If you were designing 5E...

[fectin]

What would you base it on?
What are the major changes you would make?

Me, I'd start with 3E, rewicker the combat to fit in the 4E action economy, rewrite classes away from Vancian casting, and enforce a rigorous keyword system. Items would get some new limitation that was not money-based. Fighters get to use more of them, wizards get to make them.

Fighters also get tanking abilities.

I think I would also go with an armor=DR system, since this would need to be a major rewrite anyway.

Not that this all means anything; it's just idle speculation.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Alright.

I'm just going to say what I'd change, this is by no means complete.

Strip out alignment/alignment based effects, they're stupid.

Go with a tome knight style thing where after 10th level where you no longer take fighter and take something like hell warrior. Easiest way to solve this crap.

Break up casters into beguilers, wamages, and similar guys,

Maybe implement a condition track OR immediate action counter system to stop RLT.

All monsters have monster classes you can take as a PC. Or at least the interesting ones (dragon, vampire, mind flayer, humanoids)

[Juton]

Changes I'd make:

AC/HPs: The numbers worked in 2e just the mechanics sucked (THAC0). It's easy to update the mechanics though. Cut down on the HP bloat so that a Fireball is worth a damn.

Skills: Either make skills superpowers or not, not a mixed bag. Diplomacy in 3e is basically a superpower if you put ranks into it, Climb is not.

Feats: Should matter or not be included. Crap like weapon focus has to go. If making fighter feats both relevant and balanced is too difficult then make all feats applicable to non-combat actions only.

Different mechanics for different settings: This is a bigger conceptual leap. Some groups want linear fighters and linear mages, so create a Hyboria setting where mages are limited as fuck and swinging a sword matters. Some groups want DBZ + LotR, so let Faerun be a setting with quadratic Warblades and Wizards, everyone gets superpowers, just different sets.

[Prak]

I would say, right up front, in the Players Handbook, that the standard flavour for a class is only a standard, and that the same mechanics can represent other ideas, and give a couple examples. I would reiterate this in the DM guide in a chapter specifically about making new stuff, with comprehensive guides to making new stuff, and a look into balance points.

I would also provide PrCs and magic items in the PHB, and more complete rules for making a high level character, rather than putting all that in the DM's guide and implying that you have to suck the DM's cock to be allowed to take a PrC or have an item, or the like.

Finally, I would emphasize collective moderation of the game environment, stating that the "DM/MC" is merely the guy who knows what the building looks like beyond the areas the PCs have explored, and runs the non-player characters, not the thundering overlord who rules the game. I would emphasize that the group should collectively craft the game world, pieces of the world that will feature heavily in the game, the tone of the game, and so on.

Finally, I would provide a forum that will not go away, or change just because a new edition comes out, that doesn't get run like a playschool sandbox, and allows virtually any kind of (game-related) content to be posted. Basically the official forum of the edition would be like the den, where the rules are based on common sense, not pandering to the lowest common denominator.

[Seerow]

1) I'd have power sources mean more. Each power source represents a different sub-system. Martial might be a stamina system, or maneuvers. Arcane would be vancian casting. Psionics would be basically like what it is now, etc. The 4e ideas of power sources isn't bad, the problem is there is no difference between an Arcane Defender and a Martial Defender. Their powers might be marginally different, but 3.5 was closer to the way it should be in terms of subsystems.

2) All classes would have some form of encounter based limits. Their individual abilities may also be limited per day, or unlimited use, depending on power source, but each sub-system would have some sort of encounter based limitation. Simply put even the strongest heroes will tire eventually if going all out. Some sub systems may have more longevity than others, but everyone has some sort of limit. This helps solve the 5 minute work day, because even if the mage goes all out, after he rests a couple minutes, he'll be okay to go again.

3) All classes provide some class features even at higher levels. Most class features include some scaling. Prestige Classes now progress a class, rather than just the subsystem powers (ie spells/maneuvers). Any class feature that scales gets improved by the prestige class at relevant levels. So if your Fighter has "Bonus Feat" as a class feature, where he gets a bonus feat every 2 levels, and you have a Fighter6/Duelist10, and Duelist gives 8/10 martial progression, then you have 7 bonus feats, as if you were a Fighter 14. Your incentive to stay in the Fighter class longer than it takes to prestige out is for new class features, whatever those may be.

