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Anonymouswizard
2018-06-04, 05:31 PM
Everybody and their DM has thought about fixing D&D, even though most of us will never complete their fix for one reason or another. Not all of us even agree on what must be done. So I though it might be fun to discuss how you would fix Dungeons & Dragons.

So the rules are simple. You must simply explain the changes you'd make and why you'd make them while still keeping: a class and level structure, the ability to explore dungeons and fight monsters, and tactical combat.

To start this off, I'll plonk down what I'm working on. This has changed significantly since I started working it, because it began at a point where I was disillusioned with common magic games and I recently threw out the last draft for bring too specialised as a no magic combat simulator.

Goals: -lower magic, high fantasy
-magic doesn't solve problems, but provides more tools
-a focus on customisable archetypes
-a lower power ceiling

So the system uses three physical Virtues (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution) and three mental Virtues (Intellect, Courage, and Empathy). Well okay, they're Ability Scores, but we're going for a game of heroes here, and Virtues sounds cool. Intellect is both your ability to logic and your ability to notice things, Courage is roughly Willpower, and Empathy is your ability to connect with people. I didn't like how hard it was to tell the difference between what Intelligence covers and what Wisdom covers, and honestly Courage and Willpower is more than enough for a Virtue to cover.

Well, we have classes and levels at least. But broad archetypes the players can fine tune, the basic classes are literally the Mundane and the Magician. The Mundane gets a lot of Skill Points and Talents, while the Magician can learn spells from a magical tradition. Races are also classes, so elves get access to special spells and dwarves gain enhanced abilities with technology. Here multiclassing allows us to allow people to break racial archetypes while still keeping them strong, an elf who doesn't want spellcasting takes Elf 1 for basic elf abilities then focuses on the Mundane class, while one who focuses on it goes Elf 1/Magician (Elf) X.

Talents are feats. Closer to 5e feats than 3.X ones to help them stand up against spells as a character choice, but still feats except in name. They absorb a lot of old class features, to keep things like Smite and Channel Divinity there as options.

Skill points are gained from your class (a set number per level), and give skill ranks at a rate of one to one. Your maximum number of ranks is equal to three plus one third of your level rounded mathematically (increases at 2nd level and every third level afterwards), as a slight incentive to not just max your main skills and neglect all others.

Before moving onto spells, let's talk derived Statistics. Your Hit Points begin equal to your Constitution and increase by 1-3 each level, depending on your class. For spellcasters their Magical Energy begins equal to their Empathy and increases by 1-3 each level, depending on class. Melee Defence is equal to 10+Dexterity+your highest weapon skill, Ranged Defence is equal to 10+Dexterity+Dodge skill, Mental Defence is equal to 10+Courage+Discipline skill, and Spiritual Defence is equal to 10+Courage+Faith skill. Speed is 10+Strength+Dexterity.

For spells, spell levels are gone. A magician of any level can learn any spell. But every spell you cast requires you to spend XP or start suffering Exhaustion levels. Spells also don't allow you to bypass a skill check completely anymore, but may allow you to substitute a different skill or roll the skill when you wouldn't be able to. There's also no free Cantrips, at least at the moment, and ME can run out fast if you're casting spells for everything. Magicians get a better toolkit, but it has inbuilt costs and doesn't replace the mundane one.

Well that's my idea at least, feel free to critique it and/or post your own.

Beleriphon
2018-06-04, 06:04 PM
I generally keep a really heavy book at hand, I'm fond of the OED Unabridged from a few years ago that I own, and just give anybody that tries to muck up the game a dirty look and then pat the book.

If you meant rules, eh I don't as a rule have problems with the rules. But your system seems a lot like Green Ronin's True20 ruleset.

2D8HP
2018-06-04, 07:03 PM
Well, I've seen me some interviews with Mike Mearls where he flat out says that a big goal with 5e WD&D was to make it more accessible to new players (I put the W there because '91 BECMI/RC was called 5e TD&D, yes it was so, 'cept they didn't need to put the "T" in front back then).

And it's working.

There's lots of new players, and old players coming out of the woodwork.

It's Dungeon Masters that are scarce.

The DMG makes me want to "stop all my bellyaching, get off ny duff, dust off the DM's hat (a too small plastic horned 'Viking' helmet, with 'DUNGEON MASTER' written by magic marker on it) perch it on my head and show 'em how it's done!"

And then I look into the PHB, shudder, and hide in a corner, there's just so much!

1977 Basic rules D&D I could DM, and I did, starting at the age of ten.

Thing is players like all those crunchy, juicy, and shiny options, I do, I love the Swashbuckler! I love a muti-classed Barbarian/Fighter/Paladin/Ranger/Rogue even more!

But I don't want to DM that mess!

I don't know how to square that circle.

So my solution is to use BRP or LotFP as a GM, and to play 5e when someone else is the DM.

I don't know, take the free on-line rules, red line some of it, and call it a day.

Quertus
2018-06-04, 08:17 PM
As a first draft, really, I'd just take 2e D&D, and rewrite it using BAB instead of THAC0, good ideas instead of toxic advice, and Quertian pros instead of Gygaxian pros. Maybe include a few updates, like giving Fighters +1 BAB at level 1, or Wizards getting more than one spell at first level.

If I were more serious about it, I'd poke at the 4e crowd, until I either understood what they liked about the 4e gameplay, I got kicked off the forum for insulting people in my incredulity, I had a mental breakdown, died of old age, or, the least likely outcome, actually managed to understand and steal their special sauce.

I'd consider attempting to add in all of the breadth of the 3e content, but that sounds like too lengthy an effort for one lifetime.

Cluedrew
2018-06-04, 08:30 PM
I'm not sure exactly, but it would probably look a lot like Dungeon World. Or at least closer to Dungeon World than most actual D&D editions. I might more ability to adjust a character to your exact tastes as time goes on, but most Powered by the Apocalypse systems do a great job at making every class/playbook seem interesting and unique out of the gate.

I might also create a more complete theoretical explanation of magic, just to keep wizards from being able to do absolutely everything. But Dungeon World apparently does an alright job of that already.

Pex
2018-06-04, 08:40 PM
Roleplaying is my job. Gameworld setting is the DM's job. Fun game mechanics is D&D's job.

3E Chassis
Warriors use 3E Tome of Battle
Arcane casters use Dreamscarred Press Psionics
Divine casters use Pathfinder Oracles
Spellcasters use 5E style Cantrips adapted for 3E Chassis
All characters use 5E rules for movement and actions
Feats, Skills, and Magic Item details to be dealt with Pathfinder style
Pathfinder point buy and races.

Frozen_Feet
2018-06-04, 08:43 PM
I had my fill of tinkering with d20 years ago with the results still probably lingering in the depths of the homebrew forum, and my need to make a retroclone died with Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

JAL_1138
2018-06-04, 11:59 PM
In the broadest sense, I'd try to tone down high-level magic such that high-level casters could still be powerful but wouldn't require redesigning the world to and/or giving enemies specific counters to their abilities in order to challenge them. It's been something of an issue for most of D&D's history, and is still an issue even in 5e--try pitting an enemy without teleportation and poison immunity against a caster with Forcecage and Cloudkill, for instance.

Eldan
2018-06-05, 02:27 AM
Power levels:
I feel as if 4E was on to something with tiers. Really. While more specialized systems are perhaps basically better at any given level and game style than D&D, the unique selling point of D&D, I think, is that rush of levelling. Where you start out as the village nobody and end up a demigod, if you play long enough. So we play into that. Low levels are weak. There's barely any magic, you need trickery, guile, tactics and probably henchmen to take on anything more than a few goblins.
But from there on, you go on to be mighty heroes, a Conan or an Aragorn or a Robin Hood. At this level, mages are wise and learned, but their magic is not that powerful and it does not have the answers to everything and they probably rely on their knowledge of the weird and dangerous more than on their spells.
At higher levels, everyone has powers. That's it. There's no more "Guy who's just pretty good with a sword". That's just not a thign that works anymore. If you want to be close to normal, you can be a Gilgamesh or Cú Chulainn, but you will still be functionally invulnerable to normal weapons and wrestling dragons. More likely, your fighter will be Thor. Your wizard is now the classical D&D wizard.

Magic:
At low levels, there will be Unearthed Arcana styled Incantations like in the SRD, just many, many more of them, and they will be open to any class as rituals. For more specialized classes, there will be a few general magical powers, though very few, mainly things that concern interacting with magic via willpower, namely sensing magical effects and creatures, breaking curses and enchantments, warding off and banishing magical creatures, that kind of thing. In addition, there will be pact magic, based on Tome of Magic's binder, but refluffed with more categories of spirits other than just the really weird ones from outside reality: animal spirits, ancestral spirits, fiends, that kind of thing.

Vancian magic is a thing, because I love it, but it will be restricted to very high level wizards. It will be based on concentration and allow a wizard to memorize and release more narrow magical effects. It will mainly have the advantage of allowing a wizard to directly access magical energies like magical creatures do, without needing an outsider or spirit as an intermediary.

Combat:
ToB Maneuvers for everyone. They just work.

Also, I find healing just tedious, so let's switch to a vitality and wound points system, where in many fights, you'll get winded, but not badly wounded. This also has the advantage of allowing a bit more realism at lower levels, where your barbarian can't just say "Oh, it's just a longbow, I can take that". No, he evaded. It was close and thrilling. Throw in vitality points automatically refilling after a short rest, too.

Skills:
More of them. A lot more. Here's the thing. I know that combining skills like hide and move silently into stealth or listen and spot into perception is popular. But I like granular skills. Like, super-granular. If it was up to me, everyone would get something like 10 skill points per level and the skill list would be twice as long. I'd freely plunder from other games, too. You can tell me all you want that no one ever takes Gem Cutting or Astrology as a skill, I want that in there.

Feats:
Eliminate everything that's just +X to Y. Unless maybe, maaaaybe the bonus is super huge. Really, I'd like feats to hand out new abilities wherever possible.

Kaptin Keen
2018-06-05, 03:39 AM
My fix is E6(-ish). Basically E6, except once you're Epic Level, you can essentially do all things. Not easily, you don't get to cast high level magic in combat - but there is a way for you to do anything, pretty much regardless of class.

So it's sort of E6 with a free-form epic level superstructure.

Florian
2018-06-05, 04:16 AM
Well, ok. Holy d20 cows, meet the butcher.

Attributes:

The six basic attributes stay the same, but without the score. Instead, everything works of the pure modifier. (I.e. STR +2 instead of STR 14 (+2)). No bonus spells per day due to high scores.

Classes:

No more "full" 20 level classes and Prestige Classes. Instead, there´re three tiers of play, each with their own 7 level classes and an optional level zero for playing origin stories of how you actually got your class/powers/knowledge. The tiers are basically self-contained and non-consecutive, so there is no "+1 existing X", rather, each tier has a list of available feats and tier-specific spells/martial stuff ranging from 1-4, with T1/T2 using fixed-list casters and only T3 opening up to full list casters. And yes, everyone will get spells. No multiclassing. (Conan > Captain America > Thor)

Spells:

Spells will be divided between class specific, combat magic and ritual magic. The former two will "refresh" their used spell slots after each encounter, the later will use up a spell slot for the day as usual. Class specific spells are directly tied into already existing class features, like smite evil or rage and modify those in a way.

Gear and magic items:

Automatic Bonus Progression and Scaling Items as the standard (both PF Unchained). No more raw +x items of any kind.

Pleh
2018-06-05, 06:54 AM
E6 with Generic Classes from UA.
Expanded (but not unlimited) set of class features that can be taken as feats. All class features converted to feats are Typed as Feature Feats. Also, planning some feats fixes (Dodge and its ilk)
Feature feats will be taken from trusted sources (more or less the same splat restrictions as an Iron Chef competition).
No LA buyoff, but up to LA+1 races allowed. Feats gained with RHD must choose General, Racial, or Monster feats (RHD never grants Feature Feats).
Warrior gets ToB maneuvers and stances as Warblade (but you may choose any combination of 5 disciplines).
Spellcaster and Warrior now get 4+int mod skill points each level
Psionics have magic transparency and are open to spellcasters as an equal alternative to divine or arcane spells.
Expert gains proficiency with Bard and Rogue weapons plus invocations as Warlock.
You don't take PrCs, but as soon as you meet a PrC's prereqs, you can take the PrC's features as feats.
Passive and Active defenses: you always gain the benefit of passive defenses, which is like taking 10 on concentration, perception, initiative, AC, and saving throws. As an action, you can consciously use these defenses (for AC, this is fighting defensively), but you must roll a d20 instead of taking 10 and take the result, even if it's worse than 10.
Saga First Aid: to give first aid, roll Heal against DC 15. If you make the check, the character gains their character level number of hit points and can't benefit from first aid for 24 hours. You heal an additional point for every 2 points by which you beat the DC. You take a -5 to give yourself first aid.
Initiative gains Iaijutsu Focus as a Trained Only application. Initiative is also a skill you can use any time you want to interrupt something (except attacks on you, which is AC and/or Reflex).
Skill Grouping: Grouped skills consolidate skills so points don't need to stretch as far. Class features that target a grouped skill still only affect that sub skill and not the whole group unless we make an exception. You still roll these sub skills separately; the consolidation just allows them to share ranks. Prereqs that require a skill that has been absorbed are satisfied by the skill that has acquired the sub skill. Prereqs that normally require multiple skills in a group only require a number of ranks in the combined group skill equal to the highest prereq (of skills belonging to that group). For example, prereqs of 4 Ride and 8 Handle Animal only require 8 Handle Animal.
Ride is grouped into Handle Animal. You never need to make checks to ride mounts whose attitude towards you is Helpful, such as an animal companion, though you still need to make them for doing riding stunts.
Appraise, Craft, Decipher Script, Profession, and Spellcraft are grouped into Knowledge (X). Gather Information is grouped here when using the skill to do research using written documents.
Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate are grouped into Persuasion (note that you still choose which to use, you just use the same ranks for whichever skill). Gather Information is grouped here when using the skill to talk to people.
Spot and Listen are grouped into Perception.
Hide and Move Silently are grouped into Stealth.
Tumble, Jump, and Balance are grouped into Acrobatics.
Artificers and Incarnum: Chopping down the Christmas Tree. The only magic items that exist are expendable wands, potions, scrolls and similar items. Magic weapons, armor, and baubles (rings, amulets, masks, etc) don't exist and instead everyone with class levels gets meldshaping as a totemist (with chakras and essentia as part of the package).

EDIT: I was thinking about the dodge feat fix and it reminded me I wanted another systematic change: all characters get 1 Martial Reaction per round. This can be used to make an attack of opportunity or a dodge. To make a dodge, roll Initiative against a DC equal to the attack being dodged (you must declare dodge after the attack is declared, but before the result of the attack is declared). If the check succeeds, the attack deals half damage if it beats AC and the dodger gets +1 dodge to AC against that attack.

Uncanny dodge allows the dodger to negate all the damage from a dodged attack.

Mobility allows you to dodge attacks of opportunity

Combat reflexes gives you martial reaction equal 1+dex mod (minimum 1)

And so on.

MrSandman
2018-06-05, 07:58 AM
Two things have always bothered me a lot about D&D: how unrealistic weapons and especially armours are, and how long combat takes.

I started by changing available armours and their protections (mail was the best armour you could get in a world with technology similar to Europe 1200, and it was a good armour, not the nonsense that comes in the handbook), I continued by doing away with hit points and using an endurance system instead in which players sort of rolled a saving throw when they got hit to see if they'd get wounded, and ended by playing FATE.

Cluedrew
2018-06-05, 08:29 AM
[...] and ended by playing FATE.I feel like that is how a lot of stories about trying to improve D&D end. Everyone (in North America) seems to come into the hobby by passing through D&D. Some people stay there but I actually think it is the wrong system for a lot of people, and so they drift away from it.

I'm working on a system that... well as I mentioned above is closer to Dungeon World than D&D mechanically (except dice pools) but the setting is different from both of those. Magic users aren't wizards for one, the there is a single setting for the game and so on.

Psyren
2018-06-05, 10:54 AM
It's Dungeon Masters that are scarce.


D&D 7.0 will solve this problem with AI :smallcool:



Thing is players like all those crunchy, juicy, and shiny options, I do, I love the Swashbuckler! I love a muti-classed Barbarian/Fighter/Paladin/Ranger/Rogue even more!

But I don't want to DM that mess!

You can force them to stay single-classed, or at most two classes, yanno. The nice thing about D&D (and Pathfinder) is that a lot of the time, just sticking to one class gives you a bunch of crunchy options while demanding relatively little cerebral overhead from the GM.

Anonymouswizard
2018-06-05, 11:57 AM
While everything is great, Selected replies only so I'm able to do some other stuff today.


If you meant rules, eh I don't as a rule have problems with the rules. But your system seems a lot like Green Ronin's True20 ruleset.

Maybe, never actually read True20. I also don't like how it seperates out mundane stuff into two classes, but that's a personal preference. But I believe that a lot of my 'design goals' are similar to theirs.


Power levels:
I feel as if 4E was on to something with tiers. Really. While more specialized systems are perhaps basically better at any given level and game style than D&D, the unique selling point of D&D, I think, is that rush of levelling. Where you start out as the village nobody and end up a demigod, if you play long enough. So we play into that. Low levels are weak. There's barely any magic, you need trickery, guile, tactics and probably henchmen to take on anything more than a few goblins.
But from there on, you go on to be mighty heroes, a Conan or an Aragorn or a Robin Hood. At this level, mages are wise and learned, but their magic is not that powerful and it does not have the answers to everything and they probably rely on their knowledge of the weird and dangerous more than on their spells.
At higher levels, everyone has powers. That's it. There's no more "Guy who's just pretty good with a sword". That's just not a thign that works anymore. If you want to be close to normal, you can be a Gilgamesh or Cú Chulainn, but you will still be functionally invulnerable to normal weapons and wrestling dragons. More likely, your fighter will be Thor. Your wizard is now the classical D&D wizard.

I've actually decided to lop off the 'core rules' at level 10/Conan, and give gods their own dedicated book (because at that point so many assumptions change that it really is a new game, and that deserves discussion). So essentially an Epic Level Handbook treatment for, to use the 4e tiers, late paragon/epic.

I'm also justifying this with the lower levels really just being more popular (as well as what I prefer). Yes, this is essentially leading to a 'two book core' case where I release the pdfs 'Book 1: Mortal' and 'Book 2: Demigod', if I ever get decent art for this and bother to get it on DriveThruRPG (probably for PWYW, maybe free) instead of just putting it on my blog (which I really need to restart). Yes, I've argued against exactly that.


Magic:
At low levels, there will be Unearthed Arcana styled Incantations like in the SRD, just many, many more of them, and they will be open to any class as rituals. For more specialized classes, there will be a few general magical powers, though very few, mainly things that concern interacting with magic via willpower, namely sensing magical effects and creatures, breaking curses and enchantments, warding off and banishing magical creatures, that kind of thing. In addition, there will be pact magic, based on Tome of Magic's binder, but refluffed with more categories of spirits other than just the really weird ones from outside reality: animal spirits, ancestral spirits, fiends, that kind of thing.

Vancian magic is a thing, because I love it, but it will be restricted to very high level wizards. It will be based on concentration and allow a wizard to memorize and release more narrow magical effects. It will mainly have the advantage of allowing a wizard to directly access magical energies like magical creatures do, without needing an outsider or spirit as an intermediary.

I'll be honest, I like rituals/incantations as well, but I'm a bit torn on putting them in. On the one hand, letting even nonmages cast spells if they have the time and the right piece of paper is good, on the other hand it's another couple of pages of rules plus a list of rituals. I love it as an option, but I'm not sure I'd make it a PC's main form of magic at any level.


Combat:
ToB Maneuvers for everyone. They just work.

Also, I find healing just tedious, so let's switch to a vitality and wound points system, where in many fights, you'll get winded, but not badly wounded. This also has the advantage of allowing a bit more realism at lower levels, where your barbarian can't just say "Oh, it's just a longbow, I can take that". No, he evaded. It was close and thrilling. Throw in vitality points automatically refilling after a short rest, too.

Eh, I'm going competely the other way. Relatively low hp totals, fast and deadly combat, relatively slow healing without magic. I can see the desire for wounds and vitality, but I want Combat as War.


Skills:
More of them. A lot more. Here's the thing. I know that combining skills like hide and move silently into stealth or listen and spot into perception is popular. But I like granular skills. Like, super-granular. If it was up to me, everyone would get something like 10 skill points per level and the skill list would be twice as long. I'd freely plunder from other games, too. You can tell me all you want that no one ever takes Gem Cutting or Astrology as a skill, I want that in there.

Feats:
Eliminate everything that's just +X to Y. Unless maybe, maaaaybe the bonus is super huge. Really, I'd like feats to hand out new abilities wherever possible.

I'm actually combining skills and giving everybody a bunch of skill points. I don't want 'skill monkey' to be a thing, everybody should have a bunch of skills instead of one or two. Agreeing on Feats thought.


Two things have always bothered me a lot about D&D: how unrealistic weapons and especially armours are, and how long combat takes.

I started by changing available armours and their protections (mail was the best armour you could get in a world with technology similar to Europe 1200, and it was a good armour, not the nonsense that comes in the handbook), I continued by doing away with hit points and using an endurance system instead in which players sort of rolled a saving throw when they got hit to see if they'd get wounded, and ended by playing FATE.

Yeah, I own a lot of other systems. The problem I've found is that nobody's willing to play, for example, Unknown Armies, and I hate running D&D.

I mean, I'd be running Unknown Armies right now if I could. But nobody wants to play a game of crazy mages stuck in a crime story. Then again, Uknown Armies is one of the few roleplaying games which opens the combat section with 'right, here's some ways to avoid risking your life, number one is surrender...'

So yeah, a lot of my changes are to keep the rough style and feel of D&D while going for the more open character creation I like. Keeping classes and levels because for all their problems, it is simpler to spend 8 skill points and pick a Talent/two spells then to divide up your 50CP. Because that way I might actually be able to run a game I enjoy.

MeimuHakurei
2018-06-05, 01:46 PM
Well, I don't have a concrete plan on hand, but here's what I'd do to make D&D more enjoyable to me:

-Focus on high-powered, heroic fantasy. Gritty, low-powered systems that make you struggle to survive are as common as grains of sand in a desert, while more heroic systems are rare.
-Put an emphasis on mechanical clarity. There are some situations which can share the same subsystem, but clear mechanics should cut down on rules questions and mitigates abuse from either side of the screen.
-Related to the above, reduce direct DM input on player abilities. If you have to ask your DM how your power unfolds, it highly limits a player's ability to make informed decisions if there's no way of telling if your spell has the intended effect or if your straightforward idea makes your DM scream about metagaming. The DM is a narrator, not a scriptwriter.
-Reduce the horizontality of the higher classes. Tier 1s have an absurdly wide skillset and it makes them too samey on grounds that very little is not open to any of them. At the same time, broaden the concepts of lower tier classes to not get stuck doing one thing only forever.


-Classes that are too broad and nondescript as a concept get out of core - Fighter, Wizard and Sorcerer definitely and maybe a few others.
-Fighting classes based on different styles (think Swashbuckler, Knight or the other core martials) which later gain wuxia-style special abilities.
-Magic classes based around certain themes (like Dread Necromancer, Beguiler and Warmage) which may have limited options for certain effects (a blaster will lack social tools, a necromancer doesn't have good mobility options and a conjurer lacks means to act spontaneously). You can totally be a tome-diving scholar and not be infinitely powerful.
-Shapeshifting will be a fixed buff like in Pathfinder but also present a menu of choices that determine what special abilities you get. Summons work the same way and such creatures require a skill to be controllable.
-Bestiary monsters will have flexible spell lists and occasional monsters with variable traits (such as HP and some stats), with highlighted abilities considered to be common knowledge.

khadgar567
2018-06-05, 01:56 PM
depending on pathfinder 2e my current fix would be nerf the f out of wizard then add some quality of life stuff to game like proper entertaiment options ( dancer class and few updated book of erotic fantasy stuff) but not much change unless it needs another round of idiot proofing

Tvtyrant
2018-06-05, 03:05 PM
Pretty long list, the short of it:
1. Classes would be broken up into a combat and a social class. So a character might be a Skirmisher/Scholar, or a Brute/Wilderness Expert. This removes the horrid flaw of trying to balance combat effectiveness against out of combat effectiveness, and the number of classes would be both shorter and longer due to more combinations being available.
2. Traditional spell based magic is based on rituals and incantations which take time and group participation. This is not class based.
3. Skills have elaborate mini-games for diplomacy, locks/traps, magic, etc. Many of these are not dice based (doing a 100 piece puzzle on a timer for an epic level ritual for instance).
4. HP is removed, replaced by endurance points and wounds. Wounds are lost to heal endurance, when hit by a crit or when dropping below 0 EP. You roll on a wound chart for these, and wounds heal very slowly.

Anymage
2018-06-05, 03:34 PM
Which edition?

The biggest issues I'd notice, whichever edition I started from, are twofold. First, as 2D8HP mentioned, there's a tug of war between players (who, having only one character, want to load it up with shinies and cool power interactions), and DMs (who, having to deal with a whole party full of that stuff plus the rest of the world's reactions and counters, want to keep their mental load somewhere more reasonable). And second, as the 4e experiment showed, stretching too far from the expected baseline will cause a revolt. Like, I liked 4e for a lot of the simplifications, but I know that filling tables and selling books is a lot easier with products off the 3e fork.

CantigThimble
2018-06-05, 03:54 PM
So far the best fix I've found to my problems with 3e and 5e is to play 2e instead.

The more I play systems with tons of options, streamlining and overall freedom, the more I realize I don't actually like any of those things. I LIKE having a small system with messy stat rules and odd class/race restrictions. Those make the game more fun for me. The more things get opened up, streamlined and made 'fun' for players the less real any of it feels.

And no, this isn't nostalgia. I played 3.5 first for 6-7 years, (I also played 2e a little but didn't like it) then 5e for another 4-5 and only played 2e seriously in the last 3 years.

Psyren
2018-06-05, 05:17 PM
So far the best fix I've found to my problems with 3e and 5e is to play 2e instead.

The more I play systems with tons of options, streamlining and overall freedom, the more I realize I don't actually like any of those things. I LIKE having a small system with messy stat rules and odd class/race restrictions. Those make the game more fun for me. The more things get opened up, streamlined and made 'fun' for players the less real any of it feels.

And no, this isn't nostalgia. I played 3.5 first for 6-7 years, (I also played 2e a little but didn't like it) then 5e for another 4-5 and only played 2e seriously in the last 3 years.

I prefer a tendency to an outright ban; i.e. races and classes aren't restricted, but there are logical reasons why certain combinations are rare. For example, in most D&D settings relatively few Dwarves are wizards and almost none are Sorcerers, and usually this is explained by not giving them any racial advantage for being the former and an outright disadvantage for the latter. But if you want to be a Dwarf Sorcerer, well, PCs are meant to be exceptional, so go for it - the roleplay opportunities that pop up when other dwarves you meet view you as being daft will be rich indeed.

Jay R
2018-06-05, 06:18 PM
Change things enough that people are back in a mysterious world, like the first time they ever played. [And give them fair warning.]

From the introduction to my latest 2e campaign:


DO NOT assume that you know anything about any fantasy creatures. I will re-write many monsters and races, introduce some not in D&D, and eliminate some. The purpose is to make the world strange and mysterious. It will allow (require) PCs to learn, by trial and error, what works. Most of these changes I will not tell you in advance. Here are a couple, just to give you some idea what I mean.
1. Dragons are not color-coded for the benefit of the PCs.
2. Of elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, kobolds, goblins, and orcs, at least one does not exist, at least one is slightly different from the books, and at least one is wildly different.
3. Several monsters have different alignments from the books.
4. The name of an Undead will not tell you what will or won’t hurt it.
5. The first time you see a member of a humanoid race, I will describe it as a “vaguely man-shaped creature.” This could be a kobold, an elf, or an Umber Hulk until you learn what they are.

Jama7301
2018-06-05, 07:10 PM
I mean, I'd be running Unknown Armies right now if I could. But nobody wants to play a game of crazy mages stuck in a crime story. Then again, Uknown Armies is one of the few roleplaying games which opens the combat section with 'right, here's some ways to avoid risking your life, number one is surrender...'




DO NOT assume that you know anything about any fantasy creatures. I will re-write many monsters and races, introduce some not in D&D, and eliminate some. The purpose is to make the world strange and mysterious. It will allow (require) PCs to learn, by trial and error, what works. Most of these changes I will not tell you in advance. Here are a couple, just to give you some idea what I mean.
1. Dragons are not color-coded for the benefit of the PCs.
2. Of elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, kobolds, goblins, and orcs, at least one does not exist, at least one is slightly different from the books, and at least one is wildly different.
3. Several monsters have different alignments from the books.
4. The name of an Undead will not tell you what will or won’t hurt it.
5. The first time you see a member of a humanoid race, I will describe it as a “vaguely man-shaped creature.” This could be a kobold, an elf, or an Umber Hulk until you learn what they are.


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Anonymouswizard
2018-06-05, 07:39 PM
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I'm in the middle of writing what is essentially 'detrademarked UA fanfiction' at the moment, and plan to upload a review of 3e on my blog (as the grand restart I've been meaning to get around to) including why I think it is the best urban fantasy game ever written.

One of the big advantages to UA is that the world and magick is evolving. Partially because it's meant to be 'our world, but with an occult underground and real magick', which means real world advances can impact the setting (most Videomancers probably hate streaming services, because it's harder to fetishise their shows). I actually love that 3e's corebook has none of the Adept schools from 1e and 2e even though they're still around, because it very much gets across that the world has changed an new Adepts have different priorities.

Unknown Armies is also just a very well written game. Characters in it are supposed to want to avoid combat, or at least get it over with as quickly as possible. So combat is deadly, and even moreso once firearms get into the mix (you can survive a couple of chainsaw attacks if you're lucky, but guns essentially deal melee crit levels of damage all the time), the system opens the combat section with 'six ways to avoid a fight', and very few supernatural powers are combat based. It's also got one of the best sanity systems I've seen, which not only represents being too detached to be shocked by something, but if you do roll for shock you're going to take a notch, the only question is if you get more crazy or more detached.

Goaty14
2018-06-05, 08:52 PM
-3.5 D&D
-Make martial characters a lot more wuxia, possibly redefining skills

That's it. To paraphrase the quote of some guy on the paizo forums: "It'd be good if we could shift the discussion from 'The fighter sucks and needs magic to be playable' to 'The fighter is such a bad--- everybody has to use magic to keep up"

D&D 3.5 is just a low-magic game, but 75% of everything is a magic-user.

SimonMoon6
2018-06-05, 09:02 PM
Ability Scores

* Eliminate the "Wisdom" ability score and add "Perception". Any game rules that used Wisdom for "force of personality" (Will saves, cleric stuff) uses Charisma instead; anything that used Wisdom as "perception" (Perception skills, Monk AC bonuses) uses Perception instead.

* Eliminate the number values (3-18+) and instead just use the bonuses. Instead of a STR of 18, you have a STR of +4.

Magic

*Everyone is highly specialized. Clerics get two domains that they cast from and they can cast no other spells. Wizards get one "school" and a universal school that they can cast from (and nothing else). Schools would be redefined for balance and some new thematic ones (like "fire" or "cold") would be added. Sorcerers might still be allowed to cast from any schools, but they're also still limited in the number of spells they know. (This would also give PCs a reason to seek out a "sage" or "diviner" since most PCs wouldn't have access to divination schools unless that's ALL they want their character to be able to do.

Monsters

*Every aspect of monster design is going to assume that players might be playing monsters as PCs.

* Since polymorph is both problematic and fun, the polymorph spell will be reworked (but not eliminated) to give bonuses to stats rather than the monster's generic stats, so all monster stat blocks will elucidate as necessary what is gained from becoming a certain monster. For example, a troll might have STR 18, but a PC doesn't get STR 18 when polymorphed into a troll. Instead, the stat block will indicate that trolls have a racial +2 bonus to STR (and then most trolls put a "16" in STR, to give them a total of 18), so a PC who turns into a troll gets +2 STR. (Except that would be rephrased to take into account that we wouldn't have "18" STR anymore in this new system, as noted in the second bulleted point above.)

SimonMoon6
2018-06-05, 09:09 PM
3. Skills have elaborate mini-games for diplomacy, locks/traps, magic, etc. Many of these are not dice based

I would like something this, but I would keep it dice based. I want all (well, most) skills to be just as complicated as melee combat, with as many options.At least, charisma-based skills could use this sort of upgrade. It would be nice to have all sorts of charisma combat rolls to have to make, and various maneuvers to consider. Should I use "flattering lie" or "logical reasoning"? Should I try to sunder my opponent's ego or try to disarm his sharp tongue?

Tvtyrant
2018-06-05, 09:47 PM
I would like something this, but I would keep it dice based. I want all (well, most) skills to be just as complicated as melee combat, with as many options.At least, charisma-based skills could use this sort of upgrade. It would be nice to have all sorts of charisma combat rolls to have to make, and various maneuvers to consider. Should I use "flattering lie" or "logical reasoning"? Should I try to sunder my opponent's ego or try to disarm his sharp tongue?
I'm good with that as well, I just find dice problematic as they tend to either be too important to success (5E) or not important (3.5).

I really enjoyed some of the Arkham board games' approach.

JoeJ
2018-06-05, 10:35 PM
(In the order of easiest to hardest to accomplish without making something that no longer feels like D&D)

1) Bring back priest spheres. It doesn't make sense to me for a cleric of Zeus and a cleric of Aphrodite to have the same spell list.

2) Get rid of hit points and have damage impose conditions instead. Something very like M&M would work well for me.

3) Social interaction rules that are unambiguous, symmetrical (that is, they don't distinguish between PCs and NPCs), and that mesh seamlessly with combat so that you try and convince an enemy to stop trying to stab you. The Firefly RPG does this, but I don't off the top of my head know how it would work in any kind of d20 system.

Pronounceable
2018-06-06, 01:02 AM
Hey, is this a spinoff thread? Lemme throw out my most expensive pearl of wisdom at it.

Make up your mind. Is it supposed to be an abstracted combat game with some roleplayly bits attached? Is it supposed to be a deeply detailed simulation of a fantasy world? Is it supposed to be a collaborative storytelling game with sometimes rolling a few dice? What do you even want? Without finding a %100 definite answer to that, anything you do will end up just as wishywashy a mess as regular DnD.

Me? I say pick option 1 and let everything grow from it.

Ignimortis
2018-06-06, 01:59 AM
I've made a rough draft of a roadmap recently to follow after I finish running my current 3.5 campaign. The issue is basically this: casters have all the narrative powers, even the ones nobody needs, and martials don't have anything that's better than 4th or 5th level spells, much less 7-9th level.

So far, the presumed plan is:

Use Pathfinder as a base (prevents Polymorph/Shapechange abuse, has a somewhat better low-OP baseline for Barbarians/(Unchained) Monks.
Comb the spell-lists (not as tough as it looks, since most spells betray their purpose by name and can be counted on to be fine) and remove everything that shouldn't be a spell cast with spell-slots at all, making most things that would still be useful into rituals anyone can use. I'm one third of the way through the PHB, so that might take a while unless I devote more time to it, but just to demonstrate, I'll list PHB spells starting with A that I would remove from spell lists:
Arcane Sight, Greater (use Arcane Sight+Analyze Dweomer); Astral Projection (probably a very expensive ritual), Atonement (don't screw paladins over and give them a full redemption quest, and if they need Atonement regularly, either you or they are doing something wrong), Augury (made into a ritual, accessible to everyone), Awaken (also a ritual, but Druid-Ranger-Nature Cleric only).
Remove Wizards, Sorcerers, default Clerics, Fighters. Anything that doesn't specify at least some measure of a concept shouldn't exist in a class-concept-based game. Use Beguiler-type fixed list casters for arcane magic, refurbished Cloistered Clerics and Oracles for divine magic. Sorcerous bloodlines introduced as 1st-level arcane magic feats if you want that flavour.
Analyze the bonus types (enhancement, competence, circumstance, luck, etc.) and combine them into four distinct types (enhancement for magic, competence for raw skill, circumstance for opportune moments, untyped for those rare things that don't work with none of the former) which stack with each other but not themselves. Might not work out, but it's an idea I've been kicking around for a while.
Comb the feat list, at least the PHB+PHB2+PF SRD, and combine most of the feats related to each other into more powerful versions. As in, Skill Focus (Acrobatics) also includes Leap of the Heavens; Weapon Focus applies to weapon groups, includes Weapon Specialization and scales with level; Dodge is Dodge+Mobility, also (slightly) scaling with level. Metamagic feats, item crafting feats, etc. don't get buffs.
Introduce a remade version of the Automatic Bonus Progression with all that entails - no Big Six items. ABP needs to be reworked and give better bonuses.
Use Unchained skill unlocks without feats. 2+Int skills per level get buffed to 4+Int universally. Rogues might get 10+Int as bragging rights points. Check if any class needs improvements to their skill list.
PoW and ToB are on the table, meshed together, some disciplines combined due to thematics and mechanics (Primal Fury+Tiger Claw or Shadow Hand+Veiled Moon).


I think this should rebalance the curve a bit - casters are still good at magic and unorthodox tactics, martials are incredible at breaking face and can still have a fortune-teller at low levels, use skills to do superhuman things, and so on. The desired balance point is basically high T3-low T2.

Satinavian
2018-06-06, 02:13 AM
Fixing D&D... to be honest, i would not want to do it at all. I don't think D&D is a particularly good game and if i ever would create my own rule system, i would certainly not take it as a starting point at all. There might be some ideas that i might take as Inspiration though, like Gestalt parallel progression.

The main character structure and progression would be similar to Splittermond. Point buy with tiered abilities requiring total xp to buy. Skills as main main structure, with feat like specialities that can be bought at certain levels. Magic as schools as skills.

But now you ask ? What, classless point buy ? How does that work with Gestalt ? Well, the answer is that i would want my system to be able to do certain stuff that other systems are bad in. That is easy transition between individual scale conflict to large scale conflict. Leading armies, ruling countries, managing trade empires magically manipulating the climate of a whole country via ley lines and rituals, building a fortress.
That all is stuff people do in the fiction that RPGs simulate. But most RPGs suck at it. More than half don't even try, many others have some half-assed, broken mechanics that are so bad that people use handwaving instead and only the rest are kinda good at it but usually fail at everything else because they are wargames/economy sims with RPG elements attached.
I knew i wanted all those abilities in my game. But i really don't want people to be able to specialize in individual or large scale conlicts. I don't want someone to become a better fighter by dumping all administrative/leadership abilities and thus become overpowered when the PCs act alone and useless when the armies are moved. Spezialization is fine but having optimal builds that might not be able to do anything for whole sessions are bad.
That is why individual scale and large scale powers get a different point buy budget and can't be traded for each other. That way it is ensured that the group is roughly equally powerfull regardless of the exact conflict scale that is used at the moment. That also makes it easier to simulate different kind of premises. You could have seasoned adventurers that just now earned a keep and start dabbling in politics. You could have an emporer and his administrative staff who are still not better in single combat than an ordinary guard and might be challenged if they have to do some spywork themself instead of just sending someone else. Having different pools for individual scale abilities and large scale abilities allows finetuning power levels of your characters to the setting premise.

Resolution system would be several dice, at least three, to get a proper distribution. But i would probably not use a dice system per se as i am not happy with variance increasing with skill level.

MrSandman
2018-06-06, 07:06 AM
Change things enough that people are back in a mysterious world, like the first time they ever played. [And give them fair warning.]

From the introduction to my latest 2e campaign:
DO NOT assume that you know anything about any fantasy creatures. I will re-write many monsters and races, introduce some not in D&D, and eliminate some. The purpose is to make the world strange and mysterious. It will allow (require) PCs to learn, by trial and error, what works. Most of these changes I will not tell you in advance. Here are a couple, just to give you some idea what I mean.

I'm interested in hearing how that worked out. Personally, I would find it frustrating, as it would be akin to imagining that the PCs have lived in a cave their whole lives and know nothing of the world they inhabit. I'm okay with refluffing uncommon or exotic creatures and the players knowing nothing about it. But it seems that you've been refluffing a lot of common stuff that the characters should know something of, even if it's vague.

Rhedyn
2018-06-06, 07:15 AM
Well I wouldn't start at D&D. You familiar with Savage Rifts? Frameworks are basically classes, so to "fix" D&D, I would just create fantasy frameworks that act as classes, add magic item crafting mechanics (what an item does and how much it cost is already rules. It's players making it that I would add), after that it depends on what kind of D&D you want to play.

For 2e, I would use the Hellfrost crunch.

For 3.x, I would add the Shaintar book's crunch.

For 4e, I would use Savage Showdown (wargame rules) instead with free form roleplaying.

For 5e, I wouldn't add anything, but I would use the Power pointless variant spellcasting rules to add more strategic uses to magic.

Notable differences from D&D: No hit points, magic doesn't replace skills, exploding damage dice means any attack could kill you.
I play SW like I play/run D&D, it's just easier to run for me.

Jay R
2018-06-06, 08:11 AM
I'm interested in hearing how that worked out. Personally, I would find it frustrating, as it would be akin to imagining that the PCs have lived in a cave their whole lives and know nothing of the world they inhabit.

Close enough. It actually assumed that they had lived in an isolated village deep in a haunted forest for their whole 14 years of life. From the same document:

You will begin as first level characters with very little knowledge of the outside world. Your character is just barely adult – 14 years old. You all know each other well, having grown up in the same tiny village. Everyone in this village grows their own food, and it’s rare to see anybody from outside the village, or anything not made in the village. There is a smith, a village priest, but very few other specialists.

You are friends, even if you choose to have very different outlooks, because almost everybody else in the village, and absolutely everyone else anywhere near your age, are dull villagers, with little imagination.

By contrast, you and your friends sometimes stare down the road, or into the forest, wondering what the world is like.

The world is basically early medieval. You all speak a single language for which you (reasonably) have no name. If you learn another language, you’ll know more about what that means.

It’s a really small village. There are fewer than 100 people living there, which is smaller than it used to be. There are chickens, goats, sheep, a couple of oxen, but no horses or cows.

The village has a single road going out of town to the north and south, and you’ve never been on it. The only travel on it occurs when a few wagons go off to take food to market – and even that hasn’t happened in the last few seasons. Very rarely, a traveler may come through, and spend the night with the priest. You have all greedily listened to any stories these travelers tell. Your parents say this isn’t good for you – what’s here in the village is good enough for you, and all travelers are always liars, anyway.

A stream runs through the village. (This is primarily so you can learn fishing if you desire.) There are also a few wells.

The village is surrounded by a haunted forest nearby. You have occasionally gone a few hundred feet into it on a dare, but no further, and never at night. I will modify this (slightly) for any character who wishes to start as a Druid or Ranger. Nobody gets to know the modification unless they choose one of those classes.

Three times in your lifetime the village has been raided at night from the forest. You were children, and were kept safe in a cellar. Some villagers have died, but by the time you were let out, whatever the attackers were had fled or been buried.

There is very little overlap between the D&D adventurer class “Cleric” and the average priest. Most priests will have about as much magical ability as seen in medieval stories, i.e. no more than anyone else. (If you want to play a cleric, let me know. There’s a way we will handle it, but no player except one with a cleric PC will know about it.)

Similarly, not all thieves are in the Thief class, not all bards are in the Bard class, etc. Most fighters are “0th level”. There might be a fair number of 1st level Fighters; anybody else with levels will be uncommon. If you meet a bard on your travels, he will probably be a singer/harpist with no adventurer skills or class.

There is an old witch at the edge of the village. Your parents disapprove of her, call her a fraud, and are afraid of her. Everybody knows that the crop blight three years ago was because she was mad at the village.

The old folks in the village sometimes talk about how much better it was long ago. There was real travel, and real trade. Nobody knows what happened since.

You have heard many mutually conflicting tales of all kinds of marvelous heroes. You may assume that you have heard of any story of any hero you like – Gilgamesh, Oddysseus, Sigurd, Taliesin, Charlemagne, Lancelot, Robin Hood, Aragorn, Prester John, Baba Yaga, Prince Ōkuninushi, Br’er Rabbit, anyone. The old stories seem to imply that occasionally there have been several Ages of Heroes. Your parents don’t think these tales are good for you. Takes your mind off farming.



I'm okay with refluffing uncommon or exotic creatures and the players knowing nothing about it. But it seems that you've been refluffing a lot of common stuff that the characters should know something of, even if it's vague.

The three times goblins came to their villages, the PCs never saw them. They haven't seen any other non-humans before their adventures.

The first time the party met goblins (which are bestial and only use tactics when controlled by a forceful leader), they discovered that the goblins just charged them, and then tried to flee as soon as one of them was injured. Then the PCs met some with a human leader, and he gave all the commands.

So when they discovered a small town under siege by a force of fifty or more goblins, under three ogres, the party slew the three ogres, and very quickly the goblins panicked and fled. This made the PCs, at third level, the great heroes and saviors of the village, and there are now songs about them defeating an entire army.

[They were a little flummoxed when attacked by wolf-riding goblins, who used an unexpected tactic. They tried to separate one PC away from the rest and run off with him to kill and eat later. It was awhile afterwards before one of the players recognized it as the tactic of a wolf pack, and realized that the alpha wolf was in charge, not the goblin riding him.]

None of this kind of learning about the creatures in the world is possible if the players have read every monster's stat block.

It seemed popular enough. Several of the players want me to get back to it.

Eldan
2018-06-06, 08:22 AM
I've actually decided to lop off the 'core rules' at level 10/Conan, and give gods their own dedicated book (because at that point so many assumptions change that it really is a new game, and that deserves discussion). So essentially an Epic Level Handbook treatment for, to use the 4e tiers, late paragon/epic.

I'm also justifying this with the lower levels really just being more popular (as well as what I prefer). Yes, this is essentially leading to a 'two book core' case where I release the pdfs 'Book 1: Mortal' and 'Book 2: Demigod', if I ever get decent art for this and bother to get it on DriveThruRPG (probably for PWYW, maybe free) instead of just putting it on my blog (which I really need to restart). Yes, I've argued against exactly that.


Eh. While I like the occasional sword and sorcery-ish low level game, I find that they get boring quite fast, at least to me. I like having dozens of spells at my disposal to solve problems, to compete on a continental scale and to just thrown in all the really out there weirdness of mid-level D&D.




