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

[Crazy Jerome]

@KidSnide , agree with all that.

I do think one of the inherent problems in D&D has been how wide open the "arcane" list has been. Traditionally, it didn't matter, because the magic user was the one that got it. But as the game expanded, this directed a large conceptual bundle through a small funnel.

I really wouldn't mind a structure that broke up arcane into a few different sources. Then turn around and give the "wizard" access to most or all of them, though perhaps not maxed out in all. After all, a "wizard" was originally called that because they had mastered a wide variety of disciplines.

Not sure it would fit D&D, but one possibility would be to break up the "arcane" skill to reflect those different sources, and to also tie casting to those skills, similar to how rituals often work now.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Eh, my perception would be that the 1e approach, with 4 separate spell lists was clunky, and the 2e refinement down to 2 lists was more elegant. Yes, each list was larger, but most of the overlap disappeared, and the 1e lists overlapped a LOT.

Now, maybe the lists grew overlarge in 3e, I don't know, that could certainly happen at some point. They were fairly hefty in 2e, but still seemed under reasonable control (I only refer to 2e PHB, I have no idea what came later, we eschewed it entirely). I do kind of remember thinking the wizard list was getting a bit bloated with marginal and somewhat redundant options though.

In any case, I think 3 core lists, Magic User, Fighting Man, and Cleric, would be pretty good. They really don't need to be super extensive, especially if they are written in such a way that the powers scale with level.

Honestly, I'm going to be brutally minimalist here. The classes are Fighting Man, Magic User, and Cleric. That's about it. You want a Paladin? Well, OK, there can be a Paladin, but lets refactor again...

Instead of three classes, lets have 3 power sources, Martial, Arcane, and Spiritual. Now you can use the class names for builds, so you can have all the classic class names back:

Martial - Fighting Man, Rogue, Ranger, Barbarian (maybe Monk and Assassin too)
Arcane - Wizard, Warlock, Bard, Artificer, Swordmage
Spiritual - Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Shaman

Now you can have your specialized builds within those classes. Some of the things I listed above might even be builds instead of classes, and some of them will have 'minors' in other power sources.

My instinct on minors in another source would be to have it allow picking of some smaller number of your options from the minor source. So you might get to have at most 1 less power of each type in the minor source or something like that, and split your at-wills between the two, with the option to take both in your major. You could then take an MC feat to let you get into the third power source if you REALLY want to be a triple dipper (or a 2nd one for a single source class with no minor).

Masteries and Themes, or whatever the heck there is, would still potentially have their own limited skill lists, but they could also open up access to powres from other sources if it made sense (IE the Ordained Priest Theme could give you access to one Spiritual power for instance).

My justification for the short list of power sources is really pretty simple. Spiritual simply pulls together all the "you get your power from some higher source" stuff. You can set up your cosmology with a god of nature, or natural spirits, or some totally different scheme, it doesn't matter. Powers are either fluffed to be appropriate to the given class, interact with a class feature that makes them suite the theme of the class, have a pre-requisite, or have a rider. Any or all of these can be contemplated, and many powers can simply be generic to all classes in the source, like basic attacks.

As for Role... I'd still definitely keep them. I guess it is possible you could key powers to roles. I am not sure I like that much balkanizing, but at the same time it seems like powers are critical to roles, even with class features supporting each role. Again, some kind of rider might help, but I'm not exceptionally fond of that either. Eh, well.

[MENTION=2011]KarinsDad[/MENTION] I think that's cool. Powers can certainly be patterned along those lines, and maybe that works to solve my role quandry.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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.

I can see where you're coming from, though, because that was part of the fun, wasn't it. It was a more strategic game - what you did prepping for combat was often more important than what you did once combat started. Heck, what you did in building and leveling up your character was a lot more important than both. It's an entirely different challenge than playing 4e.

Now that I think about it, I've had the same experience, in a sense. I run and play game at conventions a lot. When I would choose a game to sign up for in 3.x, I would invariable choose only those that let me bring my own character, because a lot of the fun was in creating the character and the strategies it'd use, playing the character was more of the final 'proving' step of the exercise. When I play 4e, I've found I'm perfectly happy to use a pre-gen out of the blue, because the fun is in the play, itself.

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.

Yep. My experience, as well.

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.

I think part of the issue is that the challenge happens on the tactical level, once initiative is rolled. To make a fight more challenging and memorable, creating an encounter with powerful enemies that use vicious combos will only be part of it. You want to create an interesting environment for the fight, and have the enemy use tactics that leverage both the environment and eachother's powers to really stick it to the PCs - especially in the early rounds.

