D&D 5E What rules would you like to see come back in 5E?

[Sadras]

what I feel is severely lacking:
• spell interruption.

Agreed.

• more rules to reinforce cooperative play

This was extremely evident in 4e, but why do you think this is necessary. Is it because sometimes players work against each other and as DM you prefer to encourage cooperative play?

• different ways to gain XP (not just combat )

I have never been a fan of the XP systems in any of the editions. I'm surprised how little they have elaborated on this throughout the years which is pretty sad considering how critically important it is for the DM and the players for different reasons.

Beside the obvious of how fast or slow the XP pace, I believe PCs should gain XPs for:

1) Gaining knowledge of a setting: Either through meeting important NPCs, traveling new roads/towns/cities, obtaining lost lore/history. This applies mostly to long-term campaigns.

2) Gaining magical or divine knowledge or through related experiences.

3) Intelligent, Comedic or Cinematic moments during roleplay.

4) Monster experience - could reflect a set minimum of encountering a beast and perhaps an additional amount for every ability the PCs experience. For instance a Dragon has an XP value of abc, but perhaps the PCs only experience a of its ablities why should they get the full total.
Perhaps the party only had to deal with the Dragon's tough armour, strength, breath weapon, bite and claw and missed out completely on its spells, flight, wing buffet, and tail slap and any other supernatural abilities. They do not necessarily deserve to get all the XPs then since they have learnt very little of a Dragons capabilties.
I'm not saying WoTC should break down abilities for XPs, but a discussion point could be made for it. Its not game-breaking, just my personal quirk.

Then there is party XP as opposed to indvidual XPs
In our campaign I let the party all level up at the same time - I have lumped all their XPs required to gain a new level and instead have a party XP total. So for D&DN they are all level 7, i think requiring 9,000 for level 8, so with 4 in the group 4 x 9,000 = 36,000 XPs required. So if the mage discovers some historic arcane lore, and since he is part of the group, the party gains the XP. Therefore once they hit that 36,000 mark they can all level-up.

• removing the sacred cow of ability scores ( keeping only the modifier )

That is certainly an option. Lean towards the White Wolf system. If they could also cap/HP gain and then you have it. I think E6 and Pathfinder's P6 have got it right.

 

[am181d]

This sounds pretty interesting. Like the goblins are complicit in combat ordering rather than competing against the players for it. What are your rules for how an NPC determines who goes next?

DM's choice. I've used that rule in D&D, Marvel FASERIP, and my own homebrew Sci-Fi system.

 

[Brock Landers]

A lot of it comes down to options: like, Group Initiative, and rolling for Initiative every round (makes combat way more swingy).

 

[MJS]

It would definitely allow DMs to throw more at the party without worrying about overwhelming them.

True, and very easy to grandfather in, creating scenes akin to Legolas and Gimli's counting game with the Orcs.
It would be unwieldy at high levels, though, where I think something more akin to Chainmail's 20:1 or 10:1 rules would work better.

On the topic of encouraging cooperative play - I think distinct classes, and a DM willing to let PCs die of their own foolishness does the trick. Rules for cooperating beyond the class system seems too mich.

 

[landovers]

This is kind of the point. In addition to making the game more tactically interesting, spell interruption drastically reduces the power differential between casters and melee. It also makes melee essential to keep the enemies off your caster so he can get off his spell, encouraging teamwork. I don't recall nearly as much complaints about casters being "too strong" back in the day when they could be interrupted.

I don't think spell interruption is the way to go to bridge the gap between casters and martial classes. I feel it'd still be very tough to balance (you never know if the caster will own the combat or completely fail) and wasting a turn/spell getting interrupted can't be any fun. 'Realistic', but not fun. But then again I'm not into old-school so maybe I just don't get it.

Cast times, that I could get behind, pushing the caster a bit further in the initiative when casting a stronger spell (not necessarily an entire turn, mind you). Casters get less actions but more powerful stuff. In this case rerolling initiative every turn might make it work better. I dig these little tactical complications, like the person who mentioned you should only get shield bonuses on the front and off-hand side. I'd play this fiddly, fiddly game, hahaha. And people say 4e/Pathfinder have long combat! I have no hope of seeing these things in Next, by the way (from the look of it, I'll be glad to get Attacks of Opportunity and flanking).

