1. It is beyond stupid that a 40 pound Halfling with a Str of 18 can carry 270 pounds of gear. It is equally stupid that a Sprite familiar, weighing 10 pounds, with a Str of 3, can FLY while carrying 22.5 pounds of stuff.
The mechanic should be, at best, 10 pounds per Str point, then half for Small, half that again for Tiny. That 10 pounds per Str point applies to ALL size classes.
My way, a 6'6", 250 pound Half-Orc can lug around 200 pounds, with a Str of 20. That is still silly. Ask an NFL Defensive Tackle to lug around 200 pounds all day and see what happens. But it is better. My 40 pound Halfling with Str 18 would still handling 90 pounds, and my Tiny Sprite would be Flying with 7.5 pounds. Still far from anything realistic, but better.
2. Falling damage. It must track closer to the acceleration due to gravity, and the damage cut off from a fall much much higher. Barbarians falling 200 feet don't get to hit rocks, brush themselves off, and carry on.
3. Held Actions, or whatever you want to call the mechanism, must be much more clearly spelled out. I have no idea how many players I have had to stop as they abused the mechanic. None liked it when I stopped them.
4. Vertical Jumping is once again way off anything that could be treated as reasonable. It must be scaled back.
5. Dispel Magic and Counterspell must be made more difficult. Example: Under the current rules, say a Hallow Spell was cast at a 9th level spell slot. There is no logical reason to do it, but say some 18th level caster did so. We are talking about some caster of ancient awesome power. Along comes Joe the 5th level Wizard. He now has Dispel Magic to play with. Assume an Int of 18. The DC of breaking that Hallow spell, which was cast 2000 years before, on some temple of legend, is 19. Joe rolls an 12 or better on a 20, or 45%. He has a +7 on his rolls. Bye bye goes this spell cast by someone who Joe can't even begin to fathom the power of.
5. Grappling. Fred the Barbarian leaps 15 feet into the air, and with a single hand, grabs the foot of a Large Dragon flying overhead, and drags it to the ground. What's more, if he fails on the 1st attempt, he gets a 2nd shot at it if he has 2 attacks/ turn. No, just no. Once again, this goes beyond any belief, even for a game of heroes and magic.
I introduced in Session 0 10 pages of notes addressing these glaring issues. The players adapted beautifully. The only time it was a real issue was when the Monk leaped off of a 60 foot ledge to try to grapple a flying devil. He failed and fell. The players ALL wanted to roll the damage instead of me as they considered it so foolhardy.
The basic economic problem is that in original D&D the PCs motivation really was 'go into the dungeon to gain wealth', and if you want that to be a real motivation, there's two needs:
A treasure hoard needs to be meaningful wealth upgrade. If your net wealth is 100 gp, 50 gp of treasure is great. If your net wealth is 10,000 gp, it's petty cash. This basically means you need exponential wealth gain. It probably doesn't need to be as fast as 5e (which is about +57% per level, so over 19 levels you multiply wealth by 1.57^19 or 5,200), but you'll need to come close.
There has to be something that PCs can spend money on, that they will care about. While some players like empire-building, for most of them that's going to be gear upgrades.
To make it so magic items are actually valued loot and the PCs can't just buy anything they want, their level has to escalate in the same way.
Now, a lot of modern campaigns actually aren't primarily about the loot, they're about Saving the Village/Country/World/Universe, and in those campaigns it's not necessary for magic items to be available to buy or sell, making their nominal value irrelevant, but D&D still needs to support the old style option.
I agree on the knife edge dance of "what is reasonable" for awarding players in terms of currency and magic items.
But I find that in most campaigns that I play in (not talking about the one that I run), cash was always a huge deal, because the players always expected to be able to buy magical items. Only in one, where magical items were almost non-existent, was cash not an issue.
If the chars plan on settling down and buying a keep, money, whether in actual currency or concentrated wealth aka magical items, is a big deal.
