Mechanical Thinking is a new series that presents new houserules that you can add to your home D&D games, and then interrogates the underlying mechanics, examines what problems the rule solves, and identifies what the rule can do to improve your game. Then, once all is said and done, join me and other readers in the comments for a discussion about the proposed rule. Just remember that all rules have their place, and while they might not fit your table, they might be perfect for another gaming group.
If you have a mind for mechanics or for the process of game design, or if you want hone the mechanical side of your RPG knowledge, this series is for you!
Overextending
Today’s mechanic is overextending. I mused about it on Twitter at the beginning of March, and I think this is an idea worth taking a closer look at. Here’s the mechanic I proposed there:
OverextendSome adventurers fight recklessly, allowing them to land cutting blows at the cost of leaving their most vulnerable areas open to attack. Once per turn, when you miss with a melee attack, you can choose to hit instead. If you do so, any attack that hits you before the beginning of your next turn is a critical hit.
Overextending is a house rule that arose in one of my games when my players were growing frustrated that they effectively wasted their turn whenever they missed with their attack. There’s merit to this frustration; in a turn-based game like D&D, a player can sometimes be left waiting a long time for their next turn in combat to come around, especially if there are a lot of players at the table or if the DM includes a lot of monsters in a single combat.
In my experience, I’ve found three solutions to this problem:
- Make turns go by faster.
- Give players more opportunities to act off-turn.
- Make player turns “count” more.
The Overextend mechanic touches on two of these issues; it helps players avoid the feeling that they’ve wasted their turn if they miss an attack roll by introducing a more dynamic and less binary system. It also slows play by making turns potentially go slower, since everyone who misses at least once in a round has to weight the costs and benefits of overextending. Consider this: missing an attack in D&D isn’t just painful because you didn’t contribute to whittling away your foe’s hit points, but because nothing happened. Good stories are made up of changes in tension, but the consequence for failure in this situation is the narratively weak option of maintaining the status quo. Put another way, the least interesting outcome in any story or any game is “nothing happens.”
Introducing a system that allows characters to succeed at a cost (similar to more narrative-focused games like Dungeon World) helps the story feel dynamic, even if it actually puts the “successful” character in a worse position overall than failure would have. This helps players feel like their turn has counted, because even if they’re suddenly in a bad position, they’ve managed to make the combat encounter more interesting.
There are other ways of making player turns feel like they mattered. If the DM or player has good descriptive chops, then they can narrate the missed attack roll in a way that gives the player a little more time in the spotlight. Even if their turn didn’t accomplish anything, being able to stay in the spotlight just a bit longer can help them narrate their actions and let them have narrative fun a little longer, even if they aren’t having a ton of mechanical fun.
Issues and Revisions
That said, this house rule isn’t perfect. Every rule, even official ones, can and should be tweaked to better serve the table that they’re playing at. Consider what the effects of allowing a player to automatically hit once per turn can change the game. Rogues and paladins, whose Sneak Attack and Divine Smite features give them huge damage bursts as long as they hit, would love to have this feature. Guaranteeing a hit can remove tension from an otherwise nail-biting die roll. Meanwhile, fighters who have many attacks per turn, but with very few added effects, are left in the dust by this feature.
If you want to avoid the attack being a guaranteed sure thing, consider allowing the character to reroll a missed attack with advantage, instead. “Once per turn, when you miss with a melee attack, you can choose to reroll the attack with advantage.”
Additionally, some players may think that opening their character up to devastating critical hits is too much of a drawback, especially if you’re using the modified version of the rule above, and the attack isn’t guaranteed. A way to soften the impact of the drawback, while still keeping it threatening, is to instead allow all creatures adjacent to the overextending character to make a single attack against them.
Incorporating both the tempered bonus and softened drawback results in the following, more moderate version of overextending:
OverextendSome adventurers fight recklessly, allowing them to land cutting blows at the cost of leaving their defenses open to counterattack by opportunistic foes. Once per turn, when you miss with a melee attack, you can choose to reroll the attack with advantage. If you do so, all creatures within 5 feet of you can use a reaction to make a single melee attack against you.
