Dear Mike & Monte

Kzach said:

I just want D&D to improve my sex-life. Is that asking too much?

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It will give you a x1000 multiplier, but unfortunately 0x1000 is still 0

You are outta luck.

Morrus said:

Make the races actually matter. A +2 bonus at first level to an ability score simply doesn't matter later in the campaign. The dwarf may as well be an elf (except that he got some minor differences 8 levels ago).

Racial ability bonuses should be twice as large as they are. And, like classes, they should continue to gain stuff which reminds them they're a halfing not a goliath.

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I think the racial utility powers that we've seen in Heroes of Shadow and Heroes of the Feywild is a step in this direction. Which is why I say that 5E might as well take the next logical step and make race a theme. You want to give dwarves the potential to be good with axes and effective against giants? Give them a racial attack power that requires them to use an axe and gets +1[W] (more at higher levels) against giants or something. To prevent too many options for any single character, allow players the choice between that power and a more generic (but broadly useful) class attack power.

[MENTION=2804]Dragonblade[/MENTION], not much to comment on your reply as I like and agree with everything you wrote.

A quick thought about the Vancian system vs. powers--why not both? The wizard can be a Vancian spellcaster and the sorcerer a more power-based or spontaneous caster...or something like that.

Tallifer said:

I would prefer there to be no Fifth Edition. Since Fourth Edition can be entirely contained within the on-line Character Builder, Monster Builder and Compendium, I think that all that is needed is more errata and revisions. To mark Dungeons and Dragons' fortieth anniversary, the Wizards of the Coast should republish the first two Players' Handbooks with all the errata incorporated.

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I've been advocating a "4E Revised edition", with at least a re-formatted, errata-ed, improved PHB. But that's already half way to 5E.

Tallifer said:

Keep everything. Just gradually fix a few minor problems....

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All of your suggestions are really good ones, but why not fold them into a 5E that is still loosely compatible with 4E in a similar way that 2E was with 1E?

One way to do 5E would be to ask the question, "If we were to re-do 4E with all that we've learned in the last four and a half years, what would we do?" They'd fix a bunch of stuff, tighten things up--along the lines of your suggestions. But then they'd ask, "And what is 4E Revised missing that we want to put in or change?" Do they wait another few years to do that or do they kill two birds with one stone and publish a new edition?

I say go for the new edition, but make it relatively backwards-compatible with 4E or, better yet, with a simple core/modular options approach that would be able to create a 4E-esque experience or a 3.5E-esque experience, or even an "Old School" experience.

Zaukrie said:

2. I think you need a default setting. There needs to be a way for new people to enter the game, and w/o this, not sure how they really do it.

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I completely agree. Even if the Golarion products don't make as much profit as splats and adventures, it supports the rest of the line. Heck, this is the same with the print Dragon Magazine--it might have even lost money but it was a loss leader--something that you put out to drive other sales. I think a default, fully supported setting fulfills that purpose and is a major lack in 4E.

I love your other suggestions as well.

Morrus said:

There's no scene there. Nothing's happening. Just a sword larger than the wielder, and lots of spikes. No scene to fire the imagination.

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I fully agree. It is interesting to note that the Wayne Reynolds art for Paizo is more scene-oriented, at least the cover art. I think the good folks at Paizo "get it" in this regard.

Kzach said:

I just want D&D to improve my sex-life. Is that asking too much?

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Yeah, good luck with that.

This is largely an academic exercise, since I'm pretty dang happy with Pathfinder as my D&D edition of choice and unless a majority of 4e tropes are disowned by a WotC 5e, I probably won't give it more than a glance. But here's my thoughts on designing a potential 5e.



I would want them to include input from as wide an audience as possible, not just from the echo-chamber of DDI, organized play (God forbid "Lair Assault" feedback is a serious input), or CharOP, or what they personally like in their home games.

I would hope -expect actually- that if they decide not to include something from classic D&D that they don't bring it out and publically mock it in elitist and disrespectful podcasts. Additionally, if you change something flavor-wise, for God's sake actually know and understand the material, especially when you're paid professionally for this. Thirdly, don't change something just because you aren't familiar with it and the original source material "was really hard to find".

Support multiple playstyles with the game. Don't pick one playstyle, ramp it up to 11 and ignore everything else.

Don't make mini use mandatory.

Make the rules serve the flavor and not the other way around. Also, don't ram rules changes down the throat of existing settings in such a way as to necessitate blowing them up in order to accomodate everything from the vanilla core game. That's lazy design and disrespectful to the material.

Don't assume that the trademark is the only thing that matters. You could brand Ultimate Fantasy Heartbreaker as D&D, but if it only resembles D&D in name, you aren't fooling anyone and you'll notice when you fracture the market so fast it'll make your head spin and necessitate a rushed, vaguely backpeddling stealth Ultimate Fantasy Heartbreaker.5 edition release.

Setting Support - fire and forget settings failed utterly. Don't ever do it again if you want those settings to actually be worth something as IP for the future, otherwise in a decade nobody will be playing them and in 15 years nobody will remember them.

However I think that they're going to be stuck between having to go back towards a 3.x game to reclaim the market (thereaby alienating their 4e players) or sticking with 4e'isms heavily (and not gaining back any of the market share they lost with 4e, and probably only then having a smaller piece of the pie with less than universal 4e -> 5e adoption). It's not a good place to be.