4) Rather than an Armor as DR system, I'd use something to the system in Dungeons the Dragoning (I'm sure it's based off something else, but I'm not familiar with it), where you have a damage threshold, and divide the damage you take by that threshold to determine actual damage taken. I'd combine that with Vitality/Wound points, so any time you get hit you take that amount in vitality, and then take wounds based on how much it exceeds your threshold. So if you have a DT of 30, and get hit for 50 damage, you take 50 vitality, and 1 wound. If you take 75 damage, you get 2 wound points instead. Vitality would scale much like current HP, and wounds would scale extremely slowly. A critical hit would increase wound damage directly rather than increasing the vitality damage, and running out of vitality would severely reduce damage threshold, so once you hit 0 vitality the next hit will probably kill you.

5) Redo skills completely. Not sure how, but the current method of skills really really sucks. I'd be inclined to move skills away from d20 entirely, but that would likely just cause more confusion.

6) I'd keep the concept of tiers from 4e, but like with the power sources, make them mean something. Like at each tier, the types of powers available changes drastically. 4e style powers (damage plus minor effect that can be shrugged off easily) are only in heroic tier. At Paragon and Epic, you get more of the sorts of stuff 3.5 does. Transforming into creatures, teleporting, making clone armies, fucking enemies over even on a successful save, inflicting status effects that don't go away automatically, etc.






Basically long story short, take the good ideas bad execution 4e offered, and merge it back towards the things 3.5 had going for it, and try to balance it all. 4e wasn't all bad, it was just a bad example of going too far to try to achieve balance.

[Seerow]

Oh Prak's post reminded me.

I'd change magic items to be something like Incarnum is. ie everyone has so much capability to bind magic items, that increases as you level. The more strongly you bind an item, the more powerful it gets. And with some time (few minutes most likely. Maybe a couple hours) you can alter these. Most magic items would be unique/interesting effects rather than flat bonuses, and those flat bonuses would be worked into standard levelup stuff (ie everyone gets a flat +1/4 level to all saves and attack bonus, that sort of thing). ie +5 magic sword = boring, Magic Sword that gives an aura buffing you and your allies that is more effective the more you invest in it = good.

This reduces the christmas tree effect, and lets players keep a single magic item and have it continue growing with them rather than having to replace it constantly. Gold can then be given freely without worrying about upsetting player balance. Worst case they can buy a ton of magic items that they can't have all bound, or have to bind weakly, so it wouldn't really upset balance all that much.

[Josh_Kablack]

• Class, race and level all have to stay for it to be D&D. They can all be handled differently, but they must be included.
• Initiative defaults to seating order. Randomized initiative is optional.
• Turn action sequences are simplified so that players can get more than 1 turn in 15 minutes. That cannot happen in a group of MC + 4 players when PCs get 3 actions on their turn, an opportunity action on each other character's turn, and a floating immediate action anywhere between their own turns.
• Vancian casting dies a much-deserved death. Either Everything is at-will, or damn near everything is at will except for each PC having up to one single big-damage power with some sort of nova cost.
• Any skill system is designed to work at multiple different levels of abstraction - so that different groups can choose to handle tasks a a single roll or as a minigame according to their preferences. The text has probability charts explaining the mathematical differences. Mike Mearls and Keith Baker and their partners in the crime of 4e skill challenges are sentenced to years of repeatedly writing those charts on the chalk board.
• XP needs a complete overhaul. Either it's a resource management minigame like Phone Lobster's "Stuff" system or it works on some sort of pseudo-democratic system with immediate feedback from other players like After Sundown.
• A lot less crap is handled as "magic items" than has traditionally been so in D&D. This means that a number of iconic powers previously handed out solely as magic items are now handed out as class powers/feats/skills
• All monsters are scalable. Hopefully with a lot less math than that involved in 3e.
• Death thresholds and lethality are set low enough that death just about never happens by accident. Heck, just make "Kayoed" or 'Defeated" a totally different status than "Dead"
• Speaking of status ailments, we could get by with less than 47 of them - really we could if we just realized that players cannot remember that many things.
• Speaking further about status ailments, that crap where CR 4 monsters cause multi-day effects that take spells cast by 9th+ level healers to cure gets dumped into Gygax's grave, never to return.
• If there is any sort of leadership, followers, zombie hordes, charmed monster, special mount, animal companion, golem, summoning, or any other set up in the game where a player commands multiple characters, every class gets access to it starting at the exact same level.
• The "you need a healer in your party" paradigm needs to go away. So should the "we create the illusion of dramatic tension in this battle by giving PCs like one hundred hp and the boss monster has 9,999, but you have cure, life, potion and 99 phoenix downs while it just wails on you and regenerates a support unit every third round" paradigm from the FF series that 4e tried to adopt.
• Possibly some sort of mechanical incentive to adopt tactics other than focus fire is included. If not, then the fluff and descriped tactics for a bunch of critters talks up how common and effective focus fire is.
• Either power sources as an idea go the hell away or they get to mean something.
• The idea of "tiers" gets talked up in the fluff. It is explained repeatedly that the nature of character abilities and how they can expect to handle challenges fundamentally changes at each tier. "Run from the dragon", "Find the secret passage to sneak into the dragon lair and steal back the heirloon before it awakens", "Attack the dragon", "Challenge the dragon to solo combat", "Add the last color dragon to your collection of pokemon", "Make the dragon behave by threatening to eradicate the dragon's entire race via traveling through time", and 'Ascend to become the Dragongod" are all viable adventures. But the fluff talks about how some are just not viable at 1st level, and some are just not viable at top level.
• For sales and marketing reasons, mechanisms like PrCs where MCs and even players are actually expected to write custom content and then share it with other groups over the internet 5g network absolutely needs to be included.

