For spells: I want a "general arcane," and "general divine," and a "general primal/natural" spell list, then individual spell lists for each class. So all arcane classes can pick from the general arcane list AND their own, etc. I like this because it makes it easier to know what spells are unique to each class at a glance, makes understanding spell lists easier for new players, and is actually basically already how things are done just without the labels.
with how Wizard's is going by blending so many exceptions to the general spell lists, instead of the rules, I doubt that will happen. Artificers get 'divine' healing spells and there's quite a lot of overlap with the new expanded spell lists found in Tasha's.
I feel like the Artificer could really do with it's own spells. I love the flavour, but it needs its own spells that scale properly rather than just feeling like half a class.
It has its own list, they just didn't give it any unique spells. It's any easy fix. Fully unique spell lists, though, gets you part way to 4E, and you don't want to have 3 spells that are basically the same thing when we can instead just have the same spell on all 3 lists.
Yeah, the armorer and alchemist failed on their face. They need something else, Pathfinder with it's bombs was something. Not sure what, but the solution is, but they need a bit of planning.
@@jocelyngray6306 To be clear, I don't think it should have an entirely unique spell list, many of it's options currently do fit, I just think it should have some unique options that lean into certain aspects like the support role that allow it to stay relevant at higher levels during combat.
The best part about removing the "choose your targets" mechanic for some AoE spells is that you can add it right back in as a class feature, feat, or magic item. If you're an Evocation Wizard then yeah maybe it is reasonable that you can pick and choose who gets hit by your Fireball, let the Sorcerer spend metamagic points to be able to avoid hitting their allies, make one of the items your players loot from the dragon's hoard a Circlet of Careful Spell Placement, etc.
Talking about evocation wizard vs careful spell sorcerer - they should really even them out. No damaging friends for free or using up a resource to give friends a higher chance to get half damage? That's so annoying
I literally never knew that was a rule. We always played it where if an ally is in your spell path, they're hit. Lol what's the point of the evocation wizard ability if literally everyone does it?
@@darev2335 It's only certain spells that have the "avoid your allies" built in, most of them don't. It's just kinda weird that sometimes you can and sometimes you can't, so Cody's point was to remove the exceptions and just make it consistent.
@@matthewblanchard9805 3 years is also the amount of time 5e was in playtest. I would be very surprised if WotC isn't ramping up for a 6e playtest in the next year or so.
@@lovelandfrogman2136 Yes, since Jeramy Crawford and co are kinda bad at their jobs...but even just listening to some community feedback would be appreciated from the company making the game...y'know.
The biggest change I want for D&D 6e is more high level adventures. There are so many amazing high CR creatures but I don’t want to have them resigned to homebrew campaigns and one shots
@@adrianmalinowski1073 the thing is it shouldn’t have to be. Having access to the best powers of a class and being able to use high level spells against legendary creatures SHOULDN’T be boring. 6e should make adventures geared to players getting some actual power
BTW: i think you are leaning to heavy on combat tactic. that is the part of the game that has more development. if we are going to get a 6e. i would love them to focus a little on the other aspects of the game.. give more love to exploration, and social encounters... we have really almost no support from the books on that aspects.
Sounds like you should play 4E. It had a full set of rules for pure skill based encounters granting encounter experience without combat. Social interaction or crafting or trying to solve a puzzle. Whatever you may want to make the players do. There was a system for rolls and challenges where the whole party would be working toward a goal and no one was doing anything combat related.
@@zero11010 i did play 4e and i didn't enjoy it at all. i had been playing D&D and other RPG since 90's so, and i'm yet waiting to see a really good social encounters mechanics. i did like skill challenges in general, (but they are not exclusive to 4e) but they do not work fine for most social encounters.. I think d&d 6e would benefit a lot of having well polished rules about reputation, factions, social influence, etc. ( i know this is really HARD to put into rules. believe me, i tried and it didn't worked :P )
@@eliasvernieri That's too bad. I had a lot of fun both running and playing 4E. The skill based system for encounters was a lot of fun. I'm with you on how long I've been playing. I grew up playing in the early 90s with first edition games with older friends and that turned into 3.5 in high school and college. That lead to 4E which I loved deeply, and now 5E which is fine, but I miss a lot of the details of 4E. You make a player give an in game reason for the skill they're trying to apply. This is supposed to be all role play. Players will make up a historical story from their homeland that reinforces their point ... and then you let them roll a history check and that will apply to the skill challenge. It's an in game reward for role play at the table. It was wonderful! That system allowed you to set up a whole session or even a whole campaign that never needed to use combat and still allowed for character advancement without using pure house rules. I also really liked the 4E system for traps giving experience points. It would basically associate experience points with each trap as if it was a monster. That allowed you to insert them either into a fight and know if you were unbalancing that fight, or in between fights and keep players on their toes.
@@zero11010 I get it. i dont use XP at all. and each time the characters arrive to a place where they will have a good rest and some free time. i ask the players if they want to lvl up.. ( that's the whole thing :P ) "you don't lvl up until you all agree on leveling up, and you have a confortable and safe place to rest for a few days" and about skills challenges, sure... i use those.. and they are more "prominent" on most of my games than monsters. i have fewer combats than most DM i know, but each one is very unique and challenging, and they are story driven.
@@eliasvernieri Sounds great, man! If you enjoy D&D podcasts with a different feel you may like the college humor postcast on Dimension 20. Specifically, the 6 episode series with Matt Mercer as a player.
i call it the MMO response to becoming a popular game, making monster sless dangeorus, so bad player sdont die, but give the monster smor ehealth so idiots think it was epic.
To be fair, I've never seen it work well, and I've played since AD&D. In my homebrew world I've allowed my two sticker to create some of his own maneuvers as a battle master, that add more flavor to his two weapon fighting.
Check out The Dungeon Coach's video on Duel Wielding in 5e. I haven't tried it myself yet, but it's the first great idea I've seen regarding Two-weapon fighting in D&D. :)
I'm weirdly freaked out about the idea of being around for a change of editions! I played 2e, then was out of the game for almost 20 years, then 5e. A new edition coming out while I'm playing the current one, I don't know how I'll cope!
I did same as you.I played from D&D to AD&D to 2E and then to 2: Options… each one built upon the last. So it was more like a logical progression and less like an entire paradigm shift. I wasn’t impressed with 3rd edition and 4th edition was WotC’s pathetic attempt at making WoW into D&D… which amounts to it just being pure trash. 5E was as if WotC realized how good 2E and it’s Options was, distilled it into what 5E is today. Removed the clutter, streamlined the approach, and voila! Ive a bad feeling 6e will consist of a lot of what we’ve seen with Strahd… people getting their panties in a bunch and demanding the world of D&D be more politically correct… because that makes sense: politically correct fantasy realms. Shoot me now.
I personally feel like secret death saves isn't a great solution because players feel like they lose control over situations (even if it is still just random). It isn't the worst solution, but it feels more like a band aid on a broken system than an truly solid design change.
I would say openly rolling death saves builds the tension. "Heck, hes failed twice, we need to heal him now!" In secret you have no idea if hes passed or failed, so near death and nearly fine feel equal.
@@Wertbag99 I think that's kind of the point of doing it in secret. If the party is in the middle of a battle, would anyone really be able to tell if the unconscious party member is close to death or close to stabilizing without actively checking or something? I would say not. Someone needs to get to the downed character and heal or stabilize them and not be like "well, he's rolled a 19 and a 16, so he'll be fine for at least another round."
You said something related to this without really calling this out directly. Encounter design in 5E is garbage. I’ve played 5E since it launched and no game master runs the 6-8 medium and hard encounters in a day (page 84 DMG). No one does it. Then everyone .. this channel included … seems to be totally surprised that when they don’t follow the rules on combats that that the players aren’t challenged appropriately. You have identified that you want some things to hit harder. That’s not the real problem that needs to be fixed. The real problem is that NO ONE is doing combats as the book intends. No one should be surprised that when you balance monsters for 6-8 fights per day with two short rests then let the players do 2-4 fights per day with 2-3 short rests that players are having an easy time and monsters feel weak. This is the lynchpin that is setting up other problems with encounters. You cannot possibly change monster design without first changing this.
No one follows this because fights can take longer than one hour, maybe even two or three hours depending on the amount of enemies, player attention and experience, DM experience and preparation, or if the players are roleplaying ore something. I had a boat vs boat pirate encounter last 4 hours once. That was a memorable battle, but took way too long. Doing 6-8 fights per day would make either sessions last for ever, or you would have to split a single day into multiple sessions where keeping track of health, spells, etc. is not cumbersome, but boring. So the idea of making combats deadlier and keeping them deadlier as you level up is a good alternative to campaigns where there is only one or two combats a day, or per short rest. It also engages players more into the current battle. Just my two cents.
@@diegomizaelcalderongonzale4425 you’re right. Why do you have to do a whole in game day in one session? Ideally each combat encounter can be started and finished in a single session … more than one may be nice, too. I disagree with the tedium of tracking hit points across multiple encounters. That’s the game. Players don’t generally have that much to keep track of. Most campaigns don’t really go above level 10. So you’re looking at maybe a handful of spells slots and maybe 3 class based abilities that recharge on a short vs long rest. And maybe an item or two with an ability with limited usages. Plus hit points and hit dice. I don’t know … I feel like that’s why I play with a pencil and an eraser. I hear you though. It’s a huge change in game intention. And NO ONE plays the game with 6-8 encounters per day. If nothing else the fact that NO ONE plays the game as they intended it means they did this poorly.
@Andrew Adams I don’t think it’s inherently a bad design to expect 6-8 encounters in a day. I think that CAN be totally fine. I also think that would have been easier in 4E with so many at will and encounter based options. But the casuals revolted and history only remembers their complaints. So, in 5E they went closer to 3.5 in terms of turn options to keep from hurting the poor little minds of the casuals with choices. (You can’t tell, but I’m playing a violin to make it extra sad for the casuals) So, now you’re in 5E as a warlock at level 3 with 2 spell slots to use in 2-4 encounters before you rest to regain them. That’s the intention. You’re a wizard with 3 first level spell slots and 1 second level spell slot (or whatever) to use on the 6-8 encounters for the whole day. That’s a lot closer to 3.5 where every caster was a shitty archer with no DEX for most of the day and had one or two turns with a huge spell otherwise. That’s what players said they wanted to go back to. So, that’s the direction they went with 5E. It’s hard for anyone with healing spells to do anything but heal if you get 6-8 fights and have 5 spells slots for all of your healing and all your buffing and debuffing and also all your offensive spells. That’s closer to 3.5 than 4E … that’s what players wanted. Expecting a party to do 6-8 fights in a day shouldn’t inherently be bad. Most fights are like 30 seconds long? Maybe 60 seconds. That’s less than 8 minutes of combat in a day. That’s shorter than most MMA or boxing matches. And, each of those 30-60 second bursts are spread out a bit. That CAN be ok. In practice the players and game masters collectively said “I don’t want to follow your rules” and wizards of the coast never thought to respond with … “ok here’s the monster design you should be using.” Or if they thought it they didn’t say it and let a bunch of game masters who are infamously poor at creating content try to build their own monster system while relentlessly complaining about how the monsters are bad (when they should have been upset with the challenge rating system AND also the player balance that is centered around it).
I recently joined a game where my dm was new, and I and my bf (2 of the 3 players) were new, so our dm started with the sunless citadel module, and now at level 3 we’re done and doing her homebrew stuff. Our DM modified it even to be less combat but in sunless citadel there was definitely 6-8 encounters, easily, and as a level 1-2 I was usually spent before that (and I’m playing a barbarian so knowing when to rage at a good time was really hard, plus as the character in the party designed to get hit, I definitely did that). Thinking to the one session we’ve had so far outside of the module, it was a 100% roleplay. There weren’t even very many roles (maybe 3 or 4 ability checks the whole session). I’m sure combat will happen eventually, but dm did make it clear there will not be as much combat, and she even cut out a lot of combat in the module portions. Which I did appreciate because we were there forever. All of this to say, I think 6-8 encounters is very possible when you’re doing a dungeon crawl. However, I don’t think that’s what most people like anymore. The roleplay aspect, and the social pillar seem far more popular now. I think having more support for those aspects and rebalancing around the reality that 6-8 is not a number most people do would solve some issues.
It's even more that. WotC did something wrong in the very beginning- they put the monsters under the same condition as the pc's (proficiency and all of that) but they don't give the monsters enough abilities and potential as the pc's have. It boils down to many other mechanical problems that 5e doesn't tackle, and I hope 6e will fix. The spell slog system has to change, monster design needs it's own system, AC & initiative are good IMO, since they serve their technical intention in encounters. I think many things are done very well, even the skill system is fine by me. But yea.. encounters should feel more deadly by a lot. Also there are many grey areas they should address at 6e
Our table has used the opportunity attack when standing from prone in melee, really enjoy it and of course it applies to PCs and NPCs. For the opportunity attack on spells, would you agree that casting a melee attack spell should not trigger opportunity attack? Like make that a feature of those spells.
That has been a common request from the party. Or also casting the spell before you get into melee, which was the practice in older additions. Or having your familiar deliver touch spells. We also had the use of a bonus action to cast defensively. (Although, we have since removed bonus actions).
@@ILikeIcedCoffee When I heard Taking 20s case to remove bonus actions I was convinced lol. For a while I allowed players to slow down bonus actions to actions when needed not even realizing it was against RAW, then I learned it wasn’t RAW but continued allowing it bc honestly it made sense and had not broken the game in any way.
@@Retlaw32 The good news is when I rewrote my classes, rogue had already had cunning action removed, which was one of my players first comments when I suggested removing bonus actions. He hadn't even realized it at being level 3.
thats sort of how it works in pathfinder actually spells trigger attacks of oppertunity but the "melee attack" portion of the spell doesnt, and the way that spells with attacks work is you can cast the spell then attack at any point in your turn meaning you cast the spell holding it, run into melee, then use its attack and it counts as a normal attack you are still incentivised not to cast spells in melee, but spells with melee attacks are still useable
@@crowgoblin what? Rolling for Initiative was all the way back in the Basic Box Set but it used d6 and you got a plus or minute 1 based on your DEX score. The d20 version has been around since AD&D…so “roll for initiative” has been part of D&D forever.
I like to give my "big beefy baddies" more than one initiative counts so they act more than once a turn and feel more epic while balancing the action economy. Yes, I know some monsters have legendary actions, but it just "feels" better to have them swing more and only the super large monsters tend to have legendary actions.
This reminds me of Dragon Quest 8 where bosses and more powerful enemies near the end of the game would get 2 attacks/actions (one or two bosses had 3 attacks/actions) on their turn, but party members only got 1 action. Of course one or two "quick" low level monsters would sneak in random turns where they got to take 2 actions instead of of just one. Those kept you on your toes during the low-level grind.
I'd love to see them bringing back prestige classes. It's doesn't feel like you have earned your ability to be "unique". It was one of my favorite things about 3.5
they kinda tried with UA but it was so dependent on the DM that you kinda had to have them give you levels in the PrC kinda like how Wild Magic is dependent on the DM which is why I don't like that either
Opportunity attacks on standing up could get a little abusable when any strength based class can shove prone most monsters with good chance of success at will. Now everyone always shoves prone on your first attack, for free advantage on your next attack
Use your action to take disengage, that allows you stand, and use a bonus action, but not just jump back into the fray. That is why I do Attacks of Opportunity in a lot of situations, because many game mechanics are simply not used because of things being too easy for the players.
@@O-D-X Generally, if the fighter/barbarian is trading one of his 2+ attacks per turn for a monsters entire action and advantage for their next attack and possibly allied attacks, they are coming out ahead. You are probable better off eating the opportunity attack to stand up and still acting. Prone is pretty weak in 5e because it's very easy to apply to monsters, but less so for monsters to apply to pcs because of how multiattack works and because few monsters have athletics prof. Giving opportunity attacks when you stand up makes it much stronger, and buffs fighters and barbarians significantly.
That was how Trip Monks were broken in 3.5 for sure. On the flip side, SHOULD the average animal or monster be intelligent enough to avoid taking such an attack? If the answer is no, then the attack should be allowed. If the answer is yes, then it should be up to the DM to show the player that "nope. Your opponent is too smart for that". Bring back the 3.5 Disengage as a 5 ft step directly away with no Att of Opp and then it costs the move to stand back up.
In that case, I'd ask how the player is shoving the monster. Are they using shield, or a shoulder, just how? I could argue that your shove could provide an opportunity for a monster to either dodge or attack you. You could be literally ramming your character into an attack. Also, it could be done in a way that for a "Shove" to work, you'd need to grapple, or use a shield. I then also don't see a reason why we couldn't return the "Shove" action to it's default, in a Fighter or Barbarian class (around level 10). Of course, going RAW this couldn't happen, but in the spirit of changing stuff, it could work.
