D&D 5E What direction should 5th edition take?

[invokethehojo]

I do prefer extensions that build on what is there in ways that fit.... the cinematic wound rules I mentioned... expanding usage of minions so that lower player count games are better supported. So my thinking is only ever put in a coffee machine if you can find a reasonable and elegant way to make it fit, this does not preclude a branching set of system options... nor does it imply system doesn't matter, to the contrary those people not feeling supported will explain that too, just that excessive focus can make for a narrower audience and in the end a lower profit margin.. So long as you can expand your target without doing disservice to what you have already done it becomes a win win, situation.

I agree. Yes a system should follow it's strengths, but not putting in an easy way of adding some grit or similar just seems narrow minded. McDonald's is a burger joint, but they have chicken sandwhiches and salads. I think that 5e could improve upon 4e by adding a few more options in style, and I don't think it would ruin the system by them adding some of that. Now if they went crazy with that idea and did too much of it that could mess things up, just like McDonald's found out when it tried to serve pizza some years ago.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hmmmm. I think DracoSuave had something there back a few pages.

It seems to me that 4e has taken a number of steps to improve DM narrative control, but there could be some more things done. For example many people have discussed various forms of "hero points" at various times. 4e has APs, HS, dailies, and magic item power use limits, but there are some legitimate complaints with all of these resource systems. They aren't tied in very well with the concept of narrative control for one thing. Folding them all into a single hero point system might actually work pretty well.

Consider, those who have problems because they structure their stories in such a way that there are only 1 or 2 encounters in a day would find it much nicer if dailies became "really awesome" powers which required a point to use. Want to use a healing spell or second wind? Another point. Take an extra action? Another point. Other uses could exist as well. They could be awarded in a variety of ways, possibly determined more by the needs of the particular story than anything else. Different groups could do it on a different basis. As long as the proper number are available to the players so they can do special things at a rate that works for a given game it really has not a lot of mechanical impact. At the same time it would enhance the customizability of the game without a lot of alternate/optional rules.

I think I like the concept of skill powers as well. Coupling that with a kind of profession system might work pretty well. Characters can be assigned certain groups of primary skills based on their character concept and advance them, gaining access to various powers. Picking a power source could give you a range of types of these powers to pick from. DP Domain based stuff could work basically the same way. It also reduces the rather bloated number of specific powers which have to exist now with the "every class has to have its own list of 800 powers". It doesn't have to be really classless, players can still select from various core features they use. Synergy is fine too as long as the assumed power level of PCs is such that they need a certain degree of that synergy to be effective. Feats can be then be used to add in a bit more synergy where someone wants an oddball combination that doesn't work too well on its own. That really isn't very different from what feats do now (some at least).

Its ALMOST a different system, but in essence there's nothing there that requires a true rewrite of the 4e core mechanics. It would just change a lot of the supporting stuff and thus it certainly isn't going to come from WotC in the foreseeable future, but it would still be pretty much the same game. Kind of like the difference between 1e and 2e.

 

[Turtlejay]

I don't understand these sort of threads. A lot of these suggestions could be adopted as new or alternative rules within 4e or would be better of in the Paizo forums under Pathfinder 2.

I agree 100%. This is kind of the point I was making earlier. The next edition will be so wholly different than 4e, as different as 4e is to it's predecessor.

We would do better to talk in generalities about what sorts of features we would like, and stay away from specifics, as most of those can be implemented within the current system.

I also highly doubt that WotC is lurking and archiving discussions like these for guidance on it's future product development.

Jay

 

[Garthanos]

It seems to me that 4e has taken a number of steps to improve DM narrative control, but there could be some more things done. For example many people have discussed various forms of "hero points" at various times. 4e has APs, HS, dailies, and magic item power use limits, but there are some legitimate complaints with all of these resource systems. They aren't tied in very well with the concept of narrative control for one thing. Folding them all into a single hero point system might actually work pretty well.

I recall on a different thread that when somebody wanted hero points... I was thinking merging action points and healing surges functionality add in a few more pieces of functionality then bluring the eyeballs figure its all the luck of heros (Hero Points.... ummm HP ;-)).. hero points could be well hit points too. I am attacked by a 10 intensity attack I can spend 10 hero points to minimize it completely or 5 and accept a lesser wound inducing a form of temporary impairment associated with the type and style of the attack. When my hero points run out I am at the mercy of chance.

 

[aurance]

5th edition should have the following standard races:

Hadozee, Giff, Giant Space Hamster, Neogi, Tinker Gnome, and Scro.

Oh, and it should also be set in space.

Just sayin'.

 

[Tai]

The hero points you are describing sound very similar to the vitality points used in Star Wars d20, combined with the condition monitor used in Star Wars Saga, at least when used as hitpoints. I would be very cautious about having any spendable resource awarded through narrative play being used as both hitpoints and special attack powers. Players have a very strong tendency to be afraid to use expendable resources, especially if they're also your hitpoints. They will either horde them zealously, or use them to throw super attacks at the enemy every round if the powers are good enough - it'll be very hard to find a balance in between. The advantage of splitting the combat resources into different abilities is that people will use all of them, rather than just building their character to do one of them and using that one all the time... And the fact that they are expendable but renew in a known manner means players will use them when they think they need to.

