Heh, 5e is "zaftig." Love the description. Next time at AL I am going to call 5e "Reubenesque" and see who gets the reference.

Anyway, I dig Edgewise callling you to articulate and narrow your goals. I am very much in the same boat about less mechanical pyrotechnics and greater grittiness. Most of my changes were in that vein, FYI.

Later I found the class/race features, abilities, feats, and delineated combat a bit too involved for my tables as well. Most players just forget the alternate basic moves outright, so they almost surrender to routine. And those who are on the ball often have too many widgets for GMs to keep abreast once we get into the mid-high tiers.

The only issue I have with this set up is the healing.

The moment you remove the healing options, you get classes that will hold up the rest of the party because they have so many hitpoints more than the others.  Fighters, Rangers, Paladins (assuming you're using all of them) all get a D10 which means they'll on average have more HP to heal up.  Especially if they're the up front swing the big phallus weapons.

If you have a means to balance that out, perfect, otherwise, it could (key word there) be an issue.

That actually would be the point, the bloaty HP front-liners hold up the party's threat threshold. That's the reward for big, beefy front-liners.

I would keep Hit Dice as a healing mechanism. It also doubles, like exhaustion, as a useful design resource for ad hoc campaign house rules.

I do like some feats, like Healer, for their less synergistic supplemental roles.

Quote from: Opaopajr;891123That actually would be the point, the bloaty HP front-liners hold up the party's threat threshold. That's the reward for big, beefy front-liners.

I would keep Hit Dice as a healing mechanism. It also doubles, like exhaustion, as a useful design resource for ad hoc campaign house rules.

I do like some feats, like Healer, for their less synergistic supplemental roles.

The OP stated they wanted extended 'rest times', which means that the HD healing thing wouldn't be much of a benefit in general.

I think the suggestions made in the DMG and the Unearthed Arcana articles are enough to change the flow of the game.

I've been running an old school wilderlands-style sandbox in 5E RAW (without feats) for a year now and can attest to it working well. Characters have been dying right and left, just because I don't scale encounters at all. They dig deep, they see some shit.
The biggest difference is in the availability of magic. If you want a sword & sorcery setting, either don't use many spellcasters or make them count. Spellcasters are rare in my homebrew, but I don't keep quotas on my players playing any of them. It just means that they are exceptional in that way.

OSRing 5E doesn't make much sense on the rules front, because take S&W for example: if you are using ascending AC it isn't that far away from 5E anymore. It is just way deadlier and streamlined to its essential core.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;891120The only issue I have with this set up is the healing.

The moment you remove the healing options, you get classes that will hold up the rest of the party because they have so many hitpoints more than the others.  Fighters, Rangers, Paladins (assuming you're using all of them) all get a D10 which means they'll on average have more HP to heal up.  Especially if they're the up front swing the big phallus weapons.

If you have a means to balance that out, perfect, otherwise, it could (key word there) be an issue.

Hold up the rest of the party?

Only if you think that it is impossible to set foot outside the inn without max hit points.

Part of the old school mode of play involved sometimes having to keep going without hit points always being topped off. To compliment that, the play style focused more on exploration and not just a series of planned combat encounters of X, Y, or Z difficulty.

If you change the game rules without changing the basic mode of play along with it then there will be likely be extra complications.

Stick to the Basic edition, use some of the alternate skill/proficiency options in the DMG.

Example: no skills, only ability score proficiency. Proficiency dice instead of a flat bonus, perhaps.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;891181I think the suggestions made in the DMG and the Unearthed Arcana articles are enough to change the flow of the game.

I've been running an old school wilderlands-style sandbox in 5E RAW (without feats) for a year now and can attest to it working well. Characters have been dying right and left, just because I don't scale encounters at all. They dig deep, they see some shit.
The biggest difference is in the availability of magic. If you want a sword & sorcery setting, either don't use many spellcasters or make them count. Spellcasters are rare in my homebrew, but I don't keep quotas on my players playing any of them. It just means that they are exceptional in that way.

Sounds exactly like my own 5e Wilderlands sandbox game, also just over a year old - bravo, sir!

Quote from: Exploderwizard;891194Hold up the rest of the party?

Only if you think that it is impossible to set foot outside the inn without max hit points.

I was thinking leaving the inn at 50% when the rest of the party are nearly topped up.

If the Wizard has 20HP out of 25, that's not that big an issue.  When the Fighter has 20HP out of 50 (At about 7th level) you MAY want to wait a tad longer.  And depending on how long healing takes in the OPs game, don't bother with time sensitive missions, because the amount of time it takes to get enough healing in may prevent you from ever succeeding.

