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

[Zsig]

I think that "Daily" as a game-play term should just go away.

It's not something that the system "understands", and it causes lots of problems.

You got well defined terms like "turn" (which is a set of actions, which in turn are each well defined) or "round" (once each person took its turn), then you got "encounter" (which is a given number of rounds) and you even got "level", that could be defined (but doesn't need to be) by the number of encounters a given character accomplished before reaching the next level.

...and then you got "day".

What costitutes a "day" in terms of game? One encounter? Four encounters? What if my group's playstyle doesn't match that which the system assumes?


This is the reason we see stuff like 15 minutes adventure day, and/or some people mindlessly blowing off all their daily powers on every single encounter and then asking for a stop.



Currently, on my games we use the "1/ day = 2/ level (but still only once per day)" and it does wonders, but I'm not here to talk about my games, so yeah, get rid of "Day" as a game term.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Yeah, I agree. They should be more explicit about the fact that just because 12 hours have passed since your last one, doesn't mean you can automatically take an extended rest. To drive the point home, maybe they should be called Extended Powers, since they only refresh after an Extended Rest. That could be a day, if the story/module calls for it, or it could alternately be a week, a month or a year.

 

[Minigiant]

I could repeat some of the things said here, fewer and more meaningful conditions, easier tracking of durations and bonuses, consolidation of class powers within the same power source...

My main wish is is the skill system to be fixed up a little. 4e got close too perfect but the design model of the game will create creep. There are/will be too many perfectly legal bonuses to add up. Combine that ways to to substitute one skill for another and...

Skill tiers? A Cap before Ability modifier are added? Skill "roles" that separate bonuses, rerolls, and skill substitution? Something would be nice.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

KD's original suggestions mostly sounded like they hit some decent points, nothing I'd really disagree with there.

The whole streamlining conditions and effects thing definitely has to happen. Honestly there should be almost no such thing as lasting effects. It is a condition and can have a duration, or it is an effect and applies immediately, there should be practically nothing else. That way effects can do a whole bunch of things, but they don't require tracking. Then durations can really be reduced to End of Your Next Turn, and Encounter. Saves can be granted-only effects, but they could be granted by an action (IE you can try to douse ongoing fire damage, but you'll not be swinging at me at the same time). This lets you have some interesting decision points but removes tracking from the equation and reduces the number of rolls and thus modifiers that come up.

I would cut back on actions. 4 actions are enough, Standard, move, free, and immediate (which is an interrupt and used also for OAs). This limits all OOT nonsense to once a round per character, which is a big speedup at higher levels. Minor actions are unneeded extra paperwork. Sustaining just happens unless you state otherwise, picking things up, etc doesn't need an action. With minor actions gone there's no temptation for designers to turn them into even MORE attacks.

Consolidating the design space for powers is a definitely good concept. I'm not convinced I would have powers based on source. It is a theory, but you will never come up with a generic list of powers that are applicable to every role, nor can you base role entirely on class features.

I think frankly I would just forget about power source entirely. I can't see anything it added to the game except headaches. It created a lot of the implement mess and is just generally a font of "we added this restriction for the heck of it, so what if it messes up a lot of perfectly good concepts".

Fall back to class, and just limit classes to a small number. Really only the 'big 4' basic archetypes NEED to be classes. Then you can construct builds which emphasize specific roles within each class, providing most of the feature mechanics. On top of that you can have something like 'masteries' that let you focus on something like doing cool stuff with an axe, which can supply more features and or a shortlist of powers (similar to a PP or PrC, and not too different from a theme really).

The Mastery concept could also be applied to skills. You want to be a good second story man? Well, there's a cat burglar mastery. Go ahead, pick it up. Now you get to do some nice special climey things and some special B&E things, and some special Stealth things.