[shadzar]

start with 2e revised...remove chapter 5 to get rid of all skills related garbage, so that player can provide concepts for their character themselves and providing the reason behidn theur characters actions and motivations.

if some people cant play it that way, then too bad. D&D will have a focus, and you can change it, but it isnt to be made as "everybody's game". everyone doesnt have to paly D&D, their are other choices for the public's entertainment efforts to be spent on if they dont like one particular. and make sure that is said in both PHB and DMG.

go back to OD&D through and mine for the missing parts, such as probability charts to explain the dice. no reason D&D can't teach something.

place the goal at the beginning of EVERY chapter so people have less chance to miss it. sooner or later, they will read it.

avoid attempts at playing psychiatrist to provide group therapy. the game must be cooperative, but it isnt the job of the game to make the players get along.

place things in the PHB and DMG where they belong rather than in the wrong book.

make sure the monster manual includes base concepts, not just every Tom Dick and Harry, monster from any source because some favored monster is popular (good-bye mind flayer).

remove psionics and bards.

move crunch from being hidden in fluff.

NWPs, weapon speed, etc will be in a optional book, making clear that this is optional and not required to play and that an entire group must agree upon it. buying an option accessory for the game, doesnt guarantee a right for a player to use it in a game.

refine the PHB explanations of cooperative play to explain HOW player should work together to make sure everyone is having fun, as it isnt only the DMs responsibility.

refine the DMG to explain how the players need to work out some thing for themselves, and when they cant step in and do something to keep the game going, even if it means stopping the game and taking care of personal issues and returning to D&D when the outside factors are taken care of. again reminding D&D isnt a therapy session.

refine the PHB to explain the DM is in charge. he was chosen or for whatever reason the one doing the job, so you had a choice to play in his game or not, so let him do his job.

refine both to make sure people understand it isnt DM v player.

refine the DMG to explain that while trying to kill the PCs in places as the controller of the world itself, it doesn't mean the DMs goal is to always kill the players.

refine both to explain XP isnt for just killing things and "taking their stuff", but the character can be rewarded for contribution to the fun of the players.

refine the PHB to make sure that players understand everyone gets a chance to play, and that glory hogs aren't going to be welcomed by other players.

remind in both, that the guidelines are not finite, but a framework for common ground to play the game, and things can be changed, including use of books beyond MM, PHB, and DMG, so that IF wanted by enough people optional accessories can be used, but it WILL change the game, and at times in MAJOR ways. and it doesnt have to come from a published book to be added to the game.

that is where i would start, assuming "5E" not to be literal, but the next edition of D&D published.

[Winnah]

I like the idea of 4e rituals, though I have some issues with the implementation. I would probably try and develop a system for the use of magic and skills in circumstances where time is not a major factor. So forging a sword and crafting a magic sword would require similar tests, just with varying degrees of difficulty. Extended actions like running a business, training an army and raising the dead should also rely on similar base mechanics, rather then exception based specific rules for a multitude of differing effects and outcomes.

