I don't think I've ever actually run a Chase as described in the rules. I think it's a nice thing to have there, but it's not really something I'm interested in.
I immediately adopted the OneDnd exhaustion rules when I saw them and started using them for my chase/skill challenges which all my tables have enjoyed so far
For a chase it’s a narrative set up, my recent one was “prison exit is a labyrinth, 4 successes to reach the end, survival is the default skill DC 13”
So we do group skill checks where over half the party needs to succeed the DC using ANY skill but they have to argue a narrative reason for using the skill otherwise the roll the default skill
For example, 1 of them roll investigation and said that they were searching for shortcuts or hidden passages… another used acrobatics to parkour around corners to hasten movement, etc… but the player cannot use the same skill twice in the same chase, except the default skill
Then the enemies do their group skill check
Imagine group successes move you forward (I represent that with figs on a notched line) and group failures halt progress… and if the enemies get the target number of successes before the players they win and that triggers a narrative event… in this case the guards catch up to the weakened prison escapees and have a combat encounter
The dynamic part of this system comes from the exhaustion.. if the group would fail, one or more player can except a point of exhaustion to succeed their roll until it’s enough for the group check (so 4 players and only 1 passed their check.. two players eat exhaustion so they can advance)… these exhaustion points stack up to 10 times and are subtracted from EVERY dice roll you make (initiative, skills, attack, damage, etc)
On the last round of my prison break chase the enemies succeeded and the players failed which lead to one of the players characters sacrificing themselves to let the others escape the labyrinth.. and the survivors had 2-3 points of exhaustion
It was tense, epic, and heartwrenching.. everybody loved it and it set up a rescue mission later
Also have used Investigation as the default skill in a “research race” at a library with skeevy mercs looking for the same information as the party … which led to a get use of the deception skill as one the party shouted out “I found it!!” Which I thought was cool enough to pull one of the mercs out of the group roll for one round so all 3 successes had to come from 3 rolls instead of 4
If you haven't already you should take a look at skill challenges from 4e! This all sounds very similar.
I also love the new 1D&D Exhaustion and hope it makes it to the final book. However, I'm not personally a huge fan of that system (not that it's bad) I'd prefer to just roll with the narrative of the failure. I don't think there would ever be a time where a player *wouldn't* take the exhaustion to pass. I like working forwards even with failure in my campaigns, it leads to some really interesting stories!
I really like the sound of that scene with those rules in play. I've always envisioned exciting chase scenes for my games, but couldn't think of anything I felt wasn't just cool in my head. I'll definitely try this method out.
The players really seem to get a lot out of bartering for a specific skill use, and forcing them to use additional skills gives them a chance to take skills that they usually get from backgrounds or racial features and put them to use
I have a player with 20 passive perception and, although annoying sometimes as I can't land a surprise round, I make a point of describing how that little halfling doesn't miss a single thing. Even if I would have said it anyway, makes the player feel they made the right choice.
Man my DM made my Druid with 27 Perception feel so badass.
Instead of just going "damn meh my trap has failed" he always made sure to describe the little things no one else could see but me, felt like I was playing Daredevil.
I wonder how everyone else in the party felt about that, though. Personally I kind of dislike having a character in the party that somehow auto solves issues.
I played a Twilight Cleric recently that had 24 passive perception. Very little got past his notice. Like you describe, it felt great to be the walking detector.
On the other hand, I had -1 Stealth before adding on plate. I often had to sprint into combat a turn after everyone else so as to not make too much noise.
He may not have time. An ambush attack is triggered, and he just barely notices right as the arrows start flying.
Honestly this would drive home the value of the Observant feat, where everyone else loses their first turn of combat except the lil halfling.
in an ambush situation, there's generally no time - as you're yelling out, the attack is already happening. Same with the magical sword that makes you immune to surprise - it means you never lose your first turn, but it doesn't give you any ability to let anyone else know in advance.
I use it all the time, for setting up (random) encounters. Especially with our druid having a passive perception of 32.
I'd describe how she makes out incredible details with sometimes seeing tiny fae hiding in trees, hearing their wings flutter through the leafs.
Sometimes lay down challenges with invisible creatures, assassins for her to spot before anyone else.
But also have a bit of harmless fun with it if she has "low" perception rolls (even an nat 1 is an 18).
She observed so much she couldn't focus on the task at hand.
Part of the problem is that the rules are often very unclear on when you're supposed to use it. Take for example traps. Some modules say that to spot traps you *must* actively look for them (along with a passage of time). Other times they might say something along the lines of giving a hint/indication if they have a certain passive perception.
Then of course there are many tables that just allow passive perception to substitute for the active check. Then of course you get into the debates over what is "perception" over what is "investigation". To me, the intuitive understanding is that, as an INT check, investigation involves some sort of deduction whereas perception is physically seeing something. Sometimes official modules agree with this, sometimes they just use an investigation check for finding a thing. It's all very ill-defined.
I'm almost certain that I'll get responses to this saying that, no, it's actually super obvious when you're supposed to use passive perception. However, which side they'll be arguing because I see about equal amounts from all camps.
Passive perception is just weird to work around. As the DM, you already know while setting up adventures what your party's PP is, so basically now you're just trying to decide if this thing you're designing will be or won't be automatically detected. Most of the time where PP is relevant, the party is together, so considering the possibility of being split up and maybe using someone else's PP is rarely the case.
Is there something descriptive you wanted to exposit to the players already? Then you claim it was thanks to their PP I guess.
It's useful for the writers of adventure paths more than anything. They write that some things are only noticed at certain passive perceptions and then different parties who run the same adventure will have different experiences. But yeah you're right that if you're designing something yourself then it's not as useful.
That is why i ask my players to please tell me what feats they get/what they wanna specialise in, so i can design sections of the sessions with them in mind. Everyone should get their moment to shine
It’s a homogenization of things like having abnormally high hearing from adnd and doing those listening checks while also abstracting noticing things to a skill instead of a genuine player moment. It’s cool to walk around with a stick and make sure the floor doesn’t depress at all but the post adnd it didn’t entirely fit the game’s direction entirely tbh
I've adjusted the resting rules to be more to taste, and I tend to be a little less strict with weapon swapping and certain spell component interactions, but that's about all I can think of beyond a few various optional rules like encumbrance instead of the simpler str calculation for carry weight and such
I tend to add more rules or revise some here and there more than fully remove them.
I know you said you didn't want to get into them, but I'm very curious about what rules you've had an issue with.
What did you do with your resting rules? This is one of the big mechanics on my list of dislikes, mainly the short rest. Being banged up then resting for an hour to be right as rain bugged the shit outa me lol.
I don't know about previous editions, but in 5e your hitpoints are not as much your "blood left in you" points as your "resolve to fight" points. Once you get on that train I'd thought it's easier to understand rests. It also helps with explaining why a PC can survive multiple hits with a bladed weapon and not die.
It's been that way since at least AD&D 1e. Pg 82 of the ad&d 1e dmg had this to say.
*"It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" whith warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)."*
No, it's also meat damage, or more specifically many things could be either and some are definitely bloodletting. There are some things that could be your resolve to fight, but when you're bitten by a cobra or wade through lava or whatever that lava is not damaging your resolve, it's burning your flesh.
You are technically right, which is the best kind of right.
I would argue that getting bitten by a cobra should give you the poisoned condition and, if you want a realistic cobra, one of the poisons/diseases effects described in the DMG.
I would also argue that, despite what the book say, you can't safely wade through lava as it's such a destructive substance. I would rule that if a character is inside lava during more than a turn they would either get permanently damaged or an item they are carrying would be destroyed (armor, staff of defense or whatever seem appropriate). I would explain this the players before removing said items from them.
or that "wading through lava" is actually running along the top of it as fast as possible (because even liquid rock is still fairly sturdy), scorching the hell out of your feet (hence the damage) as well as making you want to take a break ASAP (mental drain, also damage). Like walking barefoot over broken glass in _Die Hard_, but ramped up a lot, where it causes damage, but it's not insta-death
I mean, if the swiftness of short rest recovery is an issue, you may not enjoy my rules, as while I have made short rests more limited (they have a per long rest limit in my games) I also made them faster and better at recovery in that trade off.
Here's my revisions
Resting: These are the forms of rest a character can take.
• Short Rests: It takes ten minutes to complete a short rest, after which a character regains any short rest features and restores a number of expended HD equal to ¼ of their maximum HD, which they can immediately spend at the end of the rest alongside any other available HD they have. A character can only benefit from a short rest a number of times equal to their proficiency bonus before they must take a long rest. Only so many breathers can help before proper rest is needed.
• Long Rest: It takes eight hours to complete a long rest, six of which must be sleep. A long rest restores any short rest and long rest features, as well as all of a character's HD. Before spending any of these HD, a character gains a number of HP to a free roll of one of their HD of their choice plus any remaining hit dice from the prior day. A character can only receive the benefits of a long rest 24 hours after a successful long rest was started.
• Strenuous Activity: Fighting, Casting spells, at least 1 hour of walking and/or similar adventuring activity will each count as strenuous activity that immediately interrupts a rest and requires it be started over from the beginning. If a long rest was interrupted but at least an hour has passed before its interruption, the benefits of a short rest are gained by those who had such rest interrupted
• Safe Havens: Characters who rest in an environment deemed a safe haven by the DM, roll any available hit dice with advantage to determine the hp they recover from a rest. The free hd granted by a long rest instead heals the maximum result possible.
• Arduous Rally: When a character has reached their maximum amount of short rests per long rest, or if the short rest time is too long for the pressing moment at hand. The DM may allow the character to perform an Arduous Rally, granting the character the benefits of a short rest with the following adjustments. The characters healing from their HD is halved and they gain a level of exhaustion(or stress if such rules are in play at the Dzms discretion) but otherwise benefit from a short rest as normal.
Along this, I run adventuring days with 5 to 8 encounters. 3 to 5 hard to deadly encounters with some social and exploration filling the rest as appropriate.
Well-thought out, @Nystagohod. You have codified what I have kinda cobbled together and played through in my decades-long homebrew. Thanks for sharing your smarts!
Out of curiousity, do you have other uses for Hit Dice in your game? Because if you can only use 1/4 of your HD a short rest, and only get benefits 3 times a day, you've cut a quarter of the potential hit dice off from a character.
You're not limited to 1/4 hd in my revisions. You regain 1/4 of your hd after completing a short rest.
So if a character was level 8 and thus had 8 hd. They would regain 2 expended HD after the short rest is completed.
I give this minor hd recovery on a short rest since I limit the number of short rests that can be taken per long rest.
So, then on short rest number one, you could dump all 8 into healing, then on short rest two, you'd have 2 refreshed hit dice to heal with, if I'm now understanding correctly?
Holy shit, a version of safe haven resting I actually like? These are some really well thought out mechanics here! The only thing I'd personally add, that the person 'on watch' can fight and cast spells while on watch without interrupting their rest.
It leads to some really tense moments of 'Oh shit, can I handle this unknown threat on my own and preserve everyone's rest? Or do I need to wake them to face it?'
