D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

[Pedantic]

Healing Surges were a great idea.... it has nothing to do with how much of your HP they heal. Healing surges were a pacing mechanic, a measure of how far the players could go before they had to take a long rest because you lose the ability to regain hit points. Hit dice serve basically the same function in 5E.

I think the big 4e mistake (aside from naming them "Healing Surges" which nearly suggests the inverse role they serve, Trespasser's Endurance is a much better name), was tying them to a daily/per rest refresh schedule. Adopting something like the 5e gritty rest schedule, with a limited pool of healing available inside that structure is much more flexible and does a better job driving at the attrition aspect.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure, but a 1st edition wizard had exactly the same issue of using a spells as any other edition wizard. No edition addresses the 5 minute adventuring day.

Indeed, it's a design flaw all the way along.

If the party doesn't have a time limit, there is no reason to approach any challenge without maximum resources regardless of game system.

Exactly, which means the designers have to either

a) design as if parties will have max resources, or close, for nearly every battle because that's how the players are going to play, or
b) make resource recovery much - as in, light-years - harder such that the game really does become attrition-based.

Of those, a) is likely to be better accepted; which opens for business the idea of characters gaining benefits when operating at less than full pop*, to force a choice on to the players whether to go low-risk low-reward or high-risk high-reward.

* - very basic example might be that any character who all three of starts, fully participates in, and finishes a battle while at less than half h.p. gets 50% more x.p. for that battle.

 

[Lanefan]

Healing Surges were a great idea.... it has nothing to do with how much of your HP they heal. Healing surges were a pacing mechanic, a measure of how far the players could go before they had to take a long rest because you lose the ability to regain hit points. Hit dice serve basically the same function in 5E.

In the days before non-magical healing and-or ubquitous wands of CLW were a thing, the number of available healing spells-potions-devices in the party served the same function and at far lower complexity.

 

[Zardnaar]

Healing Surges were a great idea.... it has nothing to do with how much of your HP they heal. Healing surges were a pacing mechanic, a measure of how far the players could go before they had to take a long rest because you lose the ability to regain hit points. Hit dice serve basically the same function in 5E.

Still falls into to much healing camp along with regain everything over night.

I can "grind" PCs down either a few encounters in OSR gaming.

4-8 encounters per day in modern gaming depending on edition.

 

[Zardnaar]

In the days before non-magical healing and-or ubquitous wands of CLW were a thing, the number of available healing spells-potions-devices in the party served the same function and at far lower complexity.

Wasn't hard coded in though. Most DMs probably didn't care. Easy ones probably added more options, gritty ones not sp much.

Even wands of CLW weren't hard coded in. A lot of groups didn't use them or know they existed.

All editions of D&D have dailies. The attrition side of things dies vary a lot.

I've played both recently and the differences are very stark. OSR has meaner monsters though so your 1-2 encounters can be very threatening combined with 1 hp/day.

The "peobke" everyone's arguing over is vastly lessened in pre 3E. They might like modern solutions but its actually contributing to it.

This doesn't mean OSR is perfect and the playstyle may not be popular. They also have their own issues if you play pre 3E in 2025 as I found out recently. So its not like old school is strictly better modern newbs ha!!!.

Modern design followed by modern players is primary problem. 4E onwards would have similar issue, 3Es only saved by lingering OSRisms they hadn't purged yet. 3E has 1 hp/level per day, buffed magical healing and cheap magic items that may or may not be used at any table.

3.5 one of the few things it got right may be the hit points monsters have. OSR and 3.0 leans towards glass canon types. Maybe thats a good thing idk.

 

[tetrasodium]

Sure, but a 1st edition wizard had exactly the same issue of using a spells as any other edition wizard. No edition addresses the 5 minute adventuring day.

If the party doesn't have a time limit, there is no reason to approach any challenge without maximum resources regardless of game system.

The trouble is not a failure to "address" the 5mwd. That is very different from an edition having rules actively encouraging players to push for the 5mwd while the rules as a whole remove nullify and design against the gameplay elements that previously made the 5mwd more difficult to force

 

[Zardnaar]

The trouble is not a failure to "address" the 5mwd. That is very different from an edition having rules actively encouraging players to push for the 5mwd while the rules as a whole remove nullify and design against the gameplay elements that previously made the 5mwd more difficult to force

This. You coukd do 5MWD in older D&D. Even if DM let you get away with it there's various ways of dealing with it.

 

[Remathilis]

Old school doesn't have the problem to same extent.

I attritioned some players out with very few '"easy" encounters over a few days.

1hp vs all your hp back (+ HD) is the difference.

4E fa s claim healing surges are a great idea. You dont even need them though. The "need" is artificial because you bloated the HP to begin with and rapid recovery rate.

Also kinda destroys a traditional hex crawl.

Wands of CLW another example. They weren't as hard coded though.

..." Too the same extent" is doing A LOT of heavy lifting there. It was harder to nova because classes outside the wizard (and lesser extent cleric) couldn't. There was no action surge, divine smites, no bardic inspiration, no rage. The closest thing to a nova was dropping your highest level spell. Nova became a thing because magic began providing a strong mechanical benefit for buffing and character's gained x/day resources that were part of their core identity.

I don't even think healing was as big an issue because we did Baldur's Gate healing (two days to be back to full and have your complete spells) and nova wasn't an issue. The only nova characters were mages and psionicists.

Honestly, and it pains me to say this, you are always going to have X minute workdays for as long as major class features are Y per day. The more resources, the quicker to nova and rest.

 

[Zardnaar]

..." Too the same extent" is doing A LOT of heavy lifting there. It was harder to nova because classes outside the wizard (and lesser extent cleric) couldn't their was no action surge, divine smites, no bardic inspiration, no rage. The closest thing to a nova was dropping your highest level spell. Nova became a thing because magic began providing a strong mechanical benefit for buffing and character's gained x/day resources that were part of their core identity.

I don't even think healing was as big an issue because we did Baldur's Gate healing (two days to be back to full and have your complete spells) and nova wasn't an issue. The only nova characters were mages and psionicists.

Honestly, and it pains me to say this, you are always going to have X minute workdays for as long as major class features are Y per day. The more resources, the quicker to nova and rest.

Yeah main problem is dailies existing full stop.. But 1 -2
Encounters its easier to wear PCs done pre 3E.

People like smites, action surges etc but they haven't quite figured out they're contributing to the problem as well.

If its actually a problem for them (take foum bitching with a large grain of salt).

 

[mamba]

I backed abime5e

is that Nimble 5e? Anime 5e (haven’t heard of that…)?

hoping it would change more than it did shifting to point out levelup5e really hoping for much more drastic revisions in a lot of areas and most recently did the same with draw steel because it proved that it was willing to slaughter the sacred cows sustaining 5e's problems.

I am glad DS! is trying to tackle them, WotC just entirely dropped the ball with 2024 as far as I am concerned

I also back mearls's patreon and have been intrigued but not yet sold over some "ehhh..." Design goals he seems to be targeting

curious what he will come up with, by and large I like what he is saying