Funny that you mention video games here. Because every one that I've played is exactly like 5e: the baseline non-magical weapons all do pretty much the same thing: light attack, heavy attack, block. Only magical weapons do anything beyond that, and honestly... the vast majority of those simply do extra damage of one type or another which is very similar to 5e magic weapons. And in both 5e and videogames players generally end up picking just the weapon that does the most damage and using that over and over. There's no strategy or decisions here, and almost never anything actually different under the hood - just different animation sets plopped on top of the same underlying mechanics.
And didn't you complain about not wanting to have a whole backpack of different weapons for different situations? So it sounds to me that you don't actually want to have to choose the right weapon for the task, you just want weapons to be flat more powerful than they are now. Plus making Fighting Styles more impactful pidgeon-hole fighters into the same constraints as Hexblades and Bladesingers where they have their one weapon they are good at using that that's it. They comparatively are useless with anything else which is actually decreasing their options in combat.
I see you haven't played Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Flail+shiled, spear+towershield, rapier+buckler, dual scimitars, huge-ass zweihander, and all other gear combos play very differently. And a bucket of weapons isn't needed. I carried around a rapier, a buckler, a flail, and a longbow, and that covered pretty much all I needed. Rapier when I needed a fast weapon against fleshy parriable opponents, flail for enemies like skeletons, golems and for mounted combat, longbow for picking off enemies beyond reach or if they're too dangerous to approach. Two melee weapons and one ranged covered all my needs. And that can be transferred to tabletop easily. Even more so with multiple damage types for weapons, like slashing/piercing for a longsword.
As for versatile weapons, you gotta understand who uses the versatile property, and I believe it is a niche for gishes mostly. They need a free hand to cast a spell or use a wand every now and then, at other times they switch to combat mode and two-hand their weapon. So I guess versatile weapon fighting style could give the player +2 damage while 2-handed, and, say, let you use spells (or grapple) for opportunity attacks, while a versatile weapon master feat could let you use bonus action to make a weapon attack after you cast a spell.
Funny that you mention video games here. Because every one that I've played is exactly like 5e: the baseline non-magical weapons all do pretty much the same thing: light attack, heavy attack, block. Only magical weapons do anything beyond that, and honestly... the vast majority of those simply do extra damage of one type or another which is very similar to 5e magic weapons. And in both 5e and videogames players generally end up picking just the weapon that does the most damage and using that over and over. There's no strategy or decisions here, and almost never anything actually different under the hood - just different animation sets plopped on top of the same underlying mechanics.
And didn't you complain about not wanting to have a whole backpack of different weapons for different situations? So it sounds to me that you don't actually want to have to choose the right weapon for the task, you just want weapons to be flat more powerful than they are now. Plus making Fighting Styles more impactful pidgeon-hole fighters into the same constraints as Hexblades and Bladesingers where they have their one weapon they are good at using that that's it. They comparatively are useless with anything else which is actually decreasing their options in combat.
I see you haven't played Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Flail+shiled, spear+towershield, rapier+buckler, dual scimitars, huge-ass zweihander, and all other gear combos play very differently. And a bucket of weapons isn't needed. I carried around a rapier, a buckler, a flail, and a longbow, and that covered pretty much all I needed. Rapier when I needed a fast weapon against fleshy parriable opponents, flail for enemies like skeletons, golems and for mounted combat, longbow for picking off enemies beyond reach or if they're too dangerous to approach. Two melee weapons and one ranged covered all my needs. And that can be transferred to tabletop easily. Even more so with multiple damage types for weapons, like slashing/piercing for a longsword.
Timing-based differences CANNOT be transferred easily, and timing is like 99% of Dark Souls / Elden Ring. Even in these games every single one of the weapons you mentioned have the same basic mechanics: light attack, heavy attack, block, jump attack, and each weapon attack only involves hitting the enemy then dealing damage to it (ok there is also the stagger mechanics some of the time for some builds). Elden Ring weapons / load outs generally vary similarly to 5e weapons: Strength vs Dexterity to use, different reaches, defense vs offense trade off (i.e. weapon + shield = less damage but more defense, dual wielding = many attacks each one low damage, and two-handed weapons = less defense + more damage). 5e already has all of these aspects in their suit of weapons available. The only substantial difference in Elden Ring is timing vs damage trade-off which 5e tries to mimic with GWM as an accuracy vs damage trade-off since as a turn-based game it can't alter weapon attack timings.
D&D 5e already covers all the styles you mention in Dark Souls / Elden Ring: zweihander = greatsword + GWM spear + tower shield = spear + shield + Shield Master dual scimitars = two-weapon fighting with scimitars flail + shield = whip + shield rapier + buckler = Dex-fighter
Even in Elden Ring if you're playing a straight no-magic fighter, most of what you are doing is simply "bop"-ing the monster with your weapon then either blocking or dodging monster attacks. The main strategy is simply memorizing the timing / tells for the monster moves so you know when you can "bop" with which speed of "bop" to deal damage without getting hit - a style of play that is utterly incompatibly with turn-based combat.
I guess it can be argued that the variance in these effects is smaller in 5e than in the video game equivalents. It could be made more extreme I suppose: e.g. Heavy Weapon damage dice are double what they are now, but require two actions to make an attack. Close range weapons like Daggers, Sickles, and Unarmed Strikes require moving into your opponent's space to make attacks AC of all armour is decreased by 2, and a shield now provides a +4 AC bonus Some weapons could use Dex for attack rolls but Str for damage (or vice versa) Some weapons could deal 1d4 + Str + Dex damage rather than 1d10+Str
PS Versatile weapons should be way more popular than they are. The main reason they are not used more is that there is no Fighting Style that helps them out and no feats to support them - you are mathematically better off just using a versatile weapon as a one-handed weapon in 5e.
