I will start off by saying that I agree there are vast improvements to the players handbook and DMG for DnD 2024. And while there are some disappointing class changes (rangers for instance) overall I think that yes, a lot of the changes have improved classes and certainly aspects of play. But, the biggest issue for me that has really made 2024 overall feel worse is that it seems that, consciously or not, mechanically the game designers have focused on making a combat engine game, and so pulled away from the other pillars.
Some examples of this
Backgrounds, - I like the overall changes to character creation changes, especially given that in the DMG the state what i think was already obvious, you can make a custom background just change the Skill and tool proficiencies, swap the ASI's around and decide a language. But, where are those little flourishes that really made each background feel like it was individual, gaining a criminal contact, having to pay guild fees, a false identity, those are little things that helped define a character outside of the round by round combat. By removing those altogether wizards have made characters far more homogenised
Class abilities - WOTC seem to have focused on the 6 seconds of a round and the impact all class/subclass abilities have on that, and removed or ignored anything that helped define a class outside of combat. So, gone is favoured terrain, timeless body, read thoughts those things that helped in the non combat elements of the game.
By removing and changing these 2 things Wizards have made it that outside of combat every class is pretty homogenised, you are either a spell caster, a non spell caster or a half caster, if your a spell caster then use your spells to do whatever it was the class could do before. If your a non spell caster, well, see if you can roll a skill check to do something. Experianced players will be able to flavour this in, so, rangers in my party will always have advantage on trying to disguise the party campsite if they are in the woods, but any new players coming in will feel more and more that DnD is about combat only, that it is basically a computer game on paper, fight stuff, have a cut scene fight more stuff. Whats more they have put more effort into combat stuff, the new rules for weapons for instance (which I really lie) . So they have removed RP rules and added Combat rules
This I think is why for me despite all the improvements it has made DnD 2024 misses so so hard, and why in 2025 I will be looking to port my existing campaign away to a new fantasy based system.
I know others will disagree and like I say I am not saying I hate everything about the new rules, I really don't WOTC have come really close to making a really great all round TTRPG system here, but the miss is just to big to ignore.
This has come up before, but IIRC the counter-argument was that all of those "RP" elements in a class could just as easily be attributed to skills/expertise. Does it feel different that you, as a player, now has to think to use the survival skill to make camp and keep it hidden instead of having a specific subset of a skill spelled out for you? Of course. On the other hand, you are no longer tethered to that specific subset of a skill in your mind. You can and should be able to do all sorts of stuff now that you, maybe, didn't think you could do because something specific was given to you (implying, wrongly or not, that that was the only thing you could do).
This has come up before, but IIRC the counter-argument was that all of those "RP" elements in a class could just as easily be attributed to skills/expertise. Does it feel different that you, as a player, now has to think to use the survival skill to make camp and keep it hidden instead of having a specific subset of a skill spelled out for you? Of course. On the other hand, you are no longer tethered to that specific subset of a skill in your mind. You can and should be able to do all sorts of stuff now that you, maybe, didn't think you could do because something specific was given to you (implying, wrongly or not, that that was the only thing you could do).
There is that, but then there is the way that a party who did not have a ranger or a druid might be less comfortable in the woods. If you link it to Survival, then it takes away that element. "no no, you can do it anyway" is perhaps the mindset which makes people feel like their choices in the game are not actually all that important.
How many games have you been in where someone says "I will do X" and then many voices pipe up "I will also do X!" "me too!". 5 survival rolls later and would you believe it, one was good. camp is always hidden. Making it Ranger specific meant that the story might, just might, include the phrase "Wow, I wish we had a Ranger, it would make this so much easier!". If everyone is the same outside of combat, then travel, camp, roleplay, etc. is all homogenised, and I'm not sure I like it. I feel like when they started homogenising milk, actually - I didn't ask for it, it solved a problem nobody cared about except the milk company, and it made the milk taste worse. It still works in cereal, and makes tea, but it's not as nice.
