D&D 5E What needs to be fixed in 5E?

[Fanaelialae]

This thread really proves that the problems of D&D cant be solved by a new edtion. Infact in order to fix it you need eaither A a time machine, or B a mind control ray.

See the problem is us. Me, Morris, all of us.

D&D grew way too big. In the good old days everyone house ruled...I dont belive you could find 5 groups that played RAW 1e. Most likely the same with 2e.

As we players took the game new ways, with house rules, interpreted rules, and just styles, we made D&D our own.

NOW with the more solid rules and the hardcoded ways of doing things everyone wants there rules, there inteprtations, and there styles...but no game could be everything we all want.


Do you want magic items to just be little things, or character defineing?
Do you want fighters and wizards to play the same or very diffrent?
Do you want HP and healing surges to be abstract or actual damage?
Should the system be about building and customizing?

We could have 20 page arguements about all of these and more... don't even think about math holes and alignment, and wish spells...

How can 5e be what we all want...it can;t

I've actually been giving this a lot of thought lately, and while I agree that you can never please all of the people all of the time, I think it might be possible to please most with a new edition.

Start with a very rules lite framework, and bolt optional rulesets to this. It would have to be done just right, but I do think it's feasible.

Is it worth the effort? Maybe, maybe not. Even though it might appeal to more players, it would essentially ensure that there is no "standardized ruleset". Every table would have their list of X, Y and Z optional rules that they use. On top of that, you'll certainly end up with some elements that interact in some inadverdent fashion with some combination of optional rules. Every edition has had those broken elements even without this level of design complexity!

I do think it could be done though. I'm just dubious whether it would be worth the drawbacks.

 

[KarinsDad]

OK, you show me how your character can use a teleport to be permanently out of reach of the enemy for the whole encounter, which is often trivial with flying. Heck, I can fly over a wall, you can't teleport through it. Of course there will be specific tactical situations where you'd rather be able to teleport, but as a general thing I'd clearly rather have a flying speed than a teleport, even if the teleport was at-will (though that would be mighty handy).

Except that the vast majority of fly powers in 4E don't give a fly speed and they especially don't do that for more than a round. Most flying in 4E is not continuous flying during an encounter. Exceptions don't prove a rule.

I fly to the top of the cliff. I run away.

I teleport to the top of the cliff. I run away.

For escaping, both are pretty darn similar (although teleport still doesn't provoke OAs).

When discussing the short term fly and teleport of 4E heroic level where it only lasts a single round, teleporting out of a grab or a hazard (which typically happens at least once per level) is gold compared to being able to fly around a corner where you cannot teleport to. That rarely happens where it actually makes a difference.

Teleporting into the perfect tactical spot can happen every single encounter. PCs in our games do it a lot. Flying there is haphazard at best. Try flying through a zone and tell me how much better it is. Try flying past an opponent and provoking an Opportunity Attack and tell me how much better it is. Avoiding OAs often mean a shift followed by a fly move action. Teleport moves away and still has an action remaining.

4E flight is typically not a continuous duration over an entire encounter. And yes, I have seen multiple occurrences of teleporting to a catwalk or other height where the PC was out of range of melee attacks for the entire encounter. No real advantage for fly there.

Now, the 16th level Wizard spell Fly is somewhat advantageous. Course, many foes have ranged attacks of some type, so it's not that advantageous. But, a slight tactical advantage of a few powers at Paragon doesn't negate the advantages of short term teleport over short term flight throughout all 30 levels of 4E.

When discussing long distance flight or teleport, again teleport wins. A flyer is seen while flying. Everyone knows where he's gone. A teleporter (e.g. portal or ritual) just vanishes. His destination is mostly unknown.

There is no way that Flight typically has more utility in 4E than Teleport. Yes, there are a few minor Fly advantage corner cases, but the majority of the time, Teleport wins hands down.

Seriously. If Aegis of Assault was flying instead of teleporting, would it really be as effective as the Swordmage flies through the battle and provokes?

Now, having an encounter long fly speed at will is nice if one can get it. Course, being able to teleport at will has advantages as well. But neither of these is the majority of PC flight or PC teleport in 4E.

 

[KarinsDad]

That's not really accurate, unless a scrape is your definition of serious damage. Loss of hit points in earlier editions didn't represent serious damage until the last few hp. The only real difference in this respect between 1e and 4e is that fatigue/luck recovers much more quickly in 4e.

