Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY

[Darth Ultron]

Why does "E6" exist?

Above 10th level WD&D just seems weird to me, and apparently (according Mike Mearls) most 5e WD&D is played no higher than 7th level, which seems believable to me).

TD&D definitely had "power creep" over it's 25 years, but nothing like the giant jump that was 3e WD&D

I think the The Rules Cyclopedia and BECMI did the best D&D leveling.

[Kish]

Why does "E6" exist?

Because people like the 3.5 system at lower levels and want constant advancement, but don't want to have to deal with, e.g, PCs who can teleport and spellcasters being on a whole different plane than non-spellcasters.

Characters who have reached level 6 have proven themselves, but this extremely rapid growth does not go on forever. Instead, they master specialized techniques, or become more versatile. This stage of a character’s development is represented by gaining new feats.

Note: And want constant advancement. E6 would not need to exist if "let's just stop leveling and becoming more powerful in any way at level 6" was a popular playstyle; that simple, straightforward house rule would not require the detailed netbooks written for E6, the careful reframing to make level 6 clearly represent a mighty hero (or villain). E6 is no argument for the 5E "you have a fair chance of failing any skill or hit roll at level 1, and you have a fair chance of failing any skill or hit roll at level 20, but the DM is more likely to say you automatically succeed instead of looking at the roll if you're level 20" thing.

I poked around the E6 netbook some more and found this:

E6 recognizes that 6th level characters are mortal, while reframing the game’s perspective to create a context where those same 6th level characters are epic heroes.
[...]Levels 1 to 6 are a period when a character comes into his own, and a crash course in action and danger transforms them from 1st-level commoners to veteran adventurers (or corpses). Once transformed by their experiences, a character’s growth is no longer a continuous, linear progression. Instead, they specialize or broaden their abilities: There are still major differences between the master warriors and the veteran mercenaries, but it's not a change of scale. This change in progression, which we see frequently in fantasy literature, is modeled through the acquisition of feats.

...so yeah. Thematically, E6 couldn't be further from "low fantasy"; in non-E6 D&D, a sixth-level character is low-level, not a mighty hero. In 5ed, with its mechanics, calling a sixth-level character a mighty hero would just be grotesque; in 3.5ed, with monsters similarly limited (or reflavored--while monsters are CR-capped by default, it could also work for an ancient red dragon to be something like an MMORPG raid boss, a legendary terror to be tackled by forty level 6 adventurers, a small army of the realm's greatest heroes), it can actually work.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Emphasis added in bold.
I was thinking about this post this morning and it reminded me of something I've thought about in relationship to 4e, namely the term 'bloodied.' What if bloodied means physical damage and becomes either a status effect and/or a keyword?
[...]
For those in favor of a more gritty D&D, being bloodied could offer a place to start having wound penalties of some kind or another. I am not yet sure how I would implement wound penalties in D&D. Would it make sense to have a minus to all roles while bloodied, a CON penalty or something more fluid depending on the class?

Star Wars Saga does something like this, where you have a "condition track" of increasing penalties for being wounded and a "damage threshold" where if you take that much damage from a single attack it moves you down a step on the track. The steps are -1 to all rolls and defenses, then -2, -5, -10, and finally unconsciousness, which is pretty good at representing going from unharmed to "nah, just a scratch" to "I'm a goner!", and most status effects are folded into or dependent on the condition track in some way.

Now, in SWSE recovering condition damage and inflicting more of it is pretty easy since it's meant to represent stamina more than anything else, but if you make recovering it pretty difficult (requires lots of bed rest and/or high-DC mundane healing and/or powerful healing spells), flavor it as serious wounds, and attach persistent effects to it like "broken arm" or the like, suddenly you get a nice way to represent wounds that isn't just another track of HP or a simple on/off bloodied switch.

I would say that if a paladin subclass steals the rangers' thunder so effectively, it says something about the rangers.

Well, the thing it mainly says is that stuff that blatantly falls under the ranger theme was given to the paladin, thus restricting the ranger's design space, that's all.

Sorcerers used to be the ones with all the fiend/celestial/dragon/fey flavor due to their bloodlines, and then 5e introduced the warlock with fiend/celestial/dragon/fey patrons, and if sorcerers had been primarily defined by the bloodline flavor (as opposed to being full arcane casters first and guys with wonky bloodline powers a distant second) you can bet that either the warlock would have stolen the sorcerer's thunder and made him seem somewhat superfluous or they both would have had watered-down flavor from trying to split the same theme.

I'm not necessarily in the "rangers have to be their own full class or else!" camp, but it's definitely the case that people are being too quick to claim that the ranger's schticks can just be handed off to the fighter, rogue, or druid without losing anything. And the fact that we're looking at using three classes to fulfill the ranger archetype implies that it's not so dispensable, just like a rogue/fighter/wizard multiclass doesn't fulfill the bard archetype on its own.

That's kind of the problem here. Why shouldn't the rogue be able to do all that? Or anyone with proficiency in survival and/or stealth?

For the same reason that ranks in Stealth don't let you Sneak Attack, either. Some things should be available to anyone with certain skills, and some things should be class features available only to certain classes, for thematic reasons or role protection or synergy or whatever other reasons.

That being said, it's not like the rogue is standing on very form ground, either. I feel like maybe rogues and rangers should be merged as a "stealthy problem-solver and scout" class, with subclasses providing different flavors thereof. The more outright fantastical varieties of ranger, like beasmastery and such, can be their own class, or a subclass. Or a druid's subclass, or something.

Oh, I'm totally in favor of making ranger into one or more subclasses rather than a class on par with fighter or rogue; like I said upthread, in my current work-in-progress class system there are different ranger subclasses for the fighter, rogue, and druid so you can build the "monster slayer" ranger, "stealthy uber-tracker" ranger, or "one with nature" ranger. I just think it probably does have to be (a) full subclass(es), and not just a few building blocks added to other classes, unless you're breaking down classes to the point that every other hybrid class is also building blocks and you're most of the way to a classless system.

Because their per-day resources have a way smaller impact.

+5d6 fire damage to every attack from Dragonfire Inspiration or a charging smite with a x3 crit weapon is a pretty big impact, and a magic missile or spike stones spell is a pretty small one. Spells being a daily resource and some spells being combat-enders or plot-solvers are orthogonal issues; most spells can be balanced on a daily basis just fine in comparison to other resource schedules, and those that can't are due to their overly-impactful effects, not their resource schedule, and probably can't be balanced as-is in other resource schedules either.

[Cosi]

I tend to like doing it that way instead of subclass multiclassing because in that setup you can either subclass your main class or multiclass, not both, so you can have a Wizard (Evoker) or a Wizard (Fighter) but not an Evoker (Fighter) or a Fighter (Evoker).

I don't think you have to do it that way. You could ban Wizard sub-Wizard if you wanted, and there's no reason to expect that there wouldn't be customization options within a class. There is, at minimum, the specialization of choosing whichever spells it is you choose.

Definitely true. I do think, though, that it's easier to AD&D multiclass/3e gestalt a class onto a monster (like my upthread example of an ogre being a Giant and an ogre mage being a Giant//Wizard) than to have monster subclasses you'd swap out for player-class subclasses because it makes writing monsters easier (you don't have to worry about which of their abilities might get swapped out in a multiclass scenario and how integral those are to running the monsters, it's a complete unit on its own and you can add on whatever you want) and modifying monsters easier for DMs (strictly adding abilities and increasing some numbers is easier to do on the fly than trading abilities and adjusting things up and down).

What? The subclass is supposed to be its own complete track. There's no swapping abilities around.

Not all clerics of Boccob are just wizards with a couple priestly class features on top in the same way that not all paladins of Heironeous are just fighters with a couple priestly class features on top--and, for that matter, priests of Wee Jas aren't just priests with a couple necromancer-y class features on top, either.

Why not? I could understand having priests of Boccob who were Sorcerers or Warlocks, but I can't see any benefit to a unified Priest class which provides mechanical support for both priests of Pelor and Nerull. Do priests of Grummsh and priests whatever-the-Elf-god-is have enough in common to carry an entire class? Does whatever that is generalize to priests of Obad-hai, Kord, and Tiamat?

Classes are supposed to not just provide a theme, but also provide different resource subsystems (or lack thereof, in the case of some classes) and different mechanical ways to express the same flavor.

I agree. But classes need to have the same level of conceptual weight. And I don't see a satisfying Priest class that is the equal of Necromancer, Shaman, Druid, Summoner, Illusionist, Fire Mage, or Warlock. You also have to remember that it goes the other way too. If you write a Priest class that has enough mechanical diversity to support both Vecna and Karl Glittergold, people are going to want to play characters who use the Illusion and Death spheres without having to worship your god of Assassins. Going the other way works better.

Yeah, it's the conceptual block I was talking about, not the mechanical part--it's not that you can't balance them, just that up to this point the designers haven't, so they've used magic items to sneakily give the fighter magic with varying levels of success.

I don't think the magic item system has done that since 3e. If everyone gets the same magic, the catch-up effect is minimal.

