My favorite variant rule that nobody ever talks about, even in this video, is the spell point variant from the dungeon master guide. Being able to substitute out some low level spell slots that regularly go unused for some higher level spells is amazing depending on the campaign of course. I’ve been using it in my lastest campaign and it’s been a massive relief especially bc I’m the only experienced player and somehow the only magic user in the 5 person party (other than an eldritch knight fighter)
@@BlitzkriegBryce no, it essentially converts spell slots into a mana-like system. For example a 9th level caster has 57 spell points. A 1st level spell cost 2, 2nd level 3, etc. So at that caster level 9 you could cast 26 1st level spells if you wanted to or 8 5th level spells, or something inbetween
Slow Natural Healing (DMG p267); I like to use this because it strikes a good middle ground between normal resting and gritty realism. Injuries are more likely to carry over to the following day since full healing is no longer free, but the time scale of adventuring isn't stretched out meaning a short rest in a dungeon is still possible. From full health the adventuring day operates as normal, but after a tough day of adventuring you'll start off the next day a bit softer. What this means is the DM doesn't need to have only 'big encounters' to 'almost' kill a player to make it challenging, but instead only has to aim for 'under least half hp by the end of the day', since that is all that is needed to have their next day start lower than the previous. A few days like that in a row and the party is going to be looking for a safe town or something to recover. It allows for low CR creatures to maintain relevance since a single weapon hit equates to roughly 1 hit dice worth of healing, and with only regaining half you hit dice on a long rest, spending more than half in a day means you will eventually run out at that pace, becoming more and more dependant on potions and spells to keep going, leaving less resources for damage dealing, making those mid-tier enemies start to feel as dangerous as higher CR foes since there are less novas to spare. It favors attrition and helps prevent the game devolving into rocket-tag, which is a big problem in higher tiers.
"Hitting Cover" is actually really useful for martial classes playing with a skilled DM. Generally when fighting in mobs you'll have higher AC then all other mobs and if you're able to keep tabs on initiative order for mobs you can position yourself so that you'll always have a turn for cover against ranged attackers by putting your target between the range casters/archers and yourself. Combine this with actual cover and you get a very Dynamic battlefield where Melee players get to enjoy the aspects of movement a lot more instead of "hit-pass."
I'm one one of those DMs that uses a +2 bonus when flanking instead of advantage. It's not just because it makes it too easy to get advantage, it's also because it makes a lot of abilities that give advantage redundant: such as Pact Tactics, Reckless Attack and my biggest sticking point, the Help action. Why waste an action to give someone advantage when you can just stand on an opposite side? Why grant advantage on all attacks against you when you can just stand on an opposing side? It's these reasons I don't like the flanking rules as written
This Flanking devalues every other way of getting advantage to the point where it's not worth using them, and that actually ends up taking combat options and strategies away from the game. Why would you reckless if you can just stand in a spot amd get the same benefits for no cost? Why waste a slot on faerie fire? Why knock something prone? You basically devalue all these options to the point where they are not options worth considering.
I do similar, but instead of a static bonus, it's the number of creatures that are flanking. So, if you're flanking with 1 other creature, +2, but if you and 7 allies surround a medium or small enemy, that's +8. But it also applies to enemies. So those wolves with pack tactics that surround the fighter? +8 and advantage.
Or shoving someone prone. Advantage flanking is especially hilarious when the DM tries to flank as well, and everyone just forms one long chain across the battlefield. Oftentimes it's also in favour of the monsters anyway, as there's more of them and suddenly your party suffers a bunch of crits. I have enough difficulty not TPKing them with a normal chance to crit.
I have 1 small addition to the +2 rule though: you can take the Hide action against a creature that you are flanking, even if you are not obscured. On a success you gain advantage on your next attack roll against the target before the end of your next turn. You know, for them Rogues.
The variant uses of ability scores sounds like a great way of encouraging players to perform a skill they're not proficient or naturally skilled (high stat) at. Too many times have I wanted to intimidate someone with my fighter/barbarian with charisma as my dump stat and an 18 in strength, only to roll a poor charisma intimidation roll. It could be used for medicine or religion as well. Wisdom Religion could be remembering tales or communing with the spirits that follow your patron for vague answers, intelligence medicine could easily just be applying and understanding the medicine in a more scientific way.
Advantage in 4E used to mean +2, so for me and my friends who used to play it a lot, that's what flanking always meant. I really like the cleaving rule, because casters have one very distinct difference to melee, casters don't have to be on the frontline to cast their AoE spells while melee often have to put their life on the line to be effective. Melee are also hit by both enemy melee and casters, so giving them an edge with cleaving, considering it's extremely conditional by needing to actually kill the enemies, sounds great to me.
I have an idea for a homebrew variant rule: if you have advantage from multiple sources (ie Vanilla Flanking, Pack Tactics, Reckless Attack, and Help Action), in addition to having advantage, every source of advantage gives +1 to your roll
I hoped for spell points (mana) variant rule. It gives so much flexibility to casters and it only starts to be worse than the regular spell slot from ~16th level.
The only reason why i don't use the flanking rule as written (beyond playing theater of the mind) is because advantage is already relatively easy to get. I'm also a GM who likes to give advantage if the player does something creative or exciting. It basically turns every combat into a dance where everyone has advantage, and any feature that gives advantage will be wasted, because you can only get advantage once (and there's a lot of features that exist to give advantage). If I were to use a flanking rule, it'd definitely be just a +1 or +2 to attack rolls, because it's still easy to do, it still gives you a nice little boost, but you don't feel like you're playing inefficiently if you happen to not get it on every attack.
Fighting Spirit (Samurai Fighter Only) Wreakless Attack (Barbarian Only) Faerie Fire (Artificer, Bard, Druid, Drow Twilight Cleric Only) Devil's Sight + Darkness (Warlock Only*) Pact Tactics (Kobold, Monster Exclusive) Help Action (Mastermind Rogue, Hobgoblin Only (Bonus Action) Prone (Strength Based, Melee Only) Steady Aim (Rogues Only) Advantage can be given in many different ways, but they require you to be playing a specific Class, Subclass, or Race. And each method comes with their own ups (Advantage) and downside. Which Flanking also has. Most notably is that both creatures have to be right beside the creature their flanking.