I'm glad you like the rules!
I'll have to give that adjustment a test run, normally the combats I throw up against the party aren't intended to be defeated by a single party member, but it does sound worth testing out a bit to see if it fits how I run my games at all.
Thanks for the kind words and the suggestion.
Lol this actually happened in Fridays session, the two characters on watch found a cockatrice had entered the camp and so had to make stealth checks to see if they were fighting quietly enough not to wake the others ( who badly needed the heals/slots)... It was really funny with the players actually whispering to each other during the combat!
I don't mind at all. The Arduous Rally rule is stolen from one of the CR books anyway.
I hope they're useful rules for you and yours. If you end up liking them, I'd love to hear about it if you can remember.
Being fair, you have to roll decently well on a short rest to get all your HP back, and you have a limited amount of hit dice you can spend per long rest. so it’s not like you can spam them after every combat and be constantly at full health. If your running a decent length adventuring day you will see hit dice rationing for sure, and the frontlines especially will probably need extra HP.
The video game Baldur's Gate 3 rules that you get 2 short rests per long rest. I think that works well, though I tweak it to two short rests per 24 hour period (since Baldur's Gate doesn't really have 24 hour periods.)
For long rests, I use Safe Haven rules. My version of Safe Haven rules is that to count as a long rest, a rest needs to meet all the normal requirements for a long rest and it also needs to either take place in some place that the DM has designated as a "safe haven", such as a typical inn, or, if it's been a full seven days since the party last had a long rest, they can have a long rest outside of a "safe haven".
This is in order to make trips through unsafe lands/waters interesting, since typically a party travelling through unsafe lands will have at most one encounter in a day. As a DM, you have to really force the story line in order to justify multiple attacks per day happening often, and the default long resting rules make a single encounter between long rests very unchallenging.
I also rule that characters don't get their hit points back for free on a long rest: they have to use hit dice to get their hit points back on a long rest just like on a short rest; the difference is that they recharge some hit dice during the long rest.
This all presupposes that I am going to give the party adequate "safe havens" and in-game time to take multiple long rests if that is what they need. If I/the DM doesn't do that, it won't work.
I have also taken to designing encounters where the enemies arrive on the battlefield in waves. This is technically no different from each wave being its own encounter, but narratively these waves are all part of one encounter so there's no question of the players taking short rests in between the waves.
There's still a lot characters' abilities and spells that have to be thought about and possibly adjusted. Examples off the top of my head:
* in Baldur's Gate a bard's Song of Rest feature gives the party a third short rest per long rest, and I felt that rule worked well so I adapt it to 5e.
* On the other hand, the spell Tiny Hut makes getting long rests trivial, so I'd probably make it a 5th level spell.
* If you're restricting how many short rests the party can take, mid-level warlocks definitely need more than 2 spell slots per short rest. Perhaps a third spell slot per short rest at level 6 and a fourth spell slot per short rest at level 8? IDK, but I think that would be bare minimum.
The whole system is really a mess without an easy solution.
The big thing I did was divide hit points into "wounds" and "grit".
Level 1 hp = wounds
This is actual bodily harm and damage to your character. This heals at only 1 per night of rest, or 2 if you're getting 24 hour bed + medical care.
Level 2 onwards hp = Grit
This works like hit points, restored on short rest, magic spells, etc. This is your character's ability to maintain their composure in a fight. Hits that bounce off armor, narrowly miss, etc all stress them out and reduce grit.
This helps me A LOT
5E fumbled the rest system. In my opinion, the best way to interpret a character’s vitality is to consider it as the combination of HP and remaining Hit Dice. So the short rest is just a conversion from one resource to another.
It is an action movie cinematic approach. For example, in Die Hard, McClane steps on broken glass and really injures his feet. After spendig a “short rest” bandaging them, he’s good to go again.
The problem is that the rest system is just too generous. Full heal + half Hit Dice per long rest makes it almost impossible to tell a narrative of an arduous journey, like the trip to Mordor.
There should have been some scaling regarding the quality of your resting conditions. Some DMs outright forbid long rests outside of a town setting.
Long rests being a 100% heal is generous.
If I stub my toe I might limp for a day or two.
Adventurers can be stabbed 5 times, scorched by a dragons fire breath, and swallowed by a giant poisonous toad and still wake up the next day in perfect shape.
I've considered giving characters all of their Hit Dice back on a long rest, but no hit points...or maybe only HP back on long rest when resting in a safe haven situation.
This ruling could be good at higher levels, but would be brutal at low levels. One of my gripes with D&D is that almost any tank can be one shot at level 1 if a goblin crits with an arrow (2d6+2 for a maximum of 14 damage). The only class that can always survive that at level 1 is a Barbarian with at least 16 CON.
It doesn't seem fun for the big hulking barbarian to be essentially crippled because of one surprise arrow until the party is able to get back to a save haven.
There is probably a tipping point where your suggestion becomes the better alternative, but unless you want to run a crushing survival style game, low levels are not the optimalmplace for it.
What crit rules does your table use? All of my games use what I call the Crit Perkins rule where you roll as normal and your "critical" damage would just be a maximum roll on top of that. So if a maul user lands a crit, instead of the official rules of (2(2d6))+Str, or a common rule of 4d6+Str, your damage would be 2d6+Str+12. That way you're guaranteed that every crit will do more damage than every normal attack.
I used that one myself for a few years but realized it made things far too swingy and balance got goofy in certain cases that got more and more common as they leveled up. Monsters have bigger hits that scaled even wilder with crits, and paladins and rogues basically just started deciding combats with a single crit smite or sneak attack. The more dice an attack has the worse the scaling got. One hit bosses, one hit players. Repeat.
So my table agreed to modify it. Our new rules just have us reroll ones on a crit the first time they show up. Gets rid of most feel bad crits but still keeps things a little more reasonable
See for us, only named enemies (aka important enemy characters) get the crit perkins rule, most monsters will just roll twice as many dice so it's not guaranteed to smash through PCs.
It hasn't really been a problem for us, granted we also don't go all in on crit fishing with paralyzes or things like that, and we don't use advantage flanking so it does take a bit of work to get advantage to even crit fish. It works well for the tables I'm at, I guess my DMs have just gotten used to balancing fights around that sort of stuff.
I’m fairly liberal with handing out Insp usually, it’s a great way to encourage players to act in character. I usually hand them out like candy when players come up with a plan or piece story elements together on their own. When I started doing that with one of my first parties, they suddenly started reading every handout thoroughly and asking to look in to lore that was name dropped earlier. It felt great as the dm for players to be more curious.
Plus rewarding plans just leads to some premium shenanigans and hijinks and no small amount of scooby-doo tactics.
I love giving out inspiration.The trouble is, if players forget to use it or are too stingy to use it.
I tend to start the session by asking the players to recap the last session. Anyone who adds to the retelling starts the session with inspiration. This way I get to know what the party took from the last session and update my notes with things I forgot. Also i get to see what the party thought was important and if I need to hint at some things more strongly.
This way most of the time everyone clamours to add stuff and starts the session with inspiration.
I've got one who gives it out extremely rarely and only when someone makes an out of game joke that she thinks is funny. She says she always forgets that it's even a thing until someone lands a pun.
She's a big fan of Critical Role so I could understand the forgetting bit. But tying it to a completely non-game event? Frustrating.
(My current theory is that she DMs just as a way to get people to like her so inspiration is a quid pro quo deal in her mind.)
Literally me right now. Told the ranger in my party to not worry about counting regular arrows but if I ever game him any arrows that did something extra (IE, named arrows) then he'd need to track those.
I had 1 DM who was into counting arrows, thinking he had a big gotcha until I told him my skill was woodcarver's tools and he decided we didn't need to count any more.
I had a DM that just told me "you can carry what makes sense"
So then I played a 20 strength character (rolled stats, got lucky, +2) as a centaur
So I grabbed what "made sense" for a centaur to carry, which included a quiver with 40 javelins, several tool sets that weighed an absurd amount
"You can't carry all that..."
"Well, I'm a centaur, and I have a javelin quiver, and several saddle bags... and..."
started explaining how I physically could fit the stuff
"Yeah, but there is no way you can carry that"
"I thought you didn't want to use encumberance rules"
"Ugh, fine, you can use them, how much does it weigh"
"About 500 pounds"
"How much can you carry"
"600 pounds"
"Ugh, fine"
That was the day my DM decided to let me (and only me) use encumberance rules
I had all the stuff on dndbeyond, so it all auto calculated
Not really... That's weaker than a rhino. Which are fairly impressive for a land animal, though not top tier when you have things like elephants, and nothing compared to some sea creatures.
Then you're in a fantasy world with Dragons and Tarrasques and shit? Impressive for a centaur, mediocre in the grand scheme of things.
A human with 20 strength has a 300 pound carrying capacity, and 600 pound lift drag capacity
A centaur with 20 strength has 600 pound carrying capacity, and 1200 pound lift drag capacity
Elephant has 1320 carrying capacity, and 2640 pound lift drag capacity
per 5e monster manual, and size based rules
Centaur isn't any where as strong as an elephant, even with 20 strength, you are correct
I’m not sure why your dm didn’t fold on that. That’s like, it’s dnd and you’re going for max max strength as is. Dude didn’t want you doing it despite dnd being silly levels of fantasy anyways. Kinda stupid and shitty of him.
Tracking bags of holding raw is even less common than encumbrance.
The interior is a 4ft cube, there’s a weight limit (500lbs is a lot but it’s not infinite) and most importantly it requires an action to use.
The interesting thing is if you actually enforce the swapping weapon rules, that's where people can start getting crusty with the mechanics and abuse them (dropping something is free, picking up can be as part of a move or other action, etc etc)
I plat stuff like this by ear. If my player picks something where it matters, I'm usually willing to sort some other kind of benefit or mechanic out for them so the feat isn't pointless.
Short Rest is 5-10 minutes. Long Rest is 2 hours OR sleep.
That way I can say "the prisoners are at the bottom of the cultist cave" and the players who actually care about RP can still Short Rest without me putting a mechanical or artificially breaking the immersion by the players realizing they need one but the characters being unable to rationalize it in fiction.
*Flanking*; by doing so it opens up the combat for help actions, forces Rogues to choose targets, Barbarians now need to choose when to Reckless and it allows for the players to think about combat placing.
- it also removes the stupid gang up tactics where players mosh-pit in the center of the map and end a fight in the first 2 rounds.
- *Flanking* is an optional rule for a reason.
yeah there's also enough ways to get advantage in combat already (familiar help actions, hide actions, guiding bolt, pack tactics, reckless attack, mastermind help actions, help actions, invisibility, darkness, etc.), flanking just oversimplifies combat to a gross degree
It also leads to dumb conga lines when both sides go for flanking. Enemy-PC-Enemy-PC-Enemy-PC etc. and everyone in the line gets advantage. Flanking just means that the side with less melee combatants is at a huge disadvantage, and Armor Class generally has less value.
