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

[KarinsDad]

2) Make a single big combat a day option a viable one if you want it - that's always been how I've gamed since the late 70s, one big encounter per day. The climactic showdown with the BBEG should be with both sides at full strength, not with the players having expended most of their powers just to get there. The big showdown where both sides get to show off their "A" game. I don't want to have the Super Bowl with one side well rested, and the other side having been banged up from having played on Sunday morning the day of the Super Bowl. (However, I think multiple encounter days are a great prelim to Super Sunday...)

Well, the main issue is when Daily powers are already expended. Unless this is the 5th or 6th encounter in a given day, our group usually has most of their Daily powers available, so the fact that a given PC is down to 4 surges out of 12 isn't too much of an issue. At higher levels, the players are a bit more willing to drop a Daily here and there, but they still tend to conserve them a bit and so the climactic showdown tends to still be that way.

This is more of a DM style thing though. A DM who wants to have a climactic showdown at full strength should just arrange it to be the first encounter after an extended rest.

 

[KidSnide]

Here's my list:

* Generally, I'd like to see more optional rules that allow different takes on the same game.

* I'm sick of returning to the dungeon. Dungeons are great, but can we return to all those other places where adventures also take place? Can rules for movement, range and perception handle the possibility that the encounters takes place on maps where the scale isn't 1-inch-to-5-foot?

* Related, I'd like to see Paragon and Epic level play (particularly Epic level play) that feels substantially different from Heroic level play.

* I'd like to see good modules. They are essential, and they need to be varied. Yes, a heroic-to-epic hack-and-slash is an important part of the cannon, but over the course of an edition, we should also have:
- A couple good dungeon-y sandboxes of various levels, with substantial information on how the inhabitants react to intruders
- A couple good wilderness hex-crawls
- A couple good "base of operations" towns
- A handful of good plot-based adventures, including at least one plot heavy adventure path where the PCs get to make many substantial world-altering decisions
- Good coverage of the classic "scenario" adventures, such as: "stop an invading army", "escape from prison", "journey to wacky-land", "hunt the vampire", "explore the wizard's tower", "loot the deathtrap dungeon"

* I'd like to see a meaningful design effort in non-combat encounters and the associated character abilities. I'd like to see skill challenges expand beyond X successes before Y failures, with sample frameworks for the most common types of non-combat encounters.

* I'd like to see support for more alternate campaign types such as: "found your kingdom", "conquer the neighboring kingdom", "loot the seven seas", "gothic horror", "Dark Sun-style wastelands", non-medieval time periods like ancient types or age-of-exploration. This kind of stuff generates inspiration (and games that steal an aspect or two) far in excess of the number of people that actually choose to use the full campaign support described.

More nitty gritty:
* I like parts of Healing Surges, in that (1) I like mechanics that allow for non-magical "healing" of not-entirely-physical damage and (2) I like that healing powers heal a proportionate amount of the targets hit points. However, as discussed at length in the Healing Surges thread, they create an awkward narrative space when a character goes down. I'd like to see an optional "lasting wounds" rules that would facilitate a grittier game, while still allowing people to play with the "adventurers just keep going" rules.

* Like many, I would like to see fewer and more meaningful conditions, and fewer subtle and unimportant distinctions between conditions (like when during a turn the condition ends).

-KS

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I want to remove the 5 min power use out of combat...and change it to a scean.


Infact here are how powers should look:

At will
Once per scean or encounter
Twice per scean or encounter
Once per story
twice per story

power duration should be:
end of your next turn
Save ends
Encounter or Scean
Day
Story
Permenant until used again or Discharged

that way I can use an encounter long buff to social skills for an entire scean that is a dinner party or masqurade ball.

you can also say a dungeon is a story, that way takeing 20 days or 3 or 1 is the same amount of powers...15min work day is ALWAYs the DMs call. You can use this to make single encounter days...

I would lessen the assumed math of items. I would make it so that at level 10 it is assumed you have a +1 magic weapon, Neck and Armor at level 20 it is assumed you have +2. However magic comes faster then that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

5e needs to focus the support for Roles in class features instead of powers, and consolidate powers by Source instead of giving each class an often-repetative power list of it's own.

Amen!

Sadly, there hasn't been the faintest wiff of this sort of idea from the 'new Direction' of Essentials+, nor from the many meandering L&Ls.

 

[Tony Vargas]

2) Make a single big combat a day option a viable one if you want it - that's always been how I've gamed since the late 70s, one big encounter per day. The climactic showdown with the BBEG should be with both sides at full strength, not with the players having expended most of their powers just to get there. The big showdown where both sides get to show off their "A" game.

It's always been an option, in 4e as in earlier eds. Dailies obviously get thrown down more (if it's obvious it's the only encounter, or if the encounter is just that brutal), and surges are less meaningful, but that's about it.

