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

[Gortle]

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 agree.

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.

Interesting idea.

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.

Agreed

 

[Gortle]

Needs to be fixed

What I think works in 4th ed

1. healing surges and hit points. Surges are a nice resource. Finally I can have a party without a cleric.
2. tactical movement system. Nice dimension to the game.
3. powers system is good, but maybe 2 at will, 4 encounter, 4 daily gets a bit complex when you start adding in powers from feat and items.
4. the simple skill system. I like the skill challenges too but often just go with one roll for simplicity.

What needs to be fixed

1. there should be a default rule for multiattacks (any attack that can target more than one creature) that static damage bonuses are halved. Make an exception for powers from one class - sorcerer - as that is their specialty.
2. do we really need the distinction between opportunity attacks and immediate actions? The intricacies of Combat Challenge for fighter is annoying.
3. weapon groups where good. I like the differences between the groups. But they need more options. More feats, a few more group specific powers for the martial classes. Picks and Flails should have general bonuses that make them playable.
4. effect types Fire, Radiant, Cold, Psychic, etc are great. Need to expand the options for each of them more. It sucks that there are great cold and radiant damage combinations, but nothing for the other types beyond simple +1/+2/+3 feat bonuses that are swamped by other feat bonuses. I'd like to see a dozen or so feats for most effect types that aren't tied to class or race. They don't have to be about damage. Is there a weakening effect from Necrotic? Why not?
5. character themes should be stronger. Balanced does not have to mean equal. I'm happy for the Cleric to be a significantly better healer than the Warlord, the Warlord is better at tactical offense. It is harder to do, but it is more fun and more interesting. Less cookie cutter powers please.
6. reduce the number of pointless, weak, and narrow options. You are just wasting your customers time as they read it.
7. the maths. Play-testing? What happened to it guys?
8. conditions tracking in combat. Making them all expire at then end of the creatures next turn would help. Defender auras are easier to track than marks.
9. the number of independent bonuses that stack. Do we really need untyped, power, item, feat, enhancement etc etc. Find a way to drop a couple.

 

[KarinsDad]

If fact you can do this as a house rule with existing 4E. It doesn't make you more 'powerful', it just gives you more options.

More options = more versatile = more powerful.

BTW I hate having to swap out powers as you go up in level (I forgot how to swing really hard) and using the same at-wills over and over again.

Yeah, I'm not too keen on that myself.

Edit: You'd think WOTC would love your character being able to collect powers, especially in the form of cards, MTG and all that.

Oh and the ability to scale up powers so that a 1st level power can be boosted up, say, to a level 6 version.

How about the following?

Since the vast majority of powers do damage, let's start with a model of two types of powers: damaging powers and utility powers. The PC gets x number of each (for now, we don't care what x means and it could be a different number for each).

For the damaging powers, let's start with a model of:

Weapon melee basic attack
Weapon ranged basic attack
Mystic melee basic attack
Mystic ranged basic attack

Mystic at this point could mean anything with is not using a weapon. Force bolts from a wizard, divine power from a cleric, whatever.

All PCs at first level have the ability to use one or more of these four types of basic attacks.

At will powers then become modifiers to these attacks.

For example, a power that pushes a foe one square. The entire power takes a single sentence (or two depending) on a character sheet.

Instead of this vast plethora of cards, or pages and pages on a character sheet, we instead have for a first level PC with 18 Str and a Longsword:

Melee Basic Attack Basic Attack At-Will ✦ Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: +7 vs. AC
Hit: 1d8+4 damage.
Special: You can use an unarmed attack as a weapon to make a melee basic attack.

Cleave
You hit one enemy, then cleave into another.
Hit: Melee basic and an enemy adjacent to you other than the target takes damage equal to your Strength modifier.

Crushing Surge, Invigorating
The feel of your weapon crunching against the enemy puts your heart back in the fight.
Hit: Melee basic

Footwork Lure
You press the attack, engaging your enemy before falling back and drawing him after you.
Hit: Melee basic and you can shift 1 square and slide the target 1 square into the space you left.


The entire At Will damage portion of the game becomes a serious of minor special effects that get added to the core basic attack.

Encounter damaging powers could then take the form of:

Melee Advanced Attack Advanced Attack Encounter ✦ Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: +7 vs. AC
Hit: 2d8+4 damage.

Covering Attack
You launch a ferocious attack at your enemy, allowing one of your allies to safely retreat from it.
Hit: Melee advanced and an ally of yours adjacent to the target can shift up to 2 squares as a free action.