Then again, there's three types of shields in Souls games, and only one in DnD. Bucklers, shields, and towershields could function differently, not to mention that realistically, shield is MUCH more than just decreasing enemy chance to hit you by 10%. I'd say it should instead let you give a disadvantage to enemy attack against you, twice against the same enemy if you have extra attack, with classes or different shields gaining additional uses for blocking, like blocking attacks from different opponents, more blocks per round, failed block not expending an attempt, counterattacking after successful block, blocking an attack directed at nearby ally. This could help people make dedicated tanks if they'd want.
Then, damage types. WotC are clearly afraid of making monsters vulnerable or resistant to piercing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage, because this is too impactful for martials. A caster can simply cast a spell of a different element, but if a rapier-wielding fencer faces skeletons, well, they're screwed. Dual damage types for weapons (like piercing/slashing for longswords, bludgeoning/piercing for warhammers, etc) would address that, while weapons with single damage types might get other benefits, from simply bigger damage to whole new weapon properties to offset specialization. An axe could simply hit harder, while a rapier could offer something for more sophisticated play, like double damage dice on a first attack against an enemy who just missed an attack against you, dance and riposte. Or an increased critical range. 3.5e weapons had that.
And heavier, STR-only weapons could use bigger damage dice. As is, Dex offers way more than Str in terms of versatility, I believe this should better be offset. Specialization on melee damage only (and let's be honest, Str is 95% about that) should rewarded by greater damage.
"counterattacking after successful block" - exists already: Battlemaster Repost "blocking an attack directed at nearby ally" - exists already: 2 different Fighting Styles
Using a reaction to make a Block with a shield would actually be a nerf, since typically PCs are attacked multiple times per round. In terms of defensive mechanics there isn't a whole lot that can be done in 5e that doesn't exist already : shield master, interception fighting style, protection fighting style, Dodge action, Disengage action, and Defensive Duelist feat cover pretty much all of the options and are available to all martials already. So basically, you're just asking for existing mechanics to be available for free without the cost of a feat / fighting style - thus building for them is not required, they are just a free bonus everyone gets.
PS building a tank is already 100% possible if players want to do so. It just comes at the cost of much lower DPR than a DPR build. Most players seem to prefer DPR to tanking thus choose not to sacrifice DPR for tanking. [Plus DPR is inherently better than tanking anyway b/c a dead enemy does 0 damage whereas even the best tanking only reduces enemy damage to ~ 25%]
PPS Tanking as a play style fundamentally doesn't make much sense when fighting an intelligent enemy. Intelligent enemies aren't going to waste their time attacking someone they can't hit, they will find other solutions.
"You can already do [X] by taking a gigantic hit to your viability in combat!" "I don't want to take a gigantic hit to my viability in combat, though..." "See?! All you want is more power! You don't want options at all, you just wanna be OP!"
No. No, I do not. I want the other things I can do on my turn to be as good as The Attack Action. Not drastically better than The Attack Action, because then we have a new Default Answer to Everything and we're right back to where we started. Not drastically worse than The Attack Action either, Agilemind, because we already have that and nobody uses it because doing so is a mistake and we all know it.
I would like for there to be real, actual, meaningful choices for things to do in a fight, other than Taking The Attack Action. Because Basic Bonk is boring as hell, and yet we've never had an option for better. Basic Bonk, doing nothing but Taking The Attack Action, will always be there for people who just can't be bothered to do better, but we still don't have any way of going Beyond Basic Bonk in any meaningful capacity.
PS building a tank is already 100% possible if players want to do so. It just comes at the cost of much lower DPR than a DPR build. Most players seem to prefer DPR to tanking thus choose not to sacrifice DPR for tanking. [Plus DPR is inherently better than tanking anyway b/c a dead enemy does 0 damage whereas even the best tanking only reduces enemy damage to ~ 25%]
PPS Tanking as a play style fundamentally doesn't make much sense when fighting an intelligent enemy. Intelligent enemies aren't going to waste their time attacking someone they can't hit, they will find other solutions.
"You can do X if you don't mind being useless" translates as "You can't actually do X".
MMO style tanking with threat and challenge is dumb, but tanking absolutely exists in the real world. It's done by blocking enemy movement, typically by making it difficult to bypass you. It's possible to implement something like that in a TTRPG, but at a minimum you'd have to delete all the "On your turn" garbage -- a readied attack should do more damage than a regular attack, not less -- and move back to a 3.x style opportunity attack where moving through someone's threatened zone, even if you don't exit, draws an attack.
I tried to solve the 'ready an action' problem at my own table about a year ago. Anyone can hold their action by just moving down the initiative order. You can fall down as far as you want to go until you are ready to act. Then you get your full action as normal, and your new initiative is wherever you stopped. It's far easier, more intuitive, and lets players really combo their skills as a team.
No. No, I do not. I want the other things I can do on my turn to be as good as The Attack Action. Not drastically better than The Attack Action, because then we have a new Default Answer to Everything and we're right back to where we started. Not drastically worse than The Attack Action either, Agilemind, because we already have that and nobody uses it because doing so is a mistake and we all know it.
I would like for there to be real, actual, meaningful choices for things to do in a fight, other than Taking The Attack Action. Because Basic Bonk is boring as hell, and yet we've never had an option for better. Basic Bonk, doing nothing but Taking The Attack Action, will always be there for people who just can't be bothered to do better, but we still don't have any way of going Beyond Basic Bonk in any meaningful capacity.
The problem with this mindset is it is everything situational, there is nothing you can do as an alternative to the attack action that will be "balanced" with the attack action. Right now for example even with the weak options we have - if you are fighting a wereboar and have no silver or magic weapons using the help action to give your Warlock advantage on his Eldritch Blast or using grapple so said Wereboar can't focus on the guy damaging him are A LOT better than the attack action (real example from play 2 weeks ago). Even Dodge is better than attack in that situation too!
