"It's a bit deceptive to name it Find Traps..." Amanda, let me introduce you to a ranged necromancy spell called Chill Touch.

5th edition feels like it's trying to compete with video games and take a lot of video game mechanics. They try to keep it simple by simplifying equipment, making character harder to kill off. Like shields, the amount of rules for each piece of equipment took up their own book in earlier editions. The simplicity of 5th is refreshing.

To me religions in D&D didn’t make sense for a long time, until they did. I assume the polytheism of D&D is mostly based on ancient Greco-Roman beliefs and in that context single-deity clerics make sense as that what they did. At the same time even clerics of Jupiter would occasionally pray to other gods, but they weren’t ordained in the mysteries of those gods. So a DnD cleric could/ should pray to all the gods of the pantheon, but could only channel miracles of their chosen deity. Many places would have had their patron gods, who they worshipped the most, while maybe only acknowledging other gods without as much devotion. Those kinds of religions could evolve into monolatries which explicitly only worship one god while admitting existence of other gods, while not worshipping them

Some great topics! Here are a few more: 1) Travel speed Horse vs people = about the same in 8 hours. 2) Crafting costs vs buy, such as scrolls 3) NPC income vs store costs.

After going through the rest of the comments I realized that I might actually be able to help you with some of these questions. Falling: This is a perspective shift that can help. The average person walking around in a DnD world doesn’t have hit dice. Their con is around 8-12. So they only have like 2-5 HP. The characters are heroes and 20d6 is a lot of dice to roll. Dying to falling damage feels wrong if your character has the hp to survive a 20 story fall. Which does happen in rare circumstances in the real world. Another thing that you can use is the Massive Damage rules in the DMG. As it stands, It encourages heroic gameplay like jumping from an airship onto the back of a flying dragon with out worrying completely about just flat out being killed. Shields: Porting over the Shield rules from 3rd edition can be a quick fix. Bucklers +1, medium shields +2, tower shields give you Cover Religion: The Grungeon Master has a great video on this and how to fix it. To defend Barovia, it’s a Domain of Dread. A separate dimension that sits outside of the normal cosmic influences. It’s not just a weird most shrouded land in the Forgotten Realms, it’s closer to a Strahd personalized Hell. Most people who don’t have any idea of how polytheistic societies operate don’t know how to depict religion outside of their own typically monotheistic definitions of religion. So instead of tread shaky ground they just let the DMs handle religion how they see fit and call it good. It’s annoying but that’s what it is. Find Traps: is indefensible. They didn’t want wizards to make rogues useless so they nerfed the spell. Advantage/Disadvantage: It’s just a tool to get rid of the floating modifiers that plagued earlier editions of the game. Essentially it is just short hand for representing a scenario based modifier that will give a +/- 3 to 6. Advantage/Disadvantage canceling each other out is just shorthand for not having to have a bunch of math clogging up the game. 3rd edition was all about these things and it would bog down game play. Like the archer scenario would be like +4 to the dc of the shot after you roll percentile dice because you only have a 50% to hit the target due to being blind folded…. Etc. In other scenarios it would be well I got +3 circumstance bonus, but -4 environmental, and +2 scenario and -3 magical… so that adds up to-2… wait and their in full cover? Okay but what if I do this…. It becomes a drag that was way easier to say you get advantage from these factors and disadvantage from these so it’s just a straight roll. It wasn’t about simulating a rule for every scenario it was about creating a shorthand that made things faster at the table.

Re: find traps, there are several things (at least) that are misnomers. "Detect traps" would be better. "Sneak attack" is one that took me a long time to get over, as it's not a sneak attack and doesn't rely on sneaking or stealth. I'd name it something like "precision strike" or "strike unaware" or something along those lines.

The big "riot shield" is called a tower shield. In my games the buckler gives a +1, regular shields give the standard, tower shields give +3.

Interesting. In Pathfinder 2e: 1. You reach terminal velocity at 1500 ft. and take 750 hp of damage (wich will pretty much kill any PC); 2. Vareity of shields giving item bonus from +1 to + 3 to AC (you have to spend one of your three actions to get this bonus); 3. "At the GM’s discretion, champions and clerics can dedicate themselves to a pantheon." 4. This spell does not seem to exist in 2e; 5. Bonuses and penalties are adding up (But if you have multiple bonuses or penalties of the same type, you must use only the highest bonus/penalty on a given roll-they aren't cumulative.)

Interestingly, there were two issues of Dragon magazine that addressed falling damage in the early 80's. The first, in issue 70, by Frank Mentzer, explained that the system in the book, which is the same used in 5e, was not Gary's intended system. But due to an oversight, it was misprinted. It should have been a cumulative system, so 1d6 for 10', plus 2d6 for 20', plus 3d6 etc. So 1d6 total for 10', 3d6 for 20', etc. Then, in issue 88, there were two articles, both with scientific interpretations. One calculated something slightly less than the existing system; the other concluded that the existing system was in fact correct, scientifically speaking. Of course, hit points were a lot lower all around back then, too. So maybe the cumulative system, with a higher limit than 20d6, is more appropriate for today's big numbers. Keep asking questions. It's what built this hobby. (btw, my cousin had a heart attack at age 23. He's fine now, closing on 50, with no heart problems since.)

tbh I think the falling thing is more a problem with health scaling than it is a falling issue. Pathfinder 2e fixes this by capping it higher, but I'm sure there are a few ways to do it that would work fine

Earlier versions have different types of shields. I believe AD&D even has different stats for them. Basic D&D says they give 1 to AC and says that what you gain in coverage you lose in mobility. So it all balances out.

Find Traps is a legacy from previous editions, where it makes much more sense. 5E nerfed it as niche protection for rogues. The deity issue comes down to your individual world-building, but it's worth noting that previous editions went through many iterations on this theme. As another commenter notes, Pathfinder allows a cleric to worship a pantheon, which was also a core feature of 3E Eberron. In D&D 2e, a cleric could actually be devoted to an ideal or a concept, even in a world with named, individual deities. The term "specialty priest" was used for a cleric specifically devoted to one deity alone. Even paladins could be devoted to, e.g. "justice" or "the Crown". Here is the relevant text for shields from D&D1e, just for fun: "Note that the inclusion of a shield raises armor class (AC) by a factor of 1 (5%), but that assumes attack from the front where the character can interpose it between himself and a blow. - A small shield can be counted against only one attack per melee round. A normal-sized shield can effectively be counted against two attacks per melee round. A large shield is counted against up to three attacks per melee round. - Attacks from the right flank and rear always negate the advantage of the shield." I don't happen to have the 2e PHB handy, but IIRC that edition added Tower Shields, which gave something like +2 AC and +4 AC vs. missiles, but were a cast iron bitch to lug around.

