How to Make 5E D&D Grittier (Ep. 250)
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- Опубликовано: 27 июн 2024
- Professor Dungeonmaster talks about how to make your 5E game a whole lot grittier.
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When Professor DM whips out the + TWO vest of protection, you know things are indeed gonna get gritty.
It used to be a +1 vest of protection. His campaign is giving out Monty Haul treasures.
@@patricksanders7988 He finally had enough platinum to upgrade it. He needs it to fight trolls after all!
@@DnDOldGuard I thought he had enough subscribers to level up the vest.
The most glorious movie like death was in our AD&D game in the 80's. We were on the walls of Ereheii-Cinlu, fighting off Drow guards. The Druid got hit with crossbow bolts and missed check. He fell to his death through the roof of an unknown building. We could not recover the body.
Ouch
Heck yeah! That’s what I’m saying! A little character death goes a long way, like oregano!
@@timblighton6216 I can use a lot of oregano...
Double damage. All your problems are solved. Try it for yourself. You don't even have to tell your players. Monster do 2x damage and have half the normal hitpoints.
THAT is a great idea. I wish I had put it in the video.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Forgot to include: Alternatively for bosses, halve the AC bonus instead of hit points. That way everyone gets a chance to "get a hit in". The effect is more or less essentially the same mathematically but changes the "feel" of the fight dramatically.
Yeah, I think this is almost mandatory to do at this point. It may have been an extreme choice a few years ago but now PCs are powerful enough that they can take it. It makes combat more intense and punchy. Most important of all it shortens combat which can really drag with some groups.
I have been doing 150% damage and half the hitpoints on monsters for like half a year now. I initially did it to fix how much combat drags on with the HP bloat, but it has the awesome side effect of putting the players more on edge. They key is you can't really expect how much damage a monster is going to do because of the multiplication. Huge numbers come out of nowhere sometimes; even hobgoblins are spiking for 20-30 damage!
I’m thinking about halving all the players and monsters hit points. Makes combat much more dangerous and initiative much more important!
Sensational as always. I shudder to think what the state of my campaign would be now if I hadn't discovered your mantra of keeping it simple but keeping it interesting and fun. No shoehorning players and no losing sleep before running a session. Excellent work, and thank's again.
Low Fantasy Gaming has 1 con save if someone goes back to check on you and you haven't been pulped. It also uses a system of crippling damage so if you go down, if you come back you have permanent damage which might include losing a limb or an eye.
LFG is a proper little gem of a system.
Yes, I like the LFG Con call.
LFG is a pretty good D&D alternative. I'd love to see it make the leap from POD to retail in the future.
Dungeon Crawl Classics has a similar mechanic, in which if you go down (0hp) your allies may attempt to recover your body at the end of the fight, and when they turn you over, you can roll a luck check to see if you actually survived or not. If you do, you still get damage to one of your physical attributes.
DMG page 267 has an option for "gritty realism". Short rest is 8 hours, and Long Rest is a week. Slower healing = more risk. Especially if you plan adventures with time limits.
Good callout, check out the following for more grit:
5e Hardcore Mode by Runehammer
5e Hardmode by Pickpocket Press
As well as the lingering injuries table in the DMG which helps, I've had so many tables that don't flinch when someone goes down to zero HP. This helps them actually give a damn.
@@mrgunn2726 already on my shelf. :)
The thing is that the first thing the "gritty realism" option does is not slow healing. Instead it creates a very very low magic system, where you have a limit to cast only 2 spells per week with a 1st level character. It for example completely invalidate the concept of an illusionist since it will simply not have the spell slots to perform daily even at higher levels.
agree that rule is pretty great
"Sailing" and "Tubthumping" mentioned in the same video! That's the kind of quality content this channel is famous for, LOVE it, thank you PDM! 😀👍
Thanks!
In 5e, we rule that at 0 HP you would make a CON Save to keep fighting (with DISADVANTAGE, of course). Fail and you are no longer conscious. You die when you exceed CON in negative HP (no save). We also go "old school" on Hit Dice.
Casters (wizards, warlocks, clerics, sorcerers) = D4 for hit dice.
Semi-Martials (war clerics, bards, rogues, druids) = D6 for hit dice.
Martials (fighters, paladins, rangers) = D8 for hit dice.
Hardcore Martials (barbarians & monks) = D10 for hit dice.
We have some options to tune for personal preference...
#1) Add the CON bonus only ONCE.
#2) Add an extra FULL HIT DIE (ie a 1D4 would get 4 points) for 0-level training to make lower-level characters less "squishy."
#3) Only give another Hit Die when the PC's Proficiency Bonus increases. This means a 20th Level PC will have just SIX Hit Dice (seven if option #2 above is used).
We also allow a character with multiple attacks to roll only ONE To Hit Roll but then to roll Damage DICE (plus any modifiers) based on the number of attacks. So a fighter with a sword and three attacks could roll just ONE To Hit roll but do 3D8 with his one attack. He could also attack two targets doing 1D8 damage to one target and 2D8 damage to that target's companion. This is always the player's option, but it allows weapon damage to "scale" up as the PCs rise in level.
Of all your suggestions here, I LOVE timers and honestly should be using them even more in my own games. I actually do like the general resting mechanics, but nothing is as much of a tension killer as knowing that the party deciding to take an eight hour nap before fighting the BBEG; ensuring the stakes (as well as environment) dictate that they can't is the best way to get players nervous and excited at the adventure's climax.
Those tips about resting and the gods are pure gold 🤌✨
I think ultimately 5e is not suited to "gritty" (read: "player character death is fairly common -- expect it") play for one big reason: character creation is too involved. Making a character in 5e is creative and inspires the player to invest heavily into what they want to be and what their character brings to the table. There isn't enough emphasis that the most important story your character will ever be a part of will happen at the table -- a lot of people want total control over how bad ass their character is and so they write the most exciting story as the BACKSTORY. Before ever getting to the table! Killing that character is like denying all the work they did.