I feel like DnD 2024 is trying to add some of the customization of Pathfinder 2e into itself but they also made spells and abilities far more general, so there are fewer meaningful choices to be made regardless of whatever customization they add in. DnD 5e emphasizes a lot of symmetrical balance over asymmetrical balance. The latter is what pulls in people long term and makes them want to dust off the old book to run a game, where as the former is more about making it easy to get someone new into it, but once they have done a game they aren't going back for a long while.
Even though pathfinder 2e is harder to get into and run, once someone runs it I'd definitely say it is more fun than DnD 2024. I still play DnD but I tend to do so because it is easier to get people into doing DnD. Pathfinder, with the more nuanced spells and background / race / class integration tends to make things feel fresh. No two first level rogues feel 100% alike unless they copy paste each other, for example.
I can relate to this a lot, but I think it can be more generically described to say that the game just has a lot of disassociative mechanics already in the 2014 edition and they have gone further down the road in many ways in the 2024 edition. It's rapidly fumbling its way to becoming a generic RPG system, rather than being specific or committed to something.
Class archetypes no longer exist at all, backgrounds are caricatures, you pick the one that gives you the bonuses you need and very little of what you get from it has anything to do with the background itself. Very little distinguishes species from one another, but perhaps more egregious is that skills have universal uses that can turn any class into an expert in anything, so there are no splits or divisions, areas of expertise or some method in which the classes distinguish themselves. A Dwarf Cleric can be as good a Ranger as a Ranger can, a Orc Barbarian can know as much about magic as a Elven Wizard. etc.. etc..
In a word anything that make D&D distinctive has been washed out of it, it no longer has a personality or abides by any identifiable thread that makes it a specific fantasy that is recognizable, it's the ultimate in generic fantasy striving to be as generic as is humanly possible and still technically qualifying as fantasy game. It's intentionally designed to be the blandest game it could possibly be with absolutely not a single thing that distinguishes in any way shape or form.
That said, I do think there is one advantage to this to designing the game this way, a significant one.
One very obvious thing is that 5e 2024 D&D is also incredibly modular, to use a metaphor, out of the box it is the very boring color beige, but beige is actually a very good neutral color upon which to paint your own masterpiece. I think the only other variant of D&D that has this level of flexibility is 1st edition B/X and I think that is because the mechanics are so streamlined, unassuming and direct.
You can take this very generic system and mold it in a million different ways and in that, there is a lot of creativity that can be achieved and because the design space is so easy to work with, this really is not something that requires a lot of specialized knowledge. Sure it helps to be a creative person and have some practice in that way, but that tends to describe most people who play D&D. I mean, its a game that is a kind of magnet for that type of personality.
I found for example that creating my own setting by using the D&D that's there to piece together my own world and adapt the game to serve my setting with adapted rules, based on those that already exist, to be a pretty easy and very fun experience.
I would never in a million years just play D&D using the rules as written in the player's handbook in that generic fantasy space, but once you layer your own design over it, your own setting.... Yeah.. there is real magic in that.
In a sense, it's the same thing that I love about 1st edition B/X. In a way 5e 2024 is a Dungeons and Dragons creation toolkit more than a game and its just about taking all of these pieces and putting them together in creative ways.
For example the Backgrounds are very generic, but what happens when you write your own backgrounds, to fit your own fantasy world and get more specific is that you end up with a far more attractive and creative selection. Yes this takes work, but once the work is done the game goes from generic to specific in a flash. This is true about handling of skills, magic, classes, species. With very minor, tailored adaptions and changes which are easy to implement you end up with a hyper-focused RPG and these core rules were really well in that space because the game is so easy to adapt.
