Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S. Eliot, Preface to Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus
Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten – you’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up – you’re on ten on your guitar, where can you go from there? Where?
Nigel Tufnel, This is Spinal Tap
The Systems Reference Document (SRD) for 5e is a fantastic starting point for fantasy roleplay. It leans toward high fantasy, with heroic characters jumping up from even the most grievous of wounds to win the day. Hit points flow back into them as if from a river. Injuries have no permanent effects. Damage is a concept talked about only in abstract units. Sometimes, we desire more grit in a setting, more lasting consequences for the characters, a harder road for them to walk.
This document describes ways to add more grit to your SRD-based settings. It goes beyond remembering how Falling (SRD 86) and Suffocating (SRD 86) work to applying, first, official optional rules and then two levels of house rules to your Open Gaming License (OGL) based games.
The Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG) (5e) introduces several options for raising the grit level in an OGL setting. These include most of the combat options in the back of the book. Action Options, Cleaving Through Creatures, Injuries, and Massive Damage form a nice kit for making combat more decisive and the potential effects more permanent. The setting becomes truly gritty when you pull in the Healing options and Rest Variants to add prerequisites for healing and to slow healing in general. For the right kinds of campaigns, Fear and Horror, Madness, and use of the Sanity score are also thematically gritty.
For dark or survival themed campaigns like The Curse of Strahd or Tomb of Annihilation our group typically adopts all of the following optional rules from the DMG:
- Roll damage, instead of using average damage. The gritty world is a random world.
- Story-Based Advancement keeps the focus on the narrative and the characters, instead of counting and tracking XP. (DMG 261)
- Some of the optional Healing rules make healing slower and more difficult. (DMG 266-267)
- The Healer's Kit Dependency is logical and makes equipment more important. (DMG 266)
- Slow Natural Healing "works well for grittier, more realistic campaigns." (DMG 267)
- The Gritty Realism rest variant has gritty right there in its name. (DMG 267)
- The Action Options are fun and bring more gritty physicality to conflict. (DMG 271-272)
- Cleaving through Creatures is also pretty gritty, when high-powered characters are taking on minor foes. (DMG 272)
- Massive Damage applies equally to NPCs and PCs. It's grittier. It puts even more emphasis on Constitution. (DMG 273)
- Injuries are the gritty reminder of dangers of the setting. We always use the critical hits option, because it works in the flow of the game. We usually use the badly failed death save as well. Even at our grittiest, we usually don't use the 0 hp option, because there are already significantly gritty consequences for reaching 0 hp. (DMG 272-273)
- Fear and Horror are always available for a key moment in the story. (DMG 266)
In truth, my groups play almost every campaign with the above optional rules, unless we're aiming for vertiginous fantasy. We also use the Sleep (XGtE 77-78), Tool Proficiencies (XGtE 78-85), and Spellcasting (XGtE 85-88) rules from Xanathar's Guide to Everything (XGtE).
For more Lovecraftian horror-themed campaigns we add:
- Each character has a Sanity score from the New Ability Scores: Honor and Sanity section. (DMG 264-266)
- This brings in Madness. (DMG 258-260)
That's about as far as the official options can take us into a gritty world. We'll have to make our own trail from here. This section introduces more optional/house rules that build on the optional rules from the DMG and XGtE.
In addition to the Healer's Kit Dependency, a character can't spend any Hit Dice to heal after finishing a short rest unless someone makes a successful Wisdom (Medicine) check. Only one check is allowed per character wishing to heal per short rest. The check is made with disadvantage if the character is poisoned. The DC of the check depends on the current hit points of the character relative to their max hit points.
| Relative Hit Points | DC of Wisdowm (Medicine) Check |
|---|---|
| >= 1/2 Max HP | 10 |
| < 1/2 Max HP | 15 |
Stabilizing a character at 0 hit points always requires a Wisdom (Medicine) check. The DC is 10 if the character has a healer's kit. It is 15 if the character does not have access to a healer's kit.