I'm actually combining skills and giving everybody a bunch of skill points. I don't want 'skill monkey' to be a thing, everybody should have a bunch of skills instead of one or two. Agreeing on Feats thought.

See, I've played a lot of other RPGs with skill lists much longer than D&D and I've come to really like long skill lists. In a lot of games I've played, skills were a separate sheet by themselves. I mean, I agree with your assessment on skill monkeys, everyone should have tons of skills (see my 10+ skill points for everyone comment). But I also like long lists with niche skills on them.

King of Nowhere
2018-06-06, 09:05 AM
My recipe is fairly simple in concept, with a single golden rule.


Everything must have a defence.

At least, a reasonable defence for a character of similar level.

Every time a build or spell or feat breaks this, I apply a ban or a nerf. There is quite a lot of stuff to ban, indeed most of the high-op play falls into that category. At the same time, it is also elastic enough that different groups have different conceptions of what has no defences.

It is also a severe nerf for high-op casters, as the best spells are the ones against which there is no defence, and they generally don't work. Either they allow a saving throw, or a relatively cheap-for-your-level magic item will get you out of it (looking at you, forcecage), or a character of your level is unlikely to be killed/incapacitated by it, or it doesn't work. And it leveld the field pretty well.



None of this kind of learning about the creatures in the world is possible if the players have read every monster's stat block.



Why not? a monster's statblock tells nothing of the tactics it will use. Sure, the manual contains some instructions, but it's more as an help for an unexperienced DM who doesn't know how to handle stuff. And everything about society is completely refluffable. In my world goblins have a nation, and a fairly powerful one too. There's half a dozen to a dozen goblins past level 15, and they are as well equipped as any adventurer of the same level. they are currently allied with the players, as the outcome of a subplot that started when at second level a player decided to not kill a goblin straggler but to recruit him as a cohort.

Jay R
2018-06-06, 09:05 AM
I introduced one change in original D&D. It didn't change anything about play, except to get rid of one inconsistency.

I changed "Intelligence" to "in-world knowledge and magic ability", and "wisdom" to "divine ability".

There's no point saying a character has a wisdom of 16 and an intelligence of 18 if the player keeps having him make foolish decisions. And there's no point saying another character has as Intelligence of 4 if she's the one who solves all the puzzles and mysteries.

Your character is no wiser than you are, for the same reason that your knight in chess doesn't make more tactical moves than you make.

The Jack
2018-06-06, 10:48 AM
I know exactly what I'd do, and I'd try to keep DnD as close to the source/Broad and applicable to everyone's game rather than just my own (though I've still got a few things that might be my own biases)

Based off of 5e, I'll try to keep it mostly backwards compatible.
I would, however, consider bringing the older skill system back. 5e doesn't give enough skills. But ignoring that.

Str- some additions
Dex-some additions
Con-fine
Int- Each modifier gives additional skills, Negative modifiers might be a thing if each class gets an extra skill anyway.
Wis-fine
Cha-Fine.

Pointbuy- Increase the high and low cap for more diverse characters.

Weapons.
Some Range weapons will have strength requirements, and there will be incremental versions of such (Hunting bow, short bow, Long bow, war bow, great bow or something as such) Slings get more love.
For melee weapons, pointless distinctions will disappear (Halberd/Glaive and Scimitar/shortsword) and some weapons will be capable of switching damage types. Polearms need revision, and any it will be noted that any martial weapon without light/finess properties can have versatile for a few extra coins. In fact I'd put up a formula for creating weapons. Oh and the greatclub does a d10.

I believe very early firearms should be in the PHB, though it's very obvious that the weapons in the DMG have very silly stats and shouldn't be used. The advantage of modern small arms isn't how damaging they are, but how easy they are to use. (also, Guns are loud,smokey and terrifying)

Armour (obviously the use of international english is important here!)
Bucklers for +1
Tower shields as a +2 in combat but can count as superior cover if focused on such.

When it comes to armour it's mostly terminology. I want to scrap leather armour/studded leather armour. It's a garbage fantasy trope. It's not real and it's tacky. I'd like to rename them as "superior light armour" and "reinforced light armour" and maybe hide can be Thick Padding (hide/fur/Textile)
Ring mail is in a similar boat (a lesser offender, since nobody gets it) perhaps "crude armour"
Scale could be Scale/Laminar but then it could get confused with splint

Light armour should be proficient for everyone.
It should be assumed that people with heavy armour should be able to strip down to medium and then light armour. Nothing should stack, only the highest protection should count, though enchantments from an under-layer should often stay relevant.

CLASSES
Scrap the Monk and make him a Fighter archtype, perhaps the other martials too.
Give all fighter Archtypes superiority dice, but less and smaller than the battlemaster.
Give the martial classes proficiency with unarmed strikes.
Rename the barbarian to Beserker and vary the background examples a bit; The class Works perfectly for certain warrior monks or intellectual steroid abusers.
I've never liked the class, but I'm sure there's ways to make the ranger less lame.
Competitively rebalance all the subclasses against eachother. I should be reading optimiser guides that give everything blue ratings.
Magic subclasses that use INT should adhere closer to wizard principles.
The bladelock should stand on it's own

FEATS
There's some obviously useless ones. I shouldn't need to cover them. Martial adept needs to give more dice and more maneuvers, Magic adept should be repeatable. Lucky is clearly broken.

Backgrounds.
I feel like there should be a box that says "if you want to do this quickly, pick two skills, two language/item skills, one advantage, and then justify it" You can then add the starting gear from X economic band.

MAGIC
Obviously there's some spells that could be rebalanced. But let's talk about what isn't there.
-While I don't think any spell (wall of force) should be permanent, I do think it should be more possible to make long term magical creatures and selected spells should have permanency options-
Create Larger undead needs to be a thing
Players should be able to achieve anything NPCs can given the right class.
-Wards that negate of AOEs (like fireball) are absolutely necessary for castle warfare. Counterspell can only take you so far.

2D8HP
2018-06-06, 10:57 AM
Many suggestions for "fixing" D&D that I've seen in this and many other threads may fit a pattern:

Backgrounds not "Classes"?

Traveller in 1977 and RuneQuest in 1978

More skills?
Traveller in 1977 and RuneQuest in 1978

Based on individual abilities not "Levels"?
Traveller in 1977 and RuneQuest in 1978

More realistic "gritty" combat?
RuneQuest in 1978

Non "Vancian" magic?
RuneQuest in 1978

Can someone help me spot the pattern?

Calthropstu
2018-06-06, 11:11 AM
Start with a 3.5 chasis. 3.5 is EASILY the best d&d edition. Switch to most pathfinder updates.

Build a point buy system for racial traits being able to pick up all sorts of generic and racial specific items.

Make a customizable option point buy class system on level up.

Utilize the 2e psionic rules for spells instead of spell levels making a system of prereqs. Make the whole overall system use 3e psionic powerpoints. All of this tying back to the point buy class system.

2D8HP
2018-06-06, 11:36 AM
Start with a 3.5 chasis. 3.5 is EASILY the best d&d edition. Switch to most pathfinder updates.

Build a point buy system for racial traits being able to pick up all sorts of generic and racial specific items.

Make a customizable option point buy class system on level up.

Utilize the 2e psionic rules for spells instead of spell levels making a system of prereqs. Make the whole overall system use 3e psionic powerpoints. All of this tying back to the point buy class system.


I haven't played either, but that sounds like the 3.5 variant Mutants & Masterminds

Or if you want to go back to 1985 Fantasy Hero which was based on the earlier Champions.

Seerow
2018-06-06, 12:03 PM
1) Have a single universal resource that everyone gains as they level. We will call it essence. This resource is used for other subsystems to tie into, and used as a balancing tool. The expectation is that basically anything supernatural a character does takes up essence. So you have spellcasting ability? Invest essence into it to be able to cast those spells. You have a Magic Sword? Invest essence in it to unlock its potential. You have some sort of ancient heritage/special race? Invest essence to unlock the cool stuff from that. Bigger/more powerful features (Like spellcasting) either take more essence (ie invest all of your essence into spellcasting to keep a full progression), or have more places to invest essence (say it costs essence for each spell slot or spell known), to keep things relatively balanced.

2) Each 'power source', to borrow 4e terminology, uses a different subsystem. So a Wizard's Magic works fundamentally differently from a Cleric's Magic, which are both fairly different from how Psionics functions. Altogether I would expect about 5 different subsystems with all classes falling under one of the 5.

3) Find some use for odd stats. One idea I toyed with for a time was providing a long list of minor perks (think mini-feats or skill tricks) that unlock based off odd stats. Actually seems like a good place to put the more boring number fixing stats. 12 dex gets you a +1 dex mod, 13 dex gets you a +1 dex mod and you can pick up weapon finesse with your new perk. Something along those lines.

4) Bring back healing surges from 4e, but make them more limited. Drop them to 3/day, with feats/perks that can increase that. Make them take longer to recover. I would make the change from 4e such that healing potions don't require a surge, but also find some way to limit the number of healing potions a party can carry. Say have a max number of potions you can carry without them causing magical interference, with the ability to spend essence to increase that cap if desired.

5) Update the skill system to balance the utility between different attributes. I would aim for 3-4 active skills linked with each attribute. Constitution may end up being cut as an attribute, as a purely defensive attribute that everybody wants high, but not as a primary, does not contribute much to the game overall. Instead allow for more traits/feats that can push health/healing up and down to provide the desired diversity in character durability.

6) Differentiate Active Skills and Background skills. Things like Knowledge and Craft should not be competing with Tumble and Athletics. Let Intelligence give extra background skills, but have active skills set based on what you expect the character to do.

7) If I really wanted to go way out there, I would implement some sort of vitality/wounds system. I invested a lot of time and effort coming up with one that seemed reasonable and balance, but ultimately discarded it because it was a pain to run. This one will probably have to wait until the inevitable D&D 7.0, Rise of the Machine DMs.

Anonymouswizard
2018-06-06, 12:25 PM
Eh. While I like the occasional sword and sorcery-ish low level game, I find that they get boring quite fast, at least to me. I like having dozens of spells at my disposal to solve problems, to compete on a continental scale and to just thrown in all the really out there weirdness of mid-level D&D.

On the other hand I find that a lot of people get overwhelmed by Wizard play and resort to fireballs because they're simple.

Not that a magician in my game can't have dozens of spells. Sure, they begin with five and as standard gain two a level, but that's just the ones they've committed to memory and can cast quickly. A magician (or elf) can cast any spell of their tradition if they have it written down, it just takes five times as long. You don't want to be relying on written spells, because they can be taken away easily, but they're there as an option.

But yes, different styles are good. I have, however, found that D&D really does give too many world in a lot of instances.


See, I've played a lot of other RPGs with skill lists much longer than D&D and I've come to really like long skill lists. In a lot of games I've played, skills were a separate sheet by themselves. I mean, I agree with your assessment on skill monkeys, everyone should have tons of skills (see my 10+ skill points for everyone comment). But I also like long lists with niche skills on them.

I found it worked well in GURPS, but there if I don't have skill X I might be able to substitute a skill I have at a lower rating. It doesn't work in systems where I need Interpretive Dance, but all I have is Acting, Tap Dancing, and Unicycle, and can't substitute any of them.

Plus 10+ skill points doesn't mean anything by itself. The standard D&D 3.5 skill list is what, 30ish skills, not including individual Crafts or Professions, maybe 40, and characters tend to get around 4-6 skill points a level (as an average across most classes). Therefore if you have 300 skills but the average character gets 12 skill points a level characters will be less skilled in average.


I introduced one change in original D&D. It didn't change anything about play, except to get rid of one inconsistency.

I changed "Intelligence" to "in-world knowledge and magic ability", and "wisdom" to "divine ability".

There's no point saying a character has a wisdom of 16 and an intelligence of 18 if the player keeps having him make foolish decisions. And there's no point saying another character has as Intelligence of 4 if she's the one who solves all the puzzles and mysteries.

Your character is no wiser than you are, for the same reason that your knight in chess doesn't make more tactical moves than you make.

Once of the interesting ideas I've seen is Intelligence allowing you to have packed anything from the mundane equipment list that weighs less than Xlbs and costs less than Ygp. It works out fairly well in the right groups.

martixy
2018-06-06, 04:13 PM
I have been collecting "fixes" and changes for years now.

All of these have gone towards one overriding purpose - it's a two-parter:

Aesthetic:
I want my game to feel like epic(in the etymological sense of the word). I want that aesthetic found in ancient greek myths, where the world is largely unknown, mystical powers roam everywhere, heroes go on grand quests and the gods meddle with mortalkind in all manner of ways.
Design:
I have this belief that what makes a game fun is the ability to make multiple meaningful decisions in any situation. This means characters whose only option is "go there and hit it with a stick" or variations thereof are the worst possible characters ever.


To that end, many of the changes I've made include things that increase the lower tiers options.

I reduce feat taxes drastically, I use weapon groups, I use PF's skill system, I grant extra skill points, actions points are reserved for martials(gained through martial combat and cannot augment casting), I use(and expand) called shots, BAB offers a ton of side benefits apart from attack bonus(proficiencies, scaling AC, etc). And a ton of other bits spanning all parts of the game.

All of this aimed at the goal of making martials effective at their niche as a baseline, rather than after spending every character resource available to them to get there. Instead they can now be spent on developing a unique personal combat style, rather than merely staying competitive.

You'll note that nowhere in here do I ever mention nerfing casters or balance. Although balance is important, it is secondary. And nerfing casters is a poor proposition for balance, no one likes having their toys taken away. Though they didn't escape the nerf hammer - I made polymorph require knowledge and a piece of the creature and defensive casting is significantly harder(requiring better positioning).

Cluedrew
2018-06-06, 05:20 PM
Then again, Uknown Armies is one of the few roleplaying games which opens the combat section with 'right, here's some ways to avoid risking your life, number one is surrender...'It is odd, but this makes me want to play it more than almost anything else I have had about it. The particular setting of the game never grabbed me (a little bit too scattered I think) but the mindset this shows sounds hopeful.

Anonymouswizard
2018-06-06, 05:40 PM
It is odd, but this makes me want to play it more than almost anything else I have had about it. The particular setting of the game never grabbed me (a little bit too scattered I think) but the mindset this shows sounds hopeful.

Honestly, if you don't like the setting don't get it, but we could do with more games that treat combat as dangerous and often not worth it.

My university group's first campaign was Unknown Armies, and it affected the way we played everything else. We went in ready to use our 30-40% combat skills and a bunch of modifiers to deal with what we were warned was a combat heavy (but firearms light) game, and after the second session started avoiding combat. This carried over to our next game, where only the new guy made a combat character and everybody else took ALL THE SOCIAL SKILLS. Never again did we enter a fight without a 'let's be reasonable about this', eventually causing the GM in one campaign to mention that yes, he had combat encounters, but because we played this way we'd managed to blunder past every single one. Playing in a way where you literally expect every combat to be a potential TPK is very fun, it really changes the way your characters act and a high intimidate skill can make drawing a weapon fight-ending. It ended up with our superheroes trying to ask the hulk expy to be reasonable about this, please stop smashing up the street...

To be explicit, these are the six ways Unknown Armies recommends to avoid combat:
-Surrender
-Disarm
-Deescalate/re-channel
-Pass the buck
-Call the cops
-Run away and don't look back until you're sure they've stopped pursuing you

Cluedrew
2018-06-06, 07:00 PM
Rather, because the setting is kind of scattered it hasn't really come together to hook me in. Although yeah most of it so far has been in the range from "I could work with that" to mildly interesting. But sometimes it just takes a little thing. FATE hit my number 1 slot of new systems to try with:

Rivers of Gold: No Situation can prevent access to your Resources skill. If stripped of positions and thrown into jail you can bribe the guards. Stranded on a desert island you will be living in luxury within a week.
-Paraphrased from FATE System Toolkit.

You just turned bad RAW into a superpower. That I kind of want to use. That is awesome.

Eldan
2018-06-07, 02:18 AM
Many suggestions for "fixing" D&D that I've seen in this and many other threads may fit a pattern:

Backgrounds not "Classes"?

Traveller in 1977 and RuneQuest in 1978

More skills?
Traveller in 1977 and RuneQuest in 1978

Based on individual abilities not "Levels"?
Traveller in 1977 and RuneQuest in 1978

More realistic "gritty" combat?
RuneQuest in 1978

Non "Vancian" magic?
RuneQuest in 1978

Can someone help me spot the pattern?

Yeah, but i don't like RuneQuest! :smalltongue:

Look, if I knew what I liked, I'd be playing that instead. But I keep coming back to 3.5. :smallamused:

Eldan
2018-06-07, 02:21 AM
I found it worked well in GURPS, but there if I don't have skill X I might be able to substitute a skill I have at a lower rating. It doesn't work in systems where I need Interpretive Dance, but all I have is Acting, Tap Dancing, and Unicycle, and can't substitute any of them.

Plus 10+ skill points doesn't mean anything by itself. The standard D&D 3.5 skill list is what, 30ish skills, not including individual Crafts or Professions, maybe 40, and characters tend to get around 4-6 skill points a level (as an average across most classes). Therefore if you have 300 skills but the average character gets 12 skill points a level characters will be less skilled in average.

True, I suppose. I just mean, I'd like a skill list that is perhaps 50% longer than what D&D is now, with an option to fill in more skills in some categories like knowledge and profession, and have everyone with perhaps a few more skills than a rogue or bard has now. No one should ever have only 2 skill poitns per level.

As for the other thing, I usually DM and at my tables "I don't have that skill, can I roll this skill instead?" is a standard exchange, so I already do that.

Eldan
2018-06-07, 02:27 AM
Actually, the stunt that really made me want to play FATE at one time was called something like Man of a Thousand Faces and the text was something along the lines of
Once per session, when you are not in a scene, you can declare that any non-player character in that scene is secretly you, IN DISGUISE!.

JoeJ
2018-06-07, 02:43 AM
Actually, the stunt that really made me want to play FATE at one time was called something like Man of a Thousand Faces and the text was something along the lines of
Once per session, when you are not in a scene, you can declare that any non-player character in that scene is secretly you, IN DISGUISE!.

That is awesome! You've sold me on Fate. I'm going to go over to DTRPG and get it now.

Eldan
2018-06-07, 03:30 AM
Note that there's dozens and dozens of different versions of Fate, usually specific for a certain kind of game style or setting. This may be just in one kind of pulp hack.

RazorChain
2018-06-07, 05:37 AM
First I would implement a proper skill system which has been sorely lacking from most DnD editions. Then I would revamp the combat system, get rid of the bloated hitpoints, put in attack and defensive rolls and make armor mitigate damage instead of making you harder to hit because it makes no sense ("No siree didn't get hurt, the huge boulder from the trebuchet just glanced off my leather armor")

Magic system. Make a proper system and laws of magic instead of just having them as slottable superpowers. Throw the vancian sytem into the trashcan and use mana or spell points. Just go back to using 3 kinds of Saving throw baseds on Will/Fortitude/Reflexes



And by then I could probably just use my precious time to play something else and just call it D&D or just make a new system from scratch.

2D8HP
2018-06-07, 06:21 AM
First I would implement....


Yet again, most of those changes sound to me like RuneQuest.

MrSandman
2018-06-07, 07:20 AM
. . .and make armor mitigate damage instead of making you harder to hit because it makes no sense ("No siree didn't get hurt, the huge boulder from the trebuchet just glanced off my leather armor")
It actually does make sense. A leather armour may not be able to stop a trebuchet's boulder, but armours were created to keep their wearer from being hurt. For instance, late 13th century mail was impervious to most weapons of that century, that's why two-handed swords became a thing (both because now warriors did not need a shield, and because two-handed swords were more capable of piercing through mail than one-handed swords). Same goes with plates, warriors did not aim for an armour's plates, they aimed for its openings. It's not that there was no way to break through armour (in fact, armours kept evolving because people kept finding ways to pierce through them), but that it is extremely hard. So if you hit an armour's strong point (say, the middle of a plate), the vast majority of the time your attack will just be deflected without any significant harm to your opponent.

wumpus
2018-06-07, 10:21 AM
depending on pathfinder 2e

I'm not sufficiently familiar with 5e to know what works or not. But some thought:

Feats that give:
You can do [cool thing that almost never comes up enough to burn a feat on].
without feat
you can't do [cool thing]

Need to be completely eliminated. You might make them "with this feat you have advantage while doing [cool thing], otherwise you have disadvantage" (although that might be too far a swing, but at least you might take the silly feat.

[Note that this doesn't extend to day-to-day actions. Two weapon fighting makes a great feat chain, but "swinging from the chandelier" should be a common fluff move.]

All of the "Timmy options" need to go. An open ended build system should be hard to get everything to work perfectly together. Including stupid options is largely a way to punish noobs, something no community needs to do. Obviously there has to be a "worst feat", but the penalty for taking it should be a low as possible (pile on advantages until something else becomes the "worst feat").

Of course, this includes "non-caster classes" for anything 3e based. Not sure anyone really tries to fix this in 3e anymore.

For a "fix Pathfinder" specific fix (that isn't much of a "fix D&D" thing): meld the game to setting and the setting to the game. It should be hard to tell where the crunch ends and the fluff begins. Advancing in classes should have in-game (non-metagaming) meaning: as clerics advance, their position in the church should advance (or perhaps this can be a separate ladder. Along with all the celestial politicking (does your mid-level cleric work with a specific angel/deva/solar? what's the angel's position with the deity and how is the player changing this)?

Is there a "fighter's guild"? What does advancing a class in fighter mean?

There was a recent release of Pendragon that did this amazingly well. Unfortunately, Pendragon (1.0) is basically a 1 class system (everyone is a knight) so extending it is a ton of work.

2D8HP
2018-06-07, 10:51 AM
I'm not sufficiently familiar with 5e to know what works or not....


I've played (but hardly DM'd for reasons given upthread) some 5e WD&D, and what I think would make it more fun for me is pretty much a DM issue, and good options towards what I would like are already in the DMG, but some general things to make it better for me than default 5e are:

1) Slow down how fast PC's "level-up"

2) Make healing slower and less easy.

3) Make HP less and Damage more.

4) Use the Lamentations of the Flame Princess or the Stormbringer Alignment system.

5) More clarity about what skills apply to what tasks: Acrobatics or Athletics? Insight, Investigation, or Perception? Nature or Survival?


There was a recent release of Pendragon that did this amazingly well. Unfortunately, Pendragon (1.0) is basically a 1 class system (everyone is a knight) so extending it is a ton of work.


Which recent one was that?

I got 5, but I understand that there's now a 5.1 and 5.2 (which I can't figure out how to get my FLGS to order for me, it seems I have to buy on-line myself, which I don't like doing).

4th edition Pendragon, and some of it supplement had rules for playing Magic-Users and Saxon non-Knights, but 5th went back to a Cymric Knights focus.

Great game, I wish it was more popular.

Anonymouswizard
2018-06-07, 11:37 AM
It actually does make sense.

Both ways actually make sense, but you need the right system.

In D&D, where we don't care about where you hit, armour as defence class makes sense, and is what I'm using. Because lots of armour can absorb or deflect blows to such a degree that you don't take meaningful damage we're just simplifying by sorting into 'no meaningful damage' and 'got through/avoided armour'.

In something like Dark Heresy, where one roll tells us if we hit and what location armour as DR makes a lot more sense.

RazorChain
2018-06-07, 12:06 PM
It actually does make sense. A leather armour may not be able to stop a trebuchet's boulder, but armours were created to keep their wearer from being hurt. For instance, late 13th century mail was impervious to most weapons of that century, that's why two-handed swords became a thing (both because now warriors did not need a shield, and because two-handed swords were more capable of piercing through mail than one-handed swords). Same goes with plates, warriors did not aim for an armour's plates, they aimed for its openings. It's not that there was no way to break through armour (in fact, armours kept evolving because people kept finding ways to pierce through them), but that it is extremely hard. So if you hit an armour's strong point (say, the middle of a plate), the vast majority of the time your attack will just be deflected without any significant harm to your opponent.

It makes sense when you are fighting man to man in a medieval wargame like Chainmail was at first or a game that focuses on naval combat where Armor Class is taken from. When you get to the extremes it falls apart. When you are facing a 20' frost giant swinging a two handed maul your plate armour isn't going to do much. Just like a bus running you over at 50 mph, then your plate armour doesn't help you, just like when the Tarrasque stomps on you.

It's just my preference and lot of other people because majority of systems other than D&D are structured in such a manner that armor doesn't make you harder to hit but to hurt and is represented either in Damage Resistance, toughness rolls or armour rolls to oppose damage. To protect the character D&D instead doles out HP in abundance.

I prefer Attack roll vs Defense roll

if hit

Damage roll vs Soak roll or Damage roll with Damage Reduction subtracted from Damage.

This is a better way to avoid HP bloat.

MrSandman
2018-06-07, 12:41 PM
Both ways actually make sense, but you need the right system.

In D&D, where we don't care about where you hit, armour as defence class makes sense, and is what I'm using. Because lots of armour can absorb or deflect blows to such a degree that you don't take meaningful damage we're just simplifying by sorting into 'no meaningful damage' and 'got through/avoided armour'.

In something like Dark Heresy, where one roll tells us if we hit and what location armour as DR makes a lot more sense.

Agreed


It makes sense when you are fighting man to man in a medieval wargame like Chainmail was at first or a game that focuses on naval combat where Armor Class is taken from. When you get to the extremes it falls apart. When you are facing a 20' frost giant swinging a two handed maul your plate armour isn't going to do much. Just like a bus running you over at 50 mph, then your plate armour doesn't help you, just like when the Tarrasque stomps on you.

Well, if you get hit by a giant's hammer, you're toast. Period. There's really nothing short of magic that would prevent or mitigate enough such blow and look medieval-ish. I really can't see how some sort of damage reduction adds realism here.



It's just my preference and lot of other people because majority of systems other than D&D are structured in such a manner that armor doesn't make you harder to hit but to hurt and is represented either in Damage Resistance, toughness rolls or armour rolls to oppose damage. To protect the character D&D instead doles out HP in abundance.

My personal preference is attack roll vs. attack roll, as it shows that both combatants are engaged in the fight and it is not a mere succession of I try to hit you then you try to hit me but a complicated art in which we both are trying to evade each other's attacks as well as hit at the same time.

Anonymouswizard
2018-06-07, 12:55 PM
Agreed

I'm going to admit right now that I personally prefer hit locations and armour as DR. But that complicates things, and I find everything runs smoother with little practical difference under the D&D model.


Well, if you get hit by a giant's hammer, you're toast. Period. There's really nothing short of magic that would prevent or mitigate enough such blow and look medieval-ish. I really can't see how some sort of damage reduction adds realism here.

The idea, I think, is that the DR would subtract from a human's damage and leave only one or two points to get through, but against the giant's damage your 14DR isn't looking so good, a giant does 234d12 damage per swing.

This is obviously not taking into account that in pre-5e D&D that giant might have a Strength modifier in the low teens or more, suddenly your +8AC full plate isn't stopping it's swing as much as you thought it was...


My personal preference is attack roll vs. attack roll, as it shows that both combatants are engaged in the fight and it is not a mere succession of I try to hit you then you try to hit me but a complicated art in which we both are trying to evade each other's attacks as well as hit at the same time.

While I like it in theory I've personally never got it to run smooth. But then again my idea of a perfect roleplaying session is one where weapons are never drawn.

Jay R
2018-06-07, 01:26 PM
D&D is not fixed by any rules change. Fortunately, it is not particularly hurt by any rules change, either.

No rule will fix the problems caused by unreasonable players trying to get unreasonable results out of the rules. Any rules set large enough to encompass the game is also complicated enough to be stretched, misapplied, and used to justify nonsense. And if you successfully prevent one such attempt, you haven't fixed the game; you have merely moved on to the next rule-twisted nonsense.

No rule will fix the problems caused by untrustworthy DMs trying to create an unfair situation for their own amusement. Too much is hidden from the players for you to ever stop somebody who wants to put you in an unfair situation.

D&D is only fixed by playing with trustworthy, reasonable players, in a game run by a competent, trustworthy, and reasonable DM.

JoeJ
2018-06-07, 01:37 PM
Note that there's dozens and dozens of different versions of Fate, usually specific for a certain kind of game style or setting. This may be just in one kind of pulp hack.

Okay, but that one pulp hack still requires that I have the core rules, right?

Anonymouswizard
2018-06-07, 02:01 PM
D&D is not fixed by any rules change. Fortunately, it is not particularly hurt by any rules change, either.

No rule will fix the problems caused by unreasonable players trying to get unreasonable results out of the rules. Any rules set large enough to encompass the game is also complicated enough to be stretched, misapplied, and used to justify nonsense. And if you successfully prevent one such attempt, you haven't fixed the game; you have merely moved on to the next rule-twisted nonsense.

No rule will fix the problems caused by untrustworthy DMs trying to create an unfair situation for their own amusement. Too much is hidden from the players for you to ever stop somebody who wants to put you in an unfair situation.

D&D is only fixed by playing with trustworthy, reasonable players, in a game run by a competent, trustworthy, and reasonable DM.

True, but that's not what this thread is about.

I'm fairly certain people can work out why this thread was posted, but the point was a psuedo-celebration of the fact that we don't all want the same things from the same game. The fact that you can't actually 'fix' a social activity isn't the point, the fact that when given the same starting rules we veer off in many different directions is.


Okay, but that one pulp hack still requires that I have the core rules, right?

Probably not, I've got a sneaking suspicion it might be Spirit of the Century, which is a full edition before CORE. Essentially Fate goes as follows:
-FATE1e (noncommercial)
-FATE2e (noncommercial)
-FATE3e, no core rulebook
--Spirit of the Century, pulp action
--Dresden Files, epic urban fantasy, is more a 3.5 or a precursor to 4e.
-Fate 4e (note different capitalisation, it changed)
--Fate CORE, essentially the corebook
--Fate Acclerated, essentially a much lighter version of CORE, focused on being able to jump into the game with no messy 'game creation'
--Atomic Robo
--War of Ashes: Fate of Ablahdablah (what, I just can't be bothered to look up the setting name)
--Transhumanity's Fate, an Eclipse Phase hack
--Dresden Files Accelerated
--A bunch of 50 page minisettings

Note that Spirit of the Century, the Dresden Files games, and Atomic Robo include all the rules required for play. Although as you're supposed to make up your own stunts (and that is a good example of what I might allow) instead of picking from a list unless you desperately want a certain setting Accelerated should be your first purchase, followed by CORE. Ideally in PWYW pdf format, so you can go back and spend money on them if you like them after grabbing them for free (I nab all the pdfs for free and then buy physical copies of the ones I like).

daemonaetea
2018-06-07, 02:01 PM
Quite honestly, my fix would just be to add a lot more options to 5E and call it a day.

I don't think 5E is perfect, but I think it largely accomplishes everything I want D&D to do. My only real complaints are that I want more material - I truly miss the variety that late 3.5/PF brought to the table, but not enough to go back to the headache they could represent - and that I think the monsters in 5E could stand to be a little more interesting.

Just to discuss some of my issues with 5E, in particular I feel the skill system is too flat. The difference in skill level from 1st to 20th feels much more minor than the same characters growth in killing abilities, which is odd. But I don't think you can really do too much about that without introducing complications to a system that thrives on its simplicities. Similarly, I miss the weapon variety of 3.5, but the system would be poorer for the complications more variety would introduce. The only real problem I've found with 5E that I feel should actually be fixed are that higher CR monsters are typically pushovers for high leveled players. While the lack of variety in the rest of the system is more about preference, I truly feel 5E needs more high powered enemies for players to face. Tome of Foes seems like it's at least taking steps in that direction.

Other than that, 5E feels like a logical end goal of design. It's not perfect, but even those imperfections fall within an acceptable range. Options aren't perfectly balanced, but the range is now close enough that no one will ever actually feel useless. And I don't think you can achieve true balance without sacrificing uniqueness.

2D8HP
2018-06-07, 02:05 PM
...D&D is only fixed by playing with trustworthy, reasonable players, in a game run by a competent, trustworthy, and reasonable DM.


Dang it Jay R, you brought good sense into our arguments!

How are we supposed to make the thread last now!


Okay, but that one pulp hack still requires that I have the core rules, right?


$5 got me the 48 pages of FATE Accelerated (an intro version, sorta like the equivalent of the 48 pages of the bluebook).

Good deal.

There's probably some free PDF's as well.

Friv
2018-06-07, 02:55 PM
Alright, let's have some fun with this. Pretending that I have full license to mess with things, but we still want it to feel like D&D at the end of the day. I would be tilting towards something that takes the best of the original 1974 dungeon crawl, with a sprinkling of modern tabletop design.

* There are only four classes - Fighter, Mage, Priest, and Rogue. Each class has a number of subclasses which provide a bonus at certain levels (so a Fighter would have the subclasses Barbarian, Champion, Ranger and Monk. A Mage might have Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard. A Priest could be a Cleric, Druid, or Paladin. A Rogue might be an Assassin, Bard, or Thief.) Probably you expand a bit to have four or have subclasses.

* There are only four Abilities - Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma. Wisdom gets broken between Intelligence and Charisma, and Constitution is a subset of Strength. You start with a spread of +2, +1, +0, -1 and then add a bonus +1 to any Ability. Most of the races have minimum ratings instead of bonuses (dwarves must have Strength +1 after all bonuses, elves must have Dexterity +1, etc.)

* Each Heritage gives you two bonuses that apply new permissions - situations in which you can just declare success. Elves don't sleep, and can use their exceptional senses. Dwarves are immune to nonmagical poison, and can see in pitch blackness. Halflings are Small and can eat almost anything. Etc. Humans don't get any bonuses, but do get an extra Skill instead.

* Skills let you bypass rolls. Your skill level is Standard, Expert, Legend, or Myth. Tasks are Routine, Standard, Expert, Legendary, or Mythic. If a task's difficulty is lower than your skill level, you do it. If a task's difficulty is equal to your skill level, you have to roll against DC 10 (using the related Ability.) If a task's difficulty is higher than your skill level, you fail. There are not very many skills - maybe fifteen? Enough that having one is a Big Deal. Social skills let you reduce what you need to offer to get people on your side, essentially acting as tactical modifiers to social situations.

* Spells go from First Circle to Seventh Circle, instead of from 1 to 9. The Mage and Priest get their spells at Levels 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18. Warriors get cool combat stuff at those levels, and rogues get extra skills or upgraded skills (rogues get way more skills than anyone else.)

* You always get something when you level up, either from your class, your subclass, or from what everyone gets. These happen at about the same time for each class. So your class bonus is Levels 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18. Your subclass bonuses are Level 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 19. And the general bonuses kick in at Level 1, 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20. This also means that you can start everyone off at Level 2 without them having to learn a lot of new rules for their character type - they just get the general Level 2 bonus (which is probably HP and a small general bonus.)

ExLibrisMortis
2018-06-07, 03:20 PM
I would take 3.5, and limit all core classes to five levels, maybe ten, tops. You're supposed to prestige out after, and that is now explicit. All PrCs provide or advance casting; break points for each class are generally (but not always) at level 2, 3, and 5. For example, the paladin would be a five-level base class, with break points at level 2 (Divine Grace), level 4 (Turn Undead), and level 5 (Special Mount). Level 1 abilities are supposed to be character-defining, but also scaling with level, like Smite (which should probably be the PF version, as well), so that you have something to work with as first-level character, but you're not pressured into first-level dips too much (looking at you, barbarian/cleric/monk/UA druid).

The idea is that you can enter PrCs with ECL 6 requirements as straight X 5, a multiclass X 2/Y 3, or slightly delay and enter as X3/Y3 or similar.

JMS
2018-06-07, 04:33 PM
As I am lazy, and happy to steal others works, I would just slap Giants and graveyards (link in sig) on to 3.5, replace tome of battle with path of war, and 3.5 Psionics with Dsp Psionics, soul knifes being gifted blades or the PoW archetype. Maybe add Grods Christmas tree removal rules, for a more 5e feel.

That or just play 5e, with home brew,3rd party and UA

Segev
2018-06-07, 05:00 PM
Not a "fix" for anything but martial/caster disparity, but...

Skill Masteries that are (ex) abilities that give new abilities or expand existing ones, with different Mastery Ratings; characters can have Skill Masteries for particular skills as long as their Mastery Ratings sum to the number of ranks the character has in the skill. (If this is PF instead of 3.5, they may have up to three more points of Mastery if they have it as a class skill.)

Weapon Techniques that range from (ex) to (su) abilities, usable as long as the character is wielding the weapon for which he has the technique. Techniques are ranked by prerequisite: Proficiency with the weapon, Weapon Focus for the weapon, Weapon Specialization for the weapon, Greater Weapon Focus, Greater Weapon Specialization, Weapon Supremacy. Having these gets you one free technique for the weapon for each "tier" you're at. Additional ones can be purchased through expensive training (in supplies, trainers, or however the DM wishes to model it).

These should allow a master of multiple weapons to swap out weapons for different techniques.


Between Skill Masteries and Weapon Techniques, it should be possible for any challenge Magic can overcome, there should be martials/rogues who can overcome them, with roughly the same odds that a randomly chosen martial/rogue could do it as a randomly chosen magic-user could do it.

JoeJ
2018-06-07, 05:15 PM
Probably not, I've got a sneaking suspicion it might be Spirit of the Century, which is a full edition before CORE. Essentially Fate goes as follows:
-FATE1e (noncommercial)
-FATE2e (noncommercial)
-FATE3e, no core rulebook
--Spirit of the Century, pulp action
--Dresden Files, epic urban fantasy, is more a 3.5 or a precursor to 4e.
-Fate 4e (note different capitalisation, it changed)
--Fate CORE, essentially the corebook
--Fate Acclerated, essentially a much lighter version of CORE, focused on being able to jump into the game with no messy 'game creation'
--Atomic Robo
--War of Ashes: Fate of Ablahdablah (what, I just can't be bothered to look up the setting name)
--Transhumanity's Fate, an Eclipse Phase hack
--Dresden Files Accelerated
--A bunch of 50 page minisettings

Note that Spirit of the Century, the Dresden Files games, and Atomic Robo include all the rules required for play. Although as you're supposed to make up your own stunts (and that is a good example of what I might allow) instead of picking from a list unless you desperately want a certain setting Accelerated should be your first purchase, followed by CORE. Ideally in PWYW pdf format, so you can go back and spend money on them if you like them after grabbing them for free (I nab all the pdfs for free and then buy physical copies of the ones I like).

That's helpful, thanks. :smallsmile:


Similarly, I miss the weapon variety of 3.5, but the system would be poorer for the complications more variety would introduce.

You might want to check out Beyond Damage Dice (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/204266/Beyond-Damage-Dice-New-Weapon-Options-for-5th-Edition?term=beyond+damage+dice&test_epoch=0) from Kobold Press. It's got a few new weapons but it's mainly about cool maneuvers using existing weapons. It keeps the complication down to a minimum by making them useable by anybody who has proficiency in that weapon.

calam
2018-06-07, 07:45 PM
As opposed to many people on this thread I don't think D&D should become grittier. When I play D&D I play a game that's about being a hero of increasingly larger scale. Like if you play a 1-20 campaign you should go from a fairly realistic action/folk hero while at level 20 you can become something along the lines of Rama.

This is going to be mostly based on pathfinder for things I don't talk about like HP per level
on to the specifics:

races: I think races should have a more minor effect since I think the stat differences bias towards certain classes too much. I'd prefer a couple qualitative abilities only

Classes:
I think classes should still exist and I like the idea of using archetypes that you get every couple levels automatically like in 4e or 5e. I also like the idea of power sources that 4e had although I don't like the execution and I think it should be treated like the difference between incarnum and psychic powers. I also think that limited uses of abilities or other types of resource management are required for a good class, at least in what I want D&D to be. I also think that day based limits are strange and only make sense in dungeon crawl heavy campaigns

example of a class:
barbarian:
would be a nature type class which would mean this class (as well as other nature classes like the ranger and druid)would have a system where you gain animal aspects and can affect nature like making entangling vines. It would have the same concept of emotion based fighter with nature knowledge and at level 6 it would get an archetype like wanderer which gets more nature based abilities or berserker which focuses on direct combat and would get "spells" and some abilities from the archetype

Skills:
I think skills should have far more scaling than they do now with middle level and high "epic level" uses. This should probably be done with skill unlocks based on rank so you can't have a lucky roll allow you to jump 20ft at level one but make that simple by level 10.

some skills should be based off of have rules for minigames such as diplomacy or complicated trap disabling so social and trap passing isn't just rolling a die several times until you get through

Also I think that the idea of a skill monkey is a bit ridiculous and there should be enough skill points for each character that you don't need a dedicated one

feats:
I think feats should be interesting additional things that allow you to try out mechanics from other classes, have their own mini mechanics (like the luck and tactics feats from 3.5) and generally do qualitative things rather than give you +10% boosts to whatever.

equipment:
weapons and armor are fine to a certain extent. I'm not aiming for realistic combat so I don't really care that a greatsword can't pierce or whatever but it would be cool to have some cheap non adventurer items that don't exist in the real world to help show that the setting evolved with magic

combat:
I want combat to be more dynamic with every class having their own choices to make that can have their pros and cons to them rather than having classes like fighter just charge and then full attack. So each class should have something to do besides direct attack even though the classes should each have niches to fit into to a certain extent.

magic:
magic (and by that I mean all the powers from the power sources) shouldn't be as strong as it was in 3.5/pathfinder although spells like teleporting should still exist. I'd rather have more OP spells debuffed by making them take longer to cast or give a warning to enemies than remove them completely. There should also be spells that would be used by non adventurers for setting reasons.

Hopefully that isn't too wordy for you guys

Jay R
2018-06-07, 07:51 PM
I would go back to the idea that a class was, well, a class. It's a measure of where you have been living and what you've been doing.

To become a wizard, you have been training for years to understand how magic works. A fighter has spent the last few years training in combat. A cleric has been learning divine casting in a church.

Learning two classes at once should be extremely difficult. Picking up a new one while devoting all your time to a quest or adventure using other skills should be impossible.

I'd probably design martial classes like a tree with many branches. It certainly makes sense for a Fighter to grow into a Warlord or other warrior class. But going from a wizard class to a Fighter, separate from spending years learning to fight, makes no sense at all.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-07, 09:07 PM
I'm one of those who plays D&D to play D&D, not to play a generic fantasy game that happens to use the D&D rules as a baseline, so keeping Vancian casting, classes, alignments, and all that jazz is non-negotiable for me and making things classless, point-based, gritty, etc. don't interest me at all. My "perfect" D&D starts with 3e for the things it does well, brings in a bunch of stuff from BECMI and 2e that they did better than 3e, and then layer on top things like a better skill system that none of those editions did well.

I've been working on a fix off and on for a while, and there are two major parts of the system that have remained largely unchanged the whole time:

Classes and Subclasses

Like Friv's proposal, there are a fixed number of base classes with all existing classes being subclasses, but there are 10, not 4. You have the standard Warrior, Magic-User, Priest, and Expert, and then conceptual hybrids of those: Gish (martial/arcane), Champion (martial/divine), Adept (martial/skills), Theurge (arcane/divine), Trickster (arcane/skills), and Mystic (divine/skills). (Names are working titles; "gish" and "theurge" are a bit on-the-nose and finding a good name for martial/skills is hard.)

Every base class has its own resource mechanic(s), and existing classes from the various editions fit under them. For instance, the Theurge covers those who combine the two styles of magic (drawing on the power of a higher being [divine] via pacts and knowledge [arcane], venerating [divine] an impersonal force [arcane], etc.), so it would cover classes like the warlock and binder who make deals with powerful beings and a "shaman" class (like the binder mechanically but the spirit shaman flavor-wise) that makes deals with spirits, and its resource mechanic is getting multiple packages of similarly-themed abilities each day (vestiges, "pacts" of multiple invocations, etc.).

On top of that, there are four tiers with mandatory sort-of-PrCs, called basic, prestige, mythic, and epic paths. Each is 3 levels long and fits "alongside" rather than instead of your normal class progression; most would be conversions of existing classes and PrCs that only get 2-3 interesting and useful abilities, but there would be new ones as well. The class progression looks like this:


LevelBase ClassSubclassPath
0thClass Feature 0Subclass Feature 0
1stClass Feature 1Basic Feature 1
2ndClass Feature 2Subclass Feature 1
3rdClass Feature 3Basic Feature 2
4thClass Feature 4Subclass Feature 2
5thClass Feature 5Basic Feature 3
6thClass Feature 6Prestige Feature 1
7thClass Feature 7Subclass Feature 3
8thClass Feature 8Prestige Feature 2
9thClass Feature 9Subclass Feature 4
10thClass Feature 10Prestige Feature 3
11thClass Feature 11Mythic Feature 1
12thClass Feature 12Subclass Feature 5
13thClass Feature 13Mythic Feature 2
14thClass Feature 14Subclass Feature 6
15thClass Feature 15Mythic Feature 3
16thClass Feature 16Epic Feature 1
17thClass Feature 17Subclass Feature 7
18thClass Feature 18Epic Feature 2
19thClass Feature 19Subclass Feature 8
20thClass Feature 20Epic Feature 3


The base class feature is usually a level of spellcasting or similar selectable-ability progression, but there are other fixed class features sprinkled in there; the 0th-level stuff in there is things like proficiencies, cantrips (2e-/3e-style, not 5e-style) and is separated out to enable 0th/0th multiclassing at 1st level. Subclasses may build on base class features, but aren't necessarily tied to single base classes; you might be able to have a less magical Warrior (Ranger) or Adept (Ranger) or a more magical Champion (Ranger), for instance. Paths are generally either class-agnostic with very simple prerequisites (like just "must have Stealth trained" for a sneaky path) that anyone can take, or class-/subclass-specific for further customization like 3e barbarian totems, 5e warlock pacts, and so forth.

For an old 3e take on how the class/subclass/path setup might look in practice, see here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?267853-3-5-Base-Class-The-Divine-Champion-Giving-the-half-casters-some-love).

Skills and Proficiencies

There's four parts of this: the skill list, skill point progressions, proficiencies, and skill synergies/specializations. For skill list and proficiences, I'll quote myself from an earlier thread:


I've used something similar to this in the past, and am working on fleshing out a more complete system. Basically, going farther than not always using an associated ability score, skills don't have an associated ability score and each skill can be used with each of the six attributes (in theory; some combinations won't be used often or at all), kind of like how Shadowrun has un-attribute-associated skills and always specifies "Roll [stat]+[skill]" for its checks. My skill list looks a lot like Corneel's, where each skill represents a general approach to doing things rather than representing the things you do.

