Best house rules and variants to make D&D less heroic

[tedcahill2]

Just like the title says. My friends and I, same group of friends from high school, have been playing 3rd/3.5 D&D since the books came out 20 years ago. The most important part for some of them is that it's familiar. This is definitely the kind of group where half of them still don't know all the rules 20 years in. So I can't uproot them into a new system that suits a more grounded narrative.

Personally, I'm really sick of playing a game where the PCs are head and shoulder above the average person. City guards, chumps, 100 ft drops, irrelevant, dozens of monsters over our CR, we rush in. I don't want to get into a discussion about the DM being able to reign some of that stuff in, simply because there are various skill levels of DM in our group and not everyone is capable or cares to reign those things in. D&D doesn't feel dangerous anymore, and because hit points are a 100% or dead sort of system there's nothing stopping me from going balls out until I hit 0, and hope that whatever puts me there doesn't drop me to -10 in one hit so my healer has a chance to stabilize me.

Anyway, what are some house rules or variant rules I can try adding in that will make the game feel dangerous again? That will make players think twice about jumping that 20 ft chasm? Or taking on a giant at level 2?

[Chainguy]

First thing that comes to mind is D20 Modern massive damage rules: if you get hit for an amount of damage equal to or higher than your constitution score, make a fortitude saving throw (dont remember the exact DC calculation) or drop to -1. That's to amp the feeling of fragility.

Second thing (although I have never tried it) may be to lower class HDs by one or 2 steps, just knowing they have less HPs than usual may be enough to curb the "Invincible Hero" syndrome.

Last thought: Maybe have them be staggered when they are below 1/2 hp?

[Cosi]

I mean, the answer to this actually is "play a different system". D&D is built around the assumption that characters will become substantially more powerful than the average person and will do impossible deeds of overcome unbeatable challenges. It's even baked into the core RNG. Using a d20 instead of a dicepool has the effect of making it possible to push people off the RNG, and have low level people not matter in a high level context. It's like asking how to use Vampire to tell a story about a bunch of cybernetically augmented mercenaries to run heists for megacorps in a dystopian future. I'm sure you could work something out that kind of works for that, but what you should do is play Shadowrun instead, because it is specifically designed to facilitate doing that.

That said, if you really want to do this, the way to do it is a level cap. E6 is popular, but in principle there's no reason you couldn't do E4 or E12 if you happened to think those best suited your vision. You can also squash the power curve between PCs and NPCs somewhat. If the average guard is a 4th level Warrior, the PCs are going to consider the city guards a meaningful threat even up to 8th or 10th level.


Personally, I'm really sick of playing a game where the PCs are head and shoulder above the average person. City guards, chumps, 100 ft drops, irrelevant, dozens of monsters over our CR, we rush in. I don't want to get into a discussion about the DM being able to reign some of that stuff in, simply because there are various skill levels of DM in our group and not everyone is capable or cares to reign those things in. D&D doesn't feel dangerous anymore, and because hit points are a 100% or dead sort of system there's nothing stopping me from going balls out until I hit 0, and hope that whatever puts me there doesn't drop me to -10 in one hit so my healer has a chance to stabilize me.

Does the rest of your group feel that way? It sounds like if they're building characters that can kill a Giant at 2nd level, or beat dozens of over-CRed enemies, the same things you view as problems may be why they enjoy the game. You don't build characters at that level of power accidentally, and it's disrespectful to the rest of your group to go directly to "change the rules" because you don't like their playstyle.

Also, I think you should put some more thought into what you're trying to achieve. You want D&D to be not-X, but "don't do X" isn't an especially strong basis on which to build something, particularly if you are (as I hope you would) compromising with other people's interests. You don't have to make PCs less powerful to add stakes. There are plenty of stories with powerful protagonists where things still feel meaningful and challenging.

[tedcahill2]

Does the rest of your group feel that way? It sounds like if they're building characters that can kill a Giant at 2nd level, or beat dozens of over-CRed enemies, the same things you view as problems may be why they enjoy the game. You don't build characters at that level of power accidentally, and it's disrespectful to the rest of your group to go directly to "change the rules" because you don't like their playstyle.I meant to imply they would rush in on monsters clearly too powerful for them assuming the DM wouldn't put a monster in their way that they couldn't beat. Not a single one of them optimizes. I optimize the most, and I still only aim for tier 3 levels of optimization because I know that if I go high the rest of the party will be garbage in comparison. When it comes to making characters above level 1, or leveling up in general, they almost always look to me for ideas for feats and such.


