D&D 5E Innovations I'd like to keep in 5E

[Bedrockgames]

I started in second. I don't remember the different XP tables bringing anything to the game. It may function as an attempt to balance the classes over the course of a campaign, but I don't see why that method is actually a good way to do it. As has been mentioned, most campaigns don't last from level 1 to 20. In addition, if each character's balance is considered through each level, the result is that their power is balanced throughout the campaign as well.

If I paid someone to paint my wall purple, and they actually made one side blue, one side red, and put a gradient between the two colors, I would not pay them. I don't see the appeal in one class outshining another class through any innate aspect of the class. Sure, it has to do with taste, but it's also treating each class unfairly, and most people don't like being treated unfairly.

And you are entitled to have opinion. Lots of people share it. My point is some of us found it a great aid to balance. Rapid advancement for the rogue was a big gift that made them more attrsctive to me as a player. On the whole i found 2E a far more balanced game than 3E. And 4E was balanced in a way that just didn't appeal to me. With 2E the classes were balanced by a whole host of things and they still had enough texture and variety to be distinct and interesting.

 

[CroBob]

To amend my post;

5; I'd like to see power source matter. If each class has it's own separate list of powers, power source becomes nothing more than a keyword. That's fine in allowance for re-flavoring, but it means the power source has no real mechanical effect. It doesn't matter what your power source is. If the power sources all shared abilities, and it was the class itself that defined the differences in what each class could do with the powers they get, the power source idea would make much more sense. Book of Nine Swords worked fine.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The game has a 40 year history, not a 4 year history. If you are interested in building the best D&D possible (not necessarily the best game possible, but the best *D&D* possible) you need to consider the entire 40 year span. Ignoring the classic editions because they are older is just plain foolish.

It's not about "turning back the clock", it's about rediscovering things that were done well and lost in the newer editions. Not every change is for the better.



This forum is about 5e, which is supposed to be a unity edition. If you want to personally exclude the classic editions, pretend they don't exist, and just assume they did everything poorly, I guess that's your perrogative. However, it's perfectly legitimate to bring them up in this forum.

This kind of logic is like saying that if you want to make a muscle car you have to use 1960's technology because it is 'classic'. I'm not interested in driving a 1960's car in 2012. The world has moved on. I can drive a car made with modern technology and have the essence of the same experience that '66 Mustang would give me. Heck, Ford could even put similar body panels on it. That doesn't mean the flaky Holly carb should be on it. Fuel injection just works better.

So, that's the whole point here. There's nothing wrong with recreating the feel and play style of AD&D if you want. There's nothing wrong with using basic technology that just works, like hit points and classes (all cars still have wheels after all). Beyond that a '66 Mustang looks darn cool and we can design our new car to look a lot like it on the outside if we want. Same for D&D, but the argument that specific mechanics have to be used because they're classic or that specific design decisions have priority because they were used in 1e (and weren't always great ideas even back then) is like saying my new Mustang has to have drum breaks and a carb.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This doesn't match my experience at all. Followers were a huge boon. Just look at the 2E follower chart to see what you get. You roll for three different levels of followers, including an elite bodyguard contingent. I had an easy time making that work for me.

This tells you how utterly irrelevant this stuff was, because I couldn't even tell you what the 2e follower rules look like. Never used them even once in 10 years. I know the 1e ones, and in 1e followers are mostly pretty much crud. A 1e fighter has a 4% chance of getting a single 7th level follower with some magic items. Any other followers are 0 level 100% of the time.

There are other problems with using this as a balancing factor. Many campaigns simply don't follow the pattern that is assumed by the follower rules. Many players are simply not interested in being obliged to develop their character in that direction. These rules seem awkwardly grafted onto particularly one specific class that is supposed to represent a WIDE variety of different possible character concepts.

IMHO in any modern incarnation of D&D this kind of benefit should be decoupled from a specific class. If a player wants to be a ruler then that's great, have some sort of PP that lets you do that. Forcing every fighter player to play that 'destiny' and depriving them of practically any other interesting feature and claiming that followers and strongholds is their REWARD for their class choice sucking just makes no sense at all and in 2012 is not good or even mediocre game design.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This kind of logic is like saying that if you want to make a muscle car you have to use 1960's technology because it is 'classic'. I'm not interested in driving a 1960's car in 2012. The world has moved on. I can drive a car made with modern technology and have the essence of the same experience that '66 Mustang would give me. Heck, Ford could even put similar body panels on it. That doesn't mean the flaky Holly carb should be on it. Fuel injection just works better.

