It really depends... on my part, i expect the game to level you up about once a month. thats about every 4 sessions. that said, just like the adventures int he premade. i expect to gain about 12 levels totals and be near the end of the campaign after a whole year. the reason i expect that is because most campaigns don't even last that long and most campaigns do not even go into the higher tiers. because at that point most DM don't even know what to do at that level. the problem is the players, their characters becomes so strong that most players always finds an easy way out of everything. not because of balance issues, but because of how spells works. so yeah...
much like adventures, i expect a full year from 1 to 15. granted my campaigns have lasted up to 3 years from 1 to 20. but anything longer then that to me seems like you are just not liking high end adventures or have not yet understood that every story has an end and must end somewhere.
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Yeah, in my campaigns I juice the PCs to lvl 3 in 2-3 sessions, and then after that it slows down to about 4-6 sessions/lvl. We play every 2 weeks, so they hit lvl 3 in about a month and then it’s about 1&1/2-2 months before lvl 4.
I think the biggest change in play style from the old days is that back in the day, we expected to start a character at level 1, play them till we were bored with them (or they died) and make a new one. I don't remember if I ever got a character as far as level 9. And we played short adventures, not really connected and with no long-term goals. The modules sold by the company sort of emphasized the one-shot nature of an adventure.
These days, there seems to be a mindset that you get your character into a single protracted campaign that takes up their entire adventuring life, and in the end they attain godlike powers and retire to live happily ever after.
Whether it's better or worse is up to the player, I guess. It was kind of nice to have a 'portable' character who could simply go from your brother's adventure into the school friend's adventure without weird plane-traveling, reality-warping and campaign-interrupting necessary to get them there. On the other hand, milestone leveling is a blast, as you get to ramp up your abilities without waiting for months and painstakingly adding the XP from every rat you step on. And the idea of your character having an epic tale and a happy ending to their adventures is kind of appealing.
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Edeleth Treesong (Aldalire) WoodElf Druid lvl 8 Talaveroth Sub 2 Last Tree StandingTabaxi Ranger, Chef and Hoardsperson lvl 5, Company of the Dragon Team 1 Choir Kenku Cleric, Tempest Domain, lvl 11, Descent Into Avernus Test Drive Poinki Goblin Paladin, Redemption, lvl 5, Tales from Talaveroth Lyrika Nyx Satyr Bard lvl 1, The Six Kingdoms of Talia
I think the biggest change in play style from the old days is that back in the day, we expected to start a character at level 1, play them till we were bored with them (or they died) and make a new one. I don't remember if I ever got a character as far as level 9. And we played short adventures, not really connected and with no long-term goals. The modules sold by the company sort of emphasized the one-shot nature of an adventure.
These days, there seems to be a mindset that you get your character into a single protracted campaign that takes up their entire adventuring life, and in the end they attain godlike powers and retire to live happily ever after.
Whether it's better or worse is up to the player, I guess. It was kind of nice to have a 'portable' character who could simply go from your brother's adventure into the school friend's adventure without weird plane-traveling, reality-warping and campaign-interrupting necessary to get them there. On the other hand, milestone leveling is a blast, as you get to ramp up your abilities without waiting for months and painstakingly adding the XP from every rat you step on. And the idea of your character having an epic tale and a happy ending to their adventures is kind of appealing.
That sums it up quite nicely ! the fact is, the adventuring life is a hard one and its not like the fantasy tropes of lord of the rings. the reality is, your character will do a ton of adventures that have no points with each others. that's why i never retcon a situation i created or my players have created. reguardless of what that situation may be, the character will have lived that strange and weird situation. one exemple of that is 2 players who came to a game, never to come back the next week. they just weren't gonna come back and never informed us. that said, the story goes on and now my players have met two random adventurers that are still somewhere in the world, they don't know and it doesn't matter. that single day they met those adventurers. and thats it. it brings life to your game. that's also why i continu playing even if a player or two are missing, as long as the others are willing to play still. players have to realise that the adventuring life isn't being bilbo the hobbit or the fellowship of the ring who must be killing godly creatures. heck i even met some anime geeks who wanted to be able to defeat a kraken at level 1 because they thought level 1 meant level 1 god. just like in their animes ! there is a game for everyone... but honestly...
i really like the adventurers league gameplay. it is really reminiscent of the times where adventuring meant something ! in adventurers league, you come in, do your module, go into downtime, then go onto another totally different scenarios and adventures. that's a campaign, a series of adventures. its not a book story where you are the hero. if you wanna do that i suggest you take the actual books where you are the hero. they are great and are made for solo play to begin with.
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Windrunner, I've been playing DND (mostly DMing) for about a year now. I also study systems and logic (specifically, economics and political science - I have a year left before I graduate with my bachelor's degree). I've always found studying comparative politics (aka how rules affect outcomes) absolutely fascinating. Thank you for explaining this. I've seen a lot of people hate or praise 5e for how it's opened DND up to more easily be about story, characters, etc., and how in the good old days it was all about entering dungeons, killing monsters, and taking their loot. This has opened my eyes up to how 5e could be even better, and makes me start to think of what kinds of simple, reasonable rules could be implemented to make it so 5e players would more organically garner this sense of home and community with the world that you talk about. In my first year of playing, this has been one of the biggest things I've noticed: the only magic items we use are the ones we discover in monsters' loot piles, the only class and race features anyone cares about are the combat-oriented ones, and while me and my fellow players love focusing on story and character development, there's been few game mechanics to reinforce that aspect of the game.
