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No worries! It's just on my mind because I'm pretty sure some of my players will be a bit reluctant to change ruleset, and I don't blame them really. I'm mentally preparing myself to shift back to 5e if there's too much unhappiness or they can't handle the additional complexity.

I also burned out on 3.5. I don't think I would go back to it for a while yet, though I have lots of fond memories of that game and it does a lot of stuff pretty well. 4e was the edition I ended up playing for the shortest time, that's a big part of why I want to revisit it and give it another proper go.

Mostly I think our group loves 5e precisely BECAUSE you've got extremely complex, fleshed out classes and classes where everything is incredibly simplistic.

DnD does, and in my experience always has, dragged crazy hard when a player takes more than like 30 seconds to figure their gak out during their turn in combat, because this is a game where playing out a full combat by the rules with substantial challenge takes like 4-5 rounds on average.

In the current group I'm playing with, we have 2 players who really want their actions in combat to be as simple as possible, 1 player who really likes doing something different each and every round and having a billion different choices, and 1 player who enjoys having a few options to play with. DnD 5e's structure generally seems to keep things even enough that nobody ever feels utterly worthless, and frequently the player who really just designed her whole character in a combat sense to be "I shoot bow" ends up doing the most damage with their action.

the big stumbling point tends to come in my experience when you've got players who end up stuck with fewer or more options than they want, or groups that just do not have the attention span/play frequency for even simple combat encounters to be at least 30-60 minutes long. 5e is kind of a compromise between a simple 'roll a few dice, the game doesn't drastically change between combat and roleplay' type system and a 'RPG stops, players set up a quick skirmish miniatures game every time they get into combat' type system.

No, to me D&D never really have that great of combat decision making. When you are attacked, you do nothing but remove Hit Points.

Some classes have a variety of choices, but generally the most common combat decision is either do I get close and roll my d20, or do I stay far away and roll my d20?* Most of D&D's decision is "strategic" in the sense that you make it pre-combat, as opposed to "tactical" as in decisions made while "in combat" to maximize effect.




* = Vast over-simplification.

I don't disagree with the point that 5e has classes for people who like complexity and people who do not. I think up to roughly level 10 it works pretty fine as far as class balance goes, and level 10 is about as high as most people go.

I do think there are some obvious trap classes, especially if the PHB is all you own - stuff like Frenzied Berserker, Beastmaster Ranger, Champion Fighter (arguably), Wild Magic Sorcerer and maybe even Assassin (depending on how your DM runs their game) are all pretty lacklustre. But if you keep people on the classes that are well designed in the PHB you will be fine I'd say.

It just bugs me because I dislike how much scenario control spellcasters get later on. It's not really about combat effectiveness but more the amount of control they end up having over the outcome of the other parts of the game, especially in the style of game I tend to run.

But no doubt, 5e is tremendously successful and popular for lots of good reasons, my reasons for being a bit burned out on it are quite personal.

 Easy E wrote:
No, to me D&D never really have that great of combat decision making. When you are attacked, you do nothing but remove Hit Points.

Some classes have a variety of choices, but generally the most common combat decision is either do I get close and roll my d20, or do I stay far away and roll my d20?* Most of D&D's decision is "strategic" in the sense that you make it pre-combat, as opposed to "tactical" as in decisions made while "in combat" to maximize effect.




* = Vast over-simplification.

In terms of the decision i tend to make with my character in combat, I've got:

Poison spray to deal damage at range without expending any resources
Spike Growth to either prevent an enemy from getting to the party or to deal damage when I know a particular enemy is going to want to move over an area
Entangle to attempt to disable melee enemies/create Advantage for the party rogue to use
Heat Metal to deal unavoidable damage at range to a single target
Wind Wall to deflect projectiles and deal damage to targets in a line
Moonbeam to deal the maximum amount of damage to a small area
Transform into a Pounce beast to attempt to deal damage and knock a target prone
Transform into a Charge beast to close to melee and deal damage
Transform into an AOE effect beast like an ice spider or swarm

All the Transform actions remove my ability to cast spells on subsequent turns and usually offer a much lesser effect to my spells but add a large amount of hit points to me. most of the actions I take deal some kind of damage, but each uses a different resource (or no resource) and most convey a distinct effect - disabling or partially disabling a target, affecting an area vs a single target, setting up damage over time, or reducing the damage my allies will take during the rest of the round.

We hang out at level six, and have been comfy there for months as it keeps combat fairly quick and easy to resolve, but as the player in the group most interested in having lots of options during combat, 10 prepared spells that I can swap at will, 10 spell slots of various levels, and 2 uses of wild shape.

All spells...... which speaks to Da Boss indicating that spell casters are the only fully fleshed out system in D&D.

I have had this discussion elsewhere, so ne need to really re-hash it here. Thanks though.

Speaking of d20 combat, I'm actually making a homebrew d6 combat adapted from 40k for my D&D game, mostly to accomdate a large combat story they group is about to get into.

Going to ratio armor classes to armor saves, every 10 hp or so will be equivalent to a wound, attacks per round transfers, THAC0s (I run 2.5 edition) normalized to ballistic/weapon skill, etc.

Should be fun for the big climax battle at the end of the story... I hope anyway.

I've used One Page Rules for mass battles and it worked very fluidly. After their turn, each player could activate a single unit and do some actions.

 Easy E wrote:
All spells...... which speaks to Da Boss indicating that spell casters are the only fully fleshed out system in D&D.

I have had this discussion elsewhere, so ne need to really re-hash it here. Thanks though.

Right, I think that was kind of my point. The spellcasting classes (or other various classes/subclasses who have more than the basic suite of options) provide players like me who want tons of options the ability to have them, while the simpler classes allow players who are mostly interested in the roleplaying aspect and just want a simple "I attack" to be the only thing they want to remember in combat to have their thing, and neither of us ends up feeling useless because I can only ever match the sheer damage output that they do by expending my most limited resources, and I always have a bunch of different interesting options to pick from in a fight.

Also I don't necessarily see it as *that* much of a huge problem if spells are one of the only super in-depth intricate systems in the game if almost everything can just do spells, and "spell" is just the word they use for basically any limited-use special action attack/effect. Theres a couple of systems like Maneuvers and monk...whatever, special monk stunts that they define as distinct systems, but they use "Spells" for magic spells, holy prayers, ranger and paladin special attacks, lots of monster special abilities, racial abilities and lots of subclass features.

I will definitely say though there are ways to create your character that absolutely bore the living hell out of me. I ended up playing a Barbarian just for 'this is who I want my character to be' reasons in my first introduction to 5e and I got bored of the complete lack of options that class has in about 2 sessions.

but if you actually know going in what your preferred playstyle is going to be, and you make your choice accordingly, you can make the mechanics fit your preferred level of complexity just fine. I eventually reworked that barbarian into a Fighter/Stone Sorceror and was much much happier with him.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
No, to me D&D never really have that great of combat decision making. When you are attacked, you do nothing but remove Hit Points.

Some classes have a variety of choices, but generally the most common combat decision is either do I get close and roll my d20, or do I stay far away and roll my d20?* Most of D&D's decision is "strategic" in the sense that you make it pre-combat, as opposed to "tactical" as in decisions made while "in combat" to maximize effect.




* = Vast over-simplification.

In terms of the decision i tend to make with my character in combat, I've got:

Poison spray to deal damage at range without expending any resources
Spike Growth to either prevent an enemy from getting to the party or to deal damage when I know a particular enemy is going to want to move over an area
Entangle to attempt to disable melee enemies/create Advantage for the party rogue to use
Heat Metal to deal unavoidable damage at range to a single target
Wind Wall to deflect projectiles and deal damage to targets in a line
Moonbeam to deal the maximum amount of damage to a small area
Transform into a Pounce beast to attempt to deal damage and knock a target prone
Transform into a Charge beast to close to melee and deal damage
Transform into an AOE effect beast like an ice spider or swarm

All the Transform actions remove my ability to cast spells on subsequent turns and usually offer a much lesser effect to my spells but add a large amount of hit points to me. most of the actions I take deal some kind of damage, but each uses a different resource (or no resource) and most convey a distinct effect - disabling or partially disabling a target, affecting an area vs a single target, setting up damage over time, or reducing the damage my allies will take during the rest of the round.

We hang out at level six, and have been comfy there for months as it keeps combat fairly quick and easy to resolve, but as the player in the group most interested in having lots of options during combat, 10 prepared spells that I can swap at will, 10 spell slots of various levels, and 2 uses of wild shape.

The thing with the choices you are listing is that the vast majority of them are situational. So in every situation where they do not apply, they are not really a choice. They are the illusion of choice.

