TSR-ish 5E: Max Wilson's house rules doc [Archive]

View Full Version : TSR-ish 5E: Max Wilson's house rules doc

MaxWilson

2021-04-23, 08:20 PM

A parenthetical comment on a Combat Challenge post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25016208&postcount=38) prompted a request for my house rules:

Unusually for me, I used PHB initiative rules (IGO-UGO) instead of my normal WEGO rules, in order to keep the results more relatable to other people. For the same reason I also used spell slots instead of spell points, and Legendary Resistance instead of TSR-style magic resistance.

Can you post the entirety of your house rules in this thread or another thread? They sound fascinating.

Why a house rule document?

So that players can know what rule changes might affect them up front. Player-facing rules go in this document, which gets given out to new players so they know what rules in the PHB don't apply. There are some DM-facing rules which don't go in this doc, including changes to monsters and procedures for running mysteries and dungeon crawls, and of course ad hoc rulings for a unique situation which don't get written down anywhere although I will try to be consistent if the unique situation recurs. This document exists so that players can make good decisions about things the characters would logically already know from experience.

House rules for my campaign

Simple changes

1.) On ability checks only, an odd score gives an extra +1. So Str 19 means you have +4 to Strength-based attacks and saves, but +5 to Strength checks.

2.) You can use both your move and your action in a Readied action, and can maintain a readied action from round to round.

3.) Class tweaks:

For Champion:

Improved Critical: you crit on a 19-20. Furthermore, when you inflict a critical hit, roll damage once and then double the total damage (including any bonuses from Strength/magic weapons/etc.), instead of just rolling twice the normal number of dice.

Furthermore, Remarkable Athlete now stacks with proficiency. So a Str 18 Champion 9 with Athletics proficiency would have +4+4+2=+10 to Strength (Athletics) checks, not just +8.

For Arcane Archer:

You have three shots per short rest instead of two.

For Battlemaster:

You can temporarily regain expended superiority dice, up to your normal maximum, by studying enemies for weaknesses. For every Attack you forgo during the Attack action, you regain one expended superiority die, which is usable only against creatures you can see at the time you regain the die. This temporary die expires after one minute if it has not already been used, as do any temp HP gained from Rally with it.

For Berserker:

When you end a Frenzy rage, if you pass a DC 15 Con save you do not suffer any exhaustion.

4.) Everyone uses spell points instead of spell slots. A player can opt for DMG spell points or use the rules here: http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2016/12/spell-points-by-formula-5e-variant-rule.html. Must decide when spellcasting is first learned; cannot change.

5.) An attacker unseen by his target has advantage only on melee attack rolls, not ranged attack rolls; however, he does qualify for sneak attack damage at range if unseen despite not having advantage.

6.) Anyone with any weapon can attack vital areas at -5 to-hit for +5 to damage. GWM and Sharpshooter feats merely increase the bonus when you are using those weapons.

7.) Casting a non-bonus-action/non-reaction spell triggers an opportunity attack from any enemies in melee range, unless you have the Warcaster feat. (This replaces the third benefit of Warcaster, about reaction spellcasting.) This attack occurs after the spell is cast but before it takes effect (e.g. can still hit someone Dimension Dooring away, can disrupt a concentrations spell and prevent it from taking effect). If the attacker is a Mage Slayer, they can force a concentration save to potentially disrupt even non-concentration spells.

8.) Casting a non-bonus-action/non-reaction spell while moving at more than half speed, riding a horse or on a moving ship forces a concentration save every round even if it's not a concentration spell (Fireball) or it fizzles. Fizzling does not cost spell points but does waste your action to no effect.

9.) There is no Disengage. Opportunity attacks occur when you move at full speed away from an enemy (turning your back), or whenever you are paralyzed/unconscious. You can back away at half speed without turning your back. Creatures like beholders and black puddings have no backs to turn and can move at full speed in any direction without provoking opportunity attacks.

Remark: Dashing while moving backwards replaces and is equivalent to Disengage. You move half speed ('15), but you do it twice because you Dashed, so you move 30' without provoking opportunity attacks--that's why Disengage does not exist, because it's redundant.

10.) Falling damage doubles for every size category over Medium, and halves for every size category under Small. For example, an Ogre falling 100' would take 20d6 HP of damage, not 10d6, because it is Large; and a Fire Giant falling the same distance would take 40d6 damage because it is Huge; but a housecat would take only 5d6 because it is Tiny, and a rat would take 2d6 because it is Tiny II.

11.) Abilities which recharge on "rolling initiative" instead recharge after five minutes. Specifically the following:

I. Relentless : five minutes after you expend your last superiority die, you regain one die.
II. Perfect Self [Monk 20]: whenever you've had less than four ki for five minutes and haven't spent ki during that time, you regain enough ki to have four ki remaining.
III. Superior Inspiration [Bard 20]: five minutes after you expend your last use of Bardic Inspiration, you regain one use of Bardic Inspiration.

12.) While you are incapacitated/stunned/paralyzed/unconscious (but not grappled/restrained), your Dex is 0. Won't affect PCs in heavy armor, but that swashbuckling rogue is in deep trouble if he ever gets paralyzed by a monster or put to sleep, even briefly.

13.) You do not heal to full health automatically on a long rest. Hit Dice can normally only be gained or spent on a long rest, instead of a short rest, and on any given rest you can spend HD or regain half of your HD but not both. However, Bardic Song of Healing now also allows you to spend one HD during a short rest.

14.) You can go below zero HP. Instead of the normal rules on death saves and stabilization, you die whenever you reach negative (max HP). E.g. if you have 40 max HP normally, you die at -40 HP. When you are at zero HP or below, you are either stunned or unconscious. (If you choose to make a DC 15 Con save and succeed you can be stunned, but if you fail the save or choose not to try, you are unconscious from shock.) When you are below zero HP and are not already stable, you must make a death save at the start of every round. If you succeed, you are stable unless/until you take damage again. If you fail, you take 20% of your max HP in damage, rounded UP, not down. You can be stabilized by another character's actions as usual, through the use of a healer's kit or the Wisdom (Medicine) skill or a Spare the Dying cantrip, and any amount of healing also stabilizes you, even 1 HP.

Example: if you have 40 HP normally, and you get hit twice by an Iron Golem for a total of 50 HP of damage, you're now at -10 HP (and likely unconscious, unless you made the DC 15 Con save). Since you're at -10 HP, not zero HP, you can't be restored to full activity by a simple 1 HP Word of Healing as you would under PHB rules--it takes 11 HP of healing to get you conscious again. At the start of every round, you make a death save (as usual, it is DC 10 and no attribute modifiers apply). If you succeed you stabilize at your current HP, otherwise you lose another 8 HP and must save again next round. If you ever reach -40 HP you die.

Remark: In some ways losing 20% of your HP is more generous than the default rules because it only takes one roll to stabilize, and someone who is just barely at negative HP may take five failures before they die. A wound which takes you down to -1 HP is extremely unlikely to kill you. In other ways though, it is less generous because stabilizing doesn't wipe out past failures--that requires actual healing. Furthermore, if you're deep in the negatives, a single failure will kill you, possibly before anyone else can intervene.

15.) Parry: This is a special type of attack which attacks attacks. When you Attack on your turn, you may choose to dedicate one or more of those attacks to Parrying. If an enemy attacks you with a melee weapon before your next turn, you may roll a melee weapon attack and replace your AC with your attack roll against that attack. You can do this a number of times equal to the number of attacks you dedicated to Parrying.

Example: Robilar the Mighty, an 11th level fighter, has been attacked in his bed by two assassins. Unarmed and unarmored, he snatches up a nearby log to use as an improvised club, and dedicates two of his three attacks to parrying. Robilar inflicts some damage on an assassin with his remaining attack, but then the assassins strike back. On the first assassin's attack, Robilar parries, and rolls d20+8 on his melee attack (for Strength 18 and proficiency bonus +4), getting a total of 23, which he uses instead of his normal unarmored AC of 10. The assassin rolls d20+6, gets a 15, and fails to hit AC 23! Then the second assassin strikes, and Robilar rolls d20+8 and gets a 14. The assassin rolls d20+6 and gets 17, so Robilar is hit! The assassin rolls 5d6+4 poison damage and inflicts 27 HP of damage on Robilar--Robilar is in trouble if he doesn't finish them off soon!

16.) To avoid breaking the game, Simulacrum works more like AD&D Simulacrum than PHB Simulacrum. Instead of an almost-perfect copy of the original, Simulacrum produces a dull, listless imitation of the original. If the original creature has any class levels or special abilities, the copy has only 50% of those class levels or abilities, rounded up (the player can select which ones, e.g. if you copy a dual-classed Fighter 5/Wizard 6, you can pick which feats to keep and if you want a Fighter 5/Wizard 1 or a Wizard 6).

In exchange for this nerf, Simulacrum is now not restricted to humanoids, and it may regain spell slots as normal by resting, but it never increases in power (never gains levels).

[B]Complex changes

1.) Open-ended d20 rolls. Since skill checks and saves, unlike attack rolls, don't auto-succeed on a 20 or auto-fail on a 1, but I always want there to be some chance of failure*, on a 20 you re-roll at +10 and take the highest roll. Roll again at +20 if you roll another 20, etc. If you roll a 1, re-roll at -10 and take the lowest. If it's obvious that you've already failed or succeeded you can of course stop rolling already.

*Unless you have Reliable Talent.

2.) Concurrent multiclassing is an option. With concurrent multiclassing, you can advance in two classes or three at the same time, e.g. you could be a 10th level Battlemaster/Necromancer with the abilities of both a 10th level Battlemaster and a 10th level Necromancer. See http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2017/01/5e-old-school-multiclassing-rules_29.html for more details.

3.) XP awards. All characters get a share of XP proportional to their share of the total levels or CR (rounded up to 1) on their side of a combat. For example, in a party of three 9th level PCs and one 5th level PC (total of 32 levels), if they earn 2000 XP from defeating twenty orcs, the 9th level PCs will all earn 9/32 * 2000 = 562.5 XP, while the 5th level PC earns 5/32 * 2000 = 312.5 XP. But if one of the PCs casts Animate Objects and temporarily animates 10 Tiny Objects during the fight, then there are 42 total levels/CR, so the 9thl level PCs earn only 9/42 * 2000 = 428.6 XP, while the 5th level PC earns 238.1 XP.

Purpose: this rule does not exist to punish you, it exists to keep the game interesting, so that you have a good excuse NOT to make the game too easy by flooding every fight with animated dead, purchased mastiffs, and summoned creatures unless you genuinely need them to survive and beat a tough enemy.

4.) Different initiative variant, WE-GO instead of IGO-UGO, and is designed to enhance player engagement and teamwork by reducing the amount of time players spend waiting for their turn to interact with the DM, while also making more intelligent characters and monsters seem more intelligent.

Procedure: DM secretly decides all monster actions while players consult each other and declare everyone's actions for the round together. Then actions are resolved in an order determined by the DM's best judgment of realism and convenience (e.g. arrows are faster than human feet so an arrow attack may happen before a move-and-melee-attack; but the DM might also resolve them both at the same time if the order isn't likely to change any outcomes), with initiative contests when the DM calls for one to decide potential ties.

Once you've declared an action or movement usage for this round you are committed and can't change it except how you initially specified (e.g. you can declare "I'm charging the goblins (moving towards them and Dashing if necessary) and attacking whoever gets within range if I didn't need to Dash"), but you can delay action declaration (or explicitly declare Delay). At any time before the round ends, you can declare an action or movement usage that you haven't used yet (e.g. "I'm standing up" after someone knocks you down, if you have enough movement left, or "I take cover") but then you automatically lose any initiative contests the DM calls for against those who declared actions before you. When the round ends, the DM will pause briefly for additional declarations, and if none are made (e.g. if a Mexican standoff occurs), any unused actions or movements are lost and a new round begins.

During initial action declaration for the round, faster thinking (a tighter OODA loop) is represented by letting highly intelligent creatures gain extra knowledge about other's actions before acting. A character (or monster) who wishes to observe other creatures before declaring an action may take a penalty of N on any initiative contests this round. If so, that character or monster may learn the action declarations of any characters or monsters with intelligence less than or equal to [character's own Int] - 10 + N, before declaring their own action. Example: if Erac the Mage (Int 17) does Observe 4, Erac's player may ask the DM what any monster with Int 11 or less is doing (which could be Delaying) before Erac has to declare his own action. If Erac chooses to Fireball because a group of goblins is preparing to scatter in all directions, and if the DM decides that an initiative contest is needed to see if the goblins scatter before the Fireball detonates, Erac will have -4 on that initiative contest because he paused to study the goblins before acting.

True surprise is rare and occurs only when an unwary target has effectively declared a non-combat action such as "read a book" at the same time a hidden attacker is preparing to attack them. If a target is wary (e.g. an adventurer in a dangerous dungeon) but unaware of a specific threat (the goblin aiming a crossbow at his back), at the start of combat the attacker will declare an action, and the target will be treated as having implicitly Delayed and will get to declare an action after the attacker's action is resolved.

Ask DM for details (or consult brief writeup here http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2017/01/simultaneous-initiative-in-5e.html).

5.) Magic Resistance and Legendary Resistance works differently--requires a reaction and can dispel a spell it's affected by, regardless of whether or not it has a save. Details here: http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2016/03/5e-magic-resistance-variant-rule.html Fundamentally, instead of advantage on saves, it's now like Dispel Magic as a reaction whenever a spell would directly or indirectly affect the monster.

