Fighters and Maneuvers [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Vogonjeltz

2014-11-03, 05:16 PM

My guess is that Battlemaster Maneuvers are supposed to be a fig leaf to people who like Tome of Battle and/or 4E style melee. Don't think of it in terms of "realism." Think of it in terms of WotC trying to cater to every segment of gamers. (Although in my opinion, in this specific case they did a poor job of it).

It's also worth mentioning that you can get any maneuver with a Feat. So anyone can access them. It jut requires special training.

True, but that only gives a single, inferior(d6), superiority die, and access to any 2 of 16 maneuvers. By way of comparison, the best possible outcome on that die for the dilettante feat user (a 6) is lower than the average outcome for a pure Battlemaster Fighter by 18th (6.5).

Also, and I thought this didn't need mentioning, the contest rolls are themselves an attack action, meaning you can't actually shove someone AND do damage to them. The maneuvers are either a reaction, or added freely onto the attack action. So the Fighter could, at level 5, hit someone dealing damage + superiority damage AND shove them (even further than the shove action allows), as a saving throw, rather than an opposed check.

Why, you might ask, is the save more useful than the opposed check?

Because only 4 classes have proficiency in strength saving throws.
7 Classes have the option of getting the appropriate skill proficiency, and 4 of the backgrounds get it.

Odds are, without even knowing who you're trying to shove, you're better off using the maneuver than the contest.

Also, you can use one manuever per attack. So when you can make 4 attacks, that's up to 4 manuevers in a single round. Actually, if you had 8 dice you could go full nova with action surge and expend all 8 in addition to the 8 attacks.

Firechanter

2014-11-04, 05:44 AM

When I first flipped through my newly acquired PHB, and got to the Battlemaster entry, I saw "maneuvers" and sure enough, at first glance it looked like a "Warblade Light", which would be awesome. Then I looked closer and was rather disappointed. Rather unspectacular effects, just a handful of uses between Short Rests, and a very very moderate damage boost -- all in all it feels kinda *meh*. Especially when you're used to ToB goodness. :/

But griping aside, let's have a look which maneuvers might be worthwhile and which are rather wastes of space. Disclaimer, this is just my assessment and I may be missing stuff.

Commanders Strike:
Dude, _you_ are the Fighter, and as such probably the best Damage Dealer in the party. Why would you trade your own attack against that is most probably inferior? Seems rather stupid to me.

Disarming Attack:
The same problem as in previous editions -- only works against creatures that actually hold something. Might be useful, but probably not among your first picks.

Distracting Strike:
Not bad -- you deal extra damage and give a friend Advantage. Could be particularly useful if your friend has a similar trick up his sleeve and can give you Advantage in turn.

Evasive Footwork:
So it's like 3E Mobility, but with a random bonus and you have to pay each time you use it. Seems too situational to spend a maneuver on it. Pass.

Feinting Attack:
You get Advantage _and_ extra damage. Yeah! Probably one of the best maneuvers on the list. Particularly if you can combine this with something like Great Weapon Master.

Goading Attack:
Might be interesting for Tank builds, when you actually have the best odds in the party to dodge an enemy's attack. I.e. if you optimize your AC. Otherwise, hardly worth it.

Lunging Attack:
Reach seems to be much less valuable in 5E than in 3E. Instead of spending a precious superiority die, you could just, you know, _move_ 5 feet and then strike.

Maneuvering Attack:
the first maneuver that actually does something for Action Economy. You get to attack and deal extra damage, and you give a buddy a free move. This one really looks like it adds some tactical flexibility.

Menacing Attack:
Debuffs one enemy for one turn on a failed Wis Save. So it's best used against physical types who can dish out a lot of hurt. This maneuver buys your party some time to finish off the bastard. Looks good to me.

Parry:
Spend a Die for a bit of (random) DR? Probably not. Or only with defensive-oriented builds (such as the Tank who uses Goading Attacks as well). Personally I prefer a more offensive style.

Precision Attack:
Now this is something unique -- you get a bonus To Hit! These bonus seem to be incredibly rare, as far as I can tell. So again, in conjunction with GWM this is gold. Especially when you already got Advantage from another source and _really_ need to make sure the next attack hits.
(If you don't have Advantage yet, Feinting Attack is better because it also adds damage.)

Pushing Attack:
Unless there's some kind of abyss you can push your enemy into, why would you want to push them?

Rally:
Might be useful _if_ you have reasonably high Cha.

Riposte:
Another maneuver that does a bit for your Action Economy. It's a bit like Robilar's Gambit. However, you can only use it when the enemy attack misses, so it's probably best in conjunction with other defensive maneuvers and a reasonably high AC.

Sweeping Attack:
Very very situational -- basically makes sense only when you have two enemies in reach who are both very low on health, so even your measly Superiority Die will kill one. I guess in most cases it makes more sense to pile the damage on a single target.

Trip Attack:
certainly one of the most useful maneuvers. You make bonus damage and have a chance to knock the target prone. Attacks against a prone target automatically have Advantage. So this one can be a real force multiplier.

Shadow

2014-11-04, 06:14 AM

Commanders Strike:
Dude, _you_ are the Fighter, and as such probably the best Damage Dealer in the party. Why would you trade your own attack against that is most probably inferior? Seems rather stupid to me.

You, as the fighter, deal the most consistent sustained damage, yes.
You do not, however, have anywhere near the best single attack in the game. That belongs to the rogue, and no one else even comes close.
Use this ability to let the rogue sneak attack out of turn, because SA is once per turn, not once per round.

You trade your 2d6+8 (or whatever) for someone else's 11d6+8.... not a bad trade at all.
And incidentally, if you have a rogue in the party (even a multiclass) then CS becomes the most cost effective maneuver you could possibly use.

Firechanter

2014-11-04, 08:21 AM

Thanks for the insight. That makes sense.
However, since Sneak Attack seems to take a few levels to take off, it might suffice to take Commander's Strike some time around mid-levels, not necessarily from the beginning.

Longcat

2014-11-04, 08:45 AM

The vast majority of Battlemaster maneuvers work for ranged attacks, which offers some interesting opportunities, such as tripping people with a Longbow.

odigity

2014-11-04, 09:12 AM

True, but that only gives a single, inferior(d6), superiority die, and access to any 2 of 16 maneuvers.(6.5).

Yeah, I think Martial Adept feat sucks, and would never take it. If you really need some maneuvers, dip Fighter 3-4. It's not exactly a bad dip. :)

Also, you can use one manuever per attack. So when you can make 4 attacks, that's up to 4 manuevers in a single round. Actually, if you had 8 dice you could go full nova with action surge and expend all 8 in addition to the 8 attacks.

I don't think you can get more than 7 superiority dice total via any means in the PHB (Fighter 15 + Martial Adept). Good enough though, since you're likely to miss at least one of your eight attacks anyway. At 18thlvl those are d12s, which means that (depending on the maneuver) you're doing an extra 7d12 (on top of your normal damage), which is practically a Meteor Swarm (on top of your normal damage). Not a bad one-round nova for a boring old fighter.

But griping aside, let's have a look which maneuvers might be worthwhile and which are rather wastes of space. Disclaimer, this is just my assessment and I may be missing stuff.

...snip analysis of all Battle Master maneuvers...

Hey Firechanter, just wanted to point out that while there are two guides for the 5e Fighter already, both are on the Wizards forums:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?377491-Guides-Tables-and-other-useful-tools-for-5E-D-amp-D

We can probably use a local version... (wink wink nudge nudge)

silveralen

2014-11-04, 01:04 PM

Sort of. There was never a chance of a full ToB-style class showing up in the PHB. It would require too many extra pages and mechanics, and I assume they wanted to go with a more traditional design philosophy for martials in the PHB.

This is the kind of thing I would expect to see in a future splatbook.

I wouldn't expect them at all honestly, more than a bit of their unique stuff is already incorporated in the game. Paladins new smiting, all the monk subclasses, battle master fighter (not to mention action surges), are reminiscent of aspects of those classes. Which isn't surprising, since those classes came to be primarily to "fix" the original base classes.

HorridElemental

2014-11-04, 01:51 PM

I wish the battle master had a bit more... Oomph to their abilities.

Right now it is just a lazy way of saying "see we tried!" to people who want non-casters to have nice things.

Demonic Spoon

2014-11-04, 01:59 PM

I wouldn't expect them at all honestly, more than a bit of their unique stuff is already incorporated in the game. Paladins new smiting, all the monk subclasses, battle master fighter (not to mention action surges), are reminiscent of aspects of those classes. Which isn't surprising, since those classes came to be primarily to "fix" the original base classes.

There were two things the ToB did that people liked.

1. It fixed martial characters that otherwise suffered from major balance problems

2. It created a subsystem for martial combat that a lot of people liked much better than the base one.

5e has #1 out of the box - Fighter, Paladin, and Monk are solid choices. #2 it does not (beyond the battlemaster), but that's understandable because the ToB was controversial.

Given 5e's emphasis on variant rules, it seems reasonable that WotC would want to release a variant set of rules for the people who liked the 3.5e ToB mechanics. It wouldn't be used in every game, and wouldn't be the default, but would be there for people who wanted it, like all the other variant rules.

Speaker

2014-11-04, 03:20 PM

Yeah, I think Martial Adept feat sucks, and would never take it. If you really need some maneuvers, dip Fighter 3-4. It's not exactly a bad dip. :)

I don't think you can get more than 7 superiority dice total via any means in the PHB (Fighter 15 + Martial Adept). Good enough though, since you're likely to miss at least one of your eight attacks anyway. At 18thlvl those are d12s, which means that (depending on the maneuver) you're doing an extra 7d12 (on top of your normal damage), which is practically a Meteor Swarm (on top of your normal damage). Not a bad one-round nova for a boring old fighter.

Hey Firechanter, just wanted to point out that while there are two guides for the 5e Fighter already, both are on the Wizards forums:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?377491-Guides-Tables-and-other-useful-tools-for-5E-D-amp-D

We can probably use a local version... (wink wink nudge nudge)

The Martial Adept feat does suck unfortunately superiority dice are really rare. It surprises me that people think the BM is the best fighter archetype when Eldritch Knight takes that position hands down and even it's kind of meh. You would think that since fighters are supposed to be consistent they would give them a resource that preforms...consistently. If I was playing a BM I would beg the DM for a new superiority dice mechanic.

JoeJ

2014-11-04, 03:46 PM

The Martial Adept feat does suck unfortunately superiority dice are really rare. It surprises me that people think the BM is the best fighter archetype when Eldritch Knight takes that position hands down and even it's kind of meh. You would think that since fighters are supposed to be consistent they would give them a resource that preforms...consistently. If I was playing a BM I would beg the DM for a new superiority dice mechanic.

"Best" is relative. If what you want is a character who can pull off flashy maneuvers, Battle Master is the best choice. If you want to play a bruiser you should pick Champion (or perhaps go for Barbarian). Eldritch Knight is only a good choice if what you want to play is a skilled warrior who can also cast spells.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-04, 04:02 PM

i'm working up a monk and i'm actually pretty tempted by martial adept.

sure, it's only 1 die per short rest, but the parry damage block or advantage when you reeeally need it seems like it could pay off. Monks have tons of things they can do with their bonus actions/reactions anyway so you wouldn't even want to multiclass into battlemaster really.

It's pretty thematic for a spear wielding crouching tiger/hidden dragon guy too.

EDIT:

there are times where you can't get within 5 feet of someone, and that seems to be when lunging attack pays off... it sure scales poorly though, it seems way better levels 1-4 than after people start stacking extra attacks.

My main problem with the BM is that for a lot of martial builds it seems bonus actions are always useful, and having to burn superiority die AND a bonus action for a negligible effect (like lunging attack) is pretty harsh on a pretty limited resource.

HorridElemental

2014-11-04, 04:12 PM

Vogonjeltz

2014-11-04, 04:16 PM

--snip--

Agree with your assessments for the most part.

I could see a case for Commander's Strike (Raging Barbarian or Rogue pal? *Ah mentioned; Fighter is unable to actually make the attacks on the desired target?).

Parry has actually saved my Fighter's life at least once, so it's hard for me to agree with discounting it (this becomes more valuable as the superiority die value goes up, plus it adds Dex mod, so there's good potential there for an Archery focused Fighter.

Something to bear in mind is when the superiority die is actually expended. Some maneuvers burn it AFTER a hit is determined, which means the bonus damage always happens. Some burn the die prior to a roll, meaning it could be all for naught. In picking maneuvers for my Battle Master I tried to appreciate the widest use case scenarios.

Also note, many of these maneuvers work with ranged attacks or melee attacks.

My picks were based on use cases:
Parry - works off your character being hit. (reaction)
Riposte - works off your character being missed. (reaction)
Trip Attack - offensive, for the reasons you mentioned. Using this effectively requires understanding that an opponent needs 15 feet of movement to stand. If they're grappled, their movement is 0. In other words, tripping someone you're grappling means they can't stand up.
Disarming Attack - offensive, vs opponents with weapons, remember to kick the weapon out of the way as free object interaction.
Menacing Attack - defensive, requires a different save from disarming and trip.

Sadly there's nothing that requires a Dex save, or I probably would have picked that up to diversify the targeted ability.

Oh, and regarding Rally. It provides temporary hit points with no duration. That means they last until the subject takes a Long Rest (8 hours). You regain all maneuvers after a Short/Long Rest. So as a Fighter you could Give your entire party bonus HP, then rest for a measily hour and carry on with bonus HP and full maneuvers. So there's actually potentially some good there.

