# Postmortem: 10 Ideas in 5e that didn't quite work...



## Remathilis

With 5th edition winding down and 1D&D ascending, I'd like to look at some ideas presented during the game's lifespan that didn't quite work out as desired. Some will be removed, some will be changed, and some may yet live to see 5.5. In no paricular order

*1.) Backgrounds*

Yeah, the kinda exist in the packet as predefined options, but the current background is dead. It started life in D&D next as a kind of mixture of 4e Themes along with 3e-style feat trees before morphing into a collection of non-weapon proficiencies and role-playing aids. It helped define your character as more than just as fighter or a sorcerer, but as a soldier, an outlander, or a sailor. And lots of supplements (Official and 3pp) added more of them to fit every possible origin. However, they maintained a few flaws in their design: most players viewed them as inflexible options for skills and proficiencies despite "customizing your background" being an option. Most of the Features were heavily DM and campaign dependent (and often amounted to little more than "free room and board" or "NPC will cut you some slack". Easily forgotten by both DM and player. They also had a cascading effect as we'll see below. While I genuinely liked the ideas of backgrounds, I don't think they did what WotC wanted in terms of role-playing.

*2.) Bonds/Ideas/Flaws/Traits*

Alongside Backgrounds were lists of personality traits, written in first person sentences to foster deeper role-playing options by having PCs define their personality, beliefs, and shortcomings. Like the backgrounds they were attached to, they were supposed to offer suggestions, but more than a few PCs took them as the only options for playing your acolytes or urchins. Others picked them at character creation, wrote them down and promptly forgot them, or didn't bother to write them down at all. While BIFTS may exist in some fashion in 5.5, they aren't attached to background and I suspect won't appear as some rollable table of suggestions, though I feel they will probably remain for NPCs in modules.

*3.) Trinkets.*

Ah trinkets. Little curiosities you rolled for at chargen, wrote-down in your equipment and were ignored afterwards. Sometimes interesting, rarely useful, often forgotten.

*4.) Multi-classing*

5e brought back 3e style multiclassing, with some adjustments to fix the problems inherent to such a system. Spell slots (but not spells known) were dependent on all caster classes, proficiency bonus and cantrips were a function of character level, not class level, and starting proficiencies were staggered to avoid dipping for free saves and weapons/armors. Despite all this, the system was still primarily used to dip one class into another to pull some low-level features from one class and add it to another. In particular, the Charisma classes (Warlock, Sorcerer, and Paladin) synergized almost too well with each other. Eventually, subclasses and feats became more popular ways to poach from one class and into another, and I wager that multiclassing with get another revision (if it remains at all) to curb abuses and discourage 1-2 level dips.

*5.) Inspiration.*

Designed as a reward for good role-play (remember those BIFTS?) Inspiration didn't quite work as they wanted. It was hard or inconsistent to get, easily forgotten, and didn't connect to the rest of the system. I see why WotC has opted to make it more widely and consistently useful.

*6.) Modular Rules*

Ah what sweet summer children we were! The notion that 5e would be rules-modular was partially true: It's a remarkably easy system to house rule. But the dream of Alternative skill systems, advanced combat options, new spell systems, mass combat, alternative ability scores, and other ideas hinted at in the DMG but never expanded on or fleshed out quickly faded. An alternative "Greyhawk" initiative based on weapon/spell speed was UA'd but that was the only attempt at any sort of alternative rule modules we saw from WotC.

*7.) Psionics.*

Another bit of vaporware: true psionic rules seemed like a necessity and WotC honestly tried to make the Mystic a thing, but it never gelled and eventually collapsed into the vaguely psychic subclass options we have today.

*8.) Short Rests*

The short rests were designed to resemble the encounter recharge mechanic in 4e: a way to recharge certain abilities more often than a long rest as well as to heal between encounters. But the long duration needed to use one made it hard to do in most situations (if you were safe enough to take a lunch break, you probably weren't in the kind of place you needed to recharge those abilities in) and the fact certain classes and races (warlock, monk, fighter, dragonborn) needed them far more than others lead to a lot of tension in using them. They still exist in some fashion, but I wager the change from short-rest recharge to prof/day will make their usefulness dimmish further.

*9.) Hit Dice*

Speaking of, they were great for short rests to heal hp without magic, but as short rests were skipped either due to the inability to safely rest for an hour or skipped instead for a long-rest, HD rarely had a chance to shine. It seems a few more options to use them to heal 4e style (spending them in combat or via a spell) might bring them more use beyond low level.

*10. Pact Magic*

I'm going to get some flack for this. Pact Magic is the Warlock method of casting spells; a few spell slots recharged over a short rest and always cast at max efficiency seemed like an interesting alterative to spellcasting on paper, but warlock magic was very finicky. It was a very hard concept for new players to wrap their heads around always casting at max level (no, you use your 5th level spell slot to cast your 1st level spell as if it was 5th level), was wholly dependent on frequent short rests, and was an absolute nightmare with multiclassing. Further, the spell list went up to 9th level, but levels 6-9 were part of a different class feature (mystic arcanum) and didn't use spell slots at all to cast. The system looked cool, but maybe (if WotC is open to more radical adjustment to the class system) it would be better to have warlocks be a regular spell slot caster akin to sorcerer or bard rather than their own weird spell system that doesn't play nice with the rest of the game.

That's my list. Got one to add? Disagree? Let me have it!


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## Warpiglet-7

You got a like from me for generating an interesting discussion!  

I will add more detail tomorrow.  I agree in some areas but not backgrounds or pact magic!  I will say more when I have more time.  But backgrounds helped to get me in the right frame of mind and remember those bits.

We always did backgrounds back to 1e—but these little pithy bits helped focus me!

Conversely, in generally made my own using the suggestions as..suggestions!

The proble her is the player.  They take an advantageous skill set but lose the baggage:   It’s on us as individuals and groups to keep it!

That said never once have we used inspiration for playing your character.  It’s a reward in itself even for this heavy combat swashbuckling group of mine!


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## Tales and Chronicles

I think the ''weird spellcasting'' should be left to the sorcerer, to at last give them a niche. The warlock can have regular spellcasting with all the creepy-ass spells and it still would be good, IMO.


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## Bill Zebub

What about the basic play loop? Seems like most people are just partying on as if it’s still 3.5e, declaring they are “rolling Perception” and the like.


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## Shiroiken

I disagree about traits/ideals/bonds/flaws, as I've always found them useful as a player and DM. My biggest issue was trying to tie them to backgrounds, instead of being their own section (like alignment). The provide a simple framework for the player and DM to tie the character into the world and guide roleplay.

Your issues with short rests aren't universal. I've heard lots of complaints about them, but I've not experienced many issues. The frequency of short rests in our group depends on the party composition (more short rest classes means more short rests) and level (since you get more use out of multiple rests at higher level).


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## payn

I love that list, minus multiclassing. I have never minded the dip. I do think there is room for improvement though.


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## TerraDave

Mostly right on the list.

Modular rules, and that this was _already_ supposed to be 1D&D, was very hyped in Next and then faded very fast. And it was sad. Part of the Next One seems to be locking down and narrowing things even more. 

As for Warlock, so close to such a good class. They really should not blow it up. We will see.


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## UngeheuerLich

Multiclassing works fine.

8 to 10 are working ok.


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## Kobold Stew

This is an interesting list. I agree with you on 2, 3, 5, 6 -- none of them produced better play at the table. 

1. Backgrounds. I think Backgrounds were great, and better even than the designers realized in terms of supporting new and interesting builds. I won't speak for "most players", but consistently at the tables I was at, backgrounds were key to character formation. And I loved that customization of backgrounds was presented as an possibility (not even an "optional rule") out the gate. I used custom origins a lot, and appreciated that it urged us to have a hook for creative play intersecting with mechanics.

4. Multi-classing works fine. Dips can be a problem in white-room design discussions, but I have not seen them as a problem when characters are actually levelling up. 

7. They had a few options for Psionics: (a) don't have them; (b) have a new core class; (c) psionic subclasses for existing classes; (d) pisonics just as feats. Everyone has a preference, and despite starting with (a), they eventually went with (c) and (d). Some people will have wanted other things (they tried (b) in a UA and were attacked, despite it being clever and original), and in the end they'be made a reasonable choice that some people like, and I think it allows some fine builds. 

8./9. We've seen that they are moving away from short rests to proficiency times per long rest. I think the "need to win" made players of some classes based on long rests antsy -- short rests helped some classes more than others. Players look to their own sheet first. You're right that these didn't work as intended at most tables.

10. I don't think Pact Magic is as complex as you make out, but it's a new system, and it blended with the invocations. levelled spells were less important than invocations and cantrips, unlike other casting classes. Just that meant they worked as intended, I feel.


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## delericho

Remathilis said:


> Most of the Features were heavily DM and campaign dependent (and often amounted to little more than "free room and board" or "NPC will cut you some slack". Easily forgotten by both DM and player. They also had a cascading effect as we'll see below. While I genuinely liked the ideas of backgrounds, I don't think they did what WotC wanted in terms of role-playing.




I actually thought this was a good thing about Backgrounds. Who you were before you started really should be one of the least interesting parts of the character. Plus, making the benefits from the background trivial also meant it was something of a "free hit" - no need to pick your background to optimize synergy with your preferred class.



Remathilis said:


> *3.) Trinkets.*
> 
> Ah trinkets. Little curiosities you rolled for at chargen, wrote-down in your equipment and were ignored afterwards. Sometimes interesting, rarely useful, often forgotten.




Likewise, these were working as intended, I think - they provided some marginal interest at character creation, but otherwise could be completely ignored.

One I would like to add:

*Lair Actions:* These were fine, and a good idea, but they were also too rare, and too restricted to high-CR foes. Which meant, given that the vast majority of play is in levels 1-10, they very rarely ever came into play.

Fortunately the fix for these is pretty simple: give more monsters lair actions earlier.


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## John R Davis

Er 
What??
Not sure how you played but bonds, backgrounds and trinkets were a massive part.
Gutted Spelljammer doesn't have a new trinket table. A trinket has saved the day many a time.


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## Kobold Stew

I would add (with 11 as Lair actions, above):

*12. Ranger*. I think we know the Ranger didn't work out as intended. But they've made lots of changes, and the result (with Tasha's optional abilities) is pretty solid -- unique abilities and not overpowered. And they have a mechanism for Beastmaster that they've replicated for other core classes to (Firewarden druid, artificer).

*13. Wizard specialties.* Apart from the Diviner's Portent, very few of the ways to specialize as a wizard given in the PHB were fun: getting a reduction on spell transcription costs is like a coupon you never use.

*14. Gish.* This is not an archetype I play, and so I admit I don't fully understand it. The PHB had Abjurer Wizards and Eldritch Knights, neither of which satisfied. Xanathar gave us War Magic, which didn't fly. Tasha adds Bladesinging, and doesn't limit it to Elves. Hexblade Warlock, Valor Bards, Sword Bard, Hexadin, Sorcadin. The list goes on. There are so many ways to be a melee wizard, and people are always unhappy. I think Bladesinging is the closest to the archetype as I understand it, but this more than anything seems to point to a type of play they have struggled to meet.


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## Li Shenron

Remathilis said:


> That's my list. Got one to add? Disagree? Let me have it!




I think you're making a big mistake.

Most of the stuff you mention effectively work as *options*. Instead of trying to frame an "intended use" for each one of them, you should ask yourself in how many _different ways_ the gaming groups have used them.

For instance, Backgrounds can be used by some gaming groups just to give a bit of narrative backup to characters of a certain class picking proficiencies usually of another class. This could have been a cut-and-dry rule such as "pick two skills from the whole list", instead the idea of Background is "pick a background to narrate _why_ you have those two skills". OTOH Backgrounds can be used by another group to create a placement for a PC in the setting: PC1 is the town sage, PC2 is a noble in the local court and PC3 is in the prison guards. If you run a campaign where the PCs don't live their lives behind and become full-time travelling adventurers, these (and the related features) will be handy and will be used. Yet another gaming group might instead focus on their chosen background just as a source of roleplaying suggestions. All of these are fine ways to use backgrounds.

Same goes with Inspiration, Short Rests, Multiclassing... these ARE modular in some sense, or "dialable". The fact that some of these rules are inconsistent is a _strength_ exactly because it allows them to be used differently by different groups. They fact that some don't even connect is also a _strength _because then a group is even able to completely ignore them if they aren't interested. I can understand wanting more connection for something that you like, but for example 3e was burdensome because too many things connected too much, and didn't give much freedom to individual groups (if you tried to change something, you had to work on how it affected several other things).

All in all, these made 5e work more as a *toolbox* than a rigid system, and this was very much intended when designers repeatedly stated that the purpose was to allow for as many different playstyle as possible.

Now the 1D&D revision sound like the designers have grown more opinionated about how everyone should play the game (a trend seen in much stronger tones 15 years ago): everybody should use feats, everybody should use inspiration, everybody should make a big deal of backgrounds... This is actually quite surprising, considering that in the more narrative/roleplaying areas of the game they've gone a long way towards more inclusivity. So why are they moving towards _less_ inclusivity of playstyles?


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## FireLance

Remathilis said:


> *8.) Short Rests*
> 
> The short rests were designed to resemble the encounter recharge mechanic in 4e: a way to recharge certain abilities more often than a long rest as well as to heal between encounters. But the long duration needed to use one made it hard to do in most situations (if you were safe enough to take a lunch break, you probably weren't in the kind of place you needed to recharge those abilities in) and the fact certain classes and races (warlock, monk, fighter, dragonborn) needed them far more than others lead to a lot of tension in using them. They still exist in some fashion, but I wager the change from short-rest recharge to prof/day will make their usefulness dimmish further.



Actually, the only thing that 5E changed about short rests was to increase the time required from 5 minutes to 1 hour. In 4E, you had to take a short rest to get your encounter powers back. It would be truly ironic if some people say that they prefer 5E to 4E because they think that you got your encounter powers back whenever you started a new encounter in 4E, when it is actually 5E which had features such as Relentless and Perfect Self that gave Battlemasters and Monks superiority dice and ki whenever they rolled initiative and didn't have any.


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## CleverNickName

I have never once thought that psionics were a necessity in D&D.  In fact I think they feel incredibly out-of-place in a fantasy setting.

But here's the deal.  Some people agree with me, and some people agree with you, but _most_ people are going to fall somewhere in between.  And that entire field between those two goalposts is the reason why creating cohesive, balanced, and fun rules for a psionics mechanic, in D&D, is always going to be a challenge.  Psionics means too many different things, in differing amounts, to different people...try as they may, there will likely never be a consensus on what "psionics" needs to look like in D&D.  The doomed Mystic was not the first failed attempt, nor will it be the last.

The closest approximation I've seen to the classic AD&D Psion in 5th Edition is the Aberrant Mind sorcerer, using the optional rule for Spell Points in the DMG.  It's close, but no psi-cigar.


