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

[FrogReaver]

Listen, I get this is a heated debate about how useful you, personally, find CR as compared to a wholly new DM or whatever, but that's really not what this thread is about and I'd appreciate it if we could stop this particular derailment, please?

Yes. Your question was much more interesting.

 

[Remathilis]

B/X is even better than BECMI.

Its on my list of favorite D&Ds. Best D&D to DM.
BUT its a bit to basic. Modern players wont go for it. I can get my groups to play versions that include some AD&D classes and spells eg clones.

And that whole THAC0 thing.

They'll pick 5E every time though.

That's a bit of my point. The game is perfectly balanced to avoid nova, and the first thing players want is new toys that throw that balance out of whack. Repeat over several editions and you get the problems you cited: characters with nova buttons and bags of HP. To blame this on modern D&D as if classic D&D had figured it out is disingenuous. AD&D itself is unbalanced and prone to the same abuses as modern, just at a level that older players will tolerate out of the fact they are familiar with that level.

To say this is a reaction to modern D&D is horsefeathers. It's a reaction in some way to every edition of D&D. Except Basic. They figured it out by cutting D&D to the bone and only giving the minimum needed to run a good game. And that was never going to be sustainable.

 

[FrogReaver]

Not the balance of 4e. The pacing of 4e.

I think balance and pacing and inextricably linked.

The existence of encounter-abilities ensures you can't dump -everything- into a single fight and have no resources for the rest of the day. It creates a functionality floor slightly higher than "I'm out of spell slots to smite, so I just hit him with my sword"

And if you also limited daily abilities to 1/encounter, even if you have 6 of them, you also avoid the nova dumping, there.

I disagree. The same floor level can be set with or without per encounter abilities. They typically are more interesting from a game perspective but they don’t really change balance/pacing.

What your proposal actually does (assuming each daily is mostly equal in power) is remove or greatly reduce the ceiling by giving you enough daily power slots to fill every adventuring day but limit an encounter to one daily only, which does affect balance/pacing compared to not doing that. But the important note is that this is solely because of the daily power structure you’ve proposed and nothing to do with the per encounter power structure.

As an example if one layered per encounter powers on top of 5e spell casting, you’d still find the same problems with balance/pacing.

So instead of the Paladin dumping all their spell slots into smiting in the first couple rounds of combat, you could make Smiting a non-spell function usable twice per encounter dealing extra d8s equal to your proficiency bonus, for example. Which, coincidentally, helps to reign in the Sorcadin dropping 7th and 8th level spell slot smite crits while still making high end paladin smites 6d8.

That’s been a popular proposal in some variation or another, but it just gives the paladin more overall resources for an encounter because you’re not taking his spell slots away. Sorcadins in particular can still convert those slots to bonus action booming blades, hastes, shields, etc.

I think in practice 2024 solved the Paladin smite issue. Increased base damage from damage feats and weapon masteries and better accuracy boosting channel divinities means not having smite isn’t nearly as big a deal.

Making smite limited to once per turn by making it a bonus action slowed the potential usage rate by 1/2 to 1/3 and can lead to smite competing with other abilities. By level 5 a Paladin should be able to mostly smite for 2 encounters if desired. By level 9 that’s more like 3.

 

[AnotherGuy]

So if there were an in-narrative reason for an AEDU structure you would be more receptive to it?

Yes.
Personally I had a love-hate with 4e powers. I loved the key words and flexibility of it all, I loved the narrative description provided, I loved their simplicity, but I struggled not seeing them as playing cards.

Like a structure where it relied on not just expending nebulous "Spell Slots" but actual narrative 'energy' or 'power' that wound up resulting in a comparative weakening? Like, say, a Psion being limited in how fast they can spend Power Points before the nosebleed and headache shut them down?

Yes, nice - really like this.
I always felt cantrips should go this direction.

... what about a Recharge mechanic? If combats are supposed to last between 3 and 5 rounds, setting up a "Use it and lose it 'til you recover it" mechanic that goes for 5 rounds on your exertion with the idea that you've done something big and it takes a second to get your wind back. Would that work?

