Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5010172" data-attributes="member: 22424">This is a really tricky one for me, because these days I'm not interested in making the game any more complex. In fact, I would prefer to play a much simpler version of the game (almost a D&D Saga Edition).(While I like Pathfinder very much, and find a lot in there that is great, it's even more complex than 3.5e. Between that and yet another round of power creep, I'm inclined to leave it and stick with 3.5e.)So, while there are various things I might do to the game to make it simpler, I also don't want to introduce a lot of House Rules to make it happen. And so, most of what I do end up doing is very minor.The bullet-point list of things I'm using in my current campaign is as follows:- Using the skill system (but not the skills themselves) from Pathfinder.- Eliminate Monk/Paladin multiclass restrictions.- Eliminate Favoured Classes- Encumberance by armour only- Ignoring all currency less than 1 gp- Fixed hit points per level, at a rate of 3/5/7 depending on BAB. Rather than "max at 1st level", all characters get a flat bonus of 5 hit points.I'll probably also be porting the concept of Skill Challenges and the Minion/Normal/Elite/Solo split across from 4e.And that's about it.Now, if I am interested in doing a full rewrite... well, that's another thing. Some of the big headline items I might consider:- Reduce the importance of attributes by changing from +1 per 2 points to +1 per 3. Remove all effects that temporarily change these values, and vastly reduce the effects that permanently change them.- Cut right back on bonus types, to about 7 in total. Eliminate trivial (and especially trivial and conditional) bonuses. Reduce stacking.- Add talent trees for all races, classes and alignments. Characters get either a talent or a bonus feat every level (as in Saga). Add "prestige trees" in place of Prestige Classes. Also, some talents have alignment restrictions but classes themselves do not.- Eliminate multiple attacks for high BAB (and other sources). Instead, characters do extra dice of damage. Also, mixed dice types will not be used for damage - when sneak attack, critical hits or energy weapons add dice to the pool, these will be of a same type as the dominant dice in the pool.- Remove shields from a character's armour class. Instead, shields grant the character extra hit points. The player can usually choose whether to take a blow on the shield or not.- Consider splitting the 'avoidance' and 'absorption' parts of armour class into the AC and the Ref defense. An attack must beat both to do damage (though some attacks negate one or the other). However, I think this may be a bit over-complex.- Adopt a Beginner/Expert/Commander/Master tier structure as in BECM D&D. (Yes, I know these aren't the same names.) Provide generation guidelines for starting at the lowest level in each tier.- Eliminate multiclassing, and the majority of choices, in the Beginner tier. (Optional rules can add it back in, but the default should be reduced choice, to be newbie-friendly.)- Vastly reduce the rate of power acquisition in the Commander and Master tiers. BAB and Skill Ranks would top out at 15. Hit points, Skill points and so on would be acquired at a much reduced rate. The game would instead focus on empire building and then legacy building.- Eliminate "Small" as a size category.- Introduce a Stunting system for more freeform combat (importing the Combat Maneuver Bonus.Defense from Pathfinder), and a Social Conflict system to augment the Skill Challenge system.But, of course, all of that has fairly wide-reaching implications for the game as a whole. As such, it's only something I would do if I suddenly found myself with endless free time.</blockquote>

Verification