I thought 5e was a heroic game until I played a Call of Cthulhu campaign. Running around fighting against overwhelming forces, shattering their ownd minds and breaking their bodies just for a chance to save the world from human evils and horrors beyond. The lovecraftian universe is cold and uncaring, but seeing my players fight for what their characters believe is more than moving, it's inspiring. They are as immortal for me as some of my favorite characters from other media. That is why you need villains, death and risk. There is no power otherwise. No true fantasy, either. Just an adolescent's dream.
I kept playing D&D 5E with my group because I thought my players were attached to the game and their characters. They recently told me that they are actually bored with 5E and ready to try a different game. We are playing Old School Essentials next week and I couldn't be more thrilled!
SHADOWDARK. Seriously, it’s everything I love about 5e, nothing I don’t, all the cruft pulled out and wrapped in an economy of word choice I’ve never seen in another rpg
Getting like 10 fights in a night with 4th level characters... Meanwhile in our 5e campaign we'll get through one during overland travel and then the session is over...
It's a pretty neat 5E mod. Not the first one to do old school inspired 5E play, but it's good to see the concept continue. I'd rather stick to OSR style play myself, but this game is a nice homage.
@@HouseDM Agree. It borrows the bones of it's system from 5e, but it is its own thing. Wouldn't even say its that 'old skool', in that it's mainly a tone and not really mechanical. Plus it is a complete game, unlike most OSRs. And it does it's own thing too.
Go Deathbringer!!! Show em that preview! I've recently gotten back into playing 5e after almost a year of only playing old school. The difference is glaring and unfortunately, most of the people I play with don't want a deadlier game. I enjoy the stories we create, but even that is different because I've found I far prefer emergent stories now than a vaguely disguised railroad.
Players come up with more inventive and creative solutions to every challenge or problem put in front of them when they know one misstep can kill their character. And getting XP for gold instead of killing creatures in old school games means that not every encounter is automatically going to end up with combat.
Not only that but combat is much safer for them in pf2 and 5e They WANT the dangerous combat option these days. The modern systems are designed around that. I prefer Savage Worlds where is a death spiral with quick simple, easy to follow rules that help create a pulp like fantasy as adnd was meant to have.
I have yet to try SW but it’s been on my list of systems to try for years. I’ve been playing White Box and OD&D lately and feels so fast and light I’m loving running it.
You’re allowed to award xp for things other than combat. I find this whole culture of 5e rules bashing kooky. You all are totally fine making judgement calls about which rules to use, but deciding how much xp a particular encounter solution is worth is iNsAnE! Sure, the DM made up the entire world and everything you will encounter tonight, but it’s Ok. It’s still a rigidly structured and totally fair game because…he wrote down everything that he made up yesterday, and he’s not going to change it tonight. 😂
@@Newnodrogbob Its not OUR FAULT that WOTC sold us an undercooked handbook... most editions and games also include clarifications and rules handbooks later just solving whatever messes popped up... 5e? no AND ITS SIXTY DOLLARS
The elevator trap in Ravenloft with the sleep gas save at -4 hurdles you up into the high tower and then the players awaken to Strahd chewing their faces off…yes, resplendent!
THE BEST TRAP. The party sent Rictavio (van Richten) down to that level with another party member while they searched for Argynvost's skull... Rictavio and the Rogue ended up getting killed by that trap. But then another player who really liked Van Richten took the Gift of Zhuudun in the Amber Temple just to True Ressurect Van Ricthen. We just ended that session and they are about to assault Castle Ravenloft for a final time.
@@k-aw-teksleepysageuni8181 Our priest and rogue managed their saves but Strahd used his mirror image and distracted the thief and charmed the priest into casting hold person on him, then the vampyre went to work ]}:(€
@@tyrrollins Arbitrary? Everyone knows you don't F w/ a vampire. And if you do, you'd better be certain that you have the deck HIGHLY STACKED in your favor. And even then... bad stuff happens. Point is, telegraph and make sure the players have the requisite information.
@@jefffaller5155 My comment isn't about vampires its about save or die rolls and situations. They arent interesting and are an archaic ttrpg mechanic. If you like meat grinders they are probably fine but games where death is routine is as bad as games where it doesn't happen.
The "death is not on the table" reminds me of 7th Sea 1e/2e, where the tension and excitement doesn't just come from dying, but from the emotional and social stakes at hand. The game and book are really honest about that and the GM and players enjoy the game starting from that premise. Maybe 6th edition needs to be more honest about characters being super hard to kill. I know they won't and characters will be unstoppable machines from medium levels as in 5th, but one can dream.
5e wants to be a combat-heavy game, but the combats in the introductory scenarios are very unbalanced, and combat in general is very swingy, with people gaining and loosing hp all over the place. At the same time, most effects that players (and monsters) could use for a distinct advantage have been neutered, so the only real deciding factor is who can get the sliding scales of hp down to 0 (and keep it there for 3 turns) first.
@@RecklessFables Yeah! I've had a lot of great and intense combat and roleplaying moments in that game and it doesn't turn my character into an invincible super hero or drags for hours without intention.
Having just finished a 4 year low-to-high level campaign, we're switching from 5E to Savage Worlds. But the first thing we did was do a Dungeon Crawl Classics one-shot, Sailors On The Starless Sea. My players LOVED it. They were tense as they explored the dungeon because anything could mean death for their little army of peasants and as they made their narrow escape from the sinking ziggurat at the end, each of them only having one character left, they were laughing and cheering.
“Optimization” should be optimizing an awesome story, not making it mathematically impossible for me to get hurt, or limit me to cheese so I can then be 30x more effective in combat than everyone else because I’m a aracockra/assassin/wizard/Druid/twilight cleric.
When I was running 5e, I created an Excel spreadsheet where I entered the PC stats, and it then generated a balanced generic monster based on those stats. I would then use the special abilities from the Monster Manual, but use the stats from the spreadsheet. It could also generate quick/weak or slow/powerful versions, or versions designed for range. It made the battles less of a foregone conclusion. One of my favorite things about 4th edition was that the battles were always close, and that created tension. 5e has no tension.
5E stock can have tension, but it really helps to have fewer players as a smaller party can suddenly find even demigod like powers get overwhelmed if they play badly or roll poorly. And with so few players you can more easily run larger swarms without slowing the game to a massive crawl. I do like your Monster jiggering system though, and aid for something I think any 5E DM ends up doing a fair bit, inventing actually challenging situations.
I hated 4e on release but have definitely grown to appreciate how finely tuned the balance was, especially as a DM. Truly the only balanced edition, though at the cost of limiting player freedom. Always the cost of a tight system.
You’re absolutely right. Without great risk there is no reward. I’m sure there are many players who are satisfied with going through the motions of playing, satisfied by the imagery in their minds. I see these people as those who are proud of their participation awards. TTRPGs are an abstraction of real life, set in an imaginary environment. They’d no better place to take risks because the consequences only affect one’s imagination. Not all heroes survive IRL and they shouldn’t in fantasies. A fantasy hero not performing outrageous acts at great risk is empty of meaning.
I haven't run 5e in a very long time. I run shadowdark now with BX and 1E by my side for reference. And my uncle started running 2E again THAC0 and all... Its wonderful
+++ totally agree. One of the best things about (1980s) Champions was that you earned very few experience points per session /adventure... (One to 3 points which you could allocate add you wished..characters started with 200 to 300 points less a bunch of disadvantages)... So you were improving by 1 percent per session..maybe. Though your character build was highly customized, you were largely who you were going to be in the game. Change the "build budget", change the type of game. I've come to prefer just playing "first level" characters and focus on role playing
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 - the developers were local here in the SF Peninsula which was extra fun and how I stumbled into the game. I still have my play test copy of Fantasy Hero and maybe Espionage :) In the 80s, D&D was far from inevitable..in fact it was kind of like now... there were so many weird and wonderful games that came out..and some that became huge like Call of Cthulhu...and many that still thrive. (Do you go back to "The City State of the Invincible Overlord"?) To me, classic Champions is still the best "Pimp my Character" system..but if you want to focus on role playing, give me a first level character and a good GM in any system.
You nailed it. I had to change my 5e game a lot. The first session of 5e we ran RAW, everyone of the players voted it too easy and not satisfying. This was the green light for me to introduce drastic changes, which I did at the time. Currently I am working on adventures fir a different games system, and playing (as well as assisting in an OSE/AD&D based game). I will return to 5e house rules sometime, but having fun with other systems right now.
@@michaellopate4969 I was using WotC 5e Box Starter Set and using their premade encounters and only the rules in the Box Set. I fixed what I needed to fix to have the kind of game everyone wanted.
5e was like my time in a logging camp in Alaska. We ate like kings everyday and in under 2 months i was sick of all the food and was just eating ice cream for dinner half the time.
I used to think the same thing as you did until I started running a game for some kids. I realized death doesn't need to be on the table, but losing is still an option. If you run or lose, this orc army is going to take over this town, your guy will be in the dungeon for a few months, then we start from there. I mean in the long run you only win or lose because the DM decides if you win or lose
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 even with adults. Some adults will cry and leave the table when you hit them too hard. I was running Morg Borg a few weeks back and my, all adult players, pushed back on the level of misery I put them through even before the deaths. I ultimately agreed with them, that game is misery on top of misery. Not to get too far from the point I was getting at. Death… while is big as far as stakes go, isn’t the ultimate stakes, because dnd has a back from the dead mechanic so easy I find death to be rather whatever. Threatening players with misery has much more stakes ultimately. The character dies… yeah ok, so what they get raised in a few days and come back to find their favorite town in slavery, the king dancing for coppers by an outhouse, and everyone they had as friends serving the villain… that is stakes for me. I see your point but I prefer mine on this one I’m a fan of your class professor 👍🏾
I'm currently working on a video to review Mausritter, and that book said this: "The only way for danger to be meaningful is if the outcome of failure is meaningful." That game expects you to die. I take a lot of jabs at 5e on my channel, and there's always someone that will say "you're just bad at GMing" when I say it gives the players way too much power. Glad you made this video. Also, you mentioned nobody wants to GM for 5e. "Old Grognard Says" did a terrific video on just that a little while back. He did a bang up job putting into words what I had been ranting about. Do recommend.
100% agree that death should always be on the table simply for the fear factor involved. But 5e and Pathfinder want to make sure that death is a trivial matter. Like shooing gnats away. Annoying but not a threat at all because even if you die you can come back again with a simple handwave. Even resurrection magic should come at a cost or be more difficult to use each time it is used. But when you can't kill a PC unless they fail three death saves (the odds are in their favor for a better than 50% chance of success), have to hit them into negative the same number as they have positive, then they short rest, get all or most of the HP back in an hour, then go on like nothing happened. Or they long rest and wake up the next day fully healed. Making healing potions and healing magic almost meaningless and forget any resource management, or challenges that don't have to be over the top difficult to create any risk. This then bogs the game down because you have to place massive bags of HPs and damage dealers to threaten players, dragging things out to utter boredom. Compare that to my current C&C games where low level monsters are still a threat to mid-level PCs because everyone isn't a bag of endless hit points and reviving abilities. Combat is 100x faster than in 5e.
Back in 81? 82 I had this wizard with that 1d4 hp that was like 2hp after roll. Get into my first dungeon, DM rolls a random encounter trap while my wiz is in a tight hallway and oil is poured out on the wizard followed by a flaming cinder (rolled straight out of the 1ed DM's guide). Fail save, dead. That was my first experience, it was rough but we didn't cry. I got over it and we moved on to have years of fun playing TTRPGs. That encounter will never be forgotten.
There's something about old school DnD that allowed player skill to be something beyond metagaming. Not sure why modern games can't still allow for that while having the mechanics they do, but they do seem to push you to the limited options in the book rather than the infinite possibilities outside the book, and honestly most players are using the same strategy every battle, doing the same thing. Wizards seems to be making the game more and more like a videogame every edition, which plays well into their strategy of VTTs and AI DMs I guess.
They've been trying to make D&D more like video games for decades. That's why you have so much healing (you usually start every encounter at full health in a video game), so hard to kill (most games you just respawn after death), every player gets new "whiz-bang" powers every level or two, all the classes are "balanced", etc. Very few of these changes are good for a TTRPG. Playing a video game, whether MMO, Action RPG or other, is just a different experience.
