In the spirit of the announcement yesterday around OGL1.0a and the CCL, I think it's worth thinking about what all of the legacy D&D products can learn from all of the different iterations of the game out there. This innovation is core to innovating better and better products in the future, and we have an opportunity now with the current situation for this conversation.
What innovations do you see out there that certain products get right? What are some of the weaknesses / gaps as you see it?
Let me start:
- 5e gets a lot of it right. Focus on ability scores for checks, consistency and simplification of the game to make it easy to play, the overall balance through 10th-12th level, etc. They also pretty well nailed the balance between character options and simplicity. 5e's two biggest weaknesses IMO are (1) hit point bloat causes combat to detract from story momentum, (2) game balance is not engineered assuming a lot of magic item bonuses (both defense and offense), (3) boredom of players waiting for their turn due to combat length and (4) the game starts falling apart at high levels (due in part to items 1 &2). Also, there is not enough lethality in the game.
- I like Pathfinder 2e's skill check system - critical failure if you fail by 10 or more, critical success if you succeed by 10 or more, Nat 1 moves you down 1 category and Nat 20 moves you up one category is an improvement on the 5e system. I also like 3 actions instead of the move, action, bonus system 5e uses. I am intrigued by the character ability system as well - tying your starting ability scores to your class, background and ancestry is a very intriguing system. At the same time, there appears to be a lot of crunch and an overly documented list of actions in the system. I'm not as familiar with this system TBO, having only recently delved into it as a part of the OGL saga.
- I like the OSE system where they have kept the spirit of the old school game (combat and game speed -> player engagement, DM as adjudicator of the rules, open list of character actions, overall simplicity of the game). However, I like the 5E skill system, especially the simplified ability score option instead of skill option, over the OSE skill check system. I'm also not as much of a fan of the extreme lethality of the game, preferring a house rule "death save" at 0 hp to see if your character dies, and a 4d6 stat roll over a 3d6 system.
So what do you see that should be brought back to the core of D&D that other systems are doing better?
As far as pathfinder stuff. Degrees of success or failure is already an option in the DMG. There’s actually a lot of options in the DMG people say they are looking for in a new system and end up homebrewing. Pretty much all of chapter 9. With ability score generation, I only played the play test of pf2e, but as I remember, it ended up with every character having the same scores, just arranged differently. Could be they fixed that in the final version.
The three action economy, I really liked. Much simpler and more intuitive than 5e, imo.
Older editions I think were very good about keeping the martial/caster divide better balanced. Casters generally leveled more slowly, and spells took longer to cast, so they could be interrupted. It really helped balance things better. Plus stuff like fireball needing to fill it’s full volume, and lighting bolt bouncing off walls, it made using those spells more difficult, which helped balance them a bit. Not sure how you bring that back in 5e, without adding a pile of complexity that would just big things down, though.
Fantasy age uses 3d6 in its core and 1 d6 is supposed to look different then the others because it's number allows special actions called stunts to many roles in conversation, combat, or exploration. This leads to more dynamic results from your roll then only 1s and 20s being special at some tables.
I like the Hero System's flexibility to build what you want and the no need to name a class. It might be time for D&D to drop race and class for players and, instead, let you pick features. Several of the new builds basically do this by saying to assign your extra points where you want. Let people look the way and have the ancestry they want- genetics hop generations so you suddenly have a human with dark vision - just lets you know they have some other ancestry in their tree.
I like Vampire's build-up of consequences to damage. In D&D taking damage has no meaning unless you use the optional rules. Perhaps that is where it should stay- but D&D could do a better job of promoting those optional rules for people who are becoming bored due to the lack of threat to a character at the higher levels. I do miss how hard it was to survive those first levels, and how the challenge to stay alive was there. The current system rewards not just brave choices, but thoughtless ones as well.
The Fantasy Age mechanic of generating special actions -is fun.
No one gets high-level campaigns really right. I think partly because they try too hard to keep lower-level players safe.
D&D gets right that I can get a new player started in the game in 30 minutes or less. The simplicity of determining success or failure with enough interesting things which can raise or lower the chance. It is comfortable- familiar and flexible.
