Hello. To be clear this isn't an invitation for a more detailed expansion of the 'I want to bang my familiar thread'. Instead I was wondering what rules or options would you add/take away for a Pathfinder a Hardcore mode of play specifically designed to test players to their limits. In theory I would like to be able to apply this filter to an Adventure Path. I have put this in the discussion thread rather than homebrew because I would like to stick to Pathfinder options where possible but some tinkering could be acceptable. I had a Google search and couldn't see anything but apologies if my google-fu is weak.
Some examples...
- Add the advanced template to all monsters.
- Use the optional rule for shooting into combat which contains a PC where missing by 4 or less means the PC gets hit.
- Called shots from the Ultimate Combat.
- Applying the elite stat array to all NPCs
- Adding 50% to all monster groups (lesser monsters for single enemies)
- Adding mythic templates to key monsters (but not mythic PCs)
Any other ideas?
Move into the realm of homebrew by giving key enemies Legendary actions, Lair actions and Legendary resistance - as per 5th ed. Not sure if this is going too far.
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Crits do not need to be confirmed.
Give a form of sneak attack to monsters that work as a group.
Crits - Ouch!
Free teamwork feats for monster maybe?
It's unclear what you want. There are so many definitions of "hardcore" that you need to clarify what you mean.
In CRPGs, hardcore usually means no save games; if you die, you're done. Start over. If this is what you want, just don't allow raising dead by any means and force players to replace a dead PC with a new level 1 PC (if he survives a few fight's he'll level up fast).
The rest of the post just makes me think your definition might be "to make the game harder". But not all of those options make it harder on the players; some also make it harder on the GM. Hitting allies with arrows probably hurts the monsters more than the PCs unless you have lots of archers/gunslingers in the PC group. Called shots benefits both PCs and monsters.
(don't forget that everything you do that makes combat more deadly hurts the PCs in the long run - nobody really cares if the fighter kills orc #127 with a called shot to the eye, but everybody cares if orc #127 does that to the PC fighter)
Another definition might be "lots of work". Adding templates and elite stats and mythic powers means rewriting stat-blocks of EVERYTHING; you can't even open a bestiary and use the beast right out of the book without rewriting at least some of it. If "hardcore" means lots of work, then these ideas are perfect - but it might be tedious to GM that.
Some items on your list seem geared to make encounters harder. Mythic monsters against non-mythic PCs can be very dangerous indeed. If your definition of "hardcore" is "the GM wins some encounters" then there are easier ways - instead of restatting every monster, just use bigger monsters: your level 5 PC don't need to run into trolls when they could run into fire giants instead...
I'm not really trying to be snarky. You made a list of some things you think might be "hardcore" but it's really scattered; different items on that list will get different results. It makes me wonder what you think "hardcore" means. It's like if I made a list of "good foods" that included quinoa, dark chocolate, pizza, rice, and Mountain Dew. You would probably ask me what my definition of "good foods" is.
Fair enough. By hardcore I mean, harder. Obstacles more difficult to overcome. If the typical AP requires 50% optimisation I'm talking about a game that needs 75%-90% to be successful.
In essence a game in which a fairly heavy degree of player power is required to be successful - where players can open her up a bit and flex their muscles. It may be for a mythic game where PCs gain greater abilities or just for a game with a higher points buy where all the players have the full range of options and can play Avengers style.
In short, a game where the Synergist summoner can play with their head held high.
Let's take Fallout 3 as the baseline gaming equivalent - everything is tougher and does more damage and otherwise normal activities like eating and drinking are that little bit harder.
Removing Raise Dead could be an option but I suspect this would make for a very short game.
For the record adding the simple advanced template is just a case of adding +2 to all dice rolls, Save DCs, ACs and adding 2x HD to hp. Though I really like the max hp suggestion.
Easy! 10 point buy, no stats above 15 after racial adj.
Half WBL- Low fantasy.
I would also probably adopt many of the PFS rules, or at least limit crafting and classes a little.
PS Max HP is generally not a good solution, because it makes dealing HP damage less effective, while not affecting a casters ability to save or suck enemies. You probably want to add to saves, SR, and touch AC or something as well.
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The simple advanced template is almost misnamed - it's not really a template but rather it's just a buff. It's like an undetectable and undispellable enchantment that adds bonuses. Templates change the base creatures but this one only changes it's HP and its die rolls. False Life and Prayer can do just about the same thing.
In any case, it sounds like you want things to be harder. Then I wouldn't go with missing arrows hit allies since that only hurts the PCs if they have many ranged combatants - it will hurt the bad guys more in many conceivable encounters.
Likewise with called shots. It equally helps both sides. The only thing it makes harder is figuring out what to do each round (slows people down).
The rest of your list works well. Don't limit the templates. Whip them all out and watch the fun. Forget the templates' Type restrictions (if it says the base creature must be living, try giving it to undead or constructs anyway).