The main benefit of the luck blade in this scenario is actually the wishes it potentially comes with; the trident comes in very handy in certain campaigns, and the holy avenger comes in very handy for certain classes, but there's no class for whom or scenario in which the luck blade doesn't come in handy (albeit only 1 to 3 times). I wasn't even thinking about the boring bonuses part, and am definitely in favor of ditching those for the most part and making "+X weapon" one weapon option among many (and not a particularly appealing one) rather than a default part of every magic weapon.

Sure, the story where you find a thing with a bunch of wishes is a good one. But it's not particularly better than the story where you find a thing that lets you control fish, or that lets you send your shadow out to kill people, or whatever other magic stuff you could be doing. +X weapons shouldn't exist at all. Magic items should probably give a fixed "its magic" bonus if they give any bonus at all.

Disagree; there's nothing wrong with enabling people to play pre-Trench-Run Luke, pre-unplugged-from-the-Matrix Neo, pre-Eye-of-the-World Rand, and other characters who are still more "commoner swept up in larger events" than action hero. But the game should definitely make clear that that is what 1st level represents, that 3rd level (or whenever) represents more capable heroes, and that it's perfectly acceptable and even encouraged to start above 1st to get the particular feel you're looking for, instead of making it seem like you have to start at 1st or you're doing it wrong (which none of the editions really do, but they don't do anything to argue against that common perception, either).

I think if you want to do that it's probably better to put in content below 1st level. Have like a Prologue Mode or something where you run through a level 0 adventure as part of character creation.

Those are benefits, yes. I'm honestly not sure if they're worth the drawbacks, especially considering how wobbly the CR system has always been.

I think the CR system is actually pretty good. It's not perfect, but it's mostly accurate, and when it's inaccurate it's usually not by very much (even the much feared-Shadow and Giant Crab are probably only CR 5 monsters). Certainly it's better than the alternative of "the DM has to wing it".

Is it? Or is it just something people have taken for granted because that's what the rules result in?

Yes. Even BECMI D&D went up to Immortals, who "who discovered the multiverse, and decided to give it order and purpose". Every edition of D&D (except 5e, though it's not over yet) has explicitly endorsed the notion that things would eventually go all crazy and gonzo. The idea that you eventually become very powerful is a deep part of D&D's heritage, and shows up to varying degrees in the source material. The hobbits in LotR don't become particularly powerful in an absolute sense, but they do become much more powerful than any other hobbits.

This I can mostly agree with, but the logical conclusion is that low levels can remain low-powered and people who want to be action heroes right off the bat can just start at a higher level.

Certainly there should be some degree of that, but you only have so many levels for your power progression.

Those are roles that can and should be covered. But whether or not they deserve entire classes is another question altogether. If we're going to have, say 12 classes, then we really do need to decide which ideas deserve them and which can be covered by subclasses, feats or something else. Creating Aragorn should be possible - whether or not you need a whole class called "ranger" to do that is a different question.

I mean, if you have a class that you could plausibly call "Ranger", there's no real reason to not call it "Ranger". I'm all for killing sacred cows, but I don't really understand your apparent grudge against that idea of Rangers.

I've never thought about it this way. It's a fair point, but I'm not sure how I feel like designing things around high-end play. Power granted by deities or otherworldy patrons is a staple, so should we restrict players from using it because of something that might happen on a level of play that they will likely never see?

You don't have to eliminate it, you just have to be careful with how it works. The obvious solution in my mind would be to have Lloth's spider magic be something she teaches you, rather than something she gives you. So if you happen to be a real prodigy at spider magic, you can become more powerful than Lloth, and if you do decide to kill Lloth all you lose is access to whatever secret spider magic she hasn't taught you yet.

Wall of stone twice a week replaces every stonemason in the world, unless it's really expensive.

Anything that requires you to get the attention of someone who can by definition cast fabricate, major creation, wall of stone, and lesser planar binding is going to be expensive. What do you even offer someone who can do that? You can't give them stuff, because they can make all the stuff you make better and faster. You can't give them money, because money is used to buy stuff.

[2D8HP]

Actually, I've been ruminating on this for a long time and had asked friends and acquaintances on how they would fix D&D, and based on how much I see this on the forums and in people's answers...

Not sure if this merits a separate thread, and I want to ask - why so many people wish for D&D to be a gritty low magic fantasy game? .

Because I want "Dungeons & Dragons" to feel more like the D&D I played again (but not all of the way, having most of my new PC's survive till second level is an exciting novelty).

It hasn't been that for ages,

I suppose, but that change was while I wasn't playing, so it seems like a big adjustment.

and there are literally dozens of those on the market, as far as I'm aware, and they have been designed as such from the start.

As was D&D, at first.

I've heard lots of good things (bad things too, though) about LotFP, some good remarks on Shadow of the Demon Lord or something like that, etc. Most heartbreakers of older D&D versions also attempt to skew the board towards "gritty realism".

Meanwhile, my project of remaking D&D only exists because there is no game I know of in the genre of "superpowered fantasy heroes"

1985's Fantasy Hero leaps to mind

aside from Exalted similar in tone to what I want to play and DM, and Exalted's mechanics are kinda bad and would require much more work to redo properly, while higher-level D&D would work quite well for that with a full progression in 20 levels from mortal to demigod.

Why does "E6" exist?

Above 10th level WD&D just seems weird to me, and apparently (according to Mike Mearls) most 5e WD&D is played no higher than 7th level (which seems believable to me).

TD&D definitely had "power creep" over it's 25 years, but nothing like the giant jump that was 3e WD&D (and I presume 4e).

That a common complaint about 5e WD&D is that it is too "low power" seems amazing to me as, while fun, it seems more like 3e WD&D to me than TD&D.

In most things 5e WD&D seems like a "compromise edition" designed to be "everyone's second favorite: and, judging by how many new players there are, it seemd to be working..

Because people like the 3.5 system at lower levels and want constant advancement, but don't want to have to deal with, e.g, PCs who can teleport and spellcasters being on a whole different plane than non-spellcasters.

Note: And want constant advancement. E6 would not need to exist if "let's just stop leveling and becoming more powerful in any way at level 6" was a popular playstyle; that simple, straightforward house rule would not require the detailed netbooks written for E6, the careful reframing to make level 6 clearly represent a mighty hero (or villain). E6 is no argument for the 5E "you have a fair chance of failing any skill or hit roll at level 1, and you have a fair chance of failing any skill or hit roll at level 20, but the DM is more likely to say you automatically succeed instead of looking at the roll if you're level 20" thing....
:

.....so yeah. Thematically, E6 couldn't be further from "low fantasy"; in non-E6 D&D, a sixth-level character is low-level, not a mighty hero. In 5ed, with its mechanics, calling a sixth-level character a mighty hero would just be grotesque; in 3.5ed, with monsters similarly limited (or reflavored--while monsters are CR-capped by default, it could also work for an ancient red dragon to be something like an MMORPG raid boss, a legendary terror to be tackled by forty level 6 adventurers, a small army of the realm's greatest heroes), it can actually work.

My "Why does E6 exist? " was a rhetorical question towards arguing that there is a demand for lower level play by people besides me.

And you'll get no argument from me that 5e WD&D gets wonkier at high levels.

I only briefly glanced at 4e so I could be mistaken, but AFAICT a 1st level 5e PC is probably the most powerful first level PC of any edition of D&D, but a 20th level one is weaker.

I have mixed feelings about how powerful 1st level 5e PC's are but, especially given how fast PC's "level-up" in 5e, I'm happy they weakened 20th level.

[Kish]

But again, if it was just a demand for lower-level play, that would call for a simple level cap house rule, or for "you reach level 7 and retire; we're starting over with new first-level characters." E6 has as its core assumption "the PCs will get beyond sixth level, enough that if I don't want them to have fifth-level spells I need to totally overhaul the game system." I would say it's very much a system for mid-level-and-above play; true low-level play (which does certainly exist) doesn't need it.

Then again, if you mean "low-level" as "no one creates walls of iron or does 20d6 damage to all and only enemies within 60 feet of each other," granted; however far you progress with E6, you'll never have what D&D would call high-level spells.

These three campaign stories make interesting reading, I think. I'd start with the second, which is why it's the one I linked to; the first has a particular adversarial DM/PCs dynamic which is somewhat amusing, as well as somewhat frustrating, to read, but shouldn't be taken as an example of normal 3.5 play (and the second is generally my favorite).

[2D8HP]

....These three campaign stories make interesting reading...

Thank you very much for that!

I'll read it with interest.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

What? The subclass is supposed to be its own complete track. There's no swapping abilities around.

Not swapping things within the subclass, swapping out subclasses. If monsters are set up to have a class and a subclass like players to enable building a giant shaman as a Giant (Druid) or whatever, then the basic giant presumably has a subclass like (Giant), (Brute), or the like, and you swap out Giant (Giant) for Giant (Druid) to make a shaman, Giant (Marshal) to make a warlord, or whatever. In which case you need to consider whether a giant feels sufficiently giant-y (if the subclass has active and thematic abilities) and/or is sufficiently strong (if the subclass is mostly passive abilities and numerical boosts) with its subclass traded out for something else.

