Home Made D&D Edition

[Zardnaar]

Back in 2009 or so I made a house rule document to fix 3.5 that was basically a list of banned stuff. This eventually turned into a rough outline of a home brewed D&D system we tested a few times in 2013/14 right before 5E came out. I got a few ideas from WoTC 5E playtest and made 4 classes level 1-5 initially. At the time I was playing OSR retroclones but I wanted feats in there as well so I updated a lot of the 3.5 feats, dumped or fixed the broken ones. I wanted sme basic options like 2E or ACKs, modern d20 mechanics and fort/ref/will with fixed numbers along with a functioning skill system.

Now that 5E has been out I kind of wnat to fix a few things there as well and mine ideas such as various class ideas. I also want to strip out things like short rest mechanics as I think everything should be aat will/daily or at will/encounters and 5E mixes short resat type classes with daily classes. Other things in 5E that kind of annoy me is the healing rates and I think they messed up a few things like saves and various other minor things. I also want a more basic game than 5E going back to AD&D classes perhaps and OSR multiclassing and xp for gold, mostly because MCing is still borked, and gold for xp makes things a bit different and is a chagne from killing stuff (you will get xp for monsters and RP as well). Also looks like PF2 will not be my fixed 3.5 system I have been wanting for years.

Since I'm basically lazy and a lot of work has been done for me I have thought about what I want to borrow and I have narrowed it down to the following.

The Brain Storm ATM

4E or 5E round structure
Multiple attacks as an action/standard action
Some fiddly numbers are OK (+2 to hit for flanking for example)
3E/4E style microfeats.
Universal proficiency bonus (probably 4Es +1/2 levels, bounded accuracy just a bit more stretched than 5E).
Armor tops out at platemail
3E style armor
3E style weapons
5E style crit system but a longsword for example will crit on 19/20 for 2d8 damage, a great axe for 3d12.
Fort/Ref/Will defense
Prof bonus on all saves
Class bonus on saves at level 1 a'la 3E
OSR xp tables and multiclassing (B/X xp tables, AD&D ones are a bit funky)
4 classes initially, up to 11 (2E ones+ Monk, and Assassin or Barbarian)
Advantage/disadvantage
5E monster HD/sizes used, HP scaled back, some old OSR things tweaked (energy drain reduces max hp and exhausts you no level loss).

Probably have all classes get a feat at level 1,3,5,7,9,10 etc. Some classes will get a few more. Some classes will get 5E abilities (action surge on fighters) and in some cases have abilities brought forward (fighters get attacks at 5,11,16). Short rest mechanics ported will become 2/day or 3/day. This is because if spellcasters can nova so can the marital's.

So cherry picked a few concepts from B/X through to 5E. My fighter will resemble the 5E ones but have AD&D type saves using fort/ref/will. The rogue will have sneak attack and backstab (sneak attack for damage, backstab +4 to hit or advantage for flanking).

Spell lists will also be very truncated (around a dozen for each level).

So any ideas what you would do with a modern OSR game that is not a clone or a very simplified 3E which is sort of what I am aiming at. Any suggestions for the most classic low level monsters would also be appreciated as I have to write the damn things up but I have a few write ups I can tweak from my old notes. Also after any suggestions at what older D&Ds did well and what 5E doesn't do or has messed it up a bit or is a bit annoying.

 

[Greenfield]

One complaint I had with 4e was the universal proficiency bonus.

Fighter types and Wizard types get better in melee at exactly the same rate, which seems weird. That characters got an automatic AC bonus at the same rate made that advancement an illusion, bonuses and targets increasing at exactly the same rate.

4e's skill system was also problematic. You're either trained or not, no granularity, no ability to fine tune your skill set. And again, universal proficiency bonus added to skills, but the target numbers increased as well, so advancement was another illusion.

So I'd lose that mechanic completely, for combat, saves, skills, AC, everything. It may be simple, but it's simply bad.

 

[zztong]

I occasionally go through this exercise on my walk home from work. Lately, I've been thinking my ideal homebrew D&D game would involve a "build your own class" system. If I'm making classes, I tend to end up with class abilities in a spreadsheet and a resulting score. Some of my players would enjoy making a class to fulfill their character conceptions rather than try to navigate a fine line between classes with a multiclass system.

