D&D 5E Range/Move Redux

[CapnZapp]

It's time to discuss the elephant in the room, the way 5th edition forgets that for players to choose slow short-range (melee) characters, the game rules actually need to encourage that.

Now, I can certainly see myself rolling up a grumpy Dwarf character that never touches abow or crossbow, but that's not what I'm talking about here. The game can't rely only on gamers preference to adhere to fantasy archetypes, the game must actually offer real crunchy benefit, or over time, these archetypes will become abandoned.

In short: the reason people have been playing grumpy Axe Dwarves all these years isn't (entirely) because of Tolkien and other fantasy role models. It is because D&D has always made sure to give you benefits when you create such a character!

But now... 5th edition has kind-of forgotten that the game is supposed to do that.

Here's what I want out of the D&D game.

In order to create a very strong "fighter-y" character, I want the game to make me have a slow Speed (not more than 30 ft) and little range (for my primary weapon).

Any character with great mobility (speed of 40 or 50 ft or more) needs to be considerably more fragile than the slower counterpart.

Any character with great range (more than 30 ft, definitely) needs to be considerably more fragile or at the very least severely disadvantaged in melee.

This means that if you are mobile or ranged, you should not be able to see more than 15-17 AC. The only way to see 17-19 AC is if you are both slow and melee.

---

Now, I hear you saying "but the game DOES give tanky shield fighters the highest AC in the game". Problem is, even ranged fighters get enough AC.

5th edition is sufficiently easy that you never need that extra boost of AC. Once you have AC 18, you're fine. Getting to AC 21 already at low levels is overkill.
Not to mention counter-productive. After all, there aren't any real "stickiness" to D&D tanks, no aggro mechanism for instance. So if one of the heroes sport an almost-impossible AC 21 maybe the monsters simply attack somebody else..., especially if AC guy is slow and immobile? Which would be completely opposite why the fighter put on his armor in the first place!

So we can't increase the numbers for slow axe dwarfs. We need to decrease the numbers for everybody else. (It's like with Great Weapon Mastery - I get that the feat is WotCs way to reward two-weapon use over range (ignoring the senseless SS for the mo'). The problem is the feat makes the game too easy. Instead of allowing GWM to break the damage boundaries upwards, you need to nerf ranged damage downwards)

So read what I wrote above: AC 17 should be the top number for any mobile or ranged character, and ideally it should be lower unless you make compromises.

How do we accomplish that?

Let me say straight away I won't argue for a return to the days of 20 ft Speed in heavy armor. I fully understand why that was scrapped - it IS overly frustrating to have no less than 50% less speed than the "norm". So let's not reduce Speed, but we certainly need to restrict Speed increases (in heavy armor).

Based on my observation that none of the Fighters go Strength and Heavy Armor (precisely because Dex + mobility + range is so superior), we probably need to take down Light armor a notch but perhaps not Medium, since we've already concluded a min-maxer will choose either light or heavy: going "in-between" never leads to optimal results, and medium armor is probably only optimal for the Barbarian and that's a special case.

Probably the easiest solution is to either
a) remove Studded Leather entirely
or
b) at the very least impose Stealth Disadvantage on Studded Leather

You can always allow everybody to pick the Protection fighting style if you feel this change impacts the innocent (= Rogues, Bards etc).

I want to do more for our short range non-mobile (bearded) archetype, but as I've already said, I can't actually give it bonuses (since the game is easy enough as it is), and I can't come up with any more easy reductions to everyone else.

Maybe have Mobile feat say it only works when you don't have Stealth disadvantage from armor.

I would love to increase Shields to +3 or even +4 to properly compensate for the loss of versatility (no two-handed weapons like greatsword or bow)
My players never pick up a shield unless they are spellcasters that ignore the penalty to damage for being stuck with a single one-handed weapon; offense being superior to defense, after all
...but unless I remove Plate, that would result in a net AC increase. And if I remove Plate, I need to remove Half-Plate too (otherwise why even bother with heavy armor).

