D&D 5E (2014) Deadly D&D5E

[Horwath]

Bring back negative HPs.

you die when your negative HPs equalls your constitution score plus your level.

Every round you take 1 damage until healed or stabilized.

Any healing first must heal all negative HPs before healing your "normal" HPs.

 

[MNblockhead]

When Chris Perkins ran his "meat grinder" game for the D&D Tomb of Annihilation live stream, he required a 15 for a death save instead of 10.

Of course deadly means you need to get players to the point of having to make death saves. That generally involved more monsters, tougher monsters, or the DM actually playing sentient beings as intelligent creatures with a strong desire to survive and will take precautions, gang up on the party, and use tactics.

 

[GameOgre]

I like what i'm seeing here!

What about the other half of things though? How do I streamline character creation so making a new character isn't a chore and much faster? Isn't there a section in the DMG on removing skills and taking it to a ability roll?

Also if you made it 3D6 in order and removed feats it would give characters reasons to love those +2 increases a lot more.

 

[LordEntrails]

I like what i'm seeing here!

What about the other half of things though? How do I streamline character creation so making a new character isn't a chore and much faster? Isn't there a section in the DMG on removing skills and taking it to a ability roll?

Also if you made it 3D6 in order and removed feats it would give characters reasons to love those +2 increases a lot more.

Character creation isn't tough after you've done it a handful of times. Selecting a couple of skills should not take a player more than 60 seconds, so removing that won't help.

If you want to make it even easier, use one of the digital tools for character creation (HeroLab, PCGen, FG, Beyond).

 

[Greg Benage]

0 HP = dead

If you want to take the edge off a little, one death save immediately when you drop to 0 hp. Meat-grinder DC optional.

What about the other half of things though? How do I streamline character creation so making a new character isn't a chore and much faster? Isn't there a section in the DMG on removing skills and taking it to a ability roll?

Personally, I wouldn't change character creation. Everyone should have a backup character. If you allow players to invest in recruitment and training (1 gp = 1 xp for backup character), that also creates a decent money sink. No one wants to bring in a backup at 1st level. But this also removes the sense that death doesn't really have consequences, because new characters always come in at party level. Your character can come in at party level, but you'll have needed to pay your dues.

 

[Monayuris]

I've played and DM'd tons of Basic D&D and tons of 5E and like both of them. I have a natural tendency to run my 5E game like Basic and I think I've had as many, if not more deaths in 5E than in Basic (granted I start Basic at 2nd or 3rd level).

1. You need to curtail the rest recovery rate of 5E. You don't have to push encounter difficulty too much higher if you introduce more attrition into the game. Its not so much about one-shot killing a character as it is about the grind and attrition of adventuring and being forced to make a decision to risk pushing on or not (I actually like the short term survivability that 5E provides, its the more long term lack of attrition that bothers me). I'd use the slow natural healing option at the very least (long rest does not recover to full hit points) or use the one day short rest and one week long rest variant.

2. Creatures with multiattack - declare all of their attacks up front and on the same character instead of targeting their attacks one at a time on different characters. If a multiattack monster drops a character to 0 on the first attack, it could force 2 death save failures on the second. You can go one step further and declare all monster attacks ahead of time. If one PC is up against 4 goblins and you declare all 4 goblins will stick that PC, you'll get more deaths than if you had the other 3 move on to new targets. Just be upfront to your players about monsters acting in this manner, declare the monster actions and stick to the declaration (since this can also work in their favor).

3. Add some king of penalty to dropping to zero, to prevent healing word and such from just popping characters back up. I like adding a level of Exhaustion at 0 hp to simulate a lingering injury.

4. Check out the DMG maneuvers section. If I remember correctly many of them are Actions *OR* Bonus actions. Try using Overrun as a bonus action to get past the front line melee types who may be protecting the weaker casters. Try putting pressure on the back ranks and force the group out of their optimized standard operating procedures. (I have zombies do this by default to simulate their horde nature). If it is a bonus action, its worth trying even if the success rate isn't very high.

 

[ccs]

1) Death at 0 HP.

2) Don't fudge any dice rolls as the DM.
Roll your dice in the open & let whatever results occur stand.

3) Ignore the CR system. Put whatever monsters, in whatever #s, in the adventure as you think fits. Not what some formula would suggest.
Go get yourself copies of a few classic modules & look at thier encounters. B2 Keep on the Borderlands, B? Horror on the Hill, Shrine of Tomoachan, U3 The Final Enemy, various others. They weren't "balanced" but they were a blast to play through.

4) Play intelligent creatures intelligently.

5) Adjust the healing rates. It took TIME, alot of it, to heal back to full without magic back in BECMI & AD&D.

