Indeed their are some RU-vid creators who also provide monthly publications for their patreon supporters too. I think this may be better done through 3rd parties. If it goes on D&D beyond it acquires an aura of legitimacy that it may not warrant. I look at magazine rules as having the weight of playtest UA which is probably wise. We have seen WotC fail to vigorously test recent releases and more problematic material from Tasha's cleric subclasses to Strathaven spell balancing to Spelljammer races. I feel I don't trust them to provide regular monthly drops of optional content and frankly they probably don't want the risks and confusion that will result from time to time.
Dont know if anyone's mentioned this, but Ghostfire Games has an adventure path subscription service called fables that I like very much. Very robust set of materials. Very fun
Some of the Prestige Class prerequisites don't make any sense and actually get in the way of the story. Remember, in order for a paladin to become a blackguard (and get full class benefits) without being stuck as a fighter without bonus feats, three conditions must be met: 1) The paladin has to fall from grace. Not only fall from grace but go all the way from Lawful Good to an evil alignment (I assume Lawful Evil) in one fell, beautifully dovetailing narrative swoop. Which would be easier if the PHB didn't encourage the DM to make alignment changes a step-by-step process... 2) The paladin just had to HAPPEN to have 5 ranks in Hide at the time. Hide is a cross-class skill, and since both dexterity and intelligence are dump stats for paladins, you won't have the skill points nor the motivation to invest in those without several level ups. Why hide? Because blackguards can sneak attack just because oohhhhh, EVIL! (Ideally, to be optimal, you should be a Rogue at level one and then multiclass into Paladin for 10 levels, if your goal was to just get everything out the Blackguard class. Oh, and don't forget to pick up 2 ranks in religion!) 3) The paladin has to actually have enough experience to level up and gain a blackguard level. The fact that the player has to worry about this creates an environment of "character builds" that also impose on the story in order to make them happen. If your pally's going to fall to the dark side, you shouldn't be waiting for your number of class levels to tell you when to do it, you should be focused on making the moment be as dramatic as it should be, possibly on the spur of the moment! If you are looking down at your character sheet, you are not engaging with the imagined world. Here's the better rules for prestige classes: 1) To become a prestige class, you just need to join the club. For Blackguard, you basically just need to dedicate yourself to evil the way that a paladin dedicates him/herself to good. Maybe you have start as a paladin or sell your soul in the official Blackguard cult or whatever. 2) Because you don't even need to level up free first, a prestige class will require you to have levels in a particular class. The prestige classes themselves are exactly like the core classes (Fighter for Purple Dragon Knight, Wizard for Red Wizard of Thay, Wizard AND Cleric for Mystic Theurge....or Paladin for Blackguard in this case), except it has additional class features. You immediately replace all of your core class levels with the prestige class levels. DONE!
Good Video. Might I suggest breaking each point up with a title card, or separating the video progress bar with chapters. So going back to a specific point is much easier. Hell time stamps in the video description would go a long way. But again good video.
These are all good callbacks, there are players at my table who've never played 4e that use 'bloody' but have no idea it is a relic of an edition they've never played. It deserves to come back simply because it never left!
As a DM I always loved the 4E Monster Manual . It made running the monsters way easier. You had two or three powers they had and what they did, and how many times they could use them. I was less a fan of this system for the PC's.
One of a few. I LOVED 4th ed. Points of Light was very exploration heavy, world building was so great, and I absolutely ADORED having classes (other than magic magicy casters) not suck at higher levels. Minions was my jam and the concise manner powers were explained was great.
I'm working on a very faithful adaptation of the 4e classes for the DM's Guild. I'm using the Renown/Piety rules as a framework for variant Paragon Paths/Prestige Classes. That way, even a creature outside of a "power" class can take a version of one.
