The D&D Basic Attack Issue

[Ignimortis]

Just an observation that's been a while in the making, mixed with a bit of a personal opinion.

Having something called a "basic attack" is bad for any game that intends to have somewhat complex and engaging combat gameplay, especially for characters who are supposed to be good at direct combat (martials). D&D certainly does have this issue, as do D&D-likes like Pathfinder. For the purposes of the thread, I'll focus on D&D and its' derivatives, since they do focus on combat a lot.

What is a "basic attack", you ask? It's the move that every single character has access to, which consists of making an attack roll with an equipped weapon and the only purpose of which is to reduce target's HP by default damage associated with the weapon. So it's no Power Attack, no Mountain Hammer Strike, no Greenflame Blade, etc. It's what you do when you say "I attack" and roll the dice without specifying any extra properties.

The existence of basic attack usually means that it's the balance line. Something that's more effective than just basic attacking is either resource-limited or takes more effort to do — 3.5 full attack or ToB maneuvers, 4e dailies and encounters (at-wills will be mentioned below), 5e BM maneuvers or Monk ki point effects, PF2's Strike feats. That, in turn, means that you have to use basic attacks at least sometimes, either because you don't want to spend your "big guns" right now, because you've already spent them, or because you can't actually do the advanced thing due to action cost and whatnot.

Somehow the best solution has only been tried once in the mainstream D&D, and it's been 4e martial at-wills. Even then, 4e made a major mistake — there are at-wills that simply "do more damage", and you don't get that many at-wills anyway (two, three if you're Human). This means that you have very little incentive to actually use anything besides "this at-will does more damage than I'm supposed to do normally", and even if you do, that just changes to "use the thing that I always use, and if that doesn't work, fall back onto doing more damage".

However, why not go a bit further? Surely it isn't that hard to invent a couple dozen at-wills that are just better than just attacking one target with your weapon for Weapon Damage + Stat (let's call them Strikes for now)? You don't even need to have them distributed to a single class only. There's certainly overlap for what can be Barbarian Strikes and Fighter Strikes, as well as Fighter Strikes and Ranger Strikes and Rogue Strikes and Monk Strikes.

The core condition is very simple as well. No Strike actually deals better damage than the other in any way. There's no Precise Strike for extra accuracy. There's no Power Attack for extra damage. If you get a damage-boosting feature, it applies to all strikes equally. If you get an AoE strike, it's not efficient against a single target and is probably worse than making a separate Strike against each target (alternatively, you can apply a Strike to several targets with reduced effectiveness for each one beyond the first). All extra effects beyond damage are utility - movement, applying some form of CC, team synergy, etc. Perhaps even include a mechanic that encourages you not to spam the same move — as long as you keep a "combo" going without repeating the same move or the same two moves, you get bonuses to effectiveness - maybe even the very same accuracy or damage I wouldn't include in the base strikes.

TL;DR: Basic attack is bad, why not give martials multiple at-wills with varied effects?

[Mastikator]

In a game that I made I more or less solved this by not having basic attacks. Different weapons have different options (often overlapping) and it has meaningful effects.

Depending on what type of game it is (fantasy, modern, scifi etc) you could use martial arts as a base for weapon attacks, where the PCs martial arts create attack options for their weapons. For example a defensive sword strike that causes the next incoming attack from the target to have disadvantage on their attack roll. Or allows the attacker to disengage safely. Or repositions the attacker and attackee.
What if you don't want to play a martial artist/monk? Silly all warriors use martial arts, even barbarians use a form of martial arts, the barbaric martial arts tradition. Martial arts is not about punching while looking cool, it's about attacking with practiced technique and ALL martials do that.

The downside is that many players want to just attack and not think, this creates added bookkeeping for martials and makes them feel as choice heavy as casters.

[elros]

I have to agree with all of the points made, and they are great suggestions to add variety and depth to combat. I have always wondered how to represent different weapons beyond just different base damage and critical damage. Yes, some weapons offer options to trip, etc, but they are the exception. How do a flail, mace, hammer, and morning Star differ, since they are all just blunt damage weapons?

The downside is that many players want to just attack and not think, this creates added bookkeeping for martials and makes them feel as choice heavy as casters.
I think that is the real issue- many people (including me) like a simple mechanic to resolve combat. Personally. I like to use my imagination to describe the situation (e.g. low damage could be a bash with the hilt, high damage an impale, etc), and others may want combat to end quickly.
Maybe it’s because I started out with basic D&D and have played war games, but I have not been drawn into the simulation RPGs. It’s the same reason why I don’t get into video games like Dark Souls that rely on combos and other complex actions, while other people love those games.

[Ignimortis]

The downside is that many players want to just attack and not think, this creates added bookkeeping for martials and makes them feel as choice heavy as casters.

That's basically the only argument I've been hearing for years, really. My current solution to that would be to keep one simple class for these players (I personally gravitate to making Barbarian that class, but I do understand that a lot of people would disagree, so maybe one could again go the 4e route and make something new like "Slayer", which was basically the simplest striker imaginable for 4e).

Mind you, that class wouldn't really be more effective than the default choice-heavy "Fighter". If they did noticeably more damage or were in other ways statistically much better, they'd be a better option in a game where reducing the enemy HP to 0 quickly is tantamount to victory. So "Slayers" would have to do about as well as "Fighters" with maybe minor token bonuses or something.



I think that is the real issue- many people (including me) like a simple mechanic to resolve combat. Personally. I like to use my imagination to describe the situation (e.g. low damage could be a bash with the hilt, high damage an impale, etc), and others may want combat to end quickly.
Maybe it’s because I started out with basic D&D and have played war games, but I have not been drawn into the simulation RPGs. It’s the same reason why I don’t get into video games like Dark Souls that rely on combos and other complex actions, while other people love those games.

Meanwhile I get bored to death when my interactions with the game don't involve me thinking out my every turn in advance and adjusting for what the other actors do. To be fair, I got into D&D after having played a whole lot of different videogames, so that might be coloring my perception as well.

Of course, the D&D solution was always "just play a caster", but I dislike both the long-term resource management and the aesthetics+mechanics of most casters. In fact, when I play casters, I tend to go for classes that do "blast people with magic real good many times" and maybe a rare buff spell in a pinch, like Sorcerers or Warlocks. That's part of the problem, simple (-er) casters exist, but all the martials are the same "I hit it with a stick real good", and the very top of martial complexity over the years (ToB maneuver users, IMO) is still below most casters without a fixed spell list.

[Khedrac]

A lot of the problem comes from the evolution of the game over time with different people having different ideas about what the game is for. Your entire argument hangs on the premise you stated (so full marks for stating your argument clearly):

Having something called a "basic attack" is bad for any game that intends to have somewhat complex and engaging combat gameplay, especially for characters who are supposed to be good at direct combat (martials).

The issue I have is "what makes you think D&D does intend to have complex (and engaging) combat gameplay?"
Going back to the early days (I am not sure about "Original D&D") the first version of Basic D&D not only had the "basic attack" as the only combat option, but all, yes all, weapons did 1d6 damage. Different damage for different types of weapons (e.g. daggers and claymores) was an optional rule!
(OK the thief class's ability to backstab did add an additional combat option.)
Ignoring AD&D for a moment, Basic/Expert D&D did not introduce any alternative attacks until the Companion Rules came out (the "Smash" and multiple attacks) following the third version of Basic D&D!

For a game that came from miniatures wargaming, it is quite clear that rules-driven complex combat gameplay was not part of the intention.

At this time AD&D (1st Ed) was taking the game in a different direction, with the usually ignored optional rules for adjustments for different weapon types against different types of armor (which in my experienced was ignored because it only covered armored fighters and ignored monsters who were the majority of opponents) and a completely different set of rules for multiple attacks.
Actually make that several different sets of rules for multiple attacks - the rules for melee weapons differed from those for missile weapons, and then there was an oft forgotten rule that actual Fighters got one melee attack per level against 1st-level humanoids!

[AD&D influence can be seen on BECM D&D first with the inclusion of an essay on pole-arms in the Companion rules (though it had a different breakdown than AD&D's similar essay) and the inclusion of "Weapon Mastery" in the Master D&D rules (which again suffered from purely applying to weapon-users and not to monsters).]

That said, while AD&D supplied a load of "realism" options, there was very little in the system to make combat any more engaging than in Basic D&D (more complex yes, but only in the sense of working out the modifiers, not in choreographing the flow of battle.

2nd Ed AD&D initially cleared a lot of things up, but then all the splat-books complicated things again, but either way there was a lot more potential for variation in combat.
Here, I think, you have some clear signs of the deviation between part of the fan base asking for (and getting) more complex combat rules and the authors trying to grant the requests without fundamentally re-writing the system.
Thus the problem you have identified starts becoming an integral part of the mess as the intent of complex and engaging combat is present in a system bolted on to one where it was not part of the original idea.

So going back to Basic D&D, what was one supposed to do if complex combat was not part of the intent?
To start with, fights were not supposed to be to the death, both AD&D and Basic D&D had morale rules which could cause one's opponents to retreat or flee. If I remember correctly, the main times that morale was checked were: first damage taken, first death and when 50% of the side has been disabled - and some opponents were more likely to flee than not!
The other big factor was something that, to me, is one of the significant differences between so-called "Old School" RPGs and modern - the players were expected to devise crazy plans and the DM to adjudicate the results on the fly. For example, collapsing a wall on an opponent, or throwing oneself down on the floor just behind an opponent as the main fighter drives them backwards so they trip over you.
In my experience (which I admit stops at 3.5 & PF1) newer gaming tries to have rules for everything, which tend to codify what you cannot do (or not without a huge penalty for not being trained). This tends to "force" players down the "roll an attack" route where, as you state, the basic attack does not make for complex or engaging gameplay.

3rd Ed D&D then makes this worse by having so many situational modifiers for combat that it ends up being extremely complex with much real variety in what happens in a battle - you attack and either miss or do damage, but now you need to be good at maths to work out the result (to the point where I do not recommend fighters for any new player not good at maths).

So, when you get to the core of D&D, I don't think it is designed to provide complex and engaging combat - that's a retro-fit with varying degrees of success - it's designed to be a simple combat mechanism around which the DM and players could improvise a combat to fit the circumstances (even if the rules not longer support this).

If you want an interesting and complex combat system play RoleMaster with a good GM (they exist) - combat is fast (yes, with a good GM it can be fast) and can be very entertaining (such as a duel between a barbarian wand two cave trolls where one troll and the barbarian both tripped over an imaginary dead turtle on consecutive rounds - which definitely puzzled the observers) or something else designed for it - D&D is not.

[KorvinStarmast]

Having something called a "basic attack" is bad I presume that you are referring to 3rd and 4th edition D&D, since 5e doesn't have that. If you Attack in 5e, you generally make a melee attack or a ranged attack, and it can be either spell based or weapon based. There is also the special attack (shove/grapple).

The issue I have is "what makes you think D&D does intend to have complex (and engaging) combat gameplay?"
Going back to the early days (I am not sure about "Original D&D") the first version of Basic D&D not only had the "basic attack" as the only combat option, but all, yes all, weapons did 1d6 damage.
That was in the original game; Greyhawk supplement formalized the change to damage by weapon type. (Ad HD by class as well).

Different damage for different types of weapons (e.g. daggers and claymores) was an optional rule!

(OK the thief class's ability to backstab did add an additional combat option.) Yes. And then in AD&D the grapple and overbear option was added to the DMG and it was clunky to implement.

For a game that came from miniatures wargaming, it is quite clear that rules-driven complex combat gameplay was not part of the intention. Not to mention that the combat round took a minute, not the current six seconds.
(Nice comments on AD&D 1e).

2nd Ed AD&D initially cleared a lot of things up, but then all the splat-books complicated things again, but either way there was a lot more potential for variation in combat. Here, I think, you have some clear signs of the deviation between part of the fan base asking for (and getting) more complex combat rules and the authors trying to grant the requests without fundamentally re-writing the system. Thus the problem you have identified starts becoming an integral part of the mess as the intent of complex and engaging combat is present in a system bolted on to one where it was not part of the original idea. By the time 2d edition came out, there were a variety of other games out there (you mention Role master) that approached combat differently than the core D&D approach, so I think that some of what was happening was bloat from trying to appeal to other tastes.

So going back to Basic D&D, what was one supposed to do if complex combat was not part of the intent?
To start with, fights were not supposed to be to the death, both AD&D and Basic D&D had morale rules which could cause one's opponents to retreat or flee. If I remember correctly, the main times that morale was checked were: first damage taken, first death and when 50% of the side has been disabled - and some opponents were more likely to flee than not!
The other big factor was something that, to me, is one of the significant differences between so-called "Old School" RPGs and modern - the players were expected to devise crazy plans and the DM to adjudicate the results on the fly. For example, collapsing a wall on an opponent, or throwing oneself down on the floor just behind an opponent as the main fighter drives them backwards so they trip over you. Good summary.

So, when you get to the core of D&D, I don't think it is designed to provide complex and engaging combat - that's a retro-fit with varying degrees of success - it's designed to be a simple combat mechanism around which the DM and players could improvise a combat to fit the circumstances (even if the rules not longer support this). Nicely said. And your plug for Rolemaster is seconded.

[Ignimortis]

A lot of the problem comes from the evolution of the game over time with different people having different ideas about what the game is for. Your entire argument hangs on the premise you stated (so full marks for stating your argument clearly):


The issue I have is "what makes you think D&D does intend to have complex (and engaging) combat gameplay?"

An interesting point of view, but it's been 22 years since even AD&D 2e, where the first attempts at combat complexity have begun, has been current. While the original intent may have indeed not been about combat, D&D has been excessively focusing on combat rules for at least 14 years, or even 22 years, if we consider the clear attempts that 3e had made to change combat rules and the clear-cut idea that PCs fight monsters, usually to the death, usually in somewhat sporting conditions (which is what CR is for), etc. Surely something could've been done in that timeframe?


I presume that you are referring to 3rd and 4th edition D&D, since 5e doesn't have that.

Not sure if any of them call it that, but I'm pretty sure 5e has that in spades. In fact, that's pretty much what half the classes usually do on their turn, sometimes more than once.

[KorvinStarmast]

Not sure if any of them call it that, but I'm pretty sure 5e has that in spades. In fact, that's pretty much what half the classes usually do on their turn, sometimes more than once. BAB (Basic Attack Bonus) is a 3e term. (Not sure if 4e used it, as I missed that edition).
I'll not agree with your broad (overly broad) assertion. The monk, to name but one, has a variety of things to do during a round. The BattleMaster (sub class of fighter) likewise.

I'll not comment on editions 3 and 4, but the aim of 5 was to make things less complex, not moreso. That was a design goal. (Achieved with modest success). The action economy comprises of 5 elements:
1. Move. 2. Action 3. Bonus Action. 4. Reaction 5. Interact with an object.
Under Action you will find:
Dodge, Disengage, Dash, Attack, Hide, Ready, Help, Search, Use and Object, Cast a spell.

Your assertion is not well supported for this edition.
As you get into various classes and sub classes, you find things like the cavalier's ability to lock people down, the Paladin's channel divinity, and so on. And you can always improvise an action, which is where this edition is trying to be less rule bound (despite the rules myopia of some of the player base) in the way that the earlier editions were. (Khedrac explained this nicely, so I'll not repeat their points).

[RedMage125]

I presume that you are referring to 3rd and 4th edition D&D, since 5e doesn't have that. If you Attack in 5e, you generally make a melee attack or a ranged attack, and it can be either spell based or weapon based. There is also the special attack (shove/grapple).

The OP clarified what they meant in the opening post:

What is a "basic attack", you ask? It's the move that every single character has access to, which consists of making an attack roll with an equipped weapon and the only purpose of which is to reduce target's HP by default damage associated with the weapon. So it's no Power Attack, no Mountain Hammer Strike, no Greenflame Blade, etc. It's what you do when you say "I attack" and roll the dice without specifying any extra properties.
So any attack that is not a special attack action "Shove/Grapple", or things like the weapon cantrips. Which is most weapon attacks that get done.


BAB (Basic Attack Bonus) is a 3e term. (Not sure if 4e used it, as I missed that edition).
I'll not agree with your broad (overly broad) assertion. The monk, to name but one, has a variety of things to do during a round. The BattleMaster (sub class of fighter) likewise.


Since we're being nitpicky, 3e's BAB was Base Attack Bonus, not "basic".

And 4e did use the term, because at-wills usually were called something else. Off the top of my head, a Rogue At-Will was Sly Flourish, allowed the Rogue to add CHA to their damage. Some Fighter At-Wills were Tide Of Iron (required a shield, make an attack and then push the target back 1 square, Fighter moves into that square), or Cleave (make an attack, but also deal STR mod to another target adjacent to the Fighter). Cleric had a ranged Implement attack that did Radiant Damage (kind of like the Sacred Flame cantrip now), or a weapon using one that after hitting would give the cleric and one adjacent ally a +1 bonus to AC for 1 round. Warlord had an At-Will that, on the warlord's turn, he used his Standard Action, and a nearby ally got to make a Basic Melee Attack, which, if it hit, added the Warlord's INT mod to damage.