Also, I think you should put some more thought into what you're trying to achieve. You want D&D to be not-X, but "don't do X" isn't an especially strong basis on which to build something, particularly if you are (as I hope you would) compromising with other people's interests. You don't have to make PCs less powerful to add stakes. There are plenty of stories with powerful protagonists where things still feel meaningful and challenging.What I want to achieve is to have a game where getting hit matters, or could matter, beyond taking a few hit points of damage. Where there are threats so clearly beyond your abilities that you have to run. Where you aren't so powerful that you can murder hobo your way through a small city.

[umbergod]

Maybe use the Unearthed Arcana variant of vitality/wounds? Makes all combat more deadly due to crits being reg damage straight to wounds, which is equal to your con score.

Edit: check out E6/E8. That looks to be exactly what you want

[Eldariel]

Vitality and Wound Points is a good way to keep death constantly near. Critical hits are automatic physical damage and if you get dropped to 0, you are dying. So any crit is big game. Of course, you have to reign in some of the damage bloat of the system (mostly bonus damage abilities like Power Attack and Sneak Attack). My signature has a campaign journal using the system with some houserules. It's pretty enjoyable and cuts down the need for downtime healing. Injury system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/injury.htm) is a step more brutal and makes it easy to do physical damage. The normal game lacks things like arms getting cut off, but the rules have spells like Regenerate anyways: Injury makes it possible to just make a list of body parts and see what you hit.

There are some well-developed "called shot"/physical damage systems around in the internet and the forums but I don't have time to look those up right now. Suffice to say, I suggest using something like that though. Perhaps add morale and sanity á la Heroes of Horror and Heroes of Battle, and you are many steps in the grittier direction already.

[tedcahill2]

Edit: check out E6/E8. That looks to be exactly what you wantWe tried E6. We all collective hated the feeling that progression stagnated to nothing but feats.

[zlefin]

Just like the title says. My friends and I, same group of friends from high school, have been playing 3rd/3.5 D&D since the books came out 20 years ago. The most important part for some of them is that it's familiar. This is definitely the kind of group where half of them still don't know all the rules 20 years in. So I can't uproot them into a new system that suits a more grounded narrative.

Personally, I'm really sick of playing a game where the PCs are head and shoulder above the average person. City guards, chumps, 100 ft drops, irrelevant, dozens of monsters over our CR, we rush in. I don't want to get into a discussion about the DM being able to reign some of that stuff in, simply because there are various skill levels of DM in our group and not everyone is capable or cares to reign those things in. D&D doesn't feel dangerous anymore, and because hit points are a 100% or dead sort of system there's nothing stopping me from going balls out until I hit 0, and hope that whatever puts me there doesn't drop me to -10 in one hit so my healer has a chance to stabilize me.

Anyway, what are some house rules or variant rules I can try adding in that will make the game feel dangerous again? That will make players think twice about jumping that 20 ft chasm? Or taking on a giant at level 2?
if the pcs take on a giant at level 2, what prevents the giant from just killing them all?
not feeling dangerous is generally less a result of the scaling than it is a result of DMs pulling punches or not having dangerous enough threats. there's plenty of ways to make threats that can and will kill you at any level.

[Mike Miller]

I love suggesting this to everyone when your sort of complaint surfaces. The Grim-N-Gritty "variant" can be a lot of fun. It changes some core aspects of third edition, such as the way armor works and how attacks are handled. It makes things deadlier and has multiple variants on how to make magic less powerful. Monsters really live up to their name. The party won't want to rush in to fight that ogre once they see what it is capable of in GnG...

[Zanos]

Any giant should one shot any 2nd level PC, especially an unoptimized one. Sounds like you just aren't putting threats in front of the players that could realistically threaten their lives, so your players assume any threat in front of them won't realistically threaten their lives.

Solution to that should be pretty obvious. Stop pulling punches. 3.5 is plenty lethal if you let players make mistakes.

[Oberron]

Let them only play npc classes and slap a class lvl to every monster.

[2D8HP]

Just limit levelling up, but if that seems to harsh limit HP increases.

