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

[KarinsDad]

Keeping the skill list small - and the skills fairly broad - is a really good idea. Not just for D&D, but for games in general. Skill proliferation is a bane of good game design, it creates incompetence - each additional skill is another thing your character /can't do/, unless he invests in the skill.

Maybe '5e' or just 'better D&D' really needs 3 siloes, rather than tiers. You get combat abilities that support your combat role in one 'silo' - that's all your basic attack bonuses and defenses, hps/surges, and attack powers and so forth. The, you get a separate customizeable pool of non-combat options - skills, utility powers, rituals, etc - that support, perhaps, a formal non-combat role. Finally, you get a separate set of customizeable 'background' choices that let you customize your character's non-adventuring aptitudes, knacks, traits and quirks. The key is that you can't swap from one 'silo' to another. No sacrificing combat effectiveness for non-combat, or overall effectiveness for a detailed background.

And then every PC is by definition "good at their combat role", "good at their non-combat role", and "good at their other non-combat role".

You want to keep the skill system simple, but increase the complexity of the PC's out of combat options.

Even two silos, combat and non-combat, are probably one too many for DMs who want the players to decide where to spend their resources or for players who want to be combat monsters and non-combat lambs, or vice versa, or somewhere in between. Two silos is doable, but three starts getting ridiculous because the third silo will expand into quirk powers, just like skills are evolving into skill powers. It'll become the design equivalent of analysis paralysis as it takes 3 or more hours to go through all of the stuff needed to create a character sheet. Both the second and third silos could be combined without losing good game design features.

Just like skills are just part of a single silo system in 4E (it's something that the player decides when creating the PC), the "aptitudes/quirks" could just become a part of the second silo in a two silo system. You get your quirks and you are done. No special additional benefits.


Personally, I think that quirks and traits and such out of other game systems are a crutch and used just like backgrounds are in 4E. Not to give the PC flavor, but to find some minor game mechanics advantage. I think quirks and traits and such are just a bunch of white noise that makes the entire game system more and more complex, and PCs harder to build as the player then reads through pages of quirks. Aptitudes and quirks and traits and such should have zero mechanical advantages and should be a small paragraph explaining how to create a good PC background. IMO.

Let's stop adding so much side trash to the game system. This is no different than adding a bunch of unnecessary skills to the skill system. Crafting? PC background. Playing the flute? PC background. Walks with a limp? PC background. The game could have a simple rule for using background abilities and having 1000 sentences in the PHB on specific background skills and traits could be dropped.

These types of things keep getting added to game systems by people who need to have a rule for every little detailed and insignificant thing. That's what we have DMs for. Have rules for combat encounters and skill challenges. Let people just roleplay for background stuff and let the DM decide what is appropriate and works for his campaign world with just a few guidelines or a simple single rule or such.


As a side note, I think that skill utility powers was one of the biggest mistakes that WotC made for 4E. As mentioned earlier in the thread by someone that backgrounds came along and messed with the math of the skill system, skill utility powers messes with the math of the skill system.

I don't think that the players should be able to pull a +5 to this skill out of their butts encounter/challenge in and encounter/challenge out. It's ok to fail in skill challenges because the dice are cold. There doesn't need to be an old style "action point" system to get bonuses to skill rolls.

I view skill utility powers as minor super powers. When taking a math test, does it really make sense that someone can come up next to you and encourage you to "do better"? Either you know how to solve the problems, or you don't. Yes, encouragement can help in some cases, but 4E went way overboard with it.


And this is part of the problem with 4E conditions. Every other power and his brother has these little side bonuses or penalties to all kinds of game mechanics. It's not just marking a foe. It's a +2 bonus here, a +Cha bonus there, on and on and on. Thousands and thousands of powers have game mechanics modifiers somewhere within them.

I think one of the best ways to improve 5E is to increase the number of ways that PCs can modify themselves, and decrease the number of ways that PCs can modify NPCs or other PCs. A Fighter giving a +1 bonus to AC to all of his allies next to him should be rare, not common. A Fighter giving a +1 bonus to himself should be more common.