As a somewhat new player, I ABSOLUTELY fell into the trap of scanning my character sheet whenever a situation was presented. Instead of thinking through it with my brain (through the lens of my PC) and asking what I could do out of the infinite possibilities, I instead went straight to my character sheet to see if there was anything that could potentially be useful or if anything sparked an idea, a la "oh I could use *this*!" But that enables a paralysis of sorts, because if you *don't* find anything particularly helpful in your character sheet, you fall into the trap of thinking there's nothing you can do in whatever situation you're in. Now, I try to think through things as a person (specifically, my PC) would. Then, if something on my character sheet *happens* to be helpful, so be it -- I'll use it. In the end, it's probably a matter of having more familiarity with the rules and the special things your PC can do -- and having it all at ready recall -- so that you're able to combine the infinite possibilities outside the book with those inside the book in a sort of "idea stew" that you can pluck from.
its not metagaming. Based on knowing character options, picking a class by looking at what it can do and how it development looks like is metagaming. Wanting a rogue to disable traps, open locks and sneak is metagaming. With that approach every lvl should be almost randomly assigned. Its not my fault 5e is a dumbed down trash that breaks its own rules to make monsters weaker, but assign them higher cr. Its not my fault u, knowing what a player character is capable of, decided to pitch 4 heroes against a single monster cr=avg party lvl, as if action economy itself wont kill your boss. Let them pick their path, u fix the monsters and fight team vs team.
@@murderyoutubeworkersandceos what you're talking about is minmaxing, though people do often refer to it as metagaming. Though really, metagaming is using knowledge you as the player know that your character doesn't. I have no issue with minmaxing. I do it a ton. I'm talking more about looking at options beyond the expressed mechanics. Old school DnD expected this. It had rules for attacking when you use your action to do that, but you could do anything on your action, and players often did unusual things that were quite effective. The more you played, the more you as a player learned to do these types of things, and that is meta knowledge gained by playing the game with often multiple characters. Your character's ability to do something clever was based on your own as a player.
@@DavidSmith-mt7tb no, its not. Choosing a rogue to sneak isnt minmaxing, or metagaming. Reading the wizard spell list to pick the 2 spells u gain each lvl isnt metagaming, or minmaxing. If they often refer to that as metagaming, then they r fucking wrong. Characters r aware of the rules of the world - they know its good to take cover against arrows, or that their spells have saving throws they can work to improve. What options beyond the expressed mechanics?!
Purple Rain! 👍 I have also called 5e "The Math Game" starting at about 9th level. I have also noticed that many players become bored with 5e at about the 2 year mark, and start to look for something more challenging.
So, so true. My most memorable games of D&D were when a character died. Not died then came back because of a revivify spell. Each time it meant something. First time was when my character who spent half the campaign plotting against the others because he was manipulated by a sentient sword, dies at the hands of his once companions after fighting to redeem himself and failing to convince them. Another was holding the line as a barbarian who was all about battle and honor so his companions could escape. Or as a DM when a player died the party went on a quest to find a cleric that could resurrect them because one of the players that lived fell in love with the one who died and never told them.
Your game Deathbringer was a great inspiration for making my 5E games grittier, and also reducing the PCs' exponential power leveling. My fellow-players and I have more fun now playing our Sword & Sorcery version of 5E, with PC deaths every session or so, than the official corporative 5E in which nobody dies.
"If death isn't on the table, the game has no meaning." - Professor DM Simple concept, but frankly this statement is pure genius. I find that most newer players (many of whom have only ever played 5e) are afraid of losing their characters so much.
In OSR, and older versions of D&D you played people who became heroes. 5E you play super heroes in plate armour right from the start. When I first played 5E, and saw all the healing options, I thought there would also be a optional rule for inserting little white boxes with a red cross into your game.
To highlight the philosophical changes, I was just reading an old AD&D Ravenloft Adventure today that actually said: "Don't have Senment kill any of the PCs (unless they do something really stupid)". "Stupid" was even italicized to emphasize it! Definitely a different mindset now.
I absolutely love the redacted Death saving throw screen shot. Was amazing. On the size the game I am in has had a lot of the no death stuff happening and I hate it. If my character dies I just roll a new one but I am about the only one who does. Just this last game 2 characters in the party Died (or should have) when they wondered off alone. However, after both were confirmed dead, one of the players got all upset and stated they would not make a new character because they had spent hours making their character. (Side note actually making the character only took about 10 mins, what they spent hours on was the super elaborate backstory that has had next to no relevance in the campaign.) So the DM made some bs reason how when my character found their bodies a random scroll of True Resurrection happen be nearby. And Yes I might have tried to mess up the DM'S plans with my character as he wanted me to cast the Scroll but I am a Barbarian. So I did what a Barbarian does best. I built a fire and burned the scroll as an offering to the gods. I then carried both their bodies back to town where our DM has a lvl 20 Cleric npc (basically as long as our body can be recovered we will never die because of this cleric).
This is precisely why I only ask for a couple of paragraphs of back story. Someone hands me pages of back story I hand it back. I don't have time to read your novel. If that's what you want, go write a novel instead. I just need the basics of who they are and where they come from. A hook or two into the campaign is nice but that's it. Your first level character isn't going to be related to the king or a long lost godling or whatever without an OK from the DM first so don't waste time writing that into the backstory. Keep it simple and concise.
I fully agree with Prof DM. I was recently at a table where we had an encounter I was certain would end in a TPK. I was actually excited to go down in a blaze of glory, and was even thinking up new character ideas. However, the party not only survived but won the battle. I was actually disappointed, it didn't feel right, and I ended up leaving that table after the next session.
@LeFlamel The DM also expected a TPK, and also seemed excited about it. After that battle, and after a long rest, our next encounter was an adult Green Dragon. Took us 3 rounds...
Oh boy you’re not kidding! Last session, our party of 5 11-12th level characters took on 4 modified iron golems AFTER completing a multi session battle against an adult red dragon with only a short test between. The biggest challenge was they started running out of spell slots. The ONLY reason we had any death saves was because sections of the floor opened up, dropping two PCs into lava after they failed dex saves. It was a great and memorable session, but it makes me wonder how I maintain tension after they take their next rest.
funny for us, but how fun for you as a player to die to a couple unlucky die rolls? And then what, to restart at level 1? With the same party where everyone else is 5 levels up on you?
@@michaellopate4969 We don't think it's funny when characters die. It should be tragic, dramatic or heroic though. It's not really unlucky to die, in a dungeon fighting monsters, and opening trapped chests and doors...... I prefer to think of it as lucky to survive, sticking their noses in to places better left alone.
For me, its the reason DM'ing 5e is not fun. I know the players have a ton of fun living the power fantasies, but you have to bend so many rules to challenge the players in any shape or form. The coolest part of a DM is not knowing the result of some crazy scenario you made, or how the players will react to it and then getting to be a spectator while they work through it. There are just so many ways to cheese the system or "win" in 5e.
For the most part, I don't think players really enjoy it all that much either. "God mode" is momentarily fun, but becomes boring very quickly. Players get stuck in a trap of getting what they want, not being able to give that up, and not really realizing why they are so unsatisfied.
I agree. I would gladly GM DCC or Shadowdark on next to no notice and feel like I could just roll with it. Improv and creativity still have a place there. 5e just feels like "murder math". That bead shoving until the players win. I understand I can tweak it but, I can run other games stock, right off the shelf, and present challenges which are fun for me and for my players. I don't like games where you win in the build. What is the point? Just because you put a narrative hat on it, that does not make it a good time. I have found that games like Blades in the Dark , DCC or Shadowdark have really grabbed my players because NONE of us know how anything will turn out. Playing to find out, with some sense of things being high stakes, make even a simple game dynamic. It's so much more fun.
@@taragnor The reason this seems to be the case is that 5e has a much more general audience, many of whom have a lower level of investment, or simply lower level of experience, in the hobby. It is still remarkably easy to find a 5e game to join with almost zero notice, without having to dig too deep through the internet. For the most part, every other TTRPG exists in the realm of enthusiasts. Heck, I've met avid players of 5e who don't even know there are third party publishers for 5e content, much less hundreds of other psuedo-medieval fantasy TTPRGs on the market.
I agree and at the same time I'm the opposite. I had a lot more fun running 5e than playing in it. When I finally got to do more playing, I realized that we were spending hours on combats that we had no chance of losing. If I want combats where the outcome is predetermined, then I want them to be over quickly and much simpler, requiring a much lighter rules system for combat. It really felt like players showing off to each other with no other purpose. Plus when the game makes it so much about what options your character is made with, then many players want to skip to the part of the game where they use all those abilities which is combat 80% of the time. So its a mismatch between rules and intended gameplay.
I totally get this as a DM. Over COVID I was running three online games a week. First Group had 2 Players in it who decided that characters dying was a traumatic experience for them personally (their words) so they wanted death off the table. It got to the point in this group that if I presented any physical risk they cried foul and said I was trying to TPK them (I’ve never killed a character in any of these games). In the end they left the group and the smaller group were actually great to DM for. Second Group were more old school in their approach. I had monster combat encounters that would wipe the floor with them, making them pick and choose their battles and come up with the most hairbrained schemes to defeat the monsters. I loved DMing for this group and they had a lot of fun. Third Group were all power gamers who built their characters so strong and multi classed to get the juiciest features that combat was a maths nightmare of trying to calculate how high to go with the challenge rating just to create a halfway decent encounter. They never dropped below half hit points and would wipe the floor with monsters 5 CR higher than them - they were like tanks with magic powers, and would spend ages deciding how as a group how they should attack (I had to rule in the end that in combat, quick decisions are needed). They enjoyed the game but it was stressful for me to run. Learning from all this is I like the games where risk and death are a factor and players have to work as a team to support their individual weaknesses. Even then there will be challenges that they have to think outside the box to be successful in the encounter.
What do I think? I think you shouldn't be dissing my AD&D death's door rules, that's what I think! 🤪Seriously, I agree wholeheartedly - the easy-mode play of 5e can be frustrating... especially if you have a DM who leans into it in obvious fashion! I was once in a game where a player got disintegrated by the spell, he was done. The DM announces that his Goddess Patron came to him in the plane between worlds and gave him just enough hit points to continue the battle, and was restored. This was common. No one died. There were literally no stakes, he was just pushing us through the novel he'd written.
I've recently started DMing some Tier 3 (11-16) for my local adventure league group, and the thing about the monster's damage not keeping up with the player's HP really rings true. One module I ran had a powered up ancient copper dragon as its final encounter and aside from its breath weapon that was able to do over 100 damage to multiple characters, its regular claw/bite attacks were disappointingly weak compared to the massive HP pools of the party. Another adventure I ran I think I ended up basically tripling the power of each of the monster groups and the party still ran through them with barely a scratch. Actually posing a challenge to a party at this level without homebrewing the rules requires some really massively over-the-top power levels for the monsters.
Yup and as a player that grew up playing Advanced D&D 2e Ravenloft and 3.5. Myself and most the folks I play with realized we weren’t having much fun with 5E. There’s little to no challenge. So back to 2E and back to fun!
I’m currently running Shadow of the Dragon Queen, and to add a sense of urgency I have the dragon army on a calendar ala Red Hand of Doom. If my group misses a session, I advance the calendar one day. That can make things a little harder as those missed sessions add up over time. So far it’s worked out well.
In order to give my players (level 10) a challenge in my 5e game, about halfway through our campaign I stopped worrying about ability bonuses to all my monsters attacks and just add flat bonuses to all of their damage rolls. Mooks do regular damage plus 5, tough enemies do plus 10, and bosses do plus 15. I don’t have to have a bunch of spellcasters or monsters making 5 attacks a turn to do tons of damage. Really improved my game
I'm pretty sure there are lots of ways to measure success and failure in a TTRPG besides the threat of death. ...But given that the core mechanics of DnD are fundamentally about answering the question of whether monsters or a group of heroes would win in a fight, it does seem odd to bend those mechanics to accomodate players who don't want that to be a question.
Great video! For some reason "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" Kept playing in my head, lol. Agree about the 5e power creep as well as the sentiment of "are you really playing if risk isn't involved?"
I pulled the punches a bit for my absolute noob players for the first session or two, so they could learn and get into it without the frustration of dying. They came close to dying a few times. I told them in session 0 that dying was possible, and there were no death saves. I think it worked out well. They didn't know when I spared them, and so they were in fear of the death whose hand I stayed for a time. Now, four sessions in, if the dice take them away, they are taken. But they are invested in the game and the outcome. They have a handle on the rules, and play with critical thinking.
