It’s an expedience thing really. It works for if you want a higher action game with less downtime. Personally I like it, but only for games where I want things to happen in quick succession. But then, I’m not really out to kill the PCs. If it happens, it happens, but I’m not trying to and don’t really want to.
@@wanderdragon1075 It is expedient to hand wave the healing time. 1 hp a day or 1 hp+ con mod. But the world was moving during this time, so things have changed.
@@wanderdragon1075 you regain all your hit points from that sword damage after one night sleep doesn't work for any stories. that is a video game respawn. It also means battle damage is a joke, especially when combined with the incredible levels of magical healing available and most characters being casters.
In a game where stats can have a big impact, if I were to have players roll for stats, I’d have them roll together and share the results. That way nobody is at a disadvantage just because they rolled badly that one day where you make the rolls that influence the whole campaign. The party is a bunch of clumsy idiots or a bunch of superbeings, both sound like fun concepts. But then, I’m more of a stat array or point buy person, anyway, as I’m not convinced all the various approaches to controlling the inherent randomness of rolling stats lead to meaningfully different experiences.
Great! Hope your DM enjoys it and finds it useful. I believe it's important to trim out the complicated stuff... but find a way to keep the intent. In this case, the intent is... you're an adventurer but you're not a pack mule.
I really like all your rules. For the safe rests, I am changing the time at my table to 72 hours. The first 36 hours a character regains hit dice, then after the second 36 hours all hit points are restored. Short and long rests remain unchanged. The longer time I feel isn't so long, but if there's a time crunch the party is under pressure to end the total safe rests prematurely.
I loved all of these, well, maybe I didn't LOVE the stunted stats, but I def. agree with you that too high stats takes away fun (I made an online roller with tons of rules, and while it is good, not rolling for real takes something away). I think I liked your initiative-rule the best. It is such an old issue and while "roll for initiative" is tradition, it is also cumbersome. Yours really sound like it will create engagement.
I do enjoy the 0 hit point selection. While I haven't used it, I have been thinking about the blaze of glory concept for a bit now, but haven't tried using it yet.
Each of these resonates with me. I think I am inclined to tweek each of them in some way, or at least spend some time thinking about it, but all had the right kind of sensibility, to my thinking. Speeding up initiative is the most immediately desired change, so Static initiative is worth a try this week.
Yeah, initiative is the biggest waste of time. My group really loves the fast round / slow round. I find it really encourages players to be responsible for their initiative order. Which is great because you have so many other things to do as a DM.
0:00 intro 0:25 reasoning.. game design 79s 2:24 Daggerheart rule bonus.. Static Initiative 5:15 add dex to every round against Dex DC of monster.. stealth skill add wheh hiding during round 5:47 add bonuses for monster 8:38 slot based encumbrance 10:43 Safe Rests 14:02 roll for ability scores 16:38 daggerheart death rolls and when someone reaches zero hp
I hacked Deathbringer (from Professor DM at Dungeoncraft) to change the death mechanic. When a PC's HP goes into negative, they're doomed to die at the end of combat (or 1 turn if outside combat). That way they can "do the cool thing they wanted to do," have time to accept their fate, and play out a heroic death such as Boromir's.
I like your rules. 2 Questions. 1) If a character chooses a Blaze of Glory ending, do you still allow a caster to hit them with a 3rd level Revivify within a minute? Personally I would say no, as the PC is using up every last bit of his life essence to defy the death for a major effect. However, I would still allow a Raise Dead (with some sort of roll for success) and a Resurrection (auto success) type spell. 2) Would you consider giving your NPC villains the same options?
I am impressed you have some solid house rules to make 5e, so much better then just don't allow X, especially the remove short rests ... well that ruins a lot of characters. That DaggerHeart rule is pretty interesting.
Thanks! I really think about ways to improve game play... not just eliminate things that bother me. Treantmonk's Temple has 3 house rules that are very thought-out and prevent a lot of fiddley multi-classing. Thankfully, my players aren't real power-gamers. If they were, I'd implement his rules, too. I'd never want more house rules than can fit on one page. So, 8 or 9 max.
Regarding the 0 hp rule, I can anticipate a situation where the player with 0 hp wants to go out in a blaze of the glory, but the other players cancel that decision (and remove the player's agency) by healing them before the player's next turn. Is the player with 0 hp able to tell the others not to heal them?
