House-ruling 5e: Alternatives to Ability Increases and Healing

[Kupursk]

Howdy fellas,


I've followed 5th edition since its playtest era, and have read and re-read it a couple times after it came out, but never made the jump to the new edition, and thus far I have stuck with my own 2e-3e hybrid. Overall I do like a big part of 5e, but there are two main design choices that I REALLY don't like, and that put me off from ever switching to 5e. So I'm just curious if anyone ever came up with alternate house rules for those:


1) Ability Score Increases
I really don't like how ability scores seem to have become just a mechanical/numerical value on your character sheet, merely used to calculate bonuses, instead of a description of your character's physical and mental attributes. I still stick to the notion of attributes as a description of your character and find it very weird that a character can start as a scrawny, weak fella, and after a couple of adventures he's basically Schwarzenegger. Or else he can go from a total half-wit to Einstein.


Even when playing 3e I avoid the ability increases every 4 levels, sticking with just the initial values. But in 3e this doesn't affect the overall system all that much, as most of your check numbers come from elsewhere.


However... in 5e I don't think simply removing ability increases would work. The main reason is that these are intrinsically tied to the system's overall math. They're used to compensate the slow-progressing Proficiency Bonus (by higher levels you're sort of EXPECTED to have that +5 from ability modifier to your checks, at least on the stuff your class is supposed to be good at). And thus having lower ability scores could make characters considerably weaker, and fail a lot more checks.


So here's my question to you folks. Has any of you ever struggled with the same issue and came up with a good alternative to ability increases? Even if it involves some heavy house-ruling, I wouldn't mind as I like house-ruling anyway.


Note: The first thing that came to mind was giving and extra +1 to proficiency bonus in place of an ability increase, as each ability increase supposedly also serves to make a lot of stuff you're good at raise by +1 on their checks. But this would break the system's balance in some places, I think, as one could combo that with an initially high ability and reach check values beyond what the system expects.


Note2: I know feats are an alternative to ability increases, but many of those also increase an ability anyway, and I'm not sure 5e expects you to trade ALL your ability increases for feats, as at some point you'd probably be picking "whatever" random choice of feats that you're not really interested in anymore.


2) Excessive Healing
5e has a LOT of healing compared to older editions. Players can recover a lot of HP between battles and can go full-HP after each day's rest. I'd like to keep HP as a "resource" to be managed during the course of an adventure, or during the exploration of a dungeon. I find the 3e standard of recovering your Level in HP with every night's rest to be a sweet spot for my taste.


Now the 5e DMG does have some alternatives to healing, or I could simply use the 3e standard and ignore this new "hit dice as recovery" rule, and replace any recovery abilities with something else (except the classic spells and such).


But the problem I see is that enemies do a LOT more damage in 5e, to compensate for the fact that player's can recover HP so easily. Basically every fight has to be a more severe threat in terms of damage to be a challenge, whereas before even in an "easy" fight one would have to watch out for damage so as not to be lower in HP for the rest of the adventure. So the issue I see is that monsters ARE balanced taking the big amount of healing into account, and just removing this expected healing could severely hinder the players' progress.


So, has anyone ever tried some lower healing rules and how did it work out with the increased monster damage in 5e?


I suppose I could simply eyeball the damage of each creature and lower them a tad, but if anyone has come up with a more standardized alternative I'd love to hear it!


Appreciate any input you guys might have!

 

[Xeviat]

I'm not sure I've ever seen a situation where someone started with an 8 stat and used ability increases to boost it considerably high. People tend to boost their primary stat, and once that hits 20, they start increasing secondaries or Constitution.

I don't think I have anything to add to the HP side. Changing healing would require a big change to the rest of the system.

 

[TwoSix]

Point 1: You could probably not give out any ASIs at all and still be OK, assuming they have at least a 16 in their main stat. You don't really use ASIs to raise bad stats to good, you use them to raise good stats to great. Characters would be a little weak at higher levels, but easy enough to give out slightly higher magic items to compensate. Just let them take feats instead. Maybe add a stat requirement to feats if you want to minimize the possibility of stat narrative incoherence. (Raising a stat from a 15 to 16 really won't impact your conception of a character too much, I would hope.)

