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Love it when the villains get the best lines haha, but you know what, there's some great lines all around in those movies: "a dishonest man, you can always trust to be dishonest..." lol
I repeat this Same Quote at our sessions ... Only because this is the TRUE Intention of D&D. Yes - some rules Do help .... but others Just Get In The Way of the REAL FUN & EXCITEMENT that awaits you at the Game Table!! NO MORE INITIATIVE - NO MORE SPELL SLOTS - NO MORE MOVEMENT CALCULATIONS... These are just absolute Thrill Killers and completely Unnecessary.
@@-WolfMan- what do you do without spell slots? Does everyone just spam their highest level spells, or do you use a different mechanic to manage that resource?
I think you play a lot less tactical-war gamey games, since the crunchiness of managing speed and battle positions is half the fun in my encounters. Speaks to how the same thing that is fun for one group is tedious for another.
I struggle to keep the relative position of all creatures in an encounter in my head without some sort of map in a game written like D&D. I can keep narrative track of them games with combat that's more narrative-space, but with modern D&D and similar games (e.g. Pathfinder) I kind of need the map to keep things straight in my head. ...I don't need a good map - a sketch of one on blank paper is fine - and I don't play games where I need a map to keep track of things that often (Most games I play and run don't even have near/medium/far abstract ranges like the example Bob showed) - but running D&D combat how Bob describes I would be the player (or, worse, GM) who needed to ask where everyone is relative to each other again often enough to be annoying.
There's a balance to be struck in TTRPGs. I'm an OSR guy, so the war gaming roots of D&D are pretty important to me, but I do try to avoid turning D&D into a battle simulator generally speaking. Here's where I make the distinction--in a war game, we are manipulating units, vehicles, etc. That's when you're pulling out the tape measures, taking in distance to target, managing obstacles to achieve battlefield objectives. In D&D, we are focused on dramatic individual characters who are probably trying to loot a dungeon. In my personal opinion, the perfect D&D movie is probably 13th warrior or the Clive Owen King Arthur movie. Where the combat is gritty and believable. To capture that, you need more common sense rather than crunch.
Might just be me, but I would never think of dropping movement speed from my games. It makes my players (and me) think a little bit about how to position themselves, and having those constraints makes it more cool and special when awesome things happen, rather than trying to force them.
I don't think it's a bad thing to take away or keep. I definitely understand your reasoning, however I think what he meant was to speed the game up by making it so that the players aren't 'nitpicking' distances, he's trying to make it flow more easily. For example. "You want to attack the goblin?, Well he's just out of your range, you can run about 2/3 of the way, or just take out your bow and shoot". Rather than going "Okay you're. . . . . . . . . . 45 feet away, you could dash but then you'd lose 15 ft and your attack, but if you take out your bow he's still within . . . . . *Counts again* 45 ft and thus within your bows ran. . .. what's short bow again?. . . . . . . . 80! Got it, so what do you want to do?" Especially with some of my players, the amount of options paralyze them easily, I just played with one in another game last night and she stopped the game for a smoke break so she could think of her options (it was about time for one anyway), and then afterwards still asked what we thought her character should do (no one else was anywhere near her). That's why the cheat sheets exist in the first place. But again it is your game and you are able to keep it however you want, hell you can make each square 6.576 meters if you really wanted to.
Movement speed is another resource and another thing players can play around with, you know that tabaxi build with insane speed, I couldn't take that away from my players
yeah, i've run characters (namely certain ranger or rogue builds) whose strengths rely on moving around the battlefield, hitting and running while avoiding attacks of opportunity and maneuvering for flanking and hiding for sneak shots. If I'm running a group that has characters like that, I'd have to keep some form of movement mechanics, albeit simplified. One thing I've done before is have a simple pass/fail d20 roll (1-10 fail, 11-20 pass) for moving up to 10' farther than their move speed, avoiding a movement based attack of opportunity, and being able to do certain full actions that I think should probably be minor actions or free actions without sacrificing their attack for that round. Basically if they want to do it, I have them attempt and then roll the d20, if they fail then they only move their base move instead of the extra, or they do provoke the opportunity attack, or they are unable to do the extra action in time. Also, I like to keep the enemy's move and positioning fairly simple, they bunch up or become a throng/swarm, with only a few ranged enemies breaking off from the group.
Our main house rules: - Inspiration decided by the party at the end of each session. Next time that player can turn any roll into a success - Exhaustion is just -1 to any D20 roll and spell DC. Exhaustion can stack. - If you go unconscious and come back you gain a level of exhaustion - Drinking potion is bonus action, to give someone else is action. You CAN drink a potion as an action and you get the maximum health from it.
Our top four house rules are 1) Getting rid of initiative, and using weapon reach as a means of determining who goes first. It's much more realistic and also a whole lot faster. I'll never call for initiative ever again. 2) Using movement as described in Bob's video. If it makes sense, you can do it. If it's questionable, roll a die. 3) Using attacks for parries based on comparative to-hit scores, pitting weapon skill vs weapon skill. 4) introducing spell failure--each time a mage or priest casts a spell they have to roll against their spell craft/religion ability. And introducing possible critical failure.
@@andrewlustfield6079 I like the parry rule, but I think it needs to go along with a change to armor. If armor was absorption, maybe even with a die roll mixed in (+a number for the armor, +dex I guess) for randomness, this would work better, making it so that you always hit if the enemy fails to parry.
@@plaidpvcpipe3792 While I like the basic concept of damage reduction--it makes a lot of sense in general, and even though you could point out that it has some logical flaws, too. (like how against someone in plate armor, it was often the roundel dagger that dealt the killing blow---but only after the knight or man-at-arms was knocked to the ground) In general, it's pretty logical. But every time I've seen and experienced it, it slows the combat down way too much for my taste. It's just another layer of complexity and another layer of math to get through to resolve whether or not a blow managed to damage a character or monster. The nice thing about our parry system is that it compares martial skill vs martial skill. I basically assume there's a 50% chance that someone can successfully parry an incoming blow--so 11 or better on a D:20, and then you use the difference to your character's to hit score and the enemy he or she is trying to block. So for instance if your character has a +7 to hit and they are trying to block someone with a +9--you would need to roll a 13 or better on a D:20 to succeed--otherwise the attack goes through and does damage. Conversely, if the same character with a +7 to hit is fighting someone with a +4 to hit, you would only need to roll an 8 or better on a D:20 to successfully block an incoming attack. Also, you can use this with a shield, too and cover someone directly adjacent to you, or say someone is going over your shoulder with a spear to strike the mage behind you---another way to use the same system. It's very flexible and very balanced.
Constraints like movement speed and opportunity attack create constraints that can provide more creativity. Time saved doesn't equal better game IMO. It also removes most of the usefulness of spells like shocking grasp.
I agree that some of these are a bit too far, and they could flatten something that the players bought to personalize their style. I still approve of the sentiment and I simplified so many things in my games.
The real point of the video isn't suggesting specific rules, but to encourage people minimizing elements that don't promote fun within their own games. Tailoring to your audience is key. For most people more turns per hour = more opportunity for fun. Often the games I play are made up of 50/50 DnD-heads and normies we've convinced to play. The more we minimize number-crunching and exposed mechanics of the game the more overall fun it is; in some games we've even eliminated most of the PC dice-rolls. Shocking grasp exists only to enable disengagement by disabling the opportunity attack. Opportunity attacks are not the fun element, successfully disengaging when you think you might lose your character is. Shocking grasp could be reimplemented as crowd control that prevents or slows the mob from following you, allowing you to evade.
And as a Monk my entire gimmick is just flushed down the toilet, being able to move 180 feet a round is incredibly important to me and my abilities and it makes for a very fun experience.
@@TheBoardGamer and I think you can still play a Monk that clearly moves way faster than the other PCs/creatures without needing to worry about distance and counting squares.
I do enjoy that Pathfinder has only certain enemies able to perform attack of opportunity. It gives this feeling of uncertainty and tension before anyone tries to move around the enemy for the first time. And it falls in line with your line of thinking. Not everyone is trained for this martial feat of additional attacks.
@@SerifErdem Sure. You can also probably guess based on what the enemy is. If it's very martial and melee based, it probably has it. A player looking something up shouldn't dissuade you from using a rule.
Yeah that's a good in-between. Like a simple goblin grunt should probably not be able to pull it off, but the hobgoblin warrior? Or some monster with a ton of tentacles, or a quick reaction time? Sure!
I actually think that makes it worse. Now the trigger is even more situational, and therefore ends up as cognitive load for the DM. Brain power that could be used for cool narration.
On the 3rd houserule. Instead of making every creature weaker, I can really recommend the minion rules from MCDM's Flee Mortals (there's a free preview with these rules included). I've been using them using boss fights especially so there's a bunch of, well, minions to slash through when trying to take out the big boss monster. Very cool how melee characters can just slash through a row of them if they deal enough damage!
I was immediately thinking the same thing. MCDM's minion rules are awesome. They even overlap with your critical rules. "Overkill" if you overcome the ho of one minion that remaining damage passes to the next minion. Even without critical hits my players have killed 3 skeletons in a single arrow/melee swing. They love killing minions.
@@Athanatosti i know. But, the powers utilized can do the same thing as mentioned. MCDM attributes much of their inspiration from 4e. Honestly, MCDM pretty much just re-tooled 4e to fit 5e. I have no issue with that, Colville is awesome, but why not just play 4e? I love 4e!
Your fourth homebrew rule is actually in the DMG, and one that I use in my groups all the time. Cleave, on p272 of the DMG. This helps narrow the martial/caster divide.
Was about to comment that. I give this to my casters as well though (sorcerer and paladin) It feels good and I can always make encounters harder should their effectiveness get out of hand
Well, yes, but actually no. See, there ARE Cleaving rules in the DMG, but they are awful. Not only does the first monster you hit have to be undamaged, but you also have to reduce it to 0 HP for you to be able to transfer any leftover damage. As if THAT weren't enough, you can only transfer the damage in the first place if the creature you want to transfer the damage to is ALSO undamaged. This makes Cleaving borderline impossible, even at early levels.
@@inkdragoon4547 The second creature can be damaged, but the damage only hits a 3rd creature if the second creature was undamaged. Still, I use the rule as a baseline and modify it, allowing a cleave to pound through enemies, especially if using the Minion rule from 4e. It makes fighters feel a little better against spellcasters.
Yeah as someone said below, it's not. The DMG version only works if you're attacking a craeture that's at max health and it must drop all the way to zero, then any left over damage can roll onto another creature at max health
I also love to give my players opportunities to feel like badasses, killing hoards of monsters. At first I tried to use swarm mechanics, but they proved to be to monolithic, in a way that killed their purpose. Now I use Colvilles minion mechanic, and after a full arc when my players fought an army of giant termites, I must say it it is fun. His design basically combines 3rd and 4th rules. 1st and 2nd rules are probably a good idea for IRL games, and I think I`ll implement it in my next session. If it goes well, there is a chance that I`ll think about using 2nd in my online games too. I`m Not too enthusiastic about the 1st rule, Because I like drawing battle maps.
Haha you can still draw maps, just don't worry about adding a grid to it! Nah, do whatever is most fun for you. I need to look into colville's minions because now a couple comments have recommended it!
I feel like this highlights something about D&D: it exists in a space between on one side dynamic rules-lighter systems which put a bigger emphasis on just doing cool things creatively, and on the other side truly crunchy tactical systems. Personally, I think there's a lot of merit in either pole, that other systems can handle better the precise combat simulations, or are more flexible for splashy storytelling. However, I know a lot of folks like the hybrid style of 5e D&D.
I don't think people really "prefer" d&d in the same way other people like other games. Most of the time people are playing 5e because they haven't tried anything else, not because they like it for it's merits.
Your third and fourth house rules remind me a lot of Matt Colville's "minion" rules. I think it achieves basically the same benefits that you outlined, and even allows for some cool new minion abilities.
My players LOVE my homebrew initiative system that I call Fast/Slow I set a DC for initiative by rolling 2d10+fastest monster bonus - meet or beat and you are fast, otherwise slow, and turn progression is: 1. Lair Actions 2. Fast PCs in any order 3. Baddies 4. Slow PCs in any order This was good mix of structure and freedom to keep things moving while still having a reason for high initiative etc
A houserule I use is to have players roll initiative for social encounters; too often combat is treated as an entirely separate game mode from the RP, and while nuancing the RP like that makes them feel more in-line, I think this idea of streamlining combat will also help bring both aspects into greater synchronicity.
I do this as well but I use charisma as the modifier for the roll. Keeps the extroverts in check and allows for the introverts (players) to get involved. Sometimes the barbarian wins the role and... well, things get interesting.
I love the balance you help bring to the D&D TH-camr space. There’s a disproportionate amount of combat focussed number crunching channels (which I love!) so I love how you are so dedicated to min-maxing the fun. Antonio Demico (Tiny Hat) is another one I like for this reason.