As for Armor, I think I'd just ditch having stat modifiers there. You can beef up your AC by getting heavier armor or better enchantments. Just leave it at that. You're a rogue and you want to be mobile and wear leather? OK, fine, you'll be somewhat easier to hit, but so what? You can have some 'dodge' ability or something that you can pick up, which the big clunking guy in plate isn't going to need. The range between unarmored and plate just won't be all that big. The suggestion of fewer armor steps is good too, and goes with this. SImply have None, leather, chain, scale, plate. Wearing plate is good for 5 points of AC more than the wizard with 'none', and that's just about perfect. I'd basically have one proficiency that let you wear the 3 heavier armors, and keep the small armor penalty as well and just apply that to the 3 heavier armors as well (this stuff can be tweaked).

Just plain get rid of the 'untyped bonus', there is no such thing. Provide simple static bonuses from most sources that are +1. You can go stack a bunch of them on your character, and there can be a 100 ways to get each one, so what? Everyone will end up with enough of them. If you don't want the +1 damage from arms slot item, then there's a ring, a sword, and a wondrous item that all give the same item bonus, have fun! All of them are properties and work all of the time.

Now, maybe there is one type, probably item, that can be higher than +1, and situational, but such items are very hard to get and you pretty much get to have one at a time. They're not player resources so the whole issue there goes away, and they could also be boons.

Many concepts could be merged. For instance boons, rituals, and practices are all basically the same thing. They could all simply provide a character with benefit, you decide how to explain it. The upshot being since it isn't a piece of equipment, you can always use it, under whatever circumstances are prescribed.

I don't really think non-combat mechanics are problematic in 4e at all. There can be redefinition of some things, but skills actually work well as-is. I know there are complaints, but frankly if you can show me the system that is actually materially better, then go for it. I've looked and this is about as good as it gets. Fixing bonuses fixes skills, and SCs are OK, just explain them better. Page 42 takes care of the rest.

I think you'd find with these kinds of changes that combat will go a lot faster, min/maxing can be reduced. More characters will be able to do more things more of the time, and it will be a lot easier to build a character and to run it.

 

[TwinBahamut]

There are a lot of things that can be done to improve 4e with a 5e...

I like the idea of pooling powers more by role rather than by class, though I'm not sure it is the best solution to my problems with the rules. It would work better for spellcasters than more weapon-oriented classes, I think...

I'm not familiar with how Essentials handles things, but I've never been totally happy with the annoying need to sort through page after page of powers in order to get a good idea of what a class can do. Generally, I would prefer a 5e that had fewer powers overall and didn't make you guess at what the most important powers were.

It would also be nice of they addressed the need to constantly trade up to higher-level powers, which often meant that characters had to abandon powers that were defining to their playstyle in lower levels without any clear equivalent at higher levels.

It would also be nice if classes were a little less rigidly structured in their mechanics. Not every class needs to have the same balance of at-will, encounter, and daily abilities, and many classes could probably benefit from powers that didn't fit into those exact categories.

Less numeric dependence on treasure would also be nice. I'm not exactly a fan of +X items and their necessity for the math to work out well in 4e. 4e's explicit information on that was an improvement over 3e, but it would be better to just get rid of that part of the math entirely.

I like the idea of roles quite a bit, but I'm not sure if the four roles in 4e are the best ones to use. Cleaning up the names and concepts and maybe introducing some more roles could potentially help a lot. Too often it seems like they went the route of making each "role" just a reskinned idea of the Fighter/Thief/Wizard/Cleric team, when they should have instead moved back to basics and worked out what the game really needed.

I'd also like to see the idea of the Ki Power Source revived. I really liked that idea when it was first mentioned and was sad to see that WotC messed up the concept and scrapped it.

There is also a lot of flavor and fluff I'd like to see changed, but I don't really expect anyone at WotC to listen to me and dial back the Far Plane nonsense, so I'm not sure if there is much point in complaining about that (and other such things).

 

[KarinsDad]

As for Armor, I think I'd just ditch having stat modifiers there. You can beef up your AC by getting heavier armor or better enchantments. Just leave it at that. You're a rogue and you want to be mobile and wear leather? OK, fine, you'll be somewhat easier to hit, but so what? You can have some 'dodge' ability or something that you can pick up, which the big clunking guy in plate isn't going to need. The range between unarmored and plate just won't be all that big. The suggestion of fewer armor steps is good too, and goes with this. SImply have None, leather, chain, scale, plate. Wearing plate is good for 5 points of AC more than the wizard with 'none', and that's just about perfect. I'd basically have one proficiency that let you wear the 3 heavier armors, and keep the small armor penalty as well and just apply that to the 3 heavier armors as well (this stuff can be tweaked).