The first step to making a more gritty 5e game is reworking the character creation to be FAR more streamlined. Less decisions, less creativity. And players should be primed with the understanding that the badass parts of their character are going to be the *result* of things that happen at the table. The table doesn't serve to show off the cool shit you just decided you have, it serves as the story for how you got the cool shit! And then you can show it off, yeah
I agree. That’s why I created Deathrbinger.
True.
I found out that games that are more dangerous ( ie characters are more likely to perma die ) have players invest far less in roleplay or deeper character building.
Maybe the appeal of 5e is that the character can not die?
This is why in RPG I am designing there is no such thing as character death, but missions have lose condition instead. So instead of party wipe, you have - you lost this campaign.
I think that's absolutely a valid point, and really it applies to 3e as well (and probably 4e, but I've never actually played 4e!) It's the simplicity of character creation in those old-school games that really seemed to give them a distinctly different flavor from modern D&D - the difference in complexity of the character sheet encourages a different level of attachment altogether.
And with that different level of complexity and attachment comes a different style of gaming: on one hand, there's the infuriating amount of effort that goes into assembling a min-maxed Frankenstein monstrosity from the pieces scattered across dozens and dozens of splat books, magazines, and websites to get that perfectly fine-tuned number-crunching machine with no personality whatsoever, with the understanding that the machine will crunch numbers indefinitely until the player gets bored or a new splat book is available to create an even more efficient number-cruncher from.
On the other, there's the incredibly cautious approach of protecting that investment of character-creation effort and time with those constant rest-breaks. Who wants to spend another couple hours trying to make up a new disposable character while everyone else is having fun? (That gets old even for those of us who enjoy character creation!)
And then, it drives the GM to sweat getting everything just right to try to ensure that nobody flips the table over losing a well-loved character that took days to create, and weeks to write an elaborate backstory essay for, and money to buy a professionally-painted portrait and mini for, etc., just because the GM got sloppy and made an encounter that was too challenging for the character to survive....
When character creation is about as easy as rolling 3d6 six times, picking a class/race and applying a couple modifiers if necessary, then trying to think of a name (the REALLY hard part!), the whole thing looks very different!
Especially when character generation to replace a lost character is quick and easy, and results in a character that isn't much weaker than the rest of the party, who have a few levels under their belts! (That's another difference with the more modern versions of D&D: the modern games scale differently, and a modern character with a few levels on them has become a virtual god compared to a first-level newbie, with very little hope of a first-level replacement character being able to contribute anything useful, without dying because the higher-level monsters scaled to the rest of the party just glanced his way! Things like reducing the number of hitpoints available can help relieve a bit of that, as can limiting or not using feats or whatever the 5th Edition equivalent might be. But, it's not perfect, and there's a lot more to this "scale creep" than hitpoints and feats - a game really ought to be built to a less bloated scale!)
I agree. 5e have sadly the problem of " being at the goal without working towards it " . The characters dont become badasses , they are already that .
The adventures should make those characters stronger and badass by overcoming obstacles and archieving success not only through leveling but also by interactions and choices that makes the character what he is . If you make it the other way around then the game has no point and ends up being a board game forbfew sessions.
5e can be gritty but Backgrounds should only have from where they come and why they decided to go on adventures . Otherwise you have a planned fanfic (insert beloved videogame/comic/movie hero) at your hands that is already a mega badass but still starts at level 1.
Way Less Avengers , much more Conan/Elric/fahfrd and grey mouser !
@@Snyperwolf91 Great way to put it. That's precisely why I play Dungeon Crawl Classics.
It's all about AC, hit points, and number of attacks per round. Find the highest armor in the party; choose a monster that will hit that on a 10+. Find the highest hit points in the party; choose a monster that will reduce that to 0 on three average rolls. Count the number of party members; encounter the same number of monsters.
Two encounters like this and they could all easily be dead. The DM picks the monsters. The OG way to make it grittier? Pick tougher monsters.
And if no tougher monsters exist that suit your needs? Make up tougher monsters.
I ran a game in a souls-like inspired world without making any changes to the rules and I simply picked monsters that were 3-5 CR higher that what the DMG suggests players should be able to deal with. For some of the more climactic boss fight enemies I gave them extra attacks and lair actions that caused status conditions and area of effect damage so that even in a 4v1 scenario the players were still in danger. The most important thing is to make sure your players know what they are getting into. If your players say they want a more gritty or dangerous campaign or setting give it to them and if they complain remind them that they asked for it.
That and reduce the availability of magic items. Things get scary really quickly when you have a monster with spell resistance and resistance to non-magic weapons.
or use a system that doesn't overtly force you into an arms race with exponential player growth
@@tx7140 This, I also had +X magic items that weren't considered magical but could be upgraded past +3 so they would do more but against things with resistance to non-magic weapons they would still be doing half damage. I also only let the part have a single magic user so that it was more physical combat oriented rather than spellslinging
Congratulations on Episode 250
I love when your videos feature "at the table" advice like this. My favorite death fix, is to simply decrease the number of saves before death. 0hp = Death is a rule we didn't use even back in the B/X days. We used to allow a Sv vs. Death roll after you went to 0hp to see if you were unconscious or dead. I mean, it's literally called a 'Death Save' in the B/X rules, so it made sense to us. :)
One think I like about 5e is that rules are fairly modular. Gritty realism isn't hard to implement with some rest mechanics, dead rules, limited magic and gold, etc. This said, it is also easy to implement in other systems. I've run the same campaign in 1e, 3e, and 5e. Part of it is just understanding the DM and the DM knowing the rules. I once put 30 gnolls and wolves at a 2nd-level party. They knew to flee. I remember a 1e module where you fought hill giants at 3rd-level, yet were inside a keep. You can setup expectation in a lot of ways... none scaled encounters, being a stickler with encumbrance on an overland journey and targeting the mule, or having enemies strike fallen PCs. Players learn pretty quickly.