Fun rules! Im most intrigued by the Daggerheart death rule and the encumbrance rule. Here's a house rule of mine. If a PC drinks a potion in a creature's threat range, the creature can use it's reaction to get an automatic hit on the PC. The mere action of tipping your head back to drink leaves you wide open. Especially if the potion is 3 oz or greater. Even drinking a shot from a shot glass would be extremely risky while in a fight!
Doesn't changing initiative each turn mess with conditions that are meant to last until a certain part of a character's turn? How would you get around this? We're supposedly using a slot based encumbrance but it seems to have got a bit lost in the VTT, which doesn't have a slot system.
Good question. We haven't had any problems with it. The Monster's initiative doesn't usually change except in the situation where it's higher because of a leader and the leader is defeated. But even when it does, the monsters are still going in the middle of the round, so that doesn't change much. Most negative effects on PCs last until the end of your turn. Therefore, they are mainly designed to impead your next turn (sometimes can persist if you fail your save again). So, turn order doesn't change that. With effects that end on the players' turn, we haven't noticed any real issues there either. Since the players choose when they go... they can choose to go at the end of the fast round if they're on fast round... same on slow. So, I haven't had an issue with spell effects. Class abilities on the other hand... an example, the Firbolg's hidden step... If you use it on the fast round, you're invisible on the monsters turn. Then you roll initiative again, and you're on the slow round... you're getting more out of the ability. Since you were invisible on two monster turns. But you're also giving up making an attack, doing damage, and forcing saving throws for that turn in between. You wouldn't want to use it on the slow round and then roll initiative and then go on the fast round. In that case, you waste your ability because you wouldn't be invisible during the monsters turn. Since initiative is a dexterity check, you can choose to fail and therefore choose to go on the slow round. This prevents any problem.
Encumbrance has seen many weird iterations, slots is certainly a way, I'm not here to tell you you're wrong, but I get a little frustrated when I hear people say that it's difficult to manage the weight system. The rules for weight based encumbrance are just easier: add up your item weight, if it exceeds your Str * 15 then you have to leave something behind. No asking about half or quarter items, no grey area, just a number. Often times, I feel like those opposed to this are thinking they need their calculators out and be proficient in 10-key. The basic idea is that you're doing encumbrance to check that the players can't over prepare for their journey by taking infinite supplies, and that they can't bring back too much stuff. So just do the math when they leave town and when they pick up a loot pile of significant size. Fact of the matter is that once you leave town your inventory is usually shrinking due to various expendables, and because you are already unencumbered you don't need to know the new total. Even if you're picking up small trinkets it is unlikely any kind of game breaking unless the party is obviously abusing the lax desire to do encumbrance math (at which point you can push the math again to discourage the abuse). If they're picking up something of significant weight, I think that's a significant piece of loot and the math needs to be done again, but Str * 15 is pretty forgiving and most players should have 10-20lbs of space left fairly easily from my experience. I also feel that people over complicate the actual math itself. Most of your gear will not be changing. Add all those things together one time and make small corrections for when you get new armor or something. And even then, I doubt your DM is changing the weight of different sets of full plate or a new great sword. Then you're only tracking expended items, and new items. Anything beyond that is very likely specific story drama like "all your items were stolen in the night", "one specific thing was stolen from you", or "you must take this oddly heavy MacGuffin somewhere". And for those first two... you are less encumbered now, not more so, don't bother with the math. So that's how I view the whole encumbrance thing. Do the math at key points as sort of a tax. Group your items logically to simplify the math. As a side note, I also like the simplicity of Str * 15 because you can use it as a difficulty slider. Str * 12 is much harder than Str * 15, but that's all about what kind of game feel you're trying to get and how into that kind of difficulty your party is. (Sorry, this turned into sort of a rant, but I didn't even mention how laughable a Bag of Holding and a Handy Haversack make weight based encumbrance.)
Math isn't that hard... but it's not fun. And there's always a player who's not good at math. I just don't want to take time out of a session to figure out how much a backpack weighs. I only get 3 hours a week. I don't even want to waste 3 minutes of that time on math. I find it much easier to spend 3 seconds to say, "That the bejeweled horn you just found takes up half a slot."
And that's totally fair. I can see that being simple enough, once readily established. My only point is that many people over complicate what encumbrance is for and it leads to some pretty bad assumptions that further lead to just a zero encumbrance game. It can be run without encumbrance, most games it never even comes up, but it existing is still pretty important when it does come to it. Do you find that slots is more meaningful as a limitation on carry capacity? Or did you implement it just to remove the math? @@direden
@toddcampbell9732 Yeah, I haven't run it with that few. We always play with at least 4 players. With only 2... regular initiative doesn't take any longer.
