Clone. Doesn’t work post-mortem, but if they can last for ~120 days… and if they can’t, there’s always Imprisonment or True Polymorph to keep them alive until the clone body matures.
Plan 1: Raulothim’s Psychic Lance. By the time I get to take that spell, I must have had at least one ASI so I’ll just take metamagic adept for subtle spell. I just have to know the name of the target and be within 120 feet of them (240 if the second metamagic option I take is distant spell), and it’s pretty close to a guaranteed kill vs. a commoner, no murder weapon, and nothing showing that I was there.
Plan 2: Clone. Claim that it’s some revolutionary stem cell rejuvenation therapy and sell it to the super-rich. (Though I might make it fail accidentally if it’s someone like Murdoch or Kissinger. Payment in advance, no guarantees, and I’ll do it on international waters.)
This was my motivation behind allowing more players in the first place. My previous group basically fell apart because I had 3 players and when one of them canceled last minute - which was basically all sessions - there weren’t enough players for a session. When one of those players dropped out permanently, I went online to look for more players, and I figured: “Hey, if I have 6 players with the same flake ratio then I’ll have a 4-person party most of the time. Let’s do this!”
But then the fuckers started showing up consistently for every session!
And even though I’m a noob (well, not so much since I’ve been DMing for a year now, 7 months of this for this large weekly group… but I still have no idea what I’m doing) I still have to make some new applicants take a number. Which just underlines how much of a DM/player imbalance there is.
(I’m planning to split the group based on player experience level into two biweekly campaigns of 5 players, that way I might be able to allow a couple of newer players to join and still preserve what was left of my sanity.)
Just put your foot down and refuse to add more than 5 players until you’re experienced enough. (sigh I wish I had followed my own advice.) Sure, CR started with 7 regular players and sometimes they have even bigger parties with guest players… but that’s Matt Mercer, he knows what he’s doing, and the players are also good enough to avoid making it a nightmare for him and each other. You as a noob DM will have your hands full with herding 4-5 overly excitable cats and managing the rest of the game.
And then you start DMing, even as a beginner who has no idea what he’s doing you get 6-8 players at the table, that party size is unsupported by the balancing tools given by WotC so you wrack your brain trying to come up with challenging encounters for the whole group, burn out, stop DMing, and the imbalance worsens even further.
That final element has this amazing interplay where you feel that you’re burning your humanity (or species neutral equivalent term) as you use magic, and your innate or monsterous side comes through, it was a really cool design and I’d love to see it taken even further with a subclass that also incorporated hitpoints into the flow somehow, meaning that you are a tank before you cast your spells, but literally burn out your life force as you do so, revealing the monster underneath. It could be really cool for a vampire or something else that has an interesting interplay with harm, healing and magic.
The Order of the Lycan blood hunter has a similar mechanic. Every blood hunter has abilities with a HP cost, but the lycan might also go berserk if they start the turn with less than half HP.
Casters also get proficiency up, that depends on total character level.
And higher spell slot levels still increase the character’s damage output and specific utility. Some spells - such as Cure Wounds or Hold Person - are pretty much designed to be upcast, and some others (e.g. Heat Metal) are unexpectedly great. Someone with Bard 3 / Sorcerer 4 might only have second level spells, but a level 4 Heat Metal vs. a heavily-armored target deals 4d8 per turn without a saving throw for up to 10 turns.
TBF the only class that gets more than one extra attack is the fighter.
Now of course it would make sense to sum up the levels you have in classes that get multiattack, and if you have >=5, you get an extra attack. But since attack progression is far less regular than spell slot progression, getting something approaching regularity beyond that would be difficult.
Now if OneD&D wanted to boost martials and introduce some sort of a multiattack scaling across multiclassing, here is how that could work:
Introduce features called Special Attack and Signature Attack. (Simply because just stacking extra attacks in a way that gives a bunch of half-casters extra attack at level 5-6 would give full martials a ridiculous number of attacks per turn at higher levels.) Special Attack is an attack that deals double weapon damage (which stacks with crits), but other extra damage sources like smites don’t get doubled. Signature Attack is a Special Attack that can also force a save, either a STR save vs. being disarmed, a DEX save vs. being knocked prone, or a CON save vs. being dazed. You pick which one when you get the feature, and you can change it on level up.
Introduce an attack progression table which details how many regular and special attacks you get per warrior level. (IDK if Lemmy’s MD syntax allows tables in lists, so see the table below.)
Like for spell slots, some classes (fighter, barbarian, monk) count as whole classes, others (paladin, ranger, artificer) count as half, and some caster subclasses (bladesinger, swords bard, hexblade, etc…) count as third.
The table:
Warrior Level
Normal attack
Special attack
Signature Attack
0
1
-
-
3
2
-
-
6
1
1
-
9
2
1
-
12
1
1
1
15
2
1
1
18
1
2
1
So:
A level 12 single class fighter gets 1 normal, 1 special, and 1 signature attacks.
So does a fighter 6 / barbarian 6.
A level 12 paladin counts as a level 6 warrior so they get a normal and a special attack. (Also, in OneD&D the divine smite is a bonus action spell like every other smite, so the level 18 paladin can’t go too nuclear with 3 smites per turn.)
A fighter 6 / paladin 6 counts as a level 9 warrior, 2 normal attacks and 1 special attack.
Of course this could be refined a bit further, e.g., instead of a generic “special attack” they could pick power attack (must be a strength-based attack), precise strike (must be a dexterity-based melee attack), or pinpoint shot (must be a dexterity-based ranged attack) and they could swap this one on level-ups too. But I think this should be a start.
That’s only for the blaster-caster subclasses though. The subclasses that are more likely going to go into melee (mostly the ones who get heavy armor proficiency: Forge, Life, Tempest, Twilight, War, and many other subclasses) get Divine Strike instead. So a cleric build that takes 8 levels of the subclasses that get Potent Spellcasting would be unlikely to use True Strike by then, they’d likely hang back and spam Toll the Dead or Sacred Flame (or a ranged spell).
(Even with a heavy crossbow (that most blaster clerics aren’t proficient with, but they can gain proficiency from racial features or multiclassing), at level 8: True Strike + 20 WIS + Potent Spellcasting = 1d10 + 1d6 + 5 + 5 = 19 average damage with +8 to hit; Toll the Dead + 20 WIS + Potent Spellcasting = 2d8/2d12 + 5 = 14/18 average damage with a save DC of 16. Not very much more powerful. And then you get to level 11 where TTD with Potent Spellcasting jumps to 3d8/3d12 + 5 = 18.5 / 24.5 average while True Strike with the heavy crossbow is 1d10 + 2d6 + 10 = 22.5. The cleric will more than likely spend the first turn setting up a buff/debuff/control spell, so the d12 damage dice will apply most of the time.)