5e failure: NPCs

I've mostly been a 5e fan, but one place I feel the system has fallen short is NPCs. The combat has been heavily tested and balanced around ensuring players have about a 50% chance to hit (according to Mike Mearls, this is due to observing that players don't have much fun when they go 6 rounds in a row without a hit), so monsters are huge HP sacks in order to keep them alive for a couple rounds. An AD&D ogre typically has around 19 hp, while the 5e ogre has 59(!!!), but the 5e ogre is so much easier to hit, and players output so much more damage relative to their own HP, that the in-game experience of fighting an ogre really isn't too different from one game to the other. If an AD&D module says 4 ogres attack the party, you can reasonably replace them with 4 ogres in 5e and get approximately the same difficulty.

The unfortunate consequence of players hitting more often and doing more damage per level is that NPCs are really just not viable foes at all. A common scenario in AD&D is an NPC of approximately the same level as the players with a few minions. In 5e, the players focus-fire on the NPC, killing him in the first round, then mop up the minions. Let's look at why, focusing on 5th-level characters.

The party opens the door on a 20'x20' room to confront an evil cleric standing behind a row of orcs armed with spears. Our wizard decides to save his Fireball for later, as this isn't a very hard fight. We're going to focus-fire on the evil cleric. The fighter throws handaxes, the rogue shoots his shortbow, the wizard casts Magic Missile, and the cleric casts Spiritual Hammer. How's this work out?

In AD&D, the evil cleric has +1 chain and a shield for AC 3. The DM gives him 6 hp per hit die for 30 hp.

• The fighter's exceptional strength gives him THAC3 of 10, and his axe does d6+3 damage.
• The thief's high DEX gives him a THAC3 of 13, and his arrow does d6 damage.
• The cleric's THAC3 is 14, and his Spiritual Hammer does d4+2 damage.
• The wizard does 3d4+3 damage. He cast Protection From Normal Missiles earlier to ensure his spells succeed while the party clears rooms.

If everybody hits, the evil cleric takes 2d6+4d4+8 damage.   But the thief has a 40% chance to hit, and the cleric has a 35% chance to hit, so when we factor all this in, the party has (using my supersecret calculator) about a 0.5% chance of taking out the evil cleric in the first round. Of course, players don't do all this math, but experienced AD&D players have an intuitive feel for this, and consequently know it is much more worthwhile to attack the orcs immediately (who have AC 6 and an average 4.5 hp apiece) than to concentrate on the cleric.

In 5e, the cleric has chain and shield for AC 18. The DM gives him 7 hp per hit die for 35 hp. In addition, he gets an effective +2 to AC for being behind the row of orcs.

• The fighter gets to throw two handaxes at +7 to hit, and each axe does 1d6+6 thanks to his Duelist fighting style,
• The thief, who is hidden around the corner, gets advantage to attack, +7 to hit, 4d6+4 damage.
• The cleric's Spiritual Weapon attacks at +6, ignores the protection from cover, and does 1d8+3 damage. In addition, our cleric also throws a light hammer at +6 to hit, 1d4+3 damage.
• The wizard uses a 2nd-level slot for 4d4+4 damage. 

There is, when accounting for 5e's critical hits, a 66% chance the evil cleric is dead in the first round. Furthermore, if the cleric isn't taken out immediately, he can cast devastating spells like Spirit Guardians, which could quickly turn this situation into a TPK. By contrast, the most exciting thing an AD&D cleric typically does is boost the attacks of his minions. So not only is eliminating him in round 1 hardly even possible, taking him out isn't nearly so urgent.

My experience with 5e is that NPC + minions tends to be that the party focus-fires on the NPC and eliminates him in one round, or maybe the top of the second. This makes these kinds of scenarios wholly unsatisfying in a way they aren't in AD&D.

Pathfinder Sales Collapse

According to ICV2, Pathfinder has now fallen so far in sales that Starfinder is now the #2 best-selling RPG. And no, Starfinder sales haven't exploded. It's currently ranked #41 in Amazon's fantasy gaming list, and #3009 in all books. The 5e Player's Handbook is, of course, #1 in fantasy gaming and #15 in all books. If you want another proxy, Pathfinder's fallen to under 10% of online games on the platforms Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds.

