D&D General Help Me Build the D&D Game I Want to Run

[Neonchameleon]

This is somewhat related to my recent "Let's Talk About Chapter 9 of the DMG" thread, and informed by a recent playtest I did of Five Torches Deep (which is an OSRification of 5e). Going back and forth and thinking about things, what I decided is that I want to create the game I want to run out of 5e using optional rules, house rules, 3rd part supplements and bits and bobs from other games.

So first, let me describe the game I want to run:

The aesthetic is relatively gritty and "realistic" in the sense that Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings or Abercrombie's worlds are: people need to eat, they get tired, wounds hurt and while fantastical elements exist and may even be prominent and powerful, they aren't common.

The play loop I want is a cycle of: wilderness exploration to the adventuring sight (moderate peril); exploration and problem solving at the adventuring site (high peril); return to the relative safety of civilization where character development and interaction with the world takes precedence (low peril). I use the term "peril" because I don't necessarily mean "deadliness" although that might be included; it is more about lasting negative consequences, from injury to disease to magic curses to losing what one cares about.

Although this main loop is episodic, it should support characters growing over time, discovering more, exploring farther and gaining competence, without necessarily significantly transforming over time (becoming superheroes).Long term stories should emerge from this sort of play and be largely informed by the interactions in civilization based on events that occurred out in the wild or in the dungeons.

Now, I know some folks are going to say "Use something besides 5E" and that is a totally fine suggestion, except that I WANT to use a modified 5E for this. I think Zweihander is likely a good fit for all the above, but I don't want to have to learn and master a whole new system and have to convince players to do the same (not to mention the monetary cost of everyone coming on board for a new game).

So, with all the above presented, what comes to mind for optional rules, house rules, bits stolen from other games, etc... to get 5E where I want it to be?

Thanks.

Why? Just about every design decision in D&D is about lowering the grit - and the people who talk about "combat as war" seem to think that American Football is war because they wear armour and have direct crunching impacts rather than soccer players who don't. I won't say D&D 5e is the absolute worst game you could pick for this (there's always Exalted or Maid) but it comes close.

The first thing you need to do to get any sort of gritty system in 5e is tear out hit points and replace them with wound mechanics, introducing the death spiral. Any system where you can take the maximum damage from an orc with an axe and not face lasting consequences has had most of the grit filtered out. And remember "simple magic" should not fix wounds; you should not be undoing the work of an orc with an axe with a first level spell.

The second thing you need to do is tear out the magic system. Any full casting class is too much magic - remember Gandalf was a fifth level caster in a much lower magic game than D&D; your rangers are probably too high magic for the game you are describing. Indeed there should be a good reason not to cast spells (which D&D has never really had). Cantrips should be banned of course and most casting should be ritual casting.

My favoured magic system here would be from WFRP 2e (and probably therefore borrowed by Zweihander). Each spell you know has a target number, and you get to pick a number of dice equal to your casting level to try to cast it. Doubles are a backfire, triples are worse, and the higher the number on the matching dice the worse and more visible the backfire. All 1s also not good.

The third thing is hack the rest rules. One day for a short rest, a week for a long rest sounds about right.

And the fourth is that in 5e you need a money sink; gold is almost worthless because there's not much to spend it on.

 

[dave2008]

Works for you.

I like to prepare for every class including those not currently being played, thus if-when one does get played I'm not scrambling. We'd long since redone the spells and put them in binders as the PH/UA write-ups were so often unclear or incomplete (or just said "look here instead").

Once we got our gaming website going I wanted to put the spells online to get away from the binders, and that forced me to do a to-the-floor rework of them as I was typing them all in longhand anyway and including our rulings etc. built up over the years.

Process took a couple of years, but now it'd done all I ever have to do is add any new rulings, add (or delete) spells as needed, and occasionally tweak anything that raises a problem.

That sounds awesome, and a lot of work!

And your current group has no Clerics and just one Wizard? What edition?

5th

 

[Mepher]

Works for you.

I like to prepare for every class including those not currently being played, thus if-when one does get played I'm not scrambling. We'd long since redone the spells and put them in binders as the PH/UA write-ups were so often unclear or incomplete (or just said "look here instead").

Once we got our gaming website going I wanted to put the spells online to get away from the binders, and that forced me to do a to-the-floor rework of them as I was typing them all in longhand anyway and including our rulings etc. built up over the years.

Process took a couple of years, but now it'd done all I ever have to do is add any new rulings, add (or delete) spells as needed, and occasionally tweak anything that raises a problem.

And your current group has no Clerics and just one Wizard? What edition?

That really does sound awesome. Is your site public? Would love to see what you guys did. I am having trouble getting my players to contribute. They know I am not a huge fan of 5E RAW. They don't want to help me modify but they are quick to argue when I do change something.

 

[GMMichael]

I think 2E wizards and clerics need cantrips. Not necessarily combat ones, but magical powers that are just inherent and establish their magicality.
I want to do something for fighters to keep them interesting to play but don't know what.

Thoughts?

But that's what made 2e wizards cool; if you didn't use your spells wisely, you'd have to resort to the stick, or the dagger. Better yet, you'd go find a nice hole to hide in until the fight was over.

