Is it worth switching to 5e?

[Voorhees Carnivean]

Hi all. Been a long time since I've posted but since there's Ravenloft news again I'm back to thinking about it. I've been hooked on Ravenloft ever since the black box set and bought all of the 2e, 3e and 3.5 products, and stopped at 3.5 as that's the last time the campaign setting as a whole was supported. I'm not running a campaign right now (although I've been trying to get one going for awhile) but my previous campaign and all my current materials are in a modified form of 3.5, and now that there's going to be a 5e sourcebook for Ravenloft, I'm thinking of it again, and even though it seems like its going to be a continuity ditching reboot setting-wise, mechanics-wise there's still a good chance it has a lot of good stuff in it. (I have a definite opinion on it but am waiting till I've finished reading the whole thread to comment just to make sure I'm not just saying a bunch of stuff that has already been brought up and discussed to death)

I currently use a 3.5 using the alternate D20 rules that are out there for hit points and AC, most notably used in the Star Wars d20 system. (for those who know how those mechanics work, just skip to the next paragraph) Briefly, HP is changed to Vitality Points, which works exactly the same except it is replenished per hour of rest instead of per day as HP and represents exertion, stamina and minor injuries. When it is exhausted, or there is a critical hit, it goes into Wound points, which the starting amount is always your straight Constitution score, and which recover at the same rate as HP. AC is replaced by Defense, which is based on the ability to avoid blows and gets increases per level based on class just like the attack bonuses, and modified by Dex and size the same way as AC is. Actual worn armor instead gives a damage reduction when taking Wound points.

I use this system because I always felt that the standard HP and AC mechanics didn't really fit with the Ravenloft setting and once there was an established alternative way to do it in the d20 system, I quickly jumped on it. It took a long time converting all the classes, prestige classes, NPCs and various monsters into the system, and I have a couple pages that go through all the new mechanics that I give to all my players and would be happy to buy a 3e rulebook on ebay or the pdf on DriveThruRPG for anyone who wanted to play but has only played later editions. Still, obviously, using the system people are already used to would make it much easier to recruit new players.

I've heard that 5e does some good things, but from reading the reviews can't tell how it translates specifically to my needs as far as what I'm looking for in a system for a Ravenloft campaign

Mainly what I would want it to do is
- Allow for a lot of diversity in character options like all of the feats and stuff from 3e
- Even things with relatively low vitality and and damage dealing ability (a Dominic D'Honniare controlled butler with a kitchen knife for example) can seriously screw up a high level character if they're not careful, rather than just getting a +2 to their surprise attack roll, doing three points, maybe six on a critical, and then getting splattered as soon as the 46 hit point remaining character takes their next action.
- Allow the party to be able to get roughed up to the point where it feels like they're fighting for their lives and in mortal peril but be able to recover relatively quickly without camp spamming for several days in the middle of everything to cast and relearn healing spells. I see traditional D&D scenarios like running a gauntlet and trying to get through before succumbing to attrition and a horror scenario playing out more like a roller coaster ride where characters are in serious peril in every encounter, but go into each new encounter relatively at full capacity unless something really bad happened to them previously
- Allow for a relatively low magic setting, by having lots of cool abilities and options for characters that aren't necessarily magical in nature.

So basically what I'm asking is will 5e is able to accommodate the above with little enough tinkering that it makes it worth it to go through the trouble of switching (obviously, how good the stuff in the new book is will also be a factor) or would I be better off just sticking with the system what I've already taken the time to get to where I want it. I'm relatively out of the loop as far as RPG gaming goes, so knowing how much desire there is for 3.5 and how big of a difference it would make for players as far as what system I'm using, that will probably weigh in as well.

Anyway thanks for reading and any feedback is greatly appreciated

[Jester of the FoS]

I'm a really big 5e fan, and think it does a great job of marrying the old school feel of 1e & 2e with the newer experience and design of 4e.

It's a neat version for many reasons.

It really balances spellcasters and martial characters. Fighters feel effective at all levels. But wizards also don't feel ineffective and their spells can do crazy things.

The game also makes use of something called "bounded accuracy." Basically, the DC of checks and challenges doesn't really increase as you level. All locks in the world don't suddenly become better when you level up. Instead, the rogue gets slightly better over time. A character might have AC 17 at first level and at level 10 it might only go up to 19 or 20.
This means low level monsters can still hit. So four zombies might be a challenge at 1st level, and you can use that same statblock and throw fourteen zombies at a 10th level party. You don't need to make a dread necrotic-infused Stahd zombie for a high level party.