[Biggus]

Not giving maximised HPs at level 1 would make the game more tense at low levels.

At higher levels, giving your enemies access to some of the same advantages the PCs have. The city guard has a SWAT team made up of Fighters instead of warriors, with maybe a Wizard and Cleric on the strength too. Creatures with a lot of treasure have a large part of its value in magic items that they can and do use, instead of just a pile of gold.

Variant rules for HPs, massive damage etc found here: http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/variantAdventuring.htm

[heavyfuel]

Outnumbered rules instead of Flanking
For each enemy threatening a creature besides the first, the creature is outnumbered and takes a cumulative -2 penalty to AC. For every ally the creature has who has the creature in their threatened area, the penalty is reduced by 2 points. If the penalty is reduced to zero, the creature is not outnumbered.

Sneak Attack and similar abilities work against any creature who is outnumbered.
Improved Uncanny Dodge always reduces your AC penalty by 2 points.

This makes mobs of weak characters much more dangerous, and low level city guards and soldiers are no longer completely useless against high level threats.

Falling that is more realistic
Gravity acceleration is exponential, so the dice damage should better reflect that. Make falling damage 1d4 instead of 1d6, but make it cumulative. So falling 20ft is 2d4+1d4. 30 ft? 3d4+2d4+1d4. Pretty much no one can survive 100ft fall.


I've been using both of these rules in my games for a few years now, and I have to say they work great. Though, as usual, YMMV.

[The Kool]

Solution to that should be pretty obvious. Stop pulling punches. 3.5 is plenty lethal if you let players make mistakes.

I'm going to second this. Do not feel bad about hitting hard. Start optimizing monsters. Play them smart. Ambushes, playing to weaknesses, and most importantly do not engage in face to face beatdown slogfests. Your monsters will lose and they should know better. Hit and run tactics, have your monsters know when to retreat. Use spellcasters. Remember to play the spellcasters outside of the fight... they have time to prepare too, and aren't stuck in stasis while not in the scene. Traps should be devious, and all foes that don't have low wis/int should at least execute basic adventurer levels of common sense. Have foes with class levels, like the city guard composed of more than just 1st level warriors. Major city? Maybe the general is level 20, and his officers are level 16 and the majority of the veterans are level 12.

But you're looking for mechanics to change, so I put my voice behind Vitality/Wounds. It's not a perfect system but I think it's in the right direction. Ultimately, people are right that the answer is probably to run a different system. Have you considered AD&D?

[ericgrau]

As others said D&D isn't really built for this. Whatever you do will have to be within the system one way or another.



Anyway, what are some house rules or variant rules I can try adding in that will make the game feel dangerous again? That will make players think twice about jumping that 20 ft chasm? Or taking on a giant at level 2?
Why aren't they already TPKing to a giant at level 2? Are they allowed abilities that are too strong? Ban the strongest ones. Do you mean they will attempt to take on a giant at level 2 even if they will TPK?

Either way you'll have to kill some PCs. That brings in the fear real quick. Ask players to make backup PCs to keep things moving. They can still have backstories, even a premade backstory on the backup, just probably not long backstories. I had a DM who tried to kill 1 PC each session. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he didn't. There was infighting sometimes because the game was so tense and flack to the DM which he openly mocked (in a good humored way), but it was a lot of fun. That's probably a good goal, because if you have a goal of more than 1 then you risk a TPK. And if players try really hard and/or run away, they can avoid it. Our first 3-4 sessions of one campaign starting at level 1 ended with us running away from room #1. Because we were too noisy. A few levels and some sneaking around later and we finally made some progress. Eventually we got a wand of silence. What you're harsh about may be different, but don't be afraid to kill off PCs willy nilly. Coddling them can be nice to keep a plot going and develop characters, but it also breeds fearless PCs. Coddling includes allowing anything in builds no matter how strong, endless magic items, fudging rolls when someone might die otherwise (though this doesn't have to be 0% or 100% of the time), and even controlling the encounter level too much. By the book EL should be randomly between trivial and possible TPK. And the reason given is so that PCs learn to both run away sometimes and not fight everything, and to not always nova their resources. I realize lots of people don't have time to play so it's tempting to not insert encounters you're not supposed to fight, but at minimum it could be nice to have one from time to time. A more reasonable alternative to killing PCs is to capture them and/or make a deal. After all the PCs might be worth something as a ransom or something else, or the main goal of the monsters might not be to simply kill the PCs. They could bargain lives for their real goal, as they hover over the body ready for a coup de grace. My "evil" DM loved coup de graces btw. Or other such things.