This would need to be controlled in some way as to how many Encounter powers the PC could use, but having the PC gain more options would be doable.

In order to acquire the additional basic and advanced attack options, the PC would spend a feat something like "you gain 3 mystic basic attacks, either melee or ranged, of your choice". This ensures game balance between the PC that has a lot of different basic or advanced attacks (i.e. many options at all times), and the PC that has few, but used his feats for other things.

I do think that a PC should not be able to acquire every power for that class in the game without spending resources like feats to do so.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I'm familiar with that, yes. Can't say as I miss it.

Wow. Big party, with 3 hangers-on.

yes, I was blessed with a large group of players, including two women.

The problem with 3.5E (and 3E and PF) is that it took me a long time to put that lich together - selecting magic items, deciding which long term buffing spells it would have going, then the order in which they'd cast their short duration buffs and which ones would be from memorized spells and which would be from scrolls, picking spells for a level 19 wizard/archmage, deciding which ones would be quickened, empowered or maximized, coming up with any sort of contingency spell/effect, etc. Picking skills & feats to enhance the various abilities, etc.

Then, coming up with the strategy to Gate in the Balor and let it handle the party while the lich buffed up, and then the lich's dramatic entrance with the Time Stop and Force Cages.

And, that was just two main bad guys (balor & lich), with those ogre zombie minions.

Since the party had such a diverse array of attack options, I often had to "go big" in order to challenge them - multiple casters supported by a bunch of strong melee types. (i.e., two high level drow clerics; two high level drow wizards; a drow duskblade; a drow marshall; 4 or 5 mid level drow fighters; a pair of drow rogues; a pair of hill giant barbarian slaves; maybe 20 orc barbarians; and I think one of the drow clerics had a horned devil greater planar ally... plus, I'm probably missing a few others)

When you put together that big an encounter, it takes friggin' forever. However, it was a great encounter that was won when the party cleric was able to cast her Mass Heal spell, but the party was able to stop the drow cleric from doing the same on her turn.

The reason I like 4E as a DM is I can put together a big encounter in a fraction of the time it took me previously. And, with fewer options on both sides, combat seems to run much quicker than it did before.

However, despite playing 4E for almost a year & a half now, I still haven't quite found the balance in being able to challenge the players on a regular basis.

When they were level 8, I gave them a couple of level 8/9 encounters as a prelim to facing the BBEG. Then, the BBEG was a level 12 solo, supported by some level 8/9 skirmisher types for a level 12 encounter. However, after a tough first round, the encounter was a cakewalk for the PCs.

 

[KidSnide]

Yeah, I don't pretend to know for sure what the 'ideal' number is, but I'd note that it ranges somewhere between 2 (weapon users and magic users) and some other low number. OD&D started out with 3 (fighting man, magic user, and cleric), then added the 4th of the big 4 almost immediately. Nobody has actually created a 100% compelling argument for a class that has to exist since then. All the barbarians and rangers and whatnot are really variations of fighting man. All the various casters are variations of magic user. Even cleric and thief can arguably be subsumed under fighting man and magic user. I think you really need a STRONG argument for the existence of an entire class and power list. Honestly, Essentials seems to have that dialed in pretty well, and I think if they had been doing a clean reimplementation they'd have stuck to the big 4.

I agree with your general comments on the number of classes. However, I think it's worth noting that bringing the list down to 2-4 would effectively bring the system back to spell list, in the sense that every class would need to share from a small number of common power sets. Personally, I would be inclined to have one power set for each power source.

You could then seed each power set with enough keywords (school for arcane, domain for divine and technique for marshal) so that classes could be given access to portions of the power set. For example, the Martial power set could have Weaponmaster powers, Swashbuckler powers, Protector powers, Inspiring powers, Tactical powers, Rage powers, Sniper powers, Trickery powers and maybe some other sets (it's ok if a power is in more than one set).

Each class would have a distinctive set of class abilities (like the Essentials classes), which provides design space for different builds. Classes could have access to parts of the power set. For example, a standard Fighter could have access to Weaponmaster, Swashbuckler, Protector, Rage and Tactical (although other fighter builds might alter those sets), a standard Rogue could have Swashbuckler, Sniper, and Trickery powers, and a Paladin could have Weaponmaster, Protector and the divine sets Protection and Wrath.

