I feel that a modular system could have been done and done well. The issue that that sides would not get 100% of what they wanted.but more than what current 5e provides.
A base system with a base assumption of swappable parts on each class and race. With variant for death, health, magic level, tactics, survival, and conversation.
For example, the killer of modular fighter was that there was no real swappable class feature. So there was no choice of +X damage as the default and a choice of Y superiority dice or Z special attack.
Basically the aspects of TCOE could have been built in the base system's design and math from the start. Instead they went with a "Good enough for most people" version and attempted to has mods on the backend.
The major issue with this is just how minimalist early D&D demands things be. Hence my comment earlier. If Fighters need to be essentially empty of features, how do you match that in such a way that you don't make the new(er)-school options a straight 100% power-up, thus throwing all encounter math completely out the window.
And it doesn't matter how many subclasses or Battlemaster maneuvers you could take to create the essence of what a Warlord might possibly do... no Warlord Class means 4E cannot be made and thus 5E modularity is complete and utter BS.
Alternatively, all the options on this front being outright crap at doing Warlord-like things kinda getting in the way? I mean, the four things Warlords were pretty good at were (a) actually being the main healer of a party, (b) dealing with negative conditions, and especially (c) handing out or enhancing attacks and (d) effectively repositioning allies. The Battle Master is kind of passable at exactly one of those things (repositioning). The Banneret, the one that's supposed to be specifically good at the first two things, generally sucks. And the franken-builds that let you kinda sorta do this set of things without magic are ugly and really, really slow to come online (e.g. you need to be at least 5th level just to START hitting the Warlord-esque feels).
Thing is, a LOT of people like to characterize the above as "ah, yes, you're arguing in bad faith and would never, ever be happy unless 5e was just a reprint of 4e." It's not. It's asking for the things carried forward to, as you put it, actually keep enough of the spirit of the thing. I made
rather a lengthy post on the subject (and
a later follow-up taking a more holistic view, rather than an item-by-item one.) 5e "learned" from 4e
mostly by mimicking the superficial color or concept of the latter and absolutely none of the spirit....which tends to get people rather annoyed as you might expect!
I get tired of this argument.
Join the club. Sales aren't quality and never will be. If you stop conflating them, this argument will go away.
I mean, that's rather irrelevant. People are talking about how neat it would be if 5e was modular in the way described before, or postulating what it would look like. Saying "go play something else" doesn't really add anything to the discussion. It's the equivalent of somebody telling you to move to Canada whenever your country does something you don't like.
Exactly. "Get out if you don't like it then" is not, at all, an argument in good faith.
But 5E just gave up on modularity. The DMG in general has an "unfinished and untested" vibe to a lot of the optional rules, like they slapped them together without ever using them in "live fire" conditions.
Because they almost certainly didn't use them so, or did so in only very limited ways. 5e's designers wasted more than half of their playtest period, easily 1.5-2 years, dithering about with fiddly random/unworkable stuff (e.g. Specialties) or repeatedly going back to the drawing board without letting designs breathe. Multiple classes never got any public playtesting
at all for the mechanics they ended up using, because they appeared
once and WotC got scared off, and you can see the weaknesses in the resulting classes (e.g. Sorcerer and Warlock). 5e is a game that spent about two years figuring out utterly basic stuff and then had to speedrun the final year to make sure things got published on time. It's honestly somewhat impressive that it came out with relatively few glaring faults (I'm looking at
you, Beast Master), but if their playtesting had been more rigorous and serious and their schedule more...timely, shall we say, 5e could have done much better than it did in terms of legitimate modularity (and fixing preventable problems).
????!?!?!???
Such as?
Settings aren't modules, and most of the settings haven't included modular options, merely extensions specific to that setting. Classes and subclasses also aren't modules. Options maybe, but not modules.
Beyond the class stuff, Tashas has some modular stuff in it, it's just unfortunately quite well-hidden and poorly presented.
But several implies, imho, a minimum of four. And there's no way to even argue it implies less than three.
Honestly, don't bother. For some folks, "it adds one subclass option" is going to be enough to be "modular," even though that looks legitimately nothing like the bill of goods we were sold.