That leads us to another issue: Consequences of player death. It's tempting to not gimp players for dying for fear that they'll be less able to participate. But having no consequences also makes players careless about dying frequently. By the book level loss and resurrection only puts you a level behind for about 4 levels, and actually you're only behind a level half that time. So on average it's like being a level behind for 2 levels. Because when you're a level behind you're supposed to gain extra xp to catch you up. It's not horrible. Backup characters should also be a level behind, if not 2 levels behind after rez is available to encourage rezzing over making a new character. More than 2 levels behind and it gets hard for a PC to contribute, so you may want to cap it there. And you may want to allow swapping of live characters with little or no penalty, especially if the PC is stuck with a mistake. You can be more lenient than this, but there really should be at least some kind of penalty for dying.

Speeding up combats can also help with the suckiness of having nothing to do during failure, or to allow more mixed EL fights, or etc. There are lots of tips out there you can search for. One good one is to require players to figure out their action before their turn. If you trust them you can even have them preroll, and possibly post stats like monster AC for all to see. If players aren't ready on their turn on round 2 or later within 10ish seconds, have them hold their action. Be more lenient on round 1, especially for those going first. Another is for casters write out their spells on lined paper or similar as a table, along with basics like range and components as table headers, and also a short description to remind the player exactly what it does. Like "3 | Fireball | Std | Long | Inst | Ref half | Yes | CL d6 fire in 20' radius. Atk roll for openings. Lights/melts some stuff." And really you don't need the last 2 sentences, but I included them as an example of other details that players may or may not decide to include for their own reference. Anyhoo you could provide that table to casters. I also have some reference info in my sig to help speed up book rules lookups. And/or fudge a ruling on the fly and look it up after game, to keep things moving.

You don't have to go all out bastard but find the level that both you and your players like.

You can also look for ways that limit power without messing with the system much. Like E6. Or slower level progression. Again make sure it's something your players would like too. High level NPCs is another option, but then you need to be ready for an Eberron style world where magic is abundant.

[HouseRules]

Remove massive damage rule and replace with this: All damage have a DC = damage.

[noob]

Simplest houserule: download od&d and play with that from now on.
Everything had way lower hp so everything was way more deadly also there was countless effects with no save just die.
As a plus it overall makes most rules simpler and reduce the total number of rules(although many people can have an hard time understanding taco at their first read)

It is like 5e without balance and with even simpler rules.

And you can actually go around and fight the big stuff(and get killed horribly in the process but know you had a possibility of success) which is a thing lacking in the new editions.

[Malroth]

Do away with NPC classes and most of the Tier 5 NPC's as well. If every farmer is a Ranger 6+ with favored terrain (farmland), A couple martial study feats and a Natural bond boosted Animal companion riding dog they'll thing twice before trying to mess with them.

[Cosi]

I meant to imply they would rush in on monsters clearly too powerful for them assuming the DM wouldn't put a monster in their way that they couldn't beat. Not a single one of them optimizes. I optimize the most, and I still only aim for tier 3 levels of optimization because I know that if I go high the rest of the party will be garbage in comparison. When it comes to making characters above level 1, or leveling up in general, they almost always look to me for ideas for feats and such.

It sounds like your problem is less about the system and more about the party metagaming and the DM stepping in to prevent TPKs. Which is a legitimate problem, but not really one you can fix by changing the rules. If the problem is that the DM is fudging things so enemies are less dangerous, you aren't going to fix that by making enemies more dangerous.


What I want to achieve is to have a game where getting hit matters, or could matter, beyond taking a few hit points of damage.

Lots of offensive spells, maneuvers, and other things have riders of some kind. You could also introduce mechanics like the ones suggested in this thread by various people.


Where there are threats so clearly beyond your abilities that you have to run. Where you aren't so powerful that you can murder hobo your way through a small city.

These aren't really system problems. No un-optimized party is surviving -- let alone winning -- a fight with a Giant at 2nd level without significant intervention by the DM. Fighting through a small city is similarly non-trivial until fairly high level, especially if people aren't optimized.

