D&D 5e Lite

Whilst preparing for Dungeon of the Mad Mage, I’ve been reading some osr stuff. One of the benefits of this playstyle is its simplicity, and I’ve been thinking about translating that quality to 5e.

So recently when I had to run a last-minute one-shot session of Tomb of Annihilation, I decided to give it a shot. It worked out really well!

Here’s the pitch: you want to play D&D with your friends, who incidentally have never played before, and you’ve got nothing prepared. No characters, no lists of spells, no rulebooks and magic items, nothing. What do you do?

Well first off you’ll need a dungeon. I can’t help you with that. Grab one on your phone from the DMSGuild.

Once you have that though, you’re done. Everything else you improvise! The core of D&D is beautifully elegant. Gameplay amounts to this:

• The DM describes the situation
• A player describes what they want their character to do
• The DM determines:
• How difficult the task is
• Which character stat is relevant
• Whether the character has relevant training based on race, class and background.
• The player rolls a d20, adds their ability modifier, and adds proficiency bonus if applicable.
• If the result equals or beats the difficulty then the action succeeds!

That’s it – that’s the whole game.

Well not really. Of course there’s more to the game than that. Hit points, armor class, special abilities, magic. But here’s what you do – you use what you remember and improvise the rest. How many sneak attack dice does a rogue get? I dunno, Dex modifier? How many hit points can a paladin heal with Lay on Hands? I dunno, level times hit die? How many zombies can a cleric turn with turn undead? I dunno, hit die plus Wisdom modifier? Etcetera!

This way of playing is liberating! And not just for you but for your players as well. When a character is just 6 stats and some hit points there is all the more room for creativity.

Example Rulings

Here are the rules I used when running an improvised game. Don’t take these as gospel, the idea is that you do what feels good to you, not what felt good to me one night when half my players didn’t show up!

In general: I gave special powers limited uses per day. That way, if something turns out to be too weak or too strong, you can tweak those limits.

Character creation

• Roll 3d6 six times and assign the values to Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha in any order.
• Add racial bonuses, usually a +2 here and a +1 there.
• For each level, roll your hit die and add your Con bonus. The total is your hit points.

Classes

Fighting Man (lvl 5)

Hit die: d12

Proficiency modifier: +3

Attacks per turn: 2

Armor class: 15

Weapon: Magic Greatsword +1 (d12)

Paladin (lvl 5)

Hid die: d10

Proficiency modifier: +3

Attacks: 2

Armor class: 15

Weapon: Spear (d8)

Smite: Can be used a number of times per day equal to Cha bonus. Deals an extra 2d8 + Cha bonus damage.

Lay on hands: Can be used once on each character. Heals 2d8 + Cha bonus.

Detect Good and Evil: Unlimited but costs 10 minutes (ie: a random encounter roll).

Cleric (lvl 5)

Hit die: d8

Proficiency modifier: +3

Attacks: 1

Armor class: 15/17 (shield)

Weapon: Hammer (d8)

Pray: Succeed on a DC13 Religion check to ask your god for aid. The DM determines in what way this divine aid manifests. Examples:

• “Light!”: a magical light pierces magical darkness.
• “Smite!”: holy spirits hit all nearby enemies for d8 + Wis bonus.
• “Heal!”: restores 1d8 + Wis bonus hit points.
• “Revive!”: a comrade is brought back to life with Wis bonus hit points – I’d probably increase the DC by two steps after this one.
• “Repel!”: causes 1d8 + Wis bonus undead enemies to flee.

After spending an action to pray, regardless of whether it was successful or not, the DC increases by 1.

Races

Dwarf

Con +2, Wis +1

Proficient at recognizing weak spots in structures, intuiting depth and direction.

Darkvision.

Dragonborn

Str +2, Cha +1

Firebreath: 3d6, then 2d6, then 1d6.

Human

All +1

Magic

I didn’t have spellcasters in my party but if I had, this is what I’d have done:

Magic User (lvl 5)

Hit die: d6

Proficiency modifier: +3

Attacks: 1

Armor class: 10

Weapon: Staff (d6)

A magic user can attempt to cast a spell a number of times per day equal to their level + Int bonus. A spell functions similar to the wish spell in that any effect that the magic user can imagine can be cast as a spell. After describing the spell to the DM, the DM sets the difficulty based on these guidelines:

The magic user rolls an Arcana check and on a success the spell takes effect. I’d probably also add that if the target is missed by 10 or more a magical mishap occurs, just for fun.

Higher Levels

You could turn this into a long term system. I’d make sure everybody gets something at each level, without reverting back to full 5e. The things I’d include (in addition to hit points) are:

• Ability score increase
• Proficiency increase
• Extra attack or class ability improvement (lowered prayer/spell DC, more/better smites, etc.)

It’d probably be fine to just cycle through these three with the ability score increase spread out over two levels:

As for XP, it’s kinda messed up in 5th. This will sort of work: start at 250 XP to level up and double until you hit 20k. Then arbitrarily start adding 5k per level around 14.

XP needed to reach level

Final Word

To reiterate: don’t take these as gospel. I’ve only playtested them in a single session which was designed to kill the characters anyway. They’re probably not very balanced. But that’s the point. When nothing is balanced, then balance ceases to be meaningful or even desirable. And we threw balance out of the window when we started rolling 3d6 for stats.