D&D (2024) Revised 6E prediction thread

[Ruin Explorer]

The trick is that we are using an older school mentality. This is not the 3.5 mentality of "its not a specific option or rule you can't do it". Its "do what you want, and you and the dm work it out together."

So for example, grapple only consumes 1 attack. And while people snide it for being weak, its relatively simple and easy to do, and if you have two attacks only requires a bit of your offense.

The rules give some basic notes for bull rushes, disarms, and trips...no reason you can't attempt those.

In my last game, the barbarian fought a lich with a staff of power at one point. The barbarian rushes in, dashes past the guards, grabs the staff out of the lich's hands (a "disarm" attempt), and then with his second attack we used the "use an object rules" to have him break the staff in front of all of them. He happened to randomly have a ring of force resistance, so only took half from the massive explosion. The lich and all of his cronies were dead, and the barb stood strong.

5e allows for all of that, even encourages it, and gives basic mechanics (such as opposed athletics checks) to administer them. So don't think of it of "there are no options", think of it as "the rules don't say I can't....so!" You and the DM work out it out, and with a little bit of creativity and flexibility, you can absolutely make a fighter doing all sorts of tricks.

Ah the old "Non-casters have got meaningful tactical options if the DM lets you have them".
And of course spells give the spellcasters tactical options whether the DM lets them or not.
It's not great design.

To be clear, most groups I play with play the same way as you, but some DMs are much better at this kind of thing than others, and more codified options for non-casters would be helpful, frankly. Not tedious lists of Feats like 3.XE though I agree.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I am not as tactically-minded as you, ER, so I hesitate to expose my ignorance, but simply because you got a great concept for a class here, how about replacing Mystic Arcana with some high-level ability to alter terrain, not through actual transmutation of the field of battle, but through maximizing the use of the terrain. The net result could be penalizing opponents with a range of penalties that could affect a large enough area with significant and creative-enough penalties that the effect could rival or exceed high-level spells that alter terrain.

That...has some legs, actually. I'll have to chew on it more, and as noted I've already got Summoner to finish first. Still, that's a seed to start from, which is more than I had yesterday. Thanks!

And if course I don't mind a signal boost, though it's harder to find games than that most of the time I'm afraid. Still, when it happens, it happens. For now I focus on DMing for my DW group.

 

[dave2008]

I have not, but I've heard exactly the opposite: that it flattens the strategy out. Which made me lose a lot of my interest. Would you have a link to something that says otherwise? I'm certainly willing to give a second look. (After all, I originally had to give 4e a second--and third!--look before I realized what it was really offering me.)

The fact that the "Synthesist" Summoner they offered (for playtesting) was...really really not good, as in "spending a resource to be worse than you were before" not good, definitely also dampened my spirits, unfortunately.

You check out the pathfinder forums on this site. That is where I get most of my information. If I get time I may look up some specific post buyt maybe @Campbell , @The-Magic-Sword , @Justice and Rule, @kenada could discuss the tactical and strategic benefits of PF2e game play.

 

[Hatmatter]

That...has some legs, actually. I'll have to chew on it more, and as noted I've already got Summoner to finish first. Still, that's a seed to start from, which is more than I had yesterday. Thanks!

And if course I don't mind a signal boost, though it's harder to find games than that most of the time I'm afraid. Still, when it happens, it happens. For now I focus on DMing for my DW group.

If you finish either of them, feel free to share them with me...I always like perusing what people come up with. I hope someone here ends up inviting you to a game! It sounds like your DW group in is in the hands of a good DM!

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

You check out the pathfinder forums on this site. That is where I get most of my information. If I get time I may look up some specific post buyt maybe @Campbell , @The-Magic-Sword , @Justice and Rule, @kenada could discuss the tactical and strategic benefits of PF2e game play.

Appreciate the ping.

So basically @EzekielRaiden , pathfinder 2e doesn't flatten the strategic curve. It limits the power growth from character optimization to an extent, and then provides tools for gaining more advantages in the actual fight. Inflicting conditions, applying buffs, positioning, using special techniques that play with action cost for number of strikes, or provide benefits by circumventing the penalty for attacking multiple times, offering repositioning, and other fringe benefits, that can add up to major advantages.

The game still rewards system mastery in character building mind you, just not as much as say the first edition of pathfinder-- you get diminishing returns from trying to get direct power increases, so you pick up a lot of utility and versatility. Your barbarian, to name an intuitive example, might have a high intimidate and be able to use it to demoralize in combat to inflict frightened, which lowers the target's ac (which increases both hit chance AND crit chance because the rule that 10 above or below the target number is a critical hit) they can pick feats to support that, including some class unique ones, but its not a crazy delve into other rulebook to make it work, its pretty straightforward.

