D&D General Design issues with 5e

[Sulicius]

No HP bloat.

What makes having more HP a problem in 5e? That fights take longer? Or is this just comparing old monsters to new monsters and seeing a higher number?

 

[Retros_x]

What makes having more HP a problem in 5e? That fights take longer? Or is this just comparing old monsters to new monsters and seeing a higher number?

Yes it takes longer. Mostly because adding dozens of dices and subtracting it from a three digit HP block is more annoying. But also because many 5e higher level monsters are just big blobs of HP. The fights don't get much more interesting on higher levels, its just punching down the numbers.

 

[Sulicius]

Yes it takes longer. Mostly because adding dozens of dices and subtracting it from a three digit HP block is more annoying. But also because many 5e higher level monsters are just big blobs of HP. The fights don't get much more interesting on higher levels, its just punching down the numbers.

Try 5.5e, it's a lot better at the high levels. Plus PCs deal more damage, so that's not the issue. The problem is more all the added abilities used every bonus action, reaction and for free.

 

[humble minion]

Too few decision/customisation points for PCs. Unless you're a spells-known caster, by the time you hit third level you've made almost every major choice you'll ever get to make when it comes to building your character. There is very little room to have your PC grow in reaction to events, learning new skills/languages/whatever requires you to devote a feat to it which is a huge investment in resources.

The bard should have never been a full caster, it should be a Charisma-focused support class with more versatility and strings to its bow than that. Oh, and the bard's entire suite of abilities are based around performing, but the Performance skill has absolutely no impact on them, which is ridiculous.

Too many iconic monsters are too low in CR. The 5.5 MM tried to give us more beefed-up variations, which was welcome, but a bigger CR spread when it comes to things like incorporeal undead, mythology-based monsters like minotaurs/medusae/gorgons and so on would be welcome.

The action economy is brutal when running fights against single big monsters until you get high enough level that Legendary Resistance/Legendary Actions come into play. At mid tier an appropriate-CR single monster can almost never pump out enough damage to seriously threaten a 5-PC party before they kill it.

Str and Dex need to be more balanced for martial characters. Str is a great stat if and only if you're planning on being a full-plate wearing brick, and is pretty much never required elsewhere. A higher Dex gives you better AC, a better ranged capability, benefits useful skills like Stealth, helps you out with a more useful saving throw, and you lose almost nothing in melee. For absolute minimum reduce rapier damage to 1d6, but also look at putting minimum Str requirements on longbows, or removing the Dex bonus to damage for ranged attacks at long range. Fixing this would also have the welcome side-effect of making classic weapons like the longsword or battleaxe much more viable options.

Similarly, it should be just as possible and viable to build a Str 14 Dex 14 martial character as is it to go with Str 18 Dex 10 or Str 10 dex 18. The current system incentivises all-or-nothing, which is boring.

Advantage and disadvantage work ... ok, but I'd introduce a concept of something like 'complete disadvantage' which is a level of disadvantage that represents extreme situations where disadvantage can not be cancelled by advantage. So something like Blinded would apply complete disadvantage when you're making melee attacks, and it doesn't damn well matter if your target is restrained or got hit with a Faerie Fire, you're still going to find it hard to hit.

 

[Li Shenron]

So I felt like posting this thought exercise : if I were the lead designer, and not concerned with consensus or backwards compatibility, what would I consider needs changing to improve the game?

With the original 5e 2014 rules as a basis, very little. I have near-zero problems running the game with 5e core rules, thanks to the "rule 0" concept which allows me to keep in check the things that could be practical problems such as spamming retries and Guidance.

But since this is a thought exercise, I could say that these are the major areas where I would probably put some extra design work to see if I could improve the game further:

1) Removing action economy: I would look at how to replace bonus actions with just having abilities that augment someone's turn.

2) Removing passive ability checks, consider some alternative to the d20 roll for ability/skill checks to reduce the swinginess of the results.

3) Expanding the skills list to something more similar to 3e and providing more practical in-game uses of tools proficiencies.

4) Making Intelligence more relevant in the game, for example by having it provide mechanical benefits and shifting a lot of saving throws from Wis to Int.