The recharge mechanic is great for monsters but feels game-y for characters.
It works for monsters, because then it is not on the DM deciding and because there is no fixed recharge the players cannot also meta game and definitely know the dragon doesn't have their dragon breath for x rounds...

I always prefer players having the option to decide how far they want to push their characters without being dictated to by fixed mechanics. To give you an example
Instead of saying every 5th round as a fixed time constraint you get abc power back, I'd rather the player say my character attempts to cast another magic missile and suffer the level of exhaustion, or burn through x HD or I roll to see if I get exhausted...etc

We have a similar rule where x hit point damage (which is stamina in our game) can be avoided by
Rolling on a Lingering Injury table, taking a Level of Exhaustion, Damaging their Armour/Shield...etc
These are player choices.

 

[zakael19]

So here's what I'm thinking would be a decent place for the kind of powers the different classes get to pull out:

Martials get 4 exertion per encounter. Their class provides them abilities that cost an exertion to augment what they were already doing with a weapon attack or whatever. So you swing on your turn and add a Rider on top of it that deals more damage, pushes enemies around, whatever. For 2 exertion, you can do the thing -harder-. Doing more damage, extra targets, further distances, etc. All based on the class feature.

Arcane gets 2 spell slots per encounter. Arcane Spells tend to be more effective than what a martial gets out of 1 exertion, but similar in power to what 2 exertion does. For a straight up spellcaster class there's a whole spell list with bigger and smaller spells (Daily vs Encounter) but for Arcane characters that aren't full casters, like a Swordmage gish-tank, the spells are class abilities like the martials get, but they still get to pull their daily spells off the big spell list they share with the rest of the Arcane.

Divine gets 2 spell slots and 1 channel divinity per encounter. Channel divinity is supportive regardless of your specific class, though whether it's healing or a buff or something is both class and/or subclass specific. Spells are a little less powerful than the Arcane ones, but always have some beneficial effect separate from straight throughput.

Nature gets 3 spell slots. All their spells that deal damage also add control effects. All their control stuff is just flatly better than anyone else's controls. Spells have a similar throughput to Divine casters. Whether you're in melee, blasting AoE, or skirmishing, you're doing your best to lock people down for funsies and effectiveness!

Occultists get 2 spell slots. Again, less straight throughput from Arcane, closer to Divine. But all of their abilities provide some kind of debuff to the target. That can be some control like knockback or drag, but penalties to damage, healing, movement, attack rolls, etc are all, also, part of the schtick. Also some Curses along the way because come on, curses are important!

Psychics get 2 Psi Dice. Psi dice don't always get expended when you use them. You apply them to your powers, powers get stronger, then you roll the dice to see if you keep it. You can apply up to two psi dice to your powers, but you always risk losing them. If you do, you have to wait to get them back. If you don't lose them, you get to keep using them.

Neat ideas! I think that some sort of in-Initiative mode trigger to regen a resource that ties into the class fantasy would be cool too. Like maybe a Barbarian has “Bloodlust, gain 1 exertion when you land a killing blow” or Occultists can tap their HD or something to replenish, Nature is like “when a creature escapes a control effect” etc?

I’m assuming a greater emphasis on ritual casting for out of combat applications, maybe even powered by HD?

 

[FrogReaver]

The recharge mechanic is great for monsters but feels game-y for characters.
I always prefer players having the option to decide how far they want to push their characters without being dictated to by fixed mechanics. To give you an example
Instead of saying every 5th round as a fixed time constraint you get abc power back, I'd rather the player say my character attempts to cast another magic missile and suffer the level of exhaustion, or burn through x HD or I roll to see if I get exhausted...etc

IMO. In terms of balance and pacing that kind of system is absolutely terrible.

I think it’s obvious as to why, but I’ll elaborate further if needed.

 

[AnotherGuy]

IMO. In terms of balance and pacing that kind of system is absolutely terrible.

I think it’s obvious as to why, but I’ll elaborate further if needed.

I'd be interested in your thoughts...and what you believe may be a better replacement.
I'm always open to ideas.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'd be interested in your thoughts...and what you believe may be a better replacement.
I'm always open to ideas.

