# What Improvements Would You Want with 6E?



## GreenTengu

I understand that most are fairly happy with 5E, but at the same time 6E is fairly inevitable. Several years in, what improvements would you like to see with 6E?

A few I have.

* Actively work to make sure there are no utter god stats or dump stats. No stat should utterly be able to functionally substitute for another in 90% of situations the way Dexterity does for Strength or be the stat that is used for most of the common skill rolls AND initiative AND ranged attacks AND AC AND the most commonly used save as Dexterity is currently. On the other hand, don't let any stat be so utterly worthless that one has to wonder why anyone playing a class whose class abilities to not directly derive from it would ever sink a single point into it like Intelligence is in the current edition. Even if it takes changing the ancient sacred cow of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma from which to derive characters for a new set of attributes that the designers find it possible to make equally viable-- all characters from all classes ought to be able to functionally benefit from each of the attributes in a way that would be meaningful and rewarding. That could mean that Fighters with high Intelligence can execute battle tactics or Wizards with high strength can channel that strength into ranged force attacks, but actively work to see that any range of stats matched up with any class could result in something good but different.

* Make sure all classes in the core rulebook are viable, even (or maybe especially) if it means giving a lot of classes similar mechanics or the number of functional "classes" gets reduced and former classes become aspects or paths within other classes. For example, Warlock and Sorcerer could easily become types of Wizards who come by their power by different means which may have a number of different alternations to the class, but still ultimately draw from the same base pool of abilities.

* Give characters more options for customization even if it means their character could mechanically become similar to a character of another class/race or a lot of the customization options are rather situational. In the current edition it seems rare that any real choices are made when leveling up.

* Have a general template of how races function when launching the edition. The current edition has some base races that clearly a lot of consideration has gone into while later additions feel like little or no care has gone into their design and functionality rendering them almost functionally unplayable-- or alternatively, playable exclusively as classes that their description suggests they would virtually never specialize as. Just as much care should go into making sure that one can play and contribute and have fun as an Orc, Hobgoblin, Lizardfolk or Kobold as one can playing an Elf, Dwarf or Halfling. In fact-- in general-- write the whole game with the understanding that sentient, breeding, free-willed humanoids of all sorts are simply races in the world even if they are antagonistic 90% of the time. And allow for the traditional races to also take the antagonistic role (where are the unique stat blocks for when I fight against a group of evil Dwarfs or evil Elves in the Monster Manual?!)

* Have the animals included in the monster manual make even the slightest bit of sense. Don't have a house cat that is very capable of killing a level 1 PC and don't make hyenas way weaker than wolves simply because you are too unimaginative to think of a ranger taking anything but a wolf as a companion and thus designed the wolves specifically to be way stronger than any other similarly sized animal specifically to be the singular functional animal companion choice while utterly neglecting how they sized up to every other animal you put in the book.

* Don't put any weapon that functionally breaks the entire game balance on the standard weapons table like has done with the rapier in 5E. By all means, include flintlock, black powder weapons as options-- but don't let any weapon be so good that the very inclusion of the weapon the game allows a non-standard build of a class to be insanely more powerful than the standard build as in the current edition.

* At the same time, shields should not be nothing but an AC boost. Shields absolutely can and should be used offensively without necessitating any sort of feat or drawing an attack of opportunity or anything of the sort.  Dual-wielding and great weapons should not be the only two viable combat options in the game, especially since they were never the ideal ways to fight historically. And somewhat similarly, spears should not be trash next to swords as they have been in basically every edition-- spears have won far more fights in history than swords ever have and are far better except when it comes to drawings/readying them and close quarters. Warhammers and other heavy, blunt weapons should also be much more viable, particularly against armored opponents. Perhaps instead of determining damage die by weapon, it should be determined by the class and just posit that a Fighter is generally going to be able to use the same weapon more effectively than a Cleric and a Thief can absolutely sneak attack someone with a club to the back of the head as they can a dagger to the kidney and they shouldn't be at a massive penalty for using a weapon not on the preapproved list. Should a Wizard really be fighting at a massive penalty because they are attacking with a sword instead of a "simple weapon" instead of simply doing the same damage as they would have if they were using a 1-handed "simple weapon"?


I am sure there are many other bugs with 5E that I am sure people would like to see fixed in another edition.


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## Sorcerers Apprentice

When was the last time you saw a +1 rapier?


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## commandercrud

Most of these aren't just bugs with 5e, they've been "bugs" with D&D since the beginning.


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## aco175

I would mostly like to see classes each have a role.  I know 5e has kind of done away with roles, but I like to see each class fill a role or be half as powerful, but fill more than one role.  Another thread going on now talks about the bard and how it can be as powerful as all the others classes and more.  To me, no class should be more powerful in their role as the main 4.  

6e could go in another route with only one class and pick packages that give abilities that mimic current powers and spells.  Each player could pick a new power each level and 'multiclass' every PC.  That may be ok since you could stack powers and get more advanced powers as you level.


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## GreenTengu

1







Sorcerers Apprentice said:


> When was the last time you saw a +1 rapier?




Whenever the DM feels like rewarding a weapon that the players will actually use. Although a Short Sword +1 is still a +1 to hit bonus over a standard rapier for any character relying on a rapier.
Reallly-- in the same vein, one could claim that a Great Weapon Specialist Fighter (the only strength build that can keep up with, if not outdo, the Dex build) is balanced with the other options because it is conceivable that the DM will never grant a +1 Great Weapon.



commandercrud said:


> Most of these aren't just bugs with 5e, they've been "bugs" with D&D since the beginning.




What is the point of each edition if not fixing some of the bugs from the previous one?
I mean, besides getting everyone to buy a new set of books.
2nd edition improved on 1st, 3rd edition built on 2nd, 3.5 edition built on 3rd.

Regardless of whether something has been a system flaw since the 1970s, there is no reason not to fix it if it is at all possible without making the system too complicated and unwieldy that it slows the game down


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## aco175

lowkey13 said:


> "I play D&D ... sex-e."



Oi right, get in my belly- I'm so 6e.


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## Tony Vargas

GreenTengu said:


> I understand that most are fairly happy with 5E, but at the same time 6E is fairly inevitable.



I'm not convinced that it is. It depends on how the market treats 5e going forward. If it plateaus, and even if it doesn't keep growing, settles into fairly stable sales - that is, if it "has come back, and is here to stay, baby!" it can continue indefinitely, with only cosmetic new 'editions' now and then for marketing tie-ins, anniversaries, and the like.  
If it runs its course and suddenly drops off like it did back in the days, then the comeback followed by flop could provoke a new edition that's actually new - and different - in the hopes of re-booting the franchise.
I'd hate to have to want the game I love to fail, commercially, in order to even have a shot at some day improving, especially since, the last time it took a shot at improving, it was nearly fatal.   So, mostly, I'm hoping for the first scenario, even though it means I'll likely wander away from D&D again, like I did in the 90s...



> Several years in, what improvements would you like to see with 6E?



Very hypothetically, and not worrying about market considerations like the above, I can agree with the following:


> make sure there are no utter god stats or dump stats.
> Make sure all classes in the core rulebook are viable.
> Give characters more options for customization.
> By all means, include flintlock, black powder weapons as options-- but don't let any weapon be so good that the very inclusion of the weapon <breaks the game>.
> At the same time, shields should not be nothing but an AC boost.
> spears should not be trash next to swords



plus...


> *  instead of determining damage die by weapon, it should be determined by the class and just posit that a Fighter is generally going to be able to use the same weapon more effectively



13th Age does something like this, each class has some weapon options, how effective they are is mainly a function of the class, not the weapon, and the same weapon can perform differently for different classes.  Works nicely.


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## Sacrosanct

I would like to see some changes in this recent thread of the same title, and would like to know that some of these changes never see the light of day 

Now that I've referenced that recent thread, I've just saved a whole bunch of repeat discussion!  Cuz I'm a helper like that


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## dave2008

Several ideas of the top of my head (most of which will never happen):

separate tracks of HP and wound points (we call it bloodied hit points)
more options during character advancement (not a lot more, but a choice every level is good)
All class features are also feats. 
Two or 3 classes max (Martial and Arcane or Martial, Arcane, and Divine).
Other "classes" are just selecting the right feats to create whatever character you want.
Higher level monsters that hit harder. I don't like that a bugbear is deadly at low levels, but an ancient dragon is a cake walk at high levels.
Monsters with a bit more tactics built in (not overboard, but a bit more - similar to what has been published since the MM)
Monster level or CR = player level (1 player = 1 monster of equal level)
Armor with a damage reduction component (DR only comes into effect when wound points do)
More Mechanical Support for Exploration: Optional rules for exploration tactics (similar to PF2e)
More Mechanical support for Social encounters:  optional rules for "social combat"


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## robus

Sacrosanct said:


> I would like to see some changes in this recent thread of the same title, and would like to know that some of these changes never see the light of day
> 
> Now that I've referenced that recent thread, I've just saved a whole bunch of repeat discussion!  Cuz I'm a helper like that




I was going to say, didn't we just do this topic??!


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## Blue

Top level goal: Grow the hobby by retaining existing customers and welcoming new ones.

Breakout: It must be recognizably D&D to the vast majority of existing players, and new players can jump into a game with their own level 1 character with minimal reading and time invested.

6E goals to help with this:
Power Sources
Bring back the concept of Power Sources, and affiliate them with ability scores (or multiple ability scores).

Ability scores
An issue both existing and new players have, for different reasons, is how some ability scores are vital and some aren't. For veteran players, there are concepts that just are sub optimal. A high INT tactical fighter should be reasonable, but the mechanics don't reward the INT and since it comes at an opportunity cost of other ability scores it leads to poor characters. For new players the ability score to class rubric hasn't been burnt into their brains, and their concept may be a high STR, low WIS druid. That won't serve them well at the table alongside more conventionally built characters.

There are a bunch of ways to improve this.

Balancing ability scores so they all have flavorful things that will add to all characters.
Allowing classes to be based off various ability scores might be interesting. Is your bard an INT-based loremaster or a CHR-based performer?
Make chassis classes like "unarmored caster", "warrior/caster", "skirmish/invoker", "caster/invoker" that then pick a power source, which determines the ability scores for their magical aspect. ("Invoker" was a shorthand for a more warlock invocation type.)

Race/Class matchups
Because of ability scores mods from races, and needed ability scores for classes (though lessened from the first issue), take a page from 13th Age (it's d20 OGL) and have the races give out a +2 from a selection of race-appropriate abilities, and class give +2 from a selection of class-appropriate abilities, and they can't be the same. Heck, have background do the same - I'd love to see it become more of an integral part of a character.

Powerful Races
The 5e races don't have a lot that impacts mechanically (outside of ability scores). Make race choice more meaningful by having more features, including some that don't come online until later levels or activated by feat.

This increased design space will allow more powerful races then currently allowed, such as large races and flying races - and being so will have a real opportunity cost in not picking one of the other races.

Multiclassing
I'm a fan of 5e multiclassing, but a lot don't. It also is really easy for a new player to shoot themselves in the foot. So take away multiclassing and replacing it with feats that allow substitution of features from another class (so a "mostly one with a bit of another') as well as some hybrid classes (much like the paladin is now).

Will classes allowing Power Sources, you can have the skirmisher/caster picking Arcane for a INT based arcane trickster type goodness, or Primal (druid) for WIS based ranger-like goodness, etc.

Since there is no more need to caster levels to be able to add in some ways like in 5e (sadness - I like that design space), you can also step away from the "spellification" of classes and give back special abilities to classes without making them spells.

Customization
Existing players want customization, new player need a low-barrier-to-entry which does not include reading through a lot of customization options and making irrevocable choices based on theoretical knowledge.
A solution is to add in a lot of customization later in play, with 1st level giving strong foundation instead.  (No more subclasses that grant foundational things at 3rd level.)  What customization is granted at 1st should have options that get retrained.  (Not saying everything can be retrained, but perhaps 1st level options can be trained when you gain 2nd or 3rd.)

So a new player picks race (who you were born as), background (who were were raised as) and class + Power Source (who you are now), plus arranges ability scores and picks skills.

Customization comes in for everyone at 2nd and onward, and at a "character level" point of view, not just for your class.

Recovery
Better balance between at-will and other resource recovery/management models, with more knobs for the DM to tweak depending on their game style.

Keep
Concentration, Upcasting, Bounded Accuracy


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## Tony Vargas

commandercrud said:


> Most of these aren't just bugs with 5e, they've been "bugs" with D&D since the beginning.



And some bugs were intentionally brought back by 5e, because they'd been with D&D so long, it just wasn't D&D without 'em. ;P


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## Tonguez

As a former player of GURPS It does amuse me that eveytime these ‘make a better DnD’ threads comes out class customisation is always the big feature. I came back over to 3e because I liked the use of Feats and agree that having class features be Feats would be great but then why have Classes at all?

Is fixed Character Class the core feature that makes DnD?


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## Blue

No critiques, just questions expanding my understanding.



dave2008 said:


> All class features are also feats.




How do you picture class features to scale?

For example, right now we have Martial Adept as a Battlemaster class feature.  It gives less and does not scale.

Would an Sneak Attack feat be a set +1d6 per turn?

Or do you expect them to scale over time, just not as fast as the primary class?

In other words, does one feat taken at 12th give you all the sneak attack, or is that several feats worth so someone else might have a little sneak attack and a little rage. (Classic Conan from the books.)



dave2008 said:


> Two or 3 classes max (Martial and Arcane or Martial, Arcane, and Divine).
> Other "classes" are just selecting the right feats to create whatever character you want.




Are you picturing any multiclassing? For example is a paladin a Martial with feats, or multiclassing Martial and Divine?
(Can we add Primal for druids? And for the feats that could make a ranger.)

You mention Martial, are you envisioning one class that covers rogues, barbarians, knights, and archers? Would there be a benefit for more than one type of Martial class?


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## Tony Vargas

Tonguez said:


> Is fixed Character Class the core feature that makes DnD?



Broken character classes are a core feature that makes D&D.


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## Bacon Bits

The only major issue I see with 5e from a design perspective is with some of the rest and recovery mechanics.

Fighter, Warlock, and Monk all heavily rely on short rests _much_ more than the other classes. They need short rests to operate effectively in every combat. That requirement forces encounter design to increase the number of encounters per day so that short rests become more valuable, but to do that you've got to reduce the overall difficulty of encounters. Now you're running into a wall that makes the game feel less flexible to run as a DM.

If your game table likes 2-3 Deadly to Deadly+ encounters all the time, then Fighter, Warlock, and Monk begin to lag behind the other classes. This is an issue of game flexibility that hasn't been an issue before. The game _should_ be able to accommodate that. In the past, the limitation on combat adventuring was always how much healing you had. It doesn't matter how fast or how slow it was, eventually you had to hole up and heal up and recover all your abilities. Now they've done two things: reduce how many abilities _some classes_ get and link _those classes' abilities_ to short resting. Now you've got natural conflict about how often to rest and what type of rest to take. I've seen tables argue about it. The Fighter wants to stop and rest because _he has nothing cool to do for the rest of the day_, while everyone else says, "the Cleric can heal you; let's keep going." It's like going on a car ride with 3 men and 1 pregnant woman: there's going to be an argument about stopping to pee.

It also means, somewhat paradoxically, that Fighters, Warlocks, and Monks are terrible at long chases or sustained time pressures! If you're in a situation where you're going to face a long series of encounters and you can't short rest due to time, those three classes are much more limited. Since short rests take so long and long rests are unavoidable due to exhaustion, these three classes have a significant disadvantage that isn't clear from first glance. Since one of those classes -- namely, Fighter -- is _the most popular class in the game_ it's kind of a significant design issue. Fortunately, martial classes are very potent in 5e in relative terms, and Warlocks have the highest damage cantrip in the game, so it's a little easier to get past.


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## MechaTarrasque

Make every class TAD (two attribute dependent), maybe even the class is based on 1 attribute, but each subclass is based on another.  Then if you think one attribute is too good, don't match it up with the second best one (sorry dex classes don't get wis subclasses).


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## Tony Vargas

Bacon Bits said:


> Fighter, Warlock, and Monk all heavily rely on short rests _much_ more than the other classes.



Well, BM fighter, particularly, with short-rest CS dice.  EK has added daily resources.  Champion at-will.



> If your game table likes 2-3 Deadly to Deadly+ encounters all the time, then Fighter, Warlock, and Monk begin to lag behind the other classes. This is an issue of game flexibility that hasn't been an issue before.



Sure it has. It's a perennial issue, only slightly perturbed for a couple of years c2009.  It's just in the past the it was between Vancian and all-at-will classes, rather than a three-way between Daily, short-rest, and long-rest.  (Though, there were further complications in 3e, as there were both daily classes that needed rests, an daily classes that just _dinged_ at a certain time each day.)



> The game _should_ be able to accommodate that.



In theory.  In practice it's virtually never done so.



> It also means, somewhat paradoxically, that Fighters, Warlocks, and Monks are terrible at long chases or sustained time pressures! If you're in a situation where you're going to face a long series of encounters and you can't short rest due to time, those three classes are much more limited.   Since short rests take so long and long rests are unavoidable due to exhaustion,



Ouch.  Yeah, you've got a point there.  The 1hr "short" rest is problematic, it's just not that short, it doesn't fit narratively into many circumstances, and when it does, it's probably as practical - and more beneficial - to take a long rest.   







> these three classes have a significant disadvantage that isn't clear from first glance. Since one of those classes -- namely, Fighter -- is _the most popular class in the game_ it's kind of a significant design issue.



 There's no point making a trap that no one will ever walk into, now is there?


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## Mistwell

You: "*What Improvements Would You Want with 6E"*
Me: "*Wait, we're already trying to improve on 6E? Before it's even written?*"


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## Zardnaar

I don't think encounter or daily type mechanics are a problem.

They don't play nice together though. I regard the fighter more shirt rest. 

 I like it when players design a party rather than play whatever.

Fighter
Monk
Warlock

There's your warrior, artillery, skirmisher roles covered throw in a light cleric or whatever and it's a short rest party.


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## dave2008

Blue said:


> No critiques, just questions expanding my understanding.
> 
> 
> 
> How do you picture class features to scale?
> 
> For example, right now we have Martial Adept as a Battlemaster class feature.  It gives less and does not scale.
> 
> Would an Sneak Attack feat be a set +1d6 per turn?
> 
> Or do you expect them to scale over time, just not as fast as the primary class?
> 
> In other words, does one feat taken at 12th give you all the sneak attack, or is that several feats worth so someone else might have a little sneak attack and a little rage. (Classic Conan from the books.)



I don't know exactly, this is a complete re-write concept.  I am not talking about taking 5e class features and make them feats.  I am saying when you design the game you make it so that class features a actually feats.  However, I imagine some feats scale and some don't.  So some feats have a fixed level and/or prerequisites (like PF2e) and others are general and always applicable (like 5e).




Blue said:


> Are you picturing any multiclassing? For example is a paladin a Martial with feats, or multiclassing Martial and Divine?
> (Can we add Primal for druids? And for the feats that could make a ranger.)



Generally speaking all feats are available to all classes (some feats may have level or prerequisite requirements).  It is basically a classless system.  You class is just a set group of feats you get a first level.  Then it is modified at every level thereafter.  A "paladin" might start as a martial a level one, then take the divine caster feat at level 2 or something similar.  Or you could have the priest background (level 0) and decided your life as an adventure is to be a fighter so your level 1 class is Martial, but you would have some divine elements from your background.  You can think pick and chose how much fighter and how much cleric you want at each level.



Blue said:


> You mention Martial, are you envisioning one class that covers rogues, barbarians, knights, and archers? Would there be a benefit for more than one type of Martial class?



 Yes, one class with options to modify the class via feats into a barbarian, a ranger, a rogue, etc.


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## schneeland

Oh, I have lots of ideas - I'm just not sure if it would still be recognizable as D&D afterwards. So unless they want to design the D&D to end all D&D, they probably better not base 6e on my ideas 

Also, a) as @Sacrosanct mentioned, there was an idea collection/wish list thread not too long ago, b) independent of any mechanical stuff, I would mainly love to see WotC license out their worlds, spells and monsters on reasonable terms, so I can fight Beholders, Mind Flayers and Owlbears in the Forgotten Realms with systems other than D&D (probably not going to happen either).


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## Zardnaar

It would be a tweak to 5E. 

 Some classes and races buffed, tweaked feats and spells. Dex and Int looked at along with saving throws.

Damage scaling would be looked at as well or cantrips don't scale. Damage spells might scale like ye good old days or at the same rate as cantrips.

 Or if you use a higher level slot you get 2 dice.


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## Lanefan

GreenTengu said:


> 2nd edition improved on 1st, 3rd edition built on 2nd, 3.5 edition built on 3rd.



Those are all very debatable assertions... 

They're each derived from the one(s) before, yes, but whether those derivations were improvements or faults is a very open question.


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## Lanefan

Whatever happens, my only hope is that for 6e they do the following:

Design an extremely basic but still playable framework;
Live up to the plug-in rules modularity idea that was originally promised for 5e;
Look over threads like these from here and other sources;
Take the most commonly-requested ideas* and design standalone rules modules around them; and then
Playtest the effing hell out of the whole lot in every combination before release.

That way everyone can build the game they want, more or less, via their choice of rules modules.  Further, the game as a whole becomes or remains flexible enough to handle lots of different playstyles and preferences.

Oh, and provide complete conversion guides to all previous editions such that material from any prior edition can relatively easily be converted to 6e.

* - even if these ideas outright oppose each other e.g. some might want a more lethal and gritty game, others a non-lethal game; these can each be plug-in modules.


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## Arnwolf666

Making class features feats is the worse idea I ever heard. I want distinct class features. Only rogues sneak attack and have expertise. Only barbarians rage. And etc. 

I would like to see meta magic go back to the wizard and sorcerers focus more on bloodline related abilities. 

I would be happy for feats to go to hell and just develop the classes better. 

That’s just my opinion. Skills and powers anyone !!! Worse book ever.


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## 5atbu

Is PF2 really 6e?


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## Lanefan

Arnwolf666 said:


> Making class features feats is the worse idea I ever heard. I want *distance* class features. Only rogues sneak attack and have expertise. Only barbarians rage. And etc.
> 
> I would like to see meta magic go back to the wizard and sorcerers focus more on bloodline related abilities.
> 
> I would be happy for feats to go to hell and just develop the classes better.
> 
> That’s just my opinion. Skills and powers anyone !!! Worse book ever.



I think you mean 'distinct' class features. 

Otherwise, I'm largely in agreement.


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## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> They're each derived from the one(s) before, yes, but whether those derivations were improvements or faults is a very open question.



1e through 3.5?  1e > 2e was mostly clean & polish.  2e > 3e was 'streamlining' (I wouldn't have put it that way before Tweet's post, I'd've said "consolidation"). 

