Getting That Old School Feel

[koboldish]

Hello Playgrounders!
Does everyone remember their first few D&D sessions? Where every monster was something special, magic was actually interesting, combat was actually dangerous, and you were happy playing your straight classed rogue or fighter whilst battling kobolds, goblins, dire rats, and other such fearsome beasts? Those were probably my favorite experiences playing D&D. Now, as opposed to a roleplaying game, my group seems to have turned it into a simulator where you throw numbers at things and can buy magic items on every street corner. I'd like some suggestions for bringing back that old feelings (just like AD&D Sword and Sorcery!), encouraging roleplaying, and hopefully some rules for 3.5 character creation that prevent too much optimization.

Thanks!

[johnbragg]

The shortest answer is : E6. But you probably already knew that.

Poorly thought out ideas: Limit to one Prestige Class?

Another, more well thought idea: Play a low-level campaign, but take a half-dozen common monsters--goblins, kobolds, skeletons, zombies, ogres--and just rewrite them. Maybe hobgoblins have Fast Healing 1. Maybe kobolds have ghost sounds as a once-per-day or at-will ability. Maybe every goblin is a 1st-level Rogue. Maybe Ogres have 2 Hit Dice but a crazy Armor Class, or DR 2 or something.

[koboldish]

Quite right, I already knew about E6 (I have decided not to use it). Thanks though. Limiting prestige classes wouldn't do that much either. The last part of your response was absolutely wonderful. I will have to look into that and do a ton of things with it. Do you think we could try to come up with other things to rewrite?

On a different note, I also think that the magic system needs to be redone.

[jedipotter]

You can:

1. Remove the knowladge skill, information abilites, and divinations.

2. Change all the monsters. The easy way works, just switch the names so make ''dire rat'' use the ''manticore'' stats.

3. Limit healing and other cures. Make it hard, or near imposssible, to get healing and other cures. Have a character suffer with say a missing arms for several games. Same for curses and other bad effects.

4. Have your game day last at least 10 hours, but often 16. Have encounters during that whole time. Allow no safe and restful places.

5. Restore the unfairness to the game. Bring back all 1e/2e unfair rules, such as system shock, death from teleport, save or die for spells and poison, have energy drain drain a level of xp and use all 1/2E spell descriptions.

[Stux]

I've been running a low-magic, low-wealth, attrition based campaign. Its pretty fun so far. It makes it a lot more work as a DM though, because you can't just go off CR, you have to really make sure your encounters are, while challenging, not impossible.

Magic items are very rare in the setting so, with the low wealth too, getting them becomes a very special occasion. Even a lowly Longsword +1 becomes something pretty awesome.

As for casting classes breaking the game in this setting, personally I have tweaked the way magic in general works. All casters get hugely reduced spells per day (based off of the new D&D Next progression) to the point where they never get more than 1 casting per day of the higher spell levels. This means they still get their shiny toys, but each casting is something really epic. I have also made all spells with a casting time of Standard Action require a round of concentration before they come in to effect. This makes mundane classes much more important, as the wizard wont get off his encounter ending spell without the fighter backing him up.

You could just ban all full-casters, but I don't think that is as fun. This is all going to be quite a bit of work on the part of the DM to implement in a balanced way, but I have found it worth it.

There are a lot of people who hate low magic settings, citing that monsters aren't designed with it in mind. And yes, there are plenty of monsters that in a low magic setting have the capability on paper to wreck the party. But you just have to get a bit more creative. Encounters in reality are never just the party and a monster on an infinite flat surface. Put in environmental things the party to use to their advantage, make the monster afraid of fire, put in a way they can trick that flying monster in to landing and trap it. There are lots of ways to handle these things.

[koboldish]

Also some well thought out responses. I think I may have made some errors in my original post. My goal is not to unfairly annoy the players using older things from 1e and 2e (I never really like them anyways). I am not trying to kill a player every time we have a session at level 1, or kill players because they don't know something. I want to make the system new and dangerous. Anyways, thank you very much for the well reasoned responses, but I think some of them were a bit too harsh.

[johnbragg]

Quite right, I already knew about E6 (I have decided not to use it). Thanks though. Limiting prestige classes wouldn't do that much either. The last part of your response was absolutely wonderful. I will have to look into that and do a ton of things with it. Do you think we could try to come up with other things to rewrite?

An old DM of mine did something like that with us--we were veteran players playing low-level characters, exploring the ruins of the ancient civilization from Before the Cataclysm. So orcs and goblins and skeletons and zombies were either rare, or the raised pets of the real opponent.


