D&D 5E How Old-School is 5th Edition? Can it even do Old-School?

[Yora]

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.

 

[DND_Reborn]

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.

I agree it definitely has some elements, but the issue is more the plethora of elements at detract from old school feel.

• High hit rate (60% or better)
• HP bloat
• High damage (I'm looking at you, Smites!)
• Spamming Cantrips
• And so on...

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.

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.

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.

I never played 3E much, but from what I hear and my limited experience I agree.

However, with the increased exposure to magic, 5E loses some ground in feeling old school. There is way too much overlap in spellcasting and with infinite cantrips and having nearly half the races with darkvision, things like worrying about light get thrown out the window.

Of course, infravision was much too common even in AD&D; of dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, and human, only the last two didn't have infravision.

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.

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.

 

[DND_Reborn]

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 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.

 

[jmartkdr2]

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.

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.

 

[DND_Reborn]

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.

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.

Of course, very much dependent on your character and goals.

 

[Voadam]

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.

Some things were arms races of opposed checks such as spot or listen versus hide and move silent. Many things could be competitive for the party level so that ambush monsters often needed focused PC perception skills to be not beaten and maxxed out stealth type PC skill could be pitted against a maxed out perception type skill on a monster. But even here if you have a not maxxed out skill you might come across monsters not designed for ambushing or guarding and less than maxxed skills could still be useful.

Other things one rank was enough depending on what you wanted to do. Picking up a new language was one language per skill rank, perform was one rank per instrument/art form.

Still other things had defined DCs to hit so that once you could hit those easily maxxing out past that provided little additional benefit.

 

[TerraDave]

So, the "old school" era lasted 10-30 years, depending on who you talk to, and throughout that time, there was huge variation in play across tables.

I have run several converted 1E and B/X adventures in 5e. You can certainly have a weird vibe and challenge the players (vs their character sheet) in games like these. 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. You can certainly kill lower level characters, and TPK and torment higher level ones. Its also full of nods back to older editions, especially in some of its most prominent adventures.

In terms of play style, you can run just like any past edition of D&D in terms of making players say what they are doing and just just using their abilities as win buttons. Resting and recovery can be issues. I have a "restiness" test for long rests that I have used for a long time and that could be considered a house rule. I also have some small chance of not coming back from the dead with magic, that could be another.

And sure, in terms of character options, its more like later 2E, or 1E with the Arduin Grimoire. I can see how that can be annoying. If you are not using feats, then you probably do need a boost to the standard human, though not a large one. You can ban drow, tieflings, and anything from the non-core books.

And if you really want B/X D&D. Play it. Its a good game, albeit one with a high body count if played RAW.

 

[Reynard]

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.

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?

 

[DND_Reborn]

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??

 

[TerraDave]

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.

It depended on the spell. But in terms of challenging the player this nerfing can help.

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??

Sure, hence the rest of my post. And there was Arduin Grimoire, maybe Spell Law. Some late 2e options. Or just good old Monty Hall. You could certainly have a high magic old school game, perhaps inadvertently. In play the difference is not necessarily that big. But I get that these options and their prevalence are annoying for some.