D&D General How well does mixing 5es in one table work?

[djotaku]

I couldn't speak for Nimble2e from experience, buuut it really changes core 5e rules, Nimble2e's not as backwards-compatible as the others (for good or ill), so I wouldn't want to try mixing them.

Yeah, I took a look at the quickstart rules yesterday. It looks really cool. But it REALLY makes me give it the sideeye at its claims of 5e compatibility. It really seems more like 5e and PF2e had a baby.

 

[Distracted DM]

Indeed, I had a 1st to 20th level 3x5e game where we used a mix of Level Up Advanced 5e, D&D 2024, and D&D 2014. It went fine. We used just the core books so I didn't have a million subclasses come in.

I shared my experiences here:


If I were doing it again, I'd have one core set of rules at the table so we didn't have a mix of potion drinking rules and the like. I don't think its the ideal way to play but you sure can mix up a lot of subsystems from various 5es in one game – Luck and Doom from TOV, Safe Havens and Supply from A5e and so on.

I'm listening to it now, I was gonna ask what did you do for core rules, but you just let everyone use the core ruleset that their characters were from which is so weird and funny, I'm glad, as you say in the vid, that everyone was still having a good time. Did you ever get any people asking "hey why can't I drink potions as a BA, or why do I need the rapid drink maneuver when the 5e24 characters can do it for a bonus?" I'm guessing not 'cuz you said your 8 people were all "pretty onboard for your nonsense" :'D
And what did you do for spells, I'm guessing everyone was using the spells from their respective books?

 

[cbwjm]

Played a 5e game that was meant to be 2014 but one of the players, not knowing the difference in DnDbeyond made a 2024 fighter and everything worked fine, really wasn't all that noticeable other than that he'd use his weapon masteries.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

We've experienced no issues, other than one player wanting to homebrew the 2014 version of Chill Touch back into the game (their character sheets are all on D&D Beyond), now called Lich Slap.

 

[darjr]

I do like seeing people mix things up.

Reading discourse on this hits me in a weird way.

I’m in a game that started as a Basic Fantasy game that used OSE things running AD&D adventures and lots of other things tossed in. Classes, monsters, magic, adventure material, etc. Granted those are all close games but not nearly as close as most of the 5e variants people mention in these discussions.

So I guess my advice is to go forth and shake that bag as hard as you like. You can sort it out on the table.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Reading discourse on this hits me in a weird way.

I’m in a game that started as a Basic Fantasy game that used OSE things running AD&D adventures and lots of other things tossed in. Classes, monsters, magic, adventure material, etc. Granted those are all close games but not nearly as close as most of the 5e variants people mention in these discussions.

So I guess my advice is to go forth and shake that bag as hard as you like. You can sort it out on the table.

Yeah, this kind of mixing is probably the norm in OSR games, whether it's something as simple as running a BD&D adventure under AD&D or just grabbing cool content from all over and throwing it in the stew pot together. It very rarely is a meaningful problem.

 

[ECMO3]

I wouldn't consider that "mixing" rules. That is just the base assumption for a "5.5e 2024-only" table, that any old 5e content not yet reprinted is still fair game

Well there are a lot of rules not reprinted, including a lot of content that is not player facing.

For example - gritty realism, optional rules for shove aside and tumbling through opponents.

 

[ECMO3]

That's....not a mix. That's just using 2024 without restricting it to 2024+ books only.

That's exactly the sort of tight restriction I would specifically advocate against.

Ok. It works for me.

 

[saviirkad]

No issue with mixing so far, though we largely switched to 2024.

When the campaign ends and I start doing session zeroes for future games, we'll probably standardize what rules will come from which source. Like I want to use the 2014 Backgrounds, plus Tasha's ASI options, with 2024 species and classes. If there's a 2024 background that a player wants to use, we can recreate it in the 2014 style.

I'll still grant the lvl 1 origin feat that comes with the 2024 backgrounds, I'm just not a fan of losing the 2014 background features or restricting that feat and starting ASI to them.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I'm listening to it now, I was gonna ask what did you do for core rules, but you just let everyone use the core ruleset that their characters were from which is so weird and funny, I'm glad, as you say in the vid, that everyone was still having a good time. Did you ever get any people asking "hey why can't I drink potions as a BA, or why do I need the rapid drink maneuver when the 5e24 characters can do it for a bonus?" I'm guessing not 'cuz you said your 8 people were all "pretty onboard for your nonsense" :'D
And what did you do for spells, I'm guessing everyone was using the spells from their respective books?

Everyone had different potion drinking rules, which was a big laugh for everyone really. Some could drink it as a bonus action (D&D 2024), some only as an action (D&D 2014), and some with a bonus action because of some ability they had (A5e).

You used spells from your book so a fireball for the A5e wizard was 25% worse than the fireball the D&D 2024 light cleric had. The A5e wizard ended up getting a special version of fireball that was 1d6 higher, though.

Playing with a mix of 5es at one table can work. But I don't recommend it.

I think it works better to pick one core book and core set of rules for everyone and then modify stuff from the other 5es if you want to use them. Tell players that if they pick stuff outside that ruleset, you guys will have to work together to smooth out the rough edges (which you should probably do anyway -- none of these rulesets are ideal).

A lot of stuff from other 5es (luck and doom from TOV, safe havens and supply from A5e, better exhaustion rules from D&D 2024) can be used across 5e systems but having a core understanding of the rules and then modifying those rules to suit your table is probably better than the "Everyone has their own instance of the rules" approach I did.

Still, we ran the campaign all the way to 20th level and all of us totally enjoyed it.