It has been a gods-awful long time since I have revisited this soapbox of mine. In truth I've been busy running games and taking it easy in my old age. I spent about 2 years trying to wrap my head around D&D 5E and have finally just given up on trying to cram those wonky rules into the fantasy campaign that I enjoy the most. Following is a gentle rant on the problems I can't seem to rectify as Dungeon Master.
1) Too Many Damn Options
The players don't start out as nobodies - they are all super-heroes with numerous gadgets, powers, and abilities that just seem to get better as the game progresses. Every splat book that has come out since 2014 has done nothing but muddy the waters and make it that the DM has to own all these sourcebooks in order to find out what these abilities do. Choosing to add in these new character races, classes, feats, or spells is dangerous because once one person has access, they ALL want access. Soon, you're no longer playing with elves, dwarves, and humans - now you have fey or artificers, tabaxi or goliaths, new cleric domains, spells, spellcasting options for warlocks, magic items, etc. Does anyone actually playtest all this material?
2) Bizarre Spell Rules
I like options for my spells as much as the next DM, but some spells don't seem to do all that much, even if using a higher spell slot, and some do more than enough using only their base spell level! In particular, those spells with mobile spell areas that force a saving throw on each and every round slow the game to a crawl and seem extremely unfair in tight quarters such as dungeons. As an example, we had a druid in the game I was running who would cast moonbeam on any caster or leader directing the bad guys' attacks. If they started their turn in the moonbeam, or entered it for the first time (5-foot-radius takes up four squares in a 10-foot wide corridor), they had to make a Con saving throw or take 2d10 radiant damage (or half damage on a successful save). She could then move it on top of them again if they tried to get out of it, simply by using an action to do so. The problem with this is that they have no chance to avoid the thing, and it has a range of 120 feet! The same applies to any other mobile area of effect spells, like spirit guardians.
Other spells are not well described and you have no idea how to handle them. Take the witch bolt spell, for example. This 1st level spell has a range of 30 feet. Assuming the hit roll succeeds, there is now an arc of lightning dancing between the caster and his/her target. Each successive round, damage is done automatically to that same target. But what if someone is thrown through or runs through the beam? Are they affected by the lightning damage? Does the "cover" blocking the beam mean that they are now the target? Does that release the former target from the spell's effects? The spell description lacks information on how this works, especially in a crowded melee with mobile targets and caster.
3) Seemingly Random Monster Stats
I'm coming from a history of DMing in AD&D 1E, 2E, 3E, Basic/Expert D&D, etc. All the monsters were always portrayed with statistics that were pretty much written in stone. Sure, you could modify these stats to make them spellcasters, or give them strange powers, or even allow them to use magical items to bolster the stats, but the base stats were as given in the various monster tomes. Nowadays, you craft creatures much like others craft encounters. NPCs don't have set classes and levels - they can do whatever you need them to do for that particular encounter. So, let's say I have an evil cleric running a ring of raiders in the lower portion of a certain moathouse. I want to make sure the characters can't take him out easily, but I also want to keep him true to his background. Apparently, I build the NPC encounter (including his henchmen and subordinates) along the lines of selecting his abilities, powers, and items not from a standard source of listed powers for a 6th level cleric, but from a grocery list of ingredients in the DMG that allows me to tailor the creature to the needs of the encounter. Sorry, that's not my style. I come from a long-standing tradition of using the same powers, spells, and items that the characters have access to. I'm not going to give an NPC some random power simply to overcome some limitation - it breaks verisimilitude and makes the players feel like they're options are limited. What's good for the goose, should be good for the gander!
4) Lack of Alignment Restrictions
I'm sorry, but if you are playing a paladin, you should be lawful good. Don't want to play a LG paladin? Find another class to play. Want to have paladin abilities with an evil deity? Develop an anti-paladin or black knight class instead. Druids who are non-neutral make little sense to me - the whole concept of a neutrally aligned, karmic cleric who worshiped nature has been thrown out the window. I can get around the non-good ranger, but having Lawful barbarians and Chaotic monks just makes no sense to me. And don't get me started on Lawful Good Rogue/Assassins! These are tropes that have been used in fantasy and gaming for decades - to dismiss them because people don't understand how they work is like throwing away the dice if the players aren't good with math...
5) Multiclass Rules Really are Confusing
I've yet to see a multi-class ruleset that works (i.e. explains all the fiddly little problems that come up). 3rd edition came closest to working, but missed the point of why multi-classing really exists. Multi-Classing was a way to keep AD&D 1E level-limited demi-humans useful when the game progressed to higher levels. It was only an option for demi-humans in the earlier versions of the game, and the classes allowed were only the base classes (you could not be multi-classed with any of the sub-classes). That later changed as assassin, druid, and ranger were allowed to mix.
