I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
I’d say it’s more of a 5e & PF problem, PF2e is much better about general rules that apply to most cases, with player abilities adding additional things on top.
But yeah, generally if you want to play 5e OSR is a better choice.
To be honest, I found 5e is so massively oversimplified it’s boring. Maybe I didn’t play enough to comb through books of niche rules or something.
I dunno. Every time I try to make a fighter. I have problems with the rules. Like, I wanna suplex an orc. What do I even roll?
I don’t think that’s in the rules. Like, at all. The unarmed fighting style allows you to deal damage to a creature grappled by you, the grappler feat allows you to pin a creature you grappled (which is just fucking useless since both of you become restrained), and you can make a shove attack to push a creature prone. But there’s nothing in the basic rules about an unarmed attack that deals damage and knocks the target prone.
The alternatives for flavoring are:
- Battle Master fighter, trip attack. Technically it must be a weapon attack, but if you have the unarmed fighting style, a natural weapon, or are a monk multiclass, I’d be inclined to allow it.
- Open Hand monk, Open Hand technique. This is probably the best alternative that is 100% RAW.
Of course a more permissive DM (like me) could allow you to make a fairly hard athletics check once you have grappled the orc and have two free hands, then resolve it as a 2d6+STR bludgeoning damage attack.
That’s actually really clean ways to handle it. I am impressed. Any chance you would have ideas about more basic wrestling moves? Choke hold? Arm bar?
I’m not a wrestler or a wrestling fan, so no clue for most of them. Bars and holds… well, I think the automatic damage to the grappled creature that is dealt with the unarmed fighting style is meant to symbolize damage dealt by various holds and bars, so that would apply here.
Airway chokes are extremely impractical in D&D; every creature can hold their breath for a number of minutes equal to their CON modifier with a minimum of 1, and that means 10 rounds. I wouldn’t bother trying to simulate that, just deal the 1d4 damage and move on.
Blood choke… well, that’s a different matter entirely. I would most definitely require the grappler feat and the unarmed fighting style for this. Say, you forgo the automatic damage to the grappled target and instead force the target to make a CON save, DC = 8 + your PB + your STR mod. If the target fails, it gains a level of temporary exhaustion (that lasts while you’re choking it), if it fails by more than 5 then it gains 2 levels, and if it hits 6 levels it falls unconscious.
Absolutely. When I read the way a round is handled in 5e my first impression was: How many movie and book heroes signature move do they want to cover with this jungle of rules? “Oh, I’ve seen X in movie Y doing Z! That was awesome, and I want my character doing that move in D&D, too!”
I disagree for 5e about that. In fact many 5e players complain about the lack of specific rules (but IMO they merely want to play pf2e without admitting it).
To me, the problem of 5e is the community first, and lack of specialty second. 5e does a bot of everything. So when you’re looking for osr, you will miss many osr feature and many things are too specific or bloated. If you’re looking for rule heavy ruleset, it’ll be way too light and dm dependent.
they merely want to play pf2e without admitting it
In my case, I wanted to play pf2e without knowing it. I’ve been running a DnD curse of Strahd campaign, and I’ve been getting more and and more irritated at long rests, challenge ratings being meaningless, and martial vs spellcaster balance. Pf2e solves all those issues, and I didn’t even realize till I sat down to do prep for a campaign.