6) See those ability score bonuses? Dial them back to thier BECMI/AD&D points on the charts. You want a +?
Likewise you might consider scaling the HD of certain classes back. Once upon a time you wizards enjoyed a mere d4....

 

[Monayuris]

1) Death at 0 HP.

2) Don't fudge any dice rolls as the DM.
Roll your dice in the open & let whatever results occur stand.

3) Ignore the CR system. Put whatever monsters, in whatever #s, in the adventure as you think fits. Not what some formula would suggest.
Go get yourself copies of a few classic modules & look at thier encounters. B2 Keep on the Borderlands, B? Horror on the Hill, Shrine of Tomoachan, U3 The Final Enemy, various others. They weren't "balanced" but they were a blast to play through.

4) Play intelligent creatures intelligently.

5) Adjust the healing rates. It took TIME, alot of it, to heal back to full without magic back in BECMI & AD&D.

6) See those ability score bonuses? Dial them back to thier BECMI/AD&D points on the charts. You want a +?
Likewise you might consider scaling the HD of certain classes back. Once upon a time you wizards enjoyed a mere d4....

One thing I've always liked about Basic D&D is that ability score modifiers are 'compressed' to +/- 3, but even more so that they have a very narrow application. Strength is for melee attack and damage and open doors, Dexterity covers AC, missile attacks and initiative, Charisma covers reactions hirelings, etc...

Outside of those specified applications, the modifiers don't do so much. This makes a Fighter with a 10 strength a feasible option (in Basic, its only +1 attack and damage behind a strength 15 Fighter).

When ability modifiers started being applied to more and more elements of the class and started showing up in resources per day and effectiveness of spells, the importance of high ability scores started growing. It wasn't just that your strength modifier determined how often you hit, it starts determining how many times per day you can use class abilities and how effective they are.

I would like to try a house rule that for all applications of ability scores excluding attack and damage rolls, characters use their proficiency bonus in place of their ability score modifiers.

For example, instead of a Bard getting CHR modifier uses of Bardic Inspiration, they get their proficiency bonus uses per day. It will reduce effectiveness of low level Bards, but after 5th level or so, it will start catching up. This decouples ability scores from class effectiveness a little and reduces the pressure to optimize their abilities.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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

I value parsimony, so I'd try to keep the rule changes small. I would do three things, assuming that we're doing a dungeon-crawl style game centered on combat:

(1) Make most encounters in the dungeon somewhere between quadruple-Deadly and 10x Deadly. This makes a straightforward brawling strategy barely possible but very difficult, and rewards Combat As War thinking.

(2) Whenever you are incapacitated/stunned/paralyzed/unconscious (but not grappled/restrained), your Dex modifier is -5 instead of whatever it usually is. Won't affect PCs in heavy armor, but that swashbuckling rogue is in deep trouble if he ever gets paralyzed by a monster or put to sleep, even briefly.

(3) You can go below zero HP. Instead of the normal rules on death saves and stabilization, you die whenever you reach negative (max HP). E.g. if you have 40 max HP normally, you die at -40 HP. When you are at zero HP or below, you are either stunned or unconscious. (If you choose to make a DC 15 Con save and succeed you can be stunned, but if you fail the save or choose not to try, you are unconscious from shock.) When you are below zero HP and have not already stable, you must make a death save at the start of every round. If you succeed, you are stable unless/until you take damage again. If you fail, you take 20% of your max HP in damage, rounded UP, not down. You can be stabilized by another character's actions as usual, through the use of a healer's kit or the Wisdom (Medicine) skill.

Example: if you have 40 HP normally, and you get hit twice by an Iron Golem for a total of 50 HP of damage, you're now at -10 HP (and likely unconscious, unless you made the DC 15 Con save). Since you're at -10 HP, not zero HP, you can't be restored to full activity by a simple 1 HP Word of Healing as you would under PHB rules--it takes 11 HP of healing to get you conscious again. At the start of every round, you make a death save (as usual, it is DC 10 and no attribute modifiers apply). If you succeed you stabilize at your current HP, otherwise you lose another 8 HP and must save again next round. If you ever reach -40 HP you die.

Remark: In some ways losing 20% of your HP is more generous than the default rules because it only takes one roll to stabilize, and someone who is just barely at negative HP may take five failures before they die. A wound which takes you down to -1 HP is extremely unlikely to kill you. In other ways though, it is less generous because stabilizing doesn't wipe out past failures--that requires actual healing. Furthermore, if you're deep in the negatives, a single failure will kill you, possibly before anyone else can intervene.

 

[transtemporal]

Just start each session with "OK, you've made up new characters? Great. You're in the inn enjoying a hearty meal by the fire. Suddenly a meteor hits the inn instantly disintegrating everything and everybody inside. You take... 967,154 points of fire damage." That's how you make any edition of DnD deadly!