If the concept of "adding bonuses and penalties to other characters" were decreased and "adding bonuses to myself" were increased, then the bookkeeping would be a lot less intrusive. Each player would keep track of his own PC more and the entire table would have to keep track of all of the PCs and NPCs less.


The conditions tracking nightmare flows directly out of the concept that 3/4ths of the powers have to do something beyond just damage and/or movement, and that concept flows directly out of the entire design model of powers. When you give many many multiple powers to every PC, there is a tendency to give every PC a bunch of "cool ways" to affect the combat beyond their own PC.

I don't think the conditions problem can even be addressed until the game designers understand the root cause of it. The root cause is because every PC is a minor super hero with multiple super powers that can affect others and most of those minor super powers only last for a small varying amount of time, so the players are constantly having to do bookkeeping in some way on when those effects end.

The main solutions are to decrease the number of different powers, to decrease how often those remaining powers can affect other creatures, and when powers can affect other creatures, increase the duration and decrease the effectiveness of those effects.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Keeping the skill list small - and the skills fairly broad - is a really good idea. Not just for D&D, but for games in general. Skill proliferation is a bane of good game design, it creates incompetence - each additional skill is another thing your character /can't do/, unless he invests in the skill.

Maybe '5e' or just 'better D&D' really needs 3 siloes, rather than tiers. You get combat abilities that support your combat role in one 'silo' - that's all your basic attack bonuses and defenses, hps/surges, and attack powers and so forth. The, you get a separate customizeable pool of non-combat options - skills, utility powers, rituals, etc - that support, perhaps, a formal non-combat role. Finally, you get a separate set of customizeable 'background' choices that let you customize your character's non-adventuring aptitudes, knacks, traits and quirks. The key is that you can't swap from one 'silo' to another. No sacrificing combat effectiveness for non-combat, or overall effectiveness for a detailed background.

Hmmmmmmm. I obviously agree with the 'short skill list' thing. We've pretty clearly established the superiority of that approach. I also agree that having a 'silo' for the obscure sorts of marginally relevant to adventuring kinds of background elements of the character makes perfect sense, if for no other reason than to make sure people pay attention to that dimension of the game.

OTOH I'm kind of skeptical about the whole aspect of 'combat' vs 'non-combat'. I disagree that there is a real distinction. I think OFTEN you can say that a SITUATION may be one or the other. I'm just not entirely sold on the concept that it is a good idea for a game to build a wall between the two. It is rather artificial. 4e has been beat on a whole lot for things like making it impossible to use a ritual in a combat situation. Likewise attack powers aren't really applicable to other situations. I think the distinction needs to be made irrelevant, not enforced even more. Obviously some things will mostly not be relevant in a straight hack-em-up swordfight and other things won't find a lot of utility in a diplomatic negotiation, but the game should consist more of a continuum between those extremes vs trying to break it up into 2 totally different realms that can't meet and where you have almost virtually 2 separate character sheets.

 

[Matt James]

I would designed trained skills that open up access to additional skills. Keep it simple and only add complexity where it is wanted.

 

[KarinsDad]

Hmmmmmmm. I obviously agree with the 'short skill list' thing. We've pretty clearly established the superiority of that approach. I also agree that having a 'silo' for the obscure sorts of marginally relevant to adventuring kinds of background elements of the character makes perfect sense, if for no other reason than to make sure people pay attention to that dimension of the game.

OTOH I'm kind of skeptical about the whole aspect of 'combat' vs 'non-combat'. I disagree that there is a real distinction. I think OFTEN you can say that a SITUATION may be one or the other. I'm just not entirely sold on the concept that it is a good idea for a game to build a wall between the two. It is rather artificial. 4e has been beat on a whole lot for things like making it impossible to use a ritual in a combat situation. Likewise attack powers aren't really applicable to other situations. I think the distinction needs to be made irrelevant, not enforced even more. Obviously some things will mostly not be relevant in a straight hack-em-up swordfight and other things won't find a lot of utility in a diplomatic negotiation, but the game should consist more of a continuum between those extremes vs trying to break it up into 2 totally different realms that can't meet and where you have almost virtually 2 separate character sheets.

