Martial Combat Overhaul. Let's make swords great again. Integrate the Maneuver/Superiority system into all classes that gain a Fighting Style as a core class feature (fighters, rangers, dingdongs, blood hunters) - if you're trained enough to have a signature fighting style, you're trained enough to have signature moves. Each class builds its available Maneuver pool from a set of universal maneuvers, as well as maneuvers specific to its class. Each weapon could also have a unique maneuver tied specifically to it, allowing weapon selection to actually god damned matter again. As well, MCO involves baseline improvements to the martial combat system. 'Big Power' feats like GWM and PAM need to be less crucial to good builds; the 'Power Strike' option of -5/+10 is wildly imbalanced. Melee builds are basically judged to be Good or Shit based almost solelyl on whether they can GWM to get away with Power Striking on every attack. Instead of giving it such a huge swing, Power Strike simply lets you add your proficiency bonus to the damage roll of your attack rather than the attack roll, and it's something you can do on any (weapon/unarmed) attack. There are a myriad of other things I'd do to make martial combat as engaging as it should be, but these are the two main ones.
Short Rests Suck and Nobody Uses Them. Not because the idea of taking a breather is a bad one, but because short rests are inherently weird. Some classes don't ever need anything more than a breather; other classes get almost nothing from a breather. This dissonance means it's hard for the short-rest guys to convince the rest of the team to risk their hides on spending A WHOLE ASS HOUR sitting around massaging their butts in a dungeon somewhere. The short rest is supposed to be the way you recover and restore yourself in dangerous ground when you don't have a surfeit of healing magic, but it takes so damn long that you're generally exposing yourself to more danger, not less, and the fact that most spellcasting classes get effectively nothing from a short rest means the martials designed to key off them are risking their squishy's keisters for basically dick-all. Everybody should regain something from short rests - no, spending Hit Dice doesn't count - and they should be short rests. Not an entire hour spent handjobbing oneself in a hostile dungeon. Yes, I'm aware that short rests seem to be disappearing rather than being redone in D&D 2024, but that doesn't stop me from wishing they worked better.
Feats are Fun, Let People Actually Take Them. You know what's not fun? Bumping an ability modifier up by one and seeing effectively zero change in your playstyle or capabilities, but just being a little bit better at what you were already doing. You know what's better than almost every single feat in the books? Bumping an ability modifier up by one and seeing effectively zero change in your playstyle or capabilities, but just being a little bit better at what you were already doing. 5e is a system absolutely starved forcustomization and real player choice. Players have almost zero agency over their character's growth and development - once you choose your class at 1st and your subclass at some point before 4th, your progression is effectively locked in. No matter what happens to your character during the course of their adventures, their growth will never reflect it. Feats are the one and only way to even partially remedy this, but to gain a feat you have to give up the ability to improve as a whole. Many players say "working as intended! Be a little bit better at a lot of things or way better at one thing, that's a valid choice!" and maybe they're right. But it's not a choice that feels good, especially in a game where you normally get absolutely zero native access to feats. You never get to take that one feat that really speaks to who your character is without falling behind in the numbers, and that just doesn't feel good. So fix it, however you have to
Skills Don't HAVE to be Boring and Useless. Remember how your socially awkward wizard has never once succeeded on a Persuasion check no matter how well reasoned and logical her argument is because her CHA score of 7 means she's apparently a troglodyte that cannot people and her genius-level intelligence has never once mattered? We can fix that. Eliminate the hard-coded coupling between skills and abilities. Instead of a giant list of eighteen rigid, fixed, unbending, unchanging, Eternal and Forever skills in the middle of your sheet, just have a set of blank lines you can fill in with whatever you're proficient with. The skills can still exist, but they're not tied to specific abilities anymore, and a DM can also easily and seamlessly insert or modify their own skills to tune a world to their liking. Tool proficiencies can actually be equivalent to skill proficiencies, instead of shuffled off to a forgotten corner of the character sheet to rot. Just imagine the possibilities.
Hardcore Rules are Not Just for Hardcore Players. Every game could potentially benefit from better rules for things like injury, disease, starvation/exposure, and everything else people tend to just blow over. The people who simply will not ever tolerate those things in their games can ignore those rules the same way they always have, but for the rest of us? How many classes get ways to mitigate/ignore disease despite there not being any actual diseases in the rulebooks anywhere save for one bad spell nobody uses? Who's ever used the Lingering Injury rules straight out of the book? 'Survival'-oriented rules that aren't crappy afterthoughts would go a long ways towards helping out DMs who want to present a more grounded challenge to their players without Wizards telling those DMs to more or less eat farts and die before doing it all themselves. A lot of folks might be surprised by how much verisimilitude and engagement they get from a world where they don't get to handwave ninety-five percent of the world's threats and dangers.
And finally...
Don't be Married to What Came Before. I don't hold out high hopes for this one, but frankly D&D 2024 will be a better game if Wizards is willing to break stuff. Don't hold them to 100% perfect flawless backwards compatibility with everything; that means very limited ability to fix stuff that isn't working. How do people expect monks to stop being so weirdly over-dependent on ki if Wizards can't break old subclasses? How do people expect martial/melee combat to stop being terrible and boring if they can't crack old adventures that expect martial characters to be pointless meatwalls? If we want a better ruleset, the books built on the old bad ruleset will need to be shooed out at least somewhat. Backwards compatibility does not have to be perfect to exist. So long as Bounded Accuracy remains and the target numbers in old adventures are still more-or-less right? Things will be fine. So let them break some stuff in the name of unbreaking stuff in the original core books.
I have no idea why 5e decided "let's keep the short rest concept from 4e but change it from 5 minutes to an hour", as opposed to either dropping them entirely, or keeping them at 5m.