I sort of feel like DnD went this direction largely because it wanted to differentiate itself from the 3.5 version and the MMO boom made it attractive to make a more board style game that had a lot of design elements from tactical RPGs integrated into it (Hunters mark being a notable inclusion and nod to the World of Warcraft hunter class). But in the transition they also obliterated Faerun to "give players more breathing room in their favorite setting" by destroying said setting, and made it feel like people were making units in a board game over a character.
5e STILL has this feeling of making a unit in a board-game, just now they also thrusted the Bonds, Ideals, Flaws, and Personality trait sections into the character creation to try and staunch the bleeding. By effectively avoiding going into the underbrush to detail the more non-combat elements and usages we still have combat oriented spells, just they are now done with circles, cones, and lines instead of cubes, squares, and lines.
I'm not going to sit here and say that it's 100% better this way. I also liked the flavorful (if not always impactful) things tied to each class/subclass. And perhaps it is solving a problem no one had with it. I do think they addressed it in one of the videos, but I don't recall their reasoning.
For now, though, I would just say that something like that would be DM discretion. The DM could make everyone have disadvantage, except the ranger, or only allow one person to roll with everyone else using the "help action" giving some benefit, but setting the DC high so that it would be really hard, regardless. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are tools that can be used to simulate what it was before.
5e STILL has this feeling of making a unit in a board-game, just now they also thrusted the Bonds, Ideals, Flaws, and Personality trait sections into the character creation to try and staunch the bleeding.
You mean the Personality, Bonds, Ideals, and Flaws that are not in 5ER? I'm salty about that. In general I like a system that is more modular and allows flavor to be flexible and largely added by the player, but I do not like how the narrative elements that encouraged roleplay and thinking deeply about character motivation were left out.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
There is that, but then there is the way that a party who did not have a ranger or a druid might be less comfortable in the woods. If you link it to Survival, then it takes away that element. "no no, you can do it anyway" is perhaps the mindset which makes people feel like their choices in the game are not actually all that important.
How many games have you been in where someone says "I will do X" and then many voices pipe up "I will also do X!" "me too!". 5 survival rolls later and would you believe it, one was good. camp is always hidden. Making it Ranger specific meant that the story might, just might, include the phrase "Wow, I wish we had a Ranger, it would make this so much easier!". If everyone is the same outside of combat, then travel, camp, roleplay, etc. is all homogenised, and I'm not sure I like it. I feel like when they started homogenising milk, actually - I didn't ask for it, it solved a problem nobody cared about except the milk company, and it made the milk taste worse. It still works in cereal, and makes tea, but it's not as nice.
If someone goes to the effort of learning Survival on their character, they deserve to have it be relevant (there is something to be said for adding trained-only checks that can't be done without the proficiency). Everyone rolling is a general problem that gets solve the same way for survival as it does for any other skill.
Everyone rolling is a general problem that gets solve the same way for survival as it does for any other skill.
One of D&D's great ironies is that could be solved by making things like exploration (and other non-combat things) explicitly turn-based, with an explicit action economy. ...and more things for everyone to do, of course.
If someone really wants a game where "you're not a ranger, so you can't be good at survival" is true...that's a much more class-restricted game than D&D currently is or has been for several editions at least.
One of D&D's great ironies is that could be solved by making things like exploration (and other non-combat things) explicitly turn-based, with an explicit action economy. ...and more things for everyone to do, of course.
It doesn't really need to be turn-based, you just need to either make "Can I roll too" have some meaningful risk or cost, or have the answer be "No". It's a fairly simple economic calculation: a roll generically has
A benefit for success.
A penalty for failure.
An opportunity cost (i.e. what could you have done with the same resources instead of attempting the roll).
In turn-based action, making a roll has an opportunity cost -- it's costing you an action that you could have used for something else. Outside of combat, it frequently either has no cost, or no meaningful cost (e.g. players don't actually care if their characters spend a day doing something, as long as it doesn't cost the players meaningful time). This means the players will just always want to make rolls, unless the chance and penalties for failure are high enough that they never want to make the roll.
