Your Ideal Edition of D&D

[josha]

Fourth edition isn't young anymore, and it's definitely showing its age (with heaps of errata and way too many player options). I know we probably won't have a new edition really soon, but I suspect one will be announced in the next couple of years. I thought it would be a good idea if everyone told WotC exactly what they wanted from 5e and why.

This is what I think 5e should be like . . .

I think D&D 5e should focus on reducing prep-time and opening the game up to a wider audience. It would have many of the signature aspects of 4e (such as healing surges and class powers), but be less focused on tactical combat and optimization.

Character Creation . . . Character creation would have fewer steps and fewer options. Players would choose a race, a class, their ability scores, and a build. Builds would come with pre-selected equipment, class features, and powers. Builds wouldn't be abstract like "control wizard" and "war wizard", but be finite like "illusionist" and "evoker".

Adventuring . . . There would be no skills or feats, so adventuring would look a lot different. Characters would just add their level to skill checks, and if a particular check (such as picking a lock) would be easier for a particular race or class, it would say so in the adventure and the DM would give the player an advantage.

Combat . . . Combat would be the part of the game that would be changed the most. It would be grittier, quicker, and less tactical. Dungeon tiles and miniatures would be optional, and not included in the core rules. Picture AD&D combat, but more balanced, simple, and intuitive.

Overall, the game would be built to feel less like a string of miniatures battles and more like an interactive novel.​

 

[Mummolus]

So you want Essentials with no feats and mindless combat?

Personally, I'd like the opposite. Let people choose a feat at each level to lessen the impact of choosing less powerful ones, make multiclassing less restrictive (remove power swap feats, just let MC characters choose their powers from either list), and change the rules regarding skills to let them be used more often in combat scenarios.

 

[jbear]

My initial reaction reading your post was ... errrk! I wouldn't like your ideal edition very much at all. I think it's pretty tricky for a company to come up with a game system that fulfills everyones ideal needs/wants.

I do agree that there is an overdose of options available at character generation.

I don't think there needs to be a new edition. Just a tidy up. WotC seems to be in a process of doing just that, tidying up the classes one at a time and releasing them for free so everyone can have access to them.

Magic Item also need to be tidied. The rarity system needs to be properly sorted out. Commons need to be common. Uncommons need to be good. Rare needs to be special and flavourful and special ... oh ... and special.

Feats need to be properly catalogued and ordered in a way that it's easier to sift through the options, or even eliminate them from your character's options in the character builder. That way you can reduce the valid options for that particular character by yourself. Feats that have been rendered obselete should simply be removed.

And so on and so forth. I think it's a case of taking a really good start, tidying it up a bit,
and tinkering with a few areas where it has lagged. And honestly ... I think WotC is onto that. But that's just my opinion.

 

[the Jester]

I've actually been working on my own ideal D&D for several years. I've got a thread for it here; the first post now includes a current pdf of the system (occasional nsfw language in there).

Here's an intro/overview:

WHAT IS D&D JAZZ (and what's the point?)

D&D Jazz is my take on the ideal D&D system. Since different gamers prefer different things, this means that I designed it with my own tastes in mind. D&D Jazz has several major design goals that are heavily integrated into its design, including:

FAST AND FURIOUS- No combat should take an hour to play unless it is a major, major combat. This manifests through the ten second rule.
TACTICAL ENOUGH- PCs, especially fighters, should have more interesting options than in the early days of D&D. This manifests through fighting style and stance choices.
SCREW OPTION OVERLOAD- A pc should not to spend fifteen minutes looking over their options in combat. Likewise, when a character gains a level there should be one or two decisions to make: what class am I taking a level in?, followed possibly by a choice of style, stance, metamagic, etc. This manifests in the absence of feats, skill lists, large menus of powers, etc, and the advancement system.
EVERYONE STARTS AT FIRST LEVEL- The game is designed so that every new character can enter the game at 1st level without being automatically useless if the other pcs are significantly higher level. This manifests through heavily flattened math and slow hit point accumulation.
TIME PASSES- A pc should not advance from 1st to 30th level in a month, or even a single year of game time. Many elements of the system take significant time, including taking a level in a new base class. The 'xp for frivolously expending money' system is also designed to encourage downtime. Adventurers shouldn't adventure constantly (though there is nothing wrong with the occasional time pressure adventure!).
SANDBOX NOT STORY- A lot of the elements in D&D Jazz work best in a sandbox style campaign, where the pcs can choose the difficulty of their challenges by selecting where to adventure.
HIGH LETHALITY- Anyone that has played in my campaign knows that I am a rat bastard DM with a high pc mortality rate. D&D Jazz is designed to kill and maim pcs and npcs both. It would not be too crazy of an idea for a group to play multiple characters each in the Jazz environment.
DEVIL'S CHOICES- D&D Jazz is full of devil's choices. Do I spend that treasure on new armor or burn it for xp? Do we go after the tougher monsters with the bigger treasures or fight the easy things for coppers and silvers?

WHAT'S THE POINT? After all, between the various versions of D&D, retro-clones, Pathfinder, d20 games, etc, etc, there are already dozens of ways to tweak D&D.

Yes, but none of them do it the way it needs to be done to fully satisfy me. D&D Jazz has elements from every version of Dungeons & Dragons since the original three little booklets; each iteration of the game has some element that I adapted. This is simply what it took to make it the best game I could for my tastes.

It is my hope that anyone playing or running this system enjoys it a great deal. However, as it is designed for my style of play, if your preferences don't match mine, you may not enjoy it as much as I do. Hopefully the system is flexible enough that you can adjust it and make it your own. Thank you for taking a look, and good gaming!

 

[KahnyaGnorc]

My ideal edition would have two parts:

Standard: First, I thought about calling it "Basic," but that would imply a simplicity that I wasn't intending. This part would be the core of the edition, designed to be strictly balanced and can be used to run regular D&D campaigns (typical medieval fantasy). Most "Official Play" would use only this part.

Advanced/Optional: Not sure the correct term for this part, but it would include rules and options above and beyond the Standard part. While balance would be a factor, choice and options would be the bigger point. This would include out-of-the-box settings, Unearthed Arcana-style optional rules, and themes that wouldn't fit in the Standard ruleset. When creating their worlds and campaigns, DMs would have a wide variety of options to either include or not. "Official Play" may use some of these (especially when show-casing the out-of-the-box settings)

Standard would be more like 4E, while Advanced/Optional would add elements from previous editions (Savage Species, hard/impossible-to-truly-balance spells, and, of course, things like Gestahlt characters and alternate systems, i.e. wound system) or even allow for some off-the-wall elements.

 

[Mengu]

Overall, the game would be built to feel less like a string of miniatures battles and more like an interactive novel.

Aside from this, which should be a goal for every rpg, I disagree with everything.

Fourth edition is still evolving. It may be ever-evolving for all we know.

Character creation complexity is the least of my worries. Some can be simple, some can be complex, I don't care. It's ease of play that's important. The current card format, and 7-8 page characters are terrible. The data can be significantly condensed, the verboseness of the powers can be reduced by more standardized rules/icons. I play from a 1 page custom sheet. All the information I need is on there. I still have the CB sheet to reference if some obscure rule comes up, but such obscurities should be eliminated anyway.

I like feats. I just don't like their current condition. Too many concepts fighting for the same design space. And like it or not, combat oriented feats that shine above others win every time. The design spaces need to be separated for feats. I don't mind if we get 1 feat a level, so long as they are divided up in some way, so one level gives "static combat feat", next level gives "tactical combat feat", next level gives "utility feat" and they cycle through. Magic items have a similar issue. Some of the things magic items can do need to be separated out into "talents" or some other concept, so a controlling weapon or rushing cleats aren't a build requirement.

As for tactical combat, I like it. I just think a timer mechanic and DM empowerment to skip players who take too much time to decide what they are going to do would be nice to keep things moving. Snap decisions people, you have 6 seconds of actions, you don't have 2 minutes to think, you have 2 seconds to make up your mind and start resolving!