But, if the chars are going to be essentially wanderers, and not putting down roots, very little upkeep is required.
That being said, more "realistic" economic mechanics being introduced I believe enhance the game. We all live in such an environment, so bringing the D&D environment closer to that is a good thing.
Sorry didn’t get through the entire thread before posting this but one of the “problems” listed was HP especially at high level. In AD&D, Fighters, for example, stopped rolling for HP at 9th level and then gained a flat +3 per level after that. Maybe options like this and others would help in that arena. Plus it has “old school“ D&D to back it up.
Problem: Dexterity is much better than Strength, it's the edition's "god stat". It gives near-equivalent (equivalent at higher levels) AC, works for ranged attacks, works for melee via slightly weaker finesse weapons, and is more often used for saving throws.
Solution: simple, get rid of finesse weapons. If Strength is the melee stat and Dexterity is the ranged stat, the two will be more balanced in my opinion.
Also, yeah, the jumping, breath-holding, encumbrance, and other calculations are horribly broken, but I straight up don't even use them anymore because of it. :-)
I will never understand why people think DEX is a god stat. I mean, I understand, but I just can't ever agree with it.
It allows you to effectively use finesse weapons, duel wield for higher damage, use all ranged weapons, AC, and possibly the best saving throw. No other score comes close to it in efficiency.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
I think heavy weapons should allow a character to add 1.5 times their Str mod to damage rolls. Let Str shine a bit more in combat since Dex does so much for combat.
Chapter 9 of the DMG essentially tries to tell DMs they're welcome to alter, create, or disregard mechanics for their campaigns and gives several examples. If that's not good enough for 5e, then I don't really know what will fix 5e.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I will never understand why people think DEX is a god stat. I mean, I understand, but I just can't ever agree with it.
It allows you to effectively use finesse weapons, duel wield for higher damage, use all ranged weapons, AC, and possibly the best saving throw. No other score comes close to it in efficiency.
Except its far from the best saving throw (STR actually has roughly an equal amount of saves in the MM, and DEX saves are mainly taken up by dragon breath as well as enemy spellcasters, creating a very strong bias in terms of when and how you face said saves; furthermore, WIS and CON are far more important, given they're the Save or Suck/Die effects), dual wielding is flavorful but generally considered closer to a trap option, finesse weapons are weaker than their heavy counterparts.
Adding to AC is actually a drawback of the stat (heavy armor grants equal AC without the stat requirement), Athletics and other strength checks are actually important to exploration (much like Stealth is).
The only real advantage DEX has over STR is that strength-based thrown weapons are crap, and DEX adds to Initiative. Meanwhile, Strength offers you the advantage of the ability to shove, grapple etc in combat.
The rest is a wash. That's not nearly enough to make it a "god stat" nor best in efficiency.
I tried to resolve the magic item as valuable treasure issue by by working in a theory of conservation of magical items and bringing back 4th Edition's concept of residium.
Basically, there is something of a fixed amount of physical magic material in the world in the form of residium. Residium is used to craft magical items and can be harvested from unwanted magical items to help craft newer ones. Each stage of rarity of magical item requires and/or produces a certain amount of residium. Therefore, if the party wants to craft a magical item, they must first acquire enough residium via hunting down other magical items or finding small parcels of residium as treasure. The overall number of magical items in the world may fluctuate slightly as adventurers or kingdoms/buyers acquire/repurpose items, but overall magical items remain rarer as magical gear is harder to mass produce.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
I will never understand why people think DEX is a god stat. I mean, I understand, but I just can't ever agree with it.
It allows you to effectively use finesse weapons, duel wield for higher damage, use all ranged weapons, AC, and possibly the best saving throw. No other score comes close to it in efficiency.
Except its far from the best saving throw (STR actually has roughly an equal amount of saves in the MM, and DEX saves are mainly taken up by dragon breath as well as enemy spellcasters, creating a very strong bias in terms of when and how you face said saves; furthermore, WIS and CON are far more important, given they're the Save or Suck/Die effects), dual wielding is flavorful but generally considered closer to a trap option, finesse weapons are weaker than their heavy counterparts.