Proficiency dice is another great variant rule, brings another layer of risk into the game, while also letting players roll more dice, and from my experience a lot of players don’t want to bother rolling the dice and just use the bonus unless they’re making an important check, where they go for that extra 0.5 average to allow for the super heroic feel of suddenly getting lucky and succeed when it really matters, like protagonists in a movie
I didn't know what it was, so I searched: DMG: www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/dungeon-masters-workshop#ProficiencyDice discussion: www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/2292-have-you-used-the-proficiency-die-option Question - if you have dis/advantage, do you roll two proficiency dice, or always just one?
@@VanBurenPhilips any DM can decide for their own games if you roll one or two, but RAW, just one. The only situation where two dice are rolled is when you have expertise in something
One rule I use at my table is that all Healing Potions restore their maximum amount of hit points instead of rolling for it. I feel it makes them more worth getting, especially for parties without a proper healer. There’s no worse feeling then rolling 2 1’s on that potion of healing you just bought
Our table's custom potion rules were: Action: Full healing amount to self, or roll to heal someone else. Bonus Action: Roll to heal yourself. This made it so dedicating a turn to using a potion means getting the full benefits, but feeding one to someone else isn't as effective (as the person's often unconscious and the main goal just getting them back up). But it also gives you the option of using a potion on yourself as a bonus action, if you're willing to sacrifice some of the healing you receive.
The two most impactful optional rules are, hands down, Feats and Multiclassing. They are so ubiquitous that most people don't even know they are optional rules.
As a DM, the only big issue I see with that is the rogue class, since the sneak attack triggers on advantage, it makes sneak attack farming super easy. Personally, it's not that big of a deal for me, I adjust the monsters HP to make them a bit meatier so that they can put a fight (when necessary, let them have their fun wrecking a couple of low-tier henchmen), but yeah. I can see why a DM who doesn't feel like experimenting around (or is simply starting as a DM) would rather not have to deal with this.
@@Nokugan Rogues already get sneak attack by virtue of "flanking" even without actual flanking, as per the rules to sneak attack. Advantage does make it more guaranteed that their sneak lands, though.
Many people do believe that, and mainly because flanking was indeed a standard rule in previous editions and never really checked if it was still a rule in 5th.
For me, the reason why adding disarm is fine, even when the battlemaster has Disarming Attack maneuver is because Disarming Attack will still do all the damage, AND you can add a d8 to wit, while regular disarm does no damage. I feel like we need stuff like this for all martial classes and spellcasting equivalents where you can still do the action, but there's a tradeoff. but if you're class specializes in it (like battle master) it should be superior in every way because they trained for it. And if there's no way to make it weaker, buff the maneuver and use the old version as the baseline
Regular disarm is still kind of absurd. Your chance to disarm is going to be much better then your chance to hit, and you get to remove their weapon from the fight, basically ensuring that you win. And as a dm, if my players started using this you can be sure I would. And a dms creatures will have advantage because they are likely larger. It turns combat into a weird dance of constant disarming to try and get weapons back from everyone all the time.
love the healing surge and hero points it will help with games i run for new players that are normally 2-3 and most of the time don't have a healer and ive always used flanking in all games ive run and played in xD didnt run into any dms who didnt use it lol
One i use in my games is during combat that i very much tweak a bit and change a little during each time to suit the story needs. players can "Sprint" it uses movement, action and bonus action and they move 3 times their movement speed but they have to do it in a straight line. Any enemies within 5' (10' for longer melee weapons) can use their reaction and attempt an opportunity attack. If they hit the target goes prone. If they are running in a straight line at a target and go more than 2 times their normal movements but before their maximum 3 times they can attempt to grapple the target for free. I also depending on the terrien they are sprinting through may have them roll a d20 dex check. Though with this house rule i very much play it by ear as to the factors of the dex difficulty and if they roll like super high lets say and part of the path is through difficult terrien i may have them ignore the movement penalty, or if they are carrying something heavy or wearing cumbersome armor i may make the chrck harder again just very much one of those things that its best to rule it depending on the situation. Players have made some crazy plays with this that hsve gone both good and badly for them. My probably favorite was when a hasted fighter made a chage half way across the map, dodged like 3 opportunity attacks and successful grappled and basically tackled the leader of the group to the floor.
I am actually shocked you did not talk about variant rests. Shorter short rests or gritty realism long rests on page 267 of the DMG. I use the shorter short rests and several other variants with homebrews. I have found Flanking to be better when it gives a +2 allowing you to also get advantage elsewhere. Also if surrounding the enemies with 3 or more characters it becomes a +5. This really helps mobs and swarms hit the PCs who typically have far higher AC than their puny attacks can hit. Also though huge and bigger creatures have resistances to be flanked or surrounded. I have found it to be really balanced. I have also used a tweaked version of Healing Surges. All hit die are recovered on a long rest but none on a short rest. Then a Healing Surge can use 1/3rd of hit die so at 6th level is 2 hit die, at 9th level will be 3 hit die, and so on. I think it is good for characters that desperately need healing and can spend an action in combat away from danger to do so. It doesn't get used much but I think it is nice to have that emergency option. Finally our Hero Points are re-rolls and are given out once per session with sometimes extras given out as bonuses for solving optional puzzles and stuff like that.
I give out inspiration liberally rather than use flanking or other bonuses. At the start of each session, I highlight good roleplaying or clever ideas from the last session and give those players inspiration. They know they'll get more and can only hold one, so they don't horde it.
I had a rule i used in my game, there were multiple countries, each had some kind of perk or feat like one countrys known for its are so 1+ charisma and any art supplies with proficency and expertise
You have to be on opposite sides for flanking to work. It says so in the text you put on the screen. The imaginary line has to either go through opposite sides of the square or through opposite corners. The image you are showing would not grant advantage, because the line is going through the left side, and the top side. Also flanking is pretty much the most common variant rule in the game.
I believe NADDPOD did something like a Healing surge in their podcast via an Amulet of the paladins god since they were a 3 person party (druid paladin and fighter)
my rules for cover is simple, same size creatures equals half cover, creatures of one size more are 3/4 cover, creatures that are two sizes bigger provide full cover
I've used the disarm variant rule before, its not good. It makes it way too easy to disarm opponents, and sense you can pick up a dropped weapon as an interact with objects, every player and creature would try to disarm until it succeeded.
Such a strategy seems like it could be easily defeated by carrying one or more backup weapons, which can similarly be deployed with an object interact at the start of your turn, and with adequate prep, your opponent(s) are likely to run out of hands before you run out of options.
