I have been playing and running dnd 5e for years, and for whatever reason it is only now slowly dawning on me that the engine is just...bad. I'm not smart enough to put my finger on why, but I have noticed that whenever people discuss running it well, or I think of ideas myself, it always seems to boil down to doing extra work yourself and adding your own content to make the game interesting, dragging the engine behind you like dead weight.
Of course, everyone wants something different in a ttrpg. My group wants a combat based dungeon crawler with fast combat and good opportunites for strategic, tactical gameplay. 5E has a lot of content that tries to create this, but I feel I should look for other options.
Thread topic: In your opinion, what engines/editions are best for a group looking for that dungeon crawl oriented around combat, killing things and avoiding being killed, with strategy and turns that move fast enough to avoid the game being bogged down with slow turns.
>engine
Is this an ai troll thread that mistakes this board for /video games/? Did you just pick the most popular game, ask ChapGPT to make an insincere assbackwards troll thread complaining about it, and failed to proofread what it spewed out?
What are your thoughts on One Roll Engine?
I love One Roll Engine, been trying to get my friends to play Monsters and Other Childish Things.
I don't think anyone is doing proof-reading anymore. We are at full automation of shitposting now.
Hey this is OP first checking this thread after posting it for reply bait. I thought it was normal to refer to ttrpgs as "engines?" I have heard others do it. Sorry if I got it wrong.
5e is not designed to be fast and doesn't equip you to make good encounters very well. Its on your shoulders to make good encounters, but to be fair most RPGs are like that.
>My group wants a combat based dungeon crawler with fast combat and good opportunites for strategic, tactical gameplay.
Fast combat and tactics seem to be at odds until someone innovates the hell out of this stagnant-ass industry. See OSR: Its mostly hack and slash, so you can move pretty fast through it until players are bogged down with magic items and spells at high levels. See 3.5: tactical as all hell but the balance is terrible and you'll be bogged down with feats and magic items almost instantly. OSR is probably your best bet, because you can put an emphasis on battle ranks and flanking maneuvers and start at level 2 or 3 if you don't like the character lethality meme. Check out Gary Gygax's Keep on the Borderlands, if you hate it then you'll need to try something else. beware of False OSR shit like Troika and Mork Borg, which destroy tactical depth.
Its acceptable terminology.
The term engine doesn't get used much, but it is an accurate term for the baseline mechanics for a system.
is just a paranoid homosexual who spends his time pretending he can clean up the board from undesirables because he's still butthurt staff wont let him be a janny.
5e is not very good for what you are looking for. A fast paced dungeon crawl means that you'll have to give up some of the tactical decisions or else combat will take forever.
What you are looking for: an OSR game of your choice: OSE, B/X, Shadowdark, the list goes on. Scan the rules on all of them and decide from there. I personally am using Shadowdark right now and I'm a fan. It is very similar to 5e in some ways as well.
>Shadowdark
Giga cringe. Proof women shouldn't write RPGs. I'm not even trolling, there is nothing good in that game. Stupid zoomer ADHD hipster ideas like irl time = game time that seems original but aren't.
The engine itself has some issues but isn't bad in a vacuum. It's the D&D 5E ruleset that comes with it and the spergy morons it created and the toxic culture it spawned is the problem. And of course every 5E engine based game just takes D&D 5E rules and alters it just a little bit so the problems remain.
Wow, OP, you're really gunning for some replies. Just straight up pure trolling now.
We are all OP.
>every 5E engine based game just takes D&D 5E rules and alters it just a little bit
Every homebrew of 5e I see just makes it into 4e
You mean with more cool down castables that essentially just add extra character fluff and little to no tactical or otherwise mechanical difference?
Damn I'm starting to think 4e was way ahead of its time
Unironically, yes. DnD is the Fortnite of TTRPGs, even though it's pretty unfair to Fortnite to compare it to something so much worse.
Literally the ONLY good thing DnD has going for it is the fact that it's the game everyone already knows how to play. That's it.
