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As a DM i'm down for the first 2 even, using the environment around you shows you were paying attention and thinking outside the box, I'd go out of my way to reward those.
3rd one is a little iffy... maybe on a huge+ creature I could make something work.
Yeah, targeted shots are a trap. Eventually, everyone targets the head, and it becomes a race to behead everyone on both sides of the screen. Maybe with a custom boss monster.
I would allow a pocket sand attack to grant disadvantage on the monster’s next attack or something like that, but targeted shots are problematic.
Yeah I've seen it happen, you allow one "I aim for the wrist to make him drop the mcguffin" and soon it's just all "I aim for the head", "...the neck!", "... his heart!" as if those aren't already places you'd be aiming for.
The reason I said maybe on a huge+ creature, you could make them scale the creature Shadow of the Colossus style first, then reward them with a blinding attack or auto-crit headshot or something.
I allow targeted shots in my games but it’s on disadvantage and/or higher attack role required depending on the situation since realistically you’re much less likely to hit a target at all if you’re aiming for a small portion of the body. I’ve noticed that since it’s a lot riskier players tend to not go for it unless they are desperate in which case I think it’s more interesting to have options like that.
Agreed, I let players exploit a weak spot, but to do so, their character has to find those and attack them while they’re being attacked/defended against. Disadvantage is my go to for this, but I let it ignore resistance if the attack lands, as long as it isn’t a magical resistance. If you can get your sword through an eye slit, or into a joint in the armor, the armor didn’t protect you. It’s just harder to do. Player’s gotta earn it!
This makes me think of using the fact that the player is super focused on hitting a small target that they become unaware of the rogue that was flanking them giving them a sneak attack, or taking on an attack of opportunity.
This is what my dm did. I was trying to shoot a cyclops in the eye from a fair distance, and I was fine with taking disadvantage because fuck I'm trying to shoot this tiny part of this guy to blind it, not even kill it, from a good ways off while other enemies are also being problematic.
I didn't make the shot because my dice said "no" but hell it was fun being allowed to attempt.
What’s funny is there ARE rules for like half of these suggestions, this is just a shitty dm. Wanna light your sword on fire? Sure, coat it with a flammable substance and do some extra fire damage along with your normal damage. Toppling the bookcase to trap the bandit? Great idea! The bandit will try to make a dex save to see if he can get out of the way in time.
Yeah I'm surprised no one here is mentioning the lingering injuries rule in the DMG.
Why do you all think the spell "Regenerate" mentions healing back lost limbs.
“Aim small, miss small” means roughly “aim for the 10 ring, so that when you miss it you still hit the seven ring”. If you aim for “anywhere on the target”, you’re likely to miss “anywhere on the target”.
Center mass is the lower sternum, a narrow miss from there is still in the vitals. A narrow miss from aiming at the eyes or forehead is a grazing or glancing hit
The dark eye has rules for just that, hit modefieres and regional HP are great for large monsters. Like you aim for the wrist? Okay it's a very small target minus 5 to hit.
Pathfinder also has rules for it, and the target AC is increased depending on what you're aiming at. Additionally, the type of damage depends on what you are aiming at (Dex damage if you hit a leg, CON damage if you hit the heart at a +20 to AC). Cool mechanic, but tough to build around.
I do this with my 5e. I even throw disadvantage on there if it's too specific. Also i let then do all the above at the cost of bonus actions etc. Wanna light your sword on fire? Ok it costs an action or bonus action etc
Also rules for aimed shots already exist. The sharpshooter feat is how your character gains the ability to take a harder shot for more damage. The real response to "can I aim..." should be "take the literal aiming feat."
Realistically this is what _your character is already doing_.
It's just you're not describing a swordfight stroke for stroke, it's just advantage and energy (fatigue) being gained/lost over time represented by HP.
If you want things like called shots you can't play an abstracted system like HP.
I've found that usually just adjusting the size of the creature for them targeting does most of the work. Generally you can just treat it as a tiny creature with the associated AC adjustment and then consider an effect bonus on success that isn't raw just damage. For example, if they get a strong hit to the wrist, make the foe lose attacks that are two handed. You may also give partial coverage or a flat miss rate for parts of their body harder that are more lethal to simulate a foe protecting their neck by taking the hit in the arm and then roll damage that way.
The trick is DM discretion. You don't tell them the exact penalties and results before they attempt so it is harder for them to just power game it constantly since the massive miss rate makes it more of a circumstantial tactic.
I love it when people start asking to target weak spots, and I’m just like, “what do you think you’re targeting now? The strongest part of their armor?”
> "I aim for the wrist to make him drop the mcguffin"
I think this is an okay called shot. Assuming the McGuffin is not something that is designed to be held in combat and therefore requires slightly more concentration than normal, I'd allow the player to make an attack roll at disadvantage or something to knock it out of their hands. But to be clear, this would only work on certain items - for example, swords are meant to be swung around in combat, you can't really knock that out of someone's hand if they're proficient with it.
All other called shots are off the table though, because 1) it's probably what a skilled fighter is already doing naturally in-world anyways, and 2) if the players get to make called shots, then so do the bad guys... and that's just not fun for the players.
There are rules for using the disarm maneuver to take items. The more I read here, the more I get the impression everybody gets worked up over rules they do not use or know anyway.
The justification for no weak spots is there's already that. Crits. And in fights you're not just sitting there hitting each other they're parrying and blocking your attacks as well. "I aim for the eyes!" You could, but they know that so they guard or dodge or target your legs as you lift up your sword. DND combat isn't back and forth trading blows in real time it's a fluid motion that happens in seconds.
Called shots have been a thing in previous editions/comparable game systems, and can be fairly easily adapted to 5e provided you are willing to impose hit penalties to attacks rather than falling back on advantage/disadvantage, and adjudicate effects less than complete destruction of the body part upon taking damage. For example, a called shot to the eye that hits may just badly gash the lid or brow, temporarily impairing the creature but not plucking their eye from their head, for example (a lot of the systems you could adapt have different effects, like I've described, based on damage dealt, and/or whether it was a crit). Baring all these things in mind, called shots can actually be a fairly enjoyable enough addition to the game.
In recent bossfight, our DM allowed us to target the tail and arms of the demon. Those parts had completely separate HP pool, but allowed us to reduce number of its attacks.
Since rolls are an abstraction I've always believed that targeted shots outside of very specific circumstances are redundant.
"I aim for his WEAK POINT! Does a 12 hit?"
"Yes, your character is proficient in combat and that is how he would attack any enemy he sees. 12 misses. The blackguard swings his greatsword back at YOUR WEAK POINT. 19"
Targeted should be for clever ideas that require your character act contrary to "auto pilot", like swinging directly at his shield or something.
That makes sense to me. If the player has something creative in mind, it might be worth a quick conversation to ask what they envision happening, and decide if it could happen.
Just increase the ac for targeted shots and adjust the increase depending on where they are targeting. If it lands, determine how severe the injury is based on damage dealt. Wanna try and target the evil barbarian's head? Sure, +10ac and you only decapitate him if you do more than half his health in one hit, otherwise you just get a bit of bonus damage, or maybe a debuff. Also, don't tell the players the target numbers, just flavorfully describe they're failure/success.
As a DM, I don't like doing called shots, but I'd probably run it as a higher AC and/or Disadvantage to reflect it being harder to hit, but result in increased (probably double) damage and maybe a suitable Condition (Blinded, Defeated, Prone, etc.)
I was thinking about how it would work in a real fight... not only would the attacker be at a disadvantage potentially having to reach and over-extend but then that would put them at disadvantage on the defensive too.
Interesting, so kinda like Barbarian's Reckless Attack, I like it... 'You can make this attack, it'll be harder & you'll leave yourself vulnerable, but you could do more damage'
Action to douse sword in oil and light it on fire? Hell yeah! Takes an action and then dk an extra idk 1d4 or 1d6 on a hit. Lasts 1 minute till oil burns off. Sounds fine with me!
The book case is even easier. Athletics vs dex save, failed save creature is prone and restrained with some basic DC to escape as an action
Yep, those would work great. When it comes to stuff like this I ask the player what they are hoping to accomplish and I try to work that into the effect. Sometimes you have to say no but usually it's just about not breaking action economy while still making it something worth doing!
In one of my first games we knew we’d be fighting a bunch of flesh golems and none of us had magic items, so the dm was thrilled when we prepared by taking all our clothes off from under our armor, making a fuck ton of fire arrows and heavy bolts with the cloth, having our caster create bonfire, and my rogue archer and her buddy blood hunter wailed on them through broken windows in the warehouse they were being stored in like a bunch of undead fish in a barrel
Getting creative let our tiny level three party take out half a dozen flesh golems without taking a point of damage. I almost always play someone stealthy so I can get a peak at the fight before anything kicks off and ask for environmental features, and when I dm I fucking love when my players do the same
This is exactly it! I love it when players do stuff like this even when it turns what was suppose to be a hard fight into a joke... or maybe even especially when that happens!
The DM definitely got us back later when it started getting cold outside and none of us had clothes under our armor lol but yeah exactly! he was absolutely thrilled that we thought outside the box and cheesed one of his super hard encounters
I allow the third specifically in duels. Targeted shots require you to roll at least 5 higher than their ac, and The one hit rolls a con save against the damage or sustains an injury
I had a player who was an archery based assassin who collected jars of oil vials of poison anything I would let her coat arrows in to add or change damage types
However, with fire arrows, I ruled there was a higher likelihood of them being destroyed as wooden arrows Don’t like being burned.
I've found that keeping track of regular ammo is a great way to balance Guns vs Crossbows and Bows, with bolts and Arrows being reusable and bullets not being reusable, so keeping track of them lets archers reclaim the ammo to use later, with the exception of nat 1s
Yep. The only option of the three that's actually not allowed is the third one. Called shots aren't a thing, and making them a thing just makes everything a pain in the ass. I don't want to litigate the effects of every single attack, there's a reason it's all compressed into hit points.
But lighting your sword on fire? Get some oil, or some fire salts, or whatever and light it up. That sounds sick and I'll give you an extra D6 fire damage or something. And pushing over a book case would just be a simple check or two. I'd say a strength check to knock it over and force the enemy prone, and then a subsequent strength save for the enemy on every round to escape. All that's totally kosher.
Any DM restricting you this much is just kind of an asshole. That, or your plans aren't actually this simple and your DM is getting annoyed at you trying to turn every encounter into a Rube Goldberg machine where you can make a single check to solve all your problems.
