6 Ideas to Make D&D 5E Combat More Interesting for Martial Characters

One problem I have with 5E D&D is that martial combat isn’t that interesting. Combat as a whole is pretty good, but things like weapon and equipment choices don’t make much difference, and there’s only a few combat actions that go beyond basic attacking or using a class power.

That’s why, when we talked about our 29 Ideas to Spice Up D&D 5E, I brought a lot of combat-related tweaks I’ve been toying with for a while. When I look at the hundreds of years people were fighting with arms and armor, I just see a lot more interesting things we could do with the martial side of the game that I think would add depth and make it more fun.

So here, I’m going to lay out my goals for this project and some of the current draft text I’m working on. I would love it if you could try some of these in your games and let me know how they work for you.

Martial Combat Overhaul: My Goals

A lot of supplements have added more martial depth to editions of D&D, some more successfully than others. The tricky thing is adding depth without adding complexity and a lot of additional fiddly numbers to track. For example, I don’t think it’s more fun to have to track item hit points in addition to character hit points – that’s just extra math.

I also don’t want to add a bunch of new mechanics to learn. For example, I don’t want to create a new dueling system with rock-paper-scissors guard and attack rules. Those can be neat, but it’s essentially a minigame, and that’s not what I want to do here. I’m also not looking to make character facing a big deal in D&D 5E.

What I do think is fun is having more options like the combat actions in the Player’s Handbook. Shove and grappling let you do some neat things in combat, and that gets turned up to 11 when you play a battle master who has access to a lot more of those things. At the same time, I don’t want to undercut the battle master by giving everyone access to that class’s special skills.

So my goals are:

• Add more choices, tactical depth, and cool plays to make in martial combat.
• Create some interactions where weapons, equipment, other characters, etc., can open new combat options.
• Make martial options a bit better against magic than they currently are
• Do that without adding anything else to track: No new HP, charges, uses, etc. These should be basic abilities open to anyone that do not consume resources.
• Use as much of the existing mechanics to facilitate the new options as possible so they sit on the game’s framework and don’t ask players to learn much that’s totally new.
• Pull from loose historical combat where possible to keep the martial options closer to believable combat physics. (This doesn’t matter to all DMs, but I like martial options to be at least loosely rooted in physics and what we know about historical combat to help differentiate them from magical classes that are explicitly playing with fantasy rules.)

6 New Combat Ideas for D&D 5E

1. Shields Give +3 to AC and Saves But Can Be Disrupted

5E has made shields pretty powerful with a base +2 AC bonus, but if anything that’s still less powerful than they were historically. At the same time, the shield is something that can be lost or pulled out of position. True shield damage and breakage, while historically accurate, is one of those fiddly things I don’t want to get lost in, but there’s room here to add some interesting options.

So, instead, let’s do this:

• Shields give a +3 bonus to AC and they apply their AC bonus to dexterity and strength saving throws (because the user can hide behind them, use them for additional leverage, etc.)
• A grapple attack can grab a shield and pull it out of position. Success means the shield’s benefits are nullified until the owner escapes the grapple. The owner can move away without escaping, but they release the shield if they move out of reach of the character grappling it.
• In a fully fleshed-out system, I would probably allow a couple more spells to disrupt/remove/disarm shields as well.

2. Long Weapons With 15′ Reach But Penalties In Close Quarters

Historically, polearms could reach much further than 10 feet, but they also become a hindrance when you’re in confined spaces (either narrow hallways or even dense forests) or an enemy gets up close. To reflect that and add more depth to combat range and multiple attackers, let’s try a new weapon keyword: “Long Reach.”

• Long Reach weapons have reach of 15′, but they have disadvantage on attack rolls if an obstacle (walls, trees, etc.) or enemy is within 5 feet of the wielder. (Perhaps the enemy needs to be a certain size? It depends how you feel about familiars and other tiny creatures disrupting swings and thrusts.)
• Any polearm, spear or reach weapon can have the long reach property at the character’s discretion, it just has a longer haft.
• Optionally, you could also give regular reach to certain smaller long weapons, like greatswords and greataxes, to create more range levels in melee combat. (To me, it doesn’t make sense that a dagger and a zweihander both have 5-foot reach. Your mileage may vary.)

3. Weapons That Grapple

Many historical weapons, especially polearms, were made with spikes or hooks coming off the back side that could be used to hook the opponent’s shield, armor, or weapon. Let’s allow that in the game with a new attack:

Weapon Grappling: Any weapon with a hook can be used to make a grapple attack that uses its weapon attack bonus instead of athletics. This attack can be made on any target within the weapon’s reach.

