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Helping melee combat to be more competitive to ranged.
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6984991" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>Look, CapnZapp. I don't think "the game we knew" is even the same game--I never played 3E or 3.5, and yet I often see you reference it as your baseline edition. I'm not interested in trying to make 5E work like 3E; I do have some neat things from AD&D that I've imported into 5E (Magic Resistance), and others that I wish I could import but haven't yet found a way to do so idiomatically (golem immunities to magic; higher-level weapon immunities).</p><p></p><p>So there's a bit of a pronoun problem here. There is no "we".</p><p></p><p>I'm not necessarily telling you to stop trying to make it work like the game <em>you</em> knew, whatever that is; but I've listed some of the factors you need to be aware of before you start tinkering with the game design. In previous posts I've listed other things you could do, separately or in combination, so <em>clearly</em> I'm not telling you that it's futile to try to make melee fighters relevant.</p><p></p><p>I'm approaching this thread like a powergamer or a game designer wearing a powergamer's hat to evaluate his game. That's where I'm coming from. If you were asking for advice from me wearing my DM-as-adventure-builder's hat, I'd be telling you to plan an adventure in the Vertical Cliffs of Colossus in which the PCs pursue a trail up through caves up through (and sometimes on) a cliff face past the Djinn Guardians of Rao to reach the Jade McGuffin of Humanityness which can save Lorella's baby from lycanthropy, all while being pursued by a cult of earth creatures who can phase through the rocks just like earth elementals. In that adventure, beefy sword-fighters will be as valuable as anyone, maybe even more so depending on what kind of sword-fighters they are.</p><p></p><p>But this thread is about rules, so I've been giving mostly rule advice on what you can do on a systemic level to alter the incentives of your game.</p><p></p><p>P.S. Oh yeah, I forgot one major thing you can do to incentivize sword-and-shield fighting: hand out a +3 shield that prevents you from dropping to 0 HP once per long rest (like the half-orc ability) while you're using it. Bam, done. I tend to overlook magic items as a motivator because I hate magic items, but they do unquestionably shape player incentives.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6984991, member: 6787650"] Look, CapnZapp. I don't think "the game we knew" is even the same game--I never played 3E or 3.5, and yet I often see you reference it as your baseline edition. I'm not interested in trying to make 5E work like 3E; I do have some neat things from AD&D that I've imported into 5E (Magic Resistance), and others that I wish I could import but haven't yet found a way to do so idiomatically (golem immunities to magic; higher-level weapon immunities). So there's a bit of a pronoun problem here. There is no "we". I'm not necessarily telling you to stop trying to make it work like the game [I]you[/I] knew, whatever that is; but I've listed some of the factors you need to be aware of before you start tinkering with the game design. In previous posts I've listed other things you could do, separately or in combination, so [I]clearly[/I] I'm not telling you that it's futile to try to make melee fighters relevant. I'm approaching this thread like a powergamer or a game designer wearing a powergamer's hat to evaluate his game. That's where I'm coming from. If you were asking for advice from me wearing my DM-as-adventure-builder's hat, I'd be telling you to plan an adventure in the Vertical Cliffs of Colossus in which the PCs pursue a trail up through caves up through (and sometimes on) a cliff face past the Djinn Guardians of Rao to reach the Jade McGuffin of Humanityness which can save Lorella's baby from lycanthropy, all while being pursued by a cult of earth creatures who can phase through the rocks just like earth elementals. In that adventure, beefy sword-fighters will be as valuable as anyone, maybe even more so depending on what kind of sword-fighters they are. But this thread is about rules, so I've been giving mostly rule advice on what you can do on a systemic level to alter the incentives of your game. P.S. Oh yeah, I forgot one major thing you can do to incentivize sword-and-shield fighting: hand out a +3 shield that prevents you from dropping to 0 HP once per long rest (like the half-orc ability) while you're using it. Bam, done. I tend to overlook magic items as a motivator because I hate magic items, but they do unquestionably shape player incentives. [/QUOTE]
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