I definitely disagree with that. In some ways it's flexible for certain classes in the theme department, but in other ways and for certain concepts and classes it's completely rigid, especially when it comes to mechanics.
Of course with a flexible DM anything is possible, but RAW DnD 5e is pretty set in stone. You get one meaningful choice when making a character (two for warlocks), and that's it.
Going to hope I don't get infracted for posting so often today, but...
In fairness, Rodney has a distinct point. While the core rulebooks tends to inform players that they're free to reimagine their abilities however they like without changing the mechanical structure of the game, very little assistance is given for doing so. Whether or not new or altered rules are required or whether 5e is 'Flexible' or 'Rigid' are their own debates, but a section of the book going over a few ideas for nonstandard character creation could be quite useful for all the brand-newbie, "I've never played any sort of game before in my life beyond Monopoly and I have no idea what I'm doing" sorts that Wizards is continually trying to ensnare.
Experienced gamers can look at a set of mechanics and figure out different ways to spin their stories; new players often have trouble with this, especially when the mechanics they're spinning are so strongly anchored to their 'normal' fluff. 'Reflavoring' is a skill and it requires either practice or instruction. Currently, much as Wizards hates us and wishes we'd all die, they're relying on the Experienced Gamers to instruct newcomers in this and many other tricks and useful shortcuts for making a D&D game work. The fewer of those tricks and shortcuts there are that come at a player cold, with nothing more than one-sentence afterthought mentions in the books, the smoother a new player's introduction to the game is.
I'd like more attention given to the fact that there is no right, wrong, better, or best way to play dungeons and dragons. D&D is and has always been a game to played in whatever manner each group and table sees fit. 5th edition hasn't changed that.
Back in the day, we didn't have any resources to look to for comparison between our game and "their" game. This is because there was no internet. If something was broken, we addressed it at the table and fixed it. If something sucked, we didn't use it. If we needed something, we added it or built it.
Today - while it's an amazing community and great resources, there's so much comparison and a sense of 'putting certain things on a pedestal. In this sense, it can feel like if those that are uninformed or inexperienced don't follow suit, they must be doing something wrong. While I 100% support Critical Role and consider Matt Mercer and the cast as brilliant, it has had this effect. I've heard of many that felt that if the game run at their house wasn't on par with what Matt runs, something is off.
The rules and design of the game is another thing that has created this effect. Some treat WotC and those that wrote the book with a sense of, "well if they wrote it that way, it must be." Rules in D&D have only ever been guidelines. I don't just hold to the, "everyone is free to homebrew", I hold to, "everyone is supposed to homebrew." It's how the game is to be played, because while the rules may be in place, it's your story and your world. The rules should always be secondary to the world and story you're trying to tell.
With builders, meta stuff, optimal this and best that, it's difficult for new players to realize that they are free to make shit up. And in doing so, they would have just as accurate, valid, and worthy of a game.
That's what I'd change. The perception that 5E D&D - in that it's global and in the hands of a large community that's able to share their thoughts - is somehow different than original D&D. Numbers and rules have changed but it's still a game played around a table with good folk, eating snacks, killing monsters, and taking their stuff. That experience transcends any notion of best, better, right, wrong, official, or otherwise.
Get rid of cantrips. Magic is rare and mystical again.
I can't disagree with this strongly enough.
Low levels for spellcasters in older editions of the game were absolutely rotten because you could only cast one to three spells and then you were out and stuck with throwing rocks from a sling at enemies. Spellcasters should actually be allowed to cast spells, not play the role of backup archer with a less effective weapon. Cantrips mean that a spellcaster can actually stick with using magic in combat.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Get rid of cantrips. Magic is rare and mystical again.
I can't disagree with this strongly enough.
Low levels for spellcasters in older editions of the game were absolutely rotten because you could only cast one to three spells and then you were out and stuck with throwing rocks from a sling at enemies. Spellcasters should actually be allowed to cast spells, not play the role of backup archer with a less effective weapon. Cantrips mean that a spellcaster can actually stick with using magic in combat.
I agree. Spellcasters should be able to cast spells, and all the time. If you had cantrip slots, even if they recharged on a short rest, that would make Prestidigitation and most other non-combat cantrips not be super useful.
It would suck to be a wizard and instead of the current situation where you run out of spell slots you instead just have to spam cantrips you can only cast cantrips until you run out, and then you have to spam a dagger.