Best skill challenge I ever ran was a race across the city rooftops chasing a "suspicious character" in an action-mystery game run in a modified Al Qadim/Arabian Nights setting. We had 6 PCs, most entirely new to D&D, and everyone was able to contribute and get excited, casting spells to "head him off" or slow him down, climbing up/down walls, trying to use Perception to see which way he was headed, etc. No need for a map, I'd just ask players what they wanted to try, asking for rolls if needed, and my descriptions kept them appraised as to whether they were "catching up", and what clues they picked up along the way. Narratively, I knew the guy had to get away, but the journey to that point was entirely down to the players' ingenuity and the whims of the dice gods. Who says D&D can't do fun mysteries :) Haven't run a table in a while, but 4e is basically my forever-edition for D&D at this point. Besides the cool & crunchy mechanics, it was really easy to homebrew for, or pull in material from earlier editions or other systems entirely. Digital resources also made it easy to meetup & play after-work, which suits our current lifestyles.
I'd love to see a physical copy of Dragon magazine again for us old timers that don't like reading everything on a tablet or computer. Also, unpopular opinion; BRING BACK THAC0!!!!!
Nothing against THAC0, but from comments I've seen online & heard in-person, most folks today can't/won't do even that level of basic math. Between math-phobia and math-innumeracy, something like adding/subtracting a list of positive & negative numbers puts more fear in people than facing off against an Elder Black Dragon at level 1.
@@mandisaw It's sad because it's not hard math... Your Thac0 is 12, trying to hit a 2 AC, add 2 to your Thac0. You need 14. Time for my old man moment. "Kids these days..." **shaking my fist at nothing**
@@anthrojim Aye, my late hubby was positive-to-indifferent about THAC0, but he grew up with the cRPG side of D&D. We both found when running 4e pen-and-paper, that new & old players, math whizzes and math-phobes alike seemed quite comfortable with it, so long as there were less than maybe 4 bonuses/modifiers. Past that, it was less about math difficulty, as keeping track.
monsters in 4th edition were way cooler than in 5e just my opinion. You mentioned bloodied and minions, both of which I have adopted from 4e into my 5e games for a while now. I like the prestige classes too a lot better than subraces/classes etc, because now all the DMs do is start the character at a specific level (usually 3rd and or 5th) and it doesn't feel earned, kind of reminds me of level boosting in mmos, which always irked me. As far as Dungeon/Dragon with their streamlined adventures, doesn't DM's Guild fill that role now? At least in concept? I do think they phased it out so that they could sell more of those bloated $50 adventure books which wizards makes money on, so I doubt (sadly) those will make a comeback.
Dungeon & Dragon magazines served two different audiences. Dungeon was DM-focused, with not just adventures, but setting info, freestanding NPCs & plot hooks, and in ye olden days, info about other TTRPG systems that DMs might be interested in checking out. Dragon was player/general-focused, with character options, Unearthed Arcana articles, and snippets of player-safe setting info to whet the appetite. Articles from in-house writers and outside submissions were a good way to get a foot in the door. And there were letters to the editor sections, and ads for small-press systems/aids/products, like a lot of hobby print magazines at the time. 4e included the magazines digitally as part of the overall D&D Insider subscription, so it was a reliable "hook" to provide value for (and collect money from) players & DMs alike, beyond initial character-creation, allowing them to make money without the book-bloat that 2e & 3/3.5e faltered under (or the potential microtransactions discussed in the new edition). Paizo (of Pathfinder) got started in D&D managing the magazines, so from an industry standpoint as well, there's a lot more value to having the magazines back than just published adventures.
1)I never stoped using "Bloodied" but it became more of a story telling condition. It was a way to tell when something was at 1/2 hp with out knowing the HP. This is for monster and players to tell with out any macnical affect, 2) It needs the crafting system added in. Personly I loved the 3.5 and pathfinder vs of it and something more like that would be so nice. 3)Sort of from 3.5/pathfinder is a house rule we added for 5e. Monster Lore Skill (-5 if untrained). This Knowledge skill gives your info on monster in our game at 10+chanlange rounded down. You get more by how much you pass it by and if 20 over you basically get that stats. It the older it was each had it for some monster but 5e has less skill so it was pushed into one class. Range and any time you can pick any skill you can pick this only.
