D&D 5E Discussion

[Sacibengala]

Hold up, is this for real?

Where is this persons source for this information?

https://wpn.wizards.com/en/news/dun...les-distribution-through-wizards-of-the-coast

 

[Jason Liang]

... fuck, I can only identify the obvious one

 

[ERYFKRAD]

... fuck, I can only identify the obvious one

Yeah, Garrosh Hellscream doesn't need an axe for people to know it's him.

 

[luj1]

5ED sounds dumbed down af

 

[Caim]

5ED sounds dumbed down af

They did a few things right, it's just that the rest got stripped down so much it's a net loss.

 

[Jason Liang]

Ok, this one is easier to identify. The illithid is N'gathrod (who I only know because he has a card in Mtg) and that's him in the first picture... maybe?. Chick on the upper right I'm guessing is one of the Seven Sisters, probably Dove or Alustriel. Dwarf on the bottom right could be any dwarf but I guess its supposed to be Bruenor. Still no idea about the necro/ drow chick on the left.

 

[deuxhero]

5ED sounds dumbed down af

Not just dumbed down, it just plain old doesn't fucking work. Dice rolls have a bigger range than your modifiers. Poorly thought out attribute generation rules mean if you deviate from intended character creation paths even slightly you've made a useless character (if a race doesn't have an intelligence bonus, they might as well be barred from being wizards). Racial abilities play very poorly with class abilities (Dwarfs get medium armor for free. The classes they're forced into already have medium armor.)

 

[Alex]

5ED sounds dumbed down af

Not just dumbed down, it just plain old doesn't fucking work. Dice rolls have a bigger range than your modifiers. Poorly thought out attribute generation rules mean if you deviate from intended character creation paths even slightly you've made a useless character (if a race doesn't have an intelligence bonus, they might as well be barred from being wizards). Racial abilities play very poorly with class abilities (Dwarfs get medium armor for free. The classes they're forced into already have medium armor.)

I don't get this complaint at all, and I don't mean by this to defend 5e. But since the attribute range is smaller now, why would you need an intelligence bonus to being with? When they were open ended like in 3e, you might want to get the biggest intelligence bonus you could racially so you could get the highest save dc to your spells, for instance, at any level. Here, the maximum int is 20; so even if you took a race with a minus 2 to int and got a 16 as your initial roll, you would still be able to max out int by level 12; for all the good that this would do to you (+3 to associated rolls and save dcs).

 

[deuxhero]

5ED sounds dumbed down af

Not just dumbed down, it just plain old doesn't fucking work. Dice rolls have a bigger range than your modifiers. Poorly thought out attribute generation rules mean if you deviate from intended character creation paths even slightly you've made a useless character (if a race doesn't have an intelligence bonus, they might as well be barred from being wizards). Racial abilities play very poorly with class abilities (Dwarfs get medium armor for free. The classes they're forced into already have medium armor.)

But since the attribute range is smaller now, why would you need an intelligence bonus to being with? When they were open ended like in 3e, you might want to get the biggest intelligence bonus you could racially so you could get the highest save dc to your spells, for instance, at any level. Here, the maximum int is 20; so even if you took a race with a minus 2 to int and got a 16 as your initial roll, you would still be able to max out int by level 12; for all the good that this would do to you (+3 to associated rolls and save dcs).

It's because the range is smaller that it's worse to give up attribute bonus (which maters for everything). +4 is only 80% of +5, but +11 is almost 92% as good as +12
1: Attributes besides your primary, dexterity, and constitution are more valuable in 3E/PF, and the scaling cost makes it harsher to get a very high attribute in the first place. You actually get something of value in return for less extreme attributes.
2: More things contribute to attribute bonus and difficulty class than just raw starting ability score. A starting score of 16 (+3) vs. a starting score of 18 (+4) maters less when your level eight wizard also has a 4 (+2) intelligence headband, add spell level to DC, get bonuses from various feats/class features/etc., can inflict penalties in various ways. It's way worse with martials (as is the norm for 5E) since they get more bonuses than a wizard gets (+level in BAB, +1 from masterwork weapon, +2 from flanking, various spell bonuses, +2 from rage), and deal with enemies that suffer penalties in 3E, but grow less than linearly in 5E and no penalties or bonuses stack.
3: There's worthwhile things to do in 3E that don't depend on a roll, or require one that's fairly easy for a character trained in the area. Much less the case in 5E where everything just gives (dis)advantage which doesn't stack and is easy to cancel out.
4: In 3E, positive racial mods to a mental attribute on +0 LA was actually pretty rare while the ones that did exist often carried penalties to dex or con (status nobody can dump). It's not really a big deal to lose something that doesn't really exist without penalty (this doesn't apply in PF, but still worth a note)

Also 5E had no fucking idea how to handle higher level encounters due to this retarded math and just made everything HP sponges. The result is that you battles are longer and you will need to roll a lot more. That extra percentage matters a lot more over 10 rolls than 2.

 

[Alex]

5ED sounds dumbed down af

Not just dumbed down, it just plain old doesn't fucking work. Dice rolls have a bigger range than your modifiers. Poorly thought out attribute generation rules mean if you deviate from intended character creation paths even slightly you've made a useless character (if a race doesn't have an intelligence bonus, they might as well be barred from being wizards). Racial abilities play very poorly with class abilities (Dwarfs get medium armor for free. The classes they're forced into already have medium armor.)

But since the attribute range is smaller now, why would you need an intelligence bonus to being with? When they were open ended like in 3e, you might want to get the biggest intelligence bonus you could racially so you could get the highest save dc to your spells, for instance, at any level. Here, the maximum int is 20; so even if you took a race with a minus 2 to int and got a 16 as your initial roll, you would still be able to max out int by level 12; for all the good that this would do to you (+3 to associated rolls and save dcs).