@@madness1931 Congratulations, you've returned us to the 3.5 grappling/combat maneuver system that was an overcomplicated mess that you either built a cheese build around or completely ignored. The way grappling and shoving works in 5e is great. It's simple enough for new players to understand, and can be engaged with by anyone with a good strength without needing a ton of character resources expended, while still offering enough potential upside (permanent prone) that picking up say athletics expertise to be better at it is a valid choice. This whole line of thought, starting with OA's on standing up, just brings back a part of 3.5 that never worked well. Realistic grappling rules are awful unless the entire game is about one-on one fistfights. 5e's system may be abstract, but it works without taking up half the combat chapter. It doesn't need to be made more complicated.
there's a couple of brand spanking new 5e books coming down the pipeline. I think a 5.5 is way more likely than 6e, so much content and services like DnD beyond are riding on 5e, I know that change should be attempted when the business is successful but 5e doesn't feel like it's done yet.
You hit the nail on the head with the adventuring day mechanics. Rarely does it fit naturally for my players to have several combat encounters in one day, yet literally everything in the game is balanced to it. Most of my homebrew rules are simply to counterbalance this issue so the game is playable.
Pathfinder 2e has a great skill system, where you improve in chosen skills as you level, eventually becoming Legendary in them and unlocking ludicrous feats, like Scare to Death for Intimidate
@@dangerousbeans2907 Really gonna need examples there, bud. PF2e has plenty of interesting choices, combining classes and archetypes gives you tons of choices, and the 3 action system really opens up the possibilities
@@TheBoondockGamer73 Pathfinder (and 3e and variants') skill systems in a nutshell: 'Either you spend your entire build on a skill making it competitive with the escalating DCs and opposing monsters... ...or you become a wizard and ignore skills entirely and just do it automatically with a wave of your fingers.' 3e and Pathfinder have degenerate skill systems--you shouldn't be reliant on +20 variances or more on a 20-sided die. Bounded Accuracy makes skills better.
I admit I was thinking about some of the reasons that 5e never actually did dungeon delving very well recently. I think part of the problem is that characters are just stunningly resilient in this edition. While 1e/2e's 'death on falling to zero' was punishing, it also gave a sense of actually being a bit terrified of delving into places unprepared. You feared that dark corridor that sounds were coming from. That's psychologically not the case anymore. Deep down players know they have lots of chances to get back up, especially at 1 hp again and simply continue on. Even if they're struck for 35 more points of damage, they simply fall down, and start the 'death saves' process all over again. I like the idea of death saves sticking with you. I've been toying with introducing the exhaustion system in as well. I've also pondered running a 1 or 2 shot using a modified 2e option of going into minuses, and having the cure spells only get you to 1hp maximum and having disadvantage from a weakened state until you finish a long rest. A true heal spell would, of course, bring you back up to normal, but its a high level spell. I also agree partly about monsters needing more 'oomph' in some way. I think it would require a massive rework on how CR works and the expectations of what parties encounter per day. I'd like to see the 'expected' number of combats trashed entirely. It should be up to the party to decide if they feel they can go on. But it would require a lot of fundamental shifts to how monsters and enemies are designed. An ogre in 5e is actually less deadly towards a low level party than they were in old editions, even though the 5e ogre has way more hp on average. Adding to that, I'd like to see 'bloodied' brought back from 4e, and enemies having special powers keyed off of that. Its one of the few things (along with minions) that I miss from 4e. Creatures felt more interesting to run when they had interesting powers/effects they could unleash. But I get that its personal opinion at that point. Lastly, I'd like to see weapon proficiency reworked. A fighter at first level shouldn't have the same chance to hit as a wizard with a quarterstaff if both had baseline strength. I always imagined non-warcaster arcanist types wouldn't have top tier training in weaponry as well. But that is, again, personal preference. Love the vids. I agree on the magic items too. MOAR!
All of my homebrew bosses have "bloodied powers", and some of the special/gimmicky monsters as well. Also some bosses and monster have special kill conditions. This things I reimplemented because I missed them that much from previous editions.
And resource management just isn't a thing in Dnd5e. Everyone ignores encumbrance and no one wants to count torches... well, everyone has darksight so torches, we don't need no stinking torches.
My death saving throw house rule: When you reach 0 HP, for every time you have previously reached 0 HP (since your last long rest) you automatically fail 1 death saving throw. At it's core I like that this rule leans into the resource attrition of DnD creating difficult choices for players. Players may yo-yo once or twice, but they will also consider the danger of small amounts of healing that are just setting up an even more dangerous situation. I feel that this also lets my healer players shine more: many players can heal for a little bit (or any player with a healing potion) but only players specialized in healing can really bring characters from the brink of death back to a safe amount of HP (and a healer isn't optimized by being able to throw out a level 1 healing word the most times in a day, or the most good berries in a day).
@@christianacquasanta1472 an interesting thought, and I do want reaching 0 HP to be a scary event, I feel that even 1 level of exhaustion with disadvantage on ability checks to be too harsh for my liking. I want the rogue who tripped the horrible trap and went to 0 to consider how safe it is to continue looking for traps or if it'd be better for the fighter to look for now. I don't want that rogue to be unable to stealth for the rest of the day. or a high level party just uses one of many ways to deal with exhaustion and now we're back to reaching 0 not meaning very much. but maybe something like "travel exhaustion"? during an encounter you're not exhausted while exploring the cleric who was previously on lookout now has disadvantage on their perception check. Or 2 levels of exhaustion and now the party is hex-crawling at half speed. I feel like there is a nugget of something really cool.
@@Bobodia4444 Pillars of Eternity dels with it using "injuries" of the damage type that downed you up to 3 Fourth time you're dead straight Injuries might be like half speed, disadvantage on X ability score. It's more book-keeping tho I would do it in reverse, and use injuries like a travel thing. Daily encounter is an ability check. Fail the check you're injuried or the cart is damaged (also in my campaign you can only short rest while traveling between regions, it's also so that I can stack encounter on the road without them going nova) One of the injuries might be an exhaustion too, you pushed the cart down for 4 hours because it got stack, on top of general traveling fatigue Something like this d100 (except combat others are skill checks) 1-20 combat 21-40 Beneficial 41-50 Netral 51-60 Detrimental 61-100 Impedement
A simple solution to prevent the "+27 to hit" scenario: Same as temp HP, you only get one additive bonus, so it is assumed you use the best one. Additive is not the same, so you can stack that with advantage.
I use RAW for death, but I spike it a little with 1- Secret death saves (rolling behind the screen) and 2- Intelligent Roleplay of the monstrs (confirming their kills, targeting healers, etc)
I've never understood why it's such a taboo for monsters to confirm kills in 5e. I did it once with some hobgoblins (as the dm) and my players got really upset..
@@sagebauer1077 Well that's on them. Why on earth would a monster knock a target unconscious and just be like, "ok I beat them…time to let them recover while I move on to fight another one"
@@sagebauer1077 Largely it's an issue because it feels like metagaming. Here's the thing, the vast majority of non-PCs in the world die at 0 hp, and don't even have healing magic. Look at the rest of the monster manual, hardly anything has healing spells, nothing really fights like the PCs fight. So when you have monsters ignore an active PC to hit a downed one, you're basically having your NPCs react based on knowledge of PC tactics, something they should (in most scenarios) be totally unfamiliar with, because NPCs just don't fight that way. If the hobgoblins were dueling with a rival clan of orcs, nor NPC caravan guards, confirming kills is a terrible tactic. It's literally only a good tactic against the PC party, and nobody else in the world.
I Literally just implemented in my newest game of 5E that standing up from prone and picking up an item or interacting with items not on your person provoke Attacks. it was something i also like from 3.5 it also gives melee users a bit more to do since i also allow disarming attacks. i also agree that there needs to be a tiny bit of numerical additions, the game already supports this concept (Archery fighting style +2 and Cover uses +2 and +5) it be very simple to just have +2 bonus and +5 bonus. id also love for skills to be a bit more numeric (+1 +2 and +3 and get rid of expertise) and mix the bounded accuracy with how older editions allowed upgrading skills. I like how multiclassing works in this edition for casters (how spell slots work), i know martial need a little tweaking but i think a lot of that has to do with the inate design on how classes work in general. i wanna see 10 levels (stop doing 20 its harder to balance) and have each class gain features from the base Class EVERY level. and then have things like Sub class / sub class features, Feats and ASI be based on Character level. this opens up a lot more ability to customize and allows sub classes to be shared among classes. also stop making just sub classes ... 7 years and we only ever got one new class it feels kinda bad. I also love 4E's "4 AC system" of AC / Fort / Ref / Will and how they acted as AC's rather than saves and allowed players to pick what stat used what (this made things like int and str a bit more useful) but just use 5E bounded accuracy so it doesnt get so hard to hit later like 4E
To me, it makes more sense that if one falls unconscious they aren't going to snap awake, it takes more than 6 seconds to wake up. I feel they should remain prone on the turn that they have been revived, maybe with the dodge action, then able to get up on their next.
As a way to balance the martial classes vs. casters, I have introduced the weapon mastery system from BXMI. With some simple modifications it allows also for super character customization: with the same weapon one martial character can do so much more than a caster, not just attack twice. As a caster learns new spells, a fighter improves the damage or learn tricks with his weapon.
@@yeahnaaa292 it’s quite complex but essentially there are different levels of weapon mastery and with each of them the character gains either bonus to attack, to ac or special abilities. In the link below you should be able to find an excerpt of the original rules. It might need some streamlining and adjustments but it’s really cool. www.pandius.com/w_mast2.html
The Warlock class in general. There wasn't a lot going on until Hexblade. Just EB everything. Then Hexblade activates God mode. Just make the features of the Hexblade Eldritch Invocations with level and Pact of Sword prerequisites.
I don’t think I agree with this. Fiend pact is every bit as good as hexblade. The core of what you’re saying is that warlock needs help. I think their spell system is pretty lame. Especially if you play the game as intended. 3-4 encounters then a short rest then 3-4 encounters is what the game should be balanced for. Warlock gets 2 spell slots per long/short rest for most of the game. That is lame, and that’s what they balanced the game for.
I had a ton of fun making two different warlocks, one fought in melee and the other was a classic fire caster. I think there is plenty going on with Warlock between flavor and play style, but they do need a little something to entice them to do more than EB.
@@Jstar95175 what would that be? The balance of the class is founded upon having fewer spells memorized, and fewer but higher level spell slots available that regenerate faster. The only things you can do with that are … * More offensive abilities that are usually every round. This can be more equally effective cantrips. * More offensive abilities that use a totally separate mechanic like channel divinity or wild shape which can be a lot to track. * fundamentally change the class. Eldritch blast is by far the best cantrip in the game and with agonizing blast it is almost as good as some first level spell slots. Does it need to be changed? What’s your archer based ranger going to do? Shoot his bow every single round? What’s your axe wielding barbarian going to do? Swing his axe every round? How about the rogue? Fighter? Monk? Why is the war locking focusing on eldritch blast so different?
@@zero11010 First off, all of those classes have interesting variety in different ways and don't default to one thing. I've literally made a ranger that didn't use ranged weapons and he was just as much fun to play as an archer ranger, for example. Like I said, I made two very different warlocks and it was fun, EB doesn't take away from that. However, when you look at all the customization that Warlocks have with their invocations and such, it's obvious they are supposed to be highly varied or else why the hell is there an Archfey Patron who doesn't have anything to do with damage, basically, and doesn't synergize with EB? I think if they took a lateral approach with equally strong Warlock cantrips not focused on straight damage, they'd have more options. Something that can consistently debuff enemies very well is an example I literally just thought of. WotC put actual time and effort into this, as opposed to me, a passionate hobbyist, so I'm sure they could come up with something viable that would help promote zoning enemies, stealth, overcoming others in social interactions, etc. They have the skeleton of allowing Warlocks to do all that, but EB is so powerful in combat and basically necessary when you have no spell slots in combat at higher levels. I don't have a solution, these are just my thoughts. I don't design tabletop games
@@Jstar95175 I appreciate your thoughtful response! I'm not sure if I agree with your point about archfey doesn't syntergize with eldritch blast. It seems like the intention is that neither the pact, nor the patron really impacts the eldritch blast which was clearly intended to be the bread and butter for the class (minor exception for the pact of the blade which can combine with thirsting blade to be a low power gish character where they have melee ability like an eldritch knight has casting ability). Now, the archfey is mechanically less offensively minded than a lot of other patrons. For sure. But, that doesn't have anything to do with eldritch blast (just like the fiend and the great old one -- temp hit points for dark one's blessing means most of the time it doesn't' do anything). I absolutely LOVE your suggestion of having support related cantrips that are more like vicious mockery and intended to buff/debuff every turn rather than intending to do damage. That is a total rockstar idea. I could see that being related to the pact rather than the patron so you could have an archfey who is focused on eldtrich blast, or a weapon, or these buffing/debuffing spells just like you might find a fiend focused warlock with offensive spells, or devilish weapons, or curses to weaken enemies or whatever. I would be nervous about these support related cantrips because they seem to be hard to make. The major support related cantrips I can think of (for combat) are true strike, blade ward, resistance, and vicious mockery. And, true strike and blade ward are mechanically a waste of a memorized spell. But, the idea behind each are solid, they just needed to be balanced to be better than mundane actions. Vicious mockery has a neat effect but it does such an embarrassing amount of damage (which can be needed for a spell that has multiple effects). You're very right that eldritch blast is a requirement. It's possible to use hexblade to be about as good as any other warlock with eldritch blast and agonizing blast, but hexblade isn't really better, it's realistically a 1D8+4 weapon attack instead of 1D10+4 and then two of those at level 5. But at level 11 eldritch blast pulls ahead again and again at level 17). Even swapping 1D8 for 2D6 doesn't keep up with eldritch blast. But ... WHY is eldritch blast so good? It's the best damage type in the game with a huge range and instead of doing multiple dice to the same target it's multiple blasts to impact multiple targets each imparting a separate spell casting modifier bonus. This is WAY better than anything else. The reason it's so good is to balance how few spell casting slots the warlock gets. This is why people who argue that you don't "have" to take eldritch blast might as well be saying you can play the game with a 10 in all of your attributes ... yeah, you CAN do that.
For AoO on spells, I like the option that spells provoke aoo if and only if the spell level is higher or equal to half your proficiency bonus (or some other number). Makes thematic sense, as basics spells you mastered a long time ago are efforteless to cast, and creates interesting strategy.
My house rule for both 5e and Starfnder is when you get up from 0HP you are stunned are your first turn back up. Standing up provoking attacks of opportunity.
Watching this I got an idea for attunement: you have as many attunement slots as your proficiency bonus, but more powerful items take up more slots. That way at high levels a random uncommon magic item with attunement isn't so bad.
That's weak as hell. Proficiency only ever reaches a +6. So 6 slots then what would you have items? Common = 1, Uncommon = 2, Rare = 3, Very Rare = 4, Legendary = 5, Artifact = 6? A player could never attune to more than one Very Rare + item, if you're thinking about making it some like C/U = 1 R/VR = 2 L/A = 3. You're still nerfing L/A items, but making R/VR and U too strong, being able to attune to 6 Uncommon Items means; Ring of Warmth, Cloak of Protection, Bracers of Archery, Brooch of Shielding, A Weapon of Warning, Headband of Intellect. To name a collection of items that would be too strong.
Common magic items (not including wonderous) don't have attunment. 5e is designed with the idea that magic items in general aren't that common to come across. Magic shops (if it exists) in major cities sell commons and maybe a few random uncommons. Everything else you find in the wild. Loot tables are random. Items for sale are random. If a DM hands the player the books and lets them pick whatever they want there are bigger issues at play for that table.
@@dsan05 : Yeah it's definitely one of the better ideas in 5E. I like the idea that only a few magic items are super relevant, as opposed to a character wearing a giant assortment of minor trinkets.
I like The Dungeon Coach's idea of not making every other save in the game a wisdom saving throw. Int and Chr need some love in that area. Int just needs some love in general, the only high int character I've ever played was a wizard.
Love the content as always. I really really like the end part where you responded to the commenter suggestions. It gives a better back and forth for sure.
Characters with no or light armor should be able to calculate their AC using their CON and/or STR instead of/ in addition to their DEX. I feel the current AC calculations limits our build options, forcing us to play high DEX wizards etc. or suffer from having a dangerously low AC. Also it doesn’t seem realistic that a character who fights a maximum of a few minutes each day would wear 50+ pounds of heavy armor for the entire day, or carry a shield with them everywhere, including the bar or the bathhouse.