What should be noted is that a lot of those old adventures weren't just standalone, but also meant to be used with the old hexcrawling method as places of interest you could pregenerate on yourr map and drop down with further text tying it to your world or as a random feature the players could encounter anywhere. If there's nothing pressing people for time, like say, a haunted tower where the ghosts aren't actively hurting anybody but those who stumble upon it, the players can very well just leave the tower alone and continue forward, noting the tower on their map as a place of interest. later on when the priest can better turn undead or you get yourself a holy sword, you decide to clean the place out and refurnish it as your base of operations in this wild land, making use of all those loyal followers and henchmen you've accrued to setup shop and stable.
I absolutely agree about #1 - bringing back Dungeon/Dragon magazines. The Dragon+ was way too fluffy and tended to be just a marketing flyer. Maybe have a DMSGuild version that people could subscribe to for either PDF or physical copies.
I think if WoTC tries to release modules and campaign paths on a subscription model, it will mean eternal pre-order syndrome for players : “act now to secure the digital exclusive Tiamat mini and a special abyssal portrait frame for Hoard of the Dragon Queen 2.0!” everyone will agree that the extra $100 is a bit steep because you don’t even know if the next part of the campaign will be good (or out on time), but if you wait you’ll miss out on the pre-order bonus…
The Flanking thing should be just an advantage not a +2! The Minions thing, ONLY if the players could also get them! Screw the Bloodied Condition if it makes the enemy more dangerous! I DISAGREE ABOUT TOUR OPINION ABOUT "FEAT BLOAT"!
It's interesting that you see value in the 10 topics listed, when my group and I consider them painful. I have played since Advanced Dungeons and Dragons with all the version from that point. I agree that the Magazines need to come back, but they didn't make enough money which is why it was cut.
Only the print versions didn't make enough money, because print magazines were on the decline all-over. They shifted to digital in 4e, and it was just fine
I like most of your suggestions but I can't believe you are literally begging WOTC for micro transactions! You'd have to be a fool to not realize that micro transactions are coming with this system but to beg for them? No I want to pay for an adventure and have the adventure. Not interested in paying for part of an adventure only to find they decided to not support it or have some other reason to not finish it. Not to mention that if you really think WOTC would do this at a discounted price you clearly have not been paying attention to how WOTC does things. WOTC monetizes the hell out of things. You really want D&D to turn into a thing where every year we will have to by the main / Core storyline then but monthly releases of the supplements to that core storyline not being able to complete the quest until we purchase it all? Then have to do it all over again to keep up with next year's game?? No man I left MTG for that reason. I'm not about to get stuck spending hundreds of dollars every year to keep my game current.
Hearing you talk about the leveled feats and knowing some of their design philosophy with them REALLY makes me wish they'd go further with variant class features. Maybe even variant subclass features like a variant 11th level feature all sorcerer's could take or hell all martials or all casters. You could give every caster class some variant on a hex blade as an optional low level feature.
Hmm, I don't know. I really felt some of your additions would actually hurt the advances we have now. Subclasses works way better than prestige classes. Magazines don't actually sell as good and would make even harder to a DM to have everything. But, minions are a need
So many great ideas from 4e that got tossed aside because people just hated that edition so hard. Also, please WotC, please let me actually be able to customize my character again. Every Race Class combo should be as customizable as a Tiefling Warlock.
I loved 4th edition my personal favorite till this day in fact. The thing is while I do like paragon paths the subclass system in 5th edition kinda does this because you specialize in your class. The problem is it come on earlier than later.
That's just it though, paths/destinies were more adaptable to how the campaign actually progressed. There are definitely things that should be Level 1-only choices, but I think your class abilities ought to be somewhat able to be tweaked to suit the campaign as-played, not just as-planned.
good list. none of the things that you mentioned can't be run in 5E right now. I would suggest that thieves get to keep advantage for flanking, but everyone else only gets +2 instead of your suggestion.