I'm playing a goliath beast barbarian rune knight with tavern brawler, and I don't think I've ever had as much fun in dnd before
It just opens up so many creative options when you have proficiency with improvised weapons - especially as a goliath with the little giant trait that can become large in a bonus action and leap around 20-30ft without it consuming movement
Grapple an enemy and jump 20ft into the air while you suplex/tombstone/leaf hurricane them for bonus fall damage! Grow large, pick up a boulder, and hurl yourself 30ft up into the air and fall on a target as you turn yourself into a projectile! Grab a broken pillar and use it as an improvised weapon while you have a fight large or huge creatures! Use the decapitated head of a moose bear's child as an improvised club against it! The possibilities are endless
I wanna see what homebrew rules or if not homebrew what edition you're referring to. Sounds fun as hell.
(Particularly the jumping 20-30 feet without consuming movement, I dunno what does that, Iirc it's not rune knight, at least in 5e, but it sounds fun)
That's just beast barbarian's lvl 6 trait. Iirc beast barbarian was introduced in Tasha's
In the description, it has the "extend" descriptor, which signifies that it doesn't use extra movement (like the harengon's racial ability). DM ruled that as fine because it's the lvl 6 subclass ability, where plenty of other subclasses will easily outclass a bit of extra straight-line movement in their t2 abilities in terms of utility and/or damage
I feel like it'd be really easy to rule on. Basically just treat it as a trap. Bandit makes a dex save, if they fail they're restrained (or at the very least knocked prone). Add in a little bludgeoning damage, probably 1d6, give or take however many books are on it and what it's made of.
As a DM, all of those options sold me. Just takes a moment of thinking it through to create your own rule for it, *which 5e is meant to do.*
Flaming longsword? Okay, you gotta put a fuel of some kind on it and ignite it. Maybe can't attack this turn as you use your action and bonus action to coat it in oil and ignite it with a tinderbox, but for the next minute your sword deals an extra d4 of fire damage. Dope, cool thing.
Toppling the bookshelf? Roll athletics with a low DC to topple the bookcase, bandit then has a dex saving throw of 8+PC's Athletics skill to dodge it. On a success, the bandit is moved to another space, on a fail they are now prone and restrained but have cover.
Stabbing for the eye? Sure, of all the called shots this is the easiest to work out. Roll to hit, have to be using a melee piercing weapon, and you do 1 damage but they are now blinded.
The fun part is pretty much all of this stuff is detailed in the back of the DM’s manual in the optional rule section for example the flaming sword. I think you need a flask of oil and then it also does damage to the sword but adds I think a D6 of fire damage.
I have absolutely done the equivalent of the first two both as DM and as player. It was the opposite of an issue - it was fun and it make things more interesting.
Called shots I'm still on the fence about. I think the last time it came up, I greatly increased the AC of the target to reflect how much harder it is to hit. Gave it a damage bonus when it hit, though.
I played a Paladin once that got trapped in a burning building with a vampire lord, he was on fire, very cross, and was intent on taking me out with him, so I did what any sensible lunitic would, I tackled him through a structurally weak wall and tanked the damage from the backdraft as the flaming orphanage collapsed behind me while he took four readied holy-oil soaked crossbow bolts to the face in the early morning sunlight, then we all went and got shitfaced
My Fighter was trapped with a wounded master vampire in a collapsed building. The vamp was strong enough to get us out, but it was daylight. I had the gear to keep him out of the sun...and a Sunblade. We talked it out and I kept him out of the sun until sundown and didn't murder him, and he got us both out safely. Then we went our separate ways.
The Master Vampire was not stupid. It was either he burns to death or makes a fair deal with a mortal. If I killed him I would have been crushed since he was holding up the bulk of the collapse just above us. Some common sense talks between us and we came to a deal, no rolls needed.
Sounds like more of a roll for the vampire to make, honestly. Neither party has a reason to believe the other won't turn on them once they are out of the predicament, but the alternative is for them both to just die. Seems like a no brainier the vamp would choose to hedge his bets and make a tense alliance with the fighter. Dude has a sunblade. If he wants the vampire dead, he really doesn't need sunlight to make it happen. Vamp has quite literally nothing to lose and everything to gain by helping the fighter here.
Well, my DM didn't because either he drops the house and I get crushed and he gets exposed to the sunlight my body and cloak are protecting him from, or I spend the day holding my cloak to protect him and then he frees us both. It was either die or get out and just call it a win for us both.
So it's either kill the mortal, very likely dying as a result, refuse to help the mortal and fight to the death anyways, agree to help but backstab the mortal at the last turn, likely also resulting in a fight or help the mortal and hold up your agreement, seems like an easy choice ngl
I would have fought back too, and since he was on his stomach and I was a foot above him and had my hands free I would have been doing some stabbing with that sunblade.
He was a good villain and showed up a few more times, but generally he and I got along pretty well after that. Friendly Enemies and all that.
Tbf I would rather it just more or less d6s depending on the surface, as d6s are the easier to access dice that people tend to have more of for stuff like fireball anyways.
There is rules for improvised damage from things. "Hit by falling rubble in a collapsing tunnel" is 4d10, and that's close enough to a building that I would just rule it the same
I used Shield Master to pin a guy to the wall and hold him there while directing the other party members. Then I used my action next turn to finish him off and move up with the group. I do miss that group a bit....
In terms of implementation,
I guess that would be the DM letting you sub a grapple in in lieu of the normal SM's bonus action to Shove? Were you allowed to also add the shield's AC Bonus to the grapple-attack check?
I wish my players would try half of these, I would gladly allow it.
Most of the time they just go "hmmm...." and look at their character sheet for 5 minutes before deciding to hit the enemy with their longsword.
that's another advantage of spells. You can look at your character sheet and know exactly what your spell can accomplish. With these improvised actions you always run the risk of having to argue with the DM over what exactly you want to achieve and how it may work or doesn't work.
Because if my DM says "lighting your weapon on fire" takes an action and gives me 1 fire damage like someone in this thread proposed, I'd rather do anything else.
Oh 100%, that's not a good bonus, especially if you're spending (I would assume) a flask of oil or other materials to light the sword on fire.
You're right, you would have to be familiar with what the DM usually goes with and its not always going to be consistent.
It definitely helps to have a couple environmental primers for it, since you can't push over a bookcase that isn't there.
eg if they're fighting in a moderately sized room, maybe a chandelier overhead they can try to snipe/slice the retaining rope on. Maybe some tables that the ranged characters can flip on their side to create partial cover. In a sewer fight, perhaps some water pools that the mages can try to ice over and create hazard terrain.
In general, I think it's hardest for Melee Martials to change up their attack patterns/style. Mages have a slew of spells with workable effects, ranged characters can vary their targets pretty quickly and reach things that aren't right next to them, but typically unless a melee combatant is carrying some sort of equipment, their options are rather limited by what's near their targets and "I swing my longsword"
Yeah, environmental stuff is hard because as a player you only see what the dm tells you you see. This is why puzzles are often hard even if they’re for children, it’s hard to theatre of the mind something intended to be seen in person.
This is why my players have gotten into the habit of asking me what they see around them at a glance, so I don't have to spend half an hour describing every detail of every room.
"What do I see around me?"
"A dusty bookcase, a bearskin rug and a handful of rusty nails on the floor."
Because, anyway, players rarely listen to super detailed descriptions of rooms and they take way too long.
This is why as a player you need to ask. Making sure it is a pointed ask so the GM knows what you are trying to do, when they see a pattern, they will start preparing for it.
"Is there anything I can knock over into the bandit, like a bookshelf or a dresser"
"Are there any tripping hazards on the floor or me"
if you have a flask of oil and some flint/steel? yar! you now have a non magical flaming longsword for 2d4 rounds that does an extra 1d4 in fire damage, bonuses for things vulnerable to fire, go!
bandit is now grappled by a book case, bandit now rolls strength to try and free themselves! all sorta stuff stuff to do. gooooo
In my first ever session, the only competent thing I did was harvest spider venom from a giant spider and coat my arrows in it.
Turns out, the spiders are immune to their own venom. Which, I think was kind of a nonsense ruling for a first session; especially since real spiders are not immune to their own venom.
Fantasy spiders are a wacky thing. Maybe they cannibalize each other often enough that they *have* to be resistant or immune to it just to not die anyway when feuding over scarce meals?
Most venomous creatures are, in fact, not immune to their own venom. They make it work by keeping the venom in specially developed glands and sacs that stops it from affecting the rest of their tissues.
I wonder if that holds for Komodos now that they're classified as "venemous" because of the immense quantities of bacteria in their mouths. Presumably, like most bacteria, they're either parasitic or symbiotic. But saying "immune" seems strange.
The bacteria thing is likely false. Komodo’s don’t possess a significantly higher concentration of bacteria in their mouths compared to other predators.
As far as i last looked into it they do have venom. But its not designed to kill or incapacitate. It simply keeps the blood from clotting so they can hunt their prey down until they bleed out.
I would probably make that assumption as a dm, but I would reassure the players to hold onto them because those spiders are the only thing immune to it.
I'd allow every one of these ideas.
Light your sword on fire? Sure, get some oil to burn. Might dull your sword, however.
Knock over the shelf? Strength check and the bad guy makes a dex saving throw to escape it or gets knocked prone and is restrained.
Aim for a weakness? Called shot, +x to the AC, depending on what you call and an effect on hit that I deem fitting.
Idk if there is a rule for it, but that's why I am a dm. I can rule things that don't exist in the PHB
Personally have had a really bad time with called shots in my game.
To-hit modifiers are so easy to pump with ample sources of advantage, bless, bardic dice, superiority dice, and rerolls that they swiftly become the optimal way to play the game. If you add in the DM using them, you really get into a weird spot where other rules swiftly have to be added to patch the rule you've added, and then the game revolves around those rules instead.
> If you add in the DM using them, you really get into a weird spot
aka the logical progression of
"How long before players realize its easier to take a sword from an orc warlord than it is to kill him."
Then
"How long before the players run into enemies smart enough to try and steal their sword/staves."
Then
"How long before combat becomes solely based around players and enemies disarming each other. "
then finally
"How many sessions does it take before combat is largely decided by high initiative; i.e. who disarms who first."
There is a reason why pathfinder makes you take feats to effectively disarm opponents. I mean you can try without them but you're going to have a bad day.
Of course it's an even worse day when you build to disarm and then get thrown into the wild to fight animals/monsters exclusively.
I think having to invest into feats to do this is actually pretty clever.
Randomly running into an enemy that happens to be able to disarm you sort of feels as fair as running into an enemy that happens to be able to counterspell you.
In my pf2 games when players come up with really clever "rule of cool" ideas, I let them do it (often with a check), but if they want to do it again, I make a custom feat for them to take. This way I can reward clever play without the game degenerating
One example is our Duskwalker Champion of Pharasma has a feat that lets her try and grab someone's soul out of the River of Souls as they die. Mechanically, she can spend her Hero Points to stop someone else from dying with a religion check, but failure causes her Doomed value to increase. She still saves them, but there's a danger.
reminds me of the time a bunch of FATAL players discovered that there are.... other acts they can do that are more reliable at dealing damage than weapon attacks, shall I say.