My go-to homebrew for encounters is to present the players against tough monsters but halve the monster HP. It’s less of the chipping-away-indefinitely, and it’s lethal.
I'm DM ing 5E for my daughter and her friends. There have been many times where they easily could have been snuffed out. I could see it becoming more lop sided now that they're at 5th level.
The old school term for player groups who take character death off the table is "Care Bears" and it was always a pejorative back in the day. I just don't understand how it became the norm today.
I'll be running The Fantasy Trip for my group in a little bit. Polar opposite to 5e. But if it only takes five minutes to make your character, death is a little less traumatic ;)
@@ColdNapalm42 same story in 3E and PF1 as well tbh, level 1 characters are lightning fast if you know the game or have the assistance of someone who does.
@@priestesslucy however long you play to get attached is kinda irrelevant to the system. Nor is the time honestly. I've been attached to characters after 10 min or not cared one bit after years of play.
With all the WotC debacle , I turned to CyberpunkRED and wow was it refreshing to see the nervous and deadly system play put. FNFF sure has its slower moments, but it was very refreshing as a newbie at ttrpg in general
I think the death/injury thing depends entirely on the kind of game you're going for. *Failure* should always be on the table, *Defeat* should always be on the table, but there are settings and scenarios where random death just isn't in genre. For example, Super Heroes "die" all the time, but it's seldom due to bad luck or a poor decision. They die at the end of epic story arcs, or as a shocking opening to a new adventure. A Super Hero game where Spider-Man can catch a .45 slug to the lung from a random thug and bleed out just doesn't sit right with me. On the other hand, a Super Hero game where Spider-Man can get the snot kicked out of him, show up too late to save his girlfriend, see innocent people suffer because he screwed up? That's *perfect*! D&D has been a game of epic super heroes for decades at this point. I love a tense dungeon crawl, to be sure, but simply put that's not the fantasy most mainstream D&D players are looking for these days. I do agree that genuine challenge is tricky to achieve with 5e. I think I'd like to see a "Heroic Injury" system of some kind, where dropping to 0 HP gives you some kind of dramatic effect, a cool scar beneath the eye, the shattering of a magic weapon (which can be reforged at the end of a quest) or getting captured and spirited away to another area of the dungeon you must escape or be rescued from. Basically, defeat doesn't have to be permanent, but it should be both possible and dramatic.
I really like AD&D's -10 HP. We still use it to this day in our Pathfinder 2e sessions. At negative HP you are incapacitated / unconscious and bleeding out. You lose 1 HP per round cumulative with other persistent damage (poison, on fire, etc.). People can die really fast once they hit 0 HP so the whole party gets a sense of urgency to save the downed PC before its too late. This leads to real heroic and dangerous actions on the part of the party as they try to save their friends. Some of the best stories of game play revolve around these heroic, self sacrificing saves.
I think the key is to have some actual tension in the situation, which it sounds like your group is managing. The 5e rules make it too easy to establish real tension in most situations. Then characters can pop up and be fully functional again after just a little bit of healing, so no real consequences. When I played with the -10 rule, a character who got knocked out needed a week of rest and recuperation before being able to do anything more than move slowly, unless he received a Heal spell (6th level, which most of my players never got high enough to have).
Play to your audience is what I do. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel or give my players a game experience that they didn’t ask for, trying to arbitrarily add challenge doesn’t add meaning. Listening to the players and letting them choose the meaning and help them create it has worked best for me.
The two things I loathe most of all are Hit Points and the Long Rest. You mean that we defeated a (fill in the blank BBEG) today, slept all night, and in the morning not only are we fully healed but now we're even HARDER to kill? GURPS was a great system for avoiding this. You could have 100 xp (having survived a year of playing every week) and STILL be taken out by a lucky hit to the head or some vital organ.
There are also ways to make going down hurt without being death at 0 hit points. My house rules are that: A) Whenever a player goes down, they get a Bane die until they can complete a Long Rest (a negative d4, per the Bane spell), that increases in size (d6, d8, etc.) each time they go down. I also use Bane dice for attacks from vampires and other monsters with level drain, and those require powerful magic to remove. If they get past a d12, they die. B) Whenever a player goes down, they cross off a death save they can fail before they die, which resets after a long rest. It makes players think twice about their tactics when getting knocked down and getting back up has a real penalty attached to it. They're more complicated, than death at 0 hit points, but they serve their purpose and use the game's existing mechanics to do it.
I'm only taking it easy on my players because they're new. I've told them you have a couple more sessions to absorb the rules and then it's absolutely cut throat. Great video, professor!
When running Waterdeep Dragon Heist I asked the players if they would be ok if death was off the table for the game. If anyone was killed they would be out of the scene, gain a permanent lingering injury and return on one hit point in the next scene. Nobody objected and we played on. My intent was to run a short focused campaign and I didnt want character replacements to break the flow of the story. I need not have worried. Nobody came even close to dying at any time anyhow..
Death is part of the game. If you really are concerned with having "That Guy" at the table put together some new house rules where players who die become ghosts of some sort. Give them something to do. Or let them be the "my character's father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate" player.
When I was a kid sometimes on Easter Morning we received a music record album. I remember Color By Numbers, by Culture Club and Purple Rain, by Prince And The Revolution. Thanks for unintentionally giving me an excuse to regale that memory, Dungeon Craft.
Thanks for another great video PDM!, when death is on the table its exciting, fun and squeezing the creativity out of the players. Truth is, we took a break from 5E and playing Shadowdark and Call of Cthulhu and having a blast. The real magic is to play with fragile characters.
I absolutely love the system in Knave 2e, damage at 0 means damage to your inventory and slots are replaced by injuries. I've never seen terror in the eyes of my 5e party so real. Of course, I've since adapted the system for 5e mwahahaha.
In my group we are all begginers. We are playing one of the official modules wich in theory is balanced for 4 to 6 players with only 3 players that are not optimizing at all. for now we are finishing almost all enounters with an inch of our lives and we are having fun.
The first 5 or so levels, in the base system, are decently balanced. When you add in all the additional options from the new books and/or higher level play, 5E begins to fall apart as a system.
The key reason it's working... 1) You are all still low levels I assume. Honestly, it's near impossible to break things before level 5. It is literally impossible before 3. The earliest one could break something is level 4. With 8 needed for not human. But a lot of these broken optimized things kick in at double digits. The problem is that it doesn't even get hard to break the game at those levels. 2) You are all still new. I assume even to TTRPGS in general. In which case, you won't even have the basics in your head about game breaking stuff so you won't know it until you run into it directly. Have fun while it lasts.
Good thing all the older editions of DnD still exist along with dozens of other fantastic OSR systems. If the people want a grittier, deadlier, experience, there's no shortage of other options.
Great video. Everything you mentioned is one of the reasons I left 5e, not b/c I hate the game, I was just tired of dealing with all the written rules. I missed the dungeon aspect of the game we had back in the BX days. This has pushed me to games like Lamentations of the Flame Princess, ICRPG, EZD6, Shadow of the Demonlord, Shadowdark and Mork Borg. It is hard to call yourself the hero when you cannot die. Is it more heroic to be a demigod and win every time or to be the town peasant who leaves the fields of their homeland, braves death and saves the village? Outside of the TTRPG sphere, we would have a hard time following a story where we knew the hero would have no chance to die, even Superman has to worry about Kryptonite.
In Swords and Wizardry I played a paladin with mid stats except his HP because I roll high on d8s. I played him like a paladin. Dude was like first to the fight, leave no man behind, etc. And there were numerous battles where he survived rounds of melee combat with only a few HP. One time I bumrushed a group of orcs at 1hp cause it needed to be done and killed them all and somehow just didn't get hit. The possibility for instant death made those moments epic.
Exactly. The complexity combined with nerfing any "Feel bad" portions of the game means that it's all just an amusement park ride that is slow and dull to run. I've found a new love for fantasy games by leaving 5e behind.
@@Skulliver-t8q well said. I'm actually a big number cruncher meta gamer type. Just cause I enjoy the puzzle of optimizing and/or the novelty of finding bizarre play styles, making stuff work that shouldn't work. But I don't want the game to be easy. I just want to play it the best I can. I've honestly always enjoyed more open leveled systems though, cause I hate getting features that are kinda meh after leveling for 2 months. In those games you can often puck up a stat boost or perk every couple weeks. You're always getting something yet it takes a long time to get overall way more powerful, so the game stays challenging.
I started my son on 5E with the excellent Phandelver set, because D&D is important. I like the character survivability- for children. Soon, I'll switch to Savage Pathfinder. It's there in the name-Savage Worlds for swingy fights and nailbiting adventures. :)
I mean, ppl play games for experiences outside of the mundane real life. Winning is important since losses are lessons to help you win. Imo DnD is to provide a heroic experience which is why our skills and abilities even at the start are more powerful than common folk within the stories. Play the DnD you want and worry less about where society tries to push you.
In early edition of D&D players had to solve all the challenges, not the characters, so "builds" did not exist. In 3rd to 5e characters solve everything with their stats and "options", so players actually play by making "the build". The moment of decition making is completly shifted.
@@kendiamond7852 Kinda agree with you there, yeah. I don't think the "players are hard to kill" is entirely bad, it just kinda dishonest to build a system like that and don't let GMs and players, your clients, know the game is going to be like that from the start.
I'm training up 2 young padawans currently, this will be required viewing. 8>D They will both also get a copy of B1 (real ones), a folder labelled 'expired characters', and cheat sheet where the first phrase listed is 'because I'm the Dungeon Master, that's why'. 8>D
"A flock of pixies to turn the party into T-Rex's and make them fly... Common that's rediculous!" You just gave me a brilliant idea for my next monster encounter. My players will never see it coming! Thanks professor dungeon master!
I think the best 5e supplement that put death on the table was Adventures in Middle Earth, it's low magic system made it so healing was rare and dear god did our characters die. By the end of the campaign every player had a character that had died due to no resurrection magic.
I can personally attest to how scary level drain was in the 1990s. I'm adding it back in to my Shadowdark game but changing it to XP drain. It is still scary, but not quite as harsh as the old level drain mechanic. Lesser draining undead or effects are 1d4 XP. Vamps and other major undead will do 1d6+ XP.
I like the idea of xp drain. Its harsh enough to be meaningful but soft enough that you dont need to hold up a sign that says "dont get hit by this thing it will de-level you"
@@nathan8812 I haven't read the rules but I strongly suspect that Shadowdark players don't have thousands of XP. I imagine it's more like DCC, where 1000 XP will get you all the way to 10th level. In D&D you'd have to make this d4 x 100 XP or x 1000 to have comparable threat.
@@nathan8812 yeah in Shadowdark you get get maybe 6-7 xp per session and it takes 10 XP to get to 2nd level. 20 more to get to 2nd level. If I was using a high XP game maybe multiply by 100 to make it apply.
I have been working on supplemental rules. Basically, I lay them out in index cards, and a random table. One of the cards is a Reaper Card. When that card is in effect, there is a reaper present. That means no death saved and no resurrection. That way, we can explore different rules, there is an in game reason, and you don't have to stick to that rule for an entire campaign if you don't want to. It makes the game seem a little more like a board game, but my player seems to enjoy it
Why is death at -10hp in ad&d the worst rule? Genuinely curious. I always thought it struck a nice balance but I know I could be missing something important.
This is why I don’t usually use CR. What fun is it if you KNOW that you can beat the dragon? He’s ancient and you’re level 2. Do what you need to do. And yes he has an army of Kobolds who worship him. A literal army. Because he’s an ancient dragon. So yes, you might want to tread lightly and use honorifics when speaking to him, IF he will even listen to you before gobbling you up like a pizza roll.
You nailed it with the reason DM are in short supply for 5E. No wonder the "paid DM" demographic is so large now. Waiting for the new DnD to offer AI DM. 😊
As a DM I've really been enjoying a recent campaign I set up to specifically play into 5e's strengths. But *hooooo boy* has it highlighted for me just how much workload there is to trying to run 5e blindly.
This is why I play Deathbringer with Basic Fantasy (streamlined B/X). Deathbringer keeps it simple but allows for player creativity and innovation, while using ascending AC, d20 roll high, and Advantage/Disadv (the best part of 5e). The peril is very real, but at the same time you've got Deathbringer Dice (bonus dice) to help out if you just hit some bad rolls at a crucial moment... but DD are a finite resource! When your luck runs out you're likely to be making a new character. It strikes the right balance... PC death is a strong possibility, but doesn't happen as often as it did in B/X... where I buried more PCs than ever survived to 3rd level.