On a different note, I also think that the magic system needs to be redone.

REdone is obviously a ton of work, ask Vadskye. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=307778

Less work, depends on what you want to redo about the magic system.

Other things to rewrite: I have an idea for magic items--make most everything a charged or one-use item. So most +1 swords would be good for 50 attacks and need regular recharging. Better weapons would require low-level epic stuff--the hero wields the weapon for at least half a level, a master craftsman to reforge the weapon to more-than-masterwork standards, and a spellcaster to weave the magic together. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=305509

[Grod_The_Giant]

It sounds like you and your players have acquired too much system mastery to maintain the excitement of a new game, yes? In which case, my recommendation would be to do your best to make it a new game again.

Ban all published classes and replace them with homebrew stuff.
Ban all spells from the PHB.
Use exclusively odd new monsters-- or at the very least, heavily rewritten ones with the same names.


(Or, you know, switch to a different system, but that might not be feasible)

[Stux]

Other things to rewrite: I have an idea for magic items--make most everything a charged or one-use item. So most +1 swords would be good for 50 attacks and need regular recharging. Better weapons would require low-level epic stuff--the hero wields the weapon for at least half a level, a master craftsman to reforge the weapon to more-than-masterwork standards, and a spellcaster to weave the magic together. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=305509

I would be very wary about doing anything like this without also changing or limiting the casting classes. Otherwise all you have really achieved is widening the gap between casters and mundanes. Either those playing mundanes will get very annoyed, or they will spot this before character creation and everyone will play wizards and druids.

EDIT:
Also, without wanting to start yet another PF vs 3.5 debate, one advantage of PF is that pretty much any class is viable to single class. In fact while PrCs exist, they are usually worse than sticking it out in your main class, even for mundanes. Something to consider anyway.

[johnbragg]

There are a lot of people who hate low magic settings, citing that monsters aren't designed with it in mind. And yes, there are plenty of monsters that in a low magic setting have the capability on paper to wreck the party. But you just have to get a bit more creative.

One major thing is the DM either not using monsters designed for high-magic settings, or adjusting their CR.

If the monster is DR 10/magic, that's a much bigger challenge for a party in a setting where magic items are very rare than it is for the expected party of magic Christmas trees with multiple magic weapons and stat boosters and a Heward's Handy Haversack full of scrolls "just in case".

The players can still get creative and get heroic and win, but the XP and rewards should reflect that. Dragonslaying would be an epic accomplishment.

EDIT:

I would be very wary about doing anything like this without also changing or limiting the casting classes. Otherwise all you have really achieved is widening the gap between casters and mundanes.

Very true. But I'm not sure what direction the OP is going with magic as a whole. ("This" was limiting magic weapons.)

[Stux]

The players can still get creative and get heroic and win, but the XP and rewards should reflect that. Dragonslaying would be an epic accomplishment.

Totally agree. That is very much the intention of my house rule system.

If the party WERE to face something with high magic damage reduction there would be something environmental that could be used to bypass it, but it would likely involve the party having to manage holding off the monster whilst making that happen.

[koboldish]

Yes. Very much so. Thank you for all of your thoughtful responses.
As of now, I have narrowed it down to a few main goals based on your responses:

Rewrite most monsters that will be used to make them more interesting.
Shrink the power gap between mages and mundanes.
Make magic items more rare and interesting (sorry, I don't really like the idea of degrading items that would normally be permanent).
Lower the levels of optimization available, while still retaining enough room to customize things.


Rewriting monsters is the easy part. Fixing mundanes should also be pretty easy (there are plenty of threads around here).
Low magic and fixing the power gap are the hard parts.

[Story]

Hello Playgrounders!
Does everyone remember their first few D&D sessions? Where every monster was something special, magic was actually interesting, combat was actually dangerous, and you were happy playing your straight classed rogue or fighter whilst battling kobolds, goblins, dire rats, and other such fearsome beasts? Those were probably my favorite experiences playing D&D. Now, as opposed to a roleplaying game, my group seems to have turned it into a simulator where you throw numbers at things and can buy magic items on every street corner. I'd like some suggestions for bringing back that old feelings (just like AD&D Sword and Sorcery!), encouraging roleplaying, and hopefully some rules for 3.5 character creation that prevent too much optimization.


My very first D&D character was a Necropolitan Fire Elf Domain Generalist Wizard, so no, not really.

[Stux]

Fixing mundanes should also be pretty easy (there are plenty of threads around here).

