Alternatives to Extra Attack as a form of character advancement?

[Greywander]

I've been working on a big overhaul were I'm making a lot of changes to the class system. As a result, it was actually a lot easier to rip out Extra Attack as a class feature and make it a character feature that everyone gets. Now, I've gotten criticism about this before and I brushed it off at the time, but I can kind of see people's point that it doesn't make much sense for the wizard to be getting additional attacks. What really pushed me over the edge was thinking about single-shot weapons that do a lot more damage but require an action to reload, meaning that they work best for characters without Extra Attack so you only lose one attack when you reload. I'd like to include weapons like this in the overhaul, but giving everyone Extra Attack makes them obsolete after low levels. Heck, that even applies to the existing weapons with the loading property.

What I'm thinking is that maybe instead of just giving you Extra Attack, you'd get some kind of upgrade point that you could choose how to allocate. You can spend it on Extra Attack, or you could spend it on something else. The question is: what are some other things you could spend this on?

One thought I had was Sneak Attack, but that doesn't fix either of these issues. Sneak Attack is still kind of a martial ability (though maybe a better fit for a wizard than Extra Attack), and Sneak Attack still prefers you to attack every round with a weaker attack instead of alternating between a powerful attack and reloading. I'll probably want to rewrite how Sneak Attack works so it's more compatible with these single-shot weapons, but that still only fixes one of these two issues.

I think what I'm struggling with is that, since this is still somewhat based on D&D, it still feels like every character should be viable in combat. Since Extra Attack is purely a combat ability, it feels like any alternative should also be a combat ability, as otherwise you'd be trading combat effectiveness for something else, and thus making your character less viable in combat. So what are some things that aren't magic (as that's handled separately), and aren't martially oriented, but still help with combat effectiveness and make sense as a core character progression feature? What are abilities that would fit a scholar, doctor, or merchant character concept?

[Sexyshoeless]

So there's a number of approaches one could do. I'm just going to barf ideas out here.

1. Give certain riders to the single attack. Sneak attack adds more dice to the attack, but you could also lean in a more support/CC direction by forcing saving throws, condition saves on hit.

2. Give an alternative to the attack action that is more helpful. Especially in answer to your last question, one can think of some ideas such as:

a. buffs to the help action (help more people, bonuses such as more damage, THP, advantage on the next attack, etc if the helped attack hits)

b. Just on application buffs or debuffs. Perhaps you can take away attacks or actions the way the slow spell does on an action after succeeding a skill check. In action economy terms, giving up your action to stop/hinder the enemies. The enchanter wizard's level 2 ability is an example of this

c. Stacking counters. You imagine a scenario where if the merchant or brewer strikes X times with their poisoned darts, the foe takes a bazillion d6 damage.

d. buffs to the team. there is a woeful lack of on demand buffing in DnD 5e - you could do things like mark your ally - they get X bonus or advantage on X checks until the end of your next turn. upgrades could have you doing this to more allies.

3. More of an idea than another option - you may want to look at KibblesTasty's artificer. It's a masterclass of a homebrew but particularly he has "upgrade" lists each subclass can choose from that are a truly delightful gallery of utility, damage options. You could soft poach that system and give a list of say "Spell -like abilities" that non magically mimic the effects of certain spells such as web (tanglefoot bag+), fog cloud (smoke bomb), thunderwave (grenade), etc.

[GalacticAxekick]

I think what I'm struggling with is that, since this is still somewhat based on D&D, it still feels like every character should be viable in combat. [...] So what are some things that aren't magic (as that's handled separately), and aren't martially oriented, but still help with combat effectiveness and make sense as a core character progression feature? What are abilities that would fit a scholar, doctor, or merchant character concept?This probably isnt the answer you want, but your goals are contradictory.

For the sake of the game (which is combat heavy) you want every character to be viable in combat.

But for the sake of the story (which includes scholars, doctors, merchants and more), you want certain characters to lack martial abilities (which are synonymous with combat skills of all kinds) and magical abilities (the go-to support for people who lack martial abilities).