 

[invokethehojo]

I like the direction Adbul is heading, a unified system of managing all that stuff would give more customizability but still retain the basics of the system, and IMO I don't think 5e will be totally different from 4e, I think it will change more core stuff (depart from the inherited mechanics), but I think they will stick with the at-will, encounter, daily mechanic, which is thier baby entirely.

And no, turtlejay, they may not be archiving what we say, but I can't see how listening to us would be bad for them, so one can always hope... or maybe hope one of the designers will here us and split off and do some of these things for us like Monte Cook did with unearthed arcana.

 

[Garthanos]

The hero points you are describing sound very similar to the vitality points used in Star Wars d20, combined with the condition monitor used in Star Wars Saga, at least when used as hitpoints. I would be very cautious about having any spendable resource awarded through narrative play being used as both hitpoints and special attack powers. Players have a very strong tendency to be afraid to use expendable resources, especially if they're also your hitpoints. They will either horde them zealously, or use them to throw super attacks at the enemy every round if the powers are good enough - it'll be very hard to find a balance in between. The advantage of splitting the combat resources into different abilities is that people will use all of them, rather than just building their character to do one of them and using that one all the time... And the fact that they are expendable but renew in a known manner means players will use them when they think they need to.

Over splitting a resource is a complexity adder... I havent played Star Wars....

Hero Points mainly need to have a self policing use and recovery dynamic (Fate Points self police very well ) -- For instance one possible way is if you make your story controlled by a lot of "luck" -- the villains end up having more "luck" - villain points. Using maximum saving limits between periods are one way of dealing with hoarding (kind of like temp hit points which vanish after a rest).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. I think it would be perfectly workable. The current system where you have basically 4 conserved resources, AP, HS, Daily, Item uses, seems to me a bit unwieldy. Item uses are fairly minor and most players don't seem to get too worried about their AP use since they get more fairly regularly, but once you burn the majority of a party's dailies or drain several of the PCs down low on HS the day is over. I think the renewal criteria for these is a bit too stringent. Merging these categories simplifies player decision making a bit and also allows for more interesting trade offs. A player is still going to balance slugging it out with encounter powers vs burning some resources to end the encounter quicker (hoping that the trade of HP/HS vs daily uses is favorable in the current rules) but now they aren't regretting making that specific decision later on when they see what the next encounter looks like. Instead they get to make their decisions more appropriate because they are always made on the basis of relevant information.

Obviously the potency of dailies, the hit point number recovered using a hero point, etc have to be balanced by the designers to make each option roughly equal. I don't think that's impossible to do. There is still complexity in terms of requiring healing powers to access healing, etc either.

I never played either of the Star Wars systems so I can't really comment on whatever issues there were with how it worked there, but I can only assume that the various uses of the points weren't well enough balanced. Some options must have simply been better than others?

In terms of recovery what I'm looking for is superior narrative control of pacing so that games can proceed at different game world time rates and not run into problems. As it stands now my own practices on HS recovery are more tied to narrative events than strict time. A "chapter" usually involves beginning with resource recovery and the action taking place during the chapter draws on that pool. It allows a much more literary style of pacing where a sequence of encounters are not slavishly forced into an artificial "adventuring day". Player choices can still determine points where the party can recover, but it avoids "we sleep in the dungeon" moments. The players know that they are going to have to manage their resources through accomplishing some sort of recognizable goal. Using hero points and allowing some ongoing recovery just helps deal with problems like "oops, you had some bad luck and got beat up, too bad I guess you'll have to all run away and rest now. Sorry the boss monster got away while you healed up from those 4 lucky crits I got."

I think it also allows for a variable degree of gritiness. In fact the gritiness doesn't really have much mechanical impact anymore. A gritier game simply spreads things out more in game time, so that nasty sword wound you got takes 3 weeks to heal? No problem because the narrative pacing of the adventure is simply scaled with that in mind. More tension can exist too since you have hero points which you may be able to gain as you go along it can make more sense to press on while your low on resources. You'll just need to take bolder actions, that is up the stakes of your encounters with the enemy, to pick up some more.

Admittedly some players will tend to feel overly entitled and may try to ham things up for points, but the DM knows all, its not like you can fool him into believing you took a big risk when you didn't. Maybe a system like that leans pretty heavily on the DM to do a good job, but then again 4e is already leaning pretty heavily on DMs in several ways. Published adventures are going to point out where points should be awarded, so it probably wouldn't make pre-made adventures any harder to run.

In any case I'm always looking for ways to reduce system complexity and usually eliminating several different mechanics in favor of one does that.

It would be interesting to know what the debate on this point was in the 4e design process. They obviously must have had some sort of mechanism like this on the table at one point or another.

 

[eriktheguy]

This is sort of on the topic of 4e and 5e, but I'm interested to know what ENworld thinks about it.

Do you think that monsters need ability scores anymore?

My reasoning is that the rules in the DMG for making monsters pretty much outline their statistics as they need be. If you want to make a monster more more agile, more buff, more intellectual, you can do this with combat stats instead of ability scores. I don't see a need for anyone but player characters to have ability scores, and therefore I don't see a need for any ability scores to start at 10.