D&D 5E D&D 5.5e; Your wish for 5.5e update.

[Oofta]

Eventually, any game will get stale and warty. Interest will decline as people move on to new things. I'd say ten or so years is the average lifespan of a well-regarded game.

But, it may not require a new edition to reinvigorate 5E when that time comes. Just a change of setting, which alters the flavor of the game.

That said, I'm sure we'll get a revised PHB someday. Mearls has already mentioned on a couple occasions what that process would look like. They take the survey data that they keep gathering, and find weak parts of the game, like the Ranger. They iterate on an alternate version, and release it in a new product. Someday, if the new version becomes dominant in actual play, they might revise the PHB to include it instead.

It seems obvious from the Unearthed Arcana articles that they're probably working on new books with alternative class builds and so on. I just don't expect it to be called the PHB 2 or anything like that since they want to avoid confusion with people thinking they can buy just the version 2 of the book and thinking they would have all the rules.

But a book with a bunch of class variants? Maybe a new DM's options book? I expect to see that in the next year or so.

 

[77IM]

It seems obvious from the Unearthed Arcana articles that they're probably working on new books with alternative class builds and so on. I just don't expect it to be called the PHB 2 or anything like that since they want to avoid confusion with people thinking they can buy just the version 2 of the book and thinking they would have all the rules.

But a book with a bunch of class variants? Maybe a new DM's options book? I expect to see that in the next year or so.

Maybe they'll call it "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons"

 

[Henry]

Eventually, any game will get stale and warty. Interest will decline as people move on to new things. I'd say ten or so years is the average lifespan of a well-regarded game.

But, it may not require a new edition to reinvigorate 5E when that time comes. Just a change of setting, which alters the flavor of the game.

That said, I'm sure we'll get a revised PHB someday. Mearls has already mentioned on a couple occasions what that process would look like. They take the survey data that they keep gathering, and find weak parts of the game, like the Ranger. They iterate on an alternate version, and release it in a new product. Someday, if the new version becomes dominant in actual play, they might revise the PHB to include it instead.

5e D&D will last, without doubt, until sales figures flag consistently enough to warrant a new edition to rekindle interest. If you want a long-lived 5e, keep buying what's released, and keep sharing the game and the hobby with new players as long as you can.

My best guess when the flagging starts? Maybe... 2019? It's still going pretty strong, and as The UA articles have proven, there's quite a bit of design space they can mess with for a major rules expansion, so at the very least I think we're getting five to six years out of this puppy. IMHO more than a decade is unrealistic to get out of a "healthy" edition cycle; in my estimation both AD&D1 and AD&D2's cycles were a bit "unhealthy" toward the last few years of their cycles, made so extended by Gary Gygax's contentious ouster, and TSR's bad business moves, respectively.

Then again, it's been said that AD&D1 was still selling respectably into 1990, when it was forcibly killed off to keep from cannibalizing AD&D2 sales, so maybe we'll be looking at 5e books on shelves into the year 2030...

 

[Henry]

Maybe they'll call it "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons"

Excavated Lore?
Exhumed Esoterica?
Deterrestrialized Dwemercraft?
"Stuff we dug outta Mike Mearl's Filing Cabinet?"

Though, "Legendary Lore" has a nice ring to it...

 

[Mercule]

One of the reasons ASIs are needed is to counterbalance the racial stat bumps. I really hate the racial stat bumps.

Not sure I understand this one. Non-humans get ASIs, also, so it shouldn't matter. At creation-time, the racial bumps are balanced against the human +1 to all.

Unless, of course, you mean that you don't want to see all races bump at creation. I'm not sure what I think about that. Initially, it felt wrong for non-humans to not get some penalties, but I think I've warmed to the idea that human adventurers center around 11, instead of 12. That means that any stat where a non-human doesn't get a bump is actually a penalty, relatively speaking. For NPCs, I'm not too concerned with parity with PC scores; peasants have lower than a 27 point buy, BBEGs probably have more.

 

[Quartz]

Not sure I understand this one. Non-humans get ASIs, also, so it shouldn't matter. At creation-time, the racial bumps are balanced against the human +1 to all.

I dislike them all. I haven't liked them since 3E.

Unless, of course, you mean that you don't want to see all races bump at creation.

This. No stat bumps at all. Demihumans get their racial abilities and one feat and humans get two feats and two skills.

 

[Blue]

I'm not saying that 5e is doing bad. It's quite good actually. But look at the trends:

3rd ed year 2000.

3.5e y 2003.

4E y 2008.

4E essentials(essentially 4.5E) y 2010.

5th ed y 2014.

Every previous edition had hordes of additional splat books for cash flow, but they would spike in sales when they came out and then drop down, while core books sales stood strong. Development costs for the core books had a MUCH higher ROI.

Compare to 5e where it's almost entirely core book sales, plus APs.

5e business model isn't comparable to 3.x or 4e. Or AD&D 2nd for that matter with all of the Skills & Powers and class splat books.

So when you take out those data points as irrelevant, there is literally nothing left except 5e. There is no trend line. And therefore there is nothing to indicate they are going to turn the crank and come out with 5.5 or 6.0 anytime soon.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

5e D&D will last, without doubt, until sales figures flag consistently enough to warrant a new edition to rekindle interest. If you want a long-lived 5e, keep buying what's released, and keep sharing the game and the hobby with new players as long as you can.

I think that at some point we might see a revised player handbook.
Taking in account questions that keep poping up they might change wording a bit to clear up those points like the stealth rules.

We will see a suplement with a ranger variant, and when they do the revision/reprint of the phb they might consider making the variant the standard ranger.
Some classes might also have some diferent/aditional subclasses based on what is popular at the time of the revision.

But we might still be years away from that, AD&D 2nd relesed in 1989 and the revised/reprint PHB came out in 1995.

 

[Oofta]

I think that at some point we might see a revised player handbook.
Taking in account questions that keep poping up they might change wording a bit to clear up those points like the stealth rules.

The problem with this theory is that not everybody agrees that there is an issue, just a different approach where they don't try to spell everything out. Yes, things are vague, yes, there will be table variation. That doesn't mean it needs to be fixed.

Another example of this is the grappling rules. I was having a conversation with somebody the other day, how the current grappling rules are simple and concise (I just checked and they're less than 200 words). In D&D SRD for 3.5 the rules for grappling has a word count of over 1,600. They were so complex that they were only rarely used and every time we used them we had to look up the rules.

Grappling in 3.5 was better defined, but it was also this huge block of text that generated nearly as many arguments as the current stealth rules in my experience (YMMV).

IMHO more rules do not necessarily mean better rules.

On the other hand I'd be ok with a "book of optional rules" for things like stealth and grapple. As long as they are optional and I can ignore them completely and continue running stealth the way I have been with little or no complaint.

 

[76512390ag12]

IMHO more rules do not necessarily mean better rules.


Hallelujah!