So much of the various "tactical" pieces of D&D combat rules really show their deep roots to the wargame genre that D&D emerged from in the first place. Which is neither good nor bad, but if you ever wondered "But wait, why is this limitation even here?", this is the answer about 90% of the time. :) My only objection to getting rid of movement speed is that I just rolled up a monk, and being *absurdly* mobile is one of the things I'm really looking forward to. (At level 3, I *already* am up to 50ft/move *grin*)
I gotchu: Duck: as a reaction to being targeted with an attack, you make take the duck reaction and fall prone, potentially making hits from afar miss while leaving you open to near by opponents Readied strike (how I run opportunity attacks): if you have at least one attack unused from your turn and are not surprised, you may use one attack if the creature you are currently fighting leaves your range. Evade: as a reaction, you may move using any movement speed you did not use on your turn (maximum of half) provided you are not affected by anything that may slow you down (difficult terrain, slow, etc.)
One thing I use while dm'ing: Players roll hit & damage dice at the same time. If they miss the hit, but have a high damage roll, and are near something in the environment (fighting in a room with statues or pillars), sometimes i'll have their attack miss the target, but hit the statue, and then say "your swing misses the ogre but hits the statue next to it, cracking it with a loud boom on impact" This opens up the players to consider trying to knock down the statue to block a route, to hurt an enemy, to knock them down, etc. Great channel, keep it up!
My players like to work with strategy and tactics, so I keep the board and movements. One example of them really liking tactical movement was that minibosses and boss monsters can generate threat squares, if you are sitting in a threat square at the start of their next turn you take fixed damage, no AC, no saves, just take it to the face. Well I would routinely set up these threat squares and monsters would usually be threatening attacks of opportunity or blocking an escape route, my players had a lot of fun thinking up ways to escape these situations. My favorite one yet was when a player switched places with an enemy and the enemy got hit by the threat square instead, wasn't expecting it but we all had fun with it.
"Where was that attack every other round?" The attack roll in D&D is meant to represent the moment that your character is potentially able to get past their opponent's guard to hit them. In the reality of the fiction of D&D, melee combat is constant swinging and swords/shields/axes/whatever clashing but you sort of 'zoom in' on an attack that can actually make an impact on the fight. You aren't just standing there only swinging your sword once every six seconds when you're level 1. Likewise, characters get opportunity attacks as a Reaction to the enemy turning their back to flee, again it's a moment that your character can get past their opponent's guard. I also generally don't have creatures with special reactions take Opportunity Attacks since they have more important things to spend their reaction on.
Exactly, it's more of an attack sequence. The AoO represents how on your turn (to roll, combat was constant) you would have had a better chance to get past their guard.
Same with movement, but no one can feasibly balance/track 16 beings moving step by step. Although now that I think about it, one entity declaring movement and another having a "move to intercept" could really hype up the tension
Those are some fun rules Bob, thanks for sharing them with the rest of us. I thought I'd also share something in return: I've been trying to incorporate Morale into my sessions to make the game more fun. Not all monsters want to die fighting the heroes, so I use morale checks to add unpredictability to encounters. If a player scores a critical hit and one shots a monster, it forces the remaining monsters to make morale check or be Frightened of that hero. If a group of monsters without magic gets attacked with magic, they make a morale check or are Frightened of the spell caster. Opponents are more likely to flee, surrender, or parley with the heroes to save their lives which makes combats faster, more varied in outcome, and opens up opportunities for role playing and deal making.
Thanks! And that's a great addition. I didn't mention it in the video, because I don't have any specific advice on it, but generally if the bad guys were getting whooped bad, or if their leader was taken out, I'd roll something to see if any surrender or flee. It definitely makes a fight more interesting!
About removing opportunity attacks. Do your players move more, now it's gone? I find that creating combats, where the end goal is not a fight to death but with some purpose (stopping a ritual, getting to a boss, free captives and getting them safe) creates a combat where players want to move and need to chose. Love your vids. ❤
Thanks! And yes, they definitely move more! It's still important to emphasize that there are other objectives though. In this module, a couple situations involve saving a prisoner, and those were the most exciting.
I actually try to provoke AoO from monsters when my allies might need to get away… it makes for good theater and something more interesting than just standing toe-to-toe
After fooling around with some of the same ideas as bob, I've gone so far as to simply not let *non major enemies* have AOOs - but *let some pcs keep them* - this makes the pcs feel really slick and swashbuckly. I let any player with martial weapons or a sneak attack (or monks) take aoos, and only them (and the occasional boss built along PCs paradigms, like a boss that will cinematically fight a lot of npcs) It works great. You really want your pcs to punch through a ton of baddies taking little nicks until they actually hit something worth fighting. it bumps martials an eensy bit and lets them shine for having real fighting training Another really good house rule is i said no feats by default at asi, take your stats at asi levels and we'll come up with an opportunity to train a feat per tier based on the narrative....if you want great weapon master in t2, you need to be in there swinging away in t2, etc. Some times i'll improv a little mini version of the feat's mechanic while they are working on it, like -2 for "extra damage" if they are working on sharpshooter. then i give them the feat on a level that's kind of a dead level for their class, in the middle of the tier. The players eventually realize they are trading a little planned crunch for a character that might have both stat points AND a feat and play ball. it also kind of lets players go after thematic feats like actor or healer that get overlooked for half feats.
@@toddgrx That reminds me of XCOM Long War and the skill "Lightning Reflexes". There should definitely be a feat that let's you run past enemies, baiting out their reaction, so they can't use it on opportunity attacks towards your teammates.
I don’t want to remove it conpletely so I’m thinking about modifying it so that if you move away while facing the enemy you can without triggering an opportunity attack but you can only move half the distant since I see it as a moving backwards movement. If you turn your back then you can move full distant but you will trigger an opportunity attack (same with dash).
In 3.5 D&D, an attack roll doesn't represent one swing of the sword. It represents feints, positioning, and a strike. It's assumed that you're in constant movement, looking for the opportunity to strike. So, when someone provokes an attack of opportunity, you aren't somehow making your enemy faster by letting them swing their weapon again, you're presenting an opening and all of the swings they were already making trying to get through your defense now has another chance of landing because you aren't defending yourself in that moment. Presumably, 5th edition made the same assumption. In reality, an attack of opportunity was just a way for front-line characters to provide some battlefield control to keep enemy melee fighters from rushing straight to the squishy caster characters. Before WotC updated 3rd to 3.5, they produced Star Wars. In the original Star Wars d20, you were forced to stop your movement if at any point your movement brought you adjacent to an enemy. There was nothing stopping you from moving past them on your next turn, but if there was an enemy in your way, you just had to stop there so they had the chance to hit you on their next turn, and heaven forbid you wanted to move past three enemies. It would take you three turns to do so. Then 3.5 introduced attacks of opportunity, and Star Wars received a revised rule set that allows attacks of opportunity, and now movement was more free.
It's funny how a lot of these houserules looks like how you begin to play ttrpgs. It's how I played anyway, when I just had a set of dices and just read a few rules. This simplicity is appealing, but I've grown fond of battle grids, using movement speed and covers strategically. I usually do theatre of the mind for small, fast-paced combats, and grids for bigger ones. For the attack of opportunity, it's true it pins down combat. Nobody ever moves. But deleting it makes martials even less powerful. The truth is you have to give players reasons to move. I was blown away playing the videogame the dungeon of Naheulbeuk, wich is based on a ttrpg close to dnd. My characters were taking attacks of opportunity each fight because I had to move. Maybe they'd miss their attacks ? With AOE effects, objects to interact with to end the fight, places to hide, another character dying, etc, you can keep a fight moving on the grid even with opportunity attacks. To be honest, I may add more opportunity attacks, like PF2. Casting a spell with your hands should trigger a OA from a warrior in front of you. And paradoxically, it may help fights move, because you don't want to stay in front of someone getting a free attack every turn.
Since melee martials often get the short end of the stick, I carry over damage from any killing blow, not just crits. They have to roll for it, but it's a free attack. What i do for crits is always maxing out the bonus damage. Nothing feels worse than getting hyped over a crit and your mighty strike lets you down with less than a regular roll. It's faster and the juicy numbers are always exciting!
The biggest challenge with throwing out rules for the sake of having fun is that it can topple other concepts or step on the toes of abilities other characters might have invested choices into. It’s why I NEVER allow quiet or secret casting unless you are an aberrant mind sorcerer or a sorcerer with subtle spell metamagic. The cleaving attack is a variant rule in the DMG or somewhere in the PhB already, too. I think I can get behind the AoO thing, then a creature who can do it immediately becomes a bigger threat. And it makes sentinel/PAM make your character feel differentiated. For epic cinematic moments I can understand hand waving movement speed - for the sake of letting player creativity and ingenuity run wild, but for combat I think it’s important. Getting just out of range of counterspell or other abilities is HUGE. And what about the Mobile feat? Or Swashbuckler subclass features? I’ve increasingly found the more I try to tinker, the more toes I step on with character abilities
That final cool moment with the fighter reminds me of an OSR ability of making multiple attacks against low Hit Dice minions (which I would have made those ghouls at my table). On that note, the Minion rule of 4th edition is quite useful in 5e or any DnD clone.
I usually run TotM and use a similar movement "rule" - yes, no, give me a roll (I typically tell them what they need for this roll so they can make an informed choice). However, if I removed opportunity attacks, my players would beeline for any boss/controller/caster types trying to hang back behind a line of minions. I don't use flanking, but I have a gang-up bonus - +2 for two attackers, +3 for three, and +4 for four (the max). This also makes large numbers of smaller critters more of a threat as PC ACs increase faster than most monsters' attack bonuses. I also use static monster initiative, turning Initiative into a check (so if a player ties a monster's passive Init DC, the player goes first since it's a success.)
Nice! I like static monster initiative sometimes, and I've also been sharing the DCs more and I find that it adds a little more suspense to each roll--or I suppose it just makes the roll result more exciting when it hits the table. And hey, you can always have that boss/caster type B-line away from them! If it's an open square room, that might get old fast. But depending on the environment (varied elevation, dungeon coridors, etc) it can get really interesting without opportunity attacks.
10:22 this is a lot like the 'tour de force' rule in Spaceship Zero/Ruin Nation, the 'critical' can really be anything that the player and DM comes up with. There's a chart that you can use if you want, but it's usually the most fun to make it up on the fly. Bullets can ricochet, destroy armor, trigger grenades, whatever is fun and dramatic!
These ironically are rules that my party uses often. But I 100% commend you for adapting your game to your players game style. Well done sir👏 you followed the most important rule. Have fun
These sound like good rules for early levels and newer players. I worry that they remove some flavor and uniqueness, though. Without tracking movement, monks lose one of their comparative advantages. Rogue's Cunning Action is mostly meaningless. Feats like Mobile and Sentinel are useless without opportunity attacks or movement tracking. Spells like Longstrider, Expeditious Retreat, and Misty Step are mostly obsolete. I do like the cleave rule you added. That helps martials close the gap with casters a bit. Maybe sticking with the Close, Near, and Far ranges and giving opportunity attacks disadvantage by default would be a good balance.
My friends and I grew up on Heroscape. The crunchiness of the rules helped keep a fair game in an adversarial set up, but my friends also now excel at coming up with creative solutions within the limitations given them. Our wives play (5e) with us, too. They generally prefer the combat over RP anyhow. I think I’m keeping most of the basic crunchiness of combat, but I really do like the idea of critical hit rollover damage…
Now I want to try using a battle map, but not with squares, just a a general guide for where players and monsters are in relation to each other and terrain. No counting, just eyeballing, and it’s realistic and doesn’t make high movement speed classes useless
I personally enjoy the crunchiness of combat in DnD, it really encourages precise strategy and tactics (in theory at least) but I will say I agree about opportunity attacks and have considered making opportunity attacks have disadvantage. One of the biggest issues as you mentioned is that nobody ever moves around in combat. But that could be addressed by having dynamic objectives on the map during the fight as well.
Yo, what!? T1J is here? Wow. Worlds collide. I agree about the Opportunity Attacks too. They're way too strong and, consequently, every fight becomes heavily influenced by who exploit / avoid Opportunity Attacks the most. They don't even make much in-game sense to me for the reasons Bob described in the video. I've always suspected that Flanking was the personal darling of someone on the design team, and they didn't take it well when they realised that Flanked characters would choose to move out of the way rather than just stand there gritting their teeth, surrounded by enemies.
I really like tactical combat and one of my players has basically made a speedster with mobile, so I definitely use movement speeds and opportunity attacks. But by now we have a pretty decent idea of how far 30ft is, so I often guesstimate monsters’ movement unless it’s gonna be important to the players’ or monsters’ plans; this has been working pretty well for me so far It’s definitely worth knowing which parts of the game you like and which can be sanded away! Great suggestions!
I love these house rule videos, because sometimes you find something that will change your game! I'll try to remember that critical hit rule and see how often that would come up.
Thanks very much! House rules are all about personal preference, so it depends on what your goals are for the game, and what you like to see happen at the table
@@BobWorldBuilder yea for sure! I've been running games for a decade and have a whole book shelf full of different systems but Ive never considered half of that for d&d
Stopped watching because I stopped DMing but damn did I miss you Bob. I remember when you started and happy to see how you've grown. Great video as always
Your comments about opportunity attacks and the lack of movement make so much sense. After watching your video I presented the idea to my group. We decided a more incremental step. Sliding around an adjacent enemy doesn’t provoke an opportunity attack. If you move away from an adjacent enemy, they roll a d20 and on a 19 or 20 get an opportunity attack. My table of 13 year olds came up with this and I thought it was perfect! Thanks for the tip!
