TheSword
Legend
To be honest, I’m with you.Look, it's pretty simple.
Can my martial character blind an opponent? Say with a saving throw each round to "clear the eyes"? What would be the check for that? What would be the DC? The fact that a 3rd level caster can do this just shows how far the span is. Would you allow my 3rd level fighter to blind an opponent for multiple rounds? Could my 5th level fighter do it to multiple opponents? Could my 7th level fighter do it to three opponents?
And we're talking about something as basic as "throw sand in the eyes". Yet, there is no mechanical guidance for doing that. TEN YEARS and we have zero guidance for how a fighter can do something so basic.
THAT'S the problem.
I play WFRP 4e where any character can spend a bit of the party’s tactical resource and perform an opposed skill test to apply a condition. I like it.
As you say it can be done in D&D currently. It’s just being left to the DM to decide how difficult it is, which I have some sympathy for as well. it can be circumstantial. I don’t want characters built around the ability.
I’d let player throw sand in a characters eyes but they’d get a save and it would take some form of action. The hard thing about this is a martial character is almost always better killing or knocking the victim unconscious. Why blind an orc for a round when you could just take them out of the combat. It’s the reason the blindness spell probably doesn’t see much action.
If I was writing OD&D I would add the Combat Trick action from 3e which could replace an attack and apply a condition with an opposed test if the circumstances allow. Put some mechanics rules behind it.
I’d also allow the Fight Dirty bonus action which allows you to add 1d4 to the damage of another attack that hits that round.
I think we could do a lot more with bonus actions and reactions as part of the base game to keep things tactical and interesting.
All that said there is a big difference between throwing sand in someone’s eyes and cutting through a wall of force, jumping a building or teleporting. I’m all for the first, not at all interested in seeing fighters do the latter.