D&D 5E (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[Incenjucar]

And thus, folks, was made the most significant mathematical discovery in the history of roleplaying:

5.512024 is D&D's version of pi.

Hopefully to be launched with an ORC and Pi adventure.

 

[TwoSix]

If the dungeon generates 5,000 g.p. each in treasure and the Fighters and Thieves each get to keep all of their share while the Clerics and Mages have to plow 3,000 of it back in along the way just to keep themselves going, that ain't gonna fly.

And if the party as a whole foots the bills to keep the casters going then nothing changes except there's a big reduction in the overall amount of treasure to divide at the end of the adventure, which isn't - I don't think - the problem you're trying to solve here.

To be clear, this isn't something you simply staple onto existing class structures. You have to build the classes up around this premise, ideally creating new narratives around the caster classes, and adjust other subsystems to accommodate it. Primarily, adjust treasure tables so that a lot of potions and scrolls become magical reagents that only the casters utilize.

Having only fighters and thieves allows resources to be expended on making the fighters and thieves slightly more competent, but they'll always lack the "Oh, crap" abilities that casters provide.

Simply saying "Mr. Mage, your fireball costs 20 gp now" would be, frankly, a stupid way to implement it.

I'm not sold on this premise. That said, what was once a major in-game cost of recharging abilities (where such includes hit points) has been eroded significantly in 4e-5e: time. You get all your h.p. back overnight and even if you don't, there's way more healing available than once was the case.

Sure the casters might get all their spells back overnight but if the Fighter's still only at 6 h.p. out of 40 you're not going anywhere until she's cured up, which in theory should put a nice dent in your healer's spells for today. Can you afford to rest another day to refill the healer?

I think "afford" in that last sentence is the really interesting question here. What is the net game effect of taking time to complete the dungeon/exploration/what have you? What does it cost?

The "resource to recharge" model needs to be paired with site design that makes the rewards proportional to the risk, and doing 5MWD stuff means that you'll lose out on the best rewards. One of the main points of "resource to recharge" is to make doing a 5MWD challenging in the fiction.

Slow HP recharge, but the presence of a cleric just turns a one-day break into two isn't strong enough for what I'm looking for.

In a way they already do that when buying or claiming magic items that make them better at what they do; this puts that model far more up-front and, as I noted earlier, risks making the whole thing become very treadmill-y. It also presupposes you-as-DM are always going to seed enough treasure into each adventure to make this model viable.

I guess? To me, having a game where smart/lucky play puts you ahead and unlucky/unskilled play puts you behind just kind of makes sense, and hits the play priorities I enjoy in these sort of games. I mean, I guess I could call a game where you progress no matter what you do a "conveyer belt" as a comparison. Is that better or worse than a "treadmill"?

And again, it's not like the party will somehow get stuck if they're flat broke. The casters still have some class abilities, and the warrior types can still fight. You're just down 90% of your healing and a bunch of the "oh crap" buttons casters normally provide.

What would increase, in my game anyway, is casters' vulnerability if all their "spells" are in fact stored in devices that are at risk of being destroyed with some bad luck. And Dispel Magic just became the go-to means of ruining a caster's week (I still have it as area-effect rather than targeted); it couldn't affect a caster's available-to-cast slots in any edition but if it can hammer their device-stored spells, they're hosed.

I mean, I'm already overhauling classes and magic item tables, I would probably also houserule a spell that breaks the entire magic paradigm I put in the game.

 

[tetrasodium]

Sure the casters might get all their spells back overnight but if the Fighter's still only at 6 h.p. out of 40 you're not going anywhere until she's cured up, which in theory should put a nice dent in your healer's spells for today. Can you afford to rest another day to refill the healer?

This reminds me of a point that I often find myself wondering when people grouse about the old pre-4e hp recovery rates while pointing at spell slot recovery rates. The incongruity with how people not playing a video game actually played is just too hard to ignore the question of if the ly actually played it at a table with dice and other people. The teamwork was pretty much all Ripley all the time for everyone with each class using their strengths to cover for and protect whoever was squealing in fright because a wraith rust monster kobold or skeleton was chasing their bud. The kind of "I got mine" play style/mindset 5e offers builds like short rest nova classes just never happened back then like it does now.

 

[jayoungr]

I always find it's better for a game to be constrained at its base, and then expandable via options. It's trivial to add recharging and permanent magic to PCs via magic items and boons.

