D&D 5E CHALLENGE: Change one thing about 5e

[Ath-kethin]

I've griped about this in a couple of threads here now, but you asked for it: the Wizard chassis stinks. All the wizards are only minor variations of the same thing, and all of them get the same spells. That's my gripe.

My solution is to limit specialists to spells from their speciality school only. Read magic and detect magic become class abilities of the Wizard.

A "mage" class would also be added, that can learn from any school, but whose spells top out at 6th level (basically a 3/4-caster progression, spread across a full class progression). You can be versatile the expense of power, or powerful at the expense of versatility. A diviner is a diviner, and isn't just a guy with a some foresight nuking everybody with a fireball (just like the necromancer).

 

[ammulder]

So, I won't answer this exactly as asked, but I will contribute this:

I'm am involved in a weekend-long RPG convention that is likely to use all 5e this year (for the first time). We are trying to stick close to the PHB rules, because it sort of defeats the purpose of adopting a well-known system to then tweak the heck out of it. But there are two things we're likely to change:

1. Drop all of the "uncommon" races, leaving Dwarf/Elf/Halfling/Human. In this case I think it's probably more of a historical thing with the event and the past race selection there -- and for those coming to the 5e setting for the first time, Half-Orcs and Tieflings in particular are a lot to swallow.

2. Arrange the pantheon such that there is one domain per deity, and one deity per domain. Thus making each deity recognizable and distinct, and making you a Cleric of "Deity" not a Cleric of "Domain." Also adding some sort of effect to non-Cleric PCs who declare themselves to be a Follower of "Deity" (as opposed to a general pantheist who respects or disrespects all gods more or less equally). At this point the Follower effect may potentially be gaining Inspiration when a cleric of your deity shows their power in some particularly noteworthy fashion, but we haven't finalized it yet.

The "problem" in that second case there is that the clerical domains, while logical for organizing game mechanics, make for sort of bland clerics. Likewise, having 57 overlapping deities makes for a pretty forgettable pantheon. If these deities are movers and shakers in the world, we'd like them to each be more striking in the game.

There are assorted minor changes too -- for instance we don't use money or encumbrance at the convention because we'd rather spend the time gaming, and we adjust the XP track so a PC who starts out on Saturday night mostly catches up to the rest of the characters after one session -- but those two above are the big ones.

 

[pdzoch]

I am probably alone on this, but I think the DMs guide is missing some crunch. I think this is true especially when compared to the Player's Handbook. The PHB has sooo many options, races, classes, spells, equipment, feats, etc. that it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the options. Oddly enough, there is still a thirst for more of such content.

On the other hand, the DM's guide provide a lot of broad guidance for world building. While the mechanics for running a game appear to be all in place, the mechanics for running a campaign in a fully functioning world is largely left up to the DM. The really allows for lots of creativity by the DM, but results in lots of creativity required of the DM. The campaign settings may fill some of this in, and many third party publications are filling this gap. It seems that the old editions the DM's guide had tons of charts, tables, and mechanics to support the mechanical functions of a campaign world.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

The inspiration and trait mechanic.

Advantaged can be gained in so many ways that many don't bother keeping track of their character traits.
and if they do it is a lot of work for a DM to keep constant track of 5 traits per player character.

Maybe put a bit more focus on alignment as a RP guide.
instead of having the trait table talk about how a character each alignment of that class might act.

 

[Flamestrike]

Mostly cosmetic changes:

I'd key Paladin smites off a separate X/short rest mechanic, where X is a number from 1-4 and it increases as the Paladin levels on par with the Warlocks spell slots. Damage would increase with paladin levels (between 2 and 5 d8).

Let Warlocks use 6th+ level arcanum slots to up-cast lower level pact magic spells known.

A weapon-master monk archetype.

A spell-less ranger as default, with three archetypes [hunter] being a stealthy scout type, [warden] getting casting, and [beast-master] grabbing the companion.

Make the martial adept feat grant 2 die per short rest.

A weapon specialization feat that adds +1 to hit and an extra +1d6 weapon damage. Prerequisite: Fighter 6, and you can retrain the weapon selected with a months downtime.

Scale low level moon druids (2-4th level) back a bit, and nerf the capstone down to kill off the onion druid effect.

Drastically scale back Simulacrum so it doesn't become a doubling of class resources for 1500gp.

Allow a [Dex] save to avoid Forcecage and being boxed in via a Wall of force.

The Shield spell applying only against the single attack unless up=cast with a 3rd level or higher slot.

