Troll Lord Games

Desrimal wrote:I've been playing D&D 5e for 7 months now. We've played 8-10 sessions and the characters are at level 5 or 6. I still like the game a lot. It always reminded me of C&C, but I like the fact that the rules are clearer and there are more options for players to customize their characters rules-wise, which in my experience doesn't make players focus less on being the characters.

I'm still a fan

I can see that. Some people like having a lot more specific rules to fall back on. Like 3.x games. That just was never the intention of the creator of D&D.

Desrimal wrote:I've been playing D&D 5e for 7 months now. We've played 8-10 sessions and the characters are at level 5 or 6. I still like the game a lot. It always reminded me of C&C, but I like the fact that the rules are clearer and there are more options for players to customize their characters rules-wise, which in my experience doesn't make players focus less on being the characters.

I'm still a fan

I can see why people like 5E, and I don't dislike it. I just have more fun playing C&C on Monday and Tuesday than I do playing 5E on Thursday. I'm really not sure why either. We are just playing with the core book, but while its cool to decide upon skills, etc... my 5E character still does far less than my C&C characters, because with my C&C character, I can attempt ANYTHING with a attribute based check. So maybe thats why I am not having as much fun with 5E, I feel like I am wearing a straight jacket when I am playing and comparing it to what I could try to do in a C&C game.

Arduin wrote:I can see that. Some people like having a lot more specific rules to fall back on. Like 3.x games. That just was never the intention of the creator of D&D.

Funny. IIRC 1e had a rule (and a table) for damn near everything. The only difference being, that 1e rules were alot harder to remember, due to the lack of continuity.

Treebore wrote: I can see why people like 5E, and I don't dislike it. I just have more fun playing C&C on Monday and Tuesday than I do playing 5E on Thursday. I'm really not sure why either. We are just playing with the core book, but while its cool to decide upon skills, etc... my 5E character still does far less than my C&C characters, because with my C&C character, I can attempt ANYTHING with a attribute based check. So maybe thats why I am not having as much fun with 5E, I feel like I am wearing a straight jacket when I am playing and comparing it to what I could try to do in a C&C game.

C&C was the first game I've ever played, that seemed to urge players into having their characters attempt everything. This was an eye-opener for me! I've been following this gaming-philosophy ever since, but some games (like 3.x and Pathfinder) have rules that doesn't fit this philosophy very well. IMO it's different with 5e - it makes everything possible. Just like C&C!

Desrimal wrote:

Arduin wrote:I can see that. Some people like having a lot more specific rules to fall back on. Like 3.x games. That just was never the intention of the creator of D&D.

Funny. IIRC 1e had a rule (and a table) for damn near everything. The only difference being, that 1e rules were alot harder to remember, due to the lack of continuity.

I have to agree with Desrimal. The original D&D and then AD&D was very rules heavy. Not that it stopped us much, we just ignored a lot of them.

Desrimal wrote:

Arduin wrote:I can see that. Some people like having a lot more specific rules to fall back on. Like 3.x games. That just was never the intention of the creator of D&D.

Funny. IIRC 1e had a rule (and a table) for damn near everything. The only difference being, that 1e rules were alot harder to remember, due to the lack of continuity.

Compared to 3.x type games? Not EVEN close. Not by 2 or 3 rule books full.

Arduin wrote:

Desrimal wrote:

Arduin wrote:I can see that. Some people like having a lot more specific rules to fall back on. Like 3.x games. That just was never the intention of the creator of D&D.

Funny. IIRC 1e had a rule (and a table) for damn near everything. The only difference being, that 1e rules were alot harder to remember, due to the lack of continuity.

Compared to 3.x type games? Not EVEN close. Not by 2 or 3 rule books full.

True, if you are a completest and felt the need to buy and use every book published then 3.X has them all beat. But if we are talking core rule sets, then AD&D was very rules intensive and had lots of small fiddly rules that didn't even use consistent formats.

But to be clear, I loved AD&D warts and all, it was the edition I have the most fond memories of so far.