You cant have both.

If you're going to have doctors who dont know anything about fighting, arent in fighting shape, and dont have magical backup... they MUST suck at combat.

And if you're going to have doctors who can hold their own in a fight by using their knowledge of anatomy, quick thinking and dexterity to strike vital wounds... they have martial abilities.

There are plenty of things that can replace Extra Attack. You can replace multiple normal attacks with one big attack (like Sneak Attack), or with area effects, or with a damage over-time effect, or with a countdown to unconsciousness that totally bypasses hit points. But framing those as neither martial nor magical just doesnt make sense.

EDIT: I think the most you could get away with as non-martial, non-magical combat abilities is support abilities. The scholar can give insight about the enemy and environment. The doctor can patch people up. The merchant might be carrying just the thing the party needs. The diplomat might be distracting or disheartening to the enemy, and focusing or encouraging to the party. But any kind of direct attacking/defending is necessarily martial or magical.

[PhantomSoul]

This probably isnt the answer you want, but your goals are contradictory.

For the sake of the game (which is combat heavy) you want every character to be viable in combat.

But for the sake of the story (which includes scholars, doctors, merchants and more), you want certain characters to lack martial abilities (which are synonymous with combat skills of all kinds) and magical abilities (the go-to support for people who lack martial abilities).

You cant have both.

If you're going to have doctors who dont know anything about fighting, arent in fighting shape, and dont have magical backup... they MUST suck at combat.

And if you're going to have doctors who can hold their own in a fight by using their knowledge of anatomy, quick thinking and dexterity to strike vital wounds... they have martial abilities.


This isn't actually a contradiction: you changed a very important preposition. (Though that doesn't mean you aren't right for specific applications!) The line you quoted wasn't that they should be good AT combat, but that they should be good (well, viable) IN combat and "still help with combat effectiveness". A medic being viable IN combat might not mean they contribute by swinging a sharp stick, but instead, you know, as a medic. Maybe that means healing, maybe that means identifying which targets are in better or worse shape, maybe that means figuring out weak points of a target (e.g. they seem to be more sluggish on one side).

Though really, in 5e, a bunch of kobolds can stack up to become a threat, so if you get enough martially incompetent medics together, they can still give you a bad day with their sharp sticks! :)

[GalacticAxekick]

This isn't actually a contradiction: you changed a very important preposition. (Though that doesn't mean you aren't right for specific applications!) The line you quoted wasn't that they should be good AT combat, but that they should be good (well, viable) IN combat and "still help with combat effectiveness". A medic being viable IN combat might not mean they contribute by swinging a sharp stick, but instead, you know, as a medic. Maybe that means healing, maybe that means identifying which targets are in better or worse shape, maybe that means figuring out weak points of a target (e.g. they seem to be more sluggish on one side).Yes, I already addressed this


I think the most you could get away with as non-martial, non-magical combat abilities is support abilities. The scholar can give insight about the enemy and environment. The doctor can patch people up. The merchant might be carrying just the thing the party needs. The diplomat might be distracting or disheartening to the enemy, and focusing or encouraging to the party. But any kind of direct attacking/defending is necessarily martial or magical.

[Herbert_W]

So what are some things that aren't magic (as that's handled separately), and aren't martially oriented, but still help with combat effectiveness and make sense as a core character progression feature? What are abilities that would fit a scholar, doctor, or merchant character concept?

I think you're facing down a hard Morton's fork here. You want all character concepts to be good in (not necessarily at) combat. Ypu want to represent character concepts such as scholars and merchants. You have an unstated but implied desire for realism. Realistically, scholars and merchants are not good in combat.

