Can one man fix the 5e kingdom?
Nimble creator Evan Diaz has cracked the code on how to make D&D mechanics fun again
I interviewed Evan Diaz, creator of Nimble a sort of rules tweak supplement that sets out to fix all the bits of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition that drag gameplay and nudge players into stale characters. I was very skeptical before reading Nimble, but then I read it and became a believer. But I still wanted to grill Evan as hard as I could with 20 or so questions. His answers didn’t surprise me. Evan knows his stuff, and Nimble is even more impressive to me after our chat.
NOTE: Nimble is crowdfunding on Kickstarter
I. Intro
Hi Evan! Can you describe what Nimble is and enumerate the features briefly?
Sure! Nimble is a 5e rules supplement that streamlines and fixes a number of the most frustrating things about D&D. Players, in my experience, are pretty hesitant to learn a new game and 5e is already a great system in many ways, but for new players it can be confusing and overwhelming; and for experienced players combat can be a slog, player agency can be minimal, and the rules overly fiddly. Nimble fixes all of that.
There’s a quote on Nimble’s Kickstarter page that resonated painfully with me: “D&D has been described as 30 minutes of fun, spread out over four hours.” This is so painfully true. How long were you playing D&D 5e before you realized that it’s super boring when run Rules As Written?
It didn’t take long at all. It CAN be fun RAW, but so frequently it isn’t. The optimal thing is rarely the most fun thing, unfortunately. There are no tactical trade offs and few interesting choices to be had. You run up, and make your one attack. Nobody moves. No teamwork needs to develop. Don’t heal that guy he has 1 HP, heal him after a couple saving throws, he’ll watch us play in the meantime...
The frustration on a player’s face after missing his one measly attack 4 turns in a row, really sticks with you. As does the frustration of explaining the half dozen or so steps a new player needs to memorize to make an attack. It’s arcane.
I’ve seen a few attempts at simplifying D&D 5e directly (some of which have become bestsellers!), and they often encounter the same problem, which is that they create gaps in the rules. I can only presume that is a result of a lack of playtesting. How much playtesting has Nimble seen so far?
Yes, playtesting is absolutely key. These rules are the culmination of many live campaigns with new and experienced players (and even more spreadsheets). There’s just no way to know a thing works at the table short of actually playing it at the table. Players have an uncanny knack for breaking a system, finding edge cases, and pushing boundaries. It’s a great thing! If there is some degenerate combo, players will find it, and quickly.
The idea here is to leave as much as possible about D&D alone. DMs have enough to worry about without having to change classes, monsters, and adventure modules to fit a new system. The core of 5e is fantastic, let’s leave it be. Nimble speeds up combat and creates opportunities for more interesting choices in 5e without adding needless complexity for the players or DM.
II. Action Economy
I think probably the most relevant thing to talk about here is an apples to apples comparison of 5e rules to those found in Nimble. So let’s start with Action Points. Action Points are a significant departure from the traditional Action, Bonus Action, and Reaction turn economy in D&D 5e. How do you envision this system working in harmony with existing class features, abilities, and spells that rely on the standard action economy? For instance, how would features like the Fighter's "Action Surge" or the Rogue's "Cunning Action" be impacted or modified under this system?
I don’t think it’s as significant a change once you think about it. Players already get 3 things they can do on their turn, it’s just very inflexible (you can’t give up one of those to do a 2nd bonus action for example). This means classes that can make good use of their bonus action can just DO more cool things on their turn, and classes that can’t, tend to feel left out. We’ve opened up that flexibility to every player now.
How existing features work with Nimble is generally very intuitive, Action surge give a fighter an extra action point, Cunning Action lets a rogue lets a rogue dash/disengage/hide for free once per round.
Action Points is a great opportunity to balance out the Spellcaster/Martial divide a bit without nerfing abilities or overly complicating things. Cantrips/bonus action/reaction spells cost 1AP. Leveled spells otherwise cost 2AP.
Can you explain why you drop the attack roll?
The gameplay loop of rolling a die, adding something to it, conferring with the DM to see if you hit (you likely missed) before you can roll the cool dice for your attack is unnecessarily cumbersome and slow.
The possibility to miss an attack is exciting, but missing frequently is just frustrating and time wasting.
Lots of other RPG systems have no attack roll and combat FLIES. It’s fantastic. So it’s hard to come back to 5e, where a turn can easily take 10-15 minutes, and players are reluctant to learn a new system once they’re familiar with D&D. The Nimble system combines the best of both worlds, we cut right to the chase and simply roll damage dice! Those determine if a character hits, crits or misses.