Point 2: Way trickier. Moving to the long rest variant in the DMG could work (short rest = 8 hours, long rest = week), but if you're used to older editions, you may want an overnight rest to recharge spells. I honestly don't know of a great solution.

 

[Satyrn]

1) I think your concern in note 2 - " as at some point you'd probably be picking "whatever" random choice of feats that you're not really interested in anymore" - will be a feature. As your players start selecting things that they aren't interested in, they'll be expanding their experiences in ways they otherwise wouldn't be.

2) if you decrease the hp/healing of the PCs, my preferred solution as DM is change nothing, and instead simply run more lower CR monsters than I otherwise would've. They will still be able to hit the PCs ( just don't ever hand out +1 shields and armor )

 

[BluejayJunior]

For healing rests, I would keep long and short rests as options for abilities to recharge. Then just change how much they recover for an overnight rest. Regaining HP equal to your level (possibly +CON mod as well) sounds like a better approach. Maybe have short rests heal you CON mod with a minimum of 1 (although that makes short rests pretty effective at lower levels) or something similar. Or just do away with the healing for short rests and use it only as a means of recharging abilities that recover on a short rest.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

1) The main benefit of increasing your scores is that it compensates for not cheating at your initial rolls. Back in AD&D, when an 18 made a huge difference and there was no easy way to raise your stats after the initial roll (and race selection), you saw a lot of "natural" 18s. Maybe DMs were less strict, and allowed multiple re-rolls until you got a set that included an 18.

The point of being able to increase your stats later is that, assuming you have horrible luck, you can roll a 14 as your high stat and still cap out "where you should be" by the time you're high level. The game is balanced under the assumption that everyone will have +5 in their main stat, sooner or later. Increasing the proficiency bonus would not solve that, because you would end up with wildly varying competencies based on those initial rolls - if you increase proficiency by +2 across the board, so that the math still works when you start with a 16 and never improve it, then the half-orc fighter who rolls well and starts with a 20 will be +2 better at everything they care about, and there's no way for anyone to catch up.

If you really wanted to remove those later increases, but also keep things balanced for where they should end up eventually, you might consider granting all of the benefits at level 1. If your class is fighter (I'm assuming you don't use multi-classing), then you get seven +2s (or feats, if you use those) to distribute as normal. It might make the first few levels too easy, but not moreso than if you'd rolled very well, and the higher Con will come in handy given the lack of healing.

2) Speaking of healing, I would recommend throwing out hit dice, and just going back to 3E-era healing. Adjust the encounter rate to compensate. Instead of 6-8 encounters per day, maybe go with 3-4, and give them a few days to heal up between active adventuring days. If they have anyone with healing in the party, then they should get back on their feet pretty quickly.

 

[Bacon Bits]

1) If you disagree with ASIs, then I'd suggest simply limiting your players from improving any one ability score more than once. For example, you might increase strength from 17 to 19, but you can't increase it beyond that. Alternately (or even additionally), you might consider limiting the maximum ability score to be 18 instead of 20. Or you could consider introducing class-based ability score restrictions or maximums. That is, a Fighter ASI can improve Str, Dex, and Con, a Paladin ASI can improve Str, Cha, and Wis, or a Fighter can improve only Str, Dex, and Con above 16, etc. The vast majority of players are going to begin play with a 16 or better in their class's primary ability score. This should minimize the amount of math changes you get. My only concern would be for the Fighter, since that class's entire schtick is lots of ASIs.

Mathmatically, as long as your players can get to an 18 in their primary stat then I wouldn't have any hesitation about restricting ASIs having a real impact on the game.

Edit: The other alternative is to re-introduce weapons up to +5 enhancement, and you should plan on giving out at least +1 weapons before level ~8 and +2 weapons before level ~14. That's the baseline. If you want to give out real rewards, then, you'll have to give out +3 or better items.