I can see several options:


Abandon realism. A merchant's eye for appraisal lets them spot weaknesses. A doctor's knowledge of anatomy gives then sneak attack. That's blatantly not how things work in reality, but hey, it's a fantasy game.
Abandon the idea that every character has to be useful in combat. Come up with other answers to the question of "why is this guy even here?"
Abandon the idea of having ordinary scholars/merchants/doctors/etc. as playable characters beyond low levels. Perhaps characters can start as ordinary noncombatants who are somehow thrust into adventure - but once they've been adventuring for a while, they're not just an ordinary noncombatant character any more.

Personally, I'd go for the last one, but that's just me.


some things that aren't magic (as that's handled separately)

Why not magic? Outright giving a character magic might not work given the lore of your setting - but why not give characters who have magic the option to spend this boon in a way that enhances it?

With that out of the way, let’s start from the ground up. EA has a number of traits. Some are bugs (i.e. you want at least some alternatives to EA to not share them) and some are features (i.e. you want all EA alternatives to share them). Only once we’ve sorted out which are which do we have grounds for making good suggestions for alternatives, and for knowing whether a given set of alternatives covers all of the bases.

There’s two traits that I think we can classify as a feature:


EA is chunky. Instead of getting a little bit better level by level, it improves in steps at set intervals. That means that EA won’t play nicely with multiclassing, but that’s OK (if I understand your proposed system correctly) because it doesn’t need to play with multiclassing at all. Characters simply get an EA or alternative at fixed character levels regardless of class.
EA makes a character useful in combat. (This is a broader criteria than being good or skilled at combat. An e.g. cleric who passively heals nearby allies is good in, but not necessarily at, combat.)

There’s a cluster of related traits that you’ve called out a bug - but it’s unclear which parts you’d consider bugs by themselves once the cluster is split up.


EA is contingent on a character’s actions. EA only provides a benefit when a character does a specific thing.
Given that EA is contingent on a character’s actions, the contingent action is making attacks, specifically.
Furthermore, since EA operates on a per-round basis, a character must perform the required action every round or else leave money on the table.

There’s a bunch of traits which may be features, or which might not, depending on your design goals:


EA provides a benefit per round spent in combat. This is the most useful on days with many and/or long encounters. This stands in contrast with per-encounter abilities which are most useful on days with many short encounters, or per-day, which is most useful on days with few encounters. (There are other resource management scales such as per-adventure or per-level but I hardly ever see those used.)
EA provides an offensive benefit. It makes enemies die in fewer rounds, but doesn’t make you endure more rounds of enemy attacks.
EA is not contingent on teamwork. A character with EA can use it regardless of what (if anything) other characters are doing.
EA is not contingent on encounter design. EA is (or can be) equally useful regardless of what enemies you’re facing, with few or contrived exceptions.

[Greywander]

Thanks for the responses so far, I really do appreciate people taking time out of their day to discuss these things and offer their input. And this is a tricky one.


So there's a number of approaches one could do. I'm just going to barf ideas out here.
A lot of these would work pretty well as features for specific classes, but are too specific for generic character progression. "Extra Help" is an interesting idea, being able to help multiple characters at the cost of a single action. But who actually takes the Help action as the primary thing they do in combat? I think that idea works better by allowing Help as a bonus action, like the Mastermind.


This probably isnt the answer you want, but your goals are contradictory.
[...]
EDIT: I think the most you could get away with as non-martial, non-magical combat abilities is support abilities. The scholar can give insight about the enemy and environment. The doctor can patch people up. The merchant might be carrying just the thing the party needs. The diplomat might be distracting or disheartening to the enemy, and focusing or encouraging to the party. But any kind of direct attacking/defending is necessarily martial or magical.

I think you're facing down a hard Morton's fork here. You want all character concepts to be good in (not necessarily at) combat. Ypu want to represent character concepts such as scholars and merchants. You have an unstated but implied desire for realism. Realistically, scholars and merchants are not good in combat.
It certainly is quite the conundrum. The Venn diagram of "not martial" and "good in combat" has very little overlap. I think it's a correct analysis that some kind of support benefit would be the way to go.