So, that's the whole point here. There's nothing wrong with recreating the feel and play style of AD&D if you want. There's nothing wrong with using basic technology that just works, like hit points and classes (all cars still have wheels after all). Beyond that a '66 Mustang looks darn cool and we can design our new car to look a lot like it on the outside if we want. Same for D&D, but the argument that specific mechanics have to be used because they're classic or that specific design decisions have priority because they were used in 1e (and weren't always great ideas even back then) is like saying my new Mustang has to have drum breaks and a carb.

That is a straw man. No one is saying mechanics have to be used because they are old. We are saying just because a mechanic was used thirty years ago that doesn't automatically mean it is bad or shouldn't be used again. Not all developments in design are for the better, and some that work for one purpose don't work for others. As an example the 4e powers system was an advance that only about half of the D&D community embraced. It will most likely be jettisoned in this edition or relegated to an optional ad on. Do you believe we should never consider the powers system again because it is out of date? Of course not. Maybe in ten years designers will find a way tonmake it have broader appeal or the mood will be ripe to embrace it.

Old doesn't equal bad and new doesn't equal good.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This tells you how utterly irrelevant this stuff was, because I couldn't even tell you what the 2e follower rules look like. Never used them even once in 10 years. I know the 1e ones, and in 1e followers are mostly pretty much crud. A 1e fighter has a 4% chance of getting a single 7th level follower with some magic items. Any other followers are 0 level 100% of the time.

Just becuae you decided to ignore a crucial mechanic that doesn't make it irrelevant nor does it make the system imbalanced.

I can't comment on 1e followers as I am less familiar with the system. Smeone else may be able to address this criticism of the 1e fighter.

There are other problems with using this as a balancing factor. Many campaigns simply don't follow the pattern that is assumed by the follower rules. Many players are simply not interested in being obliged to develop their character in that direction. These rules seem awkwardly grafted onto particularly one specific class that is supposed to represent a WIDE variety of different possible character concepts.

I agree having alternatives for different campaign styles is good. But the vast majority of standard D&D campaigns I ran during 2e used the follower rules. My ravenloft games didn't, but they still were pretty well balanced due to many of the dangers of casting spells in ravenloft...being a fighter there was always a safe choice.

IMHO in any modern incarnation of D&D this kind of benefit should be decoupled from a specific class. If a player wants to be a ruler then that's great, have some sort of PP that lets you do that. Forcing every fighter player to play that 'destiny' and depriving them of practically any other interesting feature and claiming that followers and strongholds is their REWARD for their class choice sucking just makes no sense at all and in 2012 is not good or even mediocre game design.

I have to disagree with you. Given the assumptions of D&D and the class system having the fighitng man gain a reputation and attract followers makes sense. But the fighter wasn't the only one who recieved followers (his were jsut pretty darn good). At tenth level thieves also got followers for example. And this was all dependant on player action. Followers arrived if you built a stronghold. You were free to not do so. Calling this bad design because it doesn't suit your preference isn't helpful (i could easily say 4e is bad design design because it fractured the player base for example, but that isn't true). You have a particular set of expectations regarding balance and class design and 2e doesn't meet those. For a lot of others the edition met their balance and pay expectations.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Exactly how I already said. Remove the idea of skills as they are, untie statistics from them entirely. Give characters specialties, which would replace skills. They could keep the same name, call them "skills" still, doesn't matter, but the mechanic is slightly different. When a character makes an attempt to do something (say climb a rock face, tumble through an enemy's square, recall useful information about a particular sort of monster or tree or rock, create a useful bell, or whatever), figure out what kind of stat would help him to do that sort of thing, and have him roll that stat check. Then, if he is also specially trained to do that sort of thing, he gets another bonus to do that thing, regardless which stat you have him roll. Sure, climbing a rock face will almost never be anything besides strength, but if you're in some magical realm where you move through space and time through the power of thought, let's say, would it really be strength he's using? When the rogue tries to blend in with a crowd, is he using his dexterity for his stealth check, or his charisma? Even if you do manage to use the same stat in every situation, so what? It still removes a bulky part of the character sheet.

Anyway, all skill checks would just be a stat check, and if you happen to be doing a skill you're good at, you get your proficiency bonus, or skill bonus, or whatever we call this thing.

I'll devil's advocate the opposite point of view:

There's little to be gained by complexifying the skill system in this way. Lets compare the 4e skill system to the proposed 5e skill system you outline (which AFAIK is pretty much what Monte is advocating).

