I've written a few times regarding not being able to challenge my groups. (Most recently in this thread:
D&D 5E - A Mess of OP Characters (magic items, rest mechanics, etc.))
I want to work on a house rule document to present before the start of the next campaign to keep this type of experience from happening again.
What am I trying to avoid?
- Game unbalancing magic items
- Having to restructure the game and redesign monsters after 5th level or so
- Accommodating a fun and challenging experience for 6-7 players
- Preventing spellcasters from going nova easily
- Short adventuring days
I'm getting intense feedback from the gritty rest mechanics. I also suggested rolling for stats, and that was scoffed at. I don't expect the group to be amenable to other systems, such as the OSR variety.
I still want to DM for this group. They really enjoy it - but it's hard to keep pace with their power level. Even in the default game, they easily get so overpowered that I can't adapt.
Gritty Rests. This is only a pacing change, but the pacing change REALLY MATTERS.
Here is a slightly modified version:
A
SHORT REST requires a night's sleep or equivalent. When you do a short rest, you can expend HD to regain HP (adding your constitution bonus), regain short-rest resources. In addition, you can roll all HD you had expended
before you started your short rest; any that land on an odd value of 3 or more are recovered.
If your max HP are reduced, you can expend a single HD that does not heal you and regain that many lost HD (add your constitution modifier). If you are exhausted, you can expend a single HD and regain a level of exhaustion.
A
LONG REST requires 1 week of safety. During this time you can do downtime activities, cast up to 1 leveled spell per day (or similar magical abilities), and occasionally use cantrips (and similar magical abilities). Anything moderately intensive (repeated use of cantrips, a single short combat, travel) delays the end of the long rest by 2 days for every day it occurs.
During a long rest, each night counts as a short rest. At the end of the long rest, you regain any HD expended and all of your HP, even those expended during the long rest.
---
Next, as a DM, your job isn't to make ENCOUNTERS.
It is to make CHAPTERS and SCENES.
A SCENE is a set of linked encounters. What makes a group of encounters a SCENE and linked is that once the SCENE is triggered (PCs engage it? Or even the opportunity is offered, and the PCs decline) waiting a day means that there are CONSEQUENCES. Your job when building a SCENE is to work out possible CONSEQUENCES before you finish the design. The CONSEQUENCES of a SCENE are as important as the terrain is for an encounter; you could wing it, but it does really matter.
The SCENE changes, usually in a way that the PCs 'story-wise' wouldn't like, but definitely one that impacts the world.
Raiders attacking a settlement can be a scene, consisting of multiple groups of raiders, and possibly the main group carrying away treasure.
SCENES consist of 1-4 encounters. Their difficulty looks like:
Easy: 2 medium encounters.
Medium: 3 medium encounters
Hard: 4 medium encounters
Deadly: 5+ medium encounters.
Easy encounters count as 0.5 medium, hard as 1.5 and deadly as 2+ medium encounters.
So a single Deadly encounter is an Easy scene.
A CHAPTER is a series of linked SCENES. What makes a group of SCENES a CHAPTER and linked is that once the CHAPTER is triggered, waiting more than a few days (but at most a week) means there are CONSEQUENCES. These CONSEQUENCES should be larger in scope than SCENE consequences usually.
A CHAPTER should consist of 1-4 SCENEs. Their difficulty looks like:
Easy: 2 medium scenes.
Medium: 3 medium scenes.
Hard: 4 medium scenes.
Deadly: 5+ medium scenes.
Easy scenes count as 0.5 medium, hard as 1.5 and deadly scenes as 2+ medium scenes.
So a single Deadly scene is an easy chapter.
...
A CHAPTER could make up a piece of an adventure, like a dungeon (plus travel back and forth), or be an entire adventure.
The point is that by building using these larger pieces, nova potential becomes an option that players who do it end up with repeated CONSEQUENCEs.
Early on you'll want to telegraph the consequences, but players should catch on that if they disengage from a series of events before they wrap it up they are saying "we lose". It is like running away from an encounter.
...
The last change would be to require spending a HD when you use healing magic. The spent HD (plus your con mod) adds to the amount healed. The exceptions is the Heal spell, Mass Heal, the Regeneration Spell and Power Word: Heal. I also allow Cure Wounds to use the target's expended HD instead of d8s if it is larger (as a small bonus).
If you have no HD, all healing magic (except that short list above) can do is stabilize you.
This prevents using healing magic (be it potions or anything else) to free up your healing budget completely. Attrition is a thing. It also makes using healing spells a bit more fun.
(This is one of the reasons why you can recover some HD on a short rest; if you are healed during an adventuring day and use up all your HD, a night's rest won't heal you further but will recover some HD. So you'll be game for it.)
...
