Alternate Ruleset: Posture, Advantage, and Grappling

[Argothair]

Had a flash of inspiration this morning for some homebrew rules on "posture," and I thought I'd share them with the Playground for critiques and improvements. The basic idea is that during combat, every character always has a posture that indicates the character's readiness and ability to fight or dodge. Instead of just being "prone" or "standing", the system smoothly tracks several degrees of readiness and assigns bonuses or penalties accordingly. Whenever you would make an attack roll, an ability check, or a save that uses a d20, you instead roll two or more d10, and then keep the best (or worst) 2d10 out of your results. If you're defending (e.g. you're the subject of an attack roll, you're the subject of an ability check, or you're imposing a save on an enemy), then you flip the penalties so that they make sense, i.e., if you're kneeling on the ground and a goblin attacks you, the goblin gets to roll 4d10 and keep the best 2d10.

On your turn, you can use a full 20 feet of movement to improve your posture by one step (e.g. from Kneeling to Off-Balance). You can repeat this process as many times as you like. For a typical character, taking the Dash action would therefore allow you to improve your posture by three steps (e.g. from Kneeling to Ready).

Each time any of the d10s that you keep show a natural 1, your posture worsens by one step (e.g. from Standing to Off-Balance). Each time you take damage in excess of your hit dice, your posture worsens by one step per full hit die of damage. For example, if you're a Fighter with d10 hit dice, and you take 26 damage, your posture would worsen by two steps -- one step for the first 10 damage, and one step for the second 10 damage.

If you successfully Shove your opponent, their posture worsens by one step. If you successfully Grapple your opponent, their posture worsens by one step, and they cannot improve their posture until they succeed on an opposed check to break your Grapple.

For a little extra added flavor, you can introduce the "Trip" action (if successful, reduces opponent's posture by two steps) and the "Parry" reaction (if successful, negates one melee attack and reduces opponent's posture by one step).

If you are at the lowest level of posture (dazed/pinned), then you cannot make any attacks or cast any spells with somatic components, and attacks against you are an almost-automatic success -- if you roll a natural 1 against a dazed/pinned enemy, you still miss. If you roll a natural 20, you score a critical hit. Anything in between is a regular hit. There's no penalty if your posture is further reduced beyond dazed/pinned. Characters who are unconscious are considered to be dazed/pinned for combat purposes.



Posture
Dice


Ready
3d10, keep best 2


Standing
2d10


Off-Balance
3d10, keep worst 2


Kneeling
4d10, keep worst 2


Floored
5d10, keep worst 2


Dazed / Pinned
Can't attack or dodge

[JNAProductions]

This... This seems awful.

First off, let me address the obvious-Parry has no rules.

Second off, this is a huge nerf to anyone who might end up prone-normally it takes half your movement. Now, if you consider Floored to equal Prone, it takes 80' of movement-three turns, two turns (if one is spent Dashing), or one turn (if you have a really high move speed or Dash twice). Not to mention, you can become completely fethed with just a TOUCH of bad luck. So, you're Ready, but roll a 1 on any one of your 3 dice (a ONE IN FOUR CHANCE). You're now Standing. Your opponent shoves you, knocking you to off-balance, and now you STILL have your 1/4 chance of rolling a 1. But, they also hit you with a Greatsword, for, say, 12 damage. Doesn't matter what class you are, you're down to kneeling. You have a greater than 1/3 chance of rolling a 1. This just spirals into death very quickly.

Also, you reference rolling a nat 1 and nat 20... But your system removes those.

[Argothair]

All right, fair enough; clearly the rule about a natural 1 worsening your posture by one step needs to be diluted or removed. It could be changed to "natural snake eyes," i.e., both of the dice you wind up keeping are 1's, but it's probably easier just to remove it.

The effect where your posture is worsened by taking damage is probably also too strong, especially at higher levels...perhaps it would be better to lose one step of posture every time you take at least CON worth of damage. So if you have 15 CON and take 32 damage, you would lose two steps of posture (32 / 15 = 2, drop the remainder).

If you play with these rules, you would need to adjust spells that knock people prone so that they instead cost you one or two steps of posture. Obviously it would be overpowered for, e.g., a cantrip to knock somebody from Ready all the way to Floored.

I apologize for not spelling out the complete rules for Parrying in the original post, but my vision for Parrying is pretty simple: if you're holding a melee weapon, and you are targeted by a melee attack, you may spend your reaction to attempt to Parry. If you do so, make one attack with your melee weapon against the character targeting you. If you hit, instead of dealing damage, you cause your opponent to automatically miss, and to lose one step of posture.