You can like or dislike them, but 2e was a slicker product than 1e, and 3e a cleaner one, mechanically (and 4e, disastrously better-balanced).  Each an improvement in it's own way...



GreenTengu said:


> What is the point of each edition if not fixing some of the bugs from the previous one?



Putting them back. That's what 5e did.  For the sake of tradition and Big Tents &c. 

So 5e was certainly better than it's predecessors - _better positioned for the market_.
And, let's face it, that's what pays the rent.


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## Lanefan

Tony Vargas said:


> 1e through 3.5?  1e > 2e was mostly clean & polish.  2e > 3e was 'streamlining' (I wouldn't have put it that way before Tweet's post, I'd've said "consolidation").
> 
> You can like or dislike them, but 2e was a slicker product than 1e, and 3e a cleaner one, mechanically (and 4e, disastrously better-balanced).  Each an improvement in it's own way...



And at the same time, each a step backward in another way.

2e (on original release) was slicker than 1e, but also bland as hell and far too obviously pandering to the satanic panic crowd.
3e (on original release) was a streamlining of 2e, but went overboard with it and threw out some very good standalone mechanics from the earlier editions.
4e (on original release) was...well, not entirely complete; and at the same time was a much bigger jump from its predecessor than any previous edition jump had been - a poor combination no matter how one looks at it.
5e (on original release) was a deliberate attempt* to steer a course somewhere between 3e and 4e, while in theory adding to both.

* - one can, of course, argue till midnight as to whether this attempt has thus far been successful or not - if one cares.


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## Arnwolf666

Lanefan said:


> I think you mean 'distinct' class features.
> 
> Otherwise, I'm largely in agreement.




Corrected. Thank you.


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## Parmandur

GreenTengu said:


> What is the point of each edition if not fixing some of the bugs from the previous one?




There is no point in new editions, which WotC has finally figured out. Ergo, a 6E in any meaningful sense is implausible.

If there were a 6E, I'd like to see the core rules stay just as with 5E, to the extent that 5E characters could be brought to a 6E table or 6E characters run Princes of the Apocalypse without issue. The significant changes I'd like to see would be:


removing Feats and 3.x multiclassing from the game
Have Subclass be a Level 1 choice for all Classes
putting in Themes as an alternative Variant to ASI
Provide a Tier power-up to Backgrounds at the appropriate Levels, as with the Ravnica Guilds
Put Group Patrons ala Enerron into the core books
Make favored terrain be the Subclass for the Ranger: Highlander Rangers from the Mountains, Steppe Rider Rangers from the Grasslands, etc.


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## Bacon Bits

Tony Vargas said:


> Well, BM fighter, particularly, with short-rest CS dice.  EK has added daily resources.  Champion at-will.




1/3 casters don't have nearly enough resources to count as being daily powers. Getting 2nd level spells at level 7 and 3rd level spells at level 13 is _absurdly_ slow.

And having played a Champion level 1-19, calling anything they get before level 18 an "at-will power" is _really_ stretching that definition. No, I never felt weak, but without the minimal amount of decision making required to use GWM, I would never have made it past level 5 with that class. Playing a champion, you feel like you have two choices to make and that's it: when to Second Wind (yay ) and when to Action Surge. Since Action Surge is best early on (best defense is a good offense) you run into the problem that if you make a mistake, you're stuck until the next long rest.



> Sure it has. It's a perennial issue, only slightly perturbed for a couple of years c2009.




You're missing my point. It's been an issue, yes, but it's not been one which has caused _party conflict_. It's never worked at cross-purposes. It's been an artifact of the game, but not a flaw of design. It hasn't been a problem that caused issues in game play. Well, excepting the "5 minute work day" that irritates DMs, but if that was an issue in 4e then that's basically impossible to avoid.

In 1e/2e/3e/4e, when the Fighter wanted to stop because they were out of hp, you stopped because nobody else wants the Fighter's role of high AC, high hp, and consistent damage. The "meat shield" idiom is not an unwarranted one. When the spellcasters want to stop, the Fighter does because not only does he wants the Wizard's big guns, he wants the Clerics fast healing and combat healing. Not only do the requirements to rest dovetail into what each class does for the others, nobody is really arguing about _how long_ to rest, either. [Excepting 1e's extremely slow spell recovery, but I don't think I ever played in a campaign that didn't use 100% daily spell slot recovery.]

In 5e, you can run into situations where the Fighter/Warlock/Monk wants to stop because their active resources need replenishing, but the Barbarian/Bard/Cleric/Druid/Rogue/Paladin/Wizard/etc. _don't_ want to stop because not only are they mostly full on resources, but the role that a Fighter/Warlock/Monk is expected to fill int the party -- tank, blaster, or skirmisher -- isn't significantly impaired. The worst part is that they'll be more likely to be bored and they player might feel less in the spotlight. It doesn't make your character worse, it just makes playing your character _feel_ worse. Unfortunately, that actually _worse _from a design perspective.



> Ouch.  Yeah, you've got a point there.  The 1hr "short" rest is problematic, it's just not that short, it doesn't fit narratively into many circumstances, and when it does, it's probably as practical - and more beneficial - to take a long rest.




It's somewhat ironic because, in my observation, the number one recommendation that DMs seem to get when they ask, "How do I run 6-8 encounters a day when my party keeps stopping after 2-4," is, "Use time pressure to force them to keep going." Nearly any time pressure that is urgent enough to prevent them from long resting is also going to prevent them from short resting every other encounter!



> There's no point making a trap that no one will ever walk into, now is there?




It would be less of an issue if there were _more_ classes that relied on short rests for most of their interesting, active abilities. The problem is that, with only 3 classes with the issue, many groups will have 1 short rest class and 3-4 long rest classes (or the one at-will class, Rogue). So the short rest player is always out-voted.

There's a *third problem* with short rests, and this one relates to Hit Dice.

One of the last concessions made at the end of playtesting was to dial back the number of Hit Dice recovered with a long rest. Originally, you recovered all of them with a long rest. They switched it to only recovering half with a long rest to appease players who wanted slower recovery.

That was also a design mistake. The consequence is that, over the long term, filling your day with short rests to recover hit points and continue adventuring _carries diminishing returns_.

Say you're a 10th level whatever. You short rest and expend 5 Hit Dice to recover your hp. Later, you rest again and spend another 4 Hit Dice to recover hp, and you keep going. Later you long rest. Great! This is what the game wanted you to do! Except, wait. You only recover 5 HD overnight. You'll only have _6_ HD tomorrow, but adventuring today and recovering with short rests cost _9_ HD. Assuming the next day is equally difficult, I should expect to be unable to continue adventuring tomorrow at my _second_ rest opportunity (i.e., short, long) even though I had _three_ rest opportunities today (i.e., short, short, long).

Now, I agree that this is very realistic. Getting worn down over time is thematic, flavorful, and challenging. Indeed, I would even agree that this is an overall good design... except when your game includes classes that rely on short rests.

Reduced HD recovery _discourages_ short resting day after day after day. Short resting is now not as sustainable. You'll either need to go more encounters between rests, or else just have fewer encounters per day even if they have the same difficulty. If you do the former, then short rest classes have fewer chances to recover resources over the same number of encounters. That is, they have fewer ability uses each day. If you do the latter, long rest characters will have the same amount of resources to use over fewer encounters. That is, they have fewer ability targets each day.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Bacon Bits said:


> It's been an issue, yes, but it's not been one which has caused _party conflict_. It's never worked at cross-purposes.



Sure it has.  I mean, I get that the conflict would generally be resolved, eventually, by "hey, we're out of healing" or "hey, you can come with me when I teleport or not" but, yeah, there was conflict. 
And, when there wasn't, and the party just went along with the 5MWD, there was (except for the minor 4e blip) significant class imbalance, as a consequence.



> It's been an artifact of the game, but not a flaw of design.



 Meh, only difference between flaw & artifact in that since is spin.  Yes, resource disparity is an artifact of the system, yes, it's a flaw, whether between daily and at-will, or among short rest, long rest, and at-will.



> In 1e/2e/3e/4e, when the Fighter wanted to stop because they were out of hp, you stopped because nobody else wants the Fighter's role of high AC, high hp, and consistent(ly taking?) damage.



Erm… was it the fighter that wanted to stop?  I mean, in 3e, he just needs you to drain another WoCLW for him, in 4e he's got half again anyone else's hit points and double their surges, and spends 'em on a short rest - coincidentally, he needed 5 minutes, either way, and he's good to go.



> In 5e, you can run into situations where the Fighter/Warlock/Monk wants to stop because their active resources need replenishing, but the Barbarian/Bard/Cleric/Druid/Rogue/Paladin/Wizard/etc. _don't_ want to stop because not only are they mostly full on resources, but the role that a Fighter/Warlock/Monk is expected to fill int the party -- tank, blaster, or skirmisher -- isn't significantly impaired. The worst part is that they'll be more likely to be bored and they player might feel less in the spotlight. It doesn't make your character worse, it just makes playing your character _feel_ worse. Unfortunately, that actually _worse _from a design perspective.



I agree, though, that there's an added nuance to the issues, this time around, because short rests are so, well, not-short...
...there is one mitigating factor, though, in that anyone who's been hurt, even if they've no other short-rest resources, might benefit from spending HD, similar to running out of healing before, but less pronounced.



> It's somewhat ironic because, in my observation, the number one recommendation that DMs seem to get when they ask, "How do I run 6-8 encounters a day when my party keeps stopping after 2-4," is, "Use time pressure to force them to keep going." Nearly any time pressure that is urgent enough to prevent them from long resting is also going to prevent them from short resting every other encounter!



Yeah, time pressure is not /that/ simple a tool. 

The other advice is "change the length of rests."  OK, usually it's "use the gritty variant," but you could go the other way and change short rests to a more manageable 5 or 10 minutes or something... really, though, the encounter/daily dichotomy is a *lot* easier to manage than the short/long dichotomy.



> It would be less of an issue if there were _more_ classes that relied on short rests for most of their interesting, active abilities. The problem is that, with only 3 classes with the issue, many groups will have 1 short rest class and 3-4 long rest classes (or the one at-will class, Rogue). So the short rest player is always out-voted.



OTOH, one of those three /is/ the most popular class in the game, and it's not that unusually to see at least two fighters in the party.  Monks and Warlocks maybe not so much.  So it's really an issue at the party-composition level, and, if you're aware of it, you might, session 0, recommend the players address it, right there, either by agreeing to respect each class's needs, or by picking classes with more compatible resource mixes - Barbarian or Paladin instead of Fighter, for instance.



> There's a *third problem* with short rests, and this one relates to Hit Dice.
> One of the last concessions made at the end of playtesting was to dial back the number of Hit Dice recovered with a long rest. Originally, you recovered all of them with a long rest. They switched it to only recovering half with a long rest to appease players who wanted slower recovery.



Which is a little odd, honestly (since doesn't the 'gritty' variant do that same thing for them in a big way, too?), but at least easily changed.



> Now, I agree that this is very realistic.



Mildly, perhaps?  ....nah, not especially.  Again, if they're that put out they can throw the gritty switch and run at a slower pace.


> That was also a design mistake. The consequence is that, over the long term, filling your day with short rests to recover hit points and continue adventuring _carries diminishing returns_.



Again, especially if the DM resorts to "time pressure?"


----------



## dave2008

Tonguez said:


> I came back over to 3e because I liked the use of Feats and agree that having class features be Feats would be great but then why have Classes at all?



That is basically where I am at.  I explained in another post, but I would go essentially classes with "quick builds" that follow the traditional classes.


Tonguez said:


> Is fixed Character Class the core feature that makes DnD?



 Unfortunately I think it is.  The only way to get a classless system is, IMO, to design it as classless but provide "archetypes" that model the traditional classes.  These archetypes are really just quick build guidelines to fit a particular class theme.


----------



## dave2008

Arnwolf666 said:


> Making class features feats is the worse idea I ever heard. I want distinct class features. Only rogues sneak attack and have expertise. Only barbarians rage. And etc.
> 
> I would like to see meta magic go back to the wizard and sorcerers focus more on bloodline related abilities.
> 
> I would be happy for feats to go to hell and just develop the classes better.
> 
> That’s just my opinion. Skills and powers anyone !!! Worse book ever.



Just because you don't like something doesn't make the idea bad.


5atbu said:


> Is PF2 really 6e?



No, it is right there in the name


----------



## pickin_grinnin

Less background textures/colors and slightly larger text in the print books would be a great thing for us old-timers.


----------



## Shiroiken

There are many things that I would love to see changed for a 6E, making it my ideal edition of D&D. I'm also sure that many posters could say the same. The problem is that these idealized editions would completely fail, because they're too detailed. 5E works well because it has a fairly simple framework that each DM can build off of, and it appeals to the largest base possible (as shown by the playtest and surveys).

That said, a few changes to the general setup of 5E would be good when they do another edition. Most of these changes wouldn't be a major shift away from the current framework, but might require a new edition to implement.

*Ability Scores - balance the saves across all of them, so that having a low ability score means you're vulnerable to something. Ideally a use for each ability score outside of class abilities would be nice (Int is a common dump stat, for example).

*Arms & Armor - for the love of Gygax, PLEASE balance these, with some obvious exceptions acceptable (clubs and hide armor being bad are fine, since they're supposed to be crappy).

*Encounter Guidelines - set a reasonable assumption based on level. For example, right now 6-8 encounters is completely unrealistic at low levels, especially considering that you're unlikely to take more than 1 short rest per long rest. Set it at about 4 for lower levels, then increasing it until you're able to handle about 10 encounters per long rest at epic tier. While this doesn't actually affect my game (I don't use encounter guidelines), this has been a contentious issue online.

*Fix the Ranger - I like the PHB ranger more than any of the revised options, but the key IMO is that you don't get enough sworn enemies and terrains. Also, gaining a combat benefit against your favorite enemy would be nice.


----------



## teitan

I don’t want a 6e. I want a slight reset with an improved action economy similar to Pathfinder 2e. Expansion of subclass options and backgrounds, most popular new races added into the core rule book. Things like that rather than a revamp. New art. Maybe a section in the DMG on Phandelver or a similar location in the Realms. Very little needs done to 5e really.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

So while most points are hinting to little problems in 5e they are blown way out of proportion.


----------



## dave2008

teitan said:


> I don’t want a 6e. I want a slight reset with an improved action economy similar to Pathfinder 2e. Expansion of subclass options and backgrounds, most popular new races added into the core rule book. Things like that rather than a revamp. New art. Maybe a section in the DMG on Phandelver or a similar location in the Realms. Very little needs done to 5e really.



Adopting the PF2e action economy would be a major re-write and warrant a new edition.


----------



## teitan

I don’t see how it would be a major rewrite. It wasn’t a major rewrite changing the action economy in 3e to the action economy of 3.5. It seems more a simplification


----------



## GreenTengu

teitan said:


> I don’t want a 6e. I want a slight reset with an improved action economy similar to Pathfinder 2e. Expansion of subclass options and backgrounds, most popular new races added into the core rule book. Things like that rather than a revamp. New art. Maybe a section in the DMG on Phandelver or a similar location in the Realms. Very little needs done to 5e really.




You cannot fix the broken weapons table, fix that certain classes and races are just trash because no thought or care was put into them, that Intelligence is an utterly worthless attribute that no one has any reason to have higher than 8 while Dexterity is a god attribute that allows you to have the highest AC and best save without any gold investment, go first, hit more often and deal more damage than any other stat options in both ranged and melee or that there is basically a single "right" way to arrange your stats and choose your weapons if you want to be more effective and anything else in the game is just a trap that will set you possibly the equivalent of an entire level behind in effectiveness than if you choose the "right"option.

None of that is fixable by adopting some other actin economy or adding more bloat to the game. All additional subclass options are either broken or so subpar that literally no one ever uses them and the paper they are printed on is just wasted.

Now maybe one can fix quite a lot of it with a 5.5 Edition instead of a 6 Edition. Maybe.
One would have to rewrite the Ranger from nearly scratch, particularly the Beastmaster, and rewrite basically all the races from Volo's and make several tweaks even to the PHB ones. But, sure-- that could be a 5.5.

But I don't see one fixing the insane brokenness of the Dexterity or the uselessness of Intelligence while it would still be 5E. One would have to reassign Intiative and Ranged Attacks to other attributes, remove the rapier from the weapons table, and spread out which save various attacks target so they are more evenly distributed. And similarly give Intelligence literally any other function than a bunch of skills that amount to "ask the DM for more information because you don't know what you are supposed to be doing."


----------



## dave2008

teitan said:


> I don’t see how it would be a major rewrite. It wasn’t a major rewrite changing the action economy in 3e to the action economy of 3.5. It seems more a simplification



I've already looked into adding it to my 5e games and it affects every class in multiple ways.  Along with reassigning all move and bonus actions, standard actions (multiattack?), and reactions you have to consider all spells and many class features.  Then, ideally, like PF2e there are features and abilities that take advantage of this new action economy.  Not to mention legendary actions and other odd balls.  You could simply mash into the current system, but that would not be doing the concept justice.


----------



## snickersnax

I want:

1) Mechanics that allow for some BBEGs to be viable solitary opponents.

2) Easy variant options for low-magic world building.

3) Easy variant options for hard mode.

4) A consistency editing pass so that when I read the fluff and compare the mechanics I'm not scratching my head and wondering WTF.  A second pass for making ability names actually do what they sound like they do.

5) An index that doesn't self reference.

6) Fix bad ideas:  hit point bloat, intelligence dump stat, whack-a-mole healing


----------



## Arnwolf666

Bacon Bits said:


> 1/3 casters don't have nearly enough resources to count as being daily powers. Getting 2nd level spells at level 7 and 3rd level spells at level 13 is _absurdly_ slow.
> 
> And having played a Champion level 1-19, calling anything they get before level 18 an "at-will power" is _really_ stretching that definition. No, I never felt weak, but without the minimal amount of decision making required to use GWM, I would never have made it past level 5 with that class. Playing a champion, you feel like you have two choices to make and that's it: when to Second Wind (yay ) and when to Action Surge. Since Action Surge is best early on (best defense is a good offense) you run into the problem that if you make a mistake, you're stuck until the next long rest.
> 
> 
> 
> You're missing my point. It's been an issue, yes, but it's not been one which has caused _party conflict_. It's never worked at cross-purposes. It's been an artifact of the game, but not a flaw of design. It hasn't been a problem that caused issues in game play. Well, excepting the "5 minute work day" that irritates DMs, but if that was an issue in 4e then that's basically impossible to avoid.
> 
> In 1e/2e/3e/4e, when the Fighter wanted to stop because they were out of hp, you stopped because nobody else wants the Fighter's role of high AC, high hp, and consistent damage. The "meat shield" idiom is not an unwarranted one. When the spellcasters want to stop, the Fighter does because not only does he wants the Wizard's big guns, he wants the Clerics fast healing and combat healing. Not only do the requirements to rest dovetail into what each class does for the others, nobody is really arguing about _how long_ to rest, either. [Excepting 1e's extremely slow spell recovery, but I don't think I ever played in a campaign that didn't use 100% daily spell slot recovery.]
> 
> In 5e, you can run into situations where the Fighter/Warlock/Monk wants to stop because their active resources need replenishing, but the Barbarian/Bard/Cleric/Druid/Rogue/Paladin/Wizard/etc. _don't_ want to stop because not only are they mostly full on resources, but the role that a Fighter/Warlock/Monk is expected to fill int the party -- tank, blaster, or skirmisher -- isn't significantly impaired. The worst part is that they'll be more likely to be bored and they player might feel less in the spotlight. It doesn't make your character worse, it just makes playing your character _feel_ worse. Unfortunately, that actually _worse _from a design perspective.
> 
> 
> 
> It's somewhat ironic because, in my observation, the number one recommendation that DMs seem to get when they ask, "How do I run 6-8 encounters a day when my party keeps stopping after 2-4," is, "Use time pressure to force them to keep going." Nearly any time pressure that is urgent enough to prevent them from long resting is also going to prevent them from short resting every other encounter!
> 
> 
> 
> It would be less of an issue if there were _more_ classes that relied on short rests for most of their interesting, active abilities. The problem is that, with only 3 classes with the issue, many groups will have 1 short rest class and 3-4 long rest classes (or the one at-will class, Rogue). So the short rest player is always out-voted.
> 
> There's a *third problem* with short rests, and this one relates to Hit Dice.
> 
> One of the last concessions made at the end of playtesting was to dial back the number of Hit Dice recovered with a long rest. Originally, you recovered all of them with a long rest. They switched it to only recovering half with a long rest to appease players who wanted slower recovery.
> 
> That was also a design mistake. The consequence is that, over the long term, filling your day with short rests to recover hit points and continue adventuring _carries diminishing returns_.
> 
> Say you're a 10th level whatever. You short rest and expend 5 Hit Dice to recover your hp. Later, you rest again and spend another 4 Hit Dice to recover hp, and you keep going. Later you long rest. Great! This is what the game wanted you to do! Except, wait. You only recover 5 HD overnight. You'll only have _6_ HD tomorrow, but adventuring today and recovering with short rests cost _9_ HD. Assuming the next day is equally difficult, I should expect to be unable to continue adventuring tomorrow at my _second_ rest opportunity (i.e., short, long) even though I had _three_ rest opportunities today (i.e., short, short, long).
> 
> Now, I agree that this is very realistic. Getting worn down over time is thematic, flavorful, and challenging. Indeed, I would even agree that this is an overall good design... except when your game includes classes that rely on short rests.
> 
> Reduced HD recovery _discourages_ short resting day after day after day. Short resting is now not as sustainable. You'll either need to go more encounters between rests, or else just have fewer encounters per day even if they have the same difficulty. If you do the former, then short rest classes have fewer chances to recover resources over the same number of encounters. That is, they have fewer ability uses each day. If you do the latter, long rest characters will have the same amount of resources to use over fewer encounters. That is, they have fewer ability targets each day.




With the availability of healing in this edition I don’t find this an issue.


----------



## Don Durito

The 5 minute Work day is not impossible to resolve.  13th Age does it easily.  You just make the reset indepedent of actual time and dependent on the number of encounters that take place, with the GM adjusting as needed.

Now whether you'd prefer the 5 minute work day (In order to clutch desperately at some last fragments of real world plausibility) to that solution is another issue.  But the problem _has_ been solved.


----------



## Arnwolf666

Don Durito said:


> The 5 minute Work day is not impossible to resolve.  13th Age does it easily.  You just make the reset indepedent of actual time and dependent on the number of encounters that take place, with the GM adjusting as needed.
> 
> Now whether you'd prefer the 5 minute work day (In order to clutch desperately at some last fragments of real world plausibility) to that solution is another issue.  But the problem _has_ been solved.