Essentially, you would turn cantrips into 1st-level spell slots that are worse and recharge like Pact Magic.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Subclasses that change the existing core feature of a class instead of simply adding to it.
Would love this. Subclasses just feel like a shiny coat of paint over the same pieces. I'd definitely prefer subclasses to be more influential and change up the base class playstyle and theming more.
It's one of the reasons I consider warlock the best designed class in the game (despite its balance issues with multiclassing). It basically has a second subclass, so between the first subclass and the pact boon you feel like you're building a character a lot more than other classes.
Get rid of cantrips. Magic is rare and mystical again.
I can't disagree with this strongly enough.
Low levels for spellcasters in older editions of the game were absolutely rotten because you could only cast one to three spells and then you were out and stuck with throwing rocks from a sling at enemies. Spellcasters should actually be allowed to cast spells, not play the role of backup archer with a less effective weapon. Cantrips mean that a spellcaster can actually stick with using magic in combat.
I agree as well, and it's not only a question of low-level caster fun. In a world where there are many casters anyway and where they have lots of spells per day anyway, where there are lots of magic items and magical phenomenons around, and where casting is very mechanical anyway, there can be no "rare and mystical" magic. Once more, D&D is not made to simulate a low-fantasy low-magic setting. If this is what you want to simulate, change to another game rather than wanting to change the D&D game, it has never worked in the past because the paradigms are fundamentally different.
Fair. It’s just a little disappointing to me that the average party looks more like an MMO (everyone has magic, and the wizards are spamming it everywhere!) or Harry Potter than Lord of the Rings. There are definitely other systems that do this better though: I’m thinking of switching my D&D games to a reflavored Adventures in Middle-Earth for just this reason.
Fair. It’s just a little disappointing to me that the average party looks more like an MMO (everyone has magic, and the wizards are spamming it everywhere!)
I think this is an apt comparison.
Even MMOs have changed over the years. The "older" variety of MMOs have powers with cooldowns and have resources you expend, such as endurance, after which you need to recover.
Example: City of Heroes. Each power, after you use it, has an individual recharge time. You can't re-use it until it refreshes, but you can use other powers, that are ready to go and have refreshed already. You also expend some endurance with each power, and you have a fixed Endurance max of 100 (barring special circumstances), that at least in the original game could never be increased for any reason. Endurance recovers very slowly, about 1 or 2 a second, but you send it in battle way faster than it recovers. So after a little while you have to either slow down your attack rate or you have to stop and rest for a bit (maybe 10 seconds). Players constantly complained about "running out of endurance." They didn't like "not doing anything" while their endurance recovered.
When the same company made a second superhero game (Champions Online), they went with the model of "charging up" your endurance (they called it energy but it was the same thing) with your "default" attack. Default attacks didn't cost any energy, did small amounts of damage, and added energy to your energy bar. After a few swings, you had built up enough energy to do your big powers. Then your energy drained back down, and you had to swap over to the default attack again. (Many) players loved this -- this was active. They were "doing stuff" -- you were hitting things to gain endurance, rather than waiting around for a few seconds to let it recharge.
The "charge up" model was put into other games over the years (Dragon Age 2 has something like it for example) - because players "like to be doing something" all the time. Cantrips seem to follow along the same lines -- magic user characters want to feel like they are "doing something" in every battle (and something magical).
And although I understand that, the "always doing something" model negates one of the most interesting elements of a roleplaying game for me -- resource management. I liked the idea, in COH, of having to manage my endurance and run my character efficiently in combat -- of not over-using the high-End powers. In the lower levels, my scrapper couldn't use her "defense toggles" (powers you turn on and leave on that cost a little End each second) too much because she didn't have endurance reducing enhancers on them, and didn't have the stamina power (which helps End recovery). The "charge up" side would complain -- see? You have two "super reflexes" defenses, you are a "reflex scrapper", and you can't even use them! But I did use them -- against bosses or dangerous enemies. Just not all the time, at low level, because I was managing my endurance. And I liked the feeling that at low levels I had to carefully manage things, and then by high level, I could run 4 toggles at once (with Stamina fully enhanced, with those toggles having Endurance reducers on them, etc.) -- it made my character feel way more powerful at higher level than she had been at low level. And now I was managing other things (with multiple powers that have different effects -- the recharge timing so I can do the right thing at the right time). But I couldn't just "do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to." Which, I think, is what a lot of gamers actually want, even though it's not what they say they want out loud.
