I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
5e has both too many rules and not enough rules.
It has very specific rules in some places. Item interactions, many spell specifics, grapple, holding your breath, etc.
It has very lackluster rules in other places. Social conflict, item and spell crafting, metagame stuff like making your own class or species.
I think a lot of people playing DND would be happier playing a different system. Just not the same system for everyone.
Exactly. It’s sort of an uncomfortable middle ground, but also just kind of messy.
And I’m tired, as someone who DMed it a bunch, hearing people act like broken or missing rules aren’t a problem, or somehow even a good thing, because the DM can just make something up. Yeah, not shit. I can do that in literally any game I run. It’s just unpleasant to do in 5e, yet I have to do it all the damn time to keep the game running smoothly. I’d rather have a game that either supports me as a GM, or is easier to improvise.
I think it was a different thread where I posted about how a guy in my dnd group straight face told us something like “the beauty of DND is we can just try out different rules. If we want to do a chase scene we can try it one way, and if it doesn’t work or we don’t like it we can try something else”.
I’m just like that’s not a unique property of DND. That’s just how playing make believe works. And I’d rather have a game that runs okay out of the box rather than keep playtesting as a DM, or deal with unchecked dm whims as a player.
That sounds familiar! Partly because I recall reading that, but also because it’s a frustratingly common scenario.
D&D is, for a ton of people, synonymous with tabletop RPGs. Often that means people think the things they like about playing tabletop RPGs are unique to D&D, even they aren’t.
What gets me are people who complain about Pathfinder 2e having more rules. You’re just as free to ignore them, and no one has to read much less memorize all the rules. Besides, is anyone under the illusion that players are learning all the rules to 5e?
It also suffers from not using consistent language and keywords in the rulings.
The more recent rewrites are better but there would be way fewer discussions on “what exactly does this mean” if there were consistent keywords for things.
…also I am currently writing a pile of homebrew to try and run a spelljammer game because those books they released inspired me to run a Treasure Planet campaign but didn’t give me nearly enough material.
5e isn’t just needlessly complex, it is an unreferencable mess that has very poor general rules with lots of exceptions and poor standardization. The rules for traveling are so misplaced that most players don’t know they exist, not that it’s possible to find them when needed. And when there are general rules, they tend to be unfun. Stuff like crafting has no depth in 5e, it’s just time + gold = item. It might “work”, but it’s just bookkeeping there is no hidden fun.
For fantasy, I prefer Hackmaster 5e, because it keeps the complexity and detail without dumping special case rules onto players. It’s not perfect, but it’s way more engaging and characters feel way more interesting. WFRP 4e is also nice, but not as deep (it does suffer from rules being scattered everywhere). I’ll likely end up playing OSE ot some point.
If you got to look up rules and nobody cares or wants to, skip it. Its my advice. Use rules only if its necessary and soemwhat contributing to a fun experience.
This is universal.
5e is the worst of both worlds. It is both far too convoluted while offering almost nothing to play with.
Hah you wrote basically the same thing I did.
To be honest, I found 5e is so massively oversimplified it’s boring. Maybe I didn’t play enough to comb through books of niche rules or something.
5e is already too simple, playing anything simpler makes me want to vomit.
Plus, OSR games are generally made by the most absolute vicious racists and general bigots imaginable. Genuinely awful in every way possible.
Can you link me some sources on the racism/bigotry? Genuinely curious, didn’t realize this was the case.
He’s likely referring to the New TSR, which did make a pretty racist race section for a game. But they already are basically dead as a company, if not actually bankrupt.
The only other scandals would be WotC getting sued for labelling Adnd stuff as racist, when WotC made at least 2 books with racist art in the 2020s. Or the Zac S lawsuit, where a pornstar OSR creator was accused of stuff then won the lawsuit so easily he looks like the nice guy in porn. Reggie (LotFP) is also weird, but not the average creator. He’s basically just an eccentric artist.
The OSR is way less bigotted than WotC. Hell Shadowdark was made by a lesbian and she is very well regarded even by people critical of SD as a system.
Oh wow, a Zak S apologist. Die.
OSR has a vocal minority or reacitonaries giving it bad name. But even among perpetually online, they’re a minority. Facebook had two OSR fan groups - one for reactionaries (it’s now deleted) and other being very welcoming and progressive. The latter had ten times as many members.
I once again recommend the video, as it adresses both your points.
I dunno. Every time I try to make a fighter. I have problems with the rules. Like, I wanna suplex an orc. What do I even roll?
