Preserving the Fear Inherent in 1st Level

[Oofta]

One other thing you can try. Establish up front that there are fights they cannot win. Make it clear is doesn't matter if they are 1st level or 20th level; there is always a chance of failure.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I started a new campaign last night, running the Yawning Portal version of Sunless Citadel in Eberron for a group consisting of a mix of lapsed and current players. The first thing that happened was a tense, close-to-TPK fight against 3 giant rats. It was scary, but fun scary. But having run quite a bit of 5E in the past, I know that particular feel goes away pretty quickly. It is pretty difficult to kill 5E with even a couple levels under their belt but I think the game benefits from a healthy dose of mortal fear.

What methods have you found to keep the game dangerous even as PCs rise in level? What methods have you tried that did not work out or otherwise ended up not using? What's your take on high lethality D&D as it relates to player engagement and enjoyment?

Thanks!

Serious question: who is this more fun for? Have you asked your players if they really prefer swingy, low resource fights like at 1st level? I ask because I've seen this exact thing from other GMs who have a belief that unless someone is about to die (or goes down), the fight wasn't exciting for the players (I think because it wasn't exciting for the GM). I'm playing with a DM right now that has expressed frustration that the fights don't seem challenging because no one on the player side goes down, and I've tried to tell him that the players are feeling very pressured, and making hard choices on what to do to make it through (ie, burning limited resources) and that it's very apparent on the player side that a few good rolls one way or the other decided the fight. Player perception of fights is VERY different from the DM's perception, because the DM has nearly perfect knowledge while the players do not. The knowledge differential is critical for tense fights -- ie, a fight that appears to be a cake-walk for the DM because he KNOWS what's what and what's next isn't for the players who don't know what's around the next corner or even if what they see right now is everything that's going to happen. Spice up your fights with a few surprise additions late in, or a sudden change to the situation now and again and your players will have all of the tension you could want. Don't mistake your view of the fight for their view of the fight.

 

[Reynard]

Don't mistake your view of the fight for their view of the fight.

This is a good point.

 

[Inchoroi]

1. Bring back level draining.

2. Players will then be fearful of having their levels drained, PLUS you can keep knocking them back to 1 and they can be afraid of that, too.

3. ????

4. Profit!

Oh, god. Level drain. Plsno.

However, in my campaigns, I've never felt that at any point my players have felt safe; in fact, my players know that I play everything straight, and prepare the world as it would make sense. This means that, if they're level 5 in a dungeon and it makes narrative sense for there to be a full lich there, well, there's an actual lich there. My players expect and respect my writing ability to make sure they're aware of the fact that they might be getting in over their heads before they do so.

That's a narrative, DM-side viewpoint, of course! I help that along by having a few special houserules.

1. HP does not reset on a long rest. Instead, during a long rest, you get to spend hit dice, just as if you took a short rest; at the end of your long rest, you get back half the remaining hit dice you have, minimum 1. Things like bard's Song of Rest works on a long rest, as well as a short rest.

2. Failed death saves do not reset until a character takes a long rest. This means that, if a character drops and has to make a death save and fails, that failure doesn't go away if the cleric/bard/druid/whatever brings them back to functionality. Successes, of course, go away when a character is back above 0 hit points, because it wouldn't make sense otherwise. I considered imposing exhaustion levels instead of having failures on death saves not reset, but ultimately rejected it as being a little more difficult to keep track of.

3. Lingering Injuries. I know people sometimes don't like these, but I find it adds a certain amount of danger to every single combat, regardless of level. I do, however, slightly modify when lingering injuries come up, as follows:

* When a creature takes a critical hit, the attacking creature rolls 1d20; on an 11-20, the target takes a lingering injury.
* When a creature drops to 0 hit points but isn't killed outright, the attacking creature rolls 1d20; on an 11-20, the target takes a lingering injury.
* When a creature rolls a natural 1 on a saving throw against a trap or magical effect, the DM rolls 1d20; on an 11-20, the triggering creature or creatures take a lingering injury.
* When a creature fails a death saving throw by 5 or more, or automatically fails a death saving throw for any reason, they take a lingering injury.