Abandon the idea of having ordinary scholars/merchants/doctors/etc. as playable characters beyond low levels. Perhaps characters can start as ordinary noncombatants who are somehow thrust into adventure - but once they've been adventuring for a while, they're not just an ordinary noncombatant character any more.

I think that might have been what I had in mind when I decided to give everyone Extra Attack. You're a wizard? Well, you've been in enough dangerous situations that your instincts and reflexes allow you to attack with less hesitation than a commoner, even though that's not your forte.


Why not magic? Outright giving a character magic might not work given the lore of your setting - but why not give characters who have magic the option to spend this boon in a way that enhances it?
This might be about to go off on a big tangent, but...

For pretty similar reasons as Extra Attack, spellcasting has also been removed as a class feature and turned into a feature that every character gets. Which is to say, every character gets things that look suspiciously like spells, and work suspiciously like spells, but may or may not be actual magic, depending on how they've chosen to flavor it. A "caster" is just someone who invests more heavily into mental stats, which this spellcasting system relies much more heavily on (with all three mental stats having their own effects on the spellcasting system; INT = more spells known, WIS = better concentration, CHA = attack/save DC). That said, this is something I'm still hammering out, and it might end up looking like a weird cross between spellcasting, invocations, and feats.

One thing I was planning on doing was moving away from the idea of leveled spells and leaning more on the upcasting system. Basically, a spell would have a base effect you could create with a certain spell point cost, and then each spell would also have its own metamagic effects that you could apply by spending additional spell points (or an equivalent resource). For example, Invisibility could have the same base effect as in vanilla, and you can spend an additional 2 spell points to target an additional creature, and/or 5 spell points to turn it into a Great Invisibility effect. Instead of cantrips and cantrip scaling, I was planning on giving free spell points per casting, increasing at the same time that you get Extra Attack. These free spell points per casting would allow you to cast the same spells more often without running out of resources, but also if the free spell points are greater than the base effect of a spell then you could cast that spell at will (it essentially becomes a cantrip).

So I suppose I could give the free spell points per casting as an alternative to Extra Attack. I guess my feeling was that since everyone benefits from cantrip scaling in vanilla, everyone should get the comparable benefit from the overhaul. Even if I do this, though, it still kind of feels a bit like Sneak Attack in that it adds more options that are different from one another, but there's still something missing. And I think what's missing is the "skilled" option, for characters who aren't magical and aren't martial but are skillful.

Consequently, one possibility that I considered, but ultimately rejected, was to turn Extra Attack into a passive "spell" (so more like a feat or invocation, perhaps, but granted through the spellcasting system). Passive "spells" would likely reduce your spell points or take up an equivalent resource, similar to how one way to run Animate Dead is to make it permanent but you just don't get that spell slot back until the effect ends (e.g. your undead are killed, or you release them from your control). But this way, Extra Attack would have been optional, and not available to everyone, and it would have also taken up a spell known and reduced your spellcasting resources. But I just didn't care for it, it seemed like a hacky way to deal with the problem.


With that out of the way, let’s start from the ground up. EA has a number of traits. Some are bugs (i.e. you want at least some alternatives to EA to not share them) and some are features (i.e. you want all EA alternatives to share them). Only once we’ve sorted out which are which do we have grounds for making good suggestions for alternatives, and for knowing whether a given set of alternatives covers all of the bases.
This is a really nice breakdown of Extra Attack. I'm looking over this to see if some sort of epiphany jumps out at me, but sadly nothing is coming to me.

Hmm, I think part of it is that, particularly coming from the angle of single-shot weapons, I still want these characters to be taking the Attack action at least some of the time. This could mean that their usefulness in combat is derived from something other than an action, such as a bonus action. Or it might be something they set up first, then start crossbow plinking, e.g. a concentration effect. Or it might be some kind of always-on passive ability that doesn't require spending any kind of action. And I feel like it's kind of important that whatever we offer as an alternative has to be something that (a) doesn't appeal to a pure martial, but also (b) would appeal to a hybrid character doing a split between Extra Attack and this alternative.

