Would the following curse be too detrimental, too beneficial, or just right for a combat-focused campaign?

Question

The Curse:

Clockwork Curse
All Attack Rolls the cursed target makes replace their d20 roll with a 10 instead of rolling, as per the effect of Clockwork Amulet.

Extra Details:

• This curse is expected to apply for at least a full in-game day.
• Encounters for the day will come from the Forest or Coastal Encounters (5-10) tables in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
• The character will be part of a 5-player group.
• The character's attacks are their ideal method of dealing damage.

The Goal:

• This curse is meant to be a setback or gameplay-shift to the player, not a crippling of the player.
  • I want the player to spend time affected by the curse to work with it or work around it.
• Since the players can decide not to remove it, the beneficial aspect of it should not be too strong.

The Question:

Is this curse too detrimental that it imposes more of a penalty than I expect? Is this curse too beneficial in the long-run? Or is it reasonably fair?

Answer 1

This punishes player fun more than character mechanics

Dependant on the AC of your enemies this curse is either a massive buff due to never missing, or a massive penalty due to never hitting. Either way it takes away the uncertainty and suspense of combat by making the result a formality.

In my experience a lot of the fun of combat is encapsulated in the thrill of the unknown. This curse takes away that unknown by removing the agency from a cursed characters turn. The curse has two states:

1. 10 + Attack modifier >= enemy AC. The player knows they are going to hit so every turn they can skip straight to rolling damage. No need for clever tactics or positioning to gain advantage or cancel a disadvantage. The character is effective but boring to play.
2. 10 + Attack modifier < enemy AC. The player knows they can't hit. There is no point trying so they are instead forced to play a support role, depending on the type of character they may quickly run out of things they can do in this role. No interesting options and a lack of effectiveness makes this character frustrating to play.

In both scenarios the mechanical penalty to the character is not as significant as the penalty to player enjoyment. In my opinion that makes this a bad curse.

A good curse challenges both the player and character to find a way to overcome, cure or circumvent the limitations imposed by the curse. Something that forces them to change their typical combat style or think outside the box. This curse doesn't do that. It is either good or it is bad, and there is (almost) nothing the player can do about it.

Answer 2

Against an average enemy this would be a buff not a curse

Rolls are generally balanced around requiring an 8 to succeed in something you are good at, so always rolling a 10 is a buff (on average, assuming the player invested in the combat stat).

This does mean that against certain high AC enemies this player will never hit.

So how this will effect your game depends firstly on how many high AC enemies you chuck at the party / player, and how they will react to not being able to hit things. Some players will welcome the challenge and have to think of new tactics, some players just want to cause damage and put very little thought into it.

You know your players (hopefully) better than we do, so you would have to judge this for yourself.

Answer 3

It seems fine. Finding out how it works seems somewhat fun. The player barely hits a sahuagin without needing to roll, then barely hits the next. Seems good, but there has to be a catch. Then they barely miss the armoured hobgoblin, still with no roll, and keep barely missing. There's the catch. At some point they'll get the idea or you'll just tell them about the "always 10" part.

Now you're onto the meat. The players may even discuss the problem. For each new monster type the player might take a test whack. Goblins, bugbears and a bugbear captain? Goblins are a sure hit -- but should they try the bugbears? If you allow heavy tabletalk, what are the odds someone has memorized the exact AC of each monster?

Options are using that +2 dagger (suppose their main weapon is only +1), or maybe a shove action or a grapple. Or a Bless spell (it seems to me the d4 would still be rolled, and added to the 10). They'll probably gain Advantage once before realizing it won't help. Few feats allow for an optional attack bonus, but they might have one. They can Assist another attack. Or try to draw attacks and Dodge (the monsters don't know the player can't hit them). Doing the last two for 1 fight isn't so bad.

You (the GM) can cheat. If 2 rolled encounters in a row only have monsters that guy can't hit, replace one hobgoblin with a softer gnoll.

Answer 4

Seems like a serious debuff

In terms of what the character can actually do -- you roll a 15 or over like 25% of the time. That makes for a hard fight, but you can burn resources and win it. This curse makes easy fights trivial, and hard fights impossible. You might be able to, as the DM, design around this -- make things harder by giving more low-level enemies, and totally avoiding high level enemies. But that sounds really tedious.

Also, how will you deal with advantage? I suspect the expected value of a roll with advantage is about 15. If you give them a 15 on an advantaged attack, it might be more manageable (also more fun).

Answer 5

Situational. Sounds like it would make hitting most low to medium enemies easy, but make it impossible to hit a boss or demi-boss.

So useful for a front liner who will be wading through canon fodder mobs. Not directly useful against a armored one or boss, but silver lining. Against those, it would encourage the player to use the "help" action to help their team hit the boss.