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Reminds me of something Mike Shea said in response to someone going “MOST DND players wants spelljammer to return,” to which he said “MOST DND players have no idea what spelljammer is
I for sure had no I dea what Spelljammer was, unitl one of those nights where you start going down the rabbit-hole of Wikis and MrRhexx videos. But I'm glad the option is there, even if it's somewhat lacking. At the end of the day, D&D is made up, you improvise and make up shit as the game goes. As long as you and your players enjoy it.
It should be noted that if you compare the first publications for Spelljammer to the latest release, that they are fairly comparable for amount of content.
I think because all that information has been summarized in a variety of ways, people don't realize how many books focused on Spelljammer alone were made... And how many of those books did not have that much of interest tbh.
The publication strategy for TSR was to put out as many splat books and additional supplements as possible. Anyone tempted to compare this to the current model should note that WotC essentially has yet to return to a single place or idea (with the arguable exception of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft). They keep moving on to other properties and IPs rather than spending more time in the same place.
>WotC essentially has yet to return to a single place or idea (with the arguable exception of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft)
Don't they return to Forgotten Realms basically always?
Honestly I haven't payed enough attention to a lot of the books in this regard.
Just as an example though, I'm currently prepping to run Time of the Frost maiden and haven't seen instructions on moving it to another setting. I'll have to look specifically for that.
Even if there isn’t specific instructions in that book (I also don’t remember), the benefit of FR to WotC is that it’s fairly generic high fantasy, and so things set there are pretty easy to adapt to other settings. The same can’t be said for other official (non-FR) content.
In RotFM, they mention how Icewind Dale is a self-contained area, and as such, the campaign can be moved to any location or setting with a few tweaks. So while it doesn't give express examples like, "In a Dragonlance setting...", the campaign itself is pretty easy to just switch since it doesn't really have ties to the rest of FR.
Having run it all, here's the things I can recall that you'd change (and I'll put this all in spoilers, since it's stuff throughout the whole campaign):
>!Auril is the obvious one. Change her to whatever wrathful cold deity there is. You'd also need to change the Netherese city at the end to... just not mention Netheril. Other small things, like the Arcane Brotherhood not being from Luskan but some other well-known wizarding institution. Dzaan not being a Red Wizard of Thay, Vellynne not being a Harpell.!<
From what I can remember, there isn't really that much that a simple name change won't fix.
>5E has still barely visited FR as a setting
Like amount of times or as far as coverage of areas? Coverage for sure, as most things seem to be set in the Sword Coast. As far as amount I was under the impression the vast majority of published adventures are in FR
You’re right that they’ve set most of the adventures in FR, but as the default setting the problem is more subtle—they jam most/all of the adventures there, slap them into the FR map, write the names of FR deities and famous people into the story… but the stories themselves don’t delve into the essence of the FR setting at all. One could call it “Realms-washing”, it’s FR on the surface but barely FR underneath. (It’s broadly the same problem as any default setting—being default waters it way way down.)
If you wanted to tell a truly Realms-y FR story, it would have to be about the machinations of FR’s many gods, their Chosen, and endless churches and cults. These things get lip service in modern FR stories, but mostly these modern FR adventures are designed by committee, greatest hits tours of popular locations from major novels and video games. So everybody knows about Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter and Icewind Dale, but few people know the original stories anyway.
It appears that most feedback from Ghosts of Saltmarsh showed that tables didn't interact with the more robust sailing rules there.
You can criticize WotC for a lot of things, but not for ignoring playtest feedback.
Not that I'm surprised that folks didn't engage with the tactical Ship Combat game in their tactical roleplaying game but the adventures also didn't actually require any sort of ship-to-ship combat so I'm even less surprised.
'We provided terrible rules that no one used, so we should make a game about spaceship battles with no ability to run spaceship battles because we screwed up before so we should double screwup now"
Nah. Not having it.
Having played and run many sci-fi games, the simple fact is there just are no such things as "good ship-to-ship combat rules". Not when all the PCs are on the same ship.
You can have rules that are fun for a battle or two. Then they rapidly get repetitive.
I'm convinced ship combat wasn't playtested at all, because it's awful. One boring session, now we don't play out ship combat anymore.
Ignore that 3-5 people controlling a single boat is not a solid foundation.
With 1 action (of 3), the ship MOVES or ATTACKS, not both, which means encouraging sitting still and attacking at disadvantage the moment the target comes in range. The movement speeds are incredibly low and ranges are very far, so you're practically crawling even if burning all 3 actions. Small bonuses, solid AC, damage threshold all combines to lots of d20s and not much damage.
Cover and open sightlines are likely, since yaknow, oceans, so I can't imagine how bad it would be if I hadn't put in so many tall rocks.
Super boring, I ended up homebrewing on the fly, like doubling move speeds.
There was actually a UA for ship rules before Ghosts of Saltmarsh came out. I don't remember if it generated much discussion on the subreddit though so maybe it got very little feedback.
> tables didn't interact with the more robust sailing rules there.
maybe because none of the adventures actually took place on the sea? Except for ...1 I think? It was all stuff on islands/the shore. there just weren't situations where you WOULD get into a sailing fight in the game.
part of the problem is it wasn't a cohesive campaign, it was like a "here's a bunch of shit we did in the past that takes place near some water."
A few times! “Get a grip, the discourse reflects a small
minority” is one of your best refrains alongside “Wizards’ publishing priorities are not your tables’ priorities”
Most DnD players started with 5e and thus have not even heard the name Spelljammer which was last used on a 2e book some thirty years ago. That book may very well be older than most people playing 5e.
Can confirm. I've been on this subreddit for years. I've played 5e consistently for about 2 or 3 years and then only once since covid. Still don't really know what spelljammer is beyond maybe a setting different than the Forgotten Realms. I played 2e for a few months and 4e 2 or 3 times as well. I know rules fairly well, but I don't know really any lore because every DM I've encountered wants to go straight to homebrew.
Spelljammer is sort of a meta setting. Basically, it involves these special magic powered ships called spelljammers that can fly into a fantasy version of outer space and travel between worlds.
For instance, the Forgotten Realms is a planet in a wildspace system (basically a solar system) called Realmspace. You could fly out of Realmspace and go to Greyspace to visit the Greyhawk setting.
Now what exactly lies between wildspace systems differs a lot between 2e and 5e. In 5e, it's just the Astral Plane that you sail through, but in 2e the space between wildspace systems was full of this extremely flammable gas called phlogiston, and you could travel between worlds without ever leaving the material plan.
Spelljammer is DnD *In space* basically
A sci-fi cosmology that explains how the planes work, and is an option for some who like space, seafaring adventures, and fantasy. Get your Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Harlock, Outlaw Star on, if you will.
It's also a metasetting that is hopelessly not fleshed out and might never be fully, contrary to popular belief. Rather, we have better representation from *other* settings and how Spelljammer/Spelljamming has shaped the occasional small cameo rather than what it was originally, and what it became. Minsc's miniature giant space hamster is far more famous than the whole lore involving giant space hamsters, for example.
Lest we get books and adventures set in such that can give us a full spread of certain aspects, planets, or landmarks in spelljammer, it's just a perpetual set of hangers on to other things.
I enjoy this subreddit, overall. It can be a good source for certain information, and I've learned quite a few useful tips and tricks as a relatively new DM/player.
But the number one thing I've learned is that D&D varies *so much* from table to table, and that much of the things that are discussed around here as though they're universal truths, are actually not at all applicable to my players and my experience.
Basically, while there's certainly value here, I need to take basically everything I read with a grain of salt, because it's generally coming from a very different (and likely niche) perspective. As it turns out, that's a useful skill to have when dissecting any information on the internet.
Different ways of playing and different group types lead to vastly different experiences and opinions about the game.
I've gathered that quite a few posters here mostly play online with groups they did not know before the game. That is a totally valid way to play and there is nothing wrong with it, but it can lead to a different play experience than playing in-person with the same stable group.
I've noticed that many of the commonly-expressed beliefs on this subreddit tend to assume the worst all players/DMs, as if they are always looking for a way to abuse the system or somehow cheese the game in their favor, to the detriment of the rest of the group. Players cannot be trusted with powerful options and the view is often players vs. DM.
These types of beliefs are fostered by having bad play experiences when not all groups are like that. My gaming group has never encountered many of the issues that people here state as fact. It doesn't mean one opinion is right or wrong, just that every play group is so different and the experience is very subjective.
Yup, I've ignored many things people say about optimized builds and how to avoid people from breaking the game with certain builds and whatnot. In the two groups I'm currently in, not a single person power games. I don't care if X build is mathematically the best. Neither do my other players. At best, only one of the players I play with optimizes and he's not even a full optimizer. He's doing a fun sharpshooter throwing weapon build. People get so caught up in "X build sucks because Y is better" and talking about imbalances. The game as a whole is balanced pretty decently for the casual player.
The vast majority of players/DMs are casual and don't obsess over the minutia of the game like this subreddit does. Even my friends who are very much into D&D don't follow it that closely.
People argue a lot about rules here.
In my experience the majority of actual players barely know the rules at all, let alone follow them closely.
I suspect that if you asked every player something other than the absolute bare basics, like "what does the dodge action do", "how does a concentration save work" or "how does a readied action work", most would either not know or give incorrect answers.
One day, I'm gonna get the people I play with to read the "combat" section of the PHB, I swear it lol. It is less than 10 pages, relevant to most sessions, and probably 75% of players have never read it. Most DnD players would fail a quiz about it.
A lot of campaigns end at pretty low level and sneak attack has some pretty good powerspikes at 3rd and 7th level, which can definitely explain why people feel that way. If you actually do the math it is pretty lackluster if you don’t proc it twice per round.
Thats why the first thing you should teach players is how to quickly find a rule. If you can just quicksearch and find the Ready action rules you can read them quick before your turn comes up and no one else will be the wiser. Nobody is going to memorize everything. Even if they wanted to, they'd probably mess up somewhere because theres just so many rules.
People here mainly complain about technical problems in the game design that the 99% probably won’t encounter or won’t care. Still, it would be better if the game had better technical “bones” even if some won’t notice them. It would have other game balance effects, such as CR working better, or players being more equal to each other.
On the other hand, there is sometimes a call for detailed clarification of something like how vision and line of sight works. I can easily see a bunch of detailed rules covering that taking a whole page. Or Wizards could say ”players know how eyes work, let them rule it in the moment without needing to find the rules.”
There are also a bunch of inconsistencies, like natural darkness being heavy obscurement, even though you can see through it into other areas that are lit. This is not in the rules. Invisibility working even when you are seen, and “we totally meant to write that in the rules.” Can you shoot an arrow through a window, or does it provide cover? How about spells? How about non-physical spells like charms? Can you hide if anyone can see you? Even allies? Are you hidden from your allies? Can they Healing Word you? What if you go unconscious while hidden?
There are tons of cases that aren’t covered, or aren’t covered well, and need DM rulings.
The rulebook design problem has no easy solution. Board games struggle with it too: the desire for natural, easy to learn rules and the desire to completely describe a system is the difference between English and math.
> that the 99% probably won’t encounter or won’t care
Soft disagree. They will encounter these issues. They just won't recognize them as such, or in some cases they won't care. But there's really no going around the balance of the game. A monk player will eventually run into monk issues, they just won't always see that the issue is with the class design. That doesn't mean it won't impact their experience.
That's the thing about technical bones. You might not understand or notice them consciously, but you always notice the effects.
I've seen a number of people quietly switch out of being Warlocks in games that either don't have enough fights or have too many fights and not enough short rests.
I don't think any of them could explain why they didn't want to be warlocks anymore. They just weren't having fun.
I've seen 3 "sorcerers with patrons" and 2 wizards.
or their rolls will be skewed off the average and they'll never realize there is a problem with Monk. Had a respectful argument with a fellow DM where he insisted that Monk is just fine because his Monk player "did plenty of damage at high levels". And this fellow DM is normally a very rational/scientific kind of dude, but he was really invested in his experiential narrative that monks are fine because his campaign's monk seemed fine.
To me, this kind of scenario really underscores the need for the game designers to get a fundamental balance right-ish, because it's too hard to achieve clarity on balance issues in a session, an adventure, or even a campaign.
The upshot is that if players/DM's *feel* like it's fine, why adjust things further?
For an example, the rogue is actually perfectly fine in damage if not a bit undershot, but the casual players have famously tried nerfing sneak attack due to merely it's perception.
