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30.5 Days
Nov 19, 2006
I guess but if you want a 5E martial archetype that is nothing like other martial archetypes and has a totallly different progression from all archetypes from the same class (w/r/t Xelkelvos' suggestion) then I don't know, I guess things cross over pretty quickly into "why are we playing this again?" territory. I guess if you're stuck in a game of 5E you'd be glad to have it but if the entire concept of 5th edition martial progression is fun-allergic I guess I gotta just shrug.

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30.5 Days
Nov 19, 2006

Generic Octopus posted:

The hazard of loading the front end of a class with good stuff is multiclass shenanigans, is my guess for why so many good things are 5/6/7 or more levels deep in the classes.

Multiclassing is back! And we made the game less fun to support it, wow!

goatface
Dec 5, 2007

I had a video of that when I was about 6.

I remember it being shit.


Grimey Drawer
There are a bunch of things in the martial classes that I don't think should be the either-or choices currently there. The Totem Barbarian is the one I think I've mentioned in the thread before, just give them the loving lot of it.

Infinite Karma
Oct 23, 2004
Good as dead





AlphaDog posted:

Leave the grappling rules where they are.

Then make an exception for monks and fighters. They can grapple someone with a normal attack roll as a bonus action because they are highly trained and specialised melee combatants.

Grappled opponents are automatically immobilised. (for anyone, same rules as now for escaping)

Fighters and monks, on the other hand, can do the following (while still wielding a single handed weapon and making the rest of their attacks as usual):

When the opponent is initially Grappled, the grappler chooses to immobilise them as normal, or take them down (knock them prone, and they are no longer grappled).

Once per round, the grappling fighter or monk may use a regular attack in order to apply one of the following:

Takedown: (as above)
Improved position: Target remains grappled, makes a Str save (DC rules go here) or gets Disadvantage on saves while grappled.
Joint lock: Target remains grappled, makes a Con save (DC rules go here) or gets Disadvantage on attack rolls until the end of the fight.
Choke: Target remains grappled and makes a Con save (DC rules go here) or is rendered unconscious.

Yes, this does mean that a fighter with 3 attacks could hit a dude with his sword, grapple his opponent, improve his position, and choke the opponent out in the same round if he succeeds each check.
It's not a terrible idea, but there are a few problems I see:

1. Further complicating grapples with a extra conditions divorced from the sort-of keyword mechanics that already exist (the spell mechanics) makes it that much harder to remember the grapple rules, which are already unwieldy. Keep it simple - you say I'm grappling to inflict blindness. You make your attack roll, and if successful, blindness effect happens immediately, without having to make any more notes about the grapple. And you're already trading your action for something other than damage, don't put too many hoops in the way to get that alternate effect, which is supposed to be balanced against damage already (when a Wizard does it).

2. Those options make sense from the standpoint of a human wrestling with another human. A lot of enemies you fight aren't humanoid - a chokehold on a tree creature or a joint crack on a giant snake is overly specific. And if you're grappling with a 30-foot anaconda, you probably aren't holding it down and dominating it like you would a skinny elf. If you just want to brutalize someone with your martial prowess, attack him for damage. If the enemy is dangerous enough that you want to use status effects, then give some genuine and diverse status effects.

3. Obviously knocking an enemy unconscious is the objectively most powerful choice, so who's ever going to do anything else? Using spells as a template gives you the option of (A) linking the concentration mechanic to it, so a more decisive effect like paralysis can be ended, and allies can pitch in to end it early, and (B) having built-in level gating without reinventing the wheel.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

30.5 Days posted:

I guess but if you want a 5E martial archetype that is nothing like other martial archetypes and has a totallly different progression from all archetypes from the same class (w/r/t Xelkelvos' suggestion) then I don't know, I guess things cross over pretty quickly into "why are we playing this again?" territory. I guess if you're stuck in a game of 5E you'd be glad to have it but if the entire concept of 5th edition martial progression is fun-allergic I guess I gotta just shrug.

Well, it's a relatively simple system that's easy to teach newbies, and being D&D, more people are willing to give it a shot. I don't think it requires that much houseruling to make fun, it's already a lot closer to decent balance and fun for martial classes than 3.x was, by my estimation.