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In the spirit of the announcement yesterday around OGL1.0a and the CCL, I think it's worth thinking about what all of the legacy D&D products can learn from all of the different iterations of the game out there. This innovation is core to innovating better and better products in the future, and we have an opportunity now with the current situation for this conversation.
What innovations do you see out there that certain products get right? What are some of the weaknesses / gaps as you see it?
Let me start:
- 5e gets a lot of it right. Focus on ability scores for checks, consistency and simplification of the game to make it easy to play, the overall balance through 10th-12th level, etc. They also pretty well nailed the balance between character options and simplicity. 5e's two biggest weaknesses IMO are (1) hit point bloat causes combat to detract from story momentum, (2) game balance is not engineered assuming a lot of magic item bonuses (both defense and offense), (3) boredom of players waiting for their turn due to combat length and (4) the game starts falling apart at high levels (due in part to items 1 &2). Also, there is not enough lethality in the game.
- I like Pathfinder 2e's skill check system - critical failure if you fail by 10 or more, critical success if you succeed by 10 or more, Nat 1 moves you down 1 category and Nat 20 moves you up one category is an improvement on the 5e system. I also like 3 actions instead of the move, action, bonus system 5e uses. I am intrigued by the character ability system as well - tying your starting ability scores to your class, background and ancestry is a very intriguing system. At the same time, there appears to be a lot of crunch and an overly documented list of actions in the system. I'm not as familiar with this system TBO, having only recently delved into it as a part of the OGL saga.
- I like the OSE system where they have kept the spirit of the old school game (combat and game speed -> player engagement, DM as adjudicator of the rules, open list of character actions, overall simplicity of the game). However, I like the 5E skill system, especially the simplified ability score option instead of skill option, over the OSE skill check system. I'm also not as much of a fan of the extreme lethality of the game, preferring a house rule "death save" at 0 hp to see if your character dies, and a 4d6 stat roll over a 3d6 system.
So what do you see that should be brought back to the core of D&D that other systems are doing better?
As far as pathfinder stuff. Degrees of success or failure is already an option in the DMG. There’s actually a lot of options in the DMG people say they are looking for in a new system and end up homebrewing. Pretty much all of chapter 9.
With ability score generation, I only played the play test of pf2e, but as I remember, it ended up with every character having the same scores, just arranged differently. Could be they fixed that in the final version.
The three action economy, I really liked. Much simpler and more intuitive than 5e, imo.
Older editions I think were very good about keeping the martial/caster divide better balanced. Casters generally leveled more slowly, and spells took longer to cast, so they could be interrupted. It really helped balance things better. Plus stuff like fireball needing to fill it’s full volume, and lighting bolt bouncing off walls, it made using those spells more difficult, which helped balance them a bit. Not sure how you bring that back in 5e, without adding a pile of complexity that would just big things down, though.
Fantasy age uses 3d6 in its core and 1 d6 is supposed to look different then the others because it's number allows special actions called stunts to many roles in conversation, combat, or exploration. This leads to more dynamic results from your roll then only 1s and 20s being special at some tables.
I like the Hero System's flexibility to build what you want and the no need to name a class. It might be time for D&D to drop race and class for players and, instead, let you pick features. Several of the new builds basically do this by saying to assign your extra points where you want. Let people look the way and have the ancestry they want- genetics hop generations so you suddenly have a human with dark vision - just lets you know they have some other ancestry in their tree.
I like Vampire's build-up of consequences to damage. In D&D taking damage has no meaning unless you use the optional rules. Perhaps that is where it should stay- but D&D could do a better job of promoting those optional rules for people who are becoming bored due to the lack of threat to a character at the higher levels. I do miss how hard it was to survive those first levels, and how the challenge to stay alive was there. The current system rewards not just brave choices, but thoughtless ones as well.
The Fantasy Age mechanic of generating special actions -is fun.
No one gets high-level campaigns really right. I think partly because they try too hard to keep lower-level players safe.
D&D gets right that I can get a new player started in the game in 30 minutes or less. The simplicity of determining success or failure with enough interesting things which can raise or lower the chance. It is comfortable- familiar and flexible.