With these changes, what do you think of the ruleset?

[JNAProductions]

All right, fair enough; clearly the rule about a natural 1 worsening your posture by one step needs to be diluted or removed. It could be changed to "natural snake eyes," i.e., both of the dice you wind up keeping are 1's, but it's probably easier just to remove it.

The effect where your posture is worsened by taking damage is probably also too strong, especially at higher levels...perhaps it would be better to lose one step of posture every time you take at least CON worth of damage. So if you have 15 CON and take 32 damage, you would lose two steps of posture (32 / 15 = 2, drop the remainder).

If you play with these rules, you would need to adjust spells that knock people prone so that they instead cost you one or two steps of posture. Obviously it would be overpowered for, e.g., a cantrip to knock somebody from Ready all the way to Floored.

I apologize for not spelling out the complete rules for Parrying in the original post, but my vision for Parrying is pretty simple: if you're holding a melee weapon, and you are targeted by a melee attack, you may spend your reaction to attempt to Parry. If you do so, make one attack with your melee weapon against the character targeting you. If you hit, instead of dealing damage, you cause your opponent to automatically miss, and to lose one step of posture.

With these changes, what do you think of the ruleset?

It's still awful. Especially that Parry rule-that makes low AC people useless in melee. Or Reckless Attacking Barbarians. Let's say the Barb has Half Plate and 14 or more Dex, for AC 17. At level, say, 11, with a +1 Weapon, you'd be looking at +10 to hit with advantage. That's a 91% chance of hitting with a Parry.

Admittedly, it eats a reaction, but I'd gladly spend a reaction to have a 91% chance of negating an attack (any attack, even a crit) and knocking their posture down by 1.

[Argothair]

I think your example is somewhat cherry-picked...most enemies will be harder to Parry than a Reckless Barbarian, and there is something odd about a lone barbarian successfully charging down an armed, wary, courageous warrior. Historically, that was the *point* of heavy infantry, i.e., that they can stand their ground against a reckless attacker and parry a careless-but-passionate thrust in order to gain an advantage. Barbarian charges worked best in places like Teutoberg Forest, where the Barbarians had the Fighters heavily outnumbered (and, therefore, could make the Fighters run out of reactions).

All of that said, my first draft of Parry probably is still too powerful. Perhaps it would be better if instead of cancelling an enemy attack, it simply applies the one-step reduction in posture before the enemy attacks. So, your Reckless Barbarian charges in for the kill, and is considered Ready because of his Reckless Attack advantage. The Barbarian gets Parried successfully, reducing his posture to Standing, and then makes an attack against the Fighter as normal by rolling 2d10. That seems pretty balanced to me. If the Barbarian goes crazy against an archer or a spellcaster or someone who's distracted by another opponent, then the reckless attack is hugely successful. If the Barbarian goes crazy against another melee warrior who's ready to parry, the reckless attack is still a *threat*, but it's not an efficient or optimized threat.

Anyway, thanks for all of the detailed feedback! I appreciate your help in refining this idea I had.

[thegreatone5224]

What about the rules for advantage or disadvantage? Normally you'd roll 2d20 and take the higher or lower. Would this mean someone who is ready would roll 6d10 and take the best 2? What about all the features/spells that grant advantage or disadvantage? How do they interact with the various degrees of posture?

For example, what happens if someone who is floored is attacked by a ranged attack? Normally they would have advantage but now it seems like they lose that option or have to pay a great price to use it. Lets say what I said above reigns true and I roll 5d10 due to being floored. Advantage in this situation would dictate that I take the highest two but then your rules say they take the worst two. How would this be resolved?

Overall I think this needs to be flushed out a bit more before I can say one way or the other.

[Argothair]

Good question, thegreatone. I am basically imagining the whole 3d10/4d10/5d10 idea as just another kind of advantage.

So, if you are Ready and you have Advantage, you roll 4d10 and keep the best 2.
If you are Standing and you have Advantage, you roll 3d10 and keep the best 2.
If you are Standing and you have Disadvantage, you roll 3d10 and keep the worst 2.
If you are Off-Balance and you have Disadvantage, you roll 4d10 and keep the worst 2.

And if the two forces are pulling in opposite directions, then they cancel each other out, just like Advantage with Disadvantage.

So if you are Ready and have Disadvantage, you roll 2d10.
Likewise, if you are Off-Balance and have Advantage, you roll 2d10.

Does that answer your question? I'm not sure I totally understood your scenario about prone archers.

[thegreatone5224]

From my understand, while a creature is prone, ranged attacks have disadvantage against them while melee attacks have advantage.