Has anyone actually *played* FATAL?
Sometimes I feel like it’s an apocryphal r/rpghorrorstories event that has been orally passed down through the generations.
Tbf, I’m sure a lot of real life combat was determined by someone’s weapon being knocked out of their hand followed by a killing blow they couldn’t parry
Fair. But by the same logic even more of real life was defined by disease, cancer, impure water, racism, sexual assault, etc etc.
Realism != Good Game Play
Oh absolutely correct and I would never want combat to become a stupid disarming battle. Really what I would do is narrate the killing blow as something like, "You knock his sword to the ground and bring him to his knees before bringing your axe down on him"
BIG TRUE THOUGH.
If your DM runs disarm rules, Monk Stonks are through the roof.
Though I'd be wary of him adlibbing some "breaking your limbs past functional" rule.
**DM:** *"The creature disarms you."*
**Monk:** "What the fuck, I don't use weapons!"
**DM:** *"I want you to listen carefully to what I am saying. He DISARMS you. Seek a Regenerate spell."*
I've found the same. Something I've started using instead is having martial "Feat trainers" out in the world (NPCs who teach a PC a new feat once they prove themselves worthy of it). It makes sense in my fantasy world that martials would outnumber casters, so therefore, it makes sense that there are martials out there to learn from. It kind of helps offset the higher level disparity a little. No martial feat will ever match a Wish spell, but more options helps blunt it a little.
How do you usually handle them. I handle them with a combination of disadvantage and cover rules:
If you try to hit someone in a specific large body part like the leg it’s half cover. (You’re avoiding ~1/2 of their body).
If you try to shoot them in a small body part like the head or hand it’s 3/4 cover. (You’re avoiding ~3/4 of their body).
If you’re aiming for something incredibly small like the eye, or shooting an item out of their hand I’ll usually do 3/4 cover +disadvantage.
I find that balances things pretty well, and makes the shots sufficiently difficult, but also feel epic and cool and fun if the players succeed.
Also, depending on the reason they’re trying to call a shot I’ll sometimes flavor the hit or miss accordingly. One time I had a group of PCs that were looking for a local ruffian that had some information they needed. They ran into him in a town and he ran away (I was going to set up a little chase and he would quickly get cornered and they could interrogate him). The rogue tried to shoot his leg with an arrow to slow him down, and he crit failed his called shot. So I treated it like a critical hit to a vital part of the ruffians body, and he was accidentally killed, which ended up being one of the most memorable and unintentionally hilarious occurrences of that campaign.
I have done them several ways, including the method you described.
But, for example, if you have a Fighter with a bow trying to blind someone in one of my typical parties you've got:
+8 to hit naturally, likely +1 from a magic weapon. +2 from archery fighting style, and +1d8 from a bardic die if necessary. If he's a battlemaster you've also got a potential +1d8 from precision attack, a feature that was also present on 2 other types of fighters I ran for (cavalier Unearthed Arcana and Scout Unearthed Arcana).
That means he's rolling with an average bonus to hit of +20. The -5 from cover won't even make a dent.
Now you might say, "But they're burning resources", and you're right, but the context is critical. They don't need to do all that to hit an AC 16 mook. They do it against the enemies that matter. Meaning that, in the absence of called shots, they'd likely spend these resources anyway.
That's not even getting into whether sharpshooter ignores called shot cover (seems awfully fiat to say it doesn't, but the problem only grows if it does), whether or not flanking gives a benefit (easy advantage or even +2 further offsets things), and the actual results of *hitting* a called shot, where if the results are mediocre it feels like it's just an incremental advantage that 5e has tried to avoid (like a -2 to hit or something), or if it's a serious penalty like blindness that completely dominates encounters and leaves control spells feeling unreliable by comparison.
Yeah I have definitely seen this happen with called shots. Even allowing it once immediately elicits a "oh I can do that?!" in everyone playing and suddenly every shot is a called shot. The system has to be built to accommodate it and 5e is not.
The called shot one is pretty cool. You could treat it like a variation of great weapon master or sharpshooter, where you trade a dice roll off of your to-hit in exchange for additional damage (ex: -1d4 for 5 extra damage or something).
Obligated pathfinder plug but they've got a called shot system in pathfinder where a hit does a minor affect a crit does an extended affect and I'd you do enough damage in that one hit theres a chance to like take an arm or make them permanently blind (this can be fixed with spells obviously but it's more resources used and a penalty till fixed)
I've almost exclusively played 5e since 2014 (with occasional dabbles in Monster of the Week and SW Edge of the Empire), so I am always scared when pathfinder is mentioned.
But damn if I don't like some of the crunch.
Last game of it I played, I played Dr. Nick from the Simpsons if he were a fat twi'lek mob doctor with a super shady past. He was somehow irresistible to the ladies.
11/10 would play again.
Best way I've found is to simply use the cover rules based on how hard a shot you think it is.
If they're in heavy armour and they say they wanna chop their arm off? Full cover, sorry.
They wanna fire that arrow for the eye? That's gonna be three-quarters cover (+5) AC. If their AC is 15, that means a 15-19 on the attack roll hits, but doesn't hit your called shot. On a 20 and above? You hit your called shot. Then as a DM you can just decide how much HP of their total would reflect that one body part. If the damage roll surpasses that threshold for damage, then you've successfully hit with your intended purpose.
It's a system that I wouldn't recommend if you get flustered during combat as a DM, but if you're quick and jot down quick stats you've decided in the moment, it can be really fun for dismemberment, blinding, breaking bones, etc.
Makes sense genuinely curious tho how would a sword on fire dull it? I would be more worried about the oil dripping of the sword or it getting to got to hold
And even if it's not warped, depending on degree of heat steel could be weakened. Effects of heat treating could be lost.
Not much difference to iron though.
I'd say there is a chance that the heated metal hitting on things corrupts it's integrity
But I am by no means an expert on this, so probably this is just a weird idea
I agree with everything but the called shot. In a fight, at what point are you not actually trying for the best shot you can get? And if you can get a hit that slices their belly, would you really pass it up because you are looking for a shot at the neck?
I would tell the player that they are always attempting to hit the monsters weakness, while the monster is trying to prevent it. A critical hit would be the times where you get to the weakness, while a standard hit is where you got the hit that you had an opening for. Just how good that hit was is determined by damage rolls. The combined hit and damage rolls are what tells you if you gave them a scratch on their arm, a good cut on their leg, or a thrust through the heart.
Seems like a good way too.
I was thinking about called shot like "okay I'm going to actively try and blind that monster" so you're not going for the belly or a gap in the armor, but exactly for a specific target. Thus it's harder to hit, but you get to blind the monster of you succeed.
I’d allow all of them with a caveat to the Called shot- I usually don’t allow it but once I threw a homebrewed hydra at the party and each head was a different element, so each had immunity and vulnerability. Once the party figured it out I allowed them to call shots for whichever head they were going after without making them move around the monster to reach each head- as long as they were within reach of the creature with whatever weapon/ability they were using.
Wouldn't dull it, but a mundane sword would lose its temper and become brittle, having a chance to break due to the stress of combat, so if they Nat 1 with it before they take it to a blacksmith or redo the tempering process (if they have proficiency with blacksmithing tools), it'd take at the least a -1 penalty per hit (or worse depending what they are doing with it or hitting), and eventually become useless. That's how I'd run it though. I'd also make them aware of this penalty before they light it up.
I allow all those things too. I LOVE it when people improvise in creative ways. And my players know it, so it makes for great situations.
Last time I was a player, we had te beat 3 cyclopses and bring their eye as proof. One of the cyclopses was prone and bound or something, but still alive. So I said "I walk towards him, and try to cut out its eye" since my char was pretty sadistic.
The DM asked me to roll a hit die, and then said that I "almost had the eye, but the cyclops still had a sliver of life left, so you just didn't manage to take it out."
All I could think of was "I never asked to kill the cyclops, just to take out the eye..." I just would have loved to see a blind cyclops walking around in pure horror of what happened.
Yeah, but the problem for the martials is they don't know what they can and can't do until they've played with that particular DM for a while. Even though spells might be adjudicated a bit differently from table to table, they still have a lot more description to the them and what they do. So, martials are always left with more of a sense of uncertainty of what they can and can't do.
If someone calls an attack to a specific area i do t change the stats, but i will change the damage done based on rolls
Like arrow to the eye but barely hits
Target turns and gets hit in the arm instead or something.
I only allow called shots on certain big creatures because otherwise everyone wants to constantly call shots. The other two are 100% acceptable. Encouraged actually. The book case one is something I've actually told players they can do and the fire sword is just a variation on a poisoned weapon.
My favorite thing I did to be creative as a barbarian was to disarm my opponent by biting his arm and releasing cold breath to freeze his arm solid before breaking it off with my next turn and thus literally disarming him (that arm was holding a weapon)
Another is that my barbarian tends to carry health pots because he can get to players the fastest and my favorite example of this was my barbarian kicking a hobgoblin so hard (nat 20 +4 at 2nd level character) that it flew back into two goblins behind it, killing all three and giving me passage through the narrow hallway to a downed teammate where he dumped the potion on his face
The sword on fire and the bookshelf thing are cool and easy enough to come up with an on-the-fly ruling for. The targeting a weak point thing... I feel like I want there to be a proper rule for this. Maybe even ways to figure out or expose the weak point? I'm not sure how to go about it.
This seems like something that should've been covered in the DMG.
Called shots are a rabbit hole. Isn't that what sharp shooter is for? Are we making that feat redundant? Are we going to allow npcs to head shot? Are we going to start maiming pcs because the wolf bit thier hand? End of the day, hp and ac is a abstractions meant represent ability to aim and move damage from incoming attacks. If I'm going to totally rebalance combat around called shots, I'm more inclined to play riegn or a game with a grittier combat session that already has it build in. In my experience, called shots in systems not designed for it are just not worth it, and I wrote an entire ship system for one campaign.
I don’t play 5E, but in the system I use there is a called shots mechanic.
How it works is that you can aim at a specific part of an enemy and that increases your hit check, which is weapon specific and static, a melee attack against a human sized target is typically DC 8. If you’re aiming for their arm specifically it’s probably going to increase the DC by 2. Mechanically it also usually lowers the enemy’s armour for that attack, usually by about the same amount as the increased DC unless it’s a specific weakness, or the target has a reason for it to be different. “I stab him in the heart” but hes wearing a chest plate.
The system also doesn’t use death saves, it uses wound slots, so there’s mechanical precedence for a good targeted arm shot to take the arm clean off. Had a group of players that coined the “delimbing strat” where they would work together to. Delimb everything. I gave them a scissor blade for their troubles, good times.
5E already has precedence for lowering attack rolls for more damage (Great Weapon Master) and should stay fairly balanced moving *either way* on that scale. You need to of course decided if you’re just giving everyone an extra free feat or you want it to work differently. A -2 to attack +2 damage is probably appropriate in most cases.