I know once I had a dm who had ranged crit fails could hit others. My monk made them stop that after I caught one that hit me and dunked the arrow on the enemy. They flat out said immediately after that "we aren't doing that crit fail rule again" after we all had a good laugh about it Also, on disarm, I think the sizes are advantage/disadvantage on THEIR roll
The best variant rule, and one I recommend using in every campaign with new players is Proficiency Dice. Often an issue with teaching people D&D5e is that new players have a hard time distinguishing their ability score modifier and their Proficiency modifiers. Almost everyone has seen a new player foolishly add their Proficiency modifiers modifiers to their damage at least once. Proficiency dice turns your Proficiency modifiers into a dice equal to double the modifier. So a +2 modifier becomes a 1d4 modifier, a +3 into a 1d6, so on and so forth. What this does is separate the ability and Proficiency modifiers into two very different bonuses to a roll, which in turn helps new players learn the difference. In terms of actual balancing, it neither helps nor hinders the players stat, because while obviously you could potentially roll double your Proficiency score, you could also potentially roll a one. It fully balances itself out in that regard. Oh, and of course, players also just love to roll bigger dice pools, so giving them more dice to roll for their big attack is usually gonna be more fun for players, so that's a benefit for the rule as well.
flanking rule does require to be on opposite sides of the enemy " If the line passes through opposite sides or corners of the enemy's space, the enemy is flanked."
Is the adventurer's league modules set in everon used hero points. However, they use a variant where at the beginning of each adventure the characters have one hero point, and can at times earn additional heroic points for performing certain heroic actions. Because each of these modules is written to be played in 4 hours and it is expected that the characters will level up at the end of each 4 hour session this change to allowing one hero point with the possibility of earning 1 or maybe 2 others depending on how heroic the character's behavior is an amazing adaptation.
hero points are nice, but I much prefer the Mutants & Masterminds 3e version. Instead of being per level, they’re per session. You start each session with zero hero points, and you earn points by encountering Flaws or Complications of your character. I think the addition of Complications makes them much more interesting because it rewards heroes going through tough times instead of being a one note badass 24/7. That said, I’m sure you could use D&D’s flaws in much a similar way, but it would require player buy-in and a little bit of elbow grease. Generally in M&M3e a character has a ton of complications and it’s an ever-changing list as the character grows and progresses.
I use something similar to Hero Points, but I have them refresh every session, and the pool never increases. When used on a Death Save, they don't don't turn a failure into a success, they just negate the failure. I rarely hear Spell Points mentioned. I wonder if I'm among the few who uses this variant rule.
Hi, I have a question about character creation. I have a Character named Malisa Chocolata, and she is a creation of a forgotten cult.And the problem is that she is an abomination Half human and half creature, so I was wondering if I can use the bases of the "Dragon born" Race as a reference point.Because the story of the character is that she has to become Queen, and create her own Colony as Queen to save the forgotten cult that created her .(The cult worshiped Insect & Human hybrids as divine apparitions) And my problem is that I don't know how to mechanically create a character that is an aspiring queen, cold and calculating in battle as well as ruthless with whoever becomes an obstacle ,in the purpose that she has life.And I am looking for a class that meets these requirements , if anyone knows of any class and explains it to me in a simplified way I would be very grateful .
I played a pretty ruthless queen type some time ago, I decided to go with enchantment wizard for instinctive charm at 6th level. It was baked into her story that she had had upwards of 8 husbands because whenever someone would try to assassinate her, she would use instinctive charm to make the attack hit her husband instead. It's usually a difficult feature to use because you want an enemy to have another enemy in melee range of it, but not another ally, and that's bad for you. But if you don't care about that enemy hitting your ally instead? well, it has no resource cost, so spam away. They have more hit points than you anyway, they can take it. If you wanna go more martial you can branch out after level 6, personally I like Psi Warrior, but artificer multiclasses are cool too.
"aspiring queen, cold and calculating in battle as well as ruthless with whoever becomes an obstacle" What you describe there are called your character's personnality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws... It's as nothing to do with your class but everything to how you roleplay your character.
instead of heroic points, I stole adversity tokens from the Kids on Brooms system presented by Dimension 20's Misfits and Magic. It's altered a little bit since D&D rolls and fails rolls a lot more often. On a nat1 of any d20 roll (referred to as a d20 test now in One D&D) they earn an adversity token. They can use the tokens in the same way, boosting their d20 rolls by 1 per token used, or an ally's roll by 2 per token used. I don't allow it on every d20 roll out of combat, and a character has to be able to provide meaningful help to another to use their tokens for them. My players have used them to great success recently even though they started off mainly forgetting about them. One recently used his to boost a religion check well beyond what he should've been capable of (only a +2) up to a 26 and because he pushed well past his limits I let him have a vision from his god. Pro-tip: if you're using a system similar to heroic points/adversity tokens and your players mainly ignore them- try hosting a Call of Cthulhu one shot. The luck points in CoC really drove home how important the adversity tokens were. And being a one shot let them think of them as pretty disposable since they didn't have to ration them out- it was use it or lose it for the session. Since adversity tokens do come back on a 5% chance every d20 roll.... they tend to get a lot to use.
Do the rules for mass combat count as a variant? The one where you calculate the number of enemies that need to attack as a group to score a hit, instead of rolling for each individual enemy in a large group.
That's this page about "Handling Mobs" and it's not written as a Variant or, as this video should be called, "Optional Rule" www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/running-the-game#HandlingMobs It definitely functions like an optional rule in that it doesn't get used all that often from what I've seen, but it's not technically an optional rule in the most literal meaning. For reference, right below that, under "Using Miniatures," are the optional rules for 'Flanking,' 'Diagonals,' and 'Facing,' formatted as "Optional Rule: ______"
"Flanking on Squares. When a creature and at least one of its allies are adjacent to an enemy and on opposite sides or corners of the enemy’s space, they flank that enemy, and each of them has advantage on melee attack rolls against that enemy. When in doubt about whether two creatures flank an enemy on a grid, trace an imaginary line between the centers of the creatures’ spaces. If the line passes through opposite sides or corners of the enemy’s space, the enemy is flanked." so RAW you can't do the move you said. you have to be on exact opposite sides. not the weird cornering thing.
Hitting Cover as written is weird, because if that cover is provided by, say, an ally standing between you and the enemy, then you can end up shooting your ally because you *almost* hit the enemy. Where otherwise hitting an ally instead would be something the DM would have happen if you roll *abysmally* low.
