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.