I don't think it matters.

At any point in the game, each player has options. The options that the players are going to use are dependent on what the players want to do at that moment in time.

The options could be split into:

Movement options.
Attack options.
Defense options.
Lore options.
Influence options.
etc.

at character creation time and the game would still work. The reason that people give flack over the rituals not being able to be used in combat is solely because players USED to be able to do many of those rituals in combat. Now, they cannot.

So while I agree with you that allowing all of the options at all times (with some exceptions based on how long it takes for the option to work) is the proper way to go, I don't think that has any bearing whatsoever on character creation time.

If there is a "create the combat options" of the PC and "create the non-combat options" of the PC as part of character creation, that's ok. All of the options will appear on the character sheet and be available and most of them can be used at any point in time in game.

The idea with siloing the abilities is to avoid the "I have to use feats for skills, but that takes away from my combat abilities, so I'm not going to do that" aspects of the current character design process.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And then every PC is by definition "good at their combat role", "good at their non-combat role", and "good at their other non-combat role".

You want to keep the skill system simple, but increase the complexity of the PC's out of combat options.

Even two silos, combat and non-combat, are probably one too many for DMs who want the players to decide where to spend their resources or for players who want to be combat monsters and non-combat lambs, or vice versa, or somewhere in between. Two silos is doable, but three starts getting ridiculous because the third silo will expand into quirk powers, just like skills are evolving into skill powers. It'll become the design equivalent of analysis paralysis as it takes 3 or more hours to go through all of the stuff needed to create a character sheet. Both the second and third silos could be combined without losing good game design features.

Just like skills are just part of a single silo system in 4E (it's something that the player decides when creating the PC), the "aptitudes/quirks" could just become a part of the second silo in a two silo system. You get your quirks and you are done. No special additional benefits.


Personally, I think that quirks and traits and such out of other game systems are a crutch and used just like backgrounds are in 4E. Not to give the PC flavor, but to find some minor game mechanics advantage. I think quirks and traits and such are just a bunch of white noise that makes the entire game system more and more complex, and PCs harder to build as the player then reads through pages of quirks. Aptitudes and quirks and traits and such should have zero mechanical advantages and should be a small paragraph explaining how to create a good PC background. IMO.

Let's stop adding so much side trash to the game system. This is no different than adding a bunch of unnecessary skills to the skill system. Crafting? PC background. Playing the flute? PC background. Walks with a limp? PC background. The game could have a simple rule for using background abilities and having 1000 sentences in the PHB on specific background skills and traits could be dropped.

These types of things keep getting added to game systems by people who need to have a rule for every little detailed and insignificant thing. That's what we have DMs for. Have rules for combat encounters and skill challenges. Let people just roleplay for background stuff and let the DM decide what is appropriate and works for his campaign world with just a few guidelines or a simple single rule or such.

I was right with you up to this point, though my observation is that what you're describing here is basically 4e as it stands today, though it HAS in some cases stepped a bit out of this box.

I don't think the 'help someone else' modifiers are the culprit. It is just the sheer number of buffs and debuffs and their weak association with any kind of narrative logic that is the issue. They're a nightmare to track regardless of who grants them, and I don't agree that just because they apply to my character and not your character they somehow get easier to deal with.

I would be more tempted to recast them in terms like "when you have a narrative based opportunity to help someone with X kind of thing, you grant them a +5 bonus for their check" and make it an interrupt and put some reasonable range etc on it that reflects how it works within the narrative structure. If you want to play hard and fast totally gamist play, then you can simply assume any situation where the mechanical requirements are met is a valid use.

Again, this relates back to my last post, walls between 'combat' and 'non-combat' (really between mechanics and narrative) create the real problems. It is GOOD that a game have precise mechanical rules, but they also need to integrate smoothly with narrative considerations. Refluffing is one powerful way to do that, but it clearly isn't sufficient on its own. Were a 4e-style design to pay careful attention to this factor I think you'd find that the need to 'silo' would largely vanish. That need didn't exist at all in pre-3.x editions of the game, and I think it can be eliminated in a 4e-style system design too.