The OP's point is that all these maneuvers are narratively more interesting than "I make an attack". Because even though 5e dropped the word "basic", that's all it is.

You are correct that the Battlemaster Fighter has resources to spend to do more maneuvers. But the OP seems to be looking for something a bit more widespread.

[Ignimortis]

BAB (Basic Attack Bonus) is a 3e term. (Not sure if 4e used it, as I missed that edition).
I'll not agree with your broad (overly broad) assertion. The monk, to name but one, has a variety of things to do during a round. The BattleMaster (sub class of fighter) likewise.

I'll not comment on editions 3 and 4, but the aim of 5 was to make things less complex, not moreso. That was a design goal. (Achieved with modest success). The action economy comprises of 5 elements:
1. Move. 2. Action 3. Bonus Action. 4. Reaction 5. Interact with an object.
Under Action you will find:
Dodge, Disengage, Dash, Attack, Hide, Ready, Help, Search, Use and Object, Cast a spell.

Your assertion is not well supported for this edition.
As you get into various classes and sub classes, you find things like the cavalier's ability to lock people down, the Paladin's channel divinity, and so on. And you can always improvise an action, which is where this edition is trying to be less rule bound (despite the rules myopia of some of the player base) in the way that the earlier editions were. (Khedrac explained this nicely, so I'll not repeat their points).

I've played 5e from the 2014 release to 2020 on every martial class that isn't a Rogue or a Barbarian. The only class where making tactical decisions was somewhat supported was indeed the Monk, and mostly because their resource usage isn't too strict after level 8 or so (early levels are distressingly bad, though). Even then most options that Monks have are very situational and get very little use, while Flurry of Blows is bread-and-butter.

But my assertion was exactly that all martial classes of D&D fall back on that basic attack (as per 5e, Attack) action, i.e. the action that exists solely to lower enemy HP without any additional effects by itself. Battlemasters get too few maneuvers to use them every turn (not even every attack). Paladins get to Channel Divinity once per short rest, and most Channel Divinity uses are Bonus Actions, so you still have your Action to attack (and probably should). Rangers don't get combat options that aren't "hit more people" or "hit for more damage". Etc, etc.

As a martial, you will spend 90% of your turns, if not more, making Attack Actions and maybe Bonus Actions too. All of which will behave in the same exact way — you hit the target, you reduce their HP, move on. No "reduce enemy speed" effect. No "automatically shove an enemy" effect unless you're an Open Hand Monk who had just used ki to Flurry of Blows. No "inflict Frightened on the enemy", too. All of these are in BM maneuvers, but BM gets so very few of these that you could think they get to explode an enemy outright or something equivalent with these, not do a basic combat trick. If Battlemaster had a permanent d4 or even a d0 (i.e. no bonus) it could fall back onto for BM maneuvers, it would be a hundred times more fun for me. Not perfect, but still a lot more fun than anything else in 5e.


The OP clarified what they meant in the opening post:
So any attack that is not a special attack action "Shove/Grapple", or things like the weapon cantrips. Which is most weapon attacks that get done.

The OP's point is that all these maneuvers are narratively more interesting than "I make an attack". Because even though 5e dropped the word "basic", that's all it is.

You are correct that the Battlemaster Fighter has resources to spend to do more maneuvers. But the OP seems to be looking for something a bit more widespread.

That's right. Not even only narratively more interesting, but gameplay-wise, too.

Sure, you can use Shove instead of an Attack, but for most situations, doing so is not very conductive to actually winning the fight, unless you're pushing someone off a cliff. But pushing someone off a 5-ft railing is counterproductive, because they'll just get up next turn for half their movement and hit you in the face anyway.

However, having a choice between, say, Frightening a foe + doing damage to them, Shoving a foe + doing damage to them or knocking them Prone + doing damage? You're doing something useful in either event, but the additional effects make it worth to think about what you'll do this turn in particular, consider the enemies you can do it to, and so on. If you have access to five or six such abilities, all at-will, it can get very interesting, especially if we're not talking about 5e's combat engine, where movement is free, but something more robust like 3.5 or PF2, where every type of action has an associated cost and so those Strikes can have other types for move actions or swift actions, or activities...

[Lord Raziere]

....I mean it'd be simple to introduce some strategy into basic attacks, just divide them into light and strong attacks to start with. light attacks for quickness and number, strong attacks for power and piercing a defense. its something that some games already do to make combat much more interesting.

[warty goblin]

There's also the matter of DM burden. Most monsters use basic attacks, with pretty simple decisions about when to use what; the archers should stay back and shoot, the guy with the big axe should rush in. Easy 7s good when running a big heap of orcs or whatever.

If you get rid of a basic attack driven combat system and go to a more complex system for PCs, the obvious question is why the monsters don't get something like that. If you do give every orc in the game three or four melee attack options so they feel like they're playing the same game as the PCs, the loading on the DM increases hugely. It also probably drives up the number of status effects and saving throws PCs have to make, which slows down gameplay and probably annoys players. Crowd controlling dudes is fun, being crowd controlled usually sucks.

(Even giving PCs access to lots of status effects as default options drives up DM loading hugely. Damage is just a simple running arithmetic problem, much easier to track than effects with specific durations and consequences.)

If you don't give Joe Orc access to the same system, it starts to feel odd. Bob the Mighty Warrior, greatest knight in the land, has to go through a complex batch of moves to steadily grind down his foes via status effects and maneuvers and so on, Joe Orc just hits like a ton of bricks every single time.

And honestly, I suspect a pretty reasonable number of players just like smacking things for big numbers, and would mechanically rather play Joe Orc. Not everyone enjoys having to pull three or five special game levers just to stab something.

[NichG]

Part of the issue is that the end state for combat tends to most often be 'the entire enemy side is <= 0hp', combined with costing a fair amount of table time per character-action, so that each participant may only get to do 3 or 4 things in a given fight. That strongly biases things towards either spending actions making enemy hitpoints go down, or being able to affect many or all enemies on the field with a single one of your actions. Debuffing a single enemy, especially if there's a failure chance, is rarely worth sacrificing damage. Also, pushing the design too far the other way and trying to make the non-damage parts of a fight matter more (without enabling them to lead to victory conditions of their own) just tends to make fights drag on longer.

Composite actions sit at a sort of nice spot if you aren't going to go the full distance and rebuild the combat system to allow for other kinds of reliable victory conditions. That is to say, rather than replacing the basic attack with a set of completely distinct things, you have lots of ways to act alongside or augment basic attacks, or build resources by doing basic attacks which can be spent as micro actions in other circumstances. For example, Tome of Battle Boosts for augmenting the basic attack in exchange for a smaller action resource. Another way to do it would be to have basic attacks charge up a Momentum resource that has to be spent during your turn or before your next turn, where each point of Momentum can be used to do different things dependent on class/feats/etc stuff - maybe you can spend it to move 5ft outside of your turn, or gain/grant an ally a bonus to AC, heal a bit, change your initiative count, hide in plain sight, etc. Those things should generally avoid modifying the damage flow, because (unless you add other victory conditions), the damage flow is basically the clock that determines when the battle ends, and even something like a 20% increase in damage is going to be hard for other things to beat.

Of course, adding ways for the fight to end other than total annihilation of one side is also a worthwhile design goal. An actual integrated morale system, battle objectives and limited time to achieve them, etc, would mean that there could be situations where choosing to do something other than 'attack an enemy in some form' would be an optimal choice, and then spamming a basic attack wouldn't be standard operating procedure as much. A Leadership check to scatter the small fry might do more than actually killing them. Or a double move to get to a control objective to get an extra round of cumulative victory score might be worth more than taking out an enemy unit at all. The question there is usually how to make those abstractions consistently available so players can expect them in every combat and build around them, while simultaneously having guidelines or systems which would make it easier to DM (e.g. if you have to come up with a reason for every combat to have an explicit time limit or nontrivial objectives, it's easy to get lazy about it and just fall back to 'kill the other side' type fights)

[Ignimortis]

....I mean it'd be simple to introduce some strategy into basic attacks, just divide them into light and strong attacks to start with. light attacks for quickness and number, strong attacks for power and piercing a defense. its something that some games already do to make combat much more interesting.

This tends to be interesting in real-time games (which have other factors like stamina usage or combos or the sheer ability of enemies to gang up on you), while TTRPGs need a bit more, IMO. It still results in situations where you always know what you're gonna do all combat - see dodge-heavy, fragile enemies? Lay into them with Light Attacks, and vice versa.


There's also the matter of DM burden. Most monsters use basic attacks, with pretty simple decisions about when to use what; the archers should stay back and shoot, the guy with the big axe should rush in. Easy 7s good when running a big heap of orcs or whatever.

What you could do about that is to give those creatures only one or two attacks with some basic rider (usually not hard CC), but some interactions with one another, so they're playing like a squad of orcs instead of a gang of individual orcs that don't do much outside of their turn. A gimmick helps enemies stand out anyway (for example, 5e MM is terrible about this, a lot of enemies are just piles of HP and damage).


Part of the issue is that the end state for combat tends to most often be 'the entire enemy side is <= 0hp', combined with costing a fair amount of table time per character-action, so that each participant may only get to do 3 or 4 things in a given fight. That strongly biases things towards either spending actions making enemy hitpoints go down, or being able to affect many or all enemies on the field with a single one of your actions. Debuffing a single enemy, especially if there's a failure chance, is rarely worth sacrificing damage. Also, pushing the design too far the other way and trying to make the non-damage parts of a fight matter more (without enabling them to lead to victory conditions of their own) just tends to make fights drag on longer.

That's pretty much why I don't like the suggestion of "well why don't you just use the default Shoves and Grapples and Trips if you dislike attacking so much?". I like things I do to matter, and the most important thing in D&D-like games is to reduce enemy HP. If your Shove/Grapple/Trip/Whatever doesn't contribute more party DPR than just hitting the enemy, why do them? It's not like you can grapple a guy and hit another enemy with his body like an oversized club, or suplex a giant and break his neck.



Composite actions sit at a sort of nice spot if you aren't going to go the full distance and rebuild the combat system to allow for other kinds of reliable victory conditions. That is to say, rather than replacing the basic attack with a set of completely distinct things, you have lots of ways to act alongside or augment basic attacks, or build resources by doing basic attacks which can be spent as micro actions in other circumstances. For example, Tome of Battle Boosts for augmenting the basic attack in exchange for a smaller action resource. Another way to do it would be to have basic attacks charge up a Momentum resource that has to be spent during your turn or before your next turn, where each point of Momentum can be used to do different things dependent on class/feats/etc stuff - maybe you can spend it to move 5ft outside of your turn, or gain/grant an ally a bonus to AC, heal a bit, change your initiative count, hide in plain sight, etc. Those things should generally avoid modifying the damage flow, because (unless you add other victory conditions), the damage flow is basically the clock that determines when the battle ends, and even something like a 20% increase in damage is going to be hard for other things to beat.

My thoughts exactly, nothing to add, all those systems have been considered at some point.



Of course, adding ways for the fight to end other than total annihilation of one side is also a worthwhile design goal. An actual integrated morale system, battle objectives and limited time to achieve them, etc, would mean that there could be situations where choosing to do something other than 'attack an enemy in some form' would be an optimal choice, and then spamming a basic attack wouldn't be standard operating procedure as much. A Leadership check to scatter the small fry might do more than actually killing them. Or a double move to get to a control objective to get an extra round of cumulative victory score might be worth more than taking out an enemy unit at all. The question there is usually how to make those abstractions consistently available so players can expect them in every combat and build around them, while simultaneously having guidelines or systems which would make it easier to DM (e.g. if you have to come up with a reason for every combat to have an explicit time limit or nontrivial objectives, it's easy to get lazy about it and just fall back to 'kill the other side' type fights)

That's not bad too, but that does require a lot more time investment and effort - and a bit of reorienting the system's goals in general, returning in part to pre-3e D&D's game structure. Thing is, an imaginative DM can already include a lot of that in the game — but those would be gimmick fights, and usually they'll be done in a way that winning at actual combat is way harder than doing the gimmick correctly.

[olskool]

We add both Combat Maneuvers to the Fighter's FIGHTING STYLE and give weapons "Special Effects" which they can do. I'll explain but FIRST I must clarify HOW we do weapon proficiencies. We have FOUR Types of Proficiency (both for weapons and non-weapon proficiencies)...

Non-Proficient: You are untrained = -2 To roll (may be overcome by Attribute/Characteristic bonuses... ie "natural talent")


Basic Proficiency: You have only the most basic training and practice rarely = Provides NO BONUS TO HIT but also no penalties. You still add Characteristic bonuses to your To Hit

Martial Proficiency/Expert Proficiency (non-weapon): You train regularly and keep up with any breakthroughs or developments. You use this skill regularly to improve it. = Add your Proficiency Bonus to your To Hit.

Mastery [Skill or Weapon]: You are inventing new ways to do the skill and have an intuitive grasp on the Skill in question. Mastery is only awarded as a Class Attribute or as a FEAT. You must acquire a [Skill] Mastery through leveling up. = Adds DOUBLE your Proficiency Bonus To Hit & your Proficiency bonus to Damage.


"Special Effects" can be done by anyone when a Natural 20 is rolled (in addition to doing maximum damage) on a To Hit that didn't NEED a natural 20 to be rolled. Martial Proficiency users can also score a Special Effect IF they roll 5+ OVER what they needed to hit the target. "Special Effects" may be weapon dependent or not and include things like...

Entangle (whips, nets, lasso) = The target must make a DEX Save or be unable to move. A successful save STILL results in DISADVANTAGE next round.

Slash (slashing weapons like axes, broadswords, & Polearms) = The target takes an additional rolled damage on top of the weapon's max damage. A target with light armor or a shield must save versus a DC equal to the damage rolled (magic bonuses apply as well) or be reduced in AC by 1 (or shattered for shields).

Impale (piercing weapons like spears, daggers, swords, and picks) = The target takes rolled damage + maximum damage and must Save v. the Damage or be Impaled (ie the weapon is STUCK in their body). The ATTACKER may try to retrieve their weapon by rolling a STR Save against the damage if it becomes lodged or just let it go. A lodged weapon does half its rolled damage when the victim moves or attacks until it is removed by a STR Save.

Crush (bludgeoning weapons like maces, hammers, & flails) = The target takes max damage + rolled damage and must make a CON Save vs the damage or be STUNNED next round. Additionally, they must make either a STR or DEX (DM's ruling based on the attack) Save vs Damage or be knocked prone and need an entire ROUND to stand back up. IF the Saves are made, the target still suffers DISADVANTAGE the following round from being winded.

Pin Weapon (staves, polearms, shields, tridents, & spears) = In addition to max damage, the target's weapon or weapon arm is pinned either to the wall, ground, or against their own body unless they Save against the ATTACKER'S STR or DEX (whichever is lower). Neither the Attacker nor Target can move or used the pinned & pinning weapons to attack until the PIN ends. A successful Save against PIN still results in DISADVANTAGE next round.

Sunder Weapon, Shield, or Armor (axes, picks, hammers, & poleaxes/halberds) = In addition to max damage, the target's Shield, Weapon (these must be declared by expending your REACTION to hit them), or Armor (the default here) MUST roll a Save against the Damage or be shattered/broken (shields & weapons) or lose 1 AC (armor).

The following Special Effects (SEs) can be used by any person or weapon. HOWEVER, IF a weapon lists this maneuver in its capabilities, it has an advantage in performing that maneuver. Thus, whips give an advantage with disarms and tripping.

TRIP
DISARM FOE
REDIRECT FOE (move 5ft or change one facing)

We give the Martials Special Abilities like these with their FIGHTING STYLE. Each time they get an ASI, they also get a new SE to use with that fighting style. For the Martial to use their Special Effect in a Fighting Style, they must roll an additional (different colored) D20 AND expend their REACTION. IF...

Both rolls fail, then nothing succeeds
The To Hit fails but the maneuver roll succeeds, then both fail
The To Hit succeeds but the maneuver roll FAILs, it is a simple hit for damage
Both rolls succeed, the target takes damage AND the maneuver must be resisted.

If 5 over or a "crit" is scored, using an effect from your fighting style creates DISADVANTAGE on the target's saving throws due to your expertise at that move.

This is just a sampling of how we do Special Effects in D&D 5e. Use what you will and ignore the rest.

[kyoryu]

Somehow the best solution has only been tried once in the mainstream D&D, and it's been 4e martial at-wills. Even then, 4e made a major mistake — there are at-wills that simply "do more damage", and you don't get that many at-wills anyway (two, three if you're Human). This means that you have very little incentive to actually use anything besides "this at-will does more damage than I'm supposed to do normally", and even if you do, that just changes to "use the thing that I always use, and if that doesn't work, fall back onto doing more damage".