This is mathematically nearly identical to 5e RAW in terms of encounter balance, even when combined with the action point system. And it adds some really cool choices with weapon choices too. The best weapon is no longer the one with the biggest dice, there are interesting tradeoffs rather than best choices and bad choices.
Your designer's note mentions that this system "greatly improves tactical decisions" by enhancing actions like grappling, shoving, and moving. What specific limitations or shortcomings did you perceive in the original D&D 5e rules that led you to develop the Action Points (AP) system to address these aspects?
If a martial class only gets 1 action per turn, it’s suboptimal to ever do anything other than attack. The action point system, combined with the new attack rules, now it sometimes makes sense to grapple or shove with one of your action points to get a tactical advantage for your team. It just makes sense that if you don’t move or use a bonus action, you’ll have some bandwidth on your turn to do something else instead. If a spellcaster teleports somewhere up high and is unharried by enemies, it makes sense that they’d be able to spell sling better than if they were surrounded by enemies.
Introducing a mechanic like "stacking disadvantage" can drastically alter the risk-reward calculus for players. How did you ensure that this modification maintains game balance, especially considering that players can now attack multiple times in a turn, albeit with increased penalties?
Lots of spreadsheets and playtesting! It’s an elegant solution since players are already used to advantage and disadvantage, and mathematically it does exactly what we wanted it to do to the damage curve to maintain game balance.
There is a slight damage buff for players using multiple attacks, but not so much that there is always (or even usually) a “correct” answer. Mostly it just fixes the “I wasted my turn” feeling that is common in 5e. Sometimes the optimal thing to do is attack again, or dodge, or knock a monster prone, or help an ally. It changes depending on the situation, and it gives this really cool space for interesting choices (both good and bad ones) to take place.
III. Death and Exhaustion
In your revised "Dying" mechanics, characters can still take actions and make choices, veering away from the traditional unconscious state. What gameplay experiences or feedback led you to believe that the traditional unconsciousness mechanic was less engaging or "not fun," and how do you anticipate this change will affect the tension and stakes of combat scenarios?
The tension of dying is a big part of what makes 5e so interesting, but the tension comes from the risk of permanently losing a character - NOT from losing your *TURN*. People come to play, not to watch their friends play. It’s just not fun to not do anything on your turn for multiple rounds.
Nor is it fun for players to game the mechanics and yoyo up and down because that’s an optimal play pattern. We’ve fixed that aspect of dying as well.
8a. What does your resting rule aim to do?
This fixes the game breaking playcycle of players going “nova” (using up every ability) and then long resting after in every fight - even in the middle of a spooky dungeon. Ruining encounter balance and robbing the game of the tension of resource management - where martial classes in particular tend to shine the most. DMs of course can use random wandering monsters as a club to keep parties moving but that’s a band-aid that often doesn’t work and only further slows the story down.
Now, going on a long adventure away from the safety of town is more dangerous and exciting. Info about the location of a nice place to rest is now a pretty sweet adventuring reward. A few weeks of adventuring in the wilderness may need to be followed by a week or so of resting, storywise. Again helping the common narrative problem of PCs leveling up too quickly (4 months ago he was just a poor orphaned beggar, now he’s a level 13 noble with his own castle!).
Your approach to the "Exhaustion" mechanic results in PCs dying when they reach their 6th level of exhaustion. Can you elaborate on the decision to use exhaustion as a more prominent feature in combat and the consequences of actions? How do you foresee this influencing player decisions, especially in prolonged battles or dangerous environments?
SEEING death coming is what makes for exciting tension. Players are not helpless spectators any longer, but at the same time, a character that has started to rack up a few levels of exhaustion will play noticeably differently, and even their partymates will start instinctively protecting them.
We’ve moved away from the convoluted exhaustion mechanics of 5e, making it easier to track and understand, it primarily serves as a long term measure of how close someone is to death.
IV. Monsters
Ok, monsters. D&D 5e mechanics involve more varied Armor Classes (AC) and individual modifiers for each creature. Nimble streamlines all this pretty dramatically. By simplifying monster armor into three groups—Light, Medium, and Heavy—how do you believe this will influence the strategic choices players make in combat compared to the original system?
Capturing the feeling of fighting a lightly armored mage VS a heavily armored construct is cool, but the fine gradation between a 17 AC or 16 AC doesn’t add anything particularly fun or exciting.
They feel the exact same, one just makes you miss slightly more often.
Having fewer but more distinct armor levels is COOL because each kind of enemy feels different to fight. And different classes are more effective or less effective against different foes. The Rogue saying “leave the big guy to me” is totally cool.
Which weapon a player uses matters more now, as does damage types for spellcasters. A cool little tactical bonus for those who are into that sort of thing, but not so much that the game revolves around those choices.
