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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Necrofumbler" data-source="post: 8313529" data-attributes="member: 6923702">Sticking PC to level 3 HP is essentially doing this:- Classes which rely on having a big bag of HP to be worthwhile get a really super hard "kick in the groin" treatment. Anybody mostly melee based, basically.- Meanwhile "squishier" classes which rely on staying away from the battle and shooting or casting sells from afar, basically those that generally don't get targeted or hit in the first place in most battles, get nowherre near as penalized and can pretty much keep on functioning near their top. All full spellcasters and pure ranged guys, basically.Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin. Or melee-based Rangers and Rogues. In such campaigns, there would be next to zero point in playing one of these classes unless you want to quickly become the party's "little Tim the weak sidekick". This is because while your high level fighter will now go down every single fight, your high level wizard will still have no problem nuking the hell out of several fights worth of baddies.If you nerf HP, then you also have to nerf these:- Amount of spellcasting slots / uses per day of powersAfter all, if you fighter, which relies on having lots of hit points to last several fights, has less hp, then your wizard, which relies on having lots of spell slots to last several fights, should also have less slots.and/or- Adjust the "Standard Aventuring Day" to a different time interval. DMG says that a party can face "up to" 6 to 8 medium-to-hard challenge rated encounters, with 2 Short Rests and 1 Long Rest per adventuring day, and a need for the DM to avoid letting the party rest too often.  This doesn't mean that every adventuring day needs to reach that stated 6-8 maximum, far from it! But it is still a very good ballpark figure and thus guideline as to how the classes are balanced between each other. i.e. The "standard" adventuring day should be something relatively common, and definitely not the exception.Most DMs I know handle campaigns with only 1-2 fights per day WITHOUT adressing this aspect. And that is bad because it unbalances the value of short-rest-based classes (fighter, warlock) relative to long-rest based ones (barbarian, spellcasters).Check out the overall "amount of use of their powers" such classes get in say a 6-8 battles-a-day scenario:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fighters and warlocks: 3 Short rests worth of powers, spread over 6-8 fights.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Barbarians: Their daily Rages, spread over 6-8 fights. Feels pretty similar to fighters at mid-levels.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Daily Spellcasters: All of their spells, but they must very carefully spread their use out over 6-8 fights.</li> </ul>Verdict: Classes end up "more or less" balanced.Now let's compare for a 1-2 battles-a-day scenario, usually without much time in between them:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fighters and Warlocks: Woopss, down to only 1 Short Rest, but over only 1-2 fights. Feels pretty much  like before.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Barbarians: Their daily Rages, but spread over only 1-2 fights. Suddenly they can Rage all the time and at higher levels can even end up wasting a fraction of their daily Rages. Bummer!</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Daily spellcasters: All of their spells, but all focused into only 1-2 fights! YAY LET'S GO ALL NUCLEAR!!!</li> </ul>Verdict: Very obvious extreme imbalance between classes.The only exception I've seen is DMs actually doing "dungeon crawls".Any DM not seeing the problem above, the utterly high level of ridiculous unfairness of it all, is missing a few of the puzzle pieces in his brain. Because he is basically playing favorites without even realizing it.Then those same DMs wonder publicly why oh god just WHY do they have to up the difficulty of their battles so much? Gee wiz louise, try following the "standardized" amount of battle first, then, heh?Also, adjust everything for "sustainability". Some classes are better are doing LOTS of fights without losing much staying power. Check out all the unbalancing magics too. For example a rogue with a Ring of Regeneration "1 hp per round" will be at top effectiveness and sneak attack just as well wether it is the first battle of the day... Or the 100th! Letting players strike the motherload of gold then buy a chest full of many wand of cure wounds or just a frakking tons of healing potions is the exact same problem. For those things if magical items got so rampant that they buff the party to godlike levels, I'd just want to go the "Mordenkainen's Disjunction" route to reset things out a bit lol.Having lots of healing makes the party much stronger because suddenly the party healers don't need to spend as many spell slots on healing and can thus focus on dealing more damage instead.So yeah a DM needs to check out how "min-maxed" the PC group is.SUGGESTIONS:Use DMG page 267 Gritty Realism Variant rule:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">1 Short Rest is 8 hours night sleep.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">1 Long Rest is a full week.</li> </ul>I'd even add "and only if safely back in town".I'd also change "week" for whatever appropriate time interval there is between adventure chapters.Let's say your party usually gets only 1-2 battles in any given day of adventure, but that happens only once or twice in a 7-days week. Then the "Long Rest" should be an entire month! Link it up to being OUT of adventuring for an entire "moon cycle" or something, with magic linked to super long ritual linked to the moon say the wizard must sleep with a big rune under his bed, and he needs to remain livingg calmly relatively nearby for the entire month so that the moon "complete a full circle around the symbol".Use Rest Tokens:Deal to the group (of player)s 2 Short Rest Tokens and 1 Long Rest token.They still have to take Breaks (1 hour, replaces Short Rest) and Camp (8 hours of mostly sleep, replaces long rests) to avoid simple penalties like becoming too stressed out by repeated battles (Shell Shock), or from lack of sleep. But when they take a Break or Camp, they can also spend 1 relevant Rest token (Break