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[GiglameshDespair]

Sounds kinda... overdone, really. The system is pretty solid as is, and I'm not convinced of the benefits of some of the changes.

[Neyvn]

If you think thats over done, I should really get to work sorting out my Nautical Campagin's settings and rules.

Plot = Synopsis.
Magic is disappearing in the world, first with items, then beings and finally spells themselves. Dwarven Fortresses and Cities sealed themselves away from the outside world, those that approach them are never seen again, those Dwarves that were left outside became Outcast and changed, they now focus mainly on earning enough Gold to buy their way back to their homes. Elves, due to the effect of magic waning, have found themselves becoming susceptible to a leaf is commonly drunk/smoked by the other races. This leaving them in a state much like the IRL Drug known as "scopolamine". They end up becoming slaves to the Human race and others that can afford to own one. Gnomes have all but disappeared all together and Halforcs being slaughtered either by fear or from each other in battlepits.
Adventurers becoming bored with the lack of adventure and such due to Dungeons being conquered quickly and in large numbers, Dragons and other magical challenges disappearing and such too doesn't help. But a promise of new adventure as a new landmass has appeared. What was previously a magical storm that prevented anyone of passing through now fallen into nothing due to the magical drain, the new land has been opened to the greed of man and ships moving in. With strange folk living there, looking like that of deamons and drake (Tieflings and Dragonborn) and new places to loot and use for resources. Things will change...

Think a combination of Age of Sails and the discovery of America/Caribbean/Asia for theme. The idea of the Carribbean for the location and Asia for the people in the way they differ. Wish I could explain clearler tbh but I am currently fighting the ZZZzzz...

"Cons"
Magic Quality is LOW. Magic Classes have a chance of their spells fizzling or causing WildMagic effects to happen, magical items are limited to rare special occasions.
Races are limited within certain parameters. Tiefling/Dragonborn/Dwarf are NPC only. Elves are considered Slaves in way of social standings and Halforcs and Gnomes are Rare to the point of being unable to pick them as a PC Race.
Classes are limited in way of what is considered Western over Eastern in certain ways, eg Monk is compleatly out of the question, Warlock might be as well. Ideally a limit on how themed the Class is tbh.

"Pros"
Heh, haven't really got much other then the fact that unless Story Events are triggered, the whole game could have sessions of player initiated things happening. The Players will have a chance to choose between three lifestyles. 1: Pirate, 2: Navy, 3: Freelance. Each have their own sidestories and bonuses and such. But mainly if the players what to make money to buy a better Ship they can instead of going after the Big Bad...

[Neonivek]

The short rest span might be nerfing a few classes to hell and back... Given that a short rest is pretty much meant to be a breather as opposed to an outright nap.

I'd never touch Warlocks under that ruleset...  The entire gimmick of that class is that it basically is back up to full strength during each and every short rest.

[UXLZ]

Well, now I know I definitely wouldn't play in that campaign.  Nothing I can see that's really problematic or that seems massively overdone, but it just doesn't sound much like fun.

Still, I hope you and your players enjoy yourselves.

I see, so you're more one for the dice than for the story and experience? What I'm trying to do with this rule set more so than anything is make it so the players have real reason to avoid fighting outside of me throwing over leveled stuff in their face. Taking the focus off the dice and onto what's actually happening is my biggest concern. It isn't finished, though, unfortunately.

Can you actually tell me what it is that makes it sound 'unfun'?

The short rest span might be nerfing a few classes to hell and back... Given that a short rest is pretty much meant to be a breather as opposed to an outright nap.

I'd never touch Warlocks under that ruleset...  The entire gimmick of that class is that it basically is back up to full strength during each and every short rest.

Hmm, I guess I can go back to DnD's regular rest times if I'm making it so that HP doesn't automatically go back to full... Does making hit dice expended during a long rest restore an additional con modifier or two HP sound alright, as well? I really, really want to avoid the regular DnD "Oh, I just got nearly killed by a dragon 8 times, but I slept it off and now I'm strong as ever."

Sounds kinda... overdone, really. The system is pretty solid as is, and I'm not convinced of the benefits of some of the changes.

Isn't everything I do overdone?
All changes have benefits, some have downsides that I'm going to try to fix. I wouldn't be enacting them if there wasn't a point, would I?

