[Movie] Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

[Endus]

Where the inelegance of how 5e handles this becomes most apparent as PCs get to higher levels and you start to see the combat slow down more and more and more as each PC becomes a pile of completely idiosyncratic mechanics that pile on top of each other until we have individual turns taking five minutes, when they should take 30 seconds at most.

Did you ever play 3.5 or 4e? Combat took at least as long or significantly longer; not only did you often have exactly the same delay as players weighed their choices, you had the addition of complex bonus/penalty calculations that had to be kibitzed and examined. Especially at higher levels it wasn't unusual in 3.5 to have to combine the effects of 15 or more bonuses or penalties just to try and stab a dude. Boiling most of that down to advantage/disadvantage and making them non-stacking is one of the best things 5e did, mechanically, to keep combat moving along at a decent pace.

Pick up your Player's Handbook and show me the detailed rules for doing something as common and inane as picking a lock, including searching for traps, dealing with different types of traps, and dealing with different types of locks in a variety of different situations without the DM having to wing it. Go on, I'll wait. Hint: It's dumbed down to a single roll and that's that.

p. 154 for Thieves' Tools, and pp. 176-177 for Dexterity checks in general.

Yes, it's a single roll. Let's check 3.5 real quick, p. 79 for Open Lock, which is just a single roll. There's some additional suggestions for disarming traps imaginatively, but that all applies to 5e as well; the disarming traps bit I pointed at is just for trying to use thieve's tools to disarm it mechanically.

The only real difference I'm seeing is that 5e's skill system is less bloated, and it doesn't include specific DCs, leaving those up to the DM, which 3.5 did anyway, it just established a default range, which isn't actually helpful in any real sense. It's still the same "DM picks a difficulty, player rolls to beat it".

Searching for traps falls under Perception/Investigation in 5e, so again, there's rules there for all that too. I really don't see what you're driving at, as someone who's spent years playing in both systems.

Next, tell me exactly how you make a healing potion. I'll even help you out with a seed: See the Herbalism Kit (but not Alchemy Supplies!). Then go on, tell me exactly how to make a potion from there, with page references please, not DM fiat.

I don't have a specific page reference since I'm pulling from D&D Beyond, but in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Chapter 2: Downtime Revisited, the Crafting an Item section, and scroll down to the "brewing potions of healing" subsection. Gives you the exact amount of raw material cost and the number of days required per type of healing potion.

Other rules in that section cover all kinds of other crafting.

After that, tell me what happens if you have proficiency with Performance and a Musical Instrument, and want to play that instrument. Why do you even have the latter if you have the former? Go on, show me the detailed guidelines and rules for dealing with things like that. Page references requested again.

Either can work separately. If you have both Proficiency in Performance and in a musical instrument, then we're going back to Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Chapter 2: Dungeon Master's Tools, the Tool Proficiencies section, and "Tools and Skills together". You get Advantage, in addition to proficiency bonus.

I can show you all those things in most of the other editions of the game, and usually right there in the Player's Handbook because it's very much common, everyday stuff that players deal with in the game. But not in 5e. Good luck finding anything coherent that's not combat-related in 5e.

I mean, you picked two examples and they both had really clear answers that didn't take me long to find, at all.

That's what I was saying. Also most of the rules require DM fiat and a single roll. Unlike, say, making a single weapon attack against a single opponent in one round of combat, including all the detailed information on movement and spacing, exact outcomes of various attacks, and so on and so forth, for an action that takes all of a couple of seconds of in-game time. Compared to, say, a lengthy negotiation with a noble, or sneaking about scouting an orc encampment.

A single attack against an enemy is DM fiat for the enemy's stats, and a single roll. You're not applying your standards fairly.

Also, 5e is perfectly permissive towards letting you negotiate with nobles or scout orc encampments and use a bunch of different checks at various points. It comes down to the DM letting you, but that's always been the case, even in 3.5. That's how DMing works.

It's interesting you bring up Eberron. I'm a big fan, and my favorite part about it is how it remixes things with new spins on classic monster races. This is something else that goes out the window once everyone is some oddball snowflake. I can no longer come up with creative ways for monsters and their societies to work. Instead, I need to shoehorn everyone into "Yeah these races are all just incorporated into society like everyone else." It makes for a bland setting.

