Parmandur
Book-Friend
Yup. Apparently, they were quite overwhelmed writing the DMG for a deadline, and organization is where they cut corners. The 2024 revision I expect will be majorly focused on user friendliness.
D&D 5E Some Gems I Have Forgotten In The DMG
One hopes. I also wouldn't be surprised to see some or all of the DM material in Xanathar's and Tasha's merged in as well. (And it would be nice to see some of the sub-systems from specific adventures, too, like the hexcrawl rules from Tomb of Annihilation.)
Tales and Chronicles
Jewel of the North, formerly know as vincegetorix
Yeah, I wish they buff the explorations rules a little by merging the hexcrawl of ToA and all the exploration rules that are currently split across the PHB and the DMG, with maybe the encounters by region of XGtE.
Something like this:
Exploration
- Speed of travel/distances (sidebar: mounts)
- Weather and environmental effects (from regular challenges to planar effects)
- Roles while travelling and their effect.
- Attrition: how to pace encounters in long exploration sequences. Healing variant rules.
- The environment types: coastal, forest, arctic etc
- Encounter tables per region.
Social
- Factions and questgivers
- Creating a vilain/NPC tables
- Social challenges DC with starting reaction roll
- Loyalty
- Renown and Faith
- Downtime activities
Battle
- Handling mobs, mythic trait and legendary creatures
- Optional traits/template to add to a creature to make it beefier.
- Morale (sidebar variant: system shock, lingering injuries)
- Creature workshop: CR and encounter building
Delve
- Items/magic items (sidebar variant: speed factor, new weapons)
- Damaging items and structures
- Random dungeon building and world-building.
Magic
- Schools of magic
- Scroll/potion mishaps
- low magic variant (different spell progression or ritual rules)
Removed are: Sanity and Honor rules, madness rules, etc
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doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Huh. My experience is that 5e DMs are very open to variant rules, everywhere but places like this where a lot of the more balance and RAW focused types socialize.Bolded bit: Because it's a 4e-ism.
Like I'm pretty sure that's the reason for a significant chunk of people. The rest probably just don't know it's there, or don't consider using it because, in my experience, 5e DMs are not actually that favorable to variant rules or experimentation. (Unless it's experimentation they personally created--that's always 100% fine.)
Also I don’t know what’s eyeroll worthy about not wanting to use variant rules in general but making some of your own. You know your DMing strengths and weaknesses better than Jeremy Crawford does.
teitan
Legend
I doubt that’s it because most players today haven’t played 4e and came to the game in 5e. I really think it’s this culture of “the DMG isn’t necessary” that social media influencers have pushed in the current era along. Also because most streaming shows don’t use a lot of the optional rules in the DMG but seem to use all of them from the PHB.Bolded bit: Because it's a 4e-ism.
Like I'm pretty sure that's the reason for a significant chunk of people. The rest probably just don't know it's there, or don't consider using it because, in my experience, 5e DMs are not actually that favorable to variant rules or experimentation. (Unless it's experimentation they personally created--that's always 100% fine.
teitan
Legend
While it would be nice I think the emphasis will be on bringing in the naval and vehicle rules from the modules since they are focused on backwards compatible and those rules are only available in adventure books and not the rules expansions. With the gift set I think they’re signally that they won’t be superseding those since MotM is supposed to be forward compatible with revised.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
The eyeroll is for the (IME extremely common) attitude where anything "optional" is derided for being optional (and God forbid you suggest anything homebrew)....but literally anything, anything whatsoever, no matter how tenuous or untested, that the DM personally comes up with is utterly beyond reproach.
Like I have straight-up had people, here and elsewhere, tell me that official variants are bad because they change things...and then also (separately) say that they personally change things. In other words, their behavior calls into question their alleged principles, and instead makes their opposition look capricious (on top of making it look like they are either in denial about their bias, or aware of it but trying to keep it hidden.)
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
This comes across like you’re maybe a bit too into trying to judge people’s motivations for liking and disliking things…
Why do you care?
Swarmkeeper
Hero
How many DMs have you played with in the last few years and how many of those deride the variant/optional rules? Not doubting that you do encounter it, I just think "extremely common" is... a bit of hyperbole.
Not at all defending the DMs you've encountered, but I do think there is a big difference between player-sided homebrew for their personal character and the stuff a DM introduces into a campaign to provide a fun, challenging experience for all.
In any case, it sounds like maybe you're experiencing some bad faith DMing. Sorry for that.
I can't say I've seen that here on ENWorld but, then again, I skim quite a bit when I see particular names that often bring a lot of negativity to conversations - so perhaps I've selectively missed such posts.
For our table, I prefer sticking as much as possible to the official WotC rulebooks - including many (but certainly not all) of the variant/optional rules. Easiest way for our group to maintain consistency about what to expect. I do reserve the right to tweak monsters, traps, treasure as I see fit to make for an enjoyable, fresh, and varied experience for the group, though.
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