One thing most GMs forget is terrain and environment. I guess that's two things, but I'm thinking of them as the same: challenges that make an encounter more difficult than it should be. Killing a dozen orcs isn't too hard for a 5th level group. Killing them while the PCs are climbing a tall cliff in the rain and the orcs are shooting at them from cover/concealment on the opposite cliff, well, that's a whole new problem (bonus points because they still have the same CR so they only give the same XP and loot as any other dozen orcs, but the difficulty of the fight is much harder - more bonus points if you raise the CR because of the increased challenge, then give them revised better loot to mach their new CR, and that loot all takes the form of magic arrows or other useful gear to make them kill the PCs more easily - how about throwing shurikens to sever the PCs' ropes...).
for a Pathfinder a Hardcore mode of play
Make the players roll two d20 any time a d20 roll is necessary and take the worst result.
Or, players roll a d12 instead of a d20 whenever a d20 roll is called for and add 1 plus 1/4th of their level to the die roll. Crits only occur if the die roll is a 12 on a d12 and the PC is at least 4th level. (Monsters and NPCs roll a d20 as normal.)
You don't need to adjust the rules.
Don't use solo BBEG's, add support focused NPCs to groups, make sure at least one NPC in each encounter can target casters.
Adding a bard, skald, or witch to an encounter that already has 4-5 NPC's can make things much more interesting.
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Play casters as enemies that actually play to their capabilities.
Just be clear - I am looking to make PCs stronger not weaker. The idea is to increase the challenge posed not nerf the PCs.
One idea is to unchain NPCs and replace fighters with Brawlers.
Just be clear - I am looking to make PCs stronger not weaker. The idea is to increase the challenge posed not nerf the PCs.
One idea is to unchain NPCs and replace fighters with Brawlers.
Mathematically there really isn't much difference. If I give -2 to all player to hit rolls, or I give +2 to all monster AC the distinction is irrelevant.
Play Angband, hardcore Ironman variant a few times. You will have been educated on how to die lots.
Just be clear - I am looking to make PCs stronger not weaker. The idea is to increase the challenge posed not nerf the PCs.
One idea is to unchain NPCs and replace fighters with Brawlers.
Mathematically there really isn't much difference. If I give -2 to all player to hit rolls, or I give +2 to all monster AC the distinction is irrelevant.
Of course you are right, but in one situation the players get stronger characters and the other weaker. Of course strength is also a function of flexibility. So new powers are just as important as modifiers.
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Wound thresholds for PC's using the Gritty Mode rules from Unchained.
Diseases and Poison rules from Unchained.
Spell Fumbles from Unchained.
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Play casters as enemies that actually play to their capabilities.
yup playing enemies to the best of their abilities will rock most parties.
Play casters as enemies that actually play to their capabilities.
This takes a very good GM to pull off, because you need to separate what YOU know, from what the NPC knows. Of course, some (most) parties make no effort to hide there abilities.
Fair enough. By hardcore I mean, harder. Obstacles more difficult to overcome. If the typical AP requires 50% optimisation I'm talking about a game that needs 75%-90% to be successful.
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So a game where you MUST munchkin and minmax to survive? Not what I call fun.
As a GM, you have the ability to ratchet up the game to where it's "rocks fall everyone dies." So to set this properly, you need to decide an end goal.
I once knew a GM who ran a games store in Ramapo, NJ. His goal was a 25 percent kill rate per session. He generally acheived that with the use of extremely nasty traps and modules. His players simply mimeographed another copy of the characters they just lost. (He also had the rule that your character only had what your mini did.
[. . .]
One thing most GMs forget is terrain and environment. I guess that's two things, but I'm thinking of them as the same: challenges that make an encounter more difficult than it should be. Killing a dozen orcs isn't too hard for a 5th level group. Killing them while the PCs are climbing a tall cliff in the rain and the orcs are shooting at them from cover/concealment on the opposite cliff, well, that's a whole new problem (bonus points because they still have the same CR so they only give the same XP and loot as any other dozen orcs, but the difficulty of the fight is much harder - more bonus points if you raise the CR because of the increased challenge, then give them revised better loot to mach their new CR, and that loot all takes the form of magic arrows or other useful gear to make them kill the PCs more easily - how about throwing shurikens to sever the PCs' ropes...).
What he said.
Tucker's the hell out of those Kobolds.
Is the goal to make encounters more fun by making them more challenging?
I have to agree that terrain and other environment factors can work.
We once had to swim across a dungeon room--with a shadow in the water with us. Its incorporeality let it ignore the water, and its touch made Strength-based Swim checks tougher and tougher.
I also like encounters that can only be overcome through teamwork.
