D&D 4E Making 4e a bit more dangerous

[Blackbrrd]

Thanks [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], that clarifies things!

Some good ideas about "downed" PC's actually not being on the floor unconscious and bleeding. Especially since the healer of my current party is a Bard.

Now, I have no problems actually killing the PCs. Adjusting monsters to get the right oomph (mostly by normalizing the to-hit/defenses and upping damage) is something I already do. I even went so far as to help optimize the PCs for high damage before survivability.

Attrition (of healing surges/powers) isn't really the way I want to play the game. Very quickly, it leads to the PCs just long resting every where. It's not something I like as a player either. It doesn't fit my DM-ing style either, where you quite possibly won't have more than one encounter per day. (I don't really do dungeons, and there is a fair share of wilderness/inhabited lands where throwing 3-5 random encounters per day would just be unbelivable).

The attrition would need to be of some other kind, but I don't want it to be anything that makes it harder for the PC to kill mobs, just slightly easier for the mobs to kill the PC. My current DM has used the lingering diseases and such, and I am not really a fan. At least from the way he ran it. Maybe if the PCs just get infected if they go below below 0hp it would make more sense.

If the kind of attrition actually varied with the monster, it would work out better? Lets say we have a variety of diseases, wounds, fatigue or curses with different effects. The mechanic to get rid of them should probably be relativly easy, but harder than just taking a long rest. I am fond of the "safe house" thought. In other words, if you have the chance to just chill, lower your guard, eat good food and get some proper rest, your body fixes the rest. It also makes for a good way to have the PC's take a break now and then, not just running through adventures 24/7.

Example attrition conditions:
- Wounded: your current max hp is half-way between bloodied and normal max hp.
- Fatigued: you get a -2 penalty to saving throws to get rid of slow, daze and stun
- Cursed: the DM can re-roll one attack roll per day
- Diseased: Follow disease track*

*Can be cured by all the normal means, and in addition by the 24 hour rest in a safe location with good care.

 

[keterys]

How about if when a PC goes to 0 hp they don't fall unconscious (let's say they're knocked prone, and dazed and cannot remove the dazed condition). They can consider surrendering or playing dead, though clearly anyone who is going to bounce back and rejoin the fight or has a reputation for doing so, well, that's a thing...

Enemies can then respect (or not) that wish, but I assure you that people will start dying if they're considered targets at 0 or lower. And PCs can make the valid decision to hide, flee, or surrender, or give up their mild protection from death.

 

[Sadras]

Some good ideas about "downed" PC's actually not being on the floor unconscious and bleeding.

We introduced a similar rule as Quickleaf in our 4E campaign where dropping to 0 gives you a Wound but you're not necessarily unconscious and you gain a Wound level (failed death saves also did this), however we took it one step further in that we changed the entire healing dynamic. Wounds could be healed through long rests where:
1 wound (Bruised) takes 1 day to heal,
2 wounds (Injured) = 1 week + 1 day above to heal entirely,
3 wounds (Mauled) = 1 month, + 1 week, +1 day above...
4 wounds (Crippled) = 6 months, + 1 month, + 1 week +1 day
5 Wounds (Incapacitated) = death imminent within moments...

And Wounds could only be healed by non-surge healing, therefore only by a Cleric's Cure Light/Moderate/Serious/Critical Wounds...and the Healing power would have to match the wound severity in order for it to Heal. So someone that had sustained 4 Wounds required a Cure Critical but that would only lessen the injury to 3 Wounds - it wouldn't negate it completely.

The system for us made Clerics and Divine Healing unique, powerful and valuable as opposed to just better hp healers than Warlords, Bards...etc Now temples with healing would be sought after for their services. Ofc this affected Healing potions and the like...but I'm not going to get into all the details here.

 

[the Jester]

A simple way to increase the game's resource management component- although this might be too attrition-based for your taste- is to change the definition or requirements of a long rest.

For example, I just ran about 8 sessions in the deep Underdark, where pcs had to find a "safe zone" to take an extended rest. Or you could say that an extended rest is a week of downtime or something. I'm not sure that this would accomplish your overall goal, though.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

When you went down to 0 hit points or less, you can no longer be healed beyond bloodied. Any extra healing is lost.

It might require a short rest, an extended rest, a ritual or whatever you like to recover this drawback. (Even a short rest can be harsh, since being healed by a good healer it's easy to go far beyond bloodied from 0 hit points, and being forced to stay bloodied for the rest of the fight is not without drawbacks. Of course, some classes have special abilities for which this also can act as an advantage. I think that will still be okay.)

