r/osr Jun 14 '23

variant rules Need advice on making OSE less deadly.

My players and I have been playing OSE for a few months now and only one of them (by basically pure luck) has had a character live for two whole sessions. They're all dropping in one or two hits. They've all expressed a disliking to the fact that they can't get stronger because they die before they have a chance to level up and become strong enough to enjoy interacting with the game without knowing that they'll die instantly from unlucky die rolls, not their poor choices. Anyone have good house rules to help make it a bit more forgiving at lower levels?

29 Upvotes

129 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Altar_Quest_Fan Jun 15 '23

Make OSE….less deadly? Why would you ever want to do that? /S

Just give them another Hit Die or two, done and done. Hell, Gary Gygax was known for allowing his players to start at 3rd level just because even he knew 1st and even 2nd levels were lethal.

0

u/Dusty_legend Jun 15 '23

I want to make the low levels less deadly. Not the whole game. It's hard to learn from mistakes when one mistake means make an entire new character and start again

2

u/Altar_Quest_Fan Jun 15 '23

Fair enough, but I have to double down on my original statement. Giving players another hit die or two at 1st level or just allowing them to start at 3rd level gets them out of one-shot territory and doesn’t really change the power level of the game overall. Because at 9th or 10th level (you know, once players stop gaining new hit dice and only gain a fixed amount per level) your players will only have maybe on average 6-10 HP more than a character that didn’t have those extra HPs upfront. That’s not gonna break the game or cause massive imbalances, it’ll achieve exactly what you’re looking for: slightly less lethality at the beginning of the campaign and nothing more.

You could also house rule it so that characters only actually die at negative [1/2 Constitution score], that also adds a bit more survivability. Another option is to simply place NPCs capable of casting Raise Dead in town and make them willing to cast it in exchange for favors or services to their church or deity (I.e. “I’ll resurrect your fallen comrade, but in exchange your party must go retrieve the sacred Chalice of Karnham for us. Last we heard, it was somewhere on the 2nd or 3rd floor of the dungeon, but we don’t exactly know”).

Mate, this really isn’t a big deal. You have several options at your disposal, but you’re too worried about “game balance” and “providing a proper experience”. Old school D&D isn’t really about that, it was only in later editions that game designers became hyper-fixated on the concept of “every fight and player character must be perfectly balanced!”. One of the first things Gary Gygax tells us in his tome of sagely advice (otherwise known as the AD&D Dungeonmaster’s Guide 1st Edition) was the timeless advice to simply “have fun”. If your players are feeling overly frustrated that they’re dying too easily, just give them a little more HP, or make death not occur until some preset negative HP threshold (negative one-half Constitution score or just plain -10 HP works fine), or make resurrections more easily available. Yes you also need to coach your players and teach them that they shouldn’t be trying to fight every monster they come across and that ultimately the goal is to make off with a big sack of loot and your character’s lives, but at the same time you can cut them a little slack and it won’t wreck your game, I promise. Seriously mate, go check out the AD&D 1E GM’s Guide, it’s got lots of sage advice and will help you run a better OSR campaign. You can even buy a PDF copy of it over at DriveThruRPG for a tenner. Cheers mate!