D&D (2024) YOU are in charge of the next PHB! What do you change?

[Gladius Legis]

I thought the exact same thing back with 3e and then wotc gave us the train wreck that was 4e. Hopefully they have learned their lesson.

3e still didn't move D&D out of the niche market the way 5e did. 3e was also fundamentally broken in ways 5e isn't.

 

[Steampunkette]

Yeah as Gladius says, I've never seen a half-caster Bard not in official material, not in unofficial material, that wasn't complete and utter trash of the most crummy kind of a mechanical level, and usually not at all fun to play either (I say this as someone who has played multiple Bards in every edition from 2E to 5E, as well as various other D&D-related games).

Could it be done? Yeah, probably, with a sufficiently genius designer, who can manage to work out how to make up for losing god knows how many incredibly powerful spells. Is it remotely likely to happen? Noooooo. I've never seen anyone manage it.

And what's interesting to me is, the people keen on the idea of a half-caster Bard? Almost universally don't like or long-term play Bards. They're just offended by the concept of full-caster Bards, aesthetically. They liked it when the Bard has to be this passive loser-guy in 3.XE and Pathfinder, singing for the benefit of everyone else, not upsetting the Wizard by casting better spells than him. To hell with that! I started in 2E. The 2E Bard might technically seem like a half-caster, but in practical terms, no, because of XP. I was literally casting 5th-level spells before the Elven Fighter/Mage in my party was, back in 2E, and not far behind the actual full-on Mage.

I mean to be fair, only one Bard sucked, and that was the 3.XE Bard. 2E you levelled like a rocket and had access to a really good selection of stuff re: fighting, sneaking, and spelling, with music and lore to complete the package. 3.XE, you were just terrible. This awful character who had been shoved into this support-hole, but who wasn't a full caster like the "support" Cleric (who also had a much higher AC, better HP, better spell access, same BAB, and was just missing some janky music abilities, which his spells could outperform anyway, for the most part). At least you had spells and thanks to LFQW you weren't the worst character in the party. 4E Bard was extremely solid, fun, and well-themed. 5E Bard is a powerhouse like all the 5E full casters and is great fun to play.

Oo... that is another thought. Making different types of magic -mean- different things.

So... Half-Caster Bard would suck. But what if Bard and Warlock style Occult spells capped out at "5th Level" but 5th level was closer to 8th/9th level for a Wizard? Or a Cleric doing the same thing with 7th level spells.

Different Scales for different classes, so some "Lag" at certain levels and "Jump" at others, so there's more room for other class features and defining traits. So a Wizard gets a constant granular increase in spell power, while the Bard's spell power increases in fits and spurts but there's a greater quantity of bard class abilities between the levels they'd otherwise get spell slots if they had 9 levels of spells.

Could be an interesting direction to take spellcasters to make them more varied than they currently are.

Comparative using Wizard spell levels/power as baseline:
Wizard: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Cleric: 1 2 4 5 6 7 9
Bard: 1 3 5 7 9

... not sure this makes sense.

 

[Mind of tempest]

3e still didn't move D&D out of the niche market the way 5e did. 3e was also fundamentally broken in ways 5e isn't.

I see even parts of the new guard just baffled by how things work as it does not match up to intuition very well in some areas.
few calls for 6e but complaint less they are not.

 

[Scribe]

If it was me?

Alignment Matters.
Lineage Matters (ASI Increase unique to Lineage)
Sub Classes.
Sub Lineage.
Increase in Background and Culture having a mechanical impact.
Reinforce 'D&D-isms'

Establish the current fact that Alignment on a Lineage is a quick recommendation not the unchanging law.

Tasha's is an option.

Cleave to the original premise that 5e is inward looking, and D&D for all who have, and could later, play it.

Oh, and long live The Great Wheel.

 

[Sacrosanct]

some third party company is out there waiting for the day wotc makes a radically new edition of the game that doesn’t resemble d&d.

We can call the game that company releases, "Pathdetector".

for me? The biggest change I'd do is include a passage that says, "Every time someone starts yet another new discussion about what needs to be changed in the edition following this one, we will ensure that that suggestion never makes it in."

 

[Aldarc]

I would run an extended playtest with transparent iterations and clear goals for changes. D&DNext was a good way to really show off what D&D could be. I am still mining stuff that was dropped off development.
A couple of wish list items:

• Race becomes lineage Stat bonus moved to class
• Multiclass rules limited a bit; no one level dips
• Complete redesign of the sorcerer No more junior wizard Innate caster using primal elements No spell slots

Moving stat bonuses to Background and Lineage to reflect your training is a pretty solid choice.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

There's a lot of quibbles that I have regarding class features, but few of them are fatal. Worst case scenario, just give the character an awesome magic item.

I think stat bonuses should move out of race/lineage/ancestry into class and background. I'd like each race to have a "power" similar to 4E's approach to race. That's really fun stuff.

Also agree that "culture" could help differentiate races more.

And I like the idea of making backgrounds beefier with (for example) weapon proficiencies.

On the DM side, I'd like more support for a lot of subsystems like travel, social encounters, high level wealth sinks, etc. Level Up is doing the Lord's work in this area.

Monsters are a little dull. Higher level monsters don't hit hard enough. Spell lists on monsters typically provide a lot of suboptimal choices that make it hard to discern the combat loop for said monster. I would have liked to see minions/mobs to provide a bit more variety in the types of battles.

All of that said, 5E is really good, and I'm not sure it gets enough credit for how elegant the core of the system is.

 

[Mind of tempest]

We can call the game that company releases, "Pathdetector".

for me? The biggest change I'd do is include a passage that says, "Every time someone starts yet another new discussion about what needs to be changed in the edition following this one, we will ensure that that suggestion never makes it in."

The next edition would be one page consisting of nothing but profanity by following that rule.

There's a lot of quibbles that I have regarding class features, but few of them are fatal. Worst case scenario, just give the character an awesome magic item.

I think stat bonuses should move out of race/lineage/ancestry into class and background. I'd like each race to have a "power" similar to 4E's approach to race. That's really fun stuff.

Also agree that "culture" could help differentiate races more.

And I like the idea of making backgrounds beefier with (for example) weapon proficiencies.

On the DM side, I'd like more support for a lot of subsystems like travel, social encounters, high level wealth sinks, etc. Level Up is doing the Lord's work in this area.

Monsters are a little dull. Higher level monsters don't hit hard enough. Spell lists on monsters typically provide a lot of suboptimal choices that make it hard to discern the combat loop for said monster. I would have liked to see minions/mobs to provide a bit more variety in the types of battles.

All of that said, 5E is really good, and I'm not sure it gets enough credit for how elegant the core of the system is.

6e would be most likely really similar in a lot of areas to 5e

 

[Remathilis]

Nothing is ever going to be perfect, but 5E is still growing by double digits. So I disagree that "the vast majority" of people don't like 5E. Take a look at some of the responses and there are a few minor commonalities that I see pop up like how we handle race/culture and backgrounds. But other than that? If you distilled the ideas down into workable rules and hashed out some minor differences I think you'd still see a half dozen different incompatible games.

The ideas aren't bad or wrong in any way, but different people have different ideas on what "better" looks like. It likely would be better, for them. If I tried to do a new edition? It would probably work out as well as the Homermobile.

True, but nature of the changes are less "I would fix the ranger's favored enemy" and more "I would change the ranger a spell-less wildness warrior" or "we don't even need a ranger class at all" level of changes, which to me suggested that people want a 6e that is again more different than similar to 5e.

Maybe it's the nature of the speculation thread, but its a good thing the next edition isn't being designed by committee.

 

[Remathilis]

Double post.