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

[doctorbadwolf]

And if casuals ignore them their opinions dont matter.

This is a non-statement. It means nothing.

2E to 3E made that transition. Grognards raged.

Not remotely the same. Not even in the same ballpark.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Then you have a niche product. Nothing wrong with that just dont claim its superior/more popular.

But if you have big product to niche product thats a bigger problem than niche product to begin with.

I don't claim my preference is more popular (it really isn't), but for me it is superior.

 

[Zardnaar]

This is a non-statement. It means nothing.

Not remotely the same. Not even in the same ballpark.

I just find it funny. Somehow 4E great, a handful of raging grognards sunk it and an awful version of D&D was in print for 17 years.

Some more information has come to light though. The more complicated editions didnt sell that well. The less complicated ones have.

Also most games dont go that high in level and forum members are extreme minority.

I dont think the vast majority of gamers had much of a issue with 3.5 only forum users.

If most gamers only have phb and most games finish by level 7 (I suspect this was true back then) there's not much wrong with 3.5 except its fiddle.

Most of 3.5 big issues involve higher level play and splat book abuse most of which was theory crafting.

It explains a lot. Another theory is dont make a product that provokes a backlash from your own customers. Pick your poison.

 

[Lanefan]

You know, we can save a LOT of time if we just reduce the DMG to "figure it out yourself".

Encounter balance? Figure it out yourself.
Treasure distribution? Figure it out yourself.
World building? Figure it out yourself.
Monster creation? Figure it out yourself.
Campaign management? Figure it out yourself.

Think of all the magic items you could fit in the book if you stop using it to tell DMs how to play!

Though you probably intend this as sarcasm, it's also quite true. Just make it...

Encounter balance? Figure it out yourself. Here's some basic tips and pointers.
Treasure distribution? Figure it out yourself. See our published adventures for examples if needed.
World building? Figure it out yourself. Here's some examples and ideas; see our published setting guides for others.
Monster creation? Figure it out yourself, using the published monsters as guidelines and for ideas, tips, and inspiration.
Campaign management? Figure it out yourself. Here's some more basic tips and pointers.

...and you're not too far from ready to rock. What's needed are those tips, pointers, and examples; presented as rough guidelines and ideas rather than hard-coded rules or instructions.

Seriously, many DMing skills are something self-taught to suit one's own aims and methods, and largely can't be learned from a book. Given that, we simply have to assume and accept that there's inevitably going to be rookie mistakes here and there.

 

[Lanefan]

No, I’m not. I’m speaking purely about mechanics.

HS don’t do this. The same amount of stuff is being tracked, and it is less complex for everyone to track their own stuff rather than having some classes require tracking stuff for everyone and weighing the use of resources for the whole group.

It is simpler to mark that you used 1 HS than it is to have a strategic chat with the party cleric about how badly you do or don’t need them to use a healing spell on you.

I disagree. The point of a healer is to mete out those healing resources wisely.

For healing purposes, you're going from

Cleric player tracks: hit points, spells remaining
Everyone else tracks: hit points
Total things tracked = number of characters plus one

To

Cleric player tracks: hit points, healing surges, spells remaining
Everyone else tracks: hit points, healing surges
Total things tracked = number of characters doubled, plus one.

How in any way is this not adding mechanical complexity?

It is simpler to have all healing work the same way for everyone.

As in, everyone has self-healing abilities beyond simple resting? No thanks.

Simple resting is already stupid-level more generous in 4e and 5e than it should be. Allowing everyone to self-heal on top of that, plus stil have magical healing available, is too much on top of too much.

 

[Remathilis]

Though you probably intend this as sarcasm, it's also quite true. Just make it...

Encounter balance? Figure it out yourself. Here's some basic tips and pointers.
Treasure distribution? Figure it out yourself. See our published adventures for examples if needed.
World building? Figure it out yourself. Here's some examples and ideas; see our published setting guides for others.
Monster creation? Figure it out yourself, using the published monsters as guidelines and for ideas, tips, and inspiration.
Campaign management? Figure it out yourself. Here's some more basic tips and pointers.

...and you're not too far from ready to rock. What's needed are those tips, pointers, and examples; presented as rough guidelines and ideas rather than hard-coded rules or instructions.

Seriously, many DMing skills are something self-taught to suit one's own aims and methods, and largely can't be learned from a book. Given that, we simply have to assume and accept that there's inevitably going to be rookie mistakes here and there.

Figure it out yourself is useful for when you have someone who knows the rules and is interested in learning a style, but it's absolutely terrible for teaching the basics. Put another way, I would never buy a car whose operatiing manual says "figure it out yourself".

 

[Zardnaar]

Figure it out yourself is useful for when you have someone who knows the rules and is interested in learning a style, but it's absolutely terrible for teaching the basics. Put another way, I would never buy a car whose operatiing manual says "figure it out yourself".

Old D&D dudnt entirely lack guidelines for encounter design.

CR is also a but of an art form. 4E screwed that up majorly hence monster vault. 72 pages of errata as well.

They also screwed up individual monster design making insanely tough critters for their CR. 3E-5E are all guilty of that 1 lol.

 

[Steampunkette]

Conceptually, the idea seems sound though the numbers could use some tweaking. If the goal-length for an encounter is 3 rounds then most abilities should only be usable twice before temporary shutdown (also maybe only 2 or 3 rounds), so as to force those do-I-use-it-or-not decisions to occur much more often.

That said, I think any exhaustion mechanic should be part of, or quickly lead to, a death spiral; that's the whole point, you're running out of gas to the point where either you're gonna die or your foe is and it's gonna happen soon.

Practically, though, I wonder if tracking this stuff would become a female-dog for the more casual players at the table.

I think the easy way is just to have the DM run a round tracker at the top of the DM screen, or a round-tracking die. On initiative count 0, it goes up by 1.

After 5, you get 1 exertion/spell slot/psi dice/whatever back. Start the counter over.

If you haven't used any of those things, you don't get a "Free Use", so there's incentive to dump at least one encounter resource before the 5th round.

Could even make every 6 rounds you get a "Spend a daily in this combat" use back.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Figure it out yourself is useful for when you have someone who knows the rules and is interested in learning a style, but it's absolutely terrible for teaching the basics. Put another way, I would never buy a car whose operatiing manual says "figure it out yourself".

Teaching the basics IMO is what starter sets are for.

 

[Remathilis]

Old D&D dudnt entirely lack guidelines for encounter design.

Have you seen the BECMI'S system? It makes 5e's system look like elementary school math..

CR is also a but of an art form. 4E screwed that up majorly hence monster vault. 72 pages of errata as well.

4e MATH was bad. It was fixed come MM2. That's not a failing of Challenge rating though. Still rather have 72 pages of errata than TSR saying "I don't know, what do you think we are, game designers?!"

They also screwed up individual monster design making insanely tough critters for their CR. 3E-5E are all guilty of that 1 lol.

It was a result of the arms race between PCs using broken splats and monsters designed not to die before they can even act. Then again, D&D since the 1980s didn't view combat as a fail state so they wanted fights that were dynamic and lasted a few rounds. The whole premise of this thread has been that D&D combat ends up ac race to nuke the monsters before they can act and how monsters don't advance quick enough to meet the churn of splats and charops.

I sound like a broken record, but there is an edition where PCs don't get builds and nova potential, HP isn't inflated and monster math stays relevant. BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia. Every other edition ends up in the arms race you're complaining about in some form or another.