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## Ruin Explorer

Remathilis said:


> With 5th edition winding down and 1D&D ascending, I'd like to look at some ideas presented during the game's lifespan that didn't quite work out as desired. Some will be removed, some will be changed, and some may yet live to see 5.5. In no paricular order
> 
> *1.) Backgrounds*
> 
> Yeah, the kinda exist in the packet as predefined options, but the current background is dead. It started life in D&D next as a kind of mixture of 4e Themes along with 3e-style feat trees before morphing into a collection of non-weapon proficiencies and role-playing aids. It helped define your character as more than just as fighter or a sorcerer, but as a soldier, an outlander, or a sailor. And lots of supplements (Official and 3pp) added more of them to fit every possible origin. However, they maintained a few flaws in their design: most players viewed them as inflexible options for skills and proficiencies despite "customizing your background" being an option. Most of the Features were heavily DM and campaign dependent (and often amounted to little more than "free room and board" or "NPC will cut you some slack". Easily forgotten by both DM and player. They also had a cascading effect as we'll see below. While I genuinely liked the ideas of backgrounds, I don't think they did what WotC wanted in terms of role-playing.
> 
> *2.) Bonds/Ideas/Flaws/Traits*
> 
> Alongside Backgrounds were lists of personality traits, written in first person sentences to foster deeper role-playing options by having PCs define their personality, beliefs, and shortcomings. Like the backgrounds they were attached to, they were supposed to offer suggestions, but more than a few PCs took them as the only options for playing your acolytes or urchins. Others picked them at character creation, wrote them down and promptly forgot them, or didn't bother to write them down at all. While BIFTS may exist in some fashion in 5.5, they aren't attached to background and I suspect won't appear as some rollable table of suggestions, though I feel they will probably remain for NPCs in modules.
> 
> *3.) Trinkets.*
> 
> Ah trinkets. Little curiosities you rolled for at chargen, wrote-down in your equipment and were ignored afterwards. Sometimes interesting, rarely useful, often forgotten.
> 
> *4.) Multi-classing*
> 
> 5e brought back 3e style multiclassing, with some adjustments to fix the problems inherent to such a system. Spell slots (but not spells known) were dependent on all caster classes, proficiency bonus and cantrips were a function of character level, not class level, and starting proficiencies were staggered to avoid dipping for free saves and weapons/armors. Despite all this, the system was still primarily used to dip one class into another to pull some low-level features from one class and add it to another. In particular, the Charisma classes (Warlock, Sorcerer, and Paladin) synergized almost too well with each other. Eventually, subclasses and feats became more popular ways to poach from one class and into another, and I wager that multiclassing with get another revision (if it remains at all) to curb abuses and discourage 1-2 level dips.
> 
> *5.) Inspiration.*
> 
> Designed as a reward for good role-play (remember those BIFTS?) Inspiration didn't quite work as they wanted. It was hard or inconsistent to get, easily forgotten, and didn't connect to the rest of the system. I see why WotC has opted to make it more widely and consistently useful.
> 
> *6.) Modular Rules*
> 
> Ah what sweet summer children we were! The notion that 5e would be rules-modular was partially true: It's a remarkably easy system to house rule. But the dream of Alternative skill systems, advanced combat options, new spell systems, mass combat, alternative ability scores, and other ideas hinted at in the DMG but never expanded on or fleshed out quickly faded. An alternative "Greyhawk" initiative based on weapon/spell speed was UA'd but that was the only attempt at any sort of alternative rule modules we saw from WotC.
> 
> *7.) Psionics.*
> 
> Another bit of vaporware: true psionic rules seemed like a necessity and WotC honestly tried to make the Mystic a thing, but it never gelled and eventually collapsed into the vaguely psychic subclass options we have today.
> 
> *8.) Short Rests*
> 
> The short rests were designed to resemble the encounter recharge mechanic in 4e: a way to recharge certain abilities more often than a long rest as well as to heal between encounters. But the long duration needed to use one made it hard to do in most situations (if you were safe enough to take a lunch break, you probably weren't in the kind of place you needed to recharge those abilities in) and the fact certain classes and races (warlock, monk, fighter, dragonborn) needed them far more than others lead to a lot of tension in using them. They still exist in some fashion, but I wager the change from short-rest recharge to prof/day will make their usefulness dimmish further.
> 
> *9.) Hit Dice*
> 
> Speaking of, they were great for short rests to heal hp without magic, but as short rests were skipped either due to the inability to safely rest for an hour or skipped instead for a long-rest, HD rarely had a chance to shine. It seems a few more options to use them to heal 4e style (spending them in combat or via a spell) might bring them more use beyond low level.
> 
> *10. Pact Magic*
> 
> I'm going to get some flack for this. Pact Magic is the Warlock method of casting spells; a few spell slots recharged over a short rest and always cast at max efficiency seemed like an interesting alterative to spellcasting on paper, but warlock magic was very finicky. It was a very hard concept for new players to wrap their heads around always casting at max level (no, you use your 5th level spell slot to cast your 1st level spell as if it was 5th level), was wholly dependent on frequent short rests, and was an absolute nightmare with multiclassing. Further, the spell list went up to 9th level, but levels 6-9 were part of a different class feature (mystic arcanum) and didn't use spell slots at all to cast. The system looked cool, but maybe (if WotC is open to more radical adjustment to the class system) it would be better to have warlocks be a regular spell slot caster akin to sorcerer or bard rather than their own weird spell system that doesn't play nice with the rest of the game.
> 
> That's my list. Got one to add? Disagree? Let me have it!



Agree with all except Pact Magic. I see where you're coming from, but the real issue is it being Short Rest-dependent. Other than that it functions really well. My experience differs from yours re: new players understanding it - I saw the opposite. New players were confused as hell by the main spellcasting system, but not by Pact Magic. I don't think making Warlocks into "Arcane Full Cast Number 4!" makes any sense at all lol. But I could see changing Pact Magic to be even more obvious and limiting it to specific spells, all of which scale.


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## Mind of tempest

CleverNickName said:


> I have never once thought that psionics were a necessity in D&D.  In fact I think they feel incredibly out-of-place in a fantasy setting.
> 
> But here's the deal.  Some people agree with me, and some people agree with you, but _most_ people are going to fall somewhere in between.  And that entire field between those two goalposts is the reason why creating cohesive, balanced, and fun rules for a psionics mechanic, in D&D, is always going to be a challenge.  The doomed Mystic was not the first failed attempt, nor will it be the last.
> 
> The closest approximation I've seen to the classic AD&D Psion in 5th Edition is the Aberrant Mind sorcerer, using the optional rule for Spell Points in the DMG.  It's close, but no psi-cigar.



psionics in fantasy has some pedigree and it seems to no longer really stand up all that well in sci-fi anymore outside of throwbacks, I see it more in occult-themed works honestly.


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## CleverNickName

Mind of tempest said:


> psionics in fantasy has some pedigree and it seems to no longer really stand up all that well in sci-fi anymore outside of throwbacks, I see it more in occult-themed works honestly.



Agree completely.  I use it all the time in _Call of Cthulhu..._but D&D, not so much.


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## Aldarc

CleverNickName said:


> I have never once thought that psionics were a necessity in D&D.  In fact I think they feel incredibly out-of-place in a fantasy setting.
> 
> But here's the deal.  Some people agree with me, and some people agree with you, but _most_ people are going to fall somewhere in between.  And that entire field between those two goalposts is the reason why creating cohesive, balanced, and fun rules for a psionics mechanic, in D&D, is always going to be a challenge.  The doomed Mystic was not the first failed attempt, nor will it be the last.
> 
> The closest approximation I've seen to the classic AD&D Psion in 5th Edition is the Aberrant Mind sorcerer, using the optional rule for Spell Points in the DMG.  It's close, but no psi-cigar.



I feel like WotC is spending so much time trying to reinvent the wheel and make everyone happy with the Psion while missing a fairly easy method. Just make a Psion that uses spells, spell slots/points, and give them abilities that modify those spells, something closer to the 3.5 psionic system. Test that before trying anything else new and whacky. People may want something like 1e/2e psionics, but they have yet to really try out something that integrates a little more cohesively in the existing paradigm.



CleverNickName said:


> Agree completely.  I use it all the time in _Call of Cthulhu..._but D&D, not so much.



It's pretty common in romantic fantasy, hence its inclusion in Blue Rose.


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## Ruin Explorer

CleverNickName said:


> I have never once thought that psionics were a necessity in D&D.  In fact I think they feel incredibly out-of-place in a fantasy setting.
> 
> But here's the deal.  Some people agree with me, and some people agree with you, but _most_ people are going to fall somewhere in between.  And that entire field between those two goalposts is the reason why creating cohesive, balanced, and fun rules for a psionics mechanic, in D&D, is always going to be a challenge.  The doomed Mystic was not the first failed attempt, nor will it be the last.



I think the issue with Psionics is, you can't design it for people who "don't want Psionics".

It's like, you can't design Artificers for people who are fundamentally against the idea (me according to some people lol!).

Equally, you can't design Fighters or Wizards for people who, fundamentally/conceptually don't like to play those things.

You have to design classes for the people who_ do_ like the _basic concept_.

The Mystic wasn't doomed by its design, it was doomed by requiring 70% approval in an environment when, well, probably less than 70% of people even want significant Psionics in D&D. As I've said many times, any Full Caster-type class, let alone with a new system, would be doomed if subjected to 70% approval. It's notable that Artificer wasn't subjected to the approval process (as in, there was no possibility of saying no to Artificers period), and frankly, even as a Half-Caster, it wouldn't have passed. I mean, can you imagine though, if 5E launched without Bards or Warlocks, and then tried to add them via the 70% approval process? There absolutely NO possibility either would have got through. It's harder to imagine re: Wizards/Clerics/Sorcerers, but if we imagine a D&D where Sorcerer was the main Arcane caster, and Wizard was added as an entirely new class, subject to the 70% approval, there's no way. People would just say it was a "boring and overpowered" version of the Sorcerer.



Mind of tempest said:


> psionics in fantasy has some pedigree and it seems to no longer really stand up all that well in sci-fi anymore outside of throwbacks, I see it more in occult-themed works honestly.



There's also just an absolute TON of stuff in fantasy literature which is called "magic" (or something that's not "magic" or "psionics" - it's pretty much never called that), but that in terms of what it does and how it works, is obviously much closer to Psionics than D&D's fire-and-forget-type magic. Good examples would be, like virtually _all_ "Romantic Fantasy" (i.e. the stuff Blue Rose covers), which was historically a huge chunk of the market, where the good guys tend to use psychic powers and the badguys D&D-style magic, Robin Hobb's "Assassin" books (the entire setting there are what, like 19 books or something now?), where The Wit and The Skill are pretty much both forms of Psionics, tons of the modern equivalent of Romantic Fantasy, which is basically the (extremely successful and rarely discussed) "Teenage Assassin Girl" genre, and so on.

I will say that books where magic looks like Psionics are disproportionately written by female authors, and where magic looks like D&D-style magic disproportionately written by male authors, so I think there's a bit of sexism in the claims that "fantasy doesn't have psionics in it", and a bit of entirely-unconscious sexism in the opposition to psionics as part of D&D (i.e. "at all", rather than in a specific game).

I think if they'd just renamed it to something that wasn't psionics or psychic powers or the like we'd immediately see like a massive increase in its acceptance though.



Kobold Stew said:


> *14. Gish.* This is not an archetype I play, and so I admit I don't fully understand it. The PHB had Abjurer Wizards and Eldritch Knights, neither of which satisfied. Xanathar gave us War Magic, which didn't fly. Tasha adds Bladesinging, and doesn't limit it to Elves. Hexblade Warlock, Valor Bards, Sword Bard, Hexadin, Sorcadin. The list goes on. There are so many ways to be a melee wizard, and people are always unhappy. I think Bladesinging is the closest to the archetype as I understand it, but this more than anything seems to point to a type of play they have struggled to meet.



This definitely fits the list for "didn't quite work", yeah.

The issue is that a lot of people don't want just a half-caster with a sword (available already as an Artificer Battle Smith), they want something like the Swordmage of 4E, where the magic is fully integrated into their combat, where they're not just sometimes casting spells. Or at least the Magus of PF2 (not PF1).

Bladesinging fits well for an OD&D/AD&D-style Gish i.e. "Fighter/Mage", but less well for what a lot of people want.


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## Horwath

payn said:


> I love that list, minus multiclassing. I have never minded the dip. I do think there is room for improvement though.



I would love to have the rule that multiclassing must be within a level difference between classes, but those characters suck.

One solution is to have multiclass characters dual levels at certain point.

I.E.
5th level multiclass is 3/3 split, but with 3/2 HPs, and HDs, 5th level proficiency bonus. Only getting class features of both classes at 3rd level
then
8th level is 5/5
11th level is 7/7
14th level is 9/9
17th level is 11/11
20th level is 13/13


----------



## Charlaquin

Do not touch my beautiful Warlock. I don’t think there’s a single thing they could do that would make me drop the new edintion faster than giving warlocks the same boring spell slot progression as every other caster. Leave them alone; if you don’t like them, just play a sorcerer or wizard or something instead. Just let us warlock fans keep the one cool spellcasting class to ourselves.


----------



## Mind of tempest

CleverNickName said:


> Agree completely.  I use it all the time in _Call of Cthulhu..._but D&D, not so much.



give the amount of diet Lovecraft we got in dnd why not just have psionics as well it is not like it will make your life worse?


Ruin Explorer said:


> I think the issue with Psionics is, you can't design it for people who "don't want Psionics".
> 
> It's like, you can't design Artificers for people who are fundamentally against the idea (me according to some people lol!).
> 
> Equally, you can't design Fighters or Wizards for people who, fundamentally/conceptually don't like to play those things.
> 
> You have to design classes for the people who_ do_ like the _basic concept_.
> 
> The Mystic wasn't doomed by its design, it was doomed by requiring 70% approval in an environment when, well, probably less than 70% of people even want significant Psionics in D&D. As I've said many times, any Full Caster-type class, let alone with a new system, would be doomed if subjected to 70% approval. It's notable that Artificer wasn't subjected to the approval process (as in, there was no possibility of saying no to Artificers period), and frankly, even as a Half-Caster, it wouldn't have passed. I mean, can you imagine though, if 5E launched without Bards or Warlocks, and then tried to add them via the 70% approval process? There absolutely NO possibility either would have got through. It's harder to imagine re: Wizards/Clerics/Sorcerers, but if we imagine a D&D where Sorcerer was the main Arcane caster, and Wizard was added as an entirely new class, subject to the 70% approval, there's no way. People would just say it was a "boring and overpowered" version of the Sorcerer.
> 
> 
> There's also just an absolute TON of stuff in fantasy literature which is called "magic" (or something that's not "magic" or "psionics" - it's pretty much never called that), but that in terms of what it does and how it works, is obviously much closer to Psionics than D&D's fire-and-forget-type magic. Good examples would be, like virtually _all_ "Romantic Fantasy" (i.e. the stuff Blue Rose covers), which was historically a huge chunk of the market, where the good guys tend to use psychic powers and the badguys D&D-style magic, Robin Hobb's "Assassin" books (the entire setting there are what, like 19 books or something now?), where The Wit and The Skill are pretty much both forms of Psionics, tons of the modern equivalent of Romantic Fantasy, which is basically the (extremely successful and rarely discussed) "Teenage Assassin Girl" genre, and so on.
> 
> I will say that books where magic looks like Psionics are disproportionately written by female authors, and where magic looks like D&D-style magic disproportionately written by male authors, so I think there's a bit of sexism in the claims that "fantasy doesn't have psionics in it", and a bit of entirely-unconscious sexism in the opposition to psionics as part of D&D (i.e. "at all", rather than in a specific game).
> 
> I think if they'd just renamed it to something that wasn't psionics or psychic powers or the like we'd immediately see like a massive increase in its acceptance though.
> 
> 
> This definitely fits the list for "didn't quite work", yeah.
> 
> The issue is that a lot of people don't want just a half-caster with a sword (available already as an Artificer Battle Smith), they want something like the Swordmage of 4E, where the magic is fully integrated into their combat, where they're not just sometimes casting spells. Or at least the Magus of PF2 (not PF1).
> 
> Bladesinging fits well for an OD&D/AD&D-style Gish i.e. "Fighter/Mage", but less well for what a lot of people want.



wait there is a genre of nothing but teenage girl assassins? is any of it good or innovative for the rest of fantasy or is it one of those random subgenres that is flat strange for outsiders?

that idea for the gish is technically doable but it also runs into the problem of having fewer thematics or RP potential than mayonnaise which no one as yet has been able to fix?



Charlaquin said:


> Do not touch my beautiful Warlock. I don’t think there’s a single thing they could do that would make me drop the new edintion faster than giving warlocks the same boring spell slot progression as every other caster. Leave them alone; if you don’t like them, just play a sorcerer or wizard or something instead. Just let us warlock fans keep the one cool spellcasting class to ourselves.



I am not a warlock fan but I hear few complaints about them other than making all all blade locks have hexbladeness to them with similar bost to the other areas and maybe more base spell slots but mostly it is the too many synergies with the other cha caster.


----------



## TerraDave

Kobold Stew said:


> I would add (with 11 as Lair actions, above):
> 
> *12. Ranger*. I think we know the Ranger didn't work out as intended. But they've made lots of changes, and the result (with Tasha's optional abilities) is pretty solid -- unique abilities and not overpowered. And they have a mechanism for Beastmaster that they've replicated for other core classes to (Firewarden druid, artificer).
> 
> *13. Wizard specialties.* Apart from the Diviner's Portent, very few of the ways to specialize as a wizard given in the PHB were fun: getting a reduction on spell transcription costs is like a coupon you never use.
> 
> *14. Gish.* This is not an archetype I play, and so I admit I don't fully understand it. The PHB had Abjurer Wizards and Eldritch Knights, neither of which satisfied. Xanathar gave us War Magic, which didn't fly. Tasha adds Bladesinging, and doesn't limit it to Elves. Hexblade Warlock, Valor Bards, Sword Bard, Hexadin, Sorcadin. The list goes on. There are so many ways to be a melee wizard, and people are always unhappy. I think Bladesinging is the closest to the archetype as I understand it, but this more than anything seems to point to a type of play they have struggled to meet.



Ranger, total fail out of the gate. Even with the patches...in any case its an obvious one to fix now. Also, if not quite as bad, see sorcerer and monk, and some fighter subclasses. 

