D&D 5E Mechanics you don't want to see, ever

[Sadras]

DOAM

 

[Shiroiken]

• XP loss - this was probably a worse effect than death in AD&D, creating radical party imbalance; worse in 3E when death also meant level loss
• Drama Dice - from 7th Sea, basically a PC could do something cool, which empowered the DM to something really bad to the party later (1 person benefits, but everyone suffers)
• Disadvantages - granting character benefits at creation for taking on flaws (which will largely be ignored during play)

 

[DND_Reborn]

After looking at Rune Knight and Revived Rogue, I thought that some things should never appear in the books as mechanics. I just feel that things like height change, and personality/bonds/flaws change should not be a class/subclass features. They are no concrete rules for that, and you can't tell me how my character looks, or how to RP my character. If i want to play a character with multiple personalities, I will do so without needing mechanics to tell me.
Subclasses should grant things that you will see use without having to wait for the stars and moon to align with a comet that comes every few hundred years (look at you, Undying Warlock).

So without further ado, things i don't want to see:

• Appearance changes. As mentioned above.
• Bonus Distances less than 5 ft. Oh you, un-Remarkable Athlete. I know not everyone play using grids and minis, but come on. Don't waste printing space with insignificant stuff that won't make a difference 99% of the time.
• Alignment change. No real mechanics other than certain magic item having requirements, which i think is arbitrary.
• Crappy ribbon abilities with high level requirement. Monk & Druid's Timeless Body. Do you want to commit to a single class just to be rewarded with abilities you will never use?

Any other things you can think of?

So if another player uses a Wish to turn your character into half your height or twice your height, or to drastically alter your alignment or make you donate all your gold or soemthing, what would you do?

Those are perfectly valid uses of a wish mechanically. You should get a saving throw, but let's say you failed it. Then what?

 

[jasper]

Mechanics you don't want to see, ever hmmm this year is $$ order
Plumber
AC/HEating
Car.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Agreed. I replaced level drain with extra damage back in 2e and never looked back. Sure, level drain made certain undead terrifying, but it was absolutely un-fun. The aging attack of a ghost was similarly problematic (I'm a little surprised it made it to 5e, honestly).

The magic item creation rules of 3e also required spending XP. That never sat well with me, either.

• XP loss - this was probably a worse effect than death in AD&D, creating radical party imbalance; worse in 3E when death also meant level loss

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This might be a controversial one, but class abilities that give the players narrative control of the world. I think such mechanics work very well in other games, but I don’t think they’re a good fit for 5e. I think those kinds of mechanics can work in certain contexts - for example I’ve run a prison escape scene where the players could interrupt the action to add a detail to the scene by describing a flashback where they set the added detail up in advance. But I think such things need to be used sparingly and with very specific intent to work within the flow of play in 5e, so attaching such narrative mechanics to class or subclass abilities would be too disruptive in my opinion.

I think these would be great but I agree that they don't suit every game so should probably be optional.

Personally alignment change mechanics and idiocy like Evil people do Necrotic, Good people do Radiant is the most awful stuff to me. It doesn't even work thematically and is ridiculous and limiting. 5E has a particularly brain dead bit of this with Angels, who serve Good deities, whereas Neutral and Evil deities have no servants (demons and devils are ironically ruled out as such by the same book). Angels are messengers and should serve all actual god-gods, like 4E, whereas people like Asmodeus could have devils/demons. Likewise necrotic or radiant or whatever should be down to the specific god, not the alignment of the god, let alone the alignment of the PC!

 

[DEFCON 1]

Mechanics you don't want to see, ever hmmm this year is $$ order
Plumber
AC/Heating
Car

Mike & The

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[trentonjoe]

+1 to hit

 

[TheCosmicKid]

They are no concrete rules for that, and you can't tell me how my character looks, or how to RP my character.

Let's explore this. The game has never been shy about inflicting mental states on characters -- mostly fear and madness. Appearance changes are somewhat rarer, especially since the injury system is abstracted, but under certain circumstances it may be appropriate for the DM to say "You just burned off all your hair". And in the extreme they can definitely say "You are dead", which if you think about it is a pretty dramatic change to how your character looks and is RPed. Are those situations okay? If so, what's the difference between those and this?