Normally, I would argue this point. However, I am no longer permitted to hold or express any such opinions on this website.
Instead, may I simply ask if you were aware of the dozen-plus threads on this very subject that all sport a multitude of pages and which are easily located with the briefest of searches in the last few non-main pages?
I usually dont agree with Yurei but they have a point. I have only played 5th edition but I would consider it far from perfect and getting perpetually more complicated as more things comes out.
5th edition is fine, but there will eventually be a 6th edition unless dnd as a whole dies.
Just keep developing 5e until it stops being profitable.
What do you do after that? Give up and end D&D? I want 5e to last a long time, it is a great system, but I think that eventually 6e will have to happen. And if 5e is better, I will already have the books and can keep on playing it.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
I don't know that I'd go so far as to say there never needs to be a 6th Edition. I don't think phantom prospects of whatever a 6th Edition might look like are worth wasting effort on right now. 5th Edition is still going strong and doesn't show any signs of dropping off anytime soon. I'd argue that right now 5E is well-defined and succeeding in a market filled with many other distinct choices; there isn't much need to make fundamental changes to chase people who are looking for a different game when the market is full of different games people can play. Eventually market conditions will change and the designers at WotC will be inspired to try something different, and a new edition will be born.
But honestly I don't imagine most of us are all that afraid of moving forward to new things. Lots of us have been through an edition change before. The changes always seem bigger and scarier before they come and then once the hullaballoo is over many of us will check out the newest edition - as we have before - and be just fine. Granted, it seems like there's always some small, loud part of the community that's never happy with new things. They don't want new stories, they don't want new settings, they don't want new mechanics, they don't want new people playing the game... But for all their loud, cranky vitriol, they don't really represent the D&D community as a whole.
I like 5e, like a lot, but I definitely want there to be a 6e. Let's cover some reasons why there should be a 6e.
First, every edition (and thing) comes to an end. Editions die. No matter how popular or loved, its eventually going to have to end. When it ends, WotC will not stop making D&D as long as it is profitable. D&D makes them money, and quite a bit of it, and they're not just going to just stop making D&D as long as it makes them money.
Second, 5e is far from perfect. I love this edition, but I am aware of its many flaws. The whole "melee weapon attack" and "attack with a melee weapon" being different things is a flaw. Natural weapons count as weapons, and unarmed strikes don't for some reason. That's a flaw. Prone being too easy to get rid of, the lack of different shield types, the imbalance in ability scores, imbalance in the races, and so many other things are flawed. These are problems, and it would take a new edition (5.5e or 6e).
Third, don't tell people to go play different games. That's gatekeeping. I love this edition, and have spent hundreds of dollars on books in this edition and hundreds of hours homebrewing and playing this edition. I would like a 5.5e or backwards compatible 6e at some point (years away, hopefully) to make use of all of this. I can't do that if I were to leave D&D and go play Pathfinder or 3.5e.
Just my 2 cents.
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Considering the garbage rules we’re getting for Psionics this edition, 6e can’t come fast enough.
What makes you think a 6e would have a better psionic system? I understand wanting a new edition, but this is not one of the reasons I would want a new edition.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Considering the garbage rules we’re getting for Psionics this edition, 6e can’t come fast enough.
What makes you think a 6e would have a better psionic system? I understand wanting a new edition, but this is not one of the reasons I would want a new edition.
I think because they may NOT put psionic features as spells :)
I wan't a 5.5 with a more complex ruleset tbh, but I enjoy grindy rules :)
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“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
I feel like before they make a 6e they should ask the gamers what they want, or at least find out what was the best parts of every other edition and merge that all into 6e. Or maybe a 6e will never happen and new editions to the game will be through sourcebooks, and campaign books like now and with artificer. ( I think that made sense? I don't usually make sense... )
Normally, I would argue this point. However, I am no longer permitted to hold or express any such opinions on this website.
Instead, may I simply ask if you were aware of the dozen-plus threads on this very subject that all sport a multitude of pages and which are easily located with the briefest of searches in the last few non-main pages?
A 6e, or at least a "consolidated edition," of the core rules and optional rules in Tasha's and likely other publications, will eventually be in order. I doubt much of the core mechanics will change, but refined.
