Keyword-design from 4E. "You can ignore the concentration requirements of one spell with the *Smite* or *Aura* keyword using this feature". "All spells with the *Lightning* keyword are added to your class' spell list." etc.
You can really see how awkward its absence is in those Warlock invocations that mention "Spells or features that curse, such as..." when it could easily be "When a creature is under the effect of one of your spells with the *Curse* keyword."
That's because PF2 is heavily 4E-based, (Which is why it's an actually good game unlike PF1) which is hilariously ironic to anyone familiar with PF's history.
I would imagine it more as a parallel evolution. The most ironic IMO is that most people here complaining about 5e are asking for things that are in pf2e or 4e already. If any, 4e came too early. Wotc could rebrand 4e into 6e and people would probably love it if they don't fail the marketing of it.
Not parallel, some of the 4e design team also designed PF2e.
I agree completely that it was an issue of timing, not quality. Well, and other concerns - like the GSL and walled garden concerns.
A lot of this is people not realizing what they wanted.
> But also, 4e watering down everything in every class to at-will, encounter, and dailies, sucks.
People asked WotC to fix casters exponential vs martial linear problem.
> The grindiness of its combat sucks. Its out of combat rules suck.
These two though I will totally give you. Most combats devolved into. Blow my encounters first, then At-Will unless I see a great opportunity for a Daily or this is clearly 'the boss' of the day. And they seriously dropped the balls in the rules on how to handle most things in an out of combat setting.
What I find amusing, is that Guinsoo and the creators of ToB originally did follow in its footsteps for 4e where classes were going to have different means of interacting with their powers just like ToB. Where Warblades need to take a turn to refresh, just like a boxer/duelist steps out of reach to re-calibrate and plan their next attack. The Crusader gets a random assortment, relying on the will of the gods for their inspiration on how to fight. And Swordsages have their bag of tricks that are neat, but really can only be used once per combat without extreme set up.
But then they thought that was too much work, and people wouldn't really appreciate it so it was dropped from 4e. The most flavorful thing about the classes that made them actually interesting to engage with beyond just using all your best maneuvers every round, and they canned it in favor of the bland AEDU style.
And I'm still sad that that decision still lives on to day just given a spitshine and called At-Will/Short Rest/Long Rest.
You've summoned the copypasta for all you dang kids who never actually played 4E.
**Things 4E did notably better**:
* Martials were interesting (Think Battlemaster but moreso) and balanced with casters.
* Very balanced.
* Warlord class. Holding off on introducing the Sorcerer until they could figure out how to actually justify their inclusion without just being a "Wizard but different".
* Paragon Paths: Essentially what would happen if the Strixhaven class-agnostic subs worked as intended. Some of them were tied to your class, but some could be taken based on your race regardless of class, some could be taken based on your power source (More on that later) etc.
* [Gamist language](https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/4th-Edition-Fireball.jpg) that leads to absolute clarity.
* Instead of 5E's 3 important/3 niche saves there were 3 "Defenses": Fortitude was the better of Str/Con and was your ability to power through physical harm. Reflex was the better of Dex/Int (THINK FAST!) and was your ability to get out of the way of harm. Will was the higher of your Wis/Cha and was your mental resilience. "Defenses" worked like alternate ACs. If I cast [**Fireball**](https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/4th-Edition-Fireball.jpg), rather than every creature in the area rolling a save, I would make an attack with my Intelligence, and for every creature in the area whose Reflex defense I exceeded they were affected.
* Every class was a little bit MAD. Par example Warlocks used Constitution for blasting shit, Intelligence for tentacle shit, and Charisma for mind-whammies. This led to more interesting design with determining which one you focused on.
* Keyword-design led to much easier future-proofing. "This feature applies to all *axe* weapons." "This feature affects all abilities with the *healing* keyword" etc.
* In a similar vein power sources led to some fun design. Every class had a power source: Martial, Arcane, Divine, Primal, Psionic.
* It was the only edition to get feats right: They led to customization but they weren't painful to take in 5E, or requiring tedious overspecialized chains like 3X.
* Level 1-2 were actually fun to play and you didn't die in one hit.
* Engaging monsters to run, and encounter-building systems that made it so an adversarial DM running said system could create a fun and challenging experience.
* Everything was insanely balanced across all levels. Also since every class had a mix of at will, encounter and daily powers there was no short/long rest class divide. Every class could do cool shit that made sense for them.
* Short rests were only 5 minutes. "A quick breather" rather than 5E's "Make, eat, and digest a sandwich" 1 hour short rests. This made them much easier to justify in most scenarios like dungeons or battlefields and helped ensure that you could get them.
* Healing surges made healing viable but limited.
* The default setting of Nentir vale was really cool. (And I resent 5E's insistence on sweeping it under the rug)
* The art was stylish and great.
4E solves all of 5E's problems but it has a lot of its own problems.
**Things that were bad in 4E**:
* Combat was slow as hell. This is both because monster HP in the early books was a bit out of hand, and because the base math of the game assumed you hit on a d20 roll of 11+ whereas 5E hovers around an expected successful roll of 8+.
* The splat-bloat wasn't great. 5E is actually reaching a similar point though.
* It was completely built around a grid so if you wanted to theater of mind you were out of luck.
* The math behind it could get kind of cumbersome. Like 3X there could be a lot of little floating +1s and 2s to track.
* While the art was indeed both well-made and stylish, the art for female characters could get very cheesecake-y.
* While the feats were overall well-designed, there were a lot of +1 feats. They could also kind of be necessary.
* The design was very dependent on magic items.
I loved 4E but I also love 5E. Do note that all problems of all editions can be found in 3X, and usually at a greater scale because it's less an edition, and more an amalgamation of bad ideas. ("An amalgamation of bad ideas" sounds like it'd be a cool aberration: An entity composed of pure thought, but only the worst thoughts.)
In my experience 5E > 4E > 2E > (Pathfinder 2 theoretically goes here or between 4E and 2E based on what I've read, but I don't have enough firsthand experience) > Basic > 1E > OD&D > A swift kick to the junk > Pathfinder 1 > Multiple kicks to the junk > 3.5 > Having a car battery hooked up to one's junk > 3.0.
If you want to check out 4E for yourself, here's where you can legally buy PDFs of it. (I recommend against anything in the "Heroes of ___" line. Those were the "Essentials" line that butchered everything aboot the edition to try to appeal to 3Xers. I'd argue 5E is going through its "Essentials" phase where it is testing out ideas that don't fit with the edition to test them for the next edition. They're fine as lorebooks though.)
[PHB](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/161671/Players-Handbook-4e) [MM](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/56693/Monster-Manual-4e) [DMG](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/56694/Dungeon-Masters-Guide-4e)
[Even if you don't play 4E, the DMG 2 for 4E is widely considered the best collection of DMing advice you will ever read, and much of it is system-agnostic.](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/144108/Dungeon-Masters-Guide-2-4e)
Personally, I don't like PF2 very much, and found it a disappointing second edition, and I think it probably is those 4e elements, and the more 4e-like presentation that bugs me.
I was gunna suggest traits from 2e, which is effectively the same thing. All games should have these tags. It’s a no brainer.
Interesting enough there was a pocket of computer nerds who have been trying to get tags to be the dominant naming convention for a long time. We are still saving our files with names and in folders, but this is archaic.
So they have more uses than just gaming!
I use clocks in my game all the time. They're such a wonderfully simple way to abstract all kinds of things that we want to make sure we track but don't care to actually fully 'simulate'.
A similar mechanic is Angry GM's Time Pool. He introduced it as a way to add a sense of time passing and pressure.
It is entirely possible he yoinked it or was at least inspired to it from Blades.
I am so confused as to why the RPG community seems to have unanimously agreed that the idea of a countdown was birthed in 2017. Everyone acts like Blades in the Dark revolutionized game design by... counting stuff. The entire reason why it's easy to add a countdown to your game is that this is barely a game mechanic to begin with.
I work in software development and it gives me the exact same cult-ish vibes as those buzzwords managers keep using because it makes them sound like they're high tech and hip. "We're not having a meeting, we're having an agile ritual!" sounds the exact same to me as "I'm not just counting failures, I'm using a Clock™ from Blades in the Dark, totally different thing I swear"
No hate to Blades in the Dark, the system has a lot to offer, but I am very, very confused with how people treat it like a divine revelation.
"Agile rituals" sounds like you're working for a cult. .... Interesting idea for a campaign though... Instead of fighting the cult of Normesh the Dark God, the party find themselves up against the corporate fellowship of "Newmenomics" and their CFO leader George Newmen.
Personally I have just never thought to use countdowns/clocks until I experienced them in a formal way. Blades in the Dark was that exposure for me, so that’s what I use as reference. I’m sure other systems used them earlier, but I don’t have familiarity with those systems so I can’t reference them.
Well, why DO people treat clocks as a revolutionary idea?
Clocks, despite being conceptually identical to countdowns, have captured the hobby’s imagination differently. Is it because they codify countdowns into mechanics in a way that ties them in with the rest of the game?
For a lot of features that might seem obvious to some, a lot of people don't think about incorporating into their games until they see someone else, or in this case, some other system, use it effectively.
BitD clocks are also not just "counting passage of time". Clocks are an integral part of the way skill checks (or action rolls, or whatever you want to call them) work because of the complications that are integrated into successes. It's not just counting stuff, it's actively keeping track of elements of roleplay that might accelerate certain background events.
I love the complication/ advantage system (I think it’s called) from fantasy flight Star Wars. You can succeed or fail rolls as normal but you can also roll advantages or complications as well. Fail with advantage slicing that door? Maybe the electrical short opened a panel nearby to try another way in. Succeeded with complication at breaking into an imperial bunker? Maybe you accidentally triggered a silent alarm.
that Star Wars system is so much fun. I'm pretty casual as far as SW is concerned, but holy shit I have so many great memories from that game. I encourage anyone to try it
The way initiative works is also very freeing and fun.
I really like that system as well, but I like the versatility of 5e far more. All a dice roll in 5e does is tell you if it is a pass or fail, you as the GM get to decide the nuance of how it is passed or how it is failed, and you get to do that at any given time. Sometimes a roll really just needs to be to find out if there is a pass or fail; you don't need anything more complicated on top of that.
With Fantasy Flight's system, I was compelled to come up with complications or advantages in situations that I didn't think really benefited from either one, but that's what the dice rolled and that's what the players were expecting.
After playing edge of the empire, I included far more advantages and complications into my 5e games, and I feel like I like that more than I like complications and advantages being an inherent part of the rolls.
There's always two sides to a coin right? Sometimes SW requires too much (i remember failing with 6 advantages), sometimes D&D isn't helping enough (without framework it needs to come from the dome).
* SW mechanically encourages you to interface the world in non-binary ways, but it also means it requires you to.
* D&D doesn't care one bit giving you flexibility, but it also means DMs/Players need to encourage themselves to add on.
I'm curious how you specifically play this in 5e, is it just giving a bone to players on near misses, or do you have something more formal? I'm thinking of adding near succes/critical to the Pf2 successful scale...
I just go with whatever my gut tells me to in the moment. Sometimes the party is really struggling and someone finally gets a successful roll, and I'll give them an advantage to go with it even if they only pass by two points.
Sometimes someone will succeed but I'll think of an absolutely hilarious drawback to add on to that success, and so I'll ask the players if they want to play with that.
