silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
So I'm curious: I'm going to Dragon Con next weekend, and I'm wondering what the etiquette would be on pick up games of 5E? Is that even a thing that happens? I've never been into TtRPGs before, so this is all new.
So I'm curious: I'm going to Dragon Con next weekend, and I'm wondering what the etiquette would be on pick up games of 5E? Is that even a thing that happens? I've never been into TtRPGs before, so this is all new.
Most cons have some tables that are open for walkups. You'll want to get there early in the day and reserve a spot for later, probably.
If Wizards has any presence, they'll probably have local DMs doing demo tables.
But those levels go by quickly, guys. Only 300 and 600 experience, respectively. So only your first half a dozen sessions or so will be housecat-lethal situations.
We reached level 3 by the second session, and while combat was certainly close, no one ever reached 0 hp in our games.
They don't get the full page, they get to pick three of the maneuvers.
Yes, but there are over a dozen options for them to choose from.
If you want an echo chamber that reaffirms your opinions on 5E, try elsewhere.
I don't want an echo chamber, I want to talk to PA peeps about their experiences playing 5e.
Sure, but in 4e Fighters got many options, even at low levels, to do damage in addition to pushing or knocking enemies prone. And they didn't have to wait until level 3 to become sticky.
Mike Mearls had said that the DMG will include more systems for more tactical combat in the DMG. I hope they actually come through with that.
Which is vastly disappointing. I TPKed a party once with two bad initial rolls against them. Felt unfun for everyone.
Yeah, if someone is not used to how lethal the early levels can be, I can definitely see how unfun the combat can be, espeically if they have experience with other systems.
For 5e, I think one of the most contensious points has to do with , well, how basic the core rules are. I seee it as a definite pull back from the codified rule set of 4e: much is left up to the discression of the DM. For example: advantage. Charge is a feat in 5e, which seemed to be too heavy a price tag to our dm, so we have a houserule that if you decide to run in a straight line for 3 squares or more at a target, your attack action has advantage, simulating a charge.
OR, gets a full page of tactics at level 3, or can cast spells and summon a blade, but please, keep reducing.
you needed a page for your abilities in 4e, even the at wills, because they did more than just damage most of the time.
Every class in 4e, at lower levels, can be played off a single standard sized note card, front and back, that contains -everything- you need to know about that character. That means all of your powers, all of your class features, any feats, skill bonuses, defenses, items, everything that makes it a full character. Not everything has to be expressed on a M:TG sized card for a single ability, people just do it that way because it looks good and makes it super easy for everyone at the table to see what they're capable of doing in any given situation at a glance.
Which is one of the main things that I disliked about 3.x and such, and what I'm seeing that I'll also dislike about 5e - I can't tell from a quick look what a character is capable of doing, since I've got to read through every spell or maneuver they can perform and then fill in any "holes" that might come up from a spell's wording.
As a DM, knowing what my characters are capable of doing when they are going all out in a session means that I can provide them with appropriate challenges or an easy ride to make them feel like heroes. Having to parse through a paragraph of a spell for "summon a simple mundane tool" in 20x the amount of words is not useful to me. Just tell me wtf it does, and then role play it however you want to.
Every character in the 5e starter set is one page through level 3. up through level 5 is on the back, but so are things like a history of the character. on the front includes the traits, ideals, flaws, and bonds boxes, which aren't strictly necessary. if we want to compare how small a card to make something like, say the barb, I was able to fit everything on one character sheet, including descriptions of abilities and traits, equipment and attack rolls. just because something has a long description in the book doesn't mean it can't be broken down on the page. Rage, bonus action, adv on str rolls and saves, +2 damage on str atks, resistance to B, P and S dmg. 2 per long rest.
The only character sheets that aren't one page, for me, are spell casters, and that's just because I use a second page to remind myself what spells do, like Sacred flame: action, 120ft, dex save 1d8 damage. or sleep: 90ft, 1 min, 20 ft cube roll 5d8=hp affected, go from lowest hp to highest undead and immune to charm immune.
Thanks to the editable pdfs from reddit (which are way better than the wotc ones) I can just print up everything. There's also a great spell sorter that some dude named Ari made which makes it a cinch to create either a spellbook or spell cards.
An honest question, as a DM, did you know how everyone's characters worked 5 days after the official release of the phb for 4th edition? That being said, I actually do know pretty much what everyone is capable of as a class through level 5.
For 5e, I think one of the most contensious points has to do with , well, how basic the core rules are. I seee it as a definite pull back from the codified rule set of 4e: much is left up to the discression of the DM. For example: advantage. Charge is a feat in 5e, which seemed to be too heavy a price tag to our dm, so we have a houserule that if you decide to run in a straight line for 3 squares or more at a target, your attack action has advantage, simulating a charge.
Here's the thing, dude: if your DM has to houserule the game for it to be fun, it isn't a fun game. Your DM is a fun dude.
And there is zero difference between making a houserule in 4e and 5e; the exact same amount of discretion is left up to the DM (which is to say, all of it).
I'm curious, what is your party composed of? Where is your DM getting monster stats? I ran three sessions of 5e using the basic rules and did not have one encounter where every body was left standing and the other characters were not outshined by the cleric or wizard.
Party is level four currently, we have a rogue/fighter, battlemaster fighter, cleric/warlock, rogue, bard, and paladin. No wizard. Had a druid but they bounced out of the group. No one was interested in playing a wizard I guess, though we had one for a while at level 2. Maybe it was just the player, but her character didn't do too much to impress us.
Uh, I didn't say we needed charge in the game to have fun, just that it specifically says in the game that the DM decides when advantage is given outside the codified rules and that was one of the areas he added it to. The game functions fine without charge being a standard move... I really wish people would stop assuming that when I say something is in 5e that I'm quietly saying that it's missing in 4e. I'm not. The games are mutually exclusive. Does it matter that 4e has something? does it matter that pathfinder also has something?
I'm sure if I was playing 4e, that I would be having fun in a different way. I've played 4e, I've been a dm for 4e. I'm now playing 5e, and having fun as well. Each of our characters is very distinct, has abilities that help both in and out of combat, and feel useful. Some of the best anecdotes from our game involve the fighter, who's killed so many skeletons with his great axe that we all call the weapon bonecrusher.
So I'm making a fighter for a one shot tomorrow so I decided to actually look at battle master. You are absolutely correct, at level 3 you pick 3 maneuvers. However, you gain an additional 2 maneuvers @ levels 7, 10, and 15, for a total of 9. These all regenerate during a short rest, along with your second wind and action surge. You also get more ability increases than any other class, which also means you have access to more feats which are pretty strong in 5e.