Arduin wrote:

Desrimal wrote:

Arduin wrote:I can see that. Some people like having a lot more specific rules to fall back on. Like 3.x games. That just was never the intention of the creator of D&D.

Funny. IIRC 1e had a rule (and a table) for damn near everything. The only difference being, that 1e rules were alot harder to remember, due to the lack of continuity.

Compared to 3.x type games? Not EVEN close. Not by 2 or 3 rule books full.

No. I was compairing 1e to 5e. I think 1e is a lot more rules-heavy compared to 5e. That rules should sometimes be ignored is stated in both the 1e dmg and the 5e dmg IIRC. So I don't think 5e is a step away from Gygax's intention.

I am DMing 5E and have been since it's release. I am starting to dislike 5E because of the reasons below.

1-15 min work day? try 15 min Adventuring Career. The game seems designed around 1-20th level in one adventure path or around 20 sessions. WAY too fast and although it would have a easy fix, doesn't have that option.

2- Class imbalance is way out of hand. Some class's like the Barbarian are so overpowered it's silly while others are only overpowered enough to be noticeable.

3- Races are not balanced at all. For instance the 1/2 orc gives +2 str +1 con,Darkvision, On Crit it adds a extra damage die, once per long rest(Day) when it drops to 0 or less hit points instead it still has 1. So yes the 1/2 orc can be at 2 hit points and take 1,999,000,888,666 damage and still be at 1 hit point. While other races get almost nothing.

4-Save DC's for casters are broken. It's just too easy to make saves. Granted at least it's refreshing to see them broken in a different way that in the past...they are still broken. 8+ prof bonus(low number)+stat bonus(low number)= low number!

5- Monsters. While most of this is fine the stupid legendary actions make some class's suck wind verse tough monsters or frankly just be a waste of time. Combined with low DC saves its stupid to play a wizard a lot of the time. In our games it isn't abnormal when fighting such a beast that our 16th level Wizard does nothing for the entire battle. The creatures are often immune to low level spells and the wizards VERY few high level spells have low DC's. Combine this with the creatures automatically making failed saves a number of times per day= Time to go make drink and smoke a Cig during combat.

6-Magic Items- Why the heck make the whole three attuned items per character rule and then make most magic items not require attunement? It's not even like they made all the overpowered or high end items attuned only. Nope some of those don't require attunement while some rather pitiful ones do. It's like they got a idea and went with it and then at the end said" We are not sure about this...we better nullify it"

These are just some of the reasons 5E is really starting to become not my cup of tea.

Point 1 seems readily solvable for the DM -- just slow down advancement to a rate you are comfortable with. The other points have more teeth. Hmm...

GameOgre wrote:I am DMing 5E and have been since it's release. I am starting to dislike 5E because of the reasons below.

.

They just switched from being one type of P&P "computer game" in 4e to another in 5E

5e looks very good... for stealing rules off of:
- Backgrounds
- Kits came back
- Aggressively controlling numbers
- Advantage / Disadvantage system

Based on what other people are saying, it needs a lot of work before it can be considered balanced enough for general use. I get this feeling that the writers of 5e didn't really want to cut it down so much, or that they wanted to have just enough 3e and 4e to placate those kinds of people.

ssfsx17 wrote:or that they wanted to have just enough 3e and 4e to placate those kinds of people.

This.

I don't blame them. They nuked Wizards hold on P&P RPG's with the creation of 4E and they didn't want ANOTHER bomb like that.

I don't know how its going. When 4E came out most people I know bought it. Most hated it and never bought more books. With 5E most people I know haven't purchased it but a couple play it 9 months along.

Mixed bag.

There's a thread on Dragonsfoot that gives sales figures (or at least estimates them based on available data). It looks like 5E is selling very well.

Buttmonkey wrote:There's a thread on Dragonsfoot that gives sales figures (or at least estimates them based on available data). It looks like 5E is selling very well.

"very well" is dimensionless.

Like I said, I have no idea how its doing vs. earlier editions. Given heavy recent inflation only number of units of type (PHB, DMG, MM) would have any real meaning.

