I've been pondering the idea of adding a stagger mechanic to monsters in my Elden Ring-inspired campaign setting, but I wanted to run it by the good folks here to see if it could work.

My current idea for the system is that I keep track of all the damage an enemy takes in one round. The enemy gains a number of Stagger Points (abbrv. as SP) at the start of their turn equal to the damage taken divided by 10, rounded down (ex. 13 total damage turns into 1 SP). If the amount of SP equals the creature's CR + its CON modifier (minimum of 1) at the start of its turn, it becomes staggered (stunned) until the start of its next turn. I based it off of CR so that more challenging monsters are harder to stagger, because low-CR creatures might be outright killed before they can get staggered.

If a creature is stunned from being staggered, an attacking creature can choose to make one attack that hits them an automatic critical hit, similar to weak-point strikes in many soulslike games. However, doing this ends the stunned condition early, so it's better used just before the enemy gets back up.

A creature that has SP built up, but not enough to stagger it, loses SP at the end of its turns equal to its CON modifier (minimum of 1). Stagger doesn't apply to PCs, and there are some features certain monsters may have that make them harder to stagger (ex. a Serpent Knight, a CR 3 creature, is treated as CR 5 when calculating its stagger threshold.)

This is a very experimental idea, and I haven't tested it in an actual game yet, so I don't know if this is too powerful or not. Are there any changes I should make?

Sounds a little complicated just reading it out, but once you've used it a few times I don't think it would add much more burden than tracking HP. I'm impressed with the elegance of the design. That said, this does sound very powerful, and you'd have to increase the threat of the monsters substantially in other ways to compensate.

I think as you test this, it's going to be hard to balance around just how devastating it is to lose a full turn in 5e. It's also important to consider that D&D's action economy is digital (you have discrete turns that occur linearly one at a time) while action RPGs are analog (lots of things happen at the same time). Because of this difference, stagger will tend to be stronger in D&D than it is in Elden Ring. Part of skill development in Elden Ring is learning how long the openings are in boss fights, and how best to use that time. In D&D, that calculation is easy; the stagger lasts exactly one round, and your players will get exactly X number of actions in that time. They'll even know who goes last before the end of the round, making the "choose to critically strike but end the stagger" mechanic a non-choice; there will always be a mathematically correct time to use that auto-crit.

Basically I think this is a cool idea with the bones of a good implementation, but it may suffer in translation from one medium to another. Maybe consider making stagger cause something other than a hard stun if it proves too powerful in testing. Keep us posted though, I'd love to see how this develops.

My first question is what problem are you trying to solve? Are your encounters that difficult that you need to give the PCs a boost? Or do they have problems focusing fire, so you’re trying to encourage that? Also, seems like if you ever run a solo monster, they’ll just be screwed, as focused fire in that case is inevitable.

My second is, why wouldn’t this apply to PCs as well?

Quote from Mdhe >>

Sounds a little complicated just reading it out, but once you've used it a few times I don't think it would add much more burden than tracking HP. I'm impressed with the elegance of the design. That said, this does sound very powerful, and you'd have to increase the threat of the monsters substantially in other ways to compensate.

I think as you test this, it's going to be hard to balance around just how devastating it is to lose a full turn in 5e. It's also important to consider that D&D's action economy is digital (you have discrete turns that occur linearly one at a time) while action RPGs are analog (lots of things happen at the same time). Because of this difference, stagger will tend to be stronger in D&D than it is in Elden Ring. Part of skill development in Elden Ring is learning how long the openings are in boss fights, and how best to use that time. In D&D, that calculation is easy; the stagger lasts exactly one round, and your players will get exactly X number of actions in that time. They'll even know who goes last before the end of the round, making the "choose to critically strike but end the stagger" mechanic a non-choice; there will always be a mathematically correct time to use that auto-crit.

Basically I think this is a cool idea with the bones of a good implementation, but it may suffer in translation from one medium to another. Maybe consider making stagger cause something other than a hard stun if it proves too powerful in testing. Keep us posted though, I'd love to see how this develops.