@Sjm: Hmm, I guess I could do that, it sounds reasonable enough. The reason I'm hiding them is because I don't want anyone ever getting complacent. Well, people wouldn't want to waste them anyway, so it shouldn't matter. I'll use a permanent descriptor, then, since letting them see the actual number would ruin the porpoise.

Elves are considered Slaves in way of social standings

We're off to see the whizzard, the wonder whizzard of oz! (I'm always leery of seeing an entire race of slaves in a campaign, especially if they're elves. >_>)
Why are they considered slaves?
How does the stigma translate to half-elves?

[NullForceOmega]

Actually, most of my issue with the ruleset above is its focus on numbers.

I play fast and hard with the rules, I don't go set in stone until I have to make a call, then it becomes dogma.  Half the time I don't even roll.

The system you outlined has huge overhead on dice rolling, even if it is meant to facilitate roleplaying over 'rollplaying'.

Everything in my games is story and experience, most of the time dice will be rolled once or twice a session (unless there is actual combat, then it gets very crunchy.)

The part that seems 'not fun' with the above is the DF level of realism.  While waiting four weeks for a broken bone to mend is realistic, and something I would do, the focus on 'don't get hurt or you're fucked' just sounds unpleasant from my perspective.  I know that there are players that appreciate that roguelike level of hardcore, but I'm just not one of them.  I'm not trying to say there is anything wrong with what you want to accomplish, because there really isn't, just that it isn't something I personally would have fun playing.

[Flying Dice]

I'll insert a bit-by-bit initial response.

Here's a taster of some of my upcoming campaign's rule set. Tell me if anything seems a bit extreme or overdone. I'll be trying to make stuff more concise when it actually goes up, of course (for instance, Gritty Realism and Slow Natural Healing could probably be in the same spoiler.)

Spoiler: Proficiency Variant (click to show/hide)

Attack Rolls, Attack Rolls and Saving Throws the character is proficient in will instead have a dice rolled based on the proficiency score and added d20 roll. Expertise makes that dice be rolled twice. For example, a second level Rogue who has expertise and proficiency in Sneak with a DEX of 16 will have their sneak checks rolled as 1d20 + 2d4 + 3, rather than 1d20 + 7.

Seems like pointless complication. You've already got the random element built into the system, changing proficiency to a die roll rather than a flat number just means that players' supposed core abilities are less reliable and more inconsistent. Why is this necessary? What purpose does it serve?

Spoiler: Fear And Horror (click to show/hide)

Fear: When confronting threats a creature has no hope of overcoming, a Wisdom saving throw will be rolled with a DC set according to circumstance. A failed roll means becoming frightened for 1 minute, with a repeat of the saving throw at the end of each of that character's turns, which ends the effect if passed. This will be... Quite uncommon.

Horror: More than simple fright. The revulsion and anguish upon something completely contrary to normal understanding, what can and should occur, or discovering a dreadful truth. The saving throw is Charisma, and the DC is once again dependent on circumstances. Failed means short term or long-term madness that I'll decide or roll for.

Is this supposed to be CoC? Basically what you're saying is that you're going to throw encounters at players that they aren't going to be able to defeat, attach an arbitrary and unknown DC to it, and then nerf a lot of their means of escape if they fail. Moreover, you're eliminating player agency by using a condition which forces them to flee using whatever resources they have.

Worse, you add the same situation, but then in addition to removing agency in the short term, you also arbitrarily inflict semipermanent debuffs on players' characters because you decided to throw them at an encounter they had no chance of beating without even giving them the chance to flee. I haven't read the rest, but I suspect/hope this section is going to be the worst. This sort of thing is the type of houserule a control-freak killer DM would use to prevent his players from having fun or making their own decisions. It's not always bad to present players with hooks that lead to an encounter that they really shouldn't attempt, but they should have the option of confronting it despite the warning signs, and the chance, however slim, of pulling out a victory if there's even the slightest mechanical possibility of such.

Spoiler: Slow Natural Healing (click to show/hide)

Hit points aren't regained via Long Rests, a character may spend Hit Dice at the end just like a normal rest.