Arduin wrote: Given heavy recent inflation only number of units of type (PHB, DMG, MM) would have any real meaning.

Not holding my breath for this kind of data. Bet they don't share it outside corporate internal reporting. But I admit, it would be interesting to see the numbers though.

Arduin wrote:

Buttmonkey wrote:There's a thread on Dragonsfoot that gives sales figures (or at least estimates them based on available data). It looks like 5E is selling very well.

"very well" is dimensionless.

Fine. Here is the post from Dragonsfoot. Take it for whatever worth you wish to give it:

Dude on Dragonsfoot wrote:Sounds like.

I wonder how many books they're actually selling?

I took a look at amazon, PHB currently #154 overall and #1 in fantasy game rpgs. Down from #124 in Febuary.

From what I can tell, that's somewhere around 300 books a day. So if they are selling about 50% of books through amazon as they said, they're selling about 600 books a day of the PHB currently for the last 3 months, or about 20,000 a month. I'm not sure how long it was at #1, but it was at least six days, at a minimum of 4000 a day, 24,0000 in the first week. I'd made a guesstimate of a minimum of 200,000 PHBs. Of course that figure is a very rough guesstimate based on stuff to be taken with fist full of salt found on the internet.

Buttmonkey wrote: Fine. Here is the post from Dragonsfoot. Take it for whatever worth you wish to give it:

Yeah, saw those before. Not the data I was looking for to determine vs. prior editions.

Thanks

GameOgre wrote:The game seems designed around 1-20th level in one adventure path or around 20 sessions. WAY too fast and although it would have a easy fix, doesn't have that option.

That's an interesting observation, but doesn't match my experience with 5E.

I'm playing a game of 5E in my local game store and DM'ing another. We were doing HOARD OF THE DRAGON QUEEN. In 18 sessions my character barely reached 7th level and in 27 sessions the players I'm DM'ing for in the other game are mostly 7th level. (The adventure claims you should end up 8th but there aren't enough XP that we can find to do this.) I have found that leveling up goes quickly early on, but really stagnates somewhere around 5th level.

Here's data for my character:
1st level = session 1
2nd level = session 2
3rd level = session 4
4th level = session 8*
5th level = session 8*
6th level = session 15
7th level = session 18**
* Using downtime rules to level up twice.
** We would never have leveled up to 7th so quickly but the DM knew we were going to retire our characters at the end of the module so he went crazy with XP.

And for the game I'm running:
1st level = session 1
2nd level = session 2
3rd level = session 4
4th level = session 8*
5th level = session 8*
6th level = session 18
7th level = session 26
* Using downtime rules to level up twice.

I have no idea how you can get to 20th level in 20 sessions unless the DM is really a pushover.

Agreed, Finarvyn. It definitely moves fast with the first two levels, but slows down noticeably from there.

There's an optional level-up system in the DMG that I use: First session takes you to level 2 and second session takes you to level 3. From this point it takes two sessions to go up one level. That's 36 sessions to level 20 if my math-fu is correct (which is very unlikely).

It works fine in my group

Desrimal wrote:There's an optional level-up system in the DMG that I use: First session takes you to level 2 and second session takes you to level 3. From this point it takes two sessions to go up one level. That's 36 sessions to level 20 if my math-fu is correct (which is very unlikely).

It works fine in my group

Damn, that's fast. I would think it would be hard to design adventures that are reasonably scaled at that pace.

I think what people notice is how fast the first couple of levels come. It seemed that the first couple sessions we leveled every time. But by fourth it had slowed down and by 5th it was more reasonable. But I will say, it all depends on the table as well. Do you play three hour or five hour sessions? Do you do a lot of combat or do you spend a lot of time talking? I could see the 20 in 20 if they played six plus hour sessions and had a lot of combat. Then the XP might be flowing at a higher rate than the normal game style I would run.

We're only fourth level, and we have played about 60 hours.