Requiring a three level hexblade dip would go a long way to fix it. I've been seeing more and more hexlbade dips and I roll my eyes if it's the first time they're trying this, but if they've run a dip before I usually ask them to do something else and not be that guy.
Just fold the Hex Warrior feature into the Pact of the Blade, so any Pact of the Blade warlock can use Cha to attack with their pact weapon. Make the Hexblade's Curse feature usable +prof per long rest rather than once per short rest.
@@deathslinky2768 I'm heavily considering to ditch short rests and make all those places that say "per short rest" be "4 times a day" (or multiply the number by 4) since that is the designed amount of short/long rest designed into 5e. Then make the hit dice portion of short rest into a "healing rest" that cost 20 minutes per hit dice spent with half the time consumed if they use a charge of the healer's kit per dice consumed (or something like it)
@@DaDunge I can see that. It's still wild good. I'll admit I've run a hexblade paladin I referred to as the Smoting Chainsaw. It's stupid powerful and gimmicky. I'm not sure what the solution is. I think multiclassing in general needs to be adjusted.
I use raw mostly except you can choose to not be unconscious and can take a action at the price of a failure (still have to death save at end). I did this bc dying was boring and allowed players to potentially make that ultimate sacrifice
Maybe for the issue of bigger enemies feeling weak or underwhelming, perhaps have a rule that creatures Large or bigger can split up their multiattack option…for instance, instead of hitting 3 times in one turn, they attack once on their turn and then gain 2 legendary(-ish) actions to attack between the players’ turns. It wouldn’t alter the strength/CR of the creature but would make its action economy feel more threatening.
Ive seen mercer do this when the party faces agains a single big creature (whatever it may be) and i added it to my games. Just giving them legendary attack actions goes a long way into increasing the difficulty of a combat
I also like an idea for an earned point system via leveling where you can unlock new skill proficiency and gain experience maybe a cost chart based off your state modifiers and you get a point each level or get a point each ASI and it costs 1 point to gain a proficiency and 2 points to gain expertise.
I'd love to see weapons get different perks or "granted abilities" to encourage unique weapon choices. Or at least put them on equal footing so players aren't punished for using a "sub-optimal" weapon. Right now it seems like every character just defaults to the same "best in slot" option. Pathfinder 2.0 did have some nice ideas in weapon diversity.
I agree with this, but giving every weapon a unique bonus could get very convoluted. Right now a martial class will often pick "i use a greatsword" or "i use a greataxe" because they have the highest damage iirc. Seeing more PCs with lances/glaives/warhammers/morningstars is very flavourfull, but to me, picking those is either a sacrifice of efficiency for flavour, or if you want to cheese (my current PC is a cheesy bugbear with a glaive and polearm master, 15ft melee with opportunity attack if they approach)
Yes this can be convoluted.. but we already have a type of keywords system in-place. so just lean into that for weapons.. And all you'd really need to do is make certain weapons perform better at certain circumstances. For example: Blowdarts are [Silent], meaning that attacking with them does not reveal your position (on a hit or miss) Axe weapons are [Brutal], meaning that when they are used on a prone target, and you crit, you get an extra die of damage (yes like Barbarian's Brutal critical; it also leans into axes being 'executioner' weapons) Flails and Maces are [Shield-breakers], they ignore the bonus to AC from a shield. Basically we wanna make the weaker weapons maybe on the niche or situational side, buffing them so they're not ignored, but have at least some utility that might make a player pick them. I've personally been working on something similar to make Armor feel more diverse, and hopefully takes away some of that Dexterity-super-stat.. Yes this would add some complexity, but this is all complexity that should mostly take up time before combat rolls around. Keywords in my experience are easier for ppl to remember, especially if the keyword itself already eludes to what it does. For example, When I refer to Armor that gives a stealth disadvantage, I just say "The armor is [Noisy]". Armor with a strength requirement is [Hefty], I may specify the strength needed by explaining it as [Hefty (15)].
If you were to change how the AOE "Choose Your Target" spells, how would you change them? A lot of those spells have a long range they can be cast at. Would it be like a previous commenter said and just have the spells go in a straight line, hitting who/whatever is in the line of fire? If so, that would leave quite the trail of destruction since Fireball can travel 150ft.
I use a party initiative where the highest roller wins it for their whole party and gets to act first if they want. Players can choose when they go in relation to each other and it really opens things up for team work. But there's another little house rule that makes our combats feel even more engaging: players roll all the dice! I transcribe all monster stat blocks to index cards for quick reference before each game. Any ability that uses a roll and a modifier is converted to a DC of 10 plus said modifier (except for saving throws, which are 12 plus the appropriate modifier.) Now all spells use attacks and players have no spell DC on their sheet. When an enemy attacks the player rolls AC (1d20 + their AC modifier, which is their normal AC -10) versus the DC of the enemy's attack. A result of 1 on this roll is a critical hit from the enemy. I usually use fixed damage values as well. This does several things: 1) It always feels like the player's turn. Even when the enemies are acting, the players roll the dice. 2) Getting missed by an attack feels more victorious. Goblin missed you? You did that! 3) Combat feels faster. No silent lulls as I roll and add things up. 4) Most importantly, I don't have to feel guilty for hurting characters. Goblin killed you? You did that! :3 (Bit of a joke on that last one, but honestly I do feel bad when I roll high against the players and this does help a little.)
I'm one of those DM's that applies a level of exhaustion whenever a character drops to 0. When I ran a game several years ago, I used the lingering injuries from page 272 of the DMG, but that turned into a lot of bookkeeping. Exhaustion is simple, stacks with other effects, and is already trackable in Roll20. I agree about re-balancing monsters. If I throw a single high-CR enemy at my players, they win by having way more actions per turn than it does. Passive perception is convenient for monsters/NPC's. Instead of rolling perception checks for each of the hobgoblin guards, I just check the rogue's stealth roll against a single DC. But whenever something tries to sneak up on my players, I make them roll for it. I'll give them advantage if they're trying to be alert or disadvantage if they're distracted with something else.
Be careful throwing around exhaustion. That was raised as a suggestion. If you have one source adding a couple levels it’s no big deal. If you end up with two it’s a huge problem and 3 sources is more than deadly. You lose one level of exhaustion per day. If someone ends up at 5 or 6 levels of exhaustion they’re basically crippled for a week of game time which is hard to deal with in the middle of a dungeon. Mechanically, it’s easier to kill a level 10 adventurer and bring them back to life than to deal with 6 levels of exhaustion because your frenzy barbarian got knocked down and was injured … but still wanted to be a barbarian … and your module also has a rule about how hot the environment is being tiring and ….
Two tiny goofy suggestions here inspired by your video- 1. Take the overpowered feats (sentinel, lucky, PAM etc) and maybe even combine some or buff a tiny bit and turn those into capstone's (I imagined a fighter capstone being GWM + Sentinel or something crazy) 2. Give big bad guys or bosses or just special mobs multiple initiative? So like super quick goblin rogue captain gets to go 3rd and also 5th, rather than just everything has multi-attack. Love the video and community as always!! Big thanks!
I would like to see a number of things that people would hate me for. First off, I’d love to get rid of HP and replace it with a less granular system for health. Some systems combine an exhaustion and HP mechanic which I think would be cool for horror games. I’d also love to see all classes get reworked sort of in the style of warlock where you have a limited number of abilities you choose from that you can do nearly at will while everything else has a cost. I think that really has merit as a concept and should be expanded
In regards to the more deadly combat.... You know that the CR is balanced around 3-4 combat encounters each day, you specifically say that that isn't your play style which is valid, but then you have to adapt how you plan then, if you only want one bug fight, make the bosses higher Cr monsters.
My thoughts on capstones ( i havent played all the classes yet, but still) Artificer: as is, Barbarian: as is Bard: instead you gain unlimited Bardic inspiration Cleric: as is Druid: as is Fighter: dont know. Probably as is, but its so boring. Maybe swap with action surge so that 4th attack is 17th and as capstone you regain action surge during initiative Monk: instead, beginning of each of your turns regain 1 ki point Paladin: dependent on subclass. Good overall as is imo Ranger: have it affect any enemy isntead if favored enemy Rogue: boring like the fighter, but probably fine as is. Sorcerer: regain 1 sorcery point at the begining of your turn Warlock: as a bonus action (or full action if bonus action is overpowered) regain ANY pact spell spell slot (not mystic arcanum) Wizard: this could go a few ways. It could just be an improved spell mastery, where you can cast the two 3rd level spells at will at lowest level, but i like the following better. You can cast the 2 spells with a lower spell slot. If the spell is fireball, you can cast it with a 2nd lvl slot, but with the effects of it as a 3rd level spell. If you spend a 5th lvl spell slot, it is cast at 6th level. (If underpowered, it can instead affect all your spells, and renaimed to spell mastery while 18th level feature us renamed to signatures spell)
I have been listening to nerd poker and one of the things they did was allowed the wizard and option to make one of their 1st level spells a cantrip. I definitely liked that and it makes sense that a magic user would gain such mastery over a handful of leveled spells in that manner. Even if they got capped to a certain amount per long rest would make sense.
Could you do a deep dive into why you like opportunity attacks so much? I really liked when you used side-by-side combat examples back when you compared 5e to Pathfinder 2.0.
It's not something the game designers can actually fix. The problems with skills is within players/DMs themselves. What can they do to make Animal Handling relevant? Or Medicine? Whether skills matter or not is 100% the matter of your game. I personally don't see any problem with any skill, they all come up from time to time at my table. Even "useless" Intelligence - Investigation is one of the most commonly used skills for me. If "only 5 skills matter" - it's your problem, not game's.
@@antongrigoryev6381 well ... there is this thing with skills There really are only 3 that matter the most from my perspective as I have read 6 or 7 modules, the most occuring ones are perception, investigation, persuasion ( shall I say these are 3 most relevant skills in modules) then there are some instances where i.e stealth matters in avoiding the combat in module or insight can reveal that the NPC is lying. Other skills occure once or twice per module in average. In homebrew games you can use any of the check you want basically I had to read and tweak stories from modules to make other skills relevant or when the players call for the check ... I am not the DM that always call for the necessary checks but I leave the decision for the group and assess the situation from their description ... and so in my homebrew campaign nearly every skill had its use, yet the game mechanics on mosters and their abilities still left its mark. So IMO skill system needs a rework ... beacuse when you go to the roots of encounters or secrets it usually goes one way or another to the relevancy of perception and stealth in combat, investigation and perception in exploration, and persuasion and insight mostly in social interactions. Charisma based skills have the leading role and use in every social interaction that is true, yet persuasion is the most commonly used one, second in line are probably Dexterity based ones then Wisdom based (except for perception, which is probably most commonly used one active or passive) followed by Intelligence based ones and lastly Strength based where it is only athletics. Unless you homebrew the shit out of the world you play in, there will be only 5 most relevant skills.
@@ArmagedonSVK Again. how do you imagine they can rework it? What can they possibly do to make Animal Handling, a skill that helps you deal with animals you don't even come in contact with every day, as useful as Perception, a skill that lets you notice things? Remove former from the game altogether?
@@antongrigoryev6381 the skill system needs to be revised altogether ... first of I came to conclusion that passive skills need to be removed as it can get out of hand in 3 or 4 levels secondly the animal handling skill can be used pretty well and often if the game or rather players use mounts ... the animal handling skill is underused as almost none of the modules is using beasts as enemies or encounters as is ... even though they can make really interesting flavour in exploration parts of campaigns skill system also kind of suffers from the limitations by class restrictions and taking skilled feat is for most of the time waste of the feat, or it is taken for character flavours when build is already done. Downfall is also that the feats are optional so not every game the feats are allowed. as I read rules and skill system in 3.5e, it was better suited for modularity of characters and skills had more depth to them ... so in this case shall I say one step back = two steps forward what can they do to make other skills more relevant? ... nothing in the game mechanics but write one or two modules or some guide on Out of the combat play to encourage use of other skills such as animal handling medicine history and so on ... there is hope for that and small fraction in Tasha's in section dedicated to parleying with monsters
Hey, we use y'all here in kansas too! Edit: I really disagree about spells that select and avoid friendly targets. It's magic. It can do things that are otherwise impossible, and that's fine, and from a crunch standpoint I don't think it's that bad. There is one caveat I'd add though, only let non damaging spells for this. Fireball just blankets the area in fire and it's fun just being like, sorry bro, take this one for the team when your ally gets caught in it (maybe even on purpose). But something like fog can be something that just applies to enemies and it's fine.
For initiative, my DM uses 10+your initiative bonuses instead of rolling. It works pretty well and he doesn't have to go around the table asking all the time. He asks at the start of the session and then updates in his notes if it changed. He also gives Big Bads 2 or even 3 initiative turns depending on how tough he wants them to be.
DnD just went to the carnival with Bugs Bunny and now they're heading to the prom. I don't see deadlier and scarier being part of the 6e plan unless there's another drastic change in direction.
@Taking20 Have you ever played Heroes 3 video game. Do you remember monsters with Haste (not haste spell from 5E). They simply were put in a different group when deciding turn order. They rolled among themselves, were sorted via initiative score BUT the group with haste attribute comes before everyone else. Something like this would be easy to implement and solve the initiative problem
I love discussions like this because they've been happening for years and every time people say 6e is right around the corner. I think it really needs to be acknowledged that 6e isn't coming. It's just not. From a business perspective it makes no sense to have WoTC split their player base and stop supporting the most popular (and most profitable) edition of d&d. 5e made more money for Hasbro then any other sector of their business last year, and growth is only expected for the years to come. Historically, new editions of d&d were rolled out to reengage players who had left, and to revitalize sales when they were low. As much as we may hate it, nobody watching this video is the core seller base for WoTC. The vast majority of dnd customers are not involved with the online content cycle. That being said, I do think it's likely we will get some expanded rules at some point, like a soft 5.5. We might already be in the beginning stages of that change with Tashas introducing new race customizations and variant class features. I think we can expect more of that, even though I would prefer an overhaul of some of those core rules. First, I wish AC was lower for players, like a blanket -2 across the board. Unarmored AC should be 8 + your dex. This works well because it makes monsters more deadly from hitting more often and helps keep the player's AC somewhat similar to what the monsters have. I always hate seeing the heavily armored knight villain rocking an 18 AC when the entire party is at 20 or higher. Secondly, we need an expansion on travel rules. Don't make me do the math of calculating travel pace, distance, difficult terrain for a specific portion of that travel, and all the little number tracking from foraging, rations, and water. That system is very tedious and nobody uses it because it's not engaging. Adventures in middle earth has a great take on travel and I highly recommend using it. It gives the party choices about how they want to approach travel. Third, two weapon fighting is dumb and needs to change. You should just get an extra attack with your off hand that doesnt take a bonus action, but your damage dice should get smaller instead, or you should be less accurate. You can further balance this by giving clear and enforceable rules for drawing and stowing weapons. Additionally, literally everyone should have something else they would want in their offhand. Make what you hold in your hands a big deal and give viable alternatives to offhand attacks. Example: grappling requiring a free hand and it's actually just as good as an extra attack. Fourth, they need to give DMs more tools to hurt the players. We need more versions of Exhaustion for cold and hot climates (think frostbite and heat stroke), and poisons/diseases should be regular and deadly threats to PCs. Curses shouldn't be so easy to remove. Imagine a book full of curses, poisons, and diseases with effects and ways to remove them requiring monster parts, herbs, or rituals.
5e is going to be 8 in 2022. I have only been playing it for 1 1/2 years. Only because my kiddos showed an interest. I played basic and 2e back in the olden days. Never played 3, 3.5 or 4. From what I've seen and read you are somewhat correct. Most companies often try fix something that is still great. I like how 5e has so many upgraded rule books and has a larger room for homebrew and allowed outside content creation. Not sure what fixes a new addition could really make.
Make intelligence a stat that any character can benefit from again. In 3e and its derivatives having a high intelligence gives all characters bonus languages and skill training. I've personally house ruled that characters with an above average intelligence can choose a bonus language or tool proficiency for each point of modifier.
I think, on the reaction thing, you're sometimes forgetting that the game round isn't one person does something, then the next, then the next. The general idea is that it's all happening at the same time. That's the reason that a monster or person may not be able to stop someone from casting a spell, giving a potion, etc. They are mostly busy doing something else. But if they do have that reaction available, sure let them smack them. Many monsters already have a bonus to the action economy with extra attacks or special actions, which make sense because they're still usually weaker.
