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What is a thing that bugged you about the system?
I am compiling a list of homebrew things to change in my game. And I'm curious what things frustrated players and DMs about the system. I already have a big list of fixes and new ideas but I would love some new input :)
I just feel like that people who want to get physical are at the mercy of magic users too much still.
Yeah a lot of my changes are giving weapons special attacks like how they have in BG3 and to allow STR and DEX to be used in skill checks. I'm also giving free non-combat feats to the players to let them have skills like Actor or Chef. For the magic users it won't matter much but to the martial characters it should help!
I wish I can give more input but I've been playing more pathfinder than 5e.
I asked my husband and he told me 5e is bland and needs homebrew and extra work on the DM's part to be fun
Oh boy buckle up because I have a laundry list
So IN GENERAL,
I think the system has a lot of ludonarrative dissonance. It attempts to invoke high fantasy tropes while limiting your power level so much that it feels like low fantasy. Plus, 90% of the rules deal with combat where probably only half of play time is combat at most.
I HATE advantage/disadvantage. I think it's a fine modifier but slapping it on literally everything in lieu of any other modifiers was a clear knee jerk overreaction to the stacking modifiers of 3.X and there has to be a happy middle ground.
If the class list is going to be so limited, the subclasses need to either be extremely flexible in flavor and function, or there need to be a metric fuckton of extremely flavorful options, and simply neither of these is true.
The spell selection is so limp dick, if you want to make a themed character without homebrew, good luck.
The weapon selection is horrible, there's usually a best in slot weapon for any build.
Martials get literally nothing to do with their turns, they just attack, bonus action if they're lucky, and pass.
Warlocks feel so awful to play because short rests are so inconsistent at 1 whole ass hour.
HP at level 1 is so fucking bad holy shit.
I've probably forgotten something because this godforsaken system is so awful that I could not possibly list all my issues with it in one post.
I've never found 5e combat to ever be that compelling to participate in. Might just be because of the people I play with, but it seems really hard to balance to actually be challenging.
Also I wish Path of The Elements Monk wasn't an awful path to take with monk cause conceptually its really cool, but doesn't stick the landing with its benefits from a role play aspect or a combat aspect.
A lot of my most prominent issues are balance related, martials being too weak, encounter building being a nightmare if you're not especially familiar with the system (though that's not something you can especially fix with homebrew), some subclasses just being considered "traps" for being so weak, that kind of thing.
A lot of skills just being more useless RAW than I'd like, especially where you feel they should have at least some effect, like medicine is the most notable one probably.
Minimal mechanical character customization in 5e irks me too a bit, because yeah, maybe a several months ago I picked to play an [[insert class here]] with one subclass and now in RP they really like nature even though they didn't pick a remotely nature-y subclass and now I don't have a mechanical way to represent their practice aside from multiclassing, which might significantly maim my character's strength compared to the rest of my party.
Also on a very similar note, having any level ups at all where I am not making at least one choice, with how spread out level ups can be, feels kinda bad too, as fun as pure "number go up" is, I want to mechanically express individually at least a bit.
Those are the ones that come to mind right now.
I know I'm in the extreme minority here, but I really like for gnolls to be MEGA EVIL. You need relatively low-level mass-army enemies that can be killed without it being some kind of war crime (goblins, orcs, and kobolds have shifted in the cultural zeitgeist to being less acceptable targets).
I like that Yeenoghu's influence is so corrupting that there's no way for gnolls to ever be redeemable or not evil.
It's not that I want to encourage murderhobos, but I want to avoid "what about the poor goblin babies left behind after you wipe out the goblin village?" as much as possible
Oooh, them's fighting words in most furry spaces Snazzy!
I do understand where you're coming from though. It'll obviously depend on what kind of story and setting that a campaign is going for, but my go-to for 'morally-uncomplicated cannon fodder' is usually just zombies and skeletons.
As a general rule I really don't like it when these game systems paint an entire race/species as outright evil; not least because they usually pick anthro-ish races for it that are just way more appealing to me than playing as an elf or a dwarf.
I could........... ugh
hypothetically be argued into allowing players to play gnolls from a tribe that managed to break away from Yeenoghu's influence in the past (in the same way that tieflings aren't any more evil than humans).
