How realistic is Dungeons and Dragons combat?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
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An in depth look at how D&D pen and paper tabletop rpg combat would work in real life, such as the round order, range, movement, and fighting in a five foot square.
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Just to clarify, it's true there are feats/classes that allow you to lung forward and attack an additional 5ft, but my point is that in real life any noob can lung forward when attacking, it's very basic, and restricting it to a special class or learned feat/talent makes no sense. A level 1 warrior of any type is supposed to be well trained and proficient in their weapons, and saying they can't lung is very unrealistic and unsatisfying, I describe this same thing in the video where I talk about making wide sweeping attacks even when a low level.
Also, D&D may claim every combatant's actions happen within the 6 seconds of the round but this is directly contradicted by the successive order of the turns. If I move 30ft and then attack, the rules are clear and we have confirmed this in reality that those actions took 6 seconds, and therefore if anyone reacts to my new position, it has to have happened *after* that six second period. This gets compounded when another party member then tries to heal my character from getting damaged in that same round. If it all happens at the same time the healer started to move to heal me before I was even damaged because my character was damaged at the end of the turn. Did the healer know the future? no, they are reacting *after* my actions and then undertake actions that also take six seconds to preform, ergo, according to how player actions play out in the D&D rules it is literally impossible in many instances for every combatant's turns to happen simultaneously within 6 seconds.
hi shad
How about making that lunge skill a basic action available to all classes for combat im pritty new to D&D and just curious if it would work that way
My Fix:
- +5ft for every weapon
- disadvantage if the target is 5ft or closer too you
- daggers ignore this drawback
This also makes daggers more usable, and makes grappling more interesting
No wonder lol 😂!
I don’t think you comprehend how long I’ve been waiting for a video like this
this feels like shad had an argument with his DM that he didn't get over with yet.
he's the GM
Right where my mind went
You know little known fact, but Orcs actually LOVE to argue peacefully and non violently.
But its a trick. Don't fall for it.
You see, the more the orc sticks around and argues peacefully and non violently, the more the one they are arguing with will more and more be tempted by their instincts to turn to violence because they can't win the argument.
This is what the orc wants.
Once the one the orc is arguing with turns to violence the orc will then grab his 45 pound 2 handed mace, smile smugly, and say "You attacked first!"
This is the real reason so many people think orcs aren't smart.
Its actually a method of weeding out those who show signs of weakness without breaking any laws.
@@rachdarastrix5251 But my character is Half-Orc. What does that mean for her?
Shad fact: Shad can reach anywhere in the material plane using his lunge technique, that's why he's so mad at not being able to lunge in d&d
Monk bugbear has entered the chat
There's a subclass of warrior called battle master can lunge though.
@@shaneross739 honestly the closest thing to Shad's actual class, given his in-depth understanding of weapons and techniques
Additional Shad Fact: When Shad uses 1% of his true power his reach extends into the Astral Plane
@@showtime6310 3% places him far into ginnungagap
I can’t believe the DM forgot shad was a battle master fighter and could use a lunging attack to hit an opponent 10ft away without moving
He's been using too many resources since he last rested. He's out of superiority dice.
This is a great point. The average farmer or tradesman, or even a wizard, thief, druid, barbarian, etc... all don't have the same level of training that a knight or professional man-at-arms would have. This is reflected in the ability of the trained combatant to execute combat maneuvers like Shad's.
Note: I love D&D and I love Shad's channel!
Shad should be able to use Vicious Mockery as well...
@Dillon Brunschon Shad has a decent bit of practice compared to most people, but very little compared to a trained soldier or even a city guard in a fantasy setting. Just look at how open he leaves himself when he demonstrates his lunge, that (in dnd terms) is an example of stepping in, attacking, and then stepping back, which provokes attacks of opportunity (IE a counter attack). There are many ways to avoid that issue in DnD though, such as training extensively to be a Battle Master or taking the Martial Adept feat. That, to me, represents doing enough training and practice that you can actually do these types of thing without leaving yourself open to an immanent counter attack.
@@cowmanthe3rd I would just like to add what I thought was shad's point, "That anyone can do that", but he didn't say you can do it and not be vunerable(if I missed of him saying something like that, then sorry, my comment was useless).
Lunging Attack: When you make a melee weapon attack on your turn, you can expend one superiority die to increase your reach for that attack by 5 feet. If you hit, you add the superiority die to the attack's damage roll.
Shad is a battlemaster
Was gonna comment this
That makes sense
Something Shad should realize: DnD keeps the core rules simple, and fancy things like manouvers become classes or subclasses. that way, the player that wants them can access them but everyone else isn't boggled down by them. Every player gets to use the rules (and only those extra rules) that they are interested in.
My thoughts exactly
or a pathfinder fighter with the lunge feat
"how Realistic is combat in DnD*
Me, a caster: >.> not very.
I was about to argue, until I realized your very existence is unrealistic
Monks who can move almost 100ft in six second intervals: laughs
Barbarians who can get so angry that bladed weapons have trouble cutting through their bare skin: laughs manically
Druid: laughs in Dire-Gorilla
@@kingsadvisor18 Moving 100 ft in six seconds is humanly possible. Hard with equipment but possible.
Me, an American with 20 firearms who plays a wizard or Artificer>> actually its pretty realistic.
My Half-Dragon wielding two Huge Tonfas and flying while wearing full plate armour: Incredibly realistic, what are you talking about?
By this logic, surely in response your enemy can, lean away from your lunging attack? Instead of standing statically as presented, hence you must move forward more.
Exactly, especially if the attack comes from over 5 feet away, you have enough time to see it coming.
Combat rules in D&D are not supposed to be "realistic", it's just a mechanic to transform a very complex fluid environment down to a few easily managed moves. Things will be totally unrealistic, and that is expected. If you make a change to make things more realistic, then as you aptly demonstrated, a counter can be made to show that the "improved" version is actually just as unrealistic. (For instance, the attacker is stretching so far out with his sword that although contact is made, there is much less force so we could say the target takes half damage and has a +4 to AC because he can see the attack coming from miles away...)
Also, the 5E rules state that you control an *5ft area*
This means you *could* theoretically be 10ft away while in adjacent 5ft squares by both being on the edge of the areas. And fighters and rogues *can* move mostly freely as a bonus action to signify them being able to recover from lunges, dodged/missed attacks, and such more easily than other classes.
I think that's the point of AC. Since AC also describes your ability to dodge attacks or how likely you are to avoid the attack.
That's what rolling to hit is for, it would determine if your enemy dodges your attack.
Yah and like the dummy is not even at the back of the square, like lunging into the other square he just hits the bummy in the center if it's square. More like 7 feet then 10
Just looking at the lunge recovery, yeah that looks like you'd be vulnerable to a counter attack. An attack of opportunity if you will.
Yeah, but then why does *not* pulling back after doing that lunge remove that possibility ?
@@314Pirasy Do you mean after a lunge or after a step? If recovering forward from a lunge, you'd be more vulnerable than stepping. Would this not just mean that a lunge of any sort would leave you open to an attack of opportunity? This doesn't help Shad's case, but it might make for an interesting mechanic (trade an AoO for 5 more feet attack range if you were more or less certain of a killing blow).
If a step though, better control of balance and relatively slower movement mean you can act more defensively.
@@bencochrane6112, I would say that if you "end your movement in the closer square", then it would simply be interpreted as not lunging but performing a more calculated and defensive move instead. Or lunging with an immediate transition to the guard as you step forward.
@@TheRealMeatwad Yeah agreed, basically a step and attack, which already exists in the rules. Which renders the lunge as a core attack mechanic somewhat obsolete: you can do it, but returning to your same spot offers an attack of opportunity. Rogues can Cunning action to get out of it, and fighters have a manoeuvre that does the same.
A proper parry would knock him prone
Shad I would like to thank you for this opportunity. Now when someone in my game wants to just “lean real hard” I can roll and justify the response “the ogre bashes your unprotected back into the dirt, your jab does negligible damage and merely scrapes his nose” and I’ll have an in scale video demonstrating why that was a terrible idea
while also being able to say "the ogre leans away" and since all actions in the 6-second round occur simultaneously, the ogre target is AS allowed as the players to not TECHNICALLY leave their square while "leaning really hard"
I'd unironically purchase that Shad "Figurine" in the thumbnail. And I don't even play DnD.
How much woudl you pay? I'll model it and send you the STL to be 3d printed.
Me too, shad looks really awesome in it!
Hero Forge custom mini I mocked-up. \o/
www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D12032736/
Ed: added the bow. Ed.2: Fixed the beard color and bow clipping with the quiver. Ed.3: Added base items.
I'd use it for warhammer
Needs more weapons. Haha
GM: And Now you have Syphilis
Me: Bold of you too assume I don't already
GM: O_O
You see, our party just got back from the Warren's and I was afflicted with Hopeless, so to reduced stress I was put in the Brothel, but after that there wasn't enough money to put me in the sanatorium.
D O U B L E S Y P H I L I S
@@Marinealver RIP. Guess your not going back to the dungeons for a few weeks.
Weaponized syphilis; you can't see.
fun fact, you can attack 10ft away in 5e, if you "lunge" which i believe is one of the Battle Master Maneuvers
"Lunging Attack
When you make a melee weapon attack on your turn, you can expend one superiority die to increase your reach for that attack by 5 feet. If you hit, you add the superiority die to the attack's damage roll."
Which is what i'd say you did.
Also, spears do not have reach in 5e.
you need a pike.
@JoeRingo118 ah yes, forgot about that one. But yeah, it makes sense, with spear training you learn to lunge more, increasing your damage and reach.
There's also a "Lunge" feat in pathfinder, which does the same, kinda (+5ft range, -1 to hit). So I'd say he just had the feat and did a lunge over there. Even the -1 to hit seems adequate.
Shad is just a battle master who can do Lunging attack maneuver at will
Yes but in reality any noob can lung, they're very basic, restricting it to a special class makes no sense.
@@shadiversity not alot of things in dnd do make sense
Shad: Look! I can hit further than this 5 foot radius
Also Shad: *leaves 5 foot radius*
Just what i was thinking.
As a DM i'm just here thinking "that just counts as moving 5ft, attacking and getting back lol"
@@isphus and a cheeky attack of oppurtunity from the opponent
"Look my back foot is planted!"
**Stands with back foot on tip-toes and his front foot planted.**
@@Ryotbh *and still barely has enough range to mildly scrape the opponent with his attack*
@@SpiderconPrime Which should make sense, since it would be a an exchange of blows.
Shad, you made a big mistake. It's not 6 seconds in a turn, it's 6 seconds in a ROUND. As in those 4 adventurers and 2 orcs taking their turn? All happening within the same 6 seconds.
Also, reactions exist! These can be taken once a round by each player (or monster) and are used to do something in response to something someone else did. Did you shoot an arrow at me? I'll use my reaction to create a magical barrier, making it harder to hit me!
Thanks for the correction.
Did that Orc just try to move past the Paladin to attack the Sorcerer on the back lines? Sentinel Feat!
@Vyldim That's why I used it!
You missed also what happens if there is an enemy in the other squares... and that they are not FFX dummies... they move, like you.
I still agree on 2handers reach. :)
Yeah, the whole time he was explaining I was like... that's not how it works. It _seems_ to all happen in succession because it's easier to just show the effects of each thing right as each player declares what they're doing. But in actuality, it's no different than what he was describing for Cogent, aside from using the same attack roll for the entire round.
"What if I lean forward?"
>They lean back
it's a lot harder to lean back without losing your balance or giving up your position than it is leaning forward
Unless you're Neo of course
The trouble I see with the leaning forward to attack is your attack is so telegraphed at that point now. Yeah, difficult to lean back yourself but you have area you're in, side step the attack or quickly step-back within your 5 feet of square. At his range he was barely touching the bandit in the center of their square, they had room to move and shift away.
I fully agree standing in an adjacent square is ridiculous looking at it in RL like this, but attacking from SO far away and STAYING that far away is also a bit ridiculous.