I don’t think that’s in the rules. Like, at all. The unarmed fighting style allows you to deal damage to a creature grappled by you, the grappler feat allows you to pin a creature you grappled (which is just fucking useless since both of you become restrained), and you can make a shove attack to push a creature prone. But there’s nothing in the basic rules about an unarmed attack that deals damage and knocks the target prone.
The alternatives for flavoring are:
- Battle Master fighter, trip attack. Technically it must be a weapon attack, but if you have the unarmed fighting style, a natural weapon, or are a monk multiclass, I’d be inclined to allow it.
- Open Hand monk, Open Hand technique. This is probably the best alternative that is 100% RAW.
Of course a more permissive DM (like me) could allow you to make a fairly hard athletics check once you have grappled the orc and have two free hands, then resolve it as a 2d6+STR bludgeoning damage attack.
That’s actually really clean ways to handle it. I am impressed. Any chance you would have ideas about more basic wrestling moves? Choke hold? Arm bar?
I’m not a wrestler or a wrestling fan, so no clue for most of them. Bars and holds… well, I think the automatic damage to the grappled creature that is dealt with the unarmed fighting style is meant to symbolize damage dealt by various holds and bars, so that would apply here.
Airway chokes are extremely impractical in D&D; every creature can hold their breath for a number of minutes equal to their CON modifier with a minimum of 1, and that means 10 rounds. I wouldn’t bother trying to simulate that, just deal the 1d4 damage and move on.
Blood choke… well, that’s a different matter entirely. I would most definitely require the grappler feat and the unarmed fighting style for this. Say, you forgo the automatic damage to the grappled target and instead force the target to make a CON save, DC = 8 + your PB + your STR mod. If the target fails, it gains a level of temporary exhaustion (that lasts while you’re choking it), if it fails by more than 5 then it gains 2 levels, and if it hits 6 levels it falls unconscious.
I think there’s a rules oversight on the choking side of things; while a creature can hold it’s breath for a minimum of 30 seconds (if it has a negative con modifier, which hardly ever comes up), the next paragraph of that rule says: “When a creature runs out of breath or is choking, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round).” (emphasis mine) So I’d say that there’s a difference between holding your breath, and being actively strangled- the latter I’d probably rule as a second opposed athletics check during a grapple instead of dealing damage, which puts the creature down after Con Mod consecutive successes.
That is probbaly the way to do. It doesn’t feel right to me. I think. Like, I can find you a video of a six year old choking a processional fighter unconscious in 6-12 seconds. The only strength involved would be getting into that position you know. The air choke thing kinda fits with what we observe in realmlife better than what I woudl ahve thought though. For stuff like arm bars or joint hold manuvers it is almost trivially easy to break someone’s arm with a well placed move. Pro fighters often get injured in training when they are trying not to you know. Which would interfere with somatic components at least. The numbers you talked about make sense in terms of a low-level fighter and a peasant with 1d4 hp. But realistically an arch magus would be just as vulnerable to being triangle chocked by a farm boy as the other farmers he us used to wrestling with at festivals.
The problem with this is combat balance. I wouldn’t want to give players an ability that can take out an archmage in 2 turns, no save, without any resources used.
It is unbalanced, but it is realistic. It is like those old tired discussions about a little kid with a gun vs a high-level warrior.
It’s a game, not a simulator. I mean, how would I handle fireballs then? Would I roll for lung damage due to the targets breathing in hot air (enforcing realistic consequences), or would I just disallow the spell because magic is not realistic? Or if the enemy gets shot by an arrow, would I roll for organ damage?
And of course you have to account for the fun of all players. Would it be fun for the wrestler player to take out any humanoid in two turns? Probably. Possibly. Would it also be fun for the archer and the swordsman who still have to play by the normal game rules instead of the power fantasy of a “hurr durr wrestling is da ultimate martial art” player, and have to actually use their attacks to overcome the enemies’ AC and whittle down their HP? Doubtful. What’s the point of having them around if the wrestler can just choke everything because that’s the part of combat that the DM suddenly starts simulating realistically?
Either enemies can survive a dozen arrows, being roasted alive in their armor for a minute, being stabbed with a rapier a lot, etc… and they can last long enough versus a wrestler that just choking them doesn’t become the dominant strategy, or they can be choked out in a realistic timeframe but they can also be instakilled by an arrow or a sword.
If you only take one element of the game and turn it “realistically” OP while the rest remain fantasy, you’re liable to fuck up the whole game for everybody else. Now there could be a merit in playing “dark and gritty, all damage is super lethal” games but then that’s not really D&D anymore, something like Mörk Borg might be better for it.
Me and OSR are a complete mismatch in execution. But we work in theory and design. Where we clash is where the meme is. Simple basic rules that are to be used in pretty much every situation. Where the GM is empowered to make those rulings. Where the GM is King.