I don't think you can get more than 7 superiority dice total via any means in the PHB (Fighter 15 + Martial Adept). Good enough though, since you're likely to miss at least one of your eight attacks anyway. At 18thlvl those are d12s, which means that (depending on the maneuver) you're doing an extra 7d12 (on top of your normal damage), which is practically a Meteor Swarm (on top of your normal damage). Not a bad one-round nova for a boring old fighter.

My bad, I thought for some reason that a character could take the Martial Adept feat multiple times. (Not so).

Speaker

2014-11-04, 04:20 PM

"Best" is relative. If what you want is a character who can pull off flashy maneuvers, Battle Master is the best choice. If you want to play a bruiser you should pick Champion (or perhaps go for Barbarian). Eldritch Knight is only a good choice if what you want to play is a skilled warrior who can also cast spells.

I meant best in an optimization kind of way not thematically. I rather like the monk class and wanted to get the martial adept feat since that kind of makes sense even though I think both of those options are not all that great from a power perspective.

My major problem with the BM is that their resource is really limited and it doesn't come back unless you take a short rest which quite frankly doesn't make sense for the fighter class theme of being a combat king who keeps on trucking. I'd have preferred if it replenished every encounter but you were limited to 2 or 3 each one.

silveralen

2014-11-04, 04:31 PM

2. It created a subsystem for martial combat that a lot of people liked much better than the base one.

Given 5e's emphasis on variant rules, it seems reasonable that WotC would want to release a variant set of rules for the people who liked the 3.5e ToB mechanics. It wouldn't be used in every game, and wouldn't be the default, but would be there for people who wanted it, like all the other variant rules.

But again that subsystem has been rolled into existing mechanics to a degree. Paladins/rangers have strikes and stances in the form of bonus action spells which augment an attack, spells which use a weapon as part of the casting, and concentration spells to buff over an extended period.

I'm just trying to figure out what exactly people miss. My paladin reminds me of my warblade in all the right ways, though losing my "stance" when I use a special "strike" was annoying until my DM basically removed concentration from most paladin smites.

My major problem with the BM is that their resource is really limited and it doesn't come back unless you take a short rest which quite frankly doesn't make sense for the fighter class theme of being a combat king who keeps on trucking. I'd have preferred if it replenished every encounter but you were limited to 2 or 3 each one.

I have no idea why it starts you at 4 dice at lvl three, than hands out a gran total of two additional dice over the next 12 levels. I almost feel like it was a typo, gaining two additional dice at those levels. Same thing with the lvl 15 ability, why just one per combat?

Demonic Spoon

2014-11-04, 04:35 PM

But again that subsystem has been rolled into existing mechanics to a degree. Paladins/rangers have strikes and stances in the form of bonus action spells which augment an attack, spells which use a weapon as part of the casting, and concentration spells to buff over an extended period.

I'm just trying to figure out what exactly people miss. My paladin reminds me of my warblade in all the right ways, though losing my "stance" when I use a special "strike" was annoying until my DM basically removed concentration from most paladin smites.

To a degree is the point. They want the stances and maneuvers that scale with level. Most of the contention is related to the Battlemaster as compared to the 3.5 Warblade.

HorridElemental

2014-11-04, 04:50 PM

I want to bring a bunch of forum goers together and make up a good solid homebrew scale with notes and warnings to DMs about whatever.

Then a DM just has to check this reference guide (PDF.) and on the same page could download a copy of the homebrew via PDF...

So like if you are playing 5e and someone wants to bring a Battle Master fix the guide could have a link to it or a PDF of it and a warning if it is too weak or too strong or something...

How would one go about doing this I wonder... It would be a fantastic DM tool. Give the power rating of 0 (useless) to 5 (insaaaaane) and DMs would say "only 2-4 ratings of homebrew in my game" or whatever.

Eslin

2014-11-04, 07:46 PM

[QUOTE=silveralen;18358775]But again that subsystem has been rolled into existing mechanics to a degree. Paladins/rangers have strikes and stances in the form of bonus action spells which augment an attack, spells which use a weapon as part of the casting, and concentration spells to buff over an extended period.

I'm just trying to figure out what exactly people miss. My paladin reminds me of my warblade in all the right ways, though losing my "stance" when I use a special "strike" was annoying until my DM basically removed concentration from most paladin smites./QUOTE]

The spells and buffs are very limited, react horribly with concentration and are actual magic on a couple of very specifically focused. They may remind you of maneuvers, good for you, but they're as closely related as a bard reminding me of a factotum - good for me if it does, but it's not a replacement and I still want my factotum.

The warblade/swordsage/crusader were a well balanced series of classes with interesting gameplay that didn't fall off with level like many martials and the system is very transferable to 5e, I imagine we'll see them again soon.

silveralen

2014-11-04, 08:27 PM

The spells and buffs are very limited, react horribly with concentration and are actual magic on a couple of very specifically focused. They may remind you of maneuvers, good for you, but they're as closely related as a bard reminding me of a factotum - good for me if it does, but it's not a replacement and I still want my factotum.

The warblade/swordsage/crusader were a well balanced series of classes with interesting gameplay that didn't fall off with level like many martials and the system is very transferable to 5e, I imagine we'll see them again soon.

The limitations are in your head, I've yet to have any trouble keeping mine going.

Actual magic? Yes, swords that set people on fire are magic. Wasn't it literally called sword magic? I honestly don't understand why that's an issue.

I can't imagine we'd see a 5E factotum. Nor do I expect to see variations on these, they took the better parts of the class and added them to other classes. We don't need better martial classes anymore.

Eslin

2014-11-04, 08:44 PM

The limitations are in your head, I've yet to have any trouble keeping mine going.

Actual magic? Yes, swords that set people on fire are magic. Wasn't it literally called sword magic? I honestly don't understand why that's an issue.

I can't imagine we'd see a 5E factotum. Nor do I expect to see variations on these, they took the better parts of the class and added them to other classes. We don't need better martial classes anymore.

Those limitations are not in my head, they're in the designers' heads. There is a long history of having martials be able to do less than casters simply because casters can use magic and therefore do impossible things.

And they didn't take the better parts of the initiator classes and do anything with them, the closest thing we have is the battlemaster fighter which is a very, very poor imitation. We do need better martial classes - we need martial classes with more out of combat utility and we need martial classes with more interesting in-combat options. They've proved they can do it well - the 3.5 initiators and the 4e martial classes were balanced and had a variety of in-combat tactical options, with the ability to take bigger and better options as they leveled. 5e has the opportunity to implement that kind of class without (most of) the problems 3.5 and 4 had.

MeeposFire

2014-11-04, 08:50 PM

The problem with amny of the mentioned classes (swordsages, warblades, crusaders, factotums, etc) is taht they are not really archetypes that need to be their own class. In 3e they are really variations of a traditional class with a new mechanic. There is a reason why people say "play a swordsage instead of a monk". The swordsage class in many ways is the monk (or potentially a more militant rogue it can be multiple archetypes mind you) but based around the new maneuvers concept in ToB. The reason they are separate classes is due to how class design was done back in that time. If they created the ToB book now the crusader would probably be a sublcass/archetype choice for the paladin (perhaps instead of an oath). Most of those classes no longer need to be a separate class because most of those classes were just eh same archetypes with a different mechanic to differentiate them. Today we can do that more easily with sub classes.

For instance a warmage is no longer needed as we can do that with a sub class of sorcerer probably with armor prof and perhaps greater flexibility with elemental damage types.

Honestly what does the warblade class bring to the table as a concept that isn't already brought by the fighter class? Note when I say concept I am talking about role or flavor of the class and not the mechanics because unless the mechanic is so connected to the class that nobody else could do it then the mechanic could be applied to a different class (most likely fighter).

silveralen

2014-11-04, 08:59 PM

Those limitations are not in my head, they're in the designers' heads. There is a long history of having martials be able to do less than casters simply because casters can use magic and therefore do impossible things.

And they didn't take the better parts of the initiator classes and do anything with them, the closest thing we have is the battlemaster fighter which is a very, very poor imitation. We do need better martial classes - we need martial classes with more out of combat utility and we need martial classes with more interesting in-combat options. They've proved they can do it well - the 3.5 initiators and the 4e martial classes were balanced and had a variety of in-combat tactical options, with the ability to take bigger and better options as they leveled. 5e has the opportunity to implement that kind of class without (most of) the problems 3.5 and 4 had.

You are stuck in 3rd edition. Nothing wrong or limited about these classes anymore. Guess which "martial" classes can fly or teleport? All of them! Skills have been made much easier. Even basic fighter can action surge (it's been a while, but isn't that very close to a high level warblade maneuver? Moment of time?).

Seriously, everything you want exists in this edition, you just refuse to use it or disqualify it without trying.

Demonic Spoon

2014-11-04, 09:18 PM

Honestly what does the warblade class bring to the table as a concept that isn't already brought by the fighter class? Note when I say concept I am talking about role or flavor of the class and not the mechanics because unless the mechanic is so connected to the class that nobody else could do it then the mechanic could be applied to a different class (most likely fighter).

I don't think anyone here is arguing that ToBish-classes in 5e would need their own fluff. The mechanics are specifically what people are missing. A subclass won't work because a martial maneuver system along the lines of what Eslin and others want would require a total rebuild of the Fighter class, whereas subclasses have a small, constant set of ability "slots" that a subclass can fill.

You are stuck in 3rd edition. Nothing wrong or limited about these classes anymore. Guess which "martial" classes can fly or teleport? All of them! Skills have been made much easier. Even basic fighter can action surge (it's been a while, but isn't that very close to a high level warblade maneuver? Moment of time?).

Seriously, everything you want exists in this edition, you just refuse to use it or disqualify it without trying.

The thing that the ToB has that Eslin and others are missing is the "power" dynamic - you level up, you choose powers, and you can use them to do cool things, much like how spells work. Action surge is sort of like that, but it's one ability that is default and not really a choice, whereas the ToB had a ridiculous array of powers to choose from. Furthermore, the ToB abilities got substantially stronger over the course of levels (much like spells). These abilities were also usable very, very frequently

Compare to Battlemaster maneuvers, by contrast, which are largely static and only usable a few times per short rest.

To be clear, I have no interest in such mechanics myself, and would not use such a splatbook in any 5e games I ran. However, we shouldn't pretend like 5e already has what they're asking for. It doesn't. And I'm glad it doesn't...but 5e is supposed to be a flexible system, so I don't think that an optional subsystem is necessarily a bad idea.

Gurka

2014-11-04, 09:26 PM

Those limitations are not in my head, they're in the designers' heads. There is a long history of having martials be able to do less than casters simply because casters can use magic and therefore do impossible things...

Honestly yes, Magic users can and always will have abilities that mundane characters do not. They can warp reality, while mundanes remain bound by it. Oh well.

They have a broader scope of utility in this edition, as in others, but their raw power is only marginally greater, if at all. In terms of the middle of a fight, they've really done a good job balancing the fighter, rogue, monk and barbarian. In the games I've been part of so far, the wizards and sorcerers who have selected their spells to be good at blasting may shine now and again but in most fights they're really taking back seat to the fighters, barbarians and monks. The Rogues are capable of some really spectacular wetwork even at mid levels which they really hadn't been able to do effectively in previous editions that I can recall.

The only time the wizards and Sorcerers have really stood out is when they were eschewing all but a couple of nukes, and instead taking as many utility spells as they could fit. I'm ok with them having that niche. Especially since the mundanes weren't left out in the proverbial cold either, when not fighting.

The only thing that's stood out as significantly stronger is the onion, and it wasn't really a problem for all that long.

I grant you that we've disallowed a few of the more egregious oversights in balance, where the spell list is concerned, but even if we allowed them, I don't think there'd be a major problem. Everybody contributes in roughly equal amounts in all phases of the game, as it stands now. Perhaps I have an exceptional group that I play with, but it can't be all us. It's definitely not perfect, but it hits closer to the mark than any edition I've played in a really, really long time. I haven't been able to say I actually liked D&D in over 15 years, and I can actually say that again. It's still not my favorite game, but it's on the list now, and that's worth a lot.

That came off as a bit rah-rah I see now... oh well.

silveralen

2014-11-04, 09:31 PM

I think the mechanic exists, again paladin/ranger, just not in battlemaster fighter. Heck, it exists partially in eldritch knight fighter, valor bard, or elemental monk. It's odd.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-04, 10:04 PM

Multiclasss eldritch knight/battlemaster. Uh, can you even do that? Lol.

Raxxius

2014-11-04, 10:06 PM

One of the interesting logic flaws of the system is specifically limiting fighter classes to 'mundane' while giving them abilities clearly beyond the realms of physical possiblity. No human in reality can come close to the physical prowess of a high level fighter, they're way beyond the realms of plausability, and frankly so they should be.

One of the bigger issues the Battlemaster is well covered, it's the ultimate flatness of the class, you get all your cool toys first and then nothing really tasty. Total lack of tiering of maneuvers doesn't feel great, and an extremely limited pool also makes them feel meh. It doesn't really matter that the BM isn't weak, excitment really caps at 3 and it's all a bit meh from there on in.

While TOB was cool, and I really liked the warblade/crusader/swordmage classes as a fix for boring (weakness has nowt to do with IMO) core classes. I don't see a need for a reintroduction of them however, people have already stated that they can be roled into exisiting classes, crusaders could be roled into pallys, swordmages into monk, warblade could be rolled into either battle master or eldrich knight.

The problem I feel is that combat maneuvers should be avalible for everyone, with the battlemaster being especially great/versitile at them. 2nd ed with combat and tactics had a plethora of cool stuff you could do, 3rd ed tried but making it feat related just slapped a straight jacket on the system instead of expanding it. For example, I feel everyone should have the option to parry attacks, it adds interactivity to combat and stops you just feeling like you're getting smacked over the head repeatedly when it's not your turn.