Wizard has a few really solid schools, a few it depends (illusionist) and some blah, but overall a strong class that feels about right in play. 

Swords with benefits characters are really, really popular. And there are many ways to make them in 5e. But no, there is no real arcane equivalent of the  paladin, except maybe a multiclassed paladin.


----------



## TerraDave

Charlaquin said:


> Do not touch my beautiful Warlock. I don’t think there’s a single thing they could do that would make me drop the new edintion faster than giving warlocks the same boring spell slot progression as every other caster. Leave them alone; if you don’t like them, just play a sorcerer or wizard or something instead. Just let us warlock fans keep the one cool spellcasting class to ourselves.



There is no way I would play a sorcerer if I could play a warlock instead.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Mind of tempest said:


> wait there is a genre of nothing but teenage girl assassins? is any of it good or innovative for the rest of fantasy or is it one of those random subgenres that is flat strange for outsiders?



I mean, technically it's a subgenre, but yeah there are definitely enough fantasy novels about teenage girl assassins for it to be considered a genre at this point, I'd suggest. They're also an extremely common character in fantasy novels generally, at this point.

Like here's a 2018 reddit post that lists a bunch (and more are in the comments): 
(NB most of the leads in the books are teenagers or early 20s)

Some of these are pretty obscure, but some sell hugely more copies than books which are much "bigger" names in the male-dominated TT RPG world. You see Mistborn on the list for example (which less on-genre than most), that's known to a huge number of fantasy fans on this board, and has sold 1.5m copies across all three books - whereas likely very few people here have read or even heard of Sarah J. Maas' Throne of Glass series, and that's sold 7m copies! And if anything Throne of Glass is closer to D&D than Mistborn is, thematically/setting-wise.

We saw the same pattern with Romantic Fantasy in the 1980s and 1990s. It outsold a lot of more male-oriented fantasy, and fantasy by male authors, but somehow, hardly anyone who played TTRPGs seemed to have read it, even when they'd read obscure-as-hell extruded paste fantasy by male authors. Only when Blue Rose came out did it really get recognised at all, and a lot of the bizarre hate some people had for Blue Rose was simply that it represented a different paradigm of fantasy, and one that some men felt very threatened by.

Is any of it good or innovative? Hmmm. Some of it is? I mean, mostly it's just different? Like, the 90% rule applies here as with all fantasy (and most genres in fact). I read the first Throne of Glass book. I wouldn't call it good, but it have stuff in it that a lot of fantasy just doesn't - like the main character actually has a menstrual cycle and it impacts their life/feelings, etc., for example, and indeed, doing hard exercise isn't some cool thing that just makes you stronger like most fantasy, but the character gets lactic acid build up (they don't know it's called that, obviously), and pukes all over the place. Indeed this kind of slightly "closer to the real" in terms of bodies and behaviour/feelings deal is fairly common in the subgenre (Mistborn is a notable reversal, where it's completely unrealistic about both - but Sanderson himself has discussed how he sees that as a failing on his part), rather than power-trip "pain is just weakness leaving the body" stuff seen in a lot of fantasy. I think my only real criticism-criticism of Throne of Glass would be that it's about an assassin but the assassin never actually assassinates anyone, she continually manages to subvert having to actually do it and it's not terribly believable and sort of weakens the tension of the book. Most of my other "criticisms" would be a genre-reader mismatch issue, rather than actual failings. I'd have read the sequel if the last damn scene in the book wasn't yet another "Psych!!! I didn't actually kill them lol!" deal.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TerraDave said:


> There is no way I would play a sorcerer if I could play a warlock instead.



Right? You'd have to have a gun to my head.

Oh and ideas that didn't quite work:

*Ultra-simplistic weapon rules* - 5E has treated weapons more simplistically than any previous edition (including BECMI/RC D&D!). And like, personally, I don't think it's worked. It's lead to PCs _not_ using diverse weapons, but instead a small selection of marginally more optimal weapons. I think D&D needs to "pick a lane" here, and either go for something like class-based damage (probably not) or weapons which have at least a little bit more going on, so there is actually a reason to use more of them. This has played out particularly poorly for extra-fancy weapons from 3E and 4E, and like, I kind of am fine with that but also "yawn".


----------



## Horwath

Ruin Explorer said:


> Right? You'd have to have a gun to my head.
> 
> Oh and ideas that didn't quite work:
> 
> *Ultra-simplistic weapon rules* - 5E has treated weapons more simplistically than any previous edition (including BECMI/RC D&D!). And like, personally, I don't think it's worked. It's lead to PCs _not_ using diverse weapons, but instead a small selection of marginally more optimal weapons. I think D&D needs to "pick a lane" here, and either go for something like class-based damage (probably not) or weapons which have at least a little bit more going on, so there is actually a reason to use more of them. This has played out particularly poorly for extra-fancy weapons from 3E and 4E, and like, I kind of am fine with that but also "yawn".



I would say that STR based melee weapons need and damage die bump and that is it.
You cannot value Versatile property same as finesse.
And half the weapons have no sense whatsoever with any consistency in terms of damage and properties.


----------



## John R Davis

Yeah STR needs something to stop DEX being even more UBER.


----------



## Horwath

John R Davis said:


> Yeah STR needs something to stop DEX being even more UBER.



having longsword/battleax/warhammer at d10 vs. rapiers d8 would be enough.
same for greatsword/greatax/maul with 2d8 to compensate for not having 1+1/2 str mod to damage.


----------



## Remathilis

Charlaquin said:


> Do not touch my beautiful Warlock. I don’t think there’s a single thing they could do that would make me drop the new edintion faster than giving warlocks the same boring spell slot progression as every other caster. Leave them alone; if you don’t like them, just play a sorcerer or wizard or something instead. Just let us warlock fans keep the one cool spellcasting class to ourselves.



My big problem with pact magic is 

1. Being tied to short rests makes their spell regain unreliable, and the majority of the early game is hoarding two spell slots if you don't think a short rest is going to be available.
2. The fact you have your highest spell slot creates incentive to use your highest level spell and ignore lower level ones, save for bread and butter ones like hex. 
3. The system breaks down at 10th level, ergo mystic arcanum and the confusion "why warlocks have 6th level spells but the table only goes up to 5th". 
4. It doesn't play well with multi-classing, it doesn't add to other classes the way every other class does, and it can synergize too well with others (I've lost track of what the latest Sage Advice is on paladin smite and pact magic). 

I'm not saying the warlock is unfun or not flavorful, and invocations are brilliant. I just think the pact magic system needs a revision because it didn't hit design goals of being simple and intuitive.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Remathilis said:


> 1. Being tied to short rests makes their spell regain unreliable, and the majority of the early game is hoarding two spell slots if you don't think a short rest is going to be available.
> 2. The fact you have your highest spell slot creates incentive to use your highest level spell and ignore lower level ones, save for bread and butter ones like hex.
> 3. The system breaks down at 10th level, ergo mystic arcanum and the confusion "why warlocks have 6th level spells but the table only goes up to 5th".
> 4. It doesn't play well with multi-classing, it doesn't add to other classes the way every other class does, and it can synergize too well with others (I've lost track of what the latest Sage Advice is on paladin smite and pact magic).



I mean, 2 & 4 are literally not problems. At worst 2 is something you personally dislike from an aesthetic perspective. Gameplay-design-wise it's an active positive.
1 is a real problem because Short Rests are a real problem. Easy to fix though.
3 isn't much of a problem, because by the time people get to that level, their degree of system mastery re: Warlocks is high enough to understand, and statistics show few people play above 10th anyway (I think someone quoted 77% of groups play at level 7 or below earlier).

So again this is really a Short Rests problem.


----------



## payn

Horwath said:


> I would love to have the rule that multiclassing must be within a level difference between classes, but those characters suck.
> 
> One solution is to have multiclass characters dual levels at certain point.
> 
> I.E.
> 5th level multiclass is 3/3 split, but with 3/2 HPs, and HDs, 5th level proficiency bonus. Only getting class features of both classes at 3rd level
> then
> 8th level is 5/5
> 11th level is 7/7
> 14th level is 9/9
> 17th level is 11/11
> 20th level is 13/13



No thanks, I prefer it as is.


----------



## Remathilis

Interesting thoughts everyone.

I want to say they even if the system missed the mark, it wasn't bad. I just feel many of them didn't quite do what they advertised. 

A good example is background features and Adventure Paths. If your DM was using one of the many storylines WotC provided, there was little opportunity to use them. The earlier Sword Coast ones occasionally have times you could meet with a noble or get a free inn room, but the more far afield you went, the less useful they were (free room and board from your temple was useless in Avernus, meeting a noble in Barovia is detrimental to your health!). I know that also is a part of the DM and prepackaged modules, but if WotC couldn't find ways to fit uses for backgrounds into their adventures, most newer DMs weren't going to be able to.

So the idea was solid, but the fact that they were easily rendered moot by most adventures meant they rarely were a factor in game. 

If I was to add a few new ones, I'd say Downtime didn't work as desired due to how often games without home bases don't have weeks or months of sitting at home. I'd also say the 6-8 encounters per day design is fine for Dungeon Crawls but failed in other types of resource balancing. Ymmv on those.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Li Shenron said:


> I think you're making a big mistake.
> 
> Most of the stuff you mention effectively work as *options*. Instead of trying to frame an "intended use" for each one of them, you should ask yourself in how many _different ways_ the gaming groups have used them.
> 
> For instance, Backgrounds can be used by some gaming groups just to give a bit of narrative backup to characters of a certain class picking proficiencies usually of another class. This could have been a cut-and-dry rule such as "pick two skills from the whole list", instead the idea of Background is "pick a background to narrate _why_ you have those two skills". OTOH Backgrounds can be used by another group to create a placement for a PC in the setting: PC1 is the town sage, PC2 is a noble in the local court and PC3 is in the prison guards. If you run a campaign where the PCs don't live their lives behind and become full-time travelling adventurers, these (and the related features) will be handy and will be used. Yet another gaming group might instead focus on their chosen background just as a source of roleplaying suggestions. All of these are fine ways to use backgrounds.
> 
> Same goes with Inspiration, Short Rests, Multiclassing... these ARE modular in some sense, or "dialable". The fact that some of these rules are inconsistent is a _strength_ exactly because it allows them to be used differently by different groups. They fact that some don't even connect is also a _strength _because then a group is even able to completely ignore them if they aren't interested. I can understand wanting more connection for something that you like, but for example 3e was burdensome because too many things connected too much, and didn't give much freedom to individual groups (if you tried to change something, you had to work on how it affected several other things).
> 
> All in all, these made 5e work more as a *toolbox* than a rigid system, and this was very much intended when designers repeatedly stated that the purpose was to allow for as many different playstyle as possible.
> 
> Now the 1D&D revision sound like the designers have grown more opinionated about how everyone should play the game (a trend seen in much stronger tones 15 years ago): everybody should use feats, everybody should use inspiration, everybody should make a big deal of backgrounds... This is actually quite surprising, considering that in the more narrative/roleplaying areas of the game they've gone a long way towards more inclusivity. So why are they moving towards _less_ inclusivity of playstyles?



Because that's just mechanics, and it doesn't affect their public image the way the narrative/roleplaying stuff does.


----------



## renbot

Kobold Stew said:


> *13. Wizard specialties.* Apart from the Diviner's Portent, very few of the ways to specialize as a wizard given in the PHB were fun: getting a reduction on spell transcription costs is like a coupon you never use.



A thousand times yes! A "specialist" wizard should be strongly incentized to actually cast the spells from their school, whether by making the spells more effective, additional effects, more interesting abilities that recharge when a school-spell is cast, access to metamagic that can only be used on spells from their school, etc.

 Historically I have made tailored spell lists for each specialist wizard, removing some wizard spells from their options and adding spells from other class lists that fit the concept. Alas, all that hard work has been...largely unappreciated by my players so I've stopped trying to force my "vision" on their characters. Player agency is my cross to bear.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg

You will have to pry the Warlock build out of my cold, dead hands.

There are exactly two (two) interesting class builds right now in terms of design, AFAIC. Warlock and Monk. Okay, Rogue as well, to a lesser extent. 

The rest might be good, but they are relatively boring. 

I would have made an exception to the Mystic class, which was genuinely interesting, but got shot down.


----------



## payn

Snarf Zagyg said:


> You will have to pry the Warlock build out of my cold, dead hands.
> 
> There are exactly two (two) interesting class builds right now in terms of design, AFAIC. Warlock and Monk. Okay, Rogue as well, to a lesser extent.
> 
> The rest might be good, but they are relatively boring.
> 
> I would have made an exception to the Mystic class, which was genuinely interesting, but got shot down.



I think next playtest packet is trying out Warlock and Monk as Bard subclasses.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg

payn said:


> I think next playtest packet is trying out Warlock and Monk as Bard subclasses.




HA HA!

You almost had me there. Based on recent trends, I think they are doing away with all classes and instead making them all just Elf sub-types.

Do you want to play an arctic elf, an astral elf, a space elf, a warlock elf, or a monk elf?


----------



## TheLibrarian

Definitely agree on backgrounds/bonds/ideals/flaws/trinkets.  This felt like forced roleplaying to me.  Like the meme where the security guard says: "I specifically told you to role play amongst yourselves."  But then these are activities most of my groups already engaged in.  I can see where they were useful for new players, though.  Here's a stereotype you can grab on to to help ease you into this thing that might seem a bit weird.  But I felt for experienced players most of the options were pretty shallow. 

Hit Dice are interesting, but don't replace a dedicated healer, which it seems like they might have been intended to do.  That said, I ported this idea over to a Star Wars saga edition where healing is somewhat obtuse and it works pretty well!


----------



## Mind of tempest

Ruin Explorer said:


> I mean, technically it's a subgenre, but yeah there are definitely enough fantasy novels about teenage girl assassins for it to be considered a genre at this point, I'd suggest. They're also an extremely common character in fantasy novels generally, at this point.
> 
> Like here's a 2018 reddit post that lists a bunch (and more are in the comments):
> (NB most of the leads in the books are teenagers or early 20s)
> 
> Some of these are pretty obscure, but some sell hugely more copies than books which are much "bigger" names in the male-dominated TT RPG world. You see Mistborn on the list for example (which less on-genre than most), that's known to a huge number of fantasy fans on this board, and has sold 1.5m copies across all three books - whereas likely very few people here have read or even heard of Sarah J. Maas' Throne of Glass series, and that's sold 7m copies! And if anything Throne of Glass is closer to D&D than Mistborn is, thematically/setting-wise.
> 
> We saw the same pattern with Romantic Fantasy in the 1980s and 1990s. It outsold a lot of more male-oriented fantasy, and fantasy by male authors, but somehow, hardly anyone who played TTRPGs seemed to have read it, even when they'd read obscure-as-hell extruded paste fantasy by male authors. Only when Blue Rose came out did it really get recognised at all, and a lot of the bizarre hate some people had for Blue Rose was simply that it represented a different paradigm of fantasy, and one that some men felt very threatened by.
> 
> Is any of it good or innovative? Hmmm. Some of it is? I mean, mostly it's just different? Like, the 90% rule applies here as with all fantasy (and most genres in fact). I read the first Throne of Glass book. I wouldn't call it good, but it have stuff in it that a lot of fantasy just doesn't - like the main character actually has a menstrual cycle and it impacts their life/feelings, etc., for example, and indeed, doing hard exercise isn't some cool thing that just makes you stronger like most fantasy, but the character gets lactic acid build up (they don't know it's called that, obviously), and pukes all over the place. Indeed this kind of slightly "closer to the real" in terms of bodies and behaviour/feelings deal is fairly common in the subgenre (Mistborn is a notable reversal, where it's completely unrealistic about both - but Sanderson himself has discussed how he sees that as a failing on his part), rather than power-trip "pain is just weakness leaving the body" stuff seen in a lot of fantasy. I think my only real criticism-criticism of Throne of Glass would be that it's about an assassin but the assassin never actually assassinates anyone, she continually manages to subvert having to actually do it and it's not terribly believable and sort of weakens the tension of the book. Most of my other "criticisms" would be a genre-reader mismatch issue, rather than actual failings. I'd have read the sequel if the last damn scene in the book wasn't yet another "Psych!!! I didn't actually kill them lol!" deal.



well, it sounds fine but not really useful for expanding dnd at present does it have stuff that is more stealable?


