Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
You're assuming that this edition is being written by professionals and experienced game designers, not hipsters and their nepotistic twitter circles.

Perhaps Mike Mearls was more important than people give him credit for.

It doesn't help that D&D's popularity blew up in the last few years. Now every trend-chasing casual wants to be in the metaphorical kitchen taking selfies while the remaining cooks struggle for elbow room.
 
Perhaps Mike Mearls was more important than people give him credit for.

It doesn't help that D&D's popularity blew up in the last few years. Now every trend-chasing casual wants to be in the metaphorical kitchen taking selfies while the remaining cooks struggle for elbow room.
I’m pretty sure Mike Mearls was very important for the success of 5e, yes. Not solely so, but probably among the rules and design reasons.

A big problem with what to me seems to be reactive design is that people don't necessarily know what they want. They'll say what they think they should say, but that isn't always right. And the people yelling hardest on twitter, or anywhere else, aren't necessarily the best gauge for what should actually be done.
 
Communicating with your public once you have some ideas is surely not a bad idea. Also helps build buzz.
The issue here is that good design work - especially when you're revising and attempting to improve an existing system is dependent on how all the parts fit together.

The designers should also have a better understanding of that than the general public.

What they're doing is what they've always done. Audience testing in fragments. It's not playtesting because they release new stuff and then give people a survey to ask their opinion one month later. How much actual playtesting can be informing the opinions that they're getting?

See the top and bottom threads from this page on Enworld.

1666955555460.png

The problem I forsee with this is they're not actually going to end up with something better - just different. For everyone small issue they fix, Dual wielding fell behind, Crossbow Expert was too powerful, they're just as likely to create a new one - because if you repeat the same process you used the first time you're going to get a similar result. The general public aren't likely to really be all that wiser in their opinions then the public were when they originally designed 5e, but after 8 years the designers certainly should be.

It was also a very different circumstance in the lead in to 5e. Recovering from an edition that failed in the market and making a radically new edition - it's perhaps understandable that you'd want to do a lot of market testing. That shouldn't be the case when you're making a much smaller scale revision and you have eight years of data about what people like about the current game.

They'd be better at this point to really do the work in house and then release a beta document of a whole revision and let it be playtested for an actual worthwhile length of time, so that people might actually understand the point of changes rather than just be constantly receiving first impressions.
 
Surely they have a clear idea by now about what needs to be fixed?
You do know we are talking about the tabletop roleplaying hobby here? :wink:

There were people slagging each other over the implications of the Greyhawk Supplements, the 2nd edition of Tunnels & Trolls, Runequest 2e, and The difference between the 1977 printing of Traveller and the 1981 printing. Granted without the internet it was mostly in the zines and later letters to Dragon Magazine.

The upshot is that "what needs to be fixed" is a contentious issue.
 
I have a Guisarme in my shed I bought for doing yard work. I mean if you see a Guisarme on sale and you have even a half assed excuse to get one you have to. It's the law

We have multiple types of bills and guisarmes in Codex...
 
They'd be better at this point to really do the work in house and then release a beta document of a whole revision and let it be playtested for an actual worthwhile length of time, so that people might actually understand the point of changes rather than just be constantly receiving first impressions.

Yeah, a great part of the issue here is that they're releasing all the "playtest" material piecemeal, so people get only fragments of what's supposedly being tested without a clear idea of what the overall changes or design goals are supposed to be. In the most recent release they included some classes with spellcasting abilities, but we don't even know what the overall changes to spellcasting are, only that changes are being made and a fraction of what those changes are. We don't even know what changes are in store for dedicated spellcasters. So how are we supposed to gauge the full impact of those changes, if we've only been teased with a portion of them?

