My thoughts...Next in my series of rambling tinkering thoughts on 5e (because apparently I like to keep my mind engaged this way), I was thinking about a simple change to add more choice in combat.
Simple, but I suspect with long reaching knock-on effects.
The idea is thus: Characters may determine if they are in a reckless, cautious, or neutral stance at the start of their turn if they are making a melee attack. If they are using ranged or casting a spell, they are assumed to be in neutral stance.
If aggressive, they have advantage to attack rolls, but enemies have advantage to attack them for the rest of the round.
If cautious, they have disadvantage to attack rolls, but enemies have disadvantage to attack them for the rest of the round.
Neutral is the same as vanilla 5e. No advantahe or disadvantage.
Intention: To enable more player choice. Players might go reckless if they're having a hard time hitting something and they're willing to take the risk. On the other hand if they are struggling to survive they may wish to be cautious to try and bide some time.
Issue 1: the aggressive stance gives everyone the barbarians reckless attack feature. Something else would need to be given to boost this feature for the barbarian. Perhaps extra damage. What would you suggest?
Issue 2: the monks patient defense is diminished somewhat by the cautious stance. Perhaps they could get some ability to absorb damage such as the deflect missiles ability. Not sure about this one yet. What would you suggest?
Issue 3: this gives everyone the ability to dodge yet still attack. I'm fine with this actually as i feel that dodge is underutilised in my experience.
What other issues would this change cause that I'm missing? It definitely changes the dynamics of the fight and I'd love to try it out with a group to see how it plays.
First while the idea seems something worthwhile, I do not like that it's so narrow as to only be affecting attacks and so powerful it stomps over other actions and class features. So it would not get in my game eith this manifestation.
Second, i do not like the certainty, the easy math, trade-off. I give this I get that makes it too predictable.
Third, dodge is already powerful. Your best way to encourage its use is to use it and let them see it in play against them, not changing it to something else.
So, if I were going to do this, I would leverage it with the DMG option for success at cost (S@C). (Assumes you are not already using that optional feature.)
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Let's call it - Going All Out
At the start of your turn you may go all out, throwing everything into your effort. If your attack roll fails by 1 or 2, it succeeds anyway. But at that point, once the success occurs, the GM can and will impose some cost, setback or misfortune that also happens. (See Success at cost and Ability Checks "some progress with setback" as just a few examples. This could be applied to an enemy's save vs your spell, turning a narrow success to resist your spell into a failure, but again at a cost to you.
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So, this basically brings S@C inyo the game as a choice one can invoke before taking an action, wagering a slight gain in odds of success with a cost.
It's essentially S@C but declared in advance, "pre-clared"?
The key to this working will be the variety and scope of the impactful drawbacks that hit the character when the 1-2 under occurs. (Note, you could make a small tweak, to flavor, and frame it as lemons to lemonade - if you say "on a roll of 1 or 2" instead of 1 or 2 under. Makes it more of an immediate recognize thing.)
But the key remains the uncertainty - the GM has a wide array of options, not a set trade-off you calculate in advance.
So, this is the route I would go, leveraging an optional rule, bringing it more as a choice or gamble into the fray.
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