D&D (2024) The Great Nerf to High Level Martials: The New Grapple Rules

[Yaarel]

I don't think the issue a lot of people run into is "effectiveness" and more they run into "Archetype Functionality"

Take a character like Catwoman. She's a dexterity archetype, the nimble thief, what are somethings she should be able to do? Jump, climb, grapple individuals using her superior skill and speed to overcome their superior strength, knock opponents out with kicks, trip people... all of which are designated as "strength" abilities.

Now, some people see that and say "well clearly Catwoman is also strong and a proper version of her will have a high strength". But she also has high endurance, high charisma, high intelligence and high perception/wisdom. The only thing you CAN say she lacks is strength, because she is a dexterity archetype, not a strong woman archetype. And it is nearly impossible to make a character who has EVERYTHING. Which inevitably leads to the question... how do we get these archetypes to mechanically match their inspirations? Because, realistically in DnD terms, unless you are a scrawny scholar type... you are strong as a function of your role in the story.

Catwoman has superhuman Strength, in the 20s.

However, she has typical Medium Size Carrying Capacity, no proficiency training in a "Weightlifting" skill, and likewise lacks any special superpower relating to Weightlifting.

Her Jumping, Climbing, Wrestling, and Unarmed Combat are superhuman.

Her Dexterity if any would be for Stealth, and she avoids missile weapons. Her finesse whip utilizes her athletic Strength. Her Dexterity seems human.

 

[James Gasik]

This is the flaw with people wanting to draw parallels to, or to emulate, superheroes in D&D. Superheroes have high stats across the board.

Want to emulate a superhero like Catwoman or Batman, or other heroes who have high Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and/or Charisma scores? Use higher arrays or more generous stat generation methods. It's simple, and it doesn't break anything because the DM gets to modify the difficulty all they want. The only thing that 16s across the board does is make heroes less differentiated by ability score and be more differentiated by species, class, subclass, and equipment, and give heroes a slightly higher modifier on skills that they might normally suck at. It's not an auto-win.

Ok, but who should people draw parallels to? Conan is a superhero (quite literally, see Savage Avengers). Almost every fictional character a D&D player would look at and say "oh, I want to play a character like that guy/gal!" has a fleshed out kit of abilities and what would be equivalent to several great ability scores.

D&D is this strange beast that wants your characters to do the same kind of epic things you see fictional characters do, like fight giant monsters, face down demigods, and battle in the ruins of a crumbling castle floating above the Elemental Plane of Fire, but with characters who have some glaring weak points, so as to force you to rely on your companions.

I mean let's look at one of the ur-examples of an "adventuring party", the Fellowship. We have four Halfling Commoners (Fighter 1 or Rogue 1's if we're being extremely generous)- one of which has 2 heirloom magic items and an Artifact, an Elven Fighter with massive racial advantages and stupidly high level having been alive for thousands of years, a Human Fighter with 200 hit points, a Dwarf Fighter with 400 hit points, a Celestial being disguised as a Bladesinger, and a paragon Human Ranger (supposedly) with massive racial advantages and very high ability scores!

It plays more like high level WoW characters running low-level alts through a dungeon to get them xp, lol.

Even D&D fiction is bad at this- the power level of any given group of characters in a D&D novel is going to be pretty wildly disparate, most people have really high stats, and even low level characters have pretty amazing advantages- Streams of Silver gives us a high level Drow Fighter/Ranger, a high level Dwarf Fighter (who the PHB even uses as an example in character creation!), and a low level Human Barbarian with a +5 magic warhammer!

The Heroes of the Lance? Only occasionally all in the same place at the same time to begin with, so it's hard to even call them an "adventuring party" in the traditional sense, as they're not only scattered all over the place as the adventure continues, but one of them turns heel and attempts to solo the final boss!

Where's the appropriate character a player should emulate when envisioning their character? Phillipe Gaston? Willow Ulfgood? Effectively lower level characters kept alive by more experienced heroes?

 

[Clint_L]

Coincidentally this is why non-magical characters in D&D tend to suck, because the only way to transcend ability scores and skill checks is to use magic.

My monk, who is now using the 2024 playtest rules, can wreck the face of any caster of a comparable level. Seriously. It isn't close.

 

[Yaarel]

Leveling "tiers" are how the D&D 5e game engine actualizes superheroes.

The master tier (levels 9−12) is where humanesque superheroes start, like Batman, Daredevil, and Beowulf.
The grandmaster tier (levels 13−16) is heightened and world altering, like Captain America, Storm, and so on.
The legend tier (levels 17−20) is for the cosmic powers, like Superman and Thor.
The epic tier (levels 21−24) tends to be for stuff that is also beyond most superhero main characters.

The main difficulty of using the 5e engine for superheroes is, at these high tiers the 5e characters tend to get very complicated with many fiddly features. Oppositely, the superheroes tend to be simpler − thematically consistent with only a few powers that are useful and versatile. Even so, D&D mechanics, especially spells and feats at the higher tiers, can often duplicate or approximate each superpower.

High tier 5e can do the superhero genre. It might take some tweaking to simplify the high tier characters.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Superheroes generally start at peak human in most physical regards and then add powers and abilities on top of that. Fantasy RPGs lean toward a weaker baseline.

Okay. Name a fantasy "Phantom thief" who was incapable of climbing or leaping.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This is the flaw with people wanting to draw parallels to, or to emulate, superheroes in D&D. Superheroes have high stats across the board.