It focuses on rulings not rules. It doesn't try to create a hard rule in the book for every situation and expect the DM to abide by "the rules." Instead, it establishes the general rules and gives the DM the freedom to decide what happens or the challenge of a task.

Allow for a lot of diversity in character options like all of the feats and stuff from 3e

Yes and no.
Characters have choices and diversity. Each class has subclasses, which grant 3-5 extra abilities at set levels. So three wizards with three different subclasses will all do different things.
And there are also feats. Characters get far fewer feats but each feat is much larger, being akin to getting 2-3 feats at once. And entire feat chain. This makes certain feats very dramatic and impactful.

But choices are rarer for players. You pick your subclass at 3rd level and then potentially a feat at 4th, then might not make another choice until 8th level. It's not 3e or Pathfinder where you're making a new choice every level and spending hours designing your character.
This is a big disadvantage for players who like spending their time between games building characters. But is a huge boon for casual players who find flipping through pages of feats between games to be homework.

Even things with relatively low vitality and and damage dealing ability (a Dominic D'Honniare controlled butler with a kitchen knife for example) can seriously screw up a high level character if they're not careful, rather than just getting a +2 to their surprise attack roll, doing three points, maybe six on a critical, and then getting splattered as soon as the 46 hit point remaining character takes their next action.

Not in the base game. But you could add a wound point system to 5e as easily as you did to 3e.

And there are ways to hurt characters in other ways that straight damage. The exhaustion condition, draining Hit Dice, or the like.

Also, like in 1st, 2nd, and 4th Edition, monsters don't use the same rules as PCs. It's possible to give an NPC a "surprise attack" power that deal extra damage during, well, a surprise attack. Or Dominic D'Honniare could have a "psychic strike" power that lets him deal an additional 3d10 psychic damage when he hits with a weapon attack. So the butter knife only deals 1 damage itself, but his follow-up mental assault blasts the character for 16 damage.

Allow the party to be able to get roughed up to the point where it feels like they're fighting for their lives and in mortal peril but be able to recover relatively quickly without camp spamming for several days in the middle of everything to cast and relearn healing spells. I see traditional D&D scenarios like running a gauntlet and trying to get through before succumbing to attrition and a horror scenario playing out more like a roller coaster ride where characters are in serious peril in every encounter, but go into each new encounter relatively at full capacity unless something really bad happened to them previously

5e characters heal fast. You regain all of your hit points overnight (a long rest) and can take a short rest (1 hour) during to regain extra hp (and occasionally refresh class features).

But characters are mortal and you can mess them up pretty quickly with a few challenging foes. Even at high level, tough monsters can be fairly deadly and high level characters aren't indestructible. And an extended dungeon crawl or prolonged adventuring day will easily leave the party low in resources, injured, and vulnerable. Some characters can recharge every encounter or two and go into the next fight fairly strong (fighters, warlocks) and some classes get weaker over time as they use their resources (barbarians, clerics, wizards).

Allow for a relatively low magic setting, by having lots of cool abilities and options for characters that aren't necessarily magical in nature.

Yes and no.
Characters have a lot of spells. And even traditionally nonmagical classes, like the rogue and fighter, have a subclass that is magical. But that's D&D in general: lots of spellcasters.
But PCs are meant to be the exception. Them having magical abilities makes doesn't reflect how common magic is in the world.
The wizarding world of Harry Potter is fairly low magic as 99% of the population can't cast spells. But you'd never know that by looking at Hogwarts.

Conversely, magic items are not assumed in 5e. You can give out zero magic items and characters can generally function. There doesn't need to be any magic item shops or regular upgrades to their magical gear. Which can make the world feel fairly low magic.

[Jester of the FoS]

If you're curious, the D&D Basic Rules are free online:
https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules

Download them. And maybe run the introductory adventure from Curse of Strahd, called Death House. Available for free here:
https://media.wizards.com/2016/download ... enture.pdf

[Voorhees Carnivean]

Thank you for such an in depth response - it really helps and I'm leaning toward making the 5e change now and just waiting to see what the new book is like before I decide. I didn't realize they had those two things up for free on their site. That's really cool. I'll definitely check those out. Death House was the one bit of new stuff they added since Expedition to Ravenloft that almost made me buy Curse of Strahd just for that. If I end up doing 5e I'll be picking it up anyway, but if not I'm glad I'll be able to get my hands on that scenario.
Has someone out there posted up a version of Vitality/Wounds/Defense for 5e that you're aware of or do you think I would need to do it from scratch?

