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

[Ovinomancer]

Do we have data on that? My understanding is that AD&D varied wildly between tables, and my own experience with 2E was as described - never get into a fair fight, avoid taking damage whenever possible, and natural healing was sufficient for when you failed at that.

Oh, that happened with me, too, until the cleric got a hold of a few wands of cure X and the heal spell. It's hard to argue that the availability of these items in 2e and especially 3e where somehow ignored by the mass of players when the game incentivized their use strongly. That's not to say that a group couldn't take actions to reduce or eliminate such, but then your argument is that there was a silent majority that rejected core assumptions about 3e (and to a more limited degree 2e) on availability of healing and played in a more gritty manner. Occam's razor says that's not the right assumption to bank on.

But hard data? Maybe from the organized play folks. I have tons of anecdotal data from many games across many groups, but that's not systemic data. It does confirm my assumption that the majority of play was using the default game assumptions of magic for sale (3e) and cheap healing magic (both 2e and 3e, Wands of CLW weren't uncommon on the 2e magic charts and were much more effective given the generally lower hp totals in 2e).

EDIT: It just occurred to me that the default assumptions you make about play -- that characters understand and know the physics imposed by the game rules -- would lead to those characters NOT using CLW wands in 3e as a primary way to maintain hitpoints between fights. Especially given the 3e rocket tag incentives.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Oh, that happened with me, too, until the cleric got a hold of a few wands of cure X and the heal spell. It's hard to argue that the availability of these items in 2e and especially 3e where somehow ignored by the mass of players when the game incentivized their use strongly. That's not to say that a group couldn't take actions to reduce or eliminate such, but then your argument is that there was a silent majority that rejected core assumptions about 3e (and to a more limited degree 2e) on availability of healing and played in a more gritty manner. Occam's razor says that's not the right assumption to bank on.

I don't recall ever finding a cure wand, in either edition, and it wasn't until very late in the 3E cycle that I ever saw a cleric with access to the Heal spell. In AD&D, you either rolled randomly for loot, or the DM placed things according to what made sense for their world; and since homebrew setting creation was usually a given, we never felt pressured by the rules to include such things. In 3E, magic items were in the DMG, and players didn't really have a reason to look in there unless someone really wanted to play an enchanter as their character concept (which never came up).

I did encounter the wand phenomenon in Pathfinder, after changing to a new group entirely, and it struck me as being as out-of-place then as the 5E healing rules probably seem to the OP now. With Pathfinder, at least, I've always assumed that it was an error introduced due to poor design math; and the proposed changes to limit that abuse, in Pathfinder 2, supports this position. (That was also the game where I had to use a wheelbarrow to carry my gold into town, in order to commission magical armor; it exceeded the weight limit of our Bag of Holding.)

EDIT: It just occurred to me that the default assumptions you make about play -- that characters understand and know the physics imposed by the game rules -- would lead to those characters NOT using CLW wands in 3e as a primary way to maintain hitpoints between fights. Especially given the 3e rocket tag incentives.

In my case, the characters would have discussed the economics of the situation, if the players had been aware of them. We were never really in a position to buy or make wands, regardless; and given the degree to which free healing can trivialize many encounters, I'm glad that we never figured it out.

 

[Kupursk]

But hard data? Maybe from the organized play folks. I have tons of anecdotal data from many games across many groups, but that's not systemic data. It does confirm my assumption that the majority of play was using the default game assumptions of magic for sale (3e) and cheap healing magic (both 2e and 3e, Wands of CLW weren't uncommon on the 2e magic charts and were much more effective given the generally lower hp totals in 2e).

It's true that 3e "assumed" large availability of magic items throughout the leveling, especially the "stacking bonuses" kind. It's definitely the core assumption when you look at high-CR monsters with ludicrous AC and to-hit (50+ in some cases). You just can't achieve anything near those numbers without stacking magic items.

It's one of the things that always put me off from high-level games of 3e. I just don't like at all to run settings where magic is assumed and not-at-all special. I like gritty Sword & Sorcery a lot more. With time and experience I ended up pretty comfortable eyeballing the overpowered numbers and adjusting them on the fly for non-magic-item-dependent campaigns where just the core class values are assumed and every magic item is a nice extra.

Eventually I ended up with a hybrid between 2e and 3e that I ran for most games. It had some of the options of 3e like feats and prestige classes but all the numbers were closer to 2e standards. Especially AC, hit and such, which were the ones who tended to go crazy at 3e's higher levels.