Want to emulate a superhero like Catwoman or Batman, or other heroes who have high Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and/or Charisma scores? Use higher arrays or more generous stat generation methods. It's simple, and it doesn't break anything because the DM gets to modify the difficulty all they want. The only thing that 16s across the board does is make heroes less differentiated by ability score and be more differentiated by species, class, subclass, and equipment, and give heroes a slightly higher modifier on skills that they might normally suck at. It's not an auto-win.

Would you prefer if I talked about Jake Thayne, the Primal Hunter, who can leap over trees and smash boulders, but is an archer whose primary way of fighting is being faster and more agile than his opponents?

How About Jennifer Gleam, who is a swordswoman with light swords, and can also crush a man's throat with a single punch and leap onto the top of a building?

Maybe Brooke, fast enough to run on water, fights with a rapier like a duelist and also capable of leaping multiple stories?

Yes, I dared to use a superhero that everyone had heard about, instead of fantasy characters no one has heard about. And sure, you COULD just give everyone high stats, but that isn't the point. The point is a person who is looking for that archetype, and it is almost specifically a thief/acrobat/archer/dex-based archetype is immediately going to be confronted by having expectations of what that means in the world of the story, and faced with this conundrum that to do so they need to be a different archetype that doesn't match the rest of what they want.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

Ok, but who should people draw parallels to? Conan is a superhero (quite literally, see Savage Avengers). Almost every fictional character a D&D player would look at and say "oh, I want to play a character like that guy/gal!" has a fleshed out kit of abilities and what would be equivalent to several great ability scores.

Where's the appropriate character a player should emulate when envisioning their character?

The game works fine with moderate stats because DCs aren't crazy. But it is not against the rules to use higher stats.

If all the players want to play "superheroes," they should have a conversation with their DM. If the DM doesn't want them to have higher stats, and wants to inflate DCs so they fail often, the group needs to decide how they want to move forward. How important is this DM's game to them?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Superheroes are impossible to emulate accurately in D&D because their skills transcend ability scores.

Sigh

Same with most Fantasy heroes. Ain't none of the three main characters from Mistborn getting emulated in DnD. Can't emulate Link and most of his strengths or abilities, or Sora. Curran can't be emulated in DnD. Klbkchhezeim can't be emulated in DnD. High Priest Ferdinand, Tavi, Blake Thornburn...

Seriously, I could go on. I didn't pick a superhero because they are some sort of ideal. I picked them because they are one of the few set of characters that I KNOW everyone is familiar with.

There's no way Catwoman would fail a climb check, so climbing for her isn't a climb check. It's an ability that grants her a climb speed.

Coincidentally this is why non-magical characters in D&D tend to suck, because the only way to transcend ability scores and skill checks is to use magic.

Sure, you could claim that it is just an ability that she can never fail to climb, and that she has a magical ability to jump, and she has a special boon that increases her unarmed damage.... but what you are doing here is saying "These abilities cannot be modeled in the current set-up of DnD, and so therefore we need to make exceptions" which is one way to handle things, but immediately highlights that DnD is failing to grasp the archetype. Not that the archetype is somehow unreasonable, but that it is just not possible with the rules, and therefore it can't be done, instead of seeing that "it can't be done with the rules" is what we are point out.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Catwoman has superhuman Strength, in the 20s.

However, she has typical Medium Size Carrying Capacity, no proficiency training in a "Weightlifting" skill, and likewise lacks any special superpower relating to Weightlifting.

Her Jumping, Climbing, Wrestling, and Unarmed Combat are superhuman.

Her Dexterity if any would be for Stealth, and she avoids missile weapons. Her finesse whip utilizes her athletic Strength. Her Dexterity seems human.

She can be tied to a chair, or held down by a regular crime goon. Superhuman strength? Only if every crook in Gotham is sporting a 22 strength and their rope is made with titanium.

And yet, I would agree that her jumping, climbing, wrestling and unarmed combat at better than human, as presented.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Leveling "tiers" are how the D&D 5e game engine actualizes superheroes.

The master tier (levels 9−12) is where humanesque superheroes start, like Batman, Daredevil, and Beowulf.
The grandmaster tier (levels 13−16) is heightened and world altering, like Captain America, Storm, and so on.
The legend tier (levels 17−20) is for the cosmic powers, like Superman and Thor.
The epic tier (levels 21−24) tends to be for stuff that is also beyond most superhero main characters.

The main difficulty of using the 5e engine for superheroes is, at these high tiers the 5e characters tend to get very complicated with many fiddly features. Oppositely, the superheroes tend to be simpler − thematically consistent with only a few powers that are useful and versatile. Even so, D&D mechanics, especially spells and feats at the higher tiers, can often duplicate or approximate each superpower.

High tier 5e can do the superhero genre. It might take some tweaking to simplify the high tier characters.

Sure, ideally, but also... no, no that isn't where those power levels actually hit.

Catwoman is the example from before, and she is below Batman surely, right? Level 8? Here is a page from an old comic

Using a whip to destroy manacles. Manacles have 15 hp. Whip is 1d4+5 assuming she has a 20 dex. If she crit, and dealt max damage that would be 13. She would need to have a 24 dexterity to pull that off in DnD.

Meanwhile, here is the after math of a blow from Thor against a powerful foe

Please tell me what 20th level DnD character can hit hard enough to SHATTER NEARBY MOUNTAINS. Not the mountains he hit, the mountains NEAR HIM when he hit SOMETHING ELSE. He literally shook a planet. No 20th level character is capable of that.