At least DnD existing serves as a trash-filter to keep normies and morons out of the other games in the hobby.
There is a number of "simplified for mud crawling" 5e based systems like knave and deathbringer rpg. Personally, I have abandoned systems with scaling hp all together. I have been running cortex prine for my current campaign. But my current game is not a mud crawler, so...
Think of playing a game of 5E as doing a court case.
None of your players have prepared, they won't have read the law books required to become a Lawyer but they are both sides legal teams.
The DM is the judge, the legal teams and the jury, and none of the players will prepare.
Nothing that happens in the court room can take place without the proper procedures the players have no intention of learning.
They have index card abilities they keep screeching about that makes them go: "I'm so great at lawyering, I rolled a 32"
Then combat takes forever because they have nothing prepared nor do they know shit,
And they sure as frick have no intention of learning for next time.
5E isn't beginner friendly.
It's a labyrinth of procedures.
Each fricking time your players show up with a new sub-class it's just another waste of time.
This is close to my experience as well.
It’s like they made the game as simple as they possibly could, and it’s still too complicated for non-DM normies.
Couple that with how they all get overly attached to their characters because they wrote a le epic backstory and want that kino Critical Role / Adventure Zone experience and it all culminates in them being whiney babies who don’t know the rules.
5e is extremely fricking simple and easy and I'm almost insulted at how bloated everything feels for how simple it actually is.
Almost everything in the game is a combination of PB, Ability modifier and some other value.
The issue is that rules are all over the place or not properly labeled. For example, how many leveled spells can you cast in a turn is something very important and crucial to the rules, yet it's mentioned as the last line i "Bonus action spells" in the spellcasting rules after making you feel like you can cast any spell as a bonus action.
>Any OSR
Lightweight dungeoncrawlers heavily based on the first editions off DnD. OSE, Labrynth Lord, Shadowdark, etc. Most of these are not too different from each-other. Regardless of the system you pick, there's a wide selection of quality osr content for dungeoncrawling that's easily converted to any DnD type system.
>Dungeon Crawl Classics
In that vein of d20 dungeoncrawler but more robust. Fighters and Casters are really fun in this system, though the casters do have a few superfluous subsystems (e.g. spelldueling) that you could easily ignore or simplify for brevity's sake. Thieves might need a little love.
>Forbidden Lands
A d6 dicepool system. It also checks most of those boxes, though you might or might not want to use a different dungeon exploration procedure than the one in the book. The rules for overland travel are something you might want to look at in case there's anything you'd want to steal. An issue here that the supplementary content isn't very good in my experience, and it's harder to convert content from d20 systems.
>Troika!
A small chance, a smidgen, that this is the one. Just look it up. If you're not interested by what you see don't bother. If you are interested but the setting doesn't fit there's a supplement called "Prime Material" that converts it to standard dnd fantasy. 2d6 system but conversion from d20 content is surprisingly easy.
>Troika
There's a funky initiative system where you pull dice out of a bag. It can cause you to go multiple times or not at all. If you're looking for neat combat then this one's worth a read through.
>5E
Every edition of D&D aside from arguably AD&D (when used as intended) have been bad systems.
D&D as a whole has always been clunky.
> d20
> Save-or-suck
> Meat Points
> Spell slots
The thing is, there's not a lot out there objectively better. My suggestion: find yourself a game concept, find a game that matches the style somewhat, and homebrew.
Or find a generic system. I am partial to DP9's Silhouette system myself, [Skill Level]d6; take highest, but those being only an engine, they tend to be better.
Obligatory not OP-- for 'finding similar systems based off of a core rolling mechanic', I play a Vampire the Requiem 2e campaign and the rolling system ([stat]d10, 8~10 are successes, roll 1 more d10 per crit 10) is very forgiving. I'm having trouble finding a similar system that doesn't have absolutely trash PDFs for system rules, any recommendations on that part?
'Stat mod= dice pool' is generally what I'm after, most I could find was Sci-fi, tech, or Modern when I want Fantasy. A replacer for 5e.