 

[KidSnide]

I think the devil-in-the-details with this discussion is the question: to what extent are the powers an intrinsic part of the class?

For example, I think we agree that arcane classes (Wizards, Sorcerers, Bards, SwordMages, etc...) would benefit from a certain shared power list. For example, the game only need one encounter power that creates an enemies-only fire burst around the caster. At least to me, that has the additional benefit of making these shared powers well-known arcane techniques in the gameworld, not just another random power. Certainly, I'd like to see spellcasting monsters use abilities with the same flavor and similar effect.

But right now, wizards get most of their "controllery-ness" through the powers. Do they share those with the other arcane classes? Or do wizards now get special condition meta-magic (e.g. once per encounter, I can immobilize with a cold power) to move the class differentiation into the class abilities?

If they share powers, is a melee cleric different than a paladin, except that one marks and has more hit points and the other has better healing magic? To be fair, I don't really know the difference between a paladin and a melee cleric in the gameworld fiction either. Or are they really like the Knight and the Slayer - the same class as different roles? I'm not sure that's OK. I think most D&D players want more differentiation between the Cleric and the Paladin than we get between the Knight and the Slayer.

You can say, as suggested upthread, that these classes don't completely share the same list. Each might have a the same list of radiant melee smites (after all, how many radiant melee smites does the game really need?), but the Paladin also has access to some martial powers, while the cleric has access to some divine leader-y powers. That's a reasonable answer, but it either results in a bunch of overlapping power lists (like the 3.x spell list), or a ton of small power lists (divine defender, divine striker, divine controller, etc...) that could be ugly to maintain and create a sense that each one requires separate support.

Or maybe the non-power class abilities have to become seriously more interesting? Does WotC have to write two dozen Essentials-style cleric domains?

Just thinking out loud...

-KS

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Instead of three classes, lets have 3 power sources, Martial, Arcane, and Spiritual. Now you can use the class names for builds, so you can have all the classic class names back:

Martial - Fighting Man, Rogue, Ranger, Barbarian (maybe Monk and Assassin too)
Arcane - Wizard, Warlock, Bard, Artificer, Swordmage
Spiritual - Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Shaman

I think the devil-in-the-details with this discussion is the question: to what extent are the powers an intrinsic part of the class? ...

If they share powers, is a melee cleric different than a paladin, except that one marks and has more hit points and the other has better healing magic? To be fair, I don't really know the difference between a paladin and a melee cleric in the gameworld fiction either. Or are they really like the Knight and the Slayer - the same class as different roles? I'm not sure that's OK. I think most D&D players want more differentiation between the Cleric and the Paladin than we get between the Knight and the Slayer.

You can say, as suggested upthread, that these classes don't completely share the same list. Each might have a the same list of radiant melee smites (after all, how many radiant melee smites does the game really need?), but the Paladin also has access to some martial powers, while the cleric has access to some divine leader-y powers. That's a reasonable answer, but it either results in a bunch of overlapping power lists (like the 3.x spell list), or a ton of small power lists (divine defender, divine striker, divine controller, etc...) that could be ugly to maintain and create a sense that each one requires separate support.

Or maybe the non-power class abilities have to become seriously more interesting? Does WotC have to write two dozen Essentials-style cleric domains?

Just thinking out loud...

-KS

Continuing that thinking out loud trend ... This is sort of a reply to the above, at least in spirit, but I'm mainly just springing off the sense of both of your ideas rather than the details.

I think Abdul's three sources could work well. What I don't like about the implication of that approach is that characters fit into one source or another. That's fine with "Fighting-Man" and "Wizard", because they do. But Paladin, at least the D&D concept of Paladin, really doesn't. And for that matter, neither does the Cleric.

I guess what I'm objecting to is the seemingly inevitable drive towards a pyramid structure of classifications that seems to hit D&D designs so hard--even when you've got things that obviously don't fit that structure. We get this whether we start with classes roles or sources or whatever. It's almost like biological classifications.

I also think this is why in any given design, there are elements that become rather vestiges. Power sources are the most recent example. They were supposed to be meaningful in the design space at one time. But because they had to fit into some kind of tight classification scheme, the things that were supposed to be attached to them got gradually moved onto classes, roles, feats, etc. (Maybe. Or maybe that same movement happened for some other reason, and they hung around as vestiges for flavor only. I don't really know, of course.)

Therefore, I think the answer to the problem of ending up with a few giant lists or a huge number of short, stubby lists--is to attach something meaningful but reasonably tight to each element in the categories, but don't make the categories completely hierarchal. Then develop the classes in terms of those elements. Or to answer the question from KS--I think the powers should not be an intrinsic part of the class--but there should definitely be effective, structural limits.