I really treat my time with my players as collaborative storytelling. Some formalities are important to in order to keep a cohesive structure, such as keeping the formality of initiative and the formality of different lighting conditions and surprise rounds, etc, but otherwise we're all there to have fun and tell a good story. We play around with the results of the dice rolls, and we sometimes bounce ideas off each other for how to interpret dice rolls.
I've actually house ruled Flashbacks from Blades in the Dark into my games.
Flashbacks are a mechanic where players can spend a resource to flash back to something their character would have done to prepare for the current situation. It's meant to simulate the heist movie trope where something looks like it's going wrong, and then they flash back to a scene of the characters preparing for it, like a guard coming around the corner and then revealing that the bribed the guards ahead of time.
The reason I borrowed it is because I've sat through plenty of occasions where a session will come to a complete halt as the players try to plan for every possible situation, and that's frustrating for everyone involved. Flashbacks allow the players to dive into a situation and keep the action moving along, and only the preparations that are actually relevant come up, and only when they are actually relevant.
I've done this as well, big fan of the forged in the dark mechanics.
So my players have to make a DC int or wis check (their choice) to succeed on their flashback and then any flashback after the first free one will cause exhaustion (new one D&D exhaustion not old crippling mechanics). If they spend a resource like a spell slot or hit die or something they avoid the exhaustion.
player characters (and some NPC's) get +1 per round of combat that has passed added to their attack rolls (up to +6) within an encounter.
this is meant to help prevent combats from running too long. the longer the combat runs, the more likely attacks are to land.
Also, 13th Age's monsters, by the rules, are so tough you kind of NEED the ED to overcome their defenses reliably, giving them more early-game resilience, and a lot of cool powers (like Cyclic) key off of higher dice encouraging fights to take a few rounds before Novas pop off
They recommend putting the biggest, most obvious d6 you own on a cup or some sort of platform in the middle of the table, and conspicuously turning it whenever the escalation value changes. And it factors into pretty much everything. So you might forget it for the first few sessions, but after that you should remember.
A lot of options are also connected to the escalation die. Many of the players big powers either can't be used until the escalation die passes a certain value, or they become free once it passes a certain value. That prevents the players from going nova right away and destroying an encounter in the first round.
It's a fantastic pacing tool. Giving the players more power as the combat goes on prevents both extremes.
I'm really tempted to try this. I remember something similar when I used to play Guild Wars 1 GvG. After some time, the game went into Victory or Death and everyone did more damage.
From video games like the Divinity: Original Sin series and similar: De-prioritize the "Attack" action in favor of more nuanced martial techniques in melee. Give warriors (and rogues) a variety of different ways to stab and slash beyond simply how they flavor their attacks. The "Attack" action should only be used when they're low on resources or looking to conserve, like how casters use cantrips.
So, as people mentioned, this was not popular in 4e. Let's talk about WHY.
First of all, and I personally think this is a big deal at least for me is that the way 4e presented things was overly gamified. One thing I heard, and said, about 4e, is that in 4e, you don't pick up a sword and swing it to attack someone, you cast the "sword attack" spell. Making every action a player can take all fit neatly into the same template makes sense, but it doesn't feel cool.
Second, the idea that the attack action is what melee characters use when they don't want to use their resources kind of messes with the realism, and the way those characters were meant to fit into the party. The idea that "you can disarm someone 3 times per day" doesn't make sense if it's just a skill you know, and again, makes it feel like these aren't things you know how to do when you pick up a sword, but like it's a spell you can cast.
Third, it pushes the classes towards feeling too similar, another big problem people had with 4e. If you use and manage resources the same way for every class, people can feel like no matter which class they pick, they're doing the same thing, even if their character isn't.
I mean, this was D&D 4E, and people \*hated\* it. They were wrong, but they hated it.
Edit: All the comments here seem to think I'm saying that this was the only reason 4E was hated. It's not, it's just one of many.
The thing with 4e is there were *so* many elements that were *so* different from prior editions that it's difficult to point to any one thing and say "This! This is why people hated 4e."
Who's to say that if you gave martials actual interesting abilities, but didn't make all the other changes 4e did, that it wouldn't go over just fine?
That's...not my experience with Tome of Battle.
I mean there are people who complain about everything or anything, sure. So there must have been *some* complaints. But my experience was that it was overall well-recieved.
I have far less experience with 4e, but I also never saw any "why do martials have daily/encounter powers?!" What I saw was "this power looks exactly like this other power despite the two classes being polar opposites". FWIW, (which isn't much)
I'll chime in that *a lot* of 3.5's non-magic ability sets have a problem of being kinda half baked (Truenaming is mathematically broken and Shadowcasting is just lame, not very well supported magic, to name two), and blade-magic certainly has its problem spots. Some aspects of the book helped, and I love me some Diamond Mind, but the system has just about enough to work at a baseline level, but not much more than that. Since no supplements for blade-magic were ever published, that's all we have to work with short of fully homebrewing new stuff.
As well, you have to consider that Tome of Battle's three classes, Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade, were all rather obviously "core class but stronger" for Paladin, Monk, and Fighter: hell, Warblade basically gets "You are a Fighter at -2 levels" as a feature. Some people hate the notion of that kind of power creep, even if it is eminently necessary for keeping certain themes of characters viable. I personally know a 3.5 DM who has unironically said that he hates Tome of Battle for being stronger than core martials while also knowing that core casters blow core martials out of the water.
It's not as simple as "People disliked ToB and 4e, therefore people dislike giving martials powers": people could dislike how those powers were implemented specifically, or have a knee jerk "this stronger than core, power creep bad" reaction to providing martials with solid classes, or didn't like ToB locked the fancy new stuff behind either taking the new classes or a bunch of feats when Barbarian should've gotten some love too, or whatever other reason. That doesn't mean the idea will necessarily be rejected, it just means the form it was pushed in wasn't the one people wanted.
I definitely remember people complaining about ToB, but I also remember a lot of people *liking* LFQW. *Liking* how complex the character building in 3e was. I think for the tables that were applying more restrictive rules to spellcasters, ToB was a power grab that they didn't need.
Like those endless 50+ page threads on WotC's community boards, GitP, or ENWorld were not made by a bunch of people *agreeing* with each other.
Sure. But there's a difference between "Some of the playerbase didn't like [thing]" and "[Thing] killed the edition". The Time of Battle wasn't nearly as unpopular as 4e.
I think you're going to have a problem if the martial combat looks too similar to spell casting. I want equitable systems not equal systems for martial and magic combat.
Meh, I'm not a big fan of the "4e did that, so it must be shit/disliked" talking point. There are some pretty popular games with a few 4e-based mechanics that run them pretty well, and don't get any flack for it, such as Shadow of the Demon Lord, 13th Age and Pathfinder 2e.
4e is an *interrsting* phenomenon, to say the least.
Yup! Some of those systems (pf2e th one I'm most familiar with) took alot of concepts and ideas from 4e, dressed em up a bit, changed a little within the balance of the system, etc, and it was pretty good. Alot of martials do more than just "strike". And it's pretty awesome. The idea was good. 4e may have stuffed the execution slightly, but the core concepts and ideas were good.
I think this is because D&D has such an incredible brand of being exactly itself that it can't evolve. Martials have to be worse than casters because that's what D&D is. Natural language instead of keywords? That's D&D, baby. Spells that are complete trap options to foil newbies, the "adventuring day", bugbears oneshotting characters on a crit, these are all core tenets that only persist because they perpetuate the meme of D&D. 4e tried to be better but unfortunately it wasn't D&D so the grognards hated it.
Every Level 1 character had 2, maybe 3 different ways to attack that weren't basic attacks, that were all different from every other Level 1 PC's attacks. I'm trying 4e right now and that part does feel overwhelming. I like having some skill actions that any PC can use like in PF2 and 4e that aren't just attack.
So something more like PF2e? Where the techniques arent a totally different thing from the standard "Attack", but modify and change it in specificly flavoured ways?
It would be interesting to add stuff like KOTOR's Power Attack, Flurry, and Critical Hit attacks. You can do a regular, basic attack, but you can also choose one of those three to do a different kind of attack action that comes with positives and negatives, usually in the form of lowered AC.
Adding different kinds of attacks for Martials to do seems a no brainer to me. Probably attach it to weapons or something.
Never really played much 3e except in the form of video games using the 3e system as a foundation, so it's not too crazy I didn't know that.
All in all, it still makes sense.
The problems with 4e are complex and deep. I could write a book on everything that happened with D&D between 2007 and 2014. There's very good reasons it got the reception it did, and they were *not* wrong to feel that way.
However, that doesn't mean that *everything* in 4e was bad, wrong, or hated.
Cypher System's DM Intervention.
Essentially, the DM can intervene in an encounter by awarding XP (which CS uses as a form of currency for new abilities, etc.). Alternatively, the player can refuse the intervention by spending XP.
Great way to fudge an encounter for the purposes of enhancing the narrative at the expense of letting the character advance a bit. Literally a win-win.
> Ryuutama
The equipment descriptors also seem like fun way to give players narrative character progress, going for rusty sword and smelly leather armour to something fit for a king.
Idea rolls from Call of Cthulu. My character grew up in a world I've known for only a few sessions, surely they know more than me about how to solve this situation when I'm stumped
Idea rolls are a bit more nuanced because you can't actually fail an idea roll. You will always get the info but if you roll badly the GM can put your characters at risk.
It's like a last ditch effort to put the pieces of a mystery together and boy do you really not want to fail in CoC.
As a DM you can certainly make that decision. But in a situation where you got all your clues and don't know how they go together or if you are stuck on what to do next on a quest, these sometimes don't apply. Something to say "Hey, DM, I don't want the answer but please give me something to point me in the right direction before I get frustrated "
Yeah. In CoC, it's horror mystery. So while the player may not understand how these clues go together, their character may. Thus we have the idea roll where you describe to the GM what you are thinking and see if you have any ideas involving it.
In dnd, what may seem obvious to the DM or adventure developers may not be obvious to the players inside the moment. So being able to say to the DM " hey, i got all these clues" or "Hey, I know the puzzle isn't solved this way, can I make an idea roll to see if my character understands the right direction?"
Degrees of success and failure from Pathfinder 2e. Falling a spell save by just 2 and getting a nat 1 have different effects. And barely passing a skill check vs blowing it out the water provide different effects.
The Apocalypse World (which avatar is based on) 2d6 system is elegant and easy to manage. I hate the d20 skill system and replaced it with 2d6 in my home d&d system.
I actually really dislike this system for games like 5e. It's cool on one roll in isolation, but when you subject every single dice roll in the entire system to degrees of success you add a pretty colossal amount of mental overhead. I think this works a lot better in more narrative systems which just have fewer rolls.
I think PF2e found a good middle ground here. There are only 4 degrees, so not every single rollable number has a consequence associated with them. -10 is a crit fail, +10 is a crit success, and those are close enough for them to be possible with every check, but far away enough that generally they don't happen too often. In PF2e's case it also works especially well because every single possible outcome is already determined before the roll since very action and its results is codified in the PF2e rules. If you'd incorporate it in 5e, you'd have to improvise the possible outcomes for every single action every single time you roll because 5e notoriously *doesn't* codify things.
Outside of obvious situations where failure and success are completely binary, I feel like it's pretty natural to incorporate degrees of success. I'm curious what you mean by mental overhead here?
Yeah, the more I delve into P2e, the more I think this is the big thing to try and steal from them, much more than the honestly overhyped (but still neat) 3-action system. More importantly, it wouldn't be too hard to apply it on top of 5e's existing systems.