@@lotoreo you can also just step back? It's quite common. You see boxers do it all the time too /shrug/
@@zimzimph yeah that's true actually, but that's stepping back and not leaning back..
you know, I think this all comes down to the fact that the very way DnD treats combat is a very bad way to get at the intricacies of actual fighting
The easiest solution to this is to make attacks outside your effective range, be made with disadvantage.
our universe: "But what about dragons?"
alternate universe: "But what about dungeons?"
Kolyan Velius HA!
As someone who does larping I can honestly say, if u are fighting someone who isn’t a literal battle dummy and u lunge in to attack with anything other than a polearm, they WILL block and u WILL be killed. That’s why DnD says u need to be 5ft away to actually hit
not true, I've seen lunges successfully used for sword on sword fighting, both with and without shields.
@@thekaxmax were they done by rookies or people who trained a lot?
@@deadpoolvdante a lot. SCA fighters of many years practice, fencers or many years practice, LARP fighters with experience. Lunges work against people with no polearms. Note that the lunge wouldn't be a standard fencing move if the statement that they didn't work was true.
@@thekaxmax so in other words, people who trained to attack with lunging and had a lot of experience. So if they were a DnD character they would’ve had the lunging attack feat. The video says anybody who can pick up a sword could successfully do a lunge attack, which is what I’m disagreeing with
@@deadpoolvdante Almost all sword-only arts that I know of, and I've done several and studied a lot more, have a lunge move. The only major ones I know of that don't are things like katana--which has a lunging swing that acts like a lunge--and some sword and shield forms that use a shield rush instead. /Everything/ else with a blade has a sudden thrust move of some kind: a lunge. So do axe forms, with a much shorter weapon.
Cos if you can't take advantage of a sudden opening at normal combat range or just outside it what good is the style?
Now, doing it effectively and avoiding a counterhit, that takes some practice. But not special skill.
If anything, the video proved to me the exact opposite what Shad says - yes, you need to move to adjacent square to hit someone with a sword. Leaving a toe behind isn't exactly the same as staying in the same square. However, this whole lunge things is an excellent way to flavour what you do in combat.
The Revelation that shad and jazza are connected by Blood is legitimately blowing my mind right now.
I thought he was gonna be some distant cousin when I read your comment
They talked about that in the video jazza made a 3d printed chainmail armkr
they WHAT
@@miraakuloso it was actually surprising.
We are all connected by blood through the Blood God.
If anything this makes d&d weapon range seem more reasonable.
Agreed. He pretty much shows how the 5' square is a reasonable approximation to use, I mean it covers not just longswords but maces, daggers, and all sorts of shorter non-lunging weapons. Obviously you could add lunging rules/traits for more complicated combat, but then you're playing a more complicated system like Cogent and not DnD.
Agreed. Massively over-extending yourself and doing minimal real damage is not a useful measure of the area you can EFFECTIVELY control. The only reasonable takeaway is that perhaps greatswords should also have reach (similar to a glaive, halberd, lance, pike, spiked chain, and whip in 5e). A simple spear is also a thrown weapon, so not giving it reach keeps it more mechanically balanced.
@@AM-hf9kk i believe shad himself made a video explaining how dnd "greatswords" are actually just longswords since they can't be one-handed with a shield while dnd "longswords" can so they're actually arming swords. If there actually were proper greatswords aka zweihanders/montante/similar big swords that don't get as ridiculous as the cloud buster in dnd then they should absolutely have reach, but i guess you could just take a glaive/swordstaff and reflavor it as a greatsword.
@@Fauxknight other comments pointed out how the battlemaster fighter (aka a guy who trained in combat enough to learn advanced techniques instead of randomly swinging) can in fact get lunging attacks to attack people at 10 ft of distance without suffering penalties, so i'd agree it makes sense that other people who didn't train to do that particular thing, say wizards, can't do it.
*Laughs in Bugbear wielding a halbert*
I feel like Shad is reaching (get it?) for this one, for several reasons:
- At 10 ft distance, you're not within combat range for most melee weapons. As per example at 7:50 using a longsword you would be out of combat/melee range. Therefore I would rule Shad's argument for the 5 ft rule as invalid.
- The way Shad needs to fully extend to get a hit in (8:45, 9:23, 10:40).
Leaving a toe in a square doesn't mean you're _standing in it_ imo. If your weight is on the front foot, you've moved. If the weight would remain on the back foot, then I'd rule in favor of Shad but alas, his weight shifted to the front foot.
- The amount of damage you would even be able to do to an actively fighting (dodging) opponent. Example: 16:35 moves me to say very little damage.
In summary, I would say while it is technically possible to "hit" an opponent from over 5 feet away, you most likely won't do noticable damage to your opponent if you even manage to connect in the first place.
Since the source material did not use any live opponents but only used a stationary doll as opponent I am unable to fully confirm the above statement.
ive always taken the 5ft to be something like the weapons maximum effective range ie where you are most likely to still be able to do significant damage with a landed blow, as shown by shad yes you could hit beyond that but his on example you are really stretching yourself to do so thus losing any effectiveness/power and as such you could house rule to reflect this if needs be ie you land the hit but you suffer a reduction modify to what you role on your hit dice if you miss opponent has option of attack of oppotunity
Yeah. It’s really bad logic here. The sweep as well. It’s a feat because it takes training to be Effective with a sweep against multiple enemies. A noob doing that in a life and death fight leaves themselves open. You’d have to be trained to look for moment that you can pull off a giant swish. Plus. The combat rules for the six second round is that everything IS happening concurrently over six seconds. And there are reactions that can happen between actions. Plus. When he says people high in the initiate for cogent “respond” to people lower? To interrupt? You’re playing the same rules. Ac isn’t always armor it’s the ability to deflect, bend out of the way, defend your area. They just had/were bad dms and didn’t use descriptions to fill out that six seconds.
Shad is also not taking the actual weight of the real weapons into consideration. Real swords are not so easy to hold at the very end the way he is reaching, especially the great sword
@@reclaimer1173 Well put! Needless to say, but for clarification purposes I'll state the obvious: it's a game. It has to have rules - maybe somewhat simplified as to what they represent in D&D - to make it comprehensible for players.
In D&Ds case the rules are also meant to make the game have a baseline of flow in combat and to not make it unbelievably difficult. Game take up a lot of time as it is already - imagine the time spent having to argue combat rules every session over and over as a DM...
Somebody else in the comments said it as well: this video feels like Shad is sore about a lost argument with his DM.
Additional note for sections like the Long Sword. He is hitting with the tip of the sword, but a long sword is Slashing damage, like to Slash with the sword. Minor note but if he wanted to take that into account I feel we would be quickly over-complexifying the systems.
Alternate title "Shad Explains Battlemaster Lunge Maneuver"
I just scrolled down to see if somebody had made this comment yet.
No one:
Shad:
In chess your castle can move but that's not how castles actually work in real life
Medieval batman lied to me!
Technically they were originally chariots.
Its called a rook
Perhaps we can think of rooks as siege towers?
@@gokbay3057 If they are chariots, maybe Rook can move diagonally as well but in a Knight like manner, they could move 1 step side after maybe about 2, 3 or 4 steps forward but again that would make Rook an OP piece unless the other pieces are also tweaked to balance gameplay.
Wanna try DnD? Why not COGENT?! :D
Fancy seeing you here, and yes I agree completely ^_^
@@shadiversity Is it time for table top time?
@@shadiversity lol please make video about VTAC Tomahawks in the future?
Had Cogent bookmarked on my Browser for quite some time now.
Love it, really interesting system, and it's helped with some discussions about how something in DnD can/could play out.
Still trying to get my group to try a full test with using just the Cogent system though.
All we need now is an official hardcover SOTC TTRPG based on Cogent. MAKE A KICKSTARTER NOW SHAD
Actually this video made me appreciate the 5 foot square. Because it would be the area opponents move around in. So if everyone is on the far edge of their square regularly and lunges in to strike this would totally make sense and explain why flanking gives advantage. But a lunge attack as an action that does not allow additional bonus attacks would be very interesting, if only allowed when the opponent is being flanked.
I'm only really familiar with 3,5 but I would interpret it as a 5 foot move forward (move action) one attack (standard action) and a 5 foot move back (free action).
which is why GURPS uses a 3' hex: you occupy the hex, fight into the hexes out from there, and reach weapons allow further out again. These include longer swords as well as polearms.
So what Shad wants is:
OFFENSIVELY Long Greatsword: two-handed, Slashing, 2d6, Reach Weapon, Can offend multiple targets in range at -1atk per additional target
basically a real life greatsword
@@Dramoklos well yes like one IRLin DND that wouldn't happen because of balancing reasons, a fighter couldn't have all that at level 1 because that would be overpowered
"Effective" range is where the arguments should be made.
I agree. He left himself exposed to fail and for a counter attack... That said, I would argue only the counter if it was a sun blade. (As that is pure fire)
Yeah you could argue that when you strike outside of 5-ft square, you do half damage
@@davehedric1543
Or you can just give them a disadvantage on the attack, but only allow it if they don´t have a disadvantage in the first place.
What he is describing is basically battlemaster´s lunge attack manoeuvre thought.
So you could make the argument that a no-name nobody is not going to be able to attack effectively at that range...
He also says, If you lean real hard. But his oponent just hast to lean a little bit to be out of his reach.
You can just move forwards and backwards 5 feets instead, saying you lunge doing so.
Leaving you exposed on your retreat backwards, (aka. Taking the risk of an opertunity-attack)
wich is not a big strach to argue that a lunge leaves you exposed for a moment after you strike.
I really don't se his point
Little did he realize the only reason a human, such as himself, could perform such feats of sword mastery was because variant humans start with a feat...
He's a lvl 3 battlemaster fighter, he has lunging attack.
My thoughts exactly
As of this video I've seen his Lunging Attack. He's a level 2 fighter who THINKS he's a level 3 Battlemaster, at best.
@@DragonElixion makes sense.
I've always interpreted distance as each character controls 5ft Sq. Do two characters in melee could be anywhere from 10ft apart (each at the edge of their square) to shivving distance (just shy of grappling.)
This is EXACTLY what it means
That's quite literally what the PHB says.
I'm only 1 minute in and I have two comments:
1) this is hysterical
2) nonchalant one-handed back scabbard
Yeah, Chad-Shad just puts the sword away, and it's only impressive if you know why he can't do that.
@@dlahouss He designed that back scabbard personally and explained its functions and how it works, and how you can sheathe a sword with his design for a back scabbard that is as effective as one at the waist. It's all in another video, if you haven't seen that one.
@@Dragon_Lair I have. That's where he taught me how back scabbards are impossible... Unless you do this thing that there are no historical examples of.
@@dlahouss but he did it. Thus there is now a historical example of it. It happened in the past, afterall. Besides, he's not really going off to war with it, he's using it mostly for personal purposes, and to look kinda cool. Thus, not impossible.
@@bswtsp21 th-cam.com/video/-H65RlAklDc/w-d-xo.html
I understand it's not impossible. My statement is based on:
- If all you knew was modern representations, you would think everyone wore back scabbards
- I followed Shad going from "people didn't do this" to "what would it take" to "I'm totally going to do this" resulting in Shad looking cool from a modern perspective, since he solved the issues that prevent one from doing this.
But my understanding remains that there are no examples of people doing a scabbard this way before, oh say... 1900 AD. I'm a lay-person, maybe there are, I'd be interested to learn otherwise.
As you mention at the start, a character “controls” a 5 foot square but their body isn’t necessarily centered. If the dummy backs to the far edge of the controlled space, then even the lunge doesn’t reach (setting aside the majority of the body entering the middle square issue). Two characters in a 5 foot square can also engage at approximately 10ft of actual distance between them. Better reflecting the danger zone you describe
7:57 "This is getting out of hand! Now, there are two of them!"
DnD are a compromise to keep it really simple. There are pros and cons to that but many people find more realistic games like shadowrun too complicated.
Heh, and we actually made some of the SR rules _more_ complex at some point... It's just that every player knew the rules they needed well enough to apply them on their own without the GM needing to tell them 😋
But in many cases they are highly unrealistic.