That’s one solution that works.  I wonder about people that have been writing adventures 20+ years. I never had a problem with any edition. It was all a matter of constructing the encounters and adventures. And really wasn’t that hard with practice. Is this a phenomenon of people that play prepublished adventures?


----------



## Don Durito

Arnwolf666 said:


> That’s one solution that works.  I wonder about people that have been writing adventures 20+ years. I never had a problem with any edition. It was all a matter of construction the encounters and adventures. And really wasn’t that hard with practice. Is this a phenomenon of people that play prepublished adventures?



My experience as a player (I won't run 5E - I've got far better options) is that GMs just don't grok the importance of spacing out rests for the at-will short rest characters.  It's common in my experience to have encounters during travel, where there are two or three full nights before the next one and the rest variant isn't used.  Players quickly learn that they can get away with being awesome.  And unless you're doing dedicated dungeon delving it's very easy for combats to drop down to one or two a day (In an urban or wilderness adventure you might get in 4 combats in a session but they won't necessarily be on the same day in game time).

The full hour for the short rest is an annoying amount of time to factor in.  If you're trying to make time urgent to keep players from taking a long rest - you need to make it not so urgent that PCs can't also stop and sit around for an hour.

And even if you get it right you're still going to have players (quite reasonably) constantly asking or weighing up whether they have time for a rest, and how long that rest can be.  This _alone_ is annoying enough to just go to the 13th Age solution.


----------



## Arnwolf666

I have played 13th age quite a bit. And frankly enjoyed it. I enjoy lots of games though. My players were always afraid to burn resources. And I do alot of urban and wilderness adventures. I’m kind of sick of dungeons. But I digress. My players never know if it will be a 1 encounter day or a 8+ encounter day. Just because they use an important daily ability doesn’t mean something will happen to put them in a time crunch. I’ve had many a player curse that they used certain abilities not expecting to need them later. 

I do notice younger players burning spell slots early on and faster than older players. My older players are always afraid they will need it later.


----------



## CleverNickName

Really my only issues with 5E are that healing is too easy, and there aren't any monster templates.  So if they fix those problems integrate these preferences of mine, I'd be happy.

But since those two changes aren't enough to merit an entire new edition, they would have to change a bunch of other stuff along with them.  That would mean a lot of things that I like about 5E right now would get changed or removed in 6E.  I haven't really cared for any even-numbered edition of D&D; this would set me up to continue that unfortunate trend.


----------



## Arnwolf666

CleverNickName said:


> Really my only issues with 5E are that healing is too easy, and there aren't any monster templates.  So if they fix those problems integrate these preferences of mine, I'd be happy.
> 
> But since those two changes aren't enough to merit an entire new edition, they would have to change a bunch of other stuff along with them.  That would mean a lot of things that I like about 5E right now would get changed or removed in 6E.  I haven't really cared for any even-numbered edition of D&D; this would set me up to continue that unfortunate trend.




Monster templates would be a nice thing to put into a new monster manual. A monster manual should be more than a list of monsters. They should be helping us build monsters.


----------



## Raith5

I dont have a rush for 6e but I would eventually like to see:


more character options at lower levels where feats are more for breadth rather the depth.
more tactical options for martial types
more options and out of turn attacks and surprises for monsters (especially solos).
All directed spells should be roll to hit rather than saves.
long and slow rest breakdown should be within the system rather than hardwired into the classes

I know it goes against the history of D&D but I think there needs to be a bit more thought into the weapons and armour list. Surely spears should be more dangerous than Staves for example. Padded armor should be more protective than leather etc


----------



## Zardnaar

Tweaked feats, weapons, armor, skills, archetypes, come to mind. 

 Spells as well. Dancing lights requires concentration.


----------



## Horwath

All weapons are available to all classes.
Difference between classes can be done with fighting styles, number of extra attacks, "riders" on weapon attacks.

Extra attacks for full martial classes(fighter/barbarian) would be every 4 levels(1 attack at 1st level, 2 at 4th...6 at 20th)
For paladins/rangers/monks every 6 levels, 2 attacks at lvl6...4 attacks at lvl 18,
rogues/bards/warlocks every 8 levels, 2 attacks at lvl8, 3 attacks at lvl16
full casters extra attack every 12 levels, so 2 attacks at lvl 12.


All classes can wear all armor, but suffer armor penalty if they do not have sufficient strength.
Lightest armor can have str requirement of 8,
Heaviest armor can have str requirement of 18,
also no spell-casting without sufficient strength,

10th level spells at lvl19.

no ability boosts from racial bonuses, howevery every race(except humans) would have one or more abilities that would have minimum value and maximum value at 1st level.
In default array and point buy minimum score is 8 and maximum is 16 at 1st level. 18 would be max score available without magic.

Elves: min 14 dex, max 14 con
Wood elves, min 12 wis,
High elves, min 12 int,
Drow, min 12 cha,
Wild, min 12 str

Half orcs: min 14 str, min 12 con, max 14 int

Dwarves, min 14 con, 
Hill dwarves, min 12 wis, max 14 dex, 
Mt dwarves, min 12 str, max 14 cha,

Half elves, min 12 dex

Halflings, min 12 dex, max 14 str

Gnomes, min 12 con, max 14 str


added bonus skills/tools/languages for high intelligence,

Add two ability scores to almost all checks

Melee attack bonus: str+dex bonus
Melee damage: 2×str
Melee finesse damage/thrown: str+dex
2H melee: 3×str
2H melee finesse: (2×str)+dex

Ranged attack roll: dex+wis
Bow damage str+dex
X-Bow damage: dex+int

Spell attack/damage bonus/DCs
Wizard: int+wis
Cleric: wis+cha
Druid: int+wis
Bard: cha+int
Sorcerer: cha+con
Warlock: cha+int
Paladin: cha+wis
Ranger: wis+int
EK: int+wis
AT: int+cha

Fort save: str+con
Ref save: dex+int
Will save: wis+cha

initiative: dex+wis


Skills:
athletics: str+con
acrobatics: str+dex
stealth:dex+wis
thievery: dex+int
Arcana/Nature/Religion/History: int+wis
medicine: int+wis
Survival: int+wis
animal handling wis+cha
perception: wis+int
deception/intimidate/persuasion/perform: cha+int

most tools are int+wis or int+dex
music instruments are cha+int or cha+dex


----------



## FrogReaver

Tonguez said:


> As a former player of GURPS It does amuse me that eveytime these ‘make a better DnD’ threads comes out class customisation is always the big feature. I came back over to 3e because I liked the use of Feats and agree that having class features be Feats would be great but then why have Classes at all?
> 
> Is fixed Character Class the core feature that makes DnD?




Much easier to balance when things are siloed.


----------



## FrogReaver

Parmandur said:


> There is no point in new editions, which WotC has finally figured out. Ergo, a 6E in any meaningful sense is implausible.
> 
> If there were a 6E, I'd like to see the core rules stay just as with 5E, to the extent that 5E characters could be brought to a 6E table or 6E characters run Princes of the Apocalypse without issue. The significant changes I'd like to see would be:
> 
> 
> removing Feats and 3.x multiclassing from the game
> Have Subclass be a Level 1 choice for all Classes
> putting in Themes as an alternative Variant to ASI
> Provide a Tier power-up to Backgrounds at the appropriate Levels, as with the Ravnica Guilds
> Put Group Patrons ala Enerron into the core books
> Make favored terrain be the Subclass for the Ranger: Highlander Rangers from the Mountains, Steppe Rider Rangers from the Grasslands, etc.





Why did they make a new edition with 3.x?  Why did they make a new edition with 4e out?  Ergo - there is and always has been a point to new editions.


----------



## FrogReaver

Don Durito said:


> The 5 minute Work day is not impossible to resolve.  13th Age does it easily.  You just make the reset indepedent of actual time and dependent on the number of encounters that take place, with the GM adjusting as needed.
> 
> Now whether you'd prefer the 5 minute work day (In order to clutch desperately at some last fragments of real world plausibility) to that solution is another issue.  But the problem _has_ been solved.




I think any solution that doesn't allow for real world plausibility is a non-solution for most people.


----------



## Tony Vargas

FrogReaver said:


> I think any solution that doesn't allow for real world plausibility is a non-solution for most people.



The broader fantasy genre isn't real-world-plausible.


----------



## aco175

I can see having skills be dependent on 2 attributes, this means that overlap is less and it makes each stat more valued.  I'm not sure on adding both together or just picking the higher of the 2.  An example would be perception where you could use intelligence or wisdom.  Maybe adding both to get your bonus would work as well by changing the needed roll- making a check of 20 a average skill.


----------



## FrogReaver

Tony Vargas said:


> The broader fantasy genre isn't real-world-plausible.




Can a non-magical fighter just walk through walls?  Step on air till he walks over top of the wall?  Take 2 steps and be wherever he wants to be?  Transform into an eagle?  

If not then there's definitely quite a few elements in this fantasy genre that are real world plausible.  The notion that it's a fantasy setting doesn't mean ALL elements should be real world implausible.


----------



## Tony Vargas

FrogReaver said:


> Can a non-magical fighter just walk through walls?  Step on air till he walks over top of the wall?  Take 2 steps and be wherever he wants to be?  Transform into an eagle?



 Can a wizard do any of those things in the real world?  No.
The whole genre in not real-world-plausible.


----------



## Doc_Klueless

If this thread has taught me anything, it's that other people's improvements are not something I view as an improvement. 

And vice versa.

heh.


----------



## FrogReaver

Tony Vargas said:


> Can a wizard do any of those things in the real world?  No.
> The whole genre in not real-world-plausible.




Fantasy is a genre that is a mix of fantasy and real world. The fantasy elements are explicitly spelled out. Since resting isn’t spelled out the. It needs to be real world plausible. Imbue resting with magical power and it can do anything - but I do think a setting with that much fantasy would be appealing to most.

That’s why wizards can do non plausible real world things and be fine.


----------



## Tony Vargas

FrogReaver said:


> Fantasy is a genre that is a mix of fantasy and real world.



 No, the 'urban' fantasy sub-genre is.


----------



## Parmandur

FrogReaver said:


> Why did they make a new edition with 3.x?  Why did they make a new edition with 4e out?  Ergo - there is and always has been a point to new editions.




Their plan was to make money, which worked in the short term but failed quickly in all four cases before descending into heads rolling and layoffs: 3.0 lasted three years, 3.5 did get five years, but straight 4E was replaced after about two years by Essentials and both were out of print within four years of the initial release.

As I said, WotC has learned their lesson, and has found that evergreen is the way to get the green.


----------



## FrogReaver

Parmandur said:


> Their plan was to make money, which worked in the short term but failed quickly in all four cases before descending into heads rolling and layoffs: 3.0 lasted three years, 3.5 did get five years, but straight 4E was replaced after about two years by Essentials and both were out of print within four years of the initial release.
> 
> As I said, WotC has learned their lesson, and has found that evergreen is the way to get the green.




4e wasn't changed to 5e for more money - I mean more money was important - but it was changed because it wasn't working. 

I can't speak with as much certainty about why 3.x was changed to 4e.

So ultimately the evidence is a little shoddy that new editions were simply done to achieve more money - they are done for that - but at least some 4e to 5e were done because the previous edition wasn't working.


----------



## Parmandur

FrogReaver said:


> 4e wasn't changed to 5e for more money - I mean more money was important - but it was changed because it wasn't working.
> 
> I can't speak with as much certainty about why 3.x was changed to 4e.




In both cases, it was money. It's always money. 3.5 happened after 3.0 sales started crashing hard, and 4.0 happened after 3.5 cratered.

The way that 4E "wasn't working" was also money: the game worked fine for people who liked it, but the financials were not good enough to go on.

As such, we can predict that 6E will happen when 5E ceases to be financially satisfactory in a major way. However, if it is a successfully evergreen edition, with a rotating player base (people enter 7th grade every year), that might not happen as such.


----------



## FrogReaver

Tony Vargas said:


> No, the 'urban' fantasy sub-genre is.




All fantasy settings are - or at least those that feature humans in any way.


----------



## FrogReaver

Parmandur said:


> In both cases, it was money. It's always money. 3.5 happened after 3.0 sales started crashing hard, and 4.0 happened after E
> 3.5 cratered.




But why would they believe the risk vs reward of a new edition would make them  more money instead of less.

Reasons include and are likely not limited to:

1.  The current edition is failing
2.  A grand new idea that has a lot of monetary upside (I think this was 4e's reason for being created)

I don't think the decision making process has ever been - let's make a new edition so the same people will rebuy books again.  So when you say money and imply it's for this reason I fundamentally disagree.


----------



## Parmandur

FrogReaver said:


> But why would they believe the risk vs reward of a new edition would make them  more money instead of less.
> 
> Reasons include and are likely not limited to:
> 
> 1.  The current edition is failing
> 2.  A grand new idea that has a lot of monetary upside (I think this was 4e's reason for being created)
> 
> I don't think the decision making process has ever been - let's make a new edition so the same people will rebuy books again.




I've seen WotC folks explicitly stated that as their goal with new editions, yes. Core books sell well, it's an "easy" sales boost.


----------



## FrogReaver

Parmandur said:


> I've seen WotC folks explicitly stated that as their goal with new editions, yes. Core books sell well, it's an "easy" sales boost.




Talking about some side effects of a decision to change editions doesn't imply that's the reason for the change of edition.


----------



## Parmandur

FrogReaver said:


> Talking about some side effects of a decision to change editions doesn't imply that's the reason for the change of edition.




I'm quite certain that the sales boost was given as a primary factor in these decisions: 3.0 particularly was tanking after a year or so, as the initial rush wire off.


----------



## Tony Vargas

FrogReaver said:


> All fantasy settings are - or at least those that feature humans in any way.



A fantasy set in the real world - wether historical, contemporary, or speculative future - could be said to combine the real world with fantastical elements.  Or, it might be a fantastical world that merely resembles our own, coincidentally or by design, thus combing elements, or at least appearances, of the real world with a fantastical one. 

But the mere presence of "humans?"  No, not unless, perhaps, it establishes they evolved on Earth or something (And that they are somehow exempt from the fantastic attributes of their transplanted setting). 
If some deity made them or something, they're merely humanoids native to a fantasy setting.


----------



## FrogReaver

Parmandur said:


> I'm quite certain that the sales boost was given as a primary factor in these decisions: 3.0 particularly was tanking after a year or so, as the initial rush wire off.




If the edition was tanking then doesn't that go along with my number 1 point - one of the most common times you get a new edition when an edition is failing?


----------



## FrogReaver

Tony Vargas said:


> A fantasy set anywhere other than the real world - wether historical, contemporary, or speculative future - might be said to combine the real world with fantastical elements.  Or, it might be a fantastical world that merely resembles our own, coincidentally or by design.
> 
> But the mere presence of "humans?"  No, not unless, perhaps, it establishes they evolved on Earth or something (And that they are somehow exempt from the fantastic attributes of their transplanted setting).
> If some deity made them or something, they're merely humanoids native to a fantasy setting.




Disagree.  
1.  A fantastical world that resembles our own is precisely the kind of real worldism that i'm talkin about.  If you have a fantasy world that resmembles our own then that supports my position not yours.

2.  Humans are called humans because in general they resemble us and our capabilities.


----------



## Parmandur

FrogReaver said:


> If the edition was tanking then doesn't that go along with my number 1 point - one of the most common times you get a new edition when an edition is failing?




Yes, it's basically the only reason.


----------



## Tony Vargas

FrogReaver said:


> If you have a fantasy world that resmembles our own then that supports my position not yours.



 For instance, the world inside the matrix resembled our own, by design, but it's laws were only simulating those of the real world.



> 2.  Humans are called humans because in general they resemble us and our capabilities.



 Sure, but that resemblance needn't be to real-world humans as we understand them today, but to humans of myth/legend/genre, who do implausible thing constantly.

Mind you, I'm fine with urban fantasy taking the real-world aspects to the level if hard sci-fi - but, I'd expect a similar level of rigour in integrating the fantasy-like elements.

D&D, specifically, does not have a setting/genre that ties back to the real world much, at all, except with the occasional bad pun or pop culture reference.


----------



## FrogReaver

Tony Vargas said:


> For instance, the world inside the matrix resembled our own, by design, but it's laws were only simulating those of the real world.
> 
> Sure, but that resemblance needn't be to real-world humans as we understand them today, but to humans of myth/legend/genre, who do implausible thing constantly.
> 
> Mind you, I'm fine with urban fantasy taking the real-world aspects to the level if hard sci-fi - but, I'd expect a similar level of rigour in integrating the fantasy-like elements.
> 
> D&D, specifically, does not have a setting/genre that ties back to the real world much, at all, except with the occasional bad pun or pop culture reference.




In all of those examples there's far more similarities to the real world than differences.


----------



## Tony Vargas

FrogReaver said:


> In all of those examples there's far more similarities to the real world than differences.



There are more than enough differences to admit a great deal of implausability - certainly to the 'action movie' level of implausability that D&D system oddities like hps merely approach.


----------



## Arnwolf666

Horwath said:


> All weapons are available to all classes.
> Difference between classes can be done with fighting styles, number of extra attacks, "riders" on weapon attacks.
> 
> Extra attacks for full martial classes(fighter/barbarian) would be every 4 levels(1 attack at 1st level, 2 at 4th...6 at 20th)
> For paladins/rangers/monks every 6 levels, 2 attacks at lvl6...4 attacks at lvl 18,
> rogues/bards/warlocks every 8 levels, 2 attacks at lvl8, 3 attacks at lvl16
> full casters extra attack every 12 levels, so 2 attacks at lvl 12.
> 
> 
> All classes can wear all armor, but suffer armor penalty if they do not have sufficient strength.
> Lightest armor can have str requirement of 8,
> Heaviest armor can have str requirement of 18,
> also no spell-casting without sufficient strength,
> 
> 10th level spells at lvl19.
> 
> no ability boosts from racial bonuses, howevery every race(except humans) would have one or more abilities that would have minimum value and maximum value at 1st level.
> In default array and point buy minimum score is 8 and maximum is 16 at 1st level. 18 would be max score available without magic.
> 
> Elves: min 14 dex, max 14 con
> Wood elves, min 12 wis,
> High elves, min 12 int,
> Drow, min 12 cha,
> Wild, min 12 str
> 
> Half orcs: min 14 str, min 12 con, max 14 int
> 
> Dwarves, min 14 con,
> Hill dwarves, min 12 wis, max 14 dex,
> Mt dwarves, min 12 str, max 14 cha,
> 
> Half elves, min 12 dex
> 
> Halflings, min 12 dex, max 14 str
> 
> Gnomes, min 12 con, max 14 str
> 
> 
> added bonus skills/tools/languages for high intelligence,
> 
> Add two ability scores to almost all checks
> 
> Melee attack bonus: str+dex bonus
> Melee damage: 2×str
> Melee finesse damage/thrown: str+dex
> 2H melee: 3×str
> 2H melee finesse: (2×str)+dex
> 
> Ranged attack roll: dex+wis
> Bow damage str+dex
> X-Bow damage: dex+int
> 
> Spell attack/damage bonus/DCs
> Wizard: int+wis
> Cleric: wis+cha
> Druid: int+wis
> Bard: cha+int
> Sorcerer: cha+con
> Warlock: cha+int
> Paladin: cha+wis
> Ranger: wis+int
> EK: int+wis
> AT: int+cha
> 
> Fort save: str+con
> Ref save: dex+int
> Will save: wis+cha
> 
> initiative: dex+wis
> 
> 
> Skills:
> athletics: str+con
> acrobatics: str+dex
> stealth:dex+wis
> thievery: dex+int
> Arcana/Nature/Religion/History: int+wis
> medicine: int+wis
> Survival: int+wis
> animal handling wis+cha
> perception: wis+int
> deception/intimidate/persuasion/perform: cha+int
> 
> most tools are int+wis or int+dex
> music instruments are cha+int or cha+dex



Ugggh


----------



## Arnwolf666

Doc_Klueless said:


> If this thread has taught me anything, it's that other people's improvements are not something I view as an improvement.
> 
> And vice versa.
> 
> heh.



Oh dear god yes. To each his own. So many things are just repulsive to me.


----------



## Stalker0

I used to have a large list...but most things for me are simple house rules. A tweak here, a tuning here. I can do those in 5e.

So to me...if I'm getting a new edition, I want it to tackle something that is not easy to adjust, something that I think is so core to the game that it would take a lot of work to really and fully address.

And for me that is....Balanced Play for 1-2 encounter per day groups. In all my years of DMing, the concept of 4-6 encounters a day has never been the norm. The occasional dungeon crawl sure, but I play a lot of one off encounters, or random travelling encounters. I'm not going to do that 6 times a day for balance.

For all of the optional rules 5e presented to cater to different players taste (including a variety of healing options), there really was nothing to address this style of play.

So that would be my big thing. Most everything else I can or already have addressed to my satisfaction.


----------



## S'mon

1. Go back to roll-in-order as default, substituting (eg) 15 for one stat. Pretty much how 4e D&D Gamma World did it. Eliminates all need for stat-balancing.

2. Go back to 4e style increased hit points at 1st level. Dying in round 1 of your first combat is fine in OSR, but the standard D&D game shouldn't be so much more lethal at 1st level than subsequently. Adding full CON to level 1 hp as in 4e works well.


----------



## Arnwolf666

Stalker0 said:


> I used to have a large list...but most things for me are simple house rules. A tweak here, a tuning here. I can do those in 5e.
> 
> So to me...if I'm getting a new edition, I want it to tackle something that is not easy to adjust, something that I think is so core to the game that it would take a lot of work to really and fully address.
> 
> And for me that is....Balanced Play for 1-2 encounter per day groups. In all my years of DMing, the concept of 4-6 encounters a day has never been the norm. The occasional dungeon crawl sure, but I play a lot of one off encounters, or random travelling encounters. I'm not going to do that 6 times a day for balance.
> 
> For all of the optional rules 5e presented to cater to different players taste (including a variety of healing options), there really was nothing to address this style of play.
> 
> So that would be my big thing. Most everything else I can or already have addressed to my satisfaction.




I don’t know if this works for you. But have you used the optional rules for faster recovery time?


----------



## Ruin Explorer

5E is a strong base so I'd want a smaller change than previous ones, I think. That said:

1) Rework stuff so that there are less god/dump stats. I think this would be pretty easy to do, in practice, because the real issue in 5E is mostly that INT is excessively weak, rather than anything else. The OP rants about DEX, but in actual play, at real tables, DEX-based characters (and CHA-based ones) aren't as common or dominant as they are in some people's imagination/theorycrafting. More options for INT casters would be good - I don't see why all Sorcerers or Warlocks or even Clerics should be CHA or WIS.