The version I tend to prefer is inspired by a 4e skill challenge, though with simplified mechanics:
Tell the players "I'm going to call this scene a skill challenge. Everyone, tell me what you're doing to make the scene a success".
Each player describes what they're doing, and the DM tells them what, if anything, to roll (the DM could decide that certain actions are automatic successes or failure -- commonly this is expending spells or special abilities).
If the PCs get enough successes, the scene succeeds. The DM might give partial results depending on number of successes.
If someone goes to the effort of learning Survival on their character, they deserve to have it be relevant (there is something to be said for adding trained-only checks that can't be done without the proficiency). Everyone rolling is a general problem that gets solve the same way for survival as it does for any other skill.
You can do that, but that is a house rule that is the opposite of what the rules actually are. You ALWAYS get a roll when taking an action that triggers a skill check, the proficiency is just there to determine whether you get the bonus or not.
What you're describing is the opposite of RAW and there is a good reason for it. Because the only way to apply it is pure DM Fiat as you will not be able to implement the game rules consistently the way you are describing and the entire premise of 5e is to be a player-benefit rules system. Meaning every rule is designed to not require a ruling that benefits the player. What do you do if a player with no stealth proficiency tries to sneak past some guards? Does he get a roll or not? If yes, then why would the dumb fighter with no Arcane skill not get an arcane skill when researching a rune in a library? Why make a ruling in one case, but not the other?
Inconsistencies like that is exactly why RAW clearly says that you ALWAYS get a roll.
For the record, I agree with you, I'm just pointing out that 5e is designed very specifically and very clearly to not allow what your suggesting.
Did the teamwork rules translate over to 5ER? Because in the 2014 book, if everyone wanted to roll on something the DM could make it a teamwork action where everyone rolls and half the group needs to succeed for the whole group to succeed.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Did the teamwork rules translate over to 5ER? Because in the 2014 book, if everyone wanted to roll on something the DM could make it a teamwork action where everyone rolls and half the group needs to succeed for the whole group to succeed.
If the working together rules still exist in 2024 (other than via help) I cannot find them.
You can do that, but that is a house rule that is the opposite of what the rules actually are. You ALWAYS get a roll when taking an action that triggers a skill check, the proficiency is just there to determine whether you get the bonus or not.
Pretty sure RAW is that players do not call for rolls, nor does every action trigger a roll. Rather, players describe their actions and the DM describes the results. Only if the DM decides something should call for a roll do the dice come out as per RHYTHM OF PLAY:
The Dungeon Master Describes a Scene. The DM tells the players where their adventurers are and what’s around them (how many doors lead out of a room, what’s on a table, and so on).
The Players Describe What Their Characters Do. Typically, the characters stick together as they travel through a dungeon or another environment. Sometimes different adventurers do different things: one adventurer might search a treasure chest while a second examines a mysterious symbol engraved on a wall and a third keeps watch for monsters. Outside combat, the DM ensures that every character has a chance to act and decides how to resolve their activity. In combat, the characters take turns.
The DM Narrates the Results of the Adventurers’ Actions. Sometimes resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer walks across a room and tries to open a door, the DM might say the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM might ask the player to roll a die to help determine what happens. Describing the results often leads to another decision point, which brings the game back to step 1.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Did the teamwork rules translate over to 5ER? Because in the 2014 book, if everyone wanted to roll on something the DM could make it a teamwork action where everyone rolls and half the group needs to succeed for the whole group to succeed.
If the working together rules still exist in 2024 (other than via help) I cannot find them.
Huh ... well that was one of my solutions to everyone wanting to roll. Everyone succeeds or fails together that way. The other thing was that I reminded them that players don't call for rolls.DM calls for rolls.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
You can do that, but that is a house rule that is the opposite of what the rules actually are. You ALWAYS get a roll when taking an action that triggers a skill check, the proficiency is just there to determine whether you get the bonus or not.