It's because the range is smaller that it's worse to give up attribute bonus (which maters for everything). +4 is only 80% of +5, but +11 is almost 92% as good as +12
1: Attributes besides your primary, dexterity, and constitution are more valuable in 3E/PF, and the scaling cost makes it harsher to get a very high attribute in the first place. You actually get something of value in return for less extreme attributes.
2: More things contribute to attribute bonus and difficulty class than just raw starting ability score. A starting score of 16 (+3) vs. a starting score of 18 (+4) maters less when your level eight wizard also has a 4 (+2) intelligence headband, add spell level to DC, get bonuses from various feats/class features/etc., can inflict penalties in various ways. It's way worse with martials (as is the norm for 5E) since they get more bonuses than a wizard gets (+level in BAB, +1 from masterwork weapon, +2 from flanking, various spell bonuses, +2 from rage), and deal with enemies that suffer penalties in 3E, but grow less than linearly in 5E and no penalties or bonuses stack.
3: There's worthwhile things to do in 3E that don't depend on a roll, or require one that's fairly easy for a character trained in the area. Much less the case in 5E where everything just gives (dis)advantage which doesn't stack and is easy to cancel out.
4: In 3E, positive racial mods to a mental attribute on +0 LA was actually pretty rare while the ones that did exist often carried penalties to dex or con (status nobody can dump). It's not really a big deal to lose something that doesn't really exist without penalty (this doesn't apply in PF, but still worth a note)

Also 5E had no fucking idea how to handle higher level encounters due to this retarded math and just made everything HP sponges. The result is that you battles are longer and you will need to roll a lot more. That extra percentage matters a lot more over 10 rolls than 2.

That is a good explanation, thanks!

I think all this stuff only matters if you are playing a game where optimisation is important in first place. In the two 5e games I've played, it really wasn't, so to me that is still pretty pointless, if you want to play a dumb wizard, just go ahead. In one of our games we had a sorcerer that tried to act as a fighter more than use spells, for instance. I think trying to use 5e for the kind of game where victory is in opmising your PC to the best spec possible is pretty pointless. I mean, 5e doesn't seem to me to be particularly good for any kind of game, but it is particularly bad to these.

 

[J1M]

5ED sounds dumbed down af

Not just dumbed down, it just plain old doesn't fucking work. Dice rolls have a bigger range than your modifiers. Poorly thought out attribute generation rules mean if you deviate from intended character creation paths even slightly you've made a useless character (if a race doesn't have an intelligence bonus, they might as well be barred from being wizards). Racial abilities play very poorly with class abilities (Dwarfs get medium armor for free. The classes they're forced into already have medium armor.)

But since the attribute range is smaller now, why would you need an intelligence bonus to being with? When they were open ended like in 3e, you might want to get the biggest intelligence bonus you could racially so you could get the highest save dc to your spells, for instance, at any level. Here, the maximum int is 20; so even if you took a race with a minus 2 to int and got a 16 as your initial roll, you would still be able to max out int by level 12; for all the good that this would do to you (+3 to associated rolls and save dcs).

It's because the range is smaller that it's worse to give up attribute bonus (which maters for everything). +4 is only 80% of +5, but +11 is almost 92% as good as +12
1: Attributes besides your primary, dexterity, and constitution are more valuable in 3E/PF, and the scaling cost makes it harsher to get a very high attribute in the first place. You actually get something of value in return for less extreme attributes.
2: More things contribute to attribute bonus and difficulty class than just raw starting ability score. A starting score of 16 (+3) vs. a starting score of 18 (+4) maters less when your level eight wizard also has a 4 (+2) intelligence headband, add spell level to DC, get bonuses from various feats/class features/etc., can inflict penalties in various ways. It's way worse with martials (as is the norm for 5E) since they get more bonuses than a wizard gets (+level in BAB, +1 from masterwork weapon, +2 from flanking, various spell bonuses, +2 from rage), and deal with enemies that suffer penalties in 3E, but grow less than linearly in 5E and no penalties or bonuses stack.
3: There's worthwhile things to do in 3E that don't depend on a roll, or require one that's fairly easy for a character trained in the area. Much less the case in 5E where everything just gives (dis)advantage which doesn't stack and is easy to cancel out.
4: In 3E, positive racial mods to a mental attribute on +0 LA was actually pretty rare while the ones that did exist often carried penalties to dex or con (status nobody can dump). It's not really a big deal to lose something that doesn't really exist without penalty (this doesn't apply in PF, but still worth a note)

Also 5E had no fucking idea how to handle higher level encounters due to this retarded math and just made everything HP sponges. The result is that you battles are longer and you will need to roll a lot more. That extra percentage matters a lot more over 10 rolls than 2.

That is a good explanation, thanks!

I think all this stuff only matters if you are playing a game where optimisation is important in first place. In the two 5e games I've played, it really wasn't, so to me that is still pretty pointless, if you want to play a dumb wizard, just go ahead. In one of our games we had a sorcerer that tried to act as a fighter more than use spells, for instance. I think trying to use 5e for the kind of game where victory is in opmising your PC to the best spec possible is pretty pointless. I mean, 5e doesn't seem to me to be particularly good for any kind of game, but it is particularly bad to these.

That's because 5e was designed to appeal to nostalgic first impressions of players unwilling to try 4e.

 

[Alex]

5ED sounds dumbed down af

Not just dumbed down, it just plain old doesn't fucking work. Dice rolls have a bigger range than your modifiers. Poorly thought out attribute generation rules mean if you deviate from intended character creation paths even slightly you've made a useless character (if a race doesn't have an intelligence bonus, they might as well be barred from being wizards). Racial abilities play very poorly with class abilities (Dwarfs get medium armor for free. The classes they're forced into already have medium armor.)

But since the attribute range is smaller now, why would you need an intelligence bonus to being with? When they were open ended like in 3e, you might want to get the biggest intelligence bonus you could racially so you could get the highest save dc to your spells, for instance, at any level. Here, the maximum int is 20; so even if you took a race with a minus 2 to int and got a 16 as your initial roll, you would still be able to max out int by level 12; for all the good that this would do to you (+3 to associated rolls and save dcs).

It's because the range is smaller that it's worse to give up attribute bonus (which maters for everything). +4 is only 80% of +5, but +11 is almost 92% as good as +12
1: Attributes besides your primary, dexterity, and constitution are more valuable in 3E/PF, and the scaling cost makes it harsher to get a very high attribute in the first place. You actually get something of value in return for less extreme attributes.
2: More things contribute to attribute bonus and difficulty class than just raw starting ability score. A starting score of 16 (+3) vs. a starting score of 18 (+4) maters less when your level eight wizard also has a 4 (+2) intelligence headband, add spell level to DC, get bonuses from various feats/class features/etc., can inflict penalties in various ways. It's way worse with martials (as is the norm for 5E) since they get more bonuses than a wizard gets (+level in BAB, +1 from masterwork weapon, +2 from flanking, various spell bonuses, +2 from rage), and deal with enemies that suffer penalties in 3E, but grow less than linearly in 5E and no penalties or bonuses stack.
3: There's worthwhile things to do in 3E that don't depend on a roll, or require one that's fairly easy for a character trained in the area. Much less the case in 5E where everything just gives (dis)advantage which doesn't stack and is easy to cancel out.
4: In 3E, positive racial mods to a mental attribute on +0 LA was actually pretty rare while the ones that did exist often carried penalties to dex or con (status nobody can dump). It's not really a big deal to lose something that doesn't really exist without penalty (this doesn't apply in PF, but still worth a note)

Also 5E had no fucking idea how to handle higher level encounters due to this retarded math and just made everything HP sponges. The result is that you battles are longer and you will need to roll a lot more. That extra percentage matters a lot more over 10 rolls than 2.

