Hussar
Legend
Well, we've kinda rounded a bend in our Primeval Thule campaign, and things have changed at the table, so, I thought now is a good time to show the results of my 5e experiment. When running PT in 5e, I wanted to really strengthen the "SWORD and sorcery" feel and I felt that 5e is a smidgeon too magic happy for what I wanted. So, at character generation, I put my foot down, and managed to badger my players into accepting a pretty strong restriction - no classes/characters with cantrips.
Just for a bit of background, we run the game on Fantasy Grounds and use voice chat. That has it's own ups and downs, so, I'll try to keep that in mind when I talk about the results.
So, after about year of play and 9 levels, here's what I learned:
1. Combat becomes LIGHTNING fast. When you remove casters, area of effects, and whatnot from combat, you can blow through a LOT of combat in a 3 hour session. We actually touched into 7 combats one session, with a fair bit of time for other stuff, although that was very much the exception. However, we frequently did 3-5 combats in a 3 hour session and rounds just blow past. When you strip down the analysis paralysis that often comes with casters (should I cast this spell or that spell... or if I move the spell 5 feet to the left I can get that guy, but, then I won't get that other guy... ), the game really speeds up.
2. Combat becomes very predictable. Not sure if this is a good thing or not. But, I can pretty much guarantee how much damage the party will do per round and plan an encounter accordingly. I know that the 5 PC's we have will do about 125 (give or take) damage per round. Pretty much like clockwork. So, if I wanted a strong encounter, I needed about 400 HP worth of baddies. It does make planning encounters pretty easy. And, because the party lacked area attacks, it really, really cuts down on the total damage the party can do per round.
3. Choices get pretty limited and the players I think were not very happy about it. We allowed, barbarians, fighters, rangers, paladins, monks and rogues as options. We wound up with two rangers, a paladin, a rogue and a monk. I think the players were not terribly happy with all the classes being pretty close to each other. 5e really does seem to rely on having casters to add variety. The non-casters tend to be pretty similar in play.
4. One thing that I did like, and now that we've done some shifting around with characters and allowed full casters, is that without casters in the party, "Magic Solves All Problems" becomes a lot less of an issue. Players rely on their skills a lot more since you can't just magic problems away. They spent a lot of down time learning new languages and tools so that they could broaden their approaches to problems. Now that we have a bard and a warlock in the party, every problem becomes a nail to the hammer of magic. Instead of relying on skills, spells become the default.
Not a result I'm very happy about.
Overall, I'd say the experiment was a pretty solid success. The game was fun and the players seemed to have a pretty good time. 5e works pretty well as a low magic game, IMO.
Just for a bit of background, we run the game on Fantasy Grounds and use voice chat. That has it's own ups and downs, so, I'll try to keep that in mind when I talk about the results.
So, after about year of play and 9 levels, here's what I learned:
1. Combat becomes LIGHTNING fast. When you remove casters, area of effects, and whatnot from combat, you can blow through a LOT of combat in a 3 hour session. We actually touched into 7 combats one session, with a fair bit of time for other stuff, although that was very much the exception. However, we frequently did 3-5 combats in a 3 hour session and rounds just blow past. When you strip down the analysis paralysis that often comes with casters (should I cast this spell or that spell... or if I move the spell 5 feet to the left I can get that guy, but, then I won't get that other guy... ), the game really speeds up.
2. Combat becomes very predictable. Not sure if this is a good thing or not. But, I can pretty much guarantee how much damage the party will do per round and plan an encounter accordingly. I know that the 5 PC's we have will do about 125 (give or take) damage per round. Pretty much like clockwork. So, if I wanted a strong encounter, I needed about 400 HP worth of baddies. It does make planning encounters pretty easy. And, because the party lacked area attacks, it really, really cuts down on the total damage the party can do per round.
3. Choices get pretty limited and the players I think were not very happy about it. We allowed, barbarians, fighters, rangers, paladins, monks and rogues as options. We wound up with two rangers, a paladin, a rogue and a monk. I think the players were not terribly happy with all the classes being pretty close to each other. 5e really does seem to rely on having casters to add variety. The non-casters tend to be pretty similar in play.
4. One thing that I did like, and now that we've done some shifting around with characters and allowed full casters, is that without casters in the party, "Magic Solves All Problems" becomes a lot less of an issue. Players rely on their skills a lot more since you can't just magic problems away. They spent a lot of down time learning new languages and tools so that they could broaden their approaches to problems. Now that we have a bard and a warlock in the party, every problem becomes a nail to the hammer of magic. Instead of relying on skills, spells become the default.
Not a result I'm very happy about.Overall, I'd say the experiment was a pretty solid success. The game was fun and the players seemed to have a pretty good time. 5e works pretty well as a low magic game, IMO.
