D&D 5E What Single Thing Would You Eliminate

[CleverNickName]

Okay, so what's the advantage of having a weaker trident? What does a trident do that a spear doesn't?

Absolutely none. They are mechanically identical, just like several other weapons in the game (sickle and club, glaive and halberd, etc.)

What I'm trying to say is, "not getting an advantage" isn't the same thing as "being penalized." A character isn't being punished by choosing a trident (or any other weapon) for thematic reasons.

 

[Sithlord]

Spears need a boost in general. They are the king of weapons after all. I reskin them to be like swords

 

[jmartkdr2]

Absolutely none. They are mechanically identical, just like several other weapons in the game (sickle and club, glaive and halberd, etc.)

What I'm trying to say is, "not getting an advantage" isn't the same thing as "being penalized." A character isn't being punished by choosing a trident (or any other weapon) for thematic reasons.

It's weaker than any of the other martial options, so you're deliberately using a subpar option. Whether you call that "a bonus for picking a longsword" or "a penalty for picking a trident," the game favors longswords over tridents.

The simplest solution would be to make tridents simple weapons, so that they're actually redundant. But as martial weapons, if you pick trident you're nearly always taking a hit to mechanics for roleplay reasons - and you shouldn't need to choose between roleplaying and effectiveness at the character concept level.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Impresses the audience.

Retarii didn't fight with net and trident because it was more effective; they fought because it was a great spectacle.

What's the bonus to charisma checks for using a trident again?

 

[Sabathius42]

Your open-table point tangentially gets at my main objection to milestone levelling: how do I-as-DM reward the characters that take the risks and-or drive the action and not reward those who don't, and at the same time avoid accusations of favouritism?

Answer: a coded and somewhat transparent reward system granular enough to make these character differentiations at the by-encounter or by-event level. Also known as xp.

Question: If I played a super high stealth 5e rogue who stayed physically far from combat and in little danger but dealt out a majority of the damage in a battle....would I get full XP?

Second Question: Do you actually have a problem at your table with players who just don't join battles at all because they are afraid of losing a character? I have never....in my 30+ years of gaming ever seen that happen with the rare exception of an almost dead character the rest of the party was trying to rescue. Everyone fights every battle....and we have used milestone levelling exclusively since 3e Age of Worms.

 

[Lanefan]

Question: If I played a super high stealth 5e rogue who stayed physically far from combat and in little danger but dealt out a majority of the damage in a battle....would I get full XP?

Yes for the battle; the Rogue got involved and helped out.

Had, however, said Rogue not done anything to help in the battle (e.g. all she did was keep watch outside the door) then no xp for it for her.

Second Question: Do you actually have a problem at your table with players who just don't join battles at all because they are afraid of losing a character?

At my own table, not very often lately; but it was almost chronic with one or two players in the past. At the table where I'm a player it's happened enough to be a Known Issue, though it's certainly improved of late.

I have never....in my 30+ years of gaming ever seen that happen with the rare exception of an almost dead character the rest of the party was trying to rescue. Everyone fights every battle....and we have used milestone levelling exclusively since 3e Age of Worms.

I'm talking about characters in good condition. Obviously if a character is close to death or otherwise incapable of doing much of use, that's different.

And it can be more subtle than simply staying out completely, e.g. a Fighter who somehow never ends up facing the toughest/deadliest opponent in a group of foes, as in a spoken or unspoken "You guys deal with the Giant, I've got the Orcs" type of thing. Once in a while: fine. As a pattern: annoying to say the least, for those who get smoked by the Giant.

 

[Lanefan]

What's the bonus to charisma checks for using a trident again?

Charisma checks? Nah. But intimidate checks? Now you're talkin'!

 

[billd91]

It's weaker than any of the other martial options, so you're deliberately using a subpar option. Whether you call that "a bonus for picking a longsword" or "a penalty for picking a trident," the game favors longswords over tridents.

The simplest solution would be to make tridents simple weapons, so that they're actually redundant. But as martial weapons, if you pick trident you're nearly always taking a hit to mechanics for roleplay reasons - and you shouldn't need to choose between roleplaying and effectiveness at the character concept level.

