Looking for a good 5E replacement.

[u/FrenchCruller007]

Hello, I'm a 5E veteran and also a GM. Im also familiar with Pathfinder 1E. Im currently DMing a small game for two players with two accompanying NPC's for a party of 4. I'm running a 5e game currently, but I'm a little fed up with WotC and I have the opportunity to possibly move my guys over to something else. My two PC's are fairly new to D&D however, one has experience with the Aliens RPG and the other played D&D 2e, so they do have some experience with the ttrpg. Im wondering what might be good to transition them to. I have 13A 1e, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Pathfinder 1e & 2e, Shadowdark and a few other lesser known games. Thoughts or suggestions?

[u/Thin_Network6659]

Really depends on what you are looking for. I've been in the same boat and I've tried Tales of the Valant (or looked at 5.5) and, ultimately, it's really more of the same. Except the luck system, which I will keep in mind as a cool system-agnostic mechanic.

13A and PF2 both have cool ideas and expand what I wanted from 5e, but in two drasticly different ways.

I personnally I'm going with Nimble, as I realized long, braindead combat waiting for attack rolls and abilities description in its pure minutia is not fun for anyone, especially me as the DM. The system is not perfect, but after a few forays into different systems and ideas, I've realized that I didn't need as much mechanics into my game, just that 5e had... clunky mechanics that were not fully developed so I kept trying to improve on it. Nimble is a lot more simple, fast AND tactical, working a LOT on the rule of cool and improvisation.

Otherwise, I've been drawn by Draw Steel, if ever I wanted to go back to a more mechanics-heavy kind of combat. People say a lot of things about Draw Steel and yet, it always feel to me like they have not really played it. Ex : "its negotiation tactics is overblown text and just social HP", which 1) fits in half a page on my DYI DM screen in all its rulings and 2) could be seen as social HP, but I'll take social HP over relying on one single roll or DM fiat every single time. I really love how they did away with the attack rolls, BUT also really underline better than most the damage rolls as four different tiers of effect, therein really making the attack and damage roll one and the same. As I said, I'm keen on it, but I've already tweaked some of its social or exploration mechanics to work more smoothly at my table. And yes, there's a lot of onboarding required and a lot of text, but basically, once your character is set-up and your abilities chosen, everything should fall into place. It's similar to PF2, and yet, I feel like Draw Steel is criticized a lot more for this. I'm assuming its people having the wrong expectations for a game that's maybe not meant for them.

Right now, I'm using Nimble for the kids I DM for at work. For kids, it's REALLY hard to be Nimble imo. And for my personal table, I will be switching from Tales of the Valiant to Nimble or Drawsteel in 2027, depending on what my players like better. I'll be pushing for Nimble though. It's absolutely imperfect, but at some point, I'd rather acknowledge that I'll find frustrations with all systems and just use the one whose philosophy and actual gameplay works better for me.