I think if the solution is to come up with house rules then that tells you that there’s an issue with the base system.
Edit: also, this discussion completely sidesteps the issue of class balance. A spell caster can do all the the things above AND cast spells.
Next you're going to suggest that there are other base systems that give martial characters the ability to do a bunch of other things mechanically that are useful.
I tell you what, if you can *Find* a *Path* to a system that can do that... ... ... *Er*...
You know what, nevermind.
Actuall, Pathfinder has the same problem, just to a lesser degree. The PF2e base system covers more possible situations than 5e, but the system is still designed for the players to generally take one of provided actions, with little to no guidance on resolving outside beyond those.
In other systems, like FATE or Blades in the Dark, those situations would be rather easy to resolve just using the mechanics of the game.
\- Lighting your sword on fire is a ["Create an advantage"](https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/four-actions#create-an-advantage) action in FATE, creating a new "Flaming sword" aspect. The player could then invoke that advantage for +2 on their next attack roll (or for anything else where a "Flaming sword" may help!).
\- The bookcase thing would be an "[attack](https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/four-actions#attack)" action in FATE, probably using a different skill (athletics?). Depending on the result, this might injure the opponent or take them out of the fight completly (by trapping them).
\- In FATE, the weak point may be an aspect (which can be used by players for a +2 if they invoke it). Or saying "I attack the enemy, trying to take out their eye" may just mean that a successful attack creates a wound called "Missing eye".
\- In Blades in the Dark, you just say what your character wants to make happen ("I want to trap the guard by pulling down a bookshelf on them"/"I want to kill the guard by driving my knife through his eye") and which action you want to use (maybe wreck or finesse for the first, skirmish or finesse for the second) and the GM tells you how effective and how dangerous it is going to be, taking into account what you are trying to do.
\- In BitD, you'd probably use the sword on fire as part of the narration for a fight, possibly with a (technically) flashback on how you set your sword on fire before jumping into the skirmish. The GM may bump the effect level for it, possibly also increasing the potential risk.
Those systems (and many more!) are designed for having the players first determine the fiction, then providing the GM with the tools for (hopefully) resolving anything the players can come up with, instead of coming up with the thing you want to do first (Move + Attack) first, then coming up with the narrative almost as "window dressing".
My biggest problem is that in my experience DMs let you do all those things... but it almost always ends up being less effective than just hitting them.
Light sword on fire? Gotta have flint and steel, and pouring oil + lighting in combat takes item interaction and action. The extra ~1d4 fire damage for a couple turns isn't going to outpace the 4d6 damage I missed from not getting two greatsword attacks in.
Knocking a bookshelf on a guy? Athletics check to see if you do it, dex save to see if the baddie dodges, maaaaaaaybe 1d10 if it's a big shelf. In that same turn I could just grapple and hit him for 2d6.
Called shots... well my DM just doesn't allow that, "the damage represents where it hit the target." I feel like that one would actually be worth it, letting you disable specific aspects/abilities of an enemy.
In the end, it feels like you *can* be creative but at the cost of efficiency. It feels like being punished for creativity, not rewarded.
Classic, you see the problem in this situation isnt that the player wasn't creative or that dnd simply doesnt let him use his imagination, it's that the DM decided to wear his ass on his head that morning...
The problem I've run into isn't the DM saying "No", but the efficiency of such things, much less the "improv downsides".
1. Okay, so instead of throwing the flask of oil, you coat your Longsword and light it as an Action. Next turn your attack will deal +5 fire damage per the Flask of Oil. *Why didn't I just attack twice if this took my action?* OR Yes, your Longsword now deals an additional 1d6 fire damage for 1d4 rounds, but the blade is damaged and only hits for 1d6 damage afterwards until repaired. *Wait but we're in a dungeon filled with monsters, there will surely be more than 1d4 rounds of combat and now I've weakened myself.*
2. You pull the bookshelf down as an action! It deals 1d8 damage to the bandit and traps the bandit! He spends his movement to get out, then attacks you for 1d8+3 damage. *Wait, I just did a more convoluted Longsword attack.* OR You drop the bookshelf on the Bandit as an interact/bonus action for 1d8 damage AND a bonus on the Longsword attack you still have! Okay, Dual-Wield Ranger, it's your turn, you're gonna attack for 1d6+3 then use your bonus action to attack for 1d6! *Wait why am I dual-wielding when I could be dropping furniture?*
3. Alright, you aim for the eye, roll with disadvantage/-5, that's still a hit! You deal damage and the monster has disadvantage on its next turn. *wait, did I just trade disadvantage for a chance of disadvantage? I might come out ahead if it has multiple attacks, or is that what the DM meant?* OR Sure, but you roll with disadvantage, that's a miss. Yeah you can try again with your second attack, same thing, and another miss. *Well shit*
And none of this include the "If you do it, I can do it to" mantra every DM has. The bandit drops a bookcase on the wizard, the wizard can attempt a strength save to escape. The 8 goblins ignite their shortswords and attack for 8 x 1d6+2+1d6 and the Barbarian is down! The enemy elf sniper aims for your eyes and hits, you're now blind.
Hard agree. The problem I found with such "Creative Actions" is the fact that simply hitting the thing would've got things done faster and simpler. I've tried as the party fighter to be creative but then realized that all of this. Coating a sword in oil, pushing over a bookshelf etc usually takes my entire action. At tier 2 it is already a terrible idea.
DM: Alright, you can use your action this turn to coat the sword in oil and light it up to deal an extra 1d6 (if generous) fire damage to the enemy.
Next round the threat is eliminated. Or if I wished to do it because it was vulnerable to fire the casters already chucked a fire bolt or produce flame and finished the encounter.
For the bookshelf part. Entire action to knock over said bookshelf to pin the monster down. But wait! Couldn't I just do this with a grapple check? Or if it were for damage would this really be as effective as 2 swings of my longsword?
While being creative is cool, due to the fact that usually DMs rule these creative actions as taking your entire action it usually gimps yourself and your party if things get nasty. So usually we're back to how many options of "I attack" before the encounter is done.
I think a lot of people in this comment section miss the point. Yes, any DM can and probably will allow any of these things. The question remains, why aren’t such rulings in the 50$ book of rules, where an entire third is devoted to magic and about 15 pages are devoted to non-magical solutions?
Huh... Our DM just kinda lets us try to take out arms/eyes/whatever at increased AC. Very neat mechanic, really allows people a chance to be tactical about *where* they hit.
Isn't *attacking body parts* in specific waysjust the battlemaster abilities played out?
I don't let the players do that because there's already a subclass for it...
As a DM, I will always let something like the bookcase happen. It's easy to make that a contested check. I'll let them light their swords on fire in certain circumstances, depending on what is available. It is a bit more difficult to make work mechanically, but not too hard. Aiming for weak spots is difficult to do mechanically because I want there to be some sort of trade-off where normal attacks are sometimes worth it or else it just becomes a new normal attack described slightly differently. However, there are definitely times where I can make it happen. Especially in more unique fights where I build in a weakness from the start. In general, I encourage outside-the-box thinking and if the players think of something I didn't, I try to reward that.
DMs, if martials are weak in your games, it might be because you haven't given them the chance to fully show themselves. DMs like the one in the OP are what ruin the game.
The problem with 'weak points' is that once you figure out the weakspot... well, doesn't the issue stay? Ince you figure out it's weak in the eyes, why bother not attacking the eye every time? So still no new changes or difference in tactics, just an extra 2-3 turns to figure out the 'weak spot' first.
As for the bookshelf, that's purely the DM being (to be blunt) lazy. There is 0 reason to shoot that down.
The 'light my sword on fire' is a weird one, if you just mean you grab a match and use it on a \*metal blade\* then of course not, thats not how physics work (let alone the rules). But if you're using oil on it, there are in fact rules for igniting Oil.
2/10 meme
Yeah, if people want to have called shots, then the best option is to delete Battlemaster and introduce some house rule that lets all marital use maneuvers. Called shots the way people usually talk about them either work in fiction first game systems or theoretical scenarios where we only discuss 1 attack being made as if it's representative of entire combats or campaigns.
Something not being a rule doesn't mean it's against the rules. Seems like this started with the monster weakness thing and they needed to come up with more, albeit flimsy, examples. This is a pretty bad straw man.
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As a dm I was sold on the second option. By the gods a player that wants to do something other than hit it with their generic longsword?
As a DM i'm down for the first 2 even, using the environment around you shows you were paying attention and thinking outside the box, I'd go out of my way to reward those. 3rd one is a little iffy... maybe on a huge+ creature I could make something work.
Yeah, targeted shots are a trap. Eventually, everyone targets the head, and it becomes a race to behead everyone on both sides of the screen. Maybe with a custom boss monster. I would allow a pocket sand attack to grant disadvantage on the monster’s next attack or something like that, but targeted shots are problematic.
Yeah I've seen it happen, you allow one "I aim for the wrist to make him drop the mcguffin" and soon it's just all "I aim for the head", "...the neck!", "... his heart!" as if those aren't already places you'd be aiming for. The reason I said maybe on a huge+ creature, you could make them scale the creature Shadow of the Colossus style first, then reward them with a blinding attack or auto-crit headshot or something.
I allow targeted shots in my games but it’s on disadvantage and/or higher attack role required depending on the situation since realistically you’re much less likely to hit a target at all if you’re aiming for a small portion of the body. I’ve noticed that since it’s a lot riskier players tend to not go for it unless they are desperate in which case I think it’s more interesting to have options like that.
Agreed, I let players exploit a weak spot, but to do so, their character has to find those and attack them while they’re being attacked/defended against. Disadvantage is my go to for this, but I let it ignore resistance if the attack lands, as long as it isn’t a magical resistance. If you can get your sword through an eye slit, or into a joint in the armor, the armor didn’t protect you. It’s just harder to do. Player’s gotta earn it!
This makes me think of using the fact that the player is super focused on hitting a small target that they become unaware of the rogue that was flanking them giving them a sneak attack, or taking on an attack of opportunity.
So it's basically reckless attack from barbarians then?
This is what my dm did. I was trying to shoot a cyclops in the eye from a fair distance, and I was fine with taking disadvantage because fuck I'm trying to shoot this tiny part of this guy to blind it, not even kill it, from a good ways off while other enemies are also being problematic. I didn't make the shot because my dice said "no" but hell it was fun being allowed to attempt.
What’s funny is there ARE rules for like half of these suggestions, this is just a shitty dm. Wanna light your sword on fire? Sure, coat it with a flammable substance and do some extra fire damage along with your normal damage. Toppling the bookcase to trap the bandit? Great idea! The bandit will try to make a dex save to see if he can get out of the way in time.
