D&D 1E Houserules to make 5e like 1e or 2e (things I've used for the past year) -thoughts?

[Ath-kethin]

Again, like the older editions, no one recovered from near death in a day's rest, so using the Slow Healing DMG variant, helped to simulate that. Also with a cleric with the healer feat in the party, made regaining hit points has proved to be an easy task. It also put more emphasis of having a cleric in the party, as I found in other games (like Pathfinder and a multiple wands of cure light wounds) to make out of combat healing trivial. This puts a little more sting in getting injured and worn down over time (without a cleric in the party) and helps put fighters and barbarians, or other melee types in check (as I found optimized melee types to be very very powerful in my groups I've run, overshadowing spellcasters or other types).

Again this was designed and used to make it 'feel' a bit more like the older editions (1e and 2e), and more realistic for being badly injured - - it takes longer than a day (naturally) to be back to full fighting health.

Thoughts?

YIDM

I understand why you want to implement the slower healing. As I mentioned, I am a 2e veteran myself; the gonzo healing was a big chunk of why I passed on 4e, and I had originally planned to slow healing down in my 5e games as well.

But I am mainly a DM, not a player. What I found as a player was that the standard 5e healing speed meant one less thing I had to keep track of and worry about. As a DM, it means as many less things I need to keep track of as I have players. And it helps facilitate the kinds of stories I like to be involved with, specifically sword-and-sorcery type stuff like Conan and Fafhrd + Grey Mouser. None of whom spent time holed up in a hospital room or wearing a cast on their leg slowly recovering from injuries.

Now, I also don't allow any full casters except warlocks in my campaigns, so there's that. But mostly, I'm curious as to whether your players were interested in an exponentially more challenging game, with far more accounting involved.

One thing I love about 5th edition is how nobody agrees on which classes are "overpowered." The fact that you can make a case for the melee types to be too strong says a lot about the quality of the overall design. And it's your game; there's no wrong way to play it. Do what works for your table. I've just never seen a group of players who were as interested in going back to the "bad old days" of weeks-long recovery from combat as the DMs were.

 

[Coroc]

Tbh 5e is more closer to 1e or 2e than it is to 4e or 5e. But it has Advantages over 2e i clearly see as a Long time 2e Player and DM. The Advantage is linearity, you do not need 100 tables anymore.

XP for your observation that 1st Level spells scale poorly compared to cantrips, i did not realise that yet, it seems to be a flaw, not looked upon thouroughly by the Designers, maybe bec. high Level Play is rare.

On your gritty injuries: Legendary Mobs should not be immune to swords of sharpness, only if they have a legendary action which allows them to deny that specific attack. Equal rights for all if you go the "adventuring may leed to lasting injuries" way.

As a Player i see no big fun to Play a crippled character, to have a constant malus caused by this from a game mechanical point of view is no exiting challenge for me. A mob occurs once, he is hindered for the fight by an injury but unless it is a returning villain not anymore after that. The Player has to go along with it maybe for a Long time depending on what Magic healing Options are available.

Otoh slow healing i use it also. But it is 8 hour short rest (except in most dire circumstances: in a time based mission i might allow a 5 minute rest as a short rest) and a Long rest is a Weekend at the inn. I use it rather tactically because i do not want the 8 medium Encounters adventuring day but rather want many combats to bring the Party to the edge, means they win but it is with the last strength they got then i am satisfied as a DM.
This was a thing which was far more difficult to achieve with 2e than with 5e. The dependancy on lucky dice was much bigger back then making planning for the dm much harder.

 

[Coroc]

typo in the first line it should mean "..than it is to 4e or 3e. "

sry for that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I dislike the non-scaling aspect of spells (like magic missile) that now, do less than half at 17th level than a cantrip like fire bolt or eldritch blast. This made no sense to me, that your spending a resource (like a 1st level slot), and doing less damage than you do with an at will cantrip ability.

So use lower-level spell slots for things other than damage.

(and didn't align with older editions) 2) Spells used to scale in older editions (1e, 2e, 3e, etc.)

They did, and they still do in 5e, but not always in the same ways. In the classic game (0D&D, 1e, BECMI) spells scaled with your caster level, but saving throws only got easier (they scaled with the level of the target), so while your spells got more and more potent as you got higher level and the spells got higher level, similar-level targets got more and more likely to save vs them.
The net effect was that high level spells that granted saves often did nothing, while low-level spells that scaled damage/level and save:1/2 could be overwhelmingly powerful at high level.

