D&D General Help Me Build the D&D Game I Want to Run

[Reynard]

I would love to look into AiME but no one I know has a copy, it isn't in bookstores, and I don't like buying a new system/ add-on without previewing it first.

@Reynard, I am working on a L12-variant that I'll share when it is done. I don't know if it will fit the bill completely, but it might give you more ideas.

Judging from your statement about bards, you might need more such as heavy spell list pruning.

First I'm going to try C&C with the same adventure I am running for the pared down 5e.

 

[DND_Reborn]

First I'm going to try C&C with the same adventure I am running for the pared down 5e.

That's cool. I expect it should run fine I would think. I've looked into C&C a bit but a lot of it just reminds me more of 1E--sort of a OSR/5E blend. But I've never played it, so I'm interested to see what you think.

 

[Mepher]

Castles & Crusades actually interests me a lot. I picked up the Hardcover PHB a few months back. With everything going on they are giving away the latest pdf of the PHB. Check it out, its a nice mix of 2E & 5E imo.

Troll Lord Games • Makers of Castles & Crusades and many other RPGs

Troll Lord Games

www.trolllord.com

 

[Mepher]

That's cool. I expect it should run fine I would think. I've looked into C&C a bit but a lot of it just reminds me more of 1E--sort of a OSR/5E blend. But I've never played it, so I'm interested to see what you think.

Well you have to remember that C&C came out before 5E was released. It filled a niche for people that wanted something more than AD&D. 5E took a lot of their thunder but for people like me, it's a great alternative. Gives the players some more options (limited cantrips, more classes) without the over the top numbers that 5E brought into combat.

 

[Lanefan]

I wouldn't say "most" of the XP was from treasure--maybe half overall would be my best estimate. But that depends entirely on the game and the DM's comparison of XP to gold (what ratio) and what monsters you are looking at.

Years ago a poster here named @Quasqueton did an exhaustive analysis of available xp via gold and monsters in many of the classic 1e modules. I don't know if any of those old threads exist in archived form any more, but if memory serves the ratio of xp from treasure to xp from monsters was often much higher than 1:1, with sometimes as much as 80% of the available xp coming from treasure!

He also found that if one used xp-for-treasre as written the level advance rate per adventure in 1e wasn't much different from that in 3e, which came as a complete surprise to me.

Regardless, the pace was slower when it came to leveling IME due to how much was needed.

It's even slower if you take out xp for treasure completely, as we did ages ago (and 2e did later).

 

[Ovinomancer]

Late in, and up front I'm going to say that the resource tracking heavy game you're asking for isn't my cuppa, but I've done some things along these lines that may help you get where you want without major overhauls.

I ran (for about a year) a hexcrawl exploration in 5e. I wanted to focus the game on the risk of exploring and travel. To do this, I did not use the gritty long rest times, but I did alter how rests work by changing all healing to hit die use and altering hit die recovery times. Paired with requirements to be able to rest, this created a need for safe bases and risk between those bases and required having necessary resources.

The off the top of me head recreation would be something like this:

Short rest: 1 hour. Must have reasonably safe area (can be fortified or has active watches without immediate danger). Requires rations. Requires water. Can spend hit die to recover hitpoints. Regain short rest abilities.

Long rest: overnight. Must have reasonably safe area (can be fortified or has active watches without immediate danger). Requires rations. Requires water. Requires fire. Requires 6 hours sleep. Can spend hit die to recover hitpoints. Will recover 1 level exhaustion. Will recover long rest abilities. Recover 1/2 hit dice.

Safe rest: 1 day. Must have safe area with accomodations. Requires daily upkeep costs. Regain all hit points. Regain daily and short rest abilities. Recover 1 level exhaustion. Recover all hit dice.