Personally, the system and rules don't say gritty to me as much as setting, campaign, story, NPCs, and situations. The grittiest encounter I think I've ever had was a group of PCs in a remote Mongol-like village trying to get information and some woman was only going to help them if one of the PCs married her so she could get out of the village without marrying some smuck. It was just epic. Ten 100' golems wouldn't be as scary as these guys trying to find other way to get the information.
As I played A&DD coming to 5E I wasn’t so sold on the death saves but now I’m actually a fan. As a DM my party is on pins and needles when a party member goes down and they just rolled there second failed death save. They also know the rule that they take damage while making death saves they die so The entire party will go out of their way to block them from taking more damage so that seems like a real reaction to a fallen compatriot.
"There're going to be people that say, "No Professor! A rogue is a criminal!". Yes, I know that. It was a big insult in the middle of the 18th and 19th century, but today there are no connotations of criminality associated with it. [A] thief is a criminal like Conan, he's a thief, a reaver, a slayer. The Nissan Rogue is what you use to drive your kids to soccer practice." 😆
5e: The Nissan Rogue of rulesets. 😆
(jk!)
Great video! I recently received Ruins of Symbaroum, the 5E conversion of the Symbaroum TTRPG. And Free League also mess with rest to increase the deadliness of the setting. A short rest and long rest are significantly less powerful than in the base game. And you would need 3 days in a safe place resting to get the benefits of a long rest. Needless to say you do not get those while you are on an adventure. Even short rests are likely to get interrupted. It's a simple change and, as you suggested, a great way to up the tension as players know they can't just stop for a rest every time they take a wound or want to regain spell slots. Between that and the general deadliness of the monsters and a magic corruption system, I think it's going to be great fun to run.
I enjoy all your videos and the tips you provide. Thanks Professor Dungeonmaster!
Welcome back professor! Great to have you back on track with insightful game mechanics suggestions instead of all that corporate malarkey stuff. It warms my heart. Thank you!
I've never really liked the idea of death saves, especially if you have to wait 10-15 minutes until it's your turn again so you can roll a die (At least in 5e games I've been a part of). Instead, I borrowed an idea from Darkest Dungeon where when a player reaches 0hp they are on death's door. Whenever at 0hp a player takes additional damage they roll a d6 on a 1-2 they die. This keeps the player in control and active in the encounter, driving home the risk vs reward style of play I enjoy.
Thanks for the great video professor DM.
Use the old AD&D "house rule" that everyone used. At 0 HP, you make a CON save to stay conscious and continue to fight (with DISADVANTAGE, of course). Fail that Saving roll and your down! You DIE if you go to more than CON in NEGATIVE HP regardless.
Thanks for this, this is a cool idea. I've played Darkest Dungeon but never thought about it for D&D. I hate the waiting part too when it comes to death saves. I feel like having a 'fight for your life' mechanic when you hit 0 HP is way more interesting and allows the players to actually play the game while keeping the threat of death real.
I like the ideas of Hardcore mode, but you we're right at the beginning, players feel bad when they feel 'nerfed' and it's best to avoid changing the rules. I think you can get the same effect without touching the rules at all.
Less HP? Just give Monsters +50% more damage dice on attacks, and plan to hit hard without pulling punches. If you're worried about balance, reduce their HP Hit Die by 50% to make them hit hard and die fast. No need to change the players, the monsters are the purview of the DM.
I actually love Death Saves, they represent a state of vulnerability for a PC. I personally use exhaustion when you drop to 0, but if you just make the monsters take prisoners, strike a downed PC, or hold action to threaten to Coup de Grace the unconscious PC if the rest of the party don't stand down, you use the Death Saves mechanic to make the enemies feel more brutal. When you kill the PC because the rest of the party didn't throw down their weapons, they can't say you didn't warn them...
Nitpick : 2e had thieves. There's even a complete thief handbook. They were part of the rogue category along wiith Bards. 3rd edition though... ;)
Otherwise great video as usual. :)
Thief was a subclass of rogue. The other subclass was bard.
There's thieves in 5e too. I'm not sure what he's on about lol... Hell in deathbringer (which is awesome) they are called Scoundrels.
@@allenyates3469 it wasnt really a subclass. not the way subclasses work in 3.5, 5e, etc. it was really just a way of categorizing. i guess thats subclass, but not the same. fighters, paladin, ranger were technically subclasses of warrior by that definition, but the classes still pretty much classes. with some shared rules.
@@mirtos39 k... I'll choose different words next time. Just for you. Lol
Too right! Totally stealing "The Lopper". I like to have critical hits do damage equal to half plus one of the target's total HP with a con save for system shock survival. 😁
The problem isn't a DM changing D&D 5E to make it more gritty , it's getting players of the 5e generation to want to play with gritty restrictions, even those in the 5e DM Guide optional rules chapter.
WOTC have raised the younger gamer to expect optimization / power / and unlimited choices ( race, class, feats etc ) .
So many old school GM's are forced to play 5e and a particular type of 5e or they can't find a group to play with!!
I think it was video games that cultivated gamers to expect those things and D&D evolved to accommodate; everything else is spot on
Don't look for players. Get some friends and introduce them to the style of play you enjoy.
@@thelaughingman4791 I would say it's a circle. Video games pushed in a way, other edition pushed that way too. Now, I have a hard time telling some of my players they can't play a Yuan-ti, a Bugbear and a Drow in the setting!