Thanks for purchasing DB. I'm currently contemplating reducing the ability scores from 6 to 3-4. Thoughts? Do you care or is it more important that it align with already existing D&D material?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 I started with B/X back inna day, so I'm not married to 5e standards... I was accustomed to bonuses running +1 to +3 (if you were super lucky). I also don't use 5e adventures much as I don't care for most of them. As it is, I limit new L1 PCs to a max of 5 in any one attribute to start, more in line with old-school. I do like that DB PCs are competent from day 1, but reducing max stat to 4 would still leave them a lot more capable than B/X PCs were. Do you plan to leave build points at 8 or reduce those also, I wonder?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1get rid of charisma! Nothing prevents a player from role playing like the old “but i don’t have a high persuasion/deception/intimidate skill” excuse.
I wish more people would talk about the issue of 5e being built so heavily in-favor of the players that it causes MORE negative reactions when bad things actually do happen to players. When the game is rigged so heavily in your favor (advantage die, inspiration die, multiple death saves, etc.), it's almost inevitable that when someone's character dies or fails a quest objective, they'll accuse the GM of cheating or singling out their character for some unsaid reason.
Having one person in the table who doesn't want their character to die is understandable to me, and you could make exceptions, retire the character until they recuperate you can roll another one for the rest of this campaign; your old character can get together with new lower level characters in the next one. But it's a game where you fight monsters most of the time, there are other games out there. I think in tales from the loop the PC kids don't die. There are wrestling games, I don't think you are supposed to kill PCs there either.
No one wants their character to die. I mean, if it's a good one they like. That's what makes OD&D so good. Super lethality means everyone who loves their character will play smart. Too smart.
I do agree: the presence of risk (in various respects) is what makes games interesting, and what makes them games. The basic mechanic of all games (except the Lottery!) is: you win some, you lose some. Though distance and schedules have made it impossible to play for a while, the game I've had going most recently has been an interesting experiment: the players all started at 10th level, so that they could do some interesting things to start with. Even despite that, in each adventure we've done where combat was involved (more than half of them thus far), at least one player nearly died each time. No, they didn't quite get to 0 HP, but they were close, and they felt vulnerable in the process...particularly when the cleric wasn't there, and she often wasn't! However, fun was had by all, and they all want to play again (some of them were essentially brand new to the game, and I figured the higher level was a way to get them to learn the mechanics faster by necessity), so I hope that we can sometime soon!
I just can’t wrap my head around making 5e challenging without making an active decision to try and kill the party. I don’t want to design an adventure like that so after my 2 year campaign closed I’ve just been running other stuff.
Me I think of it as being a supervillain.... It's not enough that you just try to kill the hero, no... You're trying to kill the hero in an overly convoluted death trap that they will probably escape from. (And if they somehow fail they die....) It's about the presentation of what is trying to kill them this time more than it is simply trying to kill them....
Well, tomb of horrors is not precisely a good example for anything. In order for a player decision to matter it needs to be an informed decision. When the consequences are arbitrary, like it happens in the tomb of horrors, player decisions doesn't matter, since they have no control over what is going to happen. That's telegraphy is important and risk asessment is an important part of decision making. There's a very big difference in agency between "we know that if we are spotted we are dead but we will do it because it's our best shot" than "a rock falls on your head. you are dead. You could have chosen to not to walk". This is where tomb of horrors fail misserably.
I'll probably never get my group to try OSR again, but yesterday we had our first Pathfinder 2E session and almost ended in a TPK due to our own stupidity. I loved it, and I'm on the edge of my seat to see what happens next. This sort of tension has been missing from my 5e games, and they've become boring. That tension that we all experienced yesterday made me realize what I didn't like about 5e.
@michaellopate4969 In 5e, if a TPK occurs, rarely do I feel like it's something I did wrong. Oftentimes, it's my build, or the encounter was just too hard, or the DM miscalculated the CR stuff. I never look back at an encounter and think, "If only these 10 things were done..." Rather, it's "I have no idea how we were supposed to win. Guess the dice hated us." Or more often than that, "Gee that was easy. Bringing an enchanter really makes this game cake." Maybe you're right. Maybe my GM sucks at running 5e, but kicks ass at running PF2. Can you explain to me how a GM with 10 years' experience withDMing 5e sucks, but has us on the edge of our chairs with his first PF2 session?
@@TheReasonableGamer I couldn't say for sure, but its certainly possible that the unfamiliarity with the system made everything feel more exciting because you didn't know what was going to happen. Maybe after 10 years of Pathfinder you'll find yourself in the same spot. Because in terms of encounter design, pathfinder doesn't have much more going on than 5e. If your DM is magically better at pathfinder, something else is going on beyond differences in game mechanics.
@michaellopate4969 But I don't have unfamiliarity with either system. I personally have a couple years under my belt GMing PF2, and ive played and DMed 5e since it came out. It was my GM's first time. But let's assume unfamiliarity. I still never had that feeling in 5e, even when it was unfamiliar. My son just learned both systems, and he agrees that Pathfinder requires more tactics to be successful in combat. I don't see how encounter designs can be similar, when the rules are drastically different, unless you homebrew some PF2 conditions and rules into 5e, and if you do that, you may as well just play PF2. Action economy means different things in either system. CR means different things in either system. Concealment, invisible, stealth, and failed saving throw all mean different things. Due to this, PF2 encounter design is more varied RAW.
Currently running my first 5E campaign. We are only a few sessions in and I am amazed at how powerful the party already is. They're 2nd level. Healing is crazy accessible. And we are just using the core books. THACO rules!
When the 5E DM learns they can just give dragons the Illithid brain removal ability and won't have to explain themselves to anyone they will have taken their first steps on the path to righteousness.
The Green Devil illustrates perfectly my issues with 5e. This thing is infamous in Tomb of Horrors and part of D&D iconic imagery. It actually doesn't take that many lives if a party is cautious. It's actually pretty easy to figure out. But I was gobsmacked at the 5e version of Tomb of Horrors, that reduced it to "roll Arcana skill to figure out what it is". For the record, I do -10=dead. But you lose 1d4/round and it takes a roll to stabilize someone. And there's is going to be recovery time & injuries. I've considered using the "Death & Dismemberment" rules floating around the internet.
I think once WotC started selling 15 level campaign books instead of individual modules, they decided they had to make the characters live long enough to see the entire campaign. 5E healing, rest and Death Save mechanics reflect that.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 TSR sold entire campaigns in 2e. The Night Below box set went from level 1 to 17 in a single grand campaign. And that's just one example.
Death = Stakes, and stakes are key. Realistically, a lot of us are in it for the story and enjoy the journey. BUT, if nobody can die, how do you make decisions matter? Rime of the Frostmaiden, I think, was good at giving DM's the opportunity to create life and death situations, but not always for the characters. I'm sure fights could be run where the Maguffin is easily damaged if the party isn't careful, BUT, a few times a campaign, death should be on the table and should be at a pivotal time in the story.
It’s true 5e by default is certainly a power fantasy but in fairness to 5e, the DMG Workshop at the back of the book (chapter 9) has some very nice variant rules to increase the challenge for gaming for tables that like it that way. This is often overlooked by those that over criticise 5e.
You don't even need variant rules. Just make encounters more challenging, and keep increasing difficulty until the balance is where you want it. Or don't let them long rest, keep them moving and combat gets harder and harder as resources are exhausted. You don't have limitless healing. People who claim 5e is "too easy" just aren't using their brains or have bad DMs.
I don't have a lot of ttrpg experience, but will be playing a bit of baldur's gate 3 with my friends online when it gets released, and turning on hardcore mode where you lose your character at death is going to make it a whole lot more fun.
Here's an idea. How about each table play they way they like with the game they like? Why do I care how someone else has fun as long as no one is getting hurt?
I agree that 5E is a system built much easier to handle from a Player success standpoint, that said: Death is not the only failure state in an adventure. If a group agrees on what they want to go on, then they could be captured, fail to meet a deadline, lose a battle with their rivals, be stolen from. As long as they agree on what they want, there are many options for enjoyment.
Since I discovered DCC, I apply some DCC mechanics to 5e. Or, even better, I play DCC. It takes my player to another level, they’re more focused into roleplaying than in resource or character sheet management, as easier the system is, better the game experience. Just my opinion.
I picked up DCC during the OGL debacle. Looking forward to running it once I finish my current campaign. Also I'm slowly introducing tables into the 5e game. Really does spice things up!
When I became obsessed with D&D in 1978, my Dad, a cardshark of sorts, asked questions along te lines of "How do you win" and "what are the stakes?" I remember trying to explain that there really isn't winning and losing in this game in any traditional sense. He didn't get it, but I did, and that's all that mattered. Not having clearly defined wins and not having stakes was problematic for my dad's enjoyment, but it was not problematic for me. A lesson I learned over the years is that there is more than one way to have fun and games. Fun can be about rolling dice and strategizing combat sessions where there are stakes. But fun can also be about thinking over a cool character design and collaboratively imagining a great story for that character. In that kind of fun, it gets tiresome if your character keeps dying before you get to imaine that great story. In the former type, it is problematic if the stakes are meaningless. think 5e is designed to make this latter type of fun easier to come by at the expense of the former type.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 My favorite Dungeoncraft of all time was the Reviled Society series. I also loved MacDeath and the Keep on the Borderlands series.These stories from your table do a great job capturing that old style of play, where meaningful stakes heighten drama and player engagement. More of that, please!
I thought 5e was a heroic game until I played a Call of Cthulhu campaign. Running around fighting against overwhelming forces, shattering their ownd minds and breaking their bodies just for a chance to save the world from human evils and horrors beyond. The lovecraftian universe is cold and uncaring, but seeing my players fight for what their characters believe is more than moving, it's inspiring. They are as immortal for me as some of my favorite characters from other media. That is why you need villains, death and risk. There is no power otherwise. No true fantasy, either. Just an adolescent's dream.
Love Cthulhu.
A D&D session were you can’t is a story with participation. Even in the 80’s “Choose your Own Adventure,” there was a chance you could die.
Loved those.
I kept playing D&D 5E with my group because I thought my players were attached to the game and their characters. They recently told me that they are actually bored with 5E and ready to try a different game. We are playing Old School Essentials next week and I couldn't be more thrilled!
Let me know how it goes.
SHADOWDARK. Seriously, it’s everything I love about 5e, nothing I don’t, all the cruft pulled out and wrapped in an economy of word choice I’ve never seen in another rpg
Shadowdark is amazing. Most of my players love it, but one prefers hardcore maths so is now leaning to Pathfinder! :)
Getting like 10 fights in a night with 4th level characters... Meanwhile in our 5e campaign we'll get through one during overland travel and then the session is over...
It's a pretty neat 5E mod. Not the first one to do old school inspired 5E play, but it's good to see the concept continue. I'd rather stick to OSR style play myself, but this game is a nice homage.
Love Shadowdark!
Definitely would NOT consider it a 5e mod. That’s quite reductive to the actual thought and intent that went into its design, imho.
@@HouseDM Agree. It borrows the bones of it's system from 5e, but it is its own thing. Wouldn't even say its that 'old skool', in that it's mainly a tone and not really mechanical. Plus it is a complete game, unlike most OSRs. And it does it's own thing too.
Go Deathbringer!!! Show em that preview! I've recently gotten back into playing 5e after almost a year of only playing old school. The difference is glaring and unfortunately, most of the people I play with don't want a deadlier game. I enjoy the stories we create, but even that is different because I've found I far prefer emergent stories now than a vaguely disguised railroad.
Players come up with more inventive and creative solutions to every challenge or problem put in front of them when they know one misstep can kill their character. And getting XP for gold instead of killing creatures in old school games means that not every encounter is automatically going to end up with combat.
Not only that but combat is much safer for them in pf2 and 5e
They WANT the dangerous combat option these days. The modern systems are designed around that.
I prefer Savage Worlds where is a death spiral with quick simple, easy to follow rules that help create a pulp like fantasy as adnd was meant to have.
I have yet to try SW but it’s been on my list of systems to try for years. I’ve been playing White Box and OD&D lately and feels so fast and light I’m loving running it.
Yes! XP for GP is so much more interesting, and so much easier to track.
You’re allowed to award xp for things other than combat. I find this whole culture of 5e rules bashing kooky. You all are totally fine making judgement calls about which rules to use, but deciding how much xp a particular encounter solution is worth is iNsAnE!
