CC's without any magic

[lordorinko]

So, today i was watching critical role and a pit fight encounter presented itself for barbarian of the party, grog. And travis willingham described awesome moves like thunderclapping both ears, shoving thumbs in eye sockets, aiming kicks to kneecaps to bust knees and a whole lot of moves. All these moves for rolling 1d4/2+STR MOD equal of dmg and nothing else.

Now, normally those moves would deafen, blind, make you limp and so on in real life. But they would also bring a ton of pain. But since dealing a lot of dmg and dropping a control effect on a foe will be too strong i would like to implement these phsical effect in a game that i'm DMing currently in a balanced way. So that not only casters or battlemasters are the only CC guys in the game. (yeah i know you can shove, trip, push/pull but there are a lot of CC's in the game and if a pin costs enemy half his movement speed to get up a busted kneecap might do something similar.)

So what are your advices on this issue how should i implement these mechanics in the game. How should the save be like how should i calculate the DC of such attacks. Should they be an action or an attack action.

Pls keep in mind that although i'm aiming these to be realistic, priority is to make them balanced. Any idea is welcome :)

[Unoriginal]

I would probably make it use an attack roll vs a CON save, dealing no damage but if the opponent fail the condition applies 'til the end of their turn.

[Vogie]

There's a couple ways that I could see execution of this:

Individual body parts are more difficult to hit - an attempt to hit a throat, ear, et cetera, will be at disadvantage.
For the same reason as number 1, the target must fail a dexterity throw or they can move that body part out of the way
Use Stunning Strike as a model, and require one to expend some resource, and the target must fail a constitution save.
To unlock the ability to target individual body parts, you must have some sort of feat. Tavern brawler, Martial Adept, Savage Attacker, Sharpshooter, or one of the weapon mastery feats
Allow anyone to learn the "Snare" spell, or purchase "Snaring rope", et cetera



In my signature, I have a homebrew marksman class called "Deadeye" with a Called shots feature - it was based on the Called shots mechanic in Pathfinder, converted to 5e. I also used the Maneuver mechanic/Superiority dice from the Battlemaster fighter and Spell-less Ranger.

[Man_Over_Game]

In a circumstance where a character wants to do something cool, and something else already provides that option, there needs to be a penalty for the improvised action; something that makes the investment to rely on those tactics worthwhile.

In this case, many of these things can be done by the Battlemaster, who uses Superiority Die. Since the Barbarian isn't using those, we need to make these options strictly worse than investing in the Battlemaster, especially since there is no resource being spent by the Barbarian.

My recommendation is to make it so that the attacks have no modifier to damage, and instead use a save of 8+damage modifier. They aren't proficient in these improvised attacks, so no proficiency to your DC, sorry.

So in this case, a barbarian with a +4 mod with a kick that knocks someone prone would deal 1 damage (as the minimum for an unarmed attack), and tack on a Constitution DC of 8+4 (12). If the Barbarian was Raging, I'd allow the bonus rage damage to be applied to the damage.

For more powerful effects, like Blindness or Stun, they get a saving throw attempt at the START of their turn, not the end, as those are strictly better than things like Prone, Deafness, or Grappled.


Alternatively, Exhaustion can be representative of these kinds of effects. Implementing a system where you make Constitution saves against "Pain DC's" that inflict temporary Exhaustion, called "Pain". Pain works exactly like Exhaustion, and stacks with Exhaustion for determining the downsides from the Exhaustion table, but a stack of Pain is removed for every individual source of healing you receive, including Hit Die used. Using something like this would be a lot more controllable and usable than allowing every condition possible on free Battlemaster Maneuver knockoffs. I'd use a similar thing as I mentioned before, removing the damage modifier on the attack for an 8+Mod Constitution DC (Constitution because at that point, the attack has already hit).