What 5e got wrong

Sacrosanct said:

You're the one who came here into a public discussion, saying something very opinionated and literally said you'd refuse to hear any sort of contrary conversation. Sorry, but if you don't want people disagreeing with you, you shouldn't come to a public forum.

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Maybe you should expect people to express opinions on a public forum. Maybe you should also expect people to prefer actual conversation over zealous and misguided attempts to convince them their opinion is wrong based on absurd reasoning, like there's nothing wrong with the rules because the DM can change them.

In any case, I'm not going to perpetuate a pointless semantic conversation. Unless you provide productive conversation contributing to the original topic I'm not responding to your posts anymore.

Tony Vargas took my points and ran with them in a more eloquent way.

Suffice to say, 5e needs to be flexible, and that takes a lot of DM adjudication, and thus Rule Zero gets implemented a lot in 5e. Oberoni Fallacy doesn't really work when talking about 5e because 5e de-emphasizes the purpose of CharOp (power to the players). This is probably my biggest issue with the D&D Adventurer's League – it takes away the power of houserulling from the DM for the sake of "fairness" and thus imposes a structure on 5e the edition was never meant to carry.

In any case, trying to make the game fair for different ability scores is what got us into the madness of the 4e Battlemind attacking with his Constitution (or the ConLock for that matter). Nobody really argues that Constitution isn't fairly treated in 5e; in fact, because of 5e's bounded accuracy and bounded ability score maximums, Constitution is the ability score everyone wants to invest in. Likewise, all abilities are worth investing in by almost any and every character to some extent. 5e finally throws off the shackles of the 1 or 2 ability score using characters that were common in 3rd and 4th editions (remember that I loved 4th edition, in spite of this flaw).

Einlanzer0 said:

Sorry, I just think this is flat-out wrong. What's the point of having rules at all if it's all completely subject to the whims of a DM?

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Principally, to help a DM in running a fun game.

DMs are empowered to make adjustments so things work for their games, they are not empowered to just casually rewrite the combat mechanics. While they can certainly do that, it is not the assumption of 5e that they will or that they should. The combat rules in particular are intended to create a set of rails for the gameplay, otherwise mechanics like Hero Points, Inspiration, and Advantage/Disadvantage wouldn't exist.

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I think 5e's take on combat falls in line with the idea that rules are there to help rather than to dictate: we've given you something we think works pretty good. Here's how it works. Here's how to change some things.

WotC carries a responsibility to strive for a well-balanced ruleset. And they have done a relatively decent job with it a lot of the changes they made from previous editions.

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I'm with you, but the things you've been seeing as "imbalanced" (because they're not strictly combat-equivalent) are certainly more open to discussion and questions than you seem to be presuming. It is not the case that, if Charisma is not as useful in combat as Dexterity, that it should be made to be as useful, or else the ability scores are flawed. That Charisma is not as useful in combat as Dexterity but is valued equally indicates instead that combat is not the only or even necessarily primary consideration the designers have taken into account.

Einlanzer0 said:

Maybe you should also expect people to prefer actual conversation over zealous and misguided attempts to convince them their opinion is wrong based on absurd reasoning, like there's nothing wrong with the rules because the DM can change them.

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See what he did there? "Your attempt to convince me my opinion is wrong is misguided because of your absurd reasoning, i.e. your opinion is wrong" The lack of self-awareness is simply mind boggling.

OldSkoolRPG said:

See what he did there? "Your attempt to convince me my opinion is wrong is misguided because of your absurd reasoning, i.e. your opinion is wrong" The lack of self-awareness is simply mind boggling.

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"There's nothing wrong with the rules because the DM can change them." <-- absurd reasoning. #sorrynotsorry. And same thing applies to you that applies to Sacrosanct.

Marandahir said:

Tony Vargas took my points and ran with them in a more eloquent way.

Suffice to say, 5e needs to be flexible, and that takes a lot of DM adjudication, and thus Rule Zero gets implemented a lot in 5e. Oberoni Fallacy doesn't really work when talking about 5e because 5e de-emphasizes the purpose of CharOp (power to the players). This is probably my biggest issue with the D&D Adventurer's League – it takes away the power of houserulling from the DM for the sake of "fairness" and thus imposes a structure on 5e the edition was never meant to carry.