Hit your ally because you rolled a Nat 1? Sure, that’s how the dice go sometimes. Hit your ally because you rolled 17 against what’s now 18 AC? Feels like utter BS.
Hitting your ally because your tried to shoot at an enemy that was standing behind him totally makes more sense than suddently hitting the dungeon's ceiling or some random tree 300 feet away...
13:20 "I would obviouslly suggest it to everyone else" I would NOT! I'm a DM, I already have enough problems with using hellhounds in my game (They have advantage on every attack just by standing next to another) they are 3 lvl of challenge rating, my players were 4lvl, I already used less than I wanted to, HALFED ALL OF THEIR DEALT DMG from the combat start, and ignored their breath weapon - my players were almost dead after 4 rounds, because they decided to try run away (so few opportunity attacks on each of them, every round - PCs have 30ft speed, hellhounds 50ft... AND EACH OF THESE ATTACKS HAD ADVANTAGE...) Now imagine having flanking rules: most of the encounters with... gnolls, wolfs - they travel in packs, and wolfs know to try and surround their pray; goblins, gnomes - they are intellectual enough to think in order to take advantage from positioning themselves; even stupid phase spiders, if you think about it well, they can't shot web like giant spiders, but they have a web walker feat, so it's more than likely that they are working together (yes, i know, spiders are mostly solitare, but there are like dozen of species that are SOCIAL. So yeah, giant spiders in d&d might just be one of those social species), and Phase Spiders have int of 6 and wis of 10, they totally know how to use their blinking feat "Ethereal Jaunt" to pop up right behind PC's back before attacking him. Imagine having flanking rules... Those encounters? They would be WORSE THAN DEADLY for your player's PCs. And so a pain in the ass for a DM to create an INTERESTING, challenging, scary, but not deadly encounter. Espacially since most of the time in order to balance action economy you do need to have more opponents than PCs. So what - you will have sneeky goblins and you will just... not make them attack from upfront and behind? To not kill your players, with giving Goblins an advantage for each attack thanks to flanking rules? Yeah, just don't use them - don't make your own life as a DM harder...
Because in pathfinder there is a good balance between martials and casters and half-casters. And as you can see D&D is sucking up to castes. As long as there is a rule to makes caster stronger it's fine but if there is one for martials than this is cosidered as " OP ". Strixhaven is the purest prove to it. Castes are just favored by D&D.
Well, isn’t that sort of a given? At least on attacks that’s an insta fail no questions asked, and you’d need a pretty particular set of circumstances (very low DC/very high mod) to pull a success out of a 1 ability check as well, and at that point what’s even the point of rolling
Whew, variant encumbrance isn't on the list. Now for a part 2 video where it's just all of Tasha's, unless there's a difference between "variant" and "optional."
@@Sephiroth517 I mean, when this system has "creature" mean "creature" and "creature that has died within [timeframe]" mean "object," I want to at least try to keep my definitions in line XD
To dig deeper into it, a variant rule is a different way to handle a rule that already exist. While an optional rule is a new rule that did not already exists. In summary, a "variant" modify a rule, an "optional" adds a rule.
Constitution for intimidation has much more sense than charisma. I already laugh at our DM when he once tried to intimidate my character with small gnome with high charisma when I played rune knight fighter yuan-ti with 2.5 meters of hight.
I can agree with flanking being too OP as a rogue addict. An example of a homebrew is Jocat (I would do this as well) homebrewing it to be a +2 to damage hits, rather than advantage.
the DM is a referee, this means all these complex statements are worthless at most tables...meaning these type of rule set is for DMs who refuse emergent story telling... so dont hop on their train lol
Stop using flanking if your players are strategically minded. Flanking is so easy to get that it makes every other way to get advantage not worth considering. Things like knocking prone, restrains, blinds, faerie fire, reckless attacks, and subclasses that grant advantage get so devalued that they aren't worth taking. Let melee use rules like shove prone and climb onto larger creature to get advantage and you will have much more dynamic combats. If you want to use a form of flanking, use a +1 with bounded accuracy that still makes a difference. Advantage equates at a +5 to hit and a bonus that massive shouldn't be so easy to get.
Hitting cover is an incentive for people to give up long range combat. So nope. Bad af. I don't want more spellcasters in my games. Using other attributes is great. Breaks the 'everyone has high dex' as well. Auto success is a good time saving rule. It isn't more than that. Disarm: bad. Melee doesn't need more nerfs. I love mark, flaking and cleave. When my first adventure made by myself gets where I want, I'm gonna use'm. Melee needs help in dnd. Simple as that. I like healing surge, but I think I'd homebrew it. I don't like hero points. Dnd characters rarely die, and hero points ensure death's meaninglessness.
Long range combatants will likely have Sharpshooter anyway and the allows them to ignore cover. The spellcasters are the ones that have to worry about it. So if anything, it encourages fewer spellcasters by using the cover rules.
The rules for hitting cover are incredibly stupid. Imagine missing by 3 then using your bardic inspiration and rolling a 1 or 2, suddenly you're not only missing your target but also hitting your friend.
![Top 10 Commonly Misunderstood Rules [Part 2] DnD 5E](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AvhRgegBeug/mqdefault.jpg)
My favorite variant rule that nobody ever talks about, even in this video, is the spell point variant from the dungeon master guide. Being able to substitute out some low level spell slots that regularly go unused for some higher level spells is amazing depending on the campaign of course. I’ve been using it in my lastest campaign and it’s been a massive relief especially bc I’m the only experienced player and somehow the only magic user in the 5 person party (other than an eldritch knight fighter)
How does the rule work? Is it like “exhaust a 2nd level slot and a 1st level slot to use a 3rd level spell”?
What page is that on?
@@Smashblood101 I’m not sure, I use dnd Beyond but it’s in the Creating New Player Options section
@@BlitzkriegBryce no, it essentially converts spell slots into a mana-like system. For example a 9th level caster has 57 spell points. A 1st level spell cost 2, 2nd level 3, etc. So at that caster level 9 you could cast 26 1st level spells if you wanted to or 8 5th level spells, or something inbetween
OMG I LOVE IT! THANKS FOR SHARING INFO ABOUT IT!
Slow Natural Healing (DMG p267); I like to use this because it strikes a good middle ground between normal resting and gritty realism. Injuries are more likely to carry over to the following day since full healing is no longer free, but the time scale of adventuring isn't stretched out meaning a short rest in a dungeon is still possible.
From full health the adventuring day operates as normal, but after a tough day of adventuring you'll start off the next day a bit softer.
