D&D (2024) Revised 6E prediction thread

[Vaalingrade]

That isn't the case.

Tell that to people who like satisfying martial characters.

 

[Guest 6801328]

If species is entirely removed from the game, your idea of environmental lineages could work. They cannot fill the same space.

Well, they can. But you seem really hostile to the idea, so I'll stop trying to persuade you.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Tell that to people who like satisfying martial characters.

I am one of them.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, they can. But you seem really hostile to the idea, so I'll stop trying to persuade you.

They can, in the same way that elf and blacksmith can.

 

[Stalker0]

The notion of the racial changes also stems from the debate on how much the PC making rules are also "assumed" to be the way regular people of the world are created.

For example, in 3.5 everything was beholden to the system. Monsters, PCs, NPCs....everything cut from the same cloth, even to absurd terms. In 4e, almost completely divorced, to the point that some NPCs had abilities my players were super envious of. 5e seems to go into the middle, in general using similar rules as PCs but allowing for deviations (just because).

If the rules very intentional separate PCs from the rest of the world, than I am fine with the notion that race doesn't really affect your PC ability scores. You want to play an Elf with an 8 dex, go for it, PCs are weird.

But if the rules in any way inform the players that "humans and elves are just as dexterous as each other in the world"....that is where I would have a problem with removing the ability bumps and such.

 

[Guest 6801328]

They can, in the same way that elf and blacksmith can.

Honestly your objections just seem to me like a failure of imagination, but maybe I'm still not understanding your point.

Anyway, it's not important. Just brainstorming for fun.

If you want to get the last word in, it's all yours.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Honestly your objections just seem to me like a failure of imagination, but maybe I'm still not understanding your point.

Anyway, it's not important. Just brainstorming for fun.

If you want to get the last word in, it's all yours.

lol "Here's a snide derision of your creativity, but it's not important, I'll just drop it as if I have some sort of high ground."

 

[embee]

D&D has always had a "lot of ore in the mine", there's literally never been a time in D&D history where "ore in the mine" was the reason for an edition change. Edition changes happen because sales become slower, and/or companies see better ways to make money.

And I strongly suspect the latter will be a major angle with 6E. Right now, however much WotC are charging DNDBeyond, DNDBeyond (and to a lesser extent others) are eating profit that WotC could be making itself. Setting up something like Beyond is not really particularly hard. You don't need particularly amazing experience, tech, or people. It's pretty much just a fancy website of a kind people are pretty experienced in making - even with a full-integrated tabletop it's still pretty much that.

I very much doubt WotC will want to let those subscriptions, book sales, and so on go to a third-party in 6E, especially given they're expanding massively into the digital sphere, setting up AAA game studios and so on (those people aren't who you'd use for this, that's just an example). If they're smart, they'll probably let the other companies keep existing, keep licensing stuff to them and so on - that way, you don't massively offend a bunch of loyal customers - but when your own digital offering is slicker, faster, more integrated and so on, you're going to get people moving over.

Of course WotC have been absolute boneheads before on this kind of thing, like with 4E using licencing to try to ditch or severely limit 3PPs at a time when really, 3PPs were their major competition but also a major asset, which was profoundly Not Smart.

Combine that with desire to be more up-to-date rules-wise, more inclusive and long-term-popular with stuff like race, and I think we're a lot closer to a new edition than you suggest. As noted I think it's more likely to be a 1E-2E-type transition rather than a 2E-3E-type one, let alone 4E-5E, but I think it'll be significantly more than a 5.5E. I suspect it'll be low single-digit years. 5 would be my outside bet for hearing about something that is clearly 6E, even though WotC will probably just call it "D&D". I'd be very surprised if we haven't heard anything by end of 2024.



Yeah less than 50/50 sounds about right to me, sadly. I do think they could come up with a better default, and simpler, more integrated mechanism than HD. I think again, if they do, people are going to probably squawk about 4E-ification, but that'll be further in the past, and I don't think it'll be as major of an issue.