So I guess for me... it's not really about cantrips. It's about the extremely reduced role tactical management of resources has come to play not just in D&D 5e compared to earlier editions, but in most RPGs these days. Players seem to want to just spam out their abilities all the time, rather than having to hold the cool stuff for exactly the right moment and use it wisely. Short resting is another mechanic I'm not too in love with either, for that reason.
And I think that this is actually a deeper problem than it seems, because in thread after thread here we have seen people complaining that the CR system is broken and "deadly" difficulty challenges are being wiped out by the party with no effort. And it always comes back to the fact that the game expects 6-8 encounters per long rest, but almost nobody does that. Why? Because as soon as they start running out of their resources, players, not wanting to bother managing them, just take a long rest and get them back. Unless the DM "rigs" it so that the players can't keep doing this after every tough battle, the players will try to always have all their resources all the time -- because they don't want to have to think about managing their resources.
I think I agree with Naivara... I'm probably going to need, for the next campaign, to start looking into other game systems -- probably old, out of print ones -- that require more thoughtful resource management from the players.
What I would change about 5e would mostly come down to minor tweaks to a bunch of things. The one house rule I regularly employ though is critical failures on skill checks, as I don't think being able to get a skill bonus so high you basically can't fail anything but the most difficult tasks isn't realistic (everyone makes mistakes), so maybe that?
But if it were more a question of what I would most like to see most for 6e; I would like to a proper blocking/dodging/parrying mechanism as a basic mechanic, probably with a big overall reduction in hit-points to make hits more dangerous but less frequent, i.e- your aim is to avoid being hit as much as possible, probably with armour providing damage reductions for non-barbarian tanking.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Get rid of cantrips. Magic is rare and mystical again.
I can't disagree with this strongly enough.
Low levels for spellcasters in older editions of the game were absolutely rotten because you could only cast one to three spells and then you were out and stuck with throwing rocks from a sling at enemies. Spellcasters should actually be allowed to cast spells, not play the role of backup archer with a less effective weapon. Cantrips mean that a spellcaster can actually stick with using magic in combat.
I agree. Spellcasters should be able to cast spells, and all the time. If you had cantrip slots, even if they recharged on a short rest, that would make Prestidigitation and most other non-combat cantrips not be super useful.
It would suck to be a wizard and instead of the current situation where you run out of spell slots you instead just have to spam cantrips you can only cast cantrips until you run out, and then you have to spam a dagger.
Essentially, you would turn cantrips into 1st-level spell slots that are worse and recharge like Pact Magic.
Well, then let the “Utility” cantrips stay free and only do the SR cantrip points for combat cantrips?
Subclasses that change the existing core feature of a class instead of simply adding to it.
Would love this. Subclasses just feel like a shiny coat of paint over the same pieces. I'd definitely prefer subclasses to be more influential and change up the base class playstyle and theming more.
It's one of the reasons I consider warlock the best designed class in the game (despite its balance issues with multiclassing). It basically has a second subclass, so between the first subclass and the pact boon you feel like you're building a character a lot more than other classes.
Artificer too. Those are probably the two most interesting classes in that regard, for my tastes at least.
Well, then let the “Utility” cantrips stay free and only do the SR cantrip points for combat cantrips?
Not sure this is a solution for those of us who want "resource management" to be an integral, significant, portion of the game. The utility cantrips can still obviate the need for things like torches. One person wrote a while back on another site that his mages wanted to use the Mending cantrip on arrows so that expended arrows could be repaired, thus eliminating the need to track ammunition or ever buy more. And there is the issue that some of us (who seem to be the same folks who prefer resource management to be an actual "thing" in the game rather than something to which the game, frankly, barely gives lip service), don't necessarily want to see magic splattered all over the world and used to do things like clean the house, fertilize crops, wash your face, and comb your hair.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Some folks find resource management to be a chore that impedes the fun of the narrative. They don’t care about that stuff, like how Hollywood doesn’t care that guns don’t actually hold that many bullets in a magazine.
Other folks think that running out of stuff and having to worry about it adds fun by adding elements of tension, adding the possibility of things going wrong as story elements, and increases verisimilitude.
