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5E's "Missed Opportunities?"
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<blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 7511263" data-attributes="member: 12377"><p>Ah, my favorite mini-game! Your wish list is pretty different than mine. I don't disagree with anything you've written, just most of it would not be quite as high up on my TODO list.</p><p></p><p>To prevent considering major rewrites, I try to think about potential 6E changes in terms of their <em>compatibility impact</em>, that is, how big of a pain it will be to convert from 5E to 6E. I'd like 6E to be so compatible with 5E that you can continue to use adventures and setting supplements written for 5E without any conversion at all.</p><p></p><p>1) My main beef with 5E is the action economy. Bonus actions and Extra Attack are both very confusing; I've seen too many players, both new AND old, screw this up. There are a bunch of ways they could simplify this, while also encouraging players to describe actions more naturally and less game-mechanically. <em>Compatibility Impact:</em> Moderate. The "bonus action" language is found throughout the game, so changing this language would mean a conversion process for any rule that used bonus actions (and possibly Extra Attack). Fortunately, very few adventures or setting books really mention bonus actions, except in a few places (like custom magic items or NPC stat blocks).</p><p></p><p>2) I'd rebalance a few things, especially feats. I'd call the current spell balance "OK" -- like it's not terrible, but there are some weird protrusions that could be sanded down. Likewise for classes/subclasses -- there are a few that are noticeably better or worse, but most are pretty even. Feats, OTOH, are mostly either overpowered or underpowered. But the concept is fine, so it's just rebalancing the specifics that is needed. <em>Compatibility Impact:</em> Minimal. As long as the names stay the same, the rules can change. For example, if an enemy wizard in an adventure has <em>phantasmal killer</em> prepared, and then 6E rewrites <em>phantasmal killer</em> to actually be useful, the adventure doesn't need to be modified in any way to reflect that change.</p><p> </p><p>3) I've never played or run a campaign in which Inspiration wasn't house-ruled, either eventually or up-front. Because Inspiration is a meta-mechanic, I'd actually like it if the core rules included 3-4 variants you could pick from. (Right now there are 2 variants: Use Inspiration, or don't.) <em>Compatibility Impact:</em> Minimal. Because Inspiration is currently optional, it's hardly mentioned outside of the PHB and DMG.</p><p></p><p>4) Magic Item Power Ratings. I understand why this wasn't in 5E, to try to move away from the "magic items are required" mentality of 4E, but I feel the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. The "rarity" system doesn't work; rarity doesn't correlate super well to utility, and it's too coarse-grained. I feel like: building encounters would be hard without monster CRs, and by the same token, handing out treasure is hard without Magic Item Power Ratings. Plus, you could use such ratings to judge whether all the PCs were roughly balanced in terms of items. <em>Compatibility Impact:</em> Moderate, because items found in adventures and supplements would need to receive ratings, or go through a conversion process to get a rating.</p><p></p><p>5) Rebalancing abilities, particularly, making Intelligence less of a dump stat. For most PCs, Intelligence is ONLY used for Knowledge checks, and I find the frequency of Knowledge checks varies wildly by group and DM. It's kind of a playstyle thing. For example, I find myself rarely calling for Knowledge checks, just because I'd rather just tell the PCs what they know. Because of such playstyle differences, I don't really have a great suggestion for how to make Intelligence more generally relevant. <em>Compatibility Impact:</em> Unsure, because I don't have a solution proposed, but I suspect you could do this with a pure rules change, and not need to change any NPC stats or anything, which would make the impact Minimal.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="77IM, post: 7511263, member: 12377"] Ah, my favorite mini-game! Your wish list is pretty different than mine. I don't disagree with anything you've written, just most of it would not be quite as high up on my TODO list. To prevent considering major rewrites, I try to think about potential 6E changes in terms of their [I]compatibility impact[/I], that is, how big of a pain it will be to convert from 5E to 6E. I'd like 6E to be so compatible with 5E that you can continue to use adventures and setting supplements written for 5E without any conversion at all. 1) My main beef with 5E is the action economy. Bonus actions and Extra Attack are both very confusing; I've seen too many players, both new AND old, screw this up. There are a bunch of ways they could simplify this, while also encouraging players to describe actions more naturally and less game-mechanically. [I]Compatibility Impact:[/I] Moderate. The "bonus action" language is found throughout the game, so changing this language would mean a conversion process for any rule that used bonus actions (and possibly Extra Attack). Fortunately, very few adventures or setting books really mention bonus actions, except in a few places (like custom magic items or NPC stat blocks). 2) I'd rebalance a few things, especially feats. I'd call the current spell balance "OK" -- like it's not terrible, but there are some weird protrusions that could be sanded down. Likewise for classes/subclasses -- there are a few that are noticeably better or worse, but most are pretty even. Feats, OTOH, are mostly either overpowered or underpowered. But the concept is fine, so it's just rebalancing the specifics that is needed. [I]Compatibility Impact:[/I] Minimal. As long as the names stay the same, the rules can change. For example, if an enemy wizard in an adventure has [I]phantasmal killer[/I] prepared, and then 6E rewrites [I]phantasmal killer[/I] to actually be useful, the adventure doesn't need to be modified in any way to reflect that change. 3) I've never played or run a campaign in which Inspiration wasn't house-ruled, either eventually or up-front. Because Inspiration is a meta-mechanic, I'd actually like it if the core rules included 3-4 variants you could pick from. (Right now there are 2 variants: Use Inspiration, or don't.) [I]Compatibility Impact:[/I] Minimal. Because Inspiration is currently optional, it's hardly mentioned outside of the PHB and DMG. 4) Magic Item Power Ratings. I understand why this wasn't in 5E, to try to move away from the "magic items are required" mentality of 4E, but I feel the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. The "rarity" system doesn't work; rarity doesn't correlate super well to utility, and it's too coarse-grained. I feel like: building encounters would be hard without monster CRs, and by the same token, handing out treasure is hard without Magic Item Power Ratings. Plus, you could use such ratings to judge whether all the PCs were roughly balanced in terms of items. [I]Compatibility Impact:[/I] Moderate, because items found in adventures and supplements would need to receive ratings, or go through a conversion process to get a rating. 5) Rebalancing abilities, particularly, making Intelligence less of a dump stat. For most PCs, Intelligence is ONLY used for Knowledge checks, and I find the frequency of Knowledge checks varies wildly by group and DM. It's kind of a playstyle thing. For example, I find myself rarely calling for Knowledge checks, just because I'd rather just tell the PCs what they know. Because of such playstyle differences, I don't really have a great suggestion for how to make Intelligence more generally relevant. [I]Compatibility Impact:[/I] Unsure, because I don't have a solution proposed, but I suspect you could do this with a pure rules change, and not need to change any NPC stats or anything, which would make the impact Minimal. [/QUOTE]
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