Gritty gone?

[Cadfan]

What do you mean by "gritty?"

 

[Kwalish Kid]

OK,
So I've largely run "gritty" games. And while 3.x wasn't the best for that type of game, it could be made to work, mainly by running lower-level games. I'm thinking 4e won't work for this at all. Low-level play isn't "that" low-level, lots of blasting, etc. Makes me sad.

That said, 4e looks like a great game. Just not the type of role-playing I generally prefer. I've got the first 3 books on pre-order and look forward to reading them and playing some. But I very much doubt it will be my game of choice....

Mark

Honestly, when I think 4E, I think Die Hard. Now there was a movie with a character who was tough. However, it was also a pretty gritty movie. John Maclean got hurt a lot and that pain got to him, at least from time to time. In my 4E campaign, it's hopefully going to be a lot like Die Hard from time to time.

If you want wounds to have some real effect, then you can easily come up with some rules that leave hit points and healing as they are and impose some other sort of, mostly minor, hurts and injuries that are longer lasting. (I recommend adapting the Wound system from Earthdawn, since it's pretty easy to adapt and is freely available on the web.)

 

[Celebrim]

Instant grittiness rule: Instead of regaining all your healing surges after a 6 hour rest, you only regain 1.

Nightmare mode: You regain 1 per week.

The way 4E seems to be balanced it appears you are expected to lose about 50% of your hitpoints in an average encounter. You then expend 2 healing surges to recover all or most of your loses, and can continue to the next encounter.

For the most part that's fine. I don't have a particularly big problem with that and you can still do some gritty with that. The problem is with how 4E handles losing more than 50% of your hit points.

For that, taking away healing surges just doesn't seem to work. I'm far more concerned with the ability to regenerate all hit points from a 6 hour rest, than I am with the ability to regenerate all healing surges.

All your changes would actually do is force a six hour rest after most encounters, and limit the amount of magical healing that could be used during a battle to more or less 'none'.

My take on gritty healing in 4E is in a different thread.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Heroic tier is kind of gritty. Okay so everyone's shooting laser beams all the time. But at least there's no flying, and maybe no invisibility. And it's supposed to be easier to do low magic than in 3e. The Xmas tree is sparser and the adds you need to replace are clearer.

 

[Lackhand]

Instant grittiness rule: Instead of regaining all your healing surges after a 6 hour rest, you only regain 1.

Nightmare mode: You regain 1 per week.

This. Though even with this, you bounce back from death too quickly -- I suggest removing death tokens also eats surges.

 

[Zulgyan]

I'm no fan of 4E but I'd do it this way:

Divide all total HPs by 2 (or more). Keep same damage capacity.


Done.

 

[Doug McCrae]

What do you mean by "gritty?"

It means the PCs can't do anything. DMs love it.

 

[Cyronax]

I'm no fan of 4E but I'd do it this way:

Divide all total HPs by 2 (or more). Keep same damage capacity.


Done.

And the players revolt, as they always do when the game is made too lethal.

Too bad. Good idea.

Edit: Dispel criticism. I meant that i liked the idea, but players wouldn't allow it to be implemented.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I think a condition track ala SAGA would do a lot to add a gritty feel.

Deadly isn't gritty, per se. Potentially deadly standoffs are gritty, persistent wounds are gritty, pain is gritty, and so forth. But most gritty characters manage to stay around for a while even with fighting. So I think all you really need is a subsystem that layers pain on PCs and good get the drop rules to apply that pain.

Still, really not going to be the best game for gritty until it's modded very very heavily.

But even low level 3X didn't do gritty too well so much as occasionally deadly.

Gritty mileage varies, for me gritty means tough but in pain, with a minor aside for cautious. For others it's far more specific - skills that only get raised because you used them, horrifying infection rules, rolling to get past your hesitation to commit murder before combat begins, and all that.

So you got everything from people only playing first level in DnD to people playing mortal level Exalted where you can't go a week without catching tetanus from shaving with your own rusty blade.

Somewhere on that range I'm pretty certain 4E will work for ya, but I wouldn't say it's going to be anybody's go to gritty, no.

 

[Henry]

It means the PCs can't do anything. DMs love it.

And heroic means player characters killing men by the hundreds, consuming the English with fireballs from their eyes & bolts of lightning from their arses.

Actually, gritty is a play style that more than just sadistic DMs enjoy. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a small but loyal following for games like Call of Cthulhu, Grim Tales, Warhammer FRP, and Runequest. PCs can do things, just not a lot of things that would be considered cinematically flashy or gravity-defying -- more Raiders or 3:10 to Yuma than 300 or Hero.