I would place this rule under the "Melee Attacks" in chapter 9: Combat of the Player's Handbook. Would you use this house rule at your table? What about it appeals to you, and what would you change to better suit your group’s playstyle? Let me know in the comments!
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of Worlds Apart, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and their feline adventurers Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
At my table this would interact well with my houserules with inspiration. Id allow players to do this (maybe with any attack) as long as they had inspiration in their pool as opposed to using inspiration on the roll.
I really like this idea!
I do like previously mentioned ideas of using some sort of, “use up to your con mod between long rests” though.
I really like this tweak, it plays into the feel of the, “instant gratification, instant punishment” too, which seems to be the fee this ability is going for.
I like both versions, but like you said in the article, this shouldn't be something that is available to everyone; a fighter who has three attacks per round can take a miss, whereas a rogue would definitely want to land that sneak attack. Maybe I'll use it as a feature available to some classes, like the barbarian and paladin on top of the mentioned rogue. If I use it, I'll be sure to post feedback!
If you're doing a series, you might want to address variant rules that address attunement to magic items (I would also love it if the Devs let you set the attunement limit when making your charecter, as it's something I think a decent number of tables would like to be able to change on D&D beyond.)
I might use these rules with new people but feel these house rules lessen the value of certain class abilities and other player choices. These also focus on the roll aspect of the game versus the role aspects. I think the Critical Role group do a good job of making misses have value by describing what happens and responding with more social aspects rather than seeing each round as “roll and go”.
I agree. This house rule gives an advantage to melee based characters over ranged based characters, including spell casters. It unbalances the game because you can't let a lot of single target spells like Banishment auto-work at a cost to the caster of being hurt more if they're hit the next round. Part of the tension is the chance that your action won't have any effect that round, and that includes every character and NPC.
modified version has some issues as a crit fishing build as rolling again adds more chances for a crit and this effectively lets them roll 3 times on a single attack
I kinda use over extension as a natural1 punishment. When a creature rolls a natural 1, the attacked enemy may make an attack against it. Basicly you try to attack and you over extend leaving a vulnerability to the opponent. It also doesn't consume your reaction wich makes fights lots faster and more compelling
I like the first version a lot! I would definitely put this on a limit to one use per initiative roll to address a lot of the negatives. I also feel like this has a huge impact on the value of some mechanics like the Shield spell (whose users typically can't take many hits). I see more value in the second one being introduced as a feat with some tweaks since it's kinda in the same realm as Savage Attacker or Elven Accuracy. The flavor text "Some adventurers..." kinda points to this being a feat as well since the current version is "every adventurer."
Like many have said, this does step a bit on Reckless Attack... but the Barbarian gets arguably the most use out of this house rule since they have damage resistance while raging and (with the second version) can get essentially 4d20 (or 5 if elf or half-elf with Elven Accuracy) to see if they hit and to fish for critical hits. Also makes Barbarian/Fighter Champion multiclass an unstoppable tide on the battlefield.
That said, I do really like the feel of this. The feel of it is very 4e (which I was a fan of), which is why I feel the "once per initiative roll" is a good fit since that harkens back a bit to the Encounter Powers of 4e and their limited use.
I like the general concept because I've had a few combat encounters in each of the two games I run where a player just had a string of bad rolls and was basically just twiddling their thumbs waiting for the other five or six players and all the enemies go around again and again.
However, I think it would be too powerful to be something that a player could utilize every round, and arguably even just once per combat whenever they wanted (as per some justified concerns expressed around builds with features that can make hits devastating).
If I were to use this at all, I think it would be something I as the DM would offer up once in a while if I see someone just not getting to do much in a combat encounter. I'd set up the scenario narratively while describing the results of the rolls, and then offer up the opportunity to the player at the time to get the additional attack roll in exchange for the consequence.
Wow, a lot of discussion. You can tell you've hit on something important.
James, you mentioned your home group has played with this rule. How has it fared in actual play? I could see my players only using this on that essential, battle-ending round to bring down the boss. Whiffing felt much more frequent in 3.5e than I've noticed in 5e (I didn't play 4e), so I don't see my players fighting this frustration as much.