I have tried running them and constantly kept asking myself “according to the rules what am I supposed to do?” as I want to run systems as they want to be ran. What is a failure? How does the outcome space look like? And when I get to play I feel I get to relinquish so much control to the GM that I feel almost powerless. The GMs rulings and fiat rules. Sure these are my experiences and I can love OSRs and their designs while not wanting to acctually play them.
This is why I play Shadowdark. It’s amazing. All the best bits of 5e design, none of the cruft. Ruleslite is the way to go.
Take a look at Knave. It is a parring down of 5e.
5e has too many rules? If anything it seems to be lacking rules. D&D in general has too many options, but 5e often has nothing if you want rules to handle specific non-combat situations,
When systems go even lighter, it stops even feeling like we are playing a Game, and it starts feeling like annotated improv, which is very much not what I want to play. It never feels right to me as a player to be making sweeping declarations without knowledge of what the GM and the other players are planning.
Okay, explain to me why do you need rules for holding your breath in 5e. Because that’s a good example of too many rules, in OSR you would use something already existing.
And you do you, but really the OSR tend to teach players to find ways to avoid rolling altogether by stacking deck in their favor before attempting something.
For the few times your players want to swim a lot underwater OR if you use monsters designed to drown them long term
Frankly I could point it right back at you as the example of a good thing to have. If you need to dive underwater without equipment or cross smoke during a fire, it’s useful to have a reference of how long you can keep at it, how many rounds does that take, how much distance you can cross, what happens once you can’t keep at it anymore. We are talking about adventurers, it’s surprising that this is somehow thought of as an irrelevant edge case.
Are we expecting that the player should always have spells or some magic scuba for this?
I really don’t get what’s with OSR and not wanting to roll. I’m playing an RPG, I’m up for rolling. Though in this case, the rule does not even require rolling until you are already drowning.
Simple rules that can describe almost every situation are also rules that over-generalize characters to the detriment of options (everyone’s noticing the same things, instead of perception allowing more observant characters to do what they could do), over-include the player’s capabilities in place of the character’s. (Players conversational skills failing to match with those of the character they intend to play), overly abstract what they describe (a monster’s “power” or a character’s actual abilities meaning something in adjudication but nothing consistent/concrete enough in-world), or demand a DM adjudicate without reinforcement or restriction (In the absence of rules every corner case ruling risks the danger of turning the table into a debate between PCs and the DM, inviting rapid ends and either producing embittered DMs or embittered players* - especially under the “pack it up” approach the video suggests - and helping to increase combative tables in the future.)
The games that OSR takes inspiration from did a lot right in their mortal power-level, reasonable growth, real risk of danger, and humanistic tones but if you’re trying to sell me that the growth of rules that followed aren’t a direct result of weaknesses in those games? I don’t think we’ll agree.
*The “Dorkness Rising” problem, for a slightly more light-hearted allusion.
I’m really looking forward to ‘Project: Black Flag’ aka ‘Tales of the Valiant’ aka ‘CORE Ruleset’, which a like-like to 5e (compatible in regard to power-scaling and adventures) that’s in development right now. My community plans to switch to it as soon as it’s out as they are cleaning up a lot of rules and pushing for a world-agnostic system that feels a lot better from both a player and a DM.
It’s true; 5E and most versions of D&D are just too heavy and get in the way of actually having fun.
I think it says something that out of old editions B/X is still so well-regarded among old-school fans for being simpler than AD&D. Sadly when I ran it for my players they found it too counter-intuitive. I consider it a personal failiure as a gm to properly represent the system, even though they assure me it was not my fault.
Yeah I wouldn’t worry about it too honestly; it’s very tough to get into OSR style games without having watched a session, played a game, or read a few OSR-y Internet thought pieces. Much of how it’s done is cultural and not presented in the books. That is one of the things that later editions of D&D are better at.
I don’t find 5e bloated exactly. But I do think it has a few too many systems in place, sometimes with overlapping use-cases.
Like attacks, skill checks, saves… They’re all basically the same thing, an opposed check, but they have slightly different rules. Sometimes the player is rolling against a target, but sometimes the target is rolling to save against? It’s a little strange, and adds a bit of extra complexity where I don’t really think it’s necessary.
A lot of it is just legacy systems that are kept because it wouldn’t be D&D without them.
Also because if they made a simple system, they wouldn’;t be able to sell more books.
How is it at all strange?
This introduces confusion in new players like “sorry cat’s grace only applies to dex skill checks, not saves”. Which then makes them think all RPGs are a convoluted stack of exceptions, so they don’t try other games.
