5e and Design Bloat

Some iconic artwork.

D&D 5e is a bloated mess, and it shouldn't be. At its core, there is a simple, streamlined system that ought to be fast at the table: 1d20 + modifiers vs. DC and a simple pass/fail resolution. The variable modifiers of previous editions have been trimmed down to advantage and disadvantage.

Despite this, the game is somehow bloated in its design. Why? How? Well, it's because 5e refused to create a cohesive system and offloaded all its complexity to its class mechanics and the faux-optional feats.

A Lack of Standardized Systems

5e (both 2014 and 2024) refused to standardize or streamline any systems or subsystems within the game. Why? They wanted an accessible rules system and thought that exception-based design was the key to doing this.

It's not. This over-reliance on exception-based design means that instead of a robust core system that serves as a stable framework upon which other mechanics can be built, there's a hodgepodge of disconnected mechanics.

Proficiency and Expertise

Proficiency bonus is central to the 5e system. It influences attack rolls, saving throws, save DCs, and various mechanics that key off it. Expertise doubles your proficiency bonus when using a skill in which you have proficiency. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Because you can have proficiency with a skill, save, weapon, or tool, but you can only have expertise with a skill. Moreover, expertise is segregated from the rest of the skill system, meaning you need a feat or a class feature to access it.

This was handled particularly badly in 5e 2014, where there wasn't even a proper game mechanic for this. The rules read:

At 1st level, choose two of your skill proficiencies, or one of your skill proficiencies and your proficiency with thieves' tools. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses either of the chosen proficiencies.

5e 2024 had the good sense to alter this:

You gain Expertise in two of your skill proficiencies of your choice.

This is a significant improvement, but it remains flawed in that this should be incorporated into the rest of the skill system. (One can easily imagine this as a simple modification of the existing system: classes all get X number of baseline skill proficiencies and Y number of bonus proficiencies, if they spend a bonus proficiency on an existing skill, they gain expertise.)

Fighting Style, Combat Feats, and Weapon Mastery

Fighting styles were a key martial class feature introduced in 5e 2014, offering (typically lackluster) benefits to those classes to represent their superior combat training. There were also "combat feats" like Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master, which made the use of specific weapons stronger. 5e 2024 moved fighting styles to feats and introduced Weapon Mastery as a bonus to martial classes, which added in more powerful features when using specific weapon types.

Let us examine this design.

• There are Fighting Style feats that improve your use of specific weapons.

• There are General "combat" feats that improve your use of specific weapons.

• There is the Weapon Mastery class feature that improves your use of specific weapons.

What a wretched set of choices. Weapon Mastery is impressively egregious as it would have been a very simple addition to existing fighting styles or to expand upon weapon proficiency.

There is also conceptual overlap between these categories. For instance, take the Cleave Weapon Mastery:

If you hit a creature with a melee attack roll using this weapon, you can make a melee attack roll with the weapon against a second creature within 5 feet of the first that is also within your reach. On a hit, the second creature takes the weapon’s damage, but don't add your ability modifier to that damage unless that modifier is negative. You can make this extra attack only once per turn.

Now compare that to Great Weapon Master's Hew ability:

Immediately after you score a Critical Hit with a Melee weapon or reduce a creature to 0 Hit Points with one, you can make one attack with the same weapon as a Bonus Action.

These are conceptually similar but mechanically distinct.

• Great Weapon Fighting is a level 1 Fighting Style feat that applies to weapons wielded in two-hands.

• Great Weapon Master is a level 4 General "combat" feat that applies to weapons with the Heavy property.

• Cleave is a Weapon Mastery that applies to two Heavy, Two-Handed weapons.

If you are a greataxe-wielding martial, you obviously want all of these. Instead of packaging these up nicely, 5e 2024 requires you spend two feats and a Weapon Mastery slot to get these benefits. It is absolutely ridiculous that the design is this scattered: all of these should merged into a single, unified system. (That could manifest as Fighting Style feats scaling based on level, a special martial-only class feature, or expanded rules for weapon proficiencies.)

Obtuse Mechanical Interactions

5e has its share of "obtuse" mechanical interactions, where the mechanics are unclear, a bit convoluted, or require several steps to resolve.

