Like when I was new to game completely I had fun in first few campaigns, but after a while I realized that if I make character of same class, they play exactly the same, and lot of times there are level ups where i barely nothing if I'm not playing a caster.
So 5e is more similar to OSR games than PF and 4E are. PF has more of a "Roll Diplomacy to talk" vibe going on and you need to spend one of your actions to move etc. A lot of things that you have to earn through your character's mechanics in PF is just part of adventurer basics in 5e, which makes the characters a lot more samey.
On GM side I'm frustrated by ambigious rules which sometimes are freeform and sometimes have super specific rules for scenario, encounter design guidelines are confusing, monster design seems arbitrary(quickling is good example of overpowered for their cr monster...) and lot of monsters have been quite bland in monster manual compared to their older incarnations in previous editions.
It works better for sandbox games where CR and encounter budgets aren't as much as an issue.
sometimes have super specific rules for scenario
I actually love this♥
I'd rather have a scenario be a set of mechanics so that the story can be emergent.
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What followed was nearly 20 minutes of teeth pulling on my part to try and ask the local townsfolk what the "Shamsaran Empire" is.
I find that DMing style to be very strange.
If I'd created the Shamsaran Empire I'd be delighted that you'd given me a opportunity to get information about the Empire into the minds of the players. There must be somebody in town who knows about the Empire's background, and why wouldn't that person be happy to show off their knowledge?
It's the start of the campaign, so the Empire might not be fully formed in the DM's mind yet, but if he can't come up with some cool information (or even misinformation) about it then what is it doing on the map in the first place?
And if he had planned that you would later find yourselves in a Shamsaran town without realising at first, then this is a great chance to foreshadow it.
"The Empire?" The innkeeper looks around nervously, then turns back to you with a troubled expression on his face. "Nobody talks much about them; it is said they have eyes and ears everywhere.
"The Empire is always expanding, but they don't send out armies - or at least, not at first. They are … what's the word I'm looking for? … insidious. They get themselves so tangled up in local politics, trade, religion, the economy, that you wake up one morning and find they've taken you over. The only thing that seems to have changed is the flag flying over the town hall, and yet nothing will ever be the same again …"
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Good Gods! Zombies be so damn slow you'd need a bazillion to keep a city afloat turning fans!
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sometimes have super specific rules for scenarioI actually love this♥
I'd rather have a scenario be a set of mechanics so that the story can be emergent.
Oh no, I like having specific rules. Problem is that 5e tries to be freeform until suddenly it isn't :p
Also back to topic: Uh...... Yeah I think your game master is textbook example of "Thinks they are much more smarter than they actually are"
I don't understand DM's who run their scenes or setting by mini-games of 20 Questions. If I search the area for secret doors, I mean I'm taking the time to search THE ENTIRE AREA for secret doors. I don't feel it's appropriate to call out that I'm searching the floor, then the west wall, then the east wall, then the ceiling the best I can with my 10' pole, THEN advancing 10' and continuing with this process... and so on until the area is searched.
That's exactly how I run my game, like 20 Questions that is.
Since each 10′×10′×10′ area takes ten minutes to search I wanna know what order you go through them so we know how much light to scratch.
And since some of the things are well hidden I wanna know how you look. Opening the drawers, or even looking under them to see if anything is stuck under there?
If you say "I walk around the room hitting the walls with my tenfoot, listening if anything sounds weird" I'll go "Clockwise or counter-clockwise around the room?"
I love love love this style of gaming so much♥
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Oh man this reminds me of one of my favorite stories. This happened to a friend of mine and wasnt something I personally experienced.
My buddy tells me they are playing a AD&D game and the party encountered a maze. They needed to track or make some wisdom checks to properly navigate the maze. It took them three game sessions to get out of it. Back then, he didnt think much of it because often long dungeon crawls to build XP was the norm.
Once the party exits the maze the GM stands up and laughs telling them triumphantly that the walls of the maze were only 3 ft high and if only, just only, a player had asked for that detail they would have skipped right past the maze.
Game ended right there and then. As it should have.
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Oh man this reminds me of one of my favorite stories. This happened to a friend of mine and wasnt something I personally experienced.
My buddy tells me they are playing a AD&D game and the party encountered a maze. They needed to track or make some wisdom checks to properly navigate the maze. It took them three game sessions to get out of it. Back then, he didnt think much of it because often long dungeon crawls to build XP was the norm.
Once the party exits the maze the GM stands up and laughs telling them triumphantly that the walls of the maze were only 3 ft high and if only, just only, a player had asked for that detail they would have skipped right past the maze.
