Questions from AD&D to 5E

[Malfarian]

*NEW Questions added in bold, my continued thanks!*
Thank you in advance for your time. There are many threads similar to this one and there is the pinned post with questions, but my patience and search fu is not what I need it to be right now, apologies in advance for duplications (mods delete if needed).

I last played D&D back in the age of 2nd ed (Well in reality I faked some 3.5 but I played it like AD&D).

I'm reading the PHB now and I'm a little confused on some things, I'd appreciate any assistance,

:smallbiggrin: Q1) Does removing the long rest give you back all your HP unbalance the game?
Why am I asking? - Long Rests give you back all of your hit points. This seems like a really big change to me, and I'm curious about the motivations/balance to this. As a DM I'd often stress the party heavily, sometimes it'd be kill the cleric, etc and the need to keep those precious HPs until returning to safety was critical, now you just sleep 8 hours and viola you're better. I realize that mages and clerics get their abilities refereshed after a rest, so why don't fighters? is a valid question, this could simply be preference.

:smallbiggrin: Q2) Would letting the player after a Long Rest roll any remaining HD for HP be too weak? Then refresh their Hit Dice?

:smallbiggrin: Q3) Can you gain Advantage twice and Disadvantage once and end up with Advantage? It reads like any Advantage cancels out any Disadvantage

:smallbiggrin: Q4) Dying is very different now, seems very "nice to players". In my day it was get to -10 and you expire, now you need to get to your negative hit points correct? So if I have 100 hit points, I have to get to -100 to die OR lose 3 saves, whichever comes first?

NEW Qs
D&D now feels more "binary" to me, as in a Ranger can't be surprised in his native environment, rather than he receives a large bonus to being in his native environment.
Q5) How well does these "always/never" class abilitites play now?

Thank you all, it's been over 20 years and I'm trying to learn the new system, it's not as "technically" well written as it used to be, as in there used to be more examples, but overall 5E seems a drastic improvement on AD&D

Thanks,
Mal

[lunaticfringe]

I mean you can do whatever you feel is necessary/whatever you want to the system. The DMG encourages this and the PHB hints that DMs/Games will vary. But...

I would play in and/or run a game or to using RAW before making changes. 5e is pretty lethal as is and low level is absurd. The Lost Mines introductory adventure was rough. The first part every one in the party except the Fighter was downed and made Death Saves. Opening fight the Mooks won Initiative and the first arrow volley downed the Wizard and nearly dropped my Druid.

[Laurefindel]

Q1) Does removing the long rest give you back all your HP unbalance the game?
Why am I asking? - Long Rests give you back all of your hit points. This seems like a really big change to me, and I'm curious about the motivations/balance to this. As a DM I'd often stress the party heavily, sometimes it'd be kill the cleric, etc and the need to keep those precious HPs until returning to safety was critical, now you just sleep 8 hours and viola you're better. I realize that mages and clerics get their abilities refereshed after a rest, so why don't fighters? is a valid question, this could simply be preference.

Q2) Would letting the player after a Long Rest roll any remaining HD for HP be too weak? Then refresh their Hit Dice?

The latter is a legit variant rule proposed in the DMG: long rest don't refresh hit points, but players can spend hit dice to heal as normal.



Q3) Can you gain Advantage twice and Disadvantage once and end up with Advantage? It reads like any Advantage cancels out any Disadvantage

not by RAW. advantage and disadvantage don't stack, but cancel each other out.


Q4) Dying is very different now, seems very "nice to players". In my day it was get to -10 and you expire, now you need to get to your negative hit points correct? So if I have 100 hit points, I have to get to -100 to die OR lose 3 saves, whichever comes first?

There is no such things as "negative hp" in 5e, but if excess damage (from a single blow) equals your total hp or more, you die outright. In other words, this becomes very unlikely as soon as you get 25hp or so. Otherwise yes, 5e is more "death-friendly" than AD&D.

[ad_hoc]

Q1) Does removing the long rest give you back all your HP unbalance the game?
Why am I asking? - Long Rests give you back all of your hit points. This seems like a really big change to me, and I'm curious about the motivations/balance to this. As a DM I'd often stress the party heavily, sometimes it'd be kill the cleric, etc and the need to keep those precious HPs until returning to safety was critical, now you just sleep 8 hours and viola you're better. I realize that mages and clerics get their abilities refereshed after a rest, so why don't fighters? is a valid question, this could simply be preference.

A long rest resets the tension. It does so in AD&D too it's just that you needed spellcasters, especially a Cleric. In 5e if no one is a Cleric the games plays just fine.

The party still needs safety to rest 8 hours. Also most missions are going to be time sensitive in one way or another. Either there is an actual ticking clock or monsters will move in and replace ones killed, etc.


Q2) Would letting the player after a Long Rest roll any remaining HD for HP be too weak? Then refresh their Hit Dice?

I just don't see the point. A long rest already resets the tension. This is where short rests come in. Short rests take the role of the old long rest. The difference is that spellcasters really need to be careful about wasting spell slots. This is good because spellcasters are very powerful now. They have more HP and AC, and they require the same experience to level up.


