D&D 5E Hard Mode Campaigning

[Astrosicebear]

Lots of awesome ideas here, thanks everybody! The thought is to create enough changes that we may capture the feeling of playing the deadlier games of old, without changing the system properly.

The game is pretty much there without any changes. Simply rule 0 hp is death, or you only get 1 death save.

 

[Lanefan]

[MENTION=6776259]Haffrung[/MENTION] in post 6 and [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] in post 7 hit nails square on heads. Good stuff!

One thing I'd do is this: death in 5e as written is a speedbump for a mid-to-high level party. Make revival spells more costly, and bring back the resurrection survival roll from 1e (and the permanent loss of a Con point) to make death something to still be concerned about even at high level.

Another change to help get yer old-school vibe on would be to have an overnight rest only give you back some of your h.p. rather than all of them - say, 10% of your total. This sometimes forces an interesting choice on the party of either resting for a few days to get healthy and then go back into a possibly restocked (and certainly healthy) dungeon, or wade back in now at less than full health to press the advantage.

Lan-"I used to know what Con. 16 felt like, before I started adventuring"-efan

 

[Iosue]

No moving and casting in the same turn. Or, at least, moving gives the caster Disadvantage.

Re-roll initiative every round. Swingy-ness galore!

CON save to survive polymorph and resurrection.

Nat 1 on any spellcasting causes a roll on the Wild Magic table.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

Make several difficulty levels of combat.
Such as Standard, Tough, and TPK.

Standard is the combat you plan on.
Tough is 50% more creatures or hp.
TPK is 100% more creatures or hp.

 

[77IM]

Only rogues can have proficiency with theives' tools or the Investigation skill.

Potion miscibility table!

Gold earned = XP. No XP for monsters (just have the tougher ones guarding more gold). This gives the game more of a "heist" feel, as smart players will attempt to circumvent monsters as much as possible, and run when necessary. This can allow you to use more dangerous monsters than normally.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

You'll also need to lose at will cantrips, at least any that do damage. And scale the thief and magic users hit dice back.

 

[Scorpio616]

The game is pretty much there without any changes. Simply rule 0 hp is death, or you only get 1 death save.

The group I'm in decided that the trauma of Death saves stick and don't go away until a long rest. So you can't use the dying rules to Yo-yo up and down quite so much.

 

[redwizard99]

For our group, we just use the old 3E death rule.
Keep track of negative HP and -10HP = dead.

And the character loses one level if he is not revived within one minute.

 

[Stalker0]

I say d4 hitdice for all of them...that will make them sweat!!

 

[Pentegarn]

Just be careful. With rules like that (which are fine) the game will devolve into 15 minute days. They will rest until fully healed then head back to the dungeon for a room or two, blow everything to survive and then rest again for a week.

Sounds fun...

You're assuming his players exploit, and he (as a DM) allows it.

If the 15mwd is an issue in a game, it's an issue because the gaming group is made up of players who exploit, and a DM who allows it. If that's the preferred play style of that group and they have fun with it, so be it. The game is about having fun. But it's not the game breaking issue that the players posting to 50+ page threads on the various RPG forums have made it to be. The 15mwd was never an argument that held any water. The rules have always been clear that you rest/pray/prepare to regain spells once in a 24 hour period. It's been there since AD&D. If this is ignored at the table, the fault of any imbalance or breakage lies with those at the table.

Granted, it's a simplistic and heavy handed way to balance spell casting. Other games, like DCC, does it better by imposing spell checks to successfully cast a spell to begin with, on top of allowing opponents a saving throw in most cases. Also, they do this by adding the risk of misfires and corruption for arcane magic, and deity disfavor for divine. At the very least, a failed spell check results in the loss of the spell for the day. These things make a caster question if it's worth attempting the spell to begin with, so the reasoning behind the rules balancing the frequency of spell casting lends itself easier to role play. I know in our games, casters tend to put off spellcasting if it appears martial combatants have things at least reasonably in hand. I'm sure plenty will disagree. For my groups, and myself, we tend to prefer DCC's method since our inspiration for magic in fantasy tends to come from books like Tolkien's Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings, or Howard's Conan books. Gandalf didn't run around the movies slinging spells left and right, "round" after "round".

As for the argument for resting because "the casters are out of spells"... well, imho, players need to learn to play their casters. If it's not fun for them because they can't cast a spell every round and rest as soon as their favorite spells can no longer be cast, then maybe a pure caster isn't the best class for those types of players to begin with. If the divine casters are burning through their slots too fast and the party is without healing, then maybe those casters might want to save more slots for healing magic, and/or the rest of the group needs to start using some strategy, stealth, and parlaying instead of rushing in, toe to toe, encounter after encounter, slugging it out.

Again. It comes down to whatever works, and is fun at a particular table. But try not to blame the developers or others if the rules don't work for whatever reason at your table, especially if (as in the case of the 15mwd) your table is ignoring rules set into place to avoid the particular problem. Instead, change the rule, create a new rule, house rule whatever you need to make the game work at your table. This was suggested even in the rule bloat of 3x, and the precise RAW of 4e, where the rules were spelled out for everyone in these editions which seems built for rules lawyering. House ruling has been encourage, at least to some extent, throughout all editions of D&D.

As to the OP's question, definitely option 3. If I were playing 5e, the hit die would be gone before I cracked the book for the first time. It'd be replaced with 2e's natural healing rules instead. That's the way I'd do it at my table.