D&D (2024) 4e design in 5.5e ?

[Lanefan]

That is how 5e uses saving throws in most cases... Duration is fixed and you can escape depending on your ability to withstand.
And actually this is how saving throws in 5.5 should be used.
Effects that kill/disable with a single saving throw actually don't fit into 5e. They should all be changed to at least 2 or 3 saving throws. Death saves as you say is a good idea, as well as stone to flesh.

I'm nastier as a DM and thus much prefer to get it over with. Even a three-save system could be concatenated into rolling a single save with double-advantage (i.e. roll 3d20 and take the best).

Another factor is how difficult those saves are to make. On a single-save system, if you only need to roll a 4 to succeed your odds are pretty good. But on a 3-save system where you need to roll a 17 the odds aren't great even though you get three tries at it.

1st saving throw: minor effect, second: major effect: third: potential kill.

Dominate monster or polymorph could easily work that way.

Dominate:
1st: charmed
2nd: confused
3rd: dominated

Polymorph:
First: incapacitated
Second: stunned
Third: polymorphed

And those spell should at least require concentration or even a bonus action to keep up until the full effect takes place.

I like this except for the last line. Spells like polymorph should all be fire-and-forget, such that after casting it on one foe I can cast it again on another foe next round, meanwhile my first victim is still making saves.

Dominate's a different beast; in that after dominating someone you then have to spend at least some effort in telling it what to do. Here the three-round idea makes sense, even if not the three-saves.

 

[Lanefan]

I also would be interested to see a return to the 5 minute rest concept, though I think that is too big a change for what they are considering.

Dnd's current model is "steadily drain away resources until encounters are actually a threat". I would rather it be "characters are consistently strong....until the story says their not"

And here's another philosophical difference: I'd rather the resource-drain model be intensified, such that not only are resources drained but they're also hard to recover quickly. This intentionally and frequently forces parties into choosing whether to press on while weakened or retreat and rest up - while giving the enemy time to do the same.

 

[TwoSix]

I like this except for the last line. Spells like polymorph should all be fire-and-forget, such that after casting it on one foe I can cast it again on another foe next round, meanwhile my first victim is still making saves.

I think it depends on the narrative you want the spell to present. A 3 round polymorph suggests a longer transformation and a bit more of a body-horror element. Instantaneous polymorph is more WoW flavor (Baaa!), and gives more of a spiritual or a trickster vibe.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The very big difference is how healing surges were THE pacing mechanism for 4e and how hit dice have very little to no impact on pacing in 5e. Running low on hit dice isn't really much of a concern in 5e, whereas it was the signal to look for an extended rest in 4e. Prior to this, you were fine in 4e to continue pressing. This alone makes a huge difference between healing surges and hit dice -- they serve as a fundamental part of the structure of 4e throughout and in 5e they're there alright.

One thing I'll say regarding this (and which may be why there seems to be a disparity between those who found use with healing surges and those who didn't) is that I know personally in the 4E games I ran that I don't believe there was ever a time when a party ran low (let alone out) of healing surges before taking extended rests. So there was never any pacing to come out of them, and there was never a question of "pressing on" or not. I know for our tables, the number of healing surges a character had never came up, because the party would take rests based on narrative concerns... and that usually meant after just one or two combats in a day.

Now obviously this entirely comes out of how any particular DM runs their game, which is why some probably found them great, and some never got the appeal. If surges being a pacing mechanic never actually got used in that way (like they never were for me), of course that DM wouldn't see the use others do, and might very well just make the equivalency between the HS and the HD. "You have a fight, you spend some HS/HD, you get back some hit points, you then continue with your day until it's time to sleep."

So at the end of the day, it's not anything that will be able to be shown to someone else who doesn't agree with you, because their experiences with them were different and no amount of explanation is going to make it clear.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not sure I see what the benefit is -- why can't I trip every attack? Because I didn't roll high enough on this table? How is that functionally different from you don't have any more uses of the trip ability until you rest?

The narration on this is trivially easy - because on this particular attack you couldn't reach your foe's foot or other point of balance. Maybe on your next attack you'll be able to reach it, and thus try tripping again; or maybe not.

This is where a % chance each time rather than a hard limit per day makes loads of sense.

 

[Charlaquin]

So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful? What is that supposed to represent in the fiction? Are healing potions just glasses of water?

So, first of all, 4e fully embraced the abstract nature of hit points. Most hit point damage was assumed to be luck/morale/energy/divine favor/whatever rather than actual physical injury. The only thresholds that mattered were Bloodied (which meant showing visible but largely superficial signs of wear like cuts and bruises), and 0 HP which meant unconscious and possibly dying - technically this is how 5e says to narrate hit point loss as well, but in 4e, many mechanics actually relied on this narrative. Which incidentally is one of the reasons I say it is objectively not true that the fluff didn’t matter - it very much did matter, to the point that some fluff couldn’t be ignored… which was a problem for folks who prefer “HP as meat.”

Now, keeping in mind this model of narrating HP loss, this means healing magic doesn’t fuse broken bones and knit open wounds. It restores your stamina, energy, resolve, will to fight, etc. And once we accept that, it’s pretty trivial to accept that you have a limited reserve of such willpower, and that past a certain point, no amount of magic is going to help. You’re just plain tapped out for the day.

To me, that seems too transparent as other people are saying, in that the game is very obviously telling you that you will have access to X amt of healing and no more, because it does not want encounters to become unbalanced. Whereas in basic/AD&D, doing things to unbalance encounters (say, hoarding healing potions) was the objective.

