DnD system grit


Gamer Life General Discussion

Silver Crusade

I wanted to get opinions about something that I see as a barrier between me and newer editions of the game. Every new edition and expansion moves farther from a gritty dungeon delve game to more flashy action. I am not here to make an edition war so I will be specific. I want to be able to use things like pathfinder or 4th edition but when I try I hit speed bumps and I wanted your input.

1. Environmental hazards trivialized, light? In basic, and first it's a real concern torches weight a pound each, light a small space, burn out quickly and mages on lower levels will usually not wet their 1 spell pick on a light spell. 3.5 pathfinder introduce sunrods, tiny, light, cheap, bright and last for hours, lights no longer a problem. 4th mages can cast light forever. Literally.
Non combat traps? 3.5 is moderately susceptible to traps but I find they are oddly leveled, a pit trap that is 20 feet deep that you can avoid outright and only affects one character seems to be roughly the same challenge rating as 4 orcs. but even if my players hit a trap the reduced random encounters, and increased spell casting makes it easy to recover with out running out of resources.
4th has a larger problem, even if I put a trap that does 30 damage to the group on level 1 they will simply spend five minutes healing, and depending on who their healer is may only use 1 healing surge for it. Getting hit, ignoring it heroically.
Random encounters are removed or weakened or removed entirely allowing players to rest up every fight always being at 100 percent and the less you need to worry about food and water, and light the more you can just take your time and never feel that sense of danger.

The last 2 issues I want to bring up are character power and style.

Power. Gritty characters struggle to survive, more than just in combat, but the more modern the system the more the system is on the players side, helping them survive all encounters with almost no risk. I can explainhow it's stacked that way if I need to but it would take a while.

Style. Gritty characters rely on swords and skill, not a thousand flashy powers. Some times flashy powers are good, but not in my gritty Conan/lord of the rings/Dragonlance/grey hawk settings.

Ideas? No rude answer or fighting. I want honest help, I like certain features of newer editions, character customization and game support being 2 big ones. I appreciate your time on this. Thank you.


The easiest answer I can give is to ban the primary spellcasting classes and heavily restrict magic items.


First off, I agree. Systems have moved away from the gritty realism to an easier experience; especially 4th edition. I DM'ed a group who played that for nearly a year, and there was nothing I could throw at them that would even scratch them; they never considered food or any such necessities, and when they attacked, despite being three completely different classes, it felt exactly the same since they all used one of their many many powers (plus, the battlemind, despite being a tank, outdamaged the two striker party members). Now, obviously some of this is my fault; I should've made the encounters harder. But, some of it is the system's fault; 4E is like WoW on a tabletop. If you're looking for realism in 4E, you won't find it; it's meant to be easily played and understood, with simpler rules and all such things. In order to make 4E 'gritty', you'd have to do major overhauls, at which point you may as well move to PF or 3.5

Regarding PF/3.5 in general, the beauty of these systems is that at the end of the day the rules are just suggestions. A PF SWAT team isn't going to kick in your door and arrest you for debuffing magic classes and making enchanted items as rare as gold dust with a diamond coating. If your setting demands a low-magic, high-risk setting, make those changes. Reduce all the class hit dice by one (or even two?) categories to make hits feel more damaging. Make players keep track of things like torches, and who is holding them, and what happens to them if they get ambushed etc. If a player really really wants a spellcaster, maybe reduce the number of spells known or spells per day (or both) by half. At that rate, low-level casters wouldn't survive much without multiclassing into something like fighter, which I guess is the point of the setting. Want more realism? Implement the called shot, wounds and vigour, and alternate armour systems presented in Ultimate Combat.

Lastly, on style; the flashy-attack problem goes away once you leave 4th ed. PF/3.5 only have the default 'I hit/shoot something' (unless you're a caster) and it's up to the player to describe how and where, and it's better that way. If you're nerfing casters, they'll have to be using martial attacks more often and that will make their spells seem even more special when they do use them.

Short answer; if you don't like something, change it :P

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I'm going to be that guy who recommends E6 to death, but in this case: It's totally applicable.

Otherwise, the survivability of low level characters, and move away from book-keeping to Adventuring! Was a conscious decision by designers, because players want to feel like bad asses, and they want to do it all day.

A wizard with 1 spell, who spends most of his day shooting a crossbow is a peasant with a trick. A wizard capable of casting light and acid splash all day always feels like a wizard.

I suppose somewhere out there there's a player who likes keeping track of every pound of gear, and really is into how fiddly the rules for light and darkness are (in practically every iteration of the game), I've never met that player. But most players want to Be Awesome and Look Cool Doing It.

Furthermore a campaign can optimistically last years, but more commonly lasts a few sessions before fizzling out due to "Real Life" setting in, GM burnout, play-style difficulties or any other number of reasons. If you got to do something cool at level one at least you can get something out of the experience.