For instance, as I've suggested elsewhere, the class variants and race/legacy (including custom legacy where there will be an optional rule for creating balanced unique birth origin traits), could be reconsidered as the "foundation" for character creation, and the races and classes we currently have can be offered as templates for those who don't want to do that deep development. It's been mentioned rather than a 6e, a "Golden Edition" timed with the games 50th anniversary might be an apt repackaging of the rules that have grown since the core books. If the market shows high engagement with the optional char generation rules, it'd make sense to offer them within a core work than an optional work. This is likely a decade down the line.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I feel like before they make a 6e they should ask the gamers what they want, or at least find out what was the best parts of every other edition and merge that all into 6e. Or maybe a 6e will never happen and new editions to the game will be through sourcebooks, and campaign books like now and with artificer. ( I think that made sense? I don't usually make sense... )
Well no, because "the game people want to play" should be presented in the core books, not sourcebooks and campaign guides which require the core books for mechanical basis. And WotC does engage its player community to understand what its players want. That's why we have 5E.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I'm going to have to agree with the group here. I have enjoyed 5e so far and hope it can continue for a while. But this edition is far from perfect, and all things must come to an end. So I feel that a 6th edition will happen eventually. As to when it will happen, we don't know.
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"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Perfection is a road, not a destination. They sure ain't there yet.
I remember an article from Long, Long Ago where some big-wig at Wizards of the Coast talked frankly about Editions and sales. He said that almost all the money that Wizards makes from D&D comes from the sales of the Core Rules. The supplements bring in very little dough by comparison. Only a small sub-set of the people who buy the Core Rules can be counted on to buy a given supplement. When sales figures on the Core Rules start to dip, it is time for a new Edition of D&D, needed, wanted, or not. They need a constant stream of new players far more than they need to sell supplements.
I feel like before they make a 6e they should ask the gamers what they want, or at least find out what was the best parts of every other edition and merge that all into 6e. Or maybe a 6e will never happen and new editions to the game will be through sourcebooks, and campaign books like now and with artificer. ( I think that made sense? I don't usually make sense... )
This is what they already did for 5e. It's part of why 5e was so successful.
If they try to make a new edition that's more complex it will be less popular, if they try to make it less complex it will be too boring.
I don't agree with this. Firstly, the only variable at stake isn't complexity vs simplicity. Two RPGs with equally simple mechanics can vary wildly in how they tackle character creation, roleplaying, combat, magic systems, exploration, task resolution, etc. Shadowrun and The Riddle of Steel are both fairly complicated for wildly different reasons. Secondly, even if the overall complexity of 5e seems ideal, playtesting can reveal unexpected changes that prove popular. There are components of 5e mechanics that might locally benefit from more detail or minimalism without changing the overall "crunch vs fluff" balance in DnD.
One example for this would be spellcasting. Having a distinction between character level and spell level, as well as explaining the difference between "spells known", "spells prepared", and "spell slots" is very clumsy and awkward for new players to me. The same applies to ability scores vs modifiers, the former of which are an abstract hangover from older editions of DnD that seem to be predicated on rolling 4d6-1 (or 3d6 in the old days) for a nice bell-shaped distribution of probabilities, but really serve no function other than an abstract number besides XP which scales character progression and is reference for using certain items or multiclassing.
Thirdly, you can have emergent complexity (aka depth) from very simple underlying mechanics if your game is well designed. Often these are blank spaces for players to invent parts of their own abilities or skills that are explicitly detailed in the books. It needs to be constrained for balance purposes, but a lot of RPGs do this really well, and it's always something I've always felt DnD kinda lacked outside of homebrew. Sure, you can ask your DM to include something outside-the-box, but many won't if the system doesn't encourage it, which stifles creativity to me.
I desperately want there to be a 6e (preferably the sooner the better). I love 5e's core rules and would like that to carry through. Maybe with pathfinder 2e's three action system which is much simpler than move action, bonus action, action action.
However the whole philosophy around class design in 5e is what I hate, and why I want 6e. Few classes, absolutely piles of subclasses (which have very little mechanical impact), godawful multiclassing system, psionics just turned into wizard spells.
I'd like 6e to redo their approach to classes from the ground up, and as I find them fundamentally unsatisfying on every level for 5e the next edition can't come soon enough.
However wanting 6e doesn't mean that I want to play 3e. Not liking the 5e class system doesn't mean that I enjoy having to work out 30 different + and - modifiers, or calculate the exact bulk of all items in the inventory, or have to map each spell to each spell slot individually. So saying 'go and play 3e' is not going to make the people wanting a new edition go away.
Considering the garbage rules we’re getting for Psionics this edition, 6e can’t come fast enough.
What makes you think a 6e would have a better psionic system? I understand wanting a new edition, but this is not one of the reasons I would want a new edition.
Nothing guarantees better psionics rules for the next edition, but the bad rules are guaranteed for this edition. Therefore a new edition is a chance to 'roll the dice' again and hope we get something good.
Perfection is a road, not a destination. They sure ain't there yet.