In 2e some spells were capped and stopped scaling at a given point. Aside from that, the same as before, lower level spells didn't do overwhelming damage in spite of save:1/2, but some mid-high level spells still could.

In 3e, spells scaled with caster level (which had a more specific meaning) and some were still capped, but Save DCs scaled with spell level, while save bonuses scaled quite poorly, so, your highest-level spells were extremely difficult, even all but impossible to save against.

In 4e, spells scaled like everything else, as you accumulated bonuses from leveling and other sources, and, roughly, with spell level, as it mapped to Tier.

In 5e, spells scale with slot level, but save DCs scale with Character Level, while save bonuses often don't scale at all, and cantrips scale with character level, as well. So, while a low level slot may not do a lot of damage, if it imposes anything at all on a save, it gets increasingly likely to work at higher levels, in addition to becoming a more trivial resources as you gain more and more slots.

and didn't unbalance play

The classic game 'balanced' with casters weak/lagging at very low level, everyone getting their moment some of the time in that 'sweet spot,' and casters dominating at high level. That's not balanced, at all, really, it's just varied imbalances. 2e was not appreciably different. 3e, with untouchable optimized save DCs, utterly broken spells like Polymorph, and more spell slots than ever, was, well, utterly broken - Tier 1 classes dominated out of low level. 4e was oddly balanced for D&D. 5e has swapped around some of the old issues - scaling damage with slot means that 'cheap' low-level spells don't become overwhelming at high level even when you save for 1/2, but scaling save DC with character level means slots 'work' more and more often, even as you get more and more of them.

As a side note the change to Magic Resistance change was used because as written in 5e (only giving advantage to saves) it has zero effect to spells without saves. So as written in 5e, MR didn't help against magic missiles, power word kill, etc. This didn't match the way MR was in older editions (1e, 2e, 3e, etc.);

Yep, that was on odd and inconsistent take on it. Not as odd and inconsistent as being essentially absent in 4e, but still, a departure.

Most importantly, it was done to make 5e "feel" and play more like older editions (1e, 2, 3e, etc.).

With regard to the specific issues touched upon, above. You could get more of a classic-game feel out of 5e if you: Replaced scaling DCs with fixed DCs based on the type of effect, and had all saves scale with level as if you were proficient.
And: scaled spells with level instead of slot (ballpark it to scaling all spells you cast as if they were using your highest level slot).
And: instituted magic resistance as giving a save to negate any spell, regardless of what it's normal save was, /in addition to the normal save./

 

[Your Immortal DM]

I understand why you want to implement the slower healing. As I mentioned, I am a 2e veteran myself; the gonzo healing was a big chunk of why I passed on 4e, and I had originally planned to slow healing down in my 5e games as well.

But I am mainly a DM, not a player. What I found as a player was that the standard 5e healing speed meant one less thing I had to keep track of and worry about. As a DM, it means as many less things I need to keep track of as I have players. And it helps facilitate the kinds of stories I like to be involved with, specifically sword-and-sorcery type stuff like Conan and Fafhrd + Grey Mouser. None of whom spent time holed up in a hospital room or wearing a cast on their leg slowly recovering from injuries.

Now, I also don't allow any full casters except warlocks in my campaigns, so there's that. But mostly, I'm curious as to whether your players were interested in an exponentially more challenging game, with far more accounting involved.

One thing I love about 5th edition is how nobody agrees on which classes are "overpowered." The fact that you can make a case for the melee types to be too strong says a lot about the quality of the overall design. And it's your game; there's no wrong way to play it. Do what works for your table. I've just never seen a group of players who were as interested in going back to the "bad old days" of weeks-long recovery from combat as the DMs were.

First, thanks for all the replies! I am so happy to have good feedback.

I also agree the “gonzo” healing of 4e or even Pathfinder to be a bit much. However, as a DM, or my players never seemed to have difficulty tracking hp, or healing over time; so I didn’t even realize it could be an issue. Interesting thoughts on that. And since it’s never been an issue, having the Slow Healing DMG variant seemed to be more realistic anyhow (in addition of accomplishing the “feel” of the older editions - - what this thread was all about). And even without magical healing, being able to spend ½ hit dice each night indefinitely, made healing to full hp take only 2-3 days, tops; so, I never saw it as an issue.

Only allowing warlock? Yikes. I get the theme, it’s much more Conan- style, but I am going for a little more classic (and higher powered Tolkien; aka traditional D&D).