2) Part of the above re-work would be systematically going through spells and abilities and seeing if one or two saves were excessively common/uncommon, and fixing that. Again, this isn't that challenging, because loads of spells could have any one of three saves. In fact I'd be tempted to roll backwards on this, somewhat, and go with more 3E or 4E-style approaches.

3) Drastically re-work and re-conceptualize a number of classes, Ranger being at the top of the list. This may hurt. Ranger needs to fish or cut bait, particularly - is he just "Forest Fighter" or is he a magic-y "Fighter-Druid", or what? If he isn't Forest Fighter, the Fighter needs an archetype which is that.

4) If we really want "three pillars" to be a thing, build it into the game, don't make it an afterthought. As part of this and the stat rework I'd be tempted to do something like add two stats to each skill, rather than just one (increasing DCs slightly too, though not too much). Right now, it's hard to have a "social pillar" when it's basically "CHA-town, population the Paladin, Bard, Warlock, and Sorcerer!"

5) Formalize Skill Challenges involving multiple rolls, multiple party members, and so on, and really test the naughty word out of them and nail the math. Make them actually part of the game and actually involve multiple characters and we can actually have three pillars maybe. 4E "had some ideas" here but never adequately developed them, and you can see 5E is still thinking about 4E's ideas whilst trying to act like this is 3E. They can fix this.

6) Yes bring back higher HP at L1 from 4E (and the various times it's popped up before). Having played at L1 recently (again) it's just dumb, terrifies the DM, makes the players briefly fatalistic (which fades by L3 at the latest), and you get really silly situations which never, ever re-occur in later levels. Just start people at like L2 to L3 HP and rebalance accordingly.

7) I feel like a sick bastard saying this but bring back templates, too, for monsters, from 3.XE - and make putting class levels on monsters more of a thing. And indeed a strong focus on making monsters something the DM can easily come up with a thing.

8) Lots more suggestions/details for traps/hazards etc. in the DMG.

9) Try and find a way to make overland travel at least slightly interesting?


----------



## Arnwolf666

This is what made charisma badass in early editions when the good DM’s used them. Morale checks.


----------



## Parmandur

Ruin Explorer said:


> More options for INT casters would be good - I don't see why all Sorcerers or Warlocks or even Clerics should be CHA or WIS.




Mearls wanted to make the Warlock Int based, but the playtest results demanded a Charisma Warlock.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Parmandur said:


> Mearls wanted to make the Warlock Int based, but the playtest results demanded a Charisma Warlock.




Interesting. Most OP or ridiculous builds in 5E involve Warlock at some point and if they'd been INT that simply wouldn't have been possible, because they'd have had sufficient MAD. What were they in 3.5E? Weren't they CON in 4E?


----------



## Tony Vargas

Stalker0 said:


> .And for me that is....Balanced Play for 1-2 encounter per day groups. In all my years of DMing, the concept of 4-6 encounters a day has never been the norm.  I'm not going to do that 6 times a day for balance.



 I've always been a little perplexed by 5e taking it out to 6-8, when I've never seen any indication that even 3e's 4-or-so assumption was broadly borne out in the wild.



> For all of the optional rules 5e presented to cater to different players taste (including a variety of healing options), there really was nothing to address this style of play.



 The hard _need_ for a long-slog adventuring day (with 1 hr breaks) is built into the class designs - and something that player-facing and pervasive, though it might be mathematically simple to adjust (halve  short-rest resources, divide long-rest by 6, for an average 1-2 encounter day), would be a challenge to get players to accept, especially if done dynamically, it enable varied pacing,  rather than one alternate pace.


----------



## Parmandur

Ruin Explorer said:


> Interesting. Most OP or ridiculous builds in 5E involve Warlock at some point and if they'd been INT that simply wouldn't have been possible, because they'd have had sufficient MAD. What were they in 3.5E? Weren't they CON in 4E?




Not aure about 3.x, it was pretty obscure, but I think it was Charisma. 4E was Charisma or Constitution, variously.


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> I've always been a little perplexed by 5e taking it out to 6-8, when I've never seen any indication that even 3e's 4-or-so assumption was broadly borne out in the wild.
> 
> The hard _need_ for a long-slog adventuring day (with 1 hr breaks) is built into the class designs - and something that player-facing and pervasive, though it might be mathematically simple to adjust (halve  short-rest resources, divide long-rest by 6, for an average 1-2 encounter day), would be a challenge to get players to accept, especially if done dynamically, it enable varied pacing,  rather than one alternate pace.




Shorter adventure days are definitely possible, they are just wonky cakewalks. But if people want a wonky cakewalks (like Critical Role) that is fine. The Classes are well balanced when pushed to the limit: if a group doesn't want to push the limits, then balance isn't a problem.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> Shorter adventure days are definitely possible, they are just wonky cakewalks.



 Or wonky trans-deadly near TPKs, if you dial them up enough to be a challenge.



> The Classes are well balanced when pushed to the limit.



 They theoretically become roughly balanced, around single-target DPR, at that point.  Exactly how it shakes out depends on level, whether feats are opted in, the mix of chalkenges faced, system mastery/skilled play - and DM force.


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> Or wonky trans-deadly near TPKs, if you dial them up enough to be a challenge.
> 
> They theoretically become roughly balanced, around single-target DPR, at that point.  Exactly how it shakes out depends on level, whether feats are opted in, the mix of chalkenges faced, system mastery/skilled play - and DM force.




The game part, qua game, does boil down to Hit Points either taken through damage or restored through healing. Everything else is dressing. So, yes, the Fighter and the Wizard balance for DPR, but they also narratively balance: both have their moments to shine in a full day.

For a challenge, the full adventure day is the way to go.


----------



## Lanefan

S'mon said:


> 1. Go back to roll-in-order as default, substituting (eg) 15 for one stat. Pretty much how 4e D&D Gamma World did it. Eliminates all need for stat-balancing.



Sounds nicely old-school.



> 2. Go back to 4e style increased hit points at 1st level. Dying in round 1 of your first combat is fine in OSR, but the standard D&D game shouldn't be so much more lethal at 1st level than subsequently. Adding full CON to level 1 hp as in 4e works well.



Where I'd rather see it go the other way: instead of making 1st level less lethal, increase the danger of higher levels so 1st isn't so much of an outlier.

Particularly given that 5e, which would doubtless be the baseline, has revival effects available so cheaply and at such low level (something else I'd change).


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Parmandur said:


> Shorter adventure days are definitely possible, they are just wonky cakewalks. But if people want a wonky cakewalks (like Critical Role) that is fine. The Classes are well balanced when pushed to the limit: if a group doesn't want to push the limits, then balance isn't a problem.




The problem is it's basically bad design on the part of the 5E team, though. Like, who the heck writes adventures where you honestly have 6-8 encounters which actually use up resources in a day? I've been playing since 1989 (as I often note), and outside of a few dungeon crawls, that's completely unheard-of. It's just weird. Like, it would be like assuming the average person walked 20000-30000 steps/day and everything should be designed around that, when the reality is that 10000 or less is typical. Why go with a bizarre extreme that few will reach and that most DMs struggle to design for?

And yeah, did they learn nothing from 4E? 4E showed even 4/day was pushing it. 3E showed even lower numbers.

Maybe this is what happens when you basically playtest exclusively in weird dungeons and then 80%+ of the people actually playing the game spend 90% of their time outside dungeons and similar environments.


----------



## Parmandur

Ruin Explorer said:


> The problem is it's basically bad design on the part of the 5E team, though. Like, who the heck writes adventures where you honestly have 6-8 encounters which actually use up resources in a day? I've been playing since 1989 (as I often note), and outside of a few dungeon crawls, that's completely unheard-of. It's just weird. Like, it would be like assuming the average person walked 20000-30000 steps/day and everything should be designed around that, when the reality is that 10000 or less is typical. Why go with a bizarre extreme that few will reach and that most DMs struggle to design for?
> 
> And yeah, did they learn nothing from 4E? 4E showed even 4/day was pushing it. 3E showed even lower numbers.
> 
> Maybe this is what happens when you basically playtest exclusively in weird dungeons and then 80%+ of the people actually playing the game spend 90% of their time outside dungeons and similar environments.




They've said that their expectation, after playtesting with hundreds of thousands of people, is that the average fight takes 2+3 rounds, and there will be 5-8 such fights in a day with two Short Rests. This is how the Adventure books are written, which continue to sell like hot cakes, and satisfaction with the base assumptions remains high. So, I trust their data as to what a normal day looks like.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Parmandur said:


> They've said that their expectation, after playtesting with hundreds of thousands of people, is that the average fight takes 2+3 rounds, and there will be 5-8 such fights in a day with two Short Rests. This is how the Adventure books are written, which continue to sell like hot cakes, and satisfaction with the base assumptions remains high. So, I trust their data as to what a normal day looks like.




I don't, and I don't think it's particularly rational to assume that, to be honest. I strongly suspect the vast majority of people who run those books (probably a small minority of people who actually run D&D) actually do not run them as 5-8 encounters per day. I've played in plenty of groups, and podcasts and streams and so on pretty much universally reflect a lower number of encounters on the vast majority of days. It also only allows for extremely narrow "intense but not that intense"-type design of the adventuring day, and doesn't at all support how D&D and other RPGs have been played historically and continue to be played.

It's bad design.

EDIT - It's also circular logic. They designed the game for 5-8 encounters/day (which was seemingly already an assumption when they started playtesting, I note - I wonder where this came from?), and then playtested with weird little dungeon crawls as literally the only kind of adventure they were playtesting, and designed the entire game around 5-8 encounters/day and because they've done that, they release adventures with 5-8 encounters/day. So is it any surprise they remain satisfied with their own logic? Yeah, if you design for a ridiculously high number of encounters/day, and then release adventures that fit that, unlike the adventures humans actually write and run, sure, you're bound to be "satisfied". It's just totally circular logic, though.

A paranoid man might wonder if it they made it intentionally incompatible with how people normally run games, in order to make it so their own weirdly-designed adventures worked! Almost like DRM or something. But I suspect it's more likely to just be a weird fetish based on a dungeon obsession. It's downright hard to write a wilderness or urban adventure with that many meaningful, resource-draining encounters/day though.


----------



## Parmandur

Ruin Explorer said:


> I don't, and I don't think it's particularly rational to assume that, to be honest. I strongly suspect the vast majority of people who run those books (probably a small minority of people who actually run D&D) actually do not run them as 5-8 encounters per day. I've played in plenty of groups, and podcasts and streams and so on pretty much universally reflect a lower number of encounters on the vast majority of days. It also only allows for extremely narrow "intense but not that intense"-type design of the adventuring day, and doesn't at all support how D&D and other RPGs have been played historically and continue to be played.
> 
> It's bad design.
> 
> EDIT - It's also circular logic. They designed the game for 5-8 encounters/day (which was seemingly already an assumption when they started playtesting, I note - I wonder where this came from?), and then playtested with weird little dungeon crawls as literally the only kind of adventure they were playtesting, and designed the entire game around 5-8 encounters/day and because they've done that, they release adventures with 5-8 encounters/day. So is it any surprise they remain satisfied with their own logic? Yeah, if you design for a ridiculously high number of encounters/day, and then release adventures that fit that, unlike the adventures humans actually write and run, sure, you're bound to be "satisfied". It's just totally circular logic, though.
> 
> A paranoid man might wonder if it they made it intentionally incompatible with how people normally run games, in order to make it so their own weirdly-designed adventures worked! Almost like DRM or something. But I suspect it's more likely to just be a weird fetish based on a dungeon obsession. It's downright hard to write a wilderness or urban adventure with that many meaningful, resource-draining encounters/day though.




I didn't say that _WotC_ was satisfied with the results, but that _players and customers_ are satisfied with the results, which play well when followed while pulling the near trick of working fine if people want to undershoot the expectation (as you point out, many do). Sure, won't be as challenging, but the guidelines point out how to make it a viable challenge.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> play well when followed,



 Well, through the ~4-11 "Sweet Spot," anyway. 


> while pulling the near trick of working fine if people undershoot the expectation



 You're really whistl'n past the graveyard on that one.  I applaud your optimism and facility for positive spin, though.

But, no, failing to deliver challenge without overcranking the encounter guidelines, and distorting class balance is not "working fine..."

... and it's not a helpful (or even entirely neccessary) "defense" of the game, either.  When someone complains that 5e is "too easy," we helpfully point out that a longer 'day' will increase the challenge posed without dialing up the individual encounters or resorting to 'gotchyas.'  That's helpful advice.


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> Well, through the ~4-11 "Sweet Spot," anyway.
> You're really whistl'n past the graveyard on that one.  I applaud your optimism and facility for positive spin, though.
> 
> But, no, failing to deliver challenge without overcranking the encounter guidelines, and distorting class balance is not "working fine..."
> 
> ... and it's not a helpful (or even entirely neccessary) "defense" of the game, either.  When someone complains that 5e is "too easy," we helpfully point out that a longer 'day' will increase the challenge posed without dialing up the individual encounters or resorting to 'gotchyas.'  That's helpful advice.




Not really my point, so I'll put it this way. I see four logical groupings for how people relate to the adventure day:

A. People who play the published adventures and/or follow the DMG and/or XGtE guidelines close enough for government work, and are satisfied.

B. People like Critical Role who do not (often) push the full adventure day, but have fun anyways because strict combat equivalence and challenge are not important to the flow of their game, and are satisfied. (I would put myself and most of my experience outside of the official modules here)

C. People who would regularly want to push past the guidelines, but find them limiting.

D. People who want a game balanced around a smaller adventure day economy, and are dissatisfied.

Group C I won't say doesn't exist in actuality, but it is fringe. The game right is tuned properly for groups A & B. Group D is dissatisfied, but...how big is it compared to either A or B? Tuning the game for D would make people in A dissatisfied, though B would be unaffected. I would posit that since WotC has built a publishing schedule aimed primarily at A, and not changed course after five years, suggests that group A is, in fact, the primary market for the game.


----------



## Zardnaar

I think the encounter guidelines are crap, it's just not a deal breaker for most people.

And if you have fun steamrolling everything who cares? I more or less ignore the encounter guidelines just eyeball it. A large horde of crud isn't worth the numbers multiplier.

 My last DM was new and he couldn't get the encounter rules working. He only ran 10 sessions or so, 6 person party high default array. 
 The default is easy mode but it doesn't really tell you that and a "deadly" fight is often easy.


----------



## Parmandur

Zardnaar said:


> I think the encounter guidelines are crap, it's just not a deal breaker for most people.
> 
> And if you have fun steamrolling everything who cares? I more or less ignore the encounter guidelines just eyeball it. A large horde of crud isn't worth the numbers multiplier.
> 
> My last DM was new and he couldn't get the encounter rules working. He only ran 10 sessions or so, 6 person party high default array.
> The default is easy mode but it doesn't really tell you that and a "deadly" fight is often easy.




Group B.


----------



## Zardnaar

Parmandur said:


> Group B.




Probably C for myself.

No D&D's perfect, it's mostly if the positives outweigh the negatives.

Why I think guideline rules keep failing is they make assumptions most people don't use.

They did do a survey but that was a while ago and we don't know the exact results.

Since then a huge amount of new players have turned up and they didn't vote in the playtest. So they might be struggling.

The encounter rules are really only good for a sweet spot dungeon crawl.

There's to many variables that any written rule can account for. Party size, ability scores, optimization etc.

Good encounter design is an artfirm, and takes years to pick up and you generally only learn from experience or prepublished modules.

I started 93 it was probably 98 before I could do really complex and interactive encounters using tactics, terrain,  elevation, houserules etc.

With my new players they immediately noticed session 1 I use more traps than other DMs they've had. I was running a Pathfinder conversion just ran it more or less as is.


----------



## Parmandur

Zardnaar said:


> Probably C for myself.
> 
> No D&D's perfect, it's mostly if the positives outweigh the negatives.
> 
> Why I think guideline rules keep failing is they make assumptions most people don't use.
> 
> They did do a survey but that was a while ago and we don't know the exact results.
> 
> Since then a huge amount of new players have turned up and they didn't vote in the playtest. So they might be struggling.
> 
> The encounter rules are really only good for a sweet spot dungeon crawl.
> 
> There's to many variables that any written rule can account for. Party size, ability scores, optimization etc.
> 
> Good encounter design is an artfirm, and takes years to pick up and you generally only learn from experience or prepublished modules.
> 
> I started 93 it was probably 98 before I could do really complex and interactive encounters using tactics, terrain,  elevation, houserules etc.
> 
> With my new players they immediately noticed session 1 I use more traps than other DMs they've had. I was running a Pathfinder conversion just ran it more or less as is.




Sure, but that's precisely why the game is tuned around maximal adventure days: just winging it works better when that will primarily result in players creaming any opposition.

The adventure products are huge sellers: new DMs are going to look for them for more concrete examples when forming their ideas about how to manage an adventure day.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> Not really my point, so I'll put it this way. I see four logical groupings for how people relate to the adventure day:



 I see no value to such speculation. 
If your point is, "yeah, but the game sells well, so it doesn't matter," fine - at a sales meeting.

But this isn't "how would you sell D&D?" 
... though, y'know, topic drift: nothing stops you from going there.


----------



## Zardnaar

Parmandur said:


> Sure, but that's precisely why the game is tuned around maximal adventure days: just winging it works better when that will primarily result in players creaming any opposition.
> 
> The adventure products are huge sellers: new DMs are going to look for them for more concrete examples when forming their ideas about how to manage an adventure day.




The new adventures often don't get completed and there's not the variety.

I learnt on the old B/X series and Dungeon magazine. Shorter adventures may not get the money but I imagine they're easier to learn from.

Yes I know they exist but you're not going to find them in the shop shelf.


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> I see no value to such speculation.
> If your point is, "yeah, but the game sells well, so it doesn't matter," fine - at a sales meeting.
> 
> But this isn't "how would you sell D&D?"
> ... though, y'know, topic drift: nothing stops you from going there.




How would one design D&D and how would one sell D&D are identical propositions.

The point is, the game is tuned properly now, for the goal of entertaining as wide a range of people as possible: an alternative basis for tuning isn't probable.


----------



## Parmandur

Zardnaar said:


> The new adventures often don't get completed and there's not the variety.
> 
> I learnt on the old B/X series and Dungeon magazine. Shorter adventures may not get the money but I imagine they're easier to learn from.
> 
> Yes I know they exist but you're not going to find them in the shop shelf.




I have no data on whether people finish the adventures, but they sell and get read.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> How would one design D&D and how would one sell D&D are identical propositions.



 Not remotely.


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> Not remotely.




The _telos_ of game design is to make games that appeal to people and get played. Designing a game is about selling a game, exact identity in terms.


----------



## Sacrosanct

Parmandur said:


> The _telos_ of game design is to make games that appeal to people and get played. Designing a game is about selling a game, exact identity in terms.




not for every game. Not even for most games. But for D&D, you’re absolutely correct. After D&D, the big boy in the room, dropped from the top spot (an unthinkable concept during the first 35 years of the industry), I can bet dollars to donuts that the #1 requirement of the 5e design team was to come up with a game that would put D&D back in the top spot.


----------



## Parmandur

Sacrosanct said:


> not for every game. Not even for most games. But for D&D, you’re absolutely correct. After D&D, the big boy in the room, dropped from the top spot (an unthinkable concept during the first 35 years of the industry), I can bet dollars to donuts that the #1 requirement of the 5e design team was to come up with a game that would put D&D back in the top spot.




Well, true, not every game has "become a massive international hit" as the specific goal, but "get people into playing and having fun" always has to be central to solid game design. Otherwise it isn't game design, it's a math exercise.


----------



## Arch-Fiend

i havent read many of the ideas brought up here so i dont know if this has been mentioned, but i wouldn't radically change the way D&D is, maybe radically changing it is the best option, 5e was a departure from 4e, and 4 from 3, but im mostly just going to focus on a problem that i think D&D has had for the last 3 editions. ironically started by my favorite edition, but i can criticize that which i hold most close.

feats.
feats are not a very good method of giving players mechanical character diversity while also trying to cater to every kind of D&D game that could be ran. typically D&D games will focus into a few different avenues of gameplay depending on what kind of story a dm wants to run, but one fundamental divide is a game where plot a characters progress through combat vs a game where plot and characters progress through non-combat skills and ability application creates one massive problem for feats attempting to cator to both, that problem is players not having experience or simply not knowing what kind of game they are going into when choosing feats.

now a simple solution is simply letting players change the feats they have when they took those feats under an incorrect perspective of what the game would be like. however this is an imperfect solution to a problem that doesent even need to exist, AD&D didint have this problem, because AD&D had weapon proficiencies and non weapon proficiencies and regardless of what class you took, you never got zero of one of these proficiencies, meaning by design a character should always have an ability that is useful to whatever kind of game a dm is running.

now im not saying we copy AD&D exactly, but it shows a good trend to be thinking along with regard to how we implement character customization mechanics other than classes, which is minimize the risk of a player making NO good chances and increase the chance they make good choices when given so many options.

combat feats and noncombat feats, why not? i think characters should get an equal amount of both regardless of what class they take unlike the way AD&D implemented it, basically characters would get them at a rate much like ability score increases are gained every few levels in 5e. also obviously dont make players choose between feats and ability score increase. just balance the game against players getting all this stuff.


----------



## jgsugden

Greetings Professor Gygax

Hello

This 6E is a strange game.
The only winning move
is not to play.

How about a nice game of 5E?


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Tony Vargas said:


> Broken character classes are a core feature that makes D&D.



If they let a player play the desired archetype, and have fun, without making fairly casual or “low system mastery” players notice the system in a negative way, it isn’t broken. 

5e has no broken classes.


----------



## Parmandur

doctorbadwolf said:


> If they let a player play the desired archetype, and have fun, without making fairly casual or “low system mastery” players notice the system in a negative way, it isn’t broken.
> 
> 5e has no broken classes.




Even the Ranger is viable, though easily the least well done.


----------



## S'mon

Ruin Explorer said:


> I don't, and I don't think it's particularly rational to assume that, to be honest. I strongly suspect the vast majority of people who run those books (probably a small minority of people who actually run D&D) actually do not run them as 5-8 encounters per day. I've played in plenty of groups, and podcasts and streams and so on pretty much universally reflect a lower number of encounters on the vast majority of days. It also only allows for extremely narrow "intense but not that intense"-type design of the adventuring day, and doesn't at all support how D&D and other RPGs have been played historically and continue to be played.
> 
> It's bad design.
> 
> EDIT - It's also circular logic. They designed the game for 5-8 encounters/day (which was seemingly already an assumption when they started playtesting, I note - I wonder where this came from?), and then playtested with weird little dungeon crawls as literally the only kind of adventure they were playtesting, and designed the entire game around 5-8 encounters/day and because they've done that, they release adventures with 5-8 encounters/day. So is it any surprise they remain satisfied with their own logic? Yeah, if you design for a ridiculously high number of encounters/day, and then release adventures that fit that, unlike the adventures humans actually write and run, sure, you're bound to be "satisfied". It's just totally circular logic, though.
> 
> A paranoid man might wonder if it they made it intentionally incompatible with how people normally run games, in order to make it so their own weirdly-designed adventures worked! Almost like DRM or something. But I suspect it's more likely to just be a weird fetish based on a dungeon obsession. It's downright hard to write a wilderness or urban adventure with that many meaningful, resource-draining encounters/day though.