I don't even hate a lot of these changes. I like the idea of feats, so I don't care that they're standardizing them, and I prefer unified spell lists. I also like some of the changes made to races, like all magical races getting a cantrip, plus a few spells as they advance in level. I don't even mind them getting rid of racial ability modifiers, even though I don't agree with the reasoning behind it, cuz we still get ability modifiers through our backgrounds, and backgrounds are customizable. So we can assign those bonuses however we want, including using them for abilities traditionally associated with our race.

But the "playtesting" process is so haphazard I'm basically stuck in "wait and see".
 
I'm also hearing that the playtests aren't consistent with each other, so they appear to be trying out multiple different variations and seeing which ones 'work best' or, perhaps more likely, are best received by the audience.
 
The upshot is that "what needs to be fixed" is a contentious issue.

I've seen people say 5e is basically perfect except; they should remove the ability check DCs from PH & DMG to "prevent players "weaponizing" them, and all the spells where players get to choose effects should have the effect nailed down or the spell removed.
 
I've seen people say 5e is basically perfect except; they should remove the ability check DCs from PH & DMG to "prevent players "weaponizing" them, and all the spells where players get to choose effects should have the effect nailed down or the spell removed.
To me, 5e is fine. It's not my favorite edition of D&D (that would really be some OSR game) but it's still good. Most of the complaints against it I see are things that are explicitly discussed in the DMG with various options given, and you can always houserules stuff beyond that. The memetic idea of D&D 5e is quite different from the actual game, but in many ways what I see here is trying to make the game closer to the meme, rather than keeping the core of a good game.
 
I've seen people say 5e is basically perfect except; they should remove the ability check DCs from PH & DMG to "prevent players "weaponizing" them,

Personally, I think the hobby in general needs to improve how skills are used.
I summarize my thoughts on the subject here

Despite the D&D centric nature of the essay, it was something that originated with running GURPS for two decades. Basically came about during the late 90s when a player asked a reasonable question about why I was having them make so many skill checks when their skill level was around 18 (which in GURPS Terms meant the player was considered an expert in that skill, almost a master which is what a 20 skill mean).

I thought about it and saw that the player had a point and slowly developed my ideas in the essay since.



and all the spells where players get to choose effects should have the effect nailed down or the spell removed.
To me, this is a setting detail, not a system detail. If spells in your world can do only one thing then make it so. The same with anything else that are on the various list like equipment, monsters, and so on. Even the skill list itself is a setting detail.

Either your setting works well with the assumed setting of the 5e core rulebooks or it doesn't. After which you can either make your setting match what is described in the 5e core rulebooks, or alter the list to make the system match.

For example of what the impact of a radical alteration would look like I point at Adventures in Middle Earth or the new Lord of the Rings RPG. But it been my experience that most folks' settings work fine with the core assumptions of 5e with some tweaks.
 
Last edited:
I've seen people say 5e is basically perfect except; they should remove the ability check DCs from PH & DMG to "prevent players "weaponizing" them, and all the spells where players get to choose effects should have the effect nailed down or the spell removed.
...I think some people just want to play CoC, but don't know it:thumbsup:.
 
While I don't play it these days, I experimented with and liked 5E so I get why it has become so popular.

The things I most like about it are backgrounds and the odds progression for thief skills (and similar things).

What I don't like about it is the fragmentation of character 'types' into a large number of classes and subclasses that are distinguished by chains of powerzzz that get unlocked as they progress. I understand this has become a very normal feeling structure to class and level games, and mirrors people's experiences with fantasy video games. But I find it obnoxious, mostly because the class abilities are dominated by super 'meta' stuff and/or complicated sounding stuff that ends up boiling down to a situational bonus to hit or damage or AC. To me, it all comes across as way too fussy, and it creates a false sense of diversity. I.e., there are a lot of classes/paths, but each one of them is quite rigidly defined.

