Level Up (A5E) What are your common house rules?

Distracted DM said:

I don't think that's Cure Wounds' fault- I think Healing Word is too powerful given 5e14/24 RAW. A5E fixes this a bit since dropping to 0 gives a level of fatigue, but I still think that if Healing Word has to stick around, it should be a touch spell.

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I can't agree with you on this. I think being able to quickly heal someone up off the ground at range is very much in keeping with the heroic fantasy of 5e/a5e. It's only a d4+spellcasting mod at the base - if the target doesn't immediately take the opportunity to get out of there (which likely sacrifices a useful position and/or provokes AOOs) and/or take some other kind of preventative action like getting more healing or casting a protective spell (both of which consume additional resources) they're probably going right back down anyway.

Timespike said:

I can't agree with you on this. I think being able to quickly heal someone up off the ground at range is very much in keeping with the heroic fantasy of 5e/a5e. It's only a d4+spellcasting mod at the base - if the target doesn't immediately take the opportunity to get out of there (which likely sacrifices a useful position and/or provokes AOOs) and/or take some other kind of preventative action like getting more healing or casting a protective spell (both of which consume additional resources) they're probably going right back down anyway.

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I'd really like an option for the fantasy to be a little less heroic personally.

Micah Sweet said:

I'd really like an option for the fantasy to be a little less heroic personally.

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Options are fine, but insisting the base system be changed so everyone's game gets less heroic doesn't seem like an ideal solution to me.

That said, I do think there's probably a market for a pre-made set of tweaks to the system you can use for a nastier/grittier/deadlier/more desperate game for those who want it. Were someone to make that as a third-party release, they would probably do reasonably well, sales-wise.

Timespike said:

Options are fine, but insisting the base system be changed so everyone's game gets less heroic doesn't seem like an ideal solution to me.

That said, I do think there's probably a market for a pre-made set of tweaks to the system you can use for a nastier/grittier/deadlier/more desperate game for those who want it. Were someone to make that as a third-party release, they would probably do reasonably well, sales-wise.

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Every time D&D made a new edition they changed the base system so everyone's game gets more heroic. I don't see the difference.

I think the heroism peaked at 4e and at least dipped for 5e. A5E also has less-fogiving rules about survival and massive damage, lower player ability scores overall, and removed a fair bit of the "nova potential" that came with things like the O5E versions of divine smite, the coffeelock, and so on.

There's also a bit of tension between "more options and crunch" and "fast and deadly." If PC death is on the table every time someone reaches for a d20, character creation should be fast to avoid the players going "eff this." And in a system like A5E, it's not quick. Even a first-level character can take an hour. And when character creation takes an hour, people are going to want to keep that PC around for a while, understandably, because of the amount of metagame work they've had to put in.

Now, I get that there are some that will say that's exactly why the character creation should be simpler, at which point my answer is that what you are looking for is Shadowdark, OSE, Swords & Wizardry, Castles & Crusades, or any of the other well-regarded OSR games with large followings.

But if you and your group want A5E's granularity and customization mixed with swift and unpredictable death and you have the patience for the repeated character creation doing that requires, that's a niche implementation, but it's not the first time I've heard it, and that's also why I wasn't being sarcastic about a toolkit for a more nasty and lethal version of 5e/O5E probably being a commercially-viable product. There's clearly at least a small-but-vocal core of people looking to do that style of play here on the forums, which means there are probably more out there in the general customer sphere.

Timespike said:

I think the heroism peaked at 4e and at least dipped for 5e. A5E also has less-fogiving rules about survival and massive damage, lower player ability scores overall, and removed a fair bit of the "nova potential" that came with things like the O5E versions of divine smite, the coffeelock, and so on.

But I wasn't being sarcastic about a toolkit for a more nasty and lethal version of 5e/O5E probably being a commercially-viable product. Runehammer Games has sold many a copy of 5e Hardcore Mode (over 5,000, in fact, based on the Adamantine metal badge they have). It's not my preferred style of play, but there's clearly some significant demand. There's also the entire OSR for folks who want to do the "death awaits in every corner" style of play.

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None of that, however, (except the comment about 4e, which I feel is debatable) speaks against my point that D&D has consistently been changed, for everyone by the way you're using the term, to be more heroic, and you appear to be arguing that's fine while condemning the opposite. The fact that alternatives like the OSR exist is beside that point (as much as I love the OSR). Both directions are a matter of taste IMO, and to me it's either ok to change the focus of the base rules in either direction, or not ok for both.

Micah Sweet said:

None of that, however, (except the comment about 4e, which I feel is debatable) speaks against my point that D&D has consistently been changed, for everyone by the way you're using the term, to be more heroic, and you appear to be arguing that's fine while condemning the opposite. The fact that alternatives like the OSR exist is beside that point (as much as I love the OSR). Both directions are a matter of taste IMO, and to me it's either ok to change the focus of the base rules in either direction, or not ok for both.

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I think you may actually be missing a large part of my own point: I am enough of a third-party publishing cheerleader than I sat down and hammered together a lengthy blog post on getting started at it a while back. One of the things I most want to see is more, and more kinds of support for A5E because that keeps the system vibrant and alive.

I am clearly not the person to write a high lethality, OSR-style set of house rules for A5E. You, Austin, and some of the other folks who want deadlier, more desperate games would be far more suited to it than me.

I'm not really interested in debating the power level of various editions of TSR/WotC RPG. I am interested in more third-party support for A5E existing. And you have identified something (indirectly) that none of the rest of us in the 3PP sphere are working on.

I also think a first-party large-scale nerf of the system writ large is probably not in the cards, but I might be wrong; that'd be a question for Morrus.

Timespike said:

I think the heroism peaked at 4e and at least dipped for 5e.

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So here's the thing: sort of, but also not. What determines heroism? In my mind, the monsters' capabilities vs the PCs.

5e characters can punch way above their weight class, and the difficulty of many monsters came down.

In 4e and ancient red dragon was a level 30 solo monster. In 5e, it's a CR24 monster with legendaries.

The 4e ancient red was a much more dangerous opponent, and the party had to be a higher level to deal with it. Even the Elder Red dragon, level 22 solo, would require a high-teens party to handle it.

In 5e, a tier 3 party could take on an ancient red dragon.

Nothing wrong with having a gritty set of optional rules. Massive damage, Healing Word as touch rather than ranged, etc. Likewise, it is good to have a heroic set of optional rules with healing potions on bonus actions, 5E 2024 style healing spells, etc. The two are not necessarily exclusive, you could possibly use both the gritty and heroic rule options at the same time.

In general, I have found that characters survive better in 5E D&D and A5E due to the 3 death saving throws being required to kill them, rather than just negative damage beyond -9 HP in 3E D&D and earlier. (I forget 4E D&D as we didn't play it for that long - the errata rate in 4E due to lack of proof-reading and lack of play testing was driving me nuts.) I think that we've had a couple of character deaths due to massive damage in A5E, and one case where the DM was kind enough to have the Bugbear strangling my level 1 character incapacitate rather than kill her ... Other than that, our survival rate has been pretty good, but there's been a number of almost 50/50 chances where I have expected my character to go down or die (one of those being a successful save vs. massive damage from Meteor Swarm when we were level 9).

Yeah, alternate rules give options to tweak and adjust a game to preferred tone; using both hypothetical sets like that could potentially give you feel comparable to something like Die Hard.