I've recently started DMing using theatre of the mind more, since where we meet up is in a pretty busy pub and space is a little tight. I absolutely second dropping movement from the equation, it speeds things up so much and, in my experience, prompts more creativity! For example, the party had encountered an assassin in the study of their necromancer friend. When he tried to escape out the window, half the party dived straight through after him! I did call for some Acrobatics checks, most of which were failed, resulting in a hilarious pile-up on the bottom floor, but my players were having the time of their lives. Had they sat there counting squares and second guessing themselves, I don't think it would have been half as enjoyable.
That's a cool set-piece. Also, I played in a pub once (one of my players was only in town for an afternoon so we chose a locale close to the bus terminal). Do you find it contributes to game atmosphere?
Yeah, I thought of that because I play a cleric so positioning is key and I have to be in the limit of my spell ranges, but I do agree that if the encounters are on the simpler side of just goblins and groups, you could ignore it
The consequence of removing Opportunity attacks from that game is that it does promote ranged attacks being better in most circumstances. The weapon you'd want to be in melee is so that you can pressure and corner people. Since you are removing the grid and de-emphasizing movement speed it may work out to be basically equivalent (The Barbarian can walk up to the elf and hit them, the elf can walk away and shoot, the barbarian follows and hits them, etc.). But it does have a significant consequence on tactical gameplay that will encourage people to go ranged and not worry about melee people in their grill.
i have a whole slew of buffs to spells and classes in a document i keep.... but really there's one big rule at my table. for every monster past level 5, attack is doubled and health is halved. combat can feel agonizingly slow against a lot of enemies in vanilla dnd, and i was shocked how this change gave me zero balance issues once i used it to start speeding things up. not technically a house rule, but something else i tend to run with: i write level 1-2 encounters so that enemies will not kill the players if they win. and if the players lose, it sets up interesting plot hooks for later. for example, maybe your job is to transport a powerful magical item when your party is attacked by goblins. if you lose, they steal the item and all of your valuable equipment and ransom you for pennies, and then much later at level 3 or 4 you have a problem where magically enhanced goblins are roaming around as a legitimate problem for governments in the area. this is harder to write and account for but sure beats the Wild Beyond The Witchlight approach of "level 1 encounters are so dangerous that there aren't any"
When I learned to play roleplaying games in 2e it was all theater of the mind. It's cool seeing you make the same kind of changes I did to 5e. Especially with goblins; the goblin stats in the books are fully geared and equipped. My goblins are unarmored and have daggers, clubs, and thrown rocks (12 AC +5 1d4+2). The leader is the only one using the book profile. At least until higher levels, and in appropriately organized settings, where they're actually dealing with somewhat competent and equipped goblins. If they're in a random cave though? And they just moved in? They're not going to have much gear. Anyways, great video
Flanking is optional and you can easily do without it but some classes and builds are dependent on tracking movement and opportunity attacks to make their roles in combat more impactful. Using minions or near minions with 1 hit point or low hit points does wonders for the balance in 5e.
If movement becomes irrelevant, it's going to be important to consider how to compensate for that with classes/abilities/equipment that are movement-oriented. What does your Monk get if the difference between a 30 speed and a 45 speed is erased? What does Expeditious Retreat do now? That's a lot of ripple effects.
This is my thoughts also. I have similar problems with his weird takes on initiative that makes Alert significantly worse, along with robbing a lot of classes/subclasses of features that boost / give advantage to initiative with no compensation. I like what he's trying to do but a lot of it seems to remove any kind of perk you'd get from playing a particular class so you're better off playing something else and you can get that benefit anyway, or at least not have it ignored. Edit: for example, everyone is basically getting Mobile for free, just in a really convoluted way which punishes Rogues, Monks and anyone else who can disengage or prevent AoO, or have high movement speeds naturally or movement perks (tabaxi for example).
As someone completely new to D&D and related RPGs, this and so much of your content is very encouraging. I was always hesitant to jump in because so many GMs were sticklers for the rules and regulations. But this is a game, it's supposed to be fun! If I didn't want fun I'd be doing yard work instead during my free time. Bending, modifying, and changing things to encourage people to play in a style they enjoy? I'm all for it. Thanks for doing what you do!
I like the crit rule, I'm not sure if you assumed it in this way, but I would make it an option only for martials to be able to do that. Although casters do have some spell attacks, there's not many, and it would be nice to give martials a little bit of an edge in this way.
One of my favorite house rules is for 1st level hp, take max hit die plus Con score instead of Con modifier. It adds 10-15 hp, which isnt game breaking at later levels, but makes a big difference in those first few.
An Attack of Opportunity is not a free attack. Its costs your reaction for the round. Though it doesn't limit every character, this is something to take into consideration for your players. A reaction is usually used to cast a defensive spell or action, so choosing to make an attack of opportunity can potentially leave you more vulnerable. If you want to tweek it, perhaps have the AoOp cost a Bonus Action, or make the next attack on that character have advantage, or AoOp are made with disadvantage, or perhaps tie it to a feat. OR!!!! Make a rule that, if you are next to an enemy and your character makes an AoO on another enemy, the original enemy gets an AoOp on YOUR character. And then the other player who is flanking the first enemy makes an AoO, and then the enemy adjacent to THEM makes an AoOp, and then the 3rd player who is flanking THAT enemy makes an AoOp.....
We run facing rules instead of flanking. So a creature can choose to turn around as a reaction, or to op attack, but not both. Many creatures have different reactions as well. From extra defense to retaliation. And loads of class abilities, feats and spells are all about reaction. Like shocking grasp. It's incredibly useful for a caster to both attack and get away from melee. It would be pointless without opportunity attacks. Movement rules are half the game. Removing them is like wanting to remove HP because it's too much bother keeping track of it.
Melee attacks started not as actual attacks, but as "chances to hit." That's where opportunity attacks came from. When someone turns to run, their attacker(s) get a "chance to hit" them. They might miss. They might hit. Melee combat works okay that way, but ranged attacks only work that way if you do away with ammo (because melee attacks don't have ammo).
Awesome homebrew rules Bob and if I hadn't fully committed over to PF2E I'd definitely look at introducing a few of these great concepts into my games.
Not counting squares still works well in PF2e. DM just has to tell the player how many actions it'll take to reach where they want to go (it's what I did for pretty much all of our Abomination Vaults campaign). The killing lots of creatures in one go is a little trickier, but is similar to making more enemies work like troops when you want lower tier enemies to stand a chance, but still let the players mow through hordes of baddies. One thing I'm probably doing in my next PF2e campaign is treating initiative like a standard check (I hate rolling initiative) and the players roll their initiative vs the highest Perception DC of the enemies. Players who succeed can go in whatever order they want, then the enemies in whatever order the DM wants, then the players who failed can go in whatever order they want. Tis similar to how I did initiative during my last campaign (each side rolls a d10, winners go in whatever order followed by losers in whatever order), but requires the ignoring of less rules and my players like rolling individual initiative for whatever reason.
@Jonathan Cormier I like the grittiness, and depth of tactical options presented by having the minutiae of details in PF2E so I won't be tweaking anything for those games. I run plenty of abstract systems though such as the Star Wars RPG by FFG and Conan 2D20 by Modiphius where zones, or distances such as short-medium-long are used. They also use mobs of enemies which makes big combats easy to run and initiative lite rules such as "the players go and then the Game Master unless the Game Master spends a point of Doom to allow a mob of enemies or a toughened or nemesis enemy to go before the players" etc.
@@byronkooper neat. Wasn't sure if you were looking to use similar rules in PF2e or not. I like the amount of player options supported by mechanics in PF2e, there's just a handful of things I either don't care about or want to streamline on my side of the table. The 2d20 system looks real neat, but every actual play I've seen of it ends up feeling like you're playing the momentum pool more than playing the game (if that makes sense), which was always a turn off for me
Oh man these are all great. I do some very similar rules. First off, if any player has left over damage points after killing a foe that left over damage rolls over to the next target assuming they are in range of the weapon which would also include an arrow going through on target into another! Critical hits get full damage plus another damage roll (of course), I don’t make my players “prepare spells” daily (you either know the spell or you don’t & we don’t track spell slots any more in lieu of a “roll to cast system”. With all of those tweaks that favor the players I took a few liberties with combat too, a critical fail on any attack or spell cast means some type of negative consequence. The spell may misfire & teleport the PC somewhere else (not too far away) or the barbarian may miss the target & accidentaly hit the next nearest PC for 1D4 of damage.
It's not that it's a free attack. It's a part of the fact that there is a back-and-forth with attack and defense. But in dropping your defense to do something else, that opens up an opportunity to attack.
Opportunity Attack makes sense in a duel, where the enemy is only focused on one character and, if that character lowers their guard, the enemy is going to see an opportunity. When battling a bunch of undisciplined goblins who are frantically darting glances at all the other adventurers in the room, the chance of one of them recognizing that moment of weakness and taking advantage of it goes down exponentially.
@@rgilbert3614 Yes, but the "story" of the combat is it's not actually one person taking a turn, and then waiting half an hour for their turn to come back around - it's all happening at the same time. You don't just make "one attack." You're poking and trying to get past the guard. It's not "your turn" when you turned around and fled. You fled while they were attacking you. An attack that was just another stab you would have blocked was one that you didn't block because you ran. Or otherwise dropped your own guard. Now, this is an entirely separate issue as to whether or not AoOs are good (for your group).
@@SangoProductions213 I agree that it is all happening at one time. The round is supposed to take 6 seconds (although I have players at my table who take so long to min-max their turns that another player once got up and baked cookies from scratch between their turns). However, since it IS all happening at one time, it would seem impossible for most low-level combatants to be aware of every opportunity around them at all times. Plus, if one's blade is already clashing with the enemy before them, they are not going to have that opportunity to lash out at other foes rushing past. So only a creature focused on their target would see that an opportunity from their target if that target disengaged. Basically, it should require a "fog of battle" mechanic which, to keep it simple, says only the target of a creature's attacks is vulnerable to attacks of opportunity from that creature. Or, if one of my players wanted to roll for opportunity, I would say it was a Wisdom check and set the target's DEX as the number to beat (which simulates their speed at closing that window of opportunity v. the attacker's ability to recognize the opening).
I think telling it like you're dropping your defence to turn around and run is not congruent with what would actually happen. You'd carefully but quickly step away until you're out of reach, and then turn around. Opportunity attacks only really makes sense if you're engaged with multiple enemies and trying to move past or between them, not moving away from them. Against one enemy you can most of the time keep up your defence, even if you're trying to get past them.
I really love the 4th house rule!! It brings the epic momentum into a combat!! EXCELSIOR!! My house rules of dual weapon combat for ANY fantasy RPG are... 1/ if you have enough agility, you can attack 2 targets WITH NO PENALTY. Each target then deals its own damage PER weapon. You attack 1 target with 2 weapons WITH NO PENALTY, the target deals its own damage PER weapon. It's simple, fast effective and highly fun. 2/ when you FUMBLE your attacks, that's where the fun for the DM is at its best: ...2 FUMBLE attacks, the weapons, may be stuck into a body, an armor, a breach, blocked, or broken, etc... Welcome to Hell!! The GM does what they want!! HELL YEAH!! Of course, the event must be in par with the situation--it's at the GM discretion. ...1 SUCCESS and 1 FUMBLE attacks, the FUMBLE weapon must be "stuck", blocked for the best, and it may really annoy the player in their moves, like the character is being "hold" for a second by the blocked weapon ("Damned!! Mestuck!! Humpff!!"). It may happens any things the GM wants to in this tiny short time, again at the GM discretion. It's up to the GM to adapt or adjust these short rules for their scenario. The GOAL is to give the players AND the GM all the fun only a RPG can do!!
We made a house rule at our game that there will be many ways to bring a dead player back. It's not just the typical go to a priest. Other options include being reincarnated as another race, coming back as one of the Ravenloft lineages or a lycanthrope or even making a deal with a devil or some dark entity. 🙂 So depending on where the party is, the method of resurrection might be different.
Great work as always Bob! If it was my video, I would just make a point of pointing out that every single one of those rules doesn't work if your players are into tactical combat. Sure, they may speed up combat, but they take away from the actual tactics and leans more into the storytelling aspect (which is really really great if that's what your group is aiming for!) But again, great work!
Yeah, I can't imagine playing like that. It would sick all the fun out of the game and make it nothing but a grind to count HP. Not to mention imbalanceing the class abilities completely. Rip anyone wanting to play a rogue.
Another great video. Thank Professor DM for long ago telling us about you. I love your honesty and your channel is at the top of my list. I run 5 sessions per week on Start Playing Games and I can tell you that while I do NOT use flanking and I sometimes fudge a little distances, I could never get rid of opportunity attacks. There would be way too much back and forth to stay in some Twilight Cleric's aura/sphere and fighters and rogues would run to the line and run back, over and over. My minions would just run past the front line and attack the squishies, etc. For some reason I seem to attract strategic players and they love the strategy of battlefield placement. I counter by also having placement and strategy as the minions and that seems to be what they enjoy. I would love to see one of your sessions to see how these rules work. The #1 rule I want to make right now is that Good Berries don't exist. lol
I usually like to make crits cinematic and brutal. And if a crit killed a creature, all other affiliated creatures are automatically feared of the “killer” for their next turn.
Yep! When I run a game, if a PC cuts a head off, the rest of the PC's party are energized and get an extra +1, while the opponents seeing their buddy get decapitated have to make a Wisdom check or run away.
