D&D 5E What Single Thing Would You Add

[overgeeked]

It should! I'd love to see a buildup power system or a combo system in D&D.

House rule: You can only use your highest level spells after you’re bloodied. Say the top 1/2 of your spell levels. You can cast up to 4th-level spells, so until you’re bloodied 3rd- and 4th-level spells are off limits.

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah, but that's a fight to the plot climax for viewing entertainment, not a fight to the death against players who like to think up killer combat maneuvers.

Maybe in a gladiatorial combat, the Goku thing works.

What’s weird is the players who go straight for the throat seem to be the same players who whine the loudest when the DM plays the intelligent monsters as even halfway intelligent creatures. “Of course they set traps. It’s their home and it’s regularly invaded by adventuring parties.” “That’s not fair.”

 

[Sacrosanct]

Once you started dealing with negative ACs, the difficulty for people steeply climbs - it's worse than adding 2 digit numbers.

Entirely depends on the person. Numbers are linear, regardless of they go negative or stay positive. Remember way back in elementary school days, when they had you plot out a line with 0 in the middle, and dots going each way left and right to teach the concept of negative numbers? -5 and 5 are 10 steps apart. so that's pretty simple to take 10 away from 5 and get -5 as it is to take 10 away from 15 and get 5. You're moving 10 steps to the left either way. To me, that's a lot easier and faster than starting at 13 and adding 16 to it, because you're moving 16 steps. Having 1e's AC system locked to a 20 point range is simpler to me, even with negative numbers, than having a scale that went past the 40s possibly.

I totally get how this is subjective and based on preference. But I disagree how the statement "ascending is easier" or "makes more sense" is being used as if it were something objective. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Usually when I see someone make that comment in the context of how ascending is better than descending, they are omitting things like how 1e had it locked into a 20 point range and other editions do not, and omit things like how you only ever had to make one math step in 1e (since THAC0 was pre-calculated) and in 3e (when the switch was made), it was not because more factors were involved in each attack, and those varied in each attack. I.e, all things being equal, ascending is more intuitive for most people, but the fact is, not all things are equal when comparing 1e to say, 3e. There are additional layers in 3e that make it more complex.

 

[Sacrosanct]

This, I'm going to disagree with. Power points in the 5e Mystic class got pretty high--64 points at 10th level, whereas ki and SP maxed out at 20 at 20th level. There's a lot more numbers to track.


If you haven't already, check out the Level Up Warlock playtest. They decided to use sorcery points for the whole thing.

Funny thing about the new ignore system. Whether you ignore them or they ignore you, not only do their posts not show up, neither do their quotes you're quoting them of. So it seems like you're having an argument with yourself lol. Before, you wouldn't see their posts, but you could still see their posts that were quoted by others putting your response into context.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah, but that's a fight to the plot climax for viewing entertainment, not a fight to the death against players who like to think up killer combat maneuvers.

Maybe in a gladiatorial combat, the Goku thing works.

From my view as a DM, the monsters (especially big bosses) are there for viewing entertainment.

 

[Faolyn]

Funny thing about the new ignore system. Whether you ignore them or they ignore you, not only do their posts not show up, neither do their quotes you're quoting them of. So it seems like you're having an argument with yourself lol. Before, you wouldn't see their posts, but you could still see their posts that were quoted by others putting your response into context.

Weird. That's probably an issue they should address.

 

[billd91]

Entirely depends on the person. Numbers are linear, regardless of they go negative or stay positive. Remember way back in elementary school days, when they had you plot out a line with 0 in the middle, and dots going each way left and right to teach the concept of negative numbers? -5 and 5 are 10 steps apart. so that's pretty simple to take 10 away from 5 and get -5 as it is to take 10 away from 15 and get 5. You're moving 10 steps to the left either way. To me, that's a lot easier and faster than starting at 13 and adding 16 to it, because you're moving 16 steps. Having 1e's AC system locked to a 20 point range is simpler to me, even with negative numbers, than having a scale that went past the 40s possibly.

I totally get how this is subjective and based on preference. But I disagree how the statement "ascending is easier" or "makes more sense" is being used as if it were something objective. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Usually when I see someone make that comment in the context of how ascending is better than descending, they are omitting things like how 1e had it locked into a 20 point range and other editions do not, and omit things like how you only ever had to make one math step in 1e (since THAC0 was pre-calculated) and in 3e (when the switch was made), it was not because more factors were involved in each attack, and those varied in each attack. I.e, all things being equal, ascending is more intuitive for most people, but the fact is, not all things are equal when comparing 1e to say, 3e. There are additional layers in 3e that make it more complex.

Having ACs locked within a 20 point range would be easier for every case, whether dealing with part of the range being in the negatives (10 to -10) or all just positive from 10-30. But the operations are would still all easier dealing just with positives than negatives. The operations are simply easier across the whole population - it's only roughly as easy for some people because of how much effort they've taken to master it.
With respect to using a pre-calculated table - that's just leaning on a crutch independent of the method of tracking AC. You could do that with all positives as well, taking the character's normal bonuses and pre-adding 1-20 to them so they can just roll the die, reference the table, and call out the AC they hit. So, ultimately, it's a pretty irrelevant factor. The fact that the practice fell by the wayside indicates even further, to me, that shifting to ascending ACs was a big usability change for the better. Nobody felt the need to lean on that crutch anymore.

 

[Reynard]

2021 and we're arguing about THAC0.

 

[Oofta]

Entirely depends on the person. Numbers are linear, regardless of they go negative or stay positive. Remember way back in elementary school days, when they had you plot out a line with 0 in the middle, and dots going each way left and right to teach the concept of negative numbers? -5 and 5 are 10 steps apart. so that's pretty simple to take 10 away from 5 and get -5 as it is to take 10 away from 15 and get 5. You're moving 10 steps to the left either way. To me, that's a lot easier and faster than starting at 13 and adding 16 to it, because you're moving 16 steps. Having 1e's AC system locked to a 20 point range is simpler to me, even with negative numbers, than having a scale that went past the 40s possibly.

I totally get how this is subjective and based on preference. But I disagree how the statement "ascending is easier" or "makes more sense" is being used as if it were something objective. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Usually when I see someone make that comment in the context of how ascending is better than descending, they are omitting things like how 1e had it locked into a 20 point range and other editions do not, and omit things like how you only ever had to make one math step in 1e (since THAC0 was pre-calculated) and in 3e (when the switch was made), it was not because more factors were involved in each attack, and those varied in each attack. I.e, all things being equal, ascending is more intuitive for most people, but the fact is, not all things are equal when comparing 1e to say, 3e. There are additional layers in 3e that make it more complex.

It is easier to add than subtract into negative numbers for many people. That's just a simple fact. Whether you find it more difficult or not is moot. Pre-calculating is also not relevant since you can do exactly the same thing with the current system so it's a wash.

But this is really off-topic, I suggest setting up a poll/separate thread if you want to keep discussing.

 

[Oofta]

2021 and we're arguing about THAC0.

Yeah, at this point we're digging up the fossilized bones of the dead horse so we can beat them yet again.