Game ended right there and then. As it should have.
Yeah. I had a GM like that who deliberately withheld information that the PCs would obviously see in the moment because the players didn't think to ask for the obvious.
Example: Party gets to a wide river that they have to get across. It's about 100 feet across.
Players: "How deep?"
GM: "Six inches to two feet."
Players: "How does the footing look?"
GM: "Probably pretty slippery: You'll need to make a DEX check to avoid falling in."
Players: "But it's only six inches to two feet deep?"
GM: "Yes."
Players: "Okay, we cross the river."
GM: <grins> "Everyone make DEX checks, but at -8. It's that slippery."
Players: <groan> <roll> <everyone fails>
GM: "You all slip and fall into the algae-slick rocks. The water, flowing at nearly 30 mph, washes you 20 feet downriver and over the waterfall! You all take—" <rolls> "—29 points of falling damage."
Players: "Wait! What waterfall?"
GM: "You never asked what was downstream!"
I had an AD&D GM like that, too. His deal was treasure. We'd kill an enemy and then see if he had anything good on him. And the GM would ask us what specifically we were looking for.
"Uh, helm?"
"No."
"Armor?"
"No."
"Ring?"
"No."
"Cloak?"
"No."
"Wand?"
"No."
So eventually we'd run out of things to ask for and say we were leaving, and the GM would say, "Okay, you travel seven more hours before you stop for the night." Then he'd start snickering. "You never asked about boots! That NPC was wearing boots of elvenkind! But now he's seven hours away, and you can't go back!"
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Yeah im about 7 steps out the door and cant go back...
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Yeaaaaaaah, I think at some point you should stop being polite, tell your friend you absolutely hate their gming style and that they aren't as smart as they think and then quit playing and hopefully get more reasonable friends next time if the gm isn't willing to be being friends with people who call them out :P
Never liked the "Oh no, you can't just search the room, you have to search every object individually!" style gming which just relies on "GOTCHA" moments
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In 1st edition, there wasn't a "search" skill. If you wanted to search the bed you'd say "I search the bed". Depending on the DM, that may or may not have been assumed to include looking under the bed. However, if you said "I look under the bed" then if there was anything under there to find then you'd find it.
In 3rd edition, you'd say "I search the room" and the DM would ask for a search check and let you know if you found anything. Depending on the DM, if you said "I search under the bed" then you might find what was there without rolling - or you might still have to roll anyway.
I'm happy to play it either way (although the former method does put a lot of onus on the DM to describe the room properly - you can't search the fireplace for loose bricks if you don't know there is brickwork or, even worse, that there is a fireplace at all).
However, what I hate is being forced to describe in exact detail what I am doing, and then having to make the skill roll afterwards. Pick one method or the other - don't make me suffer the worst of both worlds!
However, what I hate is being forced to describe in exact detail what I am doing, and then having to make the skill roll afterwards. Pick one method or the other - don't make me suffer the worst of both worlds!
Agreed for sure!
Mark, I'm not trying to defend any of the other many problems with the game you're in which definitely sounds like a very frustrating and experience.
I'm a HUGE fan of letting characters do what they're trained to do instead of relying on the players to interpret things with their real life brains. I'm not super witty or clever, but my bard is; I'm not trained to pick up on "weird" noises and interpret them as traps, but my thief is; I'm not knowledgeable of a jaguar with multiple tails coming out of their back, but my WIZARD might be.
I feel the exact 180° opposite; *I* wanna play the game, I don't want to watch as my character plays it, as she succeeds or fails at puzzles based on her Int rolls.
To people with the "low-walled maze" story or the "undetected but obvious waterfall" story or the in "you forgot to check the boots" story, thank you. Caveats to keep in mind when running this style, for sure♥
The point isn't to get stuck or let them be completely dependent on the one correctly found "pixel". It works best with an open game world where you can take all kinds of routes and do all kinds of things; some routes fail and some succeed.
One thing we do to make things a lot smoother is to set up "standard routines"; "Anytime we enter a room, we look up. You got that, DM?" "Anytime we search a body, we are checking their helm, armor, and boots too. You got that, DM?" "Anytime we search a room, we go counter-clockwise. You got that, DM?"
We had two such routines in a campaign I played; always look up and always hit every floor tile hard with our tenfoot before stepping on it. We discovered many traps buuuut we also attracted a lot of enemies with noise.
I have a story of my own. The story of how I fell in love with D&D. The "mirror story"!
