D&D 1E Giving an AD&D feel to 5e

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'd say that if the Warlock has to go, all the more the Sorcerer.

5. no warlock? (Maybe letting sor/wiz pick up the subclasses if desired)

Slow burn is right. Slow down healing and slow down the level progression and I think you'll start to get some of that 1e feel back almost immediately. Back in the day, it could really be a crawl to get past first level, whereas 5e breezes on out of there.

AD&D is more of a slow burn.

So I'd say the best way to capture that feel isn't necessarily rewriting rules, but rather adapt concept to 5e parameters.

Without writing new house rules... I'd say run a Gritty Variant game from the DMG, ignore the recommendation of the daily # of encounters (or in the very least stretch it out over the week), and especially don't cater the encounters to the players.

Adventures would need to be more excavation style dungeon crawls, and not pre-written short-stories complete with all the acts and beats laid out for you. Players need to know when to run away, because there's no guarantee they can handle what's coming. Games would literally be a day spent in a dungeon followed by retreating home for a week for a long rest to recover, and return later.

It's not much different than AD&D where you healed 1 hp a day, and had to leave for a few days to heal after a fight.

The DM definitely has to be up to the task, though, and players used to the quick and dirty video game style of 5e will be in for a shock.

 

[GreyLord]

5e Old School

Something I bring up when one wants a more AD&D (or OD&D) feel to their 5e game.

Something that I think can make a game feel more like AD&D just in general are...

1. NO ASI. Change bonuses from the tables in 5e to the old bonus tables in AD&D. - 5e is VERY dependent on Ability scores to boost various abilities up, especially in combat. This makes it so that it feels less old school, and more of something where ability score bonuses are one of the major focuses of the game. If you don't have your Prime ability score maxed for whatever you are doing, you weaken your character. Going back to the AD&D tables makes this less of a focus.

2. BECAUSE of #1, this makes fighters (or warriors like the Barbarian, Ranger, and Paladin) a LOT less able to hit or be as successful as fighters in 5e. I double the Proficiency bonuses with weapons for Fighters to make up for the loss of the Ability score bonuses.

3. Reduce XP points given out for monsters by 10. That means you'll only get 1/10th of the XP for killing something that you normally do in 5e. Replace this with XP for gold. One XP point per GP.


Those three items do a lot to make the game feel more like an AD&D or old school D&D game than many other ideas.

 

[Greg K]

Extremely late in 1e and most games didn’t use Non Weapon Proficiencies because the Survival Guides weren’t well received and OA was almost a separate game. They weren’t core and the game was smoother without them. 2e? Also an optional rule in the core rulebooks. They weren’t expected as default in a game.

I agree that proficiencies were optional. I even acknoweldged that not all groups used them. Being optional, however, does not change that they were part of the AD&D experience for many groups including every group with which I played going back to 1e upon the release of the survival guides and Oriental Adventures. I also stated that that my suggestion was for groups that did use proficiencies in AD&D 1e and/or 2e

 

[Lanefan]

Slow burn is right. Slow down healing and slow down the level progression and I think you'll start to get some of that 1e feel back almost immediately. Back in the day, it could really be a crawl to get past first level, whereas 5e breezes on out of there.

I was coming in here to say this but you beat me to it.

 

[dmhelp]

There's a problem there with #3, which you took note of below. By 16th level, most classes will have attained proficiency in ALL saving throws, so the 19th level ASI (which you've proposed reinterpreting as save proficiency) serves no purpose. It's not insurmountable, but you'd need to address it with some tweaks.

This issue is magnified for certain classes. Fighter, Rogue, and Monk in particular.

By 12th level the Fighter would attain prof in all saves, so the 14th, 16th, and 19th ASIs serve no purpose.

For the Rogue, the 15th level Slippery Mind (prof in WIS saves), 16th and 19th ASIs would serve no purpose.

And for the Monk, the 14th level Diamond Soul feature (prof in all saves) is invalidated.

The 1e answer would probably be followers & strongholds.

I really liked your responses and this is exactly my dilemma.

Followers and strongholds was something we usually ignored.

I’ve thought about just allowing feats in these few cases but this seems to make a fighter/thief really awesome at high level. It also makes barb/fighter (if you allow it) required over barb because it is the only way to get reckless gwm.

Which is why I was thinking of just giving out a few extra skills.

Just ASIs could be considered but again it turns the fighter/thief into superman.

It wouldn’t be the end of the world to have dead levels, but fighters may feel lacking. But maybe that is ok because your saves are maxed at 12 and you are the only one with third attack?

 

[Don Durito]

No feats. No multiclassing.

If that's not enough just play Castles and Crusades.

 

[Blue Orange]

FWIW, in addition to the many excellent suggestions above, 1st ed classes included cleric, druid, fighter, paladin, ranger, mage, illusionist, thief, assassin, monk, and bard. (Barbarians were added in Unearthed Arcana, the Tasha's of its day, along with thief-acrobats, cavaliers, and pictures of all of the polearms exhaustively cited in the original PHB with no explanation; the bard famously involved changing classes from fighter to thief and then to druid.) The assassin was similar to the thief but could use poison and do instakill attacks if they surprised someone and was D&D's notorious 'evil' class. Base races included dwarf, elf, half-elf, gnome, halfling, human, and half-orc. Dragonborn, tieflings, warlocks, and sorcerers were still decades in the future.

Classes as extant in 2nd ed included cleric, druid, fighter, paladin, ranger, mage (general and specialist-illusionist etc.), thief, and bard. Classes were divided into four big 'buckets'--priest, warrior, wizard, and rogue. The monk and barbarian disappeared until 3rd ed. Base races included dwarf, elf, half-elf, gnome, halfling, and human--the half-orc had been removed as part of the 'evil' purge along with the assassin. (Technically tieflings were in the Planescape expansion as a player race.)

Most infamously, there were racial restrictions on class availability (dwarves and halflings couldn't be mages and gnomes could only be illusionists, and nobody but humans could be a paladin), and level caps on non-human level advancement (admittedly raised somewhat from 1st ed to 2nd ed), and strange multiclass limits where dwarves could be fighter/clerics and fighter/thieves but not cleric/thieves (though gnomes could!). There were racial ability adjustments (+1 DEX, -1 CON for elves for example) and required minimum rolls to pick a given race or class. (Paladins needed a 17 charisma, to enforce their rarity--odds of rolling than on 3d6 are about 1 in 70.) I imagine you'd probably want to leave this in the past with the rules for using THAC0.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

That slow level progression was such a big part of earlier gaming. The joy of hitting 2nd level after so many trials and near-death scrapes. You felt forged in fire. Just getting a +1 longsword that glowed in the dark felt like drawing forth Excalibur. In 5e, you can easily get to 2nd level after your first adventure.

I was coming in here to say this but you beat me to it.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That slow level progression was such a big part of earlier gaming. The joy of hitting 2nd level after so many trials and near-death scrapes. You felt forged in fire. Just getting a +1 longsword that glowed in the dark felt like drawing forth Excalibur. In 5e, you can easily get to 2nd level after your first adventure.

"In 5e, you can easily get to 2nd level after your first adventure."

In 5e, you can easily get to 2nd level after your first encounter.

 

[ART!]

Fewer bonuses starting out.

I remember my son making a fighter when we first started playing 5E, and I knew there was something "wrong" when at 1st level he had a +6 to hit.