----------



## Charlaquin

Remathilis said:


> My big problem with pact magic is
> 
> 1. Being tied to short rests makes their spell regain unreliable, and the majority of the early game is hoarding two spell slots if you don't think a short rest is going to be available.
> 2. The fact you have your highest spell slot creates incentive to use your highest level spell and ignore lower level ones, save for bread and butter ones like hex.
> 3. The system breaks down at 10th level, ergo mystic arcanum and the confusion "why warlocks have 6th level spells but the table only goes up to 5th".
> 4. It doesn't play well with multi-classing, it doesn't add to other classes the way every other class does, and it can synergize too well with others (I've lost track of what the latest Sage Advice is on paladin smite and pact magic).
> 
> I'm not saying the warlock is unfun or not flavorful, and invocations are brilliant. I just think the pact magic system needs a revision because it didn't hit design goals of being simple and intuitive.



I disagree with all of that (well… except multiclassing, but I don’t really care about that one.) Again, if you don’t like the warlock don’t play one. But let us warlock fans have our one cool thing.


----------



## Mind of tempest

Charlaquin said:


> I disagree with all of that (well… except multiclassing, but I don’t really care about that one.) Again, if you don’t like the warlock don’t play one. But let us warlock fans have our one cool thing.



I wish it was like this with psionics.


----------



## MockingBird

Backgrounds, traits and flaws etc work very well with casual/new players in my experience. They've never played rpgs or really dig deep into them so having these to pick from was great. Also it gives me, the DM, lots of ideas on how to tie the characters into the world. They don't feel like they are only there to crawl dungeons for no reason. I also feel that forcing a new player to make up their own background is a big ask. I mean this as a brand new players perspective. They aren't going to know how big or little of an impact it will have on their character, so giving them something to choose from helps move things along. This is all from my personal experience. I don't have the luxury to play with hard-core D&D players, they are all casual or brand new. I really don't want WotC to lose sight of this aspect by making character Gen complicated for the sake of being complicated, example being forced feats.


----------



## payn

MockingBird said:


> Backgrounds, traits and flaws etc work very well with casual/new players in my experience. They've never played rpgs or really dig deep into them so having these to pick from was great. Also it gives me, the DM, lots of ideas on how to tie the characters into the world. They don't feel like they are only there to crawl dungeons for no reason. I also feel that forcing a new player to make up their own background is a big ask. I mean this as a brand new players perspective. They aren't going to know how big or little of an impact it will have on their character, so giving them something to choose from helps move things along. This is all from my personal experience. I don't have the luxury to play with hard-core D&D players, they are all casual or brand new. I really don't want WotC to lose sight of this aspect by making character Gen complicated for the sake of being complicated, example being forced feats.



I dont get why there cant be basic packages for causal players and more nuanced and custom for the initiated? Quick and easy made backgrounds for the grab and go newbie. A custom system for those who want to make up their own.


----------



## Benjamin Olson

payn said:


> I dont get why there cant be basic packages for causal players and more nuanced and custom for the initiated? Quick and easy made backgrounds for the grab and go newbie. A custom system for those who want to make up their own.



I actually find it's the absolute newbies who gravitate the most to custom backgrounds when there is an experienced person helping them. A lot of people get overwhelmed by the prewritten ones.


----------



## Sir Brennen

TerraDave said:


> There is no way I would play a sorcerer if I could play a warlock instead.


----------



## Benjamin Olson

The mix and match proficiency with ability score that is an optional rule for skills and the official way to use tools and other such proficiencies was a very clever idea undermined by the set up of official character sheets (as well as by the fact that few skills made sense to use multiple ability scores with on a _regular_ basis). 

To me this join Backgrounds, Traits/Ideals/Bonds/Flaws, Trinkets, and Inspiration in the category of "game design ideas that I genuinely like and consider rather inspired, but that mostly never quite achieved what they should have in actual play."


----------



## Malmuria

If they are doing away with short rests for anything but healing, then the warlock will have to change in some way.  It wouldn't be popular, but I wonder about a warlock class that had _no_ spell slots, and instead only had invocations, but with an increased invocation list that let you cast particular spells.  I'm playing a warlock now with mask of many faces and I love that I can just cast it at will.  Also some invocations could have patron-specific prerequisites, so as to lean into the flavor of the patron.  I've seen warlocks of many different patrons, but mechanically it ends up being a lot of eldritch blast+hex.


----------



## MockingBird

Benjamin Olson said:


> I actually find it's the absolute newbies who gravitate the most to custom backgrounds when there is an experienced person helping them. A lot of people get overwhelmed by the prewritten ones.



Interesting because I have the exact opposite experience. Granted my experience is probably extremely more limited than yours. My experience stems from talking my friends and family into playing. I've personally been playing the game since 2e, attempted 3e/PF (I didn't like it, neither did my players but it wasnt horrible), attempted again with 4e (my players absolutely bounced off it, couldn't get into it and building characters was a chore on its own), and once again with 5e. With 5e it stuck, they love it enough to keep playing it. Touching on experience again, I don't play with random people because my area doesn't have a game shop. I feel like I'm not seeing the whole picture of what is and isn't popular within 5e. In my circle extra options are largely ignored.

Edit to add: I wish I could play (not just DM) with more people. I don't think it would be such a system shock with this playtest. I mean I just bought Tasha's over the weekend. It seems I have fell behind.


----------



## Benjamin Olson

MockingBird said:


> Interesting because I have the exact opposite experience. Granted my experience is probably extremely more limited than yours. My experience stems from talking my friends and family into playing. I've personally been playing the game since 2e, attempted 3e/PF (I didn't like it, neither did my players but it wasnt horrible), attempted again with 4e (my players absolutely bounced off it, couldn't get into it and building characters was a chore on its own), and once again with 5e. With 5e it stuck, they love it enough to keep playing it. Touching on experience again, I don't play with random people because my area doesn't have a game shop. I feel like I'm not seeing the whole picture of what is and isn't popular within 5e. In my circle extra options are largely ignored.



It partly depends on the situation in which characters are being made, I think. At one extreme: If a new player is handed a PHB and told to have a character in 2 days I would imagine they would pick a prewritten background 90% of the time or more. At the other extreme: If a new player arrives at a game and needs to make a character on the spot and someone is walking them through the process and making it clear that they can just make up a background I think the majority find it easiest to just say what they want to be rather than read through backgrounds weighing which one appeals to them most.


----------



## Reynard

Kobold Stew said:


> *12. Ranger*. I think we know the Ranger didn't work out as intended. But they've made lots of changes, and the result (with Tasha's optional abilities) is pretty solid -- unique abilities and not overpowered. And they have a mechanism for Beastmaster that they've replicated for other core classes to (Firewarden druid, artificer).



For as often as people online complain about the ranger, I have NEVER had someone in a real game complain and I almost always have at least one in the party. It's a meme, not a real problem.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg

Reynard said:


> For as often as people online complain about the ranger, I have NEVER had someone in a real game complain and I almost always have at least one in the party. It's a meme, not a real problem.


----------



## Lojaan

Hit dice. It is so difficult to explain this to new players. Needs at least a name update.


----------



## pgmason

> John R Davis said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah STR needs something to stop DEX being even more UBER.
Click to expand...



I personally think that finesse weapons should use Dex to hit, but still use Str for damage.  That would go a long way to making Str more useful.


----------



## ReshiIRE

pgmason said:


> I personally think that finesse weapons should use Dex to hit, but still use Str for damage.  That would go a long way to making Str more useful.



This is what Pathfinder 2e, though they go further and make it so that most ranged weapons don't add bonuses to damage from STR automatically, and it takes either feats or specific weapons to do that iirc. 

However, it should be noted that Pathfinder 2e's ability score system is very different. Essentially every ability score boost level gives you four different +2 boosts that you can give to any stat (though you only add +1 if the stat in question is 18 or over). That means that the damage modifier gap by following this rule would be much larger in 5e if implementing this rule, especially since weapons in 5e do not have a way to increase their damage built into the game, meaning melee characters rely on multiple attacks. 

And the difference in damage over multiple attacks per round and over multiple rounds would be quite noticiable for Dex based characters in the current system and your purposed change.


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

Lojaan said:


> Hit dice. It is so difficult to explain this to new players. Needs at least a name update.



Healing surge..?


----------



## doctorbadwolf

But odd to have a postmortem for a thing that isn’t dead, but okay.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Reynard said:


> For as often as people online complain about the ranger, I have NEVER had someone in a real game complain and I almost always have at least one in the party. It's a meme, not a real problem.



Well, no. They are getting enough feedback to keep tinkering over 8 years. It’s a real issue. 

It’s good to remember that your experience isn’t representative of the broader community of millions of people.


----------



## John R Davis

Reynard said:


> For as often as people online complain about the ranger, I have NEVER had someone in a real game complain and I almost always have at least one in the party. It's a meme, not a real problem.



Agreed. It's the ruddy 5e memes that need to not be carried forward!!
The 5e bard are just so stupid and untrue.
Oh yeah and don't have theory-crafting either.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Reynard said:


> For as often as people online complain about the ranger, I have NEVER had someone in a real game complain and I almost always have at least one in the party. It's a meme, not a real problem.



It actually is a real problem, and I have seen people complain in a real game. Claiming it's a meme is just incorrect.

The difference between online and offline complaining though is that most people offline aren't sitting around analyzing the class and that most people offline don't want to whinge/draw attention.

This isn't just true in 5E, or just in D&D, it's true in all TTRPGs, all editions of D&D.

Most players whose characters aren't very fun or effective just suffer in silence. What you see when their class is improved or whatever, though, is suddenly they're having a lot more fun and are more engaged with whatever area of the game their class was improved in. A smaller number do say things like "I wish my character was as good as X character" or express similar frustrations, but usually very briefly. Only a tiny number of relatively "serious" players actually work out exactly why their character sucks. Also a lot of those more serious players? They know which classes are weaker, and they just don't play them! How they gonna complain about a class they don't play? You don't complain about other people's characters!

Only when something is a truly amazingly awful situation like LFQW do complaints come to the fore from more "normal" players. And remember how loads of people used to say "LFQW isn't real!" or "I play at a table with martials and casters and no-one has a problem with LFQW!"? Even though it was obviously nonsense (and a lot of the time if you questioned people about it, it turned out they didn't actually have any martials, but they used to (funny that!), or they were playing only levels 1-5 or the like).


----------



## Staffan

Remathilis said:


> *8.) Short Rests*
> 
> The short rests were designed to resemble the encounter recharge mechanic in 4e: a way to recharge certain abilities more often than a long rest as well as to heal between encounters. But the long duration needed to use one made it hard to do in most situations (if you were safe enough to take a lunch break, you probably weren't in the kind of place you needed to recharge those abilities in) and the fact certain classes and races (warlock, monk, fighter, dragonborn) needed them far more than others lead to a lot of tension in using them. They still exist in some fashion, but I wager the change from short-rest recharge to prof/day will make their usefulness dimmish further.
> 
> *9.) Hit Dice*
> 
> Speaking of, they were great for short rests to heal hp without magic, but as short rests were skipped either due to the inability to safely rest for an hour or skipped instead for a long-rest, HD rarely had a chance to shine. It seems a few more options to use them to heal 4e style (spending them in combat or via a spell) might bring them more use beyond low level.



Completely agree on these ones. I want 4e-style short rests and healing. Healers should be useful for in-combat healing, but not necessary for adventuring. And I've ranted numerous times about how hit dice might *seem* like healing surges, but can't be used in the same way because instead of having a fixed number of heals that scale with level, you have a level-based number of heals with a fixed power. That means that an ability like "spend a hit die to X" doesn't work the same way as "spend a healing surge to X".



Kobold Stew said:


> *13. Wizard specialties.* Apart from the Diviner's Portent, very few of the ways to specialize as a wizard given in the PHB were fun: getting a reduction on spell transcription costs is like a coupon you never use.



D&D's schools are bad, have always been bad, and should feel bad.


Kobold Stew said:


> *14. Gish.* This is not an archetype I play, and so I admit I don't fully understand it. The PHB had Abjurer Wizards and Eldritch Knights, neither of which satisfied. Xanathar gave us War Magic, which didn't fly. Tasha adds Bladesinging, and doesn't limit it to Elves. Hexblade Warlock, Valor Bards, Sword Bard, Hexadin, Sorcadin. The list goes on. There are so many ways to be a melee wizard, and people are always unhappy. I think Bladesinging is the closest to the archetype as I understand it, but this more than anything seems to point to a type of play they have struggled to meet.



At least for me, the thing I want is not a "melee wizard". I want a frickin' swordmage, who uses magic as part of their fighting style. Spells like _lightning lure_ is a good start, but should have a much longer range (if you look at the range and wonder "but why can't I just walk up to them and hit them instead?", it's too short). I want something that looks and feels like a World of Warcraft Death Knight or Enhancement Shaman.

I don't need _fireball_, I need a spell that teleports me into the middle of a horde of foes with a mighty explosion that deals some damage and knocks people over, and then lets me make an attack on everyone nearby. I want to charge my weapon with frost so that when I strike my foe, I will freeze their feet to the ground so they can't escape.


----------



## jdrakeh

UngeheuerLich said:


> Multiclassing works fine.
> 
> 8 to 10 are working ok.




Yeah, those thoughts mirror my own. I currently play a multi-classed character and all is good. I've previously played a Warlock from Tier 1 to Tier 4 and that was fine, as well.


----------



## Branduil

Surprised no one has mentioned Saving Throws. Going from 3 saving throws to 6, 1 per ability, felt like an answer in search of a question. It immediately and pointlessly introduced the problem of 3 of the saves barely ever appearing. And then we get to the even bigger problem, which is that the proficiency system and "bounded accuracy" are broken by the ability to target spells towards non-proficient saves. If they want to keep the save system as is, there's a pretty basic solution: all PCs are proficient in EVERY save. Class Proficiencies in those saving throws are now Expertise. This preserves the spirit of the concept, which is that high-level characters should be REALLY good at what they're good at. High-level Rogues _should_ make basically every Dexterity save. Granting proficiency in every save also gives much more freedom to designers to target spells at a variety of abilities without making too many guaranteed-fail saves because the Fighter didn't spend all his feats on saving throws.


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

I dunno. When even the game itself struggles to find use for Str saves (Web? no, that's Ref save, then a Str check, not a save), Int saves (Maze? no that's not a save, it's an Int check you make as an action) and Cha saves (this is the most random one as 'sense of self' overlaps with Wis save so much, it's usually just Wis save)... surely it's much easier to just cut those out.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

fluffybunbunkittens said:


> I dunno. When even the game itself struggles to find use for Str saves (Web? no, that's Ref save, then a Str check, not a save), Int saves (Maze? no that's not a save, it's an Int check you make as an action) and Cha saves (this is the most random one as 'sense of self' overlaps with Wis save so much, it's usually just Wis save)... surely it's much easier to just cut those out.



Yeah exactly just go back to 4E's Fort/Ref/Will, which were respectively best of STR or CON, DEX or INT, and WIS or CHA. That would genuinely be a straight-up improvement to D&D. The whole "simplification" aspect of not having "derived" saves was destroyed by also making those saves have proficiency or not and there being twice as many of them!


----------



## payn

Ruin Explorer said:


> Yeah exactly just go back to 4E's Fort/Ref/Will, which were respectively best of STR or CON, DEX or INT, and WIS or CHA. That would genuinely be a straight-up improvement to D&D. The whole "simplification" aspect of not having "derived" saves was destroyed by also making those saves have proficiency or not and there being twice as many of them!



The only reason I dont like this is basically everybody has the same strengths and weaknesses. It just changes based on class you pick. Might as well divorce it from stats and just make it entirely class based.


----------



## Branduil

payn said:


> The only reason I dont like this is basically everybody has the same strengths and weaknesses. It just changes based on class you pick. Might as well divorce it from stats and just make it entirely class based.



I guess I don't see how that's different from the current system? There's a little variation, but if you're playing a specific class, you have 2 save proficiencies, and your stats are going to be fairly similar to everyone else who plays that class.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Staffan said:


> Completely agree on these ones. I want 4e-style short rests and healing. Healers should be useful for in-combat healing, but not necessary for adventuring. And I've ranted numerous times about how hit dice might *seem* like healing surges, but can't be used in the same way because instead of having a fixed number of heals that scale with level, you have a level-based number of heals with a fixed power. That means that an ability like "spend a hit die to X" doesn't work the same way as "spend a healing surge to X".
> 
> 
> D&D's schools are bad, have always been bad, and should feel bad.
> 
> At least for me, the thing I want is not a "melee wizard". I want a frickin' swordmage, who uses magic as part of their fighting style. Spells like _lightning lure_ is a good start, but should have a much longer range (if you look at the range and wonder "but why can't I just walk up to them and hit them instead?", it's too short). I want something that looks and feels like a World of Warcraft Death Knight or Enhancement Shaman.
> 
> I don't need _fireball_, I need a spell that teleports me into the middle of a horde of foes with a mighty explosion that deals some damage and knocks people over, and then lets me make an attack on everyone nearby. I want to charge my weapon with frost so that when I strike my foe, I will freeze their feet to the ground so they can't escape.



