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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8149143" data-attributes="member: 72555">OD&D had slow combat.Take a name level fighter and have it fight another name level fighter.Compared to a level 1 fighter, the fighter's damage output is at most 2x or 3x higher (mainly caused by everything auto-hitting, while low level fighters missed a lot).  But the fighter's toughness is 9x higher.After name level, the fighter's HP stops going up nearly as fast, and the fighter's damage output increase also slows (going from 80% to 85% accuracy is a smaller bump than going from 30% to 35% accuracy percentage wise).---One thing OD&D did better than later editions was maintain the importance of an attack, instead of inflating numbers.At low levels, an attack is a chance to land a blow.  If it lands, the enemy is likely to be killed.At high levels, an attack is a nearly guaranteed hit, but it takes many hits to drop a foe.Despite damage per hit not moving much, if enemy HP grows inversely with PC accuracy, the number of swings remains unchanged.In later versions of D&D, hit chance stays more level, and number of attacks grows.  Resolving 2 or 3 attacks/round takes 2 to 3 times longer than one attack; the result?  combat that takes the same number of rounds takes longer to evaluate.4e attempted to fix this by scaling player damage, and not accuracy/attack count.  It ended up failing because they didn't go all in; in 4e, your damage didn't scale enough to keep up with monster toughness: one of the only ways to have your damage per round keep up with monster toughness was to ... get more attacks.In addition, rolling 7d12 and adding up all that damage is slow compared to rolling 1d12.  As others have noted, the lower HP totals meant that lower damage expressions and less adding happens.---OD&D did the opposite with spells than with attacks.  In OD&D, the chance of a spell landing dropped as you gained levels (and fought similar level foes), but the impact of a spell landing often grew.Saving throws got better at higher levels; which means "spell accuracy" got worse.Meanwhile, fireballs got bigger.In theory, spell effectiveness (in fractions of enemy toughess) times accuracy remained relatively level.For both spells and weapons, low level foes became auto-hit and auto-kill.But against high level foes weapon attacks auto-hit and did attrition damage.Against high level foes, spell attacks had a low chance to hit, but could end a fight.  Damage spells (fireball) would deal attrition-ish damage (the enemy would save against the damage, taking half, with increasing likelihood).---5e is sort of a middle ground between 3e and 4e and OD&D.  Attack counts go up modestly, accuracy goes up modestly, and damage per hit goes up modestly.Big monsters tend to have legendary saves and high save checks, making save-or-lose spells less effective (like OD&D).The numbers are bigger, so you have to add up more dice.The greater number of taps (or attack attempts) to kill creatures, and the greater number of dice per tap, slows things down.---I suspect, but am not certain, that the "name level" loss of HD and going to static HP per level aligns with when (relative) accuracy stops giving as large a boost to damage per round.---Now, if the above is the case, how would I OD&D 5e?  Note that this may involve changing encounter difficulty.1) Replace extra attack(x).  Now it is weapon master(x).Weapon Master:When take the attack action, roll an additional d20.  You can replace your attack roll with it.  If your weapon hits, it deals an extra weapon damage die.You can instead choose to cleave.  Make a single weapon attack targeting 2 creatures in range; any creature hit takes the same damage.Fighter gets Weapon Master upgrades; they deal more +2/+3[W] and roll extra +2d20/+3d20 and let you cleave 3 or 4 targets.This should be faster to resolve than extra attack.  As a bonus, it makes the weakest fighter subclass (champion) more fun.I haven't run the numbers on what it does to DPR.  But it isn't obviously better/worse.  I do like this however, I should run the numbers.2) Give everyone (including monsters) full (or maybe half) proficiency bonus to saves.  If you have proficiency in a save, add an extra 1/2 or full proficiency. (make spells less accurate).3) Scale down monster HP to account for the reduction in damage.4) Rescale cantrips a bit (saves get harder to land, making the attack ones better).5) Compensate casters for the fact that save spells are harder to land somehow.  Not sure how.</blockquote>

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