Sure, the DM made up the entire world and everything you will encounter tonight, but it’s Ok. It’s still a rigidly structured and totally fair game because…he wrote down everything that he made up yesterday, and he’s not going to change it tonight. 😂
@@Newnodrogbob Its not OUR FAULT that WOTC sold us an undercooked handbook... most editions and games also include clarifications and rules handbooks later just solving whatever messes popped up... 5e? no AND ITS SIXTY DOLLARS
The elevator trap in Ravenloft with the sleep gas save at -4 hurdles you up into the high tower and then the players awaken to Strahd chewing their faces off…yes, resplendent!
THE BEST TRAP. The party sent Rictavio (van Richten) down to that level with another party member while they searched for Argynvost's skull... Rictavio and the Rogue ended up getting killed by that trap. But then another player who really liked Van Richten took the Gift of Zhuudun in the Amber Temple just to True Ressurect Van Ricthen. We just ended that session and they are about to assault Castle Ravenloft for a final time.
@@k-aw-teksleepysageuni8181 Our priest and rogue managed their saves but Strahd used his mirror image and distracted the thief and charmed the priest into casting hold person on him, then the vampyre went to work ]}:(€
Ah yes-save or die mechanics. Nothing like just dying to random shit. Arbitrary high difficulty is as bad as the game being to easy.
@@tyrrollins Arbitrary? Everyone knows you don't F w/ a vampire. And if you do, you'd better be certain that you have the deck HIGHLY STACKED in your favor. And even then... bad stuff happens. Point is, telegraph and make sure the players have the requisite information.
@@jefffaller5155 My comment isn't about vampires its about save or die rolls and situations. They arent interesting and are an archaic ttrpg mechanic. If you like meat grinders they are probably fine but games where death is routine is as bad as games where it doesn't happen.
The "death is not on the table" reminds me of 7th Sea 1e/2e, where the tension and excitement doesn't just come from dying, but from the emotional and social stakes at hand. The game and book are really honest about that and the GM and players enjoy the game starting from that premise.
Maybe 6th edition needs to be more honest about characters being super hard to kill. I know they won't and characters will be unstoppable machines from medium levels as in 5th, but one can dream.
5e wants to be a combat-heavy game, but the combats in the introductory scenarios are very unbalanced, and combat in general is very swingy, with people gaining and loosing hp all over the place. At the same time, most effects that players (and monsters) could use for a distinct advantage have been neutered, so the only real deciding factor is who can get the sliding scales of hp down to 0 (and keep it there for 3 turns) first.
7th Sea is Pulp and it is pretty great for that.
@@krinkrin5982 I'd say combats in a lot of scenarios and levels tend to be unbalanced, for one side or the other.
@@RecklessFables Yeah! I've had a lot of great and intense combat and roleplaying moments in that game and it doesn't turn my character into an invincible super hero or drags for hours without intention.
Having just finished a 4 year low-to-high level campaign, we're switching from 5E to Savage Worlds. But the first thing we did was do a Dungeon Crawl Classics one-shot, Sailors On The Starless Sea. My players LOVED it. They were tense as they explored the dungeon because anything could mean death for their little army of peasants and as they made their narrow escape from the sinking ziggurat at the end, each of them only having one character left, they were laughing and cheering.
I call the modern style of play, “playing house.”
“Optimization” should be optimizing an awesome story, not making it mathematically impossible for me to get hurt, or limit me to cheese so I can then be 30x more effective in combat than everyone else because I’m a aracockra/assassin/wizard/Druid/twilight cleric.
Unironically, Playing Pretend is a better form of roleplaying experience.
And the attribute arrays, smh. Rolling your stats creates character.
@@InternetHydra STRONG AGREE. But I play D&D for the game.
🤣
When I was running 5e, I created an Excel spreadsheet where I entered the PC stats, and it then generated a balanced generic monster based on those stats. I would then use the special abilities from the Monster Manual, but use the stats from the spreadsheet. It could also generate quick/weak or slow/powerful versions, or versions designed for range. It made the battles less of a foregone conclusion. One of my favorite things about 4th edition was that the battles were always close, and that created tension. 5e has no tension.
4E was WAY ahead of its time. 5E is really a huge step backward LOL I hear PF2E has adopted many ideas from 4E LOL
5E stock can have tension, but it really helps to have fewer players as a smaller party can suddenly find even demigod like powers get overwhelmed if they play badly or roll poorly. And with so few players you can more easily run larger swarms without slowing the game to a massive crawl. I do like your Monster jiggering system though, and aid for something I think any 5E DM ends up doing a fair bit, inventing actually challenging situations.
I hated 4e on release but have definitely grown to appreciate how finely tuned the balance was, especially as a DM. Truly the only balanced edition, though at the cost of limiting player freedom. Always the cost of a tight system.
You’re absolutely right. Without great risk there is no reward. I’m sure there are many players who are satisfied with going through the motions of playing, satisfied by the imagery in their minds. I see these people as those who are proud of their participation awards.
TTRPGs are an abstraction of real life, set in an imaginary environment. They’d no better place to take risks because the consequences only affect one’s imagination. Not all heroes survive IRL and they shouldn’t in fantasies. A fantasy hero not performing outrageous acts at great risk is empty of meaning.
I agree with all the points you made. Which is why I'm switching to Shadowdark instead of 5E. :) Keep making great content Sir!
I haven't run 5e in a very long time. I run shadowdark now with BX and 1E by my side for reference.
And my uncle started running 2E again THAC0 and all... Its wonderful
+++ totally agree.
One of the best things about (1980s) Champions was that you earned very few experience points per session /adventure... (One to 3 points which you could allocate add you wished..characters started with 200 to 300 points less a bunch of disadvantages)... So you were improving by 1 percent per session..maybe.
Though your character build was highly customized, you were largely who you were going to be in the game. Change the "build budget", change the type of game.
I've come to prefer just playing "first level" characters and focus on role playing
I played some Champions back in the 80s and early 90s. Fun game.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 - the developers were local here in the SF Peninsula which was extra fun and how I stumbled into the game.
I still have my play test copy of Fantasy Hero and maybe Espionage :)
In the 80s, D&D was far from inevitable..in fact it was kind of like now... there were so many weird and wonderful games that came out..and some that became huge like Call of Cthulhu...and many that still thrive.
(Do you go back to "The City State of the Invincible Overlord"?)
To me, classic Champions is still the best "Pimp my Character" system..but if you want to focus on role playing, give me a first level character and a good GM in any system.
You nailed it. I had to change my 5e game a lot. The first session of 5e we ran RAW, everyone of the players voted it too easy and not satisfying. This was the green light for me to introduce drastic changes, which I did at the time. Currently I am working on adventures fir a different games system, and playing (as well as assisting in an OSE/AD&D based game). I will return to 5e house rules sometime, but having fun with other systems right now.
If 5e combat was too easy, that's your fault as a DM. Design more challenging and dangerous encounters.
@@michaellopate4969 I was using WotC 5e Box Starter Set and using their premade encounters and only the rules in the Box Set. I fixed what I needed to fix to have the kind of game everyone wanted.
Back in the day we used the Arduin critical hit tables, which were freaking lethal. No long rest would cure being ripped in half.
5e was like my time in a logging camp in Alaska. We ate like kings everyday and in under 2 months i was sick of all the food and was just eating ice cream for dinner half the time.
I used to think the same thing as you did until I started running a game for some kids. I realized death doesn't need to be on the table, but losing is still an option. If you run or lose, this orc army is going to take over this town, your guy will be in the dungeon for a few months, then we start from there. I mean in the long run you only win or lose because the DM decides if you win or lose
With kids that works.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 even with adults. Some adults will cry and leave the table when you hit them too hard. I was running Morg Borg a few weeks back and my, all adult players, pushed back on the level of misery I put them through even before the deaths.
I ultimately agreed with them, that game is misery on top of misery. Not to get too far from the point I was getting at.
Death… while is big as far as stakes go, isn’t the ultimate stakes, because dnd has a back from the dead mechanic so easy I find death to be rather whatever. Threatening players with misery has much more stakes ultimately. The character dies… yeah ok, so what they get raised in a few days and come back to find their favorite town in slavery, the king dancing for coppers by an outhouse, and everyone they had as friends serving the villain… that is stakes for me.
I see your point but I prefer mine on this one
I’m a fan of your class professor 👍🏾
I'm currently working on a video to review Mausritter, and that book said this:
"The only way for danger to be meaningful is if the outcome of failure is meaningful." That game expects you to die.
I take a lot of jabs at 5e on my channel, and there's always someone that will say "you're just bad at GMing" when I say it gives the players way too much power. Glad you made this video.
Also, you mentioned nobody wants to GM for 5e. "Old Grognard Says" did a terrific video on just that a little while back. He did a bang up job putting into words what I had been ranting about. Do recommend.
Thanks for sharing.
100% agree that death should always be on the table simply for the fear factor involved. But 5e and Pathfinder want to make sure that death is a trivial matter. Like shooing gnats away. Annoying but not a threat at all because even if you die you can come back again with a simple handwave. Even resurrection magic should come at a cost or be more difficult to use each time it is used. But when you can't kill a PC unless they fail three death saves (the odds are in their favor for a better than 50% chance of success), have to hit them into negative the same number as they have positive, then they short rest, get all or most of the HP back in an hour, then go on like nothing happened. Or they long rest and wake up the next day fully healed. Making healing potions and healing magic almost meaningless and forget any resource management, or challenges that don't have to be over the top difficult to create any risk. This then bogs the game down because you have to place massive bags of HPs and damage dealers to threaten players, dragging things out to utter boredom. Compare that to my current C&C games where low level monsters are still a threat to mid-level PCs because everyone isn't a bag of endless hit points and reviving abilities. Combat is 100x faster than in 5e.
Back in 81? 82 I had this wizard with that 1d4 hp that was like 2hp after roll. Get into my first dungeon, DM rolls a random encounter trap while my wiz is in a tight hallway and oil is poured out on the wizard followed by a flaming cinder (rolled straight out of the 1ed DM's guide). Fail save, dead. That was my first experience, it was rough but we didn't cry. I got over it and we moved on to have years of fun playing TTRPGs. That encounter will never be forgotten.
It was a mighty death.
There's something about old school DnD that allowed player skill to be something beyond metagaming. Not sure why modern games can't still allow for that while having the mechanics they do, but they do seem to push you to the limited options in the book rather than the infinite possibilities outside the book, and honestly most players are using the same strategy every battle, doing the same thing. Wizards seems to be making the game more and more like a videogame every edition, which plays well into their strategy of VTTs and AI DMs I guess.
They've been trying to make D&D more like video games for decades. That's why you have so much healing (you usually start every encounter at full health in a video game), so hard to kill (most games you just respawn after death), every player gets new "whiz-bang" powers every level or two, all the classes are "balanced", etc. Very few of these changes are good for a TTRPG. Playing a video game, whether MMO, Action RPG or other, is just a different experience.
As a somewhat new player, I ABSOLUTELY fell into the trap of scanning my character sheet whenever a situation was presented. Instead of thinking through it with my brain (through the lens of my PC) and asking what I could do out of the infinite possibilities, I instead went straight to my character sheet to see if there was anything that could potentially be useful or if anything sparked an idea, a la "oh I could use *this*!" But that enables a paralysis of sorts, because if you *don't* find anything particularly helpful in your character sheet, you fall into the trap of thinking there's nothing you can do in whatever situation you're in.
Now, I try to think through things as a person (specifically, my PC) would. Then, if something on my character sheet *happens* to be helpful, so be it -- I'll use it.
In the end, it's probably a matter of having more familiarity with the rules and the special things your PC can do -- and having it all at ready recall -- so that you're able to combine the infinite possibilities outside the book with those inside the book in a sort of "idea stew" that you can pluck from.
its not metagaming. Based on knowing character options, picking a class by looking at what it can do and how it development looks like is metagaming. Wanting a rogue to disable traps, open locks and sneak is metagaming. With that approach every lvl should be almost randomly assigned.
Its not my fault 5e is a dumbed down trash that breaks its own rules to make monsters weaker, but assign them higher cr. Its not my fault u, knowing what a player character is capable of, decided to pitch 4 heroes against a single monster cr=avg party lvl, as if action economy itself wont kill your boss. Let them pick their path, u fix the monsters and fight team vs team.