What this means is the DM doesn't need to have only 'big encounters' to 'almost' kill a player to make it challenging, but instead only has to aim for 'under least half hp by the end of the day', since that is all that is needed to have their next day start lower than the previous. A few days like that in a row and the party is going to be looking for a safe town or something to recover.
It allows for low CR creatures to maintain relevance since a single weapon hit equates to roughly 1 hit dice worth of healing, and with only regaining half you hit dice on a long rest, spending more than half in a day means you will eventually run out at that pace, becoming more and more dependant on potions and spells to keep going, leaving less resources for damage dealing, making those mid-tier enemies start to feel as dangerous as higher CR foes since there are less novas to spare.
It favors attrition and helps prevent the game devolving into rocket-tag, which is a big problem in higher tiers.
Feats are variant rules? That's pretty amazing to hear.
Continue to love this content despite having yet to sit down and play a single session.
"Hitting Cover" is actually really useful for martial classes playing with a skilled DM. Generally when fighting in mobs you'll have higher AC then all other mobs and if you're able to keep tabs on initiative order for mobs you can position yourself so that you'll always have a turn for cover against ranged attackers by putting your target between the range casters/archers and yourself. Combine this with actual cover and you get a very Dynamic battlefield where Melee players get to enjoy the aspects of movement a lot more instead of "hit-pass."
I'm one one of those DMs that uses a +2 bonus when flanking instead of advantage. It's not just because it makes it too easy to get advantage, it's also because it makes a lot of abilities that give advantage redundant: such as Pact Tactics, Reckless Attack and my biggest sticking point, the Help action.
Why waste an action to give someone advantage when you can just stand on an opposite side? Why grant advantage on all attacks against you when you can just stand on an opposing side?
It's these reasons I don't like the flanking rules as written
This
Flanking devalues every other way of getting advantage to the point where it's not worth using them, and that actually ends up taking combat options and strategies away from the game. Why would you reckless if you can just stand in a spot amd get the same benefits for no cost? Why waste a slot on faerie fire? Why knock something prone? You basically devalue all these options to the point where they are not options worth considering.
I do similar, but instead of a static bonus, it's the number of creatures that are flanking. So, if you're flanking with 1 other creature, +2, but if you and 7 allies surround a medium or small enemy, that's +8.
But it also applies to enemies. So those wolves with pack tactics that surround the fighter? +8 and advantage.
@@beaug4306 not if you have a DM where Advantage stacks lol yes I know I'm definitely an outlier here
Or shoving someone prone. Advantage flanking is especially hilarious when the DM tries to flank as well, and everyone just forms one long chain across the battlefield. Oftentimes it's also in favour of the monsters anyway, as there's more of them and suddenly your party suffers a bunch of crits. I have enough difficulty not TPKing them with a normal chance to crit.
I have 1 small addition to the +2 rule though: you can take the Hide action against a creature that you are flanking, even if you are not obscured. On a success you gain advantage on your next attack roll against the target before the end of your next turn.
You know, for them Rogues.
Diagonals is the best variant rule in the game
The variant uses of ability scores sounds like a great way of encouraging players to perform a skill they're not proficient or naturally skilled (high stat) at. Too many times have I wanted to intimidate someone with my fighter/barbarian with charisma as my dump stat and an 18 in strength, only to roll a poor charisma intimidation roll.
It could be used for medicine or religion as well. Wisdom Religion could be remembering tales or communing with the spirits that follow your patron for vague answers, intelligence medicine could easily just be applying and understanding the medicine in a more scientific way.
Kind of ridiculous that medicine is listed as wisdom and not intelligence if you ask me.
Advantage in 4E used to mean +2, so for me and my friends who used to play it a lot, that's what flanking always meant.
I really like the cleaving rule, because casters have one very distinct difference to melee, casters don't have to be on the frontline to cast their AoE spells while melee often have to put their life on the line to be effective. Melee are also hit by both enemy melee and casters, so giving them an edge with cleaving, considering it's extremely conditional by needing to actually kill the enemies, sounds great to me.
I have an idea for a homebrew variant rule: if you have advantage from multiple sources (ie Vanilla Flanking, Pack Tactics, Reckless Attack, and Help Action), in addition to having advantage, every source of advantage gives +1 to your roll
I hoped for spell points (mana) variant rule. It gives so much flexibility to casters and it only starts to be worse than the regular spell slot from ~16th level.
I prefer spell points, since I prefer to spam lower level spells anyway.
The Iron Kingdoms: Requiem book from Privateer Press has a ‘fatigue’ spell casting system that is essentially mana points. Very nice system.
Casters don't need help. They are already favored heavily in dnd.
The only reason why i don't use the flanking rule as written (beyond playing theater of the mind) is because advantage is already relatively easy to get. I'm also a GM who likes to give advantage if the player does something creative or exciting. It basically turns every combat into a dance where everyone has advantage, and any feature that gives advantage will be wasted, because you can only get advantage once (and there's a lot of features that exist to give advantage). If I were to use a flanking rule, it'd definitely be just a +1 or +2 to attack rolls, because it's still easy to do, it still gives you a nice little boost, but you don't feel like you're playing inefficiently if you happen to not get it on every attack.
Fighting Spirit (Samurai Fighter Only)
Wreakless Attack (Barbarian Only)
Faerie Fire (Artificer, Bard, Druid, Drow Twilight Cleric Only)
Devil's Sight + Darkness (Warlock Only*)
Pact Tactics (Kobold, Monster Exclusive)
Help Action (Mastermind Rogue, Hobgoblin Only (Bonus Action)
Prone (Strength Based, Melee Only)
Steady Aim (Rogues Only)
Advantage can be given in many different ways, but they require you to be playing a specific Class, Subclass, or Race. And each method comes with their own ups (Advantage) and downside. Which Flanking also has. Most notably is that both creatures have to be right beside the creature their flanking.
Proficiency dice is another great variant rule, brings another layer of risk into the game, while also letting players roll more dice, and from my experience a lot of players don’t want to bother rolling the dice and just use the bonus unless they’re making an important check, where they go for that extra 0.5 average to allow for the super heroic feel of suddenly getting lucky and succeed when it really matters, like protagonists in a movie
I didn't know what it was, so I searched:
DMG: www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/dungeon-masters-workshop#ProficiencyDice
discussion: www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/2292-have-you-used-the-proficiency-die-option
Question - if you have dis/advantage, do you roll two proficiency dice, or always just one?