4. Feats are Fun, Let People Actually Take Them. You know what's not fun? Bumping an ability modifier up by one and seeing effectively zero change in your playstyle or capabilities, but just being a little bit better at what you were already doing. You know what's better than almost every single feat in the books? Bumping an ability modifier up by one and seeing effectively zero change in your playstyle or capabilities, but just being a little bit better at what you were already doing. 5e is a system absolutely starved forcustomization and real player choice. Players have almost zero agency over their character's growth and development - once you choose your class at 1st and your subclass at some point before 4th, your progression is effectively locked in. No matter what happens to your character during the course of their adventures, their growth will never reflect it. Feats are the one and only way to even partially remedy this, but to gain a feat you have to give up the ability to improve as a whole. Many players say "working as intended! Be a little bit better at a lot of things or way better at one thing, that's a valid choice!" and maybe they're right. But it's not a choice that feels good, especially in a game where you normally get absolutely zero native access to feats. You never get to take that one feat that really speaks to who your character is without falling behind in the numbers, and that just doesn't feel good. So fix it, however you have to
This. I really, really liked 4e's feat system. Feats and ASIs were on different tracks--you got an ASI every so often and you got feats every so often. It was not a one or the other kind of thing--you just simply had more options to customize your character and more interesting choices to make every time you levelled up. I would not be surprised to see a feat overhaul--it seems like a pretty useful change to fix some of 5e's lack of individualization flaws.
Related to that--and to the general complaint about character individualization lacking in 5e--I would love to see Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies return in 5e. For those who did not play 4e, when you reached certain levels you got to also choose a Paragon Path (level 11 on a 1-30 scale) or an Epic Destiny (level 21). These were additional customizations you got for your character based on where your character was at that point in the campaign--so, for example, if you had made friends with a fey, you might want to paragon path into a fey knight that gave you the ability to summon a unicorn mount. It was a fun additional progression reward generally independent of race and class (though some had racial/class prerequisites) and really allowed you to both make a character which was decidedly your own and make a character who seemed to grow and specialize as a direct result of their experiences in the campaign.
I am not going to hold my breath on this change ever coming--there were a lot of things that 4e did really well that Wizards is likely never going to bring back simply because of the backlash against 4e generally.
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Some other changes, none of which I feel are too big an ask:
1. Make it explicitly clear that alignment is optional and not an absolute. Most people know this, but the alignment purists are among the most annoying people to play with in the game.
2. Add official ways to customize spells other than flavour. This was my biggest complaint about Tasha's--they promised us "spell customization" but really just gave us "reflavouring things is cool." One of 5e's big problems is that there are some spells that are just too good not to take--Fireball, for example, is going to show up on 90% of characters' sheets. I personally have a set of rules for reskinning spells to other damage types (looking at similar resistance/vulnerability/immunity levels among monsters so the power level stays about the same), but that's an imperfect system and it would be nice to have some more official guidance on it.
3. More high-level monsters in a wider-range of categories. Currently you want high-level plants? Ha. Nope. Find some kind of other tentacle monster Aberrant or such and reskin that into a plant if you want to have some plants for a group of level 18 parties to fight. Same goes with Beasts, Oozes, etc. Because most adventures are focused at low and mid levels, the monsters get pretty thin up there in the higher levels, some monster types dropping off the radar completely.
4. A few new classes. The subclass system only goes so far in allowing you to customize your character--it would be nice to have a few more options available. They have playtested some before in UA, so it is not like it would be impossible to do or that they have not already laid some groundwork.
4. Feats are Fun, Let People Actually Take Them. You know what's not fun? Bumping an ability modifier up by one and seeing effectively zero change in your playstyle or capabilities, but just being a little bit better at what you were already doing. You know what's better than almost every single feat in the books? Bumping an ability modifier up by one and seeing effectively zero change in your playstyle or capabilities, but just being a little bit better at what you were already doing. 5e is a system absolutely starved forcustomization and real player choice. Players have almost zero agency over their character's growth and development - once you choose your class at 1st and your subclass at some point before 4th, your progression is effectively locked in. No matter what happens to your character during the course of their adventures, their growth will never reflect it. Feats are the one and only way to even partially remedy this, but to gain a feat you have to give up the ability to improve as a whole. Many players say "working as intended! Be a little bit better at a lot of things or way better at one thing, that's a valid choice!" and maybe they're right. But it's not a choice that feels good, especially in a game where you normally get absolutely zero native access to feats. You never get to take that one feat that really speaks to who your character is without falling behind in the numbers, and that just doesn't feel good. So fix it, however you have to
This. I really, really liked 4e's feat system. Feats and ASIs were on different tracks--you got an ASI every so often and you got feats every so often. It was not a one or the other kind of thing--you just simply had more options to customize your character and more interesting choices to make every time you levelled up. I would not be surprised to see a feat overhaul--it seems like a pretty useful change to fix some of 5e's lack of individualization flaws.
Yes. They're out here really trying to make feat trees a thing in the latest UAs, ignoring the fact that taking two feats means you're sitting on your starting stats until level 12. Most games don't even make it that far. Maybe they'll just suggest everyone rolls their stats until they get an 18 in something...
But yes, one of the complaints about 4e was the content bloat, and feats were a very visible part of that. There were at least... 3000 or so? Which to me was glorious, but other people hated it.
4. Feats are Fun, Let People Actually Take Them. You know what's not fun? Bumping an ability modifier up by one and seeing effectively zero change in your playstyle or capabilities, but just being a little bit better at what you were already doing. You know what's better than almost every single feat in the books? Bumping an ability modifier up by one and seeing effectively zero change in your playstyle or capabilities, but just being a little bit better at what you were already doing. 5e is a system absolutely starved forcustomization and real player choice. Players have almost zero agency over their character's growth and development - once you choose your class at 1st and your subclass at some point before 4th, your progression is effectively locked in. No matter what happens to your character during the course of their adventures, their growth will never reflect it. Feats are the one and only way to even partially remedy this, but to gain a feat you have to give up the ability to improve as a whole. Many players say "working as intended! Be a little bit better at a lot of things or way better at one thing, that's a valid choice!" and maybe they're right. But it's not a choice that feels good, especially in a game where you normally get absolutely zero native access to feats. You never get to take that one feat that really speaks to who your character is without falling behind in the numbers, and that just doesn't feel good. So fix it, however you have to
This. I really, really liked 4e's feat system. Feats and ASIs were on different tracks--you got an ASI every so often and you got feats every so often. It was not a one or the other kind of thing--you just simply had more options to customize your character and more interesting choices to make every time you levelled up. I would not be surprised to see a feat overhaul--it seems like a pretty useful change to fix some of 5e's lack of individualization flaws.