I wouldn't use any of these rules as you presented them (maybe I would use the last one if I wasn't already doing something similar), but I do love house rules and I am glad your group liked it.
Yeah! Hermetic Dnd! I think my favourite homebrew idea from the RPG's I've checked out this year since the OGL debacle has been that, whenever you're not sure about something, roll a d6, a 1-3 results in the worse outcome for the players, and a 4-6 results in the better outcome for the players. Not only does it remove any bias I might have as a DM, it also removes all the time I might spend thinking about how something unimportant might work. Hoorah!
Funny you should mention that house rule! I've also been doing something like that, but depending on what exactly the players want to happen, it may only happen on a 5-6, or even only a 6. The best instances were in dungeons where one player kept wanting to pin doors shut, so we'd roll 50/50 chance each time, and his reactions were priceless either way. It's wild what players can find fun xD
I do a similar thing to your goblin rule. One of the few thing I liked in 4e was the minions. One hit and they are down. So many times I don't even track hit points for mooks. If they are hit, they are down. (I still let the players roll of course) When it comes to bosses, I tend to reduce their HP by half, and increase their damage...usually double. Makes dragons as terrifying as they SHOULD be, but not the long combat slog they tend to be unmodified.
The lack of movement speed counting and opportunity attacks would have really negated my current character. Monk/rogue with a lot of abilities to stun opponents. With haste I managed to move 270ft before attacking, which is fricking ridiculuos and would have never worked in a non-movement counti scenario. So while those two changes speed up combat by a lot, it also discourages certain types of character.
I like attacks of opportunity and don't like that moving into reach no longer triggers one, as it makes the utility of a pole arm much more realistic. Without attack of opportunity I'd have to come up with some other rule to explain why pike lines were so effective. To solve the "attack of opportunity when leaving combat" issue I allow my players to "Disengage" as a Bonus Action, before turning and fleeing. Basically you keep your guard up while you break contact and the opponent doesn't get an attack of opportunity. Frightened creatures cannot use the disengage bonus action so draw attacks of opportunity as they panic and flee.
Love the idea of excess crit damage spilling over to other targets, consider that stolen! I'm currently running Stormwreck Isle for a new group, a rule I'm trying out is that critical hits happen when an attack roll is 5+ more than the target's AC, *but* crits do maximum damage (not double dice), so a fighter's longsword might do 1d8+3 on a normal hit and 11 on a critical. Crits happen more often which makes combat faster and more risky and thrilling. I'm also trying out a rule that monsters have a "Wounds" value, so normal minions have 1, elites have 2-3, bosses have 4+, etc. Every critical hit inflicts a Wound as well as doing damage, when the monster has taken max Wounds it's considered defeated regardless how much HP is has. Again, intention is to make combat faster, empower players (important for newbies!) and less "punch the bag of meat points".
Very cool ideas! I think the AC+5 for crits is a thing in Pathfinder. If it is, I'm sure someone will confirm in the comments because I've already seen a couple "just play finder" style comments haha
@@BobWorldBuilder ah cool, not really familiar with Pathfinder so that's a fun coincidence. Tbh I'm only running 5E to get new players in the hobby, once they've got their feet wet I'll be introducing them to other games like One Ring and Best Left Buried.
These sound like some fun rules! I'm definitely keeping opportunity attacks at my table, but getting rid of movement speed would up the flow of combat for sure...
Some of these rules nerf core class or feat features like cunning action, PAM, mobile just to name a few. You take hit and run and give it to everyone you destroy the rogue.
Videos like this are what I love. Straight to the point, not an hour long audio novel that could have been covered in 10-15 minutes. Personal opinion! Keep up the great content!
Hi Bob, love your content. All of these modifications are great ideas. I think I'll try some of them in my next group. Simplifying things makes for a more immersive experience, so this is RPG gold. Thanks for the advice and keep making awesome content!
I think throwing movement out is great for Theatre of the Mind, but the moment a map is on the table, it does matter especially for monks and rogues who have core abilities around moving faster than other classes. I also measure how far I can move and where before my turn, as do my fellow players to make things smoother. Honestly, a better way to help with this if you use a grid or battlemap; is when players write down their speed is to write down the amount of tiles they can move in parenthesis so we don't need to ask "How far can I move? It says 30 feet" "That means you can move (counts on fingers) 6 tiles" I think removing attacks of opportunity throws the tactics side of DnD out the window. Positioning no longer matters nor has consequences, even for theatre of the mind you can just walk away from enemies as you will or just bowl past the 20 guards because they can't do anything to you. However, that being said, I know there are tables who don't care about the tactical side of DnD, they just want to focus on the fantasy, but for me the tactics makes it fun and grounds the fantasy because we had to earn the ground we gain by hand both mechanically and narratively . I think that's an interesting way to do CR, but the big advantage of the monster manual is that you don't have to worry so much about making the numbers. In my experience the numbers you need to care about aren't the CRs or the monsters', it's the party's. I balance everything around my party's stats (AC avg, HP total, hit avg, average dpr, maybe save avg), easier encounters lean to the low side of the averages, hard ones lean to the higher side or even to the maximum of a player in some instances and I choose my monsters in the boundaries of these metrics and then make sure I also take into account the terrain and dpr of my monsters to make sure it's within the realms of reason for my party to handle. Granted, I run my games online so I have access to everyone's sheets, but if I were at a table, I'd probably just ask for everyone's sheets a session or two after leveling up and write down all the math on that end. Crits allowing for a "Blade Storm" or "Double Tap" approach I think is really cool when paired with monsters with 1-3 hit tallies (aka ones that PCs can kill in 1-3 hits), but I might even go a step further and make you do the highest damage possible and then roll the extra dice (I can't remember what those crits are called. My table just calls them Crunchy Crits) so bad rolls can allow your fighter to cleave and hack like a boss even if he rolls natural ones for damage. It also makes crits feel much better for monsters you can't cleave through with like 5+ hits in them. Honestly, I might even just make cleaving/blade storm a part of weapon attacks in general so martials have access to some kind of "AoE" by default since casters already have that capability built in via spells.
Probably one of the dumbest hills I'm willing to die on is the enormous difference between using the "rule of cool" to build upon the rules and build upon player abilities, and using the "rule of cool" to disregard the... rules of uncool, I guess. This video really perfectly illustrates that difference with rolls that allow players to feel more powerful and competent without discarding your sense of your campaign world as a logically consistent place.
Wow, these are some hot takes. Can't imagine using them myself, I would genuinely have a lot less fun with the strategy of movement, opportunity attacks and harder combat being taken away. I understand rescaling low level combat a bit, but I can't imagine doing it at levels higher than level 2, maybe 3. (Except the fourth houserule, critical hits being cooler is just cool) This isn't to say you can't play with these rules, but I wouldn't like them myself at all.
I like the critical hit in a Spanish game called "Vieja Escuela" (Old School), in which critical hits give you a array of Tacticals options: Low the enemy AC, give him disvantage or advantage to your party, etc. it make it more interesting than "double attack"
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That third rule sounds very similar to Into the Odd, in which every attack automatically hits, and you only roll for damage. In that game, armor reduces damage.
One I implement at my table for combat is the "All enemy NPC's share one initiative." This makes it a lot easier to track when the enemies move and attack, especially when you run things like zombie hordes or a bunch of guards. I also do a roll for any/all friendly NPCs like escorted characters, guides, etc.
With regards your third rule... after my very first ever session as DM, watching my party flounder to hit a single Goblin in that starter campaign Phandalin... I made the "Newbie Rule". Any roll to hit within 2 points of a creature's AC was counted as a partial hit and did half the damage. This rule was in place until the PCs reached level 3. Worked out perfectly. Combat sped up, characters were hitting things almost every round (even if for 1 or 2 points of damage). Game changer.
I've been DM of lotr for long time and I always have done similar things. Now I'm starting in D&D and I'm glad someone mentioned it. For me if you high roll in attack, damage should be higher. Something I loved from lort was the critics as then it came the "narrative part of the combat" (yes those tables where rounded numbers like 80-90-100-110-120 are critical/deadly hits), the higher the roll, the more likely to stun, lacerate the enemy. Also Lort is full of moments of broken weapons or shields, which usually brings very funny moments and moments to improvise.
Yeah, i would implement none of these rule except the last one, bc i like to optimize a little, and if i build a character to have a lot of speed, or to slow down enemy and make them not even want to approach me, well theater of mind does not work The last one tho is great, martial boost my beloved
I see what you mean, but 100% if a player designed their character to be fast or effective at slowing enemies, I would take that into account. That character would just be able to move farther than "normal" distance, or they'd be able to slow enemies to a crawl. We had situations where our druid transformed into creatures with faster speeds, and when our cleric turned undead, and everything worked great!
Theatre of the mind combat is something that I've REALLY struggled with, and I think movement speed is a big part of that! Would there be any chance of you putting out a sample combat situation as a demo?
A LOT of people have trouble imagining the scene without a visual cue. I didn't realize that until a player thought we were lying when we said we could!
@@yzfool6639 If I was just dealing with say my character and one monster, I could probably keep track of it in my head. When it's multiple characters and mobs though, nope I need something. I don't doubt some can hold all that in their head, if you can more power to you!
For an example you can listen to Not Another D&D Podcast or Dice Camera Action, two podcasts that are entirely played with theater of the mind. There is no particular skill btw, I learned to play D&D with theater of the mind and it was just natural. Later we switched to a grid for a more tactical combat, but if you want a faster paced game with more cool things happening - although at the cost of a less strategic game - theater of the mind is cool.
The Rule of Cool is the most important rule at my table, I'm glad you posted this, I hope it helps new GM's understand that rules are more of a guideline than a black and white code that has to be followed at all times.
I'm not sure about taking out opportunity attacks. If they want to disengage, they should take an action to do it with the Disengage Action. If they are just fighting but backing up, they are not really getting away. If they actually flee faster (turn and run), the enemy can get an extra swing in while they are undefended. I'm not sure what the problem is.
I used to use the rollover damage rule, but I started doing Perkins Crits and that's the preferred method now because HUGE NUMBERS! For those that don't know, on a crit you get the maximum amount of damage on the dice you would roll for damage and then you roll once normally adding that to the max damage. Ex. Crit with a Short sword: 6 + 1d6 + Bonus Yes, this stacks with Smites and Sneak Attacks making Rogues and Paladins beefy.
The "making enemies weaker" is not a bad idea, but I'd go for the minions rules in 4e. 3 HP or 1 HP are pretty much the same 😂 I'm running a modified version of Phandelver and opted to ignore the surprise rules for my party of 5 and they still had a tough time from the ambush to the cave.
As I replied to another comment, I didn't want my PCs to be able to kill a goblin by throwing a rock at them lol, so 3 HP and 1 HP still have an important difference :P
@@BobWorldBuilder I see, that's understandable. In any case, tweaking monsters HP and AC sounds a lot more fun than reducing number of monsters. Action economy might be against the party at the start (and being surrounded by enemies could create a cool dramatic moment) but as the battle rages on, they get to turn odds on their favor and defeat the bad guys. I might try this on my next session, they're gonna fight a lot of Red brands on the streets of Phandalin 😁
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To quote one of the greatest movies, "The Code is more like guidelines than actual rules." -Captain Barbosa, Pirates of the Caribbean
You have fun taste.
A couple movies later a pirate says that and get shot by the keeper of the code and says: "the code is the law"
Love it when the villains get the best lines haha, but you know what, there's some great lines all around in those movies: "a dishonest man, you can always trust to be dishonest..." lol
I repeat this Same Quote at our sessions ... Only because this is the TRUE Intention of D&D.
Yes - some rules Do help .... but others Just Get In The Way of the REAL FUN & EXCITEMENT that awaits you at the Game Table!!
NO MORE INITIATIVE - NO MORE SPELL SLOTS - NO MORE MOVEMENT CALCULATIONS... These are just absolute Thrill Killers and completely Unnecessary.
@@-WolfMan- what do you do without spell slots? Does everyone just spam their highest level spells, or do you use a different mechanic to manage that resource?
I think you play a lot less tactical-war gamey games, since the crunchiness of managing speed and battle positions is half the fun in my encounters.
Speaks to how the same thing that is fun for one group is tedious for another.
If only positioning mattered in 5e as it did in previous 40k editions...
I struggle to keep the relative position of all creatures in an encounter in my head without some sort of map in a game written like D&D. I can keep narrative track of them games with combat that's more narrative-space, but with modern D&D and similar games (e.g. Pathfinder) I kind of need the map to keep things straight in my head.
...I don't need a good map - a sketch of one on blank paper is fine - and I don't play games where I need a map to keep track of things that often (Most games I play and run don't even have near/medium/far abstract ranges like the example Bob showed) - but running D&D combat how Bob describes I would be the player (or, worse, GM) who needed to ask where everyone is relative to each other again often enough to be annoying.
I agree, i feel like this would take half the fun out of the game. Combat is 1/3 of the pillars but i get ppl being more story driven
People forget that D&D literally stems from war gaming
There's a balance to be struck in TTRPGs. I'm an OSR guy, so the war gaming roots of D&D are pretty important to me, but I do try to avoid turning D&D into a battle simulator generally speaking. Here's where I make the distinction--in a war game, we are manipulating units, vehicles, etc. That's when you're pulling out the tape measures, taking in distance to target, managing obstacles to achieve battlefield objectives. In D&D, we are focused on dramatic individual characters who are probably trying to loot a dungeon. In my personal opinion, the perfect D&D movie is probably 13th warrior or the Clive Owen King Arthur movie. Where the combat is gritty and believable. To capture that, you need more common sense rather than crunch.
