Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7456685" data-attributes="member: 19857">I will admit to not reading the whole thread, but if you're looking to hack 5e to get rid of the elements you list on the front page that are more narrative than simulationist, I have a few suggestions:1. Hit Dice - eliminate HD healing entirely and just give all characters 2HD per level instead of 1.  That's functionally what short rest healing does - it splits your hp into two separate pools that you can't access all at once and gives you a narrative where when you rest you restore some energy.  Editions prior to 4e didn't need it, so if you don't like it get rid of it.  You could also just get rid of HD entirely and not double their hp - the only impact would be to reduce the length of the adventuring day as your front line can't keep fighting as long and will need to take a long rest sooner.2. Action Surge - replace the "player's choice" version of this with one that is triggered on an event that happens on a rough schedule of once per combat for a fighter.  One version of this - utterly unplaytested - would be "when you roll a natural 17 or higher on an attack roll against a foe, you have gotten lucky and have somehow outmaneuvered or confounded or otherwise tricked your foe.  You may take an extra action."  No recharge on a short rest, no player choice as to whether or not to use the power, no recharge on the power - just luck of the battle that gives them a momentary advantage.  It could come up multiple times in a battle or it could come up zero times in the battle so that's a bit of a trade off, but on average if your combats go 5 rounds on average it should average out to 1/battle.  (If your combats are shorter on average you'd might make the range larger - if your average combat goes 6+ round you might make the range smaller, but only if you're really worried about it coming up 1/battle on average - if you're willling to just take the luck of the draw, I'd probably jut make it 17 or 18+ and be done with it )  At 17th level you can double the range so that it probably happens twice per battle on average.  It's not as much fun as Action Surge because you can' get the "he failed on his first attack but used Action Surge to swing around and succeed on a second swing" narrative in there, but when you cut narrative control away from the players something has to give.The other option would be to replace it with a damage bonus for fighters.  The rough benefit of Action Surge is that a fighter will once per combat  have one more chance to attack.  It would probably be fair to exchange this feature for one that gives the fighter a +1 bonus to all damage rolls (or maybe a +2 bonus - I'd have to think about it, and then double i when you get to 17th level).  Not as flashy or as fun as an extra attack, and if your combats tend to be short it's going to be less damage than an extra attack would give you on average, but it's not as swingy either.3. Second Wind - again, take away the player's conrol of this.  There are two easy ways to do this - one would be to have it trigger on an event - I'd have it be automatic once the PC falls to half hp the first time in a battle.  If you still think that's too weird and not simulationist enough, another idea would be to acknowlege that this class feature basically gives the Fighter an extra 10 + level hp times the number of encounters they see in a day.  You could just hand the fighter an extra number of hp based on that up front - of course this means the Fighter has tons of hp, but in reality the Fighter DOES have tons of hp compared to other character classes - they're just hidden.  Mathematically it would be roughly equivalent.  (I personally prefer the triggered Second Wind option at half hp, but YMMV).4. Inspiration - ignore it.  It's a narrative and roleplaying cookie that can give players a bit of help in a variety of ways but it does't break the game if you never give out inspiration.  It just means your players have to work a bit harder and will fail a bit more often on die rolls if they don't actively look for things they can do in game to gain advantage.Dunno if you'll like any of these suggestions, but that's how I'd hack 5e to try to keep it roughly in line with expectations while removing player narrative control.  Move actions that are triggered by player choice to being triggered by other events outside of player control, mostly based either on predictable events that will always happen once in the battle or triggered on random rolls during the battle that represent the chaos of the battlefield rather than player choice.</blockquote>

Verification