This is why I try to stay away from such threads. If it hadn't grown to such a nice size I would have continued to ignore it. Some people see this as a thinly veiled invitation to just bash on a system they don't like, and fans of it feel like those very people are insulting *them*, and fun, reasonable speculation goes nowhere.
On topic, I don't think 5e will be recognizable to us (and not because we will play it with chips in our brains). The 3.5->4e jump was big. Sure, in retrospect it is easier to see what direction they were going, but the implementation of a power system for all classes was a huge change. I would think 5e should change just as much to avoid being called 4.5e.
What changes could they introduce? I like the already mentioned ability score change, and think maybe eliminating ability scores altogether might be called for. Your character is built around that framework, and then it is rarely touched the entire rest of his adventuring career. Maybe have a set of bonuses that races get (+1 with certain weapons or something) and leave it at that.
I would also love to see classless go, games that have pools of buildpoints are a little tougher to learn up front (maybe? does anyone disagree?) so tiers of options with some flexibility would work (like, you can chose to be a caster, and chose implements, and what type of magic (power source) you'd like).
I don't think we could even guess what it will look like.
Jay
On topic, I don't think 5e will be recognizable to us (and not because we will play it with chips in our brains). The 3.5->4e jump was big. Sure, in retrospect it is easier to see what direction they were going, but the implementation of a power system for all classes was a huge change. I would think 5e should change just as much to avoid being called 4.5e.
What changes could they introduce? I like the already mentioned ability score change, and think maybe eliminating ability scores altogether might be called for. Your character is built around that framework, and then it is rarely touched the entire rest of his adventuring career. Maybe have a set of bonuses that races get (+1 with certain weapons or something) and leave it at that.
I would also love to see classless go, games that have pools of buildpoints are a little tougher to learn up front (maybe? does anyone disagree?) so tiers of options with some flexibility would work (like, you can chose to be a caster, and chose implements, and what type of magic (power source) you'd like).
I don't think we could even guess what it will look like.
Jay