One D&D: Backwards Compatibility

The more I get into 5E, the better my older OSR games look. My problem with 5E is the game makes a lot of basic game design mistakes, adding complexity where the game doesn't need it. Some of the systems they built, like the skill system and advantage-disadvantage system, seem simple on the surface, but to make these works requires hundreds of particular cases and secondary rules to be written and tracked.

The game they want does not support the mechanics they implemented.

For example, look at Traveller's core mechanic, roll 2d6, and beat an 8+ number. Simple. The whole game works off that one mechanic. What modifies this mechanic? Die roll modifiers, or DRMs for short. That is it. You don't need to go deeper into the book to understand how the system works. Maybe a range chart or suggested modifiers is about it. Maybe a few rules for opposed checks and long-term tasks.

You look at 5E, and everything modifies everything. Something here will modify that something over there. Advantage happens here but not there. This gives you an advantage, but that doesn't. This skill is rolled at times and has passive uses at other times. The rules are a mesh of interlocking modifiers and supporting rules everywhere, and the design is just a mess. Interrupt mechanics are tossed in everywhere, and these are often layered in, with players stopping play and announcing, "Nuh-uh, my player has X, so it counters Y!" They had great intentions when they started with a universal target number for difficulty and a proficiency bonus, and the advantage/disadvantage system - and that is where it should have stopped.

Instead, many inexperienced game designers were brought in and tacked on systems to this core simplicity and built a mesh of messy connections and interdependencies as time progressed and books were released. What should be simple - isn't. What should be "the referee makes a ruling" - isn't. As time passed, many terrible ideas and added complexity were tossed onto the system. Every game this happens to, no matter how simple and streamlined, breaks.

5E core is an entirely different game than "5E end of the edition."

And they started off writing a game where "most of it is up to you" and ended up with "we had to publish many rules clarifications because nothing was that clear in the first place."

The design they created was not even the design they wanted to support.

In this regard, Pathfinder 2 is a better game since nothing is left up to you. Pathfinder 2 is the logical progression of 5E; with more rules, nothing is left up to interpretation, and if you have a question, the book answers it without ambiguity. I can see why many 5E players go to Pathfinder 2; they want a game with rules for everything and get tired of the "having to make it up or look it up" dissonance of the 5E design.

5E is the game that wanted to be the OSR but was dragged by its players into wargame rules.

The OSR runs in the other direction than both of these games - "making it up" even supersedes the rules as written. Most games work the same and run on a single-core mechanic. You never have to look up a rule, and you can even pull in rules from other games.

This isn't to say 5E is a bad game; it is just Wizards has made a mess of the rules in the newer books, and the direction One D&D is taking the game is perpetuating terrible game design decisions. Sometimes you need to break backward compatibility because what you have - and supporting all of it - will create a bigger mess than revising the rules entirely.

Backward compatibility becomes backwards compatibility.

5E is a Superhero Game

The better I get at designing characters, the more I realize that 5E is a fantasy superhero game. The infinite use attack cantrips that scale with levels. The focus on casters and magic powers feels like different types of superheroes. I find myself building characters based on "low-level attack options" and planning how these characters will scale with level.

Even the classes feel more like "superhero archetypes" than traditional classes. This isn't even the same genre as a lot of B/X and OSR fantasy games at all; the classes can be seen as base archetypes of superheroes and the branching subtypes within that archetype.

Part of me wonders if this whole genre wouldn't be better served by dedicated superhero rules.

Take a pile of points, buy what you want and design what you want, unlimited freedom and choices.

Fantasy Champions 4th Edition

We did that back in our end days with B/X; we converted everything over to Champions 4th edition and had a lot of fun. D&D 4 reminded me of that "fantasy superhero" game we ran, and you could say 4E leaned in hard on the superhero genre. With Champions, we could design "AoE" sword swipes for our fighters, magic stun missiles for our mages, healing for our clerics, force wall shield spells, and ranged AoE entangle spells for druids. It was a very imaginative and awesomely fun game. It was a heck of a lot of work too.