In any case, trying to make the game fair for different ability scores is what got us into the madness of the 4e Battlemind attacking with his Constitution (or the ConLock for that matter). Nobody really argues that Constitution isn't fairly treated in 5e; in fact, because of 5e's bounded accuracy and bounded ability score maximums, Constitution is the ability score everyone wants to invest in. Likewise, all abilities are worth investing in by almost any and every character to some extent. 5e finally throws off the shackles of the 1 or 2 ability score using characters that were common in 3rd and 4th editions (remember that I loved 4th edition, in spite of this flaw).

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I don't agree that Oberoni doesn't work in 5e. At all. It's still incumbent on WotC to provide a good, well-thought out ruleset, regardless of how much they empower DMs to tweak or adjust.

Getting back to ability scores - I never thought that people using Con to attack with made any sense or was a good idea; all it does is further reinforce the class-based score structure d&d has always had. What I'm saying needs to happen is that they need to tie more baseline combat-relevant mechanics to the ability scores to make them less class-dependent than they currently tend to be. There should be some incentive and some payoff for playing a high-int, low-con fighter, for example, rather than just gimping the crap out of yourself to do it. I've actually drafted a number of things over the years in an attempt to facilitate this, like a tactics-style mechanic that works something like HD.

Einlanzer0 said:

"There's nothing wrong with the rules because the DM can change them." <-- absurd reasoning. #sorrynotsorry. And same thing applies to you that applies to Sacrosanct.

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I never made that argument. Since you like to keep accusing others of engaging in a fallacy, this is what we call a "strawman".

TheCosmicKid said:

You seem to be describing a wizard.

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No, I'm not. At all.

Wizards study distinct arcane formulas, according to established rules, to use (generally) known spells in a relatively safe, predictable manner.

That bears no resemblance to what I described.

Einlanzer0 said:

Sorry, I just think this is flat-out wrong. What's the point of having rules at all if it's all completely subject to the whims of a DM?

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They're a starting point for when the DM isn't having any whims. Seriously, though, the idea is that the DM will make rulings to make the game he's running better, not just on a whim. As playing games go, DMing is fairly responsible.

DMs are empowered to make adjustments so things work for their games, they are not empowered to just casually rewrite the combat mechanics.

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Rulings aren't re-writing rules, just interpreting or overruling them. But, yes, DM's are empowerd to re-write the rules if they want to. Or, rather, nothing can stop them. The assumption in 5e is rulings, though, not re-writes.

So, the idea that it's okay for Wizards of the Coast to publish imbalanced rules just because they provide the caveat that a "DM can change it" (which has always been the case) is laughable in its absurdity.

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They can publish an imbalanced system for no reason whatsoever. Or 'because our surveys indicate D&D fans hate balance' or whatever.

Now, it would be absurd if they'd published 5e and claimed it was balanced and the DM shouldn't need to change it, then resorted Oberoni when confronted with the fact it wasn't. But they've done neither.

Jester Canuck said:

Keep in mind that originally in D&D you gained experience for treasure acquired not monsters slain.

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Not in any published ruleset. Indeed, one of the changes made by the first supplement to OD&D, Greyhawk, was to reduce the exp for killing monsters.

Sacrosanct said:

Which again, assumes the rules are imbalanced.

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Of course they are. And not just on the tautological grounds that perfect balance is impossible. The question isn't are they balanced or are they broken, but whether that can be excused because the DM is Empowered to enforce spotlight balance and assure playability, or whether Oberoni applies. Key reasons I have to argue it's the former are that there was no particular call for or prioritization of balance leading up to Next or during the playtest (in fact, plenty of the opposite), and that the explanation of play includes DM rulings as a matter of course.

The thing about Oberoni is it's not talking about rulings, but house-rules. There's a distinction. House rules replace/change existing rules. The result is a different ruleset. Ruling don't replace rules, they might override the results of a rule, or cover a situation there's no rule for, but they don't change the rule itself. When a rule is broken and the DM changes it, the rule was still broken, even when an off-hand 'Rule 0' says "BTW, change any rules you want." When the rules say "and now the DM makes a ruling," the DM isn't changing them by making that ruling, he's just working with them.

Einlanzer0 said:

The Oberoni fallacy still carries plenty of weight.

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Only to the degree the game purports to be balanced in the first place. 5e rests so much on DM rulings that it doesn't need much, if any, mechanical balance to be playable. You want to complain that 5e isn't balanced, go ahead. It isn't.

WotC carries a responsibility to strive for a well-balanced ruleset.

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Nope. They're selling a product, and how well it's sold has been darn near inversely proportional to how well it's been balanced.