Level Up (A5E) What would you do to simplify A5E and/or speed up combat?

[Tessarael]

Hi folks, what would you do to simplify A5E and/or speed up combat?

I very much enjoy A5E, but there are some things that players forget, which slow down combat, or complicate representing a character in a virtual table top like Fantasy Grounds. So in that context, are there any changes that you have made, or thought about making, to simplify A5E a little, or speedup combat with A5E? If you have similar house rules for 5E D&D, that would be of interest as well.

A few possible examples:

• Feats:
  • Primordial Caster: select acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder. Your spells ignore damage resistance of that type. Add your proficiency bonus to damage dealt of that type.
    • This is instead of +1 damage for every damage die roll of 1. The other two benefits are standard for the feat.)
• Fighting styles:
  • Great Weapon Fighting gives +2 bonus to damage rolls with a melee weapon wielded two-handed. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property to do this.
    • Rerolling weapon damage die rolls of 1 or 2 slows down combat.)
• Skill expertise:
  • For every four skills that you would gain a +d4 expertise die in, you instead get expertise (double proficiency bonus) in a skill.
    • This is to avoid needing to tracking skill expertise specialties in a virtual table top.
• Spellcasting:
  • You can spellcast while wielding two weapons, a two-handed weapon, or weapon and shield, if you are proficient in them. To do so, a weapon or shield is used as your spellcasting focus.
    • This is to avoid the need to track which spells have only verbal components, or somatic but not material components.
    • Alternatively, allow the above rule for Bards, Clerics, and Heralds, requiring other spellcasters to take the War Caster feat if they want to spellcast when dual wielding or using weapon + shield.
• Weapon properties:
  • Defensive weapons give +1 AC, if you are also wielding a shield of the appropriate degree or lighter, providing that you have shield proficiency.
  • Parrying weapons give +1 AC, if you are not wielding a shield, and you are proficient. (No, you can’t wield two parrying weapons to get +2 AC.)

 

[Waller]

If I wanted to simplify A5E I'd play core 5E.

 

[Tessarael]

Sure, 5E is an option. But I do prefer A5E.

 

[VenerableBede]

I don't play A5e for simple or fast... It's definitely simpler for other games, but one of the results of making a game crunchier is, almost inevitably, slower play speed. Unless you are playing with really focused, really efficient individuals who have their characters (and the overall rules) memorized.

That said, I tend to find the overabundance of dice used in A5e fiddly, and cleaning that up is an easy way to shave time off of turns. Other than Advantage/Disadvantage, I generally do this by finding ways to avoid rolling multiple dice wherever possible (such as with your Great Weapon Fighting example), or finding ways to avoiding using multiple types of dice in a single roll (other than d20 + whatever damage die). Converting dice into static bonuses—expertise dice in particular—takes so much fiddliness out of the game.

Static bonuses are your friend, people. Stacking on an additional die roll after die roll has the same problems that static bonuses can have, but worse because it takes the additional time of finding the die and rolling it.

 

[Tessarael]

Yes. Converting expertise dice to static modifiers would simplify things too.

 

[Distracted DM]

I'd disagree with the full-hands spellcasting without the Battle Caster feat, but I can understand how that would speed things up

I'd also agree to the static modifiers simplifying things; it'd also lower the heights of what rolls can reach with crazy expertise dice. Getting +1d6 and 1d8 on some checks as a 1st level character can result in some very swingy and high rolls!

 

[Chaltab]

Honestly moving the game to Foundry might be helpful? It has expertise dice built into the system and the system download comes with a huge chunk of what's on A5E tools and also a bunch of 3PP stuff built in.

 

[Tessarael]

Fantasy Grounds does allow expertise die modifiers to be applied as well. I'm not really focused on which virtual table top software is used, but if there is a better one for A5E, I am curious.

 

[Chaltab]

My limited experience with Fantasy Grounds was not positive (the program felt obtuse and the o5E game we used it for ended with a TPK at level 1) so I can't speak to how well it works with A5E compared to other VTTs.

But in general previously mentioned ideas are solid. Eliminating dice re-rolling, turning Expertise Dice into static modifiers. Perhaps switching to o5E Counterspell because of how the A5E version requires a roll for a spell of equal level and lets the target cast something else if they're countered.

 

[Distracted DM]

Fantasy Grounds does allow expertise die modifiers to be applied as well. I'm not really focused on which virtual table top software is used, but if there is a better one for A5E, I am curious.

The Foundry system is indeed pretty solid. But I don't know anything about the r20 and FG implementations.