D&D (2024) D&D 6th edition - What do you want to see?

[Hurin70]

As long as it doesn't have (1) non-magical and-or (2) ranged healing, as those concepts do need to die in a fire.

A fire which I'd be quite happy to light.

I'm fine with getting rid of non-magical and ranged healing. There's a lot that can be done with things like temporary hit points and bandages.

As for "TPK fests" - this rather goes against what I most often hear about 5e, that it's too forgiving on the PCs.

I should have been clearer: at high levels, a group of optimized characters can crush encounters pretty easily. So yes, the game can become too easy/forgiving.

At low levels, however, character options are limited, and the first couple of levels in particular are rocket tag. On top of that, each of the published modules I've played had multiple unbalanced encounters. Horde of the Dragon Queen was notorious for that (because the makers didn't have the final monster stats for things like Berserkers/Bandits, IIRC). I'm currently DMing Princes of the Apocalypse, and an encounter that includes one CR 7 BBEG, an additional (invisible) CR 6 henchman, and another dozen CR 1/8 mooks is in an area recommended for a level 6 party. That's a TPK waiting to happen.

 

[S'mon]

I'm currently DMing Princes of the Apocalypse, and an encounter that includes one CR 7 BBEG, an additional (invisible) CR 6 henchman, and another dozen CR 1/8 mooks is in an area recommended for a level 6 party. That's a TPK waiting to happen.

I guess groups vary a lot, but I'm DMing PoTA and I can't imagine that being much of an issue for my group; at level 6 they just took out both Elizar Dryflagon and Vanifer (with her fire elementals) in a single session. Not having had a LR since the previous session where they fought through Scarlet Moon Hall taking out the guards and flame priests.

They did nearly TPK when they first attacked Scarlet Moon Hall at level 3 & ran into multiple fireball wielding flame priests! Especially as I misread one flame guard as a flame priest causing them to be facing 3 priests, a fire elemental, 2 hellhounds & 2 flame guards in a single encounter...

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'll add my vote to getting rid of popping up, good as new, from 0 HP. It's actually a good tactic to intentionally absorb a really big hit at low health and go unconscious just as long as somebody can toss a healing word before your next turn. That's just...lame.

Maybe you should gain a level of exhaustion every time you go unconscious.

 

[5ekyu]

1 better wording on their encounters per day to exhaust a party baseline expectation so that folks do not think it is a requirement and know its just a benchmark for them making guesses.

2 then again, a better balancing encounter bit altogether that deals with in-play balance more than on-paper balance.

3 Three Rs of Encounters - robust, reactive and resilient guidelines.

4 Turn more/all of the "one save or suck" effects into "race-to-three" akin to how contagion works. "One save and useless" is boring.

5 incorporate spending HD more into normal routine kinds of stuff, not just resting, perhaps have spending HD at varying rates be a way to refresh "short rest" abilities in place of "short rests."

6 basically ditch short rests in favor of an accountable resource for shorter recovery abilities - see 5.

...

 

[Tony Vargas]

I find it interesting to see many posters in this thread suggest things for 6e that were in 4e. I hope that's the sign we're finally past the vigilante phase, when everything from 4e had to die in fire, and that we can finally, calmly, and rationally appreciate and accept what good ideas 4e had.

If you liked 4e, Hope is the main thing 5e has delivered. Hang onto it as long as you can, I guess.

I would also like to have something for my character to spend hismoney on, and magic items become more abundant.

One thing 5e has sorta added, or at least presented a little differently from 1e, is Downtime. Dowmtime seems like a great place to dispose of treasure. Just needs to be elaborated on some.

Exp/level is already a built in system that rewards players for success with greater power that can be used to achieve greater successes. Magic items have always been gasoline on that fire, anyway. 5e pushing them further back under DM control wasn't an entirely bad thing, neither was 3e/4e make/buy & wealth/level making them into a player level-based build resource, of course, just a very different thing. But, the upshot, in 5e, the game is tuned to work with magic items as a DM-controlled bonus, not an expected part of advancement, and make/buy would mess that up pretty severely.

On the subject of balance, I'd like to see more of that too

Well, you can Hope.

And a decent Ranger? Is that too much to ask?

Yes. It's right up there with trisected angles and squared circles. ;P The issue with the Ranger is downright ontological. You can't have a decent implementation of the Ranger because we don't have a decent definition of the Ranger. It's just another case of a player wanting to play something from fiction (Aragorn) that the D&D Fighter wasn't nearly up to handling, and the DM pasting some spells & special abilities to a Fighter+, and papering over the strict superiority of the resulting class with some HD/hp shell games and unrealistic stat requirements. Instead of, y'know, actually filling out the fighter into a worthwhile class that does significantly more than hit things.

Yes, I know, that raises some balance issues, but 5e already has balance issues, at least judging from the published modules (which are TPK-fests).

Funny how some DMs run a 5e module and get TPKs, while others get cakewalks. D&D really is back to being more about the DM than the rules.

Edit:

I should have been clearer: at high levels, a group of optimized characters can crush encounters pretty easily. So yes, the game can become too easy/forgiving.