If the enemy has no projectiles, or is a single target, or are few in number and spread out, then Windwall isn't something you are going to use. You have better options. So check it off the list. Are enemies not clustered together? Then forget MoonBeam too. Is melee covered by the other characters? Ditch all your transformations as options. The strategy part that was mentioned is that you picked these options either by being that class or by making these choices with your class and it's given you this repertoire to draw on. But in any given decision making point you generally have only really 1 or 2.... MAYBE 3 things that are good decisions.

In that moment, the rest of your "choices" might as well not exist.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 RegularGuy wrote:
Speaking of d20 combat, I'm actually making a homebrew d6 combat adapted from 40k for my D&D game, mostly to accomdate a large combat story they group is about to get into.

Going to ratio armor classes to armor saves, every 10 hp or so will be equivalent to a wound, attacks per round transfers, THAC0s (I run 2.5 edition) normalized to ballistic/weapon skill, etc.

Should be fun for the big climax battle at the end of the story... I hope anyway.

I am personally a big fan of moving away from emulating mass combat and into emulating the FEEL of mass combat.

Basically, I don't need to calculate morale, combat for units, and individuals, and generals commands and whatever.

It's a lot of stuff to keep track of and the players don't really interact with any of it in a meaningful way to justify the amount of effort it requires. So instead I give the players things they can do in relation to the combat that can tip the balance of the STORY of the battle. And I turn each of those into a minigame or series of mico combats. Do they want to fight their way to key leaders and kill them? Well then they have x number of rounds fighting waves of 3-5 enemies to get to the general. If they cannot do it in time then some kind of boost to the general or debuff to the party, or change in the environment that makes things more difficult (maybe he has extra mooks in his actual fight?). And beating that general will result in a change to the story of the fight. Parts of the enemy army breaking up? Maybe it's 1 of 3 things that need to be done to end the fight favorably. Chuck in a time limit in terms of an actual timer or number of rounds of combat and if they cannot get enough things done the situation ends worse then it could have. Maybe named favorite NPCs died in the fight?

I don't need to keep track of all that crap that most mass combat systems try to track. I just need the players to FEEL like they have been in a mass battle and that their actions have consequences, good or bad.

 Lance845 wrote:


I don't need to keep track of all that crap that most mass combat systems try to track. I just need the players to FEEL like they have been in a mass battle and that their actions have consequences, good or bad.

^This is the way. In my experience, nobody is actually impressed or interested in you playing a solo wargame and trying to resolve mechanics you came up with on the fly to show that you're "following the rules" of the larger battle.

Either the battle is sufficiently close such that the player's actions can tip the scales one way or the other (in which case, don't bother with a wargame mechanic type thing and just incorporate the players using their allies as special attack options and such) or the battle is something of a foregone conclusion in which case why are the PCs even there?

As to the rest of the post, I'm good. I've done several pages of Lance's Magical Dancing Goalpost game, I'm set.

Yeah, the tactical vs strategic choice of D&D is really for a different thread.

In this thread, we ran into a bit of a challenge in our game and it is not the first time. There are plenty of hooks and ways to move forward in our game, but everyone is too busy doing useless stuff like shopping, gossiping (investigating), or what not and ultimately we spend a whole session or two not latching onto anything and just drifting aimlessly around.

Any one have good advice for a Player to try and herd his fellow cats along?

 Easy E wrote:


Any one have good advice for a Player to try and herd his fellow cats along?

One option would be to simply say "hey everyone, I'm going on to the next mission, anyone coming?", and see if it coaxes them to stop gossiping and start slaying!

 Easy E wrote:
Yeah, the tactical vs strategic choice of D&D is really for a different thread.

In this thread, we ran into a bit of a challenge in our game and it is not the first time. There are plenty of hooks and ways to move forward in our game, but everyone is too busy doing useless stuff like shopping, gossiping (investigating), or what not and ultimately we spend a whole session or two not latching onto anything and just drifting aimlessly around.

Any one have good advice for a Player to try and herd his fellow cats along?

We generally dont run into that problem very much besides just having long, meandering conversations in character that occasionally throw off the timing of a session as our DM kind of had it planned out. For the most part, I mostly just go with the old "well, we should probably get moving" and then we resolve the conversation later out of session in our discord group.

Yeah, such "subtle" calls to get on with it have not really been working....

It's kind of up to the GM to have something happen. Just because the players are not doing things doesn't mean the world isn't doing things. If they drag their feet then whats the consequence of that? That plot hook isn't waiting for them. What happens when the world decides to interact with them instead of waiting for them to interact with it?