At this point, there is no longer a Pathfinder product in the top 50 on Amazon. The CRB now sits at #77 on the gaming list and #8,114 overall. That's not to say Paizo has stopped publishing books. They just released a new world splat on Christmas (a book of minor deities nobody asked for), a new set of pawns, more flip-mats, a rules expansion for martial arts, and more stuff like that. But the rankings are abysmally low. This stuff isn't selling, and the proliferation of it makes Paizo look more like late-era TSR than a healthy company.

Oh, and they've got more coming! Pocket editions of everything, more splats, more accessories, a new AP, and essentially more and more junk to suck the last few whales dry of their cash for a game nobody is buying anymore.

Buzz for Pathfinder 2 seems to be bordering on nonexistent. I've scaled my forum usage back to zero in the last few months, but a quick perusal shows the obsessive nerd-world of RPG forums is just not really interested in talking about Pathfinder 2. This bodes ill for its sales, because unlike D&D, Pathfinder has zero brand recognition outside of the dedicated nerds. There is no chance that the game will bring in huge numbers of new players the way 5e did.

It doesn't take a genius to predict PF2 is going to sell poorly. It's a product without an audience. But what we can add to that is that continuing with PF1 is no longer an option. If PF2 is a sales catastrophe of significant magnitude, Pathfinder is over.

And really, that might be a good thing. Unlike Pathfinder, Starfinder isn't a me-too product with a generic setting shamelessly cribbed from the most popular bits of somebody else's product. Paizo will have to lay some people off, of course, but there's more sustainability in a unique product than the Fruity Frosted O's version of D&D.

Alignments in the World of Greyhawk

Alignments are one of those things that generate lots of discussion, in part because they've changed meaning over the years. By the time you get to 3rd edition, "Lawful Good" had officially changed meaning to "Obedient Stupid," which made it possibly the most unpopular alignment for player characters. However, it was more intelligible in the early editions of the games, since they were moral axes, not strict, behavioral rules.

The Law/Chaos axis:
Lawful: The needs of society outweigh the needs of the individual. Order is preferable to chaos. Rulers, authorities, and hierarchies exist for a good reason and are necessary to maintain society.

Chaotic: Order, hierarchy, and social convention are restrictive or even harmful. Civilization is a prison. Aristocrats are obnoxious, and disciplined armies are a self-contradictory absurdity to you.

The Good/Evil axis:
Good: Every human and demihuman (i.e. player races) has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Evil: The weak exist to serve the strong. Might makes right. Selfishness is good; charity is for fools.

What about Neutrality? Often, D&D players take "neutral" to mean "amoral," but more often than not, "neutral" played this way is actually "evil." A character who drifts around the world, doing whatever will personally benefit him the most, with little regard for anything but his own profit and increasing power, is chaotic evil, not neutral!

That's right, murder-hobos. You're chaotic evil.

Neutrality in the Greyhawk context means that you believe moral forces must be held in balance for the true good of the world. Civilization has its place, as does wild nature. The hopes and dreams of human beings are held in check by other forces which cull the weak and put limits on ambition.

A classic druid is True Neutral. They are not the enemies of civilization, but neither can they be relied on to help the armies of Gran March go wipe out orcs once and for all. In fact, should the forces of civilization log too many forests, dam up too many rivers, and plow too many plains, a True Neutral druid just might stand back while a tribe of hill giants raids the king's realm, so that nature might reclaim the land and bring balance to the world.


Furthermore, no alignment means "stupid." Just because a Paladin is lawful good doesn't mean he's going to draw his sword and charge into a group of Fire Giants guarding a chasm. A Chaotic Neutral thief is, in fact, able to restrain himself from robbing the king and incurring his wrath. If players are using alignments as an excuse to do insane, self-destructive things, they really are doing it wrong.