Finally, 5E retained, in diluted form, a very unsuccessful design concept introduced in 4E: the notion that every class 'needs' to be given some distinctive attack power that they can use pretty much every turn, so that every player has something to do during combat. This philosophy makes all the classes converge in their functional roles (i.e., the different names for various kinds of attacks and powers are just window dressing - in they end they do loosely the same things), and it promotes the fetishization of combat as the main purpose of a play session. And, obviously, the rapid HP recovery of 5E is a vestige of 4E and completely removes the adventure-scale resource economy of traditional D&D - this, again, highlights the skirmish fight as the main goal of play (i.e., because you might as well engage in them, since you will effectively automatically recover any HP losses you suffer in each one).

If I ran the reboot I would make the undoubtedly bad business move of cutting the complexity of classes and class powers to the bone, expand the range and importance of backgrounds, undo the 4E-ification, and bolt on a more nuanced treatment of social status/caste and campaign time-scale play.
 
...I think some people just want to play CoC, but don't know it:thumbsup:.
Really, a lot of games. That's what happens when one game gets really popular, people want to use it for everything, and games that are actually much better for what they want languish in obscurity.
 
While I don't play it these days, I experimented with and liked 5E so I get why it has become so popular.

The things I most like about it are backgrounds and the odds progression for thief skills (and similar things).

What I don't like about it is the fragmentation of character 'types' into a large number of classes and subclasses that are distinguished by chains of powerzzz that get unlocked as they progress. I understand this has become a very normal feeling structure to class and level games, and mirrors people's experiences with fantasy video games. But I find it obnoxious, mostly because the class abilities are dominated by super 'meta' stuff and/or complicated sounding stuff that ends up boiling down to a situational bonus to hit or damage or AC. To me, it all comes across as way too fussy, and it creates a false sense of diversity. I.e., there are a lot of classes/paths, but each one of them is quite rigidly defined.

Finally, 5E retained, in diluted form, a very unsuccessful design concept introduced in 4E: the notion that every class 'needs' to be given some distinctive attack power that they can use pretty much every turn, so that every player has something to do during combat. This philosophy makes all the classes converge in their functional roles (i.e., the different names for various kinds of attacks and powers are just window dressing - in they end they do loosely the same things), and it promotes the fetishization of combat as the main purpose of a play session. And, obviously, the rapid HP recovery of 5E is a vestige of 4E and completely removes the adventure-scale resource economy of traditional D&D - this, again, highlights the skirmish fight as the main goal of play (i.e., because you might as well engage in them, since you will effectively automatically recover any HP losses you suffer in each one).

If I ran the reboot I would make the undoubtedly bad business move of cutting the complexity of classes and class powers to the bone, expand the range and importance of backgrounds, undo the 4E-ification, and bolt on a more nuanced treatment of social status/caste and campaign time-scale play.
At least the HP recovery thing is built to be modular. It all depends on how long you make short and long rests. This is an example of what I mean by the memetic 5e versus the real 5e.
 
Last edited:
i think what i like best about this board is there are a lot of VERY experienced gamers in here. who have a lot of experience with a lot of other systems and actually think about being a good player or being a good gm and what a system is trying to do. it makes the commentary quite insightful and not so inciteful.

While I don't play it these days, I experimented with and liked 5E so I get why it has become so popular.

The things I most like about it are backgrounds and the odds progression for thief skills (and similar things).

What I don't like about it is the fragmentation of character 'types' into a large number of classes and subclasses that are distinguished by chains of powerzzz that get unlocked as they progress. I understand this has become a very normal feeling structure to class and level games, and mirrors people's experiences with fantasy video games. But I find it obnoxious, mostly because the class abilities are dominated by super 'meta' stuff and/or complicated sounding stuff that ends up boiling down to a situational bonus to hit or damage or AC. To me, it all comes across as way too fussy, and it creates a false sense of diversity. I.e., there are a lot of classes/paths, but each one of them is quite rigidly defined.

