I've heard it said that you can't get D&D to fit a Horror game, because the players want to be heroes and they will never run away, so if you present them with things genuinely dangerous enough that they should be afaid, they instead end up just dying after charging at it.
I have been pondering the Horror genre for a while for a D&D oneshot, and I am trying to come up with some good mechanics for it which will instill in the players a sense of dread and horror, which I hope will then transfer down into their characters.
The first part of this will be a ticking clock - an actual "you have 3.5 hours of real time to complete this mission" ticking clock. If you are not prepared for your turn in combat, then you will become flustered and feel like you're wasting time. I know that this mechanic will have different ramifications on different characters, so I might make the ticking clock slow down during combat, perhaps. I want the party to feel like the combats are more of an obstacle to their goal than their actual goal, and I don't want them to treat combat like bullet-time for thinking over things, I want them to feel a sense of urgency.
The second part of this comes from an idea I have had to make the players feel like they are losing some control, without taking away their agency. As a bad example, we have the Umber Hulk, which takes away player agency and leaves players feeling frustrated, not frightened, as their characters do things whch they cannot control. This is not the way I want to go.
Instead, I intend to take away the players knowledge of their characters HP. I will roll damage and narrate to them how hard they felt they were hit, (IE was it a scratch, or did it feel like a rib popped?), and they will not know how much damage they have taken, and I will track their health. Characters will probably spend every moment in survival mode after the first combat, which is exactly the way I want it for a horror game. I want the barbarian who's still on 80hp to be running like he's only got 4. That's the whole point of a horror game.
I will allow them to use an action to assess the damage, but its a high DC medicine check to get the exact number, otherwise they get "you're over half" or "you're under half". They cannot repeat the check more than once every 30 minutes, real-time.
I don't think that there's anything else I can take away from them (or that I would need to) to get the sense of fear that I'm trying to go for here.
The third part is, of course, darkness and space. Yes, darkvision is prevalent, but I will be using the limits of character vision, along with large rooms which go beynd the 60ft. darkvision limit (for most races), to have the monsters disappear from view and reappear in other positions. I also intend to throw Monsters at them when they have other things to do, like force open a door or interact with a puzzle, so that they are a real problem for them, not just an encounter.
So, what do you all think about this? Do you think it will get the sort of horror vibe across, if combined with scary visuals and crepy monsters in the dark?
All looks good. As you said dnd is a hero fantasy so denying them combat is scary. Ran the adventure “a-deep-and-creeping-darkness” the monsters were only Meanlocks but the hallucinations were great to mess with players
van richten book has some rules for stress where players can get negative modifications to rolls
setting up scenarios where the players need to make a leap of faith is also scary. I set up a puzzle that involved a bunch of mirrors, one player had to go through the mirror to solve it because it was a portal, afterwards he said that was scary because he had no idea where he was going or if it was a trap
Once initiative is rolled the player knows it’s a straight fight, the longer you can postpone that the less in control the players feel
So, fresh off playing Blades in the Dark today I'd suggest looking into the clock mechanisms to add that ticking clock sense. I've also been thinking about ways to add the Devil's Bargin into D&D.
I'd also look at how you could implement some real consequences to D&D. One of the best things about Blades in the Dark is its brutal nature. There are consequences that are ongoing. Injuries don't just go away with a long rest. Players can take severe stress or trauma. So, look into how injuries and long-lasting impacts can work in D&D. Page 272-273 of The Dungeon Master's Guide are a good start, even if dreadfully written compared to other game systems. You could also check the section on Madness (258-260), again, poorly written but a good start. Madness in Call of Cthulhu is really useful as a system to read up on. In Blades, the Stress, Trauma, and Harm system is a thing of beauty and means that players have to think really careful about what they do. Likewise, healing is brutally difficult. Sadly, modifying healing in D&D is more of a difficult thing because of how darn easy and available healing is. Short of removing all healing spells and items I can't see how you could help on that.
Faction and reputation systems can help create some kind of long-term consequence too. The threat of rival gangs, harsh prison terms, being hunted are all good for creating a pressure cooker style of play. Blades does this by keeping you in a very confined environment. If the heat gets too high, you can't just bug out, you're stuck in that city, you will be found sooner or later. So, an island or besieged city might be a great setting.