That is a good explanation, thanks!

I think all this stuff only matters if you are playing a game where optimisation is important in first place. In the two 5e games I've played, it really wasn't, so to me that is still pretty pointless, if you want to play a dumb wizard, just go ahead. In one of our games we had a sorcerer that tried to act as a fighter more than use spells, for instance. I think trying to use 5e for the kind of game where victory is in opmising your PC to the best spec possible is pretty pointless. I mean, 5e doesn't seem to me to be particularly good for any kind of game, but it is particularly bad to these.

That's because 5e was designed to appeal to nostalgic first impressions of players unwilling to try 4e.

Why would anyone try 4e? There are much better board games in the market.

 

[J1M]

5ED sounds dumbed down af

Not just dumbed down, it just plain old doesn't fucking work. Dice rolls have a bigger range than your modifiers. Poorly thought out attribute generation rules mean if you deviate from intended character creation paths even slightly you've made a useless character (if a race doesn't have an intelligence bonus, they might as well be barred from being wizards). Racial abilities play very poorly with class abilities (Dwarfs get medium armor for free. The classes they're forced into already have medium armor.)

But since the attribute range is smaller now, why would you need an intelligence bonus to being with? When they were open ended like in 3e, you might want to get the biggest intelligence bonus you could racially so you could get the highest save dc to your spells, for instance, at any level. Here, the maximum int is 20; so even if you took a race with a minus 2 to int and got a 16 as your initial roll, you would still be able to max out int by level 12; for all the good that this would do to you (+3 to associated rolls and save dcs).

It's because the range is smaller that it's worse to give up attribute bonus (which maters for everything). +4 is only 80% of +5, but +11 is almost 92% as good as +12
1: Attributes besides your primary, dexterity, and constitution are more valuable in 3E/PF, and the scaling cost makes it harsher to get a very high attribute in the first place. You actually get something of value in return for less extreme attributes.
2: More things contribute to attribute bonus and difficulty class than just raw starting ability score. A starting score of 16 (+3) vs. a starting score of 18 (+4) maters less when your level eight wizard also has a 4 (+2) intelligence headband, add spell level to DC, get bonuses from various feats/class features/etc., can inflict penalties in various ways. It's way worse with martials (as is the norm for 5E) since they get more bonuses than a wizard gets (+level in BAB, +1 from masterwork weapon, +2 from flanking, various spell bonuses, +2 from rage), and deal with enemies that suffer penalties in 3E, but grow less than linearly in 5E and no penalties or bonuses stack.
3: There's worthwhile things to do in 3E that don't depend on a roll, or require one that's fairly easy for a character trained in the area. Much less the case in 5E where everything just gives (dis)advantage which doesn't stack and is easy to cancel out.
4: In 3E, positive racial mods to a mental attribute on +0 LA was actually pretty rare while the ones that did exist often carried penalties to dex or con (status nobody can dump). It's not really a big deal to lose something that doesn't really exist without penalty (this doesn't apply in PF, but still worth a note)

Also 5E had no fucking idea how to handle higher level encounters due to this retarded math and just made everything HP sponges. The result is that you battles are longer and you will need to roll a lot more. That extra percentage matters a lot more over 10 rolls than 2.

That is a good explanation, thanks!

I think all this stuff only matters if you are playing a game where optimisation is important in first place. In the two 5e games I've played, it really wasn't, so to me that is still pretty pointless, if you want to play a dumb wizard, just go ahead. In one of our games we had a sorcerer that tried to act as a fighter more than use spells, for instance. I think trying to use 5e for the kind of game where victory is in opmising your PC to the best spec possible is pretty pointless. I mean, 5e doesn't seem to me to be particularly good for any kind of game, but it is particularly bad to these.

That's because 5e was designed to appeal to nostalgic first impressions of players unwilling to try 4e.

Why would anyone try 4e? There are much better board games in the market.

...and now you see why they did that.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Why would anyone try 4e? There are much better board games in the market.

I told my GM a lot of people say DND 5e is bad. He said "who? go on reddit, people love it".
I said "I hang around places where people say they're proud of never having even touched 4 and 5e". He says "well, see? they haven't even tried it, how would they know".

I didn't even answer anything. It's the whole "should you try shit to make sure it tastes bad" argument. The more I play with this DM, the more I learn to just stay silent.

 

[J1M]

Why would anyone try 4e? There are much better board games in the market.

I told my GM a lot of people say DND 5e is bad. He said "who? go on reddit, people love it".
I said "I hang around places where people say they're proud of never having even touched 4 and 5e". He says "well, see? they haven't even tried it, how would they know".

I didn't even answer anything. It's the whole "should you try shit to make sure it tastes bad" argument. The more I play with this DM, the more I learn to just stay silent.

The issue with this applied to 4e is that most people who actually played it (earnestly, not by trying to prove something or purposely ignoring entire chapters of the rules) enjoyed it.

The majority of criticisms in contemporary reviews and forum discussions about 4e are factually wrong.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I want to describe a bit how my first tabletop session is going. For the purpose of getting some feedback. Maybe we're doing something wrong, or it's 5e's fault, or it's something else.

First of all, I got into this because all great cRPGs (Fallout 1, BG2) were made by guys who played tabletop. I thought if I was ever going to make something of mine, I needed to know how it plays. I found a DM that was starting a party of first time players, so it sounded like a perfect match.

I have a couple of qualms, some related to roleplaying, some to worldbuilding, some to DND (I think).

