Chaosmancer
Legend
Since when have you actually proposed an ability? Instead, you're just as unwilling to let the ability's provenance go as I am, to be fair.
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I wonder if you could implement a system like the Weapon Mastery system. Call it Skill Focus.
Give certain classes Skill Focus at level 5 or so, letting them pick a number of skills. Then in the skill section, have different abilities that are unlocked by a combo of skill focus, level/proficiency, and expertise.
Oh, you happen to be a fighter with medicine prof at level 5, now you can roll a DC 12 check and spend a use of a healer's kit to heal an ally 1d4+medicine modifier as an action.
Sure, you could use a DC 17 if you want to be as close to the rules as they currently stand as possible. I'd still make it a strength check with proficiency though, simply because breaking stuff is something most monsters and adventurers are well-versed in. It isn't like breaking down doors isn't common as dirt.
More importantly, it would be possible to do, which would open up things for PCs to attempt to do.
And, to put my money where my mouth is... some rules I've implemented.
First number is minimum lift
Strength score^X determined by size.
Second number is maximum lift/push/drag, First score x 2
- Tiny^1
- Small^1.5
- Medium ^2
- Large^2.5
- Huge^3
- Gargantuan^3.5
Lifting More
You may attempt to Lift/Push/Drag more with the following Athletics rolls
DC 15 = Maximum Lift/Push/Drag x 1.25
DC 20 = Maximum Lift/Push/Drag x 1.50
DC 25 = Maximum Lift/Push/Drag x 2.00
This was very vague, as it was come up with on the fly, and I haven't st down and crunched numbers
As a free action (meaning it costs nothing from your round) you can roll an Athletics check using Strength or Dex.
DC 15 = you can move an additional 5 ft.
With every 5 points of DC increasing the distance by 5ft
If you are using your action to Dash, double those feet.
You get a number of "charges" during a fight or scene equal to your Con modifier for "free". After that, using this might result in exhaustion or maybe even hp loss.
Also, this is not without risk. If your total result is between 10 and 15, you waste it.
If what you roll on the die is a 1, 2 or 3 or your total result is less than 10 you gain a level of exhaustion, maybe hp loss.
I looked for jumping rules, but can't find them right now.
What if, by level 10 or so, a martial character with Investigation could roll and on a success, they discover enough clues to actually get to "see" what happened in a room? The DM would describe to them, for example, that two men slipped in through the window, startled Mr Darcy, who ran for his sword, but he was hit by a thrown dagger with an ornate handle. The two men dragged him back to his chair, where the second used magic to seal the wound, and make it appear as though he died of natural causes.
This is something that absolutely happens in fiction, with skilled investigator characters, and if the player knew that, they might be far more interested in putting a higher Int on their character, and building towards that ability.
OR, if they want to play the jock fighter, maybe give their athletics a way to destroy scenery more easily, or an ability to ignore environmental damage and effects through sheer toughness (Oden standing for an hour in a pot of boiling oil to save his men from execution)
There are things that would allow us to compete or exceed spells, things we lack, and can't build towards.
One thing I would like, but I know would be a bear to balance, is to have skills do more.
For an egregious example of what is wrong, look to the Medicine Skill. Medicine... is worthless. You cannot use medicine to heal people. You cannot use medicine to cure disease or poison. The best use for medicine in terms of actually dealing with injuries is to stabilize a dying creature... which the 10 gp healer's kit let's you do regardless of skill prof. Even doing things like looking at a corpse to see what killed them is something you can also do with an investigation skill.
And that is just basic, mundane uses for the skill. Going beyond that to what the limits of magical, fantastical medicine can be aren't even on the table.
Let's take that ability I listed before. Investigation check to "see" a replay of the events that happened in this location. Does it work as a non-magical ability? Yes. Does it work as a magical ability? Also yes.
What if we gave fighters the ability to roll a con save against an effect that causes automatic damage on their turn, to reduce that damage to its minimum amount. Does that work as a non-magical ability? Yes. Does it work as a magical ability? Also yes.
Rolling medicine to actually heal hit points and cure diseases and poisons? Non-Magical? Yes. Magical? Yes.
Action surge and indomitable work both as non-magical and magical effects. Same with second wind. Heck, you could take the fighting styles and make them work both ways.
Sure, literally jumping over a mountain is likely a bit much. Other than teleportation or plane shift even casters can't move that far in a single action.
But what about jumping 100 ft? That is literally 1/5 of what it is possible for a caster to do in a single action. Is that more doable?
One thing I absolutely think would help is getting back to basics and looking at the environment.
True Fact! There is no roll for climbing a normal climbable surface. The rules state that climbing rolls can be made in extreme conditions. So, let's say the rogue/fighter wants to run into an alley and free-hand climb a three story house... Well, they can climb at half movement speed, and as long as there is no time limit, they can just do that. It would take them six seconds to clamber up that building if they dashed.