@@VanBurenPhilips any DM can decide for their own games if you roll one or two, but RAW, just one. The only situation where two dice are rolled is when you have expertise in something
One rule I use at my table is that all Healing Potions restore their maximum amount of hit points instead of rolling for it. I feel it makes them more worth getting, especially for parties without a proper healer. There’s no worse feeling then rolling 2 1’s on that potion of healing you just bought
Our table's custom potion rules were:
Action: Full healing amount to self, or roll to heal someone else.
Bonus Action: Roll to heal yourself.
This made it so dedicating a turn to using a potion means getting the full benefits, but feeding one to someone else isn't as effective (as the person's often unconscious and the main goal just getting them back up). But it also gives you the option of using a potion on yourself as a bonus action, if you're willing to sacrifice some of the healing you receive.
The two most impactful optional rules are, hands down, Feats and Multiclassing. They are so ubiquitous that most people don't even know they are optional rules.
I definitely always thought the flanking rule was standard. The balancing factor is that it applies to PC's and monsters
As a DM, the only big issue I see with that is the rogue class, since the sneak attack triggers on advantage, it makes sneak attack farming super easy. Personally, it's not that big of a deal for me, I adjust the monsters HP to make them a bit meatier so that they can put a fight (when necessary, let them have their fun wrecking a couple of low-tier henchmen), but yeah. I can see why a DM who doesn't feel like experimenting around (or is simply starting as a DM) would rather not have to deal with this.
@@Nokugan Rogues already get sneak attack by virtue of "flanking" even without actual flanking, as per the rules to sneak attack. Advantage does make it more guaranteed that their sneak lands, though.
Many people do believe that, and mainly because flanking was indeed a standard rule in previous editions and never really checked if it was still a rule in 5th.
necromancers when flanking rules- :D
necromancer when cleaving rules- :(
For me, the reason why adding disarm is fine, even when the battlemaster has Disarming Attack maneuver is because Disarming Attack will still do all the damage, AND you can add a d8 to wit, while regular disarm does no damage.
I feel like we need stuff like this for all martial classes and spellcasting equivalents where you can still do the action, but there's a tradeoff. but if you're class specializes in it (like battle master) it should be superior in every way because they trained for it.
And if there's no way to make it weaker, buff the maneuver and use the old version as the baseline
Regular disarm is still kind of absurd. Your chance to disarm is going to be much better then your chance to hit, and you get to remove their weapon from the fight, basically ensuring that you win. And as a dm, if my players started using this you can be sure I would. And a dms creatures will have advantage because they are likely larger. It turns combat into a weird dance of constant disarming to try and get weapons back from everyone all the time.
love the healing surge and hero points it will help with games i run for new players that are normally 2-3 and most of the time don't have a healer
and ive always used flanking in all games ive run and played in xD didnt run into any dms who didnt use it lol
Mark was one of my favorite mechanics in 4e and I already had it as a feat for characters when I play 5e. But it's cool they made it a varient rule.
One i use in my games is during combat that i very much tweak a bit and change a little during each time to suit the story needs. players can "Sprint" it uses movement, action and bonus action and they move 3 times their movement speed but they have to do it in a straight line. Any enemies within 5' (10' for longer melee weapons) can use their reaction and attempt an opportunity attack. If they hit the target goes prone. If they are running in a straight line at a target and go more than 2 times their normal movements but before their maximum 3 times they can attempt to grapple the target for free. I also depending on the terrien they are sprinting through may have them roll a d20 dex check. Though with this house rule i very much play it by ear as to the factors of the dex difficulty and if they roll like super high lets say and part of the path is through difficult terrien i may have them ignore the movement penalty, or if they are carrying something heavy or wearing cumbersome armor i may make the chrck harder again just very much one of those things that its best to rule it depending on the situation. Players have made some crazy plays with this that hsve gone both good and badly for them. My probably favorite was when a hasted fighter made a chage half way across the map, dodged like 3 opportunity attacks and successful grappled and basically tackled the leader of the group to the floor.
I am actually shocked you did not talk about variant rests. Shorter short rests or gritty realism long rests on page 267 of the DMG. I use the shorter short rests and several other variants with homebrews.
I have found Flanking to be better when it gives a +2 allowing you to also get advantage elsewhere. Also if surrounding the enemies with 3 or more characters it becomes a +5. This really helps mobs and swarms hit the PCs who typically have far higher AC than their puny attacks can hit. Also though huge and bigger creatures have resistances to be flanked or surrounded. I have found it to be really balanced.
I have also used a tweaked version of Healing Surges. All hit die are recovered on a long rest but none on a short rest. Then a Healing Surge can use 1/3rd of hit die so at 6th level is 2 hit die, at 9th level will be 3 hit die, and so on. I think it is good for characters that desperately need healing and can spend an action in combat away from danger to do so. It doesn't get used much but I think it is nice to have that emergency option.
Finally our Hero Points are re-rolls and are given out once per session with sometimes extras given out as bonuses for solving optional puzzles and stuff like that.
I give out inspiration liberally rather than use flanking or other bonuses. At the start of each session, I highlight good roleplaying or clever ideas from the last session and give those players inspiration. They know they'll get more and can only hold one, so they don't horde it.
I had a rule i used in my game, there were multiple countries, each had some kind of perk or feat like one countrys known for its are so 1+ charisma and any art supplies with proficency and expertise
You have to be on opposite sides for flanking to work. It says so in the text you put on the screen. The imaginary line has to either go through opposite sides of the square or through opposite corners. The image you are showing would not grant advantage, because the line is going through the left side, and the top side.
Also flanking is pretty much the most common variant rule in the game.
I believe NADDPOD did something like a Healing surge in their podcast via an Amulet of the paladins god since they were a 3 person party (druid paladin and fighter)
my rules for cover is simple, same size creatures equals half cover, creatures of one size more are 3/4 cover, creatures that are two sizes bigger provide full cover
I've used the disarm variant rule before, its not good. It makes it way too easy to disarm opponents, and sense you can pick up a dropped weapon as an interact with objects, every player and creature would try to disarm until it succeeded.
Such a strategy seems like it could be easily defeated by carrying one or more backup weapons, which can similarly be deployed with an object interact at the start of your turn, and with adequate prep, your opponent(s) are likely to run out of hands before you run out of options.
@@kingfail3819 I like to use disarm against casters to make them drop their magic focus item.
I frequently use alternative ability scores for different skill checks.
I know once I had a dm who had ranged crit fails could hit others.