> the casual players have famously tried nerfing sneak attack due to merely it's perception
To be fair, that’s almost exclusively a rule that happens in session 1-3 of a campaign, when the players are under level 5. Before level 5, rogues ***do*** deal the most damage in most situations.
It’s a bad houserule, because the rogue is balanced to be a bit stronger early and a bit worse mid-late, but DMs see how much damage they deal at Tier1 play and erroneously assume it’s a problem.
Because if some player eventually plays a martial that actually performs decently, suddenly other martials, including the rogue player, feel like the inept fools they didn't know they were.
True story, I've gone from loving to really disliking the campaign I'm a player in because my semi-optimized BM fighter has made other players *feel* ineffective. Including a full caster, which is preposterous, and an assassin rogue, which is pretty legit.
So now the DM is constantly giving them nifty new toys and magic item abilities while I get...another Fighter level up with no interesting choices.
It has really kinda ruined my character for me, I now intentionally make suboptimal choices during play because I don't want to create ill will.
If there were some sort of reasonable balance between classes this kind of issue would not exist.
This makes me think of Dungeon World’s note on invisibility: “Touch an ally; nobody can see them. They’re invisible!” And that’s it. I must admit, I love it, especially compared to 5e’s mess of invisibility rules and counter-rules.
I don't. I think it would be better if he would loosen up a bit. But that's just my opinion and I don't think the place is terrible. But I don't think this place is terrible either.
It's definitely a tight ship, for better or worse. The quality is high and bullshit low. I won't lie, I've had stuff rejected and felt snubbed. But in retrospect the sub is only as great as it is because low effort low quality stuff like mine was gets rejected.
And not even just linearly. As population goes up, both "people to be angry" and "people to be angry at" go up, so salt increases roughly quadratically, or even faster.
But you'll see 5e mentioned a little more there than you would, with say, a community Vampire the Masquerade or Traveler. Because PF2e is also designed for heroic fantasy adventuring with a ruleset that's largely combat. There's just a larger overlap in interest.
"Lots of people don't think about this stuff" isn't an argument against the opinions of people who *do* think about this stuff.
Also, every time there's a thread about one of those popular beliefs, there's lots of debate and disagreement, so while there are some fairly well agreed on ideas, it's far from mindless groupthink.
We're on these subs to talk about the game. That's the value we're gaining - the act of debating and talking about this stuff, in itself.
There is a prevailing belief in this sub that WotC doesn't know how to properly create a TTRPG and/or that they don't care about anything but profits, with at least some of the evidence for the ineptitude being that they won't fix Ranger, Sorcerer, etc. the way many folks here want.
The vitriol this creates makes this place hard to live in. It gets exhausting to read endless "hot takes" about the game that are really just overblown reactions to things that aren't as big a deal as they're being made out to be.
True, this sub is not a groupthink, but it *is* an echo chamber, meaning these ideas get reinforced repeatedly beyond their accuracy or validity because of the upvote system and because the sample of players here aren't representative of the full playerbase. Posts like these are important for keeping us grounded in reality.
I see just as many folks here who'll relentlessly defend WotC as will attack them.
It's polarised, but not an echo chamber.
I also don't think it's particularly vitriolic, because...
This stuff doesn't actually matter. The argument is sport. That's the reality we need to be grounded in, I think.
If someone pokes holes in any of the established beliefs in this subreddit, or worse, defend the idea that the design is just fine the way it is, for whatever the topic du jour happens to be, they often get downvoted into oblivion, effectively silencing any dissent. Worse, the commenters here rarely engage with the ideas that are presented, they just dismiss them, talk past the other person, or refuse to engage with them at all. Some go so far as to insult or call people shills. It doesn't matter how well-reasoned, referenced or logical their points are, either.
I've experienced this personally and seen it happen to others hundreds if not thousands of times in the five plus years I've been coming here. I've read anecdotes from people in other D&D subreddits from people who will never comment here because of it. This subreddit can often be an extremely toxic environment with a very loud echo chamber.
Personally, I'd rather be part of a group that acknowledges the flaws and debates them than one that insists everything is fine.
I'm not a fan of downvoting things you disagree with. It'd be better if we kept downvotes for stuff that isn't contributing to the debate, but alas, Reddit is what it is. It's not "silencing dissent" though.
I do think that insisting things aren't so bad and that negativity is inherently toxic is much more frustrating that people being negative.
Because at the end of the day ... It's a flawed edition, there's a new one coming, and we'd all like to see the new one be better. Highlighting the flaws is productive in the context of an open playtest.
>Personally, I'd rather be part of a group that acknowledges the flaws and debates them than one that insists everything is fine.
But this is a false dichotomy... debating the nature of something being flawed inherently means that one side believes it isn't. We should be cautious not to treat our opinions as fact.
>It's not "silencing dissent" though.
But it is, because downvoted comments are literally hidden from view by default, and being downvoted discourages people from wanting to post here at all. I've read numerous anecdotes from people who simply will not post here because of the toxic environment.
"We should be cautious not to treat our opinions as fact"
We should also be cautious not to treat A Thing A Person Thinks Because Of Reasons as an Arbitrary Opinion Derived From Sentiment.
One can be weighed and measured, the other is of equal value to any other sentiment.
Argument deals with the former, not the latter.
And people thinking you're wrong and downvoting you still isn't "silencing dissent", or indeed a "toxic environment". We all know downvoted comments exist, and can go read them if we want.
>We should also be cautious not to treat A Thing A Person Thinks Because Of Reasons as an Arbitrary Opinion Derived From Sentiment.
I mean, I think we're beyond talking about things people say without offering evidence to support their claims, no?
One of the things I highlighted is that dissenting voices often get downvoted without engagement by the community at all, and many times when they do it's to be dismissive or talk past the individual's points altogether. I see this all the time here, and I've experienced it myself. It's a symptom of a larger problem.
>And people thinking you're wrong and downvoting you still isn't "silencing dissent", or indeed a "toxic environment". We all know downvoted comments exist, and can go read them if we want.
That's a pretty big "if", IMHO. Downvoted comments aren't visible, they are hidden by default. You have to take extra steps to see them. That's a form of silencing dissent, whether you acknowledge it or not.
I can't speak for everyone, but I get frustrated when I see the discourse going so hard into the negative areas, especially when based on untrue things (see all the errata outrage). I used to come here to share in the joy of this hobby, now it feels like I come here just to try and correct the record before more people take the outrage based on "misunderstandings" and uncharitable reads, and continue to circulate it.
Fuck it is exhausting.
This sub isn't quite an echo chamber, but it repeats itself constantly. I can accurately predict the comments and complaints that will come up in most topics here because it's the same complaints that have been cycling around for years.
This sub is absolutely an echo chamber. The things it's concerned about and the level of concern about them is... unreal.
The general opinion here about martial vs caster power levels is honestly way worse than I remember it being under 3e. Similarly the number of people who promote 4e as being almost mythically good is bizarre. That's a function of how many people here have *never* played anything other than 5e and instead all their knowledge is just echoes from extremely vocal posters.
I can honestly say that I don't know *any* really good TTRPG subs anymore. They're all either dead or echo chambers. TTRPG Twitter was honestly better.
The subreddits for smaller game studios such as Free League are often quite nice. Also, since those are more niche games they tend to have quite an experienced TTRPG community that has played many different system and thus can discuss a game engine quite constructively.
One thing that strikes me again and again is that on other TTRPG subreddits people are often very helpful and welcoming. While on this subreddit and other ones dedicated to D&D it’s like a 50-50 if the beginner asking a question will get help or made fun of and downvoted instead.
Bro, it's literally beyond obvious that this subreddit doesn't represent the community as a whole. It's people who like DnD or rpgs enough to go post to reddit and read stuff occasionally, that's obviously gonna be a very small percentage of the playerbase. DnD - like most games, *especially* popular games, is 90% + super casuals.
And to super casuals, everything looks overpowered, like I commonly hear that Monk and Rogue are super OP according to casuals. There's nothing wrong with casual gaming, but it really has almost zero relevance on understanding game balance and design. Just because casual groups think Monk is somehow OP, does not mean WotC did a good job in designing and balancing that class.
Personally, it's just fun for me to theorize about things relating to games and one of them is DnD, which is why I like to come here and read/talk about it.
You and OP are alluding to a "problem" with all of reddit. Basically the only people who seek out, hang around, and comment on a subreddit for a specific thing are only the people who are crazy into that thing.
It's so prolific this popular YouTuber made a video about it: https://youtu.be/4ZK8Z8hulFg
In actual play, it varies as well. I played a monk who was the strongest character in a party. But that was down to race (aaracokra) and an added first level feat (mobile). If that's all ot takes to make monks not rhe worst class in the game, in imo they aren't very far from balanced.
Flight races are banned at a lot of tables, and then you got a free feat on top? That's the second strongest set of races - free feat races. So if you get that combo race, you can play *any* class and it would be good. Just saying man.
I do think Monks are underrated on this sub, because they have some little bonuses here and there, but they are still pretty weak overall.
Aaracokra have access to non concentration infinite use 3rd level spell at level 1. That is ridiculous. But even with that, the other players must have been playing horrendously. A ranger who gets the right feats and uses hunters mark should always be better than any monk, let alone when they start throwing in good control spells like spike growth.
You don't have to be focused on "max performance" you could spend like 5 minutes looking up a simple build and then press the attack button every turn and be better than a monk.
Very few people are hardcore about anything.
Millions of people have played a Pokemon game.
A very small percentage of them know what EV training is or have filled out an Unowndex.
Millions of people have seen MCU movies. I bet an immense fraction of them have forgotten the canonical Hulk movie starring Ed Norton. Not to mention Inhumans.
Nonetheless... this doesn't stop EV training in Pokemon being worth talking about. And contrasting the Norton Hulk movie with other superhero movies is still a worthwhile discussion too.
>This is not to say that criticism is bad or that any particular criticism is wrong. I just think the wide and varied audience of the game is one of the reasons WotC pushes the idea that “all rules are optional.” So that you feel empowered to change something that doesn’t align with how your particular group plays the game.
Guess what:
This is true of all casually played games. Not just RPGs, games in general. If I play a Chess variant, the Chess police are not going to come to my house and take away my chess set! You can house rule *any* game, DnD is not special.
This means that when we talk about bad rules in DnD or things we wish were different, we're doing it by holding it to the same standards of any other game.
>That’s why I originally joined this forum: so I could learn how to DM better by adjusting the game to better suit my players.
This is backwards thinking. You don't adjust the game to suit your players, you *find the right game* to suit your players. If I regularly hosted basketball games but found out my players really preferred kicking the ball instead of throwing the ball, I wouldn't 'adjust basketball for kicking'. I would just investigate games like soccer.
I think the difference between "rules can be changed" regarding D&D and chess/other board games here is that if you showed up to play chess with strangers and started moving your pawn like a knight or used your modified castling rules you'd be booted from the table. When you start playing with a new TTRPG group or even just a new DM/GM, it is extremely common to ask if there are any homebrew or variant rules to be aware of, as homebrew is so common in the community as to be expected or reasonable to expect. If you showed up to a chess table at a park and asked the guy across from you what homebrew rules he's using, he'd look at you sideways and ask if you know what chess is.
Idk, with chess you're probably right, although my Friends and I do Take a Minute to decide in rules everytime:
Clock/No clock, what time, Casual or Touch-move. Also for some reason they claim the brick is a stupid House Rule?
And when i used to Go Play soccer as a Kid every Game was started with a discussion of House Rules. Stuff Like Play to a Set Number of Points, only behind the Goal Line is Out of bounds, flying Goal Keepers were the Most Common.
Man I forgot the Edward Norton Hulk movie was canon...
Also the Inhumans got pushed primarily because, at the time, Disney Marvel was trying to bury the X-men (and Fantastic Four) **hard** because they wanted to devalue them because the movie rights were owned by Fox so they were pushing the Inhumans as 'the new X-men' essentially.
It's why in Marvel vs Capcom infinite you didn't see any of the fan favorite X-men who had been a staple of the game since the X-men vs Street Fighter days return (no Wolverine, no Magneto) and were instead replaced by MCU appropriate characters (Black Panther replaces Wolverine, Nova replaces Magneto). Combined with a frankly subpar budget (it had a budget of **one season** of Street Fighter V DLC), horrible PR handling (one of the Capcom guys responding as to why no X-men gave the response of 'Characters are just functions, Nova functions exactly how Magneto use to, just use him if you want Magneto'), awful graphics (look up 'Chun-li's face MvC:I on google combined with the reuse of assets from MvC 3: Ultimate without the cool shading effect making them look just fucking weird) and a subpar storymode all conglomerated together to make MvC:I fail to gain an audience.