However, why not go a bit further? Surely it isn't that hard to invent a couple dozen at-wills that are just better than just attacking one target with your weapon for Weapon Damage + Stat (let's call them Strikes for now)? You don't even need to have them distributed to a single class only. There's certainly overlap for what can be Barbarian Strikes and Fighter Strikes, as well as Fighter Strikes and Ranger Strikes and Rogue Strikes and Monk Strikes.

I had really hoped that 4e would have had a number of at-wills that were more situational and positional. The number of things that boiled down to "obviously better" disappointed me. That's true even for encounters and dailies.

[AceOfFools]

Your premise is bad.

Having a basic attack available to anyone with a weapon is an absolutely necessity in a combat focused game because people will pick up their fallen comrade’s much better sword and try to wield it. Let alone what do your non-martials do when they’re out of big guns/their at-will spells are useless due magic/elemental resistance?

Secondly, your conclusion is invalid based on the evidence available.

The need to have a dozen abilities with riders and unique effects was a contributing factor in 4e’s unpopularity. Having to a) pick which of many options, and b) track and compute all the effects of these modifiers was Not Fun for so many players, that DnD bleed market share to Pathfinder, because it was simpler.

One of the core strengths of DnD going back to AD&D is that it has opt-in complexity. My friend who does not enjoy tracking and balancing many options and resources can roll a fighter and play alongside our other friend who likes playing wizards for precisely that reason and play together. DnD meets the needs of a variety of players preferred complexity level, and so you don’t have to compromise to play together.

In short, basic attacks and/or basic-attack-but-better at-will are a feature, not a bug, and they make the game better (where “better” is defined as “more fun for more people”, not “more fun for you”).

[NichG]

That's not bad too, but that does require a lot more time investment and effort - and a bit of reorienting the system's goals in general, returning in part to pre-3e D&D's game structure. Thing is, an imaginative DM can already include a lot of that in the game — but those would be gimmick fights, and usually they'll be done in a way that winning at actual combat is way harder than doing the gimmick correctly.

If its only a sometimes thing, players can't really build concepts around it. It makes a difference if you commit to the idea that, for example, every single fight no matter what has a timer and once that timer hits zero, no matter the state of the sides, the fight is over and the situation moves on in such a way that the things the fight was about can no longer be changed by either side. Then you can have abilities that mess with the timer, abilities which rush to capture goals or objectives, etc. But if the campaign isn't built around the fact that every fight has to be like that, the guy who specialized in timer manipulation is going to think 'I should have just gone with damage'. There's a lot of stuff you'd have to do throughout the system to make that not end up feeling dissonant - for example, increasing the length of combat rounds to something closer to 10 minutes, connecting it to stamina (so every round, everyone who participates in fighting advances to Fatigued then Exhausted then something worse than Exhausted, modulo effects from Constitution or feats), allowing time for reinforcements to arrive, etc...

[Pauly]

[complex and engaging combat gameplay, especially for characters who are supposed to be good at direct combat (martials).

Speaking as an old time miniature wargamer this does not mean having a menu of attacks to choose from.
You derive complex and engaging combat gameplay by having meaningful tactical decisions. Where to move. When to take cover. Which opponent to engage. How to reduce the opponent’s choices. When to fall back. When to charge. Co-ordinating with your allies. The interaction of terrain with characters.
What you’ve described is a JCRPG where everyone lines up on opposite sides of an open field and then chooses which of their special abilities to activate.

Many skirmish level wargames create complex and engaging combat gameplay solely using “attack”. It can be that the solution is to reduce the number/effect of special attacks not add more special attacks.

Having a basic attack is a good thing. If it becomes irrelevant because you can spam an ability that is better than a basic attack without detriment.

[RedMage125]

Your premise is bad.


You seem to be under the impression that the OP wants all "basic attacks" to be "gone", but they didn't say that. It was the desire for more options on top of just basic attacks.

A gimmick helps enemies stand out anyway (for example, 5e MM is terrible about this, a lot of enemies are just piles of HP and damage).


Here I disagree.

A lot of enemies, especially humanoid ones, have common traits, just like in 4e.

Kobolds have pack tactics. Goblins have Nimble Escape, Hobgoblins have Martial Advantage (like sneak attack when ganging up), Bugbears have reach, and also that extra damage when they have surprise. Orcs can all rush an enemy as a BA.

I think 5e did a pretty good job with making them feel different an unique.

[Ignimortis]

Your premise is bad.

Having a basic attack available to anyone with a weapon is an absolutely necessity in a combat focused game because people will pick up their fallen comrade’s much better sword and try to wield it. Let alone what do your non-martials do when they’re out of big guns/their at-will spells are useless due magic/elemental resistance?

They can have a basic attack. Anything can have a basic attack, the act of hitting someone with a weapon shouldn't be a thing that doesn't have rules for it. It should just be irrelevant to characters who are supposed to be good at fighting, and not used as a baseline for balance.



Secondly, your conclusion is invalid based on the evidence available.

The need to have a dozen abilities with riders and unique effects was a contributing factor in 4e’s unpopularity. Having to a) pick which of many options, and b) track and compute all the effects of these modifiers was Not Fun for so many players, that DnD bleed market share to Pathfinder, because it was simpler.

Pathfinder, simpler than 4e? Really? Allow me to put a big "doubtful" on that. Even playing a very simple no-frills martial like a Fighter in 3.5 is only simple if your DM runs the game equally as direct, i.e. every non-caster charges and then stands around full attacking and 5-ft stepping. 4e is a lot simpler in base gameplay, you don't even get a dozen abilities before level 10 or something, and choosing from two at-wills with free movement can't be that hard. 4e did fail, but "complexity" wasn't the reason, because Pathfinder was way, way, way more complex even in Core.



One of the core strengths of DnD going back to AD&D is that it has opt-in complexity. My friend who does not enjoy tracking and balancing many options and resources can roll a fighter and play alongside our other friend who likes playing wizards for precisely that reason and play together. DnD meets the needs of a variety of players preferred complexity level, and so you don’t have to compromise to play together.

In short, basic attacks and/or basic-attack-but-better at-will are a feature, not a bug, and they make the game better (where “better” is defined as “more fun for more people”, not “more fun for you”).
And so I have suggested keeping a class or two for people who don't want complexity. Ideally, there should be simple martials, simple casters, complex martials, complex casters. As of right now, i.e. 5e and PF2, we have only complex casters, somewhat simpler-but-not-extremely-simple casters (Warlock) and simple martials (every martial).


[complex and engaging combat gameplay, especially for characters who are supposed to be good at direct combat (martials).

Speaking as an old time miniature wargamer this does not mean having a menu of attacks to choose from.
You derive complex and engaging combat gameplay by having meaningful tactical decisions. Where to move. When to take cover. Which opponent to engage. How to reduce the opponent’s choices. When to fall back. When to charge. Co-ordinating with your allies. The interaction of terrain with characters.

What you’ve described is a JCRPG where everyone lines up on opposite sides of an open field and then chooses which of their special abilities to activate.
Yes, meaningful tactical decisions.
1) Most of that works because of a grid and terrain. In fact, a lot of JRPG+tactics games (like Final Fantasy Tactics) do all that, while still having a list of very different abilities you can use.
2) Having special abilities do special things (that aren't worse than just hitting enemies) helps a lot in establishing meaningful choices.

I've played D&D and Pathfinder on a grid exclusively, with a GM who actually did try to have terrain and positioning matter, and for me personally, it was still dull unless I could actually interact with those actively. In the end, the best decision would almost always be "stand somewhere where they can't gang up on you, use defensive actions if you have them and can use them without hurting your damage output, KILL".

Now, that did change — but only if I had special abilities like Spider Climb/Wall Running (that 40 feet of elevation now provides a choice instead of saying "yeah you're gonna have to circle around while they keep pelting you with arrows, sucks to be you"), actively moving enemies around (only matters if movement isn't free, though), affecting enemy stats other than HP, etc, etc. If my only option is to select how to move and who to attack, there are two outcomes — I can just charge in regardless, or I play carefully but my turn is still over in 5 seconds because the only thing I do is say "I move here, I attack", having calculated what I'll do during the other players' and the NPCs' turns.

Besides, aren't wargames mostly for two people, each of whom controls a whole side? I can imagine setting up combos gets a lot easier if you have five actors under your control instead of only one.

[Mastikator]

That's basically the only argument I've been hearing for years, really. My current solution to that would be to keep one simple class for these players (I personally gravitate to making Barbarian that class, but I do understand that a lot of people would disagree, so maybe one could again go the 4e route and make something new like "Slayer", which was basically the simplest striker imaginable for 4e).

Mind you, that class wouldn't really be more effective than the default choice-heavy "Fighter". If they did noticeably more damage or were in other ways statistically much better, they'd be a better option in a game where reducing the enemy HP to 0 quickly is tantamount to victory. So "Slayers" would have to do about as well as "Fighters" with maybe minor token bonuses or something.

Given that the Battle Master is (in my opinion) strictly better than Champion, yet the Champion is more popular speaks volumes to the argument that *people want to a) have a basic attack and b) not have options or riders or alternatives they just a good but simple basic attack.

For a D&D game I would not remove that option because ultimately it comes down to the player's preferences. If the players wanted a tactical combat game then they wouldn't (and shouldn't) play D&D, because that's not what D&D is. Which is why I created options that depend on weapons for my own homebrew made game, but I'm not going to homebrew it for D&D 5e because I fully expect most players wouldn't enjoy it. (even if I did it really well)
Players that want to have options for their martials can take half casters or third casters or battle master. But if a player wants to play champion let them do basic attack every round.

Source for popularity: https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-best-fighter-subclasses-ranked-popularity-dnd-gunslinger-arcane-archer-cavalier/ (fighter subclasses ranked by popularity)

Edit- by "people" I mean D&D players. Different player bases have different preferences and no game- no player base can prefer everything.

[King of Nowhere]

[complex and engaging combat gameplay, especially for characters who are supposed to be good at direct combat (martials).

Speaking as an old time miniature wargamer this does not mean having a menu of attacks to choose from.
You derive complex and engaging combat gameplay by having meaningful tactical decisions. Where to move. When to take cover. Which opponent to engage. How to reduce the opponent’s choices. When to fall back. When to charge. Co-ordinating with your allies. The interaction of terrain with characters.
What you’ve described is a JCRPG where everyone lines up on opposite sides of an open field and then chooses which of their special abilities to activate.

Many skirmish level wargames create complex and engaging combat gameplay solely using “attack”.

Seconded. Placement matters a lot.
Do you stand still to deal a full attack against the tank in front of you, or do you move and deal a single attack, but against a squishier target?
Do you bunch up with your teamates to flank, do you stand in front of the wizard to stop a charge, do you spread out to avoid area effects?

I play 3.5 and i never felt a lack of complexity and meaningful options for melee combat

You also have a trip manuever, which gives a moderate debuff and same damage, but it can waste an attack if the opponent resists

I don't feel there is a need for more. And i do not like the anime feel of all the martials striking silly poses and shouting their moves

[Zombimode]

Yeah, I also second Pauly's sentiment here.

The existence of basic attacks alone has no bearing on the tactical complexity or the lack thereof.


I play 3.5 and i never felt a lack of complexity and meaningful options for melee combat

That also matches my experience.

But... not all players/DM understand where the complexity in the combat system lies. You can see that with how often "full attack as standard action" gets touted as a house rule - a rule change that would remove a lot of the interesting decisions.

If you search for complexity and choice only within your ability descriptions themselves, I can understand why basic attacks would seem like a bad idea.

[Pex]

The most powerful condition is the dead condition. It's what everyone is going for. In D&D that means taking away the opponent's hit points. That is what damage does. More damage brings the dead condition faster, so players are not wrong for wanting more damage in their attacks. For a player to want to do something besides more damage that something has to make it easier to do damage later. That can be a debuff on the opponent that makes it easier to hit, take more damage on a hit, make it harder for the opponent to hit the player's character, do less damage on a hit, or not doing anything at all. Another way is to buff the player's character to hit opponents better, do more damage, or protect the character from harmful effects that would prevent him from giving the opponent the dead condition.

These extra things, the debuffs and buffs, have degrees of power. +1 to hit and damage is less powerful than advantage on the attack and opponent loses his next turn. If you make the buff/debuff attack as always available it just becomes the new at will power if it's significantly more effective than just damage. At some point the buff/debuff is too powerful to be always available, so it must have a limiting factor such as a limited resource use or precise conditions must be met to be used at all.

If everything has a cost of spend a resource or need conditions, what's the player to do when he's out of the resource and the condition is not met? He does nothing, his character is just there twiddling thumbs? There always needs to be something the character can do. You can call it the basic attack. In D&D terms the effect of that basic attack must be commensurate with character level. That's why damage cantrips increase in dice for spellcasters. For warriors, they get multiple attacks and/or extra damage on those attacks. There can be buffs and debuffs, but the game designers must draw a line that says, no, you must spend a resource or have conditions met to do this thing when a buff or debuff becomes powerful enough.

TL/DR: I disagree with your premise. Basic attacks are a necessity and a good thing for the game for reasons, even if it's only damage.

[Ignimortis]

Seconded. Placement matters a lot.
Do you stand still to deal a full attack against the tank in front of you, or do you move and deal a single attack, but against a squishier target?
Do you bunch up with your teamates to flank, do you stand in front of the wizard to stop a charge, do you spread out to avoid area effects?

I play 3.5 and i never felt a lack of complexity and meaningful options for melee combat

You also have a trip manuever, which gives a moderate debuff and same damage, but it can waste an attack if the opponent resists

I don't feel there is a need for more. And i do not like the anime feel of all the martials striking silly poses and shouting their moves


Yeah, I also second Pauly's sentiment here.

The existence of basic attacks alone has no bearing on the tactical complexity or the lack thereof.

That also matches my experience.

But... not all players/DM understand where the complexity in the combat system lies. You can see that with how often "full attack as standard action" gets touted as a house rule - a rule change that would remove a lot of the interesting decisions.

If you search for complexity and choice only within your ability descriptions themselves, I can understand why basic attacks would seem like a bad idea.

Doesn't match my experience. I have played several non-martial adept martials in 3.5/PF1, and I was bored to bits every combat. Not even an issue of "mage does everything" or anything, but the things you describe — they're about as basic as anything in grid combat. Block the squishies so that there's no direct line to charge them, yes. Is that meaningful? I suppose. Is that fun? I don't know, especially if you didn't do anything to actually make a win come closer instead of preserving the status quo. As NichG has noted above, most combats last only long enough for you to make 3 to 4 moves, maybe 5 or 6 if the combat is long. And you've just spent a potential 33% of that combat doing nothing on your own. It's great tactically, because yes, you can probably take a lot more attention than that backline. But fun, I don't know about that. If I wanted to do that, I'd play a MOBA as a tank or something, because that takes way less time and is a lot more dynamic.

Is it any surprise that common 3.5 martial optimization paths veer towards "I don't need to defend anyone, because I charge/teleport to this guy and he explodes into bloody gibs" or "yeah I just stand there with my 10 AoOs and my AoO range is like 30 feet so I hit everyone who even dares to provoke an AoO anywhere close to me"? Both of these provide a way to contribute towards combat resolution by resolving someone's HP to zero.

Then again, I have gladly traded all the charger and shadow pouncer and tripper builds for ToB builds with lower damage and more utility, simply because their damage was still high enough to clear the expected thresholds by quite a bit, and I could do other things too. Especially since I could still bolt a few pieces of the old builds over onto the adepts, if I wanted to.


The most powerful condition is the dead condition. It's what everyone is going for. In D&D that means taking away the opponent's hit points. That is what damage does. More damage brings the dead condition faster, so players are not wrong for wanting more damage in their attacks. For a player to want to do something besides more damage that something has to make it easier to do damage later. That can be a debuff on the opponent that makes it easier to hit, take more damage on a hit, make it harder for the opponent to hit the player's character, do less damage on a hit, or not doing anything at all. Another way is to buff the player's character to hit opponents better, do more damage, or protect the character from harmful effects that would prevent him from giving the opponent the dead condition.

Yes. That's half my point, really.



These extra things, the debuffs and buffs, have degrees of power. +1 to hit and damage is less powerful than advantage on the attack and opponent loses his next turn. If you make the buff/debuff attack as always available it just becomes the new at will power if it's significantly more effective than just damage. At some point the buff/debuff is too powerful to be always available, so it must have a limiting factor such as a limited resource use or precise conditions must be met to be used at all.

Yes. I have explicitly described a situation where all of your powers still deal damage. You can have more powerful powers with limitations, too.



If everything has a cost of spend a resource or need conditions, what's the player to do when he's out of the resource and the condition is not met? He does nothing, his character is just there twiddling thumbs? There always needs to be something the character can do. You can call it the basic attack. In D&D terms the effect of that basic attack must be commensurate with character level. That's why damage cantrips increase in dice for spellcasters. For warriors, they get multiple attacks and/or extra damage on those attacks. There can be buffs and debuffs, but the game designers must draw a line that says, no, you must spend a resource or have conditions met to do this thing when a buff or debuff becomes powerful enough.

TL/DR: I disagree with your premise. Basic attacks are a necessity and a good thing for the game for reasons, even if it's only damage.
As noted above, I do not propose deleting basic attacks, but more like...giving martial characters attacks that supercede the basic attack by being just better than that. A very, very basic (and probably not very satisfactory) picture of that would be "give all martials access to Battlemaster maneuvers, but with a d0 superiority die".

That's the other half of my point. Why is basic attack that point after which everything has to have a cost? Why not raise it up slightly, so that you do something more than just damage, and the damage is still there so you're not trading the win condition away for maybe making something work better? It needs careful consideration, of course, but it can work, especially if there's a robust Condition system that would allow for many different ways to affect the target besides damage. For example, 5e wouldn't work well with such a change, because conditions are either barely important or overpoweringly strong to let you just inflict on a turn-to-turn basis. Something like PF2, however, could really lean into that instead of doing what they did.

[InvisibleBison]

The existence of basic attack usually means that it's the balance line. Something that's more effective than just basic attacking is either resource-limited or takes more effort to do — 3.5 full attack or ToB maneuvers, 4e dailies and encounters (at-wills will be mentioned below), 5e BM maneuvers or Monk ki point effects, PF2's Strike feats. That, in turn, means that you have to use basic attacks at least sometimes, either because you don't want to spend your "big guns" right now, because you've already spent them, or because you can't actually do the advanced thing due to action cost and whatnot.

I don't understand why the basic attack issue is an issue. Based on the structure of your initial post, I think this paragraph that I've quoted is supposed to contain an explanation of the problem, but as far as I can tell it doesn't. Sure, you lay out some consequences of the basic attack, but you don't make a case for those consequences being bad. You don't really make a case for the basic attack being a problem anywhere, really. The closest you come is saying that you find the current combat paradigm to be boring, but your personal preferences aren't game design principles.

[KorvinStarmast]

I've played 5e from the 2014 release to 2020 on every martial class that isn't a Rogue or a Barbarian. The only class where making tactical decisions was somewhat supported was indeed the Monk, and mostly because their resource usage isn't too strict after level 8 or so (early levels are distressingly bad, though). Even then most options that Monks have are very situational and get very little use, while Flurry of Blows is bread-and-butter. In your experience. Not everyone is as DPR obsessed as that. I use FoB less often than I do something else with ki. It is for me a situational choice: if I am using my hands for three attacks (once level 5) I am far more likely to use ki for a Stunning blow, or to save it for one if I am not at the crucial enemy yet, or something like Patient Defense, than to punch a fourth time. But sometimes I just keep punching (or throwing balls of radiant energy).

But my assertion was exactly that all martial classes of D&D fall back on that basic attack (as per 5e, Attack) action, Gee, might that be due to them all being a variation on the Fighting Man? Fighting is a core competency. You appear to be complaining that fish have scales.

Here's an idea: play a Rogue.

Also, and FWIW: carping at the margins is not a productive endeavor in my experience. That is what your rant/OP amounts to, as I read your further complaints.

There's also the matter of DM burden. Most monsters use basic attacks Well said. I wonder if the OP has ever DM'd.
Even giving PCs access to lots of status effects as default options drives up DM loading hugely. Also correct.

And honestly, I suspect a pretty reasonable number of players just like smacking things for big numbers, and would mechanically rather play Joe Orc. Not everyone enjoys having to pull three or five special game levers just to stab something.
I have plenty of players who like that.


Secondly, your conclusion is invalid based on the evidence available. {snip} One of the core strengths of DnD going back to AD&D is that it has opt-in complexity. Your post was more concise than my attempt at a reply, so here's a *golf clap* :smallsmile:

It was the desire for more options on top of just basic attacks. Improvise an action is available to anyone. You don't need a rule for that. The "I need a rule for that" mind set is not good for the game. But that rant does not need to crop up here and now. :smallwink:

I think 5e did a pretty good job with making them feel different an unique. Yes, it took me a while to 'feel' each of the various stock monsters, and after DMing for a bit longer I began to enjoy their subtle features a lot more ... but it also meant I had to prep (do a mental walk through of two or three tactical play sets) before encounters in order to get better performance from my humanoid monsters.

[Ignimortis]

I don't understand why the basic attack issue is an issue. Based on the structure of your initial post, I think this paragraph that I've quoted is supposed to contain an explanation of the problem, but as far as I can tell it doesn't. Sure, you lay out some consequences of the basic attack, but you don't make a case for those consequences being bad. You don't really make a case for the basic attack being a problem anywhere, really. The closest you come is saying that you find the current combat paradigm to be boring, but your personal preferences aren't game design principles.

Fair point. I think that basic attack is bad not by itself, but by being the balance line for everything else you can do without spending resources, all the while being in a game where reducing enemy HP enough is the win condition.

In short, it could be summed up as:
1) Basic attack serves as the balance point for spending actions and doing damage in most popular/wide-spread D&D-likes, e.g. 5e and PF2 (3.5/PF1 to a lesser extent, too).
2) Classes that are designed without spellcasting tend to have their effectiveness expressed through combat-focused features.
3) Combat is most commonly won through doing damage.
4) Therefore, non-spellcasting classes tend to rely on basic attack a lot, because doing anything else reduces their effectiveness noticeably, since, as has been noted before, most combats only last long enough that you can get maybe 4 turns.
5) That means that non-spellcasting classes have very little incentive to interact with other rules of the game that don't improve their effectiveness, because their effectiveness is reliant on them doing damage.

Current D&D-like game design is such that attacking is almost always the best option, but since basic attack is the baseline for that, attacking doesn't interact with any rules that aren't attack rolls and doing damage. Your choices are, generally, "attack" or "attempt to make a non-damaging, less generally effective action contribute more to ending the combat than attacking would". 99% of the time it's better to attack. Contrasting that are spellcasters, who even at cantrip level, have more significant choices, and vastly more significant choices on the spell level.

Now's where the personal preference part starts: I find that boring. I want to play a character who doesn't use magic and yet has significant tactical options that do not detract from their effectiveness in ending fights.

[Ignimortis]

In your experience. Not everyone is as DPR obsessed as that. I use FoB less often than I do something else with ki. It is for me a situational choice: if I am using my hands for three attacks (once level 5) I am far more likely to use ki for a Stunning blow, or to save it for one if I am not at the crucial enemy yet, or something like Patient Defense, than to punch a fourth time. But sometimes I just keep punching (or throwing balls of radiant energy).
Stunning Strike, yes, very useful, almost always, although a great sink of ki, but it's very helpful (stunned is an absolutely debilitating condition, AND I still do damage while doing that). Also can be combined with FoB for four attempts to Stun. I have broken through Legendary Resistance with that once.
Patient Defense, not really. Step of the Wind, oh boy, I might have used that...once in 12 levels? Twice? Deflect Arrows is good, but it's on Reaction which is barely used in 5e.



Gee, might that be due to them all being a variation on the Fighting Man? Fighting is a core competency. You appear to be complaining that fish have scales.
Not sure what you mean by that. I am certainly not against all those classes being good at fighting. In fact, I want them being good at fighting to show in ways beyond "me hit hard, many times!".



Here's an idea: play a Rogue.

What for? I've seen several Rogues played at the table, and outside of having better-than-normal skill checks, I didn't see anything that I personally would find fun.



Also, and FWIW: carping at the margins is not a productive endeavor in my experience. That is what your rant/OP amounts to, as I read your further complaints.

I have no idea what that phrase means (outside of contextual presumptions), and Google seems to lead either to fishing advice or back to your posts on GitP.



Well said. I wonder if the OP has ever DM'd.
Several times. I admit that my experience might be colored by using a virtual tabletop every time, which does automate a fair bit of work. Being able to just link the ability in chat is far quicker and convenient that going back to the book to read it again.



I have plenty of players who like that.

And I did propose a way to keep them happy. Somehow those arguments tend to always devolve to "hey, those players exist, they like things just how they are, maybe you should play a spellcaster or a different game?". However, there's no different game. There's two and a half D&D-like games in the metaphorical town, and neither does things right from my point of view.

[KorvinStarmast]

Stunning Strike, yes, very useful, We are in violent agreement on that. :smallsmile:

Not sure what you mean by that. I am certainly not against all those classes being good at fighting. In fact, I want them being good at fighting to show in ways beyond "me hit hard, many times!". Maybe I misunderstand your issue: do the additional features come at too slow of a rate for your tastes?
{rogues} I didn't see anything that I personally would find fun. I suggested that you try one, but since I am not sure what the tables you play at are like, that may be a good or a bad suggestion. I'll go back to what my grandma said a few times: try it, you may like it. Up to you, of course.

I have no idea what that phrase means Interesting.

Several times. Sweet. DM side of the screen experience. All good! :smallsmile:


And I did propose a way to keep them happy. Somehow those arguments tend to always devolve to "hey, those players exist, they like things just how they are, maybe you should play a spellcaster or a different game?". However, there's no different game. There's two and a half D&D-like games in the metaphorical town, and neither does things right from my point of view. OK, which edition are you playing? (I have to empathize with you a bit here, since 'find a new game' is in many cases not an option for any number of people).

[Ignimortis]

Maybe I misunderstand your issue: do the additional features come at too slow of a rate for your tastes?
In short, I'd just like for martial classes to be able to both contribute to combat ending (i.e. do damage) and have a selection of fun things you could do at the same time. I've already mentioned that a Battlemaster Fighter that had a permanent d0 to fall back on would be infinitely more interesting to me, but expanding on that for several concepts and classes would be even better.

So a player could have three or four meaningful attack variants, each of which would still do damage, but the additional effects would be the real thing you're choosing from — for example, is it better to push an enemy right now, make them afraid, teleport to another adjacent space to set up a flanking position more easily, or remove their reaction until your next turn? And that's something you could work with every turn, without worrying that next time you won't have anything to do besides smacking the guy hard.

OK, which edition are you playing? (I have to empathize with you a bit here, since 'find a new game' is in many cases not an option for any number of people).

I'm currently playing PF2, and until we made a homebrew class that frankly flips the bird at most design points of the system, it was a pretty miserable experience every time I got into combat. The issue was precisely the fact that there is, technically, no better action than a basic attack outside of specific class features. That, in turn, got me 'brewing and thinking that perhaps the same could be traced to all D&D-likes I've played.

Before that, we've been running 5e for six years (2014-2020) and I've both played and GMed some PF1e on the side from 2016 to 2020, too.

Played Ranger, Sorc, Fighter/Warlock, Paladin, and Monk in that order in 5e, in pretty combat-heavy games, too. Monk was decently fun due to Unarmored Movement, high movement speed and the general combat flexibility I had (also passive Perception so high that the in one dungeon, the DM just gave up and marked all the traps in LoS - figuring out how to avoid them was another thing). Everything else felt too limited, despite me putting out great numbers (that's another thing — I didn't feel weak or useless, I was just bored by combat quite often).

Played a Harbinger in PF1 and enjoyed it thoroughly. Posters in this thread aren't completely off base when they say that 3.5 baseline has some decent complexity in combat - movement isn't free, positioning matters, conditions are important, etc. Having a martial class that can effectively interact with many more rules than just movement, base combat maneuvers and attacks is what brought it all together for me.

[BRC]

The issue is that D&D 5e has relatively few "Small levers" to pull outside of minor damage boosts, and you don't want to throw a bunch of extra paperwork or weird saving throws on every attack a fighter makes. Stuff like moving enemies around is only situationally useful, and something like disarm or knockdown is either devastating or basically useless depending on the scenario.


What comes to mind for me is this, and I don't love this.

You have 3 "Stances": Aggressive, Defensive, Mobile.
In each stance, you gain a minor bonus (+1 attack, +1 AC, +5ft movement), and your attacks have a chance to generate some resource, let's call them Tokens, of the appropriate type.

Then, as you level up, you select a list of things to spend your tokens on.

For example, an Aggression token could be cashed in when an attack hits to reroll a damage die or "You rolled a 19, turn that into a crit with an Aggression token". A Defensive token could be cashed in to gain an AC bonus against a single attack. A Mobile token could be cashed in for extra movement.


If you want to get more complex, you can build some stuff in to encourage different weapon styles. "If your attack rolls max damage, gain an Aggression token" encourages using Daggers and D6 weapons.

This way you keep everything on the character sheet, rather than tracking statuses on enemies. It also keeps the language pretty clear, rather than specifying "I'm doing a Heavy Strike" or whatever, you can say "I'm Attacking" and that communicates almost all the immediately relevant info to the GM and other players.

Edit: Since what you're doing is generating resources to use later, it also speeds things up, since every attack doesn't now have to have the decision point of "Which of my abilities is the best to apply to this attack at the moment". You can always just default to Aggressive or whatever and use the tokens later on.

[LecternOfJasper]

I feel you. 4e tried this, but it felt a bit odd for strikers, as they tended to have many more options for at-wills that just boosted damage.

I'm the game I'm making, I'm making pretty much every ability able to stack and apply to other uses of a skill. That way any abilities that boost damage will also apply to other checks using the same skill, and any ability that gives you alternative ways to use a given skill stack with any given "damage" boosts.

I'm hoping this, combined with any boosting of the effectiveness of a roll being situational or having tradeoffs, will allow for people to have useful choices that don't always revolve around immediately, personally doing more damage.

I think the "battle master dice but a d0" idea is a neat one. The thing that immediately sprang to mind was Lunging Strike, but it was already clear additional changes would have to be made to accommodate this rule.

[KorvinStarmast]

{snip PF2 point}
Before that, we've been running 5e for six years (2014-2020) and I've both played and GMed some PF1e on the side from 2016 to 2020, too. I can't comment on PF.

In 5e there are two optional rules that I've seen in play quite a bit (from the DMG).
One was the Disarm optional rule.
The other was the "climb onto a larger creature" optional rule that got used a lot in our last campaign. We are considering trying out the "marking" optional rule but I am not sure I want to yet. (I have a paladin).

My Fighter got to level 14, almost 15, when the campaign went dormant. He used shield master. He had Medium Armor Master. He had proficiency in stealth. He was a scout and a tank. :smallwink: Knocking people down as a BA and attacking was good sometimes, unless the opponent was too big. When Crawford made that excrementally bad backpedal on Shield Master, our DM decided to go with that, and I was still enjoying Shield Master, but now in a more tactical way. I'd be trying to knock enemies down so that our Barbarian could get advantage with his GWM attack without using Reckless attack. Worked sometimes, sometimes didn't.

Bring back the old Shield Master (or rather, the correct Shield Master) approach and there's one more tool in the kit box.

[Telok]

One good martial type I played was a 3.5e warblade. Never had more than 2 strikes at a time though, so had to use the basic attack to refresh every 2nd or 3rd round. What made the character fun wasn't the big chunks of damage, but everything else. Being able to hear invisible things 30' away, jump 25' up to smack flyers, temp jack AC up to unhittable & take all the opportunity attacks, no sell some attacks & mind control spells, effective immunity to things like speed debuffs.

More little damage boosts, "knock prone if they fail a save and aren't too big or flying or no legs or...", and modest one-round debuffs aren't giving people more real offensive options. More options are stuff you couldn't do before that changes the situation in non-trivial ways. Tacking on an extra d8 damage & disadvantage on one attack is trivial when you fight stuff with 150 hp & three attacks a round. An extra d6 & 5' shove is bupkis against 60 hp & something flying or casting long range spells.

Want to go old school and there was a bushi fighter type from the old AD&D OA (a book known even then to be more than a bit inaccurate &... not great culturally). They had a good bit where for 10 rounds they could be two levels higher... maybe once a week, it was a long time ago. Massive boost to low level survival being able to temp level up for a bit. They were real levels too, not some temp hp & minor to-hit bonus including saves & number of attacks. But more importantly they could scrounge up gear in an edition where gear loss did actually happen, and do a few other useful things not related to combat. Sure, you only had the "basic attack", but it was an edition where having an 18 strength meant you could do strong person stuff in combat and not just be 30% more likely to open a stuck door than a random halfling commoner.

[Pex]

At some point it's up to the player to realize attacking for damage is not the right move. Hopefully the player learns quickly. I still remember a glorious thing I did in a combat playing my 5E barbarian/fighter/rogue triple class bada$$. The party was in a cavern corridor. We had to fight a mindflayer who was hiding in an alcove up the wall and its drow thralls blocking our way. My turn.

Bonus Action: Rage

Move: I run past the drow to under the alcove. I didn't care about opportunity attacks. I'm taking half damage anyway, thank you rage. They happened to miss.