Extra attack or Multi-Attack (for monsters) doesn't give them a bonus to their action economy per se; it is merely a damage output and miss insurance. Legendary actions do, but compared to players, a solo fight is always in the favor of the players.
the problem with that line of thinking however is that DnD IS a game, its not all happening at the same time if it was, then when I as the wizard see the demon charging towards me, i run the other way but i cant do that, i have to wait for him to get into melee with me first and THEN i decide if i run away or not if i knock you down on my turn, then you get up on yours, how did i knock you down and you got up at the same time no time passed, i did a thing, then you responded to that thing because it IS a game and turns DONT happen at the same time as each other the oppertunity attack system of 5e is fundementally flawed because so many actions i could take that make sense as ways to gain an advantage in combat do NOTHING for me knocking you away, does nothing you just walk back in close and get your attacks off, knocking you back achieved LITERALLY nothing tripping you, does nothing you just stand back up and swing, knocking you down achieved LITERALLY nothing getting into close with the guy when he still has his bow out, well who cares dropping the bow and drawing his sword doesnt provoke any reaction from me and he still gets to swing back, meaning there was no advantage at all to being in melee with a guy who has a ranged weapon out (exact same thing applies to spellcasters, why do they care if you are in melee with them it doesnt affect their spellcasting at all) 5e has a LOT of flaws with its systems and oppertunity attacks and the lack of reaction is a big one
@@gregsmw I get what you're saying, but it also doesn't work the other way. If there are 10 in combat, one of them isn't assumed to stand still and do nothing while the others go either. 6 seconds is actually quite a bit of time for an action and not a lot of time for 30 feet of walking movement. None of it's perfect. Some of the rules aren't there to make sense in reality, but to balance some actions against others. I can't say I agree with all of them but they are there as guidelines for DMs. If your DM wants to run it slightly differently then they can. Too many people used to board games or video games think rules are "hard-coded" and that's not how D&D works. It doesn't have all of the answers. They tried to build it so that people can run the game as simplified or as complicated as each group likes. Nearly every group I've run or played in ignores some of the base rules because it just saves time. But they may add a big set of custom rules for running a shop or something. Just do what you enjoy.
In the boardgame Eldritch Horror, when you have multiple bonuses for a roll, a player only uses the highest bonus. So 6th ed could drop the AD/DisAD and move back to bonuses, but a player only gets to use one. Conversly, negative modifiers get sifted to the biggest negative when figuring which to apply. I think it could easily be the case where a paladin aura or the bless spell provide a +1 for a certain number of rounds and then maybe for a single round a player has a +3 or +4 to an attack and next round the player goes back to using the +1. As a change to the whole not getting to often play capstone abilities, I would prefer each class to have skill trees that can cap out at like level 6 or 7. This way a player can choose to go down 1 path or multiple paths and this solves the issue of players not getting to use the bigger high level abilities.
So I mentioned Path 2e as far as action economy went on your last video but, what about the skill system for 2e. I think this one is a bit more simplified in comparison to Path 1e and DND 3e but, it keeps a good bit of customization as well as class specific skills and skill bonuses.
Yes and no. 4E did somethings better, but also had issues with whack-a-mole style combat and it's damage numbers just weren't very intimidating either. What 4E did do better is change it from a bunch of attacks (claw/claw/bite) to one single bigger attack, which is a much better idea.
So one suggestion I was thinking of because I loved it everytime my dm added this to his campaigns the rule of rolling every time a monster takes a swing at you to show you are actively trying to dodge attacks so you would have an ac modifier instead of a static ac that needed to be beat
Something one of my groups incorporated from things like Starfinder is # of languages being somewhat INT based. Another idea bounced around, that kind of helps with the death and dying stuff was penalties when reaching 25%, 50%, and 75% hp. This would mean playing more tactically really starts to benefit the party/monsters and also helps reduce the effectiveness popping a healing word or lay on hands to get a play into the fight.
What about multi-sub-classing? The Swashbuckler that takes some arcane trickster abilities, or the Evocation Wizard that has a change of heart and takes some enchantment skills classes?
Death and death save mechanics - 1:40 Blend AoO and OA - 4:36 Give smaller bonuses - 8:30 No more AoE "choose" effect - 10:05 Better Capstones - 11:35 Fix the Hexblade - 12:30 Deadlier monsters + Quicker combat - 13:35 Suggested rules Attunement tied to Proficiency - 18:25 Dumpin AC for Damage Reduction - 19:00 No more initiative - 19:45 Skills overhaul - 21:00 More unique class spells - 22:00 No more passive perception - 22:30 Bring back taking 20 - 23:10
Maybe add stronger Cantrips at the higher levels in addition to scaling the basic ones, or allow most casters to start casting low level spells at will in higher levels, since for a lot of classes those spell slots just go on unused.
We could go a bit better here. There are ways to get rid of vancian magic. Spell points are popular. I actually implemented a roll for spell completion and only a failure depletes any resource. Magic becomes much more fluid when you aren't counting bullets. Its less resource management and more risk management.
But then barbarians, monks and fighters suck even more in comparison with casters.. I think the overall power of magic should be toned down a bit so that cantrips look stronger, buffing martial classes all around
@@noamshavit I'll take they you never played Pathfinder 1e. Where cantrips didn't scale and do no more than 1d6 damage, and that was disrupt undead, specifically against undead creatures. 5e's got very good magical cantrips. And spell points allow you not be forced to use lower level spells. Thereby negating the need for low level spells to affect high level play. Additionally, high level play is actually a niche group. All of the game numbers begin to fall apart past level 12. That's why so few adventures exceed this level. The prep time for such high level adventures makes them unwieldy and unsatisfying. This an opinion of course, but I have found it true in my 12 years in the game.
Part of the problem with brute monster is that while they get more damage dice as they increase in size, their STR bonus remains the same. A quick band-aid - each size > medium adds the STR bonus again, so the huge hill giant does 3d8+15 instead of 3d8+5.
So, instead of WotC focus on money but instead of work with gm's and/or players together like Paizo does? That would be drastic. That won't happen. Stay crunchy.
Can you go over the section about attacks of opportunity and opportunity attacks again? That whole section was confusing as hell and I don't get what you were getting at in that section
Agreed, he was ranting on about wanting to blend the two rulesets without giving examples how that would look as a result. For someone who has never played 3e, I have no idea what he was going for.
I'm OK with a few spells that allow it, ideally while dealing less damage. Like a nerfed version of Spirit Guardians. There is a place, flavor wise, for a spell that sacrifices impact to protect your team, especially in the divine spells, since your patron could know who your allies are.
@@nicolaezenoaga9756 TBH right now I'm playing at 4th edition campaign with veteran GM and it's fantastic. It's realy seems likу power fantasy isnstead of 3 attack as fighter, or hunter's mark management as ranger
@@nicolaezenoaga9756 DnD 4th have some balance Issue our DM houserule to compensate idea of "must take feats" and items is: +1 feat bonus to attack at levels 1, 11, 21 +1 feat bonus to non AC deff at 11, 21 +1 item bonus to dmg at 5/10/15/20/25/30
Honesty 4E with 5E's bounded accuracy and casters (so spell slots exsist) would be ideal. most of 4E's issues were that numbers got out of hand and that casters and martials all felt the same because spell slots basically didnt exsist. i still like the idea of daily and encounter powers but i also like spell slots and unique magic items that were not just more numbers
With more reasons for an opportunity attack, giving two opportunity attacks for every character per round may also be necessary, otherwise disengage may become obsolete. For example, if a someone gives a healing potion in melee range, they could then run away without disengaging, because the enemy already used their one opportunity attack.
For the Death saves, what I've done is implement a house rule of: Any healing done to a creature that is not an normal action, only stabilizes them and they are still prone and unconscious. So this would mean any bonus action or reaction would only stop them making death saves, they don't get up without someone or something waking them up. Might also implement the drop to the bottom of the turn order when they do get up.
So, I am going to have to bring the unpopular perspective. I have been playing D&D a long time. I have the original books. Not just the 1st Edition Advanced D&D rules. Or the red book, blue book first edition D&D basic rules. I have the A4 sized original D&D rules from the early 70's (and every edition since; except 4th). This game was spawned from a set of miniature rules called "Chainmail." The entire point of the rules was to NOT be a miniature combat game. Everything you are talking about is combat. D&D is not a combat game, and SHOULD NOT BE, in my opinion. That misses the point entirely. There are tons of miniature combat games. GW alone publishes more combat games than any one person can reasonably play. D&D at its roots is a Role Playing Game. It has combat sure, because sometimes that is the only way to resolve conflict in the story. A roleplaying game is about a shared story. Any device that is oppressive to the story IMO can be discarded. One shotting a character with a monster may sometimes be necessary to the story, but it has no place in the everyday adventure. People don't want to play Boromir and have to make a new character for next week. They want to be Aragorn, or Drizzt, or Belgarion, or whomever. The characters want to feel like epic characters in a saga. Your CR 5 dude shouldn't just erase 1 player per round and have lunch. That misses the point entirely. There are times when the DM may need to kill the party or a party member, but that is a decision that can't be taken lightly, or left to a single dice roll. If I want to "fight to the death" against another gamer, I'll play 40k or AOS or Flames of War or Bolt Action. If I want to roll dice and just kill stuff, I will play Wrath of Ashardalon or something similar. Games are there to scratch any itch, and sometimes you don't want to invest the time and effort into roleplaying. So at that point, play another game. Break out D&D when you want to play an epic story, not worry about the game mechanics. The game mechanics are not the point. The "the rules" are a framework for a common experience.
Something I’ve implemented at my table was initiative modifier is both dex and int, this adds some weighting to int, and means the fighters of my group, who are strength base, can be smart and therefore don’t have as bad modifiers to initiative
A skill change/overhaul that I'd like would be something along the lines of: -Pull out Perception, Investigation, and Insight from the Skill stuff; they should be their own thing and are treated special anyway what with their "Passive" stats, so 6e should treat them special -Give each class a "Primary Skill" or a "Master Skill"; one that gains a bonus from your level(s) in that class. Perhaps this is "instead of" as opposed to "In addition to" proficiency/expertise? -Since there are 13 classes and 18 skills (15, if they remove the three I mentioned above) there could be something there for subclass specialization as opposed to base class? However I would -personally- prefer to see the skill list trimmed down a bit more. Perhaps combine Survival and Medicine as the two (in my experience only) are often conflated and/or flip-flopped at a whim, and combine Deception/Persuasion since the two are -very- similar. This would get us down to 13 skills and 13 classes. --Addendum: if we drop the concept of passives (as per the last section of the video) then I definitely think the skill list could be trimmed down some. As to exactly *how* would be up for more discussion and likely intense debate. Personally, I would make the above two combinations (medicine/survival, deception/persuasion), and additionally I'd roll animal handling into nature, combine perception and insight, and combine athletics and acrobatics. This would get us back down to that 13 skills/13 classes. There'd need to be a tweaking/rebalancing of which attributes are applied to which skills but this whole thing is a pretty high-level discussion at this point anyway. UNRELATED: Another change I'd like (though far less likely to see) is to rename Charisma to somethign else. I've been in *so many* games where someone has super low charisma because they wanted to build up their beefy strong guy fighter/tank/etc and then tried to argue that "my mountain of an orc with black skull armor should be super intimidating, not likable". Since charisma is more understood as "likability" in general use, perhaps renaming the stat to something like "Presence" or "Personality" would make it more applicable to how the stat is used?
TWO videos about 6E D&D?! Seems like someone isn't happy with his choice of TTRPG! Having NOT watched either video about 6E because I ABSOLUTELY HATE that it has been coming up so much the last couple of years I wonder how many of these changes are inspired by Pathfinder 2E! Oh the irony if any are lol
For the issue of the "dying mechanic" I use the lingering injuries on p.272 in the DMG each time they hit 0 hp, and it works like a charm. It creates tension for the low-mid level play since most effects cost a regenerate to fix.
A simple solution for the "Hit Point Bloat" of 5e (other than reducing them) is to allow Classes and Monsters with multiple attacks to ADD A DIE OF DAMAGE to any attack for each extra attack they get. The monster gets 3 attacks for 1D6 each... change that to 3d6 each. That will help you out a bit. Our House Rule reads only slightly different from the one above... "IF the PC may make a certain number of multiple attacks in a round, they may make one or more attacks against ANY enemy within range who is in their frontal arc. Alternately, an attacker may surrender one or more of their multiple attacks and instead launch a "concentrated attack" against either a single foe or perhaps a pair of foes (given sufficient multiple attack capability). A concentrated attack adds an additional Damage Roll to the attack but costs the user one additional attack to initiate. So a Fighter with 3 attacks and a Shortsword doing 1D6+2 (with a STR bonus) could strike one opponent with a normal attack (doing the 1D6+2) and immediately strike a second opponent with a Concentrated Attack [using two attacks but with a single roll To Hit] and if they hit, that attack would do 2D6+4. Alternately, that same Fighter could use ALL THREE of their Attacks to hit a single opponent for 3D6+6. The player gets to choose how they will divide up their PC's multiple attacks." You will find that this rule will help speed up combats. It also gives Fighters a bit of a "tactical choice" in how to use their multiple attacks.
For spells:
I want a "general arcane," and "general divine," and a "general primal/natural" spell list, then individual spell lists for each class.
So all arcane classes can pick from the general arcane list AND their own, etc.
I like this because it makes it easier to know what spells are unique to each class at a glance, makes understanding spell lists easier for new players, and is actually basically already how things are done just without the labels.
with how Wizard's is going by blending so many exceptions to the general spell lists, instead of the rules, I doubt that will happen. Artificers get 'divine' healing spells and there's quite a lot of overlap with the new expanded spell lists found in Tasha's.
That is exactly what pathfinder 2 did. Four spell lists that are accessable to everyone.
Pathfinder 2e
Visionary
I feel like the Artificer could really do with it's own spells. I love the flavour, but it needs its own spells that scale properly rather than just feeling like half a class.
Yeah, I agree! It doesn't make sense that such a wildly different application of magic also has so little of its own spell identity
It has its own list, they just didn't give it any unique spells. It's any easy fix. Fully unique spell lists, though, gets you part way to 4E, and you don't want to have 3 spells that are basically the same thing when we can instead just have the same spell on all 3 lists.
Yeah, the armorer and alchemist failed on their face. They need something else, Pathfinder with it's bombs was something. Not sure what, but the solution is, but they need a bit of planning.
@@jocelyngray6306 yeah, Artificer spells would be great. Doesn't have to be wholly unique, most spellcasters have crossovers to other class lists
@@jocelyngray6306 To be clear, I don't think it should have an entirely unique spell list, many of it's options currently do fit, I just think it should have some unique options that lean into certain aspects like the support role that allow it to stay relevant at higher levels during combat.
The best part about removing the "choose your targets" mechanic for some AoE spells is that you can add it right back in as a class feature, feat, or magic item. If you're an Evocation Wizard then yeah maybe it is reasonable that you can pick and choose who gets hit by your Fireball, let the Sorcerer spend metamagic points to be able to avoid hitting their allies, make one of the items your players loot from the dragon's hoard a Circlet of Careful Spell Placement, etc.
Talking about evocation wizard vs careful spell sorcerer - they should really even them out. No damaging friends for free or using up a resource to give friends a higher chance to get half damage? That's so annoying
I literally never knew that was a rule. We always played it where if an ally is in your spell path, they're hit. Lol what's the point of the evocation wizard ability if literally everyone does it?
@@darev2335 it depends on the spell. Fireball and other damaging spells hit allies too. Slow, Sleep and some Divine spells let you choose the targets
@@darev2335 It's only certain spells that have the "avoid your allies" built in, most of them don't. It's just kinda weird that sometimes you can and sometimes you can't, so Cody's point was to remove the exceptions and just make it consistent.
@@fakjbf3129 ah. Gotcha
I can’t see 6e coming anything soon but wizards needs to watch these videos and take notes
Yea they need to watch these videos and not listen to the game designers they actually pay…
@@lovelandfrogman2136 LOL!!
I can see it coming out in 3 years for the 50th Anniversary of the game.
@@matthewblanchard9805 3 years is also the amount of time 5e was in playtest. I would be very surprised if WotC isn't ramping up for a 6e playtest in the next year or so.
@@lovelandfrogman2136 Yes, since Jeramy Crawford and co are kinda bad at their jobs...but even just listening to some community feedback would be appreciated from the company making the game...y'know.
The biggest change I want for D&D 6e is more high level adventures. There are so many amazing high CR creatures but I don’t want to have them resigned to homebrew campaigns and one shots
High level play is boring for me
@@adrianmalinowski1073 the thing is it shouldn’t have to be. Having access to the best powers of a class and being able to use high level spells against legendary creatures SHOULDN’T be boring. 6e should make adventures geared to players getting some actual power
They could release supplemental materials to play beyond 20th. That would be a better solution.