I'd note that some people will try to complain that all of this will lead to a "Only if the DM says I can" kind of situation. Well, I suggest you go back and think hard before making that post. There is NO parsing or arrangement you will ever make that isn't just an utterly gamist chess game that doesn't require adjudication of narrative considerations by someone. You can either put that on the DM or adopt a 'storytelling' kind of option with explicit player plot coupons to let them do that. Pick your poison people, you get one of those three options, and logic dictates there are no others.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I've been giving some thought to the points raised earlier in this thread about hp/healing surges. just curious, but how would you feel about something like this? Mind you, the following is just a rough outline.



New/Redefined Terminology

Threshold- A character's tolerance for resisting serious harm. Physical threshold might be mostly determined by armor, with bonuses for races that are particularly tough or have natural armor. If the damage from a single blow exceeds your threshold, it inflicts a wound in addition to dealing hp damage. Damage that exceeds multiples of your threshold, inflicts that many wounds (rounded down).

Depending on the design approach characters might only have one threshold, two thresholds (?physical and mental?), or even one threshold for each defense.

Unless an attack exceeds your threshold, you ignore all conditions associated with that attack (unless otherwise noted in the attack description). A successful attack that doesn't exceed your threshold fails to penetrate your defenses, costing only stamina. An attack that exceeds your threshold is a solid blow that causes injury.


HP- Hp still work largely the same way. They are defined as representing a character's stamina and luck, and no longer reflect any type of injury. If the term hp is a big issue, they could be renamed stamina points.

Hp do not go below 0. All hp are restored to maximum after a short rest; no expenditure of resolve is required for this.


Resolve- What used to be called healing surges, and they work much the same way. The name change is primarily so that they are not conflated with actual healing. Resolve represents a character's deep reserves of physical and mental stamina. Tapping into resolve restores your flagging stamina (hp), in the same sense that real world athletes catch their second wind.

Resolve is usually fully recovered after an extended rest. Wounds or harsh survival conditions (ie, starvation/dehydration/hypothermia) may may prevent some or all resolve from being recovered. A character who is out of resolve is near complete exhaustion. As such, gritty campaigns may impose an exhaustion penalty for being a 0 resolve. Not all creatures have resolve - a typical goblin wouldn't, though a goblin champion might.


Wound- When an attack exceeds a character's Threshold, that character suffers a wound. A wound reduces both your current and maximum Resolve by 1. If a wound reduces your current Resolve below 0, you are dead. Wounds are not normally of the potentially lethal variety and should be narrated as such, until a killing wound (but see injuries, below).

Wounds are healed at a rate determined by the type of campaign. High fantasy campaigns may allow characters to recover from all wounds overnight. Gritty campaigns have slower wound recovery; from 1 day to 1 week per wound.


Injuries- Gritty campaigns may assign injury penalties to wounds. This might simply be a -1 to all rolls per wound. Alternatively, a hit location table may be used with penalties appropriate to the body part injured.

Bleeding injuries might also occur, requiring a save each round; failure results in the loss of 1 point of resolve. No more saves are required once the bleeding is staunched, which may be accomplished by a successful Healing check, a wound healing spell, or rolling a natural 20 on the bleeding save.


Staggered- A character reduced to 0 hp is considered staggered. They immediately fall prone, become dazed, and their Threshold is reduced. Such a character is seriously fatigued and may pass out; other explanations might be more appropriate, such as a character whose sanity is stretched thin and is on the verge of going catatonic.

At the beginning of a staggered character's turn, he makes a Staggered Save. 2 successes allow the character to spend a point of resolve, which restores the character to positive hp and immediately removes the staggered condition. 2 failures indicate that the character has succumbed to fatigue and will be unconscious for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, the character may spend a resolve to regain consciousness; if the character has no resolve left, he remains comatose until he recovers at least 1 resolve, which will normally require (at least) an extended rest. A natural 20 is equivalent to 2 successes, while a natural 1 is equivalent to 2 failures.


