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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 9547579" data-attributes="member: 7031982">Yeah, I agree with all of this.Which is why it was a little bit of a head-scratcher for me to be told that the approach I'm describing makes martials even worse.  At my table, the abilities written on your character sheet don't matter as much as your ability to think up creative solutions.  (And I can play that straight or whacky, depending on the mood of the table.)I literally just finished a session with a group of kids.  Two of them I had never played with before.The first is super into D&D, and often DMs.  At one point, early in the term, he said, "I'm going to cast Thaumaturgy and use a booming voice to threaten the goblins with their impending doom.  Ok, that gives me Advantage on Intimidate and I roll a...."  "Hold on, hold on...don't roll anything yet," I said...The second kid has played a few times, but really isn't very familiar with the game.  When the chainmail clad zombie popped out of the sarcophagus (to the surprise of absolutely nobody) instead of attacking with his greataxe, he popped barbarian rage, yelled some challenge and described some kind of elbow slam pro wrestling move."Um, ok.  You know your unarmed strike does a couple points of damage, and your axe will do 1d12 plus 3?""Yeah, I know but I want to knock him across the room."Now, normally D&D is either an attack or a shove, but not both, right?  But he didn't know that; he was just describing what he wants his character to do."Ok.  How's this: you make a normal attack roll, and if you succeed you will do normal unarmed damage AND you will then make a contested strength check to knock it prone.  You'll have advantage on that, because of your barbarian rage.  BUT...if you miss the attack, you'll be one who is prone, and it will have advantage attacking you."He happily took that deal, landed the attack, and was thrilled with the outcome.Two very different approaches.</blockquote>

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