Why would you think that ever happens? Fights take the same number of rounds, or slightly more, as levels increase. Fights at 1st level tend to be 3-5 rounds. If the same number of attacks were happening, fights at 5th would take 2-3, and at 11th would take 1-2, and at 20th would take 0-1.
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Trying to make 5e more oldish and want some people's opinions
- Thread starter fatdoomguy
- Start date
Why would you think that ever happens? Fights take the same number of rounds, or slightly more, as levels increase. Fights at 1st level tend to be 3-5 rounds. If the same number of attacks were happening, fights at 5th would take 2-3, and at 11th would take 1-2, and at 20th would take 0-1.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Again, take clock time out of the equation!
In four attacks each warrior has exactly the same chance of maiming herself, whether novice or expert. That those four attacks take four times as long in clock time to occur for the novice is completely irrelevant.
The bigger question is how many attacks does it take the expert to finish off her foe as opposed to the novice. If the novice can kill her foe in 8 attacks and the expert can kill her foe in 8 attacks then the chance of fumbling at some point in those combats is precisely the same for each. That the novice's fight lasts 8 clock-time rounds where the expert's only lasts 2 has no bearing on any of this.
Flip side: the same, of course, is true of critical hits.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Interesting.
Seeing as the OP is looking to make 5e more old-school and as I'm coming at this from an old-school perspective, low-level fights IME tend to be considerably longer than 3-5 rounds: 8-12 is far more common*. Higher-level fights are often short and sometimes very short - one-round battles are common enough not to raise any eyebrows. It's strange, in fact: higher-level fights take fewer in-game rounds to complete but take far longer at the table to play out.
* - the all-time record for anything I've DMed is 38 rounds. That was an odd one in that the entire combat was a single mid-level fighter taking on a fully-equipped clone of herself; said fighter had through her career poured all her resources and treasure into defense to the point that each needed a natural 19 to hit the other! For a more conventional fight it's 32 rounds - a 1st-2nd level party taking on 8 Orcs in a narrow passage.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
It's interesting that your counterargument is that the legendary warrior, who trades blows with angels and demons, has exactly the same chance of maiming herself through ineptitude as the rookie guard per maneuver and that this is okay.
Further, on the context of 2e where combat rounds are a minute and "attacks" are just the ones that matter in a constant back and forth, the 2e highly skilled fighter is making 2-3 times as many effective trades as the novice yet is also 2-3 times more likely to maim themselves over the course of the same level of effort.
Please, stop attacking, I can't bear to watch any more crit failures.
Dessert Nomad
Adventurer
I don't like it, and more importantly I don't think there's anything realistic about the kind of narrow weapon proficiencies that 1e and 2e had. People who were competent, experienced melee fighters didn't need large amounts of training to switch from a sword to a spear to an axe, or worse from a sword to a slightly smaller sword or from a poleaxe to a poleaxe with a spike on the back. I mean, can anyone find a historical source that troops switching from one style of polearm to another needed months or years of training to learn the new one?
Tiny numbers of weapon proficiencies just isn't realistic. If it floats your boat go for it, but don't do it in the name of realism.
Right, the fact that initiative is about who will strike faster is why the sword should have a HUGE initiative bonus compared to a dagger. The quarter-second of 'wind up' isn't significant, what is significant is that the sword wielder can hit effectively while the dagger user isn't even in range. The idea that someone holding a dagger can get off multiple moves in the fraction of a second it takes for 'wind up' with a sword simply doesn't match reality - the dagger user has to wait for the sword user to attack first to have any real chance of hitting without getting killed himself.
In sparring and fencing situations the dagger fares somewhat better than it would in real life with full-strength swings and a person not concerned about the dagger-wielder's safety, you can certainly find videos of dagger vs sword where dagger wins. But the more realistic they make the situation (using full speed blows, for example), the harder of a time the dagger user has. And even in cases where you watch video of someone using daggers to win against someone with a sword, you will almost NEVER see the dagger user able to strike first - successful dagger users wait for the sword user to swing, then exploit the sword user being off balance to attack. If you always have to wait for your opponent to swing before you do anything, you certainly do NOT have the initiative in the fight.
I don't have a problem with letting dagger wielders be effective melee combatants in the game, but it's not actually realistic, and giving them an initiative bonus is anti-realistic, since in reality they will almost never strike first.
