D&D 5E Thread closed, please delete

[Blue]

It looks overall like a hideous mess to me - but if you and your players can keep track of all that in play, great I guess. But I did use "At 1st level, characters receive their CON score as additional HPs in addition to what their class grants" in my Primeval Thule campaign, and found it worked well especially in conjunction with that setting's higher baseline for monster & NPC Challenge & damage.

Can you say what looks like a mess? Specifically, what's not a drop-in replacement and that is the same complexity as the current rules? Because that's a point I specifically aimed at - for the most part all you are doing is the exact same rules but writing down different numbers/die sizes. Warlock spells/druid wildshape is about the only places where I increased complexity.

Please give specific examples of increases in complexity or lack of clarity so I can correct them.

 

[S'mon]

Can you say what looks like a mess? Specifically, what's not a drop-in replacement and that is the same complexity as the current rules? Because that's a point I specifically aimed at - for the most part all you are doing is the exact same rules but writing down different numbers/die sizes. Warlock spells/druid wildshape is about the only places where I increased complexity.

Please give specific examples of increases in complexity or lack of clarity so I can correct them.

No, it's not one thing being bad, it's the aggregate of multiple changes. I find the more player-facing rules get changed, the unhappier players get, and the harder it is to keep track of every change.

 

[Blue]

No, it's not one thing being bad, it's the aggregate of multiple changes. I find the more player-facing rules get changed, the unhappier players get, and the harder it is to keep track of every change.

Got it - if these were the core rules they would be fine, but having multiple points of change that the players have to track when they are used to the rules in the book gets confusing.

 

[Flamestrike]

Sorry, I am not looking at changing the context. Your ideas have merit but are out of scope for this discussion.

It looks like you want to make changes to every single class, when all you have to do is change the rest frequency.

Doesnt that make a heck of a lot more sense though?

 

[Blue]

It looks like you want to make changes to every single class, when all you have to do is change the rest frequency.

Doesnt that make a heck of a lot more sense though?

It doesn't meet the stated goal of making the classes we haven't played more attractive for the short campaign while keeping all classes reasonable because the party will likely still have some of the others. It also doesn't meet the unstated goal of trying out 13th Age style spell slots in 5e as a more permanent replacement for a normal campaign.

I would love your feedback on what is presented in the thread. But changing the rest frequency has been off the table for this discussion, so let's please try to keep the thread on target.

 

[dmhelp]

You could triple combat maneuver uses, action surges, ki, and warlock spell slots recovered on long rest. Or start them at double and at level x in the class they triple. That would be less rule modifications. Or do that for martials and switch warlocks to long rest spell points.

 

[fearsomepirate]

This is not for everyone. Let me repeat that: THIS IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. This is not a general replacement / house rule.

My usual D&D group swaps DMs around, but we almost all do 1-3 encounters per day and not to many short rests. We pump up the difficulty to make good, deadly battles, but casters are almost never using cantrips so have the highest effectiveness per Action, barbarians can rage every encounter, paladins can smite most hits, etc. It's a fun game, but it has definitely affected class choices for the various campaigns we have done.

You change a lot of variables, which will make this hard to rebalance and confusing to remember. A lot of this could be accomplished by simply having short rest abilities recharge whenever initiative is rolled.

 

[Flamestrike]

It doesn't meet the stated goal of making the classes we haven't played more attractive for the short campaign while keeping all classes reasonable because the party will likely still have some of the others.

Yes, it does make them more attractive. Increasing the frequency of encounters between long rests, and making short rests easier to get (a few minute breather) makes Fighters, Monks and Warlocks far more attractive.

It also doesn't meet the unstated goal of trying out 13th Age style spell slots in 5e as a more permanent replacement for a normal campaign.

That goal was unstated, so I cant really be held responsible for not knowing it existed.

I would love your feedback on what is presented in the thread.

That is my feedback. I think there are better ways of making short rest based classes more attractive compared to long rest ones.

As for the 13th age thing, I have no idea. I've never played it.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Well, I strongly dislike taking away all the lower level spell slots from casters, as the continued relevance of many low level spells is something I like about 5e. But if it suits your goals, it suits your goals.

However, if you are going to take away people's lower level spell slots then you should drop the one spell swap-out per level-up limitation on memorized casters. You should perhaps also lower the cost of Wizards copying spells of the levels that will face semi-retirement since they are obviously of less long term value.

Or just do a campaign without any full casters, rather than worry about balancing a whole system of how to handicap them. I suspect any player who doesn't anticipate this being the permenent rules of all their future D&D games would just look at this scheme and decide to put off their next caster character for some other campaign.

 

[S'mon]

You change a lot of variables, which will make this hard to rebalance and confusing to remember. A lot of this could be accomplished by simply having short rest abilities recharge whenever initiative is rolled.

That would be much easier to remember and would turn short rest powers into 4e style Encounter powers. If you want to keep the 'nova every fight' feel of a game where Long Rest classes only fight 1-3 times per LR, then I think this is the best aproach.

I tried turning SR powers into "x3 per Long Rest" powers, but it never felt quite right - worked ok for Fighters, but Monks got far too much Ki for important fights.

Personally I eventually embraced 5e's balance around an expectation of up to 6-8 fights per LR by making LR a week (w full HD recovery) while keeping SR unchanged but max SR 3/day; once I did that everything fell into place and the game now runs really well for me. I understand that's not an option for the OP but I would recommend it to others having issues.