[King of Nowhere]

if the pcs take on a giant at level 2, what prevents the giant from just killing them all?
not feeling dangerous is generally less a result of the scaling than it is a result of DMs pulling punches or not having dangerous enough threats. there's plenty of ways to make threats that can and will kill you at any level.


Any giant should one shot any 2nd level PC, especially an unoptimized one. Sounds like you just aren't putting threats in front of the players that could realistically threaten their lives, so your players assume any threat in front of them won't realistically threaten their lives.

Solution to that should be pretty obvious. Stop pulling punches. 3.5 is plenty lethal if you let players make mistakes.


It sounds like your problem is less about the system and more about the party metagaming and the DM stepping in to prevent TPKs. Which is a legitimate problem, but not really one you can fix by changing the rules. If the problem is that the DM is fudging things so enemies are less dangerous, you aren't going to fix that by making enemies more dangerous.




So much this.

If they are not optimized, then facing a giant at level 2 should be deadly. let it be deadly. have the giant focus on a single character, and have the giant keep kicking the character even after he got below 0, to make sure he killed. put some encounters that should clearly be deadly for them, give them plenty of hints that they should escape, and if they don't, play those monsters to their strenghts and kill as many characters as you can.

Don't worry, there is a resurrection spell. having to use it means that the players won't lose that pc they were affectionate to, but they will lose money and xp, which sucks.

I've done that, and my players quickly became so suspicious that they make plans for every small encounter. Now they are powerful enough they can be carefree, but there was a time when I could have put a lame cobold with a bad cough on their path aand have them alarmed.

[jintoya]

So much this.

If they are not optimized, then facing a giant at level 2 should be deadly. let it be deadly. have the giant focus on a single character, and have the giant keep kicking the character even after he got below 0, to make sure he killed. put some encounters that should clearly be deadly for them, give them plenty of hints that they should escape, and if they don't, play those monsters to their strenghts and kill as many characters as you can.

Don't worry, there is a resurrection spell. having to use it means that the players won't lose that pc they were affectionate to, but they will lose money and xp, which sucks.

I've done that, and my players quickly became so suspicious that they make plans for every small encounter. Now they are powerful enough they can be carefree, but there was a time when I could have put a lame cobold with a bad cough on their path aand have them alarmed.

A whole bunch of this, my party knows I love mimics, so they are leary of loot, they know I'll lot a smart bandit in with the idiots, so they have to be clever, they know I can take a standard pack of goblins and make a mid tier encounter out of them... As a result they are careful, clever and don't underestimate foes... No steamrolling from them.

Teach your players that there is always a bigger fish, they will love the challenge

[weckar]

A house rule we once experimented with was wounds.
Anyone who is even 1 point below their max HP takes -1 to all rolls and AC.
This escalates to -2 at 75%, -4 at 50% and -6 at 25%.
Diehard or similar effects move all brackets but the first down by 25%.
Constructs do not lose AC, but take a double penalty to rolls.
Undead lose double AC but are not penalised on rolls.

[noob]

A house rule we once experimented with was wounds.
Anyone who is even 1 point below their max HP takes -1 to all rolls and AC.
This escalates to -2 at 75%, -4 at 50% and -6 at 25%.
Diehard or similar effects move all brackets but the first down by 25%.
Constructs do not lose AC, but take a double penalty to rolls.
Undead lose double AC but are not penalised on rolls.

and an undead construct gets double penality to both?

[heavyfuel]

A house rule we once experimented with was wounds.
Anyone who is even 1 point below their max HP takes -1 to all rolls and AC.
This escalates to -2 at 75%, -4 at 50% and -6 at 25%.
Diehard or similar effects move all brackets but the first down by 25%.
Constructs do not lose AC, but take a double penalty to rolls.
Undead lose double AC but are not penalised on rolls.

From personal experience (I played with a DM that had a similar system) this really makes losses agonizing spirals from which it's very difficult recover. Getting to 25% health you might as well not be in combat anymore, unless you're a caster, in which case there's absolutely no difference in your performance. "Bosses" also become much less threatening much easier.

[Cosi]

Increasing wound penalties are an interesting idea, and I think it would be beneficial to explore that space if you were designing a new game, but I'm far from convinced it can safely be added to an existing game ad hoc. That said, if we're talking about ad hoc ways to make damage matter more, one pet idea I've had for a while is making something like 4e's Bloodied condition a requirement for hitting people with save-or-dies (i.e. above 50% HP, you're immune). It makes damage beyond the last point matter, makes healing more useful, and increases synergy between casters and martials.