My recommendation was more like "if you wanna play political vampires, houserule V:tR or find a generic system to run it instead".
From what I remember from Whitewolf games we played, and it has been so long I'm not sure if it was V:tR or V:tM (it was the one where Brujah and Malkavian were derivative Bloodlines of ? and Ventrue), you are correct. Common houserules we used is that, for difficulties, a number of successes are required instead of removing dice from the pool, and damaging attacks, as well as powers, had base damage and smaller dice pools.
Sorry I can't help ya more.
Ahhhh, I see I see.
Yeah V:tR is the one where Brujah and Malkavian are derivatives. I don't know why they didn't make them their own thing-- guess they didn't want to change the numbers for the original doc by adding ones that were aside from the base game. The PDFs are god-awful with the Serif font paragraphs and cursive headers & titles, and I can't change them all in one go without fricking up the spacing. Whoever decided red small cursive was an ideal aesthetic for a text-heavy PDF, I hope they spontaneously combust.
That being said I'll look a little harder if there's any similar system. It feels far better than getting 1 singular dice roll and a slat modifier. And even if you only have 2 dice in a stat your rolling in V:tR you're still able to 'succeed'. Dice pools tying to stats was similar in Kids on Bikes but the system isn't as meaty as I want it to be, and implementing magic would be too much work on my part to homebrew such a big extension.
Seriously, though, I'd look into Genesys to run V:tM. Most of the core ideas of V:tR can be added to just about any system (gaining Blood Potency, losing humanity), it deals with stat+skill dice pools more elegantly, as well as circumstance modifiers.
The only thing you'd need to work on is WillPower, Vices and Virtues, but you could mimic Edge of the Empire's Force Points. IF you want to deal with it at all. Just say that a player has a max of WillPower equal to Lowest between Composure and Resolve, and a Vice give them 1, and a Virtue gives them 2.
And I don't mind the whole bloodline thing myself. Granted, I played little OWoD before V:tR, but people mutating their blood for an advantage, or being cursed with latent extra madness kinda make sense. And I like Malkavian being more rare, more unique. Both as a Malkavian player and as a GM.
Are you not using penalties at all? 2 dice in an unmodified pool shouldn't get you very far.
Not on a large scale, no, we're Blood Potency 1. There is still conditional penalties depending on what you're trying to do, but flat penalties? No, none. Even then, not a lot of the party is min-maxing so the DM hasn't needed to up the difficulty too hard.
Thanks for the rec, I'll 100% look into it! Might rec it to my DM too if the PDFs are any better.
> Meat Points
Honestly I prefer hit points to "wounds" or other health pips that ultimately just round numbers down to single digits.
Unless you implement something like Fragged Empire's Stamina / Stat damage (HP is stamina, when you run out, every attack that hits you has an extra free Critical effect that damages your stat. If a stat goes to 0 / -5, u dead), or at the very least a "bloodied" status or penalties for reaching low HP, wounds mean nothing.
I mean, at least get on d&d 4th ed, WoD and Shadowrun's level (all better, none good).
Heck, even Star Wars Saga did HP better than 5e, even though they botched the Condition Track idea.
is he in the thread yet?
Yes but didn't have a massive spergout like usual.
5e is like democracy, it's far from perfect system but every alternative is somehow even worse.
No it isn’t. There are several, more specialized systems that are vastly better at handling what D&D tries to do.
This analogy is correctly describes most peoples relation to both dnd and democracy, and also captures the midwit sentiment that there are no better alternatives to either.
Democracy is awful and the Founding Father's vocally shat on it as a system that would always fail spectacularly into tyranny.
5e is similarly awful in the sense that it causes a clinical case of brain rot that teaches players to be uncreative murder hobos
Ignoring the UStardery and that not only was it democracy that drove the founding fathers to get the states working, but the point that was shat on was how control over education and lack of education in it would lead to the ideas of consent to representation, vote on implementation and priority of the overall value of the common man (aka democracy); 5e doesnt teach players to murderhobo, bad dms that dont play RAW do. Sadly 5e is simple enough that a burger room temp IQ like you can run it for actual room temp IQs and somehow still have a halfway decent time despite ignoring 40% of the things that make the numbers work and 60-80% of the remaining rules.