Eberron's my favorite setting, and a big part of the point of Eberron is that it doesn't have those petty prejudices, or at least not in the same ways. Goblins aren't looked at any more askance than Halflings or Gnomes, probably less so than Gnomes, Zilargo spies are everywhere. What it does do is make most of those conceits nationalistic, not racial. A Goblin from Sharn isn't gonna be different from anyone else from Sharn, but a half-orc from Droamm definitely is. The oddball characteristics are still out there, you've got nomadic Halfling tribes riding dinosaurs and such, they're mostly just cultural. Judging the entire setting by the standard of Sharn is a mistake; Sharn it presented as an oddball for the setting in and of itself. But there also isn't any inherent automatic murder-motives; there's often bad blood between peoples over past wars and such, but no concept of "hey, that's an orc, we can kill that for funzies for being an orc because who gives a fuck about orcs, right?" that a lot of other settings run into trouble with. I find that broad acceptance of all races a hell of a lot more nuanced and interesting than "that elf's skin is black, so it's evil and we can murder it in the face without any more information than that".

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A lot of people do not like the Advantage/Disadvantage system because it makes things too simple and "samesy". Other systems have more complicated systems involving numerical plusses and minuses...but that doesn't mean those systems are "worse"

If I never have to spend 20 minutes working out exactly which bonuses all apply to a given attack or spell effect again, I'll be really happy. I'd rather get on with the game than spend my time working out minutiae like that. The benefit of simplicity here is you move on and get through it. Combats in 3.5 could easily blow up to taking an entire 4-hour session at higher levels. In 5e, it moves a lot faster, and less time spent arguing over whether flanking applies here or not means more time I can spend snarking at the Barbarian for fumbling his axe in that last fight.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

1. Saying "No you can't" is not fun and does not help players have fun. They just get resentful about it and feel micromanaged.

Only if your players are entitled annd need to have everything their way.

2. Saying "Society won't be very welcoming to you" just means that now every game is outsider monster campaign. That doesn't solve the problem of how all this "uniqueness" narrows what campaigns can be.

No, it doesn't. Different races will have different levels of acceptance. You add layers to society by deciding how each race fits in.

3. You are missing the point. It isn't that one player wants to be a freak. That's actually awesome. The problem is EVERY player wants to be a freak.

That's not been my experience at all. The most popular Race for PC's in D&D is human...because humans are naturally good at being pretty much every class.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2017...breakdwon.html



Granted, this chart is from 2017 but rounding out the top 5 are Elf, Half-Elf, Dwarf, and Dragonborn...with Dragonborn being the only "freak" among them. The most popular race/class combo is human fighter...which is about as vanilla as you can get.

[NineSpine]

Did you ever play 3.5 or 4e? Combat took at least as long or significantly longer; not only did you often have exactly the same delay as players weighed their choices, you had the addition of complex bonus/penalty calculations that had to be kibitzed and examined. Especially at higher levels it wasn't unusual in 3.5 to have to combine the effects of 15 or more bonuses or penalties just to try and stab a dude. Boiling most of that down to advantage/disadvantage and making them non-stacking is one of the best things 5e did, mechanically, to keep combat moving along at a decent pace.

I think 5e is an improvement in a lot of ways, but those improvements break down after level 10 imo with how absurdly complex every character becomes.

I think all editions after second fail in this regard too btw. I'm not limiting my criticism to 5e.

Eberron's my favorite setting, and a big part of the point of Eberron is that it doesn't have those petty prejudices, or at least not in the same ways. Goblins aren't looked at any more askance than Halflings or Gnomes, probably less so than Gnomes, Zilargo spies are everywhere. What it does do is make most of those conceits nationalistic, not racial. A Goblin from Sharn isn't gonna be different from anyone else from Sharn, but a half-orc from Droamm definitely is. The oddball characteristics are still out there, you've got nomadic Halfling tribes riding dinosaurs and such, they're mostly just cultural. Judging the entire setting by the standard of Sharn is a mistake; Sharn it presented as an oddball for the setting in and of itself. But there also isn't any inherent automatic murder-motives; there's often bad blood between peoples over past wars and such, but no concept of "hey, that's an orc, we can kill that for funzies for being an orc because who gives a fuck about orcs, right?" that a lot of other settings run into trouble with. I find that broad acceptance of all races a hell of a lot more nuanced and interesting than "that elf's skin is black, so it's evil and we can murder it in the face without any more information than that".