Do you have any ideas about how to do that? How to make downtime/recovery time a more interesting part of the game? And/or a more required part of the game?
Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of this alternative ruleset: at a short rest, you can use up to half of your available hit dice. You also get your features, spell slots, etc., refilled that refill at a short rest. At a long rest, you can use up to all of your available hit dice. You also get your features, spell slots, etc., refilled that refill at a short rest. To refill your hit dice, however, you have to take a tenday off from heavy physical labor, or one hit dice restored for every day you take off of heavy physical labor. This option sounds like a pretty reasonable adjustment (again, at my first glance) and would guarantee that players at least consider what options they can do while they're recovering.
Hmm. I like this idea. Windrunner, I'd love to pick your brain more on these types of things.
seems to offer more narrative systems to use that can be transplanted in any system. just as i've been using other third party stuff to add more war table elements to my games.
the beauty of 5e lies in how modular it is. You can turn it in almost anything you want it to be.
for my part, the only thing i hate is how the long rest just simply heals you full. that's why i used the inkjury table and added a shadowrun like system to it. i like the wound system of shadowrun, just not the healing last wound part. now players as they go gain injuries that may need more healing then the long rest needed. so while the hit points go back up because thats their will to fight. the wounds are the physical interpretation that may shut their body down if they aren't careful.
also... one could simply go back to 3e healing system. which was fine as is, because it requires magical healing to get full faster. that is, you gain a number of hit points per day instead of all at once. you could add their constitution modifier to help them. the fct is, back then, if you had a cleric or anyone having cure spells, they could just speed up the process by healing you each days and then at the last day of healing, you'd be full and ready to go. them to. i liked that kind of effect as it made players prepare more before going to combat. but it also made players wanting less combat because of it. so i get where 5e comes from. if people have no way to heal then they will just ignore every combat and just want to face bbeg only.
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The injury table we use is similar. If you break your arm then you can't do certain things. Meaning no dual wielding, no shield usage etc. Even though your HP is full. With Lesser Restoration being able to reduce the 6 weeks of healing by 1 week when used. and it can only be used once per day for this purpose. Meaning that they still got 6 in-game days to cope at the expense of a spellslot a day. Choices.
Unless they use Greater Restoration. That'll fix broken bones. but can't deal with the massive injuries like dismemberment and such. Which you actually need to use the cleric's regeneration spell for.
Without an injury table you nullify so many spells and game options when you think about it.
The injury table we use is similar. If you break your arm then you can't do certain things. Meaning no dual wielding, no shield usage etc. Even though your HP is full. With Lesser Restoration being able to reduce the 6 weeks of healing by 1 week when used. and it can only be used once per day for this purpose. Meaning that they still got 6 in-game days to cope at the expense of a spellslot a day. Choices.
Unless they use Greater Restoration. That'll fix broken bones. but can't deal with the massive injuries like dismemberment and such. Which you actually need to use the cleric's regeneration spell for.
Without an injury table you nullify so many spells and game options when you think about it.
Do you happen to have that injury table handy? *pleading look* :)
But seriously folks - yeah, we do a similar thing. I use a modification of the table in the DMG (I removed the short-term madness options and replaced them with some physical injuries). If you drop to 0 hit points, you have to roll a CON save or pick up an injury level, which can only be healed by rest or Greater Restoration.
When a player character, or story important NPC, hits 0 hp they will have to roll a Constitution Save. The rules for this are the same as a concentration check for spellcasters. DC 10 or half of damage taken. On success nothing happens. On a failure a d20 will be rolled to determine the severity of injury. Another d6 will determine where the injury occurs.
Spells such as Lesser and Greater Restoration get an added effect. Lesser Restoration can fully heal the minor wounds at the cost of a spell slot. It can also be used once a day to reduce ONE week of healing duration from a major would, such as a broken limb. Normally it takes six weeks, but each day that a Lesser Restoration is used the healing process is reduces by a full week. A Greater Restoration would fully heal a major wound instantly. As for critical dismemberment the cleric can use its regeneration spell. A grazed, or flesh, wound will heal itself during a short rest.
D20 Table: 1 - Critical wound which will cause dismemberment. 2-5 -- Major Wound (gives -5 penalty) 6-10 -- Minor Wound (gives -3 penalty) 11-14 -- A Grazed, Flesh, Wound (gives -1 penalty) 15-20 -- No wound
1D6 Table: 1 - Head area such as nose, eyes, ears 2 - Torso 3 - Right Arm 4 - Left Arm 5 - Right Leg 6 - Left Leg
At first I was opposed to an Injury Table, because it seemed redundant. You can easily heal and go on as if nothing happened. Meaning more things to keep track off while in-game there would be little benefit from it. In this, theoretical, setup I hope that players will be more pro-active in trying to avoid reaching 0HP. Even though they can heal the injuries, it'll still take a few battles. Giving some time in which the penalties can accumulate to the point consecutive situations can be more challenging.