While it may have been a lot of work, everything was balanced. Since power design and the interactions between point-buy and different powers were balanced, we could come up with anything and be reasonably sure it would work well with whatever else we designed and came up with. Even high-ability score characters were balanced since those were purchased with the points to buy powers, and everything worked incredibly well together. A character of X points was balanced with a monster of X points.

You can do this with the legacy 4th Edition Champions book, but it is, at its heart, a superhero game, and you will need to do more work to get the game you want. There are more focused solutions today, which get you started much faster.

Fantasy Hero Complete (Stand Alone)

The Fantasy Hero Complete book does this; it eliminates the need for a library of Champions 6th Edition books and tries to give a one-book answer to the superhero-fantasy genre. Granted, a lot of the conversions really feel like they have been square-pegged into round holes, but the one-book system works, and if you want to try your hand at freeform power and character design in a fantasy setting, this is the place to start.

I would steer clear of the full Champion's 6th Edition library - to start - since those are a lot of books, and it is too easy to get distracted by superheroes. It is better to have a book that focuses on the most common fantasy superhero tropes and start small since you will have a lot of work to do. And another suggestion is to start small, just a rogue or fighter type, and get used to the scale of attacks and combat before you get lost in power design and magic characters. I would start with low fantasy and work my way up to the total superheroic high fantasy.

And to make your life easier, use the Champions 4th Edition combat roll, 11 + OCV - DCV or less on a 3d6. The math is the same and more straightforward.

No Classes

One of the most liberating things about Fantasy Hero is you break free from classes. Do you want to be a fighting werewolf druid archer? Sure! Want to be a warlock paladin unholy smite teleporter in plate armor with a power that charges up your dark sword? Sure! Want to just point-buy as you gain experience and be a "highly skilled person" with no powers? Sure! Want to design all sorts of fantastic 3-hex front arc swipe damage plus fire effect magic melee powers? Sure!

For a referee, without a lot of predesigned foes, this game is a tough one to referee. Many of your fights will mirror superhero fights, with one-on-one battles with interesting but powerful foes taking center stage. Some fights will be over quickly because the foes will have no defense against some attacks. You will be using a lot of generic "mook" style characters just to speed up play, but that really isn't any different from other games.

Some people need classes; I get it. Sometimes I sit there and wrestle with what a game gives me versus what I could do if the game cut me free with a complete character design system. There are also times when I just can't create the character I want in a system and give up on it entirely.

Fantasy Hero (Expansion Book)

This book does have a few drawbacks, in that it is not a complete "Champions" book per-se, and you need a grasp on the Champions system to get going quickly - or you will be confused by many concepts. If you want to pay more and go all in, the excellent Fantasy Hero 6th Edition is available, but you will need the base system I and II rulebooks, along with the bestiary and grimoire books.

But you are talking about the difference between a single $30 book and a $170 book collection (current Amazon prices). My suggestion, get the single book - even though it has flaws - and see if you like the system before buying a ton of books. You get more, plus better and more complete resources in the entire set, but I still like the smaller, cheaper, more-focused book for getting started.

This version is an expansion of the core universal rules of Champions 6th Edition, so it is not a standalone book. People love this version over the smaller complete book, so it is an excellent upgrade if you go all in. It is easy to get overwhelmed with the five-book set versus the all-in-one book.

If you adopt the system, this is the way to go. Otherwise, dip your toe in with a single book.

Versus 5E?

You lose a huge player base, but no one is changing the rules on you anymore. You will never worry about your class getting nerfed. You will not worry about never having the right power or the powers not working the way you want. You won't worry about having to multiclass and do one-level dips. You won't worry about the unknown, shadow groups, ignored surveys, and inexperienced game designers hired by companies messing up your favorite game.

Don't laugh; it happens all the time.