My list of concepts to keep in 5e:

1. Powers For Everybody
Every character should have options beyond "I make a basic attack." You should not have to play a spellcaster to unleash a more powerful attack or trigger some beneficial effect when you need it.

2. The Encounter Power
There should be encounter powers to straddle the middle ground between vanilla at-will abilities and more significant daily powers.

3. Healing Surges
Healing surges ensure that healing powers generally keep pace with character hit points as they go up in level. As a reserve of endurance that usually goes beyond what the PCs can bring to bear in any single encounter, they also enable multiple encounters per day while retaining the possibility that PCs could be dropped in any encounter. Possibly, they could be reflavored and renamed as hit point restoring powers instead of healing surges, e.g. instead of having 12 healing surges, a paladin could have 12 daily uses of cure light wounds.

4. Skill Challenges
Skill challenges provide a structure to supplement the normal free-form approach for resolving non-combat challenges that are more complex and require more than a single skill check. Perhaps they could explicitly be made more flexible - for example, the DM could award multiple successes and even automatic successes for good ideas.

FireLance said:

My list of concepts to keep in 5e:

1. Powers For Everybody
Every character should have options beyond "I make a basic attack." You should not have to play a spellcaster to unleash a more powerful attack or trigger some beneficial effect when you need it.

2. The Encounter Power
There should be encounter powers to straddle the middle ground between vanilla at-will abilities and more significant daily powers.

3. Healing Surges
Healing surges ensure that healing powers generally keep pace with character hit points as they go up in level. As a reserve of endurance that usually goes beyond what the PCs can bring to bear in any single encounter, they also enable multiple encounters per day while retaining the possibility that PCs could be dropped in any encounter. Possibly, they could be reflavored and renamed as hit point restoring powers instead of healing surges, e.g. instead of having 12 healing surges, a paladin could have 12 daily uses of cure light wounds.

4. Skill Challenges
Skill challenges provide a structure to supplement the normal free-form approach for resolving non-combat challenges that are more complex and require more than a single skill check. Perhaps they could explicitly be made more flexible - for example, the DM could award multiple successes and even automatic successes for good ideas.

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It sounds very much like you want 5e to be an improved 4e....

Those are pretty much the exact things that folks that don't like 4e would want removed from the game. (And why we dropped the game to play Pathfinder, in many cases.)

If WotC does take this approach then they will pretty much be turning their backs on regaining the lost players.

Frankly, I think that it is also the approach that WotC should use - the folks that they lost have moved on, and Pathfinder is doing just fine. Make a game that is similar to 4e, but easier to enter at the ground level. Hell, do a 4e BECMI!

They should try for new players, but neither turn their back on 4e players nor try to regain the Pathfinder crue. The styles of 3.X and 4e are too dissimilar, trying to make both groups happy will only give the game designers ulcers.

Return to the OGL - get back the publishers that helped 3.X become popular for so long. Sorry WotC, you can't write adventures worth a bean, encourage others to do it. But if you try to make it so that is all that they can do for 5e then they will go elsewhere.

The Auld Grump

Dear Mike and Monte. Start over. Do not do 5e yet. Make a wargame. That is the seed for D&D, WoW, and WHFRP. I can't speak for the last one but the first two I would say have been successful.

You really don't need another RPG so soon. It would just be competing with it's earlier editions.

Or, don't listen to me, see if I care.

TheAuldGrump said:

It sounds very much like you want 5e to be an improved 4e....

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Well, certainly I would like 5e to build on what I see to be the strengths of 4e. I did have a list of changes which I think 5e should make to the 4e ruleset, earlier in the thread.

Those are pretty much the exact things that folks that don't like 4e would want removed from the game. (And why we dropped the game to play Pathfinder, in many cases.)

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Are they really that objectionable? If you ignore the actual terminology (which have probably acquired negative connotations to some gamers) it basically boils down to:

1. All characters should have options beyond making a basic attack.

2. There should be powers that characters cannot use all the time, but which can be regained after resting for a short while (less than a day).

3. Healing should scale with character hit points. Characters should have some ability to recover hit points so that they are able to take on more than one encounter a day, while preserving the threat that they could be dropped even in the first encounter of the day.

4. There should be a system which DMs could use to structure more complex non-combat challenges.

How do any of these (or how have any of these) negatively impacted your gaming experience?

Mercurius said:

Gamers tend to be an easily offended lot (just go over to rgp.net, for chrissakes). If someone is still offended about something a game designer said about a game...four years ago, then I don't know what to say. You can't design your PR around people that are that sensitive.

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First impressions are important. If someone is offended four years ago, what reason do they have to reevaluate their feelings towards 4E? I don't know about you, but if I have bad feelings towards a game, a restaurant, a TV show or whatever, I don't bother to reevaluate it unless someone else encourages me to do so. With 4E, I have all sorts of sunk costs in Pathfinder and a group that's discussing switching from 3.5 to Pathfinder. Neither I, nor anybody in my shoes, has any reason to reevaluate our first impressions of 4E no matter what they're based on.

FireLance said:

3. Healing should scale with character hit points. Characters should have some ability to recover hit points so that they are able to take on more than one encounter a day, while preserving the threat that they could be dropped even in the first encounter of the day.

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Please look at the thread "Why don't you like healing surges?" (or something like that). It went on for pages and pages and we probably don't need to repeat it here.