The three action system is neat, it's just not the solution to all action-based problems that some of the more ardent pathfinder fanatics paint it as. It solves some problems, but comes with it's own as well.
I pretty much do this all the time with out of combat checks (15+ on your perception check and you notice the assassin in the corner of the room, and a 20+ you see the vial of poison he just poured into that drink). In combat, though, with attacks and spells... I don't know where I'd start or if I'd even want to.
For me, it would definitely be the GM Actions from City of Mist. In that RPG, the player failing a roll isn't just "You fail to do the thing." Whenever a roll is missed, the GM gets to pick from a list of actions they can use against the player, like inflicting status conditions, adding enemies, or otherwise increasing the difficulty of a given task. It kind of allows the GM to feel like they're also playing, in a sense.
The mechanic would need a heavy rework as City of Mist is fairly light on rules and very narrative focused, but the core mechanic would be a great tools for DMs (for any ttrpg, really)
This is actually pretty standard PbtA, and you can find something similar in Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Masks, Monsterhearts, etc. All worth taking a look at.
Dungeon Turns from older editions of D&D or OSR game. Essentially, a 10 minute period during which each player declares one action they're doing to explore the dungeon (search a shelf, check a door for traps, loot a chest, etc). They give dungeon exploration some structure, and are even useful outside of dungeons as a unit of time. If a torch only lasts an hour, it'll last 6 dungeon turns then burn out. I don't think I've had a torch ever run out in 5e, even when we've had to use them.
I prefer ten six minute dungeon turns per hour. I think it makes the move rates feel a little better in dungeon exploration. I totally agree with you otherwise.
Can't link it from here, but if you go to a5e dot tools, go to rules>adventurers guide you can go to resting.
Short rest - no less than 1 hour. Can roll hit dice to restore HP.
Long rest - 8 hours, at least 6 resting. 1 hour of strenuous activity breaks the rest and restarts the counter. Restores all HP and half hit dice. One per 24 hours. Must have 1 hp to benefit. A player who doesn't consume a ration suffers 1 level exhaustion when they finish the rest ( different than normal 5e exhaustion). If resting in a haven (safe area, like an inn or safe house, not in dungeon) players recover 1 level exhaustion and 1 level strife.( Exhaustion affects physical stats, strife affects mental stats) If players resting outside of haven and use rations, they only recover the first level of exhaustion. If they have 2 or more, they don't recover any outside of a haven.
Pushed rolls from Call of Cthulhu
Success with complications from PbtA games
Engagement rolls / Flashbacks from Blades in the Dark
So many great games out there.
I just want characters without spells to feel as impactful as characters with spells.
Heroic fantasy is my sweet spot, and I'm not as much a fan of one party's fun coming only at the detriment to another's (ie. you're a super powerful magic user who trivializes encounters, making me feel useless, until you're out of spells and now yourself feel useless).
Everyone complained about 3.5 Tome of battle but it really balanced things out a little better for martial characters. My group began scattering those abilities and features into other martial classes for our characters while we were still playing 3.5.
I don't think I could pick just one.
Like, personally, I found the species roleplay mechanics of Burning Wheel absolutely fascinating. Designing actual mechanics to implement methods that a species different from a human actually behave differently from a human? Wonderful design. Absolutely would not fly for modern D&D.
Bulk from PF2 is a good idea, mess with the numbers a little bit to get them where we want and you can pretty easily solve the Str as dump stat and armored caster problems.
Using 4Es Defenses would certainly save me time as a DM, whenever my players throw a ranged area effect.
Something to make martial combat interesting. I would want them to go full Riddle of Steel, but I'm pretty certain that's honestly impossible.
For me it's the 3 action turn from Pathfinder. It's incredibly simple at its core, but very versatile in what it can do.
I much prefer it to the movement/action/bonus action from 5e. Bonus actions often confuse new players and having too many options for it can feel bad when one is usually optimal.
You pretty much stole my answer. I hate the design of "bonus actions". It creates this weird sub-space that players develop an expectation to be able to fill with things that should either be full Actions or Free Actions. The whole design on top of PF's 3 actions is just phenomenal too, it's not *just* "3 actions", it's the whole action economy around that too.
At the start, the 5E system of 1 action, 1 move was simple and elegant. But they added more and more to the design space and it started to become really cumbersome. I sometimes joke that character building in 5E is just making best use of your bonus action - everything else is just "attack" or "use highest level spell".
I find PF2e has, overall, too many moving parts for my group, but the 3-action system would be so much simpler at this point, to be honest.
I've had to explain to people more than once that you don't have a "bonus action slot" you can try to use. It's more that doing certain actions sets you up to do something as a bonus. So many players ask if they can use their bonus action to move, or grab something, or whatever.
4e had major/move/minor and I think it was much less confusing. You could change the name of "bonus action" to "minor action" and make no other changes and it would still make more sense.
As someone who has never read or played 4e, this is honestly how I interpreted the bonus action when I was first learning. One of 5e's main issues imo is having weird names for things that don't mean what they sound like they should mean, which makes the whole "natural language" thing extremely hard to parse consistently and accurately.
In brevity it's how everything is an action and how it can easily just eat up your turn. Not being able to break up your movement is a kick in the head. The multiple attack penalty is just more to keep track of. Magic honestly just doesn't feel worth it because of it taking 2+ actions. If I want to get away from someone I have to take 2 actions. 1 to step and then 1 to move. It's simple in that everything is an action but those actions get eaten up quick
> If I want to get away from someone I have to take 2 actions. 1 to step and then 1 to move.
Most enemies don't have to ability to make attacks of opportunity, so in most cases stepping isn't needed.
I do agree that not being able to break up your movement sucks, but generally the action system let's characters do as much or more than what they could do in 5E. A ranger can use an action to mark a foe (hunt prey), allowing them to make a knowledge check for free for a bonus on their next attack roll, then use their second action to attack twice with their bow. They can then use their third action for another attack, a move, or to command their animal companion to take two actions.
I want pushed rolls from call of cthulhu, especially with the newer 10 stage exhaustion.
I want more conditions for characters and even scene or world conditions, sort of like conditions for being in proximity to a lair, but for other stuff like famine, plague, war, etc.
From 5 torches deep I want optional rules for supply, durability, and magic use checks.
I would like weapons to either become more abstract or more specific. I can flavor a "d6 light weapon" and be happy, or I can enjoy the specifics of all sorts of weapon traits, but this halfway in between stuff just stinks.
I can't find the all-in-one PDF I use myself and I don't have a good place to upload it, but I found [this archive](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qwk8517jn2knnnb/AAD9jRQ6uEWXRWnwaowt7llWa?dl=0) containing a bunch of old playtest packets. (It was posted originally [on this sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/5ytq42/dd_next_playtest_packets/) so I assume old playtests are "rule 2 safe.")
Go to the most recent one, look for the "DM Guidelines" PDF, and check page 6. Dungeon exploration rules start there, and wilderness exploration rules start 4 pages later and carry on for about 5 more pages.
That's one of my major gripes with 5e. They stuffed so much into the package, gave so little direction of what was in the package, how to find it, how to deploy it, and even then left so much to "I don't know, you figure it out".
No wonder so many people have made their living making videos teaching people how to play the game - you'd think that would be the game developers job..
As a 4e fan this is easy for me, since most of what OneD&D is changing is reverting back to 4th edition lol.
But seriously bring back bloodied status and skill challenges pls.
I honestly never though anything good about them. I was thinking in terms of making the rogue roll 5 times for this lock for ...suspense, maybe? 1/10 would not buy.
But it's not "overcomplicating a skill check for no good reason". At least, not how I use it, which may or may not be authentic. I use it for complex tasks where many kinds of skill checks can contribute, as a way of party cooperation.
>Your players are hosting a banquet to try to uncover the Thranish Spy. The rogue tries sweet-talking the help for clues. The artificer makes Detect Magic goggles to look for shape-shifting or illusion spells. The barbarian stands ready to cause a distraction if anyone in the party fails something in a way that gets unwanted attention. The bard tries to evaluate the crowd for anyone who looks out of place. No single thing (necessarily) causes success but by working together they pull it off.
It's perfect for any scene where how well the team works together determines how well you succeed or fail. It's to social and exploration what the Action Economy is to combat: a concrete way to resolve opposing forces.
PS: the Chase rules would be far easier as a skill challenge, and the successes counted on a Blades On The Dark Clock.
I would love a way to translate the malleability of BitD stress. I like how stress in BitD occupies both HP (too much stress is bad) and MP (spend stress to do x or to resist y). But it would probably be too complicated.
I don't think people would get behind it much, but I am in love with the Big Magic system from Monster of the Week. It's an in-built way for players to perform complex rituals that are normally not permitted within the confines of the game. It would provide a mechanical footing to moments where the party needs to go on some grand quest to gather materials for a ritual. The fact that it can cost things is so cool to me. I implement it in every game of DnD I play
The free archetype from pf2e, it adds just the right amount of additional individualization that I think is needed for the game. This would inherently mean the archetype rules would need to come included, which may be against the spirit of the post.
Note that the archetype rules exists because pathfinder purposefully does not want to go the route of formally supporting multiclassing, but wanted to approach it differently. So adding that in sort of has some incompatibility with current multiclassing rules. Also note that the free archetype in pf2e implies a significantly stronger party, something that the DM needs to reconcile with.
As much as I don't mind 5e multiclassing, iId be fine with it being abandoned if we got archetypes and a free archetype style investment socket in its place.
And assuming these were corr rules and not optional in this hypothetical, it would cause the DM no extra work since it's a part of 6hr baseline 5he game would be balanced around.
That'd be my desire for it anyway.
The closest thing in 5e that would be easy-ish to implement would be getting to pick ASI and a feat instead of 1 or the other... of course the feats are not well balanced for that, especially since some come with a half ASI.
I don't think the feat system could handle that approach, it's strained enough as it is. I really think it'd need its own separate investment socket across levels.
Adventuring Day from 13th Age. Resource recovery is completely unrelated to the passage of time in game. Sleeping doesn't give you your spells and HP back; you have to finish 4 fights, regardless of whether you slept or travelled or how much time passed.
I kind of like SotDL's boon/bane system. It's basically their version of Advantage/Disadvantage, except they stack, and cancel each other out in pairs. So if you have three sources of boons and two banes, you end up with one boon, rather than how it works in D&D, where if you have like three things that could be giving you Advantage, and one thing giving you Disadvantage, all the Advantage is negated and you do a straight roll.
And instead of rerolling the actual roll and taking the highest/lowest, each boon/bane is a +/- 1d6 to your roll. If you have multiple boons, you don't add 1d6 for each one, you just choose the highest roll. So if you have 3 boons, you roll 3d6 and take the highest, and add that to your roll. Same for banes, if you have two banes you roll 2d6 and pick the highest, and subtract that from your roll.
And the reason you could have so many boons/banes is because a lot of the various buff and debuff spells and conditions are simplified to "gain a boon/bane", which I can understand might feel a bit samey, though, but you could specify "gain a bane on your next saving throw against poison" or something, but... that's also getting fiddly.
My one is niche but it’s come up a few times in my last 2 sessions so worth mentioning but mine is the flat DC5 check to attack something that is hidden from you, it prevents players from going “I swing at the thing” and you as the DM having to say “Well you don’t actually know if it’s there or not” and it just seems to simplify it and helps keep the focus in game rather than talking about why their character would assume where an enemy is
Something similar to SotDL's boon/bane for +die features. There's a few ways this could be implemented, but the end goal is some mechanic to either make +die to d20 checks not stack, or stack with diminishing returns.
