Thought: Homebrew where you pick two subclasses instead of one and both evolve normally. No multiclasses cause it'd be kinda nuts as is
It's like a toned-down gestalt. I'm going oathbreaker/vengeance paladin both because it'd do silly damage and because I can say that I broke my old oath in order to take vengeance on someone
Well you see, one time an evil wizard cast a spell on the whole world...
laughs in WFRP profession progression
I bet some obsessive nerd has converted DND to point buy (like wod, gurps, etc) instead of class and level based.
You get XP for stuff, and you can spend that as you like on all the stuff you'd get from leveling. Follow the recommended route and get a standard looking fighter. Or go crazy and buy nothing but hit dice. Or make a glass cannon by buying all the sneak attack dice and second attack (in case you miss) and nothing else.
Or, per this meme, buy superiority dice and maneuvers, and then also buy extended crit from champion.
It would be a mess. I think part of why dnd is popular is its comparably small decision space. There's just not a lot of room to fuck up your character
Or just play one of those systems. GURPS is great.
I have a hard enough time finding people and a schedule for mainstream games. Where the hell am I going to find people who want to GURP with me?
Yeah, I mostly play Fate or nWoD. But a lot of people are really emotionally invested in D&D, so sometimes I think of ways to try to trick them into playing something different while they think they're still playing D&D.
I suppose I'm lucky enough to have enough friends into ttrpgs to build a group of players open to the system I like. I lost some who were emotionally invested in D&D, but frankly they were the least fun ones to play with (min-max munchkins and rules lawyers undercut by an unfamiliar system), so I'm not too upset about it. Plus I've been empowered with many more options for creative play, and blessed with players interested in creative play.
that is one way of making people try out other gamea
Because 5e is a simple game made for adolescents. It's easy to pick up, easy to build a character, and easy to run. The problem is once you start trying to do anything particularly interesting, it crumbles. It foists basically all mechanic decisions that aren't directly related to combat onto DM adjudication, and provides very little guidance. I mean, last I checked you have the option to be proficient with various sets of craft tools, but the system doesn't actually explain what that actually does mechanically.
If you want to make interesting character builds, you have to transition to a more detailed system. I'm partial to GURPS myself, but Pathfinder 2e is a nice middle ground of detail while still being fairly familiar to someone used to D&D.
I mean, last I checked you have the option to be proficient with various sets of craft tools, but the system doesn't actually explain what that actually does mechanically.
Chapter 8, "Between Adventures," "Downtime," "Crafting." Page 187 in the 2014 version of the Player's Handbook. It tells you exactly how long it takes and how much it costs to create items using artisans' tools. I concede that it's pretty generic and would benefit from some refinement, but it does explain what you can do, mechanically, with your proficiency in artisans' tools.
(If the 2024 version of the Player's Handbook removed this guidance then I'm not sure what to say, except that I don't personally consider that version to be "5e.")
Xanathar's Guide to Everything also has an extensive section in Chapter 2, beginning on page 78, that does a great job fleshing out each type of tool proficiency and providing novel ways to use them. I highly recommend that if you're interested in crafting.
I concede that it's pretty generic and would benefit from some refinement
That's my point. A couple paragraphs on one page, and an addendum in another book to consider giving the player advantage and maybe an "added benefit", again left entirely up to the DM. The Xanathar's content is nice, if again a bit vague, assuming your DM uses it. But that's still buried in an appendant text.
And that's just one example. Called shots are another good example. Anything outside the narrow scope of the written rules is left up to the DM. That's not fundamentally problematic in a ttrpg, the game master always has the final say anyway, but it's lazy game design, and it's only getting worse with each release. I said elsewhere that I quit D&D after buying the 5e Spelljammer set, which dumped all mechanical decisions onto individual DM decision. I don't buy rulebooks to get permission to run my game how I want. I buy rulebooks for playtested rules.
I agree 100% with your sentiment about the quality and depth of supplemental books having sharply dropped off! I don't know exactly where the turning point was for me... sometime around Tasha's Cauldron and its variant rules for racial traits, maybe... but I definitely lost interest in anything new that they put out. I saw how thin Spelljammer and Fizban's Treasury were, and thought... "that's it?!"
