Tag-team Attacks

Image credit: Joel Thomas, Races of Stone, Copyright Wizards of the Coast (2004)

I really enjoy the D&D 5e combat system. It’s streamlined, easy, and quick. Perhaps more importantly, a character has a host of options at his/her disposal for actions to take. It’s only drawback is that play time can be taken up waiting for players (myself included) to decide what they’re going to do next. The same can be said of the magic system (though some classes, for me at least, seem more complicated than others).

Having played through numerous fight sequences, there is one glaring shortcoming that I can’t get past. All of those options really are isolated to a single character engaged in a single action that they take by themselves on their own turn. There is very little available in the way of character cooperation during combat. Sure, there’s Pack Tactics, Sneak Attack, and a few other features available to some creatures and classes but these are mechanics that offer passive bonuses to a single character due to circumstances.

What I want is for two characters to actively participate in a joint maneuver (let’s call it a tag-team-attack) to achieve a result greater than either could have achieved on their own.

Concerns

I’ve been mulling over how this might work. Several concerns immediately come to mind.

• Game balance
  Combat is supposed to be a little stressful and a little exciting, keeping the players on their toes as they wonder whether this fight will be their character’s last. Tag-team-attacks, if done incorrectly, could upset that balance, a balance Wizards of the Coast has clearly worked hard to maintain.

• Value
  A tag-team-attack literally involves two characters performing a single action that they could not do individually. This means that they must sacrifice their individual action in order to work together. If the players are making this sacrifice, it should be worth “giving up” their individual action to cooperate with another player.

• Simplicity and flexiblility
  Any rules need to be easy to follow and flexible enough to apply to numerous situations. Moreover, I want to take advantage of as many existing rules as possible without introducing new ones.

• Limited
  What makes a tag-team-attack so cool is that it’s a dramatic turn in combat. It’s the final blow to a powerful enemy or a desperate (but effective) volley against an angry mob bent of the characters’ destruction. As such, tag-team-attacks should be a rare event.

Feats?

My initial thought for this was that tag-team-attacks could be written up as feats. In my experience, most players shy away from feats because on the surface they do not appear as valuable as taking the straight attribute bonuses. I don’t agree with this viewpoint, but it has been expressed to me a lot. Moreover, a feat implies a finite set of possibilities. If I wanted to perform several different tag-team-attacks, I would have to take several feats which, I believe, would further limit the tag-team-attack as a viable mechanic. Besides, confining the tag-team-attack to a feat does not provide a flexible set of rules that can be used in any situation.

The Basic Idea

Putting aside feats as non-viable, that leaves a new mechanic.

I started with defining a tag-team-attack as two characters, on the rare occasion, using each of their actions in a given turn to perform a single action together so that the single action is more powerful, more interesting, and more dramatic than what each character could have done on their own. The tag-team-attack is comprised of a primary action and a support action that bolsters the primary action. For example, a tag-team-attack might enfuse a sword strike with Necrotic damage. In this example, the sword strike is the primary action and a spell dealing Necrotic damage is the supporting action.

Given that definition, a tag-team-attack must start with the character who will be performing the supporting action taking the Ready action on their turn. The trigger for the Ready action is the second character performing the primary action on their turn. With the necrotic sword attack example, this means the character casting the spell takes the Ready action; the character swinging the sword uses their Attack action on their turn.

A Little More

The above explains how to manage the actions within a turn so that characters can perform a tag-team-attack, but it doesn’t cover the more important, and interesting, aspect of the tag-team-attack.

What’s the benefit?

Here are my thoughts.

First, only the character taking the primary action needs to make an attack roll. The character taking the support action therefore relies on the primary action for success in order for their attack to also succeed. This applies even to spells where no attack roll is usually called for.

Second, since these are two characters helping each other, the attack roll is made with Advantage.

Third, add the appropriate proficiency bonus from the supporting character into the attack roll. Add the appropriate ability bonuses from each character to each damage roll when applicable. 

Fourth, any saving throw that might be required from the target is made with Disadvantage.

Fifth, the effects of a natural 20 from an attack roll apply to both damage rolls. This even applies to spells that require no spell attack roll (and therefore usually don’t have any chance of doubling their damage dice).

Multiple Attacks per Action

Some classes and creatures allow for multiple attacks in a single action. I’m on the fence regarding whether a tag-team-attack should allow multi-attacks. The idea fits into the concept of a tag-team-attack being a dramatic and powerful death blow; just about every video game and movie out their has some sort of furious flurry of attacks that does massive damage to the bad guys. But I also feel that this would affect game balance. When using spells as the supporting action, you might require a spell slot be expelled for each attack. You might also limit the spells to only cantrips, which can be cast at will and are more easily justified in being used multiple times. I think I would need some more play testing to figure out how to handle this.