Might just be me, but I would never think of dropping movement speed from my games. It makes my players (and me) think a little bit about how to position themselves, and having those constraints makes it more cool and special when awesome things happen, rather than trying to force them.
Definitely not just you haha, that's the default!!
I don't think it's a bad thing to take away or keep. I definitely understand your reasoning, however I think what he meant was to speed the game up by making it so that the players aren't 'nitpicking' distances, he's trying to make it flow more easily. For example.
"You want to attack the goblin?, Well he's just out of your range, you can run about 2/3 of the way, or just take out your bow and shoot".
Rather than going "Okay you're. . . . . . . . . . 45 feet away, you could dash but then you'd lose 15 ft and your attack, but if you take out your bow he's still within . . . . . *Counts again* 45 ft and thus within your bows ran. . .. what's short bow again?. . . . . . . . 80! Got it, so what do you want to do?"
Especially with some of my players, the amount of options paralyze them easily, I just played with one in another game last night and she stopped the game for a smoke break so she could think of her options (it was about time for one anyway), and then afterwards still asked what we thought her character should do (no one else was anywhere near her). That's why the cheat sheets exist in the first place.
But again it is your game and you are able to keep it however you want, hell you can make each square 6.576 meters if you really wanted to.
Movement speed is another resource and another thing players can play around with, you know that tabaxi build with insane speed, I couldn't take that away from my players
yeah, i've run characters (namely certain ranger or rogue builds) whose strengths rely on moving around the battlefield, hitting and running while avoiding attacks of opportunity and maneuvering for flanking and hiding for sneak shots. If I'm running a group that has characters like that, I'd have to keep some form of movement mechanics, albeit simplified. One thing I've done before is have a simple pass/fail d20 roll (1-10 fail, 11-20 pass) for moving up to 10' farther than their move speed, avoiding a movement based attack of opportunity, and being able to do certain full actions that I think should probably be minor actions or free actions without sacrificing their attack for that round. Basically if they want to do it, I have them attempt and then roll the d20, if they fail then they only move their base move instead of the extra, or they do provoke the opportunity attack, or they are unable to do the extra action in time. Also, I like to keep the enemy's move and positioning fairly simple, they bunch up or become a throng/swarm, with only a few ranged enemies breaking off from the group.
And there are many classes, spells, and magic items that grant incremental speed bonuses that wouldn't be useful anymore
Our main house rules:
- Inspiration decided by the party at the end of each session. Next time that player can turn any roll into a success
- Exhaustion is just -1 to any D20 roll and spell DC. Exhaustion can stack.
- If you go unconscious and come back you gain a level of exhaustion
- Drinking potion is bonus action, to give someone else is action. You CAN drink a potion as an action and you get the maximum health from it.
The potion rules are super clever.
I use the same rules for potions! I like the exhaustion rule. I need SOMETHING for the pali just using 1hp of lay on hands each time.
Our top four house rules are
1) Getting rid of initiative, and using weapon reach as a means of determining who goes first. It's much more realistic and also a whole lot faster. I'll never call for initiative ever again.
2) Using movement as described in Bob's video. If it makes sense, you can do it. If it's questionable, roll a die.
3) Using attacks for parries based on comparative to-hit scores, pitting weapon skill vs weapon skill.
4) introducing spell failure--each time a mage or priest casts a spell they have to roll against their spell craft/religion ability. And introducing possible critical failure.
@@andrewlustfield6079 I like the parry rule, but I think it needs to go along with a change to armor. If armor was absorption, maybe even with a die roll mixed in (+a number for the armor, +dex I guess) for randomness, this would work better, making it so that you always hit if the enemy fails to parry.
@@plaidpvcpipe3792 While I like the basic concept of damage reduction--it makes a lot of sense in general, and even though you could point out that it has some logical flaws, too. (like how against someone in plate armor, it was often the roundel dagger that dealt the killing blow---but only after the knight or man-at-arms was knocked to the ground) In general, it's pretty logical.
But every time I've seen and experienced it, it slows the combat down way too much for my taste. It's just another layer of complexity and another layer of math to get through to resolve whether or not a blow managed to damage a character or monster.
The nice thing about our parry system is that it compares martial skill vs martial skill. I basically assume there's a 50% chance that someone can successfully parry an incoming blow--so 11 or better on a D:20, and then you use the difference to your character's to hit score and the enemy he or she is trying to block. So for instance if your character has a +7 to hit and they are trying to block someone with a +9--you would need to roll a 13 or better on a D:20 to succeed--otherwise the attack goes through and does damage. Conversely, if the same character with a +7 to hit is fighting someone with a +4 to hit, you would only need to roll an 8 or better on a D:20 to successfully block an incoming attack. Also, you can use this with a shield, too and cover someone directly adjacent to you, or say someone is going over your shoulder with a spear to strike the mage behind you---another way to use the same system. It's very flexible and very balanced.
I enjoyed it when you demonstrated your player critting the ghouls.
Thanks! Me too haha
You can tell what part Bob was really excited about--it's the part he gets up and re-enacts.
Constraints like movement speed and opportunity attack create constraints that can provide more creativity. Time saved doesn't equal better game IMO. It also removes most of the usefulness of spells like shocking grasp.
I agree that some of these are a bit too far, and they could flatten something that the players bought to personalize their style. I still approve of the sentiment and I simplified so many things in my games.
The real point of the video isn't suggesting specific rules, but to encourage people minimizing elements that don't promote fun within their own games. Tailoring to your audience is key. For most people more turns per hour = more opportunity for fun. Often the games I play are made up of 50/50 DnD-heads and normies we've convinced to play. The more we minimize number-crunching and exposed mechanics of the game the more overall fun it is; in some games we've even eliminated most of the PC dice-rolls.
Shocking grasp exists only to enable disengagement by disabling the opportunity attack. Opportunity attacks are not the fun element, successfully disengaging when you think you might lose your character is. Shocking grasp could be reimplemented as crowd control that prevents or slows the mob from following you, allowing you to evade.
you have stockholm syndrome from only playing bad systems with a bunch of fiddly bullshit rules that slow the game down and put your players to sleep.
And as a Monk my entire gimmick is just flushed down the toilet, being able to move 180 feet a round is incredibly important to me and my abilities and it makes for a very fun experience.
@@TheBoardGamer and I think you can still play a Monk that clearly moves way faster than the other PCs/creatures without needing to worry about distance and counting squares.
I do enjoy that Pathfinder has only certain enemies able to perform attack of opportunity. It gives this feeling of uncertainty and tension before anyone tries to move around the enemy for the first time.
And it falls in line with your line of thinking. Not everyone is trained for this martial feat of additional attacks.
Nice but some players can look up to book and learn if it has a attack of opportunity or not.
@@SerifErdem Sure. You can also probably guess based on what the enemy is. If it's very martial and melee based, it probably has it. A player looking something up shouldn't dissuade you from using a rule.
@@SerifErdem I mean you can say that about literally any creature ability.
Yeah that's a good in-between. Like a simple goblin grunt should probably not be able to pull it off, but the hobgoblin warrior? Or some monster with a ton of tentacles, or a quick reaction time? Sure!
I actually think that makes it worse. Now the trigger is even more situational, and therefore ends up as cognitive load for the DM. Brain power that could be used for cool narration.
To be fair with maybe the exception of the hobbits… the fellowship is most assuredly not lvl 1
True haha
On the 3rd houserule. Instead of making every creature weaker, I can really recommend the minion rules from MCDM's Flee Mortals (there's a free preview with these rules included). I've been using them using boss fights especially so there's a bunch of, well, minions to slash through when trying to take out the big boss monster. Very cool how melee characters can just slash through a row of them if they deal enough damage!
Hmm I'll have to finally look into that! haha
I was immediately thinking the same thing. MCDM's minion rules are awesome. They even overlap with your critical rules. "Overkill" if you overcome the ho of one minion that remaining damage passes to the next minion. Even without critical hits my players have killed 3 skeletons in a single arrow/melee swing. They love killing minions.
Play 4e!
@@robertlewis4769 the 4e minion rules are different from these.
@@Athanatosti i know. But, the powers utilized can do the same thing as mentioned. MCDM attributes much of their inspiration from 4e. Honestly, MCDM pretty much just re-tooled 4e to fit 5e. I have no issue with that, Colville is awesome, but why not just play 4e? I love 4e!
Hey Bob, if a box told you to do something, it might be a mimic. You should be careful.
It might also be a friendly mimic. They're rare, but they exist.
i think the box might be a mimic
Your fourth homebrew rule is actually in the DMG, and one that I use in my groups all the time. Cleave, on p272 of the DMG. This helps narrow the martial/caster divide.
Was about to comment that.
I give this to my casters as well though (sorcerer and paladin)
It feels good and I can always make encounters harder should their effectiveness get out of hand
Well, yes, but actually no.
See, there ARE Cleaving rules in the DMG, but they are awful. Not only does the first monster you hit have to be undamaged, but you also have to reduce it to 0 HP for you to be able to transfer any leftover damage. As if THAT weren't enough, you can only transfer the damage in the first place if the creature you want to transfer the damage to is ALSO undamaged. This makes Cleaving borderline impossible, even at early levels.
@@inkdragoon4547 The second creature can be damaged, but the damage only hits a 3rd creature if the second creature was undamaged. Still, I use the rule as a baseline and modify it, allowing a cleave to pound through enemies, especially if using the Minion rule from 4e. It makes fighters feel a little better against spellcasters.
@@egonhomes Ah, ok.
Yeah as someone said below, it's not. The DMG version only works if you're attacking a craeture that's at max health and it must drop all the way to zero, then any left over damage can roll onto another creature at max health
I also love to give my players opportunities to feel like badasses, killing hoards of monsters. At first I tried to use swarm mechanics, but they proved to be to monolithic, in a way that killed their purpose. Now I use Colvilles minion mechanic, and after a full arc when my players fought an army of giant termites, I must say it it is fun. His design basically combines 3rd and 4th rules.
1st and 2nd rules are probably a good idea for IRL games, and I think I`ll implement it in my next session. If it goes well, there is a chance that I`ll think about using 2nd in my online games too. I`m Not too enthusiastic about the 1st rule, Because I like drawing battle maps.
Haha you can still draw maps, just don't worry about adding a grid to it! Nah, do whatever is most fun for you. I need to look into colville's minions because now a couple comments have recommended it!
I feel like this highlights something about D&D: it exists in a space between on one side dynamic rules-lighter systems which put a bigger emphasis on just doing cool things creatively, and on the other side truly crunchy tactical systems. Personally, I think there's a lot of merit in either pole, that other systems can handle better the precise combat simulations, or are more flexible for splashy storytelling. However, I know a lot of folks like the hybrid style of 5e D&D.
I don't think people really "prefer" d&d in the same way other people like other games. Most of the time people are playing 5e because they haven't tried anything else, not because they like it for it's merits.
Your third and fourth house rules remind me a lot of Matt Colville's "minion" rules. I think it achieves basically the same benefits that you outlined, and even allows for some cool new minion abilities.
This is my favorite thing from 4E. It is truly the only thing I miss from it.
Funny thing is that 5e has an optional cleave rule that is basically that rule only it works on any attacks not just Crits.
My players LOVE my homebrew initiative system that I call Fast/Slow
I set a DC for initiative by rolling 2d10+fastest monster bonus - meet or beat and you are fast, otherwise slow, and turn progression is:
1. Lair Actions
2. Fast PCs in any order
3. Baddies
4. Slow PCs in any order
This was good mix of structure and freedom to keep things moving while still having a reason for high initiative etc
A houserule I use is to have players roll initiative for social encounters; too often combat is treated as an entirely separate game mode from the RP, and while nuancing the RP like that makes them feel more in-line, I think this idea of streamlining combat will also help bring both aspects into greater synchronicity.
I do this as well but I use charisma as the modifier for the roll. Keeps the extroverts in check and allows for the introverts (players) to get involved. Sometimes the barbarian wins the role and... well, things get interesting.
I love the balance you help bring to the D&D TH-camr space. There’s a disproportionate amount of combat focussed number crunching channels (which I love!) so I love how you are so dedicated to min-maxing the fun. Antonio Demico (Tiny Hat) is another one I like for this reason.
So much of the various "tactical" pieces of D&D combat rules really show their deep roots to the wargame genre that D&D emerged from in the first place.
Which is neither good nor bad, but if you ever wondered "But wait, why is this limitation even here?", this is the answer about 90% of the time. :)
My only objection to getting rid of movement speed is that I just rolled up a monk, and being *absurdly* mobile is one of the things I'm really looking forward to. (At level 3, I *already* am up to 50ft/move *grin*)
Speaking of Attacks of Opportunity, there needs to be more Reaction options.
Sorely!
I gotchu:
Duck: as a reaction to being targeted with an attack, you make take the duck reaction and fall prone, potentially making hits from afar miss while leaving you open to near by opponents
Readied strike (how I run opportunity attacks): if you have at least one attack unused from your turn and are not surprised, you may use one attack if the creature you are currently fighting leaves your range.
