Getting Rid of Multiple Attacks per Round

[CleverNickName]

My game table hates having multiple attacks at higher levels. Which is unusual, because every other gaming group that I have been the DM for absolutely loved them. The most common complaint is that combat is already very slow, and adding two, three, four, or five attack rolls to the melee fighters only exacerbates the problem.

So I proposed the following work-around, and we tried it out for a few gaming sessions. It playtests fairly well, so I thought I would share it here. (We have tested it under 3.5E and Pathfinder.)

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Characters do not gain multiple attacks at higher levels. Instead, they gain bonus damage. The implication is that characters do not "get faster" with their weapons as they gain levels, but learn to "hit harder" with them instead.

The Rule: any time that a character would get an extra attack with a weapon, he doesn't. Instead, that weapon makes 1 attack that deals an extra 5 points of damage. This is an untyped bonus that stacks with all others. The character must be using the full attack option to get this bonus damage. In the event of a critical hit, this extra damage is not multiplied.

If the full attack option would normally allow a weapon to make 3 attacks, instead the character makes 1 attack that deals +10 damage on a hit.

If the full attack option would normally allow a weapon to make 4 attacks, instead the character makes 1 attack that deals +15 damage on a hit.

And so on.

Example 1
Huxley is a 6th level fighter. Normally he would get two attacks on account of his high base attack bonus, when using the Full Attack action. Under this house rule, he instead makes a single attack at his highest BAT, and deals +5 damage if it hits.

Example 2
Huxley takes the Two Weapon Fighting feat. When fighting with two weapons, he would normally be able to make two attacks with the primary weapon and a second with the off-hand weapon. The primary weapon is made at the normal bonus (taking the normal penalty for two-weapon fighting), and deals +5 damage. The attack with his off-hand is not an "extra" attack, and therefore is made normally (also taking the usual penalties for fighting with two weapons, and dealing the normal damage on a hit.)

Example 3
Huxley is now a 20th level fighter, and he has optimized his number of attacks per round. He has the Two Weapon Fighting, Improved Two Weapon Fighting, and Greater Two Weapon Fighting feats, and he has purchased himself a set of matching scimitars of speed. His high base attack bonus and the haste effect would allow him to make 5 attacks with his primary weapon, and his feats would allow him to make three attacks with his off-hand weapon. Instead, under this house rule, he makes one attack with the primary weapon at +20 damage, and one attack with his secondary weapon at +10 damage.

Example 4
Keyodai is a 20th level monk. When she uses her flurry of blows ability, she would normally get to make 5 different attack rolls. Instead, under this house rule, she makes a single attack roll that deals +20 damage (4 extra attacks x 5 damage per attack = 20 extra damage).

Example 5
Fafnir is an ancient red dragon. When he makes a full attack, he gets to attack with his bite, his claws, his wings, and his tail. But since he never attacks more than once with each of these "weapons", he doesn't get the benefit of bonus damage under this house rule.

Example 6
Fafmor casts haste upon himself. Now he is allowed to make an extra attack as a partial action, and he decides to make an extra tail slap. Under this house rule he still only makes one attack per "weapon", but his tail slap now deals +5 damage.

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Things We Have Observed

1. There are a lot fewer dice rolls now. Our high-level ranger once had to roll a fistful of color-coded dice in every battle, then sort them by color and different attack rolls, then determine how many of which weapons managed to hit. Some players really enjoy the process, but mine do not. Under this rule, the player only needs to track two d20 rolls at the very most.

2. Targets are more important. The afforementioned ranger doesn't get the option of making several attacks against an assortment of creatures within range, and no longer has the burden of choosing the order in which he targets them. Depending on your campaign and your play style, this might not be a good thing...but for my TWF ranger, it was a huge relief.

3. Fighters deal damage more reliably. At high levels, extra attacks are often worthless because they are penalized so heavily (that 4th attack is made at -15, for example). This house rule makes combat less "swingy" for multiple attacks, allowing the fighter to do more damage on average. Again: depending on your campaign and play style, this might not be such a good thing.

4. High-level combat is faster. We run a combat-heavy campaign with 6 players, and our gaming sessions are 5 hours long. Before using this house rule, we would normally only get 3 or 4 encounters per gaming session before we ran out of time. Now, we average about 5 or 6.

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Has anyone ever used a similar house rule for multiple attacks? I'd be interested in hearing your feedback.

 

[Stormonu]

Somewhat - I allowed characters to use normally got extra attacks to use what might be termed a "Power Strike". They took a -5 penalty to hit, made one attack and increased the damage by a multiple equal to the number of attacks they would have normally made. So, X2 at start and up to X5 by 20th. I also changed the Power Attack feat so that it reduced the -5 penalty to -2 penalty to hit.

However, with 5th's arrival, I'm very tempted to drop the staggered attacks and have all attacks at full BAB - but perhaps only fighter(-types) get the extra attacks at higher levels; everyone else has to take a feat (+1 attack at BAB +6, +2 attack at BAB +11 - and that's it).

 

[garrowolf]

What I did with my Nexus D20 game is add something called a burst attack. You don't get extra attacks.
A burst is a repeated attack on the same target. This can include burst fire from an automatic weapon, repeatedly punching, or striking with a weapon.
Each burst would start at your dex bonus. So if you have a +3 then your burst modifier is 3. Then it would increase by 1 each time you would get an additional attack. So if you would have 3 additional attacks you would have a burst of 6.
So you increase the damage by the burst modifier. It can be additional dice or a specific bonus such as 2x the burst modifier or whatever you need.