I think the rules as they currently exist offer many options that are better than the attack option for people that look for ways to use them. Even if you are only looking for mathematical objectively better options, help or a defensive/control option (disengage or grapple) can be objectively mathematically better than attacking quite often. People still don't use them though. In the Wereboar example above our Barbarian attacked 2 turns in a row doing 0 damage both times, he even attacked him again knowing he would do no damage
Inside Darkness, Silence or Spike Growth, Frightened, Charmed, Turned..... If the enemy has any one of those conditions or effects on it and one of your allies did it to him, then attacking it in melee is rarely the best thing to do, yet that is the thing most melee builds will do even though other objectively better options exist right now.
I also find most players who play melee builds don't want to play tactically. They want to hit it with a stick because that is easier than playing to make your spell casters and thereby the party over all more effective. I have found this to be true both as a DM and as a player. There are exceptions, and I would argue I am one of them, but unless you make the other option objectively and obviously better all the time it will simply become another option they don't use.
The reason people don't use all those options you constantly hold up as being Oh So Tactical, Ecmo, is that they do not aid the situation. It's the same reason Blade Ward is a bad meme - you can't end a fight with solely defensive moves. Fighters and other martials have nothing they can use to pursue victory in most situations that isn't The Attack Action. Yes, in the extremely niche narrow circumstance where you cannot damage an enemy at all, then doing something else is better - but that Something Else doesn't help you out of the situation.
I don't know what the solution is. If I knew, I'd propose it and try to implement it in my games. But continue to point to increasingly niche, baroque, and bizarre one-off anecdotal situations as reasons why nothing should ever change ever isn't helping anyone or anything. Please stop.
The problem with this mindset is it is everything situational, there is nothing you can do as an alternative to the attack action that will be "balanced" with the attack action. Right now for example even with the weak options we have - if you are fighting a wereboar and have no silver or magic weapons using the help action to give your Warlock advantage on his Eldritch Blast or using grapple so said Wereboar can't focus on the guy damaging him are A LOT better than the attack action (real example from play 2 weeks ago). Even Dodge is better than attack in that situation too!
Congratulations on pulling out an excellent example of bad design in martial classes -- monsters that are flat immune to the PCs weapons so all the PC can do is hold it still for someone else to beat on is atrocious game play. In any case, the point isn't to make the options always equal, the point is to make it so that choosing options is an interesting decision that requires thought.
I have used both Help and grapple in combats. They are not never useful, but they're pretty rarely useful because they're generally bad.
Help is typically about as valuable as 1/3 of a single attack, so by tier 2 when people are getting multiple attacks it's worth something like 1/6 of an action. As such, you should only use it when your other options are total trash.
Grapple does have situational uses, mostly against opponents that have obnoxious mobility that ignores opportunity attacks, but it's rare and only applies to the minority of characters who are actually good at it.
The reason people don't use all those options you constantly hold up as being Oh So Tactical, Ecmo, is that they do not aid the situation. It's the same reason Blade Ward is a bad meme - you can't end a fight with solely defensive moves. Fighters and other martials have nothing they can use to pursue victory in most situations that isn't The Attack Action. Yes, in the extremely niche narrow circumstance where you cannot damage an enemy at all, then doing something else is better - but that Something Else doesn't help you out of the situation.
I don't know what the solution is. If I knew, I'd propose it and try to implement it in my games. But continue to point to increasingly niche, baroque, and bizarre one-off anecdotal situations as reasons why nothing should ever change ever isn't helping anyone or anything. Please stop.
Even blade ward is situationally useful. For example, with a PC like a Bladesinger who wants/needs to tank for a turn or something it can be exceedingly useful. Or casting it on yourself just before busting in a door to help survive a bunch of readied actions or something. For that 1 round it can be clutch, the rest of the time, not so much. But for those instances when it is useful it is very useful.
Bladesingers are the one exception to Blade Ward being a meme, because they can cast it and still attack. A two-weapon 'Singer can swing twice and also cast Blade Ward, which is an entirely different story. The issue with the spell isn't that it's never useful, it's that the spell is so seldom a good idea that wasting a precious cantrip slot on it is exactly that - a waste. That and Dodge exists, which handles much of Blade Ward's job for it.
That's part of the whole issue, though. Super niche, narrow, and highly specific side circumstances do not make en entire thing good. Bladesingers being able to make Blade Ward work doesn't make the spell good. It just means they have an edge nobody else does, and in the very narrow circumstance where that edge applies the thing is not as bad as it otherwise might be. It does not, and never has, made the thing "Good".
This is really at the core of it right? DnD combat is built around action economy. In most situations, the single most effective thing you can do is remove an enemy from the battlefield, and with it, it's actions. That makes dealing damage king.
Spells get around this sometimes by either being able to affect a large number of enemies with a condition. Or by shutting a single enemy out of the action economy.
For martials, damage is often their best option. For a different course of action to be as valuable, it has to have a major effect. This means thier options must either:
Have an effect in addition to the normal damage
Have an effect superior to the normal damage
Or affect more than one enemy
If any of these options exist, the player will always choose to use them. So they either have to be limited somehow, or factored into the balance of the class. Limiting them currently comes in multiple forms:
Situational (Battlefield) - the option only comes up rarely based on the particular combat. Terrain and specific monster vulnerabilities apply This is often DM driven when creating encounters, or is limited by player creativity, so it can't be controlled well.
Situational (Mechanical) - the events that trigger the option are limited. An example would be "when an ally within 5 feet of you is targeted by an attack."
Action Economy - the option requires the use of an Action, Bonus Action, Reaction, or movement. These can have unintended consequences where some classes find the cost too taxing and others have ways to cope with it easily, like the Bladesinger example.
Pools - dice, points, or slots. You are limited in using the options based on a pool of uses that get slowly depleted. You recover your pool on a short or long rest. Everyone has very strong opinions on these, due to different play styles and story needs.
Overall Class Balance - some classes gets more options while others get more consistent damage. This is the one people have a problem with the most. Because consistent damage isn't as exciting to them, and might not be as valuable from one game to the next.
So anything you want to do to increase options for a class requires balancing it. You have to limit it somehow. DnD has typically employed all of the above methods. It's successful in certain games and not in others. It succeeds for some players and not others.