For armor, I'd like to explore a concept of:

None: AC x+4, damage resist 0
Leather: AC x+3, damage resist 2
Chain: AC x+2, damage resist 3
Scale: AC x+1, damage resist 4
Plate: AC x, damage resist 5

The PCs in low or no armor dodge better, but get hit harder if they get hit.

Say that the D20 die roll required to hit None is 13 for a given foe and the die roll required to hit Plate is 9 and say the foe hits for 10 points of average damage.

Average damage becomes:

None: 4
Leather: 3.6
Chain: 3.5
Scale: 3.3
Plate: 3

So overall, the heavier armors protect slightly more. But, the PCs in heavier armor also get hit more often as well.

A higher level foe that hits easier +2 and harder +2 would result in average damage of:

None: 6
Leather: 5.5
Chain: 5.4
Scale: 5.2
Plate: 4.9

Combine this with Dex adding to AC, but not to hit for melee. Str is used to determine to hit for all melee classes.

The concept that any ability score can be used for to hit and damage in melee (and any ability score can be used to boost AC based on class) seems off to me. Just like Wis or Cha add to Will and Int does not, ability scores should be specific as to what they modify and this shouldn't change from class to class.

Magic armor could then add +1 to the resistance that the armor supplies and nothing to the AC. By definition, it would protect better and not just by random chance.


Another aspect of the game that this helps to alleviate is the swinginess. I've played (very high) AC defenders where the DM often rolled out of his butt. So, the defender got hit often not because he had more foes around him, but because the DM dice were hot. Lowering the chance to hit via AC doesn't necessarily equate to lowering the overall damage that the PC takes.

But, lowering the damage via resist automatically does, at least for any single attack.

In the first example above, a Defender in resist 5 Plate with 30 hit points has to get hit 6 times for 10 points of damage to go unconscious.

The Controller in resist 0 no armor with 25 hit points has to get hit 3 times.

This makes sense to me. The guy in armor is much harder to take out because the armor absorbs part of the blow each time. That's the reason armor was invented. Not to make a person harder to hit.

If a player wants to avoid the swinginess, he would move to a heavier armor. If the player wants to play the odds and hope to not get hit, he would move to a lighter armor. With the randomness of a D20 in the current game, heavier armor will typically help in the long run, but doesn't necessarily help at all in the short term.

It's great that you have armor on, but it's not helping in this encounter.

When I see Iron Wizards floating around who have high ACs and get hit on average the same as a guy in Plate and they don't really get taken out that much quicker if they are hit, just because they are smart, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Armor doesn't appear to protect that much. Adding Int to AC is purely a game balance rule. It really doesn't make sense that a low Dex high Int character is really going to be smart and experienced enough to dodge blows as well as a high Dex character.


Risk and Reward. Today except for Strikers, most PCs can do similar amounts of damage and can have similar levels of defenses. There is less of a concept of the lowly Wizard in the back that avoids direct combat because he is so frail, but he gets other significant advantages. Sure, he can slow a foe. Not that this helps that much.

Any more, that Wizard can have defenses as high as other PCs and the only main difference is that he often has fewer hit points (and part of that can be alleviated with Toughness and good Con or backgrounds). Wizards are these mighty warriors that can wade though combat just as much as the PCs in heavy armor, well protected by, err, their intellect.

Course, changing the armor this much is extremely not D&D-like.


Alternatively, having shields give damage resist instead of AC might be an option as well.

 

[KidSnide]

Fall back to class, and just limit classes to a small number. Really only the 'big 4' basic archetypes NEED to be classes. Then you can construct builds which emphasize specific roles within each class, providing most of the feature mechanics. On top of that you can have something like 'masteries' that let you focus on something like doing cool stuff with an axe, which can supply more features and or a shortlist of powers (similar to a PP or PrC, and not too different from a theme really).

