Making [4e] More Gritty

[Tormsskull]

Hi all,

I don't have a lot of experience with 4e yet, and as such I intend to keep playing it by the RAW for some time. However, my initial observations lead me to believe that 4e is not nearly as gritty as past editions. This thread is not to debate if 4e is gritty or not, but to list ways that is could be made gritty (or grittier if you feel it already is).

My first thoughts:

1. Characters can only use Healing Surges, unaided, in combat, and they grant temporary hit points instead of normal hit points. Any Healing Surges used in combat as a result of a magic (powers from a Paladin or Cleric, potions, etc). grant normal hit point restoration instead of temporary hit points. At the end of a battle, when a character's temporary hit points vanish, if the loss of these temporary hit points would bring a character to negative levels, they are instead reduced to 1 hit point.
2. Outside of combat a character can use a Healing Surge only if aided by magic (powers from a Paladin or Cleric, potions, etc).
3. Resting a full 8 hours will restore 1/10th of a character's MAX Hit Points (If a character has 30 max HP, he will regain 3 HP for 8 hours of rest) & 1/3rd of a character's Healing Surges.
4. Warlord's are either removed as a class, or otherwise respun as Templars or some other sort of class that draws on magic.

Do you think that the above would result in a grittier D&D game, or not? Do you have some of you own ideas to make D&D more gritty?

[MartinHarper]

Warlords are either removed as a class, or otherwise respun as Templars or some other sort of class that draws on magic.

I don't understand why you feel Warlords aren't "gritty".

[Dan_Hemmens]

While it's your houserules and you're free to make them as you want, I wonder if you're making a mistake by adding a "magic only" clause to your "gritty" mod.

This is just my opinion, of course, but to my mind whether something is "gritty" depends on what the consequences of something are, much more than the way in which it's supposed to work. Trivial magical healing is no more "gritty" than trivial non-magical healing.

If you want to make 4E genuinely grittier, I'd suggest just keeping a flat "Healing Surges only grant temporary HP" rule (possibly making Healing Surge HP cumulative with non-healing-surge HP, since otherwise other sources of temporary HP become worthless since you're bound to use Healing Surges at some point). Then have HP restored only on rest, and only by a small amount, with Healing Potions restoring HP as normal (rather than activating Healing Surges).

[Crow]

I think if temporary hit points vanish and they're negative, they should drop.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Anything that makes it easier for PCs to die or remain incapacitated is going to make D&D "grittier." If you really think 4e is insufficiently "gritty" how about:

1) Halving the HP of all characters
2) Imposing a -2 penalty to everything when a character is Bloodied
3) Making a table for permanent injuries (limb loss, eye loss, etc.) to be rolled upon when PCs are dropped below 0 HP.

Now, if your real complaint is that you don't like Healing Surges or non-magical healing, then you should say so. In such a case it is easiest to do your temporary HP shuffle (noting that Temporary HP do not stack) and to reflavor the Warlord into a Bard, where is "Inspiring Word" is actually a magical song that heals wounds. Bam!

[Tormsskull]

I don't understand why you feel Warlords aren't "gritty".

The idea of a character inspiring another character and that inspiration healing wounds doesn't seem gritty to me.

and to reflavor the Warlord into a Bard, where is "Inspiring Word" is actually a magical song that heals wounds. Bam!

That's actually a very good idea. I think a lot of the group-support style mechanics of the warlord could very easily fit the bard of past editions.

[MartinHarper]

I think if temporary hit points vanish and they're negative, they should drop.

In 4e, temporary hit points don't stop you dropping in the first place.

[Crow]

In 4e, temporary hit points don't stop you dropping in the first place.

I was talking about his houserule.

[batsofchaos]

All this does, in my opinion, is generate busy-work for the players and DM.

Proposed rules:

PCs are hurt, if they don't receive magical aid they will only heal some of their wounds over their extended rest. So, they have the magical healers bring 'em back to maximum. This drains the healer's magic. Everyone rests, magical healers get their magic restored, and they continue out and about at 100%.

Current rules:

PCs take their rest and continue out and about at 100%.