If a creature attempts to use its magic resistance against a given spell and fails, that represents being unable to resist this casting of that spell unless its magic resistance improves--any retries will result in failure. E.g. if you've got a demon bound with Planar Binding, the demon gets only one chance to resist that Planar Binding. (But a crafty demon may not test the Planar Binding right away so be on your guard.)

If magic resistance fails due to temporary circumstances like Hex or Cutting Words, that represents a temporary failure which can be overcome if the creature retries without the hindance. In this rare circumstance, the DM may record the original d20 roll prior to the temporary modifiers, and re-use it on the subsequent attempts. (Or the DM may choose another equivalent method with the same probability curve.) Ditto for temporary improvements: a demon which rolls a 7 (failure) on its MR check against Planar Binding, but then receives Enhance Ability (Charisma) and tests the spell again, would roll one new die, compare it to the previous 7, and take the higher result.

Rukelnikov

2021-04-23, 08:51 PM

I remember liking your Initiative system, and reading this there are a couple things here I'm gonna try next time I DM. Thanks for sharing these!

Btw, that Robilar sure likes to gamble with his life

MaxWilson

2021-04-23, 08:55 PM

Btw, that Robilar sure likes to gamble with his life

Hey, that's what Action Surge is for, so that once you know how hard the assassins hit you can double-Dash away while yelling at the top of your lungs for help!

Rukelnikov

2021-04-23, 09:03 PM

Hey, that's what Action Surge is for, so that once you know how hard the assassins hit you can double-Dash away while yelling at the top of your lungs for help!

That's what I'd call a sound strategy

Btw, are you up for debating these house rules or would you rather just leave this thread as a document and nothing else?

x3n0n

2021-04-23, 09:10 PM

MaxWilson

2021-04-23, 09:21 PM

First: thank you! I've been one of those looking to see your rules assembled in one place.

Second: IIRC, you also have a variant version of simulacrum; are there other spells that don't exist at your table in PHB/XGtE form?

Oh, thanks! You're right, I do need to add Simulacrum to the doc. There are no other spells that I've changed, although I do have spell research rules that aren't written up in this doc, for players who want to create custom spells during play. Edit: added this to the initial post.

16.) To avoid breaking the game, Simulacrum works more like AD&D Simulacrum than PHB Simulacrum. Instead of an almost-perfect copy of the original, Simulacrum produces a dull, listless imitation of the original. If the original creature has any class levels or special abilities, the copy has only 50% of those class levels or abilities, rounded up (the player can select which ones, e.g. if you copy a dual-classed Fighter 5/Wizard 6, you can pick which feats to keep and if you want a Fighter 5/Wizard 1 or a Wizard 6).

In exchange for this nerf, Simulacrum is now not restricted to humanoids, and it may regain spell slots as normal by resting, but it never increases in power (never gains levels).

That's what I'd call a sound strategy

Btw, are you up for debating these house rules or would you rather just leave this thread as a document and nothing else?

I see the distinction between debate and discussion as: a debate is about someone trying to win an argument regardless of what the actual truth is, whereas I prefer discussions where people instantly change their minds if they decide they are persuaded by the facts in question.

In general I try to avoid "debating" on this forum (hard to believe, I know) but I'm certainly up for discussing things with people I respect, which certainly includes you Rukelnikov. A lot of things will simply come down to taste, e.g. maybe unrealistic falling damage doesn't disturb you enough to spend a house rule on it, but once upon a time it bothered me enough to add it to my doc so that players can maybe kill elephants with pit traps. I don't mind you hypothetically pointing out that it hypothetically doesn't really bother you, but hopefully you don't expect to persuade me that it doesn't bother me. I also won't be offended if you say "I think I'll just make falling damage d20 per 10' fallen, x2 for Large, x3 for Huge, and x4 for Gargantuan" and maybe I'll even say "that's interesting, sounds like it could work." Discussion doesn't have to reach a consensus to be valuable.

If you persuade me at any time that there's a better way to do something than what I'm doing, I assure you that I will instantly change my mind and my rules doc accordingly.

strangebloke

2021-04-23, 09:47 PM

Rukelnikov

2021-04-23, 10:08 PM

I see the distinction between debate and discussion as: a debate is about someone trying to win an argument regardless of what the actual truth is, whereas I prefer discussions where people instantly change their minds if they decide they are persuaded by the facts in question.

In general I try to avoid "debating" on this forum (hard to believe, I know) but I'm certainly up for discussing things with people I respect, which includes Rukelnikov. A lot of things will simply come down to taste, e.g. maybe unrealistic falling damage doesn't disturb you enough to spend a house rule on it, but once upon a time it bothered me enough to add it to my doc. I don't mind you pointing out that it hypothetically doesn't really bother you, but hopefully you don't expect to persuade me that it doesn't bother me.

If you persuade me at any time that there's a better way to do something than what I'm doing, I assure you that I will instantly change my mind and my rules doc accordingly.

Thanks for the confidence :smallwink:, and yeah I think we are on the same page, its not about "who is right" (in many scenarios "being right" isnt even a possibility), its about trying to pitch in to improve the game.

I liked the Disengage change, but im unsure of how do you handle movement within reach, which normally doesn't provoke. Like can I move say 10 ft within the threatened area of another creature and then half of my remaining 20 when I get out of his area? Or is it basically "taking disengage costs half your movement insted of an action"? I like the half movement costs for stuff, we used "half movement to drink a potion" for a while.

And regarding the falling damage, I get that it makes sense, and I know my group rarely uses falling damage as a tactic (I'm the most likely one to levitate enemies and drop them to the ground), but the damage looks really high. I guess you are limited by only being able to grapple a creature one size larger than you, but things like Levitate or Telekinesis would be dubbed the Giant Killers, idk maybe i'm just seeing ghosts were there are none.

We play with negative HP as you mention, but we do that any healing makes your next Death save an automatic success and you stabilize as usual at 3 good saves (or if you get to positivie HP of course). We opted for this change when we got to high levels and people were at -100 hp and still getting stabilized by 1 HP lay on hands.

Finally, I noticed many of these rules seem inspired by previous editions (mostly 3.x but I noticed a couple 2e ones too). My question is, why did you change the exploding die to +10 instead of +20? Is it because a Nat 20 in 3e was treated like a 30 (IIRC it was like that in the book where the exploding d20s were introduced), so in order to "relfect" the effect on 5e's bounded accuracy it needed to be lowered?

x3n0n

2021-04-23, 10:09 PM

Oh, thanks!

My pleasure, and thanks again. :)

I'm trying to puzzle out the details of Parry.

Let's say I forego one attack as a Parry.

Then an enemy announces a melee attack against me. I decide *before seeing the attacker's roll* whether to "spend" my Parry on this attack. (1. Yes?)

If I do, then I roll a melee attack and decide whether to replace my AC with that attack roll for the purposes of this attack only, presumably keeping whichever is higher. (2. Yes?)

How does this interact with extant temporary AC modifiers (Haste, Slow, Agile Parry, Multiattack Defense)? How about with a shield held in the other hand?

For example, Ken the Way of Kensei Monk (Unarmored Defense AC 17) makes one unarmed strike during his Attack action while holding a kensei weapon (triggering Agile Parry for +2 AC), and chooses to MaxW-Parry with his other attack.

Ken then chooses to MaxW-Parry the first incoming melee attack with his bare hand, and rolls 18 (11 + 4 Dex + 3 PB). What is his AC for this incoming attack? (I'd like to guess 20: 18 replaces the base 17, +2 for AP.)

Same idea, but Frank the Fighter wearing Splint and carrying a shield (AC 17 +2) and a warhammer. Frank rolls 18 for a Parry; what is Frank's Parry AC?

(Hopefully I can figure out the edge cases from here.)

Thanks again!

MaxWilson

2021-04-23, 10:14 PM

Obviously I'm not going to adopt everything here. Everyone has their preferences, and I tend not to care too much about realism or verisimilitude or whatever you call it. Sure it makes sense for an ogre to take double fall damage but big monsters are already kind of hilariously weak for their size, lets not bully the poor dears more, shall we?

other things are obvious or have the virtue of simplicity. "Just double damage, the doubled dice on a crit thing is stupid" being one of them, the "you can move with a readied action" being another one. (The rules even cite an example of someone doing this even when its against the rules.)

But I'll speak to two things I like... that I'm also concerned about if used in conjunction. Points 12 and 14. Your dex drops to zero if incapacitated and you die when you reach your negative HP total. I like both these rules. The dexterity ruling is just obvious: you can't dodge if you're incapacitated, and the negative/bloodied HP rule averts the silly ping-pong nature of combat healing...

...but doesn't an incapacitated dexterity character just die? Their AC will be 7 if they're using light armor or 8 if they're using mage armor, and enemies will have advantage against them and be able to auto-crit. Naturally this already sort of was the case, but without the ability to reset death saves easily it feels like you've no choice but to win combat the round after your friend goes down or watch them bleed out very, very quickly. It doesn't matter if you're stabilizing if even a goblin can deal ~10 damage a round to you.

I suppose you COULD keep attacking downed targets round after round until they're actually dead, but unless the target has already demonstrated a Troll-like tendency to get up and jump back in the fight, why would you bother?

I don't see players trying to finish off downed monsters, nor do downed monsters generally try to finish off downed PCs, because without pop-up healing as a threat there's just no reason not to move on to the next guy still standing. That doesn't mean predeclared attacks against a target who falls unconscious midway through can't rip you to shreds, and charging into the middle of way too many monsters is a good way to get killed (not just for Dexy characters BTW, for anyone especially Reckless Barbarians), but if you survive whatever sequence of attacks knocks you out, you're likely to take only incidental damage after that (AoEs) unless the whole party TPKs or retreats. Even then you might very well wake up after combat, if the monsters have no particular reason to care if you die or not, though you may also wind up broke and weaponless.

TL;DR they could, but IME neither the players nor the monsters usually have reason to act that way.

Edit: looks like I need to update the doc to say that if you try to stay conscious when over your max damage, even if you make your save to be stunned instead of unconscious, you're still vulnerable to auto crits. The intent is that staying conscious is for RP (cryptic dying mutters), not tactical damage reduction (avoiding auto crits). The fact that this interaction hasn't come up before now is maybe an indication of how rare attacking downed creatures actually is in my game.

Rukelnikov

2021-04-23, 10:22 PM

GeneralVryth

2021-04-23, 10:26 PM

I will chime in and just say thanks for posting these. I was already a fan of your WE-GO system, and many of these make sense or are nice tweaks. This thread is definitely going in my list of saved threads for future reference if I ever run a new 5e game.

strangebloke

2021-04-23, 10:47 PM

I suppose you COULD keep attacking downed targets round after round until they're actually dead, but unless the target has already demonstrated a Troll-like tendency to get up and jump back in the fight, why would you bother?

I don't see players trying to finish off downed monsters, nor do downed monsters generally try to finish off downed PCs, because without pop-up healing as a threat there's just no reason not to move on to the next guy still standing. That doesn't mean predeclared attacks against a target who falls unconscious midway through can't rip you to shreds, and charging into the middle of way too many monsters is a good way to get killed (not just for Dexy characters BTW, for anyone especially Reckless Barbarians), but if you survive whatever sequence of attacks knocks you out, you're likely to take only incidental damage after that (AoEs) unless the whole party TPKs or retreats. Even then you might very well wake up after combat, if the monsters have no particular reason to care if you die or not, though you may also wind up broke and weaponless.

TL;DR they could, but IME neither the players nor the monsters usually have reason to act that way.

Edit: looks like I need to update the doc to say that if you try to stay conscious when over your max damage, even if you make your save to be stunned instead of unconscious, you're still vulnerable to auto crits. The intent is that staying conscious is for RP (cryptic dying mutters), not tactical damage reduction (avoiding auto crits). The fact that this interaction hasn't come up before now is maybe an indication of how rare attacking downed creatures actually is in my game.
well it depends on the monster. Slavers would leave them alive, naturally, and something like a dragon would know to eliminate threats as fast as possible, but something unintelligent motivated by a hatred for living things (skeletons, demons) or a suicidal determination to do what damage they can (kobolds) might just try to permanently kill at least one opponent.

It all depends! Of course such enemies are very scary under default rules as well, its just easier to bring them back up.

Eldariel

2021-04-23, 10:55 PM

...but doesn't an incapacitated dexterity character just die? Their AC will be 7 if they're using light armor or 8 if they're using mage armor, and enemies will have advantage against them and be able to auto-crit. Naturally this already sort of was the case, but without the ability to reset death saves easily it feels like you've no choice but to win combat the round after your friend goes down or watch them bleed out very, very quickly. It doesn't matter if you're stabilizing if even a goblin can deal ~10 damage a round to you.

Well, it's just like in 3e. If an enemy chooses to spend their round attacking a downed person, hitting them and damaging them is fairly easy (as it should be!) unless they're literally clad in steel all over. However, consider for a moment:

1. This is no longer a yoyo healing land. If you manage to down somebody, the chances of them coming back up are slim.

2. There are still other enemies alive.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of the Goblin. You are in the middle of a battle. You manage to drop the fiendishly quick burglar with a lucky arrow. You've never, ever in your life seen a person get back up after they took an arrow to the eye. There are people actively trying to kill you around you. Do you:
1) Choose to try and kill the downed thing deader?
2) Choose to try and kill the living things trying to deadify you?