True Fact! Baseline high Jump rules allow a character with a 16 strength to jump and their feet clear a six foot height. A fighter/rogue with a high strength (or using the thief dex abilities) can casually jump over the head of most humanoids. Additionally, a 16 strength fighter can reach a ledge that is (on average) 14.745 ft above them. This means that they can trivially, without rolling or major exertion, run up to a two story house, jump, grab the edge of a window, and pull themselves up it.
These are feats of level 1 characters. A level 3 Rogue Thief should be able to, in a single span of six seconds, run into an alley, jump up and grab a second story window, kick off that to land on a third story balcony across the alley, then proceed to climb up the ivy on the side of the building to a height of approximately the 7th story of the building.
There are two things that should be added to this.
1) Let Fighter/Rogues add their proficiency to their jumps and adjust long-jump distances as well as fix the weirdness of its interaction with movement speed (you shouldn't only jump 5ft instead of the 30 you should clear, just because you ran up first). I like the idea of calculating sets of 5 ft based off their bonuses (so a fighter with a +4 strength and +3 prof jumps 35 ft) and leaving non-martials with the strength score method.
2) Let Martial Characters destroy the environment more. Right now, a 20th level fighter with a normal warhammer is potentially destroying a stone wall in three to four swings... the exact same that a 1st level fighter might accomplish. And that is even if the DM allows it, and that is even if the players think of it. A DM might allow an Ogre to charge through a wooden wall in a dramatic flair to attack the players, but they almost never allow the players to bust through walls or destroy floors or ceilings in the same manner.
How many fighter/rogues have been allowed to stab an enemy through a wooden wall? Or pull the classic of reaching through a wall to grapple an enemy? Wooden walls and doors should not make you safe from a mid-to-high level fighter. Hiding inside a wagon shouldn't make you safe from the rogue shooting you through the wagon's walls. These people live in a world that is destructible, let them feel like they are capable of shattering wood and cracking stone with ease.
And, after you implement such rules REMIND the players. Your rogue isn't used to thinking of the fact that they can jump OVER the knight's head to escape, your fighter isn't used to seeing a barred wooden door and realizing it isn't actually an obstacle that can stop them. And once you have players who are used to thinking in this way, then you are going to see a change in how those classes feel to those players.
Since when? Oh, once or twice. I also said I was happy with these:
I'll add another houserule we've been using which helps Fighters in such situations, another of @DND_Reborn's work:
Action Surge can be used to multiple the lifting and jumping capabilities of the PC by a factor equal to the proficiency bonus.
So, your PC can lift 420 lbs at level 1? Spend your Action Surge and it doubles to 840. At level 5, it triples, and level 9, it quadruples, etc.
Your PC can jump 18 feet with their STR 18? Spend your Action Surge and it doubles to 36, then goes to 48, etc.
This way, a Fighter anyway, can perform superhuman (IRL) but plausible actions in a fantasy game.
It wouldn't be hard to expand this to allow Rage to perform similarly. But I don't know if I could as easily see it going to other martials. Monks have Step of the Wind, a Rogue using Cunning Action might be able to jump further maybe?
All in all, it just comes down to how far you want things to go. At Fighter 17+ with STR 20, you can normally lift 300 lbs, but with the above Action Surge it would be 1800 lbs. If you were a goliath or had some other "Powerful build"-type feature, it could go as high as 3600 lbs! If your typical Ogre weighs about 1000 lbs, either of these would be enough to lift an Ogre overhead, etc.
Also, another idea I've been thinking of is a modification to Rage. Instead of the way it works, what if Rage increased the Barbarian's Strength by your proficiency bonus???
In levels 1-4, it would be a +1 to Strength-based attacks and damage, instead of just +2 damage. Of ocurse a +1 to Strength checks is not as good as advantage, it helps a bit.
However, look at what becomes possible IF you ever got to level 20? You have unlimited rages, and with Primal Champion could have a Strength 24, bumped up to 30 while raging!!! Time for some fun working the numbers:
Str 30 x 30 = 900 lbs, go Goliath => 1800, go Bear Totem => 3600, allow Rage to multiple lift / jump like Action Sure, and now you have 21600 lbs-- over 10 tons. I think such a system which is build for such power, in a fantasy game and at level 20, while most definitely superhuman, would be acceptable to many groups.
Jump back to level 1. Str 20 x 30 = 600 lbs, Goliath is 1200, Rage x2 would make it 2400 lbs, roughly twice the real-world limit for humans currently. Since this is a raging Goliath barbarian, is that too much of a stretch at level 1? Not IMO.
