Tabletop Community Watch

[BlazikenLover]

I would say that any D&D 5e official release post mordekaisen tome of foes is shit but I would be lying since sword coast adventurer's guide was a huge letdown: was hyped as an option book yet all it really had were some reflavoured backgrounds, optional race features for ONE race and, mostly mediocre, archetypes. As a setting book it was also underwhelming from what I recall, since older books did what it tried to do better.
Volo's guide to monsters was great, tons of monster ecology stuff and even character options (fuck your whining about freakshit, tabaxi, goliath and bugbear are some of my favourites).
The xanathar's subclassed were good, a step in the right direction but the book was also hyped as having these optional rules for DMs to make stuff like crafting less annoying, yet I feel they failed in that regard since those go mostly ignored.
Then came tasha's which tried to do a similar job, and I got really mixed feelings about this book. I love the idea of additional and alternate class features, since they can grant abilitied that make a ton of sense for the base class to have or give the player more customization, I loved the archetypes too. My problem with the book lies in the tone, the excerpts from tasha were cringy, I found the art to be terrible. I could ignore those two, but the final annoyance came in the form of a rule, one which wotc said would be optional until it wasn't: "pick your own racial scores". Why am I bothered so much by this, considering I am a DM who might let his players change a racial modifier? Because I felt it robs races of their identities, makes every race feel samey and less unique.

My biggest issue with 5e is the wasted potential: so many good ideas that remained in the UA for no good fucking reason.
The mystic (psionic class) was a clusterfuck sure, but if they kept iterating on and polishing the idea it would have been great, instead we get some mediocre archetypes with a really stupid mechanic and a few feats
The ranger was known as the worst base class in the game, with many brainlets saying it should be removed. They attempted to fix it no less than three times and the last attempt was their best one so far, so what did they do? Trash the idea and release new archetypes.... Because a freaking archetype can fix the BASE CLASS ISSUES AND ALSO FIX THE OLD ARCHETYPES RIGHT?
Minor ones: Unhearthed arcana archetypes never making it to publication, some were really cool such as stone sorceror (ffs just rename it to metal sorceror and you had a great gish, people are always happy to have more gishes even) or severely nerfing them (this is one I don't understand, the monk having a good new archetype won't bream the game)
To me it feels like after 2018 they got really lazy with the content, that was also the year mearls got cancelled for "shielding a woman abuser" and they started amping the pandering. Then came the lawsuit from that black employee which they treated like shit and surprise surprise, months later you had them echoing the idiotic "orcs are racist" nonsense. And don't get me wrong, I think Mearls is a cunt and one of the main reasons of everything that's wrong with the game.

Tldr: decent game, wasted potential with shit expansions, complacent releasing mediocre products and pandering.


Edit: oh ffs I thought I was posting on the tabletop thread not the community one.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

@Adamska I can’t reply to your post, but I’ll just say that I’ve played more 5E than any other edition. There are a number of errors in your post. Will saves don’t exist in 5E. Magic in 5E for Wizards and Clerics is similar to Vancian, but there are differences. Concentration is a thing (saying ‘Wizards should stay out of melee’ is dumb; a good DM will throw out various ways of doing damage on the party not just limited to dudes with swords), certain spells can be cast at various levels, spell saves/spell attacks are calculated differently. I can go on, but it’s probably the most complicated system. Vancian was simpler. You have X number of level-specified spells prepared. Once you use them, they are used. 5E splits preparation from spell slots, so you can ‘prepare’ various spells but just spam magic missile all day if you want.

I haven’t played a regular wizard in a long time, so forgive me if I’m wrong, but every class has its own system anyway so it doesn’t really even matter. You pretty much have to learn a new magic system for every fucking class (including martial classes like monks which now basically have spells anyway).

5e magic is simple as fuck. The only class that doesn't use the same casting system is Warlock. Every other class has a number of spell slots by level (your basic 3/3/2 etc) and prepares a number of spells based upon their casting modifier (Int/Wis/Cha) + their level (a level 4 Wizard with 16 Int can therefore prepare 7 spells). You use the spell slots to cast the prepared spells, some of which gain additional benefits from being upcast.

 

[Ghostse]

@Adamska I can’t reply to your post, but I’ll just say that I’ve played more 5E than any other edition. There are a number of errors in your post. Will saves don’t exist in 5E. Magic in 5E for Wizards and Clerics is similar to Vancian, but there are differences. Concentration is a thing (saying ‘Wizards should stay out of melee’ is dumb; a good DM will throw out various ways of doing damage on the party not just limited to dudes with swords), certain spells can be cast at various levels, spell saves/spell attacks are calculated differently. I can go on, but it’s probably the most complicated system. Vancian was simpler. You have X number of level-specified spells prepared. Once you use them, they are used. 5E splits preparation from spell slots, so you can ‘prepare’ various spells but just spam magic missile all day if you want.