We were like 5th or 7th level in 3.5, and we had to take out a stone golem. The cleric stoneshaped a ramp under it, the bard cast grease under it, the wizard was the bait by the cliff edge, the paladin bull rushed it, and my scout lassoed it, jumped off a cliff, drank a potion of enlarge to octuple my weight, and used a featherfall token to not die as we pulled/pushed the golem off the cliff.
Cool story. Feels very 'tremors' like, which is an ace ending to the film.
Prepared enemies is definitely a good tool. I idea wouldn't be to try and kill PCs instead to give them a chance to use classes and powers that would be frowned of in a normal game.
A few more idea.
- more important enemies have hero points
- liberal use of consumable magic items by monsters and NPCs
- limited opportunities to rest safely (remove rope trip and its chain)
Just be sure not put the PCs against 100 1st level wizards, each with a wand of magic missiles with 1 charge left.
That actually happened to friends of mine.
Just be sure not put the PCs against 100 1st level wizards, each with a wand of magic missiles with 1 charge left.
That actually happened to friends of mine.
Party wizard stares at GM blankly, "I had Shield up."
-been in a similar situation before.
The next spell to hit me was a massively overpowered Fireball. I also had Fireshield up.
The following week the GM imposed the house rule that all monsters had 95% spell resistance.
A "hardcore" mode would be a game where everything is harder - especially surviving. Milo v3 was on the right track:
Wound thresholds for PC's using the Gritty Mode rules from Unchained.
Diseases and Poison rules from Unchained.
Spell Fumbles from Unchained.
I would add this: no magical healing (neither spells nor bursts nor potions nor wands), no regeneration, no raise dead. At all.
Now *that* would make a memorable "hardcore" mode. Players would *have* to invest in the heal skill, and be cautious and take *days* to heal from the slightest scratch.
Of course this would disproportionately nerf martials. So let's not forget to put magic on the "hardcore" setting as well, using the limited magic rules from PF Unchained and toss in some additional nerfhammer clause like casting time = (spell level -1).
Wouldn't that be frustrating? It would really force players to always try a diplomatic solution or some clever comabt avoidance strategy instead of the usual D&D/PF solution which is search and destroy everything in sight. Not sure I'd want to play under these conditions.
It may have been suggested already, but have monsters act outside their nature at the worst possible time.
For example: the players were hunting a Half-Fiend Griffin in the Five Kings Mountains who had dominated a tribe of Yetis. The Yeti's had successfully raided a cart carrying fireworks from Tain Xia that were headed to Andoran. The players passed by the cart and thought "Cool, the monsters won't know how to use these, we'll get fireworks as loot!"
They were wrong...
The Yeti's hid at a distance in the snowy peaks behind boulders (Bonuses up the wazzo) and then waited for the players to cross an old broken dwarven bridge. They then fired the fireworks at the mountains and started an avalanche. The players (low lvl with only a magus for magic) had to rapidly find a way across the broken bridge to dodge the avalanche. Not all of them made it.
It might have been ruthless of me as a DM, but it was still one of the most fun encounters they ever had and is still talked about to this day. They never did reach the top of that mountain...
And that's when it's time to stand up, get your books, and leave... quickly.The following week the GM imposed the house rule that all monsters had 95% spell resistance.
Agreed. Of course, this is why I prefer to have visual indicators on the board as well as my notes of what spells someone has up. It cuts down on the "OH! I had that cast, really. I said it when you were in the bathroom I think?" That way I don't forget, they don't forget, etc.
I GM'ed a D&D Grit game, which used a house rule where anyone who drops below 0HP roll on a chart to determine their wounds. Some include lost limbs, lost eyes etc.
We used another "Massive Damage" rule where losing 50% of total HP in a single hit means rolling on a table. Results range from immediately dropping to 0 HP to being stunned.
Both rules apply to NPCs and PCs. At low levels it means PCs are more fragile; it also means that low-HP baddies drop quickly. It really adds to the tension in a battle, and the random affects give a lot of additional drama and description to a fight.
I realize you're looking for PF rules here, but I thought it might be relevant anyways. These rules come from the D&D 5e DMG.
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Some fantastic ideas.
The idea for this bread came from "Ask James Jacobs" where a hardcore mode for APs was suggested and it was generally accepted as an interesting idea.
Definitely seen a lot here to tempt my fancy, if it appealed to players.
Another idea, which can help GMs think outside the box, sort of in the Tucker's kobold's vein. Find a guest player who's very good at thinking tactically and let *them* run the monsters (you just adjudicate). Someone you know who's good, but not in the current group is usually ideal. Kind of a cameo thing.
You don't have to tell them party composition if you feel that's too much of an advantage, but let them arrange the environment, plan ambush zones, etc, as intelligent creatures might in the event they were anticipating possible attack. Tell the guest player they're allowed to TPK the party if they can pull it off. Honor their requests for "more ammo" (e.g. casters, wands, trap ideas etc - as people mention above) up to what you feel is a reasonable limit. Usually the person will come up with things you would never have thought of.