The important part, however, is that every houserule above also applies to NPCs and monsters (where it makes sense, of course; an ooze doesn't have limbs to amputate, after all). There have been two combats where the characters were in a rough spot, but a lucky lingering injury changed the dynamic of the fight completely, and made for a very dramatic reversal of fortune. I keep meaning to make my own DM screen that includes this stuff, but never seem to get around to it...

Changing character hit points per level, wholesale rewrites of the game's mechanics, etc, feels unnecessary! I don't want to do all that work; I already have too many projects to work on as it is.

 

[tglassy]

I’ve started just ignoring the CR of creatures and just put them against whatever I think is cool and appropriate for the adventure, with the addendum “Running away IS an appropriate response sometimes.”

I’ve sent Gibbering Mouthers against lvl 0 characters, and Boneclaws against lvl 1 characters. Ok, not against, but they saw one and tried to fight it.

I’ve sent Dracoliches against a part of lvl 6s, and gave Strahd a Staff of the Magi. Of course, that party is lvl 10 and is loaded up on magic items from around Barovia, so I don’t feel the least bit bad at that.

These monsters never get any use. So I use them. So far, nobody’s died. They’ve all barely managed to survive. And they all feel awesome.

 

[Horwath]

1. ban all items giving magic bonus to AC.

2. put hard cap on Con of 16.

3. Classes get 1 HP less per level

4. Return of the surprise round. If PCs get into ambush, attack them with advantage to all attacks, then roll initiative as normal.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

My players are always scared of death throughout the campaign.

What I do:
- I tell my players during recruitment already, that I'm a DM that's very unforgiving and will actually try to get them killed every battle (that's what I tell them but in reality there are a few rules I set myself as for example to not gank up on a single PC unless there is no other target available and also to have enemy spellcasters preserve a spell slot of the highest level for emergency cases)
- I give XP as combat reward, I do reward solving an encounter without combat too and I might give double XP as a quest reward bonus if the encounter was part of a quest; still in most official campaigns my PCs are eventually below the recommended level, this kinda balances out with "It's getting easier on higher levels"
- When my PCs walk into a region equal or below their level, I act out all the enemies as smart as I can (DM tactics can easily be superior to player tactics, mainly because the DM is a single person whereas each PC is controlled by a different player, which makes good cooperation harder)
- When a PC dies and can't be revived and the player creates a new character, that character will always start at level 3 again, so the player loses all XP earned

 

[Caliburn101]

Monster attack damage does not match PC HP inflation. Add that to the additional methods PCs have to recover /avoid damage as they get higher level and combats become increasing less dangerous. The two easiest options are:

1) Make your monsters hit harder, and/or...
2) Reduce the PCs HP

It is hard to convince players they should have less HP, so more powerful monsters is usually easier. You don't have to do this for every battle or every monster (you can also use more monsters and environment, hazards, traps to increase the threat).

You can also look at doing an E6 or E10 version to limit power levels as of PCs as you get to higher level. I think I am going to do this (E10) for my next campaign and see how it goes.

A quick rule of thumb set of modifications I use is;

1. Increase monster damage dice by one dice-step for all dice involved (e.g. d8's turn into d10's).
2. Increased monster HD (and recalculate resulting HPs) by one dice-step (as above).
3. Increase AC of monsters by 25% of CR (round down). Alternatively fro humanoids, give them better armour to wear and give out shields where possible.
4. Increase DC's of monster abilities by half of proficiency progression (i.e. +1 to +3) appropriate for the level of the game.
5. Make frequent use of monster 'commanders' who use an action at the start of combat to inspire their 'troops' and give them all temporary HP equal to 2+CR.
6. Use terrain and tactics mercilessly - monsters do NOT generally want to die, and should act like it!

