I'm considering running a game of fifth edition D&D with increased lethality...

.... How would active defenses make high lethalaty a thing?

Unless it's part of making you get attacked by two enemies during a round ruin your life.

... Speeding up combat by killing the PCs... doesn't generally lead on to anything interesting, unless you planed on dead PCs.

It's a classic
youtube.com/watch?v=v26rUX16cZM

did you forget the part where enemies would also have reduced HP?
If the players dont just wade stupidly into every battle and plan shit out they can still triumph

I haven't played D&D but these kind of high lethal games turn into who hits first wins so I don't know how the system handles hitting but you should also consider that

So... you want to make D&D even more of a "rocket tag" game?

Just play Warhammer Fantasy if you crave grimdark so much.

Just attack downed PCs ya dingus

Not a good idea.
Unless you ban all spellcasters.
And even then, Ranged attacks will be the only thing that happens.
Plus, Rogue is suddenly amazing, with their ability to attack, move and hide in combat.
I mean, think about it.
Assuming full HP at level 1, at level 7 you'd have:
Fighter(18 CON) = 38 HP.
Barbarian (18 CON) = 40 HP
Wizard (14 CON) = 20 HP
Cleric (12 CON) = 15 HP
Where as a Rogue, with, say, 14 CON = 22
You can see where this is going.

The average encounter does quite a bit more damage, usually has multiple attacks and can even have resistances.
And remember that certain Barbarians always take half damage in a rage, effectively doubling their HP. This is a much bigger deal and will mean your Barbarian will be more hardy than whatever boss monster they're facing.
A rogue can half one damage source per round at level 5, also very powerful.

For that matter: you start out at level 1 with about +4 to your BAB. (Assuming STR/DEX 16)
Since 16/18 is the starting AC, and it doesn't go much higher with time, AND 2 hits on average kills a level 1 adventurer, you find that as they go up in level their ability to survive DECREASES if they don't have close to max CON.

I'm pretty sure the only viable Class is a Barbarian and Rogue/Monk(3) if you roll for stats and get good results on DEX/WIS.
Even if you don't, 16 DEX and 16 WIS means 16 AC, which you can bump up at level 4.
Your AC will be close to the maximum.
Your HP will be the largest, for Barbarians, pretty bad with the Rogue/Monk.
You can both hide, but at level 5 (Rogue 2/Monk 3[Shadow]) you are undetectable (+20 to Stealth) and can hide even in combat.
Your damage doesn't scale very well. At level 6 the Rogue is lethal to damn near everything. You're doing 3d6+4 Damage with a bow, 6d6 on the first sneak attack, almost always at advantage. Your Stealth roll is +10 (Assuming your DEX is 18) AND you can get +10 to Stealth for an Hour, pending concentration. Nothing can see you, ever.

>Maybe you should you try and even the chances by acting smart while roleplaying?
Ok, but a single die roll just caused my death. Lame attempt at bait, friend.

Assuming standard array for Attributes:

Wood Elf (Rogue 3/Monk 3):

STR 8
DEX 18
CON 13
INT 12
WIS 16
CHA 10

AC: 17
HP: 15
Damage: 3d6+4 (Sneak Attack + Bow/short sword)/1d8+2d6+4
Your shtick is hiding. You sneak up to someone, virtually undetectable (20+your roll, even if you roll 1, odds are good you'll succeed, unless the enemy is on the look out, and if you roll 8, you actually *can't* be detected by anything short of a Planetar, Beholder or Dragon, all well over your pay grade).
You attack, doing 6d6+4 dmg, average of 25.
A Young Red Shadow Dragon has hit die of d10. Con of 5.
It's got 100 HP, by your system.
You move, hide, it rolls perception. It's got a +8. If you roll average and it rolls fantastically, you beat it.
Your subsequent attacks only do 15 damage, but, again, you almost always hit, the Dragon almost never sees you. if it does, it's game over, but that's actually true for everyone.
At level 6, you can kill this thing in 6 rounds.

I just looked it up, a Solar has 154 hp if you only give it the CON bonus after level 1
It's challenge rating 21.
Perception +14
So, passive Perception of 24.
If you can get someone to bless your weapons or something and roll at advantage for stealth you can actually take this guy out in one surprise round with 6 characters that follow this build. It requires rolling only slightly above average.

OP, what are you trying to accomplish with this?

If you just want more pcs to die, there are other systems that handle that better.

