D&D 5E (2014) More swingy combat

[Seramus]

• Everyone gets +Prof to damage (even two weapon fighting).
• Failing a death save gives 1 Exhaustion.
• +Con to HP only happens at 1st level.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

There's always the system shock from massive damage (DMG p.273).

One nasty hit and you could be dead.

 

[Guest 6948803]

Judging from the OP, I am guessing it is more about the tension in the fight more so than the potential of failing at a task, but I could be wrong.

Yes, yes, and another yes to that.
I have no issues engaging or challenging my players. They just find their everyday combats not dangerous enough (thanks for all tips you gave me above, I am frequently doing that, this thread is about measuring a notch I need to raise to make them more excited.)
And maybe I put it wrong, but I didn't thought about HALVING HP, but decreasing every level/HD by 2 (so, 2nd level rogue with 10 Con would have 8+3 hp instead of 8+5). Thanks for all other suggestions (I particularly liked idea of messing with critical ranges).
All in all, I am not trying to change 5e into L5R, just trying to tune it to player preferences.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yes, yes, and another yes to that.
I have no issues engaging or challenging my players. They just find their everyday combats not dangerous enough (thanks for all tips you gave me above, I am frequently doing that, this thread is about measuring a notch I need to raise to make them more excited.)
And maybe I put it wrong, but I didn't thought about HALVING HP, but decreasing every level/HD by 2 (so, 2nd level rogue with 10 Con would have 8+3 hp instead of 8+5). Thanks for all other suggestions (I particularly liked idea of messing with critical ranges).
All in all, I am not trying to change 5e into L5R, just trying to tune it to player preferences.

Hopefully the suggestions will help or at the very least give you food for thought and help you make the game more appealing to your table.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Also, my favorites hard mode rules:

• Death Saves (and Stabilization DC) is 10 or half the damage that took you to 0 hp, which ever is highest (like for Concentration check). A successful Medicine check to stabilize or 1 use of Spare the Dying only grant 1 successful death save.
• Falling to 0 hp increases Exhaustion level by 1. If you are stable at the end of an encounter, you can spend 1 HD to recover quickly and not wait 1d4 hours.
• HP is CON score + average HP at level 1, then only average (no + Con mod) at level up.
• Each time you regain hp, from spells and features, you add your Con mod.
• Resting in the wild or in less-than-Modest lifestyle in a city requires to make a Con check at the end of a long rest to see if the character benefit from the rest; if they fail the check, they regain nothing.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Hello,

Due to preferences of my gaming group, I would like to make D&D combat more swingy - my players are used to game systems with death spiral and quick death. After our first 5e campaign, they complained, that combat slogs and don't feel threatening compared to Modiphius Conan or WFRP.
But I don't want to change too much (otherwise I could as well just switch from D&D to other game).
So, my first idea would be to slash HP gain by 2/level (we use fixed hp, don't roll for them). That would have added bonus of making healing more relevant, but big downside would be purely psychological - no one likes to be nerfed! Also, I am not sure if lowering hp pool by just 2/level will change much.
Second idea is upping monster damage, effectively doubling dice with every hit (or in case of some monster, doubling damage from main attack). That would certainly add to swingy combat, but would be totally brutal. Slightly less brutal option would be just upping damage by one rank (e.g. from d6 to d8) but again, not sure if that would change much, and I would probably need to change weapon damage as well. Less inclined to buff spells, as spell caster are pretty good anyway.
Anyone have thoughts or tried something similar before?

IMX, I think 5e combat gets pretty swingy just by increasing encounter difficulty. If you aim for 2-4 deadly combats per day instead of 6-8 medium, combat will naturally get a lot more dangerous and swingier. The more actions the NPCs have, the more dangerous combats get and the more important success or failure of each attack becomes. This does have negative effects on fighters, warlocks, and monks, however, as there will be fewer short rests but that was going to happen anyways.

You can further make the game more dangerous by adding in a cutoff for hit points. Say that after level 10, instead of gaining hit die + modifier in hp, instead each character gains a fixed number of hit points with no Con modifier. d6 = 1, d8 = 2, d10 = 3, d12 = 4. This has the effect of making the game increasingly more dangerous at high level, while the math of the early levels is basically unchanged. You could move the cutoff from level 10 to level 7, 8, or 9, but I'd be leery about moving it before that. You'll note that, yes, this is exactly what Gygax did in AD&D.

Another option would be to steal the escalation die from 13th Age.

Escalation Die​

The escalation die represents a bonus to attacks as the fight goes on.

At the start of the second round, the GM sets the escalation die at 1. Each PC gains a bonus to attack rolls equal to the current value on the escalation die. Each round, the escalation die advances by +1, to a maximum of +6.

Monsters and NPCs do not add the escalation die bonus to their attacks

If the GM judges that the characters are avoiding conflict rather than bringing the fight to the bad guys, the escalation die doesn’t advance. If combat virtually ceases, the escalation die resets to 0.

Obviously, you can make the fight more dangerous by changing that third paragraph so that the escalation die applies to NPCs and monsters as well as PCs.

That said, I'm not really a fan of adding damage because the game deals damage in such inconsistent ways. Sometimes it's one hit at 8d6, sometimes it's three hits at 1d6+5. I don't want to do that scaling math in a fair way over and over. I'm too lazy.

