First, I don't like long posts--so I apologize for the length of this one... Also, as usual, this is not for most and I am ok with that.
I've mentioned this idea here and there in other threads, but I wanted a place to put it out there on its own. In the (relatively) near future I will be running our game as DM for a while. Being the rule-tweaker that I am, there are several ideas I will be implementing but this is the most important one:
Everything has half its listed hit points.
Well, okay, not
quite for PCs, who are closer to 53-55%, but otherwise it is universal.
An orc? HP = 15 right? Not now, it is only 7 (I round down).
An ogre? HP = 59 is now only 29.
An adult red dragon? HP = 256, but will only be 128.
And so on...
For PCs it is slightly different. You begin with max HP and your hit point modifier (discussed later). At 2nd level, you get
only your hit die and then at 3rd level you get
only your hit point modifier. This repeats so on even levels you get a hit die, and on odd levels you hit your hit point modifier. This results in slightly better than half normal hit points, but not by a lot.
So, why am I doing this? BECAUSE COMBAT TAKES WAY TOO LONG! The culprit? Hit point bloat (IMO anyway).
It also has some great side-effects!
1. It really makes low CR creatures more potent because not only can they hit, but when they
do it matters MORE. Think about it. A CR 1/2 Goblin can hit a AC 20 with 16 or higher (25%), which is great and part of what bounded accuracy was supposed to do. For a PC with 50 hit points or so (say about 5-6th level), those 5 points of damage aren't a big deal really. However, with my idea the HP would be about 30, making 5 points much more significant!
Now, I realize if the goblin has its normal hp, it might survive a second round and get to attack again, maybe hitting for 5 points. So the idea with the bloated hp is it keeps combat going a long time because things survive long enough to keep hitting repeatedly and wear down the PCs. But that is the problem... a slow beating down of the PCs and combat dragging on and on.
2. Scary monsters are
SCARY, I mean like
WOW, SCARY! So, an ogre does 13 damage. Pretty nice, right? Sure, with 50 hp that is about 25%. But, with only 30 hp, it is 43%! Makes that ogre a bit scarier, huh? I think so. Of course, with only 29 hit points, the PCs will kill the ogre more quickly, but again that is the point--to speed up combat.
3. Magic
kills. Sleep can actually affect things. In 1E, the average ogre (4d8+1) had 19 hit points. Sleep actually had a 50/50 chance of working. In 5E, it won't work until you get the ogre down 30 hp or more typically. Well, people might cry out "NO way! Casters would be too powerful!" accept they aren't since they will
also have fewer hit points and be just as vulnerable to enemy casters as their opponents are to them.
I could go on, but I am shaking from how long this post is already so one final thing:
The Hit Point Modifier.
Forget CON. Lame. Because CON is tied into hp, for most characters it is the 3rd or better stat, rarely 4th, and super rare for 5th or 6th. With the "abstract" idea of hp in 5E being more embraced, I have gone further....
Your Hit Point Modifier is equal to the modifier you have for your highest ability score. This means a wizard will gain his hp bonus from INT (most likely), a rogue from DEX, etc. Now, we use CON in other ways so it is still important to the game... but that is for another post.
You're adding a lot of special mechanics and modifying other stuff your players seem to accept you doing, but they might still secretly feel a bit "nerfed". Also, it adresses the HP aspect, but not as much others aspects like say the obvious current lack of impact of relative weapon damage by size, and, way more importantly, your ultimate goal: making combat faster!.
Still, the point about
some DMs wanting to effectively speed up combat and making it "more swingy" is a very valid one.
But if the point is to speed things up,
you might as well go all the way and remove
all uncessary or slow steps altogether. Especially things which often tend to slow down combat to a crawl.
Here is (nearly) how I do it in my campaign:
HOUSE RULE - DICE: Only d20 are allowed at the game table.
Reason: Removes a LOT of game table clutter.