Yes. They're out here really trying to make feat trees a thing in the latest UAs, ignoring the fact that taking two feats means you're sitting on your starting stats until level 12. Most games don't even make it that far. Maybe they'll just suggest everyone rolls their stats until they get an 18 in something...
But yes, one of the complaints about 4e was the content bloat, and feats were a very visible part of that. There were at least... 3000 or so? Which to me was glorious, but other people hated it.
Yeah, the feat system in 4e had… flaws. I think having like 30 racial unique feats, 30 class unique feats, dozens upon dozens of feats related to individual gods (only one of which was good—and it was so good as to be game breaking), a half dozen or more feats with really, really niche specialisations…
It was a lot, especially for new players, and the overwhelming majority of the feats were complete and obvious garbage that you would never want to take, even for flavour reasons. I’m all for combing through options to build a character, but 4e’s feat system felt a lot like constantly sifting through a lot of chaff to find… the same kernels of wheat over and over again.
A happy medium between the two would be ideal. Cautiously optimistic about feat trees and hope they change how feats are chosen so players do not have to make the “feels bad” choice between skill increases and character customisation.
Yeah, the feat system in 4e had… flaws. I think having like 30 racial unique feats, 30 class unique feats, dozens upon dozens of feats related to individual gods (only one of which was good—and it was so good as to be game breaking), a half dozen or more feats with really, really niche specialisations…
And a bunch which were really just static bonuses, rather than doing anything interesting at all. I think part of the problem was that you got an awful lot of feats in 4e (18 by max level) so individual feats just couldn't be all that significant. The number of feats you got in 3e was more manageable; unless you were playing a class whose entire purpose in existing was feats (see fighter) you'd have seven by max level.
The other hard thing for 5e is that they wanted to make the feat system optional. I suspect if they'd made ASIs work like 4e (+1 to two different ability scores) it would be more feasible to have ASIs and feats trade off.
I’d also love to see feats and asi decoupled. Maybe keep feats based on class levels, to keep it as an important factor in if and when you want to multi class, but move asi similar to cantrip scaling. Like you get an asi when your proficiency bonus increases. That at least helps keep the math predictable for each tier of play. And lets you get a really big power boost when you hit a new tier, which is always cool.
While I enjoyed paragon paths/prestige classes, and I’d love to see them, I don’t think they’ll happen. You had to build toward them and get certain prereqs to qualify. It wasn’t very new player friendly, which really seems to be a big motivator in this edition. Hitting level 11, and realizing you can’t do what you want because you picked the wrong thing at level 4 is not a good feeling.
I'm not categorically opposed to feats, but I've never seen a feats system I actually fully like.
Also I hate the name "feats."
So I'm proposing a new system: the special moves system. In this system, you get a certain number of points to buy special moves as you level up, but here's the critical thing: you can get more points during gameplay. Thus, we eradicate the complaint that you make no meaningful build choices after you choose your subclass, AND we make it impossible to fully plan a 1-20 build before you even sit down to play, in one fell swoop. We gain a carrot with which to motivate mechanically driven players that isn't magic items (yay!), and most importantly of all, every special move is something you could describe as a special move. It's not a feat to make the same trick shot with a crossbow a hundred times over the course of a campaign! That's a special move.
How do you earn these special move points? Who cares. Let's say everyone gets one whenever an NPC says "thank you" to the party and means it. Just as an example. (I also like the idea of awarding them as consolation prizes for players who roll 20s on things that aren't attacks.)
Ta-da! I fixed feats. I'll be taking no criticism, and I expect to be paid within the month for my hard work. You're welcome.
Just give us 5th Edition - Ultimate Edition. It's 5th Ed, re-issued, with,
1) Tasha's Guide Options in Core.
2) Less Spells, because frankly, people don't use half of them anyway.
3) Less Monsters, cause the same.
4) Fully 100% compatable with what came before so people don't feel the need to re-buy unless they want to and finally...
5) And sold in 1 big book, finally breaking the 3-book curse! More cost effective for new players, DMs, and old players that want a one book reference to carry to their weekly game!
5) And sold in 1 big book, finally breaking the 3-book curse! More cost effective for new players, DMs, and old players that want a one book reference to carry to their weekly game!
That would actually be the most anticonsumer format that I could think of. It's important to note that the bigger a book, the more expensive it is to bind. I'm not just talking materials which scale linearly, but how much it costs to put it together which scales faster. It will cost a lot more to have them in one volume rather than three. The cost of that monster volume will be much higher than what it does now. There's a good reason why hardbacks are generally around 300-500 pages, it's the best compromise between cost and length. All three are in that region now.
The other problem is that by putting them together, even without the oversll cost increase, you're creating a steeper barrier to entry. No one can just get the PHB and work their way up. That'd deter newcomers who rather than gambling $40 on the PHB would be forced to fork up well north of $100 on the chance that they like it.
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Lots of stuff I've forgotten, so I'll keep adding to this list.
- Backgrounds get extended and made more impactful.
- Feats and ASIs disconnected from each other, and moved to character level rather than class level.
- Invocation/Infusion like options for all classes.
- More classes. I'd like to see a psion, warlord, and swordmage get added as official classes. Maybe add bloodhunter, though it's a bit setting specific like artificer and also seems to have a bit too much 3.5e design to it. Still really fun to play though.
- Bring back the playtest sorcerer.
- As racial ASI's are all the same, just delete them or move that into the ability scores generation section of character creation.