In D&D 5e, monsters do not automatically hit, and their to-hit bonuses play a significant role in determining combat outcomes. With Nimble, monsters hit automatically. What are some of the pros and cons that you’ve observed with this approach?
Well, combat goes much more quickly for one! There is still the chance for monsters to miss, but chances are, if you’re standing right next to a gobbo with a knife, you’re getting stabbed.
Mathematically the game balance is the same, but now the agency is more in the hands of the players and less random luck. Players can choose to avoid some damage from an attack, by giving up a small part of their upcoming turn, or they can take the damage and be ready with a really big swing back at the baddie. Players have so far really liked the ability to choose when they take damage or not and it keeps things moving along really quickly and the choices they make really matter.
Positioning and teamwork shines a lot more now too, tanky characters can actually protect and take damage for their team. And fragile characters REALLY don’t want to be surrounded.
The traditional D&D 5e system relies on ability modifiers to adjust damage for attacks. Your adjustments suggest damage calculations that mostly omit these modifiers, particularly for Medium armor interactions. How has this affected the balance and feel of combat encounters in your experience?
It’s like death by a thousand cuts. It doesn’t take that long for a player to look at their character sheet, see that their STR modifier is +3 and add it to another number. But when this happens hundreds of times across a campaign it eats up hours of time and mental bandwidth.
We tried a bunch of different things, like monsters reducing damage of each attack by a certain amount, but it became super fiddly and the mathematical overhead was too much. We eventually came to our senses. In 5e RAW a player’s combat abilities increase at about the same rate that Monster’s defenses increase. It's just numerical inflation! Needless calculations that slow the game down.
By skipping the damage modifier for medium & heavy armor we get across the feeling of harder to damage foes AND cut multiple calculations out of the play loop. We get the feeling of an enemy that is harder to damage AND speed up play at the same time. Win, win.
Balance-wise it’s basically identical, gameplay-wise it's more fun and quicker too.
The more we can limit the needless modifiers on every roll the smoother and more quickly play can proceed. The rules can get out of the way and let the story and fun shine through.
V. Ability Scores
With the removal of Constitution as a main ability score, how does Nimble propose managing player characters' hit points and survivability, given its traditional role in determining HP and resilience?
Level 1 is notoriously fragile, a small boost there was needed; but higher levels were okay, and maybe had too many HP. We needed a solution that gave a modest increase at very low levels but didn’t also bloat HP at the top end. Now instead of adding a CON bonus, Players simply roll their hit dice with advantage. This mathematically does exactly what we wanted it to do for balance. At level 1 players take their maximum hit die and add to it the hit die rolled with advantage.
There is still plenty of randomness but now it is a bit less swingy and the DM doesn’t have to be so afraid of a TPK in the first session.
Constitution didn’t derive any skills and it overlapped with Strength so much that there isn’t much reason for it (other than tradition, which is fine!). It made for a good candidate for streamlining and cleaning up the character sheet. Experienced players don’t miss it and newer players appreciate the reduced needless complexity.
Combining Intelligence, Charisma, and Wisdom into a single WILL save is a significant change. Did that lead to any knock-on effects in the original rules that you had to consider?
Not really, this was one of the more modest changes. Mostly just reducing the “feels bad” of extremely rare (but very deadly) saving throws. It makes no narrative sense that Charisma resists this mind altering effect, but Wisdom or Intelligence resist these other mind altering effects.
There is no need for 3 different saving throws to do this 1 thing. Barbarians and Rogues are still bad at it. It’d be like having 3 different kinds of DEX saves! Again experienced players definitely don’t miss it and newer players appreciate the reduced needless complexity.
Your decision to make Strength affect Intimidation and carrying capacity aims to make it more central. Were there specific character archetypes or narratives you had in mind that influenced this change, and how has it influenced player decisions in building their characters?
Strength was commonly a big “dump stat” and other stats are known overperformers (Dexterity). We reshuffled where some of the character skills and attributes derive their bonuses from to 1: make more sense, and 2: balance it a bit better. It’s not much fun to be a barbarian and useless outside of combat.
It feels good as a player to have your character choices pay off. And for the player that wants to play a brute, it feels good to roll a 23 intimidate and get the info you needed from the sketchy merchant without 20 minutes of RPing. With the optional carry capacity rules, weak wizards need to rely on their partymates to carry much of the loot too. Anytime we can easily increase teamwork is a plus in my book.
VI. Magic
Instead of spell slots, Nimble uses a pool of mana points that you spend to cast. What kind of effects has that had to the game in your playtests?
