5E Hardcore Mode by Runehammer


#43

Hey!

I’m an old-school D&D fan, looking to simplify my 5e game. Loving Hardcore Mode so far, but I do feel like I need some clarification regarding scope. So, my questions are:

  1. Are all these house rules designed to be used together? I’m leaning towards just picking up a few of them, modifying a few of the others.
  2. How does this paradigm think of monsters such as a lich, with CR>10, for instance? I see two ways of handling this: either digging up an old AD&D 1e retroclone and converting, or downscaling CR to a 1-10 range. That is if I don’t use it as is, in which case a lich would have AC 31, for instance, and that is a bit crazy. How to handle these monsters?
  3. What about the rest of the abilities these characters would get starting at level 11? Do we just toss these out or do we compress them in the new 1-10 range?

I am tempted to ignore the level 10 cap for both PCs and monsters, and just use pure HD for the monsters as well as for the PCs. Also, I think I’m with @schilcoa on removing the limit on spells and just making everything dependent on the roll, a la WFRP or RuneQuest.

Please advise, I’m really in the dark here. How do you handle these issues at your table?

(Also, should I just scrap D&D altogether and just play ICRPG?)