This is a somewhat limited shift, but the changes to what's required to rest makes a big difference, and the slow bleed of hit dice over a few days in the wilderness adds up without becoming a single bad encounter crippling (like the gritty rest can do). It focuses play more on the exploration without going overboard or requiring huge changes. If the PCs think a fire is too dangerous, well, then no long rest. This really makes rangers in their home terrain shine, although, oddly, I didn't have a ranger in this game. I have a ranger in my Sigil Planescape game. Players, go figure.

 

[Lanefan]

@Ovinomancer - good call on adding the third rest type, that being "safe rest".

The only change I'd make there would be to add "if possible" to "requires fire" for a long rest, as there'll arise many situations where a party can safely long-rest but not be able to safely make a fire e.g. in a sheltered ice cave, or not have access to anything that will burn e.g. in a desolate plant-free wasteland.

 

[Ovinomancer]

@Ovinomancer - good call on adding the third rest type, that being "safe rest".

The only change I'd make there would be to add "if possible" to "requires fire" for a long rest, as there'll arise many situations where a party can safely long-rest but not be able to safely make a fire e.g. in a sheltered ice cave, or not have access to anything that will burn e.g. in a desolate plant-free wasteland.

Ah, yes, thank you. I thought I had a fourth rest in there, the night's rest. Same as long rest but no fire needed and no hit dice recovery, though you can spend them.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Years ago a poster here named @Quasqueton did an exhaustive analysis of available xp via gold and monsters in many of the classic 1e modules. I don't know if any of those old threads exist in archived form any more, but if memory serves the ratio of xp from treasure to xp from monsters was often much higher than 1:1, with sometimes as much as 80% of the available xp coming from treasure!

He also found that if one used xp-for-treasre as written the level advance rate per adventure in 1e wasn't much different from that in 3e, which came as a complete surprise to me.

It's even slower if you take out xp for treasure completely, as we did ages ago (and 2e did later).

Well, from my own experience and research, it was overall about 50-50 for monsters vs. treasure for XP distribution. The default for an encounter where the monster matched the party in strength was 1:1, and the vast majority of encounters are not even matches, so awards were more typically 3:1, 5:1, or less (gp:xp).

So, advancement was slower in AD&D. If your table differed, that is fine. In 5E roughly 2-3 sessions per level is expected to be "the norm" (DMG, p. 261) and I have found that isn't far off for our main game. In AD&D, it was typically twice as long (minimum 4-8 sessions per level). Of course, every table has their own pace, so I am just speaking for my own experience.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, from my own experience and research, it was overall about 50-50 for monsters vs. treasure for XP distribution. The default for an encounter where the monster matched the party in strength was 1:1, and the vast majority of encounters are not even matches, so awards were more typically 3:1, 5:1, or less (gp:xp).

Depends if you're running published modules stock (which is what Quasqueton was looking at), or whether you're tweaking them to reduce trasure and-or increase monsters, or whether you're running homemade adventures.

It also depends how much of the treasure is actually found compared with what's available, ditto how many monsters are fought compared to the complete roster in the adventure. Wandering monsters present another headache as every DM handles them differently, particularly in frequency of occurrence.

So, advancement was slower in AD&D. If your table differed, that is fine. In 5E roughly 2-3 sessions per level is expected to be "the norm" (DMG, p. 261) and I have found that isn't far off for our main game. In AD&D, it was typically twice as long (minimum 4-8 sessions per level). Of course, every table has their own pace, so I am just speaking for my own experience.

This didn't look at advancement by session counts, only adventure counts e.g. G1, G2 and G3 would be three adventures. Every table is going to take a different number of sessions to get through any given adventure, thus comparing adventure to adventure is more valid.

Also, he was comparing 1e to 3e; this was begun in times before 4e had come out (never mind 5e!), and people were remarking on 3e's (to them) astonishingly fast level advancement compared to 2e.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Depends if you're running published modules stock (which is what Quasqueton was looking at), or whether you're tweaking them to reduce trasure and-or increase monsters, or whether you're running homemade adventures.

It also depends how much of the treasure is actually found compared with what's available, ditto how many monsters are fought compared to the complete roster in the adventure. Wandering monsters present another headache as every DM handles them differently, particularly in frequency of occurrence.