On the other hand, with DDB being done through licensing, WOTC doesn't have to worry about the logistics and infrastructure. They tried to roll their own with 4e and couldn't get it to work. It's just not in their wheelhouse.

What is in their wheelhouse is licensing. That's their bread and butter.

When you say that putting out a VTT isn't all that hard because it's just a fancy website, it's kind of like saying that putting a man on the moon isn't that hard because all you have to do is stick a guy in a rocket and aim it at the moon. The trick is building a fancy website that actually works. Like I said, WOTC is in the licensing business, not the website business.

So, someone else does the heavy lifting. All WOTC needs to worry about is the Accounts Receivable. Think how it works now:

Player goes to Target. Sees the Starter Kit for $15 and picks it up. Likes it. WOTC gets money from the sale. Player goes onto Amazon and orders the the PHB. WOTC gets money from the sale. Player decides to try online play and signs up for Roll20. Buys some content on Roll20. WOTC gets money from the licenses. Player decides that, you know, FGU is getting a lot of good of mouth for the automation. Player buys FGU and content on FGU, which, even though s/he's buying the same content again, doesn't feel so bad because FGU has cheaper prices. WOTC gets money from the licenses. Foundry sounds good. And it has DDB integration. Player signs up for DDB and buys content on DDB. WOTC gets money from the licenses.

Sure. WOTC could develop their own platform. But they don't even know where to begin. Roll20 is the 800 lb gorilla in the VTT market and does a decent enough job. But it's far from perfect. And it's the dominant player. The other leading contender - the Mac to Roll20's PC - is FG and it too has trouble rolling out basic features.

In order for WOTC to put out their own VTT, they have to win over Roll20 folks. And not just them. Also the FG and Foundry users. Keep in mind - these three have been fighting over the same group of users for years and their biggest hurdle is user investment. There's only so many times that you can keep selling the same content.

If WOTC put out its own VTT tomorrow, would you sign up? Would you abandon your current campaign, your current content, your current knowledge of the platform, and then actively convince your players to go along too? Because that's the hurdle. That's why people dig in with their VTT of choice. Because they're invested in it.

And let's say that WOTC does get over that hurdle. When you listen to a lot of VTT users, many say that they'll go back to in-person play as soon as possible. So that means that VTT goes back to being the alternate method of play with in-person (and paper books) being the default. Which begs the question of why WOTC should plow a bunch of capital into an already niche market to lock down the also-ran when they can let VTTs fight each other with their own money and passively collect revenue from all of them.

 

[efenord]

Yes, there have been many prediction threads about 6e in the past. This thread isn't mean to predict when 6e will come out, but when it does, what changes do you expect to see based on what you've seen WoTC do in the past few years in regards to errata, rules changes, design directions, etc.

For me, I think Tasha's was a signal flare of sorts. And with the recent UA, I think the writing is clearly on the wall. We will see a 6e, because some of the most cherished sacred cows of D&D are going to go through big changes on how the rules are going to be written for them. Also, when I look at the history of D&D, it seems more common than not that when you reach the point where there are a lot character options and most/all of the campaign settings are out there, we see a new edition in a year or so.

Let me address the latter first. First, let's look at the actual list:

1e to 2e: Dragonlance and Planescape settings came out, and immediately 2e discussions were being made.
2e to 3e: The Player's Options books were clearly a look at revising the rules, (and of course WoTC would want their own edition rather than TSR's 2e)
3e to 4e: 4e was announced almost immediately after the Complete X books came out (complete champion was June 2007 and 2 months later 4e was announced, so they were clearly talking about 4e long before that).
4e to 5e: 4e churned out a lot of player's options and settings right out of the gate. 3 player's handbooks, 3 monster manuals, and 2 DMGs in a 2 year period. By the time 2012 came and the Player's Options books (Feywild and Elemental Chaos), pretty much everything was covered. 5e was announced shortly after (actually announced before PO Elemental came out). Yes, sales figures had a lot to do with it, but more to the overall point:

When an edition has pretty much gone through all the core archetypes, and all of the most popular settings have been created, a new edition soon follows. I'm guessing a large factor is because not as many people buy the outlier materials. Complete book of fighters is gonna sell more copies than Complete book of gnomes. Forgotten Realms campaign setting will sell more than Spelljammer. Etc. So from a business perspective, in order to increase sales, come out with a new edition.