[SBLOCK=I could redo the armor table to read...]Light
Padded AC 11 Stealth Disadvantage
Leather AC 11
Chain Shirt AC 12 Stealth Disadvantage

Medium max +2 Dex
Hide AC 13
Scale mail 14 Stealth Disadvantage
Breast plate AC 14
Chain mail AC 15 Stealth Disadvantage

Heavy -5 Speed penalty unless race is Dwarf, Goliath and similar; another -5 Speed penalty unless Strength 13 requirement is fulfilled
Banded mail AC 15
Splint mail AC 16 Stealth Disadvantage
Half-plate AC 17 Stealth Disadvantage

Shields
Light shield +2 AC
Heavy shield +3 AC Stealth Disadvantage

...and reserve full-plate as loot - that is, its place is in the DMG, not among the things you expect to be able to buy off the shelf.

Not sure if I'm overdoing it, though. Thoughts on this?[/SBLOCK]

Don't forget that related changes are discussed in my thread Feats Redux:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?547594-Feats-Redux

Therein I tweak the game so that, most significantly:
* no longer is it possible to get rid of ranged fire disadvantage when in melee yourself
* the default is no ability damage to ranged fire - you need a feat for that
and last but not least
* there is no way to effectively gain similar crazy high damage with a ranged weapon as with a two-handed weapon. While GWM is gone, its replacement(s) simply does not work outside of short range.

No more Speed 50 Fighters with Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert, effectively combining two-weapon fighting with great weapon fighting, all of which happens at up to 120 ft range with no range penalty, no cover penalty, no in-melee penalty, no "fragility" penalty (these guys are fighters, remember, with great AC great HP and great features) and really, no damage penalty either (the only difference being a d8 damage die instead of a d12, a -2 damage difference easily compensated for by all the benefits, not least a frikkin' +2 bonus to attacks!!)

Oh well.

---

What can a player expect under the Reduxed ruleset?

Well, I can't say I feel I have entirely eradicated 5e's tendency to not properly price speed and range.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Now, I can certainly see myself rolling up a grumpy Dwarf character that never touches abow or crossbow, but that's not what I'm talking about here. The game can't rely only on gamers preference to adhere to fantasy archetypes, the game must actually offer real crunchy benefit, or over time, these archetypes will become abandoned.

In short: the reason people have been playing grumpy Axe Dwarves all these years isn't (entirely) because of Tolkien and other fantasy role models. It is because D&D has always made sure to give you benefits when you create such a character!

First off, I do want to say I applaud your decision to rework the game for yourself so that it accomplishes what you want it to. You've spent the last several years seeing the game fail you in various ways in your campaigns you'd played or run, and it's cool to see you accept the premise that if the game doesn't work, go right ahead and make changes to it. Which is the best and probably most successful attitude to have to get a D&D game you want to play.

But at the same time... I'm also willing to bet that you aren't in fact correct with your statement above. Melee will never be abandoned, because there's not nearly the number of players who think as you do... that mechanics always trump story. There will always be a large percentage of players who will play to the fiction, never even thinking once about the "efficiency" of that decision. I've run two games simultaneously through Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and currently two games simultaneously through Curse of Strahd... and not a single one of these 25+ players and characters have ignored a melee-focused concept because the game mechanically made it "less useful" over a ranged character. Seriously, no one's spent any time thinking about it. They played melee because they liked the story of being a heavily armored and shielded paladin, or a wildshaped druid, or a swashbuckled fighter with two rapiers. And if they played range, it's because the characterizations of those ranged characters is what drew them, and not that it just "made more sense" and was a "tactically smarter" issue.

You and your group are a very specialized group of gamers, and obviously you've spent the time to discover this particular picadillo of the game that could be "exploited" (to put it one way.) But the number of other players and groups who not only think, but also act and make choices the way your group does I suspect is woefully small. Small enough that WotC has not shown any predilection to "fix" the game that way. Which is why its awesome that you're now choosing to do it yourself. That's what's great about the game, and why it works as it does. Keep it up!