Not terrible in a void, but given that the rest of the rules sound like you're going to be flooding players with encounters they're not ready for, it doesn't exactly look good. At least you followed up with a semicoherent reason for it. Smells like "muh realisms" to me. Why is it a flat "You cannot heal" rather than reduced healing?

Spoiler: Gritty Realism (click to show/hide)

A short rest is 4 hours, and a long rest is 3 days.

Read the PHB more thoroughly before you houserule. As has already been pointed out, this heavily nerfs several classes for no good reason. No, "But muh realisms" doesn't count as a good reason.

Spoiler: Initiative (click to show/hide)

Initiative is rolled with 3d6 rather than 1d20. The intent of this is to keep variation while making a creature's speed or readiness have more effect.

Getting knocked out in battle sets initiative to 0.

Dice pools are sometimes a good system to use. This case isn't one because of the way you're using it. It's going to average out at mediocre rolls every single time, and it's going to feel boring as hell. The second part is reasonable.

Spoiler: Lingering Injuries (click to show/hide)

Depending on what happens, I may decide to add a lingering injury effect from the DMG. A good example of when one is likely occur is when a creature goes from Max HP to 0 in a single round or attack, or roll a 1 on a death saving throw.

More of the same killer DM muh realisms crap from before. You're arbitrarily removing player agency and crippling characters because you want to.

Spoiler: System Shock (click to show/hide)

When a creature suffer damage equal to half or more of their Max HP they roll a CON saving throw, and upon failing suffer an effect such as one of these.
- Drop to 0 hit points.
- Drop to 0 hit points, but stable.
- Stunned until the end of their next turn.
- Can't take reactions and has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the end of their next turn.
- Can't take reactions.

See above re: Removing agency and killer DMing.

Spoiler: Dude, Where's My Spells? (click to show/hide)

All planar-shifting, long distance teleportation and resurrection magic (or anything that involves communicating with the dead or so forth) is banned due to conflict with setting. If you die, you’re dead. Zombie-raising type necromancy is still allowed, of course.

Workable enough, but if you really want a low-magic setting, ban casters and use few/none as enemies and NPCs instead of nerfing half the classes in the game.

Spoiler: The Iron Curtain (click to show/hide)

This may be the thing that makes several players decide not to apply for this game. Oh well, I reckon it's worth it.
Everything will be rolled behind-the-scenes by me, and you guys won't see any of the results directly bar a few things where it's necessary (initiative and how much damage you take.)
The goal of this is similar to the goal of rolling stealth/insight/etc checks outside of the player's eyes. That is, avoiding situations like "Oops I rolled a one for stealth, better not try and be sneaky this time" and "Oh, a natural 20, whatever my insight shows up is almost certainly true."

Plus, it puts the focus where (I believe) it should be. The RP.

This is a massive red flag for any player. Even if you are honestly just trying to focus on roleplay, the way this will come off to any player ever is that you're a killer DM who doesn't want his players to notice him fudging rolls. If a DM ever said this to me when I joined their group, I would walk out laughing at them. Among other things, it also removes vital information from the players; if they fail a check, not knowing what they rolled for it means that they don't know if it's worth their time to keep trying.

Spoiler: Dying is Easier... Sorta (click to show/hide)

Creatures will die upon failing two death saving throws, rather than three. However, rolling a natural one won't count as two failures, instead counting as a single failure and causing the creature to end up with a lingering injury.

Again, muh realisms and killer DMing.

Spoiler: A Little Fate Goes A Long Way (click to show/hide)

Here's probably the most major homebrew rule, and I'm inspired by Dark Heresy for this one. Each PC will start the game off with a certain number of "Fate Points." Upon making any check that you have to roll 1d20 for, you may choose to spend a Fate Point to gain advantage for that roll.
However, in accordance with the Iron Curtain, no one will know how many fate points they have, and they also serve another important function... Stopping you from dying. In the event that a PC's death is certain, a number of fate points dependent on the severity of the system will be used to save them. For example, getting shanked by a skeleton will probably only cost a single point to be spared from. Falling from orbit, or dropping into a pit of lava without protection, however... May not be quite so cheap, and in some cases may be more than what you can afford. (In which case the character will either receive major injuries if they aren't overspending by that much, or simply die as per norm if it's more than a quick loan might be able to cover.