Finally, the other thing to think about is just how horrifying some of the creatures you come across would be if you really saw them. In Blades, an encounter with a Ghost or spiritual creature is a traumatising experience. It's not common, and it is going to rock you to your core. Truly imagine a Grell. A beaked, tentacled creature. How would you actually react if you saw one in person. Now imagine a Mummy as vicious as D&D mummies are. Those things would be terrifying. In Blades you have either three actions on encountering something otherworldly - Freeze, Flee, or roll a Resolve to try and keep your composure. Could that be modified to D&D?
Being honest, I think D&D can be made to work as a system with horror as a theme, but being honest other systems just do it so very much better than D&D. It's possible in D&D, but it's just not as effective as other systems. Trying other systems can genuinely be scary, but honestly if you're a GM/DM it'll make you a better DM. As a player, it'll make you a better player too.
If you're 100% set on using D&D read up other systems. Interrogate how they work and see what you can borrow, steal, or modify.
The first part of this will be a ticking clock - an actual "you have 3.5 hours of real time to complete this mission" ticking clock. If you are not prepared for your turn in combat, then you will become flustered and feel like you're wasting time. I know that this mechanic will have different ramifications on different characters, so I might make the ticking clock slow down during combat, perhaps. I want the party to feel like the combats are more of an obstacle to their goal than their actual goal, and I don't want them to treat combat like bullet-time for thinking over things, I want them to feel a sense of urgency.
I enjoy this idea and think the implementation will achieve the desired stress level for some. I personally know some players that will go into full blown mental lock-up, and others that will completely disregard the clock. If you have a group that will respond well to this, go for it.
The second part of this comes from an idea I have had to make the players feel like they are losing some control, without taking away their agency. As a bad example, we have the Umber Hulk, which takes away player agency and leaves players feeling frustrated, not frightened, as their characters do things whch they cannot control. This is not the way I want to go.
Instead, I intend to take away the players knowledge of their characters HP. I will roll damage and narrate to them how hard they felt they were hit, (IE was it a scratch, or did it feel like a rib popped?), and they will not know how much damage they have taken, and I will track their health. Characters will probably spend every moment in survival mode after the first combat, which is exactly the way I want it for a horror game. I want the barbarian who's still on 80hp to be running like he's only got 4. That's the whole point of a horror game.
I will allow them to use an action to assess the damage, but its a high DC medicine check to get the exact number, otherwise they get "you're over half" or "you're under half". They cannot repeat the check more than once every 30 minutes, real-time.
I like the idea that you're going for here. It might work very well, so long as the players are all-in with the idea as well. Adding lingering injuries to the list would add the degradation of the body as damage increases, but will become another resource/condition to track on your end. The more you track, and the players don't, it might start to look like you're playing by yourself.
The third part is, of course, darkness and space. Yes, darkvision is prevalent, but I will be using the limits of character vision, along with large rooms which go beynd the 60ft. darkvision limit (for most races), to have the monsters disappear from view and reappear in other positions. I also intend to throw Monsters at them when they have other things to do, like force open a door or interact with a puzzle, so that they are a real problem for them, not just an encounter.
Fog, dust or mist might provide the obscurity that you are working for, better than just darkness. Lack of natural light does provide a veil to hide things in, but to only be able to see 5-10 ft in a heavy fog, and muffled sound, might better provide the sensory depravation that you are describing. Enclosed spaces that limit movement (claustrophobia), underwater or deep water (thalassophobia), fear of heights (acrophobia), the list goes on.. spiders, grasshoppers, crowds, decisions, burning... Incorporating these environmental elements into the game can give the participants that mental link to their real-world fears, but please tread carefully, even if you have consent.