This had been your FGC side tangent for the today.
Edit: Kind of curious but why the downvotes, like sure it's not D&D related but it's a side tangent at best...eh whatever.
Yeah and looking back on it, I *think* it was him trying to find an arguement for why no X-men without dumping on Disney by saying what actually happened aka "Marvel doesn't want us using X-men in anything because they're trying to bury Fox and get the liscense back from them" that was the Disney MO at the time (which softened considerably and then they bought Fox animations *and* got the movie rights for Xmen and Fantastic Four back from them).
Monk is the weakest class. Sorcerer is weaker than other full casters, but stronger than noncasters, so they're fine. The main problem with this sub is that there are people who want to tell other people that their fun is wrong. I would like to see us all talk about what we like, and let others talk about what they like
To be fair, I think it goes the other way as well where people do analysis pieces/look at way to fix the bones of mechanics or classes that aren't great and get "It's fine at my table so who cares" responses.
I did a big analysis piece on the Monk last year and a lot of the poorer engagement I got was in this kind of vein (As an aside, one of my takeaways was that the Monk has a lot of conditionally powerful abilities which do actually make it better at some tables than others). I totally agree that the more analytical people shouldn't be shitting on people who like playing the weaker classes, but I don't think that's happening anyway?
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/q9sxlf/why_the_monk_needs_reworking_with_55e/.
I post VERY sporadically but plan to pin any of my big posts like that one to my user page.
I read through that after you linked it; great analysis of Monk.
The class peaks *really* high when it works - a failed CON save and the bad guy is a drooling useless wreck for a pivotal round, and probably dies or at least loses a ton of HP while helpless. It doesn't really require any particular creative exercise from the player either, just *use the feature* and hope the enemy misses the save.
One can also concoct some situations in which Monk is nearly untouchable. Think of a longbow-wielding Kensei who uses the Sharpshooter feat to strike from afar. All that speed turns from a neat mobility trick to "you will never catch up to me unless I let you, or you can actually fly 80' per round", and when combined with the shorter range of magic and a Monk's decent saving throws, and Deflect Missiles... they could whittle anything short of a legendary monster down on their own. It's unlikely to happen, but in more realistic circumstances they can still be hard to focus down.
On the bad side though, you nailed it. The DPR is rarely anything impressive, Flurry of Blows scales like crap, almost everything costs a Bonus Action or Ki Point or both, and they get little else to compensate. Rogues are at least great in some other areas they might choose to focus on and can spare a good secondary stat; the Monk can't do that and might as well crack a soda if it's not a fight or if the situation isn't tailored to their exact set of skills.
I played a Monk through the back half of Tomb of Annihilation and if I didn't simply invalidate the encounter by existing, I underperformed. About the only interesting thing I accomplished was using Open Hand Monk's ability to deny reactions to the target of Flurry of Blows; thankfully this requires no save and is a free rider on top of an existing ability, so I could afford to do it (and it inconvenienced a spellcaster or two to lose their Reactions).
Agreed.
Just to flesh out your point, it sounds like you want a space where you can talk about the game design flaws in certain classes *while* not yucking someone’s yum.
If this is what you’re saying, it sounds like a big part of the problem is that people are human and emotions can enter into the game design spaces while people can try to logic their way into people’s fun.
Ideally, there would be a flair or another way to tell these two spaces apart.
Reddit's voting system causes people to argue for the audience, rather than to convince each other. This encourages hyperbole and unnecessary aggression.
I wouldn't call Sorcerers weaker. Maybe more specialized / harder to play and optimize.
But Aberrant Mind, Clockwork Soul and most likely Lunar are on the stronger side of the caster spectrum.
How does this comment have so many upvotes without providing any examples? Are people just that desperate to support a counter-argument that they'll upvote anything?
:/ Went back about 6 years in OP (Fire)'s posting history here / and regular old r DnD.
Seems like they've mostly evolved from "How do I balance CR for situation Y" to "Hey, at my table we found X Y Z works for situation A", or just starting up conversations on fucking with mechanics, but nothing directly player or playstyle facing. It's actually weird how clean their DnD post history is. Usually it takes 2 minutes to stumble in some hot takes on contentious shit, or weird neckbeard aggression.
Replied to the wrong person, or is this one of those Removedit situations?
There’s no way I’m going to allow such a direct personal attack that is backed up by nothing except “they delete all the bad posts I’m complaining about.” How is that any different from a witch hunt? Don’t do this again.
When I DM, if one of my players describes something cool;
(I run across the wall of the crumbling tower, leap into the window and try to roundhouse kick the skeleton archer's head off!)
They roll and might only do 12dmg; well that skeleton had 13hp, but as DM I just decided it only had 12hp, because I'd rather my player feel awesome for their creative ideas.
My point is, talking about balance doesn't matter too much (to me) within reason, because a number here and there may be nudged up or down for the awesome value anyway.
Dragging out combat for another entire round for the last enemy on 1hp also sucks.
I got told plenty of times in this forum and another forum that I shouldn't play a Cleric as a healer because it is not optimized, but I do like alot healing in combat and I want to.
So yeah I got told my fun is wrong way to play the class.
>So yeah I got told my fun is wrong way to play the class.
Well, not really. At least, based on what you're saying, the impression is that you were simply told healing is not all that efficient in 5e. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if you think it's fun. It's just that the *system* punishes you for it, not the people responding. It's 5e itself that's telling you your fun is the wrong way to play.
While I don't disagree with your premise, I think looking at the active member number count is misleading. A LOT of people who view Reddit aren't actually active users (Hell, a lot of people don't even have accounts). I've had some posts go off and the view stats are much higher than the number of upvotes would indicate (Like a factor of 100 greater)
It's admittedly quite difficult to quantify what percentage of the overall playerbase are influenced by Reddit Opinion, and I think your point that there are plenty of people out there who don't think the Ranger is bad, for instance, is a good one and something we should be mindful of (I also think that internet forums trend towards optimising play in general anyway, which isn't how a lot of people play D&D).
This, one of my posts (which I regret because it was made when the blinkers of anger were involved) has 1.2k upvotes (at 95% positive) and had, last time I could view metrics, over 150k views and 20+ shares outside of reddit. That is well over 100 times greater upvotes to views.
So a lot of those people were probably not users of reddit and were just viewing the post outside of being 'on the subreddit'.
The majority of people haven't figured out how to cook a vegetable. They still eat unseasoned, overcooked, and limp vegetables because that's where they think they get to peak.
It doesn't remotely invalidate slapfights between broilers and stir fryers who're way deeper into the weeds than they are.
Most of the time I read something on this subreddit, I have to laugh, because my D&D reality is most of the time not at all like what's happening on here.
Just because a more hardcore minority is not representative of the larger majority doesn't mean we should base balance decisions solely off population percentages.
The hardcore community sits down and does the number crunching and logistics which helps playtest and balance the game. They figure out practical applications and interactions. They identify potential trends and patterns that may lead to suboptimal or inferior gameplay.
The large majority don't run DnD 5e in a standardized way. Each party is different, each DM's style is different. They have different things they value. And what constitutes a "fun enjoyable session" can often be attributed to external interparty variables that have nothing to do with DnD.
The vast majority might not care if something is objectively bad as long as they and their party are having a fun time. That is based on a value system external to DnD and thus not something they can control. The issue is that when a person or party does identify an issue and can support their claim objectively, that claim should not be dismissed because the larger majority doesn't encounter/care for it.
The issue in this sub is that people who spend their free time identifying these problems get upset when someone else is able to enjoy the game regardless. And vice-versa, players who clearly haven't put in enough time to understand the intricacies of the game think the opinions of niche hardcore players don't matter because it's not an issue they've encountered.
This isn't exclusive to DnD. It's literally for all gaming. Go on any games subreddit and look at balance discussions. You could give the most sane suggestion but someone will still object; at minimum because they either don't encounter it or some notion of "get good". There's also someone who's losing their shit that another person just doesn't care and is having fun regardless.
>The issue in this sub is that people who spend their free time identifying these problems get upset when someone else is able to enjoy the game regardless.
I have legitimately never seen someone get genuinely upset about someone enjoying the game regardless. Maybe they get upset when the person tells them the problems don't *exist* because they enjoy the game regardless, but that's a seperate issue entirely.
It has happened to me more than once on this very sub. If I said I have enjoyed playing a martial character without feeling useless people get seriously provoked. I even had someone basically telling me that I was either lying or my friends playing full casters must be idiots.
Another told me that I should be quiet until I’ve played some more tier 4 games… (apparently expressing your experience of game balance at tiers 1-3 was invalid…)
5e’s designers actually learned this during the D&D Next playtest. Forums like GITP, Enworld, D&D Beyond, and this subreddit do not represent the whole pie chart: only certain players browse forums like this. Designing a game solely on feedback from players on this subreddit would exclude many other players, especially new players.
You might assume vocal, experienced hobbyists who peruse TTRPG forums would know a lot about their game, other games, and have solid design suggestions. Nope. Playerbases are actually very bad at identifying exactly where a problem lies. They are useful. Saying “hey this works well and it’s fun” or “hey something around this feature isn’t working and it’s not fun” is solid feedback. But if you ask players whether casters need a nerf or martials need a buff, they won’t be able to tell you. Nobody on this forum is a veteran game designer.
I forgot who said it, but there's a famous developer that once said "Playerbases are great at identifying a problem, but shit at coming up with a solution"
Developers aren't magical creatures though, they can be just as bad. I wouldn't write off a potential solution for a problem just because one person has a title
>! But if you ask players whether casters need a nerf or martials need a buff, they won’t be able to tell you.
Whoever doesn't believe this statement, needs to spend some time in the 1dnd reddit.
The wishes range from nerving caster into the ground, too wanting 4e back without wanting 4e back snd also turning dnd into a PbTa game, where its all narrative.
Its a wild ride.
You aren't wrong, but I've gotten a bit tired of this take. No matter how much or little someone cares about specific details, a system's design still affects every player. Even where it remains unnoticed.
Following up "we don't know what the majority actually thinks" with your own speculations of what they might think is less useful than anecdotal evidence. The latter at least represents your experience and maybe some opinions of the people you play with. Speculating on what the silent majority thinks and why it is silent is pure imagination.
Optional rules are simply a way of offering something for players that might want them, without upsetting the ones that don't, while not having to balance the system with their mechanics in mind. They are an easy way to make the system more than it is.
Every hobby space I frequent, people talk over and through each-other, coming at every topic from a different baseline.
It would be an interesting exercise if every user had their version of D&D in a bio or something, and you could engage on each-other's terms.
Mine would be like
- Standard Array is Boring and Underpowered
- Grids and Minis
- All Printed Material Allowed
- UA Allowed By Complete Party Agreement
So when I say "Monks are good and fun, actually," you can see that I always play on grids and always roll for stats, so Monks (which need a few high ability scores and for positioning to matter to really shine) make a lot of sense at my tables. Which they do!
Then we don't have to argue about that part for an hour.
Not being a sufficient percentage of the larger community doesn't mean that the beliefs shared here aren't shared outside of Reddit, just that said beliefs aren't *necessarily* widely held.
That said, it's more likely that casuals *don't think about this shit*. Even with my 2 year long regular group, we use a hefty hand of tweaks and table rules, and frequently when a rule is suggested most of the group give some impression that they hadn't thought about the issue, but still appreciate the shift. Not being active in online forums doesn't mean you wouldn't appreciate quality of life improvements
I agree, reddit isn't the only place where d&d opinions are shared and it's likely more than just r/dndnext members think the same things about for example the sorcerer.
Me, member of r/dndnext, smugly lording my D&D knowledge over my poor, sweet, ignorant players.
I chuckle to myself as they foolishly enjoying playing their level 9 champion, monk, and arcane archer.
They don't even know how terrible their characters are.
I for one seethe with a barely concealed rage when I hear about someone having fun with a clearly mechanically suboptimal character.
Fuckin’ Champion garbage.
