Making a miss more interesting.

[MadBear]

Been tinkering around with 5e, and I thought I'd get some input on an idea that I've been kicking around in my head.

One issue that everyone hates in D&D is that when you miss, nothing happens. The problem is that the system isn't designed super well to do much else. But I thought I have a potential way to make the game more interesting and fun with what I think might be a small tweak that I've stolen from FFG Star Wars.

The basic premise is that when you miss, you still don't get to do damage, but instead you can choose 1 other person who you can pass a d4 onto. This d4 can be used on their turn to either add to an attack roll, skill check, or saving throw on their next turn. It must be used on their turn, (so no gathering them over time). Basically represents, that while you missed the attack, you helped setup a team mate for success later. If multiple people miss, they can all stack their d4's onto a single friendly target who then can get to add multiple d4's to their next attack roll, skill check, or saving throw

Of course what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and enemies will get this feature as well.

I'd be super curious to hear thoughts? The goal was to:

1. Give you some small benefit that you get a choice over when you miss
2. Make the benefit meaningful but not broken
3. Narratively make the game more interesting ("You only think that I missed you, in actuality I put you exactly where I wanted" as an arrow slams into the enemy from your rogue)
4. Keep it simple. You miss, pick up a d4 hand it to someone, they can choose how to use it.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

What?

They tried putting in "miss" riders and people flipped their collective crap about them. Some people complained in 3e, some in 4e, and it blew up during the 5e play test.

Well, on the martial side, martials can't have nice things. Well, fighters if we we want to get even more specific, fighter's can't have nice things.

Most homebrew I see try to make hits more interesting, not misses, because hits are rather boring in 5e (unless spells count then a "success" can be quite dynamic). I don't see why misses should be more interesting/dynamic than hits.

[noob]

Been tinkering around with 5e, and I thought I'd get some input on an idea that I've been kicking around in my head.

One issue that everyone hates in D&D is that when you miss, nothing happens. The problem is that the system isn't designed super well to do much else. But I thought I have a potential way to make the game more interesting and fun with what I think might be a small tweak that I've stolen from FFG Star Wars.

The basic premise is that when you miss, you still don't get to do damage, but instead you can choose 1 other person who you can pass a d4 onto. This d4 can be used on their turn to either add to an attack roll, skill check, or saving throw on their next turn. It must be used on their turn, (so no gathering them over time). Basically represents, that while you missed the attack, you helped setup a team mate for success later. If multiple people miss, they can all stack their d4's onto a single friendly target who then can get to add multiple d4's to their next attack roll, skill check, or saving throw

Of course what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and enemies will get this feature as well.

I'd be super curious to hear thoughts? The goal was to:

1. Give you some small benefit that you get a choice over when you miss
2. Make the benefit meaningful but not broken
3. Narratively make the game more interesting ("You only think that I missed you, in actuality I put you exactly where I wanted" as an arrow slams into the enemy from your rogue)
4. Keep it simple. You miss, pick up a d4 hand it to someone, they can choose how to use it.

You give something as strong as guidance on a miss?
You basically made guidance pointless.
Heck a fighter missing a lot before doing a skill check will now rival a rogue in skill use because for some obscure reason you wanted something that stacked.

[Magikeeper]

It's an interesting idea.

As noob brought up, though, letting it add to skills and saves creates situations where players might actively want to miss even outside of combat.

Restricting it to just attack rolls keeps it focused on combat, although there will definitely be situations where the d4 is used to boost an attack against an entirely different foe nowhere near the first one so the teamwork explanation isn't going to hold. You could come up with a narrative justification for it, but it'd be a bit less mundane than what you're going for I think. Unless the PCs are just lucky because they're the PCs.

[Tvtyrant]

Been tinkering around with 5e, and I thought I'd get some input on an idea that I've been kicking around in my head.

One issue that everyone hates in D&D is that when you miss, nothing happens. The problem is that the system isn't designed super well to do much else. But I thought I have a potential way to make the game more interesting and fun with what I think might be a small tweak that I've stolen from FFG Star Wars.

The basic premise is that when you miss, you still don't get to do damage, but instead you can choose 1 other person who you can pass a d4 onto. This d4 can be used on their turn to either add to an attack roll, skill check, or saving throw on their next turn. It must be used on their turn, (so no gathering them over time). Basically represents, that while you missed the attack, you helped setup a team mate for success later. If multiple people miss, they can all stack their d4's onto a single friendly target who then can get to add multiple d4's to their next attack roll, skill check, or saving throw

Of course what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and enemies will get this feature as well.

I'd be super curious to hear thoughts? The goal was to:

1. Give you some small benefit that you get a choice over when you miss
2. Make the benefit meaningful but not broken
3. Narratively make the game more interesting ("You only think that I missed you, in actuality I put you exactly where I wanted" as an arrow slams into the enemy from your rogue)
4. Keep it simple. You miss, pick up a d4 hand it to someone, they can choose how to use it.

Back in 4E some players invented escalation rules for making combat less grindy without everyone just blowing their dailies. One of the solutions was to have every miss give you +1 to hit until the end of the encounter, stacking so each turn was more accurate and lethal.