Speed things up a bit too: No more slowdowns from slowpoke players that never seem to be able to learn which one is the d8 even after two years of playing. Or that always keep on insisting on picking up or rolling their dice one. by. one. by. one. Less dice means less physical dice manipulation involved altogether.
HOUSE RULE - DAMAGE: No damage dice are rolled instead they always deal max damage.
Reason: Random damage is not really needed. There is already enough randomness in the attack roll itself! And anyway, the players rarely know exactly how many HP their enemies have. So rolling for damage is a useless step anyway.
Thus, damage is simply written directly on character sheet besides the relevant attacks.
Speeds things up a bit too: Less dice to be picked up and rolled and added. Especially if you have math challenged players that takes minutes to add their damage dice together. Or players that insist on rolling the attack FIRST and then rolling for dammage ONLY if they did hit (instead of rolling all the dice at once).
Max DG also makes bigger weapons more "noticeable" and the math to me feels "more right".
Rolling you end up chooosing between doing +1 or +2 avg DG
vs +2 AC (shield)
vs 1 extra attack, so of course that llittle +1 DG avg is gonna feel weak in comparison.
Maxing instead it becomes +2 or +4 DG
vs +2 AC
vs 1 extra atk. Feels much more "right" to me.
Heck in my campaign, I ask players to roll ALL of their d20 in one go. 3 attacks? You roll SIX d20! Color coded with three hues (say red for 1st attack, green for 2nd and blue for 3rd), and two shades (say opaque + transparent) for each hue "pair". This is because the player might not know in advance about if his PC has advantage or disadvantage on the roll, onnly the DM knows that. So the clearer dice is for when advantage or disadvantage would apply and thus ALWAYS needs to be rolled, no exceptions.
And if a player "forgets" to roll the second for advantage/disadvantage: he does not get to use an Advantage dice result on that roll. If he would have had Disadvantage, but forgot to roll the 2nd dice at the same time, he gets -10 on his roll instead. Initially I am "relax" with this rule, but after explaining it (and letting the player reroll the missing dice) a few times, then wham I apply it all the time. Players pick up fast and then stop slowing down the action resolution during combat.
You'd be surprised how faster the cobmats become when 9 dice rolls (3 attacks, then advanntage/disadvantage, tghen damage) are replaced by a single "all at once" roll instead.
HOUSE RULE - A PC is a player's avatar in the game, not a puppet
The PC's actions thus reflect the players own decisions: the PC is not a perfectly remote controlled puppet and while quite skilled, he is no better at tactical decisions than the player is.
This is the "anti-analysis-paralysis" and the "know your PC" rule. The excuse "But my character is a pro, he'd know and take the right decision right away, while
I need time to think!" is a very false statement: The god Thor both in movies and comics is super skilled and super high level. Yet he does superbly stupid tactical choices and decisions all the time. If you want your PC to perform better then just BE A BETTER PLAYER.
Just frakking use the Murky Mirror already:
Let’s talk about the mythical distinction between players and characters. Players are characters. Characters are players. And once you accept that, it’s a lot easier to run a fun game. …
theangrygm.com
HOUSE RULE - You declare your entire round
This is also part of the "anti-analysis-paralysis" rule.
Basically, players still get a "bag" containing various tokens: 1 Move token (actually several little "move 5 feet" tokens) + 1 Action token (which may be potentially several separate Attacks tokens) + 1 Bonus Action token + 1 Interaction token (+ 1 Reaction token, but that is usually outside their own turn). HOWEVER instead of "spending" these tokens one. by. one. by. one. with the opportunity to pause the flow of the game at every single step to "think and decide" what token to use up next, this house rule says that they instead get only
a single "turn declaration step" for
all of their tokens.
