D&D 5E can you do a mega-dungeon in 5th Edition?

[DeJoker]

Characters that get gravely injured could suffer a "wound", a level of exhaustion. The more "wounded" they are, the more exhaustion they have. Taking proper care of a wound upon a long rest and using a hit-die can relieve one level of exhaustion. No more than 1 level can be removed at once.

Exhaustion can also be given to a character who has had insufficient Sleep, Drink, or Food. Levels of exhaustion accrued this way can be taken care of by doing whichever of the 3 activities caused it. Characters can not gain Inspiration while they suffer any levels of exhaustion.

Is Exhaustion with Levels something that is a Standard part of 5th Ed??

And what do you mean by "Gravely Injured"

 

[Slit518]

Is Exhaustion with Levels something that is a Standard part of 5th Ed??

And what do you mean by "Gravely Injured"

Have been KOed, some debilitating injury (as narrated by the DM as a result of a hit, critical, failure, whatever caused the scene, etc...).

And yes, there are 6 levels of Exhaustion that a character can acquire in D&D 5e. The 6th level of Exhaustion's side effect is Death.

 

[DeJoker]

Have been KOed, some debilitating injury (as narrated by the DM as a result of a hit, critical, failure, whatever caused the scene, etc...).

And yes, there are 6 levels of Exhaustion that a character can acquire in D&D 5e. The 6th level of Exhaustion's side effect is Death.

Okay I was hoping for a book and page reference with that question suppose I should have been more specific -- so do you know what book and where in the book that can be found?

 

[dave2008]

I wanted to create a "mega-dungeon", that "felt" like RA or ToEE but utilized 5th RAW as the base system, how would one go about doing that?

Cheers,
J.

Run ToA, I think it qualifies

 

[Tormyr]

Okay I was hoping for a book and page reference with that question suppose I should have been more specific -- so do you know what book and where in the book that can be found?

PHB 291

 

[dave2008]

Okay I was hoping for a book and page reference with that question suppose I should have been more specific -- so do you know what book and where in the book that can be found?

Exhaustion, PHB pg 291 (level 6 may be death, but your hurting pretty bad by level 3)

Lingering Injuries, DMG pg 272

 

[Slit518]

Exhaustion, PHB pg 291 (level 6 may be death, but your hurting pretty bad by level 3)

Lingering Injuries, DMG pg 272

Thank you, me from 2008! I almost forgot about that part in the DMG.

 

[Mistwell]

is it even possible? no, seriously!

of course playing an adventure of walking through a dungeon is of course possible, but running a meg-dungeon (old school style) as it's own self-contained entity. What would need to change in how a dungeon is presented to make it possible? some of the things that I can think of off the top of my head.

- Fast level advancement at low levels vs. old school, slow level advancement and VERY HIGH 1st level mortality
- XP for treasure, vs. milestone and "story" awards based XP. how would encounter design have to change to incorporate milestones and story awards?
- emphasis on "role playing" to earn Inspiration vs. no real way to do that in past editions.
- short and long rests vs. attrition warfare and strategic thinking of "do we enter into 1 more door?" how does a dungeon layout change based on this?
- Easy Player death vs 5th edition where player death is relatively hard (when compared to earlier - pre-4th - editions)
- modern play de-emphasizes Hirelings and torchbearers vs. a ready supply to provide cannon fodder and a HP buffer
- Insta-death traps and deadly encounters (contact poison, save or die) has pretty much gone away.


I wanted to create a "mega-dungeon", that "felt" like RA or ToEE but utilized 5th RAW as the base system, how would one go about doing that?

Cheers,
J.

This is the first thing I did with D&D 5e, during the beta test three years ago. It was rather simple to do. I even included stuck doors requiring a roll to open them. Insta-death traps are easy - you just add them back in. There is nothing in the rules forbidding it or make other things not function well if you add them back in. Same with other aspects.

For rests, I used a lot of wandering monsters. My players had to really seal off a room (and pray they hadn't missed a secret door) to try and attempt a long rest while in the dungeon, or else retreat all the way back out (which itself was risky). My players were quite challenged when waves of skeletons attacked them in the room they were sleeping, particularly since they had no spells left at that point nor turn attempts.

