D&D 5E What else to I need to consider for a 5e realism hard mode?

[Greg Benage]

IMHO, monsters are so much easier to tune as you say. There are lots of easy ways to make them tougher. Many you can do on the fly.

It may be easier, but there's two full books of monsters! And while I acknowledge it may be easier for some, it's pretty easy to fall down the analysis rabbit hole. Like, okay, I want to put save-or-suck and save-or-die back in, get rid of all the iterative end-of-turn saving throws. Fine. Now, does the saving throw proficiency system still work? If it doesn't work, what's the solution? What ripple effects does that solution have? If I do this for monster abilities, do I also want to reintroduce SoD and SoS into spells? And so on.

I'm probably just too lazy, and B/X is right there on the shelf.

 

[Charles Rampant]

The career system is ... strange. It's both a weakness *and* a strength of the system. Warhammer is "realistic" and one of the aspect of this realism is that you don't choose the circumstances of your birth. So roll twice for careers and pick one. You wanted to be a wizard? Well, tough luck, you got rat catcher or peasant, pick one. (Of course, you then choose to be a rat catcher who wants to be an adventurer/sellsword/etc and move on to other careers). So there was a lot of richness and substance to the system. On the other hand, for some people not being able to choose your class is intolerable. Furthermore, the system was a bit hard to navigate.

My big beef with the careers system was the fact that, ultimately, the characters were not advancing in those careers; they were adventuring! So your Acrobat just became a Guild Merchant? Uh, mate, you didn't do any merchanting, you stabbed some Skaven. Now sometimes you can make these things work - the Spymaster might actually have some spies to master - but after a while you mostly saw people head into the combat careers for a reason.

I find the 5e method of your 'career' being a background element rather than your class much more coherent in play, but then I know that the Careers system is actually a lot of fun to plan around and offers benefits of both classes (limited choices keep it easy to analyse, strong identity for the character) and point buy (freedom to choose what suits your character concept).

So I'd certainly not try and rip the WFRP system out or anything, but it sure is a bit of a headscratcher if you think about it too hard (which is always a bad idea with RPG systems, to be fair). I wonder what approach they'll take for 4th edition WFRP - since Cubicle 7 are already doing OGL with Adventures in Middle Earth, we might even see them double dip with a custom system and a D&D setting book. (Age of Sigmar would probably work far better in D&D than WFRP 2e rules, for example).

 

[dave2008]

It may be easier, but there's two full books of monsters! And while I acknowledge it may be easier for some, it's pretty easy to fall down the analysis rabbit hole. Like, okay, I want to put save-or-suck and save-or-die back in, get rid of all the iterative end-of-turn saving throws. Fine. Now, does the saving throw proficiency system still work? If it doesn't work, what's the solution? What ripple effects does that solution have? If I do this for monster abilities, do I also want to reintroduce SoD and SoS into spells? And so on.

I'm probably just too lazy, and B/X is right there on the shelf.

One and a third books actually. However, that is really irrelevant. It is a one solution fits all (or most) approach - that is why you can do it on the fly. Depending on your groups capabilities you simply: increase HP, increase AC, Increase attack, increase damage, & and if needed (solos) increase mobility and stun lock defense.

Those options can be dialed up or down easily for whatever threat level your group can handle. I can just grab the MM and make those adjustments on the fly without any notes or creating new stat blocks. Now, if you want to get into modifying or adding abilities - that takes some time

 

[mflayermonk]

I have a great group of highly competent players and I'm thinking about running our next campaign with a 5e "hard mode" rules set. We are all interested in a campaign that plays more like a fantasy novel and less like a cartoon or video game.

Some of these rules I already use, the big one is the change to HD and rebalancing around ~1/3 hitpoints at high level.

Sounds like fun. As someone that has done this before, here are some things that came up:
1) Ranged attacks might become too prominent, so think about firing into combat rules and how effective you want ranged combat to be.
2) Alliance-building becomes far more important. Henchman and follower rules might be useful.
3) I wouldn't rule out feats and multiclassing, but would have them as rewards for accomplishing goals in game as opposed to being able to choose them when a PC levels up.

 

[DeJoker]

I like the take a -4 penalty if you were firing into combat or you might hit your own folks rule it did help to cut down on that abuse of course you could take a Feat to cancel that but most of the time only archer types did that. That being said I feel that archery is not the threat it historically was, I mean having a loaded crossbow or bow pointed at you was akin to having a loaded gun pointed at you today you really had to be suicidal to risk getting shot but in most D&D games this concept does not exist you can stand at the end of a hallway with a loaded crossbow and the fighter is most likely going to charge you rather than consider surrendering and then will still most likely beat the snot out of you after you shoot and hit him with that missile weapon. Just something wrong (to me anyway) with that scenario

 

[Ancalagon]

My big beef with the careers system was the fact that, ultimately, the characters were not advancing in those careers; they were adventuring! So your Acrobat just became a Guild Merchant? Uh, mate, you didn't do any merchanting, you stabbed some Skaven. Now sometimes you can make these things work - the Spymaster might actually have some spies to master - but after a while you mostly saw people head into the combat careers for a reason.

I find the 5e method of your 'career' being a background element rather than your class much more coherent in play, but then I know that the Careers system is actually a lot of fun to plan around and offers benefits of both classes (limited choices keep it easy to analyse, strong identity for the character) and point buy (freedom to choose what suits your character concept).

