There’s been a lot of talk about how 5e is bad lately (it isn’t) from public GMs and designers who want their players to switch to new or their games (they won’t), because GM and design centric perspectives misdiagnose that 5e is good, actually.

This video’s first point illustrates the misdiagnosis well. Actually, players of 5e want a list of character options the size of Pride and Prejudice. It scaffolds unique characters with mechanical support and prescribed choices in character growth. GMs don’t like it because the GM is poorly supported, and designers are usually forever GMs.

I actually diagnosed this confusion a few years ago with my embarrassing Infinite Hack, which I don’t expect I’ll revise. The key thing is that any (fantasy) hack of 5e needs to be fully compatible with all the character and spell options to be acceptable to players of 5e.

With this in mind, here are the hacks I would try to achieve those goals and make the combat less slow and easier to prep for. There are a bunch of procedures I’d add, but honestly you can take them straight from any fantasy procedural from the last few years. Errant, for example.

• Hit points. Use your number of HD, add the size of your hit dice. Monster HP is same.
• Death saves. Roll the type of hit dice for rounds until you die, when reduced to 0 HP. Monsters don’t get death saves.
• Proficiency. It’s fine, but if your passive proficiency at something is equal to or higher than the DC, auto-succeed. Also, if you learn something cool and specific, get the specialisation bonus, and write it on your sheet next to arcana or whatever.
• Damage. All attacks deal 1 damage. Critical hits deal their damage dice. Beware multi-attacks! Monsters are same.
• Rests. Heal 1HD damage and conditions on a short rest, all damage on a long rest.
• Inventory. Players don’t care. Use a pack mule and then just give each character ten slots for cool things like a video game. Yeesh, go full Breath of the Wild and allow them to trade XP for extra slots if they want.
• Spells. Do away with slots and memorisation. Make a spell check (like a spell attack) whenever you cast a spell. If you fail, lose the spell for the day, but you can still cast the spell. Yup, it makes spell attacks messier, but it makes everything else cleaner.

Ugh I could probably do math to figure out how equivalent this is to RAW combat mathematics, but honestly I’m feeling sick and couldn’t be stuffed. My point is, if you want 5e players to play with you recognise what they love and incorporate that into your game. And that means 15 classes, 100 subclasses, and 1000 spells.

Thank you for reading my fevered rant.

Updated! After chat with Marcia about monster HD!

4th July, 2023

Idle Cartulary