At low levels, however, character options are limited, and the first couple of levels in particular are rocket tag. On top of that, each of the published modules I've played had multiple unbalanced encounters. Horde of the Dragon Queen was notorious for that ....

OK, yes, you have a point there.

 

[Henry]

I find it interesting to see many posters in this thread suggest things for 6e that were in 4e. I hope that's the sign we're finally past the vigilante phase, when everything from 4e had to die in fire, and that we can finally, calmly, and rationally appreciate and accept what good ideas 4e had.

Consider that even Pathfinder 2nd edition has picked up a few 4e-ish ideas (multiclassing works on the same principal as original multiclassing in 4e; class features have a VERY similar structure to the way powers are picked from 4e; magic items are classified by character level of appropriateness; monster stats are calculated in ways very similar to the way their stats are calculated from 4e); I think the ideas (divorced from the edition tribalism that was so hot in our veins at the time, and WotC's dramatic direction changes) are being re-evaluated.

 

[Lanefan]

Let me second the bloodied condition as something to bring to 6e from 4e. I think it could even be made backwards compatible with 5e: a dungeon master can give a creature that has suffered damage the bloodied condition. At that point the dungeon master can pick from or roll for an effect on the bloodied table for the creature's type or the dungeon master can use the bloodied condition effect contained in the creature's stat block. [With the tables, all monsters and NPC's might not have individual effects, and if you had a 5e monster that didn't {yet} have a 6e stat block, you could give it the bloodied condition.]

Hmmm...this leads down some interesting paths.

In 4e a creature's bloodied condition was what it was, no variance. But here you're suggesting that each creature could have a variable range of possible bloodied conditions (which could include none at all) - cool!

And to take it a step further, there could be degrees of bloodied e.g. condition x kicks in when the creature is first damaged, condition y begins when the creature hits half h.p., condition z arises when the creature has less than 10% of its h.p. left - that sort of thing.

Complicated as hell, of course, and the space it'd all take up would make the MM bigger than the full-size Oxford Dictionary - but maybe worth a look as a per-campaign system for DMs who are so inclined.

I would let the players give the PC the bloodied condition if the PC suffered half of their hp's in damage (or less if they use an inspiration point) with an effect based on class and level (multiclass PC's use their total level and pick one of their classes). I am not sure if this would work out, but I see each class having a 20 effect table, and you can pick an effect with a number equal to or less than your level. A player who doesn't want the PC to have the bloodied condition can choose not to invoke it.

Here, however, I'd put the brakes on; for a few reasons:

1. PCs generally have enough going for them already, and players have enough (or too much) to keep track of as it is without adding more.
2. It's inevitable, due to player-driven design pressures, that any and all PC bloodied conditions will end up being beneficial to the PC, resulting in nothing more than an overall power boost. That said, if PCs took a hit somehow because of becoming bloodied, or even if there was some sort of benefit-penalty trade-off, I could maybe sort of get behind it. Otherwise you could easily end up with PCs intentionally trying to get hurt (or hurting themselves!) in order to invoke their bloodied condition, which seems a bit ridiculous.

EDIT to add: with one exception - I'd say a Barbarian cannot rage unless it has taken damage within the last minute, which preserves various Barbarian tropes.

To make becoming bloodied carry any sort of penalty would, however, require a fundamental change in what seems to have become WotC's overall design philosophy (which largely eschews penalties) - I'm not holding my breath on that.

 

[Blue]

1 better wording on their encounters per day to exhaust a party baseline expectation so that folks do not think it is a requirement and know its just a benchmark for them making guesses.

Better wording on encounters per day to dispel the myths that it's not an important balance point between the long rest, short rest, and at-will primary classes determined by testing and design. Special attention towards dispelling the myth that tougher encounters use more of all resources from all classes in even amounts.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I find it interesting to see many posters in this thread suggest things for 6e that were in 4e.

Fourth Edition had plenty of good ideas. It also had a lot of bad ideas, though; and for whatever reason, the designers only brought the bad ideas into 5E.

If I really wanted to make a good 6E, I would go back to 4E, and then build up the good ideas while abandoning the bad ideas. It would be an awful lot of work, though.

 

[Lanefan]

I should have been clearer: at high levels, a group of optimized characters can crush encounters pretty easily. So yes, the game can become too easy/forgiving.

At low levels, however, character options are limited, and the first couple of levels in particular are rocket tag.

Nothing wrong with that at all!

A large part of reaching high level is being lucky enough to survive low level.

On top of that, each of the published modules I've played had multiple unbalanced encounters. Horde of the Dragon Queen was notorious for that (because the makers didn't have the final monster stats for things like Berserkers/Bandits, IIRC). I'm currently DMing Princes of the Apocalypse, and an encounter that includes one CR 7 BBEG, an additional (invisible) CR 6 henchman, and another dozen CR 1/8 mooks is in an area recommended for a level 6 party. That's a TPK waiting to happen.

Unbalanced only if the PCs insist on a) seeing combat as the only way through/around any encounter, and b) taking all the foes on at once in a pitched battle.

But if they do some careful scouting to find out what they're up against, and then lead with some AoE spells* to both clear out the mooks and soften up the big guys, they should be fine.

* - by 6th level they should have some decent AoE spells at their disposal...right?