I wanna point out two things 1: Each round is 6 seconds in lore and in reality, everyone does their actions almost simultaneously. 2: and movement is its own thing in 5E, so you're free to move as long you got the movement speed left, but moving out of someone's 5ft gives them an opportunity to attack.
3.5 also has simillar rules. So does Pathfinder 1e. 2e has different action economy but you still can just use your move to go in attack and leave the range.
And 2e pathfinder doesn't give everyone opportunity attack.
@@DanateDMC That's why in second edition they released the Combat and Tactics book, using that your attack reach was determined by your weapon size. Longer weapons could strike opponents that weren't in adjacent tiles. Have a pike? You can strike up to four squares away.
Disengage shouldn’t be an action, it should just cost a significant amount of movement, since you have to back up instead of being able to freely walk.
But unless you’re grappled or too close for the range of an enemy’s longer weapon, it really is just stepping backwards. It’s not a big deal.
Also: bring back Tumble :’(
I disagree with point one, because characters’ turns actually play out in sequence with characters mostly doing all their actions before the next character even starts, except for the few kinds of reactions that some characters get.
@@bharl7226 You... Disagree.
Have you read the rules in the book maybe?
"You need to be in the adjacent 5' large square, you're using melee"
"This is an almost 8' long zwëihunder"
"Still melee"
Great swords have 10ft reach
Does that mean you CAN attack both adjacent and non adjacent with the same weapon?
Zweihänder, you mean.
@@ephgm no, it is clearly 2 dogs.
@@robertblume2951 Only in 4th Edition. In all other versions of D&D, reach weapons are universally polearms or chains/whips
"When you just face off against opponents, being ready to offend each other..."
YOUR MOTHER WAS A HAMSTER, AND YOUR FATHER SMELT OF ELDERBERRIES.
How appropriate. You fight like a cow.
fetchez la vache
... How much damage would a catapulted cow do anyway?
@@atraxian5881 depends on what you're aiming at. Maybe that can be Shad's next video...
You used vicious mockery, and dealt max damage.
Ah, the battle of the bards
In response to the 6 second round...At 45 years of age, and had started playing D&D when I was just seven, I've been around the block a time or two. During that time I ran across rules in early D&D, basic/first ed, that state during a combat round there are many blows and furry of action assumed to take place, but only once in that span of time (unless you get more than 1 attack) does an opening present itself for you to truly make a to hit attempt.
I also think there is a misunderstanding. Shad seems to be oprating under the assumption that every individual player action takes 6 seconds as opposed to the round as a whole. It's meant to play out in (roughly) the same timeframe.
@@starstreamheartlocke652 I don't think that is what he said.
@@PeregrinTintenfish He said something along then lines of "I take my action, then they take their action." But the turns are knid of a disambiguation for the game's clarity. What's more supposed to be interpreted is that over the course of 6 seconds, every turn that was taken happens at about the same time, with the exception of actions that directly influence the actions of another character.
@@starstreamheartlocke652 right, but even playing it, one can forget that. Turn order does matter, a lot. The problem is most obvious when trying to retreat. If an adventurer starts running away he can move 2x his speed. Then his pursuer moves 2x his speed and then is able to attack. It would not be possible in RL for a pursuer running the same speed to overtake someone. But because the one fleeing has stopped, at the end of his turn, it is impossible for him to get away.
@@PeregrinTintenfishYou're right, there are a few things that don't translate over well in that regard, but I've never felt like cases like that pop up a lot in actual play.
Moves whole body into next square except for back foot "see I didn't leave this square at all"
11:22
Maybe watch the whole video before commenting. . .
@@shadiversity The point you’re trying to argue against here is saying “you are actually moving into the closer square to attack from that distance” and you say in response... nothing. Like, nothing
@@shadiversity What you call lunging is actually just movement in D&D and suddenly it all makes sense.
And the position you are standing in is the foot that supports most of your body weight, for obvious reason.
Also squares are very limiting, (and only used because they are easy to use) but you can totally think in circles around characters.
I can recommend BG3 to get a better sense of actual ranges, since it's not build around squares.
You are also saying yourself that it's much easier to defend against an attack if you are farther away, so it makes total sense that a proper attack with a high chance to hit has to be done from an effective range for offense. (your chance of hitting anyone with your funny long lunge move in HEMA is very low)
@@shadiversity imagine a battle map in dnd where there is a 5 feet cliff between you and your opponent (as in, a 5 feet square). Now I don't think your attack would work. You mentioned "use a crative solution", but I just can't see how, without falling to your death.
In addition, I see multiple reasons for the 5 feet range:
-You have to step (move(ment)) 5 feet into the enemys space to be able to hit
-I think people often forget that action/movement don't happen in the exact order you announce them. When engaging and attacking, these things overlap, so at one point, when you start your attack, you might be 10 feet away and when your combat end, you don't stand around doing nothing, the enemy will try to counter, which your character will in turn defend from. (You kinda mentioned that)
-Characters don't have to stand in the middle of their assigned squares, if the fighters stand on the edge each, they might be ~8 feet apart.
-Consistent "5 feet" work better than adding "10 feet with exceptions" (like the cliff example)
-Different races have differemt sizes (human vs halfling vs goliath) and not all will achieve the same distance. Again, keeping it simple for (most) races helps the flow of the game
-Not all enemys are sword fighters. A spell caster or ranged fighter will instantly gain a considerable advantage for even these 5 feet difference. Beeing in really close range to a ranged enemy puts you in a clear advantage and is represented in that way in the game.
I would agree with the above but correct slightly. Lunges *are* commom and do hit often. But like any big strike. They take windup and wind-down. You have to back off of a lunge. Which isnt a difficukt thing but it does open you up to a counterattack. Wherein 5th edition dnd actually covers it by staing you can easily move attack and move back in the same turn. Even move attack move again and attack again if you are able to get multiple attacks off in a round. However leaving an enemy creature's reach, will allow them an attack of oppurtunity. Which is akin to: you lunge you hit their offhand shoulder. Good stuff. But then they swing down onto your shoulder while youre trying to pull back. In swordplay the swordsmen often advance and retreat as a pair to make the most of this. To parry and riposte back and forth. Ofcourse if you strike and instead of falling back push into their space its 'the danger zone' but it also means you can go for quicker attacks without exposing yourself as far. This is fair in that it burns ten feet of your movement because while the lunge is relatively quick. So is sprinting across ten feet.
I would say as shad mentions that the rules likely consider the square the majority of your body is in as the square youre in. Because as an above comment remarks. If there isnt place to step in that space between you. A simple standing swing from a sword wont reach far enough to clear the distance. And this video does a bit to assume youre facing a swordsman who is leaning into the borders of his 'space' when far more often you're facing a monster and the person is likely leaning back and shifting around in that space attempting to dodge and parry. If you centre the bodies of both entities in their 5ft squares it looks like you can lunge forward to make the strike. But what if theyre on the back end? What if its a goblin and is a much smaller target able to skirt around your blows faster?
Greatswords are interesting as unlike halberds its a lot harder to get under their reach. And certain forms and flows involve strikes with the blade not extended to minimize the shifting centre of gravity. I would say they were not given reach because of the variation in character sizes the maximum distance of a non-lunge and probably because of game balancing and how one might attack of oppurtunity at exiting ten feet might exceed the reach of the greatsword.
That said. When dming if the greatsword were in the hands of someone suitably large. A tall human half orc or goliath. Id say they would be able to treat the greatsword has having a 5ft or 10ft reach as desired in the moment. But ofcourse that would make the weapon as useful as any polearm but with more damage. So for overall balance i can see why this was left out
Aha, now we see Shad's true endgame: his desire to use his celebrity to get tabletop RPGs to change their combat systems!
We're on to you, Mr Versity! ;p
EDIT: Man I was joking, but he really is. XD GG Shad, I look forward to reading the rules of your new system.
I think he was bringing up this topic because it's related to his game, sure! He freely admits it. I thought it was impressive how he was able to mention his book, his shirt/pants, his armor's company, his upcoming game, AND of course his sponsor!😁
@@KickyFut well he wants to build castles after all
Sadly Shad, like most people, are woefully unaware of the indie TTRPG scene. He says "most rpgs" have this issue, which is wrong. There are uncountable amounts of games out there doing combat infinitely better than DND does.
I'm stoked he's making his own though. As a fellow game designer, I'm always overjoyed to see other people's work, no matter if I like the product or not.
@@TheOnlyToblin yeah, I think he's mistaken into thinking D&D is even a battle/fighting TTRPG, which it is not...
Neighbor: "Mooom, the guy with the castle has put out a giant chessboard!"
Hey, where's Perry?
And there's two of him
Ain't gonna lie, if I were his neighbor, within a week I'd be his apprentice helping him set up these backyard scenarios...
I just wanted to say as well, when you were talking about combat turns in D&D, in the game, one combat round (meaning everyone's turns put together) is all 6 seconds. But not each turn. The WHOLE round is 6 seconds. So, because of initiative (basically indicating how fast you reacted when combat started) you get to go before others, as if you acted quicker in that 6 seconds.
I think it also bares mentioning that the use of a turn order is a compromise, sacrificing realism and players' ability to micromanage their actions in combat, to keep things easier and simpler to resolve, allowing for more powerful or complex actions to be introduced into the system.
@@dgameboy101b yeah, the idea of a Round is that Everything happens simultaneous, and the Turn order is just the individual moves that lead to a composite image of around 6 seconds, so if you find the Rounds system unrealistic, just think of them as a 6 second Summary of what everyone did, Now a lot of what Happens during the Round still would count as Metagaming if you're truly critical, but well if you run everything at once it gets confusing and complicated Fast
I was looking for this comment. It kept bothering me when he referred to every players turn as 6sec long. Combat would be goofy in your head if you are thinking every turn is 6sec, rather than the whole round.
@@shono1997 6 seconds is a Very long time when it comes to these things,
I'd honestly would try to see if I could GM in such a way that it actually would seem like everything happened simultaneous during a round, though I'm very aware that the system exists for a reason to not do that
Thank you for pointing this out I wanted to go through the comments before I said the exact same thing. I started using more colorful descriptors as a player and honed it to perfection as a DM and my players love it! I like to describe combat as more dynamic and vivid, rather than the idea that you stand "toe to toe" and swing until someone gets to 0 HP. I use the exact thing he is talking about with how close the attack roll was to the AC of the player or monster. I have influenced a lot of players over the years with this idea, and it brings me joy.
There are feats like "Lunge" that allow you to attack at a +5 reach. So exactly what you are talking about. When trained in lunging you gain the +5 feet reach
Feats represent special training (at least for combat feats) right? The lunge feat represents training and practice at moving up, attacking, and moving back with out opening your self up to attack.
You can emulate a lunge with out the feat: free action (five foot move), standard action (single attack), move action (movement - 5) Yes, that provokes attack of opportunity because you do move into their reach moving forward and potentially opening your self up to attack.
I once heard someone say the idea is when engaged you’re probably on opposite sides of your 5ft squares rather than in the direct middle
Somewhere in the 10 feet box that contains you and your opponent, one back end to the other, which is a huge amount of space to manoeuvre in
18:05
No, the ENTIRE round takes 6 seconds. It is not 6 seconds per turn, per actor, for every single actor during the round. You are NOT waiting 6 seconds for your opponent to take action. All of the events of the round are taking place within a 6 second span.
20:47
Same as the above. This is a core misunderstanding of what is happening.
Technically that's what's happening, but the way it actually plays out has all of the turns occurring sequentially.
@@omnitroph1501 Yep, characters who act earlier in the round are reacted to by those who go later in the round.
@@shorewall yeah initiative is a test of reflex as dnd combat is fast paced in setting
"I technically didn't leave the square" you say, having completely left the square except the foot you left behind.
If you're playing 5e you can already step up into the danger zone and step back after striking, but after your little lunge you're left vulnerable to a counter attack(an AoO) when you pull back. Especially if there are multiple opponents.
I will agree that in the case of 3.5/Pathfinder where it's a feat, that should probably just be a thing anyone with proficiency could do.