Even when I run 5e dungeon crawls, I very rarely see the mythical 6-8 fights/day. It tends to be more like 3-4 before the PCs are looking to exit the dungeon for a long rest. 

I did finally get to the 6-8 encounters per LR, but it was by putting LR at 1 week and running wilderness expeditions where LR in hostile territory was basically not an option.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Arch-Fiend said:


> i havent read many of the ideas brought up here so i dont know if this has been mentioned, but i wouldn't radically change the way D&D is, maybe radically changing it is the best option, 5e was a departure from 4e, and 4 from 3, but im mostly just going to focus on a problem that i think D&D has had for the last 3 editions. ironically started by my favorite edition, but i can criticize that which i hold most close.
> 
> feats.
> feats are not a very good method of giving players mechanical character diversity while also trying to cater to every kind of D&D game that could be ran. typically D&D games will focus into a few different avenues of gameplay depending on what kind of story a dm wants to run, but one fundamental divide is a game where plot a characters progress through combat vs a game where plot and characters progress through non-combat skills and ability application creates one massive problem for feats attempting to cator to both, that problem is players not having experience or simply not knowing what kind of game they are going into when choosing feats.
> 
> now a simple solution is simply letting players change the feats they have when they took those feats under an incorrect perspective of what the game would be like. however this is an imperfect solution to a problem that doesent even need to exist, AD&D didint have this problem, because AD&D had weapon proficiencies and non weapon proficiencies and regardless of what class you took, you never got zero of one of these proficiencies, meaning by design a character should always have an ability that is useful to whatever kind of game a dm is running.
> 
> now im not saying we copy AD&D exactly, but it shows a good trend to be thinking along with regard to how we implement character customization mechanics other than classes, which is minimize the risk of a player making NO good chances and increase the chance they make good choices when given so many options.
> 
> combat feats and noncombat feats, why not? i think characters should get an equal amount of both regardless of what class they take unlike the way AD&D implemented it, basically characters would get them at a rate much like ability score increases are gained every few levels in 5e. also obviously dont make players choose between feats and ability score increase. just balance the game against players getting all this stuff.



Id like to see you elaborate further.  Im interested in seeing a further progression of this line of thought.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Tony Vargas said:


> Not remotely.



Agreed


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Parmandur said:


> I didn't say that _WotC_ was satisfied with the results, but that _players and customers_ are satisfied with the results, which play well when followed while pulling the near trick of working fine if people want to undershoot the expectation (as you point out, many do). Sure, won't be as challenging, but the guidelines point out how to make it a viable challenge.




I don't agree that players and customers are particularly satisfied with the results, and the circular logic remains in place. You assert that, because official adventure sales are allegedly good, people must be satisfied. This is does not follow at all. On the contrary, the inability of people to make their own adventures work as well as the frankly weirdly designed WotC ones may well drive sales, as people seek something that works better. With 3.XE and PF there can be not the slightest shred of doubt that the complexity and effort involved in constructing encounters for those systems helped drive adventure and AP sales. Thus I suggest sales of official adventures may well reflect a problem with the system, not satisfaction. I have never seen a WotC survey result saying "Oh yes we love 5-8 encounters per day!" even. 

As for "they work fine with less", you're contradicting your own, recent statements! Where you called less than 6-8/day "wonky"! Correctly, I would say. They work poorly with less, but player instincts are to pull back earlier and it's hard to write anything but a dungeon where 5-8 encounters in a day doesn't seem contrived in the extreme (certainly if it keeps happening! One day can work, but two or three or more?). 

The guidelines do not explain how to make a "viable challenge" because 5E is badly designed here and utterly reliant on spamming encounters in a ludicrous way for challenge, and ill-suited to typical D&D play. And players do notice. My own players have commented that 5E encounters are a lot easier than 4E, and even if I dial the difficulty up, as you say, that makes things "wonky" because the encounters simply become swingy and deadly and blow resources in a disorderly way.

TLDR - 5-8 encounters per day forces DMs to write around this bizarre requirement, and that's perverse because design should serve DMs, not vice-versa. But if it sells adventures and APs I am indeed sure WotC is richly satisfied.


----------



## Don Durito

That's the issue with these threads.

"What improvements would you want with 6E?" could mean anywhere from:

  "What would be your own private ideal 6E made purely for your personal tastes?"
to
"What improvements would make the game qualitatively better better according to some ideal of game design that your prepared to defend"
to
"What improvements would you like to see that you might think would feasibly be introduced without massive backlash?".


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Also "how would one sell a game immediately" and "how would one sell a game long term" are also very different tasks.

4e did neither well

Im worried 5e does the former well and maybe does the latter barely better than 4e.  That can damage the sale of later editions.  The first 3 editions were pretty different from eachother but all 3 of them did better in both departments than the company will often admit and this trickles down into whatever the current crop of players is.  They will try to convince you the first three didnt do well in both departments.  They did.  Seeping into a population during a time when a product is heavily stigmatized by the brand of "counter culture" or "outsider" takes time.  When you consider that element the 1st three editions in a way even did better than 5e at immediate sales.  The popularity comes slow when you build gradually and strongly.  Sustainably.  I dont think 5e is actually the best thing to look at for multigenerational maintenance of sales and popularity.  And probably not even immediate sales.  What happens when dnd is no longer in style?  At that point when the cultural trend says regardless of what you do it will be at a disadvantage for sales do you recommend just not making any new edition of dnd?  If your argument for how to sell dnd is soley what sells best then i dont think your mindset for what later editions should look like is a good one.  It is a view of limited scope.  You have to look at the long game.  There will be times when immediate profit cannot be what justifies your decisions for long term structure of the product.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Ruin Explorer said:


> I don't agree that players and customers are particularly satisfied with the results, and the circular logic remains in place. You assert that, because official adventure sales are allegedly good, people must be satisfied. This is does not follow at all. On the contrary, the inability of people to make their own adventures work as well as the frankly weirdly designed WotC ones may well drive sales, as people seek something that works better. With 3.XE and PF there can be not the slightest shred of doubt that the complexity and effort involved in constructing encounters for those systems helped drive adventure and AP sales. Thus I suggest sales of official adventures may well reflect a problem with the system, not satisfaction. I have never seen a WotC survey result saying "Oh yes we love 5-8 encounters per day!" even.
> 
> As for "they work fine with less", you're contradicting your own, recent statements! Where you called less than 6-8/day "wonky"! Correctly, I would say. They work poorly with less, but player instincts are to pull back earlier and it's hard to write anything but a dungeon where 5-8 encounters in a day doesn't seem contrived in the extreme (certainly if it keeps happening! One day can work, but two or three or more?).
> 
> The guidelines do not explain how to make a "viable challenge" because 5E is badly designed here and utterly reliant on spamming encounters in a ludicrous way for challenge, and ill-suited to typical D&D play. And players do notice. My own players have commented that 5E encounters are a lot easier than 4E, and even if I dial the difficulty up, as you say, that makes things "wonky" because the encounters simply become swingy and deadly and blow resources in a disorderly way.
> 
> TLDR - 5-8 encounters per day forces DMs to write around this bizarre requirement, and that's perverse because design should serve DMs, not vice-versa. But if it sells adventures and APs I am indeed sure WotC is richly satisfied.



I couldnt agree with this statement more


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Parmandur said:


> Group C I won't say doesn't exist in actuality, but it is fringe. The game right is tuned properly for groups A & B. Group D is dissatisfied, but...how big is it compared to either A or B? Tuning the game for D would make people in A dissatisfied, though B would be unaffected. I would posit that since WotC has built a publishing schedule aimed primarily at A, and not changed course after five years, suggests that group A is, in fact, the primary market for the game.




B are not "satisfied". They see the problem. It's just not a dealbreaker. I don't believe A are the main group and I'd like to know why you think they are. Your publishing logic does not work given 3.XE had huge problems here which both 4E and 5E sought to solve, but that didn't make WotC during 3.XE "change course" either.

Tuning for D would not leave A dissatisfied. That's straight up irrational and illogical. A don't write adventures, they buy them. Thus if you balanced for 2 or 20 encounters a day, so long as the official adventures had that, A would be fine.

If you want to separate A out into the larger A1 who buy adventures and much smaller A2 who write adventures and love the 5-8 number and find it works well for them then I would say A2 is probably far smaller even than D, even ignoring B which is likely the vast majority of people playing 5E. And don't even try "well if B were really the biggest they'd be catered for!" that's never been true in either TT RPGs or MMORPGs. I mean look at 90s WoD - Katana and Trenchcoat was the main way the TT (and to a lesser extent the LARP) was played, but was it supported? No (or rather, not intentionally). Indeed Revised was basically a metaphorical attempt to throw acid in the collective faces of the majority of players. WotC aren't that dumb but they either intend 5-8 as quasi-DRM (unlikely) or made a mistake when setting that, but not a big enough mistake to be worth correcting, as it would require an entire new edition to do so, and it works wonkily but just about okay.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Parmandur said:


> Not really my point, so I'll put it this way. I see four logical groupings for how people relate to the adventure day:
> 
> A. People who play the published adventures and/or follow the DMG and/or XGtE guidelines close enough for government work, and are satisfied.
> 
> B. People like Critical Role who do not (often) push the full adventure day, but have fun anyways because strict combat equivalence and challenge are not important to the flow of their game, and are satisfied. (I would put myself and most of my experience outside of the official modules here)
> 
> C. People who would regularly want to push past the guidelines, but find them limiting.
> 
> D. People who want a game balanced around a smaller adventure day economy, and are dissatisfied.
> 
> Group C I won't say doesn't exist in actuality, but it is fringe. The game right is tuned properly for groups A & B. Group D is dissatisfied, but...how big is it compared to either A or B? Tuning the game for D would make people in A dissatisfied, though B would be unaffected. I would posit that since WotC has built a publishing schedule aimed primarily at A, and not changed course after five years, suggests that group A is, in fact, the primary market for the game.



This is a very limited scope compared to the wide variance ive seen in player populations both across editions and even in my as of yet fairly recent venture into 5e.  What about those who arent interested in encounter structure being relevant at all?  Lotta dissatisfied players in the "creative" camp and thats not the only group of creative types who play but 5e fails multiple different sections of players that would be described as the creative/imaginative type.  Creative types find 5e (even more so 4e) suffocatingly prescriptive (I am reluctant to point this out but there is such a thing as more valuable players.  The creative kind is one of the kinds that DRAWS other players in.  Thats valuable.)  A high value player is a major resource like a dm.  You dont want to disatisfy either and it IS more important than average player satisfaction directly.  Those two groups generate a lot of player satisfaction.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

from OP

"Give characters more options for customization even if it means their character could mechanically become similar to a character of another class/race or a lot of the customization options are rather situational. In the current edition it seems rare that any real choices are made when leveling up."

This is one thing i would point out as an example of an aspect of what i was talking about when i said that 5e's immediate sale is not necesaarily good for long term sale.  Cooky cutter classes are not going to keep people in the game longer than a single edition.  Or even for more than a year or two.  At least not in large numbers.  And it will also create a culture of laziness in the creative department.  Not good.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

I would gladly take breakability of classes over stagnation by lack of options.  Just putting that out there.


----------



## S'mon

Any claim that 5e with its simpler rules and limited options does not have broad based enduring appeal seems bizarre to me. 'Creatives' especially love the simpler framework.

There is a small market for high crunch charbuilding - hence PF2e.


----------



## Parmandur

Ruin Explorer said:


> I don't agree that players and customers are particularly satisfied with the results, and the circular logic remains in place. You assert that, because official adventure sales are allegedly good, people must be satisfied. This is does not follow at all. On the contrary, the inability of people to make their own adventures work as well as the frankly weirdly designed WotC ones may well drive sales, as people seek something that works better. With 3.XE and PF there can be not the slightest shred of doubt that the complexity and effort involved in constructing encounters for those systems helped drive adventure and AP sales. Thus I suggest sales of official adventures may well reflect a problem with the system, not satisfaction. I have never seen a WotC survey result saying "Oh yes we love 5-8 encounters per day!" even.
> 
> As for "they work fine with less", you're contradicting your own, recent statements! Where you called less than 6-8/day "wonky"! Correctly, I would say. They work poorly with less, but player instincts are to pull back earlier and it's hard to write anything but a dungeon where 5-8 encounters in a day doesn't seem contrived in the extreme (certainly if it keeps happening! One day can work, but two or three or more?).
> 
> The guidelines do not explain how to make a "viable challenge" because 5E is badly designed here and utterly reliant on spamming encounters in a ludicrous way for challenge, and ill-suited to typical D&D play. And players do notice. My own players have commented that 5E encounters are a lot easier than 4E, and even if I dial the difficulty up, as you say, that makes things "wonky" because the encounters simply become swingy and deadly and blow resources in a disorderly way.
> 
> TLDR - 5-8 encounters per day forces DMs to write around this bizarre requirement, and that's perverse because design should serve DMs, not vice-versa. But if it sells adventures and APs I am indeed sure WotC is richly satisfied.




WotC reports satisfaction numbers with the game as a whole in the 90% range. I see some people on the internet expressing frustration with the adventure day as set up, but rather muted and not offline at all. The books have guidelines on how to brew it at home, and they have published thousands of pages of examples now. It is still an artform and not a science, but it is well supported and embraced by the player base.

Lower encounter days are wonky in terms of things like Wizard or Paladin balance: some Classes get more powerful if they can Nova confident that they won't get in trouble, while other Classes won't get their non-Nova chance to shine if the Nova capable Classes aren't pushed past their limit. But a lot of people don't care about that (again, I point to Critical Role), and have fun anyways. The game is a game of attrition, and not everyone pushes it to the limit. If it was changed to a game that challenged players with a handful of encounters, the attrition game becomes untenable, which wouldn't go over well.


----------



## Parmandur

Ruin Explorer said:


> I don't believe A are the main group and I'd like to know why you think they are.




WotC publishes 3-4 hardcovers a year. At least two of those every year are adventures that follow the guidelines of the game. We can be quite certain, then, that the prime audience of the game (at least those who spend money) is made up of people who like the gameplay provided by those guidelines. Otherwise WotC would have changed direction due to commercial pressure. Not only have they not changed, the adventure products have gotten more and more bonkers in that direction over the years.



Ruin Explorer said:


> Tuning for D would not leave A dissatisfied. That's straight up irrational and illogical. A don't write adventures, they buy them. Thus if you balanced for 2 or 20 encounters a day, so long as the official adventures had that, A would be fine.
> 
> If you want to separate A out into the larger A1 who buy adventures and much smaller A2 who write adventures and love the 5-8 number and find it works well for them then I would say A2 is probably far smaller even than D, even ignoring B which is likely the vast majority of people playing 5E. And don't even try "well if B were really the biggest they'd be catered for!" that's never been true in either TT RPGs or MMORPGs. I mean look at 90s WoD - Katana and Trenchcoat was the main way the TT (and to a lesser extent the LARP) was played, but was it supported? No (or rather, not intentionally). Indeed Revised was basically a metaphorical attempt to throw acid in the collective faces of the majority of players. WotC aren't that dumb but they either intend 5-8 as quasi-DRM (unlikely) or made a mistake when setting that, but not a big enough mistake to be worth correcting, as it would require an entire new edition to do so, and it works wonkily but just about okay.




I see no logical reason to doubt that WotC is not currently serving the market what the market wants.

Accepting your A1-A2 distinction (though it undoubtedly isn't clear cut like that), I see no reason to doubt they are a significant portion of the fanbase.

I think you misunderstand my logical catagory of Group B: it is folks who undershoot the guidelines but remain satisfied (such as Matt Mercer). By definition, this group is happy playing an underpowered game, and wouldn't be overly affected by a change downwards in tuning, positively or negatively. I suspect that a lot of people are in this catagory.

Most everyone I have seen in actuality falls into the satisfied A and B buckets: clearly D exists, but again, tuning the game for D is mutually exclusive with group A's perspective, they cannot be reconciled in one game ruleset. The game can work for A & C or A & B or B & D, but not other combinations. WotC made a choice, and clearly it has worked for the game.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> The _telos_ of game design is to make games that appeal to people and get played. Designing a game is about selling a game, exact identity in terms.



 The point of a game is to be played.  That may be by people who pay for the privilege, or not, or it might be for just the designer and a few of his friends.

I get the desire to insert sales as the relevant goal - it would justify an ad populum argument, and the only remotely objective evidence we have for D&D being 'good' is it's relative popularity.  But, you can't pretend that the point of game design is sales.  You can sell a game on a number of bases, depending on why people might buy it.

You can sell a game as game, for no other reason that it's fun to play.  In theory.  In practice, you can barely give games away for free on that basis, alone.  There are myriad games in the public domain, for instance, that can be played with a few dice, or a deck of cards, or paper & pencil, etc...  You can't expect a for-profit, trademarked, game to compete with all that.

Instead, games are sold on the basis of cultural-icon status, association with family, familiarity & recognition through advertising or past market dominance, association with famed/admirable people that potential customers can feel a connection to by playing (or just owning) that game, etc.   

I mean, briefly, I'm sure there's been many a master's thesis published on such topics, if you want to dive into the scholarship.   Personally, I find microeconomics like these the more-dismal half of the dismal science.


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> The point of a game is to be played.  That may be by people who pay for the privilege, or not, or it might be for just the designer and a few of his friends.
> 
> I get the desire to insert sales as the relevant goal - it would justify an ad populum argument, and the only remotely objective evidence we have for D&D being 'good' is it's relative popularity.  But, you can't pretend that the point of game design is sales.  You can sell a game on a number of bases, depending on why people might buy it.
> 
> You can sell a game as game, for no other reason that it's fun to play.  In theory.  In practice, you can barely give games away for free on that basis, alone.  There are myriad games in the public domain, for instance, that can be played with a few dice, or a deck of cards, or paper & pencil, etc...  You can't expect a for-profit, trademarked, game to compete with all that.
> 
> Instead, games are sold on the basis of cultural-icon status, association with family, familiarity & recognition through advertising or past market dominance, association with famed/admirable people that potential customers can feel a connection to by playing (or just owning) that game, etc.
> 
> I mean, briefly, I'm sure there's been many a master's thesis published on such topics, if you want to dive into the scholarship.   Personally, I find microeconomics like these the more-dismal half of the dismal science.




It is impossible to separate the design of a game, creating something fun for people to play, from selling the game in terms of getting people to play (money exchanged or otherwise). They are the same thing.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> It is impossible to separate the design of a game, creating something fun for people to play, from selling the game in terms of getting people to play (money exchanged or otherwise). They are the same thing.



 I just explained why they're not even vaguely related.  I mean, most games sell to people _who haven't played them yet_ - they're actual quality as games has no influence on that purchase!  They might have seen advertising, noticed it on the shelf because of the art or the name, read a blurb on the back...

Sales is very much its own thing.



doctorbadwolf said:


> If they let a player play the desired archetype, and have fun, without making fairly casual or “low system mastery” players notice the system in a negative way, it isn’t broken.



By that standard, most D&D classes have been broken to tiny pieces.  They're extremely poor at matching desired genre archetypes, for instance.  
One of many reasons I like to use pregens:  you give new players a choice of characters, they pick one, and may notice moments when it's reminiscent of a genre archetype.  You ask them, "what sort of character from fantasy would you want to play" so you can guide them through rolling up a character and help them pick a class, you invariable end up explaining to them why that character won't measure up to the one they called out - and, if as is so often the case, the closest match is fighter, why it /never/ will.  Even if it's not, why it's magical powers, while they'll eventually far exceed those of the archetype they're going for, will never work much like them, at all.

Funny thing is, even if you did balance the classes, at least to the point you could say "not broken" with some confidence, they /still/ wouldn't necessarily start modeling genre well - though closing the gap between martial &caster characters by making the former more broadly capable  and the latter more specialized & limited would do both.


----------



## 5ekyu

Ruin Explorer said:


> Interesting. Most OP or ridiculous builds in 5E involve Warlock at some point and if they'd been INT that simply wouldn't have been possible, because they'd have had sufficient MAD. What were they in 3.5E? Weren't they CON in 4E?



Honestly, four charisma classes is a bit out of whack - bard, sorc, warlock and paladin. 

Really how hard us it to not see twelve classes, six abilities and fail to suggest "hey, what if it was two classes for each ability" and then have sub-classes that hit other secondaries? Just one example set...

Str Fighter Monk
Con Barbarian Sorcerer
Dex Ranger Rogue
Int Wizard Warlock
Wis Cleric Druid
Cha Bard Paladin


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Tony Vargas said:


> I just explained why they're not even vaguely related.  I mean, most games sell to people _who haven't played them yet_ - they're actual quality as games has no influence on that purchase!  They might have seen advertising, noticed it on the shelf because of the art or the name, read a blurb on the back...
> 
> Sales is very much its own thing.
> 
> By that standard, most D&D classes have been broken to tiny pieces.  They're extremely poor at matching desired genre archetypes, for instance.
> One of many reasons I like to use pregens:  you give new players a choice of characters, they pick one, and may notice moments when it's reminiscent of a genre archetype.  You ask them, "what sort of character from fantasy would you want to play" so you can guide them through rolling up a character and help them pick a class, you invariable end up explaining to them why that character won't measure up to the one they called out - and, if as is so often the case, the closest match is fighter, why it /never/ will.  Even if it's not, why it's magical powers, while they'll eventually far exceed those of the archetype they're going for, will never work much like them, at all.
> 
> Funny thing is, even if you did balance the classes, at least to the point you could say "not broken" with some confidence, they /still/ wouldn't necessarily start modeling genre well - though closing the gap between martial &caster characters by making the former more broadly capable  and the latter more specialized & limited would do both.




I’ve literally never in my life had to do any such thing, except when play a Star Wars RPG, and even then it was only because they wanted to play something the system just didn’t support, like some obscure Force Tradition with very specific iconic abilities. 

In DnD? Nah. Especially in 5e, I ask what sort of character they wanna play, and just help them make that character.


