D&D 5E The Burden of Being Small

[KarinsDad]

I was actually surprised at how medium and small creatures are almost identical. Beside the variant rule on encumbrance, the only thing I noticed was disadvantage with heavy weapons. Certainly FAR less harsh than 3.x. Am I missing anything else? Is there a blanket rule on reduced speed (might have missed it) or is it just that each small race happens to have reduced speed?

I can think of an advantage for prone small guys.

A 30 speed PC uses 15 move to stand up.

A 25 speed PC uses 10 move (12.5 round down) to stand up.

A 20 speed low Str heavy armor PC uses 10 move to stand up (which is amusing that the high Str PC needs to use up more move to stand up than the low Str PC).

A 15 speed low Str heavy armor PC uses 5 move (7.5 round down) to stand up.

In both cases, the small PC uses less move to stand.

Course, those high speed Monk Half Elf PCs with magic that boosts their speed use more move to stand up too.

 

[MerricB]

So, let's say I want to throw small-sized goblin skeletons at a low-level party instead of medium-sized human skeletons. How do I adjust the medium-sized example given in the book according to the new rules?

We don't know - we haven't seen monster creation guidelines yet.

One thing I did take away from 3E though was how bad "one size fits all" templates could be. Adjusting the challenge rating of a monster with template without taking into account what the base monster was created some incredibly broken monsters.

Consider a template that said: -2 Str, +2 Dex, disadvantage on large weapons. Sort of looks balanced - even perhaps worse for the monster. But then apply it to a rogue-type character and the template actually means: +1 AC, +1 to hit, +1 damage, +1 initiative. Apply it to an ogre, and you get -1 to hit, -1 damage, +1 initiative, reduce damage die from 2d8 to 2d6 (or something like that).

The 5E skeletons would likely become stronger through such a template, as they're Dex-based.

Cheers!