In 4e things are very simple and easy to handle. Every skill has a total modifier and there are 17 skills. The DM has basically one choice he needs to make for any given situation, which skill is relevant to that situation (or maybe he might pick a raw ability score instead in some rare situations). That's it. He tells the player OK, its an Athletics check! The player looks on his sheet, sees he has a +N to that skill, rolls a d20 and reports the result. The DM knows the situation is level X and a medium DC is N, he knows instantly if the check succeeded or not. There's no muss, no fuss. At WORST the DM might decide it is a hard DC or an easy DC or even that it is a higher or lower level challenge. So worst case he's got 2-3 choices to make, and the level of the challenge is probably global and those 2 extra choices have defaults that you can go with 99% of the time (medium DC of the PC's level).

Now, lets look at the situation in the proposed case. In this case the DM has to decide which skill is relevant, which ability score is relevant and still has the level and difficulty decision to make. Now the player has to look at his ability score modifier, and his skill bonus (if any), add them both together, roll, and report the result. This is the BEST case. In reality there's a constant ambiguous decision that needs to be made WRT what ability score to use. This choice is open to debate in EVERY case and involves the huge grey area of deciding what each score actually means. The player almost always has a motivation to try to negotiate this choice, which opens up gaming the system and the DM, and at best a moderately arbitrary choice.

Now, what does your system actually GAIN us? In most cases nothing really IMHO. The interpretation of ability scores is hair splitting and really adds very little to the game in the vast majority of cases. For the few corner cases where it might be nice to have this flexibility you can do it already with the 4e system (nothing stops you from saying that particular PC can't get additional or different bonuses if it makes sense to the DM). 4e allows for feats, themes, classes, races, and powers to potentially give bonuses or allow different numbers to be used if the player wants to decide his PC should be especially talented at a particular thing either.

I just don't see where the cost/benefit analysis favors the more complicated system. In a case where there's no clear benefit and there IS a clear cost the best choice is the simplest choice, and that's basically the 4e type system IMHO.

 

[Andor]

Followers arrived if you built a stronghold. You were free to not do so. Calling this bad design because it doesn't suit your preference isn't helpful (i could easily say 4e is bad design design because it fractured the player base for example, but that isn't true).

I do have to quibble with this. Basing balance expectations around the use of an optional system which the campaign structure might not even allow (how exactly do you build a stronghold during your "Be Magellen" ship based game?) is bad design, plain and simple.

You could carry that argument to the point of stupidity by claiming your fighter shouldn't be disadvantaged because he didn't want to use an 'optional' system like weapons instead of bare handed combat, but this is not a corner case. Followers add substantially to both GM and player workloads. They do not fit all character concepts, campaign styles or even world set-ups.

In 3e the follower rules were replaced by the leadership feat, which allowed access to the optional follower system, but in no way predicated class balance on the use of those rules. It also explicitly made that feat optional and under GM control.

2e had a lot going for it, but balance is not the first thing that springs to mind. Did you ever use the "Powers and Options" books? Balance was not contained therein.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Have to check the text but ptretty sure followers were a core rule. Skills and powers was broken, rarely used and not core. 2e was much more balanced than 3e imo.

If in 5e followers are not a core assumption they should add other high level alternatives but would rather see followers tied to class than a feat ( would actually like to see feats gone).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That is a straw man. No one is saying mechanics have to be used because they are old. We are saying just because a mechanic was used thirty years ago that doesn't automatically mean it is bad or shouldn't be used again. Not all developments in design are for the better, and some that work for one purpose don't work for others. As an example the 4e powers system was an advance that only about half of the D&D community embraced. It will most likely be jettisoned in this edition or relegated to an optional ad on. Do you believe we should never consider the powers system again because it is out of date? Of course not. Maybe in ten years designers will find a way tonmake it have broader appeal or the mood will be ripe to embrace it.

Old doesn't equal bad and new doesn't equal good.

It isn't a straw man, you're whole basis of argument amounts to touting older mechanics, even in the face of all their drawbacks which have been overcome over and over again in both other systems and in later editions of D&D. Many of these arguments DO amount to "it was better in the old days" from my perspective. I know you'll disagree with that, and that's fine, so it goes I also think there's been (at least with 3e and 4e) a concerted conscious attempt to specifically improve on existing mechanics. While it is perfectly possible to argue the merits of any specific newer or older mechanic overall the game system has improved with time. Designers learn with each new iteration. My concern is that the attitude of "back to the past" is not focusing on improving the game, and that should be a big part of the focus in any edition, otherwise what is the point? I still own 1e and 2e (and a couple versions of Basic and OD&D for that matter) and I can D/L numerous OSR games. While I think it will be great if 5e captures a wider range of play styles and allows the game to focus more widely on different ones I don't think rolling back the clock is a worthwhile goal. IMHO the default assumption in core 5e would best be on flexible modern mechanics. They are going to be a LOT more capable of providing a wider range of play styles than the mechanics of AD&D were, which IMHO was rather inflexible and brittle.