I've run an arc or two that involved a Night Hag. The result was that the party barbarian couldn't complete a long rest, hit point max was dwindling. You want someone in survival mode, removing the ability to long rest will put them into resource drought. No limitied use abilities that reset on a long/short rest, no hp regen, no hit dice regen. Maybe they need make a Wisdom Save or you might incorporate the Sanity score rules from the DMG in order to complete a long rest, otherwise they suffer fitful dreams for the entire night. There are also Fear and Stress mechanics in VRGtR that might prove useful, if nothing more than for inspiration.
If you try this out, please let us know what worked and what didn't.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I will definitely be trying to work out a good system of simple & easy to remember sanity complications for the players to engage with. I am thinking of making it a simple wisdom save when it comes up, and then a random table of minor effects. It's going to be a one-shot so purely mechanical, I have no need for "you gain this personality flaw" type ones!
You mentioning fog reminded me of a magical trap room which I will definitely be including. The room is full of fog - the steps descend into it. The fog is magical, nd has one simple effect - your movement is reduced dramatically.
Players will enter a room they know to be 50ft. across, and start walking into the fog. After 50ft, they've actually moved about 10ft. They will start to assume that they are lost, and panic. I will also include a "losing direction" mechanic for them to lose track of where they were going.
Once again, removing player knowledge rather than player agency - they don't know where they are. I would track it on a simple sheet behind the DM screen (pins in a board, on a paper map, most likely).
There are a lot of great ideas here and it sounds like a fun one-shot!
I can't think of much to add except I have been thinking of a better way to do Darkvision, and it seems like it might be useful for this kind of game especially. Since it's a one-off thing, your players might not mind trying it. The general concept is for Darkvision to be more limited, based off the light source rather than the character. It would let you still use lighting and gloom to set the mood.
It's a pretty simple rule to implement. You can see it here. Maybe it will help!
Here's an idea I've been mulling over for several years.
The characters start off at level 5. Each time they earn XP it reduces their total. At some point they drop down to level 4 and lose abilities. The same for levels 3, 2, and 1. If they drop to 0 XP then their character is out of the game, completely overcome by the horrors of the adventure.
This models the arc of a horror movie or book where the protagonists start off healthy and skilled and optimistic, and over the course of the adventure get wounded and beated down and demoralised and less capable.
It also makes the players fear encounters, since the result of encounters is XP and the result of XP is characters becoming less powerful. This is good - in the horror genre, players should fear encounters.
Another piece of advice for GMing horror is to deliberately stress the players. Give them the sense of urgency that their characters are experiencing.
Use lots of emotive words. Don't describe a "giant centipede attacks" - describe "a brightly coloured multi-legged insec the size of a dog drops from the ceiling onto you, it's stiff bristly hairs scrape your face, the pungent smell of venom fills your nostrils, IT STRIKES, 15 poison damage, what do you do?"
Don't let the players spend time in preperation. Have a timer on actions in combat and enforce it. When Jason or Freddy is chasing the teens they don't take 10 minutes to discuss tactics in the middle of the running and screaming.
Give the players limited information. Enforce the Investigate action. When the characters enter an encounter, give them the basics. If the player wants more, they have to spend an action to do so, meaning they don't get to attack or buff that round.
Maybe even give the players limited information about their characters. It's a lot more work for a GM but can set a good horror tone. Don't let the players know their current hit points, spell slots, and so on. Take away some of their sense of control.
Watching a horror movie is a stressful experience. Playing a horror game should be the same. Otherwise it's just any old RPG game.
Sounds cool. Maybe include something the players can't fight at first too and have this hound them.
Think like the Vashta Nerada in Doctor Who. If you've not seen it they are microscopic carnivores which look like a shadow when they swarm together to attack. A creeping dark shadow endlessly pursuing them and dealing damage when they step it feels in line with your theme. How do you even fight that as its just darkness that holds even when in the light? They could destroy its source/caster at some point which would be the only way to kill it.
It would be a good way to force a quicker decision if the party is feeling too comfortable or add tension to a combat as it slowly creeps towards the fight and threatens to cut off the parties escape.
Hey all, I'm back on this one and I thought I'd bring it back up to ask opinions!
I have 2 options t ogo with for my idea of not telling the players how hurt their characters are. I realised with much further thought that this will invalidate many healing abilities and so on, so I have a new idea to temper it a bit whilst still keeping that frantic feeling I am going for!