So, I like the possibility of turning misses into hits with a cost. My idea (for melee) is to allow the player to automatically hit, BUT this invites the NEXT attack against them to be an automatic hit with an advantage roll for a possible critical hit. In other words, it would not matter if the attack was in the same round or not and the attacker would still roll 2 dice (advantage) for the chance to make their automatic hit into a critical hit.
Also, for Ranged attacks, I like the idea of spending hit dice to allow an attack to hit. With this, though, there really is no reciprocal attack. It seems to work pretty well as long as you are following the rules for HD recovery.
I have a house rule in effect that allows casters to add their spell casting modifiers to cantrips. No one likes to hit with Firebolt and then immediately roll a 1 for damage. Kind of makes wizards feel impotent. This really only seems to be an issue with Warlocks and their Eldritch Invocations, so I just made that an automatic thing for Locks at 1st Level as an "extra".
This house rule is one step towards making a less binary success/failure system for D&D. Success at a cost mechanics like this, plus partial success or partial failure mechanics are exactly what D&D needs, IMO.
Oof, you're reminding me of a campaign I played in with 2 DMs who were new to 5e. One of the houserules they brought over from Pathfinder was the concept of "Defense Rolls", where your Defense modifier was your AC - 10, and you rolled against the attacker's weapon attack roll. If the attacker's roll was higher than the defense roll, it would hit. Sounds all fine and dandy, until you have to deal with criticals:
The DMs would make rulings on the spot, but it was so overly complicated that no one could remember from session to session.
Ultimately, all it resulted in was combat taking longer, because everyone (including the Mobs) hit less overall. We could literally spend multiple successive rounds with no one making a hit.
What I'm trying to say here is, be careful with introducing the ideas of partial success and failure in 5e. One of 5e's best features (as compared to similar d20 systems) is it's simple, fast, and (relatively) easy to understand combat system.
I feel like this gives a benefit to melee classes that ranged classes won't have, plus I don't like rules that only apply to players and not the creatures they fight, so this would have to go for creatures as well. Also, the barbarian's reckless attack is basically overextending. So then there's the problem that every class can do something similar, so one of the barbarian's unique abilities is worthless.
Interesting article, though I am curious how you would work this with the Barbarians reckless attack. It seems to slightly take away from the reasoning behind it or I could just not understand it fully. I can see it as beneficial to others, but don't want to make any player who decide to play a Barbarian feel like they just had a class feature taken away or made pointless.
I like the point that a succeeding at cost allows players to have a narrative impact and as a DM the narrative is what I enjoy the most. If I was to use this rule I would use the "moderate version" of the rule. I see it as the character missing and then taking a wild and frustrated swing that then opens them up to a counter-attack.
I like the fluff of overextending, but as it has been mentioned, it clashes with some features and the provoking reactions might slow a player's turn or take away from their moment. If I were to use something like this in my games, I would use a different ruling:
"Once per turn, if you miss with a melee attack with which you have advantage, you may use your reaction to hit instead. If you do, the attack deals half damage. Until the start of your next turn, your AC and all saving throws you make are reduced by 2."
"Once per turn, if you miss with a melee attack, you may use your reaction to spend a hit die. If you do, roll the die and add it to your attack roll."
The first option guarantees a success assuming you have advantage, when your chances of hitting are usually higher, but at half damage. This covers a few issues like stepping on a Barbarian's Reckless Attack and the potential damage bursts like Sneak Attack and Divine Smite. Advantage is sometimes easy to get for all characters, and missing with advantage sucks more than simply missing. The drawback shows the risk of overextending, making it hard to defend yourself when you focus too much on dealing damage to the enemy.
The second option doesn't guarantee a hit, failure is still an option, has fewer to no drawbacks, but is more on the random chance of the dice with some characters having better chances than others based on class. It also limits how many times per long rest a character can overextend, giving hit dice a more relevant use in combat. Might even remove the requirement for a melee attack and make it available for any attack roll, so all characters can benefit. As a rule, it's short and simple, which feels like the primary focus of 5th edition.
I agree with having it cost a level of exhaustion. I wouldn't want a player using this every turn against weak enemies who they know won't kill them with a reaction/OA.
Interesting...