Eslin

2014-11-04, 10:23 PM

You are stuck in 3rd edition.
Moved on to fifth immediately, it has the same potential as 3rd but with a simpler and more balanced chassis.

Nothing wrong or limited about these classes anymore. Guess which "martial" classes can fly or teleport? All of them!
None of them! Barbarian can jump his speed at 14, but must land on the ground at the end of every turn. One monk subtype can teleport 60ft to and from shadows, and fighters can't fly. Eldritch knights and element monks can use the fly spell very late on, but that's just actual casting.

Skills have been made much easier. Even basic fighter can action surge (it's been a while, but isn't that very close to a high level warblade maneuver? Moment of time?) That there are a few abilities similar to a few maneuvers has absolutely no bearing on this - it's like as monk is to a wizard, just because a monk has abilities that are like certain spells (feather fall/etherealness/misty step etc) doesn't mean playing a monk gives the same tactical options or feel as a wizard. And skills being better or worse doesn't change things for martials since casters get those skills too and keep their spell based utility.

Seriously, everything you want exists in this edition, you just refuse to use it or disqualify it without trying.
There's only the PHB out at present, there is no way everything I want could exist yet. As it is, the only things we lack that I think should have been in the PHB (apart from some actual proof-reading) are warlords and maneuvers.

I don't think anyone here is arguing that ToBish-classes in 5e would need their own fluff. The mechanics are specifically what people are missing. A subclass won't work because a martial maneuver system along the lines of what Eslin and others want would require a total rebuild of the Fighter class, whereas subclasses have a small, constant set of ability "slots" that a subclass can fill.

The thing that the ToB has that Eslin and others are missing is the "power" dynamic - you level up, you choose powers, and you can use them to do cool things, much like how spells work. Action surge is sort of like that, but it's one ability that is default and not really a choice, whereas the ToB had a ridiculous array of powers to choose from. Furthermore, the ToB abilities got substantially stronger over the course of levels (much like spells). These abilities were also usable very, very frequently

Compare to Battlemaster maneuvers, by contrast, which are largely static and only usable a few times per short rest.

To be clear, I have no interest in such mechanics myself, and would not use such a splatbook in any 5e games I ran. However, we shouldn't pretend like 5e already has what they're asking for. It doesn't. And I'm glad it doesn't...but 5e is supposed to be a flexible system, so I don't think that an optional subsystem is necessarily a bad idea.

Pretty much exactly this. I loved martials scaling in a similar way casters did, gaining the ability to smash through walls or throw your weapon so hard that everyone in a line took damage and remaining competitive without being unbalanced. It made my martial players finally feel equal in competence to the spellcasters, got them looking forward to fights so they could try new things out.

Raxxius

2014-11-04, 10:42 PM

Pretty much exactly this. I loved martials scaling in a similar way casters did, gaining the ability to smash through walls or throw your weapon so hard that everyone in a line took damage and remaining competitive without being unbalanced. It made my martial players finally feel equal in competence to the spellcasters, got them looking forward to fights so they could try new things out.

Argumentivley, couldn't all of this be done by giving the Eldrich Knight a new spell list, TOB specifically describes the system as magical, and the PHB is actually full of Gish esque sword n spell classes (EK, Hexblade, bard, ranger, paladin)

Eslin

2014-11-04, 10:58 PM

Argumentivley, couldn't all of this be done by giving the Eldrich Knight a new spell list, TOB specifically describes the system as magical, and the PHB is actually full of Gish esque sword n spell classes (EK, Hexblade, bard, ranger, paladin)

The system is not magical. Some disciplines are supernatural such as shadow hand, devoted spirit, desert wind but many (including all of the warblade's disciplines) are extraordinary. And the eldritch knight gives very few spells known/spells per day, while the point of maneuvers was they had no limits on use per day and scaled at the same rate as spellcasting did. And on top of that, the nine disciplines gave very different abilities, resulting in very different character types - SH/SS made a ninja, SS/DM/TC a monk, SH/DW a full on magical adept, DM/SD a straight up dexterity based fighter, and that was only one class. Restricting it to one subtype of one class would be needlessly reducing possibilities and power.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-04, 11:34 PM

MeeposFire

2014-11-04, 11:54 PM

I don't think anyone here is arguing that ToBish-classes in 5e would need their own fluff. The mechanics are specifically what people are missing. A subclass won't work because a martial maneuver system along the lines of what Eslin and others want would require a total rebuild of the Fighter class, whereas subclasses have a small, constant set of ability "slots" that a subclass can fill.

The thing that the ToB has that Eslin and others are missing is the "power" dynamic - you level up, you choose powers, and you can use them to do cool things, much like how spells work. Action surge is sort of like that, but it's one ability that is default and not really a choice, whereas the ToB had a ridiculous array of powers to choose from. Furthermore, the ToB abilities got substantially stronger over the course of levels (much like spells). These abilities were also usable very, very frequently

Compare to Battlemaster maneuvers, by contrast, which are largely static and only usable a few times per short rest.

To be clear, I have no interest in such mechanics myself, and would not use such a splatbook in any 5e games I ran. However, we shouldn't pretend like 5e already has what they're asking for. It doesn't. And I'm glad it doesn't...but 5e is supposed to be a flexible system, so I don't think that an optional subsystem is necessarily a bad idea.

Really all the battlemaster really needs is messing with the details. I am not sure yet whether the abilities scale enough as you level and I am also unsure whether they are usable enough what with the change to how long a short rest takes. If a battlemaster could use all their special dice after only 5 minutes of rest then I think it would not be so bad since then you could use a maneuver almost every turn of a fight.

Some people may think they need to have "levels " and the like on their maneuvers but I don't think so really they just need to scale correctly. In 4e many higher level powers are essentially the same as a lower level power except with more damage, an additional effect, or other small change so if you bake the progression into the power (a number of later powers in 4e did it this way to save space and confusion) then you do not need a bunch of different level powers.

Eslin

2014-11-05, 12:10 AM

Supernatural and extraordinary is what magical means.

ToB classes wern't even very martial when you come down to it - crouching tiger hidden dragon kungfu fighters even at the low end.

I think there's flavor reasons why the Battlemaster maneuvers are all available at level 3.

Maneuvers were like that because the ToB classes had to compete with 3.5 spellcasters. 5e martials don't. A battlemaster that used a maneuver every round forever might be pretty op? not sure.

Yes, and in 5e I wouldn't expect to see the exact same thing, if I wanted that I'd play 3.5. What people want is a similar system - a variety of combat abilities and classes that grows in options and power as they level using them. The 5e battlemaster is a neat little nod towards that kind of system, but they get 4 superiority dice for the first 3 levels then 2 more superiority dice for the next 17, and as they level up instead of access to new and better abilities like a caster or initiator they get to pick the abilities they didn't want at level 3.

And the whole point to maneuvers isn't using the same one every round - each class had a way of gaining their maneuvers back, though keep in mind they were not perfect since this was the first such attempt. The important bit is that it be an unlimited amount of uses, differentiating it from casters - it's not like you can spam your most powerful maneuver over and over, you have to trade off actions at some point. If anyone wants a good look at maneuvers from something apart from tome of battle, look at 13th age - every martial class has maneuvers, and it works very well.

Really all the battlemaster really needs is messing with the details. I am not sure yet whether the abilities scale enough as you level and I am also unsure whether they are usable enough what with the change to how long a short rest takes. If a battlemaster could use all their special dice after only 5 minutes of rest then I think it would not be so bad since then you could use a maneuver almost every turn of a fight.

Some people may think they need to have "levels " and the like on their maneuvers but I don't think so really they just need to scale correctly. In 4e many higher level powers are essentially the same as a lower level power except with more damage, an additional effect, or other small change so if you bake the progression into the power (a number of later powers in 4e did it this way to save space and confusion) then you do not need a bunch of different level powers.

I'd have you get one superiority dice every turn and 1-2 dice that can be used any time that recharge on a short rest. One maneuver per turn, with the ability to use two once or twice for extra oomph. Or you can sacrifice an attack to get a superiority dice back. But the main problem is still lack of scaling, they get a huge spike at 3 and then absolutely mediocre features for the next 17.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-05, 12:24 AM

The DCs scale with proficiency so that's fine. Anything that causes a status effect (like trip) scales fine. It's anything that depends on a single attack or just dealing superiority damage that doesn't seem to scale well.

parry's a good example, a parry might go from d8+3 (7.5) to d12+5 (11.5) from level 3 to level 20 and that's just not very much difference for a resource that is in very short supply.

Relentless (recover 1 superiority die if you don't have one when you roll init) and the similar monk capstone are both pretty underwhelming. Maybe if they were +1 die every time you roll init? I guess that's exploitable, though...

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-05, 12:31 AM

I'd have you get one superiority dice every turn and 1-2 dice that can be used any time that recharge on a short rest. One maneuver per turn, with the ability to use two once or twice for extra oomph. Or you can sacrifice an attack to get a superiority dice back. But the main problem is still lack of scaling, they get a huge spike at 3 and then absolutely mediocre features for the next 17.

I think being able to use maneuvers every turn would get out of control, and also detract from the specialness of maneuvers. If you can Trip a monster every turn with bonuses for free, why not?

Battlemaster might indeed be the poster child for 'multiclass at 12', or even earlier. The later bonuses really are boring.

Maybe the maneuvers should be split into 'basic' and 'advanced' maneuvers, with different progression rates, and the basic maneuvers can be used once a turn while the advanced maneuvers use superiority die.

silveralen

2014-11-05, 12:46 AM

None of them! Barbarian can jump his speed at 14, but must land on the ground at the end of every turn. One monk subtype can teleport 60ft to and from shadows, and fighters can't fly. Eldritch knights and element monks can use the fly spell very late on, but that's just actual casting.

So, just to clarify, monk has both a teleport and fly available, at 6th and 11th. Fighter has misty step and levitate options by 8 and true flying by 14. Yeah it is a spell, if he got an ability that did the sae thing once a day but didn't specifically say it is a spell would that somehow be better? No, it'd be the exact same thing. Though fighter does gain a spell casting less teleport at lvl 15.

I mean.... did the ToB people have unlimited teleports and flying speed or something similar? If anything, this is a step forward for these classes.

That there are a few abilities similar to a few maneuvers has absolutely no bearing on this - it's like as monk is to a wizard, just because a monk has abilities that are like certain spells (feather fall/etherealness/misty step etc) doesn't mean playing a monk gives the same tactical options or feel as a wizard. And skills being better or worse doesn't change things for martials since casters get those skills too and keep their spell based utility.

Except they didn't keep their spell based utility. The number of spell slots was drastically cut, their ability to stack spells was removed, and many of the utility spells have serious downsides. Spell casting utility isn't even close to what it was in 3.X, and as said above yes many of those are 100% available as an option to monk and fighter, including the mainstays of flight and invisibility.

Pretty much exactly this. I loved martials scaling in a similar way casters did, gaining the ability to smash through walls or throw your weapon so hard that everyone in a line took damage and remaining competitive without being unbalanced. It made my martial players finally feel equal in competence to the spellcasters, got them looking forward to fights so they could try new things out.

Then play a paladin or a ranger. They scale like casters because they use the same system. You are literally describing those classes in every post.

Plus, the latter is literally in the game. Lightning arrow as a ranger. Throw that weapon and hit multiple people.

Eslin

2014-11-05, 01:40 AM

So, just to clarify, monk has both a teleport and fly available, at 6th and 11th. Fighter has misty step and levitate options by 8 and true flying by 14. Yeah it is a spell, if he got an ability that did the sae thing once a day but didn't specifically say it is a spell would that somehow be better? No, it'd be the exact same thing. Though fighter does gain a spell casting less teleport at lvl 15.

I mean.... did the ToB people have unlimited teleports and flying speed or something similar? If anything, this is a step forward for these classes.
These are spells! These are explicitly spells, this isn't empowering martials this is just giving them casting abilities. It would not be the exact same thing, martial abilities would be a different system with different flavour and different mechanics that felt and played differently. How is that the same thing? And yes, swordsages (where you went if you wanted an explictly supernatural character) could fly and teleport and such.

Except they didn't keep their spell based utility. The number of spell slots was drastically cut, their ability to stack spells was removed, and many of the utility spells have serious downsides. Spell casting utility isn't even close to what it was in 3.X, and as said above yes many of those are 100% available as an option to monk and fighter, including the mainstays of flight and invisibility.
Of couse spellcasting utility isn't what is was in 3.X, no-one wanted it to be. They still have incredible out of combat utility - (worldwide teleportation, raising the dead, breathing underwater, restoring limbs, removing curses, animating armies, altering the weather, turning into creatures, mind controlling people, long range magical information gathering, magical traps, passing through stone and walls, changing dimensions, hiding the party in magical huts and mansions, creating demiplanes, moving earth, controlling water, fabricating items, divining for answers, creating illusions, creating persistent programmable illusions, causing crops to grow, allowing the entire party to fly at 300ft per round for hours). That was what I could think of and type up in two minutes.

Spell utility is still immense, and to top it off they have more in combat options too.

Then play a paladin or a ranger. They scale like casters because they use the same system. You are literally describing those classes in every post.

Plus, the latter is literally in the game. Lightning arrow as a ranger. Throw that weapon and hit multiple people.
Pretty sure I'm not describing them. Paladins and rangers are divine classes with a moderate complement of spells which have a very specific set of combat uses and take from the same resource as their out of combat utility. What I was describing was fully martial classes not powered by gods or anything that have a large variety of in combat options (which options these are being dependent on class and build) that get stronger abilities regularly as they level up and do not have to worry about uses per day, though have to use specific methods to recharge those abilities so can't just spam their best ability over and over.