[Eurus]

It's amazing to me that people get so opposed to the idea of miss riders when it seems obvious that spending a turn doing nothing, especially when you're in a slower combat where you might be waiting ten minutes between turns, is not very fun.

The d4 bonus sounds like it would work well at an IRL table. Easy to track by physically giving some a die. Personally, I would go a step farther and say that you also get to hand out a die if you can't otherwise act, because you're unconscious or something. That being said, I would also make it so that you only get a miss die if you miss all of your attacks during a turn, and you only get one.

Making it work for skill checks is a little odd, but if your combats involve a lot of skill checks I can see it. Making it work exclusively for attack rolls, or even making it work for either attack or damage rolls, is definitely simpler and it would still do the job.

Personally I'm not especially concerned about Guidance, because this is a combat rule and nobody spends a turn casting Guidance in combat.

[noob]

It's amazing to me that people get so opposed to the idea of miss riders when it seems obvious that spending a turn doing nothing, especially when you're in a slower combat where you might be waiting ten minutes between turns, is not very fun.

The d4 bonus sounds like it would work well at an IRL table. Easy to track by physically giving some a die. Personally, I would go a step farther and say that you also get to hand out a die if you can't otherwise act, because you're unconscious or something. That being said, I would also make it so that you only get a miss die if you miss all of your attacks during a turn, and you only get one.

Making it work for skill checks is a little odd, but if your combats involve a lot of skill checks I can see it. Making it work exclusively for attack rolls, or even making it work for either attack or damage rolls, is definitely simpler and it would still do the job.

Personally I'm not especially concerned about Guidance, because this is a combat rule and nobody spends a turn casting Guidance in combat.

The problem is that it replaces guidance out of combat.
Adding d4 to attacks and saves in exchange for misses is fine but not applying it to skills.
It allows extra weird things: get 100 extra bad at aiming commoners together then you can add like 100d4 to a skill check and open a door or something.(which is why I think it should not stack)

[Eurus]

The problem is that it replaces guidance out of combat.
Adding d4 to attacks and saves in exchange for misses is fine but not applying it to skills.
It allows extra weird things: get 100 extra bad at aiming commoners together then you can add like 100d4 to a skill check and open a door or something.(which is why I think it should not stack)

The obvious answer is to say "no, you can't pantomime-fight a commoner before picking a lock to get the bonus because that's silly and unbalancing, it's for real fights only".

Yeah, that requires DM adjudication... but if we're playing 5e, I hope we're all comfortable with that.

EDIT: To elaborate, the d4 rule is a suggestion for a houserule. It's not, like... a poorly edited RAW thing in a sourcebook that's fun to take to extreme conclusions or have designer-intent arguments about it. If you put it in your game, you know the intent, because it's your houserule and if there's some abusive corner case you can say "no". It seems misguided to try and find an edge case that can be abused and use that to say that the rule has no merit instead of trying to fix it.

[Razade]

You should look how Powered by the Apocalypse handles misses. Other than how you get XP (you earn XP for every miss you roll), all the moves and general mechanics have riders that make misses feed into the fiction.

[noob]

The obvious answer is to say "no, you can't pantomime-fight a commoner before picking a lock to get the bonus because that's silly and unbalancing, it's for real fights only".

Yeah, that requires DM adjudication... but if we're playing 5e, I hope we're all comfortable with that.

EDIT: To elaborate, the d4 rule is a suggestion for a houserule. It's not, like... a poorly edited RAW thing in a sourcebook that's fun to take to extreme conclusions or have designer-intent arguments about it. If you put it in your game, you know the intent, because it's your houserule and if there's some abusive corner case you can say "no". It seems misguided to try and find an edge case that can be abused and use that to say that the rule has no merit instead of trying to fix it.

I told a fix (make it not apply to skill checks and do not let it stack) and you did behave as if I did not suggest one.
As for the 100 commoner things if you are evil you could have them be in a real life and death situation against a big mindless monster with you threatening that if they do not give their boost you will let them all die to the monster and kill the survivors.
Stacking is a fundamentally non 5e thing and it should not be here: if you miss a lot then just provide the boosts to more allies instead of giving a megaboost to one ally.

Right now even without the 100 commoners situation it is odd a frail old wizard can bash in a door with brute force easily while the whole team together could do nothing as long as a monster just came here and that the fighter did miss 10 attacks at the monster thanks to action surge and two weapon fighting.
Is it supposed to be "oh my friend missed a whole lot of attacks so now it is time to spontaneously grow 50 tons of muscle for no reason and bash in the door"?
Direct combat benefits makes sense however: I can see how the whole team wailing on a monster makes it way easier to hit the monster or how saves are easier while the monster is focused on dodging.

[Ilerien]

Star Wars FFG (well, Genesys is what the engine itself is called) play it completely different. D20 engine whatever its edition is explicitly one-dimensional. Dice rolls in Genesys have two-dimensional results: the success/failure dimension which determines if you achieved the desired outcome and the advantage/threat dimension which determines how beneficial were secondary circumstances surrounding your attempt (which should be generally used as a narrative tool, but have explicit effects sometimes, mostly in combat). You're (approximately) as likely to trigger some harmful secondary effect as some beneficial one with your miss or your hit.
What you're suggesting is always triggering a beneficial effect when a character misses in combat, and it just feels wrong in my opinion.