I personally think the entire purpose behind changing the rules to make it so characters are fully healed after an extended rest was to keep the story moving. Because, simply put, there's no downside to it. In the old system, the characters would leave at max capacity anyway, so why bother making everyone adjudicate it?

The only answer is realism, which can be patched by handwaving if it's needed. "Cleric casts cure serious-blah-blah-blah, next morning." Explain it once, and then let everyone take it for granted.

I don't think DnD has been particularly gritty since 2e. I don't have an answer for reintroducing it, since I think the rules in general present a large obstacle. I'm tempted to say you're better off going for a different game if you want believable grit.

[Trog]

The idea of a character inspiring another character and that inspiration healing wounds doesn't seem gritty to me.

Since HP in 4th edition seems even more abstract than in previous editions it seems, you could look at it as a morale boost instead. Make "bloodied" actual mean "the enemy has finally scored a shot on you and drawn blood," instead of merely wearing you out physically and (morale) mentally. Change all in-combat healing via powers to be this sort of morale boosting-type healing. Which would not remove their "bloodied" status since it is not actually healing wounds, just morale.

Since many enemies have nasty powers which kick in when the heroes are bloodied this might add to the grittiness. Change spells cast out of combat to be actual regular physical healing of wounds. Or make it so healing surges spent out of combat still need an application of the healing skill or magic to be physical healing and don't allow the character to heal himself above his bloodied value until he gets one of these sorts of healing applied to him.

Otherwise grittiness is, in my experience, primarily in the fluff.

[Jayabalard]

I don't understand why you feel Warlords aren't "gritty".

it seems pretty obvious to me based on the previous 3 items on that list; all 4 items are aimed at tuning down non-magical healing. Hence the removed as respun as a class that draws on magic bit.

Because, simply put, there's no downside to it. In the old system, the characters would leave at max capacity anyway, so why bother making everyone adjudicate it?

The downside is that some people don't like the feel of that sort of game; sometimes you're going to be battered going into a fight and have to make it through the best that you can. In the old system, those people didn't always leave at max capacity.

The only answer is realism, which can be patched by handwaving if it's needed. "Cleric casts cure serious-blah-blah-blah, next morning." Explain it once, and then let everyone take it for granted.

Unless I'm wildly mistaken, this style game is the exact opposite of what the OP is looking for. Hence the thread asking for ways to make the game grittier.

[Dan_Hemmens]

it seems pretty obvious to me based on the previous 3 items on that list; all 4 items are aimed at tuning down non-magical healing. Hence the removed as respun as a class that draws on magic bit.

I think the reason that people brought that up, though, was because there's an important difference between "gritty" and "healing is only possible with magic".

To my mind magical healing isn't gritty at all unless it's rare as all hell (like, Jesus-level rare) or else it's got some horrible side effect. The moment you can just cast a (renewable) spell to remove an injury, "gritty" goes out the window.

[Eclipse]

I want to start by saying that I don't think D&D is intended to be gritty, and is much more geared to being heroic fantasy, as has been said before. I like it as it is, but I know not everyone does.

That said, I'd recommend focusing more on providing a gritty story then tweaking mechanics. Most roleplaying systems, while better suited to some tasks rather than others, can do a lot more than you would expect if you work with them.

If you must deal in mechanics as well though, I have a few ideas.

First, keep everyone low level. In 4th edition, I'd even say do a whole campaign at level one, and perhaps let people advance through just feats you allow them to take once in awhile.

Eliminate the use of healing surges without magic entirely unless someone is dying. This makes magical healing more important, and it turns the number of healing surges into a value that shows how much trauma someone can take in a day before their body just won't respond to the magic anymore.

If someone is dying, give them two failures before death instead of three. Only one failure if you want death to be more common. Alternatively, make the saving throw easier to fail. If they succeed at the saving throw, they lose a healing surge and come back with 1 hit point, not 25% of their hit points.

Roll stats on 3d6, or give players fewer points to buy stats with. If you want to be really mean, roll 3d6 in order. I'd say allow rerolls if net modifiers are less than zero after racial stat adjustments. Incidently, the 3rd edition game I played with 3d6 in order was actually pretty fun for a few sessions, though not something I would want to do on a regular basis. A friend who likes gritty really enjoyed it and wants to play it like that more often now though.