1) To start off, it's a homebrew setting that the DM is making up as we go. At the beginning I thought it was fine, because everyone is a newbie, so a Faerun or something else would overwhelm them.
But as things went on, everyone got the rules, and it's been half a year that we've been playing. And the DM has no world design document. Nothing I can sink my fangs in. Nothing I can become a nerd of. Deep knowledge of worlds appeals to me, I want to be the guy who says "AKSHUALLY! these frog people are so and so, and not how you just said they are!"
I asked why we don't do other settings and the DM said "I don't like standard settings, because it encourages people to go "AKSHUALLY this and that", which detracts from the story". B-but... what about my nerdism?

What his world design does is that I don't feel connected to anything, I feel no context. He says you're in this or that city, and my character knows more about the customs and the history of the world than I do.
I voiced the concerns, he dismissed them by saying "if you have any questions, just ask". But I'm not going to ask a morbillion questions, it has to come from a world design document.
We tried to rectify it by me actually asking questions, and I got some basics of the world. It turns out it's at a Renaissance tech level... after playing it for 6 months thinking we're in the Middle Ages.
Not that there's anything Renaissance-y about the way he lays it down.
I even have a hard time getting answers to things like "how much magic is involved in the industry?". He says "mages are rare". Okay? A mage is an industrial powerhouse. They would be bred and mass produced by any means possible by any sane society that has to use horses and mills otherwise. How they would impact the economy is immense. We can't just take our Renaissance and say "imagine this thing, but with Magic(tm)".
Anyway, I'm not a fan of this world building. I wish we did something else. He says he wouldn't.

2) The lack of imagination that this game involves is stunning to me. None of the possibilities are exploited.
For example, I recently complained to the DM that the artificer class at first glance sounds exciting as hell. For example, you say "I'd like to create an invisibility hat", the DM rolls some dice and determines that the hat I created will only last 5 hours and will make me invisible only if I'm nude. This instantly creates opportunities for fun and originality.
He agreed that yes, artificers aren't fun.
Then he went on never ever inventing fun items, after I heavily implied that we could really use them to spice things up.
Between sessions, he allows us to make requests like "go to a market to find something". I ask for magical items. He always comes up empty saying "you found nothing". He also only looks at the table of DND items when doing it.

DND items are boring. You can fix it. It takes nothing to create unique items, it's not a video game where they have to be scripted.
Create a sword that if you accidentally drop, everyone in the vicinity gets disarmed. Tell a story of how the effect was first discovered by a guy who walked into a full tavern, got drunk, dropped his sword, and instantly a hundred people let their beers slip. He was kicked in the ribs behind the tavern for ten minutes straight.
Nice background, nice effect, no? Or am I asking for something that nobody but me is interested in?

And as for the world itself... If you're going to invent your own world, why invent it so devoid of magic and fantasy? Why are the only sentient races: human, elf, dwarf, halfling?
At one point we found an artifact that could permanently transform you into anything. I wished to become a ghost of myself. Answer: "no such creature in DND". I said "a lich? an illithid?" He said "nope, CR too high". Couldn't he just homebrew some acceptable stats for me? I then asked for drow, he said this world has no drows. I asked for ocean elf, he said "nope, no such thing in here." Well would it break the game so hard if my elf could breath under water?

At one point we found a dead dragon. OKAY, I ask for lore background on dragons. If they ever formed a state, or a military alliance? Do they tax people who fly at certain altitudes? Did they press the governments to make it illegal to kill them? Or if they failed to, is there some dragon killing guild that facilitates their depopulation? Etc, etc, I asked a bunch of stuff.
The answer: "no, nobody knows the dragons exist and they don't interact with the world".
I just sat back there and said nothing as always, surprised at how disappointing it can be to play a TTRPG. If anything exciting shows up, it's immediately made non-exciting.

My wife's opinion is that DND is ill suited to imaginative worlds or imaginative items. According to her, it's a system to dungeon crawl, with strict rules and zero fun. But I just don't see the problem. Take an artificer and homebrew the shit out of him. Let him create any item at the discretion of the DM.

3) The difficulty of roleplay. I can't roleplay Renaissance people, I don't know the period well enough. Nobody in the party does.
As a result, all roleplay feels fake. I'm part of the problem, of course, but it doesn't help.

4) Finally, DND 5e itself. Concentration holds only ONE spell, how is it possible to do ANYTHING fun? You can either fly, or you can be invisible, but not both. What the fuck?
Warlock only having TWO SPELLS for the entire fight, the rest is spamming stupid eldritch blast. How is it fun??
I voiced the opinion that DND 3.5 might be more fun, but he said "it promotes munchkinism". I LOVE MUNCHKINISM. In healthy amounts, of course. But every time we level up, I spend 10-20 hours just researching all the options. It makes all the scenarios of what I could do appear in my head, it's an adventure on its own. That said, I do abide by roleplay a lot. But within roleplay, there's a window for minmaxing stuff if your character is a munchkin by nature.
And of course the DND mechanics... We discussed in this thread that the combat rules are only for combat, and if you stab someone in the heart outside of combat, that should count as a killing blow. DM said "nope, only if it's a commoner". Zzzzz.

If anyone manages to read it all, what do you think? Just don't say "shit GM", I like the guy and he has dedicated hundreds of hours of his life to create this adventure for us. I wish I could thank him somehow. And instead I'm making this whiny post. Feels bad.

 

[Alex]

Why would anyone try 4e? There are much better board games in the market.

I told my GM a lot of people say DND 5e is bad. He said "who? go on reddit, people love it".
I said "I hang around places where people say they're proud of never having even touched 4 and 5e". He says "well, see? they haven't even tried it, how would they know".

I didn't even answer anything. It's the whole "should you try shit to make sure it tastes bad" argument. The more I play with this DM, the more I learn to just stay silent.

The issue with this applied to 4e is that most people who actually played it (earnestly, not by trying to prove something or purposely ignoring entire chapters of the rules) enjoyed it.

The majority of criticisms in contemporary reviews and forum discussions about 4e are factually wrong.

Every aspect of 4e is geared towards a board game rather than an RPG. Stuff like "per encounter" and "per day" abilities, being able to change your abilities by re-specing in level ups, etc. That stuff doesn't make any sense in whatever imaginary world you can conceive, unless it is specifically made to look like a "game world". Most people, on seeing this stuff, won't even try to play because that is a completely different idea than even 3e. 3e was focused on builds, but they were still supposed to exist in a world where you could, in theory, attempt anything. Character abilities still were supposed to be aspects of the setting rather than simply actions the game allowed you to do. So even people who really liked 3e would be put off by 4e. Yeah, I never tried 4e, and I don't intend to. If I wanted to, I would look for someone to play Gloomhaven with instead, which seems more interesting anyway.