The original option was for the DM to track the HP of each character, and then they could to tests to work out how hurt they are, and blah blah lots of mechanics and bookkeeping added to a game that's already timed - bad idea!
New plan!
The players state their current HP when initiative is rolled. The DM tracks their HP during the fight, narrating the hits rather than exact amounts of damage, and the players can use a bonus action to learn their own remaining HP. They also learn it immediately after the fight.
This removes all the "make a test to work it out" bloat and means that they know how hurt they were going into the fight, and have no idea how hurt they'll be coming out, allowing them to keep their tactics relevant (rather than a barbarian on 2HP thinking they can still tank it all because they don't know) but also keepign the mystery of what's occurring because the fight is fast paced and scary!
I've heard it said that you can't get D&D to fit a Horror game, because the players want to be heroes and they will never run away, so if you present them with things genuinely dangerous enough that they should be afaid, they instead end up just dying after charging at it.
I have been pondering the Horror genre for a while for a D&D oneshot, and I am trying to come up with some good mechanics for it which will instill in the players a sense of dread and horror, which I hope will then transfer down into their characters.
The first part of this will be a ticking clock - an actual "you have 3.5 hours of real time to complete this mission" ticking clock. If you are not prepared for your turn in combat, then you will become flustered and feel like you're wasting time. I know that this mechanic will have different ramifications on different characters, so I might make the ticking clock slow down during combat, perhaps. I want the party to feel like the combats are more of an obstacle to their goal than their actual goal, and I don't want them to treat combat like bullet-time for thinking over things, I want them to feel a sense of urgency.
The second part of this comes from an idea I have had to make the players feel like they are losing some control, without taking away their agency. As a bad example, we have the Umber Hulk, which takes away player agency and leaves players feeling frustrated, not frightened, as their characters do things whch they cannot control. This is not the way I want to go.
Instead, I intend to take away the players knowledge of their characters HP. I will roll damage and narrate to them how hard they felt they were hit, (IE was it a scratch, or did it feel like a rib popped?), and they will not know how much damage they have taken, and I will track their health. Characters will probably spend every moment in survival mode after the first combat, which is exactly the way I want it for a horror game. I want the barbarian who's still on 80hp to be running like he's only got 4. That's the whole point of a horror game.
I will allow them to use an action to assess the damage, but its a high DC medicine check to get the exact number, otherwise they get "you're over half" or "you're under half". They cannot repeat the check more than once every 30 minutes, real-time.
I don't think that there's anything else I can take away from them (or that I would need to) to get the sense of fear that I'm trying to go for here.
The third part is, of course, darkness and space. Yes, darkvision is prevalent, but I will be using the limits of character vision, along with large rooms which go beynd the 60ft. darkvision limit (for most races), to have the monsters disappear from view and reappear in other positions. I also intend to throw Monsters at them when they have other things to do, like force open a door or interact with a puzzle, so that they are a real problem for them, not just an encounter.
So, what do you all think about this? Do you think it will get the sort of horror vibe across, if combined with scary visuals and crepy monsters in the dark?
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
All looks good. As you said dnd is a hero fantasy so denying them combat is scary. Ran the adventure “a-deep-and-creeping-darkness” the monsters were only Meanlocks but the hallucinations were great to mess with players
van richten book has some rules for stress where players can get negative modifications to rolls
setting up scenarios where the players need to make a leap of faith is also scary. I set up a puzzle that involved a bunch of mirrors, one player had to go through the mirror to solve it because it was a portal, afterwards he said that was scary because he had no idea where he was going or if it was a trap
Once initiative is rolled the player knows it’s a straight fight, the longer you can postpone that the less in control the players feel
So, fresh off playing Blades in the Dark today I'd suggest looking into the clock mechanisms to add that ticking clock sense. I've also been thinking about ways to add the Devil's Bargin into D&D.