It’s really odd, to me, that none of the weapon based spells like Wrathful Smite or Ensaring Strike are just an action that an attack is part of, that also does a big magic thing. Like…why are no leveled spells built like the cantrips?


----------



## Stalker0

payn said:


> The only reason I dont like this is basically everybody has the same strengths and weaknesses. It just changes based on class you pick. Might as well divorce it from stats and just make it entirely class based.



Aka what 1e/2e saving throws looked like


----------



## Stalker0

fluffybunbunkittens said:


> I dunno. When even the game itself struggles to find use for Str saves (Web? no, that's Ref save, then a Str check, not a save), Int saves (Maze? no that's not a save, it's an Int check you make as an action) and Cha saves (this is the most random one as 'sense of self' overlaps with Wis save so much, it's usually just Wis save)... surely it's much easier to just cut those out.



This is the crux of the issue. If they had balanced out the 6 saving throws, then alright I'm on board. But it felt like they had this idea, then in implementation it fell short, and instead of reevaluating and going "ok that was a failure, lets roll it back", they just left it in there.


----------



## payn

Branduil said:


> I guess I don't see how that's different from the current system? There's a little variation, but if you're playing a specific class, you have 2 save proficiencies, and your stats are going to be fairly similar to everyone else who plays that class.



Thats true, though having saves for all ability scores is more interesting. I do wish class/feat/ability combos where more open than they have been in modern design (4E/5E/PF2). I really enjoyed being able to make a wide variety of stat arrays within each and every class back in 3E/PF1 (though im well aware of the execution issues).


----------



## Ruin Explorer

payn said:


> Might as well divorce it from stats and just make it entirely class based.



I would be 100% fine with that.


----------



## Lanefan

doctorbadwolf said:


> But odd to have a postmortem for a thing that isn’t dead, but okay.



So, a pre-mortem then?


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Lanefan said:


> So, a pre-mortem then?



Wouldn’t that make any analysis a pre-mortem?


----------



## Lanefan

Ruin Explorer said:


> Yeah exactly just go back to 4E's Fort/Ref/Will, which were respectively best of STR or CON, DEX or INT, and WIS or CHA. That would genuinely be a straight-up improvement to D&D. The whole "simplification" aspect of not having "derived" saves was destroyed by also making those saves have proficiency or not and there being twice as many of them!



Go back a step further and have the save defined by the source or type of effect - poison, spell, breath weapon, death, etc. - and leave the related-ability question for case-by-case adjudication based on the in-game situation.


----------



## Levistus's_Leviathan

fluffybunbunkittens said:


> I dunno. When even the game itself struggles to find use for Str saves (Web? no, that's Ref save, then a Str check, not a save), Int saves (Maze? no that's not a save, it's an Int check you make as an action) and Cha saves (this is the most random one as 'sense of self' overlaps with Wis save so much, it's usually just Wis save)... surely it's much easier to just cut those out.





Ruin Explorer said:


> Yeah exactly just go back to 4E's Fort/Ref/Will, which were respectively best of STR or CON, DEX or INT, and WIS or CHA. That would genuinely be a straight-up improvement to D&D. The whole "simplification" aspect of not having "derived" saves was destroyed by also making those saves have proficiency or not and there being twice as many of them!



I think it's baffling that a) WotC designed the game with 6 different Saving Throws and b) they knew that half of them were useless when designing the game, because when they gave the Classes their Saving Throw proficiencies, they made it sure that all 12 of them got proficiency with one useful one (Dex, Con, or Wis) and one useless one (Str, Int, and Cha). 

How . . . how do you do that? And why? If you're designing a system with 6 different types of Saving Throws, make them all useful! If you know that half of them are useless, get rid of that half! 

Overall, I like 5e. But there are some really baffling design decisions that always make me wonder what was going through the minds of the game designers when they were writing them. (Making the Versatile weapon trait when there's absolutely no reason to ever use it, creating True Strike, which is worse than just attacking twice, and not giving Divination Wizards access to the spell _divination_, just to name a few.)


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

AcererakTriple6 said:


> If you're designing a system with 6 different types of Saving Throws, make them all useful!



For what it's worth (and though I wish we had just Fort/Ref/Wil), monsters do use Str saves quite often (making it a better class save than Int/Cha)... It's just that the effects aren't that meaningful, as it's mostly about avoiding being knocked down or forced movement. Which does make perfect sense to oppose with Str, and is something you'd expect the warriors to be good against, while everyone else dumps the obvious dump stat.

Because Con saves are already the most common save called for, if you rolled those Str save effects to use Fortitude save instead, together they'd make up the majority of saves. I can see how that kind of a thing might make WotC pause for a bit and split off the weak effects into the secondary save, makes sense... But then they didn't do it in similar numbers to Int/Cha, because how would you even. Which is when you'd _hope_ they'd take another pause and decide to just make those regular Str checks and call it a day ( 'hey, make a Str check or the tentacles pull you this way')...

Lesson: you really shouldn't let your love for symmetry make the overall game design worse.


----------



## Tales and Chronicles

fluffybunbunkittens said:


> For what it's worth (and though I wish we had just Fort/Ref/Wil), monsters do use Str saves quite often, it's just that the effects aren't that meaningful - it's mostly about avoiding being knocked down or forced movement. Which does make perfect sense to oppose with Str, and is something you'd expect the warriors to be good against, while everyone else dumps the obvious dump stat.
> 
> Because Con saves are already the most common save called for, if you rolled those Str save effects to use Fortitude save instead, together they'd make up the majority of saves called for. I can see how that kind of a thing might make WotC pause for a bit and split off the weak effects into the secondary save, makes sense... But then they didn't do it in similar numbers to Int/Cha, because how would you even. Which is when you'd _hope_ they'd take another pause and decide to just make those regular Str checks and call it a day ( 'hey, make a Str check or the tentacles pull you this way')...
> 
> At least Str saves do something, which makes them stronger as class saves than Int/Cha saves. Small mercies for poor martials.
> 
> Lesson: you really shouldn't let your love for symmetry make the overall game design worse.



Seeing from the new grapple rules, I think most spells that required a STR check to break free of a restained condition will be changed to a save (Bigby's Hand, Whirlwind, Web, Entangle etc) that would add about 15 new spells to the STR save list. Same with most illusions requiring Investigation checks which could be saves instead, adding 10 or so new Int saves to the game.


----------



## James Gasik

AcererakTriple6 said:


> I think it's baffling that a) WotC designed the game with 6 different Saving Throws and b) they knew that half of them were useless when designing the game, because when they gave the Classes their Saving Throw proficiencies, they made it sure that all 12 of them got proficiency with one useful one (Dex, Con, or Wis) and one useless one (Str, Int, and Cha).
> 
> How . . . how do you do that? And why? If you're designing a system with 6 different types of Saving Throws, make them all useful! If you know that half of them are useless, get rid of that half!
> 
> Overall, I like 5e. But there are some really baffling design decisions that always make me wonder what was going through the minds of the game designers when they were writing them. (Making the Versatile weapon trait when there's absolutely no reason to ever use it, creating True Strike, which is worse than just attacking twice, and not giving Divination Wizards access to the spell _divination_, just to name a few.)



Versatile is for small sized characters, basically.  Not defending it, but that's basically what it's for.  A halfling can use a longsword in both hands to get a d10 without disadvantage.

And I completely agree, there are many design choices in 5e that I can't get my head around, since they don't seem to make a lot of sense.  The entire design around saving throws seems backwards to me.  I would have preferred 4e's approach, or something similar, which would let you use one of two ability scores to determine a save/defense (so Reflex is based on either Dex or Int) and have three of them, which is super elegant.

Plus, the game isn't clear exactly what makes a spell need a Charisma save, either.  I mean, you look at Banishment.  Why is it a Charisma save?  Because nothing else makes sense?


----------



## payn

James Gasik said:


> Versatile is for small sized characters, basically.  Not defending it, but that's basically what it's for.  A halfling can use a longsword in both hands to get a d10 without disadvantage.
> 
> And I completely agree, there are many design choices in 5e that I can't get my head around, since they don't seem to make a lot of sense.  The entire design around saving throws seems backwards to me.  I would have preferred 4e's approach, or something similar, which would let you use one of two ability scores to determine a save/defense (so Reflex is based on either Dex or Int) and have three of them, which is super elegant.
> 
> Plus, the game isn't clear exactly what makes a spell need a Charisma save, either.  I mean, you look at Banishment.  Why is it a Charisma save?  Because nothing else makes sense?



I dont see what's so elegant about every character having identical saves with different names? Seems lazy to me.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

payn said:


> I dont see what's so elegant about every character having identical saves with different names? Seems lazy to me.




I can see why some dex saves could be substituted by int saves... But the otherway round... not so much.

I could however see some spells being resisted by 2 saves.

Fear: vs wis or cha.
Mind affecting/visual illusions: int or wis
Fireball: int or dex
Ice blast: dex or con


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

The nice thing about 4e defense setup (pick the better of two stats for Fort/Ref/Wil each) was that it gave martials Charisma as an alternative to Wis. Just being able to be charismatic was an extra mechanically valid character option, finally.

Str/Con this did not help at all, as everyone wants Con anyway, so this just encouraged to dump Str even more.

Int/Dex was closer, as while Dex had more things that use it, you could substitute Int for AC/Init.


----------



## James Gasik

payn said:


> I dont see what's so elegant about every character having identical saves with different names? Seems lazy to me.



The idea is you have three saves, but you can use one of two different ability scores to provide the bonus for them.  

So Fortitude is based on the higher of Str/Con, Reflex the higher of Dex/Int, and Will the higher of Wis/Cha.


----------



## James Gasik

fluffybunbunkittens said:


> The nice thing about 4e defense setup (pick the better of two stats for Fort/Ref/Wil each) was that it gave martials Charisma as an alternative to Wis. Just being able to be charismatic was an extra mechanically valid character option, finally.
> 
> The other two defenses weren't interesting at all, though - Str/Con (everyone wants Con anyway) and Int/Dex (everyone wants Dex except Wizards who don't even have to think about this).



Do remember though that each class has a primary attribute and a secondary based on subclass in 4e, so while you might want Con, you're not going to be able to give it the same build priority as a class that actually uses Con to determine it's class abilities.*

*funky "V-classes" like the Warlock notwithstanding.

So if I'm a Fighter, being able to prioritize Strength over Constitution to keep my Fortitude defense high is pure bonus.


----------



## payn

fluffybunbunkittens said:


> The nice thing about 4e defense setup (pick the better of two stats for Fort/Ref/Wil each) was that it gave martials Charisma as an alternative to Wis. Just being able to be charismatic was an extra mechanically valid character option, finally.
> 
> The other two defenses weren't interesting at all, though - Str/Con (everyone wants Con anyway) and Int/Dex (everyone wants Dex except Wizards who don't even have to think about this). It's not like there was a reason to go 'hmm, I hate hitpoints/initiative, let me pick that other stat in the pairing instead' when it's not your main class stat already.



What do you mean finally? That was doable in 3E and made even better in PF1. I do think that 3E/PF1 still had the best stat variety (but totally borked math) amongst options. IT just so happened they made non-combat stuff compete with combat and that was a huge mistake. Modern design seems to have gone into this tight package where every single character has 2-3 different arrays. Pretty boring and predictable. Worse, every single build is identical they just pew pew with different flavor.


James Gasik said:


> The idea is you have three saves, but you can use one of two different ability scores to provide the bonus for them.
> 
> So Fortitude is based on the higher of Str/Con, Reflex the higher of Dex/Int, and Will the higher of Wis/Cha.



No, no, no, I get it, but its lazy as hell. Also, a big part of the "everybody is the same" complaint. One which I might add has carried over a bit into 5E and is potentially the worst yet in PF2. So, this is not just a 4E thing (anymore).


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

payn said:


> What do you mean finally? That was doable in 3E and made even better in PF1.



Possible in the way that as a warrior your Will save was going to be bad anyway, so you might as well tank it on purpose..?


----------



## James Gasik

Huh, I didn't think of it as lazy at all.  It went a long way towards making all ability scores equally viable, I thought.  I mean, I would think having 6 saves was equally lazy, especially with the way those 6 saves were then used, with three being "major" saves, and the other three being "well, this might happen sometimes".  A case might be made for Strength saves, but those could have just been Str checks (as was pointed out previously).


----------



## James Gasik

fluffybunbunkittens said:


> Possible in the way that as a warrior your Will save was going to be bad anyway, so you might as well tank it on purpose..?



I think he might be referring to the Feats that let you use different things to determine saving throw bonuses.


----------



## payn

fluffybunbunkittens said:


> Possible in the way that as a warrior your Will save was going to be bad anyway, so you might as well tank it on purpose..?



So, the idea putting points in charisma means that will must be tanked? I can see this, but fortunately 3E/PF1 allowed a lot of ways around that via feats and equipment. You were not stuck with what you were stuck with.


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

James Gasik said:


> Do remember though that each class has a primary attribute and a secondary based on subclass in 4e



_deep inhale_ True. It's been like a dozen years... But now it's coming back, A shape classes (one primary stat, powers use different secondary stats) and V shape classes (two different attack stats, but one secondary for both, like melee cleric is str+cha, while lazer cleric is wis+cha)...


----------



## James Gasik

With the push towards point buy as a "balanced" (heh) method of determining ability scores, while still pushing players to have high ability scores in things important to their class, you're going to have dump stats.  Taking steps to make that less damning to the player was then kind of necessary.

I've seen players who tried to not dump things with point buy, and ended up with 14's in everything.  And then struggled as a result, failing when other characters succeeded.  Even if, mathematically, it was only failing another 5-10% of the time, the moments when their lower scores let them down outweighed the moments when their non-dump stats mattered, and they were miserable as a result.

D&D has always been a game where specialization is rewarded more than generalization, after all.


----------



## payn

James Gasik said:


> Huh, I didn't think of it as lazy at all.  It went a long way towards making all ability scores equally viable, I thought.  I mean, I would think having 6 saves was equally lazy, especially with the way those 6 saves were then used, with three being "major" saves, and the other three being "well, this might happen sometimes".  A case might be made for Strength saves, but those could have just been Str checks (as was pointed out previously).



Problem is the 4e defense doesn't really make all stats important, in fact, it does the opposite. Based on class, a few stats really matter, the rest don't. I dont think 5E went far enough making all stats matter to all characters.


----------



## James Gasik

fluffybunbunkittens said:


> _deep inhale_ True. It's been like a dozen years... But now it's coming back, A shape classes (one primary stat, powers use different secondary stats) and V shape classes (two different attack stats, but one secondary for both, like melee cleric is str+cha, while lazer cleric is wis+cha).



Sorry, was the trip down memory lane painful?  While I had overall positive memories of 4e, I know that's not universally true.


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

James Gasik said:


> Sorry, was the trip down memory lane painful?  While I had overall positive memories of 4e, I know that's not universally true.



No no, I love 4e, it just has... so much stuff...


----------



## Tales and Chronicles

On the subject of saves. I think it would be best to add proficiency bonus to all saves, to avoid being completely unable to pass a saving throw (though the new nat20 will help a little on that).


----------



## James Gasik

payn said:


> Problem is the 4e defense doesn't really make all stats important, in fact, it does the opposite. Based on class, a few stats really matter, the rest don't. I dont think 5E went far enough making all stats matter to all characters.



Well no.  It makes them closer to being equally important when building your character, but obviously not in play.  And even then, you ran into issues-

Str gives you carry capacity.  Con gives you healing surges and a few more hit points.

Dex gives you initiative.  Int does not.

Cha gives you social skills.  Wis gives you...Perception and Insight.

But I don't think any edition has ever managed to make all 6 ability scores equally viable.  I mean, when I started playing in AD&D, Charisma didn't really do a lot by itself.  Sure, it came up more at level 9 and up, when you're doing the base building thing (IF your game was doing that), and presumably it would matter if people were using the NPC reaction rules (which I never saw anyone use, but that's my own experience).

And it really hasn't gotten much better, other than, now there's incentive to have high Charisma for a few classes (technically Paladins and 2e Bards wanted Charisma, as well as a couple of specialty Wizards, but that was just a prerequisite, it didn't actually fuel any features).

Proficiency bonus matters more than ability bonuses even now, so it doesn't take much to be a face other than proficiency in Persuasion (and there's a few ways to get expertise on top of it).