@@wanstedt0138 that doesn’t fix the fact that Wizards haven’t made engaging content to actually take you to 20th level
Just change to pathfinder 2e, they have those.. dnd5e at lvl 10is the cap, with 12 at best
BTW: i think you are leaning to heavy on combat tactic. that is the part of the game that has more development. if we are going to get a 6e. i would love them to focus a little on the other aspects of the game.. give more love to exploration, and social encounters... we have really almost no support from the books on that aspects.
Sounds like you should play 4E. It had a full set of rules for pure skill based encounters granting encounter experience without combat.
Social interaction or crafting or trying to solve a puzzle. Whatever you may want to make the players do. There was a system for rolls and challenges where the whole party would be working toward a goal and no one was doing anything combat related.
@@zero11010 i did play 4e and i didn't enjoy it at all.
i had been playing D&D and other RPG since 90's so, and i'm yet waiting to see a really good social encounters mechanics.
i did like skill challenges in general, (but they are not exclusive to 4e) but they do not work fine for most social encounters..
I think d&d 6e would benefit a lot of having well polished rules about reputation, factions, social influence, etc. ( i know this is really HARD to put into rules. believe me, i tried and it didn't worked :P )
@@eliasvernieri That's too bad. I had a lot of fun both running and playing 4E. The skill based system for encounters was a lot of fun. I'm with you on how long I've been playing. I grew up playing in the early 90s with first edition games with older friends and that turned into 3.5 in high school and college. That lead to 4E which I loved deeply, and now 5E which is fine, but I miss a lot of the details of 4E.
You make a player give an in game reason for the skill they're trying to apply. This is supposed to be all role play. Players will make up a historical story from their homeland that reinforces their point ... and then you let them roll a history check and that will apply to the skill challenge. It's an in game reward for role play at the table. It was wonderful!
That system allowed you to set up a whole session or even a whole campaign that never needed to use combat and still allowed for character advancement without using pure house rules.
I also really liked the 4E system for traps giving experience points. It would basically associate experience points with each trap as if it was a monster. That allowed you to insert them either into a fight and know if you were unbalancing that fight, or in between fights and keep players on their toes.
@@zero11010 I get it. i dont use XP at all. and each time the characters arrive to a place where they will have a good rest and some free time. i ask the players if they want to lvl up.. ( that's the whole thing :P ) "you don't lvl up until you all agree on leveling up, and you have a confortable and safe place to rest for a few days" and about skills challenges, sure... i use those.. and they are more "prominent" on most of my games than monsters. i have fewer combats than most DM i know, but each one is very unique and challenging, and they are story driven.
@@eliasvernieri Sounds great, man! If you enjoy D&D podcasts with a different feel you may like the college humor postcast on Dimension 20. Specifically, the 6 episode series with Matt Mercer as a player.
I strongly agree that making monsters interesting does NOT mean making them damage sponges.
i call it the MMO response to becoming a popular game, making monster sless dangeorus, so bad player sdont die, but give the monster smor ehealth so idiots think it was epic.
Two weapon fight needs a rework
To be fair, I've never seen it work well, and I've played since AD&D. In my homebrew world I've allowed my two sticker to create some of his own maneuvers as a battle master, that add more flavor to his two weapon fighting.
It needs reworked based on the weapons used
Check out The Dungeon Coach's video on Duel Wielding in 5e. I haven't tried it myself yet, but it's the first great idea I've seen regarding Two-weapon fighting in D&D. :)
I'm weirdly freaked out about the idea of being around for a change of editions! I played 2e, then was out of the game for almost 20 years, then 5e. A new edition coming out while I'm playing the current one, I don't know how I'll cope!
I'm expecting 6e to be mostly backwards compatible.
Keep playing 5e until 6e gets fully fleshed out
Its fun when a new edition comes out
I did same as you.I played from D&D to AD&D to 2E and then to 2: Options… each one built upon the last. So it was more like a logical progression and less like an entire paradigm shift. I wasn’t impressed with 3rd edition and 4th edition was WotC’s pathetic attempt at making WoW into D&D… which amounts to it just being pure trash. 5E was as if WotC realized how good 2E and it’s Options was, distilled it into what 5E is today. Removed the clutter, streamlined the approach, and voila! Ive a bad feeling 6e will consist of a lot of what we’ve seen with Strahd… people getting their panties in a bunch and demanding the world of D&D be more politically correct… because that makes sense: politically correct fantasy realms. Shoot me now.
@@shinka_mjr I'm certainly not going to shoot you over it, but the game I love becoming less racist is good actually.
The DM Lair has death savings throws rolled in secret & a death penalty rolled on a chart
I personally feel like secret death saves isn't a great solution because players feel like they lose control over situations (even if it is still just random). It isn't the worst solution, but it feels more like a band aid on a broken system than an truly solid design change.
@@michaelasmitty Players roll Privately to
the DM only the dying player and DM know the results.
I would say openly rolling death saves builds the tension. "Heck, hes failed twice, we need to heal him now!" In secret you have no idea if hes passed or failed, so near death and nearly fine feel equal.
@@Wertbag99 I think that's kind of the point of doing it in secret. If the party is in the middle of a battle, would anyone really be able to tell if the unconscious party member is close to death or close to stabilizing without actively checking or something? I would say not. Someone needs to get to the downed character and heal or stabilize them and not be like "well, he's rolled a 19 and a 16, so he'll be fine for at least another round."
I would argue that not knowing gives it urgency, rather than, oh he passed, oh he failed, okay he’s good we can wait a turn or two before we get him.
I did exhaustion, but Now Im doing Pathfinder. Love it
You said something related to this without really calling this out directly. Encounter design in 5E is garbage. I’ve played 5E since it launched and no game master runs the 6-8 medium and hard encounters in a day (page 84 DMG).
No one does it. Then everyone .. this channel included … seems to be totally surprised that when they don’t follow the rules on combats that that the players aren’t challenged appropriately.
You have identified that you want some things to hit harder. That’s not the real problem that needs to be fixed. The real problem is that NO ONE is doing combats as the book intends.
No one should be surprised that when you balance monsters for 6-8 fights per day with two short rests then let the players do 2-4 fights per day with 2-3 short rests that players are having an easy time and monsters feel weak.
This is the lynchpin that is setting up other problems with encounters. You cannot possibly change monster design without first changing this.
No one follows this because fights can take longer than one hour, maybe even two or three hours depending on the amount of enemies, player attention and experience, DM experience and preparation, or if the players are roleplaying ore something. I had a boat vs boat pirate encounter last 4 hours once. That was a memorable battle, but took way too long.
Doing 6-8 fights per day would make either sessions last for ever, or you would have to split a single day into multiple sessions where keeping track of health, spells, etc. is not cumbersome, but boring. So the idea of making combats deadlier and keeping them deadlier as you level up is a good alternative to campaigns where there is only one or two combats a day, or per short rest. It also engages players more into the current battle.
Just my two cents.
@@diegomizaelcalderongonzale4425 you’re right. Why do you have to do a whole in game day in one session? Ideally each combat encounter can be started and finished in a single session … more than one may be nice, too.
I disagree with the tedium of tracking hit points across multiple encounters. That’s the game. Players don’t generally have that much to keep track of. Most campaigns don’t really go above level 10. So you’re looking at maybe a handful of spells slots and maybe 3 class based abilities that recharge on a short vs long rest. And maybe an item or two with an ability with limited usages. Plus hit points and hit dice. I don’t know … I feel like that’s why I play with a pencil and an eraser.
I hear you though. It’s a huge change in game intention. And NO ONE plays the game with 6-8 encounters per day. If nothing else the fact that NO ONE plays the game as they intended it means they did this poorly.
@Andrew Adams I don’t think it’s inherently a bad design to expect 6-8 encounters in a day. I think that CAN be totally fine.
I also think that would have been easier in 4E with so many at will and encounter based options. But the casuals revolted and history only remembers their complaints. So, in 5E they went closer to 3.5 in terms of turn options to keep from hurting the poor little minds of the casuals with choices. (You can’t tell, but I’m playing a violin to make it extra sad for the casuals)
So, now you’re in 5E as a warlock at level 3 with 2 spell slots to use in 2-4 encounters before you rest to regain them. That’s the intention. You’re a wizard with 3 first level spell slots and 1 second level spell slot (or whatever) to use on the 6-8 encounters for the whole day. That’s a lot closer to 3.5 where every caster was a shitty archer with no DEX for most of the day and had one or two turns with a huge spell otherwise. That’s what players said they wanted to go back to. So, that’s the direction they went with 5E. It’s hard for anyone with healing spells to do anything but heal if you get 6-8 fights and have 5 spells slots for all of your healing and all your buffing and debuffing and also all your offensive spells. That’s closer to 3.5 than 4E … that’s what players wanted.
Expecting a party to do 6-8 fights in a day shouldn’t inherently be bad. Most fights are like 30 seconds long? Maybe 60 seconds. That’s less than 8 minutes of combat in a day. That’s shorter than most MMA or boxing matches. And, each of those 30-60 second bursts are spread out a bit. That CAN be ok.
In practice the players and game masters collectively said “I don’t want to follow your rules” and wizards of the coast never thought to respond with … “ok here’s the monster design you should be using.” Or if they thought it they didn’t say it and let a bunch of game masters who are infamously poor at creating content try to build their own monster system while relentlessly complaining about how the monsters are bad (when they should have been upset with the challenge rating system AND also the player balance that is centered around it).
I recently joined a game where my dm was new, and I and my bf (2 of the 3 players) were new, so our dm started with the sunless citadel module, and now at level 3 we’re done and doing her homebrew stuff.
Our DM modified it even to be less combat but in sunless citadel there was definitely 6-8 encounters, easily, and as a level 1-2 I was usually spent before that (and I’m playing a barbarian so knowing when to rage at a good time was really hard, plus as the character in the party designed to get hit, I definitely did that).
Thinking to the one session we’ve had so far outside of the module, it was a 100% roleplay. There weren’t even very many roles (maybe 3 or 4 ability checks the whole session). I’m sure combat will happen eventually, but dm did make it clear there will not be as much combat, and she even cut out a lot of combat in the module portions. Which I did appreciate because we were there forever.
All of this to say, I think 6-8 encounters is very possible when you’re doing a dungeon crawl. However, I don’t think that’s what most people like anymore. The roleplay aspect, and the social pillar seem far more popular now. I think having more support for those aspects and rebalancing around the reality that 6-8 is not a number most people do would solve some issues.
It's even more that. WotC did something wrong in the very beginning- they put the monsters under the same condition as the pc's (proficiency and all of that) but they don't give the monsters enough abilities and potential as the pc's have. It boils down to many other mechanical problems that 5e doesn't tackle, and I hope 6e will fix. The spell slog system has to change, monster design needs it's own system, AC & initiative are good IMO, since they serve their technical intention in encounters. I think many things are done very well, even the skill system is fine by me. But yea.. encounters should feel more deadly by a lot. Also there are many grey areas they should address at 6e
Our table has used the opportunity attack when standing from prone in melee, really enjoy it and of course it applies to PCs and NPCs. For the opportunity attack on spells, would you agree that casting a melee attack spell should not trigger opportunity attack? Like make that a feature of those spells.
That has been a common request from the party. Or also casting the spell before you get into melee, which was the practice in older additions. Or having your familiar deliver touch spells. We also had the use of a bonus action to cast defensively. (Although, we have since removed bonus actions).
@@ILikeIcedCoffee When I heard Taking 20s case to remove bonus actions I was convinced lol. For a while I allowed players to slow down bonus actions to actions when needed not even realizing it was against RAW, then I learned it wasn’t RAW but continued allowing it bc honestly it made sense and had not broken the game in any way.
@@Retlaw32 The good news is when I rewrote my classes, rogue had already had cunning action removed, which was one of my players first comments when I suggested removing bonus actions. He hadn't even realized it at being level 3.
thats sort of how it works in pathfinder actually
spells trigger attacks of oppertunity but the "melee attack" portion of the spell doesnt, and the way that spells with attacks work is you can cast the spell then attack at any point in your turn
meaning you cast the spell holding it, run into melee, then use its attack and it counts as a normal attack
you are still incentivised not to cast spells in melee, but spells with melee attacks are still useable
I don't get it though. Like, what are you supposed to do? Lay on the ground so you don't get hit?
Thiese are all great ideas, but people forget that DND 5e designer Jeremy Crawford just says "If you dont like it. Homebrew it"
"Roll for Initiative" is synonymous with D&D, I can't see them removing it.
5E but not D&D, because D&D didn’t originally include any initiative
@@crowgoblin what? Rolling for Initiative was all the way back in the Basic Box Set but it used d6 and you got a plus or minute 1 based on your DEX score. The d20 version has been around since AD&D…so “roll for initiative” has been part of D&D forever.
I like to give my "big beefy baddies" more than one initiative counts so they act more than once a turn and feel more epic while balancing the action economy. Yes, I know some monsters have legendary actions, but it just "feels" better to have them swing more and only the super large monsters tend to have legendary actions.
This reminds me of Dragon Quest 8 where bosses and more powerful enemies near the end of the game would get 2 attacks/actions (one or two bosses had 3 attacks/actions) on their turn, but party members only got 1 action. Of course one or two "quick" low level monsters would sneak in random turns where they got to take 2 actions instead of of just one. Those kept you on your toes during the low-level grind.
I'd love to see them bringing back prestige classes. It's doesn't feel like you have earned your ability to be "unique". It was one of my favorite things about 3.5
Pathfinder 2e solved this with the "Free Archetype" variant rule. Every campaign uses it
they kinda tried with UA but it was so dependent on the DM that you kinda had to have them give you levels in the PrC kinda like how Wild Magic is dependent on the DM which is why I don't like that either
Opportunity attacks on standing up could get a little abusable when any strength based class can shove prone most monsters with good chance of success at will. Now everyone always shoves prone on your first attack, for free advantage on your next attack
Use your action to take disengage, that allows you stand, and use a bonus action, but not just jump back into the fray. That is why I do Attacks of Opportunity in a lot of situations, because many game mechanics are simply not used because of things being too easy for the players.
@@O-D-X Generally, if the fighter/barbarian is trading one of his 2+ attacks per turn for a monsters entire action and advantage for their next attack and possibly allied attacks, they are coming out ahead. You are probable better off eating the opportunity attack to stand up and still acting. Prone is pretty weak in 5e because it's very easy to apply to monsters, but less so for monsters to apply to pcs because of how multiattack works and because few monsters have athletics prof. Giving opportunity attacks when you stand up makes it much stronger, and buffs fighters and barbarians significantly.
That was how Trip Monks were broken in 3.5 for sure. On the flip side, SHOULD the average animal or monster be intelligent enough to avoid taking such an attack? If the answer is no, then the attack should be allowed. If the answer is yes, then it should be up to the DM to show the player that "nope. Your opponent is too smart for that". Bring back the 3.5 Disengage as a 5 ft step directly away with no Att of Opp and then it costs the move to stand back up.
In that case, I'd ask how the player is shoving the monster. Are they using shield, or a shoulder, just how? I could argue that your shove could provide an opportunity for a monster to either dodge or attack you. You could be literally ramming your character into an attack. Also, it could be done in a way that for a "Shove" to work, you'd need to grapple, or use a shield. I then also don't see a reason why we couldn't return the "Shove" action to it's default, in a Fighter or Barbarian class (around level 10). Of course, going RAW this couldn't happen, but in the spirit of changing stuff, it could work.
@@madness1931 Congratulations, you've returned us to the 3.5 grappling/combat maneuver system that was an overcomplicated mess that you either built a cheese build around or completely ignored. The way grappling and shoving works in 5e is great. It's simple enough for new players to understand, and can be engaged with by anyone with a good strength without needing a ton of character resources expended, while still offering enough potential upside (permanent prone) that picking up say athletics expertise to be better at it is a valid choice. This whole line of thought, starting with OA's on standing up, just brings back a part of 3.5 that never worked well. Realistic grappling rules are awful unless the entire game is about one-on one fistfights. 5e's system may be abstract, but it works without taking up half the combat chapter. It doesn't need to be made more complicated.
there's a couple of brand spanking new 5e books coming down the pipeline.
I think a 5.5 is way more likely than 6e, so much content and services like DnD beyond are riding on 5e, I know that change should be attempted when the business is successful but 5e doesn't feel like it's done yet.
D&D 6E is confirmed (last I knew). But they have said it will be backwards compatible with everything from 5e. So I think it will essentially be 5.5e.