- Manoeuvres for all martials. Some will be usable by multiple classes. Others unique to a single martial.
- Allow warlocks to either customise their eldritch blast a lot, giving it different abilities or effects. Or allow invocations to apply to other damage cantrips. I like warlocks being a cantrip spammer. But at least let them mix up what they can do with it.
- Make strength not useless.
- Make enemies have more interesting abilities, rather than being HP stacks. Bring back the bloodied condition and abilities.
This, sans the bolded text, is almost my entire list, so I'm just gonna quote you and steal it.
In addition
-either more complex weapon options or 100% streamline them, none of this in-between nonsense
-make point buy the primary stat system
-a more complex feat system, not in the feat tree kind of way but more in tiers where you get higher tier (and thus more powerful feats) less frequently then low tier feats (most of the half feats would probably fit in this). Maybe like three tiers, so tier 1 with what are now half feats, tier 2 with generally useful and powerful stuff like Alert, tier 3 with build defining stuff like Sharpshooter.
hmm, wishlist. I hope that's not a djinn granting the wishes
More MtG Setting Integration. I like it very much more then the base forgotten worlds setting. I would love it to be the core setting of D&D going forward (and it gets far more development than anything forgotten realms), but most of the community would probably rather wish going back a decade or two to grey hawk, dragonlance, dark sun or something along those lines.
If we are going to separate culture from races, make backgrounds more impactful and better. And just throwing a feat in it is not making it better, that is the most lazy way to do it.
Make humans as a base race more interesting. Nearly no one plays base human, they all take variant human instead.
Multiclassing replaced with prestige classes. This is a lot of work, but might be a better alternative down the road, to avoid certain issues (hexblade+paladin/bard/sorcerer)
Hefty rework on feats. Some are too good, and others far too underpowerd.
Ok lots of people are saying things here that are already in the power of DM's and players to do, Backgrounds can be as expanded and detailed as you want. If there is a particular one you want then you can talk to your DM about tweaking an existing one, or making a new one.
Feats can be disconnected from ASI's in my own campaign I allow the choice of a free feat the moment the players reach level 4 (not class level 4 but actual character level 4), I do then enforce that there first class level 4 they must take an ASI and not a feat, this is more because over time I have found the balance works well. From there on out if a player makes a good cause for taking an additional feat later in the campaign then I might allow it depending on the storyline reasoning.
Many classes that are asked for are actually a variation on an already existing one and so can come under as an alternative new subclass.
Every ASI is useful for the right class and, if your DM uses it for skill checks and saving throws throughout the game. Strength especially is a useful one for martial classes.
I suppose on the back of many of the comments, and the fact that they can already be applied, the biggest thing I want the 2024 version to focus on is giving DM's and Players freedom to change the rules as they want at the table ideas and suggestions of how to discuss and apply changes, lets move away from RAW and instead move to Rules as a Guide.
Mechanically it is important that whatever they produce is fully backward compatible, I am not going to be throwing out everything I have bought and buying an entire new system but rules wise I think this system is largely balanced and flexible enough to cover most playing groups. but there are some tweaks that could be made.
Rangers need to get some love they don't need anything drastic but they do need to be balanced to be a more unique option, a lot of the time they seem to stray either into Rogue type use on the table, or as an alternative to the fighter with a bit of magic thrown in.
More information for DM's on setting up challenging encounters, so many threads on the forum show that CR is not fit for purpose with the way many people run the game.
More information on how to make social encounters become more than just a series of dice rolls. Alot of DM's new to the game find themselves getting into the trap of just having players make persuasion and deception checks to work out how a social encounter has gone.
More resources to help DM's have the confidence to allow proper crafting in game. The rules as written in Xanathars mean that it is pretty impossible to run a proper crafting part of the campaign. I know from experiance that actually letting players go out and get the fantastical ingredients they need to make a special weapon, and then have them forge that weapon over a short period of time, is great fun but there are only snippets of ideas in the books.
Fix some of the wording and ruling and provide some better examples of "what if scenarios" to help new players.
Campaign settings that have adventure hooks running throughout them. Other systems do this really well, I have the old 1st edition L5R and throughout every book there are hundreds of one paragraph encounter/adventure/campaign ideas relevant to the information on that page. Most of the monsters in there version of the monster manual had the same, sometimes just a single line with a unique idea of how to use/introduce that monster in an encounter.
but I will reiterate a lot of the points made, like fix the economy, change the setting, can already be accomplished if DM's had the confidence to just ignore certain aspects of the rules. Over the years I have seen DM's ignore Initiative all together (they simply roll a Dice and start combat with that player/themselves going round the table) you can all be that radical with the rules you don't like and I feel the book needs to reiterate that, there are no optional rules in DnD, every rule is optional if the table agree.
Ok lots of people are saying things here that are already in the power of DM's and players to do, Backgrounds can be as expanded and detailed as you want. If there is a particular one you want then you can talk to your DM about tweaking an existing one, or making a new one.
Feats can be disconnected from ASI's in my own campaign I allow the choice of a free feat the moment the players reach level 4 (not class level 4 but actual character level 4), I do then enforce that there first class level 4 they must take an ASI and not a feat, this is more because over time I have found the balance works well. From there on out if a player makes a good cause for taking an additional feat later in the campaign then I might allow it depending on the storyline reasoning.
Many classes that are asked for are actually a variation on an already existing one and so can come under as an alternative new subclass.
Every ASI is useful for the right class and, if your DM uses it for skill checks and saving throws throughout the game. Strength especially is a useful one for martial classes.
I suppose on the back of many of the comments, and the fact that they can already be applied, the biggest thing I want the 2024 version to focus on is giving DM's and Players freedom to change the rules as they want at the table ideas and suggestions of how to discuss and apply changes, lets move away from RAW and instead move to Rules as a Guide.
