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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8640708" data-attributes="member: 18">I think this is a good thing to think about, but your examples aren't realistic.A modular 5E would be modular, not designed to completely re-create every edition and genre. It would have options for leaning into them, not for replicating them. For example things on your list which would just never have happened in any WotC product (or not until the end of 5E experimentation period):1) Race as class.There's not enough demand outside the extreme OSR. And it'd require a huge amount of book space to do, because it's effectively multiple classes extra.2) Level caps.They only make sense in the context of non-humans being "better" than humans, and AD&D-style multiclassing existing, neither of which would have been the case.3) Classes redesigned with full AEDU.I mean, that's an entire sourcebook worth of stuff that's incompatible with everything else you're putting out.So those and a lot of other things you're suggesting which would fundamentally alter math would just not happen.But other things would be highly likely:A) Different natural healing rates and ways HD worked.For slow healing we could very easily see only healing say, level HP/full rest (or a bit more), and instead of HD being used to heal on short rests, HD are expended whenever you get healed by a healing spell (this is how Worlds Without End does it, effectively).B) Length of rests and how frequently they can be taken.It's easy to envision 10 min short rests as an option, or a cap on short rests.C) Option to not use Skills and just use Proficiency in some way, or to have Skills completely determined by a pre-set list from race/class.D) How death/dying works - i.e. could ditch Death saves for just dying at X negative HP.And so on.Close conceptually, but far in terms of the actual specific issues with modularity people had.It's absolutely correct to say some people want replications of earlier editions, and others just want them to be evoked, or to be able to use certain elements of them.Your examples, though are problematic, for example here:1) Disarm isn't a 4E "thing". It doesn't resemble a 4E thing. You literally can't disarm people with a generalized rule in 4E, to the point where people moaned about it. That's a 3E thing.2) Flanking isn't handled well in 5E, it's either non-existent or basically free advantage 24/7. Not a good modular rule design, and doesn't really "evoke" flanking in 3E or 4E because it's something vastly more powerful. There's a reason nobody uses it.3) Marking is a 4E thing, and the implementation as an optional rule isn't terrible, so that's a better example but helps show the others aren't great. Also, with only one Reaction/turn ever, neither 3E nor 4E vibes can really be evoked, because it's so easy to get away from people. But 5E becomes completely unbalanced if you sidestep that, as Tunnel Fighter showed.Special combat rules in general don't evoke 4E, vibe-wise, at all. They evoke 3E. 3E was built with tons of special combat rules. 4E cut them down and made thing specific instead of general, and that's not the sort of "numbers quibble" you're referring to later, it's a profoundly different approach.Other places where modularity could have helped with a 4E vibe would be, for example, giving an option for Short Rests to be 10 minutes (rather than the hilariously demented shorter rest option we got, which was short rests are 5 mins and long rests are an hour, I mean lol wth WotC drink less petrol). I was rather surprised that wasn't in there. Or making healing spells expend HD. Having there be a lot more "Ritual" spells (I'm surprised we didn't see a list of more spells that could be "optionally ritual", for example). Providing people with Feats as well as ASIs, and so on.A 3E vibe could have been helped by, for example, including an option to regularly hand out Feats (not as many as 3E) alongside ASIs instead of either/or.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. The sanity optional rule for example, I'm not going to argue again here, we had like a bazillion page thread of it, but anyway basically is inverted. Any amount of playtesting would have spotted that. The short rest/long rest thing being grouped together is another example. Any actual playtesting, or people actually discussing the options at length would have seen short rest length and long rest length separated. Basically no-one wants a long rest to be 1 hour. And almost no-one wants a short rest to be 8 hours. But in keeping with the spirit of "Just write it down, we've got a deadline!!!!" that pervades the 5E DMG, that's what we got.</blockquote>

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