Random Snapshot of TTRPG Amazon Ranks

Here are the Amazon ranks in fantasy gaming. D&D 5e is the hobby's juggernaut, but let's see how it's going (omitted non-TTRPG books):

1. D&D Player's Handbook
2. D&D Dungeon Master's Guide
3. D&D Monster Manual
4. ---
5. D&D Xanathar's Guide to Everything
6. D&D Mordenkainan's Tome of Foes
7. D&D Volo's Guide to Monsters
8. D&D Dungeon Master's Screen Reincarnated
9. ---
10. D&D Starter Set
11. ---
12. Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook
13. ---
14. Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide
15. ---
16. ---
17. D&D Guildmaster's Guide to Ravinica
18. ---
19. ---
20. ---
21. D&D Tales From the Yawning Portal.

It's not surprising to see the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook crack the top 20. Pathfinder is the 2nd-biggest brand in the hobby, and people are interested in what this game will be. It's sucking out all the oxygen in the room for Paizo's other products: Starfinder's fallen down to #40, and original Pathfinder stuff is even lower.  But remember, sales numbers fall off exponentially as you go down the list. The D&D Player's Handbook is #53 in all books, while the Pathfinder Playtest is #1,184. Tales From the Yawning Portal is #2,096.

I think what's likely is we'll see initial numbers out of the gate that put Pathfinder 2 in the top ten in Amazon Fantasy Gaming. It may even crack the top 100 in all books; after all, Starfinder launched at #184. But it will rapidly fall off from there as its audience will be limited largely to the Paizo faithful and their immediate friends.

Is anyone even talking about Starfinder now?

Battle Master: Worst 5e Mechanics

In my opinion, 5e's Battle Master Fighter is hands down the worst design of the core classes and archetypes. It's not that it suffers from being underpowered (that award goes to the Way of Four Elements Monk), is counterintuitive (that'd be the Beast Master Ranger), or has a crippling design bug (hello, Wild Magic Sorcerer), its' that of all the classes, it suffers the most egregiously from dissociated mechanics.

For the most part, 5e's done a very good job of clawing back from 4e's dissociated design, which is why the earlier game was frequently derided as feeling like a video game. There are largely 3 kinds of resources:

1. Magical power, mostly in the form of spell slots.
2. Physical stamina, such as a barbarian's rage or a fighter's action surge.
3. Durability, mainly in the form of hit points.

The Battle Master's Combat Superiority Dice don't really fall into any category. They can't be stamina, because they can be used to heal allies or order them to attack, and they're not magical, either. They're completely dissociated from the character and his fictional world. They're not the only example, of course. There's no apparent reason bards can't inspire people more often. The expansions have even more dissociated mechanics, such as the Purple Dragon Knight's ability to share his Second Wind, or Cavalier special attacks being limited by his strength modifier.

But overall, Battle Master is the worst. The class works fine as written, but I don't particularly like having them at the table. They add a weird flavor to the game. You've got your monk channeling ki, your wizard exhausting his magical energy, your barbarian pushing himself to his physical limits, and your battle master...spending superiority dice. It's just weird, and doesn't really fit the tone of the game.

5e Goodness: Demon Lords

5e's "bounded accuracy," meaning that stats no longer shoot to infinity, was initially one of the most questioned parts of the system. I feel like overall it was a strong decision, as adding huge numbers to a 20-sided die roll broke any sense of intuition I had about previous WotC editions (is +23 to attack a lot?). It's not flawless, but keeping the numbers in a defined range makes design problems tractable. I recently got Out of the Abyss, and comparing this book's stats for Yeenoghu, Demon Prince of Gnolls, to his Book of Vile Darkness (3.5) version I think really shows the strengths of 5e design.

Stat	3.0	5e
Hit Dice	33d8+363 (511)	24d12+192 (348)
Initiative	+13	+3
Speed	40’	50’
AC	42/24/33	22
Saves	+29/+27/+25	+9/+10/+15/+3/+14/+2
Attack	+51/+46/+41/+36 (+4 vs good)	+16 (x3 flail, x1 bite)
Damage	1d12+24	2d12+9 (flail) 4d10+9 (bite)
Resistance	DR 15/+6, 10 acid/cold/lightning	Cold, fire, lightning, spells
Immune	Fire, poison	Poison, mundane weapons

The problem with the left is I don't know what those numbers really mean. I know how high +16 to attack is. It's "the rogue is toast if this bastard gets close." This is because the absolute highest base AC goes with magic items is 29 (+3 shield, +3 plate, ring & cloak of protection, +1 Armored style). But how high is +55? Is Yeenoghu auto-hitting his attacks? Or do magic items get you over 60 AC by the time you're ready to fight toe-to-toe with Yeenoghu? I mean, I guess they must...but then this highlights the absurdity. Roll a number from 1 to 20...then add 55.