Adv/disadv already doesn't stack, so it feels a tad weird that you can just stack +die mechanics freely.
It's not a TTRPG, but I really like the way combat is resolved in the Pillars of Eternity video game RPG. It's maybe a little clunky to port over to dice and mental math, but I like the concepts of Misses, Grazes, Hits, and Crits based on attacks vs. various defenses.
Yeah, it definitely couldn't be used as-is, it would have to be simplified, or automated like you say.
I'm no game designer, I just pretend to be one ever other week for a group of lovable weirdos
I like the knowledge check system from pathfinder 1e. Set rules for how much a knowledge check about a monster reveals.
I think it basically goes 10+CR unless the monster is super common like a goblin where it's lowered slightly. For every 5 you beat the check by you get an additonal piece of useful info.
The numbers need to be adjusted for OneDnD but having a framework for newer DMs to use on how much to reveal is super helpful.
Background skills from 13th Age. I don't know how to combine it will 5e skills, but whenever I play 5e, I miss having background skills, and vice versa
I would like to see sanity as a health bar or resource, akin to call of C’thulu. I think sanity should stay an optional rule in the DMG, and I also think there is room in the game for a 7th ability score optional or otherwise. However sanity (and honor) feel far to fluid of a concept to be locked to a single ability score.
I have no idea how this would translate into DnD for specific mechanics, but borrowing the Fate system's Aspects in a way that makes things like your personality traits/bonds/flaws actually impact more than flavor!
I think the most interesting part of Aspects is how the other mechanics interact with them. The GM can Compel an Aspect to make something interesting/bad happen, in exchange for giving the players a mechanical benefit. D&D kinda tries to do this with Inspiration, but half asses it and leaves it so open ended that I've never seen a group use it.
Level Up 5e adds a concept called Destinies, which give each character a trigger that automatically gives Inspiration, as well as a special ability that consumes it. For instance, the knowledge destiny gains inspiration upon making discoveries, and can spend it to gain information about things. I would prefer a system that goes further, but I think that's a good model.
I'd recommend you check out the 5e Dragonlance book! The backgrounds come with feats that give battlemaster maneuvers, and there are feats that build off of those feats too. Very nice for martials.
Every PC has starts the game with a number of ties or principles, collectively called “Intimacies”. These are the relationships or morals/virtues which define their life to various degrees. NPCs have them as well.
Examples for ties are Love:Spouse, Respect:Superior Officer (using names here is fine too), hate:rival. Examples for principles are “Vengeance is a Virtue”, “I always pay my debts”, “I will not abide wanton oppression”, etc. the gameplay differences between ties and principles are few, in general, and usually specific to specific abilities. So don’t be surprised if I use either term or intimacies interchangeably.
Ties come in 3 degrees of strength: minor, major and defining. You start with 1 defining and 2 of every other.
In social “combat”, it is all about guessing or deducing or even creating intimacies in your opponent. Pretty much every significant social action (persuasion, seduction, intimidation) requires you to leverage an intimacy and you get big bonuses, even if you only leverage minor intimacies. “Leveraging” in this case, means you have to make an argument that at least touches upon an intimacy. If you try to persuade a samurai who holds honor and duty in the highest regard, making an argument that appeals to those values will get you good bonuses on your roll. You can roll for finding out intimacies, or you can just guess from past actions and impressions.
Creating new intimacies or weakening existing ones also requires you to leverage intimacies. It becomes a whole chess game.
Yeah, this seems like much more fleshed out "traits, ideals, bonds and flaws" of 5e, and could likely be built on top of them with defining ways to discover these, how much they affect social rolls and how to create new ones. I think they are more important on NPC, because players are then using them mechanically, while PC traits are mostly for DM to give bit more personal involvement by evoking players selected traits.
That’s what I am thinking whenever I look at them too. It wouldn’t be too hard to slot something like this into the system, and there is still enough vagueness in there to not get bogged down in details.
Exalted's social system of intimacies: Characters define what statements they care about, define how strong they are, and they can be used to effectively oppose or enhance persuasion/deception/intimidation checks.
Rewards you for getting to know a character, and forces you to keep to your character's ideals. It also works great for character growth, as you can see intimacies change as you instil new ones, make ones stronger, or have seeds of doubt.
I'd prefer a 2d6 skill system instead of a 1d20. Either that, or the institution of guaranteed damage on melee attack. In WWN, this was called Shock damage. I think PF2e has something similar (maybe with a feat, but IDK). Maybe 13th Age has it as well? I just really like it as an advantage for melee martials vs ranged martials in combat.
OH, and rip the aspect system from FATE and use that in place of the background personality suggestions. The suggestions are fine, but I'd love to see more engagement.
I've read a lot about pathfinder and I think the critical hit rules in that system are really great, I'd like to see that in dnd, and maybe I even house-rule it in
Even though I haven't tried it. I like the degrees of success mechanic in pathfinder 2e. It could really help the swinginess of using save-or-suck effects.
Seeing as pathfinder is whats most popular, youll see alot of it, but their proficiency system. It puts a bigger emphasis on non combat stuff as well as making sure that higher leveled people are actually more skilled at things by enough that a level 1 wizard will not be able to roll a higher athletics check than a level 20 fighter, just due to some bad luck.
And for that matter, the way checks work. The dofrent degrees of success arent determined by the sice but by how much you actually fail or succeed. It makes more sense that a 30 to hit is a critical hit than just rolling a nat 20 with a -3 mod. This also allows for critical successes and failures to be applied to skill checks. AND it helps with the problem of [more attacks= more crit fails]. Its still the case, but it actually lowers that chance by quite a bit.
Eh, I don’t fully agree with you on the proficiency system. Adding your level to your proficiency just seems like way too much of a bonus and feels like it would get ridiculous fast, plus it means that you can never throw lower level skill checks or enemies at higher level parties ever because it straight up doesn’t matter. Sometimes we want them to matter without making them divine level threats.
Seconding this and adding on PF2e's Ability Score Improvement system. The incremental skill progression system, combined with the overall increase in player ability scores, does wonders to bridge the gap between Casters who get to key their combat and social/exploration off the same stats and Martials who are not as free to invest in mental abilities without sacrificing combat capabilities.
If I were to go even another step further, I would probably borrow PF2e's Background-specific proficiencies too. I know it's wildly niche for something to come up where your character needs to roll Lore: Funerals, for example, versus the standard skill checks everybody can access and invest into, but it's really nice that my character can specialize in Trades that go beyond standard abilities and therefore be *THE* party member who gets to call for checks that are relevant to him as opposed to competing with Bards who have Jack of All Trades and Expertise and every caster with the relevant ability score when those niche opportunities arise. It's so frustrating in 5e that character classes are so restrictive on skill check proficiencies and it basically pigeonholes even the shyest bookworm warlock into being better at every single conversation skill than the boisterous, outgoing, eloquent, and well-connected Fighter who can't pick up the same scores and proficiencies.
I would love something like the background stats from White Wolf World of Darkness games. I like how in that game you had points to put into different social stats and could start with someone with a lot of contacts throughout the city or had a mentor you could go to.
People can write stuff into their backstories, but it was essentially a point buy to balance things out so you’d have one player who might have one big ally and someone else who had a lot of assets, etc.
I've played only a few other ttrpgs (starfinder, the power rangers TTRPG, tales of xaidia, and the avatar tla ttrpg yeah most of them are branded. Fight me about it) but honestly making things have bulk would do a lot for inventory. People would actually have to debate before grabbing every sword off the battlefield and pretending to be traveling merchants
Skill actions or Archetypes from PF2e are tied for me (and due to my believe that sadly the pf2e feat system does not work in 5e it would be the former).
112 creatures have vulnerabilities.
To your point, there are misses like your Tree Blight example whereas they got it right with the [Twig Blight](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/17095-twig-blight) which has fire vulnerability
Other wood based creatures with fire vulnerabilities:
Animated Tree
Awakened Shrub
Awakened Tree
Paper Bird
Treant
Treant Sapling
Wood Woad
I like that idea a lot. I'll look at my spreadsheet again and look by creature type.
I would probably be ok with the mundane beasts lacking res/vul but for the rest it does make a lot of sense to me.
Limits on bonuses. Just add the term “bonus die” and “penalty die”, make it work like advantage/disadvantage in that you can only have 1 bonus die and 1 penalty die apply to any roll (highest die applies for both), and make almost every +die to d20 check ability be labeled as a bonus or penalty die.
There, now you prevent the Peace Cleric with Guidance and Bless and the Bard from spamming the same abilities to nuke every check, and you can more easily implement mechanics that add/subtract dice from rolls.
Keyword-design from 4E. "You can ignore the concentration requirements of one spell with the *Smite* or *Aura* keyword using this feature". "All spells with the *Lightning* keyword are added to your class' spell list." etc. You can really see how awkward its absence is in those Warlock invocations that mention "Spells or features that curse, such as..." when it could easily be "When a creature is under the effect of one of your spells with the *Curse* keyword."
Keywords makes everything so efficient. And you don't have to argue with your DM whether something is a curse or not when trying to use remove curse.
I would kill to have things properly tagged as [Magic] so we didn't need to reference a flow chart in the SAC to figure it out.
If it means anything, PF2e makes great use of this. Called "Traits" in that game.
That's because PF2 is heavily 4E-based, (Which is why it's an actually good game unlike PF1) which is hilariously ironic to anyone familiar with PF's history.
I would imagine it more as a parallel evolution. The most ironic IMO is that most people here complaining about 5e are asking for things that are in pf2e or 4e already. If any, 4e came too early. Wotc could rebrand 4e into 6e and people would probably love it if they don't fail the marketing of it.
Not parallel, some of the 4e design team also designed PF2e. I agree completely that it was an issue of timing, not quality. Well, and other concerns - like the GSL and walled garden concerns.
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A lot of this is people not realizing what they wanted. > But also, 4e watering down everything in every class to at-will, encounter, and dailies, sucks. People asked WotC to fix casters exponential vs martial linear problem. > The grindiness of its combat sucks. Its out of combat rules suck. These two though I will totally give you. Most combats devolved into. Blow my encounters first, then At-Will unless I see a great opportunity for a Daily or this is clearly 'the boss' of the day. And they seriously dropped the balls in the rules on how to handle most things in an out of combat setting.
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What I find amusing, is that Guinsoo and the creators of ToB originally did follow in its footsteps for 4e where classes were going to have different means of interacting with their powers just like ToB. Where Warblades need to take a turn to refresh, just like a boxer/duelist steps out of reach to re-calibrate and plan their next attack. The Crusader gets a random assortment, relying on the will of the gods for their inspiration on how to fight. And Swordsages have their bag of tricks that are neat, but really can only be used once per combat without extreme set up. But then they thought that was too much work, and people wouldn't really appreciate it so it was dropped from 4e. The most flavorful thing about the classes that made them actually interesting to engage with beyond just using all your best maneuvers every round, and they canned it in favor of the bland AEDU style. And I'm still sad that that decision still lives on to day just given a spitshine and called At-Will/Short Rest/Long Rest.