For anyone that doesnt work through pre pruning 3.5, no. Not for fantasy play with more than 3 distinct classes low skill floor for adequate performance that when run by the rules or at least with use of the number tables provided by both core books (that have simplified versions in the first true +1) without being too shallow for modification or plain crunchless.
Full (round) attack isn't a thing in 5e, standard attack gives bab equivalent its without limiting movement like fra, charge or skirm would for well set martials in 3e (aka everyone playing one); proper use of cover(including other creatures), difficult terrain+knockback, positioning for AoO optimization, precasts, is bare minimum strats if run by RAW. On its own not lethal if not done for one encounter, but certainly is by the third daily (unless the DM uses the RAW monster customization options and gives class levels that dont improve base dpr and AC in which case it is lethal). Nice copium tho.
homosexual israelite alert
I would like to recommend GURPS as a potential system, or "engine", that may serve your purposes. Unlike most GURPSgays, I will actually substantiate my points.
The core reasons I think GURPS would be good for your needs is as follows:
>3d6 roll under is a good fundamental mechanic that creates weighted curves. This helps make characters more distinct and means that you can have more strategy than just "do I hit the target"
One of the best combat systems in any TTRGP I've ever played. GURPS melee in particular is absolutely immaculate, with support for any number of maneuvers and moves your players might want to perform. I don't have enough characters to fully explain how the system works here, but its a very good one and I haven't seen a better system for "martial" type characters in an RPG (though I've heard Pendragon is similar).
However, you should also keep in mind that:
>Its complex. GURPS requires your players to have functioning brains, or at least to skim the rulebook once. Its certainly not as difficult to learn as some anons make out, and unlike DnD you don't need to cross reference 30 different books to learn basic facts about how to play, but some essential reading will be in order. Playing GURPS and mastering GURPS are too very different things.
Lastly, I want to address something that is critical to any discussion of GURPS: What fricking books do I need? For something like this, you only need 4. Basic set (Characters and Campaigns), Martial Arts, and Low Tech. I would also strongly recommend using Dungeon Fantasy, as it has a lot of premade stats that will fit what you are probably going for.
Lastly, before somebody says it, just because GURPS is a "generic" system doesn't mean its inherently inferior to more "specific" systems. I've seen plenty of specific systems, DnD included, with terrible combat systems.
Theres more I want to say, but I'm already at the character limit.
>and unlike DnD you don't need to cross reference 30 different books to learn basic facts about how to play
you've never played DnD
I think he was being hyperbolic, anon.
To add to this, if you have a good gm who is fluent in Gurps, you can play a game with people who do not even know the rules. You can just ask them "what would you do in real life in this situation" and you can translate their input to Gurps and resolve it. Gurps has the advantage of having an internally consistent rule system so it is easy to sort of guess the results and rulings etc
For what you're asking, Shadow of the Demon Lord is my go-to and has been for a good few years. It's simple without being boring and still has a nice bit of crunch to work with. It's lethal and risky but never feels unfair or mean-spirited. It's really elegant overall and everything is designed to not slow the game's momentum down, whether that's initiative or modifiers. The mechanics are just where you need them and then it steps back for when it's time for RP and narrative stuff. Character progression has you choose 3 classes at 3 different tiers, which gives you a load of flexibility and there aren't any restrictions between them. No matter what you choose you'll be competent and it's a great way to get mechanical backing for your narrative choices. Magic is always a blast to play around with. Martial caster balance is great and nothing ever feels like the objectively best choice. The setting is a lot of fun and full of really cool histories and metaphysical stuff. There is a load of flexibility in its tone and content, it's a horror game but doesn't cater to a single type of horror and you lets you make those sort of choices yourself. It's often dark and gritty but there is never a lack of hope or a pointless sense of nihilism to it. There is more content then you'll ever need but it's all in small cheap supplements so you never end up buying a book and hating half of it and feeling like you wasted a chunk of cash, most of its the price of a cup of coffee, and 99% of it is really well balanced.