Action: Climb the cavern wall to reach the alcove, thank you having advantage on athletics checks for raging and no penalty to speed while climbing since I'm a Thief Rogue. I'm now in front of the mind flayer. Also thanks to these Forums. I had just previously to this game day gained the 3rd level in Rogue. Before that I asked the Forum for advice on which subclass to take and no speed loss on climbing as fitting my character's emphasis on physical prowess became the deciding factor.

Action Surge: Thank you Fighter.

Action: Attack - I grapple the mindflayer, thank you advantage on athletic checks for raging and expertise in Athletics from Rogue. Second Attack, thank you Extra Attack. I throw the mindflayer onto the cavern corridor floor enabling the party to attack the mindflayer directly, thanks again advantage on athletics checks with expertise. On the Shadowmonk's turn he teleports to it and successfully stuns it. It's dead in two rounds without doing a thing.

Attacking the drow for damage on my turn instead would have been a dumb thing to do.

[Ignimortis]

The issue is that D&D 5e has relatively few "Small levers" to pull outside of minor damage boosts, and you don't want to throw a bunch of extra paperwork or weird saving throws on every attack a fighter makes. Stuff like moving enemies around is only situationally useful, and something like disarm or knockdown is either devastating or basically useless depending on the scenario.

Yes, 5e's lack of associated costs (movement is free, getting up from prone is basically free because it costs half movement and doesn't provoke anything) and lack of small boosts (+1/-1s being replaced by advantage/disadvantage, which is very strong compared to small-but-stacking modifiers) means that it's hard to actually make such a subsystem work without ignoring the base design points.



What comes to mind for me is this, and I don't love this.
*snip*
It's three resources to track, though. I'm not sure if that's a better alternative to various abilities, but I'm quite focused on how it works with VTTs like R20 and Foundry, so a lot of complexity is automated out already.


One good martial type I played was a 3.5e warblade. Never had more than 2 strikes at a time though, so had to use the basic attack to refresh every 2nd or 3rd round. What made the character fun wasn't the big chunks of damage, but everything else. Being able to hear invisible things 30' away, jump 25' up to smack flyers, temp jack AC up to unhittable & take all the opportunity attacks, no sell some attacks & mind control spells, effective immunity to things like speed debuffs.

More little damage boosts, "knock prone if they fail a save and aren't too big or flying or no legs or...", and modest one-round debuffs aren't giving people more real offensive options. More options are stuff you couldn't do before that changes the situation in non-trivial ways. Tacking on an extra d8 damage & disadvantage on one attack is trivial when you fight stuff with 150 hp & three attacks a round. An extra d6 & 5' shove is bupkis against 60 hp & something flying or casting long range spells.

Oh, martial adepts are just wonderful. Warblade and PoW adepts in particular, although Crusaders are an interesting take on "adapt every turn" too. I consider them the best variations on a D&D martial ruleset so far, although applying it to 5e would be pretty hard due to the system's design points mentioned above. As long as your action economy is "big action, small action, move, reaction", you can cook up something with martial adepts, though.

And abilities have to scale properly — at level 1 you might have to make the enemy roll a save against being knocked prone, and only if they're Large or smaller. At level 5, you can knock down anyone Large of smaller without a save, and Huge creatures get a save. At level 10, only Gargantuan creatures get a save, and Large- creatures get a speed penalty because you quite literally shattered one of their legs or wings or something. Etc, etc.


At some point it's up to the player to realize attacking for damage is not the right move. Hopefully the player learns quickly. I still remember a glorious thing I did in a combat playing my 5E barbarian/fighter/rogue triple class bada$$. The party was in a cavern corridor. We had to fight a mindflayer who was hiding in an alcove up the wall and its drow thralls blocking our way. My turn.

*snip*

Attacking the drow for damage on my turn instead would have been a dumb thing to do.

Never said that "attacking the closest target in range" is the right move, always. The right move is the one that brings you closer to finishing the combat quickly. My point is that generally the right move is just to hit the right enemy hard. For instance, a gloomstalker ranger could've done the right move very differently: move to a point from where the flayer is visible, hunter's mark, tripleshot its tentacle face hard enough to kill it outright. Would it be as awesome? Not really, but it's just as effective.

Besides, since you did no damage to the Flayer, someone else had to spend time and resources to finish it off. The monk who did the stun and the damage? Could've probably done the same thing without your input, considering that you're at least level 9. Unarmored Movement up the wall, stun on attack, FoB into that, one pulverized mindflayer. Alternatively, Unarmored Movement up the wall, stun on attack, grapple into an auto success through that stun, FoB to throw the Flayer down with half HP missing.

However, if your grapples did damage, and left the flayer half-dead simply from having your char break a couple of its bones while doing the aforementioned maneuver, would that be worse in any way? What about you being able to push the flayer off the balcony with a punch instead of grappling? Because that's pretty much what I'm suggesting.

[Lacco]

TL;DR: Basic attack is bad, why not give martials multiple at-wills with varied effects?

I will not be able to comment on the D&D part, as I feel my experience with D&D would not be sufficient to comment, but...


In a game that I made I more or less solved this by not having basic attacks. Different weapons have different options (often overlapping) and it has meaningful effects.

Depending on what type of game it is (fantasy, modern, scifi etc) you could use martial arts as a base for weapon attacks, where the PCs martial arts create attack options for their weapons. For example a defensive sword strike that causes the next incoming attack from the target to have disadvantage on their attack roll. Or allows the attacker to disengage safely. Or repositions the attacker and attackee.
What if you don't want to play a martial artist/monk? Silly all warriors use martial arts, even barbarians use a form of martial arts, the barbaric martial arts tradition. Martial arts is not about punching while looking cool, it's about attacking with practiced technique and ALL martials do that.

The downside is that many players want to just attack and not think, this creates added bookkeeping for martials and makes them feel as choice heavy as casters.

If you want to try out a system that already has this (maneuver-based combat), check out Riddle of Steel or one of its successor games (e.g. Blade of the Iron Throne).

It makes playing as martial more fun than any other game I have seen. Of course, porting it back to D&D might not work, as the mechanics are too different.

[Pex]

Never said that "attacking the closest target in range" is the right move, always. The right move is the one that brings you closer to finishing the combat quickly. My point is that generally the right move is just to hit the right enemy hard. For instance, a gloomstalker ranger could've done the right move very differently: move to a point from where the flayer is visible, hunter's mark, tripleshot its tentacle face hard enough to kill it outright. Would it be as awesome? Not really, but it's just as effective.

Besides, since you did no damage to the Flayer, someone else had to spend time and resources to finish it off. The monk who did the stun and the damage? Could've probably done the same thing without your input, considering that you're at least level 9. Unarmored Movement up the wall, stun on attack, FoB into that, one pulverized mindflayer. Alternatively, Unarmored Movement up the wall, stun on attack, grapple into an auto success through that stun, FoB to throw the Flayer down with half HP missing.

However, if your grapples did damage, and left the flayer half-dead simply from having your char break a couple of its bones while doing the aforementioned maneuver, would that be worse in any way? What about you being able to push the flayer off the balcony with a punch instead of grappling? Because that's pretty much what I'm suggesting.

Damage has to be done at some point. That's how the game works.

No one could attack the mindflayer because he was not in line of sight. The monk was able to attack the mindflayer because I put him in line of sight. It's technically true the monk could have teleported to the alcove on his turn, but he didn't have the skill to put him into the corridor. He still might have been successfully able to stun him, great, but it was not a guarantee. If it did not work he would be fighting the mindflayer alone. If the stun failed to stick in the corridor at least there were other party members able to assist in their own way. I happened to beat the monk in initiative, so I did what I did. In exchange for one character not doing damage the rest of the party was able to where as before no one could. I call that a great deal.

Me putting it in the corridor made it easy for everyone in the party to pile on it. Everyone ignored the drow until it was dead, doing damage to it. I had an intellect devourer to deal with so couldn't help in the second round. I needed to kill it fast, with damage, before an unlucky die roll meant my character's death. He wasn't a dumb barbarian, but an Intelligence save was not his strong suit. That was when just attacking for damage was the right thing to do, and I was successful. I made that first save on the devourer's turn. I was not about to risk having to make a second one. We didn't know the devourer was there. Had the monk been there he'd be in trouble, especially if the stun failed. I was at +15 Athletics with advantage. I had a lot better odds grappling the mindflayer than the monk stunning it. We were happy the stun worked in the corridor. If it didn't hopefully some if not all of the party would resist the mind blast. Either way, we were a lot better off fighting the mindflayer in the corridor rather than poking its head out of the alcove to blast us then move back in to hide as the DM was planning on doing as its strategy.

[Ignimortis]

If you want to try out a system that already has this (maneuver-based combat), check out Riddle of Steel or one of its successor games (e.g. Blade of the Iron Throne).

It makes playing as martial more fun than any other game I have seen. Of course, porting it back to D&D might not work, as the mechanics are too different.
The issue with most specialized games, including RoS, is that they're specialized. Few people want to play wholly unfamiliar systems, and even fewer want to run them. And then there's people who would like to play casters, and elves, and so forth. D&D-likes, for all their problems, have two major draws: 1) they're easy to find people to play with 2) they're capable of reflecting more "general concepts" than most specialized games.


Damage has to be done at some point. That's how the game works.

No one could attack the mindflayer because he was not in line of sight. The monk was able to attack the mindflayer because I put him in line of sight. It's technically true the monk could have teleported to the alcove on his turn, but he didn't have the skill to put him into the corridor. He still might have been successfully able to stun him, great, but it was not a guarantee. If it did not work he would be fighting the mindflayer alone. If the stun failed to stick in the corridor at least there were other party members able to assist in their own way. I happened to beat the monk in initiative, so I did what I did. In exchange for one character not doing damage the rest of the party was able to where as before no one could. I call that a great deal.

Exactly. That's one of those rare occasions where you could exchange your actions for everyone else getting a major boost in effectiveness, i.e. you didn't do damage, but your actions set up a lot more damage being dealt than what you've lost. It's a more elaborate version of "ok so he's 15 feet from the cliff's end, so if I push him hard enough, he'll die outright". Your actions that you take instead of attacking have to be worth more than attacking, and that is a rare situation.

[KorvinStarmast]

At some point it's up to the player to realize attacking for damage is not the right move. Hopefully the player learns quickly.
Great example. It is also an example of using systems mastery to leverage various features and skills.

[RedMage125]

At some point it's up to the player to realize attacking for damage is not the right move. Hopefully the player learns quickly.

Nice, my very first 5e game (back in 2014), I played a Dragonborn Valor Bard. We once had a combat with a big evil dragonborn and lots of kobolds. My party Warlock used Hex on the dragonborn, hexing his STR. I moved in and grappled. Now he had disadvantage to escape. On my Next turn, I Shoved him to the ground. With a Speed of 0, he couldn't stand up, had disadvantage on his checks to escape, and I had advantage on all my attacks against him.

Sure, this tactic took me out of the fight as well, but I completely locked down the largest and most dangerous enemy, while the rest of the party wiped out the kobolds until we were all ready to pile onto the dragonborn.

[BRC]

Yes, 5e's lack of associated costs (movement is free, getting up from prone is basically free because it costs half movement and doesn't provoke anything) and lack of small boosts (+1/-1s being replaced by advantage/disadvantage, which is very strong compared to small-but-stacking modifiers) means that it's hard to actually make such a subsystem work without ignoring the base design points.


It's three resources to track, though. I'm not sure if that's a better alternative to various abilities, but I'm quite focused on how it works with VTTs like R20 and Foundry, so a lot of complexity is automated out already.



Yeah, maybe? I'm imagining at the table itself it could be tracked pretty easily with some sort of physical token like poker chips or coins or something.

It's mostly about avoiding tracking a lot of minor status effects on different enemies by separating the Attack from the Effect, and solving the "No Small Levers" issue by making the thing that is generated a resource which can be put towards more impactful abilities.

[Easy e]

Honestly, I think you have it backwards. It is not that "basic attack" is an issue and we need more ways to attack. I think the real issue in D&D is that you need more decisions to make when you are the one being attacked.

Right now, your only option is to hope the enemy rolls badly. When it is your turn, you can try to maneuver, dodge, or cast a defensive spell*. However, those are all at the expense of your offensive capabilities. You either try to avoid attack and do nothing else meaningful. There is no, try to avoid damage at the expense of your offense, or separation of offensive/defensive resources.

For example, in many games you can use resources to parry, dodge, evade, counter-move etc. Any character can do them. D&D is not one of those games. Therefore, when it is not your turn there is no decision making. Instead, you pray that the GM rolls poorly and the enemies miss, and when that fails you subtract HP when told to.

It is the equivalent of I-Go-U-Go in wargames, except with more players and more wait time involved!




*= I am sure there are some classes or niche rules that this does not apply to. I am not an expert on D&D.

[Ignimortis]

Honestly, I think you have it backwards. It is not that "basic attack" is an issue and we need more ways to attack. I think the real issue in D&D is that you need more decisions to make when you are the one being attacked.

Right now, your only option is to hope the enemy rolls badly. When it is your turn, you can try to maneuver, dodge, or cast a defensive spell*. However, those are all at the expense of your offensive capabilities. You either try to avoid attack and do nothing else meaningful. There is no, try to avoid damage at the expense of your offense, or separation of offensive/defensive resources.

For example, in many games you can use resources to parry, dodge, evade, counter-move etc. Any character can do them. D&D is not one of those games. Therefore, when it is not your turn there is no decision making. Instead, you pray that the GM rolls poorly and the enemies miss, and when that fails you subtract HP when told to.

It is the equivalent of I-Go-U-Go in wargames, except with more players and more wait time involved!

I mean, that is also an issue. The funniest thing is, it can be solved along the same lines. Imagine giving martials a real parry reaction that lets you roll an attack towards the enemy attack and on a win, take no damage. Then at some upper single-digit level, let that parry spells too, substituting the attack roll for your save. Add a way to riposte or reflect those spells you just parried. Tons of possibilities, such as "move when attacked", "become incorporeal when attacked", "take the attack but reflect the same damage at the attacker", etc, etc.

[warty goblin]

I mean, that is also an issue. The funniest thing is, it can be solved along the same lines. Imagine giving martials a real parry reaction that lets you roll an attack towards the enemy attack and on a win, take no damage. Then at some upper single-digit level, let that parry spells too, substituting the attack roll for your save. Add a way to riposte or reflect those spells you just parried. Tons of possibilities, such as "move when attacked", "become incorporeal when attacked", "take the attack but reflect the same damage at the attacker", etc, etc.

At some point the thing to do isn't to recreate The Dark Eye's combat system, it's to just play The Dark Eye.

[Pauly]

Part of the issue with D&D is that doing damage is often trying to empty a sandbag by poking holes in it with a toothpick. When you’re playing more gritty/deadly games where taking even one hit can be a big deal then tactics matter more. Fighting in D&D is often like amoeba wars because you can get stuck in contact and then just wale away at each other.

This is not a problem with basic attack. This is a problem about the relationship between damage done and HP pools.

When you’re playing low level characters, say levels 1-3 you have to be more tactical than when you’re running high level (10+) characters.

Another issue I’ve run across is that DMs from an RPG often have fights occurring in an empty box, or with just one ‘trick’ (for example the alcove/mindflayer situation described above). DMs from TTMWG backgrounds tend to use msps that offer more tactical options.

[Easy e]

Great point on the damage side of things Pauly.

[Ignimortis]

At some point the thing to do isn't to recreate The Dark Eye's combat system, it's to just play The Dark Eye.

I mean, I've heard a lot of good things...and also bad things...about Dark Eye. Mostly that it's decent, but a very self-contained thing with a definite setting and way too many rules for everything.


Part of the issue with D&D is that doing damage is often trying to empty a sandbag by poking holes in it with a toothpick. When you’re playing more gritty/deadly games where taking even one hit can be a big deal then tactics matter more. Fighting in D&D is often like amoeba wars because you can get stuck in contact and then just wale away at each other.

This is not a problem with basic attack. This is a problem about the relationship between damage done and HP pools.

When you’re playing low level characters, say levels 1-3 you have to be more tactical than when you’re running high level (10+) characters.

Another issue I’ve run across is that DMs from an RPG often have fights occurring in an empty box, or with just one ‘trick’ (for example the alcove/mindflayer situation described above). DMs from TTMWG backgrounds tend to use msps that offer more tactical options.

Looking back at my Shadowrun and VtM experience, that is not untrue. HP bloat in D&D-likes is a real issue, especially since you're not supposed to delete enemies outright and they're not supposed to be able to do that to you, too.

The lack of encouragement for mobility is also true. Standing in place and wailing on one another is outright encouraged in 3.5 and doesn't do much in 5e either way. In PF2, moving around also takes away actions that could be used better. So yes, I also have to agree on this - D&D-like combat does not want you moving around too much.

