D&D General Ch-Ch-Changes

[Stormonu]

They'll keep races but get rid of subraces as mechanical differences. You get to pick and choose your options from a list.

Ditto for classes. They'll keep them, but all the abilities will be available at all levels, turning them into something akin to feat trees, but hopefully more open, with multiple options for prerequisites instead of a single chain.

They'll put more spells together, making smaller spell lists but with each spell having more options. Like the way Bigby's hand is now. You get a couple of fire-attack spells, but each of them lets you duplicate several different spells. Sometimes the options in the spells require you to cast them at different levels.

They still won't have psionics or artificers in the core books.



What's that?

Tons of magic items, essentially.

Damn ya'll for getting me to check out the "20th level X vs. the world" thread.

 

[Voadam]

What's that?

Having slots for magic items, and using items to boost relevant numbers to what the game is built around as default numbers.

So every character has one belt slot and there are belts of physical stat enhancement (giant strength).

Every character has one head slot and there are circlets of mental stat enhancement.

Every character has two ring slots and there are rings of +x to AC.

enough slots filled with standard number enhancers and you are a decorated magic item tree.

 

[Oofta]

They will realize that choice is merely an illusion and streamline gameplay and decision making.

All PCs will be gnome paladins dual wielding rapiers, with one stat. Awesome. The value of that stat? Infinite. Typical party?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

20 years from now? So in 2041?

I'm pretty sure the D&D brand, will, at that point, be owned by some sort of video game company primarily (even if it's still WotC, just fully transformed into a video game company - they're already starting studios and so on), and the primary "kind" of D&D that people will be playing will be some kind of DM-less online deal with procedural generation elements and so on. What exactly that will look like I'm less sure about. I strongly suspect you'll still have a character with a class, and probably with stats, and with a bunch of abilities you can use which have D&D-ish names, fighting D&D-ish monsters, and exploring D&D settings (quite probably still Faerun unless a new setting somehow becomes massively popular in the next 20 years, which could happen). I imagine there will still be a party and it won't be an MMO, because I just don't think most people want to play MMOs, or play with total strangers, if they can avoid it.

TT/pen and paper D&D will still exist of course, as a sort of complementary thing to the main brand, that mostly older people play - y'know, people who are 16+ today. It'll probably reach it's "final form" in 6E or 6.5E or something, which will likely not be all that different from 5E. I doubt alignment will survive as anything but a meme-driving set of optional rules.

People will still be hopping mad about some change in 6E that didn't get fixed in 6.5E, and is now perceived as "permanent", like Dragonborn got deleted and replaced by Goliaths, but those Goliaths were clearly an attempt to tie into some fad, or Tieflings were all given wings, or Sorcerers were merged into Wizards, or Clerics got split into two classes, or whatever. People will just not stop being mad about it.

 

[tetrasodium]

• As others have mentioned, the ASI or feat thing didn't play out at hoped & created an even larger harder to fix problem so will probably go
• the good-evil/law-chaos axis will go or be dramatically reshaped because it's a mess if used for any setting/table not heavily invested in absolute morality & having the rest of the rules written for relative morality just makes the awkwardness bad in a different way if a setting/table wants to use AM. I think it will probably look something like this thematic alignment or some other keyword/aspect based thing.
• Calling the flaws bonds & traits barely vestigial is almost an elevation of their role. We might see them in some form like the A5 destinies(?) or fat e style aspect/high concept but I expect they will go or change
• body slots will make a comeback, possibly in conjunction with attunement slots where some items need both but I suspect the 3 attunement slots boondoggle will get thrown in the rubbish bin to pave the way for allowing magical item progression over a character's levels..
  • @Voadam it was a little bit more complicated but the 3.5 dmg did a nice job of
    Spoiler: summarizing it

    
• Forgotten realms will officially be treated as a setting rather than schrodingers cat where it is a "kitchen sink setting that can take anything" yet never actually draws anything from other settings. Once it stops being all things from all times & all adventures ever it can be something treated as an equal among the other settings

 

[MarkB]

What's that?

The "Christmas Tree effect" is where characters routinely fill every available equipable 'slot' with a magic item. It had its heyday in 4e.

 

[tetrasodium]

The "Christmas Tree effect" is where characters routinely fill every available equipable 'slot' with a magic item. It had its heyday in 4e.

To help those who don't realize, this was largely due to how 4e allowed players to destroy magic items the gm gives out to convert them into the perfect set of items the want. Back in 3.5 it was less of an issue because crafting that many slots or powerful items was just not possible for a pc& buying them from an npc went through the GM who could just say not available or not available as you hope.

 

[el-remmen]

20 years from now? So in 2041?

TT/pen and paper D&D will still exist of course, as a sort of complementary thing to the main brand, that mostly older people play - y'know, people who are 16+ today. It'll probably reach it's "final form" in 6E or 6.5E or something, which will likely not be all that different from 5E. I doubt alignment will survive as anything but a meme-driving set of optional rules.

I turn 70 that year and it is my hope I will still be playing some form of P&P RPG - probably D&D - though I may just go back to BECMI by then, like I keep threatening to do.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I turn 70 that year and it is my hope I will still be playing some form of P&P RPG - probably D&D - though I may just go back to BECMI by then, like I keep threatening to do.

Yeah I don't doubt they'll still be around, and indeed new ones will probably still be emerging and so on. I just suspect the D&D brand is so big right now with people aged sort of 16-34 or whatever that people will want to monetize it in a way that's not practical with a pen and paper game. They won't want to offend people, so the pen and paper game will still exist, but a much more heavily monetized and highly accessible video game or quasi-video-game will likely be considered by the brand owners to be the "main" D&D.

 

[Oofta]

People are taking this seriously? Well, predicting the future is difficult especially when it hasn't happened yet, but here's my guesses.

A lot of play will be in virtual mode. You'll enter the game and interact with other players via their avatars. There will still be an option for a real person as a DM but they will be assisted by AI that will fill in the world.

The interface is the hardest to figure out though, there will always be a desire for people to do something other than the traditional MMO style of play, they will want to think about what they're doing and strategize. They won't want to rely on twitch responses.

So you'll have the option of turn based play with virtual die rolls if you want.

As far as the rule set? I think it will still be recognizable as D&D. Same base classes, ability scores, races (even if we have more design flexibility if we want). People will still argue about it as well. The changes will be more streamlining and changes to flavor more than anything.

I don't see alignments going away, nor any "core" changes. Bonus actions will be a thing long past, casting multiple spells per turn will be simplified somehow. There will be more optional rules for added complexity since the AI will be able to do any number crunching needed.

There will always be the option to play in person if you want, but we'll likely have some sort of holographic table top. So I see it as more tech changes than changes to the feel of the game.