D&D 5E A better basics

[DEFCON 1]

If we're talking "basic" as in "simple"...

...then for me for the rules would include Fighter and Rogue. That's it.

If reading through a spell list and choosing something is too hard for a person, *and* you as a DM do not want to just create pre-genned characters where the spells have already been chosen for the character (and thus include 3 or 4 cantrips and a pair of 1st level spells)... then you can't include spellcasters. Because spellcasters require a player to read a bunch of spells and choose them. If that's too much to ask, then you just can't include them.

Under those restrictions for a starting game... my 'Basic Set' would include a couple things:

- Only the 1st and 2nd levels of the Fighter and the Rogue.
- Most of the Backgrounds in the PHB (because Backgrounds are not difficult to grok, and those are going to be what differentiate most PCs from each other because there aren't different classes to do it for you.)
- The Core Four races per the current Basic Rules

Then I'd produce an 'Expert Set', which include levels 3-10 of the Fighter and the Rogue, including all of the subclasses for both.

In addition, it would include the spell lists of the Cleric and Wizard from the current Basic Rules, and in both cases... should a player want to take the "Eldritch Knight" or "Arcane Trickster" subclass... they could choose from the entirety of the Cleric spell list or the Wizard spell list (and maybe throw in a pared-down Druid spell list if I thought they could handle it.)

A Fighter plus the Cleric spell list would have the subclass name of Paladin
A Fighter plus the Druid spell list would have the subclass name of Ranger
A Fighter plus the Wizard spell list would have the subclass name of Sorcerer

A Rogue plus the Cleric spell list would have the subclass name of Cleric
A Rogue plus the Druid spell list would have the subclass name of Druid
A Rogue plus the Wizard spell list would have the subclass name of Wizard

This way you give the players two levels to learn the game, and then by the time 3rd level comes around, they can decide for themselves whether they think they can handle taking on a couple cantrips and some 1st level spells.

That's probably what I'd do.

 

[Azzy]

Years ago, we introduced my friends' 8 and 9-year olds to 3.5 with success, and 5e is tons simpler, and less fiddly. So, I think the base rules are fine as-is. If anything, I think pre-gens may be helpful.

 

[Alexemplar]

The phenomena is a failure of the DM, not the rules. It's easier to teach non-casters than casters, but the rules themselves aren't that hard, especially with quick build options. If you use pre-built characters (such as for conventions), new players can easily figure out the wizard and cleric. Even with helping build new characters, it just takes time and some patience (it's hard for a new player to build ANY type of new character).

As for the one page character sheet, you'd just be forcing the phenomena to occur. With the exception of maybe the Warlock (and that's only a maybe), spellcasters are going to require more pages. Even some non-casters and half-casters are going to take up a lot of space because of character options (like monks and Ki powers). So unless you want to get rid of healers, this just isn't going to work without a major re-write of the classes.

No matter the source of the phenomena, it's persistent enough to have survived multiple attempts to eradicate it and has proven influential enough to have played a big part of 5e's design philosophy. Not surprised that people would request more of it as an alternative.

 

[FrogReaver]

So the basic rules we have are only really basic in that there's not much there, rather than being easy to play (I'm looking at you Wizard with your decision-paralysis inducing spells).

So what classes and races would you choose if you could make your own Basic handbook?

I have decision paralysis on character generation. It's been 2 weeks now and I still haven't decided on my character to play in an upcoming campaign. However, if you told me we are going to play tomorrow have a character I'd whip something up and play it. So it's mostly if I have the time I will use it. Perhaps character generation took so long because most of the players were new and everyone knew this and they knew they would get leeway in having plenty of extra time to make their character.

In the future if your goal is to show the game then have a list of pregen characters for them to pick from. I would then play one session with those characters and see if the group wanted to try their hands at character creation. I would explain character creation rules at end of session and then let them either come back with their own made character or come early to the next session for character creation help or use the pregen character from last session if they showed up without either.