I have some interesting questions about the development of the 5e complete ruleset. While I think that the frameworks of 5th edition as be proven quite solid and adaptable, I also think that there some room to address well known problems.
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Absolutely this is the place to have that discussion.
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1) Do you have plans on expanding the "exploration pillar"? In the 5th edition DM guide, there isn't much about making it more interesting/dangerous and guidelines are also pretty scarse. Since a big part of the Symbaroum setting is about exploring the ruins that lies in the Davokar forest, I think it would be very useful to expand the exploration rules while also making the 5e Symbaroum book more attractive to 5e fan which are not interested in the setting itself but wish to expand the exploration pillar.
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Yep, rules will be provided for exploring Davokar and expanding this pillar. Also remember that resting works differently in Ruins of Symbaroum, you don't get back all your hit points on a long rest or any of your Hit Dice (normally, character features can improve this). So a character out in the wild has a very different resting strategy, which also feeds into the next question.
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2) Over years of playing the game, one of the main flaws of 5th edition for many on the forums/reddit is the lack of customiziation on the "pace" of the game and the balance assumption of "6-8 medium encounters per long rest, with 2 short rest in between". I think it would be extremely beneficial to design the game around different pacing and gave GMs guidelines on how to adjust that basing on the need of the campaign (for example, if you wanna have less but harder combat encounters without making long rest classes be king).
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Ruins of Symbaroum does expect (usually) that there will be less combats but they will each be individually tougher. And, as above, the new resting rules change what encounter pacing means as well. There's no easy way to fully recover while you're in danger and thus you always have to mindful of how hard you can push yourself.
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3) Last but not least, do you have plans for optional/variant rules to enchance modularity, similar to how you did with the Symbaroum Core Rulebook and Advanced Player's Guide? I think that it could be very useful for people that wish to increase certain theme of the setting, like the brutality of combats, the mysteries of magic and difference betweeen their traditions.
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Yep. Just like many classes and approaches will offer a variety of choices for the players; we will provide the GM with a series of 'rules-chunks' that provide options for how the game runs.
Thanks in advance for any answer!
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No problem!
In more general designer notes, we promised some information on Backgrounds. Backgrounds have grown to encompass both the innate aspects of a character and then the particular personal history of that character. For example, just like in the Starter Set, you can have a goblin that was raised by the Church of Prios, or now have a human barbarian tasked with raising crops for the new kingdom. We're still settling on terminology, but it's certain that the players will lots of options here.
Next time we'll talk even more about customization, especially in the form of feats.