Great list. I've always rolled my eyes at most death/dying rules. The daggerheart variant sounds promising. But I'm still unsure how helping a downed ally would work...seems like it would still result in ping ponging people back up with no consequence (which annoys me).
Yeah, I hear you. The ping-ponging is unavoidable in any system with healing magic. However, the higher risk Death Save system makes players take fewer chances. So, there's less dropping to zero hp in the first place. That results in fewer ping-pongs. Overall, it's better than the 3+ death save system. I found that 5e's deaths were cool for the first year or so. It was dramatic to watch players fear those rolls back in 2014-15. Nowadays, players are used to their chance of success. They've also figured out that action economy is the most important resource in the game. Therefore, it's tactically more effective to not spend an action on healing until absolutely necessary. Which is usually after a player drops but before their next turn. That also makes healing word superior to other healing spells because it's only a bonus action. That's the biggest root cause of the 5e ping-pong shuffle.
@@direden can't remember if it was my DM or the DM on a game shown on UA-cam but I seem to recall healing word being ruled ineffective on an unconscious character because they couldn't hear it. It's been a while now since we've had anyone with healing word in our party, so I haven't had any recent reminder.
Late reply but we've been experimenting with using the new exhaustion rules against ping ponging. Every time you get up again from 0 hp you get an exhaustion (-1 to every d20 roll). Exhaustion is not easy to clear so characters have to deal with longer lasting consequences.
I just checked out your channel for the first time. Cool stuff! I can't believe I hadn't seen it before. I subscribed. I'm looking forward to watching more.
A little confused about the 0 HP rule. Does the player decide which option they will use when they hit 0 HP, on their first turn after hitting 0 HP, or on their second turn after hitting 0 HP? If they have at least 1 full round to decide, that would suggest it's on the second turn after 0 HP. If that's the case, what does their turn look like on the first turn after 0 HP? Does that turn essentially get skipped?
I really enjoyed your static initiative when you ran that one shot a couple weeks ago and I'm going to try implementing it into my own games. The only two homebrew rules I really use often (aside balance changes to certain classes) are feats and rests. I allow all my players to take a feat at level one regardless of race, I remove Variant Human as an option, and I allow a feat in addition to an ASI whenever a player gets that option. It does make characters a little more powerful but I find that because 5e is limited in the amount of feats you get that it's difficult for players to customize their PCs the way they want. It also incentivizes focusing on a single class instead of multiclassing because ASI levels are that much more powerful. Also I do point buy so players can't realistically start with a 20 in a stat but if they pick the right feat they CAN start with an 18. I like having lower stats to start with because you see an actual growth progression as you play through the game. As for resting, I do something similar to yours. Short rests are 15 minutes and players can use hit dice to restore HP on a short rest. Abilities that are recovered on a short rest are recovered at the end of it. They can short rest twice per long rest. Long rests do not heal hit points to full, players must use hit dice to heal on long rests. At the end of that long rest they get half their hit dice back as well as all their abilities that recover on a long rest. "Safe rests," or extended rests in my game, can only be done in a safe, secure, comfortable location like an inn or some kind of lodging. This recovers everything like the normal long rest would. There are other rules I would like to implement but there would be riots in the streets so I just don't xD
@@direden I don't mind it too much but that's mostly because I do it on most of my 5e characters. You know me and that I'm not particularly big on powergaming but I think there are a lot of cool class combos and features that fit well together thematically. Zealot Barbarian and Paladin, for example, speaks to me. I also like to let the narrative dictate my character. My Fighter in a very long campaign I played in got possessed by Baphomet so I took a couple levels in Warlock at like level 14 and 15 because it made sense to the story.
@Jvstm that kind of multi-class I'm cool with. I just don't enjoy the power-gamer's, "2 level dip here and 1 level of this there... all so I can be stupid good at one thing." With no narrative reason what so ever.
point buy for stats limits the amount of power players can get from stats by removing the ability to start with an 18 without custom lineage or post tashas variant human., it makes playing human post tashas in a post tashas environment worth considering. i'd ban custom lineage, give variant human the +2 +1 treatment, and let other races choose to reassign the +2 or the +1 but not both. except races other than human that get floating bonuses or +4 or more worth of stat bonuses. like mountain dwarf or half elf. i ban 98% of monster races if i can get away with it though.
