I am going to be running a 5th edition campaign soon. So I thought I'd better actually familiarise myself with the rules - that could come in handy. To this end, I abused the print facilities at work today to get my hands on copies of the free "Basic" versions of the rules, as well as a few bits and pieces from the SRD. (I think WotC are to be commended for doing this, from a long-term growth perspective.)
I am an extremely lazy person, and as I get older I have less and less patience to learn new systems. Luckily 5th edition is still recognisably D&D, and probably more recognisably D&D than 4th or 3rd edition were to me. That said, there are some big differences from what I'm used to (which I call BECMI, but is really just Red Box Basic, because I use none of the optional rules from the Master's set). Here's what I've noticed so far:
1) They made it really hard to die. I mean really hard. PCs in 5th edition come as close as dammit to having plot immunity. I'm not sure if it is harder to die in this version than it was in 4th or 3rd, but listen, in the games I am used to running, if your hp falls below 0 you are finished. This negative hit points and death saves business is going to take some getting used to.
2) Monster stats are mercifully brief in comparison to 3rd or 4th edition, but still seem long to me - you have to work out the ability scores of monsters and keep track of modifiers? I'm going to have to think up a way around that if possible.
3) They've made hit points extremely abstract in that they basically refresh on an hourly basis, especially once PCs have gained a couple of levels. I have no problem with that in theory but in practice I feel it may result in odd circumstances within the fiction (DM describes combat round: "The orc stabs you in the chest, almost killing you...." One hour later, after the fight and some rest: "You're fine now.")
4) The spell lists seem like they have been blandified a bit, or is it just me? There don't seem to be as many spells as in PHBs of yore, and those that are there seem less interesting. But maybe I am spoiled by the extensive combination of spells I'm used to, which draws from the Rules Cyclopedia, AD&D, and quite a lot of other 1st and 2nd edition source books.
5) Because this post feels picky and negative, a positive thing: in the early variants of D&D which I am used to playing and running, character start off with brutish, miserable and usually short lives. They are pretty pathetic and the early stages of a campaign are tough. I prefer things that way, on balance. But there is nothing wrong with a bit of variety, and 5th edition looks like it will be a nice change in that PCs will start off competent and capable. I am looking forward to something different in that regard, as well as the more tactical, war-gamey feel that combat seems to promise.
Item 1: if a hero is making death saves any time they are hit for damage they automatically get a failed death save. Additionally if someone hits you with a melee weapon from within 5' while you are down it is automatically considered a crit. All crit to an incapacitated character means you have failed 2 death saves with 1 hit. So it can be deadly if these things are kept in mind.
ReplyDeleteMy first house rule: if somebody is unconscious any enemy can kill them using a single action provided they are within 5'. ;)
DeleteAnother popular house-rule: every time someone drops to 0hp, they gain a level of exhaustion. This prevents heal-scumming, and gets way more use out of the woefully-underutilised exhaustion rules.
DeleteItem 3: not every hour, the RAW is that you can use your hit dice, a term that can be confusing because of legacy use of it so let's call those healing dice, after 1 hour rest to heal yourself, but you only get half your healing dice back, minimum of 1 after a long rest. There are rules in the DMG for changing these rules.
ReplyDeleteItem 4: there is a Elemental Evil Player's Companion that you can download to add a few more spells. http://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/EE_PlayersCompanion.pdf There are also 4 cantrips in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide talked about briefly here. => http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?453159-SCAG-cantrip-review
ReplyDeleteThanks - I'll take a look, although I'll also probably end up making up a lot more.
Delete1) hard to die compared to 0=dead, but not particularly compared to death at -10, or -CON, or other variations. We've had characters die, even ones with a few levels on 'em (haven't really played any games at higher than level 5-6). And the 3 strikes thing actually brings a lot of tension, particularly with a 1 = 2 strikes at once; in 3e people were calculating exactly how long it would take for a character to bleed out when deciding whether to try to help a downed ally. In 5e it's a real nail-biter, and I've seen players guess wrong about whether there was time to spare.