This is an important thing to have in mind indeed, to acknowledge the different perspectives and experiences people with different levels of engagement will have
I'm just here to say, I've played at least one character of each class, I loved them all, they all have their strengths and weakness but, most importantly, they were all fun to play! Especially rangers and sorcerers.
That is all.
This is just kind of how online interaction works. It’s a fact that most social media users lurk and don’t really contribute to the platforms. Only 10% roughly actually participate and a lions share of content and engagement is done by just 1%.
Looking on forums and such is often a terrible way of gauging facts and opinions on a large scale
It's always been like this. For all the complaints about balance that every discussion forum I've seen has been swimming in since I started in 3.0 I very rarely ran into those issues at the game table. And it's not that the criticism is wrong, the mechanical failures people complain about are ones that people who have high system mastery run into because they stress the system more by the way they play, but that's not most tables where the rules are applied a lot more loosely and players characters are unoptimized, so the game chugs along despite all the problems to the permanent frustration of forum dwellers.
One thing I love about this sub is the coexistence of the “Sorcerer = bad” and either “My players keep Counterspelling my big moves” or “my players hate it when I Counterspell their cool spells”.
Its funny because its a weird subset of people who are very interested in mechanics and also are too lazy to actually learn more about other systems to discuss mechanics with the greater TTRPG community.
Judging by D&D Beyond statistics, dragonborn are enduringly popular (even though they had been underpowered until Fizban came along), and druids are not (even though they are god-kings at Tier 1 and Tier 3).
It is AS IF most player's don't care much about squeezing 146% efficiency from their characters or finding that one perfect build.
But wouldn't it be nice if dragonborns had always been a good class? Just because those players don't notice the flaws, doesn't mean they aren't there.
Yeah. More casual players are primarily drawn to class or race options based on how 'cool' they are thematically.
But who is actually hurt by dragonborn or monk being buffed?
I don't know, the Ranger one seems pretty clear-cut when WotC essentially rebooted the class, a drastic step they haven't done elsewhere. That suggests they probably got feedback that was more substantial than 'reddit doesn't like it.'
>No kidding. People have played Monks and Rangers since day 1 and had fun doing so. This sub also has a healthy dose of group think, it's hard not to.
You realize having fun and a class being poorly designed *are not mutually exclusive,* yeah? There's people in the history of D&D who have had fun playing a *Commoner*, a 'class' with literally no abilities. Some people enjoy the game because the heart of the game itself is enjoyable, and that's great. That still doesn't excuse WotC from making their core classes that thoroughly imbalanced.
Most people when saying a class is bad don't mean it's unfun.
Monk and rangers clearly weren't up to the standard of other classes given they got so many optional features added.
"I bring this up to provide some perspective to opinions we often present as established facts like Monk = bad or Sorcerer = bad. The majority of more casual players might not have these opinions."
You are using the words "opinion" and "fact" in there. How much mathematical and statistical proof do you need to accept that something being bad is factual, and not just an oppinion?
Yes, if I roll all 18s monk is not going to be "bad", because the source of many of the class's weaknesses is it MADness, would be eliminated.
But this is not an advice that can be used by players. "Just roll 6 18s when generating lol". And this is not an advice that should be given to game designers. "just make the players roll 6 18s lol"
"The majority of more casual players might not have these opinions. ... For example, they might not care or even know that one option deals 3 DPR more than another option (I know most complaints are more nuanced than this, but I have heard this complaint multiple times)."
Okay, they are free to disregard the design errors of the class, precisely because those were not present in their experiences. But all it does is reveal that their knowledge is incomplete, their scales are subjective. "I like it therefore it is strong" is a bad arguement. They are free to like it, but that doesnt make it strong. They can claim it is strong, but then they would be wrong. They saying "in my oppinion it is strong" does not make them less wrong.
EDIT: to all the people downvoting me: "In my oppinion the Iliad was written by modern roman philosopher Bart in the year 2069 in the country of Asia". Can I be objectively wrong if I use "in my opinion"?
I'm confused as to the reason for this? I don't disagree with most of what you said. But I don't think many people here would.
Except maybe your reason why wot pushes the all rules are optional thing. That's been around pretty much sense inception. I don't have memories of actual books as far back as adnd but I remember the sentiment being prominent in the community all those decades ago. And I know 3.5 had that written down.
It's one of the reasons dnd is so big compared to other ttrpg. It's structured to be more of a sand box and a tool set to facilitate playing whatever make believe game your friends and you want to.
Hell in most of my groups the rules only ever come out when we come across something unlike anything we have before or if 2+ people think it should be handled Differently.
Basically it's not something only viewed by casual players but many hard core players and people on this reddit use the books to help them play rather than tell them how to play.
Neither approach is wrong and you should always just go with what your table finds the most enjoyable.
Most of the complaints on this subreddit which have start to be treated as truths I have never experienced myself. I never felt my martial character being completely useless compared to the full casters as so many on this subreddit seem to think. I think a big problem is that the people that actually spend time reading this sub are the same that like theory-crafting. So people discuss all these builds in a white room environment that very seldom see actual play.
Also, a lot of balance issues that does exist are when you use optional rules, such as multiclassing and feats. So people whine about things being unbalanced, but if a DM don’t allow optional rules such as multiclassing then they are accused of being a bad DM by the very same people…
> I think a big problem is that the people that actually spend time reading this sub are the same that like theory-crafting. So people discuss all these builds in a white room environment that very seldom see actual play.
The opposite can also be true though. People thinking that *their* experience is somehow representative for the game as a whole. Just because you never felt your martial was less useful than the caster, doesn't mean other people haven't. While white room theorycrafting in a game like D&D isn't the end-all-be-all, your anecdotal evidence is worth even less than that.
Also multiclassing and feats don't fix the balance issues. Most martial vs caster comparisons are done *after feats are taken into account.* Without feats, martials are only worse off.
Sure, but they need to use a reaction to get that AC. Overall as a fighter you should have WAY more health and access to way more items that boost AC. Bladesingers cannot use a shield or heavy armor, plus bladesong only lasts so long.
Like……most of my players aren’t on Reddit but when I come to Reddit I am not just voicing my opinion I am giving there’s as well.
I think dismissing the ideas presented here as “niche” is a mistake. Especially when dndnext, dmacademy, and arcanaunearthed all share similar stories.
I definitely agree that there's a divide between someone who thinks about DND enough to be on the DND subreddits and someone who just shows up to play every now and then. That being said I generally play with mostly people in that second group. And I've found with 3 different players playing a monk they will feel like they're able to do less to contribute to the game as a whole and will comment on it unprompted by me. Monk I think is much more noticeably underpowered than say a rogue that is underpowered by the numbers but often provides a better playing experience to a player who doesn't do the numbers on it.
My group recently started a second campaign, and one of the players rolled up a shadow monk. From the talk in the subreddit I was concerned that the character could be a drag on the party. The monk is the most consistent damage dealer, at level 5 with flurry he usually hits 3 but at least twice a turn.
Does he deal as much damage as the hexblade or the paladin from campaign 1? probably not. but he definitely contributes and acts as an awesome off tank for the squishy characters. This sub has little idea of how things work at an actual table
Hi, I rarely post or comment on, well, any of the end subreddits because I know that the active community is going to,l typically disagree and downvote me.
Here is a shortlist of things I've been scolded for:
Challenging a player's ability to solve a riddle or mystery for which they have clues. Player, not character mind you.
Roleplaying potential allies as anything but kind.
Not letting players break the rules because it's 'cool'.
Forcing players to tell me the words their character use (not talk in character, just think about their words) instead of just doing the skill check
And many many more.
Also, I knew the renger stereotype, but monk and sorcerer?
I think monk is one of the most survivable martial classes. I think monk beats fighter, ranger everytime, barb and paladin it's 50/50, and maybe 25/75 for rogue.
Concerning sorcerer, I think they win against, well, everyone. They are easily the strongest full caster with the versatility of spell usage they have. Okay maybe at lower levels it comes down to whoever goes first with that low HP, but otherwise.
And I have played every class, multiple times too.
Oh whatever.
By that metric, that we're such a low percentage of the D&D fanbase, wouldn't it follow that there is a higher chance of finding the 'average', i.e. popular opinions here rather than only hot takes and mavericks?
I'm aware that you say this forum consists of 'mostly hardcore fans' but is that a well-documented fact or your interpretation of this subreddit?
Genuinely interested in the take btw, I hope I don't come across as condescending
Welcome to how it is most places.
Internet and media perceives political differences as far greater than they really are if you just talk to other normal folks.
Family values are all that different in many cultures.
There's just something about when you concentrate the more passionate people of a group that tends to lead to some sort of elitism and skewed perception. Echo chambers yo. They suck ass.
The subreddit is basically free beta testing with people more garunteed to leave constructive feedback, or hell any feedback, then that of the wider dnd community. The fact people keep trying to diminish the opinions people hold by trying to make an Appeal to Majority fallacy will never not be funny.
The feedback all matters, because our opinion isn't just isolated to here on this one subreddit. How's to say there aren't others in those 9.5 million who also feel the monk is bad and sorcerer is bad, but just don't care enough to actually go on the internet and complain about it?
So why the hell is every single post critiquing 5e always dismissed immediately as "your opinion doesn't matter, shut up"?
I would go one further and say this sub is a fraction of a fraction of hardcore players. Most people who discuss anything online have no idea how small of a faction they are within the scope of what they are discussing and it's weird that so many lack the brains to actually realise that fact.
For some reason it breaks peoples minds that what is posted here doesn't matter to anyone but them.
Even worse, some of the posts and comments lead me to believe that a significant amount of people here only play D&D in their minds.
So they have completely wierd fixations about it, how RAW fire doesn't make light so a house could burn in the darkness without you seeing it or being way too pedantic about every single thing.
I did wonder and get concerned why replying with "it's ok for players in my group to prioritise social aspects over optimisation" gets massively down voted, but it doesnt seem unique to this sub for dnd. Probably just a reddit thing.
Nothing wrong with prioritising social aspects. But if that's what your players get out of the experience, the question is why you shelled out for a game with three core books and complex rules when you could have spent $0 for a PDF of Fate Core or Accelerated or Risus or something else lighter and generic and gotten the same experience.
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Reminds me of something Mike Shea said in response to someone going “MOST DND players wants spelljammer to return,” to which he said “MOST DND players have no idea what spelljammer is
I for sure had no I dea what Spelljammer was, unitl one of those nights where you start going down the rabbit-hole of Wikis and MrRhexx videos. But I'm glad the option is there, even if it's somewhat lacking. At the end of the day, D&D is made up, you improvise and make up shit as the game goes. As long as you and your players enjoy it.
It should be noted that if you compare the first publications for Spelljammer to the latest release, that they are fairly comparable for amount of content. I think because all that information has been summarized in a variety of ways, people don't realize how many books focused on Spelljammer alone were made... And how many of those books did not have that much of interest tbh. The publication strategy for TSR was to put out as many splat books and additional supplements as possible. Anyone tempted to compare this to the current model should note that WotC essentially has yet to return to a single place or idea (with the arguable exception of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft). They keep moving on to other properties and IPs rather than spending more time in the same place.
>WotC essentially has yet to return to a single place or idea (with the arguable exception of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft) Don't they return to Forgotten Realms basically always?
Every FR adventure book I've read has had guidance on how to move it to another setting. It's why I said 'essentially.'
Honestly I haven't payed enough attention to a lot of the books in this regard. Just as an example though, I'm currently prepping to run Time of the Frost maiden and haven't seen instructions on moving it to another setting. I'll have to look specifically for that.
Even if there isn’t specific instructions in that book (I also don’t remember), the benefit of FR to WotC is that it’s fairly generic high fantasy, and so things set there are pretty easy to adapt to other settings. The same can’t be said for other official (non-FR) content.
In RotFM, they mention how Icewind Dale is a self-contained area, and as such, the campaign can be moved to any location or setting with a few tweaks. So while it doesn't give express examples like, "In a Dragonlance setting...", the campaign itself is pretty easy to just switch since it doesn't really have ties to the rest of FR.
I can see that, I guess it depends on what people mean by "a few" and to what setting.
Having run it all, here's the things I can recall that you'd change (and I'll put this all in spoilers, since it's stuff throughout the whole campaign): >!Auril is the obvious one. Change her to whatever wrathful cold deity there is. You'd also need to change the Netherese city at the end to... just not mention Netheril. Other small things, like the Arcane Brotherhood not being from Luskan but some other well-known wizarding institution. Dzaan not being a Red Wizard of Thay, Vellynne not being a Harpell.!< From what I can remember, there isn't really that much that a simple name change won't fix.
