New Thoughts on 5E

[hamurai]

So, I've been talking with our 5E DM the past couple of days and after about 6 years of play, he's finally arrived at the conclusion that he'd like to integrate more "old school" elements of D&D in 5E. This thread is not about old school ideas for 5E, we already have such threads.
His approach was to look for games which employ good elements of 5E (a very personal preference, of course). 

It got me thinking about older editions I had played (only AD&D 2e and OD&D, in that order). 

My biggest issue with 5E at the moment is the constant release of new classes, subclasses and races which shift the game from classic fantasy to seemingly random ultra-high magic with steampunk and sci-fi-ish elements thrown in. Why is that an issue for me? Because the Adventurer's League accepts all of the new content as legal (of course, they won't release stuff and make people not play them in public games) and all of this suddenly ends up in the Forgotten Realms setting (the "default setting", imho), warping the setting to something you'd find in a teen fantasy TV show that tries to serve everyone's interests and likes.

Of course, some of these are (or were) tied to a specific setting (the Artificer, for example, originally was an Ebberon class, same with the War-Forged "race"), but later books made all that content available for all settings.

Then, thinking about my beginnings with AD&D 2e, it struck me: We had a lot of that in AD&D, too. We had The Complete ... books which added new subclasses and The Complete Book of Humanoids added playable dinosaur races and minotaurs and kobolds. In these books, the new content was not tied to a setting anymore and some of my group wanted to play them in our rather "classic" fantasy setting. A flying dinosaur cleric? Not in our game world! We did play a "fun/silly" campaign at some point, where everyone played a strange race and class which made for a very strange hero group. It was fun at first, but lost its fun soon (for me, at least).

Many of our 90s gaming group had some books, but we never used all the content we had at our disposal - it just didn't make sense. If the thief player wanted to play a specific subclass from the Thief book, we as a group reviewed it and talked about it - would it break our game world or would it make sense? Then we used it or not, even "re-building" the character afterwards to fit it to the subclass. I remember that thief because I think it was pretty much the only time we had a PC change subclass at later levels (4th or so).

So why not tackle 5E the same way?, I wondered. There's a huge load of content, when adding all the stuff from DM's Guild I'd go as far as saying it's a huge crapload of content, but we that probably consider ourselves Old School players should be more than able to filter the stuff we want and forget about the rest.

The Basic Rules are a pretty good class/race filter already and a good starting point for many of us.

In the campaign we play now, we use the new Ranger from Tasha's Cauldron because it's finally a playable Beast Master class, we use most spells, but don't use the other class options.

TL;DR: For some reason, many of us seem to think that 5E is always all available 5E content, but do we think OD&D (for our personal game) is always Books I-VII? No, we use the stuff we want and cut the rest. Let's do that with 5E, too, and reconsider how good it is for us.

What are your thoughts? 

[jeffb]

Mar 3, 2021 1:10:38 GMT -6 hamurai said:

TL;DR: For some reason, many of us seem to think that 5E is always all available 5E content, but do we think OD&D (for our personal game) is always Books I-VII? No, we use the stuff we want and cut the rest. Let's do that with 5E, too, and reconsider how good it is for us.

What are your thoughts? 

Expectations are different in WOTC owned D&D. There is lip service to the DM imposing limitations, but a large percentage of D&D players feel they are entitled to use whatever is "official" for the game. For 5E most of the supplemental hardcovers like Tashas, etc are player focused, with some DM material seemingly thrown in as an afterthought.

Expectations in O/AD&D were completely different- The DM gave the players the parameters of the campaign and that was as written in the books. As 2E came along, with the proliferation of books, this became harder and harder for the DM to say "no" to, because most of the books were player focused. By 3E the pendulum had swung to the Player's side completely and has stayed there since.

I get that some player spends $30+ on a book and wants to use what they just bought. But, if it doesn't jive with my setting/campaign, sorry.


When I ran 5E in the past, the only "legal" books for my game were the basic rules, with the addition of Gnomes, and a couple of subclasses from the PHB (Battle Master, specific priests). PHB spell lists were also OK for the "legal" classes. I used the MM and some variant rules from the DMG in a few games. But that's it. But I run more of an old style game/worlds, more influenced by ERB and Lieber. Most of D&D's races and classes don't fit.

When I ran 4E- only Heroes of the Fallen Kingdoms was allowed- which essentially (npi) was the core 4 classes and races.

When I run 13th Age, I allow a few more PC options (add Barbs, Rangers to the core 4) , but only utilize the core book.

When I run OD&D, I'm not open to Paladins, Assassins, Monks, etc.

When I run Forgotten Realms, I don't run it anywhere near the current version. I use the OGB (or not), and a very few carefully picked other supplements. I don't have the massive amount of High Fantasy/High Magic it morphed into. I'm guessing GH Canonists wouldn't like my version of Greyhawk either- same for the Wilderlands.

And if some other DM wants to allow anything and everything in his/her campaign- go for it. In my original group, all of us DM'ed. We all ran varying campaigns in tone and style played in each others' games and played by that DM's rules. We didn't always like everything, but playing very different games was a good thing overall. But having Kitchen sinks, where every setting is pretty much the same D&D branded fantasy, it's all tied together fictionally and every option in the PHB and supplements is assumed to be OK? No thanks.

