Simulation

By uh, actually doing it all.

Example.

Who should I listen to...?

The posters who aren't DnDrones and insisting their game is good for anything. DnD is a high-power high-magic game about superheroes beating up dragons and demons and gods. It is not good for any kind of low power game where the players have to struggle or play smart. It is LITERALLY not designed for that.

except at low levels.

No, because even at level 1 the player characters are paragons of humanity better than all of their peers. By level 5 they're greek hero level, by 10 they're demi-gods, and by 17 they're actual gods.

This is how the game is INTENTIONALLY balanced.

Why don't you just pick engine with realistic combat and quasi-realistic rules for getting wounded? D&D just won't do.

>Do you think that this will be good for a 'Hard, but not unfair' type of game? I don't want to make it totally anti-fun but I want to make this feel like a team of people trying to struggle to surmount against impossible odds rather than a group of superheroes saving the day.
It is anti-fun. This game sounds miserable. Do you even play games? Things like encumbrance, spell components, and closely monitoring food and water are just book keeping, not any kind of fun challenge. D&D is the absolute wrong system to use for this, and borking the math because Veeky Forums tells you 3d6 is for "hardcore gamers" is only going to make things more fucky

nah. At level 1 fighters would lose a 2v1 fight against the town guard. A 4v4 fight against goblins can result in a party wipe. Past level 4 is when things get skewed.

>calculating range in three dimensions if there's height differences
All that other stuff sounded pretty excessive, but do people not do this already? The Pythagorean theorem isn't hard.

youtube.com/watch?v=RinFvgNdHLs

depends on OP's group. If someone wants to play wizard but they're not an autist who likes keeping track of stuff then OP is gonna have a bad time.

I fail to see how it's anti-fun, just making the players actually have to work for things and give thought towards maintaining their endurance, rest levels and rations rather than remaining inside dungeons for months at a time and being able to function on three hours of sleep perfectly fine for weeks on end without penalty.

Except if you're playing TSR D&D or it's retroclones. Concerning ACKS, the system I use specifically, you start out being pretty runty, a fighter or barbarian maxes out at 11 hit points, and wizards maxes out at 7, and has one spell he can cast per day.
You max out at 14th level, where your power level is more comparable to Historical heroes over fantastical ones. Think becoming Alexander the Great, not Hercules.

In the workshop section of the DMG there is an optional rule called "gritty realism" which changes short rests to be 8 hours and long rests to be a 7 day downtime activity which i use in my campaigns and it surprisingly works really well at making the game exactly what you are looking for so a simple rule that requires almost no additional work on the dm's part, spellcasters get nerfed alot, the party has to actually care about their hitpoints, i would try that before putting in a bunch of work rewritting half the game. As for languages instead of limiting the races and being seen by your party as a railroad dm the PHB says all exotic races can only be learned as a varient rule, so you can not allow it and make anything you would want them to have to translate or work to be able to read an exotic language, same thing with exotic races, the PHB says you can dissallow them at your leisure as well. If you make your players only pick between 3 races so you can rebalance the game they might see you as a railroad dm, if you explain that you are running a toned down less magic campaign and instead just take away exotic charactor options they would understand better and not feel locked into playing a pc they might not want to.
T. Someone whos favorite system is genesys but dm's dnd because its the easiest to find players for

>I fail to see how it's anti-fun, just making the players actually have to work for things
There's far better ways to do this. You should be making the fun parts difficult, not forcing them to do a bunch of dull bookkeeping and keeping everything else the same
>Rather than remaining inside dungeons for months at a time
Again, there's far better and easier ways to do this, that your players will actually enjoy

You bring up good points, thank you.

>i would try that before putting in a bunch of work rewritting half the game.
Pretty sure most (not all) of the things OP suggested are variant rules in the PHM and DMG.

Far better ways such as?

Yes, but these are varients that use less work

LITERALLY GURPS.

>Using spell components to neuter Wizards
Use GURPS Thaumatology to design your own magic system.

>Managing food and water, encumbrance and exhaustion levels.
>I was also going to make short rests seven hours and allowing them to replenish one hit die, with a long rest being three days and being able to use multiple.
Rules for lack of sleep are in the Basic Set.

Such as actually difficult combat encounters they'll lose without proper planning, and things that go after them if they're in the dungeon too long.

See that feels more like me being an assbasket though. I want it to be where if they happen to fail, it is their fault alone, not be wearing them down with an absurd amount of replenishing enemies and bullshit that comes out of left field.

I've had a DM once do that with never-ending waves of enemies in a tomb that had been sealed for thousands of years, and for some reason still had things living inside that weren't magical and still required food and water, but even after combing the entire tomb we couldn't find any such source of life sustainment.

If they play methodically, manage their resources well and operate as a team, they should win every time, because they anticipated resistance, played tactically rather than taking a short rest and spending all their hit die to invalidate the consequences of their actions.

Your welcome user

Also user, dont listen to anyone that says not to play a system because they dont like it, all systems are a matter of subjective opinion. My favorite system is genesys but if you like dnd then you go ahead and play dnd and dont let anyone tell you otherwise

You're strangely positive for someone on Veeky Forums but I really appreciate your feedback and support.

I'll certainly try to be more transparent with the players with this game about the class/race tweaks, and the DMG does have those realism tweaks you talked about.

>taking a short rest and spending all their hit die to invalidate the consequences of their actions
But spending a short rest (you get only 2 of these every long rest period) is exactly what the "consequences of their actions" should amount to: this is how the system is balanced.

That is nowhere near punishing enough for charging into a combat, getting a bunch of lucky rolls and getting out with three hit points because you threw yourself into the hands of fate.

I want that to be the death of anyone in my party. For health to not just be a resource to spend because once it's gone, it's gone for a good long time. If you get into a situation where you'd need anything more than 1 hit die to spend you're effectively crippling yourself. That's what I want.

Hit points are not meat points, user.
And if you want players to solve problems without throwing their combat resources at it you need either to create subsystems for social conflict (gets unprepared people irritated when their characters eat a faceful of mindbreak) or tactical action (really not something D&D is any good at, aside from OSR-style mother-may-I referee fiat). Both options are better served by transitioning to some other system.

D20-style systems are naturally swingy as fuck, so unless you reform the implied playstyle, I wouldn't play with you. This entire deal looks like you are going to nerf wizards, but make combad too deadly to be an option, turning martials useless and wizards into a bottleneck human resource, as nerfed as they might be.

GURPS

>That's what I want.

You probably want to find a system, or make one yourself, that's built around that expectation. If the basic mechanics of the system allow for tactics that you don't want to see being used in your game, then use something else.

>Short rests are 7 hours, long rests are three days
Congratulations, nobody wants to play a warlock in your campaign anymore.