I think the choice is obvious 99 times out of 100 (one is likely to end your life, one is not) and indeed, this mirrors historical battles for a good part of more recent history (you don't kill people who are no longer viable threats since you stand to gain nothing while with prisoners you can at least ransom them for money or put them to indentured service - I don't remember when exactly the idea of ransoming knights became the de-facto custom but it was a medieval idea to get wealth instead of bodies since wealth is more useful than bodies) but really since time immemorial.

One of the primary reasons downed characters get targeted is yoyo healing. Remove that and enemies are generally poorly inclined to waste attacks on things not swinging pointy sticks or slinging fireballs at them over targets that actively are. Of course, you can still heal downed allies: you just have to use an actual leveled healing spell instead of "Healing Word for 1d4+5" on level 20, because 1 HP is basically as good as 20 when enemies do over 20 damage with each hit.

In other words, picking an ally back up depends on the gravity of the wounds and as a consequence, enemies who see someone downed and badly wounded can be fairly confident that they'll stay down. Thus they will not target that person over someone who is still a viable threat.

EDIT: Well I got badly Illusionisted.

MaxWilson

2021-04-23, 11:00 PM

I liked the Disengage change, but im unsure of how do you handle movement within reach, which normally doesn't provoke. (B) Like can I move say 10 ft within the threatened area of another creature and then half of my remaining 20 when I get out of his area? Or is it basically "taking disengage costs half your movement insted of an action"? I like the half movement costs for stuff, we used "half movement to drink a potion" for a while.

And regarding the falling damage, I get that it makes sense, and I know my group rarely uses falling damage as a tactic (I'm the most likely one to levitate enemies and drop them to the ground), but the damage looks really high. I guess you are limited by only being able to grapple a creature one size larger than you, but things like (A) Levitate or Telekinesis would be dubbed the Giant Killers, idk maybe i'm just seeing ghosts were there are none.

We play with negative HP as you mention, but we do that (C)any healing makes your next Death save an automatic success and you stabilize as usual at 3 good saves (or if you get to positivie HP of course). We opted for this change when we got to high levels and people were at -100 hp and still getting stabilized by 1 HP lay on hands.

Finally, I noticed many of these rules seem inspired by previous editions (mostly 3.x but I noticed a couple 2e ones too). (D) My question is, why did you change the exploding die to +10 instead of +20? Is it because a Nat 20 in 3e was treated like a 30 (IIRC it was like that in the book where the exploding d20s were introduced), so in order to "relfect" the effect on 5e's bounded accuracy it needed to be lowered?

(A) Conveniently, it turns out that Levitate has a 500 lb. limit, and Telekinesis has a 1000 lb. object limit that I'd also apply to creatures (I think that's a ruling that doesn't need to go in the doc but let me know if you think it would be important to tell players) when it comes to lifting them. I.e. you could restrain a giant with Telekinesis but couldn't lift it for falling damage. If you manage to knock one off a 500' cliff though or out of an airship it will probably die, just like a normal human would, whereas a spider would survive, and to me that's a feature worth having as part of the game world even though it's rarely gameplay-relevant.

(B) Yes, "taking Disengage costs half your movement" is also an accurate way to describe it. If you carefully step backwards 10' so you can then stab my buddy, I don't get to opportunity attack you (but I can follow you).

Your movement speed is set by you for the whole round. In this case you are moving 30' this round, full speed, so you must be "turning your back" and therefore provoke an opportunity attack (ditto if you are paralyzed or incapacitated while within melee reach, or cast an action spell without Warcaster), unless you're a creature without a back like a Beholder.

A fringe benefit of Dashing at half speed (instead of Disengaging, because there is no Disengage) is that the same carefulness which protects you against opportunity attacks also protects you from caltrops and ball bearings.

(C) Oh, did I forget to say that healing stabilizes you? It does.

I take it that your way requires 3 death saves to die, but a death save failure doesn't cost you HP per se? That's valid and interesting. I take it you are viewing death saves as basically going into shock--can kill you, but doesn't injure you more per se. I'm treating them more like bleeding out. In actual play I could probably swap my rules for yours and never notice a difference, since they both are designed to elicit a similar behavior.

(D) I never played 3E (except a couple of video games, IWD2 and ToEE), had no idea it had exploding dice. I stole my rule idea from a computer game called Dominions, in which sometimes weak units like human shepherds do highly improbable things like kill an enormous giant with a single sling stone. Basically I didn't want a Skulker Rogue 2/Shadow Monk 3 to be completely and totally invisible to a whole town of peasants. I wanted at least one or two peasants to spot him every once in a while. -10 per natural 1 gave me a probability curve that felt about right.

well it depends on the monster. Slavers would leave them alive, naturally, and something like a dragon would know to eliminate threats as fast as possible, but something unintelligent motivated by a hatred for living things (skeletons, demons) or a suicidal determination to do what damage they can (kobolds) might just try to permanently kill at least one opponent.

It all depends! Of course such enemies are very scary under default rules as well, its just easier to bring them back up.

Yeah, I can agree. It depends.

I've never DM'ed for a PC knocked unconscious by skeletons or vengeful kobolds, but going for murder/revenge over victory makes sense for both scenarios. If so I have no objections, although my wargamer/tactician side wants to remark that that is a scenario where you probably ought to Fireball your unconscious buddy because it's less dangerous than letting N skeletons crit him repeatedly, if N is largeish.

Well, it's just like in 3e. If an enemy chooses to spend their round attacking a downed person, hitting them and damaging them is fairly easy (as it should be!) unless they're literally clad in steel all over. However, consider for a moment:

1. This is no longer a yoyo healing land. If you manage to down somebody, the chances of them coming back up are slim.

2. There are still other enemies alive.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of the Goblin. You are in the middle of a battle. You manage to drop the fiendishly quick burglar with a lucky arrow. You've never, ever in your life seen a person get back up after they took an arrow to the eye. There are people actively trying to kill you around you. Do you:
1) Choose to try and kill the downed thing deader?
2) Choose to try and kill the living things trying to deadify you?

I think the choice is obvious 99 times out of 100 (one is likely to end your life, one is not) and indeed, this mirrors historical battles for a good part of more recent history (you don't kill people who are no longer viable threats since you stand to gain nothing while with prisoners you can at least ransom them for money or put them to indentured service - I don't remember when exactly the idea of ransoming knights became the de-facto custom but it was a medieval idea to get wealth instead of bodies since wealth is more useful than bodies) but really since time immemorial.

One of the primary reasons downed characters get targeted is yoyo healing. Remove that and enemies are generally poorly inclined to waste attacks on things not swinging pointy sticks or slinging fireballs at them over targets that actively are. Of course, you can still heal downed allies: you just have to use an actual leveled healing spell instead of "Healing Word for 1d4+5" on level 20, because 1 HP is basically as good as 20 when enemies do over 20 damage with each hit.

In other words, picking an ally back up depends on the gravity of the wounds and as a consequence, enemies who see someone downed and badly wounded can be fairly confident that they'll stay down. Thus they will not target that person over someone who is still a viable threat.

EDIT: Well I got badly Illusionisted.

I do want to add that a Goblin might potentially give a downed foe a few more whacks, not because he's seen healing magic before, but because he's familiar with the concept of playing dead. Pretending to be dying is sometimes a better way of ending an attack sequence than dying for real, but the counter-counterplay for that is attacking a bit more (autocrits since you're mimicking the Unconscious condition).

Sometimes faking death is also a way to get ranged enemies to move closer enough to loot the body, and bring themselves within your reach. (Mostly applicable to melee PCs traveling alone.)

Eldariel

2021-04-23, 11:43 PM

I do want to add that a Goblin might potentially give a downed foe a few more whacks, not because he's seen healing magic before, but because he's familiar with the concept of playing dead. Pretending to be dying is sometimes a better way of ending an attack sequence than dying for real, but the counter-counterplay for that is attacking a bit more (autocrits since you're mimicking the Unconscious condition).

Sometimes faking death is also a way to get ranged enemies to move closer enough to loot the body, and bring themselves within your reach. (Mostly applicable to melee PCs traveling alone.)

I personally run with 3e-style CdG rules: if you don't move during your turn and spend your entire making a single attack against a helpless (incapacitated) opponent, you can deliver a Coup de Grace which is an autocrit and forces a Constitution save vs. death (damage dealt being the DC - I dropped it from 3e's 10+damage dealt since in this edition you tend to do way more damage and Con-save scaling is far slower). Nice for killing sleeping enemies you catch in their tent. Nice with some spells. Nice for finishing off downed enemies. But the opportunity cost of using a full turn to do that is of course significant, and there's counterplay since it takes lining up the shot properly and thus I placed the movement restriction on it which means if someone sees an ally about to get CdGd, they can try to knock the prospective CdGer back or try and kick the body away. It's lead to few fun interactions at our table.

But yeah, I don't say the chances of a goblin trying to confirm a kill are zero but of course, I don't think the Goblin will stop to do that if someone shot an arrow at it or is next to it with a sword the same turn it downed one enemy. If it has a moment of respite, maybe, but if its life is in active peril it's obviously forced to prioritise survival over everything else (as with basically every living thing aside from the obvious: fanatics, mindslaves, desperados, etc.).

Rukelnikov

2021-04-24, 12:00 AM

(A) Conveniently, it turns out that Levitate has a 500 lb. limit, and Telekinesis has a 1000 lb. object limit that I'd also apply to creatures (I think that's a ruling that doesn't need to go in the doc but let me know if you think it would be important to tell players) when it comes to lifting them. I.e. you could restrain a giant with Telekinesis but couldn't lift it for falling damage. If you manage to knock one off a 500' cliff though or out of an airship it will probably die, just like a normal human would, whereas a spider would survive, and to me that's a feature worth having as part of the game world even though it's rarely gameplay-relevant.

The weight limit for both spells seems like a good solution.

(B) Yes, "taking Disengage costs half your movement" is also an accurate way to describe it. If you carefully step backwards 10' so you can then stab my buddy, I don't get to opportunity attack you.

Your movement speed is set by you for the whole round. In this case you are moving 30' this round, full speed, so you must be "turning your back" and therefore provoke an opportunity attack (ditto if you are paralyzed or incapacitated while within melee reach, or cast an action spell without Warcaster), unless you're a creature without a back like a Beholder.

A fringe benefit of Dashing at half speed (instead of Disengaging, because there is no Disengage) is that the same carefulness which protects you against opportunity attacks also protects you from caltrops and ball bearings.

Cool, I hadn't thought about the caltrops and ball bearing actually :P

(C) Oh, did I forget to say that healing stabilizes you? It does.

I take it that your way requires 3 death saves to die, but a death save failure doesn't cost you HP per se? That's valid and interesting. I take it you are viewing death saves as basically going into shock--can kill you, but doesn't injure you more per se. I'm treating them more like bleeding out. In actual play I could probably swap my rules for yours and never notice a difference, since they both are designed to elicit a similar behavior.

Yeah both systems are pretty similar, your is more lenient with stabilizing, since you only need one source of healing to stabilize, and the one my group uses is more lenient with failing death saves since it doesn't incurr extra damage. I like the bleeding idea tbh, it makes sense for someone 1 hp from dying to die faster than someone at -1 HP.

(D) I never played 3E (except a couple of video games, IWD2 and ToEE), had no idea it had exploding dice. I stole my rule idea from a computer game called Dominions, in which sometimes weak units like human shepherds do highly improbable things like kill an enormous giant with a single sling stone. Basically I didn't want a Skulker Rogue 2/Shadow Monk 3 to be completely and totally invisible to a whole town of peasants. I wanted at least one or two peasants to spot him every once in a while. -10 per natural 1 gave me a probability curve that felt about right.

Oh, yeah that basically what it was for, also so that commoners couldn't hit deities on a nat 20.

Kane0

2021-04-24, 01:39 AM

diplomancer

2021-04-24, 05:00 AM

There is no Disengage. Opportunity attacks occur when you move at full speed away from an enemy (turning your back), or whenever you are paralyzed/unconscious. You can back away at half speed without turning your back.

Isn't this a buff to ranged characters? RAW, once a melee character closes in, and assuming same speeds, the ranged character has several bad choices:
1- Disengage and move back; no attack of opportunity, but unless there's some ally nearby, nothing stops the melee attacker from closing in (and attacking) the next round.
2- keep trading attacks at disadvantage. Not good.
3- dash away; ranged character eats an attack of opportunity, and melee character can just dash as well to close the distance again.
4- If ranged character has Extra Attack and Expertise in Athletics, there's a decent chance that he can use one of his attacks to shove down the melee opponent, even with lower Str; in that case, he can move away and still shoot with his other attack(s)

None of these is ideal; but with your houserule, there's a much better option; Ranged Character just moves back at half speed (no action cost) and shoots. So the one advantage melee has over ranged (IF they manage to close in, ranged may be in trouble) goes away.

Eldariel

2021-04-24, 06:29 AM

Isn't this a buff to ranged characters? RAW, once a melee character closes in, and assuming same speeds, the ranged character has several bad choices:
1- Disengage and move back; no attack of opportunity, but unless there's some ally nearby, nothing stops the melee attacker from closing in (and attacking) the next round.
2- keep trading attacks at disadvantage. Not good.
3- dash away; ranged character eats an attack of opportunity, and melee character can just dash as well to close the distance again.
4- If ranged character has Extra Attack and Expertise in Athletics, there's a decent chance that he can use one of his attacks to shove down the melee opponent, even with lower Str; in that case, he can move away and still shoot with his other attack(s)

None of these is ideal; but with your houserule, there's a much better option; Ranged Character just moves back at half speed (no action cost) and shoots. So the one advantage melee has over ranged (IF they manage to close in, ranged may be in trouble) goes away.