 

[BING XI LAO]

But as things went, everyone got the rules, and it's been half a year that we've been playing. And the DM has no world design document. Nothing I can sink my fangs in. Nothing I can become a nerd of. Deep knowledge of worlds appeals to me, I want to be the guy who says "AKSHUALLY! these frog people are so and so, and not how you just said they are!"
I never voiced this, but the DM literally said "I don't like standard settings, because it encourages people to go "AKSHUALLY this and that", which detracts from the story". B-but... what about my nerdism?

What his world design does is that I don't feel connected to anything, I feel no context. He says you're in this and that city, and my character knows more about the customs and the history of the world than I do.
I voiced the concerns, he dismissed them by saying "if you have any questions, just ask". But I'm not going to ask a morbillion questions, it has to come from a world design document.
We tried to rectify it by me actually asking questions, and I got some basics of the world. It turns out it's at a Renaissance tech level... after playing it for 6 months thinking we're in the Middle Ages.
Not that there's anything Renaissance-y about the way he lays it down.

..............

At one point we found a dead dragon. OKAY, I ask for lore background on dragons. If they ever formed a state, or a military alliance? Do they tax people who fly at certain altitudes? Did they press the governments to make it illegal to kill them? Or if they failed to, is there some dragon killing guild that facilitates their depopulation? Etc, etc, I asked a bunch of stuff.
The answer: "no, nobody knows the dragons exist and they don't interact with the world".
I just sat there and said nothing as always, surprised at how disappointing it can be to play a TTRPG. If anything exciting shows up, it's immediately made non-exciting.

Westcucks are cancer. This is what their individualism-riddled brains produce, the characters don't exist in a world, instead the world exists around the characters. But the characters are just soyjaks.

 

[Sacibengala]

go on reddit

LOL

 

[ProphetSword]

I want to describe a bit how my first tabletop session is going. For the purpose of getting some feedback. Maybe we're doing something wrong, or it's 5e's fault, or it's something else.

First of all, I got into this because all great cRPGs (Fallout 1, BG2) were made by guys who played tabletop. I thought if I was ever going to make something of mine, I needed to know how it plays. I found a DM that was starting a party of first time players, so it sounded like a perfect match.

I have a couple of qualms, some related to roleplaying, some to worldbuilding, some to DND (I think).

1) To start off, it's a homebrew setting that the DM is making up as we go. At the beginning I thought it was fine, because everyone is a newbie, so a Faerun or something else would overwhelm them.
But as things went on, everyone got the rules, and it's been half a year that we've been playing. And the DM has no world design document. Nothing I can sink my fangs in. Nothing I can become a nerd of. Deep knowledge of worlds appeals to me, I want to be the guy who says "AKSHUALLY! these frog people are so and so, and not how you just said they are!"
I asked why we don't do other settings and the DM said "I don't like standard settings, because it encourages people to go "AKSHUALLY this and that", which detracts from the story". B-but... what about my nerdism?

What his world design does is that I don't feel connected to anything, I feel no context. He says you're in this or that city, and my character knows more about the customs and the history of the world than I do.
I voiced the concerns, he dismissed them by saying "if you have any questions, just ask". But I'm not going to ask a morbillion questions, it has to come from a world design document.
We tried to rectify it by me actually asking questions, and I got some basics of the world. It turns out it's at a Renaissance tech level... after playing it for 6 months thinking we're in the Middle Ages.
Not that there's anything Renaissance-y about the way he lays it down.
I even have a hard time getting answers to things like "how much magic is involved in the industry?". He says "mages are rare". Okay? A mage is an industrial powerhouse. They would be bred and mass produced by any means possible by any sane society that has to use horses and mills otherwise. How they would impact the economy is immense. We can't just take our Renaissance and say "imagine this thing, but with Magic(tm)".
Anyway, I'm not a fan of this world building. I wish we did something else. He says he wouldn't.

2) The lack of imagination that this game involves is stunning to me. None of the possibilities are exploited.
For example, I recently complained to the DM that the artificer class at first glance sounds exciting as hell. For example, you say "I'd like to create an invisibility hat", the DM rolls some dice and determines that the hat I created will only last 5 hours and will make me invisible only if I'm nude. This instantly creates opportunities for fun and originality.
He agreed that yes, artificers aren't fun.
Then he went on never ever inventing fun items, after I heavily implied that we could really use them to spice things up.
Between sessions, he allows us to make requests like "go to a market to find something". I ask for magical items. He always comes up empty saying "you found nothing". He also only looks at the table of DND items when doing it.

DND items are boring. You can fix it. It takes nothing to create unique items, it's not a video game where they have to be scripted.
Create a sword that if you accidentally drop, everyone in the vicinity gets disarmed. Tell a story of how the effect was first discovered by a guy who walked into a full tavern, got drunk, dropped his sword, and instantly a hundred people let their beers slip. He was kicked in the ribs behind the tavern for ten minutes straight.
Nice background, nice effect, no? Or am I asking for something that nobody but me is interested in?

And as for the world itself... If you're going to invent your own world, why invent it so devoid of magic and fantasy? Why are the only sentient races: human, elf, dwarf, halfling?
At one point we found an artifact that could permanently transform you into anything. I wished to become a ghost of myself. Answer: "no such creature in DND". I said "a lich? an illithid?" He said "nope, CR too high". Couldn't he just homebrew some acceptable stats for me? I then asked for drow, he said this world has no drows. I asked for ocean elf, he said "nope, no such thing in here." Well would it break the game so hard if my elf could breath under water?

At one point we found a dead dragon. OKAY, I ask for lore background on dragons. If they ever formed a state, or a military alliance? Do they tax people who fly at certain altitudes? Did they press the governments to make it illegal to kill them? Or if they failed to, is there some dragon killing guild that facilitates their depopulation? Etc, etc, I asked a bunch of stuff.
The answer: "no, nobody knows the dragons exist and they don't interact with the world".
I just sat back there and said nothing as always, surprised at how disappointing it can be to play a TTRPG. If anything exciting shows up, it's immediately made non-exciting.

My wife's opinion is that DND is ill suited to imaginative worlds or imaginative items. According to her, it's a system to dungeon crawl, with strict rules and zero fun. But I just don't see the problem. Take an artificer and homebrew the shit out of him. Let him create any item at the discretion of the DM.

3) The difficulty of roleplay. I can't roleplay Renaissance people, I don't know the period well enough. Nobody in the party does.
As a result, all roleplay feels fake. I'm part of the problem, of course, but it doesn't help.

