D&D 5E What is your preferred style, and what tweaks do you do to get there?

[Sacrosanct]

This is sort of inspired by the numerous threads we seem to always have about how the game does or doesn't meet your expectations of your preferred style. The purpose of this thread is to help other people and share best practices, not argue the merits or drawbacks of how your style is the best and everyone else is badwrong, or how the game sucks, or the designers are lazy, etc, etc, etc. This is also a thread about 5e, so please refrain from constant comparisons about how previous edition X did it so much better. Because my first response to that is, "Then why aren't you playing that edition and talking on those forums instead of this one?" Better just to avoid that altogether. Comparisons are fine, especially if you're explaining how you ported over something from a previous edition, but bringing it up just to disparage or complain about 5e, the designers, or the players is not cool.

We need to start with a basic agreement of two things:
1. D&D 5e working out of the box exactly how someone likes and prefers is more of an exception than the norm, therefore...
2. Most people will tweak rules, or add things into their game to help get where they want.

I hope we all can agree on those two things. So based off of that, what is your preferred style, and what things have you tweaked to help get to your style. For others that share the same style, hopefully this thread will help offer suggestions to improve their gaming experience.


OK, to set an example:

Preferred playstyle: Pretty old school. Rulings over rules, fast paced, the adventure (which is all 3 pillars pretty evenly) over the mechanics. I.e., don't let a rule get in the way of your group having fun. Prefer niche protection.

Tweaks to 5e:
* rests: how often the group can rest is heavily dependent on the game world and their surroundings. Monsters don't go on pause, and will actively look for the PCs if they know they are in the area. This results in slightly less rests than in the guidelines, and gives the game more of a gritty feeling where resource management and tactical planning are important rather than just rush into each battle knowing you'll probably win
* spell components: Completely ignored unless it's something major or really valuable. Just not something I worry about managing
* encumbrance: ignored unless it gets outrageous or crazy
* ad hoc actions: these are the "swing from the chandelier" type things. Players are encouraged to try anything, even if they are not proficient or if there's not a rule for it. No reasonable request should ever be unreasonably denied. Often it's as simple as assigning a DC and ability to go with it, or an attack roll if in combat. Examples include maneuvers like disarming, tripping, throwing sand to blind, leaping over an overturned table to attack, dropping from a balcony, jumping from table to table, etc. 5e does a great job having most of these fall under existing skill checks (athletics, acrobatics, etc).
* morale: If the battle is going really badly for the monsters, and they are not mindless, morale may come into effect and they may flee. Every situation is different, with factors coming into play (is the monster just hungry, does it have a vendetta, etc? All things that might make it flee sooner, or not at all).
* Initiative: Everyone rolls like normal, I have one roll for all monsters (but they may go differently depending on their individual DEX mod). Say my monsters go on 13. I call out "Everyone above 13 may go." then the monsters go, then I call out, "Everyone else can go." Makes the game go much faster, and allows the players to hold actions much more to my tastes than in the rules.

 

[Croesus]

Not sure how I'd describe my games. A bit high fantasy, a lot of combat, only a few NPCs, but I put a lot of effort into making them memorable. Most of all, I want the campaign world to be affected by the characters and vice versa. I also don't want a high body count, but the risk of death and defeat should always be there.

1) Troupe Play: All players create at least two different characters. The world isn't static and sometimes stuff happens while one party is out and about, so the secondary characters have to save the day. Also gives players an option if a character dies, or they just get bored of him/her.

2) Ability Scores: Point buy, but with 29 points. I like characters to be competent, hence the slight boost in points. I prefer there not be significant disparities in ability scores, so no rolling.

3) Hit Points: Average hit points when leveling. Same reasoning as above, characters shouldn't have significant disparities.

4) Luck Points: As a free action, a luck point can be used for a reroll, add +1d6 to a roll, or to regain hit points like spending a Hit Die. Each character has two luck points at the beginning of each session. The luck points don't carry over, so no reason to hoard them beyond the session. I also give a "community" luck point when I roll a crit with monsters Bad stuff can happen that's not the player's fault. And this allows me to not pull punches when the characters tick off the bad guys. .

