# What do you want in the revised DMG?



## Malmuria

The thread on the current dmg made me wonder what people might want from the revised 2024 edition.  Most conversation around the revisions have been about character options and monster statblocks, but less about the contents of the dmg.  So what would the 5.5 dmg need to do in order for you to purchase it? 

 Here's my take:

Things to add
- Social contract: guidance on setting up the "social contract" of the game, including session 0 checklist and advice on managing player interactions and expectations (the Level Up dmg seems to do this, but I have not read it)

Things to expand

Running the Game: It oft-noted that the "Running the Game" chapter is the most necessary, and yet is at the end of the book.  They could expand this section further with more detailed procedures for how to do...whatever the new edition wants to do as a game (e.g. in b/x, it's dungeon- and wilderness-crawling, so there are procedures for that)
DM Workshop: An expanded DM workshop section, with modular rules to fit a wider array of settings, tropes, and play styles. It's probably unlikely that they would do this.   At the same time, they could go through all the optional rules they scatter throughout the book, reconsider what they really need, and gather the remaining ones together in one chapter.

To keep unchanged

Treasure and magic items: leave as-is I guess.
the NPC tables

Needs repair and revision

Usability: editing, organization, layout.
Encounter creation: fix the math and simplify
Adventure creation and downtime: I do like the random tables for the most part, but the advice on writing adventures just leaves me cold for some reason.  I think it's because it tries to provide advice for every kind of play, instead of being opinionated as to what kind of game dnd is.  So we have mysteries and intrigue and moral quandaries, but all kind of half-baked imo.

Remove?:

Miscellaneous rules:  mechanics for things that don't come up that often, like ship rules, chases, diseases,  etc.  Would a lot be lost if rules were not included?
Worldbuilding: The worldbuilding and cosmology sections are the weakest and least relevant parts of the book.  I feel to do it right, worldbuilding needs much more space that would be allotted to it in a dmg.


Thoughts?


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## R_J_K75

Malmuria said:


> Encounter creation: fix the math and simplify



I dont think Ive ever read the 5E DMG all the way through.

Out of everything you mentioned this is the only thing I mostly care about. For me creating encounters in 5E is the hardest part of prepping and running games.  If you try and use the RAW for them they always seem to come out too weak or too deadly; theres no in between.  We play once a week for about 3 hours and even then its probably only 2 hours of solid gaming once we get settled in, get the initial conversation out of the way and resume after the inevitable distractions creep in.  So we probably get 1 maybe 2 combat encounters in during a session.  I would like to see this fixed so that I can create encounters of the challenge I need for a specific session.  Id prefer a system that isnt multiple steps.  A chart I can just look up the party level and figure out the appropriate CRs would be enough for me.  

Tables I can roll on for NPCs, dungeon dressings, random weather, traps, poisons, wandering monsters, encounter distance, etc I can use but I dont need a ton of explanation on how to use them.  Id like the book be divided into sections, put all the fluff in the front. Stuff like how to create a campaign, types of players, the multiverse, how to deal with disruptive players I can do without and never use.  I know some people need it so I can live with it.  Put all the mechanics and tables in another section in the back so I can quickly reference them.  Id like to see a return of magical items table by type and not by CRs.  

Over all I want better organization so things are easier to find and use.  A better index would be welcome too.  All I really want and need out of a DMG is to be able to open it, roll on some tables and come away with a useable adventure outline in an hour and easily reference at the table.  Ideally I'd prefer the PHB and DMG be in one book like Pathfinder but I know thats probably not going to happen.


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## DeviousQuail

I'm sure there is a better term for it but I'd like a more robust boon system. The epic boons listed are fine for high level/power play but I'd like to see something geared for lower levels. To give an idea I'm thinking things that are less powerful than a feat but more powerful than a +1 to a skill. Right now I'm looking at doing this myself using the rare spells and maneuvers found in Level Up. Preferably there would be guidelines (e.g. given once per tier at DM discretion) and the boons would not be things that are already accomplished by other means.


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## Stalker0

A lot more traps, they are such a key part of the dungeon, and I always want more!

A new attempt at poison would be nice. Poisons just never work, they are always so expensive and so weak. I would love a new take on them.


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## Bill Zebub

Deleted.


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## EzekielRaiden

Actual modularity would be pretty nice. As would a revamped CR system that isn't "eh, just wing it, you'll probably do just as well."


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## John R Davis

R_J_K75 said:


> I dont think Ive ever read the 5E DMG all the way through.
> 
> Out of everything you mentioned this is the only thing I mostly care about. For me creating encounters in 5E is the hardest part of prepping and running games.  If you try and use the RAW for them they always seem to come out too weak or too deadly; theres no in between.  We play once a week for about 3 hours and even then its probably only 2 hours of solid gaming once we get settled in, get the initial conversation out of the way and resume after the inevitable distractions creep in.  So we probably get 1 maybe 2 combat encounters in during a session.



Wow. No book can fix this. The only 5th ed I GM at the moment is Monday 7pm to 10pm. You don't need more than 10 ten minutes of pre-play chat. 
We can get at least 5 " encounters" in in that time. I think  players need to be paying attention, be fairly sure what they will do on there turn, and learn not to be distracted 
Only a chat and social contract can do this, a " guide" can only do so much 

The CR systems isn't quite right. You cannot make it more precise, so lighten it a bit more and give things a more abstract challenge system rather than more detailed, as that's impossible.


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## Lyxen

R_J_K75 said:


> Out of everything you mentioned this is the only thing I mostly care about. For me creating encounters in 5E is the hardest part of prepping and running games




You are playing the wrong edition of the game. 5e is not 3e where monsters were designed to precision - and lord know what a pain that was at high level. It's not 4e where everything is super controlled so that the encounter computations were precise. 5e is fuzzy and imprecise, because it's an open game.

Don't you think that, after all the (mostly unjustified, because people don't even read the whole section on encounter difficulty anyway) complaints about that encounter computation system, if there was a way to do it precisely, it would have been published by WotC or on anyone of the fantastic blogs out there ? What you are asking for is impossible to do with this edition, and if this is what you are expecting from the 2024 revision, I can guarantee that you will be disappointed.


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## R_J_K75

John R Davis said:


> Wow. No book can fix this.





John R Davis said:


> ...a " guide" can only do so much
> 
> The CR systems isn't quite right. You cannot make it more precise, so lighten it a bit more and give things a more abstract challenge system rather than more detailed, as that's impossible.





Lyxen said:


> 5e is not 3e where monsters were designed to precision



As I know about the number of encounters we have in a session I'd prefer something less abstract and not have to just wing it as @EzekielRaiden put it.  I'd like a little more precision to be confident that the encounters I create are close to what I expect them to be and adequately challenge the players to the level I want.  If I want an easy or deadly encounter (or something in between) the guidelines/rules of the game should be able to accommodate that within reason. After all combat is a pretty integral part of the game and should be more than a crap shoot.  


Lyxen said:


> Don't you think that, after all the (mostly unjustified, because people don't even read the whole section on encounter difficulty anyway) complaints about that encounter computation system, if there was a way to do it precisely, it would have been published by WotC or on anyone of the fantastic blogs out there ? What you are asking for is impossible to do with this edition



What I think is that if they could do it for 3E and 4E as you said that it should be possible to get it a lot closer in 5E than it currently is. Im not looking for perfection, just something close and more reliable than guessing most of the time.


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## EzekielRaiden

R_J_K75 said:


> What I think is that if they could do it for 3E and 4E as you said that it should be possible to get it a lot closer in 5E than it currently is. Im not looking for perfection, just something close and more reliable than guessing most of the time.



Well, in fairness, they didn't really do it for 3e either. 4e was very good, definitely not perfect but quite reliable and effective. The similar but distinct 13A was also pretty reliable, and indeed featured some difficulty-flexing options to expand a monster's threatening capacity (termed "Nastier Specials," and specifically made to be...well, nastier, so employing them can really boost the impact of a particular monster even if its statblock is otherwise unchanged!)


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## Lyxen

R_J_K75 said:


> As I know about the number of encounters we have in a session I'd prefer something less abstract and not have to just wing it as @EzekielRaiden put it.  I'd like a little more precision to be confident that the encounters I create are close to what I expect them to be and adequately challenge the players to the level I want.  If I want an easy or deadly encounter (or something in between) the guidelines/rules of the game should be able to accommodate that within reason. After all combat is a pretty integral part of the game and should be more than a crap shoot.




Combat works fine, it's quick, streamlined and exciting. What it's not is challenging, and that is the whole problem for a number of people, including you, I suppose.

To create a challenging encounter that does not have the risk to turn into a TPK, you need precise computations of power, something that you cannot get out of 5e because the monsters are not calibrated and because the situations are not calibrated. 3e sort of had it, 4e got it down to near perfection, but only because it was a "closed" system in which the possibilities were restricted and computations could be made. 5e is way more open, with some advantages and some drawbacks, in particular in terms of precision.



R_J_K75 said:


> What I think is that if they could do it for 3E and 4E as you said that it should be possible to get it a lot closer in 5E than it currently is. Im not looking for perfection, just something close and more reliable than guessing most of the time.



And then, once more, if it was doable, don't you think that someone would have done it ?


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## R_J_K75

Lyxen said:


> What it's not is challenging, and that is the whole problem for a number of people, including you, I suppose.



I can't see the point in creating a combat that isnt challenging in some way for the players; though it doesnt have to be deadly.  Last I check monster have a "Challenge Rating", so I doubt the sole design intent of the CR/encounter design mechanics were strictly for fun and for the PCs to win all the time. 


Lyxen said:


> And then, once more, if it was doable, don't you think that someone would have done it ?



Perhaps WotC will change the CR system in 2024, maybe they wont and I'll be disappointed.  Just because it hasnt been done yet doesnt mean it cant or wont be. Some people seem to like the way it is and it works for them, such as yourself, while others like me don't. But I've seen enough people say they'd like to see it changed to know Im not alone. IMO theres room for improvement in it.


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## Lyxen

EzekielRaiden said:


> Well, in fairness, they didn't really do it for 3e either.




It was still way more precise, in particular because the CR computations were more accurate, but also because the encounter calculator was more precise especially with regards to the number of opponents.



EzekielRaiden said:


> 4e was very good, definitely not perfect but quite reliable and effective.




It is indeed, because it's based on paradigms which are simply quite different. What gave good results with 4e just cannot work with the intentional fuzziness of 5e.


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## Snarf Zagyg

I just want a secret sentence buried somewhere in it. In the middle of a long paragraph- “Congratulations for reading!”

So we can definitively say that … no one reads the DMG.

(I appreciate the sentiment, above, but other than useful organization and a useful index, people will just advocate for their preferences. The DMG is fine.)


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## Li Shenron

Malmuria said:


> Things to expand
> 
> Running the Game: It oft-noted that the "Running the Game" chapter is the most necessary, and yet is at the end of the book.  They could expand this section further with more detailed procedures for how to do...whatever the new edition wants to do as a game (e.g. in b/x, it's dungeon- and wilderness-crawling, so there are procedures for that)



I would hate this.

More procedures would inevitably turn out to actually make the game more restricted (unless they are marked as variants, but that would go in the other section of the book).

As a prime example, think about the spell identification rule in Xanathar. Even though I personally don't mind it, a lot of people. hate it because suddenly it sets a new standard rule for covering something that DMs handed more freely.

Even if by "procedures" you mean only streamlined explanations of existing rules, they would still need to be careful not to set a standard that many will treat at unquestionable RAW. The example here is the DMG procedure for noticing hidden doors which kind of implies that the DM has to use passive perception even if it means that every hidden door is automatically detected or automatically missed, with randomness removed. What might have been originally just aid text for one possible good way to handle hidden doors became a core rule in the hands of rules lawyers.


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## Li Shenron

To answer the main question, I don't want a revision so I would like a 50th anniversary DMG (and PHB and MM) to be just premium books with some fancies like leather cover and ribbons, and no content change besides improved formatting and layout, and maybe changes to the text only to make it more clear.

The DMG doesn't actually need much, but the PHB could have better spell lists with one-line spell descriptions, and of course the clarification that if a Druid chooses to use metal armor/shields then nothing happens.


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## John R Davis

A quick and easy fix I do is try and make the challenge as noted in the DMG but give creatures a bonus action. Even if it's just a simple attack, a cantrip or a disengage it adds to the challenge quite nicely without slowing things down. Just enough peril to make the player think a bit, and maybe panic a tad!


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## Willie the Duck

Malmuria said:


> Running the Game: It oft-noted that the "Running the Game" chapter is the most necessary, and yet is at the end of the book.  They could expand this section further with more detailed procedures for how to do...whatever the new edition wants to do as a game (e.g. in b/x, it's dungeon- and wilderness-crawling, so there are procedures for that)
> DM Workshop: An expanded DM workshop section, with modular rules to fit a wider array of settings, tropes, and play styles. It's probably unlikely that they would do this.   At the same time, they could go through all the optional rules they scatter throughout the book, reconsider what they really need, and gather the remaining ones together in one chapter.
> Usability: editing, organization, layout.



These cover my list pretty well. To my mind, rulebooks ought be designed most to the benefit of people (especially children) just learning the game (using the logic that by the time you get past that level, you barely need rules, and at the very least can be tasked with finding the rules you need). A simple, straightforward ramp into the core ideas of what DMing is like, what decisions you need to make, what processes will produce what results (and the potential pitfalls of both following and ignoring said processes), and how to make an engaging play experience for your Players.


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## Snarf Zagyg

Li Shenron said:


> .
> The DMG doesn't actually need much, but the PHB could have better spell lists with one-line spell descriptions, and of course the clarification that if a Druid chooses to use metal armor/shields then nothing happens.




and of course the clarification that if a Druid chooses to use metal armor/shields then nothing happens. they explode,  And as a bonus, take out any bards in a 30’ radius.

Think of the tactics!


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## Jacob Lewis

Apparently, the most popular request should be "somebody to read it for me".


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## DEFCON 1

This isn't necessarily about the topic, but the responses did make me wonder if there was a correlation between folks who want more robust and concrete encounter creation rules and folks who do not like or refuse to fudge dice rolls and/or adjust encounters mid-fight?

Honestly, I don't know if there is a correlation there or not, but I do know that for me I've never worried about making sure my encounters were built "balanced" in order to give me the really precise result of difficulty I was looking for because I do not have any problem having extra monsters just show up to make the fight more difficult (even if my notes didn't say they were there) or just removing a monster that got hit for 30 points and was left with 1 HP remaining (so I just call it dead), or any other tricks like that to "self-balance" the fights on a case-by-case basis.

It just seems like the people who would prefer not to "wing it" have a reason for not wanting to... and the idea that they do not want to adjust the encounter mid-encounter due to however they see the verisimilitude of the game to be, might be a strong reason for that?  I dunno?  It's just something I noticed and was curious about.


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## Reynard

Malmuria said:


> .Remove?:
> 
> Miscellaneous rules:  mechanics for things that don't come up that often, like ship rules, chases, diseases,  etc.  Would a lot be lost if rules were not included?



I don't understand this sentiment. Why would you want to restrict the kinds of things that D&D is meant to do. When you take away stuff like what you listed, you shrink the game to being about nothing but fights.


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## Reynard

Snarf Zagyg said:


> and of course the clarification that if a Druid chooses to use metal armor/shields then nothing happens. they explode,  And as a bonus, take out any bards in a 30’ radius.
> 
> Think of the tactics!



I don't normally agree with Snarf but when I do, I really do.


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## aco175

I would use the DMG more if it was like the 4e book and contained a small town in it, like Fallcrest.  I was also thinking on how it could be different than a 'starter' box where the box is designed to be something to walk you through your first campaign.  

I could use a campaign planner.  Some sort of outline that helps you get the bits you plan at low levels to tie in at high levels.  A NPC introduced at 1st level is not- what?  The threat of the orcs that the PCs never went on at 3rd level is not- what?  How do I tie in PC background and goals?  That kind of thing.


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## Lyxen

R_J_K75 said:


> I can't see the point in creating a combat that isnt challenging in some way for the players; though it doesnt have to be deadly.




That does not make any sense, sorry. Will you or not create encounters which are not deadly ? And if yes, please explain how you consider them challenging.



R_J_K75 said:


> Last I check monster have a "Challenge Rating", so I doubt the sole design intent of the CR/encounter design mechanics were strictly for fun and for the PCs to win all the time.




You are simply and plainly wrong: "An easy encounter doesn’t tax the characters’ resources or put them in serious peril. They might lose a few hit points, but victory is pretty much guaranteed."

So yes, some encounters are created that the PCs will win all the time, and nothing in the rules prevents people from playing with only easy encounters.

Actually the only type of encounter where there is a chance of defeat is "deadly". So yes, the game is designed for the PCs to win pretty much all the time. You might not like it, and I'm pretty sure that you use only deadly encounters for challenge, but this also means that 



R_J_K75 said:


> Perhaps WotC will change the CR system in 2024, maybe they wont and I'll be disappointed.




