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

[Charlaquin]

Kind of a BECMI/BX design with a 4e mentality and 5e maths.

Sounds like my perfect game!

 

[DND_Reborn]

Kind of a BECMI/BX design with a 4e mentality and 5e maths.

Care to expound on this:

How would you see this as a BECMI/BX design?

In what way is it 4e mentality? (Having not played 4E, do you just mean healing surges?)

And what aspect is it for the 5e maths?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I mean, if the argument is “fighters should have more they can do outside combat,” I’m not disagreeing. But just because combat is something to be avoided if possible doesn’t mean fighters aren’t useful to have in the party. If the cleric analogy didn’t track for you, consider proficiencies (particularly skill proficiencies). They’re only useful when you’re rolling a check, which is another soft fail-state; when possible, you want to succeed without having to make a check, but skills are still useful to have, because no matter how skillfully you play, you will end up making checks sometimes; probably a lot of them. And when you do, you’ll be glad you have skills to help make them easier to succeed at. Likewise, while combat may be best avoided, it will happen sometimes; probably a lot. And when it does, you’ll be glad you have a fighter to help make sure you survive it.

I definitely think there's a big gap between "you should ideally not need to roll skills, but it's nice to have them when you do" and "you should absolutely try to avoid combat at all costs, because you will lose characters more often than not." Because that's quite clearly the difference here. I struggle to see how anyone could think the two are on the same planet, let alone the same level.

No it does not. <large discussion snip>

You seem to be talking about something unrelated to my meaning. What I'm saying is, "If combat is a seriously dangerous, avoid-it-at-all-costs failure state, why do we have classes designed, by the designers' own admission, to be 100% combat-focused?"

 

[James Gasik]

If it works for you. I would prefer the rules to actually attempt to represent and inform the fictional reality instead of being disconnected from it.

I suppose, but I mean, you could make a ton of rules to get this desired effect, or just do an end run around the problem and just have the narrative reflect what you want to happen anyways.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I suppose, but I mean, you could make a ton of rules to get this desired effect, or just do an end run around the problem and just have the narrative reflect what you want to happen anyways.

But certainly that same logic applies to everything? So why have any rules? Just narrate what you want.

 

[James Gasik]

But certainly that same logic applies to everything? So why have any rules? Just narrate what you want.

That's a little hyperbolic. If we want the rules to force people to rest and recover from taking lots of damage during an adventure, and the end result is that they take a week off to rest, then making them do that instead of enforcing penalties to ensure they do what we want the narrative to reflect isn't the same as "well, I want the monster to deal 50 damage to the Fighter, so he takes it", lol.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That's a little hyperbolic. If we want the rules to force people to rest and recover from taking lots of damage during an adventure, and the end result is that they take a week off to rest, then making them do that instead of enforcing penalties to ensure they do what we want the narrative to reflect isn't the same as "well, I want the monster to deal 50 damage to the Fighter, so he takes it", lol.

Ultimately it is the same. The effect is just imposed by GM fiat.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Care to expound on this:

How would you see this as a BECMI/BX design?

In what way is it 4e mentality? (Having not played 4E, do you just mean healing surges?)

And what aspect is it for the 5e maths?

Just an idea, top of my head and all that, so bear with me:

Low HP: So we go back to Basic (or 1st AD&D) with HP die being small (1d4 wizards, frex) and capping after some levels (So lvl 10 rogue would closer to 35 ish hp than 70). BUT...the party is considered to go back relatively close to full hp after an encounter through Breathers and recovery features.
I think I'd keep Death Saves (maybe Wound Saves?), but they disappears after a Recovery in a Haven, not a long rest. Greater Restoration may remove one failed Death Save and Regenerate may remove 1 per 10 minutes for the duration of the spells, Heal may restore all HP and remove a Death save, etc. The other spells arent called ''healing'' or refer to ''wounds'' they are Invigorate, Instill Vigor, etc. Instant death or death effect may kill without Death saves (Power Word Kill. ) or give a failed Death Save (Enervation, Negative Energy Burst, Horrid Wilting, Death Cloud) on a failed save.
Poisons can drain the already low Max HP of the PC. Diseases may increase the DC to beat the Death Save.

