Fighting the System in D&D

[the_gneech]

WARNING: Rant ahead.

When D&D fifth edition landed, it was such a breath of fresh air. 3.x and Pathfinder (first edition) had become so cumbersome with bonuses, status effects, corner cases, and who-knows-what, that I had reached the point of not being able to bear to run them. Even with reskinning, books full of source material, and so on, I got so sick of my Saturday nights being an extended math class that I switched to Savage Worlds and ran only that for a while… which had its own problems, but that’s for some other time. Point is, I ran The Lost Mine of Phandelver and instantly fell in love. It was D&D, but with rules that made sense and moved fast, and it was amazing.

But over the past several months, I find myself fighting with it a lot more than enjoying it, and it’s starting to grind at me, both as a player and as the DM.

You Can’t Make That Character In This Game

I am a HERO System child, and that will always be part of me. One result is that I come up with very fleshed-out character concepts and “kits,” strong ideas about who the character is and how they should work. For example, a character I recently wanted to build was a pistol-packing harengon ship’s engineer, just in case a Spelljammer campaign materialized in my future. Think a cross between Gadget Hackwrench and Tracer from Overwatch. Should be a fairly straightforward thing, right? Artillerist Artificer, and you’re good to go. Except Artillerist is a pet class. You can carry your little turret companion like a weapon if you want to, but it’s still basically a familiar doing its own thing. I also wanted this character to have a wicked kick, with those harengon legs—not something she’d be doing on the regular, more as a bit of character fluff and a potential back-up to fall on if she was pinned down for some reason. So Fighting Initiate could get that with the Unarmed Combat style… except a harengon doesn’t get access to a feat until 4th level, and has to give up one of their quite-probably-only ASIs to get it.

So I tried an Armorer with Thunder Gauntlets, reskinning a heavy crossbow as her paired pew-pew pistols (making one attack requiring two hands), or using the Custom Lineage option to build a kinda-sorta harengon who could get Fighting Initiate but lost the signature leap ability in the process, or Artificer with a couple of levels of Fighter… I tried all sorts of combos. Some of them kinda-sorta worked, but none of them were what I really wanted, or at least wouldn’t become what I really wanted until well into the campaign. Which points to the next problem.

D&D Is Secretly a Seven-Level Game

5E’s designers made it no secret that they really considered 3rd level to be where most campaigns should probably start, but that they felt compelled to include the “training wheels” levels of 1-2 for reasons of tradition and easing new players in. Which, meh, but I could live with that if the game didn’t start to come apart at 6th level and generally go off the rails completely by 9th or 10th. I’m not just talking about the famously-broken CR system that doesn’t work past 3rd, but just the sheer arms race between the PCs and the monsters. Once the 3rd- and 4th-level spells come out, no monster who doesn’t have maxed hit points is likely to survive more than one round; and if you scale up the monsters so they can last any length of time, they’re almost as likely to one-punch any party member who isn’t a barbarian. I’ve observed in multiple games now that starting around 7th level combat feels less like a tactical skirmish and more like rocket tag. Which is fun sometimes, but for me at least it gets old fast.

So the “good part” of the game starts at 3rd level, starts creaking at 6th, and rare is the campaign that goes above 10th. That’s effectively a 7-level game, even if there are 20 levels in the book. If you like unusual character combos, say a burglar who’s also a martial artist a la the image at the top of this page, you probably won’t get there until the campaign’s half over—by which time the barbarian’s reckless rage, the paladin’s smite-nova, etc. are all going to be way more effective than anything you can pull off anyway. (Let’s not even get into the fact that such a character would be extremely cool in the Tier-1 or Tier-2 worlds of mortal adventure, but completely in the wrong world for Tier-3+. Spider-Man can go to space, sure, but he doesn’t BELONG there.) Which leads to the next issue…

