D&D 5E Difficulty Settings for 5e

[Tony Vargas]

Rest and recovery are the most straightforward dial to turn and have the most drastic effect.

I've played everything from a Short Rest being 5 minutes to a full night's rest.
I've played long rest takes 1 night's rest and also that it takes a week.

Longer 'days' in the sense of more encounters/day, whether you adjust the time required or not, make the major resource-management portion of the game that much more challenging. They stress the classes that are heaviest and most flexible in resources, the ones that high-system-mastery players are going to be overperforming the most with, so if there is a Champion or something in the campaign, it'll be shining a little more, too, FWTW.

Most sub-classes have either significant short-rest or long-rest recharge mechanics, few have both, so the ratio of short rests to long rests and of each to encounters can affect class balance as well as overall difficulty.

 

[Flamestrike]

Wow! Just got through the companion document and have to say this is an incredibly well thought out set of changes to both increase the challenge and give the game that old school feel (other than allowing the 13 swap during initial roll up).

After I test out my quick and dirty version on a few of the chapters of TftYP, I'm going to try your rules out on either Against the Giants or Dead in Thay.

Amazing work flamestrike

The 13 swap was just because I was feeling merciful

In all honesty it is there it is to ensure that every player gets to play a character class that they want to. Most of the classes in the players handbook function fine enough with only the one decent ability score.

Having lower stats then the standard point buy also that places greater value on ability score increases as one advances in level, and makes multiclassing that much more difficult and unique. It also makes things like monks and paladins much rarer.

Many of the rules I have implemented are there to smooth out some of the more spiky bits of 5E. I really wanted to cut down on nova strikes from player characters. Many spells got nerfed, but many spells also got buffed.

I'm proudest of my changes to the archery fighting style. The opening volley ability that it provides really harkens back to advanced dungeons and dragons.