Finally, 5E retained, in diluted form, a very unsuccessful design concept introduced in 4E: the notion that every class 'needs' to be given some distinctive attack power that they can use pretty much every turn, so that every player has something to do during combat. This philosophy makes all the classes converge in their functional roles (i.e., the different names for various kinds of attacks and powers are just window dressing - in they end they do loosely the same things), and it promotes the fetishization of combat as the main purpose of a play session. And, obviously, the rapid HP recovery of 5E is a vestige of 4E and completely removes the adventure-scale resource economy of traditional D&D - this, again, highlights the skirmish fight as the main goal of play (i.e., because you might as well engage in them, since you will effectively automatically recover any HP losses you suffer in each one).

If I ran the reboot I would make the undoubtedly bad business move of cutting the complexity of classes and class powers to the bone, expand the range and importance of backgrounds, undo the 4E-ification, and bolt on a more nuanced treatment of social status/caste and campaign time-scale play.

all-of-this-pointing.gif
 
Really, a lot of games. That's what happens when one game gets really popular, people want to use it for everything, and games that are actually much better for what they want languish in obscurity.
You'd get no argument from me, obviously:thumbsup:!
 
I'm also hearing that the playtests aren't consistent with each other, so they appear to be trying out multiple different variations and seeing which ones 'work best' or, perhaps more likely, are best received by the audience.

Yeah, but since they're handing out all these details in fragments there's no way to know how they'd work with all the other changes they haven't revealed yet, which may change the overall feel of how all these rules play together. So we're basically trying out different pieces in a vacuum.

While I don't play it these days, I experimented with and liked 5E so I get why it has become so popular.

The things I most like about it are backgrounds and the odds progression for thief skills (and similar things).

What I don't like about it is the fragmentation of character 'types' into a large number of classes and subclasses that are distinguished by chains of powerzzz that get unlocked as they progress. I understand this has become a very normal feeling structure to class and level games, and mirrors people's experiences with fantasy video games. But I find it obnoxious, mostly because the class abilities are dominated by super 'meta' stuff and/or complicated sounding stuff that ends up boiling down to a situational bonus to hit or damage or AC. To me, it all comes across as way too fussy, and it creates a false sense of diversity. I.e., there are a lot of classes/paths, but each one of them is quite rigidly defined.

Finally, 5E retained, in diluted form, a very unsuccessful design concept introduced in 4E: the notion that every class 'needs' to be given some distinctive attack power that they can use pretty much every turn, so that every player has something to do during combat. This philosophy makes all the classes converge in their functional roles (i.e., the different names for various kinds of attacks and powers are just window dressing - in they end they do loosely the same things), and it promotes the fetishization of combat as the main purpose of a play session. And, obviously, the rapid HP recovery of 5E is a vestige of 4E and completely removes the adventure-scale resource economy of traditional D&D - this, again, highlights the skirmish fight as the main goal of play (i.e., because you might as well engage in them, since you will effectively automatically recover any HP losses you suffer in each one).

If I ran the reboot I would make the undoubtedly bad business move of cutting the complexity of classes and class powers to the bone, expand the range and importance of backgrounds, undo the 4E-ification, and bolt on a more nuanced treatment of social status/caste and campaign time-scale play.

I kinda like the basic idea of all classes/character types having their own powerz, but don't like the way they've implemented it, cuz a lot of class abilities come off as fiddly features that are there as level filler, and are very situational, like you mentioned. Some of them are stuff that everyone should be able to do, at least at some basic level, but they've gated them off to a select few classes (Fighter Battle Master) in the name of giving everyone a special trick only they can do (Maneuvers such as Feint or Disarming), and/or having something to give them every level.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TJS
Personally, I think the hobby in general needs to improve how skills are used.
I summarize my thoughts on the subject here

Despite the D&D centric nature of the essay, it was something that originated with running GURPS for two decades. Basically came about during the late 90s when a player asked a reasonable question about why I was having them make so many skill checks when their skill level was around 18 (which in GURPS Terms meant the player was considered an expert in that skill, almost a master which is what a 20 skill mean).