Scrap the Halfing art. I hate it, and want to punch the fat little grinning fool in the mouth whenever I see it. Bring back Lydia from 3E in her black catsuit; the first edition that made halflings bad-asses and not all look like pie vendors.

Allow extra attack with the ready action.

Clarify perception v investigate.

Explicitly state the Hiding rules are written in plain English and the phrase' you cant hide from a creature that can see you' isn't meant to be some kind of parsed gamist nonsense of 'you can take the Hide action once you break LOS' and is just a statement reflecting common bloody sense.

Provide more guidance in the DMG about the 6-8 encounter/ 2 short rest adventuring day, how messing with it screws with class and encounter balance, and guidelines for enforcing it.
​

 

[77IM]

One thing? Only one?

OK, I overhaul the feat system.

Problem: Feats interact strangely with class features, and seem out-of-place in the game.

1. Many feats overlap, conceptually, with class features and skills. (E.g., who's more athletic: the dude with high Strength; the dude trained in Athletics; the dude with the Athlete feat; the Champion fighter with Remarkable Athlete ability; the rogue with a lousy Strength but Expertise in Athletics; etc.)

2. Many feats have non-obvious mechanical implications, relating to class choices: some feats make you better at things you can already do; others are poor choices UNLESS you have class features that can make good use of them; some feats are purely redundant with class features.

3. Using the feat system means a whole ton of new rules that you have to learn, and which the game designers need to design and balance.

Solution:

1. I like the notion of sacrificing ability score increases to gain feats. That's elegant and seems to work. We're keeping it.

2. Any special ability worth having in the game, becomes a class feature or subclass feature. Every single one. Alert? Combine this with the barbarian's Danger Sense, or make it a ranger class feature. Athlete? Combine this with the Champion fighter's Remarkable Athlete, or make it a rogue feature, maybe part of Thief subclass. Actor? Combine this with the Assassin's Infiltration Expert ability, or make it a Bard feature, possibly part of a new "entertainer" subclass. Charger? This feat is lame as , but it could be rolled into a Battlemaster maneuver, or maybe part of a Totem Warrior pick.

...I could go on, but you get the idea; move all the mechanical special bits into classes and subclasses.

3. The feat system allows you to sacrifice an ability score increase to gain a class feature from another class or subclass. Not just any old class feature; some are too powerful or class-defining to hand out to other characters without multiclassing (e.g. barbarian rage; wild shape; paladin smite). So there'd be a big list of which features you can take as a feat, and how they differ from the core class features.

For example, maybe you can take Channel Divinity: Turn Undead as a feat. You can use it once per short rest, it works just like the cleric ability. But you don't get any more uses as you level up, and without a cleric domain, you can only use your Channel Divinity to turn undead.

You can't take features you already have as feats. For example, if you are already a cleric and want to become even better at turning undead than other clerics, tough crap. There's no feat for that. Just choose the Light domain and blow them up with radiant damage. The reason for this rule is to prevent players from feeling like they NEED to take a feat in order to be the "best" at something. A better example might be two-weapon fighting: if we combine the Dual Wielder feat with the Two-Weapon fighting style, then that's all you need to be a two-weapon guy. You just write "Two-Weapon Fighting Style" on your character sheet, pick up a pair of weapons, and BAM you are as two-weapon-fighty as it gets. If players want higher-level options for two-weapon-fighting, well, we can bake that into the fighting style, or make it the purview of additional class features or subclass features. The point is that you do NOT have to give up an ability score increase on order to get them!

The trade-off now becomes: If your class is giving you all the special abilities you want, then use all your ASIs to increase your ability scores. If you want to branch out into things other classes are better at, you can give up ASIs to make your character more interesting or broader in scope. This should greatly reduce the trade-off between ASIs and stuff ability score increases are meant to do anyway; this should make feats slightly easier to balance because there's less direct comparison against an ASI.

For example, if you want to play a really awesome archer, you're probably going to pick a class like ranger or fighter. Under the current feat system, you then have to select periodically between increasing your Dex (which is +1 to attack, damage, AC, and a bunch of other good stuff) and Sharpshooter feat (which also contains some really good stuff, that may or may not be equivalent to +2 Dex). Under my proposal, Sharpshooter would be combined somehow with Archery fighting style (not exactly in their current forms; that would be overpowered; but in some fashion). So you'd pick that and be done with it. You wouldn't have to give up Dex to get these special archery abilities, unless you were playing some other class and wanted to dip into archery a little bit. Like, an elven wizard who is trying to do some "arcane archer" concept might find it worthwhile to sacrifice some ASIs for the archery special feature.