5e streamlining the rules created a LOT of ambiguity. Falling was similar, they just didn't develop it further since it didn't come up much. 3ed had the shield differences you mentioned, some granting cover in Lue of additional AC. Religion was also fleshed out then also. Streamlining took it out to open up for DM interpretation. Advantage/disadvantage also is a victim of streamlining - 3ed had a LOT of modifications to the roll and target numbers... It often became a complex mathematical equations. This became frustrating when higher levels including competing modifications had to be accounted for.

Per the advantage and disadvantage issue, Darkness is rather silly in that its effects cancel out on everyone experiencing them together. This is a situation where no one should get advantage due to the darkness affecting others, but it's a wash for anyone except for targets with devil's sight who get the best of both worlds.

I come from Rolemaster, there's a rule and table for everything. There is a falling attack table. It even has critical hits 😊

Regarding the Shields, you should consider looking into 3rd party content like Kobold Press. I found their stuff mostly balanced and easy to plug right into my games. I've been able to add at least two new kinds of shields, a Kite Shield (used by mounted folks which allows you to apply the shield's AC bonus to your mount) and a Manica Shield (essentially an arm guard that gives a +1 AC but lets the user wield a weapon in that hand). More choices is always a good thing in my opinion!

I casted Vaguely Detect the Presence of Traps before watching this video and no alarm bells went off. A+ video! Now time to homebrew some cool shield variations.

I replace Find Traps with Sense Harm. The great thing about it is that it will alert if unseen harm within the area is present. Pit trap, blade trap, poison dart. Even if a group of kobalds are lurking in the brush waiting to net you and club you unconscious. That technically is something trying to harm you through a trap. It allows for more fun and more story telling opportunities, that’s why we all play D&D.

most of these are things that were not an issue until 5th ed, then they just simplified things to make it easier for new players. 1) there was not cap on damage until 3e far as a remember, hit points were much lower in older ed (IE wizard used d4 and you rolled for level 1) so 20d6 was likely a lot more deadly in 3e just on that alone. I know in 2e I always had feather fall on my wizard, a strong breeze could kill her, she had 2HP at level 1! 2) shields had at least 3 options through 4e, I loved having bucklers and tower shields.. they also got rid of any type of actions it gave you such as bashing, or taking cover behind it based on the type of shield 3) in 2e failing to follow your gods tenants could get you locked out of your spells and require you to go through a quest to regain your cleric abilities. I am fairly sure that some type of these stuck around through at least 3e, but my memory is a bit fuzzy. I feel like there was less places with a lack of belief but that may have just been the games i played. I also dont think having a cleric who only is dedicated to one god is unheard of, think oracle of delphi who was said to have a direct connection to apollo from real world mythology. They probably should do like PF2e and give you rules for serving pantheons though. 4) Find traps actually did as stated in 2e, it told you where it was and its nature but not how to disarm it. in 3e it changed to allowing you to use the search action with bonuses like a rogue.. still worked as the name states for the most part. 5) through 4e you had bonus and penalties that could stack up (normally ranging between 1-5)

As you say, 5e has simplified (aka streamlined) a lot of the rules from earlier editions for ease of play for casual gamers. You can always grab a copy of PF1/3.5e and incorporate aspects of that into your 5e game if you and your players want the crunch (or just play another edition, or game, wholesale). One trick for Advantage/Disadvantage is that you can always replace them with a flat +5/-5 that doesn't necessarily go away. So, in the case of your archers, they might get -5 for Long Range, -5 for Being Blind (or you might even make it like undetected invisibility so they might actually not be aiming at the right location and so get an automatic miss), but still get Advantage for the other person being Blind too, for a 2d20kh-10 to beat the target number.

Falling Damage: This is a bugbear of mine too. In my games, I treat Falling Damage as a separate damage type i.e. it's not Bludgeoning and so creatures don't get their natural resistance/immunity to it (unless, as a DM, I grant them it), so a Barbarian that falls a long distance and Rages on the way down doesn't halve the damage on impact. I cap the damage at 150d6 for a 1500 ft. fall, and medium-sized humanoid creatures fall 500 ft. in the first round, 1,000 ft. in the second round, and 1,500 ft. per round thereafter (which is about 170 mph, so a little too fast for Earth parameters). I "jigger" the max. damage for different creatures if they've got less/more air resistance - again, DM fiat. If you want something that equates more to speed you could so it so the damage per 10' drop stacked which gets really nasty, really fast. 1-10 ft. = 1d6 10-20 ft. = 3d6 20-30 ft. = 6d6 40-50 ft. = 10d6 50-60 ft. = 15d6, etc.

Since its inception, D&D has had its quirks and issues from one edition to the next. With that said, I think if you find something that doesn't make sense, just do the best you can with it or as you said, omit it altogether. Rules as written can be fun, homebrew can be fun, sometimes even a hybrid of systems can help to make sense out of mechanics that initially do not. Great video!

I have a really aggressive falling rule. It caps out at 210 ft😅. It's 1d6 for every 10 ft with a threshold of 50 ft increments. Exceeding those thresholds doubles, triples and then quadruples the number of dice retroactively. So 50 ft would be 5d6 but 60 ft would be 12d6. That leaves the maximum average fall damage (for a fall over 200ft) at 280 damage

As far as having non-worshippers in a world with pantheons, Eberron kinda gets away with this by making the existence of gods ambiguous, but I can at least understand having a character in any other setting who acknowledges the gods but doesn’t worship any of them rather than just denying the existence of gods who are established to be real (unless the character was like the fantasy equivalent of a flat-earther).

I think @nominevacans5546 hit the nail on the head. I'm not saying play Pathfinder 2e instead (although I do), but Pathfinder comes directly from D&D. The points mentioned can apply to D&D 5e without otherwise affecting the core mechanics (like a homebrew). I will add a comment about the "logic" around falling damage; Although a falling object reaches terminal velocity (it reaches maximum speed), it still continues to generate kinetic energy meaning more energy on impact. The idea that 20d6 is not enough damage to kill some characters is not the fault of the falling damage but rather the Hit Point System. Imagine a 7th level Fighter with no armor sleeping off a night of heavy drinking. A second level Rogue sneaks in and backstabs the PC. The Rogue would barely do enough damage to wake the Fighter from their sleep. So sometimes you just accept that its just a game and trying to inject realism is what doesn't make sense, after all there is magic.