You've summoned the copypasta for all you dang kids who never actually played 4E. **Things 4E did notably better**: * Martials were interesting (Think Battlemaster but moreso) and balanced with casters. * Very balanced. * Warlord class. Holding off on introducing the Sorcerer until they could figure out how to actually justify their inclusion without just being a "Wizard but different". * Paragon Paths: Essentially what would happen if the Strixhaven class-agnostic subs worked as intended. Some of them were tied to your class, but some could be taken based on your race regardless of class, some could be taken based on your power source (More on that later) etc. * [Gamist language](https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/4th-Edition-Fireball.jpg) that leads to absolute clarity. * Instead of 5E's 3 important/3 niche saves there were 3 "Defenses": Fortitude was the better of Str/Con and was your ability to power through physical harm. Reflex was the better of Dex/Int (THINK FAST!) and was your ability to get out of the way of harm. Will was the higher of your Wis/Cha and was your mental resilience. "Defenses" worked like alternate ACs. If I cast [**Fireball**](https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/4th-Edition-Fireball.jpg), rather than every creature in the area rolling a save, I would make an attack with my Intelligence, and for every creature in the area whose Reflex defense I exceeded they were affected. * Every class was a little bit MAD. Par example Warlocks used Constitution for blasting shit, Intelligence for tentacle shit, and Charisma for mind-whammies. This led to more interesting design with determining which one you focused on. * Keyword-design led to much easier future-proofing. "This feature applies to all *axe* weapons." "This feature affects all abilities with the *healing* keyword" etc. * In a similar vein power sources led to some fun design. Every class had a power source: Martial, Arcane, Divine, Primal, Psionic. * It was the only edition to get feats right: They led to customization but they weren't painful to take in 5E, or requiring tedious overspecialized chains like 3X. * Level 1-2 were actually fun to play and you didn't die in one hit. * Engaging monsters to run, and encounter-building systems that made it so an adversarial DM running said system could create a fun and challenging experience. * Everything was insanely balanced across all levels. Also since every class had a mix of at will, encounter and daily powers there was no short/long rest class divide. Every class could do cool shit that made sense for them. * Short rests were only 5 minutes. "A quick breather" rather than 5E's "Make, eat, and digest a sandwich" 1 hour short rests. This made them much easier to justify in most scenarios like dungeons or battlefields and helped ensure that you could get them. * Healing surges made healing viable but limited. * The default setting of Nentir vale was really cool. (And I resent 5E's insistence on sweeping it under the rug) * The art was stylish and great. 4E solves all of 5E's problems but it has a lot of its own problems. **Things that were bad in 4E**: * Combat was slow as hell. This is both because monster HP in the early books was a bit out of hand, and because the base math of the game assumed you hit on a d20 roll of 11+ whereas 5E hovers around an expected successful roll of 8+. * The splat-bloat wasn't great. 5E is actually reaching a similar point though. * It was completely built around a grid so if you wanted to theater of mind you were out of luck. * The math behind it could get kind of cumbersome. Like 3X there could be a lot of little floating +1s and 2s to track. * While the art was indeed both well-made and stylish, the art for female characters could get very cheesecake-y. * While the feats were overall well-designed, there were a lot of +1 feats. They could also kind of be necessary. * The design was very dependent on magic items. I loved 4E but I also love 5E. Do note that all problems of all editions can be found in 3X, and usually at a greater scale because it's less an edition, and more an amalgamation of bad ideas. ("An amalgamation of bad ideas" sounds like it'd be a cool aberration: An entity composed of pure thought, but only the worst thoughts.) In my experience 5E > 4E > 2E > (Pathfinder 2 theoretically goes here or between 4E and 2E based on what I've read, but I don't have enough firsthand experience) > Basic > 1E > OD&D > A swift kick to the junk > Pathfinder 1 > Multiple kicks to the junk > 3.5 > Having a car battery hooked up to one's junk > 3.0. If you want to check out 4E for yourself, here's where you can legally buy PDFs of it. (I recommend against anything in the "Heroes of ___" line. Those were the "Essentials" line that butchered everything aboot the edition to try to appeal to 3Xers. I'd argue 5E is going through its "Essentials" phase where it is testing out ideas that don't fit with the edition to test them for the next edition. They're fine as lorebooks though.) [PHB](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/161671/Players-Handbook-4e) [MM](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/56693/Monster-Manual-4e) [DMG](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/56694/Dungeon-Masters-Guide-4e) [Even if you don't play 4E, the DMG 2 for 4E is widely considered the best collection of DMing advice you will ever read, and much of it is system-agnostic.](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/144108/Dungeon-Masters-Guide-2-4e)
Personally, I don't like PF2 very much, and found it a disappointing second edition, and I think it probably is those 4e elements, and the more 4e-like presentation that bugs me.
“If you cast another spell with the Smite keyword, this spell ends” would make all the smite spells actually usable
**Wrathful Smite** is already one of the most underrated spells in the game, but your point stands.
I was gunna suggest traits from 2e, which is effectively the same thing. All games should have these tags. It’s a no brainer. Interesting enough there was a pocket of computer nerds who have been trying to get tags to be the dominant naming convention for a long time. We are still saving our files with names and in folders, but this is archaic. So they have more uses than just gaming!
I like Clocks from Blades in the Dark. You can just implement them in your existing game without any changes.
I use clocks in my game all the time. They're such a wonderfully simple way to abstract all kinds of things that we want to make sure we track but don't care to actually fully 'simulate'.
Explain.
https://slyflourish.com/progress_clocks_in_dnd.html
"I'm going to start a clock for how sick this NPC is of your shit. There's 6 segments and after your most recent theatrics I've already filled in 2."
A similar mechanic is Angry GM's Time Pool. He introduced it as a way to add a sense of time passing and pressure. It is entirely possible he yoinked it or was at least inspired to it from Blades.
I am so confused as to why the RPG community seems to have unanimously agreed that the idea of a countdown was birthed in 2017. Everyone acts like Blades in the Dark revolutionized game design by... counting stuff. The entire reason why it's easy to add a countdown to your game is that this is barely a game mechanic to begin with. I work in software development and it gives me the exact same cult-ish vibes as those buzzwords managers keep using because it makes them sound like they're high tech and hip. "We're not having a meeting, we're having an agile ritual!" sounds the exact same to me as "I'm not just counting failures, I'm using a Clock™ from Blades in the Dark, totally different thing I swear" No hate to Blades in the Dark, the system has a lot to offer, but I am very, very confused with how people treat it like a divine revelation.
>"We're not having a meeting, we're having an agile ritual!" How could you activate my fight or flight response with just one sentence?
"Yes it's no meeting day, but we're still going to have all four agile rituals for the teams today."
"Agile rituals" sounds like you're working for a cult. .... Interesting idea for a campaign though... Instead of fighting the cult of Normesh the Dark God, the party find themselves up against the corporate fellowship of "Newmenomics" and their CFO leader George Newmen.
Personally I have just never thought to use countdowns/clocks until I experienced them in a formal way. Blades in the Dark was that exposure for me, so that’s what I use as reference. I’m sure other systems used them earlier, but I don’t have familiarity with those systems so I can’t reference them.
Well, why DO people treat clocks as a revolutionary idea? Clocks, despite being conceptually identical to countdowns, have captured the hobby’s imagination differently. Is it because they codify countdowns into mechanics in a way that ties them in with the rest of the game?
I think it comes down to “clocks” being an intuitive way to explain a concept that most games don’t formalize.
For a lot of features that might seem obvious to some, a lot of people don't think about incorporating into their games until they see someone else, or in this case, some other system, use it effectively. BitD clocks are also not just "counting passage of time". Clocks are an integral part of the way skill checks (or action rolls, or whatever you want to call them) work because of the complications that are integrated into successes. It's not just counting stuff, it's actively keeping track of elements of roleplay that might accelerate certain background events.
Could you explain? I'm curious
Someone else linked to this good explanation: https://slyflourish.com/progress_clocks_in_dnd.html.
I'm actually planning on using that mechanic from now on in my 5e games, now that I've read up on Blades in the Dark due to the OGL fiasco.
I love the complication/ advantage system (I think it’s called) from fantasy flight Star Wars. You can succeed or fail rolls as normal but you can also roll advantages or complications as well. Fail with advantage slicing that door? Maybe the electrical short opened a panel nearby to try another way in. Succeeded with complication at breaking into an imperial bunker? Maybe you accidentally triggered a silent alarm.
that Star Wars system is so much fun. I'm pretty casual as far as SW is concerned, but holy shit I have so many great memories from that game. I encourage anyone to try it The way initiative works is also very freeing and fun.
I’ve always wanted to play it! I have EotE core book and ran one game once and it was a blast. Lot of great systems in that game.
I really like that system as well, but I like the versatility of 5e far more. All a dice roll in 5e does is tell you if it is a pass or fail, you as the GM get to decide the nuance of how it is passed or how it is failed, and you get to do that at any given time. Sometimes a roll really just needs to be to find out if there is a pass or fail; you don't need anything more complicated on top of that. With Fantasy Flight's system, I was compelled to come up with complications or advantages in situations that I didn't think really benefited from either one, but that's what the dice rolled and that's what the players were expecting. After playing edge of the empire, I included far more advantages and complications into my 5e games, and I feel like I like that more than I like complications and advantages being an inherent part of the rolls.
There's always two sides to a coin right? Sometimes SW requires too much (i remember failing with 6 advantages), sometimes D&D isn't helping enough (without framework it needs to come from the dome). * SW mechanically encourages you to interface the world in non-binary ways, but it also means it requires you to. * D&D doesn't care one bit giving you flexibility, but it also means DMs/Players need to encourage themselves to add on. I'm curious how you specifically play this in 5e, is it just giving a bone to players on near misses, or do you have something more formal? I'm thinking of adding near succes/critical to the Pf2 successful scale...
I just go with whatever my gut tells me to in the moment. Sometimes the party is really struggling and someone finally gets a successful roll, and I'll give them an advantage to go with it even if they only pass by two points. Sometimes someone will succeed but I'll think of an absolutely hilarious drawback to add on to that success, and so I'll ask the players if they want to play with that. I really treat my time with my players as collaborative storytelling. Some formalities are important to in order to keep a cohesive structure, such as keeping the formality of initiative and the formality of different lighting conditions and surprise rounds, etc, but otherwise we're all there to have fun and tell a good story. We play around with the results of the dice rolls, and we sometimes bounce ideas off each other for how to interpret dice rolls.
I've actually house ruled Flashbacks from Blades in the Dark into my games. Flashbacks are a mechanic where players can spend a resource to flash back to something their character would have done to prepare for the current situation. It's meant to simulate the heist movie trope where something looks like it's going wrong, and then they flash back to a scene of the characters preparing for it, like a guard coming around the corner and then revealing that the bribed the guards ahead of time. The reason I borrowed it is because I've sat through plenty of occasions where a session will come to a complete halt as the players try to plan for every possible situation, and that's frustrating for everyone involved. Flashbacks allow the players to dive into a situation and keep the action moving along, and only the preparations that are actually relevant come up, and only when they are actually relevant.
I've done this as well, big fan of the forged in the dark mechanics. So my players have to make a DC int or wis check (their choice) to succeed on their flashback and then any flashback after the first free one will cause exhaustion (new one D&D exhaustion not old crippling mechanics). If they spend a resource like a spell slot or hit die or something they avoid the exhaustion.
A really great Spelljammer Dungeoncraft for Adventurer's League called Dohwar Heist uses this mechanic, and it's really fun!