4) Finally, DND 5e itself. Concentration holds only ONE spell, how is it possible to do ANYTHING fun? You can either fly, or you can be invisible, but not both. What the fuck?
Warlock only having TWO SPELLS for the entire fight, the rest is spamming stupid eldritch blast. How is it fun??
I voiced the opinion that DND 3.5 might be more fun, but he said "it promotes munchkinism". I LOVE MUNCHKINISM. In healthy amounts, of course. But every time we level up, I spend 10-20 hours just researching all the options. It makes all the scenarios of what I could do appear in my head, it's an adventure on its own. That said, I do abide by roleplay a lot. But withing roleplay, there's a window for minmaxing stuff if your character is a munchkin by nature.
And of course the DND mechanics... We discussed in this thread that the combat rules are only for combat, and if you stab someone in the heart outside of combat, that should count as a killing blow. DM said "nope, only if it's a commoner". Zzzzz.

If anyone manages to read it all, what do you think? Just don't say "shit GM", I like the guy and he dedicated hundreds of hours of his life to create this adventure for us. I wish I could thank him somehow. And instead I'm making this whiny post. Feels bad.

Shit GM.

I know that's not the answer you wanted, but it's the most accurate answer. It's the answer to the first couple of problems.

I've been a DM for 40 years. I'm the guy who's always the DM (which is what happens when you're really, really good at it and nobody else wants the job). When I read your description, all I see is a multitude of ways that your DM is shit. Sorry. But, not really...because I hope you find a DM that's actually good someday so that you will look back and realize how shit your current one is.

However, I have some good news. #4 is not on the DM. Those are specific 5e critiques.

And #3 is on you. You have this idea that you have to play D&D like a Renaissance person, but you don't. It's not historical roleplaying. D&D should be viewed as an alternate reality, where perhaps magic develops instead of technology. Why would you need a lot of technological advancement in a world where magic solves a lot of problems? Why would you need medical advancement when clerics can heal wounds, cure blindness and bring back people from the dead? Why would you need to invent flying machines if you can cast fly spells, wear magical boots that lift you in the air or fly on the backs of dragons and griffons? Renaissance level of advancement is not the same as historical Renaisssance. You don't have to speak like Shakespeare. Get out of that mindset.

Good luck.

 

[thesecret1]

I want to describe a bit how my first tabletop session is going. For the purpose of getting some feedback. Maybe we're doing something wrong, or it's 5e's fault, or it's something else.

First of all, I got into this because all great cRPGs (Fallout 1, BG2) were made by guys who played tabletop. I thought if I was ever going to make something of mine, I needed to know how it plays. I found a DM that was starting a party of first time players, so it sounded like a perfect match.

I have a couple of qualms, some related to roleplaying, some to worldbuilding, some to DND (I think).

1) To start off, it's a homebrew setting that the DM is making up as we go. At the beginning I thought it was fine, because everyone is a newbie, so a Faerun or something else would overwhelm them.
But as things went on, everyone got the rules, and it's been half a year that we've been playing. And the DM has no world design document. Nothing I can sink my fangs in. Nothing I can become a nerd of. Deep knowledge of worlds appeals to me, I want to be the guy who says "AKSHUALLY! these frog people are so and so, and not how you just said they are!"
I asked why we don't do other settings and the DM said "I don't like standard settings, because it encourages people to go "AKSHUALLY this and that", which detracts from the story". B-but... what about my nerdism?

What his world design does is that I don't feel connected to anything, I feel no context. He says you're in this or that city, and my character knows more about the customs and the history of the world than I do.
I voiced the concerns, he dismissed them by saying "if you have any questions, just ask". But I'm not going to ask a morbillion questions, it has to come from a world design document.
We tried to rectify it by me actually asking questions, and I got some basics of the world. It turns out it's at a Renaissance tech level... after playing it for 6 months thinking we're in the Middle Ages.
Not that there's anything Renaissance-y about the way he lays it down.
I even have a hard time getting answers to things like "how much magic is involved in the industry?". He says "mages are rare". Okay? A mage is an industrial powerhouse. They would be bred and mass produced by any means possible by any sane society that has to use horses and mills otherwise. How they would impact the economy is immense. We can't just take our Renaissance and say "imagine this thing, but with Magic(tm)".
Anyway, I'm not a fan of this world building. I wish we did something else. He says he wouldn't.

2) The lack of imagination that this game involves is stunning to me. None of the possibilities are exploited.
For example, I recently complained to the DM that the artificer class at first glance sounds exciting as hell. For example, you say "I'd like to create an invisibility hat", the DM rolls some dice and determines that the hat I created will only last 5 hours and will make me invisible only if I'm nude. This instantly creates opportunities for fun and originality.
He agreed that yes, artificers aren't fun.
Then he went on never ever inventing fun items, after I heavily implied that we could really use them to spice things up.
Between sessions, he allows us to make requests like "go to a market to find something". I ask for magical items. He always comes up empty saying "you found nothing". He also only looks at the table of DND items when doing it.

DND items are boring. You can fix it. It takes nothing to create unique items, it's not a video game where they have to be scripted.
Create a sword that if you accidentally drop, everyone in the vicinity gets disarmed. Tell a story of how the effect was first discovered by a guy who walked into a full tavern, got drunk, dropped his sword, and instantly a hundred people let their beers slip. He was kicked in the ribs behind the tavern for ten minutes straight.
Nice background, nice effect, no? Or am I asking for something that nobody but me is interested in?

And as for the world itself... If you're going to invent your own world, why invent it so devoid of magic and fantasy? Why are the only sentient races: human, elf, dwarf, halfling?
At one point we found an artifact that could permanently transform you into anything. I wished to become a ghost of myself. Answer: "no such creature in DND". I said "a lich? an illithid?" He said "nope, CR too high". Couldn't he just homebrew some acceptable stats for me? I then asked for drow, he said this world has no drows. I asked for ocean elf, he said "nope, no such thing in here." Well would it break the game so hard if my elf could breath under water?

At one point we found a dead dragon. OKAY, I ask for lore background on dragons. If they ever formed a state, or a military alliance? Do they tax people who fly at certain altitudes? Did they press the governments to make it illegal to kill them? Or if they failed to, is there some dragon killing guild that facilitates their depopulation? Etc, etc, I asked a bunch of stuff.
The answer: "no, nobody knows the dragons exist and they don't interact with the world".
I just sat back there and said nothing as always, surprised at how disappointing it can be to play a TTRPG. If anything exciting shows up, it's immediately made non-exciting.