I'm not sure about the Vancian system, but it's implementation seems to lead to encounter scheduling, which if subverted makes Vancian classes more or less powerful depending on the length of their workday. Having said that, I like the idea of magic bullets, but finding the sweet spot for their recovery is challenging.

[Seerow]

I'm not sure about the Vancian system, but it's implementation seems to lead to encounter scheduling, which if subverted makes Vancian classes more or less powerful depending on the length of their workday. Having said that, I like the idea of magic bullets, but finding the sweet spot for their recovery is challenging.

That's why I'd say give a mechanic to limit how much can be done in a short period of time. I'd probably actually increase spells per day a fair bit, but limit spells you can cast per encounter. Like a 20th level Wizard might be able to get 2-3 9th level spells, or a crapton of lower level spells, or some mix, but after that he needs to rest before he can cast more.

The "you need a healer in your party" paradigm needs to go away.

This I agree with. I like the concept of healing surges, and think a few tweaks in implementation would make for a valid resource and help with moving away from a dedicated healer, especially at mid-high levels.

So should the "we create the illusion of dramatic tension in this battle by giving PCs like one hundred hp and the boss monster has 9,999, but you have cure, life, potion and 99 phoenix downs while it just wails on you and regenerates a support unit every third round" paradigm from the FF series that 4e tried to adopt.

I agree that a boss monster with 10x more hp than the party is bad, but there should be some way to distinguish a lt or boss npc vs a regular NPC. Regular NPCs should all be playable as characters, with level/HD equal to CR. But you should be able to grab a 'solo' monster like a dragon, and not just have it be a higher level. These solo monsters may just need a better access to action economy and better defenses (specifically resistances and immunities, not just higher AC), rather than a ton of HP, but there SHOULD be a difference.

I say this simply because just grabbing higher level opponents gets hairy, especially on tier borderlines, when a higher level opponent would have access to stuff that a lower level party has no way to accommodate for.

[Lago PARANOIA]

