Powering down D&D?

[Heretic Apostate]

What are some suggestions to power down D&D?

For instance, if I were to power down D&D, I'd have dragons be simply Huge (long) at the most, rather than going all the way up to Colossal. In addition, they'd not have god-like intelligence, and powers up the wazoo.

Giants would be Huge (tall). There wouldn't be the variety, but would be more like slightly more intelligent Hill Giants.

I'd use some variation of Ken Hood's Grim-N-Gritty hit point system (maybe some Vitality/Wound Point thrown in, to make the characters more survivable; either that, or give them some luck re-rolls per session), but with spells seriously damped down. (More spells per day, but less powerful.) There'd have to be some damping down of the classes, as well.

If anyone can come up with more ideas, please post. Concrete or vague, doesn't matter....

 

[hong]

The easiest way to power down D&D is to not play at high power levels. Just because there are 20 levels of advancement statted in the PHB doesn't mean you have to use them all. Limiting people to 5th or even 10th level will give you something much more down-to-earth than the usual world-shaking antics that high-level characters get up to.

 

[dvvega]

One way to power things down is to use the DMG character classes instead of the PHB ones.

That way everyone starts with one less feat to begin with.

Feats do magnify the power levels, especially with certain chains.

Examples: the archery chains, the spring attack chain.

If you actually removed feats altogether you would find a great reduction in power for the fighting and roguish classes. Or you could remove them all from every class, except fighters who get them 1/3 levels.

For the spell casters, you can get rid of high-damage spells, or even reduce the damage die type. As per the Tome & Blood, spells of certain levels have maximum die types. 3rd level is d6 for example and 10 dice is the maximum. Reduce this to 5d4 or something similar.

Just some ideas. And you can still use up to 20 levels for your games.

 

[Crothian]

Slow down advancement by making the level chart more difficult, weaken magic, start at zero level and use NPC classes.

Are you looking for a general powering down? You can take what a noraml character gets in 10 levels and expand it to 20.

 

[RangerWickett]

Hmm. I've been thinking about the Epic-Level Handbook, and how it allows for really really powerful characters. Y'know, fighters and monks who can pull off stunts like from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or any other Hong Kong action flick.

But what about spellcasters? In Hong Kong action flicks, heck, in any movie aside from D&D, do you ever see a lot of big, offensive magic, even if the warriors are incredibly powerful? No, you still see subtler things. You might see a Dragon Ball Z-style blast of energy, but rarely a fireball that just blows up somewhere away from the caster, and never meteor swarm.

I think we could fiddle with the curve of power for spellcasters. Try to keep them just as powerful, but with less access to high-level spells. Let them max out at 5th level spells at 20th level, like rangers or paladins. But you could balance this by having a lot more spells per day, and more versatility to the spells available.

How about we use a sorcerer for the sample. At 1st through 3rd level, he has only cantrips, but he can cast an unlimited number of them per day, and he knows 10 at 1st level, 20 at 2nd. At 3rd level he could gain some extra ability. Like maybe the ability to cantrip once per round as a free action.

Then at 4th level, he can cast as many 1st level spells as he wants each day, and he knows 3 1st level spells. By the time he reaches 7th level, he knows 12 1st level spells.

Then at 8th level, he can cast as many 2nd level spells per day as he wants, and he knows 3 2nd level spells. By the time he reaches 11th level, he knows 12 2nd level spells.

And so on, until he gets access to 3 5th level spells when he's 20th level.

We'll also shift around some spells, keeping the same visual while altering the power underlying it. Like making fireballs be a 5th level spell, but instead do 20d6 damage.

Control weather could be, say, a 3rd level spell. There'll be a lot more curses and spells to trap monsters or bind them, instead of dealing damage.

Of course it's currently horribly unbalanced, but I kinda like the idea.

 

[Moulin Rogue]

I think we could fiddle with the curve of power for spellcasters. Try to keep them just as powerful, but with less access to high-level spells. Let them max out at 5th level spells at 20th level, like rangers or paladins. But you could balance this by having a lot more spells per day, and more versatility to the spells available.

I was thinking of this too, and I'll be durned if I can find it now, but wasn't there an interview a couple months ago with Monte Cook where he mentioned that there would be rules for magic in CoC, but they made magic into something you'd not be wanting to attempt very often?

If I didn't confuse that with some other game, maybe that could be used to cap the "safe" spells at a certain level, and say that casting spells higher than that level is possible, but comes at higher and higher potential cost - either losing your marbles, getting unwanted attention from outsiders, draining life essence, something like that.

 

[Crothian]

You can increase then number of spells per day can be cast and then apply a roll for a successfully cast spell. THat way not every slot equals a spell, just a chance to cast. Make it a spellcraft check of like 10 + spell levelx2 That could easily be x3 or even x4 depending on how hard you wanted it.

 

[wolfpunk]

I played around with making all the classes 10 levels, and giving the powers at an accelerated rate. I then made it so that experience for advancement was doubled, well basically to get from first to second level meant using the experience requirement for third level, moving from second to third used the experience requirement for 5th level and so on.

I limited wizards and clerics to 6th level spells, some exceptions were made for higher levels spells to be moved down to 6th level if I wanted it for teh campaign. The damage on a few spells was tweaked either by dice cap, or by reducing the damage die to the next lowest type.

For saving throws, good progression was +1 every level, middle progression (star wars style) was +1 every other level, and poor was +1 every third level. This made things very deadly, though, might just have good and poor, good being every level, poor being every other level.

For BAB progression fighters get +11/+6/+1 at 10th level, thieves get +10/+5 and wizards get +6/+1.

Bonus feats are gained every level divisble by 2.

Skill points are doubled, so a fighter gets 4+Int mod, Rogue gets 16+Int mod. Kept the max skills ranks the same for 10 levels as it would be for 20 levels, meaning you can purchase two ranks in a class skill, or 1 rank in a cross class skill each level.

I don't know how effective it was at really powering down d&d. I can post some of the class examples if anyone is interested.

 

[GWolf]

hmm

Start the players of with 1-5 Npcs class levels.

 

[Aaron2]

Couple thoughts

I'd reduce that XP awards. Right now, I'm giving out only 2/3 of the amount listed in the DMG, and this is my "normal" power game. Reducing it to 1/2 or 1/3 should do the trick. This way, the characters are less powerful but there is no need to change the rules around.

Start at 0th level. Let them be apprentices that need to earn 500xp to be full first level. Those 500 xp go away at first level so they still need 1000 to advance.

Eliminate the max hit point at first level rule. Let them roll hp once at 0th level. When they get to first level, they can roll again and take the higher of either rolls.

Finally, you might consider increasing the skill points per level and/or the skill rank cap. This won't affect balance much but will make the players more rounded and "experienced" at an earlier level.
I don't think you need to monkey with monster stats. If monsters are weaker and the players are also weaker, you haven't really affected the power level at all.

Aaron