Difficulty Mods!

There are plenty of third-party "hardcore" tweaks for ToV and 5E, and all of these work seamlessly with Tales of the Valiant. These will affect game balance, so use at your own risk! However, if you want a more deadly game and don't want to switch rules systems to a game like Shadowdark, these may be just what you are looking for.

5E Hardcore Mode is the only hardcover of the bunch, a small book, but it presents a set of optional rules that is about the most deadly of this bunch. This set makes the most significant tweaks to the rules, including penalizing unskilled checks heavily. They also make substantial tweaks to spells and spell slots, and limit the maximum level to ten. If you like the ToV rules as they are, this would be a poor fit for you, since it proposes the most dramatic changes to the core system.

This book is almost an entirely new game using a 5E rules base, and if you like how you gain levels, spells, and powers, you may look elsewhere. As a fun total conversion, the system delivers on the hardcore play style, making it an entertaining mod for 5E. I like the hardcover, though; it is a nice format.

5E Hardmode is a long-time favorite of mine, since it provides options that you can toggle on and off to adjust difficulty. This one has options to remove spells, a single death save (rolled after combat ends), healing at zero hit points, random rest replenishment, limiting dark vision, boss monsters, party retreats, chases, and permanent injuries. ToV has already made a few critical fixes to its dark vision, so some of these issues have been addressed by Kobold Press.

They have a strange rule where they double ability uses that are restored on a short rest, and only return those on a long rest. This may lead to bookkeeping issues on character sheets, and I am not a fan of that.

I liked this set since it has many common-sense options, and they are all optional. You can pick and choose a few, or go all in. They make as few changes as possible, but they are the most impactful.

Grim Reality is new, and it has three levels of difficulty in many areas, including survival. The current book is missing a few tables, and the author is working to rectify this issue; however, otherwise, this is a solid, configurable, and adaptable set of realism rules with varying levels of difficulty. They cover wounds, survival, exhaustion, healing, diseases, encumbrance, combat, environmental, and mental survival rules. This takes 5E to the level of a full-on survival game, and I love the depth and realism they give to each area.

They recommend not using all the rules, but picking a few modules for the genre of game you are playing and ignoring the ones you do not want to focus on. I like these rules; they are all optional, and you can set them easier or harder in each area. In fact, you could turn on a rules section for just a part of the adventure, such as having a desert-survival hexcrawl use the moderate survival settings, and then turning it off and ignoring it while the characters are in dungeons and towns.

Once they get those charts added, this will be my new go-to book for hardcore play. Highly recommended, although this utilizes AI art, and I wish it were available in print.

You have many options to mod in hardcore play, and a few excellent sets of rules that work seamlessly with ToV. It is nice not having to switch to a new set of rules like Shadowdark to get that same experience, and you can stay where you are comfortable and used to, using all the same class powers and spells as usual, only with a more "hardcore lens" to view your game through.