D&D 5E (2024) How I would do 6E.

[mamba]

Not effectively. A Bard or Sorcerer should be able to grab a sword Gandalf-style and get as many attacks and be able as do as many things with that sword as any other class can.

I disagree, fighters , barbarians etc. should obviously be better with weapons than any caster

I suggested we get rid of non-caster classes completely. There would be no one that can only swing swords.

I agree that everyone should be able to do more than swing a sword, I’d hate if that more always were magic however.

To me all of 5e is already too high magic. This just makes things worse. I want everyone to be on a half-caster like chassis so I can reign in the high magic bit and have some room to use for the meleers

 

[Tigris]

One "bigger" change I wouldn't mind seeing is to overhaul the way initiative is handled. There's too much variability, and often the turn order limits the tactical options. I'm not sure they should go all the way to freeform turns like say Daggerheart, but the d20 is just to variable, and the Ready Action is too punishing.

Also feels like it's an area where things could be sped up which is always nice.

The by far fastest way to do turns is to just do them in turn order.

The simplest way to do this is to just have a fixed turn order for players and GM. Players can decide how they sit.

On first round of combat everyone who beats initiative (median of enemies) just gets 1 turn before monsters. (You can handle initiative slightly differently if you find d20 too swingy, although this is a lot less the problem if combats take more than 2 turns).


Then all turns are just monsters followed by players in fixed order. This in average leads to the same amount of turns before enemies as does "normal initiative" in average mathematically, but play will be a lot faster because everyone knows easily when its their turn and play order is not limited by randomness because it was players choice.

 

[ECMO3]

To me all of 5e is already too high magic. This just makes things worse.

This is really the crux of our disagreement. I think modern players tend to favor magic more than players 30 or even 10 years ago did.

 

[Yaarel]

I really don't like this idea. One huge plus to 2024 is that they got rid of all the stereotypes and the ties to the basic character statistics.

I get that.

Even so, this is only a one time minor bonus. The default is 5 hit points from species at level zero, during the origin, so essentially it is for free. The hit points make level zero playable (plus simple weapons and background feat), before taking levels in a class.

The Dwarf and Orc have two extra points, and the Halfling and Gnome missing one point to account for balance purposes.

And the flavor feels right at low levels, while irrelevant at high levels when all combat benefits derive from class advancement.

 

[Minigiant]

This is really the crux of our disagreement. I think modern players tend to favor magic more than players 30 or even 10 years ago did.

My theory is that modern fans like High fantasy but not neccessarily high magic.

Current 5e skews from ages 25-45 and those are the ages where media makes heroes superheroes like comics and anime.

My guess is that fans would like PCs to do the fantastic acts of modern media vis the rules for them and not rely on casting a spell to do it.

 

[mamba]

This is really the crux of our disagreement. I think modern players tend to favor magic more than players 30 or even 10 years ago did.

possibly, I would be perfectly ok with D&D ending at 10th level. With my half-caster enforcement I might stretch that out another 2 to 4 levels

 

[Tigris]

My theory is that modern fans like High fantasy but not neccessarily high magic.

Current 5e skews from ages 25-45 and those are the ages where media makes heroes superheroes like comics and anime.

My guess is that fans would like PCs to do the fantastic acts of modern media vis the rules for them and not rely on casting a spell to do it.

My guess is more that modern fans like modern gamedesign and are used to it from other games.

So having an imbalance between 2 groups of classes (martials and casters) is for many just not fun.

Also peole are used to modern media where there are cool "martial characters" doing maneuvers, using martial arts etc. and not just doing "basic attack".

Having all cool things behind clunky spell lists is just really old gamedesign. When you look at mobas hero shooters etc. you normally see a broad range of different characters which have a low number of cool, character defining abilities, not characters which have huge lists of overlapping abilities they need to choose from which make all classes samey and overcomplicated.


We know from other games that cool things dont need to be complicated and be "magic".

 

[Minigiant]

Having all cool things behind clunky spell lists is just really old gamedesign.

Well that's the crux of it.

6e would have to be willing to fully support another subsystem than spells. And this is an age thing where you need designers willing to do that and executives willing to provide resources

 

[MoonSong]

I really don't like this idea. One huge plus to 2024 is that they got rid of all the stereotypes and the ties to the basic character statistics.

They didn't, but rather moved them somewhere else.

 

[Tigris]

Well that's the crux of it.

6e would have to be willing to fully support another subsystem than spells. And this is an age thing where you need designers willing to do that and executives willing to provide resources

Yeah I dont see them taking any risks at the moment. So no innovation most likely....

I dont think having designers who want to do this is a problem, the executive part is though.