D&D (2024) What Improvements Would You Want with 6E?

[Son of the Serpent]

Plus that isnt d&d

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Also not sure if thats actually true. Maybe. I feel like its not though because the nature of a gandalf like character is actually tied to the nature of the cosmos in the game. Change the cosmos away from a d&d like game and you pretty much have actually effected the validity of it being a "gandalf" like character depending on the features of that new universe as Gandalf is a true example of a "cosmic" character. Thats actually kinda weird and i didnt think of it until now but its kinda a thing.

 

[Lanefan]

Honestly, four charisma classes is a bit out of whack - bard, sorc, warlock and paladin.

Really how hard us it to not see twelve classes, six abilities and fail to suggest "hey, what if it was two classes for each ability" and then have sub-classes that hit other secondaries? Just one example set...

Str Fighter Monk
Con Barbarian Sorcerer
Dex Ranger Rogue
Int Wizard Warlock
Wis Cleric Druid
Cha Bard Paladin

Please allow me to fix this for you.

Str - Fighter, Paladin (or Knight)
Con - Barbarian, Ranger
Dex - Rogue, Monk
Int - Wizard, Warlock
Wis - Cleric, Druid
Cha - Bard, Sorcerer.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, if you used material from both GURPS: Dr Who and GURPS: River of Dreams.

That’s a big part of GURPS. You use what is needed to make the campaign and the desired characters, and that’s it.

Plus that isnt d&d

Didn’t say it was. I replied to a comment stating that no system could have done what the character wanted.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

That’s a big part of GURPS. You use what is needed to make the campaign and the desired characters, and that’s it.

Didn’t say it was. I replied to a comment stating that no system could have done what the character wanted.

None of the statements i made including or leading up to that post made such a claim though (that no system including the ones outside d&d could do it). Just saying.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That’s a big part of GURPS. You use what is needed to make the campaign and the desired characters, and that’s it.

Oh, absolutely.
The joke was just that the supplements got so amazing niche that there might actually be one, just for Billy Joel's last album.
(Like, I was delighted to get a copy of GURPS: Urth of the New Sun, but I doubt I had a lot of company).

Didn’t say it was. I replied to a comment stating that no system could have done what the character wanted.

Also Hero, FATE, and M:tA (Cult of Ecstasy, Master obviously), I'm sure, could handle it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Honestly, four charisma classes is a bit out of whack - bard, sorc, warlock and paladin.

Really how hard us it to not see twelve classes, six abilities and fail to suggest "hey, what if it was two classes for each ability" and then have sub-classes that hit other secondaries? Just one example set...

Str Fighter Monk
Con Barbarian Sorcerer
Dex Ranger Rogue
Int Wizard Warlock
Wis Cleric Druid
Cha Bard Paladin

There's nothing worse than mindlessly making things symmetrical. It's an awful and senseless thing to do. You immediately show this with Monk as a STR class, which is totally off.

Likewise why Sorcerer, which has literally always been a CHA class, as CON, when Warlock, which actually used to be a CON class, is INT? Silly.

You're basically proving the opposite of your point by doing that. You can have some stats have more or less classes. Just there are too many CHA ones.

Most everyone I have seen in actuality falls into the satisfied A and B buckets: clearly D exists, but again, tuning the game for D is mutually exclusive with group A's perspective, they cannot be reconciled in one game ruleset. The game can work for A & C or A & B or B & D, but not other combinations. WotC made a choice, and clearly it has worked for the game.

This is not true and you do not have a rational basis for this argument. You just keep making very inaccurate claims which boil down to "It's just the way it, like, totally works, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!". I get that that's your opinion, but please stop trying to pretend it's anything but an opinion. It's not helpful.

It's straight up false to claim D conflicts with all of A. D only conflicts with A2. A1 would be served by any adventures which meet the guidelines. That's not even arguable. That you are arguing it really proves my point here. It's likewise undeniably false to claim all of B is happy with undershooting and the impact thereof, rather than tolerating it. Again this isn't even arguable.