Humans could not multi-class; but they could dual-class. If your scores were high enough, and you wanted to take up a new class, you stopped advancing in your old class (and never returned to it) to follow the new class. You were now ONLY the new class until your current level exceeded your previous level. Then you could use your old abilities along with your new ones IF THEY WERE COMPATIBLE. For example, a fighter could gain up to 5 levels then decide to become a cleric. Once they reached 6th level cleric, they could fight as a 5th level fighter (so long as they only used blunt weapons) and continue to cast spells as a cleric and wear full armor and shields. In 5E you mix and match abilities from both classes to become a less powerful version of both, but with all the base abilities of both. It's not written in how many times this can be done (and I'm sure some jackass pushed the boundaries on this to the full extent).
Ever since 3E, multi-classing has behaved like a mix of multi-classing and dual-classing; you add whatever class you want at each higher level and the powers of both are usable for demi-humans and humans alike (except that you only gain some of the new class abilities once you take a new class). Your characters level is the combination of your class levels. Not sure about this, but depending on how you advance, your class levels are limited to a character level total of 20, and spell slots are based on what classes are mixed together.
6) Style of Play is Super-Heroic, No Fear of Death
In my older games, characters die all the time. There are some grisly combats, and players rarely like to run from a fight. The world simply exists; it doesn't cater to the characters' abilities or levels. In 5E, encounters are constructed to "challenge a party of similar levels." Sounds like mollycoddling to me. This means that the characters are rarely challenged to the point that they fear losing their characters. That being said, I've had a character die in 5E at 1st level due to an unfortunate critical hit by a poison snake, but that was one death in over a year of play sessions. It taught the player a lesson, and his next character was less interested in rushing into melee. Death is necessary to put fear into the player over the possibility of losing the character. High-level characters in the world should not be a dime a dozen. They should be heroes of rare caliber and ability. This is what infuriates me about the Forgotten Realms and why I never took it seriously - there are too many god-level characters roaming the Realms for it to make any sense. Guess it probably makes sense that they would then use Forgotten Realms as the base campaign for D&D 5E.
And death saves are not even a scary thing like negative hit points and bleeding out were back in the day. Almost dying used to have consequences like a week of rest or scars, or even loss of prepared spells from memory due to shock.
7) Skill Check Rolls vs. Player Skill
My last gripe about the system is the removal of player skill from the game. Your ability to keep the character alive is all but gone since everything relies on dice rolls. Players once had to talk themselves out of situations or solve puzzles with their minds. Now you roll Diplomacy (Charisma) checks or Intelligence Checks to get out of a sticky situation. I'm well aware that most D&D players have the social acumen of a pretzel stick, but if they never try, they will never grow from the experience. D&D taught me speaking skills like oration and diction, helped me through arguments using logic and empathy, and made me a better person because of it. Isn't that the point of games? Don't we play games to hone skills to be used in real life? If all you do is roll a die to solve a problem, then aren't you just avoiding the problem and blaming failure on "math rocks?" Maybe don't play the super-genius wizard if you can't solve riddles or come up with executable battle-plans that involve more than swinging a weapon or bashing someone with a shield. And the amount of rolls used in 5E is sometimes just a bit much. Also, some players believe that they can only do what's listed on their characters sheet and will come up with bizarre ways in which they want to use Nature skill to poison their combat target or Investigation to find a hole in their defenses....
8) Resting and Time Flow
This is by far the most egregious flaw of the 5E system. Being able to basically reset your character after a short rest, or completely heal up after a night's rest is completely ridiculous. It makes no sense and barely impacts the characters. Add in the pacing of adventures and it's absolutely ludicrous. D&D used to be played in 10-minutes turns and 1-minute combat rounds. Prepping spells took a long time based on how many had to be prepared for the day, and travel took hours. Healing took days or weeks of time unless you had a cleric in the party or a lot of available cash to spend at NPC temples. Now, you get into a 30 second fight, rest for 1 hour (regaining some spell slots or spending HD to heal), then pop up and rinse & repeat for the remainder of the session. Head back home and spend all your loot and level up without any required downtime. It used to take several sessions of slogging through dungeons to get enough XP to level up, then 1+ week in training to gain your new abilities, only to return to slogging for twice as long to reach the next level. Adventuring time was limited by resources (spells, provisions, light sources, etc.) and hit points (which only healed at the rate of 1/day of complete rest unless you had magical healing available). Most 1st level characters would enter a dungeon, look around a bit, then get into 1 fight and leave for the day. Resting in original D&D was mandatory after 5 turns of movement ("on the 6th turn, they rested"). You gained nothing back for that 10-minute break, but without out you faced exhaustion and stress that affected you in future combats!
These are just a few of my top gripes about how these games are typically run. It's also the reason why I've taken my current game back to Mentzer Basic D&D in order to run some fun games with gritty characters. This can only work if the players trust their DM to be fair and if they are willing to put some effort into the game, no matter how small. If the players aren't on board, then it's not even worth trying.
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