Evil DM: the bookcase is also a mimic.
Yeah, there's a ridiculous imbalance.
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.
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.
Look, you spring a door mimic on them just once...
"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero."
Ah, yes, the good old days when the level 1 wizard became useless after the first two rounds of the day.
Not really, it replaces the attack stat with the spellcasting stat, kind of like shillelagh but only for a single attack, and then stacks some radiant damage on it at higher levels (+1d6 from level 5 then cantrip leveling). It can also replace the damage type with radiant. Useful for any weapon-using caster class that doesn't get multiattack:
- Clerics would be a great target audience for this, except it's not on their spell list. *sigh* Magic Initiate (Druid) it is.
- It could be useful for non-hexblade warlocks too.
- It's a great damaging cantrip for bards who severely lack those.
- It's good for even a sorcerer or a wizard, it turns the light crossbow into a long-range radiant-damage cantrip.
- Arcane tricksters: could be useful depending on the build, probably pairs really well with a headband of intellect. (Edit: Or an extremely INT-focused Arcane Trickster with a 2-level wizard dip for the bladesong.)
- Eldritch knights: really useful at levels 1-4 if you're running into some monster that resists or is straight-up immune to nonmagical damage. Markedly decreases in usefulness once you get multiattack and/or a magic weapon.
- Probably good for artillerist artificers (they are not in the UA so it's unknown whether they'll get this cantrip), might be good for alchemists, OK for battlesmiths until they get multiattack, and redundant for armorers.
How I'd improve it further:
- Make its casting time 1 attack and limit it to once per turn in the fluff. That way it stays useful for eldritch knights, ~~bladesingers~~ (scratch that, bladesingers can cast this in place of an attack already), valor and swords bards, and the two multiattacking artificers (less so for the armorers, but even then, it gets them a good ranged attack in a guardian suit or a good melee attack in the infiltrator).
- Add it to the cleric spell list. They are the full casters most likely to go into melee even without the multiattack.
Yeah, he was a condescending sexist prick to the Kiyoshi warriors (initially), and while it did earn him some beatings, it didn't get him a restraining order and he even got with Suki in the end. That's high CHA alright.
Well, I don't think my players are here but I'll put it in spoiler tags anyway. Those playing in a world called Yphilios, don't expand this.
Frostfang's equipment
The dragon they will have to fight, Frostfang, is an adult white dragon. But he is not your typical "huge polar bear with wings" white dragon. Frostfang found a nice little golden ring on the head of a wizard he ate that fits his claw pretty well, and this ring (Headband of Intellect) made him a lot smarter and enabled him to learn the spells from the wizard's books (and other books that other dead wizards left behind).
In addition to the ring and the spells, he has been learning blacksmithing from an artificer he has kept captive for this purpose, and wears a breastplate made from the breastplates of all the paladins who tried to kill him. It is a Breastplate of Radiant Resistance. (There are three paladins in the party, sue me.)
He also has a Dagger of Warning. Partially because of the Warning property, and partially because this way he can cast Steel Wind Strike. Because I'm evil.
Maybe I'll also give him a piecemaker. Lair actions are one thing, but a six-foot metal bolt flying at you at mach 3 is another.
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.
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.
I have my own language mappings in my homebrew. Most of them only appear as names since most people speak Common, but I did include some people in my game who don't. (I make sure that they are some who speak a language that I speak too.) So the mappings are: