#OneDnD size does *not* fit all...

Here I am, punctually after the announcement of D&D's new edition.
Punctual because for several reasons, I was waiting for this for a long time already.

• I'm really, really tired of D&D 5e. There is no fun material coming out anymore, and the few interesting things that came out after Xanathar's Guide To Everything (the last book I liked) were marred by game design choices that I seriously disliked.
  
  
• I'm a game design freak, but instead of enjoying the differences of the many systems out there (which I anyway read whenever I get a chance), I always want D&D to be good for every need. This is inside me to stay, like an incurable autoimmune disorder...
  
  
• I strongly believe that I can't be the only one who disapproves of the direction the mechanics of the game took. Sure, most of the gamers I know are utterly in love with 5e, but I refuse to believe I alone see the defects. I'm not a contrarian hipster or grognard: I really want to feel part of the community, because (at least until some years ago) I really always liked it, for as long as 80% of my whole life.

Ok, I wanted to be concise and schematic with bullet points, but predictably wrote too much, so let's get into the "crunch", starting from what I've been teasing: what I don't like of 5e.

What D&D 5e was supposed to be, but never was.

The 5th edition of D&D started as a very ambitious project during its playtest "D&D Next" phase, but even before release, it had already lost a lot of features it was supposed to have.

Here are the first things that 5e "lost" early on, which I really wanted and never got again.

• Modularity: there was this constant talk of the game becoming modular, which was misinterpreted I think by SO many people, due to the wording. "Modular" meant different things to different people, and as it turned out, also to different people within the design team.
  
  What it meant in the beginning, for the designers that were promoting it, was that the game had to have some "complexity dial" system, such as:
  
  - Ready-made characters that played very simply, requiring almost no choices.
  - Options for "middle complexity" people, which gave some choices, but not everywhere.
  - The "full manual control" mode, where you could customize characters in every detail, and have many possible actions every turn, regardless of character class.
  
  What it ended up as was a one size fits all thing, or better "one size fits all within each character class": there were simple classes, middle classes, and complex classes.
  
  Subclasses kind of tried to add some complexity here and there where it was missing, but seldom managed to do the contrary, so that once again we had Wizards as nearly unplayable options for beginners because of how many choices they give, and Fighters nearly unplayable by veterans because they are BORING as hell. 
  
  
• Granular feats/features: I remember a playtest package in which Rogues started with something between 4 and 5 feats, plus a choice of 3 different ways of generating sneak attacks, one of which didn't even involve attacking. YES: you could be a non-fighting Rogue that still managed to cause mayhem and DAMAGE. I don't even want to tell you what it was, because I'm so bitter that this didn't see the light of day, (and maybe I was also under NDA, by the way) that I just HATE that we never got all this. (You can check the post here titled "A Murder Of Rogues", plus some other, I think, so no, I guess there was no NDA at that time.)
  
  You might say: "whoa, I'm glad I don't have to choose 5 feats and 3 different sneak attacks now, that stuff is like 3e, or PF 2e, and it's not for everyone." And in fact, IT DIDN'T NEED TO BE FOR EVERYONE: with the modular system, this could have been the advanced option, along with packages that just had simple stuff, and others that just pre-made the choices for you, representing Basic and Middle options, or however they could have called them.
  
  But guess what, that would have required some serious math balancing, and some extra page in the class description, or maybe expansion modules/books, which polarized people a lot, since 4th edition had not been around for too long, and it had even been revamped with the Essentials line not 2 years before. So we couldn't get this bonanza. Not even in Xanathar or (much less) in Tasha's books, later in 5e. I guessed maybe because they were saving it for the next edition... But I guessed wrong.
  
  
• Maneuvers for all martial characters: this was also something that could have been relegated to the "advanced rules" module, but instead of that, they decided to make it a Fighter exclusive, and not only, the exclusive of the single subclass of Fighter worth playing: the Battlemaster.
  
  Note that back then I even thought it was kind of bad to have common maneuvers for all martials, because I thought it made the classes too similar. Boy was I in for a rough awakening, when it turned out they would have become EVEN MORE similar, since basic attacks were all they had, most of the time.
  
  
• A sense of wonder and old-schoolness: this indeed is very subjective, and was tricky to "modularize". I remember you could build a Rogue that could, with the right feats, cast spells from scrolls, wands, and even some of its own, without having to be an Arcane Trickster.
  
  It was so much better than "getting spells", because you really had to steal or "con" magic, in a true Rogue fashion, to use it. It generated what is still one of my most beloved characters (one of the few readers of this post who knows me, might even remember which one), and now it's just impossible to represent such character with mechanics, because this cool thing disappeared from one playtest package to another, and I can almost HEAR the reasons why: "too complex" or "too unclear" or "it steals the wizards' thunder", etc. etc. No more "Read Magic" cantrip, so scrolls became things usable only by the characters who didn't need them.
  Never mind that all this could have been optional: the option just never freaking came out. For no good reason, since as an option it could have been there just for the people who like me loved it. No: one size fits all.
  

