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.
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.
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.
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.