"I haven't moved out of this square" he says as he puts all of his weight on the foot that has indeed moved out of the square. A lunge is just moving to the adjacent square, leaving your toe behind doesn't change anything. And yes, being 5ft away from your opponent is dangerous, that's why swordsmanship is so concerned with self-defense. You have to get into striking range in order to strike, that's how it works. The only reason players don't back off after every hit is because of opportunity attacks.
Unless you got the Mobility feat, or are a swashbuckler...then it’s hit and run city
"Look my foot doesnt leave the square" Shad forgets he has two feet.
look i can gently poke him if he doesn't move while showcasing my attack for way too long by tripping and falling over
Shad basically saying ‘my one foot didn’t move, so therefore I didn’t use any movement’ gave off some strong ‘nuh-uh! I’m still on base’ vibes
I'm pretty sure movement in dnd is defined as moving the entire body into another 5ft square
This video has real "when you tell your dog to stay outside so he stands in the doorway with 1 foot still outside" vibes.
Shad's Mom: "you're going to sit in that chair until you finish your veggies!"
Shad: *carries chair with him, holding it to his butt, as he goes to play Nintendo*
I'm no combat expert, but like when mythbusters did the "zombie" episode, there is a difference between tickling an opponent and killing one. The point of 5ft square or even hexes is to give a simplified representation. Their system is far from infallible, like abilities / spells with 1ft increments :/
Well, it's in feet for starters. Starting off wrong right there. ;P
@@malcolmthorne9779 the 5ft per square can easily be traded out for metric measurements
@@snekkoheckko4466 and honestly, you could make the argument from this episode that a slightly bigger,, like 2 meters say, square might be more realistic. I think if we tracked his center mass his lunges could have been reinterpretted as starting from one side of a square and reaching to the other, rather than starting in the center of one and dipping across the edge of another during an attack.
I was going to point this out myself. While Shad could physically lunge and hit an opponent 10 feet away wit ha short(ish) sword or 15 - 20 with a pole weapon, that's all he was soing though, hitting the target and with little impact at that too. So he talks about realism in terms of reach but at the same time ignores the fact that each hit at the extreme limits of his reach barely touches the target and would be lucky to go through moderately heavy clothing, don't mention armor.
@@malcolmthorne9779 There's nothing wrong with using feet and inches in a medieval inspired fantasy setting. If 5ft squares are too small to be realistic then switch to yards and make them 6ft (2 yards) indoors and 9ft (3 yards) outside, instead.
Love your videos, Shad. I think you might've misunderstood a few rules in D&D, though. There are already rules in place for almost everything you mentioned in this video.
According to 5th Edition rules:
- Movement already allows you to get into and out of an adjacent tile. If an enemy occupies a tile adjacent to you and you move away, you're subject to an opportunity attack, requiring the Disengage action to prevent. It makes a certain sense that a person could advance 5 feet, strike, then retreat with their guard up, but that is what your AC is for. Remember that AC is partially determined by Dexterity, and represents your natural hardiness (10), the strength of your armor, and your Dexterity. Disengage, conversely, is when you devote your full attention to keeping the enemy too occupied to take a cheeky swipe at your leg as you back up.
- Reaching across a river: Costs double movement. So a 5 foot river costs ten feet to cross, ten to retreat. 20 feet total. The difficult terrain mechanic covers this already. Also, the enemy will get an opportunity attack as you retreat.
- The weapon sweep example is essentially the Disengage action, as described. A "noob" can't *effectively* harm adjacent enemies, because the sweep is clumsy, but it would allow him free movement without them offending him as he dances about in the combat zone, because they're busy trying not to get hit by has wild sword sweeps.
- Combat rounds are six second per round, not six seconds per turn. They're already simultaneous.
- Your example of tripping everyone up with a high enough combat roll is already covered by improvisational actions in combat and ability checks. For example, a player kicks over a barrel of fish. Cool, that's creative. Everybody in the puddle zone makes a Dex saving throw or falls prone. DM can invent the DC off the top of their head, probably 15 or so. Similar answer if they get creative with rope, or try something clever with a sack of marbles. A broad-area leg sweep could conceivably fall under this umbrella.
I can't speak to the rules of earlier editions, I started playing at 5th. I do think D&D rules can get a little bloated at times, and if this video is basically an advertisement for simplification, it works. Maybe Cogent is the answer to that issue. I hope so, I'm honestly tired of having to fumble for the right die every time I cast a spell, or review combat actions every time a new player needs to understand what, exactly, they're permitted to do besides simply whack a goblin on the head. But I wanted to point out that most of your complaints on the limitations of D&D are actually not limited in 5e, the rules mostly allow for it, but maybe not precisely as you describe.
He did make it abundantly clear that even though the rules say all actions happen at the same time, it doesnt feel like it mechanically, and that everyone should be able to do a lunging attack, not just battlemasters, although i do agree about attacks of opportunity being a reason not everyone can lunge, i just think reactions are a little to restricted in 5e
I'm 11 minutes in, and the thing that stands out the most is just how overextended most of those lunges are, and how most of them barely make contact. So, maybe it's less of a rule about maximum attack range, and more a rule about EFFECTIVE attack range. Tippy-tapping someone with the very point of your sword ain't gonna do much, unless you're using a lightsaber.
Maybe Shad addresses this. Dunno, just wanted to comment before I keep watching.
There also used to be a rule that addresses this point, the 5ft. step. It was a 5.ft move any character who wasn't restricted could do, as long as they otherwise didn't move in the round. They removed it largely because people forgot about it, or were confused by it. A few people I played with in 3.5 didn't think it was realistic, but... yeah.
@@HunterHerne what confused me, I think, was that you couldn’t move again after the 5ft step.
@@bharl7226 That part I think was mostly the gameplay bit. If you just wanted to move a bit, 5ft step. If you actually wanted to leave combat, the withdraw action is what you wanted. I assume making the 5ft. step so restricted was so it wouldn't automatically outshine withdrawing.
@@HunterHerne I think you’re right, and I think that poor design choice was only required because of the sequential initiative turn based system actions had to be taken in.
They couldn’t let you attack AND withdraw in the same turn because you got to take your whole turn before the other guy could retaliate, lol.
Unrealistic design forces more unrealistic design to interact with it.
@@bharl7226 Maybe, but they still had to allow a retreat method. Some groups do enjoy brutal games, and even in regular games, people still need to retreat sometimes, even if it's the monsters running scared of the PCs
In public places: *Keep 6 feet apart due to social distancing*
DnD: "Hey, let me have some of that action in the rules!"
Oh it's a good bit before covid Kappa
Rebrand social distancing as staying out of melêe range lol
As a great man always said “context”
When you talk about what you *can* do in dnd you must considere the word * effectively *
When the system says you can’t hit 10feat away it does not says it is absolutely impossible. It instead says that most of classes would not be able to do it in a effective manner. Lounges are actually not a piece of cake to master. One thing is to touch an enemy 10 feat away, other is to pull that out in a way that would effectively hurt the opponent. A pour technic could easily take to a bad edge directing or a to weak strike.
In the other hand, battlemasters (fighter subclasse) can have a maneuver called “lounge” that does exactly that. He would be a martial artist and could pull that off consistently.
One more interesting point about it is that when you made some lounges, your feat work was a bit off and retreating from that attack would put you in danger. Let’s remind Dnd rules: you must walk 5 feat, strike and get back 5feat if you what to do that lounge of yours. That would imply in a opportunity attack to your opponent, which would make sense considering what a pointed out about your foot work.
About the distance between player and enemy, you don’t have to think they are exactly in the middle of the square. I always describe it as if they are going back and forth inside the square. I believe the rules says that 2 people can’t be at the same time in a 5feat square because of such movement inside. If you take that motion in consideration, it would be logical to describe the two contenders in the further edges of their own squares, what would give nearly 10 feat distance. As a HEMA student, I totally agreed that 5 feat is not a preferable distance to fight.
Um last thing. Despite of the fact I disagree with you, you gave me some ideias of homebrew rules to my games. Some time ago I rework the entire table of weapons so they could make them more like their historical counterparts. I’m thinking of add a “lounger” attribute so some big weapons, that are not long enough to have “reach”
Lounger : you may attack 10 feat away, but with disadvantage.
Thank you Shad! Really love you videos, especially those that mix fantasy and history. Keep up the good work and a shout-out from São Paulo - Brasil!!
I'm assuming you meant lunge instead of lounge. Although, the mental images of a battlemaster fighter engaging in a lounge based fighting style are hilarious.
All 5e characters are basically suoermen though due to the high power level.
That's why he said something you could do, and these people are likely much more avle to do so.
Consider adding the requirement for 10ft of movement to perform a lunge and I think it is quite viable for home brew rules.
The word is "lunge." "Lounge" is what I do on my couch
Bollocks
This is a great demonstration. Shad literally said that when fighting you stand 10ft away from your opponent. 5ft + 5ft is 10ft. Adjacent.
Bandit: "Attack!!!"
Me: "You can't do that"
Bandit: "Why not?"
Me: "It's not your turn yet..."
I guess this comment needs no replies
@@notyos We're still waiting for our turns
@Chaz Hagen i got a 1 can i roll again?
Surprise round?
The ten feet apart is “neutral ground” with not reach weapons they can’t hit you you can’t hit them. Makes sense for real life combat. To take an actual swing at someone you need to be within that engagement zone which is that five feet. Also in dungeons and dragons it is where your center of mass is that determines what square you are in, not the back foot. Even with you stepping out of the square you are only touching or poking them. Yeah they can “reach” but if they can step back less than an inch to dodge you aren’t hitting a sentient creature
I fence as a hobby, and my club's coach always says 'To hit someone, you have to be within their reaction time'. Yeah you can reach someone from 10 ft away, but if they take a half step back, they will have your blade and you are done. Club fencing is far from real combat, but if you want to hit someone, you have to get in close.
the thing i'm not seeing in other comments made explicit so i'm putting it here is that 10ft just means that thats the space that y'all influence in the engagement. yall could be at the far edges of your squares when you're squaring off, and then get in close when the wounds are more lethal. functionally shad and the dummy were always within ten feet (two adjacent squares). but by placing the dummy in the middle, he had to be at the back of his square or the square behind to be at a comfortable distance.
Yeah, something that bothered me is his loose definition of “move” throughout the video
@@sr71silver dude, don't claim someone has no fighting experience, then get shitty and insulting when they say they did. you made a flawed argument in reponse to this guys comment, and assumed he had no experience because he disagreed, then when you find out that he does have experience, you try and backtrack on what you said. just stop. insulting people won't get you anywhere.
as for your argument, what this boils down to is this: being 10 feet away , and swinging your weapon at someone won't do anything, unless your weapon has reach. The only time you're able to hit someone is when the length of the weapon + length of your arm is less than the distance between you and the enemy. every time shad his his opponent, he had to effectively "move" into the square adjacent to the enemy, which would be represented as a "movement" action. what shad doesn't seem to like, is that this will require movement, and thus, a movement action. that's it.
@@sr71silver
1. "real world combat drills" "...I spent practicing Olympic fencing."^^
2. I am pretty sure, that you are right though, 4 Inches might be even too much in some areas. And for a swing, near the tip should be the greatest force of the swing.
3. The only question, that stands is, where do you have the maximum force during a stab when you need to penetrate armor.
This is an example of what appeals to me about GURPS. A melee weapon's reach might be listed as 1,2, meaning it can be used against an opponent either one or two hexes away, but there's also rules for choosing to lunge or shift your grip, and there are also rules for the opponents choosing to displace themselves from their current hex in the process of defending. There's also a specific range increment of Close, which reflects the distance at which wrestling occurs, knees and elbows are thrown, and folks get prison-yard shanked. If you've got a longsword or a polearm and your opponent is now at this distance, you're taking such a rough penalty to your attacks that your best options (as in the real world) are to retreat, shove them away, or abandon the use of this weapon entirely. Unless you've drilled close-distance combat with this weapon by spending points on specific maneuvers, which partially mitigates the penalty.
Yeah, it's complicated, but it also means that you rarely ever find yourself in a situation where the rules just can't tolerate something.
Ye, I get it but you are *LITERALLY MOVING* to the adjacent square.