But when I run gnolls as bad guys, I specifically have them as corrupted unquestionably by Yeenoghu and not be redeemable. They also fit that sweet spot of levels 3-5 of having a variety of CR choices to allow for more unique encounters (including some really good early bosses).
The removal of 3.5's "Rogue skills" like Use Magic Device or Detect Traps and the like has turned Intelligence into a universal dump stat. As a DM, it feels like I have to force knowledge checks everywhere to make the ability score worthwhile for non-Wizards, but that's unfun for said classes as their players feel punished.
I usually address this by houseruling that you have to use Investigation (Intelligence) to find things, not Perception (Wisdom), and it honestly makes sense as the player looking around a room for noteworthy details isn't using their Perception, by definition of the word, they're Investigating.
It'd just be great if there were more things that demanded non-Wizards have an Intelligence higher than 8, ultimately.
Good call on the Use Magic Device skill. I'm adding that. I already added scroll use for any class (basically if you can cast spells, you can use scrolls). And for non-casters they can use Arcana or Use Magic Device if they're proficient in either. I'm putting "Use Magic Device" as a DEX tool proficiency just because it aligns better with how rogues are already built right now.
I agree about INT being a low-power stat at the moment.
I'm rolling Investigation into Perception (think of it as a universal "search/look" skill). So you can use INT or WIS.
I also use the variant skill/attribute rule. So you can use attributes other than the suggested ones for skills when it's appropriate.
Initiative: We ran a large group of 7 players, and default initiative would cause some players to never get a turn.
Solution: Group initiative. Monsters roll initiative, players that tie or beat are grouped into initiative and take their turn simultaneously. Same as BG3, but we did ours first!
Long rests: Players could nuke every normal encounter on the way to their destination, and then long rest at night, making travel meaningless.
Solution: Long rests only in town. Long rests require a safe location to be performed successfully. If there's a chance of an encounter, it's not safe. Short rests are more common as a consequence.
These were the most significant changes we made. There are a bunch of smaller things, too, but I can't recall them right now, and aren't as important as these two.
I do "one initiative roll for each monster type". So every skeleton goes on the same turn. If it's more than a handful of the same monster (like 4+) then I'll break them up into color coded groups and have those groups have their own turn (3 blue skeletons have a roll, then 4 red skeletons have a roll). I also do a lot of average damage rolls to save time.
I agree about the long rest problem. I adopted the same thing. I allow for short rests in the wilderness but long rests require you to either be in a safe, comfortable location or camping in one spot for a full day (with the possibility for encounters or situations that might come from that).
Idk if this really counts, but we changed Mage Hand's carrying ability a tiny bit, just made it to where you could at least pick up most people and a couple heavy objects, cuz yay magic do magic, and I threw a Mindflayer off a Pirate Ship with it x3 I was very tired of the fight lmfaoo
There's a laundry list of issues, but the one that has stuck with me since I first looked at the core rules is the severe lack of character customization. Unless you're a warlock, every character of a given class/subclass combo is nearly mechanically identical to every other character with the same class/subclass. Multiclassing and feats can alleviate the problem, but they're both wildly imbalanced to the point where you're almost always just doing a pre-existing build by choosing the right ones or kneecapping your character by choosing the wrong ones, with extremely little in-between. Lack of weapon diversity contributes to this problem, since with how barebones the weapon design is in this game the only factors to consider are damage die, range, and price. I want my character to feel like something I designed, not a bundle of abilities I chose at level 2 or 3 and can't meaningfully alter at any point thereafter.
The system being very Pass/Fail.
Many other systems incorporate the idea of 'failing forward' in which failure on a check creates complications but still moves the action... As opposed to preventing progress.
For example in Urban Shadows the veteran ability 'Old Friend' allows you to designate an NPC in the scene as an old contact and you roll.
On a critical success - they are an old friend and owe you a debt from a previous job.
On a regular success- they are an old friend but you owe them one from a previous job
On a fail- they know you, but they are not a friend, explain why this person wants you dead...
All three of those create drama and move the story forward and make for exciting gameplay.
I'm inclined to agree with you.
I naturally run my games such that this isn't that big of an issue (I tend to have skill checks be on degrees of success rather than hard pass/fail).
I remember the first time a player tried to pick a lock and failed. And then they were like "I want to pick the lock again." And I had no clue what to do about that!