In real life, the chance of seriously injuring yourself goes WAY down with increased skill; stabbing yourself in the leg was incredibly rare on the battlefield. In game terms, most critical fail systems have the chance of seriously injuring yourself go WAY up with increased skill. A 1st level fighter might get a critical fumble (roll a 1) in 1 of 5 fights, a 20th level fighter will typically get multiple critical fumbles per fight because he'll be doing more than 20 attack rolls in the same time span.
Mistakes per line types is not a good comparison, those are more akin to a regular 'miss'. How often do you injure your finger or knock the keyboard off the desk while typing? Critical failures are just not a routine part of a highly skilled task, but critical failure tables make them into one.
Switching editions can be tricky, but 5E is one that most older players can transition into fairly easily. Mechanically it is very different from AD&D, but the style of play is very much the same. That said, changing mechanics out the gate may not be the best choice, because they have been fairly well tested and balanced. You SHOULD change things to fit your groups preferences, but it's often best to understand why something is the way it is before changing it.
1. There is an alternate healing variant in the DMG that pretty much does this. It will greatly affect the number of encounters the party can face in any given day, so be aware of this when designing adventures. You might be better off using a lot of "Easy" encounters (from the DMG's creating encounters guideline) if using this option.
2. You could also group the weapons into: light blades, heavy blades, axes, hammers, etc, rather than using a specific number of weapons. It probably won't make much of a difference, unless they find a magical weapon that no one has proficiency in.
3. Not sure what this is, so can't comment.
4. Using extra effects for critical hits and misses can create a lot of chaos in combat, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd avoid anything that is a permanent injury, because having a character die feels bad, but having one become useless is worse. Had it happen in 2E as well as 5E (they have a lingering injury table in the DMG), and it's generally not good for the game, IMO, but your group may like it.
5. There is an initiative variant in the DMG that does this.
6. Whatever works for you. Languages have been greatly pared down in 5E, so this really shouldn't be an issue.
7. I've add the houserule that you gain additional languages or tool proficiency equal to your Int modifier (or lose them, if negative). Skills are hard to come by, but languages and tool proficiency are easier.
8 I like the concept of spheres, but the Domain system runs a lot smoother. If you have issue with a character preparing a spell that is way out of the deity's purview (such as Animate Dead by a Nature deity), you can simply declare that the deity refuses to grant the spell. Much easier to work it that way, and you can even RP the experience with the player via. an agent of the deity (such as an angel), in case the player can actually provide a reason why the deity might allow it.
9 Wizards no longer have to "know" a spell to put it in their spellbook, as they did in AD&D. "Knowing" a spell is a completely different mechanic, meaning that they always have it prepared. If you want to require wizards to make a check to be able to understand a spell before they can prepare it, as they did in AD&D, you can simply require an Int/Arcana check (maybe DC 10+ spell level), allowing a recheck upon gaining a level. This really is only an issue if you provide a lot of scrolls or enemy spellbooks for the wizard to take advantage of, since wizards only gain 2 spells naturally each time they level (I can say from experience that it's not much).
1. There is an alternate healing variant in the DMG that pretty much does this. It will greatly affect the number of encounters the party can face in any given day, so be aware of this when designing adventures. You might be better off using a lot of "Easy" encounters (from the DMG's creating encounters guideline) if using this option.
2. You could also group the weapons into: light blades, heavy blades, axes, hammers, etc, rather than using a specific number of weapons. It probably won't make much of a difference, unless they find a magical weapon that no one has proficiency in.
3. Not sure what this is, so can't comment.
4. Using extra effects for critical hits and misses can create a lot of chaos in combat, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd avoid anything that is a permanent injury, because having a character die feels bad, but having one become useless is worse. Had it happen in 2E as well as 5E (they have a lingering injury table in the DMG), and it's generally not good for the game, IMO, but your group may like it.
5. There is an initiative variant in the DMG that does this.
6. Whatever works for you. Languages have been greatly pared down in 5E, so this really shouldn't be an issue.
7. I've add the houserule that you gain additional languages or tool proficiency equal to your Int modifier (or lose them, if negative). Skills are hard to come by, but languages and tool proficiency are easier.
8 I like the concept of spheres, but the Domain system runs a lot smoother. If you have issue with a character preparing a spell that is way out of the deity's purview (such as Animate Dead by a Nature deity), you can simply declare that the deity refuses to grant the spell. Much easier to work it that way, and you can even RP the experience with the player via. an agent of the deity (such as an angel), in case the player can actually provide a reason why the deity might allow it.