This didn't look at advancement by session counts, only adventure counts e.g. G1, G2 and G3 would be three adventures. Every table is going to take a different number of sessions to get through any given adventure, thus comparing adventure to adventure is more valid.

Also, he was comparing 1e to 3e; this was begun in times before 4e had come out (never mind 5e!), and people were remarking on 3e's (to them) astonishingly fast level advancement compared to 2e.

We played published modules (as is) as well as a lot of homebrew stuff. We followed the treasure tables for monsters for loot, neither adding nor subtracting from the results. When I DMed AD&D (which was most of the time), it was always "let the dice fall as the may". If I rolled up a vorpal sword for a Giant Beaver a party of 3rd-level characters defeated, they got a vorpal sword. Sometimes that was a huge boon in xp (such an item was worth 10,000 XP after all!), as even divided by the 5 characters would be enough alone to be half the XP they need to level!

Either way, as I have said repeatedly, awarded XP for treasure was typically maybe half (at best) of the total XP accumulated. Some times it was more, most times it was less. Now, it is subjective to the DM. If they want faster leveling, the award treasure at a higher ratio, using 1-1 as a baseline for an average encounter instead of something hard. I typically awarded 1 XP per 5 gp recovered for the average (think moderate in 5E) encounter.

As far as the per session comment, it has nothing to do with adventures. I am simply talking about the rate in playing time at which characters in 5E level compared to AD&D. Of course it varies from group to group. In 5E the suggested rate is a level per 2-3 sessions (4-hour), in AD&D we would be lucky to level in twice that time. In our CoS game we made level 6 in only 8 sessions (granted, we accomplished a lot), but that is pretty fast and was simply by the XP awarded for defeating what we encountered.

In the long run, if you disagree with my experiences and they differed from yours that is fine and just say so, but what someone else did as their analysis is immaterial to me and my experiences.

 

[Mepher]

This thread seems to have turned into an OSR vs 5E thread with some people outright trashing on OSR style of play. The OP started this thread asking for help making 5E into a slower progression style game more focused on exploration with the players gaining power over time. OSR games keep coming up because that was more in line with their focus and style of play. AiME also appears to be similar to that from the little I have read of it. I came to this thread because I was interested in a similar style and am looking for some suggestions to house rule my game to more fit that style.

So back on topic, how can we accomplish that style of play with 5E? Telling us to play another game or bashing on a style of play you may not prefer isn't helpful. I personally am going to try out the revised healing that others have discussed here using a 3 tier rest system (Short/Long/Full), with Short allowing you to spend HD, Long allowing you to spend HD while also regaining 1/2, and the Full rest needed full accommodations but healing to full while also recovering all HD.

I am also making changes to the Light Cantrip. I am either going to return it to a 1st level spell like it used to be or, more likely, making it into a concentration cantrip.

On the topic of the recent posts I would like to make a change to the xp tables. I think 5E xp is ridiculously fast at all levels. The best 5E campaign I ever ran was Waterdeep: Dragonheist. I ended up adding a ton of homebrew content to it and the main story ended up taking 22 sessions. The players were level 5 at the end of that. I used milestone/story based xp and kept their levels in line with the main story. I have read posts about some people completing Dragonheist in as little as 6-8 sessions. For a group of players to reach 5th level in 6-8 sessions just seems absurd to me. Not once during that campaign did anyone ever ask when they were going to level. It just felt right. That pace is still faster than our old AD&D campaigns but it's much better than 5E RAW. I can always continue without xp but I am curious what others have done to slow down progression.

