What the hell?  Go hang out on TBP, for instance......

It's an echo chamber for people who want to run D&D into the ground again.  It won't be very successful, but at least a few people will get what they wanted.

How do they want it to be different? Or better yet, how do you want it to be different?

If I were to design 6E, I'd add switches to emulate different works of fiction. SpyCraft 2E did this with something called Campaign Qualities. I assume FantasyCraft did so as well, but I do not own that one. Basically you have a few pages of rules options, like:

• Corruption: Certain magic and magical items cause corruption.
• Forgiving: Characters do not die, but are unconscious for a while, and wake with 1 HP.
• Grim: Characters do max damage with all weapons.
• Gritty: Wounds can get infected, wounds can cause bleeding.
• Heroic: Characters start at level 3, and advance twice as fast as normal.
• Humans Only: There are no non-human races.
• Lethal: Characters die at 0 HP rather than -10.
• Low magic: There are no spells past level 3.
• Lucky: Characters get extra luck points.
• No casters: Certain classes have magical abilities, but there are no spellcasters.
• Weariness: Instead of spell slots, you get tired.

So  if you want to run a campaign like Game of Thrones, you would use Humans Only, Gritty, and No Casters.
If you want to run Pirates of the Caribbean, you select Forgiving, Humans Only, and Lucky.
Middle Earth would be Corruption, Low Magic, and Weariness.

That would move the game towards a toolkit that could emulate many different fantasy sub-genres.

And I'd get rid of the damn 3 to 18 scale.

Of course *some* people want it to be different.

Take any three gamers and you'll have five different opinions on what D&D should be like.

It's almost like gamers have different tastes or something.

Quote from: Razor 007;1083607Go hang out on TBP, for instance.

I have never come across a group of people more embittered over 4E's dismal market performance and truncated product lifespan.

Not even people who worked on the 4E team are clinging to the torch that desperately.

Well; one idea some people are suggesting, is for WOTC to go back and do 4E even better!!!  6E as (4E, part 2), etc.

Other people want to remove all of the defining characteristics of the game; because, you know, they've never liked it to begin with.

TBP is safely disregarded; it's primarily a collection of pitiable fools ruled over by servants of evil. Basically Hell. Just pity them, and move on.


I certainly like much about 5e, but it wouldn't break my heart to tone down magic in 6e by a great margin (seriously, someone needs to an "Evolution of the Wizard" to see the incredible increase in damage output/ac/hp of the wizards of the four editions of D&D, and maybe mention 4E as well). Also, tone down the super-powers; getting a new power every level is too much for the non-expert players to keep track off, especially when they want to play a new class and the rest of the party is past level 3 or so.


Past that, it's as viable as AD&D--sure, one would like a game to clearly improve over the course of 30 years, but there are core issues with "model all of known reality, including all possible supernatural possibilities, in 600 pages or less" that might make that a little hard to achieve.

Yeah.  People really just took that thread as an excuse to give their own personal wish-list with clearly little recognition of what is realistically likely to happen if there's ever a 6th edition.

To my mind the big things that need to be addressed (should they ever get round to it) and which realistically might be addressed are:

How skills interact with bounded accuracy(are they even needed any more - probably not - they don't exactly do much.) and all the 3E legacy issues surrounding skills.
Unequal saving throws and lack of scaling.
Rangers (and some other issues of class design, such as a better way of making manoeuvre's work than gating them off in the Battlemaster fighter.
Remove Bonus Actions - Mearls is right they are clunky and the game would be better without them.

Putting some kind of journey rules inspired by Adventures in Middle Earth in the DMG would be a good idea.  And more guidance about how to handle social interactions that don't default to "roll persuasion".

If I was in charge I would do a lot more (For one thing I would make class have more influence and ability scores less).  But realistically, I couldn't see any big change happening.  Maybe in 5 or 10 years it might be clear from the kinds of houserules (or 3rd party innovations) that people are using what more needs to change.  (And what people would accept).

But complexity certainly ain't coming back as long as people streaming their games remains a major way of growing the hobby.
No one wants to watch people looking up rules in a book.

Yeah, scaling back the magic and cutting the number of special abilities per class.  Those would be my main thoughts.  I like a lot of what they did with 5e but the special ability bloat is insane.  I'd scale things back to 1 HD = basic creature and cut back the damage output.

Quote from: Aglondir;1083610How do they want it to be different? Or better yet, how do you want it to be different?

If I were to design 6E, I'd add switches to emulate different works of fiction. SpyCraft 2E did this with something called Campaign Qualities. I assume FantasyCraft did so as well, but I do not own that one. Basically you have a few pages of rules options, like:

• Corruption: Certain magic and magical items cause corruption.
• Forgiving: Characters do not die, but are unconscious for a while, and wake with 1 HP.
• Grim: Characters do max damage with all weapons.
• Gritty: Wounds can get infected, wounds can cause bleeding.
• Heroic: Characters start at level 3, and advance twice as fast as normal.
• Humans Only: There are no non-human races.
• Lethal: Characters die at 0 HP rather than -10.
• Low magic: There are no spells past level 3.
• Lucky: Characters get extra luck points.
• No casters: Certain classes have magical abilities, but there are no spellcasters.
• Weariness: Instead of spell slots, you get tired.

