Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal - part II

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I've secretly been calling 5e "D&D For Whiners" for a long time now.

Out of curiosity, why is that?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Just back home after playing in the 5E campaign at the FLGS; some troops would have been very useful, as the party's low-level PCs got hit very hard by the critters and stuff that we ran into. One poor player, who's first game this was, got killed twice.

And a lot of the tactical assumptions, like your comment about spears, simply don't apply in 5e as the game mechanics don't have a way to deal with them - so they are out. One kind and one only of 'shield', with one numerical factor; no historical information seems to be applied. One can fire spells into melee, ignoring the chance of hitting one's comrades. Lots of stuff like this that I saw today, and which are causing me some concerns about my future participation.

We'll see, I guess.

That sucks! Hopefully, it gets better, but judging from this post and your previous one on the subject it doesn't seem likely. Too bad really.
I wonder, is this a "game mechanics" issue, or a DM issue? What's to prevent him from house-ruling in order to deal with any "game deficiencies?" I mean this was what we did back in the day. If we didn't like something about AD&D or EPT we "fixed it," and brought it in line with our campaign needs.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Just back home after playing in the 5E campaign at the FLGS; some troops would have been very useful, as the party's low-level PCs got hit very hard by the critters and stuff that we ran into. One poor player, who's first game this was, got killed twice.

And a lot of the tactical assumptions, like your comment about spears, simply don't apply in 5e as the game mechanics don't have a way to deal with them - so they are out. One kind and one only of 'shield', with one numerical factor; no historical information seems to be applied. One can fire spells into melee, ignoring the chance of hitting one's comrades. Lots of stuff like this that I saw today, and which are causing me some concerns about my future participation.

We'll see, I guess.

Excuse me Uncle, but 5th Edition does - it's the weapon property called 'Reach'. Normal melee attacks must be within 5 feet, 'reach' weapons can attack from 10 feet away. In the bog-standard rules there are no 'long spears' but there are both pikes and halberds with the 'reach' property that would well for a 2nd rank of warriors.

5th edition has a very different (but logical) layout for rules. For those of us used to the older rules - finding things can be tricky. I couldn't figure out base movement speed until Shemek pointed it out to me...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

I've noticed that hiring mercenaries has all but vanished. Boggles me; if you're first level, coughing up 5 gold each in advance and 5 after for two or three lads and lasses with long spear and chainmail can make all the difference.

The groups I been running for the past several years have been split on the issue. I only met a handful that were ignorant of the tactic. Far more common is the fact they don't want to deal with a bunch of extra people in the group. If I had to peg numbers it would be 20% don't know or never considered it. 50% don't want to deal with the extra folks, 30% are gung-ho for it and say "hell ya".

The current group I am running, has a large sailing ship and a crew with two guard but opt not to take any of them with the party when they poke in a underground burrow with undead.

Another group had one player with a dwarven paladin grow his cohort to a dozen men at arms carefully tracking their xp and items. The rest the party grumbles about the over crowding but never to the point where they told to get rid of them. Extra for one who is very vocal about how the paladin's minion should be let go.

I consistent what I see at LARPS when a group get wind of an adventure and decides who going to get on it. One thing is NOT going to happen is to invite the whole site in on it unless they feel they are going to get their ass handed to them no matter what. And it has to be really clear cut for that to happen.

It now that the new guys don't "get" it is just not as black and white as it commonly made out to be.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

We'll see, I guess.

I don't if these will help but here is play accounts I wrote up on my blog.

Where is Glassstaff?
The Great Escape of 5e

Additional comments. First off, 5th edition is not better than any classic edition. It virtue is that it works well as a 2nd best D&D for somebody who likes another edition. Despite running two campaign in 5e, I opted to return using my housed ruled variant for my Majestic Wilderlands. While the conversion to 5e was straightforward it would be just repeating what I did earlier in a slightly different form.

However I did resume using D&D 5e for a campaign involving Middle Earth because of Cublicle 7's outstanding Adventures in Middle Earth book. In part because while AiME is D&D the reworking of the stuff (class, monsters, magic) make it feel completely different than what I was running before.