My only issues with it are the very very rare Path or Ancestry that's way too good/bad and there occasional unclear ruling but that stuff is few and far between. And the only broken ancestry did get fixed, albeit in a supplement. I can't see another game supplanting it for a good while either, especially in the dark fantasy genre. At least until Shadow of the Weird Wizard comes out which is a new game in the same engine for a more traditional fantasy thing.
I just wanted to join the SotDL fanboys and add that yeah it's a nice system.
There are some option rules supplement too, although I haven't tried the more radical changes it offers.
>Of course, everyone wants something different in a ttrpg. My group wants a combat based dungeon crawler with fast combat and good opportunites for strategic, tactical gameplay. 5E has a lot of content that tries to create this, but I feel I should look for other options.
The fricked up thing is that it really doesn't. The vast majority of the Monster Manual is just a creature that can sometimes attack once or twice, and maybe has one gimmick that lets them attack an additional time, or do an attack that provokes a save of some kind.
It's not until you get to the much stronger monsters that you get anything more threatening and most of the time that takes the form of being able to heal, being able to outright ignore damage, being able to insta-win on saves and checks, and things that generally go against strategic thinking and instead turn "challenge" into "deny the players the chance to end the fight any sooner, by DM veto"
And what options do the players have? Attack as often as possible and abuse the action economy as intensely as they can so they can bum-rush any real threat before a battle of attrition can be started.
Adding to this, when people talk about "strategic combat" in D&D 5e, they mean they kick open a door, start a surprise round. FIREBALL IMMEDIATELY. Martials run in and do a full attack. Next round, HASTE ON THE MARTIALS. Martials do more attacks. Anyone still alive?! MORE FULL ATTACKS.
When you think strategy, you assume there will be clever positioning, and use of tactical decision making. Setting up clever plans the utilize an array of powers to overcome your opponents. The PHb even pays lipservice to the idea of doing clever things, like swinging from a Chandelier to do some dashing hero shit... But with the way things are calculated out, your best option, every time, without fail, is to move in, and attack as much as possible, doing as much damage as you can in one turn. Ideally, before the target can even act. Any turn spent doing some clownish acrobatics or some witty funnyman shit is going to be a turn where you're wasting time bargaining with the DM to see if they'll let you do it, and the result will always be less effective than if you just moved up and attacked, and the rest of the people at the table will probably let you know as much.
Like, the wizard has spells that can buff or aid their allies... but why the frick would you waste turn casting mage armor when you can just cast Fireball and clear the room instead? Every turn the baddies aren't fireball'd is a turn they get to try and hurt you. Hurt them first and do it hard enough so they never get the chance to hurt you. That's D&D's deep, thoughtful combat system in a nutshell.
>but why the frick would you waste turn casting mage armor when you can just cast Fireball and clear the room instead?
Troll or moronic. Mage Armor lasts all day, you don't cast it during combat. Should have picked any other buff spell for this point.
Wasted spell slot that's not going to be of any help to the majority of characters. Better off spamming Magic Missile from the back lines.
This is the thing that always gets to me about 5e combat. It's like every aspect of the system is working in tandem to ensure that combat is the least dynamic thing possible.
Some of the best spells are control spells that force enemies to sit around unable to do anything. The strongest enemies are ones that have special 'nuh uh' buttons to ignore that while often having attacks that do the same thing to the players.
The list of monsters that actually have anything interesting going for them is incredibly short.
>The list of monsters that actually have anything interesting going for them is incredibly short.
Not that anon, but any examples? genuinely curious, I haven't delved deep into the system
what's the tone of Conan and what is the tone of 5E?
>Conan
Larger than life heroes but not to the point where they divorce from reality completely.
