D&D 5E Advanced D&D or "what to minimally fix in 5E?"

[CapnZapp]

this sounds exactly like Tales of the Valiant to me. They didn't make a new game when searching for a better 5e- they just made a slightly different 5e with redone classes.

I googled that game and it took me all of 5 seconds to understand this is a complete game of its own. It isn't 5th Edition.

What makes everyone do that?* What's so hard about wanting to keep playing 5E, just with the most egregious bugbears fixed?

*) Obviously I know the answer to that question: the things that sell are the core rulebooks, so everybody wants to publish their own PHB. But this isn't about making money or competing with WotC, this is about being able to play 5th edition just without its most frustrating weaknesses.

Furthermore, it's Kobold Press, so I can certainly understand them wanting to break away from d20 after the OGL debacle. But for the purposes of this thread, please ignore WotC's disastrous approach and assume we want to stick as close to 5E as possible... in fact, so close, the game clearly remains 5E.

 

[Distracted DM]

I googled that game and it took me all of 5 seconds to understand this is a complete game of its own. It isn't 5th Edition.

What makes you say that?

 

[Corinnguard]

What's so hard about wanting to keep playing 5E, just with the most egregious bugbears fixed?

The problem is that if anyone, another RPG company or a homebrewer, tries to fix those egregious bugbears for everyone, you then declare that their work isn't 5th edition. Kobold Press came out with Tales of the Valiant, a 5e adjacent RPG and you immediately declare without really looking at it that it isn't 5th edition.

Every DM runs their 5e game differently than their neighbors. They come up with their own house rules when they aren't sure about or don't like a particular rule from one of the official books. They go by their own script when running an official adventure such as Tyranny of Dragons or Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus. Or if they are sticking to the official script in the adventure books, they might be using the game mechanics found in Kobold Press' Tales of the Valiant, or EN Publishing's Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition instead of the mechanics found in 5e. But that's okay because those two RPGs use the 5e chassis. They still play like 5e. But they went about fixing some of those egregious bugbears in their own way.

So, are all of those other DMs and those 5e adjacent RPGs doing it wrong in your opinion?

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Could be. Not familiar with their work. "Greatly increase player options but doesn't fundamentally change 5e" is right on the spot though!

Well, check it out and do tell if it's the right direction

 

[Aldarc]

5e with "minimal fixes" are basically just 5e fantasy heartbreakers.

 

[Minigiant]

- History becomes Lore and you use it for any knowledge your character might know from background, class or race. If it's out of your wheelhouse of experience, inflict disadvantage or change the DC.

That might be a great idea for a standard DC for 5e

Skill	DC 20 check
Athletics	Double your jump distance
Acrobatics
Sleight of Hand
Slealth
Arcane
History	Recall an obscure fact about your background, species, or class.
Investigation
Nature	Harvest a dose of poison from a poisonous creature
Religion
Animal Handling
Insight
Medicine
Perception
Survival
Deception
Intimidation
Performance
Persuasion

 

[der_kluge]

I googled that game and it took me all of 5 seconds to understand this is a complete game of its own. It isn't 5th Edition.

I played in a TotV game at a recent convention. I sat down, all excited to learn one of the new 5e replacement systems, and the GM tells us "Tales of the Valiant is 99% 5th edition." Oh, ok... one of the players, who was familiar with the system, made a badger-man race, because the rules have a "beast-kin" that allows for all the different anthropomorphic races, and there's a luck mechanic which mimics inspiration. Other than that, I guess it's nearly the same. I was glad to learn they didn't shoehorn their campaign setting lore into the rules like they did with their monster books.

But my take away was - why should I be interested in their system, when I already own the 5e books?

 

[Corinnguard]

But my take away was - why should I be interested in their system, when I already own the 5e books?

TotV might have game mechanics that aren't present in the 5e books that could prove to be useful in a 5e campaign. Have you come across anything in TotV that you wish was in 5e?

 

[Shardstone]

You are getting the gist correctly.

And you are giving a good example why so many efforts go awry, ending up as completely separate games... which defeats the point of starting out in the first place!

Not least because history is littered with the corpses of would-be D&D fixes or "killers". Heartbreaking to watch.

The point here would specifically be to not break away from D&D. Remain completely reliant on D&D. Be a supplement to, not a replacement of, D&D.

How is your idea compatiable with the current PHB is we change every single class to have two subclasses and have different features? And then redo every ability and spell that lets you do a thing into a bonus?

 

[Shardstone]

Well, for the systems that are covered by this hypothetical product, I want to be able to pretend this was how D&D worked all along.

So for classes, I'm not interested in making them work with the existing classes.

Imagine a reimagined set of classes that just happens to unlock the potential for much greater player option space, that just slots right into the rest of 5E!

Imagine if WotC actually created their Fighers and Rangers and Warlocks in such a way that everybody selected subclass at the same time, and all three characters could choose the same subclass... and also imagine if this choice wasn't "permanent" all the way up to level 20, but halfway-ish there you got to make a new selection to reflect upon what your character turned out to be and experience. Which also injects much needed energy into the third and fourth tier of the game, I believe.

This change alone would add to charbuilding greatly without changing the overall game's complexity; without adding any burden at all on the DM.

Yes I said "supplement not replace" but I meant that as a whole. I do not think adding supplementary classes that still work in conjunction with the existing ones is a viable approach. I meant that this hypothetical product should only do what it sets out to do, and not then "fix" (change beyond all recognition) any number of other things. If it isn't on the list in my OP, expect the game to work exactly as in vanilla D&D.

Alright, this flat out requires a new PHB. And this would be a massive change to the game. You're changing about half the entire PHB into something else entirely and trying to say it's still 5th Edition. Tales of the Valiant would be more "5th Edition" than the project you suggest.