I don’t know about better overall as there’s more to consider than just balance and pacing.

But in terms of balance and pacing, it usually makes for a very high variance system where players can trade much better performance now for much worse performance later (often 2-10x better performance now) , very similar to one of the primary drivers of the 5MWD in d&d. This can be overcame by enough constant time pressure (narratively difficult to justify) or by making it relatively difficult to recover (usually players solve for this so it’s not a very robust solution IMO).

That said oftentimes you just don’t have players that really analyze the homebrew system to really optimize for it (and since there’s no internet telling them how, you probably don’t have to deal with extreme optimizations). Meaning for localized small sample play of a novel homebrew system, you probably never see most issues of homebrew system. So this may not be an issue in practice for you.

There are benefits to higher variance systems. Mostly that players can navigate a single overturned encounter or bad rolls whereas in a low or no variance system, such things are likely to kill them.

As such I’d recommend focusing on limiting your ceiling of pc output, so that it’s in the sweet spot. Probably ceiling = 1.5*floor. Going to low variance tends to make the game feel samey and less fun, almost like your combat choices don’t really matter.

If you can lock down this sweet spot of variance down you probably could make your preferred system style work better. It’s just most trade exhaustion/hp/hit dice for resource systems tend toward extremely high variance compared to the floor output.

Other issues that make such systems hard to develop is appropriate cost. If abilities don’t cost enough resource tradeoff they are almost always use. If they cost too much they are almost never use. That Goldilocks zone is really hard to hit in such systems IMO.

 

[zakael19]

I don’t know about better overall as there’s more to consider than just balance and pacing.

But in terms of balance and pacing, it usually makes for a very high variance system where players can trade much better performance now for much worse performance later (often 2-10x better performance now) , very similar to one of the primary drivers of the 5MWD in d&d. This can be overcame by enough constant time pressure (narratively difficult to justify) or by making it relatively difficult to recover (usually players solve for this so it’s not a very robust solution IMO).

That said oftentimes you just don’t have players that really analyze the homebrew system to really optimize for it (and since there’s no internet telling them how, you probably don’t have to deal with extreme optimizations). Meaning for localized small sample play of a novel homebrew system, you probably never see most issues of homebrew system. So this may not be an issue in practice for you.

There are benefits to higher variance systems. Mostly that players can navigate a single overturned encounter or bad rolls whereas in a low or no variance system, such things are likely to kill them.

As such I’d recommend focusing on limiting your ceiling of pc output, so that it’s in the sweet spot. Probably ceiling = 1.5*floor. Going to low variance tends to make the game feel samey and less fun, almost like your combat choices don’t really matter.

If you can lock down this sweet spot of variance down you probably could make your preferred system style work better. It’s just most trade exhaustion/hp/hit dice for resource systems tend toward extremely high variance compared to the floor output.

Other issues that make such systems hard to develop is appropriate cost. If abilities don’t cost enough resource tradeoff they are almost always use. If they cost too much they are almost never use. That Goldilocks zone is really hard to hit in such systems IMO.

It absolutely can work, it just needs heavy testing & balancing within interlocking systems. See: the DS! Talent and their choices around going into strained. But it’s not across the board - just a single class that uses it to add to their psionic flavor.

 

[FrogReaver]

It absolutely can work, it just needs heavy testing & balancing within interlocking systems. See: the DS! Talent and their choices around going into strained. But it’s not across the board - just a single class that uses it to add to their psionic flavor.

I’m not familiar enough about that game to know if it does or doesn’t work there. I’m skeptical enough that I wouldn’t just take anyone’s word for it, not because the game couldnt do that, but because most people suck at in depth analysis.

Explaining what about those interlocking systems makes you think it works there would be helpful though.

Having a single class with that style of ability helps compared to all having it, as that limitation reduces the party floor vs ceiling variance. But theres very much table variance around what happens when that class has traded too much whatever for his abilities. Does the party rest or push on. And even though it limits party floor vs ceiling variance, it could still drive too much overall variance there. As an extreme example 100x floor is less than 1000x floor, but both really push towards resting.