So these were the things I didn't like of 5e since BEFORE 5e came out.

When it came out, the bitterness for all this was already a bit buried in me, and I decided to let go and have fun, but the thorn never really came out.

Problem is, the things I really disliked started blowing out of proportion with time, especially with the Tasha book (I don't even want to search its full title) and everything that came after it (very little.)

What really killed 5e for me, in no particular order.

• Botched Psionics. Apart from what I considered the AWESOME Mystic class not seeing the light out of the Unearthed Arcana playtest tunnel, my sadness here arrived when they finally decided to bring psionics to the official books.
  
  They had found a mechanic that I considered so genius, that I still want to implement it in nearly every custom thing I build: a die that could be rolled infinitely until you got the max result, which expended it, but that you could get back (I think) when you rolled the minimum.
  This was SO psionic: mind in overload does wonderful things but gets tired, and mind fumbling something gets new inspiration. A simple die trick had reinvented psionics in my mind, and finally for the best (because this came after many other sad turns, which I will actually list down here), but guess what? When the book came out, this mechanic was gone. They became dice you would roll and expend, and that's it. Just increase the number of them, and regain them after rest.
  
  I was... Speechless. But as I said, this was not the last straw, and definitely not the first, so here comes a previous one.
  
  
• Botched Ranger (and Paladin, and Sorcerer). Ahhh the Ranger. I ranted sooo much about this class over the years, that I almost feel pathetic myself. There was so much talk about an alternate ranger, about the designers admitting they had failed the class, and then what did we get? Alternate class features that did almost nothing related to the various playtest versions we had seen (this is a constant trend, as you see) and especially didn't even acknowledge the MAIN issue: the class's identity.
  
  I will say it in a different way now, maybe, but this is something I've said since forever: if you think of some classes as hybrids of others, those classes should not be classes at all. You should build the concept via multiclassing.
  A class should represent a unique thing, a primary color that you can mix with others, but can't be obtained by mixing other colors.
  
  And I ranted and ranted, that the Ranger was a major, major example of this (with the Paladin and Sorcerer coming close seconds), but even if at some point it seemed like they had listened (releasing two full and different fixes, and talking about having failed the class even in an official podcast), in the end it turned out as usual: they just upped the power level, and kept things as hybrid as usual, with spells, and all the bells and whistles that make you go "Hah, that's a ranger"... As if recognition was the definition of identity. 
  
  No. You can go "hah, that's a cross-breed" when seeing a dog, but that doesn't mean it has a clear identity. It will mean you just recognized it as such, but its identity is just the sum of different, much more unique identities, which for the Ranger in D&D are the Fighter, the Rogue, and the Druid: classes that can be mixed, and the only thing you won't get is the freaking favored enemy, something that, if 5e would have been true to its original plan, should have belonged to Background, not Class. And this happened to so many other things that appear, unsurprisingly, only in hybrid classes: they need background-territory stuff because otherwise they fall apart.
  
  
• Botched MAGIC. For D&D to botch magic, well... I don't want to go there. But yes, IMO magic was botched big time, because it was just SPREAD LIKE BUTTER over all the classes. ALL of them. Now even a full Barbarian can access spells with the right subclass. Seriously. And that would be cool if that would be "Barbarian Magic". A special one. But NO! "Simplicity! Why reinventing the wheel? We got these spells done, we can just reuse them, and players will describe them as they wish! Reskin instead of making something new!" - This was the mantra then, and it's EVEN MORE SO NOW. (Getting there.)
  
  Once again: one size fits all was the philosophy, and while we got a half'-assed attempt at an alternate magic system with spell points in the DMG, and the Warlock in the PHB, the truth is that magic feels all the same all the time, and the only clear difference you can see is between Arcane, Divine, and Primal. Remember this for later, please, because it's going to get worse now here...
  
  
• Botched Feats. I won't explain this, really, because again it's just painful to me. I can just sigh with a bit of relief now, seeing that they finally realized the mistake. This was the only part of the game that should have not been (so) modular, and it's the only part of the game in which the original modularity concept was kept. I swear...
  
  
• Botched Races. And they botched them twice. They had their problems when the edition came out, mainly the usual problem of them being absolutely irrelevant after a couple of levels, and they botched them again around Tasha's book, just to cater to the woke crowd who just because they are called races instead of species (as it would be more accurate to call them, BTW) had to ruin the game for everyone making them even more irrelevant and basically interchangeable.
  
  For fun, here's what the races should be called nowadays:
  
  - The darkvision and no sleep race
  - The infravision tougher race
  - The brave and lucky race
  - The breath weapon race
  - The flexible race (was the only one that didn't need much else, but now ALL are like it)
  - The magicky race(s) (the hellish rebuke race, and the darkness race)
  
  This is all they give, so why giving them names, you know?
  And guess what, they will screw them up even more, a third time. It gets worse, I saw it already.
  