If you have question about specific tactics and stuff about D&D 5e from the perspective of a guy who ran campaigns in both OD&D and 5th edition I will be happy to answer them.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Out of curiosity, why is that?

Primarily because it fixes many of the things people have whined about for years. Wizards get more powerful spells, fighters can heal themselves, everyone gets special powers, dexterity gives to hit and damage bonuses to finesse weapons, death saves. Don't get me wrong, I like some of the changes like proficiency bonus which cleaned up skills very nicely, but man can parties dump out damage at low levels.

But also, because the group of teenagers I ran it for, for a couple years, were a pack of whiners.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Primarily because it fixes many of the things people have whined about for years. Wizards get more powerful spells

More powerful spells? That a new one for me. Sure 5e Wizards have way more spells than their classic counterparts. But most of the 5e spells are capped compared to their classic D&D counterparts. There are handful that are sightly more powerful in comparison like Cure Wounds because they roll a number of dice equal to the level of the spells slot used to cast them. But those spells are in general a simplification of a range of classic spells.

For example Detect Good or Evil is way less useful than its OD&D counterpart. Level 6th 5e Heal is nice with 70 hit points healed but its AD&D 6th level counterpart Heal heals ALL hit points except for 1d4 hps. Although it goes up to 100 hp healed if you cast it as a 9th level spells.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Primarily because it fixes many of the things people have whined about for years. Wizards get more powerful spells, fighters can heal themselves, everyone gets special powers, dexterity gives to hit and damage bonuses to finesse weapons, death saves. Don't get me wrong, I like some of the changes like proficiency bonus which cleaned up skills very nicely, but man can parties dump out damage at low levels.

But also, because the group of teenagers I ran it for, for a couple years, were a pack of whiners.

Cool! Thanks for the explanation. I'm completely out of the loop when it comes to the "latest and greatest" incarnations of what is considered the "correct" way to play RPG's, or what is the current craze.
After 35+ years of playing AD&D my group recently made the switch to 5e and we are really enjoying it. We have had absolutely no problems with the transition, and I agree with your assessment of low level parties' potential damage output. As a result of this I have had to scale up the difficulty for all encounters.
The reality is that if something is wonky we just house-rule it accordingly, falling back on how it was done in AD&D, or EPT, or (more often than not) what makes sense. Some parts of 5e I really like, others not so much, but to be honest I feel the same way about AD&D and EPT, and tinkering with "broken rules" goes without saying, AFAIC.

Originally Posted by estar

More powerful spells? That a new one for me. Sure 5e Wizards have way more spells than their classic counterparts. But most of the 5e spells are capped compared to their classic D&D counterparts. There are handful that are sightly more powerful in comparison like Cure Wounds because they roll a number of dice equal to the level of the spells slot used to cast them. But those spells are in general a simplification of a range of classic spells.

For example Detect Good or Evil is way less useful than its OD&D counterpart. Level 6th 5e Heal is nice with 70 hit points healed but its AD&D 6th level counterpart Heal heals ALL hit points except for 1d4 hps. Although it goes up to 100 hp healed if you cast it as a 9th level spells.

Something to remember if I ever run a traditional D&D type game. I'm using only the original EPT spells for my campaign and haven't even looked at the D&D Spell List.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Just back home after playing in the 5E campaign at the FLGS; some troops would have been very useful, as the party's low-level PCs got hit very hard by the critters and stuff that we ran into. One poor player, who's first game this was, got killed twice.

And a lot of the tactical assumptions, like your comment about spears, simply don't apply in 5e as the game mechanics don't have a way to deal with them - so they are out. One kind and one only of 'shield', with one numerical factor; no historical information seems to be applied. One can fire spells into melee, ignoring the chance of hitting one's comrades. Lots of stuff like this that I saw today, and which are causing me some concerns about my future participation.

We'll see, I guess.

I believe it was 3rd edition that eliminated "flanking" as we know it and redefined "flanking" as being "envelopment." It also completed the shift in combat away from "small unit tactics" to "individual heroics."

Mileage, vary, yours, et cetera, but it doesn't float my boat.