Changes to the Game
There have been murmurs of a potential 6th edition of Dungeons & Dragons sometime shortly. I’m not sure why WotC would kill the golden goose, but the 5th edition is now in its seventh year, the second-longest gap between editions, as the 1st edition ran for 11 years before 2e rolled around. Love it or hate it, the 5th edition has been a boon for the game, bringing it into the mainstream and popular beyond Gygax’s wildest dreams.
It got me thinking about some aspects of the game that I think needs to be re-worked or removed from the game. Below is a list of the things in Dungeons & Dragons that have either outlived their usefulness or need a complete overhaul to serve a purpose in the game.
Copper coins - Like the penny, the copper piece serves little to no purpose in the game. Most creatures that will have a hoard worthy of your adventures won’t bother with copper. Looking at the treasure hoard charts in the DMG, you’ll see that creatures CR 11 and higher will only have gold and platinum in their hordes. Copper pieces are so CR5.
You need copper pieces in such large quantities to make it worthwhile that encumbrance becomes an issue. All coins weigh the same amount, with 50 coins weighing a pound. Since you’d need 100 copper pieces to equal 1 gold piece, that’s 2lb of weight you’ll be carrying around in case you needed to buy 20 crossbow bolts. Even with a bag of holding, you’ll only be able to carry 25,000 copper pieces, which is the equivalent of 250 gold pieces. I guess a DM could watch you struggle to figure out how to transport your big score after slaying an ancient red dragon by telling you it had just converted its 10,000 gold pieces into all copper pieces because he wanted a bigger hoard to lay upon (For those keeping track at home, that would be a cool million copper pieces, weighing 20,000 pounds).
Great, now I’m worried I just gave Stephen a new cruel idea for our upcoming campaign.
Electrum coins - Don’t even get me started on the electrum piece. It’s the Susan B. Anthony Dollar piece / $2 bill of the game. It needs to go away.
Alignment - I previously wrote about alignment here. It serves a purpose but needs to change, not only in how it is used to depict various creatures but also in how it is used with certain items.
Languages - I am not suggesting that we abolish the concept of either the spoken or written word. But honestly, what is the point of picking from an ever-growing list of languages your character can understand? Most dialogue conversations at our table go like this:
DM - Who speaks Abyssal?
Bob the Cleric - Me!
DM - “I shall enjoy watching you suffer in the heat of my fiery aura,” it says to you. The rest of the party hears a guttural gibberish.
Bob - I tell the party what it said.
I mean, really, what’s the point? Even if Bob decided not to share this information with the rest of the gang, they all heard it. Sure, we all like to say we won’t metagame, but let’s be realistic.
My solution for this issue is creating a homebrew magical item that is a universal translator for all languages and make it a must-have item, ala the bag of holding. Yes, the helm of comprehending languages already exists, but a wizard looks pretty silly in a helm. Use something small and unobtrusive like a pin or brooch. Don’t require attunement. Make it pretty and shiny since you should never underestimate the importance of accessorizing your outfit.
Racial Modifiers - Oh boy, did I debate putting this category on the list, as it is a hot button topic. Tasha’s attempted to resolve this issue by essentially telling us to ignore everything we know about races in Dungeons & Dragons and do what works for you. Talk about punting the issue. If WotC ever releases the 6th edition, they will have to make a definitive call.
The original orc character race in Volo's Guide to Monsters errata had a -2 Intelligence modifier, meaning that no matter how smart your orc was, it was going to be just a tiny bit less intelligent than other races (It has since been scrubbed from D&D Beyond, along with all other negative modifiers. That is a topic for another time). Some people view racial modifiers in role-playing games, including Dungeons & Dragons, as just another way for people to apply racial stereotypes to certain groups. They feel that certain practices, such as negative modifiers, can covertly encourage racist attitudes to be used by players to be used in the games, leading to both racist situations on the gaming table and encouraging racist attitudes getting adopted by some players.
Of course, the other side of the aisle will argue that it is a fantasy game and that there is no correlation between an orc or goblin and a specific race/religion/background in the real world. Some creatures are naturally evil, and it’s not just orcs, but demons, devils, and a wide variety of fantastical monsters, none of which correspond to anyone or anything in the real world. The dreaded phrase “cancel culture” begins to get thrown around, and everyone begins to start yelling and pointing fingers.
It’s time to get rid of all racial modifiers officially. I’ll be the first to admit it took me a while to get to this point. I’ve been playing for over 30 years, so it’s hard to shake the concept that dwarves are of a hearty constitution, elves weak but dexterous, and yes, orcs are unintelligent and brutish. Modifiers can be included with classes. A fighter might do more strength training than a wizard, while those acting classes that bard took in their youth could pay off as they hone their craft. Negative modifiers can be replaced with flaws that have actual consequences, and you can find our list of class flaws here.
Material Components - Material components need to go away. The introduction of the arcane focus got us halfway there on this issue, which was nice because my wizard was getting tired of having to carry around a ball of bat shit in his pocket. But when I die in battle, I’m crossing my fingers that someone has a 300 gp of diamonds in their backpack so the cleric can cast revivify.
There isn’t a player I know that would eschew the arcane focus in favor of carrying around a case filled with material components. Before its invention, spellcasters were required to obtain, carry, and keep track of their material component inventory. The DM would ask the dreaded question, “Do you have bat guano?” right after you screamed “FIREBALL!” and you’d have to scramble to check your character sheet to make sure you did. Inevitably you didn’t. Even more frustrating was when you realized you had all these little tufts of fur to cast lightning bolt but didn’t prepare the spell.
I understand that certain spells have costly material items so that the players don’t abuse them. Is there the potential for Wally the Wizard to create 100 clones of himself without the need to have a diamond worth at least 1,000 gold and a vessel worth at least 2,000 gold that has a sealable lid and is large enough to hold a Medium creature? Sure there is. My counter to this argument is that when you’re a high enough level to cast the clone spell, you’ll be making/taking gold hand over fist when you defeat those high CR monsters. Now it’s just a matter of going shopping and haggling with the local merchants. Maybe you enjoy that aspect of role play, but I’ll get my immersion somewhere else. Thank you very much.
I don’t have a one size fits all solution to this potential problem. Maybe revivify can only be cast on an individual once, or after the first time, they need to make an increasingly harder DC check, or the spell fails. What about saying in the spell description of the clone spell that you may only grow one clone at a time, or the arcane magic of the spell fails. The cool this about magic is there are no set rules on how it works because it’s fucking magic!
Something you think needs to be eliminated from Dungeons & Dragons? Or maybe you have a potential fix for one of the issues listed above? Let us know in the comments section!
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