Just look at 4E.

I feel one of the drawbacks to Champions is your character is initially very complex - there are a lot of numbers. But that complexity stays constant and increases very slowly over time. It feels like the same complexity of a level 6-8th 5E character, and then the complexity increases slowly as the 5E character continues on a steeper curve. The numbers are always "right there" and work the same way compared to 5E's interlocking layers of rules and special conditions.

Instead of wasting time and money modding the 5E rules to get them playing exactly how you want, you will be the "game designer" and have a game that is 100% yours. You will not have guidelines or safety rails, so whatever you want will be yours, and you are free to design and pick powers at will. For some, this will be amazing; for others, this will be a nightmare.

You like GURPS better, too, as the games are similar - where GURPS is more of a traditional RPG with point-buy elements; the Hero System is entirely point-buy-free for all. What I like about Champions over 5E is while there are a ton of numbers and powers, they are all in front of you, and you know what each of them does and what they are for. The rules all work the same way, attacks versus defenses, damage types and defenses versus them, and a unified power level and system.

While I am improving at designing 5E characters, it still takes considerable time. I weigh that against my solo playing, so the requirement to "play with others" goes away. The complexity of the 5E rules and characters is the factor here.

Do I play a game with a high complexity of characters and rules that gives me a small set of options?

Or do I play a game with a high complexity of characters only that gives me complete control?

Versus OSR?

No comparison. B/X and OSR games are less of a superhero game and more a "dungeon sim" game. Modern fantasy roleplaying is a superhero movie with thees, thous, and fancy tunics. B/X and the OSR don't do the modern-style of infinite blast-y cantrip superpower-style of play you get with 5E.

5E's design goals are these extremely narrow and curated class designs for experiences the designers intend you to have. Break the system, and the game gets out of balance. It is still a superhero game, but one where the company tightly controls the superheroes you can play. They control the powers, how you advance, and what your character ultimately becomes. When multiclassing exploits come up, they revise or create more attractive options.

With superhero games, you try to use a point limit and a set of powers to simulate a fantasy character. The limits are your imagination, and the rules do their best to balance the choices against each other. You are free to create the hero you want, with the powers you want, defenses, attacks, unique movements, and everything else. Your endgame is the one you control - not some "designer committee" that thinks they know better than you.

And honestly, it feels way easier to play a fantasy game these days with a game that does a better job simulating the genre than a narrow and limited-archetype game design such as 5E.

It is not that I dislike 5E; I have been around enough to know the type of game they are making and their choices to deliver on the promise. But if you change the game, you can do much more in the genre. And for some, that may be a fantastic experience worth having.

5E Multiclassing

They did a lot of thinking and work in Level Up Advanced 5e to fix broken multiclass builds, where people would dip a level here, a level there, get that sweet fighter action surge, and Frankenstein a character into something built more for numbers and attack forms than anything real.

https://www.levelup5e.com/news/keeping-it-classy-updated-core-classes-in-level-up

I can see why many hardcore optimizers avoid this 5E version and why the base 5E game has a lot of issues. Multiclassing is a nightmare in base D&D 5E, and it is used to break the game - and in doing so, breaks immersion and storytelling. Granted, multiclassing can do some incredible things, and it should be in the game - but this is one of those late-edition problems they could not have foreseen, and it only got worse. And sometimes, like the sorc-lock build, it is the only way for a class to be viable in the game. Which just sucks.

Do you mean I can't just play a straight fighter or ranger and do well? I have to do dips into classes and sticky-ball abilities that stack with each other in never-intended-to ways? Why aren't the base classes designed to be exciting and powerful by themselves? Shouldn't we design them to eliminate one-level dips for grabbing frontloaded class powers?

Yes, we should, but base 5E is too popular now to change things.

By allowing power builds, the challenge level of the game goes down, so adventure writers write for the high-power characters. And what happens is the base classes are devalued. A new player who goes straight ranger and comes to a table should not be seen as an idiot for taking 14 levels of the ranger class and nothing else.

