What ways do you simplify your D&D game? In the campaign I recently played in, the game was simplified by all of the rules that we didn't use. This isn’t a “X magic item is broken and isn’t in the game anymore” set of house rules based on balance; just things that make it easier to play. For example, we didn’t stop using encumbrance because we disliked the concept- we just did it because no one wanted to keep track of encumbrance. Here are some of the many ways the campaign I was just in was a lot less complicated than it could have been.
Encumbrance- no one kept track, we just looked up max loads occasionally when it might have mattered.
Multiclass restrictions: no Monk/Paladin restrictions on multiclassing. No favored classes or penalties for multiclassing.
Experience points: we just leveled up at the DM’s discretion after completing some number of sessions. If your character wasn’t there for the quests you still leveled. That way everyone is the same level and you don’t have to keep track of exp (and the DM doesn’t have to calculate it for encounters).
Magic item creation: if you aren’t using experience points, this one follows pretty easily. The Wishes are probably also out, although no one ever took those spells.
Flying maneuverability- I’m not sure we ever used these rules except for determining how far a Paladin with a flying mount could move/charge and whether he could hover.
Battle mat: near the end of the campaign, our fights were usually against a single enemy and the battle mat really wasn’t useful anymore. We used it in earlier fights, especially against multiple enemies.
Spell Books: we had a wizard character for a brief time. I’m pretty sure he just picked spells from the core books instead of having a spellbook. If he had one the costs were pretty minimal so he had almost all spells. From what I can remember, material components also never came up.
Damage dice: I got tired of rolling damage for a while and just declared that all of my attacks did average damage. Most of the other players kept rolling the dice, although we did average damage for 20d6 damage type spells a lot
Rolling dice during character creation: you get 32 point buy. Max hp at first level, average+0.5 after that (d4=3, d6=6, etc.). This makes creating characters easier.
Retroactive skill points from Int-based items: characters just got the full number of skill points. This one is way too complicated to keep track of and leads to really silly optimization when creating a higher level character.
No “Object Reading” or “Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions” psionic powers. This never really came up as there was almost no psionics in the campaign. The DM just didn’t have the energy to come up with 20 owners for every object and 1000 years of history for every location and he let the psionic characters know in advance. If a character had really wanted these powers, he probably would have made up a less open-ended version.
I’m sure I could think of more rules that we didn’t use. Does anyone else have similar experiences? Any other ways you simplified D&D?
We’re going to be playing Mutants and Masterminds for a while now. One of the other players ran some M&M sessions while the D&D campaign was going on and being introduced to M&M probably had an effect on further simplifying the D&D.
Encumbrance- no one kept track, we just looked up max loads occasionally when it might have mattered.
Multiclass restrictions: no Monk/Paladin restrictions on multiclassing. No favored classes or penalties for multiclassing.
Experience points: we just leveled up at the DM’s discretion after completing some number of sessions. If your character wasn’t there for the quests you still leveled. That way everyone is the same level and you don’t have to keep track of exp (and the DM doesn’t have to calculate it for encounters).
Magic item creation: if you aren’t using experience points, this one follows pretty easily. The Wishes are probably also out, although no one ever took those spells.
Flying maneuverability- I’m not sure we ever used these rules except for determining how far a Paladin with a flying mount could move/charge and whether he could hover.
Battle mat: near the end of the campaign, our fights were usually against a single enemy and the battle mat really wasn’t useful anymore. We used it in earlier fights, especially against multiple enemies.
Spell Books: we had a wizard character for a brief time. I’m pretty sure he just picked spells from the core books instead of having a spellbook. If he had one the costs were pretty minimal so he had almost all spells. From what I can remember, material components also never came up.
Damage dice: I got tired of rolling damage for a while and just declared that all of my attacks did average damage. Most of the other players kept rolling the dice, although we did average damage for 20d6 damage type spells a lot
Rolling dice during character creation: you get 32 point buy. Max hp at first level, average+0.5 after that (d4=3, d6=6, etc.). This makes creating characters easier.
Retroactive skill points from Int-based items: characters just got the full number of skill points. This one is way too complicated to keep track of and leads to really silly optimization when creating a higher level character.
No “Object Reading” or “Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions” psionic powers. This never really came up as there was almost no psionics in the campaign. The DM just didn’t have the energy to come up with 20 owners for every object and 1000 years of history for every location and he let the psionic characters know in advance. If a character had really wanted these powers, he probably would have made up a less open-ended version.
I’m sure I could think of more rules that we didn’t use. Does anyone else have similar experiences? Any other ways you simplified D&D?
We’re going to be playing Mutants and Masterminds for a while now. One of the other players ran some M&M sessions while the D&D campaign was going on and being introduced to M&M probably had an effect on further simplifying the D&D.
