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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5860992" data-attributes="member: 6668292">Helpful.To help people in both camps enjoy the mechanics instead of being split by what you consider to be the same results?That's if there are a thousands rules that can give you an attack bonus in 5e, which is currently aiming for much flatter math. A cumulative -5 penalty in a system with flatter math seems like a big enough deal that I'd hesitate to use it again, but I might attempt it.As far as math goes, I want the fiction > the rules. The rules should aid the fiction, not unnecessarily restrict it. I love random results that make for fantastic fiction.Three sessions ago, I had a player (who could regenerate limbs) lather "essence of death" collected from a defeated Avatar of Death on his right hand before a fight with a dragon, in case he could block with his arm. In the combat, it bit him. As I use a d100 Hit Chart in my game, I rolled. Arm damage (elbow). Roll to see left or right arm; right arm. It dealt enough damage to bite his arm off at the elbow, and as a dragon, it did just that. This dragon's weakness was specifically against the "essence of death" (story reason, multiple trials, etc.), and I showed them the stat-block afterwards. It bit his arm off, and took damage for doing so, and it was a really cool moment that played out randomly.In my longest running campaign (over 2,000 hours put into what began as a no-magic 3.5 game), I also used the d100 Hit Chart. There's a 1 in 100 chance of an eye getting hit, and it got rolled against the melee warrior from an arrow while he was charging into a battle (in the third session), and he took enough damage to lose an eye (left). Then, in a fight against Abelth (his former ally) in the same battle, he got crit on, and I rolled it again (except he lost his right eye). He was now permanently blind, but he ended up winning the fight (temporarily paralyzing Abelth on the Hit Chart), and sparing his former ally (they later made up). While the player thought it was cool, he was a little bummed at first, and kept playing him while waiting for a good place to swap out. He never did, and the party grew from level 2 (pre-battle) to level 26, with his character there the entire time (though his eyesight was restored around level 11). In the meantime, he picked up blindsense via a "Blind Fighter" custom prestige class, nearly eliminated miss chance, picked up an amazing ability to Listen, etc. It was by far that player's favorite character.I love what random, honest results can produce. Sure, you may not hit with that second special attack at -5, and almost certainly won't with that third attack at -10, but special things can happen in-game when you do connect. Absolutely awesome story can unfold.What I want in a system is something that enables this sort of thing. I don't want it to say "no, you can't, because it's effectively the same thing." Trust me, there's a world of difference between "you can't" and "you probably won't". When I played a one-shot "recently", I threw a spear at a pict thief who had nearly full cover from me, and I needed a nat 20 to hit; I rolled, and got it. That reminded me just how awesome that feeling of "probably won't, but did anyways" truly is.I want that feeling as a possibility in the game. And, if it's all the same to you anyways, at least let me have it.No, it's not. I've definitely seen players use maneuvers without the feat. I've done it, too. Your "same" seems to be wildly different from mine, and if this simple change (cumulative penalty) can appease people like me and people like you, why not use it?You say, "why bother?" Well, how about to make more potential players happy? You don't need to use the lesser mathematical option if you don't want to, and I can use it again if I think it'd make sense to try it again (or at all, with your trip example!). Win/win, right? As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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