Suppose the following categories, and all of them have appropriate, meaningful powers and features attached to them. (This is somewhat mutually exclusive with my earlier posts).

Sources: Martial, Arcane, Spiritual

Roles: Defender, Striker, Leader, Controller

Seven lists. But where do you put a "martial defender" power, in 4E terms? Well, is it more about the martial aspect, or more about the defender aspect? Pick one. If you can't decide, tweak it a bit so that you can.

A "fighter" then gets to pick from Martial and Defender mainly, with a modest selection from Striker as a secondary gig. Somewhat like the 4E druid, there are some hard limits on how extreme the ratio can get, but certainly opportunity to skew one way or the other.

Then on top of this, the fighter gets a few things that make them uniquely the fighter. This might just be weapon proficiencies and certain skill/feat selections. Or there might be a small handful of features/powers that only the fighter gets.

Finally, and getting away from the overly simple example, each class should probably also put some restrictions on what can be picked. I'd do this via keywords on the powers/features, which the class had to possess, but you could do it any number of ways. Basically, this is a flavor thing, with mild balance implications, and allows some useful shorthand in a few cases. If you want to give some supercharged Bard-only class features, then you might compensate by more heavily restricting their choices in the Arcane list.

Note that if I were in charge, I'd also make Race a category, with features and powers by race, and then Culture a category, perhaps stealing something similar to the RuneQuest model. So you'd have Cultures: Nomad, Primitive, Barbarian, and Civilized. This would completely remove the need for the "Barbarian" class, and not a few racial feats and work-arounds, but I could live with that. Of course, the willingness to go that extra "bridge" is a good reason why I shouldn't be in charge.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Continuing that thinking out loud trend ... This is sort of a reply to the above, at least in spirit, but I'm mainly just springing off the sense of both of your ideas rather than the details.

I think Abdul's three sources could work well. What I don't like about the implication of that approach is that characters fit into one source or another. That's fine with "Fighting-Man" and "Wizard", because they do. But Paladin, at least the D&D concept of Paladin, really doesn't. And for that matter, neither does the Cleric.

I guess what I'm objecting to is the seemingly inevitable drive towards a pyramid structure of classifications that seems to hit D&D designs so hard--even when you've got things that obviously don't fit that structure. We get this whether we start with classes roles or sources or whatever. It's almost like biological classifications.

I also think this is why in any given design, there are elements that become rather vestiges. Power sources are the most recent example. They were supposed to be meaningful in the design space at one time. But because they had to fit into some kind of tight classification scheme, the things that were supposed to be attached to them got gradually moved onto classes, roles, feats, etc. (Maybe. Or maybe that same movement happened for some other reason, and they hung around as vestiges for flavor only. I don't really know, of course.)

Therefore, I think the answer to the problem of ending up with a few giant lists or a huge number of short, stubby lists--is to attach something meaningful but reasonably tight to each element in the categories, but don't make the categories completely hierarchal. Then develop the classes in terms of those elements. Or to answer the question from KS--I think the powers should not be an intrinsic part of the class--but there should definitely be effective, structural limits.

Suppose the following categories, and all of them have appropriate, meaningful powers and features attached to them. (This is somewhat mutually exclusive with my earlier posts).

Sources: Martial, Arcane, Spiritual

Roles: Defender, Striker, Leader, Controller

Seven lists. But where do you put a "martial defender" power, in 4E terms? Well, is it more about the martial aspect, or more about the defender aspect? Pick one. If you can't decide, tweak it a bit so that you can.

A "fighter" then gets to pick from Martial and Defender mainly, with a modest selection from Striker as a secondary gig. Somewhat like the 4E druid, there are some hard limits on how extreme the ratio can get, but certainly opportunity to skew one way or the other.

Then on top of this, the fighter gets a few things that make them uniquely the fighter. This might just be weapon proficiencies and certain skill/feat selections. Or there might be a small handful of features/powers that only the fighter gets.

Finally, and getting away from the overly simple example, each class should probably also put some restrictions on what can be picked. I'd do this via keywords on the powers/features, which the class had to possess, but you could do it any number of ways. Basically, this is a flavor thing, with mild balance implications, and allows some useful shorthand in a few cases. If you want to give some supercharged Bard-only class features, then you might compensate by more heavily restricting their choices in the Arcane list.

Note that if I were in charge, I'd also make Race a category, with features and powers by race, and then Culture a category, perhaps stealing something similar to the RuneQuest model. So you'd have Cultures: Nomad, Primitive, Barbarian, and Civilized. This would completely remove the need for the "Barbarian" class, and not a few racial feats and work-arounds, but I could live with that. Of course, the willingness to go that extra "bridge" is a good reason why I shouldn't be in charge.