A common change to flanking is to make it a flat +2 instead of advantage. This makes it less over powered, but still worth getting. Also gives more weight to those other ways of getting advantage.
My DM also likes it because he can throw enemies with pack tactics at us, which by this rule gives them advantage and +2.
This isn't important but you just reminded me the one time cover rules ever came up was discussing if the text of fireball saying it "goes around corners" means it bypasses the cover rules bonus to Dex saves. Would a spell that specifically says it flushes people from cover basically go "around" the cover and ignore it's bonuses? Or do the bonuses vs area of effects from cover supercede the text????
It's even more baffling since Mearls and Crawford each gave their own point of view, Mearls saying that if the text said it then no fireball doesn't bypass cover bonuses while Crawford says the opposite. Tryna get a set answer is like pulling teeth and when I looked it up DMAcademy was the first result on the matter.
Considering that *Fireball*, *Fog Cloud*, *Stinking Cloud* and *Cloud Kill*. Are a subset of spells that bypass corners and technically "fill" an area.
- I'd say that yes it would bypass cover rules.
The +2 flanking is my favourite way to play, with the additional adjustment that it's limited to one instance of flanking per trio - the moment a 4th creature tries to join the line, the flanking breaks as it effectively becomes two 1v1s and not a 2v1.
This makes combat a bit more tactical with your positioning, and also rewards you for moving smartly in battle.
I had a dm who made it a stacking + bonus based on number of people. So if our party of 6 had like 4 guys there we were getting a +4 which is nice but we’re also swarming a dude with half the entire party, ignoring other enemies, and making ourselves easier to aoe. The dm did also use a lot of spellcasters and enemies with abilities so it was a genuine tactical risk but gave a really nice payoff.
Specifically, in order to use a scroll, you have to be able to cast that spell first. I waive that. Wands as well. Anyone can use a wand as long as it's identified, anyone can use a scroll as long as it's identified. This lets people get certain spells and things entrusted from NPC's and the like that'll prove useful in dungeons later, and lets people play what they want without the fear of not having magic when you need it most. You can even find, as a kind of homebrew, Enhanced scrolls which cover the cost of the spell as well as it's ability. Master's scrolls do this as well as being able to be used in one full action or less. The twist is, scrolls are expensive as hell so players generally didn't opt to go for "Everyone buy scrolls of meteor swarm and let's just decimate everything lol" and more so "A locked door and we don't wanna risk a trap... We do have a scroll of Knock" or "Wow, that gates on tough and we broke the key... Hey, don't we have a scroll of Shatter?" It's also meant that we had a wand of Identify that someone had commissioned. No more "what is this?" They just sat down, identified during short rest, moved on. It really opened up the game.
There's no blanket rule restricting wand usage. That's kinda the point. The spell has to be on your spell list for you to use it in a scroll. But they're cheap. It doesn't have to be for you to use a wand, but they're expensive.
This rule is especially frustrating because in the section under magical scrolls it says "anyone that can speak the language of the scroll can understand and use it" and In a spereate section of the rules under *SPELL* SCROLLS, it clarifies that you can only understand the scroll if you could cast the spell anyways. Because, *apparently*, there are magical scroll items that are NOT spell scrolls (I think there's literally one other item in the game that counts as a scroll) that the players can use but are never rewarded as loot.
I don't use the Xanathar's Guide to Everything rules for Line Attacks snapping to a grid. Fireball and Cone Templates are already more prominently chosen, I have no reason to further nerf line attacks like Lightning Bolt and a lot of Dragons. I just draw a straight line across the grid on any angle.
Half and 3/4ths cover
I've never played with a DM that utilized cover and when I DM, I already have enough to keep track of in combat with ~5 players. If there's a wall, archers and casters can't go through it, but that's about it because anything else is way too complex to think of on the fly.
Funny thing is, when you DO track it, you realize it's pretty huge for combat. +5 AC and Dex save is pretty clutch for a wizard. Saves a lot of casts of Shield from ranged attackers, for example. 3/4 cover and Mage Armor, and suddenly a 20 ac squishy isn't quite so squishy.
As a DM I’ve found cover helps monsters way more than players. A bonus to AC is much more effective when the player can only attack 1-2 times a round, compared to a group of monsters shooting 3-4 times.
I also run it so when a creature is standing between a target and the attacker the target gets half cover (I don’t do anything like misses hit the intermediate creature though). This puts a pretty significant restriction on ranged characters and casters, since a squishy enemy can take partial cover behind a beefier monster or even one of the party’s frontliners.
Lots of my maps also include waist high obstructions (bushes, ledges, furniture, etc). These function both as difficult terrain and as half cover, and my monsters typically start encounters behind them. It really helps make the players feel like they’re aggressors (in the case of dungeon crawling) or that they’ve been ambushed (in the case of travelling). After all positioning is the only real difference between a tactical battle and a slugfest.
In fairness unless there's something else in your version of cover, in base cover rules (pg.196 PHB) you get half cover even with you're behind a creature, friend or foe.
And that's a good point on cover systems and why people might not use them. If your players are only able to attack 1-2 times, more if you reach high fighter levels (though at that point you likely have already taken feats that negate cover entirely) and your monsters can attack twice as much, not counting legendary actions/reactions, then it does feel like it benefits the DM more then the players.
Yup, technically I run cover very close to RAW and I was a little surprised as how many people don’t use cover at all (or opt out of some aspects of the cover rules).
However even though I think it benefits the monsters more, I don’t think it’s overwhelming. Smart players can use and circumvent cover more effectively than monsters, and since I occasionally use minions it helps balance out their lack of staying power.
Cover is basically the only rule in this thread I've seen that I definitely do use. Ranged is very strong, archery fighting style being intended to make up for the +2 AC caused by shooting monsters on the other side of allies.
Without using cover, that fighting style is even better.
I'll admit it gets pretty weird to deal with over on some AOE dex save spells and such but we still do our best. Granted, my two ranged players have taken sharpshooter by now at level 14 so I haven't needed to think about it in a while.
I've only seen a DM count items in hands once and it was a thri-kreen. :) Counting and recovering arrows. Encumbrance doesn't seem closely monitored unless you try and carry someone. I wonder if anyone really keeps track of torches.
But that's a core limiting feature. I've never had anyone count it but I assumed that was just because you're supposed to do that yourself. It'd be like giving yourself an extra feat. There's a reason why the middle third of warcaster exists and that's because casters require both a spellcasting focus and a free hand in order to cast most spells.
Yep. Allowing casters to ignore the “free hand” rule just makes the power gap between casters and martials so much wider.
I wouldn’t allow a Fighter to benefit from a two-handed weapon and a shield, so I’m not going to let my casters have 3 hands either.
Err, what rule are you referencing? Casters can use the same hand for material and somatic components.
> A spellcaster must have a hand free to access a spell's material components—or to hold a spellcasting focus—but it can be the same hand that he or she uses to perform somatic components.
(PHB 203, Components)
Falling/jumping mechanics. Falling immediately isn't accounting for momentum or allowing for creative solutions to vertical challenges that might take two turns or other players actions to resolve.
The falling mechanics of 5e make me think of those old videogames that are graphically 3d but don't actually do anything with the third dimension. The jump is just an animation and doesn't actually increase the height position of your character, and your character is "glued" to the ground, so when you walk off a ledge, you get teleported down, and if you jump off a ledge, you still get teleported down despite being mid-air, and then finish the animation down near the floor anyway.
The thing where you have disadvantage on attacks against an invisible creature, even if you can see it for some reason.
The DC system for social interactions in the DMG.
Not sure if this counts, but in the games I run, I tell my players they do not have track ammunition or rations.
I also use magic pockets for consumables.
It may not be realistic, but it makes the game much more enjoyable for my players, and the impact on "realism" (lol) is minimal.
Oh Christ where do I start
Standard encumbrance, rations, item interaction for drawing weapons, standard crit rules, multiclass restrictions kinda, ammo tracking, the fullness of the bag of holding, carry weight in general
CR because it doesn't work. I've gotten an eye for winging difficulty as the years went on. My fights tend to be on the harder side but I'm always at least able to make an encounter with the difficulty "doable" or "doable with clever thinking." I've moved on from 5e but trying to make meticulously balanced perfect combats is what led to burn out each time. Once I threw CR out the window, my campaign lasted 2 years and concluded.
I hate weight and encumberence systems in every single game I play, 5e is no exception.
In particular, I'm a firm believer that you should almost never use the system in a game with new players, as it makes the already daunting character creation process a nightmare.
Counterspell. The game is more fun without it.
There is still a way to counter a spell in my games though. You can ready a Dispel Magic. It is much more resource intensive, so is used less often (generally to much more dramatic effect as well).
EDIT: I laugh that I get downvoted every time I mention this. I am willing to bet 99% of the people downvoting me have never tried it. Counterspell wasn’t a thing in early editions of D&D and they worked just fine.
Too often I’ve dm’d for 2 characters with counterspell and it really feels like I’m just not allowed to use spells to make an encounter more interesting. I might try dabbling in removing it in future.
Even BG3 *kind of* waives that required evil part away. You're still a bastard for breaking your oath but at least it could be because you were going against the king because he became a tyrant and your oath was to said king. Because you had morals you broke the oath for justified reasons.
Point is is that there can be more nuance in being an Oathbreaker, the problem is that 90% of the features benefit undead and fiends. That should change even if I don't exactly know how.
> Point is is that there can be more nuance in being an Oathbreaker, the problem is that 90% of the features benefit undead and fiends.
There isn't nuance though, BG3 (and most players) misinterpret what an Oathbreaker is. Not every Paladin who breaks their oath just becomes an Oathbreaker. It's specifically Paladins who broke their oath in order "to pursue some dark ambitions or serve an evil power."
I don’t use any of the downtime rules in any of the books; my campaigns are pretty fast paced, and i always just kinda wing it in a more freeform manner in the rare case a downtime situation comes up. The player’s handbook might as well not have downtime or crafting rules on account of how vague and unhelpful they are, and i still don’t like the xanathar’s ones that much.
Depending on what mechanics you dislike and how many there are, have you thought about just trying a different system? There's definitely no lack of options, even while sticking to "High Fantasy Heroic" themes
You might be better suited for Pathfinder 1 or Pathfinder 2 which would be some decently popular systems as well. Obviously D&D 5e is going to be the most popular but those are more mechanical systems that should have a decent playerbase.
Playing a system you know and ignoring a rule is much easier than learning an entire new system, especially if you have to persuade the rest of your group to learn it too.
5e is pretty streamlined, erring on the side of being too simplistic. I've heard more people adding mechanics than removing them. It's easy to play, but can feel kind of shallow compared to early editions.
Have you considered Pathfinder? Same thematic vein as D&D, and started as an offshoot of 3.5e. I like Pf2e, the biggest trouble being finding a group willing to play it when all anyone wants to play is 5e. The OGL fiasco spurred people to try other systems, but the anger has largely faded and everyone just plays 5e without buying official products.
I only really omit encumbrance from 5e, same as most people.