Unless the subclass setup you're proposing is not mandatory subclassing for everything, but rather stapling a condensed version of one class onto another class or onto a monster, in which case I don't see how that meaningfully differs from a two-class-only multiclassing approach.

Why not? I could understand having priests of Boccob who were Sorcerers or Warlocks, but I can't see any benefit to a unified Priest class which provides mechanical support for both priests of Pelor and Nerull. Do priests of Grummsh and priests whatever-the-Elf-god-is have enough in common to carry an entire class? Does whatever that is generalize to priests of Obad-hai, Kord, and Tiamat?

From a purely thematic perspective, priests of Pelor and priests of Nerull have at least as much in common as sorcerers with a celestial bloodline and sorcerers with a shadow bloodline, or conjurers and necromancers. One person in each of those duos deals in angels, team buffs, and glowy light while the other deals in undead minions, death spells, and scary darkness, but both recognizably go about things in the same way. If those priests should be a template on top of different classes, so could those other examples and a bunch more, and at that point you have no base classes to layer a template onto.

From a mechanical perspective, yes, you can generalize to any religion, and you can get there just by smashing together the 2e and 3e clerics. Give them spells in a hybrid of the sphere and domain models (lots of small themed lists with attached powers like domains, no hard one-spell-per-level restriction and multiple levels of access like spheres), compose individual priest spell lists from groups of spheres/domains granted by their god, add a turning/rebuking or Channel Divinity mechanic for powering generic-priest powers like healing allies or activating sphere/domain powers or smiting enemies of the faith on a different schedule, and make one or more faith-specific powers per religion (so a priest of Obad Hai with the Plant, Animal, and Balance spheres is still different from a priestess of Ehlonna with the Plant, Animal, and Balance spheres), and voilà, highly differentiated priests of different faiths that all share the same mechanical base. And that's just an idea that purely borrows from existing cleric classes; you can easily take it in other directions.

The reason to do things that way instead of just having a priest template or subclass for other classes is that (A) most gods aren't going to map neatly to one or more classes--Heironeous to paladin, Nerull to necromancer, Obad-Hai to druid, Olidammara to rogue, sure, easy, and Moradin can be fighter or artificer, Erythnul can be barbarian or assassin, and so on, but there's no healing-and-lasers class for Pelor (he doesn't care about most druid-y stuff, arcane blasters don't get healing, a Healer class wouldn't get blasting), no lucky-wanderer class for Fharlanghn, no nurturing-protector class for Yondalla (druids are nurturing but not protectors, paladins are protectors but more offensive than nurturing), and so on--and (B) even if they did, the ones that map to casters would be much more traditional-cleric-like than those who mapped to other classes.

Of course, many or even most priests of a given god might want to be a Fighter (Priest) or Wizard (Priest) or the like instead of a plain ol' Priest, in the same way that a lot of players want to play mystic theurges and war priests and such in 3e, and that's okay, but having Priest be subclass-only isn't really sufficient any more than having Wizard be subclass-only would be.

I agree. But classes need to have the same level of conceptual weight. And I don't see a satisfying Priest class that is the equal of Necromancer, Shaman, Druid, Summoner, Illusionist, Fire Mage, or Warlock. You also have to remember that it goes the other way too. If you write a Priest class that has enough mechanical diversity to support both Vecna and Karl Glittergold, people are going to want to play characters who use the Illusion and Death spheres without having to worship your god of Assassins. Going the other way works better.

Yes, you could write up a different class or subclass for every possible concept that might fit a priest of a god in your pantheon, but why do that when you can have one class that handles all of those concepts with much less mechanical overhead? It's nice to have the option of playing a focused caster like a beguiler, warmage, or dread necromancer, but if there were no wizard or sorcerer class and you had to write up classes like Battlemage (blasting), Warmage (wards and mass buffs), Necromancer (undead minions), Death Mage (life drain), and so on to cover all the themes that a wizard or sorcerer with the appropriate spell selection can cover, that would quickly grow prohibitively time-consuming.

Now, if the fact you mentioned Necromancer, Illusionist, and Fire Mage instead of Wizard or Sorcerer means you want to get of the Wizard, Fighter, and Rogue as well as the Priest for all being too broad and replace them with much more specialized versions, I suppose I can see where you're coming from there. But aside from that being pretty darn not-D&D for a "fixing D&D" thread, I fail to see what that gains you over retaining the broad classes and making the narrower classes subclasses of the broad ones.

I think if you want to do that it's probably better to put in content below 1st level. Have like a Prologue Mode or something where you run through a level 0 adventure as part of character creation.

Two issues with this. Firstly, those parts of the Luke/Neo/Rand/etc. stories aren't just a one-adventure let's-get-this-over-with kind of thing before the "real" story starts, they're noticeable portions of those respective stories (Luke is a neophyte warrior and Force-user through all of Episode 4 and part of Episode 5, dramatic critical hit on the Death Star notwithstanding; Neo isn't The One for most of the first movie; Rand doesn't really come into his own until book 3 of 12 in his series), and it's entirely possible to want to play a long campaign arc or even a whole campaign as wizard apprentices, Jedi padawans, a band of plucky young thieves, and so on. So supporting those concepts for a level or three is important to enable the "zero" part of "zero to hero."

Second, if 1st level is a high baseline of competence, then you don't have much room to go "down." AD&D and 3e already have a relatively low-power 1st level that puts everything from kobolds to shopkeepers to housecats on basically the same scale and causes the "housecats kill commoners" issue, so squeezing more things in there doesn't help.

[Morty]

For the same reason that ranks in Stealth don't let you Sneak Attack, either. Some things should be available to anyone with certain skills, and some things should be class features available only to certain classes, for thematic reasons or role protection or synergy or whatever other reasons.

Oh, I'm totally in favor of making ranger into one or more subclasses rather than a class on par with fighter or rogue; like I said upthread, in my current work-in-progress class system there are different ranger subclasses for the fighter, rogue, and druid so you can build the "monster slayer" ranger, "stealthy uber-tracker" ranger, or "one with nature" ranger. I just think it probably does have to be (a) full subclass(es), and not just a few building blocks added to other classes, unless you're breaking down classes to the point that every other hybrid class is also building blocks and you're most of the way to a classless system.

Yes, I can definitely get behind "ranger" themes being handled by subclasses. After all, its main problem is that it's got a lot of disparate class features that don't really fit together that well. It's true that feats and proficiencies probably can't get the job done here. But a "monster slayer", "survivor" or "beastmaster" subclass for whatever big classes are there can.

+5d6 fire damage to every attack from Dragonfire Inspiration or a charging smite with a x3 crit weapon is a pretty big impact, and a magic missile or spike stones spell is a pretty small one. Spells being a daily resource and some spells being combat-enders or plot-solvers are orthogonal issues; most spells can be balanced on a daily basis just fine in comparison to other resource schedules, and those that can't are due to their overly-impactful effects, not their resource schedule, and probably can't be balanced as-is in other resource schedules either.

True enough, I suppose. I'd still get rid of daily spells, because I don't think daily abilities of any sort create a very healthy gameplay dynamic. Some of them can work if we spread them more evenly, if not entirely symmetrically like 4e did, among different classes. Certainly not as the main resource of some classes but not others.

Yes. Even BECMI D&D went up to Immortals, who "who discovered the multiverse, and decided to give it order and purpose". Every edition of D&D (except 5e, though it's not over yet) has explicitly endorsed the notion that things would eventually go all crazy and gonzo. The idea that you eventually become very powerful is a deep part of D&D's heritage, and shows up to varying degrees in the source material. The hobbits in LotR don't become particularly powerful in an absolute sense, but they do become much more powerful than any other hobbits.

The idea that you eventually become powerful has certainly been there for a long time, but the execution has been, to put it mildly, lacking. The game goes up to level 20 or beyond, but it's never had a good idea of what it is after level 10. Not just rules, but also the fiction. This is also where the magic/non-magic disparity comes in, of course, with the game gushing about how awesome and powerful high-level archmages are, but having no clue how to depict its high-level warriors beyond "really good with weapons, I mean really good". High-level rogues and similar don't seem to exist. To say nothing of the consistent unwillingness to consider the impact the high-level characters would have on the world.

Certainly there should be some degree of that, but you only have so many levels for your power progression.

Yes, and D&D has only ever properly used maybe a half of them.

I mean, if you have a class that you could plausibly call "Ranger", there's no real reason to not call it "Ranger". I'm all for killing sacred cows, but I don't really understand your apparent grudge against that idea of Rangers.

I don't have a "grudge" against the "idea of Rangers". I just think the class as it has worked in D&D for a long time just isn't something we can work with.

You don't have to eliminate it, you just have to be careful with how it works. The obvious solution in my mind would be to have Lloth's spider magic be something she teaches you, rather than something she gives you. So if you happen to be a real prodigy at spider magic, you can become more powerful than Lloth, and if you do decide to kill Lloth all you lose is access to whatever secret spider magic she hasn't taught you yet.