You hit the nail on the head with the adventuring day mechanics. Rarely does it fit naturally for my players to have several combat encounters in one day, yet literally everything in the game is balanced to it. Most of my homebrew rules are simply to counterbalance this issue so the game is playable.
Pathfinder 2e has a great skill system, where you improve in chosen skills as you level, eventually becoming Legendary in them and unlocking ludicrous feats, like Scare to Death for Intimidate
Too bad the system as a whole is pretty weak
@@dangerousbeans2907 Not sure what you mean by the system is pretty weak, it's a fairly robust system, definitely more robust than 5e
@@TheBoondockGamer73 it pigeon holes you into uninteresting obvious choices. It gives you the illusion of options.
@@dangerousbeans2907 Really gonna need examples there, bud. PF2e has plenty of interesting choices, combining classes and archetypes gives you tons of choices, and the 3 action system really opens up the possibilities
@@TheBoondockGamer73 Pathfinder (and 3e and variants') skill systems in a nutshell:
'Either you spend your entire build on a skill making it competitive with the escalating DCs and opposing monsters...
...or you become a wizard and ignore skills entirely and just do it automatically with a wave of your fingers.'
3e and Pathfinder have degenerate skill systems--you shouldn't be reliant on +20 variances or more on a 20-sided die. Bounded Accuracy makes skills better.
I admit I was thinking about some of the reasons that 5e never actually did dungeon delving very well recently. I think part of the problem is that characters are just stunningly resilient in this edition. While 1e/2e's 'death on falling to zero' was punishing, it also gave a sense of actually being a bit terrified of delving into places unprepared. You feared that dark corridor that sounds were coming from. That's psychologically not the case anymore. Deep down players know they have lots of chances to get back up, especially at 1 hp again and simply continue on. Even if they're struck for 35 more points of damage, they simply fall down, and start the 'death saves' process all over again.
I like the idea of death saves sticking with you. I've been toying with introducing the exhaustion system in as well. I've also pondered running a 1 or 2 shot using a modified 2e option of going into minuses, and having the cure spells only get you to 1hp maximum and having disadvantage from a weakened state until you finish a long rest. A true heal spell would, of course, bring you back up to normal, but its a high level spell.
I also agree partly about monsters needing more 'oomph' in some way. I think it would require a massive rework on how CR works and the expectations of what parties encounter per day. I'd like to see the 'expected' number of combats trashed entirely. It should be up to the party to decide if they feel they can go on. But it would require a lot of fundamental shifts to how monsters and enemies are designed. An ogre in 5e is actually less deadly towards a low level party than they were in old editions, even though the 5e ogre has way more hp on average.
Adding to that, I'd like to see 'bloodied' brought back from 4e, and enemies having special powers keyed off of that. Its one of the few things (along with minions) that I miss from 4e. Creatures felt more interesting to run when they had interesting powers/effects they could unleash. But I get that its personal opinion at that point.
Lastly, I'd like to see weapon proficiency reworked. A fighter at first level shouldn't have the same chance to hit as a wizard with a quarterstaff if both had baseline strength. I always imagined non-warcaster arcanist types wouldn't have top tier training in weaponry as well. But that is, again, personal preference.
Love the vids. I agree on the magic items too. MOAR!
All of my homebrew bosses have "bloodied powers", and some of the special/gimmicky monsters as well. Also some bosses and monster have special kill conditions. This things I reimplemented because I missed them that much from previous editions.
And resource management just isn't a thing in Dnd5e. Everyone ignores encumbrance and no one wants to count torches... well, everyone has darksight so torches, we don't need no stinking torches.
My death saving throw house rule: When you reach 0 HP, for every time you have previously reached 0 HP (since your last long rest) you automatically fail 1 death saving throw.
At it's core I like that this rule leans into the resource attrition of DnD creating difficult choices for players. Players may yo-yo once or twice, but they will also consider the danger of small amounts of healing that are just setting up an even more dangerous situation. I feel that this also lets my healer players shine more: many players can heal for a little bit (or any player with a healing potion) but only players specialized in healing can really bring characters from the brink of death back to a safe amount of HP (and a healer isn't optimized by being able to throw out a level 1 healing word the most times in a day, or the most good berries in a day).
1 level of exhaustion
@@christianacquasanta1472 an interesting thought, and I do want reaching 0 HP to be a scary event, I feel that even 1 level of exhaustion with disadvantage on ability checks to be too harsh for my liking.
I want the rogue who tripped the horrible trap and went to 0 to consider how safe it is to continue looking for traps or if it'd be better for the fighter to look for now. I don't want that rogue to be unable to stealth for the rest of the day.
or a high level party just uses one of many ways to deal with exhaustion and now we're back to reaching 0 not meaning very much.
but maybe something like "travel exhaustion"? during an encounter you're not exhausted while exploring the cleric who was previously on lookout now has disadvantage on their perception check. Or 2 levels of exhaustion and now the party is hex-crawling at half speed. I feel like there is a nugget of something really cool.
@@Bobodia4444 Pillars of Eternity dels with it using "injuries" of the damage type that downed you up to 3
Fourth time you're dead straight
Injuries might be like half speed, disadvantage on X ability score.
It's more book-keeping tho
I would do it in reverse, and use injuries like a travel thing. Daily encounter is an ability check. Fail the check you're injuried or the cart is damaged (also in my campaign you can only short rest while traveling between regions, it's also so that I can stack encounter on the road without them going nova)
One of the injuries might be an exhaustion too, you pushed the cart down for 4 hours because it got stack, on top of general traveling fatigue
Something like this d100 (except combat others are skill checks)
1-20 combat
21-40 Beneficial
41-50 Netral
51-60 Detrimental
61-100 Impedement
A simple solution to prevent the "+27 to hit" scenario: Same as temp HP, you only get one additive bonus, so it is assumed you use the best one. Additive is not the same, so you can stack that with advantage.
I use RAW for death, but I spike it a little with 1- Secret death saves (rolling behind the screen) and 2- Intelligent Roleplay of the monstrs (confirming their kills, targeting healers, etc)
I've never understood why it's such a taboo for monsters to confirm kills in 5e. I did it once with some hobgoblins (as the dm) and my players got really upset..
@@sagebauer1077 Well that's on them. Why on earth would a monster knock a target unconscious and just be like, "ok I beat them…time to let them recover while I move on to fight another one"
@@sagebauer1077 Largely it's an issue because it feels like metagaming. Here's the thing, the vast majority of non-PCs in the world die at 0 hp, and don't even have healing magic. Look at the rest of the monster manual, hardly anything has healing spells, nothing really fights like the PCs fight. So when you have monsters ignore an active PC to hit a downed one, you're basically having your NPCs react based on knowledge of PC tactics, something they should (in most scenarios) be totally unfamiliar with, because NPCs just don't fight that way. If the hobgoblins were dueling with a rival clan of orcs, nor NPC caravan guards, confirming kills is a terrible tactic. It's literally only a good tactic against the PC party, and nobody else in the world.
I Literally just implemented in my newest game of 5E that standing up from prone and picking up an item or interacting with items not on your person provoke Attacks. it was something i also like from 3.5 it also gives melee users a bit more to do since i also allow disarming attacks. i also agree that there needs to be a tiny bit of numerical additions, the game already supports this concept (Archery fighting style +2 and Cover uses +2 and +5) it be very simple to just have +2 bonus and +5 bonus. id also love for skills to be a bit more numeric (+1 +2 and +3 and get rid of expertise) and mix the bounded accuracy with how older editions allowed upgrading skills.
I like how multiclassing works in this edition for casters (how spell slots work), i know martial need a little tweaking but i think a lot of that has to do with the inate design on how classes work in general. i wanna see 10 levels (stop doing 20 its harder to balance) and have each class gain features from the base Class EVERY level. and then have things like Sub class / sub class features, Feats and ASI be based on Character level. this opens up a lot more ability to customize and allows sub classes to be shared among classes. also stop making just sub classes ... 7 years and we only ever got one new class it feels kinda bad.
I also love 4E's "4 AC system" of AC / Fort / Ref / Will and how they acted as AC's rather than saves and allowed players to pick what stat used what (this made things like int and str a bit more useful) but just use 5E bounded accuracy so it doesnt get so hard to hit later like 4E
Love the harder hitting monsters and spells specific to the classes. Additionally, I'm on your bothers team with the armor and shields at level 1.
Pathfinder has skills correct. Grading out as Trained (half proficiency bonus), proficient (full proficiency bunus), expertise (1.5 proficiency bonus), mastery (double proficiency bonus).
You can do that when your core rule book is 600 pages . Then your players handbook is 300 pages and the GM book is another 300 pages .
@@colmbright9822 Exactly the same as 5e. 320 pages for DMG and 320 for PHB Vs 640 for CRB pathfinder 2e
To me, it makes more sense that if one falls unconscious they aren't going to snap awake, it takes more than 6 seconds to wake up. I feel they should remain prone on the turn that they have been revived, maybe with the dodge action, then able to get up on their next.
As a way to balance the martial classes vs. casters, I have introduced the weapon mastery system from BXMI. With some simple modifications it allows also for super character customization: with the same weapon one martial character can do so much more than a caster, not just attack twice. As a caster learns new spells, a fighter improves the damage or learn tricks with his weapon.
If you can spare the time, could you explain 'weapon mastery' to me?
Thanks F.B.
@@yeahnaaa292 it’s quite complex but essentially there are different levels of weapon mastery and with each of them the character gains either bonus to attack, to ac or special abilities. In the link below you should be able to find an excerpt of the original rules. It might need some streamlining and adjustments but it’s really cool.
www.pandius.com/w_mast2.html
@@f.b.3263 this looks great.
Thanks brother. I appreciate your effort.
Keep rolling those crits!
@@yeahnaaa292 no worries, happy to share knowledge from the last millennium 😅
@@f.b.3263 dude....OUCH!
The Warlock class in general. There wasn't a lot going on until Hexblade. Just EB everything. Then Hexblade activates God mode. Just make the features of the Hexblade Eldritch Invocations with level and Pact of Sword prerequisites.
I don’t think I agree with this. Fiend pact is every bit as good as hexblade. The core of what you’re saying is that warlock needs help. I think their spell system is pretty lame. Especially if you play the game as intended. 3-4 encounters then a short rest then 3-4 encounters is what the game should be balanced for. Warlock gets 2 spell slots per long/short rest for most of the game. That is lame, and that’s what they balanced the game for.
I had a ton of fun making two different warlocks, one fought in melee and the other was a classic fire caster. I think there is plenty going on with Warlock between flavor and play style, but they do need a little something to entice them to do more than EB.
@@Jstar95175 what would that be? The balance of the class is founded upon having fewer spells memorized, and fewer but higher level spell slots available that regenerate faster.
The only things you can do with that are …
* More offensive abilities that are usually every round. This can be more equally effective cantrips.
* More offensive abilities that use a totally separate mechanic like channel divinity or wild shape which can be a lot to track.
* fundamentally change the class.
Eldritch blast is by far the best cantrip in the game and with agonizing blast it is almost as good as some first level spell slots.
Does it need to be changed? What’s your archer based ranger going to do? Shoot his bow every single round? What’s your axe wielding barbarian going to do? Swing his axe every round? How about the rogue? Fighter? Monk? Why is the war locking focusing on eldritch blast so different?
@@zero11010 First off, all of those classes have interesting variety in different ways and don't default to one thing. I've literally made a ranger that didn't use ranged weapons and he was just as much fun to play as an archer ranger, for example. Like I said, I made two very different warlocks and it was fun, EB doesn't take away from that.
However, when you look at all the customization that Warlocks have with their invocations and such, it's obvious they are supposed to be highly varied or else why the hell is there an Archfey Patron who doesn't have anything to do with damage, basically, and doesn't synergize with EB?
I think if they took a lateral approach with equally strong Warlock cantrips not focused on straight damage, they'd have more options. Something that can consistently debuff enemies very well is an example I literally just thought of. WotC put actual time and effort into this, as opposed to me, a passionate hobbyist, so I'm sure they could come up with something viable that would help promote zoning enemies, stealth, overcoming others in social interactions, etc.
They have the skeleton of allowing Warlocks to do all that, but EB is so powerful in combat and basically necessary when you have no spell slots in combat at higher levels.
I don't have a solution, these are just my thoughts. I don't design tabletop games
@@Jstar95175 I appreciate your thoughtful response!
I'm not sure if I agree with your point about archfey doesn't syntergize with eldritch blast. It seems like the intention is that neither the pact, nor the patron really impacts the eldritch blast which was clearly intended to be the bread and butter for the class (minor exception for the pact of the blade which can combine with thirsting blade to be a low power gish character where they have melee ability like an eldritch knight has casting ability). Now, the archfey is mechanically less offensively minded than a lot of other patrons. For sure. But, that doesn't have anything to do with eldritch blast (just like the fiend and the great old one -- temp hit points for dark one's blessing means most of the time it doesn't' do anything).
I absolutely LOVE your suggestion of having support related cantrips that are more like vicious mockery and intended to buff/debuff every turn rather than intending to do damage. That is a total rockstar idea. I could see that being related to the pact rather than the patron so you could have an archfey who is focused on eldtrich blast, or a weapon, or these buffing/debuffing spells just like you might find a fiend focused warlock with offensive spells, or devilish weapons, or curses to weaken enemies or whatever.
I would be nervous about these support related cantrips because they seem to be hard to make. The major support related cantrips I can think of (for combat) are true strike, blade ward, resistance, and vicious mockery. And, true strike and blade ward are mechanically a waste of a memorized spell. But, the idea behind each are solid, they just needed to be balanced to be better than mundane actions. Vicious mockery has a neat effect but it does such an embarrassing amount of damage (which can be needed for a spell that has multiple effects).
You're very right that eldritch blast is a requirement. It's possible to use hexblade to be about as good as any other warlock with eldritch blast and agonizing blast, but hexblade isn't really better, it's realistically a 1D8+4 weapon attack instead of 1D10+4 and then two of those at level 5. But at level 11 eldritch blast pulls ahead again and again at level 17). Even swapping 1D8 for 2D6 doesn't keep up with eldritch blast.
But ... WHY is eldritch blast so good? It's the best damage type in the game with a huge range and instead of doing multiple dice to the same target it's multiple blasts to impact multiple targets each imparting a separate spell casting modifier bonus. This is WAY better than anything else. The reason it's so good is to balance how few spell casting slots the warlock gets. This is why people who argue that you don't "have" to take eldritch blast might as well be saying you can play the game with a 10 in all of your attributes ... yeah, you CAN do that.
For AoO on spells, I like the option that spells provoke aoo if and only if the spell level is higher or equal to half your proficiency bonus (or some other number). Makes thematic sense, as basics spells you mastered a long time ago are efforteless to cast, and creates interesting strategy.
My house rule for both 5e and Starfnder is when you get up from 0HP you are stunned are your first turn back up. Standing up provoking attacks of opportunity.
Watching this I got an idea for attunement: you have as many attunement slots as your proficiency bonus, but more powerful items take up more slots. That way at high levels a random uncommon magic item with attunement isn't so bad.
That's weak as hell. Proficiency only ever reaches a +6. So 6 slots then what would you have items? Common = 1, Uncommon = 2, Rare = 3, Very Rare = 4, Legendary = 5, Artifact = 6?
A player could never attune to more than one Very Rare + item, if you're thinking about making it some like C/U = 1 R/VR = 2 L/A = 3. You're still nerfing L/A items, but making R/VR and U too strong, being able to attune to 6 Uncommon Items means;
Ring of Warmth, Cloak of Protection, Bracers of Archery, Brooch of Shielding, A Weapon of Warning, Headband of Intellect. To name a collection of items that would be too strong.
I actually think attunement is pretty good game design. Annoying for players, but good design.
Common magic items (not including wonderous) don't have attunment. 5e is designed with the idea that magic items in general aren't that common to come across. Magic shops (if it exists) in major cities sell commons and maybe a few random uncommons. Everything else you find in the wild. Loot tables are random. Items for sale are random. If a DM hands the player the books and lets them pick whatever they want there are bigger issues at play for that table.
@@dsan05 : Yeah it's definitely one of the better ideas in 5E. I like the idea that only a few magic items are super relevant, as opposed to a character wearing a giant assortment of minor trinkets.
I like The Dungeon Coach's idea of not making every other save in the game a wisdom saving throw. Int and Chr need some love in that area. Int just needs some love in general, the only high int character I've ever played was a wizard.
Love the content as always. I really really like the end part where you responded to the commenter suggestions. It gives a better back and forth for sure.
we run death saves only reset at long rest, and a level of exhausting for hitting 0HP even if you are healed on the same round.