Adding to AC is actually a drawback of the stat (heavy armor grants equal AC without the stat requirement), Athletics and other strength checks are actually important to exploration (much like Stealth is).
The only real advantage DEX has over STR is that strength-based thrown weapons are crap, and DEX adds to Initiative. Meanwhile, Strength offers you the advantage of the ability to shove, grapple etc in combat.
The rest is a wash. That's not nearly enough to make it a "god stat" nor best in efficiency.
I still disagree. Lets take a look at the benefits of each stat.
Strength
Melee weapons
Carrying capacity
Extremely rare saving throws
One fairly weak skill
Dexterity
Finesse Weapons
All ranged weapons
Very common saving throw
AC
Initiative
One of the best skills in the game, stealth
Constitution
Health
Very common saving throw
No skills
Intelligence
Spellcasting stat
Rare but dangerous save
A few useful but not very powerful skills
Wisdom
Spellcasting stat
Fairly common save
Several skills
Charisma
Very common spellcasting stat
Rare save
Very good skills
Except its far from the best saving throw (STR actually has roughly an equal amount of saves in the MM, and DEX saves are mainly taken up by dragon breath as well as enemy spellcasters, creating a very strong bias in terms of when and how you face said saves;
I'm pretty sure strength is one of, if not the, rarest save in the game. And STR saves results aren't that bad, most often just grappling or other loss of mobility.
dual wielding is flavorful but generally considered closer to a trap option
Duel wielding can be very powerful, I don't think it is a trap option. Maybe not always as powerful as single weapons, but still effective through every level.
finesse weapons are weaker than their heavy counterparts.
This is true. However, the distance between the two types is not often that great.
Adding to AC is actually a drawback of the stat (heavy armor grants equal AC without the stat requirement),
That is blatantly wrong. Light armor is almost always just as good as heavier armor.
Athletics and other strength checks are actually important to exploration (much like Stealth is).
While Athletics is better for mobility, Acrobatics can often be used for similar situations. And Stealth might be the best skill in the game.
Dexterity is the best stat in the game. It might not be a game breaking difference, but it is certainly there.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
You're free to disagree. As I said, I understand the arguments. I just will never agree with them.
I said my part, and the rest seems to be just a matter of personal emphasis and what you hold more important. Or disagreement over basic facts that I'm really not interested in arguing about.
Dexterity is the best stat in the game. It might not be a game breaking difference, but it is certainly there.
Eh, it's almost always more valuable than strength (which tends towards 'save or be mildly inconvenienced'), but if it's not your main attack stat it's not that great.
Charisma and Wisdom have better skills (IME Perception is the most valuable skill in the game)
Constitution and Wisdom have better saves (taking half damage is way less important than avoiding save-or-suck), though Resilient is probably a better investment than simply raising the stat.
Constitution is mostly better defensively (hit points > ac), and medium or heavy armor might not even get AC.
It may not be a "god" stat, but I feel DEX is certainly the most versatile stat and stat with the broadest application in game. If you can't admit to that, with it's unique factor in initiative DEX is definitely the "leading" stat.
My biggest issue personally (although it only scratches the surface of the DEX/STR problem, and I forgot DEX also does initiative!) is the fact that the sword and rapier do the same amount of damage in one hand. If the sword was one die higher (which is still only a +1 damage) I'd be a little more okay with it.
Honestly, I always preferred 3e weapon rules (finesse lets you use Dex for your attack roll but not damage roll) but you'd need to give some sort of compensatory bonus to finesse based builds.
Ya know..... there's one thing that I actually would love to see happen.
With multiclass rules, we can now share spell slot growth, which helps remove some of the poison of multiclassing with casters. However... for a class like the monk, for whom multiclassing seriously hurts their ki-progression? Leaving the class is hurts.