Evade: as a reaction, you may move using any movement speed you did not use on your turn (maximum of half) provided you are not affected by anything that may slow you down (difficult terrain, slow, etc.)
@@1thumbs-upmountain138... You could also just fall prone at the end of your turn by choice and still have your reaction lol.
One thing I use while dm'ing:
Players roll hit & damage dice at the same time.
If they miss the hit, but have a high damage roll, and are near something in the environment (fighting in a room with statues or pillars), sometimes i'll have their attack miss the target, but hit the statue, and then say "your swing misses the ogre but hits the statue next to it, cracking it with a loud boom on impact"
This opens up the players to consider trying to knock down the statue to block a route, to hurt an enemy, to knock them down, etc.
Great channel, keep it up!
My players like to work with strategy and tactics, so I keep the board and movements. One example of them really liking tactical movement was that minibosses and boss monsters can generate threat squares, if you are sitting in a threat square at the start of their next turn you take fixed damage, no AC, no saves, just take it to the face. Well I would routinely set up these threat squares and monsters would usually be threatening attacks of opportunity or blocking an escape route, my players had a lot of fun thinking up ways to escape these situations. My favorite one yet was when a player switched places with an enemy and the enemy got hit by the threat square instead, wasn't expecting it but we all had fun with it.
"Where was that attack every other round?" The attack roll in D&D is meant to represent the moment that your character is potentially able to get past their opponent's guard to hit them. In the reality of the fiction of D&D, melee combat is constant swinging and swords/shields/axes/whatever clashing but you sort of 'zoom in' on an attack that can actually make an impact on the fight. You aren't just standing there only swinging your sword once every six seconds when you're level 1.
Likewise, characters get opportunity attacks as a Reaction to the enemy turning their back to flee, again it's a moment that your character can get past their opponent's guard. I also generally don't have creatures with special reactions take Opportunity Attacks since they have more important things to spend their reaction on.
Exactly, it's more of an attack sequence. The AoO represents how on your turn (to roll, combat was constant) you would have had a better chance to get past their guard.
Same with movement, but no one can feasibly balance/track 16 beings moving step by step. Although now that I think about it, one entity declaring movement and another having a "move to intercept" could really hype up the tension
Those are some fun rules Bob, thanks for sharing them with the rest of us. I thought I'd also share something in return:
I've been trying to incorporate Morale into my sessions to make the game more fun. Not all monsters want to die fighting the heroes, so I use morale checks to add unpredictability to encounters. If a player scores a critical hit and one shots a monster, it forces the remaining monsters to make morale check or be Frightened of that hero. If a group of monsters without magic gets attacked with magic, they make a morale check or are Frightened of the spell caster.
Opponents are more likely to flee, surrender, or parley with the heroes to save their lives which makes combats faster, more varied in outcome, and opens up opportunities for role playing and deal making.
Thanks! And that's a great addition. I didn't mention it in the video, because I don't have any specific advice on it, but generally if the bad guys were getting whooped bad, or if their leader was taken out, I'd roll something to see if any surrender or flee. It definitely makes a fight more interesting!
About removing opportunity attacks. Do your players move more, now it's gone?
I find that creating combats, where the end goal is not a fight to death but with some purpose (stopping a ritual, getting to a boss, free captives and getting them safe) creates a combat where players want to move and need to chose.
Love your vids. ❤
Thanks! And yes, they definitely move more! It's still important to emphasize that there are other objectives though. In this module, a couple situations involve saving a prisoner, and those were the most exciting.
I actually try to provoke AoO from monsters when my allies might need to get away… it makes for good theater and something more interesting than just standing toe-to-toe
After fooling around with some of the same ideas as bob, I've gone so far as to simply not let *non major enemies* have AOOs - but *let some pcs keep them* - this makes the pcs feel really slick and swashbuckly. I let any player with martial weapons or a sneak attack (or monks) take aoos, and only them (and the occasional boss built along PCs paradigms, like a boss that will cinematically fight a lot of npcs)
It works great. You really want your pcs to punch through a ton of baddies taking little nicks until they actually hit something worth fighting. it bumps martials an eensy bit and lets them shine for having real fighting training
Another really good house rule is i said no feats by default at asi, take your stats at asi levels and we'll come up with an opportunity to train a feat per tier based on the narrative....if you want great weapon master in t2, you need to be in there swinging away in t2, etc. Some times i'll improv a little mini version of the feat's mechanic while they are working on it, like -2 for "extra damage" if they are working on sharpshooter. then i give them the feat on a level that's kind of a dead level for their class, in the middle of the tier.
The players eventually realize they are trading a little planned crunch for a character that might have both stat points AND a feat and play ball. it also kind of lets players go after thematic feats like actor or healer that get overlooked for half feats.
@@toddgrx That reminds me of XCOM Long War and the skill "Lightning Reflexes". There should definitely be a feat that let's you run past enemies, baiting out their reaction, so they can't use it on opportunity attacks towards your teammates.
I don’t want to remove it conpletely so I’m thinking about modifying it so that if you move away while facing the enemy you can without triggering an opportunity attack but you can only move half the distant since I see it as a moving backwards movement. If you turn your back then you can move full distant but you will trigger an opportunity attack (same with dash).
In 3.5 D&D, an attack roll doesn't represent one swing of the sword. It represents feints, positioning, and a strike. It's assumed that you're in constant movement, looking for the opportunity to strike. So, when someone provokes an attack of opportunity, you aren't somehow making your enemy faster by letting them swing their weapon again, you're presenting an opening and all of the swings they were already making trying to get through your defense now has another chance of landing because you aren't defending yourself in that moment. Presumably, 5th edition made the same assumption.
In reality, an attack of opportunity was just a way for front-line characters to provide some battlefield control to keep enemy melee fighters from rushing straight to the squishy caster characters. Before WotC updated 3rd to 3.5, they produced Star Wars. In the original Star Wars d20, you were forced to stop your movement if at any point your movement brought you adjacent to an enemy. There was nothing stopping you from moving past them on your next turn, but if there was an enemy in your way, you just had to stop there so they had the chance to hit you on their next turn, and heaven forbid you wanted to move past three enemies. It would take you three turns to do so. Then 3.5 introduced attacks of opportunity, and Star Wars received a revised rule set that allows attacks of opportunity, and now movement was more free.
It's funny how a lot of these houserules looks like how you begin to play ttrpgs. It's how I played anyway, when I just had a set of dices and just read a few rules. This simplicity is appealing, but I've grown fond of battle grids, using movement speed and covers strategically. I usually do theatre of the mind for small, fast-paced combats, and grids for bigger ones.
For the attack of opportunity, it's true it pins down combat. Nobody ever moves. But deleting it makes martials even less powerful. The truth is you have to give players reasons to move. I was blown away playing the videogame the dungeon of Naheulbeuk, wich is based on a ttrpg close to dnd. My characters were taking attacks of opportunity each fight because I had to move. Maybe they'd miss their attacks ? With AOE effects, objects to interact with to end the fight, places to hide, another character dying, etc, you can keep a fight moving on the grid even with opportunity attacks. To be honest, I may add more opportunity attacks, like PF2. Casting a spell with your hands should trigger a OA from a warrior in front of you. And paradoxically, it may help fights move, because you don't want to stay in front of someone getting a free attack every turn.
Since melee martials often get the short end of the stick, I carry over damage from any killing blow, not just crits. They have to roll for it, but it's a free attack.
What i do for crits is always maxing out the bonus damage. Nothing feels worse than getting hyped over a crit and your mighty strike lets you down with less than a regular roll. It's faster and the juicy numbers are always exciting!
The biggest challenge with throwing out rules for the sake of having fun is that it can topple other concepts or step on the toes of abilities other characters might have invested choices into. It’s why I NEVER allow quiet or secret casting unless you are an aberrant mind sorcerer or a sorcerer with subtle spell metamagic.
The cleaving attack is a variant rule in the DMG or somewhere in the PhB already, too.
I think I can get behind the AoO thing, then a creature who can do it immediately becomes a bigger threat. And it makes sentinel/PAM make your character feel differentiated.
For epic cinematic moments I can understand hand waving movement speed - for the sake of letting player creativity and ingenuity run wild, but for combat I think it’s important. Getting just out of range of counterspell or other abilities is HUGE. And what about the Mobile feat? Or Swashbuckler subclass features?
I’ve increasingly found the more I try to tinker, the more toes I step on with character abilities
That final cool moment with the fighter reminds me of an OSR ability of making multiple attacks against low Hit Dice minions (which I would have made those ghouls at my table). On that note, the Minion rule of 4th edition is quite useful in 5e or any DnD clone.
I usually run TotM and use a similar movement "rule" - yes, no, give me a roll (I typically tell them what they need for this roll so they can make an informed choice). However, if I removed opportunity attacks, my players would beeline for any boss/controller/caster types trying to hang back behind a line of minions. I don't use flanking, but I have a gang-up bonus - +2 for two attackers, +3 for three, and +4 for four (the max). This also makes large numbers of smaller critters more of a threat as PC ACs increase faster than most monsters' attack bonuses.
I also use static monster initiative, turning Initiative into a check (so if a player ties a monster's passive Init DC, the player goes first since it's a success.)
Nice! I like static monster initiative sometimes, and I've also been sharing the DCs more and I find that it adds a little more suspense to each roll--or I suppose it just makes the roll result more exciting when it hits the table. And hey, you can always have that boss/caster type B-line away from them! If it's an open square room, that might get old fast. But depending on the environment (varied elevation, dungeon coridors, etc) it can get really interesting without opportunity attacks.
10:22 this is a lot like the 'tour de force' rule in Spaceship Zero/Ruin Nation, the 'critical' can really be anything that the player and DM comes up with. There's a chart that you can use if you want, but it's usually the most fun to make it up on the fly. Bullets can ricochet, destroy armor, trigger grenades, whatever is fun and dramatic!
These ironically are rules that my party uses often. But I 100% commend you for adapting your game to your players game style. Well done sir👏 you followed the most important rule. Have fun
These sound like good rules for early levels and newer players. I worry that they remove some flavor and uniqueness, though. Without tracking movement, monks lose one of their comparative advantages. Rogue's Cunning Action is mostly meaningless. Feats like Mobile and Sentinel are useless without opportunity attacks or movement tracking. Spells like Longstrider, Expeditious Retreat, and Misty Step are mostly obsolete. I do like the cleave rule you added. That helps martials close the gap with casters a bit.
Maybe sticking with the Close, Near, and Far ranges and giving opportunity attacks disadvantage by default would be a good balance.
My friends and I grew up on Heroscape. The crunchiness of the rules helped keep a fair game in an adversarial set up, but my friends also now excel at coming up with creative solutions within the limitations given them. Our wives play (5e) with us, too. They generally prefer the combat over RP anyhow. I think I’m keeping most of the basic crunchiness of combat, but I really do like the idea of critical hit rollover damage…
Now I want to try using a battle map, but not with squares, just a a general guide for where players and monsters are in relation to each other and terrain. No counting, just eyeballing, and it’s realistic and doesn’t make high movement speed classes useless
I personally enjoy the crunchiness of combat in DnD, it really encourages precise strategy and tactics (in theory at least) but I will say I agree about opportunity attacks and have considered making opportunity attacks have disadvantage. One of the biggest issues as you mentioned is that nobody ever moves around in combat. But that could be addressed by having dynamic objectives on the map during the fight as well.
Yo, what!? T1J is here? Wow. Worlds collide.
I agree about the Opportunity Attacks too. They're way too strong and, consequently, every fight becomes heavily influenced by who exploit / avoid Opportunity Attacks the most. They don't even make much in-game sense to me for the reasons Bob described in the video.
I've always suspected that Flanking was the personal darling of someone on the design team, and they didn't take it well when they realised that Flanked characters would choose to move out of the way rather than just stand there gritting their teeth, surrounded by enemies.
I really like tactical combat and one of my players has basically made a speedster with mobile, so I definitely use movement speeds and opportunity attacks. But by now we have a pretty decent idea of how far 30ft is, so I often guesstimate monsters’ movement unless it’s gonna be important to the players’ or monsters’ plans; this has been working pretty well for me so far
It’s definitely worth knowing which parts of the game you like and which can be sanded away!
Great suggestions!
Excellent house rules, Bob. I've been tossing out and redoing RPG rules since my first game as GM, way back in January of 1978.
Keep up the good work!
I love these house rule videos, because sometimes you find something that will change your game! I'll try to remember that critical hit rule and see how often that would come up.
NGL got a lot of problems with what you have mentioned but then again different rules work for different tables style. Thanks for sharing 👍
This is probably one of my favorite videos of yours. Usually I dislike house rules and though I'd not implement all of these I love this list.
Thanks very much! House rules are all about personal preference, so it depends on what your goals are for the game, and what you like to see happen at the table
@@BobWorldBuilder yea for sure! I've been running games for a decade and have a whole book shelf full of different systems but Ive never considered half of that for d&d
3.5E had "5-foot-step" which allowed your melee-ranged PCs to step back without triggering Attacks of Opportunity.
Stopped watching because I stopped DMing but damn did I miss you Bob. I remember when you started and happy to see how you've grown. Great video as always
Much appreciated! :)
Your comments about opportunity attacks and the lack of movement make so much sense. After watching your video I presented the idea to my group. We decided a more incremental step. Sliding around an adjacent enemy doesn’t provoke an opportunity attack. If you move away from an adjacent enemy, they roll a d20 and on a 19 or 20 get an opportunity attack. My table of 13 year olds came up with this and I thought it was perfect! Thanks for the tip!