Characters with no or light armor should be able to calculate their AC using their CON and/or STR instead of/ in addition to their DEX. I feel the current AC calculations limits our build options, forcing us to play high DEX wizards etc. or suffer from having a dangerously low AC. Also it doesn’t seem realistic that a character who fights a maximum of a few minutes each day would wear 50+ pounds of heavy armor for the entire day, or carry a shield with them everywhere, including the bar or the bathhouse.
Requiring a three level hexblade dip would go a long way to fix it. I've been seeing more and more hexlbade dips and I roll my eyes if it's the first time they're trying this, but if they've run a dip before I usually ask them to do something else and not be that guy.
Just fold the Hex Warrior feature into the Pact of the Blade, so any Pact of the Blade warlock can use Cha to attack with their pact weapon. Make the Hexblade's Curse feature usable +prof per long rest rather than once per short rest.
@@deathslinky2768 I'm heavily considering to ditch short rests and make all those places that say "per short rest" be "4 times a day" (or multiply the number by 4) since that is the designed amount of short/long rest designed into 5e. Then make the hit dice portion of short rest into a "healing rest" that cost 20 minutes per hit dice spent with half the time consumed if they use a charge of the healer's kit per dice consumed (or something like it)
Even that is not quite enough. We did that from the beginning and we still have a player who only ever plays paladin hexblade multiclasses.
@@DaDunge I can see that. It's still wild good. I'll admit I've run a hexblade paladin I referred to as the Smoting Chainsaw. It's stupid powerful and gimmicky. I'm not sure what the solution is. I think multiclassing in general needs to be adjusted.
Come on, let people play and enjoy the game, if they like dipping for hexblade it's because in some way that's fun for them, don't be that dm.
I use raw mostly except you can choose to not be unconscious and can take a action at the price of a failure (still have to death save at end). I did this bc dying was boring and allowed players to potentially make that ultimate sacrifice
Maybe for the issue of bigger enemies feeling weak or underwhelming, perhaps have a rule that creatures Large or bigger can split up their multiattack option…for instance, instead of hitting 3 times in one turn, they attack once on their turn and then gain 2 legendary(-ish) actions to attack between the players’ turns. It wouldn’t alter the strength/CR of the creature but would make its action economy feel more threatening.
Ive seen mercer do this when the party faces agains a single big creature (whatever it may be) and i added it to my games. Just giving them legendary attack actions goes a long way into increasing the difficulty of a combat
I also like an idea for an earned point system via leveling where you can unlock new skill proficiency and gain experience maybe a cost chart based off your state modifiers and you get a point each level or get a point each ASI and it costs 1 point to gain a proficiency and 2 points to gain expertise.
I'd love to see weapons get different perks or "granted abilities" to encourage unique weapon choices. Or at least put them on equal footing so players aren't punished for using a "sub-optimal" weapon. Right now it seems like every character just defaults to the same "best in slot" option. Pathfinder 2.0 did have some nice ideas in weapon diversity.
I agree with this, but giving every weapon a unique bonus could get very convoluted.
Right now a martial class will often pick "i use a greatsword" or "i use a greataxe" because they have the highest damage iirc. Seeing more PCs with lances/glaives/warhammers/morningstars is very flavourfull, but to me, picking those is either a sacrifice of efficiency for flavour, or if you want to cheese (my current PC is a cheesy bugbear with a glaive and polearm master, 15ft melee with opportunity attack if they approach)
Yes this can be convoluted.. but we already have a type of keywords system in-place. so just lean into that for weapons.. And all you'd really need to do is make certain weapons perform better at certain circumstances. For example:
Blowdarts are [Silent], meaning that attacking with them does not reveal your position (on a hit or miss)
Axe weapons are [Brutal], meaning that when they are used on a prone target, and you crit, you get an extra die of damage (yes like Barbarian's Brutal critical; it also leans into axes being 'executioner' weapons)
Flails and Maces are [Shield-breakers], they ignore the bonus to AC from a shield.
Basically we wanna make the weaker weapons maybe on the niche or situational side, buffing them so they're not ignored, but have at least some utility that might make a player pick them. I've personally been working on something similar to make Armor feel more diverse, and hopefully takes away some of that Dexterity-super-stat.. Yes this would add some complexity, but this is all complexity that should mostly take up time before combat rolls around. Keywords in my experience are easier for ppl to remember, especially if the keyword itself already eludes to what it does. For example, When I refer to Armor that gives a stealth disadvantage, I just say "The armor is [Noisy]". Armor with a strength requirement is [Hefty], I may specify the strength needed by explaining it as [Hefty (15)].
If you were to change how the AOE "Choose Your Target" spells, how would you change them? A lot of those spells have a long range they can be cast at. Would it be like a previous commenter said and just have the spells go in a straight line, hitting who/whatever is in the line of fire? If so, that would leave quite the trail of destruction since Fireball can travel 150ft.
For skills I would like to see a system where you gain skill points every level and each skill maxes at 5. These are pluses to your roll.
I use a party initiative where the highest roller wins it for their whole party and gets to act first if they want. Players can choose when they go in relation to each other and it really opens things up for team work. But there's another little house rule that makes our combats feel even more engaging: players roll all the dice!
I transcribe all monster stat blocks to index cards for quick reference before each game. Any ability that uses a roll and a modifier is converted to a DC of 10 plus said modifier (except for saving throws, which are 12 plus the appropriate modifier.) Now all spells use attacks and players have no spell DC on their sheet. When an enemy attacks the player rolls AC (1d20 + their AC modifier, which is their normal AC -10) versus the DC of the enemy's attack. A result of 1 on this roll is a critical hit from the enemy. I usually use fixed damage values as well.
This does several things:
1) It always feels like the player's turn. Even when the enemies are acting, the players roll the dice.
2) Getting missed by an attack feels more victorious. Goblin missed you? You did that!
3) Combat feels faster. No silent lulls as I roll and add things up.
4) Most importantly, I don't have to feel guilty for hurting characters. Goblin killed you? You did that! :3
(Bit of a joke on that last one, but honestly I do feel bad when I roll high against the players and this does help a little.)
I never understood why we can’t more skills as the player . So I can learn how to cast wish but can’t learn how to whittle ?
Oh you can learn new tool and language proficiencies but it takes something like 6 months downtime.
It costs something like 50 gp and a bit of time to learn a proficiency in 5e. No levelling or anything, just time you can do between adventures.
@@DracoSuave A lot of time, and then only tool or language proficiencies.
I'm one of those DM's that applies a level of exhaustion whenever a character drops to 0. When I ran a game several years ago, I used the lingering injuries from page 272 of the DMG, but that turned into a lot of bookkeeping. Exhaustion is simple, stacks with other effects, and is already trackable in Roll20.
I agree about re-balancing monsters. If I throw a single high-CR enemy at my players, they win by having way more actions per turn than it does.
Passive perception is convenient for monsters/NPC's. Instead of rolling perception checks for each of the hobgoblin guards, I just check the rogue's stealth roll against a single DC. But whenever something tries to sneak up on my players, I make them roll for it. I'll give them advantage if they're trying to be alert or disadvantage if they're distracted with something else.
I like reworking the death/unconscious mechanics. I'm going to suggest some of those homebrew rules to my group
Be careful throwing around exhaustion. That was raised as a suggestion. If you have one source adding a couple levels it’s no big deal. If you end up with two it’s a huge problem and 3 sources is more than deadly.
You lose one level of exhaustion per day. If someone ends up at 5 or 6 levels of exhaustion they’re basically crippled for a week of game time which is hard to deal with in the middle of a dungeon.
Mechanically, it’s easier to kill a level 10 adventurer and bring them back to life than to deal with 6 levels of exhaustion because your frenzy barbarian got knocked down and was injured … but still wanted to be a barbarian … and your module also has a rule about how hot the environment is being tiring and ….
Two tiny goofy suggestions here inspired by your video-
1. Take the overpowered feats (sentinel, lucky, PAM etc) and maybe even combine some or buff a tiny bit and turn those into capstone's (I imagined a fighter capstone being GWM + Sentinel or something crazy)
2. Give big bad guys or bosses or just special mobs multiple initiative? So like super quick goblin rogue captain gets to go 3rd and also 5th, rather than just everything has multi-attack.
Love the video and community as always!! Big thanks!
I would like to see a number of things that people would hate me for. First off, I’d love to get rid of HP and replace it with a less granular system for health. Some systems combine an exhaustion and HP mechanic which I think would be cool for horror games. I’d also love to see all classes get reworked sort of in the style of warlock where you have a limited number of abilities you choose from that you can do nearly at will while everything else has a cost. I think that really has merit as a concept and should be expanded
In regards to the more deadly combat.... You know that the CR is balanced around 3-4 combat encounters each day, you specifically say that that isn't your play style which is valid, but then you have to adapt how you plan then, if you only want one bug fight, make the bosses higher Cr monsters.
My thoughts on capstones ( i havent played all the classes yet, but still)
Artificer: as is,
Barbarian: as is
Bard: instead you gain unlimited Bardic inspiration
Cleric: as is
Druid: as is
Fighter: dont know. Probably as is, but its so boring. Maybe swap with action surge so that 4th attack is 17th and as capstone you regain action surge during initiative
Monk: instead, beginning of each of your turns regain 1 ki point
Paladin: dependent on subclass. Good overall as is imo
Ranger: have it affect any enemy isntead if favored enemy
Rogue: boring like the fighter, but probably fine as is.
Sorcerer: regain 1 sorcery point at the begining of your turn
Warlock: as a bonus action (or full action if bonus action is overpowered) regain ANY pact spell spell slot (not mystic arcanum)
Wizard: this could go a few ways. It could just be an improved spell mastery, where you can cast the two 3rd level spells at will at lowest level, but i like the following better. You can cast the 2 spells with a lower spell slot. If the spell is fireball, you can cast it with a 2nd lvl slot, but with the effects of it as a 3rd level spell. If you spend a 5th lvl spell slot, it is cast at 6th level. (If underpowered, it can instead affect all your spells, and renaimed to spell mastery while 18th level feature us renamed to signatures spell)
I have been listening to nerd poker and one of the things they did was allowed the wizard and option to make one of their 1st level spells a cantrip. I definitely liked that and it makes sense that a magic user would gain such mastery over a handful of leveled spells in that manner. Even if they got capped to a certain amount per long rest would make sense.
In our group you get 1(hidden)D4+1 death saves that the DM rolls.
Damage Reduction is amazing. Use it all the time.
Could you do a deep dive into why you like opportunity attacks so much? I really liked when you used side-by-side combat examples back when you compared 5e to Pathfinder 2.0.
Skills! Definitely need word. Especially since only like 5 of them actually matter. Make all skills and Intelligence matter.
It's not something the game designers can actually fix. The problems with skills is within players/DMs themselves. What can they do to make Animal Handling relevant? Or Medicine?
Whether skills matter or not is 100% the matter of your game. I personally don't see any problem with any skill, they all come up from time to time at my table. Even "useless" Intelligence - Investigation is one of the most commonly used skills for me.
If "only 5 skills matter" - it's your problem, not game's.
@@antongrigoryev6381 well ... there is this thing with skills
There really are only 3 that matter the most from my perspective as I have read 6 or 7 modules, the most occuring ones are perception, investigation, persuasion ( shall I say these are 3 most relevant skills in modules) then there are some instances where i.e stealth matters in avoiding the combat in module or insight can reveal that the NPC is lying. Other skills occure once or twice per module in average.
In homebrew games you can use any of the check you want basically I had to read and tweak stories from modules to make other skills relevant or when the players call for the check ... I am not the DM that always call for the necessary checks but I leave the decision for the group and assess the situation from their description ... and so in my homebrew campaign nearly every skill had its use, yet the game mechanics on mosters and their abilities still left its mark.
So IMO skill system needs a rework ... beacuse when you go to the roots of encounters or secrets it usually goes one way or another to the relevancy of perception and stealth in combat, investigation and perception in exploration, and persuasion and insight mostly in social interactions. Charisma based skills have the leading role and use in every social interaction that is true, yet persuasion is the most commonly used one, second in line are probably Dexterity based ones then Wisdom based (except for perception, which is probably most commonly used one active or passive) followed by Intelligence based ones and lastly Strength based where it is only athletics. Unless you homebrew the shit out of the world you play in, there will be only 5 most relevant skills.
@@ArmagedonSVK Again. how do you imagine they can rework it? What can they possibly do to make Animal Handling, a skill that helps you deal with animals you don't even come in contact with every day, as useful as Perception, a skill that lets you notice things? Remove former from the game altogether?
@@antongrigoryev6381 the skill system needs to be revised altogether ... first of I came to conclusion that passive skills need to be removed as it can get out of hand in 3 or 4 levels
secondly the animal handling skill can be used pretty well and often if the game or rather players use mounts ... the animal handling skill is underused as almost none of the modules is using beasts as enemies or encounters as is ... even though they can make really interesting flavour in exploration parts of campaigns
skill system also kind of suffers from the limitations by class restrictions and taking skilled feat is for most of the time waste of the feat, or it is taken for character flavours when build is already done. Downfall is also that the feats are optional so not every game the feats are allowed.
as I read rules and skill system in 3.5e, it was better suited for modularity of characters and skills had more depth to them ... so in this case shall I say one step back = two steps forward
what can they do to make other skills more relevant? ... nothing in the game mechanics but write one or two modules or some guide on Out of the combat play to encourage use of other skills such as animal handling medicine history and so on ... there is hope for that and small fraction in Tasha's in section dedicated to parleying with monsters
the idea of going to death saves gives a point of exhaustion sounds great to me, i might steal that
Read up on the exhaustion rules. Your rule about death saves shouldn’t be unfairly harsh toward anyone who decides to be a frenzy barbarian.
Hey, we use y'all here in kansas too!
Edit: I really disagree about spells that select and avoid friendly targets. It's magic. It can do things that are otherwise impossible, and that's fine, and from a crunch standpoint I don't think it's that bad. There is one caveat I'd add though, only let non damaging spells for this. Fireball just blankets the area in fire and it's fun just being like, sorry bro, take this one for the team when your ally gets caught in it (maybe even on purpose). But something like fog can be something that just applies to enemies and it's fine.
For initiative, my DM uses 10+your initiative bonuses instead of rolling. It works pretty well and he doesn't have to go around the table asking all the time. He asks at the start of the session and then updates in his notes if it changed. He also gives Big Bads 2 or even 3 initiative turns depending on how tough he wants them to be.
DnD just went to the carnival with Bugs Bunny and now they're heading to the prom. I don't see deadlier and scarier being part of the 6e plan unless there's another drastic change in direction.
The good thing tough is that is the easiest part to homebrew.
@Taking20 Have you ever played Heroes 3 video game. Do you remember monsters with Haste (not haste spell from 5E). They simply were put in a different group when deciding turn order. They rolled among themselves, were sorted via initiative score BUT the group with haste attribute comes before everyone else. Something like this would be easy to implement and solve the initiative problem
I love discussions like this because they've been happening for years and every time people say 6e is right around the corner. I think it really needs to be acknowledged that 6e isn't coming. It's just not. From a business perspective it makes no sense to have WoTC split their player base and stop supporting the most popular (and most profitable) edition of d&d. 5e made more money for Hasbro then any other sector of their business last year, and growth is only expected for the years to come. Historically, new editions of d&d were rolled out to reengage players who had left, and to revitalize sales when they were low. As much as we may hate it, nobody watching this video is the core seller base for WoTC. The vast majority of dnd customers are not involved with the online content cycle.
That being said, I do think it's likely we will get some expanded rules at some point, like a soft 5.5. We might already be in the beginning stages of that change with Tashas introducing new race customizations and variant class features. I think we can expect more of that, even though I would prefer an overhaul of some of those core rules.
First, I wish AC was lower for players, like a blanket -2 across the board. Unarmored AC should be 8 + your dex. This works well because it makes monsters more deadly from hitting more often and helps keep the player's AC somewhat similar to what the monsters have. I always hate seeing the heavily armored knight villain rocking an 18 AC when the entire party is at 20 or higher.
Secondly, we need an expansion on travel rules. Don't make me do the math of calculating travel pace, distance, difficult terrain for a specific portion of that travel, and all the little number tracking from foraging, rations, and water. That system is very tedious and nobody uses it because it's not engaging. Adventures in middle earth has a great take on travel and I highly recommend using it. It gives the party choices about how they want to approach travel.
Third, two weapon fighting is dumb and needs to change. You should just get an extra attack with your off hand that doesnt take a bonus action, but your damage dice should get smaller instead, or you should be less accurate. You can further balance this by giving clear and enforceable rules for drawing and stowing weapons. Additionally, literally everyone should have something else they would want in their offhand. Make what you hold in your hands a big deal and give viable alternatives to offhand attacks. Example: grappling requiring a free hand and it's actually just as good as an extra attack.