Finally: Character death sucks. As a player it sucks because it means you have to sit out the action while you
A) wait for your friends to Rez you.
B) Roll a new character that the GM needs to conveniently add to the plot.
Now PCs are more survivable, which means that they can have a narrative arc (HOORAY!), the player can get attached to the character and then invested in the story. If a PC is constantly under a shadow of death (as most Old School characters are in their first levels) then it's harder to get invested, and a real disincentive to take risks, since if it doesn't pay off You Don't Get To Play.

So yes, you are correct there is a movement away from torch-counting, glass-jawed PCs, to more badass heroes. From a player's perspective it's wonderful because it means you can be invested and take risks and do cool stuff. Form a GM's perspective it's great because your players will let their characters get invested, take risks and do call stuff from the very first session.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Ideas:

• Try a campaign where the players have to use NPC classes instead of PC classes. Bonus points if it's with 10pt buy or the basic NPC stat array (13,12,11,10,9,8 if memory serves).

• Remove all spellcasting except for potions and scrolls (and maybe wands).

• Use poisons (they can be nasty in Pathfinder). Even better if you mostly keep them in traps rather than on weapons, so the players can't say "Hey, that archer I killed has 20 more poisoned arrows! This'll be fun!"

That's all that's coming to me at the moment. Good luck and have fun!


There is always the option of NOT using D&D system and its derivative in the first place. There are many PRGs that achieve a gritty and more realistic fantasy feel. Instead than butcher the D&D system, you should try one of those first.

I suggest Burning Wheel, A Song of Ice and Fire RPG (not the d20 one) and The Riddle of Steel.


Following Pixel Cube's advice, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is gritty as well.


Grit is a scale that caters to the DM or players, so I guess it just comes down to specific preferences. I can make any version of D&D, or Pathfinder more or less gritty. I think the main difference over the years is the scale has swayed in favor of the players, so they have more opportunities to save the day or survive the fight, versus first edition, where the DM was king, and the players paid homage.

But overall, I have always seen grit as a campaign theme, so how I address it in Dark Sun would be vastly different than Greyhawkk.

But I do find it easier to add grit to a basic system like 4E, then to start messing with a complex system like Pathfinder, which most would say has more grit just based on the fact the dice rolls are less forgiving.


Layander wrote:
I am not here to make an edition war so I will be specific. I want to be able to use things like pathfinder or 4th edition but when I try I hit speed bumps and I wanted your input.

Likewise, this is not intended as an edition war or a criticism of your desired play style, but have you considered that you might simply be playing the wrong game? D&D of any edition-- and by extension Pathfinder-- isn't designed to be Conan or Lord of the Rings so much as it's designed to be D&D. The entire combat system of D&D is based on doing the exact opposite of what you seem to want-- making more experienced adventurers practically invincible and giving them flashy new ways of destroying similarly larger-than-life monsters. Later editions of the game have only exaggerated this tendency by applying the same logic to lower-level PCs.

If you want a grittier fantasy game, more akin to your Conan or your Lord of the Rings, you should try a different ruleset. If you want combat to be quick and brutal, try Rolemaster. If you want magic to be powerful, but less world-changing, try Shadowrun 4th Edition without all the technology rules. (I'd make everyone Physical Magicians, though; if they want to be Conan, they can limit themselves.)

There are rules for making D&D and Pathfinder grittier, but in my opinion they don't really improve the game. All they really do is make powerful attacks and spells another kind of save-or-die. Still, if you want to try, click here and here and see if you can't find something that solves your problem.


Viktyr Korimir wrote:
Layander wrote:
I am not here to make an edition war so I will be specific. I want to be able to use things like pathfinder or 4th edition but when I try I hit speed bumps and I wanted your input.

Likewise, this is not intended as an edition war or a criticism of your desired play style, but have you considered that you might simply be playing the wrong game? D&D of any edition-- and by extension Pathfinder-- isn't designed to be Conan or Lord of the Rings so much as it's designed to be D&D. The entire combat system of D&D is based on doing the exact opposite of what you seem to want-- making more experienced adventurers practically invincible and giving them flashy new ways of destroying similarly larger-than-life monsters. Later editions of the game have only exaggerated this tendency by applying the same logic to lower-level PCs.

If you want a grittier fantasy game, more akin to your Conan or your Lord of the Rings, you should try a different ruleset. If you want combat to be quick and brutal, try Rolemaster. If you want magic to be powerful, but less world-changing, try Shadowrun 4th Edition without all the technology rules. (I'd make everyone Physical Magicians, though; if they want to be Conan, they can limit themselves.)

There are rules for making D&D and Pathfinder grittier, but in my opinion they don't really improve the game. All they really do is make powerful attacks and spells another kind of save-or-die. Still, if you want to try, click here and here and see if you can't find something that solves your problem.

I second this too. D&D just doesn't work for gritty fantasy adventures.

Community / Forums / Gamer Life / General Discussion / DnD system grit All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in General Discussion