D&D General Design issues with 5e

[tetrasodium]

That sounds fine for buying items in town but it would make party treasury division, if done fairly by value, an absolute nightmare! You wouldn't be able to bid on anything because you'd have no way of knowing what your share value was going to be.

Buying items in town is pretty much the point. The auctions happen when they happen a the table avoids descending into a shopping session where the party's diplomancer or rogue just makes the pain worse for everyone else.

When it comes to the party saying "huh none of us want this, let's sell it & split the gold" there isn't much friction since it isn't factored into the split until everyone gets a share.

If someone does want it just use whatever price list you are using (or DMG or one of the examples thrown out by others).

 

[ZeshinX]

1) Skills: There needs to be some middle ground between the full customziation of 3e that also take forever and the "I do this and won't look at skills again for 5 levels" approach of 5e. Something to add a bit of spice.

Sounds like 2e's proficiency system fits that rather nicely (not how they function, but how they are acquired).

I'd love to see 2e's proficiency system brought back honestly, for Skills at least (non-weapon proficiencies). Current weapon profs work as is I find, but skills in 5.x....eesh, no.

2e's non-weapon profs...I think those'd work quite well. Function needs to be modernized of course, but acquiring them was pretty good. Not too many, but at least you gained one every so many levels. Could use the gained proficiency slot to add a new one or improve slightly an existing one. Would probably work rather well with BA. Might just open up the books at some point to see if it could work.

 

[Stalker0]

Is that a change in the game, or the players? I find that modern players see themselves as heroes rather than mercenaries, and therefore don’t want to be bothered with non-magical looting. The game is struggling to keep up with changing attitudes.

If the game wants to just remove gold based treasure almost across the board, make it scarce so that its not a big part of the game....ok that's a direction. Might appeal to some players, not others....but it does solve the problem of what to do with all of your gold, even if the answer is simply "what gold?".

But as long as gold is a core part of the game, it should have some game use.

I think a nice simple form of this is to allow consumable items to be purchasable by default but not magic items. You want a potion, sure that's expensive but any decent town stocks potions of XYZ. But magic items...no way too precious to just "sell".


That gives the players an outlet for their gold that is temporary so it doesnt' accumulate in the same way getting a bunch of magic items does.

 

[Marc17]

Sounds like 2e's proficiency system fits that rather nicely (not how they function, but how they are acquired).

I'd love to see 2e's proficiency system brought back honestly, for Skills at least (non-weapon proficiencies). Current weapon profs work as is I find, but skills in 5.x....eesh, no.

2e's non-weapon profs...I think those'd work quite well. Function needs to be modernized of course, but acquiring them was pretty good. Not too many, but at least you gained one every so many levels. Could use the gained proficiency slot to add a new one or improve slightly an existing one. Would probably work rather well with BA. Might just open up the books at some point to see if it could work.

If you squint just right, a lot of that can be dealt with using tool proficiencies in 5E.

To talk about gold use, my plan in my next game is to do three stages of gold use. From the very beginning is lifestyle costs. Usually not an issue but I'm going to ascribe penalties and benefits to the extremes. Maintaining the higher lifestyles while on the road will be harder but possibly worth the benefits. Then comes bastions to sink money into for benefits. From there I'm looking at making a titles and domain management system, but keeping it so that it doesn't require spreadsheets. Getting such requires Renown from certain adventures from there they give benefits on a greater order than bastions and new ones can be bought or upgraded.

 

[Steampunkette]

I feel like I could make a whole thread of design issues with 5e/5.5e/Offshoots, and then write a whole book about how to fix them.

 

[Remathilis]

Just reprint AD&D second edition with upwards AC.

 

[tetrasodium]

Is that a change in the game, or the players? I find that modern players see themselves as heroes rather than mercenaries, and therefore don’t want to be bothered with non-magical looting. The game is struggling to keep up with changing attitudes.

Citation needed! That sounds a lot the kind of sage posterior wisdom that did tsr in.

You say that "modern players" quite authoritatively without any source or data for the claim l, is it just an N=1 survey of your own personal experience in your personal circle of players?

In my experience with years of multiple weekly open & closed games at a flgs showed players both new to d&d and returning past edition players are quite exited to play out indiana Jones Laura Croft and so on searching for treasure as they make their way through the crypts tombs and various dungeons they explore. That tends to keep up right until the letdown realization sets in that there is nothing to do with the results. The next letdown comes in the form of noticing that the magic items are either the Impossible to ignore blindingly obvious it's dangerous to go alone take this variety or only found by jarring metagaming when someone at the table reads the adventure so they know exactly which seemingly random place or thing to suddenly start searching for treasure on after casting aside the very idea.

Those "non-magical" treasures your social circle thinks so dimly about serve the important purpose of ensuring that players maintain a sense of wonder and curiosity while exploring with frequent enough positive results that they feel like the cool magic items they found were found because they took the time to look wherever it was. "My passive perception is ##" doesn't grant that feeling because it's the gm handholding the players like children to that reveal. Eventually the joy is beaten out of them and they stop because it's certain there won't be treasure certain they can't do anything with it if there is or it's certain the gm/most metagaming player will lead them to it like a child if it's at all important

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Citation needed! That sounds a lot the kind of sage posterior wisdom that did tsr in

Just my personal observation. It’s a long time (around 40 years) since I’ve seen any player motivated by the offer of gold. But they are always up for saving the world.

 

[Lanefan]

The issue isnt pricing.

It's consistency of magic effect across rarity and level.

In reality, magic items world only br valuable to people who would want to and be able to use them and odd collectors. Only items with wide use would be expensive. This devolves the "magical item treasure" community down to adventurers, mercenaries, assassins, protectors, and the paranoid.

Along with, perhaps most important of all, nobility and the non-adventuring rich.

Nobility might commission items that help with rulership or self-protection, or might buy items either to use or simply to get them out of circulation. The rich might buy magic items out of sheer vanity. And those items might well come back on to the market on the death of their owner, as estate sales.

Temples might buy items of opposed alignment or ethos in order to sacrifice them or just get them out of circulation.

The market extends well beyond just adventurers trading items, though that's where its roots would probably lie.

 

[Lanefan]

Buying items in town is pretty much the point. The auctions happen when they happen a the table avoids descending into a shopping session where the party's diplomancer or rogue just makes the pain worse for everyone else.

The way to beat that is fixed prices and no haggling. Otherwise the game can quickly devolve into the PCs trying to buy low in one town and sell high in the next, and I just ain't got the patience to DM that.

When it comes to the party saying "huh none of us want this, let's sell it & split the gold" there isn't much friction since it isn't factored into the split until everyone gets a share.

Depends how you're doing your treasury division. Here, magic item values are factored into the share right from the start - if the treasury consists of a 2000 g.p. sword and 2000 g.p. cash to be divided between two characters, one gets the sword and the other gets all the cash; such that each gets 2000 in value. Or if the sword is sold instead, they both get 2000 cash.

If someone does want it just use whatever price list you are using (or DMG or one of the examples thrown out by others).

Sure. Use that same list for buy-in-town (or commission-to-order) pricing as well and it all becomes much easier.