I am also inclined to change the way encounter and daily powers work. I think encounter powers should represent somewhat more basic techniques that improve as you level up (like some essentials class abilities) rather than powers that are replaced at higher level. I don't mind a small number of potential replacement powers (e.g. a power that has a level 13 and 23 version, but no level 3 version), but there is a lot of rules bloat and non-meaningful decisions in having heroic, paragon and epic versions of what is essentially the same power.

I think Daily powers should be much more class/role dependent. Martial classes should probably have fewer "special maneuvers that you can do once per day" and more abilities that reflect the in-game realities of the class. Special daily stances and permanent bonuses are good examples of martial "daily" powers. You could also have "plans", minor action powers that provide a bonus for the whole battle that are more effective if used before the battle begins. For spellcasters classes, daily powers work pretty well as they are, but maybe wizards could learn more of them (and choose on the fly)?

I have no particularly feeling on your suggestion to replace a lot of build flexibility with masteries, other than to note that they seem to be halfway between a feat, a theme and a class-build. There is some merit here, if you think that the system would be better off with a smaller number of more powerful (and mechanically complicated) feats. I'm inclined to just have a lot of builds (like archer ranger, melee ranger and beast ranger), because I think the design will be much easier, but it would be nice to have a build concept usable among more classes.

-KS

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I agree with your general comments on the number of classes. However, I think it's worth noting that bringing the list down to 2-4 would effectively bring the system back to spell list, in the sense that every class would need to share from a small number of common power sets. Personally, I would be inclined to have one power set for each power source.

You could then seed each power set with enough keywords (school for arcane, domain for divine and technique for marshal) so that classes could be given access to portions of the power set. For example, the Martial power set could have Weaponmaster powers, Swashbuckler powers, Protector powers, Inspiring powers, Tactical powers, Rage powers, Sniper powers, Trickery powers and maybe some other sets (it's ok if a power is in more than one set).

Each class would have a distinctive set of class abilities (like the Essentials classes), which provides design space for different builds. Classes could have access to parts of the power set. For example, a standard Fighter could have access to Weaponmaster, Swashbuckler, Protector, Rage and Tactical (although other fighter builds might alter those sets), a standard Rogue could have Swashbuckler, Sniper, and Trickery powers, and a Paladin could have Weaponmaster, Protector and the divine sets Protection and Wrath.

Hmm, that is pretty close to something I was considering yesterday: Have role be the primary driver for powers and features, but then use classes to give access to the role lists, using the sources (and other things like themes) to goven access by keyword.

So you have Defender powers and features, Striker powers and features, etc. These powers and feature have keywords, have a level, and never cross role categories. A class must have access to all of those keywords, via their class choices to qualify for a given power or feature.

You may have "Tide of Iron", which is a Martial, Shield 1 defender power. Any character with 1 level worth of the defender roll, and access to Martial keyword powers, and using a shield, can take it. That means a lot of fighters and paladins can take it, but swordmages cannot (by default).

You may have "Holy Strike", which does damage and creates a temporary aura of protection, and is a Martial, Divine, Weapon 3 defender power. Paladins get access to this easily, but a Fighter multiclassed into Cleric would also qualify.

Then classes are defined in terms of their primary and secondary (and occasionally tertiary) roles. A fighters' defender level is equal to their class level. Perhaps their striker level is four levels lower. They get access to martial powers.

Multiclassing is by feats. All it does (that is combat-related) is give you access to new keywords. If a fighter multiclasses into cleric, this mechanically means that the character adds the divine keyword to his list.

Note that this assume that there is some judicious piggybacking on power sources to blur role distinctions. That is, "Divine" defender powers might have some mild "leader-ish" powers in them, so that Paladins get these for free, in addition to whatever their secondary role as leader gives. This provides basically three tiers of effectiveness for every role: You have it full. You have it at a few levels lower because it is secondary to your class. Or you multiclassed and got some minor ability through keywords.

 

[KidSnide]

Hmm, that is pretty close to something I was considering yesterday: Have role be the primary driver for powers and features, but then use classes to give access to the role lists, using the sources (and other things like themes) to goven access by keyword.

So you have Defender powers and features, Striker powers and features, etc. These powers and feature have keywords, have a level, and never cross role categories. A class must have access to all of those keywords, via their class choices to qualify for a given power or feature.

You may have "Tide of Iron", which is a Martial, Shield 1 defender power. Any character with 1 level worth of the defender roll, and access to Martial keyword powers, and using a shield, can take it. That means a lot of fighters and paladins can take it, but swordmages cannot (by default).