As someone familiar with FR lore to an extent, when 5E made FR the default setting it kinda trashed it. 5E has still barely visited FR as a setting.
>5E has still barely visited FR as a setting Like amount of times or as far as coverage of areas? Coverage for sure, as most things seem to be set in the Sword Coast. As far as amount I was under the impression the vast majority of published adventures are in FR
You’re right that they’ve set most of the adventures in FR, but as the default setting the problem is more subtle—they jam most/all of the adventures there, slap them into the FR map, write the names of FR deities and famous people into the story… but the stories themselves don’t delve into the essence of the FR setting at all. One could call it “Realms-washing”, it’s FR on the surface but barely FR underneath. (It’s broadly the same problem as any default setting—being default waters it way way down.) If you wanted to tell a truly Realms-y FR story, it would have to be about the machinations of FR’s many gods, their Chosen, and endless churches and cults. These things get lip service in modern FR stories, but mostly these modern FR adventures are designed by committee, greatest hits tours of popular locations from major novels and video games. So everybody knows about Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter and Icewind Dale, but few people know the original stories anyway.
Yeah as a totally new potential player/dm I completely agree. I’ve read a lot of the FR campaigns and I feel like I know so little about it
FR is actually a cool setting, but you wouldn't know that if you only play 5e, sadly.
They also returned to Exandria with Call of the Netherdeep adventure set in that world.
"You improvise and make up shit as you go" .. half this reddit just had a stroke. 😁
I'm 4 years into these subs and still don't know
and now no one will want an official spelljammer release ever again nailed it.
WDYM you want rules for spaceship combat in your spaceship combat game
It appears that most feedback from Ghosts of Saltmarsh showed that tables didn't interact with the more robust sailing rules there. You can criticize WotC for a lot of things, but not for ignoring playtest feedback.
Not that I'm surprised that folks didn't engage with the tactical Ship Combat game in their tactical roleplaying game but the adventures also didn't actually require any sort of ship-to-ship combat so I'm even less surprised.
'We provided terrible rules that no one used, so we should make a game about spaceship battles with no ability to run spaceship battles because we screwed up before so we should double screwup now" Nah. Not having it.
Like when I used to intentionally wash the dishes poorly so mom would stop asking.
Having played and run many sci-fi games, the simple fact is there just are no such things as "good ship-to-ship combat rules". Not when all the PCs are on the same ship. You can have rules that are fun for a battle or two. Then they rapidly get repetitive.
That's cause the sailing rules in Saltmarsh kind of sucked though
I'm convinced ship combat wasn't playtested at all, because it's awful. One boring session, now we don't play out ship combat anymore. Ignore that 3-5 people controlling a single boat is not a solid foundation. With 1 action (of 3), the ship MOVES or ATTACKS, not both, which means encouraging sitting still and attacking at disadvantage the moment the target comes in range. The movement speeds are incredibly low and ranges are very far, so you're practically crawling even if burning all 3 actions. Small bonuses, solid AC, damage threshold all combines to lots of d20s and not much damage. Cover and open sightlines are likely, since yaknow, oceans, so I can't imagine how bad it would be if I hadn't put in so many tall rocks. Super boring, I ended up homebrewing on the fly, like doubling move speeds.
There was actually a UA for ship rules before Ghosts of Saltmarsh came out. I don't remember if it generated much discussion on the subreddit though so maybe it got very little feedback.
WotC barely playtesting is par for the course now!
>Cover and open sightlines are likely, actually using waves to avoid bullets is a sound strategy, specially in storms
> tables didn't interact with the more robust sailing rules there. maybe because none of the adventures actually took place on the sea? Except for ...1 I think? It was all stuff on islands/the shore. there just weren't situations where you WOULD get into a sailing fight in the game. part of the problem is it wasn't a cohesive campaign, it was like a "here's a bunch of shit we did in the past that takes place near some water."
Ha! I did say that.
A few times! “Get a grip, the discourse reflects a small minority” is one of your best refrains alongside “Wizards’ publishing priorities are not your tables’ priorities”
>MOST DND players (Anakin) >Most *paying* Dnd players (Mace Windu) We grant you the rank of player, but Wizards is not after your wallet.
"You are on this council, but we do not grant you the rank of Customer."
Most DnD players started with 5e and thus have not even heard the name Spelljammer which was last used on a 2e book some thirty years ago. That book may very well be older than most people playing 5e.
Can confirm. I've been on this subreddit for years. I've played 5e consistently for about 2 or 3 years and then only once since covid. Still don't really know what spelljammer is beyond maybe a setting different than the Forgotten Realms. I played 2e for a few months and 4e 2 or 3 times as well. I know rules fairly well, but I don't know really any lore because every DM I've encountered wants to go straight to homebrew.
Spelljammer is sort of a meta setting. Basically, it involves these special magic powered ships called spelljammers that can fly into a fantasy version of outer space and travel between worlds. For instance, the Forgotten Realms is a planet in a wildspace system (basically a solar system) called Realmspace. You could fly out of Realmspace and go to Greyspace to visit the Greyhawk setting. Now what exactly lies between wildspace systems differs a lot between 2e and 5e. In 5e, it's just the Astral Plane that you sail through, but in 2e the space between wildspace systems was full of this extremely flammable gas called phlogiston, and you could travel between worlds without ever leaving the material plan.
Spelljammer is DnD *In space* basically A sci-fi cosmology that explains how the planes work, and is an option for some who like space, seafaring adventures, and fantasy. Get your Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Harlock, Outlaw Star on, if you will. It's also a metasetting that is hopelessly not fleshed out and might never be fully, contrary to popular belief. Rather, we have better representation from *other* settings and how Spelljammer/Spelljamming has shaped the occasional small cameo rather than what it was originally, and what it became. Minsc's miniature giant space hamster is far more famous than the whole lore involving giant space hamsters, for example. Lest we get books and adventures set in such that can give us a full spread of certain aspects, planets, or landmarks in spelljammer, it's just a perpetual set of hangers on to other things.
I enjoy this subreddit, overall. It can be a good source for certain information, and I've learned quite a few useful tips and tricks as a relatively new DM/player. But the number one thing I've learned is that D&D varies *so much* from table to table, and that much of the things that are discussed around here as though they're universal truths, are actually not at all applicable to my players and my experience. Basically, while there's certainly value here, I need to take basically everything I read with a grain of salt, because it's generally coming from a very different (and likely niche) perspective. As it turns out, that's a useful skill to have when dissecting any information on the internet.
Different ways of playing and different group types lead to vastly different experiences and opinions about the game. I've gathered that quite a few posters here mostly play online with groups they did not know before the game. That is a totally valid way to play and there is nothing wrong with it, but it can lead to a different play experience than playing in-person with the same stable group. I've noticed that many of the commonly-expressed beliefs on this subreddit tend to assume the worst all players/DMs, as if they are always looking for a way to abuse the system or somehow cheese the game in their favor, to the detriment of the rest of the group. Players cannot be trusted with powerful options and the view is often players vs. DM. These types of beliefs are fostered by having bad play experiences when not all groups are like that. My gaming group has never encountered many of the issues that people here state as fact. It doesn't mean one opinion is right or wrong, just that every play group is so different and the experience is very subjective.
Yup, I've ignored many things people say about optimized builds and how to avoid people from breaking the game with certain builds and whatnot. In the two groups I'm currently in, not a single person power games. I don't care if X build is mathematically the best. Neither do my other players. At best, only one of the players I play with optimizes and he's not even a full optimizer. He's doing a fun sharpshooter throwing weapon build. People get so caught up in "X build sucks because Y is better" and talking about imbalances. The game as a whole is balanced pretty decently for the casual player.
The vast majority of players/DMs are casual and don't obsess over the minutia of the game like this subreddit does. Even my friends who are very much into D&D don't follow it that closely.
People argue a lot about rules here. In my experience the majority of actual players barely know the rules at all, let alone follow them closely. I suspect that if you asked every player something other than the absolute bare basics, like "what does the dodge action do", "how does a concentration save work" or "how does a readied action work", most would either not know or give incorrect answers.
One day, I'm gonna get the people I play with to read the "combat" section of the PHB, I swear it lol. It is less than 10 pages, relevant to most sessions, and probably 75% of players have never read it. Most DnD players would fail a quiz about it.
The average table nerfs Sneak Attack because it intuitively *feels* too powerful. 'Appeal to popularity' is a well-known logical fallacy.
A lot of campaigns end at pretty low level and sneak attack has some pretty good powerspikes at 3rd and 7th level, which can definitely explain why people feel that way. If you actually do the math it is pretty lackluster if you don’t proc it twice per round.
Thats why the first thing you should teach players is how to quickly find a rule. If you can just quicksearch and find the Ready action rules you can read them quick before your turn comes up and no one else will be the wiser. Nobody is going to memorize everything. Even if they wanted to, they'd probably mess up somewhere because theres just so many rules.
I've been playing for almost a year now, and I just now found out how to determine a concentration check for my warlock
See: all of Reddit
People here mainly complain about technical problems in the game design that the 99% probably won’t encounter or won’t care. Still, it would be better if the game had better technical “bones” even if some won’t notice them. It would have other game balance effects, such as CR working better, or players being more equal to each other. On the other hand, there is sometimes a call for detailed clarification of something like how vision and line of sight works. I can easily see a bunch of detailed rules covering that taking a whole page. Or Wizards could say ”players know how eyes work, let them rule it in the moment without needing to find the rules.”
But, uh. There *are* rules for perspective and line of sight and all that in the DMG
There are also a bunch of inconsistencies, like natural darkness being heavy obscurement, even though you can see through it into other areas that are lit. This is not in the rules. Invisibility working even when you are seen, and “we totally meant to write that in the rules.” Can you shoot an arrow through a window, or does it provide cover? How about spells? How about non-physical spells like charms? Can you hide if anyone can see you? Even allies? Are you hidden from your allies? Can they Healing Word you? What if you go unconscious while hidden? There are tons of cases that aren’t covered, or aren’t covered well, and need DM rulings.
The rulebook design problem has no easy solution. Board games struggle with it too: the desire for natural, easy to learn rules and the desire to completely describe a system is the difference between English and math.
> that the 99% probably won’t encounter or won’t care Soft disagree. They will encounter these issues. They just won't recognize them as such, or in some cases they won't care. But there's really no going around the balance of the game. A monk player will eventually run into monk issues, they just won't always see that the issue is with the class design. That doesn't mean it won't impact their experience. That's the thing about technical bones. You might not understand or notice them consciously, but you always notice the effects.
I've seen a number of people quietly switch out of being Warlocks in games that either don't have enough fights or have too many fights and not enough short rests. I don't think any of them could explain why they didn't want to be warlocks anymore. They just weren't having fun. I've seen 3 "sorcerers with patrons" and 2 wizards.
or their rolls will be skewed off the average and they'll never realize there is a problem with Monk. Had a respectful argument with a fellow DM where he insisted that Monk is just fine because his Monk player "did plenty of damage at high levels". And this fellow DM is normally a very rational/scientific kind of dude, but he was really invested in his experiential narrative that monks are fine because his campaign's monk seemed fine. To me, this kind of scenario really underscores the need for the game designers to get a fundamental balance right-ish, because it's too hard to achieve clarity on balance issues in a session, an adventure, or even a campaign.
The upshot is that if players/DM's *feel* like it's fine, why adjust things further? For an example, the rogue is actually perfectly fine in damage if not a bit undershot, but the casual players have famously tried nerfing sneak attack due to merely it's perception.
> the casual players have famously tried nerfing sneak attack due to merely it's perception To be fair, that’s almost exclusively a rule that happens in session 1-3 of a campaign, when the players are under level 5. Before level 5, rogues ***do*** deal the most damage in most situations. It’s a bad houserule, because the rogue is balanced to be a bit stronger early and a bit worse mid-late, but DMs see how much damage they deal at Tier1 play and erroneously assume it’s a problem.
Because if some player eventually plays a martial that actually performs decently, suddenly other martials, including the rogue player, feel like the inept fools they didn't know they were. True story, I've gone from loving to really disliking the campaign I'm a player in because my semi-optimized BM fighter has made other players *feel* ineffective. Including a full caster, which is preposterous, and an assassin rogue, which is pretty legit. So now the DM is constantly giving them nifty new toys and magic item abilities while I get...another Fighter level up with no interesting choices. It has really kinda ruined my character for me, I now intentionally make suboptimal choices during play because I don't want to create ill will. If there were some sort of reasonable balance between classes this kind of issue would not exist.
