Himbo_Jones
Explorer
So I'm a (very) recent convert to A5E and have been filling up quite a bit of my free time over the past couple of days with reading through the A5ESRD and fiddling about on a5e.tools while trying to plan out a campaign. However, I have a few uncertainties with the structure of my campaign and I was wondering if y'all could offer some advice on the matter(s)~
Characters Without Classes. The main thread of my campaign is heavily inspired by a book series from Seanan McGuire called Wayward Children which centers around a boarding house that takes in children who have all been whisked away to fantastic worlds (think Wonderland, Oz, Narnia, etc.) and, upon their return, are struggling to adjust to the doldrums of mundane life. Admittedly, I'm taking more inspiration from the Chronicles of Narnia side of things, because the inciting incident in the campaign is when the main characters' (all of whom are siblings and in their early to mid twenties) are invited by their strange yet wealthy uncle to spend a year living in his countryside manor. Perhaps he entices them by promising to fund their university schooling (the setting I am aiming for is an imagined world that has all the trappings of Victorian/Edwardian-era England), afford them connections in a trade, or help them afford a house in the city.
In any matter, while there, the characters are given free reign of the manor and its grounds and while exploring they will happen upon not just one hidden world, but several, all tucked away in a variety of strange and interesting places (think not just a wardrobe, but in a particular book in the library which shakes whenever they go near, or under the board of that one creaky step in the stairwell). These worlds all have some quirk about them and the characters will be given a certain amount of time that they can remain in the world before they must return. Then, when they are back in the manor, the worlds will have a certain "cooldown" period before they can be entered again (and I'm toying around with the idea of rolling dice to determine how much time passes in the players' absence), incentivizing the players to explore more of the manor to perhaps discover more worlds or figure out the secrets of why their uncle has so many worlds hidden throughout his house.
All of this is to say that I am curious what to do for the characters' classes while they are at the manor. When the players enter a world, I will select from a pool of characters they've all made ahead of time and, in this way, the characters will be playing different classes in each world. But during the in-between times, I am not sure what to do. I do have plans for there to be some exploration of the manor and the immediate grounds without, some old ruins to poke through (and perhaps some baddies to fight), and a number of characters to meet and interact with that will help them learn more about the origins of all these alternate worlds should they choose. With all that said, I am wondering if there is some way to do a "generic" class for the players in the manor, maybe with the ability to draw a little upon their experiences from the worlds?
Overall, I'm not sure how to accomplish this in a smooth way, so if anyone can offer some suggestions, I am all ears!
Resting and Havens. I like that A5E has added a little extra oomph in terms of danger with the fatigue and strife mechanics, necessitating a safe haven for resting to remove these nasty conditions. However, I am noticing an absence of any Gritty Realism-style resting rules. In the past I've used a version of these rules in combination with a set of homebrewed safe haven rules (the ones that became popular on the 5e subreddit a little over a year or so ago) in my O5E games as a way to enhance the exploration pillar and fit in more encounters per long rest and it all worked beautifully, in my opinion, to encourage my players to stock up before exploring, tread carefully, think tactically, and to rely more on martial classes and not just rally around the wizard who can just burn all of their spell slots in every encounter to effectively wipe things off the map with the confidence that another long rest was right around the corner.
At a glance, it doesn't seem like implementing that style of play would cause too much friction in A5E, but I am not sure. I like that style of play, but I don't want to clash too much with the system itself, so if anyone who has maybe tried this before could give me an idea of what type of ramifications this might cause, I'd appreciate it! I have also seen talk that A5E characters tend to be a little sturdier than their 5E counterparts, making the CR encounter design system a touch trickier. My inclination is to believe that giving them fewer long rests might smooth this out, but I am also afraid it could lead to a death spiral if I'm not careful, and while I'm generally alright with letting PC death happen, I don't want to punish my players for my inability to design the campaign properly, you know?
PC Death. Speaking of death, I'm just not sure how to handle it in this sort of campaign. I certainly plan to include and design challenging encounters (both of the exploration and combat variety) that my players will have to go up against, and while I know that my players are amenable to the idea of retreating and regrouping, I also know how easily a death spiral can occur with an unlucky set of rolls. And if that happens, I honestly am at a loss for how to handle it.
They will, most likely, be in another world when they are engaging with the sort of challenges that could lead to death. But when that occurs, I don't know how to go about it because if I have the character just expelled from the world, then that puts the others in a difficult place of feeling obligated to return to the manor perhaps before they are ready so that the party isn't permanently split up or anything. But I also don't want to remove any threat of death by making it easy to mitigate or taking it easy on the players because I'm trying to avoid this sort of split, but that sort of cheapens everything a little, doesn't it?
