Hexxen is pretty amazing. The rules are extremely simple, but maintain enough complexity to still be fun and it knows what it wants to be and focuses on its core goals. Investigation is fun and engaging, combat is fast and dangerous, but not necessarily deadly and there are numerous interesting character classes that you can combine to build exactly the witch hunter you want.

Other than that, I’m working on my own system with a combat experience similar to DnD, but the social complexity and character customisability of The Dark Eye.

Okay but as long as we are complaining about shit we see on RPG forums

“I wish I could do $thing in DnD”

“$otherSystem has a very cool subsystem for $thing”

“Omg how dare you”

Had this conversation enough times to make it a pet peeve of mine

Anyway the only thing about 5e that does suck is Wizards of the Coast. Otherwise it’s fine. It’s just fine. You can have fun with it.

I’m more of a Pathfinder 2e guy tho.

(And pf2 is basically a more advanced take on what 5e was doing so…)

5e is fantastic. It presents the standard combat-centric D&D rules, and provides a lot of freedom for players and DMs to fill in whatever rules they find most enjoyable.

Levels 1-3 are designed for the express purpose of onboarding new players, so complaining that it doesn’t fully represent D&D, is pretty silly - it’s supposed to be simplified.

I will agree with the facts behind your comments on the skill system, if not the exaggerations. I would prefer a looser system, akin to those from Fate, Cypher or Daggerheart, to allow for more creative freedom.

D&D doesn’t suck - it’s a combat centric system, as it always has been.

During investigations the wizard rolls an investigation check, the cleric rolls an investigation check and the barbarian does nothing because they dumped wisdom

You might be playing it wrong.

During investigations Wizard checks the books in the library, references his own notes, chats up local researcher community. Creates and sends Arcane Eye, spreads his familiars, tries Clairvoyance.

Cleric visits a local church, talks to the priests and churchgoers, prays to the Divine, maybe convinces the town to join her in the crusade against the target and lits the town on fire, while villages attack the nobleman mansion looking for the culprit and plunder.

Barbarian goes to the local tavern to drink with the local guards. Helps local elder find his kitten. Maybe talks to a local hunter and they bond over a bear hunt they just finished, maybe about the beauty of wilderness… One thing leads to another, a secret touch, a hidden look, a moment of courage, a stolen kiss… What I was talking about?

5e needs a better way to balance encounters than Challenge Rating. It also has important rules for players in the DM book. Both of which are problems you can work around.

Yeah, it’s basically fine. It got a lot of new people interested in RPGs (and Critical Role certainly helped, too). If they’re all now looking for other systems to play, that’s fine, too.

Nope. You play what you want. I, however, will not play any game from a company that demonstrably dislikes its customers. So far, wizards of the Coast and games workshop are on my list. In the electronic space, EA, Microsoft, and Sony.

Yes, that’s called roleplaying. And there’s nothing, not a single line in any book that supports any of this! Just imagine if DnD combat only consisted of one melee attack skill and one ranged attack skill. You could still roleplay that your ranged attack is a fireball, but it would still get boring real fast!

Everything about this scenario works pretty much exactly the same if the Barbarian goes to the library and references his notes, the wizard visits the local church and convinces the town to to join their crusade and the cleric goes to the tavern, sves the kitten, drinks with the guards, etc. Every character does everything exactly the same.

Let me give you a counter example in a system that actually does this well. In The Dark Eye, the wizard goes to the local library because they have several talents and skills that help them find and organize information in books, the cleric talks to the local clergy who respect him du to his “social standing” value and “clergical vow” skill. The barbarian actually put some points into “carousing” which makes them a solid drinker and their “local contact” skill may give them a pointer towards the old lady with the cat problem.

Dunno. In my 5e game the Sentinel, Guardian, and Consular get force powers.

In another 5e game the group piloted techs and fought giant monsters (Pacific Rim).

In a few months we will be running Return of the Living Dead 5e.

You just sound burnt out on the fantasy trope, not 5e.

It’s hard to extoll the virtues of my chosen system (Pathfinder2e) without comparing it to the issues of where I find 5e lacking.

That said, what I love about 2e is the great encounter balance, almost every single “build” for a class is viable, and when you say “I’m playing a rogue” there are like 4 major types of rogues that all feel like they play differently instead of just some tacked on homebrew class. Adding free archetype rules (supported by the system creators themselves in their books) adds even more customizability.

One of my favorite things is that PF2e makes it feel like it makes encounter design fun again; martials actually have more options than just walk up and attack repeatedly, spacing matters, defenses matter. Most classes have some sort of gimmick that makes them play differently. Been working with my girlfriend to make a swashbuckler for the game I am DMing, and the panache/bravado/finisher mechanics really excite us from a roleplay and gameplay standpoint.

The three action system is way more flexible than the action/bonus action system. You can spend all 3 actions on a huge spell and burn your entire turn. You can move away from enemies to force them to burn an action or flank them to gain bonuses to attack for yourself and allies. You can apply debuffs using your main stats with actions like Demoralize, and still attack or move on your turn.

You constantly gain feats, and they are what defines your character so much. No longer do you get a “choice” of an ASI or feat. You get ones every level. There are ancestry tests from your race, class feats, skill feats, archetype feats. They don’t just make you stronger, they instead give you more possible actions, give you unique traits, like being able to fight while climbing or use deception to detect when someone is lying instead of perception.