Shadowrun in particular deals with that by having movement be free, but also not having movement-counters be free — the AoO equivalent draws from your Initiative, which is a resource you also spend on acting on your turn. So moving between various points, disengaging from melee, taking cover, etc, is encouraged, especially since hitting a running target is harder.

However, I also think that D&D isn't suited for the same level of lethality as those games. HP should still outstrip damage somewhat — just not to the point where you can get hit ten times per fight and still be standing. Active defenses and better hit vs dodge balancing lets you put a lot of potential "HP sinks" into actual dodges, parries and such.

[warty goblin]

I mean, I've heard a lot of good things...and also bad things...about Dark Eye. Mostly that it's decent, but a very self-contained thing with a definite setting and way too many rules for everything.

Eh, kind of. It's got a lot of rules, and the basic game in terms of skill checks and encumbrance and so on is much crunchier than D&D has ever been, at least as far back as 3rd edition.

What it doesn't really do is slather its basic systems with endless layers of special rules-breaking abilities and sub-currencies to activate special abilities and all the rest of the cruft that D&D accrues. Basically there's a rules engine, pretty much everything plays by that engine, and you're not going to learn fifty ways to break the rules as you level up.

The upside of this is it gives the rules a very grounded, sort of soft simulationist feel to them. Everyone is demonstrably doing the same kinds of things in the same sorts of ways with various degrees of aptitude. And the setting generally feels congruent with the rules, which I think makes them feel more entwined than they really are. The hardest part of running TDE out of Aventuria would be cooking up the new culture packages for wherever you did run it. You definitely can't just start a game with some adventurers in a tavern, all of whom are from, like, somewhere. Nowhere specific, just, you, know, somewhere.

[Sneak Dog]

There are games with very basic moves, yet great depth. They're hard to design. Having played Pathfinder, it sort of approaches depth with the complexity of opportunity attacks, cover rules for ranged and reach attacks denying AoO's and a whole host of other little rules, but runs into some issues in promoting people to actually move, rather than stand next to the enemy and full attacking (grab keyword doesn't help here either). D&D 5e drops most of the complexity, and still has you stand next to an enemy and full attack.

Yet always D&D has given casters just a massive toolbox of awfully specific effects. They still retain access to the basic attack, often with synergies between spells and basic attacks for certain classes. As a result, any depth granted to the basic attack is then also added on top of the spell complexity for these classes.

So I agree. To grant a D&D non-caster depth, they need to move away from the basic attack. Or morph it into something unrecognisable. Something non-basic.

[Pauly]

There are games with very basic moves, yet great depth. They're hard to design. Having played Pathfinder, it sort of approaches depth with the complexity of opportunity attacks, cover rules for ranged and reach attacks denying AoO's and a whole host of other little rules, but runs into some issues in promoting people to actually move, rather than stand next to the enemy and full attacking (grab keyword doesn't help here either). D&D 5e drops most of the complexity, and still has you stand next to an enemy and full attack.

Yet always D&D has given casters just a massive toolbox of awfully specific effects. They still retain access to the basic attack, often with synergies between spells and basic attacks for certain classes. As a result, any depth granted to the basic attack is then also added on top of the spell complexity for these classes.

So I agree. To grant a D&D non-caster depth, they need to move away from the basic attack. Or morph it into something unrecognisable. Something non-basic.

I agree that part of the problem is having casters with large HP pools with an infinite variety of spells.

One solution is to make it more like 1st edition and AD&D where casters were relatively squishier. Having casters who are afraid of taking damage and who will move to safety rather than standing still and casting repetitively.

Another method is to run battlemaps where it’s harder for the martials to wall off the casters and have the enemy start closer to the party, reducing the number of spells casters get to cast before the enemy is in danger close.
I try to create battlemaps that give the feeling of Aliens or the Keith Urban Judge Dredd where danger can appear from any direction and the PCs don’t have clear lines of sight to mow down the baddies at range.

[Ignimortis]

There are games with very basic moves, yet great depth. They're hard to design. Having played Pathfinder, it sort of approaches depth with the complexity of opportunity attacks, cover rules for ranged and reach attacks denying AoO's and a whole host of other little rules, but runs into some issues in promoting people to actually move, rather than stand next to the enemy and full attacking (grab keyword doesn't help here either). D&D 5e drops most of the complexity, and still has you stand next to an enemy and full attack.

Yet always D&D has given casters just a massive toolbox of awfully specific effects. They still retain access to the basic attack, often with synergies between spells and basic attacks for certain classes. As a result, any depth granted to the basic attack is then also added on top of the spell complexity for these classes.

So I agree. To grant a D&D non-caster depth, they need to move away from the basic attack. Or morph it into something unrecognisable. Something non-basic.

That's why my solutions are usually related to giving options instead of overhauling the system so that the "basic attack" is enough (for some people). Casters have proved that you can play a character with a lot of options in the game, anyway. Why not make it so that casters aren't the only ones with options?

Any bolt-on mechanics that would encourage movement could be pretty simple, too.


I agree that part of the problem is having casters with large HP pools with an infinite variety of spells.

One solution is to make it more like 1st edition and AD&D where casters were relatively squishier. Having casters who are afraid of taking damage and who will move to safety rather than standing still and casting repetitively.

Another method is to run battlemaps where it’s harder for the martials to wall off the casters and have the enemy start closer to the party, reducing the number of spells casters get to cast before the enemy is in danger close.
I try to create battlemaps that give the feeling of Aliens or the Keith Urban Judge Dredd where danger can appear from any direction and the PCs don’t have clear lines of sight to mow down the baddies at range.

The issue is not with casters, really. I mean, it is in other contexts, but not in the context of martials being very un-complex. And generally, the post-2e D&D-likes let you move and cast in the same turn for most combat-ready spells. The only exception I can readily recall is summoning spells, which do take a full round instead of a standard action.

[Psyren]

Not sure if any of them call it that, but I'm pretty sure 5e has that in spades. In fact, that's pretty much what half the classes usually do on their turn, sometimes more than once.

Yes and no. At early levels, yes, there is a basic "I attack" that martials do with their attack action that aligns with your concerns for the OP. But in 5e, tier 2 martials and beyond update "I attack" to mean getting multiple attacks with that same action (usually two, more for fighter and a handful of others at higher levels.) This distinction is important because it means every martial with Extra Attack - i.e. all of them except Rogue - now has a wider possibility space to justify either the basic "I attack twice" or "I do something special that does the damage of a single attack along with imposing a condition" or "I do something that has a dramatic effect other than damage," or "I do something that triggers the improvised damage rules as a bonus." And this is an intended means of letting martials do nonstandard or otherwise "nice things."

Invoking the nonstandard stuff would largely fall under the improvised action and custom contest rules (PHB 191 and 193 respectively) but they do exist and can be used by groups who want to spice combat up. I wouldn't mind a couple of additional examples added in for both types of action, but the point is that the mechanism to do more exciting stuff in combat does exist in 5e for groups who want to move beyond the basics.

[Ignimortis]

Yes and no. At early levels, yes, there is a basic "I attack" that martials do with their attack action that aligns with your concerns for the OP. But in 5e, tier 2 martials and beyond update "I attack" to mean getting multiple attacks with that same action (usually two, more for fighter and a handful of others at higher levels.) This distinction is important because it means every martial with Extra Attack - i.e. all of them except Rogue - now has a wider possibility space to justify either the basic "I attack twice" or "I do something special that does the damage of a single attack along with imposing a condition" or "I do something that has a dramatic effect other than damage," or "I do something that triggers the improvised damage rules as a bonus." And this is an intended means of letting martials do nonstandard or otherwise "nice things."

Invoking the nonstandard stuff would largely fall under the improvised action and custom contest rules (PHB 191 and 193 respectively) but they do exist and can be used by groups who want to spice combat up. I wouldn't mind a couple of additional examples added in for both types of action, but the point is that the mechanism to do more exciting stuff in combat does exist in 5e for groups who want to move beyond the basics.

Except enemy HP grows exponentially faster than your DPR. At level 1, a typical CR 1/2 enemy has around 20 HP, so you can probably get them down in two or three attacks at around 1d8+3 (an average of 7.5, bigger weapons do even better). A CR 1 enemy, quite dangerous to the party, still can have 30-40 HP, so it can be dropped in four good strikes or six poor ones.

Meanwhile, at level 5, a typical CR 3 enemy can easily have up to 70 HP, while your damage per attack is pretty much unchanged (at best, it's +2 from a +1 weapon and a bonus to STR/DEX), so now you need, on average, eight attacks to bring them down. And a level 5 enemy can reach above 100, bringing the total number of attacks you need for them over a dozen.

It gets even worse for many classes which aren't called Fighter and Paladin. Ranger, Monk and Barbarian pretty much stagnate in DPR past level 8 or so, while enemy HP keeps increasing more and more. Even at level 15 you can still be dealing the same 3d8+2d6+18 per round, or an even sadder 4d6+18 per round you were doing back at level 8 unless your weapon improves massively, but the enemies you face at level 15 easily have more than 130-150 HP even if they're several CRs below you. So instead of having two level 1 people quite possibly taking out a CR 1/2 enemy if their attacks hit, you now have a whole level 15 party quite possibly unable to one-round a CR12 creature.

As for improvised actions, I have never seen them used for actual in-combat moves. In fact, saying that it's the way to let martials do nice things sounds terrible when you have casters just do their thing with rules being written out for everything they can do. Now, if spellcasting were about describing the intended effect, and then rolling randomly to see if you get it somewhat right, I could get behind martial exploits being done in a similar fashion. But having something in cold hard rules is miles and leagues better.

Triggering improvised damage only works if there's a readily available source of that damage. So yes, shoving someone into a sawmill blade should be better than hacking at them with a sword, but not many fights have something like that.

In general, I dislike the advice to "fix" rules by doing improv. If I wanted to play improv with vague notions directed by dice rolls, I'd be playing FATE or something. D&D combat, even 5e's, is crunchy enough to work better with mostly static rules instead.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Except enemy HP grows exponentially faster than your DPR. At level 1, a typical CR 1/2 enemy has around 20 HP, so you can probably get them down in two or three attacks at around 1d8+3 (an average of 7.5, bigger weapons do even better). A CR 1 enemy, quite dangerous to the party, still can have 30-40 HP, so it can be dropped in four good strikes or six poor ones.

Meanwhile, at level 5, a typical CR 3 enemy can easily have up to 70 HP, while your damage per attack is pretty much unchanged (at best, it's +2 from a +1 weapon and a bonus to STR/DEX), so now you need, on average, eight attacks to bring them down. And a level 5 enemy can reach above 100, bringing the total number of attacks you need for them over a dozen.


IMX (and I've been DMing 5e for 8 years now), monster lifetimes under fire actually are relatively constant across the entire 1-20 spectrum, outside of a tiny blip at level 1.

Level 1 is the oddball--after that, things are pretty constant. Or even faster (on a rounds-to-live basis, not on a minutes-spent-in-combat basis). Because the variance in killing power grows tremendously. And actual monsters don't have as much HP as they seem based on the DMG's guidance, because that's effective HP (ie after accounting for things like regeneration, defensive buffs, etc), not actual HP.

For example, I had a level 10-ish party facing off against a modified ithillich (CR 21, ~135 HP). They killed it twice in about 5 rounds. In fact, the first 135 HP went within the first turn--the paladin was up close and managed to drop 3 smites on it (dual-wielding) for all the damages, triggering phase 2 (this one had the ability to flee and regain its HP, changing the terrain). They then killed it (mostly in martial combat with the paladin and the hexblade, neither of which were particularly optimized) in about 4 more rounds, despite the hexblade getting PW:K in round 4 (of 5). The sorcerer didn't do much other than counterspell and add a buff; the bard was support and dealt basically no damage.

And that's not uncommon in my experience. Things die way fast. Unless you have hordes/waves, in which case it's not the individual HP that matters (as they tend to die in 1-2 hits anyway), it's the martial's lack of effective horde-clearing AoE that slows things down in a mostly-attack-based party.

Edit: And as to the main topic--

I'd rather not have a profusion of options. Combat is already slow enough in a "time spent per turn" basis. Adding huge cognitive loads to everything will just slow everything down even worse. Especially if monsters have to have all these new options and effects. I prefer my combats to be interesting not because the monsters and PCs are complicated but because the scenario (including terrain and goals) are interesting. Monsters work best (IMO, and this is absolutely subjective) when they have
* A basic melee attack
* (optional) a basic ranged attack
* One or maybe 2 gimmicks (special things they can do, auras, effects on hit, other actions).
Monster spell-casting with slots and spells known? Ugh. If I need a flowchart to run the monster, that's going to make the rest of things a slog. Because every second I spend trying to figure out how to play the monster is one second the party isn't getting to be cool.

And a similar thing goes for PCs--every second spent pondering your possible actions is a second everyone else is sitting there bored. I strongly prefer (again, subjective) when everyone gets to do a lot of little actions as opposed to only a couple BIG, OPTIMAL actions. Act, then let someone else act. And a lot of my players are the same way.

[Ignimortis]

IMX (and I've been DMing 5e for 8 years now), monster lifetimes under fire actually are relatively constant across the entire 1-20 spectrum, outside of a tiny blip at level 1.

Level 1 is the oddball--after that, things are pretty constant. Or even faster (on a rounds-to-live basis, not on a minutes-spent-in-combat basis). Because the variance in killing power grows tremendously. And actual monsters don't have as much HP as they seem based on the DMG's guidance, because that's effective HP (ie after accounting for things like regeneration, defensive buffs, etc), not actual HP.

For example, I had a level 10-ish party facing off against a modified ithillich (CR 21, ~135 HP). They killed it twice in about 5 rounds. In fact, the first 135 HP went within the first turn--the paladin was up close and managed to drop 3 smites on it (dual-wielding) for all the damages, triggering phase 2 (this one had the ability to flee and regain its HP, changing the terrain). They then killed it (mostly in martial combat with the paladin and the hexblade, neither of which were particularly optimized) in about 4 more rounds, despite the hexblade getting PW:K in round 4 (of 5). The sorcerer didn't do much other than counterspell and add a buff; the bard was support and dealt basically no damage.

And that's not uncommon in my experience. Things die way fast. Unless you have hordes/waves, in which case it's not the individual HP that matters (as they tend to die in 1-2 hits anyway), it's the martial's lack of effective horde-clearing AoE that slows things down in a mostly-attack-based party.

Smiting Paladin is an outlier damage-wise about the same way as an Action Surging Fighter. A, say, Barbarian of the same level would do noticeably less damage, especially dual-wielding (Rage eats the bonus action) without GWM to fall back on. And an Ithillich probably fights like a Demilich - certainly being in reach of move+melee by someone is a deadly mistake for it.

My experience has been the opposite - if you don't have a Fighter with an on-hit effect (flametongue, etc), a Paladin or a laser turret Warlock, damage falls off by the end of tier 2 and keeps falling unless players get specific items that fix that. Had a double Monk, Rogue, DS Sorc team - we were hard to nail down, but fights tended to drag so much in T3 that by level 15, most fights got turned into 4e-esque minion+miniboss+boss scenarios - everyone who isn't vaguely important pops in one hit, regardless of damage dealt.



Edit: And as to the main topic--

*snip*

And a similar thing goes for PCs--every second spent pondering your possible actions is a second everyone else is sitting there bored. I strongly prefer (again, subjective) when everyone gets to do a lot of little actions as opposed to only a couple BIG, OPTIMAL actions. Act, then let someone else act. And a lot of my players are the same way.

I can understand that with monsters, but with PCs? Is nobody thinking about their turn while others are acting? I tend to do all my planning before my turn comes up, and when it does, it's over in half a minute if I have anything interesting to do. When I was playing something without many options (like my PF2 character until recently), my turns would often go by like this:
Turn starts. "I move here, demoralize, attack". *sigh, stare at the battlemap for a couple of minutes thinking whether doing something else would be better* Next turn: "I move again, attack, raise shield". *sigh profusely and hope we go back to roleplaying soon*

In 5e it was no different, especially on BM Fighter and Paladin. "I move, attack, attack, did anything crit, no? My turn's over." I simply didn't have anything better to do than hit something a couple times if I either wanted to conserve resources or didn't have any. Taking up time with fanciful descriptions if your attack literally did nothing beyond damage, why bother?

[BRC]

In 5e it was no different, especially on BM Fighter and Paladin. "I move, attack, attack, did anything crit, no? My turn's over." I simply didn't have anything better to do than hit something a couple times if I either wanted to conserve resources or didn't have any. Taking up time with fanciful descriptions if your attack literally did nothing beyond damage, why bother?

This is because D&D's roots are in less a tactical combat system (Well, it's DEEP roots are in Wargaming, but that's a different story entirely) than a Logistics system. Things are largely based on the idea of expending resources, with the goal being to succeed while spending as few resources as possible, and often the idea is that you can win any given battle, the danger is spending resources you'll need elsewhere to do so. "Normal attack or Limited-use Super Attack" rather than "Light attack or heavy attack".

