Lume Campaign Rules Review
Current Lume Campaign Rules
These are all the rules of the Lume Campaign as they stand now, on April 13th 2024.
Character creation options are limited to the PHB, with some additional restrictions listed below. The DM is also using the DMG, MM, XGE (random encounter and name tables), TCE (random faction tables), Arcana of the Ancients (science-fantasy creatures and treasure tables), Path of the Planebreaker (extra-planar adventuring), and Veins of the Earth (an Underdark alternative).
RAW Optional Rules and Variants (from PHB and DMG)
Gritty Realism Rest Variant (short rest of 8 hours, long rest of 7 days)
Speed Factor Initiative Variant (weapon and size modify initiative)
All “Action Options”
(Climb onto bigger creatures, Disarm, Mark, Overrun, Shove Aside, Tumble)
Cleaving through Creatures
Morale
No Feats
XP for Noncombat Challenges
Gain 4 XP for every 1 GP gained from adventuring
Downtime Activities (from XGE)
Cantrips, except Eldritch Blast, can be cast a combined number of times per day equal to your Spell Attack Modifier
Roll HP at level 1 (add con bonus as usual)
At every level, roll all of your hit dice (and add con bonus as usual) to find your new max HP (at minimum increasing your Max HP by 1, from a previous level)
Falling to 0 HP causes exhaustion
Game time passes 1:1 with real time between sessions of play
During sessions, 1 hour of actual time = at least 1 hour of game time has passed (no effect if more than an hour of game time already passed)
Character creation is RAW, but with Class-Race-Alignment restrictions inspired by 1e, and characters may only be humans and half-humans initially, unlocking other races as their settlements are located by players within the game.
The “hit dice” in stat blocks is one less than the number of dice listed (or halved dice size, if only one is listed). For example, a hobgoblin has 1d8 hit dice. This speeds up battles and keeps monster HP on par with the PCs, as far as level/hit dice is concerned.
Other combat rulings:
Having a bow drawn, spear in hand, glaive set, etc, counts as those weapons being readied for attack upon entering combat (so attacks with those weapons may be made as a reaction before the character’s first turn in combat)
Spells can be readied too, noting that readied spells require concentration
“Until the end of their next turn” effects happen at the end of the next round
You can change your declared action, but if it has a slower speed factor you will be delayed accordingly (Switching weapons this way means dropping the first weapon)
Campaign Rules - Goals and Review
After five months of play, including five sessions and the downtime between them, topped off with a Braunstein in session 5, I feel like it's a good time to review the rules of the Lume campaign. Some rules have proven to be very successful, and others I'd prefer to scratch entirely, or at least modify to be closer to RAW.
My goal is to have the minimum amount of deviation from RAW 5e in service of this campaign, so that what I share here can be most universally useful to the readers, and to allow the 5e rules to excel naturally however they are able to do so.
My initial rules were chosen in an attempt to make 5e play more “old school”, restricting the vision of the PCs, reducing HP and slowing healing, etc.
In the remainder of this post I'll review these decisions, and share any new perspective my group and I have gained.
Gritty Recovery
Gritty Realism Rest Variant
This official variant has worked very well for us so far, I think. In practice it means that while we may roleplay multiple days in one session, only one of those days is really an adventuring day.
One of the players pointed out that Wizards and Warlocks have a significant advantage over other casters, with this variant, in that they're still able to recover spells every day, while other casters need a week for the “long rest”.
Campaigns which play on a weekly basis may want to consider combining this with the optional “Slow Natural Healing” rule from the DMG, to invoke time jail with official rules instead of adding training-time-to-level-up house rules.
Verdict: Great, keep it!
PC Darkvision Requires Dim Light
All darkvision for player races requires at least dim light, except Drow
This rule applies to all playable races except Drow. In practice, this hasn't had much effect on our campaign.
This is one of the changes specifically made to reduce 5e to feel more like 0e. 5e doesn't lean into the nuances of dungeon exploration to the degree that 0e and 1e do though. 5e has plenty of Zero Prep support for adventuring outside the dungeon, so I don't think there's need to try and double down on the ubiquitous darkvision unnecessarily.
This also isn't an official 5e rule variant. Ineffective and not RAW, we're ditching this campaign rule. If your group wants to get everything out of gritty dungeon crawls, this rule is still alright I suppose.
Verdict: Poor, use RAW instead.