Great content, but I'm confused on a couple of points: I double and triple checked, and your long rest seems to impart the exact same benefits as your short rest. The text for each is exactly the same except for "long" and "short" and long adds a food requirement. Either way you get to spend 1 or more hit dice, so there's no point in long resting. Also, spell slots (which IMO are as important as hit points a lot of the time) aren't addressed in your system, are those unchanged from RAW? Thanks!
The benefits provided by the player classes remain the same. Some classes get certain abilities back on a short rest and get other abilities back on a long rest. Example: Clerics get Channel Divinity with short or long rest, but they can only get spell slots back with a long rest.
The long rest is shorter and doesn't require a safe or comfortable place. This makes it easier to take the long rest in the dungeon or wilderness. This makes it easier to get spell slots back without returning to town. Which for me seems to improve pacing
Not to be that guy - but instead of hacking 5e to death why not try a different system? There's several retroclones out there that are either exact copies of old editions with cleaned up formatting, or are mostly ports of old systems with fixes in place. I made the switch from 5e to Old School Essentials myself and only have a few small house rules in place. ShadowDark RPG just won some ennies and it looks like an old school system with some cool modernizations in place. Just some thoughts - I don't know if people are so hung up on 5e itself because it's got the official Dungeons & Dragons moniker - but I think to truly make it feel old school you'd have to strip away and change so much when there are already some wonderful systems out there that do the hybrid thing or the old school thing.
You could just kick 5e to the curb where it belongs and actually play real Dungeons and Dragons. No need to try to shine up a turd just go and get the old versions of the TSR game simple as that.
@@direden You think? There is a reason why in all those versions of the books they say make it your own. However, that cannot be said of 5E so I say again why shine up a turd and attempt to dress it as something its never going to be? Just go with the versions you are trying to dress 5E as.
That initiative DC you're setting is unfair if you're not allowing wizards to use their int bonus or clerics to use their wis bonus. What the players are restricted by, the DM needs to be restricted by as well.
I disagree... Monsters are not the same as player characters. They don't use the same mechanics. Thanks for all the comments, though. And that's the point of the video... everyone can play how they want. It's a wide world of gaming.
What's useful about the leader giving the monsters a bonus to initiative... Since initiative rolls every round, the players get a benefit from taking out the leader first. This improves the tactics of the scenario
I started playing in 1975 and people have homebrewed every edition since then. Many creative people play this game and tweak it to fit their own preferences. And some tweaks eventually become new rules. Don't bash, just play what you enjoy, and allow others to do the same.
Old School D&D used gold for xp so the encumbrance rules were important as written. Your slot based system does NOT give you an old school feel. It give you a new OSR feel made popular by Questing Beast who is NOT an Old School player nor does he run old school games. He runs a simplified fankenstien using some Old School concepts and tosses out what he doesn't like.
I still hate with the heat of a thousand suns the "one nights sleep somehow heals you completely" and would never play in a game like that.
It’s an expedience thing really. It works for if you want a higher action game with less downtime. Personally I like it, but only for games where I want things to happen in quick succession.
But then, I’m not really out to kill the PCs. If it happens, it happens, but I’m not trying to and don’t really want to.
@@wanderdragon1075 It is expedient to hand wave the healing time. 1 hp a day or 1 hp+ con mod. But the world was moving during this time, so things have changed.
@@NemoOhd20 and that works for some stories. Not in others.
@@wanderdragon1075 you regain all your hit points from that sword damage after one night sleep doesn't work for any stories. that is a video game respawn. It also means battle damage is a joke, especially when combined with the incredible levels of magical healing available and most characters being casters.
That's why it's called a GAME
In a game where stats can have a big impact, if I were to have players roll for stats, I’d have them roll together and share the results. That way nobody is at a disadvantage just because they rolled badly that one day where you make the rolls that influence the whole campaign. The party is a bunch of clumsy idiots or a bunch of superbeings, both sound like fun concepts.
But then, I’m more of a stat array or point buy person, anyway, as I’m not convinced all the various approaches to controlling the inherent randomness of rolling stats lead to meaningfully different experiences.
I really liked the encumbrance method, as a new Player I tend to forget what my capacity to carry items is so I'm sending this to my DM
Great! Hope your DM enjoys it and finds it useful. I believe it's important to trim out the complicated stuff... but find a way to keep the intent. In this case, the intent is... you're an adventurer but you're not a pack mule.
4d6 and drop the lowest was the standard rule in 1e.
I really like all your rules. For the safe rests, I am changing the time at my table to 72 hours. The first 36 hours a character regains hit dice, then after the second 36 hours all hit points are restored. Short and long rests remain unchanged. The longer time I feel isn't so long, but if there's a time crunch the party is under pressure to end the total safe rests prematurely.