Individual tasks/subskills for each skill (the "things you do" part) do have associated ability scores, though, based on what kind of task each is: Str-based rolls generally involved physical force or movement, Dex-based rolls generally involve finesse or complex/intricate/involved tasks, Con-based rolls generally involve long-term or endurance-based tasks, Int-based rolls generally involve knowing things (and replace Knowledge-type skills), Wis-based rolls generally involve intuition or observing/noticing details, and Cha-based rolls generally involve social interaction.

For a relevant social skills example, there are two skills for doing things in an underhanded fashion (Deception and Stealth, the former for tricking or misdirecting people and the latter for doing things unnoticed), and there's a skill called Culture that covers both "culture" as in customs and social institutions, like Corneel's Politics skill above, and also "culture" as in the arts and other upper-class pastimes. Here's how you might use those skills in practice and with which attributes:


Ability scoreDeception skill uses3e analogsStealth skill uses3e analogsCulture skill uses3e analogs[th]
StrFooling people as to what combat maneuver you're attempting, making people think you'll punch their head off if they don't cooperateBluff (feinting), IntimidateRapid stealthy movement, hanging from windowsills for a whileHide/Move Silently (with penalties for movement)N/AN/A
DexLegerdemain, pickpocketingSleight of Hand, Open Lock (simple locks)Careful stealthy movement, silently removing windowsHide/Move Silently (used normally), Disable Device (traps), Open Lock (complex/puzzle locks)Playing instruments, art forms like painting or weavingCraft (Painting/Pottery/etc.), Perform (technical performance)
ConN/AN/AExtended stealth (like a sniper lying in wait or hanging from the rafters to overhear a conversation)N/AN/AN/A
IntForging documents, making and using ciphersForgery, Decipher Script (codes)Tailing people unnoticed, identifying hidden entrance points, constructing camouflageKnowledge (Architecture/Dungeoneering), Survival (urban tracking), some class featuresCultural knowledge, navigating bureaucracyAppraise, Knowledge (History/Local/Nobility), Decipher Script (legalese)
Wis"Reading" a mark for a later con, identifying fellow ne'er-do-wellsInnuendo (3.0), Sense Motive (noticing lies)Noticing pressure plates and alarmsSearch, TrapfindingIdentifying movers and shakers, determining how honest or corrupt an official isInnuendo (3.0), Sense Motive (getting a hunch)
ChaLying, making yourself look more dangerous or well-connectedBluff (lying), Intimidate, Gather Information (word on the street)Disguises, impersonationDisguise, Diplomacy (appeal to authority)Wheeling and dealing, public performanceDiplomacy (illicit deals), Perform (emotional performance), Gather Information (gossip at a party)


(A "N/A" doesn't mean those skill+attribute combinations can't be used, just that I couldn't think of a good example off the top of my head while making the table.)

So as you can see, these skill groupings mean that non-traditional social skills can all be used for social stuff, and there's some overlap in Bluff-like, Diplomacy-like, and Intimidate-like tasks depending on who the audience is and how you're going about the task. There's also ways to slice things up by attribute, like being able to train only certain attributes for a given skill for fewer resources than training the whole skill, having Bardic Knowledge effectively being able to substitute for any Int-based skill checks and Rage granting something similar for Str-based checks, and so forth, but that's all outside the skills themselves.

There aren't actual Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate skills in this setup that characters can take since all of those skills' uses fall under other skills (nor are there Knowledge or Spot/Listen skills, since those fall under Int- and Wis-based tasks, respectively, of other skills), but each of those is mostly covered by just one to three skills (Deception/Tactics, Culture/Empathy/Insight, and Deception/Empathy, respectively) so you can "be good at Bluff" without too much investment and it's possible to "be good at social skills" with enough skills trained.

So this has the benefits of the skill group/subskill setup I mentioned earlier, in that each skill covers quite a broad area so that characters can be fairly competent by default without investing too many resources into one area, but between splitting uses of certain old skills over multiple new skills and allowing training/specialization of subskills you don't have an issue where all the social characters invest in the same one to two "social interaction" skills and end up too similar to one another and you don't have to make a character or creature good at a bunch of related things if you want them to be good at one particular thing.


And to your earlier point about magic skills, though it's not directly relevant to the social skill discussion, there's Arcana, Nature, and Religion for arcane, divine (druid-y), and divine (priestly) magic, respectively. They each have areas of mundane use--the usual Knowledge (Arcana/Nature/Religion) stuff, plus Arcana has alchemy, harvesting and using monster parts, and working with magic traps; Nature has Survival and Profession (Sailor) navigation stuff, the parts of animal breeding and training that don't fall under Empathy, and herbalism and potion-making; and Religion has the social religious stuff like holidays, minor miracles like prophetic dreams and omens, and everything related to undead-slaying. On the magical side, they all have basically identical uses for their different categories of magic: Str for busting through force effects or other magical barriers and disrupting usage of magical abilities, Dex for hiding somatic components or using them in constricted spaces, Con for concentration and not losing spells when attacked, Int for identifying spells and items and some parts of UMD, Wis for sensing magic, and Cha for the rest of UMD and misdirecting observers as to what you're trying to cast.

So not only does this slightly granulate the magic skills so that "magic guy," "sneaky guy," and "social guy" can all handle their main area of focus with a single skill if they want to but really need two or three skills to cover everything, but it folds together the directly magical skills with other skills that martial and skilled classes might find useful (fighters might want Arcana for mage-slaying and Nature for healing without a divine caster, rangers want Nature for getting along in the wild and Religion to deal with some favored enemies, and so on) so that at higher levels you don't have the noncasters who have been immersed in magic and magic-users for many levels now still being unable to ID an enemy spell because they can't afford to and have no pressing reason to invest in Spellcraft.

Of course. So, the basic goals of the system are (A) to fold in the boring-but-useful feats into things you get for free at starting levels, (B) to add "hooks" for downtime activities like training and crafting, and (C) to provide a way for low-level characters to be very good smiths, sages, guards, and so forth without requiring them to have lots of HD for the feats or skill ranks they'd otherwise require to fill those roles.

There are six proficiency categories and three proficiency ranks. The categories are Weapon, Armor, Knowledge, Profession, Region, and Faction. The first two map to weapon and armor proficiencies, the second two map to Knowledge and Profession/Perform subskills, and the last two sorta kinda map to affiliation rules and the variant Knowledge (Local) rules for Forgotten Realms. The proficiency ranks are Basic, Expert, and Master. Basic proficiency removes nonproficiency penalties and Expert and Master each grant a general benefit by category, and each proficiency has its own Basic/Expert/Master perks as well that are roughly on the scale of a feat.

Various other parts of the rules are modified to use proficiencies as prerequisites as much as possible, such as shortening feat trees and taking feat and skill taxes out of PrC prerequisites. They can also be used numerically for certain things (Basic = 1, Expert = 2, Master = 3), like multiplying crafting progress or adding to a weapon's threat range and other things that would be nice to scale to a small degree.

Weapon Proficiencies
These are by weapon type and fighting style: Axes, Crossbows, Dual Weapons, Mobile Fighting, Natural Weapons, etc. The general Expert perk is to not provoke AoOs when making combat maneuvers with associated weapons and the general Master perk is to reduce iterative or multiattack penalties with associated weapons; specific perks include things like Reflexive Toss for Master Thrown Weapons (threaten an area and make AoOs with thrown weapons) or Never Surrounded for Expert Dual Weapons (negate flanking bonuses while wielding two weapons).

Armor Proficiencies
These are by weight and material: Light Armor, Light Shields, Hide Armor, Scale Armor, Unarmored, etc. The general Expert perk is to increase AC by +1 and the general Master perk is to decrease ASF and effective armor weight for encumbrance; specific perks include things like Duck and Cover for Master Heavy Shields (take a move action to gain cover or improved cover) or Scorn Blows for Expert Heavy Armor (adds DR).

Because weapons and armor use a build-your-own system in conjunction to these rules, weapon and armor proficiencies are used to determine whether you can use common/rare/exotic armors and wield simple/martial/exotic weapons, and they also replace "boring" feats like Shield Specialization or Two-Weapon Defense.

Knowledge Proficiencies
These are by knowledge category: Outer Planes, Fey, Ancient History, Warfare, Commerce, etc. The general Expert perk is +5 to Knowledge checks in a sub-field like Outer Planes (Upper Planes) and the ability to take 10 on all such checks even under pressure and the general Master perk is +10 in a sub-sub-field like Outer Planes (Lower Planes [Gehenna]) and the ability to take 15 on those checks; specific perks include Art of War for Master Warfare (predict enemies' mass combat maneuvers) and Portal Hound for Expert Outer Planes (sense nearby portals and gain some idea of how to activate them).

Profession Proficiencies
These are by profession: Craftsman, Sailor, Barrister, Steward, Herbalist, etc. The general Expert perk is +5 to Profession checks in a sub-field like Craftsman (Blacksmithing) and the ability to roll Profession in place of other skill checks in a limited fashion (e.g. Expert Sailor could let you roll Profession instead of Climb to climb a ship's rigging, instead of Use Rope to tie up a ship, and so on) and the general Master perk is +10 in a sub-sub-field like Craftsman (Blacksmithing [Swords]) and a large reduction in the time required for relevant long-term tasks like crafting or researching things; specific perks include Common Language Families for Master Linguist (be able to speak and understand unknown languages at a basic level) and Pack Mule for Expert Laborer (increase encumbrance limits and reduce speed penalties for being encumbered).

Knowledge and profession proficiencies are used to replace Knowledge and Profession subskills in the core rules or to augment the skill tasks in the revised skill system posted earlier, and to replace "boring" feats like Skill Focus. The sub-field/sub-sub-field thing lets you have, say, a sage who's an expert on famous red dragons during the Third Suloise Dynasty or a blacksmith capable of reforging that broken legendary dwarven hammer without needing them to be ~12th level to let them reliably make DC 30 checks.

Region Proficiencies
These are by political region or natural region: Cormyr, The Sword Coast, North Underdark, The Sea of Swords, The Plane Of Fire, etc. Each rank gives you some knowledge of the area in all categories as a Knowledge proficiency one rank lower (so e.g. Basic Cormyr would give a Thayan the kind of common knowledge known by anyone who grew up in Cormyr, Expert Cormyr would give him Basic Politics, Basic Geography, Basic History, etc. knowledge strictly as it relates to Cormyr, and Master Cormyr would give him Expert Politics, Expert Geography, Expert History, etc. knowledge) and lets you speak some of the dominant languages of the region with varying levels of fluency (including things like local accents, handy for rogueish or diplomatic types).

Faction Proficiencies
These are by group: Cormyrean Nobility, Waterdeep Thieves Guild, Suel Arcanamachs, House Cannith, The Athar, etc. Each rank gives you some insider knowledge relevant to the faction in all categories as a Knowledge proficiency one rank lower, as Region proficiencies do, and gives you appropriate social benefits (and drawbacks) when your allegiance is known.

There are no specific perks for Region or Faction proficiencies, as they're very setting-specific and there are a bazillion regions and factions that would need to be filled out, but each rank gives a character a benefit of the player's choice from a short list of perks, including things like taking a regional feat after 1st level, meeting a race or affiliation PrC prereq despite not being that race or a member of that organization, gaining a big bonus to a certain Affiliation score, making a local contacts in a new area, and the like.

These proficiencies are used to address some rules quirks like "commoners can't make the Knowledge DC to identify a cow" or "this elf grew up in a forbidding forest but can't navigate it because the Survival DCs are too high," and to give mechanical weight to flavor/background things like an elf who grew up among dwarves or an orphan taken in by the Assassin's Guild so players and DMs don't have to have "But my character would know/have X!" conversations.


Each class and each race grants a fixed set weapon and armor proficiencies at the Basic level; (sub)races grant certain region proficiencies (often some fixed and some player-selectable from a certain) set, and (sub)classes grant fixed and selectable knowledge proficiencies. Characters can start with N profession and faction proficiencies of their choice (where N is higher if you start at higher levels). Multiple granted proficiencies stack to increase their rank, and each character gains bonus proficiency ranks like they gain bonus skill ranks from Int which may be spent to increase any proficiencies they like or to gain Basic proficiencies they weren't granted through their race or class.

For a very basic example, let's say elf grants Basic Swords and Basic Bows, fighter grants Basic proficiency with all weapon and armor proficiencies, wood elf lets you choose between Basic Dalelands and Basic High Forest, and fighter lets you choose between Basic History and Basic Warfare. A wood elf fighter would start with Expert Bows, Expert Swords, Basic High Forest, and Basic Warfare, and could pick any Profession or Faction proficiency desired; if the character has bonus proficiency ranks from Int, he could increase Expert Bows to Master Bows, increase Basic Warfare to Expert Warfare, or pick up, say, Basic Fey.

(One of these days I'll get around to just writing the whole thing up and posting it here instead of quoting summaries.)

For skill points, it's somewhere between 1-point-per-level granularity and a trained/untrained setup. There are 5 ranks of skills (Trained, Apprentice, Journeyman, Master, Grandmaster), which can be bought starting at 0th, 2nd, 7th, 12th, and 17th level, respectively. Each rank grants a bonus to skill checks, of course, and also serves as a prerequisite for certain tasks; instead of being DC 60 to keep it (mostly) out of reach of low-level characters, a task might be DC 30 but require Master rank. Levels of realism decrease as ranks increase, so Trained-only tasks are things like identifying obscure monsters or crafting complex machinery, things that a normal human could do but would require training, and Grandmaster-only tasks are things like jumping through force walls, running on clouds, and other blatantly superheroic high-level effects.

Most classes get enough skill points to keep 5 skills maxed out (so enough skill points to increase 1 skill by 1 rank at each level, and the new ranks are available in 5-level chunks) and have some left over for skill synergies and specializations, which are somewhere between skills and proficiencies. Like proficiencies, they give generic perks at each rank and then each synergy or specialization gives extra perks, but they scale with skills rather than being purchased independently. Specializations focus you further on one skill, while synergies combine two skills and advance based on the lower of the two associated skills.


I would go back to the idea that a class was, well, a class. It's a measure of where you have been living and what you've been doing.

To become a wizard, you have been training for years to understand how magic works. A fighter has spent the last few years training in combat. A cleric has been learning divine casting in a church.

Learning two classes at once should be extremely difficult. Picking up a new one while devoting all your time to a quest or adventure using other skills should be impossible.

I'd probably design martial classes like a tree with many branches. It certainly makes sense for a Fighter to grow into a Warlord or other warrior class. But going from a wizard class to a Fighter, separate from spending years learning to fight, makes no sense at all.

I think AD&D multiclassing, where you advance multiple classes at a time similar to 3e gestalt, is probably the best approach to multiclassing, as long as classes are built or tweaked to support it (for instance, if all classes give basically the same number of abilities at every level so you don't have e.g. paladin//samurai who have nothing to look forward to at high levels, paladin//wizards who get all their features from one class after a certain point, and cleric//wizards who get lots of abilities from both classes). Most multiclass concepts are "Take two or three schticks, do both equally well" (whereas most builds that end up multiclassed are usually dipping for good class features), and an even multiclass handles that more elegantly than basically-mandatory dual-progression PrCs. And for concepts that are more "Do one thing really well and dabble in a second or third," you can have multiple classes with varying levels of each schtick (e.g. wizard, bard, duskblade, and hexblade for full caster, mostly-caster gish, balanced gish, and mostly-fighter gish) so you can mix and match for the desired ratio.

Plus, it lets you do monsters with class levels and transformative classes very easily. In the former case, an ogre mage can be a giant//wizard and a solar could be an outsider//cleric in the same way that a human could be a fighter//wizard or a wizard//cleric, so you don't have high-level monsters with drastically under-leveled class abilities or the like. In the latter case, you can handle lycanthropy as forcibly multiclassing you as a shapechanger or beast or whatever, Dragon Disciple as a feat or something that gives a humanoid the flavor permission to "multiclass into dragon," and so on.

Ignimortis
2018-06-07, 09:58 PM
True, but that's not what this thread is about.

I'm fairly certain people can work out why this thread was posted, but the point was a psuedo-celebration of the fact that we don't all want the same things from the same game. The fact that you can't actually 'fix' a social activity isn't the point, the fact that when given the same starting rules we veer off in many different directions is.


So far from what I've seen around the boards in the past year, around 40% of the people want tougher grittier combat and less magic, around 5% seem to prefer full-caster plans on plans on contingencies shenanigans, 25% like 5e enough to say "I'll basically take 5e and add some stuff that WotC didn't", usually the skill system, 20% want to go back to earlier times where there were four classes of Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User and Thief, and the rest have their own weird ideas of how D&D should be.

To be fair, that "weird" isn't anything bad. My own idea of D&D is basically rising over the course of 1-20 levels from a competent, but still mortal adventurer to someone who could smack Exalted Solars in their smug faces and get away with it.

wumpus
2018-06-08, 02:41 PM
Many suggestions for "fixing" D&D that I've seen in this and many other threads may fit a pattern:

Backgrounds not "Classes"?

Traveller in 1977 and RuneQuest in 1978

More skills?
Traveller in 1977 and RuneQuest in 1978

Based on individual abilities not "Levels"?
Traveller in 1977 and RuneQuest in 1978

More realistic "gritty" combat?
RuneQuest in 1978

Non "Vancian" magic?
RuneQuest in 1978

Can someone help me spot the pattern?

I not at all familiar with RuneQuest, but played old school Traveller (and filled graveyards with characters who never played a game). I'd think advancing skills is needed, and that didn't seem to be much of an option in Traveller (or done at least awkwardly). I also played Bushido, a game with 6 levels (not sure if any relation to e6), but most advancement was done with skills (and possibly social advancement if samurai).

I have to wonder if alignment neatly falls into two groups: "never remove" and "already gone". I tend to think that any game calling itself D&D is stuck with them, but they are the first things you should houserule out of the game (unfortunately this wrecks havok with settings). I'd like to keep "exalted/vile" and "axiomatic/anarchic" and leave the rest or at least make them disappear mechanically. Getting an alignment would presumably require swearing oaths or heroic deeds (Paladins would be required to achieve exalted, presumably before knighting or receive it during knighting).

2D8HP
2018-06-08, 02:56 PM
I not at all familiar with RuneQuest, but played old school Traveller (and filled graveyards with characters who never played a game). I'd think advancing skills is needed, and that didn't seem to be much of an option in Traveller....


I haven't played or looked at the rules for Traveller since the 1980's, but that's the way I remember it as well, you pretty much only got and increased skills during character creation, making an older and more skilled character meant you risked another chance of PC death during character creation.

You could increase a characters skills during play in RuneQuest (basically the same system as Call of C'thullu) by a successful use of a skill (including weapin use skills) which led to the practice of "golfbagging" where players would have their PC's switch weapons during combat in order to increase their PC's skills in different weapons.

Corsair14
2018-06-08, 03:46 PM
I have several things in my campaign.
Some creatures are more resistant to certain weapon types so I simply bring back a resistance(#) to slashing/crushing/piercing and with the short list of weapons available its pretty easy to class them. In the few cases of weapons with multiple damage types, halberds or warhammers for example the player declares which part of the weapon they are using.

Further I really hate the PCs can do everything skill system with only a slight advantage for someone with the skill over someone not. I have experimented in both giving a disadvantage to an unskilled user to simply not allowing any bonuses for stats.

Cluedrew
2018-06-08, 04:29 PM
I learned that one of my friends, currently running a D&D 5e campaign, is trying to fix D&D. Besides some spell list adjustments and other smaller tweaks they making turns resolve simultaneously. I don't see that ending well. Especially how precise you are supposed to declare your moves ahead of time. Anyone seen that before?

Cosi
2018-06-08, 04:36 PM
Things to take away from previous editions:
AD&D:
There isn't a lot in AD&D that later editions haven't done better. Notably, THAC0, separate XP tables, and racial level limits are so bad as to be disqualifying in the modern day. The DMing advice is garbage. Even the things people mostly advocate for (notably: all the various ways casters are weaker) aren't good ideas. But there are some things worth having.

HP and damage numbers are much saner. There's no reason for people to have to add and subtract double or triple digit numbers every round. The game doesn't get any meaningful benefit for being able to distinguish between dealing 63 and 66 damage, so we should simplify the math by not doing that.
Random magic items are better than WBL. Magic items should feel special, and for that to happen you need to not get the same magic items every game. That said, it does help worldbuilding if there's at least some possibility of getting consistent items.


3e:
People are quick to point out the flaws of 3e, but it made a bunch of genuine improvements to the game. AD&D had a bunch of stupid cruft on it, and 3e cleaned that up. But there are also things 3e does well on its own merits.

Variety of resource management mechanics. There are classes in 3e that work in fundamentally different ways, and that is fantastic from a design perspective. The Warlock having at-will AoE and BFC means that the Warlock wants different kinds of fights from e.g. the Duskblade.
Monster/PC transparency. Monsters in 3e aren't arbitrary blobs of stats the way they are in other editions. They have identifiable progressions, which can be combined with PC classes and interact with consistent mechanics.
Players get abilities with narrative impact. teleport, plane shift, fabricate, planar binding, and more provide players with an outlet to directly influence the plot, which is one of the biggest reasons to play a TTRPG instead of a CRPG or something.
Characters progress to a high level of power. This is related to the previous point, but distinct from it. 3e characters can do things like wade through armies or punch out gods. Those are cool things that characters should be able to do.


4e:
4e had a lot of genuinely good ideas. Those ideas were executed very badly, but they were good ideas.

Tiers were a good idea. One of the larger problems in D&D is that Fighter is a concept that just doesn't scale. You fight. It's not clear what you do in a fight, and there's absolutely no hook for you to do anything outside a fight. It doesn't help that people insist on Fighters being mundane. The idea that at 11th level you stop being a Fighter and start being a Bone Knight or a Lightning Champion or a Verdant Lord or whatever, and that gives you level appropriate powers.
Skill Challenges were also a good idea. The execution was stupendously bad, in that the mechanics created incentives that went the exact opposite direction of what was intended, but the idea was good. All you need to do to fix those incentives is have a fixed number of rounds instead of a fixed number of failures as the timer for the challenge. Also, you should probably have abilities that interact with Skill Challenges.
Mostly I think the rules for rituals are dumb, but the idea of having some non-combat effects being class independent is a good one.


5e
Honestly, I don't think there's anything 5e does that other editions don't do as well or better.AS

Other Stuff:

Constitution becomes part of Strength. Charisma becomes a part of Wisdom. Neither of those attributes does anything interesting on its own.
The Fighter class gets removed for the reasons mentioned above. The concept simply isn't salvageable.
Tiers use the names from 4e with either a 5/10/5 or 10/5/5 split for a total of 20 levels, depending on how exactly you define things.
The game needs a default setting. Probably not one of the major established settings. Maybe you grab the name of an obscure setting from AD&D and basically remake it on whatever lines you want.
Better (actually, existent) rules for mass combat and kingdom management.
Ever class gets a resource management system and some resources to manage. Hopefully these are thematic and support the class concept (e.g. Barbarian gets a Rage Meter).
As a result of the previous, you need a more space-efficient way of writing abilities. 3e's is bad, 4e's was worse.
Every class (or Paragon Path, or Epic Destiny) needs a way to scale through the entire range of challenges.
No more multiclassing. You get a class and a subclass. There's a subclass version of every base class, but some things that aren't base classes can also fit in that slot. For example, monster progressions (like Giants) and stuff like Dragonmarks from Eberron go here.
The Cleric class no longer exists. Priests of different gods should have different ability suites. As such, Cleric is now a subclass that grants whatever universal priest-y abilities that servants of both Pelor and Nerull should have.
Oh, also, the D&D gods are crap. This probably goes hand-in-hand with the "new setting" comment, but the gods need to be replaced because they don't have any traction. The replacements should probably draw from mythology, because people can tell you who Thor is in a way that they can't tell you who Kord is.
Alignment is also crap. No more alignment. Replace it with the MTG color wheel, because you have a coherent set of well defined values, and as a result should stop trying to use the weird mishmash of Christian ethics and mind caulk that is D&D alignment.
Start with the challenges and the expectations for PCs, then write PC abilities. Then test things. Iteratively test things until you end up at whatever equilibrium you're targeting.

Cluedrew
2018-06-08, 06:13 PM
Start with the challenges and the expectations for PCs, then write PC abilities. Then test things. Iteratively test things until you end up at whatever equilibrium you're targeting.You brought up some points I like (even the testing in this quote), some I don't but I see where you are coming from, some I would fight you on (but this isn't the place for another round of caster/martial*) but the bit about challenges I will contest.

I think challenges is the wrong way of looking at this. What is interesting about a ranger being able to track a party of three hobgoblin soldiers through a forest? There is an answer there but I think the better question is: What is interesting about a ranger being able to track a group of escape POWs? What is interesting about a paladin being able to inspire the downtrodden?

In other words, take a step back, don't measure from what they are doing but more why they are doing it. In yet other words, not how they are supposed to overcome encounters, but how they are supposed to shape the campaign? Now solving encounters does shape the campaign, but that is sort of a reactive shaping. It misses this active: go out and do stuff. Rally allies, explore/discover new places, make friends, make money on the side. Whatever. How can the character push the story forward?

Start with the stories and work from there.

* Also if things have become an actual fight, it is time to take a break.


(Names are working titles; "gish" and "theurge" are a bit on-the-nose and finding a good name for martial/skills is hard.)Solider, Theologian, Mage-Knight?

Cosi
2018-06-08, 07:07 PM
One additional thing: D&D needs a better web presence. They don't have any articles up on their website from this month (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles). That's terrible. Their latest wallpaper is from last year. You should be putting out two new articles every day of the week, like MTG does. You could do:

Designer Insights -- Someone on the design team rants about how you decide how much damage fireball deals, or what kinds of magic pants there are.
Recurring Villains -- Based on one of the articles WotC put out during 3e, this gives you three stat blocks at three different levels and a couple of hooks for a villain. Honestly, you could do this with a couple of dart boards.
Power Creep (General) -- Print some cool magic items or feats for people. If they get good reception, put them in a book.
Feature Article -- Get someone to write something (non-crunchy) that's related to D&D.
Setting Fluff -- Get someone to pump out a couple of pages of setting material or short story once a week.
Save My Game -- I think this was the name of another 3e era column. DMing advice, sometimes in response to questions from fans.
Community Roundup -- Find stuff people have done that is D&D related and tell people about it. Custom adventures, D&D cosplay, podcasts, webcomics, whatever. Encourage people to be active fans.
Power Creep (Class Specific) -- Print upgrades for Warlocks or Shaman or whatever. Probably alongside some fluff material about Demon Lords or the elemental balance or whatever.
Monster Ecology -- Pick something from the MM, spend a couple pages developing it. Try to make people care about Grells or Dragonkin.
Webcomic -- Get someone to write a weekly webcomic based on your game. Like OotS, but more serious and closer tied to the mechanics.
Sample Encounter -- Put out a tactically interesting encounter at a different level every week.

There's probably some additional stuff you could do, and you could do it in any order (though I would probably put the Feature Article on Monday and the Community Roundup on Friday), but that's enough to drop one and still have two articles going up every day. There's just no excuse for not giving people a reason to come to the D&D website every day, and the best way to do that is by putting content on that website.


(Names are working titles; "gish" and "theurge" are a bit on-the-nose and finding a good name for martial/skills is hard.)

I think Gish is exactly the right name for your Wizard/Fighter class. Because that's the name that Wizard/Fighters (at least, Githyank Wizard/Fighters) have in D&Dland. It's already a word the game supports for the concept. The replacement for Theurge is that you just hammer on a list of synonyms for "Magic User" until you find one you like, then put in a rant about how people who use both Arcane and Divine magic are Occultists or Mystics or Oracles or whatever the hell.


I think challenges is the wrong way of looking at this.

You have to start with either the challenges or the players. And if you start with the players, you end up with classes like the 3e Monk, which gets a lot of abilities that Bruce Lee might plausibly have but don't add up to being able to punch a cloud giant in the face at 11th level.


In yet other words, not how they are supposed to overcome encounters, but how they are supposed to shape the campaign?

The campaign is a series of challenges. That's what it is. Today you have to cross the Howling Peaks. Tomorrow you have to persuade the local Mage's Guild advocate to lend you arcane support against the trolls. The day after that you have to kill a Herzou. Ideally, the challenge lists you have are structured so that solutions involve PCs having proactive abilities. You have the challenge "you have to get to the other continent tomorrow", and the solution to that is "cast teleport", and then characters can just teleport around.


Start with the stories and work from there.

Stories don't really have a lot to do with the mechanics. You probably want some reality checks, but those are at a high level. If the game outputs that Rangers solve level appropriate problems by backstabbing people instead of by relying on natural lore, that is ultimately a much smaller problem than if the game outputs that Rangers can't solve level appropriate problems.

Cluedrew
2018-06-08, 07:30 PM
To Cosi: My emotional reaction to that post is disappointment. I'm not sure what that means but I am willing to guess that sorting it out will take longer than it should. So unless you want to create a thread on design principles I say we just shelve this one.

Ignimortis
2018-06-08, 10:10 PM
Things to take away from previous editions:
AD&D:
There isn't a lot in AD&D that later editions haven't done better. Notably, THAC0, separate XP tables, and racial level limits are so bad as to be disqualifying in the modern day. The DMing advice is garbage. Even the things people mostly advocate for (notably: all the various ways casters are weaker) aren't good ideas. But there are some things worth having.

HP and damage numbers are much saner. There's no reason for people to have to add and subtract double or triple digit numbers every round. The game doesn't get any meaningful benefit for being able to distinguish between dealing 63 and 66 damage, so we should simplify the math by not doing that.
Random magic items are better than WBL. Magic items should feel special, and for that to happen you need to not get the same magic items every game. That said, it does help worldbuilding if there's at least some possibility of getting consistent items.


3e:
People are quick to point out the flaws of 3e, but it made a bunch of genuine improvements to the game. AD&D had a bunch of stupid cruft on it, and 3e cleaned that up. But there are also things 3e does well on its own merits.

Variety of resource management mechanics. There are classes in 3e that work in fundamentally different ways, and that is fantastic from a design perspective. The Warlock having at-will AoE and BFC means that the Warlock wants different kinds of fights from e.g. the Duskblade.
Monster/PC transparency. Monsters in 3e aren't arbitrary blobs of stats the way they are in other editions. They have identifiable progressions, which can be combined with PC classes and interact with consistent mechanics.
Players get abilities with narrative impact. teleport, plane shift, fabricate, planar binding, and more provide players with an outlet to directly influence the plot, which is one of the biggest reasons to play a TTRPG instead of a CRPG or something.
Characters progress to a high level of power. This is related to the previous point, but distinct from it. 3e characters can do things like wade through armies or punch out gods. Those are cool things that characters should be able to do.


4e:
4e had a lot of genuinely good ideas. Those ideas were executed very badly, but they were good ideas.

Tiers were a good idea. One of the larger problems in D&D is that Fighter is a concept that just doesn't scale. You fight. It's not clear what you do in a fight, and there's absolutely no hook for you to do anything outside a fight. It doesn't help that people insist on Fighters being mundane. The idea that at 11th level you stop being a Fighter and start being a Bone Knight or a Lightning Champion or a Verdant Lord or whatever, and that gives you level appropriate powers.
Skill Challenges were also a good idea. The execution was stupendously bad, in that the mechanics created incentives that went the exact opposite direction of what was intended, but the idea was good. All you need to do to fix those incentives is have a fixed number of rounds instead of a fixed number of failures as the timer for the challenge. Also, you should probably have abilities that interact with Skill Challenges.
Mostly I think the rules for rituals are dumb, but the idea of having some non-combat effects being class independent is a good one.


5e
Honestly, I don't think there's anything 5e does that other editions don't do as well or better.AS

Other Stuff:

Constitution becomes part of Strength. Charisma becomes a part of Wisdom. Neither of those attributes does anything interesting on its own.
The Fighter class gets removed for the reasons mentioned above. The concept simply isn't salvageable.
Tiers use the names from 4e with either a 5/10/5 or 10/5/5 split for a total of 20 levels, depending on how exactly you define things.
The game needs a default setting. Probably not one of the major established settings. Maybe you grab the name of an obscure setting from AD&D and basically remake it on whatever lines you want.
Better (actually, existent) rules for mass combat and kingdom management.
Ever class gets a resource management system and some resources to manage. Hopefully these are thematic and support the class concept (e.g. Barbarian gets a Rage Meter).
As a result of the previous, you need a more space-efficient way of writing abilities. 3e's is bad, 4e's was worse.
Every class (or Paragon Path, or Epic Destiny) needs a way to scale through the entire range of challenges.
No more multiclassing. You get a class and a subclass. There's a subclass version of every base class, but some things that aren't base classes can also fit in that slot. For example, monster progressions (like Giants) and stuff like Dragonmarks from Eberron go here.
The Cleric class no longer exists. Priests of different gods should have different ability suites. As such, Cleric is now a subclass that grants whatever universal priest-y abilities that servants of both Pelor and Nerull should have.
Oh, also, the D&D gods are crap. This probably goes hand-in-hand with the "new setting" comment, but the gods need to be replaced because they don't have any traction. The replacements should probably draw from mythology, because people can tell you who Thor is in a way that they can't tell you who Kord is.
Alignment is also crap. No more alignment. Replace it with the MTG color wheel, because you have a coherent set of well defined values, and as a result should stop trying to use the weird mishmash of Christian ethics and mind caulk that is D&D alignment.
Start with the challenges and the expectations for PCs, then write PC abilities. Then test things. Iteratively test things until you end up at whatever equilibrium you're targeting.


I can only disagree with some specific "other stuff" (mostly stats and class/subclass ideas). Otherwise you're pretty much on point as far as I'm concerned.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-09, 03:27 AM
I learned that one of my friends, currently running a D&D 5e campaign, is trying to fix D&D. Besides some spell list adjustments and other smaller tweaks they making turns resolve simultaneously. I don't see that ending well. Especially how precise you are supposed to declare your moves ahead of time. Anyone seen that before?

Simultaneous resolution is a thing in several games. Some games do a straight-up "You declare, I declare, he declares, she declares, now everyone try to resolve everything all at once" for actual simultaneous resolution, which works only until you have any kind of conflicting actions and then it basically falls apart.

Other games make an attempt to make things feel more simultaneous than turn-based games do, either phased simultaneous resolution or ordered simultaneous resolution. BECMI/OD&D does the phased version, having four phases of Movement/Missile/Magic/Melee, so everyone moves first (probably no conflicts), then makes ranged attacks (probably no conflicts), and the same for spells and melee attacks, with initiative and declarations handled by side rather than by character; it works well enough to make things feel simultaneous at large scales where closing in to melee, volleys of arrows, etc. are a thing, but it's less effective in your typical dungeon scenario.

WHRP does the ordered version: after rolling initiative, actions are declared in order from lowest initiative to highest and resolved from highest to lowest, allowing higher-initiative characters to interrupt lower-initiative characters more organically. It's the most simultaneous-feeling of them all, but it's a bookkeeping nightmare to resolve when you have more than a handful of characters to deal with.

So it's one of those things that sounds great and everyone wants to try, but doesn't work out too well in practice.


Things to take away from previous editions:
AD&D:
There isn't a lot in AD&D that later editions haven't done better. Notably, THAC0, separate XP tables, and racial level limits are so bad as to be disqualifying in the modern day. The DMing advice is garbage. Even the things people mostly advocate for (notably: all the various ways casters are weaker) aren't good ideas.

I'd actually argue that there's a lot AD&D does best out of all the editions, at least at the conceptual level if not in the implementation. And if you're giving 4e credit for "great concept, terrible execution," AD&D definitely deserves at least that much. :smallwink:

1e gives better tools for encounter-building (monster rarity, more ecology/society information, and the like, though of course the XP rewards don't hold a candle to 3e's CR system), multiclassing vs. dual-classing to enable you to handle both "I'm an equally good fighter and wizard!" builds and "I'm an X who dabbles in Y!" builds (though the specifics where demihumans couldn't dual-class, humans couldn't multiclass, multiclass combinations were fixed, and dual-class leveling was wonky were pretty terrible), an emphasis on domain management at the mid levels to make the game's changing playstyles as you level more explicit, random magic item tables that explicitly favor noncasters, detailed wilderness/hex crawl adventuring rules, and the like.

2e gives specialty priests and priest spheres that make different divine casters feel distinct, kits allowing PrC-like customization of characters from 1st level instead of 5th or 6th, NWPs explicitly letting you do things without having to roll for them (unlike 3e skills where many basic tasks are DC 10 to 15 so characters can fail them more often than expected whenever they can't take 10), lots of default combat options from Player Options (Combat & Tactics), "epic" foes like gods and unique monsters having HD in the high teens to low 20s so you can actually face them before the game totally breaks down, and the like.

Even if the specific mechanics are thrown out (and they probably should be), there's a lot in AD&D to mine for useful ideas. In fact, many of the things you mention below under "other stuff" shows up in AD&D in that form or a similar form.



Random magic items are better than WBL. Magic items should feel special, and for that to happen you need to not get the same magic items every game. That said, it does help worldbuilding if there's at least some possibility of getting consistent items.


Note that 3e WBL isn't a hard-and-fast "the party must get this much gold worth of stuff at each level" rule, as it's often portrayed online and as it's usually used in PbP games. It's a general "the average results of treasure tables give these values, so characters starting above 1st are expected to have roughly this much stuff" guideline:


Published adventures always provide a guideline for which levels of characters are appropriate to play. Keep in mind that this information is based on character power as well as expected treasure. Table 5–1: Character Wealth by Level gives a guideline for about how much treasure a character of a certain level should possess. This guideline is based on the (slightly more than) thirteen-encounters-per-level formula and assumes average treasures were given out. If you use a published adventure but tend to be generous with experience points, you might find that the characters in your group don’t have as much treasure as the scenario assumes. Likewise, if you’re stingy with experience points, the characters will probably gain treasure faster than levels. Of course, if you’re stingy or generous with both treasure and experience points, it might just all even out.


As long as your campaign is reasonably close to the PC gear guidelines outlined in Creating PCs above 1st Level (page 199), you can use Table 5–1: Character Wealth by Level to set the gear. For example, a new 13th-level character should have 110,000 gp in gear. If your characters are more than 20% higher or lower than the values on the table, adjust the gear value for the new character by the same percentage. If the three 12th-level characters each have 132,000 gp in equipment (50% above the norm of 88,000), give a new 11th-level character 99,000 gp (50% above the norm of 66,000).

DMs can ignore WBL entirely (as long as they compensate elsewhere for giving much less or much more treasure than expected), randomly roll up treasure roughly equaling WBL, and so on, so for most of the game (basically until the party can teleport and plane shift to go item shopping in large metropolises basically guaranteed to have the stuff they want) players having cookie-cutter magic items is more of a DM thing than a system thing.

But I agree that in general the game should incentivize getting (and keeping and using) random items rather than self-crafting everything, by making the random ones better for a given resource expenditure or just by making crafting inefficient for even-level items like 1e does.


I think Gish is exactly the right name for your Wizard/Fighter class. Because that's the name that Wizard/Fighters (at least, Githyank Wizard/Fighters) have in D&Dland. It's already a word the game supports for the concept.

The reason I'm not sold on Gish is precisely because it's exclusive to githyanki in a way that other classes aren't, so "I'm a gish specializing in spell channeling!" doesn't work in-character in the same way "I'm a wizard specializing in evocation!" or "I'm a priest/champion of Pelor!" does. But there's definitely no other term that comes close to replacing it, so I'm using it for now.

Psikerlord
2018-06-09, 05:10 AM
How I would fix dnd, wide ranging changes - overall objective, make it gritty, low magic - see Low Fantasy Gaming in my sig.

How I would fix 5e with minimal changes: see 5e Hardmode in my sig.

Ignimortis
2018-06-09, 05:41 AM
Actually, I've been ruminating on this for a long time and had asked friends and acquaintances on how they would fix D&D, and based on how much I see this on the forums and in people's answers...

Not sure if this merits a separate thread, and I want to ask - why so many people wish for D&D to be a gritty low magic fantasy game? It hasn't been that for ages, and there are literally dozens of those on the market, as far as I'm aware, and they have been designed as such from the start. I've heard lots of good things (bad things too, though) about LotFP, some good remarks on Shadow of the Demon Lord or something like that, etc. Most heartbreakers of older D&D versions also attempt to skew the board towards "gritty realism".

Meanwhile, my project of remaking D&D only exists because there is no game I know of in the genre of "superpowered fantasy heroes" aside from Exalted similar in tone to what I want to play and DM, and Exalted's mechanics are kinda bad and would require much more work to redo properly, while higher-level D&D would work quite well for that with a full progression in 20 levels from mortal to demigod.

Psikerlord
2018-06-09, 07:21 AM
Actually, I've been ruminating on this for a long time and had asked friends and acquaintances on how they would fix D&D, and based on how much I see this on the forums and in people's answers...

Not sure if this merits a separate thread, and I want to ask - why so many people wish for D&D to be a gritty low magic fantasy game? It hasn't been that for ages, and there are literally dozens of those on the market, as far as I'm aware, and they have been designed as such from the start. I've heard lots of good things (bad things too, though) about LotFP, some good remarks on Shadow of the Demon Lord or something like that, etc. Most heartbreakers of older D&D versions also attempt to skew the board towards "gritty realism".

Meanwhile, my project of remaking D&D only exists because there is no game I know of in the genre of "superpowered fantasy heroes" aside from Exalted similar in tone to what I want to play and DM, and Exalted's mechanics are kinda bad and would require much more work to redo properly, while higher-level D&D would work quite well for that with a full progression in 20 levels from mortal to demigod.

Interesting, I find the opposite to be true: there are many high magic systems, but very few low magic ones; almost none, in fact. Fairly sure Shadow of the Demon Lord, and Lotfp, aren't low magic (havent looked into them too closely however).

The main reason I want low magic is, ironically (?), to make magic "magical". When magic is everywhere, and reliable, it just becomes a kind of science. And gritty, because I want to feel like I earned my victories. I am a gameplay > story guy. Dont get me wrong, I want a bit of story, but not at the cost of genuine risk and potential PC death/TPK.

You might also check out Godbound, I think that's a epic power dnd game.

Ignimortis
2018-06-09, 08:08 AM
Interesting, I find the opposite to be true: there are many high magic systems, but very few low magic ones; almost none, in fact. Fairly sure Shadow of the Demon Lord, and Lotfp, aren't low magic (havent looked into them too closely however).

The main reason I want low magic is, ironically (?), to make magic "magical". When magic is everywhere, and reliable, it just becomes a kind of science. And gritty, because I want to feel like I earned my victories. I am a gameplay > story guy. Dont get me wrong, I want a bit of story, but not at the cost of genuine risk and potential PC death/TPK.

You might also check out Godbound, I think that's a epic power dnd game.

Well, I do understand that approach to magic — it's not what I'm going for in my games, but I can dig that. The trick is that if you give PCs access to magic, it's really hard to make it mysterious and unreliable. It's possible, but it usually discourages people who play magic-users.

As for grittiness, I meant mostly how people present it - wounds don't heal easily, equipment is scarce, etc. So basically trying to run a survival game at lower levels or even at all levels. You've described something that fits into "higher risk deadly encounters" which are possible in many environments, and I actually love those too.

I've seen Godbound, and it's a bit too high-power for my needs. The trick is, there are two sides of the axis — the "we're playing barely surviving all too mortal chumps" crowd and the "we're playing gods from the get-go" opposite. What I like D&D, 3.5 in particular, is the growth from 1-2 on that scale to 7-9. I don't need either extreme, and "fantasy superheroes" who are still involved in their world but are way above the normal human is not as well-represented, unless one converts actual superhero systems to fantasy or something.

Theoboldi
2018-06-09, 08:08 AM
You might also check out Godbound, I think that's a epic power dnd game.

Definitely seconding Godbound. It's basically Exalted's level of power and tone, but with old-school D&D-style mechanics (albeit much more streamlined and easier to play), along with some neat rules for how PCs of that powerlevel can change and influence different factions and the world at large. The full, basic game is even completely free, with a paid deluxe version including additional rules for mortal player characters than can become gods later in-game, supernatural martial arts, and divine mechas.


On how to fix D&D......well, bring back psionics. Make them feel distinct from magic. Done. That'd be enough for me. 5th edition otherwise has been pretty enjoyable for me so far.

Edit: And Swordsage'd. Dang. Still, I will recommend the Godbound Mortals rules. They even differentiate between common and heroic mortals, depending on how gritty you want the low levels to be.

RazorChain
2018-06-09, 09:45 AM
How I would fix dnd, wide ranging changes - overall objective, make it gritty, low magic - see Low Fantasy Gaming in my sig.

How I would fix 5e with minimal changes: see 5e Hardmode in my sig.

Haha I at least you can put money where your mouth is. I just play other systems that have grittyness and low magic

Cosi
2018-06-09, 09:50 AM
I'd actually argue that there's a lot AD&D does best out of all the editions, at least at the conceptual level if not in the implementation.

Possibly. Certainly, some of the things you've outlined seem reasonable.


multiclassing vs. dual-classing to enable you to handle both "I'm an equally good fighter and wizard!" builds and "I'm an X who dabbles in Y!" builds

I agree that those are things you want to handle, but I disagree that the game handles them well. The brute reality is that being a Wizard 8/Fighter 8 is not balanced with being a Ranger 10. There are too many potential pitfalls, and the workload you have to do is combinatoric. Balancing arbitrary class combinations at arbitrary rations is NP hard or harder.


random magic item tables that explicitly favor noncasters

I don't think that's a good thing. It's an outgrowth of the idea that casters are supposed to be baseline better than martials. Biasing treasure against casters just makes casters care less about adventuring, and it mitigates the important role of arbitrary treasure piles -- letting the DM give pity items to whichever character happens to be underperforming.


2e gives specialty priests and priest spheres that make different divine casters feel distinct

AD&D still has a unified Priest list with both animate dead and plant growth.


kits allowing PrC-like customization of characters from 1st level instead of 5th or 6th

That's just ACFs or Archetypes or whatever you want to call it. Those exist in 3e, Pathfinder, and 5e. It's an idea that AD&D did first, but it's not really a particularly uniquely AD&D idea.