You could just heavily encourage people to use Tomb of Battle classes? Incorporate the ToB fluff in to your campaign setting.

[koboldish]

Yeah. That would also work. Like I said, that's the easy part :smallwink:.

[Stux]

So lowering optimisation levels is the thing left then?

I'd seriously recommend giving the D&D Next playtest packet a skim, as the way it handles casters is very interesting. On top of the limited spells it also uses a semi-spontaneous casting system which I really like.

Also as I say I play PF these days, which has a slightly lower OP ceiling, plus much more encouragement to stay single class.

[koboldish]

Great! I'll go give that packet a look. Is it easily convertible to 3.5?

[Stux]

At its most basic just take the spells per day table and copypaste it in to the full casters. I then made 4/9 and 6/9 spells per day tables for non-full casters based on those progressions.

If you also want to implement the semi-spontaneous casting that would take a bit more work. The way it works is casters prepare a number of spells per day, and then cast spontaneously from the prepared spells. This means you can have quite a bit of utility but with a limited number of castings, which is what I really like about it. The issue is with things like having a wizard and a sorcerer. This system basically rolls them both in to one class. Also you may not want clerics and druids and such to have access to all spells on their list and instead gain a limited number on level up like wizards and sorcerers. Again this would take some work. Its up to you really of course!

[Czin]

Old School D&D was extremely lethal. Simply crank up more No save just die effects in terms of commonality. Punish characters for mistakes more frequently and harshly.

Run everything like the Tomb of Horrors where day to day existence is a struggle to survive really.

This can be added to any of the above suggestions, but from what my dad says, Old School D&D had a very Dwarf fortress like mentality. TPK was a fact of life and you were meant to take it in stride.

[Blackjackg]

The suggestions in this thread so far have been great.

I've been having the same issue with my recent D&D game, and the primary solution I've been kicking around in my own head has just been to go back to 1st edition.

[johnbragg]

I don't know that it's "low magic", but it's an idea I've been working on after a few failed attempts at rebuilt Sorcerer/Wizard classes.

Rebuilt Wizard
Wizards are (mostly) spontaneous casters.

1. USe the PHB Sorcerer tables up to level 9 for spells/day and spells known.

2. Other spells in your the spell book can be cast (not memorized), but require a Spellcraft check, as if it's from a borrowed spellbook (DC 15 + SL). Details: Your spellbook (spellbook library, actually) is designed to be used in one spot, not on the road. You can scribe scrolls or make magic items this way, it just takes a long time. Your spellbook is more like a library--it's not something you can pack in a backpack.Figure the book for each spell level is the size of a college textbook. You could make it even worse like I do, and declare that the spells are found in multivolume collections (like CDs or albums), so to cast say Burning Hands from the book, you need "The Elements of Pyromancy" Volumes 1, 2 and 4; or "Basic Evocation", which has all the 1-2 level evocation spells in a many-volume set.

3.. AFter level 10, instead of gaining new Spells known from the table, you get a 6th 4th level spell at 10th level and 10 more Spell LEvels Known to use however you wish.

4. At 10th level, you have the option of making a known 1st level spell an at-will spell. If it has a duration of more than 1 minute/level, you can just have it up all day. (Rule of thumb: If the fighter's wearing armor, you have it up.) This costs a Spell LEvel Known.

5. Your spell slots for higher level spells can be used for metamagic, or broken down and used for extra low-level spell slots as you go.

[jedipotter]

Also some well thought out responses. I think I may have made some errors in my original post. My goal is not to unfairly annoy the players using older things from 1e and 2e (I never really like them anyways). I am not trying to kill a player every time we have a session at level 1, or kill players because they don't know something. I want to make the system new and dangerous. Anyways, thank you very much for the well reasoned responses, but I think some of them were a bit too harsh.

You might not that in none of my suggestions said ''kill the characters''. My suggestions just make the game not so nerf safe. And the threat of character death makes the not so safe. In 3E a character would jump into a snake pit and risk the ''oh no damage to my dex!'', but in 2E they would be very unlikely to risk death by doing that.

If you make magic not so easy, that has a huge effect on the power gap. For example:System Shock-if you change for form the strain might kill you. That really slows down any changes in form. Even if you make it 1 in 20 chance, it will happen eventualy. But you can even tone it down to 'stunnned for 1 round a spell level' or such. Also Ye Old Polymorph had you drop and loose your items. And that was very effective on keeping characters in one shape(you could polymorph into a bird and fly away...but drop and loose your magic items like your belt of battle).