Infinite damage-dealing cantrips (especially Auto-damage like MM) are sort of bullshit. OTOH I felt like 3.5 made lower level magic too limited; a base of 4 cantrips is really limiting, especially when you need to declare them ahead of time. Unlimited cantrips from even a limited list is way too OP, but i feel like there is a better balance to be had.

I'm torn on 5e's preparation system. I like what it goes for, but it sort of misses the mark in a way I can't quite explain. I feel like they were trying to allow players to be flexible with the tools they'd have to respond to situations without letting them cast their entire spellbook at will, but it still feels unsatisfying.
I think that kind of gets at 5e's biggest problem for me: no individual part of it is particularly complex, but its a bunch of small things that are mildly complex but adds up becasue there's a lot of them.

3.5 let Clerics swap any prepared spell for a healing (or diety's domain) spell, so its not like it is a huge switch up.

fuck your whining about freakshit, tabaxi [ ... ] are some of my favourites

Suffer not the furry to live.

The xanathar's subclassed were good, a step in the right direction but the book was also hyped as having these optional rules for DMs to make stuff like crafting less annoying, yet I feel they failed in that regard since those go mostly ignored.

I just dislike subclasses. It just adds complexity to the game and more opportunities for the numbers to break. Release full classes or new class options, not this subclass horseshit.
I would be more interested in something in the vein of what PF2 did which would be, sort of like Prestige Classes. Have class-paths, where your advancement was limited in return for more/different powers.
(i.e. Subclass your fighter as an eldritch knight, but you now only get Eldritch knight feats/have to take specified stat boosts)

My biggest issue with 5e is the wasted potential: so many good ideas that remained in the UA for no good fucking reason.
The mystic (psionic class)

Get the fuck out. Psionics follow the furries into the ovens.

Tldr: decent game, wasted potential with shit expansions, complacent releasing mediocre products and pandering.

Agreed. Like @Adamska said, the game on release was fine. Not perfect, still had rough spots and flaws, but a decent system. Most of the suplementary material ruined it.
They are recreating all the 3.5 pain points, brought in some of the worst things from 4e and tossed out all the good, and adding in poorly written and thought out woke.

 

[Adamska]

@Adamska I can’t reply to your post, but I’ll just say that I’ve played more 5E than any other edition. There are a number of errors in your post.

Right then, let's see.

Will saves don’t exist in 5E.

Wisdom saves are will saves, even if they don't have that term anymore. Nope.

Magic in 5E for Wizards and Clerics is similar to Vancian, but there are differences. Concentration is a thing (saying ‘Wizards should stay out of melee’ is dumb; a good DM will throw out various ways of doing damage on the party not just limited to dudes with swords), certain spells can be cast at various levels, spell saves/spell attacks are calculated differently.

Concentration was a thing in 3.x and it was a proficiency in 2e too. Of course you need to focus if you're in pain or get douched with a spell. Another case of not playing and not knowing that.

I can go on, but it’s probably the most complicated system. Vancian was simpler.

Vancian's still in every edition and you're still full of shit. That's what your fucking spellslots are.

You have X number of level-specified spells prepared.

And that's Vancian. Holy shit.

Once you use them, they are used. 5E splits preparation from spell slots, so you can ‘prepare’ various spells but just spam magic missile all day if you want.

That's cantrips you can abuse, and that's only in 5e. Now that you brought it up, I'll grant I don't like how spammable they are nowadays too either. So broken clock is right again.

I haven’t played a regular wizard in a long time, so forgive me if I’m wrong, but every class has its own system anyway so it doesn’t really even matter. You pretty much have to learn a new magic system for every fucking class (including martial classes like monks which now basically have spells anyway).

Nope. Arcane and Divine spells like they always were even back in the day, with lists only being different by character. Said lists are helpfully compiled in the magic section which they cover. Ain't my fault you can't read.

Barbarians have rage and some other mechanics. They are simple but not simple enough that you can just read their entry up once and play (unless you play as barbs all the time).

If you're bitching about even playing barbarian then holy shit you're unfixable. You need to get new brain medicine at this point.

Sorry, by player vs. DM I didn’t mean the traditional Gygaxian sense. I meant that for a DM, running 3E or later ends up being a game of players choosing various abilities from various books, and you often have to come up with contingencies on the fly and try to engineer the campaign to avoid either easy mode or targeting specific ‘problem’ strategies.