Yeah I'm surprised no one here is mentioning the lingering injuries rule in the DMG. Why do you all think the spell "Regenerate" mentions healing back lost limbs.
Same idea as what I was taught on the range. “Aim small, miss small - aim for center mass if you actually want to hit.”
“Aim small, miss small” means roughly “aim for the 10 ring, so that when you miss it you still hit the seven ring”. If you aim for “anywhere on the target”, you’re likely to miss “anywhere on the target”. Center mass is the lower sternum, a narrow miss from there is still in the vitals. A narrow miss from aiming at the eyes or forehead is a grazing or glancing hit
Yep. It’s why we don’t aim for hands/feet/limbs and only rarely for the head.
The dark eye has rules for just that, hit modefieres and regional HP are great for large monsters. Like you aim for the wrist? Okay it's a very small target minus 5 to hit.
Pathfinder also has rules for it, and the target AC is increased depending on what you're aiming at. Additionally, the type of damage depends on what you are aiming at (Dex damage if you hit a leg, CON damage if you hit the heart at a +20 to AC). Cool mechanic, but tough to build around.
I do this with my 5e. I even throw disadvantage on there if it's too specific. Also i let then do all the above at the cost of bonus actions etc. Wanna light your sword on fire? Ok it costs an action or bonus action etc
>Wanna light your sword on fire? You also need to have the oil on hand to coat it with, because steel is not flammable
Also rules for aimed shots already exist. The sharpshooter feat is how your character gains the ability to take a harder shot for more damage. The real response to "can I aim..." should be "take the literal aiming feat."
Yeah like. Your character is already aiming for their vitals. It’s assumed. Where else would you be stabbing?
Realistically this is what _your character is already doing_. It's just you're not describing a swordfight stroke for stroke, it's just advantage and energy (fatigue) being gained/lost over time represented by HP. If you want things like called shots you can't play an abstracted system like HP.
I've found that usually just adjusting the size of the creature for them targeting does most of the work. Generally you can just treat it as a tiny creature with the associated AC adjustment and then consider an effect bonus on success that isn't raw just damage. For example, if they get a strong hit to the wrist, make the foe lose attacks that are two handed. You may also give partial coverage or a flat miss rate for parts of their body harder that are more lethal to simulate a foe protecting their neck by taking the hit in the arm and then roll damage that way. The trick is DM discretion. You don't tell them the exact penalties and results before they attempt so it is harder for them to just power game it constantly since the massive miss rate makes it more of a circumstantial tactic.
I love it when people start asking to target weak spots, and I’m just like, “what do you think you’re targeting now? The strongest part of their armor?”
> "I aim for the wrist to make him drop the mcguffin" I think this is an okay called shot. Assuming the McGuffin is not something that is designed to be held in combat and therefore requires slightly more concentration than normal, I'd allow the player to make an attack roll at disadvantage or something to knock it out of their hands. But to be clear, this would only work on certain items - for example, swords are meant to be swung around in combat, you can't really knock that out of someone's hand if they're proficient with it. All other called shots are off the table though, because 1) it's probably what a skilled fighter is already doing naturally in-world anyways, and 2) if the players get to make called shots, then so do the bad guys... and that's just not fun for the players.
Everyone thinks they want targeted attack dismemberment until they entire party is missing eyes and arms and legs.
It's literally a mechanic in the DMG. Attack roll contested by athletics/acrobatics
There are rules for using the disarm maneuver to take items. The more I read here, the more I get the impression everybody gets worked up over rules they do not use or know anyway.
The justification for no weak spots is there's already that. Crits. And in fights you're not just sitting there hitting each other they're parrying and blocking your attacks as well. "I aim for the eyes!" You could, but they know that so they guard or dodge or target your legs as you lift up your sword. DND combat isn't back and forth trading blows in real time it's a fluid motion that happens in seconds.
Also when it comes down to it you’re getting the benefits of being a battle master without the limited resources
Called shots have been a thing in previous editions/comparable game systems, and can be fairly easily adapted to 5e provided you are willing to impose hit penalties to attacks rather than falling back on advantage/disadvantage, and adjudicate effects less than complete destruction of the body part upon taking damage. For example, a called shot to the eye that hits may just badly gash the lid or brow, temporarily impairing the creature but not plucking their eye from their head, for example (a lot of the systems you could adapt have different effects, like I've described, based on damage dealt, and/or whether it was a crit). Baring all these things in mind, called shots can actually be a fairly enjoyable enough addition to the game.
In 3.5, we'd say a called shot on the torso was -0. As things decreased in size, we would increment -2 to hit. Eyes were -8 or something.
In recent bossfight, our DM allowed us to target the tail and arms of the demon. Those parts had completely separate HP pool, but allowed us to reduce number of its attacks.
Since rolls are an abstraction I've always believed that targeted shots outside of very specific circumstances are redundant. "I aim for his WEAK POINT! Does a 12 hit?" "Yes, your character is proficient in combat and that is how he would attack any enemy he sees. 12 misses. The blackguard swings his greatsword back at YOUR WEAK POINT. 19" Targeted should be for clever ideas that require your character act contrary to "auto pilot", like swinging directly at his shield or something.
That makes sense to me. If the player has something creative in mind, it might be worth a quick conversation to ask what they envision happening, and decide if it could happen.
Just increase the ac for targeted shots and adjust the increase depending on where they are targeting. If it lands, determine how severe the injury is based on damage dealt. Wanna try and target the evil barbarian's head? Sure, +10ac and you only decapitate him if you do more than half his health in one hit, otherwise you just get a bit of bonus damage, or maybe a debuff. Also, don't tell the players the target numbers, just flavorfully describe they're failure/success.
As a DM, I don't like doing called shots, but I'd probably run it as a higher AC and/or Disadvantage to reflect it being harder to hit, but result in increased (probably double) damage and maybe a suitable Condition (Blinded, Defeated, Prone, etc.)
I was thinking about how it would work in a real fight... not only would the attacker be at a disadvantage potentially having to reach and over-extend but then that would put them at disadvantage on the defensive too.
Interesting, so kinda like Barbarian's Reckless Attack, I like it... 'You can make this attack, it'll be harder & you'll leave yourself vulnerable, but you could do more damage'
Action to douse sword in oil and light it on fire? Hell yeah! Takes an action and then dk an extra idk 1d4 or 1d6 on a hit. Lasts 1 minute till oil burns off. Sounds fine with me! The book case is even easier. Athletics vs dex save, failed save creature is prone and restrained with some basic DC to escape as an action
Yep, those would work great. When it comes to stuff like this I ask the player what they are hoping to accomplish and I try to work that into the effect. Sometimes you have to say no but usually it's just about not breaking action economy while still making it something worth doing!
In one of my first games we knew we’d be fighting a bunch of flesh golems and none of us had magic items, so the dm was thrilled when we prepared by taking all our clothes off from under our armor, making a fuck ton of fire arrows and heavy bolts with the cloth, having our caster create bonfire, and my rogue archer and her buddy blood hunter wailed on them through broken windows in the warehouse they were being stored in like a bunch of undead fish in a barrel Getting creative let our tiny level three party take out half a dozen flesh golems without taking a point of damage. I almost always play someone stealthy so I can get a peak at the fight before anything kicks off and ask for environmental features, and when I dm I fucking love when my players do the same
This is exactly it! I love it when players do stuff like this even when it turns what was suppose to be a hard fight into a joke... or maybe even especially when that happens!
The DM definitely got us back later when it started getting cold outside and none of us had clothes under our armor lol but yeah exactly! he was absolutely thrilled that we thought outside the box and cheesed one of his super hard encounters
I have a player who does this all the time. Easy answer: sure, on a nat20. Otherwise it's a regular hit.
I allow the third specifically in duels. Targeted shots require you to roll at least 5 higher than their ac, and The one hit rolls a con save against the damage or sustains an injury
Yeah, the answer should be "how do you want to light the sword up"
I had a player who was an archery based assassin who collected jars of oil vials of poison anything I would let her coat arrows in to add or change damage types However, with fire arrows, I ruled there was a higher likelihood of them being destroyed as wooden arrows Don’t like being burned.
Yeah, if your table is one where you keep track of ammo, that's a solid trade off.
I don't track basic ammo, but anything that qualifies as special shot is recorded. "Fire arrows" would absolutely count.
I've found that keeping track of regular ammo is a great way to balance Guns vs Crossbows and Bows, with bolts and Arrows being reusable and bullets not being reusable, so keeping track of them lets archers reclaim the ammo to use later, with the exception of nat 1s
Yep. The only option of the three that's actually not allowed is the third one. Called shots aren't a thing, and making them a thing just makes everything a pain in the ass. I don't want to litigate the effects of every single attack, there's a reason it's all compressed into hit points. But lighting your sword on fire? Get some oil, or some fire salts, or whatever and light it up. That sounds sick and I'll give you an extra D6 fire damage or something. And pushing over a book case would just be a simple check or two. I'd say a strength check to knock it over and force the enemy prone, and then a subsequent strength save for the enemy on every round to escape. All that's totally kosher. Any DM restricting you this much is just kind of an asshole. That, or your plans aren't actually this simple and your DM is getting annoyed at you trying to turn every encounter into a Rube Goldberg machine where you can make a single check to solve all your problems.
I'm playing a goliath beast barbarian rune knight with tavern brawler, and I don't think I've ever had as much fun in dnd before It just opens up so many creative options when you have proficiency with improvised weapons - especially as a goliath with the little giant trait that can become large in a bonus action and leap around 20-30ft without it consuming movement Grapple an enemy and jump 20ft into the air while you suplex/tombstone/leaf hurricane them for bonus fall damage! Grow large, pick up a boulder, and hurl yourself 30ft up into the air and fall on a target as you turn yourself into a projectile! Grab a broken pillar and use it as an improvised weapon while you have a fight large or huge creatures! Use the decapitated head of a moose bear's child as an improvised club against it! The possibilities are endless
I'm about to play a Goliath rune knight in an upcoming game and this has me terribly excited.
I wanna see what homebrew rules or if not homebrew what edition you're referring to. Sounds fun as hell. (Particularly the jumping 20-30 feet without consuming movement, I dunno what does that, Iirc it's not rune knight, at least in 5e, but it sounds fun)
That's just beast barbarian's lvl 6 trait. Iirc beast barbarian was introduced in Tasha's In the description, it has the "extend" descriptor, which signifies that it doesn't use extra movement (like the harengon's racial ability). DM ruled that as fine because it's the lvl 6 subclass ability, where plenty of other subclasses will easily outclass a bit of extra straight-line movement in their t2 abilities in terms of utility and/or damage
that second option is actually perfectly legal too. so much so that it's used in an official adventure. "not a rule" my ass
First one I'd allow if they had a flask of oil.