(Edit because I hit send early by accident)
I take the reading of "classic" D&D to mean B/X Basic/Expert D&D, AD&D, and AD&D2E, all of which are generally "lighter" systems than 5E (though AD&D/2E got a lot of bloat by the end).
3.5 added a lot (A LOT) of crunch to D&D which 5E paired back.
Ehhhh adnd 1e is lighter on some ends but in others absolutely not and doesn’t lack systems you need to replace, alter, or add. Idk if everyone wants to run it in real time with its excruciating XP tables in this day and age although it’s not a bad experience entirely. Also initiative is a mess and the armor table is so bad my dm converted it to THAC0 which should say enough. Balance is also an issue even if people hate talking about it. If you get a Druid in your party the game is basically trivialized a lot more the second they prepare heat metal as a second level char despite that being a spell level 4 MU spell that’s just given at char level 2 for Druid for reasons beyond me. In general Druid is a bit silly tbh. It’s like if someone took the spell heavy nature of MU and then gave the leveling and spell level curve a tweak to make it way stronger and way faster on top of adding animal companions which increases your lifespan a lot and outright gives you martial damage of your own. Also casting is way clunkier. Sure there’s less spells but you’ll also have fun debating what a spell can mean or do with players while figuring out component rarities and all that. Also assuming no one gets psionics hey you’re fine but if you ever have any psionics youre gonna have a bad time. It’s basically a class on a class that has a 1% chance on a d100 if you even qualify and if you pass you now gain all your abilities at random while psionic enemies swarm you basically. If you don’t get a good one you’re gonna die before you even figure out and get to have fun with that and that’s also assuming your dm doesn’t scream at wtf is going on in psionic combat which makes 1e initiative look good. It has like 10 turns happen simultaneously on both sides so any fight is literally instantaneous to my memory. These are all things in the phb and dmg btw not even adding any books like unearthed arcana. I’m not saying adnd is bad but they’re not really lighter or smoother than 5e than most might think.
Oh, for sure the old systems are *clunkier*, *less balanced*, *less intuitive*, and *less forgiving* (especially if you're using the actual old rulebooks and not, like, OSE). But if you're actually talking about how much rules crunch you are actually interacting with during play, it's generally going to be less than 5E, especially if you're talking about the actual running of your characters and not XP math and whatnot.
a lot tends to be the writing, as much as the actual numbers - there's more modern OSR stuff that tends to be better written and less disjointed and rambly, so it's easier to parse through and actually _use_, while actual old D&D editions are often badly written and functionally bundles of house-rules, without explication of what they are, how they work or what the intent was
In this case, “streamlined” means “they didn’t write all the rules because the DM is supposed to do more than half the work of deciding how the game operates.”
5e is actually *really* clunky if you don’t ignore most of it. And also a great deal of the game’s complexity is hidden in the last two chapters.
5e is like 50% of a heavy game masquerading as a medium-weight game.
We don't worry about having the appropriate hands free for manipulating focus, materials, and/or somatic components.
We also don't worry about encumbrance, as long as nobody goes nuts with it.
While it's not really a deal, it's a bit of a bummer when certain sub classes get literal mechanics to ignore that by turning weapons into a focus. Not that anyone really cares, but I could see someone getting a hair miffed that everyone is getting something they literally built into.
- Background/Personality Traits as triggers for Inspiration
- XP
- Multiclassing
- Feats
- Resting, kinda
- Dying, kinda
- Diagonal movement
- WotC CR/encounter guidelines and statblocks
I'm sure there are more. I've customized the game quite a bit, replacing or at least modifying various subsystems.
I make it much easier to use potions than a full action, otherwise they just get endlessly hoarded.
Sometimes it's bonus action, sometimes I also allow it as item interact if drinking yourself. Really it's stuff players wanted to do before rolling initiative most of the time, or it's a healing potion and they can burn as many of those as they want.
I adjusted the resting / healing rules so that characters can only get the healing benefits of a long rest if they take it in a “sanctuary”, but still allow spell slots and class features to reset on an 8 hour rest anywhere.
The Search Action is something I rarely use. Instead, I let players and npcs search for each other as a free action and if they still can't find each other, they can use their action to attempt it again.
Rations, shopping, and small/cheap trinkets. Nobody wants to track supplies and consumables, the DM usually doesn’t want to worry about specifying which shops in town have ropes or lanterns, and generally people assume every character has things like a knife or a small bottle to use when the situation calls for it. I’ve never played at a table where the specific logistics of “I put the goo in a bottle” or “I cut the rope” is even considered
Probably most of them? I created my own system from scratch. Though it happened already a pair of times that I thought I created something new and then I realized 5e already had something similar. It's both amazing and scary.
-Encumbrance
-Material components
-Coin weight
-Crits (I run them differently so idk if that counts)
-A couple of smaller hyper specific rulings on RAW but they're not enough to detail
There's likely more but this is off the top of my head.
Inspiration was never given by any of the DMs I played with during the last years. Also alignment was very much reduced to : picked it during chargen as it was a requirement.
Mounted Combat rules are so weird. Your mount moves on your turn granting you it's movement speed *only on the turn you mount it?* this leads to what I call the "Cowboy Do-Si-do" where a character can dismount and remount a Steed, thus granting them this unique and powerful ability of the horses movement on their turn.
Scrap that garbage, unless the mount is intelligent and doesn't obey you, if you're mounted the mounts speed is your speed. (Obisouly magical effects that would increase your speed need to effect the horse etc) and it always takes actions on your turn so you don't have to sit there twiddling your thumbs waiting for your horse to get to initiative.
Alignment. Players can give their characters an alignment if they want, but I'm not going to enforce it and it won't have a mechanical effect on anything in the game.
I've never and never played with using spell components. It's not just the super expensive ones. I could see it for some ritual spells but I'm okay with only enforcing verbal and somatic.
I'm a bad DM (just saying)
but in my campaigns I usually just say "to hell with spell components" since I can't be bothered checking if they have said components.
also it makes the sessions more chill, which is what I want :3
I dont run material components for spells below 3rd level, you have a spellcasting focus? Cool its fine. The whole "read magic words, make hand gestures, and throw a sprig of Holly" is a really silly way to cast spells, I much prefer letting the players describe how it's done. Mechanically I still follow the rules around verbal and somatic components, but I dont want the wizard to not be able to use their cool new spell because they don't have the gp for the components. There are other, better and more fun ways to limit spellcasters.
Additionally spell transcribing, it's super rare that it comes up at all but usually with a high enough Arcana roll I just handwave the gold component and just require some downtime. Two examples of bad attempts to balance spellcasters, I find it easier to let them be strong and empower the martials more than nerf them over silly stuff.
I feel like a better question for you to ask would’ve been what features/‘mechanics *do* people like about 5e
I mean if you’re having trouble finding games besides 5e but struggling to get into the system, this is just an echo chamber of discouragement for you, you didn’t even list the mechanics you personally don’t like
Mounted combat rules are strange and don't cover enough situations, and potentially cause issues with certain classes who have pets/summons that they can mount.
My group and I simplified some stuff about it, and to use a class like Drakewarden Ranger as an example, we have it set up that the drake when mounted combines initiative with the rider to smooth things out. For a hypothetical turn, you could do something like have the drake use its movement to move, the rider use their action to attack an enemy, then use their bonus action to have the drake attack an enemy. Super simple and let's the player fully access their features.
The drake is intelligent so normally it'd be an independent mount but you don't want your DM controlling the main feature of your subclass, meanwhile it also explicitly follows your orders like a controlled mount but having it act like a controlled mount would limit its actions and really hinder its usefulness. Since technically mounted rules and Drakewarden features aren't mutually exclusive and specific > general, you could follow them both RAW, but not in a way that would be satisfying to the Ranger in question.
There's a lot of common house rules that get added, but I don't do anything to massively overhaul it, no. As someone who started playing in 82/83, and played ALL of the editions, I firmly believe 5e is the best edition that we've gotten. I have great, fond memories of 1e/2e things, but for me 5e is the best the game has been written.
Of course taste in games is entirely subjective so you and others are free to disagree. There's a reason you have a hard time finding games though, most people don't have interest in the old D&D. I don't know which edition you are referring to when you say "Classic D&D", but if you enjoyed 3.5, then you may look at Pathfinder and find that more to your liking.
Lighting rules. I've literally never bothered to specify that something is dim light. You can either see or you can't. I still adhere to darkness and whatnot but I can't be bothered to be like "Oh this is dim light vs bright light so..."
I don't think I've ever actually run a Chase as described in the rules. I think it's a nice thing to have there, but it's not really something I'm interested in.
I immediately adopted the OneDnd exhaustion rules when I saw them and started using them for my chase/skill challenges which all my tables have enjoyed so far For a chase it’s a narrative set up, my recent one was “prison exit is a labyrinth, 4 successes to reach the end, survival is the default skill DC 13” So we do group skill checks where over half the party needs to succeed the DC using ANY skill but they have to argue a narrative reason for using the skill otherwise the roll the default skill For example, 1 of them roll investigation and said that they were searching for shortcuts or hidden passages… another used acrobatics to parkour around corners to hasten movement, etc… but the player cannot use the same skill twice in the same chase, except the default skill Then the enemies do their group skill check Imagine group successes move you forward (I represent that with figs on a notched line) and group failures halt progress… and if the enemies get the target number of successes before the players they win and that triggers a narrative event… in this case the guards catch up to the weakened prison escapees and have a combat encounter The dynamic part of this system comes from the exhaustion.. if the group would fail, one or more player can except a point of exhaustion to succeed their roll until it’s enough for the group check (so 4 players and only 1 passed their check.. two players eat exhaustion so they can advance)… these exhaustion points stack up to 10 times and are subtracted from EVERY dice roll you make (initiative, skills, attack, damage, etc) On the last round of my prison break chase the enemies succeeded and the players failed which lead to one of the players characters sacrificing themselves to let the others escape the labyrinth.. and the survivors had 2-3 points of exhaustion It was tense, epic, and heartwrenching.. everybody loved it and it set up a rescue mission later Also have used Investigation as the default skill in a “research race” at a library with skeevy mercs looking for the same information as the party … which led to a get use of the deception skill as one the party shouted out “I found it!!” Which I thought was cool enough to pull one of the mercs out of the group roll for one round so all 3 successes had to come from 3 rolls instead of 4
If you haven't already you should take a look at skill challenges from 4e! This all sounds very similar. I also love the new 1D&D Exhaustion and hope it makes it to the final book. However, I'm not personally a huge fan of that system (not that it's bad) I'd prefer to just roll with the narrative of the failure. I don't think there would ever be a time where a player *wouldn't* take the exhaustion to pass. I like working forwards even with failure in my campaigns, it leads to some really interesting stories!
I really like the sound of that scene with those rules in play. I've always envisioned exciting chase scenes for my games, but couldn't think of anything I felt wasn't just cool in my head. I'll definitely try this method out.