Pretty sure RAW is that players do not call for rolls, nor does every action trigger a roll. Rather, players describe their actions and the DM describes the results. Only if the DM decides something should call for a roll do the dice come out as per RHYTHM OF PLAY:
The Dungeon Master Describes a Scene. The DM tells the players where their adventurers are and what’s around them (how many doors lead out of a room, what’s on a table, and so on).
The Players Describe What Their Characters Do. Typically, the characters stick together as they travel through a dungeon or another environment. Sometimes different adventurers do different things: one adventurer might search a treasure chest while a second examines a mysterious symbol engraved on a wall and a third keeps watch for monsters. Outside combat, the DM ensures that every character has a chance to act and decides how to resolve their activity. In combat, the characters take turns.
The DM Narrates the Results of the Adventurers’ Actions. Sometimes resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer walks across a room and tries to open a door, the DM might say the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM might ask the player to roll a die to help determine what happens. Describing the results often leads to another decision point, which brings the game back to step 1.
I'm not suggesting that it does, what I'm saying is that IF a skill check is called for, whether you have proficiency or don't is not a factor in that decision by the rules.
The very obvious and supported by material method of throttling roll spams is to only allow rolls if you have prof for specialized tasks like camouflaging a campsite. Pretty sure that’s specifically invoked as a DM tool in both the current PHB and DMG, and while hypothetically a group might try to collectively optimize, in my experience that has been the exception far more than the rule, even when a campaign has a narrow enough scope players can accurately predict that only a few skills will be relevant.
One of D&D's great ironies is that could be solved by making things like exploration (and other non-combat things) explicitly turn-based, with an explicit action economy. ...and more things for everyone to do, of course.
It doesn't really need to be turn-based, you just need to either make "Can I roll too" have some meaningful risk or cost, or have the answer be "No".
That's true. Though turn-based things neatly solve several problems at once. You can have 1) a nice variety of tasks to be done 2) that must be done by the party in some configuration 3) within a short enough deadline that some/most of the party can't just "check out" and let the ranger deal. It also means everyone gets a turn to do something in the spotlight without letting whoever talks loudest/fastest get to do the juiciest bits, and still lets the rangers / people with Survival / etc shine by being better at some parts. (Just like how combat engages the less-combative characters while still letting the combat-optimal ones shine.)
It still has the extra cost of needing to come up with that variety of tasks to be done. It would still need to be a "system" with a bunch of guidance and design surrounding it, compared to "just" teamwork rules or skill challenge rules.
I'm not suggesting that it does, what I'm saying is that IF a skill check is called for, whether you have proficiency or don't is not a factor in that decision by the rules.
Oh, that's correct, but it does make being proficient... just not feel very meaningful (in 3e, it tended to be a bonus of (level+3); in 4e, it was a flat +5 with no level scaling).
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I will start off by saying that I agree there are vast improvements to the players handbook and DMG for DnD 2024. And while there are some disappointing class changes (rangers for instance) overall I think that yes, a lot of the changes have improved classes and certainly aspects of play. But, the biggest issue for me that has really made 2024 overall feel worse is that it seems that, consciously or not, mechanically the game designers have focused on making a combat engine game, and so pulled away from the other pillars.
Some examples of this
Backgrounds, - I like the overall changes to character creation changes, especially given that in the DMG the state what i think was already obvious, you can make a custom background just change the Skill and tool proficiencies, swap the ASI's around and decide a language. But, where are those little flourishes that really made each background feel like it was individual, gaining a criminal contact, having to pay guild fees, a false identity, those are little things that helped define a character outside of the round by round combat. By removing those altogether wizards have made characters far more homogenised
Class abilities - WOTC seem to have focused on the 6 seconds of a round and the impact all class/subclass abilities have on that, and removed or ignored anything that helped define a class outside of combat. So, gone is favoured terrain, timeless body, read thoughts those things that helped in the non combat elements of the game.