I suppose it would also explain why clerics have to learn their skills just like every other profession.

[Cosi]

Unless the subclass setup you're proposing is not mandatory subclassing for everything, but rather stapling a condensed version of one class onto another class or onto a monster, in which case I don't see how that meaningfully differs from a two-class-only multiclassing approach.

Mandatory subclassing for PCs. Monsters might or might not get a subclass, depending on something like 4e's minion/normal/solo/elite thing, with some mechanism for a monster having only a subclass. So your basic Giant would get whatever the abilities of the Giant subclass were (presumably "being large" and "throwing rocks"), and the various flavored Giants (Fire, Ice, Stone, Storm) would have feats or magic item equivalents to give them a minimum of fire powers or ice powers. Then you could layer on other classes for giants that happened to be elite. Like a Shaman sub Giant or a Warlord sub Giant.

Also, not necessarily a condensed version. Something that felt plausibly class-ish, with a single resource management system and a simplified progression.

From a purely thematic perspective, priests of Pelor and priests of Nerull have at least as much in common as sorcerers with a celestial bloodline and sorcerers with a shadow bloodline, or conjurers and necromancers.

Summoner and Necromancer should be separate classes. Bloodline powers are not a big deal, or at least they don't have to be. 3e bloodlines are feats.

One person in each of those duos deals in angels, team buffs, and glowy light while the other deals in undead minions, death spells, and scary darkness, but both recognizably go about things in the same way.

No they don't. Look at the Necromancer versus the Summoner. The Necromancer walks around with a pile of minions that are small, crappy, and active all the time. The Summoner, uh, summons individual monsters during combat, or if he does use something like planar binding gets a single powerful minion. Not to mention that the tactical niches of the priest of Pelor (healing, defense, lasers) and the priest of Nerull (minions, death effects, curses) are actually completely different.

If those priests should be a template on top of different classes, so could those other examples and a bunch more, and at that point you have no base classes to layer a template onto.

Those examples literally are templates on top of different classes. In fact, they're templates within a class. But suppose we do allow priests to have either shadow powers or light powers, rather than having a Shadowcaster and White Mage, what happens to all the people who want to play characters with light powers who don't want to worship Pelor? Do they not exist? Do you write up another light power suite for a different class?

but there's no healing-and-lasers class for Pelor (he doesn't care about most druid-y stuff, arcane blasters don't get healing, a Healer class wouldn't get blasting)

You could write a White Mage class. Or do like WoW did and make that a Paladin specialization.

no lucky-wanderer class for Fharlanghn

Pretty sure that's a Bard. Or a Rogue. Maybe a Ranger.

no nurturing-protector class for Yondalla (druids are nurturing but not protectors, paladins are protectors but more offensive than nurturing)

I don't understand why Druid doesn't work here. Bears, for example, are quite famously protective, and there are any number of herd animals for a community value. Whatever class has animal powers has plenty of mandate to be a "nurturing protector".

even if they did, the ones that map to casters would be much more traditional-cleric-like than those who mapped to other classes.

I mean, yes, the ones that are more like the Cleric class would be more like Clerics. Duh. But the traditional Cleric class does not particularly feel like a priest of many of the possible gods.

Yes, you could write up a different class or subclass for every possible concept that might fit a priest of a god in your pantheon, but why do that when you can have one class that handles all of those concepts with much less mechanical overhead?

Because that class is then eating all the conceptual space that should go to other classes. White Mage is a totally viable class, as is Necromancer, and all the other things that you want to be Cleric specs. Those things should be classes, and if you are going to write up enough content to do a viable Cleric build as each of them, you should just write up the classes without the baggage.

Two issues with this. Firstly, those parts of the Luke/Neo/Rand/etc. stories aren't just a one-adventure let's-get-this-over-with kind of thing before the "real" story starts, they're noticeable portions of those respective stories

Kind of? Movies and books are different from D&D. Yeah, Neo doesn't turn into a kung fu badass until a decent chunk of the way into the movie. But there are kung fu badasses doing badass kung fu from the beginning of the movie (literally, the first scene is Trinity running from Agents). Also, while there's a decent chunk of screen time dedicated to pre-The One Neo, there aren't a lot of (I don't think any) fight scenes where he'd just a baseline human. Most of the stuff Neo does before getting his upgrade falls under roleplaying, not stuff that would be covered by the rules of the game.

Second, if 1st level is a high baseline of competence, then you don't have much room to go "down." AD&D and 3e already have a relatively low-power 1st level that puts everything from kobolds to shopkeepers to housecats on basically the same scale and causes the "housecats kill commoners" issue, so squeezing more things in there doesn't help.

1st level doesn't have to be the bottom of the system. It could be, but it's ultimately just numbers. The only real issue is hit dice causing potential non-linearity.

The idea that you eventually become powerful has certainly been there for a long time, but the execution has been, to put it mildly, lacking. The game goes up to level 20 or beyond, but it's never had a good idea of what it is after level 10.

Sure, but that's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. D&D may not have handled it well, but there's plenty of source material for it, and a clear mandate for attempting to do it. So I think you need to sit down and figure out what the game is supposed to look like at that point, because "that part doesn't exist" is quite clearly not an acceptable answer.

[Cluedrew]

The idea that you eventually become powerful has certainly been there for a long time, but the execution has been, to put it mildly, lacking. The game goes up to level 20 or beyond, but it's never had a good idea of what it is after level 10. Not just rules, but also the fiction. This is also where the magic/non-magic disparity comes in, of course, with the game gushing about how awesome and powerful high-level archmages are, but having no clue how to depict its high-level warriors beyond "really good with weapons, I mean really good". High-level rogues and similar don't seem to exist. To say nothing of the consistent unwillingness to consider the impact the high-level characters would have on the world.

"Yoink," the Thief said, and stole the sun.

Just read that a few days ago. There is a place for this high level stuff, but D&D hasn't seem to have found it. I think the old model of shifting from adventures to members of high society had more potential, but was a bit of an odd fit and it got replaced. Mind you they replaced it by giving the wizards the plot-device spell and just letting the numbers on everyone else just continue to climb. Neither solution is great and together even less so.

[Darth Ultron]

The game goes up to level 20 or beyond, but it's never had a good idea of what it is after level 10. Not just rules, but also the fiction. This is also where the magic/non-magic disparity comes in, of course, with the game gushing about how awesome and powerful high-level archmages are, but having no clue how to depict its high-level warriors beyond "really good with weapons, I mean really good". High-level rogues and similar don't seem to exist. To say nothing of the consistent unwillingness to consider the impact the high-level characters would have on the world.

The D&D Rules Cyclopedia and BECMI had a good system for this.
1-3 Basic-The characters stay within a mile or so of their home town and explore ruins and dungeons and have simple, short adventures.
4-9 Expert-The characters adventure all over the map, and have moderate adventures.
9th Name Level-At this level an adventure has made a ''name'' for themselves, good or bad. You could stay a 'nomad' or settle down and accept some land, and become part of the nobility and manage your own domain.
10-20 Campaign-At this level adventure is across the Planes and are complex and long. A lot of the adventure focus is on kingdoms, domains and politics.
20-40 Master-At this level adventures are Epic across time and space and anywhere else. A lot of the adventure focus is on worlds, cosmic empires, and politics.
40+ Immortal-At this level adventures are Immortally Epic.

Typical Sample Adventures:
Basic: In Search of the Unknown: exploration of a dangerous labyrinth
Expert:The Isle of Dread: exploration of a dangerous island and Red Arrow, Black Shield: The player characters lead diplomatic missions and armies against the Desert Nomads and their evil leader.
Companion: Earthshaker:is a humorous scenario regarding a giant mechanical war machine and the factions trying to control it, from the inside. The adventure also covers the player characters attempting to run a dukedom.
Master:In to the Maelstrom: The player characters lead a magical flying fleet to defend the world against an invading evil.
Immortal: The Immortal Storm: novice Immortal-level characters must stop a supernatural storm threatens the entire multiverse.

The general idea was a Player Character would semi retire after 9th level, often to rule. Adventure would still come up from time to time, but it was not an every day thing. So years could pass between adventures.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm going to note that my 'practical solution' to D&D is to try and run The Dark Eye instead, which does a lot of things I want (weaker magicians, more customisable characters, each attribute is potentially important to everybody), but as it's so hard to sell anybody on something that isn't D&D if I run it's almost always in a system that I don't actually like.

Which is to me the problem with D&D. I don't find it fun to run. Characters have a fairly narrow field of existence between 'can't take a hit' and 'caster god game', and even 5e has only solved it by making warriors more effective damage gods.

I am loving the amount of discussion here, mainly not participating because I don't have the free time to do more than skim most posts.

[SimonMoon6]

One more thing I would definitely add:

I would hard-wire into the game certain skill checks as being "allowed without having to describe exactly what you're doing".

For example, when you use your strength to swing a weapon, you do not have to describe how the weapon is swung; you just roll dice. When you use your dexterity to pick a lock or disarm a device, you do not have to describe how you use your dexterity to do so; you just roll dice. When you use your charisma to persuade a guard to let you pass, you do not have to describe how the persuasion is performed; you simply roll dice. And when you use your intelligence to solve a puzzle or riddle, you do not have to solve the puzzle or riddle yourself; you simply roll dice.