There are more than 7,000,000,000 people in the world right now. There is no possible way that one game can make everyone happy. 🤷‍♂️ That’s what houserules and other games are for.
Right... but this thread is about one thing we would change about D&D if we could. It doesn't ask what changes we think the 7,000,000,000 other people on earth might like or prefer.
I readily acknowledge that the majority of current D&D players don't like worrying about resource management. Just like most MMO players hate endurance, which is why COH went belly-up years ago (though it is back now with private illegal servers... it's not really "back" in terms of a business) but the games that don't use a limited resource are still going.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Well, then let the “Utility” cantrips stay free and only do the SR cantrip points for combat cantrips?
I guess if you really want that, sure, but that's not what I'd want in my games. A wizard should have magic that they can use all of the time to help in combat, never be limited to dagger spamming, IMO.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Well, then let the “Utility” cantrips stay free and only do the SR cantrip points for combat cantrips?
I guess if you really want that, sure, but that's not what I'd want in my games. A wizard should have magic that they can use all of the time to help in combat, never be limited to dagger spamming, IMO.
Yeah, limiting the number of combat cantrips a wizard or sorcerer can use is like telling a fighter he can only make 8 attacks with a weapon before it becomes Dull and can't be used again until it's fixed during a Long Rest, and also that he's only allowed to carry two weapons at a time.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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+Proficiency to STR attacks with great weapons with great weapon fighting. If you go all in on damage it should be a lot.
I definitely disagree with that. In some ways it's flexible for certain classes in the theme department, but in other ways and for certain concepts and classes it's completely rigid, especially when it comes to mechanics.
Of course with a flexible DM anything is possible, but RAW DnD 5e is pretty set in stone. You get one meaningful choice when making a character (two for warlocks), and that's it.
Going to hope I don't get infracted for posting so often today, but...
In fairness, Rodney has a distinct point. While the core rulebooks tends to inform players that they're free to reimagine their abilities however they like without changing the mechanical structure of the game, very little assistance is given for doing so. Whether or not new or altered rules are required or whether 5e is 'Flexible' or 'Rigid' are their own debates, but a section of the book going over a few ideas for nonstandard character creation could be quite useful for all the brand-newbie, "I've never played any sort of game before in my life beyond Monopoly and I have no idea what I'm doing" sorts that Wizards is continually trying to ensnare.
Experienced gamers can look at a set of mechanics and figure out different ways to spin their stories; new players often have trouble with this, especially when the mechanics they're spinning are so strongly anchored to their 'normal' fluff. 'Reflavoring' is a skill and it requires either practice or instruction. Currently, much as Wizards hates us and wishes we'd all die, they're relying on the Experienced Gamers to instruct newcomers in this and many other tricks and useful shortcuts for making a D&D game work. The fewer of those tricks and shortcuts there are that come at a player cold, with nothing more than one-sentence afterthought mentions in the books, the smoother a new player's introduction to the game is.
Please do not contact or message me.
Change one thing..change one thing..
I'd like more attention given to the fact that there is no right, wrong, better, or best way to play dungeons and dragons. D&D is and has always been a game to played in whatever manner each group and table sees fit. 5th edition hasn't changed that.
Back in the day, we didn't have any resources to look to for comparison between our game and "their" game. This is because there was no internet. If something was broken, we addressed it at the table and fixed it. If something sucked, we didn't use it. If we needed something, we added it or built it.
Today - while it's an amazing community and great resources, there's so much comparison and a sense of 'putting certain things on a pedestal. In this sense, it can feel like if those that are uninformed or inexperienced don't follow suit, they must be doing something wrong. While I 100% support Critical Role and consider Matt Mercer and the cast as brilliant, it has had this effect. I've heard of many that felt that if the game run at their house wasn't on par with what Matt runs, something is off.
The rules and design of the game is another thing that has created this effect. Some treat WotC and those that wrote the book with a sense of, "well if they wrote it that way, it must be." Rules in D&D have only ever been guidelines. I don't just hold to the, "everyone is free to homebrew", I hold to, "everyone is supposed to homebrew." It's how the game is to be played, because while the rules may be in place, it's your story and your world. The rules should always be secondary to the world and story you're trying to tell.