'Hitting it with a stick' is the most valuable thing a martial can do. They can do it all day long. Any other option is going to have to be as valuable, but at the cost of the martial's supremacy in deleting enemies permanently from the action economy.
A two-weapon 'Singer can swing twice and also cast Blade Ward, which is an entirely different story. The issue with the spell isn't that it's never useful, it's that the spell is so seldom a good idea that wasting a precious cantrip slot on it is exactly that - a waste. That and Dodge exists, which handles much of Blade Ward's job for it.
I have found quite a few uses of bladeward, all niches, but more than just this one.
Genasis (earth?) can use it as a bonus action
Order Clerics using Embodiment of Law or Sorcerers with metamagic can cast an action spell as a bonus action and use bladeward as their action. In the case of the Cleric they would need to get it through something else.
On a bladesinger with two-weapon fighting, that is possible but it you really need two feats to really do it effectively - Warcaster so you can still use shield, silvery barbs or absorb elements as a reaction with your hands full and Fighting Initiate-Two Weapon Fighting to get Dex bonus to damage.
The problem with this mindset is it is everything situational, there is nothing you can do as an alternative to the attack action that will be "balanced" with the attack action. Right now for example even with the weak options we have - if you are fighting a wereboar and have no silver or magic weapons using the help action to give your Warlock advantage on his Eldritch Blast or using grapple so said Wereboar can't focus on the guy damaging him are A LOT better than the attack action (real example from play 2 weeks ago). Even Dodge is better than attack in that situation too!
Congratulations on pulling out an excellent example of bad design in martial classes -- monsters that are flat immune to the PCs weapons so all the PC can do is hold it still for someone else to beat on is atrocious game play. In any case, the point isn't to make the options always equal, the point is to make it so that choosing options is an interesting decision that requires thought.
They are a fighter what do you want, and it does require thought, I will add usually they don't think to do it even though it is objectively better.
If you put a lot of thought into it you can often findt hings that are better than attacking. Not all the time, maybe not even half the time, but quite often and certainly often enough to be relevant. I would argue that this desire for another mechanical ability coded into the fighter DNA is because people actually want it to be right there and they don't want to put a lot of thought into it.
I have used both Help and grapple in combats. They are not never useful, but they're pretty rarely useful because they're generally bad.
Help is typically about as valuable as 1/3 of a single attack, so by tier 2 when people are getting multiple attacks it's worth something like 1/6 of an action. As such, you should only use it when your other options are total trash.
Grapple does have situational uses, mostly against opponents that have obnoxious mobility that ignores opportunity attacks, but it's rare and only applies to the minority of characters who are actually good at it.
It is not rare. the situations I mentioned combined happen a lot:
Turned - If you damage him he is not turned, almost always a bad idea.
Charmed - Most (not all) charms are broken by damage. If someone in your party charmed an enemy it is usually to get some sort of effect that is beneficial to your partty, a weaponattack, if successful, will usually disrupt that benefit.
Frightened - Frightened restricts movement and the best option is usually to disengage and back away and is usually very foolish to charge (yet that is the most common thing done if not already in melee). This is not always the case, if it has a ranged attack melee may be the best move, but usually it is objectively not.
Darkness/Silence - If your party puts darkness on someone usually that is to prevent gaze attacks, spells or because one of your party members can see through it. Likewise if your party silenced someone in combat it is usually because you want to prevent a wailing attack or a spellcaster from casting. In either of these cases grappling to keep the enemy from leaving the area is often far better than attacking.
I think those examples combined cover a lot of combats. not half of combats, but probably 20-30% of combats and when one of them happen usually attacking in melee is not the best option, usually something else is objectively more effective. Most melee martials still tend to attack even though it is not the best choice.
This is really at the core of it right? DnD combat is built around action economy. In most situations, the single most effective thing you can do is remove an enemy from the battlefield, and with it, it's actions. That makes dealing damage king.
That has less to do with action economy than with most of the non-damage options being weak.
In general, any type of CC is spending X% of your party's actions to remove Y% of your enemy's total actions; if X > Y, the CC is a net benefit. Note that reduction in actions is expected reduction, and thus has to include the chance that cc won't actually work. If the CC is only partial (makes actions less effective rather than removing them), also multiply by relative effectiveness. The problem is that the status effects available to generic fighters are Prone and Grappled.
If your party mostly consists of either melee characters, Prone can be decent, at least in tier 2, because what it mostly does is make all melee attacks between your turn and the enemy's next action (at which point they stand up) better. Not hugely better, but better -- on average, if there's five melee attacks (including the rest of your turn) between your shove attempt and the enemy's next turn, it works out okay, and the ratio gets better if your chance for shove is really high relative to your hit chance -- in 5e, a level 5+ rune knight using action surge and great weapon mastery almost certainly gets a net small benefit -- but it gets worse if your party has ranged attackers, or just non-melee attackers, or if your initiative timing works out badly.
Grappled... is really marginal. If you're dealing with a primarily ranged opponent with an easy way to get out of melee (say, cunning action or nimble escape) and poor melee options, who you can actually reach (why is the ranged attacker in melee reach to start with?), and where that ranged attacker is reasonably durable and a large percentage of enemy firepower, and you have at least one extra attack, it probably does pay off, but that's a pretty rare situation. Against most monsters, the benefit of grappled (they can only use their melee attacks on you and other melee attackers, not your ranged teammates) isn't actually worth the action cost of using it.
I would note a special case here: grapple and shove are quite good when dealing with environmental hazards or damaging zones. If there's something like a wall of fire, shoving an enemy into the wall is worth 5d8 for the shove, and another 5d8 for the grapple if they don't break out.
It is not rare. the situations I mentioned combined happen a lot:
Turned - If you damage him he is not turned, almost always a bad idea.