There's actually something that would work really well, if I wasn't already using it. Namely, getting additional bonus actions. Something else I'm going to experiment with is giving additional bonus actions as a character levels up, but with the restriction that the same bonus action can't be taken more than once on the same turn. I already have plans built around this concept (namely, making options for bonus action plentiful, and a defining aspect of building a character), so I don't feel like I can just rip it away from martial characters and require giving up Extra Attack to get these additional bonus actions. And anyway, one of the fighter's class features will be that they can make one attack as a bonus action, sort of as an alternative to fighters getting more Extra Attacks than anyone else (though they can still take this bonus action even if they don't take the Attack action).

Hmm, I suppose one option might be a sort of "pick two of: Extra Attack, free spell points per casting, and additional bonus actions". The thing is it would just feel a bit weird to overload a character with all these things they can do as bonus actions, then have that character never choose to gain any additional bonus actions. Heck, I'd better be careful how I write the rules, or it might be possible to build a character who doesn't get bonus actions at all.

I was also planning on turning object interactions into bonus actions, one you could take more than once on a turn (an exception to the normal rule, mostly for things like weapon switching or TWF). So drawing your weapon is now a bonus action. Which isn't so bad when you have three bonus actions and you only need to draw your weapon once at the start of combat. But it feels a lot worse if you never expand your number of bonus actions.

[biolante1919]

I’m curious about what other changes you’ve made to affect the whole balance of everything. But with the information here i am understanding the question to be that if the extra attack feature is separated from any individual class than what should classes that don’t get extra attack have as an option instead.

I think about the place that extra attack serves in 5e. At 5th level is a big power boost for all of the classes that essentially doubles the damage output everybody has. So martial clesses get an extra attack, rogues sneak attack better, and casters get a second damage die on cantrips. The sinple answer then is to make those other things cost whatever resource extra attack would in leveling up. Even though that doesn’t answer your question i would recommend considering the benefits a class that doesn’t have extra attack might still be getting. How have you already handled those things?

With that all said, the consideration is still “what ability would make sense for a class that wouldn’t get an extra attack and still give a comparable benefit, if not a similar one” and there’s a few ways to go there. What is worth all the extra damage of an attack? Preventing or healing damage could be but 5e tries to make preventing and reacting to damage less efficient than just dealing damage faster. Empowering allies to deal more damage is good. Weakening enemies to do less damage is good.

That’s the mechanics of the different abilities but what actually would they be?

Shielding (mundanely or magically) allies from harm, redirecting enemy attacks, medicine or healing magic, inspiring allies, discoordinating enemies, pointing out weaknesses… hope this is helpful

[Greywander]

I’m curious about what other changes you’ve made to affect the whole balance of everything.
I didn't want the thread to get bogged down with a long-winded description of the overhaul, but it seems like the thread isn't really going anywhere. So I suppose I may as well do a big brain dump of most/all the ideas I'm planning to do. Bolding some words to improve readability.

The core of this overhaul is an idea I've mentioned several times before: stacking classes (1 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?612077-5-5e-idea-for-stacking-caster-classes-but-how-to-handle-different-types-of-casting), 2 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?624437-Difficulty-making-customizable-spellcasting-with-stacking-classes), 3 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?624980-Let-s-make-some-stacking-classes), 4 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?632498-Stacking-class-mod-for-5e-(brainstorming))). The idea has developed a lot since those threads, but the basic idea is that classes are compressed to just 4 levels and you stack multiple classes as you level up. This, by the way, is the major reason why both Extra Attack and spellcasting were removed as class features and turned into character features that everyone gets. I simply couldn't decide which classes would get Extra Attack, and how it would stack, and likewise for spellcasting. My plan was to convert existing full classes into two stacking classes, and subclasses into full stacking classes. For example, Novice Fighter, Master Fighter, and Battle Master would all be separate classes, and no class would require another class, though master classes wouldn't be available until higher levels. The concept of multiclassing would be replaced with repeating a tier, allowing you to get the features of an additional class at the cost of being held back a tier. When the players hit the max tier, they can just keep repeating that tier to get as many classes as they like until the campaign ends (remember, every campaign has finite XP because no campaign lasts forever).