The way I look at Health Points is more like endurance. How people exert themselves moving, blocking without taking any real critical wounds. When they reach 0hp and drop on the ground the enemy can do three attacks. Targeting the critical organs of the collapsed and exhausted target. This is the reason that a broken arm and such rolls occur on 0hp and not on a critical hit.
And combine that with Lorenzo Remus Raiola's template for Called Shots to have specific area penalty ideas. [url=link for called shots]https://scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/69232796_527204138023434_1037465177303285760_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_oc=AQlVnO3NbOB9zoZSdQYJ1Lr-sW8ExANXx3ZjXGPAlFj0vGKjcpnS3qZnwIv5CT5SqYk&_nc_ht=scontent-ams4-1.xx&oh=33a8cef6c46ccbb77ea9788ff0552d3e&oe=5E59F46E[/url] I'm still tweaking it as we go though. this was the first draft I started with.
@BigLizard i disagree, i thought there was plenty of choices to do when creating a charcater... after all there was a reason why it took us weeks to create one. even with the current system, choices are left to a minimum... only 3e was plenty of too much choices. but back then... i'll give you that... anything else then wizard was pretty much unplayable. not to mention everyone was a an elf because they had way too much added bonuses comprared to everything else.
@Aldaron @Giblix I use the DMg injury table which is fine as is. but my ruling are more straight and happens not just at 0 hit points or on a critical. i think leaving it at 0 or crtical makes the thing a moot point. heres what i use.
Injury threshold DC: Constitution score + Highest Class Hit Die Exemple: Barbarian 2/Fighter 3 with 16 consitution would have an injury threshold of 16 + 12 (barbarian hit die) = 28
once you have that on your character sheet it stays the same all the time. any attacks or spells dealing damage above that threshold, gives you an injury rolled on the DMG table. an injury can only be healed by specifically targeting it with a healing spell. but i like your version of lesser restoration and greater restoration. might add that instead. in any cases, healing up the Hit points do not heal an injury. an injury has to be taken care of with healing.
up to this point, the only thing my players requested of me, was that i use that on the monsters as well. not just on them. i was fine doing it, though monsters may often just die anyway.
i played a bit of shadowrun returns, lately. i loved how the hit points you have are tied to your physical body. thus io wanted to tie in your body to your hit points, but in a way not like shadowrun. shadowrun treats any damage as a wound. so if that wizard attacks you with a cantruip and deals 7 damage, thats 1 wound of 7 damage. and most spells and the likes works on wounds and not on damage hitself. this is the part i hated. that meant that healing would heal you only 7 even if you got a wound of 32 just before the last wound. i think thats bullshit. anyway... that's what i use right now.
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"From what my research can tell, the Breaking of the Fellowship (roughly the end of The Fellowship of the Ring) happened on Feb. 26. Frodo destroyed the Ring on March 25. Half of the entire story takes place between those two points."
It seems like the easiest way to slow down adventures is to just change way resting works. A simple version is something like this:
A short rest is redefined as a single night's rest, not more than once per day.
A long rest is redefined as a weekend's rest in a civilized setting (no long rests in the wilderness), not more than once per week.
This seems like it might help with adventure pacing in general; while it's possible to come up with a six-fight day, it does require somewhat unusual adventure design. A six-fight week is a lot easier.
You'd need to tweak a few spells that are designed to allow being permanently active by casting every day; probably something like "You can refresh a 24 hour duration spell as a ritual as long as you haven't recovered the spell slot used to cast it."
@dndpaladin "but my ruling are more straight and happens not just at 0 hit points or on a critical. i think leaving it at 0 or crtical makes the thing a moot point. heres what i use."
In all honesty. If it was just me... I wouldn't even have used an injury table to begin with. And I agree that the way it is used in most cases makes it rather moot. Eventually I just added it in, because that is what my players want. Plus it isn't detrimental. On the other side... Using it on 0hp isn't moot in practice. Especially seeing how my encounters are made. They often go down to 0hp during combat that have ebs and flows to them. We've been using it only since the start of lvl5. So that is about 5ish sessions now.
At the moment we've had a barbarian with a shallow flesh wound that was healed during a short rest. He wanted to keep it as a memorable scar for flavor and so he got it. The cleric broke his arm during an assassin ambush. It took him 6 in-game days, using Restoration spells, to heal back up. Meaning that by the time they arrived at the entrance of the dungeon he was back to being able and use his shield arm again. In that case it didn't really add much to the game itself, because during that period it was mostly roleplay with only one massive battle. Where he had to fight to defend a village against an orc raid. Where he couldn't use his shield arm, and had to put his weapon down to grab his idol to cast spells. Showing potential for the use of injury tables. The last case was against a young black dragon in its lair. A surprise attack that caught the entire group in the breath attack resulted in the druid to break her leg. She has reduced movement speed, but once again it happened at the end of the dungeon. Unfortunately the players managed to kill the dragon with critting on each of their held actions. Who would've expected that? I was planning for a surprise hit, drag the weakest player underwater till they drowned, then ran away. Resulting in the dragon to chase them down the mountain for stealing her hoard. Which could be interesting to see how they'd cope with one PC having a broken leg. Instead now the PC's have a relative easy journey of 3 days....with plenty of roleplay in the town itself. So once again no meaningful use of the injury table here.
