Hecate Thinks about 6e D&D

I have, scattered throughout these posts, strongly implied the idea that you more or less kit-build your character. It started way back in the  first post  with the idea that for my 6e we'd use the 5e as the essential building block for all characters, and it got a bit further developed scattered around in various posts. In essence, your class gives you quite minimal class features, in 5e, but balances a bit what you can get access to, and your subclasses, how many HP and MP you get, but most importantly what class training you get access to. That class training, there need to be more options than you can actually ever take, lets you define your flavour. So lets say, for the sake of example, there are 5 picks available at every level, in every class (that seems like too many, but we're playing make believe here). You only get to take three of them... so you can opt for tank, more tank, yet more tank, or attack, attack, more attack or something in between and make your fighters...

Brandon Sanderson, a fantasy author and teacher of writing, described two core magic systems in fantasy. The first is a hard system, in which there are clear rules. The characters do x and y is the result. Magic is essentially a kind of science or engineering, even if they don't understand it that way, and it achieves basically predictable results. The second is soft, where magic works in mysterious way and no one (possibly not even the magicians, certainly not everyone else) is entirely sure what's going on to achieve it, nor necessarily quite what the outcome will be. He says some other things too, about what the effect of this in your storytelling, which are quite interesting, but not entirely relevant here. If you'd like to read more, there's a  wiki link .  In broad terms, something like the Dresden Files or most of Sanderson's own stories use Hard Magic because it's predictable while Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones use soft magic because it's mys...

In 5e, if you are proficient in a skill, tool, vehicle or instrument you add a level based proficiency bonus, and if you get expertise from somewhere (there are a few sources, but the best known is rogue), you double this. You get proficiencies from some races, all backgrounds, and a variable number from your class. You occasionally get some from your subclass. You can also get them from feats, such as Skilled  and UA skill feats as well. It's incredibly rare to get more after third level, except from feats. In 3e/3.5e, skills worked rather differently. At every level you had a number of skill points to spend, based on your character class and Int modifier, and if you bought class skills you got +1 per point you spent, non-class skills gave you +1 per 2 points you spent. So a bard would get +1 per point in Speak Other Language and Perform say, while a Monk might get it in Acrobatics, Tumble and Religion and a Wizard in Arcana and History. You could focus down and improve the s...

I'm not a huge fan of initiative in D&D. In fact, in the game I run, we use a simplified system that does away with rolling for initiative completely, more on that later.  In my time, I've been a LARPer, done reenactment combat and martial arts, albeit soft martial arts (taijiquan, baguaquan and hsingyi) and formal sparring rather than full on competition. But in all of those, I can tell you initiative isn't really a thing, there's more a feel of momentum, the tide is running with you or against you, whether that's a massed battle or a spar - and that it can fluctuate, ebb and flow, rapidly. On a more personal note, it's my feeling that if you have fixed initiative, as we do in D&D, at least a subset of people tend to turn off, then as their turn comes around they start to pay attention again. This leads to the DM having to explain the situation to them at the start of their turn so they can decide what to do. Sometimes that's inevitable, with the D...

A disclaimer. I really don't think this will fly.  Not that it's impossible to write such a system for an FRPG, RuneQuest did it, Warhammer kind of did it, GURPS Fantasy (and others) certainly did it. So you can certainly write coherent and successful FRPG systems that don't have character classes and don't have levels.  However, would they be D&D? If you think of D&D, what do you think of? If you're of a certain age, you might think of the satanic panic. Or the cartoon show. But typically you think of a party with a fighter type, a thief type (now reframed as a rogue), a divine caster type and an arcane caster type. If you're a bit less informed you go fighter, thief, cleric and wizard, a bit more informed you might say something like well it could be paladin, monk, druid and sorcerer instead, but you still think of those four roles. If you've played 5e, you might erase the cleric for a bard or a second combat character, and call them by their subcl...