So, I kind of would like to see some kind of unification of these resource pools like we do with spell slots. This would make multiclassing so much easier, plus allow us to make magical items that can interact with this "stamina-pool" like we do with interacting with your HP and spell slots a lot more fluidly and not overly specialized.
And there's already a lot of classes with different resource pools that we could use and combine. Bards and their Inspirations, monk ki, barbarian rages, several fighter subclasses, soul knife, sorcerers and their points. Sure, now they all work differently on how they refresh, how everyone uses them, etc. But short-rest-based classes, while a good idea in theory, have kind of proven to be bad in execution, so I'd kind of like to see that particular difference go the way of the dodo. And uses per rest can be adjusted by individual ability costs.
To me, the fun part of all these abilities are their actual uses, yes, and there's the resource management game. As far as I can tell, unifying these resources into a single pool wouldn't affect the former and could allow some extra flexibility in how the latter is employed in terms of multi-classing, items and more.
Ya know..... there's one thing that I actually would love to see happen.
With multiclass rules, we can now share spell slot growth, which helps remove some of the poison of multiclassing with casters. However... for a class like the monk, for whom multiclassing seriously hurts their ki-progression? Leaving the class is hurts.
So, I kind of would like to see some kind of unification of these resource pools like we do with spell slots. This would make multiclassing so much easier, plus allow us to make magical items that can interact with this "stamina-pool" like we do with interacting with your HP and spell slots a lot more fluidly and not overly specialized.
And there's already a lot of classes with different resource pools that we could use and combine. Bards and their Inspirations, monk ki, barbarian rages, several fighter subclasses, soul knife, sorcerers and their points. Sure, now they all work differently on how they refresh, how everyone uses them, etc. But short-rest-based classes, while a good idea in theory, have kind of proven to be bad in execution, so I'd kind of like to see that particular difference go the way of the dodo. And uses per rest can be adjusted by individual ability costs.
To me, the fun part of all these abilities are their actual uses, yes, and there's the resource management game. As far as I can tell, unifying these resources into a single pool wouldn't affect the former and could allow some extra flexibility in how the latter is employed in terms of multi-classing, items and more.
You are talking about massive power creep. There is a reason that multi-class chars don't get what you are describing. Because there are opportunity costs when a char decides to MC. An MC char gets the benefits of the new class, and but a trade-off of the losses of not sticking with one class. You want to remove the penalties and keep all the benefits.
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Other flaws in the game:
1. It is beyond stupid that a 40 pound Halfling with a Str of 18 can carry 270 pounds of gear. It is equally stupid that a Sprite familiar, weighing 10 pounds, with a Str of 3, can FLY while carrying 22.5 pounds of stuff.
The mechanic should be, at best, 10 pounds per Str point, then half for Small, half that again for Tiny. That 10 pounds per Str point applies to ALL size classes.
My way, a 6'6", 250 pound Half-Orc can lug around 200 pounds, with a Str of 20. That is still silly. Ask an NFL Defensive Tackle to lug around 200 pounds all day and see what happens. But it is better. My 40 pound Halfling with Str 18 would still handling 90 pounds, and my Tiny Sprite would be Flying with 7.5 pounds. Still far from anything realistic, but better.
2. Falling damage. It must track closer to the acceleration due to gravity, and the damage cut off from a fall much much higher. Barbarians falling 200 feet don't get to hit rocks, brush themselves off, and carry on.
3. Held Actions, or whatever you want to call the mechanism, must be much more clearly spelled out. I have no idea how many players I have had to stop as they abused the mechanic. None liked it when I stopped them.
4. Vertical Jumping is once again way off anything that could be treated as reasonable. It must be scaled back.
5. Dispel Magic and Counterspell must be made more difficult. Example: Under the current rules, say a Hallow Spell was cast at a 9th level spell slot. There is no logical reason to do it, but say some 18th level caster did so. We are talking about some caster of ancient awesome power. Along comes Joe the 5th level Wizard. He now has Dispel Magic to play with. Assume an Int of 18. The DC of breaking that Hallow spell, which was cast 2000 years before, on some temple of legend, is 19. Joe rolls an 12 or better on a 20, or 45%. He has a +7 on his rolls. Bye bye goes this spell cast by someone who Joe can't even begin to fathom the power of.