Players so far have REALLY liked the increased flexibility. During our last long term campaign, one spellcaster used his highest level spell slot, once I think? It was awesome, but he more often went to sleep with an unused spell slot than not. It makes sense, is numerically balanced and has been well received so far.
The bookkeeping is minimized, as is the confusion for new players. It’s much easier to say, a level 2 spell uses 2 mana, than to try and explain RAW for 5e.
Sorcery points are still a thing in Nimble, where you can convert Sorcery Points to mana and vice versa. How does this affect the Sorcerer's class uniqueness and versatility compared to other spellcasters?
I think that speaks to the elegance of the systems we’ve created. We’ve tried hard to change as little as possible so that Nimble still feels like 5e and not a cobbled together set of homebrew rules. There was no need to touch the core elements of the different classes, so we didn’t. Sorcerers class identity is maintained and they’ve enjoyed the additional flexibility of mana (and they usually spend their sorcery points on quickened spell meta magic anyway!).
VII. Skills
Redefining some skills to be based on different ability scores (e.g., Intimidation using STR instead of CHA) introduces a paradigm shift. How do you think they better reflect the essence of each skill and how do they improve gameplay?
It’s no secret that some main ability attributes were overrepresented (DEX & WIS). We wanted to spread that out in a way that both makes sense and more thoughtfully balances the value of each skill. WIS, for instance, is already the “perception/ranger” skill in 5e. So it made sense to make ranged attack bonuses use wisdom instead of DEX.
Characters with high CHA can already do well in conversations, they don’t need a third skill for conversations. It makes sense that a barbarian would be better at intimidating than a bard.
Your system removes the proficiency bonus from skills and introduces a more flexible skill point allocation. How has this affected the balance between classes, especially those with the "Expertise" feature which previously doubled proficiency bonuses?
The feeling of being “locked in” to the skills you were good at level 1 throughout your entire adventuring career didn’t feel right. If a player with a rogue discovered she enjoyed the exploration aspects of the campaign more than picking pockets and sneaking, she should be able to specialize in naturecraft if she wanted to. This better reflects a PCs changing interests throughout a campaign.
Classes with expertise are still compensated by getting extra skill points when they level up. Skill Points have been received quite well in playtesting.
With the removal of some skills (e.g., athletics and acrobatics merged into simply STR or DEX checks), how do you anticipate this affecting class or character archetypes that heavily relied on these specific skills?
Those skills were largely redundant and merely served to clutter up the character sheet. Characters that were good at that already are still good at those things, but now their skills are freed up to specialize in something else.
Other skills overlapped each other so much that there was hardly any difference between them. So some underutilized skills have been combined so that the remaining ones are more valuable and used more often. Players want their choices to pay off, it’s cool to see the ranger shine in the wilderness, but if he’s good at “Survival” and not “Nature” that’s needlessly punishing. They’re essentially the same thing, let the ranger be good at it!
You mention at one point your desire for character growth and adaptability over a campaign. How do you envision this new skill system better fostering a narrative of character development, especially for longer campaigns?
Players (and DMs) don’t necessarily know where a campaign will go at the outset, maybe a combat focused level 1 Paladin finds the campaign to be a lot more RP heavy than he thought, he can now change lanes a bit and put points into skills that matter more for this campaign (or in things he just likes to do). A player who spends a lot of time with clerics or in the wilderness, or studying with wizards can allocate their skill points very differently. It makes narrative sense and is cool to have that control over your character.
The best part is that it adds 0 overhead and doesn’t slow the game down. Anytime we can give more agency to players AND not make the game more fiddly or slow play down is a big win.
VIII. Conclusion
Do you plan to update Nimble to accommodate any changes that WotC makes to the 5e rules in their planned update in 2024?
I’ve been following the one D&D UA closely and making sure everything is in line with their current thinking so that nothing is too out of place when the updates are published. I’ve learned a lot from this project and the extensive playtesting we’ve done already. But there’s nothing like getting playtest feedback from hundreds of other players!
If any updates are made in the future, it’ll probably be based off of player feedback than anything WotC does.
On the whole, it seems like Nimble could stand on its own as an entirely new (better) RPG? What are your thoughts on that?
While that would be cool, I’ve got so many 5ee monster books, adventure modules, and supplements that I want to use! I don’t have much interest in remaking the wheel if I don’t have to, so much of 5e is perfect. It provides an amazing framework for creativity, and the built in community helps so much as well. The goal of Nimble is to just make 5e the best it can be, rather than competing with it. I hope we’ve achieved that!
Thanks so much for the thoughtful questions Dave!
Thanks, nice interview. I've kinda given up 5e and am only sticking to it for my dear group of beginners, but this might rekindle my fire for it.