So I'd certainly not try and rip the WFRP system out or anything, but it sure is a bit of a headscratcher if you think about it too hard (which is always a bad idea with RPG systems, to be fair). I wonder what approach they'll take for 4th edition WFRP - since Cubicle 7 are already doing OGL with Adventures in Middle Earth, we might even see them double dip with a custom system and a D&D setting book. (Age of Sigmar would probably work far better in D&D than WFRP 2e rules, for example).

Well it sort of made sense when you were playing your first career "I'm a scribe who's now an adventurer - OH CRAP!", but later on it became a bit strange. A lot of the advanced career were suitable "adventure material" but in some cases not so much. It was up to the player and GM to work together to come up with a plausible reason why some career choices were taken.

(amusing side note: The party thief became a fence. The party, investigating someone buying weapons, set up a fence shop and started selling old weapons they had looted as a decoy to try to find out who was buying all these weapons... but soon became so engrossed in the business and making money I had to put my foot down. I guess that's why adventurers retire )

If I were to make a merger of warhammer and D&D I would strongly consider using the background system to create a sort of career-class hybrid. Not sure if it would work though...

Is a 4e coming out?

 

[Charles Rampant]

Well it sort of made sense when you were playing your first career "I'm a scribe who's now an adventurer - OH CRAP!", but later on it became a bit strange. A lot of the advanced career were suitable "adventure material" but in some cases not so much. It was up to the player and GM to work together to come up with a plausible reason why some career choices were taken.

Yeah, that's fair; the first career serves to explain "what I did before I stabbed Skaven", but once you're a Skaven Slayer it seems odd to suggest that your main profession remains Lawyer, or whatever. It works if your characters constantly interact with their home town and have Real People problems in relation to their careers, but I'd be willing to bet that most campaigns didn't do that.

(amusing side note: The party thief became a fence. The party, investigating someone buying weapons, set up a fence shop and started selling old weapons they had looted as a decoy to try to find out who was buying all these weapons... but soon became so engrossed in the business and making money I had to put my foot down. I guess that's why adventurers retire )

It's a problem that exists in all RPGs, but I think the careers system really exacerbates. (I saw a guy on Reddit asking for advice - his players just all wanted to rob merchants rather than going on adventures. I suggested just saying to them, "That's not what this campaign is about, try again." In response, people took offence at the idea of limiting player freedom, which I found an odd argument. Ultimately, if the DM doesn't want to run a storyline, then the storyline isn't going to run one way or another.) That said, D&D characters seem to have little justification for retiring from adventuring, whereas WFRP ones do.

Is a 4e coming out?

Yeah, Cubicle 7 - the Doctor Who, One Ring, Adventures in Middle Earth guys - got the licence. Are they now the biggest UK publisher? Anyway, they got the licence to both WFRP and to Age of Sigmar, the thousands-of-years-later sequel to the Warhammer Fantasy setting. That really caught a lot of people off guard, since Age of Sigmar (AoS for short) wasn't felt to have the nerd cred to demand a tie-in RPG, but we shall see what they do with them. I suspect we'll see the two games take different tones and systems - a horror-esque WFRP and a heroic fantasy AoS would make sense.

 

[snickersnax]

Nice, I wish my players or DM would be willing to do this.

One question though. What about cure spells?

What about cure spells? Not really sure what you mean.

I have a fondness in my heart for the old cure light, moderate, serious, critical wounds, although I'm fine with them being the same spell just cast at different levels. I have a secret wish that fixing hit points will move hit points closer to actual wounds rather than having them be more arbitrary than ever. Plus I like that a 70 hp heal spell always feels like a big deal. To these 300+hp barbarians heal spells seem so small.

 

[Lanefan]

It's a problem that exists in all RPGs, but I think the careers system really exacerbates. (I saw a guy on Reddit asking for advice - his players just all wanted to rob merchants rather than going on adventures. I suggested just saying to them, "That's not what this campaign is about, try again." In response, people took offence at the idea of limiting player freedom, which I found an odd argument. Ultimately, if the DM doesn't want to run a storyline, then the storyline isn't going to run one way or another.)

A long time ago I had something like this happen, where a party set themselves up as a corporation (more or less) and started buying every business they could get their hands on across about 5 kingdoms. Then they expected me to DM their progress, capital gains, profits-and-losses, expenses, etc. etc. on a quite fine-tuned basis; and if the company needed a cash infusion they'd go out adventuring to raise it.

They had the wrong DM for this. I don't like economics in real life and I'll be damned if I'm going to DM it in a game, so I eventually just told them that I'll DM those characters who are willing to adventure and that anyone who wanted to stay behind and run the company was welcome to retire...and every now and then I'll handwave how they're doing.

Players got the hint, and adventuring resumed and continued.

 

[Greg Benage]

One and a third books actually. However, that is really irrelevant. It is a one solution fits all (or most) approach - that is why you can do it on the fly. Depending on your groups capabilities you simply: increase HP, increase AC, Increase attack, increase damage, & and if needed (solos) increase mobility and stun lock defense.

Those options can be dialed up or down easily for whatever threat level your group can handle. I can just grab the MM and make those adjustments on the fly without any notes or creating new stat blocks. Now, if you want to get into modifying or adding abilities - that takes some time

I agree it's easy to adjust a monster's ability to inflict or withstand hit point attrition. I do it all the time. The changes I'd want to make for a 5e "hard mode" involve ways to die other than hit point attrition. The way I see it, those are things that made TSR D&D feel like "hard mode" -- those are the things that created the suspense. Hit point attrition really doesn't do that, at least until you're one hit away from being dead. And in 5e, it doesn't even do it then. You only get it when you're one death save away.

I don't know if I've explained that well. It's easy to make 5e harder. But it takes more than hit point attrition management, IMO, to make the play experience feel like "hard mode."