I like 5E for Feats. That is few, but meaningful Feats.

I like 5E Bounded Accuracy so that the common man remains relevant.

I like the 3.5E Skill System, but I would have to bridge that with Bounded Accuracy such that you still spent points, but up to some Bounded Accuracy limit.

I like the PF2e notion of "Skill Mastery/Legendary", which actually parallels a house rule. I would make a Feat that allowed a character to become a "Master Craftsman" unlocking some extra skill content.

I'd like to fragment the spell casters into many classes, kind of like DragonQuest colleges of magic or the EverQuest RPG's character classes. So more spell lists with fewer spells on each list. I liked EQ:RPG's mana too.

 

[Celebrim]

Have fun with your fantasy heartbreaker.

My house rules for 3.X started out the same way, and now stand at a 600 page player's handbook with about 80 pages of notes for a Dungeon Master's guide (included detailed rules for flight and a new XP award system) and vague plans that would encompass basically an entirely new edition of the game rewriting everything to my personal taste.

Just about every DM with an opinion probably ends up doing the same thing. Every time I start a new game I tell myself I'm not going to rewrite it, and that I'll just play it as written, and every time I find a reason for 'just a few' house rules.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not using the 4E skill system. The half level thing is jjust like 5Es but goes to 10 instead of 6.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

One complaint I had with 4e was the universal proficiency bonus.

Fighter types and Wizard types get better in melee at exactly the same rate, which seems weird. That characters got an automatic AC bonus at the same rate made that advancement an illusion, bonuses and targets increasing at exactly the same rate.

In practice, I think it could work pretty well, as long as you don't contrive encounters to scale with your level.

It might seem weird that Fighters and Wizards both improve at sword-swinging at an equal rate, but what that really means, is that the numerical disparity between them remains constant. If it's reasonable that the Fighter is 40% more likely to hit and deals 100% more damage than the wizard, then that's equally reasonable whether they are both level 1 or both level 20.

Automatic increases to both accuracy and defenses mean that your characters actually fare better against monsters, which is a real problem in 5E, where low-level enemies can easily overcome high-level characters through sheer volume. If your AC never improved, then that ogre would be just as likely to deal 10 damage to you with their club, whether you were level 1 or level 20. The scaled AC bonus lets a level 15 party wade through a group of level 3 ogres with relative impunity.

 

[Greenfield]

The sword-swinger, presumably, gets more practice and training than the Wizard, in-combat experience if nothing else. So why doesn't he/she advance faster?

And the difference is more like 20% better, not 40. (Consider 10 STR wizard v 18 STR fighter.) But the exact numbers don't matter. The fighter type should advance faster, in melee ability, than the guy who studiously avoids melee and never practices.

The Elf Wizard, who has never picked up a bow since he was a kid but has a decent Dex (AC is important) hits his enemies with one almost as often as the archer type who uses and practices often. Same issue, for the same reason.

The Ranger, who uses and practices his woodland skills all the time advances just as quickly as the city-born Rogue who never learned deer tracks from train tracks.

In fact, if you were facing a 4e Skill Challenge, and your character had the training and stats to back up a particular skill, you were a god in that skill. If you lack the stat and training you should actively avoid making any effort or even trying to practice that skill. Failures stack up fast in skill challenges when well meaning PCs try to help.

What's more, as you advance you'll always be a god in that skill, or a complete flop, and that will never change. There is little or no middle ground, because they use universal proficiency in place of rank-by-rank skill advancement (as seen in 3.*).

Yes, the universal proficiency thing is simple. It removes an entire category of choices from the player when advancement time comes, and maybe you consider that a good thing. I don't.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The sword-swinger, presumably, gets more practice and training than the Wizard, in-combat experience if nothing else. So why doesn't he/she advance faster?

Two reasons, one in-game and one out-of-game:

The in-game reason is diminishing returns for effort. It's the same reason why it takes more experience to gain a level when you're level 15 than when you're level 3. The wizard, already being far behind the curve in terms of martial prowess, is still picking up the easy tricks that the fighter mastered a long time ago. The fighter is learning super complicated stuff that takes a lot of effort to master. That's why they manage to advance at the same rate, in spite of the wizard putting in less-rigorous training.