I also enjoy that not everyone agrees which class / combo is the most “powerful” and I would like to keep it that way, while retaining some old school style play and mechanics elements. I did find that spellcasters with very limited castings per day, combined with having to spend higher level slots to get increased effects a bit much in my games compared to melee types swinging multiple times per round for big damage (not to mention action surge with fighters, crits with barbarians, flurry with monks and out-of-turn backstabs with rogues, Sharpshooter rangers, big smite crits with paladins, etc. etc.). YMMV

And I felt the cantrips outstripping 1st level spells to be a mistake, a free resource like that, which can be quickened with a sorcerer, shouldn’t outstrip a level-ed spell slot. And again, in older editions, this wasn’t the case.

 

[Your Immortal DM]

I agree. 5e is more like 1e or 2e than 3e or 4e by a long shot. That is what inspired me to go back to the “good old days” while retaining the reduced lethality, and fun elements of 5e (like feats, attack options, class features, etc.)

High level play is very very common in games I run, in fact I regularly DM above 10th level than below 10th. I found high level melee to very much overshadow spellcasters in many ways, unless they focused on ‘save or suck’ spells with absolute effects on a single failed save (i.e. polymorph, hold person or hold monster, magic jar, forcecage, antilife shell + ranged attacks, maze, true polymorph, poison that makes you unconscious, etc. etc.). The spellcasters could sort of shine with AoE’s against some, but were largely less at higher level when monsters had legendary resistance, various other resistances, while melee would get hasted, attack multiple times with advantage, do big crits, and largely steal the show. Again, this is what I saw occurring in my games. YMMV

Legendary mobs are immune to vorpal (a legendary weapon), so why not a sword of sharpness (a very rare weapon)? Instead of insta-kill, it’s a less powerful less rare magic item that maims instead of kills. Seems to fit, in my opinion.

I’ve found Lasting Injury to be fairly infrequent. It requires being dropped to zero and failing death saves, or failing a save from a called shot, or getting critically hit by a fighter type NPC…so over the course of the past 6 levels in my current campaign, I’ve only had 1 PC get a bad scar and need a regenerate spell. And it was removed within two levels, by going to a major city and making a sizable donation, completing a quest/module element (along with good roleplaying). So I don’t think its as crippling as you make it out to be. Also, adventuring SHOULD be dangerous and risk life and limb from time to time. Without Lasting Injury, how does one get a missing limb in 5? I found you never did and the power of regenerate greatly reduced (which kind of bothered me).

The Lasting Injury with death save makes PCs much more careful about being reduced to zero as it’s scary (the point), and not just think it’s a minor inconvienince until the cleric gets around to casting a cure spell (and the PC right back into the fight). It makes PCs be more careful (like people might be in real life). So it’s proved to be quite useful in games I run.

I also agree with what you said as a DM. I’m always rooting for the players to win…but win by the hair of their chiny chin chin, and scrape by on truly difficult encounters. It makes the reward and victory all that much sweeter. Dice and random RNG used to play a lot bigger effect; now with inspiration, players clever actions to get advantage, etc. it’s much more player controlled risk, and less dangerous overall play in 5e (or so has been my experience). It’s also damn hard to actually DIE. You can take 100 damage in one hit when your hp is 51 or more, and all you get is down for some death saves, with up the next round on one cure + a force fed healing potion (and your back in the fight). That would have been death in 1e or 2e.

It does mean I don’t have to pull any punches in 5e (which I like thou), so that, I feel, is a good thing.

 

[Your Immortal DM]

I agree; I think the cantrip thing (vs. 1st level spells and damage) is a miss, and it’s the difference between high level and low level play. 5e isn’t designed around high level play, or so I’ve found.

I agree; casters are still weaker (and used to be weaker) at lower levels, and gain real strength, potentially surpassing other types at higher level (and very true about the older editions). The varied imbalances will always exist at higher level, when spellcasters have things like time stop, power word heal, mass heal, wish, etc. But most of that is mitigated against legendary mobs with legendary resistance (at least for 2-3 rounds; during which they can typically dish out quite a bit).

I like your ideas on spell scaling DC, and magic resistance; but I was going for a simpler approach. I was also looking back to the older editions for inspiration. A 1st level spell was the same as a 9th level spell back in 1e or 2e (for save DC), and PCs saves got better over the levels. But I do like the skill and attribute of the spellcaster to play some roll in the save (like proficiency and key ability modifier). So I thought my approach good in 5e, and was the simplest way to do that scaling spellcasters the way 5e intended.