>5E
Schizophrenic. Part of it is Conan-esque, part of it is zero to hero fantasy, and part of it is quadratic wizards D&D bullshit.
>Not that anon, but any examples? genuinely curious, I haven't delved deep into the system
I did actually go through and try to curate a list recently, so sure, I can share.
The first thing I'd list as more of a catch-all is monsters with Regional Effects. Those vary a lot in actually being interesting, but simply being a monster that causes an area to look spooky or do something magical for a few mile radius earns them some points.
More notably though, I look for monsters with more unique effects suc h as
>Shadows - deal damage to Strength score, very rare in 5e, potentially a threat regardless of PC level
>Banshee - wail can instantly drop PCs to 0, relatively easy DC, but again, still a threat
>Ghosts - can instantly age PCs by decades as well as possess people
>Rust Monsters - destroy metal equipment
>Intellect Devourers - can eat a PC's brain and hijack their body
>Draconic Shard - telekinetic intelligent object, can essentially imitate an intelligent magic item
>Elder Oblex - consumes memories, creates ooze doppelgangers using stolen memories
>Elder Brain Dragon, Gas spore, Slaad, Carrion Stalker, Rot Grubs - similar in that they all have attacks which can infest the PCs and kill/transform them after a duration
>Archon of the Triumvirate - can determine on sight what laws a creature has broken in the last 24 hours
Those I would stay stand out. A lot of them are pretty early prints or have fairly unfair abilities that can easily kill a PC, but a lot of those stand out purely because they attack PCs in a way that isn't a simple damage race that will be forgotten after a long rest.
Some of them like the Archon, Shard, Ghost, and Oblex are more about the roleplaying angle though, since they do have some unique aspects that open up some weird interactions.
This isn't an exhaustive list, but I've basically touched on maybe two dozen creatures out of the thousands that 5e has, to give you an idea of the ratio I think are interesting.
Work your way up into Shadow of the Demon Lord, which is just a straight-up better d20 system with an official setting everyone ignores, then you can start looking into the expanded skillset shit like WFRP or Shadowrun if you want to switch the setting up.
>tfw anon wasn't around for the utter slop that was the d20/OGL implosion of the 2000s
>tactics
Tactics? What do you consider tactics? I've had new players who just want to move and roll because they don't think in terms of strategy/tactics, but they like rolling dice.
Why is it always the OSRgays that come out of the woodworks for system recs? Usually GURPS gets thrown in there as a meme, but almost always OSR comes in.
>OP asks for a d&d alternative with fast combat for dungeon crawling
Not an OSRgay but what the frick did you expect to find here?
OSR is basically heavily modified D&D. Perfect for weaning D&Drones off D&D.
PF2
>what engines/editions are best for a group looking for that dungeon crawl oriented around combat, killing things and avoiding being killed, with strategy and turns that move fast enough to avoid the game being bogged down with slow turns.
BECMI. i was lucky to convince my group to play it, but good luck with yours.
It has its benefits.
I've got an utter grog (likely an oldgay) at my LGS I chat shit with on and off.
What DnD, particularly 5e has, is 'pick up and play'-ability. It's incredibly streamlined and simple, with the complexities being put into feats and not stat/check/attribute/roll modifiers. It forsakes this greater basic action variability in crunch for ease of entry, and leaves it to the table to enter it in their own method.
This is not a bad thing, mind. Being able to just sit down and play a game at the drop of a hat is a genuine redeeming characteristic, and there are very few systems and engines both out there that can do this, without the expectation that the GM will pull it off by making shit up in their head to supplement a limited set of mechanics or setting information.
TL:DR The engine is bad in performance. But it's good in how you can just sit down and play a game easy, without it being rules lite.
Hard disagree. 5e is only Pick up and Play if you are already familiar, comfortable and competent with character creation. I (and presumably everyone on this board) can roll up some stats and have a ready character sheet in less than 5 minutes but to the uninitiated it's a pretty daunting task. This is why there is a rise in people needing a 'session 0' because it can easily take newbies an hour+, even with advice, to figure out what the options are and which ones they want.
