My prime example would be Donald Trump. Hideously looking and true evil while dumping strength, dexterity, constitution (unfortunately not enough), intelligence and wisdom, but he undeniably has at least an 18 in charisma.

I’m every part of that meme and I like it! 😁

You just gave a perfect example for my “How do I deal even more damage?” point and you don’t even realize it. Do you? If all you have is a hammer…

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Wrong. I’m perfectly capable of creating complex encounters. It’s just a fact that the system actively punishes any DM who tries to set up a FUN encounter because there’s so many special abilities that just simply solve any inconvenience at the cost of an action.

My players should feel rewarded because they managed to build a campfire from discarded boxes so that they have a steady source of light during an important fight and not feel punished because they picked one of the threeish races that don’t have darkvision.

My players should feel clever because they managed to fashion a pulley system to move a significant amount of treasure out of the dungeon and not because they just stuffed everything into their bag of holding and forgot about it.

5e is boring by design and making it interesting means fighting against the system every step of the way!

Completely agree. Combat should feel fast and dangerous. With 5e It feels exactly like what it is. A bunch of sweaty nerds having a make believe d*ck measuring contest of whose made up character is the most awesome. But combat is far from the only problem here.

I think my biggest complaint might actually be that no matter what you plan to do, you’re pretty much always better off just bonking your opponent and doing damage.

Taking an extra turn to sneak around enemies and take them out stealthily? Hitting two turns in a row is better! Grapling an enemy to give your teammate a better chance at succeeding his attack? Still, two bonks will do twice as much damage. Healing? Complete waste of time as long as your HP stays above zero (and even then it only matters when you’re still down by the start of your next turn).

But I think my biggest paint points are not even combat related. It’s stuff like dark vision, spider climb, passive perception or Alarm, fly or breathless nature. A lot of characters start with these get out of jail free cards from level 1. 5e players will never experience the sense of dread and excitement that comes from exploring a deep windy dungeon with only a couple of torches that may run out at any given moment. 5e players will never struggle to hunt down enough prey in the arctic wilderness because someone will just cast goodberry.

DnD takes everything that makes the journey just as interesting as the goal and throws it away. There’s only this fight and then a long/short rest followed by the next fight. That’s really all the fun DnD allows its players to have.

But you see, that’s not how 5e works. 5e just throws an endless amount of instant problem solving abilities at your players to the point where there are no problems left except for “How do I deal even more damage?”. It still kind of works with characters up to level 7ish, but everything after is just cool™ character moments without any problem left to overcome. I mean, there’s a reason why almost no one plays double digit levels in DnD.

I just finished my last DnD campaign and am now enjoying my life with systems that allow me as the DM to actually challenge my players without the need to spend several days of preparation to make sure my encounters won’t just be solved by a single “Um actshually…” sentence.

It’s funny. I know a lot of players who think like you, but I and many others go in the completely opposite direction. The tension in my combat encounters has increased significantly since my group and I started to only give vague health info. Suddenly, it’s a surprise agin when a character goes down and you can almost feel the tension every round when another hidden death save is rolled!

No, it doesn’t. That’s precicely what classes are for. Everyone has their job and the rogue’s job is to finde traps and deal sneak attack damage. You don’t see the rogue going around demanding second wind, action surge and heavy armor, now do you?

Or he’s just one of the dozens of races that can just decide to not beathe…

Nothing of value. Just some YouTube Kiddies beating a dead horse once again.

Meh, I really don’t give two shits about it either way. In my campaigns, I’ll just ignore this and have orcs and goblins default to evil unless my party decides to do something that requires them to be more nuanced. But most of the time I just need fantasy bugs that can be squashed without any moral dilemma attached.

That doesn’t mean that other groups can’t have their nuanced orcs that have tragic generational trauma attached. It’s just not something I need for my average dungeon crawl. That’s the beauty of the hobby. There’s no one right way to go about it.

Yes, thank you. But then again, DnD is the king of unfun spells that just shortcut interesting puzzles an challenges. Alarm, Speak With Dead, Goodberry, Levitate/Fly, Planeshift, Remove Curse, Forcecage, Sending, Identify, etc.

Lol, what? 😂😂😂😂😂😂

You’ve either never left the DnD bubble, or you’re just blatantly ignorant towards 90% of what tabletop roleplaying games are! Seriously, that’s the shittiest shittake I’ve ever heard when it comes to TTRPGs. I seriously hope you’re joking, but I’m afraid you’re not.

At least a third of the TTRPG systems I play don’t even have combat rules because it’s just so irrelevant in these systems. And then there’s the vast majority of systems like Vampires: The Masquerade, Call of Cuthulu, fate, etc. where conbat exists, but is almost completely irrelevant. I’ve played in several groups that go multiple sessions without a single combat encounter and it never felt lile combat was important or missing.

TLDR: Lol 😂😂😂😂😂😂

I absolutely love The Dark Eye in every aspect except for its combat! About half of my campaigns are run in that system and I absolutely love the amount of customization it allows for your characters.

Agreed, Shadowrun overdoes it with its thousands of rules and The Dark Eye also has its problems. Especially when it comes to combat. But DnD is on the other side of that spectrum. It’s just severely lacking any kind of character depth.

That’s why I’m working on my own system trying to balance the complex, but meaningful character creatuon choices of system like Shadowrun and The Dark Eye with the combat of DnD.

And yes, it seems like we do have different preferences here. The only thing I always wonder is: Why do people who obviously prefer a rules light set of rules play something as rigid and overcomplicated as DnD. Wouldn’t you find far more enjoyment in systems lile fate or savage worlds?

So, what you’re telling me is 5e works well for combat. Which is exactly what I wrote.

But combat isn’t the only aspect of a tabletop roleplaying game. Far from it. Sure, if all you want to do is play out your superhero fantasy of killing ever bigger foes, then DnD works well enough I guess. But for me, that gets boring real fast. I want drama, mystery, social encounters, wilderness survival, interesting travelling etc. DnD does none of this.

Yes, that’s called roleplaying. And there’s nothing, not a single line in any book that supports any of this! Just imagine if DnD combat only consisted of one melee attack skill and one ranged attack skill. You could still roleplay that your ranged attack is a fireball, but it would still get boring real fast!

Everything about this scenario works pretty much exactly the same if the Barbarian goes to the library and references his notes, the wizard visits the local church and convinces the town to to join their crusade and the cleric goes to the tavern, sves the kitten, drinks with the guards, etc. Every character does everything exactly the same.

Let me give you a counter example in a system that actually does this well. In The Dark Eye, the wizard goes to the local library because they have several talents and skills that help them find and organize information in books, the cleric talks to the local clergy who respect him du to his “social standing” value and “clergical vow” skill. The barbarian actually put some points into “carousing” which makes them a solid drinker and their “local contact” skill may give them a pointer towards the old lady with the cat problem.

Hexxen is pretty amazing. The rules are extremely simple, but maintain enough complexity to still be fun and it knows what it wants to be and focuses on its core goals. Investigation is fun and engaging, combat is fast and dangerous, but not necessarily deadly and there are numerous interesting character classes that you can combine to build exactly the witch hunter you want.

Other than that, I’m working on my own system with a combat experience similar to DnD, but the social complexity and character customisability of The Dark Eye.