Then prepare to be disappointed. What you are asking is orthogonal to the way the system has been designed.



R_J_K75 said:


> Just because it hasnt been done yet doesnt mean it cant or wont be. Some people seem to like the way it is and it works for them, such as yourself, while others like me don't. But I've seen enough people say they'd like to see it changed to know Im not alone. IMO theres room for improvement in it.




Do not call this an improvement. It does not need to be improved in that area. What you wish for is a completely different system that allows precise computations from the ground up.


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## Lyxen

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I just want a secret sentence buried somewhere in it. In the middle of a long paragraph- “Congratulations for reading!”
> 
> So we can definitively say that … no one reads the DMG.
> 
> (I appreciate the sentiment, above, but other than useful organization and a useful index, people will just advocate for their preferences. The DMG is fine.)




Another reason for it to be reasonably fine, is that it has allowed (and probably empowered) the explosion of players across the planet. It is a book made for beginners mostly, apart some section on magic items for example. So it's not unreasonable that more experienced DM don't find much of interest in there, or actually, from a cursory reading, deduce (wrongly) that there is not much for them there.


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## Krachek

Malmuria said:


> Remove?:
> 
> Miscellaneous rules: mechanics for things that don't come up that often, like ship rules, chases, diseases, etc. Would a lot be lost if rules were not included?
> Worldbuilding: The worldbuilding and cosmology sections are the weakest and least relevant parts of the book. I feel to do it right, worldbuilding needs much more space that would be allotted to it in a dmg.



I agree that the cosmology part can be move to supplement that use those planes.
But the first chapter A world of your own gives key hints to build a home brew world.

miscellanous rules are not used often but are frequently present in this forum, the section can be orient more in the Rules building perspective.


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## Oofta

When it comes to encounter difficulty while I don't use the standard system, I use one that ignores the numbers multiplier, I find that my encounters are about as difficult as expected most of the time.  _However_ I do have to take into account the group I'm DMing for.  If the martial types all have magic weapons, the CR of creatures that have resistance to non-magical weapons is way too high.  Do they have effective ranged weapons or not?  Makes a huge difference on the CR of flying creatures and so on.  No two groups are the same, you always have to tune encounter budget to the group, I don't see how any system can account for that.  I don't find that I need to fudge any dice rolls, although I may fudge enemy tactics.

So a slightly revised encounter calculation section would be good, but there's only so much that can be done.


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## Lyxen

Oofta said:


> So a slightly revised encounter calculation section would be good, but there's only so much that can be done.




I agree that you need to take into account the composition of the party, in particular because one need to remember that the encounter calculator is based on standard characters with no options. So you need to take to heart the section about modifying encounter difficulty as well: "Increase the difficulty of the encounter by one step (from easy to medium, for example) if the characters have a drawback that their enemies don’t. Reduce the difficulty by one step if the characters have a benefit that their enemies don’t. Any additional benefit or drawback pushes the encounter one step in the appropriate direction. If the characters have both a benefit and a drawback, the two cancel each other out."

The examples given are situational, but often forgotten, but the same applies for example for a party with high stats (standard array is used as the base), options included (feats, multiclassing, basically everything that is used in optimised character creation), magic items (again the basis of 5e is that magic items, in particular those giving bonuses, are optional and not part of the base, etc.

We often see people complaining about the result of the encounter calculator and saying that it's too easy, but when asked, say that indeed their party have rolled their stats (and of course, "luckily", all have very high numbers), all options allowed, powerful magic items, etc.


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## el-remmen

Robust options for tweaking classes/spells/races for different sub-genres of fantasy and power levels.

I don't give a crap about CR and encounter design and have a hard time wrapping my head around it being hard. Clearly there should be some kind of CR as a guide - but something very simple like: add up total party levels and then monsters have levels and you add them up to that number (or higher or lower depending on the level challenge you want). Will it be perfect? Nope. Does it need to be or can it even ever be expected to be? Nope.  The only way to learn to good encounters is to just make them and run them, tweak them on the fly if necessary and hope you don't F it up too much.


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## Oofta

Lyxen said:


> I agree that you need to take into account the composition of the party, in particular because one need to remember that the encounter calculator is based on standard characters with no options. So you need to take to heart the section about modifying encounter difficulty as well: "Increase the difficulty of the encounter by one step (from easy to medium, for example) if the characters have a drawback that their enemies don’t. Reduce the difficulty by one step if the characters have a benefit that their enemies don’t. Any additional benefit or drawback pushes the encounter one step in the appropriate direction. If the characters have both a benefit and a drawback, the two cancel each other out."
> 
> The examples given are situational, but often forgotten, but the same applies for example for a party with high stats (standard array is used as the base), options included (feats, multiclassing, basically everything that is used in optimised character creation), magic items (again the basis of 5e is that magic items, in particular those giving bonuses, are optional and not part of the base, etc.
> 
> We often see people complaining about the result of the encounter calculator and saying that it's too easy, but when asked, say that indeed their party have rolled their stats (and of course, "luckily", all have very high numbers), all options allowed, powerful magic items, etc.




Not to mention how many encounters you have, party makeup, general tactical astuteness.  I was running two campaigns for different groups at one point using the same optional rules, roughly same amount and type of treasure, similar enemies and so on.  Group A could simply handle far more than group B.  By quite a bit.  There's no formula that could take into consideration that one group could handle a target XP budget 30% higher than the other.


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## Oofta

Something else I think the DMG should include is more talk about the role and nature of monsters in the game.  I don't want to derail the thread to yet another alignment argument (and I don't think evil monsters are inherently an alignment issue), but I think there should be discussions and options about how you handle creatures like hobgoblins.  Are all hobgoblins evil?  Are the hobgoblins represented in the book just a faction that are given stats because they are the enemy?  What role do monsters, and monstrous races play in any particular campaign?

At the very least it should be clarified that what is presented in the MM is just one default, and that every campaign should adjust as they see fit.  Give some examples of how different campaigns handle it and why.  I don't make any moral judgments about how people run their games, but people should be sensitive to the topic.


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## jmartkdr2

I don't think there's a ton of content changes needed (some minor stuff sure) - I thnk it mostly needs to be re-organized to be useful both as a textbook: reading it through should logically walk you through the things you need to know to be a good dm, and it should be organized enough to be a usable reference book. It's quite possible to do both. The current layout is neither.

The _first_ section should be running the game, (including add-on systems like chase rules) then encounter building, then adventure building, then campaigns, then worldbuilding. Rewards can go after that, then variant rules.


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## Lyxen

Oofta said:


> Not to mention how many encounters you have, party makeup, general tactical astuteness.  I was running two campaigns for different groups at one point using the same optional rules, roughly same amount and type of treasure, similar enemies and so on.  Group A could simply handle far more than group B.  By quite a bit.  There's no formula that could take into consideration that one group could handle a target XP budget 30% higher than the other.




Yes, there are many more things that can be considered, one of the most complex one being synergies. Our DM in Odyssey of the Dragonlords is running the campaign more or less simultaneously for two groups, and our group is technically much more powerful (and still, I'm not using my paladin smites as much as I could), because our classes and tactics have much better synergy. And sometimes it's synergy between the monsters and themselves, or between the monster and the party, or either group with the environment. All of that is extremely complex, not even mentioning the fact that buffing and/or having the initiative and/or having surprise can be complete game changers.


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## DEFCON 1

Said it before and will say it again... I firmly believe the encounter building rules and CR are all balanced around just having one each of the 4 character classes from the Basic Rules.  If your game deviates from that at all (additional PCs, more types of classes, adding game options etc.), the encounter building rules are not going to work for you as-is... your party will always overpower the encounter built.

But while the new DMG _could_ tell you this straight out in the book... it'd pretty much be a waste of ink.  Because if you own the DMG, it also 99.99% of the time means you've also bought the PHB, and thus you have everything at hand that is going to render the encounter building rules useless to you.  So then what the building rules are meant for doesn't do you a lick of good.


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## dave2008

R_J_K75 said:


> I dont think Ive ever read the 5E DMG all the way through.
> 
> Out of everything you mentioned this is the only thing I mostly care about. For me creating encounters in 5E is the hardest part of prepping and running games.



Interesting.  I am pretty much the opposite.  I find I don't have to worry about prepping 5e encounters at all.  I can make them whatever I want and I don't have to worry. I completely abandon trying to create "balanced" encounters about 5-6 years ago.  Now I just create what makes sense for the story, situation, and environment. I am confident my players can come up with a solution to anything they come across.


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## dave2008

My list:

Better organization:
Better explanation on how to modify the game to fit different groups / playstyles - with concrete mechanical examples
Update monster features (and their CR effects) list & how to adjust based on point 2
Explanations how conditions should impact CR & spell creation
Follow up on #1 & #2: I want to see rules packets to cater to different styles


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## Lyxen

dave2008 said:


> Interesting.  I am pretty much the opposite.  I find I don't have to worry about prepping 5e encounters at all.  I can make them whatever I want and I don't have to worry. I completely abandon trying to create "balanced" encounters about 5-6 years ago.  Now I just create what makes sense for the story, situation, and environment. I am confident my players can come up with a solution to anything they come across.




Exactly the same for me, and most of the time, the solution will not be combat, it will be intrigue, stealth, they will resort to combat only once they have ascertained that there is no other solution and they have loaded everything in their favor. And if the combat is over in two rounds, they are really happy, it's a testimony to their planning and scheming.


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## Swarmkeeper

DEFCON 1 said:


> This isn't necessarily about the topic, but the responses did make me wonder if there was a correlation between folks who want more robust and concrete encounter creation rules and folks who do not like or refuse to fudge dice rolls and/or adjust encounters mid-fight?
> 
> Honestly, I don't know if there is a correlation there or not, but I do know that for me I've never worried about making sure my encounters were built "balanced" in order to give me the really precise result of difficulty I was looking for because I do not have any problem having extra monsters just show up to make the fight more difficult (even if my notes didn't say they were there) or just removing a monster that got hit for 30 points and was left with 1 HP remaining (so I just call it dead), or any other tricks like that to "self-balance" the fights on a case-by-case basis.
> 
> It just seems like the people who would prefer not to "wing it" have a reason for not wanting to... and the idea that they do not want to adjust the encounter mid-encounter due to however they see the verisimilitude of the game to be, might be a strong reason for that?  I dunno?  It's just something I noticed and was curious about.




I think the encounter creation rules are fine as long as one goes in with the notion that they aren't perfect.  I'll sometimes use Kobold Plus Fight Club - The first rule of Kobold Fight Club is 'Yip Yip!' to approximate a "just-deadly" encounter.  Or, since encounters don't truly need to be "balanced", I'll just put together something that makes sense for the campaign.  It's up to the players via their PCs to determine whether to engage or not.

However, I am someone that refuses to fudge dice rolls.  It works better for our table to roll in the open at all times.  

Like you, I _will _adjust encounters mid-fight at times, though.  This could be bringing in a new wave of enemies or having enemies flee or disengage - again based on what makes sense for the campaign and the scenario.  I will occasionally fudge HP for monsters - most often in the players' favor if a hit comes within 1 or 2 of taking out an enemy and it's time to move on.

Probably a good topic for a new thread.  Great questions!


----------



## Composer99

I would like to see the layout changed as follows (with content changes described in each section) to make the layout progressive - in the way that lesson books for learning a musical instrument are progressive - so that content goes from most crucial and basic to most optional and advanced.

*Part 1: Running a Game*
This includes stuff like session 0 stuff, adjudicating PC actions during gameplay, encounter-building (whether the encounter includes combat or not), adjusting encounters on the fly, and running typical adventuring situations - combat, exploration, travel, social interaction, and downtime, including temporal hazards such as tornadoes or earthquakes.

Basically, in my view new DMs should be confident that they'll either have procedures or guidance for running pretty much any typical or commonplace adventuring activities, and seasoned DMs will know what the baseline assumptions for the game are before they run roughshod over them. (For this reason, I would prefer to retain material for things like chases or diseases, perhaps with some reworking.)

(Personally, for encounter building, I'd have preferred that they use aggregate monster CR to estimate encounter difficulty instead of XP budgets, though that would require reworking monsters more than I expect a 5.5 that aims to be backwards compatible would aim to achieve. Such estimates need not be precise. But CR is a smaller, and thus by my reckoning easier, number to use.)

*Part 2: NPCs*
The overall content about NPCs in the DMG probably doesn't need much change, but the layout may well. Players interacting with NPCs is covered in part 1, so this part is about creating, running, and portraying NPCs and factions thereof. I think it should be a separate part simply because we're dealing with material that is something of a hybrid of running a game and creating content for a game - for instance, if you're running a published adventure path and want to expand on the role of a given faction the players are interested in joining (or taking over!).

*Part 3: Rewards*
Treasure, boons, property, hirelings, favours, that sort of thing.

Pretty well every DM will find use to refer to the first three parts. The next three are for DMs who want to modify the game to suit their tastes or run their own stuff, possibly in their own worlds.

*Part 4: DM's Workshop*
I'd also like to see this consolidated and expanded.

*Part 5: Creating Adventures and Campaigns*
I separate this from worldbuilding since you might, say, run a campaign in the Forgotten Realms without using published adventures.

*Part 6: Worldbuilding

Appendix:* A small starter adventure so you don't have to buy the starter set or a whole adventure path to have a first adventure to throw at your players when you're a new DM.


----------



## R_J_K75

dave2008 said:


> I completely abandon trying to create "balanced" encounters about 5-6 years ago. Now I just create what makes sense for the story, situation, and environment.



This is pretty much what I have taken to doing as well.  Sometimes it works, sometimes not so I adjust on the fly.  I would just like something a little more precise so I don't have to improvise at the table.  If that happens great, if not then I will continue doing what I have been doing.  Most of the time if my players are in real trouble I'll figure out a way to give them an out.  My original point (I may not have articulated that sufficiently) was that by following the encounter building rules IME does not usually have the intended results for the level of challenge I'm wanting and expecting from how they are written, but it is quite possible there something I'm missing or misinterpreting.


----------



## Umbran

Bill Zebub said:


> A whole chapter titled “Lanefan is elvish for ‘badwrongfun’”




*Mod Note:*
It seems like somewhere, you got the idea that publicly taking personal jabs at other posters was a good idea.

I am here to disabuse you of that notion.  Welcome to a warning for insulting people, and a threadban.


----------



## Professor Murder

Better Item creation rules
Better encounter creation systems


----------



## overgeeked

Some kind of tear-out card people can sign and show around verifying that they've read the thing.


----------



## ART!

I agree with just about all the OP's suggestions, but I'll get into some specifics:


Malmuria said:


> Things to add
> - Social contract: guidance on setting up the "social contract" of the game, including session 0 checklist and advice on managing player interactions and expectations (the Level Up dmg seems to do this, but I have not read it)




Party of "what is an rpg?", "basics of play", and the like should include thoughts on accommodations for persons with disabilities, safety tools, managing different types of players, and the like. Focus the beginning of the book on best practices for recruiting and session zero.


Malmuria said:


> Things to expand
> 
> Running the Game: It oft-noted that the "Running the Game" chapter is the most necessary, and yet is at the end of the book.  They could expand this section further with more detailed procedures for how to do...whatever the new edition wants to do as a game (e.g. in b/x, it's dungeon- and wilderness-crawling, so there are procedures for that)



Yeah - get this up front. Discuss incorporating character backgrounds into the ongoing plot, maintaining momentum and interest, managing different kinds of players, common stumbling blocks, and the like. Given the probably increasing importance to WOTC of D&D Beyond (or something that replaces it), include links to (or, in print, urls for) articles that expand on these ideas.



Malmuria said:


> DM Workshop: An expanded DM workshop section, with modular rules to fit a wider array of settings, tropes, and play styles. It's probably unlikely that they would do this.   At the same time, they could go through all the optional rules they scatter throughout the book, reconsider what they really need, and gather the remaining ones together in one chapter.



Yes, please! This is probably my favorite part of the current DMG, s keto this and enhance it with stuff from subsequent releases.


Malmuria said:


> Needs repair and revision
> 
> Usability: editing, organization, layout.



Always. Again, making things as clear and as easy to find as possible is especially important for new players.


Malmuria said:


> downtime:



Expanded downtime content!! Bring in stuff from Xanathar's and elsewhere. 


Malmuria said:


> Remove?:
> 
> Miscellaneous rules:  mechanics for things that don't come up that often, like ship rules, chases, diseases,  etc.  Would a lot be lost if rules were not included?



Some basic ship rules seems important if you want to show how wide a variety of adventures the game can handle, right alongside dungeon crawling and wilderness exploration. Chase rules seem important, too. I'd like to see some basic mass combat rules, including stats for some seige weapons, castle walls, etc. Any and all of this can be expanded on in later books, but it's like to see the core ideas in the DMG - again, to show the range of things you can do in a D&D game.