We were playing in what is now my fave style, no skill checks, player skill over character skill and it was one of my first sessions. I had played hundreds of other RPGs and story games but never D&D.
Walking in the dungeon we came up to this weird hanging cloth, seemed like it was covering something. The textile was oooold.
Walked up to it… IIRC we had to saw through some metal bars to get there. And I carefully stuck my hand under the cloth and felt… glass? Or at least something smooth.
"It's probably a cursed mirror!" we players said to each other. We tied it to our cart and kept the cloth on.
Hours (and a couple of adventures) later, on our way home from the dungeon, we were attacked by giant toads!
And the first thing I do is "I yank off the cloth and show the toads the mirror or whatever it is!"
And, it _was_ a mirror and as the toad looked in it, it went… ⚞pop!⚟ and was gone!
Then and there I knew that I had found my favorite game♥
5e is so flexible and malleable and is set up to be "all things to all people" which makes it really easy to find material—dungeons, monsters, classes, spells—and really, really, really hard to find a group that all wants to play it the same way.
The way I like to play and run the game is in the minority (it's an option in the DMG). There is this popular TV show where they play D&D (there are several, actually, but I'm thinking of Critical Role) and it's wonderful but they come from the 3e/4E/Pathfinder tradition of skill checks so it's all Investigation checks, Insight checks, Persuation checks etc.
There's nothing weird about the way you wanna play the game—and there are many, many groups out there that play your way, and I hope you find one!
There's still some points of confusion, not the least of which is that the big, oppressive empire is called the Shaemsarian Empire, while the "kingdom" that no longer exists is called the Samhainian Empire.
My very first question to my DM over text was "Thanks for the email; is this all COMMON knowledge our characters can action on?" His reply was "Yes" then, 34 minutes later was a follow up "to learned people"
Although this may be giving your DM a wee bit more credit than he warrants, I has to wonder if he's got this unspoken internal head-canon going on where certain races/species/backgrounds might not be "in the know" about the empires (especially if it was run by all elves or all humans, as an example).
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Brother? I'm not a boy :)
I'm an old lady.
Yeah, I'm OK at puzzles (not as good as some of my players are — they are brilliant!) but I'm not running a linear game where the way "forward" is blocked behind a puzzle. There is no forward, it's just a wild & woolly world to explore.
Generally things on the multi-day level (such as forest survival) I do leave to the rules to cover instead of playing it out. That's more for moment-to-moment level stuff.
Your DM messed up by both having those "background skills" in the game and then not actually using them. I've only put skills in the game that we are gonna refer to.
Not all stories go that well though, and not every player is that bright or puzzle-minded. Some of us get their characters killed or put the entire party in danger when we don't understand what the "wrinkle" in the carpet means and end up 30' down in a spiked pit, or we don't know what a treant is so we stab it in the eye when it's trying to cradle us to sleep, or we don't know that a "weird smell" in a gave plus a torch means an explosion, or dozens of other calamities I've caused my fellow players by just being dumb.
So now, when my character is lost in the woods but I remembered to drop a rank in Survival, I describe what my character WANTS to do - find water, make a shelter, find a landmark, or whatever, but then I have a MECHANIC to make up for the fact that I have NO IDEA how to actually do any of those things.
And that's fine and there are many, many, many groups out there, including the most popular TV show groups (like CR) that play that way, and I hope and wish you find a group that plays the way you want to. Whether it's Pathfinder or some other game.
Being faced with a carpet wrinkle or a weird smell or an unknown tree-being or a checkered floor or a weird system of levers are things that I love as a player. I live for those moments.
The idea of the mechanics stepping in and solving the interaction for me is even more frustrating than mechanics stepping in and preventing me from solving the interaction.
"I look under the bed."
"Sorry, roll Investigation. Otherwise your character wouldn't know to look under the bed."
That's bad. But it's even worse when the character jumps in and prevents me from failing.
"There's a carpet here"
"OK, I go to the next room"
"Hold on, you see that there's a wrinkle in the carpet."
"OK, that's fine. I am careful not to trip on the wrinkle as I step on the carpet and go to the next room."
"Sorry, your high WIS character would understand that the wrinkle in the carpet means that there's a 30′ pit trap under it. You don't step on the carpet after all."
I don't want the character to play itself!
That's why we have saving throws. Here is how I would've wanted it to play out:
"There's a carpet here"
"OK, boring, I just go on to the next room beyond"
"Whooosh! You step on a pit hidden under the carpet and you fall in, bringing the carpet with you"
"Aaaah! I'm trying to grab hold of the ledge!"