My main objection is what this does to the fiction and the range of fictional options. I want rules that give me maximum story design freedom.

Because many players will risk the low percentage chance of character death to fight and progress the adventure.

The percentage chance of character death is kind of up to me, as the DM, no?

A far fewer number of players will risk that same fight, knowing it will cost them a magic item or enough gold to buy one, just to be able to have a chance to save the halflings. Those are the ones that are truly dedicated to roleplaying their character as heroic and altruistic.

Ah, so you're talking about whether the players are altruistic. I don't care as much about the virtue in my players' souls; I just want to be able to pitch a wide variety of stories without being met by "Nah, not doing that one, there's not enough treasure to fuel our wizard."

 

[TwoSix]

My main objection is what this does to the fiction and the range of fictional options. I want rules that give me maximum story design freedom.

I think any encoded magic system is going to restrict some narratives and empower others. The core D&D magic system is also fairly restricted to a certain subset of stories.

The percentage chance of character death is kind of up to me, as the DM, no?

Sure? Not sure it's particularly salient, but you're not wrong.

Ah, so you're talking about whether the players are altruistic. I don't care as much about the virtue in my players' souls; I just want to be able to pitch a wide variety of stories without being met by "Nah, not doing that one, there's not enough treasure to fuel our wizard."

How would choosing to help fictional halflings make the players altruistic?

I guess I don't see the restriction you're seeing. It helps that I've run games this way, whereas I'm trying to describe something that to me seems very clearcut but other people don't have much experience with. But players, IMX, are going to assume that as a DM, you're going to make the hooks you present worth their while.

 

[Mistwell]

If the goal was to actually fix 5E, they would eliminate the long rest/short rest issue. Everyone would have the same pools, conceptually, geared toward their class fantasies.

Oops, I accidentally invented 4E.

 

[MoonSong]

I don't think this paradigm would particularly appeal to your interests; your posts over the years generally lead me to believe you favor character-focused neotrad and narrative play over classic-style play. (If my read of your interests is wrong, I apologize.)

Your love of the sorcerer concept with its innate well of magic would certainly painfully contradict with the paradigm I'm suggesting.

I reacted bcause you noticed. However notice that your suggestion deliberately excludes a character concept, and makes playstyles harder or impossible. Which can be felt as a giant "I don't want the likes of you in my table" so not very nice.

 

[Zardnaar]

Tbh if ibe was incorporating 4E elements I woukd dump AEDU.

Keep the AE part or have every class short rest based. 10 levels.

Assuming I wanted a mechanically better game that wasn't D&D. I wouldn't do it as WotC D&D is its own thing now with its own expectations.

 

[Mistwell]

Tbh if ibe was incorporating 4E elements I woukd dump AEDU.

Keep the AE part or have every class short rest based. 10 levels.

Assuming I wanted a mechanically better game that wasn't D&D. I wouldn't do it as WotC D&D is its own thing now with its own expectations.

Just to be clear I liked a lot of aspects of 4e and had fun playing it for years. Combat took too long for me, but that was my only major complaint and I think it's unfairly maligned. Particularly some of the sourcebooks and adventures.

 

[Yaarel]

This is the weak part of your argument. You claim combat encounters are the main way to deplete resources, and therefore imply that only combat encounters matter and only combat encounters need to be attended to.

And since the solution needs to address resource attrition, combat encounters are the primary resource usage and need to be weighed much more heavily than anything else.

However, if players are leveling up by means of social encounters, then it doesnt matter if combat resources are being depleted or not. They remain unused or trivial. Relatedly, combat resources are combat resources, they dont need to be depleted if players are leveling up without them by various noncombat encounters. Combat resources become irrelevant.


Your next concern I agree with. It is the number of combat encounters that matters when addressing the class balance − at combat.

However, that doesn't address how fewer encounters affect the balance between classes.

... number of encounters affects at-will and long-rest-recovery classes differently.

"Less rounds throws off balance between classes"
There are two very different aspects that need to be met by number of encounters per day.

One of them is challenge. And yes, you can have fewer, deadlier encounters and reach your goals for this. ...

The other one is balance between the at-will classes like rogue or the EB-focused warlock, and the long-rest recovery classes like full casters plus hybrids like the barbarian or the paladin.