"The problem isn't a DM changing D&D 5E to make it more gritty , it's getting players of the 5e generation to want to play with gritty restrictions, even those in the 5e DM Guide optional rules chapter." => 100% agreed, nd given how much work it actually is to retrofit the 5e rules into something else, there's little justification for it. It's going to be just as much of an uphill battle to sell a resistant player group on modded 5e as it is to get them to play OSE... except really more because you have to do the 5e rules tweaks.
"WOTC have raised the younger gamer to expect optimization / power / and unlimited choices ( race, class, feats etc" => I disagree on the younger bit... unless you're counting 40 year olds like me who were the initial 3.x audience. Also, unlimited choices is NOT in the same category as optimization/power-creep, that's just called variety. And 5e DOESN'T actually offer that either, it's very 'omakase' in it's design, vs. something like BRP, GURPS, Savage Worlds, or Fate. And frankly, the current crop of 5e players seems strangely content to just play whatever published Forgotten Realms supplement WOTC puts out...
@@thelaughingman4791 Depends on what you're talking about, if you're referring to the optimization/power-creep... yeah maybe. but if you're talking about balking way from challenge or grittiness, hell no.
In point of fact in the last 10 years, the SAME period that 5e was released, there has been a renaissance in hard games. Rougelikes & soulslikes are built for people who REVEL in the idea of 'git gud' , & 'casual' is an insult.
The first D20 conversion of Game of Thrones had some amazing modifications of the damage rules to make it suit the setting.
- Hit points were much lower, not rolling dice but being a relatively low number with your CON modifier
- Armour didn’t add to your armour class, but instead reduced damage when you were hit
- You didn’t add your stat to your attack, only your damage - but with much lower armour classes, this was fine
- If you took more than a certain amount of damage in a single hit you had to make a test not to pass out from the system shock
- Natural Healing included infection tests
- Magical healing was heavily limited
It was absolutely brutal and I think you’d like it if you could find a copy.
Honestly, I don't mind the idea of a characters being unconscious when they have negative hit points (up to -con). It just needs to be a lot harder to recover from and/or some kind of penalty for ending up that way. Plus, it doesn't stop a character from getting splatted outright from a heavy hit.
I still love the ICRPG dying timer as a replacement for Death Saves. It's essentially the same thing but the FEELING is more tense.
Also, I don't think 5e characters by RAW are as tough as people think. It's all about what the group wants and the tone you set! If everyone agrees that character death should be possible then you only need one thing; monsters that focus on dying characters. Give the other players a real serious reason to get in gear and stop them before they rip the unconscious wizards head off!
That being said the ideas here are fantastic additions!
multiattacks going into the same already downed target do help a lot but there is also a truth in the fact that 5e characters are quite powerfull while the overall ruleset is very forgiving.
Definitely have to chat to players before hand or they'll feel like you're just being an asshole.
These are the homebrew rules I use to make things more deadly.
(Lasting Wounds)
• You suffer a level of exhaustion if you
∆ Drop to 0 hit points, and then are healed to 1 hit point or more during a combat encounter
∆ Fail a death saving throw by 5 or more
(Lingering Death)
• All failed death saving throws are only reset at the end of a Short or Long rest
(Massive Damage)
• Whenever a creature takes more then half it's hit point maximum from a single source in damage, it must make a Constitution Saving Throw, the difficulty of which increases as you increase in level or CR,
How I handle death saves is that when there is a cleric in the party or if the party members have made a devotional offering to their gods before a combat encounter, then they will receive a blessing in the form a death save.
I also do scaled starting HP based on class:
Barbarian - 12 HP at lvl 1 and a +5 HP bonus + CON mod per level until lvl 10.
Fighter/Paladin/Cleric - 10 HP at lvl 1 and a +4 HP bonus + CON mod until lvl 10.
Monk - 10 HP at lvl 1 with a +3 HP bonus + CON mod until lvl 12.
Artificer/Sorcerer/Bard/Rogue - 8 HP at lvl 1 and a +3 HP bonus + CON mod until lvl 10. (Sorcerers also use CON for spell damage, and use HP instead of Spell Slots for casting.)
Warlock/Wizard/Druid - 6 HP at lvl 1 with a +3 HP bonus + CON mod until lvl 12.
Additional rules I use:
Barbarians, Monks, Dragon Lineage Sorcerers and anyone using light armor receive a reduction from physical forms of damage by -1 point.
Anyone wearing medium armor will receive a -2 reduction.
Anyone wearing heavy armor will receive a -3 reduction.
Shields can either provide an additional -1 damage reduction, or a +1 AC bonus which must be stipulated at character creation. However, taking the Shield Master feat will grant you both bonuses and an additional damage reduction of -2.
Sorcerers, Warlocks, Druids, and Wizards receive a -3 damage reduction from all forms of magical damage.
Bards, Clerics, Paladins, and Artificers receive a -1 damage reduction from all forms of magical damage.
If a character's HP is reduced to exactly 0, they are rendered unconscious, but if the damage reduces their HP to -1 or greater, the character is killed.
A critical blow from an enemy that does not cause lethal damage will always result in a lasting wound to the PC that enemy has attacked. For instance, leaving a nasty scar, mental trauma, or the loss of a digit/eye etc.
Here's a fun one for you. Give your PCs a number of Hit Dice equal to their PROFICIENCY BONUS. If you feel you need a bit more staying power, don't give them a CON bonus. Give them their CON SCORE as a base of HP to build off of.
I’ve been DM-ing for about a year. I’ve been taking it VERY SERIOUSLY and dedicate almost all of my free time utilizing your advice, along with the advice from other channels. That being said, this channel works the best for me. I enjoy the topics and opinions. I especially appreciate how you don’t speak with monotone. Sorry for the “me me me” talk but in my opinion, you’re the best.