There are 16 different maneuvers, and the maneuvers have dice associated with them. they start at d8s, then d10 @ level 10, and d12 at level 18.
The following allow you to take an attack while also doing something: Disarm, Distract (give advantage to the next attack) Goading, maneuvering (allow an ally to move) menacing (frighten target), push, and trip. You can also heal, parry, allow someone else to attack, increase ac during a move, riposte, and cleave with this ability.
I think that's pretty cool. Picking 3 of those is going to be tough, but being able to do them 4x per short rest is pretty boss.
The reason 4E melee classes take up more space on the character sheet than just hp, stats and equipment is that it jacks up the power level and options these classes have to the level of freaking spell casters for the first time in, like, FOREVER.
I will say the 5th edition fighter is probably the most versatile in terms of being a reasonably generic platform with a somewhat wide variety of subclasses. You can be a magic user, you can have maneuvers, or you can be straightforward and powerful.
All that said, 4e still had a more versatile fighter overall. The only real, true limitation on the 4e fighter was that, prior to essentials, you were more or less expected to always be able to be frontline.
I will say the 5th edition fighter is probably the most versatile in terms of being a reasonably generic platform with a somewhat wide variety of subclasses. You can be a magic user, you can have maneuvers, or you can be straightforward and powerful.
To clarify this statement, you could go through the 4e stuff and be like, "What defines a character with X power source" and turn each one into a 5th edition fighter subclass, and it would be the penultimate "Martial and..." class, which is neat! And flatly I will say that, in my mind, is a win for 5th edition.
The problems are that, 1- until 3rd level it still sucks, full stop, and 2- I just said, "the fact that this game is easy to houserule is a win." and...yeah, that's useful (because different players/DMs want different things!) but it doesn't say anything about the actual quality of the games design.
a level 1 figher can have +1 ac, +2 for ranged (arguably making her to hit +7) extra off hand damage, +2 damage sword and board, or can reroll 1s and 2s on a two handed or versatile weapon (arguably making a great sword the best 2 handed weapon, mechanically). also second wind. a wizard knows 6 spells and can cast them 3 times, assuming they take 1 short rest prior to a long rest. They also know 3 cantrips.
To me they seem comparable, but maybe that's because of how my DM narrates damage in our game. Each hit from the fighter is very entertaining in it's own way.
a level 1 figher can have +1 ac, +2 for ranged (arguably making her to hit +7) extra off hand damage, +2 damage sword and board, or can reroll 1s and 2s on a two handed or versatile weapon (arguably making a great sword the best 2 handed weapon, mechanically). also second wind. a wizard knows 6 spells and can cast them 3 times, assuming they take 1 short rest prior to a long rest. They also know 3 cantrips.
To me they seem comparable, but maybe that's because of how my DM narrates damage in our game. Each hit from the fighter is very entertaining in it's own way.
Two notes:
If you did an "Or" list for the wizard naming spells like you did options for the fighter the list wouldn't feel so comparable.
Oh! Also, and this is honestly a straight with for 5th edition wrt fighters.
In 4e you simply could not play a ranged fighter. Granted, there's amazingly good reason for that, and you could easily play a ranger and call yourself a fighter, and pick powers that felt more fighter than ranger, but if a player said, "I want to play a fighter who uses a bow." the answer was reflavoring, not "okay here ya go."
Which really, really pissed me off after the essentials stuff came out and they never gave us an archer slayer.
But those levels go by quickly, guys. Only 300 and 600 experience, respectively. So only your first half a dozen sessions or so will be housecat-lethal situations.
We reached level 3 by the second session, and while combat was certainly close, no one ever reached 0 hp in our games.
They don't get the full page, they get to pick three of the maneuvers.
Yes, but there are over a dozen options for them to choose from.
Of which they get a limited set compared to the fact your average 4E fighter has many of those options baked into the system (where they automatically favor him anyway) and gets a bunch of at-wills, encounters, dailies, paragon path perks, racial powers and epic destinies on top of them. Not to mention the inherent fighter classes marking ability, extra punishment attack mechanics and so on.
The 4E fighter is a swiss army knife with a veritable horde of different utility options.
The 5E fighter is a canopener that eventually gets to have a bottle opener at the bottom.
Again, (this is directed towards Tox as well) the PHB1 fighter with literally nothing else between 5E and 4E is much worse off by miles compared to how his spellcasting companions will scale against him. Adding spells onto a class is not a solution as well: It's admitting that there is a problem.
Also I want to point out, though I will again in a future argument, that most of these maneuvers are actually things any fighter in 4E could just do by default. So you had a lot of these as basic core parts of the system in 4E and then added things on top of it. So it's not even that exciting a proposition to be buying back things you used to get for free and could use very effectively right from the get go.
I don't want an echo chamber, I want to talk to PA peeps about their experiences playing 5e.
Then you're going to have to deal with negative impressions.
all that being said, I really thought this was the thread to talk about 5e and I guess I was just wrong. to enworld!
Which are not doing you any favors whatsoever in terms of encouraging anyone to engage you in good faith.
Mike Mearls had said that the DMG will include more systems for more tactical combat in the DMG. I hope they actually come through with that.
This remains to be seen and what I am waiting for.
What a shame they released all the books months apart so that the relevant things I need to judge the system (as I DM) fully aren't there. It's unbelievably frustrating to still be arguing conjecture on these issues when the game is ostensibly supposed to be "playable".
Yeah, if someone is not used to how lethal the early levels can be, I can definitely see how unfun the combat can be, espeically if they have experience with other systems.
It has nothing to do with being used to it and everything to do with me winning initiative and then rolling a critical hit and an 18 on two consecutive attacks. The poor amount of HP did the rest. It makes sense to me your experience is different here, because you've got a huge party of 7 characters from the sounds of things and that breaks the encounter design (at least from what I understand of it). While I had 4 and when two players are downed on round 1, that 50% reduction in ability to do literally anything meaningful is rather more apparent than the issues that might occur over 7 level 4 characters.
Again, not a problem if you crank up the starting level to 3 so that one dice roll isn't anywhere likely to be lethal.
For 5e, I think one of the most contensious points has to do with , well, how basic the core rules are. I seee it as a definite pull back from the codified rule set of 4e: much is left up to the discression of the DM. For example: advantage. Charge is a feat in 5e, which seemed to be too heavy a price tag to our dm, so we have a houserule that if you decide to run in a straight line for 3 squares or more at a target, your attack action has advantage, simulating a charge.