This would accomplish several things:

(1) The player doesn't have to be as skilled as the player character. Nobody ever assumes that a player needs to be a great fighter to play a great fighter, but often, rather poor DMs seem to think a player needs to be a great orator in order to play a great orator. That's stupid and just makes charisma even more of a dump stat for everyone. The same is true with intelligence. When a group of PCs encounters a riddle, a rather poor DM thinks it is okay to challenge the *players* instead of the *PCs* with a riddle, when actually it should be the PCs who are challenged. That means that a smart player playing a dumb PC will have that dumb PC figure out all the complicated riddles while the dumb guy playing a smart PC will have a supposedly smart PC who can NEVER figure out ANYTHING.

(2) This also means that there will have to be a new skill added to the game (since just leaving "puzzle solving" as an INT check might be too easy for those bad DMs to overlook). So, it might be called "Riddle Master" or "Puzzle Solving", but I'd rather give it a more generic name like "Cleverness" which allows for solving puzzles or riddles with just a roll of a die.

Example:

DM: You are faced with a Sphinx. The sphinx speaks a riddle. The riddle has a DC of 25.

Player: Can I take 10?

DM: Sure.

Player: Okay, I've got 11 ranks in Cleverness and a +4 Int modifier. that gives me a total skill check of 25 when I take 10.

DM: Okay, you've solved the riddle.

(3) Certain skill checks will allow PCs to earn XP. Why should killing monsters be the only way to get XP? Disarming traps, persuading guards, and solving riddles with a die roll should be things that grant xp in the same way that making a die roll to kill a monster should. Of course, there should be a system that makes it so that PCs can't simply make skill checks over and over again to try to game the system; it should only count for skill checks that are an important part of the adventure.

Also, Charisma based skill checks must be allowed to work equally well on PCs as on NPCs. If it's okay for an opponent to become your friend via Charm Person, why can't he become your friend via Diplomacy?

[JoeJ]

One more thing I would definitely add:

I would hard-wire into the game certain skill checks as being "allowed without having to describe exactly what you're doing".

For example, when you use your strength to swing a weapon, you do not have to describe how the weapon is swung; you just roll dice. When you use your dexterity to pick a lock or disarm a device, you do not have to describe how you use your dexterity to do so; you just roll dice. When you use your charisma to persuade a guard to let you pass, you do not have to describe how the persuasion is performed; you simply roll dice. And when you use your intelligence to solve a puzzle or riddle, you do not have to solve the puzzle or riddle yourself; you simply roll dice.

Your change would make me not want to play that game. The reason good DMs don't base those kinds of things on die rolls is that those players who enjoy having puzzles and social interaction in their game want to try and solve the challenge themselves. Making it a simple skill check takes that away from them.

Combat challenges the players, not just their characters, because it's the player who has to decide the tactics; which weapon or spell to use, who to target, how to position themselves, when to attempt a special maneuver, when to retreat or surrender, etc. Replacing all that with a Tactics skill check would make combat too boring to bother with. Social interaction and exploration need to challenge the players the same way or they're not worth doing at all.

[Kish]

I think it's more ambiguous than that.

Sure, combat involves the player choosing tactics (and, on this particular forum, I'm probably in the minority in suggesting that it's bad roleplaying for a character with single-digit Intelligence and Wisdom to come up with good tactics, or rather suggesting that that matters). What about something that really is pure brute force--bending a bar, for example? The player obviously doesn't need to bend a metal bar in real life, or suffer any penalty to their character's ability to do so from the player's lack of physical prowess. A player who can barely lift ten pounds can play a massive bruiser without restriction. So should a player who is hopeless at riddles be automatically restricted to playing characters who are hopeless at riddles?

[JoeJ]

I think it's more ambiguous than that.

Sure, combat involves the player choosing tactics (and, on this particular forum, I'm probably in the minority in suggesting that it's bad roleplaying for a character with single-digit Intelligence and Wisdom to come up with good tactics, or rather suggesting that that matters). What about something that really is pure brute force--bending a bar, for example? The player obviously doesn't need to bend a metal bar in real life, or suffer any penalty to their character's ability to do so from the player's lack of physical prowess. A player who can barely lift ten pounds can play a massive bruiser without restriction. So should a player who is hopeless at riddles be automatically restricted to playing characters who are hopeless at riddles?

It has nothing to do with how good the player is at solving riddles. The question is does the player enjoy solving riddles, regardless of how good at it they are? If they do, why take that away from them? If they don't, why allow them to take that away from players who do?

[PhoenixPhyre]

It has nothing to do with how good the player is at solving riddles. The question is does the player enjoy solving riddles, regardless of how good at it they are? If they do, why take that away from them? If they don't, why allow them to take that away from players who do?

See, people differ here.

I don't like most "player challenge" puzzles. Because they're both immersion breaking (why does this puzzle only work in English?) and often devolve into reading the creator's mind (due to ambiguity, etc.). They also take an inordinate amount of table time.

I probably wouldn't go so far as abstracting away the puzzle entirely behind a single roll (because I'm not fond of single points of failure), but I could certainly see allowing a roll to get a hint/partial solution. Especially with puzzles that would be much easier to see if you're there in person than just hearing the words (anything revolving around 3D placement of objects, for example, or similarities in visual appearance). This also allows people to play characters that differ from them in mental attributes.

But then, I don't play for challenge of any kind. It's meaningless to me. My biggest source of enjoyment is exploration of the unknown. What's beyond that hill? Behind that door? What happens if I do X? I find "challenge-oriented" play to devolve into "plan so we win before we even start" 5D chess matches. Which I find horribly boring. And that's the best case--worst case it's a meat-grinder that leaves me disconnected from the characters and events or a purely artificial difficulty event (like random levels with completely different mechanics in the middle of a video game).

[JoeJ]

See, people differ here.

I don't like most "player challenge" puzzles. Because they're both immersion breaking (why does this puzzle only work in English?) and often devolve into reading the creator's mind (due to ambiguity, etc.). They also take an inordinate amount of table time.

I also find puzzles that only work in one language to be immersion breaking, unless that language also exists in the game world. I don't use them. Instead, I'll use logic puzzles, or mysteries that have to be solved by putting clues together, or classic riddles that would work in a large number of languages (I'm not sure there's anything that works in absolutely every language).

I probably wouldn't go so far as abstracting away the puzzle entirely behind a single roll (because I'm not fond of single points of failure), but I could certainly see allowing a roll to get a hint/partial solution. Especially with puzzles that would be much easier to see if you're there in person than just hearing the words (anything revolving around 3D placement of objects, for example, or similarities in visual appearance). This also allows people to play characters that differ from them in mental attributes.

The way I handle characters who are smarter than the players is to first give the question or problem to the players. If they can't come up with anything and aren't willing to guess, they can choose one character to make an Intelligence check instead. But it has to be one or the other, not both.

But then, I don't play for challenge of any kind. It's meaningless to me. My biggest source of enjoyment is exploration of the unknown. What's beyond that hill? Behind that door? What happens if I do X? I find "challenge-oriented" play to devolve into "plan so we win before we even start" 5D chess matches. Which I find horribly boring. And that's the best case--worst case it's a meat-grinder that leaves me disconnected from the characters and events or a purely artificial difficulty event (like random levels with completely different mechanics in the middle of a video game).

If you don't enjoy something, that's an argument for not having it at all at your table, not for having it resolved with a die roll. If some of the other players do like that thing, then hopefully you can all reach some compromise about how much of it to have, so that everybody can have an enjoyable game overall.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I also find puzzles that only work in one language to be immersion breaking, unless that language also exists in the game world. I don't use them. Instead, I'll use logic puzzles, or mysteries that have to be solved by putting clues together, or classic riddles that would work in a large number of languages (I'm not sure there's anything that works in absolutely every language).

Most of those "logic" puzzles require a specific framework that would make little sense in-universe (because we reason from our assumptions and facts, which are different in universe in an un-accessible way). They also give a great advantage to the kind of people who memorize riddles. It turns into a "can you guess the obscure source" contest. Pass.

The way I handle characters who are smarter than the players is to first give the question or problem to the players. If they can't come up with anything and aren't willing to guess, they can choose one character to make an Intelligence check instead. But it has to be one or the other, not both.

If you don't enjoy something, that's an argument for not having it at all at your table, not for having it resolved with a die roll. If some of the other players do like that thing, then hopefully you can all reach some compromise about how much of it to have, so that everybody can have an enjoyable game overall.

It's not dislike (although for some puzzles it gets really close), it's just irrelevant to my fun.