5) Morale: I roll a d12 when things are going badly. Loads of fun when all the orcs run except one crying "Never retreat, never surrender!"

6) Not Adversarial, but Challenging: As a GM, I never try to kill or shaft a character. However, the character's enemies will try to do so. The characters have to earn their victories. Hence, why I give out luck points.

7) You're Heroes, Dang It!: Not a fan of evil acts/characters. A "shady" character is okay, someone who steals, rapes, pillages, murders...nope. So some character actions just aren't allowed. A player has to buy into this or find another game.

8) Simplify: Some elements just aren't worth the time for us. So no encumbrance rules. Material components are hand-waved unless it's expensive or the characters have been captured. Object manipulation mostly hand-waved.

re: Community luck points for crits. This is kind of a balancing mechanism, because sometimes the dice just get hot. The most we've ever had was 11 (!) community luck points in a single 4-hour session. Needless to say, the characters needed them to have a chance.

 

[robus]

For my table, I definitely try to keep things focused on the action.

*) at the start of the session recap the recent major events and transition directly into the current situation

*) roll initiative at the end of the combat round so there's no bookkeeping when combat breaks out. (This has gone down well)

*) same general simplifications as yours

*) travel adventures compressed into a couple of "adventuring days" rather than a drip, drip of encounters

*) try to follow iserith's action adjudication as well as possible

*) end the session on a dramatic note; high, low, or at the cusp of something new and exciting

 

[Sacrosanct]

*) try to follow iserith's action adjudication as well as possible

[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] please enlighten me on this, for I am very curious

 

[iserith]

@iserith please enlighten me on this, for I am very curious

Pretty much encapsulated here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?453707-How-to-Adjudicate-Actions-in-D-amp-D-5e

It could use some revision, but I haven't had the time.

 

[hastur_nz]

Short answer: there's nothing at all in the 5e rules that stops me, or fellow DM's, from running the Style of game that we want...

Bearing in mind that style is too difficult to describe, e.g. above I see "old school" then straight after are a bunch of things described that for me are definitely NOT old-school as far as I remember, saw, read of etc. So my "style" is "Rock-Star DM" lol...

I use all the rules as written, all official books, with a heavy dose of "common sense" in terms of any ambiguity / lack of clarity in what's written. Anything from UA is OK, but we all know there's some rough as guts cheese there still so we don't use those bits. The only house rule I have is for long rests, where you don't get any HP back from resting, you have to spend hit dice, cast spells, etc - not a huge change to be honest, but stops the "video game re-set bottom" feeling at low level; from around 5th level it's a non-event either way.

The 5e rules are pretty good, everyone I know that's actually used them thinks they are far better than any other version that's come before. There's nothing at all in the 5e rules that stops me, or fellow DM's, from running the Style of game that we want, so in all honesty there's nothing that needs tweaking to achieve our desired Styles of Play. It's all about exactly HOW you go about using the 5e framework.

For example Skill Checks are used in all sorts of different ways by different DM's and/or Players; the 5e rules actually do try and say "only roll dice if it's not clearly success or failure", but that's lost on a lot of people who seem to want to roll dice for everything. Similarly Morale is not something you need specific rules for, but some DM's have every monster and NPC fight to the bitter end, some roll dice for morale, others like me have actually thought about it before hand, in terms of what the antagonist's GOALS might actually be, hence I know what they might be prepared to die for vs surrender/flee/etc, so judging morale doesn't need any rules or dice.

 

[iserith]

I don't think I really have a preferred "style." I tend to make my game the most compatible it can be with the given game system I'm using. So my D&D 5e games are not like my D&D 4e games in many ways. This sometimes comes as quite a surprise to people with whom I used to regularly play D&D 4e that jump into my 5e games. Or to those who are used to seeing me post a certain way during the 4e era and now see me saying something different in the 5e era. I think it's inviting trouble to say "I play D&D this way..." and then try and hammer whatever edition of the game system to conform to the game I want to run. I prefer to come at it from the other direction. I think things go more smoothly that way.