By allowing exploits, you are hurting the new player experience.

You are also hurting the game since none of the base classes are great without exploiting other classes with multiclassing. Your entire game is devalued and the property of the min-max players. How many players would you get coming to your game if you banned multiclassing?

I suspect many would stay away. But the horse is out of the barn, and multiclassing is seen as the "key to winning 5E." Get that action surge for double attacks, dip into warlock for an eldritch blast, a level of the paladin, and all sorts of other tricks and exploits to mix and match class powers and abilities to break the game in creative ways.

Honestly, I feel it is terrible for the game in the long run - after people have fun breaking the rules, they will move on. Many games have been through this and down this road before.

Frankly, if I were to play base 5E, I would limit multiclassing - even if it were just me playing solo. This is why Level Up appeals to me so much, I get to play 5E, but experienced players have gone over the game, fixed it, and made classes fun again. They rebalanced classes and made significant changes to a few, such as the above article mentions rangers and fighters.

The thing is, I like their changes. This is the balance mod that has been in development for the game that you just want to start playing with since you agree with the changes and like that experience better. And now that I know about the exploits, I don't want to tempt myself and abuse them - it would feel wrong.

They also have multi-class feats, which create the sort of "prestige class" builds we saw in 3.5E - and that is very cool.

I get it; One D&D is trying to make changes for the better, but I am going to wait and see. The follow-on books for D&D did a lot of damage to the game's balance and, in some ways, invalidated entire classes (Tasha's unarmed fighter vs. monk). D&D has always had a problem with the core books being the best game version, while the expansion books inflated player power to ludicrous degrees - which is why people bought them.

The One D&D Core books will probably be worth it.

But I can wait and enjoy other things until then.

And it gives others the chance to review and let everyone know if the new edition is worth buying.

Advanced 5E Level Up: Basic Character Builder

Check out the character builder on the A5E site; this is pretty cool!

https://www.enworld.org/tools/a5e/

The menu link on the tools site does not work at this time, but this link does.

You can create a basic level one A5E character from this site and generate a PDF for your character sheet. This is an incredible resource, and it makes it super simple to get started.

The Warlock I Want

I was watching a few YouTube videos on the 5E warlock class and how the class isn't exciting or even viable without multi-classing it with the sorcerer class and how most gameplay from levels 1-10, you are stuck with just two spell slots for casting spells level 1. You need a short rest to recharge them. And I heard you can't cast warlock spells at a higher level?

What a terrible design.

No wonder people multiclass this; Warlock honestly is only worth getting a few low-level powers to wear the nametag and then go spend your time in other classes getting true power. And One D&D will simplify this design and fix a few things? The design is terrible, to begin with, and feels like it needs to be rebuilt entirely.

Level Up 5E's take on the warlock is fantastic. Gone are the spell slots, and in are spell points. You can cast spells at a higher level. You can use the mental ability score to cast with. Eldritch blast is a class feature, and you choose the attack type. And there are a lot of other thematic changes to the class that gives it depth and intriguing nuance.

All of Level Up's classes are like that. They are these "ultimate cool" versions of 5E classes tweaked and rebuilt to be fun. They are admittedly more complex, but that gives them depth. I designed the same party in standard 5E versus Level Up, and I missed the Level Up party more. The Level Up crew felt wonderful to adventure with and had this "heft" and "substance" to them that felt compelling.

One D&D seems to be taking cues from three directions:

• Simplify things like the OSR
• Patch problems and smooth out level charts
• Simplify things for the digital tabletop

That last goal, I feel, is the most important to Wizards since it will enable them to turn One D&D into an online cash shop and profit center. This is why you are seeing so many class abilities get turned into spells since having one "spell list" is more straightforward to track in an online UI than separate lists of spells, and class abilities with per-rest usages, and all sorts of other per-class custom UI elements.