The reason why people pick up and stay with 5e is it's customisability. Plenty of classes to pick from and they all have subclasses you can easily run a full party through 4 or 5 campaigns and never have anyone repeat the same class and subclass combination.
A pretty book, it's highly available(on the shelf of every lgs and several book shops in my area) and character options that spark the imagination are what make 5e the current big thing.
To return to my (and your) original point I don't think 5e is particularly good for pick up and play. Character creation is just a little too dense. And this would be pretty easy to fix. If the DMG or PHB had some pre-made characters in the back for people to use for there one shots or to learn the ropes but they don't currently and unless the GM chooses to have a few extra character sheet lying around then it's not easy to just start playing(and let's be honest you could fix every problem in any system by just saying "well the GM can just...") but as is the system doesn't even have anything to facilitate quick start. Cyberpunk red has 3 different levels of character creation complexity but 5e doesn't even bother to hold your hand. The only way you can consider it quick to begin is if you are comparing it to ADnD or 3.5
As someone who really doesn't like DnD, the engine is okay. The swingy d20 evokes the dramatic moments of heroic fantasy. Apart from that, the real problem is that it bills itself as the premiere format to disappear into a world of roleplaying wonder where you can do and be anything, but really it is a wargame with a skills list to cover noncombat and help a gm adjudicate.
Classes, which are their for role protection, really don't fit that promise. Classes are for gamey games which would be fine if DnD didn't purport to be a comprehensive roleplaying experience facilitator. Feats, which should be a helpful tool for providing characters interesting routes to represent their characters with mechanical investment, seem to always have to take a back seat to builds or watch as you get outdone in your own field or wonder how much quicker the fight could have gone.
Magic, if it must be vancian which I understand is a head-ache free though largely porridge-tasting solution to how to implement people who can manipulate reality, should at least take a leaf out of l5r's book and off to let players take on some higher casting DC or DnD equivalent tax to augment spells as a core ability. I'd prefer runic, syntactic or pool-built like in Mage the Ascension/Awakening, as these spell entry lists make it feel like spellcasters are people who shop off the same list of reality software.
I will say conceptually the six stats are not too bad a spread for the impossible problem of making attributes that aren't too inclusive or exclusive leading to dissonance. Arguably, Strength and Constitution overlap a bit (strength tends to come with health and vice versa) and Wisdom dies the opposite by bundling senses and intution/experience (but their is at least some conception throughline in the form of insight) but given how any configuration will have these problems I don't mind so much.
It has some major flaws.
advantage and disadvantage are really bad.
I'm as judgmental of late D&D as the next guy but "bad" is not the term I'd use, sort of like how most of the time when people are pissed about movies or whatever, it's not like they were -bad- in the sense that, say, Suburban Sasquatch was bad. They're not Star Wars Holiday Special bad. They're not FATAL bad. They're mediocre when they SHOULD have been good, and that's what pisses people off.
Moreover in the case of 5e, it's mediocre when its prior editions were all pretty good, and it instead struck out on this weird salient that brought nothing to the table compared to earlier editions. 3.X and 4e were both systems that had intense system depth, and the balance issues were awful--but 5e is what happens when you completely iron those issues out, you end up with homogenized slop. But it's not bad, per-se, it is rather that it feels as though WOTC abandoned multiple promising venues of development to start over, and this is the 5th time they've done this (actually more than that) and it's starting to get old that a company with more design experience and more veteran designers than just about any other /tg/ company on Earth somehow cannot get its shit together long enough to actually improve and iterate upon a prior edition instead of starting over.
I must remind you that 3.X at its height had a 3rd party supplement pool so massive it exceeded the entire White Wolf catalogue, twice. The whole thing. Paizo by itself produced more books for 3.X than Chaosium has ever produced total. If you started now it would probably take you several years of concerted reading to read every OGL 3.X license book. When 3.5 happened, the 3.0 stuff could still be retrofitted fairly easily to work with the new system, but with 4e that was a complete no-go, and 5e is just as distant. So you've got a company outmoding 99% of its own catalogue every time it releases a new edition, not because the new one is bad, per-se, but because it isn't better but different.