My wife's opinion is that DND is ill suited to imaginative worlds or imaginative items. According to her, it's a system to dungeon crawl, with strict rules and zero fun. But I just don't see the problem. Take an artificer and homebrew the shit out of him. Let him create any item at the discretion of the DM.

3) The difficulty of roleplay. I can't roleplay Renaissance people, I don't know the period well enough. Nobody in the party does.
As a result, all roleplay feels fake. I'm part of the problem, of course, but it doesn't help.

4) Finally, DND 5e itself. Concentration holds only ONE spell, how is it possible to do ANYTHING fun? You can either fly, or you can be invisible, but not both. What the fuck?
Warlock only having TWO SPELLS for the entire fight, the rest is spamming stupid eldritch blast. How is it fun??
I voiced the opinion that DND 3.5 might be more fun, but he said "it promotes munchkinism". I LOVE MUNCHKINISM. In healthy amounts, of course. But every time we level up, I spend 10-20 hours just researching all the options. It makes all the scenarios of what I could do appear in my head, it's an adventure on its own. That said, I do abide by roleplay a lot. But withing roleplay, there's a window for minmaxing stuff if your character is a munchkin by nature.
And of course the DND mechanics... We discussed in this thread that the combat rules are only for combat, and if you stab someone in the heart outside of combat, that should count as a killing blow. DM said "nope, only if it's a commoner". Zzzzz.

If anyone manages to read it all, what do you think? Just don't say "shit GM", I like the guy and he dedicated hundreds of hours of his life to create this adventure for us. I wish I could thank him somehow. And instead I'm making this whiny post. Feels bad.

#1 and #2 sound like your DM is insecure and tries to both stick to RAW and to pre-empt being called out by the players. There is no good reason not to homebrew items, for example – in fact I'd go as far as to say it's standard practice in most campaigns one would play. There can be a good reason to limit PCs to certain races should each be special in terms of lore and behavior (and not just a human reskin as is the case with many DnD settings), but your DM doesn't sound like he really has a well-defined setting in mind, else you wouldn't feel so disconnected from everything.

 

[deuxhero]

5ED sounds dumbed down af

Not just dumbed down, it just plain old doesn't fucking work. Dice rolls have a bigger range than your modifiers. Poorly thought out attribute generation rules mean if you deviate from intended character creation paths even slightly you've made a useless character (if a race doesn't have an intelligence bonus, they might as well be barred from being wizards). Racial abilities play very poorly with class abilities (Dwarfs get medium armor for free. The classes they're forced into already have medium armor.)

But since the attribute range is smaller now, why would you need an intelligence bonus to being with? When they were open ended like in 3e, you might want to get the biggest intelligence bonus you could racially so you could get the highest save dc to your spells, for instance, at any level. Here, the maximum int is 20; so even if you took a race with a minus 2 to int and got a 16 as your initial roll, you would still be able to max out int by level 12; for all the good that this would do to you (+3 to associated rolls and save dcs).

It's because the range is smaller that it's worse to give up attribute bonus (which maters for everything). +4 is only 80% of +5, but +11 is almost 92% as good as +12
1: Attributes besides your primary, dexterity, and constitution are more valuable in 3E/PF, and the scaling cost makes it harsher to get a very high attribute in the first place. You actually get something of value in return for less extreme attributes.
2: More things contribute to attribute bonus and difficulty class than just raw starting ability score. A starting score of 16 (+3) vs. a starting score of 18 (+4) maters less when your level eight wizard also has a 4 (+2) intelligence headband, add spell level to DC, get bonuses from various feats/class features/etc., can inflict penalties in various ways. It's way worse with martials (as is the norm for 5E) since they get more bonuses than a wizard gets (+level in BAB, +1 from masterwork weapon, +2 from flanking, various spell bonuses, +2 from rage), and deal with enemies that suffer penalties in 3E, but grow less than linearly in 5E and no penalties or bonuses stack.
3: There's worthwhile things to do in 3E that don't depend on a roll, or require one that's fairly easy for a character trained in the area. Much less the case in 5E where everything just gives (dis)advantage which doesn't stack and is easy to cancel out.
4: In 3E, positive racial mods to a mental attribute on +0 LA was actually pretty rare while the ones that did exist often carried penalties to dex or con (status nobody can dump). It's not really a big deal to lose something that doesn't really exist without penalty (this doesn't apply in PF, but still worth a note)

Also 5E had no fucking idea how to handle higher level encounters due to this retarded math and just made everything HP sponges. The result is that you battles are longer and you will need to roll a lot more. That extra percentage matters a lot more over 10 rolls than 2.

That is a good explanation, thanks!

I think all this stuff only matters if you are playing a game where optimisation is important in first place. In the two 5e games I've played, it really wasn't, so to me that is still pretty pointless, if you want to play a dumb wizard, just go ahead. In one of our games we had a sorcerer that tried to act as a fighter more than use spells, for instance. I think trying to use 5e for the kind of game where victory is in opmising your PC to the best spec possible is pretty pointless. I mean, 5e doesn't seem to me to be particularly good for any kind of game, but it is particularly bad to these.

Except the HP sponging and even good characters having poor odds of success does make optimization very important.

 

[Mortmal]

I want to describe a bit how my first tabletop session is going. For the purpose of getting some feedback. Maybe we're doing something wrong, or it's 5e's fault, or it's something else.

First of all, I got into this because all great cRPGs (Fallout 1, BG2) were made by guys who played tabletop. I thought if I was ever going to make something of mine, I needed to know how it plays. I found a DM that was starting a party of first time players, so it sounded like a perfect match.

I have a couple of qualms, some related to roleplaying, some to worldbuilding, some to DND (I think).

1) To start off, it's a homebrew setting that the DM is making up as we go. At the beginning I thought it was fine, because everyone is a newbie, so a Faerun or something else would overwhelm them.
But as things went on, everyone got the rules, and it's been half a year that we've been playing. And the DM has no world design document. Nothing I can sink my fangs in. Nothing I can become a nerd of. Deep knowledge of worlds appeals to me, I want to be the guy who says "AKSHUALLY! these frog people are so and so, and not how you just said they are!"
I asked why we don't do other settings and the DM said "I don't like standard settings, because it encourages people to go "AKSHUALLY this and that", which detracts from the story". B-but... what about my nerdism?

