D&D (2024) Survey Launch | Player's Handbook Playtest 5 | Unearthed Arcana | D&D

[Incenjucar]

In any event, I would like WotC to put more rules down for movement so it can be a bit more cinematic and interesting by default.

I will personally continue working on some homebrew movement features, especially since the stuff I'm working with has Swimming competing with Flight, but I would prefer if the core game had clear, specific rules that everyone can use without having to make any extra decisions at the table.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

In any event, I would like WotC to put more rules down for movement so it can be a bit more cinematic and interesting by default.

They did add rules for it! By making jumping its own action that takes your whole turn...

 

[Incenjucar]

They did add rules for it! By making jumping its own action that takes your whole turn...

I know we're all nerds here but between that and fighters WotC really needs to hire some designers who didn't fear Gym Class.

 

[Pedantic]

I'm a big fan of the idea of skill abilities in general.

I feel like I've been crying in the TTRPG wilderness for a fully explicated skill system for years now. We got two alternate pole takes on how to avoid one with 4e and 5e, and I worry that's essentially reframed the debate. I haven't seen anything that involves both writing down all the things skills can do, and avoiding reference to a generic and/or scaling difficulty table.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Yeah, I didn't think I'd miss 3e's skills, but... even my favorite stupid skill, Use Rope, has sample DCs!

 

[Incenjucar]

There are really just so many small, fun rules they could add that would energize things:

• Jump-climbing
• Swim-jumping
• Vaulting over an object/creature
• Climbing big creatures
• Riding non-mount creatures (orc with a shoulder gnome, etc)
• Using terrain and creatures to enhance movement
• Taking actions upside-down
• Fastball specials (orc throwing shoulder gnome)

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

The Thief, for example, can fast climb and make longer running jumps as an ability. Should someone who isn't a Thief be able to do this? Should it be gate kept by a Feat? If it's simply a matter of hitting the DC on a check, how difficult should it be?

The book says Athletics checks can allow for longer jumps, but infamously, no system in the PHB tells you how. It's up to the DM to just decide "I think you can exceed your jumping distance by (arbitrary amount) by making (arbitrary check)". A little bit of real guidance would be really helpful for some people.

this was one of the longest running arguments at my table. 2 players/DMs think that the lack of DC or examples means you can't really make a check, and 1 player/DM thinks it is just using the easy/hard DCs
everytime someone wanted to jump at all the 'discussion' broke out.

I personally am a 'rule of cool' type girl so I would change sides depending on if I thought it was cool or not.

I know when I first started DMing, long ago in an edition far far away (AD&D), I often felt the urge to make houserules. But a lot of my early houserules fell flat because I had no idea what I was doing, and I did more damage to my games. Nowadays, I prefer to run games as close to the rules in the book as possible, because I've learned that nobody is going to remember what I've put in a six or seven page rules document, but anyone can read the books, lol.

same
in fact I would go even farther and say that 3rd party supplements are so hit or miss that we are gun shy about useing them, think of them as no better then a "this is how I would homebrew it"

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

In any event, I would like WotC to put more rules down for movement so it can be a bit more cinematic and interesting by default.

what happened to the idea of modular rules from the last playtest? we could have a 4e set of options, an over the top anime set of options... maybe each as a book or maybe 1 book with several sets of rule add ons.

 

[Cruentus]

what happened to the idea of modular rules from the last playtest? we could have a 4e set of options, an over the top anime set of options... maybe each as a book or maybe 1 book with several sets of rule add ons.

Development time v Value, most likely. The vast majority of people would just use what ends up in the PHB, and not even the stuff in the PHB marked "optional." We all know that just about no one reads, or uses, the variant rules in the DMG. So where do those other 3 variants reside? Their own book? That would be design, production, distribution, etc. that all of, like, 7 people would buy.

They talked a good game about modularity, but they either created half baked "alternatives" - looking at you Gritty Realism and the alternative rest schedules, and slow healing, etc., or made it that if you did try to hack things yourself, you set yourself up for failure when those tweaks had knock-on effects that you had to then weed out or that could disrupt game time in other areas of the game you hadn't anticipated.

They're clearly going for a limited palette of "safer" design decisions (as can also be seen from the last Next Playtests vs what we got in the 2014 PHB) and leaving it up to 3pp or the community to try to make it their own, or make it work for their table, if they want something different than in the "core."

 

[Vaalingrade]

what happened to the idea of modular rules from the last playtest? we could have a 4e set of options, an over the top anime set of options... maybe each as a book or maybe 1 book with several sets of rule add ons.

As I've been frequently told, the answer to that is, "That never happened. Stop asking'.