Proposed House Rule: Untrained Skills

One of the lesser issues in 5e (and also earlier editions) is that if you have two characters, one with proficiency in a skill but a low attribute and the other with no proficiency but with a high attribute, the second of these has a better chance to succeed at relevant skill checks than the one who has invested actual resources in getting 'good' at that thing.

For example: Fred the Fighter has a Cha of 10 and is trained in Intimidate. His skill modifier is therefore +2; Bob the Bard has a Cha of 18 but no proficiency; his skill modifier is +4.

Of course, it's valid to declare this to be a feature rather than a bug. It's also valid to either have a bunch of things that either a proficient character can succeed at automatically or that, conversely, an untrained character automatically fails.

But here's a proposed alternative: if you do not have training in a skill (tool, whatever), you get to apply your attribute bonus up to the maximum of your proficiency bonus.

In which case, both Fred and Bob would end up with the same skill total of +2.

This has the effect of allowing an untrained character to be as good as, but never better than, his trained companion. And, since most characters will also have at least a small bonus in their relevant attribute they'll usually be just a little behind.

Plus, it has the advantage of being a nice, simple rule that cleans up a minor annoyance.

(Of course, it does also raise a question: does this also apply to attack rolls, saving throws, and armour use, all of which have a proficiency mechanic? Though, in this case, I think I'm going to say "no".)

Wizards' Three Last Chances

For all that I like the core of 5e, it's fair to say that I've been less than impressed with a lot of what surrounds it - in particular, I've felt that the storyline books peaked a year ago and have gone backwards quite badly, I'm disappointed by the relative lack of support, and I'm particularly disappointed with the lack of support for Eberron and Dark Sun.

All of which means I'm thinking of giving up on the edition, or at least on the official releases for it, in favour of other options.

But I'll give it one last chance. "Volo's Guide to Monsters" has been out a couple of weeks, and is hopefully due to arrive from Amazon this week. I don't have high hopes for this book at all, but it might impress me. And if it does...

Actually, no, I'll give them two last chances. There's supposed to be a "major mechanical expansion" coming soon, probably next year. Maybe that will have the support I'm looking for?

Three! Three last chances: I'm not planning to buy any more of the storyline adventures set in the Forgotten Realms. However, at some point WotC might publish an adventure set in Eberron or Dark Sun (it's unlikely they'll do both in the next year or so). If they do so, I'll give that a go and see how it is.

But if none of those come to anything, it will be time to step away from this edition, just as I did with 4e. There's no foul there; it will just be that WotC won't be producing the game for me, and that's fine. All things considered, though, I kind of hope that it doesn't come to that!

The Missing Classes

The class lineup in 5e is pretty good for the most part, with only a few glaring holes. If I were to do a big book of rules charged with filling those gaps, then, I think I would introduce the following:

At least one, but probably a few, psionic classes. I think this only really needs two: the Psion and the Ardent. The Psychic Warrior should be a Fighter subclass, the Soulknife is probably a Monk subclass, and the Lurk a Rogue subclass. (Wilder is a subclass of Psion.)

An Artificer class. Subclasses would be the technomancer (the 'classic' Artificer), tinkerer (a non-magical variant - like Dragonlance's Tinker Gnomes), the alchemist, and the mountebank (think Jarlaxle - and if you don't know who that is, lucky you!).

A Warlord class. This one is mostly a matter of principle - the Warlord is the only class to appear in a 'base' PHB for any edition that doesn't currently exist in 5e. So it should exist, and it should be a class, not a subclass.

A Mageblade class. Again, a matter of principle, although a lesser one - the Elf 'class' from BECMI is also unrepresented. Plus, the advantage of this class is that then I wouldn't feel so bad about banning multiclassing.

(Though, actually, it occurs to me that the Assassin doesn't exist as a full-blown class in 5e...)

And I think that's it - just a few more classes to fill some gaps, and I think that's enough. Of course, there would be room for more, as will always be the case, but for me I think those are the big gaps.

Tome of Beasts

Of the three 5e core rulebooks, my favourite is the "Monster Manual", which has a great set of monsters, lovely artwork, and just the right amount of lore. If the MM has a weakness, however, is that it is a very 'classic' set of monsters: giants, and dragons, and orcs, and beholders, and so on and so forth. This pretty much had to be the case, of course, but it did leave me looking for something new.

Consequently, my most-wanted supplement for 5e for a long time was simple: a "Monster Manual 2", which could be crafted very easily - take the MM, remove all the monsters, replace them with other monsters, and we're done.

