D&D 5E Stuff from your favorite edition you DON'T want in Next

[RangerWickett]

Tonight, my party of 5 PCs dazed the villain of the adventure a total of 9 times. He was an elite, with 2 other standard monsters, 1 more elite, and 4 minion allies, so the combat was still threatening, but it was frustrating for the nefarious villain to spend the whole fight just being hammered without ever doing anything threatening in return.

Sure, perhaps it was a design issue, because the villain had minor action powers and was a skirmisher, so being limited to standing still and making a single standard action was more painful than if he'd been, say, a brute. But could you imagine if Darth Maul showed up and just got shoved into a corner and thwacked for the entire fight without ever making the good guys worry that he might kill one of them?

So, I'd rather that sort of long unpleasant beat-down not show up in Next. If a foe is tough enough to last through 9 rounds of combat, he shouldn't spend all of them neutered.

What about you?

 

[Jon_Dahl]

I don't know too much 4e, but I guess the problem was that the players had chosen to make "dazers". They could've chosen to make a party of enchanters and charm the villain, or assassins and assassinate the villain. In your example of Darth Maul, both would have been anticlimactic and unpleasant. With dazers, the fight was at least a long one.

I think that no matter how they design Next, the responsibility of having reasonable and exciting combats rests on the players' shoulders.

To answer your question:
My favorite edition is 3.5 and I want a critter-free alternative for every class. I might forgive if the druid is forced to have an animal companion, but I'm absolutely sick and tired of every ranger, sorcerer and wizard having a rat/cat/something silly by their side. I have already houseruled this in my game. I want a critter-free game, at least as an option in the core. And my players fully agree with me.

 

[timASW]

I dont want to ever spend 2 hours in a single combat again in 5e. in either modern edition some of these fights can turn into ridiculous grinds.

From pathfinder I would like to see them find a way to keep higher level play down to earth more. At a certain point in all the games, usually around 10 you wind up fighting tons and tons of extra-dimensional and other out of this world monsters because the PC's just cant be challenged by regular things anymore and it starts to feel a little ridiculous.

 

[Obryn]

Favorite edition is 4e.

I'd like to see systems for both large, setpiece battles and quick random encounters. I love the big setpieces, but that's the only option in 4e, sadly.

And yes - cutting down on the condition warfare would be nice. (In 4e, some kind of condition mitigation is critical for Elites and Solos by mid-Paragon.)

As I've said elsewhere, I don't need every class to be structured similarly. I think a good balance is important, but I'd like to see it happen with different sorts of PC mechanics.

I also would like substantially less scaling by level. Next is already heading in this direction, but alarmingly it looks like it's maybe going too far in the other direction.

-O

 

[Stormonu]

Races as classes.

 

[billd91]

Favorite edition is Pathfinder. I want to see easy magic item creation (other than maybe potions) gone, gone, gone.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1) "We got an elf for that."

2) obvious class or prestige class redundancy- we only need a few heavily-armored divine warariors in the game, and 3 PrCls that blend magecraft and martial mastery is better than 15...and I'm a guy who loves options.

3) unclear language & fancy sentence construction that only confuses people as to what you really meant. This is coming from a lawyer.

 

[Sunseeker]

Since my heart is divided between 3.X and 4e...

3.X: CR rating. It literally made no sense, not as a concept mind you, but when put into action, it was completely useless. There was no consistent method to monster ratings. Monsters of grossly different power ratings often had the same CR, and with no standard for rating monster power, there was no way for 3PPs to rate their own creations, which means 3PP stuff could be twice as powerful, or half as powerful as the rating indicated when actually in combat.

It's not so much that I'm opposed to CR rating as a concept, it's a fine idea, and there needs to be some way to tell if X or Y is a good challenge to your party. But there needs to be a consistent and obvious method to the madness, otherwise it's meaningless.

4E: Lose the rigidity. I love the creativity I can do in 3.X, especially as presented in the form of templates. I mean when you place "Demonic" before a creature, it MEANS something in 3.X, in 4E it was as bad as CR, two creatures could have similar naming paradigms and yet have nothing in common! In 4E it often felt like you could only play or fight the creature as written. I did feel it was easier to customize monsters through the DDI tool, but that was much later on. It felt especially bad with characters because the previous edition had presented us with numerous ways to be creative with what we were given...but then 4E replaced that all with rigidity and very little in the way of customization.

Now that rigidity gave us great balance, but I feel that much like CR, if there is a standardized, rational, mathematically-backed system wherein a person can break things down or build things up in a unified manner, we'll retain that balance but also gain great creativity.

 

[FireLance]

Evil "paladins".

I can live with neutral paladins if they serve a principle or a virtue (e.g. valor).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Evil "paladins".

I can live with neutral paladins if they serve a principle or a virtue (e.g. valor).

I just call the paladins of other alignments "Holy Warriors".*







* loved Book of the Righteous, too.