D&D 5E What would you miss about 5E if you were playing AD&D?

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[cmad1977]

My players. No one would ever go back.


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[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[DemonSlayer]

Feats, skills, Advantage/disadvantage, Inspiration, Opportunity attacks, Higher AC being better, character backgrounds, and spell slots.

I know AD&D has character backgrounds and spell slots, but 5e does it better.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

As a last note, I do feel, though, that some higher-tier monsters in 5e should have some other spell protection buffer, as I am not a big fan of spell resistance giving advantage to saves or of legendary resistances as they are, and am not convinced that either of these mechanics delivers what they wanted to. I did not like the old percentile spell resistance either, as sometimes it would feel like a very blunt solution, but at least it had the work done.

You may find the following proposal of interest, if you don't mind me linking to my own blog:

Variant rule: Magic Resistance
[This rule replaces both Monstrous Manual Magic Resistance and Legendary Resistance. Creatures with one or the other should be assigned a Magic Resistance ability and score.]

Some extremely powerful creatures strongly resist and disrupt the effects of magical energy. These creatures live and breath arcane energy, and by an act of will they can cause magic to recoil from them like water droplets skittering off a hot griddle.

A creature with Magic Resistance can apply that resistance whenever it is affected by a magical effect by expending its reaction. If there is a saving throw or attack roll involved, it can wait until the result is known before deciding to use Magic Resistance. When Magic Resistance is used, the creature makes an ability check against the DC of the magical effect (similar to Counterspell) and if the check succeeds, the magical effect is negated. Unlike Counterspell, the check need not occur at the instant of spellcasting. A Magic Resistant creature could, for example, attempt to walk through a Wall of Force, and at the instant where the Wall of Force prevents its movement, expend its reaction to dispel the Wall of Force. A Magic Resistant Creature could similarly choose at any time to resist the effects of a Maze spell holding it captive or a Planar Binding spell compelling its obedience.

Example: Esmerelda the Enchantress casts Hold Monster VII on a Balor with DC 18. It rolls an 11 on its saving throw and fails. But before the magic takes hold, the Balor resists the magic! A Balor has +12 to Charisma (Magic Resistance), and Esmerelda cast the spell at 7th level, so the Balor has to make a Charisma (Magic Resistance) roll of DC 17 to avoid being paralyzed. It rolls a 21 and shatters the spell! The spell ends, freeing the Balor and any other creatures targeted by the spell.

Note: because a reaction is required, Magic Resistance cannot be used by creatures who are surprised or incapacitated.

Note 2: because Magic Resistance is an ability check, things which affect ability checks including Hex and Cutting Words do affect Magic Resistance rolls. This is by deliberate mechanical analogy to Counterspell.

Note 3: whether things like a monk's Stunning Strike can be resisted with Magic Resistance depends on how your DM interprets whether they are magical or not. Magic Resistance is not limited strictly to spells but does apply only to things that are fundamentally magic. If the DM rules that magic resistance applies to Stunning Strike, he will also tell you what level spell each strike is equivalent to for purposes of Magic Resistance. It might be appropriate to set the level equal to the monk's proficiency bonus.

Variant: some DMs might want the players to do the rolling instead of the monsters. A mathematically-equivalent formulation to the above is: monster spends its reaction to set a DC equal to 12 + Charisma (Magic Resistance). The player then has to roll to beat that score with a bonus equal to the level of the spell. In the case of Esmerelda, she can roll at +7 to beat the Balor's DC 24. Just as before, there are 4 chances in 20 that the Balor is affected by the spell.

 

[Mercule]

I hadn't played 1e in a long time and we tried a off night game and I was stunned at how reliant on making a skill check players were, myself included. The idea of taking the description of the room I had just given them and using that to narrate how they were going to search had become alien. They didn't think to say "well we are going to pull the blankets off the bed and check for anything, then flip the mattress off to look underneath". They were just kind of at a loss once they didn't have a Search check to kind of do everything for them. And these are players from the early 80's. But now instead of visualizing the room from the description, asking for clarification if something was unclear, and then narrating their actions they were just stuck for awhile since they were so used to just saying "I search the 10x10 room with beds and furniture with a skill check" or two and no need to talk about how to do that. To me its more immersive to do it old school. Like me parallel parking a car now that I'm used to a camera on the back, I'm very rusty when I drive other vehicle.

I've wondered, more than once, whether I'd enjoy returning to that mode or if I'm better off with the "improvements" of later editions. I honestly don't know, but I suspect that the way I'm running 5E is a happy medium between "the character doesn't matter" from 1E and "just roll a die" from 3E. I make the characters tell me what they're moving out of the way, what they touch, etc. but don't require painstaking detail (I rotate the left dresser knob clockwise 180, then pull the right one straight out). I might have to go back and try 1E, sometime.

That's precisely the type of situation I mean, and one reason why I don't like the 5E conversion of Tomb of Horrors. To me a game is more enjoyable if it is a test of the players' own skills in terms of actual interaction and deduction, rather than their ability to assemble a best possible combination of skills/feats.

I think there's a place for each. I enjoyed the "challenge the player" exploration of AD&D and probably would, again. It's a game and the players are playing it. So, there has to be something for them to do beyond rolling dice while on rails.

I also like the idea that a dumb (OK, less intelligent) player can play a smart character by using skill checks to get clues from the DM. Or... that a smooth-talking player can't just dump-stat his charisma and rely on his own ability, steamrolling the guy who actually sacrificed strength (or whatever) for charisma to play the face.

If I was going to go purely one way or the other, I'd rather use the PCs as playing pieces and challenge the players. But, my ideal spot probably favors skills being meaningful. There's just a much steeper drop off somewhere on that end of the spectrum. "All things in moderation" as the saying goes.