If the turns are simultaneous, it's impossible to put distance between you and melee, much less if you're moving at half speed while they are sticking to you at full speed. You need to dash at full speed while they attack you to get away, losing a turn too.

diplomancer

2021-04-24, 07:18 AM

If the turns are simultaneous, it's impossible to put distance between you and melee, much less if you're moving at half speed while they are sticking to you at full speed. You need to dash at full speed while they attack you to get away, losing a turn too.

Ah, good point. But I can still see some issues;
Let's say A is a Warlock with Repelling Blast invocation, and B is a melee brute. They are at 40' distance when the round begins. A goes first, and hits B twice; distance now is 60'. B now dashes (as he was planning to anyway) to close distance to A. A, who hasn't moved yet, says "I back away". Next round A, now at 15' distance, again goes first and hits B twice (with no disadvantage), distance now is 35' and, again, B can't reach A without dashing. Is there anything I'm missing in the house rules that would stop that?

Rukelnikov

2021-04-24, 07:58 AM

Ah, good point. But I can still see some issues;
Let's say A is a Warlock with Repelling Blast invocation, and B is a melee brute. They are at 40' distance when the round begins. A goes first, and hits B twice; distance now is 60'. B now dashes (as he was planning to anyway) to close distance to A. A, who hasn't moved yet, says "I back away". Next round A, now at 15' distance, again goes first and hits B twice (with no disadvantage), distance now is 35' and, again, B can't reach A without dashing. Is there anything I'm missing in the house rules that would stop that?

Well in the standard rules A could have pushed B to 60 ft, and then take his move to end up at 90 ft, so even dashinB wouldn't be at melee.

Anyway im sure there are some scenarios that play differently, if it were exactly the same, then it would just be standard PHB.

But I do understand the concern, ranged has already quite many benefits over melee.

ZRN

2021-04-24, 08:56 AM

The initiative system is interesting to me - it seems like given the general attention to detailed technical stuff, I’d expect your players to be big on detailed tactical combat, and if so it’s hard to conceptualize how that would mesh well with the DM making a lot of the specific decisions on positioning, etc. (E.g., if a psi warrior wants to shoot and push an enemy away from allies, or if a wizard wants to fireball a group of moving enemies, they won’t know the exact positioning when they make that choice.)

Does there tend to be back and forth on those details? (“Okay, you said Zedd is going to shoot the goblin away from his friends, and the goblin has moved 10ft before he gets a shot off, so tell me what square you’re pushing him to”) or do you just generally try for the best fit based on their initial stated intent?

MaxWilson

2021-04-24, 10:16 AM

On your disengagement, can’t you simply spend the extra movement to back away, then turn around to run the rest at regular speed? D&D tends to handwave facing which may muddy the waters here.
Also, i’m guessing there is no escaping a flank and that is intentional?

No, for the same reason even the PHB won't let you "move at half speed" over caltrops to avoid damage and then full speed the rest of the round. The intent is that your speed is measured over the course of a round. If you back away without taking an opportunity attack, your speed this round is half normal.

If it were a big deal to a player to back away 5' and then move normally 15' I can imagine increasing granularity to the point where what you are talking about would work, if the enemy you back away from doesn't follow you. I don't have any particular reason I want it NOT to work, but it's more detail / complexity than I have needed up to now. The main problem would be "how to do this without making caltrops useless?"

Isn't this a buff to ranged characters? RAW, once a melee character closes in, and assuming same speeds, the ranged character has several bad choices:
1- Disengage and move back; no attack of opportunity, but unless there's some ally nearby, nothing stops the melee attacker from closing in (and attacking) the next round.
2- keep trading attacks at disadvantage. Not good.
3- dash away; ranged character eats an attack of opportunity, and melee character can just dash as well to close the distance again.
4- If ranged character has Extra Attack and Expertise in Athletics, there's a decent chance that he can use one of his attacks to shove down the melee opponent, even with lower Str; in that case, he can move away and still shoot with his other attack(s)

None of these is ideal; but with your houserule, there's a much better option; Ranged Character just moves back at half speed (no action cost) and shoots. So the one advantage melee has over ranged (IF they manage to close in, ranged may be in trouble) goes away.

You're missing some RAW options:

5) step back 5', eat an opportunity attack, shoot without disadvantage instead of Dashing away. This is basically always better than #2 (trade attacks at disadvantage) once you get Extra Attack.

6) step back 5', DON'T eat an opportunity attack because the melee opponent's reach is greater than 5' so you haven't left their reach, and shoot without disadvantage.

So if it's a buff to ranged guys, it's a small and situational one which doesn't even matter against many (possibly most) monsters. Meanwhile it's also a buff to melee guys as well, who no longer have to take opportunity attacks to reposition themselves on the battlefield, e.g. make a fighting retreat down a corridor.

Mostly it's just a buff to realism/verisimilitude, making stories and rules align better, not a balance change. For example, #6 is absolutely stupid and yet it works RAW, because RAW opportunity attacks are incoherent. Why should a Balor's 30' reach whip make it WORSE at punishing archers who get to close than if it discards its whip? I want rules that make greater reach never be an unrealistic hindrance for that Balor--if you show your back to or get paralyzed within 30' of the Balor, it's going to exploit the opportunity and hit you, full stop.

Ah, good point. But I can still see some issues;
Let's say A is a Warlock with Repelling Blast invocation, and B is a melee brute. They are at 40' distance when the round begins. A goes first, and hits B twice; distance now is 60'. B now dashes (as he was planning to anyway) to close distance to A. A, who hasn't moved yet, says "I back away". Next round A, now at 15' distance, again goes first and hits B twice (with no disadvantage), distance now is 35' and, again, B can't reach A without dashing. Is there anything I'm missing in the house rules that would stop that?

In that specific situation, B can just move forward 30 and use a 5' reach weapon to attack A, or grapple A. A made a mistake in not backing up after going first, and B can exploit it.

Is there a reason A didn't just turn move 30' away after blasting B on round 1, instead of waiting until B was in melee range and then backing away 15'? He would have spent only 10' of distance that round, even under RAW, instead of spending 25'.

But in general it's true that winning initiative is powerful against human-speed melee enemies if you have Repelling Blast. Repelling Blast is a virtual speed boost when kiting. You're not missing anything in the rules that makes Repelling Blast or Mobile not work, although I think they work even better under RAW. (But fast monsters, speed 70'+, ideally 120'+, can sometimes get away with using knives in a gunfight, especially when dive bombing to close initial distance rapidly.)

The initiative system is interesting to me - it seems like given the general attention to detailed technical stuff, I’d expect your players to be big on detailed tactical combat, and if so it’s hard to conceptualize how that would mesh well with the DM making a lot of the specific decisions on positioning, etc. (E.g., if a psi warrior wants to shoot and push an enemy away from allies, or if a wizard wants to fireball a group of moving enemies, they won’t know the exact positioning when they make that choice.)

Does there tend to be back and forth on those details? (“Okay, you said Zedd is going to shoot the goblin away from his friends, and the goblin has moved 10ft before he gets a shot off, so tell me what square you’re pushing him to”) or do you just generally try for the best fit based on their initial stated intent?

I don't have a problem with back and forth, but no, it isn't often needed. I use a lot of TotM (sometimes with whiteboard diagramming to get everyone in the same page, but more like football sketches with Xs and Os and arrows than like battlegrids with every monster drawn individually) and generally lean in the players' favor as a general principle when determining e.g. how many Githyanki Warriors you can hit with your Fireball.

Bear in mind that the detailed technical stuff done by the DM exists so that players don't have to think about detailed technical stuff while playing, because the gameworld rules are more aligned with how they're imagining it. My goal is for them to imagine what it's like to fight hobgoblins behind fortifications, etc., and do what makes sense, instead of looking for rule technicalities. So no, most(?) players aren't into detailed tactical combat for its own sake at all, they're just into roleplaying, if that distinction makes sense, including the wacky stuff that I can never predict in advance.

5eNeedsDarksun

2021-04-24, 12:32 PM

Some good stuff here.
We also track negative hp. Maybe this comes from many years of other editions, or just the total lack of realism I get from someone being downed from a dragon breath and popped up again from the most minor of healing.
I really like the idea of getting something from an odd ability score; I'm definitely adding this to my house rules.

It's definitely smart to get these things out of the way in writing as players come to the table. I've heard the nerf vs. buff arguments, but I've never had any serious push back from a player who knows what's up before we start.

ZRN

2021-04-24, 12:41 PM

I don't have a problem with back and forth, but no, it isn't often needed. I use a lot of TotM (sometimes with whiteboard diagramming to get everyone in the same page, but more like football sketches with Xs and Os and arrows than like battlegrids with every monster drawn individually) and generally lean in the players' favor as a general principle when determining e.g. how many Githyanki Warriors you can hit with your Fireball.

Bear in mind that the detailed technical stuff done by the DM exists so that players don't have to think about detailed technical stuff while playing, because the gameworld rules are more aligned with how they're imagining it. My goal is for them to imagine what it's like to fight hobgoblins behind fortifications, etc., and do what makes sense, instead of looking for rule technicalities. So no, most(?) players aren't into detailed tactical combat for its own sake at all, they're just into roleplaying, if that distinction makes sense, including the wacky stuff that I can never predict in advance.

Oh, that’s interesting - my groups are typically similar, but at the same time most of them wouldn’t care about most of the house rules you list here for that reason - like, they aren’t doing the math to figure out when -5 to hit for +5 damage would be a good deal so they’d just not use that option. But if it makes things run smoother for you as DM when you’re the one facilitating the work of making sure they have a great experience while you worry about the technicalities for them, more power to you.

EggKookoo

2021-04-24, 12:56 PM

3.) XP awards. All characters get a share of XP proportional to their share of the total levels or CR (rounded up to 1) on their side of a combat. For example, in a party of three 9th level PCs and one 5th level PC (total of 32 levels), if they earn 2000 XP from defeating twenty orcs, the 9th level PCs will all earn 9/32 * 2000 = 562.5 XP, while the 5th level PC earns 5/32 * 2000 = 312.5 XP. But if one of the PCs casts Animate Objects and temporarily animates 10 Tiny Objects during the fight, then there are 42 total levels/CR, so the 9thl level PCs earn only 9/42 * 2000 = 428.6 XP, while the 5th level PC earns 238.1 XP.

I already do this for PCs and levels, but I never thought to do it for summoned creatures and CR. I always thought of summoned or pet creatures as an inherent part of the PC class. Not opposed to it, just digesting...

Keravath

2021-04-24, 12:57 PM

It seems to me that the disengage in this case can never actually work.

You decide to back away at half speed as your declared action. The creature attacking you declares its action as attacking you even if you decide to move away. Since it is not trying to disengage, its movement is not reduced so even if the creature tries to dash to disengage, the creature just follows and attacks anyway and the person trying to run away gains nothing.

Even trying to run away from an attacker - the only way to be successful seems to be to take the dash action to double your movement, as long as the attacker hasn't also decided to dash, it will only have 30 feet of movement so it will still get its attack (because it declared it would attack and stay in contact with their opponent) but the extra movement will allow the character to break contact and end the turn 30' away from the creature they were engaged with.

Basically, I don't see how this version of disengage actually accomplishes anything except walking backward around the battlefield while an attacker, and possibly more than one, follows you.

KorvinStarmast

2021-04-24, 02:22 PM

Simple changes

On ability checks only, an odd score gives an extra +1. So Str 19 means you have +4 to Strength-based attacks and saves, but +5 to Strength checks.
I am keeping this one. Nice.

Furthermore, Remarkable Athlete now stacks with proficiency. So a Str 18 Champion 9 with Athletics proficiency would have +4+4+2=+10 to Strength (Athletics) checks, not just +8. That too.
The rest are too much work to try out, with the people I DM for. KISS in this case means "keep it like what's in the book" or they'll get confused again.

da newt

2021-04-24, 02:59 PM

I can see the benefit / purpose of your house rules, but they seem to put a great deal of responsibility / trust in the DM to always resolve things in a very fair and equitable way while also hand waiving the specifics of turn by turn and battle map placement, and seem to add complexity to an already complex system of rules.

In my (limited) experience, I don't think I've run across a DM that I believe can both function at a high enough level to keep all of that straight and remain objective / fair.

MaxWilson

2021-04-24, 03:20 PM

Oh, that’s interesting - my groups are typically similar, but at the same time most of them wouldn’t care about most of the house rules you list here for that reason - like, they aren’t doing the math to figure out when -5 to hit for +5 damage would be a good deal so they’d just not use that option. But if it makes things run smoother for you as DM when you’re the one facilitating the work of making sure they have a great experience while you worry about the technicalities for them, more power to you.

Honestly I don't think I've ever had anyone USE the -5/+5 option, even against squishy zombies. Just because the DM invents a rule for consistency doesn't mean it gets used in play.

In this case my goal was to frame Sharpshooter/GWM in a more logical context, as specialization in a niche option available to everyone, and since I don't hear complaints about those feats being unfair/OP, I consider that mission achieved. Maybe I wouldn't hear complaints without it either, who knows, but I was thinking ahead when I made that rule, not reacting to something in play.

I already do this for PCs and levels, but I never thought to do it for summoned creatures and CR. I always thought of summoned or pet creatures as an inherent part of the PC class. Not opposed to it, just digesting...