[onmyoji]

I don't want to bash on 5E, but I started with 5E a few years back. Curse of Strahd was our first module, and I loved it. That's what started my love of Ravenloft and brought me here to this site.

Probably about six months ago, we tried out Pathfinder 2E, and I have to say I love it too much to switch back. There's just so many options and choices, and so much more of it is elegant to me. They made so many great options for character building, and restructured things so that characters gain more than one new thing every level, which is pretty fun. it also seems more balanced at earlier levels. Every 5E battle with level 1 characters always felt to me like a TPK waiting to happen. The big metaphor I use is that (to me), 5E was like first learning to ride a bike. Switching to Pathfinder felt like taking the training wheels off.

Of course, that's my own experience. Everyone else's mileage will probably differ. Unlike many of the people here, I'm a D&D newbie and don't have any real 3.0 / 3.5 / 4E experience to fall back on.

The other major thing I think is important is that it probably also depends on what you want out of your game. It's almost certainly less about how good any one system is objectively. It's likely more about what you need the system to be able to do for you.

Since switching to Pathfinder feels so freeing to me, that's legitimately worth just using any D&D modules as "blueprints" and running them in PF2 just for the freedom of it all (for both me and my players). Many might scoff at doing that much work, but that's where I'd point out that the things we want out of gaming almost certainly differs.

5E was certainly a fun experience, and I definitely don't mean to bash it, so please don't take it that way. We played it almost every weekend for three years or so, so I have a lot of fond memories of it, and it was initially a very nice fit. I just feel like I've outgrown it.

Either way, it's almost certainly a case of "one size doesn't fit all" and I'd currently rather spend the time adapting a 5E module—or several 2E ones, based on my current campaign, for that matter—to work in a system that my players and I enjoy better than to feel more confined playing it in 5E. Again, just my own (lack of?) experience. Everyone else's mileage will differ—probably substantially.

— onmyoji

[Resonant Curse]

3.5 is my go to for if I have a choice of rule sets, so take that as a starting point for my case.

I've played mostly spellcasters in 5e, and I have to say that clerics got a major offensive combat boost (one party I played with called Spirit Guardian the spirit blender and the cleric used it every battle, get two or more clerics and you just chunk about anyhing pretty quick, with no need to worry about allies in the aoe), but wizards got drastically weakened due to a huge number of the spells being concentration (so limited to one of those at a time). The at will cantrips were an improvement though. A lot of spells also grant retries on saving throws every round or on more conditions so it is a lot harder to do a lot of things through magic.

5e is not nearly as versatile as far as character options as 3.5, since you either take the feats or the stat boosts and feat selection is far lower in 5e.

Classes like the barbarian can have a very different feel to them. They get a lot of straight up magic abilities now like flight or an aoe damage aura depending on which path you take, which can be very different from how the groups are usually portrayed.

[Jester of the FoS]

Has someone out there posted up a version of Vitality/Wounds/Defense for 5e that you're aware of or do you think I would need to do it from scratch?

I wrote one a while ago for a product on the DMsGuild:

Wound Points and Hit Points
This rules option divides a character's health into the physical (wound points) and abstract (hit points). This
system lends itself well to grittier campaigns where characters are expected to recover slowly from serious
injury, as well as for Dungeon Masters dissatisfied with the abstraction of hit points.

Wound points represent fitness and durability; hit points represent energy used to avoid blows, skill at
deflecting strikes, and even luck. At 1st level you have a number of wound points equal to your Constitution score. At higher levels your wound points increase by an amount equal to your Constitution
modifier (minimum 0).

Your hit points at 1st level are what you would normally gain from your class at levels higher than 1st. You
do not add your Constitution modifier to your hit points. For example, a 1st level fighter has 6 hit points while a 2nd level wizard has 8 hit points.

Becoming Wounded and Dying
When you take damage you lose hit points first. When you are out of hit points you begin to lose wound points. At your DM's discretion, certain attacks might bypass hit points and deal damage directly to wound points, such as being attacked while helpless.

When you are reduced to 0 wound points you fall unconscious. When you start your turn with 0 wound
points you need roll death saving throws normally.
Wounded. When your wound points drop below half you become wounded. While wounded, any time you take an action you lose a wound point and must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or fall unconscious. You can repeat the saving throw each round to try and regain consciousness.
Instant Death. When an attack reduces you to 0 wound points and there is damage remaining, you die if the remaining damage exceeds your wound point maximum.

