D&D 5E Version 5.25 -- what do you change?

[Tony Vargas]

I'd balance the classes around an expected adventuring day of 4 encounters and 1 short rest rather than 8 encounters and 2 short rests.

In principle it should be simple: Approximately halve daily resources.

 

[NotAYakk]

1. Nix "attribute bonus to attack/save DC". It is simply too powerful.

It isn't hard to rework the math to work perfectly well without adding stat/2. Attributes can still add to damage and effect size.

2. Grant proficiency bonus to all saves. This prevents the "auto fail save" issue at higher levels; against an even-level foe, high stats save a lot, low stats save little, and it doesn't get worse.

3. Introduce a more general Expertise system. Expertise no longer doubles proficiency bonus; instead it acts like advantage but stacks with it. You gain Expertise in your good saves, for example. This keeps bonuses more bounded.

4. Fix the mundane classes. Somehow.

 

[CubicsRube]

Interesting question. I feel like a lot of the ideas for improving D&D that float around here are more along the lines of heavy overhauls, so restricting our consideration to a humbler "5.25" may actually bring us to some unexplored territory.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

• Move the subclass choice down to level 1 for most if not all of the classes. The devs made a deliberate design choice in 5E to avoid that where possible, but looking back with a few years' experience of the game I think it was the wrong one.
• Spread out saving throw effects more between all six of the ability scores, and provide a stronger thematic definition of what each saving throw is for. Making concentration an Int save instead of Con would do a lot all on its own. Get rid of the idea of "strong" and "weak" saving throws; let the ranger be Dex/Con and the monk be Dex/Wis like we all know they ought to be.
• A lot of people are going to say the opposite, but I say lean into Expertise a little more: give most if not all classes expertise in one thematically appropriate skill (e.g. Arcana for wizards) and let the rogue/bard's niche be more versatility than raw numerical superiority.
• Stacking advantage and disadvantage, within reason. Obviously I see the virtue in simplicity of not letting them stack. But I also repeatedly see my party's barbarian Reckless Attack while blinded to completely cancel out the disadvantage to attacks while providing no additional advantage to enemy attackers.

I like a lot of your ideas.

I've definately thought of the expertise as a homebrew. Makes sense to make that rhe wizard be represented mechanically as the expert in arcana the cleric religion etc.

In terms of saving throws i agree as well. For example i think charisma should be used to resist charms, intelligence for illusions etc. There doesn't need to be a mechanical balancing then so much as a rewriting of spells and effects as to what they target.

I also have not personally seen any problems with advantage and disadvantage stacking. I think it was an over reaction from the 3.x days of hunting for every little +1 which i found incredibly tedious. But i don't mind judging a situation where there's two sources of advantage and only one disadvantage equally a net advantage. In practice there's just relatively few things that give sources of advantage and disadvantage that i think you wouldn't see the problem in play.

 

[CubicsRube]

5e doesn't have death from old age in the same way that 5e doesn't have taxes.

What I find odd is that it doesn't have rules for defecation, and even more odd, rules for what happens when you don't defecate for weeks!

 

[Son of the Serpent]

You know what? Id rebalance the time related things far more aggressively.

Id make there be 5 different interval types of rest.

And i'd rebalance around the idea of a month.

With types of rest scaling in relevance to a month, a week, a day, 3 hours, and a few minutes. And not all classes would have mechanics as relevant to all of these obviously.

Realistically, you arent always 1 day away from safety and recouperation. Planar campaigns and megadungeons come to mind. Lets actually take that into account.

This may be too much restructuring for partway through an edition though so i understand if it is put off until 6th edition. I think it could be done in 5th though. Certainly it could have been done in 3rd.

 

[R_J_K75]

(My preferred rolling method prior to 5e was 4d6 drop the lowest in order, three times. Then pick one set.

Ive been doing pretty much the same except I let them roll 4d6 with re-rolling 1's. They can roll two sets and pick one, or roll a third, which they must use if they do no matter how bad it is. I let them assign their ability scores as they wish though.

 

[dave2008]

1. Add feats to the game, in place of ASI. Redesign all feats so that they also include +1 to a stat.
2. Redesign classes so that they gain feats and sub-class abilities at standard levels. Multi-classing now lets you gain one class's primary features in place of your sub-class.
3. Go back down to three saves, so everyone knows which one protects you from mind-affecting attacks.
4. Reduce the duration of a short rest to five minutes, with the explicit assumption that it should take place after every encounter. Re-design class abilities around this assumption.
5. Get rid of free healing, to free us from the tyranny of six encounters per day.
6. Fix the HP bloat, by getting rid of +Con to HP and +Str/Dex to damage.

I like a lot of these ideas, but IMO they would be more for a 6e, not a 5,25e as the OP asked.

 

[5ekyu]

1. Nix "attribute bonus to attack/save DC". It is simply too powerful.

It isn't hard to rework the math to work perfectly well without adding stat/2. Attributes can still add to damage and effect size.

2. Grant proficiency bonus to all saves. This prevents the "auto fail save" issue at higher levels; against an even-level foe, high stats save a lot, low stats save little, and it doesn't get worse.

3. Introduce a more general Expertise system. Expertise no longer doubles proficiency bonus; instead it acts like advantage but stacks with it. You gain Expertise in your good saves, for example. This keeps bonuses more bounded.

4. Fix the mundane classes. Somehow.

"2. Grant proficiency bonus to all saves. This prevents the "auto fail save" issue at higher levels; against an even-level foe, high stats save a lot, low stats save little, and it doesn't get worse."

I have a question - just a question not more - why does having the possibility of having an auto-fail save exist in the game for some foes of even level against some types need to be eliminated at higher levels? I mean, aren't there at higher level powerful effects with no saves at all? Aren't there foes at higher levels with immunities that are absolute too, like iirc rakshasas immunity to spells below abc.

I dont get why the possibility of "auto-fail" or "auto-success" (depends on which side you are on - pitching ir catching) is something that cannot exist in the game world at even levels as a choice that can be made. Certainly, it should be not the majority of cases or by any means the norm, but something to be prevented?

 

[5atbu]

I believe it is stated more generally somewhere in the 5e rules, more in a way like "typical humans can live up to about 80 to 90 years" or so, but there is no formal table. Only official aging effect I noticed so far was ghost 1d4 x10 years but by gaze and can be reversed if greater resto is cast within 24 hours. but also here it says nothing about what happens if you age far beyond your natural limit.

This so definitely should not be in the rules.
It's a wonderful source of role play not rule play.

YMMV

 

[5atbu]

A lot of these are house rules or rulings.

5e is clearly and explicitly planned for just that.

I'd love to know how many of you use these at your tables?

I am a Grognard of almost 40 years and have run nearly all RPGs RAR, with house rules that I don't even think about but just do as seems to suit the campaign.

So how many of these posters do these as house rules, especially the 5.01 to 5.10 versions?

How many have taken the SRD and created their own table variant?