By removing and changing these 2 things Wizards have made it that outside of combat every class is pretty homogenised, you are either a spell caster, a non spell caster or a half caster, if your a spell caster then use your spells to do whatever it was the class could do before. If your a non spell caster, well, see if you can roll a skill check to do something. Experianced players will be able to flavour this in, so, rangers in my party will always have advantage on trying to disguise the party campsite if they are in the woods, but any new players coming in will feel more and more that DnD is about combat only, that it is basically a computer game on paper, fight stuff, have a cut scene fight more stuff. Whats more they have put more effort into combat stuff, the new rules for weapons for instance (which I really lie) . So they have removed RP rules and added Combat rules
This I think is why for me despite all the improvements it has made DnD 2024 misses so so hard, and why in 2025 I will be looking to port my existing campaign away to a new fantasy based system.
I know others will disagree and like I say I am not saying I hate everything about the new rules, I really don't WOTC have come really close to making a really great all round TTRPG system here, but the miss is just to big to ignore.
This has come up before, but IIRC the counter-argument was that all of those "RP" elements in a class could just as easily be attributed to skills/expertise. Does it feel different that you, as a player, now has to think to use the survival skill to make camp and keep it hidden instead of having a specific subset of a skill spelled out for you? Of course. On the other hand, you are no longer tethered to that specific subset of a skill in your mind. You can and should be able to do all sorts of stuff now that you, maybe, didn't think you could do because something specific was given to you (implying, wrongly or not, that that was the only thing you could do).
There is that, but then there is the way that a party who did not have a ranger or a druid might be less comfortable in the woods. If you link it to Survival, then it takes away that element. "no no, you can do it anyway" is perhaps the mindset which makes people feel like their choices in the game are not actually all that important.
How many games have you been in where someone says "I will do X" and then many voices pipe up "I will also do X!" "me too!". 5 survival rolls later and would you believe it, one was good. camp is always hidden. Making it Ranger specific meant that the story might, just might, include the phrase "Wow, I wish we had a Ranger, it would make this so much easier!". If everyone is the same outside of combat, then travel, camp, roleplay, etc. is all homogenised, and I'm not sure I like it. I feel like when they started homogenising milk, actually - I didn't ask for it, it solved a problem nobody cared about except the milk company, and it made the milk taste worse. It still works in cereal, and makes tea, but it's not as nice.
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I feel like DnD 2024 is trying to add some of the customization of Pathfinder 2e into itself but they also made spells and abilities far more general, so there are fewer meaningful choices to be made regardless of whatever customization they add in. DnD 5e emphasizes a lot of symmetrical balance over asymmetrical balance. The latter is what pulls in people long term and makes them want to dust off the old book to run a game, where as the former is more about making it easy to get someone new into it, but once they have done a game they aren't going back for a long while.
Even though pathfinder 2e is harder to get into and run, once someone runs it I'd definitely say it is more fun than DnD 2024. I still play DnD but I tend to do so because it is easier to get people into doing DnD. Pathfinder, with the more nuanced spells and background / race / class integration tends to make things feel fresh. No two first level rogues feel 100% alike unless they copy paste each other, for example.
I can relate to this a lot, but I think it can be more generically described to say that the game just has a lot of disassociative mechanics already in the 2014 edition and they have gone further down the road in many ways in the 2024 edition. It's rapidly fumbling its way to becoming a generic RPG system, rather than being specific or committed to something.
Class archetypes no longer exist at all, backgrounds are caricatures, you pick the one that gives you the bonuses you need and very little of what you get from it has anything to do with the background itself. Very little distinguishes species from one another, but perhaps more egregious is that skills have universal uses that can turn any class into an expert in anything, so there are no splits or divisions, areas of expertise or some method in which the classes distinguish themselves. A Dwarf Cleric can be as good a Ranger as a Ranger can, a Orc Barbarian can know as much about magic as a Elven Wizard. etc.. etc..