I remember an article from Long, Long Ago where some big-wig at Wizards of the Coast talked frankly about Editions and sales. He said that almost all the money that Wizards makes from D&D comes from the sales of the Core Rules. The supplements bring in very little dough by comparison. Only a small sub-set of the people who buy the Core Rules can be counted on to buy a given supplement. When sales figures on the Core Rules start to dip, it is time for a new Edition of D&D, needed, wanted, or not. They need a constant stream of new players far more than they need to sell supplements.
I would be very curious with regard to their financial numbers and selling D&D material in the time of Covid. Have they maintained that steady stream of new players? Are there a lot of people switching to virtual games on systems like Roll 20? Has that replaced enough of the people not trying out the game in the traditional face to face method?
I have zero clue.
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Fifth edition is damn near perfect for most players. It's uncomplicated, it's easy to jump into, and you can do almost anything.
Do you want a stricter ruleset? Well, they developed the fudge out of 3.5 so you can just go play that.
Are there too many flaws in 3.5 for you? Then go play pathfinder.
If they try to make a new edition that's more complex it will be less popular, if they try to make it less complex it will be too boring.
Just keep developing 5e until it stops being profitable.
yup
Rogue Shadow, the DM (and occasional) PC with schemes of inventive thinking
Normally, I would argue this point. However, I am no longer permitted to hold or express any such opinions on this website.
Instead, may I simply ask if you were aware of the dozen-plus threads on this very subject that all sport a multitude of pages and which are easily located with the briefest of searches in the last few non-main pages?
Please do not contact or message me.
I usually dont agree with Yurei but they have a point. I have only played 5th edition but I would consider it far from perfect and getting perpetually more complicated as more things comes out.
5th edition is fine, but there will eventually be a 6th edition unless dnd as a whole dies.
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What do you do after that? Give up and end D&D? I want 5e to last a long time, it is a great system, but I think that eventually 6e will have to happen. And if 5e is better, I will already have the books and can keep on playing it.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
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I don't know that I'd go so far as to say there never needs to be a 6th Edition. I don't think phantom prospects of whatever a 6th Edition might look like are worth wasting effort on right now. 5th Edition is still going strong and doesn't show any signs of dropping off anytime soon. I'd argue that right now 5E is well-defined and succeeding in a market filled with many other distinct choices; there isn't much need to make fundamental changes to chase people who are looking for a different game when the market is full of different games people can play. Eventually market conditions will change and the designers at WotC will be inspired to try something different, and a new edition will be born.
But honestly I don't imagine most of us are all that afraid of moving forward to new things. Lots of us have been through an edition change before. The changes always seem bigger and scarier before they come and then once the hullaballoo is over many of us will check out the newest edition - as we have before - and be just fine. Granted, it seems like there's always some small, loud part of the community that's never happy with new things. They don't want new stories, they don't want new settings, they don't want new mechanics, they don't want new people playing the game... But for all their loud, cranky vitriol, they don't really represent the D&D community as a whole.
Considering the garbage rules we’re getting for Psionics this edition, 6e can’t come fast enough.
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I like 5e, like a lot, but I definitely want there to be a 6e. Let's cover some reasons why there should be a 6e.
First, every edition (and thing) comes to an end. Editions die. No matter how popular or loved, its eventually going to have to end. When it ends, WotC will not stop making D&D as long as it is profitable. D&D makes them money, and quite a bit of it, and they're not just going to just stop making D&D as long as it makes them money.
Second, 5e is far from perfect. I love this edition, but I am aware of its many flaws. The whole "melee weapon attack" and "attack with a melee weapon" being different things is a flaw. Natural weapons count as weapons, and unarmed strikes don't for some reason. That's a flaw. Prone being too easy to get rid of, the lack of different shield types, the imbalance in ability scores, imbalance in the races, and so many other things are flawed. These are problems, and it would take a new edition (5.5e or 6e).
Third, don't tell people to go play different games. That's gatekeeping. I love this edition, and have spent hundreds of dollars on books in this edition and hundreds of hours homebrewing and playing this edition. I would like a 5.5e or backwards compatible 6e at some point (years away, hopefully) to make use of all of this. I can't do that if I were to leave D&D and go play Pathfinder or 3.5e.
Just my 2 cents.
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What makes you think a 6e would have a better psionic system? I understand wanting a new edition, but this is not one of the reasons I would want a new edition.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I think because they may NOT put psionic features as spells :)
I wan't a 5.5 with a more complex ruleset tbh, but I enjoy grindy rules :)
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
I feel like before they make a 6e they should ask the gamers what they want, or at least find out what was the best parts of every other edition and merge that all into 6e. Or maybe a 6e will never happen and new editions to the game will be through sourcebooks, and campaign books like now and with artificer. ( I think that made sense? I don't usually make sense... )
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A 6e, or at least a "consolidated edition," of the core rules and optional rules in Tasha's and likely other publications, will eventually be in order. I doubt much of the core mechanics will change, but refined.