Healing Wound Points
Whenever you would regain hit points, you can choose to instead heal wound points. If you do so, instead of
regaining hit points, for every 5 points of healing you heal 1 wound point. If you spend a Hit Dice to regain wound points, you always regain at least 1 wound point.

While unconscious from being wounded, you cannot regain hit points. When you would regain hit points, you
can choose to either heal wound points or gain temporary hit points equal to the healing. While wounded, you cannot regain hit points by spending Hit Dice or taking a short or long rest.

Natural Healing. The rate you heal wound point damage is dependant on the tone of your game.
For a heroic game, you recover half your wound points after a long rest.
For a gritty campaign, you only recover wound points by spending Hit Dice.
For campaigns in the middle, you regain a number of wound points equal to your Constitution modifier after each long rest.

Enemies
As this variant only slightly increases the overall health of a character, it is easy to ignore the distinction between wound points and hit points for monsters and NPCs.

If you wish to track a monster’s wound points, only add half their Constitution score and assume they automatically fail their saving throw when they become wounded.

* * *

Probably about six months ago, we tried out Pathfinder 2E, and I have to say I love it too much to switch back. There's just so many options and choices, and so much more of it is elegant to me. They made so many great options for character building, and restructured things so that characters gain more than one new thing every level, which is pretty fun. it also seems more balanced at earlier levels. Every 5E battle with level 1 characters always felt to me like a TPK waiting to happen. The big metaphor I use is that (to me), 5E was like first learning to ride a bike. Switching to Pathfinder felt like taking the training wheels off.

Of course, that's my own experience. Everyone else's mileage will probably differ. Unlike many of the people here, I'm a D&D newbie and don't have any real 3.0 / 3.5 / 4E experience to fall back on.

As a perpetual DM, I bounced hard off of Pathfinder 2. I had a long list of things that bugged me about 3e/PF1 after a decade of playing and PF2 didn't really fix any of them.

I was a big 3e/PF1 player fan in the day but grew tired of my players "winning" fights via the players' knowledge of the rules rather than the characters' tactics. And half my table hated the homework of picking from lists of feats and magic items every level. I do enjoy that as a player, but as a DM the lonely fun of picking feats and customizing a character doesn't translate to fun at the table: it's fun betweengames.

As the DM, 5e felt like taking the training wheels off since I didn't require rules telling me what I could or could not do or what the exact DC for a skill check was.

But that's me. I'm glad you're having fun with it. I love Paizo the company and really, really wanted to like PF2 and give them my money again, but just couldn't get into the game.

[Mistmaster]

Jester, would youtell me what were the problems who got you to leave Patfinder I?

[Five]

Voorhees Carnivean:

Grit and Glory 5E: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LDHolQY2FURKf-8xCT3

There might be a few things in there that you can poach for a more brutal Ravenloft (eyeball Part II: Hard Grit Mode, and the variants), but you'll have to offset and crank the recovery if you want second wind to be a constant.

For that, see 5E DMG, Chapter 9, Adventuring Options, Rest Variants. Epic Heroism (short rest five minutes, long rest one hour) might be something to work around, especially if you plan on consistently shredding vigor and wounds.

[onmyoji]

Jester, would you tell me what were the problems who got you to leave Patfinder I?

I'm interested in this too. Would be happy to let you know if these problems are still in Pathfinder 2 or not.

— onmyoji

[Strahdsbuddy]

Have been playing 5e for a year because of Roll20 but as someone who has always played rogues and other “skillsy “ classes, I have to say I don’t get 5th edition for Rogues. Skills never improve, and I find myself wading to the front of battles next to the fighter just to be useful. Cunning Action seems absolutely broken, as I disengage from melee almost at will. I’m glad wizards are not weakened, but it feels like rogues are. It seems like the best thing to do with a rogue is to multi class as soon as possible because the rogue abilities seem to be static. While I’m not DMing these days, I’ll stick with pathfinder 1, it makes sense to me, especially when you ignore all the extraneous prestige classes.

[Jester of the FoS]

Jester, would youtell me what were the problems who got you to leave Patfinder I?

I'm interested in this too. Would be happy to let you know if these problems are still in Pathfinder 2 or not.