Buttmonkey wrote:

Desrimal wrote:There's an optional level-up system in the DMG that I use: First session takes you to level 2 and second session takes you to level 3. From this point it takes two sessions to go up one level. That's 36 sessions to level 20 if my math-fu is correct (which is very unlikely).

It works fine in my group

Damn, that's fast. I would think it would be hard to design adventures that are reasonably scaled at that pace.

The players loose a level if their characters die, so 36 sessions i best case scenario, and highly unlikely:) Nonetheless your proberbly right. It IS fast compared to many other groups. I don't find it harder to design adventures due to a fast level-up pace, though.

I can't remember for sure, but does the proficiency bonus mechanic keep numbers bloat down vs. adding your level? I guess that could be a positive. Keep in mind, I only played 4 or 5 sessions. Seems to me one could just beef up the power level of C&C (crits, higher att bonuses, etc.) use advantages, give attribute increases from time to time, and speed up the experience process to have the modern day power game experience (as an alternative to 5E or Pathfinder). Most of this could easily be home-brewed, but made even simpler with the CKG? Would monster AC's have to be increased as a result?

Well tried out a bit of D&D 5e on Fantasy Grounds 2 yesterday. Our regular group wasn't able to get together, so we joined in early and tried the game out with the Pre-Gens that are part of the Lost Mines of Phandelver.

From a gameplay standpoint, we all have a very limited grasp on the game rules for 5e. Really that translates to me having looked at the rules and everyone else not having a clue. The good news is we all know C&C and the tools that are available in FG2. Anyway, we did the first encounter - the Goblin Ambush. Had to check on surprise rules (Wisdom check verses Steath Check). I used Disadvantage once for a goblin arrow attack - when a PC was partially behind the wagon. Just now realized the Goblins should have had Advantage with surprise. Overall pretty interesting, but need to check it out more. Spell Sheet/abilities in FG2 are very well done. I do hope to see them translate over to the C&C Ruleset.

tylermo wrote:I can't remember for sure, but does the proficiency bonus mechanic keep numbers bloat down vs. adding your level? I guess that could be a positive. Keep in mind, I only played 4 or 5 sessions. Seems to me one could just beef up the power level of C&C (crits, higher att bonuses, etc.) use advantages, give attribute increases from time to time, and speed up the experience process to have the modern day power game experience (as an alternative to 5E or Pathfinder). Most of this could easily be home-brewed, but made even simpler with the CKG? Would monster AC's have to be increased as a result?

The proficiency bonus is a slower progression compared to adding one's level to a check. It is around every 3rd or 4th level, if I recall correctly, that the proficiency bonus goes up by one. As far as scaling monster ACs, I don't think it would necessary. Unlike D&D, C&C still presents ample ability for PCs to be slaughtered. Death in D&D is awfully hard to do (fail three death saving throws before you win three death saving throws), so even with adding an increased power level into C&C PCs, I think the lack of easy escape from dying in C&C acts as a balance for that. That is, if one was going for D&D-like gameplay.

Litzen Tallister wrote: Death in D&D is awfully hard to do (fail three death saving throws before you win three death saving throws)

Which is basically a 50/50 chance. A nat 20 brings you automatically back to 1hp and a nat 1 gives you 2 failed saves, so it's actually about 49.5% that you'll die, 50.5% that you'll survive, but still pretty close to 50/50. Plus, if you take damage equal to your max HP, you automatically die. (You have 23hp maximum and take 24hp of damage, there will be no death saving throws. You just dead).

AGNKim wrote:

Litzen Tallister wrote: Death in D&D is awfully hard to do (fail three death saving throws before you win three death saving throws)

Which is basically a 50/50 chance. A nat 20 brings you automatically back to 1hp and a nat 1 gives you 2 failed saves, so it's actually about 49.5% that you'll die, 50.5% that you'll survive, but still pretty close to 50/50. Plus, if you take damage equal to your max HP, you automatically die. (You have 23hp maximum and take 24hp of damage, there will be no death saving throws. You just dead).

It is still much, MUCH, MUCH harder to die than in 1st-3rd Edition. That was the point.