What would you change if you had the chance to go back and build 5e again from the start? And what bits do you consider perfect already?

So a similar thread got posted on reddit recently, and I'm wondering what the responses would be here. I've noticed each forum tends to give completely different answers and results for questions.

I would make Devils and Demons great again.

More oozes! I guess that's not really something that needs to be brought back to the creation of the game but I want more of those fellas 

More Celestials.

More Stuff for Fighter to do than just attack.

Make sorcerer better by giving more SP or allowing certain metamagic for free.

Give monk a secondary pool of resources for subclass features. Example: Pact Slots for Shadow Monk.  Uses per WIS mod for Kensei parry.  Etc....

Make sure all the classes (sorcerer, ranger) don't suck. 

I want them to create books devoted to creature types, ala Draconomicon style.

Balance spellcasters and martial characters better. 

I haven't read Pathfinder exhaustively, but I've seen a bit of it (game podcast I love runs it) and heard a bit of it. If I were to change one thing in 5e that I think would improve it, it would be to bring Pathfinder's philosophy on combat actions into it. The 3-action system, being able to hold your action, those things. It makes a little bit more sense, seems to run a little more smoothly, and gives players and creatures alike a lot more flexibility on their turn. (And having to track what things are "actions" and "bonus actions" I mean come on.) 

If my table wasn't already chaotic enough with my experimental mentality and constantly changing the rules, and if my players didn't rely on DDB for their sheets, I'd be tempted to try and jury-rig that system into my 5e campaign. As a DM I don't have the time or desire to try and figure out all of Pathfinder, I do appreciate 5e's simplicity, but their action system just seems objectively better.

And I think some of Pathfinder's combat maneuvers would be a really nice way to spice up the non-magical classes, but the title says one thing.

I'd have the adventures be shorter modules rather than long campaign-sized monstrosities. Smaller digestible bits, level 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, etc, that could be mixed and matched, like one could do years ago.

Quote from BioWizard >>

I'd have the adventures be shorter modules rather than long campaign-sized monstrosities. Smaller digestible bits, level 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, etc, that could be mixed and matched, like one could do years ago.

 That was one of my biggest "whoa" moments from coming back to D&D. 

If they still had small, digestible modules I might not have gone 100% homebrew. But when I saw the honking size of these things, and realized once we got stuck in it, if we didn't like it, we are talking about just giving up or plowing through for months, I said no, I will make my own shorter, digestible adventures.

It's worked OK but it is a lot of work to make all of those maps, in particular.

It would certainly have been nice if modules were intended to be adventures rather than campaigns.

Yes I think the old school TSR guys had it right -- smaller modules rather than big campaign books.

One thing? Make combat less boring for non-casters.
Two? Have much more of a balanced treatment of exploration and social encounters.

Quote from GregCa >>

I would make Devils and Demons great again.

 And dragons.

I would redistribute the abilities to higher levels instead of the current front-loading the best abilities at the lower levels.

I would try to come up with really useful/meaningful 20th level abilities, instead of the underwhelming ones most classes have.

Slightly increase warlock spell slots, and  replace some of the invocations with better options.

Quote from BioWizard >>

Yes I think the old school TSR guys had it right -- smaller modules rather than big campaign books.

 Imagine having the option of starting a module at 5th or 7th level instead of first.  Why, you could write a module about going to Avernus that starts with the player characters finding a reason to go to Avernus instead of spending multiple sessions level grinding by completing quests that are entirely unrelated to going to Avernus just so they get up to an appropriate level.

I wonder if they see small design as bad because it's old? I think it would help many GMs to have adventures they could drop into their campaign.

There were a ton of modules that had not real relation to anything else.

Quote from Wysperra >>

I wonder if they see small design as bad because it's old? I think it would help many GMs to have adventures they could drop into their campaign.

There were a ton of modules that had not real relation to anything else.

I think they see 32-page "pamphlet" modules as "not making enough profit." They can make more profit per unit, I assume, by selling giant hardbacks than small softbacks (as it were). There is a reason why in the regular book world, hardcovers are what matters most on the "bestseller list", and publishing houses don't pay a lot of attention to "mass market" (paperback) bestsellers -- they make way more money per unit on hardcovers. I can only presume (not having any access to their internal analysis) that selling, say, Out of the Abyss for 29.99, is a better profit margin for them, than selling 8 smaller adventures for some much lower price (I dunno what they'd charge for each one... $7 each maybe?) 

I suspect some of it may be... if OOA stinks, but it costs $30 for a one-time-purchase, you have no recourse if you find out 3 sessions into it that you hate it. But if OOA is instead, the "Abyss series," modules OA1 through OA6, and you hate OA1, you ain't buying the next 5 modules, and they lose all that money. They'd have to ensure not just pretty packaging (which all D&D products have, to be sure), nice attractive pictures, cool maps (which you can flip through the book and see, presumably, before you buy), but the actual adventure had better not suck, or no one will buy the sequels. Whereas this way, as long as OOA has nice "shelf appeal," it can suck all the rocks it wants once you have paid them -- they already got their money and you are stuck with the whole shebang.

So there are lots of marketing or profit-based reasons to go with one big book... but I don't think "because it's old" is realistic, unless they are being completely whimsical in their decisions. Most particularly because, it wasn't "old" until 5e came out and starting making mega-book adventures. So that can't be the reason they started doing this -- it wasn't "old" when they started. It's only "old" now that they have this less flexible model.

This has to be based on what is good for the company. I can see no real downside to the DMs and players of the world, to split up a single big book into a handful of smaller books that all have the same content and can be strung together just like the big book. It would cost about the same to get them all, and less if you didn't want them all, and would be more flexible for socketing into your existing campaign. So the down side has to be on WOTC's end. And the way companies work, it's got to be all financial -- not "it's old' as a style consideration.

I like the long campaigns that start at around level 1-3 and go to around level 10-15, but I also like the modular system of adventures from previous editions. If they want to have both options and make a substantial profit on both versions, the could continue making sets of adventures, like Tales from the Yawning Portal and Ghosts of Saltmarsh. 

The main downside of doing this would be that you would most often have to buy all the adventures in it instead of just the ones you want, unless you were to buy it on a site like this one.