Yesterday's Post  produced a lot of comments, this post is going to try and address some of them. People are wary of healing cantrips . I have to admit, I am too. I played with some other approaches. I considered, for example, Healing Word  doing d10+Wis modifier (other casting stats are allowed of course), and the minimum you could roll being the target's Con modifier. If we assume that the average Con modifier is +3, this would shift the average healing done by a Healing Word  at first level to 8.8, and 6MP. You can still, just, make this a cantrip, so... we might adapt the rule so if the casting cost is less than or equal to your casting modifier (max 5), you get it free. Cure Wounds  goes up to 11, and 6MP too - the range in Healing Word  is still attractive though. I didn't suggest this yesterday, because it makes the rolling more complex, and you could have other approaches, like if you're proficient in Medicine, add your proficiency bonus, never roll unde...

Minor Healing Spells - Cure Wounds and Healing Word Under the model laid out yesterday in my post on magic points  it's pretty clear, if it wasn't already, that healing in 5e is underpowered. Cure Wounds  and Healing Word , at least in their current first level forms would look more or less like cantrips if ported over directly. The +Wis modifier to their healing actually lifts them to cost 4MP and 5MP respectively, which, with the "spells that cost less than your casting modifier to cast" makes them free to most casters in the 5e paradigm by 4th and either 8th or 12th level depending on whether you take a feat or or not.  In a world with a functioning magic item economy, where buying either a Pearl of Wisdom +2 or an Ioun Stone of Wisdom is also a reasonable goal, you might sensibly expect a cleric, druid or bard around 6th level to be casting first level Cure Wounds  free, and from 4th level Healing Word  would be free.  I am, however, not particularly a ...

We're all familiar with the spell slots system. If you're a primary caster, you start with 2 first level slots at first level, at third character level you add two more second level spell slots and so on, basically at every odd character level, you get to cast another higher level spell. At various levels you get to add more lower level slots too. It gets a bit weird with your high level slots and you don't get tenth level spells and so on, but there's a neat pattern. Semi-casters, like paladins and druids, get a different progression, where they get spells later and slower. Warlocks are technically full casters, but get a different progression and rule system, but they access their spell levels on the full caster progression.  There's also an issue. Some spells of a given level are just better than others. Take, for example, Fireball and Lightning Arrow . Both are third level spells, both are AOE damage spells. It seems reasonable they should have similar effects....

Before we start, let me just say again, this is not what I really expect 6e to look like. I'm expecting a system with stats, rounds, d20 rolls, levels and so on. Most of the rest of what I'm going to write will centre around a system that looks like that. But what if... That's what this post will focus on, and sections of future posts will look back at this. Making your Rolls I've touched on this before, but all rolls will use 4dF. These are fudge die, essentially d3, but labelled +, 0 or -. You add a modifier and try to beat your target number TN. Thus far this is the same as d20+modifiers to beat the DC. Because we're really messing things up here, we're going to have strong successes, moderate successes, weak successes and failures. You do three bits of maths per roll, you take your modifier as a base, get +1 to it for each + you roll, if that beats the TN, one "success", if the modifier without plusses makes it, that's another, if the modifier ...

The Creature Economy Since the very earliest days, D&D has had a middle-weight combat system. You roll a d20 against the AC in some target number that depends on the armour they're wearing (the precise mechanics have changed but the underlying idea hasn't) and if you're successful you roll damage, they subtract that from their HP. When they hit 0, they're hors de combat and dying in some way. Again, the precise mechanics around that have changed too but that basic outline applies to every version. Every thing on the battle map has a turn, every character, everything they summon or animate, every monster that the DM throws at you, all using the same rules. Now compare that to RuneQuest, which is heavier. In RQ, you have an attack skill, a parry skill (and a defence skill actually), an armour value and both locational and total HP. When you attack, your opponent parries. If you hit and they don't parry (or you hit and beat through their parry) you roll a d20 to de...

Since the days of AD&D you've had race and class that you can choose. Way back before that, for old fogeys like me that remember it, Elf and Dwarf were essentially a character class you chose to play. I think what 5e does with race is interesting, although I'm going to propose some changes, but first up, I'm going to change the name. They're not races, they're species. And I'm going to call them that. If a bunch of White Supremacists lose their knickers over this, tough. I'm going to look, in at least some species, at more interesting things to do with sex and gender too. Sexual dimorphism isn't the only rule on the planet, just because it's the most common. And in a fantasy world, Trimorphism, asexual reproduction and more should be out there I think. Gender fluidity - we see this in various fish and amphibians for example should be there too. Some will say that's just window dressing, but to communities where that matters, having it built...