On the smaller scale, I would probably also revise and do minor changes to the following:

• the death/dying rules, for example removing double failures
• concentration, for example removing damage checks
• multiclassing, for example removing ability requirements

As you can see, I would rather look at making the game simpler than more complex, because I think there are still many unnecessary rules that add nothing to the fun and just crap the whole game experience by forcing players and DMs to remember them. I'd aim for an ever simpler set of core rules, and leave all complications as optional rules in the DMG together with flanking.

 

[Corinnguard]

Too few decision/customisation points for PCs.

The classes in 5e need a feature within the base class where they can pick from an assortment of mini features that further customizes the character they're trying to make. For instance, Laser Llama's Alternate Ranger has a 1st level feature called Knacks. If you want to play a stealthy Ranger, you can pick up the Stalker I Knack at 1st level to gain advantage when making Dexterity (Stealth) checks whenever you are in a natural environment. If you wanted to be a Ranger who can ignore difficult terrain and never gets lost, you can pick up the Strider I Knack. Some of these Knacks are chained together to give you even more perks (Stalker I thru IV, Strider I thru IV, etc.)

Level Up takes up a similar approach. Rangers get Exploration knacks while Fighters get Soldering knacks. And so on.

The bard should have never been a full caster

@Steampunkette is doing her own redesign of this class. Her version has them being 3/4 casters who can cast spells up to 7th level. Her approach makes room for a new Bard feature called Bardsong.

The Two-Weapon Fighting style needs to be tweaked for the Fighter class with regards to the number of offhand attacks they can make. Level Up has a fix for this where once a martial (not just the Fighter) reaches 5th level, they gain two attacks with their bonus action instead of one. There is also a fix by Laser Llama for anyone who has Two-Weapon Fighting and finds themselves between using their Bonus action for an offhand attack or another feature that also requires it. His version of TWF allows you to combine your primary attack and your offhand attack for your attack action. The bonus action is then freed up for something else like spellcasting or using a particular bonus action feature.

 

[Horwath]

The classes in 5e need a feature within the base class where they can pick from an assortment of mini features that further customizes the character they're trying to make. For instance, Laser Llama's Alternate Ranger has a 1st level feature called Knacks. If you want to play a stealthy Ranger, you can pick up the Stalker I Knack at 1st level to gain advantage when making Dexterity (Stealth) checks whenever you are in a natural environment. If you wanted to be a Ranger who can ignore difficult terrain and never gets lost, you can pick up the Strider I Knack. Some of these Knacks are chained together to give you even more perks (Stalker I thru IV, Strider I thru IV, etc.)

Level Up takes up a similar approach. Rangers get Exploration knacks while Fighters get Soldering knacks. And so on.


@Steampunkette is doing her own redesign of this class. Her version has them being 3/4 casters who can cast spells up to 7th level. Her approach makes room for a new Bard feature called Bardsong.

The Two-Weapon Fighting style needs to be tweaked for the Fighter class with regards to the number of offhand attacks they can make. Level Up has a fix for this where once a martial (not just the Fighter) reaches 5th level, they gain two attacks with their bonus action instead of one. There is also a fix by Laser Llama for anyone who has Two-Weapon Fighting and finds themselves between using their Bonus action for an offhand attack or another feature that also requires it. His version of TWF allows you to combine your primary attack and your offhand attack for your attack action. The bonus action is then freed up for something else like spellcasting or using a particular bonus action feature.

we just need more classes like 3E fighter/wizard.

 

[Zardnaar]

What makes having more HP a problem in 5e? That fights take longer? Or is this just comparing old monsters to new monsters and seeing a higher number?

5.5 fights take longer.

CR 3s with 81 hp vs 45 etc.

Indirectly nerfed damage spells. They were already on life support in 5.0.

With 5E weak saves control is meta atm imho.

5.5 also tweaked encounter design. RAW you'll end up with buckets of hp to chew through.

 

[Corinnguard]

M

we just need more classes like 3E fighter/wizard.

More like the hybrid classes in PF1. Ex. Brawler class- Fighter and Monk, Hunter class- Druid and Ranger.

 

[Horwath]

5.5 fights take longer.

CR 3s with 81 hp vs 45 etc.

Strong Combat buffs last for 1 minute, so that should be target duration of most fights, so you feel rushed to finish it before your spells wear off.