I'm not sure that I agree that there should be only four classes, but they can be far fewer than there are right now. WotC has shown that they can create distinctive classes without having to write an entirely new set of powers for each one.

I think one of the major problems with 4e is that, as implemented, it required too much splat. There are so many character classes that WotC has to put out a metric s**tload of splat books and dragon articles just to provide adequate powers and feats for the classes they already published. (And there are still undersupported classes like the "should-have-been-a-cleric-flavor" Rune Priest.) This massive workload requires too much system mastery of the players and distracted WotC from getting other things right, like adventures.

I think it's worth noting that the quality of WotC products improved dramatically once they stopped trying to publish a thousand new powers and feats per year.

-KS

 

[Tony Vargas]

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)

Hm... it is hard to come up with possible solutions to a problem that can't quite be defined...

In prior eds, there was a greater gulf between best daily resources (spells) and unlimitted-use resources. So, when the party threw down it's best stuff, it was /really/ good. But, that hardly made it easier to stretch the party to their limits - more often, it made the bad guys go down on the first round. ... hmm... On the healing side, surge triggers rather than surges are at a premium in the single-encounter day, so the abundance of surges shouldn't be contributing.

Here's an idea: describe a really memorable 3.5 climactic encounter that you ran.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I believe someone mentioned it earlier but I would like to see the end of Power Sources.

Seeing classes crammed into power sources is a nightmare.

 

[Tony Vargas]

For armor, I'd like to explore a concept of:

None: AC x+4, damage resist 0
Leather: AC x+3, damage resist 2
Chain: AC x+2, damage resist 3
Scale: AC x+1, damage resist 4
Plate: AC x, damage resist 5

The PCs in low or no armor dodge better, but get hit harder if they get hit.

The numbers aren't going to work. Well, OK, they'll work, but I don't think they'll do what you want.

So, if enemies hit 'x' half the time, they'll hit x+4 about a 30% of the time. If damage averages around 12, damage through put vs Plate would be 3.5, and damage throughput vs None would be 3.6 - higher damage makes no armor better, lower damage makes plate better. Heavy-armor characters would thus be good at wading through legions of low-damage mooks, while they'd want to strip their armor off to fight a dragon or giant.

The concept that any ability score can be used for to hit and damage in melee (and any ability score can be used to boost AC based on class) seems off to me. Just like Wis or Cha add to Will and Int does not, ability scores should be specific as to what they modify and this shouldn't change from class to class.

I don't know. A duelist with a rapier should be attacking with DEX, his deal is precision. One with a greatsword obviously needs a lot of STR. If you wear the other guy down with repeated shield blows you're using CON most heavily. If your style depends on intimidation, deception, and flamboyant risk-taking, you could use CHA. If it's a matter of methodical training and watching the enemy for each slightest 'tell' of his next move, it could be WIS. It's not completely nuts.

... the defender got hit often not because he had more foes around him, but because the DM dice were hot. Lowering the chance to hit via AC doesn't necessarily equate to lowering the overall damage that the PC takes.

But, lowering the damage via resist automatically does, at least for any single attack.

Damage dice can be 'hot,' too.

This makes sense to me. The guy in armor is much harder to take out because the armor absorbs part of the blow each time. That's the reason armor was invented. Not to make a person harder to hit.

OK, but, if you want it to work at all levels against a range of foes, you'll have to have the armor reduce damage by a percentage. If you just want it to be as good as no armor, that'd be by about 10% per each 1-lower AC the armor gave - assuming hitting 50% of the time, to start. So the guy in plate should flat out be taking half damage.

Risk and Reward. Today except for Strikers, most PCs can do similar amounts of damage and can have similar levels of defenses. There is less of a concept of the lowly Wizard in the back that avoids direct combat because he is so frail, but he gets other significant advantages.

The flip side of that is that the wizard doesn't dominate play when those 'significant advantages' turn out to be a little /too/ significant.

Course, changing the armor this much is extremely not D&D-like.

True. But not automatically bad. If WotC isn't willing to do things with 5e that it hasn't done with D&D before, it'll just be another tepid re-tread, like early 2e or 3.5... Trying to make something better means taking the risk of making it /different/.