So it is moot, more because of the timing in which it occurred so far. Not the frequency. Seeing how often they hit 0hp and the few times it actually resulted in an injury is far and few in between. It would suck if it happened constantly in my opinion. On the other hand... due to injuries they do seem to plan around it a bit. Being in town to heal up is the save thing to do...automatically lending to a more organic way for down time activities. Which then stretches the in game time with meaningful stuff and a nice change of pace from tense adventuring. So there is a positive to it.
---
On another note. Adventuring is quite a harrowing and stressful experience. Been looking into the Insanity system of Call of Ctulhu and porting it over for use in DnD 5e. An additional stat that goes down over time when certain situations occur. Leading PC's to requiring down time just to recover mentally. I find it an interesting concept, but quite difficult to find phobia's and mental illness etc that would fit. It requires players to roleplay it more then giving it a mechanical downside.
I've been playing the same character in the same campaign for nearly two years. IC time is a bit more than that... I just reached level 10. We use Milestone leveling ... the first few were fairly quick but somewhere around 5-6 it really slowed down - by DM design. We actually fought a dragon... in an actual dungeon... (how often does that actually happen?!?) and still we had to wait another couple of sessions to get to that next level because we had to not only kill the thing, but resolve why it was there in the first place.
It seems like the easiest way to slow down adventures is to just change way resting works. A simple version is something like this:
A short rest is redefined as a single night's rest, not more than once per day.
A long rest is redefined as a weekend's rest in a civilized setting (no long rests in the wilderness), not more than once per week.
This seems like it might help with adventure pacing in general; while it's possible to come up with a six-fight day, it does require somewhat unusual adventure design. A six-fight week is a lot easier.
You'd need to tweak a few spells that are designed to allow being permanently active by casting every day; probably something like "You can refresh a 24 hour duration spell as a ritual as long as you haven't recovered the spell slot used to cast it."
Your first point is already lie that. by RAW it is written that you cannot do a long rest in the same 24 hours period ! the thing is, most people forget that because its kinda stupid. i mean, can you sleep during the day if you so will it ? can you sleep after only 5 hours of work ? the answer to all these is yes !
if you want to fix rest, have to do like i'm trying to do right now... - Spells reset at one precise moment of the day chosen by the player when he first gains spells (Sunset, Dawn, Midnight, etc...) - Long rest no longer heal to full. instead you heal your constitution bonus (minimum 1) every long rest. - Long rest no longer heals ability score fully, instead they heal 1 point of your choice every time. - Short rest are 15 minutes, except for healing which takes the full hour and a healers kit.
i did these ruling to simulate resting like in real life. natural healing for long rest is more prevalent from those with high constitution. but receiving magical healing is still better and can still be done to hasten recovery. short rests... i always felt like many of those abilities wouldn't logically take 1 hour. unless you are trying to heal bigger wounds, there is no need for the full hour. so everything is back every 15 minutes. which is logical considering thats the time we get in jobs to actually relax and rest. i can easily see the warlock making a ritual to gain back his spell slots. i can picture the arcane wizard taking 15 minutes to accumulate energies to gain back some slots. or the cleric praying to gain back his channel divinities. but i just can't picture someone trying to heal a big wound with only 15 minutes and nothing to help him. thats why i added the healers kit necessity to gain back hit dice.
this is what i'll br trying next campaign with my group.
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I've been playing the same character in the same campaign for nearly two years. IC time is a bit more than that... I just reached level 10. We use Milestone leveling ... the first few were fairly quick but somewhere around 5-6 it really slowed down - by DM design. We actually fought a dragon... in an actual dungeon... (how often does that actually happen?!?) and still we had to wait another couple of sessions to get to that next level because we had to not only kill the thing, but resolve why it was there in the first place.
some people liked the idea of leveling slowly and finishing a campaign 10 years later. heck when i played at school every 1 hour lunch... after 5 years of school, my character was still level 5. people level up the way they want, not the way the game wants. reality being most people do not give XP for anything else then monsters and thus it takes players ages to level up. the game itself encourages DMs to use XP as a reward not just for combatting monsters but also for accomplishing things. this is also why treasures found gave XP back then. even though most people didn't use that. my DMs back then surely never did.
in current edition... 5e is supposed to calculate XP in a way that makes you level up about every 3 sessions. that's a big IF, the players actually fight and do things. you know the occaisionnal undecided players session and shopping sessions literally stops that from happening. but reguardless, 5e is calculated to take about 40 weeks to accomplish level 20. thats 40 games if you play each weeks. thats a lot of time if you ask me.