As a result, every class will feel the same to play with a few mechanical differences. This is the D&D 4 design goal of "online play," where they made every class a magic-heavy caster, and they all felt the same with "power cards" that got expended at differing recharge rates (at will, encounter, daily) or today these are (at will, short rest, long rest). 4E always felt like the Pokémon card game, and I bet that feeling will come back with One D&D.

D&D 4 never really went away. This was always a corporate version of the game designed to lock players into an online platform they could be charged for. I feel One D&D is bringing back many of these design goals, and you see the same sorts of simplifications and homogenization happening to the system.

This is why I left One D&D and the current 5E behind, focusing on OGL 5E games and fun 5E-like experiences.

Level Up 5E feels like AD&D to 5E's basic D&D. It is a design fork not meant to simplify online play but a reimagining of the classes to provide more depth of play, complexity, and detail to gameplay. In some ways, it feels like the Rolemaster "answer" to D&D back in the day, where ICE made a more complex but deeply satisfying game in response to the feeling AD&D was too simplistic. And it does feel like AD&D's answer to D&D, meant for experienced players and those wanting an involved play style.

L:evel Up keeps what is fun about 5E and goes in a new direction, asking the question, "What if 5E got more in-depth and detailed? It does not go overboard like Rolemaster did, but it turns the classes and characters into this "comfort food" style of feeling where you can roll around in piles of depth and nuance to designing a character. And along the way, it is not afraid to do redesigns and reimagine where the game needs help.

5E Clones: Into the Unknown

Why use 5E clones for OSR-style gaming? Well, it is familiar to many players, and it is just easier to jump into. The structure is the same, the concepts familiar, and players don't have to "shift gears" as hard to get playing.

Granted, the OSR is easy enough to get into - but to each their own.

One I picked up recently is the incredible and rules-light Into the Unknown, which tries to ease the learning curve between OSR-style play and D&D 5E play quite considerably, and it does not require the base 5E books to play. I like that the game is split into five smaller books, each one a mini-sourcebook for characters, playing the game, monsters, spells, and running the game.

I love the 5E-like games that do not rely on the Player's Handbook or 5E SRD, since when you have a PHB handy, the pressure to "just play 5E" is too intense, and the game you are trying to focus on suffers. Plus, finding games that are 5E-like that stand on their own is a cool thing, and worth calling out creators who put in the effort and time to make these creations happen.

ITU tries to simplify the 5E experience into an OGL-like retelling of the 5E base rules, compared to Low Fantasy Gaming which is more of a complete rewrite of the base game - but keeps the 5E structure.

Myself? I like Low Fantasy Gaming because it does a lot of new and original stuff; it adds corrupting and dangerous magic and gives the whole game a dark fantasy feeling.

Otherwise, this is a complete game, worth picking up, and an excellent choice for Wizards-less 5E.

One D&D: No Build Compatiblity

Some videos on One D&D lament that the backward compatibility is only for adventures and not character-build options. It doesn't surprise me, and this is the same level of "backward compatibility" that 5E clones have, like Level Up Advanced 5E.

Any revision to the base 5E rules is going to break "character build compatibility" unless these are really minor tweaks. One of the problems with the 5E design is it is not a modular design, but everything is so tightly integrated it has a "Swiss watch" level of mechanical interlocking rules and interactions.

The current playtest bard is horribly broken, allowing the party to "chain together" short rests and heal as much as they want with bardic inspiration heals. No need to spend hit dice to heal, just short rest a few times in a row and chain heal.

I am having a few serious doubts about the current design team of Wizards and some of the changes they are making, and a lot of the flavor and theming of classes are being removed to streamline the game and make it fast-playing but bland. I doubt the current Wizards team has the design credentials and experience to make anything other than fixes and optimizations, as the original 5E team was the best across the industry, with many diverse views and experiences brought in to create the ultimate edition of the game.