My monk made them stop that after I caught one that hit me and dunked the arrow on the enemy. They flat out said immediately after that "we aren't doing that crit fail rule again" after we all had a good laugh about it
Also, on disarm, I think the sizes are advantage/disadvantage on THEIR roll
The best variant rule, and one I recommend using in every campaign with new players is Proficiency Dice.
Often an issue with teaching people D&D5e is that new players have a hard time distinguishing their ability score modifier and their Proficiency modifiers. Almost everyone has seen a new player foolishly add their Proficiency modifiers modifiers to their damage at least once.
Proficiency dice turns your Proficiency modifiers into a dice equal to double the modifier. So a +2 modifier becomes a 1d4 modifier, a +3 into a 1d6, so on and so forth.
What this does is separate the ability and Proficiency modifiers into two very different bonuses to a roll, which in turn helps new players learn the difference.
In terms of actual balancing, it neither helps nor hinders the players stat, because while obviously you could potentially roll double your Proficiency score, you could also potentially roll a one. It fully balances itself out in that regard.
Oh, and of course, players also just love to roll bigger dice pools, so giving them more dice to roll for their big attack is usually gonna be more fun for players, so that's a benefit for the rule as well.
How about a top 10 mobility items? Items that increase your maneuverability either in combat or out of it
I am really surprised that Point Buy or The Standard Array did not make the list.
flanking rule does require to be on opposite sides of the enemy " If the line passes through opposite sides or corners of the enemy's space, the enemy is flanked."
Is the adventurer's league modules set in everon used hero points. However, they use a variant where at the beginning of each adventure the characters have one hero point, and can at times earn additional heroic points for performing certain heroic actions. Because each of these modules is written to be played in 4 hours and it is expected that the characters will level up at the end of each 4 hour session this change to allowing one hero point with the possibility of earning 1 or maybe 2 others depending on how heroic the character's behavior is an amazing adaptation.
hero points are nice, but I much prefer the Mutants & Masterminds 3e version. Instead of being per level, they’re per session. You start each session with zero hero points, and you earn points by encountering Flaws or Complications of your character. I think the addition of Complications makes them much more interesting because it rewards heroes going through tough times instead of being a one note badass 24/7. That said, I’m sure you could use D&D’s flaws in much a similar way, but it would require player buy-in and a little bit of elbow grease. Generally in M&M3e a character has a ton of complications and it’s an ever-changing list as the character grows and progresses.
I use something similar to Hero Points, but I have them refresh every session, and the pool never increases. When used on a Death Save, they don't don't turn a failure into a success, they just negate the failure.
I rarely hear Spell Points mentioned. I wonder if I'm among the few who uses this variant rule.
Just commenting a request for a list on Arcane Focuses (the special ones with bonuses as opposed to the default ones any caster can select at start)
My DM removed the flanking bonus to a +2 instead of advantage, saying because he said it meant enemies would get flanking advantage at well.
I did the same thing, mainly cause every battle was starting to look like a stupid conga line of enemies and players
Hi, I have a question about character creation.
I have a Character named Malisa Chocolata, and she is a creation of a forgotten cult.And the problem is that she is an abomination Half human and half creature, so I was wondering if I can use the bases of the "Dragon born" Race as a reference point.Because the story of the character is that she has to become Queen, and create her own Colony as Queen to save the forgotten cult that created her .(The cult worshiped Insect & Human hybrids as divine apparitions)
And my problem is that I don't know how to mechanically create a character that is an aspiring queen, cold and calculating in battle as well as ruthless with whoever becomes an obstacle ,in the purpose that she has life.And I am looking for a class that meets these requirements , if anyone knows of any class and explains it to me in a simplified way I would be very grateful .
I played a pretty ruthless queen type some time ago, I decided to go with enchantment wizard for instinctive charm at 6th level. It was baked into her story that she had had upwards of 8 husbands because whenever someone would try to assassinate her, she would use instinctive charm to make the attack hit her husband instead. It's usually a difficult feature to use because you want an enemy to have another enemy in melee range of it, but not another ally, and that's bad for you. But if you don't care about that enemy hitting your ally instead? well, it has no resource cost, so spam away. They have more hit points than you anyway, they can take it. If you wanna go more martial you can branch out after level 6, personally I like Psi Warrior, but artificer multiclasses are cool too.
"aspiring queen, cold and calculating in battle as well as ruthless with whoever becomes an obstacle"
What you describe there are called your character's personnality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws... It's as nothing to do with your class but everything to how you roleplay your character.
How does cleave work with sneak attack 🤔
Hero points are a nice idea, but if you're using them with a slow leveling progression, refresh one hero point per game session.
Hero points are built in bardic inspiration
Best rule to add is banning Monsters of the Multiverse.
What page on what book is automatic success?
instead of heroic points, I stole adversity tokens from the Kids on Brooms system presented by Dimension 20's Misfits and Magic. It's altered a little bit since D&D rolls and fails rolls a lot more often. On a nat1 of any d20 roll (referred to as a d20 test now in One D&D) they earn an adversity token. They can use the tokens in the same way, boosting their d20 rolls by 1 per token used, or an ally's roll by 2 per token used. I don't allow it on every d20 roll out of combat, and a character has to be able to provide meaningful help to another to use their tokens for them. My players have used them to great success recently even though they started off mainly forgetting about them. One recently used his to boost a religion check well beyond what he should've been capable of (only a +2) up to a 26 and because he pushed well past his limits I let him have a vision from his god.
Pro-tip: if you're using a system similar to heroic points/adversity tokens and your players mainly ignore them- try hosting a Call of Cthulhu one shot. The luck points in CoC really drove home how important the adversity tokens were. And being a one shot let them think of them as pretty disposable since they didn't have to ration them out- it was use it or lose it for the session. Since adversity tokens do come back on a 5% chance every d20 roll.... they tend to get a lot to use.
Do the rules for mass combat count as a variant?
The one where you calculate the number of enemies that need to attack as a group to score a hit, instead of rolling for each individual enemy in a large group.
That's this page about "Handling Mobs" and it's not written as a Variant or, as this video should be called, "Optional Rule"
www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/running-the-game#HandlingMobs
It definitely functions like an optional rule in that it doesn't get used all that often from what I've seen, but it's not technically an optional rule in the most literal meaning. For reference, right below that, under "Using Miniatures," are the optional rules for 'Flanking,' 'Diagonals,' and 'Facing,' formatted as "Optional Rule: ______"
"Flanking on Squares. When a creature and at least one of its allies are adjacent to an enemy and on opposite sides or corners of the enemy’s space, they flank that enemy, and each of them has advantage on melee attack rolls against that enemy.