I've run a total of one real "puzzle" (meaning something that wasn't an intrinsic part of the adventure itself but a lock preventing progress). It was a totally tongue in cheek, 4th-wall-leaning puzzle whose solution was the konami code (up up down down left right left right b a). That was as a breather in a relatively tense portion of a campaign. But I've been in campaigns whose DMs loved them (or were using modules that loved them). Things that get tricky with wording. Things that require reading dwarven runes as english transliterations. And I was playing a dwarf scholar for that one, someone who would know these things. But did I get any benefit from it? No, because it was a "player challenge." Those devolve into "read the DM's mind," because there's always an "obvious" solution if and only if you already know the trick. If you don't, there's no practical way to figure it out, even though in-universe it would be relatively simple. And these puzzles tend to completely block progress--until you figure them out you can't do anything else. No alternate routes, not a side-quest, but a total wall.

It's why I prefer the roll-for-hint method, if puzzles are necessary. It's degrees of success--a low result gives a cryptic hint, a high result gives a clearer hint or a partial solution ("you're pretty sure that those tiles belong there" or "you're pretty sure that the sequence starts with ..."). Both reduce the problem space and give a place to start. It also rewards people for playing smart characters.

The only exception for me is for things that are brute-forceable pretty quickly--I did do a lock that had four colored gems. The set-up made it clear that it was an elemental-opposition sequence, but which to start with? Failure just meant a little zap and some in-universe time. They guessed right on the first try, however (with the "oh, it's like Avatar!" logic which happened to be right for all the wrong reasons).

[oxybe]

My overall feeling on puzzles is : no. I just don't care for how i've seen them implemented.

Less interesting then a locked door, but serves the same purpose. Why do I say less interesting? Because for the most part, when I see a puzzle in a D&D game, you can't interact with it outside the solution and there's no way to bypass it.

At least with a locked door, if you don't have the key you can sit down as a group and try to figure out another way around it, try to pick the lock instead or kick it down and accept that you'll be making a lot of noise.

With puzzles, I can't remember the last time a GM said "yeah, you can totally take a pickaxe to the puzzle door and just bust your way through" or "yup, you remove the panel, tinker with the mechanism and force the thing open".

it's always "speak friend and you may enter"

As for my personal fantasy heartbreaker D&D fix? Take 5e and toss that baby out with the bathwater, basin and towel into the cold, uncaring wilds. I'd start with 4th ed as the mechanical and conceptual base and implement a list of changes from there.

[Draz74]

Trying to bring the thread back on topic rather than talking about puzzles ...

Everybody and their DM has thought about fixing D&D, even though most of us will never complete their fix for one reason or another. Not all of us even agree on what must be done. So I though it might be fun to discuss how you would fix Dungeons & Dragons.

So the rules are simple. You must simply explain the changes you'd make and why you'd make them while still keeping: a class and level structure, the ability to explore dungeons and fight monsters, and tactical combat.

Hoo boy. I haven't worked on my system for a couple years now, but I put a LOT of work into it for years before that. (Its lifespan was roughly the lifespan of 4e; 5e meets my needs enough that I can ignore all the things that are still wrong with it.) Who knows, maybe I'll pick it up again someday.

I stopped working on CRE8 because it was feeling too complicated overall, and because I wasn't happy with tactical combat rules that attempted to simplify the battle into Sectors rather than keeping track of every 5 ft with a grid. That said, there are a lot of things about CRE8 that I really did like:

After trying a LOT of different arrays of Ability Scores and not being happy with any of them, I abolished Ability Scores completely. Characters can still be adequately represented by their other stats, such as skills. For example, making Brawn a skill largely obviated the need for a Strength ability score. Especially with mental abilities, having more specific stats that do more specific things makes for a lot less arguing about which Mental Ability Score applies. (For the record, CRE8 ended up with 10 Skills: Athletics, Brawn, Charisma, Dexterity, Gadgetry, Glibness, Knowledge, Nature, Perception, Stealth.)

I find rolling Saving Throws to be innately more exciting than just watching your opponent's Attack Rolls and seeing if they hit, or even rolling an Attack Roll of your own. So in CRE8, all attacks require the defender to roll a Saving Throw, whether the attack is magical or mundane. There are four types of saving throws: Fortitude, Reflex, Willpower, and Defense. As a rule of thumb, Defense is the save used whenever a shield would be handy (and shields are indeed one of the few ways to boost your Defense save, making them a very valuable option compared to 3e); this means Defense is used in a lot of places where 3e would use Reflex, such as saves vs. dragon breath or a fireball spell. Reflex is still used vs true "touch attacks," as well as things like avoiding eye contact with a basilisk or medusa, or to avoid falling in a pit trap; but while it's relatively rare as a Saving Throw, Reflex is also valuable to a character because your Reflex modifier is also your Initiative modifier. Your Fortitude modifier is also valuable because it modifies your Vitality Points quantity, and your Willpower save is also used (for spellcasters) to see how many times you can recharge your Magic Points between long rests.

The hit points system is loosely based on what I could grub from Star Wars Saga Edition. Instead of Hit Points, you have Vitality Points, which represent stamina more than they represent actual wounds. Then there's a condition track that measures how hurt you actually are (although it's a much shorter track than Saga: unhurt, Wounded, Dying, Dead). Critical hits do a lot of things by default rather than just dealing more numerical damage; they can knock you down, knock you across the room, move you down the Condition Track, etc. Armor can be used to ignore some minor blows, but its main purpose is making it harder to critically hit you. (Attacks have "Impact" instead of "Damage," and a hit has more effect if its Impact beats your Armor Value.) This ends up being kind of like Armor As DR, but without the resulting invincibility issues where an ordinary guy with a dagger can never take down a foe in plate armor.

Instead of Classes, you pick what special abilities you want as you level up, in three different varieties. Feats are your main combat moves (including spells), and you get one at each level (plus one as a bonus if you're Human). Kits are the main replacement for Classes, and you get one at every odd level (plus one representing your Race). Talents are mostly minor perks, and cover everything else not represented by Feats and Kits.

I originally based the system (when it was closer to 3e) on E8. Leveling is pretty slow, so levels 5-8 are pretty high-level, and after Levels 8-9 a lot of things change: your base numerical stats stop increasing, you stop getting new Kits and Feats, and the Talents you can pick now include Epic talents. These have a lot of flavor difference from earlier talents, letting you do wuxia things like semi-ignoring gravity.

There is only one "daily" or "long rest" resource in the game (other than maybe a few magic items), Reserve Points. Recharging your Magic Points and recharging your Vitality Points both come during a Short Rest at the cost of Reserve Points ... so hopefully, the 15-minute adventuring day is abolished, and the martial characters and spellcasters both need a long rest at about the same point in the game.

Out-of-combat magic is handled with Rituals, kind of like 4e (but of course with adjustments). It's relatively easy for a non-spellcaster to pick up Talents that let them somewhat use Rituals, although I never seemed to use this option on my sample characters.

In-combat magic is loosely based on the 3e psionics system, with a "noun-verb" addition: You pick a Spell Feat that you're using, pick a Seed that you're using with it (things like Fire, Shadow, or Luck), and at higher levels, choose from a menu of improvements that you can make to the base spell by pumping more Magic Points into it. There is also Momentum, which works kind of like Psionic Focus (i.e. you either have it or you don't), but is available to all characters, and can power a number of special abilities both magical and mundane.

Temporary modifiers to die rolls are gone (with a very short list of exceptions: attack accuracy penalties for long range, and -2 to all Saving Throws if you're Wounded). Other than these common-but-simple exceptions, every die roll you roll should add a number that is actually printed somewhere on your character sheet. Things that would be handled by temporary die roll bonuses are instead handled by die rerolls, or by using a different number from your character sheet. For example, a Knock ritual might let a spellcaster use their Spellcraft Check instead of the normal skill check modifier to open a lock. All characters also have an "Awesome Check" (which is a pretty great modifier) that is specifically used for this purpose: instead of a temporary die roll bonus, some effects let you roll and add your Awesome modifier to the die roll instead of whatever you'd normally use.

Magic items other than Consumables must be Attuned to, and you can Attune only a limited number of items (based on your Magic Points). Items should always be rare-feeling and flavorful, not items that merely give you numerical bonuses.

OK, that's a few of my favorite features about the system. I'm sure I'm forgetting some though.

Here's a few things I'd like to figure out that I've never been satisfied with:

• The basic die system being more bell-curve ish. I thought about a rule that all d20 rolls become "roll 3d20, take the middle result," but I think that's too complicated unless the whole system is built around it, and I never figured out exactly how it should interact with Rerolls.
• Social skill checks ... some sort of "social combat system."
• A dynamic initiative system that makes you lose your place in initiative when you do something particularly slow, etc, without the full bookkeeping nightmare of a "ticks" system.

[Cosi]

There are points for both sides of the argument. People play RPGs because they have some particular character they want to play. Sometimes that character is someone who is stronger or faster than them, but sometimes that character is someone who is smarter or wiser than them. Having the ability to solve a puzzle, answer a riddle, or compose a plan as the result of a mechanical action supports that fantasy. Of course, other people want to solve puzzles because they think solving puzzles is fun, and ideally the game would also support that. As in so many cases, the design choice you make depends on which of a variety of competing factors you find more pressing.

The basic die system being more bell-curve ish. I thought about a rule that all d20 rolls become "roll 3d20, take the middle result," but I think that's too complicated unless the whole system is built around it, and I never figured out exactly how it should interact with Rerolls.