I wanted:

• Lighter rules
• Optional Complexity
• Optional Magic Items
• Focus on Gameplay Outside of Combat

Pathfinder 1 was a dense game with lots of small fiddly rules for everything. Where you could calculate the exact DC for balancing on a 1-foot wide beam that was greased and there was a stiff breeze. Too often I felt less like the game master and more like the puppet of the rules. My hands were tied and if I bent the rules I'd be "cheating" and my players could call me on it. And just managing all the rules and conditions was taxing when I just wanted to focus on the story.

I also wanted less complex characters. Being able to opt into complexity and lots of character choices. Because, as I said, half my table found that to be busywork. Gaining a level for them became a chore rather than a reward.
I was looking for simpler base classes with more complex archetypes and alternate/ variant rules. Or something halfway between 5e and Pathfinder 1.

Third, I wanted magic items to be optional. I got tired of the grind of magic items and treasure not being special because whatever cool item was found, it would be sold to increase the magical plus on their belt or sword by +1. I also found it made it hard to add elements like a boat or castle as a reward. Because they could just flip a sailing ship to break their wealth by level.
And everyone just having a dozen magic items always felt silly to me. It's not really reflected in any fantasy fiction. It's not a trope outside of 3rd Edition D&D.

I also wanted more roleplaying and plot manipulation mechanics. Modern RPGs tend to have some form of bonus related to the character: convictions in Vampire the Masquerade, values in Star Trek Adventures, personality traits in D&D, aspects in Fate, icons in 13th Age, duty/ obligation in Star Wars, Tales from the Loop‘s Problem, Drive, Pride, Relationships, and Anchor. And so many other examples.

Now, I'm very much NOT calling out Pathfinder 1 or 2 as a bad game. It does what it does very well and seems like a well tuned game. (Almost over-tuned really.) But it just didn't interest me enough to pull me from D&D and seemed like it just be more work than fun to run.

[Jester of the FoS]

Have been playing 5e for a year because of Roll20 but as someone who has always played rogues and other “skillsy “ classes, I have to say I don’t get 5th edition for Rogues. Skills never improve, and I find myself wading to the front of battles next to the fighter just to be useful. Cunning Action seems absolutely broken, as I disengage from melee almost at will. I’m glad wizards are not weakened, but it feels like rogues are. It seems like the best thing to do with a rogue is to multi class as soon as possible because the rogue abilities seem to be static. While I’m not DMing these days, I’ll stick with pathfinder 1, it makes sense to me, especially when you ignore all the extraneous prestige classes.

Skills improve slightly, just not every level. (It's close to every 4 levels.) And you actually gain bonuses, unlike 3e/Pathfinder where the DCs scale up at the same rate as you gain bonuses, so your odds of success never really increase. Unless you also take a feat and maybe have a magic item.
A rogue will be picking the same DC 15 lock at level 1 with a +5 bonus as they are at level 20 with a +11.

Rogues in 5e are great skill monkeys. Expertise at 6th level greatly increases a few select skills, and Reliable Talent at 11th level means they have a consistent level of competence. They'll never fail to pick an easy lock.

Their damage is on par with most fighters and barbarians, as they can sneak attack pretty much each round. And when a rogue crits, monsters just explode, as crits double all the dice. I've seen rogues make good use of two-weapon fighting. But it's also easy to play an archery rogue or use thrown weapons, as you don't need a flank: just an ally adjacent to the enemy.

And, as you say, jump out of combat to avoid being hit. They all basically have Spring Attack. So they have great survivability. Pair this with Uncanny Dodge (half an attack's damage) and Evasion (halve or negate damage from a Dex save) and they're hardy little foes.

[onmyoji]

I can understand that. I was in PF1 for a little while, but the campaign didn't really pan out for more than a few sessions. I do remember leveling being really difficult on me as a player though, so I definitely feel that comment for sure.

For whatever it might be worth, PF2 seems to ease a lot of the issues you named. I'm still fairly new to it, but there's definitely no way to estimate "the exact DC for balancing on a 1-foot wide beam that was greased and there was a stiff breeze." They focus it a lot more on the GM simply estimating how difficult the task should be for a normal person and setting an appropriate DC from there. The rules are probably much lighter than PF1, but nowhere near as light as 5E.

On leveling, there's still a lot to select per level, as PF2 has broken down pretty much everything class-, skill-, or ancestry-related into feats, which have to be selected at the appropriate levels. It might be difficult for new players to select such things, but PF2 makes it pretty clear what their options are and where they can select those options from. Also, "skill points" becomes an optional rule, not a default one, so that's less to worry about when leveling. Leveling can get a bit more complicated if you multiclass, but it's not required to do so. After gaining just a few levels, it becomes pretty clear how the pattern works.

