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

[Parmandur]

I took that to mean specific options, like Module X, Y or Z, not an over concept like classes, races or modules.

When they were doing the Next playtests and surveys, they covered the most universal concepts of the game, and hyperspecifix elements like the lore of given Monsters. It was pretty comprehensive, UT I think theybmade the business decision that certain playstyles didn't make sense to support, even if the rules allowed it. Hence no Warlord or Psion after 8 years of publications....

 

[Charlaquin]

Back when they were actively talking about survey results, in the Wild west days, they said that their standard for putting stuff I'm the core rules was 90% approval from the playtesters. The only sources I could find on a quick search were the Sage Advice interviews from a few years back where Crawford talked about lowering thst standard to 70% so they could get any options published for Xanathar's Guide, but the 90% threshold was what they did for the D&D Next playtest. So, any option that wasn't in the 90th percentile was outside of the big tent.

I thought it was 80%, but it was a long time ago and memory is unreliable.

 

[Parmandur]

I thought it was 80%, but it was a long time ago and memory is unreliable.

Nope, 90%. Though they did fail in the end, notably with the Ranger. But it does seem that certain playstyles they just decided to ignore at some point, and I think that was a business numbers decision (cruel and calculating as that can be), not a design decision. 5E can do a Warlord, they have chosen not to.

 

[Charlaquin]

Just going to say, I think “New School Essentials” is a brilliant idea. I also don’t think it would take much to create under the OGL. Something pretty close to what we saw in the earliest playtest documents with almost everything being resolved by the ability check mechanic, and proficiency bonus applicable mostly at GM discretion instead of having a codified skill list. Stick to the core 4 races and classes and a very lightweight spell list, no feats. Everything else, from subclasses to additional classes to feats to ability score increases become optional add-ons. You wouldn’t be able to play a B/X style character, an AD&D style character, a 3e style character, and a 4e style character all in the same party, but you could build the ideal d20 ruleset for your group.

 

[Charlaquin]

Nope, 90%. Though they did fail in the end, notably with the Ranger. But it does seem that certain playstyles they just decided to ignore at some point, and I think that was a business numbers decision (cruel and calculating as that can be), not a design decision. 5E can do a Warlord, they have chosen not to.

They never even tried with the warlord, they just lumped it in with Illusionist and Assassin as concepts that could be expressed as a subclass despite no one who actually wants a warlord agreeing that would be satisfying. And then they gave the Battlemaster a single warlord-ish maneuver and the valor bard Extra Attack and called it done.

 

[Ondath]

Just going to say, I think “New School Essentials” is a brilliant idea. I also don’t think it would take much to create under the OGL. Something pretty close to what we saw in the earliest playtest documents with almost everything being resolved by the ability check mechanic, and proficiency bonus applicable mostly at GM discretion instead of having a codified skill list. Stick to the core 4 races and classes and a very lightweight spell list, no feats. Everything else, from subclasses to additional classes to feats to ability score increases become optional add-ons. You wouldn’t be able to play a B/X style character, an AD&D style character, a 3e style character, and a 4e style character all in the same party, but you could build the ideal d20 ruleset for your group.

I was going to say that I'm a bit saddened to see nobody tackled the comparison with OSE's approach that I mentioned in the OP (my fault for writing a small novel, I suppose!). I might have missed the mark in how I presented the genre rules I suggested (the Basic/Advanced genre rules in OSE play much better with each other compared to my ideas), but I think there is a clear distinction between what OSE did ("Here is an entire ruleset that adds several different rules together on top of the simple engine to make it support AD&D-style games") and the kind of modularity people say 5E already has ("Here are a list of variant rules buried in the DMG, we won't bother telling how you could build a holistic genre by combining which ones with which, you figure that out yourself!")

 

[Parmandur]

They never even tried with the warlord, they just lumped it in with Illusionist and Assassin as concepts that could be expressed as a subclass despite no one who actually wants a warlord agreeing that would be satisfying. And then they gave the Battlemaster a single warlord-ish maneuver and the valor bard Extra Attack and called it done.

I am very cybical about what motivates WotC to do anything (money, specifically), and I believe they would have done more of there was the market for it.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't see damage on a miss as being any different than saving for half damage from a fireball or lightning bolt. I think it's perfectly acceptable as "misses" are not you swing and whiff on enemies.

I guess I see most if not all combat misses" as in fact being outright misses - you either didn't connect with the foe at all or your connection was of so little impact that the foe could - and did - ignore it completely.

Contrast this with being caught in a fireball. There's no way it can miss you entirely, the question is merely how much damage did it cause.

And it only just this minute occured to me after nearly 40 years: the save-for-half mechanic might be no more than a simple way of replicating the idea that not everyone is going to take the same amount of damage from a given effect. More accurate - but also more cumbersome - would be to roll the damage separately for each creature in the area.

Giving such an ability to the Fighter would only shore up the class and make a player feel better about "your turn comes up, you attack, you roll a 2, you're done".

Rolling a 2 and being done is, to me, just part of the game.

 

[Maxperson]

Nope, 90%. Though they did fail in the end, notably with the Ranger. But it does seem that certain playstyles they just decided to ignore at some point, and I think that was a business numbers decision (cruel and calculating as that can be), not a design decision. 5E can do a Warlord, they have chosen not to.

They didn't go with 90% even then. There's no way that 90% wanted the inclusion of alignment. There's no way 90% wanted bounded accuracy. There's no way 90% wanted a multiple classes that made it in. There's no way that 90% wanted spells not to scale with level. I doubt very many things at all got a full 90%. That's not how humanity works.

 

[Charlaquin]

I am very cybical about what motivates WotC to do anything (money, specifically), and I believe they would have done more of there was the market for it.

I am similarly cynical about their motivations, but I don’t think the issue with the Warlord was a lack of market for one. It’s just that the presence of a warlord was perceived as more likely to be a deal-breaker for the folks who didn’t want one than its absence would be for those who did.