Subpar... by a point, on average. Normally I would say that including options in a game that are dominated by other options is a bad idea - but when it's as little as a point of damage - 2 at max - getting one's undies in a bundle about it is an overreaction. It is the only martial melee weapon with the thrown property and even though the spear has the same basic stats as a simple weapon, characters that have martial weapon proficiencies lose nothing of significance picking it over the spear. So it's not even clear that it is a fully dominated option for a fighter. It does less damage than a longsword, battleaxe, or warhammer... but only at ranges from 0 to 5 feet. The trident beats the hell out of them at any range over 5 feet.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just a thread for "how would you change 5E" -- expect the explicit rule is that you only get to alter it by elimination, and you can only eliminate one element (although that may be broadly defined, as you will see in my example ).

For my part, I think I would get rid of non-human PC races. All of them. Maybe it is my players but no one I know actually plays a non human in a decidedly alien way. It's all rubber foreheads and free minor crunch enhancements. I think he world I would build in D&D would be much better with only human PCs, AND the image in my head of the PCs would likely be closer to what they are supposed to be from the players' perspectives.

What ONE THING would you remove from 5E?

Saving throws. Everything is an attack.

 

[Oofta]

But a trident doesn't "remove a ton of options," in fact it adds two (thrown and versatile). As for the perceived "weakness" of d6 vs d8 damage, you're talking about 1 point of damage, on average. Tempest in a teapot.

But ... but ... its 5 times more expensive and 1/3 heavier then a spear! For the same damage, range and versatility as a spear! Totally broken.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Subpar... by a point, on average. Normally I would say that including options in a game that are dominated by other options is a bad idea - but when it's as little as a point of damage - 2 at max - getting one's undies in a bundle about it is an overreaction. It is the only martial melee weapon with the thrown property and even though the spear has the same basic stats as a simple weapon, characters that have martial weapon proficiencies lose nothing of significance picking it over the spear. So it's not even clear that it is a fully dominated option for a fighter. It does less damage than a longsword, battleaxe, or warhammer... but only at ranges from 0 to 5 feet. The trident beats the hell out of them at any range over 5 feet.

I'm not trying to argue it's a big problem - it doesn't even make my top ten issues with the game, and even then only as an extreme example of why to whole weapon list isn't great.

But it is an annoyance. I'm arguing that just because it doesn't annoy you doesn't mean it doesn't annoy anyone, nor does it mean the people who are annoyed are wrong to be annoyed.

The main reason this one ... itches, is there's no tradeoff. No matter how small an issue the difference between tridents and other weapons is, there's nothing gained from the difference, it seems pointless. So the idea that it shouldn't be changed because it isn't a big enough problem feels logically unsound.

What is the minimum amount of litter before it's worth picking up?

 

[billd91]

I'm not trying to argue it's a big problem - it doesn't even make my top ten issues with the game, and even then only as an extreme example of why to whole weapon list isn't great.

But it is an annoyance. I'm arguing that just because it doesn't annoy you doesn't mean it doesn't annoy anyone, nor does it mean the people who are annoyed are wrong to be annoyed.

The main reason this one ... itches, is there's no tradeoff. No matter how small an issue the difference between tridents and other weapons is, there's nothing gained from the difference, it seems pointless. So the idea that it shouldn't be changed because it isn't a big enough problem feels logically unsound.

What is the minimum amount of litter before it's worth picking up?

Well then at some point, what's the point of having choices be anything other than cosmetic? If everything did 1d6, you wouldn't have to worry about the issue at all. Yet that would pretty much suck because people like choices to matter.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Well then at some point, what's the point of having choices be anything other than cosmetic? If everything did 1d6, you wouldn't have to worry about the issue at all. Yet that would pretty much suck because people like choices to matter.

Are you making a slippery slope argument here? If we balance tridents with the rest of the weapons table, the we must make all characters identical?

 

[TwoSix]

It's weaker than any of the other martial options, so you're deliberately using a subpar option. Whether you call that "a bonus for picking a longsword" or "a penalty for picking a trident," the game favors longswords over tridents.

The simplest solution would be to make tridents simple weapons, so that they're actually redundant. But as martial weapons, if you pick trident you're nearly always taking a hit to mechanics for roleplay reasons - and you shouldn't need to choose between roleplaying and effectiveness at the character concept level.

It isn't actually worse than other martial weapons. It's a 1d6 thrown(20) versatile. If you made it a 1d8, it would be straight up better than the longsword/warhammer/battle axe trio.