I've recently started DMing using theatre of the mind more, since where we meet up is in a pretty busy pub and space is a little tight. I absolutely second dropping movement from the equation, it speeds things up so much and, in my experience, prompts more creativity!
For example, the party had encountered an assassin in the study of their necromancer friend. When he tried to escape out the window, half the party dived straight through after him! I did call for some Acrobatics checks, most of which were failed, resulting in a hilarious pile-up on the bottom floor, but my players were having the time of their lives. Had they sat there counting squares and second guessing themselves, I don't think it would have been half as enjoyable.
That's a cool set-piece. Also, I played in a pub once (one of my players was only in town for an afternoon so we chose a locale close to the bus terminal). Do you find it contributes to game atmosphere?
I almost always do the "open movement" and "no opportunity attack" rules and the game is much better.
Imagine taking the Mobile feat and then your DM says he isnt tracking movement speed or opportunity attacks ...
Hahaha lol!
Yeah, I thought of that because I play a cleric so positioning is key and I have to be in the limit of my spell ranges, but I do agree that if the encounters are on the simpler side of just goblins and groups, you could ignore it
The consequence of removing Opportunity attacks from that game is that it does promote ranged attacks being better in most circumstances. The weapon you'd want to be in melee is so that you can pressure and corner people. Since you are removing the grid and de-emphasizing movement speed it may work out to be basically equivalent (The Barbarian can walk up to the elf and hit them, the elf can walk away and shoot, the barbarian follows and hits them, etc.).
But it does have a significant consequence on tactical gameplay that will encourage people to go ranged and not worry about melee people in their grill.
i have a whole slew of buffs to spells and classes in a document i keep.... but really there's one big rule at my table.
for every monster past level 5, attack is doubled and health is halved. combat can feel agonizingly slow against a lot of enemies in vanilla dnd, and i was shocked how this change gave me zero balance issues once i used it to start speeding things up.
not technically a house rule, but something else i tend to run with: i write level 1-2 encounters so that enemies will not kill the players if they win. and if the players lose, it sets up interesting plot hooks for later. for example, maybe your job is to transport a powerful magical item when your party is attacked by goblins. if you lose, they steal the item and all of your valuable equipment and ransom you for pennies, and then much later at level 3 or 4 you have a problem where magically enhanced goblins are roaming around as a legitimate problem for governments in the area. this is harder to write and account for but sure beats the Wild Beyond The Witchlight approach of "level 1 encounters are so dangerous that there aren't any"
Love it! So simple
Great vid!
Some good ideas here!
But i must point out that the "standard flanking rule" 4:30 is actually an optional rule, and not a standard one. :)
When I learned to play roleplaying games in 2e it was all theater of the mind. It's cool seeing you make the same kind of changes I did to 5e. Especially with goblins; the goblin stats in the books are fully geared and equipped. My goblins are unarmored and have daggers, clubs, and thrown rocks (12 AC +5 1d4+2). The leader is the only one using the book profile.
At least until higher levels, and in appropriately organized settings, where they're actually dealing with somewhat competent and equipped goblins. If they're in a random cave though? And they just moved in? They're not going to have much gear.
Anyways, great video
You can use Pathfinder's step mechanic. You can use your half of your movement to take a 5 feet movement without oppurtunity.
I don't know about the movement thing, but I like the idea that crits roll over damage so I'll definitely try that one out.
Flanking is optional and you can easily do without it but some classes and builds are dependent on tracking movement and opportunity attacks to make their roles in combat more impactful. Using minions or near minions with 1 hit point or low hit points does wonders for the balance in 5e.
If movement becomes irrelevant, it's going to be important to consider how to compensate for that with classes/abilities/equipment that are movement-oriented. What does your Monk get if the difference between a 30 speed and a 45 speed is erased? What does Expeditious Retreat do now? That's a lot of ripple effects.
This is my thoughts also. I have similar problems with his weird takes on initiative that makes Alert significantly worse, along with robbing a lot of classes/subclasses of features that boost / give advantage to initiative with no compensation.
I like what he's trying to do but a lot of it seems to remove any kind of perk you'd get from playing a particular class so you're better off playing something else and you can get that benefit anyway, or at least not have it ignored.
Edit: for example, everyone is basically getting Mobile for free, just in a really convoluted way which punishes Rogues, Monks and anyone else who can disengage or prevent AoO, or have high movement speeds naturally or movement perks (tabaxi for example).
As someone completely new to D&D and related RPGs, this and so much of your content is very encouraging. I was always hesitant to jump in because so many GMs were sticklers for the rules and regulations. But this is a game, it's supposed to be fun! If I didn't want fun I'd be doing yard work instead during my free time. Bending, modifying, and changing things to encourage people to play in a style they enjoy? I'm all for it. Thanks for doing what you do!
I like the crit rule, I'm not sure if you assumed it in this way, but I would make it an option only for martials to be able to do that. Although casters do have some spell attacks, there's not many, and it would be nice to give martials a little bit of an edge in this way.
One of my favorite house rules is for 1st level hp, take max hit die plus Con score instead of Con modifier. It adds 10-15 hp, which isnt game breaking at later levels, but makes a big difference in those first few.
An Attack of Opportunity is not a free attack. Its costs your reaction for the round. Though it doesn't limit every character, this is something to take into consideration for your players. A reaction is usually used to cast a defensive spell or action, so choosing to make an attack of opportunity can potentially leave you more vulnerable. If you want to tweek it, perhaps have the AoOp cost a Bonus Action, or make the next attack on that character have advantage, or AoOp are made with disadvantage, or perhaps tie it to a feat. OR!!!! Make a rule that, if you are next to an enemy and your character makes an AoO on another enemy, the original enemy gets an AoOp on YOUR character. And then the other player who is flanking the first enemy makes an AoO, and then the enemy adjacent to THEM makes an AoOp, and then the 3rd player who is flanking THAT enemy makes an AoOp.....
We run facing rules instead of flanking. So a creature can choose to turn around as a reaction, or to op attack, but not both. Many creatures have different reactions as well. From extra defense to retaliation. And loads of class abilities, feats and spells are all about reaction. Like shocking grasp. It's incredibly useful for a caster to both attack and get away from melee. It would be pointless without opportunity attacks. Movement rules are half the game. Removing them is like wanting to remove HP because it's too much bother keeping track of it.
Melee attacks started not as actual attacks, but as "chances to hit."
That's where opportunity attacks came from. When someone turns to run, their attacker(s) get a "chance to hit" them. They might miss. They might hit. Melee combat works okay that way, but ranged attacks only work that way if you do away with ammo (because melee attacks don't have ammo).
Awesome homebrew rules Bob and if I hadn't fully committed over to PF2E I'd definitely look at introducing a few of these great concepts into my games.
Thanks! And that's fair enough haha, PF 2e has plenty of rules to work with already! :P
Not counting squares still works well in PF2e. DM just has to tell the player how many actions it'll take to reach where they want to go (it's what I did for pretty much all of our Abomination Vaults campaign).
The killing lots of creatures in one go is a little trickier, but is similar to making more enemies work like troops when you want lower tier enemies to stand a chance, but still let the players mow through hordes of baddies.
One thing I'm probably doing in my next PF2e campaign is treating initiative like a standard check (I hate rolling initiative) and the players roll their initiative vs the highest Perception DC of the enemies. Players who succeed can go in whatever order they want, then the enemies in whatever order the DM wants, then the players who failed can go in whatever order they want.
Tis similar to how I did initiative during my last campaign (each side rolls a d10, winners go in whatever order followed by losers in whatever order), but requires the ignoring of less rules and my players like rolling individual initiative for whatever reason.
@Jonathan Cormier I like the grittiness, and depth of tactical options presented by having the minutiae of details in PF2E so I won't be tweaking anything for those games. I run plenty of abstract systems though such as the Star Wars RPG by FFG and Conan 2D20 by Modiphius where zones, or distances such as short-medium-long are used. They also use mobs of enemies which makes big combats easy to run and initiative lite rules such as "the players go and then the Game Master unless the Game Master spends a point of Doom to allow a mob of enemies or a toughened or nemesis enemy to go before the players" etc.
@@byronkooper neat. Wasn't sure if you were looking to use similar rules in PF2e or not. I like the amount of player options supported by mechanics in PF2e, there's just a handful of things I either don't care about or want to streamline on my side of the table.
The 2d20 system looks real neat, but every actual play I've seen of it ends up feeling like you're playing the momentum pool more than playing the game (if that makes sense), which was always a turn off for me
Oh man these are all great. I do some very similar rules. First off, if any player has left over damage points after killing a foe that left over damage rolls over to the next target assuming they are in range of the weapon which would also include an arrow going through on target into another! Critical hits get full damage plus another damage roll (of course), I don’t make my players “prepare spells” daily (you either know the spell or you don’t & we don’t track spell slots any more in lieu of a “roll to cast system”. With all of those tweaks that favor the players I took a few liberties with combat too, a critical fail on any attack or spell cast means some type of negative consequence. The spell may misfire & teleport the PC somewhere else (not too far away) or the barbarian may miss the target & accidentaly hit the next nearest PC for 1D4 of damage.
It's not that it's a free attack. It's a part of the fact that there is a back-and-forth with attack and defense. But in dropping your defense to do something else, that opens up an opportunity to attack.
Opportunity Attack makes sense in a duel, where the enemy is only focused on one character and, if that character lowers their guard, the enemy is going to see an opportunity. When battling a bunch of undisciplined goblins who are frantically darting glances at all the other adventurers in the room, the chance of one of them recognizing that moment of weakness and taking advantage of it goes down exponentially.
@@rgilbert3614 Yes, but the "story" of the combat is it's not actually one person taking a turn, and then waiting half an hour for their turn to come back around - it's all happening at the same time. You don't just make "one attack." You're poking and trying to get past the guard.
It's not "your turn" when you turned around and fled. You fled while they were attacking you. An attack that was just another stab you would have blocked was one that you didn't block because you ran. Or otherwise dropped your own guard.
Now, this is an entirely separate issue as to whether or not AoOs are good (for your group).
@@SangoProductions213 I agree that it is all happening at one time. The round is supposed to take 6 seconds (although I have players at my table who take so long to min-max their turns that another player once got up and baked cookies from scratch between their turns). However, since it IS all happening at one time, it would seem impossible for most low-level combatants to be aware of every opportunity around them at all times. Plus, if one's blade is already clashing with the enemy before them, they are not going to have that opportunity to lash out at other foes rushing past. So only a creature focused on their target would see that an opportunity from their target if that target disengaged.
Basically, it should require a "fog of battle" mechanic which, to keep it simple, says only the target of a creature's attacks is vulnerable to attacks of opportunity from that creature. Or, if one of my players wanted to roll for opportunity, I would say it was a Wisdom check and set the target's DEX as the number to beat (which simulates their speed at closing that window of opportunity v. the attacker's ability to recognize the opening).
I think telling it like you're dropping your defence to turn around and run is not congruent with what would actually happen. You'd carefully but quickly step away until you're out of reach, and then turn around.
Opportunity attacks only really makes sense if you're engaged with multiple enemies and trying to move past or between them, not moving away from them. Against one enemy you can most of the time keep up your defence, even if you're trying to get past them.
@@AnotherDuck As represented by the withdraw action or 5 foot step.
I really love the 4th house rule!! It brings the epic momentum into a combat!! EXCELSIOR!! My house rules of dual weapon combat for ANY fantasy RPG are...
1/ if you have enough agility, you can attack 2 targets WITH NO PENALTY. Each target then deals its own damage PER weapon. You attack 1 target with 2 weapons WITH NO PENALTY, the target deals its own damage PER weapon. It's simple, fast effective and highly fun.
2/ when you FUMBLE your attacks, that's where the fun for the DM is at its best:
...2 FUMBLE attacks, the weapons, may be stuck into a body, an armor, a breach, blocked, or broken, etc... Welcome to Hell!! The GM does what they want!! HELL YEAH!! Of course, the event must be in par with the situation--it's at the GM discretion.
...1 SUCCESS and 1 FUMBLE attacks, the FUMBLE weapon must be "stuck", blocked for the best, and it may really annoy the player in their moves, like the character is being "hold" for a second by the blocked weapon ("Damned!! Mestuck!! Humpff!!"). It may happens any things the GM wants to in this tiny short time, again at the GM discretion.
It's up to the GM to adapt or adjust these short rules for their scenario. The GOAL is to give the players AND the GM all the fun only a RPG can do!!
Great houserules for the fantastic D&D-game. Your videos are really useful and serves as an inspiration for me (and I started GMing 1978).
I really appreciate that!
We made a house rule at our game that there will be many ways to bring a dead player back. It's not just the typical go to a priest. Other options include being reincarnated as another race, coming back as one of the Ravenloft lineages or a lycanthrope or even making a deal with a devil or some dark entity. 🙂
So depending on where the party is, the method of resurrection might be different.
Great work as always Bob! If it was my video, I would just make a point of pointing out that every single one of those rules doesn't work if your players are into tactical combat. Sure, they may speed up combat, but they take away from the actual tactics and leans more into the storytelling aspect (which is really really great if that's what your group is aiming for!) But again, great work!