My feeling is there should be a minimum number of big lists. That obviates the tendency for duplication of things and with fewer bigger bins you have an easier time deciding what bin a particular power belongs in.

Thus I would largely keep role as more of a description of what you end up with vs being a classification of what you can choose. You'll aim for a certain type of role in how you build the character, and your class/build/whatever features will help reinforce that, but it doesn't have to define which powers you get. That does mean that controllers and leaders will be differentiated more by features, and defenders too, whereas strikers might sort of be more of a default where if you haven't dug into one of the other roles then logically you have resources available to amp up your damage more, so you kind of 'just are' a striker.

Particular little lists for things like themes I think are OK. In some sense they could proliferate, but each one really only needs 3-4 powers, so even having 50 themes or similar things wouldn't net a vast amount of bloat. With scaling and a bit fewer powers, and maybe less levels I think we could keep it down to a net of say 500 powers. That would be a good goal. It would be smaller than the later 2e spell list total and should be enough to have something for everyone.

In terms of the 'pyramid' I'd say this. You do have 2 levels, power source and class. Beyond that I'd try to move things mostly to something like 'masteries' where those are cross-class. A paladin could thus have 'axe mastery' to use a wicked battle axe, and so could a fighter, and so could a cleric for that matter. They would all do slightly different things, but whatever is attached to that mastery is open to all of them and helps them do it.

As for race... Well, honestly I'm not dissatisfied with the 4e approach to race myself. Each race could have a list of possibilities too, and/or act as a pre-req for certain things, maybe shared with other elements, so rangers and elves can both get some special archery sauce with some kind of option they both get. It might even be open to clerics of Selune as well. Beyond that the single racial power, racial PP/ED choices, and possibly some 'feat' options, etc is not bad. A 4e elf definitely feels like an elf (at least to me). Races may be a bit more optimized on certain paths than is perfect, and some of the best choices for specific races are a bit odd and unplanned, but it isn't a huge issue, and in some ways it is actually nice when 4e goes a bit against the established tropes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think the devil-in-the-details with this discussion is the question: to what extent are the powers an intrinsic part of the class?

With the current definition of 'class,' I think 'not very,' in most cases. If you gave a Rogue a bunch of Fighter powers, he'd still be perfectly able to stealth around and sneak attack. A Fighter with Ranger powers would still be marking. In some cases it wouldn't work too well - and in others it would work too well, but it's plausible.

What powers really represent more strongly is source. Martial powers are completely different from Arcane, for instance. The former use weapon, the latter almost exclusively use implements. One does mostly untyped damage, the other mostly typed and of wide variety, etc...

For example, the game only need one encounter power that creates an enemies-only fire burst around the caster. At least to me, that has the additional benefit of making these shared powers well-known arcane techniques in the gameworld, not just another random power. Certainly, I'd like to see spellcasting monsters use abilities with the same flavor and similar effect.

Nod. When classes are supposed to be game constructs and most NPCs and monster are not supposed to use them, the PCs get to be pretty unique, and the old feel of 'ah, he's using Magic Missle, a common spell, fortunately my Shield will stop it' is gone. Not sure how important that feel is, but it's familiar.

But right now, wizards get most of their "controllery-ness" through the powers. Do they share those with the other arcane classes? Or do wizards now get special condition meta-magic (e.g. once per encounter, I can immobilize with a cold power) to move the class differentiation into the class abilities?

I think the use of class powers instead of features to support the Controller role is one of the more fundamental flaws in 4e design. It's not unconnected to other issues, though. The controller role isn't as well-definned as the others, for instance, so it's hard to say how you'd make a class feature to support it, since the role is mostly infered by what wizard powers do - it's support and definition of support is positively circular.

'Metamagic' as a class feature to support the wizard's controller role sounds like a great idea, though. Wizard spells put in the general arcane list could be given smaller areas, with less potent effects and/or shorter durration, and then the wizard 'metamagics' them up to larger areas or longer durrations or better effects. Exactly how that might work I'm not sure. It could be 1/encounter/meta-magic it might just rely on the action economy - making the wizard's spells 'take longer to cast' a minor or two to meta-magic, a standard to actually cast. Wizards would have to do the classic 'stand still in the back and cast,' because they constantly trade in their moves for minors to do their more complex style of casting. They'd have difficult trade-offs/tactical decisions when it comes to maintaining one spell vs metamagicking a later one...

Yes, that could be quite good, I think.

If they share powers, is a melee cleric different than a paladin, except that one marks and has more hit points and the other has better healing magic?