It's also worth noting that barring optional rules like feats and multiclassing will also limit the power level of your PCs, and will generally increase the overall encounter difficulty.

I think the only other option would be to replace PC hp entirely with a wound and soak system like Conan 2d20, but that feels like a tremendous amount of work.

 

[jgsugden]

To each their own - I think most attempts to make the game harder or deadlier tend to end, eventually, in disappointment and frustration.

If you're looking for suggestions to do it, however, I'd suggest Exploding Dice. Whenever you roll a maximum value on a damage die, you reroll it and add (one less than the maximum damage of the dice) to the damage roll.

For example, you shoot a fireball for 8d6. You roll 6,6,5,4,3,2,1,1 - which would normally be 28 damage. However, with exploding dice you remove the two 6s (reducing it to 18), add 5 for each die that rolled a 6 (bringing it back up to 26) and then reroll those dice. If I rolled a 6 and a 3, I'd add 3 for the 3 and 5 in place of the 6, and then reroll that die once again. If that were a 4, the total damage would be 38.

With this, a dagger could potentially deal a huge amount of damage if you keep rolling 4s on the d4. It creates that swing that you're asking to see, and a lot of uncertainty. I've used similar rules for one shots, but would not use them in a campaign.

 

[Blue]

Also, any time someone goes to 0, they gain 1 level of exhaustion. Pop-up healing becomes really risky really quickly.

Please, not this again.

It unfairly penalizes the players who play front line melee - those willing to protect the rest of the party - for the (lack of) action from the party's healer(s).

Plus exhaustion is exactly the wrong type of penalty to give out for failure in combat because the first level of it gives you disadvantage on all skill checks - in other words the combat penalty is sucking at everything except combat. That's an inappropriate penalty.

 

[touc]

my players are used to game systems with death spiral and quick death.

It's a rare game where the players are asking for quicker ways to die.

My typical response would be to increase the challenge and diversify monsters. Many Monster Manual creatures are boring (a single melee attack). Give them some Bonus actions (e.g. second wind feature) or even Reactions (e.g. wolf can leap back 5' if enemy misses it), gets more interesting but will make your combats more lethal.

Same with "bosses." There was a reddit project on this years back, in short: split their HP in stages (e.g. divide by 3). When they drop to the next stage, wave off, like PCs do, the excess damage and add or trigger some ability (e.g. troll giant goes into rage, attacking recklessly for rest of battle). You can also diversify the combat itself. I borrowed a list years ago I found on the net; here's a sample:

• Defend the Innocent: The enemies aren't focused on the party, they're focused on a defenseless third party that the party needs to intervene and protect.
• Stop the Ritual: The party has X turns to stop A Bad Thing from happening.
• Achilles' Heel: The enemies are nearly impervious to conventional tactics except for a specific, crippling weakness that the party can exploit.
• By The Power of Greyskull: The battle has some kind of power-up that the party can leverage to make an unwinnable fight winnable. Maybe the enemies have powerful, enchanted weapons in their armory and the party can steal them and use them for themselves, allowing you to throw more powerful enemies that the party shouldn't be able to fight at their current level. Maybe there's a magical wellspring that allows the spellcasters to regenerate spell slots, allowing them to cast their highest level spells more times than normal.

As to death, D&D doesn't do "death spirals" too well because HP is an abstract of avoiding damage. It doesn't matter if a human is 20th level or 1st level, if that giant's club actually lands on him, he's going to die. I don't have a perfect solution on this one. Death Saves are default for a forgiving campaign that doesn't want a lot of player deaths. It bleeds off damage that should kill a helpless character. I use a homebrew "negative hit points" variant with disadvantage to everything once you're in this zone, loss of movement (can "Dash" to move), and stacking "death points" each time you hit 0hp. The first time, nothing. Second time, a "lingering injury" (DMG 272). Third time, death. These shed one per long rest.

The exhaustion mechanic is a solid option, though it can stack extremely fast. That'll get you a death spiral, but it can also turn your exciting dungeon crawl into a "let's retreat and head home" game when the fighter is so crippled he can't do anything (and a death spiral tends to punish the front-liners more than other classes). You may wish to incorporate something into your game that, at a cost of resources, can help shed exhaustion (even if temporarily, which might be a good alternative instead of parties retreating to rest up when facing the exhaustion death spiral).

 

[Gorg]

One way we made combat more gritty back in the days of 2E, was to expand on the critical rules.

Natural 20 = double damage. Not roll 2x the amount of dice then add modifiers, DOUBLE damage. Those crits HURT!

Natural 1 = critical miss. Often it involved damaging one's self, or an ally.

Natural 2. = fumbled weapon.

It was amazing what this did to our table! The DM played it up to the hilt, too. <rolls D20> a 1. Table goes silent, as everyone looks at the die- then at me- than at the DM. "So... You know those bolts that hold the bow part onto your crossbow? They just failed. <rolls die> take 2 points of damage from being blasted right between the eyes by the bow!" <then pantomimes someone staggering around stunned and half blinded> "crud! So much for THAT crossbow..." Yeah, it was corny and a bit overly humourous for some tables- but it sure added in a level of risk. NOBODY likes suddenly finding themselves empty handed in the middle of a toe to toe brawl.

He'd play up critical hit's, too. Often asking the player exactly what they'd been trying to do- and narrating it fully.