The Game World should inform the rule set. WOTC D&D rule sets inform the game world.

So, do what you want! That's the intended spirit of the game. Break it, Cut it up. Remove what you want. Add what you want. Rules and Canon be d**ned.

Or you can obey your Corporate Overlords, conform to the community they have groomed and fall in line. Your choice.

[Finarvyn]

Part of me would like to limit a campaign to "free PDF only" 5E as that replicates much of the spirit of the old days, but my group already discovered the PH before I could put a lid on Pandora's Box so I don't even try to limit that anymore. My players also have been discovering most of the other books as they come out, and often have enjoyed playing strange character options.

My biggest solution is to put limits on race options but allow class options. That seems to have satisfied them so far. I have always enforced the "PH+1" rule as well, since this seems to give a lot of choices without totally opening 5E up to powergamers. Sadly, I hear that AL is removing that rule.

Overall, 5E does give a lot of player option. That can be a good thing.

[Dohojar]

I used to be anal about what 5e class I wanted in my game but over the past couple of years I have come to realize that it is more of a me problem than it is with the rules. And by that I mean, I just don't like change too much. Let's face it, 5e is a lot more change than what was in 1st edition. As a DM ,it is hard to keep up with what the classes are capable of. As a player, it is a lot easier to learn just one class and subclass than a DM who has to learn what every class and subclass can do.

But as of late, I am more or the attitude of "if it makes my players happy, who cares?" I think that sometimes we get stuck in our ways as we get older and it makes change harder to accept. The way I see it is at our age (Bit of an assumption here that most of the posters on this board are 40 or older)learning new rules all the time helps keep the brain active and stop the onset of alzheimer's.

[asaki]

Mar 3, 2021 1:10:38 GMT -6 hamurai said:

In the campaign we play now, we use the new Ranger from Tasha's Cauldron because it's finally a playable Beast Master class, we use most spells, but don't use the other class options.

How does it compare to the one from Unearthed Arcana? Someone showed me some alleged preview material for Tasha's Cauldron, but it didn't look all that interesting to me.

[hamurai]

We're only 3rd level at the moment, but I've given it a thorough read. The main issue with the PHB Beast Master was that you'd have to sacrifice your own attack to have the companion attack. That's been changed to a bonus action, so you and the beast can attack on the same turn.
Another issue was the low survivability of some beast companions. Instead of choosing an actual animal, the BM now chooses a spirit of nature (Earth, Water or Sky) which materializes as an animal. Sort of a spirit animal or whatever they're called in the druidic faith. Lore-wise, this adds "magic" to the ranger, but it's a fitting decision, imo. In game terms, these spirits are similar to each other, but have different speed, survivability/AC and damage. For example, Earth Spirits are harder to kill and do more damage, but are slower, while Sky Spirits are fast and flying, but not as tough and do less damage.

At first level you can swap the Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain for similar abilities: Favored Enemy used to be used to recall info and track the enemy, the Favored Foe (creative, right?) ability grants you the ability to "mark" an enemy as quarry and do more damage against them, which is more in line with the Favored Enemy from earlier editions I know. Instead of Favored Terrain you can get more generic abilities which add to your nature/survival skills, like skills and small movement bonus iirc. We chose this because we're playing an Underdark campaign and Favored Terrain would be entirely useless, while the new ability adds abilities useful in any terrain.

In the end, I'd say it depends on what kind of campaign you'd like to play. Favored Terrain is great when you're actually in that terrain often enough, otherwise it's a lost ability. If you're happy to have Beast Master companions who don't fight but are more useful to convey messages, get small items or scout ahead, then the vanilla BM is totally OK. We have a small group and need the Ranger to do some damage, though, so Tasha's Ranger is better suited for us.

So far, my favourite BM Ranger is from the 5E conversion of Trudvang Chronicles ("Trudvang Adventures 5E"), who either selects an animal at 3rd, 7th and 9th (?) levels (those animals remain more or less as they were), or instead of choosing another companion they can select to "upgrade" the old one to be more suited for the higher levels. It's still a beta version from the kickstarter, but the flavour suits the setting and my preferences best, so far.

[Punkrabbitt]

Starting with the OGL in 3.0, there was suddenly so much stuff to choose from it became overwhelming, both as a player and a DM. So its descendant now is an official setting wherein no one bats an eyelash at an inn run by a tiefling-dwarf husband and wife couple. The end result is a cosmopolitan melting pot, with no room for the small village terrorized by a little old witch. That witch is going to have to be a levelled spellcaster, or a hag, or Goddess-knows-what, because everyone takes the weird and unusual for granted in the default campaign setting. When it comes to classes, the choices are almost absurd: do we really need mages, warlocks, sorcerers, and whatever else is "arcane?" For Goddess' sake, they're all magic-users, you can tell the DM what your background is.

[Deleted]

Mar 3, 2021 17:48:34 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Part of me would like to limit a campaign to "free PDF only" 5E 

I ran a small sandbox game like that in 2016 and played in an online session like that in 2018. Both were quite a bit of fun. I wouldn't say I objectively enjoyed it better than, say, a similar style game I was in using Basic Fantasy, but it was more than adequate. The power and options weren't absurd. They were just about right.