Opportunity attack
I’d say that he’s not close enough to the center of the square to be counted but square combat is always going to be iffy when it comes to specifics
@@rotothedragonlord7198 do be fair, if he’s allowed to lunge forward like that to hit the target why can’t the target lunge to hit him as he’s moving back?
Or as translated into D&D terms, Shad moved into the 5ft square adjacent to the target, attacked, and moved back provoking an opportunity attack from the target
@@achilles8804 and from the other enemy in the square on his other side.
@@rotothedragonlord7198 his full body weight and center of gravity is closer to the adjacent square center than the one he started with. Keeping one foot dangling over the line behind you means nothing and is clearly only happening in order to get around the rule. In real life no one would do that because it would hinder the quality of the strike
Shad's neighbor at 7:57 "This is getting out of hand. Now there are TWO of them!"
This comment section needed more Star Wars.
“...so according to the rules, I can’t attack without a reach weapon unless I’m within 5 feet...” 8:29
(Proceeds to step his leg INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE SQUARE adjacent to the opponent)
Shad literally had to get within 5 feet to make his attack, and extend himself with the lunge. He had to MOVE into the square, albeit briefly, to make that attack. He just moved there, and back, and didn’t call it a move. That took time, and effort, that could have been used to move somewhere else.
The most unrealistic thing is that, had there been an adjacent attacker on the diagonal to both him and his opponent, they could NOT have taken an opportunity attack on him to take advantage of that extended lunge, because he would have never left the adjacent attacker’s threatened area. In reality, he would have left himself wide open with that lunge the way he did it. (Of course, and there been an adjacent attacker, he would not have done it that way in the first place, but that’s another story.)
It's simpler to just say you are in the square where the weight of your body is placed.
Battle master litteraly has an ability that does exactly this
tbh they just put those numbers even if they are unrealistic cause they did not want ranged classes to be even more overpowering against others.
The pint shad is making is that the lunge should be part of the attack action and increase the range, as opposed to breaking it into move in attack and stay there as you don’t want to provoke an aoo, in older additions there was a lunge feat that literally let you do what he’s talking about.
The old rule of "shifting" can capitalize on that thought. Step in for your lunge, shift out for your retraction. It WOULD be unreasonable to not provoke a response on that retreat in 5e, though, so lunging is pretty much only safe to do when you know you can kill the enemy without the ability to shift... At which point you might as well just step forward to strike.
Lunging makes a lot more sense if you implement a rule for attacks of opportunity on advancing into adjacent squares, which is pretty reasonable.
Shad could just be a swashbuckler. Or take the mobile feat.
You have an interesting initiative system there that many others tried before, also.
What you probably don't grasp is that you double the initiave phase this way and also you have to remember the announced actions of ALL combat participants while resolving them.
It's easy to see why so few systems rely on anouncing the actions beforehand.
The turns being 6 seconds long isn't everyone's individual turn being 6 seconds long, it is the entire round being 6 seconds and every turn happens within that 6 seconds. That's why there is the reaction action. The turns are there so that everyone isn't talking over each other about what they are doing and what they are doing in response to each other
Edit: I understand that due to the limitations the game there are still an order to things that might not make complete sense in real life, like for example someone who has a significantly higher movement speed getting killed because they didn't roll so high on initiative. It's not perfect but it certainly isn't everyone waiting around for 24 seconds for their turn to do something
Having a higher movement speed won't help if someone reacts faster than you do e.g. beats your initiative. Sure, if the characters have the same speed the one will never catch the other during simultaneous turns. However, that assumes they start running at the same time. If one character gets a head start by being quicker to respond to a threat, it's not unreasonable (depending on certain factors) that they could reach and strike the other person before they could flee.
Battletech has a really interesting turn system. Each Mech/Vehicle/units actions happen simultaneously in every phase (Move, Shoot, melee, heat). So this means if you shoot an enemy with a laser and blow their arm off which had a machine gun on it, that player can still fire that machine gun at you during that round because both player's units act simultaneously. Damage to parts and components only take effect in the next round. Also the person who loses initiative moves first because since all actions happen simultaneously and nothing takes effect in the moment the action is taken the person going second outmaneuvers the initiative loser.
@Anessen yeah but having a higher moment speed does mean that if everyone was actually acting in the same 6 seconds there would be no way for the attacker to catch up if the defense's only goal was to survive. The defender can dash to double its speed whereas the attacker can't dash if they want to get a hit in, if they could even catch up with the defender's movement speed advantage
@@annalisestott8252 The other guy's point was that just because you can move faster than someone else does not mean that you will react faster than that person. For example, if Usain Bolt (holder of Olympic records in 100 meter dash) were to encounter a group of bandits, he could certainly outrun them. However, if he hesitates for a moment before sprinting off, while the bandits don't hesitate at all, one or more of them might get an attack or two in before he manages to get away. You are correct in that the attacker will never get another melee attack in once the defender starts dashing away if their move speeds are the same, but that would be expected in reality as well. You can't swing a weapon with any kind of power or accuracy when you are running at a full sprint, and that is what the person you are chasing is doing.
@Dillon Brunschon The average reaction time for a person is 4 milliseconds. Initiative determines how long it takes each participant in a battle to react to the start of the fighting. The first character to act in the battle is assumed to have realized what was about to happen and reacted immediately, while other characters are assumed to have taken slightly longer to react to the initial action that started the battle.
Using your cleric example, they didn't see you get hit and then run over to heal you. They saw you were about to get hit and started moving toward you, casting a healing spell as they jog toward you, arriving shortly after the blow lands and healing you as soon as they get there. They aren't reacting to the hit, they are reacting to the fact that you left yourself open and are going to get hit.
Characters aren't just standing around for 6 seconds between each action they take. They are observing the battlefield, jockeying for position in melee, etc.. The "actions" you take in battle are just the instances where your character has an opportunity to actually try to make something happen - after a feint or parry, you spot an opening in the opponent's defense and you try to strike at it; you recall a spell that might be useful in this situation and begin casting it as you dodge arrows and look for the best target to unleash the spell on; you notched an arrow, pull back the string and take aim before firing, etc.. Melee fighters are trading blows, but none are finding their mark except the ones you are making attack rolls for. Ranged fighters aren't just standing around twiddling their thumbs for 5 seconds then firing an arrow, and spellcasters aren't just pondering the mysteries of magic or the gods while they wait for their turn to act. Everyone is actively doing SOMETHING for the entirety of that 6 seconds, and those acting later in the turn order are able to act upon the things that happen earlier because they can SEE that the other characters are going to do whatever it is they end up doing. This is explained in the manuals (or at least it was in some earlier editions, not sure about 5E).
It seems silly because the actions play out in turns, but if you look at all the actions that occurred during the round after the round is over and play them out in a real-time sequence instead, with everyone going through the motions necessary to perform the action they ultimately performed in the order that they occurred, it makes sense (most of the time). Each of those actions that are performed will play out during the 6 second period, but some may be happening just fractions of a second apart, while others may have greater time in between them.
Alright but hear me out
When you're in the heat of it, trading blows, against someone in heavy armor and holding a shield, when you yourself are also heavily armored and holding a shield, you're going to be within 5-7 feet away from eachother while you're making or taking blows. You're both attacking and defending 3 times a round and with how far you overextend yourself, you're going to be pulled into the closer square.
I'm an active DM in D&D 5e and I have to say, I love Cogent. It brings in what I always thought was missing from D&D combat and that's having more opportunities to actively narrate a combat encounter. Yes, you can activelty describe what is happening between each movement, but Cogent allows so much more versatility. It even brings in some fun strategic elements for players during combat, something I find 5e can lack at times. All around, it makes the experience funner for the players, which allows more fun as a DM. Highly recommend checking it out and I'm so grateful Cogent exist.
I’m not done with th video but I actively gm 5e, where/what is cogent?
I disagree it overcomplicates the game. You have to balance game design with options. If you get too intricate, you get stuff like Legends of the 5 rings or the seven seas where the game is either just not fun or REEEAAAALY slow.
@@EclipsisTenebris *fun* is hailey subjective. Whether or not someone finds anything *fun* depends entirely on there preferences.
It's literally impossible to be right or wrong about whether or not soting is *fun*
-funner- more fun
I'm so so so sorry. I annoy myself.😓
@@EclipsisTenebris Or D&D4. What was both overcomplicated and oversimplistic at the same time. Specifically combat take ages, when it lack any flexibility in the class design. D&D5 has good balance between simplicity and common sense design, even if it lack in some aspects.
What you are demonstrating is stepping in and out of engaged combat range, provoking opportunity attack after opportunity attack.
Second, deep lunges like that demonstrate an opportunity attack. They are reserved for an opponent retreating from combat range like you were. Attempt a deep lunge like that against an opponent who is engaging with you will likely get you killed.
I've never heard that each person's turn took 6 seconds - the round, starting with the person who rolled the highest and ending with the person who rolled the lowest, takes 6 seconds, not the individual turns.
In 5th edition 1 round is 6 sec. Everyone acts and it is narrated as happening all at the same time
Every turn happens simultaneously, in game time. In real time, we have to go one at a time to keep track of everything. So one turn and one round both take six seconds
that's what I thought too and that is the idea. but say you want to attack a Quickling standing 30ft away. If you roll higher initiative you will be able to attack it within the 6 seconds, before it has a chance to run away. Note: the Quickling has a speed of 120 ft. So if it was going to dash during its turn it could move 8x faster than you could (not dashing cause you want to attack). If your turns were simultaneous, the Quickling would easily have escaped, even if it only noticed you approaching when you were 10 ft away. So given this example DnD isn't actually simultaneous as it says it is. So yeah he messed up, the round is always 6 seconds no matter how many combattants. But his point still stands.
@@XblacklightZ it doesn't tho, happen all at the same time that is. check out my comment on this thread to see an example illustrating this :D
@@CrownRock1 that is what the rulebook says yeah, but check out my comment on this thread that gives a little thought experiment into the validity of this :)
"Can you fight in 5ft square?"
Thunbnail: **picture of 10ft circle**
All those squares make a circle?
@@nekopunchi9793 I don't think this is how sqares and circles work
That is actually a 15 foot circle. Which is your effective melee range in D&D
@@yshedeau123 that would make more sense, but still the diagonal distance is longer than that
@@nekopunchi9793 a literal gallon
It's funny we actually have a house rule that lets you us the lunge action, It lets you add 5ft to your attack with a minus 2 attack modifier and the attack must be performed through an empty square, unlike just having reach that can be used over a friendly.
this feels like a good way to run this. it adds realism with more reach, but keeps it balanced with the most realistic disadvantage (slightly less stable than not lunging)
My table has this same rule but different. You half your attack (vs ac) and damage modifiers, as lunging is using the very tip of the weapon and you can't get the full power of a strike the way the weapon is intended to be used.
But couldn’t that slightly reduce the uniqueness of the fighter battle masters lunge attack as every player can now do it and your just expending a superiority dice for more damage and not the novelty that comes with making a unique weapon attack?
@@thecantankerouspancake9464, yes. But not everyone cares about novelty or class purity. I've seen some games that are more about the skills/play rather than arbitrary class designations.
To put it simply, people can do (or at least attempt to do) a lot of different things. But the results may vary. A game mechanic that tells me I can't do something, even though I could clearly attempt to do, is irritating.
I personally think that it is better to let people attempt to do things (at some appropriate disadvantage) than to just say, No.
Example:
Anyone can attempt to grapple... But an MMA fighter will do it in a way that delivers desirable results more often.
That's just exactly a feat from Pathfinder
It amuses me that Shad's two issues are 1) just move up 5 feet, attack, then back 5 feet and 2) reinventing those ancient Chainmail combat rules!
Distance really should be measured between centers of mass, not back feet.
Omg, you made me realize Shad is using that dumb technicality of that image of a cat with one paw on the counter as if saying ''I'm not on the counter, my paw is.'' I'll try to look for it, see if I can link it brb.
Apologies for america being odd, I dont like our measurement system either. Its so confusing
@@infinityquasar no, I think being able to lunge and retreat before you get attacked back is very realistic actually.
Also the measuring from the back foot makes a lot of sense, because that's the position from which you attack and the position that you return to once you're finished attacking.