"The Bloodied condition" >Has been playing with some friends for a few years now That's...not still in the game? I've heard it in every combat session when enemies hit less than half, whaddya mean it's technically not in the game now?
Great list! I don't agree with all of it, but I certainly enjoyed listening! Adventure Path started in Dungeon Mag when Paizo published it. Like you, I wish that adventure design went back to resembling something more like AD&D (1E), or at least something between 5E and 1E. Love Dungeon and Dragon Magazines. The return of those is a pipe dream, that's why I hold on to mine like they are gold.
Great video, and great ideas! I love 4E minions because you could add a ton to get battles to appear epic in scale. I like the Adventure Path idea as well. That’s something that Paizo really nails and they release solid products.
Psionics is bad if it available to all characters. It unbalances the whole game. It’s ok as classes and subclasses but to be honest it’s redundant in a world with magic in it.
Agreed on the psionic class. It was never done proof though. I'd say get Matt Mercer to jot some ideas down for it. He does a good job at balancing new classes "thematically " even though what he has created so far feels weird in a traditional dnd setting.
@@davidmc8478 He asked I replied. I'm not waiting with baited breath for it. I realize I am in the minority. Congratulations if you hate psionics you are in the majority. You won.
I think additional customization choose options at 10th and 20th level would me amazing. I do think that we should have 2 more skills, Endurance, it being a constitution skill, and then an additional intelligence skill, General Knowledge, or something like that, because they're been time in which I've had to ask my players or our DM has had to us for a straight intelligence or constitution roll because there wasn't an appropriate skill
I preferred Paragon Paths over Prestige classes for the same reason you preferred them over sub classes. With the requirements for a lot of the prestige classes you basically had to know exactly where you wanted your character to go because you needed x and y feats plus n number of ranks in so many skills that if you didn't plan it out you might never be able to do it.
This. Prestige classes, like a lot of 3.5e, leaned hard into the "let's build a character from 1-20" style of play. Which, don't get me wrong, can be a lot of fun, especially with new books/settings in your hands. But it's not how most people like to play. Even when I would do it in-game, it actually kind of sucked to take your feats/skill-ranks according to some future-plan, only for the campaign to fizzle out way before you got anywhere close to seeing your plans come to fruition. Or if the campaign ended up bending in a different direction than anticipated, even if it was a welcome/interesting change, it means your carefully-constructed long-term build may no longer fit.
@@matthijsclaessen8152 I think I understand what you are looking for but I think maybe there are other ways to get there, Honestly one of the things I have been thinking about is how in L5R FFG they have titles that can be earned and earning them comes with special benefits.
No Prestige Classes! Sorry, knee-jerk reaction from an OSR grognard. I forgot I won't be using 5E and newer editions. For me, D&D stopped after 2E and I'm not too happy with kits either.
can we just get away from D&D Beyond? I really, really dislike any electronic devices on or near the playing table. Apart from my big stereo in the back of the room, which has something anachronistic like - cd player and record player. The rest should be candles, pencils, dice and paper. Okay, minis, if you are into that. That's it. So if we had a Dragon magazine - I want to touch and smell it. Otherwise they are out for me. Gosh, I'm frikking old.... too old for this world, I guess. ;) (No, I'm not suicidal, just very old-fashioned....)
i'd also love to see smaller modules, akin to the old TSR Gazetteers. focus on a city/area/race/new subrace, and expand on that place/way of life and lore. give me big, beautiful, hexagonal maps to gaze upon.
The modules were how I learned about D&D in the first place, many moons ago. The local comics+candy shop had an endcap rack where they'd stick odd-sized things, incl the Archie comics I liked. Spinning it 'round, looking at the crazy artwork on the module covers (shrinkwrapped :p ), I was hooked. Knew that if I could just convince one of the boys in school to teach me to play (a girl! LOL), it'd be like playing-pretend in all my favorite fantasy books. I think it's underestimated how much having an accessible, inexpensive, low-stakes product out in the real-world, not just in conventions, or dedicated hobby shops, brings in people outside the hobby. Modules are a great on-ramp into TTRPGs, especially back when they gave you at least enough mechanical snippets to kinda-sorta work out what to do. Now, with the internet, they could have $10 mini-modules and pitch them as cheap entertainment that's not on a phone.