Fate Points will be regained at times where I see fit to have you regain them. It might be because you slew the Demi-Lich by tossing his phylactery into the fires of Mt. Doom, or it might be because you won a pie eating contest. Regardless, sometimes you might get a few RP hints about the current status of your fate points."

DID YOU NOT EVEN READ ABOUT 5E BEFORE YOU WROTE THESE? THIS LITERALLY ALREADY EXISTS IN THE SYSTEM. http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/41852/what-is-inspiration

All you'd need to do is tweak it slightly.

The long and short of it is that those houserules read like the wishlist of a DM who wants to remove as much agency from his players as he can get away with, and then repeatedly subject them to overleveled encounters while preventing them from managing to pull off victories against those same impossible odds. I would never under any circumstances play with a DM who gave me this sort of forewarning about the sort of bullshit he planned on pulling.

It's also not the sort of thing that fosters enjoyable RP. Different people take pleasure from different aspects of the game, and the best is usually a mix of roleplay and rollplay, because the two inherently complement and support each other. The DM provides the world, the players provide the motive action for the protagonists, and the dice provide the outcomes of their actions. Your justifications sound like the same sort of arguments used by people supporting diceless RPGs, and I'll just say straight out that diceless tabletop and freeform RP almost never work out well. You're not quite so far in that direction, but you've meandered into another poisonous trap instead.

Even games which already have mechanics more in line with what you want (read: CoC and Paranoia, for example) where the DM is encouraged to be a bit of a dick, they still don't set things up to remove player agency or prevent them from risking all and potentially triumphing when they ordinarily wouldn't.

It sounds like you're trying to run a high-lethality low-magic campaign with a low fantasy feel, but... there are myriad ways to do it better than this. Good luck finding players, I suppose. :|

[UXLZ]

If there are better ways than tell me. I'll be responding to your points in an edit after this, or posting it if a response comes up. I'm extremely open to  criticism and suggestions otherwise I wouldn't have posted it here.

Spoiler: This is Super Long (click to show/hide)

Actually, most of my issue with the ruleset above is its focus on numbers.

Hmm, actually, I can see that issue.

The part that seems 'not fun' with the above is the DF level of realism.  While waiting four weeks for a broken bone to mend is realistic, and something I would do, the focus on 'don't get hurt or you're fucked' just sounds unpleasant from my perspective.  I know that there are players that appreciate that roguelike level of hardcore, but I'm just not one of them.  I'm not trying to say there is anything wrong with what you want to accomplish, because there really isn't, just that it isn't something I personally would have fun playing.

I'm already considering lowering the long rest/short rest times. Tell me, given the choice, from a purely experience driven perspective rather than power gaming one,would you prefer 8 hour short rests and 3 day long rests, or long resting doesn't automatically restore health to full?

Oh, right, some of these rules are from the DMG, some are purely homebrew. Also, you seem to be making the instant assumption that I'm a terrible DM, at least going by your tone (but internet, blah de blah, I'm probably misinterpreting.)
Oh, and I'd like to mention that it's not actually low fantasy. It's quite high fantasy, actually.

Also, something you seem to have misunderstood FD is that I'm intending on hosting the game here, like Dwarmin's campaign. Play-by-post, which is why I'm willing to go with some odder rules. (Sessions won't be wasted healing since sessions don't exist, RP focus is easier, so forth.)

Seems like pointless complication. You've already got the random element built into the system, changing proficiency to a die roll rather than a flat number just means that players' supposed core abilities are less reliable and more inconsistent. Why is this necessary? What purpose does it serve?

It's there to make things a little less concrete. It's extra complexity, yes, but it's an extra range of failure->success. It makes the system somewhat less linear. I guess it's not "necessary," though.

Is this supposed to be CoC? Basically what you're saying is that you're going to throw encounters at players that they aren't going to be able to defeat, attach an arbitrary and unknown DC to it, and then nerf a lot of their means of escape if they fail. Moreover, you're eliminating player agency by using a condition which forces them to flee using whatever resources they have.

Worse, you add the same situation, but then in addition to removing agency in the short term, you also arbitrarily inflict semipermanent debuffs on players' characters because you decided to throw them at an encounter they had no chance of beating without even giving them the chance to flee. I haven't read the rest, but I suspect/hope this section is going to be the worst. This sort of thing is the type of houserule a control-freak killer DM would use to prevent his players from having fun or making their own decisions. It's not always bad to present players with hooks that lead to an encounter that they really shouldn't attempt, but they should have the option of confronting it despite the warning signs, and the chance, however slim, of pulling out a victory if there's even the slightest mechanical possibility of such.