The reason I'm not sold on Gish is precisely because it's exclusive to githyanki in a way that other classes aren't, so "I'm a gish specializing in spell channeling!" doesn't work in-character in the same way "I'm a wizard specializing in evocation!" or "I'm a priest/champion of Pelor!" does. But there's definitely no other term that comes close to replacing it, so I'm using it for now.

Sure it does. You can either retcon the name to being a general term for something Githyanki simply happen to do a lot of, or declare that the Githyanki invented the technique. Any number of real world general terms come from specific cultures.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-09, 04:18 PM
I agree that those are things you want to handle, but I disagree that the game handles them well. The brute reality is that being a Wizard 8/Fighter 8 is not balanced with being a Ranger 10. There are too many potential pitfalls, and the workload you have to do is combinatoric. Balancing arbitrary class combinations at arbitrary rations is NP hard or harder.

It's no harder to balance wizard 8//fighter 8 with ranger 10 or druid 8//ranger 8 with wizard 10 than it is to balance wizard 4/fighter 4 with wizard 2/fighter 6 with wizard 8 with ranger 3/druid 5 with druid 1/ranger 7 with ranger 8. Which is to say, neither case is at all feasible to balance on a level-by-level basis, no designer is ever going to go through combinatorially like that for either version, and figuring out which combos are amazing, terrible, or somewhere in between is something to be left to the hive mind of the internet to figure out years later. The best you can do is look at combinations holistically: is there any obvious synergy or anti-synergy with a Class A//Class B multiclass, are there any obvious breakpoints at level X for Class A such that Class A X//Class B [20-X] is always better than Class A 20, and stuff like that.

So that's a great argument for not actually having multiclassing at all (which isn't an option if you're trying to be D&D; even 4e had it, and it obviously didn't want to), but if you are going to have multiclassing then the bad parts of having both versions are really no worse than the bad parts of having either one, and there are definite benefits to having both like supporting more concepts at lower levels, not needing to have dual-progression PrCs or the equivalent, reducing the number of hybrid classes you need to support, and so forth.


I don't think that's a good thing. It's an outgrowth of the idea that casters are supposed to be baseline better than martials. Biasing treasure against casters just makes casters care less about adventuring, and it mitigates the important role of arbitrary treasure piles -- letting the DM give pity items to whichever character happens to be underperforming.

It's not a good thing if you somehow end up balancing casters and noncasters, but in the context of a game where you haven't managed to do that it helps the balance a bit.

More generally, though, the benefit there is biasing the treasure tables to give players items they'll find useful. While the 3e random weapons tables do have varying d% ranges for different weapons, the one in the DMG gives you an equal chance of finding a luck blade (really good for anyone), a holy avenger (generally useful, but really good for a paladin), and a trident of fish command (seriously?). Meanwhile, the 1e tables skew heavily towards generally useful items (and toward a few specific types of armor and weapons, making it easier for fighter types to decide what they want to specialize in). The idea is not necessarily to favor one class over another, but to favor items that PCs are likely to want (and therefore not sell to craft their own items).


AD&D still has a unified Priest list with both animate dead and plant growth.

No, it has a single page where all the priest spells are listed by level, but it's not like the 3e cleric list in that all priests can access all spells; in fact, there's not a single 3rd-level PHB priest spell in the All sphere that all priests could access. Animate dead is in the Necromantic sphere and plant growth is in the Plant sphere, so no priest could cast both of those spells unless they worship one of only a handful of gods of the hundreds published that grant minor access to both of those spheres.

It's a common complaint that 3e clerics of different religions feel too same-y, and a commonly suggested fix to have them cast domain spells from their general slots and general spells from their domain slots. Spheres are like that, except with much larger domains and a much, much smaller general list.


That's just ACFs or Archetypes or whatever you want to call it. Those exist in 3e, Pathfinder, and 5e. It's an idea that AD&D did first, but it's not really a particularly uniquely AD&D idea.

It's not unique, but it is different. AD&D kits are more extensive in their changes and benefits than 3e ACFs and substitution levels, and they're optional and cumulative with subclasses/archetypes/etc. unlike the mandatory and singular PF and 5e versions. I'm not saying the AD&D version is necessarily best (maybe you don't want the complexity of class/subclass/kit for everything), but it is another approach that you miss if you only look at 3e and later.


Sure it does. You can either retcon the name to being a general term for something Githyanki simply happen to do a lot of, or declare that the Githyanki invented the technique. Any number of real world general terms come from specific cultures.

Considering the githyanki are known to kill anyone who takes something from them without permission.... :smallwink:

But seriously, I agree with you that it works in general, which is why I'm using it. It's jut not final in the way Warrior, Priest, Champion, or Trickster are, that's all.

JoeJ
2018-06-09, 05:34 PM
No, it has a single page where all the priest spells are listed by level, but it's not like the 3e cleric list in that all priests can access all spells; in fact, there's not a single 3rd-level PHB priest spell in the All sphere that all priests could access. Animate dead is in the Necromantic sphere and plant growth is in the Plant sphere, so no priest could cast both of those spells unless they worship one of only a handful of gods of the hundreds published that grant minor access to both of those spheres.

AD&D added spheres and specialty priests in 2e. In 1e there were just clerics, and they all had the same spell list.

2D8HP
2018-06-09, 06:05 PM
Actually, I've been ruminating on this for a long time and had asked friends and acquaintances on how they would fix D&D, and based on how much I see this on the forums and in people's answers...

Not sure if this merits a separate thread, and I want to ask - why so many people wish for D&D to be a gritty low magic fantasy game? .


Because I want "Dungeons & Dragons" to feel more like the D&D I played again (but not all of the way, having most of my new PC's survive till second level is an exciting novelty).


It hasn't been that for ages,


I suppose, but that change was while I wasn't playing, so it seems like a big adjustment.


and there are literally dozens of those on the market, as far as I'm aware, and they have been designed as such from the start.


As was D&D, at first.


I've heard lots of good things (bad things too, though) about LotFP, some good remarks on Shadow of the Demon Lord or something like that, etc. Most heartbreakers of older D&D versions also attempt to skew the board towards "gritty realism".

Meanwhile, my project of remaking D&D only exists because there is no game I know of in the genre of "superpowered fantasy heroes"


1985's Fantasy Hero leaps to mind


aside from Exalted similar in tone to what I want to play and DM, and Exalted's mechanics are kinda bad and would require much more work to redo properly, while higher-level D&D would work quite well for that with a full progression in 20 levels from mortal to demigod.


Why does "E6" exist?

Above 10th level WD&D just seems weird to me, and apparently (according Mike Mearls) most 5e WD&D is played no higher than 7th level, which seems believable to me).

TD&D definitely had "power creep" over it's 25 years, but nothing like the giant jump that was 3e WD&D (and I presume 4e).

That a common complaint about 5e WD&D is that it is too "low power" seems amazing to me as, while fun, it seems more like 3e WD&D to me than TD&D.

In most things 5e WD&D seems like a "compromise edition" designed to be "everyone's second favorite: and, judging by how many new players there are, it seemd to be working.

Psikerlord
2018-06-09, 06:32 PM
I've seen Godbound, and it's a bit too high-power for my needs. The trick is, there are two sides of the axis — the "we're playing barely surviving all too mortal chumps" crowd and the "we're playing gods from the get-go" opposite. What I like D&D, 3.5 in particular, is the growth from 1-2 on that scale to 7-9. I don't need either extreme, and "fantasy superheroes" who are still involved in their world but are way above the normal human is not as well-represented, unless one converts actual superhero systems to fantasy or something.

Ah right gotcha sure I can see what you're going for. Yeah I'd like to see what you create for that, keep us posted :)

Cluedrew
2018-06-09, 06:38 PM
On Favourite D&D: 5e might actually be my favourite version of D&D. Mind you I haven't played the pre-3 versions, set up a game in one though, but we never got to play that. On the other hand of systems I've played 5th only ranks above a friend's homebrew and other editions of D&D. So I'm not sure what that says. Except that there are a lot of great systems out there that are not D&D. I should play more of them.


But seriously, I agree with you that it works in general, which is why I'm using it. It's jut not final in the way Warrior, Priest, Champion, or Trickster are, that's all.Did you see Soldier, Theologian and Mage-knight?

Mage-knight is definitely the weakest of the three, that one is hard. I can think of one setting that gave them a name and that used the term hybrid. They didn't have mixes in the same way.

Jay R
2018-06-09, 07:41 PM
I strongly urge people to drop the goal of "fixing D&D", and set a new goal of running a fun game.

If broken D&D leads to a fun game, then broken D&D is fine.
If "fixed " D&D leads to a dull game, then fixed D&D is a problem.

The goal should never be to fix a game system. The goal should be to run a fun game.

Morty
2018-06-09, 07:55 PM
What I would do with D&D would probably render it unrecognizable and cause people to abandon ship. Most things that make it what it is are completely contrary to good game design. But, here we go: First off, before we go into classes or whatever, the basic systems have to be redone.


Combat. For a game that focuses so much on it, D&D's model of fighting is dreadful. Without magic, there's just one thing to do: hit AC, deal HP damage. Every mundane form of defence is boiled down to AC or HP. Then there's the issue of HP being sometimes luck and gumption and sometimes durability, but really neither.

What D&D needs is a proper split between "mushy" health that can be lost and gained easily and "meaty" health that means you're actually hurt. Starfinder had it. Why isn't it going to be in PF2e? I guess tradition. Of course, even the "mushy" HP shouldn't bloat nearly as much as HP do in D&D. I think we need to start from assuming your starting HP won't change and see how much it breaks things, then work from there.

There needs to be an actual difference between trying to hit someone clad in plate, a robe-clad martial artist running rings around you or a wizard hiding behind a shield spell. And everything in between. If they all boil down to trying to hit the same static number, we're not going to get anywhere. It's just going to amount to depleting HP and everything remotely interesting requiring you to spend build resources on it.


Levels. D&D has a power curve no other system really has. You start out as a nobody or a decently competent adventurer, depending on the edition - then grow into massive power just by fighting progressively more dangerous enemies. And the game has never really known what to do with the power it gives PCs above level 7 or so. They turn into world-shaking superheroes and then just straight-up demigods - a high-level fighter might be pathetic compared to spellcasters or level-appropriate opponents, but compared to 90% of the people in the world, they're unapproachable.

So there's two layers here - the power progression and how to represent it mechanically. Regarding the latter, I honestly have a hard time seeing a benefit to levels, except that people would flip their lids if they were gone. What do levels even help with? They make it a bit easier to compare characters, but they suffocate and restrict progression. You always get this many feats, skills, spells and so on. No wriggle room. You can't advance in one thing without improving a bunch of unrelated ones. This is especially aggravating when combined with the endless HP inflation. You can't get better at anything without also acquiring superhero-like durability.

Regardless of whether we ditch levels or not, the power progression has to be cleaned up. And decoupled from levels at least somewhat. D&D has a massive problem of half of its published material not seeing much play, since few campaigns even get that far. On the flipside, a long-running campaign can often take players into power levels they're not enthusiastic to deal with. Your humble wizard apprentice will eventually become Dr. Strange (sidenote: I know very little about Dr. Strange, don't quote me). Your tough and dependable fighting man/woman/person... well, they're still going to be inept compared to most fictional martial heroes, and most elite fighting forces of the real world, but still perfectly capable of taking on a small army and winning. You can't really play them the same way after that, and the world won't react to them the same way.

So what do we do with this? D&D has to embrace variable power levels. E6 did that, so let's roll with it. Let players pause and slow down progression past a certain level. If we assume 20 levels, level 10 seems like an obvious cutoff point. Past that point, you either keep advancing and become a superhero, or slow down and focus on developing your influence, reach and diversity. You'll be a major part of the setting without necessarily being able to solo an army. It can happen earlier, if you want.

I feel like the game should also really encourage starting out on a higher power level, though. Honestly, the idea that you gain levels instead of just having them is kind of problematic in general. But people need to be able to play a more heroic game without having to go through the low levels first. Whether that means just starting out at higher level and spending more time at chargen, or something else.

Above else, be honest. Stop trying to pretend all those epic heroes, villains and people in-between have no effect on the world beyond just what the plot requires.


So once we get that out of the way, we can delve into classes, magic and stuff.


Classes need a... very thorough reworking. Like, we need to decide on what a class even means. Which has to cover all its level progression. As Cosi said earlier, "fighter" just isn't a concept that goes beyond level 5. Or 10, on a good day. What does a class gives us? What doesn't it give us? Is the be-all, end-all defining power of a D&D class anything more than a fossilized relic? Maybe the world won't end if a martial-oriented class can pick up some magic without multiclassing. Or, rather... some spells. Whether or not they should use magic without using spells is a whole other question. A model I considered was:

Three martial classes - one "defender" one, modelled after the 4e fighter. One "vanguard", which is like the barbarian only not stupidly narrow; it's all about being aggressive and disruptive while being capable of limited "bursts" of power. One "warlord" that's a leader and tactician. Then three magic classes... either wizard/druid/cleric or something else. More on that below. Druids don't need to be spellcasters, though. We can have a nature-oriented "wilder" class without tying it to spells. There needs to be more "expert" classes than the rogue, as well. But we do need to decide if we want different classes to have different amount of non-combat, non-magical skills. Even if we decide to decouple those proficiencies entirely, there still need to be classes who rely more on misdirection and preparation than martial or magical power. Rangers can be folded into druids and whatever "physical expert" class we end up having; this class has no reason to exist. Paladins, though, can remain as a hybrid class of a martial zealot whose oaths and beliefs give them divine power.


Magic, likewise, needs a good looking at. A lot of the assumptions of what D&D magic can do are simply detrimental to a good game, or good world-building. I don't think daily spells are salvageable, but spell preparation could work without tying it to long rests. Do we need the arcane/divine split? Maybe. I'm leaning more towards a learned/granted/innate power. One is power you develop yourself through study and practice, like a wizard or occultist. One is gained from a patron, like a cleric or warlock. And the third one is power that comes from the inside, like a sorcerer or maybe psion.

Apart from that, there needs to be less of a focus on "I can fix it easy, so long as I've got the right spell". Magic has to be fun and powerful, but it needs to enable stories, not bypass them.

There needs to be a greater focus on magic activities that aren't spells. This means both "rituals" or generally long-term magic projects required to accomplish some effects. It also means that you can interact with magic without necessarily casting spells. Maybe it means accomplishing supernatural power through martial arts - but also an experienced cat-burglar being able to disable and disrupt magical effects with enough skill and elbow grease. Or someone who does just straight-up do magic that no one is going to call anything else, but doesn't use spells the way a wizard does.


There you go. A not particularly coherent ramble that boils down to starting from scratch without a very clear goal of what to do from there. But I don't think anything short of that would be ultimately worth the effort - more like painting over a rusted car whose engine is leaking.

Ignimortis
2018-06-10, 12:00 AM
Ah right gotcha sure I can see what you're going for. Yeah I'd like to see what you create for that, keep us posted :)

I will, once I get it done. Thanks :)


I strongly urge people to drop the goal of "fixing D&D", and set a new goal of running a fun game.

If broken D&D leads to a fun game, then broken D&D is fine.
If "fixed " D&D leads to a dull game, then fixed D&D is a problem.

The goal should never be to fix a game system. The goal should be to run a fun game.

That's the point. Fixing D&D means turning it into a game that's easy to run as something fun for you and your players. That's why nobody can agree on all the points about how D&D should be fixed.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-10, 01:47 AM
AD&D added spheres and specialty priests in 2e. In 1e there were just clerics, and they all had the same spell list.

Yes, I know; I specifically noted spheres as one of the benefits of 2e AD&D in my original post. Though I guess some people think of AD&D as just 1e, and he could have mixed those up.


There needs to be an actual difference between trying to hit someone clad in plate, a robe-clad martial artist running rings around you or a wizard hiding behind a shield spell. And everything in between. If they all boil down to trying to hit the same static number, we're not going to get anywhere. It's just going to amount to depleting HP and everything remotely interesting requiring you to spend build resources on it.

3e is actually most of the way there, with AC, Reflex, and miss chances mapping nicely to the slow-and-heavily-armored, fast-and-dodgy, and magically-deflective archetypes. You could also add in parrying, as a defense that's not quite the sit-there-and-take-it of AC and not quite the missed-him-by-a-mile of miss chances and is suited well to a skirmisher character. If different kinds of attacks were nicely distributed among these defenses, either on the offense end (e.g. allowing a broad sweeping strike to target Reflex) or the defense end (e.g. letting certain characters go into "dodge mode" and start miss-chance-ing and Reflex-ing attacks normally directed at AC or parry defense), that would give you some nice tactical depth there.


Rangers can be folded into druids and whatever "physical expert" class we end up having; this class has no reason to exist. Paladins, though, can remain as a hybrid class of a martial zealot whose oaths and beliefs give them divine power.

Why oh why does everyone want to get rid of the poor ranger while keeping the paladin? :smallwink: The ranger is to the druid what the paladin is to the cleric, the psychic warrior is to the psion, the soulborn is to the incarnate, the duskblade is to the wizard...if the other partial casters have a sufficiently strong archetype to exist on their own, so can the ranger, and if they don't (er, soulborn aside) then the ranger shouldn't be the only one going away.

And I do think the ranger can fill its own niche, just like the paladin as a smiting, self-healing, aura-granting machine can have a distinct existence from both a combat-focused cleric and a faithful fighter. While animal companions, special fighting styles, terrain-specific abilities, and the like can and have been done by the fighter and druid, the "dedicated X slayer" parts of ranger (whether that's monster types, specific organizations, specific individuals bounty-hunter style) really don't fit into either niche as well (being more of a rogue or assassin thing), and the "supernaturally stealthy in natural surroundings" and "one with nature" parts don't fit either the druid (who, despite all the one-with-nature rhetoric, is really more of a commander of nature with scary beasts and flashy weather magic and such) or the fighter (who doesn't have a nature theme at all).

Basically, to hit all the high points of a traditional ranger, you'd need to mix parts of fighter, rogue, and druid, and that's a good sign it could remain its own class, in the same way that the bard grew to have much more of its own identity than just a fighter/thief/druid in the 1e days.


Magic, likewise, needs a good looking at. A lot of the assumptions of what D&D magic can do are simply detrimental to a good game, or good world-building. I don't think daily spells are salvageable, but spell preparation could work without tying it to long rests.

I always like the AD&D "every spell takes 10 minutes per spell level to prepare" option, with the alteration that you don't need to rest 8 hours to re-prepare spells as long as you keep preparing the same spells in the same slots (so you can cast/prepare/cast/prepare/cast/prepare all day if it's the same spells, but swapping spells requires rest). At low levels, wizards with their one or two spells can take 10-20 minutes between combats and be good to go, basically being per-encounter casters; at high levels, it can take over a day (roughly 2.5 days for high-level 1e wizards) to prepare a full spell allotment, enabling wizards to prepare a couple spells here and a couple there without trouble but requiring a bunch of downtime if they run through everything.

That setup does what spell preparation is intended to accomplish compared to point-based or other spellcasting models (forcing you to have both high- and low-level abilities instead of nova-ing high-level ones, making you choose a smaller subset of known spells for each phase of an adventure, etc.) without being able to refresh everything each day as 3e lets you do.


Do we need the arcane/divine split? Maybe. I'm leaning more towards a learned/granted/innate power. One is power you develop yourself through study and practice, like a wizard or occultist. One is gained from a patron, like a cleric or warlock. And the third one is power that comes from the inside, like a sorcerer or maybe psion.

The two are mostly orthogonal issues, I think. For each of arcane, divine, and psionics, you can have learned (wizard/archivist/psion), granted (warlock/cleric/ardent), and innate (sorcerer/favored soul/wilder) power. Heck, it continues for other power sources: incarnum sorta has it (the flavor's a bit muddled and has incarnum itself being all three, but they lean toward incarnate being more wizard-y and learned, soulborn being more paladin-y and granted, and totemist being more barbarian-y and innate), a hypothetical separate nature power source would have it (druids are strictly granted at the moment, but since druids are basically three classes I could see a "beastmaster" [companions] being learned, a "druid" [casty] being granted, and a "shifter" [wild shape] being innate), a "spirits" power source could have it (binder is learned, shugenja is granted, and the spirit shaman with its spirit guide being tied to the spirit shaman's soul is kinda innate if you squint), and so forth.

That's one reason why I like the class/subclass/kit model. You can have Mage, Priest, Druid, and Psionicist classes that do the basic arcane, cleric-divine, nature-divine, and psionic spellcasting/manifesting, then subclasses for each can set the ability-learning and -recovery methods, swap key ability modifiers, and so forth. Or you can do it the other way, and have Scholar, Mystic, and Wilder classes for learned/granted/innate respectively that grant basic powers like, I dunno, knowledge stuff, healing stuff, and basic magic blasting stuff, and then you layer different power sources on top of those.

Either way, the class/subclass design style works well for patterns of classes like that--and for the three martial and three skills classes you mentioned before, which if you think about it also kinda fall into the learned/granted/innate buckets like that, with warlord/vanguard/defender for martial and maybe factotum/monk/rogue for skills.


That's the point. Fixing D&D means turning it into a game that's easy to run as something fun for you and your players. That's why nobody can agree on all the points about how D&D should be fixed.

Agreed. There are some parts of D&D that can be objectively fixed and pretty much everyone agrees how to do it, but most things in D&D can only be "fixed" in different ways for different tastes, and while some of those fixes may work for very large groups of people there's no single right answer for most of it.

Pleh
2018-06-10, 07:19 AM
Basically, to hit all the high points of a traditional ranger, you'd need to mix parts of fighter, rogue, and druid, and that's a good sign it could remain its own class, in the same way that the bard grew to have much more of its own identity than just a fighter/thief/druid in the 1e days.

To be fair, maybe part of the problem is that we still really only have 1 iconic Ranger to draw from. Does Aragorn really merit his own class?

That said, if all you want was a nature based Rogue Fighter, then Scout can fill that concept just fine.

So maybe Ranger, to step away from the Aragorn limitations, should get renamed as "hunter/slayer" and incorporate more abilities like an off brand Witcher.

In fact, I think it'd be cool if this "hunter/slayer" class chose its theme based on its favored enemy type. If you favored enemies are humanoids, you're an assassin (or bounty hunter). If it's animals, you're a hunter. If it's magical beasts, you're a witcher. If it's undead, you're a ghost buster. And so on.

Jay R
2018-06-10, 08:11 AM
That's the point. Fixing D&D means turning it into a game that's easy to run as something fun for you and your players. That's why nobody can agree on all the points about how D&D should be fixed.

More importantly, I've had fun with it for over 40 years. I've played, and run, games with specific home-brewed fixes built in. I've played new versions intended to fix the problems of old versions. I've played with supplements intended to fix the problems.

And I've had fun each time - and not significantly less or more fun than any other time.

Recognizing all the flaws, I still maintain that there's nothing to fix.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-06-10, 08:44 AM
Starting from a base of 5e, I don't think it needs fixes per se.

I would like to see something done to reduce the ravioli nature of spell selection. Instead of broad lists from which you can pick and choose (so your worshiper of the god of fire and burnination has that really OP ice spell always prepared, or your blasty evocation specialist also has equal facility with polymorph and teleport as a specialist in those areas), I'd like more constrained choices. Not quite to the level of a fixed-list caster (which requires a profusion of classes with small differences) or a specialist wizard (because the schools are badly balanced and really not designed for that).

My thought has been more of an intermediate or union-list caster.

1) create lots of mini-lists, each fitting a theme. No expectation that each list is balanced against all other lists. Spells may occur on multiple lists.
2) grant each class a choice of a couple of these lists from a restricted subset.
2a) either just union the lists together to make the full list
2b) or chose one as primary and give selections from the others at certain points
3) There is no 3.
4) Profit.

I have a very rough initial pass at this in my signature (for 5e). Doing this for 3e would be way too much work--too many spells out there.

I've also been thinking about giving each class a selection of talents. These would be mini-things that either grant new alternate uses for existing features or give passive benefits for using features.

My current (very rough) implementation would involve something like

1) Four categories: Physical, Equipment, Skill, and Magic
2) Each class would get one talent every X levels (leaning toward 2, on the evens).
3) Classes would have restrictions--a fighter might have "Must have more equipment than anything else, and fewest magic", while a wizard must have "more magic, least physical". Or something like that. As I said, it's a rough thing for now.
4) Some classes might get bonus talents in a particular category.

Rhedyn
2018-06-10, 08:49 AM
The Rules Cyclopedia is print on demand now.

You can go back and play BECMI with one book and there is a good chance that you never get past the BE part.

What I find interesting is that Basic D&D had the most comprehensive magic item creation rules of any edition and still includes things like domain management that isn't always included in an edition. Combine this with actual dungeon exploring rules and a "skill system" more fleshed out than 5e (IMHO), it's one of my favorite editions of D&D right up there with 3.x.

D+1
2018-06-10, 12:33 PM
Everybody and their DM has thought about fixing D&D, even though most of us will never complete their fix for one reason or another. Not all of us even agree on what must be done. So I though it might be fun to discuss how you would fix Dungeons & Dragons.I spent about 5 years slowly doing that with 1E: http://home.earthlink.net/~duanevp/dnd/Building%20D&D/buildingdnd.htm
I only use part of what I came up with but have still grown a bit weary of having so many house rules in running it.

Doing that with 3E basically amounts to E6: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?206323-E6-The-Game-Inside-D-amp-D
Most of the remaining issues I have with 3E pretty much CANNOT be fixed beyond that - 3E gave up control of the game to the players - who were given no motivation to stop breaking it.

4E I completely, deliberately avoided.

5E I am late to start playing, so actually not yet familiar enough with to see issues needing change, much less propose solutions.

Any fix to any edition of D&D is decidedly personal project. What some see as fatal flaws others consider a saving grace or a feature to be championed.


So the rules are simple. You must simply explain the changes you'd make and why you'd make them while still keeping: a class and level structure, the ability to explore dungeons and fight monsters, and tactical combat.What I would say generally, no matter what version of the game you're perfecting, in addition to those restrictions I'd add that backward compatibility must NOT be a concern (if you're going to make changes, make changes), and spells/magic is always going to kick your butt. Spells and magic serve to create exceptions to every possible rule and without a doubt are the factor that most readily causes the game to become imbalanced, radically change tone and style of play, and/or generally spiral out of control.

Morty
2018-06-10, 03:51 PM
3e is actually most of the way there, with AC, Reflex, and miss chances mapping nicely to the slow-and-heavily-armored, fast-and-dodgy, and magically-deflective archetypes. You could also add in parrying, as a defense that's not quite the sit-there-and-take-it of AC and not quite the missed-him-by-a-mile of miss chances and is suited well to a skirmisher character. If different kinds of attacks were nicely distributed among these defenses, either on the offense end (e.g. allowing a broad sweeping strike to target Reflex) or the defense end (e.g. letting certain characters go into "dodge mode" and start miss-chance-ing and Reflex-ing attacks normally directed at AC or parry defense), that would give you some nice tactical depth there.

It's true, and 4e is the closest D&D got to letting you target other defences than AC without magic. Still, I don't think armor should translate into being hard to hit. That's shields, parrying and dodging. Armor, or spells that imitate it, blocks attacks that do hit you. The only other system I can think of that just makes armor reduce to-hit chance is nWoD, and even that went away in second edition (AKA Chronicles of Darkness).


Why oh why does everyone want to get rid of the poor ranger while keeping the paladin? :smallwink: The ranger is to the druid what the paladin is to the cleric, the psychic warrior is to the psion, the soulborn is to the incarnate, the duskblade is to the wizard...if the other partial casters have a sufficiently strong archetype to exist on their own, so can the ranger, and if they don't (er, soulborn aside) then the ranger shouldn't be the only one going away.

And I do think the ranger can fill its own niche, just like the paladin as a smiting, self-healing, aura-granting machine can have a distinct existence from both a combat-focused cleric and a faithful fighter. While animal companions, special fighting styles, terrain-specific abilities, and the like can and have been done by the fighter and druid, the "dedicated X slayer" parts of ranger (whether that's monster types, specific organizations, specific individuals bounty-hunter style) really don't fit into either niche as well (being more of a rogue or assassin thing), and the "supernaturally stealthy in natural surroundings" and "one with nature" parts don't fit either the druid (who, despite all the one-with-nature rhetoric, is really more of a commander of nature with scary beasts and flashy weather magic and such) or the fighter (who doesn't have a nature theme at all).

Basically, to hit all the high points of a traditional ranger, you'd need to mix parts of fighter, rogue, and druid, and that's a good sign it could remain its own class, in the same way that the bard grew to have much more of its own identity than just a fighter/thief/druid in the 1e days.

I can see the reasoning behind rangers being hybrid classes. The problem is that while paladins did finally become more than a sum of their parts in 5e, rangers... didn't. They're just an awkward pile of features stapled together. "Slayer of a specific thing" doesn't really work as a class, because if you're not fighting that particular thing, it just doesn't do much for you. And it's not like you need to be a ranger to have it out for a particular species, group or individual.

"One with nature" might do us more good, but it needs to be something more than the ranger has always had. "Sneaking and surviving in the wilds" just doesn't scale upwards - see my previous post. Eventually you can stroll naked through a desert, never get lost and be perfectly quite while running at full-tilt through the woods. Where do we go from there? It's something that a proficiency covers, we don't need a class for it.

I could see rangers inheriting pets from druids, who are bloated with features, and becoming a "beastmaster" class with focus on commanding beasts and becoming like them. That's something you can stretch from level 1 to 20.


I always like the AD&D "every spell takes 10 minutes per spell level to prepare" option, with the alteration that you don't need to rest 8 hours to re-prepare spells as long as you keep preparing the same spells in the same slots (so you can cast/prepare/cast/prepare/cast/prepare all day if it's the same spells, but swapping spells requires rest). At low levels, wizards with their one or two spells can take 10-20 minutes between combats and be good to go, basically being per-encounter casters; at high levels, it can take over a day (roughly 2.5 days for high-level 1e wizards) to prepare a full spell allotment, enabling wizards to prepare a couple spells here and a couple there without trouble but requiring a bunch of downtime if they run through everything.

That setup does what spell preparation is intended to accomplish compared to point-based or other spellcasting models (forcing you to have both high- and low-level abilities instead of nova-ing high-level ones, making you choose a smaller subset of known spells for each phase of an adventure, etc.) without being able to refresh everything each day as 3e lets you do.

I can see that. The problem is not so much how inconvenient it is for casters, but rather that there's no humanly way to balance abilities that can be used at-will or every now and then (like per encounter) with those that have to be recharged daily. They eclipse everything else and every challenge boils down to "can the caster(s) afford to blow through their spells here?".


The two are mostly orthogonal issues, I think. For each of arcane, divine, and psionics, you can have learned (wizard/archivist/psion), granted (warlock/cleric/ardent), and innate (sorcerer/favored soul/wilder) power. Heck, it continues for other power sources: incarnum sorta has it (the flavor's a bit muddled and has incarnum itself being all three, but they lean toward incarnate being more wizard-y and learned, soulborn being more paladin-y and granted, and totemist being more barbarian-y and innate), a hypothetical separate nature power source would have it (druids are strictly granted at the moment, but since druids are basically three classes I could see a "beastmaster" [companions] being learned, a "druid" [casty] being granted, and a "shifter" [wild shape] being innate), a "spirits" power source could have it (binder is learned, shugenja is granted, and the spirit shaman with its spirit guide being tied to the spirit shaman's soul is kinda innate if you squint), and so forth.

That's one reason why I like the class/subclass/kit model. You can have Mage, Priest, Druid, and Psionicist classes that do the basic arcane, cleric-divine, nature-divine, and psionic spellcasting/manifesting, then subclasses for each can set the ability-learning and -recovery methods, swap key ability modifiers, and so forth. Or you can do it the other way, and have Scholar, Mystic, and Wilder classes for learned/granted/innate respectively that grant basic powers like, I dunno, knowledge stuff, healing stuff, and basic magic blasting stuff, and then you layer different power sources on top of those.

Either way, the class/subclass design style works well for patterns of classes like that--and for the three martial and three skills classes you mentioned before, which if you think about it also kinda fall into the learned/granted/innate buckets like that, with warlord/vanguard/defender for martial and maybe factotum/monk/rogue for skills.

I've thought about how those intersect, yes. I don't know which of those I'd prefer to make the "main" axis, but I agree that subclasses help us here. It's just a matter of distilling the core features of each class and then adding the subclass abilities organically.

I also agree that each of the druids' main features are enough for a whole class or subclass, so I could see rangers being one of those, as above.


More importantly, I've had fun with it for over 40 years. I've played, and run, games with specific home-brewed fixes built in. I've played new versions intended to fix the problems of old versions. I've played with supplements intended to fix the problems.

And I've had fun each time - and not significantly less or more fun than any other time.

Recognizing all the flaws, I still maintain that there's nothing to fix.

So... go play it and keep having fun while we're here armchair-designing improvements? I'm not sure why you even care.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-10, 05:04 PM
To be fair, maybe part of the problem is that we still really only have 1 iconic Ranger to draw from. Does Aragorn really merit his own class?

That said, if all you want was a nature based Rogue Fighter, then Scout can fill that concept just fine.

So maybe Ranger, to step away from the Aragorn limitations, should get renamed as "hunter/slayer" and incorporate more abilities like an off brand Witcher.

Not "nature-based" in that it runs around in nature, "nature-based" in that it has nature-based magic. (Unless you want to magic up the scout and make it more of a druid//rogue than a fighter//rogue, which is also an option.)


In fact, I think it'd be cool if this "hunter/slayer" class chose its theme based on its favored enemy type. If you favored enemies are humanoids, you're an assassin (or bounty hunter). If it's animals, you're a hunter. If it's magical beasts, you're a witcher. If it's undead, you're a ghost buster. And so on.

Yep, that's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of when I said to emphasize the "dedicated slayer" aspect of the ranger. A ranger is distinct from a druid/fighter in the same way a duskblade is distinct from an evoker/fighter: the druid/fighter and evoker/fighter can fight and also use magic, but the ranger and duskblade (A) have a much more focused magical theme and (B) blend their magic and combat skills in a unique way such that their magic supports their bladework.


I would like to see something done to reduce the ravioli nature of spell selection. Instead of broad lists from which you can pick and choose (so your worshiper of the god of fire and burnination has that really OP ice spell always prepared, or your blasty evocation specialist also has equal facility with polymorph and teleport as a specialist in those areas), I'd like more constrained choices.
[...]
My thought has been more of an intermediate or union-list caster.

1) create lots of mini-lists, each fitting a theme. No expectation that each list is balanced against all other lists. Spells may occur on multiple lists.
2) grant each class a choice of a couple of these lists from a restricted subset.
2a) either just union the lists together to make the full list
2b) or chose one as primary and give selections from the others at certain points
3) There is no 3.
4) Profit.

I have a very rough initial pass at this in my signature (for 5e). Doing this for 3e would be way too much work--too many spells out there.

This, once again, looks a lot like 2e Priest spheres:

All priests spells are divided into 16 categories called spheres of influence. Different types of priests have access to different spheres; no priest can cast spells from every sphere of influence. The 16 spheres of influence are as follows: All, Animal, Astral, Charm, Combat, Creation, Divination, Elemental, Guardian, Healing, Necromantic, Plant, Protection, Summoning, Sun, and Weather.

In addition, a priest has either major or minor access to a sphere. A priest with major access to a sphere can (eventually) cast all spells in the sphere. A priest with minor access to a sphere can cast only 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-level spells from that sphere.

[...]

A priest of a particular mythos is allowed to cast the spells from only a few, related spheres. The priest's deity will have major and minor accesses to certain spheres, and this determines the spells available to the priest. (Each deity's access to spheres is determined by the DM as he creates the pantheon of his world.)

[...]

Druids do not have the same range of spells as clerics. They have major access to the following spheres: all, animal, elemental, healing, plant, and weather. They have minor access to the divination sphere.

Of course, you'd probably want to make some changes to the sphere list like splitting up the Elemental sphere into four for the different elements and splitting up Combat into one for buffs like divine favor and prayer, one for weaponlike spells like spiritual weapon and blade barrier, and one for battlefield-level cooperative spells like spiritual wrath and unearthly choir.

And AD&D priests only went up to 7th-level spells, so minor sphere access granting 3rd level spells meant they got roughly half of the spells; a 3e version of spheres would want to either make minor access allow 0th-4th level spells, or add a "moderate" access level that went up to 6th-level spells. That would be nice for greater differentiation, so you could have a priest of a fire god get major access to Fire, a priest of a nature god get moderate access to Fire and the other elemental spheres, and a priest of a sun god get minor access to Fire.

Otherwise, this system works pretty well as-is in a 3e context, you just need to go through and categorize all the spells into the appropriate sphere, and which sphere a given spell falls into is usually pretty obvious--aside from the "All" sphere, which is a very small sphere for those spells that absolutely every divine caster needs, since you'd have to decide whether you want to keep that at all and if so what spells are must-haves. Yes, there are a lot of 3e spells, but if you pull up a full list of cleric spells like DnDtools or the one here (http://imarvintpa.com/dndLive/index.php), it's the work of a couple afternoons to throw that list in a spreadsheet and then go through it ticking off which sphere a spell should go in.


Not quite to the level of a fixed-list caster (which requires a profusion of classes with small differences) or a specialist wizard (because the schools are badly balanced and really not designed for that).

For the former, I'm going to once again plug the class/subclass/kit structure. You can achieve the benefits of wizard-/cleric-/druid-style open spell lists (you can keep supporting classes in later books so they're not left high and dry like the late-3e alternate magic systems were) with the benefits of fixed lists (you can give a class a strict theme and stick to it) by writing up different tiers of lists that are composited for different classes, similar to spheres except that they're themed differently and some are exclusive.

So you can write an Arcanist spell list that wizards, sorcerers, bards, and so forth all get access to; these are your bread and butter spells like mage armor, prestidigitation, dispel magic, and others that you were going to give pretty much all the arcane casters anyway. Then you write a Wizard list with Mordenkainen's lucubration, a Sorcerer list with manifest dragon heritage, a Bard list with summon instrument, and the like that only those specific classes get access to, to reinforce their particular themes and to restrict some of the more useful spells so not all arcanists get access to them. And finally you write a Shapeshifter list with polymorph any object and shapechange, a Shadowcrafter list with shades and simulacrum, a Demonbinder list with gate and planar binding, a Mage Slayer list with battlemagic perception and Mordenkainen's disjunction, an Artificer list with fabricate and wall of stone, and so forth, to restrict the most powerful or generally useful spells to characters focusing on that particular archetype.

This setup can make a beguiler-style character (with, say, the Arcanist, Bard, Mindbender, and Arcane Trickster lists) feel quite different from a warmage-style character (with the Arcanist, Sorcerer, Battlemage, and Invoker lists) or a dread-necromancer style character (with the Arcanist, Wizard, Arcane Leader, and Reanimator lists) without having to either shove all of those things into specialist wizards and leave nothing for other classes or to actually write up a bunch of separate fixed-list casters.


For the latter, it's certainly possible to revamp the schools, their subschools, and the spells assigned to each to balance out the schools. Conjuration and Transmutation being do-everything schools is more an artifact of the late 3e designers getting lazy and chucking everything into those schools by default than of the school system itself, and when you do that the narrower schools like Evocation and Enchantment can pick up a lot of the slack and become more well-rounded. I have a set of revised schools and subschools that I use for my games that works quite well for my group, but the specific revisions made depend, as always, on individual tastes.


Most of the remaining issues I have with 3E pretty much CANNOT be fixed beyond that - 3E gave up control of the game to the players - who were given no motivation to stop breaking it.

Speaking as someone who's almost always the DM and who prefers 3e to AD&D, I prefer to view it as 3e having baked the role of rules judge or referee into the rules themselves so there are objective shared benchmarks that my players and I are aware of and implicitly agree on upfront by using the 3e rules. I never really agreed with AD&D putting certain rules for things in the PHB and then having corresponding entries in the DMG basically saying "That's what we told the players, heh heh, but the real rules are...."

And nothing stops me from houseruling or homebrewing 3e the way I used to do the same for AD&D--heck, my current game is Norse-/Vikings-themed so I've rewritten the "backgrounds" (races), classes, PrCs, skill system, "worlds" (planes) and ways to travel between them, the way "runic" (arcane) and "godly" (divine) magic work, monster types, monsters, and more to feel more Norse-ish--but when I do it's because I deliberately want to change the underlying mechanics for some reason, not because there are fuzzy areas in the rules that just say "ask your DM."


It's true, and 4e is the closest D&D got to letting you target other defences than AC without magic. Still, I don't think armor should translate into being hard to hit. That's shields, parrying and dodging. Armor, or spells that imitate it, blocks attacks that do hit you. The only other system I can think of that just makes armor reduce to-hit chance is nWoD, and even that went away in second edition (AKA Chronicles of Darkness).

Armor doesn't at all make you hard to hit, it makes you hard to hurt; missing an attack against a guy in plate armor doesn't mean you didn't hit him, it means you smacked him right in the chest and it didn't go through the armor. Going right back to AD&D:


Armor is the easiest and cheapest way to improve your character's chance of surviving the more violent dangers of the adventuring life. Clearly, the better the armor the character possesses, the less likely he is to be hurt. Armor protection is measured by Armor Class (AC), a number rating; the lower the Armor Class number, the better the protection.


Armor Class (AC) is the protective rating of a type of armor. In some circumstances, AC is modified by the amount of protection gained or lost because of the character's situation. For instance, crouching behind a boulder improves a character's Armor Class, while being attacked from behind worsens his AC.

Armor provides protection by reducing the chance that a character is attacked successfully (and suffers damage). Armor does not absorb damage, it prevents it. A fighter in full plate mail may be a slow-moving target, but penetrating his armor to cause any damage is no small task.

That's also why 3e has a difference between normal, touch, and flat-footed AC. If someone just needs to make contact, not get through armor, then that portion of your AC doesn't do any good, and if you can't dodge effectively but are wearing armor then your armor still provides some protection. Doesn't mean that's the best way to represent dodging vs. parrying vs. withstanding an attack, but there was certainly an attempt to represent that.

I dislike the common suggestion to swap out AC bonuses for damage reduction or the like, for a couple of reasons. First, they work differently mechanically: AC provides a proportional reduction in damage (percentage hit chance times damage inflicted) while DR is a flat reduction, unless you go with a basic three-quarters/half/one-quarter proportional reduction which gives you really large jumps between categories of armor. Second, if armor is just DR--or worse, grants DR while increasing the chance someone is hit through some misguided idea that armor makes you slow and clumsy--then it's hard to strike a balance between "a guy in plate armor is better protected than a guy in leather armor" and "a guy in plate armor can walk through a battlefield and not suffer any harm" without very finely-tuned DR numbers.

Much better, I think, to keep AC as-is to represent the shrugging off of blows that hit and also add DR to represent the fact that even a successful hit is mitigated by armor. And the damage type association of DR allows you to represent things like maces being particularly good against plate, arrows going through mail more easily, and so forth.


I can see the reasoning behind rangers being hybrid classes. The problem is that while paladins did finally become more than a sum of their parts in 5e, rangers... didn't. They're just an awkward pile of features stapled together. "Slayer of a specific thing" doesn't really work as a class, because if you're not fighting that particular thing, it just doesn't do much for you. And it's not like you need to be a ranger to have it out for a particular species, group or individual.

Ironically enough, I think that's because the Oath of the Ancients paladin stole some of the ranger's thunder. I mean, come on, fey knights who care about nature and beauty more than law and good, who wear leaves and antlers on their armor, who have class-specific spells dealing with plants and animals, and who turn into plant creatures as their capstone? Sounds pretty darn ranger-y to me. Next to that, and given designers who didn't have any particularly interesting ideas for rangers, yeah, the ranger's gonna look bad.

You can be themed as a monster slayer even if others also hate monsters, in the same way that a paladin can be a knight in shining armor even when faithful fighters and warlike clerics exist. And "slayer of a specific thing" doesn't mean you should only get benefits against that particular thing (much as Favored Enemy in all editions have been very unimaginatively limited to that. :smallsigh:). Dragonslayers can get energy resistance and the ability to hide from super-sensitive dragon senses, giant-slayers can get benefits against larger creatures and better ability to dodge projectiles, ghost hunters can get the ability to strike incorporeal and ethereal beings and a resistance to life-draining effects, wizard hunters can get casting-disruption abilities and protection from illusions and enchantments, bounty hunters can get the ability to bind and subdue foes easily and track particularly sneaky creatures, and so forth.

Whether each of those is a subclass and grants a wide variety of themed benefits, or whether it's like Favored Enemy and the ranger picks up multiple of these ability packages, that can still strongly theme the ranger as the dedicated monster slayer without pigeon-holing him into anything.


"One with nature" might do us more good, but it needs to be something more than the ranger has always had. "Sneaking and surviving in the wilds" just doesn't scale upwards - see my previous post. Eventually you can stroll naked through a desert, never get lost and be perfectly quite while running at full-tilt through the woods. Where do we go from there? It's something that a proficiency covers, we don't need a class for it.

It scales upwards just fine if you focus on the "sneaking" and "tracking" parts of wilderness survival as much as the "in a particular Material Plane terrain" part. Low-level rangers stroll naked through the desert or the tundra; mid-level rangers can survive in the pressure of the ocean depths and the heat of the Plane of Fire; high-level rangers can shape Limbo into perfect facsimiles of the Prime and do backstrokes through the River Styx. Low-level rangers never get lost and can follow animal tracks; mid-level rangers can find their way to nearby portals and see through all variety of disguises and tricks for shaking pursuit; high-level rangers can find a target wherever in the multiverse it tries to flee and track immaterial things like teleportation spells and very faint auras. Low-level rangers run quietly through forests and hide in foliage; mid-level rangers can tap dance around dragons and bulettes and not be found and become unseen against any background with a moment's notice; high-level rangers can run across a lake without leaving a ripple and stand so still as to become practically invisible.

Really, take a look at the kinds of things high-level spells can accomplish in the way of finding things, being stealthy, adapting to environments, and other things within the ranger's theme. There's no reason those couldn't be taken away from the wizard or druid and given to the ranger (and, if he's feeling nice, shared with the rogue).


I can see that. The problem is not so much how inconvenient it is for casters, but rather that there's no humanly way to balance abilities that can be used at-will or every now and then (like per encounter) with those that have to be recharged daily. They eclipse everything else and every challenge boils down to "can the caster(s) afford to blow through their spells here?".