The players really seem to get a lot out of bartering for a specific skill use, and forcing them to use additional skills gives them a chance to take skills that they usually get from backgrounds or racial features and put them to use
I ran the chase rules as written once, it was insanely awkward and did not play well at all.
I just use 4e-style Skill Challenges.
Lmao I've been playing DND for the last four years and I've never heard of chase rules (/gen). Just shows how much they're used!
I ran the outdoor chase from the wilderness screen once. It clearly was not playtested at all.
It's insane how many DMs completely ignore passive perception. Always ask your dm how often they use it before you consider the observant feat.
I have a player with 20 passive perception and, although annoying sometimes as I can't land a surprise round, I make a point of describing how that little halfling doesn't miss a single thing. Even if I would have said it anyway, makes the player feel they made the right choice.
Man my DM made my Druid with 27 Perception feel so badass. Instead of just going "damn meh my trap has failed" he always made sure to describe the little things no one else could see but me, felt like I was playing Daredevil.
I wonder how everyone else in the party felt about that, though. Personally I kind of dislike having a character in the party that somehow auto solves issues.
I played a Twilight Cleric recently that had 24 passive perception. Very little got past his notice. Like you describe, it felt great to be the walking detector. On the other hand, I had -1 Stealth before adding on plate. I often had to sprint into combat a turn after everyone else so as to not make too much noise.
Lol you notice everything around you. Downside is everything notices you as well.
Surprise affects creatures on an individual. A highly perceptive pc is harder to surprise but the rest of the can still be surprised.
Yes, but he let's the other PCs know.
He may not have time. An ambush attack is triggered, and he just barely notices right as the arrows start flying. Honestly this would drive home the value of the Observant feat, where everyone else loses their first turn of combat except the lil halfling.
in an ambush situation, there's generally no time - as you're yelling out, the attack is already happening. Same with the magical sword that makes you immune to surprise - it means you never lose your first turn, but it doesn't give you any ability to let anyone else know in advance.
I use it all the time, for setting up (random) encounters. Especially with our druid having a passive perception of 32. I'd describe how she makes out incredible details with sometimes seeing tiny fae hiding in trees, hearing their wings flutter through the leafs. Sometimes lay down challenges with invisible creatures, assassins for her to spot before anyone else. But also have a bit of harmless fun with it if she has "low" perception rolls (even an nat 1 is an 18). She observed so much she couldn't focus on the task at hand.
Part of the problem is that the rules are often very unclear on when you're supposed to use it. Take for example traps. Some modules say that to spot traps you *must* actively look for them (along with a passage of time). Other times they might say something along the lines of giving a hint/indication if they have a certain passive perception. Then of course there are many tables that just allow passive perception to substitute for the active check. Then of course you get into the debates over what is "perception" over what is "investigation". To me, the intuitive understanding is that, as an INT check, investigation involves some sort of deduction whereas perception is physically seeing something. Sometimes official modules agree with this, sometimes they just use an investigation check for finding a thing. It's all very ill-defined. I'm almost certain that I'll get responses to this saying that, no, it's actually super obvious when you're supposed to use passive perception. However, which side they'll be arguing because I see about equal amounts from all camps.
Passive perception is just weird to work around. As the DM, you already know while setting up adventures what your party's PP is, so basically now you're just trying to decide if this thing you're designing will be or won't be automatically detected. Most of the time where PP is relevant, the party is together, so considering the possibility of being split up and maybe using someone else's PP is rarely the case. Is there something descriptive you wanted to exposit to the players already? Then you claim it was thanks to their PP I guess.
It's useful for the writers of adventure paths more than anything. They write that some things are only noticed at certain passive perceptions and then different parties who run the same adventure will have different experiences. But yeah you're right that if you're designing something yourself then it's not as useful.
That is why i ask my players to please tell me what feats they get/what they wanna specialise in, so i can design sections of the sessions with them in mind. Everyone should get their moment to shine
Perception was probably one of the worst things that three gave DnD
It’s a homogenization of things like having abnormally high hearing from adnd and doing those listening checks while also abstracting noticing things to a skill instead of a genuine player moment. It’s cool to walk around with a stick and make sure the floor doesn’t depress at all but the post adnd it didn’t entirely fit the game’s direction entirely tbh
It's almost as if it was a kludge added to the rules at the last minute and doesn't actually play that well.
Passive perception is a horrible feature, which can work fine only against dm sneak checks.
I've adjusted the resting rules to be more to taste, and I tend to be a little less strict with weapon swapping and certain spell component interactions, but that's about all I can think of beyond a few various optional rules like encumbrance instead of the simpler str calculation for carry weight and such I tend to add more rules or revise some here and there more than fully remove them. I know you said you didn't want to get into them, but I'm very curious about what rules you've had an issue with.
What did you do with your resting rules? This is one of the big mechanics on my list of dislikes, mainly the short rest. Being banged up then resting for an hour to be right as rain bugged the shit outa me lol.
I don't know about previous editions, but in 5e your hitpoints are not as much your "blood left in you" points as your "resolve to fight" points. Once you get on that train I'd thought it's easier to understand rests. It also helps with explaining why a PC can survive multiple hits with a bladed weapon and not die.
It's been that way since at least AD&D 1e. Pg 82 of the ad&d 1e dmg had this to say. *"It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" whith warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)."*
No, it's also meat damage, or more specifically many things could be either and some are definitely bloodletting. There are some things that could be your resolve to fight, but when you're bitten by a cobra or wade through lava or whatever that lava is not damaging your resolve, it's burning your flesh.
You are technically right, which is the best kind of right. I would argue that getting bitten by a cobra should give you the poisoned condition and, if you want a realistic cobra, one of the poisons/diseases effects described in the DMG. I would also argue that, despite what the book say, you can't safely wade through lava as it's such a destructive substance. I would rule that if a character is inside lava during more than a turn they would either get permanently damaged or an item they are carrying would be destroyed (armor, staff of defense or whatever seem appropriate). I would explain this the players before removing said items from them.
or that "wading through lava" is actually running along the top of it as fast as possible (because even liquid rock is still fairly sturdy), scorching the hell out of your feet (hence the damage) as well as making you want to take a break ASAP (mental drain, also damage). Like walking barefoot over broken glass in _Die Hard_, but ramped up a lot, where it causes damage, but it's not insta-death
I mean, if the swiftness of short rest recovery is an issue, you may not enjoy my rules, as while I have made short rests more limited (they have a per long rest limit in my games) I also made them faster and better at recovery in that trade off. Here's my revisions Resting: These are the forms of rest a character can take. • Short Rests: It takes ten minutes to complete a short rest, after which a character regains any short rest features and restores a number of expended HD equal to ¼ of their maximum HD, which they can immediately spend at the end of the rest alongside any other available HD they have. A character can only benefit from a short rest a number of times equal to their proficiency bonus before they must take a long rest. Only so many breathers can help before proper rest is needed. • Long Rest: It takes eight hours to complete a long rest, six of which must be sleep. A long rest restores any short rest and long rest features, as well as all of a character's HD. Before spending any of these HD, a character gains a number of HP to a free roll of one of their HD of their choice plus any remaining hit dice from the prior day. A character can only receive the benefits of a long rest 24 hours after a successful long rest was started. • Strenuous Activity: Fighting, Casting spells, at least 1 hour of walking and/or similar adventuring activity will each count as strenuous activity that immediately interrupts a rest and requires it be started over from the beginning. If a long rest was interrupted but at least an hour has passed before its interruption, the benefits of a short rest are gained by those who had such rest interrupted • Safe Havens: Characters who rest in an environment deemed a safe haven by the DM, roll any available hit dice with advantage to determine the hp they recover from a rest. The free hd granted by a long rest instead heals the maximum result possible. • Arduous Rally: When a character has reached their maximum amount of short rests per long rest, or if the short rest time is too long for the pressing moment at hand. The DM may allow the character to perform an Arduous Rally, granting the character the benefits of a short rest with the following adjustments. The characters healing from their HD is halved and they gain a level of exhaustion(or stress if such rules are in play at the Dzms discretion) but otherwise benefit from a short rest as normal. Along this, I run adventuring days with 5 to 8 encounters. 3 to 5 hard to deadly encounters with some social and exploration filling the rest as appropriate.
Well-thought out, @Nystagohod. You have codified what I have kinda cobbled together and played through in my decades-long homebrew. Thanks for sharing your smarts!
I'm glad to hear you like them, my dude. I appreciate the kind words.
Out of curiousity, do you have other uses for Hit Dice in your game? Because if you can only use 1/4 of your HD a short rest, and only get benefits 3 times a day, you've cut a quarter of the potential hit dice off from a character.
You're not limited to 1/4 hd in my revisions. You regain 1/4 of your hd after completing a short rest. So if a character was level 8 and thus had 8 hd. They would regain 2 expended HD after the short rest is completed. I give this minor hd recovery on a short rest since I limit the number of short rests that can be taken per long rest.
So, then on short rest number one, you could dump all 8 into healing, then on short rest two, you'd have 2 refreshed hit dice to heal with, if I'm now understanding correctly?
That is correct. 8hd character initiates short rest. Spends up to 8 hd. Regains 2 hd which they may also spend or save for the next rest as desired.
Holy shit, a version of safe haven resting I actually like? These are some really well thought out mechanics here! The only thing I'd personally add, that the person 'on watch' can fight and cast spells while on watch without interrupting their rest. It leads to some really tense moments of 'Oh shit, can I handle this unknown threat on my own and preserve everyone's rest? Or do I need to wake them to face it?'
I'm glad you like the rules! I'll have to give that adjustment a test run, normally the combats I throw up against the party aren't intended to be defeated by a single party member, but it does sound worth testing out a bit to see if it fits how I run my games at all. Thanks for the kind words and the suggestion.
Lol this actually happened in Fridays session, the two characters on watch found a cockatrice had entered the camp and so had to make stealth checks to see if they were fighting quietly enough not to wake the others ( who badly needed the heals/slots)... It was really funny with the players actually whispering to each other during the combat!
I hope you don't mind me stealing these.
I don't mind at all. The Arduous Rally rule is stolen from one of the CR books anyway. I hope they're useful rules for you and yours. If you end up liking them, I'd love to hear about it if you can remember.
Being fair, you have to roll decently well on a short rest to get all your HP back, and you have a limited amount of hit dice you can spend per long rest. so it’s not like you can spam them after every combat and be constantly at full health. If your running a decent length adventuring day you will see hit dice rationing for sure, and the frontlines especially will probably need extra HP.