It's an issue, not a game stopper.  Just something you need to realize and work with, is all.

How to OSR 5e?

• To get a feel, go back to Moldvay Basic or AD&D1
• Stay there

Seriously though, the problem with 5e is, it's still a card-based powers rules system like everything WotC does.  Nearly anything that defines a class is how it breaks the rules other classes have to live by, exception-based design.  It's less complex than 3/3.5, but suffers from the exact same problem, every character is nothing but a laundry list of rules exclusions.  So far they haven't splatted the hell out of it, but if you want to play something other than baseline character and setting assumptions (in other words, not something painfully generic or Forgotten Realms based) then it's the exact same process as 3/3.5:

• Take every class that exists, put it in a blender to get a master list of cards, err powers.  
• Assemble your deck, err class.

GURPS, HERO, etc are somewhat similar, but they provide an entire toolkit, a unified system.  WotC has no interest in providing a unified system, even though with a million splats for 3e, they ended up with a de facto one, and the horror stories that the emergent complexity created are legendary.

At-will cantrips
Wolverine Healing
Christ, where do you even start, it's a "Post-MMO" fantasy RPG, and you're never gonna get past that without major surgery.

Don't get me wrong, there's some really cool ideas in there, but way too much of 4e design philosophy with regards to spells, powers, and healing carried over.

Yeah, agreed. The game feels deceptively old-school at level one, but every additional level introduces some new mechanical tchotchke that slows down play and makes the players think about rules too much. A good fix might be to eliminate all class features beyond level one or two. Just give HP, proficiency bonuses and spell slots.

Quote from: CRKrueger;891277How to OSR 5e?

• To get a feel, go back to Moldvay Basic or AD&D1
• Stay there

Seriously though, the problem with 5e is, it's still a card-based powers rules system like everything WotC does.  Nearly anything that defines a class is how it breaks the rules other classes have to live by, exception-based design.  It's less complex than 3/3.5, but suffers from the exact same problem, every character is nothing but a laundry list of rules exclusions.  So far they haven't splatted the hell out of it, but if you want to play something other than baseline character and setting assumptions (in other words, not something painfully generic or Forgotten Realms based) then it's the exact same process as 3/3.5:

• Take every class that exists, put it in a blender to get a master list of cards, err powers.  
• Assemble your deck, err class.

GURPS, HERO, etc are somewhat similar, but they provide an entire toolkit, a unified system.  WotC has no interest in providing a unified system, even though with a million splats for 3e, they ended up with a de facto one, and the horror stories that the emergent complexity created are legendary.

At-will cantrips
Wolverine Healing
Christ, where do you even start, it's a "Post-MMO" fantasy RPG, and you're never gonna get past that without major surgery.

Don't get me wrong, there's some really cool ideas in there, but way too much of 4e design philosophy with regards to spells, powers, and healing carried over.

Wait what do you mean, don't older editions also have classes? So how is that different?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;891319Wait what do you mean, don't older editions also have classes? So how is that different?

Have you played B/X or 1e?

Nope, 5th is my first. I just hear old war stories about the rest.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;891326Nope, 5th is my first. I just hear old war stories about the rest.

Well, let's just compare 1st level to 5th level.

In AD&D, for example, every single thing a 5th level fighter could do? A first level fighter could do also. Yes, the higher level fighter had more hit points, better saving throws, and a better chance of hitting...but there were no other powers beyond that (base AD&D rules, I don't know all the splats or whatever that may have come out).

Now, a 5th level cleric had more spells than a 1st level cleric (half a dozen or more)...but special powers? Nope. Much like the fighter, there was nothing gained.

Only the thief arguably gained something between levels 1 and 5...an extra die on (never clearly defined) sneak attacks, and I think maybe a 5% chance of reading scrolls or something.

Yes, there were a few special classes like Paladin or Ranger that got some stuff at "name" level...but honestly this was pretty much retirement level and a moot point.

Now 5e (and 4e, and to a lesser extent 3e), you get a new uberpower every level, as well as a family of powers based on your class, well beyond AD&D (eg, "Second Wind" is well beyond anything a fighter ever, ever, gets in AD&D).

It's a sound idea in principle, but the bottom line, after a handful of levels, you've got so many uberpowers hitting the table at once that it can get problematic, much like, say, a six player game of M:TG where everyone is playing either direct damage or counterspells...it's all boomboomboom or nonononono.