D&D 5E (2024) What Improvements Would You Want with 6E?

[Tony Vargas]

In all of those examples there's far more similarities to the real world than differences.

There are more than enough differences to admit a great deal of implausability - certainly to the 'action movie' level of implausability that D&D system oddities like hps merely approach.

 

[Arnwolf666]

All weapons are available to all classes.
Difference between classes can be done with fighting styles, number of extra attacks, "riders" on weapon attacks.

Extra attacks for full martial classes(fighter/barbarian) would be every 4 levels(1 attack at 1st level, 2 at 4th...6 at 20th)
For paladins/rangers/monks every 6 levels, 2 attacks at lvl6...4 attacks at lvl 18,
rogues/bards/warlocks every 8 levels, 2 attacks at lvl8, 3 attacks at lvl16
full casters extra attack every 12 levels, so 2 attacks at lvl 12.


All classes can wear all armor, but suffer armor penalty if they do not have sufficient strength.
Lightest armor can have str requirement of 8,
Heaviest armor can have str requirement of 18,
also no spell-casting without sufficient strength,

10th level spells at lvl19.

no ability boosts from racial bonuses, howevery every race(except humans) would have one or more abilities that would have minimum value and maximum value at 1st level.
In default array and point buy minimum score is 8 and maximum is 16 at 1st level. 18 would be max score available without magic.

Elves: min 14 dex, max 14 con
Wood elves, min 12 wis,
High elves, min 12 int,
Drow, min 12 cha,
Wild, min 12 str

Half orcs: min 14 str, min 12 con, max 14 int

Dwarves, min 14 con,
Hill dwarves, min 12 wis, max 14 dex,
Mt dwarves, min 12 str, max 14 cha,

Half elves, min 12 dex

Halflings, min 12 dex, max 14 str

Gnomes, min 12 con, max 14 str


added bonus skills/tools/languages for high intelligence,

Add two ability scores to almost all checks

Melee attack bonus: str+dex bonus
Melee damage: 2×str
Melee finesse damage/thrown: str+dex
2H melee: 3×str
2H melee finesse: (2×str)+dex

Ranged attack roll: dex+wis
Bow damage str+dex
X-Bow damage: dex+int

Spell attack/damage bonus/DCs
Wizard: int+wis
Cleric: wis+cha
Druid: int+wis
Bard: cha+int
Sorcerer: cha+con
Warlock: cha+int
Paladin: cha+wis
Ranger: wis+int
EK: int+wis
AT: int+cha

Fort save: str+con
Ref save: dex+int
Will save: wis+cha

initiative: dex+wis


Skills:
athletics: str+con
acrobatics: str+dex
stealth:dex+wis
thievery: dex+int
Arcana/Nature/Religion/History: int+wis
medicine: int+wis
Survival: int+wis
animal handling wis+cha
perception: wis+int
deception/intimidate/persuasion/perform: cha+int

most tools are int+wis or int+dex
music instruments are cha+int or cha+dex

Ugggh

 

[Arnwolf666]

If this thread has taught me anything, it's that other people's improvements are not something I view as an improvement.

And vice versa.

heh.

Oh dear god yes. To each his own. So many things are just repulsive to me.

 

[Stalker0]

I used to have a large list...but most things for me are simple house rules. A tweak here, a tuning here. I can do those in 5e.

So to me...if I'm getting a new edition, I want it to tackle something that is not easy to adjust, something that I think is so core to the game that it would take a lot of work to really and fully address.

And for me that is....Balanced Play for 1-2 encounter per day groups. In all my years of DMing, the concept of 4-6 encounters a day has never been the norm. The occasional dungeon crawl sure, but I play a lot of one off encounters, or random travelling encounters. I'm not going to do that 6 times a day for balance.

For all of the optional rules 5e presented to cater to different players taste (including a variety of healing options), there really was nothing to address this style of play.

So that would be my big thing. Most everything else I can or already have addressed to my satisfaction.

 

[S'mon]

1. Go back to roll-in-order as default, substituting (eg) 15 for one stat. Pretty much how 4e D&D Gamma World did it. Eliminates all need for stat-balancing.