Mechanically it is important that whatever they produce is fully backward compatible, I am not going to be throwing out everything I have bought and buying an entire new system but rules wise I think this system is largely balanced and flexible enough to cover most playing groups. but there are some tweaks that could be made.
Rangers need to get some love they don't need anything drastic but they do need to be balanced to be a more unique option, a lot of the time they seem to stray either into Rogue type use on the table, or as an alternative to the fighter with a bit of magic thrown in.
More information for DM's on setting up challenging encounters, so many threads on the forum show that CR is not fit for purpose with the way many people run the game.
More information on how to make social encounters become more than just a series of dice rolls. Alot of DM's new to the game find themselves getting into the trap of just having players make persuasion and deception checks to work out how a social encounter has gone.
More resources to help DM's have the confidence to allow proper crafting in game. The rules as written in Xanathars mean that it is pretty impossible to run a proper crafting part of the campaign. I know from experiance that actually letting players go out and get the fantastical ingredients they need to make a special weapon, and then have them forge that weapon over a short period of time, is great fun but there are only snippets of ideas in the books.
Fix some of the wording and ruling and provide some better examples of "what if scenarios" to help new players.
Campaign settings that have adventure hooks running throughout them. Other systems do this really well, I have the old 1st edition L5R and throughout every book there are hundreds of one paragraph encounter/adventure/campaign ideas relevant to the information on that page. Most of the monsters in there version of the monster manual had the same, sometimes just a single line with a unique idea of how to use/introduce that monster in an encounter.
but I will reiterate a lot of the points made, like fix the economy, change the setting, can already be accomplished if DM's had the confidence to just ignore certain aspects of the rules. Over the years I have seen DM's ignore Initiative all together (they simply roll a Dice and start combat with that player/themselves going round the table) you can all be that radical with the rules you don't like and I feel the book needs to reiterate that, there are no optional rules in DnD, every rule is optional if the table agree.
I am not sure “yes, these are flaws in the rules, but you can fix them by ignoring the rules” is quite as strong of an argument as you think it is.
This is not like “I am not fond of a certain spell, it is banned at my table” or “any time you role a d20, you can crit/crit fail, even dice roles where RAW there are no crits” - houserules that change an aspect of the game because that house does not like the rules, but which would not be gamebreaking if played RAW.
Played RAW, the problems addressed with feats and character customisation m are not simple “if you do not like it, you can homebrew it differently” - they are systemic issues in the game itself that decrease game experience for players by limiting character development choices (your only real choices now are your background, subclass, and the “feels bad” choice between ASI and Feats) or which prove a barrier to entry for new players who might not be able to balance their feat-ASI cost benefit analysis as well.
When everyone would have to homerule a system to fix a clear systemic issue in the game itself, that is a clear signal that the underlying system should be changed. That is particularly true of something as fundamental to the game as progression - something DMs are going to be a bit more reluctant to change. That is exactly when an official, universal change is warranted.
5) And sold in 1 big book, finally breaking the 3-book curse! More cost effective for new players, DMs, and old players that want a one book reference to carry to their weekly game!
That would actually be the most anticonsumer format that I could think of. It's important to note that the bigger a book, the more expensive it is to bind. I'm not just talking materials which scale linearly, but how much it costs to put it together which scales faster. It will cost a lot more to have them in one volume rather than three. The cost of that monster volume will be much higher than what it does now. There's a good reason why hardbacks are generally around 300-500 pages, it's the best compromise between cost and length. All three are in that region now.
The other problem is that by putting them together, even without the oversll cost increase, you're creating a steeper barrier to entry. No one can just get the PHB and work their way up. That'd deter newcomers who rather than gambling $40 on the PHB would be forced to fork up well north of $100 on the chance that they like it.
Or, hear me out, they could stop requiring 3 books "to work up to" like almost every other game DOESN'T right now.
Almost all the other big players are "One and Ready" to play. The expectation of 3 books to play one game is old and antiquated. You also ignored my part where I said "Cut out a lot of the spells and monsters that people never use."
Cause that would drastically reduce the overall size.
The only other big name game that still requires at least 2 books to play is Pathfinder, and that is just keeping the monster manual separate (which again, if they dumped all the stuff that rarely gets used from monsters and spells, they'd have space for one book).
But whatever, keep insisting we need 3 $50 books instead of one $60-100 book, because tradition,and we have to include all the trap spells and lame monsters that never get used so new players can have the illusion of choice before they join tables that tell them what they need to play to actually be effective. In a hobby most often picked up by those of limited means and incomes.
Then WotC wonders why "ye old Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" happens.
5) And sold in 1 big book, finally breaking the 3-book curse! More cost effective for new players, DMs, and old players that want a one book reference to carry to their weekly game!
That would actually be the most anticonsumer format that I could think of. It's important to note that the bigger a book, the more expensive it is to bind. I'm not just talking materials which scale linearly, but how much it costs to put it together which scales faster. It will cost a lot more to have them in one volume rather than three. The cost of that monster volume will be much higher than what it does now. There's a good reason why hardbacks are generally around 300-500 pages, it's the best compromise between cost and length. All three are in that region now.
The other problem is that by putting them together, even without the oversll cost increase, you're creating a steeper barrier to entry. No one can just get the PHB and work their way up. That'd deter newcomers who rather than gambling $40 on the PHB would be forced to fork up well north of $100 on the chance that they like it.
Or, hear me out, they could stop requiring 3 books "to work up to" like almost every other game DOESN'T right now.
Almost all the other big players are "One and Ready" to play. The expectation of 3 books to play one game is old and antiquated. You also ignored my part where I said "Cut out a lot of the spells and monsters that people never use."
Cause that would drastically reduce the overall size.
The only other big name game that still requires at least 2 books to play is Pathfinder, and that is just keeping the monster manual separate (which again, if they dumped all the stuff that rarely gets used from monsters and spells, they'd have space for one book).
But whatever, keep insisting we need 3 $50 books instead of one $60-100 book, because tradition,and we have to include all the trap spells and lame monsters that never get used so new players can have the illusion of choice before they join tables that tell them what they need to play to actually be effective. In a hobby most often picked up by those of limited means and incomes.
