D&D General Has anyone run a PHB only table?

[Greenstone.Walker]

You will quickly learn that players don't want "what's in Xanathars" or "what's in Tasha's" - they want 'Whatever you've disallowed."

No-one will want to play genasi, right up to the point where you remove them from the allowed list, and then three players will complain, 'But I wanted to be a genasi!"

PHB only is fine. I've run games that were just PHB and SCAG when other books were available, and apart from constant complaining (sheesh, every single session, "you should let us play Z" arrgghh) the game ran fine.

I would suggest looking at the Revised Ranger though, as the PHB ranger is a little bit crap.

I'm contemplating my next D&D 5E game being PHB-only, no-optional-rules. Just to see what its like.

 

[Burnside]

First 5E campaign I ran, in 2017, was Lost Mine of Phandelver using only the PHB. After we finished LMoP we continued with a few AL adventures through level 7 or 8. It worked totally fine. Actually, 3 out of the four characters could have been created using only the Basic Rules PDF:

Human Fighter (Champion)
High Elf Wizard (Evoker)
Human Cleric (Life)
Wood Elf Rogue (Arcane Trickster)

As I recall, the only issue is that by level 5 the Champion Fighter was getting a bit bored with how simple his mechanics were. Everyone else was totally happy with their characters.

 

[aco175]

Our current table is almost entirely PHB-only. Other sources were allowed at character creation, but we all ended up going PHB subclasses anyway. Devotion paladin, hunter ranger, arcane trickster rogue, light cleric.

We've dipped into other books for the odd spell or feat from time to time (and the DM has never limited himself to core book materials), but it's functioned pretty well on the whole.

This is about what my group does. My brother is the only one that may go outside the PHB.

 

[humble minion]

This is about what my group does. My brother is the only one that may go outside the PHB.

Mind you, my other group is a lot different, and we have exactly one PC who is of a PHB race and one who is playing a PHB subclass, but that's cos it's a bit more CharOp-focused and half the group chose flying PC races.

The PHB material gives you a good baseline for covering most of the most obvious fantasy archetypes. For a first campaign, it's really all you need (although the Xanathar's spells are really handy to flesh things out too).

I think that for my next PC I'll go to expansion books. Maybe an undead pact warlock, or a stars druid, or a reborn storm herald barbarian, or an echo knight fighter, or dhampir shadow monk. But I could just as happily play a wizard straight from the PHB. I suspect the PHB only starts to feel really limiting once you've gotten through a couple of campaigns using it.

 

[Mistwell]

Long story short: I'm running a nine session campaign. Each session is two hours. PCs level after each session. And combat after level three has a tendency to take quite a while. I know all the tricks to making combat go faster. But, it is not me I am concerned with. We need time for story and region building. I believe this will help some of our players be more streamlined (both for levelling and during combat), and offer a little less disparity between PCs, which in turn, will help me, as it is a "sand-boxy" campaign where opponents will need to be adjusted rather quickly.

So, does anyone have any recent experience with a PHB only table? IF so, how did it go? Pros and cons?

Thanks.

Yes. I mean, we ran a playtest-only campaign before the game even came out, and then a long standing PHB only campaign before supplements came out.

It works fine. It's what the game was most playtested to do. I'd say Tasha's fixes some oddities with the PHB but overall PHB only works just peachy.

 

[delericho]

So, does anyone have any recent experience with a PHB only table? IF so, how did it go? Pros and cons?

Sure. It runs absolutely fine.

There are two issues you're likely to face: firstly, there are some players who absolutely must build their characters with something that is not in the PHB, and will fight you every step of the way. (There are also a very small minority of players who will find that they absolutely must create a character who violates any restriction you apply to character creation. Somehow, that applies even if you say "anything goes". Heaven help you if you have that guy at your table!)

The other is that most of the classes only have a few subclasses (and Sorcerer is particularly bad if you don't care for wild magic!). So after a campaign or two you're likely to find the available options rather limiting. Indeed, this is the only reason I'm now not running "core rules only" - I've felt the need to allow subclasses from other books to widen the available options.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

So, does anyone have any recent experience with a PHB only table? IF so, how did it go? Pros and cons?

I'd say that 90%+ of the campaigns I've run and participated in have been PHB only. Not through any nefarious scheme but due to lack of funds for some of the players, the lack of will to read another book (so many other things to do!) and the lack of enthusiasm of reading a book online (DNDBeyond. I have a Master Sub and own everything... even though I seldom play D&D 5e... I may have a problem). (Ha)

They've all gone swimmingly. What matters most is just player/dm buy in. And being completely transparent up front: "This is a PHB only campaign." Someone will still probably make some sort of comment but I think it's important that the players know what to expect and can set their expectations accordingly.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Most of everything is already in the PHB, it's fine.

Unless you're about to give PHB Beastmaster Ranger to someone who doesn't know what they're getting into, just noooo.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Most of everything is already in the PHB, it's fine.

Unless you're about to give PHB Beastmaster Ranger to someone who doesn't know what they're getting into, just noooo.

Although I'd say that if a player is at a table that isn't really full of power players during combat... I have found that the Beastmaster can actually be viable with just allowing the Ranger's beast to take its own action (rather than the Ranger giving up theirs), and you "level up" the beast every once in a while by increasing its stats (a few HD, a bonus to AC, maybe adding a special ability taken from a different "more powerful" animal.)

Sure, the Ranger still won't be near the top in terms of "RAW POWAH!!!"... but my Ranger player never felt like they were running behind anyone else more often than not. She was still the strongest "at-range DPR" character in the party (at a table of players who are admittedly not min-maxers when building characters) and while she wouldn't use her animal companion as a tank and rushing it headlong into battle with the other front-liners... it did become a viable shield to her character by engaging with any enemies that got past the front line and went after her.

I don't know how viable the BM would be if the companion WAS asked to be a front-liner alongside a melee Ranger build (and you might have to "level" the creature at the same time the Ranger character levels up and poke the Ranger player to use their available spells to buff their companion rather than use the spells on other things to do so)... but at least the archery BM Ranger that played at my table for one of our campaigns never felt bad about her choice (with a little assist from me to help the companion out.)

 

[TwoSix]

Long story short: I'm running a nine session campaign. Each session is two hours. PCs level after each session. And combat after level three has a tendency to take quite a while. I know all the tricks to making combat go faster. But, it is not me I am concerned with. We need time for story and region building. I believe this will help some of our players be more streamlined (both for levelling and during combat), and offer a little less disparity between PCs, which in turn, will help me, as it is a "sand-boxy" campaign where opponents will need to be adjusted rather quickly.

So, does anyone have any recent experience with a PHB only table? IF so, how did it go? Pros and cons?

Thanks.

I don't know, "PHB only" seems pretty orthogonal to the main goal of having the players use streamlined and efficient characters. Just ask them to make simple, efficient characters! The best way to do that is to not have characters who are focused on spellcasting.