Limited Cantrips Per Day
Cantrips, except Eldritch Blast, can be cast a combined number of times per day equal to spellcasting modifier, min 1/day
This campaign rule removes the ability of cantrips to replace torches and basic weapons for casters. It has been effective in this regard, though it is more restrictive than I intended, and more restrictive than it needs to be.
Player feedback also supports the raising of this limit, without removing the limit entirely, in order to maintain the flavor this limit places on the campaign setting. Wizards will still desire to carry around darts or a crossbow in order to preserve their cantrips, or for when they inevitably run out.
The new rule is simply to add proficiency bonus to the number of times cantrips can be used per day. We will reference the Spell Attack Modifier, for simplicity.
Cantrips, except Eldritch Blast, can be cast a combined number of times per day equal to your Spell Attack Modifier
Ultimately this decision comes down to campaign setting preference. There's nothing inherently wrong with leaving Cantrips unlimited in your Zero Prep 5e Campaign.
Verdict: Good start, needed improvement.
XP for GP
Gain 4 XP for every GP gained from adventuring
This XP reward is not exactly RAW, unless you consider Treasure Acquisition to be a “Noncombat Challenge” measured by the quantity of treasure gained. Regardless, it is based on the amount of treasure that heroes are expected to have found through every tier of play, so this is actually a good analog to the XP for GP rules in older editions.
This rule is good and we will be keeping it. I need to remember to still award XP for combat encounters though, a prize for surviving the risk of combat.
Verdict: Good, works as intended
Identify Spell as Lesser Legend Lore
The Identify spell functions as a 1st level variant of the (5th level) Legend Lore spell, for an item the caster must be holding or wearing, as though you knew nothing about it.
This campaign rule was intended to encourage experimentation in order to discover magic items uses. However, 5e does not concern itself with that sort of play in general. Rather than strongarm it into 5e, I'm inclined to revert the Identify spell to RAW. Players will still have to deal with curses, and Identify doesn't remove all mystery from magic items, especially because in this campaign they will be predominantly sentient.
Verdict: Poor, use RAW instead.
No Feats
No Feats
This one is simple: Feats are an optional rule in 5e, and I believed the game will work fine without them. I was correct.
This campaign is about more than just combat, and the increase in combat complexity doesn't interest our play group. I'm sure the game works fine for campaigns using feats as well.
Verdict: Great!
Starting HP and HP Growth
Roll HP at level 1 (and add con bonus as usual)
At every level, roll all of your hit dice (and add con bonus as usual) to determine your new max HP (at minimum increasing your Max HP by 1, from a previous level)
This is part of a larger set of changes I'm using as a DM, where I am adjusting the HP of monster stat blocks as thus:
The Hit Dice of a monster is one less than the number of listed in the stat block. Ignore the flat numeric bonus to HP.
For instance a creature with listed Hit Dice of 4d6+15, I will use 3d6 instead.
This has the effect of greatly reducing the amount of Hit Points of monsters, so combat can go faster. Having players roll HP at level 1 helps balance this out: max dice value at level 1 is comparable to a monster starting with two hit dice.
So monsters HP gets brought into a traditional range, and PC HP does as well.
In addition, we reroll all hit dice on level up as described above. This has the effect of keeping PC HP marginally above average in the long run, even if they have low rolls along the way. A barbarian starting with 1 HP can possibly find themself at 24 HP at level 2. And on rolling only average at level 3 (~18), their HP increases only one point to 25, and so on.
Our group enjoys the increased threat of combat, and does not enjoy combats which run long, so this campaign rule has worked very well for us, and we'll be keeping it.
Verdict: Success!
Exhaustion at Zero
Falling to 0 HP causes exhaustion
This change discourages players from treating 0 HP as Okay just because they know they'll be healed soon after. PCs are still quite resilient due to having death saves, which reset every time they hit zero again as per RAW.
This rule is simple and doesn't interfere with other systems and mechanics, and achieves its purpose well enough. It's not RAW, but it's a rule I would recommend for any campaign where you don't want the PCs to be invincible.
The “Injuries” / “Lingering Injuries” rule in the DMG is a RAW alternative for this house rule, accumulating skill penalties when characters hit 0 HP, some of which require high level magic to recover. We’re enjoying the house rule already, so it won’t be used in the Lume campaign, but this is a good RAW way to stop 0 HP shenanigans.
Verdict: Good house rule.
Old School Side Initiative
Side initiative: declare actions at the start of a combat round, then each side rolls d6, highest roll acts first (sides act simultaneously on ties)
This was another attempt to make 5e feel more old school. This rule (not to be confused at the “Side Initiative” variant listed in the DMG) actually works very well with 5e. However it does not jive with the current play group, so we will be reverting this campaign rule and returning to RAW.
