Grittier 4th Edition: Pointers

[EricNoah]

We have had a number of excellent threads on this topic in the past. I think we were able to see, eventually, that what constitutes grim and gritty is different for each DM. It is a spectrum of options, not just one thing you can switch on or off. I think magic level and availability of healing (magical, herbal, skill-based, etc) play into it and we just don't know much about 4E magic at this point...

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=80232&highlight=gritty

 

[DSRilk]

I absolutely agree with the "I would never intentionally design something to kill a PC every 2 or 3 combats," but figured I'd try to keep my personal opinion out of it as most players go through this phase at some point. Anyway, here's probably the BEST way to make the game gritty: play WFRP (Warhammer Fantasy RP) or True20.

If you like "fear of character death," WFRP is a good way to go. You have fate points to alleviate fluke rolls.

If you like the D&D style or want damage conditions, True20 is probably your best bet. It's basically d20 with a modified combat and magic system (everything is d20 vs a difficulty, you still have classes, skill points, and feats, and the skills are basically identical and a lot of the feats are similar). The combat system uses a d20 for resolution, is fairly easy to use (once you understand it), and is easier to track than d20. The character gains "hurts", "wounds," and can be disabled, unconscious, or dead (trust me, the bookkeeping is actually easier than hit points, plus it's a perfect system for things as well, like fear - check out their horror book - the system is identical to the combat system with cool results). Characters suffer penalties to actions once wounded, if the character suffers a wound or is disabled they are stunned for one round. It's actually quite a nice system if you like the gritty feel (in this sense, gritty meaning death is possible, but not probable, but injury is likely and you fear getting hurt).

4e shares many things in common with True20, including the removal of iterative attacks and simplifying (basically removing) AoEs. Because 4e is built to scale in such a mathematical and simple way, it might be easier to stick the T20 combat system into 4e without damaging the other subsystems. While you could drop just the combat system into 3.x, you'd have to do a massive conversion since hit points and damage scale in such an inconsistent manner. In 4e, however, it seems like the scaling is based almost entirely on level, so it'd be easier to convert.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Remember, most gritty games are not designed to have the frequency of combat D&D does, much less any dungeons to crawl. Call of Cthulhu games are supposed to be mostly investigation and tension that builds to a climactic and deadly confrontation; you'll go many sessions without ever firing a shot. If you want to preserve the "D&D Paradigm" of dungeons and regular combat encounters and simultaneously make it more lethal, you'll run the risk of just making it frustrating. Likewise, there are other elements to grim-and-gritty above and beyond mere death. Call of Cthulhu, for example, has the ever-decreasing sanity of its protagonists. In many respects the descent into madness is the main focus and character death is a merciful end; Call of Cthulhu wouldn't be any less gritty if it were harder for PCs to die.

EDIT: Plus, it's often just a matter of world-building, description and storytelling. Emphasis the filthy peasants, the corrupt and decadent nobles, disease and death stalking the lands. The PCs may not be very likely to drown in mud, freeze to death in the snow or be eaten by a pack of wild dogs, but all their friends might.

 

[Irda Ranger]

If D&D is going to be gritty, the Social Encounter rules better kick ass. Because otherwise your "game" is people sitting around afraid to start fights but not able to do anything else. Either that or "Human Fighter Bob XVII enters the Caves of Chaos ..."

D&D doesn't have to be a game of dungeon crawls, but a game of dungeon grinds doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun for more than 2-3 sessions to me (sort of like Paranoia, really).

YMMV, of course.

 

[Lackhand]

Hey. So, funny story, I'm with you guys. I actually don't like much grim or grit in my D&D (despite frequently staging combats in abbatoirs or charnel houses. Shush, I have problems. ), so I was more making this thread as a way of demonstrating that while, yes, D&D is moving heroic, that's really really easy to fix (to taste).

Also, I like to tinker, so it was pretty much in my way

There's some fun to be had in a system with constant churn. I wasn't throwing that out there as "Constant character death is terrible for the players!!!" -- I don't feel that way, and I didn't mean to malign anyone. I was just exploring how one could up the lethality of D&D with the minimum number of house rules for the maximum amount of payoff.

But I agree, a D&D with lethal combat and long lived heroes is a D&D with fewer fights.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Oh, and my concept of "Gritty" is that combat should be really unpredictable and dangerous. I like MC's WoD rule that weapons do Con damage (the dice only, not any +X or +d6) on a crit. I think that's a pretty good rule because a 1st level Commoner can still get lucky with a Heavy X-bow and ruin your day, but your character isn't "out of the campaign" as long as you show the better part of valor.

I'm also reading Burning Wheel right now (which is four flavors of awesome), and it's very gritty. To put it in D&D terms, you have very few hit points but armor has a % chance of blocking a strike entirely (depending on the weapon). Two knights with short-swords would essentially fight indefinitely, since neither could hurt the other; but they'd have a very short, bloody fight with heavy maces. Likewise daggers in a dark alley (assuming no armor) make short a short and brutal fight. I'm still learning it though and don't want to go into any further detail for fear of misrepresenting something.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Oh, and my concept of "Gritty" is that combat should be really unpredictable and dangerous. I like MC's WoD rule that weapons do Con damage (the dice only, not any +X or +d6) on a crit. I think that's a pretty good rule because a 1st level Commoner can still get lucky with a Heavy X-bow and ruin your day, but your character isn't "out of the campaign" as long as you show the better part of valor.