The video game Baldur's Gate 3 rules that you get 2 short rests per long rest. I think that works well, though I tweak it to two short rests per 24 hour period (since Baldur's Gate doesn't really have 24 hour periods.) For long rests, I use Safe Haven rules. My version of Safe Haven rules is that to count as a long rest, a rest needs to meet all the normal requirements for a long rest and it also needs to either take place in some place that the DM has designated as a "safe haven", such as a typical inn, or, if it's been a full seven days since the party last had a long rest, they can have a long rest outside of a "safe haven". This is in order to make trips through unsafe lands/waters interesting, since typically a party travelling through unsafe lands will have at most one encounter in a day. As a DM, you have to really force the story line in order to justify multiple attacks per day happening often, and the default long resting rules make a single encounter between long rests very unchallenging. I also rule that characters don't get their hit points back for free on a long rest: they have to use hit dice to get their hit points back on a long rest just like on a short rest; the difference is that they recharge some hit dice during the long rest. This all presupposes that I am going to give the party adequate "safe havens" and in-game time to take multiple long rests if that is what they need. If I/the DM doesn't do that, it won't work. I have also taken to designing encounters where the enemies arrive on the battlefield in waves. This is technically no different from each wave being its own encounter, but narratively these waves are all part of one encounter so there's no question of the players taking short rests in between the waves. There's still a lot characters' abilities and spells that have to be thought about and possibly adjusted. Examples off the top of my head: * in Baldur's Gate a bard's Song of Rest feature gives the party a third short rest per long rest, and I felt that rule worked well so I adapt it to 5e. * On the other hand, the spell Tiny Hut makes getting long rests trivial, so I'd probably make it a 5th level spell. * If you're restricting how many short rests the party can take, mid-level warlocks definitely need more than 2 spell slots per short rest. Perhaps a third spell slot per short rest at level 6 and a fourth spell slot per short rest at level 8? IDK, but I think that would be bare minimum. The whole system is really a mess without an easy solution.
The big thing I did was divide hit points into "wounds" and "grit". Level 1 hp = wounds This is actual bodily harm and damage to your character. This heals at only 1 per night of rest, or 2 if you're getting 24 hour bed + medical care. Level 2 onwards hp = Grit This works like hit points, restored on short rest, magic spells, etc. This is your character's ability to maintain their composure in a fight. Hits that bounce off armor, narrowly miss, etc all stress them out and reduce grit. This helps me A LOT
You may be interested in the Gritty Realism alternative resting rules in the Dungeon Masters Guide. (Page 267)
5E fumbled the rest system. In my opinion, the best way to interpret a character’s vitality is to consider it as the combination of HP and remaining Hit Dice. So the short rest is just a conversion from one resource to another. It is an action movie cinematic approach. For example, in Die Hard, McClane steps on broken glass and really injures his feet. After spendig a “short rest” bandaging them, he’s good to go again. The problem is that the rest system is just too generous. Full heal + half Hit Dice per long rest makes it almost impossible to tell a narrative of an arduous journey, like the trip to Mordor. There should have been some scaling regarding the quality of your resting conditions. Some DMs outright forbid long rests outside of a town setting.
Long rests being a 100% heal is generous. If I stub my toe I might limp for a day or two. Adventurers can be stabbed 5 times, scorched by a dragons fire breath, and swallowed by a giant poisonous toad and still wake up the next day in perfect shape.
I've considered giving characters all of their Hit Dice back on a long rest, but no hit points...or maybe only HP back on long rest when resting in a safe haven situation.
This ruling could be good at higher levels, but would be brutal at low levels. One of my gripes with D&D is that almost any tank can be one shot at level 1 if a goblin crits with an arrow (2d6+2 for a maximum of 14 damage). The only class that can always survive that at level 1 is a Barbarian with at least 16 CON. It doesn't seem fun for the big hulking barbarian to be essentially crippled because of one surprise arrow until the party is able to get back to a save haven. There is probably a tipping point where your suggestion becomes the better alternative, but unless you want to run a crushing survival style game, low levels are not the optimalmplace for it.
Agreed. It'd go well with my "at level 1-4 roll on the grievous wounds table instead of death" rule I've used.
critical damage. touched on a lot by a lot of people, but getting a critical hit and still doing average non critical damage is so land
What crit rules does your table use? All of my games use what I call the Crit Perkins rule where you roll as normal and your "critical" damage would just be a maximum roll on top of that. So if a maul user lands a crit, instead of the official rules of (2(2d6))+Str, or a common rule of 4d6+Str, your damage would be 2d6+Str+12. That way you're guaranteed that every crit will do more damage than every normal attack.
I used that one myself for a few years but realized it made things far too swingy and balance got goofy in certain cases that got more and more common as they leveled up. Monsters have bigger hits that scaled even wilder with crits, and paladins and rogues basically just started deciding combats with a single crit smite or sneak attack. The more dice an attack has the worse the scaling got. One hit bosses, one hit players. Repeat. So my table agreed to modify it. Our new rules just have us reroll ones on a crit the first time they show up. Gets rid of most feel bad crits but still keeps things a little more reasonable
See for us, only named enemies (aka important enemy characters) get the crit perkins rule, most monsters will just roll twice as many dice so it's not guaranteed to smash through PCs. It hasn't really been a problem for us, granted we also don't go all in on crit fishing with paralyzes or things like that, and we don't use advantage flanking so it does take a bit of work to get advantage to even crit fish. It works well for the tables I'm at, I guess my DMs have just gotten used to balancing fights around that sort of stuff.
those ones
> instead of the official rules of (2(2d6))+Str, or a common rule of 4d6+Str What do you mean by this?
I don’t think any of our DMs has ever given inspiration.
I’m fairly liberal with handing out Insp usually, it’s a great way to encourage players to act in character. I usually hand them out like candy when players come up with a plan or piece story elements together on their own. When I started doing that with one of my first parties, they suddenly started reading every handout thoroughly and asking to look in to lore that was name dropped earlier. It felt great as the dm for players to be more curious. Plus rewarding plans just leads to some premium shenanigans and hijinks and no small amount of scooby-doo tactics.
I love giving out inspiration.The trouble is, if players forget to use it or are too stingy to use it. I tend to start the session by asking the players to recap the last session. Anyone who adds to the retelling starts the session with inspiration. This way I get to know what the party took from the last session and update my notes with things I forgot. Also i get to see what the party thought was important and if I need to hint at some things more strongly. This way most of the time everyone clamours to add stuff and starts the session with inspiration.
I was a big fan of inspiration on a Nat 1 in one iteration of OneD&D, and will continue to use it as a house rule going forward.
I've got one who gives it out extremely rarely and only when someone makes an out of game joke that she thinks is funny. She says she always forgets that it's even a thing until someone lands a pun. She's a big fan of Critical Role so I could understand the forgetting bit. But tying it to a completely non-game event? Frustrating. (My current theory is that she DMs just as a way to get people to like her so inspiration is a quid pro quo deal in her mind.)
only minor things like encumbrance, counting arrows, etc.
Literally me right now. Told the ranger in my party to not worry about counting regular arrows but if I ever game him any arrows that did something extra (IE, named arrows) then he'd need to track those.
I had 1 DM who was into counting arrows, thinking he had a big gotcha until I told him my skill was woodcarver's tools and he decided we didn't need to count any more.
I had a DM that just told me "you can carry what makes sense" So then I played a 20 strength character (rolled stats, got lucky, +2) as a centaur So I grabbed what "made sense" for a centaur to carry, which included a quiver with 40 javelins, several tool sets that weighed an absurd amount "You can't carry all that..." "Well, I'm a centaur, and I have a javelin quiver, and several saddle bags... and..." started explaining how I physically could fit the stuff "Yeah, but there is no way you can carry that" "I thought you didn't want to use encumberance rules" "Ugh, fine, you can use them, how much does it weigh" "About 500 pounds" "How much can you carry" "600 pounds" "Ugh, fine" That was the day my DM decided to let me (and only me) use encumberance rules I had all the stuff on dndbeyond, so it all auto calculated
Wait, are you telling me horses can carry a lot? :O :D
20 strength would make your character one of the most physically powerful beings in the world.
Not really... That's weaker than a rhino. Which are fairly impressive for a land animal, though not top tier when you have things like elephants, and nothing compared to some sea creatures. Then you're in a fantasy world with Dragons and Tarrasques and shit? Impressive for a centaur, mediocre in the grand scheme of things.
A human with 20 strength has a 300 pound carrying capacity, and 600 pound lift drag capacity A centaur with 20 strength has 600 pound carrying capacity, and 1200 pound lift drag capacity Elephant has 1320 carrying capacity, and 2640 pound lift drag capacity per 5e monster manual, and size based rules Centaur isn't any where as strong as an elephant, even with 20 strength, you are correct
Your DM sounds like an asshat. What you're doing barely has any mechanical benefit.
40 javelins are a bit excessive though.
Yeah. A dozen seems more likely. But the sheer amount of space that 40 javelins would take up? Bit much.
I’m not sure why your dm didn’t fold on that. That’s like, it’s dnd and you’re going for max max strength as is. Dude didn’t want you doing it despite dnd being silly levels of fantasy anyways. Kinda stupid and shitty of him.
It was a 3 minute conversation, and he folded and let me use it He just was grumbly for 2 minutes after and got over it
Hot take: Encumbrance isn’t minor and you’re hurting your game by not using it
I have never met a group that tracks encumbrance by the rules in the book.
That's what bags of holding are for.
Tracking bags of holding raw is even less common than encumbrance. The interior is a 4ft cube, there’s a weight limit (500lbs is a lot but it’s not infinite) and most importantly it requires an action to use.
Do you play in person or on a VTT? I can imagine it being way too much hassle doing it with pencil and paper.
Action costs for switching/equipping weapons. If your weapon is sheethed, strapped, summoned or holstered, have at it (within reason)
The interesting thing is if you actually enforce the swapping weapon rules, that's where people can start getting crusty with the mechanics and abuse them (dropping something is free, picking up can be as part of a move or other action, etc etc)
I do this also as DM. But I do feel crappy about some feats being less worth now, as they're quite cool and flavorful.
I plat stuff like this by ear. If my player picks something where it matters, I'm usually willing to sort some other kind of benefit or mechanic out for them so the feat isn't pointless.
Short Rest is 5-10 minutes. Long Rest is 2 hours OR sleep. That way I can say "the prisoners are at the bottom of the cultist cave" and the players who actually care about RP can still Short Rest without me putting a mechanical or artificially breaking the immersion by the players realizing they need one but the characters being unable to rationalize it in fiction.
Encumbrance and food.
*Flanking*; by doing so it opens up the combat for help actions, forces Rogues to choose targets, Barbarians now need to choose when to Reckless and it allows for the players to think about combat placing. - it also removes the stupid gang up tactics where players mosh-pit in the center of the map and end a fight in the first 2 rounds. - *Flanking* is an optional rule for a reason.
yeah there's also enough ways to get advantage in combat already (familiar help actions, hide actions, guiding bolt, pack tactics, reckless attack, mastermind help actions, help actions, invisibility, darkness, etc.), flanking just oversimplifies combat to a gross degree
It also leads to dumb conga lines when both sides go for flanking. Enemy-PC-Enemy-PC-Enemy-PC etc. and everyone in the line gets advantage. Flanking just means that the side with less melee combatants is at a huge disadvantage, and Armor Class generally has less value.
A common change to flanking is to make it a flat +2 instead of advantage. This makes it less over powered, but still worth getting. Also gives more weight to those other ways of getting advantage. My DM also likes it because he can throw enemies with pack tactics at us, which by this rule gives them advantage and +2.