Ideally, I'd like a way to impose death on the PCs that is just punishing enough that the players are still compelled to avoid it without making it so punishing that it completely grinds the momentum of the game to a halt.
Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing what suggestions you all might have!
Cheers,
Himbo Jones
Characters Without Classes. The main thread of my campaign is heavily inspired by a book series from Seanan McGuire called Wayward Children which centers around a boarding house that takes in children who have all been whisked away to fantastic worlds (think Wonderland, Oz, Narnia, etc.) and, upon their return, are struggling to adjust to the doldrums of mundane life. Admittedly, I'm taking more inspiration from the Chronicles of Narnia side of things, because the inciting incident in the campaign is when the main characters' (all of whom are siblings and in their early to mid twenties) are invited by their strange yet wealthy uncle to spend a year living in his countryside manor. Perhaps he entices them by promising to fund their university schooling (the setting I am aiming for is an imagined world that has all the trappings of Victorian/Edwardian-era England), afford them connections in a trade, or help them afford a house in the city.
In any matter, while there, the characters are given free reign of the manor and its grounds and while exploring they will happen upon not just one hidden world, but several, all tucked away in a variety of strange and interesting places (think not just a wardrobe, but in a particular book in the library which shakes whenever they go near, or under the board of that one creaky step in the stairwell). These worlds all have some quirk about them and the characters will be given a certain amount of time that they can remain in the world before they must return. Then, when they are back in the manor, the worlds will have a certain "cooldown" period before they can be entered again (and I'm toying around with the idea of rolling dice to determine how much time passes in the players' absence), incentivizing the players to explore more of the manor to perhaps discover more worlds or figure out the secrets of why their uncle has so many worlds hidden throughout his house.
All of this is to say that I am curious what to do for the characters' classes while they are at the manor. When the players enter a world, I will select from a pool of characters they've all made ahead of time and, in this way, the characters will be playing different classes in each world. But during the in-between times, I am not sure what to do. I do have plans for there to be some exploration of the manor and the immediate grounds without, some old ruins to poke through (and perhaps some baddies to fight), and a number of characters to meet and interact with that will help them learn more about the origins of all these alternate worlds should they choose. With all that said, I am wondering if there is some way to do a "generic" class for the players in the manor, maybe with the ability to draw a little upon their experiences from the worlds?
Overall, I'm not sure how to accomplish this in a smooth way, so if anyone can offer some suggestions, I am all ears!
Resting and Havens. I like that A5E has added a little extra oomph in terms of danger with the fatigue and strife mechanics, necessitating a safe haven for resting to remove these nasty conditions. However, I am noticing an absence of any Gritty Realism-style resting rules. In the past I've used a version of these rules in combination with a set of homebrewed safe haven rules (the ones that became popular on the 5e subreddit a little over a year or so ago) in my O5E games as a way to enhance the exploration pillar and fit in more encounters per long rest and it all worked beautifully, in my opinion, to encourage my players to stock up before exploring, tread carefully, think tactically, and to rely more on martial classes and not just rally around the wizard who can just burn all of their spell slots in every encounter to effectively wipe things off the map with the confidence that another long rest was right around the corner.
At a glance, it doesn't seem like implementing that style of play would cause too much friction in A5E, but I am not sure. I like that style of play, but I don't want to clash too much with the system itself, so if anyone who has maybe tried this before could give me an idea of what type of ramifications this might cause, I'd appreciate it! I have also seen talk that A5E characters tend to be a little sturdier than their 5E counterparts, making the CR encounter design system a touch trickier. My inclination is to believe that giving them fewer long rests might smooth this out, but I am also afraid it could lead to a death spiral if I'm not careful, and while I'm generally alright with letting PC death happen, I don't want to punish my players for my inability to design the campaign properly, you know?
PC Death. Speaking of death, I'm just not sure how to handle it in this sort of campaign. I certainly plan to include and design challenging encounters (both of the exploration and combat variety) that my players will have to go up against, and while I know that my players are amenable to the idea of retreating and regrouping, I also know how easily a death spiral can occur with an unlucky set of rolls. And if that happens, I honestly am at a loss for how to handle it.
They will, most likely, be in another world when they are engaging with the sort of challenges that could lead to death. But when that occurs, I don't know how to go about it because if I have the character just expelled from the world, then that puts the others in a difficult place of feeling obligated to return to the manor perhaps before they are ready so that the party isn't permanently split up or anything. But I also don't want to remove any threat of death by making it easy to mitigate or taking it easy on the players because I'm trying to avoid this sort of split, but that sort of cheapens everything a little, doesn't it?
Ideally, I'd like a way to impose death on the PCs that is just punishing enough that the players are still compelled to avoid it without making it so punishing that it completely grinds the momentum of the game to a halt.
Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing what suggestions you all might have!
Cheers,
Himbo Jones
