D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[EzekielRaiden]

Variety of complexity that's opt in.

4E lacked that 4E died whimpering.

I'm well aware of your flagrant anti-4e bias. There's no need to bring it up again.

Its also a presentation thing. Try reading an old spell compendium.

I have. They're awful.

5E blew up as it was comparatively simple.

No. 5e "blew up" because:

• It got incredibly lucky with the zeitgeist of the time embracing 80s nostalgia and specifically embracing D&D as a thing that was in vogue
• It landed at the height of the post-recession boom, rather than at the height of a recession that killed one of the US's biggest book businesses
• It had all the free marketing it could ever ask for and then about 3000% more, because of the podcasting boom
• It had third-party tabletop software and voice communication software it could piggyback on top of
• It got a second wind right as it might have otherwise flagged, because of the pandemic keeping people inside (all sorts of "social activities we can do over the internet" got an ENORMOUS boost during this time)

In nearly every possible way, 5e got incredibly lucky. These things mattered far more than any system design elements.

Im guessing you didn't play Star Wars Saga Edition?

No.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Sure. So design for 1 or 2 fights a day and make the attrition model span somewhat longer than a day. Partial recovery per long rest rather than full, stuff like that, forcing a near-constant choice between continuing on at less than full or - perhaps at risk - resting up longer. Maybe make some recovery only possible during downtime.

Or - and I'll throw this out there as a flyer just for kicks - maybe make recovery a lot less predictable. Long rest? OK, roll 2d10*, that's how many hit points you get back. Roll 2d6 for how many levels worth of spell slots you recover. And so on.

You could do that, but is that something people who play D&D specifically actually want? Is that something that the majority of the 30m+ D&D players, the overwhelming majority of whom never played D&D before 5E want and expect from D&D? This is about 6E D&D specifically, not a D&D-like game.

Because I would suggest it very probably isn't something they want, and it's almost certainly not something they expect (given the overwhelming majority started TTRPGs with 5E, and probably most major videogames, boardgames and so on do "reset" resources on a rest if they have such a concept). I think that sort of change is essentially a "4E-type" change - i.e. quite specific and not necessarily generally appreciated even if good design in that specific context. And I suspect the small number of people who would highly value it as a default or major balancing point are, for the most part, already playing other RPGs and wouldn't necessarily swap back to D&D because of it.

I think 6E probably wants to keep the Long Rest model as it is, because it provides a useful reset and it actually makes the game potentially quite a lot easier to balance. Short Rests could probably do with some looking at.

I do think what you suggest would be very useful as DM options - i.e. dials - keep the default as it is (basically full reset), and then offer some options for different approaches in the DMG. If you conceptualize, standardize them and name them well enough, you could even link the options to adventures or even entire settings. I.e. For this adventure, we have assumed X recovery setting, Y magic item setting, and so on, or "this setting is designed to use X recovery setting for tonal reasons...". That would require a lot more thought and more "time to cook" than either 4E or 5E (both 2014 and 2024) got of course, because you'll need options that will stand the test of time (5E 2014's optional rules were a complete mess, clearly not playtested, very half-baked, and indeed to the point where one of them literally doesn't work mechanically the way the text says it does - we know 5E was under huge time pressure to get the books out so that's probably why).

 

[Reynard]

I kinda wish @EzekielRaiden and @Zardnaar would read the thread title and OP again.

 

[Zardnaar]

I mean the buy-on has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of either version of 5e. Like genuinely it is completely irrelevant which is better and which is worse.

The market for people who were considering buying D&D 5e, but didn't for a whole decade, is pretty damned slim. So outright brand-new customers are going to be thin on the ground.

The market for people who already have D&D 5e, but are unhappy with it, cannot be any greater than the market was for people who didn't have it before 5.0 dropped. It is almost certainly smaller, because some proportion will be happy with what they have, and some proportion will dislike something about the new, whatever that dislike may be.

Every re-release in this kind of situation is chasing diminishing returns. That is the nature of revisions. They will never have the staying power of the original thing, if the original thing succeeded, as this did.

I've already been saying for years now that 5.5e would only have between 4 and 6 years in the tank, compared to 5.0's decade. Fewer if it did really poorly, perhaps edging up into 7 years if it did phenomenally well, but either way, it's a thing of diminishing returns. If we haven't heard reputable rumbles about an upcoming 6th edition playtest by 2029, 5.5e will have significantly exceeded its expected lifespan.

Im not expecting a long run.

Could be wrong but I doubt 10 years.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I kinda wish @EzekielRaiden and @Zardnaar would read the thread title and OP again.

Then I will simply stop replying to them.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm well aware of your flagrant anti-4e bias. There's no need to bring it up again.


I have. They're awful.


