D&D 5E Why my friends hate talking to me about 5e.

[nevin]

Or… You know, just give a level of exhaustion at 0 hp. That sounds both much easier and much more enjoyable for everyone involved.

no old school feel is Monster's can kill you. paladins and rogues can kill mages, fighters and rangers can kill anyone in melee. Mages can only cast spells if the melee guys keep enemies from attacking them. Magic Items fill in the gaps when your party doesn't have a full set of 5 different player types.

 

[Shardstone]

People love to tell others on this forum to specifically not bother modding DND for any reason, and that if you want to tweak it for your table then you're wasting your time, and if you and your table enjoys it you're a 1-in-a-million outlier and a fool for ever broaching such a topic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

People love to tell others on this forum to specifically not bother modding DND for any reason, and that if you want to tweak it for your table then you're wasting your time, and if you and your table enjoys it you're a 1-in-a-million outlier and a fool for ever broaching such a topic.

Yeah. And yet when asked what they would do to change the game to what they want (as in a current thread) the list is so extensive that the resulting game borders on unrecognizable (to me anyway).

 

[Vaalingrade]

People love to tell others on this forum to specifically not bother modding DND for any reason, and that if you want to tweak it for your table then you're wasting your time, and if you and your table enjoys it you're a 1-in-a-million outlier and a fool for ever broaching such a topic.

Don't forget telling them to play another game.

Because god knows that the secret for the long term survival of the game is less players.

 

[Shardstone]

Yeah. And yet when asked what they would do to change the game to what they want (as in a current thread) the list is so extensive that the resulting game borders on unrecognizable (to me anyway).

Who cares if you recognize it if it isn't for your table?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Who cares if you recognize it if it isn't for your table?

No one really. But the fact remains that a fair number of folks here want the game changed in major ways, much more than WotC is expected to change it for the anniversary edition in 2024, or than, say, Level Up is changed from o5e. We're talking changes to the assumptions of the game in significant mechanical and lore-based ways. When I see that, i cant help but wonder if the person in question actually likes D&D, since they want to make it something quite different.

 

[Mannahnin]

No one really. But the fact remains that a fair number of folks here want the game changed in major ways, much more than WotC is expected to change it for the anniversary edition in 2024, or than, say, Level Up is changed from o5e. We're talking changes to the assumptions of the game in significant mechanical and lore-based ways. When I see that, i cant help but wonder if the person in question actually likes D&D, since they want to make it something quite different.

To be fair, D&D is quite different from itself. Compare OD&D to 4E to 5E, for example.

Some of us play different editions as well. And 5E is designed with a bunch of optional rules, some of which are so commonly used that you'd mistake them for core rules (like multiclassing and feats), some of which are semi-common (like the longer rest periods, or flanking), and others I never see anyone use. One of the virtues of 5E is supposed to be openness to tweaking.

Ideally folks are clear in their posts about what edition they're talking about if they usually run a different edition (like Lanehan with his extensively homebrewed 1E), but even just talking about 5E, lots of folks play it in varying ways.

 

[Shardstone]

@Mannahnin exactly! Every single edition of D&D plays wildly different from what the other editions are. On top of that, a game that uses, for example, gritty realism is pretty different in feel then the standard vanilla rest system. So on and so on for changes.

The thing is, D&D is really only about rolling a d20, adding some modifiers, and having a pre-packaged abilities (race, class) alongside leveling up. Everyone who is always talking all this stuff about how changes make the game too different are just straight up failing to see outside of their own perspective. Adding subsystems to D&D also doesn't suddenly "not make it D&D" because your definition of D&D is PERSONAL, not GLOBAL. Even my definition above with the d20 + modifiers is really just a personal interpretation!

The point is, you can take the core chassis of D&D (d20 + mods + prof, advantage, AC, HP), and build a huge amount of subsystems (either independently used or altogether) and really modify the D&D experience in some very fun and interesting ways. That isn't a problem, and that doesnt mean you should just give up and play another game. I don't want to play another game, I want to play my version of D&D!

Its like someone orders a hamburger with non-traditional ingredients on it and you say "Bro you should just eat Tacos." What???

 

[CleverNickName]

Some folks really do get super-defensive about house-rules. It's baffling.

"I wrote a house rule to add (whatever) to the game. We really enjoy it; maybe you will too."
"You should just play something else if you want (whatever). Stop trying to change my game!"

 

[DND_Reborn]

Returning to the OP:

If your players want to try the house-rule in the video, here are some thoughts that would help go with it.

Exhaustion is a terrifying bad status ailment in 5e. It's very hard to get rid of a single level of exhaustion, and, as anyone who has ever griped about a certain Barbarian subclass knows, while one level isn't the worst, those penalties start to set in quick, which can make a character useless before long. Not to mention eventually dying anyways. Oh and you can't just toss off a lesser restoration and cure a level of fatigue, like in other versions of the game.

When we adopted a level of exhaustion a 0 hp, we adjusted lesser restoration, allowing it to remove a level of exhaustion but ONLY the first and second levels. You could upcast it to affect higher levels of exhaustion. For example, if a PC has 3 levels of exhaustion, lesser restoration cast with a 3rd-level slot would remove that one level.

Another house-rule is Endurance: you ignore the effects of exhaustion up to a level equal to your Constitution modifier.

For example, if you have CON 15, the first two levels of exhaustion to not affect you, however once you have a 3rd level of exhaustion, all the effects are there.

Then you have the fact that in-combat healing is deliberately not great in 5e, by design. I had a thread griping about this a few months back. The response I got was "lol, out of combat healing is too good, in-combat healing is fine". So even if a Cleric did nothing else but throw out his best Cure Wounds each turn on the Fighter getting the tar beat out of him by monsters to prevent him from taking Exhaustion, they would have a very hard time keeping up, and quickly run out of spell slots. And be unable to cast anything else they might want to.

A general house-rule we use for upcasting is Maximal Upcasting: when you upcast a spell and gain additional dice, those dice are considered to be maximum and you do not roll them.

So, the cleric with Wisdom 18 upcasts cure wounds using a 3rd-level slot. Instead of 3d8+4 you would get 1d8+4+16 (the max of the additional 2d8s). This gives you an average of 24.5 instead of 17.5.

We do this for all spells, so it has other impact of course, but it is one of our "Golden House-Rules".

And finally, with players running around with levels of exhaustion, you're not going to get many encounters done, I would think. So the "6-8 encounters to run the party of resources" gets thrown right out the window, as everyone is going to use all their resources as fast as they can, knowing they weren't going to do more than 3-4 encounters that day anyways.

FWIW, I don't run my game with the 6-8 encounters adventuring day, but play with the adventures completely organic. Sometimes the PCs might have just 1 encounter (or none LOL) and other times they might have a dozen! It just depends on what they are doing...

Any way, with the house-rules we've used, the effects of the added levels of exhaustion are mitigated quite a bit, BUT THEY ARE STILL THERE, which does still increase the over all sense of danger.

Now, concerning the end states of combat. Myself and others have proposed different end states that are possible. I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for with that. However, if you want to continue discussing that aspect, please let me know.

Otherwise, as I began, if your players are interested in adopting the video's suggestion, it might help to consider the above house-rules we've been using for well over a year now (well... maximal upcasting might be a bit shy of a year...).

Cheers.