D&D 5E Does anyone else feel like the action economy and the way actions work in general in 5e both just suck?
- Thread starter Son of the Serpent
- Start date
Undrave
Legend
It's a class feature to grant a hexblade Heavy Armor proficiency basically by sacrificing one of their Invocations for it. The Warlock 'Bonds' to that specific armor and they can just put them on and take them off magically.
Son of the Serpent
Pupil
Well for one thing the thing i was talking about there (from the beginning) was something i was saying i didnt think made any sense. I was of the opinion that it was indeed an idiotic mistake. Not a loophole so much. I hadnt intended to exploit something like that. I was pointing it out as what would be something of a malfunction of action economy. Not a good or clever thing. More the OPPOSITE.
I am a genius though. Would you like to know the secret answer to the universe? Its 42. Except for when its kittens or cats with buttered toast ductaped to their back.
Son of the Serpent
Pupil
huh. Noted.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
I Googled that and nothing came up.
Well, but I think it is written somewhere in the DMG (does that count as RAW?) that a DM is free to make up rulings for situations when there is no clear rule, for the sake of the game fun.
I mean watch those PAX live sessions, often with JC as a DM and you often see them making stunts a la "I jump on the dragons neck and poke him into the nostril with my magic dagger" or "I take the Halfling and throw him over the chasm directly into the face of the first orc waiting there".
What I am trying to say is, that imho it does not matter which rulings a DM uses in a borderline situation, as long as he follows the "Player x:' I attempt this and that' , DM: 'Yes but (roll for ....)'" principle.
5e is explicitly designed for those situations, and even with your double sentinel example, there seems to be an exception for that feat if both players have it, as @dnd4vr posted in #210 above.
And it does not unbalance whether DM A thinks a STR check is the right solution for a fringe problem, while DM B wants an athletics check. Both are valid approaches supported by RAW.
It also is not possible (at least I would think that way) to conclude from one special situation and its attached ruling, where e.g. a player tries the "kick dirt into the mobs face" thing to another like e.g. a player throws an egg as an improvised weapon. One might be resolved with a DEX check, the other with an attack roll.
Depending on whether the egg was rotten or not, either a CON or a DEX save might be the right thing for the mob to avoid consequences. No need for an edition of UA for each new exceptional stunt, just to cast everything in iron.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
It's not hexblade specifically - it's just a pact of the blade invocation. It's actually better for bladelocks who are not hexblades, since it reduces MAD by letting you completely dump dex, and skips over medium armour proficiency.
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Don Durito
Hero
The only versions of D&D (that I'm aware of) that are explicitly designed for improvised actions are Dungeon Crawl Classics where the Deed Die is a mechanically clever way of setting a clear difficulty and means of resolution for any particular stunt a warrior wants to attempt and 13th Age, where permission and a means of resolutions are specifically and explicitly baked into certain class powers and at least one feat.
The only thing that 5E does to encourage these sort of stunts really, is to have less rules - and it's only less rules than other WOTC editions anyway (and the amount less is vastly overstated). If you want to clear a space for this kind of thing, Castle and Crusades, or some form of Basic D&D are still much better, even if they don't give explicit guidance about how to handle this thing (which moderns games really should do - after all there's a reason it took the OSR to really uncover older forms of play, - hell even though I always felt 4E was just to overstuffed with rules and powers for stunts to have much of a role - it at least did provide some guidance for how to adjudicate them).
My experience with trying stunts in most cases with 5E resembles that of 4E. With everything else the GM has to manage at keeping sprawling combat together when there's lots of powers and complex rules interactions happening everywhere, if I actively try to do something that is difficult to resolve, I can see it's not particularly appreciated as I've just made their job harder. And, in any case, usually once I do get a ruling, it's clear that it won't be worth doing anyway, which means I feel bad for wasting everyone's time and slowing down the game for no good reason.
I'm not really convinced stunts and the like are all that compatible with the paradigm that challenge takes place at the level of the individual encounter anyway.
The only thing that 5E does to encourage these sort of stunts really, is to have less rules - and it's only less rules than other WOTC editions anyway (and the amount less is vastly overstated). If you want to clear a space for this kind of thing, Castle and Crusades, or some form of Basic D&D are still much better, even if they don't give explicit guidance about how to handle this thing (which moderns games really should do - after all there's a reason it took the OSR to really uncover older forms of play, - hell even though I always felt 4E was just to overstuffed with rules and powers for stunts to have much of a role - it at least did provide some guidance for how to adjudicate them).
My experience with trying stunts in most cases with 5E resembles that of 4E. With everything else the GM has to manage at keeping sprawling combat together when there's lots of powers and complex rules interactions happening everywhere, if I actively try to do something that is difficult to resolve, I can see it's not particularly appreciated as I've just made their job harder. And, in any case, usually once I do get a ruling, it's clear that it won't be worth doing anyway, which means I feel bad for wasting everyone's time and slowing down the game for no good reason.
I'm not really convinced stunts and the like are all that compatible with the paradigm that challenge takes place at the level of the individual encounter anyway.
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fearsomepirate
Hero
The way I adjudicate any kind of "stunt" attempt is typically some kind of ability check that grants advantage or imposes a condition, either in place of a weapon attack or an Action, depending on what it is. Players end up not really trying much because they seem to feel that attacking is almost always a better use of their resources. Even the two that are codified, Grapple and Shove, see very little use due to the feeling that attacking is probably more worth while than knocking somebody down.
JeffB
Legend
The Deed Die is something I yoinked from DCCRPG and used in my OD&D games. It's simple and effective. Utilizing the 5E DMGs proficiency die system (instead of the static bonus) optional rule might just be the optimal way to bring stunting to 5E (?)
IME with 13th Age, we also get a fair amount of improvised actions through the PC's Backgrounds. Which is something else I yoinked for OD&D and C&C
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