D&D 5E What needs to be fixed in 5E?

[Shemeska]

The elements that turned off my gaming group and myself from day 1 weren't the mechanical elements for the most part, but the wholesale changes to the default flavor and world assumptions of 30 odd years of D&D in 4e. It no longer felt like D&D to us as a result.

I don't want primordials, elemental chaos, and tieflings that all have the same monolithic appearance and origin. I don't want an alignment system with some alignments randomly excised but others left in, with LG being some sort of super good and CE being some sort of super evil with little rhyme or reason. I want archons to be well, archons again rather than inexplicably vanishing and having their name used by evil elementals. I want eladrin to be eladrin again rather than a mortal race of elves. I want yugoloths back.

Basically a large number of folks I know wouldn't be interested in a game that goes out of its way to remove, randomly replace, and sometimes mock in the marketing many of the game's historical flavor trappings ranging 1, 2, or 3 decades old. It seems somewhere between overly idealistic and arrogant to put a bullet in the head of swathes of the game's accumulated history and dance around a pyre of burning sacred cows. 5e might be rejected out of hand by a decent chunk of like minded folks unless it backtracks on 4e's excesses in that area (though WotC is in the horrible position of probably having to gamble doing that and losing hardcore 4e fans in hopes of regaining a larger share of the people who dismissed 4e because of those things).

All of those 4e'isms? Make that into a campaign setting of its own and publish it in 5e, but don't force its flavor elements upon the game at large. Let that setting have the single origin and same appearance for all tieflings, and let everyone else go back to having tieflings as utterly random in appearance and of any possibly fiendish bloodline. Etc.

Though I don't mind dragonborn as a PC race. They're like the one 4e thing I don't mind at all actually.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

The elements that turned off my gaming group and myself from day 1 weren't the mechanical elements for the most part, but the wholesale changes to the default flavor and world assumptions of 30 odd years of D&D in 4e. It no longer felt like D&D to us as a result.

I don't want primordials, elemental chaos, and tieflings that all have the same monolithic appearance and origin. I don't want an alignment system with some alignments randomly excised but others left in, with LG being some sort of super good and CE being some sort of super evil with little rhyme or reason. I want archons to be well, archons again rather than inexplicably vanishing and having their name used by evil elementals. I want eladrin to be eladrin again rather than a mortal race of elves. I want yugoloths back.

Basically a large number of folks I know wouldn't be interested in a game that goes out of its way to remove, randomly replace, and sometimes mock in the marketing many of the game's historical flavor trappings ranging 1, 2, or 3 decades old. It seems somewhere between overly idealistic and arrogant to put a bullet in the head of swathes of the game's accumulated history and dance around a pyre of burning sacred cows. 5e might be rejected out of hand by a decent chunk of like minded folks unless it backtracks on 4e's excesses in that area (though WotC is in the horrible position of probably having to gamble doing that and losing hardcore 4e fans in hopes of regaining a larger share of the people who dismissed 4e because of those things).

All of those 4e'isms? Make that into a campaign setting of its own and publish it in 5e, but don't force its flavor elements upon the game at large. Let that setting have the single origin and same appearance for all tieflings, and let everyone else go back to having tieflings as utterly random in appearance and of any possibly fiendish bloodline. Etc.

Though I don't mind dragonborn as a PC race. They're like the one 4e thing I don't mind at all actually.

I completely understand how this might throw someone off.

That said, I wasn't all that bothered by it, because I have a well-established homebrew campaign that doesn't care about the "defaults" of any edition, so there was very little to have to change.

But if I were invested heavily in the FR or Greyhawk or whatever, then yeah, I could see how this would be annoying. Especially with what happened to the 'Realms.

Even so, nothing is stopping those things from existing, or stopping you from continuing from the 3 decades of 'canon' - it just means you might have to concoct them on your own. No, there won't be an "official" version if WotC doesn't publish one, but in a home game, who cares?

Oh, wait, you already answered that. Where's that d20 OGL spirit? That was probably their biggest mistake if you ask me.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Basically a large number of folks I know wouldn't be interested in a game that goes out of its way to remove, randomly replace, and sometimes mock in the marketing many of the game's historical flavor trappings ranging 1, 2, or 3 decades old. It seems somewhere between overly idealistic and arrogant to put a bullet in the head of swathes of the game's accumulated history and dance around a pyre of burning sacred cows. 5e might be rejected out of hand by a decent chunk of like minded folks unless it backtracks on 4e's excesses in that area (though WotC is in the horrible position of probably having to gamble doing that and losing hardcore 4e fans in hopes of regaining a larger share of the people who dismissed 4e because of those things).

