D&D General Ch-Ch-Changes

[Ralif Redhammer]

The six stats will be the same - anyone remember when they tried to add Comeliness? I suspect race will have been replaced with the term lineage, which showed up in Tasha's. D&D will always be a level-based game.

In 20 years, the default setting will be a tough guess. It'd be easy to say Forgotten Realms, but 20 years ago, the default setting was Greyhawk. Twenty years before that, it was sort-of Greyhawk but not particularly. For all I know it could be Eberron or something entirely new (though I suspect it would be something more vanilla fantasy than Eberron). I don't think it'll be a MtG setting, but I could certainly be wrong on that.

 

[Voadam]

Generally in 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder the tree would look something like

Weapon slot Magic Weapon +1-5 for enhancement to attack and damage.
Armor slot for magic armor +1-5 for enhancement bonus to AC, possibly shield on top of this.
Neck slot Amulet of Natural Armor +1-5 for natural armor bonus to AC.
Ring slot #1 Ring of Protection +1-5 for deflection bonus to AC.
Cloak slot Cloak of Resistance +1-5 for bonus to saves.
Belt or glove or head for item of stat enhancement +1-5.

With a couple other slots for nifty effects and a few non slot items.

Depending on class you do not need some parts of the tree, casters need less weapons and armor/shields and could focus on getting bigger stuff on their part of the tree faster or weird neat stuff.

In 4e the tree generally looked like this:
Neck slot item for a +X to saves and a power.
Weapon of +X for bonus to hit and damage and crit, and a power.
Armor of +X for an AC bonus and a power.

Then they can go with other items for a power.

4e also had the really cool DMG2 rules for inherent bonus campaigns where the expected level based item enhancement bonuses were baked right in to characters so that items could be for weird magic and not driven by numbers or there could be itemless high level campaigns that worked fine.

 

[Stormonu]

20 years is likely to mean 3-4 edition changes (minimum!). It's very likely that a lot of the things we wouldn't consider changing now will have gone through several iterations of changes, and things are currently hot topics will have been dropped completely from the game.

Alignment will be one of those interesting things to see what becomes of it. I'd like to see it turn into d20 modern's allegiances, allowing it to expand past Law/Chaos & Good/Evil. I suspect in the near future it will be an optional keyword at the least, a good bet it will actually be entirely gone in 20 years.

I'd also be curious to see if Levels remain in future editions, or if instead the game switches to "boost component independently" model like World of Darkness, GURPS and many other "modern" games.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

Gotcha. Hadn't heard that phrase before.

And I hope that doesn't come back. I like the lower attunement slot level.

 

[jmartkdr2]

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.

I don't see Hasbro giving it up unless they have some serious hard times ahead, but that presumes they can't make money off of any of their many brands.

I definitely could imagine Hasbro buying a video game company or vice versa, since they'd love to get into that industry, but that's how the merger would happen.

 

[Voadam]

I expect it to be level based.
I expect six stats.
I expect saves of some sort.
I expect it to have hp.
I expect it will be primarily d20 based for mechanics.
I expect slots in spells in some form.
I expect we will still have 3x3 alignment.
I expect it will be like past editions, never quite the same array of classes in the PH.
I expect death mechanics to be rejiggered somehow.
I expect healing to change somehow.
I expect the core MM monsters to be recognizable, but they will have some significantly different mechanics. I do not predict if these will be more complex or easier to run at the table.
I expect paladins to be significantly different.

 

[Charlaquin]

Skills will be reduced to being Ability checks.

This one is already the case...

 

[Minigiant]

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.

Actually Christmas tree PCs was more a multi edition thing. 2e presented the idea of someone possibly being a Christmas Tree. 3e promoted the idea of a Christmas Tree being an ideal and gave players and DMs the tools to made them. And 4e codified it into the rules as a base part of the game. 5e just makes them not required and says it's just a style of play.

So by 7e, D&D will likely formally make and name "High Magic D&D" and have Christmas Trees be the base assumption in "High Magic D&D".

 

[Don Durito]

Yeah I tend to see the Christmas Tree as really a 3e thing. 4E formalised it a little more but it was really necessary in 3E. Pathfinder also laid out what a character was expected to have and it was worse then 4E in that respect.

The wishlists for players to give to GMs for magic items was new to 4E but that was really just a simplification of what was basically happenning in 3E anyway.

 

[Don Durito]

My predictions:

We will probably see the number of races and classes explode and then at some point condense in an inevitable process of action and reaction.

We will probably see something of the sort in regards to rules complexity as well.

The one thing I am certain about is that the things we now see as progress and as having fixed for good some of the mistakes of the past, will in time be seen as equally bad ideas in themselves as tastes change and that if someone from the future were to throw a copy of 8e on the table it would seem to be full of bizarre decisions and borderline unplayable.