So... exactly the same fucking thing?

I don’t think players even do this on purpose. I think it’s just the nature of the system. Spoony referred to 3E as ‘Dragon Ball Z DnD’ and I think it’s fitting.

Spoony is also full of shit on DnD, and I learned how full of shit as I got to play more and more. He also is notorious for being a hypocrite, where he has completely different beliefs when he's a player and when he's a DM. There's a reason he struggles to ever run games and every one he's ever done online burn out super fast.

I guess AD&D1E is my preferred version, but I don’t care much for tabletop RPGs to begin with. I do like DMing though, and I DM whatever the players want to play (usually 5E). I may be biased towards 1E, but I know many people share my opinions on 3E+, so I think it’s fair to look at my criticism as a part of the overall tapestry of 5E-hate. Again, apologies if I have some of the rules wrong. I haven’t played since pandemic started.

I don't think you've touched any of them tbh since you're getting the most basic shit wrong.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

Infinite damage-dealing cantrips (especially Auto-damage like MM) are sort of bullshit. OTOH I felt like 3.5 made lower level magic too limited; a base of 4 cantrips is really limiting, especially when you need to declare them ahead of time. Unlimited cantrips from even a limited list is way too OP, but i feel like there is a better balance to be had.

Magic Missile is still a level 1 spell. Cantrips are typically minor utility effects (saying a prayer to aid a skill check, predicting the next day's weather, mending a tear in your pants) or a damage effect (ranged spell attack for 1d10 fire damage or the enemy makes a dex save or gets zapped by holy light). They are hardly overpowered unless you go all in on a warlock's eldritch blast and spam 8 beams in one turn that do 1d10+2d8+14 damage each, but that requires being really high level and having specific items/one particular sub-class to enhance that and needs two full turns to set up.

 

[Adamska]

Magic Missile is still a level 1 spell. Cantrips are typically minor utility effects (saying a prayer to aid a skill check, predicting the next day's weather, mending a tear in your pants) or a damage effect (ranged spell attack for 1d10 fire damage or the enemy makes a dex save or gets zapped by holy light). They are hardly overpowered unless you go all in on a warlock's eldritch blast and spam 8 beams in one turn that do 1d10+2d8+14 damage each, but that requires being really high level and having specific items/one particular sub-class to enhance that and needs two full turns to set up.

And the reason that cantrips are infinite now in 5e are actually because warlocks were folded in due to being so popular as a class. This was a decision made because they lose Eldritch Blast, which was their infinite charge ranged attack.

Source: A friend of mine who regularly plays 5e.

 

[Ghostse]

Magic Missile is still a level 1 spell. Cantrips are typically minor utility effects (saying a prayer to aid a skill check, predicting the next day's weather, mending a tear in your pants) or a damage effect (ranged spell attack for 1d10 fire damage or the enemy makes a dex save or gets zapped by holy light). They are hardly overpowered unless you go all in on a warlock's eldritch blast and spam 8 beams in one turn that do 1d10+2d8+14 damage each, but that requires being really high level and having specific items/one particular sub-class to enhance that and needs two full turns to set up.

You're right, and it was thinking Eldritch Blast.
Mainly, and I say this someone who likes 4e, I just find the ability in a vancian system to spam even low-levels spells, especially damage-dealing spells, to be sort of bullshit.
I don't take over issue with Eldritch Blast since its just a single spell. I don't have an issue with Wizards being able to cast inifinite light. But not all Cantrips are created equal and some are clearly ripe for spam.

 

[Corn Flakes]

You're right, and it was thinking Eldritch Blast.
Mainly, and I say this someone who likes 4e, I just find the ability in a vancian system to spam even low-levels spells, especially damage-dealing spells, to be sort of bullshit.
I don't take over issue with Eldritch Blast since its just a single spell. I don't have an issue with Wizards being able to cast inifinite light. But not all Cantrips are created equal and some are clearly ripe for spam.

I wouldn't mind damaging cantrips so much if they weren't almost universally better than a ranged weapon attack at the same level, with the bonus of not requiring ammo or even a weapon. A Wizard in 5e has literally no reason to carry a weapon outside of style points or magical effects from the weapon itself.

 

[Ghostse]

I wouldn't mind damaging cantrips so much if they weren't almost universally better than a ranged weapon attack at the same level, with the bonus of not requiring ammo or even a weapon. A Wizard in 5e has literally no reason to carry a weapon outside of style points or magical effects from the weapon itself.