I've thought the exact same thing with charge and many other things. A lot of the fighters "maneuvers" are just basic things anyone could do in 4E whenever they felt like it. The fighter was able to do it and something cool on top of it. If you don't mind the expression, to me it's robbing Peter to pay Paul. There is no coherent need to make charge, a bullrush or similar fighter specific things except for how terrible the fighter actually is in comparison when you don't. When your only claim to fame is only being able to do things anyone could do in previous editions just about (but now can't), it doesn't really read that well to me.
An honest question, as a DM, did you know how everyone's characters worked 5 days after the official release of the phb for 4th edition? That being said, I actually do know pretty much what everyone is capable of as a class through level 5.
Yes, because once I understood one rule like "Close burst" I understood that same rule for literally every other character. Now I need to read a bunch of natural language passages for similar effects that work differently based entirely on the language used.
For 5e, I think one of the most contensious points has to do with , well, how basic the core rules are. I seee it as a definite pull back from the codified rule set of 4e: much is left up to the discression of the DM. For example: advantage. Charge is a feat in 5e, which seemed to be too heavy a price tag to our dm, so we have a houserule that if you decide to run in a straight line for 3 squares or more at a target, your attack action has advantage, simulating a charge.
Here's the thing, dude: if your DM has to houserule the game for it to be fun, it isn't a fun game. Your DM is a fun dude.
And there is zero difference between making a houserule in 4e and 5e; the exact same amount of discretion is left up to the DM (which is to say, all of it).
I'm curious, what is your party composed of? Where is your DM getting monster stats? I ran three sessions of 5e using the basic rules and did not have one encounter where every body was left standing and the other characters were not outshined by the cleric or wizard.
Yeah I fully agree with you on houseruling. Most importantly, I want to houserule things to suit minor clarifications or similar. I don't want to spend hours fixing things I dislike and then having basically an entirely different game, because "entirely different game" means to me "Why not just use something that does what I want?". This has been my criticism of wizards "Module" design from the start.
For example I dislike:
Disarming (it's the martial equivalent of a save or suck spell)
Charging being a feat
Levels 1-2 being worthless
Several spells and ambiguous effects (The discussed illusion thing)
Questionable monster design (I can't figure out how a dragon avoids being made useless by save or suck spells)
And so on. As I said, maybe the DMG has a really good solution to this and maybe it has fantastic ideas on designing good, close encounters like I could get from 4E (From level 1 btw). But again as I've mentioned, they didn't bother releasing it at the same time as the PHB for me to see.
The irony is that I only kind of care about what 5E does because I have players who have asked me if I would run a game, but I'm not investing a single thing this time until I've seen enough to convince me it will be worth the initial investment. And the PHB has fallen short by miles at that.
Oh! Also, and this is honestly a straight with for 5th edition wrt fighters.
In 4e you simply could not play a ranged fighter. Granted, there's amazingly good reason for that, and you could easily play a ranger and call yourself a fighter, and pick powers that felt more fighter than ranger, but if a player said, "I want to play a fighter who uses a bow." the answer was reflavoring, not "okay here ya go."
Which really, really pissed me off after the essentials stuff came out and they never gave us an archer slayer.
Aegeri I'm asking you to run a 4e game and you won't do that either
Yeah, that's because I no longer have my books (couldn't ship them from NZ to Australia ) and don't have any of the digital tools or similar anymore.
I'm also majorly burned on Wizards for the most part and already have 13th Age, which I would like to note when I bought also gave me a perfectly free PDF of the core book for absolutely nothing extra on top.
Yes, because once I understood one rule like "Close burst" I understood that same rule for literally every other character. Now I need to read a bunch of natural language passages for similar effects that work differently based entirely on the language used.
This is nowhere near as simple
All of the spells are broken down into components, range, duration, and effects.
You don't like fifth edition as it stands now. You have very good reasons for not liking 5th edition. So I'm just going to ask, what are you looking to get out of a conversation about 5th edition?
It just seems like 4th edition suited you better. I'm sorry you don't have your books anymore. That sucks. But you don't have to play 5th edition if you don't want to.
It's just... there are basically 6 versions of DnD out there, and I'm sure everyone has a flavor that's their favorite. Why can't 5e just stand on it's own for people?
Oh! Also, and this is honestly a straight with for 5th edition wrt fighters.
In 4e you simply could not play a ranged fighter. Granted, there's amazingly good reason for that, and you could easily play a ranger and call yourself a fighter, and pick powers that felt more fighter than ranger, but if a player said, "I want to play a fighter who uses a bow." the answer was reflavoring, not "okay here ya go."
Which really, really pissed me off after the essentials stuff came out and they never gave us an archer slayer.
The ranged Warlord is pretty great, at least!
As is the ranged ranger! And the ranged rogue!
Fighters are literally the only martial class that cannot at all be ranged.
@Aegeri make no mistake I am a full-on 4e fan. I acknowledge its failings, but love it anyway, and as much a fan of the D&D brand as I am, 4e is the game I've always wanted, and would have loved and played it no matter what company had made it.
Oh! Also, and this is honestly a straight with for 5th edition wrt fighters.
In 4e you simply could not play a ranged fighter. Granted, there's amazingly good reason for that, and you could easily play a ranger and call yourself a fighter, and pick powers that felt more fighter than ranger, but if a player said, "I want to play a fighter who uses a bow." the answer was reflavoring, not "okay here ya go."
Which really, really pissed me off after the essentials stuff came out and they never gave us an archer slayer.
The ranged Warlord is pretty great, at least!
As is the ranged ranger! And the ranged rogue!
Fighters are literally the only martial class that cannot at all be ranged.
Did 4e have any ranged Defenders? Swordmages could have been argued for having a ranged-ish mark, but they were still mainly melee fighters.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
What you like doesn't determine the validity of your opinions.
4E has a ton of problems, but everyone is so sick of me talking about them that I am sure I would be chased out with the pitchforks and torches if I ever say the words "Epic Tier" ever again.
Oh! Also, and this is honestly a straight with for 5th edition wrt fighters.
In 4e you simply could not play a ranged fighter. Granted, there's amazingly good reason for that, and you could easily play a ranger and call yourself a fighter, and pick powers that felt more fighter than ranger, but if a player said, "I want to play a fighter who uses a bow." the answer was reflavoring, not "okay here ya go."
Which really, really pissed me off after the essentials stuff came out and they never gave us an archer slayer.
The ranged Warlord is pretty great, at least!
As is the ranged ranger! And the ranged rogue!
Fighters are literally the only martial class that cannot at all be ranged.