That's all for now, take what you like, hopefully something in there is helpful.

[HidaTsuzua]

Some sort of "Wound System" might work as well. I wish I had my Earthdawn books for their rules which I remember worked fairly well.

A very rough draft would be this:
1.) If you take a hit that deals your Con Score or higher in damage, you get a wound. Add +5 at Paragon Tier and +10 at Epic Tier.
2.) You get one wound for every time you fail a saving throw vs death when dying.
3.) You get one wound when bloodied and reach 0 hp.
3.) Every other wound gives you a -1 to all non-save rolls (i.e. each wound is -.5 to rolls).


Then you give the Heal skill a new option.

Heal Wound: DC 15 After a long rest, you can roll to heal wound. If you succeed, you remove one wound. One character can only heal wound on one person per long rest.

You can then apply abilities as you wish that can cure/affect wounds. Some ideas:
Cure X Wounds heal all wounds on the target.
Divine and Arcane abilities that allow the target to spend a healing surge heal one wound on the target.
Martial abilities that allow the target to spend a healing surge don't heal wounds, but the target ignores wound penalties for the rest of the encounter.
Warlords get the class ability "Roll with the Punch Encounter Exploit Close Burst 5/10/15 (By Tier) Immediate Interrupt Action Trigger: An ally is able to take a wound Target: One Ally in Burst Effect: Negate the next wound the target receives"
Healing Potions heal 1 wound in addition to other effects.

Feats:
Heroic Tier:
Pain Resistance- You are resist pain.
Prereq: Con 13
You halve all wound penalties.

[Dausuul]

All this does, in my opinion, is generate busy-work for the players and DM.

Proposed rules:

PCs are hurt, if they don't receive magical aid they will only heal some of their wounds over their extended rest. So, they have the magical healers bring 'em back to maximum. This drains the healer's magic. Everyone rests, magical healers get their magic restored, and they continue out and about at 100%.

Current rules:

PCs take their rest and continue out and about at 100%.

I agree. I would be more inclined to go with giving people a chance of a crippling wound any time they go below zero hit points - and don't allow magical healing to make it all better. "Magic fixes everything" kills grit far deader than healing surges.

Something like this:

All characters have a Wound Track. Serious injuries can advance the character along the Wound Track, while time and healing move the character back toward health. Some injuries have other special effects.

The Wound Track is as follows:

Uninjured -> Grants combat advantage -> Dazed -> Stunned -> Unconscious -> Dead

Whenever you suffer a critical hit from an attack that inflicts damage, or are reduced to zero hit points or below, roll 1d20 to see if you suffer a lasting injury.

1: Advance two steps toward "Dead" along the Wound Track.
2: Injured eye (may be permanent). If you suffer this injury twice, you are blind. Advance one step toward "Dead."
3: Injured hand (may be permanent). You cannot use that arm to wield a weapon or hold a heavy shield, though you can wear a light shield. Advance one step toward "Dead."
4: Injured foot (may be permanent). Your movement rate is reduced by 1. If you suffer this injury twice, you are slowed. Advance one step toward "Dead."
5-6: Advance one step toward "Dead."
7+: No lasting injury.

On any effect noted as "may be permanent," roll 1d20 again:

1-3: Injury is permanent.
4+: Injury disappears once you reach "Uninjured."

Each day, make an Endurance check with a DC equal to 15 plus one-half your level. If you make the check or roll a natural 20, you move one step toward "Uninjured" along the Wound Track. If you fail by 1-9, you stay where you are. If you fail by 10 or more, or roll a natural 1, you move one step toward "Dead."

(Note: DCs for Endurance checks scale with level on the assumption that you will face more dangerous foes, and take more deadly wounds, at higher levels.)

[Yakk]

1> Get rid of Second Wind. Instead:
Desperate Defense:
"You cower against the assault, frantically blocking the blows raining upon you."
Immediate Interrupt + Encounter
Costs a healing surge
Trigger: You are damaged.
Effect: Gain a +2 bonus to all defenses until the end of your next turn. You gain temporary HP equal to your Healing Surge value until the start of your next turn.
Special: You lose your standard action next turn (Dwarves only lose a minor action).