[koboldish]

Ah. I don't think I read your earlier post as closely as I should have. Do you know where I could legally find the spell descriptions from 2nd edition?

[Prime32]

Hello Playgrounders!
Does everyone remember their first few D&D sessions? Where every monster was something special, magic was actually interesting, combat was actually dangerous, and you were happy playing your straight classed rogue or fighter whilst battling kobolds, goblins, dire rats, and other such fearsome beasts? Those were probably my favorite experiences playing D&D. Now, as opposed to a roleplaying game, my group seems to have turned it into a simulator where you throw numbers at things and can buy magic items on every street corner. I'd like some suggestions for bringing back that old feelings (just like AD&D Sword and Sorcery!), encouraging roleplaying, and hopefully some rules for 3.5 character creation that prevent too much optimization. Try looking at systems like FATE. There are (almost) no numbers, just "aspects" that describe characters and places, meaning your combat effectiveness depends entirely on roleplaying and creativity. Magic items aren't really a thing unless built into your character concept.

I hear Dungeon World is good too, but I don't know much about it.

[koboldish]

It's not really that I don't like numbers and dice (I love them!), it's just that too much system mastery (in my group) prevents roleplaying. We all like the d20 system, it just has a few things we want to change.

[Ortesk]

Well ive played in no magic items games, it only makes the casters that much better. I've played in grueling games of death, and again it made the casters better. Now why dont you not try for making every encounter mind numbingly difficult, and make RP based encounters? Just force some RP, make it where numbers wont work to win. Its the simplest way besides rewriting dnd 3.5

[koboldish]

Well ive played in no magic items games, it only makes the casters that much better. I've played in grueling games of death, and again it made the casters better. Now why dont you not try for making every encounter mind numbingly difficult, and make RP based encounters? Just force some RP, make it where numbers wont work to win. Its the simplest way besides rewriting dnd 3.5

Forcing RP isn't really the problem. The goal is not to remove numbers, but to create some rule fixes for a specific flavor of game. I specifically posted a few things on re-doing the magic system and shrinking the power gap between mages and mundanes. Thank you for your reply though.


Edit: First of all, I would like to thank everyone for all of their great and helpful responses! I will be using a few rule fixes, starting with Rich Burlews diplomacy fix. Could people post some links to what they think are the best magic and mundane class fixes? Thanks! (None of this really fits with the post, but I didn't want to have 2 posts in a row.)

[Grod_The_Giant]

I've done a few things (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=275054), I have... boosts to mundanes, hits to casters.

[koboldish]

Great! A lot of those look nice. I think I may want to add a few new classes, and then I'll look for a couple of ways to make it work with fewer magic items.


Edit: I'm still looking for tier 1 and a few tier 2 spellcasting fixes. I think I want a mana based system, and a few ways to limit full caster's power.
Edit 1-2: What if it just became a lot harder and more expensive for wizards to learn new spells? That makes them lose most of their edge, and easy bake wizard is pretty easy to ban. Sorcerer can be left mostly alone. Cleric and Druid fixes, though...

Edit 2: Yeah... I'm not that good at homebrew. Do you think I could get a few suggestions for low level monster rewrites?

[nedz]

Old School eh ?

Well lets fix the Fighter et al.

Levels in non full BAB classes have Con HP bonus capped at +2
Only levels in full BAB classes gain BAB which contribute to getting iteratives and iteratives do not suffer cumulative -5
General feat slots cannot be spent on [Fighter] feats
Weapon Specialisation gets you an extra iterative


OK lets fix Fireball next

Damage is uncapped
Only Monk gets Evasion, and that comes online at level 8. No Rings of Evasion either


Various other spells get fixed
Haste: Ages you a year
Wish: Granted by the nearest power, no safe options
Polymorph: You just get movement modes and respiration, oh and appearance
etc. (There's a few more of these, I just can't recall them all)

Also

No cantrips or orisons
No bonus spells from stats
No casting defensively

[johnbragg]

Only levels in full BAB classes gain BAB which contribute to getting iteratives and iteratives do not suffer cumulative -5

The "full BAB for iterative attacks" would be easy to implement, and would be a Nice Thing That Mundanes Could Have. Excluding classes is a little tougher due to easy multiclassing. The arcane casters aren't going to do anything with a second attack anyway, and I don't think we'd begrudge the Rogue-types a second Sneak Attack. The problem is CoDzilla.

Maybe rule that you get an extra attack for every six levels in mundane classes?