Admittedly, that's because it's hard to make "Light attack vs heavy attack" systems actually interesting.

Like, lets say you've got two attacks, one that hits a single target hard (Stab) and one that hits multiple targets for less damage (Swipe).

Well, that's not actually an interesting system, because it's pretty easy to see "Am I fighting one target or multiple. If one, Stab, if multiple, Swipe".

Accurate attacks vs Heavy Attacks hits the "Unfun" problem.

The "Spend resources or don't" system makes it harder to judge if you made the "Correct" choice, since it's all about hypotheticals on if you're going to need it in the future. The softer logic on the "Correct" option means that you avoid turning your simple flowchart of a turn (Move, attack) into just a slightly more complicated flowchart.


I'm not saying the problem doesn't exist, but a real solution is trickier than it may look at first glance.

[Lord Raziere]

This is because D&D's roots are in less a tactical combat system (Well, it's DEEP roots are in Wargaming, but that's a different story entirely) than a Logistics system. Things are largely based on the idea of expending resources, rather than making decisions in the moment. "Normal attack or Limited-use Super Attack" rather than "Light attack or heavy attack".

Admittedly, that's because it's hard to make "Light attack vs heavy attack" systems actually interesting.

Like, lets say you've got two attacks, one that hits a single target hard (Stab) and one that hits multiple targets for less damage (Swipe).

Well, that's not actually an interesting system, because it's pretty easy to see "Am I fighting one target or multiple. If one, Stab, if multiple, Swipe".


I dunno I already like the sound of that better than basic attack, because then I have an option for attacking multiple opponents and can describe someone doing that. like that seems like a no brainer to include.

and why stop there? light/heavy is just the start I proposed. you can go much deeper. make a slash, a chop and a stab all do different things. make different weapons have benefits for doing one attack over another. there are things you can do with this kind of thing to give a combat system more justice and respect than just a single option of being someone's method of turning off their brain. sure that can be there but there is no reason to aspire to less.

[BRC]

I dunno I already like the sound of that better than basic attack, because then I have an option for attacking multiple opponents and can describe someone doing that. like that seems like a no brainer to include.

and why stop there? light/heavy is just the start I proposed. you can go much deeper. make a slash, a chop and a stab all do different things. make different weapons have benefits for doing one attack over another. there are things you can do with this kind of thing to give a combat system more justice and respect than just a single option of being someone's method of turning off their brain. sure that can be there but there is no reason to aspire to less.

Because you hit the issue of a very simple flowchart turning into a complex one that isn't actually more interesting to play through.

Slash: Attack 2 enemies for 1d6 damage
Stab: attack 1 enemy for 1d8 Damage
Chop: Attack 1 enemy for 1d10 damage, but if you miss you end your turn immediately.

It's easy to come up with a bunch of options that don't actually turn into an interesting turn. with the above it's just

"Are there 2 adjacent enemies I want to hit? If so Slash"
"Do I want to do anything else on my turn besides make this attack, if not, Chop"
"If none of the above are true, Stab"

And if you work it in with character choices like weapon types, you end up making it worse. Axes deal +1 damage on a Chop, well you're now encouraged to go for a "Chop Build", and we're back to the Basic Attack problem.


My "Chop" up there, or something like "Reckless Attack" is the direction I would like to go. Make it about risk and reward, rather than picking The Best Move For A Situation.

For example, break down the success/failure binary.

If your final result is 5 ABOVE the target's AC, you get a Triumph.
If your final result is 5 BELOW the target's AC, you get a Stumble.

Then, different attacks can be built off that system. For these examples, assume that unless specified otherwise, Hit or Triumph = Deal normal weapon damage, and Miss or Stumble = Deal no damage.

Heavy Chop: "On a HIT deal bonus damage, On STUMBLE enemy may make an attack against you"
Feint: "On Triumph: Deal Damage as normal. On HIT: No damage. On anything but STUMBLE, your next attack is made at Advantage".
Precise Blow: "On a HIT or MISS, deal half damage".

Risk vs Reward is nice because it's harder to break down the "Correct" move in any given case and avoid the flowchart problem.

[NichG]

I mean, there is an element of game design which is creating things which are fun to go through and execute even if there's no actual thought needed to do it... So if you had a decision tree which was fun to learn and apply, that could be enough, even if its trivial. That said, 'applying a decision tree' is a hard sell for that sort of game element. Usually they're something more viscerally satisfying. Rolling a handful of dice, that kind of thing...

Is aiming a fireball to hit the maximum number of targets (not 'tricking enemies into fireball formation' or any meta-level things, just - here are where the enemies are, here's the fireball template, tell me where you're putting it) viscerally more satisfying than, say, choosing between slash and chop here? Would adding spatial, geometric, visualization elements, etc help, even if the decisions are relatively trivial to optimize?

[BRC]

I mean, there is an element of game design which is creating things which are fun to go through and execute even if there's no actual thought needed to do it... So if you had a decision tree which was fun to learn and apply, that could be enough, even if its trivial. That said, 'applying a decision tree' is a hard sell for that sort of game element. Usually they're something more viscerally satisfying. Rolling a handful of dice, that kind of thing...

Is aiming a fireball to hit the maximum number of targets (not 'tricking enemies into fireball formation' or any meta-level things, just - here are where the enemies are, here's the fireball template, tell me where you're putting it) viscerally more satisfying than, say, choosing between slash and chop here?

I would say no, but Fireball already has the "Should I spend this resource" point of decision to be made.
If you've decided to throw the Fireball, you've already made a meaningful choice, and everything after that is simply optimizing your choice. Optimizing the choice isn't fun, deciding to cast Fireball is.

If you add an optimization puzzle to each turn without adding a meaningful choice, you're just adding some more math.


Edit: Risk/Reward and Resources both introduce the idea of a "Cost", which is an easy way to avoid the flowchart problem. Since the true impact of paying a Cost can't be known, it's much harder to just work out the "Optimal" move.

[Lord Raziere]

I don't care about optimal moves, I want a fighter to do things because they should be able to do them. a wide sweeping sword swipe should hit multiple enemies, simply because thats probably what should happen. include enough logical elements like that and interesting tactical options will arise naturally from being detailed and thoughtful about how combat should work.

[NichG]

I would say no, but Fireball already has the "Should I spend this resource" point of decision to be made.
If you've decided to throw the Fireball, you've already made a meaningful choice, and everything after that is simply optimizing your choice. Optimizing the choice isn't fun, deciding to cast Fireball is.

If you add an optimization puzzle to each turn without adding a meaningful choice, you're just adding some more math.


Edit: Risk/Reward and Resources both introduce the idea of a "Cost", which is an easy way to avoid the flowchart problem. Since the true impact of paying a Cost can't be known, it's much harder to just work out the "Optimal" move.

I mean, what I'm trying to dig down to here is not about meaningful choices, but rather if you have different meaningless choices, can some feel more fun to make than others, and how would you amplify that experience in the game design.

So keeping constant 'we only consider equally meaningless choices', what would make certain kinds of meaningless choice more fun than others?

[Psyren]

Except enemy HP grows exponentially faster than your DPR. At level 1, a typical CR 1/2 enemy has around 20 HP, so you can probably get them down in two or three attacks at around 1d8+3 (an average of 7.5, bigger weapons do even better). A CR 1 enemy, quite dangerous to the party, still can have 30-40 HP, so it can be dropped in four good strikes or six poor ones.

Meanwhile, at level 5, a typical CR 3 enemy can easily have up to 70 HP, while your damage per attack is pretty much unchanged (at best, it's +2 from a +1 weapon and a bonus to STR/DEX), so now you need, on average, eight attacks to bring them down. And a level 5 enemy can reach above 100, bringing the total number of attacks you need for them over a dozen.

Taking down enemies is about more than reducing HP to zero. Hypnotic Pattern and Hold Monster are good spells despite not hurting anyone, and when optimized, a grappler can effectively be casting Hold Monster at will. WotC made a conscious decision in 5e to not have pages and pages of combat maneuvers, opposed checks, and bathroom-pass feats to swing from a chandelier or pull a rug out from under a charging knight or something, and the game is overall better for it.



As for improvised actions, I have never seen them used for actual in-combat moves. In fact, saying that it's the way to let martials do nice things sounds terrible when you have casters just do their thing with rules being written out for everything they can do. Now, if spellcasting were about describing the intended effect, and then rolling randomly to see if you get it somewhat right, I could get behind martial exploits being done in a similar fashion. But having something in cold hard rules is miles and leagues better.

It's A way, not THE way. Obviously (sub)class features, feats, and magic items do a lot of heavy lifting too, but there's only so many of those the system can hold before it collapses under its own weight. Whereas the possibility space for ability checks and opposed checks is already functionally infinite, and combines well with the other categories mentioned AND spells.

Speaking of spells, they have the advantage of being easy to design due to being magic. When Hideous Laughter makes a manticore stop in its tracks and lose its action you don't have to explain how, it just works. Could you accomplish the same thing with a well-timed Performance (comedy) check? Maybe - but justifying that should be up to the DM and table, rather than a set of specific rules that different groups will have differing levels of tolerance for.



Triggering improvised damage only works if there's a readily available source of that damage. So yes, shoving someone into a sawmill blade should be better than hacking at them with a sword, but not many fights have something like that.

A sawmill blade specifically, no, but hazardous terrain is in lots of fights.


In general, I dislike the advice to "fix" rules by doing improv. If I wanted to play improv with vague notions directed by dice rolls, I'd be playing FATE or something. D&D combat, even 5e's, is crunchy enough to work better with mostly static rules instead.

No edition of D&D can write down every single possible action your character can perform, so if you want to remove all improvisation from the game, you may be better off with a different game. "Improv" is an expected and encouraged part of D&D, and denying it while also complaining that martials don't get to do anything special is nonsensical.

[BRC]

I mean, what I'm trying to dig down to here is not about meaningful choices, but rather if you have different meaningless choices, can some feel more fun to make than others, and how would you amplify that experience in the game design.

So keeping constant 'we only consider equally meaningless choices', what would make certain kinds of meaningless choice more fun than others?

Probably? Some puzzles are more fun to solve than others after all.

You also have to work out the difference between enjoying the Puzzle and enjoying the result. Fireball isn't a "Fun puzzle to solve", it's a fun ability to execute since you get to throw a lot of dice and reshape the battlefield. While some people might enjoy the puzzle of identifying the exact spot on the map where they can hit the most enemies, I don't think that's a reliable feature.

Also, if you're counting on puzzle-solving for enjoyment in your game, you hit the issue where either only one person is having fun solving the puzzle of their turn, or you get table captaincy, as the best Puzzle Solver tells everybody what to do, and if you don't listen to them, you're letting down the rest of the party. There's only so much you can do to have a fun puzzle that can be solved quickly enough to not slow everything to the crawl.



I don't care about optimal moves, I want a fighter to do things because they should be able to do them. a wide sweeping sword swipe should hit multiple enemies, simply because thats probably what should happen. include enough logical elements like that and interesting tactical options will arise naturally from being detailed and thoughtful about how combat should work.
Ah, "Should".

"A fighter Should be able to hit two enemies with a single wide sweep".
Okay, cool,
If the first enemy is hit, does the fighter get to keep swinging? Do we differentiate between a glancing blow that might keep going and embedding your sword in the enemy's torso?

If the first enemy is Missed, do we differentiate between "The enemy dodged back" and "The enemy blocked it with their shield", if the logic is that the fighter can do this because they Should be able to, then your sword bouncing off a shield Should stop your attack from continuing onwards.

"Should" a fighter be able to do a single sword swing capable of hitting two foes with any sort of reliability? It's hard enough to swing a sword such that you'll hit one foe, much less two on the same trajectory.

D&D is a highly abstracted combat system without called shots or the like and very abstracted HP. "Should" a fighter be able to, say, just stab an armored opponent in their unarmored face? "Should" they be able to step inside the reach of their opponent's weapon? Now you have to track weapon reach

Should certain weapons be better against certain armors?

Eventually you have to draw the line and start abstracting.

[Lord Raziere]

@ BRC: I don't care for your attempt at muddling this, just because its not fun for you, doesn't meant he option doesn't appeal to other people. you can put whatever logic you want on it, but when it comes down to it, the desire to want the option to sweep with a blade to hit two foes is valid no matter what you say. I say whatever I think should be, because its my opinion. I don't have to play 4D game design chess debate with you.

[Psyren]

I see nothing wrong with fluffing Extra Attack as a sword sweep, or even just allowing a sword sweep as an improvised action. Note too that there is an optional cleave rule on DMG 272 for weaker foes.

[NichG]

Probably? Some puzzles are more fun to solve than others after all.

You also have to work out the difference between enjoying the Puzzle and enjoying the result. Fireball isn't a "Fun puzzle to solve", it's a fun ability to execute since you get to throw a lot of dice and reshape the battlefield. While some people might enjoy the puzzle of identifying the exact spot on the map where they can hit the most enemies, I don't think that's a reliable feature.

Also, if you're counting on puzzle-solving for enjoyment in your game, you hit the issue where either only one person is having fun solving the puzzle of their turn, or you get table captaincy, as the best Puzzle Solver tells everybody what to do, and if you don't listen to them, you're letting down the rest of the party. There's only so much you can do to have a fun puzzle that can be solved quickly enough to not slow everything to the crawl.


I wouldn't really use the concept of a puzzle to think about these things. A puzzle implies it actually has to be figured out, has some significant chance of be figured out incorrectly, etc. I'm talking more about things where any idea that someone would do it incorrectly after playing the game for a few rounds is at most a fig leaf. It's not so much a puzzle as the act of directing your brain through a particular set of channels - executing a skill more than thinking through something.

Think of things like totaling up dice. Or rolling exploding dice versus rolling flat dice. Or the patter of talking through the same attack sequence you've made a dozen times before ('oh, and I also get 7 electricity damage from Shocking Burst, oh, and the +1 from Prayer, and ...'). Or for other examples, things like watering crops in Stardew Valley. We could say 'oh, there's a deep optimization problem there of energy consumption versus time consumption vs ...' but actually its just, its mostly about the feeling of repeating the chore and having satisfying animations play and things like that.

The reason I bring these things up is that its possible that 'giving more options to the people who chose the minimum option class to play' is just projecting a preference. So its worth considering as an aspect of the problem, could you just make the gameplay just 'feel better' without actually changing the true tactical complexity of playing a fighter?

[BRC]

@ BRC: I don't care for your attempt at muddling this, just because its not fun for you, doesn't meant he option doesn't appeal to other people. you can put whatever logic you want on it, but when it comes down to it, the desire to want the option to sweep with a blade to hit two foes is valid no matter what you say. I say whatever I think should be, because its my opinion. I don't have to play 4D game design chess debate with you.

I never said it wasn't a valid thing to want. I think it's a rad thing to be able to do. I want fighters to be able to do that (in fact, they can, there are a few ways in 5e to do that with the Great Weapon Master feat, and a Battlemaster manuever)

Just that the question of "How should this work" has to go beyond "Because It makes sense". I don't object to the idea of one swordswing hitting two enemies, I object to the idea that all the answers of how to make that work in a game can be found by just "Including enough logical elements".

You can list Cool Things To Do With A Sword All Day, but that doesn't answer the question of how to make it work mechanically.

I'm not objecting to the idea of Doing Cool Things With A Sword. Quite the opposite. I'm trying to figure out how to make that work.


I wouldn't really use the concept of a puzzle to think about these things. A puzzle implies it actually has to be figured out, has some significant chance of be figured out incorrectly, etc. I'm talking more about things where any idea that someone would do it incorrectly after playing the game for a few rounds is at most a fig leaf. It's not so much a puzzle as the act of directing your brain through a particular set of channels - executing a skill more than thinking through something.

Think of things like totaling up dice. Or rolling exploding dice versus rolling flat dice. Or the patter of talking through the same attack sequence you've made a dozen times before ('oh, and I also get 7 electricity damage from Shocking Burst, oh, and the +1 from Prayer, and ...'). Or for other examples, things like watering crops in Stardew Valley. We could say 'oh, there's a deep optimization problem there of energy consumption versus time consumption vs ...' but actually its just, its mostly about the feeling of repeating the chore and having satisfying animations play and things like that.

The reason I bring these things up is that its possible that 'giving more options to the people who chose the minimum option class to play' is just projecting a preference. So its worth considering as an aspect of the problem, could you just make the gameplay just 'feel better' without actually changing the true tactical complexity of playing a fighter?

Ah, I see.
There's probably a term for this, let's call it "Gamefeel" (Like, Mouthfeel"), some game mechanics just being fun and satisfying to execute.

Like, even if you just say "I make a heavy attack" every turn, is that more satisfying than just attacking? It could be. Rogues have this a bit with Sneak Attack as a distinct, high-impact move that they can do, and pulling off a sneak attack is certainly satisfying. But I can't say for sure how much that comes from a Sneak Attack being a high-impact move (dealing a lot of damage), vs the act of saying "Oh! I can do a Sneak Attack".