For instance, as I've suggested elsewhere, the class variants and race/legacy (including custom legacy where there will be an optional rule for creating balanced unique birth origin traits), could be reconsidered as the "foundation" for character creation, and the races and classes we currently have can be offered as templates for those who don't want to do that deep development. It's been mentioned rather than a 6e, a "Golden Edition" timed with the games 50th anniversary might be an apt repackaging of the rules that have grown since the core books. If the market shows high engagement with the optional char generation rules, it'd make sense to offer them within a core work than an optional work. This is likely a decade down the line.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Well no, because "the game people want to play" should be presented in the core books, not sourcebooks and campaign guides which require the core books for mechanical basis. And WotC does engage its player community to understand what its players want. That's why we have 5E.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I'm going to have to agree with the group here. I have enjoyed 5e so far and hope it can continue for a while. But this edition is far from perfect, and all things must come to an end. So I feel that a 6th edition will happen eventually. As to when it will happen, we don't know.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
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Perfection is a road, not a destination. They sure ain't there yet.
I remember an article from Long, Long Ago where some big-wig at Wizards of the Coast talked frankly about Editions and sales. He said that almost all the money that Wizards makes from D&D comes from the sales of the Core Rules. The supplements bring in very little dough by comparison. Only a small sub-set of the people who buy the Core Rules can be counted on to buy a given supplement. When sales figures on the Core Rules start to dip, it is time for a new Edition of D&D, needed, wanted, or not. They need a constant stream of new players far more than they need to sell supplements.
<Insert clever signature here>
This is what they already did for 5e. It's part of why 5e was so successful.
I don't agree with this.
Firstly, the only variable at stake isn't complexity vs simplicity. Two RPGs with equally simple mechanics can vary wildly in how they tackle character creation, roleplaying, combat, magic systems, exploration, task resolution, etc. Shadowrun and The Riddle of Steel are both fairly complicated for wildly different reasons.
Secondly, even if the overall complexity of 5e seems ideal, playtesting can reveal unexpected changes that prove popular. There are components of 5e mechanics that might locally benefit from more detail or minimalism without changing the overall "crunch vs fluff" balance in DnD.
One example for this would be spellcasting. Having a distinction between character level and spell level, as well as explaining the difference between "spells known", "spells prepared", and "spell slots" is very clumsy and awkward for new players to me. The same applies to ability scores vs modifiers, the former of which are an abstract hangover from older editions of DnD that seem to be predicated on rolling 4d6-1 (or 3d6 in the old days) for a nice bell-shaped distribution of probabilities, but really serve no function other than an abstract number besides XP which scales character progression and is reference for using certain items or multiclassing.
Thirdly, you can have emergent complexity (aka depth) from very simple underlying mechanics if your game is well designed. Often these are blank spaces for players to invent parts of their own abilities or skills that are explicitly detailed in the books. It needs to be constrained for balance purposes, but a lot of RPGs do this really well, and it's always something I've always felt DnD kinda lacked outside of homebrew. Sure, you can ask your DM to include something outside-the-box, but many won't if the system doesn't encourage it, which stifles creativity to me.
I desperately want there to be a 6e (preferably the sooner the better). I love 5e's core rules and would like that to carry through. Maybe with pathfinder 2e's three action system which is much simpler than move action, bonus action, action action.
However the whole philosophy around class design in 5e is what I hate, and why I want 6e. Few classes, absolutely piles of subclasses (which have very little mechanical impact), godawful multiclassing system, psionics just turned into wizard spells.
I'd like 6e to redo their approach to classes from the ground up, and as I find them fundamentally unsatisfying on every level for 5e the next edition can't come soon enough.
However wanting 6e doesn't mean that I want to play 3e. Not liking the 5e class system doesn't mean that I enjoy having to work out 30 different + and - modifiers, or calculate the exact bulk of all items in the inventory, or have to map each spell to each spell slot individually. So saying 'go and play 3e' is not going to make the people wanting a new edition go away.
Nothing guarantees better psionics rules for the next edition, but the bad rules are guaranteed for this edition. Therefore a new edition is a chance to 'roll the dice' again and hope we get something good.
I would be very curious with regard to their financial numbers and selling D&D material in the time of Covid. Have they maintained that steady stream of new players? Are there a lot of people switching to virtual games on systems like Roll 20? Has that replaced enough of the people not trying out the game in the traditional face to face method?
I have zero clue.