You'd want to do that instead of just attacking, because every attack gets progressively more likely to miss, encouraging you to find a better use for your third action. Some builds can mitigate that with feats to be able to attack with all three effectively (flurry ranger blenders go brrr) but overall this dynamic heavily favors tactical decisions that create advantages for you and the other players to take advantage of, whether you're a high damage build doing the capitalizing, the person doing the setup, or flexing between the two (or doing a little of both.)

Attacks of Opportunity are an ability some creatures have, but it isn't ubiquitous, so you can also use those actions to move around, and since you're using the same action resource to move as you are to attack, this forces you and your foes to consider the cost and benefits as ot who has to move when to do what, and what advantages they gain from it.

Casters are full vancian, featuring both prepared (I have to decide how many slots to prep fireball in) and spontaneous casting (I learned a fourth level fireball spell, so i can spend any fourth level slot to cast it) so they're as strategically complex as ever, spells with varying actions costs for stronger or 'faster' effects are interesting as well.

Finally, out of combat, they have a dedicated exploration mode with all sorts of neat things you can do while crawling through the wilderness/dungeon, giving you a strategic role in your party's marching order.

 

[kenada]

@The-Magic-Sword Does a pretty good job of describing the tactical element, so I’m not going to dig into that too much. I think it’s fair to say that generally your class chassis provides the vertical growth while your feat choices provide horizontal. You’re not really going to be able to stack things to stack things up to give a major advantage compared to working better with your party.

Expanding on @The-Magic-Sword ’s example, you can use Bon Mot to impose a status penalty to a target’s Will saving throw. This can reduce the Will DC for the barbarian’s Demoralize by 2 or 3 (depending on the result), which makes it even easier to impose a status penalty to AC and attacks. A fighter with Snagging Strike can then effectively increase this penalty to AC by making the target flat-footed. On top of this, a cleric with bless or a bard with inspire courage can give you a status bonus to attack. By working together, the party can gain an effective +5 or +6 to attack rolls. In addition to boosting your chance to hit, this also boosts your chance of critting, which doubles the roll rather than rolling twice the dice. And that’s just attack rolls. Bon Mot also helps casters who target Will DCs. If you get it low enough, then characters with Assurance in an appropriate skill succeed automatically regardless of any penalties they have.

In PF2, a party that fights together as a team is way more effective than one that doesn’t. Even if some of the actions in that example fail, just having some of them succeed will still be really helpful. It’s the difference between a party that has no problem with moderate- or even higher-threat fights and one that struggles with purportedly easy ones. My players generally didn’t bother to leverage those kinds of synergies, so they struggled with moderate-threat encounters. I did one that was between moderate- and severe-threat, and they TPK’d (which was entirely unnecessary because they could have just walked around it).

I can’t speak to the issues with the summoner. I haven’t been following the post-launch playtests Paizo has done very closely. From what I understand, the way it worked was pretty unpopular. I expect there will be changes in the final version published in Secrets of Magic.

 

[Justice and Rule]

You check out the pathfinder forums on this site. That is where I get most of my information. If I get time I may look up some specific post buyt maybe @Campbell , @The-Magic-Sword , @Justice and Rule, @kenada could discuss the tactical and strategic benefits of PF2e game play.

... Ahahahahaha

Okay, so like 3 1/2 years ago I asked for advice/ideas on building a 5E Warlord on another board, and @EzekielRaiden basically ended up emailing me his general pitch that he gave only a few pages ago on how he would do it. It was a great idea (the Warlock is a pretty great chassis for the concept), though for me I was trying for something way, way more ambitious in trying to create a Fighter/Warlord class around a new framework that was basically built around class maneuvers, with three different subclasses:

• the Champion, who was the classic fighter and picked exclusively from combat maneuvers,
• the Warlord, who could pick from combat maneuvers and tactics maneuvers, but had to have a majority of their maneuvers be from tactics, and
• the Eldritch Knight, who could pick from combat maneuvers and combat magic, where they could mix their attacks with magical effects (with a similar split for combat maneuvers and combat magic)

There were basic maneuvers (basically martial cantrips) along with advanced maneuvers that spent their own resource, based around the Grit concept Matt Mercer created for his Gunslinger class. You could even regain grit in different ways, like a Warlord being able to regain grit from his friends killing creatures if they did it as a result of one of his tactics maneuvers. You could also spend more grit on certain maneuvers to buff their effects, like their range, damage, etc... it was complicated and weird and I loved trying to make it work. I would go back to it every few months and chart out another part of the class, and I think got to around half-finished with it.