2e was not at all like 3e, though.

No magic bonus were assumed, and it kind of had "bounded accuracy" already, although it wasn't something mentioned clearly as a design goal as in 5e. Also having a cleric in the party was the usual, but never absolutely necessary. Even if you had one, until really higher levels his healing was much more limited than in later editions. I also played 2e with lots and lots of different groups and most of my experience was as I described... no unlimited magic healing assumed, no wands of cure (except the eventual odd find), etc. Most groups I played with back then was mostly like Saelorn also described.

3e by "default" was indeed quite different. But you could run it more gritty and scarce of magic items up to a certain mid-level range without problems. At high levels you'd probably need to house-rule some stuff.

 

[Kupursk]

...

Completely unrelated to the topic but... Saelorn, your name rings a bell to me, oddly. Might be a coincidence but...

Were you by any chance that fella who posted on the 5e Playtest forums with a Squirrel Girl avatar?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Completely unrelated to the topic but... Saelorn, your name rings a bell to me, oddly. Might be a coincidence but...

Were you by any chance that fella who posted on the 5e Playtest forums with a Squirrel Girl avatar?

I don't remember the 5E playtest forums, but that sounds like me. I use Squirrel Girl on Twitter, and other places.

 

[Kupursk]

I don't remember the 5E playtest forums, but that sounds like me. I use Squirrel Girl on Twitter, and other places.

Must have been you indeed, then.
This was in the official WotC playtest forums, before they were shut down. They still called it D&D Next back then.

I used to post with an Obelix avatar myself, but don't recall if I used the same name there.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Must have been you indeed, then.
This was in the official WotC playtest forums, before they were shut down. They still called it D&D Next back then.

I used to post with an Obelix avatar myself, but don't recall if I used the same name there.

That does sound familiar. I'm glad you've been able to hold out this long! You haven't missed out on anything.

Personally, I gave up on running 5E without significant house rules, which eventually codified into Gishes & Goblins (available as .pdf on DrivethruRPG, print-on-demand available soon). Healing was one of the big issues I had to address, but I'm happy with the way it turned out.

 

[Kupursk]

That does sound familiar. I'm glad you've been able to hold out this long! You haven't missed out on anything.

Personally, I gave up on running 5E without significant house rules, which eventually codified into Gishes & Goblins (available as .pdf on DrivethruRPG, print-on-demand available soon). Healing was one of the big issues I had to address, but I'm happy with the way it turned out.

That looks nice. Is it still based on 5e or did you eventually step away from it enough to be something else entirely?

Also, is there some sort of free preview/quickstart guide for your rules that one could take a peek at on that site?

Ps: I think I vaguely remember you advocating for -2/+2 on advantage/disadvantage back then, instead of the extra dice.

 

[Bawylie]

1.) Instead of setting DCs for tasks, use the “roll under” ability check. You’ve got 13 strength, want to know if you can lift a rock? Roll 1d20. Under 13, you succeed. You have 16 con. Save vs poison? Roll 1d20 and get under 16 to succeed.

Keep the “ability modifier” for damage rolls. Proficiency bonus adds to the target number instead of the roll. You have 16 con but +2 to to con saves. To save vs poison, roll under 18.

Remove attack rolls and just use damage rolls. AC - 10 is the amount of damage reduction a target has. You can add proficiency bonus to damage.

2.) ignore hit dice. The rest will work itself out.

 

[Kupursk]

You get to the mid point of the experience table, and every attack hits -- especially with advantage being fairly easy to access! You miss a lot less in 5e in general and HP values are much higher to compensate; that's why Magic Missle is so bad. You don't get hit so much that armor feels worthless, but you get hit a lot, and there just aren't the complex defenses that you could put up in earlier editions with spells.

Really? That's odd... I thought the whole purpose of Bounded Accuracy was to keep AC relevant even at high levels. Yet what you described feels pretty much like what happens in 3e after a certain level, hit rolls being so high that player AC becomes practically pointless.

I thought the purpose of the lower Proficiency Bonus in combat was precisely to keep AC meaningful. Just by glancing at the rules it seems that a level ~10 character would have around +10 to-hit, which means he would still miss an AC 20 almost 50% of time.

Am I missing something important here? What else contributes to a higher enough hit roll so as to make you almost never miss?