D&D General Let's Talk About How to "Fix" D&D

[Stalker0]

For Solos, I advocate that they have a a certain amount of the fighter's Second wind ability depending on their a type. A brusier type solo boss would have two uses of a Second Wind that restores their health to full. A Spellcaster solo may have one use of a full HP restore Second Wind. BBEG's may have up to three.

All that really does is just gives the BBEG more hit points (which you could just give them more in the first place), or just encourages the party to nuke the BBEG all the quicker (and they already have plenty of incentive to do so).

One of the issues in 5e with solos is the lack of immediate threat. When you throw high level boss monsters at a party in 5e, they just rush in like they do with every other monster.

In 3e, boss monsters often had enough offense to destroy a player, so you had to be more careful with them. Now the boss still died pretty quick, but that threat creates fear and uncertainty in the players, and sometimes has them change their tactics.

I do think one of the best changes in 5e was making lair actions auto at 20 init...and I think it makes sense to do that for solos in general. Initiative just doesn’t work for solos. Going last in imitative as a solo basically means you don’t really go period, it has a tremendous swing in power.

 

[TheSword]

I'm speaking from experience and assuming very little. Most of what you described would be classified as either a railroad stop or a roadblock. Going out into the wilderness solely to experience a main-quest-irrelevant side-story, with no material reward, is something that will be seen by many players as you wasting their time, and once they realize that's all there is, they will start actively avoiding such quests (again, speaking from experience). Ultimately, none of what you described fundamentally alters the railroad-like nature of milestone-based gaming.

Milestones are gates. They're railroad stops. There is nothing morally wrong with that, but how players become more powerful fundamentally shapes the kinds of adventures you can run. If you rebuilt something like Temple of Elemental Evil with milestones instead of treasure based XP, it fundamentally alters what the adventure even is. In fact, giving XP for monster-slaying instead of treasure-finding so strongly alters the nature of the adventure that I think it is positively required for you to use the AD&D experience system, regardless of what other system you use for combat, skills, and so on.

On the flip side, XP really doesn't work that great for chapter-based, linear storybook adventures, which is why milestones have become so popular in the first place. In other words, XP is great for Castle Greyhawk, and not so great for Storm King's Thunder.

I think you have a very old fashioned way of seeing things. Not all adventure takes place in wilderness. Not all adventures are large dungeons as you seem to approach them.

Milestones are only gates if there is adventure locked behind them.

You are approaching Milestones like they are waypoints along a predetermined plot arc. They can be that. Paizo’s extremely popular APs make good use of them. Though it would be shortsighted to think that is all they are.

It is possible to have multiple milestones that allow players to go where they like. Like summit markers in a mountain range. There will be dozens of summits and there are multiple paths that lead to them. You can follow known trails but you can also go off piste and climb some rock faces. No mountain top is essential but they all offer some interesting views. This is how Curse of Strahd is arranged.

 

[Reynard]

I think you have a very old fashioned way of seeing things. Not all adventure takes place in wilderness. Not all adventures are large dungeons as you seem to approach them.

Milestones are only gates if there is adventure locked behind them.

You are approaching Milestones like they are waypoints along a predetermined plot arc. They can be that. Paizo’s extremely popular APs make good use of them. Though it would be shortsighted to think that is all they are.

It is possible to have multiple milestones that allow players to go where they like. Like summit markers in a mountain range. There will be dozens of summits and there are multiple paths that lead to them. You can follow known trails but you can also go off piste and climb some rock faces. No mountain top is essential but they all offer some interesting views. This is how Curse of Strahd is arranged.

I think you are changing the definition of the term to fit you're argument. If the milestone doesn't occur on a path (geographic, temporal, or otherwise) it's not a milestone. If you say "there are 12 side quests and anytime the pcs complete 3 that level" that isn't milestone leveling, it's quest XP where the XP value is defined as 1/3 the level requirement. For it to be milestone XP it needs to say "characters gain a level only once they complete 3 of these side quests and then they move on to Area 2." The former enables the players to explore at their own pace relative to the urgency of the threat. The latter gates them

 

[Reynard]

Leaving the subject of milestone XP behind for now:

I want to run an exploration and resource management heavy game that also looks and feels a lot more "low fantasy" than out of the box 5E. And I want to do it using a combinations of Optional Rules and limitations. Here's a list of things I have come up with so far, and I am curious what other folks might include or exclude.

Play Level range is 2-7 with very slow advancement.
Allowed Races: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling
Allowed Classes(Subclasses): Barbarian (Berserker), Bard (Lore), Cleric (Life or War), Fighter (Champion or Battle Master), Paladin (Devotion), Ranger (Hunter), Rogue (Thief), Wizard (all schools)
Backgrounds: no Outlander
No multiclassing and no feats.
Spells: I have to cull the list, primarily of spells that obviate the need for taking precautions while traveling and exploring.
Healing Optional Rules: Healers Kit Dependency
Gritty Realism Rest Variant
Morale Optional Rule

 

[Lanefan]

If the small encounter doesn't lead to either meaningful loot or facilitate access to the milestone, a lot of players will regard it as a waste of time.

Which is too bad, really, as sometimes it's the small encounters that end up being remembered far longer than the story-significant ones.

Our crew to this day still talk about a battle from 1984 - in the grand scheme of things it was a nothing encounter: a group of wandering Orcs and their buddies stumbled into our party's camp one night - mostly because so many crazy things happened in it including some real character-defining moments. There was no loot to be had, and only a trivial amount of xp, but none who were there would ever say it was a waste of time even though it took nearly the whole session to play out.