Then, for reasons I can't fully remember, I ended up looking at the Pathfinder 2E Core Rulebook, and I basically said "Well, I wasted a whole lot of time on this."

Pathfinder 2E is basically what I've wanted to mod 5E for years. Weapons with traits, specific uses and advantages? Check. Skill system that makes having a skill valuable, has skill gradations and is relatively easy on the bookkeeping? Double check. Effective, scary martials with lots of combat options?

The character building is so clean and wonderful comparatively speaking: the system of getting "boosts" (+2 bonuses to an ability score) through ancestry, background, and class are just intuitive and allow for characters who are broadly stat'd out and feel generally competent. Ability scores are better balanced, with Dexterity no longer being a complete god-stat and characters gaining benefits from underused stats: there are reasons to have better Intelligence even if it isn't your primary, and there are a bunch of Charisma-based combat options that are available so that martials don't just look at it as a dump-stat. Also classes largely gate off their combat stuff, not their non-combat options: all skills are open to everyone, and most out-of-combat advantages are picked up via general feats accessible to everyone, which opens up character options quite a bit.

Like @The-Magic-Sword and @kenada have already said, combat is very tactical, focusing on gaining advantages through positioning or inflicting the right buffs/debuffs. There are a lot of options open to martial classes, and they helped by how proficiency is done: Since there are gradations and it's not just tied to level, Fighters end up being the class that is most likely to hit a target and (given how criticals work) the most likely to cause crits, while Champions (the Paladin equivalent) actually have an AC bonus bigger than other classes which makes them tankier in combat.

Spells are also much better balanced: generally speaking spells are less powerful, with the "Critical Succeed/Failure on a hit/miss by 10" helping creating a bigger spectrum for spell effects rather than "Save and be alright, fail and suck". Paralyze is a good example: it's the counterpart to the classic Hold Person, but only gets a multiple-round hold on a critical failure: on a regular failure you are paralyzed for a single round, while on a success you lose one of your next three actions. Spells are now generally less spectacular, but you're more likely to get something out of a spell.

Also to say something that you might be interested in that hasn't been mentioned: Pathfinder 2E's framework makes it way easier to homebrew things, particularly when it comes to archetypes (subclasses) and classes. The a la carte method for just about everything and how feats are generally meant to not be gamechangers but options that progress and customize you makes it much easier to build something without completely unbalancing it.

I will say there's nothing quite on the level of a lazylord here: the Marshal archetype (basically 4E's multiclass feats but also for prestige classes) has some similar options, but at higher levels. But nothing quite to the same level of granting attacks to other party members.

 

[JEB]

Anyone care to predict what additional subclasses might make it into the core rules of a 5.5/6E? Ones from existing 5e products I could easily see them adding:

• Cleric: Grave Domain (fills that "non-evil death god" niche)
• Rogue: Swashbuckler (reprinted twice, fairly popular, and a major genre archetype)
• Warlock: Hexblade (due to sheer popularity, unless they decide to integrate elements into the core warlock)

 

[cavalier973]

This may be in the 5e DM guide already, but I think that having a concrete, practical method for creating an adventure--specifically, a dungeon--should be included in the next iteration, like what is in the Moldvay/Mentzer Basic rules.

Creating a dungeon in Basic DnD has a very similar feel to creating a character, what with rolling for monsters, traps, and treasures to populate the dungeon. I created one for the first time for my kids not too long ago, and I found it very entertaining. You roll separately for each room, and stories about the dungeon emerged as you build. "Why are these monsters here? I rolled for a magic sword +1/+3 versus dragons; why is it in the toilet?" Etc.

Contra the Basic DnD philosophy, though, I think the first dungeon should be loaded with treasure and XP. Get the players to 2nd level as soon as possible. Then, slow the pace down.

The 4e core DMG had a method for randomly creating dungeons, rolling for different rooms and hallways, and using a stack of cards for monster encounters.

 

[cavalier973]

I also like the Dungeonworld method of world-creation: the DM designs the first town, but then the DM and players collaborate to create the world as they play.

Also, here is Matt Colville creating a dungeon:
It sort of gives an idea of what I think should be included in the DM guide.