I really hate whenever I try to explain how some bad rules can be abused and immediatelly get someone say shit like “If this happens in your group, change it” as if that would solve the problem. And whenever it is not soemthing you witnessed personally, then it means it never happens and could never happen.
I’m just not bothering with a company that’s repeating the exact same mistakes as their predecessors, so it’s basically anything but 5e for me nowadays.
Serious question - what rules in 5e encourage bad player behaviour?
This has a lot of “stop enjoying that!” energy.
There’s no set of rules that a clever person can’t exploit or circumvent in some way, and min/maxers have been a plague on the RPG community since long before 5e. Frankly, if this sort of thing is a regular issue for you then the problem is the people you’re playing with. A good DM can roll with players like this and balance them.
This has a lot of “I’ve only played D&D” energy. I am fascinated to hear your examples of exploits in VtM, or CoC, or even PF2e. Exploits and rules abuse have always been issues in D&D, which is just one of the reasons there are so many systems that aren’t D&D. Plenty of rules can’t be exploited, regardless of how intelligent you are - being clever isn’t a magic spell that just lets you unravel rules to be remade in your image.
It’s legit not hard to make an OP/powerful character in either VtM or CoC, assuming youre talking about making a character good at combat (which is usually what people talk about in this context with power gaming). I don’t play PF2e, though, so i cant speak there.
CoC take high dex, put 90+ in handguns, take the pulp talents rapid fire and quick draw, wear a bandolier of guns, and dual wield pistols that you fire 6 shots from per turn. If you dont care about going first, then fast load if you care about reloading, if not, then just take shadow and start combat hidden for two attacks with a bonus die at the start.
For VtM its easy as take fist of caine and lightning strike. If you aren’t playing as elders, this requires gaining some exp first. I know there’s other combos that i cant think of off hand that are pretty potent too.
Each of these do have counters in the form of monsters immune to guns (CoC), or celerity 5 opponents (VtM), but thats no different than a DM in D&D always throwing fireballs at the guy with high AC. It begins to be apparent when its happening all the time that the GM/DM/Keeper/whatever is specifically targeting your weakness.
Minmaxxing isn’t really the same as rules exploits - you can do those things to become really good at combat, but you’re sacrificing your abilities in other areas, which make up a significant part of the game. It’s not like hiding behind a tower shield to disappear or undead warlocks short resting to stack death ward, where you’re actively taking advantage of wording and rules interactions to achieve unintended effects.
i mean, if youre wanting exploitative rule mechanics based on wording/interactions, you need to look no further than base first aid and medicine in CoC; You’re able to make 1 of each per wound you take. Unlike older editions, they’ve done away with the heal cap on it, so if you’re down HP, simply deal yourself 1 HP of damage, make a first aid check. and then make a medicine check to heal at minimum 2 HP. Repeat until full. You can easily reheal yourself to full this way, which is definitely “unintended” based on how healing works (and older editions).
Edit: at the end of the day, my point is that pretending other games cant or dont have exploitative mechanics/builds/whatever is naive at best? It’s not a D&D only problem. It’s just more prevalent in D&D because 1) it has more rules and 2) it has more players.
I think you’ve conflated part of those rules - there’s nothing in the medicine skill saying you can only do it once per wound, just first aid. So you can deal/restore 1 damage in between medicine checks, but that’s not what let’s you keep making medicine checks.
You are the red box in the image.
Right, OK, yes, so what? the red box is where reasonable people arrive mentally.
Not really. You’re placing blame on players using a system as written and a DM for being unable to handle an exploit in the rules. At no point do you open the rules themselves up for criticism. In fact, you deflect all criticism away from the rules, as if the impossibility of a perfect system excuses every bad decision ever made.
Just like how there is no ruleset that cannot be exploited, there is no ruleset that cannot be improved. It’s only by acknowledging the flaws that something can improve, but you seem hellbent on dismissing flaws entirely. That’s unhealthy.
DnD isn’t just a set of rules, though. It is inherently a social activity, and that means there has to be a certain level of expectation for social norms. If your group has toxic people in it, they will be toxic while playing tic-tac-toe.
The solution is to employ social pressure or ostracism for those people. We can certainly modify rules that have proven abusive in the past, but enforcing rules of conduct must always be the first line of defense.
If D&D isn’t a set of rules, why do they charge so much for their rulebook?
It’s also worth noting that nobody has said an actual exploit. Nobody has DONE anything toxic. Someone just noticed a POTENTIAL exploit and suggested fixing it before any problems occur. Yet ostracizing people is a more acceptable position than a rules patch?
If the rules aren’t something to be changed, why do they charge so much for the rules revision they just put out?