Charmed - Most (not all) charms are broken by damage. If someone in your party charmed an enemy it is usually to get some sort of effect that is beneficial to your partty, a weaponattack, if successful, will usually disrupt that benefit.
Frightened - Frightened restricts movement and the best option is usually to disengage and back away and is usually very foolish to charge (yet that is the most common thing done if not already in melee). This is not always the case, if it has a ranged attack melee may be the best move, but usually it is objectively not.
Grappling a turned, charmed, or frightened enemy is almost always going to be stupid, because why are you attacking them at all -- attack the monsters who aren't CCed.
That's basically my whole point. It's all Action Economy. Either yours or the monsters. If the option isn't strong enough to warrant the action cost, you don't use it. If it is, but only situationally, you use it then. If you can remove a monster's Action Economy, you win the fight. Spellcasters can do it by applying conditions. Martials do it by dealing damage, and thereby removing monsters. For an option to be worth anything to a martial, it has to be worth more than the action cost. If it's worth more than the action cost, it has to be limited in other ways.
It is not rare. the situations I mentioned combined happen a lot:
Turned - If you damage him he is not turned, almost always a bad idea.
Charmed - Most (not all) charms are broken by damage. If someone in your party charmed an enemy it is usually to get some sort of effect that is beneficial to your partty, a weaponattack, if successful, will usually disrupt that benefit.
Frightened - Frightened restricts movement and the best option is usually to disengage and back away and is usually very foolish to charge (yet that is the most common thing done if not already in melee). This is not always the case, if it has a ranged attack melee may be the best move, but usually it is objectively not.
Grappling a turned, charmed, or frightened enemy is almost always going to be stupid, because why are you attacking them at all -- attack the monsters who aren't CCed.
I didn't say you should grapple a turrned, charmed or frightened enemy. I said you should not typically attack them in melee. Typically things like Disengage, Charisma checks, hide, ready an action etc are a more effective use of your action than attacking them in melee, yet attacking them in melee is what most melee martials will do in this situation, even to the point of charging INTO melee against a frightened enemy. Attacking another enemy is an option, if there is another in movement range who isn't in a similar condition, but often there isn't .... and when there isn't they will almost always attack said compromised enemy even though it is far from optimal.
Actual example from combat - My Fey Wanderer twisted Dragon Fear back on to a White Dragon who failed his save. The DM chose not to use legendary resistance, not realizing the gravity of the situation, and instead waiting to use it on stunning strike and the psychic lance spell which he figured was coming. Instead of moving/staying out of breath weapon range and attacking him from range for AT LEAST two free rounds where the Dragon could not harm us ... instead, the frightened Fighter stayed in breath weapon range and the Monk dashed in even closer to get into melee. Both of them got breathed on and then the Monk was attacked and attacked with Legendary actions (attacks with disadvantage) that round and the following round. One of them may have went down in the fight, I can't remember, but they both took a ton of easily avoidable damage if they had just hung back and dodged or hid or did anything to stay out of range and give the enemy effective actions. I even used a bonus action to drop some magic stones that they could have put in a sling and hurled at him, but their play was charge into melee.
You pointed out above that combat is about action economy and often the best move for a martial in that equation is to NOT attack and ruin an effect that is stealing actions. Truthfully in the situation I described, since I had a Mirthful Fey summoned and party members that were saving against dragon fear every turn - we likely could have kept hammering him with frightened even if he saved by having my Fey try to charm me every turn and then twisting it back on the Dragon when I saved (with advantage) or twisting it on him when a party member saved against his lingering dragonfear. Between the Wizard and I, we probably could have burned through his legendaries before he could have came at us, at which point things like spam-stunning strike would be effective. It is quite possible smarter play and NOT going into melee would have won the day without us taking ANY damage at all.
As far as grappling goes - grappling an enemy who is silenced or in darkness because one of your casters put him there is usually better than attacking him and letting him stroll out of the darkness.
I see you haven't played Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Flail+shiled, spear+towershield, rapier+buckler, dual scimitars, huge-ass zweihander, and all other gear combos play very differently. And a bucket of weapons isn't needed. I carried around a rapier, a buckler, a flail, and a longbow, and that covered pretty much all I needed. Rapier when I needed a fast weapon against fleshy parriable opponents, flail for enemies like skeletons, golems and for mounted combat, longbow for picking off enemies beyond reach or if they're too dangerous to approach. Two melee weapons and one ranged covered all my needs. And that can be transferred to tabletop easily. Even more so with multiple damage types for weapons, like slashing/piercing for a longsword.
As for versatile weapons, you gotta understand who uses the versatile property, and I believe it is a niche for gishes mostly. They need a free hand to cast a spell or use a wand every now and then, at other times they switch to combat mode and two-hand their weapon. So I guess versatile weapon fighting style could give the player +2 damage while 2-handed, and, say, let you use spells (or grapple) for opportunity attacks, while a versatile weapon master feat could let you use bonus action to make a weapon attack after you cast a spell.
Timing-based differences CANNOT be transferred easily, and timing is like 99% of Dark Souls / Elden Ring. Even in these games every single one of the weapons you mentioned have the same basic mechanics: light attack, heavy attack, block, jump attack, and each weapon attack only involves hitting the enemy then dealing damage to it (ok there is also the stagger mechanics some of the time for some builds). Elden Ring weapons / load outs generally vary similarly to 5e weapons: Strength vs Dexterity to use, different reaches, defense vs offense trade off (i.e. weapon + shield = less damage but more defense, dual wielding = many attacks each one low damage, and two-handed weapons = less defense + more damage). 5e already has all of these aspects in their suit of weapons available. The only substantial difference in Elden Ring is timing vs damage trade-off which 5e tries to mimic with GWM as an accuracy vs damage trade-off since as a turn-based game it can't alter weapon attack timings.
