Developing Combat Technique system for 5e - feedback needed

I am working a house rule compendium for an upcoming grimdark/evil campaign set in Forgotten Realms' Mulmaster. The meat of the document is a combat technique system available to all players. It is inspired by Kobold Press' "Beyond Damage Dice" and Reddit posts by /u/Thypher but with based around weapon properties not particular weapons, and more tactical, restrictive and balanced in order not compete with class options and feats, while having an answer to most common attempts at combat tactics around the table.

The system is heavy on options (45+) but not meant to be used by players as is but instead handouts are to be given to players depending on their weapon choices, with all or few Techniques chosen by the player.

You can find the document here, with commenting rights: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gyVfoAxCz_XEmqj2PC1SFVb4QD2lWfmZo0OaFyfLY0Q/edit?usp=sharing

PDF version of the current document, prior any feedback: https://1drv.ms/b/s!At_LoPNJEMUNk5d8deKv5AKEdg9xmQ

I am very open for feedback and would like to know:

• The goal of the system is to present options prohibitive to low levels, hard for mid levels but broadlyused at high levels. Non-competing with class and feats has been very important for me, although I do not limit uses per short/long rest. Techniques require a bonus action to limit one per turn, and -5 to Attack. From what I've read a -5 to Attack is roughly similar to a flat chance disadvantage, but gets more penalizing the higher you need to roll and prohibits extreme rolls. It also allows to stack penalty with disadvantage for natural double disadvantage which I use for the most extreme techniques. Is the current system achieving the goal of being usable at mid to high levels, while not competing with class features that should be still preferred by players?
• I would love if people versed with 5e combat can spot Techniques that are unbalanced by design, or are open for extreme abuse from players. I have identified I have many options for prone condition as well as others, and I need to know if the saves available and the option to recover from them are fair while appropriate for a realistic/dark campaign where multiple players with tactical options can be expected overwhelm an opponent.

Thanks in advance!

Just as a note: I'm not sure whether it is feasible in this case, but you may have more responses if you can post the details here rather than on a google document.
Some posters prefer not to/can't access linked files like that.

Thanks for the suggestion, I made a PDF copy of the current state of the document and added it to the main post.

From what I've read you are using a lot the Bonus action, that will be bad for classes that use those bonus actions like the Berserker or characters using two weapons.

Pretty cool at a glance. Not really my cup of tea, but I can see how some tables would enjoy this.

War domain cleric can mitigate the attack penalties pretty easily, for themselves or another party member at higher levels. Might be worth your while to drop an NPC ally into the party, or suggest it to an amenable player for a PC, just to experiment with it a bit.

I'll give it a look when I have time, but I do have a suggestion regarding the one thing I did look at. Your long rest healing rules say this:

At start of a long rest, use any Hit Dice not spent for healing since last rest. At the end of the long rest, the character regains half his maximum Hit Dice, rounded down

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Spending hit dice at the start of the rest seems wrong. It doesn't fit the feel you're aiming for, since it seems like the character is healing suddenly before the rest. It also opens the door for problems if the long rest is interrupted.

My variant for gritty healing has the character spending hit dice at the end of the long rest, after hit dice are regained. (I chose after regaining hit dice so players don't feel inclined to takea short resg immediately). You ought to do the same - although you could have them spend hit djice before gaining more and e can learn if I'm wrong about the players inclining towards a short rest as soon as possible.

I've actually gone farther than just that in grittying up the healing. . . . here's my rules:

[
Regaining Hit Points at the End of a Rest
A character wanting to spend hit dice at the end of a short or long rest must be tended to by someone making a Wisdom (Healing Kit) check with a DC 10. A character tending to himself makes the check with disadvantage. A character with proficiency in the medicine skill gains advantage on the check, cancelling out the disadvantage if he's tending to himself.

If the Wisdom (Healer's Kit) check is successful, the character can spend one or more Hit Dice, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character’s level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. A character regains some spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest, as explained below.

Short Rest
A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds. To gain any benefit from a short rest, you must consume a pint of water and a ration of food.

Long Rest
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity— the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it. At the end of a long rest, the character regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest. These newly gained Hit Dice may be spent immediately to regain hit points as described above.

