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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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I love using magic items in place of house rules. It makes it easier for everyone when "house rules" are explicitly spelled out in an item description, and helps prevent players from being confused or surprised about which rules do and do not get enforced and in which way.
To contribute my own D&D 5e specific example: I like to have enchanted weapons that each have access to one or two battlemaster maneuvers per short rest. e.g. Quarterstaff of Tripping (trip attack) or Commander's Longsword (Commander's Strike). To keep it simple, I use the weapon's damage die as the superiority die.
Reminds me of how they incorporated weapon type-specific attacks in BG3. Stealing this one for sure.
So far, I've included in my current campaign: a utility belt that holds 3 healing potions allowing them to be used as a bonus action and a totem that allows them to reroll a hit die result of "1" on level up.
Yep, that whole weapon maneuvers system should be backported into base 5e stat, with slight modifications (i.e. they would be PB/LR instead of 1/SR, since short rests in the tabletop version are less regulated).
(Or alternatively they could auto-proc on a crit.)
Or, perhaps go the PF2e route and allow the player to tack on a weapon maneuver of choice if their attack roll exceeds the target AC by a certain amount (5?)
Too much math for 5e's design philosophy, and with bounded accuracy it would need a crit on the strongest enemies anyway.
The actual implementation of that system could take a number of forms:
Stealing other class' abilities is a great way to throw in some already-tested mechanics as cool unique magic items. Warning for anyone trying it though, don't steal another character's thunder; if one player chose to be a battle master then don't give everyone else their cool abilities too!
Yeah, there's some abilities that are just a lot of fun to have, but if your party doesn't have the right class, they wouldn't get the fun. An example would be druid shapeshifting (especially for non combat purposes). That's really great for story potential, thanks to being able to use it for spying and finding routes.