Agreed, 100%...and I'll amplify your parenthetical.

I simply don't foresee WotC resurrecting previous editions' sacred cows, nor slaughtering the 4Edisms that replaced them. My bet is that 5Ed will fully elevate the schism to permanence.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

While riding with skill didn't occur as often as "being sneaky" in my experience with D&D, it came up at least as often (if not moreso) as climbing ropes, needing to survive in the wilderness (without magic), succeeding at being diplomatic, or needing to know a bit of history.

Sure, Riding skill is debatable. It could easily go either way, skill or something else mechanically, and ideally which would depend upon what other skills are in the game. Some form of Appraisal/Mercantile ability is similar in that respect. This is an area where consistency is important, too. If you decide to be more expansive, and include Riding, then you need Appraise or Mercantile, and the other borderline things. If you decide to go minimalist, then those things need to be all kept out of the skill system, and then handled elsewhere (whether mechanically, or by fiat, or whatever).

But by the time we get to discussing performance, crafting, and the like, we are way outside the debatable arena. Whatever importance these things have, mechancially they are not comparable even to Riding, let alone Sneaking, in anything remotely approaching the mechanical center of D&D. They are so outside the range, that things like "Use Rope" can sit clearly in the middle--notably more fiddly than Riding, but more likely to matter than them.

One of the reasons that people have objected to having them represented mechanically at all is because of their poor handling thus far. I freely admit to having a kneejerk reaction against "Profession" skills (but not performance or craft skills) because of the numerous times they have been so poorly done. I've looked at the design and thought, "Would have been better to have left it out altogehter. Then, if I run a campaign where that matters, I won't have to tear out the drek before I can build something worth having."

It's like someone installed a pipe organ in a new homes' guest bathroom, in case a potential buyer wanted a conservatory.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Well one thing I recently noticed that I'd like to see is multiple ability score importance. Dump stats and off abilities should mean something. Not so much that they cause dependency but noticeable somehow.

I agree. I think every stat should be useful for every PC. High Int and Cha should be useful for a fighter, if a fighter should happen to have high scores in those. A high Str should be a useful boon to a wizard, but certainly not required.

Again, I think DA2 had a good approach - while some stats were required for a certain class, *every* stat was useful. For example, the Cunning stat is useful to all classes because it increases crit chance, while Magic is useful to all classes because it increases magic defense. I think something like that would be a good addition to D&D.

I'd bring back the skills craft, perform and handle animal/ride...maybe profession as well. And 10' poles & mules.

I don't miss the Craft, Perform, and Handle Animal skills per se, but I would like to see more coverage and discussion of those *activities*. That is, I think 5e should have rules and guidance for crafting, performing, and animal husbandry, but I don't think they need to make a 3e-style skill system for it.

As for the 'flavor' argument and the 'world setting implications' arguments. There's really not a lot that can be said one way or another about these. What would be the tactical and strategic implications of an army that could all fly?

FWIW, I'm not too keen on racial flight abilities either, although that has more to do with the difficulty in crafting challenging game scenarios than flavor for me. Note that I'm *not* saying that I want to railroad PCs and flight would make that too hard to do (although that is probably the case ...). I just want to present my players with challenges that aren't automatically obviated by some racial flight ability.

So, I hate racial tactical teleports primarily because of flavor (knowing they aren't really all that overpowered), and I hate racial tactical flight because of adventure design considerations. I want none of it!!! (pixies will give me fits ... )

I find the 4e races with their distinct capabilities and more clearly distinguished from human style to be a nice feature of 4e. I don't want it to go away for any reason whatsoever, and certainly not the dubious reasoning that anything beyond human capabilities isn't believable enough or makes the DM THINK about its implications for the world.

Well, what can I say? I freely admit I'm a lazy and uninspired person that has a slight preferences for the setting assumptions of "traditional D&D." However, I do agree that 4e's general approach to giving races clear and distinct themes is better than that of previous editions. I would not want to see that go away.

Honestly, if you don't like the way Eladrin teleport wanks with your world building, then get rid of it. Use elves in their place, or make up a variant race, etc. Turning the whole game system into bland pudding isn't the correct answer IMHO.