In a word anything that make D&D distinctive has been washed out of it, it no longer has a personality or abides by any identifiable thread that makes it a specific fantasy that is recognizable, it's the ultimate in generic fantasy striving to be as generic as is humanly possible and still technically qualifying as fantasy game. It's intentionally designed to be the blandest game it could possibly be with absolutely not a single thing that distinguishes in any way shape or form.
That said, I do think there is one advantage to this to designing the game this way, a significant one.
One very obvious thing is that 5e 2024 D&D is also incredibly modular, to use a metaphor, out of the box it is the very boring color beige, but beige is actually a very good neutral color upon which to paint your own masterpiece. I think the only other variant of D&D that has this level of flexibility is 1st edition B/X and I think that is because the mechanics are so streamlined, unassuming and direct.
You can take this very generic system and mold it in a million different ways and in that, there is a lot of creativity that can be achieved and because the design space is so easy to work with, this really is not something that requires a lot of specialized knowledge. Sure it helps to be a creative person and have some practice in that way, but that tends to describe most people who play D&D. I mean, its a game that is a kind of magnet for that type of personality.
I found for example that creating my own setting by using the D&D that's there to piece together my own world and adapt the game to serve my setting with adapted rules, based on those that already exist, to be a pretty easy and very fun experience.
I would never in a million years just play D&D using the rules as written in the player's handbook in that generic fantasy space, but once you layer your own design over it, your own setting.... Yeah.. there is real magic in that.
In a sense, it's the same thing that I love about 1st edition B/X. In a way 5e 2024 is a Dungeons and Dragons creation toolkit more than a game and its just about taking all of these pieces and putting them together in creative ways.
For example the Backgrounds are very generic, but what happens when you write your own backgrounds, to fit your own fantasy world and get more specific is that you end up with a far more attractive and creative selection. Yes this takes work, but once the work is done the game goes from generic to specific in a flash. This is true about handling of skills, magic, classes, species. With very minor, tailored adaptions and changes which are easy to implement you end up with a hyper-focused RPG and these core rules were really well in that space because the game is so easy to adapt.
I sort of feel like DnD went this direction largely because it wanted to differentiate itself from the 3.5 version and the MMO boom made it attractive to make a more board style game that had a lot of design elements from tactical RPGs integrated into it (Hunters mark being a notable inclusion and nod to the World of Warcraft hunter class). But in the transition they also obliterated Faerun to "give players more breathing room in their favorite setting" by destroying said setting, and made it feel like people were making units in a board game over a character.
5e STILL has this feeling of making a unit in a board-game, just now they also thrusted the Bonds, Ideals, Flaws, and Personality trait sections into the character creation to try and staunch the bleeding. By effectively avoiding going into the underbrush to detail the more non-combat elements and usages we still have combat oriented spells, just they are now done with circles, cones, and lines instead of cubes, squares, and lines.
I'm not going to sit here and say that it's 100% better this way. I also liked the flavorful (if not always impactful) things tied to each class/subclass. And perhaps it is solving a problem no one had with it. I do think they addressed it in one of the videos, but I don't recall their reasoning.
For now, though, I would just say that something like that would be DM discretion. The DM could make everyone have disadvantage, except the ranger, or only allow one person to roll with everyone else using the "help action" giving some benefit, but setting the DC high so that it would be really hard, regardless. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are tools that can be used to simulate what it was before.
You mean the Personality, Bonds, Ideals, and Flaws that are not in 5ER? I'm salty about that. In general I like a system that is more modular and allows flavor to be flexible and largely added by the player, but I do not like how the narrative elements that encouraged roleplay and thinking deeply about character motivation were left out.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
If someone goes to the effort of learning Survival on their character, they deserve to have it be relevant (there is something to be said for adding trained-only checks that can't be done without the proficiency). Everyone rolling is a general problem that gets solve the same way for survival as it does for any other skill.