It is definitely transparent. To me, that’s an unambiguously good thing.I want to understand what the rules are doing and why they’re doing it, and in 4e, that was always abundantly clear. And personally I think that’s the true source behind all this “dissociated mechanics” nonsense. 4e pulled back the curtain and showed the gameplay purpose the rules served, rather than pretending the rules existed primarily to model the fiction. A lot of folks didn’t like that (though for the life of me I’ll never understand why), and “dissociative mechanics” is what came out of their attempts to articulate that.

 

[Lanefan]

I think it depends on the narrative you want the spell to present. A 3 round polymorph suggests a longer transformation and a bit more of a body-horror element. Instantaneous polymorph is more WoW flavor (Baaa!), and gives more of a spiritual or a trickster vibe.

I think you misread me - or, more likely, I wasn't clear.

I don't mind the polymorph taking three rounds for the transformation to happen, with the victim getting a chance each round to shrug it off. I just don't think the caster should have to do anything more to keep it going once the spell has resolved.

Put another way, as caster I should be able to cast three polymorphs* in three rounds and, if I'm lucky, have three victims in various stages of transformation all at once; then walk away from the lot without another thought and let the spells run on their own.

* - assuming I have them prepped or memorized or whatever, of course.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That's...actually kind of interesting. While gated behind a die roll, it represents chance opportunities in the chaos of combat. If it were in addition to abilities you can use when you want, it would be a fun addition!

It is interesting. 13th Age did basically a hybrid approach. You had special abiltiies, but your dice roll determined which one you could use. We only briefly played it, IIRC, but the verdict for us was - it was too random what you could do in a given turn, and you didn't even know what it would be before you rolled. That makes tactical play... difficult. Not in the sense of "a nice challenge" but in the sense of "I am not really in control of what my character is attempting to do."
You might be correct that having a mix of "regular" abilities and a mix of random abilities might be better. If you find (or make) a game that does it, I'd love to try, I think.

 

[RangerWickett]

I would be happy if the updated version of 5e added more interesting monster abilities which harkens back to some of 4e monster design.

I also hope they take another crack at skill challenges. It never quite worked as written at most tables, but they were very close to nailing that concept down.

(Pardon the 6-page-too-late response.)

I devised a system to use 'skill challenge' style mechanics for "Secret Missions" in the upcoming Adventures in ZEITGEIST book (which I think will be coming out for Level Up near the end of this year or early next year). You'd use this mechanic for things like Mission: Impossible spycraft montages, especially in situations when the PCs would be split up. It speeds up the resolution of those scenes and lets you get to the parts where the whole party is together.

The basic gist is that there are three phases, one for the Narrator, two for the players:

1. Design the Mission.
The Narrator comes up with a list of obstacles (at least two, and no more than the number of PCs). Some obstacles may be known, others may be hidden.

2. Before the Mission.
Each PC gets to provide one effort. The player narrates what they're doing and makes a check to try to either surveil or prepare. The Narrator sets the DC based on how good the match of plan and skill is for the particular situation.

Surveilling can discover hidden obstacles and grant advantage to another character's check to actually overcome the obstacle. If you fail, you provide no benefit, and might miss something important.

Preparing attempts to overcome an obstacle before the mission even starts. You roll in secret, so you won't know whether you succeeded until in the middle of the mission.

3. During the Mission.
For each obstacle, the party chooses one PC to provide an effort to overcome it. Sometimes a situation might have multiple characters working simultaneously (like something out of Ocean's 11). Other times there might be only one person going point (like Mission Impossible).

The PC narrates what they're doing and makes a skill check. Previous surveillance might grant advantage. Previous preparation might overcome the obstacle without needing to make a check. If you succeed, great. If you fail, you can come up with a different plan and make a new check, increasing the DC by 5. If you fail that second time, you suffer a complication, which might be a quick fight, a trap causing damage, you leaving a clue that'll let someone identify you later, or something else. If you cannot deal with the complication, the mission fails.

---

This framework could work with spycraft, but also with stuff like "fortifying a town for a siege" or "acquiring components for a curse-breaking ritual" or "arranging a peace treaty" or "throwing a really nice surprise party."

It's important to keep the DCs pretty low (usually 8 + proficiency bonus), and to not call for multiple rolls to deal with a given obstacle, so that the laws of probability don't make failure a near certainty.

There's more to it than that, but I think it gets the job done for 5e-style game complexity.

 

[Charlaquin]

One thing I'll say regarding this (and which may be why there seems to be a disparity between those who found use with healing surges and those who didn't) is that I know personally in the 4E games I ran that I don't believe there was ever a time when a party ran low (let alone out) of healing surges before taking extended rests. So there was never any pacing to come out of them, and there was never a question of "pressing on" or not. I know for our tables, the number of healing surges a character had never came up, because the party would take rests based on narrative concerns... and that usually meant after just one or two combats in a day.

Now obviously this entirely comes out of how any particular DM runs their game, which is why some probably found them great, and some never got the appeal. If surges being a pacing mechanic never actually got used in that way (like they never were for me), of course that DM wouldn't see the use others do, and might very well just make the equivalency between the HS and the HD. "You have a fight, you spend some HS/HD, you get back some hit points, you then continue with your day until it's time to sleep."

So at the end of the day, it's not anything that will be able to be shown to someone else who doesn't agree with you, because their experiences with them were different and no amount of explanation is going to make it clear.

I don’t know, it sounds to me like you at least understand their function as a pacing mechanic in theory, even if you never experienced it personally.