Adjusting ability progression for the various martial classes, and forcing them to make less either/or choices, isn't a huge change, and would make everyone have more fun.

Ryuujin
Sep 26, 2007
Dragon God
So what do people think of giving Fighters a new "Archetype" that basically grants them the features the Fighter had in the 12/17/12 playtest packet?

Martial Damage Dice that start at 1d6, well at 3rd level it would be 2d6, and goes up at 5th, 7th, 9th and 11th level. Maxing out at 6d6 dice per turn, not round but turn. Giving them Combat Expertise, "Fighting Style, Maneuver and the Parry Maneuver, and another Maneuver all at 3rd level, with another Maneuver at 4th, 8th, and 10. And a 1/day Combat Surge at 11th level, 14th level, 17th level and 20th level.

Combat Expertise lets you add Martial Damage Dice to an attack, if you have any to spare after using them for a Maneuvers on that turn. Maybe include Martial Damage Bonus but with the extra attacks Fighters get now that might be too much, even though it is a once per turn on a hit thing instead of every hit.

A Fighting Style, not to be confused with the current Fighting Styles, is a list of maneuvers taken at certain levels. These also had background, specialty (which no longer exists) and equipment. Other than the Maneuvers these would be ignored, and one could probably just pick and match maneuvers without picking a specific style anyway, like you could in the playtest.

The Parry Maneuver allows you, when you are hit by a melee attack and wielding a melee weapon or shield, use a reaction to spend martial damage dice to reduce the attack's damage against you. Rolling all dice spent and adding them together to indicate how much the damage is reduced, and if the damage drops to 0 the hit becomes a miss.

This version of Combat Surge is a 1/day, eventually 4/day, take a second action like the current thing Fighters have at 2nd level. But it is per day instead of short rest, and any martial damage die rolled during the second action has its result doubled.

It seems like it would make the fighter more interesting, especially since it would allow a bunch of maneuvers all the time instead of like one or two per short rest, if you are lucky. The Parry would also make this Fighter archetype very tanky.

Ryuujin fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Feb 18, 2015

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

PurpleXVI posted:

Well, it's a relatively simple system that's easy to teach newbies, and being D&D, more people are willing to give it a shot. I don't think it requires that much houseruling to make fun, it's already a lot closer to decent balance and fun for martial classes than 3.x was, by my estimation.

Is it closer than the Tome of Battle got?

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Infinite Karma posted:

It's not a terrible idea, but there are a few problems I see:

1. Further complicating grapples with a extra conditions divorced from the sort-of keyword mechanics that already exist (the spell mechanics) makes it that much harder to remember the grapple rules, which are already unwieldy. Keep it simple - you say I'm grappling to inflict blindness. You make your attack roll, and if successful, blindness effect happens immediately, without having to make any more notes about the grapple. And you're already trading your action for something other than damage, don't put too many hoops in the way to get that alternate effect, which is supposed to be balanced against damage already (when a Wizard does it).

2. Those options make sense from the standpoint of a human wrestling with another human. A lot of enemies you fight aren't humanoid - a chokehold on a tree creature or a joint crack on a giant snake is overly specific. And if you're grappling with a 30-foot anaconda, you probably aren't holding it down and dominating it like you would a skinny elf. If you just want to brutalize someone with your martial prowess, attack him for damage. If the enemy is dangerous enough that you want to use status effects, then give some genuine and diverse status effects.

3. Obviously knocking an enemy unconscious is the objectively most powerful choice, so who's ever going to do anything else? Using spells as a template gives you the option of (A) linking the concentration mechanic to it, so a more decisive effect like paralysis can be ended, and allies can pitch in to end it early, and (B) having built-in level gating without reinventing the wheel.

Yeah, good points all. I just pulled that out of my rear end based on a 5 second think about "what might grappling do".

You're right that inflicting conditions would be the better way to do it, and you're also right about not divorcing grapples too far from the combat system.