5. Grappling. Fred the Barbarian leaps 15 feet into the air, and with a single hand, grabs the foot of a Large Dragon flying overhead, and drags it to the ground. What's more, if he fails on the 1st attempt, he gets a 2nd shot at it if he has 2 attacks/ turn. No, just no. Once again, this goes beyond any belief, even for a game of heroes and magic.
I introduced in Session 0 10 pages of notes addressing these glaring issues. The players adapted beautifully. The only time it was a real issue was when the Monk leaped off of a 60 foot ledge to try to grapple a flying devil. He failed and fell. The players ALL wanted to roll the damage instead of me as they considered it so foolhardy.
I agree on the knife edge dance of "what is reasonable" for awarding players in terms of currency and magic items.
But I find that in most campaigns that I play in (not talking about the one that I run), cash was always a huge deal, because the players always expected to be able to buy magical items. Only in one, where magical items were almost non-existent, was cash not an issue.
If the chars plan on settling down and buying a keep, money, whether in actual currency or concentrated wealth aka magical items, is a big deal.
But, if the chars are going to be essentially wanderers, and not putting down roots, very little upkeep is required.
That being said, more "realistic" economic mechanics being introduced I believe enhance the game. We all live in such an environment, so bringing the D&D environment closer to that is a good thing.
Sorry didn’t get through the entire thread before posting this but one of the “problems” listed was HP especially at high level. In AD&D, Fighters, for example, stopped rolling for HP at 9th level and then gained a flat +3 per level after that. Maybe options like this and others would help in that arena. Plus it has “old school“ D&D to back it up.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Problem: Dexterity is much better than Strength, it's the edition's "god stat". It gives near-equivalent (equivalent at higher levels) AC, works for ranged attacks, works for melee via slightly weaker finesse weapons, and is more often used for saving throws.
Solution: simple, get rid of finesse weapons. If Strength is the melee stat and Dexterity is the ranged stat, the two will be more balanced in my opinion.
Also, yeah, the jumping, breath-holding, encumbrance, and other calculations are horribly broken, but I straight up don't even use them anymore because of it. :-)
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
That's how older editions worked. Strength was for melee attacks, and Dexterity was for either avoiding harm or ranged attacks.
I will never understand why people think DEX is a god stat. I mean, I understand, but I just can't ever agree with it.
What do you think is a more powerful stat?
It allows you to effectively use finesse weapons, duel wield for higher damage, use all ranged weapons, AC, and possibly the best saving throw. No other score comes close to it in efficiency.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
I think heavy weapons should allow a character to add 1.5 times their Str mod to damage rolls. Let Str shine a bit more in combat since Dex does so much for combat.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Chapter 9 of the DMG essentially tries to tell DMs they're welcome to alter, create, or disregard mechanics for their campaigns and gives several examples. If that's not good enough for 5e, then I don't really know what will fix 5e.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Except its far from the best saving throw (STR actually has roughly an equal amount of saves in the MM, and DEX saves are mainly taken up by dragon breath as well as enemy spellcasters, creating a very strong bias in terms of when and how you face said saves; furthermore, WIS and CON are far more important, given they're the Save or Suck/Die effects), dual wielding is flavorful but generally considered closer to a trap option, finesse weapons are weaker than their heavy counterparts.
Adding to AC is actually a drawback of the stat (heavy armor grants equal AC without the stat requirement), Athletics and other strength checks are actually important to exploration (much like Stealth is).
The only real advantage DEX has over STR is that strength-based thrown weapons are crap, and DEX adds to Initiative. Meanwhile, Strength offers you the advantage of the ability to shove, grapple etc in combat.