Oh, in the future I definitely will use elves to encompass both the traditional wood elf and high elf archetypes (it's easier to do now that elves can get a bonus to Int ). I also agree that making the game more bland isn't the answer, and I would hope that removing racial teleports or flight abilities will not create a bland game. IMO I don't think it would, but others may feel differently.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

However, I do agree that 4e's general approach to giving races clear and distinct themes is better than that of previous editions. I would not want to see that go away.

Speaking strictly from a "game play and setting implication" persective, it would make sense to have all potential problematic racial abilities moved into options that the race may take. Sure, all eladrin had the opportunity to learn to Fey Step, but that was one of several choices that they could make. In practice, a lot of eladrin, maybe even the vast majority, don't. (Or they do, in some campaigns. Would depend a lot on what was happening in that world.)

Of course, that has handling time and character crunching implications that might not be acceptable. Presumably, this is why the 4E developers backed away from earlier indications that race would play a bigger mechanical role in the characters as they leveled. I'd like to know where they were going with that. But even more so, I'd like to know why it wasn't working.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which still gets you the problem of:

1) its either a straight-up stat or stat+level-check, which is 4Ed's benchmark for untrained skills, OR

2) the PC gets the +5 for a trained skill check, which is giving away reined skills like Haloween candy

Neither works for me.


While riding with skill didn't occur as often as "being sneaky" in my experience with D&D, it came up at least as often (if not moreso) as climbing ropes, needing to survive in the wilderness (without magic), succeeding at being diplomatic, or needing to know a bit of history.

I think the issue is really a presentational issue, and in defense of the 4e devs one that emerged out of the design in a rather non-obvious way.

The 4e skills really aren't exactly 'skill' in the way that most people mean that term. They don't really represent 'talent at doing something' at all, except indirectly. What they DO measure is a character's propensity to do certain things. If a character has a propensity to lie then the player acquires a good Bluff bonus to represent that. This is an 'M.O.' that character uses. It isn't that he's specifically good at fabrications or verbal misdirection, or physical misdirection, etc. It is that he deceives, he is deceptive. It is a part of his nature, and maybe he typically does it in certain ways that suite his other resources, so perhaps he typically tells tall tales, or maybe he distracts people with idiotic blather, or sings songs that manipulate them or whatever (and he probably can fall back on a couple of techniques and can probably extemporize well using other techniques, given his predilections).

With a physical skill like Athletics you have a character that takes on physically challenging tasks, that's his predilection. With a skill like History he likes to use information to figure out problems. With Stealth he's sneaky, and with Thievery he gets into things. Again, he may use various techniques and resources and may have typical ways that he uses these predilections, but it is mostly about who he is, not so much about what he knows or specific knowledge that he has.

The character may know or understand any number of things outside what the 4e skills list, they are really only very loosely any kind of system for gaging knowledge or acquired talent. The assumption really is that if a character is typically approaching problems in a given way then he's going to be familiar with that type of problem, and have general understanding and techniques he can use to apply to it. Maybe a character hasn't ever swum before, but he takes on physical challenges in a deft way and he's clearly motivated, so it doesn't really matter that much.

You can then use your other character development resources to provide specifics. The character was a blacksmith, so he goes at things with perseverance and dogged determination because that works for him. He also knows how to apply that quite effectively to a specific type of work and has the knowledge that goes along with that. His 'M.O.' is being doggedly determined, not "I pound everything into a sword with my hammer and anvil" so 'blacksmithing' isn't a thing that is in the same category as Endurance. They both exist though.

I don't think the real implications of the short skill list were clear to the people who wrote it. They wouldn't have used the term 'skill' if it were, and they might have created a bit different list as well. The list is a bit eclectic actually, given how it should really be used. They also obviously didn't present this concept in any way to the readers. It has simply become more and more clear to me in using the system. Skills are actually a bit more like 'alignment' in a sense than they are like 'weapon proficiency' or something. A mechanical measurement of character personality more than anything else.

Thought of in that way, the 4e skill system is really quite effective because it lets me think about things in terms of intermediate goals. I want to deceive the King because I'm good at deception and I can plot out a way that deception can achieve my ends. So intermediate goal is deception, my M.O. and maybe I achieve it by baking him a treat that looks like it came from his mistress and slipping it to him. It isn't about baking the treat. It is about the PLAN and my deceptive nature lets me carry it out. My Bluff check is more about how deceptive of a guy I am and have I thus got all the angles right to make a good deception come off well. Now, if my character's background is 'baker' then well, clearly I make a good treat, but it hardly even matters because if the DM doesn't supply me with the fixings for that plan, then I'll just have to come up with another, buy you can be sure it will be deceptive too!

