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Gaming Changes for 2015
Tweet Topic Started: Jan 4 2015, 12:54 PM (229 Views)
kismetrose Jan 4 2015, 12:54 PM Post #1
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Since we've recently restarted our evil campaign after a long break from D&D, I've found myself fixing things that have stuck in my craw for years but have gone unaddressed or only been half-fixed. These might not be issues for other folks but they have bothered me for various reasons, and while we are getting re-acclimated to playing, my group has been open to experimenting. Our campaign is a hybrid anyway, house-ruled from the start to suit our tastes and needs with input from everybody in the group. We've decided to get rid of the following:

Experience points that aren't used to purchase things: We've used a custom character sheet for a long time, and while redesigning it I realized that we hardly ever use the experience point section. I couldn't understand why we'd kept it at all. D&D is a game in which experience points are just a running total; they aren't used to buy abilities or anything specific, so in and of themselves, they don't do much for you. And that's just where my problems with XP started.

I know that experience points are supposed to make you feel a little more accomplished for overcoming challenges, but I'm not sure they've done that for us for years now. If you don't feel good after surviving the scenario, seeing other things unfold due to its aftermath, and getting loot, a stack of abstract points are going to do much more for you. Experience points are also supposed serve as a kind of ticking time clock, counting down to your next boost and keeping you excited, but again, this ain't our first time at the rodeo.

And you pretty much know that every X amount of sessions you're going to reach a new level, as long as you can trust your DM not to dick you around and keep you trapped. We no longer use experience points as a part of magic item creation (because that sucked anyway), and level-drain attacks drain levels, not points (and get healed up with magic later, anyway). Dividing up XP totals at the end of a session was more bookwork than anything else, something to be noted down and forgotten until it was relevant. And it was only relevant for a few minutes. So I talked it over with the group, and it's gone. I'm not sure any of us have noticed.

Long and overdone skill lists: I only spent a little time in 2nd edition D&D before moving on, but I remember the impression that non-weapon proficiencies were never what they should have been. It's like there was a desire to make non-combat skills playable, but another desire to ignore them kept the system from being streamlined. Then 3rd edition came along, unrolled a dizzying array of skills, and tied adventuring activities to them so that most folks would have to use them. Most classes didn't get enough class skills or skill points to take too many of them, and non-class skills just led to tedious bookkeeping for half of the effectiveness. There was a multiplier at first level, as well. Pathfinder fixed some things by getting rid of the mutliplier and the bookkeeping of non-class skills, as well as combining a number of skills.

But after looking at D&D 5E recently, I realized that Pathfinder didn't go far enough. There was an opportunity to condense skills further but it wasn't taken. I'm not sure how I feel yet about how 5E doles out skills to characters, but it did inspire me to finally sit down and work on the issue. I whittled our list down to 20 skills, explained them to the group without difficulty, and did it without taking functionality away. Ride checks are a function of Handle Animal. Pathfinder's narrowed list of Perform specialties was inspiring but also could have gone further, so I ran with it. Instead of having one narrow profession (like farmer), you now have a professional area like academia or agrarian activities. Perform has five major areas. There are suggested skills for each class, but no more class skills. If you put a rank in it, you received training, and you get your +3 to reflect that.

Tracking nonmagical supplies: Rations, arrows, torches. After a short time, expendable and nonmagical gear becomes an afterthought and dealing with it is another exercise in tedious record-keeping which serves little purpose, unless you are in a starvation-type scenario. We haven't played at low level for a good while now, and we probably won't do so any time soon. So we've taken on the cost of living system that lets you dole out gold per month to reflect how well you live and let that also cover minor adventuring gear. We assume that at each stop, they take time to resupply (which they do anyway). Unless it's magical ammo, there's no need to bother with it.

We haven't implemented these changes for too many sessions yet, but so far, so good.

Which long-standing aspects have you been changing in your games?
Edited by kismetrose, Jan 4 2015, 01:12 PM.
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