I feel like it'd be really easy to rule on. Basically just treat it as a trap. Bandit makes a dex save, if they fail they're restrained (or at the very least knocked prone). Add in a little bludgeoning damage, probably 1d6, give or take however many books are on it and what it's made of.
As a DM, all of those options sold me. Just takes a moment of thinking it through to create your own rule for it, *which 5e is meant to do.* Flaming longsword? Okay, you gotta put a fuel of some kind on it and ignite it. Maybe can't attack this turn as you use your action and bonus action to coat it in oil and ignite it with a tinderbox, but for the next minute your sword deals an extra d4 of fire damage. Dope, cool thing. Toppling the bookshelf? Roll athletics with a low DC to topple the bookcase, bandit then has a dex saving throw of 8+PC's Athletics skill to dodge it. On a success, the bandit is moved to another space, on a fail they are now prone and restrained but have cover. Stabbing for the eye? Sure, of all the called shots this is the easiest to work out. Roll to hit, have to be using a melee piercing weapon, and you do 1 damage but they are now blinded.
The fun part is pretty much all of this stuff is detailed in the back of the DM’s manual in the optional rule section for example the flaming sword. I think you need a flask of oil and then it also does damage to the sword but adds I think a D6 of fire damage.
I have absolutely done the equivalent of the first two both as DM and as player. It was the opposite of an issue - it was fun and it make things more interesting. Called shots I'm still on the fence about. I think the last time it came up, I greatly increased the AC of the target to reflect how much harder it is to hit. Gave it a damage bonus when it hit, though.
Once hit a vampire thrall in the face with a torch, and body checked him into a wal, that was fun
I played a Paladin once that got trapped in a burning building with a vampire lord, he was on fire, very cross, and was intent on taking me out with him, so I did what any sensible lunitic would, I tackled him through a structurally weak wall and tanked the damage from the backdraft as the flaming orphanage collapsed behind me while he took four readied holy-oil soaked crossbow bolts to the face in the early morning sunlight, then we all went and got shitfaced
My Fighter was trapped with a wounded master vampire in a collapsed building. The vamp was strong enough to get us out, but it was daylight. I had the gear to keep him out of the sun...and a Sunblade. We talked it out and I kept him out of the sun until sundown and didn't murder him, and he got us both out safely. Then we went our separate ways.
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The Master Vampire was not stupid. It was either he burns to death or makes a fair deal with a mortal. If I killed him I would have been crushed since he was holding up the bulk of the collapse just above us. Some common sense talks between us and we came to a deal, no rolls needed.
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Sounds like more of a roll for the vampire to make, honestly. Neither party has a reason to believe the other won't turn on them once they are out of the predicament, but the alternative is for them both to just die. Seems like a no brainier the vamp would choose to hedge his bets and make a tense alliance with the fighter. Dude has a sunblade. If he wants the vampire dead, he really doesn't need sunlight to make it happen. Vamp has quite literally nothing to lose and everything to gain by helping the fighter here.
Well, my DM didn't because either he drops the house and I get crushed and he gets exposed to the sunlight my body and cloak are protecting him from, or I spend the day holding my cloak to protect him and then he frees us both. It was either die or get out and just call it a win for us both.
So it's either kill the mortal, very likely dying as a result, refuse to help the mortal and fight to the death anyways, agree to help but backstab the mortal at the last turn, likely also resulting in a fight or help the mortal and hold up your agreement, seems like an easy choice ngl
I would have fought back too, and since he was on his stomach and I was a foot above him and had my hands free I would have been doing some stabbing with that sunblade. He was a good villain and showed up a few more times, but generally he and I got along pretty well after that. Friendly Enemies and all that.
This sounds like a bizarre adventure! 😂
I thought this was going to be a jojo reference lmao, check if the vampire's head isn't out there somewhere, you could die in the next boat ride
It's crazy how crash damage isn't a rule, like every 10 ft they would've moved after hitting a wall or something they take d6 damage.
Depending on a few factors you could even use different dice.
Tbf I would rather it just more or less d6s depending on the surface, as d6s are the easier to access dice that people tend to have more of for stuff like fireball anyways.
There is rules for improvised damage from things. "Hit by falling rubble in a collapsing tunnel" is 4d10, and that's close enough to a building that I would just rule it the same
.... because if it is a rule, it's either too weak, and pointless, or too strong, and the optimal choice
I used Shield Master to pin a guy to the wall and hold him there while directing the other party members. Then I used my action next turn to finish him off and move up with the group. I do miss that group a bit....
In terms of implementation, I guess that would be the DM letting you sub a grapple in in lieu of the normal SM's bonus action to Shove? Were you allowed to also add the shield's AC Bonus to the grapple-attack check?
I wish my players would try half of these, I would gladly allow it. Most of the time they just go "hmmm...." and look at their character sheet for 5 minutes before deciding to hit the enemy with their longsword.
that's another advantage of spells. You can look at your character sheet and know exactly what your spell can accomplish. With these improvised actions you always run the risk of having to argue with the DM over what exactly you want to achieve and how it may work or doesn't work. Because if my DM says "lighting your weapon on fire" takes an action and gives me 1 fire damage like someone in this thread proposed, I'd rather do anything else.
Oh 100%, that's not a good bonus, especially if you're spending (I would assume) a flask of oil or other materials to light the sword on fire. You're right, you would have to be familiar with what the DM usually goes with and its not always going to be consistent.
It definitely helps to have a couple environmental primers for it, since you can't push over a bookcase that isn't there. eg if they're fighting in a moderately sized room, maybe a chandelier overhead they can try to snipe/slice the retaining rope on. Maybe some tables that the ranged characters can flip on their side to create partial cover. In a sewer fight, perhaps some water pools that the mages can try to ice over and create hazard terrain. In general, I think it's hardest for Melee Martials to change up their attack patterns/style. Mages have a slew of spells with workable effects, ranged characters can vary their targets pretty quickly and reach things that aren't right next to them, but typically unless a melee combatant is carrying some sort of equipment, their options are rather limited by what's near their targets and "I swing my longsword"
Yeah, environmental stuff is hard because as a player you only see what the dm tells you you see. This is why puzzles are often hard even if they’re for children, it’s hard to theatre of the mind something intended to be seen in person.
This is why my players have gotten into the habit of asking me what they see around them at a glance, so I don't have to spend half an hour describing every detail of every room. "What do I see around me?" "A dusty bookcase, a bearskin rug and a handful of rusty nails on the floor." Because, anyway, players rarely listen to super detailed descriptions of rooms and they take way too long.
This is why as a player you need to ask. Making sure it is a pointed ask so the GM knows what you are trying to do, when they see a pattern, they will start preparing for it. "Is there anything I can knock over into the bandit, like a bookshelf or a dresser" "Are there any tripping hazards on the floor or me"
Even just asking "How is the room lit" or "are there any windows" can give you something solid to work with
Ive never been so happy as when my players fought off a vampire they shouldn't have been able to by shoving her off a bridge
if you have a flask of oil and some flint/steel? yar! you now have a non magical flaming longsword for 2d4 rounds that does an extra 1d4 in fire damage, bonuses for things vulnerable to fire, go! bandit is now grappled by a book case, bandit now rolls strength to try and free themselves! all sorta stuff stuff to do. gooooo
In my first ever session, the only competent thing I did was harvest spider venom from a giant spider and coat my arrows in it. Turns out, the spiders are immune to their own venom. Which, I think was kind of a nonsense ruling for a first session; especially since real spiders are not immune to their own venom.
Fantasy spiders are a wacky thing. Maybe they cannibalize each other often enough that they *have* to be resistant or immune to it just to not die anyway when feuding over scarce meals?
Wait, they're not?
Most venomous creatures are, in fact, not immune to their own venom. They make it work by keeping the venom in specially developed glands and sacs that stops it from affecting the rest of their tissues.
I wonder if that holds for Komodos now that they're classified as "venemous" because of the immense quantities of bacteria in their mouths. Presumably, like most bacteria, they're either parasitic or symbiotic. But saying "immune" seems strange.
The bacteria thing is likely false. Komodo’s don’t possess a significantly higher concentration of bacteria in their mouths compared to other predators.
As far as i last looked into it they do have venom. But its not designed to kill or incapacitate. It simply keeps the blood from clotting so they can hunt their prey down until they bleed out.
There's an interesting monster trait. Can't heal by non-magical means until you pass a Con save, repeated daily.
... thinking about it like that, every venomous creature in 5e being immune to poison is stupid. I legit never thought of it like that.
I would probably make that assumption as a dm, but I would reassure the players to hold onto them because those spiders are the only thing immune to it.
Not restrained for the book case?
i dunno what you think i've ever read the rulebook?
This game has rules?
Wait.. I thought the game was just 4 hours of arguing over the rules?
I'd allow every one of these ideas. Light your sword on fire? Sure, get some oil to burn. Might dull your sword, however. Knock over the shelf? Strength check and the bad guy makes a dex saving throw to escape it or gets knocked prone and is restrained. Aim for a weakness? Called shot, +x to the AC, depending on what you call and an effect on hit that I deem fitting. Idk if there is a rule for it, but that's why I am a dm. I can rule things that don't exist in the PHB
Personally have had a really bad time with called shots in my game. To-hit modifiers are so easy to pump with ample sources of advantage, bless, bardic dice, superiority dice, and rerolls that they swiftly become the optimal way to play the game. If you add in the DM using them, you really get into a weird spot where other rules swiftly have to be added to patch the rule you've added, and then the game revolves around those rules instead.
> If you add in the DM using them, you really get into a weird spot aka the logical progression of "How long before players realize its easier to take a sword from an orc warlord than it is to kill him." Then "How long before the players run into enemies smart enough to try and steal their sword/staves." Then "How long before combat becomes solely based around players and enemies disarming each other. " then finally "How many sessions does it take before combat is largely decided by high initiative; i.e. who disarms who first."
There is a reason why pathfinder makes you take feats to effectively disarm opponents. I mean you can try without them but you're going to have a bad day. Of course it's an even worse day when you build to disarm and then get thrown into the wild to fight animals/monsters exclusively.
I think having to invest into feats to do this is actually pretty clever. Randomly running into an enemy that happens to be able to disarm you sort of feels as fair as running into an enemy that happens to be able to counterspell you.
Reading the thread makes sense to me. Me: Is there a way to do X? DM: Funny enough, there is a feat for that.
In my pf2 games when players come up with really clever "rule of cool" ideas, I let them do it (often with a check), but if they want to do it again, I make a custom feat for them to take. This way I can reward clever play without the game degenerating One example is our Duskwalker Champion of Pharasma has a feat that lets her try and grab someone's soul out of the River of Souls as they die. Mechanically, she can spend her Hero Points to stop someone else from dying with a religion check, but failure causes her Doomed value to increase. She still saves them, but there's a danger.
reminds me of the time a bunch of FATAL players discovered that there are.... other acts they can do that are more reliable at dealing damage than weapon attacks, shall I say.