Falling damage: In addition to damage, require a saving throw (vs half the distance fallen in feet; i.e. 10 if falling 20 feet) or the character is reduced to zero hit points and must make a death save. (If you play OSR, give heroes a save vs death at zero hp.)

Maybe falling 200ft is meant to be the highest you can fall with the possibility to survive. If you fall from a greater height, then you die. Also, for shields, I use +2 as a standard shield. You can adjust the bonus for the size/type of shield as others have suggested. Thanks, Ben.

My thoughts on Barovia and the Morninglord: "Curse of Strahd" was originally set in the Greyhawk setting, where Pelor is the prinicple god and pretty much every aggrarian society worships him intently. Lethander (the Morninglord) is the closest 5e approximation -- their iconography is even rather similar. Barovia is a tiny aggrarian community strung out in a 15mi x 20mi mountain valley. I think it makes sense that the simple people of Barovia really only worship the Morninglord. Theres also the point you made -- that it presents an interesting opposition to the darkness of the setting. From the NPCs perspective, its the ray of hope in the darkness.

Gary Gygax intended for the damage to be cumulative. So 10 feet would be 1d6 damage, 20 feet would be 3d6 damage, 30 feet would be 6d6 damage, and so on until you got to 200 feet and the damage was 210d6.. On page 105 of the 1st Ed PHB it states: "damage computation based on 1d6 for each10' of distance fallen to a maximum of 20d6". In the Forgotten Realms DM's Sourcebook of the realms it provides rules that anyone falling 60 feet or more has to make a system shock or have their speed permanently reduced to 5 feet per round. Kim Mohan in the Wilderness Survival Guide (and Frank Metzner in Dragon 70 pg. 15) would use the cumulative falling damage but Mohan would cap it at 20d6. Steve Winter and Arn Parker in Dragon 88 tried to explain it using physics. Nobody listened to them and when Zeb Cook made 2nd Edition the 1d6 per 10 feet fallen became the standard. My compromise is 1d6 per 10 feet to a maximum of 210d6. Detect Traps in niche protection for the Rogue. It also stops the DM from teasing the players when they ask "Are they traps?" and the DM simply saying "None that you detect." Gods of Ravenloft: www.nwnravenloft.com/world_religions.html In 3.5 a buckler provided a +1 to AC and you could carry a weapon in the same hand as the buckler. If your forgo your AC bonus you can attack with that weapon at a -1 to hit penalty. As for Advantage and Disadvantage it requires a DMs call. I like to do net advantage. And I do like these set of rules: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/43497/roleplaying-games/untested-5th-edition-situational-advantage Glad you recovered. And I know the slow insanity of the end of the school year. But I'm on my first day of break now. Whew!

Using the Archer example, Blind also makes you roll at Disadvantage and unable to actually target the enemy. So best case, your Advantage negates the distance based Disadvantage but is then countered by the Blinded Disadvantage.

Ok Damage : do nd6! Shields: +1 to +3 based on size (even use bonus action to “activate” for a further +1 Religion: yeah, great ideas - love spell types (domains) being different gods that grant them … choose on domain and that’s deity who helps you most (or spirits/ghost/ancestors/saints … ) 4. Fond traps … yeah, to stop stepping on rogues role 5. Adv/dis are fine (just stack them if you want beyond 1/1)

IIRC older editions did have a couple different shield types but the basic +2 shield is what everybody ended up using because the tradeoffs for the others were weird.

For fall damage, keep in mind that we also get to a point that we can walk off a 9th tier spell to the face. We gradually become superhuman. For religion, I could see some people being indifferent as if they may be to royalty, and I could see the average citizen praying to whatever god suits the situation, but Clerics and Paladins are dedicating themselves to the god or goddess which they feel the strongest attachment to. I would like shields tweaked somehow too. I can understand all shields having a 2 AC because they are probably all the same thickness, but maybe with a large shield you could guard as an action on your turn and then get 2/3rds cover from attacks. Likewise, a normal shield could perhaps give 1/2 cover when guarding. For a small shield like a buckler, I am almost tempted to just give it parry.

I enjoy these gripes they are very valid. That said I can enlighten you on why things are the way they are. 1. Falling damage is a rollover from first edition D&D and was never updated to account for the HP bloat in 3rd Edition and beyond. This is why the damage is so low. 2. You are correct that Shields are dumb in 5e. In all other editions there are four different types of shields. Bucklers, Small, Large, and Tower shields. Bucklers and small shields gave a +1, Large shields gave a +2, and Tower shields gave a +4 could give cover and gave you a -2 on your attack while using it. I love Tower shields and there are feats to remove the negatives and allow you to do really neat things with them in other editions of the game. 3. Religion is an interesting one. So in previous editions every campaign setting had it's own pantheon but 5e has removed most of those settings to focus only on the Forgotten Realms, which is kind of the kitchen sink of settings. I would also say that Ed's pantheon is weak and not well explained in 5e. Now I have 2nd edition books that deep dive into all of the gods and have specialized archetypes for clerics for every god. Sadly Wizards doesn't seem to care about that and leans more on Domain instead but you end up losing a lot of world building moments when your clerics are unattached from the setting they are placed in. 4. Find Traps in 5e is stupid, you are absolutely correct. I don't know why they did what they did. From what I can find, I believe Find Traps was first introduced in the original Forgotten Realms box set, or perhaps the 2nd Edition one. I know it's in the AD&D Wizards Spell Compendium Volume 2 book and in titled Find Traps - Red Wizard, which it states Note: Restricted to Diviners, or in the Forgotten Realms Red wizards of Thay at the end of the description. Regardless of when it was exactly introduced that version and all the way up to 4e find traps just always found traps. You would know where they are and how to disable them if they had a deactivation switch. The fact that 5e make the spell useless is silly. They might as well not have put it in the game at that point. I understand that sometimes you don't have a trap finder/disabler, that is why the spell is there but to make it so ineffective is quite odd. 5. I've never understood why Wizards made Advantage and Disadvantage the way they did. I can see the view point that you can stack advantage to cancel disadvantage or vise-a-versa. That is what I have always played with when I've played 5e. So yeah I hope you enjoy my history lesson and thoughts. Hope you have same great sessions and may all your rolls be above average.