@@mandisaw my local(ish) hobby shop stocked them, and i remember having to buy "The Dwarves of Rockhome" because it sounded so metal😁, but was instantly hooked on them. had them all between myself and a friend at the time (highschool days). got them all as PDF now and still dip into them, even as a player. just took some inspiration from "Orcs of Thar" for a new character.
@@gringodingo2602 Oh yeah, the old modules are still good for picking-over. Picked up a couple of Known World gazetteers for insight on merchant-princes and running trade empires.
Big book of encounters... you want OSE or Old-school stuff. They have hex crawls and many other things that can easily be used. The Dolmenwood setting is amazing. I would also argue that +2 flanking bonus is too heavy in the way they went high with the HPs but low on the attack bonuses and AC creep (unlike 3.0 and Pathfinder). +1 might be a better accommodation, you could just house rule it. Bloodied is a great mechanic that quickly communicates to the players useful information when HPs are so high as a system. Narratively, it can be difficult to be clear that a creature is more than half wounded.
Love the bloodied idea. Use bloodied in my campaigns, but it just means players/ mobs are 50% health or below. Your call on instantly gaining recharges may be something to homebrew going forward. Expanding in that space, and because I'm reading Kieth Ammann's "The Monsters Know What They're Doing" (HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!), what about a Fight or Flight status at 10%? The turning point at which a mob must decide whether to stay or beat feet?
I would love them to do an advancement system like EverQuest did. In Everquest you have only four base classes (Warrior, Priest, Mage and Scout) these only went to level 10. The next was around four different classes for each. This is where the Fighter, Cleric, Druid, Bard, Barbarian, Wizard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Ranger, Rogue, Paladin, Monk and Artificer would come in. These intermediate classes would only have 5 levels and then the Advanced, Epic or Prestige levels would come in. Instead of there being only twelve of these, there would be like 36 prestige classes and have only 5 levels per Prestige class.
Things I'd love to see: Skills: A tool skill that can be used with any appropriate tool pack/location with strength for smithing or with dex for lock picking etc. Or with wisdom for medicine. I think this would simplify tool use in the game. Bonuses Flanking +2 to hit High ground +2 to hit Cover +2 to AC Hidden +4 to AC (unless wholey covered behind a wall etc) Conditions Bloodied, fatigued, scared, confused, distracted, impaired (ability). Slowed, swallowed etc. Defined to simplify spell descriptions and monster abilities. Monster ability tags: To show whether monsters can use certain rules or bonuses: Opportunity Attacks High Ground Flanking Critical Hits Swarm rules and minion rules so DMs can treat multiple creatures as one entity or multiple but countable minions so you can have a huge area of swarming goblins or a dozen goblin minions and know how to build either from the goblin stat block.
I took my survey yesterday, and spent over an hour filling it out... One thing I do NOT want to see is "Levels" or "Tiers" of Feats, however, giving your skills additional weight by introducing a Rank-gain system like in 3.X D&D I wouldn't be opposed to, since it will give your skills a more noticeable impact than just being altered by the increase of Proficiency Bonuses and ASIs. I also don't think every Origin needs Darkvision... There were very few instances of Infra-vision and Darkvision in the Original game, and it was usually only given to the races that were subterranean, like Dwarves and Dark Elves. This free hand-out of Darkvision to 90% of non-humans just doesn't feel like it is rooted in where a culture makes their home, but rather on some other factor, like simply the race not being "Human."
3rd feat bloat was miles longer than pathfinder feat bloat, both bad but with an easy fix: JUST USE CORE :) played that game from day 3.0 came out until well after 5 arrived, never played same build twice and still didn't play out all our coffee-chat concepts! Less is more :)
I wish they'd go back to the non-European settings like Zhakara and Kara-Tur and make modules for them or adapt past ones. It's unlikely they will since they'd definitely be called racists/cultural appropriators or be accused of misrepresenting foreign cultures (as if Faerûn is supposed to be a faithful representation of medieval Europe). So I can see why they aren't touching them with a 50 metres pole since 4e.
