u/MerelyEccentric

I want to nail a wizard with a throwing knife within line of sight. I want to be able to tumble for no damage from a 400 ft. fall. I want to be able to jump off an enemy's head for a 30 ft. vertical jump slow fall shooting arrows. Fuck this damage balancing and the numbers. I don't care that a maximized 3.5 fireball could outperform my damage 10x over to a field of enemies. I don't care that a 3.5 wizard could sneeze and take over the world. The question is, why can't I? Where's my nonsense? I'm playing a skill monkey rogue for god's sake, why am I not good at anything? I'm a level 14 fighter. A legendary warrior. Why do I never get to do anything actually cool? Why can't skill checks do anything? Why can't I do anything. Utter nonsense.

No, I'm not going to play a different system. I like D&D because it has good numbers except when it sucks because it doesn't. I don't want 4e except when I do. I don't want to DM because then I can't play. I don't want maneuvers because if I wanted to track spells I'd play a cleric or some shit. I don't care if I do damage or one shot things. I don't want to be part of a team.

I just want something I can fucking abuse. I want to break the game.

Specifically every 5E post that I read (and which reinforce my biases) seems to be about optimizing character builds, balance, and nerds upset that they’re not able to live out their drama club fantasies, while the extremely rare 2E or earlier edition posts don’t seem to touch on these subjects at all.

My experience tells me that most 5E players are younger than players of older editions… but as I said in the title, is the difference in the topics discussed a function of the editions and the rules themselves, or simply the age and agendas of the players? Correlation implies causation.

This is totally not a bait post, ignore my username.