So... my understanding of shields is those that you would use in melee combat that will not slow you down are only going to be so big, a larger shield is more like cover than a shield in the rules for 5E & tower shields which would give you cover as describe in the rules were generally employed by a shield maiden/companion while another would use arrows or spears from behind those tower shields. Older versions of D&D did attempt to incorporate those kind of rules & it slowed combat down enough that most tables did not use those just like casting times & weapon speed factors.

4:01 To your point on fall damage, i find agreeable. I have considered an alternative method that increases the die tier used from d6 to d8 and so on for every 30 feet, as well as maintain the +1d per 10 feet rule. Example: 10 feet at 1d4 damage, 20 at 2d4, 30 at 3d4, then 40 at 4d6, and so on. Feel free to experiment with this.

Falling Damage Cap: 1. To not have an insane number of dice. 2. To "replicate" a terminal velocity. 3. Most cases you wont see a fall larger than that, and if you do, the DM might just say you instant die without some other special feature, intervention etc that comes into play or its chalked up that the characters are the "heroes" of the story much like how we saw Grog survive (badly) from a high fall to allow for him to continue but at a huge HP lose...a lose not mitigated by Armor. Still taking 60-70 damage would kill most characters in most games below level 10. Take a Rogue, d8s with a Con of +1, that would be 5 x 10 +10 = 60 HP....sure pure melee like fighters, paladins, and esp Barb could pull it off easier but it works to keep the squishes in line. I am however fine with eliminating the cap. OR change the d6 to d8s past 20, d10 past 40, d12 past 60. Hmmm...actually going to use that. Thanks for sparking the convo on this one. Shields. I dont think there is a need to make this more complicated unless that is the kind of game if you wanted. I mean you can institute some variation. Bucklet be +1, regular +2, and Tower +3. I wouldn't make it too crazy, because that isnt how 5e is built....if you were in 3.5e or earlier editions that would be a different matter. Religion: This is very much a setting specific thing. And Barovia might be cut off from other deities or they simply ignore it. As for Clerics and Paladins, it might be the case of characters need be made to fit the setting...ie if you are following a defined god, its the one of the region....or if another, than you are a heretic to the region. I wouldnt get wrapped up on this, as its all flavor. Find Traps Spell: Absolutely agree. Spells like that are misnamed, lemon laws apply. Kill the spell or let it work as named. The advantage/disadvantage is again a simplifcation made because they wanted this game to be for the least common denominator of players. Its a "basic" game compared to 3.5 and earlier. So I understand the reasoning, but this is one mechanic that you need to really consider before messing with because it greatly influences all the rest of the game. But I feel ya.

Interesting video! I agree that these things aren't realistic, but I think they are purely for the sake of simplicity and/or balancing the game: 1. Falling damage can be too abusable. 2. It's simpler that way and doesn't throw off the "Bounded Accuracy" too much, but I agree that they could have included at least two types of shields. 3. This is very much dependent on the campaign setting, and there are explanations for why it's that way in Barovia or the Forgotten Realms. But anyone should be able to do whatever they want in their games. 4. You are absolutely right on that. I think this spell shouldn't exist because if it's stronger, it invalidates the DM's work in creating a cool trap, but as it is, it's worthless. 5. Yeah, it can be very weird, but it's simpler that way. I guess the DM can make rulings in those cases? One of the boons of 5th edition in comparison to others is its simplicity, but I agree it has these downsides.

Just rule that anyone falling greater than… 500 feet, let’s say, are at 0 Hp and start making death saves. That gives a range of 300 feet that 20d6 can be survivable for super chunky characters, that’s a football field of falling. Or go the cumulative dice route: 1d6 at 10 feet fallen, 3d6 at 20, 6d6 at 30, 10d6 at 40, etc. PCs will be seeking out rings of feather fall and building railings on everything like they worked for OSHA.

Personally, I would just make falling damage be certain percentage of your max hit points, like say 5% of your max hp per 10 feet, because level shouldn't really affect how lethal a fall is for you. And probably make it so if you reach 100%, you just insta die. In 3rd edition there was 6 different kinds of base shields, buckler, wooden light shield, metal light shield, wooden heavy shield, metal heavy shield, and tower shield. Heavy shields were about only ones anyone used though, because they were just the most efficient ones (that is the +2 ac shield that 5e has also). Find Traps is just dumbly named, it should be named Sense Traps or Detect Traps instead.

For falling damage its just a relic from the past editions. All damage capped at 20 dice. But also. Past lvl 9 characters only gained 1 hp per level. so falling was still a deadly thing :P

advantage cancels disadvantage is done for simplicity sake. DM will sometimes adjust this slightly in very specific situations where it doesn't make sense.

