By now, however, I have become somewhat disillusioned with several aspects of 5e. I could probably boil my primary dissatisfaction with the game to two factors:
- The power level of the PCs
- The concept of Bounded Accuracy
Now, to be fair the two are entertwined, but they are not the same thing. In my head I imagine WoTC statisticians crunching numbers involving complex, multi-variable statistical analyses on what factors contribute to player power versus monster power and encounter difficulty and coming up with what they consider their ideal sweet spot. Yes, I'm overly imaginative like that. In reality it's probably a much more nuanced and flexible design process whereby a combination of play experience and back of the envelope calculations lead to a general idea of play-ability according to their various design goals.
One of those design goals was obviously to achieve a less restrictive system feel and give players options to customize. One of the things I have never been very happy about was the power creep that has been going on since 1976 with Greyhawk and Blackmoor. So, in a way one could say D&D has always been dealing with power creep, and that would be a valid argument, but I also feel there has been a constant struggle with balance and feel that argument could be just as valid. Let's face it, the original game was brutal. I personally like it, and I only experienced it with AD&D until about two years into playing I actually got a copy of and read the DMG to find out there was an assumption, even by Gary, that PCs should have better than average stats and needed to be "exceptional". I still recall being blown away by that and running to tell my best friend and gaming buddy, unsure even then if it was legitimized "cheating" to play this way! We were still playing 3d6 straight down the line and if you rolled a one on you HP, it was a 1 sucker, deal with it. We actually kept playing with that last rule for a long time. I also recall being shocked that Gary approved of a less than zero kill level (players being able to go below zero before dying).
So, the game was brutal, lots of PCs died, players thought that sucked, so we amped up player power and put off death. This endless cycle continues not in one definite direction, though player power has increased to the levels of 4e, we have backed off some in 5e. The difference now, is that the basic assumption of the formula has changed. I have to wonder if this was due to WotC seeing this and the need for developing some end to this cycle. Hence we have bounded accuracy.
Now, I have some idea of what they said bounded accuracy was supposed to be, but basically, mechanically, this is what it achieved. Characters didn't really get "better" at doing most things very quickly. Proficiency bonuses replaced levels as a measure of skill, and level became indicative of toughness (HP) and range of options (spells and class abilities). Accordingly, a 4th level PC can't really hit anything more easily than a 1st level PC, but the 4th level character has more stuff he can do and more hit points. Which leads to the second thing, that it is a lot less important how "powerful" (as in CR) a foe PCs are up against and much more important how many of them there are. The real determiner of difficulty is how many attacks are we dealing with as a party. If there are 4 PCs of 4th level they each have usually one attack each which is four attacks available per round. Set them against 8 kobolds that is a huge challenge because there are 8 attacks versus four. Which is where player power comes into consideration. Generally the game is amped up damage wise so that monsters and players are both doing more damage per attack and monsters, even low level monsters, can often do decent damage with an attack. So in the above scenario if we say average damage per attack for the players is 7 HP they can deal 28 HP of damage per round, while the kobolds with an average of say 6 dmg per attack can deal 48 per round. Keeping in mind that kobolds can hit about as well as 4th level PCs that makes for s serious problem since most PCs are going to have an average of 36 HP at 4th level.
Now, this new idea of bounded accuracy has been touted as a great thing, since it keep monsters that are typically relegated to the nuisance heap in earlier editions are now still relevant in 5e,just up their number. The problem, of course, has been that the reverse is also true. Through a difficult monster up against the same group, say a basilisk, and the encounter can become pitifully underpowered on the monster's side. Especially since many of the iconic abilities of the monsters in 5e have been nerfed so much as to make them much less of a threat. The poor basilisk now can only petrify you magically, an effect that ends as soon as you make a DC 12 Con check, and even then can be reversed by a restoration spell that most Cleric's refuse to go without. At least what I have found is that though such an encounter is nothing to sneeze at, unless there is more than one basilisk, or some lackeys to back her up she will likely be relatively easy meat for a decently healthy party of 4.
The other thing I have found is that most 5e encounter builders are exceedingly undernourished strength wise. I've used several and have been displeased with all of them. Some used the balance rules as written in the rules, others use, I assume, their own tweaked metrics. None have I found build a solidly reliable encounter based on desired difficulty. This general approach can be mitigated by assuming some old school ethos in our adventure and campaign building. I have sort of reached a balance myself and now "have a feel" for the edition to know about what kind of power level I am going to need to challenge my players. I am not fond of allowing PCs to wade through battle after battle, challenge after challenge (what happened to save or die?!) until eventually they need to recharge spells to carry on. I also have not found the healing rules acceptable--but I can go into that another time.
Now, to be fair, 5e itself does give some advice in the DMG as to how to deal with all these issues based on the kind of game you want to play. And I am as sensitive as the next guy in knowing that players don;t want to feel as if their are entering a meat grinder every time they step outside of the city gate. Contrary to what it may appear, I am not a killer GM. We have had one death, count it, one, in a total of 13 characters. Not counting the NPC hireling who bit it before they reached level 3. But I am looking for a slightly more authentic feel, and little less superhero to my game. In other words I'm willing to make compromises. The document below is my first attempt to do that. This was penned at the start of our current campaign about 4 months ago. It is my first draft, and I am already rewriting it. I've tried to drop in several of these rules and they haven't worked too well, as I wrote before. But I am tweaking them some, and making them easier to understand and play. Feel free to take a look and beg, borrow, steal or barf on them as you will. Ideally I would like to shift to a more 1e game overall, but if I can get these to work and keep tweaking, I may be able to fee more satisfied if we continue playing Next.
Oh, and a word on the name. Obviously we know where Next comes from. The Hack part is a three part metaphor, for hacking the current system I'm playing, and drawing inspiration from the Hackmaster system, and Hack & Slash as in making the system more gritty, dangerous and exciting. Let me know what you think. I'll be posting a revised draft sometime soon.
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| GDoc for the Next Hack |
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