Gurka

2014-11-05, 04:28 AM

I really don't see ToB classes fitting into the existing classes particularly well as it stands. I say that simply because the kind of maneuvers they have at their disposal were beyond the score of power offered by a archetype. To do them justice, the classes would be too strong when combined with their basic class features, while to keep them balanced would require you to dilute the various powers greatly.

I'm definitely in the camp that they need one or more base classes, plus subclasses based on their chosen style, ala mage school or cleric domain.

That probably won't happen for a long time, if ever though.

rlc

2014-11-05, 05:18 AM

Furthermore, the ToB abilities got substantially stronger over the course of levels (much like spells). These abilities were also usable very, very frequently

Compare to Battlemaster maneuvers, by contrast, which are largely static and only usable a few times per short rest.

Yeah, I think they missed a huge chance here. I guess maybe they didn't want them to feel like spells.

HorridElemental

2014-11-05, 11:54 AM

Yeah, I think they missed a huge chance here. I guess maybe they didn't want them to feel like spells.

If by "feel like spells" you mean set up in a way that relays information easily (using the same formatting and such) then I guess they felt like spells.

I always hated this argument... It is like saying that Harry Potter and the Dictionary are the same thing. Sure they are both books (abilities) but one is fiction (spells) and the other is non-fiction (maneuvers).

silveralen

2014-11-05, 11:57 AM

These are spells! These are explicitly spells, this isn't empowering martials this is just giving them casting abilities. It would not be the exact same thing, martial abilities would be a different system with different flavour and different mechanics that felt and played differently. How is that the same thing? And yes, swordsages (where you went if you wanted an explictly supernatural character) could fly and teleport and such.

Pretty sure I'm not describing them. Paladins and rangers are divine classes with a moderate complement of spells which have a very specific set of combat uses and take from the same resource as their out of combat utility. What I was describing was fully martial classes not powered by gods or anything that have a large variety of in combat options (which options these are being dependent on class and build) that get stronger abilities regularly as they level up and do not have to worry about uses per day, though have to use specific methods to recharge those abilities so can't just spam their best ability over and over.

So let me get this straight, giving a martial class access to magic in no way empowers them, but giving them abilities which directly mimic magic but technically aren't does? That's the problem? Are you actually serious? You can't reskin your abilities as "sword magic" (which was called magic anyways) and use that?

Why do we need an entirely new system to mimic something that already exists? Besides the fact you basically seem to want access to high level "manuevers" on par with spells on a short rest, or even regaining them mid combat, despite wanting them to scale with spells which regain on a long rest, excepting warlock who does not scale nearly as high as other casters. Which again is basically showing what you want can easily be rolled into the current system, without designing an entirely new and pointless subsystem.

silveralen

2014-11-05, 01:08 PM

Also, someone give me some feedback on how well this would work:

lvl 11 (replaces 3rd attack)
Pick two preferred manuevers you already know, you can use one of these maneuvers once per turn turn without expending a superiority die, rolling a die one size smaller than normal.

lvl 20 (replaces 4th attack)
Pick two additional preferred manuevers. You can use any two, or one twice, each turn without expending a die. When you expend a superiority die on one of these manuevers, double the die's result.

If the goal is to make a fighter who uses few standards attacks, why not remove a few and replace them with more manuevers? Only downside I see is you are capped at two-three manuevers per turn, while a standard fighter could potentially launch 4-5 if he really wanted.

Gurka

2014-11-05, 01:16 PM

Without really running the numbers, I'd say that looks fine.

The only thing I see is that it's mostly gonna result in the fighter using the same attack almost every turn. It's just a different flavor of boring, to me anyway. It still doesn't offer the kind of creativity you can get out of a descriptive action. That depends on a DM who thinks we'll on his feet and doesn't mind improvising though. In my experience, they're not very common in D&D groups.

silveralen

2014-11-05, 01:23 PM

Hmm, reasonable point. Does anyone actually like relentless?

lvl 15 (replaces relentless)
Pick two additional preferred manuevers.

Or we could bump it up to three choices at lvl 11.

Or forgo picking two new manuevers for mastering a manuever they already know at appropriate levels.

Just kinda wary of giving them access to every manuever as an at will.

Gurka

2014-11-05, 01:26 PM

Besides, I thought the various semi supernatural abilities on ToB (if I remember right, it was called Blade Magic) were very flavorful, and really did a lot more things than basic maneuvers.

Some were stances, some were reactions, some were very mystical, etc. There were something like 200 abilities between all the different styles available to the 3 classes in the book. To me, that deserves more than just a dozen maneuvers.

It was something interesting and flavorful that offered a very different play experience than the fighter did. In 3.x it was also flat out better than the fighter, but there's no reason for that to be the case here, as the fighter is plenty strong.

I would also like to see 5e versions of incarnum and proper binders, for that matter. I love players having as many character options as possible. I just hope they take the time to balance them well. The quality of product you get on a quarterly or biannual basis is night and day vs a book a month.

HorridElemental

2014-11-05, 01:27 PM

Shadow

2014-11-05, 01:34 PM

They are still to weak as is, they are pretty forgettible.

What's weak about them that they need buffing?
Fighters already have the best sustained damage in the game. Giving them minor riders and effects a few times per combat to toss on top of (not instead of) all that consistent damage is about perfect. Make them much more powerful and fighter becomes OP.
Just because they aren't amazingly flashy doesn't mean that they're weak.

silveralen

2014-11-05, 01:41 PM

They are still to weak as is, they are pretty forgettible.

Too weak in what respect though? Base fighter, while not exactly the most complex class, isn't weak this edition.

Gurka

2014-11-05, 01:51 PM

Too weak in what respect though? Base fighter, while not exactly the most complex class, isn't weak this edition.

Ironically, in noncombat situations they end up very competent since they tend to have the best all around stats, and most tasks are just ability checks. As long as you don't go crazy with feats anyway. That was always something that left them out in the proverbial cold in earlier versions. "Not fighting? OK, I'll go sharpen my sword. Call me if you need something heady moved. And, you know, the wizard isn't available to magic it."

Eslin

2014-11-05, 02:06 PM

So let me get this straight, giving a martial class access to magic in no way empowers them, but giving them abilities which directly mimic magic but technically aren't does? That's the problem? Are you actually serious? You can't reskin your abilities as "sword magic" (which was called magic anyways) and use that?

Why do we need an entirely new system to mimic something that already exists? Besides the fact you basically seem to want access to high level "manuevers" on par with spells on a short rest, or even regaining them mid combat, despite wanting them to scale with spells which regain on a long rest, excepting warlock who does not scale nearly as high as other casters. Which again is basically showing what you want can easily be rolled into the current system, without designing an entirely new and pointless subsystem.

Except for the most part all you're doing is just directly giving your martial classes magic and calling that a fix. That's not, that's just going back to 3.5 where the only way to make a useful melee combatant was to make a caster and then slum it up in melee.

And it is not mimicking something that already exists. We have very few combat spells, almost all of which are for the paladin and ranger, and almost all of which do approximately the same kind of thing. Please keep in mind that although maneuvers scaled 1-9 at levels 1 through 17, a level 9 maneuver was never the equivalent of a level 9 spell - that would be stupid, since a maneuver was designed to be usable repeatedly. While inventing a huge variety of spells that scale from strength or dexterity, don't require concentration, are available to different martial characters, can be re-gained using various tactics mid fight, have very different effects to current spells and for the most part are part of an attack action is possible, at that point why aren't you just using a subsystem? We've got a pretty good one already, it just needs some tweaking to make sense in 5e.

HorridElemental

2014-11-05, 02:20 PM

Too weak in what respect though? Base fighter, while not exactly the most complex class, isn't weak this edition.

Weak as in they are forgettible and very low fantasy. The big point of ToB is that it allowed people to play the non-caster high fantasy fighter. 5e still has the same problem as 3.X... Which is that there is a glass ceiling that non-caster aren't allowed to break through. You can only be good and you can never Ben awesome. Casters and magic however are allowed to be good and awesome.

Non-caster get limits placed on them that casters do not. Even with casters being nerfed they are still miles ahead of non-casters. D&D is a game of high fantasy for some and low fantasy for others.

Essentially, there are two teams playing this game. One is like an NFL offensive lineman while the other is a high school D-lineman ... Sure by normal standards that highschool athlete is better than average Joe ... But the NFL lineman wouldn't even blink when he throws the high schooler to the ground.

Shadow

2014-11-05, 02:24 PM

Even with casters being nerfed they are still miles ahead of non-casters.

This just isn't true.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-05, 02:41 PM

The big point of ToB is that it allowed people to play the non-caster high fantasy fighter. 5e still has the same problem as 3.X... Which is that there is a glass ceiling that non-caster aren't allowed to break through. You can only be good and you can never Ben awesome. Casters and magic however are allowed to be good and awesome.
I wouldn't characterize ToB classes as high fantasy, and their non-caster status is debatable.

They gazed into the abyss and became the monster ;)

HorridElemental

2014-11-05, 02:41 PM

This just isn't true.

BM: I can disarm someone 1-3 times before I need to rest for an hour.

Wizard: I can constantly produce magic from nothing all day long.... Oh I can fly.

Nope, totally in the same playing field.

Sure versus the game the fighter keeps up with killing stuff but they are still just low fantasy bullcrap compared to the fantasy stuff the casters get to do.

Shadow

2014-11-05, 02:43 PM

BM: I can disarm someone 4 times before I need to rest for an hour, but I can do it over and over and over again and never need to sleep compared to a caster.

Wizard: I can constantly produce magic from nothing a certain number of times before I have to sleep for a night.... Oh maybe I can fly.

Nope, totally in the same playing field.

Sure versus the game the fighter keeps up with killing stuff but they are still just low fantasy bullcrap compared to the fantasy stuff the casters get to do.

fixed it for ya.

HorridElemental

2014-11-05, 02:47 PM

fixed it for ya.

Cantrip are all day long. They aren't too shabby either. I wasn't even thinking of all their other spell slots which are just gravy at this point.

A wizard can fly, but they will end up doing so much more in the time the fighter does his measlly little maneuver. The short rest isn't so short really.

Edit:

Doesn't the warlock get their spells back on a short rest? Yeah... Things in this regard has not changed one bit. Magic is allowed to be awesome while non-magical abilities has to be guarded and kept from being high fantasy.

Shadow

2014-11-05, 02:50 PM

Cantrip are all day long. They aren't too shabby either. I wasn't even thinking of all their other spell slots which are just gravy at this point.

A wizard can fly, but they will end up doing so much more in the time the fighter does his measlly little maneuver. The short rest isn't so short really.

Not too shabby? Are you serious? Cantrips are all but useless. They are an option for when, and ONLY for when, you don't want to spend a spell slot and you still want to pretend that you're contributing.
If that's your defense of why casters are so much better than non-casters then you need to actually sit down at a table and play.
Casters aren't gods in 5e like they used to be in earlier editions.
Martial characters are actually not only viable, but efffective in 5e.

HorridElemental

2014-11-05, 02:57 PM

Not too shabby? Are you serious? Cantrips are all but useless. They are an option for when, and ONLY for when, you don't want to spend a spell slot and you still want to pretend that you're contributing.
If that's your defense of why casters are so much better than non-casters then you need to actually sit down at a table and play.
Casters aren't gods in 5e like they used to be in earlier editions.
Martial characters are actually not only viable, but efffective in 5e.

Yeah, no. Cantrip aren't that useless. Vicious mockery, firebolt, guiding bolt (may have that one misnamed), and the fantastic image cantrip (minor image?). (Note: horrible with their names still, I'm away from book). Eldritch blast is fantastic too.

You other points have been addressed but since you didn't read. Sure casters got needed* but they are still playing in high fantasy (NFL) while non-casters are playing in low fantasy (high school football).

The non-casters get this measly abilities that, yes can kill things, but are measly little crap options and are even additionally limited because the designers were so afraid of people's minds blowing if you allow non-casters to be part of high fantasy.

* nerfed gets autospelled to needed apparently.

rlc

2014-11-05, 03:02 PM

If by "feel like spells" you mean set up in a way that relays information easily (using the same formatting and such) then I guess they felt like spells.

I always hated this argument... It is like saying that Harry Potter and the Dictionary are the same thing. Sure they are both books (abilities) but one is fiction (spells) and the other is non-fiction (maneuvers).

I'm not arguing anything. Let me rephrase myself, because I'm not sure how you got...whatever you got...from what I said:
Spells have different levels. Maneuvers don't, but I think they should. I think that the reason for maneuvers not having levels is because spells do. I don't think that's a very good reason.

Shadow

2014-11-05, 03:03 PM

Yeah, no. Cantrip aren't that useless. Vicious mockery, firebolt, guiding bolt (may have that one misnamed), and the fantastic image cantrip (minor image?). (Note: horrible with their names still, I'm away from book). Eldritch blast is fantastic too.

You other points have been addressed but since you didn't read. Sure casters got needed but they are still playing in high fantasy (NFL) while non-casters are playing in low fantasy (high school football).

The non-casters get this measly abilities that, yes can kill things, but are measly little crap options and are even additionally limited because the designers were so afraid of people's minds blowing if you allow non-casters to be part of high fantasy.
First of all, don't tell me that I didn't read. That's infraction worthy.

Secondly, the cantrips you listed aren't all that amazing, because none of the cantrips are amazing (EB is worse than Firebolt unles you take invocations to beef it up) and not all of them are even cantrips (guiding bolt is a 1st level spell).
And don't even get me started on Minor Illusion. People seem to think this is the Be-All-End-All of illusions, when in fact it's pretty useless when used properly.