I agree that there is a lot of nuance in Eberron in this regard, but I think that nuance is lost to some extent (although not entirely) if every party is a whacky monster fest. Eberron inspired me to use race creatively and more empathetically. If I'm forced into either "Everywhere is mega cosmopolitan and there are no race dynamics" or "You are a group of outcasts", that nuance is really difficult to actively use.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

If I never have to spend 20 minutes working out exactly which bonuses all apply to a given attack or spell effect again, I'll be really happy. I'd rather get on with the game than spend my time working out minutiae like that. The benefit of simplicity here is you move on and get through it. Combats in 3.5 could easily blow up to taking an entire 4-hour session at higher levels. In 5e, it moves a lot faster, and less time spent arguing over whether flanking applies here or not means more time I can spend snarking at the Barbarian for fumbling his axe in that last fight.

Again, not stating the more complicated systems are better...just that some people find that Advantage/Disadvantage is too simplistic.

[NineSpine]

Only if your players are entitled annd need to have everything their way.

Treat your players like entitled brats, that sounds even more fun!

No, it doesn't. Different races will have different levels of acceptance. You add layers to society by deciding how each race fits in.

Finding a unique way that each freak is a freak does not solve the problem. You are sidestepping the issue, which is that when every single character begins as something extraordinary, nothing is extraordinary anymore.

That's not been my experience at all. The most popular Race for PC's in D&D is human...because humans are naturally good at being pretty much every class.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2017...breakdwon.html



Granted, this chart is from 2017 but rounding out the top 5 are Elf, Half-Elf, Dwarf, and Dragonborn...with Dragonborn being the only "freak" among them. The most popular race/class combo is human fighter...which is about as vanilla as you can get.

Do you think those numbers from D&D Beyond might have anything to do with the fact that you need to buy a book with material containing the race on D&D Beyond to make a character with that race, and all the common stuff is from the PHB? It's not like it's an open platform you can make whatever you want on.

The human racial benefits got thrown out the window when they made the race changes, btw.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Do you think those numbers from D&D Beyond might have anything to do with the fact that you need to buy a book with material containing the race on D&D Beyond to make a character with that race, and all the common stuff is from the PHB? It's not like it's an open platform you can make whatever you want on.

The human racial benefits got thrown out the window when they made the race changes, btw.

The races listed in that graph are all the "free" races that don't require any purchases.

[NineSpine]

The races listed in that graph are all the "free" races that don't require any purchases.

Do you need me to explain to you why the free races are the most commonly used?

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Treat your players like entitled brats, that sounds even more fun!

If they aren't willing to accept that you, as the GM, are applying limits...than entitled brats is exactly what they are.

- - - Updated - - -

Do you need me to explain to you why the free races are the most commonly used?

No...do you need me to explain that among those "free" races...the "freaks" like tieflings and genasi are completely outnumbered by the vanilla humans?

[NineSpine]

If they aren't willing to accept that you, as the GM, are applying limits...than entitled brats is exactly what they are.

You must be fun to game with.

[Endus]

I think 5e is an improvement in a lot of ways, but those improvements break down after level 10 imo with how absurdly complex every character becomes.

I think all editions after second fail in this regard too btw. I'm not limiting my criticism to 5e.

2e wasn't really "better", and the usual progression means you're building a character up piece by piece, so you should have some mastery over the older abilities you're used to using. In the last few years, I've played in an Out of the Abyss game that hit level 16, a Tomb of Annihilation game that hit 14, run my own homebrew campaign set in Eberron that hit 16 right at the end, and the current game we've got going on. I wouldn't say any of those games hit any "absurdly complex" state with the characters in question. Way more complex than they were at level 1, but like I said, it's a progression over time.

I agree that there is a lot of nuance in Eberron in this regard, but I think that nuance is lost to some extent (although not entirely) if every party is a whacky monster fest. Eberron inspired me to use race creatively and more empathetically. If I'm forced into either "Everywhere is mega cosmopolitan and there are no race dynamics" or "You are a group of outcasts", that nuance is really difficult to actively use.

I think the core issue is thinking of fantastic races as "monsters" in the first place, for the most part. Why is a Dwarf more "monstrous" than a Firbolg? The latter may be less common, but it's like running into someone who's Inuit in the real world; less common, not a "monster". The elves, dwarves, and men paradigm is very Tolkienesqeue, and Tolkien was very much interested in one specific ethnocultural grouping of myths that he was repurposing for his tale (not an accusation of bias or something, just focus), and modern D&D is interested in serving a much broader cultural paradigm than that.

And FWIW, in my current group, we've got two humans (including my PC), a dwarf, a dragonborn (still a PHB race) and sure, a Loxodon and a Harengon. The last party had two elves, a tiefling, a half-orc, a Tabaxi, and a Firbolg. My group's usually got a few "freaks" but there's no lack of "standard" races either.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

You must be fun to game with.