You're only moving your body for a split second to be able to bridge the distance, you don't linger there.
@@infinityquasar How long of sticks are we talking about here?
@@lotoreo I disagree as well, it’s not just a split second and the opponent can attack back/move their weapon far quicker than you can move your whole body back out of reach, and they can move their body to lunge back at you (if they need to to reach you fast enough) just as fast as you can retreat your own lunge.
The math just doesn’t work in favor of the initial lunger being too fast to hit back.
"on a blazing hot day like this"
Sometimes I forget Shad lives in Australia. And what that means for weather.
And the fact that the seasons are flipped from what the majority of humanity experiences.
also means apocalyptic levels of frogs and spiders at certain times of years. Australia and South America are places that seem to be designed to make life miserable or end it.
2 points to make:
- the part about making attacks at a 10 foot distance without weapons with reach could be addressed with a combat maneuver "lunge", what the penalties of making it should be theorycrafted
- the fact that 5 foot is way too close for melee combat is addressed with the fact that if you move through or from the squares adjacent to an opponent, he gets an attack of opportunity since you are not directly engaged in combat with him
A lunge is often not very risky if you pull it of. And all melee classes would have learned it if they have proficiency in any weapon that can use a thrust attack.
It's an attack of opportunity or a surprise strike. But yes i would say only certain weapons should have "Gets reach with a lunge move" such as the spear, Staff, longsword and Great sword.
You would however with some weapons still be engaged in direct combat with them. with two long swords standing 10 feet apart you would be actively engaging in fencing with each other. It's different with other weapons though. But i can understand the streamlining for simplicity. I just wish they could have given some alternative rules for it *Sigh*
Good point. Lunging is exactly what Shad is demonstrating here. Technically, he has to step into the adjacent square to hit his opponent. That one of his feet stays in his original square is irrelevant. He could not have hit his opponent without ssetting foot into the adjacent square. Therefore his complaint is a little odd to me.
@@blablubb4553 not to mention his strikes are pretty weak on the lunges. He barely scratches a dummy standing perfectly still, how is that meant to land any kind of substantial damage on an armored, moving, or otherwise evading that poke in the slightest.
@@BadFiend I don't think the problem with the lunge lies in how much (or little) damage one's strike will do upon a hit but rather the implications of missing. If the defender steps back (hence not getting hit), the lunging attacker would be very hard pressed to take another step forward (where they could have had the taken a normal step into the adjacent 5' square) and strike again. Further, while in the lunged stance, the attacker would momentarily be at a disadvantage should the defender retaliate in that moment (the defender can easily step in whichever direction they choose while the attacker can only go either forwards or backwards with a more energy intensive reverse lunge (or whatever the step to get out of a lunge is called)).
@@blablubb4553 It depends on how you look at movement. In combat footwork is everything. You have the small steps, you have the strides, the shifts and jumping and running even. And then there are the Lunges.
A lunge is considered a violent and fast attack from where you stand sending out one foot to quickly gain extra reach. Without really leaving your original position which you also try to return to really fast as well. And he also points out that the squares don't make much sense with this because combat in reality isn't that rigid. Then we also have the fact of feats and class features still allowing this which further jumbles up and ruins the rules and the concept for us *sigh* Why can't DnD just give us an optional hardcore rule set for these things like every other TRPG does...XD
I'd argue that lightly touching someone just because you "can reach them" isn't a damaging hit and shouldn't count as a hit.
Have I ever given a player's character syphilis out of spite? No.
Have I ever given a player's character syphilis for being *that* bard? .....Frick yes, I have, and I'll fricking do it again, too.
I once had a player (not a bard but a sorcerer) try to sleep with everything including a literal goddess. He had to make a bunch on constitution saving throws during the goddess one. Ended up having his dick vaporized
@@minkeyandzomble6206 a small prixe to pay for salvation.
@@minkeyandzomble6206 his dong is in paradise waiting for the rest of him
Ah yes, *that* player.
"Does it move? Okay, I seduce it!"
"It doesn't? Dang, i try anyway!"
Or as one DM put it: "You think you're going to _just_ get the clap? This is D&D, there are much worse diseases. _Supernatural_ diseases."
I'd question the difference between "reach" and "effective reach" - you were barely able to reach and touch the opponent from 10ft with several weapons, but I would argue that the reach accomplished was insufficient to strike with any real force (I'll grant that this might have been a matter of perspective on the video, or the demo methodology being based more on touching the opponent than achieving an effective strike)
Yes, I think the effectiveness of attack from further back is questionable. I think from a rules based perspective it could be aloud with disadvantage since with such a stretch you don't have as good a hold on your weapon giving more time to react and make it easier to deflect but if it hits even a small connection with a blade can hurt or even kill.
There's one Mat Easton video. One of the fencers broke the tip of his practice sword, so instead of being a blunt tip it was sharpish. By the time anyone noticed his opponent had been stabbed and they had to call the ambulance. A stiff, sharpish, object does not need a lot of force to penetrate.
@@nicholasbenjamin3826 True enough, but there is quite a difference between sparring and combat against armed and armoured opponents intending to kill you. Even several monsters have tough hide that would offer a degree of protection against glancing / less-forceful blows. I could poke your arm with the tip of an arrow and not even break the skin, but applying more and more force and it's sure to do damage...
In DnD that "reach" Is essentially a lunge attack maneuver that is learnable as a fighter combat master. The question then becomes, would a common adventurer (say a rogue) have the same combat effectiveness as a trained warrior such as a fighter?
@@KirbysPVS IRL almost every attack would involve lunging. A lunge is an attack. Their skill at the attack roll should affect their ability/proficiency bonus, but it should not affect their ability to lunge.
Well now I know what the Battle Master’s ‘Lunge’ maneuver looks like.
Practically I agree.
Personally I like the Runesmith's version more.
I love how well you are proving that the DD distances are perfectly measured.
You leaning your full body into the adjacent square would still give an opportunity attack, movement speed used or not
Historians agree that all badasses in world history where just Shad in disguise.
were*
Until firearms fxxxing around, 😂 lol
So the third crusade was just Shad being the leader of both sides (Saladin and Richard the Lionheart), like Palpatine in the Clone Wars?
All hail the Shadperor of shadkind
This is a generally true consensus amongst Historians you are correct. Though you have the occasional Historian that will claim it is absurd, those people are absolutely insane and you don’t need to listen to them.
XD hope you’re having a nice day
Shadrick of Versity sounds like a really nice guy. But he forgot the key question to the GM - Mate, what about DRAGONS??....oh good, the video editor made sure to incldue it!
I would disagree with your assessment that you are "technically" still in the square you originated from for your lunge. Look at your body. Not where your feet are, but look at where your torso, leg, head, and the vast majority of your weight is. You are clearly "in" the square closer to the target. And, as you established at the top of the episode, imagine that there's a hostile in that square who clearly controls that area. He wouldn't just let you get within breathing distance of himself. As a matter of fact, when you lunge (12:29 is my reference) you're standing directly where an enemy would be standing if they were occupying that space. Not roasting, just disagreeing.
Have a good day!
Agreed, he is clearly entering the adjacent square and leaving it again which you can do as part of your movement in dnd, you just open yourself to being attacked if you do. So i’m with you on this one, his point is not valid. Now i’m not gonna argue dnd combat rules are realistic, they are clearly simplifications of reality for a game, but this particular example doesn’t work.
I agree with your disagreement!
What Shad is really looking for is for enemies to stand 10 feet apart, step closer to attack and then back away to the 10 foot distance, so that battle flows more like a real one. Probably with some penalty or opportunity attack for remaining too close to your opponent (rather than the opposite as it is in D&D).
Agreed, opponents would move forwards and backwards as he points out iirc, but the result after a round is that the opponents don't necessarily move. I think attacks of opportunity aren't well represented here however. Moving just out of reach would warrant a free attack? That doesn't make sense to me really. You could just retreat a couple feet towards an object, like a corner to break contact
Edit: I would actually argue that the adjacent square *is* the abstraction of lunging towards your opponent when you strike. It's just skipping the fact that you're 10 feet away, lunging forwards and retreating to your original position.
I generally agree with this thread, but would also like to add the context: the inability to move-attack-move is in older edition of D&D, and not in the now-standard 5e. It kinda removes the validity of much of his argument about reach in newer editions.
Shad himself indicated he has not or does not play D&D 5e, which explains why he is not understanding the movement mechanics within it. He clearly does not get that he is describing movement when he is explaining "lunging", which is a roll play concept, not a mechanic in of itself outside of separate feats and sub-class options. Shad, you need to use and understand the mechanics at a practical level and not just a logical one. Play 5e for a while and re-visit this topic.
I feel like the weight and momentum required to effectively use these weapons. Yes at 15 feet you could poke him but the concept of ac would imply he could easily slap it away leading to the 5 foot radius to deal damage not to annoy.
It's all fun and games until the DM uses an ancient red dragon
Or some guy with guns fxxxing around
_"You think you can defeat me in my own realm ?"_
Once as DM the rest of the players had the nerve to try and run away from a story moment I had put a lot of effort in to writing for them. So I grabbed a very mean looking monster from the box and placed it directly in their path. Turns out it was a level 25 pit fiend (they were barely level 5...)
That’s all fun and games until the flying paladin drops all his divine smites on it
Why?
Shad: "can I attack someone 2 squares away?"
Also Shad: Steps into the next square, still trying to prove his point
well the point is irl people didn't fight each other getting 5ft next to each other, 10ft would be the preferred unless you have the advantage and move closer for a good strike, imagine fighting someone with a sword that knew what they were doing, the amount of split second reactions you'd need to not mess up is insane, to put context in this, a person running full sprint 20ft away towards you, would be at an advantage if you had a gun, and it is still in its holster, 20ft sounds like a long ass distance and a knife has a short reach however now give that knife some length and you're 5 ft away from someone, sure you have a sword also, but you'd want to make attacks of your own rather than guarding the whole time trying to make correct movements or not tripping on yourself or whatever may be on the ground
@@Sinrix imo I think this was an ad for his system, which is fine because the dnd combat system does leave a lot to be desired when it comes to melee combat and duels. That said I don’t like that the argument was first that dnd combat was not realistic, then that it breaks immersion - which are two VERY different things.
It may be realistic that you can score a hit from 10 feet away, but in a turn based system your opponent cannot react realistically to your lunge without other mechanics coming into play like movement and attacks of opportunity.
Shad even demonstrated it when he mirrored himself in the other square. The spot in the middle is the danger zone. To think that you would be allowed to attack and retreat without your opponent being able to react is silly let alone anyone else threatening that space, which is why I’d be shocked if his system doesn’t have “punish” mechanics for missing an attack.
@@aWhysGuy i have no idea how dnd works but i do understand that the system it has works and does so for a reason because well it has to have some system if it’s a game, the whole “if-then” scenarios usually need to have some form of fair aspects for any game to work properly, idk why a square is 5ft i’m sure if he just made the square 10ft rather than 5ft then he would just be fine if he just imagined the square simply too far to be reasonable to attack someone idk lol
Yeah lol
@@Sinrix 5 feet is the space you can control around you aka. reach with weapons and avoid friendly strikes. It's not necessarily the combat space restriction, since you can move. Not to mention, everything that happens in a round happens in 6 seconds, so every parry, flank, dodge, strike and retreat are summarized in 6 seconds and is limited only by the DM's and your imagination.
I would argue that when you were lunging, you were absolutely out of the square you started in: most of your body was in the square you were lunging into, so if you determine the square based on how much of the body is in it, you are in the square you are lunging into. more importantly, though, think about why the 5-foot square makes sense: it is the region where people would have to go through you, the region which you directly control. just because your back foot is in the square you started in doesn't mean an enemy couldn't stand in that square and drop a sneak attack on you. your area of control is the square you are lunging into. that said, I would agree that having a lunge as a free action or something would make sense, as follows:
you can attack an opponent from 5 feet further than the normal attack range for your weapon by temporarily occupying the square in front of you in their direction for the duration of your attack action. you may then come out of the lunge and return to the square you started in.