And that, right there, is "Tome of Beasts", a third-party book of monsters by Kobold Press, published under the OGL. It's basically another "Monster Manual", vastly expanding the range of available critters. And, at $50 for 432 pages in hardback and full-colour, it's a heck of a buy.

The book isn't quite perfect - I noticed at least one monster missing from the Table of Contents, there were a few cases where a sub-heading wasn't correctly bolded, or the chapter heading was offset by one, or a wrong word was used. (And I'm sure there are at least a few mistakes in the stat-blocks.) But those are mere quibbles. Likewise, it would have been really nice to see a table similar to the one in the DMG indicating how all the various creature traits affect the monster's effective stats, so that a DM building a variant had a good place to start. Again, though, it's always possible to find more that could be included!

This is a great, great buy - I recommend it above any other supplement for 5e to date, including both those from WotC and over other third-party producers. (If you can buy both this and "Fifth Edition Foes", then do so. But if you have to choose, this is the one to go for.) This book also probably satisfies my desire for any more 'general' monsters for 5e - I'm now potentially in the market for setting-specific books, and there are some WotC-IP monsters I'd be keen to see updated, but I'd probably not buy a simple "Tome of Beasts 2" or similar.

One last thing: I have "Volo's Guide to Monsters" on pre-order from Amazon and due to arrive in a couple of weeks. It's really going to have to go some to compete!

Encounter Distances

In the second-last session of the "Dust to Dust" campaign, I made a mistake when setting up one of the key encounters. Specifically, I had the bad guys start an excessive distance from the PCs, meaning the combat started with several rounds of the two groups moving towards one another, punctuated with ranged attacks that were, for both sides, fairly sub-optimal.

In hindsight, I think what should be done is as follows:

Missile and spell ranges should be split into two: short and long. Broadly, any thrown weapon should be short range, while bows, crossbows, and slings should allow long range attacks. (For spell and other attacks, I think I'll place the threshold at 100ft, that being a nice round number - a spell with a range any less than that is short range, anything longer is long range.)

When an encounter starts at long range, there should be one round of the two groups moving together prior to the 'real' combat, unless one of the features of the encounter is that something prevents them from coming together. In this single round, only attacks with long range can be used.

In the second and subsequent round, ranged attacks with both short and long ranges can be used. In addition, however, any combatant can use his movement to close the gap entirely, thus bringing them into melee combat range.

(Obviously, this assumes a continuation of "theatre of the mind" play - if miniatures are used then more accurate measurements are probably important. However, as I don't really intend to switch back to minis...)

Better Player #3: Do Something!

One of the great joys of RPGs is the immense freedom that they give to players. Whereas with a book or a movie you have to watch the story unfold the way the writer has decided, with an RPG the player has the agency to determine his or her own path. (And, indeed, the tabletop RPG has an advantage over even the computer version here, because a PC can deal only with the actions the coder considered when writing the game, while the DM can adapt on the fly.)

All of which is to the good, but it does give a certain responsibility to the player: you've been given the agency to decide what to do... use it!

From the "better player" perspective, then, there are a few sides to this, then.

The first of these is that, especially in combat, the player should seek to take action promptly. Whatever the situation, there probably isn't a single 'right' answer. And, especially in combat, you're character certainly doesn't have huge amounts of time to ponder the options. So, in short, GET ON WITH IT! Yes, you might not make the best choice, but you'll probably make a good choice, and that's enough.

The second comes with more open-ended situations such as exploration, mystery solving, diplomacy, and the like. In these situations, there's a risk that the party will get bogged down, not knowing how to proceed, where to go next, or they might find themselves trapped debating options endlessly (actually, this is the same problem as above, just on a party, rather than an individual, scale). Well, do something. Whether that's a case of finding some NPC to talk to, or applying pressure to the story somewhere else, or asking a question of the DM, or something. Because until the PCs do something, the game's going to sit there. But you'll find it's actually easier to change direction once it's moving than while it's stationary.

The third is the resolution of a pet peeve of mine - the player who expects the DM to bring adventure to him. Basically, a player should have some sort of actual motivation for his PC. Presumably, your guy chose to become a Fighter rather than a blacksmith for some reason - he wants something out of it, be it revenge, fortune and glory, or whatever. So, if you find yourself between quests and the DM asks "what do you want to do?", you should probably have some sort of an answer. The actual answer will depend on the character, of course, but you'd think there must be something. And if there isn't, maybe there should be.

All of which is an awful lot of words to say very little more than is in the title: to be a better player, do something!