Q3) Can you gain Advantage twice and Disadvantage once and end up with Advantage? It reads like any Advantage cancels out any Disadvantage

No. If you have any disadvantage you can never have advantage. If you have 3 cases of advantage and 1 case of disadvantage then you roll normally.



Q4) Dying is very different now, seems very "nice to players". In my day it was get to -10 and you expire, now you need to get to your negative hit points correct? So if I have 100 hit points, I have to get to -100 to die OR lose 3 saves, whichever comes first?

There are no negative HP. If you had 10 HP total and you take 20 dmg in one attack you will die. However, if you took 19 dmg you would just go to 0 HP. If you take any damage after that you suffer a death saving throw. If you take a crit after that you take 2, and melee attacks autmatically crit against you.

It's true that you no longer need to have 5 characters on hand to replace them as they die, but character death still happens. Raise Dead is easier than it used to be too.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I realize that mages and clerics get their abilities refreshed after a rest, so why don't fighters? is a valid question, this could simply be preference.

Q2) Would letting the player after a Long Rest roll any remaining HD for HP be too weak? Then refresh their Hit Dice?

I'm pretty sure the fighter's abilities refresh on a rest as well. They just don't have so many limited-use abilities in the first place.

Overall, changing the way resting works won't break the game. There are a couple of 'gritty realism', 'slow healing' and 'long-long rest' rule variants kicking around, including in the DMG itself, so I'd advise you look at those if that's your thing.


Q3) Can you gain Advantage twice and Disadvantage once and end up with Advantage? It reads like any Advantage cancels out any Disadvantage

You read it right. Advantage and Disadvantage don't stack; if you have any amount of both they cancel out. It's nice and simple, and means that rogues can't stack up lots of advantage (which they need for Sneak Attack).


Q4) Dying is very different now, seems very "nice to players". In my day it was get to -10 and you expire, now you need to get to your negative hit points correct? So if I have 100 hit points, I have to get to -100 to die OR lose 3 saves, whichever comes first?

There are no negative HP anymore. The -100 thing is for instant death and only counts for the hit that drops you. Any hits you take after that count as failed death saves.

Edit: *shakes fist at ninjas*

[Hrugner]

Removing the long rest would place a downtime burden on healing casters encouraging them to under perform in encounters in order to aid in recovery later. It would also increase the incentive for multiclassing with warlock in order to generate more downtime recovery. It won't unbalance the game, but you may end up with people avoiding playing healing capable classes to avoid being responsible for supporting the less than exciting recovery period.

Advantage and disadvantage don't stack. If you have both, you get neither no matter how many more you have of one. Obviously this is up to the DM, and I doubt many players would complain if you decided that a handful of disadvantages was enough to ignore that one source of advantage.

Also as was said, you never go to negative hitpoints. Once you hit zero you start making death saves, dying after three failures or stabilizing after three successes. At any time, one point of healing will bring you back up.

[Malfarian]

I mean you can do whatever you feel is necessary/whatever you want to the system. The DMG encourages this and the PHB hints that DMs/Games will vary. But...

I would play in and/or run a game or to using RAW before making changes. 5e is pretty lethal as is and low level is absurd. The Lost Mines introductory adventure was rough. The first part every one in the party except the Fighter was downed and made Death Saves. Opening fight the Mooks won Initiative and the first arrow volley downed the Wizard and nearly dropped my Druid.

Thank you for your feedback, I'm not bothered by full-rest at low levels, I'm bothered by it when you're at 10th level.

[Malfarian]

Thank you for the excellent feedback all, very useful!

I need to re-read clearly some sections of the PHB. I've ordered the DMG, it'll arrive shortly.

[Mandragola]

I would very strongly suggest playing the game straight out of the book to start with before messing with it. 5e might not work how you expect, but it does work. The game categorically does allow you to mess with it as a DM, but you learn how it works before altering it. You may well find that you don't want to change much at all.

Messing about with reset times just for old times sake isn't something I'd do. Abilities are balanced around the game system they are designed for, so modifying the game system will radically alter the balance between characters and monsters.

For example, if you like you could make fighter abilities, which are balanced around short rest resets, reset on long rests. That would have the effect of making fighters a lot less powerful than spellcasters. If would also make fighters less interesting, because they got to use their features less often. Is that what you want? All that would happen is that fighters would be champions or Eldritch knights instead of the nerfed battlemaster - or they'd play something else instead. Instead, the DMG suggests an option of having a short rest take 8 hours and a long rest take a week, so that everyone suffers equally.

And the game is not easy. While characters can heal themselves quite well out of combat, in-combat healing is very difficult, because the damage that monsters do has gone up. You can't expect to out-heal the damage monsters do, or to get your AC high enough that you can't be hit. The players will take a lot of damage unless they can prevent it by crowd controlling the monsters - or killing them.

Most people that I've spoken to see these changes as positive. And one of the biggest positives is that you don't have a player who only ever heals. Indeed, even clerics are often seen casting real spells - not just healing spells. It's a whole new world.