To truly make all six ability scores equally useful, the game would have to use derived secondary characteristics, which is a layer of complexity I don't think the majority of D&D players want.


----------



## Nikosandros

James Gasik said:


> Versatile is for small sized characters, basically.  Not defending it, but that's basically what it's for.  A halfling can use a longsword in both hands to get a d10 without disadvantage.



Monks also benefit from the versatility of quarterstaves (and longswords if kensei).


----------



## James Gasik

Tales and Chronicles said:


> On the subject of saves. I think it would be best to add proficiency bonus to all saves, to avoid being completely unable to pass a saving throw (though the new nat20 will help a little on that).



This would be nice, but I don't see it happening, sadly.  The designers want each class to have weak points, and a lot of DM's feel the same, I think.

It's not a huge problem in 1-10 play that I've noticed, which are the levels most people play the game at.  It's 11+ where the issue lies with saves, and well, high level play has always been a weak point of D&D.


----------



## James Gasik

Nikosandros said:


> Monks also benefit from the versatility of quarterstaves (and longswords if kensei).



Oh that's a fair point.  The only Monk I ever saw played used a short sword, so I didn't think about the staff.


----------



## payn

James Gasik said:


> Well no.  It makes them closer to being equally important when building your character, but obviously not in play.  And even then, you ran into issues-
> 
> Str gives you carry capacity.  Con gives you healing surges and a few more hit points.
> 
> Dex gives you initiative.  Int does not.
> 
> Cha gives you social skills.  Wis gives you...Perception and Insight.
> 
> But I don't think any edition has ever managed to make all 6 ability scores equally viable.  I mean, when I started playing in AD&D, Charisma didn't really do a lot by itself.  Sure, it came up more at level 9 and up, when you're doing the base building thing (IF your game was doing that), and presumably it would matter if people were using the NPC reaction rules (which I never saw anyone use, but that's my own experience).
> 
> And it really hasn't gotten much better, other than, now there's incentive to have high Charisma for a few classes (technically Paladins and 2e Bards wanted Charisma, as well as a couple of specialty Wizards, but that was just a prerequisite, it didn't actually fuel any features).
> 
> Proficiency bonus matters more than ability bonuses even now, so it doesn't take much to be a face other than proficiency in Persuasion (and there's a few ways to get expertise on top of it).
> 
> To truly make all six ability scores equally useful, the game would have to use derived secondary characteristics, which is a layer of complexity I don't think the majority of D&D players want.



They most certainly dont and its a damn shame.


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

Your main stat is mandatory so it should have your highest score, but then the other stats aren't equally secondary because Dex/Con/Wis feed into saves (and AC+Init/hitpoints/perception are always useful for everyone to have). Which notably leaves Str/Int/Cha as the ones that do nothing unless they are already your primary stat. Which means we can predict people's stats with extreme precision.


----------



## beancounter

I think it's pretty clear that WoTC intends to phase out short rests.

I'm concerned how this may impact the warlock that relies on it. I suspect that they may tie the warlocks spell slots to their proficiency bonus per long rest - which would seriously nerf them.

Now, before anyone misinterprets what I'm saying and tells me that if I don't like the warlock I shouldn't play one - The fact is that I love the warlock, and I want to see it improved.


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

They'll keep short rests (just to have something to call the hitdice-spending period), but they are constantly divorcing resource recovery from them... so they will hopefully just say they are 10 minutes of quick recovery.

At least normalizing resources around the long rest would help standardize play (since there are apparently all these tables where short rests are not allowed). And it would still make it easier to impose other limits on long resting, without having to consider whether those same limits make short rests impossible.

GM: 'you are invading a castle, no time to rest for the night'
martials: 'but, uhh, we need to rest an hour to get any hitpoints back... or half of our class abilities...'
GM: 'uhh... okay, maybe you can rest for an hour while people are running about...'
Wizard: 'if we can rest for an hour, why cannot we rest for 8 hours? waaaaa'


----------



## glass

FireLance said:


> Actually, the only thing that 5E changed about short rests was to increase the time required from 5 minutes to 1 hour.



That may be the only change, but it is a _vast _change. IME it is the difference between short rests happening and....not happening.



CleverNickName said:


> I have never once thought that psionics were a necessity in D&D.



Obviously not. Nothing is "necessary".



CleverNickName said:


> In fact I think they feel incredibly out-of-place in a fantasy setting.



And so you want to keep them away from those who like them?



pgmason said:


> I personally think that finesse weapons should use Dex to hit, but still use Str for damage.  That would go a long way to making Str more useful.



True, but it would do it while making finesse weapons largely useless. I could see "Dex bonus to damage, but strength penalty (if any) also applies." 



John R Davis said:


> Oh yeah and don't have theory-crafting either.



Even if that was desirable, I do not see how it is possible. Are you proposing a rule in the book saying "thou shalt not theorycraft"? _EDIT (in the right place this time): Or were you being sarcastic and I missed it?_


----------



## Lanefan

James Gasik said:


> With the push towards point buy as a "balanced" (heh) method of determining ability scores, while still pushing players to have high ability scores in things important to their class, you're going to have dump stats.  Taking steps to make that less damning to the player was then kind of necessary.
> 
> I've seen players who tried to not dump things with point buy, and ended up with 14's in everything.  And then struggled as a result, failing when other characters succeeded.  Even if, mathematically, it was only failing another 5-10% of the time, the moments when their lower scores let them down outweighed the moments when their non-dump stats mattered, and they were miserable as a result.
> 
> D&D has always been a game where specialization is rewarded more than generalization, after all.



And so it should be, because without specialization and corresponding weaknesses there's much less (or no?) interdependence among the party where the strengths of one cover off the weaknesses of another, leading to more in-character impetus to just go it alone.


----------



## Blue

Shiroiken said:


> I disagree about traits/ideals/bonds/flaws, as I've always found them useful as a player and DM. My biggest issue was trying to tie them to backgrounds, instead of being their own section (like alignment). The provide a simple framework for the player and DM to tie the character into the world and guide roleplay.
> 
> Your issues with short rests aren't universal. I've heard lots of complaints about them, but I've not experienced many issues. The frequency of short rests in our group depends on the party composition (more short rest classes means more short rests) and level (since you get more use out of multiple rests at higher level).



I love the concept of TIBF, but find the concept flawed.  At the very least, if someone has to track 5 unique things about a PC, make it the player of that PC.  The idea that a DM can or should track them on top of everything else they are doing is unworkable when expected across all tables.


----------



## Aldarc

Blue said:


> I love the concept of TIBF, but find the concept flawed.  At the very least, if someone has to track 5 unique things about a PC, make it the player of that PC.  The idea that a DM can or should track them on top of everything else they are doing is unworkable when expected across all tables.



I think Mearls wanted something like Drives in PbtA games or aspects in Fate games but made something needlessly complex and monstrous from it that failed to understand why they work in PbtA or Fate games.


----------



## Blue

Aldarc said:


> I think Mearls wanted something like Drives in PbtA games or aspects in Fate games but made something needlessly complex and monstrous from it that failed to understand why they work in PbtA or Fate games.



I completely agree with you.  Aspects in Fate are core to what the character is, and get used all the time mechanically, without also class and such.  And are most often refeerence and used by player, which will lead to familiarity.  This, where it's 25 statements (assuming 5 person party) that the DM has to memorize and catch in use (as opposed to intentionally calling out) is just a flawed implementation.  But I love the concept and hope they don't give it up.  Back in the 90s Vampire had RP prompts (an overt nature and a hidden nature) that RPing to would recharge Willpower, a very important aspect.  D&D is really behind the ball in terms of mechanical support for RP.


----------



## Levistus's_Leviathan

James Gasik said:


> Versatile is for small sized characters, basically. Not defending it, but that's basically what it's for. A halfling can use a longsword in both hands to get a d10 without disadvantage.



Still doesn't work. Small characters are normally better off dual-wielding non-heavy weapons than using a versatile weapon two-handed.


----------



## James Gasik

AcererakTriple6 said:


> Still doesn't work. Small characters are normally better off dual-wielding non-heavy weapons than using a versatile weapon two-handed.



Eh?  Isn't dual wielding terrible?


----------



## Levistus's_Leviathan

James Gasik said:


> Eh?  Isn't dual wielding terrible?



Kinda. It depends on the class. Sometimes it's worth it (mainly for Rogues, in my experience). It increases your damage per turn by about 3.5 damage (or 4.5 if you have the Dual Wielder feat), while wielding a versatile weapon with two hands only increases your DPR by 1 per attack.


----------



## Eyes of Nine

Li Shenron said:


> All in all, these made 5e work more as a *toolbox* than a rigid system, and this was very much intended when designers repeatedly stated that the purpose was to allow for as many different playstyle as possible.



First of all, my head just  the idea of everything disparate, instead of connected.

Now, it feels like where the PHB missed was being *explicit* in calling each of these things options, and laying out the book in a way of "hey - here's a bunch of options, that you can connect in this way, or not."

They could also say "here's what we call the 'default' that we're going to enforce in Adventurer's League; but we'll support all the other options listed in this book on our virtual tabletop and D&D beyond, since they are 'Official Options'".


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

Aldarc said:


> I think Mearls wanted something like Drives in PbtA games or aspects in Fate games but made something needlessly complex and monstrous from it that failed to understand why they work in PbtA or Fate games.



That tracks. Which is a shame, because I love any random tables RPGs provide as inspiration. They really should've just used the background tables to form the parts of some kind of a high concept line, so the GM might remember that one line per character...
'rambunctuous hermit who wants to get back into The Council'
'ambitious necromancer's apprentice who ran with the wrong crowd'
'curious cook with a lot of family drama'


----------



## Eyes of Nine

Blue said:


> I completely agree with you.  Aspects in Fate are core to what the character is, and get used all the time mechanically, without also class and such.  And are most often refeerence and used by player, which will lead to familiarity.  This, where it's 25 statements (assuming 5 person party) that the DM has to memorize and catch in use (as opposed to intentionally calling out) is just a flawed implementation.  But I love the concept and hope they don't give it up.  Back in the 90s Vampire had RP prompts (an overt nature and a hidden nature) that RPing to would recharge Willpower, a very important aspect.  D&D is really behind the ball in terms of mechanical support for RP.



I think BIFTs should have powered Inspiration. Also Inspiration should have been 1 per PC, but a pool of Inspiration for the party would have been cool


----------



## fluffybunbunkittens

James Gasik said:


> Isn't dual wielding terrible?



It is if you have other stuff you could be using your bonus action on. If you don't, might as well. Rogues are a special case in that they have other uses for bonus actions, but also really want that extra off-hand opportunity to land that Sneak Attack. Oh, and 5e had to make drawing both weapons weird...


----------



## James Gasik

AcererakTriple6 said:


> Kinda. It depends on the class. Sometimes it's worth it (mainly for Rogues, in my experience). It increases your damage per turn by about 3.5 damage (or 4.5 if you have the Dual Wielder feat), while wielding a versatile weapon with two hands only increases your DPR by 1 per attack.



Personally, I prefer to play my Rogues as ranged attackers, as I find they're a touch fragile for melee.  I wouldn't be using a versatile weapon on a Rogue anyways.  I mean, I get it, if you have a free hand and nothing better to do with a bonus action, it's generally better to dual wield.

So I guess Monks are the only ones who care about versatile after all, since what Small sized character really needs a weapon damage die or the ability to wield a weapon in two hands?


----------



## Blue

Eyes of Nine said:


> I think BIFTs should have powered Inspiration. Also Inspiration should have been 1 per PC, but a pool of Inspiration for the party would have been cool



BIFTs did grant Inspiration, can you unpack a little on what you mean by "powered inspiration"?  I'm not sure I'm understanding your point.


----------



## Li Shenron

Eyes of Nine said:


> Now, it feels like where the PHB missed was being *explicit* in calling each of these things options



Absolutely


----------



## Aldarc

Blue said:


> I completely agree with you.  Aspects in Fate are core to what the character is, and get used all the time mechanically, without also class and such.  And are most often refeerence and used by player, which will lead to familiarity.  This, where it's 25 statements (assuming 5 person party) that the DM has to memorize and catch in use (as opposed to intentionally calling out) is just a flawed implementation.  But I love the concept and hope they don't give it up.  Back in the 90s Vampire had RP prompts (an overt nature and a hidden nature) that RPing to would recharge Willpower, a very important aspect.  D&D is really behind the ball in terms of mechanical support for RP.



If so, I would go something closer with Drives that are in Homebrew World (a Dungeon World hack). The player may be given four different drives to choose from based on their class, and they would choose one. These are connected to XP in Homebrew World, but these could be connected to Inspiration.

*Fighter *


>  Challenge
> Enter a fight that you aren’t sure you can win
>  Glory
> Show off in front of NPCs who can go on to tell your tale
>  Peace
> Settle a conflict or dispute without bloodshed
>  Pride
> Put someone in their place for disrespecting you




*Wizard *


>  Curiosity
> Cause trouble by touching, opening, or tinkering with something
>  Cunning
> Set up a ploy and then take advantage of it
>  Eccentricity
> Alienate another with your strange behavior
>  Mystery
> Deflect or evade an inquiry into your doings




Choosing one makes it easier for the players and GM to track. Tying it to class makes it about leaning into some potential archetypes and such.

OR ALTERNATIVELY 

If WotC wanted to, they could make a similar list that was not Class-based, but rather Alignment-based. So a player may have a list of four different drives to choose from Good or Chaos or Law, etc.


----------



## Eyes of Nine

Blue said:


> BIFTs did grant Inspiration, can you unpack a little on what you mean by "powered inspiration"?  I'm not sure I'm understanding your point.



Hah! Since I have never been in a 5e game that used Inspiration, I didn't even know that BIFTS "powered" inspiration. By which I mean, if you do something in keeping with one of your BIFTS, and don't have Inspiration, you get one.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> If so, I would go something closer with Drives that are in Homebrew World (a Dungeon World hack). The player may be given four different drives to choose from based on their class, and they would choose one. These are connected to XP in Homebrew World, but these could be connected to Inspiration.
> 
> *Fighter
> 
> 
> Wizard *
> 
> 
> Choosing one makes it easier for the players and GM to track. Tying it to class makes it about leaning into some potential archetypes and such.
> 
> OR ALTERNATIVELY
> 
> If WotC wanted to, they could make a similar list that was not Class-based, but rather Alignment-based. So a player may have a list of four different drives to choose from Good or Chaos or Law, etc.



My problem with things like that is that it feels like I'm straitjacketing myself before I start as to how I'll play this new character, rather than letting its character and goals etc. develop organically through play.  Maybe its goals - other than simple survival - never come to be that clearly hard-coded; instead it just keeps on keepin' on.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> My problem with things like that is that it feels like I'm straitjacketing myself before I start as to how I'll play this new character, rather than letting its character and goals etc. develop organically through play.  Maybe its goals - other than simple survival - never come to be that clearly hard-coded; instead it just keeps on keepin' on.



FYI, in PbtA games, Drives can change. Likewise Aspects in Fate games can also change.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

AcererakTriple6 said:


> Overall, I like 5e. But there are some really baffling design decisions that always make me wonder what was going through the minds of the game designers when they were writing them.



I feel like, whilst 5E has some stuff that really works tremendously well, stuff like the 6 saves, the un-integrated HD system, the Short/Long rest system, the flip-flopping on class and race design, the 6-8 encounters/day incident (which is really the 30-50 feral hogs of RPGs - 1d3+2 x 10 feral hogs I should say - I just want to know what their treasure types were!), the whole of the DMG which omg such an unhelpful mess, the half-considered Skill/Tool proficiency system, a bunch of the subclasses and so on all just mean that it's most unfinished-seeming edition of D&D. To me what it feels like is, the system needed another six months of playtesting and thinking, minimum, maybe more, but the designers were told time to lock features, they're publishing in X months, and so we got what we got. Maybe the designers were fine with that - but they shouldn't have been!

(We know that happened to 4E, too, but 4E didn't feel as unfinished, it didn't have any components as inconsistent as the above - its major issues were Skill Challenges sucked on launch, and monster math needed updated. That and like, whoever was writing Feats for like the first year or two of the game should honestly have been jailed for the protection of D&D, so many unnecessary hyperspecific Feats good god.)