ReplyDelete2) Monster ability score mods are a nuisance, but I'd be comfortable winging it.
3) D&D HP have always really only made sense in the abstract; if you narrate sword blows as actually biting deep into flesh, 43 HP has always been damned hard to explain. Even in B/X I prefer to narrate it as close calls, shallow cuts, ringing blows to the helmet, etc. until that last one that takes them to 0 and really rips flesh. Also, HP don't refresh that fast: you can get your up to your full Hit Dice back after an hour's rest, but only once per day (only way to get more times between long rests is to take some smaller portion of your hit dice). And you only recover half your Hit Dice with a full rest, so if you spend all your dice recovering it's basically two days before you get them all back. It's way different from the old 1-2 HP per day, so if you were down 40 it was almost three months to heal... but really by then everybody had so much magical healing available they could recover multiples of their HP in the middle of a single battle if that's what it took.
4) There are a lot of spells that have (IMO) been nerfed, either by reducing the duration to piddly amounts (ooh, Wall of Stone can last ten whole minutes) or requiring concentration (you can't Spider Climb and Detect Magic? Give me a break).
Still, on the whole I find it a playable edition.
"you can't Spider Climb and Detect Magic? Give me a break"
DeleteIf there's one combination of spells I *invariably* find myself using....
It's for when you're climbing up a wizard's tower to burgle it and you need to check whether the nearest window is an illusion or not. Duh.
DeleteBTW, if you want to chat more you can find me on Twitter under the handle DaddyDM.
ReplyDeleteItem 1: one more thing if a hero takes sufficient damage with one attack's damage to bring them at or below their max hit points they are dead without the death saves.
ReplyDeleteThis is unlikely to happen except at low levels. Most monsters do fairly low damage, and tend to get more attacks rather than higher damage as they scale up.
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DeleteHave you looked at Dungeon Crawl Classics?
ReplyDeleteNo. Again - I'm too lazy, and I think Basic D&D fulfills really most of my needs.
DeleteIt's funny that you are surprised by the "hard to die" thing. It's been next-to-impossible to die in D&D for nearly two decades now! Where have you been?
ReplyDeletePlaying red box basic!
DeleteI’ve made hp more abstract myself. (Roll for injury at 0 hp; hp are restored with 8 hours sleep.) But I’m still working on changing how I describe combat. I’m not sure a “hit” should have been considered an actual hit since Chainmail’s heroes.
ReplyDeleteI think the spells becoming more bland with each edition has been going on since 2e. Well, before that even, but 1e still added a lot of inspirational spells alongside the systemization of those that already existed.
Yeah, that's the problem, really. I am completely on board with abstract hit points (the most popular entry on this blog ever, with something 6600 views, is about that very topic... http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/d-combat-is-more-abstract-than-you-think.html). I've thought about experimenting with different language for the 'to hit' roll on a few occasions - I came up with the 'to attrit' roll (yes, that's a real word apparently) but it sounds a bit too weird.
DeleteConstantly interested in what OD&D/Red Box players make of 5e. I started DMing two 5e games last year after 20+ years away from tabletops -- the only other edition I played was 2e, as a kid. Not from experience but from observation I think the following two assertions are broadly true (feel free to flame me right outta here):
ReplyDelete1. 5e is designed around considered, level-appropriate xp budgets and encounters per day. Not that it NEEDS to be played that way. Just that it's baked into the design.
2. "Old school" D&D and its associated playtypes are, uh, not designed this way.
The wild picaresque venality of what I understand to be old school D&D and the OSR appeals to me more than current playstyles. But 5e is all I have, and the best thing I can say for it is that it's a really adaptable and generously designed game that wears additions, edits, and subtractions to/from its rules and assumptions with panache. Your mileage may vary.
Yes, considered, level-appropriate XP budgets and encounters per day is not happening. That's just too alien.
Delete“Constantly interested in what OD&D/Red Box players make of 5e.”
DeleteWhat I make of it: It addresses most of the issues I had with 3e and 4e. The level of complexity is closer to classic D&D. It is more modular like classic D&D.
