D&D 5E CHALLENGE: Change one thing about 5e

[Caliburn101]

1. Healing is far too effective and the slower more gritty alternatives are ill though-out, clumsy and in one case, game-breaking. I have come up with better ones myself, but shouldn't have needed to.

2. The ubiquity of magic classes is an odd thing considering the design philosophy of 'low magic' for magic items etc. I would like to see official spell-less options for all half caster classes.

3. Darkvision is so very common that frankly, who would bother taking a human into a dungeon? It is common enough that light is only required for one PC in a party and it not only makes them the 'lame child' of the party, but makes everyone else's ability less effective. Dark vision should be only available to Underdark races and Low-Light Vision should be re-introduced as an option.

4. The CR system is poorly balanced and top end monsters hit like wet fish. Damage for the standard attack of a CR 20 monster should be around the 5d12+stat bonus level on a two attack rotation, but it is so very much below this that party resources, even with a non-magic item party makes it almost irrelevant compared to the HP levels of even the non-front rank PCs. An optional table for damage (such as is in the DMG for spell creation) should be published to allow for more challenging monsters.

 

[dave2008]

What part of THOU SHALT NOT METAGAME do you not understand? Is it the "thou"? That just means "you".

If you're going to stand there and sincerely attempt to defend the heinous practice of meta-gaming, which lies in direct opposition of everything that is good and true about role-playing, then I have nothing to say to you. Your opinion is so far out of line with anything in any meaningful reality that there is no point pretending that we're speaking the same language.

Why do you fear meta-gaming so much? Unless your into really authentic LARPing any rpg has a lot of meta to deal with, it is just a matter of where you draw the line.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Sure, but that's not a role-playing game.

Like I said later in the paragraph you're quoting from, "even if you can make that case persuasively, what will you have proven?"

What part of THOU SHALT NOT METAGAME do you not understand?

The cultural context part, wherein your phrasing implies moral and religious significance for this preference in recreational etiquette equivalent to the Judeo-Christian prohibition of murder. If I were you, that's not really the place from which I'd start casting aspersions on other people's contact with reality.

 

[RCanine]

PCs are just generally too tanky.

Heavy armor is too easy to get, and too easy to use. I'd change heavy and medium armors to grant scaling penalties to DEX and STR-based ability checks and perception. I'd pretty strictly limit the amount of +1 (or better) magical armors, and I'd make a hard cap of AC at 20, just like ability scores.

Once that was done I'd look at hit point totals; I'd start at CON score + size at level 1, and reduce/stop it's late-game scaling.

 

[Wepwawet]

Oh my gods, I'm so glad that WotC's people are in charge of D&D and not you, because I seriously dislike most of the ideas I've read in this thread (only read till page 5 though)... Luckily it's easy enough to houserule things that one doesn't like at their table

My problem.*

Too much spellcasting. I think it devalues magic in general.

The solution you propose already exists in the form of D&D's 2nd and 3.x editions (Sorry, I had to say it)


My problem: Chaos sorcerers (because I played one recently, and although I had a lot of fun, I found it was little more than a Wizard with limited spells)

My solution:
* Give clear rules for when a Wild Magic Surge happens, so that it isn't only subject to a DM's willingness to have random effects happen in the game;
And either:
* Include an option similar to 3.5's Wilder's psionic surge: a chance to increase a spell's power at the risk of getting stunned (or similar)
* or make the wild magic surge table slightly safer by having a bit less negative effects, or have the very worst (and very best) random effects occur with less probability

 

[Wepwawet]

My other problem: Full healing on a long rest, or "gritty realism" being too harsh

My solution: You don't automatically recover all your HP after a long rest. Instead, you always recover HP equal to your level+Con. modifier (minimum 1). As usual you can spend any unused healing surges, and you get them all back at the end of the rest.

 

[Aldarc]

What part of THOU SHALT NOT METAGAME do you not understand? Is it the "thou"? That just means "you".

If you're going to stand there and sincerely attempt to defend the heinous practice of meta-gaming, which lies in direct opposition of everything that is good and true about role-playing, then I have nothing to say to you. Your opinion is so far out of line with anything in any meaningful reality that there is no point pretending that we're speaking the same language.

I find myself of a similar mind as Hussar and a few others in this thread. There is no commandment or rule in 5E not to metagame in either the PHB, DMG, or MM. It is written on neither paper nor tablet, whether stone or technological. There also seems to be a growing trend among roleplayers, at least as exemplified in a number of online articles that I have been reading on the subject in RPs, that metagaming is an intrinsic and inseparable part of roleplaying games. One can't not metagame. Metagaming happens even during character creation: How can I make my character to be an effective with the party composition? I do not have a contention with metagaming per se. My contention, which I imagine to be similar as your own underlying one, lies with players not roleplaying. I don't care how much players metagame; I only care that players roleplay well. As I have said, I don't think that metagaming and roleplaying are inherently antithetical to each other either.

