D&D 5E What would 5E be like if the playtest's modularity promise was kept?

[Shardstone]

Oh did people not want the Hexblade? Everyone I knew seemed very excited by it when it was released.

And it's true, a lot of their UA's for optional rules has fallen flat, but there is something to consider.

Optional rules are DM country. Only DM's are interested in them. Players want Feats and Sub (Classes).

70% of D&D 5e players aren't DM's.

I agree with you completely on all of your assessments.

As for the Hexblade, Mearls talked about how the Hexblade was the lowest percentage thing they published, just barely reaching 70 percent after everything was said and done.

On line, such as on Reddit, Facebook, and even here on Enworld, there was much chatter about how the Hexblade was broken, was a sloppy fix to the pact of the blade problem, and had very hard to grok lore. The lore changed by the time it was published, but only slightly, and other words the class was printed as before, which a lot of people were surprised by.

Personally, I have no problem with the Hexblade. The warlock PHB subclasses are all either very passive or very situational, with some stand outs like the Archfey's reaction misty step. So, having a subclass that was actually strong and flexed what a warlock could do is something I very much appreciate.

 

[James Gasik]

I agree with you completely on all of your assessments.

As for the Hexblade, Mearls talked about how the Hexblade was the lowest percentage thing they published, just barely reaching 70 percent after everything was said and done.

On line, such as on Reddit, Facebook, and even here on Enworld, there was much chatter about how the Hexblade was broken, was a sloppy fix to the pact of the blade problem, and had very hard to grok lore. The lore changed by the time it was published, but only slightly, and other words the class was printed as before, which a lot of people were surprised by.

Personally, I have no problem with the Hexblade. The warlock PHB subclasses are all either very passive or very situational, with some stand outs like the Archfey's reaction misty step. So, having a subclass that was actually strong and flexed what a warlock could do is something I very much appreciate.

Ok, I just got the impression from your post that people were going "No, don't print that, it will ruin the game!" and WotC did it anyways.

I think the Hexblade's only problem is that it's easily dippable to get a shillelagh style effect for classes that might not need it. If you invest in Hexblade, there's some good benefits down the road that make it nice on it's own.

But Hexadins and Hexa...Bards? (I'm not sure of the community name for such builds) seem to be pushing it a little.

At low levels, I saw a Hexblade/Swashbuckler and felt that was a lot of bonus damage front loaded, but I had nothing really to compare it to at the time so I let it be (I too, have knee-jerk reactions, but I try not to act on them, lol).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That specificity though to me is just matters of degrees. The module to add in those 4E-isms is there... but they just don't match 4E exactly and instead use 5E-isms in their place (like Adv/Disad instead of small numeric bonuses.) The essence of the edition is there, it just doesn't go far enough for your tastes.

So, just to be clear, you're genuinely saying the essence of 4E boils down to:

A) Flanking, which appeared in multiple editions.
B) Disarms, did not appear in 4E.
C) Marking, which did appear in 4E.

That's it? That's enough to be the "essence" of 4E? Because that's a bold claim, to put it very mildly! I wouldn't have said any of those were top points in the "essence of 4E" myself, I have to say. But I guess YMMV pretty wildly.

Re: the OP's point, I think we can reference this to see what an actual 4E module that attempted to make 5E 4E-like might look like.

1) You'd want to make it so forced movement was much more of a thing. Probably make it so you can sacrifice Attacks after the fact to make a Shove push someone further, or can push further if you're giving up more base damage.

2) OAs need to be more significant, so you probably need to make it so certain classes get like a "free Reaction" to do an OA on top of their Reaction.

3) Make healing spells eat HD by default but also be Bonus actions when they do (and probably heal for less when they don't).

4) Create a "Page 42" equivalent for 5E - i.e. table expected damages/difficulties etc. for stunts. That would be very important.

5) Add Marking to certain classes, Flanking to add, but probably do Flanking as +1d4 or +1d6 instead of Advantage - 5E wasn't imaginative enough to do that at launch, but would.

6) 10 minute short rest.

7) Start at level 3.

8) Let long-rest casters refresh some of their spells on a short rest - 5E actually addresses this briefly in another half-considered option, and suggests limit it to spells below level 5. I think you'd probably want a table, myself, showing what level and what you can refresh.

9) Suggest excluding/including certain classes.

I think that sort of modularity would be more like what people were looking for, and you could probably fit most/all of it on one page.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Oh did people not want the Hexblade? Everyone I knew seemed very excited by it when it was released.

everyone I know DID NOT want that option, but it has shown to be the most popular melee class in our games... sometimes people don't know what they want (then again an argument can be made we didn't want another magic warrior better then fighter)

 

[Parmandur]

What product are you referring to?

Xanathar's and Tasha's most notably, but also the Setting books such as Eberron or Van Richten's, as well as Adventures such as Ghosts of Saltmarsh. All of these have modules that plug into the Basic rules.

 

[James Gasik]

So, just to be clear, you're genuinely saying the essence of 4E boils down to:

A) Flanking, which appeared in multiple editions.
B) Disarms, did not appear in 4E.
C) Marking, which did appear in 4E.

