D&D (2024) What Should D&D 2024 Have Been +

[Zaukrie]

Some good ideas in here......many of which I agree with.

I'm not sure what I hoped for....but for me what I want more/better in 5e:

More player options, so people can really play what they envision. That's likely more feats and more maneuvers (and a spell point system / psionics system).
More variety in cleric powers based on what you worship (why does everyone get turn undead?).

Much more interesting monsters....I understand that goes against the simplicity of 5e, but a guy could hope anyway.

 

[Vaalingrade]

At the very least, I'd have liked the removal of six saves for the sake of symmetry, three or four of which will likely never improve, the NEXT Fighter returning, and magic item pricing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm bowing out of the fireside chat thread, for the reasons you mentioned in the OP, so I'll post my general idea here.

For the new core PHB, you keep 5e as 5e. You emphasize in the marketing and the text that everything you used before is still playable. If any rules element has the same name and identity as something already in print, assume that this is the version WotC prefers, but nothing old is actually deprecated. (AL and other "official" organizations can chose to allow/disallow as they see fit.)

Merge the Tasha's class features into the core class text, make some minor changes, but leave core class definition pretty much intact.

4 subclasses for each class: The SRD subclass, a previously existing subclass that needs major revisions (if one exists), and every other subclass is new.

2 new classes. Don't care what they are.

Make whatever race/species changes they feel are necessary. Keep human/elf/dwarf/halfling, swap out everything else for new and interesting stuff.

Reprint the absolute core feats, reprint/revise the worst offenders (like Sharpshooter), and then a bunch of new feats. Revisit classic concepts, just use new feat names and mechanics.

Do the same thing for spells. Keep about half the spells, revise a few others, and make up a bunch of new ones. Emphasize again that old spells from previous material are still totally viable.

With all my grousing, I would have bought this 5.5e, even if just to strip it for parts. That is an actually respectful update.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah to me, 5.5e is just looking like a big sidegrade. I see absolutely no reason to switch over from 5e. Pretty much every single thing I liked and enjoyed from the playtests got canned.

• I was really hoping for a shared maneuver system between all martials. That way new books can add new maneuvers just like they add endless spells for casters.
• I really wanted subclass spells for sorcerer, but they're doubling down on not having them.
• Class groups was great, but they're gone too.
• I've been fed up with the limitations of 5e classes/subclasses since before Xanathar's. But even my most pessimistic thoughts didn't predict getting the original 12 classes again before we got new classes for 5e.
• They're doubling down on things like 'attack with casting stat'. Stats are feeling less like they mean anything, and more like they're just 'primary attack stat 1, 2, or 3'.
• I hate the entire 'gameification' of the world. PC's using completely different rules to NPC's, and things like bastions being something which upgrades on level, rather than through the PC's work and currency.

Yeah. They couldn't have moved further away from what I want out of a 5e game while technically staying compatible if they had called me and asked what not to do.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Honestly? 6E. I don't have a comprehensive list of what I'd like to see, but a few things to throw out there as possibilities:

1. More precise language used in the rules. "Rulings, not rules" is a nice idea, but where you have rules, they should be easily spotted and understood. A tag system wouldn't go amiss.
2. 10 level standard. It's the range most people play in, so it should be the range the main design of the game revolves around. 11-20 should still exist, but it shouldn't take until level 5 or higher for classes to start feeling like they are coming into their own.
3. Deemphasize ability score bonuses. Bring back B/X ability score scaling. As much as I prefer rolling, I'd say keep the standard array with Tasha's style bonus points separated from race. No ASIs for leveling.
4. Reemphasize ability scores. Bring back ability scores checks as the base mechanic for getting things outside of combat done. It lets ability scores matter without having to be a primary factor in combat rolls like 3E+ inflated ability score bonus do.
5. Races as feats. More specifically, you choose race as normal, but they have no mechanical weight on their own. Instead, you get racial abilities bundled up into feats with, say, 1 major and 1 minor ability each. Multiple feats for each race, so not every dwarf has to be exactly the same. Each feat can be designated as [innate] or [cultural]. Taking the former means you are at least part descended from that race, while taking the latter means you were raised among them. Suggestion that 2 races can be taken from at most to avoid people trying to powergame a "fairy/orc/dwarf/demon that was raised among elves" hybrid. More feats that can be gained later for those that want to be the elfiest elf that ever elfed.
6. Multiclass as feats. Basically, my stance is that the more open your progression system, the more likely you'll run into winners and losers of progression. Combinations that don't synergize at all, and those that synergize so well, they become nearly ubiquitous. With open multiclassing, the benefit is often immediate while the cost is deferred (often to a level you were never going to get to anyway). Making multiclass a feat means that the class you start with is your class, and taking on abilities from other classes comes at the expense of other abilities you could have right now. Personally, I think this is a better system.

There's other ideas I have, but that's more or less the core of what I'd like to see in a new edition (which I'd rather have seen than a lukewarm refresh).

 

[Dustin Cooper]

I'd want something completely incompatible with 5e. Not because I despise 5e (I think it's the second best edition of the game), but because we already have 5e and plenty of 3rd party attempts at 5e but better. The transitions between 2e, 3e, 4e, and 5e all gave us new ways to play and think about the game, and even if I didn't always like the changes, I appreciated the attempt, and my old books were still on my shelf if I decided I wanted to go back to an old game. And after a decade of 5e, it's hard to get excited by more 5e.

In an ideal world, they'd use their position of dominance over the much larger hobby to experiment with new things and abandon things that are just there for tradition. Like they could have dropped ability scores, rebalanced the game knowing that most people don't dungeon crawl much and have few encounters per day, given us complex martial options along with simple magical options so that you're not cut out of a fantasy because the classes don't fit your play style, given us some out there racial options that inspire new and different worlds. Anything like that would have been exciting, even if it didn't end up being the edition for me.

 

[Stormonu]

The way I view it is, 5E is not (mechanically) a better game than, say, 50% of the fantasy RPGs on the market. Therefore it has lots of opportunities for growth and innovation. That they decided to just stick with a decade old "good enough" design is frustrating.

I can understand that. Back in the end days of 2E, I was weary of that system and it felt badly outdated.

However, that hasn't hit me for 5E. I feel like 5E has a lot of life left in it and can be grown in many directions without changing the core. I just don't think WotC is brave enough to explore the fringes more.

 

[Zaukrie]

I can understand that. Back in the end days of 2E, I was weary of that system and it felt badly outdated.

However, that hasn't hit me for 5E. I feel like 5E has a lot of life left in it and can be grown in many directions without changing the core. I just don't think WotC is brave enough to explore the fringes more.

It's not about bravery, it's about being a big business. I get some here some like that....

 

[Pedantic]

It's so outside the ethos of the game, but the biggest thing I'd want is a detailed skill system. It's really hard with the sharply limited range of 5e math, but some kind of set of specific actions, maybe with proficiency or total modifier requirements to unlock that makes it clear what exactly characters can do with a check.

 

[Laurefindel]

revisit and rebalance certain feat, revisit and rebalance certain spells (including BF concentration tags), and update the beast master to Tasha’s pet class mechanics.

The rest was fine as is