Hello. I am new to your channel, I loved the way that you very thoughtfully brought up these subjects. It was a very nice video to watch. I hope that can help with my thoughts. 1. Falling Damage: Your reasoning makes sense from a purely 'common sense' perspective. To my knowledge from articles in multiple editions. The designers limit of 20d6 IS based on reaching"terminal velocity". And you are correct about this amount of damage not necessarily killing an adventuring PC. However, when designing a game world and basic effects like falling, drowning, damage from exposure to the elements... we have to remember that Player characters are the exception, not the norm. These numbers have t be designed based on your everyday normal creatures. Enter the Commoner, even if they have an 18 constitution, max out at 12 Hit Points.. Thus a fall of 50 feet will likely kill one... and that includes most average beasts. A 100 foot fall would definitely kill these just about an of these creatures. Yes, 20d6 will be unlikely to kill a high level character... but this is part and parcel of the 'heroic' game. That said, D&D DOES have optional rules in the DMG that could, and in my opinion 'should' come into play if a creature falls and takes 'massive damage' from a fall. The Lingering Injury table and the Massive Damage tables are perfect for this sort of situation. For falls of over 100 feet, I have characters roll on both of these tables. Lingering injuries definitely occur, and they have to roll to see if they also suffer the effect of the Massive Damage table. Thus, a Character may well survive a 200 foot fall, but they will be, temporarily, at least... messed up for awhile. 2. Shields. While this is a reasonable question, the answer lies in previous editions. Primarily in 3rd edition. In 3rd edition, there were a number of shields. You mainly had bucklers, light shields, heavy shields, and tower shields, in various materials. They also had shield spikes. There were special rules for bucklers, tower shields, and for shield bashing. The Tower Shield seemed great at first glance but it gave negatives to attack, weighed 45 pounds. and had a high spell failure chance. The rules were not that difficult to adjudicate in general, but the thing with them as with many weapons, was that there were no 'magic' versions of some of them. A DM could say a shield was magical, but most of the 'cool' magical shields were light or heavy, and in the end most players only used the heavy shield with the +2 to AC. For the same reason that most Fighters have chosen the Long Sword: It gave the highest possibility of getting a cool magical version of that item. 5e, in its efforts to make the game easier and simpler, just decided to use the most widely used shield option. Now the cool thing for a 5e DM is that if you if you lay your hands on a 3.5e Player's Handbook, you can use this shield system without unbalancing your 5e game. You would need to swap the shield bash rules for the improvised weapon rules, and replace the -2 for tower shield attacks to Disadvantage. The biggest thing would be that you have to decide how the various types of shields fit into the game. Who can be proficient in which type. Tower shields used to require a special proficiency to use. 3. Religion: The thing about religion is that every fantasy wrote and game designer have different concepts Some are polytheistic, some monotheistic, and some. like our own world, can have a combination. One that I have always been fond of is in the David Eddings Elenium Trilogy of books. In that, the major power is monotheistic, with a deity much like the Christian one, that does not give priests powers or take a direct hand in the world. However, the Paladins of certain orders are allowed to learn divine magic from priestesses of another deity. In addition, the world has other pantheons, such as Troll gods. Every DM will have there own thoughts on this. However, I do want to touch on your comments regarding Clerics and Paladins, especially in a polytheistic pantheon. I believe that the designers drew a lot from the way that the Greek/Roman pantheon was set up. While the Greeks did pay homage to an entire very complex Pantheon...we know that the were religious orders / priests that served one deity directly, while still honoring the others. For example, it is known that were priests/ priestesses that were solely devoted to serving Apollo and Artemis. There are numerous examples of temples devoted solely to one member of the pantheon, and we know that some city states primarily devoted to a single deity sometimes warred with each other (Athens/Athena versus Sparta/Ares). So, in general. I would assume that this dynamic greatly influenced the Cleric class. As far as the Paladin class, that is a more complex development. Gary Gygax has stated that the primary influence for the class was the Arthurian legends/ King Arthur. Despite the fact that the class has been changed by the new game designers, the Paladin was originally a subclass of the Fighter, that was simply a devoted to doing good, that eventually they were able to cast Cleric spells They were never even required to serve any deity at all. The 5e design has completely rewritten the class, but the rules still do not require that Paladin be religious at all. 5e Paladins derive all of their powers from their devotion to their OATH, whether they serve a deity or not. 4. As far as Advantage/Disadvantage, the idea is that a character is either in an advantageous position to do something, or they are at a disadvantage. Now while there can be unusual situations where both might apply, the basic concept would be that one factor would help and the other would hinder. Imagine a rogue who is wounded and suffering a Disadvantage effect, but he sees his buddy next to a enemy, and he sneaks up to flank that enemy. Now it's going to be easier to hit that enemy, but he's still wounded. He's still at a disadvantage to attack anyone. Now a DM could adjudicate this... some older versions might have applied different pluses and minuses based on how severe each factor was, but in general, it's simpler to have the factors cancel each other out and assume that even though the Rogue is all messed up, the fact that he is flanking the enemy makes up for it. And in older versions the math wound up working out the same way. A wounded character might have a -2 to hit, while being behind an enemy might give them a +2... so their roll was even. A you said, this is an attempt to have a game system simulate reality, but there are going to be points where it doesn't work perfectly. Again it was a wonderful video, and I look forward to seeing more, Subscribed.

I don’t agree with all your points, but I do think you have some very valid ones as well. Sometimes it really is about making things simple. There is probably a point where as there DM I have to watch the PC falling and say “sorry dude! You’re just dead. We don’t even need to roll.” Lol

After a point, if they can't catch themselves or cast 'fly', I'm just going to say the fall turned them to paste. If you reach terminal velocity, you're taking 150% of your base health if nobody hit you with feather fall.

I started with AD&D 2E. The equipment is one major point of difference from the other versions. There is no way a halfling smith wouldn't make full plate sized for a halfling fighter. This would change the weight a lot. There shouldn't be a one size fits all for armor. To use a movie example, what if Willow tried to wear a breastplate the size of Madmartigan's? It would put him at a constant disadvantage to rolls. Weapons are just as bad, but then you're dealing with differing damages based on size. Advantage and disadvantage are unique to 5E. There may be conditions to give a bonus or penalty to a roll, but almost never a extra die and choose one. There is a lot of attempting to streamline the game, but not all of it makes sense when coming from older editions. Looking at other settings, Spelljammer was ripped apart for 5E. There is so much stuff about the world setting that is different or out right missing. Completely rewriting the Hazodee, getting rid of space travel and the dangers it presented to travel to the different worlds / planes. Not going to try covering it all here. I won't even touch 5E Planescape after that, and that is my favorite 2E setting. I've heard complaints about Dragonlance from a guy who loves the setting and has actually met the novel authors.

Hello there. I can relate both professionally and GM-wise. :) Yeah, D&D has demigods as characters and rules with a lot of baggage, so making them work is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole, heh. Sometimes it's best to try other rpg systems, any and all, and then cannibalise what you like. Best of luck!

1. Yeah, that's the main thing, the survivability is weird. It doesn't compound despite the acceleration. Maybe the damage should just be a constant that you throw into a calculator, or use a doubling die from a backgammon set to keep track, past a certain point they're toast without luck, like a saving throw or a spell 2. Yeah, I feel like an active blocking subsystem would let different types of shields shine more, but it's like they're using shields as armor accessories. Other parallel systems have used them as optional "block just about anything but then it's broken" expendable items, if a damage threshold is reached. Others treat them as damage absorbers. 3. I think the religion was more monotheistic in the concept stages but they changed it when the worldbuilding started. You get the feeling that all clerics are basically the same and then there are layers of spheres/weapon restrictions that get put on top. Alignment languages came from this idea that the faithful would know the fantasy equivalent of Latin, etc, if they were faithful to Law. The game's addressing of faith has always been a bit at right angles to what would fit a world. Some settings with more specific rules tend to address these specifics more directly I guess. Like there are polytheistic societies that would absolutely do what you say, address a god whose domain makes sense for the problems they're facing... Maybe certain Cleric spells should be attributed to certain deities? Would be a bit of work but that seems to make sense, maybe extra effects if the cleric is from a temple devoted to a specific deity? 4. Sense danger? Trapsense? I get the feeling that spell has changed over time (I'm old) 5. Do characters attacking without sight also have disadvantage? I guess this is one of those DM decides things. If the weight of the disadvantage or advantage would be overwhelming it might tilt that way in my game I guess Interested to know what concrete alternative ideas you might have for these points. As for ideas, if you get a chance, check out games Mausritter or Knave or Cairn and see if there's any ideas that might enhance your 5e games. Thanks for the video, good luck with the last stretch of school :)

