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

[FrogReaver]

I was looking at it from the monster and encounter-design side of things.

According to the core assumptions of the game (found in the 2014 DMG,) those things count for nothing.

I do also agree that there are things on the player side that should have value (and do) even though the game says they do not. In either case, that influences encounter design.

Never assume silence means an assumption of no relationship. Silence more often indicates the relationship is too complex to comment on.

 

[Zardnaar]

No, though I do like SW5E. This was just a custom hack of Star Wars Saga Edition for my own table.

Essentials is just 4e with different presentation, so, yes. A lot.

Sure, but…I mean technically the fighter and rogue variants still had powers, but barely. Not remotely the same as essentials casters that were still full AEDU.

The Thief at-wills do feel very unnecessary and fiddly, though. But again, presentation. You could take all those powers and make them one class feature tied to movement before or after you make an attack or just make them use the minor action oh wait that’s how they got to 5e Cunning Action isn’t it? Nice. Lol

Anyway yeah I mostly agree

If I ran SWSE and wanted a quick hack I would do something similar to what you did. Just use 5E numbers.

I dont like 5ESW. Its to 5E kinda reminds me of the year 2000 d20 SW it was bad.

 

[Zardnaar]

I know the history. It just surprises me how nonchalant WotC was about the change over. Then again, many a gamer didnt think much differently. I remember the "Paizo announces adventure path, setting, and continuation of 3E" thread where posters here at EN World were laughing about how "Paizo would be out of business in 3 months if they dont convert to 4E!"

Do you know who pushed for 4E so hard internally? Concerns were raised but they were over ridden.

I've got the impression it was Bill Slavisek iirc. Heinsoo and Tweet would be the other two. All got laid off says something.

Tweet seems a bit more self aware in interviews so Im leaning towards one of the other 2.

 

[Rainbow Scissors]

Never assume silence means an assumption of no relationship. Silence more often indicates the relationship is too complex to comment on.

Silence was not assumed.

I edited this to add context.

If a creature can fly, that may mean it is treated as having an AC that is 2 higher, but only if it can also deal damage from range and has an expected challenge rating of less than 10. That somewhat makes a little bit of sense, being that higher levels may have more options for dealing with flight, but it's still very undervalue. While it may be understood that other modes of movement might be treated similarly, that is unclear based upon later commentary since then.

From a quick glance, things that the 2014 DMG explicitly stats have 0 value include Special Senses, Skill bonuses (which could be used for grapple, shove, and other things in 5e14,) and Telepathy.

I feel that being able to move quickly (or with more versality,) being able to better sense the location of an enemy, and being able to communicate silently are factors that have value.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yup! And I'm kinda looking to do those. Aside from the 5 minute short rests. That's not really a thing I've considered, so far.

My current thought is that Encounter abilities should be about 2 times more effective than your at will values with a d8 guideline, early on in leveling. So if an at-will is 1d8+4, an Encounter should be around 3d6+4 to 3d8+4, or 22-28 maximum damage. This is your "Burning Hands" or "Smite" in the early game.

By level 5 that should crank up to about 3 times the effective value of an at-will. And at each proficiency mod break point get another step up there.

Dailies should be closer to 5 times the value at level 6 when you start getting them, and build steam at about the same rate, keeping them ahead of encounter powers by about 2 times at-will ability.

Now your at-will power does increase somewhat. You get 2 actions per turn after level 5, one of which has to be an at-will. But it increases not based on level, but on equipment. Magic weapons and the like directly improves your at-will with straight numbers and dice.

But after level 17, your at will is still 1d8+5 (+Magic Bonuses) where your encounters are closer to 7d8+5 (+Magic Bonuses) and your Dailies are 9d8+5 (+Magic Bonuses), so there's a big incentive to use your big stuff and Catch Breath to use it again, at that point, rather than dropping down to 2d8+10 (+Magic Bonuses) for two at wills...

But there will always be access to those two encounters in any given fight, which is still huge. The only rationing you're doing is Dailies (which you can only use once per encounter, ever, so you can't dump them all in one fight) and HP.

I'm not following you well here. I get the relative values, but when you start talking about 2 actions per turn at level 5 I'm completely lost.

Here's the thing. It doesn't matter how much better actual encounter powers are than at-wills. You get that same allotment every encounter. Your encounter powers + your at wills produces your floor. Your ceiling would then be adding your one daily power to it. So in your example for a 4 round encounter (assuming that's what you are designing for) using 1x for at will, 2x for encounter and 5x for daily. Then it looks something like:

Floor = 2x+2x+1x+1x = 6x
Ceiling = 5x+2x+2x+1x = 10x

*Note: In practice this would allow the encounter to be over in 2 rounds as 7x>6x and 6x ended the encounter in 4 rounds. Having your abilities take a 4 round encounter down to a 2 seems like the exact kind of 5 MWD problem we want to avoid.

However, I think you also previously said you'd give more daily power uses per day (limited to once per encounter) than there would be likely encounters. If that's the case then:

Floor & Ceiling = 5x+2x+2x+1x = 10x. There's no variance here (other than built in die rolls for damage and attack and possibly powers that are slightly better/worse in some situations than others).

