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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kupursk" data-source="post: 7559963" data-attributes="member: 6986037">Howdy fellas,I've followed 5th edition since its playtest era, and have read and re-read it a couple times after it came out, but never made the jump to the new edition, and thus far I have stuck with my own 2e-3e hybrid. Overall I do like a big part of 5e, but there are two main design choices that I REALLY don't like, and that put me off from ever switching to 5e. So I'm just curious if anyone ever came up with alternate house rules for those:1) Ability Score IncreasesI really don't like how ability scores seem to have become just a mechanical/numerical value on your character sheet, merely used to calculate bonuses, instead of a description of your character's physical and mental attributes. I still stick to the notion of attributes as a description of your character and find it very weird that a character can start as a scrawny, weak fella, and after a couple of adventures he's basically Schwarzenegger. Or else he can go from a total half-wit to Einstein.Even when playing 3e I avoid the ability increases every 4 levels, sticking with just the initial values. But in 3e this doesn't affect the overall system all that much, as most of your check numbers come from elsewhere.However... in 5e I don't think simply removing ability increases would work. The main reason is that these are intrinsically tied to the system's overall math. They're used to compensate the slow-progressing Proficiency Bonus (by higher levels you're sort of EXPECTED to have that +5 from ability modifier to your checks, at least on the stuff your class is supposed to be good at). And thus having lower ability scores could make characters considerably weaker, and fail a lot more checks.So here's my question to you folks. Has any of you ever struggled with the same issue and came up with a good alternative to ability increases? Even if it involves some heavy house-ruling, I wouldn't mind as I like house-ruling anyway.Note: The first thing that came to mind was giving and extra +1 to proficiency bonus in place of an ability increase, as each ability increase supposedly also serves to make a lot of stuff you're good at raise by +1 on their checks. But this would break the system's balance in some places, I think, as one could combo that with an initially high ability and reach check values beyond what the system expects.Note2: I know feats are an alternative to ability increases, but many of those also increase an ability anyway, and I'm not sure 5e expects you to trade ALL your ability increases for feats, as at some point you'd probably be picking "whatever" random choice of feats that you're not really interested in anymore.2) Excessive Healing5e has a LOT of healing compared to older editions. Players can recover a lot of HP between battles and can go full-HP after each day's rest. I'd like to keep HP as a "resource" to be managed during the course of an adventure, or during the exploration of a dungeon. I find the 3e standard of recovering your Level in HP with every night's rest to be a sweet spot for my taste.Now the 5e DMG does have some alternatives to healing, or I could simply use the 3e standard and ignore this new "hit dice as recovery" rule, and replace any recovery abilities with something else (except the classic spells and such).But the problem I see is that enemies do a LOT more damage in 5e, to compensate for the fact that player's can recover HP so easily. Basically every fight has to be a more severe threat in terms of damage to be a challenge, whereas before even in an "easy" fight one would have to watch out for damage so as not to be lower in HP for the rest of the adventure. So the issue I see is that monsters ARE balanced taking the big amount of healing into account, and just removing this expected healing could severely hinder the players' progress.So, has anyone ever tried some lower healing rules and how did it work out with the increased monster damage in 5e?I suppose I could simply eyeball the damage of each creature and lower them a tad, but if anyone has come up with a more standardized alternative I'd love to hear it!Appreciate any input you guys might have!</blockquote>

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