That said, I have been playing around with D&D 5e's various options and dials to underscore aspects I think are important to the particular campaign I'm running which changes up every 6 months or so. In my last campaign, there was emphasis on the town-to-dungeon experience and each session was meant to be a single delve. So I used the resting rules where 8 hours is a short rest and a long rest is a week which, combined with non-rules tweaks, set up the pace that worked for the episodic delve style. I modified downtime activities and lifestyle expenses to be one week at a stretch as a sort of "Town Phase" that happened prior to the journey to the dungeon and subsequent delving and offered useful bonuses. I worked out the travel rules so that choice of task while traveling and pace really mattered as it impacted how much time you had to delve and/or rest and your risk of wandering monsters on the journey. I encouraged exploration by including more trinkets that could be found by poking around. Trinkets were tied to Inspiration such that if you used your trinket in some clever way, you earned Inspiration (once per trinket), so the more trinkets you had, the more shots at Inspiration you had per session.

My current campaign which follows, more or less, the storyline of The Red Hand of Doom, doesn't have these rules. There are others instead which support that play experience. The characters have a caravan to manage, for example, which has overhead, hirelings, upgrades, and whatnot so there's a subsystem for that. Resting is normal except that there can be no long rests outside of a safe haven such as a town or the caravan. This emphasizes the importance of the mobile home base they're paying for and makes the accumulation of gold important. In order to downplay town time, I reduced everything in towns to a mini-game of general tasks with trade-offs based on location so that it's fun and there are meaningful decisions to make, but it's resolved quickly with no chance of getting bogged down with running errands (ugh). This puts more emphasis on pursuing the plot-based quests.

As a final example, I ran a one-shot, Secret Party House of the Hill Giant Playboy, for two different groups (and soon a third) recently. That adventure was really about getting into the place and acquiring as much XP and gold as possible. Each group gets a score they can compare with other groups. In this one, I decided to implement the variant Encumbrance rule to make it a meaningful choice as to what treasure to grab. Lots of the treasure was really heavy and many PCs were already lightly encumbered by their armor, weapons, and basic gear. So, because gold = points, in many cases they had to make some hard choices about what to take and what to leave behind. (One character left the place with nothing but a helmet and codpiece and you really can't ask for a better outcome in my view.)

So that's my approach: Conform "style" to the game system in general and then do a few tweaks based on the specific campaign to push a specific play experience. And don't do the same thing twice in a row!

 

[40below]

I tend to describe my preferred style as "Character-driven collaborative storytelling orientation on an action-adventure background." That is, I like to wind up with a comprehensible adventure story, with the players' characters as major protagonists.

D&D 5e offers a lot of tools to make this happen ... within a given setting. That setting is the peculiar high-fantasy, high-magic world that has emerged over the decades that D&D has existed. (The DMG makes the setting assumptions pretty explicit.)

The main tweaks I tend to make are to the setting: I may radically alter the availability of magic items, or rule that certain classes are unavailable, or that everyone must be human, or ... well, whatever works for a given setting. This setting must be something that has its own feel that excites me, but also one that my players buy into.

My current setting, for example, is "high-fantasy frontier." The players live in a very typical D&D-ish world, but they're pushing into a part of the geography completely unexplored by the civilizations from which they originate. This happens to work pretty well with the RAW from the players' perspective, but what they encounter is mostly completely new. Monsters are not found in the pages of the MM, for example. Magic items they discover are appropriate to the cultures of the (non-human) natives who have long lived in the lands they're now exploring.

If there's anything problematic about the rules, it's that things are a bit too easy. To correct that, I rely on variants that make understanding magic items harder, that make healing slower, and the like.