As for magic resistance; I considered several ways to get the “all or nothing” percentage that was once magic resistance; but then I recall the designers going for simplicity and fast play. That just adds another die roll.
When I saw things like archmage NPC magic resistance trait and the abjurer spell resistance; I felt the easiest way to do that was to use that approach more universally and cut down on die rolls. Just apply resistance or half effect or resistance (akin to the spell ‘half’ failing; since most magic resistance was around 50% and scaled up/down based on caster level and monster HD in 1e and 2e). It was simple, and elegant, and accomplished the goal without changing the 5e system too much (any moreso than the archmage NPC trait or the abjurer class feature; i.e. keeping a mechanic that I knew was already in 5e and balanced for 5e).

As for the rest, I’d love to hear more feedback.

 

[Fanaelialae]

XP for your observation that 1st Level spells scale poorly compared to cantrips, i did not realise that yet, it seems to be a flaw, not looked upon thouroughly by the Designers, maybe bec. high Level Play is rare.

Based on comments the designers have made, I don't think it was an oversight. While cantrips can, at high levels, out-damage 1st and potentially 2nd level spells, there are still plenty of low level spells that retain their utility. Shield, disguise self, mirror image, and invisibility are just a few examples of low level spells that are still quite useful in a high level campaign.

Even damage spells potentially have their uses, though admittedly they aren't great if your only thought is maximizing DPR. Burning hands may deal less damage than a cantrip, but it is an AoE and deals half damage on a successful save (unlike unmodified cantrips). Magic missile never misses (which is not something any cantrip can do). Chromatic orb gives you a variety of damage options, which is nice if you're dealing with a known vulnerability or need to deal a certain damage type for whatever reason.

So it's not quite as black-and-white as it might seem at first glance (unless your only thought is to maximizing your damage).

 

[Your Immortal DM]

Based on comments the designers have made, I don't think it was an oversight. While cantrips can, at high levels, out-damage 1st and potentially 2nd level spells, there are still plenty of low level spells that retain their utility. Shield, disguise self, mirror image, and invisibility are just a few examples of low level spells that are still quite useful in a high level campaign.

Even damage spells potentially have their uses, though admittedly they aren't great if your only thought is maximizing DPR. Burning hands may deal less damage than a cantrip, but it is an AoE and deals half damage on a successful save (unlike unmodified cantrips). Magic missile never misses (which is not something any cantrip can do). Chromatic orb gives you a variety of damage options, which is nice if you're dealing with a known vulnerability or need to deal a certain damage type for whatever reason.

So it's not quite as black-and-white as it might seem at first glance (unless your only thought is to maximizing your damage).

Good comments. I do acknowledge the word of the designers, one has to; they gave us this AMAZING game to play and talk about!

However, I’m still of the opinion that DPR is the larger issue, since with the right set of cantrips, you can always find one that will do what you need, and outpace a 1st or 2nd level slot (at high; 17+ level). Yes, you could always save all your low level spells for non-damaging utility spells, but why should it be that way? (and it wasn’t so in any other edition; especially the older ones where even a low level magic missile cast by a 9th level wizard hurt for 5 missiles).

I agree its by no means a black and white issue. It’s just what I’ve observed in my higher level games, and the houserules I presented greatly improved my games. The interactions between the variants add a bit of complexity whose result was to make all the classes that much more balanced and feeling roughly equal against mixed mobs of bad guys (as the below examples):

*Fighters felt awesome with critical hits, cleaving down mooks, and being bad-ass and scary crippling opponents
*Barbarians cleaved thru mooks, one-shot killing NPCs with big crits and massive damage, and being tough to bring down
*Monks and rogues positioned to attack anyone trying to get out of flanking positions with Mark DMG attack option, and rogues with poison frightened enemies with assassin style tactics
*Spellcasters got more use out of their lower level spells, and could last longer before needing to rest (making the players quite happy)
*Magic Resistant creatures put the hurt on spellcasters regardless of what spells they cast against them, while Damage Resistant creatures made all the more tough against opponent not having the right weapon to combat their foe…all making combat last a little longer, and be that much more deadly (like the older editions).

It’s all worked well in games I’ve run, and given that “old school” feel with the new hotness of 5e.

 

[Yardiff]

Rather than slow natural healing, might I suggest the following:

With this variant, characters no longer regain their full hit points after a long rest. Instead, during a long rest a character can spend hit dice to regain hit points, rolling each die and adding their Constitution modifier as normal for spending hit dice. This is the only way to regain hit points outside of the use of magic, class features, or feats.

At the end of a long rest, a character regains half their total hit dice, replenishing their available hit dice pool. Spending hit dice during a short rest works normally and is unchanged.

This is pretty much what my group does as well.