That's it? That's enough to be the "essence" of 4E? Because that's a bold claim, to put it very mildly! I wouldn't have said any of those were top points in the "essence of 4E" myself, I have to say. But I guess YMMV pretty wildly.

Re: the OP's point, I think we can reference this to see what an actual 4E module that attempted to make 5E 4E-like might look like.

1) You'd want to make it so forced movement was much more of a thing. Probably make it so you can sacrifice Attacks after the fact to make a Shove push someone further, or can push further if you're giving up more base damage.

2) OAs need to be more significant, so you probably need to make it so certain classes get like a "free Reaction" to do an OA on top of their Reaction.

3) Make healing spells eat HD by default but also be Bonus actions when they do (and probably heal for less when they don't).

4) Create a "Page 42" equivalent for 5E - i.e. table expected damages/difficulties etc. for stunts. That would be very important.

5) Add Marking to certain classes, Flanking to add, but probably do Flanking as +1d4 or +1d6 instead of Advantage - 5E wasn't imaginative enough to do that at launch, but would.

6) 10 minute short rest.

7) Start at level 3.

8) Let long-rest casters refresh some of their spells on a short rest - 5E actually addresses this briefly in another half-considered option, and suggests limit it to spells below level 5. I think you'd probably want a table, myself, showing what level and what you can refresh.

9) Suggest excluding/including certain classes.

I think that sort of modularity would be more like what people were looking for, and you could probably fit most/all of it on one page.

Not to disparage any of your points, but there was, in fact, one power in 4e that could disarm, the level 17 Fighter Power Exorcism of Steel.

EDIT: also, Fighters had some of best names for powers in 4e. "Exorcism of Steel"? Amazing. Even lackluster powers could have names like VORPAL TORNADO!!!!

Sorry, it's the kind of thing that makes my inner geek want to stand on a chair and scream as I use it on my foes. : )

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There were several attempts early to add modular rules to the game: psionics, mass combat, "Grayhawk" initiative, prestige classes. They always got rejected. Even now there is significant pushback to the background feats in Dragonlance. I don't blame WotC for scaling back on optional modular rules to occasional character creation options: the larger D&D community says it wants options but then blanches at every one that doesn't look like the PHB.

I think there's a question as to whether "the larger D&D community" is represented by the surveys, esp. as WotC no longer seems to run the "70% rule", but rather uses its own judgement. I strongly suspect WotC's market research shows the sort of people who fill in the surveys are not a close match for the people who actually buy their books. I'm particularly skeptical because whilst the number of people playing D&D has increased by hundreds of percent, many of them new, and who display very different preferences re: classes, races, etc. to the previous crowd, the general attitudes of people answering the surveys don't seem to have changed a huge amount.

But it is valid to say a lot of earlier attempts to make good on modularity were frustrated.

I mean, we'd probably see the Mystic or something very like it in a modular D&D.

 

[Parmandur]

I think there's a question as to whether "the larger D&D community" is represented by the surveys, esp. as WotC no longer seems to run the "70% rule", but rather uses its own judgement. I strongly suspect WotC's market research shows the sort of people who fill in the surveys are not a close match for the people who actually buy their books. I'm particularly skeptical because whilst the number of people playing D&D has increased by hundreds of percent, many of them new, and who display very different preferences re: classes, races, etc. to the previous crowd, the general attitudes of people answering the surveys don't seem to have changed a huge amount.

But it is valid to say a lot of earlier attempts to make good on modularity were frustrated.

I mean, we'd probably see the Mystic or something very like it in a modular D&D.

I mean, they don't really share as much as they used to about survey results and such, though Crawford does give some indications in his Sage Advise interviews (the Moon Sorcerer was well received and didn't need a second run, for instance).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean, they don't really share as much as they used to about survey results and such, though Crawford does give some indications in his Sage Advise interviews (the Moon Sorcerer was well received and didn't need a second run, for instance).

Yeah exactly, earlier on they were all but oversharing with the results of the surveys (though less so in the playtests before that), and then more recently, after 5E "went huge", they've stopped sharing many details beyond the odd tidbit like that, because I don't think holding yourself to a bizarre faux-democratic "70% standard" (what is this, the Senate and the Constitution lol?) of an arbitrary self-selecting group of people was necessarily the best possible business strategy long-term.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah exactly, earlier on they were all but oversharing with the results of the surveys (though less so in the playtests before that), and then more recently, after 5E "went huge", they've stopped sharing many details beyond the odd tidbit like that, because I don't think holding yourself to a bizarre faux-democratic "70% standard" (what is this, the Senate and the Constitution lol?) of an arbitrary self-selecting group of people was necessarily the best possible business strategy long-term.

Yeah, for sure. They are still adjusting course based on the Surveys, as seen by how they 86'd the Strixhaveb Subclasses and rewrote the Kender and Dragonlance Feats for a second go. But I think for most of their UA last year they just received very, very good feedback (Monsters of the Multiverse changes to Hobgoblins and Kobolds, new Dragonborn, Owlin, Harengon, and Fairy options). I recall Crawford saying the survey response to Fey-ified Hobgolins was very positive.