To gain any benefit of a long rest, you must consume 2 pints of water and 2 rations of food, and be able to sleep with something approaching comfort (a bedroll, or pile of hay perhaps). A character can’t benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.

Exhaustion
The player can choose to take a level of exhaustion in place of the food, water or comfort requirement when taking a rest. Each substituted requirement results in an additional level of exhaustion. For example, a human with no food or water will gain two levels of exhaustion.

Levels of exhaustion are only removed at the end of a long rest if all three requirements - food, water, comfort - are properly met.


EXCEPTIONS
-Elves do not need to meet the comfort requirement because of their trance feature.
-Dwarves can sleep comfortably enough on bare stone, because Dwarf.
-Gnomes do not need to eat a ration to gain the benefits of a short rest, and they only need to consume 1 ration and 1 pint of water during a long rest. They're fey that way.
-Halfings need to eat twice as much as required for a short or long rest (Just kidding; they want to, though!)

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Thank you both for the valuable feedback:

* I will consider some rule clarification on combining class abilities with flat bonus and combat techniques. War Domain Cleric is a perfect example.

* @Satyrn, thanks for spotting the start of turn issue, it will be fixed immediately. I am liking your gritty rules a lot, with few possible changes if I were to adopt them:

-- Is there a good reason you use Healing Kit and not Medicine?

-- I would allow 1 Hit Die recovery without the use of Wisdom(Healing Kit) but require it for more than 1.

-- How often your players come up on their own with the need to have water and food, otherwise they get Exhaustion? I am wondering if this would annoy my players who usually forget about those necessities, and would rather endanger the campaign by them constantly forgetting rather than make them come up with it on their own.

I decided to go with a weakened version with your long rest rule, a middle ground for now.

During long rest, character must consume at least 2 pints of water and a ration. and be able to sleep with something approaching comfort (a bedroll, or pile of hay perhaps). If he cannot, he gains 1 level of Exhaustion.

dco said:

From what I've read you are using a lot the Bonus action, that will be bad for classes that use those bonus actions like the Berserker or characters using two weapons.

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You're right, and this is intended. One of my goals with the combat techniques to have a crunchy alternative for combat turns where there are no class options left to be used. Class options should always to be preferrable to my combat techniques since the latter are unlimited use and if they were comparable in effect, this would wreak havoc to the game balance.

As for two weapons, there are few options in the system that does not use bonus action, but they are rarely powerful. I see it more as an alternaive, whether the bonus attack is more important to making opponent bleed, or dropping him prone. I welcome feedback if this is an okay trade and whether you'd prefer the bonus attack compared to a technique (especially if you could get it with an advantage).

Apostol Apostolov said:

Thank you both for the valuable feedback:

* I will consider some rule clarification on combining class abilities with flat bonus and combat techniques. War Domain Cleric is a perfect example.

* @Satyrn, thanks for spotting the start of turn issue, it will be fixed immediately. I am liking your gritty rules a lot, with few possible changes if I were to adopt them:

-- Is there a good reason you use Healing Kit and not Medicine?

-- I would allow 1 Hit Die recovery without the use of Wisdom(Healing Kit) but require it for more than 1.

-- How often your players come up on their own with the need to have water and food, otherwise they get Exhaustion? I am wondering if this would annoy my players who usually forget about those necessities, and would rather endanger the campaign by them constantly forgetting rather than make them come up with it on their own.

I decided to go with a weakened version with your long rest rule, a middle ground for now.

During long rest, character must consume at least 2 pints of water and a ration. and be able to sleep with something approaching comfort (a bedroll, or pile of hay perhaps). If he cannot, he gains 1 level of Exhaustion.

Click to expand...

I would totally recommend a weaker (less exhausting) version for a campaign that isn't short dungeon crawls with lots of opportunity for downtime. Adventurers in my current campaign could be compared to the top end professional golfers. They prep for a single event, go hard at it, and then take a break, even skipping several weeks to prep for the event that matters to them. Indeed, I'm inclined to recommend that you don't adopt any of the exhaustion bits in a campaign where the players are always on the move.

I went with the healing kit instead of Medicine because my goal was to force more resource management into the game.

The rules were made specifically for a megadungeon exploration campaign, where most forays are day trips, and I was looking for various ways to make the players choose between pushing ever deeper or return to the surface to reprovision. Maybe even make them leave behind loot to pick up later so they can continue exploring. I gave lots of means of gaining exhaustion in order to really push home the idea that the players are pushing hard as they head deeper.

It's for the same reason I'm forcing them to track water and food. But I also didn't want it to be a mere matter of ticking off a ration at the start of the day, because that's the sort of resource management I hate. I figured by tying it into the rests, it would give the players the sense that they were choosing to eat - but also, a player who has fared well through the day might choose not to gain tbe benefits of a rest when the rest of the group does, and so doesn't need to use up any food or water (ideally, the player should feel like he's pushing himself)


I can't report on how well this actually works on long treks, because the campaign is in early stages and the players have never spent more than 2 days in the dungeon.

Apostol Apostolov said:

I am working a house rule compendium for an upcoming grimdark/evil campaign set in Forgotten Realms' Mulmaster. The meat of the document is a combat technique system available to all players.
(...)
I am very open for feedback and would like to know:

Click to expand...

Good document. My comment is more about language than content. While it's pretty easy to get what you want to convey, sometimes it's not clear whether the bonus action refers to an attack or the Attack action, or another action altogether, especially for those who haven't acquired full mastery of the 5e ruleset. I would suggest adopting a formulation closer to that used in DMG and PHB. Let's use Leg Sweep as an example:

[sblock=Leg Sweep]
Leg Sweep
Required: Reach or Quarterstaff
You make a low swing attempting to sweep out the legs from under your target. Spend your bonus action and take -5 penalty to the Attack roll. If it hits, the target takes half damage and must make a STR save (DC=8+STR or DEX + Prof) or be knocked prone.
[/sblock]

D&D, has mostly used "prerequisite" rather than "required" in the past, but that's a minor nitpick. Also, i might be looking for the "reach" weapon and not find it next to the quarterstaff and other weapons, because it's a quality (or be looking for the quarterstaff quality). It might be better to say "Quarterstaff, or a reach weapon". Again, small nitpick.

Fluff text is short, concise and flavourful. That's good.

In 5e, one doesn't "spend" a bonus action. 5e usually uses "you can use a bonus action to...", or "as a bonus action, you can..." 5e also uses "if successful..." or "if the attack is successful", along with "on a hit" or "when you hit a creature with a melee attack"

As written, it isn't clear if the DC offers two formulae: either (8+STR) or (DEX+prof), or 8+(STR or DEX)+prof. It may be better to spell it out like in the PHB.

Also, it isn't clear here whether Leg Sweep applies to one of your attacks if you have more than one, replaces your Attack action altogether, or if this bonus action is a additional attack on top of those from your Attack action, or if it can be applied to an attack as a reaction. I assume it is supposed to be one of your attacks during your turn when you take the Attack action. In which case, I'd suggest something like:

"As a bonus action, when you take the Attack action on your turn, you can replace one of your attacks with a Leg Sweep attack. When you do so, make an attack roll with a -5 penalty. If the attack is successful, the target take half as much damage and must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be knocked prone. The saving throw DC for this attack is 8 + your Strength or Dexterity modifier + your proficiency bonus."

alternatively, you could use:

"When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can forgo one of your attacks and use a bonus action to make a special Leg Sweep attack. When you do so, make an attack roll with a -5 penalty. If the attack is successful, the target takes half as much damage and must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be knocked prone. The saving throw DC for this attack is 8 + your Strength or Dexterity modifier + your proficiency bonus."

or, if Leg Sweep is meant to be used with any type of attack whatsoever, you could use the following:

"Before you make an attack with a quarterstaff or reach weapon you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll to make a special Leg Sweep attack. If the attack is successful, the target takes half as much damage and must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be knocked prone. The saving throw DC for this attack is 8 + your Strength or Dexterity modifier + your proficiency bonus."

I'm AFB at the moment so I'm writing out of the SRD right now, but look into the Open-Hand Monk, the Battlemaster Fighter and the Great Weapon Master feat entries for example of 5e-speach.

'findel