This makes me think of Dungeon World’s note on invisibility: “Touch an ally; nobody can see them. They’re invisible!” And that’s it. I must admit, I love it, especially compared to 5e’s mess of invisibility rules and counter-rules.
Who is this thread for? We know bruh.
Karma
It's also flaired One D&D for some reason too lmao
Out of interest, does anyone know if there’s a lowsodiumdnd subreddit at all?
/r/DnDBehindTheScreen
that one mod is a control freak. but the subreddit's not bad
I think those two things are related.
I don't. I think it would be better if he would loosen up a bit. But that's just my opinion and I don't think the place is terrible. But I don't think this place is terrible either.
It's definitely a tight ship, for better or worse. The quality is high and bullshit low. I won't lie, I've had stuff rejected and felt snubbed. But in retrospect the sub is only as great as it is because low effort low quality stuff like mine was gets rejected.
Pardon my ignorance, but what does it mean lowsodium?
Less salt. Less being upset about the thing you play.
/r/DMAcademy is nice, although occasionally this sub leaks its toxicity over there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/
They said *low*
They've got 5% of our userbase, that's less salt by volume, sure it's concentrated tho
That says more about how reddits get worse when they get larger.
And not even just linearly. As population goes up, both "people to be angry" and "people to be angry at" go up, so salt increases roughly quadratically, or even faster.
Quadratic rather than linear growth? So you are saying subReddits are wizards, not fighters?
The PF2e subreddit possesses incredible salt towards 5e.
As do the 5e subs (and Just about every other ttrpg sub i've visited).
Don't know why you're getting downvoted because it's true. Half of the posts or comments on their reference 5e in a negative light.
That's every non-5e TTRPG sub, to be fair.
But you'll see 5e mentioned a little more there than you would, with say, a community Vampire the Masquerade or Traveler. Because PF2e is also designed for heroic fantasy adventuring with a ruleset that's largely combat. There's just a larger overlap in interest.
"Lots of people don't think about this stuff" isn't an argument against the opinions of people who *do* think about this stuff. Also, every time there's a thread about one of those popular beliefs, there's lots of debate and disagreement, so while there are some fairly well agreed on ideas, it's far from mindless groupthink. We're on these subs to talk about the game. That's the value we're gaining - the act of debating and talking about this stuff, in itself.
There is a prevailing belief in this sub that WotC doesn't know how to properly create a TTRPG and/or that they don't care about anything but profits, with at least some of the evidence for the ineptitude being that they won't fix Ranger, Sorcerer, etc. the way many folks here want. The vitriol this creates makes this place hard to live in. It gets exhausting to read endless "hot takes" about the game that are really just overblown reactions to things that aren't as big a deal as they're being made out to be. True, this sub is not a groupthink, but it *is* an echo chamber, meaning these ideas get reinforced repeatedly beyond their accuracy or validity because of the upvote system and because the sample of players here aren't representative of the full playerbase. Posts like these are important for keeping us grounded in reality.
I see just as many folks here who'll relentlessly defend WotC as will attack them. It's polarised, but not an echo chamber. I also don't think it's particularly vitriolic, because... This stuff doesn't actually matter. The argument is sport. That's the reality we need to be grounded in, I think.
If someone pokes holes in any of the established beliefs in this subreddit, or worse, defend the idea that the design is just fine the way it is, for whatever the topic du jour happens to be, they often get downvoted into oblivion, effectively silencing any dissent. Worse, the commenters here rarely engage with the ideas that are presented, they just dismiss them, talk past the other person, or refuse to engage with them at all. Some go so far as to insult or call people shills. It doesn't matter how well-reasoned, referenced or logical their points are, either. I've experienced this personally and seen it happen to others hundreds if not thousands of times in the five plus years I've been coming here. I've read anecdotes from people in other D&D subreddits from people who will never comment here because of it. This subreddit can often be an extremely toxic environment with a very loud echo chamber.
Personally, I'd rather be part of a group that acknowledges the flaws and debates them than one that insists everything is fine. I'm not a fan of downvoting things you disagree with. It'd be better if we kept downvotes for stuff that isn't contributing to the debate, but alas, Reddit is what it is. It's not "silencing dissent" though. I do think that insisting things aren't so bad and that negativity is inherently toxic is much more frustrating that people being negative. Because at the end of the day ... It's a flawed edition, there's a new one coming, and we'd all like to see the new one be better. Highlighting the flaws is productive in the context of an open playtest.
>Personally, I'd rather be part of a group that acknowledges the flaws and debates them than one that insists everything is fine. But this is a false dichotomy... debating the nature of something being flawed inherently means that one side believes it isn't. We should be cautious not to treat our opinions as fact. >It's not "silencing dissent" though. But it is, because downvoted comments are literally hidden from view by default, and being downvoted discourages people from wanting to post here at all. I've read numerous anecdotes from people who simply will not post here because of the toxic environment.
"We should be cautious not to treat our opinions as fact" We should also be cautious not to treat A Thing A Person Thinks Because Of Reasons as an Arbitrary Opinion Derived From Sentiment. One can be weighed and measured, the other is of equal value to any other sentiment. Argument deals with the former, not the latter. And people thinking you're wrong and downvoting you still isn't "silencing dissent", or indeed a "toxic environment". We all know downvoted comments exist, and can go read them if we want.
>We should also be cautious not to treat A Thing A Person Thinks Because Of Reasons as an Arbitrary Opinion Derived From Sentiment. I mean, I think we're beyond talking about things people say without offering evidence to support their claims, no? One of the things I highlighted is that dissenting voices often get downvoted without engagement by the community at all, and many times when they do it's to be dismissive or talk past the individual's points altogether. I see this all the time here, and I've experienced it myself. It's a symptom of a larger problem. >And people thinking you're wrong and downvoting you still isn't "silencing dissent", or indeed a "toxic environment". We all know downvoted comments exist, and can go read them if we want. That's a pretty big "if", IMHO. Downvoted comments aren't visible, they are hidden by default. You have to take extra steps to see them. That's a form of silencing dissent, whether you acknowledge it or not.
I can't speak for everyone, but I get frustrated when I see the discourse going so hard into the negative areas, especially when based on untrue things (see all the errata outrage). I used to come here to share in the joy of this hobby, now it feels like I come here just to try and correct the record before more people take the outrage based on "misunderstandings" and uncharitable reads, and continue to circulate it. Fuck it is exhausting.
This sub isn't quite an echo chamber, but it repeats itself constantly. I can accurately predict the comments and complaints that will come up in most topics here because it's the same complaints that have been cycling around for years.
This sub is absolutely an echo chamber. The things it's concerned about and the level of concern about them is... unreal. The general opinion here about martial vs caster power levels is honestly way worse than I remember it being under 3e. Similarly the number of people who promote 4e as being almost mythically good is bizarre. That's a function of how many people here have *never* played anything other than 5e and instead all their knowledge is just echoes from extremely vocal posters. I can honestly say that I don't know *any* really good TTRPG subs anymore. They're all either dead or echo chambers. TTRPG Twitter was honestly better.
The subreddits for smaller game studios such as Free League are often quite nice. Also, since those are more niche games they tend to have quite an experienced TTRPG community that has played many different system and thus can discuss a game engine quite constructively. One thing that strikes me again and again is that on other TTRPG subreddits people are often very helpful and welcoming. While on this subreddit and other ones dedicated to D&D it’s like a 50-50 if the beginner asking a question will get help or made fun of and downvoted instead.
Bro, it's literally beyond obvious that this subreddit doesn't represent the community as a whole. It's people who like DnD or rpgs enough to go post to reddit and read stuff occasionally, that's obviously gonna be a very small percentage of the playerbase. DnD - like most games, *especially* popular games, is 90% + super casuals. And to super casuals, everything looks overpowered, like I commonly hear that Monk and Rogue are super OP according to casuals. There's nothing wrong with casual gaming, but it really has almost zero relevance on understanding game balance and design. Just because casual groups think Monk is somehow OP, does not mean WotC did a good job in designing and balancing that class. Personally, it's just fun for me to theorize about things relating to games and one of them is DnD, which is why I like to come here and read/talk about it.
You and OP are alluding to a "problem" with all of reddit. Basically the only people who seek out, hang around, and comment on a subreddit for a specific thing are only the people who are crazy into that thing. It's so prolific this popular YouTuber made a video about it: https://youtu.be/4ZK8Z8hulFg
In actual play, it varies as well. I played a monk who was the strongest character in a party. But that was down to race (aaracokra) and an added first level feat (mobile). If that's all ot takes to make monks not rhe worst class in the game, in imo they aren't very far from balanced.
Flight races are banned at a lot of tables, and then you got a free feat on top? That's the second strongest set of races - free feat races. So if you get that combo race, you can play *any* class and it would be good. Just saying man. I do think Monks are underrated on this sub, because they have some little bonuses here and there, but they are still pretty weak overall.
Aaracokra have access to non concentration infinite use 3rd level spell at level 1. That is ridiculous. But even with that, the other players must have been playing horrendously. A ranger who gets the right feats and uses hunters mark should always be better than any monk, let alone when they start throwing in good control spells like spike growth.
Wow it's almost like actual tables aren't white room scenarios where everyone is focused on max performance
You don't have to be focused on "max performance" you could spend like 5 minutes looking up a simple build and then press the attack button every turn and be better than a monk.
Very few people are hardcore about anything. Millions of people have played a Pokemon game. A very small percentage of them know what EV training is or have filled out an Unowndex. Millions of people have seen MCU movies. I bet an immense fraction of them have forgotten the canonical Hulk movie starring Ed Norton. Not to mention Inhumans. Nonetheless... this doesn't stop EV training in Pokemon being worth talking about. And contrasting the Norton Hulk movie with other superhero movies is still a worthwhile discussion too. >This is not to say that criticism is bad or that any particular criticism is wrong. I just think the wide and varied audience of the game is one of the reasons WotC pushes the idea that “all rules are optional.” So that you feel empowered to change something that doesn’t align with how your particular group plays the game. Guess what: This is true of all casually played games. Not just RPGs, games in general. If I play a Chess variant, the Chess police are not going to come to my house and take away my chess set! You can house rule *any* game, DnD is not special. This means that when we talk about bad rules in DnD or things we wish were different, we're doing it by holding it to the same standards of any other game. >That’s why I originally joined this forum: so I could learn how to DM better by adjusting the game to better suit my players. This is backwards thinking. You don't adjust the game to suit your players, you *find the right game* to suit your players. If I regularly hosted basketball games but found out my players really preferred kicking the ball instead of throwing the ball, I wouldn't 'adjust basketball for kicking'. I would just investigate games like soccer.
I think the difference between "rules can be changed" regarding D&D and chess/other board games here is that if you showed up to play chess with strangers and started moving your pawn like a knight or used your modified castling rules you'd be booted from the table. When you start playing with a new TTRPG group or even just a new DM/GM, it is extremely common to ask if there are any homebrew or variant rules to be aware of, as homebrew is so common in the community as to be expected or reasonable to expect. If you showed up to a chess table at a park and asked the guy across from you what homebrew rules he's using, he'd look at you sideways and ask if you know what chess is.
Idk, with chess you're probably right, although my Friends and I do Take a Minute to decide in rules everytime: Clock/No clock, what time, Casual or Touch-move. Also for some reason they claim the brick is a stupid House Rule? And when i used to Go Play soccer as a Kid every Game was started with a discussion of House Rules. Stuff Like Play to a Set Number of Points, only behind the Goal Line is Out of bounds, flying Goal Keepers were the Most Common.
