“Hey, so I was thinking I’d run a game later, would you guys be interested?”
Little did they know, the wary DM had secretly been planning his next magnum opus for the past ten years, with every detail carefully plotted.
“Sure, I love 5th edition!”
Dreams falter, fantasies crash into the earth in fire and brimstone, and general mayhem commences.
Alright, this is probably a little over dramatic. Either way, if you’re reading this blog, you probably have some reservations about 5e yourself already. Honestly, people have talked about it so much I don’t really feel the need to revisit the subject. Nothing I can say hasn’t been said, good or bad.
Now, one of the best things about 5e- and I feel this is common enough of an argument I don’t need to defend it- is how easy it is to modify. The system is flexible enough you can modify it pretty heavily without it feeling like a new system or break it irreparably.
So, how can we modify 5e to give it some OSR flavor, or more accurately, how can we modify 5e to make it feel less like a video game?
Here are my suggestions to make 5e run better: half are rule changes and half are the tenants I think make playing more impactful.
THE CRUNCHY STUFF
Here are my list of home rules for my games, along with their justification:
One Free Feat: Every character gets a free feat at first level.
While 5e suffers from overpowered character syndrome, it also suffers from “easy optimal build syndrome”. It’s not hard to build a mechanically superior character in 5e , and the subclass system can make level progression into a very linear experience. Adding in an extra variable makes each character feel more unique.
Banned Feats and Spells: Silvery Barbs, Lucky, and maybe Goodberry
Silvery Barbs and Lucky are pretty obvious. Goodberry is probably more controversial; essentially, it should be a higher level spell. Food and water are major challenges and extremely thematic ones. I generally allow it with the caveat that it only provides healing.
Sorcerer Primary Ability Change: Sorcerers use CON as their spellcasting modifier. When taking feats which offer spells and boost a spell casting ability modifier, sorcerers can take CON as the relevant ability boosted.
This is mostly flavor; sorcerers receive their power from their body, their soul, their blood. It is innate. They aren’t sweet talking a patron or convincing a crowd. I like having a spellcasting class that uses a physical stat as the spellcasting ability. From a gameplay perspective, Sorcerers normally take CHA as their highest stat and CON as their second highest. This just reverses it, transforming sorcerers into a more versatile class with the option to specialize where they want, at the cost of some specialization.
Rest Period Changes: There are now three types of rest: Short Rest, Long Rest, and Week Rest. A Short Rest functions as normal, except you cannot roll HD to regain HPs. A Long Rest recharges abilities as a long rest, and lets you roll HD to regain HPs, but you cannot regain HD. A Week Rest regains half your HD, all your HPs, reduces exhaustion by one, and otherwise function as long rest.
This is going to be the second most controversial change. This is also my favorite rule, for a few reasons. The first is that it makes party roles more valuable. You want someone who is capable of casting healing spells (which can be regained on a long rest) so that the party can spend fewer HD to heal. It changes the perceived level of risk the characters have to face to deal with by making health resources more expensive. Every combat becomes a trade off, a key decision.
Get Ride of Attunement Limits: Characters can have any number of items attuned, but only one in the relevant “slot” (gloves, ring, armor, cape, etc.) DMs discretion. Alright, I hear you. If we get rid of attunement limits (3 per character) we risk: A- dramatically overpowering characters, and B- dramatically weakening certain classes (artificers specifically). From a more thematic perspective, most well known heroes have one or two key items (Indiana Jones’ Whip, Captain America’s Shield, Excalibur, Aladdin’s Lamp, and so on)- by overburdening them with items and trinkets they lose focus. Why remove the limit to begin with?
My response to this is simple: first, the limit doesn’t make sense. Who leaves a ring of regeneration lying around just because you already have on armor, a sword, and shield? It feels like a game balance video game mechanic, which I find immersion breaking (as opposed to suspension of disbelief- I personally like the idea that certain magic items are temperamental and do not like to play nicely with each other).
Secondly, I like extremely high or low magic settings. In very high magic settings, having trinkets and relics out the wazoo is part of the fun, and in low magic settings there’s not enough magic items for the attunement limit to matter.
As a response to potentially overpowering characters or weakening certain classes: the balance for any campaign is incredibly temperamental. I’ve found that 5e monster’s scale incredibly poorly at higher levels, due to player health and damage outputs rising at a far, far higher rate then theirs. Basically, if you’re using a lot of roleplay and puzzle challenges while ramping up combat difficulty, it shouldn’t be too hard.