Note also the next paragraph:

Purpose: this rule does not exist to punish you, it exists to keep the game interesting, so that you have a good excuse NOT to make the game too easy by flooding every fight with animated dead, purchased mastiffs, and summoned creatures unless you genuinely need them to survive and beat a tough enemy.

It seems to me that the disengage in this case can never actually work.

You decide to back away at half speed as your declared action. The creature attacking you declares its action as attacking you even if you decide to move away. Since it is not trying to disengage, its movement is not reduced so even if the creature tries to dash to disengage, the creature just follows and attacks anyway and the person trying to run away gains nothing.

Even trying to run away from an attacker - the only way to be successful seems to be to take the dash action to double your movement, as long as the attacker hasn't also decided to dash, it will only have 30 feet of movement so it will still get its attack (because it declared it would attack and stay in contact with their opponent) but the extra movement will allow the character to break contact and end the turn 30' away from the creature they were engaged with.

Basically, I don't see how this version of disengage actually accomplishes anything except walking backward around the battlefield while an attacker, and possibly more than one, follows you.

Sounds like I should rewrite that paragraph to emphasize the change for opportunity attacks instead of starting off with "there is no Disengage" as the first sentence. It seems to have given the wrong impression.

Disengage is eliminated because it's redundant after rationalizing opportunity attacks, that's all. Disengage == half-speed Dash.

All your criticisms are actually applicable to RAW Disengage as well--I'm not trying to change those particular scenarios. Even under RAW, Disengage is not useful alone between opponents with equal movement speeds. It's best used:

(1) As a bonus action via Cunning Action or similar,
(2) when you have a buddy or summoned creatures pinning the enemy in place so it can't follow you without Disengaging too or taking opportunity attacks,
(3) when you're enough faster than the attacker to get out of their Dash range.

My rule lets you use #2 (buddy pinning enemy) without having to spend your action on it, as long as you are fast enough, but otherwise it's similar to Disengage as an action (except in the corner case of Disengage + Dash). Or it lets you move to a chokepoint, to another room, etc., at half speed, without taking opportunity attacks. It makes melee combat potentially more dynamic, when needed.

I can see the benefit / purpose of your house rules, but they seem to put a great deal of responsibility / trust in the DM to always resolve things in a very fair and equitable way while also hand waiving the specifics of turn by turn and battle map placement, and seem to add complexity to an already complex system of rules.

In my (limited) experience, I don't think I've run across a DM that I believe can both function at a high enough level to keep all of that straight and remain objective / fair.

That's a fair concern. Earning and deserving player trust is very important to me--it's one of my two top priorities*, the other being a consistent world that is easy to DM. It often means going out of my way to telegraph lots of information to them, lean in their favor when we turn out to have been imagining things differently ("I thought the githyanki were right on the edge of the cliff"/"that wasn't how I originally imagined it, but let's check an oracle d6: on a 4-6, half of them are indeed within 5' of the edge"), be as transparent as possible, etc.

* Well, the actual priority is "give players the opportunity to make meaningful decisions in-character and explore the consequences in a safe environment", but fairness and transparency and supporting players' right to make choices with as much information as I can give them are all part of that priority.

About half the rules in the doc are designed to add consistency, which yes, is complexity. Those rules rarely or never get used, so they primarily just make the world simpler to DM. (E.g. quadruple falling damage for elephants = I can just assume that elephants are as afraid of heights as in real life, don't have to change anything.) The rules that players interact with, like initiative and opportunity attacks, are intended to simplify the player experience by removing artificial barriers ("why do I get attacked if I step backwards but not if I stand still?") that make roleplay diverge from combat rules ("why can't Bob and I both carry the stretcher in combat while Barry holds off the monsters? Why do we have to move on separate turns?").

Deleting complex rules from the PHB sometimes requires replacing them with other rules intended to be simpler, but I can understand why reading about additional rules strikes the reader as more complex. Simplifying is the goal.

dmhelp

2021-04-25, 12:14 AM

5.) Magic Resistance and Legendary Resistance works differently--requires a reaction and can dispel a spell it's affected by, regardless of whether or not it has a save. Details here: http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2016/03/5e-magic-resistance-variant-rule.html Fundamentally, instead of advantage on saves, it's now like Dispel Magic as a reaction whenever a spell would directly or indirectly affect the monster.

Thanks for posting them!

So magic resistance is always based off of charisma plus prof bonus? Do some monsters use custom numbers instead?

MaxWilson

2021-04-25, 02:33 AM

Thanks for posting them!

So magic resistance is always based off of charisma plus prof bonus? Do some monsters use custom numbers instead?

Not always Charisma, no. For Mind Flayers it's clearly Intelligence, and I give them Expertise in it because Mind Flayers have 90% magic resistance in AD&D (extremely high). Some monsters could use custom numbers, but if a monster has a spellcasting stat I generally just use that spellcasting stat, but I'm not afraid to customize (again, Mind Flayers have +11 to MR checks).

dmhelp

2021-04-25, 10:56 AM

MaxWilson

2021-04-25, 11:23 AM

I think the combination of your negative hp rule, wego initiative, and magic resistance really makes the game much more exciting.

What books do you limit players to and why?
From previous posts it sounds like VGM is ok but not MTF? And you allow ERLW but not TCE?

14) Re: Negative HP. A Zealot Barbarian with 140 hp gets stuck at -140 hp or minus infinity?

Complex
2) Re: Multiclassing. Do people play single classed/dual classed characters at all? It seems with letting people have multiple pools of spell points that there isn't much incentive not to multi class.

Do you ever encounter combinations that make you go out of your way to make things difficult for them and if so what did you do? I was thinking a Zealot Barbarian/Redemption Paladin would qualify at level 15 when you start auto healing 1d6 + 7 hp per turn, but maybe your negative hp rule makes that less excessive.

4) Re: Initiative. What happens when players use the common focus fire tactic? So pc A, B, C, & D all try to attack the same target until it is dead then move on to the next target.

Is a hasted Rogue allowed to use the haste action to sneak attack and then ready action attack to sneak attack again?

5) Re: Magic Resistance. Does a Yuan-ti PC get magic resistance?

So because Magic Resistance takes a reaction, it can be overwhelmed by multiple casters in a round?

And can a mind flayer use magic resistance against a conjured animal wolf? I think in AD&D/2e it would work against a summoned monster but not in 3e (I might be wrong on that and we just played it wrong).

Books: PHB, Xanathar's, Volo's, Mordenkainen's, SCAG, Cthulhu Mythos, and Rising From the Last War (Eberron) are all allowed. TCE is poor quality IMO and the feat design, subclass design, magic item design, optional rule design bother me enough that I just ignore it, except for stealing Ki-Fueled Strike for monks from it, and re-enabling sorcerer domain spells.

14.) Zealot: I never thought about that one before. I want the zealot to still seem cool, so I'd probably make the zealot stay alive until total bodily destruction at damage = 3 x MaxHP, just like I do for Trolls. But not infinity.

2.) Dual classing is still more frequent than true multiclassing for some reason, maybe because it's more mainstream. I haven't had trouble with particular multiclass combinations, no. Redemption/Zealot wouldn't bother me at all.

4.) Focus fire is fine. If you want to specify multiple targets, a la "we're all going to focus fire the mind flayer and the giant in that order", I'll apply your attacks in that order. Conditional action declarations are okay as long as they're not too complex (subjective judgment but basically "as long as they aren't hard for me to resolve"). If they are too complex I'll tell you to either commit to one action up front or Delay until you can commit. Usually not a problem.

No, sneak attack is once per turn, and since round = turn now for everyone, it only works once per round. For the same reason, a Fighter can ready an Attack and get Extra Attacks when the trigger goes off.

5.) No actually, Yuan-ti PCs don't get access to this kind of magic resistance. I just give them advantage on saves vs. magic, because true magic resistance is traditionally reserved for monsters and NPCs, not PCs.

Yes, multiple casters can overwhelm MR and that's on purpose.

Yes, attacking a Mind Flayer with a conjured wolf from Conjure Animals can let the Mind Flayer pop Conjure Animals if the wolf hits and if the mind flayer still has a reaction this round. (I agree, that's how MR works against in-place spells in AD&D too.)

dmhelp

2021-04-25, 12:42 PM

You forgot XGE in your list.

4.) Focus fire is fine. If you want to specify multiple targets, a la "we're all going to focus fire the mind flayer and the giant in that order", I'll apply your attacks in that order. Conditional action declarations are okay as long as they're not too complex (subjective judgment but basically "as long as they aren't hard for me to resolve"). If they are too complex I'll tell you to either commit to one action up front or Delay until you can commit. Usually not a problem.

No, sneak attack is once per turn, and since round = turn now for everyone, it only works once per round. For the same reason, a Fighter can ready an Attack and get Extra Attacks when the trigger goes off.

So when doing focus fire all players participating and the monster getting focused on have to roll initiative to see if the monster gets an attack off and who gets the killing blow?

Do you just use theater of the mind and never miniatures/maps? It seems like it might be hard to do if people are trying to move their miniatures 30' with simultaneous actions.

I'm thinking I'm going to poach your negative hp and magic resistance. I'll probably try your initiative if I can get a handle on it. Are there other rare rules hiccups that you've encountered like Rogue's ready action while hasted sneak attack?

Eldariel

2021-04-25, 12:48 PM

One thing I love about simultaneous turns is readied actions. In the Tiamat-thread, one thing that came up about fighting her is blocking her breaths with readied actions. In default Initiative this just works: she breathes and your readied action goes off first. Here? We have opposed Initiative roll (at a penalty to the caster) to determine whether the caster is in time or if Timmy gets their breath off in time. Cool, clutch and logical! Initiative becomes a tiebreaker instead of a free extra turn!

MaxWilson

2021-04-25, 01:53 PM

You forgot XGE in your list.

Thanks, added.

So when doing focus fire all players participating and the monster getting focused on have to roll initiative to see if the monster gets an attack off and who gets the killing blow?

Do you just use theater of the mind and never miniatures/maps? It seems like it might be hard to do if people are trying to move their miniatures 30' with simultaneous actions.

I'm thinking I'm going to poach your negative hp and magic resistance. I'll probably try your initiative if I can get a handle on it. Are there other rare rules hiccups that you've encountered like Rogue's ready action while hasted sneak attack?

Mostly Theater of the Mind, sometimes with diagrams. Sometimes grids when needed, but not usually. If a player wants to do grids I am willing to go to that extra level of detail but usually whiteboarding is more my style. Being willing to give players the benefit of the doubt goes a long way towards resolving potential conflicts, so I haven't had any issues when I do use grids--when in doubt, just ask the player to clarify, e.g. "is your character moving here or here?"

Yes on the focus fire thing, except that if they haven't declared a secondary target I don't necessarily bother checking to see who scored the "killing blow". Instead I just add up all their damage and compare to the monster's HP total. If it's over 100% damage, it's now dying (from Bob's Fireball and Alice's arrows and Jim's Eldritch Blasts, etc.). Whether the monster gets a killing blow does indeed depend upon initiative rolls sometimes, other times it's not needed. E.g. if an Ogre wanted to move 40' and multiattack someone, but two different PCs are Sharpshootering or Eldritch Blasting, I'll just have the players both roll their attacks while the Ogre is still moving, and if they both hit for 18 and 14 damage respectively and it has already taken 39 damage (out of 59 total HP), it gets no attack this turn and I don't bother figuring out who killed it. They both did, before it could attack. If it had thrown a javelin instead it might have gotten an attack, so I would have rolled an initiative contest in that case to see if the PCs were fast enough to prevent it.

BTW I have no problem with players rolling dice before I tell them to "roll your attacks"/"resolve your attacks." It saves time. Just don't announce the rolls until I ask for them, to avoid confusing people.

Note: I'm explaining how I'd run these details since you ask, but don't get too hung up on these details and corner cases if you'd rather do it some other way (e.g. if you want to lean more on initiative rolls and less on DM judgment of what would logically happen first). The key thing to try to keep things simple and realistic for yourself and the players, so everyone can focus on roleplay (including roleplaying combat decisions, sometimes even deliberate fear/hesitation/cowardice or mistakes!). If you want to let the Rogue have multiple sneak attacks by delaying, go ahead!

I consider the Rogue thing a feature (makes more sense), not a hiccup, but another interaction you should be aware of is monk stunning. Since stun lasts until the end of the monk's next turn, i.e. next round, Stunning Strike becomes even better as long as you can stun the target before he acts this turn, so that you can deny actions on BOTH rounds. I think that's fine/not OP but if you don't like that result you could change Stunnimg Strike, e.g. rule that monk stun wears after preventing one action instead at the end of your next turn (round).

Good luck, hope you and your players have a good time! Thanks for showing interest.

dmhelp

2021-04-26, 01:49 PM

MaxWilson

2021-04-26, 02:37 PM

So 6 goblins are in a pack and planning to charge the mage. The mage is trying to fireball them right off the bat. You roll initiatives to see how many get fireballed?

After someone has rolled their initiative do they keep it for the whole of combat or do you have them reroll every round that it is needed?

Have you ever used passive initiative for the monsters to speed things up further (although in the fireball example it would mean they all get hit or you abort fireball)?

Have you ever timed running the same combat with wego and phb initiative to see how it affects the duration of combat? You'd maybe need to run two different combats AB for first and BA for second in case the second time you run it it leads to a speed advantage.