Additionally, you could treat "under 0" healing as special, disallowing surgeless healing to recover hit points when down, or only heal up to your healing surge value if the power doesn't specifically target "below 0" healing. (There are a few Paragon Tier and Epic tier abilities partiuclarly that sometimes help you only when reduced below 0 hit points, they shouldn't be limited since this scenario is their whole point)


Narrating "down to 0" as somethnig else than bleeding out makes sense to me.

 

[Jester David]

I pondered a houserule, especially for 4e where going below 0hp isn't very scary since you heal up from 0 hp. Which is a good rule in my opinion, it's really stupid when you heal up somebody and they just go down immidiatly because the 30hp you healed only brought them up to 2 hp.

What I want is a rule that makes going down a worse thing than it is already, and not something you shrug off right after taking a rest. My idea is that when you go down, you reduce your max hp with an amount equal to your max negative hp. This lasts until you have taken an extended rest. It's not supposed to change your healing surge value or anything else, it just makes your character a bit more fragile.

Example: your character has 80hp, gets beaten down to -10 hp, and then to -15hp before getting healed. Your new max is 80-15 = 65 until you take a long rest. If you go into another combat and gets down to -7 hp, your max is still 65.

What I think this can accomplish is to make players heal earlier and to feel that a fight was more nasty if they have some after effects after taking a short rest. The effect shouldn't be too bad though, it only makes your character a bit more frail.

Something I considered was a wound system. Every time you went below 0hp and were healed you would gain a wound. Each wound reduced your total number of healing surges by 1. Wounds lasted until you spent a day per wound resting in a safe location.

The catch with most lingering damage and wound systems is they tend to make the characters more and more fragile as they adventure. So by the time you reach the boss fight everyone is gibbled and injured, and the fight can just be a regular fight but still be challenging.
However, reducing the total number of surges available after you use one gives a sense of being less than healthy without stacking penalties.

 

[Manbearcat]

1) Increase encounter budgetting such that the default difficulty is n + 2 (rather than n) and BBEG fights are n + 5 (rather than n + 3 or 4).

2) Tax PCs with Healing Surge loss regularly. Tax them 1 HS loss on every micro-failure of a Skill Challenge. Tax the entire group 1 or 2 for every macro-failure of a Skill Challenge. Also, make offers to them to augment effects or leverage p42 by spending surges. This will give them a dynamic measure of control over the pacing of their aggregate surge expenditure/loss. This augmented ablation of Healing Surges will induce a sense of tension and, sometimes, desperation.

3) Provide strict, and transparent, conditions required for Extended Rests.

4) Create a Disease Track that is tailored to your game's needs that serves as an injury track. Every time a PC drops below 0, they are attacked by it. If you want to make it more assertive, make the attack be Level + 5 versus Fort rather than Level + 3. They lose a healing surge that they can't gain back until the injury is gone. Perhaps they suffer a - 1 to speed or a - 2 to Fort. It would be trivial to come up something to meet your collective groups' preferred aesthetic.

Boom. 4e is now more deadly and you're using the tools built into the system and the various pacing mechanisms outlined in DMG2 to make it so.

Healing Surges are 4e's primary locus of "pressure". Apply more pressure there (through various means) and the nature of gameplay will change dramatically. Beware, however, too much pressure and not enough (transparent) strict trigger requirements for an Extended Rest and you may force your players into a "turtling" paradigm. An easy thing to do is either (i) place an in-fiction impetus for the players to continue on or (ii) require a successful Skill Challenge to meet the Extended Rest prerequisites.

 

[keterys]

Eh, healing surges are 4e's primary pressure for creating extended rests, but frankly I never feel like I need the party to take more extended rests (less, sure); I'd actually be happy to give the party more surges, but make the combats themselves more dangerous and/or make healing during those combats less reliable. Similar to how the vampire works, where the vampire can adventure all day on their 2 surges but might get in a _ton of trouble_ in one particular combat if they have to spend more than 1 or 2 surges in it.

The max heal of bloodied once below 0 is interesting. Another interesting one might also be a cap on how many surges you can use in an encounter - ie, if your defender can spend 3 and your wizard can spend 1 (and you put everyone else somewhere in between) then surge expenditure becomes a tougher prospect.

 

[sabrinathecat]

A different track to take, but which would make solo encounters a lot tougher:
Elites and Solos gain Superior Fortitude, Superior Reflexes, and/or Superior will, if they qualify for them.
Just getting that save vs Daze and Stun conditions from Superior Will does a lot to improve their odds.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

That wouldn't work, as elites and solos don't actually gain feats. But powers that give similar abilities might work.

(Last session, my PCs fought a brute with the slayer's Ignore Weakness ability. It was written word-for-word the same too.)