That definitely feels old school!
Back when you got 1 HP a day.
I loved all of these, well, maybe I didn't LOVE the stunted stats, but I def. agree with you that too high stats takes away fun (I made an online roller with tons of rules, and while it is good, not rolling for real takes something away).
I think I liked your initiative-rule the best. It is such an old issue and while "roll for initiative" is tradition, it is also cumbersome. Yours really sound like it will create engagement.
I do enjoy the 0 hit point selection. While I haven't used it, I have been thinking about the blaze of glory concept for a bit now, but haven't tried using it yet.
Each of these resonates with me. I think I am inclined to tweek each of them in some way, or at least spend some time thinking about it, but all had the right kind of sensibility, to my thinking. Speeding up initiative is the most immediately desired change, so Static initiative is worth a try this week.
Yeah, initiative is the biggest waste of time. My group really loves the fast round / slow round.
I find it really encourages players to be responsible for their initiative order. Which is great because you have so many other things to do as a DM.
I love all these. I had already done a similar thing with rests (I stole from cypher) but I’m going to try adopt all of these.
Brad!!!!!! I am so happy Matt shared your channel with me. I may have only sat in on one of your D&D sessions as a kid but it created a core memory
Dude! Hey, it's been years... how you been?
Thanks for the shoutout, Brad! Much appreciated❤🔥
0:00 intro
0:25 reasoning.. game design 79s
2:24 Daggerheart rule bonus.. Static Initiative
5:15 add dex to every round against Dex DC of monster.. stealth skill add wheh hiding during round
5:47 add bonuses for monster
8:38 slot based encumbrance
10:43 Safe Rests
14:02 roll for ability scores
16:38 daggerheart death rolls and when someone reaches zero hp
Hero!
I hacked Deathbringer (from Professor DM at Dungeoncraft) to change the death mechanic. When a PC's HP goes into negative, they're doomed to die at the end of combat (or 1 turn if outside combat). That way they can "do the cool thing they wanted to do," have time to accept their fate, and play out a heroic death such as Boromir's.
Very cool!!!
I like your rules. 2 Questions. 1) If a character chooses a Blaze of Glory ending, do you still allow a caster to hit them with a 3rd level Revivify within a minute?
Personally I would say no, as the PC is using up every last bit of his life essence to defy the death for a major effect. However, I would still allow a Raise Dead (with some sort of roll for success) and a Resurrection (auto success) type spell. 2) Would you consider giving your NPC villains the same options?
Great questions.
I say "yes" to all of the above
I am impressed you have some solid house rules to make 5e, so much better then just don't allow X, especially the remove short rests ... well that ruins a lot of characters.
That DaggerHeart rule is pretty interesting.
Thanks!
I really think about ways to improve game play... not just eliminate things that bother me. Treantmonk's Temple has 3 house rules that are very thought-out and prevent a lot of fiddley multi-classing. Thankfully, my players aren't real power-gamers. If they were, I'd implement his rules, too.
I'd never want more house rules than can fit on one page. So, 8 or 9 max.
Regarding the 0 hp rule, I can anticipate a situation where the player with 0 hp wants to go out in a blaze of the glory, but the other players cancel that decision (and remove the player's agency) by healing them before the player's next turn. Is the player with 0 hp able to tell the others not to heal them?
Good question.
Of course. Other players should never remove a player's agency. That's a subset of Rule #1... "don't be a dick"
Fun rules! Im most intrigued by the Daggerheart death rule and the encumbrance rule.
Here's a house rule of mine. If a PC drinks a potion in a creature's threat range, the creature can use it's reaction to get an automatic hit on the PC.
The mere action of tipping your head back to drink leaves you wide open. Especially if the potion is 3 oz or greater. Even drinking a shot from a shot glass would be extremely risky while in a fight!
I am gonna try all these!!
Doesn't changing initiative each turn mess with conditions that are meant to last until a certain part of a character's turn? How would you get around this?
We're supposedly using a slot based encumbrance but it seems to have got a bit lost in the VTT, which doesn't have a slot system.
Good question.
We haven't had any problems with it. The Monster's initiative doesn't usually change except in the situation where it's higher because of a leader and the leader is defeated. But even when it does, the monsters are still going in the middle of the round, so that doesn't change much.
Most negative effects on PCs last until the end of your turn. Therefore, they are mainly designed to impead your next turn (sometimes can persist if you fail your save again). So, turn order doesn't change that.