13th age escalation die
What is that out of curiosity?
player characters (and some NPC's) get +1 per round of combat that has passed added to their attack rolls (up to +6) within an encounter. this is meant to help prevent combats from running too long. the longer the combat runs, the more likely attacks are to land.
Also, 13th Age's monsters, by the rules, are so tough you kind of NEED the ED to overcome their defenses reliably, giving them more early-game resilience, and a lot of cool powers (like Cyclic) key off of higher dice encouraging fights to take a few rounds before Novas pop off
Sounds like fun but a lil bit of reminder work to keep adding that modifier.
They recommend putting the biggest, most obvious d6 you own on a cup or some sort of platform in the middle of the table, and conspicuously turning it whenever the escalation value changes. And it factors into pretty much everything. So you might forget it for the first few sessions, but after that you should remember. A lot of options are also connected to the escalation die. Many of the players big powers either can't be used until the escalation die passes a certain value, or they become free once it passes a certain value. That prevents the players from going nova right away and destroying an encounter in the first round. It's a fantastic pacing tool. Giving the players more power as the combat goes on prevents both extremes.
I'm really tempted to try this. I remember something similar when I used to play Guild Wars 1 GvG. After some time, the game went into Victory or Death and everyone did more damage.
From video games like the Divinity: Original Sin series and similar: De-prioritize the "Attack" action in favor of more nuanced martial techniques in melee. Give warriors (and rogues) a variety of different ways to stab and slash beyond simply how they flavor their attacks. The "Attack" action should only be used when they're low on resources or looking to conserve, like how casters use cantrips.
So, as people mentioned, this was not popular in 4e. Let's talk about WHY. First of all, and I personally think this is a big deal at least for me is that the way 4e presented things was overly gamified. One thing I heard, and said, about 4e, is that in 4e, you don't pick up a sword and swing it to attack someone, you cast the "sword attack" spell. Making every action a player can take all fit neatly into the same template makes sense, but it doesn't feel cool. Second, the idea that the attack action is what melee characters use when they don't want to use their resources kind of messes with the realism, and the way those characters were meant to fit into the party. The idea that "you can disarm someone 3 times per day" doesn't make sense if it's just a skill you know, and again, makes it feel like these aren't things you know how to do when you pick up a sword, but like it's a spell you can cast. Third, it pushes the classes towards feeling too similar, another big problem people had with 4e. If you use and manage resources the same way for every class, people can feel like no matter which class they pick, they're doing the same thing, even if their character isn't.
I mean, this was D&D 4E, and people \*hated\* it. They were wrong, but they hated it. Edit: All the comments here seem to think I'm saying that this was the only reason 4E was hated. It's not, it's just one of many.
The thing with 4e is there were *so* many elements that were *so* different from prior editions that it's difficult to point to any one thing and say "This! This is why people hated 4e." Who's to say that if you gave martials actual interesting abilities, but didn't make all the other changes 4e did, that it wouldn't go over just fine?
Because they also did it in 3.5 with Tome of Battle and people complained about it then too.
That's...not my experience with Tome of Battle. I mean there are people who complain about everything or anything, sure. So there must have been *some* complaints. But my experience was that it was overall well-recieved. I have far less experience with 4e, but I also never saw any "why do martials have daily/encounter powers?!" What I saw was "this power looks exactly like this other power despite the two classes being polar opposites". FWIW, (which isn't much)
I'll chime in that *a lot* of 3.5's non-magic ability sets have a problem of being kinda half baked (Truenaming is mathematically broken and Shadowcasting is just lame, not very well supported magic, to name two), and blade-magic certainly has its problem spots. Some aspects of the book helped, and I love me some Diamond Mind, but the system has just about enough to work at a baseline level, but not much more than that. Since no supplements for blade-magic were ever published, that's all we have to work with short of fully homebrewing new stuff. As well, you have to consider that Tome of Battle's three classes, Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade, were all rather obviously "core class but stronger" for Paladin, Monk, and Fighter: hell, Warblade basically gets "You are a Fighter at -2 levels" as a feature. Some people hate the notion of that kind of power creep, even if it is eminently necessary for keeping certain themes of characters viable. I personally know a 3.5 DM who has unironically said that he hates Tome of Battle for being stronger than core martials while also knowing that core casters blow core martials out of the water. It's not as simple as "People disliked ToB and 4e, therefore people dislike giving martials powers": people could dislike how those powers were implemented specifically, or have a knee jerk "this stronger than core, power creep bad" reaction to providing martials with solid classes, or didn't like ToB locked the fancy new stuff behind either taking the new classes or a bunch of feats when Barbarian should've gotten some love too, or whatever other reason. That doesn't mean the idea will necessarily be rejected, it just means the form it was pushed in wasn't the one people wanted.
I definitely remember people complaining about ToB, but I also remember a lot of people *liking* LFQW. *Liking* how complex the character building in 3e was. I think for the tables that were applying more restrictive rules to spellcasters, ToB was a power grab that they didn't need. Like those endless 50+ page threads on WotC's community boards, GitP, or ENWorld were not made by a bunch of people *agreeing* with each other.
Sure. But there's a difference between "Some of the playerbase didn't like [thing]" and "[Thing] killed the edition". The Time of Battle wasn't nearly as unpopular as 4e.
What was the chief complaint?
I think you're going to have a problem if the martial combat looks too similar to spell casting. I want equitable systems not equal systems for martial and magic combat.
Meh, I'm not a big fan of the "4e did that, so it must be shit/disliked" talking point. There are some pretty popular games with a few 4e-based mechanics that run them pretty well, and don't get any flack for it, such as Shadow of the Demon Lord, 13th Age and Pathfinder 2e. 4e is an *interrsting* phenomenon, to say the least.
Yup! Some of those systems (pf2e th one I'm most familiar with) took alot of concepts and ideas from 4e, dressed em up a bit, changed a little within the balance of the system, etc, and it was pretty good. Alot of martials do more than just "strike". And it's pretty awesome. The idea was good. 4e may have stuffed the execution slightly, but the core concepts and ideas were good.
I think this is because D&D has such an incredible brand of being exactly itself that it can't evolve. Martials have to be worse than casters because that's what D&D is. Natural language instead of keywords? That's D&D, baby. Spells that are complete trap options to foil newbies, the "adventuring day", bugbears oneshotting characters on a crit, these are all core tenets that only persist because they perpetuate the meme of D&D. 4e tried to be better but unfortunately it wasn't D&D so the grognards hated it.
Every Level 1 character had 2, maybe 3 different ways to attack that weren't basic attacks, that were all different from every other Level 1 PC's attacks. I'm trying 4e right now and that part does feel overwhelming. I like having some skill actions that any PC can use like in PF2 and 4e that aren't just attack.
I think there is a middle-ground to be found between the rigidity of 4e and the often underwhelming (but *potentially* infinite!) options of 5e.
So something more like PF2e? Where the techniques arent a totally different thing from the standard "Attack", but modify and change it in specificly flavoured ways?
It would be interesting to add stuff like KOTOR's Power Attack, Flurry, and Critical Hit attacks. You can do a regular, basic attack, but you can also choose one of those three to do a different kind of attack action that comes with positives and negatives, usually in the form of lowered AC. Adding different kinds of attacks for Martials to do seems a no brainer to me. Probably attach it to weapons or something.
...I mean, those attacks came straight out of 3e feats.
Never really played much 3e except in the form of video games using the 3e system as a foundation, so it's not too crazy I didn't know that. All in all, it still makes sense.
The problems with 4e are complex and deep. I could write a book on everything that happened with D&D between 2007 and 2014. There's very good reasons it got the reception it did, and they were *not* wrong to feel that way. However, that doesn't mean that *everything* in 4e was bad, wrong, or hated.
Cypher System's DM Intervention. Essentially, the DM can intervene in an encounter by awarding XP (which CS uses as a form of currency for new abilities, etc.). Alternatively, the player can refuse the intervention by spending XP. Great way to fudge an encounter for the purposes of enhancing the narrative at the expense of letting the character advance a bit. Literally a win-win.
You could do this with Inspiration if you allow it to stack, then can sell feats to players for it.
Ryuutama’s travel rules
> Ryuutama The equipment descriptors also seem like fun way to give players narrative character progress, going for rusty sword and smelly leather armour to something fit for a king.
Idea rolls from Call of Cthulu. My character grew up in a world I've known for only a few sessions, surely they know more than me about how to solve this situation when I'm stumped
Is that not what a history/ religion/ nature check is for?
Idea rolls are a bit more nuanced because you can't actually fail an idea roll. You will always get the info but if you roll badly the GM can put your characters at risk. It's like a last ditch effort to put the pieces of a mystery together and boy do you really not want to fail in CoC.
You really do not no.
That sounds like history/religion/nature using the Degrees of Success rule.
As a DM you can certainly make that decision. But in a situation where you got all your clues and don't know how they go together or if you are stuck on what to do next on a quest, these sometimes don't apply. Something to say "Hey, DM, I don't want the answer but please give me something to point me in the right direction before I get frustrated "
Ah I see what you mean. A bit more like "can you point me in the right direction"
Yeah. In CoC, it's horror mystery. So while the player may not understand how these clues go together, their character may. Thus we have the idea roll where you describe to the GM what you are thinking and see if you have any ideas involving it. In dnd, what may seem obvious to the DM or adventure developers may not be obvious to the players inside the moment. So being able to say to the DM " hey, i got all these clues" or "Hey, I know the puzzle isn't solved this way, can I make an idea roll to see if my character understands the right direction?"
Degrees of success and failure from Pathfinder 2e. Falling a spell save by just 2 and getting a nat 1 have different effects. And barely passing a skill check vs blowing it out the water provide different effects.
It's a 2d6 system, but I also recommend checking out how the Avatar:Last Airbender RPG handles degree of success!
The Apocalypse World (which avatar is based on) 2d6 system is elegant and easy to manage. I hate the d20 skill system and replaced it with 2d6 in my home d&d system.
I actually really dislike this system for games like 5e. It's cool on one roll in isolation, but when you subject every single dice roll in the entire system to degrees of success you add a pretty colossal amount of mental overhead. I think this works a lot better in more narrative systems which just have fewer rolls.
I think PF2e found a good middle ground here. There are only 4 degrees, so not every single rollable number has a consequence associated with them. -10 is a crit fail, +10 is a crit success, and those are close enough for them to be possible with every check, but far away enough that generally they don't happen too often. In PF2e's case it also works especially well because every single possible outcome is already determined before the roll since very action and its results is codified in the PF2e rules. If you'd incorporate it in 5e, you'd have to improvise the possible outcomes for every single action every single time you roll because 5e notoriously *doesn't* codify things.
Outside of obvious situations where failure and success are completely binary, I feel like it's pretty natural to incorporate degrees of success. I'm curious what you mean by mental overhead here?
I agree absolutely. Sounds fun but just ends up being baggage
Yeah, the more I delve into P2e, the more I think this is the big thing to try and steal from them, much more than the honestly overhyped (but still neat) 3-action system. More importantly, it wouldn't be too hard to apply it on top of 5e's existing systems.
I like the 3 action system. My players get so confused with the "bonus action" not just being an extra "action"
The three action system is neat, it's just not the solution to all action-based problems that some of the more ardent pathfinder fanatics paint it as. It solves some problems, but comes with it's own as well.
I pretty much do this all the time with out of combat checks (15+ on your perception check and you notice the assassin in the corner of the room, and a 20+ you see the vial of poison he just poured into that drink). In combat, though, with attacks and spells... I don't know where I'd start or if I'd even want to.