Weapon Specialisation gets you an extra iterative
Was that 1st edition? I only remember the +1 hit/+2 damage. Or was I building Rangers with 3 attacks per round at first level?

Or did 2nd edition have the 3 attacks/2 rounds thing for weapon specialists?

[nedz]

Well no iteratives for CoDzilla, since neither Cleric nor Druid is full BAB. I agree it does shaft Rogues, but it was always so.

Fighter types got an extra half an attack every 6 levels. Weapon Specialisation (part of the proficiency system) bumped that by half an attack.

Gary was always adamant, in his writings, that other classes shouldn't steal the Fighter's toys. By Fighter types we mean Fighter, Paladin, Ranger etc.

[johnbragg]

Well no iteratives for CoDzilla, since neither Cleric nor Druid is full BAB. I agree it does shaft Rogues, but it was always so.

Fighter types got an extra half an attack every 6 levels. Weapon Specialisation (part of the proficiency system) bumped that by half an attack.

Gary was always adamant, in his writings, that other classes shouldn't steal the Fighter's toys. By Fighter types we mean Fighter, Paladin, Ranger etc.

If we're just talking about the details of kicking it Old School, then Rogues get nothing and like it. If we're talking caster/mundane balance, then I think Rogues should probably get the iterative attack. "6 mundane class levels" mean they get extra attacks a little early, but I'd rather give it to them early than go back to them not having it. Rogues are Mundanes too, and Mundanes CAN Have Nice Things.

[Blueiji]

My very first D&D character was a Necropolitan Fire Elf Domain Generalist Wizard, so no, not really.

Elven Wizard 1/Fighter 1/Rogue 1. :smallbiggrin:

[koboldish]

Sorry, I've been away for a few days. Anyways, I had a quick though. What does everyone think about restricting races in the game world? A lot of cheese comes out of obscure races like silverbrow human for DFI, so I feel like a lot could be done with it. Any suggestions?

[Octopus Jack]

For the old school 'feel' I have run a 'quick n dirty' style game several times, kept the rules light and fast and done it especially for new players who want instant action or when we were camping and didn't have many sourcebooks available. The rules I enforced were:

3d6 for stats, in order
level one start
roll for hp at 1
death at 0

Oddly enough post 1st level people rarely died and one player managed to get a character who had a max of 1 hp threw most of a dungeon.

The first player died through kicking a trapped door in despite being a rogue with trapfinding skills and one player managed to keep the same character throughout the entire thing where the game managed to evolve into a stangely deeply complex political plot with open war, lots of backstabbing, hatred of a pair of healers for charging the party for their services, explosive beer, more backstabbing, ogrelympics, 'diplomacy', kobold management, an Int 4 Ranger and lots of brewing.

Then again these were people with little-no system mastery and knowledge so they were less inclined to build mechanically good characters and more of things that they thought would be fun. From a more mechanical perspective and with a more experienced group a lot of fantastic suggestions have been made of which I have pretty much nothing to add. :smallbiggrin:

[koboldish]

Octopus, that actually seems like it would be a lot of fun :smallbiggrin:. I'm looking for some fixes for a longer running game though. Anyways, on the subject of races: Is there anything else that actually needs to be in the game besides PH races and MM races? I think I'm going to get rid of psionics, but I haven't decided yet.

[Stux]

Just sticking to core races fine is fine in my opinion. If people are set on another race for RP reasons then I would hear their case. What can be nice for a fluff twist is to allow a couple of other races chosen by you that are of specific relevance to your campaign setting, this makes the race selection a little more colourful. What you can also do is type up a short paragraph about how each allowed race sits in your campaign setting, where they generally live, how other races view them etc. This added fluff encourages players to make choices for RP reasons rather than optimisation reasons. Indeed a theoretically sub-optimal race can become a decent choice if it opens up RP possibilities specific to what is happening in your world.

As for Psionics, I like the mechanics, but they do feel a little awkward to me set alongside normal casters. I'd say talk to your group about whether they are interested in Psionics at all, which may reveal the issue as moot. Alternatively if a player really wants to play psionics, maybe write it in to your campaign in some way. Perhaps there was some event in your setting's history that led to mutations resulting in psionic power, which made all the wizards pretty edgy. Perhaps wizards are a powerful influence in the major civilisation and those with psionic powers are persecuted by the establishment. There are a lot of possiblities to spice it up a little.

[koboldish]

Very nice points once again! I'm still open to plenty of suggestions, mostly on rewriting monsters, but I think I've gotten a lot of stuff so far. Thanks a ton for everyone's contributions! I will be very interested to see how this works.