Thank you. What would you like me to talk about in future episodes?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 what about easily forgettable/overlooked details that can provide a lot of immersion?
I once read someone talking about using giant clams as stash units in an underwater setting. It made me wonder what else I might not even think about.
One slight rant inaccuracy here Professor.
2nd ed Ad&d did not remove the thief in favor of the Rogue, that happened in 3rd ed after the purchase of TSR by WOTC.
2nd ed Ad&d the thief was a thief, from edition start to finish.
Love the videos, personally I run games that are at least as grim as those described here, but love finding different approaches to apply to my games.
I run a blend of both Ad&d editions because they are beautifully compatible with very little modifications. Between the two editions I won't live long enough to use up all of the potential material and options.
Keep up the great videos Professor!
Essential viewing for this channel. Great job!
I've been melting-pot-ing a system recently, thanks to your videos, soooo be ready for comments on random older videos, haha
One thing that I'm throwing in from icrpg is the heart system, but each heart only has 4 points in it rather than 10. Characters will begin with a number of hearts equal to their constitution score divided by 4, with half hearts being rounded down (so one quarter and one halves rounded down, three quarters rounded up). Then they can only gain more hearts with talents (my version of feats/class features) or special items, kind of like heart containers from zelda.
Using this system, the beefiest characters can only have 8 hearts - 5 from a 20 Con score and 3 from talents - plus however many "heart containers" they can find and want to carry (they can only carry 10 or so items, so we'll say they are carrying 2) for 10 hearts, or 40 hp. And this is for a seasoned adventurer, at least level 5 (max level is 10) and he basically can't gain any more hearts.
True grit! Appreciated the rogue similes and metaphors. We're going to try "D&D Hardcore" thanks to your recommendations. Thanks for the insight, Professor Dungeon Master.
This is great. I will take some of your advice when I start my next camaign. No spells while resting because of mysterious gas. Roll 100 die. On a roll of 1 to 50 no gas. You get the point. Do this once a day on a hex adventure. Brilliant! Thanks for the advice 😉
My preference is OSR games, but I do run a 5e game. To the chagrin of 1 of my 6 original starting players I use house rules to make it grittier and more deadly. Thankfully the other 5 prefer that style of the play. Including pared back resting mechanics, reduced hit points, rolling 3d6 for stats etc. It's far more satisfying for sure.
I usually arbitrarily make the player characters who aren't as in to the gritty battle stronger. That way, everyone gets what they want. The people who really want to play such that their life is constantly on the line get to, and the people who don't care as much about tactical combat are insulated from the wargaming a bit by their ability scores
'Hes not as gritty as he used to be...', lol
I love this channel. A true grognard of legend.
I feel like the "Chumbawamba" part of dnd could be very comedic though, in low stakes games
Barbarian (getting stabbed, 0HP)"I GOT KNOCKED DOWN"
Bard (casts Healing Word)"BUT YOU GET UP AGAIN"
Love the vid!
First... "tubthumping" is now a canon term. Audio clip loaded for our next combat.
Second... "The Loper" you say? This weekends session just got a bit more interesting!
Keep up the good work!
I run White Plume Mountain every Monday on Roll20. I play mostly 1e rules and run a different set of characters every month. Three players get to choose 2 characters each from 10 pre gens. the second they get into the mountain, the Sphinx tells the players that Keraptis is returning in 24 hours so they have no chance to rest if they hope to get all 3 of the Relics !! Thank you Professor. This has worked wonderfully each time i run it !!
that smirk *just* before the intro was epic.
Such a cool channel, professor. I love the comparisons and suggestions.
Love this video. Thank you!
You get inspiration for your lively and genuinely funny commentary.
The rest rules may need a tweak for monks and warlocks - they're designed to be able to get back some of their resources (ki and spell slots) during an adventuring day, and they'll be weaker than other classes (like wizards and clerics) if they can't.
It's pretty straight forward to fix, however - once or twice during the dungeons, the monk can push away the environmental horrors that stop other rests for a few minutes and re-center their ki, and the warlock feels their patron renew their magic after so many encounters.
Okay, the starting sequence delivery was so good 👌
I'm a huge fan of the way Dungeon Crawl Classics handles it with the rolling the body check. Even if they survive they lose a stat point for falling so it still rewards thoughtful play and not being reckless. And of course if you're so inclined to offer a path to resurrect a dead PC you make them do an epic quest for it such as battling their way into the underworld, defeating cerebrus and haggling with the ferryman and eventually even itself.
"Sailing" IS a great song!
Death saves... exactly as the Professor said; to prevent kids (and child-like adults) from having tantrums and quitting the game. I loved playing a thief in the old days. My fellow players didn't know I was, so I was always stealing from them while pretending to be another character. Never steal from a chaotic evil magic-user with a great imagination... death is not on the menu.
Sailing takes me away...
2nd edition didn’t turn thieves into rogues. That was 3rd edition. 2nd edition had thieves and bards as subcategories of the rogue class group.
Thanks for sharing,
The soccer mom in the Nissan Rogue and the Chumbawumba reference were spectacular 👌
If you want to lower the amount of HP, don't get rid of Con, that effectively turns it into a dump stat for martials. Instead, if you want that, go for hit dice. You can test the water by decrementing them all by 1 step (d12 becomes d10, d10 becomes d8, d8 becomes d6, and d6 becomes d4).
If you still want more, you can make the average hit points take the lower average (gain 5hp per d10 hit dice rather than 6, gain 4/d8, 3/d6, 2/d4, etc).
If you somehow still want more, scrap the above steps and double the damage rolls of everything.
All good alternatives. Those CON points really compound, though.