Did 4e have any ranged Defenders? Swordmages could have been argued for having a ranged-ish mark, but they were still mainly melee fighters.
No, it didn't, and until Essentials came out I didn't have a problem with no ranged fighters. But Slayers really could have had a ranged weapon option, and I legitimately consider that a failing.
What you like doesn't determine the validity of your opinions.
4E has a ton of problems, but everyone is so sick of me talking about them that I am sure I would be chased out with the pitchforks and torches if I ever say the words "Epic Tier" ever again.
I think every D&D edition kind of fell apart at the highest levels, mainly because they didn't devote as much playtesting and development time to the high-end tier stuff. And honestly, who can blame them for that? Most people aren't going to get to it.
What you like doesn't determine the validity of your opinions.
4E has a ton of problems, but everyone is so sick of me talking about them that I am sure I would be chased out with the pitchforks and torches if I ever say the words "Epic Tier" ever again.
I think every D&D edition kind of fell apart at the highest levels, mainly because they didn't devote as much playtesting and development time to the high-end tier stuff. And honestly, who can blame them for that? Most people aren't going to get to it.
Actually, that's the problem. Fourth is the first ever edition that actually made a functional [redacted] after MM3 fixed some important maths related things. They then completely dropped the ball by pretending [redacted] didn't exist anymore and giving utterly no support to make [redacted] easy to play once they made it playable.
OR, gets a full page of tactics at level 3, or can cast spells and summon a blade, but please, keep reducing.
you needed a page for your abilities in 4e, even the at wills, because they did more than just damage most of the time.
Every class in 4e, at lower levels, can be played off a single standard sized note card, front and back, that contains -everything- you need to know about that character. That means all of your powers, all of your class features, any feats, skill bonuses, defenses, items, everything that makes it a full character. Not everything has to be expressed on a M:TG sized card for a single ability, people just do it that way because it looks good and makes it super easy for everyone at the table to see what they're capable of doing in any given situation at a glance.
Which is one of the main things that I disliked about 3.x and such, and what I'm seeing that I'll also dislike about 5e - I can't tell from a quick look what a character is capable of doing, since I've got to read through every spell or maneuver they can perform and then fill in any "holes" that might come up from a spell's wording.
As a DM, knowing what my characters are capable of doing when they are going all out in a session means that I can provide them with appropriate challenges or an easy ride to make them feel like heroes. Having to parse through a paragraph of a spell for "summon a simple mundane tool" in 20x the amount of words is not useful to me. Just tell me wtf it does, and then role play it however you want to.
Every character in the 5e starter set is one page through level 3. up through level 5 is on the back, but so are things like a history of the character. on the front includes the traits, ideals, flaws, and bonds boxes, which aren't strictly necessary. if we want to compare how small a card to make something like, say the barb, I was able to fit everything on one character sheet, including descriptions of abilities and traits, equipment and attack rolls. just because something has a long description in the book doesn't mean it can't be broken down on the page. Rage, bonus action, adv on str rolls and saves, +2 damage on str atks, resistance to B, P and S dmg. 2 per long rest.
The only character sheets that aren't one page, for me, are spell casters, and that's just because I use a second page to remind myself what spells do, like Sacred flame: action, 120ft, dex save 1d8 damage. or sleep: 90ft, 1 min, 20 ft cube roll 5d8=hp affected, go from lowest hp to highest undead and immune to charm immune.
Thanks to the editable pdfs from reddit (which are way better than the wotc ones) I can just print up everything. There's also a great spell sorter that some dude named Ari made which makes it a cinch to create either a spellbook or spell cards.
An honest question, as a DM, did you know how everyone's characters worked 5 days after the official release of the phb for 4th edition? That being said, I actually do know pretty much what everyone is capable of as a class through level 5.
I think Aegeri said it best - once you learn the basic rules of what the keywords meant and so forth, which you needed to do to run your monsters anyways, you can look at a character sheet from a 4e character and immediately know what they are capable of. Someone that has an encounter power that's a close blast 5 means they've got a big aoe once every fight, so plan accordingly. Minions to make them feel incredible for picking that and wiping out half of the enemies in one go, or if you want to stick it to them to take them down a notch after the minions explode, throw a bigger dude at them with a sack of HP. Having -all- of the same rules for -every- character makes it simple and quick to glance over a sheet of attack powers, see the keywords, and then know what the character can handle to the point of building an encounter that's challenging but not impossible for them to beat, while also making them feel good for making the choices they did with their character.
My first experience with 4e was about a week after it released, but I hadn't been able to get my set of books for it until the day before my group played our first session. We knew the system in and out completely by the end of the night, and I was already able to give my players a fun time that wasn't just a walk in the park or a vicious crucible of death due to over or under tuning the baddies. The only times that we ever had an issue was when a power wasn't specific enough or was worded oddly (which later each one that we had an issue with got some errata to fix a hole or clarify things).
I relish the fact that the mechanics were divorced so completely from the RP aspects that it let my players be as badass as they wanted, and things were still easy as pie on my side of the map to make it fun and challenging and rewarding without spending a god damn week building my monsters and praying that the wizard was going to miss the session because he had a god damn fireball with my name on it. I loved 3.x because it the edition that got my friends in role playing games, but I don't look back at all the time I spent trying to craft a story and challenge them with appropriately difficult encounters with fondness at all.
And on the subject of custom character sheets, you'll get no arguments from me about WotC's offerings being horrible. I designed my group's current character sheet, and they all love it because all of the info for them is right there.
What you like doesn't determine the validity of your opinions.
4E has a ton of problems, but everyone is so sick of me talking about them that I am sure I would be chased out with the pitchforks and torches if I ever say the words "Epic Tier" ever again.
I think every D&D edition kind of fell apart at the highest levels, mainly because they didn't devote as much playtesting and development time to the high-end tier stuff. And honestly, who can blame them for that? Most people aren't going to get to it.
Actually, that's the problem. Fourth is the first ever edition that actually made a functional [redacted] after MM3 fixed some important maths related things. They then completely dropped the ball by pretending [redacted] didn't exist anymore and giving utterly no support to make [redacted] easy to play once they made it playable.
If [redacted]=[epic] then yes, I do recall them promising to provide more Epic Tier support and then utterly failing to come through on that. Otherwise... elaborate, please?
Just to clarify something guys, as the spell system is different to 4e.
Say with the pregenerated cleric character, it says that he has two spell slots that can be used to cast your prepared spells.
Then below that it says you can prepare four first level cleric spells, and that they always have Bless and Cure Wounds prepared.