I do think that "a dude is wrestling" is the wrong way to look at it though, there's a shitload of grapples, trips, and throws in most western sword fighting styles. In a fantasy world that contains maurauding ogres and stuff, I can't imagine that fight training doesn't include stuff like "what to do when your opponent is 10 feet tall".

mastershakeman
Oct 28, 2008

by vyelkin
I still think the problem with grappling turns into 'what if the gnoll/minotaur/whatever grapples you instead.' You're not going to win many strength contests vs the traditional melee opponents of d&d, because every one of them relies on absurdly high strength. So unless you just say well, monsters don't know how to tackle you (yet they somehow know how to swing weapons?) I'm not sure how you get around screwing the party over.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Ryuujin posted:

So what do people think of giving Fighters a new "Archetype" that basically grants them the features the Fighter had in the 12/17/12 playtest packet?

By this description it sounds like a great fix for some of the complaints I'm reading about the Champion(they only get to do one thing), by giving them some of the Battle Master's tricks. Hell, I think all Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, Rogues and Monks should have something analogous to maneuvers, with their archetype deciding their additional abilities, maybe some special maneuvers for their archetype only, and what sort of dice/how many dice they got to toss around.

goatface
Dec 5, 2007

I had a video of that when I was about 6.

I remember it being shit.


Grimey Drawer
Scrap grappling altogether. Turn it all into martial manoeuvres.

Combine fighter/rogue/monk into "warrior" aspects and be done with it.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

goatface posted:

Scrap grappling altogether. Turn it all into martial manoeuvres.

Combine fighter/rogue/monk into "warrior" aspects and be done with it.

Whether you're joking or not, this is basically what I'd have done. Except I'd have scrapped fighter, monk, barbarian, paladin and ranger, and made them differentiate themselves with feat/archetype choices, done the same for sorcerer/wizard/warlock, druid/cleric and rogue/bard. But, yeah, that's getting into "what I want for 6th edition"-territory, not houserules.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



mastershakeman posted:

I still think the problem with grappling turns into 'what if the gnoll/minotaur/whatever grapples you instead.' You're not going to win many strength contests vs the traditional melee opponents of d&d, because every one of them relies on absurdly high strength. So unless you just say well, monsters don't know how to tackle you (yet they somehow know how to swing weapons?) I'm not sure how you get around screwing the party over.

I agree that this is absolutely a problem in D&D and will continue to be a problem as long as grappling is treated as a strength contest. In the real world skill tends to be more important than raw strength for hand-to-hand fighting, and this is at least somewhat reflected in the rest of the D&D combat system.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
For anyone interested in the Sword Coast Legends game some questions from the community have been answered https://forums.swordcoast.com/index.php?/topic/166-community-update-1/

Infinite Karma
Oct 23, 2004
Good as dead





mastershakeman posted:

I still think the problem with grappling turns into 'what if the gnoll/minotaur/whatever grapples you instead.' You're not going to win many strength contests vs the traditional melee opponents of d&d, because every one of them relies on absurdly high strength. So unless you just say well, monsters don't know how to tackle you (yet they somehow know how to swing weapons?) I'm not sure how you get around screwing the party over.
If grappling is mainly status effects without it being very debilitating on its own, then it's more of a teamwork enhancer than an "I win" button. If a gnoll/minotaur is supposed to be a monstrous beast that would easily overpower a party member, then the monster probably isn't going to bother holding you down before tearing your arms off, he's just going to tear your arms off. If he does try to hold you down first, you're probably coming out on top, because he is probably using worse tactics than just beating the crap out of you.

On top of that, the scary monster probably isn't going to outnumber the party, unless the party is powerful enough that an individual gnoll isn't actually that scary. Getting you in a "hold person" lock so his friends can stab you twice as hard isn't very useful if he doesn't have any friends to do that with. And gouging the eyes of one PC isn't that helpful when a few more are still wailing on him.

FRINGE
May 23, 2003
title stolen for lf posting

AlphaDog posted:

In the real world skill tends to be more important than raw strength for hand-to-hand fighting
Youre right but saying that here brings out the trolls screeching noooOOOoooooo versssssSSSSSSsssssssimilituuuuude while licking their moldy lips.

So yeah.

Kurieg posted:

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Traditional Games > D&D NEXT: Subsidies for lizard dick farmers

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Ryuujin posted:

So what do people think of giving Fighters a new "Archetype" that basically grants them the features the Fighter had in the 12/17/12 playtest packet?