---

This is very similar, but it is blocking damage instead of healing damage.

---

2> Healing Surges return at a rate of (Con Bonus) per day. If your Con bonus is less than +1, it takes 2 days per healing surge, plus 1 for every Con penalty you have.


(This means your party might rest for multiple days to recover from wounds).

3> You may use one Healing Surge per day to heal HP damage out of combat "naturally" during a short rest. Long rests to not automatically restore all HP damage.

4> The Heal skill can be used to heal additional HP. During a long rest, a DC 15 check lets you allow 1 person to use 1 healing surge. +5 DC for every additional person you want to allow to use a healing surge, +5 DC if you want to "heal passively" and also take a long rest, +10 DC if you lack sufficient healing supplies (or, half the amount healed by the healing surges). You cannot allow someone to use two healing surges.

5> Healing magic is weaker. All healing magic generates a special pool of Temporary HP, which cannot exceed your current damage total, but otherwise stacks with Temporary HP from non-healing Sources. This is damaged first, and only the highest value accumulates. This pool lasts until you take a long rest, at which point it is converted into normal HP.

If you have a per-encounter power that you use out of combat, you can extend the "casting" to a full minute, and maximize the amount healed (sort of like taking 20).

This means that Clerics can patch up damage, but their rate of healing is not instant -- someone heavily beat up will still be somewhat beat up the next day, regardless.

6> "Daily" powers are changed to Milestone powers. You get a milestone every 4 or so encounters that represents reaching a critical point in the adventure plot. Long rests do not recharge Daily powers, only achievement does. (Ie, every 4*party_size*party_character_xp_value, or more often if you feel nice!)

7> You lose all action points when you take a long rest: action points are a reward for pressing on actively. After the end of each encounter, you gain a single action point. In addition, you may spend a second action point in an encounter after you become bloodied during the encounter, you personally deal the blow that defeats a normal monster, or bloodies an elite or a solo monster. You also gain an extra action point when you pass a milestone.

8> If your ranged power provokes an opportunity attack, and that attack hits, you take a penalty to the attack equal to the damage done (divided by 2 at Paragon, and 3 at Epic tier). You may burn an action point to instead not make the attack, losing the action but saving the power.

---

How is that? :-)

Doing multiple fights in a row is dangerous, but you gain action points. When you "take a break to rest up", you might require quite a while to recover completely.

[Draz74]

[*]Characters can only use Healing Surges, unaided, in combat, and they grant temporary hit points instead of normal hit points. Any Healing Surges used in combat as a result of a magic (powers from a Paladin or Cleric, potions, etc). grant normal hit point restoration instead of temporary hit points. At the end of a battle, when a character's temporary hit points vanish, if the loss of these temporary hit points would bring a character to negative levels, they are instead reduced to 1 hit point.

This is a kinda cool way of making HP a little less abstract. However, I have two things to say about that:

• If you're trying to make HP less abstract, seems like you'd have to go all the way. It's not just an issue with healing. Plenty of attack powers, such as Ray of Enfeeblement, don't make sense doing "real" damage; you'd have to change them so they do "nonlethal damage" or some other counterpart of Temporary HP.
• Not sure why "HP less abstract" means "more gritty," anyway. I understand that "gritty" requires "some kind of lasting harm possible," but there are ways to do that other than making HP represent only physical wounds (like adding in a Wounds system like other people have been experimenting with). But the way HP can also represent morale, stamina, and luck ... I don't understand why that makes things less gritty in and of itself. And if HP are abstract, there's no reason why Second Wind or Warlords shouldn't be able to restore "real" HP.

[*]Resting a full 8 hours will restore 1/10th of a character's MAX Hit Points (If a character has 30 max HP, he will regain 3 HP for 8 hours of rest) & 1/3rd of a character's Healing Surges.