  
• Botched Backgrounds. Even what was my favorite part of 5e, at some point revealed itself as a huge missed opportunity, since once again, we were talking about stuff that was awesome at 1st level, and started falling into irrelevance by the 4th. Why? Because it takes some work to make cool things, this is the truth. They just didn't work on these. They just started them well, and then abandoned them. True for many things in the game already talked about.
  
  And now last but not least...
  
  
• THE FREAKING THORN IN MY BRAIN... THE "TIMES PER DAY EQUAL TO YOUR PROFICIENCY BONUS" THING.
  If you didn't think I was crazy before, you definitely think so now, right?
  Well let me explain you why I'm not.
  
• Setting this kind of limit on ALL features, like they started doing with Tasha's book, is a nightmare of book-keeping, because even if it's the same number of times for everything (which is an abomination, I'll get there), everything has to be tracked separately!
• It breaks the immersion so much that I can't understand how can people play like this. Why the hell is my character able to do this and that only 2 times per day? When it was magic, well, it's magic, it works like this, it's a mystery... But now EVERYTHING can be done this amount of times. And you can't say "it's a representation of stamina, an abstraction like HP" because every single thing can be done this amount of times separately. This means that if I roleplay to hide what is the most gamist rule ever by describing how the character got tired, I could then start doing three or four different things all 2x times, because they are all tracked separately. Wasn't the character tired, goddammit?
• It's once again a "one size fits all" mechanic, but one that even defeats the purpose of one-size-fits-allness!! Because once again, since it's all tracked separately, what good does it do that the number is easy to remember because it's a different unrelated number on my sheet? It will anyway be at 2, 1, or 0 for each single class feature, for the first 4 levels, and then it will be trickier, when it could be 3, 2, 1, or 0, and again and again till you reach a level in which the number of features and number of times you'll be able to use them will be so big, that people will just stop tracking, I think.
  It's seriously a bad, bad, bad mechanic, that became the standard for absolutely no good reason if not what can be described as uniformity for uniformity's sake, and dumbing down not even for its own sake, since it ends up actually complicating things.

*Sigh*...
And now on with the aptly named ONE D&D, coming in 2024. The ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL-D&D, which we already know...

The direction ONE D&D seems to have taken

• Fixed Feats. Let's start with the good stuff, finally. They understood their mistake, it's clear. Feats will now be core (ONE SIZE FITS ALL), and they will increase, since you'll get one with your background, which will also mean...
  
  
• Partially fixed Backgrounds: now they actually matter a bit more mechanically, since they give you a feat. For the rest they're just the same, so their "backwards compatibility" is kind of a joke (who the hell would want the old ones, having these ones?) But yeah. They didn't fix the most important thing though: these are still static things that give you a bunch of benefits at 1st level and all at once. Leaving no excitement for later levels in this department. But after all, if it's a background it should be a thing of the past only, right? Well... Yes, IF ONE SIZE FITS ALL...
  
  
• Kinda fixed rules here and there: I guess.
  
  And now for the bad...
  
  
• DESTROYED RACES: we knew this was coming. Now they matter even LESS than the little they mattered, with even ability bonuses being stolen by backgrounds.
  The only thing they have which grows with time is SPELLS. Because now even regular elves gain spells, to be balanced with the rest. All stuff that can be learned by classes, mind you, so it's nothing more than a bonus something-everyone-can-know, instead of unique. Because why reinventing the wheel, of course. 
  
  
• AGAIN THE PROFICIENCY BONUS NUMBER USED TO TRACK FEATURES: and again, we knew this was coming. They put this everywhere in Tasha's, and that for me was like the announcement of One D&D in advance. You can smell it's a different edition because it has nothing to do with the rules that came before.
  And note that it's not used for everything, so not even its main purpose of uniformity is really fulfilled: race spells are usually only 1 time each, but if you happen to be a Gnome, for example... Here it comes, proficiency bonus times per day for your Speak with Animals (SPELL, of course). The same amount of times exactly that a Dwarf can analyze stonework TREMORSENSE. Because WHY NOT. Don't try to find a connection between things using this system. Just "if it can be done multiple times, it must be proficiency bonus times." For no reason other than uniformity. UNI. As in ONE.
  
  
• SUCKED ALL THE MAGIC OUT OF MAGIC: Again because UNIformity is good, now there are only THREE spell lists. Arcane, Divine, and Primal. Because the Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard were so similar already that why bother making them more unique? Just make them the same already. Sickening stuff. Could as well mean the end for Warlock and Sorcerer.

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You got my point: the designers think that ONE SIZE FITS ALL when it comes to D&D, and I think this is the most stupid and lazy decision they can make for this new revision.

They always understood, since the time of 4e Essentials, that they CAN have MANY SIZES FOR MANY PLAYERS, making complexity and simplicity COEXIST in the game, by making the SAME STUFF granular for the people like me, and lumped-up for the simplicity-loving crowds. It's an easy principle, but of course it requires more writing, or if wanting to keep writing minimal, at least more thinking, on the designers' side. 

My question is: don't we deserve such a small extra effort from designers?

Their answer for now is evident: NO.