I can probably pull off a similar effect via the way I present things so I'll scrap this rule, and anywhere where I think this would be absolutely necessary I'll do something similar anyway. (with different penalties, like to concentration or dexterity checks, perhaps?)

Not terrible in a void, but given that the rest of the rules sound like you're going to be flooding players with encounters they're not ready for, it doesn't exactly look good. At least you followed up with a semicoherent reason for it. Smells like "muh realisms" to me. Why is it a flat "You cannot heal" rather than reduced healing?

I just sort of took it from the DMG, but I guess quarter or half healing would make a bit more sense?

Read the PHB more thoroughly before you houserule. As has already been pointed out, this heavily nerfs several classes for no good reason. No, "But muh realisms" doesn't count as a good reason.

And as I've already said to Neon, I'm considering lowering the time required for resting.
If "but muh realisms" doesn't count as a good reason, does "muh fantasies" count as a good reason? Well, there's the caster nerfing which is a fair one. Still, I'm starting to realise that most of these things I can do in a less rigid manner by how I set stuff up, so oh well.

Dice pools are sometimes a good system to use. This case isn't one because of the way you're using it. It's going to average out at mediocre rolls every single time, and it's going to feel boring as hell. The second part is reasonable.

Tell me a good time to use it then. The point was to skew it towards the center and thus allow init modifiers to have more seeming effect, but oh well, back to linearity. 1d20 it is.

More of the same killer DM muh realisms crap from before. You're arbitrarily removing player agency and crippling characters because you want to.

More of the same power gaming muh fantasies crap from before. You've got points, but please stop it with the mocking. I find lasting injuries interesting, you don't, I see.
Also, it's not like it's impossible to recover from them, they're "lingering", not "eternal."

See above re: Removing agency and killer DMing.

Applies to enemies too, not just players.. If I wanted to remove agency, I'd write a book. Also, it doesn't remove agency, it's a combat effect. Removing agency is "But Thou Must!"
Killer DMing, I guess? I dunno, the only time I've ever ran a killer session was when I first gave it a shot. (DMing, that is.)
I like to think I usually get the balance right.

Workable enough, but if you really want a low-magic setting, ban casters and use few/none as enemies and NPCs instead of nerfing half the classes in the game.

It's not a low-magic setting, though. It's just that those specific spells (actually, long distance teleportation is fine, so remove that.) are banned due to conflict with the setting. The banned spells/effects are basically just these: Resurrection/contacting the dead. Planar travel (summons are still fine.)  and... That's it. Two effects. Not exactly "low magic" or "nerfing half the classes (in any meaningful way at least) eh?

This is a massive red flag for any player. Even if you are honestly just trying to focus on roleplay, the way this will come off to any player ever is that you're a killer DM who doesn't want his players to notice him fudging rolls. If a DM ever said this to me when I joined their group, I would walk out laughing at them. Among other things, it also removes vital information from the players; if they fail a check, not knowing what they rolled for it means that they don't know if it's worth their time to keep trying.

Firstly, I'm intending on running it Play-by-post here on B12 with me rolling everything. As is likely obvious, that means that if I wanted to fudge rolls I could anyway. You seem to keep assuming all I want to do is kill everyone and cheat.
Do you at least think hiding a player's Stealth, Arcana, Insight, and other similar checks is reasonable, at least? Or are you someone who likes to try and stealth, fail their stealth roll, then just say "Nah, I'll not go." or succeed super well on your insight check and go "Yep, definitely reliable!"?

Again, muh realisms and killer DMing.

Again, what's wrong with muh realisms? This is probably the only case where I'll agree with you that I'm probably being a bit too killer, though, so I guess I'll change it back to three. I just don't like the idea of a greatsword wielding half-orc repeatedly swinging his greatsword into an unconscious person's face and having them survive because someone keeps stabilizing them.

DID YOU NOT EVEN READ ABOUT 5E BEFORE YOU WROTE THESE? THIS LITERALLY ALREADY EXISTS IN THE SYSTEM. http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/41852/what-is-inspiration

All you'd need to do is tweak it slightly.