The overall effect of this is that fights are just as deadly but there's less out of combat book-keeping. And that's awesome.

[Naanomi]

As someone who always enjoyed playing 'the healer', I'm not sad to see it disappear as a required role in a party

[Malfarian]

I would very strongly suggest playing the game straight out of the book to start with before messing with it. 5e might not work how you expect, but it does work. The game categorically does allow you to mess with it as a DM, but you learn how it works before altering it. You may well find that you don't want to change much at all.


Thank you for your feedback, I'll be trying it out "as is" soon. My major issue wasn't at low level, but that it seemed overly powerful at higher level, but we'll see how it goes.

Thank you,
Mal

[Tanarii]

When you get your DMG check out the rest variants on page 267. The gritty realism may suit your desires.

Personally, I've found that in a intentionally highly lethal 5e combat as war campaign, which is about as close to AD&D as you can make it, it works best if you set it as:
Gritty Realism rest Variant in cities, towns, and relatively safe borderlands travel areas.
Normal rest in dangerous wilderness and small adventure sites the players can accomplish in a day.
Epic rest variant for large dungeon crawls. (Or in one case a large battle).

Of course, your players may find switching rest modes a bit metagame-y. That's why I mostly subdivide as urban/wilderness/dungeon ... it syncs up with a natural mental transition on the part of the players anyway.

Also, be sure to read DMG Chapter 8 Running the Game it's an important chapter for a DM. Especially p235-242 Using Ability Scores section. Those are hands down the most important pages for a 5e DM to read and properly understand before running a game.

[Malifice]

Thank you for your feedback, I'm not bothered by full-rest at low levels, I'm bothered by it when you're at 10th level.

Dont be. Hit Points are 'luck, the will to live, resolve, experience, fighting skill, and health' and not 'meat'. Once you view them like that you're solid.

For a nre DM, you need to be mindful of the rest mechanic. The game expects (and fuctions best) with adventuring days [the time between long rests] of around 6-8 medium-hard encounters, with around 2-3 short rests breaking up those encounters.

I personally aim for a 6ish hard encounters/ 2 short rest meta for around 50 percent of my adventuring days. The rest are either longer or shorter, or feature more (or fewer) short rests.

[djreynolds]

The best thing is the ability to roll these hit die on short rests.

You hit the castle, breach it, and right before you bust in.... you can take a 5 minute variant on the short rest. Everyone catches their breath and checks their gear and goes.

It really depends on the campaign you are running, siege warfare... the 5 minute variant on short rest works well.

But in the dungeon I prefer the 1 hour short rest, it feels more dangerous as random monsters are roaming the halls... you might get caught.

I try as a DM to remind new players that resting is important, it is a time to rehash strategies, fix gear, mend the wounded, and get your bearings back. To mental and physically decompress.

I try to tell players... you may not get another chance to rest.

Almost every class can get something out of a short rest, not just hit die, action surge, second wind, channel divinity.

Mold the rests to fit your story, its your game

[Malfarian]

Dont be. Hit Points are 'luck, the will to live, resolve, experience, fighting skill, and health' and not 'meat'. Once you view them like that you're solid.

For a nre DM, you need to be mindful of the rest mechanic. The game expects (and fuctions best) with adventuring days [the time between long rests] of around 6-8 medium-hard encounters, with around 2-3 short rests breaking up those encounters.

I personally aim for a 6ish hard encounters/ 2 short rest meta for around 50 percent of my adventuring days. The rest are either longer or shorter, or feature more (or fewer) short rests.

Before I begin, I recognize that I'm arguing for realism in a game with magic and dragons.

The reason I'm bothered, in principle, is that getting hurt is no big deal now (esp if your Cleric/healer is not around). Imagine OOTS instant healing after a few strips without magic, it would seem odd (yet we don't see anyone hurt for any extended period either).

I've been a game master for years, mostly in the White Wolf & Gurps worlds, where injuries could last a long time and really matter. Here it feels "off" but again, I've NOT played it and I will try it and see how it feels.

Thanks again for the feedback,
Mal

[Malifice]

The reason I'm bothered, in principle, is that getting hurt is no big deal now (esp if your Cleric/healer is not around). Imagine OOTS instant healing after a few strips without magic, it would seem odd (yet we don't see anyone hurt for any extended period either).

But do they matter though? All being wounded does is force the PCs to retreat and hole up until those injuries are fixed.

In a lot of ways, grittier damage and healing rules encourage the 5 minute work day.


I've been a game master for years, mostly in the White Wolf & Gurps worlds, where injuries could last a long time and really matter. Here it feels "off" but again, I've NOT played it and I will try it and see how it feels.

You might want to try the 'gritty realism' variant from the DMG (which makes short rests = an overnight sleep, and long rests = a whole week back in town).

This also makes policing the 5 minute work day much easier, and slows everyone down. You essentially need a full weeks rest in town to 'ping' back to full HP and recover spent hit dice.