I mean, you never hear people complaining that the paladin, monk, or bard is forcing the party to rest because they've run out of smites/turn attempts, Stunning Fist uses, or bardic music, yet those are daily resources. :smallwink:

The difference between daily spells and those other daily resources that make spells seem much more precious are twofold: first, those other resources are pools of the same thing where spells are partitioned into levels and slots, so a paladin can smite if he has all, some, or none of his daily smites left but a given spell might be the only copy that a prepared caster has available and a given slot might be the last one of a certain spell level that a spontaneous caster has available. Second, at some point along the line an expectation arose that a caster has to cast a spell or do some other magic thing every single round in every single encounter or they're not sufficiently "being a spellcaster," so a caster with 10 spell slots is somehow only good for 10 rounds per day (whether that's 10 rounds of combat or 6 rounds of combat and 4 utility spells or whatever) and then they're done.

The change I suggested is a good way to handle the first point (you can easily get back a specific spell with a few minutes' downtime, so you don't have to worry about casting a spell early in the morning and not having it in the evening without a full rest), but isn't the only way; things like casting directly from your spellbook, combining or splitting slots a la Versatile Spellcaster, and the like can help reduce the anxiety about that one spell being inaccessible. Reserve feats were a good way to handle the second point, providing a nice incentive to actively avoid casting spells and providing you with something magical to do in the meantime, as were Devotion and Divine feats to let clerics supplement their spells with other magical effects using their languishing turn attempts. Basically, address the psychological issues of "I might need this later" and "I'm a wizard, I should be magicking things" and you can reduce the overemphasis on spells.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-06-10, 08:14 PM
This, once again, looks a lot like 2e Priest spheres:

Of course, you'd probably want to make some changes to the sphere list like splitting up the Elemental sphere into four for the different elements and splitting up Combat into one for buffs like divine favor and prayer, one for weaponlike spells like spiritual weapon and blade barrier, and one for battlefield-level cooperative spells like spiritual wrath and unearthly choir.

And AD&D priests only went up to 7th-level spells, so minor sphere access granting 3rd level spells meant they got roughly half of the spells; a 3e version of spheres would want to either make minor access allow 0th-4th level spells, or add a "moderate" access level that went up to 6th-level spells. That would be nice for greater differentiation, so you could have a priest of a fire god get major access to Fire, a priest of a nature god get moderate access to Fire and the other elemental spheres, and a priest of a sun god get minor access to Fire.

Otherwise, this system works pretty well as-is in a 3e context, you just need to go through and categorize all the spells into the appropriate sphere, and which sphere a given spell falls into is usually pretty obvious--aside from the "All" sphere, which is a very small sphere for those spells that absolutely every divine caster needs, since you'd have to decide whether you want to keep that at all and if so what spells are must-haves. Yes, there are a lot of 3e spells, but if you pull up a full list of cleric spells like DnDtools or the one here (http://imarvintpa.com/dndLive/index.php), it's the work of a couple afternoons to throw that list in a spreadsheet and then go through it ticking off which sphere a spell should go in.


Somewhat. Except with many many more spheres (I have 30 for 5e in its current incarnation, although some of those don't have enough spells to warrant a separate theme) and for all casters. I'd like it if you can have two wizards (for example) who have completely disjoint spell lists. I want to require specialization. Different classes would be differentiated by which themes (spheres, basically) they'd have access to as well as their class features, rather than by spell list. I dislike the idea of classes whose primary (or only!) class feature is their spell list.



For the former, I'm going to once again plug the class/subclass/kit structure. You can achieve the benefits of wizard-/cleric-/druid-style open spell lists (you can keep supporting classes in later books so they're not left high and dry like the late-3e alternate magic systems were) with the benefits of fixed lists (you can give a class a strict theme and stick to it) by writing up different tiers of lists that are composited for different classes, similar to spheres except that they're themed differently and some are exclusive.

So you can write an Arcanist spell list that wizards, sorcerers, bards, and so forth all get access to; these are your bread and butter spells like mage armor, prestidigitation, dispel magic, and others that you were going to give pretty much all the arcane casters anyway. Then you write a Wizard list with Mordenkainen's lucubration, a Sorcerer list with manifest dragon heritage, a Bard list with summon instrument, and the like that only those specific classes get access to, to reinforce their particular themes and to restrict some of the more useful spells so not all arcanists get access to them. And finally you write a Shapeshifter list with polymorph any object and shapechange, a Shadowcrafter list with shades and simulacrum, a Demonbinder list with gate and planar binding, a Mage Slayer list with battlemagic perception and Mordenkainen's disjunction, an Artificer list with fabricate and wall of stone, and so forth, to restrict the most powerful or generally useful spells to characters focusing on that particular archetype.

This setup can make a beguiler-style character (with, say, the Arcanist, Bard, Mindbender, and Arcane Trickster lists) feel quite different from a warmage-style character (with the Arcanist, Sorcerer, Battlemage, and Invoker lists) or a dread-necromancer style character (with the Arcanist, Wizard, Arcane Leader, and Reanimator lists) without having to either shove all of those things into specialist wizards and leave nothing for other classes or to actually write up a bunch of separate fixed-list casters.


5e already does the sub-class thing, and it helps a lot. It has its limits, however.

Pushing the thematics into the sub-class requires having class-options (sub-classes, etc) to cover the entire possible character space. That's a lot of repetition, and coming up with unique class features becomes very difficult.



For the latter, it's certainly possible to revamp the schools, their subschools, and the spells assigned to each to balance out the schools. Conjuration and Transmutation being do-everything schools is more an artifact of the late 3e designers getting lazy and chucking everything into those schools by default than of the school system itself, and when you do that the narrower schools like Evocation and Enchantment can pick up a lot of the slack and become more well-rounded. I have a set of revised schools and subschools that I use for my games that works quite well for my group, but the specific revisions made depend, as always, on individual tastes.


I just don't think that the schools themselves give you enough diversity to allow truly thematic casters. Why would my pyromaniac (or worshiper of the god of Fire and Burnination), both Evocation specialists, have access to ice spells? One wouldn't research such things, the other's god would be loath to grant such blasphemous spells. But they're all evocation spells.


This is for 5e, and is provisional. The Thematic Magic Revamp link in my sig has the spell assignments for each of the themes.

And with only 600-ish spells, assigning them to themes was a pain in the hind-end. With who-knows-how-many spells in 3e, that would be prohibitive.


Themes marked with an * probably need to be folded into other themes--there aren't enough spells to make them a viable theme on their own.

Aeromancer, Alchemist*, Animalist, Anti-Mage, Communications Mage*, Conjurer, Cryomancer, Divine Warrior, Gardener, Geomancer, Guardian, Healer, Hydromancer, Illusionist, Infernal, Kineticist, Light-bringer, Mesmer, Necromancer, Planeswalker, Purifier, Pyromancer, Seer, Shadow-dweller*, Spiritualist, Temporalist*, Transmuter, Transporter, Void-walker, Witch


Bard
Primary themes: Illusionist, Mesmer
Secondary themes: Communications, Healer, Kineticist, Light-bringer, Spiritualist, Transmuter
Spells Known at 1st level: Choose 3 from your primary theme and one from any of your secondary themes.
Spells Known at higher levels: Choose from primary theme. Every even level (2, 4, 6, etc) you can choose from any of your secondary themes. You may exchange one spell for another from the same theme.
Magical Secrets: Choose one spell from any theme.

Cleric
Primary themes: Divine Warrior, Light-bringer, Spiritualist
Bonus Theme: Healer
Secondary themes (by domain):
*Arcana: Seer, Planeswalker, Conjurer
*Death: Conjurer, Necromancer, Shadow-dweller
*Forge (XGtE): Transmuter, Geomancer, Guardian
*Grave (XGtE): Spiritualist, Purifier
*Knowledge: Seer, Infernal, Planeswalker
*Life: Guardian, Mesmer, Purifier
*Light: Illusionist, Pyromancer, Purifier
*Nature: Animalist, Conjurer, Guardian, Gardener
*Tempest: Aeromancer, Pyromancer, Conjurer
*Trickery: Illusionist, Mesmer, Shadow-dweller
*War: Guardian, Infernal, Purifier
At 1st level: Choose a primary theme and one of the secondary themes from your chosen domain. You always have access to the spells of the Healer theme.
Spells prepared: Choose cleric level + WIS mod spells to prepare from any combination of your primary and secondary themes. You can change these every day.
Domain Spells: Removed. Domain choice sets range of secondary themes available.

Druid
Primary themes: Animalist, Conjurer, Gardener, Geomancer, Spiritualist, Transmuter
Unrestricted secondary themes: Healer, Purifier
Circle themes:
*Dreams (XGtE): Witch
*Land--Arctic: Cryomancer
*Land--Coast: Hydromancer
*Land--Desert: Light-bringer
*Land--Forest: Gardener
*Land--Grassland: Illusionist
*Land--Mountain: Geomancer
*Land--Swamp: Witch
*Moon: Guardian
*Shepherd: Conjurer
Prohibited themes: Infernal, Necromancer
At 1st level: Choose a primary theme and one of the unrestricted secondary themes.
At 2nd level: you gain the secondary theme of your chosen circle.
Spells prepared: Choose druid level + WIS mod spells to prepare from any combination of your primary and secondary themes. You can change these every day.
Land’s Guidance (new Circle of the Land ability): After you finish a long rest, you can change your attunement to the land type where you currently are, removing all prepared spells of the old secondary theme and gaining access to those of the secondary theme of the new terrain.

Fighter (Eldritch Knight)
Primary themes: Aeromancer, Cryomancer, Guardian, Pyromancer, Geomancer
Secondary themes: Anti-mage, Kineticist, Light-bringer, Mesmer, Transmuter, Transporter
Prohibited themes: Animalist, Gardener
At 3rd level: Choose a primary theme; you gain two cantrips and two 1st level spells from it. Your 3rd 1st level spell can come from any secondary theme.
Beyond 3rd level: All your spells come from your primary theme except those gained at 8th, 14th, and 20th level which can come from any of your secondary themes.

Monk (Way of the Four Elements)
Primary themes: Aeromancer, Cryomancer, Geomancer, Hydromancer, Pyromancer
Prohibited themes: Infernal, Mesmer, Spiritualist
At 3rd level: You have access to all 5 primary themes. At 3rd, 7th, 13th, and 19th levels you gain access to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level spells (respectively). At each of those levels, choose two spells; you may also switch one known spell for a new spell when you increase in level. Casting spells costs ki points equal to the spell level (including upcasting).

Paladin
Primary themes: Divine Warrior, Guardian, Light-bringer, Purifier
Secondary themes by Oath:
*Conquest (XGtE): Infernal OR Mesmer
*Devotion: Healer OR Spiritualist
*Ancients: Animalist OR Gardener
*Vengeance: Anti-mage OR Transporter
*Oathbreaker: Necromancer OR Infernal
*Redemption (XGtE): Healer OR Mesmer
At 2nd level: Choose a primary theme.
At 3rd level: Gain one of the two secondary themes for your chosen Oath.
Spells Prepared: Choose ½ paladin level + CHA mod spells (minimum 1) to prepare from your primary and secondary themes. You can change these every day.
Oath Spells: Removed.

Ranger
Primary themes: Animalist, Spiritualist, Transmuter
Secondary themes: Divine Warrior, Gardener, Geomancer, Healer, Shadow-dweller, Witch
Prohibited Themes: Infernal, Necromancer
At 2nd level: Choose a primary theme and gain two 1st level spells from it.
At higher levels: Whenever you gain access to a new spell level (5th, 9th, 13th, 17th), you can choose your new spell from your primary theme or any of the secondary themes for the class. At other levels you gain spells, choose your new spell from your primary theme.
XGtE bonus spells: Removed.

Rogue (Arcane Trickster)
Primary themes: Illusionist, Mesmer
Secondary themes: Alchemist, Communications Mage, Kineticist, Pyromancer, Seer, Shadow-dweller, Temporalist, Transporter, Witch
At 3rd level: Choose a primary theme; you gain two cantrips and two 1st level spells from it. Your 3rd 1st level spell can come from any secondary theme.
Beyond 3rd level: All your spells come from your primary theme except those gained at 8th, 14th, and 20th level which can come from any of your secondary themes.

Sorcerer
Primary themes: Aeromancer, Cryomancer, Geomancer, Hydromancer, Kineticist, Pyromancer
Secondary themes: Special
Prohibited themes: Healer (except Favored Soul), Anti-mage
At 1st level: Choose a primary theme and gain 3 cantrips and 2 1st level spells from it. The 4th cantrip can come from any non-prohibited theme.
At higher levels: Choose your spells from your primary theme.
New ability (level 3): Spell Emulation: Your mastery of the magic in your blood allows you to mimic spells you’ve heard of. You may attempt to cast any spell from any non-prohibited theme, using the regular casting time, concentration, and components. The spell emulated must be at least one level lower than that of the highest spell slot you have. Once you use this feature, you must wait until after a short rest to use it again. At 13th level, you gain an extra use of this feature per short rest. Metamagic can be applied as normal.

Warlock
Primary themes: Kineticist
Secondary themes by Patron:
*Fiend: Infernal OR Planeswalker
*Fey: Illusionist OR Shadow-dweller
*Great Old One: Mesmer OR Void-walker
*Celestial (XGtE): Divine Warrior OR Guardian
*Hexblade (XGtE): Witch OR Guardian
Spells Known: Your primary theme is kineticist; choose one of the secondary themes granted by your patron. Choose your spells known from this list; you can trade out one per level.
Patron Bonus Spells: Removed.

Wizard
Primary themes: Conjurer, Illusionist, Kineticist, Necromancer, Transmuter
Secondary themes: Any non-prohibited.
Prohibited themes: Animalist, Divine Warrior, Gardener, Healer, Purifier
Spells at 1st level and above: Choose a primary and a secondary theme. Your 2 free spells per level (as well as those at 1st level) come from these themes. You can scribe any spell you find from a non-prohibited list into your spellbook, paying the usual costs in gold and time.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-10, 10:28 PM
5e already does the sub-class thing, and it helps a lot. It has its limits, however.

Pushing the thematics into the sub-class requires having class-options (sub-classes, etc) to cover the entire possible character space. That's a lot of repetition, and coming up with unique class features becomes very difficult.

Keep in mind that in this setup the 5e classes would be subclasses, with overarching classes like Mage (wizard, sorcerer, and warlock), Warrior (fighter, barbarian, and ranger), and so forth. They already have class options for further customization, like warlock pacts, paladin oaths, and so on, so adding those kinds of things isn't all that hard.


I just don't think that the schools themselves give you enough diversity to allow truly thematic casters. Why would my pyromaniac (or worshiper of the god of Fire and Burnination), both Evocation specialists, have access to ice spells? One wouldn't research such things, the other's god would be loath to grant such blasphemous spells. But they're all evocation spells.

That's because you're misunderstanding the point of arcane schools and subschools. Schools have nothing to with character concepts at all, they're about how magic works, and wizards specialize in schools rather than themes because their class concept is "academic caster who gets their power from study and research." Evocation is different from Necromancy in the same way (and to the same degree) that physics is different from biology, and Evokers focusing on fire or ice spells is like someone with a biology degree choosing to either become a medical doctor or a botanist: they have the same theoretical underpinnings from their years of study, so if a geokinetic evoker wanted to pick up a lightning spell or a surgeon wanted to brush up on pharmaceuticals they're perfectly able to do that...and if a pyromancer Evoker wouldn't want to research an ice Evocation, he just doesn't research it.

That's also why Evokers are "focus on Evocation, but cast anything except from prohibited schools X and Y," not "Evocation only, period," because "evoker" is not a character concept, it's a starting point from which you can build a character concept. A weather-themed wizard is going to want air, water, ice, and lightning spells from various schools, but only those with weather themes (as opposed to things like wall of ice or control water), so that's mostly Evocation but also Transmutation for fly, Abjuration for endure elements, and so forth. An earth-themed wizard is going to want to Evoke blasts of earth, Conjure earth elementals and walls of stone, Transmute their skin to stone for protection and earth mounds to stone for barricades, and so on.

Sorcerers and warlocks have much weirder specialties--they're less likely to be themed around things like fire or darkness or summoning and more likely to have themes like "dragons" (anything from from cones of fire to enhancing their senses to granting flight to turning their skin to scales) and "chaos" (anything random) for sorcerers and "demons" (summoning demons, fire, curses, mind-control, fear, pain, etc.) and "aberrations (anything that looks creepy, no matter what it does) for warlocks. Bards, likewise: aside from the stereotypical illusions and enchantments, they want divinations (Bardic Knowledge!), abjurations (Countersong!), transmutations (Inspire Greatness!), and evocations (anything sound-based!), but only small thematic subsets of those things, none of which would fit into a "bard" grouping without ending up way too large and none of which can be achieved by compositing large numbers of thematic groupings without defeating the purpose of those groupings.

As you said yourself:


Different classes would be differentiated by which themes (spheres, basically) they'd have access to as well as their class features, rather than by spell list. I dislike the idea of classes whose primary (or only!) class feature is their spell list.

You can't just use spell lists to determine concepts; that's why 2e specialty priests all had religion-specific benefits, carried forward in the form of 3e domain powers and cleric Initiate feats, and why the 2e Tome of Magic introduced different ways of categorizing spells for other kinds of magic-users than just the "scholarly wizard" archetype. So trying to handle every single caster class with the same groupings of spells (whether schools or spheres) is kind of a lost cause, and that's why I like keeping class-specific lists around.

(...well, you could make it work by slicing things up finely enough, I suppose; there are 130-some domains in 3e, and looking at Tiamat as an example, her list of cleric domains--Destruction, Dragon, Evil, Greed, Hatred, Law, Pride, Scalykind, Trickery, Tyranny, and Wrath--gives a very good idea of where she's coming from in a way that "Major access to All, Astral, Law, Guardian, Protection, Summoning; minor access to Combat, Creation, Divination, Necromantic" for 2e spheres or "Divine Warrior, Spiritualist, Seer, Shadow-Dweller" for your revision does not. But domains only have to support one spell per level, so having narrow domains is fine, while avoiding too much overlap for larger groupings of spells would be nontrivial.)

Cosi
2018-06-10, 10:41 PM
It's no harder to balance wizard 8//fighter 8 with ranger 10 or druid 8//ranger 8 with wizard 10 than it is to balance wizard 4/fighter 4 with wizard 2/fighter 6 with wizard 8 with ranger 3/druid 5 with druid 1/ranger 7 with ranger 8. Which is to say, neither case is at all feasible to balance on a level-by-level basis, no designer is ever going to go through combinatorially like that for either version, and figuring out which combos are amazing, terrible, or somewhere in between is something to be left to the hive mind of the internet to figure out years later. The best you can do is look at combinations holistically: is there any obvious synergy or anti-synergy with a Class A//Class B multiclass, are there any obvious breakpoints at level X for Class A such that Class A X//Class B [20-X] is always better than Class A 20, and stuff like that.

No, the best you can do is not allow open multiclassing. Allowing open multiclassing in 3e did not result in people playing characters like a Monk 1/Sorcerer 2/Rogue 1/Fighter 1/Ranger 1/Cleric 1/Horizon Walker 3/Tatooed Monk 1/Dragonslayer 1. Mostly, open multiclassing resulted in CharOp builds (which exist because people like CharOp, not because they particularly enjoyed open multiclassing), builds that tried to emulate a concept that there wasn't a base class for (for example, the plethora of Gish builds), and characters that dipped another class early in their career. None of those require open multiclassing, and open multiclassing makes balance functionally impossible.


So that's a great argument for not actually having multiclassing at all (which isn't an option if you're trying to be D&D; even 4e had it, and it obviously didn't want to), but if you are going to have multiclassing then the bad parts of having both versions are really no worse than the bad parts of having either one, and there are definite benefits to having both like supporting more concepts at lower levels, not needing to have dual-progression PrCs or the equivalent, reducing the number of hybrid classes you need to support, and so forth.

The problems of validating an exponential number of builds only apply to open multiclassing schemes. If multiclassing is a binary subclass option, the amount of work you have to do is reasonable (particularly if subclasses are mechanically consistent). Checking the 110 possible class/subclass options for 11 classes over 20 levels is doable in a way that checking the 11^20 possible open multiclass combinations is not. Also, subclassing makes it easier to support monster PCs, and allows you to support things like "Vigilante" and "Priest" without making entire classes for them.


It's not a good thing if you somehow end up balancing casters and noncasters, but in the context of a game where you haven't managed to do that it helps the balance a bit.

I don't think the problem of balancing martials and casters is mechanically hard. There are large numbers of classes that are balanced with martials (most of which are not casters) and there are large numbers of classes that are balanced with casters (most of which are casters). The problem is that designers are unwilling to expand the Fighter's concept to include high level abilities. If you did that, I don't think there's any reason to assume the Wizard would be better than the Fighter any more than there's reason to assume the Wizard is better than the Cleric.


More generally, though, the benefit there is biasing the treasure tables to give players items they'll find useful. While the 3e random weapons tables do have varying d% ranges for different weapons, the one in the DMG gives you an equal chance of finding a luck blade (really good for anyone), a holy avenger (generally useful, but really good for a paladin), and a trident of fish command (seriously?).

I kind of disagree. If you are doing random items, that requires the assumption that there aren't gear check monsters (or at least, whatever gear check monsters there are only check gear you can buy). In that environment, any magic item is basically a nice bonus, and I think more specific items lend themselves to better stories. A Luck Blade just makes you slightly better at whatever it is you normally do. That's not really interesting. On the other hand, the Trident of Fish Command is not going to do anything in most campaigns, but its better than a normal weapon and sometimes you'll end up using your army of fish to save the merfolk prince, and that will be a way better story than the Holy Avenger making the Paladin better at Paladin-ing.


No, it has a single page where all the priest spells are listed by level, but it's not like the 3e cleric list in that all priests can access all spells; in fact, there's not a single 3rd-level PHB priest spell in the All sphere that all priests could access.

Oops, my bad. I assumed it was like the 3e domain lists. That said, still think most of the problems I expected where there. The All sphere includes things that definitely should not be universal for Priests (purify food and drink) and excludes the stuff that all Priests should be doing (god-bothering, dealing with outsiders). Also, it's better for the game if you layer Priest on top of Necromancer rather than vice versa, because that makes it easier to have non-denominational Necromancers. All the priests of Boccob are Wizards, but not all the Wizards should be priests of Boccob (or Mystra, or Wee Jas, or whatever).


The goal should never be to fix a game system. The goal should be to run a fun game.

"The goal should never be to create a successful product, it should be to create a product people buy."

Not everyone cares as little about mechanics as you do. Stop being obnoxious about it.


Every mundane form of defence is boiled down to AC or HP.

I'm confused if you mean "defenses mundane characters have" (which is false because they still get saves and evasion among other things) or "defenses mundane characters target" (which is mostly true, but not entirely).


There needs to be an actual difference between trying to hit someone clad in plate, a robe-clad martial artist running rings around you or a wizard hiding behind a shield spell. And everything in between. If they all boil down to trying to hit the same static number, we're not going to get anywhere. It's just going to amount to depleting HP and everything remotely interesting requiring you to spend build resources on it.

There's a finite amount of complexity you can put into the resolution of a single attack before the game starts becoming stupid, and having most of that complexity be on the offensive end of the attack is a defensible choice. I'm not really sure why the game needs there to be different ways of being defended against swords as opposed to having more attacks that aren't swords. I think that having 3e's four defense model of AC/FORT/REF/WILL works fine. The guy in full plate has Good/Good/Bad/Bad defenses, the martial artist has Average/Average/Average/Average defenses, and the Wizard has Average/Bad/Bad/Good defenses (or whatever setup). That seems way better to me than narrowing in on what exactly the difference between a mystical shield and a mundane shield is.


So there's two layers here - the power progression and how to represent it mechanically. Regarding the latter, I honestly have a hard time seeing a benefit to levels, except that people would flip their lids if they were gone. What do levels even help with? They make it a bit easier to compare characters, but they suffocate and restrict progression.

That's the benefit. The benefit of levels is that they provide structure and mandate minimum degrees of investment across different areas of the game. That allows you to build systems like CR which make it easier to build encounters.


You can't get better at anything without also acquiring superhero-like durability.

Yes, that's a genre conceit of the particular kind of fantasy D&D is. Go read some Xianxias or something. That said, you're not entirely wrong. Some things (e.g. knowledge skills) should be decoupled from level.


So what do we do with this? D&D has to embrace variable power levels. E6 did that, so let's roll with it. Let players pause and slow down progression past a certain level. If we assume 20 levels, level 10 seems like an obvious cutoff point. Past that point, you either keep advancing and become a superhero, or slow down and focus on developing your influence, reach and diversity. You'll be a major part of the setting without necessarily being able to solo an army. It can happen earlier, if you want.

If you've reached a point you like, why are you progressing at all? The guy who invented E6 made a big mistake when he added the "keep gaining feats" thing at the end. If you like 6th level gameplay, there's no reason to gain extra feats. Conversely, if you don't like 6th level gameplay, keep progressing. The appeal of D&D is doing zero to hero stories like The Wheel of Time of The Matrix where a random dude rises to world-conquering power.


I feel like the game should also really encourage starting out on a higher power level, though. Honestly, the idea that you gain levels instead of just having them is kind of problematic in general. But people need to be able to play a more heroic game without having to go through the low levels first. Whether that means just starting out at higher level and spending more time at chargen, or something else.

There are several parts to this. Most pressingly, characters should probably start out stronger than they do. From 3e characters dying to housecats to AD&D casters starting with a single spell per day, the game is littered with characters that just don't start with enough power to be heroes. Being an adventurer should make you at least as hard core as an action movie hero before you start gaining levels. But yes, the game needs to emphasize that while playing from 1st level to 20th level is an acceptable way to play, it is not the only way to play. Some fantasy stories take the farmboy all the way up to demigod (The Wheel of Time, Cradle, The Codex Alera). Some follow an established hero who never really gains or loses power in the long run (Conan). Some follow a hero who starts out capable, but gains greater abilities over the course of the story (Dresden, The Second Apocalypse). The DMG should probably have a whole section on different modes of advancement and the kinds of campaigns they lend themselves to.


Three martial classes - one "defender" one, modelled after the 4e fighter. One "vanguard", which is like the barbarian only not stupidly narrow; it's all about being aggressive and disruptive while being capable of limited "bursts" of power. One "warlord" that's a leader and tactician. Then three magic classes... either wizard/druid/cleric or something else.

Without commenting on the quality of those classes: that is not enough classes. I think 4e pretty clearly demonstrated that people are not going to play a D&D that launches with less classes than the previous D&D, which means that whatever you are offering as 6e needs to provide at least a dozen things or people to be.


Rangers can be folded into druids and whatever "physical expert" class we end up having; this class has no reason to exist.

"wilderness warrior", "beastmaster", and "mobile combatant" are all roles classes could have that the Ranger has at least some claim on. Certainly, the guy who runs around the battlefield harrying monsters could be a Scout, but he could also be a Ranger, and Aragorn was a Ranger in LotR.


I don't think daily spells are salvageable, but spell preparation could work without tying it to long rests.

Daily spells are interesting. Lots of spells don't really care about daily limits. You probably run out of situations where you would like to use burning hands before you run out of uses of burning hands, so it doesn't really matter if burning hands refreshes per day, per long rest, or on some other schedule. But some spells do need daily limits. wall of stone a couple of times a day is a useful BFC effect that allows the Wizard to build himself a tower if he spends a couple of months of downtime. wall of stone every 15 minutes replaces every stonemason in the world. I think the answer is probably to pull anything that breaks the game at will out into rituals/incantations/invocations (note that you can do this very finely -- temporary wall of stone is fine, so you can have that as a spell and permanency as a ritual).


I'm leaning more towards a learned/granted/innate power.

Granted power is conceptually problematic because it puts limits on how powerful a character can become. It's debatable whether the party should be able to aspire to overthrow the gods (I lean towards yes, but some people disagree), but killing a Demon Lord has been party of D&D since the fight against Lloth in Queen of the Demonweb Pits. The problem of how someone whose power comes from a deal with Lloth can defeat Lloth is not intractable, but it requires some consideration.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-11, 10:25 PM
No, the best you can do is not allow open multiclassing. Allowing open multiclassing in 3e did not result in people playing characters like a Monk 1/Sorcerer 2/Rogue 1/Fighter 1/Ranger 1/Cleric 1/Horizon Walker 3/Tatooed Monk 1/Dragonslayer 1. Mostly, open multiclassing resulted in CharOp builds (which exist because people like CharOp, not because they particularly enjoyed open multiclassing), builds that tried to emulate a concept that there wasn't a base class for (for example, the plethora of Gish builds), and characters that dipped another class early in their career. None of those require open multiclassing, and open multiclassing makes balance functionally impossible.

The problems of validating an exponential number of builds only apply to open multiclassing schemes. If multiclassing is a binary subclass option, the amount of work you have to do is reasonable (particularly if subclasses are mechanically consistent). Checking the 110 possible class/subclass options for 11 classes over 20 levels is doable in a way that checking the 11^20 possible open multiclass combinations is not.

Ah, I see the misunderstanding. I'm not talking about slapping 1e multiclassing onto 3e open multiclassing as-is, that's basically just using gestalt in a non-gestalt game. I'm talking specifically using 1e-style multiclassing with 1e-style dual-classing, where you get exactly two classes for multiclassing (or three, but allowing just two is fine if you have hybrid classes already) and exactly two for dual-classing (hence dual-classing; bards were a special case, of course), and you can't jump around arbitrarily like in 3e.

Again, not talking about using the specific implementation details, with prime requisites and restricted access to old class features, just the "always two there are, no more, no less" part. (Though keeping the part where a dual-classed character catches up quickly to the rest of the party and figuring out how to let someone start off dual-classed and end up multiclassed would be kinda nifty as a thought exercise.)

So at, say, 4th level, the complete set of options for combining fighter and wizard to some degree are fighter 6, fighter 5/wizard 1, fighter 4/wizard 2, fighter 3/wizard 3, fighter 2/wizard 4, fighter 1/wizard 5, and wizard 6; you don't have to worry about fighter 2/wizard 2/[something] 1/[something else] 1 or whatever. At that point, you're not doing level-by-level balancing for every possible combination of classes, you're basically taking each pair of classes and looking at starting packages (e.g. is fighter 1/wizard X-1 generally superior to wizard X because the high starting HP balances out being one level behind on casting?), obvious breakpoints (e.g. does every Dex-based character want to take 2 levels of rogue because Evasion is super useful?), and obvious synergies (e.g. is paladin X/sorcerer [Y-X] generally better than either sorcerer Y or paladin Y because of the all-around strengths and Cha synergy?).

It ends up being basically pairwise comparison like your subclass suggestion, and not too much harder considering that Wizard (Fighter) is probably going to end up being different from Fighter (Wizard) so you're doing multiple comparisons anyway. I tend to like doing it that way instead of subclass multiclassing because in that setup you can either subclass your main class or multiclass, not both, so you can have a Wizard (Evoker) or a Wizard (Fighter) but not an Evoker (Fighter) or a Fighter (Evoker). At least that's the common proposal; I suppose you could set it up such that you could be a Wizard [Evoker] (Fighter [Cavalier]), but at that point you're juggling enough combinations that you're back to analysis paralysis and subclass multiclassing doesn't gain you anything.


Also, subclassing makes it easier to support monster PCs,

Definitely true. I do think, though, that it's easier to AD&D multiclass/3e gestalt a class onto a monster (like my upthread example of an ogre being a Giant and an ogre mage being a Giant//Wizard) than to have monster subclasses you'd swap out for player-class subclasses because it makes writing monsters easier (you don't have to worry about which of their abilities might get swapped out in a multiclass scenario and how integral those are to running the monsters, it's a complete unit on its own and you can add on whatever you want) and modifying monsters easier for DMs (strictly adding abilities and increasing some numbers is easier to do on the fly than trading abilities and adjusting things up and down).


and allows you to support things like "Vigilante" and "Priest" without making entire classes for them.


Also, it's better for the game if you layer Priest on top of Necromancer rather than vice versa, because that makes it easier to have non-denominational Necromancers. All the priests of Boccob are Wizards, but not all the Wizards should be priests of Boccob (or Mystra, or Wee Jas, or whatever).

Vigilante is definitely best as, at most, a 3-level kit/ACF/etc. since it's a fairly narrow concept, but I think Priest can support its own class and subclasses just fine. Not all clerics of Boccob are just wizards with a couple priestly class features on top in the same way that not all paladins of Heironeous are just fighters with a couple priestly class features on top--and, for that matter, priests of Wee Jas aren't just priests with a couple necromancer-y class features on top, either.

Classes are supposed to not just provide a theme, but also provide different resource subsystems (or lack thereof, in the case of some classes) and different mechanical ways to express the same flavor. Yes, you could boil down all magic-using classes to "wizard with one or two extra class features," and the same with a single noncaster class encompassing all martial/skills classes, but that loses a lot of variety even if the flavor is superficially similar; a duskblade, a self-buffing kineticist, a warmage, and an Evocation-focused battle sorcerer are all variations on "lightly-armed and -armored guy who chucks fire and lightning at people," but they all give a very different play experience in a way that simply slapping Warmage Edge onto a psion or Arcane Channeling onto a sorcerer doesn't get you.


I don't think the problem of balancing martials and casters is mechanically hard. There are large numbers of classes that are balanced with martials (most of which are not casters) and there are large numbers of classes that are balanced with casters (most of which are casters). The problem is that designers are unwilling to expand the Fighter's concept to include high level abilities. If you did that, I don't think there's any reason to assume the Wizard would be better than the Fighter any more than there's reason to assume the Wizard is better than the Cleric.

Yeah, it's the conceptual block I was talking about, not the mechanical part--it's not that you can't balance them, just that up to this point the designers haven't, so they've used magic items to sneakily give the fighter magic with varying levels of success.


I kind of disagree. If you are doing random items, that requires the assumption that there aren't gear check monsters (or at least, whatever gear check monsters there are only check gear you can buy). In that environment, any magic item is basically a nice bonus, and I think more specific items lend themselves to better stories. A Luck Blade just makes you slightly better at whatever it is you normally do. That's not really interesting. On the other hand, the Trident of Fish Command is not going to do anything in most campaigns, but its better than a normal weapon and sometimes you'll end up using your army of fish to save the merfolk prince, and that will be a way better story than the Holy Avenger making the Paladin better at Paladin-ing.

The main benefit of the luck blade in this scenario is actually the wishes it potentially comes with; the trident comes in very handy in certain campaigns, and the holy avenger comes in very handy for certain classes, but there's no class for whom or scenario in which the luck blade doesn't come in handy (albeit only 1 to 3 times). I wasn't even thinking about the boring bonuses part, and am definitely in favor of ditching those for the most part and making "+X weapon" one weapon option among many (and not a particularly appealing one) rather than a default part of every magic weapon.


Oops, my bad. I assumed it was like the 3e domain lists. That said, still think most of the problems I expected where there. The All sphere includes things that definitely should not be universal for Priests (purify food and drink) and excludes the stuff that all Priests should be doing (god-bothering, dealing with outsiders).

Agreed; as before, it's the concept that's worth salvaging (having priests of different religions use multiple thematic and non-overlapping spell lists, designed to be modular and composable in such a way that you don't have to design a class from scratch for each new god), not the specific spell lists. Were I to make a serious effort to port 2e spheres to 3e, I might even ditch the All sphere and have zero spells common to all priests, since not all gods care about outsiders in the same way (e.g. Pelor might send an angel to help out planar ally-style, Hextor might require his priests to prove their worth and planar bind a fiend, Ehlonna might allow summoning nature's allies and not have any non-Material Plane servants to use at all, and Moradin might send the spirit of a might dwarven warrior and screw all those meddling un-dwarflike archons), not all gods are as communicative to their followers, and so forth.


There are several parts to this. Most pressingly, characters should probably start out stronger than they do. From 3e characters dying to housecats to AD&D casters starting with a single spell per day, the game is littered with characters that just don't start with enough power to be heroes. Being an adventurer should make you at least as hard core as an action movie hero before you start gaining levels.

Disagree; there's nothing wrong with enabling people to play pre-Trench-Run Luke, pre-unplugged-from-the-Matrix Neo, pre-Eye-of-the-World Rand, and other characters who are still more "commoner swept up in larger events" than action hero. But the game should definitely make clear that that is what 1st level represents, that 3rd level (or whenever) represents more capable heroes, and that it's perfectly acceptable and even encouraged to start above 1st to get the particular feel you're looking for, instead of making it seem like you have to start at 1st or you're doing it wrong (which none of the editions really do, but they don't do anything to argue against that common perception, either).


Granted power is conceptually problematic because it puts limits on how powerful a character can become. It's debatable whether the party should be able to aspire to overthrow the gods (I lean towards yes, but some people disagree), but killing a Demon Lord has been party of D&D since the fight against Lloth in Queen of the Demonweb Pits. The problem of how someone whose power comes from a deal with Lloth can defeat Lloth is not intractable, but it requires some consideration.

AD&D had a way of handling this, sort of. You didn't gain cleric spells in one big group from your god, you gained low-level spells from your own faith and knowledge of theology, mid-level spells from outsiders and other divine minions, and high-level spells directly from your god. One could certainly come up with a system where priests and others with granted powers gained their highest-level powers from their patron, but lower level ones were part of them, with that particular bar raising as they level and gain monk-style personal understanding and enlightenment or similar to power their abilities on their own.

So a 3rd-level priestess of Lolth who pisses off Lolth may be stripped of power entirely and out of luck, but a 17th-level priestess of Lolth may be able to head down to the Demonweb Pits and kick Lolth's mandibles in while only losing access to her 8th- and 9th-level spells and half her rebuke undead attempts or something like that. It still gives noticeable mechanical consequences for the "I used to worship this god and now I'm trying to kill them" scenario but doesn't render the character entirely useless.

OACSNY97
2018-06-12, 12:14 PM
What I would do with D&D would probably render it unrecognizable and cause people to abandon ship. Most things that make it what it is are completely contrary to good game design. But, here we go: First off, before we go into classes or whatever, the basic systems have to be redone.

[LIST]
Combat. For a game that focuses so much on it, D&D's model of fighting is dreadful. Without magic, there's just one thing to do: hit AC, deal HP damage. Every mundane form of defence is boiled down to AC or HP. Then there's the issue of HP being sometimes luck and gumption and sometimes durability, but really neither.

What D&D needs is a proper split between "mushy" health that can be lost and gained easily and "meaty" health that means you're actually hurt. Starfinder had it. Why isn't it going to be in PF2e? I guess tradition. Of course, even the "mushy" HP shouldn't bloat nearly as much as HP do in D&D. I think we need to start from assuming your starting HP won't change and see how much it breaks things, then work from there.

There needs to be an actual difference between trying to hit someone clad in plate, a robe-clad martial artist running rings around you or a wizard hiding behind a shield spell. And everything in between. If they all boil down to trying to hit the same static number, we're not going to get anywhere. It's just going to amount to depleting HP and everything remotely interesting requiring you to spend build resources on it.


Emphasis added in bold.
I was thinking about this post this morning and it reminded me of something I've thought about in relationship to 4e, namely the term 'bloodied.' What if bloodied means physical damage and becomes either a status effect and/or a keyword? If bloodied comes to mean the first time in a combat that you take actual physical damage, the "meaty" part of HP that Morty mentions, it provides an easy way to distinguish between the "meaty" and non-meat/"mushy" parts of HP.

I see having bloodied be a status effect/keyword offers other benefits as well:
It allows for different kinds of healing. Easy HP gain can mostly become the 'non-meat' part of HP that does not remove the bloodied status even when healing half or more of a character's total HP. This means that some healing spells/abilities could remove the bloodied status and some don't allowing for different types of healer type characters.

For those in favor of a more gritty D&D, being bloodied could offer a place to start having wound penalties of some kind or another. I am not yet sure how I would implement wound penalties in D&D. Would it make sense to have a minus to all roles while bloodied, a CON penalty or something more fluid depending on the class?

The third benefit I see to a bloodied status effect would be in encouraging combats to end before one side or the other wipes their opponents out allowing for other victory conditions. For example, there could be fights that are explicitly to 'first blood' or some groups of enemies could start trying to flee once some set percentage of their group is bloodied.

Thoughts?

Friv
2018-06-12, 12:44 PM
I dislike the common suggestion to swap out AC bonuses for damage reduction or the like, for a couple of reasons. First, they work differently mechanically: AC provides a proportional reduction in damage (percentage hit chance times damage inflicted) while DR is a flat reduction, unless you go with a basic three-quarters/half/one-quarter proportional reduction which gives you really large jumps between categories of armor. Second, if armor is just DR--or worse, grants DR while increasing the chance someone is hit through some misguided idea that armor makes you slow and clumsy--then it's hard to strike a balance between "a guy in plate armor is better protected than a guy in leather armor" and "a guy in plate armor can walk through a battlefield and not suffer any harm" without very finely-tuned DR numbers.

Can't help with the first, but just having DR reduce damage to a minimum of 1 HP instead of 0 HP pretty much covers that.

Psikerlord
2018-06-12, 04:06 PM
Emphasis added in bold.
I was thinking about this post this morning and it reminded me of something I've thought about in relationship to 4e, namely the term 'bloodied.' What if bloodied means physical damage and becomes either a status effect and/or a keyword? If bloodied comes to mean the first time in a combat that you take actual physical damage, the "meaty" part of HP that Morty mentions, it provides an easy way to distinguish between the "meaty" and non-meat/"mushy" parts of HP.

I see having bloodied be a status effect/keyword offers other benefits as well:
It allows for different kinds of healing. Easy HP gain can mostly become the 'non-meat' part of HP that does not remove the bloodied status even when healing half or more of a character's total HP. This means that some healing spells/abilities could remove the bloodied status and some don't allowing for different types of healer type characters.

For those in favor of a more gritty D&D, being bloodied could offer a place to start having wound penalties of some kind or another. I am not yet sure how I would implement wound penalties in D&D. Would it make sense to have a minus to all roles while bloodied, a CON penalty or something more fluid depending on the class?

The third benefit I see to a bloodied status effect would be in encouraging combats to end before one side or the other wipes their opponents out allowing for other victory conditions. For example, there could be fights that are explicitly to 'first blood' or some groups of enemies could start trying to flee once some set percentage of their group is bloodied.

Thoughts?
Low Fantasy Gaming does something kind of like this. On a short rest (5 mins, up to 3/day) you get back half of your damage suffered (the non-bloodied half, if you like), and make Will checks to get back used abilities. It also has an injuries & setbacks table you roll on at zero hp (assuming you make the con check and live).

Morty
2018-06-12, 06:45 PM
Oh boy, here we go. Not that I'm not enjoying the discussion but big quote-blocks give me a headache.



I'm confused if you mean "defenses mundane characters have" (which is false because they still get saves and evasion among other things) or "defenses mundane characters target" (which is mostly true, but not entirely).

Both, really, but mostly the latter.


There's a finite amount of complexity you can put into the resolution of a single attack before the game starts becoming stupid, and having most of that complexity be on the offensive end of the attack is a defensible choice. I'm not really sure why the game needs there to be different ways of being defended against swords as opposed to having more attacks that aren't swords. I think that having 3e's four defense model of AC/FORT/REF/WILL works fine. The guy in full plate has Good/Good/Bad/Bad defenses, the martial artist has Average/Average/Average/Average defenses, and the Wizard has Average/Bad/Bad/Good defenses (or whatever setup). That seems way better to me than narrowing in on what exactly the difference between a mystical shield and a mundane shield is.

There's a finite amount of complexity, sure, but some of it has to go towards the basic system non-magical characters interact with if they're going to be worthwhile. Other systems manage to split hit chance and armor just fine, and for the most part they're less complex than D&D, not more.


That's the benefit. The benefit of levels is that they provide structure and mandate minimum degrees of investment across different areas of the game. That allows you to build systems like CR which make it easier to build encounters.

Those are benefits, yes. I'm honestly not sure if they're worth the drawbacks, especially considering how wobbly the CR system has always been.


Yes, that's a genre conceit of the particular kind of fantasy D&D is. Go read some Xianxias or something. That said, you're not entirely wrong. Some things (e.g. knowledge skills) should be decoupled from level.

Is it? Or is it just something people have taken for granted because that's what the rules result in?


If you've reached a point you like, why are you progressing at all? The guy who invented E6 made a big mistake when he added the "keep gaining feats" thing at the end. If you like 6th level gameplay, there's no reason to gain extra feats. Conversely, if you don't like 6th level gameplay, keep progressing. The appeal of D&D is doing zero to hero stories like The Wheel of Time of The Matrix where a random dude rises to world-conquering power.

Once again, I'd argue if it's the appeal of D&D. If this thread has shown us anything is that it's many things for many people and maybe it should finally acknowledge that. Why do people want to progress but more slowly? Because they want to see their characters improve, just not in a way that renders the world around them increasingly obsolete. Why not try to accommodate both kinds of progression?


There are several parts to this. Most pressingly, characters should probably start out stronger than they do. From 3e characters dying to housecats to AD&D casters starting with a single spell per day, the game is littered with characters that just don't start with enough power to be heroes. Being an adventurer should make you at least as hard core as an action movie hero before you start gaining levels. But yes, the game needs to emphasize that while playing from 1st level to 20th level is an acceptable way to play, it is not the only way to play. Some fantasy stories take the farmboy all the way up to demigod (The Wheel of Time, Cradle, The Codex Alera). Some follow an established hero who never really gains or loses power in the long run (Conan). Some follow a hero who starts out capable, but gains greater abilities over the course of the story (Dresden, The Second Apocalypse). The DMG should probably have a whole section on different modes of advancement and the kinds of campaigns they lend themselves to.

This I can mostly agree with, but the logical conclusion is that low levels can remain low-powered and people who want to be action heroes right off the bat can just start at a higher level.


Without commenting on the quality of those classes: that is not enough classes. I think 4e pretty clearly demonstrated that people are not going to play a D&D that launches with less classes than the previous D&D, which means that whatever you are offering as 6e needs to provide at least a dozen things or people to be.

This wasn't meant to be in any way an exhaustive list of classes I would put in.


"wilderness warrior", "beastmaster", and "mobile combatant" are all roles classes could have that the Ranger has at least some claim on. Certainly, the guy who runs around the battlefield harrying monsters could be a Scout, but he could also be a Ranger, and Aragorn was a Ranger in LotR.

Those are roles that can and should be covered. But whether or not they deserve entire classes is another question altogether. If we're going to have, say 12 classes, then we really do need to decide which ideas deserve them and which can be covered by subclasses, feats or something else. Creating Aragorn should be possible - whether or not you need a whole class called "ranger" to do that is a different question.