Malmuria said:


> Worldbuilding: The worldbuilding and cosmology sections are the weakest and least relevant parts of the book.  I feel to do it right, worldbuilding needs much more space that would be allotted to it in a dmg.



I feel much the way I do about mass combat rules, above: a section with some basic concepts is necessary, I think, to suggest what's possible, but the full ramifications can't be covered in the DMG. And since worldbuilding is so big and so expensive, the best you can do is devote a little space to examples and core concepts like creation stories, pantheons, etc., and include a nice sampling of examples from other D&D products.

Honestly, I'd be okay with _no_ magic items in the DMG if it meant making room for more of the above content.


----------



## Eltab

Re: CR and monsters:
An example of modifying an existing monster for higher / lower level PCs, and an example of creating a creature (of some mid-range CR) from scratch.  To show what you can calculate, and what you have to estimate.I

And a sidebar "We cannot fit every situation into this one book.  We have other books that address some possible subjects:"
Eberron - patron organizations, magic-as-technology
Frostmaiden - tundra scenes, avalanches, cold-exposure
Tomb of Annihilation - getting lost, jungle scenes, heat-exposure
Xanathar
Tasha


----------



## Lanefan

Riffing off @Malmuria 's take as, after all, it is the OP. .. 


Malmuria said:


> Things to add
> - Social contract: guidance on setting up the "social contract" of the game, including session 0 checklist and advice on managing player interactions and expectations (the Level Up dmg seems to do this, but I have not read it)



Meh - maaaaaybe?

This very much fights against the idea of spontaneous "Hey, guys, let's play D&D!" around which the game has often revolved.


Malmuria said:


> Things to expand
> 
> Running the Game: It oft-noted that the "Running the Game" chapter is the most necessary, and yet is at the end of the book.  They could expand this section further with more detailed procedures for how to do...whatever the new edition wants to do as a game (e.g. in b/x, it's dungeon- and wilderness-crawling, so there are procedures for that)
> DM Workshop: An expanded DM workshop section, with modular rules to fit a wider array of settings, tropes, and play styles. It's probably unlikely that they would do this.   At the same time, they could go through all the optional rules they scatter throughout the book, reconsider what they really need, and gather the remaining ones together in one chapter.



I wouldn't expand "Running the Game" but I would move it to the front of the book, or close.  DM Workshop and an optional rules section could go at the back, but referenced throughout whenever an optional alternative exists to a standard rule or system.


Malmuria said:


> To keep unchanged
> 
> Treasure and magic items: leave as-is I guess.
> the NPC tables
> 
> Needs repair and revision
> 
> Usability: editing, organization, layout.
> Encounter creation: fix the math and simplify
> Adventure creation and downtime: I do like the random tables for the most part, but the advice on writing adventures just leaves me cold for some reason.  I think it's because it tries to provide advice for every kind of play, instead of being opinionated as to what kind of game dnd is.  So we have mysteries and intrigue and moral quandaries, but all kind of half-baked imo.



I'd like to see Downtime greatly expanded.  

Adventure creation could be largely covered off by including a short (but well-designed!!!) adventure as an appendix with lots and lots of short to-the-point side notes saying "Here's why [this element] exists in this adventure, this is why it's where/what it is, and here's a few other options for it." along with a design-details summary at the end.

Campaign creation comes under worldbuilding.

As for encounter creation, I think this can be handled in a few short paragraphs that sum up to "We have this CR system.  Here's how it works in very brief point form.  It isn't perfect, and neither will you be; your best teacher will be the experience you gain through in-play trial and error."


Malmuria said:


> Remove?:
> 
> Miscellaneous rules:  mechanics for things that don't come up that often, like ship rules, chases, diseases,  etc.  Would a lot be lost if rules were not included?
> Worldbuilding: The worldbuilding and cosmology sections are the weakest and least relevant parts of the book.  I feel to do it right, worldbuilding needs much more space that would be allotted to it in a dmg.



Hard disagree.  Both of these are essential, and Worldbuilding / Cosmology needs significant expansion - even to the point of becoming its own separate book.


----------



## jmartkdr2

Lanefan said:


> Riffing off @Malmuria 's take as, after all, it is the OP. ..
> 
> Meh - maaaaaybe?
> 
> This very much fights against the idea of spontaneous "Hey, guys, let's play D&D!" around which the game has often revolved.



I just wanted to pull this bit out and ask: what do you mean? I don't think I've ever seen DnD as a "pick-up-and-play" game, even when I was playing Basic (red box). You had to, like, make characters and stuff first.


----------



## Lanefan

jmartkdr2 said:


> I just wanted to pull this bit out and ask: what do you mean? I don't think I've ever seen DnD as a "pick-up-and-play" game, even when I was playing Basic (red box). You had to, like, make characters and stuff first.



In days of old, provided at least one person had the books, IME* games and campaigns could and did start among friends almost on a whim.  Roll-up was relatively simple (and considered part of play rather than almost being its own sub-game) and off it went from there.

* - and in the anecdotal experience of others, beyond just our crew.


----------



## Malmuria

Thanks for the responses!  I think my inclination to remove things from the dmg is not to remove them from the game, but to not include them unless they are developed as robust subsystems.  So, a "strongholds and followers" section would be great if fleshed out a bit, but not in it's current form, where it takes up all of 1-2 pages and seems mostly vestigial from older editions.  Ship rules are great, but perhaps better left for a supplement like Ghosts of Saltmarsh.  That said, if they were going to fully develop (and playtest??) these things, it would be a perfect use of a dmg.  Same with worldbuilding (look at how robust the worldbuilding material is in Worlds Without Number, for example, compared to 5e).  In fact, I think the inclusion of robust subsystems and optional rules would be the only thing that might entice me to buy the 2024 edition.

I'm still a player in a 5e game, but as a DM I've moved away from the system because of the simplicity and better dm support in osr games and/or interest in playing non-dnd games (which, like blades in the dark, often have excellent dm advice sections in a fraction of 5e's page count).


----------



## Malmuria

Lanefan said:


> In days of old, provided at least one person had the books, IME* games and campaigns could and did start among friends almost on a whim.  Roll-up was relatively simple (and considered part of play rather than almost being its own sub-game) and off it went from there.
> 
> * - and in the anecdotal experience of others, beyond just our crew.



I don't think such a section would get in the way of quickly getting started with a game (that's what the phb is for, after all).  It's more just acknowledgement that the role of the dm is partially to facilitate the game for several people, and that's going to involve getting to know what those people want and don't want out of the game.


----------



## Oofta

Eltab said:


> Re: CR and monsters:
> An example of modifying an existing monster for higher / lower level PCs, and an example of creating a creature (of some mid-range CR) from scratch.  To show what you can calculate, and what you have to estimate.I
> 
> ...





There could always be more, so apologies if I'm just misunderstanding but it's already there.  Chapter 9 Dungeon Master's Workshop under Creating a monster.  It includes a chart of Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating that I use occasionally.
​


----------



## Oofta

I'm starting to think that if we included everything people want (including me) the book might start to look like this:


----------



## Malmuria

Oofta said:


> There could always be more, so apologies if I'm just misunderstanding but it's already there.  Chapter 9 Dungeon Master's Workshop under Creating a monster.  It includes a chart of Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating that I use occasionally.
> ​











						the 5e monster creation guidelines are wrong
					

While messing around with monster creation, I started comparing 5e Monster Manual creatures with the 5e guidelines for creating monsters (DMG page 274). Based on my number crunching, it looks like …



					blogofholding.com
				




fwiw, this is the sort of thing a dmg for 5e could bring to the table that would be very useful: 5e monster manual on a business card


----------



## Weiley31

I agree with working the CR calculations or at least something that helps ya out with making sure you don't overshoot the PCs into a TPK. No matter how much I try to read various explanations of CR and all that, I still cannot fathom it properly.

I mean, on the plus side, the level 3 Ranger PC my buddy plays as didn't get insta-killed by an Assassin stat block creature, which IIRC is a Challenge Rating of 8. *okay the 21 poison damage took out half of his HP(43 total is said Ranger's max HP) but the Ranger scored his victory against it. TWICE!.


----------



## Oofta

Malmuria said:


> the 5e monster creation guidelines are wrong
> 
> 
> While messing around with monster creation, I started comparing 5e Monster Manual creatures with the 5e guidelines for creating monsters (DMG page 274). Based on my number crunching, it looks like …
> 
> 
> 
> blogofholding.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fwiw, this is the sort of thing a dmg for 5e could bring to the table that would be very useful: 5e monster manual on a business card



I agree it should be reworked, just like the encounter guidelines.  That's the problem with having to come out with a DMG before the MM is even complete or you've had enough testing to really validate your guidelines.  It's probably the biggest opportunity for rework for the 2024 edition.


----------



## Minigiant

A chapter on Worldbuilding

Designing Worlds
Designing Planes
Designing Cities
Designing Pantheons
Designing Factions
Designing Conflicts

The DMG should guide you on how to design the Plane of Anphibion with the Frogmen, Toadies, and Salamanders war for their smooth or warted gods. Ever on watch for Slaadi corruption.


----------



## dave2008

R_J_K75 said:


> This is pretty much what I have taken to doing as well.  Sometimes it works, sometimes not so I adjust on the fly.  I would just like something a little more precise so I don't have to improvise at the table.  If that happens great, if not then I will continue doing what I have been doing.  Most of the time if my players are in real trouble I'll figure out a way to give them an out.  My original point (I may not have articulated that sufficiently) was that by following the encounter building rules IME does not usually have the intended results for the level of challenge I'm wanting and expecting from how they are written, but it is quite possible there something I'm missing or misinterpreting.



I think the issue is really that there is so much variety in each PC group that one static set of guidelines can't do 5e justice.  So what I would like is just some explanation on how to adjust the encounter guidelines for different groups, themes, play styles, etc. I think the encounter guidelines work for a very specific group, but we need guidance on how to adjust them for groups that deviate from those assumptions.  Heck, if they even gave us a clear baseline assumption it would be helpful


----------



## Yaarel

Anything relating to adventuring, including skills, social interaction, combat, diseases, etcetera, belongs in the Players Handbook (not the DMG).

Anything relating to worldbuilding, including religions, languages, factions, NPCs, etcetera, belongs in the DMG (not the Players Handbook).


----------



## Yaarel

"Running the Game" pretty much belongs in the Players Handbooks.

All the variant options belong the DMG.


----------



## Mordhau

Put the magic items in the monster book and then there's no need for the DMG.


----------



## Malmuria

Mordhau said:


> Put the magic items in the monster book and then there's no need for the DMG.



 I was just looking this up for the other thread, but the 5e SRD is pretty extensive in terms of game master rules.  And the various online versions of it are much easier to reference for a dm than the book.  Generally I'm in favor of physical books over digital tools, especially at the table, but the dmg might actually be a place where a digital tool is superior (and more cost effective).


----------



## jdrakeh

A more robust chase system, probably lifted largely from Spycraft 2.0 (I'm not a fan of Spycraft overall, but those chase mechanics are awesome).


----------



## ART!

Lanefan said:


> Adventure creation could be largely covered off by including a short (but well-designed!!!) adventure as an appendix with lots and lots of short to-the-point side notes saying "Here's why [this element] exists in this adventure, this is why it's where/what it is, and here's a few other options for it." along with a design-details summary at the end.



13th Age's core rulebook is one of the few rpg rulebooks I've read cover-to-cover. The reason that's the case is how accessible it's written, and a major part of that accessibility is the regular sidebars that explain why one of the rules on that page is the way it is, and what other solutions they considered for addressing the issue that rule covers. Understanding the why's makes the rules much easier to understand and to remember.


----------



## Mordhau

ART! said:


> 13th Age's core rulebook is one of the few rpg rulebooks I've read cover-to-cover. The reason that's the case is how accessible it's written, and a major part of that accessibility is the regular sidebars that explain why one of the rules on that page is the way it is, and what other solutions they considered for addressing the issue that rule covers. Understanding the why's makes the rules much easier to understand and to remember.



Yeah I remember reading 5e a lot of times and thinking "just tell us what you intend here"*.  A lot of forum arguments about stealth might have been avoided if they'd just had a 13th Age style sidebar which told us something like "this is how we intend to use stealth, or perhaps more importantly, this is how difficult we intend it to be to get Sneak Attack, so in the case of the Rogue and hiding err on the side of being permissive".

*I appreciate that Mike Mearls use to do that sometimes on twitter but it would have been better in the book.  In contrast Jeremy Crawford's often legalistic parsing of the rules seems a completely dysfunctional approach.


----------



## MNblockhead

Oofta said:


> I'm starting to think that if we included everything people want (including me) the book might start to look like this:
> View attachment 149038



<Look over at the massive Frog God Games tomes bending the bookshelf>

One can dream.


----------



## MNblockhead

I mainly would like it to be organized in a way that makes it easier to look things up. Even for sections I'm familiar with, even in D&D Beyond with its search capabilities it takes me much more effort to jump to a section I want to get to. The current organization just doesn't work well for me. More obvious cross-references would also help.


----------



## Parmandur

MNblockhead said:


> I mainly would like it to be organized in a way that makes it easier to look things up. Even for sections I'm familiar with, even in D&D Beyond with its search capabilities it takes me much more effort to jump to a section I want to get to. The current organization just doesn't work well for me. More obvious cross-references would also help.



Yeah, the content is solid, but the organization is bonkers.


----------



## Raduin711

I hope they don't take out too much. The DMG is a pretty solid book as it is. While there is room for improvement, I would rather not lose any optional rules or things like that.


----------



## Rogerd1

We need to get rid of spells per day, and instead have a magic points that the player can spend as needed.

Have skill programs, in addition to basic skills, to allow complete bespoking of characters, e.g. Intelligence or Espionage programs to allow full on spy characters.

We need a full on points buy, for stats, skills, and powers.

Powers need splitting up into the following-

Martial abilities - these are similar to the old RQ Legendary abilities, and also feats as they currently exist, and those seen in Gurps Martial arts.

Gifted - abilities granted by gods to Paladins etc.

Cantrips - these have a points cost and players can pick anything they want.

Magic User types - whereas now we have Sorcerers, Warlocks etc, just enable the points system to allow players to pick whether their magic is innate, or drawn from some entity.

Then each of the above powers needs splitting into how much they would cost to purchase, in the aforementioned point buy system.

And also different cosmology types that could be used for the game, and how to incorporate with particular settings. Include in this different types of beings that could be incorporated.


----------



## Lanefan

Parmandur said:


> Yeah, the content is solid, but the organization is bonkers.



So, nothing has changed since 1e then.  Got it.


----------



## Minigiant

Mordhau said:


> Put the magic items in the monster book and then there's no need for the DMG.




Put magic items, special materials, expanded weapon lists, expanded armor lists, alternate item names, firearms, explosives, ray guns and siege engines, in it's own book.

I've been in support of a 5 book system

Player's Handbook
Monster Manual
Dungeon Master's Guide
Equipment Catalog
Spell Tome


----------



## Mordhau

Minigiant said:


> Put magic items, special materials, expanded weapon lists, expanded armor lists, alternate item names, firearms, explosives, ray guns and siege engines, in it's own book.
> 
> I've been in support of a 5 book system
> 
> Player's Handbook
> Monster Manual
> Dungeon Master's Guide
> Equipment Catalog
> Spell Tome



That's fine.  But my feeling has long been that most of the stuff in the Dungeon Masters Guides doesn't really need to be in a core book you supposedly need to run the game.

DM advice and optional rules is well and good, but it's not essential, whereas having monsters and magic items is.


----------



## Lanefan

Minigiant said:


> Put magic items, special materials, expanded weapon lists, expanded armor lists, alternate item names, firearms, explosives, ray guns and siege engines, in it's own book.
> 
> I've been in support of a 5 book system
> 
> Player's Handbook
> Monster Manual
> Dungeon Master's Guide
> Equipment Catalog
> Spell Tome



Yeah, I could see a 5-book system but some would be different from your list:

Player-side:
_Player's Handbook._  I think we all agree on this one.
_Spells and Equipment Guide. _ No magic items here, but all the spells and an expanded catalogue of non-magical adventuring equipment. Player-side downtime material e.g. stronghold-building guidelines could go here as well.

DM-side:
_Dungeon Master's Guide._ Magic items, running the game, optional rules and dials, downtime ideas, etc.
_Monster Manual._  Another universally-agreed-on book.
_Worldbuilding, Cosmology, and Magic Book._  Adventure design and example adventure goes here, as does setting design and physics, cosmology and pantheon ideas, and campaign/world building material.

The idea would be that before actual play begins - i.e.  during char-gen and campaign prep - the players mostly refer to the PH while the DM mostly refers to the WCMB.  Then once play begins the players mostly use the SEG while the DM mostly uses the DMG.  The MM gets used during both phases.


----------



## Minigiant

Mordhau said:


> That's fine.  But my feeling has long been that most of the stuff in the Dungeon Masters Guides doesn't really need to be in a core book you supposedly need to run the game.
> 
> DM advice and optional rules is well and good, but it's not essential, whereas having monsters and magic items is.