2. Go back to 4e style increased hit points at 1st level. Dying in round 1 of your first combat is fine in OSR, but the standard D&D game shouldn't be so much more lethal at 1st level than subsequently. Adding full CON to level 1 hp as in 4e works well.

 

[Arnwolf666]

I used to have a large list...but most things for me are simple house rules. A tweak here, a tuning here. I can do those in 5e.

So to me...if I'm getting a new edition, I want it to tackle something that is not easy to adjust, something that I think is so core to the game that it would take a lot of work to really and fully address.

And for me that is....Balanced Play for 1-2 encounter per day groups. In all my years of DMing, the concept of 4-6 encounters a day has never been the norm. The occasional dungeon crawl sure, but I play a lot of one off encounters, or random travelling encounters. I'm not going to do that 6 times a day for balance.

For all of the optional rules 5e presented to cater to different players taste (including a variety of healing options), there really was nothing to address this style of play.

So that would be my big thing. Most everything else I can or already have addressed to my satisfaction.

I don’t know if this works for you. But have you used the optional rules for faster recovery time?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

5E is a strong base so I'd want a smaller change than previous ones, I think. That said:

1) Rework stuff so that there are less god/dump stats. I think this would be pretty easy to do, in practice, because the real issue in 5E is mostly that INT is excessively weak, rather than anything else. The OP rants about DEX, but in actual play, at real tables, DEX-based characters (and CHA-based ones) aren't as common or dominant as they are in some people's imagination/theorycrafting. More options for INT casters would be good - I don't see why all Sorcerers or Warlocks or even Clerics should be CHA or WIS.

2) Part of the above re-work would be systematically going through spells and abilities and seeing if one or two saves were excessively common/uncommon, and fixing that. Again, this isn't that challenging, because loads of spells could have any one of three saves. In fact I'd be tempted to roll backwards on this, somewhat, and go with more 3E or 4E-style approaches.

3) Drastically re-work and re-conceptualize a number of classes, Ranger being at the top of the list. This may hurt. Ranger needs to fish or cut bait, particularly - is he just "Forest Fighter" or is he a magic-y "Fighter-Druid", or what? If he isn't Forest Fighter, the Fighter needs an archetype which is that.

4) If we really want "three pillars" to be a thing, build it into the game, don't make it an afterthought. As part of this and the stat rework I'd be tempted to do something like add two stats to each skill, rather than just one (increasing DCs slightly too, though not too much). Right now, it's hard to have a "social pillar" when it's basically "CHA-town, population the Paladin, Bard, Warlock, and Sorcerer!"

5) Formalize Skill Challenges involving multiple rolls, multiple party members, and so on, and really test the naughty word out of them and nail the math. Make them actually part of the game and actually involve multiple characters and we can actually have three pillars maybe. 4E "had some ideas" here but never adequately developed them, and you can see 5E is still thinking about 4E's ideas whilst trying to act like this is 3E. They can fix this.

6) Yes bring back higher HP at L1 from 4E (and the various times it's popped up before). Having played at L1 recently (again) it's just dumb, terrifies the DM, makes the players briefly fatalistic (which fades by L3 at the latest), and you get really silly situations which never, ever re-occur in later levels. Just start people at like L2 to L3 HP and rebalance accordingly.

7) I feel like a sick bastard saying this but bring back templates, too, for monsters, from 3.XE - and make putting class levels on monsters more of a thing. And indeed a strong focus on making monsters something the DM can easily come up with a thing.

8) Lots more suggestions/details for traps/hazards etc. in the DMG.

9) Try and find a way to make overland travel at least slightly interesting?

 

[Arnwolf666]

This is what made charisma badass in early editions when the good DM’s used them. Morale checks.

 

[Parmandur]

More options for INT casters would be good - I don't see why all Sorcerers or Warlocks or even Clerics should be CHA or WIS.

Mearls wanted to make the Warlock Int based, but the playtest results demanded a Charisma Warlock.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Mearls wanted to make the Warlock Int based, but the playtest results demanded a Charisma Warlock.

Interesting. Most OP or ridiculous builds in 5E involve Warlock at some point and if they'd been INT that simply wouldn't have been possible, because they'd have had sufficient MAD. What were they in 3.5E? Weren't they CON in 4E?