This nerfs PCs a bit: instead of always doing the "perfect" thing, now a player has to do the though tactical choice of deciding like say "Do I risk doing overkill damage by doing my two attacks on a single foe, vs spread out my two attacks at the risk of not killing my 1st target". IMHGO it adds a lot of much more intersting tactical choices to the game instead of the pablum-fed "I can always act in them ost efficient way possible". players are rewarded for making those though calls. Not for merely rolling dice in an obvious order.
Combat is supposed to be quick and chaotic and high-adrenaline, not a frakking chess game where you would be allowed in any way to take your time to be able to choose the most optimized "best move" possible!
When it is a player's turn, he describes ALL of his actions in one go, and if it takes him more than 6 real-life seconds to do so, then his PC was in "combat panic" and all it did that round is use the Active Perception check action and nothing else. After all, a round is 6 seconds: if
you did only thinking about wqhat to do in those 6 seconds, same thing for your PC! The DM describes again to him the battlefield situation, with the player allowed to ask a couple QUICK questions, and maybe do a couple QUICK vocal exchanges with his allies. That completes his round, next!
And if he complains, tell him to stop loooking at whatever stuff on his phone or in the PHB and just focus on what is happening during other players turns, and decide his actioins during their turn. If he doesn't know his spells, well, he has to learn them OUT OF GAME SESSION TIME (because it aacts as a disctraction that makes him not follow what is going on and you end up having to repeat once it is his turn) or just choose to play a much, much simpler class instead, like say a Fighter Champion (and to choose only Feats that give simple Passive "on all the time" effects, too).
No more "I'm gonna wait to see if I down that orc before deciding if I strike it again or make my 2nd attack on the 2nd orc instead!". In real-life, "downed" foes often remain on their foot standing
or even still able to fight for tens of seconds or more before finally going "Hey I just realized something: that wound I took 30 seconds ago was actually fatal and I'm dead
now!" and falling down from too much blood loss of from overall pain finally managing to overcome their adrenaline-overfilled body. It's not you've got those two still GIF with foe standing and foe prone on ground and the game inasteantly switch from one to the other the very instant you deal enough damage. In a video game, yes. But for an immersive experience of a fast-n-furious battle having such "roll attack and damage, pause action, think & decide, restart action roll next attack, lather rinse repeat" consstant interruptions is UTTER CRAP. For a boardgame, ok. But for an immersive players-seated-on-the-edge-of-their-pants experience? Utter Crap.
So, players have to predeclare their entire round. Some powers of course have to be slightly adjusted to have a wording that fits better with predeclaring your round, say powers that a player activate AFTER a hit or are spent only on a successful hit. Some of those I just reword them as "stances" that thus don't need to be "told" again by the player round after round after round (thus working more like a toggle "the power tries to activate until you turn it off").
Sure, it nerfs players especially min-maxing analysis-paralysis player types. But you have to be fair with foes too: can't ask your players to predeclare evertything while YOU act on a monster-sub-action-by-monster-sub-action way. When describing monsters, you use generic and "early" declarations too: "those three bandits rush to attack the barbarian!". So even if the first bandit mamages to down the barb, it only means the other two bandits still went to attack the barbarian too, not suddenly decide to "maximize" their attack potential by suddenly intead going to attack the other PCs.
You'd be surprised how that speeds up the game.
HOUSE RULE - IN GENERAL PCs AND FOES REMAIN FULLY ACTIVE UNTIL END OF ROUND
Akin to what I talk elsewhere, in reall-life enemies don't go from standing up with your sword just plugged right into their belly, to fully prone and dead a nanosecond afterward, with your bloodied sword not having moved an millimiter and thus not in their belly anymore but above the dead body, all videogame like.
Basically everybody can complete his round. So, it is perfectly possible to have "mutual kills".
I do a few exceptions for very special occasions (usually a simply INITIATIVE check contest).
Basically I kind of dropped Initiative altogether. DEX is already the "god stat" anyway, so nerfing it a bit is ok. Had to redo the Alert Feat though. Classes that have Init bonuses like say the Swashbuckkler might need a replacement power.