That rule is actually a direct variant of the wound/vitality rules from SWd20 (reprinted for 3e in Unearthed Arcana) where critical hits deal wound points. I always liked that one, but we decided not to go with VP/WP for the current game (sniff...)

 

[Irda Ranger]

That rule is actually a direct variant of the wound/vitality rules from SWd20 (reprinted for 3e in Unearthed Arcana) where critical hits deal wound points. I always liked that one, but we decided not to go with VP/WP for the current game (sniff...)

Emphasis on the "we" - Perrigan's a hero, darnit.

 

[I'm A Banana]

but the popularity of systems like Warhammer Fantasy rpg, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu and nWoD (especially with mortals) attest to the fact that there are those who enjoy the challenge of this type of playstyle. It may not be for you but, there are plenty of people who feel snatching victory when the odds are against you is more exciting then winning when everything is stacked in your favor.

I'm just trying to figure out exactly what that 'playstyle' entails.

Snatching victory when the odds are against you is all well and good, but I can achieve that in D&D. I don't know why you'd need to tinker with anything to achieve that.

So what I'm asking is: "What do you REALLY want to do?"

If it's just make more dead PC's, my advice would be to concentrate on character creation rules and on the "dungeon grind" atmosphere. Make creating a character so fast that another one can be ready after this one dies, and eradicate any individual personanality from the story. These characters don't need history or backstory or goals beyond "go into the dungeon." You could also take the concept of a "spawn point" and have dead characters re-appear at a designated point, ready to challenge the dungeon again. The spawn point could even be random, or linked to some "treasure" throughout the dungeon.

The flaw I see with this is that it almost works better as a board game or a videogame than as an RPG. You're not playing much a role when you're playing "Fighter #50," and the success of the dungeon looses context.

But if you want more dead PC's, that could still be a fun game.

If it is to make PC's fear combat more, then we're going into some more subtle manipulations of the rules. You don't actually want them to die a lot, but you don't want them to be resorting to combat, really, at all. In this case, I'd shore up the social encounter resolution system to make sure you can 'win' without NEEDING to get into fights, and then make those fights not necessarily more deadly (because we're not really trying to kill them), but more costly. Clever characters should win out over strong, but I shouldn't have to be a clever player to have a clever character. I should be able to outsmart my foes even if I can't outsmart the DM. Stealth would seem to be key, too, so all characters should have options for NOT engaging in combat. Healing takes longer, leaves scars, doesn't come from magic. Old wounds haunt a character's entire career. You might want to replace the hp system with a more direct structural damage kind of system (True20's combat could be co-opted for this purpose). Reducing the damage threshold is a pretty useful way of doing it, but instead of death, perhaps the failed Fort check causes a permenant disfigurement.

The flaw I see with this is that you really need very good stealth, social, and 'puzzle' encounter resolution mechanics that don't depend on player skill as much as they depend on a die roll and the character's implied skill. This also works against one of 4e's goals: to make combat fun and fast-paced. You'll be kind of working at cross-purposes to the majority of the 4e game if you try to make combat less fun and more troublesome.

If you want combat to be a less valid option, that could be a fun game (assuming that there is a lot of attention paid to noncombat resolution).

If you want to make the PC's struggle against overwhelming odds in a world where 'hope' is the last thoughts on the mind of the populace, but the thing that PC's are trying to restore, you don't need to tinker with mechanics much, if at all. Ravenloft and Dark Sun from 2e got that feel, and that's more of a setting consideration than a mechanical consideration. It's more a choice about how you fill your world rather than how you run a combat.

So reduce it down to it's most basic element: what are you *trying* to accomplish. Then we can choose designs for that accomplishment rather than a vague and ill-defined 'feel'.

 

[ruleslawyer]

If it's just make more dead PC's, my advice would be to concentrate on character creation rules and on the "dungeon grind" atmosphere. Make creating a character so fast that another one can be ready after this one dies, and eradicate any individual personanality from the story. These characters don't need history or backstory or goals beyond "go into the dungeon." You could also take the concept of a "spawn point" and have dead characters re-appear at a designated point, ready to challenge the dungeon again. The spawn point could even be random, or linked to some "treasure" throughout the dungeon.

Spawn points kill SoD far too much for me, but may work for others (see the related thread). But building a character raises an interesting point. I'm fond of the idea of character trees for this reason. One thing that I wish I'd done from the start of the campaign onward would be to have the players, rather than myself, design some of the local NPCs, with an eye to the idea that if a PC died, one of these NPCs could then step into his shoes. So, for example, in my current Waterdeep campaign, there might be 2 NPCs per PC in the neighborhood who had a potential "adventuring destiny" and were played up as ingenues in minor roles unless and until a PC died, at which point a new character would be ready to step into the campaign, complete with character sheet, background, and even a history of interacting with the party!

If it is to make PC's fear combat more, then we're going into some more subtle manipulations of the rules. You don't actually want them to die a lot, but you don't want them to be resorting to combat, really, at all. In this case, I'd shore up the social encounter resolution system to make sure you can 'win' without NEEDING to get into fights, and then make those fights not necessarily more deadly (because we're not really trying to kill them), but more costly.

In general, this is a good idea, and strong rules for social interaction are essential, as you say. That said, once players are scared enough of combat, they *will* find a way around it, being the clever buggers they are. The real trick is to make social interaction *interesting* from a game perspective and to allow every character type to play a role.