D&D 5E Cleaving Through Creatures using Range Attacks - Legolas

[Athinar]

Cleaving Through Creatures using Range Attacks - Legolas

If your player characters regularly fight hordes of lower level monsters, consider using the optional rule to help speed up such fights.
When a ranged attack reduces an undamaged creature to 0 hit points, any excess damage from the attack might carry over to another creature behind the original target and the next target can be no further than 5 feet from the original target. The attacker targets the next creature and if the original attack roll can hit it, the attacker applies any remaining damage to it. Only two targets can be targeted by this Action.



does this sound okay?

 

[Paraxis]

Sounds ok to me.

For melee attacks there is this from the DMG, pg 272.

CLEAVING THROUGH CREATURES
If your player characters regularly fight hordes of lower­ level monsters, consider using this optional rule to help speed up such fights.
When a melee attack reduces an undamaged creature to 0 hit points, any excess damage from that attack might carry over to another creature nearby.The attacker targets another creature within reach and if the original attack roll can hit it, applies any remaining damage to it. If that creature was undamaged and is likewise reduced to 0 hit points. repeat this process, carrying over the remaining damage until there are no valid targets, or until the damage carried over fails to reduce an undamaged creature to 0 hit points.

So your option extends that to ranged attacks, going in a line to targets behind the previous one.

 

[Athinar]

Yep, going in a line to targets behind the previous one.

Just like the Lightning Bolt and the Line

 

[PnPgamer]

Except lightning bolt does full or half damage to all of them.

Nevertheless could sound reasonable, but make sure that dm allows melee cleaving as well.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

Kinda looks like one more thing to overbalance dexterity and make sharpshooter & Crossbow Expert combo even worse.

 

[KarinsDad]

The rule from the DMG is also suspect as it rewards PCs that concentrate on damage output as compared to PCs who concentrate on other things like defense or teamwork. There should be both pros and cons for trying to be a striker.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'd allow the Cleave Through Creatures via ranged weapons for the simple reason the rule states: If your player characters regularly fight hordes of lower­ level monsters, consider using this optional rule to help speed up such fights.

The only time this would ever come up (where you'd instantly drop a creature from full to 0 hit point in a single shot) is in that particular storyline fight of "powerful PCs" vs. "hundred of minions". Which means ipso facto that the entire purpose of this encounter is for the small band of PCs to cut through huge swathes of enemies. At that point, why do you as the DM want to get so nitpicky about the "proper amount" of damage attributed to every single enemy? If you don't want this fight to go on for three hours, you WANT the PCs to slice through them all-- which means you want to avoid single attacks that cause so much damage that most of it is wasted. That does no one at the table any good. A fight ends up taking twice as long because the archer is only able to plink-plink-plink enemies down one at a time rather than two at a time.

I say save the table the pain of a slow drawn-out fight when it should be fast and crazy with enemies getting thrown everywhere like Sauron crushing the elves in the prologue of Fellowship by allowing the "over-damage" to flow into other enemies. You'll be saving everyone sanity I suspect.

 

[Kikuras]

My low-level barbarian chucked a javelin at a goblin, rolled crit, and I was happy with the kill, however another player suggested it keep going to kill another goblin. The DM went for it, I think mostly because a fun and gruesome imagery was developed to go along with it. It wasn't game altering. So appropriately and with purpose would be my note.

 

[Ebony Dragon]

I think it's a cool idea, but I would prefer the rules for it fit to work against all creatures all the time, and also to work for Monsters fighting against the players. I don't like these type of rules that only work in some situations and only the PC's get to use them. Make it a rule that can be universal.

What about only having it trigger when a single blow knocks you to low enough health that you are insta-gibbed. So it would have to drop the target to negative it's HP Max. If that happens, carry over damage can cleave into the next target.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think it's a cool idea, but I would prefer the rules for it fit to work against all creatures all the time, and also to work for Monsters fighting against the players. I don't like these type of rules that only work in some situations and only the PC's get to use them. Make it a rule that can be universal.

Well, truth be told... the odds of a party of PCs ever fighting an enemy so much higher level than them that the enemy could do enough damage with a ranged attack to send a single character from Full HP to 0 HP in a single blow... is going to be rare enough that you'll probably never need to pay attention about the rule from the opposite side. It's probably only going come close to occurring when the PCs are at 1st or 2nd level with so little hit points that a one-shot was possible... and at that point do you as the DM need to drop two PCs with a single shot?