----------



## payn

Ruin Explorer said:


> I feel like, whilst 5E has some stuff that really works tremendously well, stuff like the 6 saves, the un-integrated HD system, the Short/Long rest system, the flip-flopping on class and race design, the 6-8 encounters/day incident (which is really the 30-50 feral hogs of RPGs - 1d3+2 x 10 feral hogs I should say - I just want to know what their treasure types were!), the whole of the DMG which omg such an unhelpful mess, the half-considered Skill/Tool proficiency system, a bunch of the subclasses and so on all just mean that it's most unfinished-seeming edition of D&D. To me what it feels like is, the system needed another six months of playtesting and thinking, minimum, maybe more, but the designers were told time to lock features, they're publishing in X months, and so we got what we got. Maybe the designers were fine with that - but they shouldn't have been!
> 
> (We know that happened to 4E, too, but 4E didn't feel as unfinished, it didn't have any components as inconsistent as the above - its major issues were Skill Challenges sucked on launch, and monster math needed updated. That and like, whoever was writing Feats for like the first year or two of the game should honestly have been jailed for the protection of D&D, so many unnecessary hyperspecific Feats good god.)



Im guessing the modularity that evaporated as time went on was supposed to round 5E out?


----------



## Ruin Explorer

payn said:


> Im guessing the modularity that evaporated as time went on was supposed to round 5E out?



I suspect that got cut earlier but for the same reasons - like, they had to realize at some point that designing 5E to be modular would be a hell of a task (given 5E is also pretty crunchy), and probably booted that a while back.


----------



## payn

Ruin Explorer said:


> I suspect that got cut earlier but for the same reasons - like, they had to realize at some point that designing 5E to be modular would be a hell of a task (given 5E is also pretty crunchy), and probably booted that a while back.



I dont think it was booted so early. I think they wanted a foundation to build on, but just gave up at some point. Almost like a wait and see how this whole thing turns out before actually finishing it goes?


----------



## Aldarc

11. Modularity


----------



## TheSword

Remathilis said:


> With 5th edition winding down and 1D&D ascending, I'd like to look at some ideas presented during the game's lifespan that didn't quite work out as desired. Some will be removed, some will be changed, and some may yet live to see 5.5. In no paricular order



You’re missing the caveat here… “for me”


Remathilis said:


> *1.) Backgrounds*
> 
> Yeah, the kinda exist in the packet as predefined options, but the current background is dead. It started life in D&D next as a kind of mixture of 4e Themes along with 3e-style feat trees before morphing into a collection of non-weapon proficiencies and role-playing aids. It helped define your character as more than just as fighter or a sorcerer, but as a soldier, an outlander, or a sailor. And lots of supplements (Official and 3pp) added more of them to fit every possible origin. However, they maintained a few flaws in their design: most players viewed them as inflexible options for skills and proficiencies despite "customizing your background" being an option. Most of the Features were heavily DM and campaign dependent (and often amounted to little more than "free room and board" or "NPC will cut you some slack". Easily forgotten by both DM and player. They also had a cascading effect as we'll see below. While I genuinely liked the ideas of backgrounds, I don't think they did what WotC wanted in terms of role-playing.



They are a way of customizing intangible elements and adding a little bit of extra detail. The rule that if they granted a skill you already had you could pick any other, meant they were actually very flexible. They were fun, flavourful and helped customize the classes. They clearly aren’t going anywhere.


Remathilis said:


> *2.) Bonds/Ideas/Flaws/Traits*
> 
> Alongside Backgrounds were lists of personality traits, written in first person sentences to foster deeper role-playing options by having PCs define their personality, beliefs, and shortcomings. Like the backgrounds they were attached to, they were supposed to offer suggestions, but more than a few PCs took them as the only options for playing your acolytes or urchins. Others picked them at character creation, wrote them down and promptly forgot them, or didn't bother to write them down at all. While BIFTS may exist in some fashion in 5.5, they aren't attached to background and I suspect won't appear as some rollable table of suggestions, though I feel they will probably remain for NPCs in modules.



Excellent at easing new players into the experience of pretending to be somewhere else. Not needed for everyone but didn’t do any harm, and useful for those that needed them. Again, fun and flavour. God forbid we step outside the mechanical.



Remathilis said:


> *3.) Trinkets.*
> 
> Ah trinkets. Little curiosities you rolled for at chargen, wrote-down in your equipment and were ignored afterwards. Sometimes interesting, rarely useful, often forgotten.



Totally dull… right up until that token you wrote into your backstory ends up being a magic item that the DM weaves in. It’s a tangible way of bringing backstory to life. It worked for dark souls. Honestly, who care though? It’s a bit like saying the spare dagger the PC carries doesn’t work.



Remathilis said:


> *4.) Multi-classing*
> 
> 5e brought back 3e style multiclassing, with some adjustments to fix the problems inherent to such a system. Spell slots (but not spells known) were dependent on all caster classes, proficiency bonus and cantrips were a function of character level, not class level, and starting proficiencies were staggered to avoid dipping for free saves and weapons/armors. Despite all this, the system was still primarily used to dip one class into another to pull some low-level features from one class and add it to another. In particular, the Charisma classes (Warlock, Sorcerer, and Paladin) synergized almost too well with each other. Eventually, subclasses and feats became more popular ways to poach from one class and into another, and I wager that multiclassing with get another revision (if it remains at all) to curb abuses and discourage 1-2 level dips.



Hard disagree. The best multiclassing system in the 5 editions of the game. Allows me to do what multiclassing should do, which is play a hybrid character in a viable way. Love it. Two thirds of my characters multiclass.



Remathilis said:


> *5.) Inspiration.*
> 
> Designed as a reward for good role-play (remember those BIFTS?) Inspiration didn't quite work as they wanted. It was hard or inconsistent to get, easily forgotten, and didn't connect to the rest of the system. I see why WotC has opted to make it more widely and consistently useful.



You or your DM forget to use it, so it doesn’t work? This is a classic PICNIC… Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.


Remathilis said:


> *6.) Modular Rules*
> 
> Ah what sweet summer children we were! The notion that 5e would be rules-modular was partially true: It's a remarkably easy system to house rule. But the dream of Alternative skill systems, advanced combat options, new spell systems, mass combat, alternative ability scores, and other ideas hinted at in the DMG but never expanded on or fleshed out quickly faded. An alternative "Greyhawk" initiative based on weapon/spell speed was UA'd but that was the only attempt at any sort of alternative rule modules we saw from WotC.



There are tons of optional rules and systems for 5e. Added to by a plethora of third parties. Folks can’t even agree on what modular means so it’s a leap to criticise 5e for not being it.


Remathilis said:


> *7.) Psionics.*
> 
> Another bit of vaporware: true psionic rules seemed like a necessity and WotC honestly tried to make the Mystic a thing, but it never gelled and eventually collapsed into the vaguely psychic subclass options we have today.



I don’t hold 5e accountable for an UA play test. Pretty much everything a 3e and earlier psionic could do is replicated in 5e. Tasha’s additions were nice. They tested the water without precluding later options. I don’t call that failure.


Remathilis said:


> *8.) Short Rests*
> 
> The short rests were designed to resemble the encounter recharge mechanic in 4e: a way to recharge certain abilities more often than a long rest as well as to heal between encounters. But the long duration needed to use one made it hard to do in most situations (if you were safe enough to take a lunch break, you probably weren't in the kind of place you needed to recharge those abilities in) and the fact certain classes and races (warlock, monk, fighter, dragonborn) needed them far more than others lead to a lot of tension in using them. They still exist in some fashion, but I wager the change from short-rest recharge to prof/day will make their usefulness dimmish further.



Again, this is a picnic. Our group takes plenty of short tests. Usually two per adventuring day. One hour isn’t very long. Crickey, I get up from my office from work to get a cup of tea and by the time I’m back at my seat an hour has passed. Finding a defendable space in a dungeon is a form of tactics, as is making sure you have the resources to successful take that rest. Our group had no tension in using them. If they are causing tension, you probably need to examine the group social contract.


Remathilis said:


> *9.) Hit Dice*
> 
> Speaking of, they were great for short rests to heal hp without magic, but as short rests were skipped either due to the inability to safely rest for an hour or skipped instead for a long-rest, HD rarely had a chance to shine. It seems a few more options to use them to heal 4e style (spending them in combat or via a spell) might bring them more use beyond low level.



Much more could be done. Adventures in Rokugan and Adventures in Middle Earth give good examples of this in their add one. 3pp is great for pushing the boat out on this. To be honest, HD is our groups main method of healing.


Remathilis said:


> *10. Pact Magic*
> 
> I'm going to get some flack for this. Pact Magic is the Warlock method of casting spells; a few spell slots recharged over a short rest and always cast at max efficiency seemed like an interesting alterative to spellcasting on paper, but warlock magic was very finicky. It was a very hard concept for new players to wrap their heads around always casting at max level (no, you use your 5th level spell slot to cast your 1st level spell as if it was 5th level), was wholly dependent on frequent short rests, and was an absolute nightmare with multiclassing. Further, the spell list went up to 9th level, but levels 6-9 were part of a different class feature (mystic arcanum) and didn't use spell slots at all to cast. The system looked cool, but maybe (if WotC is open to more radical adjustment to the class system) it would be better to have warlocks be a regular spell slot caster akin to sorcerer or bard rather than their own weird spell system that doesn't play nice with the rest of the game.



On this I agree. Ditch Warlocks from the PHB.


----------



## Parmandur

payn said:


> I dont think it was booted so early. I think they wanted a foundation to build on, but just gave up at some point. Almost like a wait and see how this whole thing turns out before actually finishing it goes?



They built the system that is modular, it seems theybjuat figured out that they could get 90%+ of players in a certain range ofnplayatyles and have just focused their efforts there, leaving the 10% for the OGL (like our local Level Up effort).


----------



## payn

Parmandur said:


> They built the system that is modular, it seems theybjuat figured out that they could get 90%+ of players in a certain range ofnplayatyles and have just focused their efforts there, leaving the 10% for the OGL (like our local Level Up effort).



Right, I wasn't convinced before and I'm not now.


----------



## Parmandur

payn said:


> Right, I wasn't convinced before and I'm not now.



_shrug_ 

The system is made up of modules, and the math deals very well with them being plugged in and out. And homebrewed or third party modules work well, too!

They didn't go for delivering a wide swathe of Edition specific modules, which is an idea they briefly floated...but seemed to abandon when they started gathering data. Doubt that is a coincidence.


----------



## Micah Sweet

TheSword said:


> You’re missing the caveat here… “for me”
> 
> They are a way of customizing intangible elements and adding a little bit of extra detail. The rule that if they granted a skill you already had you could pick any other, meant they were actually very flexible. They were fun, flavourful and helped customize the classes. They clearly aren’t going anywhere.
> 
> Excellent at easing new players into the experience of pretending to be somewhere else. Not needed for everyone but didn’t do any harm, and useful for those that needed them. Again, fun and flavour. God forbid we step outside the mechanical.
> 
> 
> Totally dull… right up until that token you wrote into your backstory ends up being a magic item that the DM weaves in.
> 
> 
> Flat out wrong. The best multiclassing system in the 5 editions of the game. Allows me to do what multiclassing should do, which is play a hybrid character in a viable way. Love it. Two thirds of my characters multiclass.
> 
> 
> You or your DM forget to use it, so it doesn’t work? This is a classic PICNIC… Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.
> 
> There are tons of optional rules and systems for 5e. Added to by a plethora of third parties. Folks can’t even agree on what modular means so it’s a leap to criticise 5e for not being it.
> 
> I don’t hold 5e accountable for an UA play test. Pretty much everything a 3e and earlier psionic could do is replicated in 5e. Tasha’s additions were nice. They tested the water without precluding later options. I don’t call that failure.
> 
> Again, this is a picnic. Our group takes plenty of short tests. Usually two per adventuring day. One hour isn’t very long. Crickey, I get up from my office from work to get a cup of tea and by the time I’m back at my seat an hour has passed. Finding a definable space out of site is a form of tactics, as is making sure you have the resources to successful take that rest. Our group had no tension in using them. If they are causing tension, you probably need to examine the group social contract.
> 
> Much more could be done. Adventures in Rokugan and Adventures in Middle Earth give good examples of this in their add one. 3pp is great for pushing the boat out on this. To be honest, HD is our groups main method of healing.
> 
> On this I agree. Ditch Warlocks from the PHB.



So, other than pact magic, is 5e a perfect game to you?  Do you have your own list of issues?


----------



## TheSword

Micah Sweet said:


> So, other than pact magic, is 5e a perfect game to you?  Do you have your own list of issues?



Sure. I do. I just don’t think those things are fundamentally broken. They can improved, but each of those things was a positive addition to D&D.

I’m pretty sure I posted this in one of the many threads but…


Magic item assignment/purchasing/values.
Creatures (and PCs) being massive sacks of HP
Dropping to zero hp has no cost
Shield spell is broken when taken by high AC characters
Crits should be more interesting
Some feats are unbalanced (polearm master, lucky, GWM, Sharp shooter etc)
Warlocks suck. (I’m not saying they’re weak, just that I don’t like them)
Monk isn’t strong enough.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Parmandur said:


> _shrug_
> 
> The system is made up of modules, and the math deals very well with them being plugged in and out. And homebrewed or third party modules work well, too!
> 
> They didn't go for delivering a wide swathe of Edition specific modules, which is an idea they briefly floated...but seemed to abandon when they started gathering data. Doubt that is a coincidence.



The rushed and poorly-written DMG, which was supposed to provide most of the modularity is pretty clear evidence that they never took the modularity terribly seriously. Or at least delayed taking it seriously until it was too late.

I mean, it's clear that almost none of the modular/optional/variant stuff suggested in the 5E DMG is remotely playtested, much of it is just plain unfinished and is just waffle about what people "could" do, instead of presenting a modular option (some of it isn't even called out, you have to trudge through text and happen to find it, and it's hard to find again), and where there are modular options, they're often ill-considered and clearly don't represent what people actually want from modular options (hence so few of them being used "as is" - whereas in other games that succeed at modularity and take it seriously you see the opposite). The insanity module doesn't even do what it claims it does - the maths is all wrong (as discussed at vast length elsewhere)!

It's sad because you are right about one thing - aside from combat (where the math and class design interact too tightly to allow it), 5E has strong potential for modularity. It's easy to imagine a DMG that did a vastly better job.

This is all fixable in One D&D's new DMG of course. It wouldn't even be hard. So there's hope.

(That said, I think it's equally possible One D&D will go away from modularity and towards a more unified vision that's even easier for WotC to design and balance around.)


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TheSword said:


> Sure. I do. I just don’t think those things are fundamentally broken. They can improved, but each of those things was a positive addition to D&D.
> 
> I’m pretty sure I posted this in one of the many threads but…
> 
> 
> Magic item assignment/purchasing/values.
> Creatures (and PCs) being massive sacks of HP
> Dropping to zero hp has no cost
> Shield spell is broken when taken by high AC characters
> Crits should be more interesting
> Some feats are unbalanced (polearm master, lucky, GWM, Sharp shooter etc)
> Warlocks suck. (I’m not saying they’re weak, just that I don’t like them)
> Monk isn’t strong enough.



Whilst the Warlock one is a misfit because it's taste/aesthetics whereas the rest are actual mechanical issues of various kinds, it'd be pretty easy to fix a lot of the rest, except the "sacks of HP one", sadly.

Sacks of HP would be easy to fix with an incompatible edition. Just have PCs start with about as many HP as L3 (by whatever mathematical trick), and then kill the assumption that you gain an HD every level, instead have some sort of deal where either you gain HD every other level, or you gain them every level up to L9 or something then it goes to "every other" or otherwise stops increasing so fast. At the same time, slash the amount of HP monsters have by an appropriate amount, which is going to be pretty large.

But sadly that requires incompatibility.

For the rest:

Magic items - Easy, just give us numbers!
Zero HP - Easy, loads of RPGs offer solutions. Some variant of what Worlds Without Number does might work.
Shield spell - Honestly remove it as a spell and make it a class feature for Wizard (and maaaaaybe others). And not a level 1 feature! It's not actually iconic outside D&D nerds, helpfully (unlike Fireball, say).
Crits - Loads of things you could do. Bring back multipliers for PC weapons or have a crit always be maximized + 1 die etc.
Feats - Fix 'em.
Monks - Fix 'em.


----------



## Eric V

Reynard said:


> For as often as people online complain about the ranger, I have NEVER had someone in a real game complain and I almost always have at least one in the party. It's a meme, not a real problem.



It's a real problem.  I have been in 3 different 5e campaigns with a ranger and the nicest thing I heard about the class from the players is "Eh, it's kinda disappointing.  Oh, well."


----------



## jhingelshod

Mind of tempest said:


> I wish it was like this with psionics.



I wish it was like this with Warlords.
(Or interesting Fighter archetypes)


----------



## Horwath

Ruin Explorer said:


> Yeah exactly just go back to 4E's Fort/Ref/Will, which were respectively best of STR or CON, DEX or INT, and WIS or CHA. That would genuinely be a straight-up improvement to D&D. The whole "simplification" aspect of not having "derived" saves was destroyed by also making those saves have proficiency or not and there being twice as many of them!



