D&D 5E (2014) Going from 1st to 5th Edition

[Bolares]

About the modules thing... While a lot of people complain about them I'm here, hopping for a Eberron adventure path....

 

[Azzy]

Milestones feels so much better to me, I'm curious how it feels to someone who is used to XP their entire gaming experience.

As a DM, I'm interested in using milestones and tried with one adventure. However, my players didn't seem to care for it.

 

[Aging Bard]

The mechanics of 1e and 5e are very different in effect. In 1e, your success probabilities all increase with level, often by very different degrees per class. Fighters hit twice as often as magic-users and thieves in 1e melee. Bounded accuracy flattens success chances across all classes. Ability scores in 1e mostly matter to class-specific tasks, while driving all saving throws in 5e (which are only class and level driven in 1e). In 5e, there is much hit point and damage scaling by level across all classes, whereas in 1e physical damage scaling is rare and magic is the main source, producing the linear warriors/quadratic wizards phenomenon. The result is that 1e characters play very differently from one another, while 5e characters are a bit more homogenized. This is understandable given the current focus of wanting all characters to shine in combat. In 1e, sometimes your character had nothing to add, and sometimes they were key.

I'm sure to have got some details wrong, so feel free to correct me!

I like 1e a lot, but I'm not going to call it superior to 5e. By popularity, it certainly is not. They are just quite different.

 

[Blue Orange]

I'm not big into 'superior'--it's more like different flavors of ice cream, or maybe different formulations of the same flavor.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Actually with the linear (more or less) increase in spell slots and the linear increase in damage without a level cap, it's pretty close to a literal linear warriors/quadratic wizards...except that the tail-off in THAC0 and HP makes it almost a logarithmic warriors, quadratic wizards situation in some regards.

 

[LoganRan]

I'm not big into 'superior'--it's more like different flavors of ice cream, or maybe different formulations of the same flavor.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Actually with the linear (more or less) increase in spell slots and the linear increase in damage without a level cap, it's pretty close to a literal linear warriors/quadratic wizards...except that the tail-off in THAC0 and HP makes it almost a logarithmic warriors, quadratic wizards situation in some regards.

I emphasized "logarithmic" because I have often felt that this would be the best paradigm for all character advancement.

Generally, it seems that many gamers feel that D&D's "sweet spot" is at levels 3-10 (or 3-12 at most). Your characters are powerful enough (i.e. have enough hit points) that they are not dropping like flies in every combat encounter but haven't reached the point where they have so many options and powerful abilities that the DM is hard pressed to run interesting and manageable combat encounters.

If I were re-designing D&D using the 5E framework, I would have 1st level in my game be equivalent to 3rd level in 5E while 20th level in my game would be equivalent to about 11th level in 5E.

I think the biggest obstacle to doing this would be finding ways to not annoy players who despise the notion of "dead levels" as it might be necessary to have a few levels where the "only" upgrade a character got was an additional hit die worth of hit points.

Btw, this would achieve a personal goal of lowering the magic in D&D as the highest spell level possible in this framework would be a 6th level spell that you would only get at 20th level of character advancement.

 

[Bolares]

As a DM, I'm interested in using milestones and tried with one adventure. However, my players didn't seem to care for it.

Mine are absolutelly used to it by now. Xp is never mentioned in the table, and every player does stuff because they want it, not because they think that's what will award them XP

 

[Voadam]

About the modules thing... While a lot of people complain about them I'm here, hopping for a Eberron adventure path....

In 3.5 there was Eyes of the Lich Queen, a well regarded 128 page big module that hits a number of Eberron themes.

There was also a series of loosely connected 32 page adventures that started with the adventure in the 3.5 campaign setting. These were not as well regarded but they can all be found in the WotC Eberron section on DTRPG.

 

[Bolares]

In 3.5 there was Eyes of the Lich Queen, a well regarded 128 page big module that hits a number of Eberron themes.

There was also a series of loosely connected 32 page adventures that started with the adventure in the 3.5 campaign setting. These were not as well regarded but they can all be found in the WotC Eberron section on DTRPG.

Oh, I've already run most of them (either in their entirety or using bits and pieces) and loved most of them. The series also has a very nice 5e conversion on the DM's Guild. But what I was saying is that I'd love a big module, like Tomb of Anihilation or any of the recent releases set in Eberron.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I remember first Banshee wail only dropping to 0 rather outright killing ya. Still fearsome though. Or how ghouls (and many other monsters) paralyse you, yet you can shake it off right by next turn as opposed to being for a MUCH longer period.

 

[Weiley31]

In regards to Energy Drain, I view 5E's Exhaustion as its take on Energy Drain. Sure your not losing levels but imagine getting Exhausted each time your hit by an Undead? It would literally be sapping your vitality away. And since you die at the 6th stack of Exhaustion, that in a way is very scary.