Anyway, tiers are redefined into sets of 4 levels (meaning that going from 1 to 20 is five tiers, not four), so that a class fits exactly into a tier, and so that you get a proficiency bump each time you advance to a new tier. Each time you advance a tier, you also a hit die, as well as either an Extra Attack or an additional bonus action (with the caveat that you can't take the same bonus action more than once per turn). Free spell points per casting are also increased at the same time as Extra Attack. Overall, your tier will fill the same design space that your character level used to fill. Technically, newly created characters start in Novice Tier, which is tier 2 (where proficiency bonus = +2) and end in Legendary Tier, which is tier 6. Tier 1, which is Inept Tier, is generally not used, but exists in a theoretical capacity, and could be used for things like children or particularly incompetent adults. Monsters can go up to tier 9 (where proficiency bonus = +9, equivalent to CR 30), and technically the DM can allow players to go past tier 6, or cut them off earlier.

The full tier progression is Inept (+1), Novice (+2), Veteran (+3), Elite (+4), Heroic (+5), Legendary (+6), Mythic (+7), Fabled (+8), Forgotten (+9). Instead of giving monsters a CR, they can just be given a tier, which will automatically determine how many hit dice they get and what their proficiency bonus is. You can quickly build a monster or NPC like a PC, just set their tier and choose their classes. Unlike PCs who need to gradually acquire the features of their latest class, NPCs are typically assumed to have maxed out any classes assigned to them, so they just get all the features of those classes.

While we're on the subject, I was already planning on newly created characters to get one hit die from their class and one from their race, and 5e races tend to get on average four features, so I decided to just go ahead and make races into classes, too. This has some interesting consequences. You can now very easily created a mixed race character by simply picking up additional racial classes later on. You're still getting them like normal classes, so it shouldn't affect the balance at all. For races that are more powerful, especially monster races like dragons, I can split their abilities across several racial classes. This allows you to play as that type of monster while still being balanced, and also answers the question of why high level monsters don't also have class levels; because the race itself counts as class levels. When I write up the monster manual, I fully intend to do so in a way such that you can play as any monster, since each monster will just be their own monster race, possibly a race + class(es). E.g. goblin could be a race, and a stronger goblin might just be goblin + fighter.

For spellcasting, everything scales off of your tier/proficiency bonus and mental stats. E.g. your spells known are tier + INT mod, WIS actually allows concentration on more than one spell and is used for concentration checks, and CHA is used for spell attacks and save DC. Each class has their own spell list, which adds to your own personal list, which determines which spells you can choose to learn. Repeating a tier can add more spells to your spell list, but won't give you more spells known or anything. A spell doesn't need to be a "spell", but you can choose whether it is mundane, arcane, divine, or supernatural (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?647541-Magical-vs-Divine-vs-Supernatural-Differentiating-types-of-mystical-abilities). For example, wizardry, bardic music, or occult secrets would all be arcane. A dragon's breath weapon would be supernatural, but so would any kind of sorcery or psionics. I'm still figuring out how exactly these will be different.

Another thing is spell slot progression. All characters will have access to a generic progression, which will probably be spell points, but we'll see what I settle on. Some classes will give you access to alternative caster progressions, and you can allocate tiers to any progression track you have access to, splitting between them or going all in on one track. For example, a blood mage might be able to cast spells by spending HP instead of spell points. But you could take the blood mage class without needing to allocate anything towards the blood magic progression track. Another example is artificers will put their spells into items, which will have a limited charge. And again, you can do a split or go all in on one track.