• New campaign setting. It'll be something like a cross between Skies of Arcadia and Breath of Fire IV as far as visual and thematic motifs go. No humans in it, elves/dwarves/halflings/orcs get anthropomorphized more. As far as 'adult' content goes it'll be PG/PG-13 rated for violence/swearing/depressing things like slavery but a hard 'R' for sexual content. Think Ikkitousen level. Because it has the Skies of Arcadia/BoF feel to it the gameplay will be at Gothic Steampunk level.
• Break Wizard up into Engineer (transmutation/conjuration), Warlock (enchantment/illusion), Wizard (summoning/blasting), and Swordmage (short range elemental buffs, though it's called something else). Break up Cleric into Druid, Spiritualist (Divination/Necromancy/Holy Power), and Paladin.
• Transcendental Classes: Warlord, Rogue, Monk, Psion
  Arcane: Engineer, Wizard, Swordmage, Warlock
  Divine: Druid, Spiritualist, Paladin, Ranger. Need a better divine class idea than ranger.
• Get rid of the VAH/DMF archetype completely. If you keep 'martial' classes in the game like rogues then after a certain point they're forced to take crazier powers.
• Get rid of being able to use lower-level powers in higher-level slots.
• Explicitly keep the power levels for PCs from Conan to the 'crazy' end of the Avatar: The Last Airbender. If you want to go beyond or below that scale that you will need to buy the Black Forest or Epic Level handbook. Epic always turns out to be insulting unless there's a total paradigm shift and there's not enough space in the first book for that.
• Import Lifepath generator from Traveller. There is an option to go both forwards and backwards.
• Status ailments make you easier to kill, not harder for you to attack.
• Mandatory NPC contacts and disadvantages.
• GMPC rules. The thing is however that the players get to choose the GMPC, not the DM. There will be fixed lists of broad archetypes.
• 15 levels of play instead of the standard 20.
• Vastly reduce experience points, eliminate monster-elimination experience points. 10 experience points should get you to level 2, 1000 to level 15.
• Completely redone diplomacy system. Would look like a cross between 2E Reaction Rolls and Exalted Social Combat.
• Semi-fixed hit points per level. You get a one-time bonus due to size.
• Skill system looks pretty much like 3E D&D's, except that DCs and bonuses are put in much more control. After a certain point you autosucceed DCs and you get 'skill talents'.
• Semi-randomized treasure system. Treasure expires after a combination of metagame and in-universe uses, so you have to keep grabbing more. Any treasure drop is possible at any level, though it is weighted so that higher-level characters get more of the higher-level stuff. Partially bring back 3E's crafting system, but instead of micromanaging treasure design you randomly get a 'crystal' and can choose from a small list of options from crafting the crystal.
• Eliminate magical item bonus assumptions. Combat will be balanced towards the assumption of PCs having little more than basic gear with MAYBE some advanced stuff like adamantine plate mail being available.
• Stronghold rules. This will be a big thing.
• The monster manual will draw a lot more monsters from Indian, Chinese, and Japanese mythology for variety.
• Bring back 9-scale alignment rules and all of the batshit even though we know it makes no goddamn sense. Alignment will have absolutely no effect on game mechanics (not even a 'you can't do that because you're LG') so people can navel-gaze all they want.
• Eliminate resurrection as a PC resource. This means that you have to weigh battles in favor of PCs and/or make escape and surrender nowhere near as bloody as they are now. Meaning that a 95% victory rate is too lethal. It will still exist in the game but only as a DM plot points.
• Implement FrankTrollman's 'really abstract zones'. This means eliminating combat grids.
• Unified Power System, like in 4E D&D's.
• Mandatory Triple-Classing, of Main / Sub / Minor class that give you approximately 50% / 30% / 20% of a class's goodies. If you want to be a single classed 'Wizard' for instance then all three units give you a Wizard. The power system is weighed so that your selection of powers is a bit inflexible (at least for the first supplements) if you're 'single' classed. This is ironically a feature because people who would want to be just a 'Ranger' probably can't handle that much power selection choice anyway.
• Buffs get changed like I said in previous threads. I'll be happy to bump said threads if you like.
• Everyone is on Winds of Fate. PCs use the Green Arrow version, monsters use the 1dX version.
• Have optional Save/Restore breakpoints for the campaign at the PCs' (not DM's) discretion.
• Healing is not a 'mandatory' thing. Most combats will have no healing in it. Healing is considered an 'ace in the hole' maneuver. Regardless there will be instantaneous healing limits like in Shadowrun, so even characters that can heal PCs can't top people off and in-combat healing will work more like temporary hit points.
• PC Endurance is weighed to make the PCs more of a glass cannon as the workday goes on. As you 'win' encounters your offense goes up but your defense and/or hit points go down. The breakpoint for offense going up is at three encounters, then after that future encounters will just drain you with no future benefit.
• Monsters get slightly weaker relative to PCs as time goes on. This means that a DM will have to add more monsters to an encounter as players gain in level.
• New initiative rules:
  Player who rolls highest initiative goes first.
  The player sitting next to the player who rolled the highest initiative goes second, then the order continues CW or CCW.
  DM rolls 1dX for each monster 'group' or monsters. The 1dX is the number of players, with a 1 for the initiative winner, 2 for second-highest, then continuing CW or CCW. The monster acts right after the person the X corresponds to. Monster groups can be also be considered 'fast' or 'slow'. If they're fast they subtract from the roll (negative numbers allowed), if they're slow they add to the roll.
• Randomized global event manager. You roll for various regions every X number of time units to see if there's a disease, rebellion, economic boom, food surplus, etc..
• Four kinds of actions: Standard, Move, Minor, Free. You can trade one standard for a move or a minor and a move for a minor.
• Use a combination of Defense and DR system to keep damage expressions reasonably low. None of this 'DR is a special bonus' snowflake, it's on the same level as AC or Strength.
• Instead of making powers a blob of damage and hit points they need to have well defined generic interactions with the world like in Shadowrun or 3E D&D. An 'illusion' keyword should mean something more than any old shit you use to trick people into thinking powers are different goddammit.
• Make damaging and non-damaging powers play together better. I have the least idea how to do this, Kaelik had a really good system if I recall that I need to steal.
• PC roles are bullshit. Monster roles are the shit. We'll keep the latter, give the finger to the former.
• Get rid of the Health/Damage Assymmetry of PCs and Monsters (easy, since we're getting rid of easy healing and implementing semi-fixed hit points). I want to run Psycho Ranger fights against, goddammit.
• Keep the ritual system of 4E D&D, however:
  Instead of implementing a monetary cost, you also have a time cost. Some rituals have a 'money' option to speed it up.
  The ritual effects have to be worthwhile to use.
  Enough peasants holding hands in a circle can use some of the rituals. This is to slightly reduce the grimdark in the game.
• Get rid of that whole 'gods gain power from prayer' bullshit. It doesn't do anything but lead to grimdark.
• Get rid of the whole 'ultra-powerful gods' bullshit like in the Deities and Demigods manual. Being a god doesn't necessarily grant you extra combat power, you just get to control a lot of the mechanisms of your portfolio. It's just that all of the gods happen to be combat monsters because you need to be to hold onto your shit.
• Nearly completely divorce wealth and personal power form the rules. Wealth can buy you a lot of political power (incl. armies) but there's not a whole lot better you can buy for your personal asskickery than a suit of adamantine fullplate. There might be magical item marts in the game, but they don't sell anything better than a Wand of Fireballs.
• New status effect: Unengaged. You gain various silly bonuses while you're unengaged. PCs are better off splitting off Justice League style and getting a PC on every enemy than dogpiling one and moving on.

Jesus Christ this list got long and unorganized. Maybe I'll arrange it better later.

As far as [5E] marketing goes, that will be an even longer list and though I love to listen to myself talk I think people will get pissed if I start or bump yet another thread on the subject on my own initiative.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Some other stuff that I just thought of:

• You will have villain iconics in addition to PC iconics. PC iconics feature in the PHB and other 'player focused' material, villain iconics in the rest. Villain iconics have a lot more backstory and personality than the PC iconics.
• Races give class-agnostic bonuses to them. So things like '+1 healing surge' and 'reroll one attack against you per encounter' or even 'free melee basic attack when you're bloodied' (with an additional option for ranged characters) are okay, but +2 STR/+2 INT are not if you're still using stats.
• Get rid of Charisma and Constitution.
• Get rid of Action Points. Add special stat of 'Edge', which works like it does in Shadowrun.
• Decouple combat stats from the other stats.
• Keep feats, reduce the number that PCs get, make them more like Tome combat feats in that a feat can define a character.
• Implement Kits, Prestige Classes, and Paragon Paths. You start with a kit, get a prestige class at level 6, a paragon path at level 11. These things work like paragon paths do in 4E D&D, except that while they all hand out something good every level they don't hand out the same type of thing every level.
• Make creating 'melee only' classes pretty much impossible short of intentional gimping. This will reduce the angst of flight.
• Flight will be available much sooner. If you want it, you should have it without much hassle at around level 6 or 7.
• Get rid of monster ECL and hit die and all that crap. If you want to play a monster, there's just a minimum level. The minimum level will come on line about when the monster abilities become nothing more than a mild flavor adjunct to the PCs. Yes, this means that even though succubi and hill giants are the same CR, the minimum level to play a giant is higher.
• Implement four kinds of monster stats: Minion, Standard, Elite (PC Psycho Ranger level), and Boss. There will also be a formula how to adjust the CR for a monster so that it's 'worth' about as much as a monster in another category; so a level 3 elite is worth about as much as one boss.
• New organization for Monster Manual. The first part of the monster manual will be an encyclopedia and is arranged alphabetically. The second half will be blobs and blobs of stats corresponding to the monster. This part is arranged by CR and recommended monster groups.
• Keywords will be used a lot more than they were in 4E and will be defined extremely clearly. This is to cut down on space in future works.
• Implement player titles in the game like they did in previous editions.
• Get rid of 'wandering encounter' traps for the most part, implement traps as terrain along with special abilities to defang them. Most (though not all) traps you won't just be able to shake a rogue at it and call it a day. Some terrain traps require using certain elements on it, others flexing your muscles really hard and holding it shut/ripping it apart.
• Reimplement object health rules and make it slightly less 'hurrah sonic/force damage!'
• Redo buffs/summons like my recommendations in the 'new buffing paradigm rule'.
• Complete eliminate that 'enemies and allies' crap. You can now either include everyone in an effect, target only certain people, or include everyone with some exceptions. If a power relies on only being able to target an 'enemy' or 'ally' for balance, fucking get rid of it.
• Who the fuck did the artwork for Anima? That shit is pretty. That person is our lead artist guy. We'll also use Exalted art, including that butterfly cameltoe guy. But no naked lolis in fursuits.
• Battles should end in lot more routs or surrender than one-sided butchery. Monsters that take prisoners should be the STANDARD, not the exception. For monsters that don't do things like take prisoners, run away, or surrender like ghouls then they should have some kind of contrived mechanism that forces a defeat if the battle isn't going their way (like shadows needing to feed off of the energy of other shadows and fading away if there's too few) or they should intentionally be made to be weaker than other critters.
• The basic books do NOT need rules for:
  Mass Combat
  Miniature-Scale combat with the squares and the hexes and all that
  Playing an adventure that starts out weaker than 'movie Conan'
  Playing anything in the 'epic' scale
  The demiplanes, if you have that crap in the game
  Deity stuff beyond 'this is Pelor, this is what he does and stands for'
  Custom Spells/Powers
  