The high/low fantasy distinction that you're making us useless.
Explain to me exactly what the difference would be to make your fighters "High Fantasy" which would suddenly make them as good as you seem to think casters are.

silveralen

2014-11-05, 03:12 PM

Except for the most part all you're doing is just directly giving your martial classes magic and calling that a fix. That's not, that's just going back to 3.5 where the only way to make a useful melee combatant was to make a caster and then slum it up in melee.

And it is not mimicking something that already exists. We have very few combat spells, almost all of which are for the paladin and ranger, and almost all of which do approximately the same kind of thing. Please keep in mind that although maneuvers scaled 1-9 at levels 1 through 17, a level 9 maneuver was never the equivalent of a level 9 spell - that would be stupid, since a maneuver was designed to be usable repeatedly. While inventing a huge variety of spells that scale from strength or dexterity, don't require concentration, are available to different martial characters, can be re-gained using various tactics mid fight, have very different effects to current spells and for the most part are part of an attack action is possible, at that point why aren't you just using a subsystem? We've got a pretty good one already, it just needs some tweaking to make sense in 5e.

You kinda lose me at "regain mid fight". That's not really something I wanna bring back. But okay, lets give it a shot!

Manuevers: Let's judge their relative power in lvl based on the spells paladin/ranger have. You'd have a wide variety to choose from, with 2-3 lvl 1-3 manuevers (scales obviously) usable between each short rest, and a single level 4 and a single level 5 manuever, each usable once per day.

Stances: Well without concentration to limit them, they'd be better based on class features. Let them toggle between stances like scaling damage with knockback, scaling move speed bonus with some defensive boosts, or a scaling bonus to saves with some immunities. Assume you eventually gain minor benefits from even the stances you don't activate to help full out the class.

Also, warblade had INT as a secondary, correct? Have those abilities scale based on INT bonus (for move speed, add 5*INT bonus to base speed).

Tada! Not different enough? Okay, but if you say make manuevers easier to recover, the power has to dip dramatically.

HorridElemental

2014-11-05, 03:12 PM

I'm not arguing anything. Let me rephrase myself, because I'm not sure how you got...whatever you got...from what I said:
Spells have different levels. Maneuvers don't, but I think they should. I think that the reason for maneuvers not having levels is because spells do. I don't think that's a very good reason.

Sorry wasn't really aimed at you to argue and more of a compliment of your post to e land on a certain area.

I did not make that clear and I can see how I came off argumentative and attacking lol

HorridElemental

2014-11-05, 03:18 PM

First of all, don't tell me that I didn't read. That's infraction worthy.

Secondly, the cantrips you listed aren't all that amazing, because none of the cantrips are amazing (EB is worse than Firebolt unles you take invocations to beef it up) and not all of them are even cantrips (guiding bolt is a 1st level spell).
And don't even get me started on Minor Illusion. People seem to think this is the Be-All-End-All of illusions, when in fact it's pretty useless when used properly.

The high/low fantasy distinction that you're making us useless.
Explain to me exactly what the difference would be to make your fighters "High Fantasy" which would suddenly make them as good as you seem to think casters are.

The cantrip I'm referring too (which, if you read I said I was messing up the names due to being away from book) is the cleric cantrip. You actually didn't read what I just posted and are saying I meant a first level spell. If you aren't a mod I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be threatening people with infractions.

EB is awesome because you can beef it up quite easily.

Minor Illusion by RAW and no cheese is fantastic. Sure a lot of people take it to far or aren't creative but those that use it right can get some serious milage out of it. Just because you can't wouldn't imply that someone else can't.

silveralen

2014-11-05, 03:37 PM

The cantrip I'm referring too (which, if you read I said I was messing up the names due to being away from book) is the cleric cantrip. You actually didn't read what I just posted and are saying I meant a first level spell. If you aren't a mod I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be threatening people with infractions.

EB is awesome because you can beef it up quite easily.

Minor Illusion by RAW and no cheese is fantastic. Sure a lot of people take it to far or aren't creative but those that use it right can get some serious milage out of it. Just because you can't wouldn't imply that someone else can't.

You literally said guiding bolt. That's the name of a spell. It is a first level spell. There is no cantrip with a name even close to that on the cleric list. What exactly do you think that spell did? Because sacred flame, the only cleric cantrip attack spell, is not particularly outstanding even compared to the other damage cantrips, whereas guiding bolt would be an absurd spell to cast at will.

EB can be beefed up to the point it's hitting for less damage than a basic fighter with a greatsword.

Minor illusion is nice sure, but nothing outstanding without a lot of clever usage and a cooperative DM, which basically puts it on par with most skills.

rlc

2014-11-05, 03:42 PM

Sorry wasn't really aimed at you to argue and more of a compliment of your post to e land on a certain area.

I did not make that clear and I can see how I came off argumentative and attacking lol

Okay, cool.

Dienekes

2014-11-05, 03:52 PM

This thread is kind of about what I find wrong with the martial classes of 5e. It's not that they're particularly weak. They might be weaker than a caster, I haven't crunched the numbers, but it's nowhere near as bad as 3.5.

The problem is that they gave fighter's the greatest consistent damage around the game and used that as a balance point. When it comes to making standard attacks, fighter is king and the rest of the game is balanced around that point.

The problem is, that is the single most boring way I have ever heard of to model combat. Hack, and hack, and hack until the enemy's pile of hp is dwindled down to zero. Now the Battlemaster has some means of getting around that, but because it's balanced around the point of it's already amazing damage it can never get too much.

They still have their amazing damage, and a couple times per encounter they can add a rider, most of which are not particularly awe inspiring, especially when compared to some of the better ToB maneuvers. Hell, most of them aren't particularly exciting when compared to just the Warblade who doesn't have any magic abilities.

Now there is also the Eldritch Knight who tries to add some interesting spells into the mix. But that doesn't really fix how boring the martial combat is. Whenever you take a part in the martial combat side of the game, it's just as dull and repetitive. Only now, you have other abilities to distract you from that, most of which have nothing at all to do with being a cool warrior, if that was your concept.

silveralen

2014-11-05, 06:38 PM

MeeposFire

2014-11-05, 07:24 PM

Remember too that you can't make something as drastic as the maneuvers in ToB and the powers in 4e in general. The scaling is VERY different in 5e so generally they will not be as flashy because they do not need to be in order to reach effectiveness. Think in 3e a strike that was a standard action was made to compete with the full attack action. That sort of comparison no longer exists (thankfully in this case). In 5e a maneuver mostly modifies an attack which means it is balanced more along a boost rather than a strike (and even then once again the scaling is so different in 5e that even this does not tell the full story).

Gurka

2014-11-05, 07:26 PM

Hytheter

2014-11-05, 07:50 PM

The tried and true " fly away and bombard ", the concentration mechanic cuts the bombardment down to can trips

Well that's just not true. The only spells you can't cast while flying are spells that also require concentration. But that can be anything from Magic Missile to Meteor Swarm, it's not limited to Cantrips.

Raxxius

2014-11-05, 08:02 PM

MaxWilson

2014-11-05, 08:08 PM

The tried and true " fly away and bombard ", the concentration mechanic cuts the bombardment down to can trips, which (except for the warlock) are categorically inferior to a longbow. Plus they risk getting shot down.

This is a bit of a tangent, but "fly away and bombard" is now tactically inferior to Dimension Door + Feather Fall in many circumstances. 1.) Dimension Door doesn't require Concentration, 2.) Feather Fall now has a defined falling speed which can keep you out of range for up to 6 rounds, 3.) You can bring a buddy at no extra cost in spell slots.

Point #3 is important because, unless you are a warlock or a sorcerer spell sniper or have a longbow, spells are too short-ranged to fully exploit all those rounds of free attacks. But you can, for instance, Dimension Door + Feather Fall + Conjure Animals (Giant Owls), and then eventually follow up with Lightning Bolt once you fall into range to support your owls. Arguably you might be able to get one of your owls to carry you.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-05, 08:12 PM

dimension door+ feather fall seems really reliant on the other guys not moving.

Dienekes

2014-11-05, 08:22 PM

It's a matter of preference and playstyle. There are people who enjoy just carving straight through enemies. Honestly, that plus a few basic manuevers (trip and bull rush, which got turned into shove this edition) are fun for me. Maybe the fact I have a DM who is open to creative uses of skills helps, but I don't feel overly limited.

Also, you are really talking about two classes, barbarian and fighter. Classes designed to be relatively simple. Monks have a large reserve of ki that can be used for a variety of fun tricks depending on preference. Paladin and ranger apparently no longer count (which is weird to me, paladin, ranger, and fighter were the martial classes in 2nd edition. Plus gladiator if you liked dark sun) but they'd be another fighting class with additional complexity.

I don't get the preoccupation with making fighter and barbarian something they aren't, or insisting on avoiding certain classes and options because they are magic.

Simple, I wish to play a swordsman. I like swordsman. If I wanted to play a caster, or a gish, I would play a caster or a gish. They have the basis covered there, very well. And when I want to play gishes or casters I don't really have a problem.

Really it's mundane combat that is the only part that is pretty dull. I would like to play a character that does cool things through his swordplay. The closest we have is Battlemaster, whose abilties are as a whole pretty lackluster. I gave what I thought were reasons why they need to be lackluster for the sake of balance, as much as I dislike it, and so far that hasn't been really disproved.

It kills me that so many people on here act as if the ONLY thing you can do is make basic attacks or cast spells. There are SO many other things to do besides "I hit it with my Axe".

Barring a couple of no-save spells that incapacitate or cripple, which need to be altered, you put a fighter, rouge, or barbarian up against a wizard, and I'd say it's about a 50/50. Probably in favor of the fighter.

The tried and true " fly away and bombard ", the concentration mechanic cuts the bombardment down to can trips, which (except for the warlock) are categorically inferior to a longbow. Plus they risk getting shot down.

Alright going with the Champion subclass. You can base attack, shove, move, and what else exactly? A couple times a day you can base attack a crapload of times? And specifically here, I'm talking about combat actions. Saying "I can distract it with my skill" doesn't really count. It's not really a combat ability, it's being clever and fun. No doubt, but I am talking specifically of doing cool stuff with a sword.

And I don't deny that a fighter has a fighting chance of beating a wizard or whatever 1 on 1. For one, those tests don't really mean all that much when it comes to game balance, and two, my point was never that the fighter is ineffective, it's very effective, it's just boring.

Eslin

2014-11-05, 08:46 PM

It kills me that so many people on here act as if the ONLY thing you can do is make basic attacks or cast spells. There are SO many other things to do besides "I hit it with my Axe".

Barring a couple of no-save spells that incapacitate or cripple, which need to be altered, you put a fighter, rouge, or barbarian up against a wizard, and I'd say it's about a 50/50. Probably in favor of the fighter.

The tried and true " fly away and bombard ", the concentration mechanic cuts the bombardment down to can trips, which (except for the warlock) are categorically inferior to a longbow. Plus they risk getting shot down.

Pretty much the only thing you can do is make basic attacks, so I'd get over that if I were you. You can make a melee basic attack, make a ranged basic attack, dodge, move, attempt to trip, attempt to shove and grapple. That's about it. In a very large amount of combat situations, the optimal solution is say 'I attack again' and roll those dice. By the end of 3.5, they'd realised this and given fixes - incarnum, tome of battle, a lot of stuff in complete champion and PHB2, and by 4e they fixed it completely but screwed up the rest of the game in doing so. It's really disappointing to see 5e be little better than the start of 3e in that regard considering they knew what the problem was and how to fix it, but hopefully there'll be supplements soon. And, side note, there's no reason you have to cast cantrips while flying.

It's a matter of preference and playstyle. There are people who enjoy just carving straight through enemies. Honestly, that plus a few basic manuevers (trip and bull rush, which got turned into shove this edition) are fun for me. Maybe the fact I have a DM who is open to creative uses of skills helps, but I don't feel overly limited.

Also, you are really talking about two classes, barbarian and fighter. Classes designed to be relatively simple. Monks have a large reserve of ki that can be used for a variety of fun tricks depending on preference. Paladin and ranger apparently no longer count (which is weird to me, paladin, ranger, and fighter were the martial classes in 2nd edition. Plus gladiator if you liked dark sun) but they'd be another fighting class with additional complexity.

I don't get the preoccupation with making fighter and barbarian something they aren't, or insisting on avoiding certain classes and options because they are magic.

Monks aren't bad, option wise. They're not perfect, I've found I need to multiclass them with battlemaster fighter before I get enough options for combat to be interesting tactically, but compared to say the barbarian, they're good. The preoccupation with avoiding magical options is a lot of people want to make martial characters, not gishes. I don't mind making a character that uses spells to enhance their combat, I enjoy it even, but the reason the warblade was beloved was people finally had a purely martial character that kept up with the magical ones through strength and skill and was actually fun to play.

Paladins and rangers get a lot of their tactical options from magic, which is why they don't count. And yes, there are people who enjoy carving through enemies, there will always be a Legolas.
That doesn't mean there aren't players who enjoy having round to round tactical options, and it's kind of sad that the closest we got this edition was the battlemaster fighter.

Todasmile

2014-11-05, 10:07 PM

The Fighter needs to be changed because, from a design standpoint, it is bland. I've seen countless arguments to its effectiveness, to how it can go nova every short rest with easy and do crazy amounts of damage, and I've also seen people say that the classes don't need to be more "flashy", or that they should stay mundane while the casters handle the spectacular feats which break reality. Fortunately, the Fighter can be made mechanically interesting and diverse without becoming just another caster.

