D&D 5E [+] How do you make 5E more challenging?

[Shardstone]

Damage that drops you below your CON is insta kill.

I wouldn't do insta-kill, but I'd throw out the current death and unconcious mechanics with a "crippled" mechanic and use this. Wonderful idea, can even use it for monsters (and monsters whose HP is below their con naturally just aren't as powerful) but sometimes in the reverse as a form of bloodied.

Really elegant stuff that even argues for keeping con around. Nice.

 

[grimmgoose]

The only thing I've found that reliably works is multiple encounters. Tension in 5E is centered around resource management. The higher the level, the more imperative multiple encounters are. Multiple encounters ensure:

• Spellcasters can't cast "I win" buttons reliably
• Damage novas can be stretched out
• Martials get to feel more effective ("I can do this all day!")
• Bosses feel more intimidating ("naughty word, I'm basically all out of spell slots, and now we're supposed to fight the dragon?")

Pretty much everytime I plan an encounter, what I'm really doing is planning a series of 3 or more encounters, unless I purposefully want the players to lay the smackdown on the bad guys.

I personally hate it, which is why I'm pretty much wholly uninterested in a 5.5 that keeps it in, but that is my two cents.

 

[greymist]

1. House-rule it to Hell.

This is definitely how I am leaning. I am taking a break from DM’g at the moment and I started on a House Rules document and it is quite long!

I generally use max HP for all monsters; I give them better weapons if it makes sense; and I always have more than the bog-standard creature in a group - so 5 types of goblins, not just 1 (shout out to Nord Games’ Revenge of the Horde).

Oofta attached a document from Blog of Holding, and they have a post that mentions that the MM creatures are generally underpowered if analysed against the DMG rules for monster creation. I plan of reviewing it to see if it provides some insight to get monsters to match their CR.

I also try to get in a reasonable number of combats per “day”. Before my hiatus I gave up on trying to use a large number of medium to hard encounters and went with a smaller number of deadly encounters. I don’t think that is by any means an elegant method, but it made things more challenging, for sure.

I don’t allow multiclassing, to avoid the temptation to dip for abilities instead of for RP reasons; although I am trying to figure out if there is a way to implement MC that doesn’t grate me.

I like to inflict exhaustion when knocked out (and we even put that in as the rule in A5E). Helps mitigate the bounciness.

I do this too. And I add a level of exhaustion when a PC starts a turn unconscious. My exhaustion table allows for 10 levels before death; each level of exhaustion adds a -1 to attacks, saves, and ability checks. In addition, maximum HPs/movement/carrying capacity all get reduced as exhaustion accrues.

Enforce encumbrance.

This is a great point. I plan on going a little old-school when it comes to what is being carried. And no more Bags of Holding at low levels!

I want to introduce some sort of Gritty Resting Rules, but I don’t like the version in the DMG as I don’t like having to take a week off to recover. I am contemplating something that sees penalties build-up over time and that can be partially mitigated in the field, but need a safe haven to get back to 100% effectiveness. The difficulty is in making it fair for short rest rechargers and long rest rechargers.

So, yeah. I’m writing my own 5.5E!

 

[ezo]

So, ueah. I’m writing my own 5.5E!

I think we should form a club.

 

[Shardstone]

I think we should form a club.

It's all the rage these days

 

[Peter BOSCO'S]

Long Rests do not restore hit points. Long rests only restore (half of, as usual) their Hit Dice. Then players must spend those hit dice to heal, just as with a Short Rest. Then the players decide if they want to go adventuring while lower on hit points and hit dice, or wait and take another Long Rest. They may end up needing as many as five or six Long Rests in a row to go from almost dead to fully healed and with all hit dice. If you combine this with rests taking longer, as suggested, then things will be much slower.

Naturally they're having to pay for their living expenses the whole time. You could even make recovery slower still at lower standards of living.

 

[GrimCo]

One idea came to mind. Couple of days ago i was hanging out with friends and we started disscussion about 2ed ad&d and stats. Since we hang out at gaming caffe (it has 70-80 board games and bookshelf with rulebooks for about dozen ttrpg systems) we grabbed PHB for 2ed. Stat bonuses really started from 16 and up and real penalties were at 7 or lower. So I'm crunching ideas about using something similar in 5e.

Everyone except martials gets +1 HP for con 14-17 and +2 HP for 18-20, martials get up to +5 hp, so 14-16 +1, 17 +2, 18 +3, 19 +4, 20 +5.

Str/dex to damage, i might cap non martials also to max +2, while giving martial classes full +5, similar to CON progression for HP. To hit, everyone can get up to +5, but +1 starts at 14.

I still need to work out other things and test it in game. But it's just an idea.

 

[Distracted DM]

One idea came to mind. Couple of days ago i was hanging out with friends and we started disscussion about 2ed ad&d and stats. Since we hang out at gaming caffe (it has 70-80 board games and bookshelf with rulebooks for about dozen ttrpg systems) we grabbed PHB for 2ed. Stat bonuses really started from 16 and up and real penalties were at 7 or lower. So I'm crunching ideas about using something similar in 5e.

Everyone except martials gets +1 HP for con 14-17 and +2 HP for 18-20, martials get up to +5 hp, so 14-16 +1, 17 +2, 18 +3, 19 +4, 20 +5.

Str/dex to damage, i might cap non martials also to max +2, while giving martial classes full +5, similar to CON progression for HP. To hit, everyone can get up to +5, but +1 starts at 14.

I still need to work out other things and test it in game. But it's just an idea.

That's an interesting take, though I think some folk would have a tough time selling it to their groups! If you want a guideline for stat just giving "less bonuses," you could look at Dungeon Crawl Classics:

 

[Corinnguard]

So, yeah. I’m writing my own 5.5E!

5.5e, brewed by a community of D&D fans since 2014.

 

[ezo]

5.5e, brewed by a community of D&D fans since 2014.

Well, I didn't start my brewing that early, but I have the pdfs covering 5 years of brewing now... and still going strong (just like my coffee!). Yum!