I would imagine that it would provoke attacks of opportunity from any other enemies within range to attack you, since it is effectively a miniature move action and it directs all your focus onto the target of your attack, leaving your back leg completely unprotected. remember: even though combat is technically turn based, that is a gameplay mechanic to compensate for the fact that it would be rather difficult to resolve everyone doing their turns simultaneously. In reality, one round of combat takes only 6 seconds, and yet each person has the full six seconds for their actions. it is turn-based in implementation, but in-world it is meant to be a representation of simultaneous actions taken in six second intervals
For the movement thing, you have to keep in mind that each round takes 6 seconds. so assuming moving 5 feet takes a little less than a second, moving 30 feet would take a little less than 6 seconds, making it reasonable, especially if you also make an attack during those 6 seconds.
Essentially, if I am listening as Shad's DM, and the rest of the group agrees, I would houserule that you can shift forward and back 5 feet during a lunging attack as a part of your attack action, provided there is no difficult terrain, but you'd leave yourself open to an AoO from an adjacent enemy that is not being engaged by another ally. Bugbears, battle masters lunge, and reach weapons would extend the reach. Any apporopriate enemy would also have this ability, thus leveling the playing field. And then I would see how it played at the table.
The superior maneuver would be to move the 5' square carpet forward a bit, using a caterpillar-like motion so he wouldn't have to step off of it, in order to extend his reach during combat without incurring attacks of opportunity.
Yeah looking at this the squares should probably be 6ft each. With you and your opponent being on opposite sides of adjacent squares you would likely have the perfect amount of space for most trades and maneuvers for non reach weapons. The lunge and other stuff like that is stuff that would theoretically be possible but isn't covered by the rules because it is a dangerous move that can leave you open to attack and doesn't have a lot of power behind it. All that is fine when fighting an unarmored human opponent 1v1, but when engaged in a multi-person fray with armored or monstrous opponents you want to be performing attacks that allow you to continue to defend yourself and also get enough power behind them to actually push through gaps in armor, scales, etc. More detailed rules could allow for players to make that kind of tactical choice on the fly, but I think it's fair to say stuff like that is what at table rulings are for. The game isn't bad because it doesn't include it because the game is designed to be a bit simpler and more balanced than what real life medieval combat actually was.
@@kyle1078 Squares used to be 10 feet each in older editions, which actually fits better with how _few_ weapons have the "reach" property.
The main problem I see with Shad's interpretation of the rules is that he's constantly lunging into the next square to hit the opponent. Both feet should remain in the square! But, unlike how Shad handles his back foot most of the time, you can be anywhere in that 5ftsq box instead of being locked to the center. This also applies to your opponent - you might hug the front of your square to strike at an opponent "10 feet" away from you, but it's easy enough for them to just back up out of range while remaining well within their square.
There are methods for DND characters to strike at enemies further away, actually. A Battlemaster Fighter has the "Lunging Attack" maneuver (sound familiar?) that adds 5ft to your attack range - so swords can reach 10ft, and weapons with reach can poke someone at 15ft.
Why should both feet stay in the square? That precludes lunges entirely, and that's the point of his demonstration.
@@thekaxmax because as most DMs here are saying. seeing that action he took, I would have also said that moved him into the adj. square, attacked, and then moved back.
in addition, he lunged for a single hit without a defensive posture mid attack, which to me, would also make it reasonable to say an opportunity attack could be made on him while he did it, in the exact way he's showing it.
@@thekaxmax That's because lunges are included as part of a special maneuver to specific classes, like Battlemaster. It may be the point of his demonstration, but I'm offering a counter-point that such moves actually already exist in the game. That boil's Shad's argument to basically "everyone should be able use lunging attacks", which he addresses in a pinned comment.
I'm not saying his interpretation of the rules is bad. What I'm saying is how people see squares, and how things are supposed to interact with squares, is completely subjective. The way I see squares, both feet should remain in them to be considered "in that square", but you're not locked to the center of the square like Shad implies, and unless something special happens (like the Lunging Attack maneuver) moving one foot out should count as movement.
Yep, and if you can lunge into the next square to get extra range, presumably your opponent could "reverse lunge" to keep their distance.
"this is the length of a standard spear"
Bad example, a standard spear does not have reach in D&D. You need a longspear in order to have reach. It is thus, at least, consistent: you agree that a standard spear and a greatsword have similar reach, and indeed, in D&D, they have similar reach: which is to say they do not have the "reach" characteristic.
and that's a bad rappresentation of reality in dnd xD I'n my personal ruleset I setted that all weapons with large size got reach. ( yes, all weapons has their own size.. and are not depending on the creature)
@@kaioshinon5954 The trouble is that becomes inconsistent, unless the standard reach weapons then get 15 ft reach.
And unbalanced, those weapons cease to have any reason to exist.
In any case, D&D rules aren't supposed to directly represent reality. They are supposed to be an abstraction that ends up with similar results to reality.
(Also, if you just say the squares are 7 feet now, it looks like Shad's movements suddenly just about match up with D&D. But 7 feet is harder to do quick mental math with, and does it matter?)
@@ragnarrahl nono, I was wrong at the part: all large weapons has reach, I'm sorry, I wanted to say: in my personal rule set every weapon is rappresented in each own way, after research on research.. I ended up with something to create (almost) every weapon you want, and the result will be balanced to the others weapons that still exist ( in my rules). With this said. the square is still 5 feet= 1,5 m, the movements of shad is doing are with a long sword, and he is putting all of his body to reach the other square xD. In my rule set every weapons has his reach, and only long swords have a mixed reach that can hit at 3 m and at 1,5 m. Spear ( not short spear) can hit at 3 m, but not at 1,5 becasue they got reach. But if you use 1 second of your 6 total seconds, you can easly change the handle on the spear and make it a mixed range weapon for example. Of course all these mechanics have consequences, different effects ( not just "reach"). there are more, but I'm not continuing here for now.
@@kaioshinon5954 Uhh... your clarification makes the standard reach weapons have even less reason to exist than it previously sounded like.
Remember, the non-reach weapons, in D&D, have either higher crit or higher damage than their nearest equivalents with reach, in general. Most weapons thus have some sort of reason to exist, even if some choices are better than others. From what you've told me about your system so far, you take one of the high damage weapons, buff it with an improved version of reach, give the standard reach weapons a LESS improved version of reach with no improvement to damage mentioned and... that's the sum of the changes you've told me about so far. That makes the standard reach weapons obsolete.
(also, are you sure you mean longswords? Are you even talking about D&D at all, or just a completely homebrew RPG system? D&D "longswords" are not the equivalent of IRL longswords, they are the equivalent of IRL arming swords, because Gygax didn't know what a longsword was. There are no one handed reach weapons in D&D, except some exotics in obscure splatbooks.).
@@ragnarrahl Ye, you are right, I'm not talking about pathfinder 3,5e, sorry, but yep, it's a homebrew rpg system with that base, I didn't mention a few things, like if you use a small weapon you can attack twice ( if you do not do anything else), because with small weapon you use 2 seconds for that plus 4 ( the seconds for a repeated action are doubled), if you use a medium weapon than it's 3 sec, and you can't do a double attack, (3+6= 9, the round is max 6 sec) if you use a large weapon you use 4 seconds of your round. Small size weapon usually got more crit rate like 16-17-18 and nice crit dmg , large got 19-20 only with. There are more. but I think I will stop there sorry, anyway longsword has no reach sorry, I was wrong, I didn't check it right, It was only a few long weapon, like Zweihander and others like this.
So I think personally, the reason why they don't do what you say in Dungeons & Dragons is the standardization of races, for example a goblin or a half giant obviously would be picked less or more cause they would literally only be able to reach five feet max in the goblins case and the half giant could lunge 25 feet with a spear. So they have to standardize to keep things fair
also people hate to have more rules than nessesary. Imagine each race had to at reach depenend on size, because if you had a dwarf and a goblin of the same height, the goblin would have more range (going by short limbed dwarf). And if we start that, why not throw the fields away, since they don't matter anymore (His lunge would not always be able to reach a goblin in the "10 feet away" square)
I won't repeat the whole "combat happens simultaneously" thing that a bunch of others have said already, but I do agree that sometimes it can feel a little stiff or janky in practice. Also as a part-time DM for my group, I'd say that as long as the player can competently explain what they want to do, the "rule of cool" is always in effect. If someone wants to make a big sweeping strike despite not having the appropriate feat or class to do so, I'd still let them do it, but most likely with a bit of a negative or a disadvantage depending on how ridiculous the action is. (because they haven't "trained" for that specific maneuver by not having the feat/class etc)
The most important thing for DMs is to always be flexible and be able to think on your feet. If your players want to do things that aren't in the game's scope, you should probably bend the rules to let them do what they want so the group as a whole can enjoy the story more (as long as they make their rolls of course lol.) Same reason why DMs have a screen to hide their dice. Sometimes, you need to bend the rules to enhance the experience.
This right here. A good gm is a flexible gm . The rules are guidelines and if someone has a strange idea give them a chance. They might cock it up. Or they might defeat the general by doing gymnastic bs on his dinosaur and giving him a good snog. Yes this happened. They passed all the dice rolls so why not.
Indeed, even the rulebook is clear with: "If a rule makes the game less fun, skip it."
One of my favourite feats is a good example, Tavern Brawler. You should not have to be an experienced brawler to punch someone with your shield. A trained knight should be able to do it as well.
A fine example of this: Ran a campaign where the end dungeon was to defeat a lawful evil tyrant in a castle. I had a dungeon planned and everything. They posed as a theatre troupe, I said, write me a 3 act play and perform it, and it'll fly. 45 minutes later, they have a frankly terrible 3 act play, but it fit with the story of the campaign and it was cool. They defeated the tyrant without ever facing the dungeon. Oh well. I used that dungeon elsewhere, nothing wasted.
@@TheRevDel lol it's funny how they can do things on the fly and convert jokes into benefits for themselves. (Make one Escape from New York reference.) But as a GM to be honest that's half the fun. Sometimes they will use things and completely defeat things by being inventive. And that doesn't mean the GM can't be inventive to defeat them a little bit too.
Best example I have was a World of Darkness game. How did the evil big bad defeat them? She called the cops on them and had them arrested. They had just burned down an asylum to drive her out after all.
Good to see that we think Shad did this cause A: He wants to push this other combat system and B: He might have had some really rule lawyer GM's in the past.
You entered the adjacent square to attack, you used left over movement to retreat 5ft. By the rules this just means the enemy gets an attack of opportunity.
Unless you are a rogue, then just disengage as a bonus action and move away
Problem solved 😉
which fits since that lunge would leave you wide open
@@raixuh I was about to say lol clearly he multi classed ! 🤣😂🤣
He's a battle master. Lunging attack
You could interpret the rules so that a lunge is moving 5ft towards the opponent, but you drop your defences for that moment, allowing attacks of opportunity.
@Shadiversity
I would make you perform the attack with either disadvantage or an opposed acrobatics check due to the enemy seeing such a lunge coming.
As far as the "lunge" for you to lean in far enough to the adjacent five foot square to reach the opponent you have entered their own reach, as your foot plants all the way into the square. They can make an opportunity attack as you try to recover to your standing position. In game terms, you moved into the next square (your foot is all the way past the midpoint) and then moved back to your own square. If you have the ability you can perform a lunge attack, which allows you to essential perform this action whilst defended and "extend" your reach. (Not allowing the enemy to attack you in return due to your speed and skill) Additionally as far as engagement range, if you are both at the "far" side of your own squares (they are not going to stand right in front of you) then there is an ample space between each of you, as there is almost 8 feet of distance between you. What's important is that every system is an abstraction, as there is always levels of abstraction in table top. And the point of the games master is to ensure that everyone understands "how" things are happening, and to make exceptions and rulings as needed. As far as the stream, sure, you "lean" forward, but they can simply take a step back. As far as the cleave? A "noob" who has no training or exceptional strength will not manage to bring a sword through another person, or past their shield with any strength. Once again however there are rules and exceptions you can utilize for example if someone crits and deals over damage, you can rule that they cleave through the first enemy and make the roll against the next.