Yeah, I can't imagine playing like that. It would sick all the fun out of the game and make it nothing but a grind to count HP. Not to mention imbalanceing the class abilities completely. Rip anyone wanting to play a rogue.
Another great video. Thank Professor DM for long ago telling us about you. I love your honesty and your channel is at the top of my list. I run 5 sessions per week on Start Playing Games and I can tell you that while I do NOT use flanking and I sometimes fudge a little distances, I could never get rid of opportunity attacks. There would be way too much back and forth to stay in some Twilight Cleric's aura/sphere and fighters and rogues would run to the line and run back, over and over. My minions would just run past the front line and attack the squishies, etc. For some reason I seem to attract strategic players and they love the strategy of battlefield placement. I counter by also having placement and strategy as the minions and that seems to be what they enjoy. I would love to see one of your sessions to see how these rules work. The #1 rule I want to make right now is that Good Berries don't exist. lol
I usually like to make crits cinematic and brutal. And if a crit killed a creature, all other affiliated creatures are automatically feared of the “killer” for their next turn.
Yep! When I run a game, if a PC cuts a head off, the rest of the PC's party are energized and get an extra +1, while the opponents seeing their buddy get decapitated have to make a Wisdom check or run away.
I wouldn't use any of these rules as you presented them (maybe I would use the last one if I wasn't already doing something similar), but I do love house rules and I am glad your group liked it.
Yeah! Hermetic Dnd! I think my favourite homebrew idea from the RPG's I've checked out this year since the OGL debacle has been that, whenever you're not sure about something, roll a d6, a 1-3 results in the worse outcome for the players, and a 4-6 results in the better outcome for the players. Not only does it remove any bias I might have as a DM, it also removes all the time I might spend thinking about how something unimportant might work. Hoorah!
I use this but modified
1- bad, and
2- bad
3- bad, but
4- good, but
5- good
6- good, and
Funny you should mention that house rule! I've also been doing something like that, but depending on what exactly the players want to happen, it may only happen on a 5-6, or even only a 6. The best instances were in dungeons where one player kept wanting to pin doors shut, so we'd roll 50/50 chance each time, and his reactions were priceless either way. It's wild what players can find fun xD
I do a similar thing to your goblin rule. One of the few thing I liked in 4e was the minions. One hit and they are down. So many times I don't even track hit points for mooks. If they are hit, they are down. (I still let the players roll of course)
When it comes to bosses, I tend to reduce their HP by half, and increase their damage...usually double. Makes dragons as terrifying as they SHOULD be, but not the long combat slog they tend to be unmodified.
The lack of movement speed counting and opportunity attacks would have really negated my current character. Monk/rogue with a lot of abilities to stun opponents. With haste I managed to move 270ft before attacking, which is fricking ridiculuos and would have never worked in a non-movement counti scenario. So while those two changes speed up combat by a lot, it also discourages certain types of character.
Getting rid of movement rules and attacks of opportunity is a great start, I speed things up further by ditching individual rolled initiative
Im fairly sure that there is something similar to rule 4 in the DMG, where excessive damage done to a creature can be transfered to a second creature.
Yup, cleaving through creatures I believe. Been using it for years.
I like attacks of opportunity and don't like that moving into reach no longer triggers one, as it makes the utility of a pole arm much more realistic. Without attack of opportunity I'd have to come up with some other rule to explain why pike lines were so effective.
To solve the "attack of opportunity when leaving combat" issue I allow my players to "Disengage" as a Bonus Action, before turning and fleeing. Basically you keep your guard up while you break contact and the opponent doesn't get an attack of opportunity. Frightened creatures cannot use the disengage bonus action so draw attacks of opportunity as they panic and flee.
man's got house rules
Love the idea of excess crit damage spilling over to other targets, consider that stolen!
I'm currently running Stormwreck Isle for a new group, a rule I'm trying out is that critical hits happen when an attack roll is 5+ more than the target's AC, *but* crits do maximum damage (not double dice), so a fighter's longsword might do 1d8+3 on a normal hit and 11 on a critical. Crits happen more often which makes combat faster and more risky and thrilling.
I'm also trying out a rule that monsters have a "Wounds" value, so normal minions have 1, elites have 2-3, bosses have 4+, etc. Every critical hit inflicts a Wound as well as doing damage, when the monster has taken max Wounds it's considered defeated regardless how much HP is has. Again, intention is to make combat faster, empower players (important for newbies!) and less "punch the bag of meat points".
Very cool ideas! I think the AC+5 for crits is a thing in Pathfinder. If it is, I'm sure someone will confirm in the comments because I've already seen a couple "just play finder" style comments haha
@@BobWorldBuilder ah cool, not really familiar with Pathfinder so that's a fun coincidence. Tbh I'm only running 5E to get new players in the hobby, once they've got their feet wet I'll be introducing them to other games like One Ring and Best Left Buried.
These sound like some fun rules! I'm definitely keeping opportunity attacks at my table, but getting rid of movement speed would up the flow of combat for sure...
Thanks! I feel that those two work well together, but test em out and stick with what's for for your group!
Some of these rules nerf core class or feat features like cunning action, PAM, mobile just to name a few. You take hit and run and give it to everyone you destroy the rogue.
Videos like this are what I love. Straight to the point, not an hour long audio novel that could have been covered in 10-15 minutes. Personal opinion! Keep up the great content!
Hi Bob, love your content. All of these modifications are great ideas. I think I'll try some of them in my next group. Simplifying things makes for a more immersive experience, so this is RPG gold. Thanks for the advice and keep making awesome content!
I think throwing movement out is great for Theatre of the Mind, but the moment a map is on the table, it does matter especially for monks and rogues who have core abilities around moving faster than other classes. I also measure how far I can move and where before my turn, as do my fellow players to make things smoother. Honestly, a better way to help with this if you use a grid or battlemap; is when players write down their speed is to write down the amount of tiles they can move in parenthesis so we don't need to ask "How far can I move? It says 30 feet" "That means you can move (counts on fingers) 6 tiles"
I think removing attacks of opportunity throws the tactics side of DnD out the window. Positioning no longer matters nor has consequences, even for theatre of the mind you can just walk away from enemies as you will or just bowl past the 20 guards because they can't do anything to you. However, that being said, I know there are tables who don't care about the tactical side of DnD, they just want to focus on the fantasy, but for me the tactics makes it fun and grounds the fantasy because we had to earn the ground we gain by hand both mechanically and narratively .
I think that's an interesting way to do CR, but the big advantage of the monster manual is that you don't have to worry so much about making the numbers. In my experience the numbers you need to care about aren't the CRs or the monsters', it's the party's. I balance everything around my party's stats (AC avg, HP total, hit avg, average dpr, maybe save avg), easier encounters lean to the low side of the averages, hard ones lean to the higher side or even to the maximum of a player in some instances and I choose my monsters in the boundaries of these metrics and then make sure I also take into account the terrain and dpr of my monsters to make sure it's within the realms of reason for my party to handle. Granted, I run my games online so I have access to everyone's sheets, but if I were at a table, I'd probably just ask for everyone's sheets a session or two after leveling up and write down all the math on that end.
Crits allowing for a "Blade Storm" or "Double Tap" approach I think is really cool when paired with monsters with 1-3 hit tallies (aka ones that PCs can kill in 1-3 hits), but I might even go a step further and make you do the highest damage possible and then roll the extra dice (I can't remember what those crits are called. My table just calls them Crunchy Crits) so bad rolls can allow your fighter to cleave and hack like a boss even if he rolls natural ones for damage. It also makes crits feel much better for monsters you can't cleave through with like 5+ hits in them. Honestly, I might even just make cleaving/blade storm a part of weapon attacks in general so martials have access to some kind of "AoE" by default since casters already have that capability built in via spells.
Bob, this is an awesome video full of valuable tips for players and GMs. Well done.
Probably one of the dumbest hills I'm willing to die on is the enormous difference between using the "rule of cool" to build upon the rules and build upon player abilities, and using the "rule of cool" to disregard the... rules of uncool, I guess. This video really perfectly illustrates that difference with rolls that allow players to feel more powerful and competent without discarding your sense of your campaign world as a logically consistent place.
Wow, these are some hot takes. Can't imagine using them myself, I would genuinely have a lot less fun with the strategy of movement, opportunity attacks and harder combat being taken away. I understand rescaling low level combat a bit, but I can't imagine doing it at levels higher than level 2, maybe 3.
(Except the fourth houserule, critical hits being cooler is just cool)
This isn't to say you can't play with these rules, but I wouldn't like them myself at all.
I like the critical hit in a Spanish game called "Vieja Escuela" (Old School), in which critical hits give you a array of Tacticals options: Low the enemy AC, give him disvantage or advantage to your party, etc. it make it more interesting than "double attack"
That third rule sounds very similar to Into the Odd, in which every attack automatically hits, and you only roll for damage. In that game, armor reduces damage.
One I implement at my table for combat is the "All enemy NPC's share one initiative." This makes it a lot easier to track when the enemies move and attack, especially when you run things like zombie hordes or a bunch of guards. I also do a roll for any/all friendly NPCs like escorted characters, guides, etc.
With regards your third rule... after my very first ever session as DM, watching my party flounder to hit a single Goblin in that starter campaign Phandalin... I made the "Newbie Rule". Any roll to hit within 2 points of a creature's AC was counted as a partial hit and did half the damage. This rule was in place until the PCs reached level 3. Worked out perfectly. Combat sped up, characters were hitting things almost every round (even if for 1 or 2 points of damage). Game changer.
I've been DM of lotr for long time and I always have done similar things. Now I'm starting in D&D and I'm glad someone mentioned it. For me if you high roll in attack, damage should be higher.
Something I loved from lort was the critics as then it came the "narrative part of the combat" (yes those tables where rounded numbers like 80-90-100-110-120 are critical/deadly hits), the higher the roll, the more likely to stun, lacerate the enemy.
Also Lort is full of moments of broken weapons or shields, which usually brings very funny moments and moments to improvise.
Yeah, i would implement none of these rule except the last one, bc i like to optimize a little, and if i build a character to have a lot of speed, or to slow down enemy and make them not even want to approach me, well theater of mind does not work
The last one tho is great, martial boost my beloved
I see what you mean, but 100% if a player designed their character to be fast or effective at slowing enemies, I would take that into account. That character would just be able to move farther than "normal" distance, or they'd be able to slow enemies to a crawl. We had situations where our druid transformed into creatures with faster speeds, and when our cleric turned undead, and everything worked great!
I plan on running a Mausritter campaign after we finish Icewind Dale, and I’m for SURE not gonna make players worry about movement speed
Theatre of the mind combat is something that I've REALLY struggled with, and I think movement speed is a big part of that! Would there be any chance of you putting out a sample combat situation as a demo?
A LOT of people have trouble imagining the scene without a visual cue. I didn't realize that until a player thought we were lying when we said we could!
@@yzfool6639 If I was just dealing with say my character and one monster, I could probably keep track of it in my head. When it's multiple characters and mobs though, nope I need something.
I don't doubt some can hold all that in their head, if you can more power to you!
For an example you can listen to Not Another D&D Podcast or Dice Camera Action, two podcasts that are entirely played with theater of the mind. There is no particular skill btw, I learned to play D&D with theater of the mind and it was just natural. Later we switched to a grid for a more tactical combat, but if you want a faster paced game with more cool things happening - although at the cost of a less strategic game - theater of the mind is cool.
The Rule of Cool is the most important rule at my table, I'm glad you posted this, I hope it helps new GM's understand that rules are more of a guideline than a black and white code that has to be followed at all times.
I'm not sure about taking out opportunity attacks. If they want to disengage, they should take an action to do it with the Disengage Action. If they are just fighting but backing up, they are not really getting away. If they actually flee faster (turn and run), the enemy can get an extra swing in while they are undefended. I'm not sure what the problem is.
I already do all of these. Great stuff. I don't go by exact rules. I want the story to get where I want it to go.
I always think of the corebooks as "tips & tricks" instead of "laws and rules", because why follow a lot of rules and not have any fun?
That's how my first group played and it was awesome!
I used to use the rollover damage rule, but I started doing Perkins Crits and that's the preferred method now because HUGE NUMBERS!
For those that don't know, on a crit you get the maximum amount of damage on the dice you would roll for damage and then you roll once normally adding that to the max damage.
Ex. Crit with a Short sword: 6 + 1d6 + Bonus
Yes, this stacks with Smites and Sneak Attacks making Rogues and Paladins beefy.
The "making enemies weaker" is not a bad idea, but I'd go for the minions rules in 4e. 3 HP or 1 HP are pretty much the same 😂 I'm running a modified version of Phandelver and opted to ignore the surprise rules for my party of 5 and they still had a tough time from the ambush to the cave.
As I replied to another comment, I didn't want my PCs to be able to kill a goblin by throwing a rock at them lol, so 3 HP and 1 HP still have an important difference :P
@@BobWorldBuilder I see, that's understandable. In any case, tweaking monsters HP and AC sounds a lot more fun than reducing number of monsters. Action economy might be against the party at the start (and being surrounded by enemies could create a cool dramatic moment) but as the battle rages on, they get to turn odds on their favor and defeat the bad guys. I might try this on my next session, they're gonna fight a lot of Red brands on the streets of Phandalin 😁