Damage: We used the 5e maths, so we have the same way of doing modifier, same damage rolls, bounded accuracy. Damage and ''Healing'' (or other mitigation) should be able to keep up with each other, at a cost. PC cant endure 2-3 rounds of sustained damage, so resource-based mitigating features could be able to ''undo'' most of the damage on a PC in that round. A high damage feature or spells or critical hit will surpass the mitigation capacity of a target that round.
A creature with 1 accrued failed Death Save is considered Bloodied (which may trigger other effects). A monster is considered bloodied 1)when it reaches half-HP 2) the round after it is hit with a Critical Hit.

4e role design: Damage is mitigated with spells and features, either by giving THP, reducing incoming damage, boosting AC or simply by using recovery items or features. Some class have built-in recovery (fighter's Second Wind) and other are support classes helping the rest of the group with damage mitigation. Support is not a dirty word and it is not a chore, it must feel valuable and gratifying.

Recovery: The PC can spend HD to recover HP during Breathers and when prompted by a recovery spell or feature or item. A PC regains half its max HD on a long rest.

Just throwing some stuff here.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Low HP: So we go back to Basic (or 1st AD&D) with HP die being small (1d4 wizards, frex) and capping after some levels (So lvl 10 rogue would closer to 35 ish hp than 70). BUT...the party is considered to go back relatively close to full hp after an encounter through Breathers and recovery features.
I think I'd keep Death Saves (maybe Wound Saves?), but they disappears after a Recovery in a Haven, not a long rest. Greater Restoration may remove one failed Death Save and Regenerate may remove 1 per 10 minutes for the duration of the spells, Heal may restore all HP and remove a Death save, etc. The other spells arent called ''healing'' or refer to ''wounds'' they are Invigorate, Instill Vigor, etc. Instant death or death effect may kill without Death saves (Power Word Kill. ) or give a failed Death Save (Enervation, Negative Energy Burst, Horrid Wilting, Death Cloud) on a failed save.
Poisons can drain the already low Max HP of the PC. Diseases may increase the DC to beat the Death Save.

I am all for lower HP in general. We don't add CON mod per level, which helps mitigate HP quite a bit IMO, but returning to lower HD and/or capping HD at 10 or something works for me as well.

I don't like death saves disappearing so easily as RAW, so I am with you there.

I think the game needs to get away from terminology like "hit" and "healing", etc. unless it is meant to represent actual hits and healing. I like terminology like "vigor", etc. as well.

Damage: We used the 5e maths, so we have the same way of doing modifier, same damage rolls, bounded accuracy. Damage and ''Healing'' (or other mitigation) should be able to keep up with each other, at a cost. PC cant endure 2-3 rounds of sustained damage, so resource-based mitigating features could be able to ''undo'' most of the damage on a PC in that round. A high damage feature or spells or critical hit will surpass the mitigation capacity of a target that round.
A creature with 1 accrued failed Death Save is considered Bloodied (which may trigger other effects). A monster is considered bloodied 1)when it reaches half-HP 2) the round after it is hit with a Critical Hit.

So, are you thinking the PCs offset the damage each round or do you mean that after the battle is over, they have resources to recover 2-3 rounds of damage?

It sounds like you are thinking offset damage each round, but I wanted to be certain of your design intent.

4e role design: Damage is mitigated with spells and features, either by giving THP, reducing incoming damage, boosting AC or simply by using recovery items or features. Some class have built-in recovery (fighter's Second Wind) and other are support classes helping the rest of the group with damage mitigation. Support is not a dirty word and it is not a chore, it must feel valuable and gratifying.

So, again mitigated each round for a few rounds or after the battle?

Recovery: The PC can spend HD to recover HP during Breathers and when prompted by a recovery spell or feature or item. A PC regains half its max HD on a long rest.

Sounds fairly RAW 5E, except perhaps the "breather"?

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

So, again mitigated each round for a few rounds or after the battle?

most of the rounds, but not at-will, is my idea.

i.e
The 5th level fighter fighter has 20 HP. Enduring the assault of the Troll cost him 12 HP. The bard, on that round can use the Invigorate spells as a bonus action to let the fighter spend a HD to regain HP + the bard's spell mod. He then use his Fortifying Chant spell as his action to increase all allies' speed by 10' and give them +2 damage for their next round. The bards cant do this all day though, he'll run out of spell slot if the troll is not soon slain.

In short, cap the number of time a PC can recover in a day, make falling to 0 hp a bad thing without being too punitive for the rest of the day BUT make healing/mitigating actions worthwhile and necessary.

You REALLY dont want to be hit, and when you are, you REALLY want to recover rapidly from that blow, because the next one might drop you.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So, again mitigated each round for a few rounds or after the battle?