Yeah, in that case I'd roll initiative to see if they scatter quick enough. Then the mage can abort, or just Fireball a smaller fraction of them, say 1d3 in ToTM, or if we're using grids then however many he can target if I move all the goblins about 2/3 of their movement (20').

In this case, "initiative roll" isn't a fixed value for a creature, it's a tie-breaking mechanism. It's not something kept for the whole combat. As time goes on I find that I ask for initiative rolls less and less, and rely on narrative reasoning more and more ("what would realistically be faster?"), because rolling initiative habitually tends to make the world seem more artificial (how can A run 90' before B can move 5'?).

I have not tried timing. I do know that WEGO initiative does take longer than it feels like it does--it's not unusual to look up at the clock and find that a battle that felt like five minutes (to me) actually took forty five minutes, less because of dice rolling and more because of the time spent on decision making. (The same is true of noncombat too of course--an NPC conversation may seem like it should have taken five minutes but it took twenty. This probably shows that I need to get better at pacing or something.)

I'm not sure if PHB battles would be faster than forty five minutes in the same scenario, but I'm sure that PHB rules FEEL longer to me because you spend so much time waiting for your turn, forbidden to interact.

stoutstien

2021-04-27, 07:50 AM

strangebloke

2021-04-27, 11:04 AM

MaxWilson

2021-04-27, 11:18 AM

Fun take. I would play the crap out a game running with this format.

Any thoughts on making high attack count classes AOOs more relevant rather than rider focused ones taking all the glory? E.g. the rouge getting a chance to deal 100% of their damage at every level and the fighter getting steadily worse as they get more attacks.

Huh. I never thought about it before--haven't noticed it being an issue, maybe because Fighters rely more as grappling for hard control than opportunity attacks.

I guess my first question is, narratively, why would you expect fighters not to be worse than a rogue at exploiting someone who turns their back?

My second question is, balance-wise, is it actually a problem if the fighter swings at +4 to hit and hits them with GWM for 21 points of damage, but the rogue stabs at +9 to hit and hits for 26 points of damage, but loses the chance for Uncanny Dodge this round?

I think I may have already dealt with this problem simply by changing Warcaster, because I feel like you might just be asking about Booming Blade/Warcaster combinations, and in my game that doesn't work. (Also I prefer to call it False Fetters instead of Booming Blade, because "booming energy" is a meaningless gibberish. Instead it's kind of illusionary shackles which fetter you, without you feeling anything, and stretch when you move, unless you move too far and then they explosively *pop*.)

stoutstien

2021-04-27, 12:16 PM

Huh. I never thought about it before--haven't noticed it being an issue, maybe because Fighters rely more as grappling for hard control than opportunity attacks.

I guess my first question is, narratively, why would you expect fighters not to be worse than a rogue at exploiting someone who turns their back?

My second question is, balance-wise, is it actually a problem if the fighter swings at +4 to hit and hits them with GWM for 21 points of damage, but the rogue stabs at +9 to hit and hits for 26 points of damage, but loses the chance for Uncanny Dodge this round?

I think I may have already dealt with this problem simply by changing Warcaster, because I feel like you might just be asking about Booming Blade/Warcaster combinations, and in my game that doesn't work. (Also I prefer to call it False Fetters instead of Booming Blade, because "booming energy" is a meaningless gibberish. Instead it's kind of illusionary shackles which fetter you, without you feeling anything, and stretch when you move, unless you move too far and then they explosively *pop*.)

It's a thematic and logic break I mind. The fighter can make 8+ attacks during their the turn but that momentum suddenly just studders when it's someone else's turn. The fighter is arguably the worst at AOOs, or reaction attacks in general, which is sizable part of combat.

MaxWilson

2021-04-27, 01:52 PM

It's a thematic and logic break I mind. The fighter can make 8+ attacks during their the turn but that momentum suddenly just studders when it's someone else's turn. The fighter is arguably the worst at AOOs, or reaction attacks in general, which is sizable part of combat.

I'm not sure that's true even. Fighters can still GWM on an opportunity attack, and unlike Rogues they don't (at least in RAW) need a nearby ally to get sneak attack damage on it.

5eNeedsDarksun

2021-04-27, 02:31 PM

x3n0n

2021-04-27, 02:41 PM

Max, maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems like a couple of these rules specifically nerf the rogue, a class that in most people's opinion is pretty well balanced as is. The elimination of the Disengage as well as everyone acting on one turn (eliminating extra sneak attacks) would hit them harder than most.
Thoughts?

I don't see how s/Disengage/Dash/ is worse for Rogue; they're both Cunning Actions. (It is a buff for Expeditious Retreat, though, which now has Disengage baked in.)

Max, does Goblin get a buff to Nimble Escape, or Drunken Master? (Something like "if any creature has a feature that grants the ability to Disengage, that creature may instead Dash, but only if they are using it to move normal speed while backing up"?)

stoutstien

2021-04-27, 02:42 PM

I'm not sure that's true even. Fighters can still GWM on an opportunity attack, and unlike Rogues they don't (at least in RAW) need a nearby ally to get sneak attack damage on it.

I get where your coming from but rogues tend to have SA more often than not and GWM is a feat cost without homebrew which we both agree should happen on some level.

5eNeedsDarksun

2021-04-27, 02:52 PM

I don't see how s/Disengage/Dash/ is worse for Rogue; they're both Cunning Actions. (It is a buff for Expeditious Retreat, though, which now has Disengage baked in.)

Max, does Goblin get a buff to Nimble Escape, or Drunken Master? (Something like "if any creature has a feature that grants the ability to Disengage, that creature may instead Dash, but only if they are using it to move normal speed while backing up"?)

I guess because in our games the only characters routinely using Disengage are Rogues; we currently have a melee AT who does this nearly every round. I don't think most other characters would miss it much, except on the rare occasion when the whole group decides to bail on a fight to avoid potential death. So I guess I don't like that change for 2 reasons: 1st the rogue nerf, and 2nd the party doesn't really have a way of getting away once they are into a fight.

MaxWilson

2021-04-27, 02:54 PM

I don't see how s/Disengage/Dash/ is worse for Rogue; they're both Cunning Actions. (It is a buff for Expeditious Retreat, though, which now has Disengage baked in.)

Max, does Goblin get a buff to Nimble Escape, or Drunken Master? (Something like "if any creature has a feature that grants the ability to Disengage, that creature may instead Dash, but only if they are using it to move normal speed while backing up"?)

I'm ashamed to say I never thought of this before--Goblins say "I'm disengaging" and that means "Dash backwards at half speed without turning your back on anyone." I never realized before just now that that's technically a minor buff since it works on caltrops too.

I didn't intend to buff Expeditious Retreat. Never noticed that before actually, never came up. Hmmm. I ought to find a way to nerf it back down. Maybe make Expeditious Retreat only work if you're moving forward / at full speed.

x3n0n

2021-04-27, 02:56 PM

I guess because in our games the only characters routinely using Disengage are Rogues; we currently have a melee AT who does this nearly every round. I don't think most other characters would miss it much, except on the rare occasion when the whole group decides to bail on a fight to avoid potential death. So I guess I don't like that change for 2 reasons: 1st the rogue nerf, and 2nd the party doesn't really have a way of getting away once they are into a fight.

I'm not sure if I'm missing something, you are, or maybe both.

9.) There is no Disengage. Opportunity attacks occur when you move at full speed away from an enemy (turning your back), or whenever you are paralyzed/unconscious. You can back away at half speed without turning your back. Creatures like beholders and black puddings have no backs to turn and can move at full speed in any direction without provoking opportunity attacks.

Remark: Dashing while moving backwards replaces and is equivalent to Disengage. You move half speed ('15), but you do it twice because you Dashed, so you move 30' without provoking opportunity attacks--that's why Disengage does not exist, because it's redundant.

So Dash is intended to fulfill the role of Disengage.

5eNeedsDarksun

2021-04-27, 03:28 PM

I'm not sure if I'm missing something, you are, or maybe both.

So Dash is intended to fulfill the role of Disengage.

OK, now I'm not sure either. When you take the action Max describes I could read it as a buff in that you get 15 feet of movement on top of the (usually 30) movement you get as part of your turn, for a total of (probably 45). Or it could be, as I first read it, that you can only take 15 feet of movement total when you disengage instead of 30.

MaxWilson

2021-04-27, 03:33 PM

OK, now I'm not sure either. When you take the action Max describes I could read it as a buff in that you get 15 feet of movement on top of the (usually 30) movement you get as part of your turn, for a total of (probably 45). Or it could be, as I first read it, that you can only take 15 feet of movement total when you disengage instead of 30.

I think what you're missing is the definiton of Dash:

Dash: "When you take the Dash action, you gain extra movement for the current turn. The increase equals your speed, after applying any modifiers. With a speed of 30 feet, for example, you can move up to 60 feet on your turn if you dash."

If your speed for the round is only 15', Dash gives you 15' of movement, not 30'. Ergo Dashing backward is equivalent to RAW Disengage.

Rukelnikov

2021-04-27, 03:34 PM

Maybe make Expeditious Retreat only work if you're moving forward / at full speed.

Maybe rename it expeditious charge :P

5eNeedsDarksun

2021-04-27, 03:42 PM

I think what you're missing is the definiton of Dash:

Dash: "When you take the Dash action, you gain extra movement for the current turn. The increase equals your speed, after applying any modifiers. With a speed of 30 feet, for example, you can move up to 60 feet on your turn if you dash."

If your speed for the round is only 15', Dash gives you 15' of movement, not 30'. Ergo Dashing backward is equivalent to RAW Disengage.

OK, makes sense. So the reverse of my previous feedback then: it's a bit of a buff to melee rogues, which I'm fine with.

dmhelp

2021-04-28, 10:55 PM

Does rule #13 turn Fighters into the best healers? Can a Fighter get 8d10+8*level healing after 8 hours of resting from second wind? I’d be fine with that, was just curious how you rule it.

MaxWilson

2021-04-28, 11:48 PM

Does rule #13 turn Fighters into the best healers? Can a Fighter get 8d10+8*level healing after 8 hours of resting from second wind? I’d be fine with that, was just curious how you rule it.

Yes, Second Wind works normally, and so do Healer, Warlocks with Cure Wounds, and probably other things I'm forgetting. So, Fighters aren't the best healers but they're still quite good.

But that's okay, because if I want an NPC warrior to be lying wounded in the gutter, I can just make him a degenerate Fighter subclass without Second Wind, or a Barbarian, or neither. Ditto wounded Efreets and the like. I'm not really trying to change how subclasses are balanced, just how the world FEELS and how nonspecialized healers work.

x3n0n

2021-04-29, 08:01 AM

MaxWilson

2021-04-29, 10:20 AM

Which buffs are intended to be vulnerable to Magic Resistance?

Magic/Elemental/Holy Weapon and the like? (assuming yes; when to decide? Before attack roll? On hit?)
Shield of Faith (and Hasted AC bump and Protection from Evil and Good)? (Never? Always, decide before attack roll? Decide after attack roll, only if it will convert a miss to a hit?)
A Hasted attack or Haste-readied attack with no other spell-granted bonus? (Never? Decide before attack is launched? Only possible on a hit?)

Any spell with a non-instantaneous duration, at the first point where it directly affects the target creature.

Magic weapon / etc., when they first hit.
Conjured animals, when they first hit.
Shield of Faith/Protection From Evil, when the protected creature is first attacked by the magic resistant creature.
Haste, never.

x3n0n

2021-04-29, 10:40 AM

Any spell with a non-instantaneous duration, at the first point where it directly affects the target creature.

Magic weapon / etc., when they first hit.
Conjured animals, when they first hit.
Shield of Faith/Protection From Evil, when the protected creature is first attacked by the magic resistant creature.
Haste, never.

Is Haste's AC bump akin to Shield of Faith, then? (i.e. attacking a Hasted creature offers the opportunity for Magic Resistance, but offense that could not exist without Haste does not trigger MR.)

MaxWilson

2021-04-29, 11:05 AM

Is Haste's AC bump akin to Shield of Faith, then? (i.e. attacking a Hasted creature offers the opportunity for Magic Resistance, but offense that could not exist without Haste does not trigger MR.)

No, they're different--they function differently. Shield of Faith interferes with the attacking creature--it's like a shield, and when it interferes with the magic resistant creature, the creature can (try to) make it go away. Haste makes you quicker, it never affects the attacking creature, and cannot be dispelled by Magic Resistance (except the Magic Resistance of the creature you cast it on I guess).

Remember that in a TTRPG run by a human DM with potentially infinite detail available, there is no such thing as "fluff" vs. "crunch." Everything has or should have an actual gameworld impact when relevant. In this case, it's relevant how a given spell grants an AC boost, and my judgment is that Shield of Faith does its AC boost in a way that directly affects the attacking creature.

If it were attacking with a missile weapon instead of part of its body though, I can see letting Shield of Faith stay up.

HPisBS

2021-04-29, 02:28 PM

This is a lot to go through, so please forgive me if some of my comments are rendered moot by later points, or if some other commenter has already said the same things.

1.) On ability checks only, an odd score gives an extra +1. So Str 19 means you have +4 to Strength-based attacks and saves, but +5 to Strength checks.

I like it. It makes it kinda messy since it breaks the whole "modifier" thing, but I think it's probably worth it to make odd stats have some actual impact.

2.) You can use both your move and your action in a Readied action, and can maintain a readied action from round to round.

