I couldn't find any, I remembers talks of lowering the XP etc, so are there any mods made with the purpose of making the game more difficult?
How about introducing your own "house" rule forbidding pcs and npcs from using any metal items and setting monsters' hp/hd at maximum using the front-end but leaving characters' hp/level random?
There are the much underpromoted options "Max Hit Points by Level" and "May Hit Points by HD" for NPC's in the front end. If you enable those all the critters in the game have maxed out Hit Points, last longer and thus have more time to damage your party. In my opinion this is something like setting a difficult level.
The max HP thing, especially when you start fighting temple Bugbears with 115 HP, can make things rather interesting.
I don't know if you've already tried these, but the first things that come to mind are: 1. Use the point-buy system instead of rolling for your characters' stats. 2. Avoid the crafting system entirely, or at least limit it in some way, like only upgrading the enhancement on weapons/armor. 3. Avoid the rule breaking reach weapons. That means glaives, longspears, guisarmes etc. According to the the rules you can't hit people standing right next to you with these, but the limitation isn't implemented in the game. The spiked chain doesn't break any rules. 4. Avoid tower shields too since they're also better than they should be . If you want even more of a challenge then: 5. No reloading unless your entire party dies. Any party member that dies must either be resurrected by legal means in the game or kicked and replaced by a new character. You can obviously make the game a lot harder by your party composition too, like playing 3 evil necromancers and only hiring evil NPCs for example. I really enjoy parties like this overall. I'm currently playing a band of lawful neutral dwarven fighters, though that actually isn't so hard since fighters are great, but the lack of spells definitely makes things a lot harder.
I use 1 and 2, thanks for 3, I didn't know that, I'll bear this in mind. Party of identical characters may provide challenge but also boredom, so no But I don't hire any NPCs, disliking the not full control over them
I think after the first 20 times through the game everyone has to implement some type of in-house rules to limit PC devastation. I really like the crafting aspect, and my m-u & clerics spend a lot of non-combat feats on them, thus lessening their combat ability. But I limit weapons to +2 and two "abilities" per weapon. No +3 holy flaming burst mighty cleaving weapons and the like. I usually go max HP for PCs for the first 3-5 levels so I'm not getting killed by random map encounters, but after that I switch over to random HP. I also don't loot and sell everything single item I come across so that my PCs don't get insanely rich until later in the game.
When you can choose a feat, go for things like Skill focus in place of your more battle oriented ones.
Thanks. My problem with these type of house rules is that it makes me feel I am not playing the game, but rather playing against winning... I have a look myself at the game files if time permits and see if I can cook up some simple boots, like adding levels or just HP for monsters, the idea would be to be able to play the game as best you can and still find some challenge there
Don't know if it's possible but you could try adding more monster spell casters with higher level spells...
Have you considered making characters with XP penalties? I don't mean dumb builds, just good characters that have class combinations that end up with -20%/-40%/-60% XP . You can still play the game optimally, but you'll always be at a lower level than you normally would. I like this idea because it doesn't require any modding, doesn't require you to play the game a certain way and opens up character builds you normally wouldn't use.
That's a very good idea, though the only problem I see that for humans it require at least 3 classes, which indeed may result in silly builds.
Here are the ways I use. I am sure you have thought of most of them, but here you go! 1. No crafting at all. I do this about 50% of the time as crafting is fun, but let's face it, the game hasn't really been built with uber weapons in mind! 2. No Scather or Fragarach. 3. Take what you roll first roll, no moving the numbers around, and build the character from there. Put your skill points where you like. 4. Randomised race for all characters. 5. Randomised feats (including cleric spheres) for all characters except one (party leader) at all levels. I randomise within an acceptable set for the class and skills of the PC, so I won't give a fighter Alertness if he doesn't use those skills, but he can take multiple weapon foci. This makes chained feats like cleave, improved trip and precise shot hard to get, and you'll never see Whirlwind attack, but I do it to simulate personal choices the PC makes in his own development and training. 6. Occasionally I also use randomised spells, or only allow spells picked from the focussed school (if there is one). Of course learning from scrolls is fine. 7. Dead means dead, except the party leader. No raising, out they go and replaced by a new 1st level character. 8. I start with a party of 4. I might allow myself to expand later if I lost a lot of PCs and need to get the numbers up to compensate for a lot of 1st level characters. 9. When you level, take the HPs you get the first time around, no reloading. I've had some really interesting parties doing this, and also discovered a lot of new ways of playing. Sometimes I apply all of these, and sometimes a few of them. At first I was very wary of trying this out, because I felt I was missing out on favourite builds, but I quickly came to appreciate that my PCs had a lot more character this way, and it made me play the game in new ways, which has to be good! I've had some terrible PCs and yet still become attached to them...