I actually totally forgot about inspiration. Also, yes, I've read the PHB thank you very much. And the DMG. And the MM. And the online supplements.

gave me this sort of forewarning about the sort of bullshit he planned on pulling.

Please stop assuming I'm doing this with malicious intentions, okay? I'm doing the same about your post despite its (seeming) ridiculously insulting and derogatory tone, since I don't think you're doing it intentionally. 


I'd also like to mention that there are other things I was considering employing. For instance, a slightly easier version of Dwarmin's monster research system from New World to make up for players lacking information from fighting.

[Flying Dice]

Sorry, I was trying to make the point that that's what all of those rules taken together give the appearance of, regardless of your intentions. It was already clear from the context ITT that you weren't aiming for something like that, but if you just put up those houserules in your OP I'd be willing to bet that a lot of people would make those assumptions. That's one of the key things to remember: you're trying to make the premise appealing to potential players. Obviously some won't like this point or that of what you've done, but if a casual readthrough just gives the impression that players are going to be crippled and punished in a bunch of different ways...

Also, let me clarify what I meant when I was talking about player agency: A lot of what you've done is geared towards punishing players both during and after confrontations which are above the CR they should be fighting against, even ones which they didn't chose to engage. This in particular is, IMO, bad regardless of the context. You're telling players, "Oh, you'd better not fight unless it's a sure thing, otherwise you'll get nasty debuffs, lingering injuries, and have to take days to heal up before you can do anything interesting." It may not be what you intend, but that's how it'll be parsed. If a player or party end up in a really bad situation, it shouldn't be because of something out of their control, or a single relatively minor error in judgement, it should be because of them repeatedly making bad decisions and/or rolling very poorly.

Re: "Muh realisms." I'm not talking about mundane vs. fantasy, I'm talking about the application of complications that contribute nothing towards player enjoyment. If there's one thing I can guarantee, it's that most players won't enjoy spending most of their game time nursing injuries and avoiding fights (unless you somehow manage to find an entire party worth of people who want to be brutalized).

Suggestions:

1. You don't need a houseruled effect to make it clear when the party's shoulder deep in shit. All you have to do is make sure that the encounters you've been dropping warning hints about are actually difficult enough that the party will expend most of their resources and possibly lose someone if they fight and don't roll well. Neonivek has commented on a relevant factor before: mook-tier enemies stay threatening pretty much forever. If you've got an encounter that you want to be challenging and dangerous, consider dropping in a number of smaller threats instead of beefing the main one up, to avoid the traditional motif of "smack BBEG until he pops".

2. Regarding hiding skill checks: What was that you were saying about assumptions?

But no. I've never seen a DM hide players' rolls like that. If someone rolls Investigation to search for clues in a room, they'll see what they rolled, and even if they didn't they'll be able to get the general gist of their roll from the DM's description (unless the DM is one of the lazy types that just says "You find nothing," if you don't pass the DC).

Actually, I'm wondering what sort of games you've played in where someone decides on a course of action, aborts when they roll low, and is allowed to get away with it? You'd be laughed away from the table with any group I've played with. That's like saying, "I'm going to shoot at the third orc from the left," missing, and then saying, "Wait, wait, mulligan, I'm shooting the second one from the left I mean." Even more so with PbP because you'll be rolling actions for players, which means that by the time they see the roll the action has already happened. All this will do is annoy players and slow down play because they won't know how they rolled when they failed, which tends to lead to most of the party attempting the same check.

You might make an exception for Perception, but that would be sort of dickish, given that a player who's bothering to roll Perception is already being proactive and is suspicious of something because they're not relying on Passive Perception.

3. Basically, if I had to summarize a lot of these proposed changes, it'd be as artificial difficulty. You're not changing the meat and bones of the game in meaningful ways for the most part, you're just introducing annoyances and time-wasting drek to drop on players when they don't do what you want. If I'm a DM and I've been warning my players about (say) the shady merchant lord in the hub city and they've investigated enough to pick up clues that warn them away from directly confronting him in combat... I'll not hold back if they decide to do it anyways, but I won't tilt things any more than the inherent difficulty of him being a vampire lord with a substantial court already does; if they take that risk, they get to roll it out. Maybe they'll die horribly. Maybe they'll barely escape with their lives. Maybe they'll kill him by the skin of their teeth. That's up to their choices and how the dice fall; it's my place to tell the story in an interesting manner and roll for their enemies, not to tell them that they suddenly get an extra disadvantage because they didn't do what I wanted, or that they won't be able to adventure for a week or two worth of healing, because they didn't do what I wanted.