Seems more fun than playing with people that demand everything has to be their way.

[NineSpine]

If they aren't willing to accept that you, as the GM, are applying limits...than entitled brats is exactly what they are.

No...do you need me to explain that among those "free" races...the "freaks" like tieflings and genasi are completely outnumbered by the vanilla humans?

Tieflings and Genasi are not in the basic rules, and the basic rules are what is free. If that changes recently, I don't know about it, but this chart is from 2017 and in 2017 it was absolutely just the basic rules for free.

- - - Updated - - -

2e wasn't really "better", and the usual progression means you're building a character up piece by piece, so you should have some mastery over the older abilities you're used to using. In the last few years, I've played in an Out of the Abyss game that hit level 16, a Tomb of Annihilation game that hit 14, run my own homebrew campaign set in Eberron that hit 16 right at the end, and the current game we've got going on. I wouldn't say any of those games hit any "absurdly complex" state with the characters in question. Way more complex than they were at level 1, but like I said, it's a progression over time.

When I play strictly with people who are extremely invested in the hobby, it's less of an issue, but that is the exception that proves the rule. My main groups are a mixture of very invested folks and more casual folks and it's always a total mess.

I think the core issue is thinking of fantastic races as "monsters" in the first place, for the most part. Why is a Dwarf more "monstrous" than a Firbolg? The latter may be less common, but it's like running into someone who's Inuit in the real world; less common, not a "monster". The elves, dwarves, and men paradigm is very Tolkienesqeue, and Tolkien was very much interested in one specific ethnocultural grouping of myths that he was repurposing for his tale (not an accusation of bias or something, just focus), and modern D&D is interested in serving a much broader cultural paradigm than that.

And FWIW, in my current group, we've got two humans (including my PC), a dwarf, a dragonborn (still a PHB race) and sure, a Loxodon and a Harengon. The last party had two elves, a tiefling, a half-orc, a Tabaxi, and a Firbolg. My group's usually got a few "freaks" but there's no lack of "standard" races either.

I haven't had a human PC in the last 6 campaigns I've run.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Tieflings and Genasi are not in the basic rules, and the basic rules are what is free. If that changes recently, I don't know about it, but this chart is from 2017 and in 2017 it was absolutely just the basic rules for free.

Look at the bottom part of the chart where it says "among races that are available for free"

You'll also note it does not list races like "tabaxi" that were added in "Volo's Guide to monsters" that was published in 2016... a year before this chart was released.

[NineSpine]

Look at the bottom part of the chart where it says "among races that are available for free"

You'll also note it does not list races like "tabaxi" that were added in "Volo's Guide to monsters" that was published in 2016... a year before this chart was released.

It's not the first time 538 has made a critical, embarrassing error:

https://dndbeyond-support.wizards.co.../7747193404180

[Endus]

Tieflings and Genasi are not in the basic rules, and the basic rules are what is free. If that changes recently, I don't know about it, but this chart is from 2017 and in 2017 it was absolutely just the basic rules for free.

Looking at the Basic Rules right now. Tieflings are definitely in the Basic Rules.

Genasi were originally printed in the Elemental Evil Player's Companion, which was originally and always free to download; https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tab...%99s-companion

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

I haven't had a human PC in the last 6 campaigns I've run.

That's what is called "anecdotal evidence"

I also tend not to play human characters... but the games I've played in have all had human PC's. In both of the games I am currently playing...at least two of the PC's in each are human.

[NineSpine]

Looking at the Basic Rules right now. Tieflings are definitely in the Basic Rules.

Genasi were originally printed in the Elemental Evil Player's Companion, which was originally and always free to download; https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tab...%99s-companion

They really aren't.

https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/d...Rules_2018.pdf

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

It's not the first time 538 has made a critical, embarrassing error:

https://dndbeyond-support.wizards.co.../7747193404180

Speaking of critical, embarrassing errors...

[NineSpine]

That's what is called "anecdotal evidence"

I also tend not to play human characters... but the games I've played in have all had human PC's. In both of the games I am currently playing...at least two of the PC's in each are human.

Good for you? If my Hondas keep breaking down, it really isn't going to make me like Hondas because some dude on the internet says his is fine.

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Speaking of critical, embarrassing errors...

Embarrass me: What page are Tieflings on? https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/d...Rules_2018.pdf

[Logwyn]

Holy shit y'all are STILL arguing about Tieflings? Give it a bloody rest.

One of the worst things added to the game. I'll never play one or would let you in one of my games.