12.) While you are incapacitated/stunned/paralyzed/unconscious (but not grappled/restrained), your Dex is 0. Won't affect PCs in heavy armor, but that swashbuckling rogue is in deep trouble if he ever gets paralyzed by a monster or put to sleep, even briefly.

As they always should've been. Though I might limit readied actions to 1/2 speed + action. They are reacting to some other trigger, after all, which implies that some portion of the round's 6 seconds have already elapsed.

3.) Class tweaks:

For Champion:

Improved Critical: you crit on a 19-20. Furthermore, when you inflict a critical hit, roll damage once and then double the total damage (including any bonuses from Strength/magic weapons/etc.), instead of just rolling twice the normal number of dice.

Furthermore, Remarkable Athlete now stacks with proficiency. So a Str 18 Champion 9 with Athletics proficiency would have +4+4+2=+10 to Strength (Athletics) checks, not just +8.

For Arcane Archer:

You have three shots per short rest instead of two.

An elegant solution for Champions, though I'm not sure if that Remarkable Athlete change really gives them enough outside of combat.

And is that really all the help that the Arcane Archer needs?

For Battlemaster:

You can temporarily regain expended superiority dice, up to your normal maximum, by studying enemies for weaknesses. For every Attack you forgo during the Attack action, you regain one expended superiority die, which is usable only against creatures you can see at the time you regain the die. This temporary die expires after one minute if it has not already been used, as do any temp HP gained from Rally with it.

For Berserker:

When you end a Frenzy rage, if you pass a DC 15 Con save you do not suffer any exhaustion.

That's a fun Battlemaster idea. For the Berserker, even the roughly 50-50 odds at lvl 3 would make me wary. I might prefer the new Ranger feature that just lets you recover a level of exhaustion with a short rest. Also, I'd make it so that using Frenzy suppresses all effects of exhaustion for the duration. That should give subsequent uses a nice trade-off.

4.) Everyone uses spell points instead of spell slots. A player can opt for DMG spell points or use the rules here: http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2016/12/spell-points-by-formula-5e-variant-rule.html. Must decide when spellcasting is first learned; cannot change.

I can't say I'm a fan of any formulation that'd give me less spellcasting for the majority of play. However, I do agree that we should exchange that 1/day limitation on high level spells for a higher spell point cost.

5.) An attacker unseen by his target has advantage only on melee attack rolls, not ranged attack rolls; however, he does qualify for sneak attack damage at range if unseen despite not having advantage.

I see this idea quite a bit, but imo, there should be some offensive benefit to invisible archery.

I think I'd rather let an unseen archer (or knife-thrower, etc) attack with advantage, but simply not let that cancel out any source of disadvantage. That way, an invisible archer would still have disadvantage to attack an invisible target, etc.

7.) Casting a non-bonus-action/non-reaction spell triggers an opportunity attack from any enemies in melee range, unless you have the Warcaster feat. (This replaces the third benefit of Warcaster, about reaction spellcasting.) This attack occurs after the spell is cast but before it takes effect (e.g. can still hit someone Dimension Dooring away, can disrupt a concentrations spell and prevent it from taking effect). If the attacker is a Mage Slayer, they can force a concentration save to potentially disrupt even non-concentration spells.

8.) Casting a non-bonus-action/non-reaction spell while moving at more than half speed, riding a horse or on a moving ship forces a concentration save every round even if it's not a concentration spell (Fireball) or it fizzles. Fizzling does not cost spell points but does waste your action to no effect.

Those are some big changes; I'm not sure how to feel about them. But I imagine anyone who's annoyed at a martial-caster disparity would surely rejoice.

9.) There is no Disengage. Opportunity attacks occur when you move at full speed away from an enemy (turning your back), or whenever you are paralyzed/unconscious. You can back away at half speed without turning your back. Creatures like beholders and black puddings have no backs to turn and can move at full speed in any direction without provoking opportunity attacks.

Remark: Dashing while moving backwards replaces and is equivalent to Disengage. You move half speed ('15), but you do it twice because you Dashed, so you move 30' without provoking opportunity attacks--that's why Disengage does not exist, because it's redundant.

Another big change. Do you give Monks and Rogues anything extra to compensate? (It doesn't warrant much compensation, as this pseudo-Disengage isn't free, but still.)

10.) Falling damage doubles for every size category over Medium, and halves for every size category under Small. For example, an Ogre falling 100' would take 20d6 HP of damage, not 10d6, because it is Large; and a Fire Giant falling the same distance would take 40d6 damage because it is Huge; but a housecat would take only 5d6 because it is Tiny, and a rat would take 2d6 because it is Tiny II.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. That's probably a good change. So would being knocked prone count as falling damage for creatures that're > 10ft tall?

13.) You do not heal to full health automatically on a long rest. Hit Dice can normally only be gained or spent on a long rest, instead of a short rest, and on any given rest you can spend HD or regain half of your HD but not both. However, Bardic Song of Healing now also allows you to spend one HD during a short rest.

So what benefit would, say, a Champion without a Bard in the party get from a short rest? Monks, Warlocks, etc would wind up sad if part of the party has no built-in incentive to short rest.

14.) - Negative hp - snip.

Another significant change. I kinda like the concept, but I don't think I'd want to implement this one. I'd be interested in trying it out, at least. If nothing else, it should ramp up the tension, since a single point of healing wouldn't be enough to get a downed ally back in the fight.

15.) Parry: This is a special type of attack which attacks attacks. When you Attack on your turn, you may choose to dedicate one or more of those attacks to Parrying. If an enemy attacks you with a melee weapon before your next turn, you may roll a melee weapon attack and replace your AC with your attack roll against that attack. You can do this a number of times equal to the number of attacks you dedicated to Parrying.
...

I like it, but that's the kind of thing I think should be a Monks class feature. Make Martial Arts actually feel like martial arts.

16.) To avoid breaking the game, Simulacrum works more like AD&D Simulacrum than PHB Simulacrum. Instead of an almost-perfect copy of the original, Simulacrum produces a dull, listless imitation of the original. If the original creature has any class levels or special abilities, the copy has only 50% of those class levels or abilities, rounded up (the player can select which ones, e.g. if you copy a dual-classed Fighter 5/Wizard 6, you can pick which feats to keep and if you want a Fighter 5/Wizard 1 or a Wizard 6).

In exchange for this nerf, Simulacrum is now not restricted to humanoids, and it may regain spell slots as normal by resting, but it never increases in power (never gains levels).

Very interesting tradeoff. I enjoy imagining the amassing of in-world power that such RAW spells allow, but alas, it really isn't so healthy for the game itself. I'd be mostly happy with this change, especially before lvl 17.

Complex changes

1.) Open-ended d20 rolls. Since skill checks and saves, unlike attack rolls, don't auto-succeed on a 20 or auto-fail on a 1, but I always want there to be some chance of failure*, on a 20 you re-roll at +10 and take the highest roll. Roll again at +20 if you roll another 20, etc. If you roll a 1, re-roll at -10 and take the lowest. If it's obvious that you've already failed or succeeded you can of course stop rolling already.

*Unless you have Reliable Talent.

I can't say I agree. Imo, being an expert at fill-in-the-blank should get you much better at not failing whatever you're so good at. At some point, I feel like PCs should even overcome their usual 1/20 odds of fumbling attacks.

. . I don't have any particular comments on the gestalts, simultaneous initiative, or xp.

No, they're different--they function differently. Shield of Faith interferes with the attacking creature--it's like a shield, and when it interferes with the magic resistant creature, the creature can (try to) make it go away. Haste makes you quicker, it never affects the attacking creature, and cannot be dispelled by Magic Resistance (except the Magic Resistance of the creature you cast it on I guess).

Remember that in a TTRPG run by a human DM with potentially infinite detail available, there is no such thing as "fluff" vs. "crunch." Everything has or should have an actual gameworld impact when relevant. In this case, it's relevant how a given spell grants an AC boost, and my judgment is that Shield of Faith does its AC boost in a way that directly affects the attacking creature.

If it were attacking with a missile weapon instead of part of its body though, I can see letting Shield of Faith stay up.

Why should Magic Resistance let a creature dispel an effect that doesn't directly affect them instead of just ignore it? Would that just be too much to keep track of or something?

MaxWilson

2021-04-29, 08:36 PM

An elegant solution for Champions, though I'm not sure if that Remarkable Athlete change really gives them enough outside of combat.

And is that really all the help that the Arcane Archer needs?

I'd rather undershoot and adjust than overshoot. Frankly you might be right--even with three shots I haven't gotten any takers on them. You may be right that further buffs are warranted. I think my next move would be to base their save DCs off of Dex, like the Battlemaster, instead of Int. It's not a huge change but in conjunction with three shots it might be enough. Or maybe I should give them an at-will option, like "you can forego one attack this round to add a Magic Arrow effect to the first hit to get this round."

That's a fun Battlemaster idea. For the Berserker, even the roughly 50-50 odds at lvl 3 would make me wary. I might prefer the new Ranger feature that just lets you recover a level of exhaustion with a short rest. Also, I'd make it so that using Frenzy suppresses all effects of exhaustion for the duration. That should give subsequent uses a nice trade-off.

I like that idea for Frenzy. I'm not sure I got your meaning about Berserker 3. Wary of using it as a player (DC is too high), or wary of abuse as a DM? DC 15 will get easier as you level up and companions get more features like Bardic Inspiration, Aura of Protection, Bless or Resistance, etc. Even without that it's effectively twice as much Frenzy as a PHB Berserker gets, although again I like your idea and want to steal it.

I can't say I'm a fan of any formulation that'd give me less spellcasting for the majority of play. However, I do agree that we should exchange that 1/day limitation on high level spells for a higher spell point cost.

That's why it's optional. I like the idea but don't want to force it on anyone.

I see this idea quite a bit, but imo, there should be some offensive benefit to invisible archery.

There is--you can avoid disadvantage from nearby enemies, avoid opportunity attacks, etc.

But it's just plain too easy to become an unseen ranged attacker (heavy obscurement, being put off Darkvision range, illusions of opaque objects, etc.) and physically being unseen just doesn't help an archer as much as it does a melee fighter.

I think I'd rather let an unseen archer (or knife-thrower, etc) attack with advantage, but simply not let that cancel out any source of disadvantage. That way, an invisible archer would still have disadvantage to attack an invisible target, etc.

That's cool. I know a lot of people who like that approach. I assume they probably run darkness and illusions and stuff differently than I do or RAW says to, to make being unseen at range a lot more difficult. Whatever works for you.

Another big change. Do you give Monks and Rogues anything extra to compensate? (It doesn't warrant much compensation, as this pseudo-Disengage isn't free, but still.)

Not per se. It's not in the doc, but I have previously experimented with and enjoyed giving monks the ability to substitute Wisdom (Athletics) for Strength (Athletics). I also give them Ki Fueled Strikes from Tasha's, ever since Tasha's came out. But no, I'm not directly compensating them at all for this time change, rationalizing opportunity attacks. (They are probably hurt more by Dex dropping to zero when paralyzed.)

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. That's probably a good change. So would being knocked prone count as falling damage for creatures that're > 10ft tall?

Not until now, but I like the idea. Physically though I'd have to halve the falling distance, since half your body is already at ground level, but yeah, I like the idea of a Fire Giant taking 4d6 falling damage if you knock him prone. (20' fall, x4 for Huge, halved because his center of mass was around 10' instead of 20'.)

So what benefit would, say, a Champion without a Bard in the party get from a short rest? Monks, Warlocks, etc would wind up sad if part of the party has no built-in incentive to short rest.

Champion gets Second Wind and Action Surge back on a short rest.

I like it, but that's the kind of thing I think should be a Monks class feature. Make Martial Arts actually feel like martial arts.

For me, it's not tied to any class, it's just part of knowing how to fight. But classes with lots of attacks like monks and fighters will be better at exploiting it, as Lord Robilar's assassins discovered.

Why should Magic Resistance let a creature dispel an effect that doesn't directly affect them instead of just ignore it? Would that just be too much to keep track of or something?

Hahaha, when I played AD&D as a teemager I asked the exact same question. It bugged me. Feel free to do it that way. The reason I did it this way for 5E: tradition (AD&D), and game balance. Specifically, Magic Resistance is one of the counters to Planar Binding, etc. Instead of just ignoring one conjured Efreet per turn or whatever, a mind flayer or powerful demon actively "pops" them permanently, if you use them against them. If you want a narrative justification, think of it like shorting out a circuit, but my real reason is just that I want to weaken certain kinds of spellcasters and make minion strategies less of a no-brainer. (Also stuff like Forcecage to a lesser extent.)

YMMV, steal the ideas you like and ignore the rest.

HPisBS

2021-04-29, 09:16 PM

I'd rather undershoot and adjust than overshoot. Frankly you might be right--even with three shots I haven't gotten any takers on them. You may be right that further buffs are warranted. I think my next move would be to base their save DCs off of Dex, like the Battlemaster, instead of Int. It's not a huge change but in conjunction with three shots it might be enough. Or maybe I should give them an at-will option, like "you can forego one attack this round to add a Magic Arrow effect to the first hit to get this round."

An at-will option is important to have (it's a big part of why I think the EleMonk feels so sucky), but that might be a bit too much. It may be best to just take a page from the newest book and give them proficiency bonus # of uses.

Although, if you thought of these special arrows as SCAG-like cantrips, I guess it could be balanced if you just reduced the at-will option to 1d6 damage or something....

