D&D 5E Super Deadly 5E?

miggyG777

Explorer

Consider this, I am running it and it's REALLY good.

I also tested Runehammer's Hardcore 5e and it feels very rushed. Most parts are rough ideas rather than playtested material. Five Torches Deep is just on another level of quality and refinement.
 

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dave2008

Legend

Consider this, I am running it and it's REALLY good.

I also tested Runehammer's Hardcore 5e and it feels very rushed. Most parts are rough ideas rather than playtested material. Five Torches Deep is just on another level of quality and refinement.
I agree with both statements. I looked 5e Hardcore and ended up not purchasing because it seemed more like a list of ideas and a real guide to me.
 


Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
Okay, I want to break out two different things.

1. I want to aim at "legitimate fear of character death". 5e actually has a decently thick line between "oh naughty word, I'm going to be dead" and "my character is no longer playable". Death saves, healing, revivify, etc. So I really want to talk about the first of those.

2. When you do 6-8 encounters a day, 5e isn't the "easy mode" that people commonly characterize it. The issue is that the balance point is not where most people actually play. With less encounters, even deadlier ones, the differences in resource attrition make it that character still have tricks to pull out of their sleeves so they are likely to succeed. And if you succeed all the time, it feels like easy mode.
 

prabe

Tension, apprension, and dissension have begun
Supporter
When you do 6-8 encounters a day, 5e isn't the "easy mode" that people commonly characterize it. The issue is that the balance point is not where most people actually play. With less encounters, even deadlier ones, the differences in resource attrition make it that character still have tricks to pull out of their sleeves so they are likely to succeed. And if you succeed all the time, it feels like easy mode.

And if the DM tries to scale up threats to cope with the lack of attrition, he might find that the party are kinda glass-cannon-ish, especially if a few rolls go against the party.
 

Still believe there is a fundamental problem and the solution seems to be paradox.

Make your combat less deadly and you will have much more tension.
Stop fotcing your players into the rest nova cycle rest nova cycle.
Have them press on even when injured.
7 - 8 encounters is possible if you combine 2 or three combats. Don't let your players take rests for granted.
And be mean. Not by overwhelming your players but by surprising them once in a while.
And in the end: do you really want to really kill your player's characters every other session or do you enjoy it more when they survive and the story goes on?
 

These threads come back a lot of times.

At my table, death is not that common but TPK happens and is often the result of a character's death. Most of my intelligent monsters will see the "whack a mole" for what it is and will kill the PC to avoid this. Make sure your encounters are not mono type monsters and includes archers, casters and blockers. Nothing prevents you from modifying the equipment of some monsters.

One example I often give is the Veteran. He uses a long sword with no shield but has a really good armor. Why not give him a shield to raise his AC by 2? Or give him a great sword instead of a long sword. It would be more logical this way.

For solo monsters, I do modify them a bit because my groups are at 6 characters each so the actual Solo BBEG are not adapted to my play style. This is what I use and it works a lot.

Solo encounter big bad guys
Add 1 feat/ASI per 4 CR (save the first four)
Add 1 legendary action per PC above 4.
Multiply HP by 1 +0.25 per PC above 4.
Add 1.5 AC (round up) per PC above 4.

Here is a modified lich my players defeated at 17th level in a previous campaign.


AC: 17 (natural armor + dex) Now 23 (+1.5 AC x 2 for players number, Staff of power and +1 ring. It could go up to 25 for one attack because of the shield guardian and I am not counting the shield spell. Since shield was an at will power, it became and AC 28 and 30 for one attack)
HP: 135 (18d8 + 54) Now 238 for a 1.5 multiplier for number of players and tough feat (+36hp).
Spd: 30' (unchanged)
Stats: Unchanged (decided to use feats instead...)
Added: Warcaster, Elemental Adept Fire (that one was a surprise for my players), Tough.
Mage feature added: Shield and Mirror image at will (I counted that one as a feat)
Spell list was changed to reflect the added mage feature and feats.
Cantrips: Removed prestigiditation and added Fire Bolt. Rose number of cantrips to four and added Green Flame blade
Level 1: Removed shield and added disguise self (Lich used it to appear human as she did in her life.)
Level 2: Removed Mirror image and added Misty step instead.