The Fighter was designed to be the best in a fight, straight up, by WotC. That is fine. Unfortunately, they seemed to assume that this should be achieved by buffing their Attack action to insane degrees and making them do lots of damage. They, of course, entirely forgot to make the gameplay itself interesting.

As a Wizard, each level I get to pick two new spells from a list that covers an entire page. I get to pick from among EIGHT different schools of magic to specialize in, several of which have single features more interesting and diverse than the entirety of Champion, or arguably Battlemaster - I'm looking at Abjuration's shield, specifically. I get to look forward to new spell levels, each of which is meticulously documented, along with each spell being formatted and described in the utmost of detail. In combat, I get to choose which of my twenty or more unique spells to cast, with which spell level, on which target. I get to play around the interesting and dangerous Concentration mechanic. Out of combat, I get to participate as normal, but with the addition of being able to decide if any of my spells are useful in any given situation, which can range from social to transportation to illusory.

As a Fighter, I get to choose between five fighting styles. which is great. I can choose to use sword and board, 2h, or two-weapon fighting. When I reach level 3, I get to choose between three archetypes, and should I want to remain mundane, two. As a Champion, I can look forward to gaining completely invisible benefits which will let me crit slightly more often and succeed in some skill checks more. At tenth level, the high point, I get to choose from among the fighting styles I already chose among, meaning I'm almost certainly choosing +2 AC, Protection if I chose Duelist, Duelist if I chose Protection, or my fighting style if for some reason I didn't get it at level 1. Overall, the Champion will, in combat, choose to use the Attack command every single round, and choose which targets will receive which of its four static, unchanging attacks (eight, once/twice per short rest), which can be shoves also. Occasionally, they'll get a crit! Out of combat, I get to not talk because Intelligence was my dump stat, and only act when the group needs something broken.

The Battlemaster functions like the Champion mixed with the worst Wizard ever. They get to choose maneuvers every few levels (like the Wizard), but only from an extremely limited list they've likely already chosen the best from (like the Champion). They get some interesting, if arguably useless level up benefits (less so if the crafting rules were more useful), but their only power evolution comes in the form of an occasional dice increase, and maybe an extra maneuver per short rest. Their maneuvers are all described briefly, and rarely do any of them do anything besides modify a basic attack to deal more damage and add an effect. In the end, a Battlemaster will use the Attack command every turn, occasionally using one of their six maneuvers per short rest to achieve a small damage boost and maybe get an extra attack in, or advantage. Out of battle, they can at the least roleplay with their skill proficiency and their neat Scan mechanic.

Overall, the Battlemaster is more diverse than the Champion, but neither does much either way. Their class feature is Attack, and that is it. They get one extra feat or ability increase to play around with compared to other characters, which can be used to offer a decent amount of variety, and that's great.

How do you fix this? Well, you have to redesign the classes, not tweak the numbers. The Fighter is powerful, it's just badly made.

The Champion could have so much more flavor than "better crits". If you have to make them mundane and Attack-centric, at least let my choose how my Attack works. Let me choose between 18-20 *3 crits and the ability to gain advantage on flanked enemies. Let me choose between wielding two-handed weapons in one hand and dealing +5 damage to Prone enemies. Heck, just give me a big list of "Champion Feats" and give me the choice of one of them every time I get a new feature. The Champ can be a simple chop chop chop character, but they don't have to be boring to build.

The Battlemaster just needs to add many more, tiered maneuvers, and rework the Superiority Dice system a little - maybe a simple point system. Whirlwind Attacks, attacks which add a slow effect, maneuvers which give all your allies an AoO on the enemy (maybe an upgrade to Commander's Strike? An upgrade system could be fun, if you wanted them all available at the start), maneuvers which return melee damage to your enemy if they hit you successfully, maneuvers you use on the enemy's turn, maneuvers you use on your allies' turns, options options options. Not all of them have to be used with an attack, and maybe a lot of them replace your Action. Why do I not get neat abilities? Who says that mundane skills can't be interesting and flavourful mechanically? I should look forward to levelling up and getting cool new tricks, just like the Champion should feel, and just like the Wizard does feel.

Speaker

2014-11-05, 10:41 PM

The fighter struggle is real. To be honest...7(that's with an additional feat) maneuvers isn't a whole lot especially when your whole archetype is defined around them. Imagine spell casters used the same mechanic. They could use 7 spells per short/long rest that weren't evocation , even if they got more attacks...people would rage. I heard in the play test BM got their maneuvers much faster like once per turn or something and that made them op and instead of saying well....why not just tone that down with the number of dice they get per turn to like 1 they nerfed it down to short rests which to be honest....aren't really short. They can't even do their archetype stuff consistently, none of the other fighter archetypes can with the exception of Eldritch Knight. If you use your maneuvers basically all you are is that guy with the sword that can attack 4 times. This is why I really wanted them to have an easier time in getting their maneuvers back, maybe like the way monks get their ki back.

Hytheter

2014-11-05, 10:58 PM

Keep in mind, there are indeed players who will enjoy the simplistic playstyle of the Fighter over something Tome of Battle-ey. Some people don't wanna have to think too hard about what they're doing and/or just like to get in and hack and slash. So I don't think it's fair to say that there's no place in the game for the Fighter as is or that it should be scrapped.

But I can see a place, mechanically, for a more versatile and interesting class along the lines of Warblades and whatnot.
Here's how I'd do it:
Have a large last of "Martial Techniques" (Battle Master already has maneuvers). They can be used at will as an action, and each Warblade (or whatever we call him) has a limited number that scales.
They wouldn't scale in the same way as spells do, and certainly wouldn't have those nine levels. Rather, I'd have the class not gain any extra attacks and then give the techniques tiers that correspond to the amount of attacks a fighter would get. So levels 1-4 you only have tier 1 techniques, equivelant to one Fighter attack. Level 5-10, you get tier 2 techniques that are roughly equivelant to 2 fighter attacks. Then 11-20 would be tier 3, and ther'd be no equivelant to four attacks since that's basically a Fighter capstone.
Or maybe the tiers would be a part of the individual techniques, idk, and there might be others that use reactions and bonus actions but don't scale as well.
Then you obviously add archetypes and some other flavourful features.

I think that could work mechanically and be pretty cool. I have a hard time figuring out how to justify it in flavour terms though, without infirnging on the Fighter's and especially the Battle Master's territory.
One approach I thought of is to make the effects explicitly supernatural. Rather than an Eldritch Knight who can both attack and cast spells, the martial techniques are both attack and spell in one package. But that's problematic if you want the feel of a ToB character but don't want to be magical (ie Warblade). I don't really have an answer for that at the moment.

Eslin

2014-11-05, 11:04 PM

silveralen

2014-11-05, 11:58 PM

Surely the answer to that is just making a warblade? That's exactly what the warblade was, a fighter that used maneuvers instead of saying 'I attack' every turn. It was a direct reaction to the fighter being so boring and one dimensional, and the 5e fighter is nearly as dull as the 3.5 fighter was - surely the same reaction is warranted?

The main issue is balancing it. Like I said, it's going to be weird to find a good niche for it.

Eslin

2014-11-06, 12:00 AM

The main issue is balancing it. Like I said, it's going to be weird to find a good niche for it.

'Martial combatant that can actually do interesting things in combat' seems like a pretty huge niche, easy to fill.

MeeposFire

2014-11-06, 12:01 AM

I thought about modifying the champion archetype without making it use "special" abilities. My thought was to give it useful movement options on a bonus action. Giving them the ability to roam the battlefield, withdraw at will, etc could be very useful and help add some interesting nuance to the subtype. I was thinking something like the rogue and monk bonus action abilities but with some minor restrictions such dash as a bonus action but you have to end your move either closer to an enemy or make an attack at an enemy. Dodge as a bonus action but you can only do it when the number of enemies is greater than or equal to the number of you and your allies near you (or something like that).

As for the battle master perhaps getting one free combo of one special attack with one regular attack er round. SO once in a round you can shove with a regular attack. IN addition you can also use your special dice to make additional attacks with damage bonuses. Perhaps the champion could do the unaugmented special attacks too if you really want it. Granted the problem is that this would get boring after a while as how often are you not going to choose to shove a target every round?

Hytheter

2014-11-06, 12:06 AM

Surely the answer to that is just making a warblade? That's exactly what the warblade was, a fighter that used maneuvers instead of saying 'I attack' every turn.

I know; Warblade is the answer Mechanically. But in terms of flavour, what really differentiates a Warblade from a Fighter? Both are well trained martial masters and in the case of Battle Master both put focus on winning via specialised techniques. Justifying a Warblade's niche in terms of flavour is the challenge, not mechanics.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-06, 12:26 AM

Broken Twin

2014-11-06, 12:27 AM

I could easily see them making a Tome of Battle splatbook for 5E. There's things you can do with the paths that just weren't feasible with the default classes. Any of the Setting Sun abilities, for instance. I want to throw a guy hard enough that he knocks over the guy I'm throwing him into. Fighter subclasses don't have enough power available to really give me a ToB feel.

Honestly, I'd PREFER if their splatbooks were smaller booklets that reintroduced concepts and mechanics from their more experimental years of 3.5. Give me Incarnum, give me Tome of Battle and Binders. If they can balance them with the core classes, I'd love to see them. Heck, give me a class with a focus on shape shifting into a combat morph, Jekyll-Hyde/Henshin/Werewolf style. That would be awesome to see.

Seems a lot better idea to me than "Here's yet another flavor of vancian spellcaster."

Eslin

2014-11-06, 12:36 AM

You can do plenty of interesting things in combat. There's lots of actions other than throwing out Attacks every turn, especially in a fight that isn't just kill-this-guy. A lot of cool combat actions are covered under ability checks.

You can't hit with a stun or disarm every turn though.

re the Mike Mearls AMA it seems like they wanted to move away from 'encounter powers' as they felt that made fights samey.

Except with the short rest mechanic there are more encounter powers than ever before. And there are very few actions that are better than constantly throwing out attacks since doing so is usually the most optimal ability. There is a sharp lack of in combat options, something a ToB style system would be perfect to remedy.

I know; Warblade is the answer Mechanically. But in terms of flavour, what really differentiates a Warblade from a Fighter? Both are well trained martial masters and in the case of Battle Master both put focus on winning via specialised techniques. Justifying a Warblade's niche in terms of flavour is the challenge, not mechanics.

That was the entire reason for the 9 swords thing, they needed a different flavour. Flavour wise, this is kind of WOTCs fault for constantly putting out fighter classes that can't do anything apart from 'I hit it with my sword again' - it's not the fault of the person writing the book with the actual options that the fighter hogged all the flavour while being bland as hell mechanically.

Warblade's flavour always came across as 'fighter, but smarter' to me. In terms of gameplay niche they filled the same exact role as the fighter, but was better at their job because they weren't stupid enough to think that no abilities was a good class.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 12:45 AM

'Martial combatant that can actually do interesting things in combat' seems like a pretty huge niche, easy to fill.

Again, we have three classes that do that. Except any spells at all now mean you aren't martial, even if your entire stick focuses on hitting things with a sword, something again that baffles me coming from a background with 2E. Still, that's one class, and three for people who don't have a weird dislike of a "martial" character drawing on minor magical abilities due to his own force of personality or connection with the wild. Apparently we need a whole system and new set of classes because of caster hatred. Apparently this is a legitimate thing to request and not a demand from incredibly unreasonable people who have attached onto a single incredibly narrow type of class as being the only possible thing that could fix it. Oh, and you can't just reskin characters as not using magic, but if we have a system that is functionally the same but uses maneuvers it'd be okay.

Eslin

2014-11-06, 12:49 AM

Again, we have three classes that do that. Except any spells at all now mean you aren't martial, even if your entire stick focuses on hitting things with a sword, something again that baffles me coming from a background with 2E. Still, that's one class, and three for people who don't have a weird dislike of a "martial" character drawing on minor magical abilities due to his own force of personality or connection with the wild. Apparently we need a whole system and new set of classes because of caster hatred.

Spells mean you're using spells. I don't hate casters, I enjoy playing a caster beyond any other role, but using spells does not equal martial prowess. Gishes are fun, they really are, but what if I want to play Legolas or Aragorn or Gimli? Isn't it reasonable for people to want to have tactical options that don't come from spells? How on earth is that a baffling concept?

silveralen

2014-11-06, 12:59 AM

Spells mean you're using spells. I don't hate casters, I enjoy playing a caster beyond any other role, but using spells does not equal martial prowess. Gishes are fun, they really are, but what if I want to play Legolas or Aragorn or Gimli? Isn't it reasonable for people to want to have tactical options that don't come from spells? How on earth is that a baffling concept?

You mean.... the original ranger and two fighters? Yeah, have fun. Go wild. You know what those characters did? Attacked. Used skills. Maybe an occasional fancy anuever, but mainly they jsut hit things. They did a good job at hitting them, but that's it. They didn't use special mystic strikes and stances, they waded into the thick and chopped things up, maybe tripping or shoving a guy once n a while or something else mundane, but that wasn't something they did constantly.

In fact, Tolkien is decidedly low fantasy. You'd need to modify the system so that there would be less casting, so rangers without spells and such.

Eslin

2014-11-06, 01:05 AM

silveralen

2014-11-06, 01:19 AM

Where are mystic strikes and stances coming in? We're discussing the warblade, the completely non magical initiator (keeping in mind this is a setting in which one can take 20 arrows to the chest and fight on unhindered, this is not realism central). Constantly attacking may be entertaining to watch (watching LOTR as we speak!), but it's dull as hell in actual play - hence the point of classes like the warblade, which have a variety of tactical options available to them.

Okay, that's all very well and good, but don't cite characters who clearly weren't warblades or anything like them as examples for why this class is needed.

