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I enjoyed bg3, but DND 5e is not a system I enjoy nor want more of. It's surprisingly shallow.
This is how I feel. And honestly how the developers of BG3 seemed to feel. Additional context for other readers if not necessarily for you, but 3.5 and Pathfinder have a lot of what they call the "magical Christmas Tree effect" where someone using Detect Magic on a player character would see a magical aura around every single one of your body parts. Barring specific character build decisions there was usually a best-in-slot magical item for every place you could have one, and the difficulty curve of the game assumed that you would.
5e, especially early 5e, attempted to curb this. Magic items were rare and powerful, but more importantly interesting. Strict numerical bonuses were powerful but boring so they were mostly eliminated. Flash or nothing was the name of the game, and indeed some magical items literally do nothing but enhance looks.
BG3 said no to this. Many possible character builds can only be done, or are strongly encouraged, with sets of magic items. It was an attempt to add depth and choice back in while restricted by a system that had little of it.
Yeah, but unfortunately they kept 5e's design principle of "you barely get any feats". I want my characters to be interesting because of who they are, not because of what glowing doodads they looted from more interesting dead people.
Also class + level is so coarse. I'd rather be able to, like, buy individual things I want. Get XP for doing a quest, buy more sneak attack. Or a spell slot. Maybe hit dice. Really let me mix and match.
But DND 5e is designed to have a small decision space in builds. They want the half paying attention guy's character to perform about as well as the optimizer, instead of the huge gap between those archetypes that 3e had.
i really liked the... I think it was the Oracle class in pathfinder. that would be fun.
I always thought it was the most interesting class because each power comes with a weakness, and they grow in power as you level up. Very X-Men like. Here's some curse examples for people who don't know what the class is about:
It's one of the reasons I love Pathfinder more than DnD. So much variety and creativity in the classes. More reading
Clouded vision was the curse/perk I wanted to pick! It looks so fun to play. And my vision sucks so I could lean into that aspect of my self for the character rather than something more annoying
BG3's Devs didn't feel like 5E was too shallow, iirc they said that their next game wouldn't be 5E because it was too complex and they felt it didn't correctly fit what they wanted in a game. Have you checked the divinity games? Their systems are much, much simpler than 5E is.
I'm hyped beyond belief for the next divinity game, Divinity, but I warn you, the game system will be much simpler.
Either way it's a system designed for pen and paper, which inevitably imposes some limits compared to something custom tailored for a video game format from the get go.
It's among my favorites, and I'm nervous for whatever Divinity's got in its place.
I've not yet played divinity 2, currently playing baldur's gate 3 for the first time and really enjoying it. So I'm actually kind of excited for divinity 3. Looks like it's a couple of years away anyway tho.
I played Original Sin 2 after BG3, and at first it leaves a huge positive impression, but then more and more problems present themselves as time goes on. The armor systems create stunlocking issues; the XP system encourages genocide; the skill system feels freeing at first but ends up landing on dominant strategies very quickly. It's still a good game, and they've said in an AMA that some of my biggest criticisms won't be in this new Divinity, but their track record thus far is that their own RPG systems are not as good as 5e.
Divinity might also be closer than you think. If they go early access, which they haven't committed to, we might be playing it next year.
Really? Well that sounds mostly good news to me! Early access divinity would be exciting. And yeah, I know divinity 2 is an older game, I'm expecting to have some issues with it but I'll certainly give it a try.
TBH baldur's gate 3 has been the first game of this type I've played. Was never into D&D stuff, so I'm not really aware of what could be better or different. I'm only just now learning that I enjoy games like this!
Nice! If you got used to your ability to "use X on Y" to solve problems creatively, that's Larian's special sauce, so unfortunately, you're unlikely to find that kind of depth in any other video game besides those last two Divinity: Original Sin games. As far as the combat and skill dice rolls go though, there are definitely plenty more of those.
That's a controversial opinion but I agree with you. Going by the Original Sin games I prefer 5e over the rules Larian made for Divinity.
The surfaces system was superior in Divinity OS2 but I felt the physical/magical armor system was kind of awkward.
Functionally it kind of just removes the curtain and reveals how effective health points (EHP) vs total health points actually works. But God it felt really shit to actually play. It goes against gaming convention.
While BG3 was a better game, the combat in Divinity was more fun. Not only was cheese encouraged, it was almost required at higher difficulty levels. Summoning a lava worm to shoot a laser beam at some tossed out fire traps to cause a million damage? Sure, why not?
