Level Up (A5E) New Heritages: A Poll

[Xathos-]

What's wrong? You don't want a Brownie dealing a d10 worth of damage with a glaive?

Gotta watch out for those little bastards. They can pop up anywhere out of nowhere...

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Tiny Attacks
Tiny characters can wield Tiny weapons. Tiny weapons weigh a quarter as much as a regular weapon of the same type, but they inflict less damage (see below), they lose the breaker and reach traits, and the ranges for missile and thrown weapons are halved.

Tiny Weapons
Regular Weapon Damage	Tiny Weapon Damage
1d4	1d2
1d6	1d3
1d8	1d4
1d10	1d6
1d12 or 2d6	2d4

Exception: Tiny mechanical weapons, such as crossbows, firearms, and geared slingshots deal the same amount of damage as their larger versions, since the power is due to the mechanics and not the wielder’s physical abilities. The Narrator may decide other weapons are also exempt from this rule.

[...]

No matter if you wield a Tiny weapon or a regular-sized weapon, you may still add your full Strength or Dexterity modifier to the attack and damage rolls.

i get this, but there's a few things i immediately thought of when i read it:
1. it sounds like either tiny creatures can use heavy weapons without disadvantage, provided they have a tiny variant of that weapon, but small creatures can't, or they can have disadvantage with a heavy weapon from it being heavy despite said weapon being sized for them. both cases are equally silly for different reasons
2. exempting tiny mechanical weapons doesn't actually make much sense - yes, the weapon is less reliant on the user, but with a weapon that small the projectile's going to need to scale down with the user, which means it has less mass (and almost certainly less velocity too due to less draw weight/powder) and thus less power
3. following on from that second point, adding your full strength (dex is more forgivable here) while scaling down weapon attacks because tiny creatures generate less power is kind of odd. 3.5 did this as well with small weapons though soooo

 

[Faolyn]

@ReadyButNot, well, it's a rough draft, of course. Your points are pretty good.

Basically, I was thinking that if you'd almost need two sets of rules here: one for an all-Tiny game and one for a regular game that also has TIny PCs. So it makes sense that in an all-Tiny game, Tiny creatures would have what would be, to them, heavy weapons.

It would probably make a lot more sense if o5e/LU had kept weapon sizes like they had back in 3e. Sadly, it didn't, and considering that neither 05e nor LU nickle-and-dime creatures with +2 bonuses or -2 penalties anymore, and disadvantages is kind of an all-or-nothing deal, I'm not sure what, exactly I could to do to represent not being able to use a too-large weapon.

Except... perhaps if a weapon is two size categories too big, you can't use proficiency with it. So a foot-tall pixie could use a longsword built for a medium creature, but they'd use straight Strength with it, not Str + PB. I dunno; I need to think about it a bit.

A good point about the mechanical weapons, although D&D has never really cared about draw weight. Even LU only has one type of compound bow, IIRC.

Adding the full Strength is a bit odd, I agree, but again, I was thinking about an all-Tiny game.

So yeah, rough draft thing. Thanks for your input!

 

[W'rkncacnter]

A good point about the mechanical weapons, although D&D has never really cared about draw weight. Even LU only has one type of compound bow, IIRC.

...light crossbow vs heavy crossbow. shortbow vs longbow. the damage/range differences of those would likely be determined in large part by draw weight, even if D&D doesn't explicitly say so. although you do have a point - bows (except for the composite bow in level up, about which you're right that is the only compound bow) don't care about your strength lol

and yeah i'd agree that sized weapons and rules not really being a thing in (o/a)5e does make this sort of thing unnecessarily confusing. i don't really know how you'd address the problem better either - i simply brought up things my brain went "that seems a bit silly, hm?" at. the no proficiency thing is certainly an interesting idea though.

np, and good luck!

 

[rules.mechanic]

I'd have no problem with adding full Strength / Dexterity bonus - they may be Tiny but if their Strength is 20 they can really get some force behind that toothpick and the big folk get to add just as much Strength bonus to their dagger attacks as their greataxe attacks. And I don't think they need to miss out on the Breaker property either. I like your idea just to have tiny (or small) folk drop their proficiency bonus if they use a weapon sized 2-sizes up from them (1-size if it has the Heavy property but ditch the Heavy disadvantage) but some might prefer disadvantage if they use a weapon sized 2-sizes up from them (1-size if it has the Heavy property). Works nicely alongside your simple rule of dropping the damage dice by 1 step for every weapon size decrease from medium (as you did) - this is just because the weapon is smaller not because the tiny folk are bale to put any less force behind it. Same should probably apply to ranged weapons. If you want to keep balance and incentive particular weapons, you could give them a feature "Pinpoint accuracy?" that means they don't reduce damage for piercing or Finesse weapons. Or you could maybe allow them to treat any tiny-sized weapon as if it has the Finesse property.