my current group is at level 10 right now. they have been playing since january 11th 2019 ! so that should tell you how long it is to gain levels. and i'm giving a lot of XP for their worth. its just that sometimes they seem to go forward much less. but i will say this much... while i love milestones, they have that one drawback that XP seems to easily fix. and thats the goal of the level up. we're using XP with possibility to go back to milestones if we preffered. to my surprise the players have now preffered XP again. the main reason being... with XP, even though they are all the same level anyway. is that they actually see how far they have gone forward. while milestones is like driving on the road while being blind. there is no telling if the road you took will bring you into the next level. while with XP, you still can see how much of a development you have done up to this point and how much development you still need to level up.
at first i played with individual XP, but that led to players wondering why some were getting more then them. after a while of explaining, their role play got better and now everyone is on point. so i ended up telling them to all go up to the highest XP score of the bunch. and now they are all at the same point. one of the player likes to consider the XP. and the others often ask him how much till next level and he answers with glee. they are also happy cause they know if the level is close or not. unlike with milestones where the DM just pick a place and time.
another exemple... i am playing yawning portal with another group... we're doing milestones... they always ask me, when will they level up. as far as i am concerned, im not gonna level them up 2 games in by just passing thru the front door. but sometimes milestones seems very far and wide. the sunless citadel took us about 12 weeks to accomplish. and that was from level 1 to 3. sure they were not going fast, but thats ridiculous for a milestone. forge of fury is also one of those long dungeon crawl and level from 3 to 5 in that dungeon will be as long. seems to me like milestones are out of whack.
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You can take it slow or you can take it fast. When I was 17, I could play at a friends house for close to 48 hours because his folks had a separate apartment he could use. Now that I'm 57 I play for 4-5 hours every 2 weeks. If I had a full time day job I could probably play more. I don't and not everyone does. Often people are working 2 jobs or work shift work like I do. I see my wife for about an hour on weekdays and naturally the weekends are busy between romance, projects, leisure time, etc. My point is, I don't want to be 1st level for 6 months if I only play every other week and don't know if I'm going to live another 10 years. I need and appreciate quick level advancement.
It's worth distinguishing between advancement being quick in game and out of game, as the original post was about in-game time flow, not out of game. The number of sessions required to reach a given level won't change if you have to spend more downtime between combats.
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It really depends... on my part, i expect the game to level you up about once a month. thats about every 4 sessions.
that said, just like the adventures int he premade. i expect to gain about 12 levels totals and be near the end of the campaign after a whole year.
the reason i expect that is because most campaigns don't even last that long and most campaigns do not even go into the higher tiers. because at that point most DM don't even know what to do at that level. the problem is the players, their characters becomes so strong that most players always finds an easy way out of everything. not because of balance issues, but because of how spells works. so yeah...
much like adventures, i expect a full year from 1 to 15.
granted my campaigns have lasted up to 3 years from 1 to 20. but anything longer then that to me seems like you are just not liking high end adventures or have not yet understood that every story has an end and must end somewhere.
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Yeah, in my campaigns I juice the PCs to lvl 3 in 2-3 sessions, and then after that it slows down to about 4-6 sessions/lvl. We play every 2 weeks, so they hit lvl 3 in about a month and then it’s about 1&1/2-2 months before lvl 4.
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guess my table is an outlier. 1,5 years and my players are still lvl 5. from the pace they have i expect them to be lvl 6 around new year.
I think the biggest change in play style from the old days is that back in the day, we expected to start a character at level 1, play them till we were bored with them (or they died) and make a new one. I don't remember if I ever got a character as far as level 9. And we played short adventures, not really connected and with no long-term goals. The modules sold by the company sort of emphasized the one-shot nature of an adventure.
These days, there seems to be a mindset that you get your character into a single protracted campaign that takes up their entire adventuring life, and in the end they attain godlike powers and retire to live happily ever after.
Whether it's better or worse is up to the player, I guess. It was kind of nice to have a 'portable' character who could simply go from your brother's adventure into the school friend's adventure without weird plane-traveling, reality-warping and campaign-interrupting necessary to get them there. On the other hand, milestone leveling is a blast, as you get to ramp up your abilities without waiting for months and painstakingly adding the XP from every rat you step on. And the idea of your character having an epic tale and a happy ending to their adventures is kind of appealing.
Edeleth Treesong (Aldalire) Wood Elf Druid lvl 8 Talaveroth Sub 2
Last Tree Standing Tabaxi Ranger, Chef and Hoardsperson lvl 5, Company of the Dragon Team 1
Choir Kenku Cleric, Tempest Domain, lvl 11, Descent Into Avernus Test Drive
Poinki Goblin Paladin, Redemption, lvl 5, Tales from Talaveroth
Lyrika Nyx Satyr Bard lvl 1, The Six Kingdoms of Talia
That sums it up quite nicely !
the fact is, the adventuring life is a hard one and its not like the fantasy tropes of lord of the rings.
the reality is, your character will do a ton of adventures that have no points with each others.
that's why i never retcon a situation i created or my players have created. reguardless of what that situation may be, the character will have lived that strange and weird situation.
one exemple of that is 2 players who came to a game, never to come back the next week. they just weren't gonna come back and never informed us. that said, the story goes on and now my players have met two random adventurers that are still somewhere in the world, they don't know and it doesn't matter. that single day they met those adventurers. and thats it. it brings life to your game. that's also why i continu playing even if a player or two are missing, as long as the others are willing to play still. players have to realise that the adventuring life isn't being bilbo the hobbit or the fellowship of the ring who must be killing godly creatures. heck i even met some anime geeks who wanted to be able to defeat a kraken at level 1 because they thought level 1 meant level 1 god. just like in their animes ! there is a game for everyone... but honestly...
i really like the adventurers league gameplay. it is really reminiscent of the times where adventuring meant something !
in adventurers league, you come in, do your module, go into downtime, then go onto another totally different scenarios and adventures.
that's a campaign, a series of adventures. its not a book story where you are the hero. if you wanna do that i suggest you take the actual books where you are the hero. they are great and are made for solo play to begin with.