Examples of easy to use tactics;

• Ambush the party and use the advantage on a surprise round to disarm with one adversary and kick the weapon away with an adjacent one (or even pick it up...)
• Have missile equipped humanoids use pavise shields to fire from behind
• One grapples, the other pummels...
• Flanking, flanking, flanking
• Have the heavily armoured take a single move in first and have them declare dodge... soak up the inevitable splurge of party attacks... then unleash some heavy hitters from another location who don't have to fear immediate retaliation
• Shield walls... watch Vikings if you don't know why these were used so very, very often
• Long range missile volleys - it's always nice to get 10 free attacks in from sensible Goblins before the super-archer of the group kills just one of them - don't rush to melee if you don't have to
• Use the terrain like a pro - step out, fire an arrow, step back into 100% cover behind that big rock; form a fighting line just on the other side of broken ground, and wait for the party to come to you as you dodge and lock those shields
• Fire pigs! (see Roman battlefield tactics)
• Kill the horses and run off...
• Attack at night in overwhelming force after the Orc Shaman casts a silence spell over the campfire...

Need I go on...


These tweaks take seconds to calculate on a statblock and make a surprising difference to making games feel like a threat again.

 

[GnomeWorks]

It isn't a question, really, of resources available, or of what's in your players' toolbox. The problem is, and has been since at least 3e, a mismatch between damage output and hit point totals.

What caused me to notice the problem was this: at first level, the mage should be terrified of the fighter. At high levels, that dynamic goes away (for a variety of reasons). So what I wanted was summarized by a simple goal: a mage within swording distance of a fighter of equal level should be terrified of getting one-shot'd.

The answer to this problem is something I call potency, which can be summarized like this: a sword, rather than dealing 1d8 damage, deals potency 4 damage. What that means is relative to the sword wielder's level: at 1st level, it deals 1d2+9 damage. At 10th, 1d8+30; at 20th, 2d8+55.

HP values, which are actually what I started with, are thus: 2.5 * (size of HD - 4), plus Con score, at 1st level. Then, every level after, is (max(HD) - 1) + Con mod. So a class with a d8 HD would start with 10 + Con HP, and get 7 + Con mod HP every level afer.

The potency values were then calibrated off of those, so that at every odd level, an attack of potency X has a 50% chance of dealing lethal damage to a creature with an HD of size X. Potency values only change every odd level, with even levels everyone getting a +1 bonus on all d20 rolls (basically how 4e does things). IIRC expected variance is around 10 to 15% of that, so an attack of potency X should do at least 85%, and as much as 115%, of the HP a character with HD X would have.

The math then mostly works out that for every 2 points of Con you have, your HD goes up effectively by 1 in terms of the potency you can survive.

tl;dr - I made damage output math scale with level proportionally to HP, to retain roughly the same danger level across all levels, gave the concept a fancy name, and did a bunch of math-hammering to get the results I wanted.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Hi Folks -

Late to the party and I don't think reading seven pages is going to help my contribution to the thread, so forgive if this is a duplicate.

Re: Fear.

1. Have retainers. Klll retainers.
2. Have NPCs experience nasty things and have the nasty things get back to the PCs as rumors. Rumors get exaggerated.
3. Important: Monster stats in rulebooks are "rumored". Change them often and have characters rely on in game knowledge.
4. Intelligent monsters use tactics and try to set up enemies.
5. Zones of absolute darkness in dungeons... enjoy..
6. Zones of anti-magic in dungeons... enjoy..
7. Level drain

Do not overuse 5-7, just have them around so players have to plan around them.

8. Make it really clear that player character death can happen and can happen unexpectedly. (re: Giant baby shows up and decides to play "vroom vroom" with PC's caravan wagon.) Players intervene and end up having mommy giant trash the caravan just because... mommy has class levels in barbarian..

Point to number 8 is random encounters should be flavorful and "wtf" worthy.

9. The players need to overcome this stuff if they "earn" it.

To me number 9 is key. If the players don't feel like they earn the outcomes, you lose fear immediately.

Nuff said
KB