There are ways to make the combat and aftermath more concrete. You can rule that players can't try to stabilize others if they or the downed person is threatened. You can make healing items few and far between. You can rule that checks to treat injuries and stabilize others are made at disadvantage if you don't have a proficiency in Medicine or a theoretical Healer's Kit. You can make natural healing vary based on the quality of rest (say, something like 10% on bare ground/15% blanket/25% bedroll/50% bedroll + tent/100% real bed and shelter). Death Saves are already plenty dangerous; being damaged at all adds one failure, and a nat 1 or taking damage from a crit adds 2 failures. If you go down, it's easy to die.

If you want to simulate wounds in a relatively simple way, try this: If you go down but survive, each failure on your death saves persists for [arbitrary period of time]. Maybe a day for one failure, a week for two. If you go down again before that time's up, you're still at 1 or 2 failures and die more easily. That creates a risk which the players can manage both individually (taking fewer chances) and collectively (doing easier tasks, taking downtime, protecting wounded party members). It creates that element of danger without making players feel useless because their raw numbers are lower.

Stuff like that. Make changes, if you must make changes, which create situations where the players still have meaningful choices and room for risk/reward assessment. If you want a bit of extra brutality, I've got a PDF of the Critonomicon kicking around if you want to copy a few of its tables.

[NullForceOmega]

UXLZ, I'm really not suggesting that you are a bad DM (though on review it looks like that was aimed at FD), or anything of the sort.  I know that my tone can be confrontational and I do apologize if something I said is making you defensive.

I think that from your assertions that you have a solid grasp on what you want to do with your game, but that maybe you don't have a good idea how.  Again, not trying to be offensive here.

My above commentary about my methodology was due to your assertion that I am a 'dice' DM, when that is definitely not the case.

[UXLZ]

PPE: NFO, that was aimed at FD, you're fine. >_>
I guess I may have phrased the question about whether you preferred the crunch to the fluff was a bit mean, sorry about that.
I guess you don't work with 5E so you wouldn't know, but do you have any suggestions or advice on "how" to run it? Since I'd say that assessment is fairly correct.


Okay, now this post is something I can work with. I'll do my best to take the advice into account. I'd definitely like to see that Critonomicon. xD

I'm intending on using a lot of re-fluffed or adapted from other works creatures to prevent Metagaming (the unavoidable type, not the intentional type. I know I personally find it boring as a player encountering something I already know all about, even if I can RP my character as ignorant.)

But no. I've never seen a DM hide players' rolls like that. If someone rolls Investigation to search for clues in a room, they'll see what they rolled, and even if they didn't they'll be able to get the general gist of their roll from the DM's description (unless the DM is one of the lazy types that just says "You find nothing," if you don't pass the DC).

I should have clarified in the rule more clearly, that's what I'm intending to do. The players will hopefully get an idea of how well they've done from the way I describe stuff. The reason I want to hide the rolls is that if a player does absolutely terrible (like a 3 on the aforementioned investigation check) I'd probably have them pick up on a false lead. If they know they rolled a three, obviously they'd just be like "Ha ha, as if." Can you see why I want to be able to do that? I mean, maybe not to you, but I'd love that as a player. I guess we could make a list of what rolls are reasonable to hide and those that aren't? Some rolls have immediately observable effects like Athletics or Sleight of Hand, but the thing is... I see all these situations where it would be good to hide the roll. What if the thief tries to pickpocket from someone and fails abysmally, but the person notices and intentionally lets them steal it to blackmail them with or something later on? If the thief knows they bungled it, they'd know something was up.

In regards to the stealth, no, it doesn't quite work like that, but what about insight? If you roll a three for insight, are you going to trust what the DM tells you? If you roll a twenty, it's obvious that whatever comes up is the truth. On a three, you don't know, or you might misinterpret. You could once again say it's "dickishness", but that's the kind of thing I'd love as a player since it makes things more (in my view) dynamic, less sure.