Yeah. I guess I should be a bit more specific: I don't mind a wizard having like a cantrip-level shocking grasp for that "Oh shit I'm in melee" moment or even a weak plinking spell they can use a lot (not infinite but with high limits- even just say, limiting it to 5 minutes of casting per long rest (which is still 50 casts), just to prevent total abuse). But when the spell is infinite and as good or better than a ranged weapon, that's kinda broken.

 

[Gingervitis]

Volo's guide to monsters was great, tons of monster ecology stuff and even character options (fuck your whining about freakshit, tabaxi, goliath and bugbear are some of my favourites).

Yeah, but despite doing a lot of things right, Volo’s completely and utterly shit the bed at other things.

• Gnoll lore is completely fucked. Perhaps this is a good thing in hindsight, considering the influx of trannies, but still. They were playable races in other editions and had the same possibility for Drizzt Syndrome as many other races. Why take it away from the Gnolls? Its not like anyone predicted the influx of furfags.
• Same as the Eladrin in the DMG, they released a version of the Aasimar race that not only ruins the race, but also completely invalidates the older version in terms of stats.
• Kenku in this book are explicitly unable to speak in this edition beyond mimicry RAW. Your DM can say that this rule doesn’t apply, but just because the DM can solve the problem doesn’t mean its not a problem
• A lot of the monster races are fucked to high heaven. On one end of the spectrum, kobolds are a joke race who’s special ability involves pathetically pleading for their lives, and the orcs are just half-orcs with intelligence penalties. On the other end of the spectrum, the Yuan Ti Pureblood is actual, unadulterated cheese, with its innate spellcasting (not bad on its own), magic resistance, and complete poison immunity
• Firbolgs. Enough said.

Mind, its still one of the better 5e books. It doesn’t try to shove representation anywhere, many of its chapters are interesting enough, and (like you) I’m a sucker for monster races.

 

[George Lucas]

Right then, let's see.

Wisdom saves are will saves, even if they don't have that term anymore. Nope.

Concentration was a thing in 3.x and it was a proficiency in 2e too. Of course you need to focus if you're in pain or get douched with a spell. Another case of not playing and not knowing that.

Vancian's still in every edition and you're still full of shit. That's what your fucking spellslots are.

And that's Vancian. Holy shit.

That's cantrips you can abuse, and that's only in 5e. Now that you brought it up, I'll grant I don't like how spammable they are nowadays too either. So broken clock is right again.

Nope. Arcane and Divine spells like they always were even back in the day, with lists only being different by character. Said lists are helpfully compiled in the magic section which they cover. Ain't my fault you can't read.

If you're bitching about even playing barbarian then holy shit you're unfixable. You need to get new brain medicine at this point.

So... exactly the same fucking thing?

Spoony is also full of shit on DnD, and I learned how full of shit as I got to play more and more. He also is notorious for being a hypocrite, where he has completely different beliefs when he's a player and when he's a DM. There's a reason he struggles to ever run games and every one he's ever done online burn out super fast.

I don't think you've touched any of them tbh since you're getting the most basic shit wrong.

Concentration was an entirely different mechanic in 2E and 3E. I don’t think it’s fair to say Concentration as it is in 5E existed in previous editions.

You seem to think Vancian is just spell slots. It’s not. It’s spell slots + preparation, a restriction on what spells a slot can be used on. Obviously 5E’s system is a derivative of Vancian magic, but without the limiting preparation mechanic, it feels very much like a different system. The cleric mechanic of converting spells was essentially applied to all classes and spells as a whole. It’s not just cantrips I’m referring to, I’m referring to a wizard’s ability to use all their level three spell slots on fireball without having to prepare fireball for all their slots. Instead, they only need to prepare the spell once for the day. This enables a wizard to prepare magic missile and use all their slots (even slots higher than level 1) on just that one spell, and a DM now has to deal with that possibility.

I agree Spoony’s stories on D&D are biased, petty, and likely mostly bullshit. That said his description of 3E is spot on, so I give credit where it’s due (though I wouldn’t be surprised if he stole it from someone else).

 

[Kabuki Actor]

Spoiler: Alegria psychic illustration

Spoiler: Pauldroncore-adjacent "epic" art

Spoiler: This time he chose the one that played least into his fetish, while having some relationship to it.

Spoiler: Two for one deal.

Spoiler: It WASN'T the front page, he passed WAY nicer things to show a bunch of sans-serif glyphs with no useful information.

Soulless.

 

[Game master arino]

uh oh not google image search. We have the lolcow of the year on our hands boys.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

So from what i've gathered current D&D is more friendly for the theater nerds wanting to play roles while the oldschool players were more like math nerds who obsess over number crunching?