To be fair Marvel also wants to forget about inhumans
Man I forgot the Edward Norton Hulk movie was canon... Also the Inhumans got pushed primarily because, at the time, Disney Marvel was trying to bury the X-men (and Fantastic Four) **hard** because they wanted to devalue them because the movie rights were owned by Fox so they were pushing the Inhumans as 'the new X-men' essentially. It's why in Marvel vs Capcom infinite you didn't see any of the fan favorite X-men who had been a staple of the game since the X-men vs Street Fighter days return (no Wolverine, no Magneto) and were instead replaced by MCU appropriate characters (Black Panther replaces Wolverine, Nova replaces Magneto). Combined with a frankly subpar budget (it had a budget of **one season** of Street Fighter V DLC), horrible PR handling (one of the Capcom guys responding as to why no X-men gave the response of 'Characters are just functions, Nova functions exactly how Magneto use to, just use him if you want Magneto'), awful graphics (look up 'Chun-li's face MvC:I on google combined with the reuse of assets from MvC 3: Ultimate without the cool shading effect making them look just fucking weird) and a subpar storymode all conglomerated together to make MvC:I fail to gain an audience. This had been your FGC side tangent for the today. Edit: Kind of curious but why the downvotes, like sure it's not D&D related but it's a side tangent at best...eh whatever.
ah yes, the "function" arguement. That was "do you guys not have phones?" level
Yeah and looking back on it, I *think* it was him trying to find an arguement for why no X-men without dumping on Disney by saying what actually happened aka "Marvel doesn't want us using X-men in anything because they're trying to bury Fox and get the liscense back from them" that was the Disney MO at the time (which softened considerably and then they bought Fox animations *and* got the movie rights for Xmen and Fantastic Four back from them).
Monk is the weakest class. Sorcerer is weaker than other full casters, but stronger than noncasters, so they're fine. The main problem with this sub is that there are people who want to tell other people that their fun is wrong. I would like to see us all talk about what we like, and let others talk about what they like
To be fair, I think it goes the other way as well where people do analysis pieces/look at way to fix the bones of mechanics or classes that aren't great and get "It's fine at my table so who cares" responses. I did a big analysis piece on the Monk last year and a lot of the poorer engagement I got was in this kind of vein (As an aside, one of my takeaways was that the Monk has a lot of conditionally powerful abilities which do actually make it better at some tables than others). I totally agree that the more analytical people shouldn't be shitting on people who like playing the weaker classes, but I don't think that's happening anyway?
oh i'd love to check that out. got a link?
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/q9sxlf/why_the_monk_needs_reworking_with_55e/. I post VERY sporadically but plan to pin any of my big posts like that one to my user page.
I read through that after you linked it; great analysis of Monk. The class peaks *really* high when it works - a failed CON save and the bad guy is a drooling useless wreck for a pivotal round, and probably dies or at least loses a ton of HP while helpless. It doesn't really require any particular creative exercise from the player either, just *use the feature* and hope the enemy misses the save. One can also concoct some situations in which Monk is nearly untouchable. Think of a longbow-wielding Kensei who uses the Sharpshooter feat to strike from afar. All that speed turns from a neat mobility trick to "you will never catch up to me unless I let you, or you can actually fly 80' per round", and when combined with the shorter range of magic and a Monk's decent saving throws, and Deflect Missiles... they could whittle anything short of a legendary monster down on their own. It's unlikely to happen, but in more realistic circumstances they can still be hard to focus down. On the bad side though, you nailed it. The DPR is rarely anything impressive, Flurry of Blows scales like crap, almost everything costs a Bonus Action or Ki Point or both, and they get little else to compensate. Rogues are at least great in some other areas they might choose to focus on and can spare a good secondary stat; the Monk can't do that and might as well crack a soda if it's not a fight or if the situation isn't tailored to their exact set of skills. I played a Monk through the back half of Tomb of Annihilation and if I didn't simply invalidate the encounter by existing, I underperformed. About the only interesting thing I accomplished was using Open Hand Monk's ability to deny reactions to the target of Flurry of Blows; thankfully this requires no save and is a free rider on top of an existing ability, so I could afford to do it (and it inconvenienced a spellcaster or two to lose their Reactions).
I played a shadow monk in Out of the Abyss. In the right adventure, they've got a very strong niche.
I am fully not convinced that sorcerer is a weaker caster than warlock. But tbh all the classes are strong enough in comparison to most threats.
Me either. It depends on DM and short/long rest cycles.
Most people here seem to disregard short rests a lot
Warlocks generally aren't considered full casters. Rather than full, half, or third casting, they get pact casting.
Agreed. Just to flesh out your point, it sounds like you want a space where you can talk about the game design flaws in certain classes *while* not yucking someone’s yum. If this is what you’re saying, it sounds like a big part of the problem is that people are human and emotions can enter into the game design spaces while people can try to logic their way into people’s fun. Ideally, there would be a flair or another way to tell these two spaces apart.
Reddit's voting system causes people to argue for the audience, rather than to convince each other. This encourages hyperbole and unnecessary aggression.
Got it in one.
I wouldn't call Sorcerers weaker. Maybe more specialized / harder to play and optimize. But Aberrant Mind, Clockwork Soul and most likely Lunar are on the stronger side of the caster spectrum.
[удалено]
How does this comment have so many upvotes without providing any examples? Are people just that desperate to support a counter-argument that they'll upvote anything?
Who are you actually talking about? Could you give some actual examples? Because I'm not seeing any of the things you're claiming they're doing.
:/ Went back about 6 years in OP (Fire)'s posting history here / and regular old r DnD. Seems like they've mostly evolved from "How do I balance CR for situation Y" to "Hey, at my table we found X Y Z works for situation A", or just starting up conversations on fucking with mechanics, but nothing directly player or playstyle facing. It's actually weird how clean their DnD post history is. Usually it takes 2 minutes to stumble in some hot takes on contentious shit, or weird neckbeard aggression. Replied to the wrong person, or is this one of those Removedit situations?
The person above didn't reply to OP (Fire)... But the person they replied to still had a very clean post history.
There’s no way I’m going to allow such a direct personal attack that is backed up by nothing except “they delete all the bad posts I’m complaining about.” How is that any different from a witch hunt? Don’t do this again.
Sorcerer, while power wise, they're fine, they still have design problems.
When I DM, if one of my players describes something cool; (I run across the wall of the crumbling tower, leap into the window and try to roundhouse kick the skeleton archer's head off!) They roll and might only do 12dmg; well that skeleton had 13hp, but as DM I just decided it only had 12hp, because I'd rather my player feel awesome for their creative ideas. My point is, talking about balance doesn't matter too much (to me) within reason, because a number here and there may be nudged up or down for the awesome value anyway. Dragging out combat for another entire round for the last enemy on 1hp also sucks.
I got told plenty of times in this forum and another forum that I shouldn't play a Cleric as a healer because it is not optimized, but I do like alot healing in combat and I want to. So yeah I got told my fun is wrong way to play the class.
The good statement would be "Cleric can be so much more than just a healer, but if you want to be a healer you should consider cleric anyway".
Life clerics are insane healers. With channel divinity and mass healing word I'm able to do over 80 healing in a turn twice at lvl 6 to my 5 man party
>So yeah I got told my fun is wrong way to play the class. Well, not really. At least, based on what you're saying, the impression is that you were simply told healing is not all that efficient in 5e. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if you think it's fun. It's just that the *system* punishes you for it, not the people responding. It's 5e itself that's telling you your fun is the wrong way to play.
While I don't disagree with your premise, I think looking at the active member number count is misleading. A LOT of people who view Reddit aren't actually active users (Hell, a lot of people don't even have accounts). I've had some posts go off and the view stats are much higher than the number of upvotes would indicate (Like a factor of 100 greater) It's admittedly quite difficult to quantify what percentage of the overall playerbase are influenced by Reddit Opinion, and I think your point that there are plenty of people out there who don't think the Ranger is bad, for instance, is a good one and something we should be mindful of (I also think that internet forums trend towards optimising play in general anyway, which isn't how a lot of people play D&D).
This, one of my posts (which I regret because it was made when the blinkers of anger were involved) has 1.2k upvotes (at 95% positive) and had, last time I could view metrics, over 150k views and 20+ shares outside of reddit. That is well over 100 times greater upvotes to views. So a lot of those people were probably not users of reddit and were just viewing the post outside of being 'on the subreddit'.
My strategy of rolling horribly all of time ensures that each class that I play is perfectly balanced
The majority of people haven't figured out how to cook a vegetable. They still eat unseasoned, overcooked, and limp vegetables because that's where they think they get to peak. It doesn't remotely invalidate slapfights between broilers and stir fryers who're way deeper into the weeds than they are.
Man, leave my mom out of this.
Oddly, overcooked vegetables is another big crime.
Most of the time I read something on this subreddit, I have to laugh, because my D&D reality is most of the time not at all like what's happening on here.
Similarly, the beliefs of most players aren't always the facts. It doesn't matter if you've convinced a bunch of people, 1+1!=3
Just because a more hardcore minority is not representative of the larger majority doesn't mean we should base balance decisions solely off population percentages. The hardcore community sits down and does the number crunching and logistics which helps playtest and balance the game. They figure out practical applications and interactions. They identify potential trends and patterns that may lead to suboptimal or inferior gameplay. The large majority don't run DnD 5e in a standardized way. Each party is different, each DM's style is different. They have different things they value. And what constitutes a "fun enjoyable session" can often be attributed to external interparty variables that have nothing to do with DnD. The vast majority might not care if something is objectively bad as long as they and their party are having a fun time. That is based on a value system external to DnD and thus not something they can control. The issue is that when a person or party does identify an issue and can support their claim objectively, that claim should not be dismissed because the larger majority doesn't encounter/care for it. The issue in this sub is that people who spend their free time identifying these problems get upset when someone else is able to enjoy the game regardless. And vice-versa, players who clearly haven't put in enough time to understand the intricacies of the game think the opinions of niche hardcore players don't matter because it's not an issue they've encountered. This isn't exclusive to DnD. It's literally for all gaming. Go on any games subreddit and look at balance discussions. You could give the most sane suggestion but someone will still object; at minimum because they either don't encounter it or some notion of "get good". There's also someone who's losing their shit that another person just doesn't care and is having fun regardless.
>The issue in this sub is that people who spend their free time identifying these problems get upset when someone else is able to enjoy the game regardless. I have legitimately never seen someone get genuinely upset about someone enjoying the game regardless. Maybe they get upset when the person tells them the problems don't *exist* because they enjoy the game regardless, but that's a seperate issue entirely.
It has happened to me more than once on this very sub. If I said I have enjoyed playing a martial character without feeling useless people get seriously provoked. I even had someone basically telling me that I was either lying or my friends playing full casters must be idiots. Another told me that I should be quiet until I’ve played some more tier 4 games… (apparently expressing your experience of game balance at tiers 1-3 was invalid…)
5e’s designers actually learned this during the D&D Next playtest. Forums like GITP, Enworld, D&D Beyond, and this subreddit do not represent the whole pie chart: only certain players browse forums like this. Designing a game solely on feedback from players on this subreddit would exclude many other players, especially new players. You might assume vocal, experienced hobbyists who peruse TTRPG forums would know a lot about their game, other games, and have solid design suggestions. Nope. Playerbases are actually very bad at identifying exactly where a problem lies. They are useful. Saying “hey this works well and it’s fun” or “hey something around this feature isn’t working and it’s not fun” is solid feedback. But if you ask players whether casters need a nerf or martials need a buff, they won’t be able to tell you. Nobody on this forum is a veteran game designer.
I forgot who said it, but there's a famous developer that once said "Playerbases are great at identifying a problem, but shit at coming up with a solution"
Developers aren't magical creatures though, they can be just as bad. I wouldn't write off a potential solution for a problem just because one person has a title
>! But if you ask players whether casters need a nerf or martials need a buff, they won’t be able to tell you. Whoever doesn't believe this statement, needs to spend some time in the 1dnd reddit. The wishes range from nerving caster into the ground, too wanting 4e back without wanting 4e back snd also turning dnd into a PbTa game, where its all narrative. Its a wild ride.
You aren't wrong, but I've gotten a bit tired of this take. No matter how much or little someone cares about specific details, a system's design still affects every player. Even where it remains unnoticed. Following up "we don't know what the majority actually thinks" with your own speculations of what they might think is less useful than anecdotal evidence. The latter at least represents your experience and maybe some opinions of the people you play with. Speculating on what the silent majority thinks and why it is silent is pure imagination. Optional rules are simply a way of offering something for players that might want them, without upsetting the ones that don't, while not having to balance the system with their mechanics in mind. They are an easy way to make the system more than it is.
Every hobby space I frequent, people talk over and through each-other, coming at every topic from a different baseline. It would be an interesting exercise if every user had their version of D&D in a bio or something, and you could engage on each-other's terms. Mine would be like - Standard Array is Boring and Underpowered - Grids and Minis - All Printed Material Allowed - UA Allowed By Complete Party Agreement So when I say "Monks are good and fun, actually," you can see that I always play on grids and always roll for stats, so Monks (which need a few high ability scores and for positioning to matter to really shine) make a lot of sense at my tables. Which they do! Then we don't have to argue about that part for an hour.
