D&D (2024) Chaosmancer Martial Brews

[Chaosmancer]

I prefer to avoid any need to guess somethings weight.

For example, if I look at moose, I have no clue how much that would weigh. If I look at a ship, I have no clue how much that would way. Supposing someone can pick up an hurl a horse-drawn wagon or carriage. No clue.

I knew the elephant was somewhere in the tons, but couldnt say 1 or 10, and when I looked it up, it is often somewhere in between on average. I should not need to consult google or wikipedia each time a player lifts something! As a DM, I really want to avoid guessing weights.

I strongly recommend referring to carrying capacity by size, not weight.

This is why I have a little quick quide on the chart I use for this.

Here are some basic examples of weights of heavy things
Harley Motorcycle/Normal Horse ~500 to 600 lbs
A Bull ~1,000 lbs
An Oak Log the size of a person ~1,500 lbs
A Rhinocerous/Small Car ~3,000 to 4,000 lbs
African Elepahnt ~13,000 lbs

A moose? Probably weighs a bit more than a bull, but less than a massive log, so around 1.2K. And I don't need to be exactly precise, because things aren't exactly precise. Everything is a range anyways.

So typically:

A creature can carry one size less without encumbrance.

A powerful build can carry the same size without encumbrance.

"Giant Strength" means the ability to carry a Large or Huge load, without encumbrance.

An elephant can be Huge, a whale can be Gargantuan.

Even for irregular loads, like solid metal that might be 50 times heavier, it is more useful to say something like "load as if three sizes larger"

Sure, you could do that. But it ends up having bizarre conotations. A hay bale is large, so if I say a character can carry a large load, they can carry anything from a mattress, to a hay bale, to a cow, to a statue of a cow. But then they need to do something like hold upon an iron gate. Well.... the gate is huge, but they aren't moving it? Well how strong are they? I don't know. because the range is by size, but we don't think about moving things based on their size, but their size and weight.

Your system has some ease of use viability, but it doesn't give me anything to work with for feats that are not directly lifting and carrying around a specific object. The player wants to push over a pillar... can they? Well, if I have some idea of how strong they are, how much force they can exert, I could answer that far more easily.

 

[Yaarel]

The player wants to push over a pillar... can they?

The Fighter has Giant Strength thus can carry a Large size without encumbrance.

The pillar is Large size and free standing.

So the Fighter can pretty much push it over, automatically. No ability check.


This other pillar is Huge size, ok, and fixed, thus Difficult.

A Fighter can carry a Large load, but can push the next size up. So a Huge pillar is doable:

DC 20 ≤ d20 + Strength + Weightlifting Skill Proficiency

 

[Vaalingrade]

For combat arts, if the die roll fails is that just a burned action, or does that just mean you can't get a maneuver off and can still just sad attack?

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

In strixhaven there are rules for "studying" before a test

Each exam has a Study phase which can earn you rerolls to pass the exam, and each exam can grant you Student Dice (d4s) to bolster later skill checks.

I want to play around with something like this. Imagine studying with a weapon master and him testing you and you get martial dice like the weapon master superiority dice.

 

[Chaosmancer]

For combat arts, if the die roll fails is that just a burned action, or does that just mean you can't get a maneuver off and can still just sad attack?

If the die roll fails, but you still beat the AC, the Art does not activate, but you still make a normal basic attack.

IF the die roll succeeds, but you fail to hit the AC, then you still miss.

 

[Pedantic]

Pushing Yourself: As a Free Action on your turn you may roll an Athletics (Str) or Athletics (Dex) to push beyond your normal limits. Consult the chart for results

10 to 15 -> No change in speed
15 to 20 -> +5 ft of speed for the turn
20 to 25 -> +10 ft of speed for the turn
Ect

If you roll a 1, 2 or 3 on the die or your total result is less than 10, you gain a level of exhaustion (using the OD&D exhaustion mechanic) until you can take a 5 minute breather (usually after combat has ended)

You can do this a number of times equal to you con mod for free, refreshing at the end of a fight or scene. After that, activating this ability automatically gives you a level of exhaustion. If you would reach 10 levels of exhaustion from pushing yourself, you collapse and are unable to move for 5 minutes, gaining a permanent level of exhaustion until you take a long rest.