You could probably get away with a lot of cribbing powers from 4E, even for other classes, as long as you could come up with a way to "gate" them with Superiority Dice/spell slot equivalents (and your table is cool with that much houseruling).

30.5 Days
Nov 19, 2006

mastershakeman posted:

I still think the problem with grappling turns into 'what if the gnoll/minotaur/whatever grapples you instead.' You're not going to win many strength contests vs the traditional melee opponents of d&d, because every one of them relies on absurdly high strength. So unless you just say well, monsters don't know how to tackle you (yet they somehow know how to swing weapons?) I'm not sure how you get around screwing the party over.

I mean if he grapples the wizard I guess they need help. If he grapples the Theoretical Grapple Monk who has an extra proficiency add to grappling, you know, he's got like +7 to escape at level 3 versus the Minotaur's +4. Since he can initiate a grapple on a hit, the grapple can't just fail because of the minotaur's strength either. With the grappler feat, he'd then get advantage to apply his effects and the Minotaur would have to actually spend an action and roll to escape even though he's large-sized. It doesn't look like you get a flat bonus from size differences either, just that you can't grapple something 2 sizes larger and if you grapple something 2 sizes smaller you don't have the speed reduction.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

30.5 Days posted:

It doesn't look like you get a flat bonus from size differences either, just that you can't grapple something 2 sizes larger and if you grapple something 2 sizes smaller you get advantage.

Generally anything huge also has high strength, so adding ANOTHER bonus from size difference just seems like extra math.

30.5 Days
Nov 19, 2006

PurpleXVI posted:

Generally anything huge also has high strength, so adding ANOTHER bonus from size difference just seems like extra math.

Sure but the minotaur's bonus tops out at +4. Someone who's getting double proficiency to grapple or even just proficiency if they've got acrobatics or athletics is gonna be A-OK.

Dick Burglar
Mar 6, 2006

MonsterEnvy posted:

For anyone interested in the Sword Coast Legends game some questions from the community have been answered https://forums.swordcoast.com/index.php?/topic/166-community-update-1/

"Will there be Romances in the game?"

Sadly the answer is not "romances in video games are a plague and should be excised from the planet. gently caress off, creeps."

AlphaDog posted:

I agree that this is absolutely a problem in D&D and will continue to be a problem as long as grappling is treated as a strength contest. In the real world skill tends to be more important than raw strength for hand-to-hand fighting, and this is at least somewhat reflected in the rest of the D&D combat system.

In real life, longbowmen also objectively need more strength than swordsmen because nobody with a -1 strength modifier is drawing a bow with a poundage approaching or exceeding 100lbs. "Dexterity" be damned, real war bow users were loving ripped.

Dick Burglar fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Feb 18, 2015

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

AlphaDog posted:

I agree that this is absolutely a problem in D&D and will continue to be a problem as long as grappling is treated as a strength contest. In the real world skill tends to be more important than raw strength for hand-to-hand fighting, and this is at least somewhat reflected in the rest of the D&D combat system.

I think grappling being based on strength is a reasonable abstraction insofar as raw strength isn't a measure of how well you can hit with a sword either, but I don't really like how it's an opposed roll rather than a straight check against a DC. I admittedly haven't done the math, but it certainly feels more random to do it that way, on top of putting the DM in a situation where he has to assign a strength value to a monster.

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!
The problem with grappling is that it's consistently seen as a "general tactic anyone can use" rather then a specialized form of fighting. Then it inevitably falls into the same pit most other generalized tactics do - because "anyone can do it" it's made weak, but because it's meant to be something you specialize in, it's also made overly complicated (and still weak).

In fact, the same could be said for how combat in general works in D&D. Melee combat is always vague and inconsistent, spells are always precise and exact. ANYONE can grapple, but not anyone can fireball.

In other words, I agree that a simple and vanilla and not entirely useful "grab" technique is fine, but going into more then that should be something based on class. Like the 4e Grapple Fighter, or the ToME grapplin' Brawler (who incidentally gets some hilarious awesome stuff, be it slamming an enemy so hard into the ground that it cracks the earth and makes a shockwave, hurling baddies at each other, or just the fact that when you have someone grabbed, they take a portion of the damage meant for you as you swing them around to take hits for you on top of silencing them. gently caress WIZARDS!)

