Optional Rules - Simplified Encounters

Duncehack Edition

So who are you?

Just some tosser with an over inflated sense of self importance.

Send verbal abuse via Minds.com

What is the Duncehack?

It emerged from a place of frustration. There's quite a number of areas where 5e could be improved but... it's not going to happen for various reasons.

The Duncehack is my attempt to fix these problems I have. Plan is to go through the whole game - all of it - and homebrew it into the game I think is should have been.

Feel free to disagree with me, but ultimately I think there's no harm in putting my thoughts out there, at the very least if even one DM decides to adopt these rules, then my job is done.

No DM Guild? No OGL Release?

I chafe under binding contracts and both of these are exactly that.

The DM Guild gives you more room to mess with established rules, but basically demands that all be under the service of flagship settings.

The SRD on the other hand gives more room for interesting settings but clamps down extremely hard on what established rules you're allowed to use. Their biggest contention is that they don't want someone to sell a sourcebook that removes the need for core books. Translation: they don't want Pathfinder to happen all over again.

More to the point, both assume money will change hands. I don't want money, I just want Wizards to fix their game.

Groundrules

Groundrules for the Duncehack are as follows:

• No Nerfs: the goal is to bring weaker archetypes on the level of the stronger ones.

• Remove Traps: incentives built into classes and archetypes should provide an active payoff, rather than be the suboptimal choice.

• Frontload Agency, Backend Power: Generally speaking, people like having more options to do things, rather than more raw power. As a design rule: things that feel like core class features, or are defining class mechanics, should happen in the first ten levels, sheer numeric increases in power should come after that.

No money changed hands here

This is a passion project. I want to keep it that way.

I also want to avoid legal issues for self-evident reasons.

No UA?

Too much changes between UA and official release.

The fewer corrections I have the do between UA changes, the better.

Obligatory Natural Crit Plug

http://www.naturalcrit.com/

Someone else made a thing that lets me make homebrews without having to post them on pastebin or something. They deserve a lot of credit for that.

Obligatory /tg/ Plug

The feedback I got from various Anons on this helped me build it into something that wasn't bad and stupid.

No Images?

Needed to get it under 8mb so I could upload it literally anywhere.

So what is this?

So, it's nearing midnight, your party just started combat and they're determined to get through it tonight even though you're well past the point of wanting to sleep. Even though, as DM, you're saying 'we're calling it there', your party's not having a bar of it.

So you give up and do the damn combat and now you're scrambling for a faster way of doing the bookkeeping because your brain just cannot function right now.

Effectively this system is a way of skipping over HP in service of a 'this dies in x number of hits' mentality to ease up on the preperation and bookkeeping.

Simpler Monsters

For combat encounters that you didn't plan and/or have no impact on the story. Like what happens every time the rogue decides pickpocketing is a good idea.

Or when you're hungover and still being forced to run the game. That works too.

System

When building an encounter, don't bother with the actual HP values of the creatures. Instead pay attention to the hit dice.

Number of Hit Dice

This tells you the number of hits landed against the creature the players need to do.

Hit Die Type

This is the important one. Take note of the hit die average + the creature's Constitution Modifier.

This number is your 'damage threshold'.

When a player deals damage to the creature, only note if the result is a multiple of the damage threshold. For every multiple, note a single hit. If it's less than the multiple, don't note it.

Damage Thresholds

Hit Die	Base Threshold Value	Size Category	Example Creature
d4	3	Tiny	Sprite
d6	4	Small	Goblin
d8	5	Medium	Zombie
d10	6	Large	Otyugh
d12	7	Huge	Balor
d20	11	Gargantuan	Kraken

So under this example, a Sprite goes down in a single 3+ damage hit, a goblin goes down in two 4+ damage hits, a zombie goes down in three 8+ damage hits, and so on.

Two-Hit Rule

When two hits against the same creature within the same round fail to break the threshold, treat them both as a single threshold breaking hit and mark it appropriately.

Final Hit Rule

Unless it would break believability somehow, if the creature only has one hit remaining, any damage result on the player's dice will finish it off.

Reminder, use sensible judgement

This is a tool for you to simplify combat dramatically so you can get through it faster. If sticking to this ruleset means extending combat, then you're stubbornly going against the spirit of the thing.

Lethal, Simple Monsters

So, it's the beginning of session one, you decided to start with a level 5 party and every player brought Variant Humans pimped out with all of the combat feats and fighting styles, built specifically to wreck things in combat.

The message is clear: "We're here to play a tactical wargame."

You are unprepared for this though.

Several dozen pages of discarded notes on your narrative campaign later, you're regretting throwing out your 4e books because now you need encounter ideas. How do we keep this table happy?

Your party wants fights hard, but more importantly, they want it frequent, but you want to keep it somewhat simple for your own sanity.

System

This functions identically to the Simpler Monsters system with the following changes.

• Use Hit Die Maximum for the threshold: This means a creature using d8s will have a threshold of 8 + Con. Mod.
• No Negative Con. Mod.: If the creature has a negative Con. Mod, ignore it. The hit die maximum is the lowest the threshold will go.
• Do not use the two-hit rule: They don't hit the threshold, too bad, it wasn't enough damage. The only exception to this is half damage on a successful save spells.
• Do not use the final hit rule: If it's not dead, it's a threat and it's likely to just fight harder.

Reminder, adversarial judgement...

If you're in a situation where your party is crying out for difficult combat, then you've got to swallow your pride and set aside most of your DMing instincts. They want a wargame? you've got to play to win (well, within the rules, never DM Fiat that you win. Which brings me to...).

...But also fair judgment

The Dark Souls family of games always gets brought up by players who want this kind of game but can't quite articulate what they're after.

They're after this: Brutal, but fair. Anything you use to screw a PC, you must allow the PCs to use in the same manner back at you. Even though D&D is an asymmetrical game, and these guidelines don't change that, keep that ethos in the back of your mind when making moment-to-moment judgements on the tabletop.

Its specifically that fairness in approaching adversity they're after.

Remember this is a tool for simplicity

Best to use this for monsters without actual actual plot relevence. 'Bosses' for want of a better term, are probably handled under the normal 5e monster rules.