 

[CapnZapp]

(Posting without reading any replies)

Interestingly enough, I just met (some of) my players for the first time after ending the campaign (Out of the Abyss, levels 1 - 16).

They spontaneously offered the feedback that they did not think heavy armor was worth it. The benefits did not compensate for the drawbacks (no stealth, can't focus on speed and dexterity).

At the same time, in the opinion it was surprisingly easy to hit most monsters, maybe too easy (=translation: you weren't rewarded enough for doing the minmaxing they've been doing ).

They suggested heavy armor could probably do with at least a +2 AC bump. And monster AC too.

They also offered the feedback that about the only build that feels like a true tank is the barbarian. Most other characters are dropped by two rounds of sustained focus from non-trivial monster encounters. Only the damage resistance of the Barbarian allows you to stand in the middle of the heat with a reasonable chance of not falling in the first two rounds.

I tried to argue that a Fighter with plate mail, a shield and the +1 AC fighting style can get AC 21 as soon as he can afford the armor. Their response was that, sure, but then you give up too much on offense (since you can neither use greatweapons, ranged weapons or even dual-wielding). Apparently the 3 point difference isn't enough in their view (to transform their ability to tank from unreliable and not-good-enough into a truly reliable version). Or that AC 18 is "good enough".

---

In other words, player character light and medium armor could do with a -2 AC nerf. (This from a DMs perspective, so I don't have to tweak all the monster stats). And a -2 attack nerf.

So I've come up with the new general idea to base AC on 8, just as with save DCs. This way I can add back full plate (to compensate for one of the lost points) as well as another point of shield.

From the context of the armor table in spoilers, after deducting two points across the board, we add:
Full Plate AC 16 Stealth Disadvantage

and we change Shields to:
Light shield +2 AC
Medium shield +3 AC Stealth Disadvantage
Heavy shield +4 AC -5 Speed, Strength 15 requirement, Stealth Disadvantage

Thoughts?




Of course, this nerfs the "innocents" to, but at least it does so all across the board - my previous suggestion (above, in spoiler blocks), did not change anything for no-armor classes like wizard and monk. Not saying this is the final iteration... Maybe Mage Armor, for instance, should be kept as 12 + Dex. (Please don't draw any conclusions on anything other what I talk about).

This is attractive not only because it encourages "tanks" but also because it generally increases the difficulty level of the game, allowing me to stay closer to the encounter guidelines for the same level of actual challenge.

 

[CapnZapp]

But at the same time... I'm also willing to bet that you aren't in fact correct with your statement above. Melee will never be abandoned, because there's not nearly the number of players who think as you do... that mechanics always trump story. There will always be a large percentage of players who will play to the fiction, never even thinking once about the "efficiency" of that decision.

Absolutely true.

And no matter how badly WotC screws up the inter-build balance, they will obviously not change.

Except that I believe they will. Sooner or later we will wake up to a game where most players use dex, speed and range, and only then will we realize that this is not the game the rules were designed to handle (monsters, spells, terrain rules etc).

Just remember where you heard it first...

Anyway, I can certainly not wait for WotC waking up to this realization - hence taking matters in my own hands instead of holding my breath for a 5.1 edition...

 

[Lanliss]

While my players are firmly in the area Defcon notes, that being that Story trumps mechanics, I can agree with wanting Mechanics to reflect the way you want the game world to work. For this, I have a few ideas.

What I like
Heavy shields.
Removing Full Plate

What I would change
most of it. No offense, but for my tastes simpler is better. So, here is my list of changes.

Add Heavy Shields, + 3 AC, and a Strength Requirement of 16-18 (Slightly higher than the average Dex fighter will want to go, more on that below)

Remove Full Plate from the armor table

Light Armor has a Dex limit of +2, meaning that for many characters the best armor they can get is 15.

Remove Dex bonus to Halfe-plate, Breast Plate, and Scale mail.

Monk and Barb only add half of their Wisdom/Con mod, rounded up, to AC.

