D&D 5E What Single Thing Would You Eliminate

[AtomicPope]

elctro-magnetic pluse?

I think it was there to stop wizards just dominating everything.

Anti-magic is the relic of a bygone era. Wizards are not insanely powerful in 5e.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Anti-magic is the relic of a bygone era. Wizards are not insanely powerful in 5e.

the fighter is still behind in none just hit stuff areas.

 

[Manbearcat]

The mandate (and often requirement due to encounter balance + workday balance/resource refresh issues which were fundamentally designed into the game) for GMs to use Storyteller Force (which puts control of the trajectory of play squarely in the GM’s hands) to ensure “the fun/plot stays online.”

 

[DEFCON 1]

The one thing I'd eliminate is alignments for deities. I'm really just over the whole "Gods are like mortals with the same foibles and problems and attitudes" kind of thing. Death is not good or evil. It just is. The Sea is not good or evil, it just is. Darkness is not good or evil, it just is. Magic is not good or evil, it just is. So the deities the presides over these things should also not be good or evil either, at least as far as mortals see them and identify with them.

The idea that a good PC has to worship a known "evil" god merely because they lord over a domain the character finds important kinda sucks in my opinion. Likewise, there are plenty of domains that are considered "good" if for no other reason that the god that oversees it is "good", despite the fact that the domain itself has no morality attached to it whatsoever.

I much prefer the idea of the gods being inscrutable to mortal eyes, and that every domain should have parts of it that would be considered good and bad. Which would mean in turn the widening of portfolios, so that nobody who worships a god can be pointed at and screamed "EVIL!" based on nothing more than the extremely narrow portfolio that god has. Why have a God of Murder if everyone who wishes to worship that god has to keep it a secret in order to avoid persecution by society because only evil people worship a God of Murder? It's pointless. That's why we have devils and demons for the whole "secret cult in the basement" kind of thing.

Make deities unknowable to mortals and the portfolios they control wide enough to support lawful and chaotic, good and evil worshippers. That's my hope and wish for the future.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The one thing I'd eliminate is alignments for deities. I'm really just over the whole "Gods are like mortals with the same foibles and problems and attitudes" kind of thing. Death is not good or evil. It just is. The Sea is not good or evil, it just is. Darkness is not good or evil, it just is. Magic is not good or evil, it just is. So the deities the presides over these things should also not be good or evil either, at least as far as mortals see them and identify with them.

The idea that a good PC has to worship a known "evil" god merely because they lord over a domain the character finds important kinda sucks in my opinion. Likewise, there are plenty of domains that are considered "good" if for no other reason that the god that oversees it is "good", despite the fact that the domain itself has no morality attached to it whatsoever.

I much prefer the idea of the gods being inscrutable to mortal eyes, and that every domain should have parts of it that would be considered good and bad. Which would mean in turn the widening of portfolios, so that nobody who worships a god can be pointed at and screamed "EVIL!" based on nothing more than the extremely narrow portfolio that god has. Why have a God of Murder if everyone who wishes to worship that god has to keep it a secret in order to avoid persecution by society because only evil people worship a God of Murder? It's pointless. That's why we have devils and demons for the whole "secret cult in the basement" kind of thing.

Make deities unknowable to mortals and the portfolios they control wide enough to support lawful and chaotic, good and evil worshippers. That's my hope and wish for the future.

I thought of having this for a setting. any other wisdom?

 

[Reynard]

Make deities unknowable to mortals and the portfolios they control wide enough to support lawful and chaotic, good and evil worshippers. That's my hope and wish for the future.

That's a setting thing, though. In some settings, the "gods" are actually mortals that have acended due to their ingrained badassery. In other settings, there are NO gods at all. In others, they hang out on a magical mountain and sometime come down to start wars and nail hawt mortals. If anything, D&D should eliminate the assumption of what the gods are and are like in any given world.

This speaks to something seen in a lot of these responses, which is that D&D is seen as a toolkit of varying degrees of versatility by some people, and as a "metasetting" by others.

 

[Campbell]

5e's damage model. Mostly it's just not dynamic enough for my tastes. Bounded accuracy, loads of attacks, and very little damage per attack lead to very chippy very static feeling combat at higher levels.

 

[Manbearcat]

I would get rid of the daily encounter quota. Of course, that would require a complete re-working of encounter balance and creature design, but hey!

I feel like this was one of the primary issues that I constantly harped on during the 5e playtest/design phase (encounter balance issues and workday balance issues being fundamentally designed into the game and that the solution would be GM Force being required at either the encounter level or at the resource refresh rate level)!

And I remember a lot of folks constantly telling me "NAH, it'll be fine! You and your balance! Get outta here!"

 

[DEFCON 1]

That's a setting thing, though. In some settings, the "gods" are actually mortals that have acended due to their ingrained badassery. In other settings, there are NO gods at all. In others, they hang out on a magical mountain and sometime come down to start wars and nail hawt mortals. If anything, D&D should eliminate the assumption of what the gods are and are like in any given world.

This speaks to something seen in a lot of these responses, which is that D&D is seen as a toolkit of varying degrees of versatility by some people, and as a "metasetting" by others.

However you want to parse it is fine by me. I'd just like to eliminate the default that every god for every setting should have an alignment assigned to it. To me alignment (if we retained it) should be reserved as a morality descriptor for mortals. Deities should not be attributed the same way. We already have the issue of seeing other fantasy races as just "humans in rubber masks"... the last thing we want is to see gods merely as "humans that don't die". That removes the entire point of them being beings worthy of worship in my opinion.

 

[Reynard]

However you want to parse it is fine by me. I'd just like to eliminate the default that every god for every setting should have an alignment assigned to it. To me alignment (if we retained it) should be reserved as a morality descriptor for mortals. Deities should not be attributed the same way. We already have the issue of seeing other fantasy races as just "humans in rubber masks"... the last thing we want is to see gods merely as "humans that don't die". That removes the entire point of them being beings worthy of worship in my opinion.

Emphasis mine.

I feel exactly the opposite: alignment shouldn't have ANYTHING to do with a creature's personality or moral outlook. It should be a real force in the universe, as inexorable as Elemental Fire or Shadow. You alignment describes what cosmic morality sign you were born under, what forces have an interest in your fate, and where your soul is going to be drawn upon your death (if you are a mortal). The more tied to cosmic forces a being is (angels and demons, gods, etc...) the more powerful a hold alignment has on the being. The only thing that should determine how a PC acts ina given situation is the Player, but that doesn't mean Alignment can't be an interesting tool in play.