I'll be honest, this constant attacking is as much a failure of the player/DM as the system. As a fighter I shove people into hazards (either natural or ones my party magic users create, go teamwork!), I knock things on enemies, I make called shots, I throw burning flasks of oil to create flame walls. Hell, earlier I climbed a tree and waited for an enemy to pass by, then jumped down and added the fall damage to my attack damage. That's fun, and it's way more engaging than reading off a list of maneuvers and picking one, at least to me. Sometimes I'll just auto pilot attack, but when I get tired of that options exist.

Yes, it requires a DM who will work with you, but if your DM isn't going to let you do these sort of things as a fighter, why would he allow a warblade class anyways?

Dienekes

2014-11-06, 01:21 AM

You mean.... the original ranger and two fighters? Yeah, have fun. Go wild. You know what those characters did? Attacked. Used skills. Maybe an occasional fancy anuever, but mainly they jsut hit things. They did a good job at hitting them, but that's it. They didn't use special mystic strikes and stances, they waded into the thick and chopped things up, maybe tripping or shoving a guy once n a while or something else mundane, but that wasn't something they did constantly.

In fact, Tolkien is decidedly low fantasy. You'd need to modify the system so that there would be less casting, so rangers without spells and such.

There are two ways (well, multiple but whatever) to model melee combat.

Way 1) I hit it, I hit it, I hit it, it falls down.

Way 2) I take a risk to try and parry the attack, and use the advantage I gain to make a quick riposte that lunges me forward a few steps. From there I try to hamstring my second opponent to cause him to fall and potentially bleed out. If that doesn't work I will take a defensive stance behind my shield to help against his inevitable counterstroke.

D&D has historically done way 1. I hate way 1. Way 1 is boring. Other games have done way 2, one of the most fun has been The Riddle of Steel. But even games like FantasyCraft have added more depth and interest in mundane combat than D&D, which is a bit sad since FantasyCraft is heavily based off of D&D.

Going by just WotC games that used the d20 system, just look at Star Wars Saga Edition. Admittedly, at first level or two the game is just standard attack, move, grab. But throughout the game you get 25ish abilities to give neat effects for both melee and ranged combat.

As to Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas. I bet I could give a list of abilities outside of a basic attack that would give them an engaging system to play with while being entirely mundane. Hell, that was what the Warblade basically was anyway. There was nothing all that mystical about them, hell read the class fluff and compare it to the original Fighter fluff and it's a pretty close match. It'd be nice to get that back.

Going by just watching Aragorn in 1 fight right now. I see him parry, I see him get a sneaky punch in. I see him lock blades to prevent the opponent from attacking. I see him trip. I see him make a very difficult attack at the neck for an instant kill. I see him bull rush a guy. I see him make a single swing that hits two opponents. I see him ward off a group of enemies through a display of arms. I see him make a very heavy overhead slash down to knock an opponent to the ground. I see him lunge forward to add reach. I see his attacks batter a foe so they are forced to step backward. I see him push one enemy into another enemy. I see him parry an enemies attack from one enemy and hitting it into another enemy.

Most of that I can do with a warblade. I can't with a 5e Fighter.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 01:25 AM

As to Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas. I bet I could give a list of abilities outside of a basic attack that would give them an engaging system to play with while being entirely mundane. Hell, that was what the Warblade basically was anyway. There was nothing all that mystical about them, hell read the class fluff and compare it to the original Fighter fluff and it's a pretty close match. It'd be nice to get that back.

So can I, it is called battle master fighter.

Dienekes

2014-11-06, 01:31 AM

So can I, it is called battle master fighter.

Yes, my point is that the Battlemaster doesn't have enough, and its mechanic is too limiting. Warblades for reference could use 3 cool things at level 1 and it only goes up from there. Battle master gets it's first at level 3, I think, and gets only a handful.

Warblade, Riddle of Steel, FantasyCraft, all did Battlemaster's shtick better and more fun than Battlemaster does.

Hytheter

2014-11-06, 01:55 AM

Most of that I can do with a warblade. I can't with a 5e Fighter.

Wait, no, hang on, most of the things you just described can absolutely be done by a fighter, mostly through battle master features but some can just be achieved by feats (which the fighter gets more of) or even basic actions.

Going by just watching Aragorn in 1 fight right now. I see him parry There's a maneuver called parry, and the defensive duelist feat works similarly, AND parrying is a technique that could easily be considered part of the abstraction of combat, I see him get a sneaky punch in. two weapon fighting using an unarmed strike, which anyone can do - though you're better off putting another weapon in that hand I see him lock blades to prevent the opponent from attacking.not sure how this is too different from parrying conceptually, let alone how it would differ mechanically I see him tripthat's a shove, anyone can do it and the battle master has a tripping maneuver. I see him make a very difficult attack at the neck for an instant killsounds like a critical hit, sacrificing accuracy for damage is also a feature of great weapon master, though it'd be cool if it wasn't limited to heavy weapons. I see him bull rush a guy.also a shove and with another battle maneuver for it I see him make a single swing that hits two opponents. sweeping attack maneuver, or the first effect of great weapon master I see him ward off a group of enemies through a display of arms. not sure what you mean by that exactly I see him make a very heavy overhead slash down to knock an opponent to the ground. trip attack maneuver I see him lunge forward to add reach. lunge manuever. Or you know, just moving as part of your turn. I see his attacks batter a foe so they are forced to step backward. pushing attack maneuver, or just a shove I see him push one enemy into another enemy. I see him parry an enemies attack from one enemy and hitting it into another enemy. those last two are definitely sorely lacking from the system

It's one thing to say that the fighter isn't versatile or interesting enough, but let's not exaggerate and pretend its totally incompetent

Eslin

2014-11-06, 01:57 AM

So can I, it is called battle master fighter.

The battlemaster has an extremely limited set of abilities that do not improve, it is a very pale imitation.

Dienekes

2014-11-06, 02:19 AM

Wait, no, hang on, most of the things you just described can absolutely be done by a fighter, mostly through battle master features but some can just be achieved by feats (which the fighter gets more of) or even basic actions.

It's one thing to say that the fighter isn't versatile or interesting enough, but let's not exaggerate and pretend its totally incompetent

Well 1 I despise using the quotes within a quote thing, because it makes responses hard. But let's try.

The game has a maneuver called Parry. It adds a variable amount of DR. This is not how parrying works. It is a terrible representation of what parrying is. Compare it to the Wall of Blades maneuver, that actually parries something.

Sneak a punch: Can the game allow you to just go from wielding a two-handed weapon to suddenly getting a quick punch and back to two-handing in a fluid motion? 3.5 had Snap Kick. If 5e can, that's cool.

Locking blades is called weapon bind, and it's actually closer to a grapple than a parry. A parry is just a deflection of an attack a bind is basically a pushing/pulling contest to get advantage against the opponents weapon to get an advantage.

Trip: yep trip 5e has. I give him that.

Making a difficult attack: Yeah, I dislike the idea that doing a cool thing is relegated to a critical. If I'm aiming for the neck I will aim there. A risk vs reward system is fun and engaging, much like power attack. Just having it come up randomly takes the choice away from the player.

Warding: Basically you see it when Aragorn is fighting the Naz'gul and a few times more. He swings his sword around in a manner that is meant to create distance to a large group as opposed to hitting someone specifically.

Bashing into the ground; I would say the mechanics would be different than tripping, though the outcome would be the same.

Sweeping Attack: Aragorns goes from killing 2 orcs, if I remember correctly Sweeping attack just deals your superiority die in damage. It's pretty weak, especially when compared to Steel Wind, a level 1 maneuver.

And Hell, this isn't even getting into stances or when he chopped off limbs. I see him take a guys arm or leg off. I see him in Vom Tag stance, Ox guard, Plow guard, and even Fool's guard once. Each of which could have some mechanical benefit pretty easily that is lost in the system.

Rysan Marquise

2014-11-06, 02:57 AM

People need to understand, more options doesn't actually mean more possibility, unless you are willing to make clearly bad choices. Sufficiently high amounts of options generally restrict what you can or will do, unless the system is quite complex.

If you have 2 options, and neither quite does what you want, you must choose between the problems of each option. Both are balanced by the way in which they don't perfectly reflect your ideal.

If you have 2000 options, there will be a perfect one.

In this way, mechanically dull 'additional' options like aiming for the neck for bonus damage are not inherently as interesting as they appear. Often they will just mean you do nothing but aim for the neck, or never need to consider the option.

Personally, if I were to add Maneuvers of an additional sort to D&D, I would do it through an expanded combat maneuver system. Something like:
Whenever you get an extra attack, you gain access to an additional Combat Maneuver. Combat maneuvers often take the place of multiple attacks, and reflect unusual combat techniques you have picked up. If you gain the extra attack feature multiple times, you can gain more combat Maneuvers, even if you would not gain an additional attack because of multiclassing.

2 Attack Actions:
Throw enemy: Engage in an athletics contest vs the enemy. If you succeed, you throw the enemy 5 feet per point of strength bonus you have. When they land, they take 1d4+Str damage, and if they hit an enemy both take an additional 1d4+Str damage. You may only throw an enemy up to 1 size larger than you.

Counterstrike: You ready yourself for a counterattack. If an enemy in reach attacks you before your next turn, you may react by attacking them first. This attack has advantage, and if it hits is automatically a critical hit.

Hail of Blows: You attack 3 times. After this, until you spend an action recovering, you may only attack once per attack action.

Bouncing Strike: You attack a group of enemies, deflecting your shot to hit them all. After you hit the target with a ranged attack, you may hit another enemy within 10 feet of that enemy. You may hit up to 5 enemies in this way.

3 Attack Actions:
Explosive Strike: You wind up and strike an enemy with explosive force. The attack deals double damage. Additionally, for every 5 points of damage the enemy takes, it is knocked 5 feet back. If this causes it to hit an enemy or obstacle, both take 1d4 additional damage.

Obviously, that isn't a full concept, but that is the sort of thing I would do if I wanted to add more fighter options in the current 5e.

Demonicattorney

2014-11-06, 03:09 AM

They could always have maneuvers that take more than one superiority die. They just havn't explored that space yet, but they will. I suspect they have a bunch of BM maneuvers that involve rolling your superiority die more than once, and things that make the die size seems to matter more. They will likely be published in the first martial class supplement in about a year, so relax.

Todasmile

2014-11-06, 03:15 AM

People need to understand, more options doesn't actually mean more possibility, unless you are willing to make clearly bad choices. Sufficiently high amounts of options generally restrict what you can or will do, unless the system is quite complex.

If you have 2 options, and neither quite does what you want, you must choose between the problems of each option. Both are balanced by the way in which they don't perfectly reflect your ideal.

If you have 2000 options, there will be a perfect one.

While this is partially true, you're misrepresenting it. If I have 2 options, I only have to take into account 2 options. While this means that your choice will stray farther from "perfect", you can still very easily figure out which is better. If I have 2000 options, I have to figure out which among 2000 options is the best option. While in an ideal scenario, you'll always have the "perfect" tool for the job, your fellow players are rarely going to sit around while you go through your pages and pages of options, trying to remember which one lets you do what. Therefore, you actually probably cap your reasoning around 20 options, maybe ones which you happen to remember, or ones which are obvious, eg: Attack.

The unfortunate problem is that the Fighter, right now, has 1 option, which is Attack. They can shove or grapple, I suppose, but in most cases you'd rather get the extra damage in. They can choose to make an attack with a different weapon, maybe a javelin to pick off someone a little out of their range, but in the end they're still just attacking.

Furthermore, every class in the game has more options than the Fighter does. Would you say that a Wizard only has one option, given the incredible arsenal they possess? Of course not. Mathematically, you might be able to determine the best course of success in a vacuum, but in general we're here to have fun with our friends, and it'd be nice if the fighters in the group had a few more toys to play with.

Hytheter

2014-11-06, 03:26 AM

The game has a maneuver called Parry. It adds a variable amount of DR. This is not how parrying works. It is a terrible representation of what parrying is. Compare it to the Wall of Blades maneuver, that actually parries something.
The variable DR is an abstraction. It represents using your weapon to deflect the incoming attack and potentially reducing it to zero aka essentially making it miss. How is that not a parry? Defensive Duelist works differently, but is also representing a parry. Does that also not count for some reason?

Sneak a punch: Can the game allow you to just go from wielding a two-handed weapon to suddenly getting a quick punch and back to two-handing in a fluid motion? 3.5 had Snap Kick. If 5e can, that's cool.

With a versatile weapon you can.
You can't with a greatsword but then I'm not sure why you'd want to when you can already swing the greatsword in question eight times in six seconds.

Locking blades is called weapon bind, and it's actually closer to a grapple than a parry. A parry is just a deflection of an attack a bind is basically a pushing/pulling contest to get advantage against the opponents weapon to get an advantage.

I guess I can see what you mean, but I'm not sure how you could pull it off in the system.

Warding: Basically you see it when Aragorn is fighting the Naz'gul and a few times more. He swings his sword around in a manner that is meant to create distance to a large group as opposed to hitting someone specifically.
Ooh yes that's definitely something we need.

Bashing into the ground; I would say the mechanics would be different than tripping, though the outcome would be the same.
The tripping attack maneuver is just hitting an enemy so hard you knock them down, I don't see how it's at all different conceptually to what you're describing let alone mechanically.

Sweeping Attack: Aragorns goes from killing 2 orcs, if I remember correctly Sweeping attack just deals your superiority die in damage. It's pretty weak, especially when compared to Steel Wind, a level 1 maneuver. it's only STR/DEX mod - maximum of 5 - weaker than a normal second attack (depending on your weapon and the size of your superiority dice) and it's more accurate than two separate attacks since you can decide to use it after you've made the roll (it uses the same roll as the initial attack).
Plus from level 5 you get two attacks, which is strictly better than Steel wind- when attacking two oppoennts its mechanically identical, but you can also attack the same guy twice.