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On the original post...
Windrunner, I've been playing DND (mostly DMing) for about a year now. I also study systems and logic (specifically, economics and political science - I have a year left before I graduate with my bachelor's degree). I've always found studying comparative politics (aka how rules affect outcomes) absolutely fascinating. Thank you for explaining this. I've seen a lot of people hate or praise 5e for how it's opened DND up to more easily be about story, characters, etc., and how in the good old days it was all about entering dungeons, killing monsters, and taking their loot. This has opened my eyes up to how 5e could be even better, and makes me start to think of what kinds of simple, reasonable rules could be implemented to make it so 5e players would more organically garner this sense of home and community with the world that you talk about. In my first year of playing, this has been one of the biggest things I've noticed: the only magic items we use are the ones we discover in monsters' loot piles, the only class and race features anyone cares about are the combat-oriented ones, and while me and my fellow players love focusing on story and character development, there's been few game mechanics to reinforce that aspect of the game.
Do you have any ideas about how to do that? How to make downtime/recovery time a more interesting part of the game? And/or a more required part of the game?
Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of this alternative ruleset: at a short rest, you can use up to half of your available hit dice. You also get your features, spell slots, etc., refilled that refill at a short rest. At a long rest, you can use up to all of your available hit dice. You also get your features, spell slots, etc., refilled that refill at a short rest. To refill your hit dice, however, you have to take a tenday off from heavy physical labor, or one hit dice restored for every day you take off of heavy physical labor. This option sounds like a pretty reasonable adjustment (again, at my first glance) and would guarantee that players at least consider what options they can do while they're recovering.
Hmm. I like this idea. Windrunner, I'd love to pick your brain more on these types of things.
@penguin
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2cgaming/grymmworld-a-5th-edition-fairy-tale-setting-by-grant-ellis?ref=9w29is
seems to offer more narrative systems to use that can be transplanted in any system.
just as i've been using other third party stuff to add more war table elements to my games.
the beauty of 5e lies in how modular it is. You can turn it in almost anything you want it to be.
for my part, the only thing i hate is how the long rest just simply heals you full.
that's why i used the inkjury table and added a shadowrun like system to it. i like the wound system of shadowrun, just not the healing last wound part.
now players as they go gain injuries that may need more healing then the long rest needed. so while the hit points go back up because thats their will to fight.
the wounds are the physical interpretation that may shut their body down if they aren't careful.
also... one could simply go back to 3e healing system. which was fine as is, because it requires magical healing to get full faster.
that is, you gain a number of hit points per day instead of all at once. you could add their constitution modifier to help them.
the fct is, back then, if you had a cleric or anyone having cure spells, they could just speed up the process by healing you each days and then at the last day of healing, you'd be full and ready to go. them to. i liked that kind of effect as it made players prepare more before going to combat. but it also made players wanting less combat because of it. so i get where 5e comes from. if people have no way to heal then they will just ignore every combat and just want to face bbeg only.
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The injury table we use is similar. If you break your arm then you can't do certain things. Meaning no dual wielding, no shield usage etc. Even though your HP is full. With Lesser Restoration being able to reduce the 6 weeks of healing by 1 week when used. and it can only be used once per day for this purpose. Meaning that they still got 6 in-game days to cope at the expense of a spellslot a day. Choices.
Unless they use Greater Restoration. That'll fix broken bones. but can't deal with the massive injuries like dismemberment and such. Which you actually need to use the cleric's regeneration spell for.
Without an injury table you nullify so many spells and game options when you think about it.
Do you happen to have that injury table handy? *pleading look* :)
But seriously folks - yeah, we do a similar thing. I use a modification of the table in the DMG (I removed the short-term madness options and replaced them with some physical injuries). If you drop to 0 hit points, you have to roll a CON save or pick up an injury level, which can only be healed by rest or Greater Restoration.
Sure. It is a really basic Injury Table.
[url=link for called shots]https://scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/69232796_527204138023434_1037465177303285760_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_oc=AQlVnO3NbOB9zoZSdQYJ1Lr-sW8ExANXx3ZjXGPAlFj0vGKjcpnS3qZnwIv5CT5SqYk&_nc_ht=scontent-ams4-1.xx&oh=33a8cef6c46ccbb77ea9788ff0552d3e&oe=5E59F46E[/url]
I'm still tweaking it as we go though. this was the first draft I started with.