 

[Gadget]

Do you know what are the specific 5e characteristics that lead to this happening? I was thinking if it is related to bounded accuracy leading to heroes hitting enemies too frequently when compared to the older editions, but on the other hand, every monster has way more HD/HPs now. Then I thought maybe the percentile spell resistance, combined with overall improved saves for high HD monsters was a more effective defense, but then again low level "bosses" usually could not count on those, and it seems to me hyperboosting your melee allies was quite reliable at the higher levels when it finally was not a clever idea to just try to affect a 80% SR elder dragon or true demon directly.

I think, as you point out, everyone having more offensive firepower in later additions is a factor. After reading recent threads, I also think the more simple--and more exploitable--cyclic initiative system may have some non-obvious benefits for the PCs as well. It is much more predictable and ordered, therefore much easier to meta-game to set up devastating 1-2-3-4 or more combos with focus fire.

Anyhow, back to the topic, one thing I find interesting in 5e, and that would get lost when playing AD&D is the way saves (don't) evolve. To me it feels low level magic in 5e is generally unreliable (for spells whose effects depend heavily on failed saves, that is. Attacking spells seem less finicky, damaging dex-save spells still get the work done, and some other low level spells even outright just work). This changes gradually throughout the game, so that at the higher levels of gameplay they become very reliable as long as the spellcaster is smart enough to evaluate their enemies and exploit their weaknesses (as even the highest CR monsters still have one or another untrained save, based on a not-so-stupidly-high attribute, which is usually inferable through the monsters characteristics).

The above-mentioned, and also the way attacks in general evolve in relation to defenses, effectively changes low-level and high-level gameplay, and to me it seems that while a low level hero needs to rely o luck and being generally careful, a high level hero is more responsible for their own fate, as their decisions result in more strongly determined results, and this feels right to me.

The added feature of the current save system is that a high level wizard does get a better chance of charming that lowly goblin, something generally absent during the 1e/2e era. Oh, I just realized by writing this that the to say spells do not automatically scale in 5e is somewhat superficial, as whereas damaging spells do not automatically scale damage (as they used to), all spells that are resistible by saves do scale in 5e at least in efficiency.

This is an interesting dynamic that has been mentioned before and I'm not sure how I feel about it. One the one hand, it is nice that the higher level mage has his spells be more effective, but on the other hand it does kind of suck that these spells aren't that effective when you first acquire them. As you point out, I this makes the spells kind of auto scale, which I feel can be somewhat unfair when compared to damage spells: not only does the caster have to pay the cost of a higher spell slot to make them scale (and that can be a significant cost), the scaling isn't really all that great. Though I will note that Charm Person in AD&D was so much more versatile and powerful that it hardly needed a boost at higher levels.

As a last note, I do feel, though, that some higher-tier monsters in 5e should have some other spell protection buffer, as I am not a big fan of spell resistance giving advantage to saves or of legendary resistances as they are, and am not convinced that either of these mechanics delivers what they wanted to. I did not like the old percentile spell resistance either, as sometimes it would feel like a very blunt solution, but at least it had the work done.

agreed.

 

[Salamandyr]

Modern characters don't actually do more damage than than earlier edition characters. They put up larger numbers, but they are attacking larger pools of hit points. And many of those cool resources they can expend to up their damage sky high wouldn't even be necessary except to deal with the huge bag of hit points that monsters now have.

Average hit points for an ogre in 1e? Less than 20. Average hit points in 5e? around 60. Heck monsters in 1e don't even average more than 10 hp until they've got 3 hit dice; Fireballs used to be lethal rather than an efficient way to reduce monster hit points by a third.

 

[JonnyP71]

Erm, yes they do, considerably more.

Take the Ogre example, almost every PC apart from a Fighter will start with a THAC0 of 20, and will have that until they reach roughly level 4. If they find a +1 weapon, they can drop that to 19.

Pre-UA, Fighters would typically have a THAC0 of 19 or 20 too until 3rd level, unless they got very lucky with their strength roll.

This means they hit an AC5 Ogre about 25% of the time. Less than half of PCs will have a damage bonus in melee typically, so that's a 1d6 from a cleric's mace, or a 1d12 from a fighter's longsword - maybe 1d12+1.

Now look at 5E, most PCs start with an attack bonus of +4 or +5. That same Ogre had an AC11, so PCs are now hitting about 66% of the time. They will usually have +2 or +3 to damage, so the average weapon damage dealt out will be higher. Wizards can now spam damaging cantrips, so they can cause reliable damage too. Rogues can usually get a sneak attack in most rounds for extra damage.

5E PCs do a lot more damage more quickly due to better changes to hit, and a higher prevalence of damage bonuses! It recently took a party of 8 characters of levels 3/4 about 6 rounds to take down a creature with AC0 and 30hp. How long would a creature with AC20 and 30hp last in 5 against the same number of similarly levelled characters? One round? Maybe 2? You also have to factor in Paladin smites, criticals doing double damage, more magic missiles, missile fire having +stat damage, Barbarian rages, Warlocks spamming Eldritch blast, Druids turning into Bears, etc.... none of these happened in 1E!

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Yeah bounded accuracy and all that is fine, but with the low AC it gets hard for mid level PC to really miss much. With my group its 6 PC and solo monsters are really not an option unless they are so much higher challenge than the PC that they are almost one shotting characters. I just wonder if my party when they add a few more levels are going to be able to start smoking the full power Demon Princes in OoTA. They are currently 6 8-9th level PC. As it was with some lucky saves they were whittling down Graz'zt and they were all 8th at the time. One had died but he was getting close to run away time. I'm just not sure how this game is going to play once they are say 15th level.

So this ties into fights taking so few rounds being something I would not miss.