Not recovering all of your Healing Surges in one night, although it does add to grittiness, seems like a pain to me. It will lead to characters going, "Oh no! I'm down to 6 out of my 9 healing surges! We better stop and rest for the night!" (Which, I have to admit, is realistic.) Or if they do actually adventure until their Surges are out, then they'll just camp out and rest for three days straight. Which is only cool if they have a good place to camp, like a town or a peaceful wilderness area (not a dungeon).

I like the idea where an extended rest gives you back all of your Healing Surges, but not any HP. (But you can spend any of your newly-recovered Surges in order to heal yourself as normal.) I think that this, combined with some kind of Lasting Wound Points system, would get you the effect you want, i.e. "Not everything just goes away and becomes peachy-creamy by sleeping for one night," but with less annoyance.

[*]Warlord's are either removed as a class, or otherwise respun as Templars or some other sort of class that draws on magic.

Hooray, we're back to the "every party needs to have a Cleric" system!

IMHO, making the system more dependent on having Casters in the party makes it less gritty, not more gritty. "Gritty" --> "at least slightly low-magic," in my book.

[batsofchaos]

The downside is that some people don't like the feel of that sort of game; sometimes you're going to be battered going into a fight and have to make it through the best that you can. In the old system, those people didn't always leave at max capacity.

Unless I'm wildly mistaken, this style game is the exact opposite of what the OP is looking for. Hence the thread asking for ways to make the game grittier.

Oh, I'm in total agreement with you. My comments regarding healing surges were my opinion of author-intent. My point was not "tough, do it this way," just "this is why I think they did this." Getting gritty in the system either requires extensive houseruling/homebrewing or picking up another system like Call of Cthulhu.

Looking at it, Yakk's system definitely has potential for giving a gritty feel, though. Go with that or something close to it.

[mikeejimbo]

Oh, I'm in total agreement with you. My comments regarding healing surges were my opinion of author-intent. My point was not "tough, do it this way," just "this is why I think they did this." Getting gritty in the system either requires extensive houseruling/homebrewing or picking up another system like Call of Cthulhu.

Looking at it, Yakk's system definitely has potential for giving a gritty feel, though. Go with that or something close to it.

And you can have a perfectly gritty Call of Cthulhu campaign even if the characters are never injured physically.

Mentally, now there's another story.

[batsofchaos]

Well that comes down to fluff, which can succeed or fail at giving off a general tone completely independent of mechanics.

However, I think one could agree that it is easier to set a gritty tone in a game like CoC than DnD, simply based off of what the mechanics are trying to accomplish.

[mikeejimbo]

Oh yeah, that's entirely true. I think a lot of it depends on the DM, too, and how they work out the story.

[Orzel]

Well my own homebrew game work a lot like 4E's HP and Surges but is a lot more gritty.

HP represented the character's ability to prevent being wounded, injured or hurt. When you had full HP, you are able to prevent a wound at the best of your current ability. At 1 HP, you are unable to stop a wounding. And at 0 or lower, your current wound prevented you from acting.

Instead of surges, you have a Toughness tract. When you have 4-5 toughness, you are have a minor wound, 3 or less toughness is a major wound, and zero toughness is a serious wound. If you have 0 toughness and negative HP, you die. You lose toughness anytime you are hit with a critical hit, drop below 1/2 your max HP, or drop below 0 HP. You could, once a fight, lower your toughness to gain 1/2 of max HP. There were 2 ways to heal. Divine magic healed wounds better. Inspiration healed HP best.

My changes to make 4E grittier would be:
A character with less that 6 or less healing surges, falls prone when you move more that 1/2 their speed (ala Walking Wounded)
A character with less that 3 or less healing surges, grants combat advantage whenever they make a standard action.
A character with zero healing surges is weaken.
A character loses a healing surge whenever they are hit with a critical hit or a hit that bloodied them.
Limit how surge return.

[Kiara LeSabre]

I think you can just do it with descriptions alone. Say a fighter uses No Surrender -- okay, sure, he's still standing, but emphasize how he has to clench his fists, grind his teeth, and literally will his body to stop falling backward, and how he's still a terrible, ruined mess even if he hasn't fallen. Enemies might express shock ("How can he still be standing??").