Speaking of HP, you may have noticed I said you get a new hit die every time you advance a tier. So by the end you'll only have 6 hit dice. Seems pretty harsh, right? But you'll actually double up by having two HP pools, so it's more like you have 12 hit dice. The first pool, which I'm calling Valor, is explicitly not meat, and is very easy to heal. You're expected to enter every encounter with full Valor. Once Valor is depleted, further damage will come out of the second pool, Vigor, which is explicitly meat and is very hard to recover. You will need magic to heal Vigor in the short term, or you need to rest for much longer. Vigor also acts as a cap on your Valor, so losing Vigor also means you'll have less Valor. I should also mention that repeating a tier doesn't give you an additional hit die, but you can swap a smaller hit die with a larger one. You also roll the new hit die regardless, and if it's higher than any of your previous rolls, you can replace the old roll with the new one, gaining the difference in Vigor and Valor. So PCs who repeat a lot of tiers will see their Vigor skewing towards their hit die maximum, rather than average.

Rest system is also expanded. Rest lengths run from a breather (1 minute), break (1 hour), camp (8 hours), holiday (24 hours), to a vacation (1 week). You can spend hit dice on a breather to recover Valor, and get all your Valor and any hit dice spent on Valor back after a break. You can spend hit dice on Vigor on a camp or longer rest, and get all Vigor and hit dice back on a vacation, with some hit dice coming back on a holiday.

Another thing I'm going to be trying out is something I'm calling the Rule of Three. For example, advantage now comes in three flavors: slight, moderate, and great. Moderate advantage is the same as vanilla: roll two d20s and take the higher one. Great advantage is like Elven Accuracy: roll three d20s and take the highest one. Slight advantage is a bit more complex: roll two d20s and take the lower, then roll a third d20 and take the higher. The Rule of Three is more about how these can stack, though. If you have three or more sources of slight advantage, they create a source of moderate advantage. However, even if you have infinite sources of slight advantage, it will only ever create a single source of moderate advantage. If you have three or more sources of moderate advantage, it becomes great advantage. In addition to advantage and disadvantage, the Rule of Three also applies to resistance and vulnerability (which now also have slight, moderate, and great variants), and to a new concept I'm calling resilience and susceptibility, which is basically advantage or disadvantage against certain conditions, e.g. elves have resilience to charm, halflings to fear, dwarves to poison, etc.

Basically, the binary nature of things like advantage and resistance made it difficult to give bonuses to certain races or classes. They were a pretty big deal. This allows only a slight bonus to be handed out more freely without upsetting game balance too much. It also allows for limited stacking of these bonuses, though you're never required to count past three. This can allow e.g. a slight advantage from your race to still be meaningful once you've gotten a moderate advantage from a class or magic item, since you can stack the smaller bonuses to create bigger ones. With two more sources of slight advantage, plus another source of moderate advantage, you now have great advantage.

I've also decided to take the opportunity to create a more sensible spacing and size system. Distances are now given in yards (short meters for the imperially challenged), with a medium creature occupying a 2 yard space. Each step up in size is a √2 increase, meaning that every two steps up will double your size. As such, I had to add a size between medium and large, since normally going from medium to large doubles your size; I've called this new size "big". The smallest size is now minuscule, which occupies a ¼ yard (9 inch) square. The largest size right now is titanic, which occupies a 16 yard (48 foot) square. "Odd" sizes, e.g. small, big, huge, occupy a diamond instead of a square, which allows them to pack a little more closely together. Technically, a small creature occupies exactly half the space of a medium creature, but there's no way to arrange two small creatures so that they're both entirely inside a medium space. Well, not without cutting one of them into pieces at least. But you could fit five small creatures instead of four into 2x2 medium squares, with unoccupied space around the edges.

And yes, this is essentially an original system at this point. But I think it will still feel quite familiar to people who have played 5e.


hope this is helpful
Me too. I might have to reread this thread a few times and sleep on it, and maybe an epiphany will come to me. It's not an easy problem to solve, that's for sure.

And with that, I really should be heading to bed.