I'll use the death saving throw variant, that one makes enough sense. Some of the lingering wounds are fairly interesting, though, and I'm a bit sad to not use them. I believe one of them was a hideous scar that gave disadvantage on Persuasion effects but advantage of Intimidation.

I like the sliding scale of healing, but you still end up with the same "I just beaten to within a hair's breadth of my life by a dragon, but I slept in a nice bed and now I'm better than ever!"
Do you think combining the injury and natural healing based on rest together might work? Something like having two failed death saving throws lowers the QoR factor by one? (So sleeping on bare ground doesn't heal at all, blanket heals 10%, etc.)
Or is that, *ahem*, taking away agency? xD

Oh, and is removing planar shifting/resurrection really that much of an issue? There are genuine conflicts with the setting (which I won't go into, since spoilerz.)

Man, if the variant rules got slammed this much, I wonder what you guys will think of the character creation options.

Spoiler: Summary (click to show/hide)

Character class doesn’t matter when it comes to background fluff. Essentially, if you want to take the monk class, you don’t have to be an actual monk. Some justification will be needed, but we can work with that on a case by case basis. Since the player count is small, everyone can have some awesome backstories. The world is flexible, but PM me first. Nothing overblown, though. You’ll regret that.

The only available race from a fluff perspective is Human. In this world, the other races never existed in the first place. However, I’m letting you take other race’s stat blocks as well as their racial abilities with fluff changes where necessary.
The exception is darkvision. No one gets darkvision naturally, since I actually want (natural) darkness to be a genuine concern.

[NullForceOmega]

I think the biggest element to making the game more gritty/real has more to do with consequences than difficulty.  For instance the actual fight might be over in a moment, but the effects can be very disproportionate.  Without having any kind of details about the actual events and actors in the campaign I can't get very specific tho'.

From the looks of it you want a campaign where the players have to decide whether or not a fight is worthwhile (i.e. the resources they would have to expend not only to finish the fight, but to deal with the aftermath) in order to keep them immersed, and that on its own is really solid.  I'm just not sure that mechanical is the best way to handle that, I'd probably use politics, grudges, and other things that might not kill them outright but instead make their lives more difficult.

Then again I may be barking up the wrong tree here, lack of data and all.

[UXLZ]

Edited my previous post with some additional stuff (character creation options.)

That's probably a fairly good gist. If I were to describe the setting it would probably be the midpoint between Regular DnD, Dark Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery, with some aspects from each of them.

[scriver]

I won't comment on mechanics and such because I'm not very good at seeing on forehand how such things and changes will work out in practice, so I know to keep my nose out of those discussions. But to me it sounds like a lot of these changes come from you not worrying about your players not playing their characters fairly, UXLZ, and half-expecting them to try and cheat the game if they can.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, NFO hit the nail I was dancing around. This is the sort of thing you mostly don't need rules for if the world supports it.

Re: Rolls: I suppose? If you have players who don't have the ability to not metagame. In that light it sounds a lot more like a big chunk of that is anti-metagaming. I'd like to say that that shouldn't be a concern with people who want an RP heavy campaign, but yeah. 

That character creation isn't really a factor. I mean, assuming you've got an in-setting reason for it. The only think that's kind of wonky is allowing people to minmax with their race even when those races don't exist, but it's not like there isn't a history of human variants. Would someone who is essentially a "human" gnome or halfling be Small sized? An "elf" have the non-darkvision racial abilities (yes)? 'Cause that's basically either not going to make sense or require in-story justification which makes all of the axed races humans in name only, sorta. Why are "elves" able to trance, why do they have that immunity, &c? The rest of it I actually like, because it opens up potential.

[Bohandas]

I think the biggest element to making the game more gritty/real has more to do with consequences than difficulty.  For instance the actual fight might be over in a moment, but the effects can be very disproportionate.

To implement something like that, what if you made critical hits deal constitution damage equal to the weapon's critical multiplier.

EDIT:
This could also help alleviate the traditional problem of wizards being more powerful than fighters, (especially if the constitution damage is in addition to rather than instead of the normal extra damage) as critical hits for spells are extremely limited.