Basically, the round goes like this:
COMBAT ROUND STEPS:
Step 1 - New Round #X
DM describes the general tactical situation (mainly what the enemies seem to want to do this round).
Step 2 - Intent Declaration
In table sitting order, players declare their action intent. If a player hesitates, I skip to the next one then come back to him at the end. If he STILL hesistates, he loses his round and will get an Active Perception instead, but that will be done only at the end of the round.
Unless especially important, players also don't declare battlemat-square-by-battlemat-square movements, but general intent "I move towards that guy" or "I move behind the pillar". It is the DM that moves all minis. according to "best following the declared intent". A player wanting to "move carefully" by choosing his exact battlemat squares, moves at a slower pace: +5 feet cost by 5 feet moved.
Step 3 - Dice Rolls
Some fights have this step and others don't. Some fights have this step only on "odd" or "even" numbered rounds. We're still doing some trial and errors here. Here everybody rolls their dice and place them from their left to right (for easy reading of their 1st attack, 2nd attack, advantage/disadvantage for each, etc.). Because this is is a ROLE playing game not a ROLL playing game, right? We've found that while player LIKE to roll and show off their rolls (a bit juvenile if you ask me, but even me when I am a player I can't help but feel that juvenile pleasure too), having nothing to "show off" when it's your turn to get the description of the result of their actions, players tend to compensate instead by using much more verbose "roleplaying descriptions" of what they just did. So we decided to keep both "combat dice roll modes".
Step 4 - Action Resolution
Usually 2 to 4 phases called A B C D etc., but exact amount can vary as needed. From round to round, DM decides how much "granularity" (and thus how many phases) will needed. I often try to use only 2.
Each phase goes like this: Resolving each player in table sitting order and their allies and foes, each creature does "a fraction" of what was declared, in order it was declared. All "fractional" moves are done first, and then all the "fractional" attacks.
For example, fighter declared that he will move to enemy X and then attack it twice.
His Phases might be like this:
Phase A: His move.
Phase B: His two attacks.
butif he declared that he strikes an adjacent foe once then moves to strike a 2nd foe:
Phase A: First attack and moving away a bit (with possible attack of opportunity)
Phase B: Rest of move + 2nd attack (made only after everybody's partial move for that phase).
Feels quite complicated on paper, but is super intuitive on the battlemat.
Step 5 - End of Round #X
DM describes special situations, changes in environment, reinforcements or creatures that left the battle field (i.e. can't be targeted anymore unless also leaving the current battlefield to go into "pursuit mode"). If a player was forced into Active Perception it is resolved now, giving extra details for that player, letting huim as ka couple quick questions of do a quick bit of extra interaction with his teammates.
- - -
Overall these kind of problems cease to exist:
- Bob is 30 feet away from Orc, both have movement 30 feet. If Bob won Initiative, ORC never catches up. but if Orc won Init, then even if Bob disengages all the time, Orc always manages to strike Bob every round.
- Bob is 30 feet away from Orc, both have movement 30 feet. Even if Bob dashes away, if Orc won Init, then Orc still manages to strike Bob TWICE in the first round: upon rushing to him, then again with an opportunity attack.
And it feels a
HUGE LOT less like a start-stop tytpe of video-game motion, and a lot more "real-time" and cinematic instead.
Mainly, one HUGE bonbus is also that players remain riveted to the game. Current D&D creature-full-turn-by-creature-full-turn is slow action resolutuion to the point of players becomintg BORED waiting their turn. The problem is that playerattention isd grabeedd "all at once" in one single huge chunk, the the player has nothing to do except follow whhat others are doing. No wonder players start to feel blazé, surf the web, or let their focus dissipate.