  Not to say that it won't enhance the game, it's just that people who DO want that crap will shell out additional money for the chance to do that.
• The basic books DO need rules for:
  Stronghold Building
  Custom Magical Items
  Enough Rituals to create a reasonably fantasy-ish world
  Adjusting monsters or, god forbid, creating them
  Procedurally generating dungeons. Another reason why you should use FrankTrollman's Really Abstract Zones.
  Generating <level 5 characters by hand in less than 5 minutes. The characters needn't be completely randomized, but they should come in packages.
  Skill challenges if you decide to keep that crap in the game. I say get rid of it, but it seems to be popular for some damn fool reason.

[Josh_Kablack]

Implement FrankTrollman's 'really abstract zones'. This means eliminating combat grids.

I think that D&D needs at least the option to use a battlemat. It can default to "really abstract" and then have conversion back to grids in a DMG sidebar, and later expand that sidebar into your latest iteration of the minis game, but I don't quite think you can appease the fanbase without at least that sort of nod to grids.

Eliminate resurrection as a PC resource. This means that you have to weigh battles in favor of PCs and/or make escape and surrender nowhere near as bloody as they are now. Meaning that a 95% victory rate is too lethal. It will still exist in the game but only as a DM plot points.

Quibble: Or intentional PC heroic martyrdom.

Import Lifepath generator from Traveller.

So Elothar of Bladereach can now die during chargen - semi intentionally if his player rolled poor stats. Yay!!

[Mask_De_H]

• New campaign setting. It'll be something like a cross between Skies of Arcadia and Breath of Fire IV as far as visual and thematic motifs go. No humans in it, elves/dwarves/halflings/orcs get anthropomorphized more. As far as 'adult' content goes it'll be PG/PG-13 rated for violence/swearing/depressing things like slavery but a hard 'R' for sexual content. Think Ikkitousen level.

.

Are you making a game for Koumei?

[Chamomile]

Yeah, that was about the point where I said "oh, yeah, Lago's crazy, no need to bother." I don't really care if you put sexual content in the game you play individually. I'm not even all that bothered if games I play in have sexual content, because I tend to be pretty indifferent to it. But the idea that you're going to sell a game whose new players frequently start at 12 years old and in America with R-level sexual content is a bad one from a business perspective. I was under the impression that this was "how would I make D&D good again" and not "how I'll run D&D into the ground but with pretension instead of stupidity."

[Juton]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I usually play with male nerds lacking in the finer social graces. These are not the type of people I want to roleplay anything sexual with. I would consider it a feature and not a bug if all overt sexuality was absent in the setting or adventure path. You can include it in a splat book, if you really want to, but I won't be using it.

[CapnTthePirateG]

I second the no sex stuff.

But I would like to also point out that we should set racial ability changes on fire, and just give out class-agnostic shit like Lago said.

[Hieronymous Rex]

Import Lifepath generator from Traveller.

So Elothar of Bladereach can now die during chargen - semi intentionally if his player rolled poor stats. Yay!!

The only version of Traveller in which you could die during chargen was the 1st edition.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But the idea that you're going to sell a game whose new players frequently start at 12 years old and in America with R-level sexual content is a bad one from a business perspective."

It's not, actually. If a product is something that parents complain about but is otherwise quality then it doesn't hurt sales as long as it's in a price range that kids can still afford. There's a reason why Live Free or Die Hard flopped but God of War didn't. If something is seen as 'cool' to teenagers but 'evil' to parents you may as well be printing money. And while this line is easy to meet with titillation, it's actually a lot harder to do with violence/drugs/nonsexual adult content. In order to make your game forbidden fruit through those avenues you risk turning off the customers you would otherwise have in the bag.

