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

[Dannyalcatraz]

I decided to throw my hat into the 5E rules discussion.

One of the things that is starting to bother me about Monte's articles is that he doesn't seem to be that familiar with 4E and he is discussing a lot of things that do not appear to need fixing.

So, I decided to ask the community what they think needs fixing.

To start off with, I'll throw the excessive bookkeeping of conditions into the mix.

IMO, conditions last for too short of a duration. Our group is constantly putting little tokens on the miniatures for dazed, bloodied, marked, grants combat advantage, is at +2 to all attacks, etc. Now, not all groups put out tokens for everything, but the game does encourage it.

So, I'd like 5E to have:

1) Have "save ends" only durations for short term adverse conditions.

2) Have "until the end of the user's next turn" only durations for short term advantageous conditions.

3) Get rid of "until the start of the user's next turn", "until the end of the target's next turn", and the rest of the special corner case short term durations.

It would make it easier to remember if all of these were consistent.

4) Increase the number of different PC condition auras (e.g. like the Cavalier Defender Aura). At least in my experience, players can remember an effect like an aura a lot more than which foe that they hit with a condition.

5) With regard to long term conditions, it makes sense to have more of these in the game. Making a foe -1 to defenses for the entire encounter is preferable to constantly placing tokens on and off the miniature (or on a white board, whatever).


Can people think of other aspects of 4E that could or needs to be improved?

Agreed, start to finish.

A note on #5- having certain conditions last longer would, IMHO, further increase teamwork and design synergies. Example: my Starlock has 2 powers that target Will. Our thief has a few as well. However, mine also reduce Will temporarily. If the condition of having a reduced Will lasted longer, both of our PCs would be more effective individually and in tandem.

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To the list, I'll add:

1) More feats that added powers to your PC as opposed to just the MC Feats. This will add to character flexibility in both design and play.

2) Allowing MC characters to learn & retrain powers without power-swap feats. I'm planning on using them for my Starlock|Psion because it fits the concept, but mechanically, I hate it. If I'm a mamber of 2 classes, I should simply be able to learn powers from both.

 

[KarinsDad]

Another one that just occurred to me.

Healing Surges.

Healing Surges bug the crap out of me.

I understand their utility, but the things that bug me about them include:

1) The number of times that the party defender gets the snot beat out of him in the first two encounters of the day, uses 5 surges up in each encounter, and then has 2 surges remaining while half of the party has used up 2 to 4 surges each and there's sometimes a guy in the back that hasn't used up any.

So, now we are back in the 15 minute day syndrome shy of being forced to have a ritual caster and Comrade's Succor in the group.

2) Having low hit points is often not half the threat that having a low number of healing surges is.

3) The fact that at low level, many players do not mind using a Second Wind and gaining back 25% of the PC's hit points because many leaders don't heal much more than that. But at Paragon levels, the leaders are often healing 50% and nobody wants to waste a surge and a standard action for a mere 25% gain.

4) The name is kind of dumb.

5) It bugs me that an unconscious PC out of healing surges cannot be healed.


If healing surges are kept as is in 5E, I would like there to be a recovery system. Maybe each PC gains back 2 healing surges per encounter. That way, the low surge Defender can hang back for two encounters and then come roaring back to the front ranks later on.

Or maybe leaders could get Wands of Healing Surge where they could store and restore healing surges.


Or better yet, remove Leader healing from Healing Surge use. If the PC does a Second Wind or uses a potion, then s/he uses a surge. But if a Leader heals the PC with a power, then no healing surge is expended. That way, the major drain on the healing surge number is removed (Leaders healing in or out of combat), but PCs still cannot quaff down 15 potions in a day. The number of healing surges could even be lowered in this case. And this type of solution would allow for more magical items that required a healing surge. If leaders could just heal PCs (limited to the number of heal powers they have), then players wouldn't mind too much using a surge for a magical item effect.

 

[Ferghis]

Agree with KarinsDad (can't xp) and dangerousjack, and I won't rehash those issues here.

Personally, I've found it very difficult to make good strikers without heavily consulting the charop boards. Specifically, I need to make sure I'm taking all the feats and items that increase damage, but I often have no idea which these might be. I hate the fact that I have to hunt what should be an obvious choice, and I hate the fact that these choices are at the expense of other possible ones that might make the character more interesting. So:

1) Remove items and feats that simply increase damage, and make those bonuses intrinsic class features, at least for strikers.

To be fair, I think this was Kzach's idea, or at least it was someone else's.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think making conditions a little less common would also be a step in the right direction. Don't get me wrong, I love them and they serve to make combat interesting. however, when all or most monsters in a given encounter are able to use them, it becomes a bit excessive.

While it's certainly something that can be worked around in encounter design, I think that a larger percentage of monsters without condition powers could be a real boon to the system. The game flows faster not only because status effects are no longer dragging out encounters, but also because players don't have as much to keep track of.

 

[RHGreen]

To start off with, I'll throw the excessive bookkeeping of conditions into the mix.