What makes fighters interesting is that they can heft swords and shields all day long without fatiguing. And they don't buckle after two hits like 2e wizards.

 

[Monayuris]

So to switch gears a moment, let's say I decided to do it the other way and run AD&D 2E (along with BECMI it is my most formative edition) and add in a couple 5E and other house rules. What works and maintains the feel of 2e.

I would totally keep advantage/disadvantage. It just makes life so much easier from an adjudication standpoint,
I think 2E wizards and clerics need cantrips. Not necessarily combat ones, but magical powers that are just inherent and establish their magicality.
I want to do something for fighters to keep them interesting to play but don't know what.

Thoughts?

I'd got with a combat maneuver system system for fighters. Something that encourages creative actions in combat and lets fighters perform feats of strength and skill. Something like Dungeon Crawl Classic's Mighty Deeds or Low Fantasy Gaming's Martial Exploits.

The point of such a system should be to be something on top of normal attacks and something that doesn't penalize such attempts.

Most systems tell you that you can do all these cool actions like disarm and trip and knock prone, but then tell you that you need to take a -4 penalty and you do it in place of damage. In such systems it is always better to do a standard attack without penalty and inflict damage.

If your system does all that cool stuff in addition to damage, it will be used. Some things I would suggest such a system be able to do is (in addition to normal attack damage):

knock prone/back/aside
disarm and throw weapon away or take the weapon
stun an opponent or inflict disadvantage
attack multiple opponents at the same time
leap in the air to attack a flying creature
cut off a poisonous stinger or maim a creature attack
force a morale check and scare enemies from attacking
etc...

I'd suggest something fast and loose. The player should just tell you what they want to do and you can just ask for an ability check or saving throw. No need for feats or powers or anything like that to quantify this.

If a 1st level wizard can put 6 orcs to sleep, a fighter should be able to make a sweeping attack and kill 6 orcs at once.

 

[DND_Reborn]

{snip}

If a 1st level wizard can put 6 orcs to sleep, a fighter should be able to make a sweeping attack and kill 6 orcs at once.

If you let the wizard do that all the time, sure, otherwise I would say no myself.

I'm not saying fighters shouldn't get something, though.

 

[Reynard]

If a 1st level wizard can put 6 orcs to sleep, a fighter should be able to make a sweeping attack and kill 6 orcs at once.

I was with you up until this point. First of all, I don't want that flavor of fantasy. I don't want superheroic warriors beheading 6 orcs with a single blow. That's what's wrong with 5E in the first place (for this particular exercise; I am not anti-5E in general). And second, it's just plain unbalanced because the 1st level wizard can do it exactly one time, and the orcs aren't dead and will wake up if they are damaged but not killed.

 

[Monayuris]

I was with you up until this point. First of all, I don't want that flavor of fantasy. I don't want superheroic warriors beheading 6 orcs with a single blow. That's what's wrong with 5E in the first place (for this particular exercise; I am not anti-5E in general). And second, it's just plain unbalanced because the 1st level wizard can do it exactly one time, and the orcs aren't dead and will wake up if they are damaged but not killed.

Sure.

The point is that you can implement a maneuver system that makes fighters more interesting and tweak it to the power level you want. If beheading 6 orcs is too superhero for your game you can just limit it to what you feel is more appropriate.

Some other options:
1. ACKS cleave rule + damage bonus per level (my favorite). I found this gave fighters an extra power up without being over the top. Basically, fighters get +1 damage at 1st level and an additional +1 every 3 levels after. They also get an additional cleave attack whenever they drop an enemy to 0 hit points. They get a number of these cleave attacks equal to their level.

This has the effect of making higher level fighters very effective against groups of low hit die foes. The fighter damage bonus turns 1 HD creatures into minions. It is balanced by the fact that at any time they can miss or roll low on damage and break their cleave chain.

In my ACKS game, I've had a 6th level fighter take out 5 goblins in a single combat round and then break the morale of the remaining gobs.

It was a pretty cool visual, made the fighter awesome and as effective as a magic-user with sleep, and stayed well within the mortal power level capability. Maybe it wasn't 'real life' realistic, but it felt more 'Game of Thrones' realistic as opposed to 'Avengers' realistic to me.

2. OD&D had a rule to allow fighters an number of attacks equal to their hit die against 1 HD or less creatures.

3. The Black Hack 2E grants a number of damage dice equal to the fighter's level. The fighter can use them all on one attack or distribute them against multiple attacks.

4. Provide a limited resource that depletes when attempting over top maneuvers. You can only do something like that once per day or so.

 

[Lanefan]

That really does sound awesome. Is your site public?

It's quasi-private in that you can only get to it if someone tells you where it is - it's hidden from search engines.

The spells home-page is here, and note this is all for modified 1e, not 5e.

Spells - Main Page

 

[Lanefan]

2. OD&D had a rule to allow fighters an number of attacks equal to their hit die against 1 HD or less creatures.

That's in 1e as well. Note that the Fighter still had to roll to hit each target.

One modification I made was that no Fighter could use this in the first round of combat, to reflect it taking the Fighter a moment to realize she was up against nothing but a bunch of mooks. (also, remember that even one non-mook negates this ability).