@BigLizard i disagree, i thought there was plenty of choices to do when creating a charcater... after all there was a reason why it took us weeks to create one.
even with the current system, choices are left to a minimum... only 3e was plenty of too much choices. but back then... i'll give you that... anything else then wizard was pretty much unplayable. not to mention everyone was a an elf because they had way too much added bonuses comprared to everything else.
@Aldaron @Giblix
I use the DMg injury table which is fine as is.
but my ruling are more straight and happens not just at 0 hit points or on a critical. i think leaving it at 0 or crtical makes the thing a moot point.
heres what i use.
Injury threshold DC: Constitution score + Highest Class Hit Die
Exemple: Barbarian 2/Fighter 3 with 16 consitution would have an injury threshold of 16 + 12 (barbarian hit die) = 28
once you have that on your character sheet it stays the same all the time.
any attacks or spells dealing damage above that threshold, gives you an injury rolled on the DMG table.
an injury can only be healed by specifically targeting it with a healing spell. but i like your version of lesser restoration and greater restoration. might add that instead.
in any cases, healing up the Hit points do not heal an injury. an injury has to be taken care of with healing.
up to this point, the only thing my players requested of me, was that i use that on the monsters as well. not just on them. i was fine doing it, though monsters may often just die anyway.
i played a bit of shadowrun returns, lately. i loved how the hit points you have are tied to your physical body. thus io wanted to tie in your body to your hit points, but in a way not like shadowrun. shadowrun treats any damage as a wound. so if that wizard attacks you with a cantruip and deals 7 damage, thats 1 wound of 7 damage. and most spells and the likes works on wounds and not on damage hitself. this is the part i hated. that meant that healing would heal you only 7 even if you got a wound of 32 just before the last wound. i think thats bullshit. anyway... that's what i use right now.
DM of two gaming groups.
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Thought this would be fun to add to my old post:
"From what my research can tell, the Breaking of the Fellowship (roughly the end of The Fellowship of the Ring) happened on Feb. 26. Frodo destroyed the Ring on March 25. Half of the entire story takes place between those two points."
Link
So, even Tolkien did lots in less than a month...
--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
Bran -- Human Wizard - RoT
Making D&D mistakes and having fun since 1977!
It seems like the easiest way to slow down adventures is to just change way resting works. A simple version is something like this:
This seems like it might help with adventure pacing in general; while it's possible to come up with a six-fight day, it does require somewhat unusual adventure design. A six-fight week is a lot easier.
You'd need to tweak a few spells that are designed to allow being permanently active by casting every day; probably something like "You can refresh a 24 hour duration spell as a ritual as long as you haven't recovered the spell slot used to cast it."
@dndpaladin
"but my ruling are more straight and happens not just at 0 hit points or on a critical. i think leaving it at 0 or crtical makes the thing a moot point.
heres what i use."
In all honesty. If it was just me... I wouldn't even have used an injury table to begin with. And I agree that the way it is used in most cases makes it rather moot. Eventually I just added it in, because that is what my players want. Plus it isn't detrimental. On the other side... Using it on 0hp isn't moot in practice. Especially seeing how my encounters are made. They often go down to 0hp during combat that have ebs and flows to them. We've been using it only since the start of lvl5. So that is about 5ish sessions now.
At the moment we've had a barbarian with a shallow flesh wound that was healed during a short rest. He wanted to keep it as a memorable scar for flavor and so he got it. The cleric broke his arm during an assassin ambush. It took him 6 in-game days, using Restoration spells, to heal back up. Meaning that by the time they arrived at the entrance of the dungeon he was back to being able and use his shield arm again. In that case it didn't really add much to the game itself, because during that period it was mostly roleplay with only one massive battle. Where he had to fight to defend a village against an orc raid. Where he couldn't use his shield arm, and had to put his weapon down to grab his idol to cast spells. Showing potential for the use of injury tables. The last case was against a young black dragon in its lair. A surprise attack that caught the entire group in the breath attack resulted in the druid to break her leg. She has reduced movement speed, but once again it happened at the end of the dungeon. Unfortunately the players managed to kill the dragon with critting on each of their held actions. Who would've expected that? I was planning for a surprise hit, drag the weakest player underwater till they drowned, then ran away. Resulting in the dragon to chase them down the mountain for stealing her hoard. Which could be interesting to see how they'd cope with one PC having a broken leg. Instead now the PC's have a relative easy journey of 3 days....with plenty of roleplay in the town itself. So once again no meaningful use of the injury table here.
So it is moot, more because of the timing in which it occurred so far. Not the frequency. Seeing how often they hit 0hp and the few times it actually resulted in an injury is far and few in between. It would suck if it happened constantly in my opinion. On the other hand... due to injuries they do seem to plan around it a bit. Being in town to heal up is the save thing to do...automatically lending to a more organic way for down time activities. Which then stretches the in game time with meaningful stuff and a nice change of pace from tense adventuring. So there is a positive to it.
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On another note. Adventuring is quite a harrowing and stressful experience. Been looking into the Insanity system of Call of Ctulhu and porting it over for use in DnD 5e. An additional stat that goes down over time when certain situations occur. Leading PC's to requiring down time just to recover mentally. I find it an interesting concept, but quite difficult to find phobia's and mental illness etc that would fit. It requires players to roleplay it more then giving it a mechanical downside.
