I've often thought that I'd like to write up my own version of rules, atleast a hack. I think I will probably still do that, atleast for my own peace of mind. As I've said before those Lab Lord/OSR/B/X rules fit neatly in my head. After running 5e for the first time I came away with a good feeling about it, but there were a few things still slowly gnawing at my brain. First things first at some point I am going to run a nice small dungeon crawl (maybe one of mine, maybe something new! I'd like to try out the Manse On Murder Hill) using some old school rules just for a taste of how that plays out. In the mean time, here's a few things that have rattled around my head.
First off I gotta build myself my own GM screen, there's a bunch of tables and helfpul things that are missing from the wotc screen. Things like monster reaction table from the DMG, a simple smaller treasure table possibly, Basic weapon damage. An explanation of save vs spell for monsters including convoluted formula (see below). Of course I have a few wonderful tables lying around that I'd like to have handy for just such the occasions.
Although there are a lot of nice things on it. NPC flaws, that's handy! NPC name, yup I came up with a guy that sounded an awful lot like "Red Cheddar". Which was funny by itself, but when you combine that with my wife's halflings name "Brie Crackerbarrel" - which are two types of cheese. It was mind blowingly hilarious.
Second point of order, Shane must learn the basic's of certain rules. I pretty well got the gist of most things fairly quickly. There was a bit of table talk, and I had a GM that had previously ran 5e sitting at the table. So that helped, but being quicker is better.
Obviously I don't need to run everything exactly by the book. (I mean really who does?) But things like ie "A monster needs to save against a magic spell". Apparently in 5e there is some convoluted formula based on spell level and a bunch of other things. As a happy alternative, b/x - save as Fighter 2nd level. So I'll have to figure that out.
Third, and this isn't really a 5e thing, but I am going to attempt to start always rolling attack and damage dice in front of the screen.
Fourth, building my own world, running my own adventures. Published text is fun, but for the way my brain works I really have to know the in's and outs of everything that happens within the module, or else I feel like I let someone down (myself or the players). That being said I've just got a wonderful bunch of ideas from a ton of different resources latetly.
Now back to my rules hack, The players are used to the bit more super powered heroes that are created within 5e. To make a hack that would have a old school feeling, but with some of the 5e coolness would be a interesting idea to do. That said even without adding any 5e stuff, things like adding Cantrips (although a bit more low level that ones that are in 5e) would be a nice addition.
I would definatly steal the archetypes, trinkets and handy naming resources that come from the basic free pdf. Steal is a bad word. Borrow for my own personal use.
Do away with 6 saving throws. 1 saving throw ala S&W.
Keep the proficiencies & Ascending AC.
Bring back a spell turning table for a Cleric, or devise some evil scheme on how to do that correctly with a d20.
Dumb the monsters back down so they aren't getting pluses across the board.
Why yes math isn't my strong suit why do you ask?
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