No. 5e "blew up" because:

• It got incredibly lucky with the zeitgeist of the time embracing 80s nostalgia and specifically embracing D&D as a thing that was in vogue
• It landed at the height of the post-recession boom, rather than at the height of a recession that killed one of the US's biggest book businesses
• It had all the free marketing it could ever ask for and then about 3000% more, because of the podcasting boom
• It had third-party tabletop software and voice communication software it could piggyback on top of
• It got a second wind right as it might have otherwise flagged, because of the pandemic keeping people inside (all sorts of "social activities we can do over the internet" got an ENORMOUS boost during this time)

In nearly every possible way, 5e got incredibly lucky. These things mattered far more than any system design elements.


No.

Star Wars Saga used the 4E engine. 5 classes around 5 pages each.

No spells but it had force powers. Anyone could access them. But they're opt in.

Any RPG and I suspect movies and video games you need the casuals.

Its not an anti 4E basis as such. It didn't appeal to casuals though.

It was designed in reaction to online complaints. But thise complaints came from the hard core.

I suspect the vast majority were casual. Played 3E more like 2E. So they never experienced the worst aspects of 3E. Druids were one of the least popular classes.

I also suspect then as now most games don't go to high level. The old E6 format was probably closer to the way most people were playing.

So modern D&D has a variety of entry points for various tastes. Making it more complicated drives away casuals (I suspect 5.5 will suffer here).

Shadowdark and OSR of course go other way to simple.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I think 6E probably wants to keep the Long Rest model as it is, because it provides a useful reset and it actually makes the game potentially quite a lot easier to balance. Short Rests could probably do with some looking at.

Interesting. I'd say the Long Rest issue is a far larger issue for 5e than the Short Rest - and this is not just me but as evidenced in Enworld's thread history.
I would imagine them revisiting the Long Rest for 6e.

 

[Reynard]

Interesting. I'd say the Long Rest issue is a far larger issue for 5e than the Short Rest.
I would imagine them revisiting the Long Rest for 6e.

I think that is a dial, too. Some campaigns work well with "long rest is a week in a safe environment" while others would benefit from "you get 2 minor recharges and 1 major recharge per session."

 

[Remathilis]

I totally disagree. Homebrewers have hacked 5e to fix a huge number of settings. All it require it for the core game to come with options built in. The game might have 15-ish classes, but with the assumption that only 4-12 will be used in any given game where they fit the milieu. Different magic-using classes would have different magic systems that fit different settings; Sub-classes could be built with different fantasy genres in mind (spellcasting would become a ranger sub-class, for example). Again, not every sub-class would be available in every game.

Middle Earth: Druid; Fighter, Noble, Ranger, Wizard; low-magic module; slow recovery; tradition fantasy spell list module; traditional fantasy races only​

​

Hyboria: Barbarian, Cultist, Fighter, Noble, Ranger, Rogue, Warlock; low-magic module; all human PCs​

​

Vancian Dying Earth: Fighter, Noble, Rogue, Magician (uses a real Vancian magic system); all human PCs​

​

Westros: Barbarian, Cultist, Fighter, Noble, Ranger, Rogue; low-magic module; slow-recovery module; tradition fantasy spell list module; all human PCs​

​

1e Faerun: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard​

​

3e Eberron: Artificer, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard​

​

Age of Sail Historical Fantasy: Fighter, Noble, Ranger, Rogue; no magic module; slow-recovery module; firearms module; all human PCs​

​

Early 1900s CoC-type setting: Cultist, Fighter, Rogue, Warlock, low magic module; firearms module; slow-recovery module; all human PCs​

​

Tatooine: Fighter, Monk, Noble, Ranger, Rogue; Psionic feats allowed; high tech weapons module; space flight module​

I absolutely believe this could be accomplished in two 350-page books by 1) moving all detailed rules explanations to the DMG and 2) cutting the abstract stuff nobody reads from the DMG.

You are still asking the system to do a lot in 700 pages if you expect balanced and expansive options. A Tolkien elf is not an Eberron elf. Aragorn and Drizzt are not the same type of rangers. Magic is wildly different in Middle Earth, Hyboria, Greyhawk and Hogwarts (to the point where you can't have one universal wizard class that could emulate them all, low/high module be damned). Their is no One System to Play Them All. Nor would I necessarily want that: a system so disassociated from it's source material doesn't have anything to focus it. It would be easily abused when modules designed for one type of play mix with a different (Harry Potter magic meets Westros healing/combat).

The d20 system showed it was remarkably flexible. It did that by creating hundreds of separate games with their own tweaks and versions of things. It constantly reinvented the wheel. And despite being similar enough, they weren't compatible without a lot of elbow grease (speaking from experience as someone who ran a SWRE Jedi in a "D&D" campaign). No way could you do the same in just 700 pages.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Interesting. I'd say the Long Rest issue is a far larger issue for 5e than the Short Rest - and this is not just me but as evidenced in Enworld's thread history.
I would imagine them revisiting the Long Rest for 6e.

I don't think either one is strictly a problem in isolation. The problem is trying to make them both speak the same proverbial language.