Come on.

Second thing was that to type this up at all, I had to refer to three different sources for the BoVD version. In 3.0, monsters are loaded up with tags that you have to look up. Yeenoghu has "tanari'i traits" and "outsider traits." This is in addition to his feats (most of which are really common, like Power Attack, but still, there's potentially a lot to look up). 5e has everything right there in the stat block.

Now, the 3.0 Yeenoghu obviously can't even be approached by low-level heroes. They wouldn't be able to hurt him, and he'd auto-hit them to death. Additionally, he has spells to ensure he has minions, a fear aura, and a whole bunch of other crap. All this is based on the assumption that the DM is just a fleshy computer who can't figure out on his own that the "Demon Prince of the Gnolls" ought to have, uh, gnolls with him, or that you shouldn't have sessions where a minor deity starts off with a thousand longbowmen shooting him simultaneously with enchanted arrows. There is basically a lot of stupid math to prevent silly edge cases that don't happen in real games. This is ironic for a game where the Fighter is fundamentally broken as written.

3.0 is tougher than he looks.

But how badass is the 5e version? Well, he isn't invincible, and the point of bounded accuracy is acknowledging that he doesn't need to be because nobody runs D&D as a simulation. Honestly, the number of people who care whether or not you can drop a monster from the book into an artificially constructed scenario like 900 9th-level monks or something and have it work out "logically" is vanishingly small. If the DM decides to send you spelunking into the lair of the gnoll prince at 10th level, you're going to get TPK'd and not really care if you did 102 damage before you all went down.

Instead of making Yeenoghu fearsome by making all his numbers super big, he hits really hard, has riders on his hits that will annihilate moderate-level parties quickly, and has a number of useful spells. With all that considered, the guy is fully capable of downing any character of 14th level or below in a single action, and even a 20th-level wizard isn't going to last a round toe-to-toe. Like his 3rd edition predecessor, he's got a few tricks up his sleeve other than "beat the crap out of you," including "everybody save vs fear, DC 17" (hey, DC 17 means something to me!) and "teleport to wherever I want if you guys are trouble."

5e art took a step up.

 So 5e dispenses with theorycraft nonsense in order to keep numbers sensible and monster stat blocks readable, and relies on the DM to not be a total idiot to make it all work.

The 5e Skinner Box

I've been experimenting with running AD&D adventures using the 5e rule set, but with the older XP tables. Just having a slower leveling pace so changes the nature of the game that it's kind of shocking to go back to the old, I mean new, way.

5e is something of a Skinner box. It's not as aggressive as a video game, but if you're playing by the book, players expect to level up every 2 to 3 sessions. As a result, they're always thinking about the next feat they're going to grab or spell they're going to learn. Many players, when they draw up a level 1 character, are already thinking about what they're going to have at level 10 or even level 20!

This is fine enough for the "storybook campaigns" WotC is selling now, where a year of gaming is supposed to take you from level 1 to 15 or so, but it has a number of unfortunate consequences.

A direct effect of this is that the low-level game just doesn't last long. Goblins and orcs aren't problems the PCs ever have to think about for too long, because after they've cleared a single tower of goblins and cleared one abandoned mine of orcs, they've leveled up so far that they're barely even interesting threats anymore. Consequently, you really can't do too much with the classic "horde" monsters before it's time to move on and start fighting giants.

A second effect is that you often don't spend enough time at lower levels to really do much with your spells and abilities. I played a Bard in a campaign once, and despite having a fairly small spell list, there were a few spells I never used, and quite a few more that only got used once or twice. This wasn't because they were bad spells so much as spells like Animate Objects and Leomund's Tiny Hut get used almost every session, while a good use for Suggestion may come up once or twice before getting much more interesting spells.

Anyway, I've found that spending more time at lower levels results in the base of the character sheet getting a lot of exercises, and enough time getting spent with orcs, hobgoblins, and bugbears for the players to really get to know them. We may never see level 15, but the old way has its merits.