Healing- (Obviously, this is just one possible paradigm for healing, but it illustrates the fact that both styles of healing could have unique advantages and disadvantages.)

Both martial and magical healing styles exist within this paradigm. Martial healing helps characters tap into their Resolve, and as such usually only functions on conscious targets. An example of martial healing would be a commander yelling "On your feet!" to an injured soldier. Martial healing of wounds can only be done out of combat, and requires various surgical procedures as well as herbal medicines.

Magical healing may be used to knit wounds during combat, though this can be costly in terms of reserves. Magic is rather ineffective, however, at reducing fatigue. Healing spells do not expend reserves, but heal less hp than martial powers.



Sample combat

Ragnar the Punchingbag has 80 hp, a Threshold of 20, and 4 resolve left.

A giant cobra lunges for him but rebounds off his chest plate. He takes 15 points of damage as the wind is knocked out of him by the impact but since his armor stopped the attack, he is not poisoned.

A giant scorpion attacks him from behind, sinking it's stinger through his chainmail and into his shoulder, inflicting 20 points of damage! Ragnar suffers a wound, reducing his resolve to 3, and begins to feel dizzy as scorpion venom pumps through him.

Now a troll attacks him - a critical hit for 40 points of damage! - the troll rakes it's powerful claws across the Punchingbag, digging furrows in his chest and knocking him back 10' (a push). Ragnar loses 2 more points of resolve, and has only 5 hp left!

Then, Bob the Irritable Farmer charges Ragnar with his pitchfork, dealing 10 damage! Though the pitchfork fails to penetrate Ragnar's mail, the force of the blow drives Ragnar to the ground and he is staggered at 0 hp.

It is now Ragnar's turn. He is currently prone, dazed, and his Threshold has dropped to 10! He's in serious trouble! He fails his Staggered saving throw; everything is going dark and he's one failure from unconsciousness! Digging deep, Ragnar uses Second Wind and fights through the oblivion that threatens to consume him. He expends his final resolve to raise his hp to 20. He's no longer staggered, and struggles back to his feet. On the verge of physical exhaustion, Ragnar the Punchingbag readies himself for what will likely be his last stand... if he's reduced to 0 hp again there will be no chance of getting up this time, and the next wound will definitely kill him. One way or another, without magical intervention he's 20 damage away from certain doom.

 

[KarinsDad]

New/Redefined Terminology

I like the concept. There are a lot of mechanics involved for inexperienced players and it would take a while for them to get used to those.

The threshold would have to increase with level. As per your example, maybe 25% of total hit points. And, it should just be one threshold. Too many rules and all that.

Your bleeding rules are a bit harsh because we have probably all experienced missing a saving throw 5 times in a row. It will be hard to balance the proper number of resolves for those times that bleeding does not occur with those times that bleeding removes so much resolve from one PC that everyone else is fine after one encounter whereas Ragnar the Punchingbag is on death's door because he couldn't stop bleeding.

 

[KarinsDad]

I don't think the 'help someone else' modifiers are the culprit. It is just the sheer number of buffs and debuffs and their weak association with any kind of narrative logic that is the issue.

But, that's the point. It is the sheer number of buffs and debuffs. And, those buffs and debuffs come in many different varieties:

1) I buff myself
2) I buff an ally.
3) I buff multiple allies.
4) I debuff a foe.
5) I debuff multiple foes.

On top of each of these, there are the different durations.

On top of each of these, there are the conditional effects. The Conduit of Ice type powers were the zone does damage, but only if an enemy ends its turn in the zone. Or Daunting Presence where the foes take a -2 to attack the PC, but not other PCs, and the NPCs have to be adjacent for this to occur. There are a ton of these types of conditional effects in the game.

So my point is that it is much easier if there are fewer types of durations and fewer numbers of #2 through #5. #1 is easy for each player to keep track of. I am +2 to attacks next turn. People rarely forget that.