 

[Ath'kethin]

I limit players to Human as a race and I don't allow any casters except Warlocks (though characters can gain spellcasting by taking the Magic Initiate feat if they want). We use the optional weapon speed modifiers and roll initiative every round.

I tend to run a pretty brutal campaign, so characters also get max hit points at each level. For abilities we use standard array +2; that is, the standard array scores plus an additional 2 points to be added as the player desires.

I also use a number of variants and optional rules from the Primeval Thule campaign setting and the 5e Talislanta reboot that is came out. I also would allow Unearthed Arcana stuff if anybody asked for it.

 

[Oofta]

I'd break my tweaks into major categories. In general I'm not much of a fan of "dungeon crawl" style of gaming. There's nothing wrong with it but I try to do more balance of story-telling, interaction and exploration.

In addition, I look as the rules as an ends to a means. I'm trying to simulate a fantasy world, and where the rules help me do that I follow them (which is probably about 99% of the time). Where they don't I bend the rules.

So when I make rulings on stealth for example, I try to judge it based on what could work and what fantasy trope I'm trying to implement. D&D isn't, and doesn't have to be realistic. That doesn't mean it can't be based on reality + magic + a healthy dose of action movie esthetics.

Pacing
I'm a big fan of the Dresden novels. In the novels, Dresden is sitting around minding his own business, and then everything goes to heck for a few days.

The "adventure" may consist of multiple days, and poor ol' Dresden and company are usually pretty beat up by the end. Resting overnight (if they get that) doesn't magically restore him to 100%.

So I use the alternate resting rules. A short rest is overnight, a long rest is several days to a week or more. This feels more "natural" to me and allows me to do the 6-8 encounters between long rests as recommended by in the DMG. It also allows investigations to last days, travel between cities and so on.

Tracking the Minutia
I don't. I assume people have rations if they're headed out into the wilderness, that the archer has plenty of arrows, that you have common material components for spells. If people are in a wilderness area I don't wait for them to tell me they're setting up watch, I'll ask who's on watch and if there are any other precautions they're taking.

I assume that the characters (not necessarily the players) know what they're doing. Occasionally I'll ask for an appropriate skill check if I think it's something the character would do. If someone wants to search a room all I ask is if they are doing a quick glance or a thorough check. A quick check will likely miss the false bottom to the chest, a thorough check will give them a chance to notice it. If they are specific on what they're doing it will be a check with advantage.

Balancing Abilities
This one falls into a couple of areas. I don't want to overly-reward certain builds over others. I try to give different people with different focuses a chance to shine. So I have a list of skills I print out just to remind myself to sometimes ask for a survival check or think about how investigation might make more sense than a perception check.

I also allow for bows made specifically for stronger characters. Pay a little extra money and you can get a bow that can only be used by someone with a 16 or higher strength to get a +3 to attack and damage.

At the same time, the dex based characters can sometimes (but not always) nimbly swing from the chandelier instead of using an athletics check.

No Evil PCs
Want to "explore your dark side"? My game isn't for you.

House Rules
When it comes to actual hard-and-fast house rules I only have a couple.

• You can get a reinforced bow to take advantage of strength.
• I semi-nerfed Heat Metal. It's simply too powerful as a second level spell. The druid casts heat metal on the BBEG in metal armor, then turns into a bird and flies away. BBEG is now at disadvantage for the rest of his life with no save, no defenses. It's ... just boring.
• For casting I don't require a free hand for somatic components. As long as you are holding an object that can be moved around (other than a shield) you're OK. That means you can't cast a spell with somatic component if you're completely immobilized or can move your arm. I just don't want to hassle with whether or not you've sheathed your weapon, and I don't visualize spellcasting as requiring Dr Strange gestures. I know you could get around it with war caster feat, but then that starts feeling like a feat tax.

Conclusion
So I guess I run a game that tries to focus more on what you are doing than how you are doing it. When the rules get in the way of the vision (needing a free hand for spell casting) I change the rule to work to fit my vision. Fortunately I don't have to do that hardly ever.