Load Bearing Rules in TTRPG

[Lanefan]

If the game has any sort of action economy, your resource cost (how much it costs to create effect X) and resource throughput (how may resources you can spend per turn/round/whatever) are things you can't mess with.

Well, you can mess with them but you'd better know what you're doing and be aware of the knock-on effects.

That's why concentration in 5e is a rigid rule. It ensures you can't stack the bonuses (or debuffs) from too many spells at one time.

It's actually a source of deep imbalance in 5e. Reactions were never supposed to carry more weight than an opportunity attack. Any spell or feature that allows you to deliver damage via reaction on the regular is adding damage on top of a character's full output.

Concentration is a fine example of a rule I'd want to change. Make some of the buffs/debuffs (Fly, Invisibility, etc.) fire-and-forget with a fixed duration and simply get rid of some others. Allowing them to stack is fine; one Dispel Magic can still ruin your day (and that's a spell that's been too harshly nerfed IMO), and if the caster is burning their slots on buffs they're not burning them on something else.

Another load-bearing rule that people have been changing and messing with since day one is initiative or combat sequencing. You gotta have it in some form unless combat resolution is single-roll or fully narrative, but none of the versions presented thus far in the various editions of D&D have been much use.

So, in answer to the OP, yes: I'll change load-bearing rules if I have to, just like I'll change any other rules.

 

[dragoner]

Much like a load bearing wall, removing it means shoring up the floor above, at some point you cross over and it is a different game. Which is fine, as long as it isn't a bait and switch.