----------



## Sacrosanct

An ad populum _can_ be a fallacy. But it doesn’t mean it _has_ to be. That’s why context matters. And other factors we can look at. Like satisfaction surveys. By looking at all of the data, 5e is popular not just because it’s popular, and can be said it’s good design regardless of how popular it is. After all, every edition has the D&D branding, but some editions did better and worse than others for popularity. Ultimately people play games they enjoy. And the bottom line is that D&D had a directive as its vision statement to be the #1 game again. In that regard, it appears that requirement was a resounding design success.

so I don’t put much weight into the argument that we shouldn’t use popularity as a factor because an ad populum fallacy is a thing. Sometimes.  We need to look at all things together, and understand the project requirements. And by doing that, popularity is a valid metric to use


----------



## Undrave

Would be nice if there was an ACTUAL exploration pillar in the game. Not just one guy rolling for Survival to not get lost and some spell caster obviating the challenge with some spells (like Goodberry feeding everybody). 

I agree with the AngryGM, there's not really that much in the DnD exploration pillar. It barely exists. What Makes Exploration Exploration?


----------



## Sacrosanct

Undrave said:


> Would be nice if there was an ACTUAL exploration pillar in the game. Not just one guy rolling for Survival to not get lost and some spell caster obviating the challenge with some spells (like Goodberry feeding everybody).
> 
> I agree with the AngryGM, there's not really that much in the DnD exploration pillar. It barely exists. What Makes Exploration Exploration?




Um...there is.  If all your exploration parts of the game are a survival check and good berries, you’re really missing out. The easy answer is to point you to the DMG and PHB on the relevant sections that address exploration.
Anecdotally, my last session was 5 hours long, and was entirely social and exploration pillars. Not a single combat this session. Much of the exploration was exploring the sewers in Waterdeep. It included searching for clues of guild signs, not getting lost, mapping the sewers, finding secret passages, dealing with the stench of the sewer and other unsanitary conditions, recognizing and avoiding hazards, both traps and creatures, using light sources, and resource management (both in fear and what spells to prepare*)

*because I prepped my spells for exploration, it doesn’t mean we obliviated the challenge. I had limited spells, and had to also prep some in the event we did have combat.


----------



## Undrave

Sacrosanct said:


> Anecdotally, my last session was 5 hours long, and was entirely social and exploration pillars. Not a single combat this session. Much of the exploration was exploring the sewers in Waterdeep. It included searching for clues of guild signs, not getting lost, mapping the sewers, finding secret passages, dealing with the stench of the sewer and other unsanitary conditions, recognizing and avoiding hazards, both traps and creatures, using light sources, and resource management (both in fear and what spells to prepare*)




Not gonna lie, part of me think it sounds really cool and fun, but another part of me feels like it would be super tedious and I'd get bored halfway through... so I'm probably not the judge of that pillar so I'll shut up now  (also maybe my DM is just not that good at it...)

Also, Darkvision being on so many races obviate the light source issues...


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> I just explained why they're not even vaguely related. I mean, most games sell to people _who haven't played them yet_ - they're actual quality as games has no influence on that purchase! They might have seen advertising, noticed it on the shelf because of the art or the name, read a blurb on the back...
> 
> Sales is very much its own thing.




You asserted that designing games and selling them are separate, but hardly demonstrated the point. Game design is about creating an experience for people to enjoy. Getting people to enjoy the experience is included in that process, by neccesity.

_Ad populum_ is a fallacy when asserting universal, abstract truth by appeal to popular opinion ("2+2=5 because that's what people put in tests"). When the matter in question is what is popular or what will be successful in achieving popularity, that is not fallacious. Game design is Rhetoric, not Logic.


----------



## Tony Vargas

doctorbadwolf said:


> I’ve literally never in my life had to do any such thing, except when play a Star Wars RPG, and even then it was only because they wanted to play something the system just didn’t support, like some obscure Force Tradition with very specific iconic abilities.



They all sort of blend together, IMX, it's so typical, and I'd done so many intro games while my health held out (no, it's OK, I'm mostly recovered these days).  But a few anecdotes stand out...



> In DnD? Nah. Especially in 5e, I ask what sort of character they wanna play, and just help them make that character.



 So, you never do that and get "how 'bout a wizard like in Harry Potter?"  (Wasn't my table, but we never saw that new player again.  It stuck out in my memory because of the contrast.  The FLGS was very crowded and an employee was helping two 'new' players get started - an older, not as old as me, but not young, guy who'd played some D&D in high school, and less old, but still not terribly young, lady who uttered the doomed Harry Potter line.  The guy, of course, proposed to start with a fighter, because that'd be easiest to get back into it - kept seeing him around for months.)  

By then, of course, I'd gone to the hard policy of pregens only.  Pick a pregen, don't even talk about how it might relate to a familiar archetype from genre, just explain it in the context of the game.  Ironically, "Defender" &c were helpful, when it was Encounters and the pregens were laminated half-sheets.


----------



## Sacrosanct

Undrave said:


> Not gonna lie, part of me think it sounds really cool and fun, but another part of me feels like it would be super tedious and I'd get bored halfway through... so I'm probably not the judge of that pillar so I'll shut up now  (also maybe my DM is just not that good at it...)
> 
> Also, Darkvision being on so many races obviate the light source issues...




the elf with dark vision doesn’t help the human or halfling in the dark tunnels


----------



## Parmandur

Undrave said:


> Not gonna lie, part of me think it sounds really cool and fun, but another part of me feels like it would be super tedious and I'd get bored halfway through... so I'm probably not the judge of that pillar so I'll shut up now  (also maybe my DM is just not that good at it...)
> 
> Also, Darkvision being on so many races obviate the light source issues...




Mearls has mentioned that they have been taken aback by how little people use the exploration rules they wrote and put in the core books. Indeed, I would wager a 6E would tone down the exploration rules because they have been underutilized.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> You asserted that designing games and selling them are separate, but hardly demonstrated the point.



People design games that are never offered for sale.  People can acquire games for free.  People buy games without any experience of how they'll play.

I don't see how much more demonstration of the obvious you need.


> _Ad populum_ is a fallacy when asserting universal, abstract truth by appeal to popular opinion



Or when asserting that the popularity of something proves it has a specific, theoretically desireable quality, when there are many other, much stronger explanations for it's popularity.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Sacrosanct said:


> the elf with dark vision doesn’t help the human or halfling in the dark tunnels



Please, give generously to guide elves for the blind...


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> They all sort of blend together, IMX, it's so typical, and I'd done so many intro games while my health held out (no, it's OK, I'm mostly recovered these days).  But a few anecdotes stand out...
> 
> So, you never do that and get "how 'bout a wizard like in Harry Potter?"  (Wasn't my table, but we never saw that new player again.  It stuck out in my memory because of the contrast.  The FLGS was very crowded and an employee was helping two 'new' players get started - an older, not as old as me, but not young, guy who'd played some D&D in high school, and less old, but still not terribly young, lady who uttered the doomed Harry Potter line.  The guy, of course, proposed to start with a fighter, because that'd be easiest to get back into it - kept seeing him around for months.)
> 
> By then, of course, I'd gone to the hard policy of pregens only.  Pick a pregen, don't even talk about how it might relate to a familiar archetype from genre, just explain it in the context of the game.  Ironically, "Defender" &c were helpful, when it was Encounters and the pregens were laminated half-sheets.




I have never really seen this, bit I only play with friends and family at home.

There was one guy, friend of a friend, who came to one session in college blazed out of his mind who wanted to be some combination of Billy Joel and Doctor Who, but that was a rather special incident of incoherence that no system could have helped.


----------



## S'mon

Undrave said:


> Would be nice if there was an ACTUAL exploration pillar in the game. Not just one guy rolling for Survival to not get lost and some spell caster obviating the challenge with some spells (like Goodberry feeding everybody).
> 
> I agree with the AngryGM, there's not really that much in the DnD exploration pillar. It barely exists. What Makes Exploration Exploration?




"Exploration pillar" = "exploring stuff" (dungeons, towns, forests) not "rolling Survival"
"Social pillar = "talking to people" (inc monsters) not "rolling Persuasion".

It's about the things you do in game, not rules-crunch.


----------



## Undrave

Parmandur said:


> Mearls has mentioned that they have been taken aback by how little people use the exploration rules they wrote and put in the core books. Indeed, I would wager a 6E would tone down the exploration rules because they have been underutilized.




This article mention Mearls releasing revisions Travel and Exploration Rules

I'm not sure what the DMG says about it honestly. Might be a question of presentation? Or that the rules as presented don't offer much value for the time spent on them? Like I said, I'm not the best judge of this.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

@Tony Vargas


> Please, give generously to guide elves for the blind...



Why are elves so good at saving money?

Its much easier to rescue it when you notice the secret door its trapped behind or can see it desperately wanting to be picked up in the dark when its siffering is just invisible to others.  Elves are quite considerate to lost and hopeless coins.  Gnomes too but they cant reach the door knobs and teiflings have a phobia of doors and portals leading to foreign family reunions so they block it out of their minds.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Tony Vargas said:


> They all sort of blend together, IMX, it's so typical, and I'd done so many intro games while my health held out (no, it's OK, I'm mostly recovered these days).  But a few anecdotes stand out...
> 
> So, you never do that and get "how 'bout a wizard like in Harry Potter?"  (Wasn't my table, but we never saw that new player again.  It stuck out in my memory because of the contrast.  The FLGS was very crowded and an employee was helping two 'new' players get started - an older, not as old as me, but not young, guy who'd played some D&D in high school, and less old, but still not terribly young, lady who uttered the doomed Harry Potter line.  The guy, of course, proposed to start with a fighter, because that'd be easiest to get back into it - kept seeing him around for months.)
> 
> By then, of course, I'd gone to the hard policy of pregens only.  Pick a pregen, don't even talk about how it might relate to a familiar archetype from genre, just explain it in the context of the game.  Ironically, "Defender" &c were helpful, when it was Encounters and the pregens were laminated half-sheets.



Nah. Literally just saying “magic doesn’t work the same in dnd as it doesn’t in HP, but you can make someone who was born with magic potential in dnd a few different ways” has seen us through that just fine several times, though. 

There’s never a reason to be like “your character will never live up to Gandalf.” The natural conclusion for the noob is, “that sentence ends with, ‘so don’t bother trying to play the concept you want to play’”


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> People design games that are never offered for sale. People can acquire games for free. People buy games without any experience of how they'll play.
> 
> I don't see how much more demonstration of the obvious you need.




"Sell" doesn't necessarily involve commercial transaction.  If someone designs a game they do not mean for people to play, that's a math exercise, not game design. If someone designs a game to give away for free, they still want people to play it, very literally to be sold on the game.

If somebody buys a game without a solid idea of the gameplay, they did so because some aspect of the presentation sold them on it. For instance, I purchased Chicken Caesar because the concept made me laugh. Presentation is part of game design: for instance, Magic: the Gathering is a complex math system that Richard Garfield added a particular fluff to, which sold and sells the math design. They are all of a piece.


Tony Vargas said:


> Or when asserting that the popularity of something proves it has a specific, theoretically desireable quality, when there are many other, much stronger explanations for it's popularity




But when the specific quality has proven popular, it is relevant. The 5E adventures, using the 5E adventure guidelines, have been successful, ergo we can conclude that the adventure guidelines are not contrary to the game's popularity.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Huh...kinda has me wondering what class most resembles harry potter type wizards...or even just one of them like mr potter himself.  The only things i can think of involve really badly multiclassed high level characters jist to get a few years into hogwarts.

I mean...they have the resource availability of a warlock blaster caster but variance and highly powerful effects like a crazy sortbof wizard with some circle magic.

And that just getting started.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

doctorbadwolf said:


> Nah. Literally just saying “magic doesn’t work the same in dnd as it doesn’t in HP, but you can make someone who was born with magic potential in dnd a few different ways” has seen us through that just fine several times, though.
> 
> There’s never a reason to be like “your character will never live up to Gandalf.” The natural conclusion for the noob is, “that sentence ends with, ‘so don’t bother trying to play the concept you want to play’”



But you CAN live up to and surpass both.  Just doesnt happen immediately.  And not in 4th or 5th edition.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> I have never really seen this, bit I only play with friends and family at home.



Well, that does give a very different perspective.  Back in the day, I gamed at local hobby shops until they all closed or stopped having anything to do with RPGs (c1989, I guess it must've been).  I went to conventions quite regularly from the early 80s - 5/year, I think was my peak attendance, but that included a couple sci-fi cons with just a bit of gaming on the side closer to two the last decade or so - until the last few years when health issues (and the attendant medical bills) precluded it.  Might get back to one local con, next year, they're changing venue to one closer to where I live, that'll make it easier.
In 2010, the Encounters program started up and I was delighted to find that the "FLGS" had made a come-back.  OK, it was a comic shop, but still,  we'd fit 4 or 5 tables inside, and two outside (CA, outside is comfortable much of the year), gaming did so well from them over the next few years that the spun off a dedicated game shop, that's half tables.  
At first, encounters was /heavily/ new players.  Even when the playtest started, we'd still get more than a few, though never at the playtest table, that held the interest of only more committed fans.

So I've seen a wide cross section of gamers over the decades - though, even so, from the Bay Area (the hobby's not as regional as it used to be thanks to the internet, but there's still differences) -  including a lotta new players.



Son of the Serpent said:


> Huh...kinda has me wondering what class most resembles harry potter type wizards...



 I suppose warlock might come close, mechanically, in that it has some at-will magical powers it uses frequently, and others that only come out occasionally, but not prominent preparation/memorization.  Wizard, appropriately, is right there, of course, in theme with magic-as-scholarship, which only makes it harder. 
4e, we used to joke about Wand Implement Mastery making you a "Harry Potter wizard."



Parmandur said:


> "Sell" doesn't necessarily involve commercial transaction.



Sure, metaphorically, it can mean "convince to try" or something. But you haven't been using it metaphorically.



> If someone designs a game they do not mean for people to play, that's a math exercise, not game design.



Well, or in support of a sales goal.  Like if he designs a commemorative edition with the expectation that it'll be kept 'mint in box' by the target audience.



> If somebody buys a game without a solid idea of the gameplay, they did so because some aspect of the presentation sold them on it.



Yep.  Which is not necessarily part of the game design.  The packaging and marketing could all be designed by a separate team, after the game was created, for instance.



> But when the specific quality has proven popular, it is relevant. The 5E adventures, using the 5E adventure guidelines, have been successful, ergo we can conclude that the adventure guidelines are not contrary to the game's popularity.



The most successful/popular/praised ones have been those that directly reference classic modules, too.  We could draw an entirely different conclusion from that. 

Personally, if I had to guess at the dynamics driving the current D&D comeback, I'd speculate that the core of it is not old players driven by nostalgia, but new players driven by curiosity about the /experience/.  That the grogs are on board lends it vital 'authenticity' without which you couldn't satisfy that curiosity.  That the experience of D&D has had quite significant elements of class imbalance, frustration, unpredictable/high lethality at 1st, and dysfunction at high levels, means none of those things are remotely dealbreakers - and, indeed, lacking too many of them could have been, if it meant losing that sense authenticity.  Enough "not really D&D" grumping on-line and interest could've dropped off, instead of being curious about the phenom, the mainstream would be repelled by the 'controversy' and obviously insular/unpleasant community. When everyone's happy with the game, the community feels more welcoming.

Now, that's a lot of factors going into bringing a property back, and it does /touch/ on design, but it imposes factors on design other than simply "game that people will enjoy playing."



doctorbadwolf said:


> There’s never a reason to be like “your character will never live up to Gandalf.”



Of course not, your wizard will get there by 5th!


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Tony Vargas said:


> Well, that does give a very different perspective.  Back in the day, I gamed at local hobby shops until they all closed or stopped having anything to do with RPGs (c1989, I guess it must've been).  I went to conventions quite regularly from the early 80s - 5/year, I think was my peak attendance, but that included a couple sci-fi cons with just a bit of gaming on the side closer to two the last decade or so - until the last few years when health issues (and the attendant medical bills) precluded it.  Might get back to one local con, next year, they're changing venue to one closer to where I live, that'll make it easier.
> In 2010, the Encounters program started up and I was delighted to find that the "FLGS" had made a come-back.  OK, it was a comic shop, but still,  we'd fit 4 or 5 tables inside, and two outside (CA, outside is comfortable much of the year), gaming did so well from them over the next few years that the spun off a dedicated game shop, that's half tables.
> At first, encounters was /heavily/ new players.  Even when the playtest started, we'd still get more than a few, though never at the playtest table, that held the interest of only more committed fans.
> 
> So I've seen a wide cross section of gamers over the decades - though, even so, from the Bay Area (the hobby's not as regional as it used to be thanks to the internet, but there's still differences) -  including a lotta new players.
> 
> I suppose warlock might come close, mechanically, in that it has some at-will magical powers it uses frequently, and others that only come out occasionally, but not prominent preparation/memorization.  Wizard, appropriately, is right there, of course, in theme with magic-as-scholarship, which only makes it harder.
> 4e, we used to joke about Wand Implement Mastery making you a "Harry Potter wizard."
> 
> Sure, metaphorically, it can me "convince to try" or something. But you haven't been using it metaphorically.
> 
> Well, or in support of a sales goal.  Like if he designs a commemorative edition with the expectation that it'll be kept 'mint in box' by the target audience.
> 
> Yep.  Which is not necessarily part of the game design.  The packaging and marketing could all be designed by a separate team, after the game was created, for instance.
> 
> The most successful/popular/praised ones have been those that directly reference classic modules, too.  We could draw an entirely different conclusion from that.
> 
> Personally, if I had to guess at the dynamics driving the current D&D comeback, I'd speculate that the core of it is not old players driven by nostalgia, but new players driven by curiosity about the /experience/.  That the grogs are on board lends it vital 'authenticity' without which you couldn't satisfy that curiosity.  That the experience of D&D has had quite significant elements of class imbalance, frustration, unpredictable/high lethality at 1st, and dysfunction at high levels, means none of those things are remotely dealbreakers - and, indeed, lacking too many of them could have been, if it meant losing that sense authenticity.  Enough "not really D&D" grumping on-line and interest could've dropped off, instead of being curious about the phenom, the mainstream would be repelled by the 'controversy' and obviously insular/unpleasant community. When everyone's happy with the game, the community feels more welcoming.
> 
> Now, that's a lot of factors going into bringing a property back, and it does /touch/ on design, but it imposes factors on design other than simply "game that people will enjoy playing."
> 
> Of course not, your wizard will get there by 5th!



Not in 4th or 5th.  Not enough variance.  And you will surpass gandalf on his average day in those editions but again not when he brought his complete A GAME.

Gandalf is a demigod after all.  Of sorts.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Tony Vargas said:


> Well, that does give a very different perspective.  Back in the day, I gamed at local hobby shops until they all closed or stopped having anything to do with RPGs (c1989, I guess it must've been).  I went to conventions quite regularly from the early 80s - 5/year, I think was my peak attendance, but that included a couple sci-fi cons with just a bit of gaming on the side closer to two the last decade or so - until the last few years when health issues (and the attendant medical bills) precluded it.  Might get back to one local con, next year, they're changing venue to one closer to where I live, that'll make it easier.
> In 2010, the Encounters program started up and I was delighted to find that the "FLGS" had made a come-back.  OK, it was a comic shop, but still,  we'd fit 4 or 5 tables inside, and two outside (CA, outside is comfortable much of the year), gaming did so well from them over the next few years that the spun off a dedicated game shop, that's half tables.
> At first, encounters was /heavily/ new players.  Even when the playtest started, we'd still get more than a few, though never at the playtest table, that held the interest of only more committed fans.
> 
> So I've seen a wide cross section of gamers over the decades - though, even so, from the Bay Area (the hobby's not as regional as it used to be thanks to the internet, but there's still differences) -  including a lotta new players.
> 
> I suppose warlock might come close, mechanically, in that it has some at-will magical powers it uses frequently, and others that only come out occasionally, but not prominent preparation/memorization.  Wizard, appropriately, is right there, of course, in theme with magic-as-scholarship, which only makes it harder.
> 4e, we used to joke about Wand Implement Mastery making you a "Harry Potter wizard."
> 
> Sure, metaphorically, it can me "convince to try" or something. But you haven't been using it metaphorically.
> 
> Well, or in support of a sales goal.  Like if he designs a commemorative edition with the expectation that it'll be kept 'mint in box' by the target audience.
> 
> Yep.  Which is not necessarily part of the game design.  The packaging and marketing could all be designed by a separate team, after the game was created, for instance.
> 
> The most successful/popular/praised ones have been those that directly reference classic modules, too.  We could draw an entirely different conclusion from that.
> 
> Personally, if I had to guess at the dynamics driving the current D&D comeback, I'd speculate that the core of it is not old players driven by nostalgia, but new players driven by curiosity about the /experience/.  That the grogs are on board lends it vital 'authenticity' without which you couldn't satisfy that curiosity.  That the experience of D&D has had quite significant elements of class imbalance, frustration, unpredictable/high lethality at 1st, and dysfunction at high levels, means none of those things are remotely dealbreakers - and, indeed, lacking too many of them could have been, if it meant losing that sense authenticity.  Enough "not really D&D" grumping on-line and interest could've dropped off, instead of being curious about the phenom, the mainstream would be repelled by the 'controversy' and obviously insular/unpleasant community. When everyone's happy with the game, the community feels more welcoming.
> 
> Now, that's a lot of factors going into bringing a property back, and it does /touch/ on design, but it imposes factors on design other than simply "game that people will enjoy playing."
> 
> Of course not, your wizard will get there by 5th!



i take one aspect of what i said back.  You can live up to, have comparable abilities, and surpass gandalf without doing very poorly leveled very high leveled annoyingly complicated (to the point of getting a lot of redundancies) multiclassing but only one way and only in one edition.  (This is also assuming you arent allowed to be high level.  Gotta pull it off by mid level)

Prepare for the fusion of two of the cheesiest things in dnd.  Ill admit they are both from 3rd.  Still my favorite edition:

5 levels of red wizard of thay.

Put everything else in chosen of mystra.

After you have finished tenderizing the wizard enjoy your flame grilled estari burger and cheese


----------



## Undrave

How about 6e finally admits that Ranger aren't a real thing and just folds them back into Fighter?


----------



## Tony Vargas

Son of the Serpent said:


> Not in 4th or 5th.  Not enough variance.  And you will surpass gandalf on his average day in those editions but again not when he brought his complete A GAME. Gandalf is a demigod after all.  Of sorts.



Yeah, according to him, and his entirely off-screen A-game.    But, yeah, in 4e, you could literally be a Demigod, not that you'd need to be...


Son of the Serpent said:


> i take one aspect of what i said back.  You can surpass gandalf without doing really poor very high kevel multiclassing but only one way and only in one edition.  (This is also assuming you arent allowed to be high level.  Gotta pull it off by mid level)



Admittedly it was for a parody, but I did a "5th level Magic-user" Gandalf I was pretty happy with in 1e, 3e & 4e.  Specifically:

9th level Fighter/5th level magic user, "character with two classes" (hilariously, every time he drew Glamdring, he got no exp!) and a Staff of the Magi & Ring of Fire Elemental Command - and psionic* enough to destroy a Type VI demon, one-on-one.