@@murderyoutubeworkersandceos what you're talking about is minmaxing, though people do often refer to it as metagaming. Though really, metagaming is using knowledge you as the player know that your character doesn't. I have no issue with minmaxing. I do it a ton. I'm talking more about looking at options beyond the expressed mechanics. Old school DnD expected this. It had rules for attacking when you use your action to do that, but you could do anything on your action, and players often did unusual things that were quite effective. The more you played, the more you as a player learned to do these types of things, and that is meta knowledge gained by playing the game with often multiple characters. Your character's ability to do something clever was based on your own as a player.
@@DavidSmith-mt7tb no, its not. Choosing a rogue to sneak isnt minmaxing, or metagaming. Reading the wizard spell list to pick the 2 spells u gain each lvl isnt metagaming, or minmaxing. If they often refer to that as metagaming, then they r fucking wrong. Characters r aware of the rules of the world - they know its good to take cover against arrows, or that their spells have saving throws they can work to improve. What options beyond the expressed mechanics?!
The bit about vampires really sells the sizzle with clarity. Yes! That's a great way of articulating the elegant simplicity.
Thanks.
Purple Rain! 👍 I have also called 5e "The Math Game" starting at about 9th level. I have also noticed that many players become bored with 5e at about the 2 year mark, and start to look for something more challenging.
So, so true. My most memorable games of D&D were when a character died. Not died then came back because of a revivify spell. Each time it meant something. First time was when my character who spent half the campaign plotting against the others because he was manipulated by a sentient sword, dies at the hands of his once companions after fighting to redeem himself and failing to convince them. Another was holding the line as a barbarian who was all about battle and honor so his companions could escape. Or as a DM when a player died the party went on a quest to find a cleric that could resurrect them because one of the players that lived fell in love with the one who died and never told them.
Your game Deathbringer was a great inspiration for making my 5E games grittier, and also reducing the PCs' exponential power leveling. My fellow-players and I have more fun now playing our Sword & Sorcery version of 5E, with PC deaths every session or so, than the official corporative 5E in which nobody dies.
Thanks. Glad you're enjoying it!
"If death isn't on the table, the game has no meaning."
- Professor DM
Simple concept, but frankly this statement is pure genius. I find that most newer players (many of whom have only ever played 5e) are afraid of losing their characters so much.
In OSR, and older versions of D&D you played people who became heroes. 5E you play super heroes in plate armour right from the start. When I first played 5E, and saw all the healing options, I thought there would also be a optional rule for inserting little white boxes with a red cross into your game.
Kinda yeah.
To highlight the philosophical changes, I was just reading an old AD&D Ravenloft Adventure today that actually said: "Don't have Senment kill any of the PCs (unless they do something really stupid)". "Stupid" was even italicized to emphasize it! Definitely a different mindset now.
I absolutely love the redacted Death saving throw screen shot. Was amazing.
On the size the game I am in has had a lot of the no death stuff happening and I hate it. If my character dies I just roll a new one but I am about the only one who does. Just this last game 2 characters in the party Died (or should have) when they wondered off alone. However, after both were confirmed dead, one of the players got all upset and stated they would not make a new character because they had spent hours making their character. (Side note actually making the character only took about 10 mins, what they spent hours on was the super elaborate backstory that has had next to no relevance in the campaign.) So the DM made some bs reason how when my character found their bodies a random scroll of True Resurrection happen be nearby. And Yes I might have tried to mess up the DM'S plans with my character as he wanted me to cast the Scroll but I am a Barbarian. So I did what a Barbarian does best. I built a fire and burned the scroll as an offering to the gods. I then carried both their bodies back to town where our DM has a lvl 20 Cleric npc (basically as long as our body can be recovered we will never die because of this cleric).
Oh my, that is awful. I don't think I could play in something that meta.
Rub the name off, all stats are reduced by 1... Wash, rinse repeat.
should have had a funeral pyre then found a new group
This is precisely why I only ask for a couple of paragraphs of back story. Someone hands me pages of back story I hand it back. I don't have time to read your novel. If that's what you want, go write a novel instead. I just need the basics of who they are and where they come from. A hook or two into the campaign is nice but that's it. Your first level character isn't going to be related to the king or a long lost godling or whatever without an OK from the DM first so don't waste time writing that into the backstory. Keep it simple and concise.
@@learyth In my games you dont get a backstory until level 3
I fully agree with Prof DM. I was recently at a table where we had an encounter I was certain would end in a TPK. I was actually excited to go down in a blaze of glory, and was even thinking up new character ideas. However, the party not only survived but won the battle. I was actually disappointed, it didn't feel right, and I ended up leaving that table after the next session.
Was the TPK avoided due to player/character skill or did the GM handwave? Cuz otherwise it kinda sounds like you just wanted to die lol
@LeFlamel The DM also expected a TPK, and also seemed excited about it. After that battle, and after a long rest, our next encounter was an adult Green Dragon. Took us 3 rounds...
Exactly! It's happened to me.
@@klausdalgaard dang that's embarrassing
Oh boy you’re not kidding! Last session, our party of 5 11-12th level characters took on 4 modified iron golems AFTER completing a multi session battle against an adult red dragon with only a short test between. The biggest challenge was they started running out of spell slots. The ONLY reason we had any death saves was because sections of the floor opened up, dropping two PCs into lava after they failed dex saves. It was a great and memorable session, but it makes me wonder how I maintain tension after they take their next rest.
Thanks foe sharing. I concur.
The "altered" rules for death saving throws was hilarious, thanks for the good laugh! Also 5e dm here and totally agreeing. 👍
Thanks!
Your players handbook with the blacked out section makes me laugh every time. I absolutely love it!
I laughed out loud at that. Pretty rare.
He should have crossed out Saving Throws too
funny for us, but how fun for you as a player to die to a couple unlucky die rolls? And then what, to restart at level 1? With the same party where everyone else is 5 levels up on you?
@@michaellopate4969 We don't think it's funny when characters die. It should be tragic, dramatic or heroic though. It's not really unlucky to die, in a dungeon fighting monsters, and opening trapped chests and doors...... I prefer to think of it as lucky to survive, sticking their noses in to places better left alone.
And it's good to have powerful friends between you and the baddies when you play (or restart) at first level. Great fun.
For me, its the reason DM'ing 5e is not fun. I know the players have a ton of fun living the power fantasies, but you have to bend so many rules to challenge the players in any shape or form. The coolest part of a DM is not knowing the result of some crazy scenario you made, or how the players will react to it and then getting to be a spectator while they work through it. There are just so many ways to cheese the system or "win" in 5e.
For the most part, I don't think players really enjoy it all that much either. "God mode" is momentarily fun, but becomes boring very quickly. Players get stuck in a trap of getting what they want, not being able to give that up, and not really realizing why they are so unsatisfied.
I agree. I would gladly GM DCC or Shadowdark on next to no notice and feel like I could just roll with it. Improv and creativity still have a place there. 5e just feels like "murder math". That bead shoving until the players win. I understand I can tweak it but, I can run other games stock, right off the shelf, and present challenges which are fun for me and for my players.
I don't like games where you win in the build. What is the point? Just because you put a narrative hat on it, that does not make it a good time.
I have found that games like Blades in the Dark , DCC or Shadowdark have really grabbed my players because NONE of us know how anything will turn out. Playing to find out, with some sense of things being high stakes, make even a simple game dynamic. It's so much more fun.
Yeah there's a reason 5E has such a DM shortage.
@@taragnor The reason this seems to be the case is that 5e has a much more general audience, many of whom have a lower level of investment, or simply lower level of experience, in the hobby. It is still remarkably easy to find a 5e game to join with almost zero notice, without having to dig too deep through the internet. For the most part, every other TTRPG exists in the realm of enthusiasts. Heck, I've met avid players of 5e who don't even know there are third party publishers for 5e content, much less hundreds of other psuedo-medieval fantasy TTPRGs on the market.
I agree and at the same time I'm the opposite. I had a lot more fun running 5e than playing in it. When I finally got to do more playing, I realized that we were spending hours on combats that we had no chance of losing. If I want combats where the outcome is predetermined, then I want them to be over quickly and much simpler, requiring a much lighter rules system for combat. It really felt like players showing off to each other with no other purpose. Plus when the game makes it so much about what options your character is made with, then many players want to skip to the part of the game where they use all those abilities which is combat 80% of the time. So its a mismatch between rules and intended gameplay.
Flea as a bard with disadvantage on appearance, but advantage on every other CHA roll would be great.
I totally get this as a DM.
Over COVID I was running three online games a week.
First Group had 2 Players in it who decided that characters dying was a traumatic experience for them personally (their words) so they wanted death off the table. It got to the point in this group that if I presented any physical risk they cried foul and said I was trying to TPK them (I’ve never killed a character in any of these games). In the end they left the group and the smaller group were actually great to DM for.
Second Group were more old school in their approach. I had monster combat encounters that would wipe the floor with them, making them pick and choose their battles and come up with the most hairbrained schemes to defeat the monsters. I loved DMing for this group and they had a lot of fun.
Third Group were all power gamers who built their characters so strong and multi classed to get the juiciest features that combat was a maths nightmare of trying to calculate how high to go with the challenge rating just to create a halfway decent encounter. They never dropped below half hit points and would wipe the floor with monsters 5 CR higher than them - they were like tanks with magic powers, and would spend ages deciding how as a group how they should attack (I had to rule in the end that in combat, quick decisions are needed). They enjoyed the game but it was stressful for me to run.
Learning from all this is I like the games where risk and death are a factor and players have to work as a team to support their individual weaknesses. Even then there will be challenges that they have to think outside the box to be successful in the encounter.
Thanks for sharing.
What do I think? I think you shouldn't be dissing my AD&D death's door rules, that's what I think! 🤪Seriously, I agree wholeheartedly - the easy-mode play of 5e can be frustrating... especially if you have a DM who leans into it in obvious fashion! I was once in a game where a player got disintegrated by the spell, he was done. The DM announces that his Goddess Patron came to him in the plane between worlds and gave him just enough hit points to continue the battle, and was restored. This was common. No one died. There were literally no stakes, he was just pushing us through the novel he'd written.
I've recently started DMing some Tier 3 (11-16) for my local adventure league group, and the thing about the monster's damage not keeping up with the player's HP really rings true. One module I ran had a powered up ancient copper dragon as its final encounter and aside from its breath weapon that was able to do over 100 damage to multiple characters, its regular claw/bite attacks were disappointingly weak compared to the massive HP pools of the party. Another adventure I ran I think I ended up basically tripling the power of each of the monster groups and the party still ran through them with barely a scratch. Actually posing a challenge to a party at this level without homebrewing the rules requires some really massively over-the-top power levels for the monsters.
Yup and as a player that grew up playing Advanced D&D 2e Ravenloft and 3.5. Myself and most the folks I play with realized we weren’t having much fun with 5E. There’s little to no challenge. So back to 2E and back to fun!
I started with 3rd played 5 then got my hands on 2e and 1e ad&d and om never going back i love ad&d and the rules cyclopedia becmi era
@@INCIESSE sounds like you found the magic of the old ways. Glad to know there’s more folks out there…
@@INCIESSE This is the way.
Absolutely 💯 right! 🤓👊
2nd Edition was the pinnacle of AD&D.
I’m currently running Shadow of the Dragon Queen, and to add a sense of urgency I have the dragon army on a calendar ala Red Hand of Doom. If my group misses a session, I advance the calendar one day. That can make things a little harder as those missed sessions add up over time. So far it’s worked out well.
Thanks for sharing.
C&C is a blast, be warned search for traps on chests 😂😂😂
It’s liking gaming back in the 80’s! Thank you so much.
In order to give my players (level 10) a challenge in my 5e game, about halfway through our campaign I stopped worrying about ability bonuses to all my monsters attacks and just add flat bonuses to all of their damage rolls. Mooks do regular damage plus 5, tough enemies do plus 10, and bosses do plus 15. I don’t have to have a bunch of spellcasters or monsters making 5 attacks a turn to do tons of damage. Really improved my game
I'm pretty sure there are lots of ways to measure success and failure in a TTRPG besides the threat of death.
...But given that the core mechanics of DnD are fundamentally about answering the question of whether monsters or a group of heroes would win in a fight, it does seem odd to bend those mechanics to accomodate players who don't want that to be a question.
Nice way to put it.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 for this table i recommend fate, or coretex!
Great video! For some reason "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" Kept playing in my head, lol. Agree about the 5e power creep as well as the sentiment of "are you really playing if risk isn't involved?"
