D&D 5E Difficulty Settings for Advanced Players

I'm not really understanding why people need rules changes for hard modes. Can't you simply use much harder encounters and be very stingy with +X magic items? Very low stats seems like it will just increase RNG without making for interesting or engaging difficulty. Whereas using only hard or harder encounters, traps, etc and so on would be more engaging and fun for all.

That said I love some of the Death Save suggestions and could see using those.

Small hint.
Remove rope trick and leomund’s tiny hut from spell lists.

Larrin said:

Needing to rest to clear the failed death saves has the side effect of not only perhaps making the game harder, but also making it more boring. "Because this game is hard you need to spend more time doing literally nothing" is not a line of text many players want to see. I see what you're trying to do, death fails not going away but stacking up more will definitely make combat more deadly, but I think "All failed death saves are only cleared after a short rest" and "all death saves are only cleared after a long rest" would be less annoying to play with, though even then you're motivating you players to take more rests. Is that what you want hard mode to be? One fight, 1 death save failed, everyone stops for 8 hours. Not the intent in design, but a potential reaction the players will have.

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You know that a long rest doesn't consume 8 real world hours, right? It can take seconds. Don't get me wrong, I don't think this change will do anything except make the players rest more, but I don't see why that would make the game play slower.

Even if you make it so long rests require "comfort and safety" like Adventures in Middle Earth, you can still hand wave it by saying, "We retreat to the nearest inn, rest, and then return." You'd have to do something like place the nearest inn several days away, and that's not always reasonable unless you're in a campaign setting like Middle Earth.

All I would do for "hard mode" is increase encounter difficulty while reducing XP rewards (trivial to do if you use milestone XP) and limiting magic item rewards. You could also change weapon and armor availability, disallow multiclassing and feats. I might increase monster hit points, but I don't even think that's necessary.

Go back to basics
Use encumbrance, remove +x magical items, use attack waves, play monsters intelligently, sunder weapons/equipment, have monsters use potions, lingering injuries, madness, gritty rest mechanic rules, nix easy and medium encounters, remove ASI,

Advanced
Monsters gain +2 on attack and skill rolls, gain 1 level exhaustion every time PC reaches 0hp or less, increase monster damage by 1.5, give ALL monsters 1 fee Action Point, nix hard encounters, increase monster hit points by 20%

Not sure why you want to apply set percentage adjustments to hit points for monsters. They already have a dice roll vs 'take the average' element. Just use max hit points for monsters to make it harder on the players. Or the midpoint between average and max. Conversely, to make it easier, pick HP values around the midpoint between minimum and average. You don't really need a new house rule for that.

E.g.
Standard bandit : 11 HPs
Hard bandit: 14 HPs
Very hard bandit: 18 HPs
Easy mode bandit: 7 HPs

Obviously if you like randomness you can vary it around those values, throw in a mixture of hards and very hards, etc. But it's all core rules.

sim-h said:

Not sure why you want to apply set percentage adjustments to hit points for monsters.

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Fair enough.

Easiest way to do Hard mode:

Whatever hit points you get at 1st level is all the hit points you will ever have. You don't get more HP when you level up.

You do that... all monsters become deadlier, instant death becomes more likely, and doing everything you can to avoid unnecessary combat (especially at higher levels) becomes critical.

I don't know, if I were to do a "Hard" Mode with a similar idea to what it seems the OP was looking at...I'd make it far more harsh simply by resurrecting ideas from Older editions of D&D...

HARD/LEGENDARY MODE

• NO DEATH SAVES. Death occurs when PC's hit 0 HP or less. They are DEAD.
• No ASI. What they roll is what they get. No ability score can EVER be higher than 18.
• Characters get 1 HP restored per day without magical healing. 2 HP if they are specifically stating they are resting. This can ONLY change if they are at a "Safe Haven" where they can treat a long rest as 8 hours to restore all hitpoints IF they are not under half their maximum number of HP. If they have less than half their maximum HP, they can restore 1 HD total of HP per day until they are over half their maximum.

These are things taken from older editions already...so, just reverse it a little and I could see the game being harder.

To make it even harder...

• Wizards, Sorcerers and Warlocks stop gaining HD rolls after level 11. They gain 1 HP (NO CON MODIFIER) each level thereafter.
• Fighters, Rangers, Barbarians, and Paladins stop gaining HD rolls after level 9. They gain 3 HP (NO CON Modifier) each level thereafter
• All other classes stop gaining HD rolls after level 10. They gain 2 HP (NO CON MODIFIER) each level thereafter.

- Spells can be disrupted. If the casters are hit, the spell stops working (if they were concentrating) or the spell is not cast if they were in the act of casting I that round but someone acted prior to their action and hit them. The spell is lost.

Something that can make it tougher on spellcasters...but also all around tougher monsters...

-Fighters, Barbarians, Rangers, and Paladins (along with Dwarves who are NOT spellcasters) who are not multi-classed are proficient in ALL saves. Monsters are ALSO proficient in ALL saves.

-Dexterity cannot be used for an ability modifier bonus to hit in melee combat nor be used as a modifier for damage. It can be used to modify the ability to hit with RANGED combat only. Monsters do not suffer this restriction.

You want hard, I think this will be harder for many than what has been listed in some posts on this thread, and yet, this merely replicates a FEW of the rules of Old School AD&D and D&D. It can get even tougher than that (for example, if sticking with BX or BE, we could say that there are no multiple attacks for the most part...or say no multiple attacks until they start getting them around level 15, and that's ONLY for Figthers!!!).

harder harder. Everyone gets only a d4 hit dice per level up to tenth. Casting haste ages the spell caster and the person you cast on 5 years, and you need a dc 8 con save or die.
If hit with a damaging spell except poison or psychic all you items need to make a saving throw.
If you cast something that does psychic damage 6% of psychic monster appearing from Astral plane.