What D&D is BAD at, and why vet DMs will often say, "Use this system instead."

 

I enjoy D&D. It was my first RPG over thirty years ago, and upon death I will hopefully be cremated and compressed into a d20 so my mortal remains can terrorize players and DMs for decades more.

 

But D&D is a tool for storytelling, and like any tool it has good uses and bad uses. Sure, one could use a screwdriver as a crowbar to pry open a door, but one breaks and bends a lot of screwdrivers that way - conversely, you COULD use a crowbar to open up a toy's battery compartment, but good luck getting it back together!

 

D&D's forte is anime-esque high fantasy without a lot of focus on reality. Magic derived from various sources (gods, nature, the self); sentient beings with racially distinct physical abilities and characteristics living in harmony or conflict with each other; a world either in decline from a previous golden age or on the rise to a new one: these are all stories that D&D excels at telling and it needs at least two of those in order to thrive. It's also a very 'crunchy' system when it comes to character creation, with many possible valid ways to build characters which rewards players who enjoy the hell out of that style of play.

 

What is it BAD at? Well, quite a bit from a story prospective, so buckle up - but first, the tl;dr version:

 

1) Any story that needs more realistic, grounded damage - or 'damage' that isn't physical.

 

2) Any story with vehicle battles on a wildly different scale from personal battles - or multiple scales.

 

3) Any story where the main difference between characters isn't race or class, but skills and 

powers.

 

4) Any story where the conflict isn't resolved through combat regularly.

 

5) Any story without spellcasting or magic items.

 

6) Any group that needs quick mechanics and choices that are easy to grasp.

 

Now, for the detail.

 

Any story that needs more realistic, grounded damage - or 'damage' that isn't physical.

 

Damage in D&D isn't realistic. You're up and fully capable of fighting whether you're at max HP or 1. 

And this is FINE, for the kind of stories it's good at; a character spitting up blood as he launches a final attack is a staple of anime.

 

But plenty of other RPGs don't do this; a staple of many systems is the 'damage track' where as you take more damage, you take penalties to represent how badly you're injured. This is a fine compromise between D&D's "Up til you're down" and other systems that are FAR too complicated in where and how you take damage to each limb or head that have mostly fallen away over the past four decades.

 

And on top of that, damage scales badly upward. If you need something to be a threat regardless of the player's level - like, say, a chump gangbanger armed with an Uzi - in D&D terms they simply won't care as they level upwards. Either it'll miss their higher AC, or they'll simply absorb the damage with their increased HP. Bad storytelling there.

 

Another thing it's bad at is non-physical damage, which is only represented in the Fatigue rules (which I'm willing to bet that 80% of DMs ignore entirely). Insanity for stories of supernatural horror like Call of Cthulhu and social standing for stories of court intrigue like Legend of the Five Rings? Mostly treated as "save or suck" effects with maybe a half-page of description in optional rules sections, rather than core features of the game. This also ties in heavily to 4), but is more a part of the 'damage' section IMHO.

 

Any story with vehicle battles on a wildly different scale from personal battles - or multiple scales.

 

Imagine that you're trying to put giant anime robots into D&D. You don't want them to have regular Hit Points, because that would mean they could be killed by a bunch of guys with swords and that's boring - you want them to be fighting other giant robots.

 

So you decide that they have "Mega HP", where 1 MHP = 100 HP, and that only weapons on that mega-damage scale can hurt them. Bam, job done, you roll over, not knowing the terror you've released... because regular players still need ways of hurting them, which means hand-usable Mega Damage weapons, which have totally invalidated the normal HP that normal people have since even the weakest MD weapon deals 100 regular damage, which means you need MHP armor to protect them, which means...

 

Fucking Palladium. Some games, like their old Robotech line? This works. But in Rifts and other settings where you regularly mix normal damage and mega damage? Nightmare.

 

Any story where the main difference between characters isn't race or class, but skills and powers.

 

Quick question: How would YOU do Avatar the Last Airbender in D&D? Almost everyone qualifies as one class (the Four Elements Monk) and even if they're not, they're pretty much restricted to Fighter, Monk, or Rogue. Reproducing it faithfully in d20 would either be boring or require so many new rules that you've written your own book for it.