Legendary action Rose to 5 (again 6 players)

Lich was also using Staff Of Power And a Shield Guardian.

As you can see the lich is way stronger that its mates but consider that it went against a group of six high level characters. The characters were not fresh, they had to fight to get to the lich and the fight lasted about 14 rounds, with 3 characters either dead or unconscious.

The only other real modification I do is to remove the full healing over night. You have to use HD instead. Otherwise the game is pretty much unchanged.
 

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
And if the DM tries to scale up threats to cope with the lack of attrition, he might find that the party are kinda glass-cannon-ish, especially if a few rolls go against the party.

I'd like to gently use your comment as a point about why the 6-8 is so often ignored. None of this is meant as disrespect or aimed particularly at you.

Increasing the deadliness of an encounter while reducing the number of encounters may balance HP attrition, but not resource attrition. That 6-8 is a quite good balance point between the long-rest recovery model characters and the at-will characters in tiers 2 & 3 of play. (Tier 1 the long-rest have a lot less and rely on cantrips, which are balanced as weaker but not greatly so against the single attacks the martial have at that tier, so it's not as important then.)

Easy example isn't a caster, it's a barbarian. A barbarian with 3 rages who knows the DM normally throws 6-8 encounters a day at them will not rage in every one. They will have encounters - half or more - without rage. When the DM throws 2-3 encounters regularly, the barbarian can count on their rage in every one.

Spells are pretty easily shown. If a level 3 buff lasts all combat, how many slots does it consume when there are 3 combats in a day? When there 8? How many extra slots for other spells does that leave?

Plus encounters are often made deadlier by either more foes or by more powerful foes. Both of those options favor casters. More foes means that area of effect spells are more often effective. Instead of a fireball catching 3 foes for 24d6, it catches 5 for 40d6. Wow. For the more powerful foes, you need to think abotu saves. A foe will only have 2-3 decent saves, between proficiencies and just great ability scores. That's means that reasonable spell selection has plenty of poor saves to pick from. You DC goes up with both your proficiency an dyour ability score, those bad saves do not - it is just as easy to make a powerful creature fail it's saves as a weak one. So it's just as east to affect them with a crowd control or debuff, but that slot takes out more powerful foes then in a regular encounter in a 6-8 encounter day.

To bring all of this home, you can only jack up an encounter so far before you risk really exceeding the HP attrition. But that level of encounter is not enough to provide the correct amount of resource attrition. So there's more resources per encounter. Making everything easier. Let me repeat that - as long as you don't push past the point were encounters will definitely kill characters, jacking up the difficulty and reducing the number of encounters is actually making the day as a whole easier than with the recommended 6-8 encounters.

That's why I'm saying that 5e is only easy mode because the design balance point and the commonly played point (by me as well) don't match. If you play to the design balance point the game is not easy mode.
 

Chaosmancer

Legend
Well, experiences differ, but in 1E (which I mostly played) until your own party got a 9th level cleric or were lucky enough to find one whose service they could employ, raising was rare. And, with the Resurrection Survival check, even when you tried it didn't always succeed (and then, short of a Wish, death WAS final.)



Easy enough to say, impossible to prove. ;)



  • Walks off with the rest of the party there to kill it? It won't get far.
  • Goo is still part of the body, so even if Raise dead won't work--Reincarnate will.
  • Limbs are no issue with Reincarnate.
  • Eating the corpse? A last meal for it then? Again, Reincarnate solves that unless the body is swallowed whole and instantly dissolves.
  • By the time you reach 5th level, 300 gp is pretty much pocket change for most tables. So, not an issue unless your characters are paupers. :D
  • Again, the goal is not to just ban stuff. We house-ruled it to make it not automatic, and that will help at middle levels, but solves nothing at higher levels. Sure, argue that "most" tables don't go past level 10 or whatever, but we are (currently 12-13th). ;)
So, none of those are really solutions IMO, but I suppose if they work in your game, cool.


This particular point sticks with me as I read through the thread. It seems like your biggest issue is a 5th level Druid exclusive spell.

If that is the case (and your players aren't worried about the random nature of reincarnate bringing them back as a race that ruins all their build plans) then why not simply house-rule that Reincarnate needs to have an intact body just like Raise Dead does?

I mean, if every solution is met with "But Reincarnate" then is seems like addressing that is the way forward for you.
 

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