I like that idea for Frenzy. I'm not sure I got your meaning about Berserker 3. Wary of using it as a player (DC is too high), or wary of abuse as a DM? DC 15 will get easier as you level up and companions get more features like Bardic Inspiration, Aura of Protection, Bless or Resistance, etc. Even without that it's effectively twice as much Frenzy as a PHB Berserker gets, although again I like your idea and want to steal it.

Meanwhile, Segev believes Frenzy is no stronger than other subclasses' abilities and should therefore be totally free. And he may be right.

Not per se. It's not in the doc, but I have previously experimented with and enjoyed giving monks the ability to substitute Wisdom (Athletics) for Strength (Athletics).... But no, I'm not directly compensating them at all for this time change...

I'm not sure I see the connection there, but I'd be happy to accept the buff lol. I assume you mean Wis specifically for grappling / shoving, rather than just any athletics check, like climbing? Why Wis instead of Dex? Just to keep them MAD?

Not until now, but I like the [prone damage] idea....

Bwahaha! Steal away! :smallbiggrin:

Champion gets Second Wind and Action Surge back on a short rest.

True. Then, how about most Artificers, Barbarians, Rogues, and Sorcerers? Afaict, the only benefit they could get would be from their race or feat selections.

Hahaha, when I played AD&D as a teemager I asked the exact same question. It bugged me. Feel free to do it that way. The reason I did it this way for 5E: tradition (AD&D), and game balance. Specifically, Magic Resistance is one of the counters to Planar Binding, etc. Instead of just ignoring one conjured Efreet per turn or whatever, a mind flayer or powerful demon actively "pops" them permanently, if you use them against them. If you want a narrative justification, think of it like shorting out a circuit, but my real reason is just that I want to weaken certain kinds of spellcasters and make minion strategies less of a no-brainer. (Also stuff like Forcecage to a lesser extent.)

I hadn't even thought of applying that to summons / animated __. That strikes me as way over-tuned! And I already felt advantage against all spells to be cumbersome enough as it was lol

MaxWilson

2021-05-26, 01:08 PM

I'm not sure I see the connection there, but I'd be happy to accept the buff lol. I assume you mean Wis specifically for grappling / shoving, rather than just any athletics check, like climbing? Why Wis instead of Dex? Just to keep them MAD?

Good point, I had grappling/shoving in mind specifically.

Wis because of little old judo masters tossing around younger burly men via perfect timing and positioning. Arguably that's just experience (i.e. high level), but I want something that would evoke the feel of "old people still excel at this", so I picked Wisdom over Dexterity.

True. Then, how about most Artificers, Barbarians, Rogues, and Sorcerers? Afaict, the only benefit they could get would be from their race or feat selections.

That's playing out right now in an online game, sort of. A player just realized there's no short rest healing and is expressing dissatisfaction with "cleric as heal-bot." Another player just stepped up to say "I've got the Healer feat so don't worry." As far as I'm concerned that is an ideal outcome--that kind of intraparty cooperation is a feature, not a bug.

So for Artificers, Rogues, Barbarians, and Sorcerers I say "either try to get someone in your party who can help you all benefit from short rests, or else change your mission tempo to ignore short rests because nobody benefits."

I hadn't even thought of applying that to summons / animated __. That strikes me as way over-tuned! And I already felt advantage against all spells to be cumbersome enough as it was lol

It would be overtuned on a PC maybe, as a way to kill monsters. But I need something strong enough to explain why Fighters (Barbarians, Rogues, etc.) are important to high-level parties, to tone down summoning spells like Conjure Animals from "uber" to "situationally excellent", and to explain why armies of Wished demons don't trivially take over the world. For some creatures I go even further:

e.g. Iron Golems not only have Magic Resistance +5 to +10 (depending) but are also immune to all changes created by magic except raw damage, e.g. grappled, restrained, blinded, plane-shifting, teleportation, etc. They are virtually impervious to magic, and that's deliberate because they're an antimagic tool designed by wizards to kill wizards (and bards, etc.).

KorvinStarmast

2021-05-26, 02:42 PM

That's playing out right now in an online game, sort of. A player just realized there's no short rest healing and is expressing dissatisfaction with "cleric as heal-bot." Another player just stepped up to say "I've got the Healer feat so don't worry." As far as I'm concerned that is an ideal outcome--that kind of intraparty cooperation is a feature, not a bug. The healer feat (which is a fine feat) is no substitute for HD healing, which means that the effect is that you have (again) levied a feat tax. (Not sure if you saw my observation on melee cantrips, but since I may have misunderstand that house rule, I am very interested in the answer).

Put another way, if I'd have realized what you were doing there I'd have purchased a healer kit as part of my original equipment. (or maybe I did and I just need to check my sheet when I can get at mythweavers again...)

Dork_Forge

2021-05-26, 03:03 PM

Put another way, if I'd have realized what you were doing there I'd have purchased a healer kit as part of my original equipment. (or maybe I did and I just need to check my sheet when I can get at mythweavers again...)

I think you have at least one, I suggested everyone carry a med kit on themselves that I can then use to treat them rather than needing to make sure I always have a kit with uses left. So far it hasn't been used at all so all kits should be full.

The alterations to rest based healing are certainly a challenging aspect of the rule set, partly why I went with my battle medic concept (otherwise I just wanted to see how a build I favour would do in one of Max's campaigns).

KorvinStarmast

2021-05-26, 03:04 PM

I think you have at least one, I suggested everyone carry a med kit on themselves that I can then use to treat them rather than needing to make sure I always have a kit with uses left. So far it hasn't been used at all so all kits should be full.

The alterations to rest based healing are certainly a challenging aspect of the rule set, partly why I went with my battle medic concept (otherwise I just wanted to see how a build I favour would do in one of Max's campaigns).
OK, checking ... brb...

For Max:
My detailed "huh?" post is here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25061749&postcount=69).

MaxWilson

2021-05-26, 03:22 PM

The healer feat (which is a fine feat) is no substitute for HD healing, which means that the effect is that you have (again) levied a feat tax. (Not sure if you saw my observation on melee cantrips, but since I may have misunderstand that house rule, I am very interested in the answer).

Put another way, if I'd have realized what you were doing there I'd have purchased a healer kit as part of my original equipment. (or maybe I did and I just need to check my sheet when I can get at mythweavers again...)

I'm pretty sure you did bring a healer's kit--I remember you talking to Dork_Forge about how all of the PCs should carry a healer's kit on their person for just that reason. Edit: yup, here:

Great idea, Love It! I'll have a healer kit in my equipment also. :smallcool:

If you need to retcon other changes though I'm open to them as well. What would you have done differently if you had known this rule was in effect?

I didn't see the observation on melee cantrips, will have to look for it**, but yes, a number of my house rules are deliberately designed to rebalance magic more in the TSR-ish direction, with more weaknesses relative to weapon-fighting, and making it harder (more expensive) to eclipse a fighter's Extra Attack damage with auto-scaling cantrip damage is on purpose. If you're asking if that's deliberate, yes it is.

** Edit: I assume it's this "detailed huh?" post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25061749&postcount=69)?

On the other hand, my motivation for healing is slightly different: healing is so easy to get in 5E that I'm not exactly trying to prevent PCs from healing. I'm more trying to (1) prevent NPCs and monsters from healing, so that players can interact with wounded monsters; and (2) ensure that any accelerated healing which players do is tied to a believable rationale. Instead of "you got stabbed through the chest with a greatsword, but somehow you're fine an hour later because [handwave]," it's "you got stabbed through the chest with a greatsword, but are functional a few hours later because an amazing healer dedicated several hours of attention to patching you up, possibly with magic."

Honestly I wouldn't mind seeing a group try to tackle an adventure without any extraordinary healing at all--it would be like a real-world special forces op--but because ultra-healing is built into 5E in so many places including class features, spells, magic items, and feats, I don't consider it my job to prevent healing. I do however object to RAW short/long rest "natural" healing--it strains my suspension of disbelief too much.

I am not flexible on this one--I'd rather not run a game than run a game with RAW natural healing. It destroys my ability to take the game world seriously.

KorvinStarmast

2021-05-26, 10:16 PM

I didn't see the observation on melee cantrips, will have to look for it**, but yes, a number of my house rules are deliberately designed to rebalance magic more in the TSR-ish direction, with more weaknesses relative to weapon-fighting, and making it harder (more expensive) to eclipse a fighter's Extra Attack damage with auto-scaling cantrip damage is on purpose. If you're asking if that's deliberate, yes it is. For ranged magic, I can see that as being thematic, for melee cantrips, it's (IMO) needlessly penal.

On the other hand, my motivation for healing is slightly different: I get the healing thing, and don't find it as problematic as what you did with melee cantrips. But there it is, you know you did it and that's your choice, and it wasn't done with a "wait, I had forgotten about melee / touch cantrips when I did this."

And here's the right forking that you give to shocking grasp. Shocking grasp, a touch spell, is designed to, if one hits, allow the caster to suppress the OA from the enemy. So you take the risk of being in touch range, and if you hit, you can get outta there. It's internally balanced (the advantage versus creatures with metal armor is probably a place to look at a second time if one is thinking of SG as being an issue)

Your set up (which is absolutely 3.5 ish, not just TSR ish, in granting OA's for spell casting in melee range (I have some 3.5 veterans who bitch about no OA when a spell goes off in melee range in a couple of my 5e games)) gives an OA for a spell whose very purpose is to prevent an OA so that the caster, if they hit, can back off.

I find that a strange choice. Mind you, I did not choose SG, since I didn't think that it fit thematically for the character in your PbP game, so it doesn't materially affect me. In a part of seven or eight players, where you can make a front versus back line distinction (AD&D ish, OD&Dish) this becomes less of a thing; given 5e's design model is for consistently smaller Player groups each PC has to have more tools, to make up for fewer player turns/actions being taken overall.

Anyhoo, I've said my piece, that's enough.

MaxWilson

2021-05-27, 05:37 PM

And here's the right forking that you give to shocking grasp. Shocking grasp, a touch spell, is designed to, if one hits, allow the caster to suppress the OA from the enemy. So you take the risk of being in touch range, and if you hit, you can get outta there. It's internally balanced (the advantage versus creatures with metal armor is probably a place to look at a second time if one is thinking of SG as being an issue)

Your set up (which is absolutely 3.5 ish, not just TSR ish, in granting OA's for spell casting in melee range (I have some 3.5 veterans who bitch about no OA when a spell goes off in melee range in a couple of my 5e games)) gives an OA for a spell whose very purpose is to prevent an OA so that the caster, if they hit, can back off.

I find that a strange choice. Mind you, I did not choose SG, since I didn't think that it fit thematically for the character in your PbP game, so it doesn't materially affect me. In a part of seven or eight players, where you can make a front versus back line distinction (AD&D ish, OD&Dish) this becomes less of a thing; given 5e's design model is for consistently smaller Player groups each PC has to have more tools, to make up for fewer player turns/actions being taken overall.

Anyhoo, I've said my piece, that's enough.

I agree that Shocking Grasp is left in a strange place, and if I had a player who felt strongly that it needed to be an exception, I'd be cool with that. I still see enough value in Shocking Grasp as written that I haven't chosen to proactively change it in the house rule doc for all campaigns, but I often make ad hoc rulings that don't make it into the permanent doc.

It's still not a terrific cantrip but it still has uses: for Warcasters, for casters with good AC who want advantage on their attack, and for anyone trying to prevent Counterspell/Magic Resistance in order to set up another character's spell.

What is TSRish about this rule is the idea that when you are casting a spell, you're not doing anything else. In TSR this means you can't spend movement, you lose your Dex bonus to AC, and your spell is disrupted if anyone hits you. (You also have to make an AC 10 attack roll to cast Touch spells even on friendlies, if you're both in combat.) In 5E, I'm treating it like being incapacitated (therefore, triggers opportunity attack) except that I still let the caster move at half speed. It's not identical to TSR but the intent is the same: provide reasons to keep spellcasters off the front lines if possible.

Edit: oh yes, and to find a good replacement for Warcaster's third bullet point. I am just not okay with the illogic of Polymorph somehow being faster and easier to cast on someone who turns their back on you. That desire for consistency is TSRish too.

Thanks for saying your piece. Again, if you as a player would like an accommodation separate from the permanent house rules doc, let's talk in the campaign thread about what end result you desire and find a ZOPA. I don't mind campaign one-offs, like "in this campaign, zombies and skeletons never heal" or "in this campaign Shocking Grasp never provokes opportunity attacks (even from Mage Slayers)". Better to have this discussion sooner vs. later so all the players know what's what.

KorvinStarmast

2021-05-27, 11:27 PM

What is TSRish about this rule is the idea that when you are casting a spell, you're not doing anything else. In TSR this means you can't spend movement, you lose your Dex bonus to AC, and your spell is disrupted if anyone hits you. (You also have to make an AC 10 attack roll to cast Touch spells even on friendlies, if you're both in combat.) In 5E, I'm treating it like being incapacitated (therefore, triggers opportunity attack) except that I still let the caster move at half speed. It's not identical to TSR but the intent is the same: provide reasons to keep spellcasters off the front lines if possible.
If we had seven person parties as the design model, I'd agree with you.

The 5e design model is a party of 4 plus or minus 1. The "front line" and "Back line" distinction from prior editions is mechanically not present. Nothing is sticky if you go pure PHB, unless you invoke the optional feat rule and apply sentinel.
Later, in Xanathar's, Cavalier is a bit sticky.
It takes monk five levels to be able to stun and begin to act as a controller.

5e, PHB only, has no tanks as MMORPG players understand a tank.