There might be something to that? The idea that Doing Something feels better than just Attacking, even if you're not really increasing the number of choices. Bring back some of the old ideas from 3.5, ideally without the "Full Attack" mechanic that discouraged any actual movement.

You are moving 20ft and attacking? Call that a Charge Attack, take a bonus about it.

You're attacking multiple enemies? Call that a Whirlwind Attack, take something about to encourage doing that over just bopping them down in turn with separate attacks.

Not using your movement this round? Call that a Steady Stance, get a different bonus about it.

It does add a layer of complexity onto the rules, since you now need to remember all these different conditions, but putting a Name to it would at least give a sense of doing SOMETHING unique each round beyond "Basic attack basic attack". It's solving a different problem than the one posited in the OP, but it's something to think about.

[Leon]

....I mean it'd be simple to introduce some strategy into basic attacks, just divide them into light and strong attacks to start with. light attacks for quickness and number, strong attacks for power and piercing a defense. its something that some games already do to make combat much more interesting.

Light/Precise Attack: Advantage on attacks but does Half damage
Standard Attack: Nothing changed
Heavy/Reckless Attack: Disadvantage but Double damage (and if you manage to pull a crit off on this attack... wow such damage)

For Characters with multiple attacks you chose which of the above for each individual attack you make.

[Ignimortis]

Taking down enemies is about more than reducing HP to zero. Hypnotic Pattern and Hold Monster are good spells despite not hurting anyone, and when optimized, a grappler can effectively be casting Hold Monster at will. WotC made a conscious decision in 5e to not have pages and pages of combat maneuvers, opposed checks, and bathroom-pass feats to swing from a chandelier or pull a rug out from under a charging knight or something, and the game is overall better for it.

Hypnotic Pattern and Hold Monster are good spells because the former potentially takes several enemies out of the fight instantly (which is as close to an instant kill as it gets), and the latter takes a target out of the fight while making it incredibly easy to kill, too. All at a cost of one action and one spell slot, plus some failed saves. If a Fighter had a somewhat-analogous move, it'd be an X/day "attack, if you hit, the target loses 50-75% HP and cannot act until the end of its' next turn".

The grappler casts Hold Monster at will by spending two actions, succeeding at two checks, becoming an attractive immobile target themselves, and still cannot grapple Huge or larger creatures. Also only good if you actually have someone else who can take advantage of it.

Also, at least a quarter of the book is spells. Sparing a dozen pages for combat maneuvers (because they literally would fit five into the same space as one spell) wouldn't have impacted anything in the long run. It's just that combat maneuvers aren't "swing on the chandelier" or "pull the rug out from under an enemy", they're more like "roll an Intimidation check and apply its' results to all enemies in 30 feet"... Except 5e doesn't have any rules for that to work off. Blast. Sometimes 5e does feel a lot like Magical Tea Party when it comes to anything beyond basic combat and spellcasting.



It's A way, not THE way. Obviously (sub)class features, feats, and magic items do a lot of heavy lifting too, but there's only so many of those the system can hold before it collapses under its own weight. Whereas the possibility space for ability checks and opposed checks is already functionally infinite, and combines well with the other categories mentioned AND spells.

The possibility space is infinite, and as such, you never actually know what you can or cannot do. Can you Frighten someone without being proficient in Intimidation? If you can, what's the difference - is it just that proficiency adds a modifier to your roll and makes it easier? What's the DC for it, anyway? Can you run on walls by using Acrobatics instead of being a level 3 Monk? How hard is it, and can I do it in full plate?

I prefer having rules for that, because guessing endlessly whether I can do the cool thing today depending on the GM means it's easier to not do it and thus not take up time at the table with arguments. That's why improv actions barely work. I don't want to guess whether a particular thing goes too far by the GM's tastes. If it's in the game, it's in the game and it can be either banned from the outset or implicitly approved, and I can work with that a lot better.



Speaking of spells, they have the advantage of being easy to design due to being magic. When Hideous Laughter makes a manticore stop in its tracks and lose its action you don't have to explain how, it just works. Could you accomplish the same thing with a well-timed Performance (comedy) check? Maybe - but justifying that should be up to the DM and table, rather than a set of specific rules that different groups will have differing levels of tolerance for.

If there were actual rules for using Performance, then you could say whether its' possible or not. Also, I dislike the concept of "magic just works, but people who live in a magical world cannot create magic-equal effects without spellcasting". Bards literally have supernaturally powerful music beyond their spell slots. Monks literally have fists that hit as hard as magic weapons and can run on water because they're just that good. Barbarians have subclasses that light them on fire or make their weapons holy simply because they're that angry and that manifests into clearly supernatural effects.



No edition of D&D can write down every single possible action your character can perform, so if you want to remove all improvisation from the game, you may be better off with a different game. "Improv" is an expected and encouraged part of D&D, and denying it while also complaining that martials don't get to do anything special is nonsensical.

And yet every single spell in the game is written down and specified. Or are spellcasters blocked from improvised action rules now? They can't improvise with magic and an Arcana check or something?

Again, the topic of the thread is even not about that. It's about the fact that "attacking something for weapon damage" is the superior tactic in most scenarios (not all of them, but by far most of them) and that the game is balanced off the assumption that "attacking something for weapon damage" is the baseline for martials spending an action well. Anything unequivocally better than that is limited in some way.


Light/Precise Attack: Advantage on attacks but does Half damage
Standard Attack: Nothing changed
Heavy/Reckless Attack: Disadvantage but Double damage (and if you manage to pull a crit off on this attack... wow such damage)

For Characters with multiple attacks you chose which of the above for each individual attack you make.

See, this is why I'm against actually going with things like these. It's not actually about anything but damage again. All you do is perform a couple of rough estimate math calculations and use the one that's more likely to work (which is either standard attack or heavy attack 90% of the time, light only if you have an on-hit effect that is unaffected by half-damage or if you really need to get in a hit, any hit, right now). It does not provide tactical depth once you've mathed out the enemy's AC and it's relation to your to-hit, which generally happens by round 2 of the combat.

Precision and damage are still solely about DPR. That's why I specified upthread that Strikes shouldn't be about doing more damage (which is where 4e borked it), but doing the same damage AND doing something else tactically. Anything but direct damage interactions. Positioning (yourself or the enemy), debuffs, buffs, healing, etc.

[Psyren]

The possibility space is infinite, and as such, you never actually know what you can or cannot do. Can you Frighten someone without being proficient in Intimidation? If you can, what's the difference - is it just that proficiency adds a modifier to your roll and makes it easier? What's the DC for it, anyway? Can you run on walls by using Acrobatics instead of being a level 3 Monk? How hard is it, and can I do it in full plate?

I prefer having rules for that, because guessing endlessly whether I can do the cool thing today depending on the GM means it's easier to not do it and thus not take up time at the table with arguments. That's why improv actions barely work. I don't want to guess whether a particular thing goes too far by the GM's tastes. If it's in the game, it's in the game and it can be either banned from the outset or implicitly approved, and I can work with that a lot better.

I just don't understand this aversion to talking to the DM. They want you to have fun right? Who cares if not every DM lets you do all the same things? Arrive at a compromise, presumably everyone at the table is an adult.

Maybe you can't run on a wall in full plate unaided (and frankly you shouldn't, not even high-level monks can do that) but that doesn't mean your only options are to shuffle around and stab things either.



Also, at least a quarter of the book is spells. Sparing a dozen pages for combat maneuvers (because they literally would fit five into the same space as one spell) wouldn't have impacted anything in the long run. It's just that combat maneuvers aren't "swing on the chandelier" or "pull the rug out from under an enemy", they're more like "roll an Intimidation check and apply its' results to all enemies in 30 feet"... Except 5e doesn't have any rules for that to work off. Blast. Sometimes 5e does feel a lot like Magical Tea Party when it comes to anything beyond basic combat and spellcasting.

Creating a "maneuver" to intimidate enemies around you adds a lot more clutter than you think, because now you need to start specifying that it doesn't work on skeletons and oozes, the targets have to be able to see and hear you, you get a penalty if you're Small but a bonus if you're Large, how long it lasts, do the targets run away or cower or just take penalties, is it repeatable and if so how often, and on and on with the caveats until you end up taking up as much space as a spell for something that could be handled much more simply by DM adjudication of the circumstances.


If there were actual rules for using Performance, then you could say whether its' possible or not. Also, I dislike the concept of "magic just works, but people who live in a magical world cannot create magic-equal effects without spellcasting". Bards literally have supernaturally powerful music beyond their spell slots. Monks literally have fists that hit as hard as magic weapons and can run on water because they're just that good. Barbarians have subclasses that light them on fire or make their weapons holy simply because they're that angry and that manifests into clearly supernatural effects.

I'm fine with plenty of non-spell magical effects for martials. Everything you listed here is okay, albeit being class features rather than ability checks.



And yet every single spell in the game is written down and specified. Or are spellcasters blocked from improvised action rules now? They can't improvise with magic and an Arcana check or something?

Again, the topic of the thread is even not about that. It's about the fact that "attacking something for weapon damage" is the superior tactic in most scenarios (not all of them, but by far most of them) and that the game is balanced off the assumption that "attacking something for weapon damage" is the baseline for martials spending an action well. Anything unequivocally better than that is limited in some way.

Actually the baseline for one action is "attacking something multiple times for weapon damage" Replacing that with some other action that does something else is broader than you think.

Also, some of the things you listed like running up a wall would be part of a move, i.e. not an Action at all.

As for spells being written down and specified - spells are much easier to codify due to the luxury of not needing much explanation for the things they do, because magic. When I get someone to help me at their allies' expense with a Charm spell, I don't need to appeal to any of their ideals/bonds/flaws first, because the magic bypasses those things. A martial version of a charm spell would have the burden of not only explaining how it does something similar without being a spell, but also of explaining how it's different from simply being the spell its mimicking, and it must do both in such a way that it justifies the added time/expense/bloat of being included in the rulebook.

[Leon]

Precision and damage are still solely about DPR.

This forum has a unhealthy infatuation with DPR, If just doing damage is unpalatable then its easy rough to say that a Light attack will give a defensive bonus as you feint or such and that a Heavy attack has a chance of pushing the target about ~ easy

[BRC]

This forum has a unhealthy infatuation with DPR, If just doing damage is unpalatable then its easy rough to say that a Light attack will give a defensive bonus as you feint or such and that a Heavy attack has a chance of pushing the target about ~ easy

D&D 5e has an infatuation with DPR, there isn't much in the way of other things to do that are not either only situationally useful (pushing, disarming) or very powerful (Stunning, long-lasting disadvantage), or just DPR with extra steps (Advantage to hit, damage over time, ect).

[Ignimortis]

I just don't understand this aversion to talking to the DM. They want you to have fun right? Who cares if not every DM lets you do all the same things? Arrive at a compromise, presumably everyone at the table is an adult.

If I have to talk to the DM all the time to ask whether I can do the thing now, it means the rules are either missing a lot of components (if the answer is most often "yes"), or that I'm trying to do things that the system does not expect to be doable (so the answer should be "no").



Maybe you can't run on a wall in full plate unaided (and frankly you shouldn't, not even high-level monks can do that) but that doesn't mean your only options are to shuffle around and stab things either.

Why not? Even if I have expertise in Athletics and Acrobatics, superhuman STR and DEX? Where does the border lie? If I can't do it because I don't have a class feature for that, we go back to my first thesis - the system does not expect that to be doable, and that's a whole different can of worms that is unrelated to that thread.

Meanwhile, my general options are to shuffle around and stab things, because that's what provides the most payoff in the system. In fact, shuffling around is only important when it either enables you to stab things, or in specific positions where it prevents someone else from being able to stab you or your friends as easily. If you're already in stabbing range and your friends can't be stabbed, you usually don't need to move, unless it's to now stab a higher-priority target.



Creating a "maneuver" to intimidate enemies around you adds a lot more clutter than you think, because now you need to start specifying that it doesn't work on skeletons and oozes, the targets have to be able to see and hear you, you get a penalty if you're Small but a bonus if you're Large, how long it lasts, do the targets run away or cower or just take penalties, is it repeatable and if so how often, and on and on with the caveats until you end up taking up as much space as a spell for something that could be handled much more simply by DM adjudication of the circumstances.

And all that could be easily worked with if most skills had actual rules instead of "make up a DC, have them roll against it". I dislike having to praise PF2, but that's precisely what it does. In fact, if PF2 was a wee bit less afraid to break the ground rules, it could be so much more than it is, because most of the core rules are great, they're just applied very conservatively and with a rabid desire to not have anything unequivocally better than just stabbing a guy.

If the foundation is solid, though, building upon it becomes very easy. 5e doesn't have a solid foundation, it has a lot of Mother-May-I and a core combat engine, as well as a ton of spells with very specific effects because even the simplest effects have to specify what exact effect they cause. Note that all the BM maneuvers don't have that stat block, because they use the combat rules that 5e already has. Why not work off that for maneuvers?

A spell, meanwhile, has to have applicable targets, range, area of effect, duration, etc. And even then it could be very well collapsed quite a bit, if you'd just established an underlying structure — Fireball and Lightning Bolt are basically the same spell, the only difference being area of effect and damage type. All the 3.5 ability score buffs (Bull's Strength, Owl's Wisdom) already got dumped into one Enhance Ability spell. Etc, etc.



Actually the baseline for one action is "attacking something multiple times for weapon damage" Replacing that with some other action that does something else is broader than you think.

Also, some of the things you listed like running up a wall would be part of a move, i.e. not an Action at all.
The part about attacking once or several times is nitpicking.

The fact that movement is not any sort of action in 5e, and does not interact with anything but itself and Prone, is part of it. Previous posters who referred to 3.5 are right about that - if movement is its' own sort of action that can be spent in various ways, it becomes way more important and factors in decision-making a lot more often.


This forum has a unhealthy infatuation with DPR, If just doing damage is unpalatable then its easy rough to say that a Light attack will give a defensive bonus as you feint or such and that a Heavy attack has a chance of pushing the target about ~ easy
BRC pretty much sums up what I'm talking about this whole time. DPR is the way to win the fight. Therefore, anything you do should be at least potentially (i.e. you might still fail and do nothing, that doesn't invalidate the idea), in the current situation, equivalent or superior to putting out your one round's worth of damage.


D&D 5e has an infatuation with DPR, there isn't much in the way of other things to do that are not either only situationally useful (pushing, disarming) or very powerful (Stunning, long-lasting disadvantage), or just DPR with extra steps (Advantage to hit, damage over time, ect).
Just so, just so. A lot of system's design is funneling towards it, too - the lack of "small levers" was mentioned upthread, for instance.

[Psyren]

If I have to talk to the DM all the time to ask whether I can do the thing now, it means the rules are either missing a lot of components (if the answer is most often "yes"), or that I'm trying to do things that the system does not expect to be doable (so the answer should be "no").

I'd rather an open-ended system where you occasionally have to ask for something than a closed system that assumes anything not listed is impossible.


Why not? Even if I have expertise in Athletics and Acrobatics, superhuman STR and DEX? Where does the border lie? If I can't do it because I don't have a class feature for that, we go back to my first thesis - the system does not expect that to be doable, and that's a whole different can of worms that is unrelated to that thread.

Meanwhile, my general options are to shuffle around and stab things, because that's what provides the most payoff in the system. In fact, shuffling around is only important when it either enables you to stab things, or in specific positions where it prevents someone else from being able to stab you or your friends as easily. If you're already in stabbing range and your friends can't be stabbed, you usually don't need to move, unless it's to now stab a higher-priority target.

It's not that you don't have a class feature that lets you do that - it's that even the guy with the class feature can't do that. That itself shows you there's a line, and (in this instance) where it lies.


And all that could be easily worked with if most skills had actual rules instead of "make up a DC, have them roll against it". I dislike having to praise PF2, but that's precisely what it does. In fact, if PF2 was a wee bit less afraid to break the ground rules, it could be so much more than it is, because most of the core rules are great, they're just applied very conservatively and with a rabid desire to not have anything unequivocally better than just stabbing a guy.

If the foundation is solid, though, building upon it becomes very easy. 5e doesn't have a solid foundation, it has a lot of Mother-May-I and a core combat engine, as well as a ton of spells with very specific effects because even the simplest effects have to specify what exact effect they cause. Note that all the BM maneuvers don't have that stat block, because they use the combat rules that 5e already has. Why not work off that for maneuvers?

I'm not against a general "maneuver system," but (a) the devil is in the details and (b) I'm not going to sit around waiting for WotC to write one before I ask to do anything interesting, or counsel others to do the same. You are of course free to do so, but I won't. I'm also not going to waste a bunch of time crawling through volumes of third-party or homebrew when the base ability check system already lets me do the kinds of things I want to do.