I've never played the tabletop games but i do make a lot of rpg character artwork. Over the past couple years i've been getting job offers for woke DnD type characters more often, also anthros (furfags). I usually politely decline when something is too out there to be attached with but whats funny is that wokes are the only people that send you pdfs with too many words and mission statements for the project when at the end is always that can be summed up briefly as "we want to design a bunch of dwarves but they are also gay drag queens"

 

[Ghostse]

So from what i've gathered current D&D is more friendly for the theater nerds wanting to play roles while the oldschool players were more like math nerds who obsess over number crunching?

Fairly accurate. I've played/run 1e/BX/BECMI (well, I guess technically just the BE part), never played 1eA and I've played, briefly some 2eA where I was heavily hand held. I've played and run 3x, 4, and 5.

I'd actually BX is more friendly to the textbook definition of Roleplay, in that you are given a role to play (for a short time) but its more about player skill because while there are numbers for math nerds to obsess over, there is almost nothing you can do to adjust those numbers (outside of raising/lowering stats). 1eA takes that ever further by having the GM force players to rely on only ingame knowledge and punishing them for using knowledge from out side.

2e was a math nerds paradise with all sorts of rule flow charts, and 3.x was the reign of unintended consequences & autistic min-maxing. I'd argue that while it was math nerd friendly, you needed less mathnerd ability as the math wasn't difficult math, you just need to chain up as many multipliers as you could find in obscure splats.

BX/2e is all about player skill, I remember reading somewhere (maybe in this thread) a good definition that "in B/1/2 if you had to roll, you'd already failed"; you were supposed to use your nerd smarts to set up things that could not fail. You might have a 2 in 6 to kick down the door, but swinging a stone block at it should just send it flying off its hinges. I'd say it was maybe too much about player skill.

5e and especially the content coming out after the main releases is much more about Roleplay as its been come to practiced since at least the internet. Where you aren't really playing someone else, you are just playing a different you, like an improv session. Everything is character skill; 4e was also guilty of this a bit, but DMs were encouraged to allow automatic successes for clever actions or give bonuses.

That's why Theater Majors like 5e. They don't have to really play, they let their characters think for them and then cry when the dice don't cooperate and blame the "killer" DM. They just have to act out their gay fantasies for a captive audience. People at the table generally react to what you do, unlike Mom and Dad.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

okes are the only people that send you pdfs with too many words and mission statements

What. Why would anyone do this shit?
Do they hope to recruit you to do their shit for free?

 

[Wikipedia]

What about 3.5, would it be a perfect mix between being a roleplay and math heavy.

 

[Adamska]

What about 3.5, would it be a perfect mix between being a roleplay and math heavy.

Never saw it as math heavy tbh, but it's a min-maxer or power gamer's dream due to the fuckload of splats, magazine expansions, and other things made during its long run.

I've never had much issue blending both when I play tbh, but it is strongly favoring the guy who can find the best books for a build. The big trick if you get antsy about it though is to try and limit the number of books you can use to two or three. Even then you can still build a lot of fun bullshit.

For example there's a ranger variant that focuses on its magic; it gets their spells early which makes them damn near perfect for prestige class shifts.

 

[Corn Flakes]

All this talk about X system being better or worse for roleplaying feels like a cop-out to me.

Systems can be more or less complex, allow for more or less build variety, but how you play your character is completely system-agnostic. It depends on you as the player, and on the GM's style. 5e might have a problem with pigeonholing characters into narrow builds with its class archetypes, just like 3.5e suffers from having so many splats a munchkin can turn a whole campaign inside out, but neither system fosters and more or less "roleplay". I've played with the so-called theater majors in both editions through the years. They've always been there.

The only thing that's changed is the crowd. With Wizards and other publishers trying to pander hard to what they think are the customers of the future because shit like Big Bang Theory and now Critical Role threw open the gates of geekdom to anyone who wants to call themselves a "nerd", this sort of shit was bound to happen. It's community displacement for commercial reasons, plain and simply.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

You're right, and it was thinking Eldritch Blast.
Mainly, and I say this someone who likes 4e, I just find the ability in a vancian system to spam even low-levels spells, especially damage-dealing spells, to be sort of bullshit.
I don't take over issue with Eldritch Blast since its just a single spell. I don't have an issue with Wizards being able to cast inifinite light. But not all Cantrips are created equal and some are clearly ripe for spam.

There is a reason for that… warlocks have a painfully low level of slots that always cast at max spell level. A six shot .44 magnum to the wizards fifteen shot 9mm. Eldritch blast is there so that they don’t run into a situation like in AD&D where the wizard is just like “Okay. I cast Melf’s Acid Arrow… I need to and lie down if you want me to do that again.”