 

ANY story where there aren't several different races providing a base upon which to place the dozens of magical classes falls apart when transplanted into D&D. A Ghostbusters game where the players are working together to trap ghosts and the main difference between characters is that one's the face, another's the researcher, and another is the techie maintaining the equipment?

 

Any superhero game?

 

Pretty much any game set in the modern world fails hard when it comes to D&D for this reason and 5) (but more on that later).

 

Any story where the conflict isn't resolved through combat regularly.

 

This is pretty simple: The weight of D&D's rules are in combat, not outside of it. Once again, this isn't BAD, it just IS; and having quick and easy sneaking and social conflict rules are a boon for groups that want to focus on killing things without worrying too much about the before and after.

 

But a setting like, say, Star Trek? Quite in addition to all the other points there are dozens of adventures in Star Trek where the conflict is resolved without a single weapon raised, but through knowledge, negotiation, and mechanical wizardry (which would be a single pass-or-fail skill roll by the rules), and outright conflict is almost always a failure.

 

There are quite a few good settings, from spy thrillers to My Little Pony to Star Trek, where the d20 D&Desque system is a poor fit. Hell, even their latest release STRIXHAVEN seems like a poor fit!

 

Any story without spellcasting or magic items.

 

A HUGE amount of D&D is devoted to magic, particularly magic created by people's supernatural powers. Even in the 5e book, a third of the book is magic spells and rules for spellcasting, with 6/13 classes being devoted to using said spells, 3 more being heavily influenced by their spellcasting, and only 2 almost entirely ignoring the spell rules and lists.

 

Now, there are settings where you could make this work. Numenera would be comfortable with the D&D magic rules and most of the other D&Desque trappings; it could easily be another Prime Material plane (and I say that liking the Numenera rules!) But a significant number of other settings would be HORRIBLE.

 

Take Star Wars. ONE class would use any kind of magic in there (two, if you split Sith and Jedi). Everyone else would be locked into non-casting Rogue, Monk, Barbarian, or Fighter subclasses, which isn't enough variety by any means. Or Call of Cthulhu (again) where one of the few effective weapons PCs can wield against the supernatural ARE spells that anyone can learn regardless of class... but learning and using them eventually drives the PCs insane. Or almost all the old White Wolf settings (Vampire, Werewolf), where most supernatural powers are inborn abilities that you activate, versus being spells you fling around.

 

A big part of D&D are the spells and the magic items. Cutting that out guts far too much of the game. 

 

Any group that needs quick mechanics and choices that are easy to grasp. 

 

D&D is not a hard rules system, but neither is it easy. A big part of the complexity is in the character creation, which makes it very front-loaded; and some decisions rooted in legacy D&D make it a smidge harder, like keeping the 3-18 attribute system when the only thing which MATTERS is the attribute's bonus or penalty. The other half of the complexity are in the tactical combat options, where there many possible choices and ideas to use.

 

Now, once again, this is FINE. It's what D&D is all about. But we all know at least one player who sticks to Barbarian, Fighter, or Rogue because they have the simplest options available - you hit things and they die - and often will only do things out of combat when prodded. Part of this often comes from choice paralysis; they're there to hang out with friends and don't want to make a bunch of hard decisions which will strain their brain. 

 

Contrast that to Savage Worlds. Attributes and Skills are the dice you actually ROLL - have a Stealth d6, you roll d6. This is smooth and intuitive even for absolute beginners to understand. Using playing cards for initiative is quick and simple. The combat being based around "Up, down, or off the table" is easy to grasp, as are the extra options of using non-combat skills to put opponents in the 'down' condition to make them easier to take off the table. Even spellcasters aren't overwhelmed by massive lists with some good and some bad to choose from, thanks to their beautiful idea of magical 'trappings' and using energy to make spells stronger if needed, eliminating redundant spells if needed. 

 

Why have a Fly spell and a Levitate spell in D&D, for example, when they're basically the same thing and one is just faster? Yes, 5e did some of that via upcasting rules and other things like the varying levels of Bigby's Hand, but jeez there's a lot of redundant clutter which could be removed. Imagine a Levitate spell that at level 1 can only carry objects for a while (Floating Disk), at level 2 could make people float slowly, and at level 3 could fly, with upcasting increasing the speed? That sort of thing.