With effects that end on the players' turn, we haven't noticed any real issues there either. Since the players choose when they go... they can choose to go at the end of the fast round if they're on fast round... same on slow. So, I haven't had an issue with spell effects.
Class abilities on the other hand...
an example, the Firbolg's hidden step...
If you use it on the fast round, you're invisible on the monsters turn. Then you roll initiative again, and you're on the slow round... you're getting more out of the ability. Since you were invisible on two monster turns. But you're also giving up making an attack, doing damage, and forcing saving throws for that turn in between.
You wouldn't want to use it on the slow round and then roll initiative and then go on the fast round. In that case, you waste your ability because you wouldn't be invisible during the monsters turn. Since initiative is a dexterity check, you can choose to fail and therefore choose to go on the slow round. This prevents any problem.
Just play AD&D 2ed. That one steel the best.
Meh, they're alright. I like initiative going clockwise around the table.
The rests and encumbrance are the ones I'd most likely try.
Encumbrance has seen many weird iterations, slots is certainly a way, I'm not here to tell you you're wrong, but I get a little frustrated when I hear people say that it's difficult to manage the weight system. The rules for weight based encumbrance are just easier: add up your item weight, if it exceeds your Str * 15 then you have to leave something behind. No asking about half or quarter items, no grey area, just a number.
Often times, I feel like those opposed to this are thinking they need their calculators out and be proficient in 10-key. The basic idea is that you're doing encumbrance to check that the players can't over prepare for their journey by taking infinite supplies, and that they can't bring back too much stuff. So just do the math when they leave town and when they pick up a loot pile of significant size.
Fact of the matter is that once you leave town your inventory is usually shrinking due to various expendables, and because you are already unencumbered you don't need to know the new total. Even if you're picking up small trinkets it is unlikely any kind of game breaking unless the party is obviously abusing the lax desire to do encumbrance math (at which point you can push the math again to discourage the abuse). If they're picking up something of significant weight, I think that's a significant piece of loot and the math needs to be done again, but Str * 15 is pretty forgiving and most players should have 10-20lbs of space left fairly easily from my experience.
I also feel that people over complicate the actual math itself. Most of your gear will not be changing. Add all those things together one time and make small corrections for when you get new armor or something. And even then, I doubt your DM is changing the weight of different sets of full plate or a new great sword. Then you're only tracking expended items, and new items. Anything beyond that is very likely specific story drama like "all your items were stolen in the night", "one specific thing was stolen from you", or "you must take this oddly heavy MacGuffin somewhere". And for those first two... you are less encumbered now, not more so, don't bother with the math.
So that's how I view the whole encumbrance thing. Do the math at key points as sort of a tax. Group your items logically to simplify the math.
As a side note, I also like the simplicity of Str * 15 because you can use it as a difficulty slider. Str * 12 is much harder than Str * 15, but that's all about what kind of game feel you're trying to get and how into that kind of difficulty your party is.
(Sorry, this turned into sort of a rant, but I didn't even mention how laughable a Bag of Holding and a Handy Haversack make weight based encumbrance.)
Math isn't that hard... but it's not fun. And there's always a player who's not good at math. I just don't want to take time out of a session to figure out how much a backpack weighs. I only get 3 hours a week. I don't even want to waste 3 minutes of that time on math. I find it much easier to spend 3 seconds to say, "That the bejeweled horn you just found takes up half a slot."
And that's totally fair. I can see that being simple enough, once readily established. My only point is that many people over complicate what encumbrance is for and it leads to some pretty bad assumptions that further lead to just a zero encumbrance game.
It can be run without encumbrance, most games it never even comes up, but it existing is still pretty important when it does come to it.
Do you find that slots is more meaningful as a limitation on carry capacity? Or did you implement it just to remove the math?
@@direden
I think I'll try your initiative rule and I will probably try the 0 hp rule.
It seems like the fast/slow round initiative works better with larger parties. (I am DMing for two players)
@toddcampbell9732 Yeah, I haven't run it with that few. We always play with at least 4 players. With only 2... regular initiative doesn't take any longer.
Great list. I've always rolled my eyes at most death/dying rules. The daggerheart variant sounds promising. But I'm still unsure how helping a downed ally would work...seems like it would still result in ping ponging people back up with no consequence (which annoys me).
Yeah, I hear you. The ping-ponging is unavoidable in any system with healing magic. However, the higher risk Death Save system makes players take fewer chances. So, there's less dropping to zero hp in the first place. That results in fewer ping-pongs.