5e sales are still really strong, and I suspect that's because of the slow release schedule so a lot of the popular material (like settings of Darksun and Dragonlance) is still yet to be addressed. That's why it's currently one of the longest running edition of D&D ever (almost 10 years since announcement) with at least another year or two. But it is starting to see the end of the tunnel re: archetypes. With books like Tasha's we're starting to see some of the more weird and unusual class/subclass/race options.

The former point is the actual design changes we're seeing in Tasha's and the Gothic legacy UA. Similar to the Player's Options books of 2e, we're seeing some significant changes to how character creation and advancement is being handled now.

That leads me to my prediction of 6e and what we'll see and expect.

Races: Racial modifiers are gone. Caps won't make an appearance. The term "race" might even go away to something like Ancestry or Legacy (I think PF does something like this). Racial choices will have a few traits based on physiological aspects, and not cultural. A race like goliath will have a powerful build trait to represent how they are stronger. Gnomes will have magic resistance. Halfling will be lucky, etc.

Ability score modifiers and other traits will be based on culture/heritage options. Also like PF2 does I think (and a lot of indie games are doing it the same way going forward). Instead of getting a +1 bonus to strength for being an orc, perhaps you get a +1 bonus to strength for being a fighter, or choosing a warfare culture, etc. Or instead of ASIs, you get feats that are related to your culture/heritage.

Alignment: We've already seen how humanoid races are no longer inherently evil. This continues. I think no intelligent species will have a default alignment any longer. That will be saved for monsters/fiends/undead. I would not be surprised to see a shift away from the 9 alignments and go back to the B/X version of general overviews of alignments. At least for PCs. Most PCs don't follow alignment anyway, but shift back and forth depending on what's going on in the game. I doubt that will happen, but I wouldn't be shocked if it did.

Classes: A lot more subclass kits, but they will be less robust than they are now, and you may be able to choose more than one. Something between a feat and a subclass as we see them in 5e. And closer to as they appeared in the playtest docs. The reason for this, is because I think it addresses the omission of classes like the warlord, shaman, and others. For example, all fighters are good at fighting martially, but a warlord kit gives you abilities that you gain at various levels to inspire allies and enforce battlefield tactics. While a battlemaster is all about maneuvers, and a champion gives you out of combat abilities, etc. If they really want to make the change, they would get rid of subclasses/kits altogether and expand and expound backgrounds to fill that role. However they do it, I strongly suspect they will have the class as a chassis with the core features, then a lot of options you can add for backgrounds or subclass kits, and those would largely be class agnostic (warlord background with a rogue class? Why not?).

Anywho, those are my predictions of a 6e. Rather than driven by sales, I think a driving factor will be how the gaming community views design today. I.e., things like race and alignment and the problematic issues therein.

Being honest, I hope the 5e would be the definitive edition. Make no sense relaunch the entire system because of important but minor adjustments in rules. I think the core of the rules are robust and far from be broken. I would say the way they approached the things in TCoE is perfect as it was presented as optional. Even the problematic use of terms like races could be addressed through a revised PHB edition instead of force everyone to acquire everything new. The 5e just started to be published in Portuguese, the books are expensive for us down of the south border. I know the main audience for DnD is the US, but the hobby is more global then ever and don't take in consideration the markets from poor and in development countries is also a kind of descrimination.

 

[Umbran]

Honestly your objections just seem to me like a failure of imagination, but maybe I'm still not understanding your point.

lol "Here's a snide derision of your creativity, but it's not important, I'll just drop it as if I have some sort of high ground."

Mod Note:

Hey! You two! Stop it!

I'm getting reports from folks who are sick of your sniping at each other. You are both eroding your own credibility with folks reading the thread. Or did you think this back and forth looked... mature, or something? Rhetorical question.

Treat each other respectfully. If you choose not to do that, you'll be removed from the conversation without further discussion.