If you don't mind indulging me, could you elaborate on what you like better about GURPS? I tried to get into it, but was quickly put off by its extreme granularity. Character creation boiled down to (and I'm paraphrasing),
You can be literally anyone or anything!!! ...as long as you meet the budget for points. However, this is a setting-agnostic system, so make sure you check in with your game master to see if your concept is actually allowed in their game. Also the primary attributes, skills, and point values of various traits could all be quite different than the default presented here because, again, they might not make sense for the setting of your game. So maybe your game master should hold your hand through character creation. But anyways, here's a three-mile-long list of things you can spend your points on, go nuts!
The foreword also said something along the lines of, "here's the most important rules, you can ignore the rest of this book and still play GURPS just fine" ...but that sounds like the same thing you're complaining about with D&D? That it leaves SO MUCH up to the game master to decide.
In D&D 5e, personally I appreciated having only the basic rules in the PHB. I felt that combat was complex enough without having called shots, flanking, speed factor, and lingering injuries presented as the default. But when we were ready to increase the complexity, we were quite glad to have all of those additional rules written up in the DMG in a modular format.
Likewise, when 95% of the game is focused on combat, social interaction, and exploring dungeon-like environments, I don't see any need for the basic rules to include a fine-tuned granular system for downtime activities. "You can create 5gp worth of any item per day using the appropriate set of tools, given that you are proficient, and it costs you half that much in raw materials." Boom, that's super simple and it gets the job done for the majority of players who are interested in crafting during their downtime in between the actual adventures. For those hardcore outliers who desire a more fleshed-out set of rules for tools, Xanathar's includes DC's for a range of tasks to do with each tool, a list of specific components that are included in each kind of tool kit, and at least three examples per tool for how you can apply it in conjunction with a skill OR use the tool in a special way. It's a lot more detailed than just "consider giving the player advantage and maybe an added benefit IDK."
I know you're frustrated that it's buried in a supplemental text rather than the core rulebook, but I don't know. Should the PHB also have the specific rules for large-scale army battles? Maritime navigation? How to play dragon chess? There's only so much you can fit into the basic rulebook...
Edit to add: I hope I'm not coming across as combative. Your criticisms are definitely valid, and I think it's a case of different players valuing different aspects of the game. I am genuinely interested to hear from someone who's played GURPS and stuck with it; there has to be an elegance to the system that I haven't had the opportunity to see, and I'd love to hear your take on it.
It foists basically all mechanic decisions that aren't directly related to combat onto DM adjudication, and provides very little guidance.
The idea here is that the D&D ruleset is supposed to be permissive, not restrictive:
The gameplay experience depends greatly on which of these directions you interpret rules from. So, when you say that it "provides very little guidance", that's intentional, because it allows the DM and the players to use the basic structure of the game to support and inspire having fun and being creative. It should be a foundation, not a cage.
D&D was always intended to be an open framework for actual roleplaying. The munchkin concept of gaming the rules for min-maxing stats came later.
Rules lawyers, be they DM or player, make playing less fun.
I don't need to buy a set of books to give me permission to use my imagination, and I don't need it's permission to disregard rules that don't serve my campaign, or homebrew my own. Every ruleset of every tabletop game is optional. Sure, ignoring some rules can unravel the system, but every table is free to make that choice.
I buy a set of books because I want an exhaustive set of balanced and playtested rules. I am under no obligation to use every rule, but I want to have them so I know if I choose to use them, I'm not going to break the balance.
For instance, I've fully moved to GURPS. It has a reputation for being complicated because there are lots of mechanics available. I ignore the vast majority of them most of the time, but when a player wants to do something out of the ordinary, I can count on having a balanced mechanic available for guidance. I don't have to worry about being too strict, or too lenient, or inconsistent the next time the same situation arises.
5e isn't "permissive", it's lazy game design. I quit after buying the Spelljammer set, which provided basically zero guidance for any of the actual spell jamming stuff. When the answer to every question is "The DM can decide to do it however they want :)”, you're not actually releasing a game system.
Again, I don't need to buy a book to have permission to use my imagination however I want. I buy a book to give me balanced and playtested mechanics. WotC doesn't seem particularly interested in that.
Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