[rel]

So what are some things that aren't magic (as that's handled separately), and aren't martially oriented, but still help with combat effectiveness and make sense as a core character progression feature? What are abilities that would fit a scholar, doctor, or merchant character concept?

Scholar:
Knowing things really well.
You automatically know an enemies strengths, weaknesses and special moves. When an opponent pulls off a special attack, you know exactly what it is and what it will do.
This grants immunity to surprise and occasional advantage or disadvantage on rolls as you bring your book learning to bear in a practical way.

doctor:
You can use your knowledge of anatomy to deal crippling injuries and debuffs. You are immune to a raft of riders as you reflexively adminster curatives to yourself and can cure the party in a limited capacity.

Merchant:
You have a limited ability to pull the exact items the party needs from your cavernous backpack, representing an intuition for what will be valuable and a general propensity for carrying a large selection of equipment.

[biolante1919]

Ok, so people will be getting either/or a bunch of extra attacks or bonus actions, and your looking for other things worthwhile to add more variety.

I liked your thought of making increased spell points an option rather than automatic to create a little triangle of combat, magic, and utility.

It’s just hard to make something as strong as an extra attack. But i think all of the previous points still stand.

An advantage similar to what an attack would grant, so giving similar damage bonus to an ally, giving a comparable debuff to enemies, heal appropriate valor, block attacks on an ally, avoid attacks on yourself.

[Greywander]

I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner.

A big part of the problem is that many possible alternatives to Extra Attack are specific enough that they really should be features of specific classes, not a general feature available to everyone. However, look at what I'm doing with spell slots in my last post. Every character has access to a generic slot progression, and specific classes unlock access to alternative slot progressions. You can then choose how much of your progression you want to allocate towards any progression path you have unlocked, including splitting between several or going all in on one path.

Why couldn't I do the same for Extra Attack? Extra Attack would be the default progression, and some classes would unlock access to alternative progressions you could swap out your Extra Attacks for. Now I can actually use a lot of these more specific suggestions that wouldn't be suitable as generic features.

I could even balance it with the extra bonus actions and free spell points per casting. If you just use the generic progression, you can get all three (Extra Attack, additional bonus actions, and free spell points per casting), but once you unlock alternative progressions you'll have to choose how to allocate between them. This would then allow a more martial character to keep their Extra Attacks, instead giving up some bonus actions or free spell points to get alternative progressions. This means there's now a lot more room for customization.

I think this is the elegant solution I was looking for. Thanks everyone!

[olskool]

What I did for EA is give my Martial Classes the choice to either make one big attack and then roll a number of damage dice [plus any adds] equal to their number of attacks, OR allocate their EA to attack many opponents doing less damage per attack. So a fighter with 3 Attacks and doing 1D8+2 with their sword could launch a single attack doing 3D8+6. Alternately, they could attack two goblins doing 2D8+4 to one and 1D8+2 to the other one. Finally, that fighter could attack three Goblins for 1D8+2 each. The PLAYER decides what the breakdown will be.

[Amechra]

I dunno what makes a good alternative to Extra Attack in your game. Why? Because I don't know how good Extra Attack is in your game.

Extra Attack is really good in baseline 5e because the classes that get it are more-or-less expected to use the Attack action every single turn — it effectively doubles your character's effectiveness. Is that still the case in your game, where everyone gets access to "spells" that may give them other equally-as-good-or-maybe-even-better options in combat? If my character rarely uses the Attack action, should I be able to trade Extra Attack for something that's as good as Extra Attack is for a Fighter (i.e. very strong), or should I only be able to trade it for something that's as good as Extra Attack is for me (i.e. effectively a ribbon)?

...

In general, the games I've seen where you have non-combatant characters that can still contribute in combat do so by de-emphasizing combat in general and giving the game a very robust system for support actions. You don't care that your Adept in Dark Heresy personally sucks at fighting, because laying down suppressing fire is really solid and doesn't require any combat skills.