"OK, make a saving throw to do that"
In this style, dice are involved after we step in it, by not examining carpets and such, and allows us to (maybe) survive a situation that would've killed us.
In the skill&dice heavy style, the dice and rules are the thick glass wall between us and the world, the clunky robot arms that we use in order to do things. In my style instead, we say and do things more directly. The dice and rules are like loaded guns on the table. We want them to work and we want them to work well, but we are just as happy when they are never used. I can play carefully and examine the map and not be limited by "Sorry, your character has too low WIS to see anything special about the map. You step on it."
Your current DM seems like he is mixing both paradigms in a way that just plain doesn't work for you. Find a group that plays the way you want, or, take over as DM yourself. Good luck♥
I dont know about 5E being "magic light" or "low magic", but the math does work without upgrading gear or providing any magic gear. So stingy DMs can rejoice again. I understand wanting magic items to be special, but man, did many a 3E+ DM think they could just toss you masterwork and expect you to survive at 8+ level. When you croaked it was always "your tactics" fault too.
Brother? I'm not a boy :)
I'm an old lady.Yeah, I'm OK at puzzles (not as good as some of my players are — they are brilliant!) but I'm not running a linear game where the way "forward" is blocked behind a puzzle. There is no forward, it's just a wild & woolly world to explore.
Generally things on the multi-day level (such as forest survival) I do leave to the rules to cover instead of playing it out. That's more for moment-to-moment level stuff.
Your DM messed up by both having those "background skills" in the game and then not actually using them. I've only put skills in the game that we are gonna refer to.
Not all stories go that well though, and not every player is that bright or puzzle-minded. Some of us get their characters killed or put the entire party in danger when we don't understand what the "wrinkle" in the carpet means and end up 30' down in a spiked pit, or we don't know what a treant is so we stab it in the eye when it's trying to cradle us to sleep, or we don't know that a "weird smell" in a gave plus a torch means an explosion, or dozens of other calamities I've caused my fellow players by just being dumb.
So now, when my character is lost in the woods but I remembered to drop a rank in Survival, I describe what my character WANTS to do - find water, make a shelter, find a landmark, or whatever, but then I have a MECHANIC to make up for the fact that I have NO IDEA how to actually do any of those things.
And that's fine and there are many, many, many groups out there, including the most popular TV show groups (like CR) that play that way, and I hope and wish you find a group that plays the way you want to. Whether it's Pathfinder or some other game.
Being faced with a carpet wrinkle or a weird smell or an unknown tree-being or a checkered floor or a weird system of levers are things that I love as a player. I live for those moments.
The idea of the mechanics stepping in and solving the interaction for me is even more...
well said. Some important things to keep in mind.
The PHB gives rules for buying low level potions as gear. The PHB also hints at the possibility of having NPCs cast "common" spells on you for money. However I've already come to understand that 5e doesn't need magic items to keep up with power levels of foes over time.
All of this suggests to me that D&D 5e COULD be low magic, or it could be high magic, based on the DM's choices and rulings. I'm fine with that. What I chafe against is the suggestion by my DM yesterday that, because the 5e system is INHERENTLY "low magic" or "magic light," that's how he's running his game.
No, his statement is slightly incorrect. What he SHOULD be saying, in my opinion, is that because 5e CAN BE low magic, that's how he's CHOOSING to run his game.
This DM does this often. He blames the system for choices HE'S made. The fact of the matter is that 5e doesn't seem to deliver any kind of mandate on how much or how little "magic" is for sale or otherwise available to common folks or low level NPCs.
On a larger scale though, I think this comes back to my own, personal frustration with 5e. This game is very explicitly centered on "rulings vs rules." The purchase of NPC spells for example has a suggested cost, but it seems worded expressly for DM fiat.
Now, if you've got a DM that is fairly consistent and transparent that's fine. However I'm now 3 for 3 on DM's who are inconsistent, obscuring information behind hurdles. This particular DM I've pointed out, is a fan of "if you don't ask the RIGHT question, in the RIGHT way... I won't give you the info" regardless of how obvious or common that knowledge would be.
I guess this is why I favor RAW. See, there will always be corner cases but it's nice to have a baseline written down. I myself am not always consistent because of declining mental faculties, poor memory skills, etc, but if I start to rule on a scene and one of my players reminds me "no, Concentration doesn't work like that" or whatever, I can reign it in and get that consistency back on track.
This DM is...
interesting.
Very interesting.
The first couple of years of 5e didn't have magic item creation rules.
The default assumption is that you can buy potions of healing easily (for around 50 gp). Some DMs remove that, while others add in potions of climbing, and some add in a lot more.