I agree but I think magic items and the associated charts and rules take up too much page space.

If you take magic items and the implied setting out of the DMG, you free up 100-150 pages.

I'd be okay with a 6th book for planes and advanced wandering monster charts

Astral Planes
Ethereal Planes
Feywilds
Shadowfells
War Worlds
Spirit Realms
Inner Planes
Outer Planes
Outlands
Demiplanes


----------



## Rogerd1

Lanefan said:


> _Worldbuilding, Cosmology, and Magic Book._  Adventure design and example adventure goes here, as does setting design and physics, cosmology and pantheon ideas, and campaign/world building material.



I liked the M&M version with magical planes, such that the gods could also exist there. But in a science fiction setting have no attachment whatsoever. Then have a Metaphysical plane where the souls whether aliens, animals, all species even gods when they die.

Or have each setting have their own particular afterlife, and then allow for cosmic beings and such to feature in this like in M&M.


----------



## Raduin711

I can't agree with splitting the books up any farther. As it is, each of these books runs $50 each, but they have everything you need to play. And the way modern commerce works, if you split 3 books into more, they are _still_ going to cost $50 each. 

Remember many new players don't know what they need, and not every bookseller knows either. Nobody wants to sit down and play only to discover that D&D no longer keeps equipment in the player's handbook, or that magic items are in a different book from _that_, and what's a "Plane of Fire?" It's not in the DMG...


----------



## Minigiant

Lanefan said:


> Yeah, I could see a 5-book system but some would be different from your list:
> 
> Player-side:
> _Player's Handbook._  I think we all agree on this one.
> _Spells and Equipment Guide. _ No magic items here, but all the spells and an expanded catalogue of non-magical adventuring equipment. Player-side downtime material e.g. stronghold-building guidelines could go here as well.
> 
> DM-side:
> _Dungeon Master's Guide._ Magic items, running the game, optional rules and dials, downtime ideas, etc.
> _Monster Manual._  Another universally-agreed-on book.
> _Worldbuilding, Cosmology, and Magic Book._  Adventure design and example adventure goes here, as does setting design and physics, cosmology and pantheon ideas, and campaign/world building material.
> 
> The idea would be that before actual play begins - i.e.  during char-gen and campaign prep - the players mostly refer to the PH while the DM mostly refers to the WCMB.  Then once play begins the players mostly use the SEG while the DM mostly uses the DMG.  The MM gets used during both phases.



That's was my original design for a 5 boon system.

I just think magic items, like spells, take up too much pages and hurt PC creation and DM guidance by forcing cuts. 

My preference for perfect is 6 books but I think it just would be too prohibitive in cost for kids. 

So either magic items or worldbuilding needs to leave the DMG. The DMG can't fit both.

Spells (outside of the basics) *definitely* need to leave the PHB.


----------



## Minigiant

Raduin711 said:


> I can't agree with splitting the books up any farther. As it is, each of these books runs $50 each, but they have everything you need to play. And the way modern commerce works, if you split 3 books into more, they are _still_ going to cost $50 each.
> 
> Remember many new players don't know what they need, and not every bookseller knows either. Nobody wants to sit down and play only to discover that D&D no longer keeps equipment in the player's handbook, or that magic items are in a different book from _that_, and what's a "Plane of Fire?" It's not in the DMG...



Cost is a problem.

However I think the flaws of the last 3 editions could have been greatly lessened if there more pages factored in the initial design and development. D&D is too old and has too many varying perspectives and preferences to meet it's needs if you don't add.

If you don't add 2 more books in 6e, you need to add 100 more pages to each book.


----------



## John R Davis

Mordhau said:


> Yeah I remember reading 5e a lot of times and thinking "just tell us what you intend here"*.  A lot of forum arguments about stealth might have been avoided if they'd just had a 13th Age style sidebar which told us something like "this is how we intend to use stealth, or perhaps more importantly, this is how difficult we intend it to be to get Sneak Attack, so in the case of the Rogue and hiding err on the side of being permissive".



To me that doesn't read as  clear AND is also a terrible idea to make a classes " one unique thing" difficult to do!


----------



## Mordhau

John R Davis said:


> To me that doesn't read as  clear AND is also a terrible idea to make a classes " one unique thing" difficult to do!



Huh?

Sorry I have no idea what you're trying to say here.


----------



## John R Davis

Mordhau said:


> Huh?
> 
> Sorry I have no idea what you're trying to say here.



The statement made on sneak attack chances!?


----------



## Mannahnin

Duplicate, disregard.


----------



## AdmundfortGeographer

In the way that Skycrawl and Downcrawl did “hexcrawl” systems for aerial and subterranean, I’d like the next DMG to have an abstracted structured option for hexcrawl exploration.


----------



## Aldarc

Oofta said:


> I'm starting to think that if we included everything people want (including me) the book might start to look like this:
> View attachment 149038



I almost think that the contents of the DMG could be separated into two books: (1) a basic guide for running/modifiying the game and (2) world-building and such in the D&D multiverse. But "tradition" - whether it's a consistent one or not - demands three books.


----------



## Mannahnin

Mordhau said:


> Yeah I remember reading 5e a lot of times and thinking "just tell us what you intend here"*.  A lot of forum arguments about stealth might have been avoided if they'd just had a 13th Age style sidebar which told us something like "this is how we intend to use stealth, or perhaps more importantly, this is how difficult we intend it to be to get Sneak Attack, so in the case of the Rogue and hiding err on the side of being permissive".






John R Davis said:


> To me that doesn't read as  clear AND is also a terrible idea to make a classes " one unique thing" difficult to do!



To say "*how *difficult" the designers intended it to be for the Rogue (or anyone else) to hide* would clarify how to run Stealth, but doesn't imply that the intended baseline was actually "difficult".  As Mordhau indicates above when they suggest that they could have explicitly TOLD DMs to err on the side of being permissive.

*(which isn't necessary for Sneak Attack, let's remember)


----------



## TheSword

The same stuff as the existing DMG.

Along with some pretty art and some new maps. Maybe a foreword from someone relevant.

It is an anniversary edition after all. You don’t celebrate your wedding anniversary by trading your parter out for a newer model!


----------



## delericho

Assuming the 2024 books are a slightly-revised 5e (and not a full-blown 6e), I'd stick with pretty much the same contents, but rewritten and reorganised for clarity. Oh, and a _really_ good index covering all three books.


----------



## Blue

Lyxen said:


> You are playing the wrong edition of the game. 5e is not 3e where monsters were designed to precision



You and I remember Budapest very differently.

There could be an vast difference between a stock foe and one with the same CR enhanced with character levels.  Just like a high level single class PC would be a tiny fraction of the power of a well built, mutliclassed with PrCs PC of the same level, so even if your monster CRs were properly calibrated to each other there was no way to match those to party level.


----------



## Lyxen

Blue said:


> You and I remember Budapest very differently.
> 
> There could be an vast difference between a stock foe and one with the same CR enhanced with character levels.  Just like a high level single class PC would be a tiny fraction of the power of a well built, mutliclassed with PrCs PC of the same level, so even if your monster CRs were properly calibrated to each other there was no way to match those to party level.




And still, it worked fairly well even adding some character levels to monsters. Sometimes yes, you had things that synergised really well and needed to adjust a bit, sometimes the synergy was really poor and you had to adjust the other way, but the tools where there and worked not too badly. Not as precisely as in 4e, but way more precisely than in 5e.


----------



## R_J_K75

dave2008 said:


> I think the issue is really that there is so much variety in each PC group that one static set of guidelines can't do 5e justice.  So what I would like is just some explanation on how to adjust the encounter guidelines for different groups, themes, play styles, etc. I think the encounter guidelines work for a very specific group, but we need guidance on how to adjust them for groups that deviate from those assumptions.  Heck, if they even gave us a clear baseline assumption it would be helpful



I agree and if the game was built upon Bounded Accuracy, I think a few paragraphs to explain exactly what it is and how it works would go a long way, for me at least.


----------



## Ath-kethin

dave2008 said:


> . . . I find I don't have to worry about prepping 5e encounters at all.  I can make them whatever I want and I don't have to worry. I completely abandon trying to create "balanced" encounters about 5-6 years ago.  Now I just create what makes sense for the story, situation, and environment. I am confident my players can come up with a solution to anything they come across.



When people ask why I think 5e has an "old school" feel, I need to start quoting this post as an answer. Because I think this bit sums it up better than anything else could.


----------



## Malmuria

Maybe it could be a boxed set!

like this:








						COMING SOON: Old-School Essentials Classic Game Set
					

Publication date: Estimated late 2022 (following the fulfilment of rewards to Kickstarter backers.) To be notified when this item becomes available, sign up for our newsletter (see signup form at the bottom of the page). Classic Game Set Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy is also available as...




					necroticgnome.com
				




If we put aside tradition, there would be many different ways of organizing the rules.


----------



## Smackpixi

3 pages of tldr summary cause no one is gonna read the book unless they have to prove someone on the internet wrong, but ya know, there are a few things they should probably know.
one page on its ok, do whatever the fork you want, it’s ok, we don’t care, if you want all dwarves to be short and angry with long beards, have at it, all drow evil, fine, do it, we could literally care less what you do with your game, but be sure to tweet at us to show how popular the game is.
5 pages on how to listen to what your players are saying.  Based on my Reddit reads a sizable portion of the dm base are people on the spectrum with limited skills for understanding how to work with people to achieve a common goal.  Or teenagers.  Regardless of the eye rolls here, pages are needed to explain what players mean when they say, “your game is kinda rapey” “I”m forking sick of stirges” “no one gives a shirt about the last 2000 years of history in your made up universe, can we just get on with it” “Todd is an art hole AND a bard, I don’t want to play with him”
0 pages on other planes no one adventures in, 5 pages each on the shadowfell and feywild and what the fork they mean to the material plane because that’s interesting other realities you might actually adventure in and could daily affect your world.  one page on the nine hells cause of course Brad is gonna send us there, 72 pages on how the fork extra planar beings might be in our world cause the MM is full of cool shirt that has no reason for being on the material plane we all actually adventure in.
20 pages on designing encounters because for some reason people just don’t understand if their players get out of battles with nary a scratch, just keep throwing more crap at them. I mean people, how hard is it to send more or less monsters based on what happened last time?  does this really need 20 pages of math to figure out?  Apparently it does.
50 pages on all the stuff I bought on dms guild cause I was too lazy and busy to make up myself.  Stores, nPCs, strongholds, ships, airships, more shops, the fantasy world economy, shops, easy sidekicksto fill out a party to play published adventures, shops and stuff to put in them that isn’t just the equipment list in the PH.
20 pages on alternate rules addressing everything people whine about there not being rules for.
2 pages on basic magic items everyone wants and expects to get, +x weapons, shields, armor, and bag of holding to carry 2000 gc cause I mean what, try getting around with that many pennies for forks sake.
100 pages of non boring ingenius items and at least 5 of those on how to make your players care about them and actually use them.
1 page on how to convince yor players to use the gd spell scrolls they have for once omg you forking scriptoriums


----------



## Reynard

First of all you are going to have to find an agreed upon definition of "old school." Good luck.


----------



## DND_Reborn

I feel like this is a thread cross-over... 

For myself, this was what old school was about (and what 5E does differently):

1. Fewer decision points and less options at decision points.
5E begins by having a lot more races, and subraces. There are more classes, and subclasses--sometimes with choices within those. You likely play with feats, so have to choose those.

2. Lower ability modifiers.
Most abilities didn't give you any bonuses for anything until about 15. You were lucky if you had three or more abilities with a modifier of some kind. In 5E, nearly every ability score gets a modifier IME, most PCs have no more than 1 ability (_maybe_ 2) with modifiers of 0 or less.

3. Fewer HP.
5E uses larger HD and it is easy to get a CON bonus to HP. You also keep getting HD for each level.

4. Better Armor Classes.
5E, with bounded accuracy, limits most PCs to ACs of 18-22 IME. Old school, with more powerful protective magic items, you could have AC of -5 or better by name level easily (equal to AC 25 in 5E).

5. The (_not-so-dreaded_) Whiff-fest.
5E makes hitting in combat _way too easy_, with success roughly 60-65% of the time on average. Unfortunately, to try to keep things "interesting" more HP was added, but that also escalated more damage.

6. Easier PC deaths.
5E makes survival very easy unless you purposefully try to counter it. With spells like _Revivify_ and the Death Saves mechanic, unless you play recklessly or have a killer DM, PC deaths are rare IME anyway. YMMV, of course.

7. Action declarations.
5E you don't declare your intentions for the round. When your turn comes up, you go. In a way, this makes things like Smite and Sneak Attack more easily applied.

8. Restricted Spell Casting.
5E allows you to cast any spell you have prepared or known at any time if you have the spell slot, so you no longer have to prepare each spell's use.

9. Slower Leveling.
5E expects PCs to level quickly. IIRC, the default suggestion is 2nd level by the end of the first session, then two sessions for 3rd, and then 3-4 sessions for each level thereafter.

10. Varying Mechanics.
5E uses the d20 system mechanic of beating a number for nearly everything.

11. Extensive Bookkeeping.
5E hand-waves a lot of things, like encumbrance, by making it such a simple system it is generally a non-factor.

12. The game is about the adventure, not the character.
5E focuses so much on the character and what they _capable_ of doing, instead of the _adventure_ and what they characters _actually do._

Of course, even prior editions (I would think anything AD&D 2E or older) which are considered "old school" did have a fair number of choices, and some groups probably did level up quickly, etc. But, off-hand those are my criteria for old school, and even with that list there are probably things I am forgetting. With enough tweaking you can get that in 5E, but it takes a bit of house-ruling.


----------



## MNblockhead

Parmandur said:


> Yeah, the content is solid, but the organization is bonkers.



Especially after seen it done well in other systems.  I bought Arcana of the Ancients from Monte Cooks Kickstarter for it. It's basically the Numera setting for 5e.  The layout is clean, well organized with very thoughtful use of call-outs and cross references. 

I've also been very impressed with the organization of Cortex Prime (Fandom), both the printed book and the web version. 

The 5e books are beautiful, quality books, and the copy editing is very good. But then then blow it on organization. Even when put into D&D Beyond they are inconvenient to navigate and search. Really hope that they improve the user experience along with any content changes and editions in the new books.


----------



## MNblockhead

Aldarc said:


> I almost think that the contents of the DMG could be separated into two books: (1) a basic guide for running/modifiying the game and (2) world-building and such in the D&D multiverse. But "tradition" - whether it's a consistent one or not - demands three books.



I would rather have the PHP, DMG, Xanathar's, Tasha's, and some of the crunch scattered among the adventure and beastiary content put into one master reference tome. Yeah, it would be a big book, but if organized well, it would be far more useful at the table. Besides, I use D&D Beyond most of the time and currently trying to search and navigate among multiple books is inconvenient, especially as the books are not designed to facilitate quick look ups.


----------



## Swarmkeeper

DND_Reborn said:


> I feel like this is a thread cross-over...
> 
> For myself, this was what old school was about (and what 5E does differently):
> 
> ...
> 
> 3. Fewer HP.
> 5E uses larger HD and it is easy to get a CON bonus to HP. You also keep getting HD for each level.
> 
> ...
> 
> 5. The (_not-so-dreaded_) Whiff-fest.
> 5E makes hitting in combat _way too easy_, with success roughly 60-65% of the time on average. Unfortunately, to try to keep things "interesting" more HP was added, but that also escalated more damage.




Just plucking these out for the moment.  I'm going to take some (hopefully small) liberties with the math for ease of use.  I believe you mentioned somewhere that a 35% hit rate would be more your speed rather than the 5e "60-65%" success rate you indicate.  With that assumption in mind, let's make it 33% vs 66%.

Combined with 5e increase in HP (I'm saying it is a 2x increase for simple math here - just as the "to-hit" rate is 2x higher) we find ourselves with the following question:

Would players rather have a 5e-style fight against a 100HP monster that can be hit 2/3 of the time OR a modded "old school"-style fight against a 50HP monster that can be hit 1/3 of the time?

It strikes me that players having their PCs hit 2/3 of the time is likely more fulfilling than missing 2/3 of the time.  If we add the "more damage" assertion to the mix, we have the 5e-style fight resolving more quickly.

Oversimplified?  Most definitely.  But, given these parameters, it strikes me as potentially adjusting HP and "to-hit" knobs down for no real benefit and, perhaps, added frustration at the table with 2x the misses.  Is that really what "old school" was like?  I honestly don't remember that - but, then again, it's been decades since I played in a 1e campaign, then I skipped 2-4, and started playing 5e exclusively 6 years ago.

That said, I'd personally focus on incorporating other ideas from your list to give our 5e game a more "old school" feel, if that's what I was after for our table.