 

[DND_Reborn]

For the next 5E game I am running, I am doing 5000 xp for level 2, and an extra 5000 cumulative per level after that:

Now, that is probably too slow for what you are looking for and I have to talk more with my players as they might want to go somewhat faster. But to make things simple for yourself, I would just award half XP all the time. Or stick with milestone so you completely control the pace. Obviously there is no end to the way you can do it.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Also, my next game I am limiting it to level 12 (I extended the table for the other post in case someone wants to use it to go to level 20). By my calculations, for a part of 4-5, that is about the maximum where higher CRs (roughly 20ish) can still be a deadly solo BBEG. Anything past 12th, especially with feats, MCing, etc. starts to make the encounter hard, then moderate, and eventually even easy.

So, one of the things I want is for solo BBEGs to be a threat again, even near the end of the game so to say.

 

[Reynard]

Also, my next game I am limiting it to level 12 (I extended the table for the other post in case someone wants to use it to go to level 20). By my calculations, for a part of 4-5, that is about the maximum where higher CRs (roughly 20ish) can still be a deadly solo BBEG. Anything past 12th, especially with feats, MCing, etc. starts to make the encounter hard, then moderate, and eventually even easy.

So, one of the things I want is for solo BBEGs to be a threat again, even near the end of the game so to say.

Solos in 5e just don't work in 5e given how easily PCs can nova their high damage abilities. Minions to harry, block and occupy are essential IMO.

 

[Mepher]

Solos in 5e just don't work in 5e given how easily PCs can nova their high damage abilities. Minions to harry, block and occupy are essential IMO.

5E took a decidedly different turn from AD&D (1E/2E) when it comes to this approach. I wont speak for 3-4E since I never played either. In AD&D you had low hit points, low damage, and high ac (well low because of the math). In 5E they totally flipped the script with high hit points and high damage. AC stays fairly stagnant through most of the levels so everyone hits a LOT.

So the real difference is that in AD&D you missed a lot but when you hit it was incremental chunks to monster's hit points. The BBEG usually had both a really high AC and relatively high hit points. It took the party many rounds to whittle away at him. A solo BBEG was possible.

In 5E everything appears to have a lot of hit points but it's just appearance. Since missing your attacks is NOT the norm and everyone does very big damage numbers, a couple hundred hit points can be gone in just a few rounds or less. Much less if the party has the resources to nova. On the flip side, the BBEG damage just doesn't even come close. Most monsters just wont have the ability to affect an entire party before it's dead. Minions are absolutely essential.

I guess these two styles are definitely a matter of preference. I prefer to have longer drawn out fights. 5E is all about kill as fast as possible so you don't get killed. Everyone is doing big damage so strike first and strike hard.

Unfortunately it's hard to turn the dials to switch it up much. Turn down player damage and the enemies will overwhelm them with damage when they can't down them fast enough. Same with upping their AC or their hit points. Sure you can make little changes but that will also have little effect. The whole system is reliant on itself and unless you dial them all down at the same time it's going to really throw combat out of whack.

It seems to me that 5E combat was strictly designed to feel like a blockbuster movie. Big flashes of action choreographed by Michael Bay. Looks cool but there isn't much substance, just exploding things.

This is how I always pictured the difference. Clash of the Titans 1981 vs Clash of the Titans 2010. Just compare the medusa scene.

 

[DND_Reborn]

That's why I want to limit the game to level 12. At that point, things like a beholder or lich, or an adult blue or red dragon, can still be a solo BBEG. I mentioned in this thread :

D&D 5E - "And remember... no disintegrations!"

Sadly, this was not the case... Yesterday we had our session and faced our first beholder! Using its complex system of caves and tunnels and hordes of minions, the beholder wrought havoc on our poor heroes. Although our party was seven-members strong (most 12th-13th levels, but one 7th as...

www.enworld.org

how our 6-member 12-13th level PCs + 1 vetern NPC fought a beholder and three got disintegrated. In another couple rounds, it might have been a TPK. And FWIW our party is pretty strong, with MCing, feats, and even a couple legendary magic items. But, the DM played the beholder very well IMO, so that contributed.

 

[DND_Reborn]

5E took a decidedly different turn from AD&D (1E/2E) when it comes to this approach. I wont speak for 3-4E since I never played either. In AD&D you had low hit points, low damage, and high ac (well low because of the math). In 5E they totally flipped the script with high hit points and high damage. AC stays fairly stagnant through most of the levels so everyone hits a LOT.