It's more complicated than that.

4e had things called Healing Surges. Using a healing surge usually restores 25% of your maximum HP, rounded down, though other stuff sometimes applies. Each character had a specific number: a baseline provided by their class, plus their Constitution modifier as additional surges. As a general rule, "squishy" classes (like Wizard, Warlock, or Rogue) tend to have lower baseline surges, while "beefy" classes (like Fighter, Paladin, or Barbarian) have a larger number, as they're expected to take a few more hits. Your surges are restored after a long rest, and consumed by most (baseline) sources of healing.

THP generally only work to mitigate damage within combat (most sources of THP don't last long enough to last between fights.) Healing can be done either in or out of combat, but all meaningful sources of actual healing require (at least) one of three things:

1. Actually hitting a real, meaningful enemy. (This is often referred to as the "[no] bag of rats" rule: you can't just have a bag of live rats you smack around to get healing from healing abilities of this type.)
2. Spend a healing surge. Since these are limited each day, you have a finite number of times you can be healed this way before you're just tapped out. (Technically, if you're out of surges, surge-based healing sometimes still gives some healing, but it's so weak it's bad.)
3. Use a Daily resource (healing powers, items, etc.) that don't require a healing surge. Clerics, for example, could pick up a lot of powerful healing actions that didn't require a healing surge....but they were all once-a-day abilities, so they're just as limited as surges are.

As a result, even if the damage is "mitigated each round for a few rounds or after the battle," your long-term resources slowly bleed away. There's essentially no way to regain healing surges without taking a long rest, so there's a clear point at which a given character should really not get into combat anymore.

Further, actual in-combat healing is limited: each character can only use one healing surge per combat under its own power (with the Second Wind action.) You need outside help, like a support character (e.g. Cleric, Shaman, Bard, etc.) or drinking a healing potion (which gives a fixed amount of HP rather than the usual healing you'd get from a surge; better potions give more HP.)

 

[DND_Reborn]

You REALLY dont want to be hit, and when you are, you REALLY want to recover rapidly from that blow, because the next one might drop you.

The issue I ran into before when working on this was really powerful attacks can deal so much damage in one instance, PCs require roughly 100 hp at those level just to have a chance to survive that single instance. So, at that point you either have to adjust damages as well, or ensure PCs have just enough to at least have a chance.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The issue I ran into before when working on this was really powerful attacks can deal so much damage in one instance, PCs require roughly 100 hp at those level just to have a chance to survive that single instance. So, at that point you either have to adjust damages as well, or ensure PCs have just enough to at least have a chance.

Yep, its a pretty hard balance to attain, that is sadly true. Too few HP and you kinda have to remove big-booms from the game or make them weaker, which is a little dull: everybody loves to take a badass dragon's breath in the face from time to time.

All in all, I think that limiting the number of time you can be healed in a certain period would be the first step to work on for these kind of rules.

Recovery: You can only carry on fighting by magical means or sheer force of will a limited number of times per day until your body goes into shock from the strain. Your Recovery maximum is your Constitution modifier + your proficiency modifier. Any time you regain HP, mark off a use of Recovery. If a character would regain hit points from a spell or a feature when they are out of Recovery, they must make a Con save against a DC of 15 or they must roll on the system shock table.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

And yet, bounded accuracy does mean that threats increase at a gradual level. Like a slow climb instead of having occasional difficulty spikes. The difference between one CR and the next might be 1 more proficiency bonus, but most of the time, it just means more hit points and more damage.

Yes that has been my experience with the game.

Status effects and AC, things that you think you'd be able to expect to live at different Challenge Ratings, are instead kind of haphazardly placed on NPC's and monsters, as far as I can tell. Shadows, at CR 1/2 have a terrifying strength drain, and you can easily find a CR 7 that's just a brute that hits like a truck.

This is also true but has nothing to do with bounded accuracy.

Since creatures with goofy special powers or annoying resistances or immunities can be found at any level, I don't really consider them as real difficulty spikes as part of progression. D&D has always been kind of bad about this; you would think, for example, you wouldn't be cursed by monsters until your casters can remove curses (as an example), but that's never been the case.

You might see a tendency towards more of such as you gain in levels, of course, but it's nothing really new to the players at that point. "Oh look, a monster that can turn us to stone. Do we have the ability to deal with it yet?"

