5 Cuts To 5e That Make The Game More Interesting

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated tabletop gaming chap

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TL;DR:

5e works best when players feel real pressure on their resources, but several rules quietly remove that tension. Dropping or rewriting things like Darkvision, Goodberry, huge carry limits, arcane focuses, and certain healing tools restores challenge, creativity, and the classic dungeon-crawling feel that the system was built for.

Introduction

Now then! Opinions incoming - you’ve been warned, and you’re allowed to disagree!

I know I'm gaining a bit of a reputation as someone who doesn't like 5e, but the truth of the matter is that I actually think that there's a very solid game there, it’s just hidden under layers of interdependent ill-considered bloat.

The problem isn't just that bloat adds unnecessary complications to a fairly elegant core system, but that unless the designers are willing to kill their darlings, they can end up neutering their own system with their well-intentioned unfettered ideas.

The way I see it, the core gameplay loop for D&D 5e is to repeatedly face the expeditioning party with challenges which cause them to gradually consume their limited resources, bringing them to a weakened state before hitting them with a big challenge.

That limitation is key, as it forces players to make trade offs and use their creativity to find unique ways of accomplishing things - the very facets which define the genre.

The key restrictions that the game places upon players are with inventory, spell slots, hunger, HP, and the Action Economy.

So with that in mind, given my group plays 5e more than anything else: here's the fat that I like to trim from the game to stop it from undermining itself, without unintended consequences to other sub systems:

Darkvision & The Light Cantrip

Darkvision allows a creature to see in dim light as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. A creature with darkvision sees in shades of gray rather than color in darkness and cannot see in magical darkness unless the ability specifies otherwise. The range for darkvision is often 60 feet, but can vary case to case.

The Light cantrip causes a touched object (no larger than 10 feet) to shed bright light in a 20-foot radius and dim light for an additional 20 feet for up to an hour.

Is there a more evocative image of dungeon crawling than a band of adventures cautiously exploring the haunted stone corridors of some long forgotten tomb by torchlight?

The rules for fighting or exploring in the darkness make you so much more vulnerable - imposing disadvantage on checks and attacks, or even preventing them altogether. Obviously it's something to be avoided at all costs.

It is in fact, a great problem for players to solve, so when the game hands them two zero-cost solutions in the form of the light cantrip and darkvision it's seems like the designers have just robbed the players of an interesting challenge to overcome.

Goodberry

The Goodberry spell creates ten magical berries that each restore 1 hit point and provide a day's worth of nourishment when a creature uses its action to eat one.

Whilst in theory we should be grateful that this is not a cantrip, the problem with Goodberry is that players aren't going to be using it for its rubbish health recovery properties - but more as a source of food for the whole party.

For this functionality it is incredibly over powered for the cost of one first level spell slot. All a magic user needs to do is hold one level one spell slot back per game day, which is easily done when hex or point crawling, and then cast Goodberry before bedtime to ensure the party is fed.

If your game involves any amount of wilderness exploration, you can drop any ideas you might have about them hunting and foraging for food, or balancing inventory management with rations. Those game elements are made redundant. Apologies to any Rangers…

Base Carry Capacity & Bag of holding

Your base carrying capacity in lb is your STR score multiplied by 15. The Bag of Holding grants an additional 500 lb and 64 cubic feet of storage.

Near unlimited storage space. This is possibly the worst idea for a magic item in the entire game.

As players, simply spend your vast wealth (that you can carry in near infinite amounts) in town on multiple copies of every possible thing you could ever need, and then sit back in sheer boredom as you proceed to solve every in-game problem by pulling the perfect item out of your extra dimensional, bag.

Yawn. Ditch it.

And it’s not like base carry capacity is much better, if we take the basic STR value of 10, that becomes 150 lb of carry capacity, to help you visualise that - it’s nearly 70 bags of sugar. That’s ridiculous, and even more so as you have characters invest in their STR stat above 10.

Not only do I get rid of these rules, I replace them with a much better inventory system lifted from Mausritter.

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Arcane focuses

An arcane focus replaces material spell components that do not have a listed gold cost. To cast a spell with a focus, you must hold it in one hand, which can also be used for somatic components.

Spells in D&D have one or more components which are indicated by the acronyms VSM which stand for Verbal, Somatic, and Material. Most spells have material components which in game terms reflects a balancing element - aspiring casters must have the requisite materials on their person in order to cast the spell.

Unfortunately, Arcane Focuses do away with this in most cases - allowing casters to replace the material requirement for items that ‘do not have a cost’ with the possession of a non consumable artefact representing an arcane focus.

That shattering crescendo you hear is the sound of intentionally designed internal character balance being launched through the window.

Honorable Mentions

Healing Word

Like Goodberry before it, the utility of Healing Word is not the amount of HP that it recovers, but rather for the fact that it brings someone back from death saving throws cheaply. Consider the combination of the following three elements:

• It can be cast at distance - characters do not need to be adjacent to their target.

• It can be cast as a bonus action - characters do not need to make a choice about sacrificing their main attack or restoring their ally.

• It’s a level one spell - casters have immediate access to it and as the game progresses with upcasting, have an abundance of slots with which to cast it.

As it is, I keep Healing Word in my games, and as GM I compensate by having vicious or intelligent enemies perform a “double tap”. The first attack takes a character down, and the second performs the coup de gras grâce (Ed. Thanks Dries!). I should mention that I don’t do this because I'm particularly sadistic or competitive (honest!) but rather to keep the game enjoyably challenging.

Fortunately this works for my group, but some people might find it too brutal or even ‘unfair’. In these cases, it might be worth dropping Healing Word instead.

Long Rest

Long Rest restores your character’s HP and Spell Slots to full, and often nullifies the effect of exhaustion effects and some status changes. It’s meant to represent the party recovering inbetween expeditions, however it is unfortunately frequently misused by GMs allowing the party to take a long rest every few encounters - essentially allowing them to approach nearly every challenge with the mindset of going nuclear.

It should be obvious that this undermines the vast majority of resource management, however rather than removing Long Rests from the game entirely, I ensure and introduce the following:

• Wandering monster rolls with a high percentage of hitting for when the Players want to take a rest in a place that is teeming with danger - like a dungeon. These interrupt a Long Rest and nullify the benefits.

• I house rule that for a Long Rest to provide any benefit, each character must additionally be in possession of a comfortable place to sleep (bed, bedroll, even a pile of hay) and some form of meal. That way, I’ve introduced a resource cost to the act, so even if players get away with a long rest in a dangerous area, it has still cost them valuable inventory space.

Conclusion

Have you considered the impacts of these 5e elements before, and how do you handle them? Let me know in the comments below if you think I’ve missed a trick here.

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