D&D 5e already covers all the styles you mention in Dark Souls / Elden Ring:
zweihander = greatsword + GWM
spear + tower shield = spear + shield + Shield Master
dual scimitars = two-weapon fighting with scimitars
flail + shield = whip + shield
rapier + buckler = Dex-fighter
Even in Elden Ring if you're playing a straight no-magic fighter, most of what you are doing is simply "bop"-ing the monster with your weapon then either blocking or dodging monster attacks. The main strategy is simply memorizing the timing / tells for the monster moves so you know when you can "bop" with which speed of "bop" to deal damage without getting hit - a style of play that is utterly incompatibly with turn-based combat.
I guess it can be argued that the variance in these effects is smaller in 5e than in the video game equivalents. It could be made more extreme I suppose:
e.g.
Heavy Weapon damage dice are double what they are now, but require two actions to make an attack.
Close range weapons like Daggers, Sickles, and Unarmed Strikes require moving into your opponent's space to make attacks
AC of all armour is decreased by 2, and a shield now provides a +4 AC bonus
Some weapons could use Dex for attack rolls but Str for damage (or vice versa)
Some weapons could deal 1d4 + Str + Dex damage rather than 1d10+Str
PS Versatile weapons should be way more popular than they are. The main reason they are not used more is that there is no Fighting Style that helps them out and no feats to support them - you are mathematically better off just using a versatile weapon as a one-handed weapon in 5e.
Then again, there's three types of shields in Souls games, and only one in DnD. Bucklers, shields, and towershields could function differently, not to mention that realistically, shield is MUCH more than just decreasing enemy chance to hit you by 10%. I'd say it should instead let you give a disadvantage to enemy attack against you, twice against the same enemy if you have extra attack, with classes or different shields gaining additional uses for blocking, like blocking attacks from different opponents, more blocks per round, failed block not expending an attempt, counterattacking after successful block, blocking an attack directed at nearby ally. This could help people make dedicated tanks if they'd want.
Then, damage types. WotC are clearly afraid of making monsters vulnerable or resistant to piercing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage, because this is too impactful for martials. A caster can simply cast a spell of a different element, but if a rapier-wielding fencer faces skeletons, well, they're screwed. Dual damage types for weapons (like piercing/slashing for longswords, bludgeoning/piercing for warhammers, etc) would address that, while weapons with single damage types might get other benefits, from simply bigger damage to whole new weapon properties to offset specialization. An axe could simply hit harder, while a rapier could offer something for more sophisticated play, like double damage dice on a first attack against an enemy who just missed an attack against you, dance and riposte. Or an increased critical range. 3.5e weapons had that.
And heavier, STR-only weapons could use bigger damage dice. As is, Dex offers way more than Str in terms of versatility, I believe this should better be offset. Specialization on melee damage only (and let's be honest, Str is 95% about that) should rewarded by greater damage.
"counterattacking after successful block" - exists already: Battlemaster Repost
"blocking an attack directed at nearby ally" - exists already: 2 different Fighting Styles
Using a reaction to make a Block with a shield would actually be a nerf, since typically PCs are attacked multiple times per round. In terms of defensive mechanics there isn't a whole lot that can be done in 5e that doesn't exist already : shield master, interception fighting style, protection fighting style, Dodge action, Disengage action, and Defensive Duelist feat cover pretty much all of the options and are available to all martials already. So basically, you're just asking for existing mechanics to be available for free without the cost of a feat / fighting style - thus building for them is not required, they are just a free bonus everyone gets.
PS building a tank is already 100% possible if players want to do so. It just comes at the cost of much lower DPR than a DPR build. Most players seem to prefer DPR to tanking thus choose not to sacrifice DPR for tanking. [Plus DPR is inherently better than tanking anyway b/c a dead enemy does 0 damage whereas even the best tanking only reduces enemy damage to ~ 25%]
PPS Tanking as a play style fundamentally doesn't make much sense when fighting an intelligent enemy. Intelligent enemies aren't going to waste their time attacking someone they can't hit, they will find other solutions.
That's such an awful argument.
"You can already do [X] by taking a gigantic hit to your viability in combat!"
"I don't want to take a gigantic hit to my viability in combat, though..."
"See?! All you want is more power! You don't want options at all, you just wanna be OP!"
No. No, I do not. I want the other things I can do on my turn to be as good as The Attack Action. Not drastically better than The Attack Action, because then we have a new Default Answer to Everything and we're right back to where we started. Not drastically worse than The Attack Action either, Agilemind, because we already have that and nobody uses it because doing so is a mistake and we all know it.
I would like for there to be real, actual, meaningful choices for things to do in a fight, other than Taking The Attack Action. Because Basic Bonk is boring as hell, and yet we've never had an option for better. Basic Bonk, doing nothing but Taking The Attack Action, will always be there for people who just can't be bothered to do better, but we still don't have any way of going Beyond Basic Bonk in any meaningful capacity.
Why?
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"You can do X if you don't mind being useless" translates as "You can't actually do X".
MMO style tanking with threat and challenge is dumb, but tanking absolutely exists in the real world. It's done by blocking enemy movement, typically by making it difficult to bypass you. It's possible to implement something like that in a TTRPG, but at a minimum you'd have to delete all the "On your turn" garbage -- a readied attack should do more damage than a regular attack, not less -- and move back to a 3.x style opportunity attack where moving through someone's threatened zone, even if you don't exit, draws an attack.
I tried to solve the 'ready an action' problem at my own table about a year ago. Anyone can hold their action by just moving down the initiative order. You can fall down as far as you want to go until you are ready to act. Then you get your full action as normal, and your new initiative is wherever you stopped. It's far easier, more intuitive, and lets players really combo their skills as a team.
The problem with this mindset is it is everything situational, there is nothing you can do as an alternative to the attack action that will be "balanced" with the attack action. Right now for example even with the weak options we have - if you are fighting a wereboar and have no silver or magic weapons using the help action to give your Warlock advantage on his Eldritch Blast or using grapple so said Wereboar can't focus on the guy damaging him are A LOT better than the attack action (real example from play 2 weeks ago). Even Dodge is better than attack in that situation too!