But, if you're going to eliminate dailies, the difference between an 'A' game from a 'fresh' party and the nth encounter of a long day is going to be minimal...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I am all for removing the striker role!

Why should not every role be able to contribute towards killing/dcapacitating?
This way monsters could get a reasonable aount of hp and numbers were a lot less inflated.
A thief could easily be something like a class that does heavy single target control and tricks outside combat.

 

[Oldtimer]

Have someone stand over you with a stick and see how well you can block that person while getting up. I've been in enough Tae Kwon Do tournaments to know that you never stand up while your opponent is standing right next to you. You are prone to leave yourself open for attack.

And I've trained Aikido for more than 30 years. I can assure you I'm more defenseless lying prone than while I'm getting up. Look up hanmi-handachi if you want.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

And I've trained Aikido for more than 30 years. I can assure you I'm more defenseless lying prone than while I'm getting up. Look up hanmi-handachi if you want.

That's great but not everyone is trained in Aikido or Judo. Those who are would most likely have a feat that would enable them to grapple or attack while prone or maybe even stand without drawing an attack of opportunity.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'll chime in to say that one of my biggest beefs with 4e at the moment is with the skill system.

While I like the basic structure of it, with pared down skill lists (I know this is not everyone's cup of tea, but IMO it's one of the things 4e got 'right.') It's far, far too easy to jack your skill bonus in some skills to ridiculous levels; too many untyped bonuses to skills.

On the plus side, it makes it simple to get 'good' at things, especially for inexperienced players, but this has two bad side effects.

First, you can easily have a *huge* gulf between skill levels, even between two characters that are supposed to be good at the same skill. This isn't necessarily bad in and of itself, but when player A wants to be the party lockpick, and so makes a modest investment in it, only to have Player B come along taking every single bonus to Thievery they can find... well, it's just frustrating for Player A.

Secondly, and perhaps more sinister, is that there are too many ways to 'substitute' one skill for another. Many of these effects are per-encounter, with the Dailies reserved for Initiative substitutions. This becomes a really big problem when you have, for example, Player A the lockpick specialist with his modest investment beaten routinely by Player B using a skill power or similar to just substitute a different skill that they've maxed out for both lockpicking and also whatever else it does.

Player A feels ripped off, and outshined - and I wouldn't blame them one bit - but Player B isn't cheating, so what can you do?

One of the biggest offenders for this is the combination of Backgrounds, Themes, and some of the newer Essentials class feature skill boosts. All untyped bonuses. Probably the worst offender for this is the Arcana skill and the Order Adept theme. The worst part being that it's trivially easy for an Arcanist to dominate skill challenges by subbing their ridiculous Arcana check for other skills (particularly social skills) on a per-encounter basis.

One of the parties I'm involved in has one such character in it, and at level 10 he has a perfectly legal Arcana check of 24, which once per encounter he can sub (once each) for Diplomacy and Intimidate, and then either one again or Bluff with Arcane Mutterings. So, by investing pretty heavily in one skill, and a smallish investment in powers (two cantrips and a feat-purchaseable skill power), he can do all the heavy lifting of the party face as well as that of his 'skill role.'

This character can trivially make at-level hard skill DCs, and can hit ones 10 levels higher 50% of the time. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. It's really hard to plan and balance for.

And he could have gotten his skill a couple points higher than that still had he chosen an Arcana-bonus race, a different background, started with 20 Int, and taken Skill Focus instead of Bardic Knowledge. But he was trying to 'diversify' a bit. He's also got respectable scores in Nature, Religion (better by far than the Cleric), Stealth (hard DCs on a 6+), and several others.

I know there are ways to deal with this, but they're all houserules at this point. It also can lead to whiny players who don't understand why you're targeting them and their level of system mastery when they're "only playing by the rules." Stuff like slapping a -5 penalty on skills used in this way may sound ok on the surface, but not only does it penalize the players with a more median skillset, it also further encourages the min/maxer to squeeze every last bonus point to make up for the "unfair penalties."

So tl;dr version - 5e (or whatever) needs to patch the holes in an otherwise streamlined skill system.

 

[NewJeffCT]

It's always been an option, in 4e as in earlier eds. Dailies obviously get thrown down more (if it's obvious it's the only encounter, or if the encounter is just that brutal), and surges are less meaningful, but that's about it.

But, if you're going to eliminate dailies, the difference between an 'A' game from a 'fresh' party and the nth encounter of a long day is going to be minimal...

it just doesn't seem the same with 4E in terms of the one big encounter per day as with previous editions, even though my previous groups had made plentiful use of in combat healing (Revivify was big in my last 3.5E campaign)

I haven't quite put my finger on why, though. In previous editions, I would be really good at stretching the party to their limits with that one big climactic encounter. However, in 4E, the big climactic encounters I've run so far have often been anti-climactic (i.e., boring for me as DM)