I'd also look at how you could implement some real consequences to D&D. One of the best things about Blades in the Dark is its brutal nature. There are consequences that are ongoing. Injuries don't just go away with a long rest. Players can take severe stress or trauma. So, look into how injuries and long-lasting impacts can work in D&D. Page 272-273 of The Dungeon Master's Guide are a good start, even if dreadfully written compared to other game systems. You could also check the section on Madness (258-260), again, poorly written but a good start. Madness in Call of Cthulhu is really useful as a system to read up on. In Blades, the Stress, Trauma, and Harm system is a thing of beauty and means that players have to think really careful about what they do. Likewise, healing is brutally difficult. Sadly, modifying healing in D&D is more of a difficult thing because of how darn easy and available healing is. Short of removing all healing spells and items I can't see how you could help on that.
Faction and reputation systems can help create some kind of long-term consequence too. The threat of rival gangs, harsh prison terms, being hunted are all good for creating a pressure cooker style of play. Blades does this by keeping you in a very confined environment. If the heat gets too high, you can't just bug out, you're stuck in that city, you will be found sooner or later. So, an island or besieged city might be a great setting.
Finally, the other thing to think about is just how horrifying some of the creatures you come across would be if you really saw them. In Blades, an encounter with a Ghost or spiritual creature is a traumatising experience. It's not common, and it is going to rock you to your core. Truly imagine a Grell. A beaked, tentacled creature. How would you actually react if you saw one in person. Now imagine a Mummy as vicious as D&D mummies are. Those things would be terrifying. In Blades you have either three actions on encountering something otherworldly - Freeze, Flee, or roll a Resolve to try and keep your composure. Could that be modified to D&D?
Being honest, I think D&D can be made to work as a system with horror as a theme, but being honest other systems just do it so very much better than D&D. It's possible in D&D, but it's just not as effective as other systems. Trying other systems can genuinely be scary, but honestly if you're a GM/DM it'll make you a better DM. As a player, it'll make you a better player too.
If you're 100% set on using D&D read up other systems. Interrogate how they work and see what you can borrow, steal, or modify.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I enjoy this idea and think the implementation will achieve the desired stress level for some. I personally know some players that will go into full blown mental lock-up, and others that will completely disregard the clock. If you have a group that will respond well to this, go for it.
I like the idea that you're going for here. It might work very well, so long as the players are all-in with the idea as well. Adding lingering injuries to the list would add the degradation of the body as damage increases, but will become another resource/condition to track on your end. The more you track, and the players don't, it might start to look like you're playing by yourself.
Fog, dust or mist might provide the obscurity that you are working for, better than just darkness. Lack of natural light does provide a veil to hide things in, but to only be able to see 5-10 ft in a heavy fog, and muffled sound, might better provide the sensory depravation that you are describing. Enclosed spaces that limit movement (claustrophobia), underwater or deep water (thalassophobia), fear of heights (acrophobia), the list goes on.. spiders, grasshoppers, crowds, decisions, burning... Incorporating these environmental elements into the game can give the participants that mental link to their real-world fears, but please tread carefully, even if you have consent.
I've run an arc or two that involved a Night Hag. The result was that the party barbarian couldn't complete a long rest, hit point max was dwindling. You want someone in survival mode, removing the ability to long rest will put them into resource drought. No limitied use abilities that reset on a long/short rest, no hp regen, no hit dice regen. Maybe they need make a Wisdom Save or you might incorporate the Sanity score rules from the DMG in order to complete a long rest, otherwise they suffer fitful dreams for the entire night. There are also Fear and Stress mechanics in VRGtR that might prove useful, if nothing more than for inspiration.
If you try this out, please let us know what worked and what didn't.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Thanks for the replies!
I will definitely be trying to work out a good system of simple & easy to remember sanity complications for the players to engage with. I am thinking of making it a simple wisdom save when it comes up, and then a random table of minor effects. It's going to be a one-shot so purely mechanical, I have no need for "you gain this personality flaw" type ones!
You mentioning fog reminded me of a magical trap room which I will definitely be including. The room is full of fog - the steps descend into it. The fog is magical, nd has one simple effect - your movement is reduced dramatically.