One of D&D's great ironies is that could be solved by making things like exploration (and other non-combat things) explicitly turn-based, with an explicit action economy. ...and more things for everyone to do, of course.
If someone really wants a game where "you're not a ranger, so you can't be good at survival" is true...that's a much more class-restricted game than D&D currently is or has been for several editions at least.
It doesn't really need to be turn-based, you just need to either make "Can I roll too" have some meaningful risk or cost, or have the answer be "No". It's a fairly simple economic calculation: a roll generically has
In turn-based action, making a roll has an opportunity cost -- it's costing you an action that you could have used for something else. Outside of combat, it frequently either has no cost, or no meaningful cost (e.g. players don't actually care if their characters spend a day doing something, as long as it doesn't cost the players meaningful time). This means the players will just always want to make rolls, unless the chance and penalties for failure are high enough that they never want to make the roll.
The version I tend to prefer is inspired by a 4e skill challenge, though with simplified mechanics:
You can do that, but that is a house rule that is the opposite of what the rules actually are. You ALWAYS get a roll when taking an action that triggers a skill check, the proficiency is just there to determine whether you get the bonus or not.
What you're describing is the opposite of RAW and there is a good reason for it. Because the only way to apply it is pure DM Fiat as you will not be able to implement the game rules consistently the way you are describing and the entire premise of 5e is to be a player-benefit rules system. Meaning every rule is designed to not require a ruling that benefits the player. What do you do if a player with no stealth proficiency tries to sneak past some guards? Does he get a roll or not? If yes, then why would the dumb fighter with no Arcane skill not get an arcane skill when researching a rune in a library? Why make a ruling in one case, but not the other?
Inconsistencies like that is exactly why RAW clearly says that you ALWAYS get a roll.
For the record, I agree with you, I'm just pointing out that 5e is designed very specifically and very clearly to not allow what your suggesting.
Did the teamwork rules translate over to 5ER? Because in the 2014 book, if everyone wanted to roll on something the DM could make it a teamwork action where everyone rolls and half the group needs to succeed for the whole group to succeed.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
If the working together rules still exist in 2024 (other than via help) I cannot find them.
Pretty sure RAW is that players do not call for rolls, nor does every action trigger a roll. Rather, players describe their actions and the DM describes the results. Only if the DM decides something should call for a roll do the dice come out as per RHYTHM OF PLAY:
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Huh ... well that was one of my solutions to everyone wanting to roll. Everyone succeeds or fails together that way. The other thing was that I reminded them that players don't call for rolls.DM calls for rolls.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I'm not suggesting that it does, what I'm saying is that IF a skill check is called for, whether you have proficiency or don't is not a factor in that decision by the rules.
The very obvious and supported by material method of throttling roll spams is to only allow rolls if you have prof for specialized tasks like camouflaging a campsite. Pretty sure that’s specifically invoked as a DM tool in both the current PHB and DMG, and while hypothetically a group might try to collectively optimize, in my experience that has been the exception far more than the rule, even when a campaign has a narrow enough scope players can accurately predict that only a few skills will be relevant.
That's true. Though turn-based things neatly solve several problems at once. You can have 1) a nice variety of tasks to be done 2) that must be done by the party in some configuration 3) within a short enough deadline that some/most of the party can't just "check out" and let the ranger deal. It also means everyone gets a turn to do something in the spotlight without letting whoever talks loudest/fastest get to do the juiciest bits, and still lets the rangers / people with Survival / etc shine by being better at some parts. (Just like how combat engages the less-combative characters while still letting the combat-optimal ones shine.)
It still has the extra cost of needing to come up with that variety of tasks to be done. It would still need to be a "system" with a bunch of guidance and design surrounding it, compared to "just" teamwork rules or skill challenge rules.
Oh, that's correct, but it does make being proficient... just not feel very meaningful (in 3e, it tended to be a bonus of (level+3); in 4e, it was a flat +5 with no level scaling).