Its so interesting how differently people view things, that sounds horrible to me (and matches my short experience with d:os). I want a game that has hard difficulty that I can beat by making smart decisions, not figuring out how to break the underlying system.
I like ridiculous things to happen. I also hate misses in any game. That's too realistic for me.
Given how much more likely one is to have played 5e than any other system, it's probably not all that controversial.
5e is a great system for a “Rule of Cool” style of DMing. That’s amazing for a decent DM and inexperienced/less technical players.
But it is not a good CRPG system or a good system for experienced and technical players. There’s a lot of “can I…” and “I want to…” that slows down combat even when you know the rules.
Plus, there’s stuff like “can a centaur ride a horse?” where 5e is inconsistent. Or the infamous peasant rail gun.
It's not even that good at that. Fate, for example, is a much lighter and better system for that. Aspects are a very simple system for setting expectations and letting players do wacky things based on them.
If I was going to run a game for new players I would absolutely not reach for 5e. It provides too much fertilizer for "can I move that far?" and "if he's flying 30' up can I still shoot him?" minutia.
Yeah to me 5e is in a weird place right now. Not quite narrative focused and not quite crunchy numbers focused either. It's like a middle ground where some parts are highly specific but others are left to interpretation. I've found people mostly get confused by this ambiguity.
I probably had fewer "can I...?" questions in BG3 than any other CRPG, if for no other reason than that all of the enemy attributes are exposed at all times, and your spells tell you which attributes they interact with. It's that same quality that allows the technical design of Larian's engine to shine, and it made large swaths of the genre feel dated immediately. Either in the video game or the tabletop, my combats don't have many questions to bog them down.
I disagree. It's a poorly designed system that fails at accomplishing anything better than alternatives. The thing it has going for it is the name/marketing. There are lighter systems that are easier and cooler, there are heavier systems that are more tactical, and there are equivalent systems that are less jank. The fact that there's things like the bonus action, that was added so late in development it was never playtested, in 5e makes it pretty awful to play. There are so many exceptions you have to learn to even start too. It's not a good system for noobs and it's not a good system for experienced players.
It's by design. It's just meant for more casual play, that's all. I play Shadowrun (pre Anarchy) so I'm no stranger to crunchy systems, but 5e is nice for just getting together with friends, drinking some alcohol, and having fun role playing without having to pay too close attention or needing a group that's really dedicated to learning the game deeply. More tilted towards friend groups and less towards gaming groups, if you will.
I'll say as a GM, the low bar needed for learning and playing 5e is much easier to get people on board with and even then that bar isn't always reached... I've had to kick people for just refusing the learn what dice to roll after months of sessions. 5e is a great gateway drug to get people into TTRPGs though, and then when you start finding out who is really getting into the hobby, you can spin that group off into crunchier systems and keep 5e around for the more casual role play enjoyers.
This is true. However,
It's kind of bad at that goal. It's really fiddly and full of friction points. What bonus do you get for 16 strength? Why do they insist on keeping that mapping.
Further evidence of it not actually being great at casual play.
Which leads me to
Counter argument: it's actually really bad at that. It's so specific and idiosyncratic it pushes people away. Uncountable players just bounce off the whole genre because their first impression is fiddly "what does 15 strength mean again?" and "sorry, you can't fit your cool idea into this class/level system"
Fate Core or Accelerated would be much more in line with how people think about this sort of stuff.
Just hasn't been my experience, man, and I've introduced maybe 2 dozen people through that system to ttrpgs. 2 bounced off. That's a pretty good success rate imo.
I think it feels fiddly to people who already know a thing or two about mechanics, but most of the fiddliness can easily be ignored or barely paid attention to and you can still manage to play and have fun. It's a lot easier to just hit straight brick walls in games like pathfinder or shadow run where the player is so lost they just can't play. I've started 5e games impromptu at parties for people who've never played and been up and running in 30 minutes with drunk people and had a blast lol. That's hard to pull off in a lot of systems imo.
The ones I referenced that wouldn't learn to roll dice weren't confused by the system... they just honestly didn't really like to play as much as they liked the idea of playing through popular media. The hobby just wasn't for them, I can't really see them engaging with any system.
I'm not saying there may not be other systems out there technically better suited... but 5e is pretty damn good at it while also being popular enough that people have heard of it and are interested in trying. That last part is just as important as being technically good on paper.
