D&D 5E Why my friends hate talking to me about 5e.

[Charlaquin]

Kind of a BECMI/BX design with a 4e mentality and 5e maths.

Sounds like my perfect game!

 

[DND_Reborn]

Kind of a BECMI/BX design with a 4e mentality and 5e maths.

Care to expound on this:

How would you see this as a BECMI/BX design?

In what way is it 4e mentality? (Having not played 4E, do you just mean healing surges?)

And what aspect is it for the 5e maths?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I mean, if the argument is “fighters should have more they can do outside combat,” I’m not disagreeing. But just because combat is something to be avoided if possible doesn’t mean fighters aren’t useful to have in the party. If the cleric analogy didn’t track for you, consider proficiencies (particularly skill proficiencies). They’re only useful when you’re rolling a check, which is another soft fail-state; when possible, you want to succeed without having to make a check, but skills are still useful to have, because no matter how skillfully you play, you will end up making checks sometimes; probably a lot of them. And when you do, you’ll be glad you have skills to help make them easier to succeed at. Likewise, while combat may be best avoided, it will happen sometimes; probably a lot. And when it does, you’ll be glad you have a fighter to help make sure you survive it.

I definitely think there's a big gap between "you should ideally not need to roll skills, but it's nice to have them when you do" and "you should absolutely try to avoid combat at all costs, because you will lose characters more often than not." Because that's quite clearly the difference here. I struggle to see how anyone could think the two are on the same planet, let alone the same level.

No it does not. <large discussion snip>

You seem to be talking about something unrelated to my meaning. What I'm saying is, "If combat is a seriously dangerous, avoid-it-at-all-costs failure state, why do we have classes designed, by the designers' own admission, to be 100% combat-focused?"

 

[James Gasik]

If it works for you. I would prefer the rules to actually attempt to represent and inform the fictional reality instead of being disconnected from it.

I suppose, but I mean, you could make a ton of rules to get this desired effect, or just do an end run around the problem and just have the narrative reflect what you want to happen anyways.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I suppose, but I mean, you could make a ton of rules to get this desired effect, or just do an end run around the problem and just have the narrative reflect what you want to happen anyways.

But certainly that same logic applies to everything? So why have any rules? Just narrate what you want.

 

[James Gasik]

But certainly that same logic applies to everything? So why have any rules? Just narrate what you want.

That's a little hyperbolic. If we want the rules to force people to rest and recover from taking lots of damage during an adventure, and the end result is that they take a week off to rest, then making them do that instead of enforcing penalties to ensure they do what we want the narrative to reflect isn't the same as "well, I want the monster to deal 50 damage to the Fighter, so he takes it", lol.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That's a little hyperbolic. If we want the rules to force people to rest and recover from taking lots of damage during an adventure, and the end result is that they take a week off to rest, then making them do that instead of enforcing penalties to ensure they do what we want the narrative to reflect isn't the same as "well, I want the monster to deal 50 damage to the Fighter, so he takes it", lol.

Ultimately it is the same. The effect is just imposed by GM fiat.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Care to expound on this:

How would you see this as a BECMI/BX design?

In what way is it 4e mentality? (Having not played 4E, do you just mean healing surges?)

And what aspect is it for the 5e maths?

Just an idea, top of my head and all that, so bear with me:

Low HP: So we go back to Basic (or 1st AD&D) with HP die being small (1d4 wizards, frex) and capping after some levels (So lvl 10 rogue would closer to 35 ish hp than 70). BUT...the party is considered to go back relatively close to full hp after an encounter through Breathers and recovery features.
I think I'd keep Death Saves (maybe Wound Saves?), but they disappears after a Recovery in a Haven, not a long rest. Greater Restoration may remove one failed Death Save and Regenerate may remove 1 per 10 minutes for the duration of the spells, Heal may restore all HP and remove a Death save, etc. The other spells arent called ''healing'' or refer to ''wounds'' they are Invigorate, Instill Vigor, etc. Instant death or death effect may kill without Death saves (Power Word Kill. ) or give a failed Death Save (Enervation, Negative Energy Burst, Horrid Wilting, Death Cloud) on a failed save.
Poisons can drain the already low Max HP of the PC. Diseases may increase the DC to beat the Death Save.