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



gradenko_2000 posted:

I think grappling being based on strength is a reasonable abstraction insofar as raw strength isn't a measure of how well you can hit with a sword either, but I don't really like how it's an opposed roll rather than a straight check against a DC. I admittedly haven't done the math, but it certainly feels more random to do it that way, on top of putting the DM in a situation where he has to assign a strength value to a monster.

Maybe an straight vs-DC roll with advantage if you're trained would be better?

e: gently caress it, there's really no way to "train grappling" under the current ruleset, is there? I mean, there's the feat, but...

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
If it were up to me I would probably just put it down to a straight ability check to grapple someone, yes.

I do like the idea of grapple being stronger but not available to everyone - there's been more than few similar cases where the designers didn't really seem to think about who and how abilities should be accessed: Charge is a feat, Sentinel is a feat, Marking is a variant rule but is then available to everyone if you implement it, and so on.

Something like grapple gets the additional feat features for free, but only a martial class, or perhaps someone that's proficient in Athletics can even attempt to grapple someone.

Toph Bei Fong
Feb 29, 2008



AlphaDog posted:

Yeah, good points all. I just pulled that out of my rear end based on a 5 second think about "what might grappling do".

You're right that inflicting conditions would be the better way to do it, and you're also right about not divorcing grapples too far from the combat system.

I do think that "a dude is wrestling" is the wrong way to look at it though, there's a shitload of grapples, trips, and throws in most western sword fighting styles. In a fantasy world that contains maurauding ogres and stuff, I can't imagine that fight training doesn't include stuff like "what to do when your opponent is 10 feet tall".

Here's a couple SCA fencers demonstrating the kinda things you can do with a longsword:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bdMfaymGlk

They're deliberately going slow so as not to hurt one another, but you get the idea. One can easily extrapolate this to tripping up the unarmored ankles of an ogre, sliding a blade between the scales of a dragon, tossing an orc as it charges, etc.The idea that it's all hack and slash really ought to be stricken from games. There's so much research into historical sword fighting that "weeaboo fightin' magic" doesn't really hold water, let alone that it should open you up to attacks of opportunity to even try, as in 3.P.

For the curious, here's a collection of sword fighting manuals from throughout history: http://www.thearma.org/manuals.htm

Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Feb 18, 2015

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Toph Bei Fong posted:

Here's a couple SCA fencers demonstrating the kinda things you can do with a longsword

Neat video.

e: Sperg removed. I've trained in a couple of sword sports in the past, and am currently training in a grappling one. As I've said before, I'd rather combat rules (including grappling) moved toward more abstract, with character skill considered, than more simulationist, especially because the simluationist stuff always seems to be written by people with no idea what "realistic" looks like.

e2: My stab at grappling rules earlier fell into the "simulationist" category. It's been pointed out that there were glaring problems with what I wrote, which there were. I'm going to think harder about it.

Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Feb 18, 2015

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Streamlined Grappling Rules

Upon a successful attack, grappler and target argue over the rules for 1d8 minutes.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
Hey, if it removes him from combat :v:

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

Toph Bei Fong posted:

Here's a couple SCA fencers demonstrating the kinda things you can do with a longsword:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bdMfaymGlk

They're deliberately going slow so as not to hurt one another, but you get the idea. One can easily extrapolate this to tripping up the unarmored ankles of an ogre, sliding a blade between the scales of a dragon, tossing an orc as it charges, etc.The idea that it's all hack and slash really ought to be stricken from games. There's so much research into historical sword fighting that "weeaboo fightin' magic" doesn't really hold water, let alone that it should open you up to attacks of opportunity to even try, as in 3.P.