Let us not forget about 5e's most dangerous rule...massive damage.
A character that takes twice as much damage as they have hp in a single attack dies. This may seem difficult to achieve, unless the characters have fought several life draining undead.
A character with 1hp remaining after life drain only has to take 2 damage to die, and ranged attacks cannot be made less lethal.
True. That may be a future episode. Thanks!
Love the energy!! Great opener
One rule that my group has been using that removed a bit of that Chumbawamba vibe of deathsaves, without being as hard core as death at 0 HP - Every time a character falls unconscious, they gain a level of exhaustion.
They add up FAST and start to be really debilitating, your character gets physically weaker every time, and at 6 levels is outright death. They can only be cure via long rest, and only 1 level per rest. So it sticks around for a while. I have found it to be really fun, but you still get to feel like a hero, and not an expendable extra.
Personally, the thief to rogue seemed more of a thing with expanding what the class could do. Of the classes, the Rogue was one of the more skilled character...with a lot of options beyond the sneaking and stealing side of things.
@@ork44 MMORPGs didn't exist back the Rogue class was named. Where do you think those games got the name from?
5e has quite a cool mechanic that is hidden under the hood and not fully realised: hit points are immediate recovery and hit die are longterm recovery and lingering injuries.
There is a variant test in the DMG that recovers hit die and not HP and this realises the system well. Like the variant encumbrance system it should have been the main rule!
To balance it for spell casters who aren’t tanking the hits you can add that casting a spell above third level costs a hit die (or if you don’t have a hit die it costs a point of exhaustion).
There are two simpler fixes to 5e; 1. Use exhaustion more, 2. Use deadly encounters more
Great video! Love the passion of prof DM!
This video gave me three new chest hairs!
I love this video for a ridiculous amount of reasons, and I relate to so much of it.
Excellent video!
Dying with zero hit points is like: I have 100HP and i can fight fine after taking 99 damage (12 stabs, a fireball and a 30ft fall) then you take a halfling punch in the stomach and die.
Negative hitpoints makes more sense than dying at zero. Even simulationist and deadly systems like gurps use 'em. People usually are neutralized (losing the ability to escape or fight) before they die and you can always keep battering the downed creature or coup de grace them (i dont know if they have those in 5e)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I will make an entire video about this subject. Stay tuned!
I also love using Exhaustion extensively for grittier game play.
Just go "gritty healing" from the DMG, give timers for dungeons and the like, and use Exhaustion as a response for non-combat encounters (like scaling a wall and failing) as well as for being dropped to 0 HP and for long fights that drag on.
Spells don't heal exhaustion, you can only recover it with time and rest, and it's not just an overnight cure.
This is the best thing I ever saw.
Thank you!
I was just looking over the table in the DMG on lasting wounds. We needed reasons people would want magical prosthetics!
Great video, Professor.
Something I do with pure hit dice is that I make the players CON MOD a floor, when the Barbarian with a +4 CON rolls a 1 on their d12 when they level up it becomes a 4. This prevents the frontliners being made of literal tissue paper because they got unlucky and rolled 1's on their level up and also disincentives dumping CON. Also I make them roll level one hit points.
The other thing I do is I make EVERY encounter VERY lethal. as an example we use pathfinder, so one of the mini-bosses I made to fight the players was a magus with a Keen Rapier. With a Trait that allowed them to apply a meta magic effect to a single spell at no cost. That spell was Shocking Grasp and the meta magic effect intensified, so it did 10d6 damage. And a Magus can deliver the spell via a weapon attack that uses the weapons crit chance, including keen. I make all my rolls public and I crit one of my players, who was already fairly low. He was instantly killed from 2d8+8+20d6 damage. They knew this enemy could do this because this was the third time they had met him and had seen him do it before. His mere presence had them fucking scrambling to just fucking run, which something I feel most DM's never actually do either, make bad guys so dangerous they are just run on sight, They did kill the guy in that same fight but everyone was pretty shocked because when other members of our group DM no one every dies, there is never any danger. I did warn them I would kill a bitch.
In general my fights tend to be VERY close with multiple people dropping very close to 0 hit points (No full casters in the party so I pull back just a tiny bit because when a player goes down they don't have an easy way to get them back up with magic). Something I don't see people do enough is SWARM the party with goons, like 20+ mobs that all die in a single hit. Whenever I DM my players know that Cleave and Greater Cleave are auto-takes because I usually swarm them with a horde and maybe 1 or 2 elite bad guys. They really fell heroic because they chops through bloody swathes of foes BUT it's still gritty because they have low hitpoints and I usually don't roll damage for shmucks, I just have them do either 6/8 damage so the players will die in 5-4 hits.
My own OSR campaign, mostly Mentzer D&D based, uses the following rules about resting and death:
1. you can only rest when you feel safe. In a 30-some room dungeon, played over 3 sessions, they rested twice. i) a retreat back to town after getting stomped by some monsters. ii) barricaded in a room with only one door, one approach, after killing everything else on that floor.
Regarding death. 0 is down and bleeding. Magical healing before the encounter ends means you live. If the fight ends before you get healed, you bled out.
It adds a certain urgency, and created a great situation recently where the cleric was trapped by some wolves and couldn't get to the main group of the party who were battling the vampire - who had dropped one of the warriors almost immediately.
I found your channel through mr bob the world builder, and I have become totally hooked my good sir. I personally have grown to feel that 5E is to easy and lacks a meaningful sense of danger. your channel shares great info that almost seems tailor made for my evolving needs as a Dm, keep up the great work professor.
I love how some people think that just because they're characters are the heroes of the story they cannot die lol I'm like dude do you even realize that most heroes in mythology didn't make it to old age
I started with 2nd ed in about 1989 and never had a chance to play 1st. That said, 5e is by far my favorite iteration of the rules in terms of mechanics, creativity and accessibility for new players.