I think the rules as they currently exist offer many options that are better than the attack option for people that look for ways to use them. Even if you are only looking for mathematical objectively better options, help or a defensive/control option (disengage or grapple) can be objectively mathematically better than attacking quite often. People still don't use them though. In the Wereboar example above our Barbarian attacked 2 turns in a row doing 0 damage both times, he even attacked him again knowing he would do no damage
Inside Darkness, Silence or Spike Growth, Frightened, Charmed, Turned..... If the enemy has any one of those conditions or effects on it and one of your allies did it to him, then attacking it in melee is rarely the best thing to do, yet that is the thing most melee builds will do even though other objectively better options exist right now.
I also find most players who play melee builds don't want to play tactically. They want to hit it with a stick because that is easier than playing to make your spell casters and thereby the party over all more effective. I have found this to be true both as a DM and as a player. There are exceptions, and I would argue I am one of them, but unless you make the other option objectively and obviously better all the time it will simply become another option they don't use.
The reason people don't use all those options you constantly hold up as being Oh So Tactical, Ecmo, is that they do not aid the situation. It's the same reason Blade Ward is a bad meme - you can't end a fight with solely defensive moves. Fighters and other martials have nothing they can use to pursue victory in most situations that isn't The Attack Action. Yes, in the extremely niche narrow circumstance where you cannot damage an enemy at all, then doing something else is better - but that Something Else doesn't help you out of the situation.
I don't know what the solution is. If I knew, I'd propose it and try to implement it in my games. But continue to point to increasingly niche, baroque, and bizarre one-off anecdotal situations as reasons why nothing should ever change ever isn't helping anyone or anything. Please stop.
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Congratulations on pulling out an excellent example of bad design in martial classes -- monsters that are flat immune to the PCs weapons so all the PC can do is hold it still for someone else to beat on is atrocious game play. In any case, the point isn't to make the options always equal, the point is to make it so that choosing options is an interesting decision that requires thought.
I have used both Help and grapple in combats. They are not never useful, but they're pretty rarely useful because they're generally bad.
Help is typically about as valuable as 1/3 of a single attack, so by tier 2 when people are getting multiple attacks it's worth something like 1/6 of an action. As such, you should only use it when your other options are total trash.
Grapple does have situational uses, mostly against opponents that have obnoxious mobility that ignores opportunity attacks, but it's rare and only applies to the minority of characters who are actually good at it.
Even blade ward is situationally useful. For example, with a PC like a Bladesinger who wants/needs to tank for a turn or something it can be exceedingly useful. Or casting it on yourself just before busting in a door to help survive a bunch of readied actions or something. For that 1 round it can be clutch, the rest of the time, not so much. But for those instances when it is useful it is very useful.
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Bladesingers are the one exception to Blade Ward being a meme, because they can cast it and still attack. A two-weapon 'Singer can swing twice and also cast Blade Ward, which is an entirely different story. The issue with the spell isn't that it's never useful, it's that the spell is so seldom a good idea that wasting a precious cantrip slot on it is exactly that - a waste. That and Dodge exists, which handles much of Blade Ward's job for it.
That's part of the whole issue, though. Super niche, narrow, and highly specific side circumstances do not make en entire thing good. Bladesingers being able to make Blade Ward work doesn't make the spell good. It just means they have an edge nobody else does, and in the very narrow circumstance where that edge applies the thing is not as bad as it otherwise might be. It does not, and never has, made the thing "Good".
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This is really at the core of it right? DnD combat is built around action economy. In most situations, the single most effective thing you can do is remove an enemy from the battlefield, and with it, it's actions. That makes dealing damage king.
Spells get around this sometimes by either being able to affect a large number of enemies with a condition. Or by shutting a single enemy out of the action economy.
For martials, damage is often their best option. For a different course of action to be as valuable, it has to have a major effect. This means thier options must either:
Have an effect in addition to the normal damage
Have an effect superior to the normal damage
Or affect more than one enemy
If any of these options exist, the player will always choose to use them. So they either have to be limited somehow, or factored into the balance of the class. Limiting them currently comes in multiple forms:
Situational (Battlefield) - the option only comes up rarely based on the particular combat. Terrain and specific monster vulnerabilities apply This is often DM driven when creating encounters, or is limited by player creativity, so it can't be controlled well.
Situational (Mechanical) - the events that trigger the option are limited. An example would be "when an ally within 5 feet of you is targeted by an attack."
Action Economy - the option requires the use of an Action, Bonus Action, Reaction, or movement. These can have unintended consequences where some classes find the cost too taxing and others have ways to cope with it easily, like the Bladesinger example.
Pools - dice, points, or slots. You are limited in using the options based on a pool of uses that get slowly depleted. You recover your pool on a short or long rest. Everyone has very strong opinions on these, due to different play styles and story needs.
Overall Class Balance - some classes gets more options while others get more consistent damage. This is the one people have a problem with the most. Because consistent damage isn't as exciting to them, and might not be as valuable from one game to the next.
So anything you want to do to increase options for a class requires balancing it. You have to limit it somehow. DnD has typically employed all of the above methods. It's successful in certain games and not in others. It succeeds for some players and not others.
'Hitting it with a stick' is the most valuable thing a martial can do. They can do it all day long. Any other option is going to have to be as valuable, but at the cost of the martial's supremacy in deleting enemies permanently from the action economy.
I have found quite a few uses of bladeward, all niches, but more than just this one.
Genasis (earth?) can use it as a bonus action
Order Clerics using Embodiment of Law or Sorcerers with metamagic can cast an action spell as a bonus action and use bladeward as their action. In the case of the Cleric they would need to get it through something else.
On a bladesinger with two-weapon fighting, that is possible but it you really need two feats to really do it effectively - Warcaster so you can still use shield, silvery barbs or absorb elements as a reaction with your hands full and Fighting Initiate-Two Weapon Fighting to get Dex bonus to damage.
They are a fighter what do you want, and it does require thought, I will add usually they don't think to do it even though it is objectively better.