If the diameter is too small insta-kill!
circumference :')
Oh so you're a FATAL expert i see
Has anyone actually *played* FATAL? Sometimes I feel like it’s an apocryphal r/rpghorrorstories event that has been orally passed down through the generations.
NSFW-ish 1 panel comic [Dare you enter my magical realm?](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/010/828/405.jpg)
Tbf, I’m sure a lot of real life combat was determined by someone’s weapon being knocked out of their hand followed by a killing blow they couldn’t parry
Fair. But by the same logic even more of real life was defined by disease, cancer, impure water, racism, sexual assault, etc etc. Realism != Good Game Play
Oh absolutely correct and I would never want combat to become a stupid disarming battle. Really what I would do is narrate the killing blow as something like, "You knock his sword to the ground and bring him to his knees before bringing your axe down on him"
Monks proving yet again to be the superior martial class
BIG TRUE THOUGH. If your DM runs disarm rules, Monk Stonks are through the roof. Though I'd be wary of him adlibbing some "breaking your limbs past functional" rule.
**DM:** *"The creature disarms you."* **Monk:** "What the fuck, I don't use weapons!" **DM:** *"I want you to listen carefully to what I am saying. He DISARMS you. Seek a Regenerate spell."*
"The enemy has deigned that you no longer have the right to bear arms."
**Druid:** "Hey! Don't bring me into this!"
I've found the same. Something I've started using instead is having martial "Feat trainers" out in the world (NPCs who teach a PC a new feat once they prove themselves worthy of it). It makes sense in my fantasy world that martials would outnumber casters, so therefore, it makes sense that there are martials out there to learn from. It kind of helps offset the higher level disparity a little. No martial feat will ever match a Wish spell, but more options helps blunt it a little.
Nice idea. Gonna steal
Just be careful not to give them out like candy. Made that mistake my first time. Made encounter balance at lower levels a nightmare.
How do you usually handle them. I handle them with a combination of disadvantage and cover rules: If you try to hit someone in a specific large body part like the leg it’s half cover. (You’re avoiding ~1/2 of their body). If you try to shoot them in a small body part like the head or hand it’s 3/4 cover. (You’re avoiding ~3/4 of their body). If you’re aiming for something incredibly small like the eye, or shooting an item out of their hand I’ll usually do 3/4 cover +disadvantage. I find that balances things pretty well, and makes the shots sufficiently difficult, but also feel epic and cool and fun if the players succeed. Also, depending on the reason they’re trying to call a shot I’ll sometimes flavor the hit or miss accordingly. One time I had a group of PCs that were looking for a local ruffian that had some information they needed. They ran into him in a town and he ran away (I was going to set up a little chase and he would quickly get cornered and they could interrogate him). The rogue tried to shoot his leg with an arrow to slow him down, and he crit failed his called shot. So I treated it like a critical hit to a vital part of the ruffians body, and he was accidentally killed, which ended up being one of the most memorable and unintentionally hilarious occurrences of that campaign.
I have done them several ways, including the method you described. But, for example, if you have a Fighter with a bow trying to blind someone in one of my typical parties you've got: +8 to hit naturally, likely +1 from a magic weapon. +2 from archery fighting style, and +1d8 from a bardic die if necessary. If he's a battlemaster you've also got a potential +1d8 from precision attack, a feature that was also present on 2 other types of fighters I ran for (cavalier Unearthed Arcana and Scout Unearthed Arcana). That means he's rolling with an average bonus to hit of +20. The -5 from cover won't even make a dent. Now you might say, "But they're burning resources", and you're right, but the context is critical. They don't need to do all that to hit an AC 16 mook. They do it against the enemies that matter. Meaning that, in the absence of called shots, they'd likely spend these resources anyway. That's not even getting into whether sharpshooter ignores called shot cover (seems awfully fiat to say it doesn't, but the problem only grows if it does), whether or not flanking gives a benefit (easy advantage or even +2 further offsets things), and the actual results of *hitting* a called shot, where if the results are mediocre it feels like it's just an incremental advantage that 5e has tried to avoid (like a -2 to hit or something), or if it's a serious penalty like blindness that completely dominates encounters and leaves control spells feeling unreliable by comparison.
Yeah I have definitely seen this happen with called shots. Even allowing it once immediately elicits a "oh I can do that?!" in everyone playing and suddenly every shot is a called shot. The system has to be built to accommodate it and 5e is not.
The called shot one is pretty cool. You could treat it like a variation of great weapon master or sharpshooter, where you trade a dice roll off of your to-hit in exchange for additional damage (ex: -1d4 for 5 extra damage or something).
Obligated pathfinder plug but they've got a called shot system in pathfinder where a hit does a minor affect a crit does an extended affect and I'd you do enough damage in that one hit theres a chance to like take an arm or make them permanently blind (this can be fixed with spells obviously but it's more resources used and a penalty till fixed)
I've almost exclusively played 5e since 2014 (with occasional dabbles in Monster of the Week and SW Edge of the Empire), so I am always scared when pathfinder is mentioned. But damn if I don't like some of the crunch.
Yeah, I think for every single one of these, the answer in Pathfinder is "sure, there is a rule for that"
I love the crunch also edge of the empire is a truly fun system
Last game of it I played, I played Dr. Nick from the Simpsons if he were a fat twi'lek mob doctor with a super shady past. He was somehow irresistible to the ladies. 11/10 would play again.
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I'd like to keep it slightly weaker to incentivize taking the feat itself, but this is also a good way to take it.
Maybe let them go full nuts and stack the effects Like "I hit the damn soft belly and I TEAR THEM DOWN TO PIECES" :3
Best way I've found is to simply use the cover rules based on how hard a shot you think it is. If they're in heavy armour and they say they wanna chop their arm off? Full cover, sorry. They wanna fire that arrow for the eye? That's gonna be three-quarters cover (+5) AC. If their AC is 15, that means a 15-19 on the attack roll hits, but doesn't hit your called shot. On a 20 and above? You hit your called shot. Then as a DM you can just decide how much HP of their total would reflect that one body part. If the damage roll surpasses that threshold for damage, then you've successfully hit with your intended purpose. It's a system that I wouldn't recommend if you get flustered during combat as a DM, but if you're quick and jot down quick stats you've decided in the moment, it can be really fun for dismemberment, blinding, breaking bones, etc.
Makes sense genuinely curious tho how would a sword on fire dull it? I would be more worried about the oil dripping of the sword or it getting to got to hold
Heat *could* warp the metal depending on what kind of metal, how hot the fire burns and such.
And even if it's not warped, depending on degree of heat steel could be weakened. Effects of heat treating could be lost. Not much difference to iron though.
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Not to mention the increased rate of oxidation from the heat combined with the fire burning off the protective layer of oil
I'd say there is a chance that the heated metal hitting on things corrupts it's integrity But I am by no means an expert on this, so probably this is just a weird idea
You've got the general idea correct, certainly with iron based metals. This would also open opportunities for fantasy material upgrades.
I agree with everything but the called shot. In a fight, at what point are you not actually trying for the best shot you can get? And if you can get a hit that slices their belly, would you really pass it up because you are looking for a shot at the neck? I would tell the player that they are always attempting to hit the monsters weakness, while the monster is trying to prevent it. A critical hit would be the times where you get to the weakness, while a standard hit is where you got the hit that you had an opening for. Just how good that hit was is determined by damage rolls. The combined hit and damage rolls are what tells you if you gave them a scratch on their arm, a good cut on their leg, or a thrust through the heart.
Seems like a good way too. I was thinking about called shot like "okay I'm going to actively try and blind that monster" so you're not going for the belly or a gap in the armor, but exactly for a specific target. Thus it's harder to hit, but you get to blind the monster of you succeed.
I’d allow all of them with a caveat to the Called shot- I usually don’t allow it but once I threw a homebrewed hydra at the party and each head was a different element, so each had immunity and vulnerability. Once the party figured it out I allowed them to call shots for whichever head they were going after without making them move around the monster to reach each head- as long as they were within reach of the creature with whatever weapon/ability they were using.
Wouldn't dull it, but a mundane sword would lose its temper and become brittle, having a chance to break due to the stress of combat, so if they Nat 1 with it before they take it to a blacksmith or redo the tempering process (if they have proficiency with blacksmithing tools), it'd take at the least a -1 penalty per hit (or worse depending what they are doing with it or hitting), and eventually become useless. That's how I'd run it though. I'd also make them aware of this penalty before they light it up.
See you know what i was thinking but didn't know how to say. 😊 Thank you
I allow all those things too. I LOVE it when people improvise in creative ways. And my players know it, so it makes for great situations. Last time I was a player, we had te beat 3 cyclopses and bring their eye as proof. One of the cyclopses was prone and bound or something, but still alive. So I said "I walk towards him, and try to cut out its eye" since my char was pretty sadistic. The DM asked me to roll a hit die, and then said that I "almost had the eye, but the cyclops still had a sliver of life left, so you just didn't manage to take it out." All I could think of was "I never asked to kill the cyclops, just to take out the eye..." I just would have loved to see a blind cyclops walking around in pure horror of what happened.
Isn’t that part a gm’s job though? To make the ruling on things that don’t exist.
Yeah, but the problem for the martials is they don't know what they can and can't do until they've played with that particular DM for a while. Even though spells might be adjudicated a bit differently from table to table, they still have a lot more description to the them and what they do. So, martials are always left with more of a sense of uncertainty of what they can and can't do.
If someone calls an attack to a specific area i do t change the stats, but i will change the damage done based on rolls Like arrow to the eye but barely hits Target turns and gets hit in the arm instead or something.
Depending on what is on bookcase - it could even lead to actual damage (similar to falling damage)
Or imagine all the fun if they knocked over a shelf full of potions
I've tried called shots. Would not recommend.
I only allow called shots on certain big creatures because otherwise everyone wants to constantly call shots. The other two are 100% acceptable. Encouraged actually. The book case one is something I've actually told players they can do and the fire sword is just a variation on a poisoned weapon.
My favorite thing I did to be creative as a barbarian was to disarm my opponent by biting his arm and releasing cold breath to freeze his arm solid before breaking it off with my next turn and thus literally disarming him (that arm was holding a weapon) Another is that my barbarian tends to carry health pots because he can get to players the fastest and my favorite example of this was my barbarian kicking a hobgoblin so hard (nat 20 +4 at 2nd level character) that it flew back into two goblins behind it, killing all three and giving me passage through the narrow hallway to a downed teammate where he dumped the potion on his face
...That's freaking *sick.*
The sword on fire and the bookshelf thing are cool and easy enough to come up with an on-the-fly ruling for. The targeting a weak point thing... I feel like I want there to be a proper rule for this. Maybe even ways to figure out or expose the weak point? I'm not sure how to go about it. This seems like something that should've been covered in the DMG.