But I think what other people have pointed out here is also true: Old-school style games and 5e style games are really coming from two different philosophies and play styles and have different goals of fun. 5e allows more of a power fantasy and encourages people to develop their characters like the protagonists of a TV, book or movie series, old school games focused on the peril of adventuring and incremental hard-won steps to power and survival.
There's room for both styles of play, I enjoy both for different reasons, and it's exciting to see the grimdark style live on. I'm keen to try these mechanics out :)
At my table I don't mind death saves BECAUSE I make my players roll theirs on the table, under three little cups.
Nobody lifts the cups until someone has either used their action to attempt to stabilize the downed character or AFTER a healing spell is used on them. Not even the DM knows if their character is alive or dead or if they're trying to heal a corpse until the cup's lifted. None of this 'it'll be fine, he's still got two death saves to go, we can ignore it' metagaming.
I have never seen players hit such anxiety levels when a character goes down, it's great :D
Loved the Chumbawamba reference!
Folks, just read the 5E DMG and implement the rules options for gritty realism, slow natural healing, healer's kit dependency, system shock, and others. Then add the variant encumbrance from the PHB. Then actually enforce the rules as they're written, especially for things such as terrain effects, exhaustion, and all sorts of other issues that impact combat and survival. Then pay close attention to the exact definitions of encounter difficulty and realize that a deadly encounter doesn't mean what you think it does. It's just the minimum threshold at which an encounter could be deadly if the PCs don't use good tactics and aren't smart. To increase the risk for smart PCs who use good tactics, you need to raise the difficulty from there. Also, don't make magic items commonplace or easy to acquire. You don't need house rules. It's all there in the books, and you can make the game as deadly and even deadlier than any edition. It's all in the DM's hands.
Great stuff friend 👏 👍
Wonderful Professor! I don’t think you are losing your grit 💪🏽 we play Mentzer Basic so Death is always in the party
I would buy the Black Iron Grimdark setting for 5e, its on sale as well at the moment on DTRPG
love the outro!!
That tubthumping reference. Absolute gold.
Tub thumping! I love it!
Now to comment again...
Very cool stuff as always professor! I ran a small set of 5 one shot adventures over 2 months for my players, and I used the following two house rules to make it more gritty (because I also hate death saving throws. Most boring thing in the world):
1) I would periodically give my players DM Inspiration (DMI). This is done when they roleplay well, or say a joke I like, or start thinking in a direction I want to encourage. Players can use DMI to re-roll a d20 roll, or if they want to do something super cool that cannot be done within the normal rule set, I'd ask for a DMI from them to "pay me" to be able to do that cool thing.
2) I had my players outright die at 0 HP. This made every battle super scary. This augmented the DMI rule because players could use one DMI to go to 1hp instead of 0, essentially avoiding death by the skin of their teeth. Boss battles have never had so much tension as when one player was down to 1hp due to DMI, and all the players realized they had one round left to topple the BBEG or else their friend would be toast!
Great advice!
If you want to keep constitution from being worthless with the new hp rule suggested, make the constitution modifier the floor for their hp. So that 20 con will keep you from rolling 1hp every level. Not as gritty but the bloat will still be reduced.
Also, for people worried that you can't have an epic battle in Basic/Expert because characters are fragile, check out the "shields shall be splintered" house rule and go wild.
It's the reason my level 2 party could use their heads and beat a weakened vampire. And it's still epic to this day.
Cool idea.
Lost Shrine of Tamoachan was an AD&D adventure where the air was poisonous as a way to speed up tournament play. I’ve had similar ideas about limiting rests. Besides toxic air, the PC’s could have to avoid wandering monsters. The time limit is also a good way to motivate players to keep things moving. Thanks for another good video!
P.S. I had a few more thoughts. DMs could allow death saves that are rolled by the DM behind the screen so that the players don’t know how close to death they are. Alternately, I have a small wood box that a player could put a d20 and shake it up. Then, the DM looks at the results so the player rolled the result but it’s still secret from them. Beyond that, I would only use death saves for PC’s and major NPC villains. All other NPC’s die at 0 hp. If their friends die easily, it can create a gritty feel without killing PC’s. Don’t forget about the instant death rule. That’s a greater risk at low level, but I saw a 5th level character almost instantly killed when a zombie T-rex got a nat 20 on a bite…
Tell it like it is!
When Greyhawk From the Ashes was released even older gamers cried it was too dangerous, too gritty, and too dark. Of course, like you, I went from AD&D to WFRP and stayed with CARL SARGENT when he wrote From the Ashes after Zeb Cook blew up GH with Greyhawk Wars. Carl had that long stint with WFRP and seemed to have brought a lot of that to AD&D 2e's Greyhawk.I think that's why it stuck with me and that my DMing style has been so influenced since then. Anyways, thanks for the tips on 5e Hardcore Mode.
Carl Sargent is a great designer.Thanks for sharing your memories!
Overall, I agree about 5E, I was going to run a game for a few friends as they were interested in 5E, now me personally, don't care for 5E (more now after this story). But our friend that was going to run was saying he just didn't have the time, so I thought I'd run a 5E game. It was going to be with variants though. because I just couldn't stand the short rest; long rest rule. I thought it was pretty stupid. I have a lot of issues with 5E overall, which is why I didn't previously have an interest in running it. But I watched the Dungeon Dudes video about 5 variant rules for a grittier game, while I didn't plan to use them all most of them were appealing in that they offered grit, but not as complex, which was what I was looking for. One was a variant of a variant in the DMG, that I actually really liked. But as I discussed with one of my to be players, he in the end decided it wasn't "gritty". He decided not to play so the game got cancelled, (I mainly decided to try and run it cause he was still relatively new to roleplaying games compared to my other two friends and me- we ran Pathfinder for a while- but he interested in 5E) My past games though were always on the grittier side. I had made use of a few variants including a massive damage threshold variant that greatly reduced the number. I prefer a more realistic setting. I know there is magic and dragons and such. But it doesn't mean the world can't be grounded in reality. It's what I prefer to run.
