Larnievc
Hero
What for?The purpose is to increase the need for CharOp, Party Synergy and individual and group tactics in encounters.
What for?The purpose is to increase the need for CharOp, Party Synergy and individual and group tactics in encounters.
Or just don't have stupid monsters. Adventurers in the area? Lock down for the next 24 hours and double patrols. Leomund's tiny hut? Bury it.Small hint.
Remove rope trick and leomund’s tiny hut from spell lists.
..Ok, but, I seem to remember some other basics...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...
...ah, there's a couple.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.
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.
..Ok, but, I seem to remember some other basics...
There's been very few suggestions on this thread to make casting harder, even though 5e has such stunningly carefree magic rules compared to the back-in-the-day 'harder' otherwise seems inclined to emulate.
GreyLord's suggestions were in terms of 5e rules.Sure, there are many ways to skin a cat, but in this instance when I meant 'back to basics' I was coming from the direction of using the rules/options within the books without having to adopt rules from previous editions.
I like the general thought, but I would probably go about it differently. As you have it now the base attacks could easily out damage the special attacks. It might be simpler to just do max damage. Or maybe at proficiency bonus to all damage.I usually find that the biggest difficulty to challenging players is the poor amount of damage monsters do. While the special attacks can hard, the base attacks don't seem to have the same danger to them. I think the best way to increase difficulty is keep everything the same but amp up the danger of the monsters in general
Hard Mode:
1. Increase the damage of "base attacks" (Up to the GM to decide what is a base attack, but it usually obvious when a monster has multiple attacks to choose from) of monsters by their challenge rating (Min 1).
Harder Mode:
1. Increase the damage of "base attacks" of monsters by their challenge rating (Min 1).
2. If monster beats player AC by 5, double the increase from 1.
Hardest Mode
1. Increase the damage of "base attacks" of monsters by their challenge rating (Min 1).
2. If monster beats player AC by 5, double the increase from 1.
3. If monster beats player AC by 10, triple the increase from 1.
This scales well with all levels of play.
This makes centerpiece monsters have useful non-special-power turns.
This plays nicely with crits.
This allows advantage to convert to not only more frequent hits, but also more damaging ones.
When using the harder modes...this makes characters with very low defense really sweat.