Two-Weapon Fighting

Two-weapon fighting in 5e 2024 is so bad that it deserves its own section. It's been discussed to death online, but here's the basics.

Certain weapons have the Light property, which allows someone wielding two of them to attack with both of them. The rules text is awful to parse, stipulating that this is possible when you take the Attack action but occurs after the initial attack roll, the second attack requires a Bonus action and must utilize a different Light weapon, and you don't add your ability modifier to the damage unless it's negative. The text even includes a "helpful" clarification (underlined below) that is borderline useless, as it's just a restatement of the rules text:

When you take the Attack action on your turn and attack with a Light weapon, you can make one extra attack as a Bonus Action later on the same turn. That extra attack must be made with a different Light weapon, and you don’t add your ability modifier to the extra attack’s damage unless that modifier is negative. For example, you can attack with a Shortsword in one hand and a Dagger in the other using the Attack action and a Bonus Action, but you don't add your Strength or Dexterity modifier to the damage roll of the Bonus Action unless that modifier is negative.

Just awful. Whatever editor allowed this through deserves an earful. What's worse than this little snippet is all the additional ways that TWFing is enhanced by other segments of the rules.

First, the Nick Mastery, which frees up your Bonus Action:

When you make the extra attack of the Light property, you can make it as part of the Attack action instead of as a Bonus Action. You can make this extra attack only once per turn.

Then the Two Weapon Fighting feat, which removes the "no ability modifier unless negative" stipulation:

When you make an extra attack as a result of using a weapon that has the Light property, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of that attack if you aren't already adding it to the damage.

Lastly, the Dual Wielder feat, which adds in a Bonus Action attack, except you don't add your ability modifier to damage again:

When you take the Attack action on your turn and attack with a weapon that has the Light property, you can make one extra attack as a Bonus Action later on the same turn with a different weapon, which must be a Melee weapon that lacks the Two-Handed property. You don't add your ability modifier to the extra attack's damage unless that modifier is negative.

Let me get this straight: I take a Fighting Style and a Weapon Mastery to remove previous restrictions on TWFing, and then I take a feat to add them back in so I can make one extra attack? These mechanics are sludge.

Unarmed Strikes and Melee Weapon Attacks

5e makes a distinction between a "melee weapon attack" and "an attack with a melee weapon." An unarmed strike is not a weapon, so it doesn't work with class features that stipulate "an attack with a melee weapon," but it can count as a melee weapon attack despite this. This also means that there are bizarre interactions with unarmed strikes and other class features; Savage Attacker and Divine Smite notably did not function with unarmed strikes in the 2014 edition.

Notably, 5e 2024 has taken great pains to specify that unarmed strikes are a special class of attack that functions identically to weapon attacks except with special rules surrounding it.

Poor Mechanical Formatting

5e 2024's mechanics are clunky to read at the table due to their poor formatting. This has a few causes.

Keyword Avoidance

5e 2024 took great pains to clarify the 5e 2014 rules text, but they still refuse to introduce keywords. Their best effort is anemic; it involves capitalizing Special Weapons to make them stand out in the rules text and bolding certain words under Conditions. Let us take a few snippets of rules text. First, let us revisit the Cleave property above:

If you hit a creature with a melee attack roll using this weapon, you can make a melee attack roll with the weapon against a second creature within 5 feet of the first that is also within your reach. On a hit, the second creature takes the weapon’s damage, but don't add your ability modifier to that damage unless that modifier is negative. You can make this extra attack only once per turn.

This is a tragedy and a farce. The Weapon Mastery has several caveats to it:

• It occurs upon hit.

• It requires an attack roll.

• You roll damage, but you don't apply your ability modifier unless it's negative.

• It can only be used once per turn.
  

There's a lot occurring within this block of rules text and there are several obvious points of failure for someone attempting to utilize this mechanic. Overall, I would streamline this design considerably (it simply has too many moving parts), but keeping this mechanic as-is, you could very clearly introduce keywords to handle the "no ability modifier unless negative" and "usable once per turn" stipulations (Weak and Limited, respectively).

