D&D General What house-rules or techniques do you use to make 5e grittier?

[Crimson Longinus]

I forgot one too: you can only spend half of your HD per one short rest.

 

[Guest 7037866]

My number 1 rule to keep 5E feeling gritty: don't adopt the 2024 material.

In general, mostly just a power bump over 2014.

 

[el-remmen]

Character only regain half their HD after a long rest.

I thought that was the rule as written or did that get changed in 2024 D&D?

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I thought that was the rule as written or did that get changed in 2024 D&D?

IIRC, it's full HDs in 2024.

I'll confirm when I have the time.

 

[toucanbuzz]

I primarily alter monsters, but here's a few things I've gone with for grittier games currently or in the past:

• Replace Death Saves with Vitality points (your starting HP and what damage your body can actually take, only increases if your CON score increases or take a HP increasing feat), much harder to recover than Hit Points.
  • At 0 HP, take 1 Vitality damage, gain 1 level of lesser exhaustion (stacks with regular exhaustion but 1 level removed by short rest or lesser restoration, or all by anything that removes normal exhaustion).
  • At 0 HP, all further damage goes to Vitality. At 0 Vitality, dead.
  • Concentration save to avoid dying and instead become staggered.
  • Dying: lose 1 Vitality at start of turn (1d4 if critical failure on save) until stabilized or healed. If failed save by 5 or more, gain lingering injury from DMG.
  • Staggered: 0' movement (can use Dash action to move), no reactions, cannot use both Action and bonus action, foes resist your class abilities with advantage. If hit, Concentration save to avoid dying. Ends if gain 1 HP.
  • Vitality healed at rate of 1 per long rest. If at full HP, every instance of 10 points of healing restores 1 Vitality. Regeneration always heals 1 per tick.
• Slot encumbrance. A visual where you fill in what you're carrying and where. If you don't have a free hand or spot, you can't carry it.
• Undead drain, no save.
• Many monster resistances restored from AD&D/3E such as golem spell immunities and demon immunities. Epic foes like Demon Lords cannot be fully harmed without +3 weapons.
• On DC 20+ skill checks, cannot succeed unless proficient in that skill.
• On DC 15+ traps, only the rogue class can disable.
• Cantrips, limited by # known per short rest.
• Raise Dead escalating difficulty per Matt Mercer.
• Spell changes (e.g. Tiny Hut functions as original, not a force field; remove abusive non-PHB spells).

 

[abirdcall]

We recently played Rime of the Frostmaiden which is a horror themed campaign.

Only long rest in a friendly settlement.
Weather conditions are encounters (eg. blizzard, -80 temp drop) which causes exhaustion. Added that 2 HD can be spent during short rest to remove 1 exhaustion.

Mental stress effects which caused permanent changes to their character (usually how they respond to further stressful situations). Example: defeated by a hag she ate one of the PCs in front of them and then left them to deal with the horror. They had an option to take -1 to stats if they didn't like the RP stipulation.

In general the world itself was harsh so even without changing the rules a lot it came off as harsh. Plot hooks were mostly vague rumours of a lost expedition or someone surviving seeing a horror. They had to travel to the adventure site and travel back so there was rising tension.

Lots of random encounters which could mess things up. Even one where they get teleported and don't know where they are and are now in an entirely different plot.

Limiting player knowledge makes things grittier and more uncertain.

 

[tetrasodium]

Imo the biggest hurdle present in making 5e more gritty is that the system fights to preserve explosive all or nothing rests where any interruption is just going to be met with "well let's try again".

3.x style linear recovery doesn't cover spell slots and 5e lacks the old time based mechanical hooks that made it so a trigger-happy caster could be interrupted at times that get in the way of a recovery. Ad&d2e recovery of flat HP per day(?)∆ & ten minutes of study/prayer per spell slot level could be adapted --BUT-- warlock complicates that in ways I'm inclined to not show sympathy towards and monk doesn't even fit either.

Unfortunately without a "see page xxx of book yyy" entry both of the hypotheticals I gave above set the stage for players to argue with the GM should they feel their class is being treated unfairly by the rules he/she made over the unfair house rule being unfair rather than discussing the merits for the game that would come with a sidebar that carries responsibility. It's especially tough because pretty much everywhere that a gm would need to tweak things it comes in the form of a nerf so the gm has little they can spotlight for players to be happy about

∆ I'm out and about, can't check the wording

 

[dave2008]

It’s been said that regardless of what variant rules WotC provides, DMs can make their game as gritty as they want. For all you DMs out there, what methods and variant rules are you using? What are you importing from older editions? One can always throw more monsters at the PCs, but that doesn’t particularly reinforce a grittier theme. I find that system matters, as rules reinforce theme, and I find grittiness to be lacking in 5e but don’t want to lose the large available player base, nor do I necessarily want to have 5000 pages of houserules unless it’s worth it.

There are several easy things you can do, like one or more of the following (and there are many more):

1. Death at 0
2. Lingering Wounds on critical hits
3. Critical hits = max damage + rolled damage
4. Don't regain HP on a long rest, unless you spend HP

Of these we use death at 0 and critical hits deal max + rolled damage. We dropped lingering wounds on a critical because it was to punitive for my group.

Edit: I should add that simply removing most resurrection type magic (anything that brings you back from the dead) as spells helps. We don't have this rule, but my group doesn't have anyone who can cast this type of magic so it is effectively the same.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Remove multi saves. Like Flesh to Stone, one save failed and you are stone

Remove Death Saves. Use like -4 is death. Bleeding at -1 per round when below 0

Cut HP by like a third or half. Do it for the monsters as well.

 

[Laurefindel]

Cut HP by like a third or half. Do it for the monsters as well.

... or don't do it for monsters...

Personally I'm partial to regular HP up to level 5, then each level contributes to half up to 11 (inclusively), then each level contributes to a quarter up to level 17, then no hit points are given when gaining levels.