 

[DeJoker]

- Fast level advancement at low levels vs. old school, slow level advancement and VERY HIGH 1st level mortality

Okay 5e advances a bit faster than old school did.. not a big issue with me I never like starting players at less than 3rd level as I look at 3rd level being 1st level of competency and prior to that you are basically still in training and 5e even supports this even more -- however, 5e also seems to lean heavily on multi-classing and they did an okay job of keeping it from being abusive when its done. Lastly I have been in old school mega dungeons and the mortality rate was higher at the mid to high levels than the low levels actually.

- XP for treasure, vs. milestone and "story" awards based XP. how would encounter design have to change to incorporate milestones and story awards?

Okay I never gave XP for treasure as I felt that was its own reward, I did give XP for monsters and things encountered regardless of whether you killed the monsters or not or were truly successful against the "thing" you just partial XP instead of full.

- emphasis on "role playing" to earn Inspiration vs. no real way to do that in past editions.

I like anything that promotes "role" playing as opposed to "roll" playing and we used to give out XP rewards for good role playing

- short and long rests vs. attrition warfare and strategic thinking of "do we enter into 1 more door?" how does a dungeon layout change based on this?

Does it need to? Okay so maybe you have a bit more staying power, but random encounters happen ever so many rounds in most mega-dungeons and a short rest is a lot of rounds to hope you do not get interrupted by a random encounter that spoils the short rest and forget about a long rest unless you can find some secure hidey-hole shack up in -- which there were some in the mega-dungeons I was in and they were great assuming someone else was not already in it and would not let you in.

- Easy Player death vs 5th edition where player death is relatively hard (when compared to earlier - pre-4th - editions)

I do not know, I have seen folks killed in 5th Ed just about as easily as they were killed in the previous editions just a matter of what the encounter is and whether than can run away fast enough

- modern play de-emphasizes Hirelings and torchbearers vs. a ready supply to provide cannon fodder and a HP buffer

That has nothing to do with mechanics and all to do with the GM's style -- personally we did not have many of these torch bearers and things although someone had a war pig once it was the only thing that returned from that adventuring group ... such a sad day but man did we all laugh

- Insta-death traps and deadly encounters (contact poison, save or die) has pretty much gone away.

Yep I did away with things like that a long-long-long time ago... I viewed insta-death as horribly un-fun one roll of the die and well you are rolling up another one seemed kind of lame and some DMs used it too much I preferred to create survivable challenges that had the potential to kill the entire party depending upon how they chose to encounter it -- to me that is adventuring fun and most of my players seemed to agree there were folks that died but most often it was their own fault rather than a single bad die roll

On a positive note (perhaps) I plan to be starting a sort of mega-dungeon game soon -- I sort of because the entire "dungeon" is not underground some of it is above ground but the local makes the entire region basically a dungeon. And some of you old school players might recognize some of the elements that I will be sprinkling into it -- but then be perhaps surprised by its implementation aka -- just because it looked like a duck and sounded like a duck does not necessarily mean it was a duck

Hope to see many of you come join in once I get it up and going.

 

[JmanTheDM]

Hey Everyone.

just to be clear, this is a 2 year old thread that has recently been Necro'd. not sure why. So there is no confusion. I have been happily running an "old school" mega-dungeon using 5th edition rules for over a year now. I am running Rappan Athuk.

5th Edition is perfectly fine for Mega Dungeon play.
I stand by some of my earlier comments that 5th edition is *NOT* good (as-is) to simulate 1st edition or BECMI style "old-school" play... however, as I have been learning, some of the old school elements are not needed, and for those that I do want in my game - I've added (especially ramping up the out-of-combat deadliness and re-introducing insta-death, no save style traps).

so, as far as I'm concerned, this 2 year old thread is no longer relevant for my own curiosity, as I've done it, been there, and experienced what I was asking about.

but good conversation, good comments, and some decent advice!

Cheers,
J.