----------



## jmartkdr2

Swarmkeeper said:


> Oversimplified?  Most definitely.  But, given these parameters, it strikes me as potentially adjusting HP and "to-hit" knobs down for no real benefit and, perhaps, added frustration at the table with 2x the misses.  Is that really what "old school" was like?  I honestly don't remember that - but, then again, it's been decades since I played in a 1e campaign, then I skipped 2-4, and started playing 5e exclusively 6 years ago.



There's a change that, while not objectively better would impact the feel of the game: hits become more important and a big deal, rather than the expectation. This frees you to narrate them as, well, a big deal rather than needing to describe them as scratches, exhaustion, etc. Basically it lets hit points more closely resemble meat points, which is indeed easier to grok.

The downside, as you noted, is a lot more turns where nothing really happens because you rolled to hit and didn't. In a game with even somewhat long turns like 5e (to say nothing of 3e, 4e, or PF) that's really bad and definitely something to avoid. If I need to wait 15 minutes for my turn to come around, I don't want to roll one die and then nothing happens. But if you can get turn times down (which old-school simplicity allows even if it doesn't guarantee) then this isn't nearly as much of an issue.

I've read that the current hit rates (65%) were specific targets based on market research - that is, WotC is certain that the 5e approach is more popular than the alternative. Sales figures prove they're not way off at least. But that doesn't matter for one's home game, really.

You can split the difference by adding a layer and having something like Warhammer's setup: you roll to hit then roll to wound then there's an armor save - even if each has a 3/4 chance of working for the attacker, that's a 27/64 chance of doing real damage. But it doesn't really feel like 'nothing happened' if the armor save is why they're not dead. Sort of - I myself wouldn't prefer this, but I'm not really an OSR  guy.


----------



## DND_Reborn

Swarmkeeper said:


> Just plucking these out for the moment.  I'm going to take some (hopefully small) liberties with the math for ease of use.  I believe you mentioned somewhere that a 35% hit rate would be more your speed rather than the 5e "60-65%" success rate you indicate.  With that assumption in mind, let's make it 33% vs 66%.



Sure. You are pretty spot on. If you do 60% with "disadvantage" (not the mechanic, but the concept), your hit drops to 0.60 x 0.6 or 0.36, roughly the 35% I would (personally) prefer. If you go to 65% as the base, you get roughly 42%, which is a tad bit high for me but perfectly acceptable.



Swarmkeeper said:


> Combined with 5e increase in HP (I'm saying it is a 2x increase for simple math here - just as the "to-hit" rate is 2x higher) we find ourselves with the following question:
> 
> Would players rather have a 5e-style fight against a 100HP monster that can be hit 2/3 of the time OR a modded "old school"-style fight against a 50HP monster that can be hit 1/3 of the time?
> 
> *It strikes me that players having their PCs hit 2/3 of the time is likely more fulfilling than missing 2/3 of the time.*  If we add the "more damage" assertion to the mix, we have the 5e-style fight resolving more quickly.



FWIW, our simplification is to remove CON bonus from HP for everything (PCs and creatures alike). _In general_, this is roughly 75% (again, on average) of the listed hit point in stat blocks. I am using a sample of over 700 creatures for my analysis. However, at one point to really keep it simple, we just did half HP for creatures, and that worked as well.

In doing the analysis with fewer HP but a decreased chance of hitting, the typically combat is extend about 1-2 rounds. Since a common complaint IME is combat is only 2-3 rounds and too quickly, this helps with that issue for those who have it.

As to the bolded comment, my experience is precisely the opposite. In old school, hitting was exciting because it did miss a lot. In 5E, attacking is even more dissatisfying because you hit so often it becomes routine:

"Oh, look, I hit (big surprise, huh?). Oh, look, I hit _again_... _yawn_

It really makes it more boring. Think about baseball. When a player gets a hit it is exciting, something is happening, because generally hitting percentage is 25-35% (or maybe that is on-base... or the same thing? I am not a baseball fan so perhaps I am wrong?). But, if hitting becomes almost _expected_, it loses its appeal.

When I was playing RAW at first, players were actually surprised and sort of happy when they _missed!_ YMMV of course, but that is my experience.

Of course, we had to expand the critical hit zone, as it were, to keep it _closer_ to 5% (1 in 20) instead of 1 in 400 with the "disadvantage" mechanic thrown in.



Swarmkeeper said:


> Oversimplified?  Most definitely.  But, given these parameters, it strikes me as potentially adjusting HP and "to-hit" knobs down for no real benefit and, perhaps, added frustration at the table with 2x the misses.  Is that really what "old school" was like?  I honestly don't remember that - but, then again, it's been decades since I played in a 1e campaign, then I skipped 2-4, and started playing 5e exclusively 6 years ago.



Missing was more common than hitting IME when playing B/X-BECMI and AD&D (1E and 2E). Granted in 2E, more things were added so hitting started to become more common, but even then I don't recall it getting over 50/50.



Swarmkeeper said:


> That said, I'd personally focus on incorporating other ideas from your list to give our 5e game a more "old school" feel, if that's what I was after for our table.



Sure, like the other points it is just from my experience. I understand why 5E favors hitting over missing, because they want the players to feel like their characters are accomplishing something meaningful. But, with my house-rules, hitting becomes even _more_ meaningful since it is less common and when you do hit, it counts for more due to the reduced HP.

FWIW, since we've made these sorts of changes, no one in the tables I play at has shown or expressed any sort of frustration. When you keep in mind the numerous ways you can actually gain advantage, offsetting the "disadvantage" mechanic house-rule, you are then right back to the 60-65% hit. It has made things like flanking meaningful, without being over the top.

One final thought, the additional couple rounds per combat does _NOT_ slow the game down. In fact, missing more often speeds it up. When you miss you have nothing to resolve-no damage to roll, no saves to make, or whatever. When you hit so often as in RAW, you are also adding the time to roll damage and finish any other things that arise. The game is actually faster IME so far by hitting less. In fact, hitting was so common that we decided to just use average damage for creatures most of the time (unless it would drop a PC to 0 hit points, in which case we rolled damage to give them a chance), and even some of the players adopted it for their own attacks.

It certainly might not be for most people, but I suggest _trying_ it before dismissing it if anyone has interest in the concept.


----------



## DND_Reborn

jmartkdr2 said:


> The downside, as you noted, is a lot more turns where nothing really happens because you rolled to hit and didn't. *In a game with even somewhat long turns like 5e* (to say nothing of 3e, 4e, or PF) that's really bad and definitely something to avoid. If I need to wait 15 minutes for my turn to come around, I don't want to roll one die and then nothing happens. *But if you can get turn times down (which old-school simplicity allows even if it doesn't guarantee) then this isn't nearly as much of an issue.*



(bold added)

Do you really find turns in 5E long to resolve? Or even an entire round long to resolve?

Frankly missing more often makes turns fly by, so even with normal initiative rules your turn comes around more quickly, as you suggest in the second bolded statement.

Now, I am not a fan of turn-based initiative, because it is a case where once you go, you likely have no involvement until you go again, which with large groups or encounters could take a while. I became so frustrated when we played RAW initiative and players would take out their cell phones while other players were resolving their turns. It certainly _could_ take a while and happened often because each player was more likely to succeed each turn than fail. It also slowed down the pace of the game which I found frustrating.

I have found since we moved to cinematic initiative, players are more engaged and the rounds seem to move along faster. Any group I start I try it with them, and so far no one has wanted to not use it. Tooting my own horn a bit, I think it is the single best house-rule/system I've come up with.


----------



## jmartkdr2

DND_Reborn said:


> (bold added)
> 
> Do you really find turns in 5E long to resolve? Or even an entire round long to resolve?



I'm in a few different games of 5e - some groups take a long time, some go through turns really fast. It can vary a bit, and some classes in 5e make it worse. It's definitely a bigger issue in other editions.


----------



## Blue

Lyxen said:


> And still, it worked fairly well even adding some character levels to monsters. Sometimes yes, you had things that synergised really well and needed to adjust a bit, sometimes the synergy was really poor and you had to adjust the other way, but the tools where there and worked not too badly. Not as precisely as in 4e, but way more precisely than in 5e.



If you want to make a case that in 3.5 that character build was completely secondary to character level such that encounter building math worked out regularly, I present to you _the entire internet_ as a counterexample.

Sorry, there's no way to be informed and have that opinion.


----------



## Lanefan

Swarmkeeper said:


> Just plucking these out for the moment.  I'm going to take some (hopefully small) liberties with the math for ease of use.  I believe you mentioned somewhere that a 35% hit rate would be more your speed rather than the 5e "60-65%" success rate you indicate.  With that assumption in mind, let's make it 33% vs 66%.
> 
> Combined with 5e increase in HP (I'm saying it is a 2x increase for simple math here - just as the "to-hit" rate is 2x higher) we find ourselves with the following question:
> 
> Would players rather have a 5e-style fight against a 100HP monster that can be hit 2/3 of the time OR a modded "old school"-style fight against a 50HP monster that can be hit 1/3 of the time?
> 
> It strikes me that players having their PCs hit 2/3 of the time is likely more fulfilling than missing 2/3 of the time.  If we add the "more damage" assertion to the mix, we have the 5e-style fight resolving more quickly.



Using your numbers in isolation of anything else, the fight wouldn't resolve more quickly at all: the half h.p. and half-rate hitting largely cancel each other out.

However, there's loads of other factors:
1 --- how much damage are the PCs doing on each hit in 5e compared to, say, 1e? (my guess is a bit more, but nothing spectacular)
2 --- how resilient are the PCs, i.e. what are their h.p. totals like compared to 1e? (I dare say, considerably higher)
3 --- how often can the monsters expect to hit the PCs in 5e compared to 1e? (this one might be more or less the same except at high level where 1e PCs would generally be harder to hit)

It's '2' above which makes the fight take longer.  If the PCs also don't have that many h.p. and thus can't take many hits, they'll quickly look for other options if-when the fight starts going against them rather than stay in and slug it out.

All that said, the one real difference the in-isolation half-h.p. and half-hit-rate model would make is that the combat's outcome would become a bit less predictable and a bit more swingy, which very much does add to the old-school feel.


----------



## Lanefan

DND_Reborn said:


> I have found since we moved to cinematic initiative, players are more engaged and the rounds seem to move along faster. Any group I start I try it with them, and so far no one has wanted to not use it. Tooting my own horn a bit, I think it is the single best house-rule/system I've come up with.



In brief, how does your cinematic initiative system work?


----------



## DND_Reborn

Lanefan said:


> In brief, how does your cinematic initiative system work?



No problem. I've posted about it before but here it goes:

1. Each character's "turn" is broken up into the separate actions they take.
2. You roll d20 + (DEX, INT, or WIS modifier) + features/feat for Initiative for your FIRST action.
3. After resolving your FIRST action, your roll d20 (NO MODIFIERS AT ALL!) for your SECOND action. If the new roll is equal to or greater than your current FIRST roll, you act immediately. If it is lower, you act on the new roll.
4. Repeat until you run out of actions. (Movement--which can be broken up, Action, Bonus action).
5. Simultaneous rolls/actions can be resolved in simple to complex fashion, as your group desires.

Notes:

A. If you have Extra Attack (or Multiattack) each attack is its own action.
B. Movement is used until your Speed is gone. So, if you move 10 feet to engage a creature as your action, you still have 20 feet remaining for later actions in the round.
C. Reactions are resolved as normal.

Benefits:

1. By breaking up each player's turn, the actions seem to create the narrative. For an example (with Initiative totals preceding) see the spoilers. *Note:* This is a pretty linear example, but in the game the distribution of actions can create very vivid scenes!



Spoiler: Example with normal Initiative



*Initiative rolls:*
Player A: 22
Player B: 19
Monster A: 14
Monster B: 1

Player A moves to engage Monster A, and attacks. 
Player B attacks Monster A, then moves into better position.
Monster A multiattacks Player A.
Monster B moves to engage Player B, and attacks.

Roll first Initiative for round 2.

Here, once Player A has gone, he as really nothing to do until the round is over and must wait for Player B and the DM to resolve everything else.

It also seems very much herky-jerky IMO instead of flowing from one action to the next.  





Spoiler: Same example with Cinematic



*Initial rolls:*
Player A: 22
Player B: 19
Monster A: 14
Monster B: 1

22 = Player A moves to engage Monster A. _Rolls for second action (12)_
19 = Player B attacks Monster A with longbow. _Rolls for second action (3)_
14 = Monster A attacks Player A. _Rolls for multiattack (18)_
18 (_is equal to or better than 14 so acts immediately_) = Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack. _Rolls for third action (1)_
12 = Player A attacks Monster A. *No bonus action or speed remaining, no further action, round over.*
3 = Player B moves to a better position. *No bonus action or speed remaining, no further action, round over.*
1 = Monster B moves to engage Player B. _Rolls for second action (17)_
17 (_is equal to or better than 1 so acts immediately_) = Monster B attacks Player B. *No bonus action or speed remaining, no further action, round over.*
1 = Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack. _Rolls for fourth action (14) because it has speed remaining._ *The monster will not move, so the round is over.*

Roll first Initiative for round 2.

IMO here we see more of a flow of action as one action moves into the next. A sense of excitement is generated when you read just the actions:

Player A moves to engage Monster A.
Player B attacks Monster A with longbow.
Monster A attacks Player A.
Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack.
Player A attacks Monster A.
Player B moves to a better position.
Monster B moves to engage Player B.
Monster B attacks Player B.
Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack.



2. Players are more engaged because they don't resolve everything for their character in one turn. This is a BIG benefit IMO.

Anyway, here is the original thread during its inception over a year ago, but it has been revised slightly since then, but the general nuance has remained the same.









						D&D 5E - Cinematic Initiative Variant (CIV)
					

So, after some discussion in my thread about what the combat round feels like/represents to you, I've done a lot of thinking about initiative and what might be a good alternative.  A couple things I want to address first: 1. This is not a roll = time system. So, going on 20 or higher doesn't...




					www.enworld.org
				




Strangely enough, @Lanefan, you were the first to comment on it. 

Other house-rules have added complexity over time, but also allows for more tactical play. Someday I might right up a more robust description.

FWIW, it you are perfectly happy with initiative in 5E, this probably isn't for you. I devised it to make the action in the game more narrate itself by the order of what actions happen when. As I've said, we've been using it and refining it for over a year now, and personally I would hate to go back to the normal initiative of resolving all a creature's actions at once.


----------



## Swarmkeeper

DND_Reborn said:


> No problem. I've posted about it before but here it goes:
> 
> 1. Each character's "turn" is broken up into the separate actions they take.
> 2. You roll d20 + (DEX, INT, or WIS modifier) + features/feat for Initiative for your FIRST action.
> 3. After resolving your FIRST action, your roll d20 (NO MODIFIERS AT ALL!) for your SECOND action. If the new roll is equal to or greater than your current FIRST roll, you act immediately. If it is lower, you act on the new roll.
> 4. Repeat until you run out of actions. (Movement--which can be broken up, Action, Bonus action).
> 5. Simultaneous rolls/actions can be resolved in simple to complex fashion, as your group desires.
> 
> Notes:
> 
> A. If you have Extra Attack (or Multiattack) each attack is its own action.
> B. Movement is used until your Speed is gone. So, if you move 10 feet to engage a creature as your action, you still have 20 feet remaining for later actions in the round.
> C. Reactions are resolved as normal.
> 
> Benefits:
> 
> 1. By breaking up each player's turn, the actions seem to create the narrative. For an example (with Initiative totals preceding) see the spoilers. *Note:* This is a pretty linear example, but in the game the distribution of actions can create very vivid scenes!
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Example with normal Initiative
> 
> 
> 
> *Initiative rolls:*
> Player A: 22
> Player B: 19
> Monster A: 14
> Monster B: 1
> 
> Player A moves to engage Monster A, and attacks.
> Player B attacks Monster A, then moves into better position.
> Monster A multiattacks Player A.
> Monster B moves to engage Player B, and attacks.
> 
> Roll first Initiative for round 2.
> 
> Here, once Player A has gone, he as really nothing to do until the round is over and must wait for Player B and the DM to resolve everything else.
> 
> It also seems very much herky-jerky IMO instead of flowing from one action to the next.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Same example with Cinematic
> 
> 
> 
> *Initial rolls:*
> Player A: 22
> Player B: 19
> Monster A: 14
> Monster B: 1
> 
> 22 = Player A moves to engage Monster A. _Rolls for second action (12)_
> 19 = Player B attacks Monster A with longbow. _Rolls for second action (3)_
> 14 = Monster A attacks Player A. _Rolls for multiattack (18)_
> 18 (_is equal to or better than 14 so acts immediately_) = Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack. _Rolls for third action (1)_
> 12 = Player A attacks Monster A. *No bonus action or speed remaining, no further action, round over.*
> 3 = Player B moves to a better position. *No bonus action or speed remaining, no further action, round over.*
> 1 = Monster B moves to engage Player B. _Rolls for second action (17)_
> 17 (_is equal to or better than 1 so acts immediately_) = Monster B attacks Player B. *No bonus action or speed remaining, no further action, round over.*
> 1 = Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack. _Rolls for fourth action (14) because it has speed remaining._ *The monster will not move, so the round is over.*
> 
> Roll first Initiative for round 2.
> 
> IMO here we see more of a flow of action as one action moves into the next. A sense of excitement is generated when you read just the actions:
> 
> Player A moves to engage Monster A.
> Player B attacks Monster A with longbow.
> Monster A attacks Player A.
> Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack.
> Player A attacks Monster A.
> Player B moves to a better position.
> Monster B moves to engage Player B.
> Monster B attacks Player B.
> Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack.
> 
> 
> 
> *2. Players are more engaged because they don't resolve everything for their character in one turn. This is a BIG benefit IMO.*
> 
> Anyway, here is the original thread during its inception over a year ago, but it has been revised slightly since then, but the general nuance has remained the same.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> D&D 5E - Cinematic Initiative Variant (CIV)
> 
> 
> So, after some discussion in my thread about what the combat round feels like/represents to you, I've done a lot of thinking about initiative and what might be a good alternative.  A couple things I want to address first: 1. This is not a roll = time system. So, going on 20 or higher doesn't...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.enworld.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Strangely enough, @Lanefan, you were the first to comment on it.
> 
> Other house-rules have added complexity over time, but also allows for more tactical play. Someday I might right up a more robust description.
> 
> FWIW, it you are perfectly happy with initiative in 5E, this probably isn't for you. I devised it to make the action in the game more narrate itself by the order of what actions happen when. As I've said, we've been using it and refining it for over a year now, and personally I would hate to go back to the normal initiative of resolving all a creature's actions at once.