Damage: We used the 5e maths, so we have the same way of doing modifier, same damage rolls, bounded accuracy. Damage and ''Healing'' (or other mitigation) should be able to keep up with each other, at a cost. PC cant endure 2-3 rounds of sustained damage, so resource-based mitigating features could be able to ''undo'' most of the damage on a PC in that round. A high damage feature or spells or critical hit will surpass the mitigation capacity of a target that round.
A creature with 1 accrued failed Death Save is considered Bloodied (which may trigger other effects). A monster is considered bloodied 1)when it reaches half-HP 2) the round after it is hit with a Critical Hit.

4e role design: Damage is mitigated with spells and features, either by giving THP, reducing incoming damage, boosting AC or simply by using recovery items or features. Some class have built-in recovery (fighter's Second Wind) and other are support classes helping the rest of the group with damage mitigation. Support is not a dirty word and it is not a chore, it must feel valuable and gratifying.

Recovery: The PC can spend HD to recover HP during Breathers and when prompted by a recovery spell or feature or item. A PC regains half its max HD on a long rest.

Just throwing some stuff here.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Low HP: So we go back to Basic (or 1st AD&D) with HP die being small (1d4 wizards, frex) and capping after some levels (So lvl 10 rogue would closer to 35 ish hp than 70). BUT...the party is considered to go back relatively close to full hp after an encounter through Breathers and recovery features.
I think I'd keep Death Saves (maybe Wound Saves?), but they disappears after a Recovery in a Haven, not a long rest. Greater Restoration may remove one failed Death Save and Regenerate may remove 1 per 10 minutes for the duration of the spells, Heal may restore all HP and remove a Death save, etc. The other spells arent called ''healing'' or refer to ''wounds'' they are Invigorate, Instill Vigor, etc. Instant death or death effect may kill without Death saves (Power Word Kill. ) or give a failed Death Save (Enervation, Negative Energy Burst, Horrid Wilting, Death Cloud) on a failed save.
Poisons can drain the already low Max HP of the PC. Diseases may increase the DC to beat the Death Save.

I am all for lower HP in general. We don't add CON mod per level, which helps mitigate HP quite a bit IMO, but returning to lower HD and/or capping HD at 10 or something works for me as well.

I don't like death saves disappearing so easily as RAW, so I am with you there.

I think the game needs to get away from terminology like "hit" and "healing", etc. unless it is meant to represent actual hits and healing. I like terminology like "vigor", etc. as well.

Damage: We used the 5e maths, so we have the same way of doing modifier, same damage rolls, bounded accuracy. Damage and ''Healing'' (or other mitigation) should be able to keep up with each other, at a cost. PC cant endure 2-3 rounds of sustained damage, so resource-based mitigating features could be able to ''undo'' most of the damage on a PC in that round. A high damage feature or spells or critical hit will surpass the mitigation capacity of a target that round.
A creature with 1 accrued failed Death Save is considered Bloodied (which may trigger other effects). A monster is considered bloodied 1)when it reaches half-HP 2) the round after it is hit with a Critical Hit.

So, are you thinking the PCs offset the damage each round or do you mean that after the battle is over, they have resources to recover 2-3 rounds of damage?

It sounds like you are thinking offset damage each round, but I wanted to be certain of your design intent.

4e role design: Damage is mitigated with spells and features, either by giving THP, reducing incoming damage, boosting AC or simply by using recovery items or features. Some class have built-in recovery (fighter's Second Wind) and other are support classes helping the rest of the group with damage mitigation. Support is not a dirty word and it is not a chore, it must feel valuable and gratifying.

So, again mitigated each round for a few rounds or after the battle?

Recovery: The PC can spend HD to recover HP during Breathers and when prompted by a recovery spell or feature or item. A PC regains half its max HD on a long rest.

Sounds fairly RAW 5E, except perhaps the "breather"?

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

So, again mitigated each round for a few rounds or after the battle?

most of the rounds, but not at-will, is my idea.

i.e
The 5th level fighter fighter has 20 HP. Enduring the assault of the Troll cost him 12 HP. The bard, on that round can use the Invigorate spells as a bonus action to let the fighter spend a HD to regain HP + the bard's spell mod. He then use his Fortifying Chant spell as his action to increase all allies' speed by 10' and give them +2 damage for their next round. The bards cant do this all day though, he'll run out of spell slot if the troll is not soon slain.

In short, cap the number of time a PC can recover in a day, make falling to 0 hp a bad thing without being too punitive for the rest of the day BUT make healing/mitigating actions worthwhile and necessary.

You REALLY dont want to be hit, and when you are, you REALLY want to recover rapidly from that blow, because the next one might drop you.