Then WotC wonders why "ye old Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" happens.
But the average player doesn’t need 3 books. They need 1. And then the whole table can chip in for the other 2, which only 1 person needs. And besides the cost savings, those really thick books fall apart much more easily.
5) And sold in 1 big book, finally breaking the 3-book curse! More cost effective for new players, DMs, and old players that want a one book reference to carry to their weekly game!
That would actually be the most anticonsumer format that I could think of. It's important to note that the bigger a book, the more expensive it is to bind. I'm not just talking materials which scale linearly, but how much it costs to put it together which scales faster. It will cost a lot more to have them in one volume rather than three. The cost of that monster volume will be much higher than what it does now. There's a good reason why hardbacks are generally around 300-500 pages, it's the best compromise between cost and length. All three are in that region now.
The other problem is that by putting them together, even without the oversll cost increase, you're creating a steeper barrier to entry. No one can just get the PHB and work their way up. That'd deter newcomers who rather than gambling $40 on the PHB would be forced to fork up well north of $100 on the chance that they like it.
Or, hear me out, they could stop requiring 3 books "to work up to" like almost every other game DOESN'T right now.
Almost all the other big players are "One and Ready" to play. The expectation of 3 books to play one game is old and antiquated. You also ignored my part where I said "Cut out a lot of the spells and monsters that people never use."
Cause that would drastically reduce the overall size.
The only other big name game that still requires at least 2 books to play is Pathfinder, and that is just keeping the monster manual separate (which again, if they dumped all the stuff that rarely gets used from monsters and spells, they'd have space for one book).
But whatever, keep insisting we need 3 $50 books instead of one $60-100 book, because tradition,and we have to include all the trap spells and lame monsters that never get used so new players can have the illusion of choice before they join tables that tell them what they need to play to actually be effective. In a hobby most often picked up by those of limited means and incomes.
Then WotC wonders why "ye old Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" happens.
There actually is a solid reason for the three book model. One book is something that can be passed around to players to create their characters; one is just for the DM and provides advice on DMing; one is the reference table for what your creatures do, and which you might want to review mid-game. Each book fulfils a different, unique role where having them separate makes it easier to use as a reference and easier to bifurcate information and avoid metagaming.
I am also not fond of removing spells. Even “bad” spells still can be fun for flavour, and the last thing 5e needs is LESS customisation.
Or, hear me out, they could stop requiring 3 books "to work up to" like almost every other game DOESN'T right now.
Almost all the other big players are "One and Ready" to play. The expectation of 3 books to play one game is old and antiquated. You also ignored my part where I said "Cut out a lot of the spells and monsters that people never use."
If you want a compact version of D&D, there's the basic rules. As for invoking "other big players", there aren't any other big players; D&D is bigger than the rest of the industry put together, and probably the second largest (Pathfinder) is also three books, except their PHB equivalent (Core Rules) is 640 pages...
Let's see. Just because. AHEM:
And finally...
Don't be Married to What Came Before. I don't hold out high hopes for this one, but frankly D&D 2024 will be a better game if Wizards is willing to break stuff. Don't hold them to 100% perfect flawless backwards compatibility with everything; that means very limited ability to fix stuff that isn't working. How do people expect monks to stop being so weirdly over-dependent on ki if Wizards can't break old subclasses? How do people expect martial/melee combat to stop being terrible and boring if they can't crack old adventures that expect martial characters to be pointless meatwalls? If we want a better ruleset, the books built on the old bad ruleset will need to be shooed out at least somewhat. Backwards compatibility does not have to be perfect to exist. So long as Bounded Accuracy remains and the target numbers in old adventures are still more-or-less right? Things will be fine. So let them break some stuff in the name of unbreaking stuff in the original core books.
Please do not contact or message me.
^ Agree with 100% of what Yurei said!
I have no idea why 5e decided "let's keep the short rest concept from 4e but change it from 5 minutes to an hour", as opposed to either dropping them entirely, or keeping them at 5m.
This. I really, really liked 4e's feat system. Feats and ASIs were on different tracks--you got an ASI every so often and you got feats every so often. It was not a one or the other kind of thing--you just simply had more options to customize your character and more interesting choices to make every time you levelled up. I would not be surprised to see a feat overhaul--it seems like a pretty useful change to fix some of 5e's lack of individualization flaws.
Related to that--and to the general complaint about character individualization lacking in 5e--I would love to see Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies return in 5e. For those who did not play 4e, when you reached certain levels you got to also choose a Paragon Path (level 11 on a 1-30 scale) or an Epic Destiny (level 21). These were additional customizations you got for your character based on where your character was at that point in the campaign--so, for example, if you had made friends with a fey, you might want to paragon path into a fey knight that gave you the ability to summon a unicorn mount. It was a fun additional progression reward generally independent of race and class (though some had racial/class prerequisites) and really allowed you to both make a character which was decidedly your own and make a character who seemed to grow and specialize as a direct result of their experiences in the campaign.
I am not going to hold my breath on this change ever coming--there were a lot of things that 4e did really well that Wizards is likely never going to bring back simply because of the backlash against 4e generally.
----
Some other changes, none of which I feel are too big an ask:
1. Make it explicitly clear that alignment is optional and not an absolute. Most people know this, but the alignment purists are among the most annoying people to play with in the game.
2. Add official ways to customize spells other than flavour. This was my biggest complaint about Tasha's--they promised us "spell customization" but really just gave us "reflavouring things is cool." One of 5e's big problems is that there are some spells that are just too good not to take--Fireball, for example, is going to show up on 90% of characters' sheets. I personally have a set of rules for reskinning spells to other damage types (looking at similar resistance/vulnerability/immunity levels among monsters so the power level stays about the same), but that's an imperfect system and it would be nice to have some more official guidance on it.