Overall, it's better than the 3+ death save system. I found that 5e's deaths were cool for the first year or so. It was dramatic to watch players fear those rolls back in 2014-15. Nowadays, players are used to their chance of success. They've also figured out that action economy is the most important resource in the game. Therefore, it's tactically more effective to not spend an action on healing until absolutely necessary. Which is usually after a player drops but before their next turn. That also makes healing word superior to other healing spells because it's only a bonus action. That's the biggest root cause of the 5e ping-pong shuffle.
@@direden can't remember if it was my DM or the DM on a game shown on UA-cam but I seem to recall healing word being ruled ineffective on an unconscious character because they couldn't hear it. It's been a while now since we've had anyone with healing word in our party, so I haven't had any recent reminder.
Late reply but we've been experimenting with using the new exhaustion rules against ping ponging. Every time you get up again from 0 hp you get an exhaustion (-1 to every d20 roll). Exhaustion is not easy to clear so characters have to deal with longer lasting consequences.
Can you imagine being the sneak attacking rogue that was the only one to beat the monsters on initiative? You're getting wrecked 😏
5E Hardcore mode could make a difference... A matter of preference.
Kewl
I just checked out your channel for the first time. Cool stuff! I can't believe I hadn't seen it before. I subscribed. I'm looking forward to watching more.
Just let them roll 4d6 minus the lowest die if you're going to modify the 3d6 rolls.
Greater chance of getting 16+ which is what I don't like.
I personally like all these changes
I love old school
There are to many safety nets in 5th edition
A little confused about the 0 HP rule. Does the player decide which option they will use when they hit 0 HP, on their first turn after hitting 0 HP, or on their second turn after hitting 0 HP?
If they have at least 1 full round to decide, that would suggest it's on the second turn after 0 HP. If that's the case, what does their turn look like on the first turn after 0 HP? Does that turn essentially get skipped?
I really enjoyed your static initiative when you ran that one shot a couple weeks ago and I'm going to try implementing it into my own games.
The only two homebrew rules I really use often (aside balance changes to certain classes) are feats and rests.
I allow all my players to take a feat at level one regardless of race, I remove Variant Human as an option, and I allow a feat in addition to an ASI whenever a player gets that option. It does make characters a little more powerful but I find that because 5e is limited in the amount of feats you get that it's difficult for players to customize their PCs the way they want. It also incentivizes focusing on a single class instead of multiclassing because ASI levels are that much more powerful. Also I do point buy so players can't realistically start with a 20 in a stat but if they pick the right feat they CAN start with an 18. I like having lower stats to start with because you see an actual growth progression as you play through the game.
As for resting, I do something similar to yours. Short rests are 15 minutes and players can use hit dice to restore HP on a short rest. Abilities that are recovered on a short rest are recovered at the end of it. They can short rest twice per long rest. Long rests do not heal hit points to full, players must use hit dice to heal on long rests. At the end of that long rest they get half their hit dice back as well as all their abilities that recover on a long rest. "Safe rests," or extended rests in my game, can only be done in a safe, secure, comfortable location like an inn or some kind of lodging. This recovers everything like the normal long rest would.
There are other rules I would like to implement but there would be riots in the streets so I just don't xD
I do like how giving ASI and a Feat prevents multi-classing. Honestly, multi-classing is my least favorite thing in the game.
@@direden I don't mind it too much but that's mostly because I do it on most of my 5e characters. You know me and that I'm not particularly big on powergaming but I think there are a lot of cool class combos and features that fit well together thematically. Zealot Barbarian and Paladin, for example, speaks to me.
I also like to let the narrative dictate my character. My Fighter in a very long campaign I played in got possessed by Baphomet so I took a couple levels in Warlock at like level 14 and 15 because it made sense to the story.
@Jvstm that kind of multi-class I'm cool with. I just don't enjoy the power-gamer's, "2 level dip here and 1 level of this there... all so I can be stupid good at one thing." With no narrative reason what so ever.
@@direden Nah man I definitely get that. I gutted Hexblade at my table.
point buy for stats limits the amount of power players can get from stats by removing the ability to start with an 18 without custom lineage or post tashas variant human., it makes playing human post tashas in a post tashas environment worth considering. i'd ban custom lineage, give variant human the +2 +1 treatment, and let other races choose to reassign the +2 or the +1 but not both. except races other than human that get floating bonuses or +4 or more worth of stat bonuses. like mountain dwarf or half elf. i ban 98% of monster races if i can get away with it though.