Do you stock spells away for example, in that you pick two spells of your six and get a charge of each of those? For example say the cleric has Bless and Cure Wounds stocked away, and the other four are unavailable to me until I choose to replace Bless or Cure Wounds with one of them. I use Cure Wounds on a party member, leaving me with Bless still available and I cannot use Cure Wounds again until I have a short rest at which point I can restock it.
Or do you have two spells available that can be any of the six, but after casting two spell I'm drained until I next have a rest and they are restored? In this example I have a pool of six spells to choose from, and can cast any combination of them until I've cast two, and which point my character is out of options other than cantrips until he rests.
It is that last one, or at least, that is how I read the rules.
You have prepared spells and then spell slots that you can expend on any of your prepared spells, and you can use any prepared spell as many times as you have slots to cast it.
discrider is correct. This is actually a new mechanic. In previous editions, most/all spell casters had to prepare specific spells into each specific slot.
I was somewhat confused, because having played Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter you had to stock spells, but the rules in new version were suggesting casting from a pool of spells and I was having trouble reconciling them.
Thanks again!
For what it's worth, I found this website that allows you to print out custom lists of spell, which seems much easier a way to deal with it than having everyone having to dig out their handbooks whenever they want to check what spells do.
discrider is correct. This is actually a new mechanic. In previous editions, most/all spell casters had to prepare specific spells into each specific slot.
I recall that Sorcerers, while only getting a small selection of spells when they leveled up (instead of choosing them every day) could choose to cast any of their learned spells any number of times up to their slot allowance.
I think, after finally having taken the time to read through @belligerent and @Aegeri picking nits, that what bothers me the most is that neither of you have pointed out what shitty game design "sloped lethality" (for lack of a better term) is. This is, at the core thesis, a failing of D&D that has only once in its lifetime been correctly addressed (in 4e). Making the first couple of levels not Russian roulette was the first thing everyone noticed and loved about 4e. How anyone would perceive walking back to the old "blink near a housecat and you're dead" was a good design decision boggles the mind. Is it nostalgic? Certainly. Does it make me want to actually play a 5e campaign as an enlightened housecat? Yes. But does it make a single iota of sense? No.
This is why I don't play D&D much any more. Not only does it continually pile in new mechanical failures, it fails to address some of its most rudimentary (and easily fixed!) failures. In the one instance they did so, a vocal minority flipped out and Wizards caved. Those aren't a) the people I want to game with, b) the people I want to buy games from, and c) any way to demonstrate you've got a vision for where your product is going.
Also, General Heretofore Bonkers found enlightenment after viciously murdering his 400th would-be adventurer. "After all," Bonkers mused to himself, "If I can kill these hopefuls so easily, why couldn't I be an adventurer myself?" Thus began the 9..7..3 epic labors of Bonkers the Cat and his erstwhile companions.
I think, after finally having taken the time to read through @belligerent and @Aegeri picking nits, that what bothers me the most is that neither of you have pointed out what shitty game design "sloped lethality" (for lack of a better term) is. This is, at the core thesis, a failing of D&D that has only once in its lifetime been correctly addressed (in 4e). Making the first couple of levels not Russian roulette was the first thing everyone noticed and loved about 4e. How anyone would perceive walking back to the old "blink near a housecat and you're dead" was a good design decision boggles the mind. Is it nostalgic? Certainly. Does it make me want to actually play a 5e campaign as an enlightened housecat? Yes. But does it make a single iota of sense? No.
This is why I don't play D&D much any more. Not only does it continually pile in new mechanical failures, it fails to address some of its most rudimentary (and easily fixed!) failures. In the one instance they did so, a vocal minority flipped out and Wizards caved. Those aren't a) the people I want to game with, b) the people I want to buy games from, and c) any way to demonstrate you've got a vision for where your product is going.
While largely I agree with you, I think it may be a bit unfair to declare that they've done nothing to address it right now. We know the DMG will include lots of optional rules so that DMs can tweak the game to suit the playstyle of their table. So it's very likely they'll include a few optional rules to help reduce the lethality of the game overall.
Of course the obvious question is why not make lower lethality the default. You said it yourself, nostalgia. At it's core, 5th edition was designed to be what is the most representative of the game as a whole. This includes things that were not necessarily strong suits of the game in previous editions. I consider that to be a failure in game design, but it's most fair to judge it for what it is, not what we think it ought to be.
I mean really something as simple as "add con score instead of con mod to starting hit points" would go a long way to reducing the lethality of the early levels, and while that would be a full on house-rule right now, there's a fair chance it could be included as an optional rule in the DMG.
And optional rules listed in the DMG are something I think it's fair to distinguish from a straight-up house rule.
I think, after finally having taken the time to read through @belligerent and @Aegeri picking nits, that what bothers me the most is that neither of you have pointed out what shitty game design "sloped lethality" (for lack of a better term) is. This is, at the core thesis, a failing of D&D that has only once in its lifetime been correctly addressed (in 4e). Making the first couple of levels not Russian roulette was the first thing everyone noticed and loved about 4e. How anyone would perceive walking back to the old "blink near a housecat and you're dead" was a good design decision boggles the mind. Is it nostalgic? Certainly. Does it make me want to actually play a 5e campaign as an enlightened housecat? Yes. But does it make a single iota of sense? No.
This is why I don't play D&D much any more. Not only does it continually pile in new mechanical failures, it fails to address some of its most rudimentary (and easily fixed!) failures. In the one instance they did so, a vocal minority flipped out and Wizards caved. Those aren't a) the people I want to game with, b) the people I want to buy games from, and c) any way to demonstrate you've got a vision for where your product is going.
While largely I agree with you, I think it may be a bit unfair to declare that they've done nothing to address it right now. We know the DMG will include lots of optional rules so that DMs can tweak the game to suit the playstyle of their table. So it's very likely they'll include a few optional rules to help reduce the lethality of the game overall.
Of course the obvious question is why not make lower lethality the default. You said it yourself, nostalgia. At it's core, 5th edition was designed to be what is the most representative of the game as a whole. This includes things that were not necessarily strong suits of the game in previous editions. I consider that to be a failure in game design, but it's most fair to judge it for what it is, not what we think it ought to be.
I mean really something as simple as "add con score instead of con mod to starting hit points" would go a long way to reducing the lethality of the early levels, and while that would be a full on house-rule right now, there's a fair chance it could be included as an optional rule in the DMG.
And optional rules listed in the DMG are something I think it's fair to distinguish from a straight-up house rule.
A clown car of optional mechanics does not make a good game. Particularly if one of the "optional mechanics" is the only way to address a serious problem.