Serious loss of hit points in earlier editions DID represent serious damage, regardless of the 1E quotes that get trotted out in these discussions. Minor loss of hit points in earlier editions did represent minor damage.

If a 15th level PC in earlier editions had 5 hit points remaining after a single encounter and had no magical way to heal, there was no way that PC could effectively act in yet another encounter. Hence, he was damaged. It wasn't that he was fatigued or had ran out of luck. Magic Missiles that hit him in that first encounter didn't make him unlucky.

In 4E, a PC losing 95% of his hit points in the first encounter of the day always has ways to recover most or all of those hit points by himself. Hence, it is not serious damage per se until all healing surges are used and hit points are low (shy of the two game mechanics of death saving throws and death by heavy hit points).

That quote doesn't negate the actual game results, nor does it negate the game mechanics or the plethora of terminology that indicates that a significant portion of hit point loss is damage: healing, damage, cures, etc. The entire game historically revolved around hit point loss being damage.

That quote was a rationalization for explaining gaining hit points at each level which could be confusing if a player thought that the 5 points of damage from a sword should kill someone. But virtually everyone who has ever played the game considered that their PC got damaged when s/he took hit point damage. They didn't think that their PC got unlucky or fatigued or no longer protected by the gods. That's not how the vast majority of players think about hit point "damage" and they never have.

I've never heard at a gaming table "Your PC is now unlucky". I've often heard "Your PC got hit". That 1E quote is a rational used to explain why healing surges is a good idea in 4E, but was not really used in earlier editions other than to explain gaining hit points as PCs gained levels.


I agree that taking hit point damage in D&D does represent a series of minor wounds, but they were still wounds in earlier editions. Now, they aren't quite wounds because we can all wish them away. woo hoo.

In my 3+ decades of gaming, no player has ever said 'Boy, I'm down to 5 hit points. I sure am unlucky now.".

 

[KidSnide]

Well, I hope that we can all agree on three things with respect to healing surges:

1) Healing Surges, in the way they are implemented in 4e (including, for example, the way they interact with non-magical healing and extended rests), have a narrative problem in the sense that they create a narrative problem for a some non-trivial portion of the potential player base who think the 4e system is worse than what came before.

2) Healing Surges, in the way they are implemented in 4e, solves some problems with healing (for example, healing proportionate to toughness, allowing new types of healers and removing reliance on wands of CLW), in the sense that some non-trivial portion of the potential player base thinks the 4e system is better than what came before.

3) Healing Surges has been discussed at considerable length in another thread.

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[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] , I like your idea about having weapon choice have a substantial impact on the choice of effective powers. I think that's fantastic because (a) weapon choice has a major impact on character feel for martial classes and I like that it has an impact on power choice and (b) it lets PCs look at an enemy and get a sense of what that enemy can do based on its weapons.

I'm less sold when it comes to implements. I know that WotC tries to do this with the PH1 wizard, but I just don't buy the idea that, fictionally, "wand wizards" are somehow a different category from "staff wizards". There's a bit of an attitude difference I guess, but I'm not sure why those two different wizards are really casting different spells. I think spell schools are a much better differentiator. I understand how a Necromancer is different from an Elementalist who is different from an Illusionist.

The other change I think is important is that it's important for humanoid monsters to use many of the same powers that PCs get. There's nothing wrong with DMs writing something strange-and-different, but the standard bandit warrior, the common orc berzerker and a normal hobgoblin warcaster all need to pick at least some of their abilities from the regular Martial and Arcane power lists. Part of the idea of the power lists is that they have a in-world existence. Yes, all powers use a standardized mechanical abstraction language, but that doesn't mean that all powers should be unique. There should be common spells in the world and monsters should use them too.

Notably, the list of PC powers should be available to be selected in the monster builder. Personally, I think it would be nice if you could take a random monster and add a "class" - a simplified iconic class ability and a random selection of powers.

-KS

 

[KarinsDad]

2) Healing Surges, in the way they are implemented in 4e, solves some problems with healing (for example, healing proportionate to toughness, allowing new types of healers and removing reliance on wands of CLW), in the sense that some non-trivial portion of the potential player base thinks the 4e system is better than what came before.