At its core DnD is a wargame where we spend most of the game time fighting against monsters and bad guys. Having robust combat systems is the big draw of the game and fighting monsters in interesting ways without being too unfair either way. People want rules that are robust enough to make interesting combat but don’t completely break down under a bit of the box thinking, like the peasant rail gun, or the moon box lich, or the create water in someone’s lungs to cause drowning, or the coffeelock to get infinite spell slots.
All of these mechanical oversights are frustrating to play with because we have to stop the game and debate over whether this cheesy game breaking bullshit should be allowed at the table and it takes time away from the reason we’re all here, to get together play a game, and let everyone have fun, DM included. And sitting around debating whether the moon counts as a container for a lich’s soul reliquary or lining up 500 peasants and each of them readying and handing off an object at a bazillion mph for an hour and a half breaks the rules is not fun.
You want a system for magic that encourages being busted even at high levels? Play some Mage the Ascension, you can do some absurdly wacky shit even at fairly low power levels.
oh hey it’s that box from the chart. d&d is saved!
Also the toxicity that is implied to exist by this post is pretty rare really. Even back when I was using Reddit, toxicity generally sank to the bottom of comment sections, and even more so here. When I got into D&D close to the beginning of 5e, some online voices on YouTube for example carried this toxicity but nowadays, most voices are far newer and friendly.
In general, most people are more interested in what happens at their table instead of all tables, and the rules are just guidelines to aid that.
I wouldn’t say it implies a toxic fanbase at all. It clearly states that’s the MO of an apologist. It further states that someone chimes in with that MO. Not a horde, not a group, an individual.
And I agree wholeheartedly. They are a minority. A very annoying, very vocal, minority.
The amount of cope is staggering sometimes and makes me disengage from discussing the hobby altogether.
Even your comment has some cope mechanism embedded:
The rules are just guidelines
As if nobody knew that. The guidelines are shit at some points, that’s the whole discussion.
There’s a thing in D&D forum spaces called the Oberoni Fallacy. The fallacy goes that, if someone says there’s a problem with a D&D rule, they’re wrong because they can just Rule 0 it away. It’s a fallacy because they have just proposed a solution to what apparently isn’t a problem.
People constantly saying “the rules are just guidelines” to any D&D problem is the same sort of idea. Yeah, I know you can ignore them, but I paid for the damn book, so I want what’s IN the book to actually matter.
I get annoyed when people say things like “big deal, just do xyz yourself, why are you complaining?” . Because making a clear and comprehensive game is WOTC’s job they are being paid for with our money!
If the system has a flaw, it’s their job to fix it, if they don’t they’re doing a bad job.
That being said, 5.5e has been pretty cleaned up in this aspect. I’m honestly shocked at how they both added new fun systems and codified a lot of vague mechanics.
Are the 5e apologists in the room with us?
No, but seriously, most people I know (rightfully) criticize 5e for a lot of things, from sloppy writing in general, to shitty adventure books, to nonsensical rulings and poor balance. I’ve never met someone willing to defend 5e so passionately.
I’ve always claimed that base 5e is basically unplayable past tier 2 because of how wild power scaling becomes, and how sloppy certain rules are (God forbid that your wizard doesn’t attempt to Shapeshift the Fighter’s Echo before you even reach tier 3). And frankly, base 5e is too boring to play for long, anyway. Homebrew is where it’s at.
Check the other comments. They are absolutely in the room with us.
Oddly enough, they don’t defend it by saying it’s good. They defend it by tearing down everything else, or brushing the flaws under the carpet with “well, you can just ignore the bad stuff, so they don’t count.”
There are valid concerns and invalid concerns because a huge assumption is that the DM won’t use the rules about being able to address edge cases. A large and complex system will always end up with some weird combination that can be abused, but as long as there are a reasonable number and they don’t come up often then the system is fine.
5e does have some basic problems like exhaustion undercutting barbarian rages, but the vast majority of online examples of things being broken involve a massive misreading of the rules by ignoring context, vague rules (a separate problem from being broken), or people thinking an outcome is broken when it is just the system working as intended. Like being able to use Shield Master to knock down/shove opponents with a bonus action before making attacks since the bonus action rules say it can be in any order. Knock them off a cliff and no opponents? Ok, since you must attack on the same turn your action is lost because it could only being used to attack. That doesn’t make it broken, and it is addressed as an edge case by the DM.
Again, some things are broken, but most of the things people call broken are just edge cases that can easily be handled by the DM being overblown in a game that has too much focus on fiddly combat while being written with the story first.
By Exhaustion undercutting Rage, do you specifically the 2014 Berserker barbarian? That’s the only one I know of that gets exhaustion from Rage, and it’s up to them whether they want to activate that feature( Frenzy) or not.
Yes, it undercuts Frenzy which isn’t good enough to deserve exhaustion. It was story based design that worked against itself.
Good thing they removed it in in the 2024 rules then
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/free-rules/character-classes#Barbarian
Woohoo, 10 years later!