If there is no healer's kit available, a character may make a separate Wisdom (Survival) check to search for materials nearby to substitute for the healer's kit before an attempt to heal is made. The DC of the check is 10 if the person making the check is familiar with the surrounding flora or if the check is made in relatively civilized surroundings (e.g an enemy camp). The DC increases for unfamiliar or inhospitable territory. A successful search takes 10 minutes, minus the amount the character succeeded the check by, to a minimum of 1 minute. A failed search takes 10 minutes. It is assumed that any improvised or plant-based alternatives will not last and so must be found when needed. Given the likely length of a search, this part of the rule is expected to be much more useful during a short rest than to help with stabilizing a character.
If played by the rules, the stable condition already provides for much of what is needed for grittier near death outcomes. Unless characters have access to magical or divine healing, there is no way to avoid being unconscious for 1d4 hours before regaining exactly 1 hit point. This rule builds on the stable condition to prevent characters from jumping up at full fighting capacity with just a little magical healing, while still allowing for major healing effects to result in heroic outcomes.
A character that is magically healed from 0 hit points loses the stable condition, if they had it, and gains the weak condition. If that magical healing or later magical healing takes the character's hit point total to half or more of their maximum hit points, they lose the weak condition as well. A long rest or any successful healing during a short rest will also remove the weak condition.
- A weak creature has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks.
- The creature's speed is halved.
- The creature may not take reactions.
A character must start a short rest with at least 1 hit point to benefit from the short rest. The 1d4 hours of being stable have to run their course before their short rest starts, unless magical healing is provided.
No matter how your group determines initiative, you can apply Speed Factor for more intense (and gritty) action. (DMG 270-271). This requires coordination between the GM and party. A character who has a creature size modifier should always apply it to their roll. Characters who wish to take actions with a positive bonus should include that in their declared roll. If, when the character's turn comes, the character decides to do something with a worse modifier, they wait until their turn would normally come. Apply negative factors (not creature size) modifiers only to resolving the action, not to when it is declared. For example, a medium-sized character with a +0 dexterity bonus who rolls a 12 and wants to attack with a heavy weapon would declare the attack at initiative 12, but it would not resolve until initiative 10. This creates more of a to-and-fro in the combat that takes character action choices into consideration. If two characters declared actions on different initiative steps, but resolve them on the same step, the character who declared at the higher step resolves their action first. Otherwise, actions resolve at the same step simultaneously.
When creating a character, choose your race and then roll 4D6, dropping the lowest die, for each ability score in order. You may then swap the values of any two ability scores—you are a hero after all. After that apply the racial modifiers. You get no other choice over how the ability scores are assigned. The rest of the choices are up to you, including class and background. Make the most of what the gods gave you.
Now we test the limits of how far we're willing to go in the name of grit. Once we go here, there is no turning back from the desert. Grit is our new goddess of death. All praise (and hit points) be to Grit.
Under the current SRD, mid-to-high-level combats frequently turn into carnivals of grinding in which participants are trading relatively small amounts of damage after the initial strikes. What should be exciting combats turn into marathons of wash, rinse, and repeat actions. The hit point abstraction loses meaning as characters exchange relative paper cuts until hands are blistered from erasing and writing numbers and dice are worn down to smooth spheres. This section presents an alternative in which hit points do not keep up with the damage escalation in the game. Combats are expected to be quick and ferocious, with small advantages quickly leading to overwhelming victories.
PC's starting hit points are the same as in the SRD. Through 3rd level characters gain hit points by rolling their regular hit dice as described in the SRD. This is meant to go along with the idea that most characters are still rapidly developing and improving until they settle into specializations at 3rd level.