I think we are more in agreement than when I started to respond to this post

That said, player characters are more durable than TSR era D&D and that is by design. A lot of people do not like the fact that they way healing currently works it is more efficient to let a character drop to 0 and bounce them back up than to try and keep their health up. Even I would prefer it to be otherwise though I, by no means want a really gritty game.

The XP budget/Cr system really has issues at tiers III and IV, particularly if the DMs lack experience at those levels and make it harder to gain that experience. Especially since official adventures fall short as well.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes that has been my experience with the game.

This is also true but has nothing to do with bounded accuracy.

I think we are more in agreement than when I started to respond to this post

That said, player characters are more durable than TSR era D&D and that is by design. A lot of people do not like the fact that they way healing currently works it is more efficient to let a character drop to 0 and bounce them back up than to try and keep their health up. Even I would prefer it to be otherwise though I, by no means want a really gritty game.

The XP budget/Cr system really has issues at tiers III and IV, particularly if the DMs lack experience at those levels and make it harder to gain that experience. Especially since official adventures fall short as well.

One of the big differences between dangerous & deadly vrs the current safe & near wolverine/deadpool recovery is that it's trivial to dial up. Players will almost never complain about being given nice magic items consumables or houserules that make them better but it's extremely difficult to turn the dial the other way. Making a "grittier" more dangerous game safer is a simple matter of giving out more or better stuff.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One of the big differences between dangerous & deadly vrs the current safe & near wolverine/deadpool recovery is that it's trivial to dial up. Players will almost never complain about being given nice magic items consumables or houserules that make them better but it's extremely difficult to turn the dial the other way. Making a "grittier" more dangerous game safer is a simple matter of giving out more or better stuff.

Yeah, its a sad truth that most homebrew rules tend to make life harder for the PCs. Maybe its because the official rules usually trend the other way.

 

[Bacon Bits]

"He replies with, I think this is a really good idea, what's wrong with it?"

So I told him. It basically comes down to three factors.

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.

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.

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.

After laying down all these points, the response?

"James why do you have to ruin everything?"

I don't think you're wrong, although I do think you could summarize it with just: "The rule opens the door to death spirals even more, and it means the players will need to plan to both retreat and take multiple long rests at any time. The DM should structure their campaign such that the players might need to retreat and take multiple long rests at any time, or otherwise that they should die on the regular."

That said, I think the rule is fine if the tone it sets is what you're going for. It's not all that appreciably different than the grim and gritty recovery system. It shifts the genre of D&D away from heroic fantasy and more towards low fantasy or horror fantasy. If that's your goal, then it's a good rule.

I do think that the short rest problem gets worse in such a campaign, but that's a core "feature" of 5e D&D. Any shift away from a very narrow range of campaign genres tends to make the encounter and recovery system fall off the rails at least a little bit. This one is no different.

Really, though, the rule strikes me as appealing to the same sorts of people who like the Mork Borg setting. Not my bag.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I mean, it's still pretty clearly a factor. If you limit other forms of progression (defenses and accuracy) and distance yourself from horizontal progression (multiclassing is optional and there's very minimal resources for horizontal progression), then you only really have survivability as a metric of advancement. That, plus the incredibly uninspired monster design, is what leads to so many big fat bags of HP with no other mechanics, and to player characters who become difficult to kill without throwing very powerful opponents at them.

I would also be in favour of more horizontal progression as you call it. I do think that there are issues with monster design but I do not see throwing powerful monsters at them as a problem. It is not like you have to do it all the time.

I also like throwing weak monsters at them the make them feel powerful.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

One of the big differences between dangerous & deadly vrs the current safe & near wolverine/deadpool recovery is that it's trivial to dial up. Players will almost never complain about being given nice magic items consumables or houserules that make them better but it's extremely difficult to turn the dial the other way. Making a "grittier" more dangerous game safer is a simple matter of giving out more or better stuff.

The current game can be dangerous and deadly if you want it to be, just not the way that older version of the game were. I have been watching Critical Role Vox Machina recently and I am impressed with how deadly many of the encounters are. Particularly high level ones.

 

[Charlaquin]

I definitely think there's a big gap between "you should ideally not need to roll skills, but it's nice to have them when you do" and "you should absolutely try to avoid combat at all costs, because you will lose characters more often than not." Because that's quite clearly the difference here. I struggle to see how anyone could think the two are on the same planet, let alone the same level.

Wait, who said you’ll lose characters more often than not?