D&D 5E Your one hope for D&D?

Satyrn said:

I . . . I just pictured a grimdark Xena reboot.

Do. Not. Want.

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The tone of the reboot is immaterial. Lucy Lawless is getting a little old for the role, and nobody else is Xena.

MonkeezOnFire said:

A little. There are several different viable builds to choose from but at the end of the day there are only two ways to kill things: attacking with your weapon or casting spells.

Different weapons have different move sets that will influence how you use them. For instance using a shield and one handed weapon lets you play pretty safe by turtling, big two handed weapons excel at clearing crowds, long weapons let you keep your distance, etc.

Spells let you be safer by keeping your distance but they are a limited resource. For this reason even spell casters typically spec into being able to use a decent weapon. Spells can also be used to buff yourself, heal or for other utility effects like silencing your movements.

I called out Dark Souls because I prefer this slower and more deliberate style of combat over something like Bayonetta. I feel like I have to think more about my actions with a slower pace instead of just frantically trying to input the buttons for a good combo (but I'm really bad at Platinum style action games so I think it's more that in those games I don't have time to think).

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This. I love Dark Souls. But it doesn't really have a class system: in D&D terms, you are pretty much always some variation on "fighter", at best dipping into magic or archery. Your bread and butter is going to be a melee weapon of some sort; variety comes from all the stuff about weapons that D&D abstracts away, like reach and arc and recovery time.

TheCosmicKid said:

The tone of the reboot is immaterial. Lucy Lawless is getting a little old for the role, and nobody else is Xena.

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Maybe Xena, as Conan did in his forties, could lead a revolution and rule a kingdom?* Then the reboot could be all politics and so forth, like a low-rent Game of Thrones.
















* like the dictionary definition of a warlord, coincidentally.

TheCosmicKid said:

Batman once shot people with guns.

...oh wait.

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What's cool about Batman is that the Character has become big enough that I can simultaneously enjoy silly takes on the Character like the Sprang comics, the '66 tv show, or the batman Brave and the bold cartoon, and dark takes on the character like Frank Miller's DKR, the Dark Knight Trilogy, or the Golden Age gun toting batman. Though I do believe there is a perfect middle ground in Batman: The Animated series.

I love that D&D can give me the same level of variety. Serious D&D movies would be awesome and silly D&D TV shows/cartoons would also be awesome and they wouldn't have to be mutually exclusive.

Now, my one hope for D&D? Being able to get my friends on to a regular gaming schedule would be a wish come true.

Tony Vargas said:

Maybe Xena, as Conan did in his forties, could lead a revolution and rule a kingdom?* Then the reboot could be all politics and so forth, like a low-rent Game of Thrones.

* like the dictionary definition of a warlord, coincidentally.

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She was a warlord. A proper warlord. That's even the term they used. Then she met Hercules, reformed, and set off on her adventures. So maybe the D&D warlord should be a background?

doctorbadwolf said:

Instead, the fact that such items were available, and had market standard prices, trade value, standards of quality, etc, is an enormous part of defining the setting, for us. For my group, if you can't go to a craftsman or merchant and commission or buy a wand or magic sword, and if an ambush by highwaymen will almost certainly never involve defending against such items, we are playing something other than Eberron.

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I guess I can see that. For me (and I speak for just myself here, as my players don't have a lot of historical context), what you've just described is not so much "Eberron" but more "4th Edition"; and specifically the aspects of 4e I didn't care much for.

Granted, it also describes 3.5 Eberron perfectly well. But it doesn't describe 5e very well at all. And my charge was not to change 5e to fit Eberron, but rather determine how to change Eberron to fit 5e. How do I preserve the 5e sense of rarity and wonderment to magical items in a setting like Eberron? My answer is that the magic economy is based primarily around consumer products and luxury goods and services. Magical weapons, armor, wands of fireball; these would have negative connotations to the Last War (and primarily to the Mourning, as most were produced in Cyre and popular theory blames the Mourning on that production). Codify that hatred and disgust into the Treaty of Thronehold, and now it's against the law to sell that +2 flameburst sword or staff of lightning, and walking down the street bearing such things would mark one as a trouble-maker or instigator. Of course, governments can make use of such outcasts as well. It's also worth mentioning that the Treaty doesn't apply to Stormreach, which would likely still have a pretty thriving magical economy.

This, I think, would be the most radical change if I were creating an Eberron setting for 5th Edition (rather than simply updating it); probably even moreso than whatever I'd end up doing with the Dragonmarks.

If there was a new setting, I would be interested in something like the Malazan or Obsidian & Blood books where The Apocalypse is coming. Not the apocalypse is over (Dark Sun, PoL), the apocalypse wasn't so bad (Eberron), which apocalypse is this again? (FR), or you are too unimportant to influence the apocalypse (Planescape), but a more high risk vs. high rewards set up.

A video game that lets me play by the d&d rules. Not a shared world. Not inspired by the rules, but the rules. That works without needing years of patches.

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Had another thought, if you will all forgive me for so many posts.

What about more "peripherals", or gaming aids, or whatever you want to call them?

For instance, my buddy who got me into 4e had monster cards. Index card sized cards with the full monster stat block and a little fluff. I think the reverse side may have had flavor and "tactics" info on it, but I don't recall for sure.

Also, we had cards with rules on them, like condition cards, and cards with "frequently used but easy to forget the details" info/rules.

What about cards with hazards, traps, traveling obstacles, puzzles, NPCs, etc? Cards for treasure and consumables? I live the idea of sticking cards for what is in a chest in a cigar box on the table, and they can't open it until they open the chest.

Now, to bring it all together, these would all be things that come with adventures, perhaps with little sleeves in the back of the book for storing them, or in packs, AND you could use DnD Beyond to make your own, format them how you want, and print them out.

Also, dndb would be able to let you format your custom play maps built with the encounter builder functions, and print those.

TheCosmicKid said:

The tone of the reboot is immaterial. Lucy Lawless is getting a little old for the role...

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Both of these statements are false.