If you put a lot of thought into it you can often findt hings that are better than attacking. Not all the time, maybe not even half the time, but quite often and certainly often enough to be relevant. I would argue that this desire for another mechanical ability coded into the fighter DNA is because people actually want it to be right there and they don't want to put a lot of thought into it.
It is not rare. the situations I mentioned combined happen a lot:
Turned - If you damage him he is not turned, almost always a bad idea.
Charmed - Most (not all) charms are broken by damage. If someone in your party charmed an enemy it is usually to get some sort of effect that is beneficial to your partty, a weaponattack, if successful, will usually disrupt that benefit.
Frightened - Frightened restricts movement and the best option is usually to disengage and back away and is usually very foolish to charge (yet that is the most common thing done if not already in melee). This is not always the case, if it has a ranged attack melee may be the best move, but usually it is objectively not.
Darkness/Silence - If your party puts darkness on someone usually that is to prevent gaze attacks, spells or because one of your party members can see through it. Likewise if your party silenced someone in combat it is usually because you want to prevent a wailing attack or a spellcaster from casting. In either of these cases grappling to keep the enemy from leaving the area is often far better than attacking.
I think those examples combined cover a lot of combats. not half of combats, but probably 20-30% of combats and when one of them happen usually attacking in melee is not the best option, usually something else is objectively more effective. Most melee martials still tend to attack even though it is not the best choice.
That has less to do with action economy than with most of the non-damage options being weak.
In general, any type of CC is spending X% of your party's actions to remove Y% of your enemy's total actions; if X > Y, the CC is a net benefit. Note that reduction in actions is expected reduction, and thus has to include the chance that cc won't actually work. If the CC is only partial (makes actions less effective rather than removing them), also multiply by relative effectiveness. The problem is that the status effects available to generic fighters are Prone and Grappled.
If your party mostly consists of either melee characters, Prone can be decent, at least in tier 2, because what it mostly does is make all melee attacks between your turn and the enemy's next action (at which point they stand up) better. Not hugely better, but better -- on average, if there's five melee attacks (including the rest of your turn) between your shove attempt and the enemy's next turn, it works out okay, and the ratio gets better if your chance for shove is really high relative to your hit chance -- in 5e, a level 5+ rune knight using action surge and great weapon mastery almost certainly gets a net small benefit -- but it gets worse if your party has ranged attackers, or just non-melee attackers, or if your initiative timing works out badly.
Grappled... is really marginal. If you're dealing with a primarily ranged opponent with an easy way to get out of melee (say, cunning action or nimble escape) and poor melee options, who you can actually reach (why is the ranged attacker in melee reach to start with?), and where that ranged attacker is reasonably durable and a large percentage of enemy firepower, and you have at least one extra attack, it probably does pay off, but that's a pretty rare situation. Against most monsters, the benefit of grappled (they can only use their melee attacks on you and other melee attackers, not your ranged teammates) isn't actually worth the action cost of using it.
I would note a special case here: grapple and shove are quite good when dealing with environmental hazards or damaging zones. If there's something like a wall of fire, shoving an enemy into the wall is worth 5d8 for the shove, and another 5d8 for the grapple if they don't break out.
Grappling a turned, charmed, or frightened enemy is almost always going to be stupid, because why are you attacking them at all -- attack the monsters who aren't CCed.
That's basically my whole point. It's all Action Economy. Either yours or the monsters. If the option isn't strong enough to warrant the action cost, you don't use it. If it is, but only situationally, you use it then. If you can remove a monster's Action Economy, you win the fight. Spellcasters can do it by applying conditions. Martials do it by dealing damage, and thereby removing monsters. For an option to be worth anything to a martial, it has to be worth more than the action cost. If it's worth more than the action cost, it has to be limited in other ways.
I didn't say you should grapple a turrned, charmed or frightened enemy. I said you should not typically attack them in melee. Typically things like Disengage, Charisma checks, hide, ready an action etc are a more effective use of your action than attacking them in melee, yet attacking them in melee is what most melee martials will do in this situation, even to the point of charging INTO melee against a frightened enemy. Attacking another enemy is an option, if there is another in movement range who isn't in a similar condition, but often there isn't .... and when there isn't they will almost always attack said compromised enemy even though it is far from optimal.
Actual example from combat - My Fey Wanderer twisted Dragon Fear back on to a White Dragon who failed his save. The DM chose not to use legendary resistance, not realizing the gravity of the situation, and instead waiting to use it on stunning strike and the psychic lance spell which he figured was coming. Instead of moving/staying out of breath weapon range and attacking him from range for AT LEAST two free rounds where the Dragon could not harm us ... instead, the frightened Fighter stayed in breath weapon range and the Monk dashed in even closer to get into melee. Both of them got breathed on and then the Monk was attacked and attacked with Legendary actions (attacks with disadvantage) that round and the following round. One of them may have went down in the fight, I can't remember, but they both took a ton of easily avoidable damage if they had just hung back and dodged or hid or did anything to stay out of range and give the enemy effective actions. I even used a bonus action to drop some magic stones that they could have put in a sling and hurled at him, but their play was charge into melee.
You pointed out above that combat is about action economy and often the best move for a martial in that equation is to NOT attack and ruin an effect that is stealing actions. Truthfully in the situation I described, since I had a Mirthful Fey summoned and party members that were saving against dragon fear every turn - we likely could have kept hammering him with frightened even if he saved by having my Fey try to charm me every turn and then twisting it back on the Dragon when I saved (with advantage) or twisting it on him when a party member saved against his lingering dragonfear. Between the Wizard and I, we probably could have burned through his legendaries before he could have came at us, at which point things like spam-stunning strike would be effective. It is quite possible smarter play and NOT going into melee would have won the day without us taking ANY damage at all.
As far as grappling goes - grappling an enemy who is silenced or in darkness because one of your casters put him there is usually better than attacking him and letting him stroll out of the darkness.