Is there a reason you can't just have people roll 3d6? That's your curved RNG right there.

A dynamic initiative system that makes you lose your place in initiative when you do something particularly slow, etc, without the full bookkeeping nightmare of a "ticks" system.

Just put tags on abilities.

[Draz74]

Is there a reason you can't just have people roll 3d6? That's your curved RNG right there.

That's too steep of a bell curve for my taste, and also has non-intuitive minimum and maximum results. And only has 16 possible results rather than 20, although that's not a big deal.

Just put tags on abilities.

Tags that do what, exactly?

If you mean "tags that change the value of your initiative score," then the issue is that most tables don't keep track of initiative scores, just initiative order. And often forget to keep track of score even if they intend to.

[Cosi]

That's too steep of a bell curve for my taste, and also has non-intuitive minimum and maximum results. And only has 16 possible results rather than 20, although that's not a big deal.

You could always have people roll a different number of dice. You're not going to get a curved RNG with a 1 as the minimum out of dice, so that complaint seems a little unreasonable.

If you mean "tags that change the value of your initiative score," then the issue is that most tables don't keep track of initiative scores, just initiative order. And often forget to keep track of score even if they intend to.

If people aren't tracking it, that suggests to me that you shouldn't ask them to. But the tag could just move you in initiative order.

[Friv]

That's too steep of a bell curve for my taste, and also has non-intuitive minimum and maximum results. And only has 16 possible results rather than 20, although that's not a big deal.

If you want a weirdly intuitive and moderately good thing to use, I would say 1d12+1d8 gives you a surprisingly reasonable bell curve. It is marginally higher on average (11 instead of 10.5) and doesn't allow for 1s. But otherwise it gives solid results.

[OACSNY97]

As for my personal fantasy heartbreaker D&D fix? Take 5e and toss that baby out with the bathwater, basin and towel into the cold, uncaring wilds. I'd start with 4th ed as the mechanical and conceptual base and implement a list of changes from there.

Would you mind elaborating on your proposed changes to a D&D based on 4e? I came in on that edition and am reasonably fond of many of the things 4e does though I can see some places for improvement. I especially like the tier system and while I don't have the tactical acumen to play warlord I really like the concept.

[oxybe]

Would you mind elaborating on your proposed changes to a D&D based on 4e? I came in on that edition and am reasonably fond of many of the things 4e does though I can see some places for improvement. I especially like the tier system and while I don't have the tactical acumen to play warlord I really like the concept.

Ideas i've had swirling in my head include, are not limited to, and are subject to change on my whims:

-Tighten the math, similar to what they did with 5th, but instead of the "try to keep everything low" plateau they went with, keep the numbers climbing. This way on or near your level difficulty stuff will still generally require an 8-13 on a d20 to hit, but it keeps 4th ed's scope when it comes to the PCs' growth: lower level challenges are easily dealt with, higher level stuff is not. You cannot just solve the problem called "red dragon" by tossing masses of soldiers at it (or can you?). +2/-2 is the recommended go-to boon with something like advantage/disadvantage being kept for special occasions.

-drop the game to 15 or 20 levels. 30 was a bit too much and after years of playing D&D and seeing how lackluster high level D&D was generally treated (IE: Poorly), scrunching down the levels a bit will probably help in that regard. We can still probably keep the tiering of Heroic, Paragon & Epic as I also like the concept, just cut each of them down to 5 levels apiece. Some working on ironing out how this will affect gaining of powers or abilities will be requires as this will probably mean the loss of some.

-Re examine the classes, make sure they fit a niche other then "generic catch-all" and focus harder on what makes them special in play. Don't be afraid to kill off a class and replace it with another concept. Sacred cows and sacred hamburgers and whatnot because classes are a skillset, not a straitjacket. A "Cleric" can be a theif and a "Rogue" a bard. The less we tie a class of abilities to "why" someone does something but instead "how", it allows for FAR more motivations. Even if two people share a similar toolkit, their interpretation of that toolkit will differ. Fully back the refluffing of classes.

-Feats will either modify or add features to characters. Think of this as further specialization (or gaining training) in certain skills, or unlocking new abilities like ritual magic, over raw numbers like Great Weapon Master. They will come with decent frequency

-Skills are actually pretty fine. may need a bit of tuning in how the individual skills work, but overall the skill system if ok.

-Inherent magic items is the baseline. The +X magic sword is dead. FAR more minor magical doodads. In short : low-level magic is commonplace, and indeed the world and most people are inherently magical to a certain degree. PCs being who they are can make the most of it, but they're not the only ones. Items like a Flametongue or Frostbrand would act akin to a 3.5 Weapon of Legacy, unlocking new abilities as it's owner levels up.

-on a similar note: high level, world-shaking stuff is rare, but magic is a known and somewhat studied thing: it's another force of nature people can harness.

-weapons are not a laundry list but rather a mix of the 4e-based Gamma World's "generic" weapon categories & Legend's keywording, making weapons largely customizable. there will be a few examples given for common weapons like spears, daggers, longswords & bows but I believe adding a variety of keyword effects and weapon properties, with the ability to mix & match them, alongside interesting class abilities, would help make weapons actually interesting.

-Classes are your combat stuff. This goes for fighters as well as mages. And for mages, if you want out of combat magics, look up rituals: I would like to shove a whole lot of these in there.

-The concept of the AEDU structure wouldn't change too much. It would just change to "At-Will, Per-Scene, Per-Session" with the utility moniker being dropped entirely, or just turned into a keyword.

-monsters would still use math akin to the MM3 on a business card format. We would still have the minion, standard, elite & solo types, but add one below minion: swarm. I've always disliked how in D&D we have the concept of swarms but generally just kept it to stuff like vermin.

Swarms would imitate the "hundreds of soldiers" VS red dragon without having to roll a hundred attack rolls or just roll once and use percentile averages.

They would act similar to their individual counterparts, but in mass amounts. So instead of just being shifty as minor action, a Kobold swarm could scatter, growing larger in size as they spread out but since their numbers are scattered they're less affected by AoEs (since they're less in mass and some may be hiding instead of working in tandem) and their overall damage is lower, but they can now cover a wider area and potentially covering one or two characters in their numbers. It'll allow for a gm to utilize a more flavourful action that showcases the teamwork of the horde without having to roll multiple dice.

A swarm of archers could utilize a massed attack that blankets the skies, bringing down fliers, while foot soldiers could stop grounded targets they're swarming from taking off entirely.

-Yes abilities and powers will have a cinematic flair but also be utilitarian to a degree. reflavour the individual uses as you want, or reuse the same cheap animation. The world is your oyster.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Mandatory subclassing for PCs. Monsters might or might not get a subclass, depending on something like 4e's minion/normal/solo/elite thing, with some mechanism for a monster having only a subclass. So your basic Giant would get whatever the abilities of the Giant subclass were (presumably "being large" and "throwing rocks"), and the various flavored Giants (Fire, Ice, Stone, Storm) would have feats or magic item equivalents to give them a minimum of fire powers or ice powers. Then you could layer on other classes for giants that happened to be elite. Like a Shaman sub Giant or a Warlord sub Giant.

Interesting take on it. I don't think I'd personally like a subclass-optional approach, since I find the minion/normal/elite setup too restrictive when it comes to using monsters at multiple levels, but I think it could work out if done right.

*snip most Priest-as-template discussion*

Because that class is then eating all the conceptual space that should go to other classes. White Mage is a totally viable class, as is Necromancer, and all the other things that you want to be Cleric specs. Those things should be classes, and if you are going to write up enough content to do a viable Cleric build as each of them, you should just write up the classes without the baggage.

It sounds in general like you prefer tons of more narrow classes over fewer more customizable classes. Where does the Wizard or Fighter fit in your setup? It seems as though the only options would be Beguiler/Ice Mage/Necromancer/Oracle/Summoner/Storm Lord/etc. for the wizard archetypes and Archer/Berserker/Hunter/Knight/Warlord/etc. for the fighter archetypes, such that if you want to make an "uttercold assault necromancer" who uses ice magic and necromancy or a "barbarian king" who flies into a rage and enhances his allies with his tactical acumen, you have to multiclass, and if the multiclass setup being used doesn't give you what you want, you're out of luck.

If that is the case, how do you propose to handle concepts that fall under one of those broader categories but don't fit into one of those narrow classes? If that's not the case, why is it fine for wizards, fighters, and rogues to have a broad conceptual space but not priests?

It's why I prefer the roll-for-hint method, if puzzles are necessary. It's degrees of success--a low result gives a cryptic hint, a high result gives a clearer hint or a partial solution ("you're pretty sure that those tiles belong there" or "you're pretty sure that the sequence starts with ..."). Both reduce the problem space and give a place to start. It also rewards people for playing smart characters.