 

[CleverNickName]

Each burst would start at your dex bonus. So if you have a +3 then your burst modifier is 3. Then it would increase by 1 each time you would get an additional attack. So if you would have 3 additional attacks you would have a burst of 6.
So you increase the damage by the burst modifier. It can be additional dice or a specific bonus such as 2x the burst modifier or whatever you need.

Holy carp, that is an excellent idea. Tying extra attacks (or extra damage, in this case) to the Dexterity score is brilliant.

 

[GMMichael]

Not a bad plan, CNN. I'd try one of these ideas-

1) Use average damage. You could do this really fast in Excel, or in a minute on a calculator. Figure out your fighter's odds of hitting (by looking at what he needs to roll on the d20), and multiply that by the average damage of his weapon. Poof! Instant damage bonus, per attack beyond 1.

2) Use die color-coding. Got five attacks? Roll them all at once. The first attack uses a red d20 and d8. The second attack uses an orange d20 and d8. The third attack uses a yellow d20 and d8...

3) Use 5E (if it must be D&D). I'm pretty sure that they cut WAY back on extra attacks. And it's sort of a 3E-in-sheep's-clothing anyway.

 

[CleverNickName]

Not a bad plan, CNN. I'd try one of these ideas-

1) Use average damage. You could do this really fast in Excel, or in a minute on a calculator. Figure out your fighter's odds of hitting (by looking at what he needs to roll on the d20), and multiply that by the average damage of his weapon. Poof! Instant damage bonus, per attack beyond 1.

Actually, this is exactly what I did, except I expanded it to apply evenly to all classes and weapons. I found the average weapon damage (since some weapons do more damage than others), using the tables in the DMG to weight each weapon by frequency (common weapons were given more weight than uncommon ones). I adjusted the Strength modifier as well, since fighters usually have high Str, mages usually have low Str, but most everyone has at least a +0. And I hand-waved special damage bonuses like Weapon Specialization and flaming weapons, since they were so rare and varied.

When all was said and done, I ended up with 5.32 or something like that. So I just made it +5.

 

[Li Shenron]

If I had to remove multiple attacks, I would keep it simple and just roll multiple damage.

IOW, do always one attack roll instead of N, but roll damage N times.

There is only a small loss in the average because of the case when e.g. your first attack would kill the target and you still had more attacks to direct to another target, instead with this variant you waste the additional damage.

 

[Celebrim]

So, let's start with the 3e implementation of multiple attacks.

At first glance, it's really clunky. You get 1-3 extra attacks, each with a decreasing chance of success. It adds lots of complexity to the math and slows down combat.

Why did they adopt such a clunky mechanic?

Well, they had several very important design goals, which the mechanic successfully implements:

a) It's important that high level non-magic users have the ability to attack multiple targets. If high level 'mundane' combatants can't attack multiple targets in a round, then magic users with their area of effect attacks are relatively stronger especially at higher levels. You introduce yet another area where magic users improve exponentially but mundane combatants improve only linearly. A high level fighter needs the ability to drop multiple 'ogres' in a round.

b) It's important that the damage inflicted increase smoothly with level. Imagine if you got a second attack at your full BAB at 6th level, or suddenly at 6th level you did double damage on all successful attacks. This would be a huge increase in power compared to the prior level, which meant that the challenges your party could face would also jump by a very large degree. This would make encounter design difficult, as things that could challenge 6th+ level parties would be much more powerful than those that could challenge 5th level parties. Monsters a few CR over 5 would be unexpectedly challenging to a 5th level party because they were designed to face parties that could basically dish out twice as much damage. By ensuring that subsequent attacks are 25% less likely to succeed, there is a much smoother increase in expected damage with no big jumps in power.

I think you will find it hard to replace the 3.X multiple attack mechanic in a way that is both equivalent and less complex.

You'll need:

a) A way to scale damage up slowly and smoothly over time.
b) A way to split that damage amongst multiple targets (which may have different defenses).

I think you could replace it with some combination of bonus damage by level, power attack as a combat maneuver (instead of a feat), and an option to attack an increasing number of adjacent foes as you increase in level (but doing only half damage to each).

Additionally, you'd need to rework the mechanics on anything that yielded you additional attacks per round, for example Cleave, as the value of an attack would go up significantly under these changes. You'd also need to rework anything that was balanced on the assumption you were giving up a full attack in order to perform the option. Anything that made a single attack radically more effective would probably be imbalanced after the changes. You'd also need to rework anything that was based on multiple attacks per round - two weapon fighting, for example.

In terms of your change, the one observation you've made that boggles the mind is that average damage at high level has gone up.

This seems really unlikely to me unless you are playing a very low powered campaign.

Your 20th level fighter is getting only +15 damage on his first attack for giving up 3 chances to hit. I would expect this to be less than the average damage of hitting with a single attack at that level. For example, the 6th level fighter PC in my game is averaging over 15 damage per hit (2d6+8) with a non-magical weapon and no magical buffs already. At 20th level, I'd expect the same character to average 24-30 damage per hit.

I'd think in general the fighter hits with his first attack 95% of the time (failing only on a 1), hits 75% of the time with his second attack, 50% of the time with his third attack, and 25% of the time with his fourth attack. The 2nd-4th attacks therefore add 150% additional expected damage. Since the average hit at that level is probably about 30 damage, in order to value forgoing 3 attacks you'd expect to add like +43 damage to your attack.

If that's not the case, then the big lesson here is 'don't play a fighter', since its easy for a 20th level wizard to produce more than 75 damage on an attack. If a fighter is only hitting 50% of the time on his first attack and that's why forgoing 3 attacks for +15 damage is a sweet deal, then something is wrong.

 

[messy]

maybe instead of multiple attacks, change "base attack bonus" to "base attack and damage bonus."