Heavy Armor adds half Strength mod (Rounded up or down to preference) to AC.

End Result
AC is split into 3 categories.

The fast ranged people can only access the lowest category, but are best off without armor if they have max Dex. Max AC of 15.

Medium AC is for Mobile Melee, or Slow ranged characters. 15-18, though Barb can push through to 21 if he uses a Heavy Shield (Higher AC for not using a Great weapon seems like a fair trade off.) This is also where the Strength requirement on the Heavy Shield comes in, as that will discourage a Dex Fighter from running around with a Heavy shield to pull out when he gets into Melee with his Rapier. That will keep him in this tier, with a max AC of Half-plate+Shield=17.

High AC, 19+. Chain, Splint, or Full Plate if they can find it, plus Heavy shields. Max expected AC of 23, but Full Plate can push it to 24.

 

[FrogReaver]

Some ideas:
1. Lower the chance to hit when attacking further than 30 or 60 ft away. maybe by -2 or -3 and I think your problem would mostly be solved even with no other changes.

 

[Corwin]

Also, "Ranged is clearly superior, so I'm playing an archer so I can hang back," might make perfect sense. Until the rest of the players follow suit and all decide to join you in making ranged focused characters, too. Then you have no meat shields to hold the monsters at bay while you pluck away from a safe distance.

 

[Uchawi]

First off, I do want to say I applaud your decision to rework the game for yourself so that it accomplishes what you want it to. You've spent the last several years seeing the game fail you in various ways in your campaigns you'd played or run, and it's cool to see you accept the premise that if the game doesn't work, go right ahead and make changes to it. Which is the best and probably most successful attitude to have to get a D&D game you want to play.

But at the same time... I'm also willing to bet that you aren't in fact correct with your statement above. Melee will never be abandoned, because there's not nearly the number of players who think as you do... that mechanics always trump story. There will always be a large percentage of players who will play to the fiction, never even thinking once about the "efficiency" of that decision. I've run two games simultaneously through Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and currently two games simultaneously through Curse of Strahd... and not a single one of these 25+ players and characters have ignored a melee-focused concept because the game mechanically made it "less useful" over a ranged character. Seriously, no one's spent any time thinking about it. They played melee because they liked the story of being a heavily armored and shielded paladin, or a wildshaped druid, or a swashbuckled fighter with two rapiers. And if they played range, it's because the characterizations of those ranged characters is what drew them, and not that it just "made more sense" and was a "tactically smarter" issue.

You and your group are a very specialized group of gamers, and obviously you've spent the time to discover this particular picadillo of the game that could be "exploited" (to put it one way.) But the number of other players and groups who not only think, but also act and make choices the way your group does I suspect is woefully small. Small enough that WotC has shown not predilection to "fix" the game that way. Which is why its awesome that you're now choosing to do it yourself. That's what's great about the game, and why it works as it does. Keep it up!

I believe understanding the rules is the pendulum. It just takes one player to see the gap to start influencing how characters are developed. You can still value story but aren't blind to certain advantages with the rule set.

 

[The Old Crow]

Some ideas:
1. Lower the chance to hit when attacking further than 30 or 60 ft away. maybe by -2 or -3 and I think your problem would mostly be solved even with no other changes.

I was thinking of doing this, and tying the range that the -2 kicks in to STR, like for every point of STR they have they get 5' range without penalty. At STR 12 that is a respectable 60'. This might end up being a little too fussy, although I would really love to have STR matter with range.

Edited to Add: STR doesn't matter for spellcasting, so it would probably be better to have a fixed range that the penalty kicked in at because of spell attacks.

 

[Lanliss]

I was thinking of doing this, and tying the range that the -2 kicks in to STR, like for every point of STR they have they get 5' range without penalty. At STR 12 that is a respectable 60'. This might end up being a little too fussy, although I would really love to have STR matter with range.

Edited to Add: STR doesn't matter for spellcasting, so it would probably be better to have a fixed range that the penalty kicked in at because of spell attacks.

That sounds fine to me. and not fussy at all, IMO.