Fourth, they need to give DMs more tools to hurt the players. We need more versions of Exhaustion for cold and hot climates (think frostbite and heat stroke), and poisons/diseases should be regular and deadly threats to PCs. Curses shouldn't be so easy to remove. Imagine a book full of curses, poisons, and diseases with effects and ways to remove them requiring monster parts, herbs, or rituals.
I strongly agree with all the points in this post.
Excellent insights.
Paragraphs/line-breaks will encourage readers to read through your text.
5e is going to be 8 in 2022. I have only been playing it for 1 1/2 years. Only because my kiddos showed an interest. I played basic and 2e back in the olden days. Never played 3, 3.5 or 4.
From what I've seen and read you are somewhat correct. Most companies often try fix something that is still great. I like how 5e has so many upgraded rule books and has a larger room for homebrew and allowed outside content creation. Not sure what fixes a new addition could really make.
i think its going to be some time before we get a 6e
Well if he’s playing bone devils he needs to give them polearms that do 2d12 damage.
Make intelligence a stat that any character can benefit from again. In 3e and its derivatives having a high intelligence gives all characters bonus languages and skill training.
I've personally house ruled that characters with an above average intelligence can choose a bonus language or tool proficiency for each point of modifier.
I find it hard to keep up with your brain. But it’s fun to watch.
12:30 Or even 3 levels of hexblade dip. We long since moved the attacking with charisma thing to pact of the blade, it's still a very common dip.
I think, on the reaction thing, you're sometimes forgetting that the game round isn't one person does something, then the next, then the next. The general idea is that it's all happening at the same time. That's the reason that a monster or person may not be able to stop someone from casting a spell, giving a potion, etc. They are mostly busy doing something else. But if they do have that reaction available, sure let them smack them. Many monsters already have a bonus to the action economy with extra attacks or special actions, which make sense because they're still usually weaker.
I don't think he is forgetting that, just saying there should be more reasons to allow an opportunity attack
Extra attack or Multi-Attack (for monsters) doesn't give them a bonus to their action economy per se; it is merely a damage output and miss insurance. Legendary actions do, but compared to players, a solo fight is always in the favor of the players.
the problem with that line of thinking however is that DnD IS a game, its not all happening at the same time
if it was, then when I as the wizard see the demon charging towards me, i run the other way
but i cant do that, i have to wait for him to get into melee with me first and THEN i decide if i run away or not
if i knock you down on my turn, then you get up on yours, how did i knock you down and you got up at the same time
no time passed, i did a thing, then you responded to that thing because it IS a game and turns DONT happen at the same time as each other
the oppertunity attack system of 5e is fundementally flawed because so many actions i could take that make sense as ways to gain an advantage in combat do NOTHING for me
knocking you away, does nothing you just walk back in close and get your attacks off, knocking you back achieved LITERALLY nothing
tripping you, does nothing you just stand back up and swing, knocking you down achieved LITERALLY nothing
getting into close with the guy when he still has his bow out, well who cares dropping the bow and drawing his sword doesnt provoke any reaction from me and he still gets to swing back, meaning there was no advantage at all to being in melee with a guy who has a ranged weapon out (exact same thing applies to spellcasters, why do they care if you are in melee with them it doesnt affect their spellcasting at all)
5e has a LOT of flaws with its systems and oppertunity attacks and the lack of reaction is a big one
@@gregsmw I can tell you they did it for the sake of simplicity. I agree with you entirely though.
@@gregsmw I get what you're saying, but it also doesn't work the other way. If there are 10 in combat, one of them isn't assumed to stand still and do nothing while the others go either. 6 seconds is actually quite a bit of time for an action and not a lot of time for 30 feet of walking movement. None of it's perfect. Some of the rules aren't there to make sense in reality, but to balance some actions against others. I can't say I agree with all of them but they are there as guidelines for DMs. If your DM wants to run it slightly differently then they can. Too many people used to board games or video games think rules are "hard-coded" and that's not how D&D works. It doesn't have all of the answers. They tried to build it so that people can run the game as simplified or as complicated as each group likes. Nearly every group I've run or played in ignores some of the base rules because it just saves time. But they may add a big set of custom rules for running a shop or something. Just do what you enjoy.
In the boardgame Eldritch Horror, when you have multiple bonuses for a roll, a player only uses the highest bonus. So 6th ed could drop the AD/DisAD and move back to bonuses, but a player only gets to use one. Conversly, negative modifiers get sifted to the biggest negative when figuring which to apply. I think it could easily be the case where a paladin aura or the bless spell provide a +1 for a certain number of rounds and then maybe for a single round a player has a +3 or +4 to an attack and next round the player goes back to using the +1. As a change to the whole not getting to often play capstone abilities, I would prefer each class to have skill trees that can cap out at like level 6 or 7. This way a player can choose to go down 1 path or multiple paths and this solves the issue of players not getting to use the bigger high level abilities.
I feel like we need more magical ranged items there are like 2 magical bows.
Honestly, we just need more magical weapons that aren't swords.
So I mentioned Path 2e as far as action economy went on your last video but, what about the skill system for 2e. I think this one is a bit more simplified in comparison to Path 1e and DND 3e but, it keeps a good bit of customization as well as class specific skills and skill bonuses.
Basically bring back a bunch of 4e stuff.
4e basically did all these things.
Yes and no. 4E did somethings better, but also had issues with whack-a-mole style combat and it's damage numbers just weren't very intimidating either. What 4E did do better is change it from a bunch of attacks (claw/claw/bite) to one single bigger attack, which is a much better idea.
House rule for death saving throws is dm rolls them behind the screen gives a unique experience and urgency when someone goes down
What if we were to tie roleplay "perk" features, feats, and extra attacks to Prof bonus
I do this.
So one suggestion I was thinking of because I loved it everytime my dm added this to his campaigns the rule of rolling every time a monster takes a swing at you to show you are actively trying to dodge attacks so you would have an ac modifier instead of a static ac that needed to be beat
With all the new content they keep releasing for 5e, they will probly make a 5.5 that uncludes most current content
Something one of my groups incorporated from things like Starfinder is # of languages being somewhat INT based.
Another idea bounced around, that kind of helps with the death and dying stuff was penalties when reaching 25%, 50%, and 75% hp. This would mean playing more tactically really starts to benefit the party/monsters and also helps reduce the effectiveness popping a healing word or lay on hands to get a play into the fight.
What about multi-sub-classing? The Swashbuckler that takes some arcane trickster abilities, or the Evocation Wizard that has a change of heart and takes some enchantment skills classes?
Death and death save mechanics - 1:40
Blend AoO and OA - 4:36
Give smaller bonuses - 8:30
No more AoE "choose" effect - 10:05
Better Capstones - 11:35
Fix the Hexblade - 12:30
Deadlier monsters + Quicker combat - 13:35
Suggested rules
Attunement tied to Proficiency - 18:25
Dumpin AC for Damage Reduction - 19:00
No more initiative - 19:45
Skills overhaul - 21:00
More unique class spells - 22:00
No more passive perception - 22:30
Bring back taking 20 - 23:10
Maybe add stronger Cantrips at the higher levels in addition to scaling the basic ones, or allow most casters to start casting low level spells at will in higher levels, since for a lot of classes those spell slots just go on unused.
We could go a bit better here. There are ways to get rid of vancian magic. Spell points are popular. I actually implemented a roll for spell completion and only a failure depletes any resource. Magic becomes much more fluid when you aren't counting bullets. Its less resource management and more risk management.
But then barbarians, monks and fighters suck even more in comparison with casters.. I think the overall power of magic should be toned down a bit so that cantrips look stronger, buffing martial classes all around
@@ILikeIcedCoffee The point here isn't making magic more fluid, it's giving low level spells uses in the higher levels of play.
@@tiagoguinhos You might be right. But we can do both.
@@noamshavit I'll take they you never played Pathfinder 1e. Where cantrips didn't scale and do no more than 1d6 damage, and that was disrupt undead, specifically against undead creatures. 5e's got very good magical cantrips. And spell points allow you not be forced to use lower level spells. Thereby negating the need for low level spells to affect high level play. Additionally, high level play is actually a niche group. All of the game numbers begin to fall apart past level 12. That's why so few adventures exceed this level. The prep time for such high level adventures makes them unwieldy and unsatisfying. This an opinion of course, but I have found it true in my 12 years in the game.
Part of the problem with brute monster is that while they get more damage dice as they increase in size, their STR bonus remains the same. A quick band-aid - each size > medium adds the STR bonus again, so the huge hill giant does 3d8+15 instead of 3d8+5.
So, instead of WotC focus on money but instead of work with gm's and/or players together like Paizo does? That would be drastic. That won't happen.
Stay crunchy.
Can you go over the section about attacks of opportunity and opportunity attacks again? That whole section was confusing as hell and I don't get what you were getting at in that section
Agreed, he was ranting on about wanting to blend the two rulesets without giving examples how that would look as a result. For someone who has never played 3e, I have no idea what he was going for.
Thank you. I thought the problem was me , since I could not understand what his point was.
We use negative hit points... its better. You wanna get back up, heal it.
Spell Slots should be an optional rule and Spell Points should be the norm. It’s far more flexible and natural to use.
I hate pick target AOE, either it's AOE or it aint.
I'm OK with a few spells that allow it, ideally while dealing less damage. Like a nerfed version of Spirit Guardians. There is a place, flavor wise, for a spell that sacrifices impact to protect your team, especially in the divine spells, since your patron could know who your allies are.
I like slow how it is.
15:30 The problem is that players have broken the AC bounded accuracy system.
So, Basicaly you want to make DnD 4 Essentials?
4e was cool. But also terribly flowed.
EDIT: Wow, I just got a thumbs up in 55 seconds.
@@nicolaezenoaga9756 TBH right now I'm playing at 4th edition campaign with veteran GM and it's fantastic. It's realy seems likу power fantasy isnstead of 3 attack as fighter, or hunter's mark management as ranger
@@nicolaezenoaga9756 DnD 4th have some balance Issue
our DM houserule to compensate idea of "must take feats" and items is:
+1 feat bonus to attack at levels 1, 11, 21
+1 feat bonus to non AC deff at 11, 21
+1 item bonus to dmg at 5/10/15/20/25/30
Honesty 4E with 5E's bounded accuracy and casters (so spell slots exsist) would be ideal. most of 4E's issues were that numbers got out of hand and that casters and martials all felt the same because spell slots basically didnt exsist. i still like the idea of daily and encounter powers but i also like spell slots and unique magic items that were not just more numbers
With more reasons for an opportunity attack, giving two opportunity attacks for every character per round may also be necessary, otherwise disengage may become obsolete. For example, if a someone gives a healing potion in melee range, they could then run away without disengaging, because the enemy already used their one opportunity attack.
Combat reflexes, let's go!
Death and Dying rules: At the end of combat, you gain one level of exhaustion if you dropped to 0 hp, and one additional level per death save failed.
For the Death saves, what I've done is implement a house rule of:
Any healing done to a creature that is not an normal action, only stabilizes them and they are still prone and unconscious.
So this would mean any bonus action or reaction would only stop them making death saves, they don't get up without someone or something waking them up. Might also implement the drop to the bottom of the turn order when they do get up.
So, I am going to have to bring the unpopular perspective. I have been playing D&D a long time. I have the original books. Not just the 1st Edition Advanced D&D rules. Or the red book, blue book first edition D&D basic rules. I have the A4 sized original D&D rules from the early 70's (and every edition since; except 4th). This game was spawned from a set of miniature rules called "Chainmail." The entire point of the rules was to NOT be a miniature combat game. Everything you are talking about is combat. D&D is not a combat game, and SHOULD NOT BE, in my opinion. That misses the point entirely. There are tons of miniature combat games. GW alone publishes more combat games than any one person can reasonably play. D&D at its roots is a Role Playing Game. It has combat sure, because sometimes that is the only way to resolve conflict in the story. A roleplaying game is about a shared story. Any device that is oppressive to the story IMO can be discarded. One shotting a character with a monster may sometimes be necessary to the story, but it has no place in the everyday adventure. People don't want to play Boromir and have to make a new character for next week. They want to be Aragorn, or Drizzt, or Belgarion, or whomever. The characters want to feel like epic characters in a saga. Your CR 5 dude shouldn't just erase 1 player per round and have lunch. That misses the point entirely. There are times when the DM may need to kill the party or a party member, but that is a decision that can't be taken lightly, or left to a single dice roll. If I want to "fight to the death" against another gamer, I'll play 40k or AOS or Flames of War or Bolt Action. If I want to roll dice and just kill stuff, I will play Wrath of Ashardalon or something similar. Games are there to scratch any itch, and sometimes you don't want to invest the time and effort into roleplaying. So at that point, play another game. Break out D&D when you want to play an epic story, not worry about the game mechanics. The game mechanics are not the point. The "the rules" are a framework for a common experience.
Something I’ve implemented at my table was initiative modifier is both dex and int, this adds some weighting to int, and means the fighters of my group, who are strength base, can be smart and therefore don’t have as bad modifiers to initiative
Hey I'm early for once!
So....when can we get our hands on this system you're making? And how?
A skill change/overhaul that I'd like would be something along the lines of:
-Pull out Perception, Investigation, and Insight from the Skill stuff; they should be their own thing and are treated special anyway what with their "Passive" stats, so 6e should treat them special
-Give each class a "Primary Skill" or a "Master Skill"; one that gains a bonus from your level(s) in that class. Perhaps this is "instead of" as opposed to "In addition to" proficiency/expertise?
-Since there are 13 classes and 18 skills (15, if they remove the three I mentioned above) there could be something there for subclass specialization as opposed to base class? However I would -personally- prefer to see the skill list trimmed down a bit more. Perhaps combine Survival and Medicine as the two (in my experience only) are often conflated and/or flip-flopped at a whim, and combine Deception/Persuasion since the two are -very- similar. This would get us down to 13 skills and 13 classes.
--Addendum: if we drop the concept of passives (as per the last section of the video) then I definitely think the skill list could be trimmed down some. As to exactly *how* would be up for more discussion and likely intense debate. Personally, I would make the above two combinations (medicine/survival, deception/persuasion), and additionally I'd roll animal handling into nature, combine perception and insight, and combine athletics and acrobatics. This would get us back down to that 13 skills/13 classes. There'd need to be a tweaking/rebalancing of which attributes are applied to which skills but this whole thing is a pretty high-level discussion at this point anyway.
UNRELATED: Another change I'd like (though far less likely to see) is to rename Charisma to somethign else. I've been in *so many* games where someone has super low charisma because they wanted to build up their beefy strong guy fighter/tank/etc and then tried to argue that "my mountain of an orc with black skull armor should be super intimidating, not likable". Since charisma is more understood as "likability" in general use, perhaps renaming the stat to something like "Presence" or "Personality" would make it more applicable to how the stat is used?
TWO videos about 6E D&D?! Seems like someone isn't happy with his choice of TTRPG!
Having NOT watched either video about 6E because I ABSOLUTELY HATE that it has been coming up so much the last couple of years I wonder how many of these changes are inspired by Pathfinder 2E! Oh the irony if any are lol
For the issue of the "dying mechanic" I use the lingering injuries on p.272 in the DMG each time they hit 0 hp, and it works like a charm. It creates tension for the low-mid level play since most effects cost a regenerate to fix.
A simple solution for the "Hit Point Bloat" of 5e (other than reducing them) is to allow Classes and Monsters with multiple attacks to ADD A DIE OF DAMAGE to any attack for each extra attack they get. The monster gets 3 attacks for 1D6 each... change that to 3d6 each. That will help you out a bit.
Our House Rule reads only slightly different from the one above...
"IF the PC may make a certain number of multiple attacks in a round, they may make one or more attacks against ANY enemy within range who is in their frontal arc. Alternately, an attacker may surrender one or more of their multiple attacks and instead launch a "concentrated attack" against either a single foe or perhaps a pair of foes (given sufficient multiple attack capability). A concentrated attack adds an additional Damage Roll to the attack but costs the user one additional attack to initiate. So a Fighter with 3 attacks and a Shortsword doing 1D6+2 (with a STR bonus) could strike one opponent with a normal attack (doing the 1D6+2) and immediately strike a second opponent with a Concentrated Attack [using two attacks but with a single roll To Hit] and if they hit, that attack would do 2D6+4. Alternately, that same Fighter could use ALL THREE of their Attacks to hit a single opponent for 3D6+6. The player gets to choose how they will divide up their PC's multiple attacks."
You will find that this rule will help speed up combats. It also gives Fighters a bit of a "tactical choice" in how to use their multiple attacks.