My method instead "parcels out" a player's amount of "doing interesting stuff with the game that diirectly relate to their PC and attention span" is several smaller chunks. Decuiding what to do is decoupled from rolling the dice is decoupled from the resolution and even the resolution is decoupled in multiple steps (each movement and attack). Instead of a big ingle chunk of" It's
MY turn now so all of you guys shut up while
I decide what
I do!", it's instead all mixed up within what all the others are doing. Basically, the player's attention is CONSTANTLY drawn to what is occuring. And when any player is "taking too long" it also becomes SUPER obvious that they are doing so, because it is not "their" turn, it is
everybody's turn.
Main bonus is since foes "remain up" until end of round, there is next to no "conflicting" actions: attacking the same guy too much leads to overkill damage, not to one PC swinging it down while other PCs seemingly stupidly swinging on a body already on the ground. In the rare cases where actually contradicting actions occur, I use a "timings" house rule: Say an enemy tries to quaff a potion and a PC tries to break it, if PC attack in Phase A while NPC was doing the quaffing only in Phase B, then bummer his potion is lost (if the PC did hit of course). In same Phase, though? That isi when "fully contradic tiry" actions are resolved using an Initiative opposed check. Kinda rare events anyway.
It is all still in a bit of trial and error. We're still trying several variants.
For example, one thing we recently did is that ELITE creatures remain fully active until end of round, while non-elite" fall down" only at end of round, but remain fully active only until the Phase they get defeated.
We also tried a simpler "single phase" mode where everybody can just resolve all of their entire round of actions and stuff all at once. Declaratioon is still in advance, but for resolution everybody moves then all the attack damage gets computed in parralel and THEN all the "downed" creatures finally fall down. For simple fights where there is not a lot of movement going on, it works ok. For fights where some creatures will Dash into or away from melee, it works much less good because several declared attack could easily become invalidated. So an at least 2-Phases round is needed for these.
All of these house rules together have brought down what was usually 3-hours-long fights down to around only 40 minutes. fights are now exiting, fast and furious, again, just like in 1st edition, and they stop gobbling up all the available game session time
=======================================
In my own campaign it is a Low-FMP type (Low fantasy, Low Power, Low Magic). Basically, elves and half-orcs, those are stories to make little kids fearful and obedient, not mere strangers that randomly cross through town. All PCs human (or quasi-human races). Zero PC spellcasters (with classes like bard, ranger and paladin reflavored without actual spells). Mainly a low level campaign with slow level ups, with gritty realism and slower healing and severe wounds variants. Much less battles, with "Combat as War" instead of "Combat as sport". Mostly it is skills (and roleplay and brains) that dominate the game a lot more. In that campaign, only "Base Weapon" damage dice gets maxed, and the rest (for example Sneak Attack dice) is half the max. No magical healing but there is a "Doctor" class that specialies in it (stilll no mere "slaps in the back and you're back up to full", the Doctor's powers take effect on Rests in order to boost what would be normally regained."
It is closer to D&D 1st Edition where 99% of the population was made up of "unleveled" people. (5th edition seems to have 10% of the population made up of leveled people, and these guys are nearly always "level appropriate" for the Pcs, too. By sheer coïncidence, surely!
It works very well for our group, my players say this is the first campaign they ever played that feels more like an immersive and dangerous adventure where they have to think what fights to do or to avoid, and how to plan and approach each fight, and that it feels less like a walk-in-the-park video game where you can just rush headlong mindlessly into every potential enemy.
Most enemies are of the "more numerous weak guys" type. Official modules tend to use a "Combat as Sport" and a video-gamey approach, with foes about the same Challenge Rating as the PCs. To us this feels quite artificial. Oh, suddenly, just because we leveled up during the night (between "module chapters"),
all the Zentharim guys we meet from now on are now Thugs (5 HD) instead of Bandits (2 HD) like those we met before? Because "Reasons". Riiiiight.