After 3rd level PCs gain hit points at a much slower rate than is described in the rules. For each level gained, the character gains hit points based on the hit dice used by their SRD class.
| Hit Dice | Hit Points Gained Per Level |
|---|---|
| D6 | 1 every even level gained |
| D8 | 1 |
| D10 | 2 |
| D12 | 3 |
| D20 | 4 |
Constitution bonuses are also applied at a slower rate after 3rd level. Instead of adding the Constitution bonus at each level, use the bonus to determine when to add or subtract hit points to or from those that would normally be gained at each level. A character may never lose hit points (current or maximum) as a result of advancing. For example, a sorcerer with a low Constitution could not lose a hit point for advancing to 5th level.
| Constitution Bonus | Level 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | ... |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -5 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | |||||||
| -4 | -1 | -1 | -1 | -1 | ||||||||
| -3 | -1 | -1 | -1 | |||||||||
| -2 | -1 | -1 | ||||||||||
| -1 | -1 | |||||||||||
| +0 | ||||||||||||
| +1 | +1 | |||||||||||
| +2 | +1 | +1 | ||||||||||
| +3 | +1 | +1 | +1 | |||||||||
| +4 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | ||||||||
| +5 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | |||||||
| +6 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | ||||||
| +7 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | |||||
| +8 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | ||||
| +9 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | |||
| +10 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 |
It's easiest to illustrate the effects of the true grit hit points rules for PCs with four examples. In each of these examples, we assume average rolls for hit dice when rolling.
- Wizard with Con 9
- Cleric with Con 12
- Paladin with Con 16
- Barbarian with Con 20
| Level | SRD Wizard | Grit Wizard |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | 5 |
| 2 | 7 | 7 |
| 3 | 10 | 10 |
| 4 | 14 | 10 |
| 5 | 17 | 10 |
| 6 | 21 | 11 |
| 7 | 24 | 11 |
| 8 | 28 | 12 |
| 9 | 31 | 12 |
| 10 | 34 | 13 |
| Level | SRD Cleric | Grit Cleric |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 9 | 9 |
| 2 | 14 | 14 |
| 3 | 20 | 20 |
| 4 | 25 | 22 |
| 5 | 31 | 23 |
| 6 | 36 | 24 |
| 7 | 42 | 25 |
| 8 | 47 | 26 |
| 9 | 53 | 27 |
| 10 | 58 | 28 |
| Level | SRD Paladin | Grit Paladin |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 13 | 13 |
| 2 | 21 | 21 |
| 3 | 30 | 30 |
| 4 | 38 | 33 |
| 5 | 47 | 36 |
| 6 | 55 | 39 |
| 7 | 64 | 41 |
| 8 | 82 | 43 |
| 9 | 91 | 45 |
| 10 | 99 | 47 |
| Level | SRD Barbarian | Grit Barbarian |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 17 | 17 |
| 2 | 28 | 28 |
| 3 | 40 | 40 |
| 4 | 51 | 44 |
| 5 | 63 | 48 |
| 6 | 74 | 52 |
| 7 | 86 | 56 |
| 8 | 97 | 60 |
| 9 | 109 | 63 |
| 10 | 120 | 66 |
Once a character's total levels sum to 3, any future advancement in a class follows the true grit hit points rules, adding the smaller amount based on the hit die of the class level gained.
There are several possible approaches to scaling monster (and NPC) hit points with character hit points based on hit dice or challenge rating. The simplest is to follow the same approach as for the characters, based on the number and type of hit dice the monster uses.
- If the monster has fewer than 3 hit dice, use the hit points as printed.
- If the monster has more than 3 hit dice:
- Multiply the expected average roll for the hit dice plus the constitution modifier by 3. Round up.
- Add the monster's constitution modifier again. (This isn't quite how PCs work.)
- Look up the number of hit points to add for the hit die type and multiply that number by the number of the hit dice the monster has minus 3. Add that to the running hit points.
As an example we can use a Bugbear. (SRD 269)
- It has more than 3 hit dice:
- 4.5 + 1 -> 5.5 * 3 -> 16.5 -> 17
- 17 + 1 -> 18
- 18 + (2 * 1) -> 20
Or something bigger like an ancient green dragon. (SRD 287-288)
- It has more than 3 hit dice:
- 10.5 + 7 -> 17.5 * 3 -> 52.5 -> 53
- 53 + 7 -> 60
- 60 + (19 * 4) -> 136
It should be clear from the numbers above that all characters are much more fragile in a true grit world than under the straight SRD rules. Campaigns applying this last tier of grit favor strategic parties that plan before jumping into big battles.