for a Short Rest and camp for a Long Rest) and get the rest benefits only if they spend a token.The DM gives back the full allotment of rest tokens only when the party finishes the current adventure chapter (which is sized for 6-8 battles)m or if they FORFEIT the adventure (including all XPs for the part they already did), going back to rest in town. They migght get another chance (or not0, but obvously the bad guys' plans have already come to fruition or at least progressed a lot more than what would they have if the PCs have stopped them the first time around. The bad guys might also have made preparations vs the players against another raid, called in reinforcement, add fortifications and traps, or just decided to abandon their now currently "compromised" base and fall back to another secret base, etc.For example, party is hired to go save mayor's daughter before she gets sacrificed by some evil cultists. If party admits defeat, mayor daughter is DEAD DEAD DEAD. Party might still want to vanquish the cultists afterwards anyway, but that is another story.And no, a DM should never have "specific story events" in mind that would inflexibly "demand" that the PCs succeed (or fail) in some kind of predetermined railroady fashion every step of the way. Let the bigger story ADAPT to the players, not the other way around.For bigger "chapters" containing more battles, those areBut forcing my group to go through that so many battles before being allowed to heal back up, wqill result in a TPKStop baby-handling them. REPEATEDLY tell them they can ALWAYS forfeit an adventure, live to fight another day and all that, and the group can use that option even straight into the middle of a battle. They are assumed to retreat and flee the dungeon, end of story. Albeit at some cost: they make one or more "Escape the Dungeon" check, DC depending on "how though" it is to escape, and number if checks more than one if they are REALLY DEEP in the dungeon. Typically a single DC 10 check. Failure means they fail forward: they escape, but at a cost. They lost some valuables, maybe are so badly hurt that when finally back in town, broken and half dead, they incur some special costs to heal those grievous injuries. By all rights, they should have all died. Of course, forfeiting an adventure while already backk oout of the dungeon or even better fully back in town, is probably "free" with zero risks involved.Also, WARN them that some adventure SHOULD be forfeited as they either will be too easy (thus not giving them any XPs!) or too hard (thus they should try only after doing OTHER adventures first, to level up first).Let any PC leaving the battlefield be treated as having automaticaly succesfully escaped that battle, even if the monsters Are faster than him. i.e. don't make fleeing HARD, not even REALISTIC. Assume players start to feel they are losing and should flee "one round too late". So you make fleeing something EASY.And then just let them get the TPK they deserve. Once it is down to the last few PCs (i.er. as soon as, to the DM, it is obvious the party is going to lose that fight, say there are already 2 dead PCs out of a group of 6, things are going very bad already!), let them choose wether they invoke the "FORFEIT AND ESCAPE" rule, or tries their luck (and everybody else's) at the risk of a TPK. Tell the check DC right then. Repeat every time another one dies, with increased DC (i.e. easier to escape with ALL your friends, if you're not the one last guy having to carry them all nearly all by yourself). It is assumed the downed PCs are barely conscious enouh to try to walk away.Basically, you transform TPKs into "you lost, and utterly so, but you live to fight another day" instead.If they STILL go for a TPK despite that, well, just let them reroll new PCs! Maybe even time get rid of a problem player (typically the one causing the group to utterly fail all the time), and a new fresh face in the group to replace him.1st edition had the advantage that creating a PC took all of 5 minutes. 15 minutes more if you went through buying your starting equipment in detail (instead of just a "Here you have X starting gold and 1 week of rations, end of story" thing). So a DM could litterally pull off MULTIPLE TPKS in the same session, no problem, until thep layers wizened up and finally learnned to PLAY WELL instead of treating every battle as a fight to the death to rush into head first.One thing I've used that helps players start to think about retreating faster:Bloodied =<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You have Disadvantage on everything</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You deal half damage with everything (not just weapons but also spells and powers)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Targets have Advantage on Saves against your spells and powers.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cantrips cost a Level 1 spell Slot to Cast.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Limited to only a single attack per action (say a Magic Missile is only 1 missile, etc.)</li> </ul>The huge nerf bat! You will see that as soon as they are a bit too damaged, they will try to retreat because the moment they SEE they are in trouble previously it was "My PC is now downed and can't do anything at all" and now it is "My PC is Bloodied and mostly useless in the fight so I should retreat to heal up".Of course you have to be fair here: less enemies, less powerful enemies, and enemies ALSO face the same problems.I usualy add a "group heroism" token: the group can decide (majority vote needed) to use it, and ONE PC can then ignore the "Bloodied" penalties for the rest of the fight. Same for the baddies. This is especially useful  for the DM when the party is fighting bosses, though, so ultimately it might help the enemies much more than the PCs.As a bonus it also prevents the "let's focus nearly all the healing only on the front line fighter" syndrome, because the ranged and casters weith bonly q1 hp left are still super useful just staying i nthe back lobbing atrrows asnd spells from afar. "With Bloodied = next to useless" it helps spreasd the healing more farily around. It also helps enemies know when to retreat or surrender instead of all acting like big sacks of hp whose sole reason to exist seem to be to fight the PCs to the death.</blockquote>

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