I don't always like this response, but I think the rules are guidelines to help get a base set them make our own choices. As a player one that bugs me the most is that a Dex charcter with Sharpshooter can ignore 3/4 cover and disadvantage to max weapon range, but RAW it states that if a character is prone or at melee range the attack is still made at disadvantage. The PC can shoot a fly at 600 or less with a longbow, but any creature that is prone or within 5 feet is now a disadvantage shot.

Doing the math on terminal velocity sounds like something id do, pretty cool video! Good Job!

It's not the fall that causes the damage, it's the stopping. Consider what they are impacting on to better consider damage.

Curse of Strahd wasn't originally a FR product. It was created by Tracy Hickman and his wife back for 2nd edition. The Morninglord (Lathander) was added as FR became the premiere setting, and Barovia was downgraded to a demiplane. Originally, I believe there was a generic good god that opposed Strahd and the powers behind him, but as more people played in Faerun, those deities became the default.

Pretty common views. The deity one is the most unique of them. I do appreciate you doing the math or research on the falling one.

Polytheistic cultures in history tended to promote the idea of praying to various deities based on the situation. The exception to this is that priests/priestesses would tend to pray mostly to the deity they served. The issue with D&D is that not every table has a historian (amateur or otherwise). Also, D&D is played in a mostly monotheistic culture. Players in such cultures will tend to have their characters remain loyal to their chosen deity because that's how their RL religion rolls.

1) The falling damage in D&D has not changed since OD&D/BX. In BX, 20d6 will absolutely murder a 14th level character. A 14th level Fighter in BX will have on average 40-50 HP, so that 70 average damage is going to splat your best meatshield. By the time you get to 5th edition, the power bloat has made that 20d6 trivial. You could change it 1d10 per 10' to 20d10 and it'd be more in line with the original game. 2) Every previous edition has had multiple shield types. Usually the core rule books only have the basic shield, but there are almost certainly expansion rules in 5E for alternate shield types. The designers are always vacillating between KISS (keep it simple stoopid) and Full Blown Gamer Autism -- for an example of the later, check out the 1E book Unearthed Arcana, with it's 15+ different types of Pole Arm, including the Bohemian Earspoon. 3) Wow. That's a big one. Buckle in, were going on a long trip through gaming history. First, the Cleric was originally created as an explicitly Christian character class modeled on the Knights Templar, with a spell list that is essentially drawn entirely from biblical miracles. You have the New Testament with the various healing and curing spells, and the Old with spells like Insect Plague and Sticks to Snakes. Then you have Turn Undead, which is basically "Hey, did you see The Exorcist? That was a cool movie. Clerics should do that." However, in actual play in the earliest D&D groups, the cleric's deity wasn't really given much thought. The concept of "deities" in the sense currently used in D&D actually begins in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk campaign and his own faith. As a Christian, Gygax found it sacrilegious to put Jesus Christ into his elf games, and so he began making up deities when the need arose. These deities were not taken seriously, and so we got clerics of "St. Cuthbert the Cudgel" who could only use blunt weapons because Cuthbert was the demigod of bonking evil on the head, and the "mad god" Xagyg, which is Gygax spelled backwards and basically represents the evil whims of the DM ("rocks fall, everyone dies!"). Basic/Expert D&D (BX) avoided any discussion of deities. Clerics worshipped Law, and because the setting was "generic medieval," the Church of Law was often interpreted as a generic medieval church, i.e. the Catholic Church. With AD&D 1E, you got the Deities & Demigods book, which gave stats for various pantheons of gods so you could kill them and take their stuff, but no real discussion of the practice of religion. It wasn't until AD&D 2E that the full blown pantheons of made-up gods that are supposed to be taken seriously were introduced, mostly for Forgotten Realms. This saw the introduction of specialty priests with alternate powers However, that system was bloated and easy to powergame, especially in D&D 3.5, and so was likely simplified in 5E. Generally, I suggest embracing the BX ethos and not having deities at all in favor of a "Lawful Church of Goodness and Light" with a very nonspecific set of beliefs (i.e. player led). If you really want a deity, I suggest doing what C.S. Lewis did and make Jesus a giant talking lion and inventing some mythology about a sacrifice, yadda yadda, now everyone good prays to the lion. You can build a whole pantheon and try to get players to wrap their heads around a polytheistic society, but it's really a lot easier to just lean into player's basic expectations and just have a single monotheistic/deistic church. 4) Here's the text of Find Traps from the Expert set for BX: "This spell causes all traps to glow with a dull blue light when the cleric comes within 30' of them. It does not reveal the types of traps, nor any method of removing them." So, why does this spell exist? Because BX is a game of dungeon exploration, something later editions of the game eschew (to their detriment, IMHO). In the game, you move through a dungeon turn by turn. Every other turn, the DM rolls for Wandering Monsters. The slower you move, the more Wandering Monsters you run into, and Wandering Monsters don't typically have treasure (and in BX, gold = XP). Searching for traps takes a full turn, so you only want to do it sparingly. Casting Find Traps takes a round and lasts for 2 turns, allowing you to quickly move through an area certain there are no traps. It's also useful if you find a large number of chests or other scenario where you may be dealing with one trap hidden among many possibly trapped objects. It takes a Thief an hour to search six chests for traps, it takes Find Traps one round to clear them all of danger. Find Traps doesn't make much sense in modern D&D, where most dungeons are 5 rooms with no wandering monsters and obvious set pieces and Save Or Die traps are considered unsporting. It's a holdover from the original game and its playstyle.

