I'm trying to write a combat maneuver for sundering weapons and armor in fifth edition—and I just realized that there's ALREADY a sundering subsystem hidden in the Dungeon Master's Guide! #dnd #rpg pic.twitter.com/YRCZR15YoP
— James 🔥 Haeck (@jamesjhaeck) July 20, 2019
First, just attack an object that’s being held or carried instead of the creature carrying it. Then, it's a "simple" matter of looking at the Objects table in the DMG. What's the weapon's material? Steel? AC 19. A weapon is usually 2 sizes smaller than its wielder, and built to be Resilient. So a Medium humanoid wields a Tiny sword. That's 5 hp. https://t.co/bq1vuSry58
— James 🔥 Haeck (@jamesjhaeck) July 20, 2019
If you think that 5 hp is too low for a typical longsword, remember that it’s hard to land a telling blow on it; it’s got 19 AC! Nevertheless, if you want your weapons to be more durable, just make a new “Tempered” level that has 2x the hit points of “Resilient” objects. As a DM I’m always loathe to go this route. I get why it’s compelling, but it falls into the called shot trap: it’s either so easy you never make regular attacks, or it’s so difficult you never waste your action trying.
Disarming hits a similar note for me.
— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) July 20, 2019
If you try it out I’m interested to hear how it goes!
And remember that magic items are generally more resilient than their mundane counterparts. It would suck for a CR 2 ogre to smack your legendary holy avenger for 20 damage. Pop.
— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) July 20, 2019
I think the battlemaster has a reasonable balance for it, with limited uses and having a save to prevent the effect. I feel like allowing wider access to those kinds of maneuvers is how I’d expand martial combat to be more tactical if I ever start really digging into the system. Yep, I leave it as the Combat Superiority maneuver.
— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) July 20, 2019