Are they that much more different, now? Both use prayers, tend to dish out radiant damage rather more often than other types, have a mix of both weapon and holy-symbol powers... In the past, the Paladin simple cast off the Cleric list with a different progression, anyway.

Or maybe the non-power class abilities have to become seriously more interesting?

Class features need to strongly support role. I suppose they also have to differentiate the class from others of the same source, but as long as you don't have two classes of the same role in the same source (like Warlock and Sorcerer or Artificer and Bard or Ranger and Rogue), role support and class differentiation could amount to the same thing.

Does WotC have to write two dozen Essentials-style cleric domains?

hopefully not.

 

[KarinsDad]

[MENTION=2011]KarinsDad[/MENTION] I think that's cool. Powers can certainly be patterned along those lines, and maybe that works to solve my role quandry.

When 4E first came out, the At Will powers were mostly "basic attack" + some small extra benefit. A one square slide, doing a little damage to a different adjacent foe, etc. The powers were similar, but with slightly different extra benefits.

There were some discussions on Sure Strike and Careful Attack. Many people thought that they should have other cool attributes added, other than normal damage.

My take was to (and WotC eventually errata-ed them to) make them a basic attack with +2 to hit.

The purpose of these powers were to increase the accuracy of the attack. So, why were other At Will powers "basic plus benefit" when these were "basic plus benefit minus damage"? It didn't make a lot of sense and as it turned out, nearly nobody ever took these powers until they were errata-ed.

Later on as more source books came out and more designers created "new cool stuff", the concept of At Will basic attack plus a small benefit occurred less frequently. But, I think that it was most likely one of the earlier core design goals and it should be brought back because not only is it elegant, but it allows players to have multiple similarly balanced powers that do not take up a ton of space on their character sheets.

Having 5 At Wills like these allow a lot of flexibility on the part of the players, but even new players can easily grasp the concepts and not be overwhelmed by 5 totally different powers. Instead, they'd effectively have one power with 5 different minor benefit options. And, players would get less bored using the same 2 repetitive At Will powers over and over again many hundreds of times over the lifetime of a PC if they had ways to get 5 or so At Wills that did slightly different things.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I agree that, at first, /most/ at-wills were 'basic attack+' but not all of them. The Warlord's Furious Smash, for instance, targeted FORt & did attack-stat-mod damage, only, and granted a buff. Hitting better than a basic attack (against many opponents) and doing less damage. I'm sure there must have been a few others that weren't exactly 'basic attack+'

...

I'd like to see a "weapon attack" (melee or ranged) in the list of martial powers. Everyone proficient in a weapon would get it, but it'd get the martial keyword. Afterall, weapon proficiency is a martial thing, it should have that keyword.

Similarly, in the arcane list, maybe there'd be 'magic missle' or 'mana blast' or something? Anyone proficient in an arcane implement gets it. Or maybe the most basic spells would be the cantrips?

Maybe in the divine list it's 'Channel Divinity...?'

Heh, maybe punching and grabbing and bull-rushing would be Primal... ?

 

[KidSnide]

I think the devil-in-the-details with this discussion is the question: to what extent are the powers an intrinsic part of the class?

With the current definition of 'class,' I think 'not very,' in most cases. If you gave a Rogue a bunch of Fighter powers, he'd still be perfectly able to stealth around and sneak attack. A Fighter with Ranger powers would still be marking. In some cases it wouldn't work too well - and in others it would work too well, but it's plausible.

What powers really represent more strongly is source. Martial powers are completely different from Arcane, for instance. The former use weapon, the latter almost exclusively use implements. One does mostly untyped damage, the other mostly typed and of wide variety, etc...

I think this is an interesting observation, and I mostly agree. But with two major exceptions:

First, a number of classes dump a substantial amount of role-aspect into the powers. Controllers are the best example, because they often lack class abilities that provide "controllerness". But you also see this strongly in leaders (check out most warlord daily powers) and, to a lesser extent the defender powers that let you mark extra enemies or absorb damage on behalf of an ally.

Second, a small number of classes (artificer, beast-druid and monk come to mind) have very distinct powers because they are a highly flavored variation on their power source. That kind of design may require some specialized power lists, but I tend to think that that's OK as an exception.

---------

I think shared power lists will have the side effect of making power source highly correlerated with secondary role. As a practical matter, there are going to be a lot of leader-y divine powers, a lot of controller-y arcane powers and - probably - a lot of striker-y martial powers. I don't think that's a problem (mostly because it fits well with the in-game fiction), but I think it would involve some effort in class design to go another way.

This has been an unusally interesting discussion topic. Apparently, I need to spread around more xp...

-KS