Also, you can find every rule for free online @ Archives of Nethys. No more being gated by purchases outside of adventure paths.

I could keep going, and I really want to extoll how awesome Golarion is, and the pantheon of gods, and everything. But I will stop here. Would happily answer anyone’s questions about the system, I love it. It gave me true passion for tabletop RPGs while DnD5e made me feel really mildly about it.

See, that’s the point of the XY problem. They asked the wrong question.

Playing Dragon Age in D&D simply would not work. Even after a significant amount of effort, you’d either end up with something entirely unlike Dragon Age or something that barely resembles D&D. So I have to tell them “no” or I’m lying. And if someone stops listening and considers me hostile because I’m not willing to lie to them, then it’s absolutely on them.

They didn’t ask the wrong question, though. You’re seeing a solution they do not want and do not care about then blaming them for not listening to the unsolicited advice.

The problem isn’t on their end.

If anything, I feel like Pf2e is more streamlined than DnD5e overall. At the very least, everything is in just one book.

The way critical success/fail works is better, too. Rolling a nat 20 doesn’t automatically make an unskilled character super good at something, and rolling a nat 1 doesn’t make a super skilled character fumble it completely.

Hey, sorry that didn’t hit right.

Since the post was in a meme community, I didn’t take the post as a serious complaint. Memes bring out jokes, that’s part of the point of them. I intended it as a form of commiseration with a bit of tongue in cheek playfulness. If I’d known you were making a real complaint rather than playing with a trope for laughs, I would have made a totally different comment.

So, here’s what I would have said if I had known you were experiencing distress over the issue.

I get it. Back when 3.x was a thing, the old ad&d diehards made the same kind of statements. Now, 5e devotees make the same kind of statements about 3.x, and even ad&d, as well as the ongoing new version coming out. It’s a fairly universal thing.

When it’s said in a lighthearted, unserious way, it can even help bridge players and DMs that are more entrenched with one version or another because it acknowledges that there’s not always compatibility between versions, making play groups harder to arrange since very few people really enjoy learning a new system to play what is (at its core) the same game.

Me and my kid make the same joke to each other, both of us aware that we have played both systems and have a different preference. Me and the DM of my kid’s group talk shit about our preferred versions too. And we piss and moan about the difficulties of running games with players that are most familiar with one edition and having trouble adapting years of play experience in one to a different one.

Like, I’ve got over a grand in 3.x books. At least that, maybe more, I lost track. So I’m not going to pony up a dime to get the equivalent library in 5e, or any future editions. But I’ve had players from 5e, and ad&d in my games (though I haven’t DMed in years at this point). There’s always a learning curve to a different edition. It places an artificial barrier of entry to the underlying game. So most people will commit to one version and stick with it.

When they do try others, what they see is changes that are a pain in the ass for fairly minor benefits, along with one or two great ideas. Us 3.x folks look at bounded accuracy, or advantage/disadvantage and drool a little, but there’s no way we’d switch just for that when the rest of the edition is just different, not better. 5e folks look at the 3.x prestige classes and how easy they are to home brew and really make a unique character but look at all the imbalances in the base classes and nope the fuck out

And don’t even ask about how newer players stare blankly at you while you try to explain thac0. Or how a black hole of despair forms and sucks your brain in trying to explain a truly awkward and counterintuitive system like thac0 in the first place.

There’s no such thing as a perfect system. They’re all approximations of fantasy settings (I’m talking about standard d&d here, but there’s no perfect system in other types of games either), and approximations simply can’t fit every situation every time.

So, when some asshole is being serious about “your edition sucks, play a better one”, fuck them. It’s bullshit, and if they don’t know it, they’re going to be a shitty player or DM anyway. They’re not worth the time and effort. But the rest of us kinda have the shorthand of the trope as a way to say “the problem exists, but we can’t fix it”. You either put the effort in to learn the details of each edition, or you stick to the one you like best and deal with having more trouble finding stable groups.

No bullshit Stamets, my entire goal was to join in on what I thought was your joke along that same line. I thought you were poking fun at the trope of it, and that’s what I was doing. The little winky face didn’t do enough to convey that, or maybe your stress over the subject meant nothing would have conveyed the intent of shared recognition of how silly it all is to edition snob. But it definitely failed to convey the intent, no matter why it failed.

Sorry about that. They can’t all be winners ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but I swear it was meant to be something we’d both have a chuckle over.

No D20 games is the rule I have lived by for decades now.

4e already sucked. 3 Series were the last good ones.

You might also like TWERP.

I used to play Cyberpunk with GURPS rules. It was great.

So, what you’re telling me is 5e works well for combat. Which is exactly what I wrote.

But combat isn’t the only aspect of a tabletop roleplaying game. Far from it. Sure, if all you want to do is play out your superhero fantasy of killing ever bigger foes, then DnD works well enough I guess. But for me, that gets boring real fast. I want drama, mystery, social encounters, wilderness survival, interesting travelling etc. DnD does none of this.

Thank you for writing about Das Schwarze Auge. It’s such a great game and world.

No, they definitely asked the wrong question. If they ask “how can I do [thing]”, it assumes it’s possible to do [thing]. But if they can’t do [thing], the question is invalid, and there is no correct answer.

Honestly, the way you put it, it’s like they don’t actually want to fix the problem. They just want their solution to be right. Anyone who doesn’t tell them what they want to hear is the REAL problem, even if what they want to hear is a lie.

Do you want me to lie?