[King of Nowhere]

From personal experience (I played with a DM that had a similar system) this really makes losses agonizing spirals from which it's very difficult recover. Getting to 25% health you might as well not be in combat anymore, unless you're a caster, in which case there's absolutely no difference in your performance. "Bosses" also become much less threatening much easier.

true. such penalties should also apply to spellcasting. You could have "concentration check DC = spell level + half of missing hit points" to cast spells when wounded.

[noob]

true. such penalties should also apply to spellcasting. You could have "concentration check DC = spell level + half of missing hit points" to cast spells when wounded.

While it is a good idea it does nothing against already active spells like the solid fog cast at start of the battle or the buff spells cast before the battle.
Maybe have something like losing buffs when hit?

[Eldariel]

While it is a good idea it does nothing against already active spells like the solid fog cast at start of the battle or the buff spells cast before the battle.
Maybe have something like losing buffs when hit?

Snag 5e need to semi-actively focus on active spell effects (with some reasonable limit on number based on...perhaps a secondary casting stat for classes or whatever) and then add damage potentially disrupting said concentration. That would make sense, make persistomancy less effective without influencing standard casters overtly much, and make damage under your total HP more relevant against casters too.

I don't like "minus half missing HP" since in a sense that punishes having a lot of HP; I think percentile limits with fixed penalties is preferable, since this extrapolates easily to casters of all HP levels. Dragons with 1000 HP who got hit once for 200 HP having to make DC 100 Concentration-checks to cast in spite of being in fairly good health is kinda problematic.

[noob]

Snag 5e need to semi-actively focus on active spell effects (with some reasonable limit on number based on...perhaps a secondary casting stat for classes or whatever) and then add damage potentially disrupting said concentration. That would make sense, make persistomancy less effective without influencing standard casters overtly much, and make damage under your total HP more relevant against casters too.

I don't like "minus half missing HP" since in a sense that punishes having a lot of HP; I think percentile limits with fixed penalties is preferable, since this extrapolates easily to casters of all HP levels. Dragons with 1000 HP who got hit once for 200 HP having to make DC 100 Concentration-checks to cast in spite of being in fairly good health is kinda problematic.

Did you consider that being gigantic and having no hands is unpractical for spellcasting when you start having gigantic wounds?
the fact a dragon is really huge means that for losing 1/5 of its health it needs bigger wounds.
Also it actually encourage stuff like temporary hit points sources which are usually considered quite minor(like casting necrotic empowerment for 200 thp).

The reason why making boost spells based on concentration is not a nerf at all is that people will just manage to have the source of the boost spells not be on the warfield.
Ex: they pay someone to cast a bunch of boost spells and benefit all from the boost spell by turning into parasites or the boost wizard of the team stay home until he is called for wizarding out of combat.
this is why hitting the boosted person being the solution against the boost spell works better.
(special exception: missing someone with spells that makes it more easy to miss can dispel one of those spells so that someone making itself near unhittable with spells can still be defeated by attacking)

[King of Nowhere]

D

The reason why making boost spells based on concentration is not a nerf at all is that people will just manage to have the source of the boost spells not be on the warfield.
Ex: they pay someone to cast a bunch of boost spells and benefit all from the boost spell by turning into parasites or the boost wizard of the team stay home until he is called for wizarding out of combat.
this is why hitting the boosted person being the solution against the boost spell works better.
(special exception: missing someone with spells that makes it more easy to miss can dispel one of those spells so that someone making itself near unhittable with spells can still be defeated by attacking)

that requires preparation and hiring npcs. can be worked around, and if the players put that much effort, they should be rewarded

[Reversefigure4]

Remove massive damage rule and replace with this: All damage have a DC = damage.

This is not a bad idea. Even if you lower the DC to make it actually doable (so that crits don't auto-kill), remember that every Natural 1 on a Fortitude save is death. Statistically, 20 Commoners with daggers brings death to a PC.

It's worth keeping in mind that DnD doesn't have a lot of good mechanics for avoiding fights (like a social combat system), so you'll need to be pretty flexible, because the grittier you go, the more fighting becomes a last desperate resort rather than a go-to strategy.