I mean, this is true, but if you ignore enough rules you're essentially playing a different game. I talked to someone once who "played DND" but didn't use skills or spell slots, and I think they just let casters interpret spells based on the names. That's so different it's arguably a different game. Or at least as different as a Chihuahua and a husky.
I agree with this, but note those systems are far more crunchy than DND. Something like Fate goes in the other direction, and I think is why it's better for fast games.
Though as an aside, a downside of Fate is it's so open it can cause a tyranny of the blank page effect. DND puts you in a pretty small box, and that can be helpful for people. The small decision space is a positive for some kinds of players. Though if you were doing Fate, you could just tell people to pick from some core ideas similar to character classes.
This is also undeniable. Someone who's going to half-ass it will drag down a game in any system.
I think we agree more than we disagree for what it's worth. Check out Fate though. It's free ( https://fate-srd.com/ )
But some systems are easier than others to wing or remove pieces. 5e already, for better and for worse, hand waives a lot stuff as up to the judgment of the GM, rather than having explicit rules on how to handle something. I think this is a bad thing for long term groups because it puts a lot more work on the GM (this might, ironically, make it good for new players but less good for new GMs), and for people who know their way around ttrpgs it's a little annoying that so much of the experience, even more than usual, relies on each given GM with less reliable and predictable outcomes.
But what rules 5e does have are usually pretty simplified... looking at 3.5, something like grappling has very explicit rules on how to resolve things in what feels like a pretty satisfying way, but it is very verbose... 5e just says "eh, contested Strength check and call it a day". It's just a very, very simple system at its heart. And again, a lot of stuff is just straight up written as "leave it up to your GM". This is frustrating for more veteran players that might want to try optimizing or pushing the bounds of a system and need a structure to push against, but for a newbie just having fun and who isn't too hung up on outcomes, this is a feature not a bug imo.
My fear with more open systems is like you said above, it can give especially new GMs and players a bit of paralysis in not really knowing where to go... I think 5e strikes a good balance of giving newbies a structure to work with while telling them not to sweat details too much. I could see with the right group though that isn't too timid or afraid to explore how this might be a benefit more than a hindrance....
All that said, I haven't tried Fate itself, so I'm speaking generally here. I'm sure I'll get around to checking it out at some point, though I'm mostly moving genres these days into stuff like the new Shadowrun and Cyberpunk RED so might be awhile... appreciate the rec though, we have a sub group that runs new systems all the time so I'm sure we'll get around to it lol. Again, appreciate the discussion! :)
The dnd 5e-ness of BG3 was among the worst parts of it.
D&D was optimized for pencil-and-paper-and-dice play. I mean, it has to keep the math simple to keep the game going.
I think that a ruleset optimized for computer RPGs would probably look somewhat different.
It's funny because while 5e has simpler math than the predecessors, it's still kind of clunky. 1d20 + proficiency + modifier isn't that bad, but I've seen a lot of players who can't correctly add 16 + 7.
I really liked the nWoD system where you roll a bunch of d10s and just count how many came up >= 8. No addition or subtraction.
Also 1d20+stuff is flat probability, which feels bad.
But also 100 times this. You could do so many things that would be painful to do by hand at the table.
https://old.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1jphv4b/favorite_calculator_for_the_table/
One can grab an inexpensive calculator if it's a matter of being able to do it at all, I suppose. Or use a phone calculator app. But...even with a calculator, there are just going to be some limitations on how many modifiers one can reasonably have and how they can interact. Like, if you have, say, four or five inputs for a check that all have percentile modifiers from various equipment or spells or statuses or whatever, it just starts to become a pain to deal with. A computer won't notice that, and there, it's fine. But for TTRPGs, one doesn't want to turn a play session into a bunch of people just playing Sim Spreadsheet. Kinda bogs down the game, kills the flavor.
I bet that there are some people who won't even play D&D in its present form because of the math.
searches
https://old.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/177rybf/have_a_friend_who_struggles_at_math_what_can_i_do/
The variance on a single d20 is miserable after playing games with better probability curves.
I love the three d6 curve from Hero System
I like Fudge dice, but understand if people want higher variance than that. I do like that characters tend to succeed at things they are good at (but not always) and fail at things they are bad at (but not always). Some people liken this to diceless, but my experience is that it's just enough variance to keep you on your toes and add drama.
Iron Kingdoms uses a nice system too, where the better your are the less variance your roll get.
Yep I moved to gurps it was a game changer
I think I'd rather see more 4e than 5e at this point. Its so one-dimensional