Every edition of every ttrpg has had rules that can be exploited and abused, and the solution has always been for groups to alter rules as necessary. It’s impossible to make an airtight ruleset. You are just a 5e hater.
I agree and I’d take it one step further: it’s undesirable to play games with elaborate exploit / abuse guards. Those systems suck! They’re boring, same-y, and labyrinthine. I literally don’t care about pvp, or balance, or “winning”. It’s not that kind of game play
Considering I’ve been running 5e since the Plague Year, I wouldn’t call myself a hater. I did notice, however, this very pattern whenever I voice concerns about anything with the rules - first people assume whatever flaw or exploit I point out, has been used in my group and then their solution is always to leave the group or kick someone out of it, and if it didn’t happen in my group, then it means it doesn’t ever happen. It’s a catch-22 debating with these people.
It’s impossible to make it perfect, but it’s trivial to make it better. For example, get rid of Silvery Barbs.
And we’d really hope with a large corporation behind it, they could do more than get rid of the obvious. They could do the playtesting necessary to properly balance martials vs casters.
every ttrpg has had rules that can be exploited and abused
That’s true for games in the tradition of D&D/F20/Trad, but not all ttrpgs. Fewer rules, a tighter scope and more elegant design make it much easier to rule out the kind of bad interactions or edge cases that lead to rules that run counter to the game’s purpose.
My Life with Master, Fiasco and Fall of Magic are all games i’ve played, where exploitation or abuse of rules is just not possible. Unbound is a tactical combat rpg without any room for abuse of rules.
John Harper’s rules-lite DW hack World of Dungeons is probably too elegant for abuse to be possible.That’s the first few that I can think of, but i’m sure there are plenty more.
It’s a story telling framework encouraging creative problem solving and creation, all rules can and will be exploited, all rules are “bad” rules. Do what works for you and your group.
This argument just dismisses all criticism of the rules and implies that the “game” portion of the role-playing game is irrelevant. By that logic, the design of D&D 5e (and every single rule and mechanic in it) is no better or worse than any other game, including stuff like F.A.T.A.L.
If the rules don’t matter, why bother? Why buy books, learn a whole system, and go through the effort of trying to use a specific RPG instead of just doing free form role-play?
If they do matter, then they can and will impact the quality of your experience in positive and negative ways. They can be well designed, easy to understand, and effective at serving their purpose, or they can be poorly designed, incomplete, confusing or nonfunctional.
Sure, you can ignore rules when you don’t want to follow them, and you can do your own thing and homebrew it if you like. You can also ignore the ending of a book and write your own headcanon, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any point in criticizing bad writing.
To put this another way, why have rule books and a character sheet with all those numbers on it? Why not just flip a coin whenever you want uncertainty about an outcome? Would a game with only that mechanic be just as effective as D&D at providing the type of experience that D&D is trying to create? If not, then why not? What makes the big complicated mess of rules that is D&D better than my single rule RPG?
This argument just dismisses all criticism of the rules and implies that the “game” portion of the role-playing game is irrelevant.
If you truly think that, then I contend that you didn’t understand their argument.
They are dismissing one specific criticism of the rules; that they can be “abused”.
Roleplaying games are a collaborative social activity. The goal should be to collectively tell an enjoyable story. Under those circumstances, no one should have any incentive to abuse the rules or their fellow players.
In other words, criticising the rules because they can be abused is like criticising the design of a hammer because it can potentially be used as a weapon. There is basically no way to design a functional, effective hammer that does not open up the possibility that a bad actor could use it as a weapon. That does not constitute a flaw in the design of the hammer, and trying to redesign the hammer to prevent such an abuse will result in a very bad hammer.
There are bad rules and good rules, but good rules are good because they facilitate enjoyable play effectively. In other words good rules should help the GM and the players do the things that are fun. The rules do not exist to create a perfectly balanced showdown between equally matched opponents, and they cannot ever exist to do that in a context where you have a GM/DM, because the overwhelming power afforded to someone with near total narrative authority makes it impossible to ever balance that dynamic. Rather, the rules exist to a) introduce an element of chaos to the narrative, and b) guide the game towards outcomes that tend to reflect the individual capabilities and circumstances of the characters involved.
And within that context there are plenty of examples of good and bad rules design. You can absolutely find, make, or customize a better hammer. But if your criticism comes down to “You could hurt someone with this if you wanted to” then you have absolutely missed the point.
There is no set of game rules that will ever prevent a toxic table from being toxic. Despite OP’s objections, the only solution to shitty people in your gaming group is to either remove the shitty people, or remove yourself. I get how much that sucks, but it really is the only solution.
I just want you to know how much I appreciate your hammer comparison. That is an incredibly apt simile and I want you to get credit for it. You should feel good about your analysis and communication skills.
That’s what three years of university and a lot of student debt gets me 😅 But I appreciate the compliment.