#2 and #3 are the second easiest to remember, but still often require bookkeeping.

But, the DM is running 5 NPCs per encounter. #4 and #5 are more difficult for the DM to handle on his own and are a significant reason people use little tokens on miniatures.


Getting back to the first sentence here, it is the sheer number of buffs and debuffs. There are only a few ways to get rid of the numbers mathematically:

1) Decrease the number of powers that can do #2 through #5, especially At Will powers than can do these type of things round after round after round. Having an Encounter power doing it once in a while is fine. Spamming an At Will doesn't address the problem.

2) Decrease the number of different durations. Make all disadvantageous effects a saving throw, make all advantageous effects either until the end of the next turn (for slightly stronger effects), or until the end of the encounter (for weaker effects).

3) Decrease the number of powers that do things conditionally. Instead of Daunting Presence being a foe is -2 to hit if adjacent and only on the PC, instead make it a +1 to the defenses of the PC against all foes. The focus becomes on buffing the PC instead of conditionally debuffing foes against specific targets and in specific circumstances. That's much easier to remember and to bookkeep.

4) Decrease the number of powers overall.


The number of times each player can do buffs and debuffs and especially conditional stuff per encounter has to decrease in order to address the problem. Having every PC being able to throw out an effect/condition nearly every single round also means having to keep track of those effects/conditions unless they are instantaneous.


As for the narrative part, that's easy. I've rarely had a problem narrating what happens based on the game mechanics except for a few rare cases like the original Come and Get It. Do you have some examples where the narrative is illogical?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Skill proliferation is a bane of good game design, it creates incompetence - each additional skill is another thing your character /can't do/, unless he invests in the skill.

And

We've pretty clearly established the superiority of that approach.

Obviously, I disagree.

These types of things keep getting added to game systems by people who need to have a rule for every little detailed and insignificant thing. That's what we have DMs for.

Not really...nor is it about "crutches" and other cute pejoratives. It's about a combination of:

1) wanting all actions of a given kind- here, skills- working with one unified mechanic for consistency

2) not having to play "Mother, May I" with your GM when something isn't in the rules- especially important when the guy on the other side of the screen is not an Ace at "winging it" or making decisions on the fly

3) simulationism- yeah, "each additional skill is another thing your character /can't do/, unless he invests in the skill", but that's just like RL, so I have no problem with it.

 

[KarinsDad]

And

Obviously, I disagree.

Not really...nor is it about "crutches" and other cute pejoratives. It's about a combination of:

1) wanting all actions of a given kind- here, skills- working with one unified mechanic for consistency

2) not having to play "Mother, May I" with your GM when something isn't in the rules- especially important when the guy on the other side of the screen is not an Ace at "winging it" or Malone decisions on the fly

3) simulationism

Yes, we do disagree.


The skills do work with one unified mechanic. Roll a D20 add a bonus, compare to a DC.


The concept of Mother May I has the inverse concept of Player Entitlement. I can do this because the rules and my character sheet say so. I prefer the DM controlling his campaign and not having the players run rough shod over it. The fewer extra superfluous rules and extra little bits there are, the less of these types of conflicts result. Mature players allow the DM to run his campaign his way without nitpicking over a lot of little extra background bits.

Something as simple as the craft skill can be handled via a simple set of "background skill" rules without having pages of information like 3E did about all of the different modifiers and rules to Crafting. Just come up with a DC, let the player roll the dice and add in the appropriate ability score, and if he makes it, fine. Determine how long it took. If he misses the roll by 4 or less, determine how much of the crafting is good and how much has to be redone. If he misses the roll by 5 or more, determine that he screwed the project up. Ditto for a variety of other background skills. If the player wants his PC to be a botanist, fine. Let him make a D20 roll for growing his plants and don't put the other players to sleep looking up the Botany rules in the DMG.

Allow the DM to DM.


Simulationism is limited regardless of which game system is used. There gets to be a point where enough is enough. 4E allows for all of this. It's called house rules.