D&D 5E What would 5E be like if the playtest's modularity promise was kept?

[Remathilis]

so what they said was undoable... and we know they tried... OR they gave up and changed direction OR they lied/mislead to get people to get into the system...

no one ever did something so no one ever should... an interesting take

I had a longer post, but the Internet ate it.

WotC has tried variants in the past. Attempts to move past the basics usually poll bad. Ergo, WotC has no reason to move past the basics, especially if they are selling well. I attribute no malice to WotC, they are giving "us" what we ask for.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

to make healing spells cost HD (or work off HD) you need to only print a 3-7 spells and have them be "optional instead of healing word use healing word*"

as for the ritual thing I would LOVE if they had an option to make all spells that take 1 minute or longer to cast just be a ritual.

I have to admit I was deeply stymied by 5E's completely stingy and inconsistent ritual spell list, coming in from 4E. Like, I expected loads of spells to be optionally ritual, and fact maybe 1/3rd of the ones I expected to be were. And it wasn't necessarily the ones most obviously ritual either.

And then the add insult to this by making the ritual caster Feat forces you to pick a spell list, rather than just offering a bunch of spells, and it's like, well, there's absolutely no balance between spell lists on this, and as noted, loads of 4E ritual spells aren't on any of the lists.

Like a lot of 5E ideas, it feels like they didn't really think it through, but just had to rush it for publication.

Of course 4E had similar issues - as the designers noted later Essentials is probably more like what 4E would have looked like if they weren't rushing and thus just AEDU'd everything to the max.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Essentials is probably more like what 4E would have looked like if they weren't rushing and thus just AEDU'd everything to the max.

Truly a bad future. Slayers and Knights instead of competent fighters... ~shiver~

 

[Oofta]

again... this is an intresting take, and instead of addressing my argument you are attacking me. Why do I matter? does the exact same argument from someone else make it more or less valid? do you know what everyone on these boards do for a living and/or know? do you address all arguments based on who the poster is?

and they said after some portion of that they COULD do the thing we are now talking about

every edition is more popular then the last... many editions make BROAD changes, therefore there is no reason to believe that a 6e that had broad changes would not sell better still... and that leaves us at the hypotheticals you keep wanting to thread cap...

okay so does that mean no one can ever say how or what they would change?

With any product, developers have to make decisions and compromises. They did the best they could and the game has been successful. They achieved their goals and then some.

So yes, I believe it's a quality product by definition of how commercial products should be judged. That, and I like the decisions they made. Apparently millions of people agree.

Have a good one.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Truly a bad future. Slayers and Knights instead of competent fighters... ~shiver~

To be fair I think they'd probably have included a more competent Fighter, and the Slayer/Knight thing was more what resulted from demands to dumb down the 4E Fighter.

Battlerage Vigour Fighters were absolutely awesome monsters though.

 

[Helldritch]

I joked back during next (and have since suggested for 6e) that you could mix 1e/2e type hp (much lower then 3e+) the front loading of said hp (like 4e) and have a 2e style wizard (prep spells per slot, no cantrips) and a 4e fighter (mark, encounter powers and daily powers) and a mix of 5e and 2e cleric (known spells based on spheres, but spell slots non prep, channel divinity) all work with the 3e skill system (spend skill pts class/cross class skills) bolted on to them. in a 5e game (the spells themselves being the 5e spells for the cleric and wizard)

edit: the closest we got was variant rest times

And it would have worked out a lot better.
The true redeeming quality of 5ed was and is Bounded accuracy. The rest is good. But BA is the true gem of this edition.

There were several attempts early to add modular rules to the game: psionics, mass combat, "Grayhawk" initiative, prestige classes. They always got rejected. Even now there is significant pushback to the background feats in Dragonlance. I don't blame WotC for scaling back on optional modular rules to occasional character creation options: the larger D&D community says it wants options but then blanches at every one that doesn't look like the PHB.

This is a factor to take into consideration. I am of the side of "If you want to discuss general, stick to the core 3 but if you want to discuss a specific book, then forget the core 3 and concentrate on the specific". And I got hosed quite often because of that.
But the DMG offers a lot of modularity that no other DMG ever did. The problem is that most people stop at the PHB and forget to read the DMG and what it offers.

It cuts both ways. Lots of people disliked Tasha's "options" because they felt WotC was dictating them rather than presenting an option. Imagine if they had printed the Greyhawk Initiative in Tasha's; people would be furious that WotC was changing the initiative rules on them!

Honestly, WotC ceded the ground on modular rules to 3pp like Level Up because any option they put in would be considered Core by the majority of players who would either demand to use it or rail how WotC was changing their game on them.

It's a no win situation

Yep. And unfortunately, the vast majority will not buy 3pp. They want "official books" like TCoE. But at the same time, TCoE is a book of power creep all along. A few ideas were good but a lot of it was not that great or got compared enough to the PHB to either scale down a bit. Seriously, there is a fighting style that give unarmed attack a base damage of 1d8... The monk players says thank you to make us feel even worse than we were... TCoE would have been much more appreciated if it had offered true remedies to classes/subclasses that needed them. Maybe the 5.5 will correct the mistakes. But I doubt it.

I was under the impression that the dislike came after Tasha's take on racial ability modifiers became the de facto standard in subsequent books, leaving people who preferred the older format with no option.

Yes and no. See my reply to @Remathilis above. The floating ASI was not well received from my part. But not because I do not want floating ASI but because I only want the +1 to be floating at most. They should have kept the fixed ASI but allowed floating as an option, not something from the get go. How do I use the new races if I do not know what stats should be the original +2/+1 be going?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Truly a bad future. Slayers and Knights instead of competent fighters... ~shiver~

I normally am agreeing with you but the knight and slayer were competent although a bit bland to play... the ruling that you could trade out a power strike for a different encounter power it played a bit better.

 

[James Gasik]

Truly a bad future. Slayers and Knights instead of competent fighters... ~shiver~

Hey, don't knock the Knight. I played one, and it was nice to basically have everything around me automatically marked every turn. Plus thanks to a few feats, if I hit you, you were slowed, and if I hit you while you were slowed, you were knocked prone. It was pretty effective (if a bit boring), but still lightyears better than a Battlemaster.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

still lightyears better than a Battlemaster.

a 3rd level slayer or knight is more interesting fun and capable then a 15th level battlemaster

 

[James Gasik]

a 3rd level slayer or knight is more interesting fun and capable then a 15th level battlemaster

Well yes, isn't that what I said? : )