OK. The armor issue. Thanks to the HEMA guys, we have a greater understanding of armor and shield than we did back in the 80s. Does scale mail and breastplate protect the same amount? What about a chain shirt and hide armor? Like weapon damage, armor class is simplified for the sake of the game. Adding complication to that system will bog down play. Personally, I would prefer a better description of each armor set, to know how it works. Maybe a good illustration of each set. But a shield is a shield. Remember, the game only gives you a +1 to AC when you master two weapon fighting (Dual wielder feat) and a +1 if you train to use your armor instead a weapon style. (Defensive fighting style) So, +2 is about right. If you want, you could include Tower Shields in the game. They provide half cover, which grants you a +2 to AC, which comes out to +4 AC overall, but then you have to account for the weight and awkwardness of carrying around a mini-wall. The stats I found were on a homebrew page, but they tracked with what I remember from 3e.

Falling damage max 20D6 = maximum velocity. You can’t fall any faster so it’s buy design you can’t take any more damage than maximum velocity would allow. I honestly think it’s lost based in physics but I think it’s also a number they felt symbolized maximum velocity.

Shields are probably as varied and complex in 5e as they can be without major armor system overhauls. I've only messed with 3.5 and Pathfinder through the CRPGs, but I remember those systems used penalties to ability checks and spell failure chance to differentiate shields and armor. It was a neat system, but I think I prefer 5e's single shield type over having my heavily-armored fighter with a tower shield be the worst party member for strength checks

Falling should be exponential. d6, 2d6, 3d6, 5d6, 8d6, 12d6, 18d6... as you speed up as you fall. It's not just the distance it's the speed. At 200 miles/hour, you're dead. It's possible to survive but it should be a percentile roll, not a damage roll. You take enough damage to kill you, it is just whether or not you can endure that. People have survived parachuting falls but most wish they hadn't. Most issues in 5e are just part of the core mechanic's simplicity. They dumbed down D&D so non-nerd could play. 3e had bucklers, light shields, heavy shields, and tower shields but it was too much to add with the simple advantage/disadvantage mechanic. They had a similar concept in 4e with combat advantage being +2 but it didn't stack. In my 3e games, you can BE flanked (not flanking, which is also stupid in 3e, you are so distracted by someone on each side that your defenses are lower BUT only to those two people) and EVERYONE is +2 to hit you. If you don't have a shield or melee weapon, everyone gets +2 to hit you, and you can then charge that person for an additional +2 to hit. I find many 5e players have played long enough that they want more from the game and 5e doesn't offer that level of play. My games are often filled with 5e players who want more...

I don't cap falling damage and I give my groups a choice, if a barbarian can use rage to resist falling damage then we use d10's, but if they agree that they can't then we use d6's.

Clerics are channels for their god, so they channel that particular god. So they dedicate themselves to that domain, and get power from that dedication. In actual play they probably should revere different gods in different situations, but that is more a roleplaying issue than a 5e issue.

D&D Religion: In my homebrew world, there is one true god who delegated control of the world to three lessers, one for good, one for neutral, one for evil, and all of the gods in the pantheon are iterations of the three. Kind of like Christian denominations. But the worshipers of the world don't know this and think there's a bunch of gods. I may make the discovery of this part of the main story at some point in the future, but no plans to do it at this point. But it does make a lot of sense for people to pray to the appropriate god in any given situation instead of being stuck with just the one they follow. Similar to all the saints in Catholicism. A very interesting point that I've never heard anyone make before.

Great video! Fall damage definitely falls off as you get to later levels, even early game a barbarian can tank a 200ft drop if they are raging. I think maybe as the creatures size category goes up maybe the dice upgrade? Not sure, maybe just making the limit higher like you said. 🎉

For me D&D makes least sense with the rolls - they have a singular target with miss or hit successes (NAT 20s aside). As a GM I adjust these for social interactions and that's simple enough - getting a 28 persuasion will get you more buyin from the person you're talking to than if you'd got a 20 - even though they're both successes. In combat though there isn't really a mechanic for having layers of success though. Contrasting games are ones like call of cthulu or blades in the dark. CoC is a d100 roll under system so say you had 50 in the skill then below 50 is a regular success, below half your skill (25) is a hard success and something right at the edge if your ability is a fifth (10 in this case). For blades in the dark it's a more straightforward system where a 6 is a success with no consequences, 4-5 is a success but it adds a consequence and 1-3 is the GM has free reign to narrate how the situation goes. As an example you might be escaping from a train heist - you've a vehicle driving beside ready for you to jump to. On a 6 you make it and escape unseen. On a 4-5 you make the jump but your bag catches and some loot spills out, or a train guard sees you, perhaps even jumps over too. On a 1-3 it could be anything from you're grabbed before you can jump to you're about to jump but the train is approaching a bridge and the get away vehicle has to slow to avoid the fall...or even drives straight off the edge. I haven't done the best example of explaining those but I like the staggered successes in other games rather than D&D's normal yes/no structure.

Fantastic vid...cheers

The whole sheild thing is a larger sheild is now cover and you get diff bonuses for that

As always, right on the mark. Keep up the good work.

I do not play 5e but have ALL Old thru 3rd edition as to your interpretation of cleric/paladin/religious power I think 🤔 IMBW you could play a C/P for the good aligned gods or neutral or Evil 😈 vs 1 specific Deity. With an exception to the Paladin (Joan of arc) who serve as vessels of PURE good or Evil thus able to be affected like unique beings they are. Great Video 🙌🏻

I enjoyed this so much! I particularly enjoyed how you called out shields for being so boring. Also religion is treated so casually. God's should be angry about it IMHO and flex a bit to remind everyone who's boss. 😂

The falling damage rules are virtually unchanged since AD&D. 70hp was a lot more meaningful back then. A typical human hits terminal velocity after 500' of falling. Advantage/Disadvantage don't stack because of how bad chasing modifiers would get in 3.5e. Rounds would drag on and on as players and/or DMs tried to find every modifier that applied.

I don't think people not being religious doesn't necessarily clash with the known and proven existance of gods in the DnD settings. First of all: You can revere certain or even all gods without subscribing to any specific religious practice established by the various churches and holy orders. What in our world would be described as spiriuality rather then religion. Second: Since Gods are known to exist, observing ritual in order to please or appease the gods would be a question of utility, rather then faith. And since sources of magice beyond the divine exist, their utility might be lessened to a degree at which people do not see any necessity to worship (and thereby empower) any deity. Third: The more antogonistically inclined may want to actively limit divine influence, or outright break it in order to "free" mortals from their religious chains, while less agressive philosophical projects might seek to escape the "Wheel" akin to Bhuddist convictions.

