Hecate Thinks about 6e D&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...

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...