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

[TwoSix]

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.

Sure. That's not the flavor of magic I would personally choose (I like casters to be fairly limited), but I can't argue with it as a valid preference of taste.

 

[Charlaquin]

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."

This was my main problem with 13A too. I also didn’t really like the escalation die at the time, though I don’t think I would mind it so much now.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

To be fair to 13th Age, only a few classes had powers like that (I think fighter was the main one).

Really, preference for randomness or player-choice driven events is very much a matter of personal psychology. Some people prefer games to be heavily skill-based, some people prefer larger doses of randomness.

 

[Charlaquin]

To be fair to 13th Age, only a few classes had powers like that (I think fighter was the main one).

Rogue used it a lot too IIRC.

 

[billd91]

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?

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.

Yeah, this was an area of 4e that really ground my gears. The idea that you obtained an external resource and all it did was catalyze your own internal resource? Terrible.
I get that they wanted to control healing resources better than 3e did, but the source of the problem in 3e was the wand making rules that enabled players to obtain dirt cheap wands of cure light wounds and always heal fully up between combats, not the fact that an external resource could give you healing.

 

[CleverNickName]

Did I miss an announcement? I can't find anything about a 5.5 Edition on WotC's website. Are we talking about the 5E Rules Expansion set?

(Serious question, not trolling)

 

[Stalker0]

I also didn’t really like the escalation die at the time, though I don’t think I would mind it so much now.

I think the escalation die concept would actually be a great addition to the core game. Besides just the narrative fun of "growing stronger during a fight" it also gives you a mechanical "broom".

With such a mechanic, you can increase the duration of fights on average (lets say from 5e's general 3 rounds to more like 4 rounds). But the escalation die keeps things moving, preventing fights from getting too long, as the longer they go the stronger the players get and the easier they can finish the job.

It also gives you a fun way to tailor fights. You can do things like the players racing towards the big bad while he completes the ritual...and when they get there they are "already at escalation 3". This gives players a way to be stronger against the BBEG when its narratively cool and fun while not just having "moar power" all the time.

 

[Stalker0]

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.

So in a nutshell:

1) All Encounter Power returned with a very short rest.... ensures that the strength and tempo of fights stays consistent regardless of fights per day.

2) Heavy resource drain model.... ensures that the players are expected to use their abilities in each fight but then withdraw to recover. Aka the strength of the party is still consistent under the assumption that fights are rare and resting frequent.

I think both have their merits. It generally means that on average, the expected party's "power level" is roughly consistent regardless of encounter type. The first one allows the players to repeat that multiple times a day (unless the DM intervenes through some mechanical tool used on rest). In the second, players are assumed to fight and then rest....with the notion that continuing to push forward constitutes a strong reduction in overall party strength and would represent "special circumstances".

 

[RangerWickett]

The design I went with for my homebrew system to try to balance "cool magic" and "one-shotting a PC or BBEG sucks" was to implement saves.

A save was an ability that could be used once per encounter to downgrade a crit to a hit, a hit to a miss, or a miss to a mishap. I was using a PF2-style four-level success system, where people had passive defense scores, and the attacker rolled, even for spells and traps and such.

There were a variety of saves, each of which would both give you defense and provide some boost on your next round, so that you had an incentive to wait to use them at the opportune moment. For instance, the Basic Reflex save would downgrade an attack, then let you make a combat maneuver against your attacker (grab, trip, shove, disarm, etc). The Basic Will save would downgrade an attack and then grant you a round of immunity from mind-affecting effects, giving you a moment of lucidity.

Each PC would get saves from their class or feats or magic items or whatever, but you could only have a limited number primed at a time. Whenever you finished a short rest, you'd choose which saves you had ready going forward.

The bonus effect was that higher-level martial saves created nice cinematic moments where the hero parried a perilous attack and turned the tide. There was lots of "downgrade an attack and force your attacker to move 10 feet, with you following" which was the first time I got that lovely Princess Bride "chatty duelists"-style movement across a battlefield.

 

[darjr]

Did I miss an announcement? I can't find anything about a 5.5 Edition on WotC's website. Are we talking about the 5E Rules Expansion set?

(Serious question, not trolling)

They are revising the core rulebooks. Calling it a revision of this editions core books. But ya know, 5.5 and 6e and what not. It probably doesn’t matter what they call it but how backwards compatible it really is. And to some that doesn’t matter either, a new core set IS a new edition to them. Which I get too.