But in fact it feells much more rewarding for players to feel that they can, not only win, but do so while also dispatching a lot of foes, too. A fight of the style "Oh you meet a mere 2 thugs and after that little fight that you knew you'd win, half the party members are nearly down to low-single-digits hp, and you need to rest and expend most of your healing already" is not rewarding. Basically, you don't feel like you're the heroes or protagonists of the story when it takes FIVE of you to
just barely defeat TWO enemies. Especially when those two are nothing special, just a pair of "random noname bad guys thug servants" that just so happen by pure chance to just be in your way and that decide to just attack you on sight without any reason whatsoever. Gee whiz, if we got so much damage from just two of these guys, what will it be when we get to the main fight with MORE of these guys
AND THEIR BOSS?
At level 1, sure, it would be ok to feel like a weak newbie adventurer. Not so anymore once you hit level 3 and you get your subclass. But when you see fraktons of random nonname enemies "thugs" being level you instead get to feel like level 3 isn't even "beginner level" yet. This is the king of thing I avoid in my campaign. The PCs are now level 3, and already they are seen as big (but quite local) heroes. Elite "more than 1 HD" foes are
not the norm, each of those is a leader or imporrtant NPC of some sort. So yeah you can easily see how in a low-ppwoer campaign the players can still get to "feel" powerful, yet in a typical standard "anything goes at full power" vanilla game (like the two campaigns I play in), you can get to regularly feel super crappy weak instead.
This is why in my campaign the NPC bandits are the ones who are the weaker ones (individually speaking). The PCs are the ELITE, and the NPC bandits and thugs are
not the elite. The bandits get their courage not from individual strength, but from numbers: because there is a score of these guys (instead of a mere pair of very tough ones)! And they are not so fantically devoted that they will always fight to the death like in most typical D&D fights, either. One single wound, and any one of them will then try to Disengage and flee. And when 1/3 of the bandits are downed, while the PCs are all still up and fighting, for the bandits it is more than time to hightail it out of there as a group! They have realistic motivations, which are not "try to damage the party as much as possible" but instead "stupid" realistic things like "eat, sleep, survive, and maybe even earn some easy cash too". And for them, any fight in which they lose even a couple of their colleagues was "not" something "easy" at all. Only PCs and say some brainwashed evil cultists oon drugs are the types fanatical enough to keep on fighting no matter what lol. The bandit leader is the one that is much more powerful and
might stay to fight to the end (maybe, maybe not).
But surrender and "parley" is always an option, too, and it works both ways. I basically have a "Reputation" score for the party calle "Bloodlust", which is a modifier for all relevant social interactions. So yeah when somebody surrenders, it is a serious thing. Killing mercilessly those with a bad Bloodlust" reputation,, tha6t's ok: at some point the reputation basicallly means" those guys are as bad as monsters: kill on sight, take no prisoners! But killing those with ok bloodlust reputation, sure you have the problem of then taking them back to civilisation for trial, but usually these guys usually feel they have some kind of debt towards the PCs for not killing them.
But basically, if an NPC is level 2 or more, then he deserves a unique name, some personality, some motivations (
not "kill the PCs, mind you: something more personal anbd manye secret, like say "wants to earn enough gold through banditry only to be able to marry the chief's daughter"), and so on. My players know that they discover these little "nuggets" only if they decide to do actual social interaction. If the only reason an NPC is in the adventure is to fight the PCs and he's just a noname generic bad guy then just take that level 5 no-name generic rogue and replace it with 4 or 5 level 1 non-name generic rogues instead. Most of all, all official modules have noly two types of NPCs: NPCs as "monsters", noname, generic, and dull bags of attack bonuses and hit points, and fleshed out NPCs that exist only for specific social encounters 100% linked to the adventure module storyline only. I prefer for most of my NPCs to be in a kind of "maybe there to fight, maybe to just do some smalltalk, and maybe even to progress the adventure... it all depend on what the players do" kind of approach.
Heck our fighter started going for "two weapon" fighting style or "weapon and shield" instead of a "greatsword" style, because he was clearly doing overkill damage vs most foes, most of which were 1 HD only.