Check out the wound point, vitality point system from Star Wars rpg (d20). Everyone who is a generic npc get a just wound points. Hero’s get wound points and Vitality points. Both are just a standard die for the class. But crits always hit WP.
Good list. Yeah, I miss the magazines. I enjoy the articles on DnDB, but I miss the art. I'd like some older style modules. I've been converting old ones from Basic and 1e. 5e makes that easy. Tumbling was awesome. Honestly I'd like to see all of the skills expanded. Totally agree about minions. I miss them. I feel like paragon paths and prestige classes fill a very similar roll to subclasses (especially with Epic Boons). But I dig the ideas. I'd like bloodied as an option.
I'd like to see Skill Challenges come back, but REALLY come back - not the pared down version writers keep pillaging these days. The section on Skill Challenges in 4th Edition was almost as long as its section on combat, and it's amazing - so much for 4e being the "combat focused" edition. It's the only edition with a way to give mechanical depth to anything other than combat.
One of the things that I miss most about 3rd and 3.5 is the free download of a level specific adventure. Say I'm running a homebrew and don't have time to write up a full session. I could go to the Wizards website and find an adventure for any individual level 1-20 and run it in 1 night with minimal preparation. They had all the maps, NPC and monster stats, sometimes a new magic item. Everything could be run start to end with the pdf and the core books.
I'd totally be down for an "Evard's Big Book of Encounters" tbh, just give me a fuuuuuckton of neat little mini-dungeons and encounter frameworks and i can probably plopp them into my adventures somewhere.
Tasha's introduced liniages like hexblood, reborn, and dhampir, and it reminds me of 3.5 "templates." I would love to see many more templates or liniages in the future. The ability to create a woodling without dumping 3 levels into "Ranger" would be nice.
I disagreed with several of your points, personally, but your last one was infallible, lol. Making campaigns exciting for the DM as well as the players is important, and most modules that are released lump-sum just won't be as exciting for the DM, since they'll have the whole thing spoiled.
You hit a lot of my personal points, chiefly pulling from 4e ideas. While part of me wants to see paragon paths/prestige classes/etc. come back, more of me wants to see a further expansion of base classes to help bring more older archetypes into focus. In particular, 4e's psionic classes, a totemic primal class, an arcane defender, and so on. I'd also love to see something akin to the blood hunter make the leap some day. My other big hope is an increased cadence of releases in smaller doses. We've gone nearly 2 years with only 4 subclasses for the artificer, which is just sad. With your ideas of Dungeon and Dragon magazines/e-zine ideas, it's a really good opportunity. You could sub to them, get regular monthly content drops of new items, subclasses, and player lineages, and then collect them in a splat book at the end of the year as annuals.
Well interesting list. I disagree with less skills. I think skills help to define a character. That is of course as long as you do not let everybody be able to simply use the skills. Also with the skills they have now to many skills are under the same stat. I would like to see that spread out a bit. I don't disagree about the idea of prestige classes but, from my experience most of them never felt suitably "prestigious". I would be more in favour of introducing to the DMG (For DM's) a way to introduce benefits to character that are something more special. I really think that 5th Edition is very well designed. I however feel that most characters feel really "cookie cutter" like. I would like to see that change and I think more skills would help that. Otherwise an interesting list. It will be interesting to see where it goes.
I'm a would be game designer. I suspect half of us are. However a dyslectic perfectionist never gets anything to the point of publication. One idea I had was a summoner that could magically open a portal that allows 1d6+2 NPC fighters to fight the foe but these are limited. They share a stat block and hit pool. They have shared intuitive and a shared attack. When reduced to half the hit pool they dive back though the portal dragging the wounded. Most importantly they can face anywhere but they don't move away from the portal. They can form a melee wall or fire ranged volleys. In some places, under ground or deep forest they are hard to summon. This is sort of like a necromancer but with the living. The summoner is a magic user but not a caster. It could be a player fighter feat or a magic item. Once per short or long rest. It creates the feel of a larger scale battle without the paper work.