Really interesting - thank you for sharing!  I might experiment with this with a smaller group of players for a session in our West Marches campaign.  Love the bolded part ("players are more engaged").  Playing online without video, it has become clear that there are certain players checked out until their turn comes around again with standard initiative.


----------



## DND_Reborn

Swarmkeeper said:


> Really interesting - thank you for sharing!  I might experiment with this with a smaller group of players for a session in our West Marches campaign.  Love the bolded part ("players are more engaged").  Playing online without video, it has become clear that there are certain players checked out until their turn comes around again with standard initiative.



Great! If you try it let me know how it works! 

One bit of advice, players NEED to get in the habit of rolling a d20 ASAP when their current action is resolved. This was the biggest obstacle, reminding players "Hey, roll to see when your next action happens!"

It is also easy if you are used to counting down the initiative, but it isn't needed if everyone pays attention.

Finally, do some mock combats first to get the feel of it.

Also, check out the original thread for more examples of how the rolls versus the narratives compare.


----------



## Lanefan

Meant to hit "reply", not "post reply"...sigh...


----------



## DND_Reborn

Lanefan said:


> Meant to hit "reply", not "post reply"...sigh...



Luckily, you can edit LOL!


----------



## Lanefan

DND_Reborn said:


> No problem. I've posted about it before but here it goes:
> 
> 1. Each character's "turn" is broken up into the separate actions they take.
> 2. You roll d20 + (DEX, INT, or WIS modifier) + features/feat for Initiative for your FIRST action.
> 3. After resolving your FIRST action, your roll d20 (NO MODIFIERS AT ALL!) for your SECOND action. If the new roll is equal to or greater than your current FIRST roll, you act immediately. If it is lower, you act on the new roll.
> 4. Repeat until you run out of actions. (Movement--which can be broken up, Action, Bonus action).
> 5. Simultaneous rolls/actions can be resolved in simple to complex fashion, as your group desires.
> 
> Notes:
> 
> A. If you have Extra Attack (or Multiattack) each attack is its own action.
> B. Movement is used until your Speed is gone. So, if you move 10 feet to engage a creature as your action, you still have 20 feet remaining for later actions in the round.
> C. Reactions are resolved as normal.



Is the base initiative rerolled each round?  For example, does Player A below always start each round with init. 22?


DND_Reborn said:


> Benefits:
> 
> 1. By breaking up each player's turn, the actions seem to create the narrative. For an example (with Initiative totals preceding) see the spoilers. *Note:* This is a pretty linear example, but in the game the distribution of actions can create very vivid scenes!
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Example with normal Initiative
> 
> 
> 
> *Initiative rolls:*
> Player A: 22
> Player B: 19
> Monster A: 14
> Monster B: 1
> 
> Player A moves to engage Monster A, and attacks.
> Player B attacks Monster A, then moves into better position.
> Monster A multiattacks Player A.
> Monster B moves to engage Player B, and attacks.
> 
> Roll first Initiative for round 2.
> 
> Here, once Player A has gone, he as really nothing to do until the round is over and must wait for Player B and the DM to resolve everything else.
> 
> It also seems very much herky-jerky IMO instead of flowing from one action to the next.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Same example with Cinematic
> 
> 
> 
> *Initial rolls:*
> Player A: 22
> Player B: 19
> Monster A: 14
> Monster B: 1
> 
> 22 = Player A moves to engage Monster A. _Rolls for second action (12)_
> 19 = Player B attacks Monster A with longbow. _Rolls for second action (3)_
> 14 = Monster A attacks Player A. _Rolls for multiattack (18)_
> 18 (_is equal to or better than 14 so acts immediately_) = Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack. _Rolls for third action (1)_
> 12 = Player A attacks Monster A. *No bonus action or speed remaining, no further action, round over.*
> 3 = Player B moves to a better position. *No bonus action or speed remaining, no further action, round over.*
> 1 = Monster B moves to engage Player B. _Rolls for second action (17)_
> 17 (_is equal to or better than 1 so acts immediately_) = Monster B attacks Player B. *No bonus action or speed remaining, no further action, round over.*
> 1 = Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack. _Rolls for fourth action (14) because it has speed remaining._ *The monster will not move, so the round is over.*
> 
> Roll first Initiative for round 2.
> 
> IMO here we see more of a flow of action as one action moves into the next. A sense of excitement is generated when you read just the actions:
> 
> Player A moves to engage Monster A.
> Player B attacks Monster A with longbow.
> Monster A attacks Player A.
> Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack.
> Player A attacks Monster A.
> Player B moves to a better position.
> Monster B moves to engage Player B.
> Monster B attacks Player B.
> Monster A attacks Player A with multiattack.
> 
> 
> 
> 2. Players are more engaged because they don't resolve everything for their character in one turn. This is a BIG benefit IMO.



Indeed.


DND_Reborn said:


> Anyway, here is the original thread during its inception over a year ago, but it has been revised slightly since then, but the general nuance has remained the same.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> D&D 5E - Cinematic Initiative Variant (CIV)
> 
> 
> So, after some discussion in my thread about what the combat round feels like/represents to you, I've done a lot of thinking about initiative and what might be a good alternative.  A couple things I want to address first: 1. This is not a roll = time system. So, going on 20 or higher doesn't...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.enworld.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Strangely enough, @Lanefan, you were the first to comment on it.



Could be - memory like a steel sieve, that's me. 


DND_Reborn said:


> Other house-rules have added complexity over time, but also allows for more tactical play. Someday I might right up a more robust description.
> 
> FWIW, it you are perfectly happy with initiative in 5E, this probably isn't for you. I devised it to make the action in the game more narrate itself by the order of what actions happen when. As I've said, we've been using it and refining it for over a year now, and personally I would hate to go back to the normal initiative of resolving all a creature's actions at once.



Fair enough.  Were it me I'd add in the idea of rerolling the base init. each round to break the symmetry.  

Another thought - what about maybe doing all the rolling up front?  So, instead of rolling the next action's init. when the first one happens, roll 'em all at the start of the round, one per action/move, and arrange to suit.  Thus, at the start of the round someone with two attacks and a move would roll 3d20 and arrange in order to suit: "OK, I attack on 20 and 15 then move on 8"*.

* - important to me is that for a move, the init here would specify when you arrive at your destination; you're actually moving in this example from init's 14 through 9 in case it matters where you are when if something might interrupt you.  I've really come to dislike what I call "mini-teleport" movement, where you're here then suddenly you're there.


----------



## DND_Reborn

Lanefan said:


> Is the base initiative rerolled each round? For example, does Player A below always start each round with init. 22?



Yes, it is rerolled each round. That is why in the example spoiler I wrote "Roll first initiative for round 2." I HATE cyclical initiative in any form! It is really unrealistic and well... you get the idea.

So, yes to this:


Lanefan said:


> Fair enough. Were it me I'd add in the idea of rerolling the base init. each round to break the symmetry.




LOL, this was your FIRST suggestion in the original thread as well! At least you're consistent. 


Lanefan said:


> Another thought - what about maybe doing all the rolling up front? So, instead of rolling the next action's init. when the first one happens, roll 'em all at the start of the round, one per action/move, and arrange to suit. Thus, at the start of the round someone with two attacks and a move would roll 3d20 and arrange in order to suit: "OK, I attack on 20 and 15 then move on 8"*.



The reason is to create some tension also because until your action comes on your first initiative, you have _no clue_ when you might get to go again next!

Since we've been doing this, I've had players go first on 18, then roll nothing but 18, 19, or 20 for each action until they were done! Crazy, but it happened!



Lanefan said:


> * - important to me is that for a move, the init here would specify when you arrive at your destination; you're actually moving in this example from init's 14 through 9 in case it matters where you are when if something might interrupt you. I've really come to dislike what I call "mini-teleport" movement, where you're here then suddenly you're there.



I am really glad you mention this since it is actually an element we've been toying with, but haven't made concrete yet!

In the above spoiler example, for instance, when Player A moved on 22 to engage Monster A, his next action was at 12, so that might be when he actually got there. _BUT_ here's the rub: Monster A goes on 14, and Player A doesn't arrive until 12...

So, the narrative could change to Monster A goes on 14 to engage Player A (they are really meeting someplace in between), and if the DM rolls a 14 or better, gets to attack immediately as the next action.

It _can_ work, we're playtesting it and trying to iron out any wrinkles.


----------



## Swarmkeeper

DND_Reborn said:


> I am really glad you mention this since it is actually an element we've been toying with, but haven't made concrete yet!
> 
> In the above spoiler example, for instance, when Player A moved on 22 to engage Monster A, his next action was at 12, so that might be when he actually got there. _BUT_ here's the rub: Monster A goes on 14, and Player A doesn't arrive until 12...
> 
> So, the narrative could change to Monster A goes on 14 to engage Player A (they are really meeting someplace in between), and if the DM rolls a 14 or better, gets to attack immediately as the next action.
> 
> It _can_ work, we're playtesting it and trying to iron out any wrinkles.




Or, simply, Player A got there at 22 but Monster A was waiting for them to approach and got the jump on the attack at 14.  Then Player A returns the favor at 12.  I'm not seeing the need to view that as a "mini-teleport" or worry about somehow meeting in-between.  Right?  Or am I misreading something.


----------



## Henadic Theologian

Mordhau said:


> Put the magic items in the monster book and then there's no need for the DMG.




 Points for being the one who comes out and says it.

 Honestly the DMG should probably be replaced by something more useful within the core. The bests parts of various editions are Timeless and don't need updating.

 The question should be what third book should the core have?

 Personally I'd replace the DMG with a Manual of the Planes as the third core book.


----------



## DND_Reborn

Swarmkeeper said:


> Or, simply, Player A got there at 22 but Monster A was waiting for them to approach and got the jump on the attack at 14.  Then Player A returns the favor at 12.  I'm not seeing the need to view that as a "mini-teleport" or worry about somehow meeting in-between.  Right?  Or am I misreading something.



That is pretty much the way we've been playing it for months now and it works fine IMO.

But, like I wrote earlier we are "exploring" the idea of a movement-timing element. I don't know if in the end we'll keep it or some version of it or not. We'll see.


----------



## Lanefan

Swarmkeeper said:


> Or, simply, Player A got there at 22 but Monster A was waiting for them to approach and got the jump on the attack at 14.  Then Player A returns the favor at 12.  I'm not seeing the need to view that as a "mini-teleport" or worry about somehow meeting in-between.  Right?  Or am I misreading something.



If player A starts moving on 22 and also arrives on 22, that's a mini-teleport and is what I'd like to do away with.

The way I handle such things is, using this case as an example and if monster A was happy with its current position, monster A's 14 would get knocked down to a 12 because it has to wait for player A to get there*, at which point both player and monster would attack simultaneously.

* - though if monster A had any other viable targets within reach on 14 one of those would get attacked instead.


----------



## Azuresun

I think the only thing I'd want is a revision to the adventuring day bit where it now gives multiple examples of adventuring days and makes it super ultra clear that there is no "right" way to do it. And if that doesn't drive a stake through the heart of the "6-8 encounters per day or you're Doing It Wrong" misconception that's so prevalent, put it on page one in big sparkly letters.


----------



## Swarmkeeper

Lanefan said:


> If player A starts moving on 22 and also arrives on 22, that's a mini-teleport and is what I'd like to do away with.
> 
> The way I handle such things is, using this case as an example and if monster A was happy with its current position, monster A's 14 would get knocked down to a 12 because it has to wait for player A to get there*, at which point both player and monster would attack simultaneously.
> 
> * - though if monster A had any other viable targets within reach on 14 one of those would get attacked instead.



I mean, I get what you are saying but let’s break it down a bit:  Moving up to 30 feet, for a capable adventurer, might take what… somewhere between 1 to 3 seconds?  Is that really important to simulate more granularly in a 6 second round combat system that is largely abstracted to begin with?  I guess as an optional “combat movement” rule, some might latch onto it.


----------



## DND_Reborn

Lanefan said:


> The way I handle such things is, using this case as an example and if monster A was happy with its current position, monster A's 14 would get knocked down to a 12 because it has to wait for player A to get there*, at which point both player and monster would attack simultaneously.



There are multiple ways we've tried handling this:

1 - *Delaying your action*. Monster A, going on 14, can delay and attacks on 12 when Player A finishes moving. _No reaction used._
2 - *Readying your action* (RAW). Monster A, going on 14, readies it action to attack as soon as Player A enters its reach.  _Reaction used. This also foils use of Extra Attack and Multiattack._
3 - *Moving to Engage and roll for next action to Attack.* Monster A moves on 14, spending some of its speed to close the gap to Player A. Now Monster A will have to roll another initiative for its next action.

1 is what we have done mostly. It is easy to do and no spending a creature's reaction frees it up.
2 works fine, but sometimes the use of reaction is hampering to later "action" in the narrative.
3 is ok, but the question arise of how much speed did Monster A use to close the gap? How much of Player A's speed was used to reach a point between the two starting locations?

We do play with a virtual grid via PowerPoint, and most of the time I will make a judgement call in case 3.

In the case of simultaneous actions, we resolve them as the higher modifier goes first, otherwise the actions are resolved actually simultaneously.

We have other rules, for things like _charging_, and made actions such as Hide, Help, and Disengage "move actions". But those are all in addition to cinematic initiative and works well with it.


----------



## DND_Reborn

Swarmkeeper said:


> I mean, I get what you are saying but let’s break it down a bit:  Moving up to 30 feet, for a capable adventurer, might take what… somewhere between 1 to 3 seconds?  Is that really important to simulate more granularly in a 6 second round combat system that is largely abstracted to begin with?  I guess as an optional “combat movement” rule, some might latch onto it.



Since the first part of cinematic initiative is to understand the initiative rolls just indicate the order in the round, not necessarily any sort of timing factor. We don't like to force the concept that you can move so far on so many initiative counts, etc.


----------



## Cadence

DND_Reborn said:


> It really makes it more boring. Think about baseball. When a player gets a hit it is exciting, something is happening, because generally hitting percentage is 25-35% (or maybe that is on-base... or the same thing? I am not a baseball fan so perhaps I am wrong?). But, if hitting becomes almost _expected_, it loses its appeal.




The baseball example makes me think about skill checks.  There are sometimes where a d20+standard bonus makes sense for a skill check or contested roll - and others where it seems silly.  

A decent in the neighborhood poker player will beat a world class one in a single hand of poker a reasonable percent of the because of the randomness. A high school basketball player might beat a pro once in a while in a game of horse. The chances of the decent local rec league player getting a hit off the Cy Young winner feel pretty small. A decent player on the local high school chess team could probably be spotted a piece by Carlsen and still effectively have no meaningful chance of not losing.  Assuming the bonuses for the amateur/pro are the same in each case, I'd like book to have something on how to reflect that when calling for checks.  (2d10 or 3d6 instead of d20 for some? Advantage for the better and disadvantage for the worse rated in some cases?).


----------



## Swarmkeeper

DND_Reborn said:


> Since the first part of cinematic initiative is to understand the initiative rolls just indicate the order in the round, not necessarily any sort of timing factor. We don't like to force the concept that you can move so far on so many initiative counts, etc.