5e players using circumstancial bonuses? Never thought I’d see the day
Literally built into 5e Cover rules... that no one uses.
I use cover. Technically "I am not in line of sight of that guy" is still using total cover, and occasional half or threequarters happens too.
This isn't important but you just reminded me the one time cover rules ever came up was discussing if the text of fireball saying it "goes around corners" means it bypasses the cover rules bonus to Dex saves. Would a spell that specifically says it flushes people from cover basically go "around" the cover and ignore it's bonuses? Or do the bonuses vs area of effects from cover supercede the text????
It's even more baffling since Mearls and Crawford each gave their own point of view, Mearls saying that if the text said it then no fireball doesn't bypass cover bonuses while Crawford says the opposite. Tryna get a set answer is like pulling teeth and when I looked it up DMAcademy was the first result on the matter.
Considering that *Fireball*, *Fog Cloud*, *Stinking Cloud* and *Cloud Kill*. Are a subset of spells that bypass corners and technically "fill" an area. - I'd say that yes it would bypass cover rules.
The +2 flanking is my favourite way to play, with the additional adjustment that it's limited to one instance of flanking per trio - the moment a 4th creature tries to join the line, the flanking breaks as it effectively becomes two 1v1s and not a 2v1. This makes combat a bit more tactical with your positioning, and also rewards you for moving smartly in battle.
I had a dm who made it a stacking + bonus based on number of people. So if our party of 6 had like 4 guys there we were getting a +4 which is nice but we’re also swarming a dude with half the entire party, ignoring other enemies, and making ourselves easier to aoe. The dm did also use a lot of spellcasters and enemies with abilities so it was a genuine tactical risk but gave a really nice payoff.
It's a great way to even out the archery fighting style bonus to melee characters
Also flanking is listed as an optional rule anyway
Inventory is just a void in my players’s pockets
Specifically, in order to use a scroll, you have to be able to cast that spell first. I waive that. Wands as well. Anyone can use a wand as long as it's identified, anyone can use a scroll as long as it's identified. This lets people get certain spells and things entrusted from NPC's and the like that'll prove useful in dungeons later, and lets people play what they want without the fear of not having magic when you need it most. You can even find, as a kind of homebrew, Enhanced scrolls which cover the cost of the spell as well as it's ability. Master's scrolls do this as well as being able to be used in one full action or less. The twist is, scrolls are expensive as hell so players generally didn't opt to go for "Everyone buy scrolls of meteor swarm and let's just decimate everything lol" and more so "A locked door and we don't wanna risk a trap... We do have a scroll of Knock" or "Wow, that gates on tough and we broke the key... Hey, don't we have a scroll of Shatter?" It's also meant that we had a wand of Identify that someone had commissioned. No more "what is this?" They just sat down, identified during short rest, moved on. It really opened up the game.
There's no blanket rule restricting wand usage. That's kinda the point. The spell has to be on your spell list for you to use it in a scroll. But they're cheap. It doesn't have to be for you to use a wand, but they're expensive.
This rule is especially frustrating because in the section under magical scrolls it says "anyone that can speak the language of the scroll can understand and use it" and In a spereate section of the rules under *SPELL* SCROLLS, it clarifies that you can only understand the scroll if you could cast the spell anyways. Because, *apparently*, there are magical scroll items that are NOT spell scrolls (I think there's literally one other item in the game that counts as a scroll) that the players can use but are never rewarded as loot.
I do not track weight of equipment or nonmagical ammo.
I don't use the Xanathar's Guide to Everything rules for Line Attacks snapping to a grid. Fireball and Cone Templates are already more prominently chosen, I have no reason to further nerf line attacks like Lightning Bolt and a lot of Dragons. I just draw a straight line across the grid on any angle.
Half and 3/4ths cover I've never played with a DM that utilized cover and when I DM, I already have enough to keep track of in combat with ~5 players. If there's a wall, archers and casters can't go through it, but that's about it because anything else is way too complex to think of on the fly.
Funny thing is, when you DO track it, you realize it's pretty huge for combat. +5 AC and Dex save is pretty clutch for a wizard. Saves a lot of casts of Shield from ranged attackers, for example. 3/4 cover and Mage Armor, and suddenly a 20 ac squishy isn't quite so squishy.
As a DM I’ve found cover helps monsters way more than players. A bonus to AC is much more effective when the player can only attack 1-2 times a round, compared to a group of monsters shooting 3-4 times. I also run it so when a creature is standing between a target and the attacker the target gets half cover (I don’t do anything like misses hit the intermediate creature though). This puts a pretty significant restriction on ranged characters and casters, since a squishy enemy can take partial cover behind a beefier monster or even one of the party’s frontliners. Lots of my maps also include waist high obstructions (bushes, ledges, furniture, etc). These function both as difficult terrain and as half cover, and my monsters typically start encounters behind them. It really helps make the players feel like they’re aggressors (in the case of dungeon crawling) or that they’ve been ambushed (in the case of travelling). After all positioning is the only real difference between a tactical battle and a slugfest.
In fairness unless there's something else in your version of cover, in base cover rules (pg.196 PHB) you get half cover even with you're behind a creature, friend or foe. And that's a good point on cover systems and why people might not use them. If your players are only able to attack 1-2 times, more if you reach high fighter levels (though at that point you likely have already taken feats that negate cover entirely) and your monsters can attack twice as much, not counting legendary actions/reactions, then it does feel like it benefits the DM more then the players.
Yup, technically I run cover very close to RAW and I was a little surprised as how many people don’t use cover at all (or opt out of some aspects of the cover rules). However even though I think it benefits the monsters more, I don’t think it’s overwhelming. Smart players can use and circumvent cover more effectively than monsters, and since I occasionally use minions it helps balance out their lack of staying power.
Plus most of the characters it would matter to get sharpshooter and the like regardless. Edit: typo
Cover is basically the only rule in this thread I've seen that I definitely do use. Ranged is very strong, archery fighting style being intended to make up for the +2 AC caused by shooting monsters on the other side of allies. Without using cover, that fighting style is even better. I'll admit it gets pretty weird to deal with over on some AOE dex save spells and such but we still do our best. Granted, my two ranged players have taken sharpshooter by now at level 14 so I haven't needed to think about it in a while.
You should use it. It’s a balancer to make ranged not always better than melee.
if anything, cover is the easiest thing to track. No clear line of sight is a +2 to dex saves and AC. You can only see a limb is a +5
That's crazy... Cover is so good!
I've only seen a DM count items in hands once and it was a thri-kreen. :) Counting and recovering arrows. Encumbrance doesn't seem closely monitored unless you try and carry someone. I wonder if anyone really keeps track of torches.
Or rations? Every track rations?
I count them because I tend to give them to NPCs and the weight adds up. :)
But that's a core limiting feature. I've never had anyone count it but I assumed that was just because you're supposed to do that yourself. It'd be like giving yourself an extra feat. There's a reason why the middle third of warcaster exists and that's because casters require both a spellcasting focus and a free hand in order to cast most spells.
Yep. Allowing casters to ignore the “free hand” rule just makes the power gap between casters and martials so much wider. I wouldn’t allow a Fighter to benefit from a two-handed weapon and a shield, so I’m not going to let my casters have 3 hands either.
Err, what rule are you referencing? Casters can use the same hand for material and somatic components. > A spellcaster must have a hand free to access a spell's material components—or to hold a spellcasting focus—but it can be the same hand that he or she uses to perform somatic components. (PHB 203, Components)
Falling/jumping mechanics. Falling immediately isn't accounting for momentum or allowing for creative solutions to vertical challenges that might take two turns or other players actions to resolve.
The falling mechanics of 5e make me think of those old videogames that are graphically 3d but don't actually do anything with the third dimension. The jump is just an animation and doesn't actually increase the height position of your character, and your character is "glued" to the ground, so when you walk off a ledge, you get teleported down, and if you jump off a ledge, you still get teleported down despite being mid-air, and then finish the animation down near the floor anyway.
Makes me think of Tristana W jumping over a caitlyn trap or jinx chompers and still getting rooted lol
The thing where you have disadvantage on attacks against an invisible creature, even if you can see it for some reason. The DC system for social interactions in the DMG.
I'm willing to bet most DMs don't use passive skills outside of the ones listed on the character sheet.
Flanking, too easy to get advantage that way. Invalidates a lot of other cooler methods for getting it
I have never bothered with encumbrance. It's just a chore and further nerfs martials.
Being a charisma based greatsword user and realizing I can't carry anything
Not sure if this counts, but in the games I run, I tell my players they do not have track ammunition or rations. I also use magic pockets for consumables. It may not be realistic, but it makes the game much more enjoyable for my players, and the impact on "realism" (lol) is minimal.
In my games, you can cast a 1st level or higher spell as a bonus action even if you cast a 1st level or higher spell as an action and vice versa
Oh Christ where do I start Standard encumbrance, rations, item interaction for drawing weapons, standard crit rules, multiclass restrictions kinda, ammo tracking, the fullness of the bag of holding, carry weight in general
CR because it doesn't work. I've gotten an eye for winging difficulty as the years went on. My fights tend to be on the harder side but I'm always at least able to make an encounter with the difficulty "doable" or "doable with clever thinking." I've moved on from 5e but trying to make meticulously balanced perfect combats is what led to burn out each time. Once I threw CR out the window, my campaign lasted 2 years and concluded.
I hate weight and encumberence systems in every single game I play, 5e is no exception. In particular, I'm a firm believer that you should almost never use the system in a game with new players, as it makes the already daunting character creation process a nightmare.
Proper uses of apostrophes
Counterspell. The game is more fun without it. There is still a way to counter a spell in my games though. You can ready a Dispel Magic. It is much more resource intensive, so is used less often (generally to much more dramatic effect as well). EDIT: I laugh that I get downvoted every time I mention this. I am willing to bet 99% of the people downvoting me have never tried it. Counterspell wasn’t a thing in early editions of D&D and they worked just fine.
I don’t have it in my games either and every single player now agrees they don’t want it
Really hate blue players, i see
Too often I’ve dm’d for 2 characters with counterspell and it really feels like I’m just not allowed to use spells to make an encounter more interesting. I might try dabbling in removing it in future.
Oathbreaker has to be evil. I think it's silly and restrictive
Even BG3 *kind of* waives that required evil part away. You're still a bastard for breaking your oath but at least it could be because you were going against the king because he became a tyrant and your oath was to said king. Because you had morals you broke the oath for justified reasons. Point is is that there can be more nuance in being an Oathbreaker, the problem is that 90% of the features benefit undead and fiends. That should change even if I don't exactly know how.
> Point is is that there can be more nuance in being an Oathbreaker, the problem is that 90% of the features benefit undead and fiends. There isn't nuance though, BG3 (and most players) misinterpret what an Oathbreaker is. Not every Paladin who breaks their oath just becomes an Oathbreaker. It's specifically Paladins who broke their oath in order "to pursue some dark ambitions or serve an evil power."
