D&D 5E What will 5E's defining sub-system be?

[MortalPlague]

5E - themes

Oh, I sure hope so. If that's the enduring, memorable part of 5th Edition, I'll be very happy.

 

[Walker N. Waistz]

1E is a bit trickier; as a descendent of OD&D, which I've never played, I don't feel qualified to make a guess.

As someone who played all the editions, I would say the 1E defining sub-system was Races.

Seriously, that was a big deal. In BECMI, Elf and Dwarf and Halfling were classes. In OD&D, you basically had one big character customization choice that mattered crunch-wise (alignment and whatever else was fluff), and that was class. But then, when AD&D rolled, suddenly you could be a thief AND and an elf. Or a dwarf and a cleric. That was a huge change.

So in my head, it would be:

1E - races
2E - kits
3E - feats
4E - powers
5E - themes

We could also say non-weapon proficiencies but, if I remember correctly, they crept into the later years of 1E.

Actually, I think most subsystems creep in at the end of the previous edition. Themes are in 4E, powers showed up in Book of Nine Swords for 3.5, etc. So I might lean more towards non-weapon proficiencies for 2E, but obviously this is all totally subjective.

 

[TarionzCousin]

From what the designers have said so far, I expect 5E's defining chacteristic to be unification/combination--the capability to play different styles of the game at the same table.

 

[Mercurius]

Of course there have been and are a few distinct sub-systems for each edition, but I was looking for something like:

feats : 3E :: powers : 4E :: ? : 5E

I think the two best answers to that are "themes" or "modularity," but the latter seems less of a distinct sub-system and more of an overall approach or meta-system.

Races for 1E works for me, Walker, or maybe the race-class combo.

 

[Mattachine]

In 1e, I believe the defining subsystem was the one that distinguished the game from other rpgs. Most other rpgs had characters with general areas of specialty (professions), skill-based characters, or were totally customizable. D&D had classes.

1e Classes