The problems of D&D

>Combat is sort of boring and relies on gimmicks

The combat system boils down to 'attack'. There's not really anything else to do, unless it's given to you by your class.

Sure, you can attempt things outside the rules, but that falls completely within DM Fiat. Saying that making up the rules on the spot solves the issue of boring combat is also saying FATAL can do anything well.

Classes don't truly give you more options in combat. All they give you is 'ability rotations' like an MMORPG would. Paladins smite in combat, because that's what works best with paladins. Battlemaster Fighters do X Y Z maneuvers, because that's what does most damage. Wizards cast this spell to clear lots of weak monsters, and this one for high single target damage. Champion fighters attack.

(Now go imagine clearing an adventure with a party full of Champion Fighters. Completely possible, and thoroughly soporific)

Clever encounter design mitigates this, but that's kind of like making up the rules. Nevertheless, it's relying on gimmicks ("Oh this monster poisons you when he attacks. Make sure to prepare remove poison", "This dude isn't hurt at all by these two types of damage").

And some stuff feels kind of arbitrary. Imagine you're fighting a construct with a fuel tank, a flamethrower, and three tentacle-like arms. There's no rules for called shots. There's nothing indicating hitting the arms can cut them off, that you might be able to disable the flamethrower, or make the fuel tank explode. Because it's not in normal gameplay (nor is sundering, disarming, crippling attacks, et cetera), you have to telegraph and be rather heavy handed with your clues to indicate what may be done.

(For real, I'm gonna have my players fight a living tree soon, and unless I tell them out of game that they can attack the branches separately I have no idea how to show them that the branches can be cut)


Also, monster power levels are hard to convey, which ties into my next point.

(2/3)

>Levels
Levels fucking suck.

The power curve is way too steep. They make some content completely unsuable. Low level PCs will never see a dragon, because it can TPK them in a single turn without anybody being able to react if it wins initiative. Nor will they see mindflayers, beholders, or a whole lot of iconic monsters. But it also works the other way around. Have a cool story you want to tell about an orc-goblinoid alliance? Sucks for you, your PCs are now level 8th and unless you bring literal hordes of monsters (which is also pretty boring because of how long the combat is going to be) it's going to be a breeze. Fun city intrigue that ties in with a character's backstory? Nah, they'll cast a single spell to resolve it or simply murder everyone, which they probably can because they are level 10.

Now many of you will probably cite the argument that the world doesn't scale, yadda yadda. That's bullshit. If the world doesn't scale, then either the adventurers must be off to some other plane as soon as they hit a certain level, or everything's going to be a walk in the park. And if they're not high enough level, they'd better run away from everything that's not a goblin or a kobold. There has to be a certain degree of 'scaling' to the world.

And yet, if you scale everything to the players, logical inconsistencies appear. How do the villagers survive in this hellhole where demons appear every sunset? Why haven't the thieves taken over the city, seeing each of them can take on a small army of guards?

So given the fact that the world probably shouldn't scale, how do you show the party how powerful a monster is while remaining in character? A first level character will get 1HKO'd by an ogre (and possibly outright killed). Werewolves are fucking scary, right? To a second level party, perhaps. You think you can probably stealthily kill the robe-wearing mage with a sneak attack? Wrong, he has 40 hp. You'd have better luck with the armor-clad 11 hp guard by his side.

>Some rules are nonexistant or downright terrible

For example, there's rules on damaging objects. The toughest and biggest object possible has on average like 27hp if I recall correctly. This is laughable.


>Magic is a mess
The main problem is that magic is designed with game balance in mind first and foremost. That results in a magic system that makes no logical sense at all. Why is creating food as hard as flying? How is seeing in the dark as hard as detecting someone's thoughts? Sending is somehow harder than both, and as hard as revifying someone.
And this is more of an opinion thing, but they've removed some of the fun of being a wizard, because you can no longer enchant stuff with lots of buffs thanks to concentration. It was a necessary nerf, but I would have done it otherwise. Perhaps apply some kind of penalty to spellcasting? I don't know, I always liked the idea of a wizard fighting indirectly through his spells, by buffing his combat capabilities. Also being able to make spells permanent was pretty cool.


These problems primary stem from D&D being very 'gamey', I think. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. I've had quite a lot of fun with D&D. But sometimes it feels like you stop roleplaying to play this tactical combat mini-game.

3/3

>haveyoutriednoplayingdnd.jpeg

>not complaining about the shit skill system
But otherwise pretty accurate

>>52806702
None of that matters as long as people are having fun.

>>52809090
Fun doesn't matter. The word "fun" doesn't even mean anything as a metric for game design. Fuck off, you are debating on the level of a child.

>>52809185
>fun is a buzzword

>>52809185
If people are having fun with D&D, that's good. If people aren't having fun with D&D, that's unfortunate, but they can play another system, or houserule D&D to their liking. There's nobody who will switch teams by these posts unless they were already unsatisfied with the experience D&D provided, and Lord knows all of these points have been elaborated on for as long as /tg/ has existed. It's not new or insightful or interesting. It's a re-run that's gone on so long the tape's worn out and the picture's nothing but fuzz, but people still watch the re-run again and again.

We get it. D&D has mechanics people don't like. The solution to it is to play a different system and talk about it on here, not bitch about D&D endlessly.

>>52809185
It's a game, games without Fun are just rules and effort and that's called work.

>>52806732
I feel like some of these problems are legitimate, but a bunch are more about assumptions you've made that aren't ultimately true. There aren't CR 20 Pit Fiends that visit every village in the world every single night, and that mage and guard encounter is just plain badly built by the GM. And 5th edition, the world you're talking about, makes scaling enemies UP really easy! It does mean that monsters don't scale down great, because special abilities and features can make that complicated, but overall levels don't have the massive problems you're stating.

>>52806745
Also the largest object "possible" on that chart you're referencing is a cart, or a ten foot by ten foot window. We're not talking about smashing a wall here.

>>52806702

>Focus on 5e
>Calls 0e/1e/2e not a role-playing game

If you didn't want to talk about real D&D, dipshit, why did you use a picture of the Basic Set?