Soon the D&D 5th edition core rules will be complete and ours for the creative taking! The D&D 5th edition Dungeon Master’s Guide will finally slay shelves and be in our hands in less than ten days.
There are a few particular things I can’t wait to investigate… or devour! Here are five things I’ll be searching its hallowed pages for immediately:
- Critical Hit Alternative Rules. It’s no secret I love impactful critical hits in my D&D. Who wants critical hits that don’t… feel critical? Crits that aren’t scary, that disappoint? The 5e critical hit is flawed in that you can actually end up with less than a normal strike’s maximum damage, which I find to be no less than ridiculous. Surely, there’s other options to consider, like a few of those during playtest? I personally enjoyed the “max your damage and then roll one more die” critical hit from playtest. But I can do even better! See my Stop Rolling Your Bonus Crit Dice article for cooler, deadlier crit options for your D&D game.
- Campaign & Adventure Options. There are so many ways to play D&D. I think one-shots, side treks, mini-campaigns and full-campaigns all have their place. Within that, there are so many storytelling tools we can use from books, TV series and movies. I hope there’s at least some discussion if not a highlights-and-lowlights review of each approach.
- Experience Point Award Options. Never enough time to play all 20 levels, right? Sure would be nice to experience them in a reasonable amount time, wouldn’t it? A typical, full D&D campaign throughout the years always took at least a year of real time or more – playing once a week, my group typically took about a year-and-a-half real world time per full D&D campaign. Often, if things lagged or we missed a few weeks for whatever reason, I’d bump up XP or levels arbitrarily. So, like in recent DMGs, I’m curious to see the discussion on different and more generous ways to award XP. (Related to this, any additional character downtime guidelines beyond those in the PHB should be helpful in explaining XP bumps from a story perspective.)
- Status Quo vs. Tailored Encounters. I’ve always found the “make everything an appropriate challenge” idea to be be bullcrap, as it’s so intrusive to a good, immersive story and swings the pendulum way too far towards competitive game-thinking like we saw last time out with D&D. Look, the world is dangerous and if there’s an ancient red dragon or lich over that hill at level 20, that same dragon or lich should be there at level 1 if the characters decide to wander into its territory to pick a fight. It’s okay for encounters to not be combat, to not be appropriate to the party’s level, and not be a simplistic win/lose scenario. It’s good for characters to sometimes be overwhelmed, Run Away!, get captured, or yes, get killed – violently and mercilessly! Put some fear in that party and challenge their minds too instead of just their dice!
- Faster Combat & Storytelling Advice. You know this one’s near and dear to me – and the 5e PHB and MM have already delivered here. Combat is rich enough without getting in the way of a good story and is certainly faster and more cinematic in 5e. The Monster Manual strikes a shockingly excellent balance of pleasure-to-read lore and ease-of-use in combat and other encounters. I also can’t wait to see how far the 5e DMG goes with storytelling advice. Just from creating Faster Combat alone, I know these are two belt of giant-strength-type things DMs crave to be great. Like the Faster Combat course and book, will this shiny new DMG answer our call?
Your turn! What are the top things you’re looking forward to out of the D&D 5th edition DMG?
Enjoy your D&D core books and games!
by
Kilsek
Kilsek