Thanks for the feedback!

Perhaps a good alternative to the hard stun on a stagger would be something like the effects of the stone golem's Slow action, plus advantage on attacks against the staggered creature. That way, the staggered creature can still do something on its turn, but is still weakened enough by the stagger to give the players an edge in, say, a boss fight.

As for the 'stagger window' and the auto-crit maneuver, maybe it could be balanced by implementing a semi-random timer to the stagger. After another creature acts in the initiative after the staggered creature, a d20 is rolled. On a 1, the stagger ends early. With each turn another creature takes in initiative, the dice scales down (from d20, to d12, d10, etc.). If there's loads of creatures in the same combat, the die won't shrink below a d4. This still gives the party a chance to capitalize on a staggered foe, but adds an element of risk as well: Do you land the auto-crit now, or risk the stagger ending early to get some extra damage in?

These potential fixes may have their own issues, but hopefully they solve the dilemmas proposed by your analysis.

Quote from Xalthu >>

My first question is what problem are you trying to solve? Are your encounters that difficult that you need to give the PCs a boost? Or do they have problems focusing fire, so you’re trying to encourage that? Also, seems like if you ever run a solo monster, they’ll just be screwed, as focused fire in that case is inevitable.

My second is, why wouldn’t this apply to PCs as well?

Both are very good questions! 

To answer the first one, I mentioned that the campaign setting is slightly inspired by Elden Ring. Like in Elden Ring, I plan for combat to be difficult: Not unfairly so, but challenging enough that victory isn't guaranteed to the party- at least, not without some cooperation and strategy. Staggering a more powerful foe can give the party time to wail on it for extra damage, but it can also give them a little breathing room to heal, set up beneficial spells, manage other threats on the battlefield, etc. In some tougher encounters, such as boss fights, the party is encouraged to use every advantage they can to secure a victory, because the enemies are doing the same. If all else fails, attempting a parley or fleeing from a fight are also valid options.

For the second question, I just thought it wouldn't be fun for the players. Monsters with abilities or attacks that take away player agency can be pretty hard to make into fun encounters for everyone, even for some experienced DMs, and every monster having the potential to attack the action economy might get grating fast. That being said, if the party tells me that they're down to play with those rules, then there's no reason not to have stagger apply to PCs as well (just use character levels instead of CR for the SP calculations).

I think there's value in the fun this idea offers, but the complexity would be a turn-off for me. Bookkeeping all the damage to all the combatants and doing math on that damage will make things take a little longer, at the least.

I'd lean into something simpler like a CON Saving Throw when a combatant goes below 50% of their hit points. If they succeed, they keep going; if not, they are stunned until the end of their next turn, at which point they can try to save again.

That feels like something already in the game with a simple bit of math (the single 50% check).

As the DM you can always just describe the monster/villain as staggering and choose to skip their turn - but I think you're going to have problems with any mechanic to force it. 

First off - characters tend to be really good at doing LOTS of damage, and already have MANY ways to stun, debuff, and/or disable enemies. Do you really want to add another?

Quote from HarmAssassin >>

First off - characters tend to be really good at doing LOTS of damage, and already have MANY ways to stun, debuff, and/or disable enemies. Do you really want to add another?

 That's my question, too: is there really a need for this on top of all the abilities player characters already have to inflict debuff effects on opponents?  What this really feels like to me is something that simply encourages players to opt for straight damage all the time instead of trying to use spells and effects that cause debuffs instead of damage.

Action economy is everything in 5e - fights in D&D are quick and brutal affairs between relatively fragile opponents compared to something like Elden Ring. As such, if you want fights to be difficult you need to do the opposite of this - the more something is hit, the angrier/faster/deadlier it gets. I already have to homebrew any solo fight I run to give my guy more attacks or he just gets steamrolled.

Combat works very differently in these two games. I would focus more on nailing the atmosphere and creature types and less on trying to port over mechanics like staggering. It just needs to feel like Elden Ring, not be Elden Ring.