Hardcore Basic D&D - Input Needed

[DaedalusX51]

First, wow! That's a Looooooot of work. So kudos on that.

Haven't given it a full/thorough read. But really like what I saw.

I would say/recommend/suggest that you could continue to advance level and continue to advance the Proficiency Bonus. The increasing prof bonus can help with handling higher level threats without necessarily "overpowering" the characters or relying on magic items. Also there are a few various class features that use prof. bonus and those getting an occasional bump will help with the advanced level feel without having to add more features and more HD and more , more, more. I agree 5e can be a bit too much over too many levels.I've never been a fan of the "I can't have a 'dead' level! wah wah. bad design. wah wah. how pointless." So this looks like it could be a ton of fun.

I'm noooot 100% on making druids only Forest Gnomes. I might have made them a "subclass" of Half-elf. Or, rather, make the Half-elf the druid and make the bard a potential subclass thereof. Go back to 1e.

As for your Monk conundrum...in addition to being out of PHB classes to use...if you want to go back to a D&D race-as-class type game (but are including gnomes, half-elves, half-orcs, dragonborn and tieflings) I might suggest using Rakasta.

I know Tabaxi are in that new Volo's guy for monster characters. Not sure if rakasta are. But they could be easily skinned from tabaxi (HA! Skinning a cat...I crack me up). So, that was my first thought there. Go backs back to "Expert," instead of "Basic," but I think you could get away with it.

Thanks! I agree about the Forest Gnome Druid. I had trouble fitting that one in there. I can probably just make the Rock Gnome Illusionist just Gnome Illusionist and add another Elven like race.

 

[Staccat0]

I kinda wish they had built 5e around levels 1-10 or so and did a second "Advanced D&D" set for levels 11-20.

I'm curious to look this over!

 

[schnee]

Man, you really did work the holy hell out of this. Glancing through, it looks really thorough and thoughtful.

What's funny is that along the way of re-creating some Basic stuff, you re-introduced AD&D 'Name' levels. (In that game, characters get 1-3 HP per level after that, depending on which class, but you get it.)

I think you also fixed a whole bunch of 'linear fighter quadratic wizard' just by lopping off all those spells completely.

This seems like a great way to get a gritty 'Greyhawk' style game. No ultra-gods roaming around, just a bunch of relative equals that can still be felled by a horde of low power beasties.

Question: what is your rule regarding magic items? Do they work identically now, with the limits on attunement and such? If those are still there, then this creates a really awesome dynamic - there is no way for a character group to become fully optimal and invulnerable, so I could see a lot more re-shuffling in the power players of the world.

 

[dave2008]

I purposefully wrote them so that they didn't reference the races directly without it also making sense for the class itself.
I realize many people don't like that restriction, so I made as optional as possible.

I noticed that,

 

[S'mon]

I've not seen any problem with playing after level 10 that didn't already appear by about level 6 (mostly, enemies having so many hp that combats drag). The only problem with Tiers 3 & 4 (lvl 11-20) is that the encounter-building system doesn't work; but I never used it anyway. There is a slight issue around groups of ca CR 8 or so monsters providing easy fights & too much XP to ca 12th level PCs, but not a major one. GM can always reduce XP awards that look excessive.

In general if you run levels 11-20 as if it were AD&D, with hordes of giants & demons etc, it works fine. It lacks the major problems of 3e/Pathfinder.

 

[DaedalusX51]

Man, you really did work the holy hell out of this. Glancing through, it looks really thorough and thoughtful.

What's funny is that along the way of re-creating some Basic stuff, you re-introduced AD&D 'Name' levels. (In that game, characters get 1-3 HP per level after that, depending on which class, but you get it.)

I think you also fixed a whole bunch of 'linear fighter quadratic wizard' just by lopping off all those spells completely.

This seems like a great way to get a gritty 'Greyhawk' style game. No ultra-gods roaming around, just a bunch of relative equals that can still be felled by a horde of low power beasties.

Question: what is your rule regarding magic items? Do they work identically now, with the limits on attunement and such? If those are still there, then this creates a really awesome dynamic - there is no way for a character group to become fully optimal and invulnerable, so I could see a lot more re-shuffling in the power players of the world.

i didn't plan to change the attunement rules, but it really comes down to playtesting to find out what feels right at later levels.

 

[steeldragons]

OO! If you're going to take schnee's suggestion of using this for a Greyhawk style game, might I suggest VALLEY ELVES as your new Druid race!

 

[Gadget]

I'm not sure I'd put Eldritch Knights as High Elves. Fey'locks or Bards seem to be a lot more more, well, fey flavored to me, though not as martial as the Eldritch Knight.

 

[Dausuul]

Are you familiar with E6? It was a system somebody came up with for 3E which limited PCs to levels 1-6, with feats being granted in lieu of levels once you hit the cap. Partly it was to avoid the insanity of high-level 3E, but the reasons you cite here were also factors. You might want to have a look at that for inspiration.

I don't have time to go through the whole thing right now, but I like what I see on a quick glance. At the same time, I find myself wondering... wasn't bounded accuracy supposed to solve these same issues? If it is failing, why is it failing? (From where I'm standing, the biggest issue is that monster attack bonuses are too low, but that may be an artifact of my present campaign where three out of four PCs have AC 19+.) Not that I feel you should abandon the project, I just want to dig a little more into the reason the project is necessary in the first place.

Also, bonus points for melding race with class. As a guy who cut his teeth on the Red Box, that just makes me happy.

 

[TwoSix]

I like those fighting styles you've added quite a bit. I'll be borrowing.