Get rid of bloodied. Silly complication. Does nothing useful and smells of board game. Whatever bloodied does well can be replaced with something better.

Get rid of marked and marked like abilities. Replace them with auras(close bursts 1, whatever) or single round bonuses.

Get rid of Combat advantage and replace it with the condition Vulnerable. 1 target is Vulnerable rather than up to 5 characters having combat advantage. If you have several targets that characters, but not all characters, have CA over then things get confused. - Just make a target Vulnerable. Then it is Vulnerable to everyone. If you make that target Vulnerable twice - just ignore it or up it to Helpless or whatever. Don't try to remember who has CA against who and why.

(often everyone gets CA, but not always)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ditch healing surges- make magical healing magical again.

However, to retain a "Second Wind" type mechanic, make it available, but only 1/encounter, like an action point.

Or maybe you could also make Second Wind ("Heroic Mettle?") a conditional resource: useable once/encounter with a dice roll (which increases in difficulty...a physical skill challenge). Succeed, you get another use this encounter. As long as you succeed with your die roll, you get another use if the resource.

That means that defenders would have better odds of recovering damage than frail controllers, without leaders being unable to heal them due to their being out of surges.

 

[Siberys]

Reducing tracking issues is the biggie for me.

Get rid of bloodied. Silly complication. Does nothing useful and smells of board game. Whatever bloodied does well can be replaced with something better.

Eh, bloodied is just a word for half hit points. It'd be there whether it was called that or not, so no prob from me.

Get rid of marked and marked like abilities. Replace them with auras(close bursts 1, whatever) or single round bonuses.

This is tied in with tracking... So yes, absolutely.

Get rid of Combat advantage and replace it with the condition Vulnerable. 1 target is Vulnerable rather than up to 5 characters having combat advantage. If you have several targets that characters, but not all characters, have CA over then things get confused. - Just make a target Vulnerable. Then it is Vulnerable to everyone. If you make that target Vulnerable twice - just ignore it or up it to Helpless or whatever. Don't try to remember who has CA against who and why.

(often everyone gets CA, but not always)

You do know about the wording 'grants combat advantage', right? 'Cause that's what you just described. I find it much more common than the 'has CA against' construction. Though this boils down to another 'make tracking simpler' issue, so I agree in spirit if not in the specifics.

 

[dangerous jack]

Opportunity Attacks:

1. should my wizard even get them? It's not like I'm likely to hit anyway. Even if I do it won't be for much damage. Even my cleric and thief aren't likely to hit.

2. Many monsters are built with just one melee attack, so if you draw an OA you'll be hit by the full power of the monster. Of course, as a player I have no reason to expect that, since my own OA's are weaker MBA's compared to my regular attacks. So it's not intuitive and once you learn that lesson, you're likely to never intentionally draw one again.

My solution (admittedly not fully thought through): only defenders get OA's. Or another character that takes a feat or something. Then it's opt-in complexity, and defenders tend to treat all types of movement (shift, walk) the same anyway so fighter is still an introductory class (i.e. If anyone moves in any way and they were adjacent to you, you get to attack them).

 

[Ainamacar]

Opportunity Attacks:

1. should my wizard even get them? It's not like I'm likely to hit anyway. Even if I do it won't be for much damage. Even my cleric and thief aren't likely to hit.

2. Many monsters are built with just one melee attack, so if you draw an OA you'll be hit by the full power of the monster. Of course, as a player I have no reason to expect that, since my own OA's are weaker MBA's compared to my regular attacks. So it's not intuitive and once you learn that lesson, you're likely to never intentionally draw one again.

My solution (admittedly not fully thought through): only defenders get OA's. Or another character that takes a feat or something. Then it's opt-in complexity, and defenders tend to treat all types of movement (shift, walk) the same anyway so fighter is still an introductory class (i.e. If anyone moves in any way and they were adjacent to you, you get to attack them).

If I were to simplify these rules I'd probably say opportunity attacks require combat advantage or whatever is its analog in 5e. Stickier creatures, like many defenders, can ignore that rule. That covers the most basic cases swiftly, and in my experience trickier cases usually have lots of combat advantage involved anyway, e.g. from flanking.

 

[dangerous jack]

Multiple Tiny Bonuses:
I don't want to deal with a bunch of +1 bonuses. e.g. the dragonborn ranger (hunter) that gets +1 if I'm bloodied, +1 if the enemy is alone, +1 if an ally is adjacent to the enemy, +1 if I'm the closest to the enemy, +2 if I have Combat Advantage, -2 if it's dim light, etc.

If a bonus that I get for during combat isn't at least +3, don't bother. Out of combat, if it's more of a static bonus (+1 sword), then I can write it down on my character sheet and factor it into the numbers there.

A possible solution would be to just give me a power that I can use only 1/encounter to add +3 with the same requirement as before.

For a more out-there solution, say the first type of situational bonus from any source gives me +3, the next bonus an additional +2, the third bonus an extra +1, and any other bonuses don't have an effect. If you need more than a situational +6 bonus, you're probably way out of your league or you're slowing down the game doing all that counting of modifiers. .