I agree that many people think it is better, but I don't agree that it solved any real problems. I do agree that the perceived problems (healing proportionate to toughness being the main one which has a ton of easy solutions and having been house ruled forever) could have easily been solved many other ways that did not rely on hit points now being perceived as stun instead of body, and helping to give 4E the stigma of being video game-like. The Pathfinder solution to the more limited healing of earlier editions being one reason of several which led a large number of people to move to that as a game system.

The only two problems with healing I have with 4E is that PCs self heal with a short rest, and that healing isn't a magical repair anymore. It shouldn't even be called healing if it isn't healing anymore. They should call them luck points instead of hit points now because they are no longer a measurement of damage until a PC gets below 0. Positive luck points. Negative hit points.


Btw, I do think that healing surges is something that needs addressing in 5E. I think there should be two systems of healing in 5E and that each group picks what they prefer. A 4E system where hit points can be regained by anyone quickly, and an optional system for grittier campaigns where magic is required to heal actual damage. This is a fairly big contention point between old style gamers and new style gamers and if designed properly, WotC could allow both sides to co-exist and use the same game system. There are several ways that this could be done so that it is more seamless than it appears on the surface, but that's a design issue.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except that the vast majority of fly powers in 4E don't give a fly speed and they especially don't do that for more than a round. Most flying in 4E is not continuous flying during an encounter. Exceptions don't prove a rule.

I fly to the top of the cliff. I run away.

I teleport to the top of the cliff. I run away.

For escaping, both are pretty darn similar (although teleport still doesn't provoke OAs).

When discussing the short term fly and teleport of 4E heroic level where it only lasts a single round, teleporting out of a grab or a hazard (which typically happens at least once per level) is gold compared to being able to fly around a corner where you cannot teleport to. That rarely happens where it actually makes a difference.

Teleporting into the perfect tactical spot can happen every single encounter. PCs in our games do it a lot. Flying there is haphazard at best. Try flying through a zone and tell me how much better it is. Try flying past an opponent and provoking an Opportunity Attack and tell me how much better it is. Avoiding OAs often mean a shift followed by a fly move action. Teleport moves away and still has an action remaining.

4E flight is typically not a continuous duration over an entire encounter. And yes, I have seen multiple occurrences of teleporting to a catwalk or other height where the PC was out of range of melee attacks for the entire encounter. No real advantage for fly there.

Now, the 16th level Wizard spell Fly is somewhat advantageous. Course, many foes have ranged attacks of some type, so it's not that advantageous. But, a slight tactical advantage of a few powers at Paragon doesn't negate the advantages of short term teleport over short term flight throughout all 30 levels of 4E.

When discussing long distance flight or teleport, again teleport wins. A flyer is seen while flying. Everyone knows where he's gone. A teleporter (e.g. portal or ritual) just vanishes. His destination is mostly unknown.

There is no way that Flight typically has more utility in 4E than Teleport. Yes, there are a few minor Fly advantage corner cases, but the majority of the time, Teleport wins hands down.

Seriously. If Aegis of Assault was flying instead of teleporting, would it really be as effective as the Swordmage flies through the battle and provokes?

Now, having an encounter long fly speed at will is nice if one can get it. Course, being able to teleport at will has advantages as well. But neither of these is the majority of PC flight or PC teleport in 4E.

As I said, teleport is generally better than short term flight, but that's not what you get at paragon, you get full on flight with a speed. Look it up in the Compendium, the vast majority of paragon flight is not the 'fly for the rest of the round' type. Heck, there are even some heroic tier 'gain a fly speed' effects, they just generally have serious disadvantages (IE Mist Form, which lets you fly but not attack, similarly the powers Minor Polymorph and Flying Wings). I'd also note that flying mounts are available starting at level 5. An Elixir of Flying will give you a fly speed at level 11 for the whole encounter. Obviously this isn't even close to a full list, there are quite a lot of ways to get non-limited flying by paragon tier.

Sure, some enemies may have missile weapons, so what? Many do not. Flying is never a disadvantage, and if it is you can just land. Full-on flight is GOOD. Teleport OTOH is like 1 round 'you must land' type flight plus 'don't provoke', of which there are far too many instances in heroic tier to even list, several of which can be repeated at-will. I also don't know of anything that states teleport isn't visible. This is a common assumption, but not stated anywhere in the rules, and I've seen it played both ways. Certainly since your destination has to be in LoS generally it doesn't do anything for you stealth-wise that any other form of movement doesn't by RAW.