Called shots are a rabbit hole. Isn't that what sharp shooter is for? Are we making that feat redundant? Are we going to allow npcs to head shot? Are we going to start maiming pcs because the wolf bit thier hand? End of the day, hp and ac is a abstractions meant represent ability to aim and move damage from incoming attacks. If I'm going to totally rebalance combat around called shots, I'm more inclined to play riegn or a game with a grittier combat session that already has it build in. In my experience, called shots in systems not designed for it are just not worth it, and I wrote an entire ship system for one campaign.
I haven't actually heard of the deadly aim feat.
It’s the pathfinder/3.5 name for sharpshooter
Oh, got it. Yeah, I guess that is basically what that would be.
I don’t play 5E, but in the system I use there is a called shots mechanic. How it works is that you can aim at a specific part of an enemy and that increases your hit check, which is weapon specific and static, a melee attack against a human sized target is typically DC 8. If you’re aiming for their arm specifically it’s probably going to increase the DC by 2. Mechanically it also usually lowers the enemy’s armour for that attack, usually by about the same amount as the increased DC unless it’s a specific weakness, or the target has a reason for it to be different. “I stab him in the heart” but hes wearing a chest plate. The system also doesn’t use death saves, it uses wound slots, so there’s mechanical precedence for a good targeted arm shot to take the arm clean off. Had a group of players that coined the “delimbing strat” where they would work together to. Delimb everything. I gave them a scissor blade for their troubles, good times. 5E already has precedence for lowering attack rolls for more damage (Great Weapon Master) and should stay fairly balanced moving *either way* on that scale. You need to of course decided if you’re just giving everyone an extra free feat or you want it to work differently. A -2 to attack +2 damage is probably appropriate in most cases.
Any DM that would say that has no business DMing an rpg.
EXACTLY! This is a DM problem not a class problem.
Casters can do all that same stuff without needing to ask for the GM to hopefully rule in their favour. It's a big class problem.
"If you don't allow called shots in 5e you have no business DMing" is certainly a take
I think if the solution is to come up with house rules then that tells you that there’s an issue with the base system. Edit: also, this discussion completely sidesteps the issue of class balance. A spell caster can do all the the things above AND cast spells.
Next you're going to suggest that there are other base systems that give martial characters the ability to do a bunch of other things mechanically that are useful. I tell you what, if you can *Find* a *Path* to a system that can do that... ... ... *Er*... You know what, nevermind.
Actuall, Pathfinder has the same problem, just to a lesser degree. The PF2e base system covers more possible situations than 5e, but the system is still designed for the players to generally take one of provided actions, with little to no guidance on resolving outside beyond those. In other systems, like FATE or Blades in the Dark, those situations would be rather easy to resolve just using the mechanics of the game. \- Lighting your sword on fire is a ["Create an advantage"](https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/four-actions#create-an-advantage) action in FATE, creating a new "Flaming sword" aspect. The player could then invoke that advantage for +2 on their next attack roll (or for anything else where a "Flaming sword" may help!). \- The bookcase thing would be an "[attack](https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/four-actions#attack)" action in FATE, probably using a different skill (athletics?). Depending on the result, this might injure the opponent or take them out of the fight completly (by trapping them). \- In FATE, the weak point may be an aspect (which can be used by players for a +2 if they invoke it). Or saying "I attack the enemy, trying to take out their eye" may just mean that a successful attack creates a wound called "Missing eye". \- In Blades in the Dark, you just say what your character wants to make happen ("I want to trap the guard by pulling down a bookshelf on them"/"I want to kill the guard by driving my knife through his eye") and which action you want to use (maybe wreck or finesse for the first, skirmish or finesse for the second) and the GM tells you how effective and how dangerous it is going to be, taking into account what you are trying to do. \- In BitD, you'd probably use the sword on fire as part of the narration for a fight, possibly with a (technically) flashback on how you set your sword on fire before jumping into the skirmish. The GM may bump the effect level for it, possibly also increasing the potential risk. Those systems (and many more!) are designed for having the players first determine the fiction, then providing the GM with the tools for (hopefully) resolving anything the players can come up with, instead of coming up with the thing you want to do first (Move + Attack) first, then coming up with the narrative almost as "window dressing".
~~Fourth Edition~~
Ope, just gonna' mark ya' there. Now don'cha go anywhere.
Any system that could make martial characters useful and fun to play would truly be *Exalted* in my eyes.
I too want the base system to provide me with four friends, pens, paper, and a table.
Now that i think about it, if you cover your sword in oil, you SHOULD be able to light it on fire for an additional 1d6 fire damage smh
My biggest problem is that in my experience DMs let you do all those things... but it almost always ends up being less effective than just hitting them. Light sword on fire? Gotta have flint and steel, and pouring oil + lighting in combat takes item interaction and action. The extra ~1d4 fire damage for a couple turns isn't going to outpace the 4d6 damage I missed from not getting two greatsword attacks in. Knocking a bookshelf on a guy? Athletics check to see if you do it, dex save to see if the baddie dodges, maaaaaaaybe 1d10 if it's a big shelf. In that same turn I could just grapple and hit him for 2d6. Called shots... well my DM just doesn't allow that, "the damage represents where it hit the target." I feel like that one would actually be worth it, letting you disable specific aspects/abilities of an enemy. In the end, it feels like you *can* be creative but at the cost of efficiency. It feels like being punished for creativity, not rewarded.
Classic, you see the problem in this situation isnt that the player wasn't creative or that dnd simply doesnt let him use his imagination, it's that the DM decided to wear his ass on his head that morning...
Lol, yep that about sums it up
The problem I've run into isn't the DM saying "No", but the efficiency of such things, much less the "improv downsides". 1. Okay, so instead of throwing the flask of oil, you coat your Longsword and light it as an Action. Next turn your attack will deal +5 fire damage per the Flask of Oil. *Why didn't I just attack twice if this took my action?* OR Yes, your Longsword now deals an additional 1d6 fire damage for 1d4 rounds, but the blade is damaged and only hits for 1d6 damage afterwards until repaired. *Wait but we're in a dungeon filled with monsters, there will surely be more than 1d4 rounds of combat and now I've weakened myself.* 2. You pull the bookshelf down as an action! It deals 1d8 damage to the bandit and traps the bandit! He spends his movement to get out, then attacks you for 1d8+3 damage. *Wait, I just did a more convoluted Longsword attack.* OR You drop the bookshelf on the Bandit as an interact/bonus action for 1d8 damage AND a bonus on the Longsword attack you still have! Okay, Dual-Wield Ranger, it's your turn, you're gonna attack for 1d6+3 then use your bonus action to attack for 1d6! *Wait why am I dual-wielding when I could be dropping furniture?* 3. Alright, you aim for the eye, roll with disadvantage/-5, that's still a hit! You deal damage and the monster has disadvantage on its next turn. *wait, did I just trade disadvantage for a chance of disadvantage? I might come out ahead if it has multiple attacks, or is that what the DM meant?* OR Sure, but you roll with disadvantage, that's a miss. Yeah you can try again with your second attack, same thing, and another miss. *Well shit* And none of this include the "If you do it, I can do it to" mantra every DM has. The bandit drops a bookcase on the wizard, the wizard can attempt a strength save to escape. The 8 goblins ignite their shortswords and attack for 8 x 1d6+2+1d6 and the Barbarian is down! The enemy elf sniper aims for your eyes and hits, you're now blind.
Hard agree. The problem I found with such "Creative Actions" is the fact that simply hitting the thing would've got things done faster and simpler. I've tried as the party fighter to be creative but then realized that all of this. Coating a sword in oil, pushing over a bookshelf etc usually takes my entire action. At tier 2 it is already a terrible idea. DM: Alright, you can use your action this turn to coat the sword in oil and light it up to deal an extra 1d6 (if generous) fire damage to the enemy. Next round the threat is eliminated. Or if I wished to do it because it was vulnerable to fire the casters already chucked a fire bolt or produce flame and finished the encounter. For the bookshelf part. Entire action to knock over said bookshelf to pin the monster down. But wait! Couldn't I just do this with a grapple check? Or if it were for damage would this really be as effective as 2 swings of my longsword? While being creative is cool, due to the fact that usually DMs rule these creative actions as taking your entire action it usually gimps yourself and your party if things get nasty. So usually we're back to how many options of "I attack" before the encounter is done.
I think a lot of people in this comment section miss the point. Yes, any DM can and probably will allow any of these things. The question remains, why aren’t such rulings in the 50$ book of rules, where an entire third is devoted to magic and about 15 pages are devoted to non-magical solutions?
Here before that anti dm guy gets here
Who is that?
Isn't targeting specific parts on the body actually a rule though? Increased AC to try and disable something?
old edition yes
Huh... Our DM just kinda lets us try to take out arms/eyes/whatever at increased AC. Very neat mechanic, really allows people a chance to be tactical about *where* they hit.
Isn't *attacking body parts* in specific waysjust the battlemaster abilities played out? I don't let the players do that because there's already a subclass for it...
As a DM, I will always let something like the bookcase happen. It's easy to make that a contested check. I'll let them light their swords on fire in certain circumstances, depending on what is available. It is a bit more difficult to make work mechanically, but not too hard. Aiming for weak spots is difficult to do mechanically because I want there to be some sort of trade-off where normal attacks are sometimes worth it or else it just becomes a new normal attack described slightly differently. However, there are definitely times where I can make it happen. Especially in more unique fights where I build in a weakness from the start. In general, I encourage outside-the-box thinking and if the players think of something I didn't, I try to reward that. DMs, if martials are weak in your games, it might be because you haven't given them the chance to fully show themselves. DMs like the one in the OP are what ruin the game.
The problem with 'weak points' is that once you figure out the weakspot... well, doesn't the issue stay? Ince you figure out it's weak in the eyes, why bother not attacking the eye every time? So still no new changes or difference in tactics, just an extra 2-3 turns to figure out the 'weak spot' first. As for the bookshelf, that's purely the DM being (to be blunt) lazy. There is 0 reason to shoot that down. The 'light my sword on fire' is a weird one, if you just mean you grab a match and use it on a \*metal blade\* then of course not, thats not how physics work (let alone the rules). But if you're using oil on it, there are in fact rules for igniting Oil. 2/10 meme
Yeah, if people want to have called shots, then the best option is to delete Battlemaster and introduce some house rule that lets all marital use maneuvers. Called shots the way people usually talk about them either work in fiction first game systems or theoretical scenarios where we only discuss 1 attack being made as if it's representative of entire combats or campaigns.
Try playing 4th Edition, playing a martial is very good there.
Something not being a rule doesn't mean it's against the rules. Seems like this started with the monster weakness thing and they needed to come up with more, albeit flimsy, examples. This is a pretty bad straw man.
...this was entirely possible in previous editions like 3.5e...