You probably wouldn't want to give this product to an 8-year old, but 8-year olds don't have 20 dollars to burn on a boxed set--let alone an allowance that lets them buy magazines or books. 13-year olds do however and they're the ones who ironically are most entranced by M-rated and all that related crap.

D&D needs a bit of edginess again in my opinion; it's gotten to the point of mainstream pablum like World of Warcraft. We'd actually love to have the days when D&D was viewed as a satanic(ally alluring) product--so you're going to have to push the envelope somewhere. No one (at least one you'd like to have as a customer for this product) is really alienated by seeing a bare boob or two dudes kissing. People ARE traumatized at seeing skeletal meth addicts or ghouls feasting on the intestines of a few town guards.

[Seerow]

But the idea that you're going to sell a game whose new players frequently start at 12 years old and in America with R-level sexual content is a bad one from a business perspective."

It's not, actually. If a product is something that parents complain about but is otherwise quality then it doesn't hurt sales as long as it's in a price range that kids can still afford. If something is seen as 'cool' to teenagers but 'evil' to parents you may as well be printing money. And while this line is easy to meet with titillation, it's actually a lot harder to do with violence/drugs/nonsexual adult content. In order to make your game forbidden fruit through those avenues you risk turning off the customers you already have in the bag.

No one (at least one you'd like to have as a customer for this product) is really alienated by seeing a bare boob or two dudes kissing. People ARE traumatized at seeing skeletal meth addicts or ghouls feasting on the intestines of a few town guards.

I think you're forgetting that in America, a bare boob will instantly get a game a NC-17 rating, while something with graphic violence can still be bought by teenagers.

What you're describing is a good way to get your game put on the shelf behind the counter at the vast majority of stores. Not to mention the majority of the stuff you listed just makes me go "This doesn't sound like D&D at all". It might be fine as a separate game, but as a new edition of D&D it sounds even worse than 4e tbh.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think you're forgetting that in America, a bare boob will instantly get a game a NC-17 rating, while something with graphic violence can still be bought by teenagers.

Counter-example: God of War, 1st Edition D&D, various Exalted Splatbooks. Yes, I know about the whole rated 'M' crap and how it's supposed to not let 12-year olds play. That shit is just reverse psychology. You may as well be slapping Lorena Bobbitt upside the head with a package of hot dogs and sleep on the kitchen countertop naked for all the good it does.

[Gx1080]

"no humans"

LOL NO. Every game with D&D on the cover kinda needs "Elves, Dwarves and Humans". No, I don't care about "hurr being different", people can and will call on your bullshit if you put a D&D logo on it.

"no fighters/rogues"

I don't care if you have to give them anime powers, but people (specifically nerds with power fantasies) WANT a manly guy who solves problems by beating up stuff/stabbing stuff. "Can't affect plot" is a feature because the kind of people who like that just care about fighting stuff. If grognards get their manpussies offended for it, who cares.

"R-content"

Bad idea. Not even as a splat. The kind of people who include said things don't need rules for it and nobody wants anything that encourages "that guy" games.

EDIT: If you want "edgy" go for the gore route.

[shadzar]

no sex...it isnt a sex RP.

half-orc came from a happy, though often given funny looks, couple.

[Stubbazubba]

TTRPGs are just beginning to outgrow it's social stigma as satanic soft porn married to sociopathic power fantasy, and you want to plunge it back into that for another generation? I don't think the false value that stigmatization would generate in the minds of 12-16 year olds would outweigh the social turnoff it would be to every other potential market. D&D has expanded its market a lot, and putting up social barriers to entry like that is not going to help the brand grow. A game can certainly be made to cater to adult stuff, but D&D is the poster child of all TTRPGs, and it's not in it's best interest to find an even narrower niche to fill.

[RadiantPhoenix]

"oh, yeah, Lago's crazy, no need to bother."

If something is seen as 'cool' to teenagers but 'evil' to parents you may as well be printing money.

Crazy? Crazy like a fox!

That said, I object to the 'no humans' idea.

Also, custom ability guidelines should be in the core rules, with a pointer to a book with more details.