I design a lot content for D&D 5e, and in that process, I get both a lot of feedback on that process and a lot of exposure to the hot takes on how 5e content should be designed. In particular, thoughts on what the ‘desired’ complexity for 5e content should be. The notion that there is a correct amount of complexity if we are all just in enlightened agreement.
However, I think what a great deal of this discussion misunderstands is that complexity in 5e is not going to be equal for everyone at that table, and that is almost certainly a good thing. There are many reasons why 5e has the marketshare it does, but one of them is almost certainly that not everyone in a group needs to engage with it at the same depth to enjoy playing it.
An extremely common reply to anything with higher crunch being designed for 5e is that people would be better served playing another system—I’m here to tell you that is, in the vast majority of cases, not really useful or actionable. It is not that the concept is inherently invalid or that D&D is the only game worth considering, just that it is largely unrelated to the desire someone might have to have more complexity in their D&D game.
Understanding Target Audiences
Most people play TTRPGs with their friends. Speaking as someone that plays ~2 games a week over multiple groups, it’s a struggle to get a group that is mechanically engaged to the point where they’d enjoy a game like Lancer—It has to be stitched together from a few players from different circles that prefer that higher crunch. But almost everyone in those groups can find joy in playing D&D… even if for some of those people, that joy is dependent on a new set of options being frequently available to them, and perhaps something with a bit more to grapple with than standard PHB content.
The point of making content with more depth for 5e (rather than some other system) is that there is a demand for it—there are people that are playing 5e because that’s what their DM runs, what their friends play, or that’s what is easiest to find a game for, but they still want a character option with choices and depth.
Most people who recognize my name will associate it with more complex content, but that’s a bit of proving my point and a bit of survivorship bias. I make a fair bit of simpler, more straightforward content. One of my more popular creations ever was Generic Elemental Spells, which are intentionally designed to be simple elemental alternatives that are free for anyone to use. But I’m mostly known for my Inventor, Psion, and that person that bolts Invocations to every class he makes, because that’s my most popular content by merit of demand. That’s the content people crave, that people talk about, that people are looking for—that’s the kind of content people turn to 3rd party content for.
But that content is designed for them, to let them find more enjoyment from the game, not to infect the game and turn it into something it isn’t.
Localizing Complexity
My goal when designing complex content is that if you don’t really want a complex character, you can play Bob the Barbarian, and sit next to Isaac the Inventor, and you, the Barbarian, don’t need to worry about how complex his, the Inventor, class is. His complexity is localized to him.
It’s what I call ‘Opt-in Complexity’ (we got back to the title!). It is a goal of furthering what 5e’s actual strength is, that it’s a big tent game where IRL friend groups who may have wildly different gaming experience and crunch tolerance can all find something they want to play within the same game. It’s not perfect, but I’m not designing 5e, I’m designing content for the game to increase its modularity such as I can within the system.
Now, this isn’t really intended to be about me, I’m just using myself as an example because it’s convenient and I don’t have to drag anyone else into this, but I see a lot of creators being hit with the same type of feedback, and a lot of people giving very dubious feedback to creators due to their belief that can discern the quality of a piece of content by a gut-check comparing it to PHB content in length and depth.
‘This isn’t for me’ is a perfectly reasonable response to content that has more complexity than you’re looking for, but it’s very different from ‘this isn’t how content for the game should work’.
Design Goals & Types of Complexity
Believe it or not, I am pretty familiar with 5e, WotC’s design principles, and sometimes even make content much more inline with the PHB… it’s not that hard to do. I too can open the PHB and look at what is in there. But that’s not my goal, and shouldn’t necessarily be your goal designing something. When you’re giving feedback, consider if it seems likely that was their goal.
The PHB already exists, and while expanding it can be a reasonable goal, many of the people looking beyond the published content are looking beyond the published for a reason.
This isn’t to say there does not exist the concept of ‘bad’ complexity. I term the difference between them ‘crunch’ (which is usually fine to add more of) and ‘grit’ (which you want to avoid, as it gums up the gears of the system). Things like floating modifiers that need to be tracked round to round.
A good example everyone knows of ‘grit’ is Conjure Animals. A spell that when you cast it, the game grinds to a halt. A good example of ‘crunch’ is Battle Master Maneuvers or Warlock Invocations. The end result of them is similar to the complexity of another character, since that complexity is offloaded to the player making that choice—it is something they did on their own time. From the point of view of the rest of the table, that character just has a few things they can do, like anyone else.
Choices the player makes in building their character does not slow down the game in play. That’s crunch, and you can add as much of it as you want, though with the understanding that not everyone wants that depth and complexity in their character options—know your target audience and who is likely to be playing what you make.
Choices or effects that happen every turn do slow down play, and should be considered carefully before you use them. Sometimes it will be worth it, sometimes it won’t. Try to streamline and optimize those, not necessarily the choices the player makes when building their character.
Making Everyone Happy (You Won’t)
There’s a lot more to this, of course. A lot of DMs will say ‘no’ out of hand to a 50 page new class, even if the end result of playing that class wouldn’t result in any more complications. And that’s fine, but something you will be working with if you make content serving the need for crunch.
Likewise, to some extent, flexibility (horizontal power) is still power. So you have to carefully prune how many choices the player has in their character making they can access at the same time. But, realistically, it’s going to be hard out do official options like Cleric or Wizard in complexity—even my 50 page Inventor class has less options than a Cleric or Wizard typically will have, since that’s just the nature of flexible full casters.
Anyway, I’m not really sure if this is actually useful or anyone will have gotten this far, but after parsing through a lot of feedback, thoughts, and discussions over the year I wanted to give this perspective help people think about how complexity interacts with the game in a bit more of comprehensive way—the goal of a homebrew/3rd party creator isn’t to ape the PHB character building (or lack there of) as closely as possible, but to make content that can play alongside what is presented there when the dice hit the table. What the player did behind the character sheet to get there is much more flexible.