They break skills down into what I perceive as a fairly elegant system where your bonus to any skill check is just level + ability modifier + proficiency, the latter of which consists of up to four +2 increments, depending on how strongly you train in it—one of these +2 upgrades is selected at almost every other level. Rogues (to your latter point) remain great skill monkeys, as they gain one of these +2 increases at every level except 1st. While I'm on skills, at least based on my experience so far, while DCs can get harder as the game progresses, it's definitely not the case that the DCs keep up with the players bonuses—unless of course, the GM expressly plans for this outcome.

From what I can tell, magical weapons are up to the GM. If you didn't want them, I'm sure you could probably omit them entirely. Though adding +1, etc. to equipment (called "runes" in PF2) also makes them magical. Not sure if that matters.

As to roleplaying mechanics, there's a lot of skill actions that can be used in roleplaying. For example, Deception is broken down into the actions of "Create a Diversion," "Impersonate," and "Lie" (as well as "Feint" in combat if you have at least one +2 bonus to Deception). which have different mechanics associated with them. Stealth is similarly broken down into "Conceal an Object," "Hide," and "Sneak." Of course, the mechanics rely on their associated skill checks, but it's not broken down to -just- rolling for Deception if you want to do something deceptive in roleplay.

To be clear, I'm ABSOLUTELY NOT trying to push you to switch to PF2. Just trying to be informative in case any of that sounds even remotely appealing at all. I know PF2 tried to move away from a lot of the 3.5 stuff, so maybe that's what's responsible for most of these changes. It seems much easier and more intuitive than my brief foray into PF1, but I'm a more seasoned player now, so that probably has to be accounted for also.

— onmyoji

[Jester of the FoS]

They break skills down into what I perceive as a fairly elegant system where your bonus to any skill check is just level + ability modifier + proficiency, the latter of which consists of up to four +2 increments, depending on how strongly you train in it—one of these +2 upgrades is selected at almost every other level. Rogues (to your latter point) remain great skill monkeys, as they gain one of these +2 increases at every level except 1st. While I'm on skills, at least based on my experience so far, while DCs can get harder as the game progresses, it's definitely not the case that the DCs keep up with the players bonuses—unless of course, the GM expressly plans for this outcome.

The rules for GMing have a table of expected DC by level and it does go up pretty methodically by 1 every level, every now and then jumping by 2 when characters ranking increases. So a specialist's odds of success at a task never really increase.
So you're adding your level to all appropriate checks your character makes, but that doesn't really do anything. You're on a treadmill.

Which a lot of people quite like as it means they get significantly tougher than low level enemies, which cease to be a threat, and allow the characters to feel powerful. And they like that the numbers get bigger. There's more feeling of advancement to have a +25 or +30 bonus to checks.

But it just feels needless to me now (and has since I saw it in 4th Edition D&D, a good year before Pathfinder 1).
There's an optional rule in the Gamemastery Guide about removing that (along with inherent bonuses so you don't need to hand out three-dozen magic items during an average campaign) but it's so much busywork to adjust every monster and encounter, and that's prep time I could spend on other aspects of the adventure.

As to roleplaying mechanics, there's a lot of skill actions that can be used in roleplaying. For example, Deception is broken down into the actions of "Create a Diversion," "Impersonate," and "Lie" (as well as "Feint" in combat if you have at least one +2 bonus to Deception). which have different mechanics associated with them. Stealth is similarly broken down into "Conceal an Object," "Hide," and "Sneak." Of course, the mechanics rely on their associated skill checks, but it's not broken down to -just- rolling for Deception if you want to do something deceptive in roleplay.

That's not quite what I mean. That's social encounter mechanics, not roleplaying.

A roleplaying mechanic is where you gain an in-game bonus for roleplaying and making decisions based on your character. 5e as the personality traits (Bonds, Flaws, Ideals, etc) where you can gain Inspiration based on those.
Where the game encourages you and rewards you for acting in-character and not just making the tactically acceptable choices.
I'm particularly fond of it in Fate, where the GM can bribe a player with a Fate Point to act in character, pushing them to act in character or roleplay overcoming their personality.

I look at PF2 and its Hero Point system and wonder if they could have used that more as a RP mechanic. Giving each class something like the barbarian's anathema or the druid's tenet and awarding buffed Hero Points for acting according to those rather than generic "heroic deeds."