The out-of-game reason is that disparate advancement rates are unsustainable over any meaningful period. If the specialist succeeds 70% of the time in their area of expertise and a chump succeeds 40% of the time (at low levels), then failing to synchronize their advancement rates will quickly get to a point where the specialist is succeeding too often or the chump is succeeding too rarely. (If the fighter hits much more than 70% of the time, then it's boring and predictable. If the wizard has much less than a 40% chance to hit, in the rare situation where they might want to, then there's no point in even rolling.) You can see this effect if you look at third edition, where wizards quickly reach the point of "don't bother rolling" when it comes to their attack rolls, and fighters only care about their attack bonus because it limits how much they can pour into Power Attack. Fourth edition, while not perfect by any means, still managed to fix that problem.

What's more, as you advance you'll always be a god in that skill, or a complete flop, and that will never change. There is little or no middle ground, because they use universal proficiency in place of rank-by-rank skill advancement (as seen in 3.*).

Yes, the universal proficiency thing is simple. It removes an entire category of choices from the player when advancement time comes, and maybe you consider that a good thing. I don't.

I'm not sure which option you're thinking about, in this scenario. Third edition was notorious for its number inflation, to the point where nobody had a chance at anything unless they had hyper-focused on that one thing. There was no point in throwing three or four points into Disable Device, because a +7 is meaningless when the rogue has +27 and the DC is 40. Splitting your skill ranks wasn't a real option; it was a trap*.

*Famously, the designers are actually on-record as having admitted that they intentionally filled the game full of trap options, in order to reward system mastery for players who learned which options to avoid.

 

[digitalelf]

disparate advancement rates are unsustainable over any meaningful period

I have to disagree with this.

I went back to running 2nd Edition AD&D a tad before 5th edition was first announced. And 2nd edition (just like 1st edition before it) has separate XP tables for each of the various classes (even among classes within the same "class group" - e.g. fighter's and Paladin's/ranger's use different XP tables). So each class advances at different rates. So a thief for example, will attain levels faster than say a fighter or mage will. So because of this, the rates at which each of the classes are able to improve their attack is different/disparate from each other. In 2nd edition, a fighter is able to improve their attack by one point per level, while the other classes have to wait, two or even three levels before they improve; and that improvement is just a single point.

And this (at least for me and the various groups I've gamed with both back in the day and now) has never been a problem nor an issue (either in-game or out-of-game). And I would say that a combined 25 years of using a game with disparate advancement rates is a very meaningful period of sustainability.

But yeah, this is completely anecdotal, and YMMV.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I went back to running 2nd Edition AD&D a tad before 5th edition was first announced. And 2nd edition (just like 1st edition before it) has separate XP tables for each of the various classes (even among classes within the same "class group" - e.g. fighter's and Paladin's/ranger's use different XP tables). So each class advances at different rates. So a thief for example, will attain levels faster than say a fighter or mage will. So because of this, the rates at which each of the classes are able to improve their attack is different/disparate from each other. In 2nd edition, a fighter is able to improve their attack by one point per level, while the other classes have to wait, two or even three levels before they improve; and that improvement is just a single point.

Second edition is an interesting case, because it actually does feature real Bounded Accuracy, to a degree far beyond what 5E implements. Since skill checks and saving throws were a flat roll-under on a d20, it meant that they could guarantee nobody would fall off the chart, simply by making sure that no stat exceeded 20 and no saving throw table included outside values. It's a guarantee which no game derived from the (3.x) d20 system could possibly hope to match, and it means that you don't need flat growth in order to ensure viability.

The only place where the asymmetric growth really came into play was on the attack roll. Thieves advanced half as quickly in terms of THAC0, but also tended to be a level or two higher, which delayed the onset of their decay for a while. More importantly, though, this was before the invention of the universal ability modifier; fighters didn't start out at a relative +5 due to Strength, which meant that it took them several levels just to reach the level of disparity that they started out with in subsequent editions. It wasn't uncommon (at least at my table) for the mage to start out with a better attack bonus than the fighter, simply due to the whims of the dice.