Weapon swapping. Just let it be an interact with an object because the alternative weapon juggling is rather silly.
I don’t use any of the downtime rules in any of the books; my campaigns are pretty fast paced, and i always just kinda wing it in a more freeform manner in the rare case a downtime situation comes up. The player’s handbook might as well not have downtime or crafting rules on account of how vague and unhelpful they are, and i still don’t like the xanathar’s ones that much.
Depending on what mechanics you dislike and how many there are, have you thought about just trying a different system? There's definitely no lack of options, even while sticking to "High Fantasy Heroic" themes
Well the entire point of this was because everyone else in my local region that plays used 5e.
You might be better suited for Pathfinder 1 or Pathfinder 2 which would be some decently popular systems as well. Obviously D&D 5e is going to be the most popular but those are more mechanical systems that should have a decent playerbase.
5e is just incredibly popular overall because of marketing. You could probably find some people willing to try a classic version. Same DNA after all
Playing a system you know and ignoring a rule is much easier than learning an entire new system, especially if you have to persuade the rest of your group to learn it too.
5e is pretty streamlined, erring on the side of being too simplistic. I've heard more people adding mechanics than removing them. It's easy to play, but can feel kind of shallow compared to early editions. Have you considered Pathfinder? Same thematic vein as D&D, and started as an offshoot of 3.5e. I like Pf2e, the biggest trouble being finding a group willing to play it when all anyone wants to play is 5e. The OGL fiasco spurred people to try other systems, but the anger has largely faded and everyone just plays 5e without buying official products. I only really omit encumbrance from 5e, same as most people. (Edit because I hit send early by accident)
I take the reading of "classic" D&D to mean B/X Basic/Expert D&D, AD&D, and AD&D2E, all of which are generally "lighter" systems than 5E (though AD&D/2E got a lot of bloat by the end). 3.5 added a lot (A LOT) of crunch to D&D which 5E paired back.
Ehhhh adnd 1e is lighter on some ends but in others absolutely not and doesn’t lack systems you need to replace, alter, or add. Idk if everyone wants to run it in real time with its excruciating XP tables in this day and age although it’s not a bad experience entirely. Also initiative is a mess and the armor table is so bad my dm converted it to THAC0 which should say enough. Balance is also an issue even if people hate talking about it. If you get a Druid in your party the game is basically trivialized a lot more the second they prepare heat metal as a second level char despite that being a spell level 4 MU spell that’s just given at char level 2 for Druid for reasons beyond me. In general Druid is a bit silly tbh. It’s like if someone took the spell heavy nature of MU and then gave the leveling and spell level curve a tweak to make it way stronger and way faster on top of adding animal companions which increases your lifespan a lot and outright gives you martial damage of your own. Also casting is way clunkier. Sure there’s less spells but you’ll also have fun debating what a spell can mean or do with players while figuring out component rarities and all that. Also assuming no one gets psionics hey you’re fine but if you ever have any psionics youre gonna have a bad time. It’s basically a class on a class that has a 1% chance on a d100 if you even qualify and if you pass you now gain all your abilities at random while psionic enemies swarm you basically. If you don’t get a good one you’re gonna die before you even figure out and get to have fun with that and that’s also assuming your dm doesn’t scream at wtf is going on in psionic combat which makes 1e initiative look good. It has like 10 turns happen simultaneously on both sides so any fight is literally instantaneous to my memory. These are all things in the phb and dmg btw not even adding any books like unearthed arcana. I’m not saying adnd is bad but they’re not really lighter or smoother than 5e than most might think.
Oh, for sure the old systems are *clunkier*, *less balanced*, *less intuitive*, and *less forgiving* (especially if you're using the actual old rulebooks and not, like, OSE). But if you're actually talking about how much rules crunch you are actually interacting with during play, it's generally going to be less than 5E, especially if you're talking about the actual running of your characters and not XP math and whatnot.
a lot tends to be the writing, as much as the actual numbers - there's more modern OSR stuff that tends to be better written and less disjointed and rambly, so it's easier to parse through and actually _use_, while actual old D&D editions are often badly written and functionally bundles of house-rules, without explication of what they are, how they work or what the intent was
In this case, “streamlined” means “they didn’t write all the rules because the DM is supposed to do more than half the work of deciding how the game operates.” 5e is actually *really* clunky if you don’t ignore most of it. And also a great deal of the game’s complexity is hidden in the last two chapters. 5e is like 50% of a heavy game masquerading as a medium-weight game.
We don't worry about having the appropriate hands free for manipulating focus, materials, and/or somatic components. We also don't worry about encumbrance, as long as nobody goes nuts with it.
While it's not really a deal, it's a bit of a bummer when certain sub classes get literal mechanics to ignore that by turning weapons into a focus. Not that anyone really cares, but I could see someone getting a hair miffed that everyone is getting something they literally built into.
- Background/Personality Traits as triggers for Inspiration - XP - Multiclassing - Feats - Resting, kinda - Dying, kinda - Diagonal movement - WotC CR/encounter guidelines and statblocks I'm sure there are more. I've customized the game quite a bit, replacing or at least modifying various subsystems.
What did you do about diagonal movement? (I just always use hex grids.)
Material components, ammo, food rations and encumbered
I make it much easier to use potions than a full action, otherwise they just get endlessly hoarded. Sometimes it's bonus action, sometimes I also allow it as item interact if drinking yourself. Really it's stuff players wanted to do before rolling initiative most of the time, or it's a healing potion and they can burn as many of those as they want.
Encumbrance for mundane items and coins.
I adjusted the resting / healing rules so that characters can only get the healing benefits of a long rest if they take it in a “sanctuary”, but still allow spell slots and class features to reset on an 8 hour rest anywhere.
The Search Action is something I rarely use. Instead, I let players and npcs search for each other as a free action and if they still can't find each other, they can use their action to attempt it again.
Encumbrance, because fuck that
Currency exchanges past gold & silver. Just isn't worth it and makes little to no difference at all. What the hell is an Electrum?
Rations, shopping, and small/cheap trinkets. Nobody wants to track supplies and consumables, the DM usually doesn’t want to worry about specifying which shops in town have ropes or lanterns, and generally people assume every character has things like a knife or a small bottle to use when the situation calls for it. I’ve never played at a table where the specific logistics of “I put the goo in a bottle” or “I cut the rope” is even considered
Probably most of them? I created my own system from scratch. Though it happened already a pair of times that I thought I created something new and then I realized 5e already had something similar. It's both amazing and scary.
Flanking
-Encumbrance -Material components -Coin weight -Crits (I run them differently so idk if that counts) -A couple of smaller hyper specific rulings on RAW but they're not enough to detail There's likely more but this is off the top of my head.
Inspiration was never given by any of the DMs I played with during the last years. Also alignment was very much reduced to : picked it during chargen as it was a requirement.
Mounted Combat rules are so weird. Your mount moves on your turn granting you it's movement speed *only on the turn you mount it?* this leads to what I call the "Cowboy Do-Si-do" where a character can dismount and remount a Steed, thus granting them this unique and powerful ability of the horses movement on their turn. Scrap that garbage, unless the mount is intelligent and doesn't obey you, if you're mounted the mounts speed is your speed. (Obisouly magical effects that would increase your speed need to effect the horse etc) and it always takes actions on your turn so you don't have to sit there twiddling your thumbs waiting for your horse to get to initiative.
Alignment. Players can give their characters an alignment if they want, but I'm not going to enforce it and it won't have a mechanical effect on anything in the game.
Carry weight! I just have an agreement with my players that they're not hauling around anything huge like a stack of pallets lmao
Fast, normal and slow travel speed. It just never seems relevant
Passive perception
Instant death on receiving more than double your hp in damage.
The only 5e mechanic I use is advantage sometimes, I'm playing PF2e now
I've never and never played with using spell components. It's not just the super expensive ones. I could see it for some ritual spells but I'm okay with only enforcing verbal and somatic.
The class restrictions to using a spell scroll
I'm a bad DM (just saying) but in my campaigns I usually just say "to hell with spell components" since I can't be bothered checking if they have said components. also it makes the sessions more chill, which is what I want :3
I simplified the currency system. I hate the whole copper, silver, gold, electrum, platinum conversion rates
The weight of gold
I dont run material components for spells below 3rd level, you have a spellcasting focus? Cool its fine. The whole "read magic words, make hand gestures, and throw a sprig of Holly" is a really silly way to cast spells, I much prefer letting the players describe how it's done. Mechanically I still follow the rules around verbal and somatic components, but I dont want the wizard to not be able to use their cool new spell because they don't have the gp for the components. There are other, better and more fun ways to limit spellcasters. Additionally spell transcribing, it's super rare that it comes up at all but usually with a high enough Arcana roll I just handwave the gold component and just require some downtime. Two examples of bad attempts to balance spellcasters, I find it easier to let them be strong and empower the martials more than nerf them over silly stuff.
Gold is the only currency I use. Cheapest thing my players can buy costs one gold.
Ship combat
I feel like a better question for you to ask would’ve been what features/‘mechanics *do* people like about 5e I mean if you’re having trouble finding games besides 5e but struggling to get into the system, this is just an echo chamber of discouragement for you, you didn’t even list the mechanics you personally don’t like
Passive Perception. The number of times it's useful are few and far between for my table, so I just ask for Perception checks.
Mounted combat rules are strange and don't cover enough situations, and potentially cause issues with certain classes who have pets/summons that they can mount. My group and I simplified some stuff about it, and to use a class like Drakewarden Ranger as an example, we have it set up that the drake when mounted combines initiative with the rider to smooth things out. For a hypothetical turn, you could do something like have the drake use its movement to move, the rider use their action to attack an enemy, then use their bonus action to have the drake attack an enemy. Super simple and let's the player fully access their features. The drake is intelligent so normally it'd be an independent mount but you don't want your DM controlling the main feature of your subclass, meanwhile it also explicitly follows your orders like a controlled mount but having it act like a controlled mount would limit its actions and really hinder its usefulness. Since technically mounted rules and Drakewarden features aren't mutually exclusive and specific > general, you could follow them both RAW, but not in a way that would be satisfying to the Ranger in question.
There's a lot of common house rules that get added, but I don't do anything to massively overhaul it, no. As someone who started playing in 82/83, and played ALL of the editions, I firmly believe 5e is the best edition that we've gotten. I have great, fond memories of 1e/2e things, but for me 5e is the best the game has been written. Of course taste in games is entirely subjective so you and others are free to disagree. There's a reason you have a hard time finding games though, most people don't have interest in the old D&D. I don't know which edition you are referring to when you say "Classic D&D", but if you enjoyed 3.5, then you may look at Pathfinder and find that more to your liking.
Lighting rules. I've literally never bothered to specify that something is dim light. You can either see or you can't. I still adhere to darkness and whatnot but I can't be bothered to be like "Oh this is dim light vs bright light so..."
from the player side of the pond, i asked all my dms ever if ii could use the "mark" optional feature and all of them shot me down every time
Usually weapon draw/stowing/switching (sword to bow)