I've been playing the same character in the same campaign for nearly two years. IC time is a bit more than that... I just reached level 10. We use Milestone leveling ... the first few were fairly quick but somewhere around 5-6 it really slowed down - by DM design. We actually fought a dragon... in an actual dungeon... (how often does that actually happen?!?) and still we had to wait another couple of sessions to get to that next level because we had to not only kill the thing, but resolve why it was there in the first place.
Your first point is already lie that. by RAW it is written that you cannot do a long rest in the same 24 hours period !
the thing is, most people forget that because its kinda stupid. i mean, can you sleep during the day if you so will it ?
can you sleep after only 5 hours of work ? the answer to all these is yes !
if you want to fix rest, have to do like i'm trying to do right now...
- Spells reset at one precise moment of the day chosen by the player when he first gains spells (Sunset, Dawn, Midnight, etc...)
- Long rest no longer heal to full. instead you heal your constitution bonus (minimum 1) every long rest.
- Long rest no longer heals ability score fully, instead they heal 1 point of your choice every time.
- Short rest are 15 minutes, except for healing which takes the full hour and a healers kit.
i did these ruling to simulate resting like in real life. natural healing for long rest is more prevalent from those with high constitution. but receiving magical healing is still better and can still be done to hasten recovery. short rests... i always felt like many of those abilities wouldn't logically take 1 hour. unless you are trying to heal bigger wounds, there is no need for the full hour. so everything is back every 15 minutes. which is logical considering thats the time we get in jobs to actually relax and rest. i can easily see the warlock making a ritual to gain back his spell slots. i can picture the arcane wizard taking 15 minutes to accumulate energies to gain back some slots. or the cleric praying to gain back his channel divinities. but i just can't picture someone trying to heal a big wound with only 15 minutes and nothing to help him. thats why i added the healers kit necessity to gain back hit dice.
this is what i'll br trying next campaign with my group.
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some people liked the idea of leveling slowly and finishing a campaign 10 years later.
heck when i played at school every 1 hour lunch... after 5 years of school, my character was still level 5.
people level up the way they want, not the way the game wants. reality being most people do not give XP for anything else then monsters and thus it takes players ages to level up. the game itself encourages DMs to use XP as a reward not just for combatting monsters but also for accomplishing things. this is also why treasures found gave XP back then. even though most people didn't use that. my DMs back then surely never did.
in current edition... 5e is supposed to calculate XP in a way that makes you level up about every 3 sessions. that's a big IF, the players actually fight and do things. you know the occaisionnal undecided players session and shopping sessions literally stops that from happening. but reguardless, 5e is calculated to take about 40 weeks to accomplish level 20. thats 40 games if you play each weeks. thats a lot of time if you ask me.
my current group is at level 10 right now. they have been playing since january 11th 2019 ! so that should tell you how long it is to gain levels. and i'm giving a lot of XP for their worth. its just that sometimes they seem to go forward much less. but i will say this much... while i love milestones, they have that one drawback that XP seems to easily fix. and thats the goal of the level up. we're using XP with possibility to go back to milestones if we preffered. to my surprise the players have now preffered XP again. the main reason being... with XP, even though they are all the same level anyway. is that they actually see how far they have gone forward. while milestones is like driving on the road while being blind. there is no telling if the road you took will bring you into the next level. while with XP, you still can see how much of a development you have done up to this point and how much development you still need to level up.
at first i played with individual XP, but that led to players wondering why some were getting more then them. after a while of explaining, their role play got better and now everyone is on point. so i ended up telling them to all go up to the highest XP score of the bunch. and now they are all at the same point. one of the player likes to consider the XP. and the others often ask him how much till next level and he answers with glee. they are also happy cause they know if the level is close or not. unlike with milestones where the DM just pick a place and time.
another exemple... i am playing yawning portal with another group...
we're doing milestones... they always ask me, when will they level up.
as far as i am concerned, im not gonna level them up 2 games in by just passing thru the front door.
but sometimes milestones seems very far and wide. the sunless citadel took us about 12 weeks to accomplish. and that was from level 1 to 3. sure they were not going fast, but thats ridiculous for a milestone. forge of fury is also one of those long dungeon crawl and level from 3 to 5 in that dungeon will be as long. seems to me like milestones are out of whack.
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You can take it slow or you can take it fast. When I was 17, I could play at a friends house for close to 48 hours because his folks had a separate apartment he could use. Now that I'm 57 I play for 4-5 hours every 2 weeks. If I had a full time day job I could probably play more. I don't and not everyone does. Often people are working 2 jobs or work shift work like I do. I see my wife for about an hour on weekdays and naturally the weekends are busy between romance, projects, leisure time, etc. My point is, I don't want to be 1st level for 6 months if I only play every other week and don't know if I'm going to live another 10 years. I need and appreciate quick level advancement.
It's worth distinguishing between advancement being quick in game and out of game, as the original post was about in-game time flow, not out of game. The number of sessions required to reach a given level won't change if you have to spend more downtime between combats.