So  if you want to run a campaign like Game of Thrones, you would use Humans Only, Gritty, and No Casters.
If you want to run Pirates of the Caribbean, you select Forgiving, Humans Only, and Lucky.
Middle Earth would be Corruption, Low Magic, and Weariness.

That would move the game towards a toolkit that could emulate many different fantasy sub-genres.

And I'd get rid of the damn 3 to 18 scale.

How would I want it to be different?

Ancient Dragons would cast Arcane Spells.  Especially the Dragons capable of taking human form.

Even simpler mechanics, wherever possible.

Advantage / Disadvantage, Critical Successes, and Critical Failures would be front and center.

Healing wouldn't have a Spam button.  Divine healing would come with strings attached: You become indebted to someone.  Natural healing takes time.  Healing potions exist, but they are precious and hard to come by.

Release freaking Dark Sun!!!

Bring back the warlord. It was the one neat class from 4e. Change the name if people are still stupid about it. If you're worried about class bloat, kill the warlock, it has stupid flavor.

Bring back healing surges. They were a solid mechanic that handled healing really well, albeit with an unfortunate name.

Bring back the 4e monster design paradigm. CR is clunky and difficult; just give monsters levels. The specific execution of 4e monsters were lacking pretty much across the board, but the design was conceptually solid.

I'd like to see some standard skill DC tables again, as in 3e. The 5e skill list seems tenable, but there's very little framework there and it seems difficult for new/inexperienced DMs to work with it. Need a baseline for skill usage, especially for more complex things like stealth.

It'd be nice to have a not-stupid encumbrance system. I don't know what that looks like, but anything has to be better than counting pounds.

Mundanes need to have nice things, and things to do outside of combat.

If we could get rid of rogue's sneak attack, that'd be nice. Put it in a rogue subclass like assassin or something, but the general sneaky thief concept shouldn't be killing fools better than the fighter.

And lop off the top end of the spell lists, put them in some kind of special category. Magic starts getting stupid crazy after 6th level spells or so.

I'd also like to see an end to fantasy gun control, with basic firearms in the standard weapons table, but that's probably a bridge too far for most folks. I'd just want firearms to be balanced with the rest of the weapons, rather than be squirreled away in the DMG and usually just straight-up better than every other weapon.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1083628Bring back the warlord. It was the one neat class from 4e. Change the name if people are still stupid about it. If you're worried about class bloat, kill the warlock, it has stupid flavor.

Rob Schwalbe (Of Shadow of a Demon Lord and who wrote most of the best rules material in late 4E) recently made a Warlord Class for 5E - it's on the DMs Guild.

It's a solid class - but my main impression was that it showed why a Warlord doesn't really work that well in 5E.  There's just not enough rules complexity for it to interact with.

Quote from: Razor 007;1083607What the hell?  Go hang out on TBP, for instance......

It's an echo chamber for people who want to run D&D into the ground again.  It won't be very successful, but at least a few people will get what they wanted.

Those people - add the Something Awful crowd as well - never liked D&D to begin with. Hell, they will say as much when it comes up in discussion. They can be safely disregarded.

I'd just like a better presented 5e PHB with an index
. Likewise the MM should have encounter tables and lists by CR. I'm very happy with the core 5e engine and don't want it changed. Ideally there would be non casting Ranger and Paladin.

I think 5e is going to stick around for a very long while. Having said that, I'd change around some ideas were I to design 6e.

As a unabashed 4E fan, yeah I like some of the stuff they did.

• I like Healing Surges but I'd tailor it to be similar to stamina and vitality as the name is too "gamey" ( though Hit Points apparently aren't tho?) But I like the concept of limited in-combat healing.

• I'd keep "Epic" progression in the PHB and have rules that make it stand out as great.

• Class balance is one of those things that you seem to either really like or hate. Is magic "wonderful and rare" or is it common? I dunno, I feel 5e does a good middle-ground but I haven't done enough high level 5e to see where martials compare to high level spells. I'd use 3e/PF as an example of what not to do tho.

• I've always liked Armor as Damage Reduction instead of "I'm harder to hit" so maybe that'd be the standard.

• keep the +2 to +6 or maybe increase it to a 2-10 spread. Anything else is simply numbers porn for no actual reason.

• keep advantage/disadvantage.

• maintain the idea of no alignment requirements.

• keep 5e backgrounds and some skills associated with them.

• I like skills simple, hated still ranks you had to Dole out every damn level.

• use more 2e magic items

IME class balance in high level 5e is good. Everyone shines in different ways. Currently running for group with bbn 19 bbn 20 druid 20 and rogue 17, they all contribute well. Obviously group lacks a primary arcane caster though.