For the curious, here's a collection of sword fighting manuals from throughout history: http://www.thearma.org/manuals.htm

It's the basic problem that I've started to think really lies at the bottom of everything that plagues non-casters - the idea that combat has to be kept vague and hacky-slashy. D&D combat in the way HP works was born from naval wargames where all you'd do is broadside and volley, and it never really escaped the idea that combat is just moving up to a baddie and then engaging in a minor war of attrition. There's no technique or finesse to it, and mastery of a weapon ends up translating into nothing more then +1 damage. The only time something interesting was done with mastery was in BECMI...like, thirty years ago.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

ProfessorCirno posted:

In other words, I agree that a simple and vanilla and not entirely useful "grab" technique is fine, but going into more then that should be something based on class. Like the 4e Grapple Fighter, or the ToME grapplin' Brawler (who incidentally gets some hilarious awesome stuff, be it slamming an enemy so hard into the ground that it cracks the earth and makes a shockwave, hurling baddies at each other, or just the fact that when you have someone grabbed, they take a portion of the damage meant for you as you swing them around to take hits for you on top of silencing them. gently caress WIZARDS!)

The problem with locking grappling to an archetype(I think that'd be most appropriate for 5e), is that fighters, barbarians and monks all seem like reasonable options for having the archetype, and the same for shapeshifting druids(I mean, poo poo, turn into a giant octopus and fling some dudes around, hell yeah! Quad-grapple mode, activate!), which is why a feat tree would seem more appropriate to me. One basic feat to unlock "grapple mode," which gives some resistance to not being grappled yourself, access to the basic grapple attack and a couple of starter "modes"(leglock, use an enemy as a shield, etc. something like that), plus giving you more grapple options as you level up. On top of that, have a few feats with other prereqs, perhaps one that requires you to have some arcane talent, maybe one that requires you have access to wildshaping, etc. that each give access to more specialized grapple things. Maybe if you have magical talent, you learn how to cast spells or cantrips with one free hand while choking out a dude with the other, or someone you've got grappled is auto-hit by any touch-attack spells you use on them.

It'd also avoid the issue that grappling isn't always an option(though with creativity it often would be), and having an entire archetype based around it could screw you a bit sometimes. It'd let the grappler fall back on more generic fighter/barbarian/whatever options if the party's up against a fire elemental or something else where giving it a hug without the appropriate protections would basically be retiring your character.

EDIT: Also since there seems to be some general agreement that martial classes need more combat options to have fun with, that further boosts the idea of giving them class-agnostic feats rather than gating a new selection of options behind a new class/archetype. It saves you having to rework every single class and archetype to give each of them more options if you simply provide a bunch of reasonably balanced feats that do the same thing, and then give any martial class/archetype you judge as option-poor access to a couple more feats early on.

PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Feb 18, 2015

ascendance
Feb 19, 2013
The OSR grappling system my friends use involves rolling hit dice in opposed checks. If multiple creatures grapple one target, each creature gets to roll and add their hit dice. It does privilege a horde of guys over one man, but since this is OSR sweep rules give high level characters a big advantage in melee too.

Elendil004
Mar 22, 2003

The prognosis
is not good.


Hey remember when the other 5e thread was created to stop things from getting shitted up? Those were the days.

Infinite Karma
Oct 23, 2004
Good as dead





PurpleXVI posted:

It'd also avoid the issue that grappling isn't always an option(though with creativity it often would be), and having an entire archetype based around it could screw you a bit sometimes. It'd let the grappler fall back on more generic fighter/barbarian/whatever options if the party's up against a fire elemental or something else where giving it a hug without the appropriate protections would basically be retiring your character.

EDIT: Also since there seems to be some general agreement that martial classes need more combat options to have fun with, that further boosts the idea of giving them class-agnostic feats rather than gating a new selection of options behind a new class/archetype. It saves you having to rework every single class and archetype to give each of them more options if you simply provide a bunch of reasonably balanced feats that do the same thing, and then give any martial class/archetype you judge as option-poor access to a couple more feats early on.
Feat proliferation doesn't seem like a good answer. There are not a lot of feat picks to go around, and they are in place of essential ability score improvements. Casters don't need to spend extra feats to learn new magic tricks.

Thinking of grappling as general "dirty fighting" with eye gouges, sand in the face, kicking up dust clouds, debilitating strikes, etc., really opens up the space for all characters. And to be fair, casters are pretty boring if they are stuck using cantrips to attack. A scrappy wizard might take advantage of an unready enemy, too.

Laphroaig
Feb 6, 2004

Drinking Smoke
Dinosaur Gum

Elendil004 posted:

Hey remember when the other 5e thread was created to stop things from getting shitted up? Those were the days.