Players will enter a room they know to be 50ft. across, and start walking into the fog. After 50ft, they've actually moved about 10ft. They will start to assume that they are lost, and panic. I will also include a "losing direction" mechanic for them to lose track of where they were going.
Once again, removing player knowledge rather than player agency - they don't know where they are. I would track it on a simple sheet behind the DM screen (pins in a board, on a paper map, most likely).
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
There are a lot of great ideas here and it sounds like a fun one-shot!
I can't think of much to add except I have been thinking of a better way to do Darkvision, and it seems like it might be useful for this kind of game especially. Since it's a one-off thing, your players might not mind trying it. The general concept is for Darkvision to be more limited, based off the light source rather than the character. It would let you still use lighting and gloom to set the mood.
It's a pretty simple rule to implement. You can see it here. Maybe it will help!
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/unearthed-arcana/158351-how-i-wish-darkvision-would-work-in-1dnd
Here's an idea I've been mulling over for several years.
The characters start off at level 5. Each time they earn XP it reduces their total. At some point they drop down to level 4 and lose abilities. The same for levels 3, 2, and 1. If they drop to 0 XP then their character is out of the game, completely overcome by the horrors of the adventure.
This models the arc of a horror movie or book where the protagonists start off healthy and skilled and optimistic, and over the course of the adventure get wounded and beated down and demoralised and less capable.
It also makes the players fear encounters, since the result of encounters is XP and the result of XP is characters becoming less powerful. This is good - in the horror genre, players should fear encounters.
Another piece of advice for GMing horror is to deliberately stress the players. Give them the sense of urgency that their characters are experiencing.
Use lots of emotive words. Don't describe a "giant centipede attacks" - describe "a brightly coloured multi-legged insec the size of a dog drops from the ceiling onto you, it's stiff bristly hairs scrape your face, the pungent smell of venom fills your nostrils, IT STRIKES, 15 poison damage, what do you do?"
Don't let the players spend time in preperation. Have a timer on actions in combat and enforce it. When Jason or Freddy is chasing the teens they don't take 10 minutes to discuss tactics in the middle of the running and screaming.
Give the players limited information. Enforce the Investigate action. When the characters enter an encounter, give them the basics. If the player wants more, they have to spend an action to do so, meaning they don't get to attack or buff that round.
Maybe even give the players limited information about their characters. It's a lot more work for a GM but can set a good horror tone. Don't let the players know their current hit points, spell slots, and so on. Take away some of their sense of control.
Watching a horror movie is a stressful experience. Playing a horror game should be the same. Otherwise it's just any old RPG game.
Sounds cool. Maybe include something the players can't fight at first too and have this hound them.
Think like the Vashta Nerada in Doctor Who. If you've not seen it they are microscopic carnivores which look like a shadow when they swarm together to attack. A creeping dark shadow endlessly pursuing them and dealing damage when they step it feels in line with your theme. How do you even fight that as its just darkness that holds even when in the light? They could destroy its source/caster at some point which would be the only way to kill it.
It would be a good way to force a quicker decision if the party is feeling too comfortable or add tension to a combat as it slowly creeps towards the fight and threatens to cut off the parties escape.
Hey all, I'm back on this one and I thought I'd bring it back up to ask opinions!
I have 2 options t ogo with for my idea of not telling the players how hurt their characters are. I realised with much further thought that this will invalidate many healing abilities and so on, so I have a new idea to temper it a bit whilst still keeping that frantic feeling I am going for!
The original option was for the DM to track the HP of each character, and then they could to tests to work out how hurt they are, and blah blah lots of mechanics and bookkeeping added to a game that's already timed - bad idea!
New plan!
The players state their current HP when initiative is rolled. The DM tracks their HP during the fight, narrating the hits rather than exact amounts of damage, and the players can use a bonus action to learn their own remaining HP. They also learn it immediately after the fight.
This removes all the "make a test to work it out" bloat and means that they know how hurt they were going into the fight, and have no idea how hurt they'll be coming out, allowing them to keep their tactics relevant (rather than a barbarian on 2HP thinking they can still tank it all because they don't know) but also keepign the mystery of what's occurring because the fight is fast paced and scary!
What do you all think?
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!