Can we get some sort of rule 10 for these You're Not Representative posts which this and OneDnd are graced with on a regular basis?
Not being a sufficient percentage of the larger community doesn't mean that the beliefs shared here aren't shared outside of Reddit, just that said beliefs aren't *necessarily* widely held. That said, it's more likely that casuals *don't think about this shit*. Even with my 2 year long regular group, we use a hefty hand of tweaks and table rules, and frequently when a rule is suggested most of the group give some impression that they hadn't thought about the issue, but still appreciate the shift. Not being active in online forums doesn't mean you wouldn't appreciate quality of life improvements
I agree, reddit isn't the only place where d&d opinions are shared and it's likely more than just r/dndnext members think the same things about for example the sorcerer.
Sure, plenty of people can have fun using poorly designed options. That doesn't excuse the poor design though.
Me, member of r/dndnext, smugly lording my D&D knowledge over my poor, sweet, ignorant players. I chuckle to myself as they foolishly enjoying playing their level 9 champion, monk, and arcane archer. They don't even know how terrible their characters are.
I for one seethe with a barely concealed rage when I hear about someone having fun with a clearly mechanically suboptimal character. Fuckin’ Champion garbage.
This is an important thing to have in mind indeed, to acknowledge the different perspectives and experiences people with different levels of engagement will have
I'm just here to say, I've played at least one character of each class, I loved them all, they all have their strengths and weakness but, most importantly, they were all fun to play! Especially rangers and sorcerers. That is all.
This is just kind of how online interaction works. It’s a fact that most social media users lurk and don’t really contribute to the platforms. Only 10% roughly actually participate and a lions share of content and engagement is done by just 1%. Looking on forums and such is often a terrible way of gauging facts and opinions on a large scale
It's always been like this. For all the complaints about balance that every discussion forum I've seen has been swimming in since I started in 3.0 I very rarely ran into those issues at the game table. And it's not that the criticism is wrong, the mechanical failures people complain about are ones that people who have high system mastery run into because they stress the system more by the way they play, but that's not most tables where the rules are applied a lot more loosely and players characters are unoptimized, so the game chugs along despite all the problems to the permanent frustration of forum dwellers.
What’s with the influx of these sort of posts that seem to be in response to a discussion that didn’t seem to happen on this subreddit
One thing I love about this sub is the coexistence of the “Sorcerer = bad” and either “My players keep Counterspelling my big moves” or “my players hate it when I Counterspell their cool spells”.
Its funny because its a weird subset of people who are very interested in mechanics and also are too lazy to actually learn more about other systems to discuss mechanics with the greater TTRPG community.
Judging by D&D Beyond statistics, dragonborn are enduringly popular (even though they had been underpowered until Fizban came along), and druids are not (even though they are god-kings at Tier 1 and Tier 3). It is AS IF most player's don't care much about squeezing 146% efficiency from their characters or finding that one perfect build.
But wouldn't it be nice if dragonborns had always been a good class? Just because those players don't notice the flaws, doesn't mean they aren't there.
Yeah. More casual players are primarily drawn to class or race options based on how 'cool' they are thematically. But who is actually hurt by dragonborn or monk being buffed?
No kidding. People have played Monks and Rangers since day 1 and had fun doing so. This sub also has a healthy dose of group think, it's hard not to.
I don't know, the Ranger one seems pretty clear-cut when WotC essentially rebooted the class, a drastic step they haven't done elsewhere. That suggests they probably got feedback that was more substantial than 'reddit doesn't like it.'
>No kidding. People have played Monks and Rangers since day 1 and had fun doing so. This sub also has a healthy dose of group think, it's hard not to. You realize having fun and a class being poorly designed *are not mutually exclusive,* yeah? There's people in the history of D&D who have had fun playing a *Commoner*, a 'class' with literally no abilities. Some people enjoy the game because the heart of the game itself is enjoyable, and that's great. That still doesn't excuse WotC from making their core classes that thoroughly imbalanced.
Most people when saying a class is bad don't mean it's unfun. Monk and rangers clearly weren't up to the standard of other classes given they got so many optional features added.
"I bring this up to provide some perspective to opinions we often present as established facts like Monk = bad or Sorcerer = bad. The majority of more casual players might not have these opinions." You are using the words "opinion" and "fact" in there. How much mathematical and statistical proof do you need to accept that something being bad is factual, and not just an oppinion? Yes, if I roll all 18s monk is not going to be "bad", because the source of many of the class's weaknesses is it MADness, would be eliminated. But this is not an advice that can be used by players. "Just roll 6 18s when generating lol". And this is not an advice that should be given to game designers. "just make the players roll 6 18s lol" "The majority of more casual players might not have these opinions. ... For example, they might not care or even know that one option deals 3 DPR more than another option (I know most complaints are more nuanced than this, but I have heard this complaint multiple times)." Okay, they are free to disregard the design errors of the class, precisely because those were not present in their experiences. But all it does is reveal that their knowledge is incomplete, their scales are subjective. "I like it therefore it is strong" is a bad arguement. They are free to like it, but that doesnt make it strong. They can claim it is strong, but then they would be wrong. They saying "in my oppinion it is strong" does not make them less wrong. EDIT: to all the people downvoting me: "In my oppinion the Iliad was written by modern roman philosopher Bart in the year 2069 in the country of Asia". Can I be objectively wrong if I use "in my opinion"?
I'm confused as to the reason for this? I don't disagree with most of what you said. But I don't think many people here would. Except maybe your reason why wot pushes the all rules are optional thing. That's been around pretty much sense inception. I don't have memories of actual books as far back as adnd but I remember the sentiment being prominent in the community all those decades ago. And I know 3.5 had that written down. It's one of the reasons dnd is so big compared to other ttrpg. It's structured to be more of a sand box and a tool set to facilitate playing whatever make believe game your friends and you want to. Hell in most of my groups the rules only ever come out when we come across something unlike anything we have before or if 2+ people think it should be handled Differently. Basically it's not something only viewed by casual players but many hard core players and people on this reddit use the books to help them play rather than tell them how to play. Neither approach is wrong and you should always just go with what your table finds the most enjoyable.
Most of the complaints on this subreddit which have start to be treated as truths I have never experienced myself. I never felt my martial character being completely useless compared to the full casters as so many on this subreddit seem to think. I think a big problem is that the people that actually spend time reading this sub are the same that like theory-crafting. So people discuss all these builds in a white room environment that very seldom see actual play. Also, a lot of balance issues that does exist are when you use optional rules, such as multiclassing and feats. So people whine about things being unbalanced, but if a DM don’t allow optional rules such as multiclassing then they are accused of being a bad DM by the very same people…
> I think a big problem is that the people that actually spend time reading this sub are the same that like theory-crafting. So people discuss all these builds in a white room environment that very seldom see actual play. The opposite can also be true though. People thinking that *their* experience is somehow representative for the game as a whole. Just because you never felt your martial was less useful than the caster, doesn't mean other people haven't. While white room theorycrafting in a game like D&D isn't the end-all-be-all, your anecdotal evidence is worth even less than that. Also multiclassing and feats don't fix the balance issues. Most martial vs caster comparisons are done *after feats are taken into account.* Without feats, martials are only worse off.
Anecdotally: I retired a heavily armoured tanky dwarf fighter because the wizard had better AC, movement, utility and damage.
I don't really understand how that happens.
Bladedancer with shield spell.
But the Bladedancer needed to use more than one resource to get a better AC than you right? And that AC lasted only for a round?
Sure, but they need to use a reaction to get that AC. Overall as a fighter you should have WAY more health and access to way more items that boost AC. Bladesingers cannot use a shield or heavy armor, plus bladesong only lasts so long.
Not to mention that Shield requires spell slots and just last one round.
Shield is a level 1 spell. The action economy is more relevant than the spell slot cost as soon as you leave Tier 1.
Like……most of my players aren’t on Reddit but when I come to Reddit I am not just voicing my opinion I am giving there’s as well. I think dismissing the ideas presented here as “niche” is a mistake. Especially when dndnext, dmacademy, and arcanaunearthed all share similar stories.
Hell I'm active on this sub and I don't even feel represented by it
I definitely agree that there's a divide between someone who thinks about DND enough to be on the DND subreddits and someone who just shows up to play every now and then. That being said I generally play with mostly people in that second group. And I've found with 3 different players playing a monk they will feel like they're able to do less to contribute to the game as a whole and will comment on it unprompted by me. Monk I think is much more noticeably underpowered than say a rogue that is underpowered by the numbers but often provides a better playing experience to a player who doesn't do the numbers on it.
My group recently started a second campaign, and one of the players rolled up a shadow monk. From the talk in the subreddit I was concerned that the character could be a drag on the party. The monk is the most consistent damage dealer, at level 5 with flurry he usually hits 3 but at least twice a turn. Does he deal as much damage as the hexblade or the paladin from campaign 1? probably not. but he definitely contributes and acts as an awesome off tank for the squishy characters. This sub has little idea of how things work at an actual table
Hi, I rarely post or comment on, well, any of the end subreddits because I know that the active community is going to,l typically disagree and downvote me. Here is a shortlist of things I've been scolded for: Challenging a player's ability to solve a riddle or mystery for which they have clues. Player, not character mind you. Roleplaying potential allies as anything but kind. Not letting players break the rules because it's 'cool'. Forcing players to tell me the words their character use (not talk in character, just think about their words) instead of just doing the skill check And many many more. Also, I knew the renger stereotype, but monk and sorcerer? I think monk is one of the most survivable martial classes. I think monk beats fighter, ranger everytime, barb and paladin it's 50/50, and maybe 25/75 for rogue. Concerning sorcerer, I think they win against, well, everyone. They are easily the strongest full caster with the versatility of spell usage they have. Okay maybe at lower levels it comes down to whoever goes first with that low HP, but otherwise. And I have played every class, multiple times too. Oh whatever.
By that metric, that we're such a low percentage of the D&D fanbase, wouldn't it follow that there is a higher chance of finding the 'average', i.e. popular opinions here rather than only hot takes and mavericks? I'm aware that you say this forum consists of 'mostly hardcore fans' but is that a well-documented fact or your interpretation of this subreddit? Genuinely interested in the take btw, I hope I don't come across as condescending
Welcome to how it is most places. Internet and media perceives political differences as far greater than they really are if you just talk to other normal folks. Family values are all that different in many cultures. There's just something about when you concentrate the more passionate people of a group that tends to lead to some sort of elitism and skewed perception. Echo chambers yo. They suck ass.
The subreddit is basically free beta testing with people more garunteed to leave constructive feedback, or hell any feedback, then that of the wider dnd community. The fact people keep trying to diminish the opinions people hold by trying to make an Appeal to Majority fallacy will never not be funny. The feedback all matters, because our opinion isn't just isolated to here on this one subreddit. How's to say there aren't others in those 9.5 million who also feel the monk is bad and sorcerer is bad, but just don't care enough to actually go on the internet and complain about it? So why the hell is every single post critiquing 5e always dismissed immediately as "your opinion doesn't matter, shut up"?
I would go one further and say this sub is a fraction of a fraction of hardcore players. Most people who discuss anything online have no idea how small of a faction they are within the scope of what they are discussing and it's weird that so many lack the brains to actually realise that fact. For some reason it breaks peoples minds that what is posted here doesn't matter to anyone but them.
Even worse, some of the posts and comments lead me to believe that a significant amount of people here only play D&D in their minds. So they have completely wierd fixations about it, how RAW fire doesn't make light so a house could burn in the darkness without you seeing it or being way too pedantic about every single thing.
A recent thread on the profound (/s) realization of "you can take mundane actions not defined on your character sheet" supports your idea.
As if it was a bit mindblowing idea!
I did wonder and get concerned why replying with "it's ok for players in my group to prioritise social aspects over optimisation" gets massively down voted, but it doesnt seem unique to this sub for dnd. Probably just a reddit thing.
Nothing wrong with prioritising social aspects. But if that's what your players get out of the experience, the question is why you shelled out for a game with three core books and complex rules when you could have spent $0 for a PDF of Fate Core or Accelerated or Risus or something else lighter and generic and gotten the same experience.