With builders, meta stuff, optimal this and best that, it's difficult for new players to realize that they are free to make shit up. And in doing so, they would have just as accurate, valid, and worthy of a game.
That's what I'd change. The perception that 5E D&D - in that it's global and in the hands of a large community that's able to share their thoughts - is somehow different than original D&D. Numbers and rules have changed but it's still a game played around a table with good folk, eating snacks, killing monsters, and taking their stuff. That experience transcends any notion of best, better, right, wrong, official, or otherwise.
All things Lich - DM tips, tricks, and other creative shenanigans
I can't disagree with this strongly enough.
Low levels for spellcasters in older editions of the game were absolutely rotten because you could only cast one to three spells and then you were out and stuck with throwing rocks from a sling at enemies. Spellcasters should actually be allowed to cast spells, not play the role of backup archer with a less effective weapon. Cantrips mean that a spellcaster can actually stick with using magic in combat.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I agree. Spellcasters should be able to cast spells, and all the time. If you had cantrip slots, even if they recharged on a short rest, that would make Prestidigitation and most other non-combat cantrips not be super useful.
It would suck to be a wizard and instead of the current situation where you run out of spell slots you instead just have to spam cantrips you can only cast cantrips until you run out, and then you have to spam a dagger.
Essentially, you would turn cantrips into 1st-level spell slots that are worse and recharge like Pact Magic.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Subclasses that change the existing core feature of a class instead of simply adding to it.
Would love this. Subclasses just feel like a shiny coat of paint over the same pieces. I'd definitely prefer subclasses to be more influential and change up the base class playstyle and theming more.
It's one of the reasons I consider warlock the best designed class in the game (despite its balance issues with multiclassing). It basically has a second subclass, so between the first subclass and the pact boon you feel like you're building a character a lot more than other classes.
Fair. It’s just a little disappointing to me that the average party looks more like an MMO (everyone has magic, and the wizards are spamming it everywhere!) or Harry Potter than Lord of the Rings. There are definitely other systems that do this better though: I’m thinking of switching my D&D games to a reflavored Adventures in Middle-Earth for just this reason.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I think this is an apt comparison.
Even MMOs have changed over the years. The "older" variety of MMOs have powers with cooldowns and have resources you expend, such as endurance, after which you need to recover.
Example: City of Heroes. Each power, after you use it, has an individual recharge time. You can't re-use it until it refreshes, but you can use other powers, that are ready to go and have refreshed already. You also expend some endurance with each power, and you have a fixed Endurance max of 100 (barring special circumstances), that at least in the original game could never be increased for any reason. Endurance recovers very slowly, about 1 or 2 a second, but you send it in battle way faster than it recovers. So after a little while you have to either slow down your attack rate or you have to stop and rest for a bit (maybe 10 seconds). Players constantly complained about "running out of endurance." They didn't like "not doing anything" while their endurance recovered.
When the same company made a second superhero game (Champions Online), they went with the model of "charging up" your endurance (they called it energy but it was the same thing) with your "default" attack. Default attacks didn't cost any energy, did small amounts of damage, and added energy to your energy bar. After a few swings, you had built up enough energy to do your big powers. Then your energy drained back down, and you had to swap over to the default attack again. (Many) players loved this -- this was active. They were "doing stuff" -- you were hitting things to gain endurance, rather than waiting around for a few seconds to let it recharge.
The "charge up" model was put into other games over the years (Dragon Age 2 has something like it for example) - because players "like to be doing something" all the time. Cantrips seem to follow along the same lines -- magic user characters want to feel like they are "doing something" in every battle (and something magical).
And although I understand that, the "always doing something" model negates one of the most interesting elements of a roleplaying game for me -- resource management. I liked the idea, in COH, of having to manage my endurance and run my character efficiently in combat -- of not over-using the high-End powers. In the lower levels, my scrapper couldn't use her "defense toggles" (powers you turn on and leave on that cost a little End each second) too much because she didn't have endurance reducing enhancers on them, and didn't have the stamina power (which helps End recovery). The "charge up" side would complain -- see? You have two "super reflexes" defenses, you are a "reflex scrapper", and you can't even use them! But I did use them -- against bosses or dangerous enemies. Just not all the time, at low level, because I was managing my endurance. And I liked the feeling that at low levels I had to carefully manage things, and then by high level, I could run 4 toggles at once (with Stamina fully enhanced, with those toggles having Endurance reducers on them, etc.) -- it made my character feel way more powerful at higher level than she had been at low level. And now I was managing other things (with multiple powers that have different effects -- the recharge timing so I can do the right thing at the right time). But I couldn't just "do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to." Which, I think, is what a lot of gamers actually want, even though it's not what they say they want out loud.