All in all, these complaints come down to not having an understanding of the abstractions, and or, having a stickler dm who understands them even less.
I actually to let my player's lunge in D&D 3.5 without the Lunge feat or equivalent ability. But, when they do it without the feat or ability, they are at -2 to their AC until the beginning of their next round the same as a charge, because they do not have the proper training to recover from their lung.
Or maybe just maybe, some people want a realistic mele combat in a game to reflect their own training they have irl.
You can easily move 15ft and attack somebody at the same time, and that’s unarmed! With a sword or spear you could easily move oh I don’t know, 45ft and make an attack.
That would be realistic, because fights happen fast and realistically a single hit on somebody should kill or down them on the spot.
@@notyetdeleted6319 you can move 15ft and attack in the same turn in dnd... And considering fights in dnd only last about 24 seconds of "real time" at the most it's definitely fast.
Sounds to me more like you just don't understand the mechanics than you want something to be "realistic"
@@notyetdeleted6319, which is why some speedier characters like rogues have the ability to Run (move an additional 30 ft) as a bonus action and then attack at the end. D&D also started to utilize 1HP support enemies that allow for "I quickly dispatched this lesser trained enemy" whereas more skilled opponents have HP more equivalent to the players.
Yes
DISCLAIMER: This comment is a defense of the D&D system, based on my knowledge on 5e. It is not an attack on Cogent Roleplay, its mechanics or its relevance. Cogent Roleplay sounds interesting. I'm not claiming D&D is more fun or realistic than Cogent, I'm just saying D&D is not as unrealistic as this video makes it out to be, as almost everything can be justified.
The lunging point is kind of overlooking the fact in real life, it takes the same amount of time to lunge as it would to step, and would reduce your movement.
What you're essentially doing is moving (your torso/center of mass) to a square adjacent to the enemy, attacking, and moving back. Should it be a free action and not cost movement? No, how does that make sense? You're definitely moving your feet, you're even having to come to a full stop and moving back. In D&D, most humans can do this fully 3 times in 6 seconds, (6 times if they're dashing, which, if you were just seeing how quickly you could step back and forth, I'd say you were doing, as you were focusing on moving as quickly as possible.) I feel like it's accurate.
In real life, you don't stand within 5 feet of eachother because that's where the enemy doesn't need to first get closer, giving you time to step back.
In D&D, you'd do the same, if it wasn't for opportunity attacks. You take the same risk of a counterattack in real life when you back away, but it's up to skill rather than dice in real life.
Let's also take into account a single-handed sword has significantly more reach in real life, than bare fists, which also have a 5 foot reach in D&D.
Beyond that, you can just barely even reach the enemy like this, making it stupidly easy for the opponent to step back within his square.
If you do engage with an enemy within 5-foot squares, you'd likely be standing as far away from eachother within those squares. That's why, when you're flanked from the other side, you lack room for comfort and are much easier to hit from either side. You could give each weapon its own specific reach, but that would just make everything complicated.
This justifies the first three points for me, being the distance between fighters, the ability to reach across 10 feet and free action lunging and moving back.
As for obstacles, a good DM can very well allow you to move onto the space of the obstacle and move back, maybe with a dexterity check involved. The rules don't contradict that.
There's a million ways a DM can rule this, it's going to vary from one DM to the other.
I'm honestly losing the next point, unsure what the problem is. Initiative not making sense? Well, there's always reactions, but D&D isn't made for realism in that regard, just fun and simplicity.
The wide slash would stop at the first opponent, unless they completely avoid contact with it. Something like this would never damage multiple opponents, except with a shallow cut on bare skin.
Don't take this as a hate comment yelling at everything Shad says. I'm here because I like D&D and I also like Shadiversity. I just also like defending things I like when points are made about them.
There's a lot of injury between "shallow cuts on the skin" and "hits bone and stops"
Heck, bludgeoning weapons might be robbed of momentum after the first hit, but if a slasher glances off armor of the first? You still got enough time to stabilize and aim a bit before the sweep gets to his buddy next to him, because with muscle memory that takes tenths of a second.
True.
But glancing off the armour of the first follows my statement. "would never >damage< multiple opponents"
It seems like an incredibly game-y thing to just sweep across several people in armour without much regard for aiming for gaps in armour, hoping it somehow ends up dealing damage.
If the attack deals significant damage to someone, it's likely because the blade buried itself within their flesh and lost all of its momentum. Unless, as stated, it's a very shallow cut without much protection to go through.
Thank you.
I was also thinking, he lunged at a stationary target and he had to lunge most of his body into the next square to do so.
TECHNICALLY speaking, that's not an attack against a person, it's an attack against a stationary object, which has an Armor Class of 5; 10 for being a Medium-sized target (in this case a mannequin/target dummy), -5 for having a Dexterity score of 0 (being inanimate.)
If you want to try bollocks like this, you have to try it with another person, SCA style, and they have to be attempting to actually defend themselves.
From the DM's side of the screen, if you go to all that much trouble and tell me you want to make a Reach attack via lunging at full extension with a mucking huge bastard sword like the one pictured, I'd probably let you make one at a pretty huge (-10) penalty to-hit. (Which, now I think about it, might even be a good idea for a feat chain - one letting you make lunging reach attacks with two-handed weapons (but NOT one-handed weapons wielded in two hands) at a -5 and then a -2 penalty.
@@ShadowDragon8685 I agree 100%. He's also ignoring that the "attack action" isn't a single swing of your sword, it represents you taking initiative while in combat with an opponent is so whole you were attacking it would likely include binding, winding, and even batting aside test strikes from your opponent to force an opponent. He's overanalyzing again, I stopped watching his videos for a long while at one point because of these videos because he doesn't actually discuss it with anybody in the other side
To put it simply, he used a technique, not a default attack. The normal reach itself never changed. ^^"
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"Lunge: Give +1 reach if you *engage* an opponent with this action, (if already engaged, change to bonus dmg?)
leaves you vulnerable to counter in case of miss or if the opponent activate an adequate counter skill.
- If your attack is successful, you return to your initial square
- In case of successful retaliation against you, either you or the opponent move one square toward eachothers."
Get a "complex action" malus just like when you target specific areas, negate it depending on weapon maestry, and that's it.
As simple as that
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Who move during the retaliation depend on what they did in context, if you fail and get BONK'd on the head, you move forward, if they counter-charge you while you're getting back to your square they get the free "moving forward", for instance.
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If you fail badly enough, the GM can decide you move one square forward instead of getting back even without counter. At this point it is similar to an off-balance state you pay "moving toward the opponent" as free recovery. Or just faceplant as you go if you contest asking for a save roll and fail again... xD
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I don't really see how hard it would be to implement this in any system. It doesn't even have to get any cost of use since it already have a big drawback in case of fail or counter. But the discussion about the difference between "engage" (scenario of the video) and "already engaged" (scenario of the rule) is still an interesting one. Of course, you should be able to commit to such "out of reach "action if you pay the price for it, just like you can throw your sword like in a movie.
Basically, combat mechanics in RPGs are to reality, what CGI is to reality. The more detailed it is, the more it risks falling into the Uncanny Valley where we can't help but notice how it's unrealistic and flawed... in contrast to if it had been more abstracted and stylised.
That being said, on the subject of reach - while it is true that Shad was able to reach out with his weapon at 10ft, it looked like he was at best able to touch the target rather than deliver an actual strike; which would likely be inadequate to deal any actual damage to said target. Additionally, it assumes that the target is simply standing in place without moving and is situated at the centre of the square or closer whilst Shad was allowed to move about when in reality, both are equally free to move. I feel the rules thus (quite reasonably) abstract it out so that they're only engaged at 5ft or less.
Also, for the purposes of distance calculations, it would probably be more appropriate/meaningful if it is measured from one's centre of gravity rather than just any part of your body. Using this approach, the 5ft rule makes all the more sense.
the rule also let a hafling to reach 5 feet with his fist to hit an opponent, its not perfect but do the job, and yes most of his attack were basically glancing blow and would only deal DMG basically to an unarmoured opponents, being slightly armoured or a monster with very thick skin that count as amour (natural AC) would make it innefective
Not to mention that the movement he does is basically the equivalent of a five foot step, since his center of mass is in the other square when he strikes, hence why in the game you're able to do a full attack action after a five foot step.
Okay i will speak from my experimenting in HEMA (European martial arts aka learning to fight with medieval weapons) You only need a few inches to make the relevant damage. To cause bleeding or if they where about to move forward even kill them.
Most of the time it will also make them back of to defend unless they make a glorious parry (now that is a difficult thing compared to a measly lunge).
Also a lunge is often a quick step out to reach a bit further and then quickly fall back again. A full long lunge to reach even further often means committing a lot. (yes lunges have different types). His slow example is merely one and it was with a longsword. So i would only accept such an attack if a player uses a larger weapon like that to reach 10 feet. (Unless they are a Battle master than can use the more dangerous lunge steps)
Essentially they should redesign the weapons into groups depending on size. And also go back to making the 3 damage types relevant again. is there anything that has a specific physical resistance??
It's just combat mechanics in turn/boardgame-based RPG's. Action RPG's are you aren't limited by stupid rules and laws that make the game boring. This is why I prefer games like Dark Souls and Witcher over DND.
@@kenji214245 I believe D&D already does group weapons by size - specifically, those that have the "reach" quality, vs those that don't - judging from Shad's explanation. Also, the critique about the efficacy of his strikes from his demonstration is less about the force behind them but with what part of the weapon he is using to classify it as a hit - specifically, he counts it as a hit even though it is with just the tip, as opposed to its centre of percussion. We know this makes a meaningful difference in effectiveness seeing how combat manual/treatises will often comment as such in one form or another, if they comment on where to hit with a sword.
"I can still strike the opponent after lunging a bit" - as he proceeds to gently poke the opponent
Me, who’s never played that game: “Oh, okay interesting. Cool”
I know. Same XD
He misrepresents how the rules work for most of the video.
@@harryclarke793
Lol
@@LittleNemoGaming oof
I played it once. Unfortunately, we didn't get to finish the game
I can't wait to hear him roast the "realistic" full-dive mmo games of the future.
What if the target also took a step backwards while still keeping one leg on the square to evade you lunge?
This is called 5tf step. (v3.5)
Basic armor class + agility. It covers dodge, step back and so on.
@@kronos661 Not if he gets out of reach (it does in other cases).
@@roydm143
Mechanicaly lounging attack is, as Shad said, an action where you step on adjecent square/hexagon while at the same time still standing on the square/hexagon you started on with a single leg to return there in case you dont hit. You know it. We use map and rules as simple as possible so if you keep your leg on a square, as Marko said, while dodging it is just AC with agility/dodge, whatever other suitable modifiers that make enemy just not hit. If you do not intend to go back after dodging (btw, reduction of agility bonus to AC in confined area or in the crowd would be nice thing if we are going all in on that) that is how it would go mechanically in my opinion:
1. Enemy misses target AC i mentioned, if he hits the AC with your armor and shield bonus you were hit but remained unharmed.
2. you disengage/do 5ft step in your turn
If he wishes to stay in that adjacent square after attacking do charge or just go in to engage.
You don't even need to do that. Just back away 2.5 feet (the furthest edge of your square). He'll only be able to hit you if your close to the edge facing him.
Anything you write in the rules for the players to be able to do will also become a narrative device for the DM in combat to use with the NPC enemies. This is why things that make combat more critical and random become extremely unfun. They amp the bell curve even more and add more randomness to the mix.
Look for ways to add more to the fight than the combat itself, have systems and rules for debris/bodies/terrain that can be determined quickly, have a system for determining sightlines/lighting/smoke etc., have a system for determining the ability for a party/enemies to communicate depending in their distance to each other compared to the noise around them. eg: It may be daytime, but we are in a burning village with lots of smoke and someone is firing a bow at us from the shadow of a window and even though I spotted them I am unable to communicate that to my friend 40ft away because the bonfire and screaming near us makes communicating more than 10ft impossible. Players can use these tactics to then set up their own ambushes, and actually role play tactics, rather than arguing over how many steps they can take and how a greatsword is great and can reach or how he can cleave at level 1 because everyone can or whatever.