D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[Ruin Explorer]

What do you have in mind - Would you remove iconic spells such as Magic Missile and Fireball etc? Perhaps tone then down in terms of damage-dealing?

You definitely wouldn't have to remove them to do what @BookTenTiger was suggesting. I don't think you'd even have to tone down Magic Missile. Maybe Fireball a little but if you just boosted martial ability to hit multiple targets maybe not even that, it'd just be relatively less powerful.

That said as long as D&D remains combat-centric, which I think any 6E would, every class should be good in and out of combat. The problem 5E has is that most casters shine in and out of combat, and this only gets more extreme as you reach higher levels, whereas non-casters don't do great out of combat except for maybe the skill-monkeys, but some of them are ALSO casters, like the Bard!

There's a pretty straightforward solution that a lot of modern D&D-like games are doing though, which is to make all spells require some kind of casting check, there are no automatic successes, which brings casters down to about everyone else out of combat.

 

[Scribe]

So designers do whatever and ignore player psychology...how did @Zardnaar and @Scribe feel about 4e...?

Bounced off it, didnt play.

 

[Scribe]

So what does that make of a huge, huge swathe of both complaints levied at, I dunno, some particular version of some popular game out there, AND at the explicit design policy that went into the sequel?

Because if that's true, then the entire foundation upon which 5e was built is inherently suspect.

Many many people have adjusted to play 5e.
Many many people also (as per this thread) want something different.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Keep in mind that this is my own crazy vision for 6e, but yeah totally.

Or maybe they'd be gated to certain paths of spellcasting? Battlemage, etc. But if you're choosing to be a combat-focused spellcaster then you're choosing to not have the other kinds of spells and magic.

Playing a wizard in a long term 5e game, I wound up being bored by the broadness of spell selection. If I'm choosing to not be a combat spellcaster, then I want that to be a path with its own rewards and challenges. There were no mechanical reasons that I couldn't suddenly choose to copy Fireball into my spellbook and start casting it.

I can certainly empathise with all that. I'm a fan of opposition schools in magic but there are also many other creative ways to narrow one's focus - some of which others have mentioned in this thread.

One could really create a Tome for how to mold the arcane classes, ramp up and down the magic within a setting, creating opposition schools or narrow bands of magic, possible casting costs (health, age, defilement, alignment shift/taint, vulnerability to possession etc) and tied to that magic overuse (magical diseases etc).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Many many people have adjusted to play 5e.

I feel like most people don't actually "adjust" as much as "tolerate", and to me, those are very different things.

D&D has a lot of quirks a lot of people who play it don't really like nor necessarily adjust to in the sense of actually accepting, but they just sort of ignore because things function well enough. And often that's because D&D is kind of the "only game in town". It's notable to me that 2E's flaws became much more of an issue as 2E became less and less the "only game in town" in the 1990s. And it's not only D&D that gets tolerated. The various oWoD games definitely had some toleration-not-adjustment directed their way, especially as they became more and more important in the 1990s. I suspect the same happens with any game that becomes successful. Hell I think it happens with multiplayer videogames even.

 

[SkidAce]

Keep in mind that this is my own crazy vision for 6e, but yeah totally.

Or maybe they'd be gated to certain paths of spellcasting? Battlemage, etc. But if you're choosing to be a combat-focused spellcaster then you're choosing to not have the other kinds of spells and magic.

Playing a wizard in a long term 5e game, I wound up being bored by the broadness of spell selection. If I'm choosing to not be a combat spellcaster, then I want that to be a path with its own rewards and challenges. There were no mechanical reasons that I couldn't suddenly choose to copy Fireball into my spellbook and start casting it.

This has some potential to be the way.

 

[SkidAce]

I can certainly empathise with all that. I'm a fan of opposition schools in magic but there are also many other creative ways to narrow one's focus - some of which others have mentioned in this thread.

One could really create a Tome for how to mold the arcane classes, ramp up and down the magic within a setting, creating opposition schools or narrow bands of magic, possible casting costs (health, age, defilement, alignment shift/taint, vulnerability to possession etc) and tied to that magic overuse (magical diseases etc).

Like this?

 

[AnotherGuy]

I feel like most people don't actually "adjust" as much as "tolerate", and to me, those are very different things.

Yes, but - it is extremely easy to tinker with.
You can easily incorporate things from earlier editions and even one's own ideas for how things ought to be.

 

[Scribe]

Hell I think it happens with multiplayer videogames even.

For sure it does, and this was what my mind was on last night.

I'm pretty notorious for filling in MP games. I was always Tank or Support in Overwatch for example, I played a Shaman or Paladin in Vanilla/Classic/TBC/Wrath for WoW.

I see that as 'adjusting to the game', and as the smart thing to do to make the experience better for everyone.

If I stamped my feet and said 'no I'm a one trick' I would have lost a whole lot more, and thats not fun.

Same thing with D&D. Adjust, or play something different, or write it up.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Same thing with D&D. Adjust, or play something different, or write it up.

But those aren't the only options - if they were, 5E would be drastically less successful. You can also modify 5E or just play it in different ways that aren't strictly by-the-book and huge numbers of people choose to do that.

I mean, in an ideal world maybe people would "play something different", but they don't lol! And the same applies with videogames. A lot of people stick with a lot of games with issues just because their mates play them or w/e.

I see that as 'adjusting to the game', and as the smart thing to do to make the experience better for everyone.

But I question whether it reliably does, or whether people tell themselves that to cover cognitive dissonance of it not actually being very fun even though they "adjusted" - thinking of videogames particularly. Some people just don't enjoy certain roles, even if they're good at them, even if they "make the experience better". Like, I have a friend who is extremely good at playing WoW, just any role. Doesn't matter. She's good at all of them. But she doesn't enjoy them equally, and furthermore, they don't get treated equally - WoW people are 10x nastier to tanks and 5x nastier to healers than DPS. Nor are they necessarily equally important - I think a good case could be made in modern WoW that a mediocre healer is fine for about 99% of content, and for a lot of content (ironically including raiding!) a pretty mediocre tank is fine (not so much for M+), but for all content, you really want absolutely blazin' DPS who don't stand in fire. Even if your tank and healer are kind of bleh, if everything just melts, you're fine. But on the flipside, way fewer people want to play tank or healer (in part because they attract 80% of the criticism and 90% of the abuse you might get in WoW), so what do we value here, actually putting a party together and getting things done ("better experience") or standing around waiting for some sucker to be willing to take the bum roles? I this as someone who has tanked for decades, note. It wasn't always like this either.

Sorry I'm not sure if this even applies to the discussion I'm just complaining about WoW now!