So the real difference is that in AD&D you missed a lot but when you hit it was incremental chunks to monster's hit points. The BBEG usually had both a really high AC and relatively high hit points. It took the party many rounds to whittle away at him. A solo BBEG was possible.

In 5E everything appears to have a lot of hit points but it's just appearance. Since missing your attacks is NOT the norm and everyone does very big damage numbers, a couple hundred hit points can be gone in just a few rounds or less. Much less if the party has the resources to nova. On the flip side, the BBEG damage just doesn't even come close. Most monsters just wont have the ability to affect an entire party before it's dead. Minions are absolutely essential.

I guess these two styles are definitely a matter of preference. I prefer to have longer drawn out fights. 5E is all about kill as fast as possible so you don't get killed. Everyone is doing big damage so strike first and strike hard.

Unfortunately it's hard to turn the dials to switch it up much. Turn down player damage and the enemies will overwhelm them with damage when they can't down them fast enough. Same with upping their AC or their hit points. Sure you can make little changes but that will also have little effect. The whole system is reliant on itself and unless you dial them all down at the same time it's going to really throw combat out of whack.

It seems to me that 5E combat was strictly designed to feel like a blockbuster movie. Big flashes of action choreographed by Michael Bay. Looks cool but there isn't much substance, just exploding things.

This is how I always pictured the difference. Clash of the Titans 1981 vs Clash of the Titans 2010. Just compare the medusa scene.

See the funny thing is the second "5E video" is not how games are run IME. You don't have characters running around, etc. You get the warriors going toe-to-toe, accepting disadvantage (looking away), but hitting anyway because AC is low as you say.

5E would be awesome if it made movement and tactical decisions more important in actual play and such.

 

[Mepher]

They aren't a good example of combat, it was more the tone of the scene. The 81 version reminds me of what D&D was growing up. My AD&D games were about you starting out as the farmer kid who, with his friends kills the kobolds in the abandoned mine and saved the local girl. Later the are the same group that killed the ogres blocking the pass. Eventually the kill the dragon that has been plaguing the region. By now they are widely known as the heroes and with their small cache of magic are ready to take on that lich occupying the castle and on up to the demon that the foolish wizard unleashed on the kingdom. They became the heroes but they worked for it.

Sure you can do all of that in 5E but it "feels" like it comes much quicker because you have such big abilites. You head in to kill Medusa. She knows you are there and you know she is stalking you. The tension is there because you know you can very easily die. You can't stand toe to toe because you will lose so you need to find a way to overcome.

The 5E version is like you say. Fighters are toe to toe just hacking away (while looking away) as the cleric is throwing his guided bolts, the paladin is smiting, the wizard blowing it up, and it's that 2-3 rounds at most of explosions until Medusa is a charred mess.

I know which version sounds better to me. See here is the rub though....there is a lot to like with 5E so again I would love to find some ways to maybe tone down the combat a notch or two and change the pace of the game.

 

[DND_Reborn]

@Mepher:

Yeah in 5E a group of 3rd level characters can defeat a medusa (we did it in "Into the Borderlands").

Anyway:

• Limit ability scores to 18 instead of 20
• Change ability score modifiers to B/X (6-8 -1, 9-12 +0, 13-15 +1, 16-17 +2, 18 +3)
• Start proficiency bonus at +1 for levels 1-2, then return to normal (+2 for 4 level,s +2 for 4 levels, etc.).
• Half the benefits of features (Archery Style is +1 to hit, not +2) to a minimum of +1
• Change features to once per turn, not per attack (like smite)
• Add HP cost to use special features (such as action Surge)
• Half awarded XP
• Include training to level (removes excess gp, slows pace)
• Stop HD at level 9, then static increase
• etc.

Actually, the easiest way IMO would be to "make an AD&D character but play by 5E rules."