It’s up to the DM which weapons get these grapple additions, but polearms and axes are the obvious choices. Whips are a good option in a different way, too. Perhaps others could be specially made to allow grappling?

4. Fighting Formations

I’m not a fan of how 4E’s flanking mechanic led to weird flanking daisy chains, but I think there’s room in D&D for more interesting fighting formations. You could allow these to anyone with the right equipment and discipline or require everyone to have a feat to use them.

(OK, I admit it, here we are introducing new mechanics that add some complexity and learning curve to the game. I think the added tactical depth will be worth it.)

3 Basic Formation Types:

• Pike Hedge: Characters with spears or pikes can squeeze 2 people per 5ft square at no penalty. (This effectively doubles the number of attacks per 5’ of formation frontage.) Characters in the formation gain advantage to shove or resist being shoved.
• Shield Wall: Characters with shields standing adjacent to each other get+2 to AC and dexterity and strength saving throws per adjacent ally with a shield in the shield wall. They also get advantage on shove rolls.
• Boar Snout (wedge): Characters in a wedge formation add +1 to shove rolls for every other person behind the front row in the formation as long as the formation has moved at least 10′ that round.

Rules for Formations:

• Everyone in the formation moves on the initiative count of the lowest initiative in the formation. Except for movement, the rest of their actions occur during their normal timing.
• You can only use one type of formation at a time (no shield wall pike hedges).
• Any character forced out of position is no longer in the formation. If they have not yet moved that turn, they lose their move.
• DM Note: Remember that any forced movement can disrupt a formation by putting the characters in it out of position.

5. New Ways to Deal Damage Through Armor

Obviously, we’re upping armor classes with the shield rule, and it gets even higher after you add magical bonuses to the game. I also have some higher AC armors in mind that might go with this. Historically, when armor got too strong to cut through with swords, a bunch of new weapons and tactics were developed to get damage through that tough armor.

At the same time, I don’t want to get into the 2E weapon vs. specific armor attack modifiers. I think that’s too much to track.

In D&D, many spells already do half damage on saving throws, but what if we added some ways for martial characters to keep up with some new weapon properties?

Armor-Piercing Weapons

+3 attack vs. targets in medium or heavy armor and monsters with equivalent defenses. (It’s up to the DM if a monster qualifies, but generally monsters with AC 16 or higher due to tough hides or armor plates would fit.)

The armor-piercing weapon property is added to these weapons:

• Morning star
• Pick
• Halberd (these usually had a hardened spike on the back and top for this purpose)
• Glaive (these usually had a hardened spike on the back and top for this purpose)
• Dagger
• Longbow with armor-piercing arrows (1d6 damage)
• Heavy crossbow
• Firearms

Armor-Crushing Weapons

If the attack misses by 5 or less, deal bludgeoning damage equal to strength bonus, minimum 1 damage.

The armor crushing weapon property is added to these weapons:

• Warhammer
• Greataxe
• Mace
• Greatclub
• Maul

That leaves swords out of the armor-piercing fun, but there was a tactic used to make them more useful against armor called half-swording. The wielder gripped the blade with their off-hand to use the sword as more of a precision and powerful thrusting weapon that could also be used better for grappling and defense. So swords can be used with this new attack stance:

Half-Swording: Two-handed. Reduce the sword’s damage die to 1d4. Gain +2 to attack vs. armor, +2 to grapple, +1 to AC.

6. New Weapon-Focused Feats

Let’s wrap this up with a few feats that could allow players to lean into the properties of their chosen weapon type a bit more:

• Axe Master: +1 dmg with axes.
  Bonus action – Axe hook: With an axe, hook and pull a piece of your opponent’s armor, shield or weapon out of position. You cannot use this ability again until you have completed a short or long rest.
  Choose an effect:
  • Reduce targets ac by 2 until the end of your next turn
  • Nullify the target’s shield until the end of your next turn
  • The target has disadvantage on attacks until the end of your next turn
• Sword Master: +1 dmg with swords.
  Reaction – Deft Parry: When an opponent makes an attack against you, you may make an attack roll with your sword. If your attack hits a higher armor class than their attack, their attack does not hit and you may immediately make a melee weapon attack against them. You cannot use this ability again until you have completed a short or long rest.
• Hammer Master: +1 dmg with maces and hammers
  Maces and hammers add the +1 dmg to Armor Crushing and gain armor crushing if they do not already have it.

Playtest These Ideas, Please

That’s not everything I have in mind, but it’s a start and shows some of the things that I think would be more transformational to martial combat. If any of it looks cool to you, please, give it a try and let us know how it works out!

Trust me, well keep coming up with new ideas here at 3 Wise DMs.