If you want the dm's monsters and villains to feel less like helpless mooks and more like active participants, and make things more swingy, try rolling for AC instead of making it a static number (e.g., lower everythings AC by 10, then roll a d20 and add it to armor for all attacks). Note that this will slow down combat quite a bit, so try using larger enemies.

If you want to speed up combat and make it faster, try a 30-sec hourglass with a decaying reward system - if the pc turn is:

So, instead of making 5e more deadly, he should either play games that are not actually deadly, or rocket tag systems?

Great advice.

It's got so much wasted potential.
>an interesting setup involving dinosaur riders vs. Neanderthals and their degenerate cro-magnon ice wizard masters
>that Batman-looking motherfucker in OP's gif being a badass
>but none of this gets any screen time because the filmmakers think what you really want to see is Blondie McBoringstupid wandering around randomly with his companion, Woman.
>the director seemed to have an obsession with the human perineum. There are hundreds of taint shots, both male and female
>The characters' names are an accidentally hilarious mix of real and made-up names. So you've got characters like Nekron, son of Juliana, for of Gerald.

RuneQuest is both deadly and not rocket tag.

>i don't know anything about 5e

5e comes with several fail safes to keep it from being a one-and-done system, to the point where a monster could repearedly drop you to 0 HP in a fight and you have a very good chance of getting out alive.

Even if all the characters only had one HP, we'd still see some rather nuanced combat thanks to all the healing, alternate defenses (including stealth, AC pumps, imposed disadvantage, etc), and the dying process that acts like a safety net.

Using CON only is dumb because it means your meaty classes will have similar HP to wizards. Doing Constitution score + HD roll or average would be better math (24 CON barb would be 174HP at 20 versus 285, a wizard would be 94 with 14 CON). I would also suggest something like my homebrew where players don't drop unconscious at 0HP, but take an injury from the DMG and gain disadvantage on rolls. It would make the game feel more dangerous (and be more dangerous because permanent injury), but not completely mess with the game's math.

It's pretty awful. It could be very Rocket-tag like if people could actually use it's finicky combat system fast enough, and RQ6 can almost get as bad as GURPS combat with players debating largely arbitrary decisions.

Any save or suck spell can end a character no matter how much planning you did.

With even lower HP, there's even more Save or Suck spells because all of them do more than 5 damage and things like Sleep can down the whole party at once.

I disagree, there are a couple strange rules but the system is one of the most robust there is for dangerous tactical combat. After the first few sessions my players figured out what their weapons did and put it to good use against a huge variety of enemies. Without terrible luck you won't die without making a few big mistakes.

But hey, that's what opinion is for.

>but a single die roll just caused my death
What kind of system are you talking about? FATAL?

... You gotta ... stop typing .... like this.......

This is a terrible idea because it means that any mage type character with less than a certain amount of con will have near to 1 health.

Thats not just squishy, thats rice paper in a typhoon.

Actually, assuming they don't get ambushed, a mage with Spell Sniper can kill anything before it gets anywhere near him.

That isn't really the point though.

High lethality assumes that at some point your character will get hit, and if a squishy ass mage with anything below 0 mod to con gets hit, it means they will instantly be downed and rolling death saves.

Arguably the death save system would act as a buffer for this better than 3.5's "-10 is dead" rule, but at the same time it makes it exceedingly easy for a mage to get their shit slapped.

For that matter, even tankier people with high con would have an issue, because they'd be getting 3-4 per level until they get something to boost that con, if they even do. 3-4 per level for like, a fighter or some shit is barely better than what a mage gets without any con mod regularly

All in all, it'd turn into a disaster because everyone would have the effective health of cup noodles that were left soaking in hot water for an entire day.

>fifth edition
Kill yourself.

Less HP matters a whole lot less for NPCs than it does for PCs. PCs have to deal with the lasting consequences of having less resources. They can't get into as many fights, they have to think about their tactics a whole hell of a lot more, worry about getting killed off, etc. Meanwhile, a goblin can just jump out of the bushes and go ham, because if he dies the GM can just say that there's another goblin. Lower HP is not a two way street.

That's a good way to make "who can cast fireball first" the deciding factor of every fight.

Dat Greater Sunder

>his weapon disintegrates

I don't believe that. I get way more invested in a character in a high lethality game rather than a character who breezes through a campaign where death is only a minor setback. Then again I've noticed a lot of people approach a high lethality game with the same mindset as a regular game, usually resulting in them surviving by the skin of their teeth of they survive at all.

Nah, his weapon just flies so far away from the point of impact that you never see it touch the ground as it is beyond our vision and in the clouded sky.