I was thinking that we want to provide that functionality, but without the complexity of "I'm a martial defender, so, if I multi-class to gain divine, then I can gain access to divine martial powers." I think it's easier to do if there are just a bunch of power lists and classes gain access to those lists based on what's appropriate.

Paladins and fighters both share access to a list of core martial weapon powers (maybe barbarians and rangers too?) and a list of martial weapon powers particularly suited to defenders. The design logic is based on role, but all the player needs to know is that he has access to those two lists. If you want access to a list that's not available to your character, that seems like a reasonable use of a feat to me.

And, of course, much of a characters role would come from class abilities.

I am also inclined to have a fixed "To Hit" modifier (rather than basing that on ability scores), which would increase multi-class flexibility for powers. Damage and rider effects could still be based on the appropriate ability score.

-KS

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I was thinking that we want to provide that functionality, but without the complexity of "I'm a martial defender, so, if I multi-class to gain divine, then I can gain access to divine martial powers." I think it's easier to do if there are just a bunch of power lists and classes gain access to those lists based on what's appropriate.

Whereas, I always thought one of the big drawbacks of the spell lists in earlier versions was that these lists always ended up having a lot of clunky conceptual overlap that confused things more than a bit of upfront organization complexity would have. YMMV.

I thought this was especially bad in later 3.*, where the system that had worked ok in 1E, limped by in 2E, finally got overwhelmed with the sheer sizes of the lists.

Though really, this is just organization discussion. I don't think there is that much difference in the two approaches, otherwise. So realistically, we'd have to see something approaching a complete list to know if it mattered. That is, we know there would be a bunch of basic "martial" powers and basic "divine" powers. If there is enough "paladin-ish" powers to make a list under "holy warrior" or whatever, then your way would work better. If out of the main fighter and cleric powers, there is a small set of such powers, then my way would work better. Then you have to compare that against every such combination.

My main intuition that makes me prefer my way as a hunch is that I think the more "complete" lists we have, the more filler we will get. Whereas, if we have complete lists only for the major roles, with extra stuff put in only when warranted (i.e. not even pretending to be complete), then we'll get less filler.

Edit: Agree with you on the ability scores. If ability scores don't affect to hit, then the rider effects can be more powerful.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Certainly could be a lot of ways to slice and dice. Frankly I would be careful of overdoing the segmentation of the power space, as effectively the more you balkanize that the more individual powers you'll need to add to the list in order to give everyone adequate choices. Go too far down that road and you end up with something that while likely slimmer than the current system might still be a bit on the bulky side. It could also become rather difficult for a player to assemble a complete list of his options, or see exactly what the effect of some given character option choices would be.

CB would help with this of course, but I think one of the issues with powers now is just that even though you usually have a reasonably short list of choices at any given point in the game, the distinctiveness of the powers gets washed out. I'd like to evoke something like the old 1e Magic User spell list, where almost all relatively experienced players knew all the iconic spells.

 

[KidSnide]

Certainly could be a lot of ways to slice and dice. Frankly I would be careful of overdoing the segmentation of the power space, as effectively the more you balkanize that the more individual powers you'll need to add to the list in order to give everyone adequate choices. Go too far down that road and you end up with something that while likely slimmer than the current system might still be a bit on the bulky side. It could also become rather difficult for a player to assemble a complete list of his options, or see exactly what the effect of some given character option choices would be.

Slicing and dicing is just an attempt to avoid the 3.x situation where every class has its own specific spell list to maintain. From what I recall, 4e began with the intent to share some power lists, but they dropped it because the published system was simpler and easier.

In any case, how you slide and dice is less important that cutting down the number of powers that each of the classes need.

For example, we could have more powers that grow as you level instead of needing to be replaced. Also, for martial classes, we could have more essentials-style class abilities that replace powers. If any given fighter is defined by his choice of 2 or 3 stances / at-will powers and his choice of 1-3 maneuvers (i.e. Power Attack and its alternatives), then you need a much smaller list.

Maybe utility powers are should be pooled by power source, with a subset (e.g. healing / marking / etc) restricted to specific classes/roles? My view is that the bigger the list of powers, the more important it is that multiple classes have access to that list. I see a major opportunity in Arcane and Divine Daily powers. I think those lists should be long and look more like the old 3.x spell lists, with different characters interacting with the list in different ways.

-KS