Bonus points if the world hits them where it hurts and makes it personal.

I've been playing a ton of D&D recently with old friends over TTS. It's been pretty fun.

Though I've always wanted to GM an Only War game with them. I have the rules but I'm a little confused. Anyone know any good resources for some Only War tutorials?

@Easy E: If subtle isn't working, maybe pull a Leeroy Jenkins? Maybe the party needs someone to take charge?

@Lance845: I like your point about the world not waiting for them. It reminds me of how to messed with my players a little bit for meta-gaming when we restarted Lost Mines of Phandelver, since we lost all but two of the players and everyone else was new the returning players wanted to restart for them. I added a one shot at the beginning where the wagon got damaged before they left, and had to wait a few days for repairs. When they arrived at the goblin ambush they were so careful about their approach, but I had the goblins no longer waiting there because it was days later than the first time. They spent more than half an hour very slowly and carefully approaching the empty woods in the most advantageous way possible.

@Jarms48: I'm glad you have been having fun playing D&D recently. I don't know anything about Only War, so I can be no help. Sorry.

So I'm running a homebrew campaign at the moment and I'm hoping for a bit of fun input on where I can go from here and some monster ideas.

Here is the gist so far:

For this part of the campaign, it is all very classic gothic horror themed and currently deep in winter. It is aesthetically set in the early medieval period, small saxon towns, danger just around the corner and history is easily forgotten.

Characters are level 4, they've been helping out a small border town with various bits and bobs. They were all summoned by my big bad who sends them a magical note and is a necromancer living in a tower deep in the heart of a nearby forest. The players have yet to meet him but they have heard all sorts of strange tales and had some horrible visions. He seeks to awaken a sleeping god called the Hungering Maw. They are now trekking deep in the forest, nominally to help find some lost woodcutters but also hoping to at least meet the big bad. They find a wood elf village that has been ransacked and were attacked by undead elves. They find a stone circle that has been broken open and the stones scarred. They've also found notes about two elven warbands that set out to cut out the heart of corruption in the forest (one a nest of giant spiders and two the necromancer). While the elven warriors left, the cultists of the necromancer raised an ancient mighty warrior to do their bidding and slaughtered the village in a ritual to destroy the stone circle and complete the necromancers control of the forest. The use of the circle was pure happenstance to show their power and that they own the forest. Little to the cultists realise that the stone circle is actually a device that siphons power and prevents the fey from entering the material plane. The party have been attacked several times by fey creatures now (redcaps and darklings) and after killing the giant spiders and rescuing a firbolg who wants to close the fey portal. (In my setting, firbolgs are tree spirits given humanoid form and brought to life by wood elves in times of great peril). At the end of the last game, the firbolg said he would enact a ritual to close the portal and gave them each a task to prepare/set traps or some such for the fey minions which will assuredly attempt to stop the portal being closed once he begins. I have a little added twist planned that halfway through after a couple of waves of enemies, they are told they must journey into the portal and destroy a lodestone or something which is keeping it powered and kill something in the fey (maybe a hag?)

So my question really is thus: What do you guys reckon would be cool minions that will steadily attack the party before the portal opens fully? I don't particularly want to use darklings again although the elder's ability to cast darkness was very fun.


I have several tracks planned still for the party:

the main "questline" is essentially that the necromancer tasks them to uncover a lost relic in a tomb somewhere in the mountains which is the key to bringing back the Maw (they have the threat of muchos painio if they refuse and the added incentive is that they will receive 2k gold).

My other thing is that the baron of the town is now mysteriously ill and a thegn has taken over, one which had been "lost in the forest" for months and now suddenly returned and stiffed the party out of some money for a bounty on orc heads (they are still super mad about that). Also he's a werewolf.

I'm really wanting to bring all the disparate things together finally, get them murdering that necromancer so we can go elsewhere but there's a fair few things left.

This is maybe just a bit of a ramble because I'm writing up things the day before the session but if anything wants to add anything please do!

Has there been any mention of a Fey focused rulebook? I say in my youtube feed that a Fey adventure is coming out but those don't typically have much in the way of race and character options as compared with core rulebooks (like Tasha's) and setting books (like Van Richten's).

The undead UA rules had a super quick turn around coming out just months later in Van Richten's and I'm curious if the Fey ones (like the Fairy and Owlfolk races) will as well.

