I've been playing 5e regularly for years now. The more I play it, the more I hate it. There are some aspects that are streamlined (positive) but so many more that are dumbed down (negative). The system feels incoherent in a lot of ways. It's like they decided to streamline it to an extreme degree, but didn't have the balls to actually follow through with all that entailed. So you end up with this weirdly bloated system that has all kinds of baggage from previous editions masquerading as a sleek streamlined system.
For example, they kind of got rid of the idea of "skill monkeys" as part of 5e's core design. The idea was for every character, regardless of class, to have skill strengths and weaknesses. Your fighter can be the guy who knows about magic, or about lockpicking, and be the best in the party at that. Which is cool. It's a great idea. But it's not true. For some reason, rogues and bards are still skill monkeys, because they get features which push their modifiers in certain skills of their choosing up to significantly beyond the limit any fighter could ever achieve. So if the bard decides to be an arcana guy, there is nothing your fighter can do to match him. It's just weird and contradictory. Why even try to even out the skill system at that point?
And then they get abilities which let them basically be as good as you ... at every skill. Regardless of training in it. Like, fuck it, forget about that idea of everyone being able to contribute to skill checks. Rogues do everything.
Another example is feats. In 5e, feats are literally an optional rule. They're tacked on, like an afterthought. The only time you can take them, according to this optional rule, is when you would otherwise get an ability score increase. And ability score increases are really fucking good. And most feats are not really fucking good. So this means that 99% of the feats are a complete waste of time, no point ever taking them, unlikely to ever see them. And then there are the few feats that are completely broken and there's no reason you'd ever not take them. There just wasn't any thought put into it.
I was just asking about feats elsewhere. Anyway, these feat problems you describe, are they problems in the corebooks or is this just normal RPG power bloat? For increasing your ability scores vs feats, don't you have a max ability score you can reach in 5e? There was a lot of talk about "Bounded Accuracy" early on, did WotC actually have the discipline to keep to that or did they slowly power creep in order to sell supplements? I haven't followed 5e since very early on so I haven't been paying attention to how it developed.
I've been playing 5e regularly for years now. The more I play it, the more I hate it. There are some aspects that are streamlined (positive) but so many more that are dumbed down (negative). The system feels incoherent in a lot of ways. It's like they decided to streamline it to an extreme degree, but didn't have the balls to actually follow through with all that entailed. So you end up with this weirdly bloated system that has all kinds of baggage from previous editions masquerading as a sleek streamlined system.
For example, they kind of got rid of the idea of "skill monkeys" as part of 5e's core design. The idea was for every character, regardless of class, to have skill strengths and weaknesses. Your fighter can be the guy who knows about magic, or about lockpicking, and be the best in the party at that. Which is cool. It's a great idea. But it's not true. For some reason, rogues and bards are still skill monkeys, because they get features which push their modifiers in certain skills of their choosing up to significantly beyond the limit any fighter could ever achieve. So if the bard decides to be an arcana guy, there is nothing your fighter can do to match him. It's just weird and contradictory. Why even try to even out the skill system at that point?
And then they get abilities which let them basically be as good as you ... at every skill. Regardless of training in it. Like, fuck it, forget about that idea of everyone being able to contribute to skill checks. Rogues do everything.
Another example is feats. In 5e, feats are literally an optional rule. They're tacked on, like an afterthought. The only time you can take them, according to this optional rule, is when you would otherwise get an ability score increase. And ability score increases are really fucking good. And most feats are not really fucking good. So this means that 99% of the feats are a complete waste of time, no point ever taking them, unlikely to ever see them. And then there are the few feats that are completely broken and there's no reason you'd ever not take them. There just wasn't any thought put into it.
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It sounds like your son took Observant in real life if he's adapting to your strategies like that.
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I'm a big fan of both Observant and Keen Mind, they can be pretty fun.
I was just asking about feats elsewhere. Anyway, these feat problems you describe, are they problems in the corebooks or is this just normal RPG power bloat? For increasing your ability scores vs feats, don't you have a max ability score you can reach in 5e? There was a lot of talk about "Bounded Accuracy" early on, did WotC actually have the discipline to keep to that or did they slowly power creep in order to sell supplements? I haven't followed 5e since very early on so I haven't been paying attention to how it developed.
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