I have been playing 5e for three years and i got bored of needing multiple encounters to dry the players out of their resource so the combat is somewhat challenging, just so they can heal in 8 hours or 4 if they are elves
What game do you guys recommend i play? i thought in changing the game rules but players are so accustomed to how the game plays that i think its better to just change systems
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Warhammer fantasy role play second edition
It's not any better than D&D.
Song/Ballad of Swords has good, challenging combat if that's what you're looking for.
>or 4 if they are elves
Elves still need 8 hours for a long rest, dingus.
Try running 5e with the slow natural healing variant, requiring them to spend hit dice to heal on long rests. Makes the game a lot grittier, especially over multiple days.
It fixes his problem with combat not being challenging, that and despite all it's short comings I love its feel
Why not just attempt to kill your party one session after reminding your players that the tone of the game just change with a new setting and campaign/module because you are bored of letting them live off easy shit all the time?
It would be fun and refreshing without the need to learn new system.
WFRP combat is not challenging.
Most characters generally have a
What? fucking really?
Well there are some combat options that boost the probability of hitting your opponent, also all damage rolls crit with a 0
Yeah. A "long rest" means 8 hours, while a "short rest" means 1 hour. Racial requirements for sleep are something else entirely, though this does mean that non-elves usually spend their long rest sleeping
Except those combat options generally carry massive downsides and do nothing to affect the parry/dodge of the enemy.
>crits
As I said, depends on nothing but luck.
As I understand it's basically the same as how I remember 1st edition Dark Heresy before all the supplemental books which is to say it's mostly things being blocked/absorbed until someone gets a lucky shot and causes the other guy to explode
It's a bit better in WFRP because of a lack of good armor. But yeah, pretty much.
Does song/ballad of swords haves magic?
Maybe you can try 4e or 3.5
Any idea if zweihander fixes this?
It's a big step up, but I haven't played it as extensively as WFRP.
Some people say 3.5.pf its shank city at first levels, i dont know how it plays at end levels, also i think the classes are more unbalanced that the ones in 5e
Do zeihander uses the same setting?
Sort of zweihander has a setting that's basically a knockoff warhammer fantasy but it's allegedly setting agnostic, that and you can use zweihander to run a game set in warhammer fantasy
GURPS is best
Depends on how you want to handle it.
5e itself has optional very long rest and slow healing rules.
I think it's fucking terrible, but it technically fixes some of your problems.
Another solution is to handle it like Strike! or OSR games do, with each fight being a dangerous challenge in itself (Strike! does this by using fights that you can amp up the difficulty of in a controlled way, while OSR stuff usually just focuses on relatively frail characters and high lethality).
What the hell is that thing? it is unnerving me
Is there a better book coming for strike? it really got my attention a while ago and tried to read it but the book was shit
I am a fan of OSR but my players dislike the "lack" of character options, but they will play a good OSR if it haves a gimmick of some sort or it is different enough
It's a frog sorta
>Not using lingering injury rules
>Not using slow healing rules
>Not interuptting sleep and short rests in hostile locations with random encounters
>Complaining about a system without reading the rules.
5E is still shit for more lethal games even with those band aids
The author is wrestling with some pretty heavy shit at the moment, so the rewrite, and some very cool sounding expansions (a book based on loot, that supposedly would let you play Monster Hunter) are on hold.
The combat is (mostly) self contained, so you can easily slot it into any game with a skill system of your choice, and that part of the book is relatively well written; I suggest doing that if you don't have a handle on the more free-formy parts.
>Not reading the OP
I am aware of this rules, but it would need a hard reset of the campaign so i prefer using a different system
Is there a link for that?
Literally anything aside from DnD and its derivatives
For example?
What do you play and ejoy?
Use more challenging encounters. The assumption of challenge in 5e is pussified beyond belief. Use 2 to 3 creatures of CR equal to average party level. Dont be afraid to have many opponents of 1- 2 CRs lower than APL. Also dont be afraid to have loads of easy encounters as well to balance it out.
Not that guy but what kind of game do you want to run? I know you want it to be higher lethality but could you be more specific?
>implying this was a problem in TSR-era D&D
Not that high on crunch , fantasy with good options for character creation and development
Also that there is the need for the players to administrate well their resources, not that gold and objects like ropes get pushed away because the only thing that matters is killing, but meh that can be done without a system supporting it, but games like OSR make this stuff necessary for survival
Combat starts at 90.
Castles and crusades maybe? it seems like you would really like OSR
Sometimes i think its not high fantasy enough for my players
Runequest maybe? I've never played it but have heard good things, also you're going to have to work something out with your players if you want a higher lethality game but OSR is to low fantasy for them
I think its mostly the lack of options, in 5e they can have this crazy powers at level 3, in OSR mechanically they dont have a lot of options
Maybe a system that has more fleshed out mundane options would work?
Yeah that could work
Try 1e AD&D.
What crazy powers are you talking about?
not crazy power but options like:
Second wind
Backstab
Cantrips
Powering magic
All about monks
etc..
>Try running 5e with the slow natural healing variant
Don't do this. It just drags out the pace, you still need the same consideration to how many encounters are per day/week instead of per normal short/long rest times. It's a bandaid solution, and doesn't actually fix the problem, at least IME.
