D&D 5E What Rule Systems Would You Like To See (More Of)?

[Blue]

I'd like to see the concept of Inspiration more woven into general mechanical options and possibly even as gating/recharge mechanisms for classes.

For example, perhaps an option when you gain Inspiration is to instead be able to spend HD without a short rest - recharging your emotional batteries, screwin up your determination, whatever makes sense for the action and the intangible meaning of HPs.

Maybe Paladin aura's would be 5' larger if you are holding Inspiration. Maybe Channel Divinity recharges with Inspiration, not with a short rest. shrug Make it meaningful and it won't be so easily forgotten.

White Wolf did this decades ago, with following your Virtue or your Vice recharging Willpower and similar.

 

[aco175]

I would like to see a more in-depth system on weapons and skills. Some of the weapon stuff has been discussed with small simple weapons maybe getting +1 to hit and large heavy weapons adding a die to damage or something. Fill the roles in categories better and add some cool things for certain types of weapons like flails getting around shileds and such.

Skills can have some things where you can add some as you go up in levels or gain more to be trained in. Even a chart on crossing over where you would use strength or Intimidation or something. The skill list can be cleaned up a bit with adding/subtracting some and letting ones that crossover use more than one skill. Maybe some rules on the 4e skill challenge, if that can work better.

 

[77IM]

I will answer the OP by mentioning some systems that I myself have felt compelled to create in order to fill in some gaps in 5E:

1. Magic item balance. Sorry, but major/minor and uncommon/common/rare/etc. are just not granular enough. I need to answer the question, "Do all my PCs have roughly equivalent magic item loads?"
2. Magic item commerce. This is a giant can of worms but I've found it more helpful to examine the game-play ramifications than to simply ignore them and say "there are no magic shops."

3. Crafting.
4. Spell research.
5. Houses/Bases.
These last 3 items really just need to answer the questions, "cost, time, and does the PC need to spend the time or can they hire somebody to do it."

6. Hirelings/Loyalty. In particular, rules for leveling up hirelings. I am thoroughly dissatisfied with the sidekick rules from Essentials Kit, as I think they take a completely backwards approach; I want something where ordinary NPC stat blocks can be upgraded over time. I also need guidelines for followers who have been press-ganged into service, as I have players who sometimes go with a "serve me or die" approach.

7. Some reason to spend money on non-functional things like clothing, jewelry, lavish parties, donating to a church or cause, etc. Some of my players like to do this stuff and I try to reward them for it but it's really hard to know whether I'm doing enough. I'd really like a concrete system for "waste X dollars and get Y benefits." I still don't have a good solution for this. Just giving out Inspiration falls a little flat.

 

[Blue]

I strongly dislike that weapon wielders are channeled into a few "on par" choices and are mechanically penalized for being flavorful and taking the other weapons.

So I wish either weapons were more general and there was reskinning, or that simple weapons got a boost if you also knew all martial weapons.

 

[Quickleaf]

Escape / pursuit rules governing the transition points between combats & chases.

 

[Lanefan]

7. Some reason to spend money on non-functional things like clothing, jewelry, lavish parties, donating to a church or cause, etc. Some of my players like to do this stuff and I try to reward them for it but it's really hard to know whether I'm doing enough. I'd really like a concrete system for "waste X dollars and get Y benefits." I still don't have a good solution for this. Just giving out Inspiration falls a little flat.

One option I've seen to reward this is to give xp (in a much less than 1-1 ratio) to a character for money spent by that character on things that don't directly benefit that character or anyone else in the party:

• donations, be they to a church or temple (not the character's own), poorhouse, orphanage, whatever
• public works e.g. funding for road-building, public art, education, voluntarily paying extra taxes, etc.
• living the good life with no expectation of reward or benefit (e.g. being ultra lavish with one's funds, constantly buying rounds for the house, and otherwise generally over-contributing to the local economy).

You'd need to come up with a workable ratio; a game I play in does something like this using a ratio of spending/donating 3 g.p. gets you 1 xp, to an absolute hard maximum that only 10% of the xp for the level you're in can be earned this way.

You also have to be careful and perhaps err on the side of harsh to prevent characters benefitting from the money thus spent and also gaining xp for it; it has to be one or the other. Example: a character building a stronghold away from town gets no xp for any money spent on the actual stronghold, but would get xp for money spent on improving the local roads between the stronghold's site and the town.

 

[Laurefindel]

Escape / pursuit rules governing the transition points between combats & chases.

Oh yeah, to avoid the “if I disengage and move, the bad guy will move and attack me on its turn. If I move and dash, he’ll get an opportunity attack now and dash next to me on its turn, at which point he’ll get yet another opportunity attack every time I dash on subsequent turns”.

As much as I want to remind my players that retreat is a viable strategy, the rules don’t seem to support it...

 

[Laurefindel]

One option I've seen to reward this is to give xp (in a much less than 1-1 ratio) to a character for money spent by that character on things that don't directly benefit that character or anyone else...

7. Some reason to spend money on non-functional things like clothing, jewelry, lavish parties, donating to a church or cause, etc. Some of my players like to do this stuff and I try to reward them for it but it's really hard to know whether I'm doing enough. I'd really like a concrete system for "waste X dollars and get Y benefits." I still don't have a good solution for this. Just giving out Inspiration falls a little flat.

I have also heard of people tying lifestyle expentidures to rests. So spending X awards you with Y number of long rests on your next adventure. Others have suggested tying these expenses to healing, so spending X awards you Y number of hit dice, which you do not recuperate on long rests otherwise.

 

[Quickleaf]

Oh yeah, to avoid the “if I disengage and move, the bad guy will move and attack me on its turn. If I move and dash, he’ll get an opportunity attack now and dash next to me on its turn, at which point he’ll get yet another opportunity attack every time I dash on subsequent turns”.

As much as I want to remind my players that retreat is a viable strategy, the rules don’t seem to support it...

Yeah, that has come up a lot in my games. The players get locked into thinking in terms of combat, requiring quite a bit of fudging on my part to create that opening where they feel they have the room to escape.

Conversely, it also leads to situations where enemies try to flee, and a player invariably asks "wait, I get an opportunity attack, and he needs to move past XY, and since he can't move far enough you can just magic missile him on his next turn, right?"

Ugh. If I never have to deal with another situation like that in my DMing career, I would be a happy camper.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Thanks for all the feedback. I am taking all of your ideas and trying to group them into common areas before I begin working on them:

Character creation/ Class features
Combat Rules
Social/ Downtime
Exploration
General Skills
Inspiration
Advantage/Disadvantage
Encounters
Hit Dice options

Combat Rules and Social/Downtime are the biggest groups. I think Combat will be easier (maybe?) to tackle so I will focus on that first before working on Social/Downtime. Later, I'll be raiding other threads as well to gain insight on areas such as Inspiration and Advantage/Disadvantage.

Again, my goal is to flesh-out areas of the game that seem to be lacking. I imagine new variant options will be created in a way of "rewriting" some systems as a matter of course, but that isn't my primary objective. Anything I create I hope will work within the current system more than replacing it.