Literally the non-logic you're using here could be used to support anything in any edition of D&D. Racial level limits for example. People kept playing 2E and not only that, but they kept on buying sourcebook after sourcebook full of racial level limits. So by your logic, racial level limits were the right decision, and a huge number of people liked them.

Which is obviously not actually true. People just ignored them and go on with it. And that's what most people do with 5E's encounter/day guidelines. They're not happy with them. They'd have more fun and more exciting adventures with a different design, but they can't change them without redesigning 5E from the ground up, because the assumption is baked into the numbers on a really basic level.

But the main point here is that you're not actually using logic or presenting a rational argument. You're just engaging in a totally circular argument that because a thing sells it must be "doing it right", which is absolute arrant nonsense of the most extreme kind. In fact you literally made that irrational claim in another post. It can't even be argued with because it's not a real argument! It's like "I'm 400lbs and alive, therefore being 400lbs is fine and has no consequences!" or something. Almost sad really, because it's unclear why you, who normally makes quite sound arguments, cannot see the circular logic you're employing.

And the fact that it would require an edition-change to fix is a huge deal. Even if they've naughty word up, you know perfectly well that there is literally nothing they can do about it short of an edition change.

I see no logical reason to doubt that WotC is not currently serving the market what the market wants.

I do agree with this, but I suspect you messed up your double-negatives.

EDIT - You claim "hardly anyone" is complaining about this, and you know what, I agree. Why though? Because this is way, way, way, way, way over the head of 95% of DMs, with no insult to them. My two current 5E DMs (I also DM), both brilliant people, capable of great erudition, totally don't get this. Both of build homebrew adventures, and don't get why they aren't challenging - and it's because they're not jam-packing 5-8 resource-draining encounters into every 16 hours (or less) the PCs are awake.

So their complaints are either:

A) "I'm a bad DM I guess..." Which sucks but you apparently think is totally cool!

or

B) "5E is really really low-lethality, even compared to 4E!"

And we see plenty of complaints about 5E being too easy or hard to design interesting encounters for. Or people asking for help with that stuff. And those complaints are really about the 5-8 encounter/day idiocy. Because that's what is causing the problems. It's like a bad foundation.

I also stone-cold guarantee that 6E, whenever it comes out, whatever it's called, ditches 5-8 encounters a day. And could not be ditched any sooner because it requires an edition change to ditch. So all your "Well they'd change if people wanted it!" is just wrong. They can't change - they'd need an edition change.

 

[Parmandur]

I replied to a comment stating that no system could have done what the character wanted.

Well, not that no system could have accommodated a concept, but that no system could have helped the situation.

 

[Parmandur]

There's nothing worse than mindlessly making things symmetrical. It's an awful and senseless thing to do. You immediately show this with Monk as a STR class, which is totally off.

Likewise why Sorcerer, which has literally always been a CHA class, as CON, when Warlock, which actually used to be a CON class, is INT? Silly.

You're basically proving the opposite of your point by doing that. You can have some stats have more or less classes. Just there are too many CHA ones.



This is not true and you do not have a rational basis for this argument. You just keep making very inaccurate claims which boil down to "It's just the way it, like, totally works, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!". I get that that's your opinion, but please stop trying to pretend it's anything but an opinion. It's not helpful.

It's straight up false to claim D conflicts with all of A. D only conflicts with A2. A1 would be served by any adventures which meet the guidelines. That's not even arguable. That you are arguing it really proves my point here. It's likewise undeniably false to claim all of B is happy with undershooting and the impact thereof, rather than tolerating it. Again this isn't even arguable.

Literally the non-logic you're using here could be used to support anything in any edition of D&D. Racial level limits for example. People kept playing 2E and not only that, but they kept on buying sourcebook after sourcebook full of racial level limits. So by your logic, racial level limits were the right decision, and a huge number of people liked them.

Which is obviously not actually true. People just ignored them and go on with it. And that's what most people do with 5E's encounter/day guidelines. They're not happy with them. They'd have more fun and more exciting adventures with a different design, but they can't change them without redesigning 5E from the ground up, because the assumption is baked into the numbers on a really basic level.

