Thread by @hexcrawl

My biggest gripe about 5E #DnD is that it often models specialization by trivializing the associated actions.

If you're interested in X, you design a character who's good at X. But the result isn't doing more X. It's that X becomes automatic and is no longer part of the game.

Take #TombOfAnnihilation, for example. A big chunk of the campaign is mounting a wilderness expedition into the heart of darkness!

If that's exciting for you, you'll pick a character class that can really contribute to that part of the campaign! Rangers and druids, for example.

ToA models the challenges of the expedition through travel speed, a Navigation check, and Dehydration.

A Ranger's Natural Explorer ability eliminates travel speed variation and auto-succeeds on the Navigation check.

The Druid has a 1st level spell to create water.

So if you make characters specialized in wilderness exploration, you take the entire structure presented FOR wilderness exploration and basically just throw it out.

It's as if the Fighter had an Auto-Win Fights ability at 1st level: You choose to be a Fighter because you're really interested in the combat portion of the game, but the mechanics instead just remove combat from the game.

5E does this a lot: It includes mechanics for a specific type of challenge (often in a vestigial form inherited from previous editions), but then simultaneously includes a low-level class ability, cantrip, or 1st level spell that renders it moot.

So rather than creating cool new gameplay, the game just sets up these boring, auto-play interactions.

GM: A thing happens.

Player: I hit the mechanical button that automatically solves it.

Why include these mechanics at all?