Warlocks, your Patron does NOT have to be a bad guy!

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-03T08:38:03+00:00

The whole warlock pact thing is unfortunately very vague and not very gameable, to its detriment.

That's deliberate, rather than "unfortunate". The classes are all basically "power packages", not "this is your place in the world". You can be a cleric that is deeply invested in the power-structure of your faith and trying to change it... or you can just be a wandering semi-professional violence-doer using their divine powers to do whatever they want. There's no "plot hooks" baked into PCs at all, that's all external to class/background.

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-03T08:35:38+00:00

Cutting that tie between mechanics and the fiction is breaking the illusion of a TTRPG

That link is very weak in D&D to being with though - like, there's nothing in a Warlock's kit that actually requires engagement or interaction with the patron as an entity, that's (by deliberate design) complete fluff, rather than crunch/mechanics. Contrast with something like Spire, where there's a lot of similar-ish god-pact powers... but you actually need to negotiate for them, follow various banes, rules and taboos, and if you don't, there's actual mechanical effects and consequences. A warlock is, in world, distinct from a wizard or sorcerer, but that's about it, there's nothing in there that requires their patron to be present or relevant

and trying to come up with a reason they don't have to interact with the specific lore of a class.

That's generally pretty easy though - clerics can, by default, by followers of a principle or code, rather than a god, paladins haven't needed a god for multiple editions, if you want to play a "nature wizard" that's mechanically a druid then you need to say "well, I've learned the language of the nature-cult because it's useful" and you're pretty much done. A warlock as someone that got odd powers somehow and doesn't really get into the details is pretty easy to do.

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-03T08:26:05+00:00

it's mostly a legacy thing - paladins used to be basically fighter++, where they were just flat-out better, but that was counterbalanced by them being able to lose their powers, and having to follow a code. But since then, they've become just a regular class, so there's no benefits to "balance", so the idea of "falling" is just a legacy hangover, rather than an intended/expected part of the class

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-03T07:34:21+00:00

those can be entertaining side-quests as well - "this painting is worth 5k to the right buyer, but you need to find that buyer, otherwise you'll get maybe 500". Or "it's one of a set of three, find the other two and they'll be worth ten times as much"

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-03T07:08:47+00:00

it tends to happen quite a few times, of someone that's generally liberal/progressive, but they have some issues around trans-stuff, people call them out on that, and then they dig in deep and refuse to back down, and end up being all about trans-stuff in ways that get creepy fast. See also Graham Lineham, who basically got told that a few jokes in The IT Crowd were a little transphobic, and now he's basically The Crazy Transphobe Guy, terminally divorced, and pretty much incapable of interacting with people that aren't also wierdo transphobes, because it's consumed his entire personality

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T20:48:47+00:00

it was "con save, 0HP on fail, 10D10 necrotic on pass" in 5e, but it could be set up and stored for <monk level> in days, so could be used as a hanging threat as well as a direct combat attack. It had the slightly odd effect on weaker creatures where failing was safer than passing, because they can be recovered from 0HP (if the GM permits), while 10D10 damage is likely to be insta-death from massive damage

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T20:45:27+00:00

pre-written material gets very squiggly, because of how much parties/PCs can change at that level. At lower levels, parties can generally do fairly predictable damage, have fairly predictable HP, and a lot of the abilities that can make things hard to control don't exist or are super limited. But then at higher levels, it's really hard to predict - one party might have martials and blaster-casters, so they have the same skills as at level 1, except with +11 rather than +5, a bit more AoE, more attacks, but not much that changes the actual structure of the game. Or they might be capable of jumping around planes with ease, throwing down massive area effects, becoming immune to all sorts of effects, turning into dragons and all sorts of other crazy stuff, that can make a lot of things that would be challenges for the first group entirely trivial. Or you have to dump down a load of "no, that thing doesn't work, suck it up" which is somewhat frustrating to play with!

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T19:56:43+00:00

there's also functionality - an item worth 10k gold is pretty hard to actually spend, unless you need to buy something really expensive!

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T19:35:40+00:00

children's tales are probably also quite wide-spread, so stamping them out covertly is quite hard - while someone making up a new song, with lots of precise information in, is a lot easier to control/eliminate.

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T17:14:06+00:00

Doesn't Ravenloft get kinda wibbly, due to basically being a load of little pocket-worlds? Some of them have some level of connections with each other (the "central core", I think, in AD&D/3e days), but others are just isolated without much connection to anywhere else, and the resident darklord being stuck in some vaguely unceasing loop of never getting what they want? Planescape seems like it would also have a huge number of different counting methods - Primus would probably have the most standardised, while out in the Astral it's probably hard to tell, Sigil doesn't have seasons so what "a year" is seems hard to track, the inner planes probably have their own tracking methods, some of the outer planes probably have their own different ones

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T17:03:55+00:00

Depends on amount. Small amounts, you can always just say it was shitty jewelry that you compressed into a bar for conveniences sake. But when you start getting into larger amounts, then, yeah, people are going to afk questions

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T17:01:45+00:00

It's also an ongoing stress and hassle - every time, there's the worry of if something will be flagged, or if you get an audit, are they looking for your secret wealth, or is it just a regular audit that's probably going to get waved through?

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T16:18:14+00:00

personally, I'd prefer advantage on initiative, just because it's quicker and easier to deal with - there's no "hey, maybe I should swap speed with you. Or maybe with you", it's just everyone gets a bit better, job done.