I thought about it and saw that the player had a point and slowly developed my ideas in the essay since.
Great essay. I've been trying to hash out skills in Cold Iron. Combat is well defined and works very well (for some definition of works very well... not everyone will like the system, and I don't think it's the only way to do combat, but it works, it's a fun game) and magic works well, but non-combat skills aren't even addressed by the original designer other than vague notes that they exist. I've tried various things in the past but determining how the numbers should work out and then making sense of them in play has proven challenging.

But maybe your idea of setting descriptors for various levels in the system would help, then with those in mind, decide what kind of success chance should be likely for different levels of tasks.

If you have thoughts, join me in my thread in Design and Development.
 
To me, this is a setting detail, not a system detail. If spells in your world can do only one thing then make it so. The same with anything else that are on the various list like equipment, monsters, and so on. Even the skill list itself is a setting detail.

Just for clarity. When I say they go
and all the spells where players get to choose effects should have the effect nailed down or the spell removed.
this is things like replacing Conjure Animals with Conjure Wolf(no upcasting), replacing something like Silent Image with Image of Guy in Armor, Image of Door, Image of Wall, Image of Guard Dog, etc., replacing the effrct of Wish with "cast any one spell you know". And simply removing "problem" spells like Banish, Teleport, Clone, Simraculum, Find thr Path, Contact Other Plane, erc.
 
At least the HP recovery thing is built to be modular. It all depends on how long you make short and long rests. This is an example of what I mean by the memetic 5e versus the real 5e.
I was looking at Monte Cook's newish (?) game, Cypher System, and how they do this. If I read the rules right, the first rest can be done in a turn, the second in 10 minutes, the third takes an hour, and the fourth takes 10 hours of rest. I'm thinking this could be a neat way to do rests in 5E but I haven't really thought through the ramifications. So I think a character could spend an action to regain a HD, sort of like giving everyone the Second Wind ability, but if they wanted to spend another they would have to wait until after initiative was over in order to spend 10 minutes resting. I guess there would need to be a rule to see how many hit dice could be regained during that first rest, or if it was always limited to one. The second and third rests would be a lot like 5E's Short and the fourth rest is a lot like the Long one, so probably those rules wouldn't change.

I usually play using the grim rules from the DMG, where a Short rest takes a while and a Long one requires resting in a safe place like Rivendell.
 
I'd be a lot less concerned about all these annoying 1DnD rules tweaks if I knew that DnD Beyond support for the 2014 rules would remain beyond 2024.(I find DnD Beyond incredibly useful in running my online Greyhawk campaign.) Alas, that's unlikely to be the case.
 
I’ve long thought a good way to handle most (all?) class powers would be through a system that works the same way as spell slots: e.g., a 3rd level thief would have a few ‘slots’ for ‘1st level powers’, maybe a slot for a ‘second level power’, etc., and then those are how many times per day they could pick a lock or whatever. It’s an idea that is obviously very ‘meta’ and gamey, but also you are playing a game that is already completely built around meta, gamey concepts, so maybe just roll with it? At the same time, I would fold other random, unique-mechanic class powers into the same approach, like clerical turning, paladin healing, etc. The end result would be different in sone details, but also would unify around something coherent, structured and time-proven, and also you would massively increase the sense of resource management as the key component of skillful play, which I like.
 
I’ve long thought a good way to handle most (all?) class powers would be through a system that works the same way as spell slots: e.g., a 3rd level thief would have a few ‘slots’ for ‘1st level powers’, maybe a slot for a ‘second level power’, etc., and then those are how many times per day they could pick a lock or whatever.
I seem to recall one of the original thief classes had this. Possibly from Warlock? Before Gygax ripped off the idea but got the details wrong for his game.
 