A few feats might still exist independent from any specific class in order to gain extra proficiencies. E.g. Skilled feat, Resilient feat, armor proficiency feats, and we'd do something more intelligent about Weapon Master (hell, I think proficiency in all simple and martial weapons is worth a feat, but that's just me).

Overall, my goal for the feat system is to allow optional flexibility in character creation. You're not straightjacketed into your class if you can snipe features from other classes. The class system is really fantastic for new players, or if you want to create a PC quickly. But it can feel very restrictive and make it hard to model certain characters from fiction (including D&D fiction!). My version of the feat system attempts to address this.

Other people view the feat system as a way to allow optional complexity in character-building; a place for the designers to stash cool abilities that don't belong on a class and which not everyone will want in their game. I disagree with this approach. I think subclasses are a better place for that sort of thing (for example, the classic contrast of Champion fighter versus Battlemaster fighter).

Furthermore, the design I propose doesn't preclude feats from heading in that direction later, if we change our minds. The feat system in the PHB would be as I described above -- nearly every feat would be an existing class feature from some other class. But a feat system in some later book could reverse that balance, and have nearly every feat in that source be original material. Like I said, I dislike this approach, which is why I'd relegate it to a supplement rather than the PHB. Still, I know some people like it, so this option would be for them.

 

[Zhern]

Inspiration - not fixable, remove it. I do allow it in my game because my players wanted to keep it but I make them work for it in exchange. I give it out for really good RP, interesting and unique tactics and plans, exceptional use of their skills, and for really bad puns. I don't think the game needs inspiration as there are enough ways to gain advantage or bonuses without having an extra 1d6+ to bail a PC out of something where luck wasn't with them.

Death saves - reduces the risk vs reward for the players and removes a lot of the drama and tension when they have three additional chances to not die, especially if they have done something stupid that got them knocked down to 0 hp in the first place. My players were okay with removing it and going with a house rule - if a PC drops to 0 and no one is able to heal/stabilize the PC, they die at the start of their next turn. Additionally, hits that take them below -15 hp are instant death (e.g. PC1 has 5 hp left, gets crit for 22 hp dropping to -17, dead).

I made sure to discuss my thoughts on these matters with my players before the campaign started. That was over a year ago. I still have the same set of core players who are fine with an edgier, grittier feel where they know they could die. They have said they get a rush out of it.

 

[Flamestrike]

Inspiration - not fixable, remove it. I do allow it in my game because my players wanted to keep it but I make them work for it in exchange. I give it out for really good RP, interesting and unique tactics and plans, exceptional use of their skills, and for really bad puns. I don't think the game needs inspiration as there are enough ways to gain advantage or bonuses without having an extra 1d6+ to bail a PC out of something where luck wasn't with them.

I let my players award it as well as myself.

Not sure what the +1d6 you refer to relates to?

Death saves - reduces the risk vs reward for the players and removes a lot of the drama and tension when they have three additional chances to not die, especially if they have done something stupid that got them knocked down to 0 hp in the first place. My players were okay with removing it and going with a house rule - if a PC drops to 0 and no one is able to heal/stabilize the PC, they die at the start of their next turn. Additionally, hits that take them below -15 hp are instant death (e.g. PC1 has 5 hp left, gets crit for 22 hp dropping to -17, dead).

I think I understand you here, but there is no such thing as negative HP in 5E.

You're effectively saying that 'you are killed outright if damage from an attack takes you to 0 HP, and more than 15 points of damage are left over after reducing you to zero'.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, I know this one isn't going to be popular.

Problem: Too much default lore in the books. The Monster Manual is particularly egregious here. Many monsters have been tied to other monsters for no particular reason and lore can be very specific at times.

Solution: Return to a 2e style. When discussing the monster, talk about its motivations, what it generally does in its day to day life, that sort of thing. Keep it very general and stop trying to thematically tie every single monster with some other monster. And FFS, no more "slave races". Sheesh.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Problem: It's been two years and several balance/performance issues of the system have been exposed as weaknesses, or flaws.

Solution: Fix them with a revised edition. Not 5.5, but maybe a 5.25. A "bring it into the shop for a check-up" edition. Nothing so drastic that you need to buy a new PHB, in fact a PDF could be put out of the basic changes/updates and all print-runs from that point on could be of the update.

I know this is not a popular solution, but I feel it's a necessary one for the longevity of the edition. Bring the core into focus, solidify it as a solid base instead of letting it fester and rot while new books override the material in it simply because they're better. The new ranger would be a perfect example of that.