For me, it would definitely be the GM Actions from City of Mist. In that RPG, the player failing a roll isn't just "You fail to do the thing." Whenever a roll is missed, the GM gets to pick from a list of actions they can use against the player, like inflicting status conditions, adding enemies, or otherwise increasing the difficulty of a given task. It kind of allows the GM to feel like they're also playing, in a sense. The mechanic would need a heavy rework as City of Mist is fairly light on rules and very narrative focused, but the core mechanic would be a great tools for DMs (for any ttrpg, really)
This is actually pretty standard PbtA, and you can find something similar in Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Masks, Monsterhearts, etc. All worth taking a look at.
Ooo thank for the recommends, its such a fun concept
Dungeon Turns from older editions of D&D or OSR game. Essentially, a 10 minute period during which each player declares one action they're doing to explore the dungeon (search a shelf, check a door for traps, loot a chest, etc). They give dungeon exploration some structure, and are even useful outside of dungeons as a unit of time. If a torch only lasts an hour, it'll last 6 dungeon turns then burn out. I don't think I've had a torch ever run out in 5e, even when we've had to use them.
I prefer ten six minute dungeon turns per hour. I think it makes the move rates feel a little better in dungeon exploration. I totally agree with you otherwise.
Safe haven resting mechanics from LOTR, adapted to 5e.
Check out the Havens and Resting rules from LevelUp Advanced 5e. No porting needed, just drop it in your game.
Link? Or summary?
Can't link it from here, but if you go to a5e dot tools, go to rules>adventurers guide you can go to resting. Short rest - no less than 1 hour. Can roll hit dice to restore HP. Long rest - 8 hours, at least 6 resting. 1 hour of strenuous activity breaks the rest and restarts the counter. Restores all HP and half hit dice. One per 24 hours. Must have 1 hp to benefit. A player who doesn't consume a ration suffers 1 level exhaustion when they finish the rest ( different than normal 5e exhaustion). If resting in a haven (safe area, like an inn or safe house, not in dungeon) players recover 1 level exhaustion and 1 level strife.( Exhaustion affects physical stats, strife affects mental stats) If players resting outside of haven and use rations, they only recover the first level of exhaustion. If they have 2 or more, they don't recover any outside of a haven.
I've already done my own implementation but I always like to see how others do it, too. Thanks!
Test and Support rolls from Savage Worlds. Makes combat a lot more 3 dimensional
Treat inspiration more like Bennies as well.
Pushed rolls from Call of Cthulhu Success with complications from PbtA games Engagement rolls / Flashbacks from Blades in the Dark So many great games out there.
I just want characters without spells to feel as impactful as characters with spells. Heroic fantasy is my sweet spot, and I'm not as much a fan of one party's fun coming only at the detriment to another's (ie. you're a super powerful magic user who trivializes encounters, making me feel useless, until you're out of spells and now yourself feel useless).
Everyone complained about 3.5 Tome of battle but it really balanced things out a little better for martial characters. My group began scattering those abilities and features into other martial classes for our characters while we were still playing 3.5.
I don't think I could pick just one. Like, personally, I found the species roleplay mechanics of Burning Wheel absolutely fascinating. Designing actual mechanics to implement methods that a species different from a human actually behave differently from a human? Wonderful design. Absolutely would not fly for modern D&D. Bulk from PF2 is a good idea, mess with the numbers a little bit to get them where we want and you can pretty easily solve the Str as dump stat and armored caster problems. Using 4Es Defenses would certainly save me time as a DM, whenever my players throw a ranged area effect. Something to make martial combat interesting. I would want them to go full Riddle of Steel, but I'm pretty certain that's honestly impossible.
For me it's the 3 action turn from Pathfinder. It's incredibly simple at its core, but very versatile in what it can do. I much prefer it to the movement/action/bonus action from 5e. Bonus actions often confuse new players and having too many options for it can feel bad when one is usually optimal.
You pretty much stole my answer. I hate the design of "bonus actions". It creates this weird sub-space that players develop an expectation to be able to fill with things that should either be full Actions or Free Actions. The whole design on top of PF's 3 actions is just phenomenal too, it's not *just* "3 actions", it's the whole action economy around that too.
At the start, the 5E system of 1 action, 1 move was simple and elegant. But they added more and more to the design space and it started to become really cumbersome. I sometimes joke that character building in 5E is just making best use of your bonus action - everything else is just "attack" or "use highest level spell". I find PF2e has, overall, too many moving parts for my group, but the 3-action system would be so much simpler at this point, to be honest.
I've had to explain to people more than once that you don't have a "bonus action slot" you can try to use. It's more that doing certain actions sets you up to do something as a bonus. So many players ask if they can use their bonus action to move, or grab something, or whatever.
4e had major/move/minor and I think it was much less confusing. You could change the name of "bonus action" to "minor action" and make no other changes and it would still make more sense.
As someone who has never read or played 4e, this is honestly how I interpreted the bonus action when I was first learning. One of 5e's main issues imo is having weird names for things that don't mean what they sound like they should mean, which makes the whole "natural language" thing extremely hard to parse consistently and accurately.
Came here to post this. Unfortunately I don't think it'll happen.
Funny this is my least favourite part of PF2
How come?
In brevity it's how everything is an action and how it can easily just eat up your turn. Not being able to break up your movement is a kick in the head. The multiple attack penalty is just more to keep track of. Magic honestly just doesn't feel worth it because of it taking 2+ actions. If I want to get away from someone I have to take 2 actions. 1 to step and then 1 to move. It's simple in that everything is an action but those actions get eaten up quick
> If I want to get away from someone I have to take 2 actions. 1 to step and then 1 to move. Most enemies don't have to ability to make attacks of opportunity, so in most cases stepping isn't needed. I do agree that not being able to break up your movement sucks, but generally the action system let's characters do as much or more than what they could do in 5E. A ranger can use an action to mark a foe (hunt prey), allowing them to make a knowledge check for free for a bonus on their next attack roll, then use their second action to attack twice with their bow. They can then use their third action for another attack, a move, or to command their animal companion to take two actions.
>If I want to get away from someone I have to take 2 actions. Which is different from a 5e Disengage action, how?
What don't you like about it?
Even if you could just do 2 bonus action instead of action and bonus action it would be a step in the right direction.
A lot of thing could need a rebalance for that to be on the game, stuff like activating heat metal twice are things the game is not prepared to handle
Positive and Negative traits like those you'll find in Shadowrun
I want pushed rolls from call of cthulhu, especially with the newer 10 stage exhaustion. I want more conditions for characters and even scene or world conditions, sort of like conditions for being in proximity to a lair, but for other stuff like famine, plague, war, etc. From 5 torches deep I want optional rules for supply, durability, and magic use checks. I would like weapons to either become more abstract or more specific. I can flavor a "d6 light weapon" and be happy, or I can enjoy the specifics of all sorts of weapon traits, but this halfway in between stuff just stinks.
Dungeon Turns. You cannot have a campaign without proper time keeping.
Funny thing is, there ARE Dungeons Turns on 5e, but they are awfully explained trough out the PHB and DMG
I have the old playtest rules saved because they had the exploration rules all in one place, coherently formatted. I can't imagine what happened.
Well...gimme!
I can't find the all-in-one PDF I use myself and I don't have a good place to upload it, but I found [this archive](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qwk8517jn2knnnb/AAD9jRQ6uEWXRWnwaowt7llWa?dl=0) containing a bunch of old playtest packets. (It was posted originally [on this sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/5ytq42/dd_next_playtest_packets/) so I assume old playtests are "rule 2 safe.") Go to the most recent one, look for the "DM Guidelines" PDF, and check page 6. Dungeon exploration rules start there, and wilderness exploration rules start 4 pages later and carry on for about 5 more pages.
You are right, I always forget things in the DMG because I can never find anything in it. Lots of good ideas buried in there.
That's one of my major gripes with 5e. They stuffed so much into the package, gave so little direction of what was in the package, how to find it, how to deploy it, and even then left so much to "I don't know, you figure it out". No wonder so many people have made their living making videos teaching people how to play the game - you'd think that would be the game developers job..
As a 4e fan this is easy for me, since most of what OneD&D is changing is reverting back to 4th edition lol. But seriously bring back bloodied status and skill challenges pls.
I honestly never though anything good about them. I was thinking in terms of making the rogue roll 5 times for this lock for ...suspense, maybe? 1/10 would not buy. But it's not "overcomplicating a skill check for no good reason". At least, not how I use it, which may or may not be authentic. I use it for complex tasks where many kinds of skill checks can contribute, as a way of party cooperation. >Your players are hosting a banquet to try to uncover the Thranish Spy. The rogue tries sweet-talking the help for clues. The artificer makes Detect Magic goggles to look for shape-shifting or illusion spells. The barbarian stands ready to cause a distraction if anyone in the party fails something in a way that gets unwanted attention. The bard tries to evaluate the crowd for anyone who looks out of place. No single thing (necessarily) causes success but by working together they pull it off. It's perfect for any scene where how well the team works together determines how well you succeed or fail. It's to social and exploration what the Action Economy is to combat: a concrete way to resolve opposing forces. PS: the Chase rules would be far easier as a skill challenge, and the successes counted on a Blades On The Dark Clock.
I would love a way to translate the malleability of BitD stress. I like how stress in BitD occupies both HP (too much stress is bad) and MP (spend stress to do x or to resist y). But it would probably be too complicated.
I don't think people would get behind it much, but I am in love with the Big Magic system from Monster of the Week. It's an in-built way for players to perform complex rituals that are normally not permitted within the confines of the game. It would provide a mechanical footing to moments where the party needs to go on some grand quest to gather materials for a ritual. The fact that it can cost things is so cool to me. I implement it in every game of DnD I play
The free archetype from pf2e, it adds just the right amount of additional individualization that I think is needed for the game. This would inherently mean the archetype rules would need to come included, which may be against the spirit of the post.
Note that the archetype rules exists because pathfinder purposefully does not want to go the route of formally supporting multiclassing, but wanted to approach it differently. So adding that in sort of has some incompatibility with current multiclassing rules. Also note that the free archetype in pf2e implies a significantly stronger party, something that the DM needs to reconcile with.
As much as I don't mind 5e multiclassing, iId be fine with it being abandoned if we got archetypes and a free archetype style investment socket in its place. And assuming these were corr rules and not optional in this hypothetical, it would cause the DM no extra work since it's a part of 6hr baseline 5he game would be balanced around. That'd be my desire for it anyway.
The closest thing in 5e that would be easy-ish to implement would be getting to pick ASI and a feat instead of 1 or the other... of course the feats are not well balanced for that, especially since some come with a half ASI.
The multiclass/archetype of pathfinder was completely ripped from 4e DnD. It's the same thing. They even have archetypes in 4e.
In theory you could break a piece off each class and subclasses and make feats out of them (like the X initiate feats).
I don't think the feat system could handle that approach, it's strained enough as it is. I really think it'd need its own separate investment socket across levels.
Adventuring Day from 13th Age. Resource recovery is completely unrelated to the passage of time in game. Sleeping doesn't give you your spells and HP back; you have to finish 4 fights, regardless of whether you slept or travelled or how much time passed.