A funny aside about the deep history of the Thief class: in the essay Gygax wrote for the silver anniversary memorabilia book, he recreated, incorrectly, the moment when he supposedly typed up the original game with its four iconic classes - fighter, MU, cleric and thief - for the first draft of the original LBB's. Except there were only three classes in that edition and the thief wasn't one of them.
 
I was looking at Monte Cook's newish (?) game, Cypher System, and how they do this. If I read the rules right, the first rest can be done in a turn, the second in 10 minutes, the third takes an hour, and the fourth takes 10 hours of rest. I'm thinking this could be a neat way to do rests in 5E but I haven't really thought through the ramifications. So I think a character could spend an action to regain a HD, sort of like giving everyone the Second Wind ability, but if they wanted to spend another they would have to wait until after initiative was over in order to spend 10 minutes resting. I guess there would need to be a rule to see how many hit dice could be regained during that first rest, or if it was always limited to one. The second and third rests would be a lot like 5E's Short and the fourth rest is a lot like the Long one, so probably those rules wouldn't change.

I usually play using the grim rules from the DMG, where a Short rest takes a while and a Long one requires resting in a safe place like Rivendell.
Yeah, the example variants in the DMG are
Epic Heroism - a short rest is 5 minutes and a long rest is 1 hour.
Standard heroism - a short rest is 1 hour and a long rest is 8 hours
Gritty realism - a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is 7 days (doesn't really have to be Rivendell safe I think, but probably not going to happen in the depths of a dungeon or on a wilderness journey).

This is just a few examples too, you could mix and match any of these (short rest 5 minutes and long rest of 7 days? Why not) or just come up with your own system for it. The main point is, the system of rests was designed specifically to be easy to change around. You want hit points to represent more than superficial rules and exhaustion? Make rests take longer. You want epic heroes who take short breathers and then push on and who are fully regenerated just by being out of danger for a bit? Make them shorter.
 
A funny aside about the deep history of the Thief class: in the essay Gygax wrote for the silver anniversary memorabilia book, he recreated, incorrectly, the moment when he supposedly typed up the original game with its four iconic classes - fighter, MU, cleric and thief - for the first draft of the original LBB's. Except there were only three classes in that edition and the thief wasn't one of them.
And yet is is a much more natural fit than the weird Cleric class. You can see this in most other fantasy rpgs at the time which weren't influenced by decades of D&D and then by computer games influenced by D&D. Tunnels & Trolls had Warriors, Wizards and Rogues (and Warrior-Wizards), The Fantasy Trip had Heroes and Wizards, Of the BRP games only RuneQuest really had that kind of divide between sorcery and divine magic, and that still worked way different than the D&D Cleric. Thieves feel like the ones that should have been there form the start, not Clerics (who are there because of how the actual play of Arneson's Blackmoor campaign developed).
 
3) I never play that far into level progression, so this probably won't impact me much. But I'm a bit iffy about Epic Boons for the reasons mentioned above about feats. Some Epic Boons might also undermine certain abilities. Epic Boon of Skill Proficiency, for example, makes you proficient in all skills. So...what happens with all the skills you already learned before? What if your character is a rogue (who have more skills than other classes)? Do you just get nothing in return for knowing a greater number of skills previously?
Epic Boons aren't new though. Page 232 of the 5e DMG has them.
 
And yet is is a much more natural fit than the weird Cleric class. You can see this in most other fantasy rpgs at the time which weren't influenced by decades of D&D and then by computer games influenced by D&D. Tunnels & Trolls had Warriors, Wizards and Rogues (and Warrior-Wizards), The Fantasy Trip had Heroes and Wizards, Of the BRP games only RuneQuest really had that kind of divide between sorcery and divine magic, and that still worked way different than the D&D Cleric. Thieves feel like the ones that should have been there form the start, not Clerics (who are there because of how the actual play of Arneson's Blackmoor campaign developed).
Bunnies and Burrows had the Seer which was similar, but I generally think it worked better as a concept.
 