Both are useful, but full-on flying is encounter-breaking and has significant strategic implications as well. There is a very slight disadvantage that you might provoke an OA (though interestingly many ways you can temporarily fly negate OAs).

I guess the point of this all is like with hit points, it is all very much a matter of opinion. I get that teleport was once-upon-a-time a super high level godlike power that totally broke the game, but 4e tactical teleport just isn't. You could argue that it could be a paragon effect, sure, but in game terms it is reasonably balanced at heroic tier. Honestly it isn't a big deal one way or another. Tactical teleport could go away and I'd not particularly miss it, as it is certainly a 4e-ism, but I don't see that it needs to.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Serious loss of hit points in earlier editions DID represent serious damage, regardless of the 1E quotes that get trotted out in these discussions. Minor loss of hit points in earlier editions did represent minor damage.

If a 15th level PC in earlier editions had 5 hit points remaining after a single encounter and had no magical way to heal, there was no way that PC could effectively act in yet another encounter. Hence, he was damaged. It wasn't that he was fatigued or had ran out of luck. Magic Missiles that hit him in that first encounter didn't make him unlucky.

In 4E, a PC losing 95% of his hit points in the first encounter of the day always has ways to recover most or all of those hit points by himself. Hence, it is not serious damage per se until all healing surges are used and hit points are low (shy of the two game mechanics of death saving throws and death by heavy hit points).

That quote doesn't negate the actual game results, nor does it negate the game mechanics or the plethora of terminology that indicates that a significant portion of hit point loss is damage: healing, damage, cures, etc. The entire game historically revolved around hit point loss being damage.

That quote was a rationalization for explaining gaining hit points at each level which could be confusing if a player thought that the 5 points of damage from a sword should kill someone. But virtually everyone who has ever played the game considered that their PC got damaged when s/he took hit point damage. They didn't think that their PC got unlucky or fatigued or no longer protected by the gods. That's not how the vast majority of players think about hit point "damage" and they never have.

I've never heard at a gaming table "Your PC is now unlucky". I've often heard "Your PC got hit". That 1E quote is a rational used to explain why healing surges is a good idea in 4E, but was not really used in earlier editions other than to explain gaining hit points as PCs gained levels.


I agree that taking hit point damage in D&D does represent a series of minor wounds, but they were still wounds in earlier editions. Now, they aren't quite wounds because we can all wish them away. woo hoo.

In my 3+ decades of gaming, no player has ever said 'Boy, I'm down to 5 hit points. I sure am unlucky now.".

Sure, a 15th level character in 1e with 5 hp remaining is injured. If you'll look at the text you quoted, I said, "Loss of hit points in earlier editions didn't represent serious damage until the last few hp". However, that same fighter, at 50 hp, was scratched up and metaphysically fatigued (not seriously injured).

The equivalent in 4e, to the 5 hp character, is a character who's bloodied and out of surges. Without magical healing (Cure X Wounds) this character is not likely to survive another encounter (just as with the 1e character). The difference being, the 4e character had deeper reserves to draw upon. He faltered and surged back several times that day, possibly without the aid of magical healing. The 1e character's decline is much more linear (he has no internal reserves). Since we're talking about the range within which a character's hp primarily represent metaphysical factors, I don't think that one is "more right than the other".

In 2e, if a character took damage, we narrated it as a scratch or bruise. A character who was low on hp was said to be fatigued or exhausted; perhaps covered in little cuts. Characters above 0 hp never suffered broken bones, were never disemboweled, and in general didn't suffered hampering injuries. To us, any other approach would have been silly as the consequences weren't reflected in the rules.

In 4e, it isn't that damage doesn't inflict injuries because you can "wish them away". 4e has a bloodied value; bloodied means that you've received some injury, minor though it may be. 4e characters are heroic though, in the John McClane sense. The hero of the Die Hard movies receives numerous cuts, scrapes and bruises throughout the movies. Sometimes they even slow him down for a short time. However, moments later, he's back to fighting form. Given adrenaline and even just sheer mental fortitude it isn't unrealistic, even from a real world perspective. I say this as someone who's studied martial arts for 10 years.