The "d20 bounded accuracy" engine 5E uses is actually really solid, it's just superbly bad at supporting 5E. Essentially the main advantages of the "engine" are how simple, easy and fast it is, while 5E is a slow, complicated and bloated system. Think of it as trying to make a motorcycle engine run a truck. If you want something fast and simple, you would be hard pressed to find something better than "roll a die against target number" with the numbers never being higher than 30. The problem is WotC has not really made up its mind as to what kind of game they want to have after they made the decision to use the simplest possible engine, and try to do everything, while also hanging onto baggage from previous editions and pretending to be a tactical combat game.
Bounded accuracy makes a lot of sense when dealing with a game that has a tone like Conan but it is absolutely fricking insane to use it in a game with the tone of 5E.
>WotC has not really made up its mind as to what kind of game they want to have
They do though. They want the game that appeals to the most people. Their priorities are to create as many fans as possible with as little effort as possible, so they make the look simple to pull in normals, and under that have it look deep to pull in autists. Once a normal buys something they go full Brand Loyalty Zombie even if they're literally too stupid to use it. Autists hate change so once they absorb all the complicated shit and make a character the game is their their special interest even if intellectually they know it sucks. So they both keep buying new books in the hopes that this one will be what they though they bought into in the first place. The best part is, the game doesn't have to be a good product at any point.
Bounded accuracy, combined with a severe aversion to any modifier that isn't Advantage or Disadvantage just means the system feels samey at every level. HP scales up, but you get more attacks, so instead of needing to do different things to overcome a wider variety of challenges, you mostly just need to keep doing the same thing, but more. At first level, you're doing one attack a round against enemies that go down in 2 hits. At level 10, you're doing a few more attacks per round to enemies that go down in 6 hits. Not exact amounts, obviously, but you get my meaning.
I think it's got the issue of being very simplified to appeal to newcomers but still keeping more in depth mechanics, which sounds good on paper but just kind of makes it a bit of a slog for new people yet flat for folk with a bit more experience.
Still the main starting point for RPGs but after a bit most people switch to other systems. Everyone and their cat recommends pathfinder 2E as an alternative, or maybe trying past editions of DnD (3.5 is generally considered the peak but 4es had a bit of a resurgence lately).
So yeah you've probably just grown out of it, I'd try other systems that have a bit more depth if you haven't already (although I'd be surprised if you hadn't if you've been playing for years, no judgement tho)
I like a bunch of the ideas in Pathfinder 2e, especially the class design and the action system, but the +1 circumstance bonuses everywhere annoy me; I genuinely like the 5e Advantage/Disadvantage, +/-1d4 mechanics, I just wish they were a little bit more granular and there were more ways to interact with saving throws (like how Prone gives Disadvantage on Dex saves).
Also, I find it funny that Paizo is woker than WotC yet I see less obnoxious wokeness in the Paizo output.
Tangent: I remember way back when Paizo made a quiet point of having the Iconic characters be genuinely diverse; Golarion has interesting and distinctive human nations and ethnicities that kinda make all the elves and dwarves and such a vestigial appendage. Arab cleric, Indian monk, bare-midriff female barbarian, Moorish paladin, et cetera. Even the fighter is kinda swarthy and Mediterranean.
My plan to combat freakshit amongst 5e players is to accuse them of erasing people of color from fantasy settings and they should play more human minorities or else they're racist.
Thats a shitty plan. Paizo is just as awful as WotC, in fact they're worse in many ways.
Did Paizo publically say they want white males to leave the hobby?
I have an online game of PF2E with my group, it's built for that imo. It's very complicated and there are so many different status effects that I can't keep track of.
The game is pretty fun, this current campaign my group is at level 8 and will likely finish at 15.
I believe Black Hack is an OSR Two action system, which would be better for an in person game(my in person group plays OSE).