Limitations

Given what I’ve outlined above, the tag-team-attack really needs to have its limits. Initially, I was thinking about limiting it based on proficiency bonuses. I don’t like this idea mostly because it means that first level characters can do tag-team-attacks which I feel they shouldn’t be able to do as a rule. It also means players would have to keep track of how many attacks they’ve done. Bah!

I also considered some other arbitrary limits, but they all seemed contrived and to require even more rules...which I’m trying to avoid.

So, I settled on using Inspiration (character Inspiration, not Bardic Inspiration). This is perfect as the tag-team-attack is an act of supreme inspiration, a moment when two characters work together to deliver an attack of legendary proportions. This also allows the DM some leverage over how often a tag-team-attack can be performed. Of course, the DM has to be fair with rewarding the Inspiration for this to work at all.

You might also want to place a limit on which spells can be combined. An easy limitation is to say that each spell must be of the same school of magic, which makes some logical sense as it would be easier to pull together the effects from the same school than it would be mixing schools. You might also simply prohibit spells from being combined at all, but where’s the fun in that? Also keep in mind that the Player’s Handbook has rules for combining spells that should still apply.

Some Examples

The above are my thoughts on some rules for tag-team-attacks. What follows are two examples to demonstrate those ideas in action. Nevermind the titles; I was just trying to be creative. Though, I do highly encourage you to create names for any tag-team-attacks you come up with as well as a narrative explaining their nature and their effects. And perhaps the DMs out their could enforce a verbal component because everyone shouts out their special attacks as they perform them! Right?

Hammer and Nail

When Eldon, a halfling thief, throws a dagger at a foe, Gurdis, a dwarf fighter, uses her warhammer to drive home the blade. Here, Eldon takes the primary action and Gurdis takes the support action.

Gurdis has a Proficiency bonus of 2, a Strength bonus of +2, and a Dexterity bonus of +1. She uses a warhammer, with a +4 attack bonus doing 1d8+2 damage.
Eldon has a Proficiency bonus of 2, a Dexterity bonus of +3, and a Strength bonus of +1. He uses a throwing dagger, with a +5 attack bonus doing 1d4+3 damage.

To perform the Hammer and Nail, Eldon makes his attack roll, with a +7 attack bonus (his +5 plus Gurdis’ proficiency of 2). The roll is made with Advantage. Upon hitting his target, his dagger does 1d4+4 damage (+3 for his Dexterity bonus plus +1 for her Dexterity bonus). Gurdis’ warhammer does 1d8+3 (+2 for her Strength bonus plus +1 from his Strength bonus).

Pointed Mockery

When Varis, a male elf ranger, launches a flurry of arrows at a foe, Lorilla, a female gnome bard, wraps those arrows with vicious put-downs to add shame to the blows.

Varis has a Proficiency bonus of 3, a Dexterity bonus of +4, and a Charisma bonus of +2. He uses a longbow with a +9 attack bonus (including a +2 bonus for the Archery fighting style) and does 1d8+4 damage. He gets two attacks per turn.
Lorilla has a Proficiency bonus of 2, a Dexterity bonus of +2. She uses Vicious Mockery doing 1d4 damage.

To perform the Pointed Mockery move, Varis makes each attack roll with a +11 attack bonus (his +9 plus Lorilla’s Proficiency of +2). Both are with advantage. He scores a hit on the first roll; his arrow does 1d8+6 damage (his +4 Dexterity bonus plus her +2 Dexterity bonus) while her Vicious Mockery does 1d4. The target must also make the save against the Vicious Mockery with Disadvantage. Varis then scores a natural 20 on his second attack. His arrow does 2d8+6 damage; Lorilla’s Vicious Mockery does 2d4. The target is still at Disadvantage on its saving throw.

Further Discussion

So, these are just my thoughts on this concept. Let's continue this conversation in the comments below. I'd like to refine it.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing from you.

Gadget: Manic Mildew’s Brightly Brolly 

Manic Mildew was an adventuring bard who retired to pursue a career in entertainment. The Brightly Brolly was a favorite gag gift he had developed to give to particularly obnoxious fans, haters, and other people whom he did not like or found particularly smelly.

Activate the Brightly Brolly by opening it as you would any normal umbrella. Upon activation, a 30 ft. sphere underneath the umbrella fills with blinding light. Any creature in the sphere must make a DC 16 Constitution saving throw, taking 2d8 Radiant damage upon a failed save, or half that upon a successful one.

The Brightly Brolly uses a recharge kit that looks like a large jar covered in mirrors. The kit draws in sunlight and stores its energy inside the jar.

The following is the stat block for this gadget, using the rules in my Epic Gnomish Inventing supplement available on the DM's Guild (link below).

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