But it is still very different from classic, and not in ways I like. But there’s no reason for it to exist if it was just classic. Not my first choice for D&D, but my first choice among Wizards’ D&D.
“But 5e is all I have”
What do you mean? With so many free rectroclones and simulacra and the PDFs of the originals for sell too, how can 5e be all you have?
Fair point! I was being rhetorical. Basically I had 5 friends, only 1 of whom had played D&D in the past 15 years. I could've done some research and come back to them saying "Moldvay, guys! It's Moldvay for us!!" but we wanted to jump right in and D&D had just been reborn in this shiny new edition and we all said "Yup."
DeleteI assume I'm a notch on some Marketing Manager's belt at WotC.
I have not yet seen a PC die in my 5e campaign, but I'm not sure dying is so hard, especially compared to 3e. The rule reads more like "one more hitand you're dead", and keep in mind 1st level characters in 5e are probably more like 2nd or 3rd level characters in BECMI.
ReplyDeleteAs for the spell selection, I must agree with you. The combination of fewer spells and unlimited combat cantrips give magic a much more video-game-y feel than in old editions. And I miss Read Magic, but this is a wholly different (and easily fixable) issue, namely magic identification being far too easy in my opinion.
With all that said I still quite enjoy 5e, if only because it feels far less internally consistent than 3e so I can just wing it instead of learning all these rulez, just like I did in the old days. ;-)
Yeah, as long as a game is not internally consistent I am pretty happy. I think internal consistency is the pits, and I'm not being facetious!
DeleteA lot has already been clarified, but I'll emphasize that characters in 5E are very fragile until about level 5, which is when they tend to have enough survivability to sustain at 0 HP. I've killed a lot of characters at level 1-4 in 5E by accident, so trust me....they are fragile (still not as fragile as a B/X level 1-2, though).
ReplyDeleteOh...also interested to hear how your experience goes. I'm actually working on a Yoon-Suin conversion for 5E to run later this year.
DeleteI've been running a kind of LotFP/5e hybrid for a few months and as others have stated, it's very easy to house rule without undue carnage. I'm having a pretty great time (so far). House rules I'm using (with 5e as the primary ruleset):
ReplyDelete1) Roll on a fairly nasty version of the Death and Dismemberment table on hitting 0 HP. Similar to the one here http://hillcantons.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/death-and-dismemberment-redux.html.
2) Changed the Universal XP/level table in 5e to the Fighter xp table from LotFP. Use XP for gold and LotFP XP awards per HD, with some eyeballing to account for monster abilities. These awards are low, but I award XP just for encountering a creature.
3) Changed the duration of some spells. Added a bunch from AD&D and LotFP. Charm, for instance, has its classic INT based duration.
4) Experimenting with allowing wizards to concentrate on their INT bonus number of spells at once.
5) LotFP encumberance.
6) Healing surges require the expenditure of 1 use from a healing kit. Otherwise, HP return at the rate of CON bonus per week.
7) Monster stats are still mildly annoying, but on the plus side, my quick and dirty conversions from LotFP, Labyrinth Lord and AD&D seem to be working ok (essentially double HP, 20-Thac0 seems to work ok for attack bonus).
The rest is pretty much the same. Bounded accuracy, adavantage/disadvanatage, inspiration mechanic: all present and in effect.
Oh and a version of the hit location drop chart from Vornheim...either way, I think it's a resilient rule set.
I quite like a lot of those ideas. Especially the quick and dirty conversion for monsters. That's exactly the kind of thing I was ruminating over. I might go for double HP, [20-Thac0]+1 for attack bonus just to give it a bit more edge.
DeleteI'm sure that would work. At any rate, I've seen 5 PCs go down thus far (in maybe 3 or 4 months). My 'You Died' quotient seems to be intact.
DeleteAs far as spells go, I don't know if this helps (or if you've already seen it), but there's a LOT of stuff here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0Qx4NeOkTzTZ2lrT2JoeUxQclU/view
Oh, it is NOT hard to die playing 5e. If you still feel that way after reading all the death-related rules, just try to get a party through the beginning scenario of Hoard of the Dragon Queen.
