I am eager for your review!Apologies, I have not read the whole thread but I wanted to post something I just discovered myself.
Old Swords Reign. A man attempt to use 5e to rebuild OD&D.
I just bought it and haven’t read it yet.
I just posted one here:I am eager for your review!
Mainly so they can play in that style and not have to have the players learn a completely different game.How would an attempt to rebuild OD&D not just be OD&D? Why would 5th edition be involved with that?
How would an attempt to rebuild OD&D not just be OD&D? Why would 5th edition be involved with that?
I agree it definitely has some elements, but the issue is more the plethora of elements at detract from old school feel.Since this thread seems to be still running, let me give my two cents on ho why I think 5e has quite a few old school elements in it.
True, the only caveat would be for class choosing your skill proficiencies. However, if you used non-weapon proficiencies in AD&D, this is not really any difference on that point.Firstly: Character generation is quick and straightforward. If you are not using any of the optional add-ons like feats and multiclassing, you are basically down to choosing class, race and background. It's nothing like the huge skill trees from the previous two editions.
I never played 3E much, but from what I hear and my limited experience I agree.Secondly: It's the first time in the WotC era that you can run actual dungeon crawls. 3e had the problem of easy access to magic items creation and parties had nearly infinite resources, which eliminated the main aspect of dungeon creaking: resource management and strategic thinking (talking strategy, not tactics). 4e on the other hand had really good pacing tools and ways to make the party exhaust their resources, but the system was better geared to just a few set piece fights instead of long dungeons. Ironically, that's the way most people (at least on Reddit) play 5e today. They would probably have a stroke if I told them that 4e could handle that style better.
Yep. IME too many DM's call for ability checks when they really aren't needed, as in there is no real consequence for failure, and players like to roll so ask for checks for everything.And finally, the way 5e handles Abilities and Skill checks is very old school. Unlike the previous two editions, 5e puts the adjucation powers squarely back into the DMs hand. Heck, you could even give up the dice completely while out of combat and run the game solely based on "skilled play", using a Free Kriegspiel approach. You don't believe me? Page 236 of the DMG says it's a perfectly valid (and within RAW) way to run the game. It even makes me think that skills are actually something they only included in the game because they feared the backlash if they had completely removed them. Just like the optional feats and flanking rules.
The greatest difference is for character creation/advancement. 5E is a "fire and forget" as in you choose the skill and never have to worry about improving it as proficiency bonus rises with level.Never beeing much of a char-ops person myself, I never understood why people say the skills in 5th edition work different than in 3rd. Of course you don't have skill points to improve skill bonuses, but the only difference that I see in using skills is that 5th edition offers fewer guidelines on what the DC for the checks should be.
The issue was that in 3e having a skill without the maximum number of points generally made the bonus too low to pass checks by mid levels - which means having a few points is no better than no points, except your focused skills also fell behind.The greatest difference is for character creation/advancement. 5E is a "fire and forget" as in you choose the skill and never have to worry about improving it as proficiency bonus rises with level.
In 3E, you had to allocate skill points or whatever and could have several skills with just 1 rank each. Sure, you could just put the max in each skill and automatically add 1 rank to each when you leveled, it would be the closest thing to 5E you can do I think.
To a point I agree, but IME it was useful to have a handful of skills maybe at half max ranks instead of max ranks if you did not want to be hyper-focused in your skills.The issue was that in 3e having a skill without the maximum number of points generally made the bonus too low to pass checks by mid levels - which means having a few points is no better than no points, except your focused skills also fell behind.
There were a few exceptions (there's no need for a better than +10 in medicine IIRC) but the conventional wisdom was "figure out how many skills you can max out, and max out that many."
So while you could spend your points a lot of different ways, there was one clear best way, with everything else being a trap.
This varied a lot skill to skill.The issue was that in 3e having a skill without the maximum number of points generally made the bonus too low to pass checks by mid levels - which means having a few points is no better than no points, except your focused skills also fell behind.
There were a few exceptions (there's no need for a better than +10 in medicine IIRC) but the conventional wisdom was "figure out how many skills you can max out, and max out that many."
So while you could spend your points a lot of different ways, there was one clear best way, with everything else being a trap.
I can't think of anything more antithetical to old school play than milestone leveling. Even the alternative you suggest misses the point. XP for recovered gold does the thing it is supposed to: focus play on results (recovering that treasure) not process (killing monsters). The XP is hidden behind a secret door, or trapped, or in the monster's lair. How are you bunch of crazy fools going to not only get it, but get it out and back to town safely?7. Milestone leveling, but every 4-5 sessions or more. SLow that roll. If they are level 10 in a year, you are not old schooling it. If you are doing XP, then reward it for smart play and not slaughter. D&D was a resource management game, not a hack & slash game. Reward XP for getting out of scraps. 2-3 xp per encounter times the CR, minimum 1. Level 1-3 might go quicker than old school but it's a different way of doing it.
In what sense?In fact 5e, with its loose skill system and magic nerfing (its funny how no one has brought this up) is an especially good edition for this.
In what sense?
Compared to 3E and 4E, maybe, but to create the old school feel any nerfing done in 5E is a bad thing when it comes to spells. Spells were much more powerful in old school editions.
And on the other side of magic, 5E has cantrip spamming and way too much prevalence in magic via classes/ features compared to anything old school.
So, just to understand you, in what sense??