D&D 5E [+] How do you make 5E more challenging?

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

I have monsters prioritize attacking downed, but not-yet-dead PCs. I also prioritize including them in AOEs when possible. This is a great job for lower level Lackey type monsters or anything with Multiattack. Any rolled death save should have at least a 50% chance of PC death, if they even last long enough to try to roll them.

During exploration, failed checks will usually have a "things get worse" result rather than a "nothing happens" result. Failing to intimidate someone turns them against you, failing a perception roll triggers the hidden trap, failing to climb means falling halfway, etc.

 

[ezo]

I'm very curious about 1l- removing cantrip damage scaling. I think the "light" version of it would be to make it class-level dependent, not character-level. Incentivize single-classing (although as per 1n you removed MCing).

How do your players feel about these house rules? How often do you run sessions? Capping scores at 18 instead of 20 is pretty interesting as well.

For 1l, no issues at all. The cantrips have riders which can be very useful. If you don't allow multiclassing, they would scale by class level automatically, as you noted. IMO, multiclassing and feats are the two greatest offenders when it comes to creating unbalance. Many of the feats are fine, or only require minor tweaking, and so we've used them still from time to time.

Frankly, they keep a lid on the game more. Take expertise, for instance. RAW, you can have a PC at first level with a +9 modifier to an ability (skill). The game is supposed to "run fine" just using DCs from 10-20, but at +9, especially if you have another PC who can grant advantage (via guidance or the help action, etc.), the PC has a 75% chance against a DC 20, at 1st level? No, that is too much IMO.

So, make expertise advantage. Now you can still have a +7, which is awesome, but it brings it down to 64%, which is sort of the "established" success goal of 65% in many cases. Still high, but better IMO.

One of my favorite houserules is that healing magics, etc. only provide temporary hit points. Since you can't have more than a single source of temp hit points at a time, you can "improve" your condition if you gain higher temporary hit points, but you quickly realize you can never fully recover! Frankly, this alone makes things MUCH harder for the PCs in many ways!

Capping scores at 18 also helps with the bonuses climbing a bit too high. I know it is only a +1 difference to bonuses, but it also feels better when proficiency caps at +6 that abilities are +4 instead of +5.

If you keep feats out, it also forces players to place ASI's elsewhere as the cap 18 is reached more quickly than cap 20.

I'll update the post a bit later, as we also have a number of house-rules and systems in place to aid players and their characters. One instance is upcasting spells. If you upcast a spell, you gain the maximum benefit from the additional spell levels, no rolling involved. For example, casting a cure wounds at 2nd level isn't 2d8+ability modifier, but d8+8+ability modifier. It makes upcasting an attractive option IME.

 

[Shiroiken]

The best method is to increase the number of encounters per long rest. This can be done by using Gritty Realism or "Sanctuaries," or by not ending/starting sessions with a long rest. If you end up taking 3-4 sessions between long rests, you can get plenty of encounters between them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Either use the Gritty Realism rest rules where a long rest takes a week and a short rest takes a day, or this 5e "Safe Haven" rest variant where you need to rest in a safe place (town, inn, etc) for two consecutive nights to get a long rest.

I had the opportunity to try Gritty Realism out with one of my groups- they got used to it and I love it. Decoupling recovery/rests from sleep was my favorite part; it takes a week for a long rest? Great, downtime activities. Some players engage with them, others don't, but usually they all have something to do whether it's research or trying to find a market for magic items etc.

The week long rest means that time will pass in the world, during the duration of the campaign- that's nice too.

Adjusting when and how often one can take a resource-restoring rest is IMO the most important way to adjust challenge to the PCs. Behind that, dealing with the "whack-a-mole" nature of combat healing is a big help.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've stopped dropping characters unconscious at 0HP and instead give them the dazed condition (1 action or bonus action, no reaction, can't concentrate). Condition remains until you have 1 or More HP and pass a DC19 Con Save at the start of your turn (lesser restoration or a short rest also removes the condition if above 0HP). Implemented about a year ago and it's made combat more tense (w/o leading to death spiral) and challenging, and also leads to rounds where dealing with dazed party members becomes a huge priority.

What happens when the PC gets hit again? Can they ever go down? Is death still on the table at all?

Edit: nevermind. Asked and answered.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In my current game:

Tossed out multiple saves. You fail that flesh to stone spell save? You failed.
If you are KOed in battle you are out until the battle is over. A cure spell just keeps you from dying.
No death saves. Changed to Shadowdarks D4 plus Con bonus = Rounds until you bleed out if KOed

I love all these things!

 

[tetrasodium]

Couple of the ones with the biggest bang for the buck are

• Die at zero, period . No saves or anything, you are just dead.
• Bringing back the iterative attack penalty or pf2 MAP penalty. Unfortunately it's my experience that this is best applied to monster ac GM side or many players will obviously choose to ignore what they feel is an unjust nerf in a way that is difficult for the GM to notice
• Bringing back sr: yes/no helps but players rightfully feel super confused about what spells are ok when and applying those tags to the 5e spell list is a pretty significant job for the gm
• Get rid of background features, just straight death to the concept.
• Do something drastic to rest mechanics. Unfortunately I've never found an option that is both a meaningful shift in function and one that can't easily be trivialized without causing significant problems somewhere.

Ime there are so many parts of 5e designed with the intent of guaranteeing "challenging" is a thing staying far far from the table theat house ruling it in no longer resembles 5e very much. Often this is because smaller tweaks tend to have ways that a player can easily gain some ability that trivializes them. You only need to look at the number of posts with many many points of change suggested in a single post so far as evidence.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Slow natural healing helps a lot.

I also like too reduce the HP of monsters a lot, but throw a lot more monsters, like A LOT more.

Im also a big fan of asking for a CON save when sleeping in a hostile land to see if the characters benefit from a long rest.

I also like to give conditional disadvantage on rolls not often used in 5e: healing rolls, damage rolls, initiative etc AND drain resources such as HDs and proficiciency bonus.

 

[overgeeked]

During exploration, failed checks will usually have a "things get worse" result rather than a "nothing happens" result. Failing to intimidate someone turns them against you, failing a perception roll triggers the hidden trap, failing to climb means falling halfway, etc.

This is a good one. I started doing that in the last 5E game I ran. Basically pull from PbtA and BitD and use fail forward on all checks.

 

[Muso]

1) A sort of half way between gritty realism and the standard rule. I.e., the spell slots and related abilities follow the standard rules, while all the others use the gritty realism option (there are three types of rests: 1 h, 8 h and 1 week)
2) For critical hits we throw one dice while for the other we use the maximum (i.e., long sword critical: 1d8 + 8 instead of 2d8).
3) As a DM I use the terrain and the minions to challenge the PCs. It usually works. Several minions can be a good challenge.
4) I prefer sand boxes where the PCs never know where they are going into (e.g. the Curse of Strahd's Bonegrinder location... it can be very dangerous at the wrong level).