The next part is avoid +X weapons and armor like the plague. A +2d6 fire damage sword does less damage to 5e's balance than a +2 sword does. +X weapons and armor are far more mechanically impactful than they feel like. Even attunement items with +X are very strong; and the fact that the baseline stuff isn't is bad.
Ie, Adamantine and Mithril armor, never +1 armor.
The same goes for save DC modifying items.
You are in charge of magic items. Don't distribute anything that adds to save DC, AC or to-hit rolls. An item that adds a bonus to saves isn't as bad unless the party is saving optimizing fiends.
To this end, also don't have a magic item shopping list. All magic items should either be placed there
by you intentionally, or
rolled randomly on a table.
For a party of 7, 2 randomly rolled or picked
by you magic items of the appropriate tier
per level is more than plenty (plus a half-dozen consumables).
If there is a magic item store,
roll the items for sale. Consider any item for sale to be equivalent to treasure.
The prices on magic items? Use the DMG ranges. Don't be afraid to use a higher or lower value. (Discount consumables by 50% off the DMG prices). The gp value is and should be arbitrary. Sometimes they'll find an amazing item for very little gp, other times they won't want to buy it because it costs too much. Both are perfectly ok.
...
Find ways to use gold to change the world. Beating a scene or the like by spending gold on something should be encouraged! But more than that -- setting up bases and the like should be rewarded.
Provide problems that can be solved by spending gold far easier than violence.
...
Have each PC have 2 bonds. Once per session, a PC can invoke their bond to make a d20 reroll, but the price is
telling a short story about their bond and what it means to their PC in the form of a flashback. This flashback may be slightly unreliable narrator if needed.
This encourages PCs to expose their characters to the party. The rerolled d20 need not be related to the bond in any way.
(I'm just trying to encourage cooperative storytelling with this mechanic. And "I get to reroll a d20" is a huge incentive for the Player to remember to do this!)
As a DM, you can offer a bonus inspiration based on bonds. You can even be explicit about using it as a bribe. "Based on your bond 'I love animals', if you rescue the horse (alive) that the princess rode off on you'll get inspiration". You'll note that this requires that YOU remember the PCs bonds -- the bit where every session they remind you what they are with a story is also for you.
...
So now your party no longer is covered in broken magic items, gets worn out by a long series of adventures before they can recover, and you have hooks into them you can use to bribe them to finish quests.
The final bit is to slow down advancement. The above will do this pretty naturally.
It should take 1 chapter per level up to level 5 or so, then 2 chapters per level up to level 11, then back to about 1 chapter per level up to 20.
This is about 25 chapters, or 75 scenes, or about 200 encounters. If you do 1-2 encounters per real life week, this is 2 and a half years before they hit 20.
It is almost 150 encounters before they hit level 11, or almost 2 years to reach level 11 at this pace.
You should understand tiers of play.
At T1, your problems should be local and pushed at the PCs.
At T2, you should offer 2-3 different problems at once that could take 1-2 weeks of travel to reach, and you can't solve all of them. Keep on adding problems (quests) as they solve them, and have consequence go off of the ones they don't choose to solve. They win everything they do, but they lose everything they don't.
This means that "ok, we take a long rest" starts to hurt.
They are losing
because it takes too much time to solve each problem. They should be aware of this. Whatever big problem there is is only winning because the heros can't be everywhere at once.
You'll introduce T3 scale issues here as things they cannot plausibly solve. Just hints, or PCs will run right at it and die.
At T3,
travel problems go away. Now you can throw bigger scale problems at them and they are capable of beating them. Tier 2 problems are now a resource problem.
You'll want to introduce a bigger issue in T2 that seems out of scope (or hinted at), and in T3 it becomes more real as something they can do something about. Maybe beat, maybe not. Also, introduce something even bigger, where defeating the impossible problem from T2 would barely put a dent into it.
T4 is the climax of the story. Here is when the big issue introduced in T2 becomes something small. A T2->T3 enemy might be worth allying to deal with a T4 problem.
"A pit fiend with a legion of demons is on the march, a mated pair of tarrasques has awakened and a dozen huge dragons are fighting in a mountain near the Captial city, and the ancient king of dornland has returned but is looking a little ... pale." might be a T4 scale chapter. All of them are happening at once. Dealing with the Tarrasques is a single
easy SCENE, but it will require some resources.
In 3d4 days each, the legion of demons destroys the dwarven homelands, the tarrasques cause a volcano to erupt when they lay an egg (a few 1000 km^2 are buried in ash and lava, and an ice age starts), the dragon's summon tiamat, and the lich king converts dornland into a post apocalyptic hell. I mean, if the PCs do nothing.
Solving those 3-4 problems is enough to level from 17 to 18. But
they don't get a long rest when trying to solve the above.
So sure, go nova. How many novas you got?