4e and Iron Kingdoms are better for it in my experience, but there are still benefits to fewer encounters in a day so you have to put some consideration into how the day will go. A single encounter power 11 creature downed a PC in a surprise round last iron kingdoms session I ran, and you're supposed to use up to 28 encounter points per encounter.
For making players afraid of combat at all, where there will likely be consequences to it, OSR games are good. Dungeon Crawl Classics is great for a compelling dungeon delving experience, though fully dying as a PC is very hard. I've been looking at Mythras recently and that's also supposed to be very punishing if you take a wrong step in combat.
What is iron kingdom about?
I have wanted to play DCC but i dont have the funky dice
Iron Kingdoms is based on a wargame and was originally a d20 hack so it is quite crunchy and tabletop-bound with base sizes and distances in inches amd so on. It functions very well mechanically, no caster supremacy (except warcasters kind of, the only thing that's not balanced in the game afaic), and while you have to bypass both defense to hit and then armor to damage someone, every point of hp counts so it feels impactful when you do hit. It's 2d6+modifiers so it's not too swingy but still allows for low-strength characters to hit high-armor opponents and so on.
The setting is steampunk, it has some pretty good worldbuilding though a lot of the politics, intrigue, investigation and so on isn't really utilized since the only mechanics you have to do non-combat things is the skill system which is similar to d20. It's quite broad, with a lot of different campaigns from religious zealots crusading and trench warfare to managing a mercenary company.
I've played a lot of Iron Kingdoms, specifically the Witchfire Trilogy adventure. I've heard from others it is quite railroady, but since I'm a good player and never read into it, I can't say if it is or not. My DM must have been good because it never felt that way.
I played with my uncle and my cousin as a trio of brother that were the son of a gunsmith. I also enjoy the firearm rules they include, and it's really cool being a Gun Mage.
I don't think it's much more railroady than most D&D style FRPGs, though I can see it turning out that way if the game is set up for investigation or some such since you'd just be following the GM's clues, and dungeons aren't very common so combat will also generally be set up in order.
Instead of running 5e just for the combat, try running it the way it's intended, with extended dungeon romps.
5e is a resource management game before it's a skirmish combat game in my opinion, so build around that, lengthy dungeons filled with traps and wandering monsters are tons of fun and force the party to plan long-term. Nothing is more satisfying as a player as barely scraping through a dungeon.
Now that you mention it, one of my most successful "arcs" where the ones with dungeons involved
How lethal is the game?
40kRPG, Anima, Apocalypse World, Dogs in the Vineyard, DoubleCross, Eclipse Phase, FFG Star Wars, GURPS, Kamigakari, Kingdom, L5R, Mekton Zeta, Microscope, REIGN, Shadowrun, Traveller, Warhammer Fantasy, WoD, and others.
Going down is pretty easy, I've only played a handful of sessions so far but any challenging encounter will have a good chance of 1-2 of the players going down. When you do, you're mostly out for the rest of the encounter, rolling on a table which contains some limb/eye loss and instant death but mostly it's just "bleed out in ~5 turns" so actually dying isn't as easy. However, it feels very dangerous to get hit since you can have a maximum of 18 hp at low level and standard damage will be 2d6+10 (doing up to around 30 damage with good rolls, and several monsters of decent challenge will do 2+ attacks per turn) so even if armor negates most of it, it definitely feels very dangerous to get hit. Since you recover a fair bit of hp just from a few minutes of rest after an encounter, and there are few resources except for number of grenades and such, it does seem like it's designed for skirmishing rather than dungeon crawling.
opposite experience as a dm. I made long rests 7 days, short rest 8 hours. Players love the planning they have to do, because I designed around this pace. It can work, especially of you dont have a ton of encounters or your dungeon fights are low im number high in challenge
Why do I get the feeling I've seen this post before ?
Sounds good, i will give it a try
Maybe i will take this approach in the next campaign
Wow those are a lot of gamed
Every time GURPS is mentioned, that frog gets posted. I think it's the same guy.
Or a bunch of copycasts
Could you provide iron kingdom pdf?
I think it's good to control the pacing of a dungeon and can see it working there, it's just in most campaigns it will make it no more "gritty" and just make it super slow paced. If you design a dungeon to be finished without long rests, and want more than a single encounter per short rest, then it can work to enforce that. My problem with 5e's rests is that short rests are basically just worse than long ones, i.e. the time required is a very small drawback - if you can afford to sit down an hour in a dangerous area, chances are you can afford to sit down 8 hours, while a night in a dungeon and a week spent doing nothing is more different. I'd just solve that by doing 5 minute short rests but the longer rests isn't that bad if that's what you want.
Too big to attach but this is the trove.
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Looks like an interesting system
Rolemaster or BRP
Also HARP or MERP
Harnmaster
I've heard of Rolemaster a few times but never got exactly what is good/special about it outside of tons of tables. What differentiates it from D&D, RuneQuest, etc.?
Gruesome combat system where everyone can die with a good crit
>everyone can die from luck
Not really selling me there.
Not really selling haha
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