3. More high-level monsters in a wider-range of categories. Currently you want high-level plants? Ha. Nope. Find some kind of other tentacle monster Aberrant or such and reskin that into a plant if you want to have some plants for a group of level 18 parties to fight. Same goes with Beasts, Oozes, etc. Because most adventures are focused at low and mid levels, the monsters get pretty thin up there in the higher levels, some monster types dropping off the radar completely.
4. A few new classes. The subclass system only goes so far in allowing you to customize your character--it would be nice to have a few more options available. They have playtested some before in UA, so it is not like it would be impossible to do or that they have not already laid some groundwork.
Forgot that one. XGTE had some introductory options, but I feel tools should definitely have more utility.
My Homebrew: Magic Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | My house rules
Currently playing: Fai'zal - CN Githyanki Rogue (Candlekeep Mysteries, Forgotten Realms) ; Zeena - LN Elf Sorcerer (Dragonlance)
Playing D&D since 1st edition. DMs Guild Author: B.A. Morrier (4-5⭐products! Please check them out.) Twitter: @benmorrier he/him
Yes. They're out here really trying to make feat trees a thing in the latest UAs, ignoring the fact that taking two feats means you're sitting on your starting stats until level 12. Most games don't even make it that far. Maybe they'll just suggest everyone rolls their stats until they get an 18 in something...
But yes, one of the complaints about 4e was the content bloat, and feats were a very visible part of that. There were at least... 3000 or so? Which to me was glorious, but other people hated it.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Yeah, the feat system in 4e had… flaws. I think having like 30 racial unique feats, 30 class unique feats, dozens upon dozens of feats related to individual gods (only one of which was good—and it was so good as to be game breaking), a half dozen or more feats with really, really niche specialisations…
It was a lot, especially for new players, and the overwhelming majority of the feats were complete and obvious garbage that you would never want to take, even for flavour reasons. I’m all for combing through options to build a character, but 4e’s feat system felt a lot like constantly sifting through a lot of chaff to find… the same kernels of wheat over and over again.
A happy medium between the two would be ideal. Cautiously optimistic about feat trees and hope they change how feats are chosen so players do not have to make the “feels bad” choice between skill increases and character customisation.
And a bunch which were really just static bonuses, rather than doing anything interesting at all. I think part of the problem was that you got an awful lot of feats in 4e (18 by max level) so individual feats just couldn't be all that significant. The number of feats you got in 3e was more manageable; unless you were playing a class whose entire purpose in existing was feats (see fighter) you'd have seven by max level.
The other hard thing for 5e is that they wanted to make the feat system optional. I suspect if they'd made ASIs work like 4e (+1 to two different ability scores) it would be more feasible to have ASIs and feats trade off.
I’d also love to see feats and asi decoupled. Maybe keep feats based on class levels, to keep it as an important factor in if and when you want to multi class, but move asi similar to cantrip scaling. Like you get an asi when your proficiency bonus increases. That at least helps keep the math predictable for each tier of play. And lets you get a really big power boost when you hit a new tier, which is always cool.
While I enjoyed paragon paths/prestige classes, and I’d love to see them, I don’t think they’ll happen. You had to build toward them and get certain prereqs to qualify. It wasn’t very new player friendly, which really seems to be a big motivator in this edition. Hitting level 11, and realizing you can’t do what you want because you picked the wrong thing at level 4 is not a good feeling.
I'm not categorically opposed to feats, but I've never seen a feats system I actually fully like.
Also I hate the name "feats."
So I'm proposing a new system: the special moves system. In this system, you get a certain number of points to buy special moves as you level up, but here's the critical thing: you can get more points during gameplay. Thus, we eradicate the complaint that you make no meaningful build choices after you choose your subclass, AND we make it impossible to fully plan a 1-20 build before you even sit down to play, in one fell swoop. We gain a carrot with which to motivate mechanically driven players that isn't magic items (yay!), and most importantly of all, every special move is something you could describe as a special move. It's not a feat to make the same trick shot with a crossbow a hundred times over the course of a campaign! That's a special move.
How do you earn these special move points? Who cares. Let's say everyone gets one whenever an NPC says "thank you" to the party and means it. Just as an example. (I also like the idea of awarding them as consolation prizes for players who roll 20s on things that aren't attacks.)
Ta-da! I fixed feats. I'll be taking no criticism, and I expect to be paid within the month for my hard work. You're welcome.
My simple request for the 2024 Edition --
Don't.
Just. Don't. Do. The. Edition. Churn. Mombo.
Just give us 5th Edition - Ultimate Edition. It's 5th Ed, re-issued, with,
1) Tasha's Guide Options in Core.
2) Less Spells, because frankly, people don't use half of them anyway.
3) Less Monsters, cause the same.
4) Fully 100% compatable with what came before so people don't feel the need to re-buy unless they want to and finally...
5) And sold in 1 big book, finally breaking the 3-book curse! More cost effective for new players, DMs, and old players that want a one book reference to carry to their weekly game!
DONE! DING DING DING!
Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.
That would actually be the most anticonsumer format that I could think of. It's important to note that the bigger a book, the more expensive it is to bind. I'm not just talking materials which scale linearly, but how much it costs to put it together which scales faster. It will cost a lot more to have them in one volume rather than three. The cost of that monster volume will be much higher than what it does now. There's a good reason why hardbacks are generally around 300-500 pages, it's the best compromise between cost and length. All three are in that region now.
The other problem is that by putting them together, even without the oversll cost increase, you're creating a steeper barrier to entry. No one can just get the PHB and work their way up. That'd deter newcomers who rather than gambling $40 on the PHB would be forced to fork up well north of $100 on the chance that they like it.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
This, sans the bolded text, is almost my entire list, so I'm just gonna quote you and steal it.
