I like d&d. I like Hitpoints.  But I want a level of Risk in combat starting at the first round.  I also don't like the unlimited magic casters get.  There should be conquences for getting hurt and for unleashing the powers of creation.

So I am experimenting with a couple of rules to make combat more dangerous and to make magic just as powerful but the casters need to ration their spells carefully.

This will be an over lay for 5th ed D&D.

Thoughs and suggestions apreaciated.  I haven't play tested yet.  Also tiny phone.  Thanks for your understand of my terrible spelling.

First thanks to who ever mentioned the knight slayer crossbow.  It did 5d4 damage and took a long time to load.  It started this train of thought.


All damage dice explode.  On a max roll on any die roll again and add that number to the total, keep rolling as long as you keep maxing.  This makes Fire balls and magic missiles much much more dangerous.  Double dice swords like the Great sword and Falchon also more dangerous.  I might use the threat ranges from 3rd.  
The rogue sneak damage wouldn't explode in combat flanking situations.  But it would in non-combat suprise round situations.

Magic - If a caster casts spells level equal to their charcter level or higher they are exhusted.  They can't regain spells until they rest, for days.  Maybe 2d4 days? Maybe equal to their level.  

They can cast but there are risks.  On the frist cast role a d12. On the next role a d10 ...
On a roll of 1 their mind is exhusted and they lose concentration with disasterous results. Roll a d6

6- lose that spell permanently.  If they find it again they can try to relearn it but thre is now guarntee.

5- lose containment.  All the spells still memorized go off.  All at once.  This is bad.  DM targets the spells but some bad things always hit the casters allies.  Don't target for maximum harm but make it sting. 0 level spells go off 0-3 times randomly targeted.

4 - Detonation.  Caster takes 1d6 lighting damage for every level of spell they still have memorised.  Then half strenght bolts come arcing off.  Stricking either completely randomly or seeking the nearest target.  Secondairy bolts equal to the number of spells memorised or the number of 6s on the initial damage roll.  They continue jumping halfing in strenght each time until they hit 1d6 but they don't split again.

3- Blood Fire.  Perminatly lose hit points. 1d10 maybe?

2 Burn out.  Lose spell gaining ability.  For a long time.  Maybe perminate. Not less than a year.

1- Coma.  Hit the ground like a sack of shit.  You don't wake up for at least a day.  Maybe as long as a week or two.  If some one does manage to wake you damage will be done.  This is a protective coma your body has sent you into to heal and prevent harm.

You can not use re rolls from luck or other comon ways on these rolls.  But possibly you could gain a boon or a charm from fates,  furies and lesser devines to avoid or mitigate disasters.

Encumbrance, Movement, Short and Long rest.

Short rest is overnight not less than 12 hours.  Long rest is 2d4 days.  

You can't get a short or long rest if traveling in heavy armor. Unless you are traveling on roads.  If traveling on good roads and staying in Inns or well prepared camps long rest can be over night and a short rest can drop down to an hour or two.  

Since I am adding a ristriction to heavy armor I think I will add a boon.  Either damage reduction or the ability to "take it on the armor" and hit twice or something.

Thoughts?

Also thinking of a hardness scale for weapons and armor.  Harder/better material armor would have damage reduction against softer/lesser weapons.  
Copper/ stone
Iron
Steel
Star steel
Adaimantium/ Mytherial
Eog?/Leaon?

Looking at later editions of D&D (per encounter/long rest/short rest), it simply makes my head hurt simply thinking about all the fiddly tracking you'd have to do at higher level.

My suggestion would be to make it simple. Complexity isn't necessary in this regard. As an example, back when I still ran AD&D, we dumped the Vancian memorization stuff. Instead, we had the 'Blood Price'. PCs and NPCs can cast the spells they'd learned as often as they like, but for every casting, sacrifice 1HP damage by level of spell (e.g. 1HP for 1st level spell, 9HP for 9th level spell). It also eliminated the glut of 'spell-stacking', which I found to be oddly confrontational and adversarial from a DM/player relationship when running higher level magic users and clerics.

Quote from: Headless;955731First thanks to who ever mentioned the knight slayer crossbow.  It did 5d4 damage and took a long time to load.  It started this train of thought.

That would be me and you are welcome.

Quote from: Headless;955731All damage dice explode.  On a max roll on any die roll again and add that number to the total, keep rolling as long as you keep maxing.  This makes Fire balls and magic missiles much much more dangerous.  Double dice swords like the Great sword and Falchon also more dangerous.  I might use the threat ranges from 3rd.

That one way of doing it not very D&Dish tho in my opinion. And this is a entirely subjective judgment call on my part.