Similar mechanics show up again with other class features, such as Sneak Attack, Divine Strike, and Primal Strike. These mechanics are common enough throughout the whole of 5e 2024 that they deserve to be called out for ease of use. Plenty examples of this exist--one imagines abilities that recover on a short rest, abilities that recover on a long rest, abilities that require you not to be Incapacitated, etc. should all have keywords.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the lack of a Visible keyword. The rules text is stuffed with instances of "a creature you can see." The 5e 2024 designers didn't think to change this to "a visible creature"?

Natural Language Rules Text

5e 2024 is a mess, the bizarre intersection of natural language and mechanics-intensive class features leaving the reader with a headache. While I certainly don't want to return to the ugly, sterile formatting of D&D 4e, 5e 2024's rules text needs a cleanup.

Take the Warrior of the Elements monk's Elemental Burst Ability:

As a Magic action, you can expend 2 Focus Points to cause elemental energy to burst in a 20-foot-radius Sphere centered on a point within 120 feet of yourself. Choose a damage type: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder. Each creature in the Sphere must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes damage of the chosen type equal to three rolls of your Martial Arts die. On a successful save, a creature takes half as much damage.

Good grief. Magic action, focus points, area of effect, range, saving throw, martial arts die-based damage. The worst offender for me is the "three rolls of your Martial Arts die" damage. What a mess of verbosity that could have been summarized as:

• Action: Magic.

• Cost: 2 Ki Points.

• Range: 120 ft.

• Area: 20-ft. radius sphere.

• Targets: All creatures within the area.

• Save: Dexterity (half damage).

• Effect: You cause elemental energy to burst forth violently. Each creature must save or take 3d8 elemental damage (Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder, your choice).

• At Higher Levels: Increase to 3d10 damage at level 11 and 3d12 damage at level 17.

There are examples of this poor formatting all throughout 5e 2024 (present even in a number of spells).

Disjointed Mechanical Triggers and Durations

One of the worst instances of design that is a product of poor formatting is the disjointed mechanical triggers and durations. Seen in 5e:

• When a creature enters this area...

• When a creature starts its turn in the area...

• When a creature ends its turn in the area...

• Until the end of your next turn...

• Until the end of the creature's next turn...

These are all in addition to the number of "[a]t the end of each of its turns, the target repeats the save, ending the spell on itself on a success" mechanics.

One of the reasons I prefer immediate, one-and-done effects as opposed to ongoing effects is because of situations like these. Look at the Hunger of Hadar:

You open a gateway to the Far Realm, a region infested with unspeakable horrors. A 20-foot-radius Sphere of Darkness appears, centered on a point with range and lasting for the duration. The Sphere is Difficult Terrain, and it is filled with strange whispers and slurping noises, which can be heard up to 30 feet away. No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area, and creatures fully within it have the Blinded condition. Any creature that starts its turn in the area takes 2d6 Cold damage. Any creature that ends its turn there must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6 Acid damage from otherworldly tentacles.

It's an ongoing area of effect (Concentration) with effects that occur at the start and end of a creature's turn (and has different damage types to track if a creature has Resistance).

Moonbeam is a similar spell:

A silvery beam of pale light shines down in a 5-foot-radius, 40-foot-high Cylinder centered on a point within range. Until the spell ends, Dim Light fills the Cylinder, and you can take a Magic action on later turns to move the Cylinder up to 60 feet. When the Cylinder appears, each creature in it makes a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 2d10 Radiant damage, and if the creature is shape-shifted (as a result of the Polymorph spell, for example), it reverts to its true form and can’t shape-shift until it leaves the Cylinder. On a successful save, a creature takes half as much damage only. A creature also makes this save when the spell’s area moves into its space and when it enters the spell’s area or ends its turn there. A creature makes this save only once per turn.

You have an effect that triggers when you cast the spell, when the spell moves into the creature's space, when the creature enters the spell's area, or when the creature ends its turn there (but only once per turn, of course).

In every RPG I've ever played, these disjointed mechanical triggers/durations demand the most rules look-ups, which slows the game to a crawl.

Summary

These bits of anti-design present in 5e 2014 should have been ironed out in 5e 2024. There's a lesson in taking a decade to revise an edition and still fouling it up, but I doubt anyone at WotC has learned it.