But the main point here is that you're not actually using logic or presenting a rational argument. You're just engaging in a totally circular argument that because a thing sells it must be "doing it right", which is absolute arrant nonsense of the most extreme kind. In fact you literally made that irrational claim in another post. It can't even be argued with because it's not a real argument! It's like "I'm 400lbs and alive, therefore being 400lbs is fine and has no consequences!" or something. Almost sad really, because it's unclear why you, who normally makes quite sound arguments, cannot see the circular logic you're employing.

And the fact that it would require an edition-change to fix is a huge deal. Even if they've naughty word up, you know perfectly well that there is literally nothing they can do about it short of an edition change.



I do agree with this, but I suspect you messed up your double-negatives.

More negatives is more better.

What's the data that shows that people by and large are unsatisfied with the adventure day format? Sure, there are people who are, and that's a valid feeling, but I don't see any reason to doubt that they are the minority report.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What's the data that shows that people by and large are unsatisfied with the adventure day format? Sure, there are people who are, and that's a valid feeling, but I don't see any reason to doubt that they are the minority report.

I'm saying that the constant low-level discussion of issues caused directly or indirectly by the 5-8 encounters a day format is the evidence.

People aren't saying "I hate 5-8 encounters a day!". I agree there. They're saying "Paladins are overpowered", or "My encounters aren't very threatening!" or "My encounters are too deadly!" or "I can't really challenge the PCs, they just breeze through stuff!", or "I feel like I'm a bad DM even though I've been running stuff for 30 years!" or "long rests are too powerful, they should happen less often!" or "Let's make healing slower, this is ridiculous!" and so on. They don't realize the reason is 5-8 encounters/day. They don't make the connection. But that's basically the (narrow) majority of design-complaints about 5E right there.

As I noted in an edit, I have two friends who DM who don't follow the 5-8 encounters thing, because they've been DMing for 30 years and it's never worked like that (definitely would be fair to say through all of 2, 3.XE and 4E, somewhere between 3-4 encounters per day was the average, with plenty of 1-2 encounter days or the like - and 4E it was clear 1-2 was already a problem, but again, only I seemed to actually follow the guidelines). I tried explaining it to one of them once, and he didn't quite get it. He's not thick. He's a long-time DM. He just didn't really think it could have that much effect. But you and I both agree that it does. Further, he's happy with 5E. He's in that 90%. So am I! That's what you're not getting. But I'd be a lot happier if they had designed either around 3-5 encounters/day, or gone with a system that didn't rely on a fixed number of encounters/day. And the only people who'd be unhappy with that are the A2s of the world, and I'm not even sure all of them would be, because resource-drain stuff can work with lower numbers of encounters too - indeed, it's much easier to tune for that than vice-versa. What we have is a system that is not quite outside the acceptable margin of design.

Just as a personal aside, I find it totally obnoxious because it's very hard to tell a story which makes sense and isn't set in a dungeon which includes 5-8 resource-draining encounters in 16 hours. I'm not sure you even disagree there. But if I don't, everything is a breeze and whilst the players like that occasionally, I can see that, long-term, after 4E, which was balls-to-the-wall hard because of the 3-4 encounter/day design and the far, far, far superior ability to gauge monster threat inherent to the system (5E is terrible at that, though not as bad as 3.XE which was ACTIVELY misleading - using the numbers in 3.XE would leave you with a worse understanding of threat than eyeballing the monsters), they miss it if I don't at least try to challenge them with the stupid 5-8 thing. But it feels so naughty word weird - and their instinct, honed over decades of D&D, is to long rest way sooner than 5E wants them to.

And let me re-iterate the most cogent point here:

You keep saying WotC would just change if this was really a problem.

To that I say, no, because they can't change this. This is baked into the very most basic mathematical assumptions of the system. It does not play well with anything less than 5 encounters/day. It plays "okay", acceptably.

But WotC can't change that because it's baked in. They'd need to re-bake the cake. Make a 6th edition. With different classes, spells, recovery options, monster design, and so on. So that WotC stick with it is only evidence, by any means, that it's not enough of problem to cause massive badwill by going to a new edition already.