Great content, but I'm confused on a couple of points:
I double and triple checked, and your long rest seems to impart the exact same benefits as your short rest. The text for each is exactly the same except for "long" and "short" and long adds a food requirement.
Either way you get to spend 1 or more hit dice, so there's no point in long resting.
Also, spell slots (which IMO are as important as hit points a lot of the time) aren't addressed in your system, are those unchanged from RAW?
Thanks!
The benefits provided by the player classes remain the same. Some classes get certain abilities back on a short rest and get other abilities back on a long rest. Example: Clerics get Channel Divinity with short or long rest, but they can only get spell slots back with a long rest.
The long rest is shorter and doesn't require a safe or comfortable place. This makes it easier to take the long rest in the dungeon or wilderness. This makes it easier to get spell slots back without returning to town. Which for me seems to improve pacing
@@direden Ah that all makes sense now, thanks. Good system, and I think I'll implement it in my upcoming campaign- cheers!
Not to be that guy - but instead of hacking 5e to death why not try a different system? There's several retroclones out there that are either exact copies of old editions with cleaned up formatting, or are mostly ports of old systems with fixes in place. I made the switch from 5e to Old School Essentials myself and only have a few small house rules in place. ShadowDark RPG just won some ennies and it looks like an old school system with some cool modernizations in place. Just some thoughts - I don't know if people are so hung up on 5e itself because it's got the official Dungeons & Dragons moniker - but I think to truly make it feel old school you'd have to strip away and change so much when there are already some wonderful systems out there that do the hybrid thing or the old school thing.
@@MrSteeleYoGirl86 I know.
I play many different RPGs
@@direden I gotcha, I meant no shade by the comment - I just see people trying to use 5e for everything when there's so many great systems out there.
You could just kick 5e to the curb where it belongs and actually play real Dungeons and Dragons. No need to try to shine up a turd just go and get the old versions of the TSR game simple as that.
@nordicmaelstrom4714
I've played every version of D&D. So, I've done all that before. And those versions need fixes, too.
@@direden You think? There is a reason why in all those versions of the books they say make it your own. However, that cannot be said of 5E so I say again why shine up a turd and attempt to dress it as something its never going to be? Just go with the versions you are trying to dress 5E as.
@@nordicmaelstrom4714 That's inaccurate.
@@direden It isn't but I am not about to play this silly game with you. Have a good whatever time of day it is when you get this.
Nobody chooses blaze of glory.
How to make 5e feel old-school.
Play 2e.
5e can never feel Old School. Don't con yourself.
That initiative DC you're setting is unfair if you're not allowing wizards to use their int bonus or clerics to use their wis bonus. What the players are restricted by, the DM needs to be restricted by as well.
I disagree... Monsters are not the same as player characters. They don't use the same mechanics.
Thanks for all the comments, though. And that's the point of the video... everyone can play how they want. It's a wide world of gaming.
What's useful about the leader giving the monsters a bonus to initiative...
Since initiative rolls every round, the players get a benefit from taking out the leader first. This improves the tactics of the scenario
@@diredenThat's so interesting
It reduces the encounter difficulty too
People need to stop trying to fix what can't be fixed.
@johnstorm9314 Most people homebrew for fun. It's not about fixing things.
I started playing in 1975 and people have homebrewed every edition since then. Many creative people play this game and tweak it to fit their own preferences. And some tweaks eventually become new rules. Don't bash, just play what you enjoy, and allow others to do the same.
Just change TTRPG. 5E isn't capable of being anything but 5e.
Naw, just find a good OSR system and tell WoTc good bye.
@@yourseatatthetable Nah, play all the games you like... And homebrew them how you want.
@@direden exactly what I said;) I stand by my opinion on WoTc and Hasbro.
Old School D&D used gold for xp so the encumbrance rules were important as written. Your slot based system does NOT give you an old school feel. It give you a new OSR feel made popular by Questing Beast who is NOT an Old School player nor does he run old school games. He runs a simplified fankenstien using some Old School concepts and tosses out what he doesn't like.
I never used gold for XP... even when I played AD&D. I prefer a more narrative game... but with old school lethality.
I agree that old school is not the same as OSR. We did a whole video about it.
Balance is lame in d&d
@@T04st0
ua-cam.com/video/hEvgCs2rkqc/v-deo.htmlsi=QPXILqjpJib_ZC5m
Get rid of 95% of the rules.
So... Shadowdark
@@direden Or ICRPG