Parmandur
Book-Friend
No accident that Harry Potter made the "Inspirational Reading" list for the 5E PHB.
D&D (2024) Toward a Theory of 6th Edition
Parmandur
Book-Friend
Definitely no way that a theoretical 6E isn't built around popular survey consensus, given how that has worked out for 5E.
I'll lay odds right now that 6E will be backwards compatible with 5E, more like the iteration of B/X to BECMI to Rules Cyclopedia than any sort of revroll.
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Tony Vargas
Legend
Impossible is contextual. Physically impossible by the standards of modern bio-mechanics & physics is very different from impossible in a mythic or fantasy context, even before supernatural agency comes into it. It's impossible for a RL world high-jump record holder to clear a castle wall. It wasn't impossible for heroes of legend, because the people telling their tall tales weren't being fact-checked by Guinness, it was just a way of illustrating that the hero could really jump.
I don't want to, no. Impossible for an unaided human IRL is fine & fairly easily established, it's just not relevant to whether something is supernatural in an imaginary fantasy world - it might draw a relatively hypothetical line between the mundane, RL-realistic and the superhuman, fantasy-heroic, though.
Let alone relevant to a fantasy RPG system where some things are explicitly called out as magical and others not.
That's how I'm seeing you argue against the distinction between super-human and super-natural that I'm pointing out. You're insisting that because something accomplishes the impossible (twilight) that there is no distinction between the superhuman (day) and the supernatural (night).
Nod. I'm sure it's possible to run for a group like that in 5e - anything's possible, really, with the amount of latitude the DM has - I just don't consider it too well supported. 5e's fast-combat tuning tends to make offense-heavy parties just roll over many encounters without apparent challenge - the 'too easy' complaint we hear so often - ratchet it up enough to create a sense of challenge and it can tilt over the edge into a death-spiral and even TPK. The support/buff/heal (traditional Cleric) role acts as a sort of net to catch the party when that happens, so lacking it is an issue.
The DM can always be the net, though.
I think we're closer to being in agreement than I thought: yes, the basic design is not, in itself, an impediment to adding and modding enough to make it work for a low-/no- magic party.
Similarly, the basic design is no impediment to just adding Templates onto 5e. But, the existing classes are, since they're not so generic nor so consistent in their design as the idea might need to work well....
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I feel like the heart of 5e is very solid...I've greatly enjoyed the system over all.
Now there are plenty of tweaks I would make (class adjustments, spell tweaks, etc). But that's a house rules or a supplemental book kind of fix.
If I were to try and look at fundamentals that I would change, there are only a few.
1) Rebalancing of stats. While any class will generally have prime stats and weaker stats, I feel the gap is too high.
Int is the biggest offender, incredibly useless for a large portion of builds. Many have argued that dex is too strong.
2) Another look at healing. Even with all of the dm options on healing, there is still a lot of precieved dissatisfaction. Whack a mole, invincible high level characters are a few noted concerns. I think this needs a relook.
3) a complete relook at rests and how things are regained.
This is one of those "revolutions" I consider worthy of a new edition. The daily rest mechanic is archaic and has a number of issues.
But assuming it is too popular to remove...I would like an embedded variant that helps a dm balance classes with few encounters per day as the norm.
Many dms like myself do not want to throw 5-6 encounters at a party a day in order to properly challenge them. I want 2 maybe 3. I would love some rules to provide adjustments to monsters and classss to better fit this model...which I believe is decently common at house tables. I want my fighters and wizards to feel competitive with each other, even under a 2 encounter a day model
Now there are plenty of tweaks I would make (class adjustments, spell tweaks, etc). But that's a house rules or a supplemental book kind of fix.
If I were to try and look at fundamentals that I would change, there are only a few.
1) Rebalancing of stats. While any class will generally have prime stats and weaker stats, I feel the gap is too high.
Int is the biggest offender, incredibly useless for a large portion of builds. Many have argued that dex is too strong.
2) Another look at healing. Even with all of the dm options on healing, there is still a lot of precieved dissatisfaction. Whack a mole, invincible high level characters are a few noted concerns. I think this needs a relook.
3) a complete relook at rests and how things are regained.
This is one of those "revolutions" I consider worthy of a new edition. The daily rest mechanic is archaic and has a number of issues.
But assuming it is too popular to remove...I would like an embedded variant that helps a dm balance classes with few encounters per day as the norm.
Many dms like myself do not want to throw 5-6 encounters at a party a day in order to properly challenge them. I want 2 maybe 3. I would love some rules to provide adjustments to monsters and classss to better fit this model...which I believe is decently common at house tables. I want my fighters and wizards to feel competitive with each other, even under a 2 encounter a day model
Tony Vargas
Legend
If classes were to have a prime stat - but backgrounds also each favor a stat, and Templates, likewise, that could spread things out a bit. Or if every class had abilities that keyed off two or three stats, in total, rather than primarily off one. For instance, if wizards targeted their attack spells with DEX, learned/prepped spells with INT, set their spell DCs with CHA, and gained bonus slots from CON, that'd spread it out quite a bit.
My concern is that any attempt to 'fix' whack-a-mole would most likely address the wrong issue and make it worse. The bottom line, IMHO, is that in-combat healing is too low-impact or inefficient, and thus players feel the need to maximize it by leveraging the heal-from-0 rule - that is, you wait until an enemy 'overkills' and ally then prop him up with a few hps so it'll happen again, in that way you keep the ally fighting while exending relatively little healing to counter relatively large quantities of damage. Being able to heal an ally up to full once or twice a combat would be more dramatic than being able to prop him up with a few hps over and over.
Short rest stands out as problematic, to me. Some things, like CS dice, that are currently short-rest would make more sense as literal encounter resources - things that have no use/meaning out of combat, and that 'recharge,' in essence, when you roll initiative. And, the fixed resting times unduly dictate campaign pacing. Some adventures might work better if a short rest could be taken as little more than a breather in the corridor before kicking in a door - others it wouldn't make sense get the benefit of a short rest for days on end.
Fewer and less imbalanced daily resources among the classes would be the obvious way to go, without just eliminating the whole rest-recharge thing, entirely.
Alexemplar
First Post
That's a "narrative" powers/features. Similar to how in 1e/2e, the Fighting Man/Fighter was assumed to get followers and a keep. Similar to how every Warlock receives a Book of Shadows/Pact Weapon/Improved familiar at 3rd level. Not at a point where it would be most logical given their their relationship with their patron, but at level 3. The Rogue deals extra damage when they catch the enemy unawares or flank them to a degree no other class can.
These characters are not functioning in accordance with the law that every Fighter gets followers. that every Warlock gets a pact gift, or Rogues are unique in getting a bonus to damage from an ambush regardless of how much sense it does or doesn't make. The They represent any number of events, tropes, including fate, luck, and plot contrivances that would result in the desired effect.
Basically, it's a mechanic that can actually impact part of the game's narrative. They haven't been especially common in D&D as compared to many other RPGs, but they've pretty much always been there in one form or another.
TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
Paging 2009...your forum war discussion points have just arrived.
You’re an entire decade out. These conversations were happening on this very forum in 1999.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Hit points & saving throws are another example, and, as Morrus points out, the debates those spawned go way back (though with the reverse of the emphasis you typically get, today), not just to the early days of these forums and to UseNet and BBSs and Out on a Limb, but, apparently, to people just harassing EGG about it enough that he wrote a whole treatise on the topic of hps in the 1e DMG.
Oofta
Legend
I was going to respond ... but it's just not worth it. Other than to say I have no clue what point you are trying to make. Getting followers or being really good at stabbing somebody are not supernatural.