What his world design does is that I don't feel connected to anything, I feel no context. He says you're in this or that city, and my character knows more about the customs and the history of the world than I do.
I voiced the concerns, he dismissed them by saying "if you have any questions, just ask". But I'm not going to ask a morbillion questions, it has to come from a world design document.
We tried to rectify it by me actually asking questions, and I got some basics of the world. It turns out it's at a Renaissance tech level... after playing it for 6 months thinking we're in the Middle Ages.
Not that there's anything Renaissance-y about the way he lays it down.
I even have a hard time getting answers to things like "how much magic is involved in the industry?". He says "mages are rare". Okay? A mage is an industrial powerhouse. They would be bred and mass produced by any means possible by any sane society that has to use horses and mills otherwise. How they would impact the economy is immense. We can't just take our Renaissance and say "imagine this thing, but with Magic(tm)".
Anyway, I'm not a fan of this world building. I wish we did something else. He says he wouldn't.

2) The lack of imagination that this game involves is stunning to me. None of the possibilities are exploited.
For example, I recently complained to the DM that the artificer class at first glance sounds exciting as hell. For example, you say "I'd like to create an invisibility hat", the DM rolls some dice and determines that the hat I created will only last 5 hours and will make me invisible only if I'm nude. This instantly creates opportunities for fun and originality.
He agreed that yes, artificers aren't fun.
Then he went on never ever inventing fun items, after I heavily implied that we could really use them to spice things up.
Between sessions, he allows us to make requests like "go to a market to find something". I ask for magical items. He always comes up empty saying "you found nothing". He also only looks at the table of DND items when doing it.

DND items are boring. You can fix it. It takes nothing to create unique items, it's not a video game where they have to be scripted.
Create a sword that if you accidentally drop, everyone in the vicinity gets disarmed. Tell a story of how the effect was first discovered by a guy who walked into a full tavern, got drunk, dropped his sword, and instantly a hundred people let their beers slip. He was kicked in the ribs behind the tavern for ten minutes straight.
Nice background, nice effect, no? Or am I asking for something that nobody but me is interested in?

And as for the world itself... If you're going to invent your own world, why invent it so devoid of magic and fantasy? Why are the only sentient races: human, elf, dwarf, halfling?
At one point we found an artifact that could permanently transform you into anything. I wished to become a ghost of myself. Answer: "no such creature in DND". I said "a lich? an illithid?" He said "nope, CR too high". Couldn't he just homebrew some acceptable stats for me? I then asked for drow, he said this world has no drows. I asked for ocean elf, he said "nope, no such thing in here." Well would it break the game so hard if my elf could breath under water?

At one point we found a dead dragon. OKAY, I ask for lore background on dragons. If they ever formed a state, or a military alliance? Do they tax people who fly at certain altitudes? Did they press the governments to make it illegal to kill them? Or if they failed to, is there some dragon killing guild that facilitates their depopulation? Etc, etc, I asked a bunch of stuff.
The answer: "no, nobody knows the dragons exist and they don't interact with the world".
I just sat back there and said nothing as always, surprised at how disappointing it can be to play a TTRPG. If anything exciting shows up, it's immediately made non-exciting.

My wife's opinion is that DND is ill suited to imaginative worlds or imaginative items. According to her, it's a system to dungeon crawl, with strict rules and zero fun. But I just don't see the problem. Take an artificer and homebrew the shit out of him. Let him create any item at the discretion of the DM.

3) The difficulty of roleplay. I can't roleplay Renaissance people, I don't know the period well enough. Nobody in the party does.
As a result, all roleplay feels fake. I'm part of the problem, of course, but it doesn't help.

4) Finally, DND 5e itself. Concentration holds only ONE spell, how is it possible to do ANYTHING fun? You can either fly, or you can be invisible, but not both. What the fuck?
Warlock only having TWO SPELLS for the entire fight, the rest is spamming stupid eldritch blast. How is it fun??
I voiced the opinion that DND 3.5 might be more fun, but he said "it promotes munchkinism". I LOVE MUNCHKINISM. In healthy amounts, of course. But every time we level up, I spend 10-20 hours just researching all the options. It makes all the scenarios of what I could do appear in my head, it's an adventure on its own. That said, I do abide by roleplay a lot. But within roleplay, there's a window for minmaxing stuff if your character is a munchkin by nature.
And of course the DND mechanics... We discussed in this thread that the combat rules are only for combat, and if you stab someone in the heart outside of combat, that should count as a killing blow. DM said "nope, only if it's a commoner". Zzzzz.

If anyone manages to read it all, what do you think? Just don't say "shit GM", I like the guy and he has dedicated hundreds of hours of his life to create this adventure for us. I wish I could thank him somehow. And instead I'm making this whiny post. Feels bad.

Wont say "shit GM" but utter shit GM . An uninspired homebrewer with no skills but a huge ego, who would be better off using something already existing instead of the inane shit he's producing. He has spent hundreds of hours in the hobby. Well, congratulations! After hundreds of hours, there's no progress, and it's still subpar. It can't be helped; he's unskilled, like most are. It could be worse, of course, but everything you say points to something really boring.

 

[Havoc]

Starting new campaign after I had to cancel a previous one (had 100 sessions already but was burned out plus personal problems). Made a trailer with AI:

 

[Caim]

Every aspect of 4e is geared towards a board game rather than an RPG. Stuff like "per encounter" and "per day" abilities, being able to change your abilities by re-specing in level ups, etc. That stuff doesn't make any sense in whatever imaginary world you can conceive, unless it is specifically made to look like a "game world". Most people, on seeing this stuff, won't even try to play because that is a completely different idea than even 3e. 3e was focused on builds, but they were still supposed to exist in a world where you could, in theory, attempt anything. Character abilities still were supposed to be aspects of the setting rather than simply actions the game allowed you to do. So even people who really liked 3e would be put off by 4e. Yeah, I never tried 4e, and I don't intend to. If I wanted to, I would look for someone to play Gloomhaven with instead, which seems more interesting anyway.

D&D 4e's biggest problem was that it had D&D in the title. As a miniatures combat game it's great, and needs some tweaking to make it perfect. You can play it as a 1v1 game with one player having the monsters and one having the adventurers, or a 1v* game where there's one "dungeon master" in control of the dungeon and its monsters while the rest takes control of 1-2 heroes each. Put a bunch of cardboard miniatures in there, release some plasic one's and job's a good one.