2) The primary issue is that both damage and hit point values have increased significantly because armor class doesn't scale anymore, and magic resistance isn't nearly as absurd. Nearly every damage roll and hit point roll adds an ability modifier to them. That's like adding an extra die of damage to every roll. A Fighter with 20 Strength hitting with a +2 Greatsword does an equivalent of 4d6 damage every attack, but you kind of need it because at high level a monster's survivability is almost entirely due to it's hit point total. That's the major defense at high level now.

There are many optional rules to limit resting. One common one is that you're not allowed to long rest in a dungeon or (more commonly) you're not allowed to long rest while you're travelling. Others say that you can only long rest if you're suitably comfortable, which basically requires at least an inn to sleep in and recuperate. This means that your hit dice become your entire adventuring day healing. You could easily say that if you're not at an inn when you long rest you don't recover hit points or hit dice.

Personally, I don't have a problem with how healing works in 5e. I find it just eliminates a lot of extra bookkeeping and uninteresting drudgery. I strongly, strongly recommend you play the game as is for awhile before you consider changing this. At least when we played 3e, the first thing the party did was pool enough money to buy a wand of cure light wounds. In actual play, 5e's healing rules just eliminate the need to do that, and it's a better game for it.

 

[Blue]

I know this isn't the advice you are looking for, but I'd playtest the system at a few different tiers of play first to understand the baseline before making sweeping changes.

That said, trying to be helpful:

Healing
You could change it so that you can only spend HD on a long rest, not a short. And take out the auto-ful-HPs after a long rest. HD healing is a lot less in practice then you might think, and you only get back half your HD a night so it's long term attrition. Between those you should get the feel of relying on magical healing of earlier editions.

Ability Scores
For ability scores, 5e math does assume that generally you'll eventually hit 20 (though 18 is more reasonable then most think), and for some classes where you have a strong secondary ability score they expect you'll get that to a 16+ range. One issue is that some classes trigger off a high prime ability score in more telling ways. A bard with 3 uses of bardic inspiration at high levels is a lot different then one with 5. So just offsetting the growth of it by adding some to proficiency has different effects based on class.

It also has further ripples - it makes having a race with a good bonus to your prime ability score required because that's set in stone and will have so much more affect on how your character plays then a bonus to any other ability score. This narrowing of viable concepts I dislike.

This is a big mechanical change, but the reason given for making the change isn't mechanical at all, yet will require a mechanical resolution. Just think of this as the natural results of focusing on it, much like a bodybuilder would increase what they could lift. That shift in viewpoint may alleviate this as an issue. Because this will have large shifts in play if removed.

 

[Dausuul]

I really don't like how ability scores seem to have become just a mechanical/numerical value on your character sheet, merely used to calculate bonuses, instead of a description of your character's physical and mental attributes. I still stick to the notion of attributes as a description of your character and find it very weird that a character can start as a scrawny, weak fella, and after a couple of adventures he's basically Schwarzenegger. Or else he can go from a total half-wit to Einstein.

That is a theoretical possibility, but I've never seen it happen in practice. If a stat is important enough to spend your precious ASIs boosting it, it's important enough to assign it a high number when you create the character! Nobody spends ASIs on a stat where they put an 8. If they have a spare point, they might use it to bring a 9 up to a 10, but that's all.

Anyway, if you wanted to get rid of ASIs with minimal impact on the rest of the system, here's how I'd tackle it:

• ASIs are not allowed.
• In place of an ASI, you may take a Proficiency Increase. Each PI gives you a permanent +1 to your proficiency bonus.
• Feats do not provide stat boosts. For every two feats that would normally grant a stat boost, you receive a PI instead.
• You can't benefit from more than two PIs, no matter the source.
• PIs are applied after abilities that double your proficiency bonus (e.g., Expertise).

This would result in roughly the same math as now. A typical PC would have the same attack bonus, save DCs, and so forth in either system.