I pulled the punches a bit for my absolute noob players for the first session or two, so they could learn and get into it without the frustration of dying. They came close to dying a few times. I told them in session 0 that dying was possible, and there were no death saves.
I think it worked out well. They didn't know when I spared them, and so they were in fear of the death whose hand I stayed for a time.
Now, four sessions in, if the dice take them away, they are taken. But they are invested in the game and the outcome. They have a handle on the rules, and play with critical thinking.
Cool!
My go-to homebrew for encounters is to present the players against tough monsters but halve the monster HP. It’s less of the chipping-away-indefinitely, and it’s lethal.
I'm DM ing 5E for my daughter and her friends. There have been many times where they easily could have been snuffed out. I could see it becoming more lop sided now that they're at 5th level.
The old school term for player groups who take character death off the table is "Care Bears" and it was always a pejorative back in the day. I just don't understand how it became the norm today.
I'll be running The Fantasy Trip for my group in a little bit. Polar opposite to 5e. But if it only takes five minutes to make your character, death is a little less traumatic ;)
That's like the funnels that are all the rage now. Make a heap of characters in seconds, then laugh as they get mowed down in hilarious fashion! 🤣
Umm...but it only takes me 5 min to make a 5E character too...
5 minutes to create the character, 50 minutes of role-play to immerse myself into her identity and become attached so I can enjoy the experience.
@@ColdNapalm42 same story in 3E and PF1 as well tbh, level 1 characters are lightning fast if you know the game or have the assistance of someone who does.
@@priestesslucy however long you play to get attached is kinda irrelevant to the system. Nor is the time honestly. I've been attached to characters after 10 min or not cared one bit after years of play.
With all the WotC debacle , I turned to CyberpunkRED and wow was it refreshing to see the nervous and deadly system play put. FNFF sure has its slower moments, but it was very refreshing as a newbie at ttrpg in general
I think the death/injury thing depends entirely on the kind of game you're going for. *Failure* should always be on the table, *Defeat* should always be on the table, but there are settings and scenarios where random death just isn't in genre. For example, Super Heroes "die" all the time, but it's seldom due to bad luck or a poor decision. They die at the end of epic story arcs, or as a shocking opening to a new adventure. A Super Hero game where Spider-Man can catch a .45 slug to the lung from a random thug and bleed out just doesn't sit right with me. On the other hand, a Super Hero game where Spider-Man can get the snot kicked out of him, show up too late to save his girlfriend, see innocent people suffer because he screwed up? That's *perfect*!
D&D has been a game of epic super heroes for decades at this point. I love a tense dungeon crawl, to be sure, but simply put that's not the fantasy most mainstream D&D players are looking for these days. I do agree that genuine challenge is tricky to achieve with 5e. I think I'd like to see a "Heroic Injury" system of some kind, where dropping to 0 HP gives you some kind of dramatic effect, a cool scar beneath the eye, the shattering of a magic weapon (which can be reforged at the end of a quest) or getting captured and spirited away to another area of the dungeon you must escape or be rescued from. Basically, defeat doesn't have to be permanent, but it should be both possible and dramatic.
Thanks for taking the time to share.
I really like AD&D's -10 HP. We still use it to this day in our Pathfinder 2e sessions.
At negative HP you are incapacitated / unconscious and bleeding out. You lose 1 HP per round cumulative with other persistent damage (poison, on fire, etc.). People can die really fast once they hit 0 HP so the whole party gets a sense of urgency to save the downed PC before its too late. This leads to real heroic and dangerous actions on the part of the party as they try to save their friends. Some of the best stories of game play revolve around these heroic, self sacrificing saves.
I think the key is to have some actual tension in the situation, which it sounds like your group is managing. The 5e rules make it too easy to establish real tension in most situations. Then characters can pop up and be fully functional again after just a little bit of healing, so no real consequences. When I played with the -10 rule, a character who got knocked out needed a week of rest and recuperation before being able to do anything more than move slowly, unless he received a Heal spell (6th level, which most of my players never got high enough to have).
Play to your audience is what I do. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel or give my players a game experience that they didn’t ask for, trying to arbitrarily add challenge doesn’t add meaning. Listening to the players and letting them choose the meaning and help them create it has worked best for me.
As it should.
The two things I loathe most of all are Hit Points and the Long Rest. You mean that we defeated a (fill in the blank BBEG) today, slept all night, and in the morning not only are we fully healed but now we're even HARDER to kill? GURPS was a great system for avoiding this. You could have 100 xp (having survived a year of playing every week) and STILL be taken out by a lucky hit to the head or some vital organ.
Thanks for sharing. What would you like to see next?
Wow Dan.. this was so WELL STATED! I too love a lot of things about 5E but everything you mention is why I don't play it.
Lol. I was JUST watching your video on the DMG this morning. My Lost City is coming soon and your channel will get a shout-out.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Oh wow, thanks! I was planning on shouting out this video with my next one! Great minds and all that!
There are also ways to make going down hurt without being death at 0 hit points.
My house rules are that:
A) Whenever a player goes down, they get a Bane die until they can complete a Long Rest (a negative d4, per the Bane spell), that increases in size (d6, d8, etc.) each time they go down. I also use Bane dice for attacks from vampires and other monsters with level drain, and those require powerful magic to remove. If they get past a d12, they die.
B) Whenever a player goes down, they cross off a death save they can fail before they die, which resets after a long rest.
It makes players think twice about their tactics when getting knocked down and getting back up has a real penalty attached to it. They're more complicated, than death at 0 hit points, but they serve their purpose and use the game's existing mechanics to do it.
Thanks for sharing.
I'm only taking it easy on my players because they're new. I've told them you have a couple more sessions to absorb the rules and then it's absolutely cut throat. Great video, professor!
Thanks.
When running Waterdeep Dragon Heist I asked the players if they would be ok if death was off the table for the game. If anyone was killed they would be out of the scene, gain a permanent lingering injury and return on one hit point in the next scene. Nobody objected and we played on. My intent was to run a short focused campaign and I didnt want character replacements to break the flow of the story. I need not have worried. Nobody came even close to dying at any time anyhow..
Glad it went well. What else would you like to see?
Death is part of the game. If you really are concerned with having "That Guy" at the table put together some new house rules where players who die become ghosts of some sort. Give them something to do. Or let them be the "my character's father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate" player.
When I was a kid sometimes on Easter Morning we received a music record album. I remember Color By Numbers, by Culture Club and Purple Rain, by Prince And The Revolution. Thanks for unintentionally giving me an excuse to regale that memory, Dungeon Craft.
Thanks for another great video PDM!, when death is on the table its exciting, fun and squeezing the creativity out of the players.
Truth is, we took a break from 5E and playing Shadowdark and Call of Cthulhu and having a blast.
The real magic is to play with fragile characters.
Thanks!
I absolutely love the system in Knave 2e, damage at 0 means damage to your inventory and slots are replaced by injuries. I've never seen terror in the eyes of my 5e party so real. Of course, I've since adapted the system for 5e mwahahaha.
In my group we are all begginers. We are playing one of the official modules wich in theory is balanced for 4 to 6 players with only 3 players that are not optimizing at all. for now we are finishing almost all enounters with an inch of our lives and we are having fun.
The first 5 or so levels, in the base system, are decently balanced. When you add in all the additional options from the new books and/or higher level play, 5E begins to fall apart as a system.
That's cool. If it's working for you, don't change it.
The key reason it's working...
1) You are all still low levels I assume. Honestly, it's near impossible to break things before level 5. It is literally impossible before 3. The earliest one could break something is level 4. With 8 needed for not human. But a lot of these broken optimized things kick in at double digits. The problem is that it doesn't even get hard to break the game at those levels.
2) You are all still new. I assume even to TTRPGS in general. In which case, you won't even have the basics in your head about game breaking stuff so you won't know it until you run into it directly.
Have fun while it lasts.
Good thing all the older editions of DnD still exist along with dozens of other fantastic OSR systems. If the people want a grittier, deadlier, experience, there's no shortage of other options.
Great video. Everything you mentioned is one of the reasons I left 5e, not b/c I hate the game, I was just tired of dealing with all the written rules. I missed the dungeon aspect of the game we had back in the BX days. This has pushed me to games like Lamentations of the Flame Princess, ICRPG, EZD6, Shadow of the Demonlord, Shadowdark and Mork Borg. It is hard to call yourself the hero when you cannot die. Is it more heroic to be a demigod and win every time or to be the town peasant who leaves the fields of their homeland, braves death and saves the village? Outside of the TTRPG sphere, we would have a hard time following a story where we knew the hero would have no chance to die, even Superman has to worry about Kryptonite.
In Swords and Wizardry I played a paladin with mid stats except his HP because I roll high on d8s. I played him like a paladin. Dude was like first to the fight, leave no man behind, etc. And there were numerous battles where he survived rounds of melee combat with only a few HP. One time I bumrushed a group of orcs at 1hp cause it needed to be done and killed them all and somehow just didn't get hit. The possibility for instant death made those moments epic.
Exactly. The complexity combined with nerfing any "Feel bad" portions of the game means that it's all just an amusement park ride that is slow and dull to run. I've found a new love for fantasy games by leaving 5e behind.
Playing an unkillable demigod was a lot of fun when I was ten years old. I had a 300th level paladin who wielded a sun sword. But then I grew up.
@@keithkannenberg7414yep, I think a lot of the old guard played as kids and know what immaturity is… the new game caters to that.
@@Skulliver-t8q well said. I'm actually a big number cruncher meta gamer type. Just cause I enjoy the puzzle of optimizing and/or the novelty of finding bizarre play styles, making stuff work that shouldn't work. But I don't want the game to be easy. I just want to play it the best I can. I've honestly always enjoyed more open leveled systems though, cause I hate getting features that are kinda meh after leveling for 2 months. In those games you can often puck up a stat boost or perk every couple weeks. You're always getting something yet it takes a long time to get overall way more powerful, so the game stays challenging.
I started my son on 5E with the excellent Phandelver set, because D&D is important. I like the character survivability- for children. Soon, I'll switch to Savage Pathfinder. It's there in the name-Savage Worlds for swingy fights and nailbiting adventures. :)
For kids that can work.
I mean, ppl play games for experiences outside of the mundane real life. Winning is important since losses are lessons to help you win. Imo DnD is to provide a heroic experience which is why our skills and abilities even at the start are more powerful than common folk within the stories. Play the DnD you want and worry less about where society tries to push you.
In early edition of D&D players had to solve all the challenges, not the characters, so "builds" did not exist.
In 3rd to 5e characters solve everything with their stats and "options", so players actually play by making "the build".
The moment of decition making is completly shifted.
Nice video, I haven't thought about the "80s guy rage quit so we need to make everyone win" sales point.
It doesn't get rid of the guy, now he just sits at the table indefinitely. At least with the rage quit you weeded out the weak
@@kendiamond7852 Kinda agree with you there, yeah.
I don't think the "players are hard to kill" is entirely bad, it just kinda dishonest to build a system like that and don't let GMs and players, your clients, know the game is going to be like that from the start.
I'm training up 2 young padawans currently, this will be required viewing. 8>D They will both also get a copy of B1 (real ones), a folder labelled 'expired characters', and cheat sheet where the first phrase listed is 'because I'm the Dungeon Master, that's why'. 8>D
"A flock of pixies to turn the party into T-Rex's and make them fly... Common that's rediculous!"
You just gave me a brilliant idea for my next monster encounter. My players will never see it coming!
Thanks professor dungeon master!
I think the best 5e supplement that put death on the table was Adventures in Middle Earth, it's low magic system made it so healing was rare and dear god did our characters die. By the end of the campaign every player had a character that had died due to no resurrection magic.
I can personally attest to how scary level drain was in the 1990s. I'm adding it back in to my Shadowdark game but changing it to XP drain. It is still scary, but not quite as harsh as the old level drain mechanic. Lesser draining undead or effects are 1d4 XP. Vamps and other major undead will do 1d6+ XP.
D4/d6 xp......yep scary, when you have 50,000 xp.
I like the idea of xp drain. Its harsh enough to be meaningful but soft enough that you dont need to hold up a sign that says "dont get hit by this thing it will de-level you"
@@nathan8812 I haven't read the rules but I strongly suspect that Shadowdark players don't have thousands of XP. I imagine it's more like DCC, where 1000 XP will get you all the way to 10th level. In D&D you'd have to make this d4 x 100 XP or x 1000 to have comparable threat.