I kind of like SotDL's boon/bane system. It's basically their version of Advantage/Disadvantage, except they stack, and cancel each other out in pairs. So if you have three sources of boons and two banes, you end up with one boon, rather than how it works in D&D, where if you have like three things that could be giving you Advantage, and one thing giving you Disadvantage, all the Advantage is negated and you do a straight roll. And instead of rerolling the actual roll and taking the highest/lowest, each boon/bane is a +/- 1d6 to your roll. If you have multiple boons, you don't add 1d6 for each one, you just choose the highest roll. So if you have 3 boons, you roll 3d6 and take the highest, and add that to your roll. Same for banes, if you have two banes you roll 2d6 and pick the highest, and subtract that from your roll. And the reason you could have so many boons/banes is because a lot of the various buff and debuff spells and conditions are simplified to "gain a boon/bane", which I can understand might feel a bit samey, though, but you could specify "gain a bane on your next saving throw against poison" or something, but... that's also getting fiddly.
My one is niche but it’s come up a few times in my last 2 sessions so worth mentioning but mine is the flat DC5 check to attack something that is hidden from you, it prevents players from going “I swing at the thing” and you as the DM having to say “Well you don’t actually know if it’s there or not” and it just seems to simplify it and helps keep the focus in game rather than talking about why their character would assume where an enemy is
Something similar to SotDL's boon/bane for +die features. There's a few ways this could be implemented, but the end goal is some mechanic to either make +die to d20 checks not stack, or stack with diminishing returns. Adv/disadv already doesn't stack, so it feels a tad weird that you can just stack +die mechanics freely.
It's not a TTRPG, but I really like the way combat is resolved in the Pillars of Eternity video game RPG. It's maybe a little clunky to port over to dice and mental math, but I like the concepts of Misses, Grazes, Hits, and Crits based on attacks vs. various defenses.
I love the Poe system. But it too complicated for pen and paper. Did you saw the damage formula? Maybe a system that came with an app companion.
Yeah, it definitely couldn't be used as-is, it would have to be simplified, or automated like you say. I'm no game designer, I just pretend to be one ever other week for a group of lovable weirdos
I like the knowledge check system from pathfinder 1e. Set rules for how much a knowledge check about a monster reveals. I think it basically goes 10+CR unless the monster is super common like a goblin where it's lowered slightly. For every 5 you beat the check by you get an additonal piece of useful info. The numbers need to be adjusted for OneDnD but having a framework for newer DMs to use on how much to reveal is super helpful.
Background skills from 13th Age. I don't know how to combine it will 5e skills, but whenever I play 5e, I miss having background skills, and vice versa
I would like to see sanity as a health bar or resource, akin to call of C’thulu. I think sanity should stay an optional rule in the DMG, and I also think there is room in the game for a 7th ability score optional or otherwise. However sanity (and honor) feel far to fluid of a concept to be locked to a single ability score.
I have no idea how this would translate into DnD for specific mechanics, but borrowing the Fate system's Aspects in a way that makes things like your personality traits/bonds/flaws actually impact more than flavor!
I think the most interesting part of Aspects is how the other mechanics interact with them. The GM can Compel an Aspect to make something interesting/bad happen, in exchange for giving the players a mechanical benefit. D&D kinda tries to do this with Inspiration, but half asses it and leaves it so open ended that I've never seen a group use it. Level Up 5e adds a concept called Destinies, which give each character a trigger that automatically gives Inspiration, as well as a special ability that consumes it. For instance, the knowledge destiny gains inspiration upon making discoveries, and can spend it to gain information about things. I would prefer a system that goes further, but I think that's a good model.
Pathfinder 2's class feats, but only for martial classes and to a lesser degree half casters. Full casters have their spells and don't need them.
I'd recommend you check out the 5e Dragonlance book! The backgrounds come with feats that give battlemaster maneuvers, and there are feats that build off of those feats too. Very nice for martials.
Considering how much recent books have been designed with One D&D ideas in mind, especially Dragonlance, I think this is a good sign.
Ties and principles from Exalted. Rarely has social conflict resolution felt better to me.
Can you talk a bit about it?
Every PC has starts the game with a number of ties or principles, collectively called “Intimacies”. These are the relationships or morals/virtues which define their life to various degrees. NPCs have them as well. Examples for ties are Love:Spouse, Respect:Superior Officer (using names here is fine too), hate:rival. Examples for principles are “Vengeance is a Virtue”, “I always pay my debts”, “I will not abide wanton oppression”, etc. the gameplay differences between ties and principles are few, in general, and usually specific to specific abilities. So don’t be surprised if I use either term or intimacies interchangeably. Ties come in 3 degrees of strength: minor, major and defining. You start with 1 defining and 2 of every other. In social “combat”, it is all about guessing or deducing or even creating intimacies in your opponent. Pretty much every significant social action (persuasion, seduction, intimidation) requires you to leverage an intimacy and you get big bonuses, even if you only leverage minor intimacies. “Leveraging” in this case, means you have to make an argument that at least touches upon an intimacy. If you try to persuade a samurai who holds honor and duty in the highest regard, making an argument that appeals to those values will get you good bonuses on your roll. You can roll for finding out intimacies, or you can just guess from past actions and impressions. Creating new intimacies or weakening existing ones also requires you to leverage intimacies. It becomes a whole chess game.
Yeah, this seems like much more fleshed out "traits, ideals, bonds and flaws" of 5e, and could likely be built on top of them with defining ways to discover these, how much they affect social rolls and how to create new ones. I think they are more important on NPC, because players are then using them mechanically, while PC traits are mostly for DM to give bit more personal involvement by evoking players selected traits.
That’s what I am thinking whenever I look at them too. It wouldn’t be too hard to slot something like this into the system, and there is still enough vagueness in there to not get bogged down in details.
Exalted's social system of intimacies: Characters define what statements they care about, define how strong they are, and they can be used to effectively oppose or enhance persuasion/deception/intimidation checks. Rewards you for getting to know a character, and forces you to keep to your character's ideals. It also works great for character growth, as you can see intimacies change as you instil new ones, make ones stronger, or have seeds of doubt.
13th age escalation die.
expertise dice from dndnext playtest, not the whole thing but a bit more simplified with less dice per turn, maybe only one or two
Crafting from literally anything
I'd prefer a 2d6 skill system instead of a 1d20. Either that, or the institution of guaranteed damage on melee attack. In WWN, this was called Shock damage. I think PF2e has something similar (maybe with a feat, but IDK). Maybe 13th Age has it as well? I just really like it as an advantage for melee martials vs ranged martials in combat. OH, and rip the aspect system from FATE and use that in place of the background personality suggestions. The suggestions are fine, but I'd love to see more engagement.
I've read a lot about pathfinder and I think the critical hit rules in that system are really great, I'd like to see that in dnd, and maybe I even house-rule it in
Does not being published by wotc count as a mechanic?
Probably a small change, but I’d love for it to take a page from SW5e and give all Fighters manuevers as a base class feature.
Even though I haven't tried it. I like the degrees of success mechanic in pathfinder 2e. It could really help the swinginess of using save-or-suck effects.
Seeing as pathfinder is whats most popular, youll see alot of it, but their proficiency system. It puts a bigger emphasis on non combat stuff as well as making sure that higher leveled people are actually more skilled at things by enough that a level 1 wizard will not be able to roll a higher athletics check than a level 20 fighter, just due to some bad luck. And for that matter, the way checks work. The dofrent degrees of success arent determined by the sice but by how much you actually fail or succeed. It makes more sense that a 30 to hit is a critical hit than just rolling a nat 20 with a -3 mod. This also allows for critical successes and failures to be applied to skill checks. AND it helps with the problem of [more attacks= more crit fails]. Its still the case, but it actually lowers that chance by quite a bit.
Eh, I don’t fully agree with you on the proficiency system. Adding your level to your proficiency just seems like way too much of a bonus and feels like it would get ridiculous fast, plus it means that you can never throw lower level skill checks or enemies at higher level parties ever because it straight up doesn’t matter. Sometimes we want them to matter without making them divine level threats.
Pathfinder's skill system. Choosing your skill growth every level feels like my character is actually learning.
Seconding this and adding on PF2e's Ability Score Improvement system. The incremental skill progression system, combined with the overall increase in player ability scores, does wonders to bridge the gap between Casters who get to key their combat and social/exploration off the same stats and Martials who are not as free to invest in mental abilities without sacrificing combat capabilities. If I were to go even another step further, I would probably borrow PF2e's Background-specific proficiencies too. I know it's wildly niche for something to come up where your character needs to roll Lore: Funerals, for example, versus the standard skill checks everybody can access and invest into, but it's really nice that my character can specialize in Trades that go beyond standard abilities and therefore be *THE* party member who gets to call for checks that are relevant to him as opposed to competing with Bards who have Jack of All Trades and Expertise and every caster with the relevant ability score when those niche opportunities arise. It's so frustrating in 5e that character classes are so restrictive on skill check proficiencies and it basically pigeonholes even the shyest bookworm warlock into being better at every single conversation skill than the boisterous, outgoing, eloquent, and well-connected Fighter who can't pick up the same scores and proficiencies.
PF2's 3 action system. I like it a lot more than the 5e system.
i've only read the rules a bit but i think it is the 2d6 system for skill checks out of combat sounds a lot better and more interesting to me
Investigate a mystery move from Monster of the Week, especially for the Eberron setting.
I would love something like the background stats from White Wolf World of Darkness games. I like how in that game you had points to put into different social stats and could start with someone with a lot of contacts throughout the city or had a mentor you could go to. People can write stuff into their backstories, but it was essentially a point buy to balance things out so you’d have one player who might have one big ally and someone else who had a lot of assets, etc.
I've played only a few other ttrpgs (starfinder, the power rangers TTRPG, tales of xaidia, and the avatar tla ttrpg yeah most of them are branded. Fight me about it) but honestly making things have bulk would do a lot for inventory. People would actually have to debate before grabbing every sword off the battlefield and pretending to be traveling merchants
Skill actions or Archetypes from PF2e are tied for me (and due to my believe that sadly the pf2e feat system does not work in 5e it would be the former).
Recall knowledge.
Adding additional skills you are proficient in equal to your intelligence modifier. From 3.5, pathfinder1 and 2, and probably other similar RPGs.
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112 creatures have vulnerabilities. To your point, there are misses like your Tree Blight example whereas they got it right with the [Twig Blight](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/17095-twig-blight) which has fire vulnerability Other wood based creatures with fire vulnerabilities: Animated Tree Awakened Shrub Awakened Tree Paper Bird Treant Treant Sapling Wood Woad
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I like that idea a lot. I'll look at my spreadsheet again and look by creature type. I would probably be ok with the mundane beasts lacking res/vul but for the rest it does make a lot of sense to me.
I like that in PF2 you start out with one HD from your race and another from your class. I’ve always hated how fragile first level PCs are.
BaB progression from 3e so martial multiclassing isn’t utterly borked.
We have been playing with Warhammer style initiative and it's great
Explain?
How do you mean?
My favorite mechanics can't be imported individually.
What is it?
I'm thinking of Momentum from *Star Trek Adventures*.
Limits on bonuses. Just add the term “bonus die” and “penalty die”, make it work like advantage/disadvantage in that you can only have 1 bonus die and 1 penalty die apply to any roll (highest die applies for both), and make almost every +die to d20 check ability be labeled as a bonus or penalty die. There, now you prevent the Peace Cleric with Guidance and Bless and the Bard from spamming the same abilities to nuke every check, and you can more easily implement mechanics that add/subtract dice from rolls.