The DMG includes this Speed Factor initiative variant, which adds much more nuance to weapon choice. Rolling initiative every round of combat means that faster characters get to better decide engagements throughout the entire combat, instead of just at the start. I've run a two year campaign with initiative like this (in a different, crunchier system) and it really didn't slow down combat. It helps to write your initiative bonus with each of your weapons on the character sheet.
After discussion with my players, we’re all interested to try it out in our Lume campaign. We’ve already established some rulings for making this work:
“Until the end of their next turn” effects happen at the end of THE next turn
This makes many boons and conditions more potent, on the whole making combat more deadly, which is the preference
Your can change your declared action, but if it has a slower initiative modifier you will be delayed accordingly
Switching weapons uses your free action to draw, so the prior weapon must be dropped (This appropriately penalizes starting with a fast weapon and deciding to switch to a slower one)
Verdict: Great in 5e, but we are switching to normal initiative with speed factor
Training to Level
Characters must train for a week with a mentor, or pay 1,000 gold in self-training, in order to level up (as players will prefer the former, this encourages character ties to world factions at early levels)
This campaign rule is… underwhelming. Because there is 1:1 downtime, and players have been using it (more on that later), PCs have already started to drift and grow into their own individual characters. Even without training-induced time jail, my current group is already inclined to roll up new characters for various opportunities.
This rule was also supposed to help ensure players engaged with factions in the world. That is happening plenty already, without needing this rule.
That said, if you're playing weekly, some version of this which forces time jail when leveling up may be what your group needs to start playing multiple parties in the same campaign.
Verdict: a wash. My group will revert to RAW, for the sake of RAW.
No Folk Heroes
No Folk Hero background (implies too much adventuring background/backstory)
I nixed this background originally because it did not tie characters into a faction in the world. But I was wrong. It ties them in to a local village or town. It's fine, and it shouldn't break anything.
Verdict: Unnecessary, reverting in favor of RAW.
1:1 Time Between Sessions
Game time passes 1:1 with realtime between sessions of play
The signature of BrOSR play, this rule has had a big, mostly good impact on the campaign. The bad, is mostly due to everyone adapting to the new play style. For instance, you will need to focus and be decisive in order to make significant progress exploring a dungeon, when your session is only three hours and you have to be out by the end of it.
Luckily, there is plenty to be done outside of dungeons that functions more naturally, and 5e DMG and XGE have lots of tables to support outdoor and wilderness adventuring. And even dungeons can still be explored, especially if you hire NPCs to aid you between sessions.
As for the positives, this has worked fantastically with Zero Prep DM'ing, and has allowed the players to adventure across the world as independent characters, as well as coming together as an adventuring party for play sessions.
The players were skeptical about this at first, but have increasingly noted that they're enjoying it, in spite of the constraints it places on things like large scale dungeon exploration.
As a campaign rule, this one doesn't override anything RAW in 5e. Instead, it has made RAW 5e even better. I highly recommend this even for single play groups who are skeptical of it. Play RAW and give 1:1 time a fair shake.
Verdict: Great success!
1:1 Time In Sessions
During sessions, 1 hour of actual time = at least 1 hour of game time has passed
This rule is in the spirit of 0e, 1e, and has an equivalent effect of Shadowdark’s “1 hour torches”. It means that while adventuring, if the players have a fifteen minute combat and spend 45 minutes hiding the bodies, distributing the loot, and talking amongst themselves in real life, then that all took their characters an hour in the game as well: time never pauses in the dungeon.
Fast forwarding time during the session is fine (there is no need for players to sit around the table doing nothing), but game time doesn’t pause for discussions between the party members. If players are having to coordinate, so are their characters.
This rule is framed in terms of “1 hour” increments, because it’s not about tracking every single second, it’s just enough to inform the overall pacing of play time.
We haven’t played with this rule enough to have come to a strong verdict on it yet. I believe that, like 1:1 downtime, it will be a success.
Verdict: Tentatively positive.
Race, Class, Alignment Restrictions
Limiting the race, class, and alignment options helps to define the setting of the campaign. Humans and Elves pursue the arcane magic as wizards, while Drow and Tieflings make deals with lords of evil and chaos as Warlocks.
