D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[EzekielRaiden]

Disagree. 8-hour refresh EVERYTHING is an issue.
@EzekielRaiden out of interest have you DMed 5e?

I would only GM 5e if I was paid above minimum wage for it.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Not gonna happen.

You want to kill someone 20 feet across the room with a sword? Then either you gotta have a 20-foot long sword (and good luck getting that down the twisty hallway!); or have a sword that shoots lightning or death rays now and then; or a sword you can throw.

GobHag's ideas are fine for optional mythic-level play but not for the core game.

When was the last time you watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Hint: Do you remember the crone's death?

 

[AnotherGuy]

I would only GM 5e if I was paid above minimum wage for it.

I only asked because players never have an issue with an 8-hour recharge all so your comment set those alarm bells off for me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Why not?

You allow it with one kind of supernatural power. Why not another?

The issue is that some people are stuck in this mindset where no-one who doesn't have completely explicit magical powers can do anything that they can't personally imagine happening IRL (which we've seen from arguments even includes things which have happened IRL, but that person didn't know could happen).

It's a very silly situation, because Monks can get away with literally anything merely by vaguely muttering "It's Focus, ok" under their breath as they do the most anime stuff imaginable (even if they don't have to spend Focus or w/e to do it, and Focus isn't some well-defined or even necessarily supernatural ability), but it's TOTALLY ILLEGAL WRONG AND AGAINST THE GODS to have a Fighter or Rogue do the same thing. Unless you refer to "psionics" or "shadow magic" or something. Then suddenly it's totally fine!

And the same exact people are mostly aggressively opposed to the very obvious and simple solution which would be to have another class, one which uses Focus like the Monk but is an armoured, martial-weapon-using melee combatant (called, say, the Warrior), which could do all this stuff and just shrug and say "Focus, man" if asked how they did it. Maybe also add a light-armoured guy called the Skirmisher or something better (not good class name imagination right now!) who does the same for Rogues and Rangers.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, we call that the "d20 system"

4E version of it though.

Skill system, +1/2 levels, NADs and the combat rules. That's essentially the 4E engine. You could remove feats, rewrite them or go with 5E large feats for example. Rewrite classes and races to do whatever.

3.5 would probably run better using a tweaked version as it would solve number bloat.

 

[TiQuinn]

It just seems to me that D&D is a very specific kind of fantasy that changes from version to version - one where a base, non-subclassed fighter has no overtly magical abilities but nearly every subclass adds in magical or supernatural abilities - and yet we can still argue about whether such a character can throw a sword. It’s not about realism - it’s about arguing over what D&D’s brand of fantasy is. One person may want it like Arthurian fantasy while another may want it like a Marvel comic superhero game.

I don’t think the game can really support both views out of the box.

 

[kermit4karate]

I mean, it's worth noting that 4e characters were specifically designed to be competent, but to never have too many powers overall. You only get 2 at-wills (3 for humans), and then a rotating set of no more than 4 encounters and 4 daily powers from your class. Anything else is a bonus you elected to have on top, like racial powers, Paragon Path stuff, or the like.

4e was specifically designed to be "sweet spot" from roughly level like, five-six onward.

I wasn't a fan of 4E. It was just too much...muchness for me. I see your point about it and higher levels but don't think that balanced out the complexity overall.

For me it was always a slog to DM. I had to house rule so much just to maintain a decent pace. Every TPK was the players dying of boredom....

 

[AnotherGuy]

I think that's because ENworld is extremely, extremely un-representative of 5E players as a whole, based on I dunno, anywhere which is full of grogs like us, but more of the vast majority of 5E players who are 35 and under, and for whom 5E is their first (or first for so long they barely remember it) TTRPG.

So we've had endless pointless going-nowhere discussions of Long Rests from literally day 1 of 5E and what they should represent and so on. If you changed the default effect of them, sure, you'd please like, some grogs, but according to WotC's own surveys, grogs as a whole (i.e. the oldest category of players, I think WotC had it as like 40+ or 42+ or something) is like what, 12%? And of that 12% of 5E players, how many want Long Rest to change? 50%? 25%? 10%? So you might be looking at pleasing 1.2% of players or less by changing this!

And importantly, not only would you be pleasing say, 6%-1.2% of players, you'd probably be actively pissing off somewhere ABOVE 50% of players who are used to Long Rest working a specific way and don't see why it would change.

The question of course is, do you want to design a 6E that is popular and successful, or do you want to design 6E into an ultra-niche game that is ideal for you, but makes 4E look incredibly popular by comparison? A lot of people would be happy with the ultra-niche I'm sure, but my point is that if you change stuff to be more OSR-ish/Old-Skool just because some grogs on ENworld wanted you to, then that's probably the direction you're headed in.

I mean, look at 5E-likes - A5E, ToV, DC20, etc. do any of them change the definition of Long Rest significantly by default? I don't think they do. I could be wrong, tell me if I am! But if this was an ez-pz way to ensure more people liked something, all of them would.

(DH, a D&D-related but not 5E-like game notably does change Long Rests a bit, in that it's a case of "Pick 2" rather than always a full reset - I think fiddling on that level might work, but even then it'll probably just create balance issues.)

I do think that ENworld etc. does show people want some options here, but I don't think it supports changing the default situation.

I do not follow other social media or D&D play-podcasts so I cannot honestly dispute the above - we will wait and see for 6e.
My grand idea for 6e as stated upthread is Dials for different styles of play- so I am all inclusive, whatever the default situation is.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The issue is that some people are stuck in this mindset where no-one who doesn't have completely explicit magical powers can do anything that they can't personally imagine happening IRL (which we've seen from arguments even includes things which have happened IRL, but that person didn't know could happen).

It's a very silly situation, because Monks can get away with literally anything merely by vaguely muttering "It's Focus, ok" under their breath as they do the most anime stuff imaginable (even if they don't have to spend Focus or w/e to do it, and Focus isn't some well-defined or even necessarily supernatural ability), but it's TOTALLY ILLEGAL WRONG AND AGAINST THE GODS to have a Fighter or Rogue do the same thing. Unless you refer to "psionics" or "shadow magic" or something. Then suddenly it's totally fine!

And the same exact people are mostly aggressively opposed to the very obvious and simple solution which would be to have another class, one which uses Focus like the Monk but is an armoured, martial-weapon-using melee combatant (called, say, the Warrior), which could do all this stuff and just shrug and say "Focus, man" if asked how they did it. Maybe also add a light-armoured guy called the Skirmisher or something better (not good class name imagination right now!) who does the same for Rogues and Rangers.

Oh, I'm quite well aware of it. I call it the "guy at the gym" problem.

If it's not something they can imagine a guy at the gym doing, it's not possible for a Fighter. Even though doing some of the things D&D characters do is literally beyond Olympic Athlete level stuff.

It's a pox upon the field of TTRPGs, and I wish I knew the words to dispel it. I desperately wish I knew them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I wasn't a fan of 4E. It was just too much...muchness for me. I see your point about it and higher levels but don't think that balanced out the complexity overall.

For me it was always a slog to DM. I had to house rule so much just to maintain a decent pace. Every TPK was the players dying of boredom....

I agree that combat tended to be slow (though some of that had to do with certain very specific unfortunate design choices in early 4e), but the way to fix that isn't to trash the system that works well, it's to create something like my "Skirmish" concept. That is, combats that are lickety-split, that are the "group skill check" equivalent, just as Skill Challenges are the non-combat equivalent of a set piece combat.