9 Wizards no longer have to "know" a spell to put it in their spellbook, as they did in AD&D. "Knowing" a spell is a completely different mechanic, meaning that they always have it prepared. If you want to require wizards to make a check to be able to understand a spell before they can prepare it, as they did in AD&D, you can simply require an Int/Arcana check (maybe DC 10+ spell level), allowing a recheck upon gaining a level. This really is only an issue if you provide a lot of scrolls or enemy spellbooks for the wizard to take advantage of, since wizards only gain 2 spells naturally each time they level (I can say from experience that it's not much).
Dessert Nomad
Adventurer
Must have been OD&D, as AD&D and BECMI did overnight rest.
The red cover Basic set Player's manual p25: "In more advanced games, adventures may last more than a day. In such cases, a Cleric can gain spells each morning, if completely rested. Any and all spells may be changed at this time, if desired." p38: "In more advanced games, adventures may last more than a day. In such cases, a magic user can study spells each morning, if completely rested. A mule should be brough along on long adventures, to carry the spell book along with normal equipment."
For 1st edition, the DMG p40 says that you need 4-12 hours of rest depending on spell level (8 hours for spells up to 6th level) and the 15 minutes per level of spell. Yeah, at extreme levels it would require days to recover all expended slots, but a 6th level mage would need 6 hours of rest then 3.5 hours of study to recover every single one of his spell slots. I think 9.5 hours is a reasonable 'overnight rest' time frame. My experience is that campaigns with PCs past name levels were fairly rare, and if they did occur tended to involve enough followers and hirelings that doing a multi-day rest wasn't especially difficult as you'd have a large camp outside somewhere.
Don't change things until you've actually played the game first. However, I'll give you my opinion on the things you've proposed.
1. In my 2-year campaign which recently ended I added the optional rules of Slow Natural Healing (no HP, only HD on long rest) and Gritty Realism (1 week long rest). I started out the campaign with Slow Natural Healing based on prior 5e experience and I had mentioned to my players I was thinking of adding Gritty Realism to make overland travel/wilderness hex crawls more difficult.
It wasn't necessary early on as the low levels (1-3) were short dungeon crawls. But when I eventually added it, it was the second best change I ever made. I also eliminated short rests, multiplied short rest abilities by 3, and triggered them off of long rest. THIS was the best change I made.
2. This is probably unnecessarily fiddly. I don't think you gain much by adding it to the game.
3. I don't know what "rest of the weary" means so I can't comment.
4. There is nothing "old school" to me about critical hit tables. I know they existed, but I don't consider them old school. Though critical hits can already insta-kill you if lots of dice are involved (rogue sneak attack, notably).
5. I don't feel it adds much. Heck, like others have said a longer weapon is arguably one that will hit first, anyway. Personally, I'd get rid of Dexterity modifier to initiative and go straight d20 as Dex is already a great stat.
6. A good change for many games.
7. Also a good change depending on the technology level you are going for.
8. Spheres are nice. It was a 2e change I liked. 5e alludes to it by, instead of limiting spells, by giving clerics spells to each Domain for free (not requiring a memorization slot). If you'd like to add spheres limiting spells, you probably don't need to make lists for every Domain, only whatever Domains the PCs actually choose.
9. Wizards being able to pick spells means that wizards aren't reliant on DMs to ensure there are enough spells available. A Wizard can go his entire career in 5e and only get his 2 spells per level and not be underpowered. It makes perfect sense to me as it indicates the Wizard working on perfecting and creating those two spells.
On the other hand, in my 2-year campaign I almost entirely used old modules from the '80s. We didn't get a Wizard until about 6 months into the campaign, but the party had kept all of the spell books and scrolls. The Wizard was drowning in spells, even considering I required her to roll to copy/learn each spell. She didn't actually need the two spells per level the book gives her. If you plan on providing lots of scrolls/books you can remove the automatic spells per level but I like the rule as it's a good fallback.
The net result was, probably exacerbated by the Wizard's player being in 7th grade, that she rarely used her other spells. It was just too many choices.
1. In my 2-year campaign which recently ended I added the optional rules of Slow Natural Healing (no HP, only HD on long rest) and Gritty Realism (1 week long rest). I started out the campaign with Slow Natural Healing based on prior 5e experience and I had mentioned to my players I was thinking of adding Gritty Realism to make overland travel/wilderness hex crawls more difficult.
It wasn't necessary early on as the low levels (1-3) were short dungeon crawls. But when I eventually added it, it was the second best change I ever made. I also eliminated short rests, multiplied short rest abilities by 3, and triggered them off of long rest. THIS was the best change I made.