So I guess for me... it's not really about cantrips. It's about the extremely reduced role tactical management of resources has come to play not just in D&D 5e compared to earlier editions, but in most RPGs these days. Players seem to want to just spam out their abilities all the time, rather than having to hold the cool stuff for exactly the right moment and use it wisely. Short resting is another mechanic I'm not too in love with either, for that reason.
And I think that this is actually a deeper problem than it seems, because in thread after thread here we have seen people complaining that the CR system is broken and "deadly" difficulty challenges are being wiped out by the party with no effort. And it always comes back to the fact that the game expects 6-8 encounters per long rest, but almost nobody does that. Why? Because as soon as they start running out of their resources, players, not wanting to bother managing them, just take a long rest and get them back. Unless the DM "rigs" it so that the players can't keep doing this after every tough battle, the players will try to always have all their resources all the time -- because they don't want to have to think about managing their resources.
I think I agree with Naivara... I'm probably going to need, for the next campaign, to start looking into other game systems -- probably old, out of print ones -- that require more thoughtful resource management from the players.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
What I would change about 5e would mostly come down to minor tweaks to a bunch of things. The one house rule I regularly employ though is critical failures on skill checks, as I don't think being able to get a skill bonus so high you basically can't fail anything but the most difficult tasks isn't realistic (everyone makes mistakes), so maybe that?
But if it were more a question of what I would most like to see most for 6e; I would like to a proper blocking/dodging/parrying mechanism as a basic mechanic, probably with a big overall reduction in hit-points to make hits more dangerous but less frequent, i.e- your aim is to avoid being hit as much as possible, probably with armour providing damage reductions for non-barbarian tanking.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Well, then let the “Utility” cantrips stay free and only do the SR cantrip points for combat cantrips?
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Artificer too. Those are probably the two most interesting classes in that regard, for my tastes at least.
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Not sure this is a solution for those of us who want "resource management" to be an integral, significant, portion of the game. The utility cantrips can still obviate the need for things like torches. One person wrote a while back on another site that his mages wanted to use the Mending cantrip on arrows so that expended arrows could be repaired, thus eliminating the need to track ammunition or ever buy more. And there is the issue that some of us (who seem to be the same folks who prefer resource management to be an actual "thing" in the game rather than something to which the game, frankly, barely gives lip service), don't necessarily want to see magic splattered all over the world and used to do things like clean the house, fertilize crops, wash your face, and comb your hair.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Some folks find resource management to be a chore that impedes the fun of the narrative. They don’t care about that stuff, like how Hollywood doesn’t care that guns don’t actually hold that many bullets in a magazine.
Other folks think that running out of stuff and having to worry about it adds fun by adding elements of tension, adding the possibility of things going wrong as story elements, and increases verisimilitude.
There are more than 7,000,000,000 people in the world right now. There is no possible way that one game can make everyone happy. 🤷‍♂️ That’s what houserules and other games are for.
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Right... but this thread is about one thing we would change about D&D if we could. It doesn't ask what changes we think the 7,000,000,000 other people on earth might like or prefer.
I readily acknowledge that the majority of current D&D players don't like worrying about resource management. Just like most MMO players hate endurance, which is why COH went belly-up years ago (though it is back now with private illegal servers... it's not really "back" in terms of a business) but the games that don't use a limited resource are still going.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
It's all because of those brain rotting vidja games!
I honestly don't have one thing I want to change. Right now I'm almost at break point of there being too much to know as a GM.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I guess if you really want that, sure, but that's not what I'd want in my games. A wizard should have magic that they can use all of the time to help in combat, never be limited to dagger spamming, IMO.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
There are times when I'm tempted to go back to the old Basic/Expert sets from the 1970s....
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yeah, limiting the number of combat cantrips a wizard or sorcerer can use is like telling a fighter he can only make 8 attacks with a weapon before it becomes Dull and can't be used again until it's fixed during a Long Rest, and also that he's only allowed to carry two weapons at a time.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.