Brainstormed in a Discord discussion with @Arisu. The Assist action is often underutilised, mainly because of its low power and heavy restrictions. After discussing some possible custom feats (including one that added Bolster to new attributes) we settled on a house rule that changes the default Assist action in a couple of ways:
Allow assisting one attribute with another, rather than requiring the assisting attribute to be the same (provided it makes sense of course)
Have the advantage scale with your level, to keep it relevant as you level up.
Original
You can use your major action to assist an ally with an action roll if they are using an attribute you have a score of 1 or greater in. The ally automatically gets advantage 1 on their roll.
Suggested
You can use your major action to assist an ally with an action roll, using an attribute of yours that is 1 or greater and within 2 points of the attribute the ally is using. The ally automatically gets advantage on their roll equal to half your level (rounded up).
Possible concerns
The low power of the original assist action discourages “pocket helper” characters that exist only to assist on every action of another character. This is of particular concern with summons, though that doesn’t work by default with this rule because summons and companions don’t have a level.
This rule also has assist equal the advantage from Bolster and even surpass it at level 7 and higher. I think the limitations to assist make up for this though, as it cannot be sustained, multi-targeted, or benefit from feats like Boon Focus. Overall, I don’t think balance is an issue.
With this house rule in play, expect more teamwork from your party (which is usually a good thing) and be sure to show it off by having enemies make use of it as well. What do you think?
After a bit more sparring, we came up with a possible alteration.
Instead of half the character level rounded up, it would be half the used attribute score rounded down.
The limits to attribute scores would also be removed.
Reason : the limits were there to make sure characters with a low score can’t assist characters with a high score. This makes sense. This would however also limit characters with a high score to assist those with a low score, which seems strange. Additionally summons can also assist using this variation on the rule, but it wouldn’t be as strong as a normal character, so “pocket helpers” would be less of a concern.
I agree with bumping up the Assist action. As a GM, I love seeing teamwork. I would further suggest a combination of the above two fixes.
Original
You can use your major action to assist an ally with an action roll if they are using an attribute you have a score of 1 or greater in. The ally automatically gets advantage 1 on their roll.
Suggested
You can use your major action to assist an ally with an action roll, using an attribute of yours that is 2 or greater. The ally automatically gets advantage on their roll equal to half your attribute level (rounded down).
Reason: Its now possible to help a character even if you are using a low score and a different attribute (provided it makes sense of course). I dont see a reason why characters with a low score can’t assist characters with a high score.
After further testing this in my games, Im now using this variant:
You can use your major action to assist an ally with an action roll, using an attribute of yours that is 1 or greater (provided it makes sense). The ally automatically gets advantage on their roll equal to half your attribute score (rounded down), to a minimum of 1.
This means your ally gets the following advantage based on the attribute score of your assist action.
Attribute Score 1-3: Advantage 1
Attribute Score 4: Advantage 2
Attribute Score 6: Advantage 3
Attribute Score 8: Advantage 4