@@nathan8812 yeah in Shadowdark you get get maybe 6-7 xp per session and it takes 10 XP to get to 2nd level. 20 more to get to 2nd level. If I was using a high XP game maybe multiply by 100 to make it apply.
I have been working on supplemental rules. Basically, I lay them out in index cards, and a random table. One of the cards is a Reaper Card. When that card is in effect, there is a reaper present. That means no death saved and no resurrection. That way, we can explore different rules, there is an in game reason, and you don't have to stick to that rule for an entire campaign if you don't want to. It makes the game seem a little more like a board game, but my player seems to enjoy it
Why is death at -10hp in ad&d the worst rule? Genuinely curious. I always thought it struck a nice balance but I know I could be missing something important.
I agree. If you die at 0 that means your state is binary, either standing or dead. You are never unconscious.
This is why I don’t usually use CR. What fun is it if you KNOW that you can beat the dragon? He’s ancient and you’re level 2. Do what you need to do. And yes he has an army of Kobolds who worship him. A literal army. Because he’s an ancient dragon. So yes, you might want to tread lightly and use honorifics when speaking to him, IF he will even listen to you before gobbling you up like a pizza roll.
You nailed it with the reason DM are in short supply for 5E.
No wonder the "paid DM" demographic is so large now.
Waiting for the new DnD to offer AI DM.
😊
As a DM I've really been enjoying a recent campaign I set up to specifically play into 5e's strengths. But *hooooo boy* has it highlighted for me just how much workload there is to trying to run 5e blindly.
This is why I play Deathbringer with Basic Fantasy (streamlined B/X). Deathbringer keeps it simple but allows for player creativity and innovation, while using ascending AC, d20 roll high, and Advantage/Disadv (the best part of 5e). The peril is very real, but at the same time you've got Deathbringer Dice (bonus dice) to help out if you just hit some bad rolls at a crucial moment... but DD are a finite resource! When your luck runs out you're likely to be making a new character. It strikes the right balance... PC death is a strong possibility, but doesn't happen as often as it did in B/X... where I buried more PCs than ever survived to 3rd level.
Thanks for purchasing DB. I'm currently contemplating reducing the ability scores from 6 to 3-4. Thoughts? Do you care or is it more important that it align with already existing D&D material?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 I started with B/X back inna day, so I'm not married to 5e standards... I was accustomed to bonuses running +1 to +3 (if you were super lucky). I also don't use 5e adventures much as I don't care for most of them. As it is, I limit new L1 PCs to a max of 5 in any one attribute to start, more in line with old-school. I do like that DB PCs are competent from day 1, but reducing max stat to 4 would still leave them a lot more capable than B/X PCs were. Do you plan to leave build points at 8 or reduce those also, I wonder?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Do it!
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1get rid of charisma! Nothing prevents a player from role playing like the old “but i don’t have a high persuasion/deception/intimidate skill” excuse.
@@anathamon kinda true
I wish more people would talk about the issue of 5e being built so heavily in-favor of the players that it causes MORE negative reactions when bad things actually do happen to players. When the game is rigged so heavily in your favor (advantage die, inspiration die, multiple death saves, etc.), it's almost inevitable that when someone's character dies or fails a quest objective, they'll accuse the GM of cheating or singling out their character for some unsaid reason.
Having one person in the table who doesn't want their character to die is understandable to me, and you could make exceptions, retire the character until they recuperate you can roll another one for the rest of this campaign; your old character can get together with new lower level characters in the next one.
But it's a game where you fight monsters most of the time, there are other games out there. I think in tales from the loop the PC kids don't die. There are wrestling games, I don't think you are supposed to kill PCs there either.
No one wants their character to die. I mean, if it's a good one they like.
That's what makes OD&D so good. Super lethality means everyone who loves their character will play smart. Too smart.
I do agree: the presence of risk (in various respects) is what makes games interesting, and what makes them games. The basic mechanic of all games (except the Lottery!) is: you win some, you lose some.
Though distance and schedules have made it impossible to play for a while, the game I've had going most recently has been an interesting experiment: the players all started at 10th level, so that they could do some interesting things to start with. Even despite that, in each adventure we've done where combat was involved (more than half of them thus far), at least one player nearly died each time. No, they didn't quite get to 0 HP, but they were close, and they felt vulnerable in the process...particularly when the cleric wasn't there, and she often wasn't! However, fun was had by all, and they all want to play again (some of them were essentially brand new to the game, and I figured the higher level was a way to get them to learn the mechanics faster by necessity), so I hope that we can sometime soon!
Thanks for sharing.
I just can’t wrap my head around making 5e challenging without making an active decision to try and kill the party. I don’t want to design an adventure like that so after my 2 year campaign closed I’ve just been running other stuff.
Me I think of it as being a supervillain.... It's not enough that you just try to kill the hero, no... You're trying to kill the hero in an overly convoluted death trap that they will probably escape from. (And if they somehow fail they die....) It's about the presentation of what is trying to kill them this time more than it is simply trying to kill them....
@@minnion2871 yah, it’s just not how I want to run a game.
Well, tomb of horrors is not precisely a good example for anything. In order for a player decision to matter it needs to be an informed decision. When the consequences are arbitrary, like it happens in the tomb of horrors, player decisions doesn't matter, since they have no control over what is going to happen. That's telegraphy is important and risk asessment is an important part of decision making. There's a very big difference in agency between "we know that if we are spotted we are dead but we will do it because it's our best shot" than "a rock falls on your head. you are dead. You could have chosen to not to walk". This is where tomb of horrors fail misserably.
Point taken. What would you like to see next?
I'll probably never get my group to try OSR again, but yesterday we had our first Pathfinder 2E session and almost ended in a TPK due to our own stupidity. I loved it, and I'm on the edge of my seat to see what happens next. This sort of tension has been missing from my 5e games, and they've become boring. That tension that we all experienced yesterday made me realize what I didn't like about 5e.
Why do you think that that can't happen in 5e? Maybe you're just not running 5e very well.
@michaellopate4969 In 5e, if a TPK occurs, rarely do I feel like it's something I did wrong. Oftentimes, it's my build, or the encounter was just too hard, or the DM miscalculated the CR stuff. I never look back at an encounter and think, "If only these 10 things were done..." Rather, it's "I have no idea how we were supposed to win. Guess the dice hated us." Or more often than that, "Gee that was easy. Bringing an enchanter really makes this game cake."
Maybe you're right. Maybe my GM sucks at running 5e, but kicks ass at running PF2. Can you explain to me how a GM with 10 years' experience withDMing 5e sucks, but has us on the edge of our chairs with his first PF2 session?
@@TheReasonableGamer I couldn't say for sure, but its certainly possible that the unfamiliarity with the system made everything feel more exciting because you didn't know what was going to happen. Maybe after 10 years of Pathfinder you'll find yourself in the same spot.
Because in terms of encounter design, pathfinder doesn't have much more going on than 5e. If your DM is magically better at pathfinder, something else is going on beyond differences in game mechanics.
@michaellopate4969 But I don't have unfamiliarity with either system. I personally have a couple years under my belt GMing PF2, and ive played and DMed 5e since it came out. It was my GM's first time.
But let's assume unfamiliarity. I still never had that feeling in 5e, even when it was unfamiliar. My son just learned both systems, and he agrees that Pathfinder requires more tactics to be successful in combat.
I don't see how encounter designs can be similar, when the rules are drastically different, unless you homebrew some PF2 conditions and rules into 5e, and if you do that, you may as well just play PF2. Action economy means different things in either system. CR means different things in either system. Concealment, invisible, stealth, and failed saving throw all mean different things. Due to this, PF2 encounter design is more varied RAW.
Currently running my first 5E campaign. We are only a few sessions in and I am amazed at how powerful the party already is. They're 2nd level. Healing is crazy accessible. And we are just using the core books. THACO rules!
Thanks for commenting.
When the 5E DM learns they can just give dragons the Illithid brain removal ability and won't have to explain themselves to anyone they will have taken their first steps on the path to righteousness.
First step to not having any players... yes, to righteousness... no.
The Green Devil illustrates perfectly my issues with 5e. This thing is infamous in Tomb of Horrors and part of D&D iconic imagery. It actually doesn't take that many lives if a party is cautious. It's actually pretty easy to figure out. But I was gobsmacked at the 5e version of Tomb of Horrors, that reduced it to "roll Arcana skill to figure out what it is".
For the record, I do -10=dead. But you lose 1d4/round and it takes a roll to stabilize someone. And there's is going to be recovery time & injuries. I've considered using the "Death & Dismemberment" rules floating around the internet.
Thanks for sharing.
I think once WotC started selling 15 level campaign books instead of individual modules, they decided they had to make the characters live long enough to see the entire campaign. 5E healing, rest and Death Save mechanics reflect that.
Interesting analysis.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 TSR sold entire campaigns in 2e. The Night Below box set went from level 1 to 17 in a single grand campaign. And that's just one example.
Death = Stakes, and stakes are key. Realistically, a lot of us are in it for the story and enjoy the journey. BUT, if nobody can die, how do you make decisions matter?
Rime of the Frostmaiden, I think, was good at giving DM's the opportunity to create life and death situations, but not always for the characters. I'm sure fights could be run where the Maguffin is easily damaged if the party isn't careful, BUT, a few times a campaign, death should be on the table and should be at a pivotal time in the story.
It’s true 5e by default is certainly a power fantasy but in fairness to 5e, the DMG
Workshop at the back of the book (chapter 9) has some very nice variant rules to increase the challenge for gaming for tables that like it that way.
This is often overlooked by those that over criticise 5e.
You don't even need variant rules. Just make encounters more challenging, and keep increasing difficulty until the balance is where you want it. Or don't let them long rest, keep them moving and combat gets harder and harder as resources are exhausted. You don't have limitless healing.
People who claim 5e is "too easy" just aren't using their brains or have bad DMs.
I don't have a lot of ttrpg experience, but will be playing a bit of baldur's gate 3 with my friends online when it gets released, and turning on hardcore mode where you lose your character at death is going to make it a whole lot more fun.
Totally agree.
For me D&D has become kind of a fantasy superhero system with too many safety nets attached.
Here's an idea. How about each table play they way they like with the game they like? Why do I care how someone else has fun as long as no one is getting hurt?
Y'all are leveling up EVERY session? I get going from Lvl 1 to Lvl 2 after the first real session, but from 2 to 3 should be twice as difficult!
I agree that 5E is a system built much easier to handle from a Player success standpoint, that said:
Death is not the only failure state in an adventure. If a group agrees on what they want to go on, then they could be captured, fail to meet a deadline, lose a battle with their rivals, be stolen from. As long as they agree on what they want, there are many options for enjoyment.
Since I discovered DCC, I apply some DCC mechanics to 5e.
Or, even better, I play DCC.
It takes my player to another level, they’re more focused into roleplaying than in resource or character sheet management, as easier the system is, better the game experience. Just my opinion.
DCC rocks. My troupe hasn't mentioned 5E since we discovered DCC/MCC.
I picked up DCC during the OGL debacle. Looking forward to running it once I finish my current campaign. Also I'm slowly introducing tables into the 5e game. Really does spice things up!
When I became obsessed with D&D in 1978, my Dad, a cardshark of sorts, asked questions along te lines of "How do you win" and "what are the stakes?" I remember trying to explain that there really isn't winning and losing in this game in any traditional sense. He didn't get it, but I did, and that's all that mattered. Not having clearly defined wins and not having stakes was problematic for my dad's enjoyment, but it was not problematic for me. A lesson I learned over the years is that there is more than one way to have fun and games. Fun can be about rolling dice and strategizing combat sessions where there are stakes. But fun can also be about thinking over a cool character design and collaboratively imagining a great story for that character. In that kind of fun, it gets tiresome if your character keeps dying before you get to imaine that great story. In the former type, it is problematic if the stakes are meaningless. think 5e is designed to make this latter type of fun easier to come by at the expense of the former type.
It's about balance. Thanks for sharing. What else would you like to see?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 My favorite Dungeoncraft of all time was the Reviled Society series. I also loved MacDeath and the Keep on the Borderlands series.These stories from your table do a great job capturing that old style of play, where meaningful stakes heighten drama and player engagement. More of that, please!
@@pdubb9754 Share those videos! Working on the Lost City now. Takes time. Thanks for your patience.
Thanks for the post, I liked reading it.