My gaming roots lie firmly in Basic D&D and First Edition AD&D, but my gaming sensibilities have changed over the years. The OSR edict: "Rulings, not rules" makes perfect sense to me in theory, and I'm quite certain there are lots of players out there who can work with a DM to make this practical around the table. My longtime Tuesday night players, on the other hand, are...curmudgeonly(?)...to say the least, and any free-form decision I make at the table is likely to provoke a spirited debate from at least one of them.
We all came out of a local gaming community in the early 80s where the DM was definitely the opponent and the players had to scrape for any possible advantage. The local DMs weren't so much "killers" as they were "sadists"—cunning, cruel, and merciless—so we learned to be confrontational as a strategy. Sometimes it worked (but usually didn't.) Post-session player chatter usually amounted to how bad the latest screw-job was versus how much fun the adventure had been. I mean, surviving to complain about it was its own kind of fun, so I guess that made us masochists.
In any case, one of the things I enjoy about 5e is the reliably-simple core game engine. The mechanics are easy to understand, they provide a good flow through the action economy, and there are just a few sub-systems to learn rather than dozens. My curmudgeonly players get it and, more importantly, they abide by it. It's right there in black and white, where I can point to it and say, "Welp, that's the rule..."
It gives them structure within which to behave, and that takes almost all the pressure off me. I appreciate that and it makes me a more confident DM because in most cases, my players' innate skepticism about everything is soothed by an easy rule reference (even if they still don't necessarily agree).
That said, the official game is barreling off in a direction I don't appreciate: a pablum of high-fantasy nonsense and performative virtue. Much of the inherent "threat" of the game has been outright neutralized as a result because the current designers don't seem to believe characters should ever lose (or even be mildly inconvenienced). This is especially evident in the monster designs, where much of what made the creatures unique, interesting, and/or deadly have been dramatically altered or dropped altogether.
I mentioned the owlbear losing its Hug special attack in a previous post, but some other examples include rust monsters no longer eating magic items, carrion crawlers having a single tentacle attack (and a superfluous bite) instead of eight (!) tentacles, and displacer beasts whose primary defensive ability (displacement) is automatically nullified if they are hit by a single attack during a round. Silliness like that abounds, turning many 5e monsters into the much-maligned "boring bag of hit points."
Broadly, one of the most awesome monster abilities in 1e was magic resistance. Back in the day, it was a simple "percentage chance of any spell absolutely failing in the monster's presence." The base percentage indicated the monster's resistance against an 11th-level spellcaster, with a commensurate 5% increase or decrease in the net difference between 11th level and the level of the PC spellcaster. "Thus, a magic resistance of 95% means that a 10th level magic-user has no possibility of affecting the monster with a spell..." That's bad-ass. It certainly made creatures like demons, devils, and powerful undead absolutely terrifying in combat (especially if you are the now-nearly useless magic-user).
On top of that, "(e)ven if a spell does take effect on a magic-resistant creature, the creature is entitled to normal saving throws." So 1e magic resistance provides a potent additional layer of defense, scaled by the percentage listed under the monster's description. Finally, it's "always-on," meaning that your BBEG will be completely ignoring many/most spells.
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| One of my favorite D&D images from my absolute favorite artist, the great Erol Otus. In your face, wizard! |
This was a huge component of 1e boss fights that has been trivialized to the point where 5e sort of warns DMs against using a single enemy opponent because they won't survive long. But the concept of fantasy heroes uniting to defeat a singular powerful entity in a final, all-or-nothing battle is a staple of heroic fiction. A staple which 5e struggles to support.