And some of the design choices and mistakes have me scratching my head. A ranger that can do 6d6 damage a turn at level one? Who are the designers? What are their credentials? I seriously want to know because the 5E team was made up of all-stars, and some of what I saw in the One D&D playtest docs is really amateur and sloppy work. Some of that stuff should have never made it to a playtest it is so broken.

Yes, fixing and streamlining is good, but every change risks losing the magic that made the game great.

And they risk throwing in a new bunch of exploits and problem builds.

And what is with replacing many class features with spells? Is the digital division telling the design team, "We only want spells! Otherwise, it is too hard for us to program this!"

I Prefer Level Up 5E

I still like Level Up 5E better; honestly, they put some real thought and care into that 5E version. And the EN World games class teams knew how to make a class and building characters fun. My LU 5E fighter puts my 5E fighter to shame. All my LU 5E characters are fantastic. All my stock 5E characters feel plain.

The Level Up classes are fun, and they have lots of cool class features I get excited about using. The designers had a lot to prove, so they did a great job making every class interesting and useful. I look at the One D&D ranger, and it is replacing class features with spells everywhere - it feels like a magic-heavy D&D 4E class with minimal innate fighting power and poor spellcasting. I do not like this concept of "spells off the prepared spell list" - it feels really copy & paste between classes and getting rid of class features for "everybody has them" spells removes flavor from classes.

I dislike the One D&D overuse of spells and feel this is done to simplify the costs of developing a digital tabletop.

The Level Up ranger feels like a true no-compromises killer that, at higher levels, specializes in beast-master, warden, or a magic-using wild-born. Magic is not the core of the class; specialization, wilderness survival, and fighting come first. In fact, the class excels in the exploration pillar of Level Up 5E, which standard 5E ignores. There are powers and class features used during exploration, and they are excellent roleplaying and mission-critical abilities.

Every class in Level Up is like that. I miss my fighter, who specializes in fighting alongside others. The discovery in these classes, along with the Pathfinder 2-like combos, is a remarkable thing, not to be dismissed or ignored because everyone is playing something else. I designed the same characters in base 5E and Level Up, and I miss my Level Up characters the most. They had the cool factor, along with being tightly tied to a setting - while still having fantastic exploration abilities.

Level Up 5E is the ultimate "wouldn't it be cool if" version of 5E out there.

May the Best Backwards Compatible Win

So One D&D will have the same level of backward compatibility as Level Up Advanced 5E and even Low Fantasy Gaming. I am not surprised.

The best backward compatibility will be OGL 5E.

After that, pick a version of 5E you love and play that. It could be One D&D, but don't ever feel forced or pressured to play something you honestly don't like or disagree with. This applies to 5E, One D&D, OSR, fantasy, sci-fi, or any game out there.

Please Don't Fail, Keep Options Open

One D&D has a lot to prove and to live up to. And I do not want a "new version" just to have a "new version" - just look at most of the AAA games released in the last 3 years and tell me how many of those lived up to expectations. Really, I don't want all the significant momentum and love of 5E to be hurt by a weak or horrid release. Overwatch 2, Saints Row, Anthem, and many other games hyped up to the moon and landed with a thud come to mind.

There is too much risk to the game and the players today who love 5E how it is.

This is why I like to promote OGL 5E games. If One D&D falls short, the OSR will pick up the slack and be the home of disaffected 5E players. I would rather One D&D never be released than have a lousy release ruin the game for everyone. But I keep my hopes up, but a lot I see I don't like.

Keep options open. Don't trash other games just to be on a hype train. With so many AAA games recently, that train may not take you anywhere but disappointment. And also, don't trash One D&D; give it a chance, but be honest if there is something you don't want to feel forced to support. But they are making rookie mistakes now in those playtest releases.

But it could work out; we will see.

Until then, so many other cool games are here for us to enjoy and support.

And a lot of them are indie 5E games worth checking out.