I've heard of several versions of flanking over the years, I think a good way to use the features in 5E is to allow bonus actions to distract, just like help, for allies on the opposite side of an enemy, for a single attack. It would prevent piling, it would cost a subtle resource, and remain simple.
Did anyone release the old Dragon Magazine or old Dungeon Magazine as a pdf? We have the paper originals, but it would be nice if someone had created an indexed and searchable version we could view on our phones, tablets, or PCs.
I would like to see weapon mastery (as per D&D Master set), this would go a ways to solve the linear fighter & quadratic wizard equation. Use a feat slot to advance , this will allow fighters to get more , but not disallow it to others but it becomes a commitment for those characters.
Yeah, no, I was with you up until you started talking about 4e mechanics. Adding bloodied, let alone other rules from that edition, is enough to make me walk away from this.
True Psionics, besides Bloodied and minions. For a little while I thought they needed vehicular skills but that I noticed those are treated as tool proficiencies.
17:10 There's only a handful of necessary skills missing from 5E ... I'd put these into my top three: Dungeoneering, WIS (underdark knowledge, identify aberrations, foraging, recognizing hazards) Endurance, CON (resist disease, fatigue, poison, sleep; better chance to maintain concentration) Streetwise, CHA (city knowledge, identify factions, gaining helpful contacts who owe favors) PS, dungeoneering is often known as underground nature and streetwise as urban nature, but still
17:10 There's only a handful of necessary skills missing from 5E ... I'd put these into my top three: Dungeoneering, WIS (underdark knowledge, identify aberrations, foraging, recognizing hazards) Endurance, CON (resist disease, fatigue, poison, sleep; better chance to maintain concentration) Streetwise, CHA (city knowledge, identify factions, gaining helpful contacts who owe favors) PS, dungeoneering is often known as underground nature and streetwise as urban nature, but still
I don't like flanking rules. In theory everything in a combat turn is happening at the same time, so letting someone move to flank while their target stands there dumbly waiting for them to be in position doesn't really seem like something that should happen, particularly when they then have a problem getting out of that position. Initiative doesn't stop other people acting. And I want to see a 4e style Warlord class. But won't.
I run other systems much more often than I run D&D and, in my games, flanking occurs when the character is mentally overwhelmed by their opponents on different sides. It also happens when the character has a large unmovable object nearby. Don't know why I posted this.... I guess I just wanted to share. lol I do like the advantage, though. I believe it's more streamlined.
Considering monsters can't crit now, additional bloodied abilities should be a must. A way to make 5e compatible is giving lists of effects monsters get when bloodied depending CR and/or monster type. Then just release new stat blocks with bloodied specific abilities.
I don’t think the magazines will truly come back. Maybe if it’s just pure dungeons I could potentially see it. 5e doesn’t have really enough mechanical complexity for lots of new classes and creatures. Because most of the diversity of the 5e lot is from making up new abilities, not as much by having a large list of abilities. I say this because when it came to making 3.x monsters there were enough tools in hand and rules in hand to design a near endless amount of creatures. When I design 5e creatures they all kind of look or feel the same unless I break the rules of creature creation or make new mechanics for the creature! Now making new mechanics for monsters if fine, I’ve done it in both. But I never felt as handicapped as a DM than when I try to make creatures for 5e. Too many monsters in 5e feel like the same stat block reorganized 5 times over and then just upscaled. The unique ones add new mechanics or abilities that aren’t in the monster creation rules.
Some good ideas - particularly the adventure paths tied to dnd beyond subscription. I think that’s a perfect way for them to deliver continuous ongoing stories in way that is very consistent for players and for them from a business standpoint!
I think they're leaning into publishing blog posts on D&DB in lieu of the magazines. They've published a few short adventures and encounters there, and some of them are not half bad.
