I have a 10-page summary of the rise and fall of the Third Civilization, starting from the Soul War ~500 000 years ago, then the Age of the Giant Kings, the Curse of Forgetting, the antique era, the Age of Conquest, the Dark Age, the Empire of the Diamond Vault, the Arcane Age and the Ascendancy Period, and finally the Collapse.
The game takes place in the Fourth Civilization, 10 000 years after the Collapse.
Shield master doesn’t work against fireballs, it only works against single-target spells.
As for tieflings… well, a wizard with the elemental adept feat can just ignore fire resistance (and ensures that the minimum damage on the fireball is bumped to 16). Or a Scribes wizard can just have Spirit Shroud in their spellbook, cast necroball, and be done with it. Or a sorcerer with transmuted spell can use another elemental type too, though for them it costs SPs.
It’s a game, not a simulator. I mean, how would I handle fireballs then? Would I roll for lung damage due to the targets breathing in hot air (enforcing realistic consequences), or would I just disallow the spell because magic is not realistic? Or if the enemy gets shot by an arrow, would I roll for organ damage?
And of course you have to account for the fun of all players. Would it be fun for the wrestler player to take out any humanoid in two turns? Probably. Possibly. Would it also be fun for the archer and the swordsman who still have to play by the normal game rules instead of the power fantasy of a “hurr durr wrestling is da ultimate martial art” player, and have to actually use their attacks to overcome the enemies’ AC and whittle down their HP? Doubtful. What’s the point of having them around if the wrestler can just choke everything because that’s the part of combat that the DM suddenly starts simulating realistically?
Either enemies can survive a dozen arrows, being roasted alive in their armor for a minute, being stabbed with a rapier a lot, etc… and they can last long enough versus a wrestler that just choking them doesn’t become the dominant strategy, or they can be choked out in a realistic timeframe but they can also be instakilled by an arrow or a sword.
If you only take one element of the game and turn it “realistically” OP while the rest remain fantasy, you’re liable to fuck up the whole game for everybody else. Now there could be a merit in playing “dark and gritty, all damage is super lethal” games but then that’s not really D&D anymore, something like Mörk Borg might be better for it.
The problem with this is combat balance. I wouldn’t want to give players an ability that can take out an archmage in 2 turns, no save, without any resources used.
I’m not a wrestler or a wrestling fan, so no clue for most of them. Bars and holds… well, I think the automatic damage to the grappled creature that is dealt with the unarmed fighting style is meant to symbolize damage dealt by various holds and bars, so that would apply here.
Airway chokes are extremely impractical in D&D; every creature can hold their breath for a number of minutes equal to their CON modifier with a minimum of 1, and that means 10 rounds. I wouldn’t bother trying to simulate that, just deal the 1d4 damage and move on.
Blood choke… well, that’s a different matter entirely. I would most definitely require the grappler feat and the unarmed fighting style for this. Say, you forgo the automatic damage to the grappled target and instead force the target to make a CON save, DC = 8 + your PB + your STR mod. If the target fails, it gains a level of temporary exhaustion (that lasts while you’re choking it), if it fails by more than 5 then it gains 2 levels, and if it hits 6 levels it falls unconscious.
I don’t think that’s in the rules. Like, at all. The unarmed fighting style allows you to deal damage to a creature grappled by you, the grappler feat allows you to pin a creature you grappled (which is just fucking useless since both of you become restrained), and you can make a shove attack to push a creature prone. But there’s nothing in the basic rules about an unarmed attack that deals damage and knocks the target prone.
The alternatives for flavoring are:
Battle Master fighter, trip attack. Technically it must be a weapon attack, but if you have the unarmed fighting style, a natural weapon, or are a monk multiclass, I’d be inclined to allow it.
Open Hand monk, Open Hand technique. This is probably the best alternative that is 100% RAW.
Of course a more permissive DM (like me) could allow you to make a fairly hard athletics check once you have grappled the orc and have two free hands, then resolve it as a 2d6+STR bludgeoning damage attack.
Using the Attack action, you can make a special melee attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
You only need the subclass (or the feat that gives you maneuvers) if you want to do it as part of your weapon attack.
Too much math for 5e’s design philosophy, and with bounded accuracy it would need a crit on the strongest enemies anyway.
The actual implementation of that system could take a number of forms:
PB/LR for every class that is proficient with the given weapon. (The most basic implementation, but also screws over pure martials in favor of half casters.)
PB/LR for every class that is proficient, but fighters regain PB/2 uses when they use Second Wind.
PB/LR for every class that is proficient, PB/SR for fighters, monks, and barbarians.
PB/LR for every class that is proficient, fighters regain all uses when rolling initiative.
For now it’s just a fourth wall break because none of the players questioned it.
If they do ask, the lore reason is:
“DM” stands for Dunnusaidu Marudu, an ancient philosopher and the inventor of hedonism in this universe. When he died, he decided that even though he has experienced all the possible sensations that his current body and the current time period can provide, he still hadn’t had enough. He had enough followers to become a minor god, and his spirit wanders the world, possessing random people for a short while to gain new experiences. He is not malicious which is why he created this talisman that appears on those possessed by him, he usually doesn’t speak much when he does this, and he never makes major life decisions in the given body.
Reminds me of how they incorporated weapon type-specific attacks in BG3. Stealing this one for sure.
Yep, that whole weapon maneuvers system should be backported into base 5e stat, with slight modifications (i.e. they would be PB/LR instead of 1/SR, since short rests in the tabletop version are less regulated).
(Or alternatively they could auto-proc on a crit.)
If one of my players can’t make it and it’s not possible to remove their character from the group storywise (meaning I’ll have to control their character in combat), the character will immediately equip the “Talisman of Protection from DM Stupidity”. What it does is:
When a character holding this item dies, they fall unconscious instead and disappear into a demiplane. While in this demiplane, the character is stable at 0 hit points. When the party takes a long rest, the character will reappear near a random other player character as if they had also taken a long rest.
If the player retakes control of the character while they are still in the demiplane, the character reappears next to another player character of their choice with 1 hit point.
If all other player characters die, the character in the demiplane will die too. If the method of their original death would have left a corpse, the corpse will reappear adjacent to a random player character’s body. Otherwise, they will disappear alongside the demiplane.
Basically, it makes them immortal unless a TPK happens.
It could be tied to per-rest. Similar to the fighters’ weapon mastery in OneDnD, switching stances could be tied to a long or short rest instead. Just call it something else, like katas. (Yeah, yeah, they are trying to move the monk away from the strictly Eastern roots, but they could give this as a flavor option.) You drill one of the katas in the morning and then you can use the basic ability associated with it for free: