D&D 5E Would Allowing Multiple Reactions Break The Game?

[NotAYakk]

Philosophically, more tiny reactions is a gameplay problem.

If you have a pile of small impact things you can do off turn, the game bogs down. The narrative impact of each small thing is small, they may add up to only a medium impact; but evaluating a small thing takes the same time as a larger thing.

The multiple attacks on your turn tend to be focused on one foe, so don't have as much impact. People roll them all at once.

---

Rather than give people a pile of reactions, maybe make reactions more beefy. And maybe give people a chance to not lose your reaction, so you can't say "distract him, then flood past".

Threaten
When you make a melee attack on a foe on your turn, you threaten them. If you fail a saving throw or are hit before the start of your next turn, your threat goes away. If you start your turn threatening a foe, your attacks on that creature are at advantage, and the first hit is automatically a critical hit.

Opportunity Attack
When a creature tries to get past you by leaving your reach or moving through your space, you can expend a reaction to make a melee weapon attack. If the attack hits, you Threaten the creature. If your attack roll is even, you regain your reaction.

This does 2 things.

1. Threaten is an anti-focus-fire feature. Creatures you don't attack get threat, which they turn into punishment. So you are encouraged to attack creatures who are hitting you instead of focusing on bringing one foe down.

Similarly, monsters are encouraged to spread their attacks around instead of focusing on dropping one player.

Mooks can offer cover for the big bad; a rogue threatening the big bad can have that threat cleared by a mook. But you have to hit or make them fail a save to block the threat.

2. Opportunity attack makes ignoring the front line worse.

First, you have a 50% chance to get a 2nd OA, etc. Second, it is a way to apply Threat off turn. Off-turn Threat is much stronger; there is less time for someone to clear it.

So if you run past the front line, you get to hit. Then if they keep going, you can follow and clean up with auto-advantage auto-crit, unless you are kept busy by their allies.

---

I am worried it is too expensive however.

 

[see]

5e is all about choices, and by devoting a fighting style - it's an actual choice investment.

Indeed, fighting styles are in some ways a weightier investment than a feat (assuming you're using feats), since Fighting Initiate can't be taken multiple times (as written, at least). A character gets zero (most classes) or one (fighter, ranger, or paladin) fighting styles without a feat, one or two if they spend an ASI/feat (with 10th-level Champion fighters managing a second/third).

That might make reactions rarer than the OP wants . . . but was part of my design thoughts in sticking it in the fighting styles instead of in a "Combat Reflexes" feat a la 3.x.

 

[Li Shenron]

Normally, a 5E character only gets 1 reaction.

Most of the time, that is fine. However, I am of the opinion that there may be aspects of the game which may benefit from allowing more than 1. For example, creating a front line to protect squishy party members is difficult to do when a character can only attempt to hit/stop one enemy. There are also fighting styles -such as the protection style- which seem rather weak because you get one use per turn and then your fighting style effectively turns off (as opposed to being constantly usable like most styles are). Also, I feel as though combat could feel less static if there are more opportunities to react to what is happening and engage in the action.

I do not want an unlimited number of reactions. Off the top of my head, my rough idea is to either allow something like
[# of reactions = 1/2 proficiency bonus (round up)].
This would mean 1 reaction for levels 1 - 4; 2r for levels 5 - 12; and 3r for levels 13 - 20.

How do you feel this would change play?

More importantly, would this break the game?

Generally speaking, I would rather address the specific problems you have than use a general and much wider house rule which can have unintended consequences, but overall I think it would be a good experiment.

I don't really think it would break the game, at worst you might get the usual player or two finding a way to exploit it, but since it will be your own house rule then you can also rule out their exploitations.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ready Defender
You gain a number of Defender’s Actions equal to your proficiency bonus. You can use a Defender’s Action when you normally would use a reaction, even if you’ve taken a reaction during the same round, though you can still only take one such action per turn. You regain all uses of this ability when you complete a long rest.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That, or allow Protection Fighting Style to not use your reaction, and be usable once per turn.

 

[Angry Cinnamon Roll]

Normally, a 5E character only gets 1 reaction.

Most of the time, that is fine. However, I am of the opinion that there may be aspects of the game which may benefit from allowing more than 1. For example, creating a front line to protect squishy party members is difficult to do when a character can only attempt to hit/stop one enemy. There are also fighting styles -such as the protection style- which seem rather weak because you get one use per turn and then your fighting style effectively turns off (as opposed to being constantly usable like most styles are). Also, I feel as though combat could feel less static if there are more opportunities to react to what is happening and engage in the action.

I do not want an unlimited number of reactions. Off the top of my head, my rough idea is to either allow something like
[# of reactions = 1/2 proficiency bonus (round up)].
This would mean 1 reaction for levels 1 - 4; 2r for levels 5 - 12; and 3r for levels 13 - 20.

How do you feel this would change play?

More importantly, would this break the game?

I think giving multiple reactions are too much.

If you want more apportunity attacks tho, i would offer the players a feat. Something that would allow them to make a number of opportunity attacks up to the number of extra attacks, but only one attack per creature that try passing through. They can forfeit one potential opportunity attack to try to shove, grapple, knock etc that target.

 

[Composer99]

My preferred way of giving more reactions for my homebrew is not to do so in any blanket approach kind of way.

Instead, what I like to do is, on a limited basis, give a "you regain the use of your reaction once per round when you use it to do [a thing]", whatever that thing might be. Usually, it's make a melee weapon attack or use a defensive ability, like the protection fighting style.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I think giving multiple reactions are too much.

If you want more apportunity attacks tho, i would offer the players a feat. Something that would allow them to make a number of opportunity attacks up to the number of extra attacks, but only one attack per creature that try passing through. They can forfeit one potential opportunity attack to try to shove, grapple, knock etc that target.

Welcome to the forum! Nice first post.

We have our Reactive feat which allows two reactions, but not to the same triggering event. We've only ever had two PCs take it and IMO it works well--definitely a trade-off.

 

[Sacrosanct]

my rune knight already turns TPKs into wins. Allowing more than one reactions? Yeah, it would break the game lol.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Normally, a 5E character only gets 1 reaction.

Most of the time, that is fine. However, I am of the opinion that there may be aspects of the game which may benefit from allowing more than 1. For example, creating a front line to protect squishy party members is difficult to do when a character can only attempt to hit/stop one enemy. There are also fighting styles -such as the protection style- which seem rather weak because you get one use per turn and then your fighting style effectively turns off (as opposed to being constantly usable like most styles are). Also, I feel as though combat could feel less static if there are more opportunities to react to what is happening and engage in the action.

I do not want an unlimited number of reactions. Off the top of my head, my rough idea is to either allow something like
[# of reactions = 1/2 proficiency bonus (round up)].
This would mean 1 reaction for levels 1 - 4; 2r for levels 5 - 12; and 3r for levels 13 - 20.

How do you feel this would change play?

More importantly, would this break the game?

One per turn seems simpler to me, and I doubt it’d break anything.