So, does this help martials? I think so, it gives options for movement that didn’t otherwise exist. However, it is a general movement ability as I have conceived it. You could make a rule that martial characters get additional free uses, or that they get advantage on the check, to make this more powerful for them than for casters.

So, I find most fixes like this amount to "martials are mundane, their abilities should be written in the skill system instead of as class features," which I don't necessarily love, but I can understand the appeal of (and will happily accept if it pushes the game towards having a detailed skill system).

I still think it's desirable to tie in class features, to ensure your martials are meaningfully unique in some way from other characters who can access skills. To that end, exhaustion might be a good hook as a currency as above. If you give fighters/barbarians, etc either a way to resist/ignore X amount of exhaustion, or to recovery from it using some action or likely to occur trigger, they're effectively more able to access abilities written into your skill system.

Other options include outright giving them bonuses to stats/skills, and then write abilities in to skills at DCs that are impossible to access without those bonuses, which I think is a bit messier than it actually needs to be, or writing in class specific abilities that require skill checks.

 

[Chaosmancer]

In strixhaven there are rules for "studying" before a test

Each exam has a Study phase which can earn you rerolls to pass the exam, and each exam can grant you Student Dice (d4s) to bolster later skill checks.

I want to play around with something like this. Imagine studying with a weapon master and him testing you and you get martial dice like the weapon master superiority dice.

Oh, that's a neat idea. Maybe do it as like a quest reward or downtime?

I use stuff from Kibblestasty and he has Camp actions, I could see getting a die or two from something like practicing your Katas and Forms during camp, and then using them over the course of the day.

 

[Chaosmancer]

So, I find most fixes like this amount to "martials are mundane, their abilities should be written in the skill system instead of as class features," which I don't necessarily love, but I can understand the appeal of (and will happily accept if it pushes the game towards having a detailed skill system).

I still think it's desirable to tie in class features, to ensure your martials are meaningfully unique in some way from other characters who can access skills. To that end, exhaustion might be a good hook as a currency as above. If you give fighters/barbarians, etc either a way to resist/ignore X amount of exhaustion, or to recovery from it using some action or likely to occur trigger, they're effectively more able to access abilities written into your skill system.

Other options include outright giving them bonuses to stats/skills, and then write abilities in to skills at DCs that are impossible to access without those bonuses, which I think is a bit messier than it actually needs to be, or writing in class specific abilities that require skill checks.

Yeah, as I mentioned for the Pushing yourself system, I designed it first as a fix for more dynamic chases.

I actually did have a barbarian feature I think... (goes digging) Hmm, can't find it. I may have not added it because you can only add so much before you start tipping power in an undesirable way. Anyways, it was basically evasion but for constitution saves. I've always liked the idea, just never found a good way to use it.

But you can also take existing abilities and add on to them as well. For example, I could see taking the Ranger's Land Stride ability and adding a blurb to it that you get +5 on Pushing yourself checks and only gain exhaustion if you roll a 1 on the d20, making them MUCH better at it.

The main point of the system in this stage is to give us set hooks. Now that we have this sub-system of rolling athletics to increase movement speed, we can design abilities around it. We can say that these classes get bonuses to the roll, while these classes get to ignore X levels of exhaustion caused by the system. It allows us to differentiate and begin highlighting the different ways these classes achieve similar results.

I'd actually love if you wanted to pop in some suggestions for new class features.

 

[Pedantic]

Yeah, as I mentioned for the Pushing yourself system, I designed it first as a fix for more dynamic chases.

I actually did have a barbarian feature I think... (goes digging) Hmm, can't find it. I may have not added it because you can only add so much before you start tipping power in an undesirable way. Anyways, it was basically evasion but for constitution saves. I've always liked the idea, just never found a good way to use it.

That's one with a classic D&D pedigree. It was called "Mettle" in the 3.5 days, I think the first appearance was on the Hexblade and worked exactly like evasion but for Fortitude and Will saves.

But you can also take existing abilities and add on to them as well. For example, I could see taking the Ranger's Land Stride ability and adding a blurb to it that you get +5 on Pushing yourself checks and only gain exhaustion if you roll a 1 on the d20, making them MUCH better at it.