"Nostalgia" should never be used as an excuse for equipping a game with bad mechanics. If you want nostalgia mechanics put them in a sidebar somewhere and let them be for the people who want to houserule them in.
The problem with allowing nostalgia to define the base mechanics of a new edition is that it imposes that nostalgia on new players without them really having any idea that there are other options. More experienced players can choose to alter those mechanics pretty easily (though they shouldn't really be required to), but a group of new players is going to play the game straight out of the box as best they can understand it.
This kind of nostalgic design also becomes recursive, where each new generation of players associates those mechanics with something fundamental to the gaming experience and we end up with terrible things being ported from one version of the game to the next out of sheer inertia.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Also, what the hell kind of housecat do D&D folk breed? Or is there some secret potion you take when you become an adventurer that reduces your capabilities to those of an infant deliberately, just because babies learn faster, or something?
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The deadly, roving warband of feral housecats is a weird artifact of 3rd ed, where any stated attack would deal a minimum of 1 damage.
This would mean that cats, with their 1d3-"a whole bunch" still dealt one damage on a hit. Your average commoner or wizard had about 4-5 HP.
The cat's tiny size, good dex and weapon finesse (claws) meant that it actually had a pretty respectable to-hit value for what it was, while most unarmored people had an AC of like, 10-12. On the flipside, most commoners/wizards had no size bonuses to armor class, an ok dex/strength and no real attack bonus, but had to try to hit a cat's rather good AC (good dex+tiny size). We're basically looking at the cat hitting on a 6-8 while a farmer needing a 12-14.
This ended up with the awkward scenarios where, by the rules, if you pitted a Mittens and Farmer John in the Thunderdome, John would ineptly flail at Mittens while the cat would slowly sever the man's arteries with surprising precision. Note that John might still end up beating poor Mittens by virtue that the cat has, like, 2 HP.
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I can totally see how people wouldn't like it that DMs basically have to fudge the first two levels when things go even moderately well for the NPCs. or moderately poorly for the players. And I also understand the idea that level one is a 'waste' because of how few abilities that players have. And I don't think starting at level 3 is an appropriate answer either.
Unfortunately--I guess-- none of that happened to me. I don't mind it when players die, either my own or others, but it just hasn't happened yet in 5e to me. My games tend to be on the more humorous side, so maybe that helps me.
and honestly, I'm not really concerned about what happens at level 15 or 20, because I'm no where near that level of play. From what I've seen from the XP chart, the game strives to maintain the "sweet spot" of character level by making people feel moderately powerful without going off the rails. This is just me speaking, but I've never understood a max level game.
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If Wizards has any presence, they'll probably have local DMs doing demo tables.
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We reached level 3 by the second session, and while combat was certainly close, no one ever reached 0 hp in our games.
Yes, but there are over a dozen options for them to choose from.
I don't want an echo chamber, I want to talk to PA peeps about their experiences playing 5e. Mike Mearls had said that the DMG will include more systems for more tactical combat in the DMG. I hope they actually come through with that.
Yeah, if someone is not used to how lethal the early levels can be, I can definitely see how unfun the combat can be, espeically if they have experience with other systems.
For 5e, I think one of the most contensious points has to do with , well, how basic the core rules are. I seee it as a definite pull back from the codified rule set of 4e: much is left up to the discression of the DM. For example: advantage. Charge is a feat in 5e, which seemed to be too heavy a price tag to our dm, so we have a houserule that if you decide to run in a straight line for 3 squares or more at a target, your attack action has advantage, simulating a charge.
Also, short rests can be a sticky area, too.
Every character in the 5e starter set is one page through level 3. up through level 5 is on the back, but so are things like a history of the character. on the front includes the traits, ideals, flaws, and bonds boxes, which aren't strictly necessary. if we want to compare how small a card to make something like, say the barb, I was able to fit everything on one character sheet, including descriptions of abilities and traits, equipment and attack rolls. just because something has a long description in the book doesn't mean it can't be broken down on the page. Rage, bonus action, adv on str rolls and saves, +2 damage on str atks, resistance to B, P and S dmg. 2 per long rest.
The only character sheets that aren't one page, for me, are spell casters, and that's just because I use a second page to remind myself what spells do, like Sacred flame: action, 120ft, dex save 1d8 damage. or sleep: 90ft, 1 min, 20 ft cube roll 5d8=hp affected, go from lowest hp to highest undead and immune to charm immune.
Thanks to the editable pdfs from reddit (which are way better than the wotc ones) I can just print up everything. There's also a great spell sorter that some dude named Ari made which makes it a cinch to create either a spellbook or spell cards.
An honest question, as a DM, did you know how everyone's characters worked 5 days after the official release of the phb for 4th edition? That being said, I actually do know pretty much what everyone is capable of as a class through level 5.
And there is zero difference between making a houserule in 4e and 5e; the exact same amount of discretion is left up to the DM (which is to say, all of it).
I'm curious, what is your party composed of? Where is your DM getting monster stats? I ran three sessions of 5e using the basic rules and did not have one encounter where every body was left standing and the other characters were not outshined by the cleric or wizard.
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Uh, I didn't say we needed charge in the game to have fun, just that it specifically says in the game that the DM decides when advantage is given outside the codified rules and that was one of the areas he added it to. The game functions fine without charge being a standard move... I really wish people would stop assuming that when I say something is in 5e that I'm quietly saying that it's missing in 4e. I'm not. The games are mutually exclusive. Does it matter that 4e has something? does it matter that pathfinder also has something?
I'm sure if I was playing 4e, that I would be having fun in a different way. I've played 4e, I've been a dm for 4e. I'm now playing 5e, and having fun as well. Each of our characters is very distinct, has abilities that help both in and out of combat, and feel useful. Some of the best anecdotes from our game involve the fighter, who's killed so many skeletons with his great axe that we all call the weapon bonecrusher.
There are 16 different maneuvers, and the maneuvers have dice associated with them. they start at d8s, then d10 @ level 10, and d12 at level 18.
The following allow you to take an attack while also doing something: Disarm, Distract (give advantage to the next attack) Goading, maneuvering (allow an ally to move) menacing (frighten target), push, and trip. You can also heal, parry, allow someone else to attack, increase ac during a move, riposte, and cleave with this ability.
I think that's pretty cool. Picking 3 of those is going to be tough, but being able to do them 4x per short rest is pretty boss.
All that said, 4e still had a more versatile fighter overall. The only real, true limitation on the 4e fighter was that, prior to essentials, you were more or less expected to always be able to be frontline.