In 3e, 4e and PF1, a steady flow of magic items is inherent in the game to an extent that just isn't true in 5e. I'm running an adventure (Dyson's Delve) right now converted from B/X and my players are floored by the high amount of magic items they're getting.
In 5e's default assumptions, finding a magic sword is a true treasure.
In one of the books that came out later (Xanathar's Guide to Everything), there are optional rules that a DM might use to provide magic item crafting. Some DMs use these, some use 3pp rules instead, and some don't have any magic item crafting available.
XGE's system requires players to go on quests to fight dangerous monsters in order to get ingredients and then spend many weeks and a lot of gold crafting them.
In even later books there is a new class, the Artificier, which isn't allowed by default in every setting. That class can create some items inherently from its class abilities.
So the answer is just… it depends.
Specifically compared to 3e, 4e and Pathfinder 1 then, yeah, there is a LOT less magic in the default assumptions.
This can be tweaked for different settings to be even lower, or a lot higher.
My players in this current campaign (our ninth 5e campaign overall, and our sixth on this particular planet (al-Toril)) have more magic items than they've had in any previous campaign but that's still a lot less than a PF1 or 4e campaign would have as after this many sessions (we're thirty-six sessions in). And over half of them came from this particular B/X delve, which they've been in for (so far) four sessions out of those thirty-six.
Here is what the WotC other editions to 5e conversion document says:
Treasure. In a careful conversion of treasure, you need to create or roll treasure as if creating it from scratch for the adventure. Use the Individual Treasure and Treasure Hoard tables in chapter 7 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide to create new assortments of treasure, using what’s in the original adventure as a guideline. Be sure to read the “Treasure Tables” section of that chapter to decide how you’ll use the tables in recreating the treasure. See also the “Treasure Conversions” section later in this document.
Treasure. Adventures in previous editions often contain more treasure than is common in fifth edition. In third edition, NPCs were especially rich sources of magic items. When improvising, give out only the treasure you’re happy with the characters acquiring
In fifth edition, treasure isn’t as abundant and magic items aren’t as necessary to character performance as in previous editions. As the Dungeon Master’s Guide says, you can hand out as much or as little treasure as you want. Instead of painstakingly recreating treasure to fifth edition parameters, you can use the tables in that book as guidelines for intuitively reconstructing an adventure’s treasure. Alternatively, you can hand out whatever is in the adventure, modified to account for fifth edition constraints. One such constraint is that the highest bonus in fifth edition is usually +3, although a particularly mighty legendary item could confer a +4 bonus. A +6 weapon might have been essential for a particular fourth edition character to function, but even a +1 weapon makes a similar fifth edition character better. Although a character might have had a weapon with a high bonus in a previous edition, maintaining a correspondingly high bonus in fifth edition is unnecessary. Further, the functions of a magic weapon or armor, unrelated to its bonus, are often the most interesting aspects of the item.
Another constraint, although one that is less strict, is the amount of money and salable goods that characters can acquire. The Treasure Hoard tables in the Dungeon Master’s Guide show appropriate amounts for accumulated treasure. At each level, a party of adventurers has access to two or three hoards from the appropriate hoard tables.
I definitely messed up in that regard for this particular expedition!
I guess this is why I favor RAW. See, there will always be corner cases but it's nice to have a baseline written down. I myself am not always consistent because of declining mental faculties, poor memory skills, etc, but if I start to rule on a scene and one of my players reminds me "no, Concentration doesn't work like that" or whatever, I can reign it in and get that consistency back on track.
This DM is the third in a row for me now who uses some permutation of "I know that's how it worked before, but this is how it works now" for anything from movement rules, Reactions in combat, gathering info during Downtime, and so on.
This inconsistency in turn helps maintain a distance between DM and players. We, as players, are always waiting to see, can we move through Difficult Terrain THIS time? Will we have to give a fancy monologue this time, or can we use a Persuasion roll to get the info? Will I get to use the Reaction with the lightning rider in this combat, or won't I?
Here is an area where we agree with each other, Mark.
I've written down a lot of house rules for our players, some things that are changes from the books and some that are just clarifications. Where the RAW is vague or says "enh the DM can decide", I've written down something (often drawn from other editions or 3pp, sometimes of my own devising). And a couple of my players are very much on top of things and love to rules-lawyer from what I write down which makes it feel rewarding for me to do so.
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You didn't mention the GM was a ten percenter. Clearly, the GM understands that "50GP for healing potion" in the rule book is an example of what is not allowed in 5E.