The main point of the system in this stage is to give us set hooks. Now that we have this sub-system of rolling athletics to increase movement speed, we can design abilities around it. We can say that these classes get bonuses to the roll, while these classes get to ignore X levels of exhaustion caused by the system. It allows us to differentiate and begin highlighting the different ways these classes achieve similar results.

I'd actually love if you wanted to pop in some suggestions for new class features.

Off the top of my head, you want a way for characters to get climb/swim speeds, and to be able to use those speeds while doing other tasks (like fighting/lockpicking, etc) without penalty. If you really want to push things in the right direction, you should go explicitly supernatural with those, allowing for things like balancing on water, or air, or running up walls or across ceilings, etc.

Personally, I'm quite fond of a Fantasy Craft skill feature that gave classes a minimum possible result in class appropriate skill checks. The Scout class in that game can't score less than 20+class level on a Survival check, for example. Given your likely bonus to skills in that game is close to Level+3 (ranks) + 3 (ability), you're effectively saying you can't roll less than maximum result-5 in appropriate skills.

Swinginess in skills gets presented as a core 5e feature so often that I don't know if you could get away with a similar ability, but maybe something like "Proficiency Mod times per day, when you roll less than 20+Proficiency on X skills, you may choose to get 20+Proficiency instead." Another take might be explicitly granting some characters a "passive" Athletics or Acrobatics, that lets them do anything at 10+mod DC without needing to roll.

 

[Chaosmancer]

That's one with a classic D&D pedigree. It was called "Mettle" in the 3.5 days, I think the first appearance was on the Hexblade and doctor's exactly like what but for Fortitude and Will saves.

Neat

Off the top of my head, you want a way for characters to get climb/swim speeds, and to be able to use those speeds while doing other tasks (like fighting/lockpicking, etc) without penalty. If you really want to push things in the right direction, you should go explicitly supernatural with those, allowing for things like balancing on water, or air, or running up walls or across ceilings, etc.

Well, for climb and swim I have a 1st level feat. It isn't exactly giving those speeds (because giving a swim speed has weapon implications) but it is close enough. This is the currently written version, without my changes to the jump.

Athlete
Prerequisite: None
Repeatable: No
You have undergone extensive physical training to gain the following benefits:
Kip Up: When you are prone, standing up uses only 5 feet of your movement.
Tri-Athlete: Climbing and Swimming doesn't cost you extra movement. When you roll for difficult climbing or swimming situations, you have advantage
Spring-Heeled: You can make a running long jump or arunning high jump after moving only 5 feet on foot, rather than 10 feet. You can add your proficiency bonus to high jumps and five times your proficiency bonus to long jumps.
Stone Press: When you are pushing, dragging, or lifting something, your speed is only reduced to 10 ft, not 5 ft.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by using lockpicking without penalty, and climbing to my knowledge doesn't directly give any penalties to anything.


Balancing on Water... I kind of like as a Monk ability. I'm not sure why.

Balancing on Air is flight, and I currently don't have explicit ways to do that. There are some subclass abilities obviously, but I'm not sure how I want to go about increasing access to it.

Running Across a Ceiling or walls, well... this one I kind of cheat on. See, if you have the movement speed and a climb speed... there isn't really a difference. So, let's say I had someone who had a speed of 40 and climb and they wanted to run, parkour off a wall and wall run 20 ft, then land and attack someone... I'd probably just let them. They basically just climbed, and it is a cool moment without me needing to force a specific narrative on how they just did that.

Personally, I'm quite fond of a Fantasy Craft skill feature that gave classes a minimum possible result in class appropriate skill checks. The Scout class in that game can't score less than 20+class level on a Survival check, for example. Given your likely bonus to skills in that game is close to Level+3 (ranks) + 3 (ability), you're effectively saying you can't roll less than maximum result-5 in appropriate skills.

Swinginess in skills gets presented as a core 5e feature so often that I don't know if you could get away with a similar ability, but maybe something like "Proficiency Mod times per day, when you roll less than 20+Proficiency on X skills, you may choose to get 20+Proficiency instead." Another take might be explicitly granting some characters a "passive" Athletics or Acrobatics, that lets them do anything at 10+mod DC without needing to roll.

Well, barbarians get this with Indomitable might, they can't roll less than their strength score. There would be space to do this here and there for certain archetypes I think. I wouldn't want to make it too common though, because the 10+mod reliable talent is a rogue staple and a big part of their power as a class.