All I'm saying is, that while you may have a preference on the matter, neither system is perfect. 4e's characters bounce back too fast to be realistic, but 1e characters arguably bounce back too slowly. Why does it take a high level fighter 2 months of natural healing to recuperate fully from a few nicks and bruises on a metaphysical level? That seems more like the rate of recovery you'd expect to see from the infirm, not a fighter with an 18 constitution!

The reason I prefer the 4e method is that at least its non-realism supports not forcing characters to sit around for months if they're injured and without a priest. Let's face it; D&D has never been hyper-realistic about damage; neither the 1e nor 4e characters are in any way penalized by their "serious injuries". They aren't limping around. They aren't denied their shield bonus because they're too busy keeping their guts from spilling out. As long as they stay above 0 hp, both are effectively 100%. IMO, a "seriously injured" character should not be able to effectively compete in the Olympics, but D&D characters have always been capable of this because they aren't penalized at low hp.

That isn't to say that I'm an advocate of death spirals or hyper-realistic wound systems. I'm not (although I think there's space to accommodate an optional system to allow it in "gritty" games).

D&D has traditionally been a game of heroic fantasy and the ruleset should reflect that (and a hit point system does this effectively). We can debate the particulars all we like, but I think it's best to keep in mind that no hp system (to my knowledge) has ever done a better than passable job at modeling reality. Your opinion is that the model from earlier editions is somewhat better; my opinion is that the 4e hp system works better. I hope that we can both agree that neither is perfect.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

[MENTION=54710]KidSnide[/MENTION] I don't know that I think there's anything wrong with different implements allowing different effects. I'm just thinking of it as a way to avoid needing to spell out for every power what school gets to use it, etc. For one thing if the spells are 'arcane' (at least many of them) they won't have a school designator. I think schools are cool, but implements are also a pretty useful way to distinguish casters, and are cross-class too. I think either idea could be worked with, and they aren't mutually exclusive either.

[MENTION=2011]KarinsDad[/MENTION] We will just never agree. Your experience with hit points is just obviously very different from what I've experienced. Obviously, as Gygax said, a character with even 20 hit points clearly isn't able to absorb multiples of the physical damage of a level 1 PC with single-digit hit points. He can stand and take 3 longbow arrows point-blank and not even be inconvenienced. That isn't physical damage, at least not in any world that faintly resembles ours.

And when you 'heal' yourself by expending HS after a fight, you certainly aren't just mysteriously healing wounds. You're just as much down as you were before, you've just had a chance to shore up your ability to take some more damage without going down instantly. Your reserves are still depleted just as much as before. Only surgeless healing is giving you something back in any real sense.

In terms of needing two systems of healing in 5e? No! What a nightmare. You'll never game balance that, you'll just make a mess. I mean I don't begrudge anyone their favorite way of having things work, but with my game designer hat on I just don't believe there is any way you can make it work with such divergent core mechanics. Healing is deeply embedded both outright mechanically and in terms of basic assumptions about how the game works that I don't think you can cleanly fit things together both ways. You'd have to provide a large number of other alternate rules and it would get messy fast. One or the other system would simply end up orphaned very quickly.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Losing hitpoints is best represented by minor slashes ("It´s only a flesh wound").
Returning HP during a fight is best represented by a surge of adrenaline or a spell that numbs the pain... (aka spending a healing surge)

I however do believe there is some design space for healing during fights. And actually I really would make "real" healing magic not "surgeless healing", but instead allow it to replenish healing surges.
And maybe you could have longer lasting wounds cost a healing surge that does not automatically replenish over night...

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Some people will not like this idea at all, but I'm interested in investigating an hp system where, after you've had a chance to rest and catch your breath, *all* your hp's return to you after a fight. No surges or anything of the sort. I feel this system is the best for representing hps as a combination of "minor" physical hurts (although not for things as bad as sucking chest wounds and the like ) and loss of intangibles like "luck," fatigue, fighting spirit, etc.

If you drop below 0 hps, you get "wounds" that, if not treated, prevent you from regaining max hitpoints. Perhaps with a "light wound" after a fight you'd only be able to regain up to 75% of your hps, while with a "serious wound" you'd only be able to regain up to 25% hp, or 50% with a persistent condition, or something else.

During battle, characters might be able to use Second Wind once, but otherwise they'll need other abilities/spells/powers to heal up. They'll have to wait until they've had a chance to rest in order to recover all their hitpoints.

Yes, this system is inspired from DA2. No, I don't care if that makes it videogamey.