I've been running a 5e campaign for a bit and recently my dad just gave me his set of old Advanced D&D source books! They are from 1981 so older than the age the oldest two party members combined. My players (and myself) all think the books are extremely cool.
I really want to find a way to incorperate these books into the game. I don't just want to add npcs from those books because to be honest, the content from these books doesn't have much value outside of the nostalgia. Adding a Gambado or Thoqqua from the Fiend Folio without explanation would probably just look like I had tried to homebrew a race and was feeling particularly uninspired. There is a reason most people have moved on to 5e!
I want to have some way for my players to physically open the books and read from them as part of the game.
Any ideas on how I could do this? I've been thinking of maybe adding in some kind of spell where they can take characters from that book and spawn them, but that could easily get very over powered since some of the creatures are extremely powerful and there isn't a really great way to rank them by power. It's also very hard to translate their old combat mechanic into 5e.
Does anybody have any idea on how I could add in some cool mechanic from the old source books? If anybody has done anything similar it would be interesting. I've been trying to brainstorm up something for a bit and wanted to know what y'all might think since I'm probably far less experianced than most of you.
The "classic" option here would be to grant the players the meta ability to look up monster statblocks and such while they are in possession of the book. In theory, this is a powerful ability, but in practice, a lot of players already have these kinds of details memorized, so this would just condone using player knowledge on behalf of the characters.
The second thing you could do is let is "cheat" some of the established mechanics of 5e. For example, once per day it could cast a Concentration spell without requiring concentration, or it could allow a player to equip a powerful magic item without expending an attunement slot.
Essentially, the book brings its own bubble of physical and magical laws that the players can exploit according to the changes between editions. They basically have access to the "Source Code" of the universe, and could treat it like a limited Admin Console.
I've been running a 5e campaign for a bit and recently my dad just gave me his set of old Advanced D&D source books! They are from 1981 so older than the age the oldest two party members combined. My players (and myself) all think the books are extremely cool.
I really want to find a way to incorperate these books into the game. I don't just want to add npcs from those books because to be honest, the content from these books doesn't have much value outside of the nostalgia. Adding a Gambado or Thoqqua from the Fiend Folio without explanation would probably just look like I had tried to homebrew a race and was feeling particularly uninspired. There is a reason most people have moved on to 5e!
I want to have some way for my players to physically open the books and read from them as part of the game.
Any ideas on how I could do this? I've been thinking of maybe adding in some kind of spell where they can take characters from that book and spawn them, but that could easily get very over powered since some of the creatures are extremely powerful and there isn't a really great way to rank them by power. It's also very hard to translate their old combat mechanic into 5e.
Does anybody have any idea on how I could add in some cool mechanic from the old source books? If anybody has done anything similar it would be interesting. I've been trying to brainstorm up something for a bit and wanted to know what y'all might think since I'm probably far less experianced than most of you.
The "classic" option here would be to grant the players the meta ability to look up monster statblocks and such while they are in possession of the book. In theory, this is a powerful ability, but in practice, a lot of players already have these kinds of details memorized, so this would just condone using player knowledge on behalf of the characters.
The second thing you could do is let is "cheat" some of the established mechanics of 5e. For example, once per day it could cast a Concentration spell without requiring concentration, or it could allow a player to equip a powerful magic item without expending an attunement slot.
Essentially, the book brings its own bubble of physical and magical laws that the players can exploit according to the changes between editions. They basically have access to the "Source Code" of the universe, and could treat it like a limited Admin Console.