The solution I adopted for my take on classic D&D is that if you roll a natural 20 you do max damage and get to roll another d20. If you don't hit again you roll your normal damage and add it. If you do hit you do max damage. If you roll another natural 20 you repeat. If you roll enough natural 20s you could be doing triple or more max damage. The most I had a player roll is roll five 20 times in a roll since I started using this rule in 2010.

I feel this is more D&Dish. But as a general purpose RPG mechanic, exploding damage dice do work. The only downside is that the larger damage dice have LESS of a change exploding than smaller damage dice. The way to fix this is recast higher damaging weapons as multiple throws of small dice. For example instead of 1d10 for a two handed sword roll 2d5 or 2d6.

 

QuoteMagic - If a caster casts spells level equal to their charcter level or higher they are exhusted.  They can't regain spells until they rest, for days.  Maybe 2d4 days? Maybe equal to their level.  

Doesn't work after first level. Look at the spell progression chart and when the character get a higher level spell. If I am 5th levels I get my 3rd level spell.

Quote from: Headless;955731Thoughts?

Just grab the 5e SRD, put it in a word processor, make your changes and start running a campaign. Explain that you are evolving the rules to make the game feel more grittier.

Also you may want to keep tabs on Douglas Cole of Gaming Ballistic who has pretty much the same objective with he take on 5e, Dragon Heresy.

Quote-me
Magic - If a caster casts spells level equal to their charcter level or higher they are exhusted. They can't regain spells until they rest, for days. Maybe 2d4 days? Maybe equal to their level.
Quote - you.
Doesn't work after first level. Look at the spell progression chart and when the character get a higher level spell. If I am 5th levels I get my 3rd level spell.

My reply.
Right so a 5th level caster can toss a fire ball no problem.  But if they then try a 2nd level invisibility spell in the same day they might melt their brain.  And if they get away with that and want to start luanching 0 level cantrips (the 1d10 firebolt kind) in another encounter the same day they have to roll on the brain melting table every time.

Quote from: Headless;955743Quote-me
Right so a 5th level caster can toss a fire ball no problem.  But if they then try a 2nd level invisibility spell in the same day they might melt their brain.  And if they get away with that and want to start luanching 0 level cantrips (the 1d10 firebolt kind) in another encounter the same day they have to roll on the brain melting table every time.

I think I see where you going with this. You mean that if TOTAL levels of spells cast during a day exceeds or equals the character's level, exhaustion sets in.

The negative: doesn't sound very D&Dish to me.
The positive: Just try it and if it fits the style and type of campaign you are running I don't see any obvious flaw. It how magic works in your setting. But you do need to run multiple campaigns to get a feel how it actually plays out.

I like the intention. Note I don't generally play D&D and one main reason is the power curve and combat system and safety of a pile of hitpoints. And, I double-don't-play 5e because by all accounts it's even more safety-oriented and simplified (e.g. sounds like it has one level of "advantage" to represent every modifier, etc.).

I kind of like the exploding dice, except 1) it is only tied to weapon damage dice and not skill, and 2) if you do max + roll, it means no one ever does just max, so if you care about having all numbers in the range, you'd want to subtract one per explosion. (e.g. if you roll 1d6 and roll 6, you roll again, so unless you subtract one, you can never do 6 with a 1d6 weapon, only 1-5, 7-11, 13-17...)

Other things I'd want to "fix" that I've read about in 5e are the "can't die in one attack regardless of damage" feature, the revival during combat, the easy access to revival, and the generic "has advantage" mechanic (i.e. I'd want a wide range of degrees of advantage).

I'd probably also want to add a wide range of potential effects of injury and target body parts with effects of different durations from funny-bone up to permanent, and some sort of defense system.

Quote from: Headless;955731I like d&d. I like Hitpoints.  But I want a level of Risk in combat starting at the first round.  I also don't like the unlimited magic casters get.  There should be conquences for getting hurt and for unleashing the powers of creation.

So I am experimenting with a couple of rules to make combat more dangerous and to make magic just as powerful but the casters need to ration their spells carefully.

This will be an over lay for 5th ed D&D.

Thoughs and suggestions apreaciated.  I haven't play tested yet.  Also tiny phone.  Thanks for your understand of my terrible spelling.

First thanks to who ever mentioned the knight slayer crossbow.  It did 5d4 damage and took a long time to load.  It started this train of thought.


All damage dice explode.  On a max roll on any die roll again and add that number to the total, keep rolling as long as you keep maxing.  This makes Fire balls and magic missiles much much more dangerous.  Double dice swords like the Great sword and Falchon also more dangerous.  I might use the threat ranges from 3rd.  
The rogue sneak damage wouldn't explode in combat flanking situations.  But it would in non-combat suprise round situations.

