D&D 5E Why Don't We Simplify 5e?

[Eubani]

You absolutely could get simpler. Make casting an arcana check. Base the DC on the effect you want. Higher level effects have higher DCs which are too high for low-level casters. Give each school rough parameters of what it can do. That would take maybe 5-10 pages and would cover the entire magic section of the PHB.

Simple Magic caster As an action shoot an Arcane Bolt 120ft range uses Int mod des 1d8 + Int damage. 1 per rest you can make bolt do 20ft rd. Every so many levels up damage dice or number of dice. Gain detect magic a couple of times a day done.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Small being?



How long? How far away?



Can nothing force it? How about magical creatures?



Because there's big gaps missing in what you tell them. That was what OD&D did with those spells.

But you know, they still took up more space than almost anything else, because even that much text takes up a lot of space when you have a lot of spells (and again, I'm not even talking as many spells as people are now used to, as a lot of staples didn't even come in until AD&D).

You can do short and snappy spell descriptions that are much more precise that Thom's example, though. This is the full description of Sleep in 5 Torches Deep:

"2HD/level worth of targets in 30’ fall asleep. Attack. 8 hrs"

All the spells are like that, and it means all 60 spells in the core rulebook fit on two pages.

 

[Cadence]

You absolutely could get simpler. Make casting an arcana check. Base the DC on the effect you want. Higher level effects have higher DCs which are too high for low-level casters. Give each school rough parameters of what it can do. That would take maybe 5-10 pages and would cover the entire magic section of the PHB.

Is the easy thing there just to grab a copy of Mage?

Anyway, what would you make the relative DCs for conjuring small amounts of nitrobenzene, aqua regia, chlorine gas, orange juice, and water? Is it based on the chemical complexity, commonness of the material, or game effectiveness?

Does the nature of the target at a distance affect the DC if it's just being conjured out of thin air? Stationary container vs. air above a stationary person vs. air space in a stationary person's mouth vs. in their chest cavity? Should it matter if you're just putting something into an air space?

 

[jmartkdr2]

One way to reduce the at-the-table complexity of spells would be to limit horizontal growth: basically, without even changing the spells much, you could make wizards a lot easier to play if they aren't prepping 30 spells out of 49 and casting up to 29 each day... okay that's at 20th but it's still a lot.

I think the upper limit of broad choices without causing issues is somewhere in the mid-teens, based on how many classes people seem to able to work through without getting confused. Which means that a max-level full caster, between spells prepped, subclass features and magic items shouldn't go past 15 or so 'spells' to pick from during play.

BUT if you do this, you can add complexity to spells in the form of internal variability - ie Fire Strike can encompass everything form fire bolt and burning hands and fireball all the way up to meteor swarm (depending on the level it's cast at), and still only count as one spell. Basically, reorganizing the spell rules into thematic groups can make the game less complex in practice while actually adding options.

I think, anyways. It seemed to work pretty well in other rpgs I've played.

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

Small being?



How long? How far away?



Can nothing force it? How about magical creatures?



Because there's big gaps missing in what you tell them. That was what OD&D did with those spells.

But you know, they still took up more space than almost anything else, because even that much text takes up a lot of space when you have a lot of spells (and again, I'm not even talking as many spells as people are now used to, as a lot of staples didn't even come in until AD&D).

The GM makes a judgment call; whatever sounds reasonable to the table. If you demand more complexity from the rules, you'll get more rules complexity. In DCC, the fighter's Mighty Deeds of Arms covers a very broad range of potential combat maneuvers, yet it relies considerably on GM adjudication to function properly. The same can be done with all aspects of design. You can go Swords and Wizardry, or you can go full Exalted.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To quote you, this is bluntly nonsense. No one in the world has the perfect, encyclopedic understanding of the rules they live by that are provided by the game book the players at the table read. Especially if we're talking about a faux-medieval world like the ones presented in most fantasy games. The people in the world would know basic stuff, sure. But they would know nothing about the game's mechanics.

Let me present a simple case.

I'm a moderately armored warrior, of above average strength.

How far can I jump?

If you wish to tell me I should have no real idea, then we might as well drop this right now, because I consider that patentetly ridiculous. This is a character who has been dependent on his understanding of his physical abilities for his whole professional life (which presumably didn't start yesterday).

So. does he know? If the player has to ask the GM every time, I'll state I don't think, in practice, he does in any way that matters; if he does (even with some degree of uncertainty, though most of that is why there's a die roll involved in most such things) that's knowing the mechanics.

Similarly, a mage should have pretty good idea how far he can throw his lightning bolt. Again, mechanics.

A character would know they're hurt, they might know they feel like they're dying...but they wouldn't know what hit points are and they certainly wouldn't be able to make tactical decisions based on that knowledge. Your character won't know the details of a spell and how it works, for example, unless they learned that spell or happened to have studied about it (arcana check). They wouldn't know if a wizard lock worked on a daemon, for example...unless the wizard who taught it to them knew that, etc.

The problem is that with the examples presented earlier, they won't know that even if they have the spell. Its not in the spell description, so how could they? The player only has the data he's been presented.