When in doubt about whether two creatures flank an enemy on a grid, trace an imaginary line between the centers of the creatures’ spaces. If the line passes through opposite sides or corners of the enemy’s space, the enemy is flanked."
so RAW you can't do the move you said. you have to be on exact opposite sides. not the weird cornering thing.
Hitting Cover as written is weird, because if that cover is provided by, say, an ally standing between you and the enemy, then you can end up shooting your ally because you *almost* hit the enemy. Where otherwise hitting an ally instead would be something the DM would have happen if you roll *abysmally* low.
Hit your ally because you rolled a Nat 1? Sure, that’s how the dice go sometimes. Hit your ally because you rolled 17 against what’s now 18 AC? Feels like utter BS.
Hitting your ally because your tried to shoot at an enemy that was standing behind him totally makes more sense than suddently hitting the dungeon's ceiling or some random tree 300 feet away...
It should really be emphasized that the rule for using other stats with skill checks is in the Players Handbook.
13:20 "I would obviouslly suggest it to everyone else"
I would NOT! I'm a DM, I already have enough problems with using hellhounds in my game (They have advantage on every attack just by standing next to another) they are 3 lvl of challenge rating, my players were 4lvl, I already used less than I wanted to, HALFED ALL OF THEIR DEALT DMG from the combat start, and ignored their breath weapon - my players were almost dead after 4 rounds, because they decided to try run away (so few opportunity attacks on each of them, every round - PCs have 30ft speed, hellhounds 50ft... AND EACH OF THESE ATTACKS HAD ADVANTAGE...)
Now imagine having flanking rules: most of the encounters with... gnolls, wolfs - they travel in packs, and wolfs know to try and surround their pray; goblins, gnomes - they are intellectual enough to think in order to take advantage from positioning themselves; even stupid phase spiders, if you think about it well, they can't shot web like giant spiders, but they have a web walker feat, so it's more than likely that they are working together (yes, i know, spiders are mostly solitare, but there are like dozen of species that are SOCIAL. So yeah, giant spiders in d&d might just be one of those social species), and Phase Spiders have int of 6 and wis of 10, they totally know how to use their blinking feat "Ethereal Jaunt" to pop up right behind PC's back before attacking him.
Imagine having flanking rules... Those encounters? They would be WORSE THAN DEADLY for your player's PCs. And so a pain in the ass for a DM to create an INTERESTING, challenging, scary, but not deadly encounter. Espacially since most of the time in order to balance action economy you do need to have more opponents than PCs. So what - you will have sneeky goblins and you will just... not make them attack from upfront and behind? To not kill your players, with giving Goblins an advantage for each attack thanks to flanking rules? Yeah, just don't use them - don't make your own life as a DM harder...
It blows my mind that flanking isn't a standard rule. I play pathfinder so it's interesting to see the differences in systems
Because in pathfinder there is a good balance between martials and casters and half-casters. And as you can see D&D is sucking up to castes. As long as there is a rule to makes caster stronger it's fine but if there is one for martials than this is cosidered as " OP ". Strixhaven is the purest prove to it. Castes are just favored by D&D.
I would add to the hero points that you can't use them if you roll a nat 1
Well, isn’t that sort of a given? At least on attacks that’s an insta fail no questions asked, and you’d need a pretty particular set of circumstances (very low DC/very high mod) to pull a success out of a 1 ability check as well, and at that point what’s even the point of rolling
I still stand for Spell points
Whew, variant encumbrance isn't on the list. Now for a part 2 video where it's just all of Tasha's, unless there's a difference between "variant" and "optional."
a variant rule is by definition optional...
@@Sephiroth517 I mean, when this system has "creature" mean "creature" and "creature that has died within [timeframe]" mean "object," I want to at least try to keep my definitions in line XD
To dig deeper into it, a variant rule is a different way to handle a rule that already exist. While an optional rule is a new rule that did not already exists.
In summary, a "variant" modify a rule, an "optional" adds a rule.
I thought you were gonna mentions feats which are technically variant rules
Constitution for intimidation has much more sense than charisma. I already laugh at our DM when he once tried to intimidate my character with small gnome with high charisma when I played rune knight fighter yuan-ti with 2.5 meters of hight.
Now you should do a top 10 homerew rules
👍🏻
I can agree with flanking being too OP as a rogue addict. An example of a homebrew is Jocat (I would do this as well) homebrewing it to be a +2 to damage hits, rather than advantage.
Imagine saying it takes fun out of the game if you don't have to roll.
I like hero points but you just get way to much
the DM is a referee, this means all these complex statements are worthless at most tables...meaning these type of rule set is for DMs who refuse emergent story telling... so dont hop on their train lol
More heroic?? Superman doesn’t need an extra d6...
Stop using flanking if your players are strategically minded. Flanking is so easy to get that it makes every other way to get advantage not worth considering. Things like knocking prone, restrains, blinds, faerie fire, reckless attacks, and subclasses that grant advantage get so devalued that they aren't worth taking.
Let melee use rules like shove prone and climb onto larger creature to get advantage and you will have much more dynamic combats.
If you want to use a form of flanking, use a +1 with bounded accuracy that still makes a difference. Advantage equates at a +5 to hit and a bonus that massive shouldn't be so easy to get.
Hitting cover is an incentive for people to give up long range combat. So nope. Bad af. I don't want more spellcasters in my games.
Using other attributes is great. Breaks the 'everyone has high dex' as well.
Auto success is a good time saving rule. It isn't more than that.
Disarm: bad. Melee doesn't need more nerfs.
I love mark, flaking and cleave. When my first adventure made by myself gets where I want, I'm gonna use'm. Melee needs help in dnd. Simple as that.
I like healing surge, but I think I'd homebrew it.
I don't like hero points. Dnd characters rarely die, and hero points ensure death's meaninglessness.
Long range combatants will likely have Sharpshooter anyway and the allows them to ignore cover. The spellcasters are the ones that have to worry about it. So if anything, it encourages fewer spellcasters by using the cover rules.
I like lingering injuries but the way you recover from them is just absurdly poorly written
Primero
The rules for hitting cover are incredibly stupid. Imagine missing by 3 then using your bardic inspiration and rolling a 1 or 2, suddenly you're not only missing your target but also hitting your friend.