D&D 5E Tactical Combat Module, hasn't it always been there?

[tetrasodium]

The singular reaction rules really inhibit a character design who like a defender generally needs to react a lot or like an enabler warlord is often granting actions out of turn. ( The cavalier seems clumsy work around to me instead of elegant so while it may work it seems to be fighting the system more than a bit). I think I am convinced this particular design feature made some very cool things harder to do.

not only that, there are conflicts within the system that make what could be useful abilities less than because too many things are pegged to their own action rather than modifying some other action in a simple & straightforward way. Take charger for example

If you have something that would let you disengage & use it, the bonus action conflicts & strips the usefulness. If you don't have that then the action to dash action to disengage conflicts.

If feats were as common in 5e as they were in 3.5 then charger would be a nice niche tool for certain builds, but they are just too rare & precious for a feat hamstrung like that.... +5 damage? a second attack or twf offhand attack with 18 str/dex will do that much minimum.

 

[Weiley31]

I really want to thank you for that idea!

Your welcome!

I mean, how else am I gonna have the Party fighter strike down Mook 1, flip over Mook 2 by using it's momentum during the failed "strike", then follow with a Shawn Michael style SWEET CHIN MUSIC kick to take out Mook 2 if Cleaving Through doesn't affect non damaged enemies. Too stylish to pass up.

 

[Don Durito]

Your welcome!

I mean, how else am I gonna have the Party fighter strike down Mook 1, sidestep a blow from Mook 2, then follow with a Shawn Michael style SWEET CHIN MUSIC kick to take out Mook 2 if Cleaving Through doesn't affect non damaged enemies. Too stylish to pass up.

It's basicially the mook rules from 13th Age. (In that case, the attacker being able to carry over damage is a specific feature of mooks). Which is how I prefer to implement it.

 

[Garthanos]

not only that, there are conflicts within the system that make what could be useful abilities less than because too many things are pegged to their own action rather than modifying some other action in a simple & straightforward way. Take charger for example

Hmmmm, seems written that way so it only works if you use your action to do it instead of whenever you dash?

If feats were as common in 5e as they were in 3.5 then charger would be a nice niche tool for certain builds, but they are just too rare & precious for a feat hamstrung like that.... +5 damage? a second attack or twf offhand attack with 18 str/dex will do that much minimum.

Charging was a normal thing anyone could do but only martial types wanted it and they wrapped an expensive 5e feat around it in 5e but honestly its not that huge. Half a feat? allow someone to get a bonus to Str or Dex when they take it.
Perhaps one could make it universal again like the Grapple and Shove options in 5e and allow one forgo one extra attack this turn to charge when you dash if you forgo an extra attack. Or something 4e was not geared around so many extra attacks so they locked it down in 4e to one basic attack for a standard action.

 

[Don Durito]

not only that, there are conflicts within the system that make what could be useful abilities less than because too many things are pegged to their own action rather than modifying some other action in a simple & straightforward way. Take charger for example
View attachment 119299
If you have something that would let you disengage & use it, the bonus action conflicts & strips the usefulness. If you don't have that then the action to dash action to disengage conflicts.

If feats were as common in 5e as they were in 3.5 then charger would be a nice niche tool for certain builds, but they are just too rare & precious for a feat hamstrung like that.... +5 damage? a second attack or twf offhand attack with 18 str/dex will do that much minimum.

This is why I find the game so damn frustrating. It's simplistic but it's not simple. I find in practice a lot of time gets spent parsing all these confusing and often not particularly intuitive rules interactions. (Like the fact that the game seems to make it's action economy more complex and confusing by trying to pretend it doesn't have an action economy). It feels that while some editions required a lot of rules mastery to know what they could do, in 5E players need rules mastery to know what they can't do. Otherwise, they try to do something and then realise halfway through that actually they can't do that.

 

[Garthanos]

This is why I find the game so damn frustrating. It's simplistic but it's not simple. I find in practice a lot of time gets spent parsing all these confusing and often not particularly intuitive rules interactions. (Like the fact that the game seems to make it's action economy more complex and confusing by trying to pretend it doesn't have an action economy).

Mearles mentioned thinking designers shouldn't need to think in terms of an action economy sigh.

 

[Don Durito]

Mearles mentioned thinking designers shouldn't need to think in terms of an action economy sigh.

Well it's possible. Castles and Crusades, which was a clear influence on 5E, doesn't really have an action economy - you can move and do a thing. 13th Age does have an action economy, but a lot of the time, it doesn't feel all that relevant.

It's just that it seems clear that the designers were still strongly influenced designing 5E by their work on 4E, and if you're taking elements from 4E then you do need a clear action economy.

 

[Garthanos]

Perhaps one could make it universal again like the Grapple and Shove options in 5e and allow one forgo one extra attack this turn to charge when you dash if you forgo an extra attack. Or something 4e was not geared around so many extra attacks so they locked it down in 4e to one basic attack for a standard action.

@tetrasodium One could make it a battlemaster maneuver which does make it potentially available to anyone but then the Martial Adept feat to get it is more broadly useful.

 

[Garthanos]

Well it's possible. Castles and Crusades, which was a clear influence on 5E, doesn't really have an action economy - you can move and do a thing. 13th Age does have an action economy, but a lot of the time, it doesn't feel all that relevant.

I have a hard time picturing those being satisfying LOL.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I have decided to be a little bit petty. I probably shouldn't, but I find myself rather annoyed and wanting to prove a point.

@tetrasodium two days ago misquoted me and then followed up that quote of something I never said to demand that I prove "my" point and come over to this thread and homebrew solutions to various problems presented in this thread.

I was in a mood, so I decided heck with it, and did so. Reading an entire thread that I really had little interest in following and devising quick and dirty solutions to the various things they pointed out as problems.

They have since ignored me, stating in a later post that "some posters" are being disingenuous in our discussion because we claim to have solutions to problems in this thread but "wouldn't dare" to post them here. I asked for clarification if they meant myself. And I have been ignored.

So. Here you go @tetrasodium , I'm putting everything here. You can now know that I was actually trying to have a genuine discussion with you in the other thread. I am spoilering things for length, and I have not been following this thread, so please do not assume I know more about what was said since.... Friday? I think it was Friday afternoon.

Spoiler: Inciting Posts

5e enables DM's to build from the basics instead of forcing them to deconstruct from complexities. (Note: I never said this)

Since it's so simple, please fgo over here & settle the apparently easy problem of implementing the dmg's optional flanking & facing rules without running into the serious problems several people in that thread pointed out with trying to use those half baked options. Clearly it's not as simple as you make it out to be given that nobody has even tried to correct people pointing out those problems.
I look forward to the simple solution you post.

The only concern raised on flanking in that thread was that it might marginalize abilities that characters have to grant advantage. And you made a long post.

Flanking grants advantage and it also restricts movement to have that advantage as a tradeoff. It also favors opponents because of the size rule for large and above.

That's not a lot of issue.

What's that? Sounds a lot like you are admitting that you can't solve this problem, or this. or these, or this.

Spoiler: My Response

Since it's so simple, please fgo over here & settle the apparently easy problem of implementing the dmg's optional flanking & facing rules without running into the serious problems several people in that thread pointed out with trying to use those half baked options. Clearly it's not as simple as you make it out to be given that nobody has even tried to correct people pointing out those problems.
I look forward to the simple solution you post.

Sigh, fine, but I have a question before I even start reading that thread. Where did you get that quote from? The one that supposedly shows I said:

5e enables DM's to build from the basics instead of forcing them to deconstruct from complexities.

Because I don't remember saying that, and when I click on the "show post" it takes me to this post:

Please read your own statblock pictures again.

DnD 5e Stone Golem has no damage resistances, so it never becomes a "mindnumbing 356 hit point slog". Actually in this example, the Golem who ignores 10 damage from every attack and has 107 hp could be the longer slog.

It kind of bothers me since I would like to know the context of why I said that, since I feel like I did not mean "I can fix any problem Tetrasodium points out to me"

But, while you answer that, I guess I'm reading an entirely new thread for giggles

What's that? Sounds a lot like you are admitting that you can't solve this problem, or this. or these, or this.

Second link makes no mention of any specific problem
Fourth link is just saying it is too easy.

Interestingly enough, the OP of that thread is making the claim that this tactical module does exist, and is arguing that adding the optional rules into 5e makes it more tactical.

So, I've only read up to the 8th post (and your links) and identified what I think the problems are.

1) Flanking is too powerful
2) Flanking is too easy because of new Attack of Opportunity rules

So, before I read any further, some suggested fixes.

For #1, I have a DM who didn't like the permanent advantage because we had a large number of NPCs in our party. So instead, we use this rule. (Not written in rule format, because we did this verbally at the table and didn't bother to write it down)

Flanking-> When flanking an opponent with an ally, you gain a +1 to the attack roll for every ally you are flanking with (ie, if you have 1 ally, +1, 3 allies +3). This bonus maxes out at your proficiency modifier.

You could also just make it a flat +1 (I think +2 would be a little more impactful than some people want it to be, due to 5e's bounded accuracy)

For #2, I would say the easy solution would be to institute the old AO rules, since that seems to be the issue involved. So something like

Attacks of Opportunity-> If a creature moves 5 ft while within your threatened range, then you can use your reaction to make an attack of opportunity, unless they have taken the disengage action before moving.

You could even add in that making a ranged attack or casting a spell triggers attacks of opportunity as well. But I think that would be going too far personally.

That took me... well, I read some other threads first, so we'll say 10 minutes since my previous post currently says it was 15 minutes.

Edit: Ah, now that I got to your personal post (I wanted to read up to it) I see that you want to make things incredibly difficult.

Towards inventory... I wouldn't bother with a rule for it personally. 95% of the time, no one bothers grabbing an item from their inventory when combat starts. You could also add in that AO happen when you take the Use Item feature. If you want to give some creatures the ability to cast spells without triggering AOs... I guess do so? It shouldn't be that hard, but I'd have a bear of a time trying to remember who I gave immunity to casting AOs to and who I didn't. I'd probably just make it a blanket "casting spells" if I truly wanted to go that direction.

But frankly, it sounds like you just want to take all of the abilities and rules of 3.5 and port them exactly over to 5e.

That's called playing 3.5. Just do that instead of making every rule in 5e match 3.5.
/EDIT

But, I should read the entire thread, make sure I can find anything else, especially since I haven't seen much about facing yet.

Ah, seems that I found the post you quoted, so I should address those points.

• Weapon rules, well I'd suggest looking on DMs Guild, weapons are a very common homebrew topic.
• Alternate crits, we did play with a "crit deck" of cards on Roll20 once. Had a lot of effects other than damage, also DMs Guild has lots of homebrew for that. Should be easy to find
• Tripping already exists, all it does is knock prone and that got absorbed into shove
• Sundering is trickier, might have to come with the weapon rules. You could use the DMG list of materials and health. That would give a sword an hp value of 10(3d6) and an AC of 19 to strike. Super rough answer, but I'm doing lightning round edits since I have to respond to an entire thread I wasn't even a part of
• Beefier rules for vertacality? Not sure what that even means. Could just be the diagonal movement rules, which do exist. Moving on
• Hex-based combat? You just use hexes. I have no idea what could possibly need to be written into the game for this. I use a hex map all the time so that radius spells are radi instead of blocks.
• Tactical Mass Combat. I agree, need a good system for that. I'm currently using the rough model provided by Matt Colville in his Strongholds and Follower's book. I'm looking forward to his Kingdoms and Warfare book that is going to provide a much deeper system. That is not something I would homebrew on my own, and it actually a complex subject that goes beyond tactical combat and into an entirely new system of play.
• Expanding Adv/Disadv to encourage stacking? I would just rule they stack. Done

So, read the entire thread. And other than your post demanding that every rule and exception from 3.5 exist in 5e, I think I found some quick and easy solutions. You are sure to tell me that I don't understand anything and that these solutions will clearly never work, but considering some of the them are rules that I am actually using I can say that yes, most of this would work just fine.

Spoiler: Accusation of being Disingenuous and responses

Including this with bolded text, so as not to be accused of putting words in their mouth. This post was an hour after my responses

In other words it's unfinished and in order to use those variant rules you need to finish it. Not selfish at all. The current 5e could have been accomplished with the following variant rules

• simplified opportunity attacks: You may want to remove all opportunity attacks for things such as spellcasting in while in a threatened square, moving from one threatened square to another, interacting with containers such as mundane backpacks, & others leaving only making a ranged attack whie in a threatened square and moving away from an opponent while in a threatened square
• Simplified facing: You are considered to always be facing every adjacent square & your shield bonus applies to attacks from all directions
• simplified DR: You may want to treat both supernatural (Su) & extrordinary (Ex) abilities as simply being "Magic" while treating all monster damage reductions as a 50% damage reduxtion from any damage not coming from a spell, cantrip, magic weapon, or Su/Ex ability.

There's also the glaring omission that some of the above disingenuous posters feel safe saying that those things I linked are easily solved perspective issues here on page 27 but didn't dare say that in the thread were they were raised.

Is this directed at me? Because I never even read that thread until you started linking it and demanding I provide fixes to problems. If you want to demand I post everything I wrote in that thread, then sure, I have no issue doing so. But, I wasn't a part of that thread and they didn't want me to answer things. You did, so I posted here.

And this was yesterday night, since which Tetrasodium has posted in the thread all of this happened in.

@tetrasodium I am still waiting on answers and responses to multiple posts. I read an entire separate thread to satisfy you misquoting me, and then it seems you think I was being disingenuous because I did not post my answers in that thread. Now, maybe I'm simply misreading you, but I would like a straight answer, because if you want me to copy and paste everything I wrote into that second thread, that will take me about 10 seconds to do and then we can go back to the discussion.