Magic - If a caster casts spells level equal to their charcter level or higher they are exhusted.  They can't regain spells until they rest, for days.  Maybe 2d4 days? Maybe equal to their level.  

They can cast but there are risks.  On the frist cast role a d12. On the next role a d10 ...
On a roll of 1 their mind is exhusted and they lose concentration with disasterous results. Roll a d6

6- lose that spell permanently.  If they find it again they can try to relearn it but thre is now guarntee.

5- lose containment.  All the spells still memorized go off.  All at once.  This is bad.  DM targets the spells but some bad things always hit the casters allies.  Don't target for maximum harm but make it sting. 0 level spells go off 0-3 times randomly targeted.

4 - Detonation.  Caster takes 1d6 lighting damage for every level of spell they still have memorised.  Then half strenght bolts come arcing off.  Stricking either completely randomly or seeking the nearest target.  Secondairy bolts equal to the number of spells memorised or the number of 6s on the initial damage roll.  They continue jumping halfing in strenght each time until they hit 1d6 but they don't split again.

3- Blood Fire.  Perminatly lose hit points. 1d10 maybe?

2 Burn out.  Lose spell gaining ability.  For a long time.  Maybe perminate. Not less than a year.

1- Coma.  Hit the ground like a sack of shit.  You don't wake up for at least a day.  Maybe as long as a week or two.  If some one does manage to wake you damage will be done.  This is a protective coma your body has sent you into to heal and prevent harm.

You can not use re rolls from luck or other comon ways on these rolls.  But possibly you could gain a boon or a charm from fates,  furies and lesser devines to avoid or mitigate disasters.

Encumbrance, Movement, Short and Long rest.

Short rest is overnight not less than 12 hours.  Long rest is 2d4 days.  

You can't get a short or long rest if traveling in heavy armor. Unless you are traveling on roads.  If traveling on good roads and staying in Inns or well prepared camps long rest can be over night and a short rest can drop down to an hour or two.  

Since I am adding a ristriction to heavy armor I think I will add a boon.  Either damage reduction or the ability to "take it on the armor" and hit twice or something.

Thoughts?

I think Dungeon Crawl Classics from Goodman Games fixes a lot of your problems, you should look it up.


I do like the exploding dice idea for dealing with mooks.
Your use of differing length short and long rests will probably be too much tracking for me as pointed out up thread. And your boon to armor seems overly gracious compared to the problem. Can't people just take the armor off to take a nap?

Why exactly do you want to one-hit kill the PCs?

Thats not adding risk. It seems like just an excuse to play Killer DM in an allready deadly system.

Just cut to the chase, point at a character, and say "DEAD!"

Quote from: Omega;955773Why exactly do you want to one-hit kill the PCs?

Thats not adding risk. It seems like just an excuse to play Killer DM in an allready deadly system.

Just cut to the chase, point at a character, and say "DEAD!"

I don't find D&D deadly.  I want a 8th level charcter with 40 or 50 hitpoints to respect a troop of 6 first level guards armed with cross bows thats why.  

I also want a PC to be able to one shot a meat shield.  

I am looking for a way to make Combat faster and more dynamic with out changing the system too much.

 I have another system that is completly home brew.  It uses an opposed dice pool mechanic.  One extra success advantage, two extra success injury to opponent, three extra success you win (death or what ever seams appropriate)  I like that system.  But it is too different from D&D, so I am looking for something to paint over D&D that does something similar.

Why don't you just reduce hp per level?

Sounds like you are reinventing the wheel. D&D already has multiple optional systems to make magic more variable, costly, and risky.

For 5e, the easiest approach would be to have a campaign world with only Wild Magic Sorcerors as casters -- and maybe restricting at-will cantrips. Try that baseline and dial up your desired campaign setting restrictions from there.

... As Opaopajr. says - there are several systems that could help you without reinventing things.

My top recommendations would be:

Fantasycraft and True20

I'm sure others will have suggestions. I use these two because they're *really* toolkitty and allow you make big system changes easily.

I'd say just go play Dungeon Crawl Classics. It's D&D-ish... but casting magic never feels entirely safe and combat seems to remain risky as well. Our campaign has been going for about a year and we MIGHT just be getting to the point where we survive a bit better... but people are still dropping fairly frequently.

Yeah DCC is a good alternative if you want something lighter. I can't tell from the OP's post. But given the changes the OP's going after... it reads like he wants/doesn't mind the Crunch.