Anti-Fun Abilities You Can’t Not Use

It’s against my nature to ban character abilities; given the “You Can’t Make That Character” issue already mentioned, I want more options instead of fewer. However, in practice, there start to be some things that show up over and over again, because they’re too good not to use, and I would argue, actually make the game less fun for me as a player, and definitely make the game less fun for me as the DM. For instance…

• Stunning Strike. On paper, this seems like a fun little controller ability. Spend some of your class resource to make the enemy lose a turn, giving you advantage on hitting them on the next turn. Thematically it fits: has there been a martial arts movie fight where the hero didn’t ring an opponent’s bell, shove them through a pile of crates, or something else that took them out of the fight briefly? So it should be great. But what happens in practice? The monk spams stunning strike until the BBEG fails their saving through purely through the law of averages, and then the rest of the party surround-and-pounds, fight over one round. What cool things can the BBEG do? You’ll never know.


• Spirit Guardians. Who even let this into the game? The cleric gets an aura that auto-kills enemies within 15′ of them without any effort or risk on their part… and 3/4 of the monsters in the game have no ranged options? The first time someone cast this in my game, I thought I had to be reading it wrong, but nope, that’s how it works. Instead of being afraid of an angry mob, the cleric runs towards them.


• And More… Banishment ends entire fights with a single saving throw. Wild Shape gives you multiple hit point pools that you can just use and discard. With the right subclass and a single feat, a human barbarian could literally resist all damage of any kind at 3rd level. I used to think sneak attack was broken, until I saw a game get above 5th level, now I feel like rogues have kinda gotten the shaft.

“yOU JuSt Ne3D To bE crEATivE!”

Posting about any of these issues to just about any internet space will get you a bunch of Reply Guys telling you that they can be fixed through encounter design or somehow magically by “Just being creative!” So let me throw in a sidebar rant about that, while I’m ranting. I’m already the King of Reskinning; being a HERO System child teaches you that, as the entire system is literally nothing but reskinning. As for encounter design, does it really make sense that I should have to build all of my encounters around the fact that the paladin is going to go supernova on their smites on the first round, or the barbarian does 75 points of damage per turn unless they crit, or that the wizard will limit every creature to being able to move or attack but not both? What, pray tell, is the point of even having published adventures when I have to throw away all the written encounters and rebuild them from scratch because WotC foes are made of tissue paper? YES, D&D encounters work better if you have multiple foes rather than a single powerful monster, and YES it’s okay for the players to flex on the monsters sometimes, and YES I can just give every monster more hit points or have another wave come running around the corner, BUT these are not solutions to the systemic problems.

Sooo… Whatcha Gonna DO About It?

Honestly, I don’t know. I think that the core engine of 5E is fine, honestly, but it has too much “D&D Baggage” attached to it to really find a meaningful solution. You’d have to go through the whole system from top to bottom to pound out every proud nail, dry out every damp squib, and tune every sour note, at which point you’re basically playing a different system anyway. Pathfinder 2E seems tempting, with promises of robust 1st-level characters and repeated claims by various YouTube channels that it actually is and stays balanced for 20 levels, but I have my concerns.

Heck, HERO System still exists, even if it’s a giant wall-o-text mess these days, and so does Savage Worlds and any other number of alternate rules systems. But D&D is easily King of the Hill in terms of online/remote play support, with PF2E the only other one that even comes close. There are a few random people doing Foundry Mods or Roll20 plug-ins for games that aren’t D&D/PF2E, but they’re super-niche.

So… I don’t know. It might just be that I need a break.

Comments

[melchar]

I've been reffing D&D since 1973. I encountered D&D at the 'airline suits' of the LA Marriott airport hotel during the last Equicon. I began with the pamphlets plus the Greyhawk pamphlet & had to make up a lot in the 2 weeks of prep I did before dragging in my gal pals & their brothers so that I could DM the game that took over a LOT of my brain. At one point I ref'd a campaign on Saturday, another on Sunday & a 3rd from 8pm till midnight on Tu/Wed/Thurs nights & some other game on Friday nights.