For a Zero Prep campaign, this has been an excellent campaign rule, in the form of 1e’s own race, class, alignment limits. It helps the races to feel inherently diverse, and that carries on to help PCs to have a place in the world, without needing to “tie them into the story” or anything like that. It is a good example of “setting implied by rules.”
The chart was revised only slightly, to bring it more in line with Elves as presented in RAW 5e: rather than having to be aligned with Chaos, Elves may now choose to be Neutral, but are still prohibited from being Lawful.
Verdict: Great success!
Old School Reaction Rolls
As 5e does not have a functional equivalent (DMG Chapter 8 “Social Rules” are not the same), I have been using “old school” reaction rolls, by rolling 2d6 for random encounters. A result of 7 indicates the most predictable disposition for the encountered creatures, while higher results are more favorable to the players, and lower results are worse for the players. In addition, I roll this way when the party negotiates with NPCs for which I do not already have established lore; this helps ensure every NPC has their own nuances, and fleshes out the world as a whole.
These roles are always context sensitive. A “4” when encountering bandits means they will probably attack on sight. But if you’re on good terms with their boss and are trying to make a deal with them, a “4” could simply mean the boss has taken insult or refuses to continue the deal.
Verdict: Great success!
Old School Random Encounters
The 5e DMG has rules for the probability of rolling random encounters, but not much in the way of procedurally generating those encounters. XGE has random tables for eleven different environments, with four tables (based on encounter levels) for each environment. This has been instrumental in running 5e with the Zero Prep style.
5e notably lacks random encounters for dungeon environments specifically. This is a real shame.
XGE’s level-based encounter tables include randomization which provides a variety of NPC strengths even at low level, this has been nice. It usually feels like resulting combat encounters are too easy, but then it also includes dragons and giants on those level 1-4 tables, so it seems alright.
The XGE encounter tables are for parties of 4 PCs. Drawing on old school (0e) auto-scaling difficulty procedures, a party with 5 to 8 members should have double the number of encountered monsters (because they’re making proportionally more noise and attracting that much more attention), 9 to 12 has triple, and so on.
The higher tiers of XGE tables should be used as players descend deeper into dungeons, or farther into the wilderness. In this way, the players have some control on how much risk they are willing to take in their adventures.
In cases where the XGE random encounter tables are not used, for instance to build a random encounter with hobgoblins, you can use the dungeon or wilderness level (first dungeon floor = level 1) x d6 to get the number of hit dice in the encounter. For example, on the second floor there is an encounter with goblins, so you roll a d6 (result of 5) and multiply that times the floor level (2) to get 10 hit dice of goblins encountered. You could pick some number of goblins, hobgoblins, goblin pets, and so on, to build a coherent goblin encounter. If the party has 5 to 8 members, roll 2d6 instead, 9 to 12 members roll 3d6, and so on. The average result is slightly weaker than the party, and the difficulties will range in scale from 25% to 150% of the average results. Note that the difficulty scales based on dungeon (or wilderness) level and party size, not on the party’s level.
This approach has worked very well in the campaign so far, and I am inclined to continue using it.
Roll encounter checks for every 20 minutes in a dungeon, for every 4 hours of travel, and at least twice per night spent in the wilderness. Roll even more when players draw attention to themselves, like when they make a ruckus in a dungeon. Since about half of these encounters are going to have positive reaction rolls, and a third of these encounters are going to be significantly weaker or stronger than the party, six hours of random encounter checks is only going to produce one or two combat situations the players are going to have to deal with.
The majority of adventure in the campaign so far traces back to utilizing random encounter tables and reaction rolls.
Verdict: Great success!
Closing Thoughts
Close-to-RAW 5e D&D has been a lot more stable than I was initially expecting it to be. Allowing the rules to shine as a whole, without tweaking all the “broken” spell combos or whatever, has worked out well. Minimal interference with the RAW seems best.
The combination of Zero Prep and 1:1 time puts a huge emphasis on player preparations. Efforts the players take, in terms of researching their goals, gathering equipment and resources, etc, are highly rewarded in this style of play. This leaves players at the forefront of play all the time: they are traveling the world to do things they are interested in doing, they are going on sidequests for preparations they want to make, they are dealing with people they want to deal with, and so on.
5e is not my favorite edition of D&D, but it is more than functional for a group of group of modern players to have fun playing rules-based D&D, allowing everyone to enjoy the stories that emerge from it. And obviously: Don’t. Ever. Fudge.
If you’ve read this far and appreciated the post, please leave a like. And if you have questions about these rules or the campaign, leave a comment!