I think 4e is very flexible, and WotC just needs to keep an ear to the community, and play with those knobs and dials to tweak the system. Perhaps a heavier hand to attack feat and item issues may be necessary, but I'm not to a point where I would look for a 5e. A mass purge may not be a bad thing at some point, as they can cut out swaths of material and affect less than 10% of characters played out there.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Having virtually no options for character creation or combat is not my idea of fun. I do think 4E has to many options, expeically feats, what with all the racial and class ones. I would like to see that cleaned up.

Also having about three magic item slots would be cool. Handheld (weapon, implement), body, ring or the like would be great. Body could be armor, waist, boots, etc.

So simpler, of course, but not a total lack of options.

 

[josha]

The consensus seems to be that my ideal D&D edition has too few character options, but bare in mind that on top of choosing a race, a class, and a build, you can decide your ability scores, have some say in the magic items you receive, and choose all your character fluff.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Well, the one other major flaw with your ideal version of D&D is that with less options comes less books for WotC to produce to support it. At least, less books that they can guarantee to be bigger sellers (since player-wanted splatbooks always seem to do much better than DM-centered campaign material.)

And that's the biggest reason why a simpler D&D I think is less likely to be produced. And if dungeon tiles, boxed sets that come with tokens and poster maps, and the eventual return of minis all remain viable revenue streams... a D&D game that does not play like a miniature game is less likely to occur as well.

What some of us players might want is all well and good... but if we want just doesn't produce revenue, then we're unlikely to get it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, so it is basically 1e level choice.That wears thin.

I think it is OK to start out with limited choices and make the choices you do get a bit more significant and have less of them. I still want to have some. I think the ideal might be something like a couple core classes per 'source', but have just say 3 sources, the gods, the earth, and the elements. Put most other things into theme-like packages, so you can be an Earth Binder (warlock), Divine Binder (Invoker), or Elemental Binder (Sorcerer), etc. All your standard character concepts are now 'themes'. You don't really need general feats, but you can offer some skill advancement + a utility power type feats that give you access to your non-combat abilities. Race could help determine things like which ability scores go into which defenses and open up automatic access to certain 'cultures' which could give you access to racial type stuff.

You wouldn't need a LOT of powers. Your source/class would determine manifestations of powers, some could be limited to specific classes. Roles can and would exist but need not be specific, any element might potentially appeal to a character emphasizing damage, control, etc. with damage/other riders from whatever elements (culture would be a good one).

Get rid of stat bumps, remove all +level d20 entirely. You can run around in your dad's beat up plate armor all game from 1 to 30. You'll just get the equivalent of an enhancement bonus (+5 per 5 levels) to attacks and defenses. Now you actually can run different level PCs together. The big bad high level monsters will beat on the low level guys, but their ACs and whatnot don't go up that much either, they are just tougher, hit lower level people somewhat better, and do more damage.

Not only would there be a generally reduction in number of powers, but there would be some tactical streamlining. Reduce all the off-turn action stuff to one action per round. Attacks gain damage bonus as you level up, you don't have to constantly swap, though you may pick up an added trick now and again. A fighter can have a lowly 4-5 standard options, but can pick up some nice general physical skill feat bonuses that let them jump around and all. Wizards can use theirs to gain swaps so they can use different powers or change damage types, etc.

Most conditions will be encounter length, but they will be rare and significant. Solo monsters will simply be designed to be only slightly hampered by each condition or somesuch. Tactics will very definitely still exist, defenses can vary a bit more than they do now between the ranks, individual battles tend to resolve quickly with one or two tactics solidly employed making them fairly decisive. They can run 4-5 rounds, and with only a few choices players need not linger overly. Bigger more interesting set piece encounters will feel like a bit faster version of 4e combat with big thrills, cliffhangers, etc.

Items will needless to say lack enhancement bonus, they will instead basically be legendary type items and fun stuff. Magic items won't be necessary, but will be usable by both sides, so the DM can easily adjust monster levels or add some items to them. This can feel a LOT more like 1e but without the DM feeling compelled to deck out the players to any specific degree.