D&D (2024) What Should D&D 2024 Have Been +

[Corinnguard]

What do you wish D&D 2024 would have done that evidence says it isn't?

Where to even begin....?

 

[ART!]

1. Races as feats. More specifically, you choose race as normal, but they have no mechanical weight on their own. Instead, you get racial abilities bundled up into feats with, say, 1 major and 1 minor ability each. Multiple feats for each race, so not every dwarf has to be exactly the same. Each feat can be designated as [innate] or [cultural]. Taking the former means you are at least part descended from that race, while taking the latter means you were raised among them. Suggestion that 2 races can be taken from at most to avoid people trying to powergame a "fairy/orc/dwarf/demon that was raised among elves" hybrid. More feats that can be gained later for those that want to be the elfiest elf that ever elfed.

Yes, please!

This would do a lot for characters with mixed racial origins.

In every race I've designed that has innate spellcasting, I come up with a 3-5 cantrips, 3-5 1st-level spells, and 3-5 2nd-level spells - all themed around what I understand that race to be like in general - and the player chooses which one they want at the appropriate levels

 

[Corinnguard]

Races as feats. More specifically, you choose race as normal, but they have no mechanical weight on their own. Instead, you get racial abilities bundled up into feats with, say, 1 major and 1 minor ability each. Multiple feats for each race, so not every dwarf has to be exactly the same. Each feat can be designated as [innate] or [cultural]. Taking the former means you are at least part descended from that race, while taking the latter means you were raised among them. Suggestion that 2 races can be taken from at most to avoid people trying to powergame a "fairy/orc/dwarf/demon that was raised among elves" hybrid. More feats that can be gained later for those that want to be the elfiest elf that ever elfed.

Pathfinder 2nd edition already does something like this. What D&D 2024 needs is more species feats, not just for the current PHB species but for all of them.

 

[Pedantic]

So this is technically still possible, but I don't think it likely: More classes. Probably not in the core books, but I'd love to see just more new mechanical chassis to hang subclasses on, with different core shticks. That's something I'd like to see as a more normal thing for WotC to do in their splatbooks.

 

[Dustin Cooper]

You know what I wish they dealt with? The fact that this game is trying to allow both theater of the mind and grid based play with the exact same rules. Like it's functional for both, but the exact distances can become fiddly for theater of the mind, and I feel like they might have oversimplified some of the positioning stuff for map play to make the former form of play a bit easier.

It's quite possible to have more than one form of combat in a game and have it still be coherent. I'm running Sword World 2.5 now, and it has a simplified combat option where the players and enemies just have a front and back line, a standard combat mode where distances are along one dimension only, and an advanced combat where you get the full 2d map like you'd normally get out of these games. And it works fine and maintains a fairly consistent feel. D&D wouldn't have to do exactly that, but there's plenty of games that play similarly to modern D&D that have zones or more abstract distances that work much better for theater of the mind, and I feel like it's something D&D could implement.

Or hey, maybe they could throw caution to the wind and just design entirely around a theater of the mind assumption, completely disregarding tradition. Not sure if that would be for me, but it'd be more exciting than slight revisions to 5e.

 

[TiQuinn]

To be fair, I think there are also folks exhausted by the wholesale overhaul of editions. WotC wants to break the wheel.

I think with each edition up til 5th, players had reached a point of “exhaustion” with the rules. Either the way the game was being played changed and players wanted something the current edition wasn’t providing. Generally, it feels like this edition was being driven by a set timeframe (tick tock tick tock…50th anniversary approaching!) and a desire by the business side to upset the apple cart with a new set of books. I think they already tested if they could get people to buy all new core books just a year and a half ago, and decided they could do it again.

 

[Shardstone]

I think 5E is a game designed for modular sub-systems, but has not been supported as such. There should be cinematic and streamlined rules modules for everything from ships to spelljammers to fighting on battlefields to different kinds of skill challenges to audiences with powerful beings/rulers and more. Relying on the DM to handwave all of this instead of filing their adventures and splats with these paradigms is the greatest mistake of 5E and prevented it from being a truly top tier game (in my opinion). I'd have changed design direction in this way.

 

[Shardstone]

You know what I wish they dealt with? The fact that this game is trying to allow both theater of the mind and grid based play with the exact same rules. Like it's functional for both, but the exact distances can become fiddly for theater of the mind, and I feel like they might have oversimplified some of the positioning stuff for map play to make the former form of play a bit easier.

It's quite possible to have more than one form of combat in a game and have it still be coherent. I'm running Sword World 2.5 now, and it has a simplified combat option where the players and enemies just have a front and back line, a standard combat mode where distances are along one dimension only, and an advanced combat where you get the full 2d map like you'd normally get out of these games. And it works fine and maintains a fairly consistent feel. D&D wouldn't have to do exactly that, but there's plenty of games that play similarly to modern D&D that have zones or more abstract distances that work much better for theater of the mind, and I feel like it's something D&D could implement.

Or hey, maybe they could throw caution to the wind and just design entirely around a theater of the mind assumption, completely disregarding tradition. Not sure if that would be for me, but it'd be more exciting than slight revisions to 5e.

Zones would allow for physical props and make theater of the mind better. Big proponent for zone-based play.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think they already tested if they could get people to buy all new core books just a year and a half ago, and decided they could do it again.

Wait, what happened a year and a half ago?

 

[TiQuinn]

Wait, what happened a year and a half ago?

I may have my timetable wrong but wasn’t Monsters of the Multiverse part of a set that included a bunch of tweaks and updates?