Daily spells are interesting. Lots of spells don't really care about daily limits. You probably run out of situations where you would like to use burning hands before you run out of uses of burning hands, so it doesn't really matter if burning hands refreshes per day, per long rest, or on some other schedule. But some spells do need daily limits. wall of stone a couple of times a day is a useful BFC effect that allows the Wizard to build himself a tower if he spends a couple of months of downtime. wall of stone every 15 minutes replaces every stonemason in the world. I think the answer is probably to pull anything that breaks the game at will out into rituals/incantations/invocations (note that you can do this very finely -- temporary wall of stone is fine, so you can have that as a spell and permanency as a ritual).

That's probably the answer, yes. Magic that seriously and permanently affects the world needs to be the domain of rituals, sorcerous workings or however else we call them.


Granted power is conceptually problematic because it puts limits on how powerful a character can become. It's debatable whether the party should be able to aspire to overthrow the gods (I lean towards yes, but some people disagree), but killing a Demon Lord has been party of D&D since the fight against Lloth in Queen of the Demonweb Pits. The problem of how someone whose power comes from a deal with Lloth can defeat Lloth is not intractable, but it requires some consideration.

I've never thought about it this way. It's a fair point, but I'm not sure how I feel like designing things around high-end play. Power granted by deities or otherworldy patrons is a staple, so should we restrict players from using it because of something that might happen on a level of play that they will likely never see?



Armor doesn't at all make you hard to hit, it makes you hard to hurt; missing an attack against a guy in plate armor doesn't mean you didn't hit him, it means you smacked him right in the chest and it didn't go through the armor. Going right back to AD&D:

That's also why 3e has a difference between normal, touch, and flat-footed AC. If someone just needs to make contact, not get through armor, then that portion of your AC doesn't do any good, and if you can't dodge effectively but are wearing armor then your armor still provides some protection. Doesn't mean that's the best way to represent dodging vs. parrying vs. withstanding an attack, but there was certainly an attempt to represent that.

I dislike the common suggestion to swap out AC bonuses for damage reduction or the like, for a couple of reasons. First, they work differently mechanically: AC provides a proportional reduction in damage (percentage hit chance times damage inflicted) while DR is a flat reduction, unless you go with a basic three-quarters/half/one-quarter proportional reduction which gives you really large jumps between categories of armor. Second, if armor is just DR--or worse, grants DR while increasing the chance someone is hit through some misguided idea that armor makes you slow and clumsy--then it's hard to strike a balance between "a guy in plate armor is better protected than a guy in leather armor" and "a guy in plate armor can walk through a battlefield and not suffer any harm" without very finely-tuned DR numbers.

Much better, I think, to keep AC as-is to represent the shrugging off of blows that hit and also add DR to represent the fact that even a successful hit is mitigated by armor. And the damage type association of DR allows you to represent things like maces being particularly good against plate, arrows going through mail more easily, and so forth.

I'm not a huge fan of directly translating AC to DR, myself. It's too simple. And I certainly agree that armor being clumsy and hard to move in is a myth as ridiculous as it is persistent. I feel like the way DR works should change, in general, but I'm not sure where to start.

I also agree that if armor provides DR, the character should also have a defence that prevents them from being hit, though. Whether it comes from armor or parrying with their weapons/shields.


Ironically enough, I think that's because the Oath of the Ancients paladin stole some of the ranger's thunder. I mean, come on, fey knights who care about nature and beauty more than law and good, who wear leaves and antlers on their armor, who have class-specific spells dealing with plants and animals, and who turn into plant creatures as their capstone? Sounds pretty darn ranger-y to me. Next to that, and given designers who didn't have any particularly interesting ideas for rangers, yeah, the ranger's gonna look bad.

I would say that if a ranger subclass steals the rangers' thunder so effectively, it says something about the rangers.


You can be themed as a monster slayer even if others also hate monsters, in the same way that a paladin can be a knight in shining armor even when faithful fighters and warlike clerics exist. And "slayer of a specific thing" doesn't mean you should only get benefits against that particular thing (much as Favored Enemy in all editions have been very unimaginatively limited to that. :smallsigh:). Dragonslayers can get energy resistance and the ability to hide from super-sensitive dragon senses, giant-slayers can get benefits against larger creatures and better ability to dodge projectiles, ghost hunters can get the ability to strike incorporeal and ethereal beings and a resistance to life-draining effects, wizard hunters can get casting-disruption abilities and protection from illusions and enchantments, bounty hunters can get the ability to bind and subdue foes easily and track particularly sneaky creatures, and so forth.

Whether each of those is a subclass and grants a wide variety of themed benefits, or whether it's like Favored Enemy and the ranger picks up multiple of these ability packages, that can still strongly theme the ranger as the dedicated monster slayer without pigeon-holing him into anything.

True, you can create enemy-themed powers that work against others as well. I could see that as a class in its own right, maybe.


It scales upwards just fine if you focus on the "sneaking" and "tracking" parts of wilderness survival as much as the "in a particular Material Plane terrain" part. Low-level rangers stroll naked through the desert or the tundra; mid-level rangers can survive in the pressure of the ocean depths and the heat of the Plane of Fire; high-level rangers can shape Limbo into perfect facsimiles of the Prime and do backstrokes through the River Styx. Low-level rangers never get lost and can follow animal tracks; mid-level rangers can find their way to nearby portals and see through all variety of disguises and tricks for shaking pursuit; high-level rangers can find a target wherever in the multiverse it tries to flee and track immaterial things like teleportation spells and very faint auras. Low-level rangers run quietly through forests and hide in foliage; mid-level rangers can tap dance around dragons and bulettes and not be found and become unseen against any background with a moment's notice; high-level rangers can run across a lake without leaving a ripple and stand so still as to become practically invisible.

Really, take a look at the kinds of things high-level spells can accomplish in the way of finding things, being stealthy, adapting to environments, and other things within the ranger's theme. There's no reason those couldn't be taken away from the wizard or druid and given to the ranger (and, if he's feeling nice, shared with the rogue).

That's kind of the problem here. Why shouldn't the rogue be able to do all that? Or anyone with proficiency in survival and/or stealth? Also, I have a problem with low-level abilities completely bypassing certain challenges and modes of play.

That being said, it's not like the rogue is standing on very form ground, either. I feel like maybe rogues and rangers should be merged as a "stealthy problem-solver and scout" class, with subclasses providing different flavors thereof. The more outright fantastical varieties of ranger, like beasmastery and such, can be their own class, or a subclass. Or a druid's subclass, or something.


I mean, you never hear people complaining that the paladin, monk, or bard is forcing the party to rest because they've run out of smites/turn attempts, Stunning Fist uses, or bardic music, yet those are daily resources. :smallwink:

Because their per-day resources have a way smaller impact.


The difference between daily spells and those other daily resources that make spells seem much more precious are twofold: first, those other resources are pools of the same thing where spells are partitioned into levels and slots, so a paladin can smite if he has all, some, or none of his daily smites left but a given spell might be the only copy that a prepared caster has available and a given slot might be the last one of a certain spell level that a spontaneous caster has available. Second, at some point along the line an expectation arose that a caster has to cast a spell or do some other magic thing every single round in every single encounter or they're not sufficiently "being a spellcaster," so a caster with 10 spell slots is somehow only good for 10 rounds per day (whether that's 10 rounds of combat or 6 rounds of combat and 4 utility spells or whatever) and then they're done.

The change I suggested is a good way to handle the first point (you can easily get back a specific spell with a few minutes' downtime, so you don't have to worry about casting a spell early in the morning and not having it in the evening without a full rest), but isn't the only way; things like casting directly from your spellbook, combining or splitting slots a la Versatile Spellcaster, and the like can help reduce the anxiety about that one spell being inaccessible. Reserve feats were a good way to handle the second point, providing a nice incentive to actively avoid casting spells and providing you with something magical to do in the meantime, as were Devotion and Divine feats to let clerics supplement their spells with other magical effects using their languishing turn attempts. Basically, address the psychological issues of "I might need this later" and "I'm a wizard, I should be magicking things" and you can reduce the overemphasis on spells.

I feel like that could work, along with cantrips, reserve feats and rituals.


Emphasis added in bold.
I was thinking about this post this morning and it reminded me of something I've thought about in relationship to 4e, namely the term 'bloodied.' What if bloodied means physical damage and becomes either a status effect and/or a keyword? If bloodied comes to mean the first time in a combat that you take actual physical damage, the "meaty" part of HP that Morty mentions, it provides an easy way to distinguish between the "meaty" and non-meat/"mushy" parts of HP.

I see having bloodied be a status effect/keyword offers other benefits as well:
It allows for different kinds of healing. Easy HP gain can mostly become the 'non-meat' part of HP that does not remove the bloodied status even when healing half or more of a character's total HP. This means that some healing spells/abilities could remove the bloodied status and some don't allowing for different types of healer type characters.

For those in favor of a more gritty D&D, being bloodied could offer a place to start having wound penalties of some kind or another. I am not yet sure how I would implement wound penalties in D&D. Would it make sense to have a minus to all roles while bloodied, a CON penalty or something more fluid depending on the class?

The third benefit I see to a bloodied status effect would be in encouraging combats to end before one side or the other wipes their opponents out allowing for other victory conditions. For example, there could be fights that are explicitly to 'first blood' or some groups of enemies could start trying to flee once some set percentage of their group is bloodied.

Thoughts?

I don't think it's enough and it doesn't really address the systemic problems HP have. It's also pretty static to always have that kick in when you're at half health.

Knaight
2018-06-12, 07:24 PM
Both ways actually make sense, but you need the right system.

In D&D, where we don't care about where you hit, armour as defence class makes sense, and is what I'm using. Because lots of armour can absorb or deflect blows to such a degree that you don't take meaningful damage we're just simplifying by sorting into 'no meaningful damage' and 'got through/avoided armour'.

I'm generally on board with armor as added defense, but D&D is one of the cases where this works the worst*, given the plethora of monsters where going right through armor makes a fair amount of sense.

That said, there's a way around this with multiple defenses, GURPS style. If you have Reflect (parrying, taking hits on armor, blocking with shield) and Evade (just dodging) defenses you can have armor add to Reflect, then take size into account. The armor will always still technically help at least a little, but Reflect quickly becomes useless once the size difference gets drastic enough. This is also no more complicated than having AC plus Reflex/Dex Save/Whatever, and less complicated than AC, touch AC, and Reflex.

It also creates some interesting options for magic items. Take the immovable rod - among other things that could act as an AC 0 shield that mitigates the size difference. Brilliant Energy gets simplified, as something that can only be countered with Evade. A whole new set of defensive items opens up as things that boost Evade (though the existence of Dex/Reflex saves/defenses mitigates this).

Speaking of size - one of the other things I'd change is the size categories. That D&D quantifies basically everything then uses ordinal qualifiers for size, something that can actually be quantified easily, has always annoyed me. Stealing Fudge's Scale system and plugging it in directly fits that, and with the magic of the OGL it's even kosher to do so.

*In fantasy anyways - genres likely to have vehicles can be at least comparable. I don't care how good your armor suit is, if you get shot by a starship it isn't helping.

JoeJ
2018-06-12, 07:38 PM
But some spells do need daily limits. wall of stone a couple of times a day is a useful BFC effect that allows the Wizard to build himself a tower if he spends a couple of months of downtime. wall of stone every 15 minutes replaces every stonemason in the world.

Wall of stone twice a week replaces every stonemason in the world, unless it's really expensive.

Darth Ultron
2018-06-12, 08:16 PM
Why does "E6" exist?

Above 10th level WD&D just seems weird to me, and apparently (according Mike Mearls) most 5e WD&D is played no higher than 7th level, which seems believable to me).

TD&D definitely had "power creep" over it's 25 years, but nothing like the giant jump that was 3e WD&D

I think the The Rules Cyclopedia and BECMI did the best D&D leveling.

Kish
2018-06-12, 08:23 PM
Why does "E6" exist?

Because people like the 3.5 system at lower levels and want constant advancement, but don't want to have to deal with, e.g, PCs who can teleport and spellcasters being on a whole different plane than non-spellcasters.


Characters who have reached level 6 have proven themselves, but this extremely rapid growth does not go on forever. Instead, they master specialized techniques, or become more versatile. This stage of a character’s development is represented by gaining new feats.

Note: And want constant advancement. E6 would not need to exist if "let's just stop leveling and becoming more powerful in any way at level 6" was a popular playstyle; that simple, straightforward house rule would not require the detailed netbooks written for E6, the careful reframing to make level 6 clearly represent a mighty hero (or villain). E6 is no argument for the 5E "you have a fair chance of failing any skill or hit roll at level 1, and you have a fair chance of failing any skill or hit roll at level 20, but the DM is more likely to say you automatically succeed instead of looking at the roll if you're level 20" thing.

I poked around the E6 netbook some more and found this:

E6 recognizes that 6th level characters are mortal, while reframing the game’s perspective to create a context where those same 6th level characters are epic heroes.
[...]Levels 1 to 6 are a period when a character comes into his own, and a crash course in action and danger transforms them from 1st-level commoners to veteran adventurers (or corpses). Once transformed by their experiences, a character’s growth is no longer a continuous, linear progression. Instead, they specialize or broaden their abilities: There are still major differences between the master warriors and the veteran mercenaries, but it's not a change of scale. This change in progression, which we see frequently in fantasy literature, is modeled through the acquisition of feats.
...so yeah. Thematically, E6 couldn't be further from "low fantasy"; in non-E6 D&D, a sixth-level character is low-level, not a mighty hero. In 5ed, with its mechanics, calling a sixth-level character a mighty hero would just be grotesque; in 3.5ed, with monsters similarly limited (or reflavored--while monsters are CR-capped by default, it could also work for an ancient red dragon to be something like an MMORPG raid boss, a legendary terror to be tackled by forty level 6 adventurers, a small army of the realm's greatest heroes), it can actually work.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-13, 02:42 AM
Emphasis added in bold.
I was thinking about this post this morning and it reminded me of something I've thought about in relationship to 4e, namely the term 'bloodied.' What if bloodied means physical damage and becomes either a status effect and/or a keyword?
[...]
For those in favor of a more gritty D&D, being bloodied could offer a place to start having wound penalties of some kind or another. I am not yet sure how I would implement wound penalties in D&D. Would it make sense to have a minus to all roles while bloodied, a CON penalty or something more fluid depending on the class?

Star Wars Saga does something like this, where you have a "condition track" of increasing penalties for being wounded and a "damage threshold" where if you take that much damage from a single attack it moves you down a step on the track. The steps are -1 to all rolls and defenses, then -2, -5, -10, and finally unconsciousness, which is pretty good at representing going from unharmed to "nah, just a scratch" to "I'm a goner!", and most status effects are folded into or dependent on the condition track in some way.

Now, in SWSE recovering condition damage and inflicting more of it is pretty easy since it's meant to represent stamina more than anything else, but if you make recovering it pretty difficult (requires lots of bed rest and/or high-DC mundane healing and/or powerful healing spells), flavor it as serious wounds, and attach persistent effects to it like "broken arm" or the like, suddenly you get a nice way to represent wounds that isn't just another track of HP or a simple on/off bloodied switch.


I would say that if a paladin subclass steals the rangers' thunder so effectively, it says something about the rangers.

Well, the thing it mainly says is that stuff that blatantly falls under the ranger theme was given to the paladin, thus restricting the ranger's design space, that's all.

Sorcerers used to be the ones with all the fiend/celestial/dragon/fey flavor due to their bloodlines, and then 5e introduced the warlock with fiend/celestial/dragon/fey patrons, and if sorcerers had been primarily defined by the bloodline flavor (as opposed to being full arcane casters first and guys with wonky bloodline powers a distant second) you can bet that either the warlock would have stolen the sorcerer's thunder and made him seem somewhat superfluous or they both would have had watered-down flavor from trying to split the same theme.

I'm not necessarily in the "rangers have to be their own full class or else!" camp, but it's definitely the case that people are being too quick to claim that the ranger's schticks can just be handed off to the fighter, rogue, or druid without losing anything. And the fact that we're looking at using three classes to fulfill the ranger archetype implies that it's not so dispensable, just like a rogue/fighter/wizard multiclass doesn't fulfill the bard archetype on its own.


That's kind of the problem here. Why shouldn't the rogue be able to do all that? Or anyone with proficiency in survival and/or stealth?

For the same reason that ranks in Stealth don't let you Sneak Attack, either. Some things should be available to anyone with certain skills, and some things should be class features available only to certain classes, for thematic reasons or role protection or synergy or whatever other reasons.


That being said, it's not like the rogue is standing on very form ground, either. I feel like maybe rogues and rangers should be merged as a "stealthy problem-solver and scout" class, with subclasses providing different flavors thereof. The more outright fantastical varieties of ranger, like beasmastery and such, can be their own class, or a subclass. Or a druid's subclass, or something.

Oh, I'm totally in favor of making ranger into one or more subclasses rather than a class on par with fighter or rogue; like I said upthread, in my current work-in-progress class system there are different ranger subclasses for the fighter, rogue, and druid so you can build the "monster slayer" ranger, "stealthy uber-tracker" ranger, or "one with nature" ranger. I just think it probably does have to be (a) full subclass(es), and not just a few building blocks added to other classes, unless you're breaking down classes to the point that every other hybrid class is also building blocks and you're most of the way to a classless system.


Because their per-day resources have a way smaller impact.

+5d6 fire damage to every attack from Dragonfire Inspiration or a charging smite with a x3 crit weapon is a pretty big impact, and a magic missile or spike stones spell is a pretty small one. Spells being a daily resource and some spells being combat-enders or plot-solvers are orthogonal issues; most spells can be balanced on a daily basis just fine in comparison to other resource schedules, and those that can't are due to their overly-impactful effects, not their resource schedule, and probably can't be balanced as-is in other resource schedules either.

Cosi
2018-06-13, 07:37 AM
I tend to like doing it that way instead of subclass multiclassing because in that setup you can either subclass your main class or multiclass, not both, so you can have a Wizard (Evoker) or a Wizard (Fighter) but not an Evoker (Fighter) or a Fighter (Evoker).

I don't think you have to do it that way. You could ban Wizard sub-Wizard if you wanted, and there's no reason to expect that there wouldn't be customization options within a class. There is, at minimum, the specialization of choosing whichever spells it is you choose.


Definitely true. I do think, though, that it's easier to AD&D multiclass/3e gestalt a class onto a monster (like my upthread example of an ogre being a Giant and an ogre mage being a Giant//Wizard) than to have monster subclasses you'd swap out for player-class subclasses because it makes writing monsters easier (you don't have to worry about which of their abilities might get swapped out in a multiclass scenario and how integral those are to running the monsters, it's a complete unit on its own and you can add on whatever you want) and modifying monsters easier for DMs (strictly adding abilities and increasing some numbers is easier to do on the fly than trading abilities and adjusting things up and down).

What? The subclass is supposed to be its own complete track. There's no swapping abilities around.


Not all clerics of Boccob are just wizards with a couple priestly class features on top in the same way that not all paladins of Heironeous are just fighters with a couple priestly class features on top--and, for that matter, priests of Wee Jas aren't just priests with a couple necromancer-y class features on top, either.

Why not? I could understand having priests of Boccob who were Sorcerers or Warlocks, but I can't see any benefit to a unified Priest class which provides mechanical support for both priests of Pelor and Nerull. Do priests of Grummsh and priests whatever-the-Elf-god-is have enough in common to carry an entire class? Does whatever that is generalize to priests of Obad-hai, Kord, and Tiamat?


Classes are supposed to not just provide a theme, but also provide different resource subsystems (or lack thereof, in the case of some classes) and different mechanical ways to express the same flavor.

I agree. But classes need to have the same level of conceptual weight. And I don't see a satisfying Priest class that is the equal of Necromancer, Shaman, Druid, Summoner, Illusionist, Fire Mage, or Warlock. You also have to remember that it goes the other way too. If you write a Priest class that has enough mechanical diversity to support both Vecna and Karl Glittergold, people are going to want to play characters who use the Illusion and Death spheres without having to worship your god of Assassins. Going the other way works better.


Yeah, it's the conceptual block I was talking about, not the mechanical part--it's not that you can't balance them, just that up to this point the designers haven't, so they've used magic items to sneakily give the fighter magic with varying levels of success.

I don't think the magic item system has done that since 3e. If everyone gets the same magic, the catch-up effect is minimal.


The main benefit of the luck blade in this scenario is actually the wishes it potentially comes with; the trident comes in very handy in certain campaigns, and the holy avenger comes in very handy for certain classes, but there's no class for whom or scenario in which the luck blade doesn't come in handy (albeit only 1 to 3 times). I wasn't even thinking about the boring bonuses part, and am definitely in favor of ditching those for the most part and making "+X weapon" one weapon option among many (and not a particularly appealing one) rather than a default part of every magic weapon.

Sure, the story where you find a thing with a bunch of wishes is a good one. But it's not particularly better than the story where you find a thing that lets you control fish, or that lets you send your shadow out to kill people, or whatever other magic stuff you could be doing. +X weapons shouldn't exist at all. Magic items should probably give a fixed "its magic" bonus if they give any bonus at all.


Disagree; there's nothing wrong with enabling people to play pre-Trench-Run Luke, pre-unplugged-from-the-Matrix Neo, pre-Eye-of-the-World Rand, and other characters who are still more "commoner swept up in larger events" than action hero. But the game should definitely make clear that that is what 1st level represents, that 3rd level (or whenever) represents more capable heroes, and that it's perfectly acceptable and even encouraged to start above 1st to get the particular feel you're looking for, instead of making it seem like you have to start at 1st or you're doing it wrong (which none of the editions really do, but they don't do anything to argue against that common perception, either).

I think if you want to do that it's probably better to put in content below 1st level. Have like a Prologue Mode or something where you run through a level 0 adventure as part of character creation.


Those are benefits, yes. I'm honestly not sure if they're worth the drawbacks, especially considering how wobbly the CR system has always been.

I think the CR system is actually pretty good. It's not perfect, but it's mostly accurate, and when it's inaccurate it's usually not by very much (even the much feared-Shadow and Giant Crab are probably only CR 5 monsters). Certainly it's better than the alternative of "the DM has to wing it".


Is it? Or is it just something people have taken for granted because that's what the rules result in?

Yes. Even BECMI D&D went up to Immortals, who "who discovered the multiverse, and decided to give it order and purpose". Every edition of D&D (except 5e, though it's not over yet) has explicitly endorsed the notion that things would eventually go all crazy and gonzo. The idea that you eventually become very powerful is a deep part of D&D's heritage, and shows up to varying degrees in the source material. The hobbits in LotR don't become particularly powerful in an absolute sense, but they do become much more powerful than any other hobbits.


This I can mostly agree with, but the logical conclusion is that low levels can remain low-powered and people who want to be action heroes right off the bat can just start at a higher level.

Certainly there should be some degree of that, but you only have so many levels for your power progression.


Those are roles that can and should be covered. But whether or not they deserve entire classes is another question altogether. If we're going to have, say 12 classes, then we really do need to decide which ideas deserve them and which can be covered by subclasses, feats or something else. Creating Aragorn should be possible - whether or not you need a whole class called "ranger" to do that is a different question.

I mean, if you have a class that you could plausibly call "Ranger", there's no real reason to not call it "Ranger". I'm all for killing sacred cows, but I don't really understand your apparent grudge against that idea of Rangers.


I've never thought about it this way. It's a fair point, but I'm not sure how I feel like designing things around high-end play. Power granted by deities or otherworldy patrons is a staple, so should we restrict players from using it because of something that might happen on a level of play that they will likely never see?

You don't have to eliminate it, you just have to be careful with how it works. The obvious solution in my mind would be to have Lloth's spider magic be something she teaches you, rather than something she gives you. So if you happen to be a real prodigy at spider magic, you can become more powerful than Lloth, and if you do decide to kill Lloth all you lose is access to whatever secret spider magic she hasn't taught you yet.


Wall of stone twice a week replaces every stonemason in the world, unless it's really expensive.

Anything that requires you to get the attention of someone who can by definition cast fabricate, major creation, wall of stone, and lesser planar binding is going to be expensive. What do you even offer someone who can do that? You can't give them stuff, because they can make all the stuff you make better and faster. You can't give them money, because money is used to buy stuff.

2D8HP
2018-06-13, 07:46 AM
Actually, I've been ruminating on this for a long time and had asked friends and acquaintances on how they would fix D&D, and based on how much I see this on the forums and in people's answers...

Not sure if this merits a separate thread, and I want to ask - why so many people wish for D&D to be a gritty low magic fantasy game? .


Because I want "Dungeons & Dragons" to feel more like the D&D I played again (but not all of the way, having most of my new PC's survive till second level is an exciting novelty).


It hasn't been that for ages,


I suppose, but that change was while I wasn't playing, so it seems like a big adjustment.


and there are literally dozens of those on the market, as far as I'm aware, and they have been designed as such from the start.


As was D&D, at first.


I've heard lots of good things (bad things too, though) about LotFP, some good remarks on Shadow of the Demon Lord or something like that, etc. Most heartbreakers of older D&D versions also attempt to skew the board towards "gritty realism".

Meanwhile, my project of remaking D&D only exists because there is no game I know of in the genre of "superpowered fantasy heroes"


1985's Fantasy Hero leaps to mind


aside from Exalted similar in tone to what I want to play and DM, and Exalted's mechanics are kinda bad and would require much more work to redo properly, while higher-level D&D would work quite well for that with a full progression in 20 levels from mortal to demigod.


Why does "E6" exist?

Above 10th level WD&D just seems weird to me, and apparently (according to Mike Mearls) most 5e WD&D is played no higher than 7th level (which seems believable to me).

TD&D definitely had "power creep" over it's 25 years, but nothing like the giant jump that was 3e WD&D (and I presume 4e).

That a common complaint about 5e WD&D is that it is too "low power" seems amazing to me as, while fun, it seems more like 3e WD&D to me than TD&D.

In most things 5e WD&D seems like a "compromise edition" designed to be "everyone's second favorite: and, judging by how many new players there are, it seemd to be working..



Because people like the 3.5 system at lower levels and want constant advancement, but don't want to have to deal with, e.g, PCs who can teleport and spellcasters being on a whole different plane than non-spellcasters.

Note: And want constant advancement. E6 would not need to exist if "let's just stop leveling and becoming more powerful in any way at level 6" was a popular playstyle; that simple, straightforward house rule would not require the detailed netbooks written for E6, the careful reframing to make level 6 clearly represent a mighty hero (or villain). E6 is no argument for the 5E "you have a fair chance of failing any skill or hit roll at level 1, and you have a fair chance of failing any skill or hit roll at level 20, but the DM is more likely to say you automatically succeed instead of looking at the roll if you're level 20" thing....
:

.....so yeah. Thematically, E6 couldn't be further from "low fantasy"; in non-E6 D&D, a sixth-level character is low-level, not a mighty hero. In 5ed, with its mechanics, calling a sixth-level character a mighty hero would just be grotesque; in 3.5ed, with monsters similarly limited (or reflavored--while monsters are CR-capped by default, it could also work for an ancient red dragon to be something like an MMORPG raid boss, a legendary terror to be tackled by forty level 6 adventurers, a small army of the realm's greatest heroes), it can actually work.


My "Why does E6 exist? " was a rhetorical question towards arguing that there is a demand for lower level play by people besides me.

And you'll get no argument from me that 5e WD&D gets wonkier at high levels.

I only briefly glanced at 4e so I could be mistaken, but AFAICT a 1st level 5e PC is probably the most powerful first level PC of any edition of D&D, but a 20th level one is weaker.

I have mixed feelings about how powerful 1st level 5e PC's are but, especially given how fast PC's "level-up" in 5e, I'm happy they weakened 20th level.

Kish
2018-06-13, 09:32 AM
But again, if it was just a demand for lower-level play, that would call for a simple level cap house rule, or for "you reach level 7 and retire; we're starting over with new first-level characters." E6 has as its core assumption "the PCs will get beyond sixth level, enough that if I don't want them to have fifth-level spells I need to totally overhaul the game system." I would say it's very much a system for mid-level-and-above play; true low-level play (which does certainly exist) doesn't need it.

Then again, if you mean "low-level" as "no one creates walls of iron or does 20d6 damage to all and only enemies within 60 feet of each other," granted; however far you progress with E6, you'll never have what D&D would call high-level spells.

These (http://agc.deskslave.org/files/ex201.html) three campaign stories make interesting reading, I think. I'd start with the second, which is why it's the one I linked to; the first has a particular adversarial DM/PCs dynamic which is somewhat amusing, as well as somewhat frustrating, to read, but shouldn't be taken as an example of normal 3.5 play (and the second is generally my favorite).

2D8HP
2018-06-13, 09:37 AM
....These (http://agc.deskslave.org/files/ex201.html) three campaign stories make interesting reading...


Thank you very much for that!

I'll read it with interest.

:smile:

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-13, 09:05 PM
What? The subclass is supposed to be its own complete track. There's no swapping abilities around.

Not swapping things within the subclass, swapping out subclasses. If monsters are set up to have a class and a subclass like players to enable building a giant shaman as a Giant (Druid) or whatever, then the basic giant presumably has a subclass like (Giant), (Brute), or the like, and you swap out Giant (Giant) for Giant (Druid) to make a shaman, Giant (Marshal) to make a warlord, or whatever. In which case you need to consider whether a giant feels sufficiently giant-y (if the subclass has active and thematic abilities) and/or is sufficiently strong (if the subclass is mostly passive abilities and numerical boosts) with its subclass traded out for something else.

Unless the subclass setup you're proposing is not mandatory subclassing for everything, but rather stapling a condensed version of one class onto another class or onto a monster, in which case I don't see how that meaningfully differs from a two-class-only multiclassing approach.


Why not? I could understand having priests of Boccob who were Sorcerers or Warlocks, but I can't see any benefit to a unified Priest class which provides mechanical support for both priests of Pelor and Nerull. Do priests of Grummsh and priests whatever-the-Elf-god-is have enough in common to carry an entire class? Does whatever that is generalize to priests of Obad-hai, Kord, and Tiamat?

From a purely thematic perspective, priests of Pelor and priests of Nerull have at least as much in common as sorcerers with a celestial bloodline and sorcerers with a shadow bloodline, or conjurers and necromancers. One person in each of those duos deals in angels, team buffs, and glowy light while the other deals in undead minions, death spells, and scary darkness, but both recognizably go about things in the same way. If those priests should be a template on top of different classes, so could those other examples and a bunch more, and at that point you have no base classes to layer a template onto.

From a mechanical perspective, yes, you can generalize to any religion, and you can get there just by smashing together the 2e and 3e clerics. Give them spells in a hybrid of the sphere and domain models (lots of small themed lists with attached powers like domains, no hard one-spell-per-level restriction and multiple levels of access like spheres), compose individual priest spell lists from groups of spheres/domains granted by their god, add a turning/rebuking or Channel Divinity mechanic for powering generic-priest powers like healing allies or activating sphere/domain powers or smiting enemies of the faith on a different schedule, and make one or more faith-specific powers per religion (so a priest of Obad Hai with the Plant, Animal, and Balance spheres is still different from a priestess of Ehlonna with the Plant, Animal, and Balance spheres), and voilà, highly differentiated priests of different faiths that all share the same mechanical base. And that's just an idea that purely borrows from existing cleric classes; you can easily take it in other directions.

The reason to do things that way instead of just having a priest template or subclass for other classes is that (A) most gods aren't going to map neatly to one or more classes--Heironeous to paladin, Nerull to necromancer, Obad-Hai to druid, Olidammara to rogue, sure, easy, and Moradin can be fighter or artificer, Erythnul can be barbarian or assassin, and so on, but there's no healing-and-lasers class for Pelor (he doesn't care about most druid-y stuff, arcane blasters don't get healing, a Healer class wouldn't get blasting), no lucky-wanderer class for Fharlanghn, no nurturing-protector class for Yondalla (druids are nurturing but not protectors, paladins are protectors but more offensive than nurturing), and so on--and (B) even if they did, the ones that map to casters would be much more traditional-cleric-like than those who mapped to other classes.

Of course, many or even most priests of a given god might want to be a Fighter (Priest) or Wizard (Priest) or the like instead of a plain ol' Priest, in the same way that a lot of players want to play mystic theurges and war priests and such in 3e, and that's okay, but having Priest be subclass-only isn't really sufficient any more than having Wizard be subclass-only would be.


I agree. But classes need to have the same level of conceptual weight. And I don't see a satisfying Priest class that is the equal of Necromancer, Shaman, Druid, Summoner, Illusionist, Fire Mage, or Warlock. You also have to remember that it goes the other way too. If you write a Priest class that has enough mechanical diversity to support both Vecna and Karl Glittergold, people are going to want to play characters who use the Illusion and Death spheres without having to worship your god of Assassins. Going the other way works better.

Yes, you could write up a different class or subclass for every possible concept that might fit a priest of a god in your pantheon, but why do that when you can have one class that handles all of those concepts with much less mechanical overhead? It's nice to have the option of playing a focused caster like a beguiler, warmage, or dread necromancer, but if there were no wizard or sorcerer class and you had to write up classes like Battlemage (blasting), Warmage (wards and mass buffs), Necromancer (undead minions), Death Mage (life drain), and so on to cover all the themes that a wizard or sorcerer with the appropriate spell selection can cover, that would quickly grow prohibitively time-consuming.

Now, if the fact you mentioned Necromancer, Illusionist, and Fire Mage instead of Wizard or Sorcerer means you want to get of the Wizard, Fighter, and Rogue as well as the Priest for all being too broad and replace them with much more specialized versions, I suppose I can see where you're coming from there. But aside from that being pretty darn not-D&D for a "fixing D&D" thread, I fail to see what that gains you over retaining the broad classes and making the narrower classes subclasses of the broad ones.


I think if you want to do that it's probably better to put in content below 1st level. Have like a Prologue Mode or something where you run through a level 0 adventure as part of character creation.

Two issues with this. Firstly, those parts of the Luke/Neo/Rand/etc. stories aren't just a one-adventure let's-get-this-over-with kind of thing before the "real" story starts, they're noticeable portions of those respective stories (Luke is a neophyte warrior and Force-user through all of Episode 4 and part of Episode 5, dramatic critical hit on the Death Star notwithstanding; Neo isn't The One for most of the first movie; Rand doesn't really come into his own until book 3 of 12 in his series), and it's entirely possible to want to play a long campaign arc or even a whole campaign as wizard apprentices, Jedi padawans, a band of plucky young thieves, and so on. So supporting those concepts for a level or three is important to enable the "zero" part of "zero to hero."

Second, if 1st level is a high baseline of competence, then you don't have much room to go "down." AD&D and 3e already have a relatively low-power 1st level that puts everything from kobolds to shopkeepers to housecats on basically the same scale and causes the "housecats kill commoners" issue, so squeezing more things in there doesn't help.

Morty
2018-06-14, 06:37 PM
For the same reason that ranks in Stealth don't let you Sneak Attack, either. Some things should be available to anyone with certain skills, and some things should be class features available only to certain classes, for thematic reasons or role protection or synergy or whatever other reasons.

Oh, I'm totally in favor of making ranger into one or more subclasses rather than a class on par with fighter or rogue; like I said upthread, in my current work-in-progress class system there are different ranger subclasses for the fighter, rogue, and druid so you can build the "monster slayer" ranger, "stealthy uber-tracker" ranger, or "one with nature" ranger. I just think it probably does have to be (a) full subclass(es), and not just a few building blocks added to other classes, unless you're breaking down classes to the point that every other hybrid class is also building blocks and you're most of the way to a classless system.

Yes, I can definitely get behind "ranger" themes being handled by subclasses. After all, its main problem is that it's got a lot of disparate class features that don't really fit together that well. It's true that feats and proficiencies probably can't get the job done here. But a "monster slayer", "survivor" or "beastmaster" subclass for whatever big classes are there can.


+5d6 fire damage to every attack from Dragonfire Inspiration or a charging smite with a x3 crit weapon is a pretty big impact, and a magic missile or spike stones spell is a pretty small one. Spells being a daily resource and some spells being combat-enders or plot-solvers are orthogonal issues; most spells can be balanced on a daily basis just fine in comparison to other resource schedules, and those that can't are due to their overly-impactful effects, not their resource schedule, and probably can't be balanced as-is in other resource schedules either.

True enough, I suppose. I'd still get rid of daily spells, because I don't think daily abilities of any sort create a very healthy gameplay dynamic. Some of them can work if we spread them more evenly, if not entirely symmetrically like 4e did, among different classes. Certainly not as the main resource of some classes but not others.



Yes. Even BECMI D&D went up to Immortals, who "who discovered the multiverse, and decided to give it order and purpose". Every edition of D&D (except 5e, though it's not over yet) has explicitly endorsed the notion that things would eventually go all crazy and gonzo. The idea that you eventually become very powerful is a deep part of D&D's heritage, and shows up to varying degrees in the source material. The hobbits in LotR don't become particularly powerful in an absolute sense, but they do become much more powerful than any other hobbits.

The idea that you eventually become powerful has certainly been there for a long time, but the execution has been, to put it mildly, lacking. The game goes up to level 20 or beyond, but it's never had a good idea of what it is after level 10. Not just rules, but also the fiction. This is also where the magic/non-magic disparity comes in, of course, with the game gushing about how awesome and powerful high-level archmages are, but having no clue how to depict its high-level warriors beyond "really good with weapons, I mean really good". High-level rogues and similar don't seem to exist. To say nothing of the consistent unwillingness to consider the impact the high-level characters would have on the world.


Certainly there should be some degree of that, but you only have so many levels for your power progression.

Yes, and D&D has only ever properly used maybe a half of them.


I mean, if you have a class that you could plausibly call "Ranger", there's no real reason to not call it "Ranger". I'm all for killing sacred cows, but I don't really understand your apparent grudge against that idea of Rangers.

I don't have a "grudge" against the "idea of Rangers". I just think the class as it has worked in D&D for a long time just isn't something we can work with.


You don't have to eliminate it, you just have to be careful with how it works. The obvious solution in my mind would be to have Lloth's spider magic be something she teaches you, rather than something she gives you. So if you happen to be a real prodigy at spider magic, you can become more powerful than Lloth, and if you do decide to kill Lloth all you lose is access to whatever secret spider magic she hasn't taught you yet.

I suppose it would also explain why clerics have to learn their skills just like every other profession.

Cosi
2018-06-14, 08:43 PM
Unless the subclass setup you're proposing is not mandatory subclassing for everything, but rather stapling a condensed version of one class onto another class or onto a monster, in which case I don't see how that meaningfully differs from a two-class-only multiclassing approach.

Mandatory subclassing for PCs. Monsters might or might not get a subclass, depending on something like 4e's minion/normal/solo/elite thing, with some mechanism for a monster having only a subclass. So your basic Giant would get whatever the abilities of the Giant subclass were (presumably "being large" and "throwing rocks"), and the various flavored Giants (Fire, Ice, Stone, Storm) would have feats or magic item equivalents to give them a minimum of fire powers or ice powers. Then you could layer on other classes for giants that happened to be elite. Like a Shaman sub Giant or a Warlord sub Giant.

Also, not necessarily a condensed version. Something that felt plausibly class-ish, with a single resource management system and a simplified progression.


From a purely thematic perspective, priests of Pelor and priests of Nerull have at least as much in common as sorcerers with a celestial bloodline and sorcerers with a shadow bloodline, or conjurers and necromancers.

Summoner and Necromancer should be separate classes. Bloodline powers are not a big deal, or at least they don't have to be. 3e bloodlines are feats.


One person in each of those duos deals in angels, team buffs, and glowy light while the other deals in undead minions, death spells, and scary darkness, but both recognizably go about things in the same way.

No they don't. Look at the Necromancer versus the Summoner. The Necromancer walks around with a pile of minions that are small, crappy, and active all the time. The Summoner, uh, summons individual monsters during combat, or if he does use something like planar binding gets a single powerful minion. Not to mention that the tactical niches of the priest of Pelor (healing, defense, lasers) and the priest of Nerull (minions, death effects, curses) are actually completely different.


If those priests should be a template on top of different classes, so could those other examples and a bunch more, and at that point you have no base classes to layer a template onto.

Those examples literally are templates on top of different classes. In fact, they're templates within a class. But suppose we do allow priests to have either shadow powers or light powers, rather than having a Shadowcaster and White Mage, what happens to all the people who want to play characters with light powers who don't want to worship Pelor? Do they not exist? Do you write up another light power suite for a different class?


but there's no healing-and-lasers class for Pelor (he doesn't care about most druid-y stuff, arcane blasters don't get healing, a Healer class wouldn't get blasting)

You could write a White Mage class. Or do like WoW did and make that a Paladin specialization.


no lucky-wanderer class for Fharlanghn

Pretty sure that's a Bard. Or a Rogue. Maybe a Ranger.


no nurturing-protector class for Yondalla (druids are nurturing but not protectors, paladins are protectors but more offensive than nurturing)

I don't understand why Druid doesn't work here. Bears, for example, are quite famously protective, and there are any number of herd animals for a community value. Whatever class has animal powers has plenty of mandate to be a "nurturing protector".


even if they did, the ones that map to casters would be much more traditional-cleric-like than those who mapped to other classes.

I mean, yes, the ones that are more like the Cleric class would be more like Clerics. Duh. But the traditional Cleric class does not particularly feel like a priest of many of the possible gods.


Yes, you could write up a different class or subclass for every possible concept that might fit a priest of a god in your pantheon, but why do that when you can have one class that handles all of those concepts with much less mechanical overhead?

Because that class is then eating all the conceptual space that should go to other classes. White Mage is a totally viable class, as is Necromancer, and all the other things that you want to be Cleric specs. Those things should be classes, and if you are going to write up enough content to do a viable Cleric build as each of them, you should just write up the classes without the baggage.


Two issues with this. Firstly, those parts of the Luke/Neo/Rand/etc. stories aren't just a one-adventure let's-get-this-over-with kind of thing before the "real" story starts, they're noticeable portions of those respective stories

Kind of? Movies and books are different from D&D. Yeah, Neo doesn't turn into a kung fu badass until a decent chunk of the way into the movie. But there are kung fu badasses doing badass kung fu from the beginning of the movie (literally, the first scene is Trinity running from Agents). Also, while there's a decent chunk of screen time dedicated to pre-The One Neo, there aren't a lot of (I don't think any) fight scenes where he'd just a baseline human. Most of the stuff Neo does before getting his upgrade falls under roleplaying, not stuff that would be covered by the rules of the game.


Second, if 1st level is a high baseline of competence, then you don't have much room to go "down." AD&D and 3e already have a relatively low-power 1st level that puts everything from kobolds to shopkeepers to housecats on basically the same scale and causes the "housecats kill commoners" issue, so squeezing more things in there doesn't help.

1st level doesn't have to be the bottom of the system. It could be, but it's ultimately just numbers. The only real issue is hit dice causing potential non-linearity.


The idea that you eventually become powerful has certainly been there for a long time, but the execution has been, to put it mildly, lacking. The game goes up to level 20 or beyond, but it's never had a good idea of what it is after level 10.

Sure, but that's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. D&D may not have handled it well, but there's plenty of source material for it, and a clear mandate for attempting to do it. So I think you need to sit down and figure out what the game is supposed to look like at that point, because "that part doesn't exist" is quite clearly not an acceptable answer.

Cluedrew
2018-06-15, 07:24 PM
The idea that you eventually become powerful has certainly been there for a long time, but the execution has been, to put it mildly, lacking. The game goes up to level 20 or beyond, but it's never had a good idea of what it is after level 10. Not just rules, but also the fiction. This is also where the magic/non-magic disparity comes in, of course, with the game gushing about how awesome and powerful high-level archmages are, but having no clue how to depict its high-level warriors beyond "really good with weapons, I mean really good". High-level rogues and similar don't seem to exist. To say nothing of the consistent unwillingness to consider the impact the high-level characters would have on the world.
"Yoink," the Thief said, and stole the sun.

Just read that a few days ago. There is a place for this high level stuff, but D&D hasn't seem to have found it. I think the old model of shifting from adventures to members of high society had more potential, but was a bit of an odd fit and it got replaced. Mind you they replaced it by giving the wizards the plot-device spell and just letting the numbers on everyone else just continue to climb. Neither solution is great and together even less so.

Darth Ultron
2018-06-16, 05:33 PM
The game goes up to level 20 or beyond, but it's never had a good idea of what it is after level 10. Not just rules, but also the fiction. This is also where the magic/non-magic disparity comes in, of course, with the game gushing about how awesome and powerful high-level archmages are, but having no clue how to depict its high-level warriors beyond "really good with weapons, I mean really good". High-level rogues and similar don't seem to exist. To say nothing of the consistent unwillingness to consider the impact the high-level characters would have on the world.


The D&D Rules Cyclopedia and BECMI had a good system for this.
1-3 Basic-The characters stay within a mile or so of their home town and explore ruins and dungeons and have simple, short adventures.
4-9 Expert-The characters adventure all over the map, and have moderate adventures.
9th Name Level-At this level an adventure has made a ''name'' for themselves, good or bad. You could stay a 'nomad' or settle down and accept some land, and become part of the nobility and manage your own domain.
10-20 Campaign-At this level adventure is across the Planes and are complex and long. A lot of the adventure focus is on kingdoms, domains and politics.
20-40 Master-At this level adventures are Epic across time and space and anywhere else. A lot of the adventure focus is on worlds, cosmic empires, and politics.
40+ Immortal-At this level adventures are Immortally Epic.

Typical Sample Adventures:
Basic: In Search of the Unknown: exploration of a dangerous labyrinth
Expert:The Isle of Dread: exploration of a dangerous island and Red Arrow, Black Shield: The player characters lead diplomatic missions and armies against the Desert Nomads and their evil leader.
Companion: Earthshaker:is a humorous scenario regarding a giant mechanical war machine and the factions trying to control it, from the inside. The adventure also covers the player characters attempting to run a dukedom.
Master:In to the Maelstrom: The player characters lead a magical flying fleet to defend the world against an invading evil.
Immortal: The Immortal Storm: novice Immortal-level characters must stop a supernatural storm threatens the entire multiverse.

The general idea was a Player Character would semi retire after 9th level, often to rule. Adventure would still come up from time to time, but it was not an every day thing. So years could pass between adventures.