I’ve long thought a good way to handle most (all?) class powers would be through a system that works the same way as spell slots: e.g., a 3rd level thief would have a few ‘slots’ for ‘1st level powers’, maybe a slot for a ‘second level power’, etc., and then those are how many times per day they could pick a lock or whatever. It’s an idea that is obviously very ‘meta’ and gamey, but also you are playing a game that is already completely built around meta, gamey concepts, so maybe just roll with it? At the same time, I would fold other random, unique-mechanic class powers into the same approach, like clerical turning, paladin healing, etc. The end result would be different in sone details, but also would unify around something coherent, structured and time-proven, and also you would massively increase the sense of resource management as the key component of skillful play, which I like.
...

So... Uh... Fourth edition, then?
 
...

So... Uh... Fourth edition, then?
It sounds a lot like it. But a game that had universal set amounts of class powers, but didn't make them all specifically combat powers would end up looking a lot different than 4e.
 
So not a word on fixing:

- High level save scaling.
- High level play in general (although personally I'd be happy if they just removed it)
- The game being higher powered in general then it's supposed to be because of the way they designed an intended rest schedule that no one is really able to follow.
- The lack of any kind of real exploration ruleset which makes one of the core conceptual areas of the Ranger redundant. (Which is a big part of why they can't make one that people are happy with - if they don't want to do this, then they do need to consider whether the Ranger even makes sense as a class).

There's a lot of other areas I would personally fix but these seem to be the main one that didn't arise out of deliberate design decisions to actually create certain outcomes (eg I think the fact that certain spells are no brainer choices better than the alternatives makes the game repetitive and dull - but they've said they did this deliberately so...)

I don't really expect they will actually address any of these things.
 
Last edited:
i think what i like best about this board is there are a lot of VERY experienced gamers in here. who have a lot of experience with a lot of other systems and actually think about being a good player or being a good gm and what a system is trying to do. it makes the commentary quite insightful and not so inciteful.



all-of-this-pointing.gif
I concur. I don't want special abilities so common--they should indeed be special, and I think they should pair down subclasses by like 2/3. No Arcane trickster--want to do that take a wizard level as an example. Just tighten everything up class wise.

BUT spells should be flexible like Silent Image and stuff. I hate the tightening up they've already done because it makes magic less bendable and less fun since you can't mix so many things to make more interesting effects.
 
I concur. I don't want special abilities so common--they should indeed be special, and I think they should pair down subclasses by like 2/3. No Arcane trickster--want to do that take a wizard level as an example. Just tighten everything up class wise.
Yes, That's another thing they could be doing with a revision right around now. They should know the system well enough that they could create much better multi-classing rules.
BUT spells should be flexible like Silent Image and stuff. I hate the tightening up they've already done because it makes magic less bendable and less fun since you can't mix so many things to make more interesting effects.
I think this is a case of people wanting to fix the sympton, not the cause. I think spells should be flexible but less abundant. I think people want them to be less flexible because they are abundant and that just feels like too much.

But they're abundant because of the way they designed the rest schedule, and the addition of cantrips, which combined, make low level magic an abundant and trivial resource.
 
Illusions have always been flexible.

Summon monster used to the most flexible spell in the game. That had to change.

Other spells such Unseen servant have always been flexible in the hands of a clever player.

But of course I wasn’t suggesting making any changes to spells. I was suggesting the opposite.
 
Last edited:
I'm getting a bit of 'fixing' shit for the sake of faffing about rather than any real need vibe. The Games Workshop model isn't a good idea here IMO.
It's not a good model for game design. Whether it's a good model for squeezing as much money out of your IP we will see...

That's pretty much the issue that WOTC have I think. They have instilled a lot of brand loyalty into much of the 5e community. To the extent that a new edition is going to be a hard sell. At some point (and we may be close) you're going to have sold as many core as you're going to, apart from to a trickle of new players. And the supplement treadmill is only sustainable for so long as they get more and more niche.
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top