This tightens up the game balance drastically, but also means if anything goes wrong, DM miscalibrates encounter difficulty, low player die rolls, high monster die rolls, unfavorable terrain not accounted for, etc then the players lack any levers they can pull to equalize to the encounter difficulty given these factors.

The first seeming solution that's really a non-solution is to just make the encounters easier to deal with the potential dice variance and ignore DM miscalibration. Assuming no DM miscalibration then you've likely made most encounters much to easy. It's only the ones where the dice variance swings badly for the players that the encounter gets to your initially desired difficulty. Essentially you've built in cakewalk mode to the games math.

Then consider what happens if the DM does actually miscalibrate. If you've not previously made the game easy cakewalk mode by accounting for dice variance then DM miscalibration is highly likely to lead to very bad player results and while such miscalibration can happen in any game, in this one the balance is so tight that it's much easier to cause negative effects.

As such I'd recommend

1. The planned encounter floor for your designed number of rounds must be meaningfully lower than the potential ceiling
2. That being able to spend resources to achieve near double output for some encounters is too much of a spike. Double output means encounter length gets cut in half. A more reasonable value might 3x daily. That would be 3x+2x+2x+1x=8x vs 6x (and also showing the encounter can be ended in 3 rounds due to 3x+2x+2x=7x>6x).

What I plan to do is have you get 2 Spell Slots per encounter and always cast at max level, like a Warlock. And then address the spells to bring their expected values in line. And then create a "Greater Arcana" spell list where the 'daily' spells go. And then provide a lot of invocation-like abilities to get spell-bundles that you can use once per encounter without expending a spell slot for things like Jump, Expeditious Retreat, Invisibility, Fly, and the like.

If your using base 5e spells I'd say that's probably too much as an every encounter thing. If it's 2 per 1 hour long short rest that's more reasonable, but then you've contributed to the floor and ceiling problem.

That's one way to do it, sure. But I was looking for a more 'systematic structure' than "Give casters a special benefit that encourages them to hold onto spells a little" because then they -can- still dump everything fast, and they might 'hold out' too long and feel cheated for not dropping spells earlier when the enemy's health was higher and the spell would've mattered more.

Sure, it was just an idea.

Kinda sorta, sure.

That's waaaay more complexity than I'm trying to get into, here.

That's a nifty idea!

Np, and thanks.

 

[FrogReaver]

Silence was not assumed.

Of course it was as that's the only way to get to your conclusions. But it's kind of pointless to continue butting heads over something so silly. So consider this my last words on that topic.

 

[Rainbow Scissors]

Of course it was as that's the only way to get to your conclusions. But it's kind of pointless to continue butting heads over something so silly. So consider this my last words on that topic.

I added context to my previous post.

I do not perceive explicitly stating something to be the same as being silent about something.

 

[FrogReaver]

I added context to my previous post.

I do not perceive explicitly stating something to be the same as being silent about something.

Okay, then please provide the explicit statement. If I'm somehow overlooking it please repost it.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Paizo bet for a different strategy about new classes. Maybe WotC dared to publish new classes with special mechanics in the last years of 5.24 Ed. when they hadn't to worry about these to be expansion-friendly.

In 4e lots of spells or powers about moving and buffing were useful but too boring for storytelling.

If WotC bets for "better" instead "sooner" then they should publish UA articles with "experimental classes" and allow players to playtest their own homemade version.

A new class could be an updated mystery-user like shadowcaster, but mysteries for different elements, not only shadow but also others like fire, water, earth, air... and even wood and metal. A subclass could be about blood paraelemental. The difference would be the mysteries could be encounter powers. She would spend the mystery slots before than warlock but the reload also would be faster. It could be expansion-friendly because the mysteries could be used by the rest of spellcasters like standard spells.

 

[Lanefan]

And that alone is a lesson that comes with experience. A new DM who thinks a 1st level party can handle two ogres isn't going to have the awareness to know how to fail forward. D&D fights are lethal damage unless the DM knows to pull his punches.

Players who think a 1st-level party can handle two Ogres are also part of the problem, even more so after the first PC or two goes down and the Ogres have barely a scratch on 'em.

"Cut your losses and run" used to be a standard piece in every player's toolbox. "Survival is job one" was another.

Two PCs out of five go splat, the other three run away, the party - and thus the game - continues, the two players roll up new PCs, and the DM learns a little. All is good. Carry on.

There are a lot of situations where a DM can ruin his campaign: throwing an impossible fight, giving a player a magic item that is too powerful too early, underestimating PC ability and cake walking them, Monty Hauling loot, etc. The game should provide a system to at least attempt to prevent the those easy to pitfalls until they feel comfortable with experimenting.

Did you mean "overestimating" here?

I've never seen a problem with giving out too much magic too early - with one exception: too much defensive magic can make the PCs either think they're invulnerable or in fact be invulnerable, neither of which is any fun for different reasons.