Personally, if I were to start down this road, I'd be inclined to go further and get rid of ability scores entirely. They really aren't needed; ability modifiers could be folded into proficiency bonus and every roll would be either "proficient" (1d20+prof) or "not proficient" (1d20, unmodified)*. But I don't know if that's a direction you'd want to go in.

[SIZE=-2]*There are obviously a number of kinks and corner cases to work out in this system; Expertise, for instance. There might have to be a couple different tiers of proficiency. But it would still be far simpler and cleaner than what we've got now.[/SIZE]

 

[Kupursk]

1) If you disagree with ASIs, then I'd suggest simply limiting your players from improving any one ability score more than once. For example, you might increase strength from 17 to 19, but you can't increase it beyond that. Alternately (or even additionally), you might consider limiting the maximum ability score to be 18 instead of 20 or introducing class-based ability score maximums. That is, a Fighter ASI can improve Str, Dex, and Con, a Paladin ASI can improve Str, Cha, and Wis, etc. The vast majority of players are going to begin play with a 16 or better in their class's primary ability score. This should minimize the amount of math changes you get. My only concern would be for the Fighter, since that class's entire schtick is lots of ASIs.

Mathmatically, as long as your players can get to an 18 in their primary stat then I wouldn't have any hesitation about restricting ASIs having a real impact on the game.

Those are interesting ideas. If I do play with ability increases I'll probably implement something on those lines.

Still, I'd like to keep ability scores as a description of your character's physical and mental attributes, not just rules mechanics. By that I mean that in our games someone with 18 Strength is massively-built like Conan or The Mountain (from Game of Thrones), because ability scores don't represent "skill" for us, but a description of the character's physicality and mental faculties. An 18 in this case means the peak of raw human strength (or maybe 20 would be that in 5e). And it'd be very WEIRD if almost every warrior in the world became a massive bulk of muscles like those in the example.

I understand that's not how 5e interprets ability score values but more just like a "general aptitude." However, that's how it used to be back in the olden 2e days, and how we always interpreted abilities at our table. I'd strongly feel like something is missing if it's not longer the case.

I'm quite ok with keeping ability scores at their initial values. I'm just looking for something else to add to the characters in place of the increases, so that they're not simply generally weaker.

I was thinking of something on the lines of "+1 to all attacks" or "+1 to all skill."
But such increases affect a different scope of what an ability increase does. That's why I'm checking with you folks who've had more experience in 5e, to see what could fit well and what'd cause issues.

Personally, I don't have a problem with how healing works in 5e. I find it just eliminates a lot of extra bookkeeping and uninteresting drudgery. I strongly, strongly recommend you play the game as is for awhile before you consider changing this. At least when we played 3e, the first thing the party did was pool enough money to buy a wand of cure light wounds. In actual play, 5e's healing rules just eliminate the need to do that, and it's a better game for it.

I've always kept healing low in my games. Close to 2e standards, even when running 3e. My settings are usually on the low-magic and gritty side. No magic shops and such. This usually means "fight smarter" and resort to basic natural recovery or whatever potions you can find, in case you take too much damage. Healing spells I stick to a smaller selection, also 2e style. Very often, even, no one plays a cleric at our table.

Lack of healing's never been a big problem. Sure it means being more careful with encounters and sometimes they do get into a really tough spot. But that on occasion just builds the tension and danger.

However, HP (and the associated amount of healing you generally had) in older editions was built more like a long-term resource, being chipped away with every encounter during the adventure, unless something bad and unpredictable happened, or too many unlucky rolls. But in 5e it seems like the overall (expected) damage players take in every fight appear to be much higher, probably to compensate for the increase overall healing in the system. And I fear that simply lowering healing to 2e - 3e standards might not work.

I was actually looking for some guidelines to rebalance monster DAMAGE to a lower healing standard, and not the healing itself which is easy to do.

I know that some monsters haven't changed much in terms of damage. For instance the Bulette has about the same damage per round in 3e and 5e.

But some, like the Bugbear, went from 1d8+2 per round in 3e to a whooping 2d8+2+2d6 in 5e.