Unless we moved - which happened sometimes - I didn't lose players & some [if they had to move] would drive up to 400 miles to sometimes get in a weekend game. Because of people moving, I started reffing [currently 10] text/response games on a local BBS that is a now part of a website. At age 64 I'm playing [YAY!] a Friday night Pathfinder game & reffing different games on Saturdays & Sundays.

From the -start- [and the depths of my crazed 15-year old mind] Gaea, my D&D campaign world, was designed to be a Byzantine high-magic world with a 7,000+ year Empire that has held power with the same dynasty. Mages have only stopped being chattel, owned by their nobles - the last 400-odd years [due to a 600-year-long war & the mages advocating their greater use should they be free to act & not restrained].

There is a longevity drug that stops aging -and fertility- as long as it is taken daily - which means that to breed, the nobles need to age, which means they usually have been around a while before they have kids - because the threat of kid's wanting to inherit is real.

Cities & all towns are protected by force shields that are prayed for as a 5th level clerical spell at sunset & taken down at dawn. ['Combine' allows for groups of lower-level clerics to erect these 'Wards' - so most farmers commute to their fields & live in the town - or in barracks, for workers.]

Adventurers know they are not tough enough to march in and try usurping the Emperor's throne - or the throne of lesser kings or even barons. Very few have ever even -tried- this - and all were from offworld, doing this despite the others in the group trying to talk them out of this. Those that tried never came close to a noble & - after being arrested & fined - either learned from the moment or went home. ...their players rolling up native PCs, or bringing in someone else and being more reasonable.

PCs never have 'player character buttons' and the other players are not forced to associate with a PC they detest. The rules are mostly 2nd edition AD&D - ever since 1st ed AD&D adopted 'kits' [which I've been using since 1979] - so I'm roughly 80% 2nd ed AD&D compliant.

I am -just- starting a new campaign of lowbie PCs [from 1st level to - the lhigh level guy being a 4th level; one PC new, the others run once or twice before] - since we JUST finished a long adventure with their high level PC [level 11 triple class Rngr-Cler-MU/ level 14 fighter with a 20 STR/ level 12/13 mage-thf & 3 other PCs] who romped around & kicked serious butt in a demon-haunted stronghold - while still also being hugely challenged.

I say this because I have ref'd a TON of games, but to me it's the setting that is the important thing. I don't use modules [[except the time a friend dumped all his World of Oerth stuff on me & the aforesaid group I mention above got to run thru 6 Greyhawk modules - never knowing they were doing the modules, since I did hand-copy maps for 'Tomb of Horrors**' as an example - and just gave them descriptions/etc without benefit of them doing anything based on pre-knowledge & it was grand]]. My brain sprouts some idea for scenarios in the world & I work it out.

I've flummoxed high level groups with 4 hit die monsters & know that a bunch of smaller guys can be -far- more threatening than 1 or 2 big powerful monsters. I've had players want to do nothing but spend time in town, buying cool things from shops with their garnered loot. Some get highly detailed furnishings or clothes. One guy - when asked what he'd do if he got a lot of cash - said he'd buy a car with a great sound system - and so bought a great warhorse - and hired a bard.

It's all about loving a world enough to give it character - and enthrall players enough with the setting that they come to like the world too - enough to want to protect it ... or their -neighborhood- in it, at least. Enthusiasm is one heck of a draw - and I worry that you may not be enjoying your games as much as you COULD.



**= cool thing about 'Tomb of Horrors' was that - given verbal descriptions & my hand-writ notes for what they found - the gnome mage -a- read the floor & told the others that they needed to only use secret doors - thru which -b- they avoided 80% of all the locale's hazards. Then - once they were back on Gaea & I told them where they had been, they did not believe me. ..then they ran and checked the bookcase of the Mu-thf player who owns every D&D thing ever published - and swore the written clue was not in the module. It was. [end digression]