The problem with trident is that some of the simple weapons, like spear, are a little overbudget for what they provide, and there's no space to make a martial version of the spear that isn't better than what the longsword was already budgeted at.

It's not some terrible issue, but the weapon chart could have used a pass to make sure each weapon followed an overall budget and that martials were meaningful upgrades over every simple. Then we could have avoided some of the "proud nails" like rapiers, spears vs tridents, and greataxe vs greatsword.

 

[billd91]

Are you making a slippery slope argument here? If we balance tridents with the rest of the weapons table, the we must make all characters identical?

What I'm saying is that if you're balancing everything just around damage - then, yes, make them all the same. But that's not what the trident does. It does a little less damage, but if you advance it to do 1d8 (1d10 with versatile), then it's actually better than the longsword, battleaxe, and warhammer because you can also throw it. The fact that you undervalue that Thrown property doesn't really make it subpar.

 

[DnD Warlord]

Hit point bloat. I’d really like to see HP levels go back to 1E/2E levels.

In the end, though there are far more things I’d like to ADD to the game, than subtract.

I keep pitching a mix of 4e and 2e for hp (front load but less overall).
Everyone starts with con score hp (not modifier full 8-20 score) then every even level gain a HD based on class (but knock down 1 die cod from current so d8 fighters d6 cleric and rogue and d4 wizards) get your con bonus to these (and keep the spend hd recover hd mechanics) and at odd levels you get a set number like in 2e (fighters get 3 rouge and cleric get 2 wizard gets 1) so a Con 20 fighter at level 20 “only” has 10d10+97 so 150ish and a wizard with a 12 con has 10d4+31 so about 56

 

[DnD Warlord]

It's off topic, but I would be interested in how such an easy fight on paper (CR wise, I don't know what "Sir Bluto" is) could have gone so horribly off the rails.

I actually find it is super easy for a low level encounter to turn bad...a party of 5 11th level characters can take on a CR21 dragon and win then 2 days later 3 shadows almost TPK them

 

[DnD Warlord]

20 pages, so I guess I can add another feature to be removed from the game.
remove Reroll.
We have advantage that is a great mechanic, triple advantage for those who like to crunch,
But reroll on top of that! stop, enough, just remove reroll.

Hafling reroll 1s the Lucy feat and advantage togather make me want to throw my dice at the player

 

[CleverNickName]

It's weaker than any of the other martial options, so you're deliberately using a subpar option.

"Deliberately using a subpar option" does not mean the same thing as "being penalized," but now I'm repeating myself.

But ... but ... its 5 times more expensive and 1/3 heavier then a spear! For the same damage, range and versatility as a spear! Totally broken.

I understand that the trident isn't a spear. It's not a dagger either, nor is it a crossbow. It's more like a rapier than a longsword is, somehow, but it's definitely not a halberd....

If the trident is a sticking point for you (rimshot), just tell the DM that you have a lance (or whatever) instead. Write down all of the stats and features for a lance (d12 piercing, reach, costs 10gp, etc) but for the name, write TRIDENT on your character sheet instead. It's just a name.

 

[Tinker-TDC]

Reflavoring is always the easy option but the trident never feels right because it and a few others don't fit into the unofficial formula on weapons:

Weapon deals d6.
Die size increases if:
-Heavy
-2-handed
-Versatile (being wielded in two hands)
-Martial
Die size decreases if:
-Light
-Ammunition without Loading
-Reach
-Finesse and Throwing weapons don't exceed d6 and cannot be used 2-handed-

Now of course some things stand out, so if you want to be optimal you choose:
-Handaxe if you want to dual-wield light weapons (and don't need finesse).
-Rapier if you want to not dual-wield finesse weapons.
-Greatsword/Maul if you want to use a heavy 2-handed melee weapon.

But it also means if you can wield martial weapons you would be equal taking a spear to a trident, despite it being martial instead of simple. The obvious fix is to make it simple. The fix that would also make it work is upping the damage die to d8/d10 versatile but making it a d6 thrown (unnecessarily complicated). I suppose you could also make it the only d8 throwing weapon making it the superior ranged choice for Strength characters (like the Rapier is the superior melee choice for Dexterity characters) but that throws things off.
Naturally, the most reasonable thing is probably getting rid of the trident and making a trident a type of spear. Nothing is lost and one disparity is fixed.