I have yet to have had a player who really wanted to take more than a level or two in artificer.
Finally, as for why this change is so necessary- having Excalibur is more than an advantage. Having the arms and armor of ages past is more than just “well equipped”. 5e is balanced so that class is the most important thing on your character sheet. You can play 5e without ever getting a magic item and still be pretty kick-ass. This helps alleviate that- it makes magic item collection a huge part of having a competitive character and gives a major roleplay goal.
Basically, when all of your power comes from leveling, its just a matter of time before you get the power as everyone eventually levels (if they don’t die). When half of your stats are from items, you have to be a lot more cautious. Also, it gives the DM stuff to target without killing the character- loosing your +4 Sword of Unaliving might be worse than death!
XP Changes: I do standard XP leveling, with a small bonus (at lower levels) for gold collected and safely brought to town.
I like using XP: there’s less DM fiat, and it’s pretty fair. I used to give players XP for avoiding a fight (which has the big advantage of rewarding trickery and cunning over boring combat) but after changing how I view monsters and combat in general I’ve leaned away from it. Instead, I reward players with treasure gained. If you can infiltrate the City of Sin to steal from the Verdant Oasis, you’ll get a reward even if no combat is used.
THE FLUFFY STUFF
Embrace Lateral Thinking Over Skills: Seriously, this is the most important DM-ing tip I know. It’s half the reason a lot of people dislike 5e- it rewards playing straight from your character sheet. A lot of DM’s have parties who enter the room and say “I would like to roll perception to search the room”. A party should enter the room and say, “We’ll examine the bed for hidden items in the mattress, look under the carpet and brickwork for a hidden passage or trap door, and then search the furniture of hidden compartments”.
If there is a hidden compartment in any of the places they search, either let them find it automatically or drastically reduce the DC. Rewarding the players for figuring out where the secret is, is more important than withholding the reward based on random chance. Skills like investigation and perception should be based in combat: detecting enemies or traps, or maybe giving a clue.
If you want to persuade an NPC, you can use persuasion to haggle a bit but the player still needs to make a pitch. A deception or persuasion check don’t mean that the NPC is convinced or persuaded; a successful deception check convinces an NPC that the lying character believes the lie. A successful persuasion check convinces an NPC to consider the player’s point of view.
The skills I used closest to “normal” are the physical or information skills. History, Religion, or Arcana can give you some insight, athletics and acrobatics can help you do physical feats.
Make Combat Optional: In some ways, combat is a puzzle, something that creates risk and consumes resources (HP) in exchange for the reward of treasure and XP. Especially for random encounters, there shouldn’t be automatic hostility in a most cases. You can try to befriend, bribe, evade, or distract enemies.
More than that, combat should sometimes be desirable to avoid. I love having extremely lethal encounters on my random encounters, because my players know that running away is always an option.
Keep Stakes High: Connected to the last point, not every fight is one players can win. On one hand, having deep character motivated stories is great in a campaign, which leads to dying being rather inconvenient for the story. I’m not suggesting you act like good ol’ George Martin, but give characters the risk of death, even if it is inconvenient, and make sure that setbacks are meaningful.
Not “oh no, my hometown burned down while I was gone” but “crap, that helpful shopkeeper who was able to get us magic items won’t work with us since we became outlaws”. Look at the stakes from the players perspective instead of the character. The character might care about their hometown, but the player won’t. Make consequences matter.
Two Words: Resource Deprivation: The core of any OSR game is resource management, which includes resource deprivation. This is why I limit healing and food-creation magic so severely. Resources can be renewable or non-renewable. This is one of the cruxes of dungeon delving; going into the dungeon implies a cutoff from the rest of the world. You have only what you have in your pockets; come out in glory or in a casket. Major resources you should be looking at as a DM: Gold, XP, HP, HD, Spell Slots, Food, Water, Light (in games based on Veins of the Earth or Veinscrawl), Equipment, and potentially Sleep.
Embrace Small Inconveniences: Let small inconveniences ride. Jump in the river? Don’t handwave the map getting wet. Next time, they’ll waterproof it. Rations? Depending on what you buy, you could risk spoilage. Torches? Whose holding it, and are they going to have to give up holding a shield or casting spells to wield it? It sucks a bit, but it rewards playing intelligently. It makes the game as a whole feel more realistic, which makes the fantasy elements stand out even more.