If you took your average full caster and took away all slots, they would be less effective on average than at-will classes like the rogue. At-will > cantrip. (This doesn't include EB boosted with invocations.)

On the other hand, if you gave casters unlimited of their highest level slots, they would do more than at-will characters. A fireball with multiple opponents, etc. Slots of the highest few levels > at-will.

Putting them together, we get, in generic terms for the average character:

Slots of the highest few levels > at-will > cantrip

So in order to balance these, we need some number of spells cast using highest level slots, and some cantrips or low-impact spells (like 1st level offensive spells in T2+). Some above and some below will average out to the same as an at-will.

...

If an encounter is 3-4 rounds and you can a spell lasting 1 minute, you only get 3-4 rounds of it at most. But if the combat lasts 9 rounds, then you are getting 2-3 times the effect from the same slot and the same action. It's more powerful. So you need to offset it with even more rounds of lower than at-will efficiency.

...

To sum up:

1. Can balance danger and challenge in fewer encounters by having tougher encounters.

2. Need to have more total rounds fighting in fewer encounters that all of the more encounters in order to maintain balance between classes.

And that second one does not often get met. Fewer encounters per day is usually fewer total rounds then if we did all of the encounters per day, and that definitely is mathematically biased in terms of the long-rest-recovery classes like casters as well as a big boost for hybrids like the barbarian and the paladin.

The above I agree with. The number of encounters and the length of each encounter matter when calculating the average combat balance between class.

Leave that to the DM.

Yes, the DM needs to adjudicated the level of the combat threat against the party. It is important to mix the levels of combat threats. I will discuss why below.

A trivial encounter may not count at all, while a drop-dead all-out might count for multiple.

Sure. At the same time, I feel even a trivial encounter is worth ½ encounter − even if just for the sake of how much time it takes to play the game. Meanwhile, if a near-TPK is worth 2 encounters, what is the point of awarding 3 encounters if no survives to receive it. Plus at certain point, they really do need to flee and might be foolish if they dont do it, unless perhaps there is some greater than life ethics to remain in a doomed fight.

The 13th Age solution with 4 combat encounters per full-heal-up explicitly gives the DM that judgement. (13th Age grants less daily powers for the characters at all levels, it's calibrated around 4 encounters, unlike D&D 5e).

I wish every caster in 5e was using the Warlock schedule of fewer spells at a time that refresh per rest. At that point, the Fighter too has features that are per rest. It suddenly becomes easy to balance everything.


Back to the earlier point. I agree, counting encounters is how to balance combat when comparing classes. However, whether this matters or not changes.

We are at a level that requires 15 encounters to advance to the next level. Compare the possibilities.
• 4 trivial combat encounters and 13 noncombat encounters
• 8 solid combat encounters and 7 noncombat encounters
• 15 solid combat encounters

The first possibility doesnt care about combat. These are old school "roleplayers" who enjoy the method acting, the puzzlers, the ones working on their ambitious projects, the gameworld immersion. For them, counting the encounters is the best, because they play D&D the way they enjoy it, and level up at a satisfying pace, at the same rate as combat players.

The midway possibility is the concern. It depends how the noncombat encounters intersperse. Say 4 solid combat encounters happen before the players refresh. Likely the per day casters are unloading their heavy magic and shining, while the Fighters are fresh and tough but dont get to show off their staying power. Even so, this is how 2014 is now already. Meanwhile all the players are participating in meaningful and rewarding noncombat encounters, and shining variously in noncombat ways. So even here there is an improvement.

In the total combat game, counting 15 encounters works better than ever. The math is perfect. The theoretical balance is actualizing.


In every possibility, counting encounters works better and in many cases perfectly. As I mentioned, I have been counting encounters for a while. It works well. I have seen no problems. All players have chance to shine (often by saving each other).


Even in the midway possibility, it matters when there is a combat encounter that is "too" powerful, that the players should run from. When combated, these too-tough threats tend to last many rounds before the players realize the predicament they are in. The per-day casters tend to unload their best spells. The combat resources deplete. The Fighters are starting to shine. Sometimes the players surprise, by taking out the threat. Then they really deserve the extra encounter. What happens next is the combat encounter after this. Then the casters enter it vulnerably dealing cantrips without heavy magic. The Fighters are shining. And this is happening within only three or four combat encounters.


Counting encounters helps in many ways, and is better than xp and milestones,.