D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[Scribe]

I do like the idea of training, although after a while it gets a bit silly--there's only so many other people of equal or higher level. I'd stick with training for lower levels (10~ or lower). By the time you get to that level, you're good enough to truly self-teach.

Even self teaching, requires investment however. Materials, space, upkeep of equipment, rehab (physio!) whatever you want to abstract it as, its still a cost.

 

[Faolyn]

Would a 6e with a new default setting (that could still support the current/legacy ones) be a benefit, or detriment?

OK, you know those... I guess giant hexes filled with terrain, locations, encounters, and stuff? They mostly seem to be published for OSR games. I am totally blanking on what they're called. My idea would be for those things to replace a default setting.

So my wish would be that the game would publish those. Each Giant Hex would have interesting area, adventure hooks, and new stuff made specifically for that Hex, like monsters, treasures, and things like that. Kind of like the old D&D/Known World Gazetteers and Dragon Mag's Voyage of the Princess Ark series. Only smaller and not inherently connected.

It would be a good way to introduce regional religions, or have a particular wizard and their unique spells live there. GMs can pretty much stick them together however they want because there's no actual world map or unification. It would be more realistic because hey, a world with presumably low communication or long-distance travel would be more likely to have areas with their own unique things. And the presence of high levels of magic could mean that yeah, you could have a temperate forest hex right next to an arctic hex. The God of Winter decided to claim that hex; you gonna tell them no? It's how the world works.

Also it would fit that whole stupid "D&D needs to be monetized more" thing WotC/Hasbro has been wanting to do, because they could each be sold separately. And it would definitely encourage the fans to make and sell their own.

So anyway, my wish: no default setting. If the book needs to, for instance, talk about the gods, they can just go "the Deity of Winter" or "Major Port City" rather than namedrop Auril or Waterdeep.

 

[payn]

Thinking back on rolling stats in 6E. I think for me to actually buck the trend of array and/or point buy id need some substantial system changes. A few I can think of;

• Remove initiative and AC increases from Dex
• Remove bonuses to hit and damage from stats and place them into class and/or level progression
• Remove perception from Wis

To facilitate varying stats from rolling id also stop SAD design (which the above changes would help with) and move into MAD. Give each class more options to rely on a different spread. For example; Wizard might penetrate defenses casting spells with a high str, know more spells with high Wis, but could keep more going at once with higher Con. Each stat would have its own pros and cons associated with doing things within the class (but not increasing effectiveness which has shifted to leveling chassis instead).

Saves for each stat works fine, but a reexamination and balancing of the spells is due. There shouldnt be any safe dump stats, nor should spells focus and exploit any above the others.

Just spitballing here.

 

[Parmandur]

One other 6E demand: make the default campaign length years instead of months again, and no longer have "campaign length" adventures as the main adventure support.

That's juat based off of what people actually do, though: AotC research found out that the organizing principle of most campaigns in practice is the Academic year.

 

[Faolyn]

But it is in a lot of magic-centric fantasy. The hard outer limits might not always be defined but there's often a clear rationale, things it can never do, things it's good at or bad at and so on.

This isn't just modern either - it's true in A Wizard of Earthsea, for example. But in modern fantasy it is extremely common, Jordan and Sanderson centre entire stories around what magic can and cannot do and how and why, for example. ASoIaF we don't know the outer limits but clearly there is little or no battle magic or similar and most magic has a terrible cost. I could go on pretty endlessly.

D&D arcane magic though has just been increasingly the "misc" folder of magic, where literally everything is just filed into there without rhyme, reason, consistency, limits or themes. For a while it generally couldn't heal and had limited buffs but 3E ended even that mild limit. There's no system or theme, there's just a pile of random junk. Much of it pretty dull and unevocative I would personally suggest. Generic simplified shared spells are good for reducing page count, bad for providing flavour or atmosphere or verisimilitude.

It doesn't actually matter whether it's common though. If you never question one power source and are very skeptical and limiting about another there is clearly an issue imho (if you give both a lot of leeway, or both none, fine).

Maybe instead of creating class lists of spells we need to have theme lists of spells. Fire spells in this list, Animal spells in that list, Mind-Control spells is that other list. Spells would have to be heavily curated to make sure the lists are roughly equal both in number of spells and usefulness.

Then your class gives you (a) a grouping of assorted lists to choose from and (b) the number of lists you can have. So Druids may get to choose two or three from among Animal, Plant, Summons, Weather, Life; and Clerics may only get one or two lists from a very small number of lists, but each subclass grants an additional list or two (Sun domain grants access to Fire list). But both Druids and Clerics have a large number of non-spell powers to make up for that loss. Wizards may get to choose a bunch of lists, because they have few non-spell abilities, but there will still be lists they can't use.

 

[Faolyn]

I very much miss the arcane/divine divide or, failing that, any divide between different kinds of magic. In fact, since A5e has a lot of spell school tags for its spells (not just the classic 8), I'm thinking of having spell availability restricted by subclass and/or institution of learning.

IMO, those spell school tags are very unevenly distributed. Your idea is a good one, though.

 

[Faolyn]

There's really nothing minor about combat cantrips though; each of them is equivalent to a ranged weapon strike, more or less, plus typed damage and usually a rider. Having them in a setting changes that setting in a huge way IMO, and largely not for the better.

In comparison to later damage-dealing spells, they're minor.

Anyway, let me rephrase: I'd do this while implementing different combat proficiency bonuses. A fighter should have a better combat ability than a caster. A wizard might get a base of +0 or +1 to hit while a fighter might get +2 or +3, even if the stats they're using are the same level.

This would mean that even though a 6e firebolt or whatever does as much damage as a sword and maybe sets the target on fire, the actual attack roll won't be as good, so the wizard would be slightly more likely to miss. I'd also make it so that most of these pew pew cantrips relied on these lowered attack rolls rather than on the presumably better saving throws.

 

[Faolyn]

What does that have to do with anything? Get your xp rewards from other stuff then. It's hardly an either/or situation.

D&D has always been very bad at giving XP for non-combat challenges. I even just checked 5.24, where it says you get the same amount of XP for non-combat challenges as you would for combat, but the entirely of the rules to do it is "judge the difficulty for yourself based on the XP budget."

But anyway, I don't need to get XP rewards from other stuff; I do milestone/story progression.

 

[Faolyn]

Which is what downtime is for!

No? I mean, yes, OK, but there's also puzzles, social challenges, environmental hazards, exploration hazards, and the like. You do those in-game, not during downtime.

 

[Remathilis]

The key word to remember there is "unserious". Methinks many here take the game, and their characters, faaaaar too seriously.

D&D was sold to me as the ability to make my own characters, worlds, and stories in a way that allowed me to express my creative freedom. D&D in the years since has moved in the direction of better helping me tell those stories. Creating nameless fighters to rush into a dungeon and die was the antithesis of that. Had I found your game instead of the one I found, I have abandoned D&D decades ago.