The rest is a wash. That's not nearly enough to make it a "god stat" nor best in efficiency.
I tried to resolve the magic item as valuable treasure issue by by working in a theory of conservation of magical items and bringing back 4th Edition's concept of residium.
Basically, there is something of a fixed amount of physical magic material in the world in the form of residium. Residium is used to craft magical items and can be harvested from unwanted magical items to help craft newer ones. Each stage of rarity of magical item requires and/or produces a certain amount of residium. Therefore, if the party wants to craft a magical item, they must first acquire enough residium via hunting down other magical items or finding small parcels of residium as treasure. The overall number of magical items in the world may fluctuate slightly as adventurers or kingdoms/buyers acquire/repurpose items, but overall magical items remain rarer as magical gear is harder to mass produce.
I still disagree. Lets take a look at the benefits of each stat.
Strength
Dexterity
Constitution
Intelligence
Wisdom
Charisma
I'm pretty sure strength is one of, if not the, rarest save in the game. And STR saves results aren't that bad, most often just grappling or other loss of mobility.
Duel wielding can be very powerful, I don't think it is a trap option. Maybe not always as powerful as single weapons, but still effective through every level.
This is true. However, the distance between the two types is not often that great.
That is blatantly wrong. Light armor is almost always just as good as heavier armor.
While Athletics is better for mobility, Acrobatics can often be used for similar situations. And Stealth might be the best skill in the game.
Dexterity is the best stat in the game. It might not be a game breaking difference, but it is certainly there.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
You're free to disagree. As I said, I understand the arguments. I just will never agree with them.
I said my part, and the rest seems to be just a matter of personal emphasis and what you hold more important. Or disagreement over basic facts that I'm really not interested in arguing about.
Eh, it's almost always more valuable than strength (which tends towards 'save or be mildly inconvenienced'), but if it's not your main attack stat it's not that great.
It may not be a "god" stat, but I feel DEX is certainly the most versatile stat and stat with the broadest application in game. If you can't admit to that, with it's unique factor in initiative DEX is definitely the "leading" stat.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
My biggest issue personally (although it only scratches the surface of the DEX/STR problem, and I forgot DEX also does initiative!) is the fact that the sword and rapier do the same amount of damage in one hand. If the sword was one die higher (which is still only a +1 damage) I'd be a little more okay with it.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Honestly, I always preferred 3e weapon rules (finesse lets you use Dex for your attack roll but not damage roll) but you'd need to give some sort of compensatory bonus to finesse based builds.
Ya know..... there's one thing that I actually would love to see happen.
With multiclass rules, we can now share spell slot growth, which helps remove some of the poison of multiclassing with casters. However... for a class like the monk, for whom multiclassing seriously hurts their ki-progression? Leaving the class is hurts.
So, I kind of would like to see some kind of unification of these resource pools like we do with spell slots. This would make multiclassing so much easier, plus allow us to make magical items that can interact with this "stamina-pool" like we do with interacting with your HP and spell slots a lot more fluidly and not overly specialized.
And there's already a lot of classes with different resource pools that we could use and combine. Bards and their Inspirations, monk ki, barbarian rages, several fighter subclasses, soul knife, sorcerers and their points. Sure, now they all work differently on how they refresh, how everyone uses them, etc. But short-rest-based classes, while a good idea in theory, have kind of proven to be bad in execution, so I'd kind of like to see that particular difference go the way of the dodo. And uses per rest can be adjusted by individual ability costs.
To me, the fun part of all these abilities are their actual uses, yes, and there's the resource management game. As far as I can tell, unifying these resources into a single pool wouldn't affect the former and could allow some extra flexibility in how the latter is employed in terms of multi-classing, items and more.
You are talking about massive power creep. There is a reason that multi-class chars don't get what you are describing. Because there are opportunity costs when a char decides to MC. An MC char gets the benefits of the new class, and but a trade-off of the losses of not sticking with one class. You want to remove the penalties and keep all the benefits.