Also, I'm laughing at the idea of simoultaneous turns, what a nightmare that would be to design, though I'd love to see someone pull that off. I imagine the combat dynamic would make it worth the trouble.

 

[Lanefan]

Also, I'm laughing at the idea of simoultaneous turns, what a nightmare that would be to design, though I'd love to see someone pull that off. I imagine the combat dynamic would make it worth the trouble.

It's trivially easy in play.

Say after rolling initiative various PCs and monsters all have init. '3'. We go through each of their actions (e.g. swing, shoot, start a spell, resolve a spell, etc.) knowing that they will all* occur. So for example, if Bob the Fighter and his Orc opponent both have init. 3 - even if Bob hits and does enough damage to his Orc opponent to kill it the Orc will still gets its swing in as it dies and might kill Bob at the same time. Meanwhile on the same initiative Jed the Mage starts casting magic missile, Frida the Elf shoots an arrow into an Orc, a second Orc swings at Bob, and another Orc throws a spear at Frida.

* - occasionally we need to granularize it a step further using what we call "sub-initiatives", most of the time this is to determine whether a spell gets interrupted and-or which spell resolves first in a segment. In the above example if the Orc had thrown his spear at Jed instead of Frida we'd roll sub-initiatives between them to see if Jed had actually started casting when the spear arrived, as if he had he'd be interrupted.

All that said, the one thing that really breaks when using re-rolled-each-round initiatives is any sort of initiative modifier a la 3e. We've never** used such a thing, in part because Dexterity is already important enough.

** - except for the occasional rare and very expensive magic item that provides an init. boost.

Lan-"the trick is not to get the first blow in, but the last"-efan

 

[Meatboy]

I don't think spell interruption is the way to go to bridge the gap between casters and martial classes. I feel it'd still be very tough to balance (you never know if the caster will own the combat or completely fail) and wasting a turn/spell getting interrupted can't be any fun. 'Realistic', but not fun. But then again I'm not into old-school so maybe I just don't get it.
QUOTE]

It may not bridge the gap but it does re-enforce the party dynamic. If the mage needs to cast a spell so that the party wins (not die) then it really serves the tanks to make sure they are protected. They need to then get up in the face of ranged threats or just block access to the mage.

 

[Meatboy]

snip... the one thing that really breaks when using re-rolled-each-round initiatives is any sort of initiative modifier a la 3e. We've never** used such a thing, in part because Dexterity is already important enough.

** - except for the occasional rare and very expensive magic item that provides an init. boost.

I dunno I find that with a little mod it works just fine. Just make sure that all spells resolve at the end of each combat round, if they don't get interrupted that is.

 

[sunshadow21]

I dunno I find that with a little mod it works just fine. Just make sure that all spells resolve at the end of each combat round, if they don't get interrupted that is.

Than you run into the problem of the spell being nullified by changing conditions even if it does go off after the caster already has to deal with potential interruption and before any saves or dealing with spell resistance. It's just too many variables that the player can't control, and most people are simply not going to bother with it. The point of the game is to control a character, and it basically makes magic uncontrollable, which makes long term PCs relying on it very, very frustrating; if you really want magic that risky, you need to remove caster as a PC option to make it clear that it's really that chaotic.

There's a fine line between balancing magic with nonmagic, and just making magic a royal pain no one, including the DM, wants to deal with. To complicate things even further that line falls in a different place for each individual and group, making it impossible to even attempt to pinpoint in the core rules; the best you can realistically do as a game designer is to is find an average that most people can live with. Most groups would take the above scenario, try it for one battle, and ditch it because it just isn't worth the hassle.

 

[Kinak]

I always found the old interrupt mechanic actually made playing a caster more interesting, rather than a pain. It's not just that it's more difficult, it's that low-level spells have a place.

My long-running 2e campaign had a ton of magical duels. Low-level spells were both harder to disrupt and were better equipped to disrupt your enemies' spells.

First and second level damage spells actually start to look pretty interesting in that situation.

Cheers!
Kinak