Possibly related question:  can a PC split their move between initiatives?  So, something like this:  move 10’ on first “action” in initiative, attack on second, move 10’ on third, bonus action on 4th, last 10’ on final “action”.


----------



## DND_Reborn

Swarmkeeper said:


> Possibly related question:  can a PC split their move between initiatives?  So, something like this:  move 10’ on first “action” in initiative, attack on second, move 10’ on third, bonus action on 4th, last 10’ on final “action”.



Yes, that is precisely it. Which is why I said:


DND_Reborn said:


> 4. Repeat until you run out of actions. (Movement--*which can be broken up*, Action, Bonus action).




Each time you move using any of your remaining speed, it is your Action for that initiative.


----------



## DND_Reborn

Cadence said:


> The baseball example makes me think about skill checks.  There are sometimes where a d20+standard bonus makes sense for a skill check or contested roll - and others where it seems silly.
> 
> A decent in the neighborhood poker player will beat a world class one in a single hand of poker a reasonable percent of the because of the randomness. A high school basketball player might beat a pro once in a while in a game of horse. The chances of the decent local rec league player getting a hit off the Cy Young winner feel pretty small. A decent player on the local high school chess team could probably be spotted a piece by Carlsen and still effectively have no meaningful chance of not losing.  Assuming the bonuses for the amateur/pro are the same in each case, I'd like book to have something on how to reflect that when calling for checks.  (2d10 or 3d6 instead of d20 for some? Advantage for the better and disadvantage for the worse rated in some cases?).



On a related note: we have adopted using 2d10 instead of d20 for everything _except_ initiative.

This makes having bonuses more important than the swingy luck of a d20.


----------



## Swarmkeeper

DND_Reborn said:


> Yes, that is precisely it. Which is why I said:
> 
> 
> Each time you move using any of your remaining speed, it is your Action for that initiative.




Ah yes.  Now it is clear.


----------



## Swarmkeeper

DND_Reborn said:


> It really makes it more boring. Think about baseball. When a player gets a hit it is exciting, something is happening, because generally hitting percentage is 25-35% (or maybe that is on-base... or the same thing? I am not a baseball fan so perhaps I am wrong?). But, if hitting becomes almost _expected_, it loses its appeal.



Of course, but now let's think about (American) football.  A quarterback who only completes 25-35% of their passes will quickly lose their appeal and end up finding another job.  Meanwhile, one hitting 65% of their passes has likely secured their starting position for years to come.  So... yeah... to each their own.


----------



## Cadence

Swarmkeeper said:


> Of course, but now let's think about (American) football.  A quarterback who only completes 25-35% of their passes will quickly lose their appeal and end up finding another job.  Meanwhile, one hitting 65% of their passes has likely secured their starting position for years to come.  So... yeah... to each their own.




The pitcher's success rate is 1- the batters'.  Same for QB vs pass defense.  So don't even need to switch sports, just which part of the team you root for most.


----------



## DND_Reborn

@Swarmkeeper and @Cadence 

Sure, I know many people probably prefer hitting more, but for the reasons I expressed, it makes it boring. I don't like something that is easier, personally, and I don't need a feeling of "routine success" to make me feel good about my characters or playing the game.


----------



## Blue

What I really want in revised but still 5e books is plentiful sidebars from the designers discussing why they put in certain rules, the effects of changing them, and alternates that they looked at and why they didn't choose them.  13th Age, a d20 from lead designers of 4e and 3e, does a great job of this, including points where the two designers disagreed and why they picked the final rules.  It makes it so much more friendly to hack, gives insight to players and DMs alike about what the rules are evoking, and gives you some knobs to tweak like 5e was originally promised to have.


----------



## Lanefan

Swarmkeeper said:


> I mean, I get what you are saying but let’s break it down a bit:  Moving up to 30 feet, for a capable adventurer, might take what… somewhere between 1 to 3 seconds?  Is that really important to simulate more granularly in a 6 second round combat system that is largely abstracted to begin with?  I guess as an optional “combat movement” rule, some might latch onto it.



1 to 3 seconds in a 6-second round translates to 4-to-10 initiative pips out of 20, which when things could be happening on any of those pips, is a lot.

And if someone spends the entire round moving?  Yes, knowing where that character is at any given time can be very important if other people are chucking A-of-E spells around and-or there's stray missile fire to contend with.  Having the character be here until suddenly it's there instead is way too abstract for me.


----------



## Lanefan

Azuresun said:


> I think the only thing I'd want is a revision to the adventuring day bit where it now gives multiple examples of adventuring days and makes it super ultra clear that there is no "right" way to do it. And if that doesn't drive a stake through the heart of the "6-8 encounters per day or you're Doing It Wrong" misconception that's so prevalent, put it on page one in big sparkly letters.



There would also need to be a section or write-up for DMs around resource depletion and how to wear a party down, if you scrap the 6-8 encounter model, as that's what the 6-to-8 model is (in theory) supposed to achieve.


----------



## Lanefan

DND_Reborn said:


> On a related note: we have adopted using 2d10 instead of d20 for everything _except_ initiative.
> 
> This makes having bonuses more important than the swingy luck of a d20.



And no fear of rolling that dreaded '1' any more, if the lowest possible is 2.


----------



## DND_Reborn

Lanefan said:


> And no fear of rolling that dreaded '1' any more, if the lowest possible is 2.



Since you mention this, our baseline critical hit/fumble system actually relies on rolling doubles:

*Critical Success.* If you roll double 6's or higher and succeed, it is a critical success.
*Critical Failure.* If you roll double 5's or lower and fail, it is a critical failure.

It isn't quite the 1 in 20, but it works well.

FWIW, advantage and disadvantage cancel of course, but also stack. Each source adds 1d10, you always take the best or worst two dice depending on if you have net advantage or net disadvantage.

Just in case you're curious about it.


----------



## jmartkdr2

Henadic Theologian said:


> Points for being the one who comes out and says it.
> 
> Honestly the DMG should probably be replaced by something more useful within the core. The bests parts of various editions are Timeless and don't need updating.
> 
> The question should be what third book should the core have?
> 
> Personally I'd replace the DMG with a Manual of the Planes as the third core book.



I'd say a manual of non-monster stuff you'd find in dungeons is more important: traps, hazards, and of course magic items. 

Then add more npcs to the Monster manual.

Between the three core books I should have no trouble send pcs into dungeons to fight dragons, with minimal improv beyond choosing what to use.


----------



## guachi

I want four sections: The Table, The Encounter, The Adventure, The Campaign.

The Table deals with effectively managing a table full of people. Different DMing styles, whatever.

The Encounter deals with building effective encounters in each of the three pillars. From revamping CR to effective ability check adjudication (especially in the Social and Exploration pillars).

The Adventure deals with coherent adventure building. Creating NPCs, exciting locations, enticing PC motivations.

The Campaign deals with stringing adventures together. Is it open-ended, is there a plot? How do you introduce new elements (planar travel, domains). It also would cover a myriad of alternate rules for different play styles.

If I'm a DM I'm almost certainly dealing with one of these four parts and I want a book to teach me how to be a better DM.


----------



## guachi

I also want Designer Notes. Real Designer Notes and not useless marginalia like in the X's Guide to Y we have now.


----------



## ART!

Henadic Theologian said:


> Points for being the one who comes out and says it.
> 
> Honestly the DMG should probably be replaced by something more useful within the core. The bests parts of various editions are Timeless and don't need updating.
> 
> The question should be what third book should the core have?
> 
> Personally I'd replace the DMG with a Manual of the Planes as the third core book.



Yeah, I think I'd be okay with the contents of a DMG distributed between the PHB, MM, and a Manual of the Planes. Having one book that provides a good look at the Shadowfell, the Feywild, the Abyss, etc - that would be pretty great, and an amazing tool for DMs.


----------



## MNblockhead

Regarding the discussion on designer notes, I think it would be interesting, but I'm not sure I would want much of that in the core books. I think that conent can be provided in other publications and venues for those interested in it. They should be more like "directors commentary" in movies. There for those who enjoy them but easily ignored by those who don't.  To be fair, I've not really seen how this has been done in other systems, but I want my core rules concise, well organized, and cross referenced. I worry that adding designer notes would bloat the core books and detract from making the core mechanics easy to learn and reference.


----------



## Mordhau

MNblockhead said:


> Regarding the discussion on designer notes, I think it would be interesting, but I'm not sure I would want much of that in the core books. I think that conent can be provided in other publications and venues for those interested in it. They should be more like "directors commentary" in movies. There for those who enjoy them but easily ignored by those who don't.  To be fair, I've not really seen how this has been done in other systems, but I want my core rules concise, well organized, and cross referenced. I worry that adding designer notes would bloat the core books and detract from making the core mechanics easy to learn and reference.



In 13th Age they're just small side bars.  Including them may actually save space because you don't have to write so many rules to avoid ambiguity or ridiculous exploits based on legalistic application of rules text.

Here's an example.





And another in regard to application of a Ranger power Terrain stunt


> *Terrain stunt*: At the start of each battle in a non-urban environment, roll a d6. Any time after the escalation die reaches that number, you’ll be able to use a quick action to execute a terrain stunt. Normally you can only use terrain stunt once per battle, but circumstances, geography, or excellent planning may suggest that you can pull it off more than once.
> 
> Terrain stunts are improvisational effects that play off your preternatural understanding of the wilderness and all the diverse forms of the natural world. Things like knocking a hornets nest no one had noticed onto your enemy’s head, maneuvering a foe onto a soggy patch of ground that slows them down, shooting the cap off a mushroom spore in a dungeon that erupts on your enemies, getting your enemy’s sword wedged into a stalactite, finding the tree branch that lets you vault up to attack the flying demon that thought it was out of axe range, and similar types of actions.


----------



## MNblockhead

@Mordhau Okay, that's cool. Side bars with examples, suggestions on dealing with edge case and cross references to other rules are always welcome by me. Lengthy digressions on why they chose to go with one mechanic over another, why they changed something from a prior edition, etc. belongs elsewhere IMO.


----------



## tetrasodium

Mordhau said:


> Yeah I remember reading 5e a lot of times and thinking "just tell us what you intend here"*.  A lot of forum arguments about stealth might have been avoided if they'd just had a 13th Age style sidebar which told us something like "this is how we intend to use stealth, or perhaps more importantly, this is how difficult we intend it to be to get Sneak Attack, so in the case of the Rogue and hiding err on the side of being permissive".
> 
> *I appreciate that Mike Mearls use to do that sometimes on twitter but it would have been better in the book.  In contrast Jeremy Crawford's often legalistic parsing of the rules seems a completely dysfunctional approach.



The omission is especially bad because d&d used to have thst kind of stuff in the 3.5 dmg's behind the curtain sidebars that went into exploring the crunch  and intent as appropriate.  In a lot of cases (like awarding xp) those sidebars are still more useful than the 5e equivalent for a 5e dm.


----------



## Lyxen

tetrasodium said:


> The omission is especially bad because d&d used to have thst kind of stuff in the 3.5 dmg's behind the curtain sidebars that went into exploring the crunch  and intent as appropriate.  In a lot of cases (like awarding xp) those sidebars are still more useful than the 5e equivalent for a 5e dm.




And, maybe one day, people will accept that 5e is fundamentally different from 3.5, that crunch is certainly not at the core of it, and that not exploring it stems from the same philosophy of having a game that is accessible to all without the need of special jargon and explanations (and which is certainly part of what made 5e a success). Whatever happens with the 2024 version of 5e, I really, really hope that it stays on the line that 5e has walked since it was created with a heavy resistance towards providing more crunch, as it was the uncontrolled multiplication of crunch was the downfall of 3e (which had great ideas at its core nonetheless).


----------



## MNblockhead

Lyxen said:


> And, maybe one day, people will accept that 5e is fundamentally different from 3.5, that crunch is certainly not at the core of it, and that not exploring it stems from the same philosophy of having a game that is accessible to all without the need of special jargon and explanations (and which is certainly part of what made 5e a success). Whatever happens with the 2024 version of 5e, I really, really hope that it stays on the line that 5e has walked since it was created with a heavy resistance towards providing more crunch, as it was the uncontrolled multiplication of crunch was the downfall of 3e (which had great ideas at its core nonetheless).



I agree, but I also think that 5e is a big tent. I wouldn't want to the core more crunchy, but I there is certainly a demand for more crunch and that demand will likely continue to grow the longer the system live on and as more of the newer players beginning looking for more ways to add to the game. I think WotC has done a good job at slowly releasing new options and crunch, but they are spread throughout so many different books that it is getting inconvenient to read them together and more difficult to easily reference them--especially if you are using the physical books. That's why I would like a revised DMG that is a well organized collection of modular options that can be added to the core game.

DnD Beyond is a great resource for monsters, magic items, and spells because it makes a useful and convenient interface that consolidates these. It is okay with character options. It is not very helpful with combat rules, downtime activity, and most other crunch. Even the search functionality returns too much noise to signal.


----------



## Lyxen

MNblockhead said:


> I agree, but I also think that 5e is a big tent. I wouldn't want to the core more crunchy, but I there is certainly a demand for more crunch and that demand will likely continue to grow the longer the system live on and as more of the newer players beginning looking for more ways to add to the game.




I'm honestly not sure, I think the demand from crunch mostly comes from previous editions players.



MNblockhead said:


> I think WotC has done a good job at slowly releasing new options and crunch, but they are spread throughout so many different books that it is getting inconvenient to read them together and more difficult to easily reference them--especially if you are using the physical books. That's why I would like a revised DMG that is a well organized collection of modular options that can be added to the core game.




I'm fine with this, as long as the less interesting ones are removed, and not too much is added.


----------



## Lakesidefantasy

Get those monster lists out of the Dungeon Master's Guide and into the Monster Manual where it belongs.


----------



## Lyxen

Lakesidefantasy said:


> Get those monster lists out of the Dungeon Master's Guide and into the Monster Manual where it belongs.



Aren't the monsters list more related to world building ?


----------



## Li Shenron

DEFCON 1 said:


> This isn't necessarily about the topic, but the responses did make me wonder if there was a correlation between folks who want more robust and concrete encounter creation rules and folks who do not like or refuse to fudge dice rolls and/or adjust encounters mid-fight?
> 
> Honestly, I don't know if there is a correlation there or not, but I do know that for me I've never worried about making sure my encounters were built "balanced" in order to give me the really precise result of difficulty I was looking for because I do not have any problem having extra monsters just show up to make the fight more difficult (even if my notes didn't say they were there) or just removing a monster that got hit for 30 points and was left with 1 HP remaining (so I just call it dead), or any other tricks like that to "self-balance" the fights on a case-by-case basis.
> 
> It just seems like the people who would prefer not to "wing it" have a reason for not wanting to... and the idea that they do not want to adjust the encounter mid-encounter due to however they see the verisimilitude of the game to be, might be a strong reason for that?  I dunno?  It's just something I noticed and was curious about.



Interesting note.

Personally I do not value the idea of setting the difficulty "precisely", which actually sounds like a ridiculous illusion to me. At the same time, I also do not generally adjust the encounter mid-fight, if it turns out easier/harder than expected then I consider it part of the fun.


----------



## dave2008

Lyxen said:


> Aren't the monsters list more related to world building ?



Maybe, but you still need the MM for your world building.  I don't really care, but putting them in the MM seems reasonable.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Li Shenron said:


> Interesting note.
> 
> Personally I do not value the idea of setting the difficulty "precisely", which actually sounds like a ridiculous illusion to me.



Yeah, I wouldn't think so either... but it just seems that whenever there are comments and threads about the CR system and encounter building rules there are people who talk as though the numbers should be quite rigorous in their use and effectiveness.  Now maybe I'm reading more into it than is intended from them (entirely possible), but the power of some responses seem to imply that they are very upset that the rules do not work as well as they think they should.


----------



## jmartkdr2

DEFCON 1 said:


> Yeah, I wouldn't think so either... but it just seems that whenever there are comments and threads about the CR system and encounter building rules there are people who talk as though the numbers should be quite rigorous in their use and effectiveness.  Now maybe I'm reading more into it than is intended from them (entirely possible), but the power of some responses seem to imply that they are very upset that the rules do not work as well as they think they should.



A lot of people find CR basically useless, for a number of reasons. And there's a lot of space between "useless" and "perfect." It should be in there somewhere.


----------



## Lyxen

DEFCON 1 said:


> Yeah, I wouldn't think so either... but it just seems that whenever there are comments and threads about the CR system and encounter building rules there are people who talk as though the numbers should be quite rigorous in their use and effectiveness.  Now maybe I'm reading more into it than is intended from them (entirely possible), but the power of some responses seem to imply that they are very upset that the rules do not work as well as they think they should.




That's the way I'm reading this as well, and not only do they want the computations precise, but they want to walk the fine line between "as challenging as possible" and "TPK possible", and somehow be able to shift the responsibility to the system instead of assuming it themselves.