And the thing about 5e is that you really can't hand out too much loot, so you can't reward too much meandering and dithering. In a typical 15-level adventure, you can offer maybe 6 or 8 extra side quests with interesting magic items.

Either you mean 'campaign' when you say 'adventure', or these adventures are getting awful big.

That said, giving out lot isn't a problem when there's mechanisms for sometimes breaking or destroying it. 1e had such mechanisms but they've been nerfed into nothingness over the editions since (I blame whiny players!) and so loot now does nothing but accumulate.

Without XP, the only reward for fighting a random purple worm in OotA if you're doing milestone leveling is "you didn't die." There is absolutely no good reason to go worm-hunting if you're a bit underleveled. The risk is death. The reward is nothing. Thus, the tactically correct decision in any wandering monster encounter is to flee, since fighting wastes precious twice-a-month play time and gives you nothing in return. Players can and do figure this out.

The different incentive structure of XP-based leveling facilitates design where the players engage on their terms, and decide for themselves whether the reward for poking about in this cave or slaying this monster is worth both the time and risk, and at what point they feel confident to spelunk deeper in the dungeon or push further into the frontier.

Completely agree here.

 

[Reynard]

Which is too bad, really, as sometimes it's the small encounters that end up being remembered far longer than the story-significant ones.

Our crew to this day still talk about a battle from 1984 - in the grand scheme of things it was a nothing encounter: a group of wandering Orcs and their buddies stumbled into our party's camp one night - mostly because so many crazy things happened in it including some real character-defining moments. There was no loot to be had, and only a trivial amount of xp, but none who were there would ever say it was a waste of time even though it took nearly the whole session to play out.

These are the reasons to play, IMO: those unintended, unexpected moments in play that stick with you forever. They are almost never part of the "main plot" of an adventure or campaign, and usually dependent upon the accident of the dice. They make the game for me.

 

[turnip_farmer]

I certainly forgot that. But why does that rule exist?

Because people with darkvision see in darkness as if it was dim light. Perception checks that rely on sight have disadvantage in dim light.

I too think darkvision is too common. The overwhelming majority of races have it, which strongly prejudices people against just playing humans.

 

[Lanefan]

All that really does is just gives the BBEG more hit points (which you could just give them more in the first place), or just encourages the party to nuke the BBEG all the quicker (and they already have plenty of incentive to do so).

One of the issues in 5e with solos is the lack of immediate threat. When you throw high level boss monsters at a party in 5e, they just rush in like they do with every other monster.

In 3e, boss monsters often had enough offense to destroy a player, so you had to be more careful with them. Now the boss still died pretty quick, but that threat creates fear and uncertainty in the players, and sometimes has them change their tactics.

I do think one of the best changes in 5e was making lair actions auto at 20 init...and I think it makes sense to do that for solos in general. Initiative just doesn’t work for solos. Going last in imitative as a solo basically means you don’t really go period, it has a tremendous swing in power.

At the very least, each different action or attack the solo gets should have its own separate initiative. I wouldn't want lair actions to be auto-20 but giving them a +5 bonus might make sense.

Also, with solos it becomes even more important to reroll init. every round and to keep the monster's init. roll(s) secret! That way the players don't get the meta-benefit of knowing when the monster will attack each round and the corresponding ability to plan around that timing.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I think you have a very old fashioned way of seeing things. Not all adventure takes place in wilderness. Not all adventures are large dungeons as you seem to approach them.

Milestones are only gates if there is adventure locked behind them.

You are approaching Milestones like they are waypoints along a predetermined plot arc. They can be that. Paizo’s extremely popular APs make good use of them. Though it would be shortsighted to think that is all they are.

Well, my "way of seeing things" comes from starting out with 4e when it launched and eventually running Temple of Elemental Evil after running and playing in a variety of by-now-traditional narrative-driven campaigns and reading some OSR blogs. IMO, it's far more "old fashioned" to view pre-Dragonlance styles of gaming as primitive and less advanced rather than as just a legitimately different type of game.

It is possible to have multiple milestones that allow players to go where they like. Like summit markers in a mountain range. There will be dozens of summits and there are multiple paths that lead to them. You can follow known trails but you can also go off piste and climb some rock faces. No mountain top is essential but they all offer some interesting views. This is how Curse of Strahd is arranged.

Sounds like this:

 

[Lanefan]

I want to run an exploration and resource management heavy game that also looks and feels a lot more "low fantasy" than out of the box 5E. And I want to do it using a combinations of Optional Rules and limitations. Here's a list of things I have come up with so far, and I am curious what other folks might include or exclude.

Play Level range is 2-7 with very slow advancement.
Allowed Races: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling
Allowed Classes(Subclasses): Barbarian (Berserker), Bard (Lore), Cleric (Life or War), Fighter (Champion or Battle Master), Paladin (Devotion), Ranger (Hunter), Rogue (Thief), Wizard (all schools)
Backgrounds: no Outlander
No multiclassing and no feats.
Spells: I have to cull the list, primarily of spells that obviate the need for taking precautions while traveling and exploring.
Healing Optional Rules: Healers Kit Dependency
Gritty Realism Rest Variant
Morale Optional Rule

Were I a potential player given this as a pitch, my question would be why neither Druid nor Nature Cleric are available as classes. Don't need both, but one would be nice.

I'd also be curious what spells you were culling and, possibly, what you were inserting to replace them particularly for utility mages and diviners (who I would guess would be most squarely in your crosshairs) to keep those archetypes viable.

Other than those minor things, and my belief that every campaign starts at 1st level, this looks like it could rock pretty good! I like the slow advancement, the limited races, and so forth - very old-school feel to it.