D&D (2024) Pie in the Sky 6E

[Vaalingrade]

No one really says it's never wounds, just never telling wounds. Lots of bruises and lacerations, impact strain from clashing weapons and over extension, grit in the eyes -- just not being constantly flayed alive by every d6 you take.

 

[Dausuul]

People have a hard time grokking the idea that if you take hit point damage from four arrows, they are not sticking in you- they missed or only grazed you!

It's not surprising that when the rules say you get "hit" and take "damage," people have trouble with the claim that you were not hit and didn't take any damage.

That has always been the problem with hit points: All of the terminology used throughout the game reinforces the idea that they are primarily meat and losing them means physical injury. If they were called "defense points," and losing them was "defending" instead of "taking damage," no one would have a problem with the idea that you can lose them when an attack misses you.

But it's far too late to change the terminology now. So D&D is left with the same compromise it's had since 1E: Pay lip service to the idea that hit points are not meat, but minimize the number of situations where you actually need that idea to make sense of what's going on.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm just going to let the man speak for himself here.

 

[Cadence]

It's not surprising that when the rules say you get "hit" and take "damage," people have trouble with the claim that you were not hit and didn't take any damage.

That has always been the problem with hit points: All of the terminology used throughout the game reinforces the idea that they are primarily meat and losing them means physical injury. If they were called "defense points," and losing them was "defending" instead of "taking damage," no one would have a problem with the idea that you can lose them when an attack misses you.

But it's far too late to change the terminology now. So D&D is left with the same compromise it's had since 1E: Pay lip service to the idea that hit points are not meat, but minimize the number of situations where you actually need that idea to make sense of what's going on.

I kind of wish they'd just say something like the picture resolution (or sigma field or whatever) just isn't fine enough to distinguish between a deep cut, shallow cut, scrape, graze, miss that made you exert, and whatever else.

The only thing that feels like it would bother me is when all the "hits" are always the same. (Both being continually sliced to ribbons and having no I'll effect really, and always passing out at zero solely from exhaustion seem odd to me).

 

[Cadence]

I'm just going to let the man speak for himself here.
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Yup. It's a big old mish-mash!

 

[Dausuul]

That... I don't like.

Because those things give us a mechanical basis to have different kinds of characters who are better or worse at different things than their compatriots. Take, for example, avoiding damage by dodging rather than relying on heavy armor to resist incoming damage or parrying attacks that come at you. Even using magic to protect yourself from people attacking you.

With strength, dexterity, constitution, and casting attributes we can make those different descriptions have a mechanical weight in the game which can help to reinforce the identity of the characters. Legolas dodges, Gimli resists, Aragorn parries, Gandalf uses magic. Y'know?

... yeah. I felt kinda dirty using LotR as my example, but it's one everyone knows...

As a designer I want more levers to play with, to base mechanics off of, to make things more interesting. And while it is a tightrope walk between too few and too many, I think attributes being removed would absolutely be too few.

I don't object--at all!--to putting mechanical weight on such things. I just despise the way it's done in D&D, where we have these six numbers representing vaguely defined concepts which cascade down across a variety of unrelated mechanics.

I would much prefer a set of stand-alone traits--which might well use the feat mechanic--which offer narrowly defined effects. So Legolas might have the Evasive trait, which grants +5 to your AC when wearing light or no armor, and +2 when wearing medium armor. Gimli lacks this trait and wears plate armor. (As for Aragorn and Gandalf, parrying and using magic for defense already have mechanical representations--Defensive Duelist feat, fighter maneuvers, spells like shield and mage armor--which are separate from ability scores.)

 

[jgsugden]

If I were WotC, and I were doing a new edition right now, I would:

• Change little beyond the below.
• Restore the idea of giving spell lists to monsters - but just highlight recommended spells instead of dumbing down the game.
• Tweak the balance on a few feats, spells and subclasses.
• Add psionics to the core of the game in a way that respects the origin of them in D&D
• Add back in rules for 21st to 30th levels.
• Add in more guidance on how to design high level games
• Make miniatures the default and theater of the mind the option (it is easier to go to theater of the mind).
• Don't move too far from the idea of violence being the solution to most problems.
• Simplify the Cosmology. Merge the Elemental Planes. Merge the Abyss and the 9 Hells into a Single Plane with regions. Merge all the Heavenly planes into a single plane with regions.
• Make more fantasy beasts - a lot of monstrosities should just be beasts. It doesn't have to "be / have been" real for it to be a beast.
• Add wounds to the game - mechanical impairments caused by certain events such as going to 0 hps, being critically hit, or as part of special boss monster attacks. The idea that a PC is either at full power or dead, with no middle ground for being hurt by an attack doesn't sit perfectly well with me.

 

[ART!]

Spell levels and character levels being the same, so that when you get to 5th level as a wizard, for instance, you can now cast 5th level spells. You'd have to redistribute the spell lists into umpteen levels if you want to stick with capping classes at 20 levels, but there are other options (13th Age caps it at 10th level, easy-peasy).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

We need someone to fail utterly at combat healing.

Luckily, more interesting classes like the Bard, Druid, Ranger, Paladin, and even Sorcerer and Warlock with the right subclass, can take that role, and no one will miss the painfully boring cleric.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Luckily, more interesting classes like the Bard, Druid, Ranger, Paladin, and even Sorcerer and Warlock with the right subclass, can take that role, and no one will miss the painfully boring cleric.

You've convinced me. Delete the Cleric too. They're basically Warlocks with extra steps anyway.