2. This is probably unnecessarily fiddly. I don't think you gain much by adding it to the game.
3. I don't know what "rest of the weary" means so I can't comment.
4. There is nothing "old school" to me about critical hit tables. I know they existed, but I don't consider them old school. Though critical hits can already insta-kill you if lots of dice are involved (rogue sneak attack, notably).
5. I don't feel it adds much. Heck, like others have said a longer weapon is arguably one that will hit first, anyway. Personally, I'd get rid of Dexterity modifier to initiative and go straight d20 as Dex is already a great stat.
6. A good change for many games.
7. Also a good change depending on the technology level you are going for.
8. Spheres are nice. It was a 2e change I liked. 5e alludes to it by, instead of limiting spells, by giving clerics spells to each Domain for free (not requiring a memorization slot). If you'd like to add spheres limiting spells, you probably don't need to make lists for every Domain, only whatever Domains the PCs actually choose.
9. Wizards being able to pick spells means that wizards aren't reliant on DMs to ensure there are enough spells available. A Wizard can go his entire career in 5e and only get his 2 spells per level and not be underpowered. It makes perfect sense to me as it indicates the Wizard working on perfecting and creating those two spells.
On the other hand, in my 2-year campaign I almost entirely used old modules from the '80s. We didn't get a Wizard until about 6 months into the campaign, but the party had kept all of the spell books and scrolls. The Wizard was drowning in spells, even considering I required her to roll to copy/learn each spell. She didn't actually need the two spells per level the book gives her. If you plan on providing lots of scrolls/books you can remove the automatic spells per level but I like the rule as it's a good fallback.
The net result was, probably exacerbated by the Wizard's player being in 7th grade, that she rarely used her other spells. It was just too many choices.
As others have said, try playing with the rules as written and figuring out why they were written as opposed to just making changes off the bat. I know in the last few editions, I've seen certain rules that looked odd up front based on my prior edition experience but made sense later. For example, 4th Edition doubled the amount of ability bonuses that you'd get from reaching every four levels compared to 3.X. However, something I didn't realize at the time was that magic items no longer gave you ability bonuses. In 5th edition, I looked askew at the seemingly low proficiency bonus increases, before later learning about the bounded accuracy philosophy and how it was baked into the game.
I think it's certainly possible to play the game as intended for awhile and later decide to implement some old school flavor (the DMG has several options), but you'll have a better understanding of how and why things happen in the current game to better implement those changes. For example, I fully understand and appreciate the reason why Concentration was implemented in 5E, but I still think it has some negative effects on play that I'm looking for ways to mitigate.
I do strongly disagree with changes to make healing take longer. The last three editions have seen progressive revisions to how HP work, away from actual literal damage to more of an abstraction, such as plot or luck points. 3rd Edition started by saying that the high-level character isn't actually able to take more lethal blows, the higher HP just represent the ability to roll with the blow and turn an attack into more of a minor wound. 4th and 5th Editions have taken a step further and said you might not actually have received a significant wound at all, maybe just a close parry, or a loss of stamina, or your luck's running out, etc. This actually ends up even tracking with how the novels written during the 1E/2E era were designed, with characters like Caramon or Wulfgar getting light cuts, blows that knocked the wind out of them or the like. The only time these novels showed characters getting impaled or hit full on with an axe were when they showed these characters dying.
I think it's certainly possible to play the game as intended for awhile and later decide to implement some old school flavor (the DMG has several options), but you'll have a better understanding of how and why things happen in the current game to better implement those changes. For example, I fully understand and appreciate the reason why Concentration was implemented in 5E, but I still think it has some negative effects on play that I'm looking for ways to mitigate.
I do strongly disagree with changes to make healing take longer. The last three editions have seen progressive revisions to how HP work, away from actual literal damage to more of an abstraction, such as plot or luck points. 3rd Edition started by saying that the high-level character isn't actually able to take more lethal blows, the higher HP just represent the ability to roll with the blow and turn an attack into more of a minor wound. 4th and 5th Editions have taken a step further and said you might not actually have received a significant wound at all, maybe just a close parry, or a loss of stamina, or your luck's running out, etc. This actually ends up even tracking with how the novels written during the 1E/2E era were designed, with characters like Caramon or Wulfgar getting light cuts, blows that knocked the wind out of them or the like. The only time these novels showed characters getting impaled or hit full on with an axe were when they showed these characters dying.
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