D&D 5E Is it houseruling to let a torch set fire to things?

[Hriston]

From the Fifth Edition "Conversions" document, regarding quick conversions of first and second edition adventure monster statistics:

• Armor Class equals 19 minus the creature’s AC,
up to AC 22.
• Attack roll modifiers are HD/2 + 2, up to +12.
• Saving throw DCs are 8 + HD/2, up to 20.
• If a creature has to make a check or saving throw, and
should be good at the roll, use the creature’s HD/2 + 2
as a bonus on the roll. Otherwise, use no modifier, or
use a penalty to reflect something the creature should
be bad at.

 

[Hriston]

Also this:

Monster Groups. If a group of monsters has 7 or more
members, it should be evaluated to see if numbers should
be reduced. Such a reduction is especially important for
player characters of lower than 5th level.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Hriston]

The Will o' the Wisp is offended by this conversion!

I mean, why bother having extreme negative armor classes when WoTC is just going to come and nerf it!

That's Bounded Accuracy for ya!

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure why Pemerton decided to justify his position using Gygax's DMG when 4e was just around the corner.

But not on the principles as set out by Gygax under the paragraphs 'Zero Hit Points' or the 'Recovery of Hit Points' which would mean you select, as is your choice to, which Hit Point principles you choose to follow/accept.

I think 4e's version of hp and Gygax's DMG version of hp are more-or-less the same. (Gygax spills more ink on it.)

I'm not sure what the recovery of hp section has to do with it. Non-magical recovery times are longer in AD&D than 4e but that is not a difference of principle - plenty of people change the short rest and extended rest times in 4e (say, 1 day for a short rest and 1 week for an extended rest), but that is not a difference of principle. It's just about how you want to pace recovery in the fiction.

In Gygax's version, zero hp always means in the fiction, the character is dying. Generally, in 4e, zero hp only means in the fiction, the character is dying if the character dies. Otherwise the character had just swooned, like Frodo after being hit by the troll's spear in Moria. But I don't think this is a difference of principle either, just a difference in resolution mechanics - 4e adds an extra buffer (the death save) between hit points and death, and it removes the "hurt enough to be comatose but not dead" condition that is part of the AD&D rules. Plenty of people have reintroduced this latter state into 4e, by use of a disease-style condition track.

The principles that are (in my view) constant across the two editions are that hit point loss is not - until the last handful - about significant injury or literally being struck, but is about being worn down, about tiring and losing luck and divine favour, about the momentum of battle running against you.

RPGs with different principles are RQ and RM, which both have hit point systems, but in both games hit point loss corresponds to significant physical harm (to a greater extent in RQ than RM, because RM uses a separate debuff mechanic to model physical harm beyond bruising, becoming woozy from pain, and blood loss).

I don't know how 2nd ed AD&D framed hit points. A lot of 3E players seem to treat them as being more like RQ/RM hit points than Gygaxian/4e ones.

 

[Maxperson]

I had a paperclip marking the page with the tables in my DMG. Early on I lost part of my old DM screen, and never replaced it. ;( The short 1e blocks didn't always or even often, have HD. It might be something like ...(AC 6, 1-6/1-4x2, 11,9,9,9,7,5)... They didn't always provide even that, sometimes they /just/ listed hps, or nothing at all. At that point, what am I converting? Nothing.

If you're converting nothing, then it's really not an accurate conversion. In 5e even an orc has 15 hit points on average, yet all of whatever that is up there is much weaker than a challenge 1/2 monster. A 5e hydra dwarfs ancient 1e dragons for hit points.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If you're converting nothing, then it's really not an accurate conversion. In 5e even an orc has 15 hit points on average, yet all of whatever that is up there is much weaker than a challenge 1/2 monster. A 5e hydra dwarfs ancient 1e dragons for hit points.

I've been running stuff like In Search of the Unknown and Village of Homlet, so the hp balloon doesn't matter so much, because they're such low levels. As far as making things a little easier if hps are a little lower - probably OK, given what 1st level 5e tends to be like, and that the old-school encounters aren't always as tiny as 'moderate' 5e ones.

But, yeah, not a mathematically 'accurate' conversion, because it's not much conversion, at all.

 

[Jester David]

In Gygax's version, zero hp always means in the fiction, the character is dying. Generally, in 4e, zero hp only means in the fiction, the character is dying if the character dies. Otherwise the character had just swooned, like Frodo after being hit by the troll's spear in Moria. But I don't think this is a difference of principle either, just a difference in resolution mechanics - 4e adds an extra buffer (the death save) between hit points and death, and it removes the "hurt enough to be comatose but not dead" condition that is part of the AD&D rules. Plenty of people have reintroduced this latter state into 4e, by use of a disease-style condition track.

Wasn't 0hp just dead in 1st Edition? I don't recall any "dying" rules until 2e, when negative hp were introduced but optional. Maybe Unearthed Arcana...

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Tony Vargas]

Wasn't 0hp just dead in 1st Edition?

Another 1e DMG option: you could let PCs survive down to -10, but they required a week of bedrest to recover, even if fully healed up magically. Most every DM I knew back then used that option and/or other home-brew or Len Lakofka variants to make 1st level a little more survivable.