Anonymouswizard
2018-06-16, 05:39 PM
I'm going to note that my 'practical solution' to D&D is to try and run The Dark Eye instead, which does a lot of things I want (weaker magicians, more customisable characters, each attribute is potentially important to everybody), but as it's so hard to sell anybody on something that isn't D&D if I run it's almost always in a system that I don't actually like.

Which is to me the problem with D&D. I don't find it fun to run. Characters have a fairly narrow field of existence between 'can't take a hit' and 'caster god game', and even 5e has only solved it by making warriors more effective damage gods.

I am loving the amount of discussion here, mainly not participating because I don't have the free time to do more than skim most posts.

SimonMoon6
2018-06-17, 09:50 AM
One more thing I would definitely add:

I would hard-wire into the game certain skill checks as being "allowed without having to describe exactly what you're doing".

For example, when you use your strength to swing a weapon, you do not have to describe how the weapon is swung; you just roll dice. When you use your dexterity to pick a lock or disarm a device, you do not have to describe how you use your dexterity to do so; you just roll dice. When you use your charisma to persuade a guard to let you pass, you do not have to describe how the persuasion is performed; you simply roll dice. And when you use your intelligence to solve a puzzle or riddle, you do not have to solve the puzzle or riddle yourself; you simply roll dice.

This would accomplish several things:

(1) The player doesn't have to be as skilled as the player character. Nobody ever assumes that a player needs to be a great fighter to play a great fighter, but often, rather poor DMs seem to think a player needs to be a great orator in order to play a great orator. That's stupid and just makes charisma even more of a dump stat for everyone. The same is true with intelligence. When a group of PCs encounters a riddle, a rather poor DM thinks it is okay to challenge the *players* instead of the *PCs* with a riddle, when actually it should be the PCs who are challenged. That means that a smart player playing a dumb PC will have that dumb PC figure out all the complicated riddles while the dumb guy playing a smart PC will have a supposedly smart PC who can NEVER figure out ANYTHING.

(2) This also means that there will have to be a new skill added to the game (since just leaving "puzzle solving" as an INT check might be too easy for those bad DMs to overlook). So, it might be called "Riddle Master" or "Puzzle Solving", but I'd rather give it a more generic name like "Cleverness" which allows for solving puzzles or riddles with just a roll of a die.

Example:

DM: You are faced with a Sphinx. The sphinx speaks a riddle. The riddle has a DC of 25.

Player: Can I take 10?

DM: Sure.

Player: Okay, I've got 11 ranks in Cleverness and a +4 Int modifier. that gives me a total skill check of 25 when I take 10.

DM: Okay, you've solved the riddle.

(3) Certain skill checks will allow PCs to earn XP. Why should killing monsters be the only way to get XP? Disarming traps, persuading guards, and solving riddles with a die roll should be things that grant xp in the same way that making a die roll to kill a monster should. Of course, there should be a system that makes it so that PCs can't simply make skill checks over and over again to try to game the system; it should only count for skill checks that are an important part of the adventure.

Also, Charisma based skill checks must be allowed to work equally well on PCs as on NPCs. If it's okay for an opponent to become your friend via Charm Person, why can't he become your friend via Diplomacy?

JoeJ
2018-06-17, 01:25 PM
One more thing I would definitely add:

I would hard-wire into the game certain skill checks as being "allowed without having to describe exactly what you're doing".

For example, when you use your strength to swing a weapon, you do not have to describe how the weapon is swung; you just roll dice. When you use your dexterity to pick a lock or disarm a device, you do not have to describe how you use your dexterity to do so; you just roll dice. When you use your charisma to persuade a guard to let you pass, you do not have to describe how the persuasion is performed; you simply roll dice. And when you use your intelligence to solve a puzzle or riddle, you do not have to solve the puzzle or riddle yourself; you simply roll dice.

Your change would make me not want to play that game. The reason good DMs don't base those kinds of things on die rolls is that those players who enjoy having puzzles and social interaction in their game want to try and solve the challenge themselves. Making it a simple skill check takes that away from them.

Combat challenges the players, not just their characters, because it's the player who has to decide the tactics; which weapon or spell to use, who to target, how to position themselves, when to attempt a special maneuver, when to retreat or surrender, etc. Replacing all that with a Tactics skill check would make combat too boring to bother with. Social interaction and exploration need to challenge the players the same way or they're not worth doing at all.

Kish
2018-06-17, 01:45 PM
I think it's more ambiguous than that.

Sure, combat involves the player choosing tactics (and, on this particular forum, I'm probably in the minority in suggesting that it's bad roleplaying for a character with single-digit Intelligence and Wisdom to come up with good tactics, or rather suggesting that that matters). What about something that really is pure brute force--bending a bar, for example? The player obviously doesn't need to bend a metal bar in real life, or suffer any penalty to their character's ability to do so from the player's lack of physical prowess. A player who can barely lift ten pounds can play a massive bruiser without restriction. So should a player who is hopeless at riddles be automatically restricted to playing characters who are hopeless at riddles?

JoeJ
2018-06-17, 01:50 PM
I think it's more ambiguous than that.

Sure, combat involves the player choosing tactics (and, on this particular forum, I'm probably in the minority in suggesting that it's bad roleplaying for a character with single-digit Intelligence and Wisdom to come up with good tactics, or rather suggesting that that matters). What about something that really is pure brute force--bending a bar, for example? The player obviously doesn't need to bend a metal bar in real life, or suffer any penalty to their character's ability to do so from the player's lack of physical prowess. A player who can barely lift ten pounds can play a massive bruiser without restriction. So should a player who is hopeless at riddles be automatically restricted to playing characters who are hopeless at riddles?

It has nothing to do with how good the player is at solving riddles. The question is does the player enjoy solving riddles, regardless of how good at it they are? If they do, why take that away from them? If they don't, why allow them to take that away from players who do?

PhoenixPhyre
2018-06-17, 02:03 PM
It has nothing to do with how good the player is at solving riddles. The question is does the player enjoy solving riddles, regardless of how good at it they are? If they do, why take that away from them? If they don't, why allow them to take that away from players who do?

See, people differ here.

I don't like most "player challenge" puzzles. Because they're both immersion breaking (why does this puzzle only work in English?) and often devolve into reading the creator's mind (due to ambiguity, etc.). They also take an inordinate amount of table time.

I probably wouldn't go so far as abstracting away the puzzle entirely behind a single roll (because I'm not fond of single points of failure), but I could certainly see allowing a roll to get a hint/partial solution. Especially with puzzles that would be much easier to see if you're there in person than just hearing the words (anything revolving around 3D placement of objects, for example, or similarities in visual appearance). This also allows people to play characters that differ from them in mental attributes.

But then, I don't play for challenge of any kind. It's meaningless to me. My biggest source of enjoyment is exploration of the unknown. What's beyond that hill? Behind that door? What happens if I do X? I find "challenge-oriented" play to devolve into "plan so we win before we even start" 5D chess matches. Which I find horribly boring. And that's the best case--worst case it's a meat-grinder that leaves me disconnected from the characters and events or a purely artificial difficulty event (like random levels with completely different mechanics in the middle of a video game).

JoeJ
2018-06-17, 06:14 PM
See, people differ here.

I don't like most "player challenge" puzzles. Because they're both immersion breaking (why does this puzzle only work in English?) and often devolve into reading the creator's mind (due to ambiguity, etc.). They also take an inordinate amount of table time.

I also find puzzles that only work in one language to be immersion breaking, unless that language also exists in the game world. I don't use them. Instead, I'll use logic puzzles, or mysteries that have to be solved by putting clues together, or classic riddles that would work in a large number of languages (I'm not sure there's anything that works in absolutely every language).


I probably wouldn't go so far as abstracting away the puzzle entirely behind a single roll (because I'm not fond of single points of failure), but I could certainly see allowing a roll to get a hint/partial solution. Especially with puzzles that would be much easier to see if you're there in person than just hearing the words (anything revolving around 3D placement of objects, for example, or similarities in visual appearance). This also allows people to play characters that differ from them in mental attributes.

The way I handle characters who are smarter than the players is to first give the question or problem to the players. If they can't come up with anything and aren't willing to guess, they can choose one character to make an Intelligence check instead. But it has to be one or the other, not both.


But then, I don't play for challenge of any kind. It's meaningless to me. My biggest source of enjoyment is exploration of the unknown. What's beyond that hill? Behind that door? What happens if I do X? I find "challenge-oriented" play to devolve into "plan so we win before we even start" 5D chess matches. Which I find horribly boring. And that's the best case--worst case it's a meat-grinder that leaves me disconnected from the characters and events or a purely artificial difficulty event (like random levels with completely different mechanics in the middle of a video game).

If you don't enjoy something, that's an argument for not having it at all at your table, not for having it resolved with a die roll. If some of the other players do like that thing, then hopefully you can all reach some compromise about how much of it to have, so that everybody can have an enjoyable game overall.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-06-17, 06:46 PM
I also find puzzles that only work in one language to be immersion breaking, unless that language also exists in the game world. I don't use them. Instead, I'll use logic puzzles, or mysteries that have to be solved by putting clues together, or classic riddles that would work in a large number of languages (I'm not sure there's anything that works in absolutely every language).


Most of those "logic" puzzles require a specific framework that would make little sense in-universe (because we reason from our assumptions and facts, which are different in universe in an un-accessible way). They also give a great advantage to the kind of people who memorize riddles. It turns into a "can you guess the obscure source" contest. Pass.



The way I handle characters who are smarter than the players is to first give the question or problem to the players. If they can't come up with anything and aren't willing to guess, they can choose one character to make an Intelligence check instead. But it has to be one or the other, not both.




If you don't enjoy something, that's an argument for not having it at all at your table, not for having it resolved with a die roll. If some of the other players do like that thing, then hopefully you can all reach some compromise about how much of it to have, so that everybody can have an enjoyable game overall.

It's not dislike (although for some puzzles it gets really close), it's just irrelevant to my fun.

I've run a total of one real "puzzle" (meaning something that wasn't an intrinsic part of the adventure itself but a lock preventing progress). It was a totally tongue in cheek, 4th-wall-leaning puzzle whose solution was the konami code (up up down down left right left right b a). That was as a breather in a relatively tense portion of a campaign. But I've been in campaigns whose DMs loved them (or were using modules that loved them). Things that get tricky with wording. Things that require reading dwarven runes as english transliterations. And I was playing a dwarf scholar for that one, someone who would know these things. But did I get any benefit from it? No, because it was a "player challenge." Those devolve into "read the DM's mind," because there's always an "obvious" solution if and only if you already know the trick. If you don't, there's no practical way to figure it out, even though in-universe it would be relatively simple. And these puzzles tend to completely block progress--until you figure them out you can't do anything else. No alternate routes, not a side-quest, but a total wall.

It's why I prefer the roll-for-hint method, if puzzles are necessary. It's degrees of success--a low result gives a cryptic hint, a high result gives a clearer hint or a partial solution ("you're pretty sure that those tiles belong there" or "you're pretty sure that the sequence starts with ..."). Both reduce the problem space and give a place to start. It also rewards people for playing smart characters.

The only exception for me is for things that are brute-forceable pretty quickly--I did do a lock that had four colored gems. The set-up made it clear that it was an elemental-opposition sequence, but which to start with? Failure just meant a little zap and some in-universe time. They guessed right on the first try, however (with the "oh, it's like Avatar!" logic which happened to be right for all the wrong reasons).

oxybe
2018-06-18, 06:57 AM
My overall feeling on puzzles is : no. I just don't care for how i've seen them implemented.

Less interesting then a locked door, but serves the same purpose. Why do I say less interesting? Because for the most part, when I see a puzzle in a D&D game, you can't interact with it outside the solution and there's no way to bypass it.

At least with a locked door, if you don't have the key you can sit down as a group and try to figure out another way around it, try to pick the lock instead or kick it down and accept that you'll be making a lot of noise.

With puzzles, I can't remember the last time a GM said "yeah, you can totally take a pickaxe to the puzzle door and just bust your way through" or "yup, you remove the panel, tinker with the mechanism and force the thing open".

it's always "speak friend and you may enter (https://shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=680)"

As for my personal fantasy heartbreaker D&D fix? Take 5e and toss that baby out with the bathwater, basin and towel into the cold, uncaring wilds. I'd start with 4th ed as the mechanical and conceptual base and implement a list of changes from there.

Draz74
2018-06-18, 09:17 AM
Trying to bring the thread back on topic rather than talking about puzzles ...


Everybody and their DM has thought about fixing D&D, even though most of us will never complete their fix for one reason or another. Not all of us even agree on what must be done. So I though it might be fun to discuss how you would fix Dungeons & Dragons.

So the rules are simple. You must simply explain the changes you'd make and why you'd make them while still keeping: a class and level structure, the ability to explore dungeons and fight monsters, and tactical combat.

Hoo boy. I haven't worked on my system for a couple years now, but I put a LOT of work into it for years before that. (Its lifespan was roughly the lifespan of 4e; 5e meets my needs enough that I can ignore all the things that are still wrong with it.) Who knows, maybe I'll pick it up again someday.

I stopped working on CRE8 because it was feeling too complicated overall, and because I wasn't happy with tactical combat rules that attempted to simplify the battle into Sectors rather than keeping track of every 5 ft with a grid. That said, there are a lot of things about CRE8 that I really did like:

After trying a LOT of different arrays of Ability Scores and not being happy with any of them, I abolished Ability Scores completely. Characters can still be adequately represented by their other stats, such as skills. For example, making Brawn a skill largely obviated the need for a Strength ability score. Especially with mental abilities, having more specific stats that do more specific things makes for a lot less arguing about which Mental Ability Score applies. (For the record, CRE8 ended up with 10 Skills: Athletics, Brawn, Charisma, Dexterity, Gadgetry, Glibness, Knowledge, Nature, Perception, Stealth.)

I find rolling Saving Throws to be innately more exciting than just watching your opponent's Attack Rolls and seeing if they hit, or even rolling an Attack Roll of your own. So in CRE8, all attacks require the defender to roll a Saving Throw, whether the attack is magical or mundane. There are four types of saving throws: Fortitude, Reflex, Willpower, and Defense. As a rule of thumb, Defense is the save used whenever a shield would be handy (and shields are indeed one of the few ways to boost your Defense save, making them a very valuable option compared to 3e); this means Defense is used in a lot of places where 3e would use Reflex, such as saves vs. dragon breath or a fireball spell. Reflex is still used vs true "touch attacks," as well as things like avoiding eye contact with a basilisk or medusa, or to avoid falling in a pit trap; but while it's relatively rare as a Saving Throw, Reflex is also valuable to a character because your Reflex modifier is also your Initiative modifier. Your Fortitude modifier is also valuable because it modifies your Vitality Points quantity, and your Willpower save is also used (for spellcasters) to see how many times you can recharge your Magic Points between long rests.

The hit points system is loosely based on what I could grub from Star Wars Saga Edition. Instead of Hit Points, you have Vitality Points, which represent stamina more than they represent actual wounds. Then there's a condition track that measures how hurt you actually are (although it's a much shorter track than Saga: unhurt, Wounded, Dying, Dead). Critical hits do a lot of things by default rather than just dealing more numerical damage; they can knock you down, knock you across the room, move you down the Condition Track, etc. Armor can be used to ignore some minor blows, but its main purpose is making it harder to critically hit you. (Attacks have "Impact" instead of "Damage," and a hit has more effect if its Impact beats your Armor Value.) This ends up being kind of like Armor As DR, but without the resulting invincibility issues where an ordinary guy with a dagger can never take down a foe in plate armor.

Instead of Classes, you pick what special abilities you want as you level up, in three different varieties. Feats are your main combat moves (including spells), and you get one at each level (plus one as a bonus if you're Human). Kits are the main replacement for Classes, and you get one at every odd level (plus one representing your Race). Talents are mostly minor perks, and cover everything else not represented by Feats and Kits.

I originally based the system (when it was closer to 3e) on E8. Leveling is pretty slow, so levels 5-8 are pretty high-level, and after Levels 8-9 a lot of things change: your base numerical stats stop increasing, you stop getting new Kits and Feats, and the Talents you can pick now include Epic talents. These have a lot of flavor difference from earlier talents, letting you do wuxia things like semi-ignoring gravity.

There is only one "daily" or "long rest" resource in the game (other than maybe a few magic items), Reserve Points. Recharging your Magic Points and recharging your Vitality Points both come during a Short Rest at the cost of Reserve Points ... so hopefully, the 15-minute adventuring day is abolished, and the martial characters and spellcasters both need a long rest at about the same point in the game.

Out-of-combat magic is handled with Rituals, kind of like 4e (but of course with adjustments). It's relatively easy for a non-spellcaster to pick up Talents that let them somewhat use Rituals, although I never seemed to use this option on my sample characters.

In-combat magic is loosely based on the 3e psionics system, with a "noun-verb" addition: You pick a Spell Feat that you're using, pick a Seed that you're using with it (things like Fire, Shadow, or Luck), and at higher levels, choose from a menu of improvements that you can make to the base spell by pumping more Magic Points into it. There is also Momentum, which works kind of like Psionic Focus (i.e. you either have it or you don't), but is available to all characters, and can power a number of special abilities both magical and mundane.

Temporary modifiers to die rolls are gone (with a very short list of exceptions: attack accuracy penalties for long range, and -2 to all Saving Throws if you're Wounded). Other than these common-but-simple exceptions, every die roll you roll should add a number that is actually printed somewhere on your character sheet. Things that would be handled by temporary die roll bonuses are instead handled by die rerolls, or by using a different number from your character sheet. For example, a Knock ritual might let a spellcaster use their Spellcraft Check instead of the normal skill check modifier to open a lock. All characters also have an "Awesome Check" (which is a pretty great modifier) that is specifically used for this purpose: instead of a temporary die roll bonus, some effects let you roll and add your Awesome modifier to the die roll instead of whatever you'd normally use.

Magic items other than Consumables must be Attuned to, and you can Attune only a limited number of items (based on your Magic Points). Items should always be rare-feeling and flavorful, not items that merely give you numerical bonuses.

OK, that's a few of my favorite features about the system. I'm sure I'm forgetting some though. :smallwink:

Here's a few things I'd like to figure out that I've never been satisfied with:

The basic die system being more bell-curve ish. I thought about a rule that all d20 rolls become "roll 3d20, take the middle result," but I think that's too complicated unless the whole system is built around it, and I never figured out exactly how it should interact with Rerolls.
Social skill checks ... some sort of "social combat system."
A dynamic initiative system that makes you lose your place in initiative when you do something particularly slow, etc, without the full bookkeeping nightmare of a "ticks" system.

Cosi
2018-06-18, 10:32 AM
There are points for both sides of the argument. People play RPGs because they have some particular character they want to play. Sometimes that character is someone who is stronger or faster than them, but sometimes that character is someone who is smarter or wiser than them. Having the ability to solve a puzzle, answer a riddle, or compose a plan as the result of a mechanical action supports that fantasy. Of course, other people want to solve puzzles because they think solving puzzles is fun, and ideally the game would also support that. As in so many cases, the design choice you make depends on which of a variety of competing factors you find more pressing.


The basic die system being more bell-curve ish. I thought about a rule that all d20 rolls become "roll 3d20, take the middle result," but I think that's too complicated unless the whole system is built around it, and I never figured out exactly how it should interact with Rerolls.

Is there a reason you can't just have people roll 3d6? That's your curved RNG right there.


A dynamic initiative system that makes you lose your place in initiative when you do something particularly slow, etc, without the full bookkeeping nightmare of a "ticks" system.

Just put tags on abilities.

Draz74
2018-06-18, 12:37 PM
Is there a reason you can't just have people roll 3d6? That's your curved RNG right there.

That's too steep of a bell curve for my taste, and also has non-intuitive minimum and maximum results. And only has 16 possible results rather than 20, although that's not a big deal.


Just put tags on abilities.

Tags that do what, exactly?

If you mean "tags that change the value of your initiative score," then the issue is that most tables don't keep track of initiative scores, just initiative order. And often forget to keep track of score even if they intend to.

Cosi
2018-06-18, 04:12 PM
That's too steep of a bell curve for my taste, and also has non-intuitive minimum and maximum results. And only has 16 possible results rather than 20, although that's not a big deal.

You could always have people roll a different number of dice. You're not going to get a curved RNG with a 1 as the minimum out of dice, so that complaint seems a little unreasonable.


If you mean "tags that change the value of your initiative score," then the issue is that most tables don't keep track of initiative scores, just initiative order. And often forget to keep track of score even if they intend to.

If people aren't tracking it, that suggests to me that you shouldn't ask them to. But the tag could just move you in initiative order.

Friv
2018-06-18, 04:42 PM
That's too steep of a bell curve for my taste, and also has non-intuitive minimum and maximum results. And only has 16 possible results rather than 20, although that's not a big deal.

If you want a weirdly intuitive and moderately good thing to use, I would say 1d12+1d8 gives you a surprisingly reasonable bell curve. It is marginally higher on average (11 instead of 10.5) and doesn't allow for 1s. But otherwise it gives solid results.

OACSNY97
2018-06-19, 09:40 AM
As for my personal fantasy heartbreaker D&D fix? Take 5e and toss that baby out with the bathwater, basin and towel into the cold, uncaring wilds. I'd start with 4th ed as the mechanical and conceptual base and implement a list of changes from there.

Would you mind elaborating on your proposed changes to a D&D based on 4e? I came in on that edition and am reasonably fond of many of the things 4e does though I can see some places for improvement. I especially like the tier system and while I don't have the tactical acumen to play warlord I really like the concept.

oxybe
2018-06-20, 01:09 AM
Would you mind elaborating on your proposed changes to a D&D based on 4e? I came in on that edition and am reasonably fond of many of the things 4e does though I can see some places for improvement. I especially like the tier system and while I don't have the tactical acumen to play warlord I really like the concept.

Ideas i've had swirling in my head include, are not limited to, and are subject to change on my whims:

-Tighten the math, similar to what they did with 5th, but instead of the "try to keep everything low" plateau they went with, keep the numbers climbing. This way on or near your level difficulty stuff will still generally require an 8-13 on a d20 to hit, but it keeps 4th ed's scope when it comes to the PCs' growth: lower level challenges are easily dealt with, higher level stuff is not. You cannot just solve the problem called "red dragon" by tossing masses of soldiers at it (or can you?). +2/-2 is the recommended go-to boon with something like advantage/disadvantage being kept for special occasions.

-drop the game to 15 or 20 levels. 30 was a bit too much and after years of playing D&D and seeing how lackluster high level D&D was generally treated (IE: Poorly), scrunching down the levels a bit will probably help in that regard. We can still probably keep the tiering of Heroic, Paragon & Epic as I also like the concept, just cut each of them down to 5 levels apiece. Some working on ironing out how this will affect gaining of powers or abilities will be requires as this will probably mean the loss of some.

-Re examine the classes, make sure they fit a niche other then "generic catch-all" and focus harder on what makes them special in play. Don't be afraid to kill off a class and replace it with another concept. Sacred cows and sacred hamburgers and whatnot because classes are a skillset, not a straitjacket. A "Cleric" can be a theif and a "Rogue" a bard. The less we tie a class of abilities to "why" someone does something but instead "how", it allows for FAR more motivations. Even if two people share a similar toolkit, their interpretation of that toolkit will differ. Fully back the refluffing of classes.

-Feats will either modify or add features to characters. Think of this as further specialization (or gaining training) in certain skills, or unlocking new abilities like ritual magic, over raw numbers like Great Weapon Master. They will come with decent frequency

-Skills are actually pretty fine. may need a bit of tuning in how the individual skills work, but overall the skill system if ok.

-Inherent magic items is the baseline. The +X magic sword is dead. FAR more minor magical doodads. In short : low-level magic is commonplace, and indeed the world and most people are inherently magical to a certain degree. PCs being who they are can make the most of it, but they're not the only ones. Items like a Flametongue or Frostbrand would act akin to a 3.5 Weapon of Legacy, unlocking new abilities as it's owner levels up.

-on a similar note: high level, world-shaking stuff is rare, but magic is a known and somewhat studied thing: it's another force of nature people can harness.

-weapons are not a laundry list but rather a mix of the 4e-based Gamma World's "generic" weapon categories & Legend's keywording, making weapons largely customizable. there will be a few examples given for common weapons like spears, daggers, longswords & bows but I believe adding a variety of keyword effects and weapon properties, with the ability to mix & match them, alongside interesting class abilities, would help make weapons actually interesting.

-Classes are your combat stuff. This goes for fighters as well as mages. And for mages, if you want out of combat magics, look up rituals: I would like to shove a whole lot of these in there.

-The concept of the AEDU structure wouldn't change too much. It would just change to "At-Will, Per-Scene, Per-Session" with the utility moniker being dropped entirely, or just turned into a keyword.

-monsters would still use math akin to the MM3 on a business card format. We would still have the minion, standard, elite & solo types, but add one below minion: swarm. I've always disliked how in D&D we have the concept of swarms but generally just kept it to stuff like vermin.

Swarms would imitate the "hundreds of soldiers" VS red dragon without having to roll a hundred attack rolls or just roll once and use percentile averages.

They would act similar to their individual counterparts, but in mass amounts. So instead of just being shifty as minor action, a Kobold swarm could scatter, growing larger in size as they spread out but since their numbers are scattered they're less affected by AoEs (since they're less in mass and some may be hiding instead of working in tandem) and their overall damage is lower, but they can now cover a wider area and potentially covering one or two characters in their numbers. It'll allow for a gm to utilize a more flavourful action that showcases the teamwork of the horde without having to roll multiple dice.

A swarm of archers could utilize a massed attack that blankets the skies, bringing down fliers, while foot soldiers could stop grounded targets they're swarming from taking off entirely.

-Yes abilities and powers will have a cinematic flair but also be utilitarian to a degree. reflavour the individual uses as you want, or reuse the same cheap animation. The world is your oyster.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-20, 02:59 PM
Mandatory subclassing for PCs. Monsters might or might not get a subclass, depending on something like 4e's minion/normal/solo/elite thing, with some mechanism for a monster having only a subclass. So your basic Giant would get whatever the abilities of the Giant subclass were (presumably "being large" and "throwing rocks"), and the various flavored Giants (Fire, Ice, Stone, Storm) would have feats or magic item equivalents to give them a minimum of fire powers or ice powers. Then you could layer on other classes for giants that happened to be elite. Like a Shaman sub Giant or a Warlord sub Giant.

Interesting take on it. I don't think I'd personally like a subclass-optional approach, since I find the minion/normal/elite setup too restrictive when it comes to using monsters at multiple levels, but I think it could work out if done right.


*snip most Priest-as-template discussion*

Because that class is then eating all the conceptual space that should go to other classes. White Mage is a totally viable class, as is Necromancer, and all the other things that you want to be Cleric specs. Those things should be classes, and if you are going to write up enough content to do a viable Cleric build as each of them, you should just write up the classes without the baggage.

It sounds in general like you prefer tons of more narrow classes over fewer more customizable classes. Where does the Wizard or Fighter fit in your setup? It seems as though the only options would be Beguiler/Ice Mage/Necromancer/Oracle/Summoner/Storm Lord/etc. for the wizard archetypes and Archer/Berserker/Hunter/Knight/Warlord/etc. for the fighter archetypes, such that if you want to make an "uttercold assault necromancer" who uses ice magic and necromancy or a "barbarian king" who flies into a rage and enhances his allies with his tactical acumen, you have to multiclass, and if the multiclass setup being used doesn't give you what you want, you're out of luck.

If that is the case, how do you propose to handle concepts that fall under one of those broader categories but don't fit into one of those narrow classes? If that's not the case, why is it fine for wizards, fighters, and rogues to have a broad conceptual space but not priests?


It's why I prefer the roll-for-hint method, if puzzles are necessary. It's degrees of success--a low result gives a cryptic hint, a high result gives a clearer hint or a partial solution ("you're pretty sure that those tiles belong there" or "you're pretty sure that the sequence starts with ..."). Both reduce the problem space and give a place to start. It also rewards people for playing smart characters.

This is my preferred solution for encounter-scale puzzles as well. The last time I ran a big puzzle like that it was an extra-large Zebra puzzle/Einstein puzzle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_Puzzle), where the characters had to arrange a bunch of tokens representing high priest names, gods, temple names, locations, and kinds of magic in a grid on a door to get into an ancient vault. I set out a handful of default clues to start that would be enough to specify a unique solution but not really allow solving the puzzle on their own, then allowed certain Knowledge checks to get a scaling number of hints in each category (DC 10 for Kn: Religion gave two hints about the gods, DC 15 Kn: Geography gave three hints on temple locations, etc.), and finally some plain Int checks gave the players a certain number of limited questions they could ask about certain grid combinations, to represent logical leaps and general reasoning.

Players who preferred to solve the puzzle mostly through player skill could do that, while a character with +Ridiculous to a bunch of Knowledge skills could get enough hints to basically make solving it a formality, but in either case both player skill and character knowledge were required--which turned out to be good, since roughly half my group loved puzzle-solving and half preferred relying on skills, and both groups came away happy with the compromise.



*snip 4e-based suggestions*

I find it interesting that, despite how different 3e and 4e are both mechanically and conceptually, a "what do people want out of a 4e-based fix" list looks very much like "what do people want out of a 3e-based fix" list with the exception of making world-affecting magic rare, keeping AEDU, and keeping minions and elites/solos as a thing, which could be made fairly palatable to 3e fans if rituals were made non-terrible and more accessible, there were more per-class and per-power-source variations in the AEDU system (a la psionics or wizard spell prep), and different monster types were made to work in a more verisimilitudinous fashion (so e.g. minions don't explode to low-damage weather effects as soon as combat music starts and solos aren't the only ones with lots of off-turn actions).

There may be peace in our time in the editions wars! :smalltongue:

OACSNY97
2018-06-20, 08:39 PM
First off- thank you for the very detailed response.


Ideas i've had swirling in my head include, are not limited to, and are subject to change on my whims:

-Tighten the math, similar to what they did with 5th, but instead of the "try to keep everything low" plateau they went with, keep the numbers climbing. This way on or near your level difficulty stuff will still generally require an 8-13 on a d20 to hit, but it keeps 4th ed's scope when it comes to the PCs' growth: lower level challenges are easily dealt with, higher level stuff is not. You cannot just solve the problem called "red dragon" by tossing masses of soldiers at it (or can you?). +2/-2 is the recommended go-to boon with something like advantage/disadvantage being kept for special occasions.
Agree. To hit math vs. at level opponents should remain near the average of a d20 throughout the entire game. This is basically the math fix 4e needed. Surprisingly, the math works better using 3/4 level as standard modifier for attacks rather than 1/2.
Here's the math to prove it. (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fzbXeJOb4mFwiVj6ztoXNSNm_bDC7PU4uQVI7ouiy GQ)



-Re examine the classes, make sure they fit a niche other then "generic catch-all" and focus harder on what makes them special in play. Don't be afraid to kill off a class and replace it with another concept. Sacred cows and sacred hamburgers and whatnot because classes are a skillset, not a straitjacket. A "Cleric" can be a theif and a "Rogue" a bard. The less we tie a class of abilities to "why" someone does something but instead "how", it allows for FAR more motivations. Even if two people share a similar toolkit, their interpretation of that toolkit will differ. Fully back the refluffing of classes.
Mostly agree but tying a class to a distinct character concept remains valuable. Forex, in 4e as seen in PHB1&2 what's the real conceptual difference between cleric and invoker? I would roll those two ideas together into one broader class as subclasses.



-Feats will either modify or add features to characters. Think of this as further specialization (or gaining training) in certain skills, or unlocking new abilities like ritual magic, over raw numbers like Great Weapon Master. They will come with decent frequency
Like the focus on flavorful feats over numeric bonuses, but what if feats were split into combat Feats and non-combat Talents that are gained separately? This would allow for non-combat abilities like Ritual Caster, Linguist, many of the skill focus feats to be worth taking as they are no longer competing for the limited resources needed to improve combat effectiveness.



-Inherent magic items is the baseline. The +X magic sword is dead. FAR more minor magical doodads. In short : low-level magic is commonplace, and indeed the world and most people are inherently magical to a certain degree. PCs being who they are can make the most of it, but they're not the only ones. Items like a Flametongue or Frostbrand would act akin to a 3.5 Weapon of Legacy, unlocking new abilities as it's owner levels up.
Having flavor-only magic items present offers a magic-rich world which supports much of D&D's world building. That being said, I wouldn't have all magic items function like Weapons of Legacy, rather, that's one of three categories of magic items available.
- Basic magic items, which have specific abilities which do not change over time without changing the item (crafting/rituals can do that)
- Legacy items that grow with the character, based around a theme (generally custom-built, likely from a list or table).
- Artifacts which grant more of their power to the wielder based on compatibility/attunement (generally pre-built, as 4e did already).


-weapons are not a laundry list but rather a mix of the 4e-based Gamma World's "generic" weapon categories & Legend's keywording, making weapons largely customizable. there will be a few examples given for common weapons like spears, daggers, longswords & bows but I believe adding a variety of keyword effects and weapon properties, with the ability to mix & match them, alongside interesting class abilities, would help make weapons actually interesting.
That seems really cool, and I like it, but I have concerns about how that would interact with general weapon/implement proficiency, (all simple weapons, military melee weapons, etc.)


-Classes are your combat stuff. This goes for fighters as well as mages. And for mages, if you want out of combat magics, look up rituals: I would like to shove a whole lot of these in there.

-The concept of the AEDU structure wouldn't change too much. It would just change to "At-Will, Per-Scene, Per-Session" with the utility moniker being dropped entirely, or just turned into a keyword.
Classes should be large enough to include out of combat but related abilities, but things like rituals or alchemy should be available as a general-use out of combat power-set.
Admittedly, Utility powers were poorly implemented, half of them being combat powers (Shield, we're looking at you), and half being out of combat utility abilities (Arcane Insight), and I think that the former should have been folded into the attack powers (AED), and the utility Utility Powers should stay were they were.


-monsters would still use math akin to the MM3 on a business card format. We would still have the minion, standard, elite & solo types, but add one below minion: swarm. I've always disliked how in D&D we have the concept of swarms but generally just kept it to stuff like vermin.

Swarms would imitate the "hundreds of soldiers" VS red dragon without having to roll a hundred attack rolls or just roll once and use percentile averages.

They would act similar to their individual counterparts, but in mass amounts. So instead of just being shifty as minor action, a Kobold swarm could scatter, growing larger in size as they spread out but since their numbers are scattered they're less affected by AoEs (since they're less in mass and some may be hiding instead of working in tandem) and their overall damage is lower, but they can now cover a wider area and potentially covering one or two characters in their numbers. It'll allow for a gm to utilize a more flavourful action that showcases the teamwork of the horde without having to roll multiple dice.

A swarm of archers could utilize a massed attack that blankets the skies, bringing down fliers, while foot soldiers could stop grounded targets they're swarming from taking off entirely.
I think that Swarm should be a separate keyword that can apply to any creature type (even Solos), though your statement that Swarm should apply to Squads of humanoids or Hordes of barbarians is valuable. Gargantuan Swarms could allow one to run massed combat (like Helm's Deep) within D&D rules without it taking an hour or more per turn.

An additional monster type could be the "Legendary" monster. Basically twice an elite, but not a Solo. This is a "Boss," allowing Solos to truly mean "Solo."
Branching off the above, Solos should tend to have multiple "Forms," think Ganon post-ALttP.
As an example of the above, a Dragon starts out in a humanoid guise, fighting as a spellcaster of some sort. Once he's beaten in that form, he reveals his true Draconic majesty and takes to the air, using mainly his breath weapon and strafing claw attacks. Then, once you've injured him sufficiently, he lands and tries to eat you, tear you to shreds, or pound you into paste with his natural weapons.


-Yes abilities and powers will have a cinematic flair but also be utilitarian to a degree. reflavour the individual uses as you want, or reuse the same cheap animation. The world is your oyster.
Having some flavorful descriptions really helps new players visualize their actions.
Ex. Compare Cloudkill in 3.5e/5e to 4e
4e is more flexible and takes up less space, but 3.5e & 5e have some details within (like the fact that it's heavier than air and thus sinks into cracks in the ground, or the fact that it rolls away from its point of origin) allowing for more informed tactical use.



I find it interesting that, despite how different 3e and 4e are both mechanically and conceptually, a "what do people want out of a 4e-based fix" list looks very much like "what do people want out of a 3e-based fix" list with the exception of making world-affecting magic rare, keeping AEDU, and keeping minions and elites/solos as a thing, which could be made fairly palatable to 3e fans if rituals were made non-terrible and more accessible, there were more per-class and per-power-source variations in the AEDU system (a la psionics or wizard spell prep), and different monster types were made to work in a more verisimilitudinous fashion (so e.g. minions don't explode to low-damage weather effects as soon as combat music starts and solos aren't the only ones with lots of off-turn actions).

There may be peace in our time in the editions wars! :smalltongue:
The end to the edition wars!?!:eek::biggrin:

More seriously, how would you feel about a small/moderate change to the AEDU system where power types feel different without changing the underlying structure? Forex, martial characters get more off-action abilities and stances, primal characters might get more abilities with lingering effects, divine characters have the most party friendly AOEs, and if there is a way to balance it, arcane characters get day-to-day or encounter-to-encounter flexibility.

oxybe
2018-06-20, 11:09 PM
I find it interesting that, despite how different 3e and 4e are both mechanically and conceptually, a "what do people want out of a 4e-based fix" list looks very much like "what do people want out of a 3e-based fix" list with the exception of making world-affecting magic rare, keeping AEDU, and keeping minions and elites/solos as a thing, which could be made fairly palatable to 3e fans if rituals were made non-terrible and more accessible, there were more per-class and per-power-source variations in the AEDU system (a la psionics or wizard spell prep), and different monster types were made to work in a more verisimilitudinous fashion (so e.g. minions don't explode to low-damage weather effects as soon as combat music starts and solos aren't the only ones with lots of off-turn actions).

There may be peace in our time in the editions wars! :smalltongue:

A lot of things 4e did were in response to problems people had with 3rd and some legacy issues that carried over. It wasn't handled well, but that they were willing to throw the baby and it's bathwater and start anew at least told me they were going for a fresh take, instead of pathfinders' "throw a coat of paint on it and add a chesterfeild or two in the living room".

Rituals are bit of a mixed bag, largely the casting time and component cost, as well as making them a bit more flavourful at times would have helped. Largely keeping them for more narrative situations rather then direct.

As far as variations within the AEDU structure, I'm generally ok with the Psionics or Wizard prep.

As far as minions go, some clarification on their use, in that they're largely made to showcase how the characters' scope of ability has outgrown a once dangerous enemy (with swarms being the next step down for them), but i think the problem with the 3rd/4th ed is that minions are a largely cinematic device, so changing it so they really only drop to PC effects or obvious hazards, like spike traps, lava, etc...

I mentioned in another thread that my ideal DMG would look very different then the current ones (largely focusing on teaching the game, rather then teaching the rules: that's what the PHB is for), and I would probably open the MM with a discussion on monster use and how they relate to the PCs and the PCs' growth/scope and maybe have some of these concepts be expounded upon in the DMG.



First off- thank you for the very detailed response.
You're welcome!


Agree. To hit math vs. at level opponents should remain near the average of a d20 throughout the entire game. This is basically the math fix 4e needed. Surprisingly, the math works better using 3/4 level as standard modifier for attacks rather than 1/2.
Here's the math to prove it. (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fzbXeJOb4mFwiVj6ztoXNSNm_bDC7PU4uQVI7ouiy GQ)

I'm not particularly surprised the math works out better if you cut out a lot of the fiddly +1's and 2's and keep it a bit more strait forward. I can see what they were going for with the half-level bonus, the implementation rather then the concept, like with many 4e things, was just kinda flawed. There are other things I would change math-wise, like simply dropping the pretext of having a 14 or 15 mattering for something, where all you're really looking for is that +2 modifier and by that I mean your stats would simply indicate a Strength score of 3 instead of 16... cut out the big number middleman and just keep what you're looking for. The stat growth could be based off tiering, class choice, be more rare, or just have a hardcap like they did with 5th (and many other games) so you don't go overboard and spam your main stat until it's ludicrously high.

Cleaning up the math would go a long way to help the game's mechanical balance difficulty people had with keeping all their numbers in check.

As I said before, we can still keep the +2/-2 for good ideas and GM given situational bonuses, with advantage/disadvantage (this is one of those "i don't mind the concept, just the execution" things I keep saying about 4e, but for 5e. If something's a good idea, I'm not against stealing) for more significant situations the PCs might be in.


Mostly agree but tying a class to a distinct character concept remains valuable. Forex, in 4e as seen in PHB1&2 what's the real conceptual difference between cleric and invoker? I would role those two ideas together into one broader class as subclasses.

I think we have the same, or similar, idea, I just didn't phrase it right. I'm not fully against tying classes to distinct concepts: a strong concept gives a designer a good design goal. I meant to say I simply prefer to have the class be not tied to one particular set of lore by default . I don't mind if a given GM says "all Barbarians get their skillset from the Sm'oh-ki The Great Bear" but I don't want that to be so ingrained into the class that GMs that don't want them to be tied to The Great Bear (and as such keyed to some of the Sm'oh-ki lore) have to work that out of the class. I find it's easier to add stuff then remove.

I personally like my wizards largely distinct and my fav 3.5 casters were the specialist sorcerors: dread necromancer, warmage, beguiler, etc...

Turning to the divine side of things, assuming active deities(in that they pick and choose their priests and grant them power), I dislike having one generic divine caster that acts like an archetype for all faiths. In my ideal world, to borrow 2nd ed parlance, we would only have specialty priests. A priest of Korrogoroth, the god of arms and warfare, would look and act MUCH different then a priest of Tums, the god of antacids and binging on spicy buffalo wings. The former would probably be closer to a Paladin while the second more gifting their clergy with alchemical knowledge, rather then a traditional D&D cleric.

I legit wouldn't be mad if we dropped the Cleric class entirely in favour for the Paladin and simply had the Invoker class that focused more on the healing magics and summoning of divine beings. Other deities could simply grant the appropriate knowledge via divine means: a Priest of Orcus that would focus on undead and pain sounds a whole lot like a Dread Necromancer, for example, whereas a more militant one would probably look a lot like the 5th ed Oathbreaker Pally.

This is largely what I mean by not tying the lore to a class, but still have a strong design concept.

It's one of those issues that's probably just me being fussy about things, and that's fine: i'm talking about a personal fantasy heartbreaker.


Like the focus on flavorful feats over numeric bonuses, but what if feats were split into combat Feats and non-combat Talents that are gained separately? This would allow for non-combat abilities like Ritual Caster, Linguist, many of the skill focus feats to be worth taking as they are no longer competing for the limited resources needed to improve combat effectiveness.

Rituals, Martial Practices, Alchemy & Magic Item Creation would probably be their own subsystems accessible by feats/talents.

probably gonna have to roll out the 'ol, "it's what playtesting is for" but I can agree that some seperation may be required, I'm just scared that getting too much too quickly could cause issues with choice paralysis, or getting stuff too slowly could cause people to groan they need to wait too long to get the right feats or talents to make their characters work.


Having flavor-only magic items present offers a magic-rich world which supports much of D&D's world building. That being said, I wouldn't have all magic items function like Weapons of Legacy, rather, that's one of three categories of magic items available.
- Basic magic items, which have specific abilities which do not change over time without changing the item (crafting/rituals can do that)
- Legacy items that grow with the character, based around a theme (generally custom-built, likely from a list or table).
- Artifacts which grant more of their power to the wielder based on compatibility/attunement (generally pre-built, as 4e did already).

I'm on board with this. This is why I love spitballing ideas with people to bounce them off of. :D


That seems really cool, and I like it, but I have concerns about how that would interact with general weapon/implement proficiency, (all simple weapons, military melee weapons, etc.)

This is largely what playtesting is for. If it works, yay! If it doesn't try to work something out and if not, shelf it for now. I'm nothing if not willing to defenestrate a few infants and their washbasins until we get one that's acceptable. Martial and Simple weapons may simply be a distinction between the number of mods a weapon can have, while an implement may have a seperate section of mods available to them. As such you could still have a "sword" but depending on if you classify it as a Simple, Martial or Implement. alternatively, you could simply not make a distinction between simple and martial. Hooray playtesting and spitballing!


Classes should be large enough to include out of combat but related abilities, but things like rituals or alchemy should be available as a general-use out of combat power-set.
Admittedly, Utility powers were poorly implemented, half of them being combat powers (Shield, we're looking at you), and half being out of combat utility abilities (Arcane Insight), and I think that the former should have been folded into the attack powers (AED), and the utility Utility Powers should stay were they were.

I can agree with the first line. I would prefer classes to focus primarily on your combat stuff but some thematically appropriate fluff abilities i'm cool with.

Agreed with stuff like Shield being more AED then U.


I think that Swarm should be a separate keyword that can apply to any creature type (even Solos), though your statement that Swarm should apply to Squads of humanoids or Hordes of barbarians is valuable. Gargantuan Swarms could allow one to run massed combat (like Helm's Deep) within D&D rules without it taking an hour or more per turn.

An additional monster type could be the "Legendary" monster. Basically twice an elite, but not a Solo. This is a "Boss," allowing Solos to truly mean "Solo."
Branching off the above, Solos should tend to have multiple "Forms," think Ganon post-ALttP.
As an example of the above, a Dragon starts out in a humanoid guise, fighting as a spellcaster of some sort. Once he's beaten in that form, he reveals his true Draconic majesty and takes to the air, using mainly his breath weapon and strafing claw attacks. Then, once you've injured him sufficiently, he lands and tries to eat you, tear you to shreds, or pound you into paste with his natural weapons.

The bloodied condition seems ideal trigger for this kind of thing.

Thinking about it, on the opposite spectrum of swarms, I also would like to see discussions on fighting colossi, in a Shadow of the Colossus type fight or trying to bring down the Divine Beasts in Breath of the Wild (depending on the sentience and/or awareness of the colossi in question): where the monster itself is both the dungeon or arena and trying to get to it's weak points to kill it is a challenge in itself, with either smaller monsters working in tandem with the colossi to protect the colossi from intruders/invaders or the colossi itself able to "activate" hazards that protect it's more vulnerable areas.

That might be more DMG material then Monster Manual, but gosh dang it I really want those cool scenes.