Maybe make such healing (and that from surges) a temporary thing that you lose some of again after the character's adrenaline rush wears off (although this possibly has the effect of disrupting the balance between magical and non-magical abilities when it comes to healing), so that we get the feeling the character really did just teeter back from the brink of death through sheer willpower.

But ... really, you're dealing with a system that's highly cinematic in style. You can do "gritty" with a cinematic, over-the-top flair with it (like something out of some shounen anime), but you can't really do "realistic gritty."

[quillbreaker]

I've been toying with a rule that goes something like this:

"At the end of combat, you may spend healing surges and use powers to heal damage taken, as per normal, but any damage that you choose not to heal at this time with a healing surge must be healed by by rest."

So, say you have 40 hit points and 8 healing surges. You do a fight and take 15 damage. You can spend no healing surges and be at 25, one healing surge and be at 35 or two healing surges and be at 40.

Whatever you choose to keep as damage, however, must be healed "normally", ie, rest. So if you spend no surges, your hp cap essentially drops to 25 and goes back up slowly by the rest rule of your choice.

This simple house rule would retain the existing game balance inside of combat, but would also add a "characters get worn down" feel that you want for a gritty game.

[TheOOB]

Keep in mind that under the basic rules, your hp isn't your ability withstand wounds, but your cinimatic ability to avoid wound. 20 damage to a level one character is a fairly serious wound, but the same attack on an epic character would be just a scrape.

To keep things simple, I'd suggest keeping the hp system as is, but changing so every time you become bloodied, you roll on a wound chart and get a wound that inhibits your abilities and some way and can take days/weeks to heal(barring the use of a ritual). When you get dropped, you can either make a seperate, more serious wound chart, or make the wounds from the first chart last longer.

[Indon]

If you want to make the game more lethal and difficult, one thing you could do would be to replace elites with normal mobs at a higher level (and equivalent XP), and solos with elites of a higher level (also with equivalent XP).

I haven't quite crunched the math, but it seems to me that would create much more offensively potent, but slightly less durable (but more defensible) creatures. Use with caution.

[Jayabalard]

Oh, I'm in total agreement with you. My comments regarding healing surges were my opinion of author-intent. My point was not "tough, do it this way," just "this is why I think they did this." Getting gritty in the system either requires extensive houseruling/homebrewing or picking up another system like Call of Cthulhu.

I guess that makes sense, but it gets kind of frustrating to see people keep saying "pick a different system" whenever someone is looking for a game style that is different than the D&D norm. It doesn't really help the discussion much, since some people would rather play their style of game in a heavily houseruled D&D system rather than some other (lesser known) system that "does it better".

Looking at it, Yakk's system definitely has potential for giving a gritty feel, though. Go with that or something close to it.

Agreed, there are some good ideas there.

I think the reason that people brought that up, though, was because there's an important difference between "gritty" and "healing is only possible with magic".

From reading the OP's post, it's pretty obvious that's one of his goals, so it's probably best if people don't get so caught up on their own person definition of what "gritty" is or isn't, since it's not like someone else's definition of gritty is going to change what the OP is looking for.

[Hectonkhyres]

3) Making a table for permanent injuries (limb loss, eye loss, etc.) to be rolled upon when PCs are dropped below 0 HP.

My group has done this for almost as long as we have existed. We also roll on critical hits. Best damn decision we ever made.

Note that this gave new value to the heal skill. We actually had a surgeon who could stitch back on limbs, perform organ transplants from the living or recently deceased, and generally get a severely maimed man back on his feet. Mostly without magic.

[Phil Lucky Cat]

Can we make this a sticky?

I like the way you people think, and this effectively solves some of the issues that have been coming up the "A friend's 4e review" thread about healing surges, 'realism' and other things.

[TheOOB]

Well, you don't heal is a physical sense when you take a second wind action, you are simply taking a second to recover and focus, giving you new energy to deflect further blows.

For the record, if you are looking for true grit, you'd best look for a game that isn't best described as "heroic fantasy", new world of darkness in particular is set up so characters take days, weeks, even months to recover from wounds based on how severe they are(depending on their type, giving enough blood a vampire can recover from near final death in a couple of weeks, and anyone recovers faster with medical care).