D&D 5E Deadly D&D5E

[GameOgre]

Ok so yeah I played classic D&D and had a great time. Yes I could just go play Classic D&D and be done,finished. I realize that BUT....lets take it for a given that I don't want to do that. Lets say for instance that I love buying new stuff and my players scream 5E on waking every morning.

While I might get them to play some 5E house rules that poke and prod the edition towards deadly they would balk at playing Classic.

So for good or bad lets not waste time going down that road.



What set of house rules could you use to make 5E deadly as all get out while altering as little as possible.

Like could I you drop all monster EXP by 30% in both rewards and encounter creation to make the game harder? Give all monsters +30% damage?

When those guys made that 4E alternate house ruled deadly encounters thing with the Iron Lich and ect..what did they do?

Is it as simple as using 24 hour short rest and week long long rests? To be honest that seems boring but maybe i'm wrong.

If you guys were going to House Rule a DEADLY D&D5E set of rules what would they be?


Just how far can we push and pull the system?

 

[LordEntrails]

I would just increase the number of creatures. Make the encounters tougher. If the players take too many rests, then interrupt them with random monsters.
You don't need to change the rules to make the game deadly.

 

[cbwjm]

Change the way death works. No more death saving throws, instead you are dying at 0 hit points and lose an additional 1d6 hit points at the start of their turn. You are dying as long as your negative hit points are equal to or less than your Constitution Score, any more than that and you are dead. For example a 10 Constitution means you can have up to -10 negative hit points before death.

If someone casts a cure spell on you, it is added to your negative hit points instead of 0 so if you are at -9 hit points, and a cleric casts cure light wounds with a 1st level spell slot and scores a 7, you will be at -2 and still dying.

This will stop the current situation where PCs hit 0 hit points, no matter how much damage they take, allows a single point of healing to bring them back up. Now the healers will have to fire off a higher level heal spell (or be a life cleric) to ensure that the target is brought back up to enough hit points.

 

[KarinsDad]

One of the main reasons classic D&D was so deadly was due to the swinginess of combat. A 1st level Fighter had maybe 6 or 8 hit points. A D6 weapon could seriously hurt him. Very few PCs had any type of damage mitigation or healing at low levels. So, one way to emulate this is merely to add the CR (round up) as a damage modifier for monsters.

Instead of averaging 29 points of damage if all three attacks hit, a Troll for example, would average 44 points of damage. That's a 50% increase in damage.

A Goblin would average 6.5 damage instead of 5.5 on a hit. So the lower level monsters are only a hair more powerful, but the higher level monsters are a lot more deadly.

Then, run the game as you normally would.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Making 5e deadly is pretty trivial:
1. Instant death on 0hp
2. Don't look at CR or PC level, just chuck random monsters into the game when you feel like it.
3. Change the character creation rules to streamline them. 3d6 in order. Attribute minimums for classes to prevent analysis paralysis (ie - typically you only qualify for 1 or 2 classes). Skill proficiencies and backgrounds replaced with "what is this class good at" evaluation. Spell selection replaced with random rolls.

 

[hafrogman]

I'd keep hitpoints and healing exactly the same and just not clear failed death saving throws until long rest (or only clear 1/long rest or 1/week or whatever). Keeps the mechanics of a single fight more or less the same, but if you go down, it has long term potentially deadly consequences.

 

[RangerWickett]

One option we did was to make healing be less of an instant fix.

Fatigue and Wounds
Every time you are reduced to 0 HP, or are at 0 HP and take damage, you remain conscious but gain a level of exhaustion. (There are six; see the back of the PHB.)

While you are at 0 HP, you act as though you your exhaustion is 2 levels higher. So for instance, the first time you get hit to 0, you get one level of exhaustion, but you act as if you have 3 levels. If you are healed and rise above 0 HP, you keep the 1 level of exhaustion. If you then get knocked back to 0 HP, you gain a second level of exhaustion, but act as if you have 4 levels.

At the end of your turn while at 0 HP, make a death save to avoid gaining another level of exhaustion. You can also stabilize, as with death saves.

When you reach 6 levels of exhaustion (really, four levels plus 2 levels from being at 0 HP), you die. {If the GM is feeling generous, he might say PCs who take no action and don't move on their turn have can willingly fall unconscious in order to get advantage on their death save.}

Hit points heal at the normal rate. Hit dice recover at the normal rate. When you get a night's rest, you recover one level of fatigue.

What this does in practice is make the PCs *more* survivable, but more likely to get into desperate situations where they keep fighting when they know they're about to bleed to death and die. It also makes fights have more consequences, so PCs who know there's another fight later might be more cautious in this fight.

When we first ran this, my level 2 dwarf fighter was at the front of the party and got swarmed by 5 zombies. The first one grabbed him. The second one tripped him. All the rest made slam attacks. The rest of the party tried to kill them while more zombies shambled in from 100 feet away. I failed to escape on the second round, and they dropped me to 0 HP. Desperate (and taking disadvantage on my attempts to escape the grab), I just began Dodging, holding the zombies off me while my fellow PCs furiously hacked at the zombies, who were too busy eating me to care. I narrowly survived at 5 levels of exhaustion, and they dragged me with them, pursued by zombies. When we got a moment's breathing room, they healed me so I could at least walk.

It was glorious.

 

[RangerWickett]

Oh, and to balance that out, each player had two PCs, one who'd stay at base, the other who'd range out on missions. The premise of the campaign was basically, "The White Walkers breach The Wall and we have a zombie apocalypse."

 

[Li Shenron]

What set of house rules could you use to make 5E deadly as all get out while altering as little as possible.

...

If you guys were going to House Rule a DEADLY D&D5E set of rules what would they be?

0 HP = dead

 

[Psikerlord#]

Quickest fix for deadly 5e: only a single death save instead of 3.

For extra grim and gritty, if you make your death save, roll on the DMG injury table.