Having some flavorful descriptions really helps new players visualize their actions.
Ex. Compare Cloudkill in 3.5e/5e to 4e
4e is more flexible and takes up less space, but 3.5e & 5e have some details within (like the fact that it's heavier than air and thus sinks into cracks in the ground, or the fact that it rolls away from its point of origin) allowing for more informed tactical use.
As long as there is still a clear distinction between what is flavour text and what is rules, I don't mind those little add-ons that gives players extra ideas on how the thing interacts with the game world on a mechanical basis, which lets them make more informed choices in-character.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-21, 02:07 AM
The end to the edition wars!?!:eek::biggrin:

More seriously, how would you feel about a small/moderate change to the AEDU system where power types feel different without changing the underlying structure? Forex, martial characters get more off-action abilities and stances, primal characters might get more abilities with lingering effects, divine characters have the most party friendly AOEs, and if there is a way to balance it, arcane characters get day-to-day or encounter-to-encounter flexibility.

Aside from stance powers, those are still too similar to really convey a difference in power sources through mechanical feel alone; when Controllers have debuff AoEs with durations and Leaders have buffing AoEs, the difference between "an Arcane Controller can hit you for a lingering debuff" and "a Primal Striker can hit you for a lingering debuff" feels more like a class of a certain role splashing a power or two of a different role than a noticeable differentiation between power sources (and the same for a Martial Leader vs. a Divine Defender or whatever on the buffing aura).

Fighters managed to stand out from the rest of the Martial classes and the rest of the Defender classes, at least to some degree, due to their encounter-length stances and powers with weapon-specific riders, but to many players (myself included) they still felt too similar to other classes mechanically because (A) most powers weren't stances or weapon-dependent, (B) weapon-dependent riders were mostly numerical as opposed to something that would really change how the fighter played, and (C) they were still used on the same schedule as all the other classes.

Yes, different classes' powers did different things even though they all used AEDU, but compare that to the difference in 3e between, say, a TWF barbarian with lots of rage-related feats, a fighter with lots of [Tactical] and [Weapon Style] feats, and a warblade with mostly Tiger Claw maneuvers and a few Iron Heart maneuvers. All three of those characters do basically the same thing (wield two weapons, smack people with two weapons repeatedly for lots of damage, often with special riders on the attacks), but the mechanical ways they accomplish those things are very different: the barbarian is largely state-based, gaining a bunch of offensive and defensive buffs while in rage that make him much more durable and threatening on the front lines (entirely Daily, in AEDU terms); the fighter is largely situational, gaining lots of "If X, do Y" debuffs from his feats that give him lots of options round-to-round as well as based on his choice of weapon, all of which are constantly available (entirely At-Will); the warblade has distinct maneuvers he can expend and recover to do certain things (entirely Encounter).

Each of those builds works differently and appeals to different players. If you just replaced barbarians with Tiger Claw-focused warblades, fighters with Iron Heart-focused warblades, and so on, as is sometimes suggested for powering up 3e martial classes, you lose a lot of mechanical variety and make playing different classes less interesting. So shaking up AEDU on a per-power-source basis is probably a minimum bar to get non-4e fans interested in a 4e-based fix.

Doesn't mean you can't divide powers into "usable lots of times per combat," "usable once or twice per combat," and "usable every couple of combats" in general, just that mucking around with the exact resource management system is good. Like, just spitballing, Martial classes could get Stamina points, which let them use any of their X encounter powers and Y daily powers X times per encounter and Y times per day total instead of using each exactly once, and lets them pay Stamina to gain a few extra uses of encounter or daily powers at the cost of a healing surge or the like; Arcane classes could have only At-Will and Daily powers by default, but all Daily spells have an associated weaker Encounter version that could be cast N times before using up the Daily slot, up to a total of X times per encounter from any number of spells (like [Reserve] feats, sort of, and a reverse of 4e psionic augmentation); Primal classes could have no At-Will powers known by default and would instead gain At-Will powers depending on their current environment/terrain, and each Encounter power would have an associated terrain in which it could be used an extra time per encounter. And so on; these suggestions aren't necessarily balanced, but you get the idea.


A lot of things 4e did were in response to problems people had with 3rd and some legacy issues that carried over. It wasn't handled well, but that they were willing to throw the baby and it's bathwater and start anew at least told me they were going for a fresh take, instead of pathfinders' "throw a coat of paint on it and add a chesterfeild or two in the living room".

Granted. I just found it interesting that while usually AD&D and 3e fans have a lot in common in terms of what they want out of a D&D fix and 3e and 4e fans are vehemently opposed, purely-AD&D-inspired fixes usually end up looking quite different from purely-3e-inspired fixes, while this 4e-inspired fix ended up looking pretty 3e-inspired. Somewhat amusing, that's all.


Rituals are bit of a mixed bag, largely the casting time and component cost, as well as making them a bit more flavourful at times would have helped. Largely keeping them for more narrative situations rather then direct.

More flavorful and more generally useful, really. For the few 4e games I ran, I ditched the casting times and component costs entirely and let people "prepare" a certain number of rituals Vancian-style at the cost of healing surges to be usable in combat time, and even then only a handful of rituals ever got used.

I'm generally opposed to splitting combat and non-combat magic (because that generally leads to one or the other category being neglected design- and interest-wise, and if you can't find combat uses for "non-combat" magic and vice versa you're not trying hard enough :smallamused:), but I'd rather see interesting and world-changing effects relegated to rituals than removed entirely.


As far as minions go, some clarification on their use, in that they're largely made to showcase how the characters' scope of ability has outgrown a once dangerous enemy (with swarms being the next step down for them), but i think the problem with the 3rd/4th ed is that minions are a largely cinematic device, so changing it so they really only drop to PC effects or obvious hazards, like spike traps, lava, etc...

I'm aware of how they're intended to be used, but in practice it's not a great solution. In AD&D and 3e, you get a nice organic progression from "this creature is way too strong to think of fighting" to "this creature is tough but beatable" to "this creature is a fair fight" to "this creature isn't much of a threat" to "this creature is just here to make me look awesome" just through the normal progression of HD and combat stats, with no special rules required; minions require a separate stat block from a normal creature of its kind, and without introducing an extra "super minion" type or similar there's nothing between "beefy normal monster" and "goes down in one hit."

As far as avoiding tracking damage for bunches of mooks, you can achieve similar effects to minions and elites in 3e already simply by setting HP to minimum and maximum for their HD, respectively, but that doesn't get you the simpler-to-run-in-groups benefit of minions without removing or ignoring monster abilities, and I don't know how to easily solve that while retaining gradual scaling and verisimilitude.

Seerow
2018-06-21, 10:28 AM
On the note of the AEDU power set up, I feel like the biggest thing is presentation. I agree with the general principle between 4e's design where every character should have abilities they can use at will, ones they can use on an encounter basis, and ones they can use on a daily basis. The main issue comes from giving everybody the exact same resource system and same alotment of powers.


Just as a quick example for a Mage and a Fighter respectively using very different designs, that ultimately come back to AEDU:

Mage:
-Has ~4 spell slots of each spell level available to him. Once past 5th level, lower level spell slots start converting to higher, so you only ever have 3 different spell levels available, and the Wizard has a total of ~12 spells per day, plus at-will cantrips.
-The wizard gains the ability to combine a couple of spell slots to prepare a lower level spell as a reusable spell, with some form of cooldown, ie an encounter based spell slot.
-The wizard is able to burn a spell slot to augment one of his cantrips, making the At-Will effects stronger.

So here you have a Wizard who follows the AEDU structure, but is more flexible as a result. You can go in with a full suite of 1/day spells, or you could have a bunch of spells you can unload every fight all day, or you could have a couple of souped up cantrips... but more realistically a player is going to mix and match and end up with a balanced suite of spells that looks similar to what a 4e wizard gets.

Fighter:
-Has a resource pool that refreshes every turn that he can use to pull off his various special abilities/maneuvers/whatever. You have a bunch of go-to abilities that you can use basically at will from this resource.
-The fighter gains the ability to push himself, gaining a large bump in this resource for 1 round, at the cost of his resource pool being diminished until he takes a short rest. He will have some abilities that cost more, so can only be used when pushing himself in this way. But he could also use the extra resources to do a larger number of at will things simultaneously.
-The fighter similarly would have the ability to push it even further, gaining far more of the resources, in exchange for his resource pool being diminished until taking a long rest.

This one is a bit more vague because there's no resource system currently like it in the game, but the general idea is you have at will resources, and then can make the decision to be less effective for some time period in exchange for stronger moments of greatness.



Both systems have At Will, Encounter, and Daily abilities. But where the Wizard one starts from Daily and then gives the ability to opt into Encounter/At Will options, the Fighter starts from At Will and gives the ability to opt in to Encounter/Daily options. This lets you emphasize the core flavor of the class, while still giving the options needed to ensure the character can fit into any campaign play style or work day length, and putting the two on more or less even footing.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-21, 01:37 PM
Fighter:
-Has a resource pool that refreshes every turn that he can use to pull off his various special abilities/maneuvers/whatever. You have a bunch of go-to abilities that you can use basically at will from this resource.
-The fighter gains the ability to push himself, gaining a large bump in this resource for 1 round, at the cost of his resource pool being diminished until he takes a short rest. He will have some abilities that cost more, so can only be used when pushing himself in this way. But he could also use the extra resources to do a larger number of at will things simultaneously.
-The fighter similarly would have the ability to push it even further, gaining far more of the resources, in exchange for his resource pool being diminished until taking a long rest.

Somewhat unrelated, but this looks a lot like the suggestion in one of the 5e playtest threads to give fighters "encounter"- and "daily"-level abilities by letting them double or triple their martial superiority dice when activating a maneuver at the cost of losing a die until the next short or long rest respectively, and as I recall you were the one to make that initial suggestion. Do you happen to have a link to that post or have an easy way to unearth it? I was looking for that suggestion and the surrounding discussion recently but wasn't able to find it.

Seerow
2018-06-21, 02:49 PM
Somewhat unrelated, but this looks a lot like the suggestion in one of the 5e playtest threads to give fighters "encounter"- and "daily"-level abilities by letting them double or triple their martial superiority dice when activating a maneuver at the cost of losing a die until the next short or long rest respectively, and as I recall you were the one to make that initial suggestion. Do you happen to have a link to that post or have an easy way to unearth it? I was looking for that suggestion and the surrounding discussion recently but wasn't able to find it.

Yes, that was me. I don't have a link to the original post, I feel like it was on the old Wizards Forums rather than in the 5e forum here. But I still feel like the general design is sound, I just have not taken the time to flesh it out much since then.

Knaight
2018-06-21, 04:43 PM
On the note of the AEDU power set up, I feel like the biggest thing is presentation. I agree with the general principle between 4e's design where every character should have abilities they can use at will, ones they can use on an encounter basis, and ones they can use on a daily basis. The main issue comes from giving everybody the exact same resource system and same alotment of powers.

I'd agree with that, with added commentary on the concept of qualitative mechanics (I have a post somewhere with a wall of text perfect for my needs, but I have no idea where it got off to) - where mechanics correspond to something happening in the game world that's non-quantitative. As an example of qualitative design Fireball, in setting, produces a ball of fire which then does everything in setting a ball of fire should. Then, secondary to this, there's also a description of how this interacts with game mechanical subsystems (saves, HP).

Most D&D editions tended to be a fair bit more qualitative than 4e, and that particular presentation issue drove a lot of people away from the edition.

falconflicker
2018-06-21, 08:44 PM
but compare that to the difference in 3e between, say, a TWF barbarian with lots of rage-related feats, a fighter with lots of [Tactical] and [Weapon Style] feats, and a warblade with mostly Tiger Claw maneuvers and a few Iron Heart maneuvers. All three of those characters do basically the same thing (wield two weapons, smack people with two weapons repeatedly for lots of damage, often with special riders on the attacks), but the mechanical ways they accomplish those things are very different: the barbarian is largely state-based, gaining a bunch of offensive and defensive buffs while in rage that make him much more durable and threatening on the front lines (entirely Daily, in AEDU terms); the fighter is largely situational, gaining lots of "If X, do Y" debuffs from his feats that give him lots of options round-to-round as well as based on his choice of weapon, all of which are constantly available (entirely At-Will); the warblade has distinct maneuvers he can expend and recover to do certain things (entirely Encounter).

Having played mostly 4th and 5th editions, with some experience with 3.5 and Pathfinder, I am somewhat confused as to the difference between the playstyles of the presented builds. Having never played a Warblade, and am not familiar with the feat keywords you're referring to with the Fighter, It seems to me that all three tend to wade in and full attack until everyone is dead. Please elaborate further on how these builds play differently from each other.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-22, 01:30 AM
Having played mostly 4th and 5th editions, with some experience with 3.5 and Pathfinder, I am somewhat confused as to the difference between the playstyles of the presented builds. Having never played a Warblade, and am not familiar with the feat keywords you're referring to with the Fighter, It seems to me that all three tend to wade in and full attack until everyone is dead. Please elaborate further on how these builds play differently from each other.

Feats are passive benefits that are always on. If a feat says "As a standard action, you can..." then you can do that all day, forever, as long as you have a standard action to spend (and, barring certain conditions, you'll have one per round). [Tactical] feats are a category of feats that grant three thematically-linked options that require sort of setup (usually of the form "If you do X in one round, then in the next round you can do Y" or "If an opponent does X to you, you can then do Y to them"), while [Weapon Style] feats grant a benefit for wielding a specific pair of weapons (usually of the form "If you attack with your X and your Y in one round and hit with both, you can do Z"). Fighters get lots of feats, so a fighter with lots of those feats has a broad repertoire of things he can do with no usage limitations, but they're all situational so only a handful of those may be usable at any given time.

Barbarians can go into a rage, and while in a rage they gain certain benefits; the basic rage gives Str, Con, and Will bonuses (that increase with level) at the expense of an AC penalty and lasts for a few rounds, but alternate versions of rage can grant different benefits and extend the duration, and certain feats and class features can add benefits to being in a rage like extra attacks or energy resistance. A barbarian can rage X/day and once per encounter, and after a rage is over a barbarian is fatigued (usually), so barbarians want to manage when and how often they enter a rage for maximum effect. So rather than having bunches of distinct options usable based on the situation, a barbarian either is in a rage and has all of his rage options at his disposal at all times, or he's not in a rage and can't use any of them.

Warblades have a set of abilities called "maneuvers" that each have specific effects, like "jump really high" or "attack everyone nearby" or "remove a status effect." They're similar to encounter powers in 4e (and in fact Tome of Battle, the book the warblade is from, was based on an early draft of 4e), except that instead of maneuvers being usable once per encounter each, maneuvers start off "readied" and then once they're used the warblade can take a turn to recover all expended maneuvers to make them "readied" and usable again.

The playstyles differ because the fighter cares about positioning most, the barbarian cares about endurance most, and the warblade cares about timing most. If a fighter can get into a position or situation in which he can trigger his feat benefits, he can do so, and keep doing it if those conditions are met; thus, he doesn't just want to wade in and full attack, he wants to figure out how to position himself and chain his actions together for maximum benefit from his feats--for instance, Shock Trooper lets you add a bunch of damage on a charge at the cost of being easier to hit, move a bull rushed target to the side as well as straight back, and trip foes that you charge into, so the fighter would want to position himself so he can charge into a lone foe (so no one can counterattack him) one round and then charge into one of a pair of foes (so he can knock enemies into each other) the next.

Barbarians have a limited number of rages of limited duration and take penalties after a rage; thus, sometimes he just wants to wade in and full attack (if he thinks the whole combat will take less than one rage's duration and he has enough rages left for the day), but at other times (lots of enemies, fourth or fifth fight in the day, large distances between foes, etc.) he'll have to pick and choose targets so he can take out weaker targets or soften up stronger ones before he rages, then make sure he doesn't end up too far away from the rest of the party when his fatigue kicks in and he's vulnerable.

Warblades can use their maneuvers whenever they want, but they can use each once before recharging and can't use a manever and recharge in the same round; thus, each round a warblade has to decide whether to use one of his increasingly-fewer maneuvers or recharge (so it's all about picking which round is best for a plain ol' full attack), and maneuvers do different things so if the warblade is facing a lot of enemies and only has one attack-multiple-enemies maneuver, he has to figure out how to pattern his spending and recovery of that maneuver for maximum effect.

Does that clarify things?

Velaryon
2018-06-22, 11:16 AM
For myself, I neither need nor want a massive overhaul to "fix" D&D. Without getting into too many specifics (because I'm posting from work), my general goals would be:

0. start with 3.5 as a baseline
1. excise a few of the most inherently broken options (things that break the action economy or lead to infinite loops)
2. buff some of the weaker options (particularly core classes and feats), and condense
3. more skill points for most classes, and a few tweaks to the skill system
4. reevaluate the Challenge Ratings of monsters using a more accurate measurement (I'm about 90% sure the original method involved a blindfold, a dartboard, and copious amounts of alcohol)
5. revamp the level adjustment and ECL system to be more accurate
6. make it easier for martial classes to reach an AC that remains meaningful past low levels
7. reduce the cost of weapons and armor, particularly for double weapons and dual-wielders
8. remove or revamp any remaining obviously stupid mechanics or loopholes (drown healing, etc.)

falconflicker
2018-06-23, 10:11 AM
Does that clarify things?

Yes, that was very informative. Thank you very much.

As a corollary, would you say that a 5e Tempest Cleric, Trickster Cleric, and War Cleric would play more or less differently than your three TWF variations?

OACSNY97
2018-06-23, 12:36 PM
Sorry about taking so long to reply as your post deserved a complete and well thought out response.

Oxybe-
Overall, I'd agree it does look like we're headed in a similar direction with our thoughts regarding improving D&D from a 4e basis. I'm really enjoying bouncing ideas and seeing what sticks too.


Turning to the divine side of things, assuming active deities(in that they pick and choose their priests and grant them power), I dislike having one generic divine caster that acts like an archetype for all faiths. In my ideal world, to borrow 2nd ed parlance, we would only have specialty priests. A priest of Korrogoroth, the god of arms and warfare, would look and act MUCH different then a priest of Tums, the god of antacids and binging on spicy buffalo wings. The former would probably be closer to a Paladin while the second more gifting their clergy with alchemical knowledge, rather then a traditional D&D cleric.

I legit wouldn't be mad if we dropped the Cleric class entirely in favour for the Paladin and simply had the Invoker class that focused more on the healing magics and summoning of divine beings. Other deities could simply grant the appropriate knowledge via divine means: a Priest of Orcus that would focus on undead and pain sounds a whole lot like a Dread Necromancer, for example, whereas a more militant one would probably look a lot like the 5th ed Oathbreaker Pally.

This is largely what I mean by not tying the lore to a class, but still have a strong design concept.

I would go with broad classes with distinct subclasses (like 5e did?) where the different subclasses can be and frequently are a different party roles. I.E. the closest 4e came in PH1 was Warlock- fey pack really should have been a controller not a striker while infernal pack was more of a true striker. Let's just embrace this difference.
I also totally agree that it's unnecessary to tie any class too strongly to any specific bit of lore.

Regarding the Cleric's conceptual basis and quickly touching on real life religion, what is the societal role/job of the priest throughout human history and cultures? From my take on things, pretty much regardless of the religion or the time period, any religion that had/has the concept of priests has them filling the roles of god-speaker, rite leader and possibly counselor. Using god-speaker/god-agent and counselor/healer roles in different proportions based on build as the basis for the cleric class, I would use strong domains to distinguish between the cleric's of different D&D deities. I want to avoid the V-shaped class mess that 4e cleric had out of the box, but I also think that if classes can be designed to cover multiple different party roles depending on build, it'll help differentiate characters.


Rituals, Martial Practices, Alchemy & Magic Item Creation would probably be their own subsystems accessible by feats/talents.

probably gonna have to roll out the 'ol, "it's what playtesting is for" but I can agree that some seperation may be required, I'm just scared that getting too much too quickly could cause issues with choice paralysis, or getting stuff too slowly could cause people to groan they need to wait too long to get the right feats or talents to make their characters work.
Totally agree with your concerns regarding choice paralysis. This was something I really struggled with as a new player and something I think should be kept in mind when designing an RPG. 4e was not the easiest system to just pick up and start playing quickly and simplified initial build mechanics would help a lot. I think I've heard that in AD&D 2e it was pretty easy to whip-up a character and start playing without a lot of fuss and I think this is a good idea. I know the 4e devs wanted every concept to be pretty much playable from level 1, but I'm more ok with waiting until maybe level 3 or 4 to get all of goodies to give time to get used to the system. I'll even go so far as to say that you get your first DAILY at level 2 not 1 just to reduce the pre-level 1 decision making. The previous paragraph was pretty much a long way of saying I agree with you but still think separating kinds of abilities is useful.

I've got some thoughts reading the several posts of AEDU discussion but I need to run for now, so I'll try and weigh in on that later (hopefully today).

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-23, 03:55 PM
Yes, that was very informative. Thank you very much.

As a corollary, would you say that a 5e Tempest Cleric, Trickster Cleric, and War Cleric would play more or less differently than your three TWF variations?

From the phrasing of your question, I'm honestly not sure whether it's genuinely curious or a leading question aiming for "But different AEDU classes are totally different because their powers do different things!" So I'm going to assume good faith here and go on a bit of a tangent.

The original point of a "class" in D&D was to determine not just what your character could do but how your character approached the game:


Character class refers to the profession of the player character. The approach you wish to take to the game, how you believe you can most successfully meet the challenges which it poses, and which role you desire to play are dictated by character class (or multi-class).

If you were a wizard, you had spells and solved problems by anticipating or discovering challenges and determining what spells you would need to prepare to overcome them, so you were all about judicious resource usage. There were no feats to take get better at combat and weapon use, no skills to train to get better at stealth or diplomacy; those would come later, but at the start it was "wizard = prepare spells, use spells."

If you were a thief, you had certain skills that no one else could use like Hide In Shadows, Climb Walls, Read Languages, and the like, and the original version of Sneak Attack, called "Backstab," required careful positioning and could rarely be used once combat started, so you were all about figuring out how to apply a limited toolset of always-available-but-thematically-constrained tools to a problem and avoiding a fair fight as much as (demi-)humanly possible. Mid-level thieves could make use of magic items (a la Use Magic Device) but there were no magic shops where you were guaranteed to be able to buy specific magic items, and as with the wizard you couldn't just get better at combat without multiclassing/dual-classing with fighter, so at the start it was "thief = apply skills, ambush enemies."

And so on. Every class gave you a totally different method of approaching the game--different pacing, different resource management, and importantly different levels of complexity for people who liked more or less fiddliness in their classes. When systems for adding more capabilities to your character showed up (non-weapon proficiencies, kits, Player Options customization, etc.) it broadened the scope of each class, but at the end of the day classes were still tied to their their resource management systems and pacing as much as to their own themes. This trend continued in 4e and 5e (where class-based choices are big, important, and character-defining and outside-of-class customization is limited) and even the very flexible 3e (where skills and feats let you customize a lot but class features--especially PrC features--are most important and there are many more class resource systems to choose from).


Coming back to "playing differently," then, there are three axes to consider: focus (what major thing you can do), breadth (how broad that thing is), and style (how you do that thing). The barbarian/fighter/warblade trio is a good example of a set of classes who sit in basically the same point on the focus axis (they all hit things with pointy sticks), but they're at very different points on the style axis (at-will situational vs. use-and-recover slots vs. state-based, as mentioned above), and the warblade is quite a bit farther along the breadth axis: Iron Heart, Stone Dragon, and Tiger Claw maneuvers and stances make him very traditionally fighter- and barbarian-like, but White Raven makes him more marshal-/warlord-like and by using Martial Study (which he does better than any non-ToB class due to how initiator level works) he can pick up Desert Wind for mobility and AoEs, Devoted Spirit for tanking and healing, Diamond Mind for strong defense and single-target striking, Setting Sun for control and evasion, and Shadow Hand for stealth and debuffs.

The three clerics you mentioned play very similarly on the style axis: they're all 5e clerics, so they all have spirit-shaman-style pseudo-Vancian spellcasting and a limited use-and-recover slot system in Channel Divinity. They're also fairly similar on the breadth axis, as they share the same very broad list of cleric spells and each domain grants a thematically-focused but mechanically-somewhat-broad list of spells; contrast a 2e sphere-based specialty priest, who would be noticeably less broad because he is more locked into his theme due to lacking a broad shared spell list, and a 3e cleric, who would be noticeably more broad because his domain choices are broader (he also gets two domain spells per spell level, but he gets them for spell levels 1-9, not just 1-5, and he gets one spell from two possibly-very-different domains rather than two from one) and his shared cleric spell list is vastly wider. Where the three differ is in theme, as they are quite different both in terms of thematics and in terms of combat and out-of-combat roles.

Here's another 5e comparison: a Tempest Cleric, a Land (Coast) Druid, and a Storm Sorcerer. Like the fighter/barbarian/warblade trio, all of them sit on similar points on the focus axis: they're all storm-themed, so they get some lightning/thunder blasting, some energy resistances, some air- and water-based mobility, and so on. They sit on similar points on the breadth axis, like the Tempest/Trickery/War Cleric trio, because they all have a themed collection of powers in their main focus plus a broader cleric/druid/sorcerer list to fall back on to handle things outside their theme. But they have very different supplemental mechanical abilities (Channel Divinity and Metamagic supplement their main magic in different ways and using a different resource, Wild Shape doesn't reinforce the main theme but is usable out of combat in a way neither Channel Divinity nor Metamagic are, and so forth), sitting somewhere between the martial trio's very different style and the cleric trio's very similar style.


So while AEDU is like AD&D, 3e, and 5e in that it can support classes with quite different themes to their abilities (if you ignore that powers are all similar in general and few classes grant notable out-of-combat competence in their utility powers) and enable players to play characters as different from one another as the 5e cleric trio are, it can't support the breadth of either the martial trio (who each focus heavily on the A, the D, or the EU portions of AEDU and don't really use the others) or the storm caster trio (who have the A from their cantrips and sorta kinda the D from their spells even though 4e Daily and 5e pseudo-Vancian are very different, but nothing in common with E or each other in their secondary resource management and a Hells of a lot more U than any 4e class), and going far enough from the 4e version of AEDU to support that amount of variety defeats the purpose of basing a D&D fix on 4e in the first place.


Totally agree with your concerns regarding choice paralysis. This was something I really struggled with as a new player and something I think should be kept in mind when designing an RPG. 4e was not the easiest system to just pick up and start playing quickly and simplified initial build mechanics would help a lot. I think I've heard that in AD&D 2e it was pretty easy to whip-up a character and start playing without a lot of fuss and I think this is a good idea. I know the 4e devs wanted every concept to be pretty much playable from level 1, but I'm more ok with waiting until maybe level 3 or 4 to get all of goodies to give time to get used to the system. I'll even go so far as to say that you get your first DAILY at level 2 not 1 just to reduce the pre-level 1 decision making.

As I've said before, every D&D edition is roughly as approachable for new players as any other from levels 1-5, they just have different pain points. You can think of it like "easy to play characters (A), easy to build characters (B), easy to make the character you want (C), easy to understand the base system (D), pick 2," really:
1e is A/B: easy to build and play, but it's not very customizable (!C) and the base system isn't very intuitive at all (!D).
2e is B/C: quick to build and more customizable with Player Options and such, but there's more moving parts to track in play (!A) and there are lot of different subsystems to figure out (!D).
3e is C/D: you can make any kind of character you want and the rules are unified and cover everything, but there are lots of rules to juggle round-by-round (!A) and new characters are complex to build (!B).
4e is B/D: intuitive and has few choices to make upfront, but it has more fiddiliness in play and requires more tactical thinking to start (!A) and those initial choices can be intimidating because the important differences are very subtle (!C)
5e is A/D: intuitive and easy to play, but building characters requires lots choices up front (!B) and there's not a lot of official material to support more character variety (!C).
(Obviously, going by this pattern, 6e will be A/C: once you understand the rules you can build and run anything with ease, but you need a PhD in RPGology to get there. :smallwink:)

So by pushing back level 1 choices, you're going to be making things easier for new players to learn and play, but harder for experienced players to make what they want, since they'd have fewer choices when initially building characters and would take longer to get certain capabilities. It's a valid design decision to make, but it is a tradeoff.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-06-23, 04:22 PM
SNIP

4e is B/D: intuitive and has few choices to make upfront, but it has more fiddiliness in play and requires more tactical thinking to start (!A) and those initial choices can be intimidating because the important differences are very subtle (!C)
5e is A/D: intuitive and easy to play, but building characters requires lots choices up front (!B) and there's not a lot of official material to support more character variety (!C).


One note--I went through and and counted (for a different purpose) how many long-term decisions have to be made for each class (including subclasses for 5e) at each level. I did this for 5e, 4e, and 3.5 (using the SRD base classes only). While the exact count depends on exact criteria, changes to criteria are generally neutral across the spectrum if applied consistently.

At first level, the only classes that required more long-term choices than any class in 4e (all 4e classes need exactly the same number of choices) were Bards, dragon sorcerers, and wizards.

Each 4e class takes 12 choices by the criteria I used. 5e monks take 6 (at the low), wizards take 15 (at the high). Note I was counting each spell separately (just like each AEDU ability).

So really, most of the choices are very similar between the two editions. There's rough parity between the systems in that regard.

Race
Class (5e has subclasses for a couple classes)
Ability scores (treated as 1 decision since there's the same number for each)
Skills (treated individually IIRC)
"Powers" (AEDU for 4e, spells for 5e)
Alignment

5e only things:
Background
personality

4e only things:
feat

not counted for either:
equipment (which is much more relevant, especially for martials, in 4e).

----------------
As someone who's taught lots of people to use both 4e and 5e over the last few years, I have no doubt that learning 5e is tremendously easier to get into and for new players to actually use. So much has been simplified and streamlined that it's no contest in my mind. Just the math of building the character (and the functional inability to make a bad character if you take what looks good) is tremendously lower. No need to dig up weapon expertise feats (and worry about "am I using the right weapon"), no stacking fiddly bonuses, no pages and pages of ability cards to memorize). And combat flows much quicker, to the point that I can do 2 full combats and RP in a 1.25 hour session, instead of 3-5 rounds of combat in 4e.

falconflicker
2018-06-23, 04:55 PM
So I'm going to assume good faith here
I'm sorry if I sounded like I was asking in bad faith, thank you for taking the time to respond.
The secondary question that I posed was because I've played all three of those clerics, and felt that they had sufficiently different round-by-round priorities to feel completely different in play, though it seems that you have had different experiences than I have.

I would really like it if different power sources functioned legitimately differently from each other. From a design standpoint, however, I find it difficult to imagine how to properly balance different resource regeneration mechanics, as there is no set # of challenges per day, nor any set mixture thereof, thus differing resource regeneration causes different classes to work better in games with certain "styles."
For example:
- On one end, a wide-ranging exploration game would tend to have fewer encounters a day, so classes with more daily resources would tend to shine here.
- On the other, a dungeon crawl would tend to take less in-universe time, heavily favoring a class with at-will or short recharge resources.

Given that D&D is supposed to be played with a mix of Classes, having certain members of the party be heavily disadvantaged depending on the game style seems like a bad idea to me.

Overall, with respect to the different resource mechanics I've seen in RPGs, I'll tend to vote for a singular resource mechanic (such as AEDU, Vancian, or Mana), as it balances characters between each other over multiple scales, where as every time I've seen an RPG try to have multiple forms of resource regeneration, they tend to balance between each other over certain specific intervals, but not others.

OACSNY97
2018-06-23, 05:14 PM
One note--I went through and and counted (for a different purpose) how many long-term decisions have to be made for each class (including subclasses for 5e) at each level. I did this for 5e, 4e, and 3.5 (using the SRD base classes only). While the exact count depends on exact criteria, changes to criteria are generally neutral across the spectrum if applied consistently.
---SNIP---
Race
Class (5e has subclasses for a couple classes)
Ability scores (treated as 1 decision since there's the same number for each)
Skills (treated individually IIRC)
"Powers" (AEDU for 4e, spells for 5e)
Alignment

5e only things:
Background
personality

4e only things:
feat

not counted for either:
equipment (which is much more relevant, especially for martials, in 4e).


Do you happen to have access to the rest of your old criteria? I'm really interested to see how what else you used to compare the character design choices.

Also, have you determined an ideal number or range of chargen options that can make for a customizable, but still easy to build character for a new player? 4e's 12(ish) choices sounds like too many for all classes, but is 5 or 6 too few?

PhoenixPhyre
2018-06-23, 05:19 PM
Do you happen to have access to the rest of your old criteria? I'm really interested to see how what else you used to compare the character design choices.

Also, have you determined an ideal number or range of chargen options that can make for a customizable, but still easy to build character for a new player? 4e's 12(ish) choices sounds like too many for all classes, but is 5 or 6 too few?

Edit: As to the second question: It strongly depends. The biggest difficulty my new players have is picking spells, especially if they can't switch them every day. The second biggest is picking a class in the first place. Which makes sense. They're both highly detailed, consequential decisions that require knowledge of the system and a prediction of play style. A barbarian (6 choices) takes virtually no time to build, and most of that is just filling in the numbers. A wizard or bard is the worst (at 15 and 14, respectively). Druids are much more heavy later (due to wildshape), but they're heavy mostly at play-time, rather than in build-time.

7-10 seems to be a sweet spot. But that depends.

I have the final spreadsheet--I can probably reconstruct the criteria pretty quickly. I'll update this when I do.

Note I was only concerned with long-term choices--those things that you can't guarantee you can buy your way out of of or swap out daily. So a cleric's spells (since he knows the whole list) don't count, but a sorcerer's do (because he can only swap one per level).

Edit: I think I ignored things like languages as too variable based on race, class, etc.

Criteria: (things marked with a * count as multiple choices, one per individual item)

5e:
* Race (including subrace because you can't not have one if your chosen race gives a choice).
* Background
* Class
* Skills*
* Subclasses (some at level 1, some at level 2, some at 3)
* Spells* (except druid, paladin, and cleric, as noted above)
* Personality Traits (all as one choice IIRC)
* Starting Equipment (one choice)
* Ability Score Distribution (one choice)
* Class Features

4e:
* Race
* Class
* Feats*
* Skills*
* AEDU powers* (not counting swapping)
* Equipment
* Ability Score Distribution (one choice)
* Class Feature Choices (each class gets one at level 1)
* Paragon path
* Epic Destiny

3e (Pathfinder, really, IIRC. I think I used the PFSRD for the information):
* Race
* Class
* Feats*
* Skills (IIRC I counted these as 1 choice since the number of choices varies tremendously between builds, even of the same class)
* Spells* (Same criteria as 5e)
* Class Features (number varies strongly)
* Alignment (since that's mechanically significant here, unlike 5e or 4e)

That's the list, IIRC.

If anyone's interested, the spreadsheet can be seen at this One-Drive link (https://1drv.ms/x/s!AjKe-YTGxfZWuDTYU0D1zCR8XlsR).

OACSNY97
2018-06-23, 05:55 PM
7-10 seems to be a sweet spot. But that depends.

---SNIP---

5e:
* Race (including subrace because you can't not have one if your chosen race gives a choice).
* Background
* Class
* Skills*
* Subclasses (some at level 1, some at level 2, some at 3)
* Spells* (except druid, paladin, and cleric, as noted above)
* Personality Traits (all as one choice IIRC)
* Starting Equipment (one choice)
* Ability Score Distribution (one choice)
* Class Features

---SNIP---

If anyone's interested, the spreadsheet can be seen at this One-Drive link (https://1drv.ms/x/s!AjKe-YTGxfZWuDTYU0D1zCR8XlsR).

I took a look at your spreadsheet and checked a couple of the 5e classes versus the 5e PHB and I get different numbers. Forex, I get 8 picks for Barbarian, not 6 at pre-first level chargen.
1. Race
2. Background
3. Class
4. 1st skill
5. 2nd skill
6. Personality Trait
7. Starting Equipment
8. Ability Scores
Would you mind checking my math and letting me know what I either double counted or included that I shouldn't have in order to get the same number of long-term picks you got?

Assuming I can get the numbers to work, I'd be happy to go with the 7-10 1st level character build long-term build choices for ease of customizable build.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-06-23, 06:17 PM
I took a look at your spreadsheet and checked a couple of the 5e classes versus the 5e PHB and I get different numbers. Forex, I get 8 picks for Barbarian, not 6 at pre-first level chargen.
1. Race
2. Background
3. Class
4. 1st skill
5. 2nd skill
6. Personality Trait
7. Starting Equipment
8. Ability Scores
Would you mind checking my math and letting me know what I either double counted or included that I shouldn't have in order to get the same number of long-term picks you got?

Assuming I can get the numbers to work, I'd be happy to go with the 7-10 1st level character build long-term build choices for ease of customizable build.

Honestly, I may not have counted personality or equipment. I probably should have. That would bump all 5e characters up by 2.

Edit: My original goal was looking at some homebrew I had made and wondering if it involved too many choices. So I compared 5e to 5e, so things that everyone has to do didn't matter (as much, basically I got lazy and ignored some stuff). Then I chased a wild hare and ended up pulling the other two editions I had access to.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-06-23, 07:24 PM
As someone who's taught lots of people to use both 4e and 5e over the last few years, I have no doubt that learning 5e is tremendously easier to get into and for new players to actually use. So much has been simplified and streamlined that it's no contest in my mind. Just the math of building the character (and the functional inability to make a bad character if you take what looks good) is tremendously lower. No need to dig up weapon expertise feats (and worry about "am I using the right weapon"), no stacking fiddly bonuses, no pages and pages of ability cards to memorize). And combat flows much quicker, to the point that I can do 2 full combats and RP in a 1.25 hour session, instead of 3-5 rounds of combat in 4e.

Honestly, it's almost entirely player-dependent in my experience, so the system comparisons were only relative, not absolute. (Kind of like how the 3e tier system is all based on "Assuming someone of the same skill/math/tactical/etc. ability is playing every class...".) Most people I've introduced to the game, in any edition, have picked everything up fairly quickly, and having one or two experienced players makes it pretty much a wash.

And of course the things you mentioned are all more relevant to more experienced players. New players don't necessarily care about planning for higher-level abilities at 1st level, taking math-fix feats, and the like, and rather than memorizing spells and powers and such I usually see players print out pages of power cards and spell descriptions and just have those handy when they play. As far as the actual act of character creation goes, "roll stats, pick race from this list, pick class from this list, pick proficiencies/skills/feats/background/etc. from these other lists, go!" is pretty simple, as long as it's presented in a non-intimidating way; I believe OACSNY97, for instance, when he says that he found that the number of choices necessary at first level induced analysis paralysis, but when I've introduced new people I've walked them through it like "Okay, you get two powers you get to pick from here, what kinds of things do you want to be doing a lot of? [Describe at-will powers] Okay, cool, now you get a power that you can use once per combat from here..." and so on and no one's had an issue with that.


I'm sorry if I sounded like I was asking in bad faith, thank you for taking the time to respond.

Don't worry, I didn't think you were asking a leading question, but I've been in enough edition war conversations I wasn't sure and thought I'd add that caveat.


The secondary question that I posed was because I've played all three of those clerics, and felt that they had sufficiently different round-by-round priorities to feel completely different in play, though it seems that you have had different experiences than I have.

As with character-building, it really comes down to player preference. Let's say you have a player who wants to play a badass warrior who kills lots of enemies, for instance: I've had players who specifically want to play a warrior because they want to have special combos and deal with positioning and stuff, and they really want all their flavor descriptions of overhand chops and disembowelments and such to all be different mechanically; players who specifically want to play a warrior not because they want to be a warrior per se but because the magical classes looked too complex to them; players who specifically want to play a warrior because it's not a magical character, and only care about resource management insofar as whatever system they use doesn't "feel like magic" to them; and players who just want to play it because they think it's cool, and don't particularly care how that works mechanically.

Barbarian wouldn't be interesting enough for the first one, warblade would be great, and fighter would depend very much on the build; barbarian would be a good fit for the second player, fighter only if built to have mostly passive abilities that they can write on their sheet as opposed to active stuff like Power Attack or [Tactical] feats, and the warblade not at all; and the the third and fourth player would basically be happy with whatever sheet you put in front of them as long as it doesn't say "Wizard" on it.

Regarding the cleric example specifically, I'd personally be pretty bored if every time I played a character it had the same mechanics. Yes, the Tempest, War, and Trickery clerics have different themes and are doing different things each round, but sometimes you want the turn-by-turn and encounter-by-encounter flexibility of a Storm sorcerer, the action advantage and utility of a Valor bard, or the spike damage and out-of-combat reliability of an Arcane Trickster rogue, you know? In 3e, I love playing hybrid characters with access to two (or more!) resource systems because where others may find juggling multiple resources complicated I find it to be a fun challenge (on the rare occasion that I play rather than DM, that is).


I would really like it if different power sources functioned legitimately differently from each other. From a design standpoint, however, I find it difficult to imagine how to properly balance different resource regeneration mechanics, as there is no set # of challenges per day, nor any set mixture thereof, thus differing resource regeneration causes different classes to work better in games with certain "styles."
For example:
- On one end, a wide-ranging exploration game would tend to have fewer encounters a day, so classes with more daily resources would tend to shine here.
- On the other, a dungeon crawl would tend to take less in-universe time, heavily favoring a class with at-will or short recharge resources.

Given that D&D is supposed to be played with a mix of Classes, having certain members of the party be heavily disadvantaged depending on the game style seems like a bad idea to me.

I would dispute that those are necessarily all that different. A hexcrawl may have fewer actual encounters, but can involve just as much resource expenditure; my current 3e campaign has a heavy wilderness exploration component, and while the party may not have many fights per day they're still using up spells to scout ahead, get around dangerous terrain features, supplement their supplies, hide from monsters, and the like, and the fights that they do have can involve a lot more creatures than a dungeon encounter because of the lack of enclosed areas so spellcasters don't have a large advantage just because they have lots of spells.

Meanwhile, a dungeon crawl takes as much time as the party is willing to spend and that the opposition allows them. One dungeon might be an abandoned crypt with mostly mindless undead foes, so you can take things at your leisure and rest whenever you want--and even come and go from the dungeon with relative impunity--as long as you barricade the door sufficiently and don't tip off the mummy at the bottom; one might be an enemy fortress, where you have to go swiftly and stealthily from room to room, if you stop to rest the alarm will be sounded and make everything much harder, and if you leave the dungeon reinforcements will nearly ensure that you can't get back in a second time; another might be a more traditional dungeon, where there are multiple factions in the area and stopping to rest or leave will allow various groups to spread the word of your presence and reinforce to a limited extent, so you have to balance rest periods with increased difficulty and you can push ahead as fast or as cautiously as you're comfortable risking.

And then of course on the opposite end from short-recharge-friendly campaigns you have things like a war- or intrigue-heavy campaign, where much of the resource expenditure comes from information-gathering, preparing for missions, and countering enemy forces doing the same. In that situation, being able to do a few things very frequently is much less useful than being able to a bunch of different things less frequently, as the whole point is to set things up so you can use your limited resources to best advantage and cause your foes to waste their resources, and fights involve either single resource-expenditure-heavy in-and-out assaults or massive multi-day engagements.


Overall, with respect to the different resource mechanics I've seen in RPGs, I'll tend to vote for a singular resource mechanic (such as AEDU, Vancian, or Mana), as it balances characters between each other over multiple scales, where as every time I've seen an RPG try to have multiple forms of resource regeneration, they tend to balance between each other over certain specific intervals, but not others.

Balancing over different scales is only a problem if certain scales are over- or under-represented in the challenges you're expected to face and the adventure and campaign structures the game is expected to take. It's no coincidence that D&D resource management paradigms have traditionally tended towards the ones that are most useful for hexcrawls, multi-faction dungeon crawls, and war scenarios, as those are the things the game was originally built to support. Other games likewise tend toward other resource management paradigms; Shadowrun magic uses drain (damaging yourself if you channel too much power) since you're expected to do most of your casting during downtime to scout Astrally, bind spirits, and so forth and if you end up in a protracted battle where you need to bust out the big guns you've done something seriously wrong, Star Wars games have very little focus on in-game resource expenditure and are all about metagame currency and combat flow/momentum because Star Wars fights are all about climactic confrontations and the will of the Force, and so on. Vancian casting would be a poor fit for either of those other settings, just like adding in a Shadowrun Mage or a Star Wars Jedi to a D&D campaign alongside a bunch of standard D&D classes without altering the assumptions of the game to match wouldn't work out too well.

In 3e there are many different resource management systems, but pretty much everything that is a resource (and not just constant, at-will, or on-or-off) is on a daily "start with X and slowly tick things off as you use them" basis (spell slots, power points, rages, smites, bardic music, domain powers, mysteries, turn/rebuke attempts, etc.). There's only a few cases where you need to track recharges and then only rarely and for a few rounds (dragon breath weapons, crusader maneuver recovery, binder every-5-rounds vestige abilities, and maybe one or two more), which isn't really any more onerous than tracking round/level durations, and only one instance of a "reset at the start of an encounter" system (factotum inspiration).

Imbalances between those systems have much less to do with the resource management part and more to do with how many a given character gets and how powerful each option is. As I mentioned a few pages back, people complain about wizards wanting to rest at every opportunity to refresh spells but no one complains about paladins wanting to refresh their smites or monks their Stunning Fist uses, because spells are broad and powerful and neither Smite Evil nor Stunning Fist is powerful enough or integral enough to a paladin's or monk's fighting style to require constant refreshing. If 3e spells were on the order of 4e daily powers (better than at-will stuff but nothing to write home about) and 3e paladin smites were, say, a major encounter-long buff to the paladin and debuff to her target with multiple selectable effects and she got constant benefits based on how many smites she had left, it would be the smites rather than the spells driving the party's pacing, yet they'd both still be daily resources on slightly different schedules.

falconflicker
2018-06-23, 08:38 PM
Good Words

I wish I could like posts on these forums rather than this content-free "You made a good point" post.

Anonymouswizard
2018-06-24, 04:12 AM
Yeah, resource systems are all about pacing.

Let's not forget that hp is also a resource (and in 3.X the only one that doesn't recharge within a day), and it's recovery rate is important. Recovering 1d6hp a day isn't a problem if you're only expecting a fight every week, but it is if you're recieving eight a day.

Players will also try to find their way around resource systems, which is actually good. This is the cause of the 15 minute adventuring day, as in 3.5 the only way to recharge spells is to wait until they come back. In many other systems characters will carry around 'containers' of resources or try to stack cost reducing effects on their favourite powers. Doing this is interacting with the system, and is exactly the kind of thing people will do in setting.