You're in luck maybe. The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. It's supposed to come out this fall and to my knowledge is the first 5e book to really deal directly with the Feywild. It's announcement says it'll include new monsters, mechanics, and story hooks. A lot of the most recent adventure modules have been leaning in on providing more setting info.

 LordofHats wrote:
You're in luck maybe. The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. It's supposed to come out this fall and to my knowledge is the first 5e book to really deal directly with the Feywild. It's announcement says it'll include new monsters, mechanics, and story hooks. A lot of the most recent adventure modules have been leaning in on providing more setting info.

Thanks for the link! I think that's the one the video was talking about "leaking" recently (though I incorrectly typed it above as already out). Maybe it will have character options like new races? My only real experience in 5e is with Rime of the Frost Maiden and that definitely isn't devoted in any meaningful way to character creation options beyond a few pages of backstory hooks and starting gear.

So currently im running a pretty interesting Homebrew campaign loosley based off of a video game I started writing up about 7 years ago and never finished up.

It's based on 5th edition mechanics, but involves Mecha and other fantasy tech (lazer pistols with ammo they can only find in ruins).

There are 3 major factions all trying to dig up and activate the 7 "Evils" which are these uber powerful mecha from the ancient civilization that actually have AI. The Evils themselves only acknowledge certain people to pilot them so I can play on personality with them.

I havent designed them all the way out yet, but the party has already met the pilot of one of them and found the key for another (who has recognized one of the players as a potential pilot when he gets strong enough).

Another major change I made is you can only level 2 class's at any given time, until you reach level 20 in a class. Once you hit level 20, you are allowed to get another class up to level 10 as a subjob for the level 20 class (so yes, you can hit level 60 potentially).

There are NPC's out in the world at level 50 or so atm and its going to take years of RL play to actually get there so im not too worried about the logistics yet.

The only thing i've really put on paper atm is the Pilot Class and the generic mecha you get to use so Im sure details will be flubbed later on, but since most of the stuff is based off of a concept of my own making its working out fine.

They are still currently in the Pilot academy arc for now, which im thinking will end at level 7.

 warboss wrote:
Has there been any mention of a Fey focused rulebook? I say in my youtube feed that a Fey adventure is coming out but those don't typically have much in the way of race and character options as compared with core rulebooks (like Tasha's) and setting books (like Van Richten's).

The undead UA rules had a super quick turn around coming out just months later in Van Richten's and I'm curious if the Fey ones (like the Fairy and Owlfolk races) will as well.

Volo's has a fair few Fey races which is the ones I've been using. I dunno if there's any better home brew stuff.

 Eihnlazer wrote:


The only thing i've really put on paper atm is the Pilot Class and the generic mecha you get to use so Im sure details will be flubbed later on, but since most of the stuff is based off of a concept of my own making its working out fine.

They are still currently in the Pilot academy arc for now, which im thinking will end at level 7.

I am interested in hearing how it goes. I am not 100% sure d20 and some of the D&D tropes are the best for such a game, but I am interested in hearing what you find worked and did not work.

So, we are now hip deep into the campaign Curse of Strahd and have plot hooks littered everywhere.

We are on session 6 or so and accomplished 0 Milestones out of 15 or so! We will probably need at least 7 in order to get to the end of the campaign. At this rate, we might NEVER get this campaign completed.

Our party also keeps getting split, even over the past couple sessions we have been chanting "Do not split the party" and then..... we split the party in the next 15 minutes! Lol.

What are the milestones for? Advancing in level or the overall metaplot? Or both?

Sounds exhausting!

On mecha RPGs, there's one called Lancer I believe that is loosely based on 4e D&D. I've heard good things.

 warboss wrote:
What are the milestones for? Advancing in level or the overall metaplot? Or both?

I think it is for leveling mostly as you complete parts of the meta-plot....

I will let you know when we hit one!

 Easy E wrote:

 warboss wrote:
What are the milestones for? Advancing in level or the overall metaplot? Or both?

I think it is for leveling mostly as you complete parts of the meta-plot....

I will let you know when we hit one!

Ah, I got this one. Milestones replace experience. So when you hit certain points in the story, like clearing a dungeon, saving the princess, etc, you just go to the next level.

I believe its purpose was both to streamline DM record keeping, and discourage murder hobos- after all, if you get the same experience for solving the problem, regardless of how bloody your solution is, there's less incentive to kill everything along the way, just to be sure you have the exp for the next level.