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't think the real implications of the short skill list were clear to the people who wrote it. They wouldn't have used the term 'skill' if it were, and they might have created a bit different list as well. The list is a bit eclectic actually, given how it should really be used. They also obviously didn't present this concept in any way to the readers. It has simply become more and more clear to me in using the system. Skills are actually a bit more like 'alignment' in a sense than they are like 'weapon proficiency' or something. A mechanical measurement of character personality more than anything else.

Best post that I have seen in awhile. Very insightful, especially the last two paragraphs. I'm going to be giving out lots of XP so that I can get back to this post. Somebody spot me in the meantime.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree. I think every stat should be useful for every PC. High Int and Cha should be useful for a fighter, if a fighter should happen to have high scores in those. A high Str should be a useful boon to a wizard, but certainly not required.

Again, I think DA2 had a good approach - while some stats were required for a certain class, *every* stat was useful. For example, the Cunning stat is useful to all classes because it increases crit chance, while Magic is useful to all classes because it increases magic defense. I think something like that would be a good addition to D&D.


I don't miss the Craft, Perform, and Handle Animal skills per se, but I would like to see more coverage and discussion of those *activities*. That is, I think 5e should have rules and guidance for crafting, performing, and animal husbandry, but I don't think they need to make a 3e-style skill system for it.


FWIW, I'm not too keen on racial flight abilities either, although that has more to do with the difficulty in crafting challenging game scenarios than flavor for me. Note that I'm *not* saying that I want to railroad PCs and flight would make that too hard to do (although that is probably the case ...). I just want to present my players with challenges that aren't automatically obviated by some racial flight ability.

So, I hate racial tactical teleports primarily because of flavor (knowing they aren't really all that overpowered), and I hate racial tactical flight because of adventure design considerations. I want none of it!!! (pixies will give me fits ... )


Well, what can I say? I freely admit I'm a lazy and uninspired person that has a slight preferences for the setting assumptions of "traditional D&D." However, I do agree that 4e's general approach to giving races clear and distinct themes is better than that of previous editions. I would not want to see that go away.


Oh, in the future I definitely will use elves to encompass both the traditional wood elf and high elf archetypes (it's easier to do now that elves can get a bonus to Int ). I also agree that making the game more bland isn't the answer, and I would hope that removing racial teleports or flight abilities will not create a bland game. IMO I don't think it would, but others may feel differently.

Sorry if I came off sounding dismissive. I honestly fully understand the "I don't find that this particular concept sits well with me" thing. If you don't feel like a teleporting sort of 'high elf' fits in then the eladrin doesn't fit in well. I just think what WotC was trying to do was climb out of the pit where vast amounts of crunch were spent in previous editions churning out races that differed from each other and from humans in little more than how long the hair on their feet was or what color their eyes were. Sure, they each got some slight bonus or penalty and maybe some very niche racial ability, but AD&D especially had really bland races. I think 4e they decided to give each race something really distinctive and just ignore minor distinctions. SO there is 'elf' which can take care of all elves, and 'eladrin' that gives you a super magical sort of 'elf' with an amazing power that is quite distinctive.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, it is not a very clearly formed idea either. I do want to explore it more. I think it implies that the 4e skill list is sort of an awkward half-duck half-cow kind of thing. I'm just not sure we know yet what a cow should really look like.

Lets see... If I were going down this road further as a designer, what might I do with it? First get better names. For instance 'bluff' isn't so good, 'deceptive' would be better. So turn them all into adjectives descriptive of the character. Then I would consider heavily whether or not knowledge belongs in there. It seems like different areas of knowledge really don't. In other words 'knowledgeable' and 'wise' are more like the things you might want, but I think wise at least is a bit too nebulous. Maybe not though, it is very analogous to 'Athletic' or 'Acrobatic'. Hmmm.

So maybe classes should specify areas of knowledge that you are knowledgeable about or could be knowledgeable about, but being 'knowledgeable' as a trait is more about using what you know. So maybe they all have to be ACTIVE words. Maybe we'd want something more like adverbal forms or something. It is a bit murky for sure.