Falling damage for me: STR save vs x2 your running jump distance for half damage. Any distance beyond and there is no save and the dice just keep adding up. Shields, I give concealment for certain types of shields. Detect trap spell ... it's not LOCATE TRAP ....

Advantage/disadvantage: You decide the modifier. That's what the game master is there for. The game rules can't cover every situation. Also, if the two archers are blind, they both miss; it's a scenario created by the world's dumbest rules lawyer.

5e is checkers, while 3.5 and before are chess! 5E got rid of adding +2 4 times and +1 and -1 2 times and -4!

Honestly, 5E made D&D more popular by making it simpler or as old school gamers like to point out, they dumbed it down. With rpg rules you can have play-ability and you can have realism, but they are inversely proportional so you can't have great amounts of both. The more that the rules make sense, the less easy it is to just grab some dice and go for it. So each DM should just decide what house rules the players at your table can handle without it becoming a huge drag and go for it.

d&d 3.5 had different size shields with different AC values buckler (tiny), shield, tower shield (large)

I rhink shields have, historically, changed alot with the different editions. Like, shields are one of the things that changes radically from edition to edition, and the 5e approach is not necessarily the best solution to the problem

Falling damage is weird. why do they do it like that? probably because PCs would find a way to cause falling damage to ace encounters. Death from falling damage also isnt heroic/sexy/cool. "I heard Elminster died." "Oh yeah?" "Yeah he fell off his Tower's Roof." not a great end to an Epic character. In the 2E game I played in a zillion years ago they compounded the damage from falling, as in 10 ft fall was 1D6, falling 20ft was 3D6 (1d6 for the first 10ft + 2D6 for the 20ft and so on) but it was still capped at 20D6. You could add in levels of exhaustion, add in a massive damage rule, was it 50 points in 3E? I totally agree with pantheons, it seems like a sociology 101 thought experiment. What if gods walked the earth? we in 1st false spring where it hit 70 degrees but nows dropped to 19. good times. You know what doesnt make sense: Spirit Guardians. how is that 3rd level? totally insane.

Just because a setting has a multitude of different pantheons does not mean every aspect of the world HAS to follow one of them in some way. And what you're thinking, the idea of serving only one god in a pantheon is called monolatry, in which someone worships one god without denying the existence of others. Not every character has to serve a god or whole pantheon if they don't want to. If a character just wants to serve Mystra, despite it not being always applicable, that's their choice, and could be an interesting character flaw.

The gods of thieves send people to kill anyone who creates find traps, detect snares and pits type spells.

Good observations all around. 2E had none of these problems... The design attempt with 5E made these problematic. Of course, there were some benefits with 5E but...

Falling damage. The cap is there as a compromise. No one wants to roll 20d6. The idea is there has to be a rule because falling happens, but there has to be a limit to save DMs' sanity. If you don't like it, go ahead and calculate it out, but players are going to hate slowing the game down just to be more accurate.

The fall damage thing... there shouldn't even be a rule in the book for it. Here's the thing, if someone falls from a height that would be 100% fatal, why are we rolling dice? A rule really isn't needed. You fall from this bridge to the chasm below, your character is dead. Be careful crossing it. If there's a 50/50 chance of survival, just flip a coin - heads, you live (miraculously, a tree catches your fall); tails, you die - splat. For those that feel this is not fair or against the spirit/rules of the game, I ask this question... what exactly are you trying to accomplish by having an obstacle like this in the game? Is it just a way to chunk hit point totals and/or use party resources, or is there more to it? Because trying to use / create a rule to accurately determine falling damage using an abstract scaling HP system is going to be useless in 99% of games anyway, and painfully convoluted regardless. And even in those rare moments where you'd need such a rule, how many times will it simply be hand-waved because killing a PC over a fall is rarely satisfying or narratively interesting?

House rule. The ground always does a crit.

A lot of what you’re noticing are holdovers from prior editions. 20d6 goes all the way back to 1E, maybe earlier.

On the religion aspect, I like to think it is more the result of mortal intervention and not so much divine intervention. For example: If a specific individual venerates a specific god and he has an aggressive attitude to promote it AND a way to instill that in a good portion of his fellow clergy, then I think that area will be weighted in that god's 'favor' over others. Over time and generations, you could well end up with a monotheistic theocracy. Also, to gain a god's favor (to be blessed with divine spells) you would have to show dedication and faith. If you just go around giving lip service to whichever god suits your purpose, at that particular moment, I think you would prove to be too fickle to really earn any gods favor and be granted the blessing of spell casting. Also, the addition of maybe some competition between the individual dieties, themselves, then things can get even more unbalanced and segmented.

Yes the falling damage is broken. Shields are also a problem.

My DM used exploding die for fall damage, to make it impactful for my barbarian.😁

Older Editions had different shields and buckler. My guess is they want to streamline it.

I know someone who threw his back out at 16 caring cat litter down stares...

5e is super player friendly vs previous editions. Check out dungeon crawl classics or ose Osr etc Love old grit Adnd 1. Falling dmg in 5e is like a squirrel falling. No big deal. In old Adnd terminal velocity was auto death.

_STEEEEEEVE!!!_

These gaps in the rules? That’s why we have DMs, GMs, Judges, what have you to cover rules as intended vs rules as written.

Shields are… +2? Oh 5e…everything is amped up. Next time I run a Dragonbane session would you like in?

If you can explain challenge ratings that would be great...

Good thoughts!

There are games that do not try to put such things into game mechanisms, since they do not try to emulate some kind of realism. That is my goal for my own system as well, since I want drama not empty simulation.

Swims through lava, gets to the other bank, takes a power nap, FULL HIT POINTS. Find a 500 foot cliff, jump, take 70 hit points damage. Take a power nap. FULL HIT POINTS!!!! There are games that try to achieve realism and generally are quite crunchy and slow. And there are games that are fast and light (but loosy goosy with realism perhaps). 5e (at least the full rule set) is neither. Once you realize this, it is time to start considering other games.

Falling damage in basic D&D was brutal....

Here's how to fix falling damage: 10 ft = 1d6 20 ft = 3d6 30 ft = 6d6 40 ft = 10d6 50 ft = 20d6 >50ft = dead. Advantage / Disadvantage is a completely undesirable and unnecessary mechanic. The DM is supposed to judge how difficult something is and just set a difficulty.