Again, you can have the GM answer the question every time, but that gets back to "Is the GM going to be consistent about this with the number of spells even a couple of medium level spellcasters will know in D&D, given the lack of common metrics?" I've expressed my opinion on that.

Like I said, players don't need to know the rules. If the player alters their decisions for their character based on the rules of the game, that's proof they shouldn't know the rules. Play your character as if they're a living person in this world. People behave and act quite differently than the player characters.

No, to me that's proof the GM wants to play bait-and-switch on their understanding of how their world works. I may not know everything about every element of my world, but I can promise you I know good and well the likely range of outcomes of anything relating to my fields of professional expertise, and I wasn't trained in fields that would get me and others killed if I didn't.

That's arguing until you win because you know you're right so screw the game and everyone else at the table...I'm right dammit...territory. I will argue until I feel like not arguing any more. Jesus. That's legit someone with the argumentative flaw. What kind of nasty trolls have you played with?

Its arguing because you think it really matters and not understanding it is having you make decisions in the dark. That's not being a nasty troll, that's disagreeing with a GM's assessment of how important it is. And often they're not the only people at the table who think its important (though that can be if its in an area that doesn't apply to them).

That's odd to me as it's a fairly common practice in a lot of ultra-light play. Default to the GM, but if someone digs in, roll off. Because the game is the thing. Actually playing. Not sitting around arguing about playing. Again, unless the GM's call is going to kill your character and you don't agree with that outcome, most arguments are pointless nonsense. Unless it comes up in play, it doesn't matter. And we don't need to have rules that cover everything or worry about every situation a spell could possibly be used in up front. What a nightmare.

I've seen RNR married to an awful lot of pretty top down views of how the game is to be run. If you haven't, you've been fortunate.

And it doesn't have to be a decision that's immediately lethal for the character. How about it changing the situation as the player understands it so the planning he's been doing makes no sense? That can lead to failure or worse down the line even if it isn't immediately lethal, and not just for their character.

For some people, maybe. Others loved it and never stopped using it.

So? Some people like all kinds of things. Doesn't mean they're generically a good idea.

 

[Thomas Shey]

We've never had rules to cover everything. But it feels like there are some common things that always come up (number of targets? dice of damage? range?) that have pretty much always been included in the D&D rules.

Yeah, even OD&D, schematic as it was, didn't skip that sort of thing. Though you could get unfinished thoughts, such as the original description of the Sleep spell, where it listed how many of which dice range were effected, but didn't discuss what to do if you have mixed levels of opponents out there (did it effect the full dice range of each, or was there supposed to be some sort of pro-rating going on? The spell description in the original beige books was no help) or Magic Missile, which was apparently always supposed to hit but the phrasing was such that many people had it make a hit roll.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You can do short and snappy spell descriptions that are much more precise that Thom's example, though. This is the full description of Sleep in 5 Torches Deep:

"2HD/level worth of targets in 30’ fall asleep. Attack. 8 hrs"

All the spells are like that, and it means all 60 spells in the core rulebook fit on two pages.

That's fair; that's kind of schematic but covers the information.

But it also means your spells have to be simple, not only in how they're displayed but how they work. You can't get anything that does much fancy. And especially as you got to higher levels, that's never been D&D's bag.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One way to reduce the at-the-table complexity of spells would be to limit horizontal growth: basically, without even changing the spells much, you could make wizards a lot easier to play if they aren't prepping 30 spells out of 49 and casting up to 29 each day... okay that's at 20th but it's still a lot.

I think the upper limit of broad choices without causing issues is somewhere in the mid-teens, based on how many classes people seem to able to work through without getting confused. Which means that a max-level full caster, between spells prepped, subclass features and magic items shouldn't go past 15 or so 'spells' to pick from during play.

BUT if you do this, you can add complexity to spells in the form of internal variability - ie Fire Strike can encompass everything form fire bolt and burning hands and fireball all the way up to meteor swarm (depending on the level it's cast at), and still only count as one spell. Basically, reorganizing the spell rules into thematic groups can make the game less complex in practice while actually adding options.

I think, anyways. It seemed to work pretty well in other rpgs I've played.

Yeah, but the more you want to do that the more you need to hose down the exception based design to do it; otherwise, rather than remembering a bunch of distinct spells, you're just having to remember all the special cases for modification within each spell. Its not self-evident that people will generally find that any easier.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The GM makes a judgment call; whatever sounds reasonable to the table. If you demand more complexity from the rules, you'll get more rules complexity. In DCC, the fighter's Mighty Deeds of Arms covers a very broad range of potential combat maneuvers, yet it relies considerably on GM adjudication to function properly. The same can be done with all aspects of design. You can go Swords and Wizardry, or you can go full Exalted.

And what about the next time? Will the GM remember what he did previously? How about the other 20 spells that have such judgment calls?

And that's a false dichotomy; there's a lot of room between "This description is sketchy enough its entirely up to the GM to decide and make consistency" and "this spell is written up like something out of USC Title 18".