To clarify this statement, you could go through the 4e stuff and be like, "What defines a character with X power source" and turn each one into a 5th edition fighter subclass, and it would be the penultimate "Martial and..." class, which is neat! And flatly I will say that, in my mind, is a win for 5th edition.
The problems are that, 1- until 3rd level it still sucks, full stop, and 2- I just said, "the fact that this game is easy to houserule is a win." and...yeah, that's useful (because different players/DMs want different things!) but it doesn't say anything about the actual quality of the games design.
To me they seem comparable, but maybe that's because of how my DM narrates damage in our game. Each hit from the fighter is very entertaining in it's own way.
Two notes:
If you did an "Or" list for the wizard naming spells like you did options for the fighter the list wouldn't feel so comparable.
and
Now do level 20.
In 4e you simply could not play a ranged fighter. Granted, there's amazingly good reason for that, and you could easily play a ranger and call yourself a fighter, and pick powers that felt more fighter than ranger, but if a player said, "I want to play a fighter who uses a bow." the answer was reflavoring, not "okay here ya go."
Which really, really pissed me off after the essentials stuff came out and they never gave us an archer slayer.
Of which they get a limited set compared to the fact your average 4E fighter has many of those options baked into the system (where they automatically favor him anyway) and gets a bunch of at-wills, encounters, dailies, paragon path perks, racial powers and epic destinies on top of them. Not to mention the inherent fighter classes marking ability, extra punishment attack mechanics and so on.
The 4E fighter is a swiss army knife with a veritable horde of different utility options.
The 5E fighter is a canopener that eventually gets to have a bottle opener at the bottom.
Again, (this is directed towards Tox as well) the PHB1 fighter with literally nothing else between 5E and 4E is much worse off by miles compared to how his spellcasting companions will scale against him. Adding spells onto a class is not a solution as well: It's admitting that there is a problem.
Also I want to point out, though I will again in a future argument, that most of these maneuvers are actually things any fighter in 4E could just do by default. So you had a lot of these as basic core parts of the system in 4E and then added things on top of it. So it's not even that exciting a proposition to be buying back things you used to get for free and could use very effectively right from the get go.
Then you're going to have to deal with negative impressions.
And not post things like this:
Which are not doing you any favors whatsoever in terms of encouraging anyone to engage you in good faith.
This remains to be seen and what I am waiting for.
What a shame they released all the books months apart so that the relevant things I need to judge the system (as I DM) fully aren't there. It's unbelievably frustrating to still be arguing conjecture on these issues when the game is ostensibly supposed to be "playable".
It has nothing to do with being used to it and everything to do with me winning initiative and then rolling a critical hit and an 18 on two consecutive attacks. The poor amount of HP did the rest. It makes sense to me your experience is different here, because you've got a huge party of 7 characters from the sounds of things and that breaks the encounter design (at least from what I understand of it). While I had 4 and when two players are downed on round 1, that 50% reduction in ability to do literally anything meaningful is rather more apparent than the issues that might occur over 7 level 4 characters.
Again, not a problem if you crank up the starting level to 3 so that one dice roll isn't anywhere likely to be lethal.
I've thought the exact same thing with charge and many other things. A lot of the fighters "maneuvers" are just basic things anyone could do in 4E whenever they felt like it. The fighter was able to do it and something cool on top of it. If you don't mind the expression, to me it's robbing Peter to pay Paul. There is no coherent need to make charge, a bullrush or similar fighter specific things except for how terrible the fighter actually is in comparison when you don't. When your only claim to fame is only being able to do things anyone could do in previous editions just about (but now can't), it doesn't really read that well to me.
Yes, because once I understood one rule like "Close burst" I understood that same rule for literally every other character. Now I need to read a bunch of natural language passages for similar effects that work differently based entirely on the language used.
This is nowhere near as simple.
Yeah I fully agree with you on houseruling. Most importantly, I want to houserule things to suit minor clarifications or similar. I don't want to spend hours fixing things I dislike and then having basically an entirely different game, because "entirely different game" means to me "Why not just use something that does what I want?". This has been my criticism of wizards "Module" design from the start.
For example I dislike:
Disarming (it's the martial equivalent of a save or suck spell)
Charging being a feat
Levels 1-2 being worthless
Several spells and ambiguous effects (The discussed illusion thing)
Questionable monster design (I can't figure out how a dragon avoids being made useless by save or suck spells)
And so on. As I said, maybe the DMG has a really good solution to this and maybe it has fantastic ideas on designing good, close encounters like I could get from 4E (From level 1 btw). But again as I've mentioned, they didn't bother releasing it at the same time as the PHB for me to see.
The irony is that I only kind of care about what 5E does because I have players who have asked me if I would run a game, but I'm not investing a single thing this time until I've seen enough to convince me it will be worth the initial investment. And the PHB has fallen short by miles at that.
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The ranged Warlord is pretty great, at least!
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Yeah, that's because I no longer have my books (couldn't ship them from NZ to Australia
I'm also majorly burned on Wizards for the most part and already have 13th Age, which I would like to note when I bought also gave me a perfectly free PDF of the core book for absolutely nothing extra on top.
All of the spells are broken down into components, range, duration, and effects.
You don't like fifth edition as it stands now. You have very good reasons for not liking 5th edition. So I'm just going to ask, what are you looking to get out of a conversation about 5th edition?
It just seems like 4th edition suited you better. I'm sorry you don't have your books anymore. That sucks. But you don't have to play 5th edition if you don't want to.
It's just... there are basically 6 versions of DnD out there, and I'm sure everyone has a flavor that's their favorite. Why can't 5e just stand on it's own for people?
As is the ranged ranger! And the ranged rogue!
Fighters are literally the only martial class that cannot at all be ranged.
@Aegeri make no mistake I am a full-on 4e fan. I acknowledge its failings, but love it anyway, and as much a fan of the D&D brand as I am, 4e is the game I've always wanted, and would have loved and played it no matter what company had made it.
Did 4e have any ranged Defenders? Swordmages could have been argued for having a ranged-ish mark, but they were still mainly melee fighters.
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4E has a ton of problems, but everyone is so sick of me talking about them that I am sure I would be chased out with the pitchforks and torches if I ever say the words "Epic Tier" ever again.
No, it didn't, and until Essentials came out I didn't have a problem with no ranged fighters. But Slayers really could have had a ranged weapon option, and I legitimately consider that a failing.
I think every D&D edition kind of fell apart at the highest levels, mainly because they didn't devote as much playtesting and development time to the high-end tier stuff. And honestly, who can blame them for that? Most people aren't going to get to it.