Sure, but that's not a role-playing game. It's not a game where decisions are made by pretending to be your character. It's a game where the players are making choices about the narrative, entirely separate from anything their characters might be thinking.

I'm sure that it's possible to have a game with elements of both role-playing and story-telling. (Or at least, I don't see any obvious reason why it would necessarily be impossible.) You just need a clear line for when the player is acting as the author, and when they're acting as the character. The problem comes when the rules ask you to make decisions as the character, utilizing information that only the players are aware of. Resting was the example at hand, with the players being aware that you need to have encounters before you can recover HP/powers, and that being a really weird thing for the characters to be aware of.

I also have strong contentions with a number of presumptions and arguments here. You seem to be venturing towards arguing the contentious notion that DM/GMs can't roleplay.

More troubling for me is the notion of FATE (and similar more narrativist-oriented roleplaying games) as 1) "not a role-playing game," which approaches edition-warring levels of trouble, and 2) that these roleplaying games are, as a result, "badwrongfun." FATE is clearly a roleplaying game by any reasonable standard. Players roleplay as player characters. Players also have some dimensions of narrative control over the story, particularly as it affects their own character, that is reinforced through mechanical options. When a player uses a Fate point to "declare a story detail," that detail does not come ex nihlio but as an extension from the character's aspect. It is about building a character. It is about becoming a character. It's about fleshing out a character that grows with the narrative. What's more, the GM can potentially reject the player from spending the Fate point if it is deemed inappropriate to the character, story, scenario, etc.

I also disagree with your metgaming example here. In this hypothetical world of Deeandia, it would not be difficult to imagine that people would quickly come to grasp with clear cause and effect consequences of resting, spells, and hit points. If the characters in question have observed or experienced themselves becoming more invigorated in the process of "encounters," don't you think they could connect the dots fairly quickly regarding what they would do in-character?

 

[Blue]

There are no rules for players to keep them on track. Only rules for Gamemasters on how to keep the game flowing. Learning how move the game requires giving players a sense of urgency, along with a sense of exigency. For a more detailed look at running combats quickly, I'd recommend the reading following web page.

http://theangrygm.com/manage-combat-like-a-dolphin/

I'm with you - when I run I keep things moving. Great article BTW. But that doesn't always happen when I'm a player. And trust me, if you're waiting 15 minutes between turns, having your turn be 1.5 seconds long to say "I start a multi-round spell" it's not fun at all.

But while a rule system can't keep players on track, I think it can easily encourage players to go off track by being too complex and having too much time between player's turns because of it.

Worst I played in was probably a 4e game in paragon levels. So many individual powers, each having to be individually evaluated for the current tactical setup. Sometimes one-by-one each turn by some of the players. Like if everyone was a high level spellcaster with lots of options. Made more complex by playing online. We played in evenings every other week and it got to the point that combats were taking more then one session to complete. Easy 30+ minutes between turns. DM had a killer campaign going on, but the weight of the system in combat was killing it. 5e came out and we started to convert but that ended up being a mess and it killed the campaign.

But I've been the cause of slowdowns in a 3.5 game way back when playing a summoner druid, because I had to run a bunch of creatures in addition to my own spellcaster. Not just taking their turns, but making saves, tracking damage, attacks of opportunity, etc. From my PoV it wasn't all that bad, btu one close friend now won't play in any group that has a regular summoner because of that, so that wasn't the viewpoint of the others.

So I agree with you that the rules can't keep a player on track. But in my experience the opposite needs to be considered, that the rules can slow things down and get in the way of keeping players on track.

 

[Dorian_Grey]

Out of curiosity, what advantages do you see in a game that requires (or at a minimum assumes) frequent combat (probably hundreds of battles over the course of a PCs career) where in each one of those combats, the PCs are a chance of smashed bones, permanent nerve damage and hacked off limbs, or where any attack roll could lead to instant death in any given combat?

And what disadvantages to such a system do you see?

I can't speak for 3e as I never played it, but 2nd Edition does not assume or require frequent combat. In fact, the DMG clearly indicates that avoiding an encounter is just as valid as slaying every beast. The DMG for 2nd Edition outlines four goals for XP rewards:

* Fun
* Character Survival
* Improvement
* Story

When talking specifically about combat and "victory conditions" the DMG makes it VERY clear that killing an enemy is NOT a requirement for XP reward. They actually make repeat that point for three paragraphs. They provide three additional options:

* Accepting surrender
* Scaring the bad guys away
* Negotiating a settlement

This is all on pages 66 through 68 of the revised printing. The DMG even implies that players who defeat a dragon through negotiation should get a larger XP reward then if they killed it with weapons (Pg 68, 7th paragraph).

Also, 2nd Edition was the only game I've seen where Criticals do lead to the results you outlined. You can find that in the PO: Combat and Tactics book and Spells and Magic which had critical hit tables leading to very negative results. This also strongly encourages players to avoid combat and find other solutions.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Skimming this thread, and the one thing I'd change about 5e is the attitude of some of it's players. There's a lot of good constructive criticism here, but it's like some people are going out of their way just to take shots