In addition
-either more complex weapon options or 100% streamline them, none of this in-between nonsense
-make point buy the primary stat system
-a more complex feat system, not in the feat tree kind of way but more in tiers where you get higher tier (and thus more powerful feats) less frequently then low tier feats (most of the half feats would probably fit in this). Maybe like three tiers, so tier 1 with what are now half feats, tier 2 with generally useful and powerful stuff like Alert, tier 3 with build defining stuff like Sharpshooter.
hmm, wishlist. I hope that's not a djinn granting the wishes
Ok lots of people are saying things here that are already in the power of DM's and players to do, Backgrounds can be as expanded and detailed as you want. If there is a particular one you want then you can talk to your DM about tweaking an existing one, or making a new one.
Feats can be disconnected from ASI's in my own campaign I allow the choice of a free feat the moment the players reach level 4 (not class level 4 but actual character level 4), I do then enforce that there first class level 4 they must take an ASI and not a feat, this is more because over time I have found the balance works well. From there on out if a player makes a good cause for taking an additional feat later in the campaign then I might allow it depending on the storyline reasoning.
Many classes that are asked for are actually a variation on an already existing one and so can come under as an alternative new subclass.
Every ASI is useful for the right class and, if your DM uses it for skill checks and saving throws throughout the game. Strength especially is a useful one for martial classes.
I suppose on the back of many of the comments, and the fact that they can already be applied, the biggest thing I want the 2024 version to focus on is giving DM's and Players freedom to change the rules as they want at the table ideas and suggestions of how to discuss and apply changes, lets move away from RAW and instead move to Rules as a Guide.
Mechanically it is important that whatever they produce is fully backward compatible, I am not going to be throwing out everything I have bought and buying an entire new system but rules wise I think this system is largely balanced and flexible enough to cover most playing groups. but there are some tweaks that could be made.
Rangers need to get some love they don't need anything drastic but they do need to be balanced to be a more unique option, a lot of the time they seem to stray either into Rogue type use on the table, or as an alternative to the fighter with a bit of magic thrown in.
More information for DM's on setting up challenging encounters, so many threads on the forum show that CR is not fit for purpose with the way many people run the game.
More information on how to make social encounters become more than just a series of dice rolls. Alot of DM's new to the game find themselves getting into the trap of just having players make persuasion and deception checks to work out how a social encounter has gone.
More resources to help DM's have the confidence to allow proper crafting in game. The rules as written in Xanathars mean that it is pretty impossible to run a proper crafting part of the campaign. I know from experiance that actually letting players go out and get the fantastical ingredients they need to make a special weapon, and then have them forge that weapon over a short period of time, is great fun but there are only snippets of ideas in the books.
Fix some of the wording and ruling and provide some better examples of "what if scenarios" to help new players.
Campaign settings that have adventure hooks running throughout them. Other systems do this really well, I have the old 1st edition L5R and throughout every book there are hundreds of one paragraph encounter/adventure/campaign ideas relevant to the information on that page. Most of the monsters in there version of the monster manual had the same, sometimes just a single line with a unique idea of how to use/introduce that monster in an encounter.
but I will reiterate a lot of the points made, like fix the economy, change the setting, can already be accomplished if DM's had the confidence to just ignore certain aspects of the rules. Over the years I have seen DM's ignore Initiative all together (they simply roll a Dice and start combat with that player/themselves going round the table) you can all be that radical with the rules you don't like and I feel the book needs to reiterate that, there are no optional rules in DnD, every rule is optional if the table agree.
I am not sure “yes, these are flaws in the rules, but you can fix them by ignoring the rules” is quite as strong of an argument as you think it is.
This is not like “I am not fond of a certain spell, it is banned at my table” or “any time you role a d20, you can crit/crit fail, even dice roles where RAW there are no crits” - houserules that change an aspect of the game because that house does not like the rules, but which would not be gamebreaking if played RAW.
Played RAW, the problems addressed with feats and character customisation m are not simple “if you do not like it, you can homebrew it differently” - they are systemic issues in the game itself that decrease game experience for players by limiting character development choices (your only real choices now are your background, subclass, and the “feels bad” choice between ASI and Feats) or which prove a barrier to entry for new players who might not be able to balance their feat-ASI cost benefit analysis as well.
When everyone would have to homerule a system to fix a clear systemic issue in the game itself, that is a clear signal that the underlying system should be changed. That is particularly true of something as fundamental to the game as progression - something DMs are going to be a bit more reluctant to change. That is exactly when an official, universal change is warranted.
Or, hear me out, they could stop requiring 3 books "to work up to" like almost every other game DOESN'T right now.
Almost all the other big players are "One and Ready" to play. The expectation of 3 books to play one game is old and antiquated. You also ignored my part where I said "Cut out a lot of the spells and monsters that people never use."
Cause that would drastically reduce the overall size.
The only other big name game that still requires at least 2 books to play is Pathfinder, and that is just keeping the monster manual separate (which again, if they dumped all the stuff that rarely gets used from monsters and spells, they'd have space for one book).
But whatever, keep insisting we need 3 $50 books instead of one $60-100 book, because tradition,and we have to include all the trap spells and lame monsters that never get used so new players can have the illusion of choice before they join tables that tell them what they need to play to actually be effective. In a hobby most often picked up by those of limited means and incomes.
Then WotC wonders why "ye old Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" happens.
But the average player doesn’t need 3 books. They need 1. And then the whole table can chip in for the other 2, which only 1 person needs.
And besides the cost savings, those really thick books fall apart much more easily.
There actually is a solid reason for the three book model. One book is something that can be passed around to players to create their characters; one is just for the DM and provides advice on DMing; one is the reference table for what your creatures do, and which you might want to review mid-game. Each book fulfils a different, unique role where having them separate makes it easier to use as a reference and easier to bifurcate information and avoid metagaming.
I am also not fond of removing spells. Even “bad” spells still can be fun for flavour, and the last thing 5e needs is LESS customisation.
If you want a compact version of D&D, there's the basic rules. As for invoking "other big players", there aren't any other big players; D&D is bigger than the rest of the industry put together, and probably the second largest (Pathfinder) is also three books, except their PHB equivalent (Core Rules) is 640 pages...