5th level half-celestial* wizard, same items.

5th level Deva* Wizard.

* Because, as you know, Gandalf was a quasi-angelic Maiar.



> Prepare for the fusion of two of the cheesiest things in dnd.  Ill admit they are both from 3rd.  Still my favorite edition:
> 5 levels of red wizard of thay. Put everything else in chosen of mystra.



As long as you're a 5th level magic-user, it counts!


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Undrave said:


> How about 6e finally admits that Ranger aren't a real thing and just folds them back into Fighter?



I figured they were a fighter with multiclass in druid.  And racism so potent they fight better when its poked 

Obligatory im just kidding.  I pass the tom sawyer test and do not see racism everywhere delusionally.  Just a joke.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Tony Vargas said:


> Admittedly it was for a parody, but I did a "5th level Magic-user" Gandalf I was pretty happy with in 1e, 3e & 4e.  Specifically:
> 
> 9th level Fighter/5th level magic user, "character with two classes" and a Staff of the Magi & Ring of Fire Elemental Command - and psionic* enough to destroy a Type VI demon, one-on-one.
> 
> 5th level half-celestial* wizard, same items.
> 
> 5th level Deva* Wizard.
> 
> * Because, y'know, Gandalf was a Maiar.
> 
> As long as you're a 5th level magic-user, it counts!



Actually that would do it (probably without the psionics tbh).

Also nice touch with making him half celestial.  I forgot about that.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Tony Vargas said:


> Yeah, according to him, and his entirely off-screen A-game.    But, yeah, in 4e, you could literally be a Demigod, not that you'd need to be...
> Admittedly it was for a parody, but I did a "5th level Magic-user" Gandalf I was pretty happy with in 1e, 3e & 4e.  Specifically:
> 
> 9th level Fighter/5th level magic user, "character with two classes" (hilariously, every time he drew Glamdring, he got no exp!) and a Staff of the Magi & Ring of Fire Elemental Command - and psionic* enough to destroy a Type VI demon, one-on-one.
> 
> 5th level half-celestial* wizard, same items.
> 
> 5th level Deva* Wizard.
> 
> * Because, as you know, Gandalf was a quasi-angelic Maiar.
> 
> As long as you're a 5th level magic-user, it counts!



And staff of the magi too.  Nice.  I think you actually hit all the bases.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Son of the Serpent said:


> Actually that would do it (probably without the psionics tbh).



I just like how it'd've let him beat the Type VI Demon, without anyone else even seeing how he did it.  Kinda fit.  Also, it was the closest I could come, in 1e, to making him even vaguely angelic - because psionics was heavily associated with outer-planes beings in 1e.  A stretch, but it worked on both levels.

My 3.5e version had the minor problem of having absolutely no chance vs the Balor.



Son of the Serpent said:


> And staff of the magi too.  Nice.  I think you actually hit all the bases.



Yeah, in the books, it sounds like the staff is maybe just a tool, the power is his, but the D&D Staff of the Magi does do a number of Gandalf Tricks leading up to the Bridge, including shattering it and the 'fall' leading them into that bizarre off-screen battle (Retributive Strike: 50% chance you shift to another plane).  After that, the Staff of Power fits what Gandalf the White did with it.

I was exposed to D&D right before LotR, so it was like "oh, Ring of Air Elemental Comman" "oh, elven chainmail, elven cloak & boots" "oh, +1/+2 vs goblinoids" "oh, Crystal Hypnosis Ball" "Oh, Staff of the Magi"..."Oh, Hold Portal..."


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Tony Vargas said:


> I just like how it'd've let him beat the Type VI Demon, without anyone else even seeing how he did it.  Kinda fit.  Also, it was the closest I could come, in 1e, to making him even vaguely angelic - because psionics was heavily associated with outer-planes beings in 1e.  A stretch, but it worked on both levels.
> 
> The 5e version had the minor problem of having absolutely no chance vs the Balor.



That part too actually.  You actually fought something pretty equivalent to a balrog.  You lived the dream lol.


----------



## Undrave

Son of the Serpent said:


> I figured they were a fighter with multiclass in druid.  And racism so potent they fight better when its poked



Sounds like a subclass to me! 

The Ranger is just three subclasses: the woodsy martial guy, the woodsy guy with a bit of druid magic, and the Beastmaster


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Parmandur said:


> You asserted that designing games and selling them are separate, but hardly demonstrated the point. Game design is about creating an experience for people to enjoy. Getting people to enjoy the experience is included in that process, by neccesity.
> 
> _Ad populum_ is a fallacy when asserting universal, abstract truth by appeal to popular opinion ("2+2=5 because that's what people put in tests"). When the matter in question is what is popular or what will be successful in achieving popularity, that is not fallacious. Game design is Rhetoric, not Logic.



I’d say it’s Pathos, not Logos, but yeah basically. 




Parmandur said:


> I have never really seen this, bit I only play with friends and family at home.
> 
> There was one guy, friend of a friend, who came to one session in college blazed out of his mind who wanted to be some combination of Billy Joel and Doctor Who, but that was a rather special incident of incoherence that no system could have helped.



GURPS could do it! 


Son of the Serpent said:


> But you CAN live up to and surpass both.  Just doesnt happen immediately.  And not in 4th or 5th edition.



It’s easier to do in those two editions than in earlier ones, but okay.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

doctorbadwolf said:


> I’d say it’s Pathos, not Logos, but yeah basically.
> 
> 
> 
> GURPS could do it!
> 
> It’s easier to do in those two editions than in earlier ones, but okay.



I have a high standard for "living up to" something.  You have to match or exceed something in varience, scale, fluidity, power, and same capabilities without any missing all at once with all these qualities applying to eachother simultaneously.

So for instance can you cast fireball?  Ok.  Can you cast fireball at a moment's notice without several seconds preceding it?  How many (and specifically which ones) spells can you do that with?  Do you have a lot of different spells?  Which ones?  Are the right ones able to happen without incantation (and obviously there are several that dont need that requirement).  Can you shapechange without the use of a class feature?  Thats another thing.  How or why you are able to do something is part of it too.  Gandalf has many abilities durectly due to the type of beingbhe is rather than being a wizard.  And many other issues.  It will be a challenge.  That or you probably arent hitting the nail on the head as well as u think u are.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Gandalf isnt simple


----------



## Tony Vargas

doctorbadwolf said:


> GURPS could do it!



Well, if you used material from both GURPS:  Dr Who and GURPS: River of Dreams.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Plus that isnt d&d


----------



## Son of the Serpent

Also not sure if thats actually true.  Maybe.  I feel like its not though because the nature of a gandalf like character is actually tied to the nature of the cosmos in the game.  Change the cosmos away from a d&d like game and you pretty much have actually effected the validity of it being a "gandalf" like character depending on the features of that new universe as Gandalf is a true example of a "cosmic" character.  Thats actually kinda weird and i didnt think of it until now but its kinda a thing.


----------



## Lanefan

5ekyu said:


> Honestly, four charisma classes is a bit out of whack - bard, sorc, warlock and paladin.
> 
> Really how hard us it to not see twelve classes, six abilities and fail to suggest "hey, what if it was two classes for each ability" and then have sub-classes that hit other secondaries? Just one example set...
> 
> Str Fighter Monk
> Con Barbarian Sorcerer
> Dex Ranger Rogue
> Int Wizard Warlock
> Wis Cleric Druid
> Cha Bard Paladin



Please allow me to fix this for you. 

Str - Fighter, Paladin (or Knight)
Con - Barbarian, Ranger
Dex - Rogue, Monk
Int - Wizard, Warlock
Wis - Cleric, Druid
Cha - Bard, Sorcerer.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Tony Vargas said:


> Well, if you used material from both GURPS:  Dr Who and GURPS: River of Dreams.



That’s a big part of GURPS. You use what is needed to make the campaign and the desired characters, and that’s it. 


Son of the Serpent said:


> Plus that isnt d&d



Didn’t say it was. I replied to a comment stating that no system could have done what the character wanted.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

doctorbadwolf said:


> That’s a big part of GURPS. You use what is needed to make the campaign and the desired characters, and that’s it.
> 
> Didn’t say it was. I replied to a comment stating that no system could have done what the character wanted.



None of the statements i made including or leading up to that post made such a claim though (that no system including the ones outside d&d could do it).  Just saying.


----------



## Tony Vargas

doctorbadwolf said:


> That’s a big part of GURPS. You use what is needed to make the campaign and the desired characters, and that’s it.



Oh, absolutely. 
The joke was just that the supplements got so amazing niche that there might actually be one, just for Billy Joel's last album. 
(Like, I was delighted to get a copy of GURPS: Urth of the New Sun, but I doubt I had a lot of company).


> Didn’t say it was. I replied to a comment stating that no system could have done what the character wanted.



Also Hero, FATE, and M:tA (Cult of Ecstasy, _Master_ obviously), I'm sure, could handle it.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

5ekyu said:


> Honestly, four charisma classes is a bit out of whack - bard, sorc, warlock and paladin.
> 
> Really how hard us it to not see twelve classes, six abilities and fail to suggest "hey, what if it was two classes for each ability" and then have sub-classes that hit other secondaries? Just one example set...
> 
> Str Fighter Monk
> Con Barbarian Sorcerer
> Dex Ranger Rogue
> Int Wizard Warlock
> Wis Cleric Druid
> Cha Bard Paladin




There's nothing worse than mindlessly making things symmetrical. It's an awful and senseless thing to do. You immediately show this with Monk as a STR class, which is totally off.

Likewise why Sorcerer, which has literally always been a CHA class, as CON, when Warlock, which actually used to be a CON class, is INT? Silly.

You're basically proving the opposite of your point by doing that. You can have some stats have more or less classes. Just there are too many CHA ones.



Parmandur said:


> Most everyone I have seen in actuality falls into the satisfied A and B buckets: clearly D exists, but again, tuning the game for D is mutually exclusive with group A's perspective, they cannot be reconciled in one game ruleset. The game can work for A & C or A & B or B & D, but not other combinations. WotC made a choice, and clearly it has worked for the game.




This is not true and you do not have a rational basis for this argument. You just keep making very inaccurate claims which boil down to "It's just the way it, like, totally works, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!". I get that that's your opinion, but please stop trying to pretend it's anything but an opinion. It's not helpful.

It's straight up false to claim D conflicts with all of A. D only conflicts with A2. A1 would be served by any adventures which meet the guidelines. That's not even arguable. That you are arguing it really proves my point here. It's likewise undeniably false to claim all of B is happy with undershooting and the impact thereof, rather than tolerating it. Again this isn't even arguable.

Literally the non-logic you're using here could be used to support anything in any edition of D&D. Racial level limits for example. People kept playing 2E and not only that, but they kept on buying sourcebook after sourcebook full of racial level limits. So by your logic, racial level limits were the right decision, and a huge number of people liked them.

Which is obviously not actually true. People just ignored them and go on with it. And that's what most people do with 5E's encounter/day guidelines. They're not happy with them. They'd have more fun and more exciting adventures with a different design, but they can't change them without redesigning 5E from the ground up, because the assumption is baked into the numbers on a really basic level.

But the main point here is that you're not actually using logic or presenting a rational argument. You're just engaging in a totally circular argument that because a thing sells it must be "doing it right", which is absolute arrant nonsense of the most extreme kind. In fact you literally made that irrational claim in another post. It can't even be argued with because it's not a real argument! It's like "I'm 400lbs and alive, therefore being 400lbs is fine and has no consequences!" or something. Almost sad really, because it's unclear why you, who normally makes quite sound arguments, cannot see the circular logic you're employing.

And the fact that it would require an edition-change to fix is a huge deal. Even if they've naughty word up, you know perfectly well that there is literally nothing they can do about it short of an edition change.



Parmandur said:


> I see no logical reason to doubt that WotC is not currently serving the market what the market wants.




I do agree with this, but I suspect you messed up your double-negatives. 

EDIT - You claim "hardly anyone" is complaining about this, and you know what, I agree. Why though? Because this is way, way, way, way, way over the head of 95% of DMs, with no insult to them. My two current 5E DMs (I also DM), both brilliant people, capable of great erudition, totally don't get this. Both of build homebrew adventures, and don't get why they aren't challenging - and it's because they're not jam-packing 5-8 resource-draining encounters into every 16 hours (or less) the PCs are awake.

So their complaints are either:

A) "I'm a bad DM I guess..."  Which sucks but you apparently think is totally cool!

or

B) "5E is really really low-lethality, even compared to 4E!"

And we see plenty of complaints about 5E being too easy or hard to design interesting encounters for. Or people asking for help with that stuff. And those complaints are really about the 5-8 encounter/day idiocy. Because that's what is causing the problems. It's like a bad foundation. 

I also stone-cold guarantee that 6E, whenever it comes out, whatever it's called, ditches 5-8 encounters a day. And could not be ditched any sooner because it requires an edition change to ditch. So all your "Well they'd change if people wanted it!" is just wrong. They can't change - they'd need an edition change.


----------



## Parmandur

doctorbadwolf said:


> I replied to a comment stating that no system could have done what the character wanted.




Well, not that no system could have accommodated a concept, but that no system could have helped the situation.


----------



## Parmandur

Ruin Explorer said:


> There's nothing worse than mindlessly making things symmetrical. It's an awful and senseless thing to do. You immediately show this with Monk as a STR class, which is totally off.
> 
> Likewise why Sorcerer, which has literally always been a CHA class, as CON, when Warlock, which actually used to be a CON class, is INT? Silly.
> 
> You're basically proving the opposite of your point by doing that. You can have some stats have more or less classes. Just there are too many CHA ones.
> 
> 
> 
> This is not true and you do not have a rational basis for this argument. You just keep making very inaccurate claims which boil down to "It's just the way it, like, totally works, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!". I get that that's your opinion, but please stop trying to pretend it's anything but an opinion. It's not helpful.
> 
> It's straight up false to claim D conflicts with all of A. D only conflicts with A2. A1 would be served by any adventures which meet the guidelines. That's not even arguable. That you are arguing it really proves my point here. It's likewise undeniably false to claim all of B is happy with undershooting and the impact thereof, rather than tolerating it. Again this isn't even arguable.
> 
> Literally the non-logic you're using here could be used to support anything in any edition of D&D. Racial level limits for example. People kept playing 2E and not only that, but they kept on buying sourcebook after sourcebook full of racial level limits. So by your logic, racial level limits were the right decision, and a huge number of people liked them.
> 
> Which is obviously not actually true. People just ignored them and go on with it. And that's what most people do with 5E's encounter/day guidelines. They're not happy with them. They'd have more fun and more exciting adventures with a different design, but they can't change them without redesigning 5E from the ground up, because the assumption is baked into the numbers on a really basic level.
> 
> But the main point here is that you're not actually using logic or presenting a rational argument. You're just engaging in a totally circular argument that because a thing sells it must be "doing it right", which is absolute arrant nonsense of the most extreme kind. In fact you literally made that irrational claim in another post. It can't even be argued with because it's not a real argument! It's like "I'm 400lbs and alive, therefore being 400lbs is fine and has no consequences!" or something. Almost sad really, because it's unclear why you, who normally makes quite sound arguments, cannot see the circular logic you're employing.
> 
> And the fact that it would require an edition-change to fix is a huge deal. Even if they've naughty word up, you know perfectly well that there is literally nothing they can do about it short of an edition change.
> 
> 
> 
> I do agree with this, but I suspect you messed up your double-negatives.




More negatives is more better.

What's the data that shows that people by and large are unsatisfied with the adventure day format? Sure, there are people who are, and that's a valid feeling, but I don't see any reason to doubt that they are the minority report.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Parmandur said:


> What's the data that shows that people by and large are unsatisfied with the adventure day format? Sure, there are people who are, and that's a valid feeling, but I don't see any reason to doubt that they are the minority report.




I'm saying that the constant low-level discussion of issues caused directly or indirectly by the 5-8 encounters a day format is the evidence.

People aren't saying "I hate 5-8 encounters a day!". I agree there. They're saying "Paladins are overpowered", or "My encounters aren't very threatening!" or "My encounters are too deadly!" or "I can't really challenge the PCs, they just breeze through stuff!", or "I feel like I'm a bad DM even though I've been running stuff for 30 years!" or "long rests are too powerful, they should happen less often!" or "Let's make healing slower, this is ridiculous!" and so on. They don't realize the reason is 5-8 encounters/day. They don't make the connection. But that's basically the (narrow) majority of design-complaints about 5E right there.

As I noted in an edit, I have two friends who DM who don't follow the 5-8 encounters thing, because they've been DMing for 30 years and it's never worked like that (definitely would be fair to say through all of 2, 3.XE and 4E, somewhere between 3-4 encounters per day was the average, with plenty of 1-2 encounter days or the like - and 4E it was clear 1-2 was already a problem, but again, only I seemed to actually follow the guidelines). I tried explaining it to one of them once, and he didn't quite get it. He's not thick. He's a long-time DM. He just didn't really think it could have that much effect. But you and I both agree that it does. Further, he's happy with 5E. He's in that 90%. So am I! That's what you're not getting. But I'd be a lot _happier_ if they had designed either around 3-5 encounters/day, or gone with a system that didn't rely on a fixed number of encounters/day. And the only people who'd be unhappy with that are the A2s of the world, and I'm not even sure all of them would be, because resource-drain stuff can work with lower numbers of encounters too - indeed, it's much easier to tune for that than vice-versa. What we have is a system that is not quite outside the acceptable margin of design.

Just as a personal aside, I find it totally obnoxious because it's very hard to tell a story which makes sense and isn't set in a dungeon which includes 5-8 resource-draining encounters in 16 hours. I'm not sure you even disagree there. But if I don't, everything is a breeze and whilst the players like that occasionally, I can see that, long-term, after 4E, which was balls-to-the-wall hard because of the 3-4 encounter/day design and the far, far, far superior ability to gauge monster threat inherent to the system (5E is terrible at that, though not as bad as 3.XE which was ACTIVELY misleading - using the numbers in 3.XE would leave you with a worse understanding of threat than eyeballing the monsters), they miss it if I don't at least try to challenge them with the stupid 5-8 thing. But it feels so naughty word weird - and their instinct, honed over decades of D&D, is to long rest way sooner than 5E wants them to.

And let me re-iterate the most cogent point here:

You keep saying WotC would just change if this was really a problem.

To that I say, no, because they can't change this. This is baked into the very most basic mathematical assumptions of the system. It does not play well with anything less than 5 encounters/day. It plays "okay", acceptably.

But WotC can't change that because it's baked in. They'd need to re-bake the cake. Make a 6th edition. With different classes, spells, recovery options, monster design, and so on. So that WotC stick with it is only evidence, by any means, that it's not enough of problem to cause massive badwill by going to a new edition already.


----------



## Parmandur

Ruin Explorer said:


> I'm saying that the constant low-level discussion of issues caused directly or indirectly by the 5-8 encounters a day format is the evidence.
> 
> People aren't saying "I hate 5-8 encounters a day!". I agree there. They're saying "Paladins are overpowered", or "My encounters aren't very threatening!" or "My encounters are too deadly!" or "I can't really challenge the PCs, they just breeze through stuff!", or "I feel like I'm a bad DM even though I've been running stuff for 30 years!" or "long rests are too powerful, they should happen less often!" or "Let's make healing slower, this is ridiculous!" and so on. They don't realize the reason is 5-8 encounters/day. They don't make the connection. But that's basically the (narrow) majority of design-complaints about 5E right there.
> 
> As I noted in an edit, I have two friends who DM who don't follow the 5-8 encounters thing, because they've been DMing for 30 years and it's never worked like that (definitely would be fair to say through all of 2, 3.XE and 4E, somewhere between 3-4 encounters per day was the average, with plenty of 1-2 encounter days or the like - and 4E it was clear 1-2 was already a problem, but again, only I seemed to actually follow the guidelines). I tried explaining it to one of them once, and he didn't quite get it. He's not thick. He's a long-time DM. He just didn't really think it could have that much effect. But you and I both agree that it does. Further, he's happy with 5E. He's in that 90%. So am I! That's what you're not getting. But I'd be a lot _happier_ if they had designed either around 3-5 encounters/day, or gone with a system that didn't rely on a fixed number of encounters/day. And the only people who'd be unhappy with that are the A2s of the world, and I'm not even sure all of them would be, because resource-drain stuff can work with lower numbers of encounters too - indeed, it's much easier to tune for that than vice-versa. What we have is a system that is not quite outside the acceptable margin of design.
> 
> Just as a personal aside, I find it totally obnoxious because it's very hard to tell a story which makes sense and isn't set in a dungeon which includes 5-8 resource-draining encounters in 16 hours. I'm not sure you even disagree there. But if I don't, everything is a breeze and whilst the players like that occasionally, I can see that, long-term, after 4E, which was balls-to-the-wall hard because of the 3-4 encounter/day design and the far, far, far superior ability to gauge monster threat inherent to the system (5E is terrible at that, though not as bad as 3.XE which was ACTIVELY misleading - using the numbers in 3.XE would leave you with a worse understanding of threat than eyeballing the monsters), they miss it if I don't at least try to challenge them with the stupid 5-8 thing. But it feels so naughty word weird - and their instinct, honed over decades of D&D, is to long rest way sooner than 5E wants them to.
> 
> And let me re-iterate the most cogent point here:
> 
> You keep saying WotC would just change if this was really a problem.
> 
> To that I say, no, because they can't change this. This is baked into the very most basic mathematical assumptions of the system. It does not play well with anything less than 5 encounters/day. It plays "okay", acceptably.
> 
> But WotC can't change that because it's baked in. They'd need to re-bake the cake. Make a 6th edition. With different classes, spells, recovery options, monster design, and so on. So that WotC stick with it is only evidence, by any means, that it's not enough of problem to cause massive badwill by going to a new edition already.




You make some intriguing points, but when push comes to shove, tuning the game around a _maximum_ threat rather than minimal seems best suited to purpose.

And as for how things used to be...the older modules I've seen seem to fit the criteria of the 5E workday?


----------



## ad_hoc

Ruin Explorer said:


> I'm saying that the constant low-level discussion of issues caused directly or indirectly by the 5-8 encounters a day format is the evidence.




That's just showing that some people are.

There are somewhere around 20 million people playing the game.

You need bigger numbers than some people on internet forums discussing their issues with the adventuring day over and over again.

I only play WotC published adventures and most of the chapters are written around the standard adventuring day laid out in the books. 

The system is flexible too, not every day has to be the standard length. The players should not have the assumption of a short day every day, that's all.