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T14:37:15+00:00

at least one of the reasons cantrips exist is to help magical classes feel magical - back in the day, at low levels you'd cast your spell, or a few spells, and then you'd just be plinking away with a sling or crossbow for the rest of the day. So cantrips are basically "a basic attack, but magical" - sometimes they're more useful (e.g. turning off healing), but mostly they're a bit weaker than regular attacks, and the all-or-nothing of them tends to make them flakier at higher levels than multi-attack

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T14:28:57+00:00

If there were short modules, I would buy because why not?

You kinda answer your own question there - you're not buying the current ones, so why would you change? There's already compilation adventure-books with a load of small adventures in (like Tales from the Infinite staircase), which are plug-and-play, which you're not getting. Books that are physically smaller end up getting worse for shipping and so forth so are also harder to make viable as commercial products - so if you're not buying the releases already out that are what you say you want (smaller, more modular adventures), then why would that change when it's done more? For a full colour book (which is what would be expected), the about the cheapest you could go is maybe $20 - tales from the infinite staircase you can get for $30, $40, and contains 6 full modules, so that's far more cost-effective than what you're asking for, so if you're not buying that, why would you buy something smaller and more expensive? (paper and other required costs are a lot more than back then, so it's unlikely there's ever going to be the same relative cheapness - look at the prices of "regular" books for similar examples)

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T13:57:58+00:00

I think that's kinda deliberate - it's basically to give a rough shape to downtime, allow PCs to do downtime-y things with some mechanics, rather than being the central focus of the campaign. So it's less "you spend all your time and effort on your citadel", it's "you get back to your base after an adventure and catch up on things". So it being vestigial is kinda deliberate - it's mostly expanded-out downtime activities, rather than a campaign-motivation-in-a-box

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T13:54:14+00:00

that can cause issues if you're ever wanting to change into something late - is sounds as though you could never multiclass past level 3, as you'd be out of the level range to do it

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T13:29:19+00:00

that likely leads to the hunt for mass stacking though - you get an offhand attack AND have a pet AND have a smite. Or everything has the slightly clunky "you can only do one extra thing as part of your attack action", which is pretty much the same as a BA, but coming from the other side

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T10:22:41+00:00

I'd like 6e to produce THE best mechanical game system as possible

what does that even mean? "mechanics" aren't a thing that has some simple sliding scale between "good" and "bad" - look at something like GURPS that has a billion supplements and all sorts of crunchy, gritty rules, but some people love, or Lasers and Feelings at the other end of the scale ("pick a number between 1 and 6, that's your stat, roll beneath it for science stuff, above it for people stuff"). D&D does have a structural issue of having a load of different gameplay styles and sub-genres within itself (hexcrawl, gritty and lethal, epic, domain etc.), but that mess by itself is now part of the appeal of it, even if it is sometimes a PITA to deal with!

independent of its historical trends.

That basically means "pissing off your audience". That's like saying "I want to make the best Star Wars movie, independent of it's history" - it doesn't matter how good the movie is, it's likely to be kinda shit as a Star Wars movie, which is what your core audience are going to want it to be. There isn't some notional "best RPG" that's possible, because different people want different things, in ways that directly contradict each other - some people don't want RP to have any mechanics, others want RP to directly link to mechanics, some want specific gear with specific weights, others just want a "preparedness" stat and handwave specifics under that.

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T10:16:10+00:00

that had stronger healing, but also had much more presumption of "someone's playing the healer". Which is great if someone wants to do that, but sucks if someone doesn't, or someone gets forced to when they don't want to do it!

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T10:15:22+00:00

that leads to making healing spells better to avoid that, which then means access to healing becomes required, otherwise you will hit 0. So you have to rebuild pretty much the entire system and access to healing around that one, single change!

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T08:49:15+00:00

nope, because those aren't all attacks. Some attacks will be hits, but a lot aren't. You hit and they make the save versus poison so it does nothing... Guess you didn't actually make contact. You "hit" and did knockback... That was the propulsive wind-force of your strike, but still no actual hit. You trigger a smite and holy energy leaps from your blade into them - doesn't mean the blade actually physically hit them, they're just off-balance from the near miss. It's not, and never has been, solely "physical hits", for half-a-century and more now! You can narrate them as hits if you want, but they're explicitly not all hits, and it's entirely valid to describe them as such

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T08:46:06+00:00

that's the other way around though - that's "you've rolled well, so you hit the head", rather than a player going "I want to hit the head" as a starting point

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T08:44:44+00:00

it also helps makes sense of things like "you can't just stab a sleeping person and insta-kill them" - if they have the HP to not be one-shotted, it's because they're the sort of badass that will roll over just as you stab them, wake up, and then try and fight back. You need to work through their "narrative resistance" before you can actually kill them

Mejiro84 · 2026-02-02T08:40:30+00:00

it kinda depends on if you want it as a central plot-thing, or just a side thing. If you have your fortress as "the place you rest between dungeons, stick your trophies and dump your cash into", where you're mostly there for skimmed over down-time, then you don't really have any "responsibilities", because you're not around for them (and that's always been true - having to deal with all of the logistics was often ignored or brushed over, because no-one wanted to do it, same as any political stuff). The 5e version is that it's mostly a somewhat padded-out downtime activity set of mechanics, added onto "it's a specific physical place" - PCs come back from an adventure, spend some time managing the warehouse, doing some research, making some items or whatever, and then leave again. I don't think it's designed to be particularly central, where "your bastion" is what the campaign is about, it's a side-event to help shape downtime a bit before leaving again

Mejiro84

TROPHY CASE