This is my preferred solution for encounter-scale puzzles as well. The last time I ran a big puzzle like that it was an extra-large Zebra puzzle/Einstein puzzle, where the characters had to arrange a bunch of tokens representing high priest names, gods, temple names, locations, and kinds of magic in a grid on a door to get into an ancient vault. I set out a handful of default clues to start that would be enough to specify a unique solution but not really allow solving the puzzle on their own, then allowed certain Knowledge checks to get a scaling number of hints in each category (DC 10 for Kn: Religion gave two hints about the gods, DC 15 Kn: Geography gave three hints on temple locations, etc.), and finally some plain Int checks gave the players a certain number of limited questions they could ask about certain grid combinations, to represent logical leaps and general reasoning.

Players who preferred to solve the puzzle mostly through player skill could do that, while a character with +Ridiculous to a bunch of Knowledge skills could get enough hints to basically make solving it a formality, but in either case both player skill and character knowledge were required--which turned out to be good, since roughly half my group loved puzzle-solving and half preferred relying on skills, and both groups came away happy with the compromise.

*snip 4e-based suggestions*

I find it interesting that, despite how different 3e and 4e are both mechanically and conceptually, a "what do people want out of a 4e-based fix" list looks very much like "what do people want out of a 3e-based fix" list with the exception of making world-affecting magic rare, keeping AEDU, and keeping minions and elites/solos as a thing, which could be made fairly palatable to 3e fans if rituals were made non-terrible and more accessible, there were more per-class and per-power-source variations in the AEDU system (a la psionics or wizard spell prep), and different monster types were made to work in a more verisimilitudinous fashion (so e.g. minions don't explode to low-damage weather effects as soon as combat music starts and solos aren't the only ones with lots of off-turn actions).

There may be peace in our time in the editions wars!

[OACSNY97]

First off- thank you for the very detailed response.

Ideas i've had swirling in my head include, are not limited to, and are subject to change on my whims:

-Tighten the math, similar to what they did with 5th, but instead of the "try to keep everything low" plateau they went with, keep the numbers climbing. This way on or near your level difficulty stuff will still generally require an 8-13 on a d20 to hit, but it keeps 4th ed's scope when it comes to the PCs' growth: lower level challenges are easily dealt with, higher level stuff is not. You cannot just solve the problem called "red dragon" by tossing masses of soldiers at it (or can you?). +2/-2 is the recommended go-to boon with something like advantage/disadvantage being kept for special occasions.

Agree. To hit math vs. at level opponents should remain near the average of a d20 throughout the entire game. This is basically the math fix 4e needed. Surprisingly, the math works better using 3/4 level as standard modifier for attacks rather than 1/2.
Here's the math to prove it.

-Re examine the classes, make sure they fit a niche other then "generic catch-all" and focus harder on what makes them special in play. Don't be afraid to kill off a class and replace it with another concept. Sacred cows and sacred hamburgers and whatnot because classes are a skillset, not a straitjacket. A "Cleric" can be a theif and a "Rogue" a bard. The less we tie a class of abilities to "why" someone does something but instead "how", it allows for FAR more motivations. Even if two people share a similar toolkit, their interpretation of that toolkit will differ. Fully back the refluffing of classes.

Mostly agree but tying a class to a distinct character concept remains valuable. Forex, in 4e as seen in PHB1&2 what's the real conceptual difference between cleric and invoker? I would roll those two ideas together into one broader class as subclasses.

-Feats will either modify or add features to characters. Think of this as further specialization (or gaining training) in certain skills, or unlocking new abilities like ritual magic, over raw numbers like Great Weapon Master. They will come with decent frequency

Like the focus on flavorful feats over numeric bonuses, but what if feats were split into combat Feats and non-combat Talents that are gained separately? This would allow for non-combat abilities like Ritual Caster, Linguist, many of the skill focus feats to be worth taking as they are no longer competing for the limited resources needed to improve combat effectiveness.

-Inherent magic items is the baseline. The +X magic sword is dead. FAR more minor magical doodads. In short : low-level magic is commonplace, and indeed the world and most people are inherently magical to a certain degree. PCs being who they are can make the most of it, but they're not the only ones. Items like a Flametongue or Frostbrand would act akin to a 3.5 Weapon of Legacy, unlocking new abilities as it's owner levels up.

Having flavor-only magic items present offers a magic-rich world which supports much of D&D's world building. That being said, I wouldn't have all magic items function like Weapons of Legacy, rather, that's one of three categories of magic items available.
- Basic magic items, which have specific abilities which do not change over time without changing the item (crafting/rituals can do that)
- Legacy items that grow with the character, based around a theme (generally custom-built, likely from a list or table).
- Artifacts which grant more of their power to the wielder based on compatibility/attunement (generally pre-built, as 4e did already).

-weapons are not a laundry list but rather a mix of the 4e-based Gamma World's "generic" weapon categories & Legend's keywording, making weapons largely customizable. there will be a few examples given for common weapons like spears, daggers, longswords & bows but I believe adding a variety of keyword effects and weapon properties, with the ability to mix & match them, alongside interesting class abilities, would help make weapons actually interesting.

That seems really cool, and I like it, but I have concerns about how that would interact with general weapon/implement proficiency, (all simple weapons, military melee weapons, etc.)

-Classes are your combat stuff. This goes for fighters as well as mages. And for mages, if you want out of combat magics, look up rituals: I would like to shove a whole lot of these in there.

-The concept of the AEDU structure wouldn't change too much. It would just change to "At-Will, Per-Scene, Per-Session" with the utility moniker being dropped entirely, or just turned into a keyword.

Classes should be large enough to include out of combat but related abilities, but things like rituals or alchemy should be available as a general-use out of combat power-set.
Admittedly, Utility powers were poorly implemented, half of them being combat powers (Shield, we're looking at you), and half being out of combat utility abilities (Arcane Insight), and I think that the former should have been folded into the attack powers (AED), and the utility Utility Powers should stay were they were.

-monsters would still use math akin to the MM3 on a business card format. We would still have the minion, standard, elite & solo types, but add one below minion: swarm. I've always disliked how in D&D we have the concept of swarms but generally just kept it to stuff like vermin.

Swarms would imitate the "hundreds of soldiers" VS red dragon without having to roll a hundred attack rolls or just roll once and use percentile averages.

They would act similar to their individual counterparts, but in mass amounts. So instead of just being shifty as minor action, a Kobold swarm could scatter, growing larger in size as they spread out but since their numbers are scattered they're less affected by AoEs (since they're less in mass and some may be hiding instead of working in tandem) and their overall damage is lower, but they can now cover a wider area and potentially covering one or two characters in their numbers. It'll allow for a gm to utilize a more flavourful action that showcases the teamwork of the horde without having to roll multiple dice.

A swarm of archers could utilize a massed attack that blankets the skies, bringing down fliers, while foot soldiers could stop grounded targets they're swarming from taking off entirely.

I think that Swarm should be a separate keyword that can apply to any creature type (even Solos), though your statement that Swarm should apply to Squads of humanoids or Hordes of barbarians is valuable. Gargantuan Swarms could allow one to run massed combat (like Helm's Deep) within D&D rules without it taking an hour or more per turn.

An additional monster type could be the "Legendary" monster. Basically twice an elite, but not a Solo. This is a "Boss," allowing Solos to truly mean "Solo."
Branching off the above, Solos should tend to have multiple "Forms," think Ganon post-ALttP.
As an example of the above, a Dragon starts out in a humanoid guise, fighting as a spellcaster of some sort. Once he's beaten in that form, he reveals his true Draconic majesty and takes to the air, using mainly his breath weapon and strafing claw attacks. Then, once you've injured him sufficiently, he lands and tries to eat you, tear you to shreds, or pound you into paste with his natural weapons.

-Yes abilities and powers will have a cinematic flair but also be utilitarian to a degree. reflavour the individual uses as you want, or reuse the same cheap animation. The world is your oyster.

Having some flavorful descriptions really helps new players visualize their actions.
Ex. Compare Cloudkill in 3.5e/5e to 4e
4e is more flexible and takes up less space, but 3.5e & 5e have some details within (like the fact that it's heavier than air and thus sinks into cracks in the ground, or the fact that it rolls away from its point of origin) allowing for more informed tactical use.

I find it interesting that, despite how different 3e and 4e are both mechanically and conceptually, a "what do people want out of a 4e-based fix" list looks very much like "what do people want out of a 3e-based fix" list with the exception of making world-affecting magic rare, keeping AEDU, and keeping minions and elites/solos as a thing, which could be made fairly palatable to 3e fans if rituals were made non-terrible and more accessible, there were more per-class and per-power-source variations in the AEDU system (a la psionics or wizard spell prep), and different monster types were made to work in a more verisimilitudinous fashion (so e.g. minions don't explode to low-damage weather effects as soon as combat music starts and solos aren't the only ones with lots of off-turn actions).

There may be peace in our time in the editions wars!

The end to the edition wars!?!

More seriously, how would you feel about a small/moderate change to the AEDU system where power types feel different without changing the underlying structure? Forex, martial characters get more off-action abilities and stances, primal characters might get more abilities with lingering effects, divine characters have the most party friendly AOEs, and if there is a way to balance it, arcane characters get day-to-day or encounter-to-encounter flexibility.