Its cool the Newbie Advice thread has a wonderful mix of terrible game advice mixed in with sincere attempts to improve D&D Next.

"I think D&D Next would be better if you used previous playtest versions of classes" or "I think D&D Next would be better if you ported in the entire Tome of Battle" is useful advice to a veteran but if someone is new to D&D its completely useless to them, because it presupposes an understanding of the issues you are trying to fix, how the rules interact with those issues, and the impact of changing or adding mechanics on those issues.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Infinite Karma posted:

Feat proliferation doesn't seem like a good answer. There are not a lot of feat picks to go around, and they are in place of essential ability score improvements. Casters don't need to spend extra feats to learn new magic tricks.

Thinking of grappling as general "dirty fighting" with eye gouges, sand in the face, kicking up dust clouds, debilitating strikes, etc., really opens up the space for all characters. And to be fair, casters are pretty boring if they are stuck using cantrips to attack. A scrappy wizard might take advantage of an unready enemy, too.

It might not seem like a good answer, but it definitely seems like a better answer than "let's rework all the martial classes from the ground up," and more easily accomplished, since it's extra content as opposed to keeping track of changed content.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
I was thinking about the variant rule in the DMG for replacing the proficiency bonus with proficiency dice: roll a d4 instead of adding +2 to your roll, roll a d6 instead of a +3, a d8 instead of a +4, a d10 instead of a +5 and a d12 instead of a +6.

And then since I just came from the D&D Retroclone thread, I was wondering if you could leverage the Deed Die mechanic from Dungeon Crawl Classics: if you roll to attack, and your proficiency die comes up on a certain value, say, 4 or higher, you get to perform a "combat maneuver". Or perhaps the free use of a class feature/ability. Or something.

Laphroaig
Feb 6, 2004

Drinking Smoke
Dinosaur Gum

gradenko_2000 posted:

I was thinking about the variant rule in the DMG for replacing the proficiency bonus with proficiency dice: roll a d4 instead of adding +2 to your roll, roll a d6 instead of a +3, a d8 instead of a +4, a d10 instead of a +5 and a d12 instead of a +6.

And then since I just came from the D&D Retroclone thread, I was wondering if you could leverage the Deed Die mechanic from Dungeon Crawl Classics: if you roll to attack, and your proficiency die comes up on a certain value, say, 4 or higher, you get to perform a "combat maneuver". Or perhaps the free use of a class feature/ability. Or something.

This would increase variance and also slow down the game; its a bad idea to then further attach another system on top of it. Just make an ability, say, a combat maneuver, that you declare after you hit, usable a number of times.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

gradenko_2000 posted:

And then since I just came from the D&D Retroclone thread, I was wondering if you could leverage the Deed Die mechanic from Dungeon Crawl Classics: if you roll to attack, and your proficiency die comes up on a certain value, say, 4 or higher, you get to perform a "combat maneuver". Or perhaps the free use of a class feature/ability. Or something.

Yeah, there's two problems here, firstly: More rolling and dice, the less you have of this, the better. Secondly, the fact that someone declares an action and then, after declaring and taking the action, suddenly it turns into another action, which can easily get kind of narratively kludgy.

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Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.

PurpleXVI posted:

Yeah, there's two problems here, firstly: More rolling and dice, the less you have of this, the better. Secondly, the fact that someone declares an action and then, after declaring and taking the action, suddenly it turns into another action, which can easily get kind of narratively kludgy.

There's a very simple solution to problem number two: the Fighter's player narrates "I attack the goblin..." then rolls, sees that it's a hit and their proficiency die hit the magic number, and then continues the narration with "...by totally smashing my shield into that goblin's face as it stumbles backwards (checks proficiency dice) 5 feet! You said something about there being a chasm behind it?" as the goblin falls into the chasm and everyone high-fives the Fighter's player.

I think the rolling extra dice bit isn't all that awkward: it gives the Fighter a unique mechanical thing to do at the low cost of rolling an extra die, and you can even use the proficiency die in interesting ways. For an example, if you were making a called shot you could use the value of the proficiency die to determine hit location or something, for a push maneuver you could use the result to determine how many feet the opponent is pushed, and so on.

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