I would put both abilities in calculations.

FORT: str+con
REF: dex+int
WILL: wis+cha

every class gets one proficiency

this would give every ability value in saves, it would give more chance to increase saves through ASI's and would reward point buy with lower abilities.

with +1/+1/+1 and one set of 15,15,15,8,8,8 and other of 13,13,13,12,12,12 would give

16,16,16,8,8,8, total modifiers of 6. average +2 per save
14,14,14,12,12,12, total modifiers of 9. average +3 per save


----------



## Horwath

TheSword said:


> Some feats are unbalanced (polearm master, lucky, GWM, Sharp shooter etc...



I would agree that they are unbalanced, but only towards some feats that are bad.
When you compare them to +2 to your primary ability they are balanced, or just slightly under +2


----------



## TheSword

Eric V said:


> It's a real problem.  I have been in 3 different 5e campaigns with a ranger and the nicest thing I heard about the class from the players is "Eh, it's kinda disappointing.  Oh, well."



I’m surprised. I love the ranger (granted not the beast master). 

Four attacks at 5th level in relatively common circumstances and two weapons is pretty cool. The spells are a nice addition - particularly hunters mark and zephyr strike. Canny makes them a proper skill monkey, and they can easily be Dex based, which is the best stat.

I’m experimenting with a current character which multi classes with cleric but only for high levels.

Favoured enemy still needs sorting as the Tasha’s version still conflicts with too many things but it’s not a major problem.


----------



## Remathilis

TheSword said:


> You’re missing the caveat here… “for me”
> 
> They are a way of customizing intangible elements and adding a little bit of extra detail. The rule that if they granted a skill you already had you could pick any other, meant they were actually very flexible. They were fun, flavourful and helped customize the classes. They clearly aren’t going anywhere.
> 
> Excellent at easing new players into the experience of pretending to be somewhere else. Not needed for everyone but didn’t do any harm, and useful for those that needed them. Again, fun and flavour. God forbid we step outside the mechanical.
> 
> 
> Totally dull… right up until that token you wrote into your backstory ends up being a magic item that the DM weaves in. It’s a tangible way of bringing backstory to life. It worked for dark souls. Honestly, who care though? It’s a bit like saying the spare dagger the PC carries doesn’t work.
> 
> 
> Hard disagree. The best multiclassing system in the 5 editions of the game. Allows me to do what multiclassing should do, which is play a hybrid character in a viable way. Love it. Two thirds of my characters multiclass.
> 
> 
> You or your DM forget to use it, so it doesn’t work? This is a classic PICNIC… Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.
> 
> There are tons of optional rules and systems for 5e. Added to by a plethora of third parties. Folks can’t even agree on what modular means so it’s a leap to criticise 5e for not being it.
> 
> I don’t hold 5e accountable for an UA play test. Pretty much everything a 3e and earlier psionic could do is replicated in 5e. Tasha’s additions were nice. They tested the water without precluding later options. I don’t call that failure.
> 
> Again, this is a picnic. Our group takes plenty of short tests. Usually two per adventuring day. One hour isn’t very long. Crickey, I get up from my office from work to get a cup of tea and by the time I’m back at my seat an hour has passed. Finding a defendable space in a dungeon is a form of tactics, as is making sure you have the resources to successful take that rest. Our group had no tension in using them. If they are causing tension, you probably need to examine the group social contract.
> 
> Much more could be done. Adventures in Rokugan and Adventures in Middle Earth give good examples of this in their add one. 3pp is great for pushing the boat out on this. To be honest, HD is our groups main method of healing.
> 
> On this I agree. Ditch Warlocks from the PHB.



Well, I assumed I wasn't speaking universal truth, but there are more than a few other people who agree.

The issue wasn't that these things didn't work, it's that they didn't work quite like WotC probably wanted them to. As evidence, most of your suggestions involved having the DM go in a fix them. A DM CAN go in and make sure his game carefully centers around a PCs background features, meticulously memorize their BIFTs, and secretly make every one of their trinkets an integral part of the narrative. OR they can buy Wilds Beyond the Witchlight and run a game where none of that stuff matters and nobody is the worse for it. Which to me says WotC didn't know how to design around those elements, and if the designers fumble with making background features or trinkets interesting, you can't expect a DM to come in a save them. 

Which is why I don't propose removing any of them (well, maybe pact magic, but I'm open to seeing what can be done with it) but instead seeing what WotC can do to make them more relevant. Background features becoming level 1 feats is a good first step. Inspiration on a natural 20 is another. Both fix problems with them being difficult to use or design for. I think BIFTs will probably be turned into a more generic role-playing section rather than be tied to background. I think psionics could use more spells and subclasses (especially a caster one without tentacles) I think they could have added more options for rule options. I don't think that's a big ask.


----------



## Stalker0

Horwath said:


> I would put both abilities in calculations.
> 
> FORT: str+con
> REF: dex+int
> WILL: wis+cha
> 
> every class gets one proficiency
> 
> this would give every ability value in saves, it would give more chance to increase saves through ASI's and would reward point buy with lower abilities.
> 
> with +1/+1/+1 and one set of 15,15,15,8,8,8 and other of 13,13,13,12,12,12 would give
> 
> 16,16,16,8,8,8, total modifiers of 6. average +2 per save
> 14,14,14,12,12,12, total modifiers of 9. average +3 per save



The issue with this is it creates an even wider array of saves than you have now, and people already complain about the wide range.

At 20th level you could have a class with a +16 in one save (+20 for barbs) and a -1 in the next.


----------



## Lanefan

Stalker0 said:


> The issue with this is it creates an even wider array of saves than you have now, and people already complain about the wide range.
> 
> At 20th level you could have a class with a +16 in one save (+20 for barbs) and a -1 in the next.



That would be a feature rather than a bug.

Characters need to have weaknesses as well as strengths, at any level, in order that they may sometimes feel a bit threatened or vulnerable and need to rely on their fellow party members to cover for them and-or bail them out.


----------



## kunadam

I frankly does not like the idea of removing the short rest. I would remove the long one (8 hours).
Long rests based features are prone to invoke the 5 minute workday effect.
So why not have encounter based and "act" based features. There is a set of stuffs you know you can use every encounter, no matter if there are 2 minutes, hours or days between them. Act is like the siege at the beginning of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen.
Then there is less argument about if the party could sit for an hour or even 8. If it is one act, they you can sit as much as you want, but that does not recharge any of the act based abilities.


----------



## payn

kunadam said:


> I frankly does not like the idea of removing the short rest. I would remove the long one (8 hours).
> Long rests based features are prone to invoke the 5 minute workday effect.
> So why not have encounter based and "act" based features. There is a set of stuffs you know you can use every encounter, no matter if there are 2 minutes, hours or days between them. Act is like the siege at the beginning of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen.
> Then there is less argument about if the party could sit for an hour or even 8. If it is one act, they you can sit as much as you want, but that does not recharge any of the act based abilities.



Thats is how PF2 works (though they try really hard to hide it).


----------



## Lanefan

kunadam said:


> I frankly does not like the idea of removing the short rest. I would remove the long one (8 hours).
> Long rests based features are prone to invoke the 5 minute workday effect.
> So why not have encounter based and "act" based features. There is a set of stuffs you know you can use every encounter, no matter if there are 2 minutes, hours or days between them. Act is like the siege at the beginning of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen.
> Then there is less argument about if the party could sit for an hour or even 8. If it is one act, they you can sit as much as you want, but that does not recharge any of the act based abilities.



And how do you define when an act has begun and-or ended?

This has always been my issue with encounter-based design: in many cases sure, it's easy to tell when an encounter begins and ends.  But in many other cases it isn't.  Is sneaking into the castle all one encounter or it is broken down into sub-encounters e.g. climbing the wall, sneaking past the guards, picking the door to the treasury, etc.?  Is encounter defined universally or is it subjective to the character? (example: party is in a fight in one room [encounter A] meanwhile a PC sneaks away from that fight and finds trouble in another room - is that still encounter A or a separate encounter B; and how is it defined if-when the other PCs come to bail out the sneaker?)

Using in-game time as the delimiter gives everything a consistent foundation, assuming the DM keeps track of in-game time (and what DM doesn't?).  Forcing the party to take actual breaks (i.e. in the fiction, resting for a while) also acts as a clear delimiter.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> And how do you define when an act has begun and-or ended?



Encounters are more analogous to _scenes_. _Scenes_ are tied to a specific location and time. If you change either of these things, then you have a new scene. A series of connected scenes form a _sequence_. For example, the opening of Indiana Jones: Raids of the Lost Ark - i.e., Indiana Jones infiltrating and exfiltrating the ruins - is a series of connected _scenes_ that forms the opening _sequence_.


----------



## Stalker0

Lanefan said:


> That would be a feature rather than a bug.
> 
> Characters need to have weaknesses as well as strengths, at any level, in order that they may sometimes feel a bit threatened or vulnerable and need to rely on their fellow party members to cover for them and-or bail them out.



It means that for any set dc, if I choose spell X it’s nigh guaranteed to fail, but if I pick spell Y it’s nigh guaranteed to succeed. That’s probably a bit much.


----------



## kunadam

Lanefan said:


> And how do you define when an act has begun and-or ended?
> 
> This has always been my issue with encounter-based design: in many cases sure, it's easy to tell when an encounter begins and ends.  But in many other cases it isn't.  Is sneaking into the castle all one encounter or it is broken down into sub-encounters e.g. climbing the wall, sneaking past the guards, picking the door to the treasury, etc.?  Is encounter defined universally or is it subjective to the character? (example: party is in a fight in one room [encounter A] meanwhile a PC sneaks away from that fight and finds trouble in another room - is that still encounter A or a separate encounter B; and how is it defined if-when the other PCs come to bail out the sneaker?)



Alderac said it more elegantly.
The DM has the script, so the DM knows what is an encounter and what is an act (sequence). So the DM can design these knowing what the players have as resources to them. And the DM can also just tell the party, that today session will be one act, or part of one. And then players can prepare accordingly. I know that there is a lot of meta in this.
But stopping for exactly one hour after a fight, or looking for place to sleep after some major battles is also meta.


----------



## Lanefan

kunadam said:


> Alderac said it more elegantly.
> The DM has the script, so the DM knows what is an encounter and what is an act (sequence). So the DM can design these knowing what the players have as resources to them. And the DM can also just tell the party, that today session will be one act, or part of one. And then players can prepare accordingly. I know that there is a lot of meta in this.
> But stopping for exactly one hour after a fight, or looking for place to sleep after some major battles is also meta.



Stopping for exactly one hour is meta but stopping for long enough to catch one's breath, grab some water and a snack, do some minor patching-up and equipment repair, talk about what just happened and what comes next, and so forth all makes perfect sense in the fiction and thus isn't very meta.

Wanting to sack out for the night after getting beaten around also makes perfect in-fiction sense.  The five-minute workday, for all that people rail against it, also makes in-fiction sense as it's what cautious self-preserving characters would reasonably try to do - which is why you won't hear me complain about it.


----------



## kunadam

Lanefan said:


> Stopping for exactly one hour is meta but stopping for long enough to catch one's breath, grab some water and a snack, do some minor patching-up and equipment repair, talk about what just happened and what comes next, and so forth all makes perfect sense in the fiction and thus isn't very meta.
> 
> Wanting to sack out for the night after getting beaten around also makes perfect in-fiction sense.  The five-minute workday, for all that people rail against it, also makes in-fiction sense as it's what cautious self-preserving characters would reasonably try to do - which is why you won't hear me complain about it.



But what if that only takes 30 minutes? My problem is not with how the DM presents a short rest, but why stick with a predefined duration?
I have seen "gritty" house rules that extend short rest to 8 hours, and long rest to a week. But that just makes the story slower (the in-game story, not the game) as the party should at all cost avoid more than one combat a day, and preferably one a week.
And another option of self preservation is to flee. If the party cannot do it with the resources at hand, then retreat, give up.
For me as a DM it would make perfect sense to allow the party to have 2 combats in a day, if that makes sense, where they can play all-in and use their potential to full. But with the rules as written, they would need a long rest for 8 hours.


----------



## Lanefan

kunadam said:


> But what if that only takes 30 minutes? My problem is not with how the DM presents a short rest, but why stick with a predefined duration?
> I have seen "gritty" house rules that extend short rest to 8 hours, and long rest to a week. But that just makes the story slower (the in-game story, not the game) as the party should at all cost avoid more than one combat a day, and preferably one a week.



There's a pretty good argument to be made for making things take longer in-game in general so as to prevent a character going from 1st to 20th level in less than a year or two of game time, but that's a different issue.  Long-rest taking a week is overkill for ability reload but IMO some injuries should certainly hang around that long, forcing the party into a choice as to whether to risk waiting for everyoe to fully recover or to press on even though someone (or maybe several someones) are still hurting.


kunadam said:


> And another option of self preservation is to flee. If the party cannot do it with the resources at hand, then retreat, give up.



Indeed; and at both our tables this may well be the case.  But more and more I wonder if we are outliers in this; and whether retreat at most tables is simply not considered as an option.


kunadam said:


> For me as a DM it would make perfect sense to allow the party to have 2 combats in a day, if that makes sense, where they can play all-in and use their potential to full. But with the rules as written, they would need a long rest for 8 hours.



Then let 'em rest for 8 hours if the fictional elements allow for such.  That said, the way I do it the "long rest" also has to include what would usually be considered overnight sleep thus can only be done once a day, meaning often times they'll sack out from about noon one day to the morning of the next.  I'm fine with this for several reasons: either the rest-time goes by in a snap but the greater world has that chance to advance itself, or they get attacked by patrols or wandering monsters, or (best of all!) the characters get bored and do something rash.


----------



## Marandahir

Ruin Explorer said:


> I think the issue with Psionics is, you can't design it for people who "don't want Psionics".
> 
> The issue is that a lot of* people don't want just a half-caster with a sword (available already as an Artificer Battle Smith)*, they want something like the Swordmage of 4E, where the magic is fully integrated into their combat, where they're not just sometimes casting spells. Or at least the Magus of PF2 (not PF1).
> 
> Bladesinging fits well for an OD&D/AD&D-style Gish i.e. "Fighter/Mage", but less well for what a lot of people want.



See, in 4e, the traditional half-casters were fully integrated mesh between martial and magical (see Paladin, Seeker, Artificer, Bard, Assassin) or else made a choice and were completely unintegrated (Ranger). Later on in Essentials, they backtracked that and did mixed-power source classes (Cavalier, Scout, Hunter, Blackguard, Skald, Berserker, etc), and 5e returns to half-caster progressions like 3e had (though not for Bard, who got to stay fully magical). 

A lot of people when they say they want a fully integrated class in 5e, what they mean is that they want an Eldritch Knight with Bladesinger spell progression, which is broken for the balance of 5e. It worked in 2008 4e because everyone had comparable AEDU power progression. But in 5e, extra attack and fighting styles and martial weapon and heavy armour profs are balanced against higher level spell access (or at least are supposed to be). The system is built toward Gishes being half-casters, or else being full casters that aren't nearly as martial as people are asking for (Hexblade, Valour Bard, Swords Bard, Sorcadin, War/Life/Nature/Tempest/Trickery/Death/Order Cleric, etc). 

The only class that truly is comparable to Paladin and Ranger here is Artificer, and Swordmage fans are frustrated because (1) the very clearly swordmage-esque subclass is locked behind setting-creator hellcow's best-selling homebrew _Exploring Eberron_ and not technically canon; (2) the "canon" warrior Artificer subclasses are Sword and Board and Doggo, or else Iron Man (neither of which is teleporting magic aegis swordmage); (3) the base class isn't designed as a martialist by default and people don't realise the swordmage is hidden inside of the Artificer; (4) Artificers get cantrips by default instead of requiring a fighting style choice to access them. 

The Artificer very clearly has a class narrative that defines the gish in a way that doesn't step on the toes of Bladesinger, War Mage, or Eldritch Knight, and yet still is an Arcane Warrior (Magitech Warrior, specifically), but I'm willing to bet that if the Battlesmith and Forge Adept and Armourer were pulled out and made their own class, with cantrips as an opt-in Arcane Warrior fighting style instead of by default, people would be less bothered by the "lack of a true gish class".


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## CM

8 encounters per day.


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## Remathilis

CM said:


> 8 encounters per day.



Yeah, the encounter creation system is fine if you run multi room dungeons where you can squeeze in several weak monsters, traps and hazards before fighting a boss monster, but it doesn't work on almost every other style of play besides that.


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## ScuroNotte

Rangers and Sorcerers.


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