The area where WotC adventures get this wrong is with overland travel. There are often random encounter tables for traveling great distances which if followed would be a slog of 1 encounter per long rest incidents.

Personally, I would dislike it if it were the other way around. I want rules written for dungeon crawling (or their equivalent) in my Dungeons and Dragons game. I want a game that provides cinematic action stories. Stopping for a rest after every encounter is not exciting. I would not watch those action movies.


----------



## Tony Vargas

ad_hoc said:


> There are somewhere around 20 million people playing the game.



I believe that stat was /had/ played the game. Like, at least once, anytime in the last 45 years.
Might have just been for the US.  That's still pretty awesome.  
Like, everyone hasn't played D&D, but, hey, you pretty likely know someone who has.  That's getting pretty mainstreamish.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Parmandur said:


> And as for how things used to be...the older modules I've seen seem to fit the criteria of the 5E workday?




What edition? What modules? I was going through my 2E stuff trying to see what would fit 5E one afternoon when I'd forgotten to write an adventure for the next day and couldn't be arsed to draw maps or come up with a plot (I had a migraine, sue me!) and barely anything was even close. There were some dungeons which could potentially fit, but they were all over the road, from having basically 1-3 encounters which would definitely waste resources, to having over 12 which would potentially be in pretty quick succession. Overland adventures and city adventures universally didn't fit - the vast majority of them featured 1-2 encounters/day - 5 in a city adventure was the highest I think I came across, though if the PCs went into the sewers it would go up to like 15 haha. So that's 2E. Some stuff fits, some really doesn't.

4E was designed for 3-4 day so that definitely doesn't fit 5-8.

3.XE is all over the road like 2E is. Dungeons do tend to at least potentially fit the 5-8 model, but again overland/urban adventures, investigations (much more common in 3.XE than 2E!) and so on usually do not. Some encounters are clearly designed for the PCs to rest before attempting (admittedly this is from memory - I don't have much 3.XE stuff to hand).

One thing worth considering is that dungeons fit the 5-8 model well because PCs usually determine when to rest. So if they can handle 5 encounters comfortably, they will, and go on to the 6th, and so on. This includes (in fact is even more true of) "outdoor dungeons" like ruined cities inhabited by monsters (a sadly less-common trope now than it was in 2E!).

Whereas in outdoor and urban and investigation-type adventures, the PCs usually cannot control the encounters/day, and they're usually designed to a much, much lower number than 5E assumes.

I have a question though - how often do you run dungeons (including "outdoor dungeons", which are very different from wilderness or overland adventures - and even underdark, which tends to be closer to overland than dungeons a lot of the time), as opposed to running city or wilderness or other adventures? Because like, in 2E, it was "mostly dungeons". But since 3.XE it's been "barely ever dungeons", for every group I've played in or DM'd for (obviously I may be biasing the latter!). And how hard is it to make non-dungeons have 5-8 encounters/day? Because I find it very hard to do it without making it seem super-contrived, and I know I'm not a bad DM, and not a bad adventure-writer.

I agree, as discussed above, for simple "Okay now we rest!" reasons make dungeons easy to do 5-8 encounters/day with.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

ad_hoc said:


> That's just showing that some people are.
> 
> There are somewhere around 20 million people playing the game.
> 
> You need bigger numbers than some people on internet forums discussing their issues with the adventuring day over and over again.




Well that doesn't stand up to basic logic. You're essentially saying no number could ever be sufficient. That's not an argument.



ad_hoc said:


> The area where WotC adventures get this wrong is with overland travel. There are often random encounter tables for traveling great distances which if followed would be a slog of 1 encounter per long rest incidents.
> 
> Personally, I would dislike it if it were the other way around. I want rules written for dungeon crawling (or their equivalent) in my Dungeons and Dragons game. I want a game that provides cinematic action stories. Stopping for a rest after every encounter is not exciting. I would not watch those action movies.




The system is inherently badly designed for overland travel and the like. You claim it is "flexible", but  you are here admitting it's not THAT flexible. As for "cinematic" and "dungeon crawl", that's literally a contradiction in terms. 4E was vastly more "cinematic" than 5E is, too, with 3-4 encounters/day.


----------



## Eric V

Parmandur said:


> Mearls wanted to make the Warlock Int based, but the playtest results demanded a Charisma Warlock.




The people aren't always right...


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> I believe that stat was /had/ played the game. Like, at least once, anytime in the last 45 years.
> Might have just been for the US.  That's still pretty awesome.
> Like, everyone hasn't played D&D, but, hey, you pretty likely know someone who has.  That's getting pretty mainstreamish.




No, that number was 40 million.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> No, that number was 40 million.



Thanks, don't know how I coulda gotten those confused.

Where's the 20mil from?  (link wouldn't hurt, even)


----------



## Don Durito

The thing with open playtests is that while they avoid drastic mistakes, they also make it difficult to implement improvements that people may initially dislike but eventually get used to and find they actually prefer.

Of course push too far and you get the kind of backlash that 4E got, but I'm far from convinced that 5E hit the sweetspot.

(And if they _hadn't _made 4E some of the elements in 5E that come from 4E, and which most 5E players take for granted - such as relatively swift healing - may not have made it through open playtest).


----------



## Parmandur

Ruin Explorer said:


> What edition? What modules? I was going through my 2E stuff trying to see what would fit 5E one afternoon when I'd forgotten to write an adventure for the next day and couldn't be arsed to draw maps or come up with a plot (I had a migraine, sue me!) and barely anything was even close. There were some dungeons which could potentially fit, but they were all over the road, from having basically 1-3 encounters which would definitely waste resources, to having over 12 which would potentially be in pretty quick succession. Overland adventures and city adventures universally didn't fit - the vast majority of them featured 1-2 encounters/day - 5 in a city adventure was the highest I think I came across, though if the PCs went into the sewers it would go up to like 15 haha. So that's 2E. Some stuff fits, some really doesn't.
> 
> 4E was designed for 3-4 day so that definitely doesn't fit 5-8.
> 
> 3.XE is all over the road like 2E is. Dungeons do tend to at least potentially fit the 5-8 model, but again overland/urban adventures, investigations (much more common in 3.XE than 2E!) and so on usually do not. Some encounters are clearly designed for the PCs to rest before attempting (admittedly this is from memory - I don't have much 3.XE stuff to hand).
> 
> One thing worth considering is that dungeons fit the 5-8 model well because PCs usually determine when to rest. So if they can handle 5 encounters comfortably, they will, and go on to the 6th, and so on. This includes (in fact is even more true of) "outdoor dungeons" like ruined cities inhabited by monsters (a sadly less-common trope now than it was in 2E!).
> 
> Whereas in outdoor and urban and investigation-type adventures, the PCs usually cannot control the encounters/day, and they're usually designed to a much, much lower number than 5E assumes.
> 
> I have a question though - how often do you run dungeons (including "outdoor dungeons", which are very different from wilderness or overland adventures - and even underdark, which tends to be closer to overland than dungeons a lot of the time), as opposed to running city or wilderness or other adventures? Because like, in 2E, it was "mostly dungeons". But since 3.XE it's been "barely ever dungeons", for every group I've played in or DM'd for (obviously I may be biasing the latter!). And how hard is it to make non-dungeons have 5-8 encounters/day? Because I find it very hard to do it without making it seem super-contrived, and I know I'm not a bad DM, and not a bad adventure-writer.
> 
> I agree, as discussed above, for simple "Okay now we rest!" reasons make dungeons easy to do 5-8 encounters/day with.




1E and Basic. Never seen a 2E adventure, and my exposure to 3E published adventures is limited to 2/7 of Tales from the Yawning Portal.

I had a friend in college who dropped in on our game describe it as feeling like a Tolkien character who found his way into a Joseph Conrad novel. Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Lost Mines of Phandelver and the 5E DMG encounter guidelines changed how I played, for the better.


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> Thanks, don't know how I coulda gotten those confused.
> 
> Where's the 20mil from?  (link wouldn't hurt, even)




It came from the same place, lemme look around later.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> It came from the same place, lemme look around later.



I'm in no hurry.  It sure would be a nice factoid though:  "there are as many people playing D&D today, as played it in the preceding 40 years" kinda thing.    Lovely sound-bite way of talking about growth.


----------



## Eric V

Parmandur said:


> But when the specific quality has proven popular, it is relevant. The 5E adventures, using the 5E adventure guidelines, have been successful, ergo we can conclude that the adventure guidelines are not contrary to the game's popularity.




OR

When there's so little (relative to previous editions) material being released in a year, -anything- gets bought.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that was the economic reasoning behind not flooding the market with books.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Eric V said:


> When there's so little (relative to previous editions) material being released in a year, -anything- gets bought.



That's certainly why I own OA, UA, and the Survival Guides for 1e.


----------



## Eric V

Tony Vargas said:


> That's certainly why I own OA, UA, and the Survival Guides for 1e.




The ninja and samurai for me for the first one, but agreed with the others.


----------



## Parmandur

Eric V said:


> OR
> 
> When there's so little (relative to previous editions) material being released in a year, -anything- gets bought.
> 
> In fact, I'm pretty sure that was the economic reasoning behind not flooding the market with books.




On the contrary, 4E's publishing history is adequate demonstration that folks won't just buy because it is there.


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> I'm in no hurry.  It sure would be a nice factoid though:  "there are as many people playing D&D today, as played it in the preceding 40 years" kinda thing.    Lovely sound-bite way of talking about growth.




"According to Wizards of the Coast, the company that has published D&D since the late ‘90s, over 40 Million people are estimated to have played Dungeons & Dragons."

...

"Wizards reported a 41% rise in the number of active players (year over year) in 2017, and 52% in 2018. Starter Set sales alone increased 65% year over year in 2018. In fact, EVERY YEAR since D&D’s 5th Edition launched has seen the game’s biggest growth."









						Dungeons & Dragons Creators and Celebrity Players Explain Its Recent Surge in Popularity - IGN
					

More people are playing D&D than ever before - here's what its most high profile celebrity players say about its surge in popularity.




					www.ign.com


----------



## Eric V

Parmandur said:


> On the contrary, 4E's publishing history is adequate demonstration that folks won't just buy because it is there.



Same argument, just different side of the pendulum.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Parmandur said:


> "Wizards reported a 41% rise in the number of active players (year over year) in 2017, and 52% in 2018. Starter Set sales alone increased 65% year over year in 2018. In fact, EVERY YEAR since D&D’s 5th Edition launched has seen the game’s biggest growth."



 I can't understand why they wouldn't just volunteer the number of active players rather than the growth %, that chart, in particular, with the first bar just data-free.
It's frustrating.  
I mean, I can understand, but I don't like what it implies.


----------



## Parmandur

Tony Vargas said:


> I can't understand why they wouldn't just volunteer the number of active players rather than the growth %, that chart, in particular, with the first bar just data-free.
> It's frustrating.
> I mean, I can understand, but I don't like what it implies.




Trade secrets.


----------



## S'mon

Ruin Explorer said:


> But WotC can't change that because it's baked in. They'd need to re-bake the cake. Make a 6th edition. With different classes, spells, recovery options, monster design, and so on.




Or they could just make "Long Rest takes 1 week" the standard rule.


----------



## Lanefan

ad_hoc said:


> I want rules written for dungeon crawling (or their equivalent) in my Dungeons and Dragons game. I want a game that provides cinematic action stories.



One, however, does not by its nature provide the other.

A dungeon-crawling party is, most logically, going to be cautious and careful.  The ten (or eleven!) foot poles are close to hand, everything is checked for traps, and the tension comes not from the action itself but from waiting for the action and not knowing how or when it's going to appear.  And the rules need to allow for this.


----------



## 5ekyu

Son of the Serpent said:


> Huh...kinda has me wondering what class most resembles harry potter type wizards...or even just one of them like mr potter himself. The only things i can think of involve really badly multiclassed high level characters jist to get a few years into hogwarts.
> 
> I mean...they have the resource availability of a warlock blaster caster but variance and highly powerful effects like a crazy sortbof wizard with some circle magic.
> 
> And that just getting started.



If I were gonna try and emulate Potter in 5e.
Spell point variant wizard.
Plus status (years) in a Wizard school as background feature.
Boons (charms, spellbooks, resources like special familiars, etc) from the school due to status. As status rises, more boons.)
Basically a lot needs to be gained from the "sttonghold/guild" setup.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

5ekyu said:


> If I were gonna try and emulate Potter in 5e.
> Spell point variant wizard.
> Plus status (years) in a Wizard school as background feature.
> Boons (charms, spellbooks, resources like special familiars, etc) from the school due to status. As status rises, more boons.)
> Basically a lot needs to be gained from the "sttonghold/guild" setup.



I feel like whatever the harry potter wizard is its gotta be a prc because right off the bat at "1st level" it would appear to immediately have a ton of capabilities.  It feels (to me personally at least) like too much to gain in a single level.


----------



## 5ekyu

Son of the Serpent said:


> I feel like whatever the harry potter wizard is its gotta be a prc because right off the bat at "1st level" it would appear to immediately have a ton of capabilities. It feels (to me personally at least) like too much to gain in a single level.



That depends on if you consider level 1 to be start adventuring or later training. A potter setting would fit yo be an adventures hspprn while still in school. 

I would have tier- 1 be "in school" centered and tier-2 be " graduated" and more the classic adventure. But it's a given, status in the school is big asset wise.


----------



## ad_hoc

Lanefan said:


> One, however, does not by its nature provide the other.
> 
> A dungeon-crawling party is, most logically, going to be cautious and careful.  The ten (or eleven!) foot poles are close to hand, everything is checked for traps, and the tension comes not from the action itself but from waiting for the action and not knowing how or when it's going to appear.  And the rules need to allow for this.




I don't understand what you're saying here.

I want both and the rules do provide both for me.

It is possible for a rules set to provide one or the other of course. These rules provide both.

Your 2nd paragraph appears to have nothing to do with my post.


----------



## Son of the Serpent

5ekyu said:


> That depends on if you consider level 1 to be start adventuring or later training. A potter setting would fit yo be an adventures hspprn while still in school.
> 
> I would have tier- 1 be "in school" centered and tier-2 be " graduated" and more the classic adventure. But it's a given, status in the school is big asset wise.



Well actually, i meant that they seem like they have tons of abilities directly before attending school and also a ton more after 1st year at school.  Powerful or lethal spells dont seem to be much of a thing first year but look at the breadth of what can be done.

Right off the bat

Massive spell catalogue

Potion making

1 or 2 familiars

Access to an arcane library (and pretty likely a far more extensive one than what a wizard typically would have access to below heroic tier in d&d)

Innate spell casting

Boosted caster level when using wand and incantation

No limit to spells known

Wizard but with spontaneous casting

Reserves of strength with fatigue (if anything) substituted for the normal stun or damage recoil

Free half non human (nearly any) template optional (like fey for instance or vela or whatever) with seemingly the ability to ignore level adjustment.

Starting equipment includes soulbound wand (or something else to represent loyalty to its master)

No need for a spell book

Honestly the list keeps going but i dont know when i would run out so im going to stop because i think it would be pretty long.


----------



## Lanefan

ad_hoc said:


> I don't understand what you're saying here.
> 
> I want both and the rules do provide both for me.
> 
> It is possible for a rules set to provide one or the other of course. These rules provide both.
> 
> Your 2nd paragraph appears to have nothing to do with my post.



Your post said you want cinematic action scenes - my read on this was that's what you'd like the game to mostly consist of.

You also said you want dungeon crawling; which (if played the least bit logically) mostly consists of lots of caution and exploring, with "cinematic action scenes" relatively few and far between.

Unless, that is, you're skipping all the exploration bits; but then it's not really dungeon crawling any more.


----------



## ad_hoc

Lanefan said:


> Your post said you want cinematic action scenes - my read on this was that's what you'd like the game to mostly consist of.
> 
> You also said you want dungeon crawling; which (if played the least bit logically) mostly consists of lots of caution and exploring, with "cinematic action scenes" relatively few and far between.
> 
> Unless, that is, you're skipping all the exploration bits; but then it's not really dungeon crawling any more.




Indiana Jones is cautious and yet the movie is also cinematic.

What isn't cinematic is resting for a day every time something exciting happens. There is no tension. I am not watching a movie like that.

Take The Terminator as another example. The Terminator finds Sarah. A few action set pieces happen. Sarah and Kyle find refuge in a motel and rest for the night thus dispelling the tension. The Terminator finds them again and the tension ramps up to the climax of the movie.

Now imagine that movie where Kyle and Sarah visit the motel 10 times instead of 1. It would be terrible.

I want a balanced mix of Social Interaction, Exploration, and Combat. All those things can be cinematic.

What is terrible is having the heroes take a day off to rest every time something happens. That is a terrible action/adventure/fantasy story anymore.

(I also disagree with combats being 'few and far between' in dungeon crawling. We must have been playing very different games of D&D.)


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> Unless, that is, you're skipping all the exploration bits*; but then it's not really dungeon crawling any more.



I suppose you could be dungeon strolling, or even dungeon sprinting.







* "rock-climbing, Joel, _rock-climbing_..."
"_deeeeeep hurrrrrting…_"
"...got...to...pad.... the....film..."


----------



## Lanefan

ad_hoc said:


> Indiana Jones is cautious and yet the movie is also cinematic.



Indiana Jones is pretty gonzo in some ways - that's what makes him fun - but isn't always logical, or wise. 



> What isn't cinematic is resting for a day every time something exciting happens. There is no tension. I am not watching a movie like that.



Neither am I, but fortunately D&D isn't a movie.  

D&D isn't being asked to stuff an entire story arc into two hours and a bit; instead it can - and IMO should - take as long as required.



> Take The Terminator as another example.



Sorry, doesn't help - I've never seen (nor been at all interested in seeing) The Terminator.



> I want a balanced mix of Social Interaction, Exploration, and Combat. All those things can be cinematic.
> 
> What is terrible is having the heroes take a day off to rest every time something happens. That is a terrible action/adventure/fantasy story anymore.



Unless your players are playing PCs with short boredom thresholds such that they couldn't sit still for a day-night without stirring up trouble somehow, a day's rest can be done in 30 seconds table time:

Player(s): "If this seems like a safe spot we'll sack out here until the next morning."
DM: "OK.  Do any of you have anything you want to do during this time?  Any spells [or rituals] to cast?"
Player(s): <quick check amongst themselves> "No, we're good; and we're on our usual keep-watch sequence."
DM: "Right.  Now, does anything come along and bother you?  <rolls dice a few times>  Doesn't look like it, so - ding! - you all wake up next morning to a <rolls some more dice> rainy, windy day."

How hard is that?



> (I also disagree with combats being 'few and far between' in dungeon crawling. We must have been playing very different games of D&D.)



Or playing in very different ways.  I'm usually a gonzo player who throws caution to the wind at every opportunity; but to those less crazy, combat is (or should be!) more often the last option than the first.  

It's safer to sneak past the guards (or just find another way in) rather than fight them and risk alerting the place.

It's safer to hole up outside the bugbear caves and whittle them down by picking off their small away-team hunting parties (who we can beat with trivial ease) for a week or two than it is to wade in right now and take on the whole clan at once (who will probably slaughter us).

It's safer to assume everything in the dungeon is out to kill us (or anyone else who happens by) until it's proven not to be, and thus searching for traps is SOP, listening at doors is SOP, constant use of every means of divination we've got is demanded of those who can do it, and so on.

Not cinematic, but much more effective in the long run.


----------



## ad_hoc

Lanefan said:


> Unless your players are playing PCs with short boredom thresholds such that they couldn't sit still for a day-night without stirring up trouble somehow, a day's rest can be done in 30 seconds table time:




The same can and should be done in your hobgoblin example.

"Okay you wait in the forest for a month and kill all the hobgoblins."

That only takes 10 seconds.

Then you should move on and engage in something that has stakes and risk.

I don't think we would play in each other's games.

That's fine. Like it has been said earlier in the thread, the way 5e is designed is not for everyone.

It is right for a lot of people though. I suggest if you really don't like the fundamental structure of the game that you just play another one.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> It's safer to sneak past the guards (or just find another way in) rather than fight them and risk alerting the place.



This is coming from a 1e kinda place, right?  I mean, where even the Thief trying to sneak past the guards is going to have to succeed at _both_ a Hide in Shadows and a Move Silently % … let alone getting a whole party that might include a cleric and a fighter or few in platemail through there, with their roll-under DEX checks or d6 surprise-only-on-1 or whichever contradictory sub-system or Len Lakofka variant* the DM settles on.









*TBF, Mr. Lakofka authored many an excellent variant, that you'll even see people, today, quote as actual rules.  like "we use d10 initiative, like in 1e"


----------



## Lanefan

ad_hoc said:


> The same can and should be done in your hobgoblin example.
> 
> "Okay you wait in the forest for a month and kill all the hobgoblins."
> 
> That only takes 10 seconds.



And makes a mockery of the game in the process.

In resting, unless wandering monsters happen by, there is no risk. (and if wandering monsters do happen by, the rest stops and we play through whatever comes next, be it a combat or some hiding or just letting them pass in the distance)

In any combat - even the most trivial - there is risk.  Some schlub opponent gets 3 crits in a row and puts you down and dead; or someone fumbles and breaks some expensive piece of gear; or something else happens* that has long-term consequences.  This is why I feel that every combat should be played through, no matter how trivial it might at first seem.

* e.g. and much more likely, at some point one of the hobgoblins gets away and alerts the whole clan; at which point stuff gets real.



> Then you should move on and engage in something that has stakes and risk.



If your party's mission is to take out the hobgoblins in Westfold Woods (an adventure that on paper is a challenge for the party as it stands), and the players/PCs come up with a means whereby that mission can be done at massively reduced overall risk, the PCs - and by extension the players, perhaps - would be idiots not to do it this way.

But if they do, I'm going to play it all the way through; and yes, it means they'll probably spend hours at the table whacking small groups of hobgoblins until the hob's finally figure out their hunting parties aren't returning.  The players-as-PCs have the right to set the pace in a situation like this; all I-as-DM can do is react to what they give me and run the hunting parties.



> I don't think we would play in each other's games.



I think there'd be some arguing if we did. 

If there's no risk to something, and the players are cool with it, skip it.  If at some point the risk for whatever reason becomes at all significantly non-zero then IMO it can't be skipped beyond that point.



> That's fine. Like it has been said earlier in the thread, the way 5e is designed is not for everyone.
> 
> It is right for a lot of people though. I suggest if you really don't like the fundamental structure of the game that you just play another one.



I'm not specifically talking 5e here, my points (I hope!) apply to any edition.


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## Tony Vargas

ad_hoc said:


> Like it has been said earlier in the thread, the way 5e is designed is not for everyone.



 Not _everyone_ - just all the 40 million people who have ever played D&D.


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