ReplyDeleteWe'll see how it all works out in a few weeks' time... ;)
DeleteIn 4E I ran a 3 year campaign and we had 3 PC deaths. I gave up and went back to red box basic with some house rules and had a two year campaign with 43 deaths. The players and I much preferred the latter. We use a Death & Dismemberment table too which allows for injuries like missing limbs etc...some PCs were retired after they lost both arms.
ReplyDeleteThe 5E healing rules seem way too good and don't make sense unless everyone is regenerating, even with abstracted HP. The best bits of 5E are character customisation and backgrounds - you could mod some of that into basic and scratch the rest - probably easier than running 5E. Level appropriate encounters sounds too railroady and way too much work.
I've run around a dozen sessions of 5E and killed at least half a dozen players... but the death rules mean the only time someone dies is when they're off on their own, or when the entire party is outmatched and has to abandon their unconscious comrades in the retreat.
ReplyDeleteResource management is out the window, more or less, since players can heal and recover hit points and powers so easily (this even though I'm fairly harsh on random encounter checks). You need to make pretty much every encounter (other than pushovers) a potentially serious threat for the combat to be interesting, and in 5E the players have so many abilities and powers, especially once they reach mid-levels, that I'm beginning to find this means every enemy needs to have some kind of special attack to pose a threat. Bog standard monsters do too little damage to be anything but a boring roadbump - they need to either dish it out in a big way, or inflict some kind of status effect, for the players to be forced to fight tactically rather than just throw magic superpowers at the problem until it goes away.
Coming from a similar background to you, I was taken very off-guard by how powerful the players became after getting just a few levels under their belt. Having DMed and played it for a bit now, I'd say 5E is at its best when the DM clocks up the difficulty to "murderous" and the players have to figure out how to use their panoply of weaponised abilities to get out of their latest jam.
I made characters hard to die in my game, with negative hit points and self-stabilization and also with a ready supply of free Raise Dead and Resurrection Spells at the early levels.
ReplyDeleteI did this because with skills and with writing the player character into the setting, character generation takes a long time, and if they get killed, players often strive to roll up the same Magic User or a Thief or a Warrior. What's the point? Second, I use a deadly non-linear system of damage, where a simple arrow can do 18 points of damage as a critical hit, which can knock out and incapacitate with a serious injury up to a 54hp character, and self-same arrow has a 1/400 chance of being lethal to its target. Also, my first level adventure featured fifth level monsters and places where players would surely die, if they are foolish enough to venture (caves which are Tiger Beetle breeding grounds).
How do I handle this in story? Dungeon is in someone's Barony. That Baron has dibs on all treasure in it, especially magic items. Either players go in with Baron's permission, or they are thieves and trespassers. So long as the players fight for the people of the Barony, they get men at arms to assist, equipment, spells and healing, such as Barony can provide. If PC's get killed, it's a 4-6 hour ride to the Church, where a PC can be brought back from the dead. They have to make a Resurrection Survival roll, which gets lower each time, and it decreases by one each day. The further the players venture out, the less chance of being brought back from beyond. Training wheels for players, in effect.
A corollary on what Laeral said above: it's hard to kill PCs, especially if there are healers in the group.
ReplyDeleteTake out the healers, and things go to hell quickly.
That's not so easy to do; druids regain all lost hit points when they shape-shift, making them one of the hardiest classes in the game. It's nearly impossible to whittle them down to nothing.
But hitting the healers with heavy-damage attacks can take them down, and once they're down, things get really exciting for everyone else. Even if they're making their saves, if they're unconscious, they are not up and doing things for others.
Ditch the EXP rules. The table is ok (but do note that getting to 2nd and 3rd level are both really quick), but EXP for kills only works if you're game is about combats.
A system in which the combat only gets really exciting once a specific portion of the players has been knocked out of play doesn't seem very well designed.
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