----------



## Lyxen

jmartkdr2 said:


> A lot of people find CR basically useless, for a number of reasons. And there's a lot of space between "useless" and "perfect." It should be in there somewhere.



It's certainly in there for me, I use ballpack CR and it works fine.


----------



## Oofta

jmartkdr2 said:


> A lot of people find CR basically useless, for a number of reasons. And there's a lot of space between "useless" and "perfect." It should be in there somewhere.




You have to adjust for every group and oftentimes by environment and scenario but I find CR works about as well as anything.  I really enjoy my current group but they generally have _awful_ tactics.  Occasionally I forget that.


----------



## DEFCON 1

jmartkdr2 said:


> A lot of people find CR basically useless, for a number of reasons. And there's a lot of space between "useless" and "perfect." It should be in there somewhere.



Heh... well like I said above... if you're running a table for 4 PCs of the Basic Rules Core 4 the encounter building rules work pretty well.  But granted that's not said specifically anywhere, so it's only by playing the game with all manner of tables and characters away from that baseline do we notice just how much the rules fall away.

But because there is no way to make a balanced set of encounter building rules that could be 'plug and play' for every number of player count, every combination of classes from the PHB, every level of magical item ownership, and every variant rule inclusion... the game doesn't bother trying.  It just requires every DM to basically learn how to create their own encounter building rules for their own tables.

Which does ask the question that if these rules they do include only really work as precisely as some players think they should for that one specific Core Four 4 PC table... should they even have bothered to include any rules whatsoever?  Which I think is a legitimate question we could ask.  If the rules won't necessarily work for 99.9% of all the tables out there, are they actually worth including them at all and probably misrepresenting themselves to almost everyone who reads them?

For me, my impulse is to say 'Yeah... I think?... if only for the _completely_ new D&D and RPG player who has no concept of building encounters at all in the first place and it gives them an idea and examples of what encounters could actually look like.'  But even then, I suspect even completely new players who weren't using the Starter Set and were creating their own fights are probably owners and users of the PHB, which means their table won't be a Core Four 4 PC one either.  So again, the rules end up being relatively useless for them if they are trying to follow them to the word.  Which can be unfortunate.


----------



## jmartkdr2

Oofta said:


> You have to adjust for every group and oftentimes by environment and scenario but I find CR works about as well as anything.  I really enjoy my current group but they generally have _awful_ tactics.  Occasionally I forget that.



I find it generally useful for comparing monsters - aside form a few special abilities that break things1, I can be pretty confident that two CR 5 monsters are about as rough to fight as the other. Whether CR 5 is right for the party is another, more difficult question, and one that requires some experimenting to determine. 

1 For example, the shadow's ability to attack strength means it ignores hp, which can be very nasty. Shadows punch way above their weight class. But that's kinda specific to them, not a problem with CR in general.


----------



## tetrasodium

jmartkdr2 said:


> A lot of people find CR basically useless, for a number of reasons. And there's a lot of space between "useless" and "perfect." It should be in there somewhere.



A big part of the trouble is that wotc designed for an astoundingly grindy number of encounters rather than one that could be reasonably pushed in normal gameplay and put a console command level recovery option 



Spoiler: almost entirely in the player's hands









Lyxen said:


> And, maybe one day, people will accept that 5e is fundamentally different from 3.5, that crunch is certainly not at the core of it, and that not exploring it stems from the same philosophy of having a game that is accessible to all without the need of special jargon and explanations (and which is certainly part of what made 5e a success). Whatever happens with the 2024 version of 5e, I really, really hope that it stays on the line that 5e has walked since it was created with a heavy resistance towards providing more crunch, as it was the uncontrolled multiplication of crunch was the downfall of 3e (which had great ideas at its core nonetheless).







A great many of those sidebars better prepare a 5e dm for running 5e yet are from two editions ago.  Yes the decision to go into detail or not in ways that are needed for the DM to go into their game well equipped with an understanding of any given topic or not is a choice and choosing not to do so on a given section says a lot.  In aggregate though there are so few efforts in the dmg to present system knowledge as anything but an opaque wall that the system winds up being rather unfriendly to the GM in need of system knowledge needed to confidently rule on areas of the rules that needs changes & rulings.  Paired with decisions like "feats and magic items are totally unsupported _OpTiONaL_" a shift of PC power from magic items to the PC itself & so on o5e's heavy reliance on ask your gm/let the gm decide works out to be downright GM _hostile_. 

The choice not to equip the gm with system understanding goes beyond a GM actively looking to better understand things to include a GM who doesn't know the mistakes they are making because a more experienced GM can not point them to the sidebar on xxx that would help them better realize things they are struggling with. in the case of 5e itself, an experienced GM who goes through the effort of understanding things followed by trial and error of correcting one off edge case rules intended to stop mythical killer GMs & similar newbieGM mistakes that choice from wotc shows the unstructured mess under the hood.


----------



## Lyxen

Well, the number of players of 5e compared to any other edition should just show you that it's not GM Hostile in general, the hostility is only generated by GM from previous editions expecting the same thing as previous editions. But I've discussed with at least 10 different DMs from 5e (usually children of friends or friends of my children) who absolutely have zero problem operating directly under the new paradigms and don't spend their time trying to recreate the past from the new.

So no, the DMs don't need more "equipment", unless you think that they are inferior DMs because of that, which would be arrogant in the extreme.


----------



## Lakesidefantasy

Lyxen said:


> Aren't the monsters list more related to world building ?



I don't think so. The lists are in an appendix by themselves. Volo's and Mordenkainen's guides have the lists for the monsters in the guide itself.

It's annoying when designing encounters to have to flip through both books.


----------



## Lyxen

Lakesidefantasy said:


> I don't think so. The lists are in an appendix by themselves. Volo's and Mordenkainen's guides have the lists for the monsters in the guide itself.




That's normal, they couldn't update the DMG because of these new publications, could they ?



Lakesidefantasy said:


> It's annoying when designing encounters to have to flip through both books.




I don't do it that way at all, there are myriads of tools available today which are way more efficient than using books at least for that.


----------



## Greggy C

I think the new DMG should point players to use dndcombat.com to test their battles, and WOTC should pay to have to it finished 

Because no CR system is useful when you can create a party of optimized bladesingers and warlock hexblades that can fight double what your default random party can fight.


----------



## THEMNGMNT

What do I want in a new 5E DMG? The 4E DMG1 and DMG2.


----------



## Shardstone

As a new DM back in 2015 who had never ran before, the game was pretty hard to grok. I needed a lot of help from another community I found to really get a hand on it. How about we not try to condescendingly speak for all new age dms? For me, a better dmg would have helped a lot.


----------



## bennet

Shardstone said:


> As a new DM back in 2015 who had never ran before, the game was pretty hard to grok. I needed a lot of help from another community I found to really get a hand on it. How about we not try to condescendingly speak for all new age dms? For me, a better dmg would have helped a lot.



What is condescending?  the 5.0 dmg? how?


----------



## Oofta

Shardstone said:


> As a new DM back in 2015 who had never ran before, the game was pretty hard to grok. I needed a lot of help from another community I found to really get a hand on it. How about we not try to condescendingly speak for all new age dms? For me, a better dmg would have helped a lot.



I think it's going to vary a lot.  Personally I get more from a video and hands-on than I ever will from a book.

Could the DMG be improved?  Of course, everything can be improved.  But there are plenty of resources out there now, far more than there used to be.

I'm not saying this to be condescending, I'm trying to understand what could help.  The more DMs the better but I can't change what WOTC publishes.  Is there any kind of advice or resources we can provide on a forum like this?


----------



## clearstream

DEFCON 1 said:


> This isn't necessarily about the topic, but the responses did make me wonder if there was a correlation between folks who want more robust and concrete encounter creation rules and folks who do not like or refuse to fudge dice rolls and/or adjust encounters mid-fight?
> 
> It just seems like the people who would prefer not to "wing it" have a reason for not wanting to... and the idea that they do not want to adjust the encounter mid-encounter due to however they see the verisimilitude of the game to be, might be a strong reason for that?  I dunno?  It's just something I noticed and was curious about.



Relatedly, I moved to 

ΣCR < Σlevels/2 = "Attritional" (easy to hard)
ΣCR > Σlevels/2 = "Lethal" (deadly)
Circa 3A + 1Lper long rest
3-6 foes = x1.5 not x2, scale from there
In general, encounters with multiple types if foe are the most interesting 
Simple rules if thumb that keep the game on an even keel, without stressing too much. Wounded foes can flee. Smart foes can go for the wizard. Rich foes can hire the party and get some payback. There's so much at play that power alone is a bad guide, and CR is only a very rough guide to power anyway.


----------



## Gustavo R

I want more math in the DMG:
1. Just basic tips for creating your world and campaigns. They can delve into this subject in online tools, like a monthly issue or something.
2. Understand the math behind the classes. If I need to create a class or a subclass, what's the math? How do balance them with each other?
3. Understand how to create races from scratch (example).
4. An easy system to create your monsters from scratch. The rules in Chapter 5 of the DMG are very complicated and not very intuitive. There must be a system to determine the CR of the monster (example).
5. Some sort of clear guidance for creating encounters.
6. More variable rules to play in "easy", "hard", and "very hard" modes.
7. Rules for creating your spells. Why do spells of the same level deal such different damage? How do balance them with each other? How do determine a spell's level?
8. How to calculate the rarity of a magic item?
9. Better Table of Contents and Summary.
10. Good graphic design (for some reason, the graphic design of the D&D books is frozen in time).


----------



## dave2008

Lots of good points, thank you for sharing. However, I do wonder about this one:


Gustavo R said:


> 10. Good graphic design (for some reason, the graphic design of the D&D books is frozen in time).




How do you mean?

5e graphic design is different from 4e graphic design, which was different from 3e graphic design, which as different from 2e graphic design, which was different from 1e graphic design.  So it is clearly not frozen in that sense.

Or, do you mean the 5e graphic design is outdated in some sense? If so, I will point you to 4e graphic design which was much more modern and fresh (and I liked a lot). However, it was rejected by a large portion of the community.  So 5e is something between 3e and 4e. One needs to be careful with graphic design  as if you are too contemporary it can quickly become dated design.

PS I am a designer myself and I quite like the graphic design of 5e. Just a reminder that "good" design is a bit subjective. I like 4e graphic design better overall, but 5e does feel more nostalgic and that is important for sales of D&D


----------



## Gustavo R

dave2008 said:


> How do you mean?
> 
> 5e graphic design is different from 4e graphic design, which was different from 3e graphic design, which as different from 2e graphic design, which was different from 1e graphic design.  So it is clearly not frozen in that sense.
> 
> Or, do you mean the 5e graphic design is outdated in some sense? If so, I will point you to 4e graphic design which was much more modern and fresh (and I liked a lot). However, it was rejected by a large portion of the community.  So 5e is something between 3e and 4e. One needs to be careful with graphic design  as if you are too contemporary it can quickly become dated design.
> 
> PS I am a designer myself and I quite like the graphic design of 5e. Just a reminder that "good" design is a bit subjective. I like 4e graphic design better overall, but 5e does feel more nostalgic and that is important for sales of D&D




Thank you!
Yes, I mean the 5e books have an outdated graphic design. I understand they were trying to create the feel of a classic D&D book, but from the game point of view, there are a lot of visual tricks that can make the book better. It doesn't have to be visually modern, but it does need to be functional. Some examples:

• Put *different colours on the borders* to help us to find chapters quickly (example).
• Pathfinder 2E uses blue for titles and red for subtitles. Simple and elegant. Another thing is to *highlight* tiers. For instance, in the PHB, in the classes, the level of each trait needs to be highlighted. Sometimes it can be more difficult to figure out which trait is 3rd level and which is 11th level.
• *Bullet points* can be coloured to separate them from the text.
• Sometimes you need to read a long paragraph to figure out what a spell or magic item does. These books are mostly used when you are playing or want to consult something. It's important to organize it better. The easy way to do this is to put *important information in bold*. Spells must have an "*Effect*" paraphyly tath stands out from the rest (as is already done with the artefacts). It doesn't have to be video gaming like 4e, but 4e was definitely more organized them 5e, IMO.
• For a game, D&D lacks visual ways to explain the rules, such as flowcharts and less "boring" tables (another example). Different thickness in the lines, different shades in the colours, different colours, inverted colours (white text on dark background) in the head... all these can help to find information faster in a table.

*Good references:*
• Grim Hollow - Players Guide
• Symbaroum (all books)
• The World of the Witcher

PS: I apologize in advance for my English.


----------



## ART!

Gustavo R said:


> Thank you!
> Yes, I mean the 5e books have an outdated graphic design. I understand they were trying to create the feel of a classic D&D book, but from the game point of view, there are a lot of visual tricks that can make the book better. It doesn't have to be visually modern, but it does need to be functional. Some examples:
> 
> • Put *different colours on the borders* to help us to find chapters quickly (example).



I see what you mean about the colors guiding the eye, and I agree. The one caveat is that it's easy to get into too many colors, which can be visually confusing. It's a bit of tightrope.


Gustavo R said:


> • For a game, D&D lacks visual ways to explain the rules, such as flowcharts



Yeah, red is always a good idea for getting things to stand out, and I like the simplicity of those progressions. You also have to be careful about having too much of that on a page. Some of the best design advice I ever heard was "highlighting everything is the same as highlighting nothing". 


Gustavo R said:


> and less "boring" tables (another example). Different thickness in the lines, different shades in the colours, different colours, inverted colours (white text on dark background) in the head... all these can help to find information faster in a table.



All of those are good ways to distinguish one type of information from another, both within a single table but throughout the book in general. For instance, a race-related sidebar could have the same background as the color used on the edge of the pages in the race chapter.


Gustavo R said:


> *Good references:*
> • Grim Hollow - Players Guide
> • Symbaroum (all books)
> • The World of the Witcher
> 
> PS: I apologize in advance for my English.



Your English seems fine to me!
That Grim Hollow book looks almost exactly like a WOTC 5E book to me, but I do like the look of that timeline in the Symbaroum sample. The Witcher book is really neat-looking, and it's distinctly more image-focused than any 5E book. As a very visual person, I'm down with that, and in the world we live in maybe that's a better approach?


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## Lakesidefantasy

I like the 5e books a lot. I particularly like the bolded word or phrase with a period to start a description of an ability or feature, and I love the art getting away from dungeonpunk.

I do get confused when subheadings are underlined, and I do wish the page numbers were darker.


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## dave2008

Gustavo R said:


> Thank you!
> Yes, I mean the 5e books have an outdated graphic design. I understand they were trying to create the feel of a classic D&D book, but from the game point of view, there are a lot of visual tricks that can make the book better. It doesn't have to be visually modern, but it does need to be functional. Some examples:
> 
> • Put *different colours on the borders* to help us to find chapters quickly (example).
> • Pathfinder 2E uses blue for titles and red for subtitles. Simple and elegant. Another thing is to *highlight* tiers. For instance, in the PHB, in the classes, the level of each trait needs to be highlighted. Sometimes it can be more difficult to figure out which trait is 3rd level and which is 11th level.
> • *Bullet points* can be coloured to separate them from the text.
> • Sometimes you need to read a long paragraph to figure out what a spell or magic item does. These books are mostly used when you are playing or want to consult something. It's important to organize it better. The easy way to do this is to put *important information in bold*. Spells must have an "*Effect*" paraphyly tath stands out from the rest (as is already done with the artefacts). It doesn't have to be video gaming like 4e, but 4e was definitely more organized them 5e, IMO.
> • For a game, D&D lacks visual ways to explain the rules, such as flowcharts and less "boring" tables (another example). Different thickness in the lines, different shades in the colours, different colours, inverted colours (white text on dark background) in the head... all these can help to find information faster in a table.
> 
> *Good references:*
> • Grim Hollow - Players Guide
> • Symbaroum (all books)
> • The World of the Witcher
> 
> PS: I apologize in advance for my English.



Thank you for the detailed reply. I don't disagree with your comments, but I also don't think it is that big of a deal. Like I said I preferred the 4e graphic design (and I didn't think it was video-gamey, but I don't play video games, so...) which had a lot of what you discuss - but it didn't sell.

I will say I quickly looked at your Grim World and Witcher links you provided they look remarkably similar to 5e graphic design to my eye  (again on a quick pass).  Maybe I would need to have physical copies to really appreciate the difference.

EDIT: I looked at the 3rd link now and I am not really seeing the improvement over WotC 5e products.  On  a very cursory review I like the WotC 5e graphic design as much or more the examples you provided. But l reserve the right to change that opinion if I get a chance to look at physical copies of the books.

PS - I had no idea your were a non-native English speaker, It was all good IMO.


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## Shardstone

Greggy C said:


> I think the new DMG should point players to use dndcombat.com to test their battles, and WOTC should pay to have to it finished
> 
> Because no CR system is useful when you can create a party of optimized bladesingers and warlock hexblades that can fight double what your default random party can fight.



I just tried using dndcombat and the party wizard kept fireballing the party lmao.


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