I really want WotC to maintain their stance on making sure D&D is accessable. A lot of systems really need to be in ways that they aren't and it makes them a chore to play while D&D always feels like something I can crack open and get into whether my players are old or new.
But WotC's decision on how to approach accessability have all leaned towards homogenization, and blandness. Reduction of options and complexity in abilities rather than making them more approachable.
The place that this hurts for me the most, with 5E is it's total lack of identity between classes beyond that they are mechanically different. There's nothing about the warlock that makes me feel like I'm in a dangerous mystic pact with a far entity without having to rely on roleplay. There's very little that makes me feel like an embassador of deities when I'm playing a cleric, I'm just a different flavour of magic user. Mechanical tie-ins to fluff are so important I think for the kind of game 5e wants to be and it makes it really hard to be engaged to try out different classes. This hit me the worst with artificer when they just made it a half-caster and said "Imagine instead of casting spells, you're using inventions to do magic, that's good enough :)"
Somebody else mentioned D&D's zero sum failures state, the place that it's the worst is in combat where so many mechanics are tied to resources that when you fail to cast them it just feels terrible (Getting counterspelled on a high level cast. I just wish this had some kind of drawback to the spellcaster or that something wacky would happen instead of just saying "nope" because that's sooooo boring)
I didn't see anyone else mention it in my cursory glance, but I have no idea what the hell they were thinking with this magic item system. I guess they wanted to make it less systematized, have magic items feel more like accomplishments or rare things than just "have enough money, or are right level, get magic item" but going in the opposite direction with it means that I just have to kind of shrug and guess whenever a player wants to craft, buy, or find a magic item they really want.
More:
This isn't just a D&D problem, more a gripe I have with a lot of attribute focused ttrpg systems. Being good at trying to convince someone shouldn't solely come down to wheather you have the talk to people skill or not. New Vegas got it so right by allowing you to make plausable arguments based on your skill in something (using science to talk to people who are also good at science should work the same way as using arcana when you're speaking with wizards) and I wish that were better represented in games like D&D. I swear in the core book they kind of implied they wanted you to use different ability scores with different skills sometimes, but jeeze I wish that being able to make a sound argument with people didn't come down to "Is your personality ability the strongest"
TO BE FAIR! There already is the variant attribute skill rule in the PHB. That lets you use different attributes for skill checks. So in your wizard to wizard talk, you could make a Persuasion (INT) roll instead of a Persuasion (CHA) roll.
I have that in my game and I encourage it for my players. It works well! But most DMs, players, and adventures totally ignore it!
a luck mechanic
I ran a group with 6 players with A LOT of homebrew, very high fantasy. To the point where magic items as loot didn't really work unless they were unique enough to be interesting or common enough to be generically useful since you could go to the magic shop and buy or commission anything short of a legendary and even that might be negotiable. so when my players wanted specific gear i would make them roll a d20 no modifiers, this wouldn't affect whether they would find the item but rather how hard/expensive/long it took it was gonna be to get it. when the monk wanted hand wraps that act as a +2 magical weapon and rolled a 1 he found a place willing to make them but it would cost 1.5x the cost of a +2 sword and take two weeks meanwhile the paladin wants to get a second enchantment transferred from a set of armor he found added to his main armor and rolled a 20 he finds a an apprentice willing to do it for half the normal cost for the practical experience and being a broke student who needs the money.
this led to things like 20's finding not just a cloak of elven kind but a rack of them in various colors at 20% off when a custom order never picked up his order or someone willing to custom make magic armor for the monk's fenris at a discount because of the "challenge". this also led to 1's ending up spending a whole day looking for a specific item only to find it in an overpriced "name brand" magic item shop that wasn't willing to haggle and the player paying 1.75x the price for a magic bo staff because of "the name" and the "brand" but was functionally the same as any other magic bo staff but prettier.
as i told my players, in a world that magical you can find anything you can dream of, it just might be hard or expensive
As someone who has run and played, my biggest frustration is the way 5E gets promoted as Such A Flexible System, when its Classes, Casting, et al, function so specifically that it's hard to make it feel Setting Agnostic even within the Fantasy genre-- let alone as a realistic eldritch horror, or a Legend of Zelda Ghibli Thing, or like half of the Kickstarter ads that look like original systems until 5E pops up. If someone could make a more Universal d20 thing I wouldn't mind, but that's probably bigger than just a homebrew adjustment.
