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The Trouble with 5e (Fit the First)

You've presumably seen the edition wars, and you've heard the complaints. 5e is too dumbed down, 5e characters are too overpowered, 5e druids are ruining my game because they keep summoning herds of elk ... whatever. If they're 2e players they probably complain that 5e is "like a video game". But in my humble opinion, all of that could be summarized as "5e is different from my edition". However, there's actually a deeper problem, which I've encountered in DMing 5e. Interestingly, it's not just a problem; it's also part of the "5e solution". I'm talking about....

Balance

In earlier editions, at first level wizards were total wimps and died like flies, while first level fighters were reasonably tough. At really high levels, fighters got somewhat tougher, but wizards practically became gods. High level characters became capable of dishing out huge amounts of damage per round, and essentially ignoring armor. Trivial case in point: In 3.5, a "straight" cleric might be hardly more than a heal stick at level 1. But by L15 that same cleric could consistently blow through spell resistance, reliably hit most targets' touch ACs, and, if the target failed its save, deliver Harm for 150 points in damage, boom, no damage roll required. In short, the game wasn't balanced. In 5e this was solved with a sledge hammer. Absolutely every decision about game design seems to have been tempered by the question, ''How does this affect the balance?'' Anything that's too strong is called "broken" and ruled out. In fact the result is a very playable game, and the streamlined rules mean you can spend more time playing and less time leafing through books (though at my table we manage to spend a lot of time leafing through books anyway, but that's just us). However there are a number of consequences which are, in my humble opinion, really not so good. I'll be exploring them in my next few posts (unless I see a squirrel and get distracted). And right now, we'll start with the most annoying one, because it crops up instantly, as soon as you run the introductory "Lost Mines" campaign.

NPCs

Adventures tend to be built around powerful, colorful NPCs who do interesting Bad Stuff. So, you need to be able to construct characters like that within the context of the game. Unfortunately, in 5e, as soon as you try you start bumping up against the limits which have been placed on everything. Case in point: There is an evil mage in The Lost Mine of Phandelver (the introductory campaign). He is stated explicitly in the text to have control over 12 zombies. He's a necromancer; that should be a no-brainer, right? Stats for the "evil mage" are given in the book as well. He's a level 4 spellcaster (so far so good); his list of known spells are given along with his stats. I won't repeat them here; I'll just observe that there are no spells for creating or controlling zombies on his spell list. So that's just a glitch, right? Patch up his spell list and you're good to go, right? Wrong. He's fourth level (says so right in the text) and Animate Dead is a third level spell. He can't cast it. I find it disturbing that in the starter set, the introductory campaign, they couldn't think of a way to build their bad guys that didn't involve end running around the rules. First, I think it says something about how restrictive the rules are, and second, I just don't like it. The world should work, according to its own rules. This one doesn't. But, OK, so they cheated a little, right? Let's cut them some slack. They want him to have zombies but they want him low enough level so the party can "take" him if a fight breaks out, so his level is knocked down one notch. No biggie, right? They only cheated a little. If you want everything to be "by the book" just knock him up to L5 so he can cast "Animate Dead", and he's good to go! Wrong. You can't fix it that easily, because Animate Dead, the goto spell for building your zombie army, limits control of the created zombies to 24 hours. After that they're on their own. You can cast the spell again the next day to get control back -- but you can only control four zombies at a time with it. So, to have twelve zombies under his control, he'd need to cast Animate Dead three times every day just to keep them in line. To cast three third level spells a day, he'd need to be at least sixth level and he'd need to burn off all his level three slots every day just to keep his zombies in line. This is really impractical, but the authors wanted a necromancer to have zombies, so they just ignored the rules. Good on them; he's a nifty character, and the adventure is most excellent; I have no beef with that. But bad on the rules. When you scale this up to something a little more epic the problems just get worse. Suppose we wanted a Big Bad who had a "zombie army". How many zombies would that be? More than 12, certainly; that's a zombie platoon, at best. Let's say fifty zombies. How could you control them? That 24 hour limit is lethal; you'd be spending all your time over breakfast, every day, just casting "Animate Dead" to keep your army going. When I ran this, I .... actually it's conceivable that somebody in the game I'm running might read this so I won't say, exactly, beyond saying I stuck a patch on the adventure so the necromancer would work. Again, that should not be necessary; the rules are just too tight. In the name of Balance, the system has been pared down so much that a great deal of the flavor and flexibility has been lost. One more example, then we'll end this comment (and leave further whining for another day): There's a Spectator in the adventure. It's been bound to its current task for about 400 years, by in-game calculations. According to the monster manual, a spectator cannot be bound to a task for more than 101 years. Oh, dear... To get around it this one is said to have "gone mad" and (apparently) lost track of the time. But that kind of escape hatch shouldn't be necessary -- and certainly not in the introductory adventure! Enough for today. -- S.