Is 5th Edition OSR? (Part II)

(Design by Thaddeus Moore)

So, considering the AD&D (1e) experience that comprehensive rules actually guided DM rulings, we can the second "Zen Moment" of player skill over character abilities to the extent player skill enhanced play over character abilities that most often translated into players understanding the idiosyncrasies inherent in the comprehensive rules and applying those idiosyncrasies in different and interesting ways.

Common examples for player skill over character abilities are pouring water over a floor looking for hidden cracks, or a PC tapping the floor ahead with a 10-foot pole to trigger any pit traps are rather quaint, but sort of a sophomore effort. Our game had graduate-level dissertations on taking an and vague descriptions by Gygax and turning the volume way up as no parents are around, such as:

• Using a water-breathing spell with a character's mouth and nose submerged into the opening of a waterskin to keep out poison gas.
• That light spells are not visible to creatures using infravision because the spells emit no heat.
• Using 1st level Cleric Sanctuary spells instead of invisibility (especially in cities) so that anyone attempting to strike or attack that character had to make a saving throw versus magic first.
• Permanent polymorph into imaginary, but beastly, humanoids with owl wings and gills under our arms.
• Many spells such as 3rd level spells fireball and lightning bolt scaled up by caster level so would come to do double, triple, or more damage still while occupying the original level spell slot. (This accounted a lot for 1e magic users getting so imbalanced at higher levels - picture a 9th level wizard with up to three 9 hit die fireballs every day - kaboom!
• Gygaxianisms such as "... the magic item gains +5 on saving throws against attack forms in its own mode" was the source of many considerations. Apart from Gygax only providing a couple examples of "mode," what about the list of saving throws, were the saves versus included on the ITEM SAVING THROW MATRIX (1e DMG pg. 80) the only saving throws where magic items get saves, or should it apply to any time an item must make a saving throw?

So this is not the sort of parochial knowledge that are often used as examples of "player skill," rather the supremely skillful 1e AD&D player had pedantic knowledge of the rules bending towards favorable outcomes for their character or the adventuring party.

Another area touted as player skill is resource management. Setting aside food and water rations (both old school D&D and 5th edition have rules for daily physiological needs of the PC), the main resources that require management are spells and the primarily spell subset of healing.

A big complaint from grognardlings I consort with are the rates of recovery from short and long rests. The argument goes that it is simply not realistic a short rest provides characters the essential approximation of cure wounds, while a long rest returns all hit points to the full maximum. A closer look at how we actually played 1e AD&D reveals an absurdity how adventuring parties managed their health through spells and rest.

Natural healing sans magic in 1e AD&D was absurdly time consuming. The original rules from the AD&D 1e DMG provided a mere 7 points per week, and after the SECOND week of healing a character could add their constitution bonus (if any). In our game we upped the number for natural healing to 1 plus the Con bonus, but even then it was a chore because a character must take total rest - no combat, spell casting, or similar activity. (It's kind that 5e provides an out for this, rather than ruining the entire rest 5e only adds a little more resting time after sleep interruptions that involved combat, spells, or similar.)

That meant adventuring parties had to rely on healing spells to keep their hit points up.

I kid you not, there were deadly dungeons where we would adventure for as little as 10 minutes before we would be looking for a secure place to shelter, rest, and recover spells and hit points. Before someone discovered rules defining sleep periods, we even had spell casters resting 2 or even 3 times per day to regain spells! 

As a result, is it any wonder folks were reluctant to play clerics? Basically clerics, other than turning undead, had to load up on cure wound spells, bouncing around during combat to help PCs to whom the dice were not being particularly kind. Medic!

5th edition deals with hit points in a way that avoids uncharacteristic naps in the middle of dungeons (did anyone ever see Conan take a nap?), and at the same time frees up cleric to be more than the fantasy doctor. Anyone who objects to this faster natural rejuvenation of hit points on the grounds of "realism" has probably blocked out the nappy times of yore, or had a DM who freely supplied healing potions, or probably never gamed a cleric.

A final note: This repetitive resting phenomena was not limited to divine casters either. On the offensive side once a high level wizard had gone through their 3rd and 4th level offensive spells they too were sent to time-out to sleep and get them back. Ha, that is why we often had elven mages. They could sort-of be aware during their meditation (not asleep) and were often counted in our old games as part of the watch.