Community

Level drain.  Age-based penalties/bonuses.  How a particular weapon works.  Minimum starting ages.  And many more!

These are all tiny, little things that people want, but might take up half a page or a page.  We argue over them for pages and pages and finally agree that they should all be optional modules.  I say no.   WotC shouldn't publish them at all.

But Pash, you are a mean, close-minded little man, and your opinion is subjective, and you aren't acting in the spirit of 5e, and stop trying to force me to play your way!

Pash, why? 

It's simple.  The developers have a limited amount of man hours to spend on this game, and they can only put out so many products.  Modules will be great for big things, but these small ones?  It would be a waste of time and money for everyone involved. The designers ought to include a short section in the DMG that encourages us to make our own modules and that gives us guidelines on doing so and/or converting old rules into 5e.  For example, look at level drain again.  You might like it, or you might not, but it's a solved puzzle.  The devs aren't going to come out with some radical new way of implementing level drain.  A level drain module would consist of a rule telling you how long it lasts, a spell for restoring it, and a list of monsters that get the ability.  That's a ten minute job for a fan, and we have three editions of examples to go on.

What we need isn't to clog the production schedule with every minor detail.  What we need is to remember that we can make modules ourselves, and a solid platform for trading fan made modules.  We, as a community, have much lighter limits on man hours and virtual page space, and we have a lot more interest to boot.  These boards already have a homebrew section where people can and do trade things, I'm sure it could be made better.

Let's call for that.

I agree some little rules like age stats don't need to be added like it was in ad&d.  Weapons need to be simple. With 1 stat damage not different for small med large.

Apr 22, 2012 -- 1:14AM, Kaldric wrote:

I disagree, for a couple of reasons. 

1. I don't think including these little options is as difficult a task as you imagine. Look at the 2e PHB and DMG - when it comes to actual rule systems rather than class, race, spell and item descriptions, most of the information is optional stuff. The core system will, and should, be tiny - covered in less than 50 pages. Leaving 200 or more pages for optional modules.

2. A tiny fraction of the potential D&D playerbase frequents these boards. I don't play with anyone on these boards - I don't know that I've ever played a home game with anyone who's ever posted on a D&D board elsewhere on the net.

1. The core might be small, but I'm not going to play with core only. Neither are most people really. Most people are going to want good rules (not to say that core only won't be good rules, but really, they will be terribly limited rules with very few options; not going to cut it, barely cut it when D&D didn't even exist). In order to satisfy both 4E people and 3e people you're going to need much more page space than any given PHB already. And that's without counting any new stuff, or grognards.

2. Realistically, everybody who plays D&D has access to Internet. Internet is quickly becoming as widespread as running water in modern states, and I rather doubt D&D sells in the third world (unfortunately). One thing is coming on these boards now, when the only realistic reason you'd do so is to take a look at CharOp. Another thing entirely is coming to these boards if you know there's going to be homebrews, advertised modules, "official" stuff with tons of rewievs. A growing and cool community makes everything 100% better.

I agree with the principle - get the base done properly first.

If I could add an extra to the list - epic levels.  See how the system shakes out for at least a year - maybe two and then design from there.

The first PHB and DMG should only contain a few modules, because these books have to be readable by new players that are just beginning to learn what an rpg is. Furthermore I agree with the original poster that WOTC should concentrate on getting the base game right before they spend too much time on optional rules.

But around 2014 I would be happy to see tomes of battle, magic, and playable races with lots of optional rules for different aspects of the game. The only thing that worries me is game balance. Each module should be constructed so that the game is balanced with and without the module. Here is a list of modules that makes make me worry about balance

• Weapon specialization 
• Level drain 
• Damage reduction
• Non Vancian casting
• Mass combat

The following subjects that do not interest me personally, but I would be happy to buy the books if it could delay the arrival of 6ed.

• Minimum starting ages 
• Aging
• Alignments
• Planar travel