I will disagree a little about negative hitpoints. I don't consider my self immature or unimaginative. I also don't consider nagative hitpoints training wheels. I think they can add something to a game. I've had numerous battles both as player and GM where fellow party members were in the negatives and the others were scrambling to try and help their comrads but can't because the battle caused people to scatter. I personally think it can add to the tension of a fight/encounter. But that's my two coppers on that subject.
Great vid. We play combat death without death saves, but the character won't die until the end of combat. It gives the other PC's a chance to save them, but at the cost of their turns/actions.
Stay Happy and Healthy. Keep up the great vids.
Now THIS is HOW you reply a message, Great Vid Professor. Content is AWESOME as always, brothers :)
great video!
One thing I added to my hotsprings island game was Death save accumulation. Meaning when you fail a death save that marker stays until the PC is out of the dungeon. I find negative hitpoints tend to outright kill too fast. Also It's not uncommon for me to make a monster or enemy finish off a downed PC , something many Dms just don't do. My GF was running a paladin in one of my games opened up the door to this room. Gets caught by banshee wailing the 3 werewolves inside the room were waiting for the party. the first 3 attacks knocked her out she's on the ground inish goes to the second werewolf. Who grabs her drags her into the room and rips the heart out of her chest. Up to this point the party was planning on using healing word to get her back up and then pull her down the stairs while guarding the door. She was very dead.
For those of you thinking it, yes she's still with me.
This is the energy I need !!
The first thing that popped into my mind when the picture of the woman about to be sacrifices was shown was "Damn, Skeletor has gone full death metal album cover."
I've been hacking the crap out of 5e since last fall in my spare time. It's pretty easy and a lot of fun. The most challenging obstacle I've encountered is learning how to make a custom character sheet for Roll20.
ב"ה
I ballance everything by the DMG suggesstion (with time limits that usually allow around 3 short rests and sometimes a little bt more rather than only 2 as suggested in the dungeon master's guide), and still characters die all the time.
In the session before the last one 2 characters died while the party had only one oil of revivify and last session the one that got revivified in the session before died again.
All you need to modify is the strategy of the enemies, who are aware that healing magic exists, and have them attack characters that are down, and they die retty quickly. Each instance of damage is a failed death saving throw for a down character, and every hit is an automatic critical so all you need is either 2 hits, a hit and an AOE damage or three times AOE damage to kill a character that is down. Since enemies are aware of the existance of healing magic, they are pretty likely to kill a character before it get healed.
5:35 "I cast tiny hut."
It takes 10 rounds to cast!
The tub thumping reference was funny 😂🤣😂
Remove the insane bonuses, op special abilities, bonus actions, ease of healing .. boom! Danger, grit.
sometimes I say roll initiative as soon as the PCs enter a dungeon and we do turn by turn exploration of the entire dungeon - I know this might sound tedious or daunting, but if you have a dungeon with a lot going on inside of it, I recommend trying it at least once
The first 40 seconds of this video are pure comedy gold xD
An easy house rule to make things grittier:
Nat 20: critical hit. Roll damage as usual, but before doubling and applying the result as hit point damage, roll the character's hit die and add to this the character's constitution mod. The damage rolled minus the second roll is the number of hit point damage per round in bleeding, until the player spends an action to successfully stop the bleeding (a skill roll). Zero or less results only does double damage as usual. A critical hit imposes a crit level on the character, which is cumulative with every critical hit endured. Don't bother with bleeding if the character is going to be reduced to 0 HP from the critical hit anyway, as this is handled as per death & dying rules in PHB.
A crit level of one or more means any curative spell of a level lower than a character's current crit level heals no hit points. A healer must use a curative spell of an equal or higher level to cure any hit point damage. Class abilities are considered a spell level equal to the character level when that ability is first gained.
Two Nat 20s on any roll with advantage or disadvantage: target is reduced to zero hit points and must make death saves. One crit level is immediately inflicted, and each failed death save is an additional crit level suffered. For example, a character in this case of being struck down by a double Nat 20 (with no previous crit levels suffered) who successfully saves for the third time after two failed death saves thus has 3 crit levels and cannot have any hit points healed by any spell lower than third level, returning to consciousness only after healing to 1 hp by more powerful curative magic or natural healing. Curative spells and abilities restricted by crit levels can, however, be used to provide one successful save vs death roll to the distressed character, once per death save cycle/situation. Casting different restricted spells and using abilities from the same source (ie. that character) does not give more than one successful death save. Two or more different sources, does.
Crit levels are reduced 1 level with a successful Constitution save as per recuperating PHB187.
When not in a combat situation and taken totally by surprise and attacked: this is treated as a Nat 20 roll, and the DM rolls a d20, with a Nat 20 roll here resulting in this being a double Nat 20 handled as above.
Having crit levels means every roll is made with disadvantage, to abstractly simulate the nature of pain and infirmity of a long term, serious injury. This disadvantage cannot be countered unless there are more factors giving advantage than the character's current crit levels, in which case a normal roll can be made (ie. a roll with neither advantage or disadvantage).
Congrats on 250 episodes!
Instead of no bonus HP for Con, I use AD&D HP rules. "Name level" is 10 across the board in my game. After 10th level you get 1hp+Con bonus. You don't suffer at low levels, and battles don't take 2+ hours at high levels.
HAHAHA!!!!!
I've gone off on the Rogue Tangent before.
That was Great!