D&D General D&D 6e ala Steampunkette: Structural thoughts

[Clint_L]

So... further thoughts.

1) Crits as Maxed Damage Values
When you crit, you max out the damage of your attack, then roll it a second time and add that on top. This ensures that crits are meaningful and strong. No more rolling minimum damage on a critical hit. It also makes sacrificing gear to be a much more important choice, since you can negate some of the damage. I figure NPCs must always take the maxed out damage value, and players must always take the rolled portion of the crit. Just so that even if someone negates a player crit it's still a solid hit, and if a player negates a crit it's much more valuable.

This is a pretty common house rule. I use it in my home games, where everyone rolls actual dice, but it doesn't work as well with my beginner campaign at school, where everyone is on DDB.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So I've talked a few times about what I'd want in a 6e game. Often enough that at 3am this morning I was plagued with thoughts of game design and couldn't sleep. So here's some of the stuff I'm looking at. Putting them in quotes to be easier to isolate and parse.

1) 10th Level Classes

Eh, fine. I’d go with either 9 or 12, myself.

2) Make Magic Users More Magical and Less Casty

A lot of this I dislike or would have to test, but I am 10000000% behind making utility magic more ritual oriented. Preferably by making anything that isn’t a flashy immediate effect into a skill use, whether it uses a spell slot or not.
I don’t like how restricted the spell list would be judging by your description here, and would rather see magic pushed into much broader design with risks and costs and such, based on skills and the use of components and focus objects and ritual implements, with ritual magic having requirements for advanced stuff where you need eg a base, a catalyst, a power source, a focus, and a circle or container, and then each spell school is a skill with description of what types of effects it can do.

3) Day 1 Psionics

Absolutely.

4) Warlords

Different name? Please? If not I will live but I have never hated a D&D class Name half as much as I hate that one.

5) Combat Maneuvers

Definitely not. This is one thing that turns me off Level Up. Combat Skills, sure. Broader use of maneuvers than 5e, definitely. But bloody well let me play without using maneuvers when I want to.
Let there be classes and subclasses that don’t rely on them.

Now if you want all classes to have tiers spell slots or maneuver dice, fine. Just give basic uses of both that aren’t more complex than “add the die to damage of an attack”, “add the die to your defense”, “add the spell die to your concentration check” etc.

Or, make every martial work like the monk with focus and 2-4 Focus Features for each class, and have optional Techniques you can learn that cost focus.

6) Spellcasting Mechanics Variety

Yeah sure. Make magic weird.

7) "Extra Attack" at 3rd with Caveats


8) Crit Protection as a Core Mechanic

I’d steal from Daggerheart. Having a track for every piece of equipment sounds tiring and not fun.

9) Exploration and Social Mechanics as Core

We can dream

10) Sensible HP Structures

I’d go further and have HP scale so little that a lucky goblin can wound a high level fighter.

What do you think about a system like this? Interesting package of alternate rules, overengineered nonsense, or nothingburger?

A lot of it isn’t to my preference, for sure. Also it’s hard to address since all the meat is in quotes and thus doesn’t get carried over when I quote you…

But I’d definitely be down to playtest such a game and give it a shot.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

In any setting where XP is granted by killing goblins or accomplishing goals, every Wizard School will have a headmaster who passes out daggers and staves and says "RIGHT! If you want to learn magic we need to go kill some goblins."

"But Master, shouldn't we study magic?"

"HAH! No. You'll never learn magic that way! You need to quest to learn spells!"

If only there were some way to make leveling up a Downtime activity, rather than the explicit and exclusive result of killing people and monsters or finishing quests...

In my game, Crossroads, you level incrementally as you play, gaining Experience and spending it during downtime on Improvements. When you gain Experience you also Mark Advancement, and when you have filled your Advancement widget, you can level next time you Full Rest (basically long rest in a safe place, for a full day or more).

I really like it.

Also you can learn Techniques in play from study, invention, tutelage, etc, and they are designed to give you more options not more direct power. Spells are a type of Technique. (Kinda, it’s more like if Rook’s Abjuration were a technique that grants a choice of a couple Abjuration cantrips, mage armor, and some other juicier Abjuration spells on a theme of being a gish, and the higher level stuff relies on you having the spell slots to use them)