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Actually, that's the problem. Fourth is the first ever edition that actually made a functional [redacted] after MM3 fixed some important maths related things. They then completely dropped the ball by pretending [redacted] didn't exist anymore and giving utterly no support to make [redacted] easy to play once they made it playable.
I think Aegeri said it best - once you learn the basic rules of what the keywords meant and so forth, which you needed to do to run your monsters anyways, you can look at a character sheet from a 4e character and immediately know what they are capable of. Someone that has an encounter power that's a close blast 5 means they've got a big aoe once every fight, so plan accordingly. Minions to make them feel incredible for picking that and wiping out half of the enemies in one go, or if you want to stick it to them to take them down a notch after the minions explode, throw a bigger dude at them with a sack of HP. Having -all- of the same rules for -every- character makes it simple and quick to glance over a sheet of attack powers, see the keywords, and then know what the character can handle to the point of building an encounter that's challenging but not impossible for them to beat, while also making them feel good for making the choices they did with their character.
My first experience with 4e was about a week after it released, but I hadn't been able to get my set of books for it until the day before my group played our first session. We knew the system in and out completely by the end of the night, and I was already able to give my players a fun time that wasn't just a walk in the park or a vicious crucible of death due to over or under tuning the baddies. The only times that we ever had an issue was when a power wasn't specific enough or was worded oddly (which later each one that we had an issue with got some errata to fix a hole or clarify things).
I relish the fact that the mechanics were divorced so completely from the RP aspects that it let my players be as badass as they wanted, and things were still easy as pie on my side of the map to make it fun and challenging and rewarding without spending a god damn week building my monsters and praying that the wizard was going to miss the session because he had a god damn fireball with my name on it. I loved 3.x because it the edition that got my friends in role playing games, but I don't look back at all the time I spent trying to craft a story and challenge them with appropriately difficult encounters with fondness at all.
And on the subject of custom character sheets, you'll get no arguments from me about WotC's offerings being horrible. I designed my group's current character sheet, and they all love it because all of the info for them is right there.
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If [redacted]=[epic] then yes, I do recall them promising to provide more Epic Tier support and then utterly failing to come through on that. Otherwise... elaborate, please?
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Say with the pregenerated cleric character, it says that he has two spell slots that can be used to cast your prepared spells.
Then below that it says you can prepare four first level cleric spells, and that they always have Bless and Cure Wounds prepared.
Do you stock spells away for example, in that you pick two spells of your six and get a charge of each of those? For example say the cleric has Bless and Cure Wounds stocked away, and the other four are unavailable to me until I choose to replace Bless or Cure Wounds with one of them. I use Cure Wounds on a party member, leaving me with Bless still available and I cannot use Cure Wounds again until I have a short rest at which point I can restock it.
Or do you have two spells available that can be any of the six, but after casting two spell I'm drained until I next have a rest and they are restored? In this example I have a pool of six spells to choose from, and can cast any combination of them until I've cast two, and which point my character is out of options other than cantrips until he rests.
You have prepared spells and then spell slots that you can expend on any of your prepared spells, and you can use any prepared spell as many times as you have slots to cast it.
I was somewhat confused, because having played Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter you had to stock spells, but the rules in new version were suggesting casting from a pool of spells and I was having trouble reconciling them.
Thanks again!
For what it's worth, I found this website that allows you to print out custom lists of spell, which seems much easier a way to deal with it than having everyone having to dig out their handbooks whenever they want to check what spells do.
I recall that Sorcerers, while only getting a small selection of spells when they leveled up (instead of choosing them every day) could choose to cast any of their learned spells any number of times up to their slot allowance.
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This is why I don't play D&D much any more. Not only does it continually pile in new mechanical failures, it fails to address some of its most rudimentary (and easily fixed!) failures. In the one instance they did so, a vocal minority flipped out and Wizards caved. Those aren't a) the people I want to game with, b) the people I want to buy games from, and c) any way to demonstrate you've got a vision for where your product is going.
While largely I agree with you, I think it may be a bit unfair to declare that they've done nothing to address it right now. We know the DMG will include lots of optional rules so that DMs can tweak the game to suit the playstyle of their table. So it's very likely they'll include a few optional rules to help reduce the lethality of the game overall.
Of course the obvious question is why not make lower lethality the default. You said it yourself, nostalgia. At it's core, 5th edition was designed to be what is the most representative of the game as a whole. This includes things that were not necessarily strong suits of the game in previous editions. I consider that to be a failure in game design, but it's most fair to judge it for what it is, not what we think it ought to be.
I mean really something as simple as "add con score instead of con mod to starting hit points" would go a long way to reducing the lethality of the early levels, and while that would be a full on house-rule right now, there's a fair chance it could be included as an optional rule in the DMG.
And optional rules listed in the DMG are something I think it's fair to distinguish from a straight-up house rule.
"Nostalgia" should never be used as an excuse for equipping a game with bad mechanics. If you want nostalgia mechanics put them in a sidebar somewhere and let them be for the people who want to houserule them in.
This kind of nostalgic design also becomes recursive, where each new generation of players associates those mechanics with something fundamental to the gaming experience and we end up with terrible things being ported from one version of the game to the next out of sheer inertia.
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This would mean that cats, with their 1d3-"a whole bunch" still dealt one damage on a hit. Your average commoner or wizard had about 4-5 HP.
The cat's tiny size, good dex and weapon finesse (claws) meant that it actually had a pretty respectable to-hit value for what it was, while most unarmored people had an AC of like, 10-12. On the flipside, most commoners/wizards had no size bonuses to armor class, an ok dex/strength and no real attack bonus, but had to try to hit a cat's rather good AC (good dex+tiny size). We're basically looking at the cat hitting on a 6-8 while a farmer needing a 12-14.
This ended up with the awkward scenarios where, by the rules, if you pitted a Mittens and Farmer John in the Thunderdome, John would ineptly flail at Mittens while the cat would slowly sever the man's arteries with surprising precision. Note that John might still end up beating poor Mittens by virtue that the cat has, like, 2 HP.
Unfortunately--I guess-- none of that happened to me. I don't mind it when players die, either my own or others, but it just hasn't happened yet in 5e to me. My games tend to be on the more humorous side, so maybe that helps me.
and honestly, I'm not really concerned about what happens at level 15 or 20, because I'm no where near that level of play. From what I've seen from the XP chart, the game strives to maintain the "sweet spot" of character level by making people feel moderately powerful without going off the rails. This is just me speaking, but I've never understood a max level game.