This is hit or miss - sometimes folks get into it and love the experience, sometimes some players feel it's somehow unfair (if they're not expecting/desiring a tucker's kobolds experience). YMMV, but definitely can add to a "hardmode" experience...
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Some fantastic ideas.
The idea for this bread came from "Ask James Jacobs" where a hardcore mode for APs was suggested and it was generally accepted as an interesting idea.
Definitely seen a lot here to tempt my fancy, if it appealed to players.
That's just something which can be done for APs because they lean towards being pretty darned easy for the most part. If you're building your own adventures it's unneeded as you can just make it the difficulty you'd prefer to begin with.
I agree Charon. I did explain in the OP the purpose of this was to apply a set of challenges to increase AP difficulty.
At the moment with a 65 - 75% optimised party I add 50% to the enemies, combine multiple small encounters into larger encounters, increase HP and rebuild NPCs. However this is already time consuming.
Our GM thought he had crafted a really tough encounter. We were level 2. We were inside a building. There were 15 bandits outside, arranged in combat formations most of whom had bows. What happened?
1. While inside, the cleric cast magic weapon and enlarge person on my barbarian.
2. The ranger and the rogue opened the doors (They were big doors)
3. I charge attacked the leader who made the mistake of standing in front.
4. Leader died in one hit.
5. The enlarged barbarian started murdering things.
6. When the rest of the party bothered to get outside and helped, it ended quickly.
Borrowing from Celtic myth, have the PCs start the game under a Geas/Quest spell, but they don't know the actual wording of the geas.
The geas could be something like one of these:
* Cannot start a fight.
* Can only cast spells on others.
* Must only speak the truth.
If you are looking for simple methods to make the game harder without much GM work: advanced template on all and max hp as already suggested.
If you have direct control over the module, you could also raise the CR of every encounter by 1: so if you ran an epic +1 encounter, you'd theoretically have a 50/50 TPK chance.
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my quick and dirty method for encounters that seem to easy. I mix and match these as needed
- double the listed health of every monster
- have every roll be 2 higher as if i had actually rolled every dice 2 more point higher, so a roll of 18 is now a 20 and i roll for crit confirm, a d6 rolled as a 6 is now and 8 before i add anyother bonuses.
- push AC, Saves, and DCs up by 2 - 5
- add additional monsters to an encounter
- sometimes even doubling up the bosses in a room, Big bad monster of the dungeon now has a twin and you have to fight them both at once
- another quick way to make a fight more difficult is to give your boss multiple initiatives so it can act more then once during a round. Split it up so boss goes then half the party goes then boss goes again.
all these options are quick can be added on the fly do not require time consuming reworks of encounters, can even be added or taken away halfway though a fight if it was to easy or to hard
I've already taken away crit confirmation, and am toying with the idea that if you fumble you open yourself up to an AoO.
I would start by picking up an adventure harder than an AP. Sword of Air, Slumbering Tsar Saga, etc, all come to mind. Apply slow advancement track to make things even tougher. Restrict healing magic and raises, lower treasure found, restrict what items can be bought (no wands of cure unless you find them in a dungeon... and without full charges, bingo, already pathfinder hardmode.
I would start by picking up an adventure harder than an AP. Sword of Air, Slumbering Tsar Saga, etc, all come to mind. Apply slow advancement track to make things even tougher. Restrict healing magic and raises, lower treasure found, restrict what items can be bought (no wands of cure unless you find them in a dungeon... and without full charges, bingo, already pathfinder hardmode.
Definitely lower the treasure found in those. They give out way, way more than WBL guidelines. My group of 4th level PCs found a Robe of Eyes and a +4 weapon on the same day fighting encounters that were only about CR 5-6.
I have GMd slumbering Tsar. My personal opinion is that Paizo's campaigns are the best on the market at the moment for combining exploration, RP and interesting locations.
I am currently converting Hell's rebels to Darksun and I want suitably heroic PCs, I am toying with making them mythic and giving them substantial racial abilities (each race being 30 RP)
As a result I want to be able to dramatically beef up the difficulty to compensate.
Just as an aside the Crit cards are really good fun and can be quite lethal (I did remove the decapitations and severing of limbs from the deck though)
Yeah, it's a good suggestion. However I find APs already finish at level 13-16 so if you take levels off that then I think you miss out. I do agree that this is the simplest method of all.
I've already taken away crit confirmation, and am toying with the idea that if you fumble you open yourself up to an AoO.I liked crit and fumble charts in 1E (Best of Dragon had some compilations I believe).
I have those charts and love them so bad. But when I told my group that those charts apply to PCs as well as NPCs they decided they didn't want to use them.