And Hell, this isn't even getting into stances or when he chopped off limbs. I see him take a guys arm or leg off. I see him in Vom Tag stance, Ox guard, Plow guard, and even Fool's guard once. Each of which could have some mechanical benefit pretty easily that is lost in the system.
I don't see how chopped limbs could work with DnD's method of HP abstraction, that's a "problem" (for those that see it that way) with the system, not any one class and the Warblade certainly never had anything like it that I can remember. There was a called shots sort of thing in Unearthed Arcana which did that sort of thing though, I think.
The stances you mentioned might give subtle advantages in a real fight, but how would they translate to an abstracted system like DnD?

In fact, overall it seems like a lot of the things you'd like to do but can't are issues with the system, not the Fighter specifically. If you want a system that models all these subtle and realistic techniques then you might wanna look elsewhere.

Fra Antonio

2014-11-06, 04:13 AM

While I do agree that Battle Masters could use more love, I don't agree with some of your expectations. D&D uses a degree of abstraction in combat to simplify things, and it will never be anywhere close to TROS, and honestly it shouldn't.

The game has a maneuver called Parry. It adds a variable amount of DR. This is not how parrying works. It is a terrible representation of what parrying is. Compare it to the Wall of Blades maneuver, that actually parries something. It can actually work as a possible interpretation, assuming you accept the fact that HP is not just meat thickness, but also a representation of luck, training, ability to negate damage etc.

Sneak a punch: Can the game allow you to just go from wielding a two-handed weapon to suddenly getting a quick punch and back to two-handing in a fluid motion? 3.5 had Snap Kick. If 5e can, that's cool. This looks like a part of a regular attack or defense to me. Narrate your attacks all you want. You don't just punch an orc just because you are so smart and know how to do it - you punch him because you see an opening and make use of it.

Locking blades is called weapon bind, and it's actually closer to a grapple than a parry. A parry is just a deflection of an attack a bind is basically a pushing/pulling contest to get advantage against the opponents weapon to get an advantage. Depending on how long it can potentially last, may seem like a bad idea when you are outnumbered to me, but I can't see why a DM would not let to have a prof+str opposed check to gain an advantage or something in a duel.

Warding: Basically you see it when Aragorn is fighting the Naz'gul and a few times more. He swings his sword around in a manner that is meant to create distance to a large group as opposed to hitting someone specifically. Yeah, could be a nice battlefield control maneuver.

Bashing into the ground; I would say the mechanics would be different than tripping, though the outcome would be the same. This is basically what Trip Attack does. You can narrate it in any fitting way.

Sweeping Attack: Aragorns goes from killing 2 orcs, if I remember correctly Sweeping attack just deals your superiority die in damage. It's pretty weak, especially when compared to Steel Wind, a level 1 maneuver. While I do agree that this particular maneuver feels a little lackluster, you souldn't directly compare it to ToB ones, or movies - for all I know, that second orc could have like 5 hp.

And Hell, this isn't even getting into stances or when he chopped off limbs. I see him take a guys arm or leg off. Chopping off limbs is basically getting you not-too-important (anymore) opponent to 0 HP. You probably wouldn't like you character's limb chopped off because an orc rolled good, right?

I see him in Vom Tag stance, Ox guard, Plow guard, and even Fool's guard once. Each of which could have some mechanical benefit pretty easily that is lost in the system. 5e tries to avoid small modifiers, and stances either provide these or become too OP.
Be default they are assumed to be a default part of martial character's arsenal, used as part of attacks, defense and other actions.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-06, 10:00 AM

Except with the short rest mechanic there are more encounter powers than ever before. And there are very few actions that are better than constantly throwing out attacks since doing so is usually the most optimal ability. There is a sharp lack of in combat options, something a ToB style system would be perfect to remedy.
The point of the short rest mechanic is that you cannot short rest after every single fight. Therefore, you don't have the same options available every fight, which changes up how you approach fights even against similar enemies. You also have to consider economy of action and not using special abilities now so you can save them for later.

I sincerely believe that if you try you can find a lot of fun things to do in battle using ability contests alone.

I went and looked through the ToB maneuvers list to refresh my memory. It seems to me a lot of stuff in there is present in other places in the PHB - for example Manticore Parry can be done by the Hunter Ranger.

Eslin

2014-11-06, 10:13 AM

The point of the short rest mechanic is that you cannot short rest after every single fight. Therefore, you don't have the same options available every fight, which changes up how you approach fights even against similar enemies. You also have to consider economy of action and not using special abilities now so you can save them for later.

I sincerely believe that if you try you can find a lot of fun things to do in battle using ability contests alone.

I went and looked through the ToB maneuvers list to refresh my memory. It seems to me a lot of stuff in there is present in other places in the PHB - for example Manticore Parry can be done by the Hunter Ranger.

There are plenty of abilities that have similar abilities elsewhere in the 5E PHB, just as there are plenty of spells that have mirrors (monk slow fall, paladin removing disease, monk shadow teleport, paladin lay on hands etc). That doesn't make a monk or paladin a valid substitute for a full spellcaster, however.

The essence to the initiator was the ability to choose their abilities, abilities which they got more of and superior versions as they levelled like casters did (enabling them to stay relevant in combat and giving them a variety of tactical options), which is something 5e yet lacks.

Dienekes

2014-11-06, 10:18 AM

The variable DR is an abstraction. It represents using your weapon to deflect the incoming attack and potentially reducing it to zero aka essentially making it miss. How is that not a parry? Defensive Duelist works differently, but is also representing a parry. Does that also not count for some reason?

And that is a terrible abstraction as it does not particularly reflect what it's supposed to. Take Block from SWSE, it far more accurately shows what a Parry is supposed to do. If this maneuver was called, Armor Block or something (as an aside, more interesting interactions with armor would be nice), it would at least fit with preconceived notions of how armor and parrying are supposed to work.

As to Defensive Duelist, that's actually better.

I guess I can see what you mean, but I'm not sure how you could pull it off in the system.

Douse the Flames did a decent job of covering it. Though personally, it should be an opposed strength check if successful opponent cannot attack with his weapon, until you break the hold on your turn or he wins an opposed strength check on his.

t's only STR/DEX mod - maximum of 5 - weaker than a normal second attack (depending on your weapon and the size of your superiority dice) and it's more accurate than two separate attacks since you can decide to use it after you've made the roll (it uses the same roll as the initial attack).
Plus from level 5 you get two attacks, which is strictly better than Steel wind- when attacking two oppoennts its mechanically identical, but you can also attack the same guy twice.

Ehh, better might be pushing it as it still costs the superiority dice that are limited and do not replenish in a consistent rate. I will agree that Steel Wind does not scale well though.

I don't see how chopped limbs could work with DnD's method of HP abstraction, that's a "problem" (for those that see it that way) with the system, not any one class and the Warblade certainly never had anything like it that I can remember. There was a called shots sort of thing in Unearthed Arcana which did that sort of thing though, I think.
The stances you mentioned might give subtle advantages in a real fight, but how would they translate to an abstracted system like DnD?

It worked in SWSE (well the chopping limbs mechanic was a bit wonky), which has a similar method of HP abstraction as DnD (there was another mechanic in there as well that allowed damage to cause penalties, that really doesn't effect any of the above that I wrote). That had pretty much everything I listed and quite a lot more.

In fact, overall it seems like a lot of the things you'd like to do but can't are issues with the system, not the Fighter specifically. If you want a system that models all these subtle and realistic techniques then you might wanna look elsewhere.

Well yes. My initial post was martial combat is boring. The way it's set up is boring. There are alternatives (TRoS being my favorite for pure mundane combat, though it is near impossible to find a group for and truth be told everything other than the mundane combat ranges from passable to unusable), but other than that I have been trying to show how even in the abstracted sense there are abilities that can be done. SWSE and FantasyCraft both have the abstractions that DnD has, only they added on additional methods of attack. SWSE is actually an interesting case as it's entirely possible to make a lightsaber character that only does one attack over and over again, and it works pretty well, but it has the options open for various attacks, stances, and tricks for those who are interested in that sort of thing.

The problem being SWSE is a dead game and not medieval (though I've seen a fair few conversions of varying quality), and I've only ever seen one game run of FantasyCraft.

And Hell, even Battlemaster could be made to do what I want. It currently isn't, because of the limited number of abilities, the range in which you get them, how inconsistent the superiority dice mechanic is, and how dependent upon the GM rest breaks are. And I gave my reasons for why I think it's set up that way. Because it is balanced around dealing the most consistent damage. So long as it is already the best at that while only doing standard attacks, the far more engaging maneuvers will be limited use add-ons between the standard attacks. Personally, I wish it was the opposite, standard attacks only happen when I have nothing more interesting I could be doing.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 10:59 AM

The essence to the initiator was the ability to choose their abilities, abilities which they got more of and superior versions as they levelled like casters did (enabling them to stay relevant in combat and giving them a variety of tactical options), which is something 5e yet lacks.

Except half that is false (fighters stay relevant in combat at every level) and the tactical options is a matter of opinion. In fact, fighter actually has tactical options, relying on cleverness and the use of standard maneuvers and the occasional battle master maneuver.

After all, at least half warblade was just a standard damaging attack. Maybe it dealt more damage than normal and had a cool description, but a good portion were just scaling damage which is no longer needed to be relevant. Same with 4e.

Let me give you play examples of an interesting non magical (he has one level in rogue) character I'm using. Fighter 7/ Rogue 1. Dex based, fights with a rapier and buckler. Expertise in athletics to help out. Shield master from being a human, went battle master. It'd probably be better if I went strength based and used the rapier anyways, but it didn't seem as fun thematically.

Now, in battle I shove things constantly. Shove them into pits, traps, or other enemies (DM has each check against my athletics total for the initial shove to avoid falling prone). When I don't, I trip things and stab them while they are down. I also have used attacks from above to generate extra damage, so I do that as part of a sneak attack sometimes. Ambushes are fun. I carry what's basically alchemist fire, and use that to create hazards sometimes as well.

My favorite creative usage of maneuvers is tripping someone, grappling them on the ground, then stabbing them. Trip gives you prone, grapple sets their speed to zero till they break out, so they are going to have a hard time getting anywhere fast. I have advantage vs their disadvantage, and I can make sneak attacks due to the advantage (with a dagger because of how we imagined the grapple).

Oh and then I use my battle master maneuvers as the situation calls for them.

I'm actually wondering what I should grab next now that dexterity is maxed. Defensive duelist would be fun, as would sentinel. Tavern brawler is cool thematically, if a little redundant with other options I already have.

Eslin

2014-11-06, 11:05 AM

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-06, 12:02 PM

man if i meet a hill giant im totally jumping on his club and fighting him that way.

this is 100% guaranteed to end well

silveralen

2014-11-06, 12:16 PM

Yes, relevance in combat is enhanced by 5e. A barbarian is relevant in combat from levels one through twenty and dull as hell for every single one of those levels - for 5e, the point of maneuvers is an interesting set of mechanical options. What you just described there was the few basic non attacking abilities all characters get and lots of DM leniency and roleplay, which is always fun but still does not mean that, when the party meets a hill giant, that the fighter has anywhere near the amount of useful tactical options a wizard does.

That's when maneuvers come in. If we fight an enemy with resistance to magic spells and advantage on saves versus them, the mage is going to be limited tactically. If he throws all giant sized monsters, I will.

Sure, the mage can try to do clever indirect things like disintegrate a hole below said monster, or drop stuff on him with telekinesis, but I can try and push a boulder off the giant, or jump onto his back from a tree. The DM, via fiat power and the fact he builds all the encounters, can screw people over. But consider my worst case scenario is "Too big to knock down, DM won't let me do anything clever. I guess I just get my normal high number of strong basic attacks and maneuvers, maybe toss in an action surge (before you say anything, I carry a longbow as back up, flying is at best mildly inconvenient)" vs "DM shut down my clever spell usage, monster has advantage and resistance to all my abilities, and he can auto save occasionally as well. Looks like I'll cast a buff spell on someone and then spam basic damage spells so I can at least try to contribute".

But please, describe some tactical options warblade had that didn't rely mainly on damage and were more than static bonuses. Or I can try.

Diamond: Use concentration checks instead of saves and extra damage strikes. Variations on indomitable and action surge. The only two that stand out are dealing wisdom damage via poking someone with your sword (which is funny enough to be worth posting in and of itself) and stunning someone a successful strike. So one tactical option that fighter doesn't have, that isn't either absurdly silly or just "i make an attack" with flavor text.

Iron: A few neat things battle master can mimic (or feats can mimic) like disarm, parry, increased speed, increased reach, a variation on second wind, etc. The only stand out abilities are the line attack throw and redirecting an enemy's attack.

Stone: Push and grapple (plus the feats to support them, or the maneuvers that supplement them) basically do everything here but the damage resistance. Oh, and the fact these aren't limited by size category, something that would be rather annoying if added as options for a different class. As for damage resistance, heavy armor master gives you a bit, but beyond that you could dip a level in barbarian. Oh, and CON damage. Which isn't an option available, and at least makes some sense.

Tiger: Well, you have mobility options much like you can grab with feats and BM (or a rogue dip). Lots of things that fixed duel wielding in that edition, as it got hit harder by the awful full attack action economy than any other fighting style. Lots of athletics checks to add damage, which is fun because we've been allowing everyone to get in on that. The main tactical options are a stun and a instant kill. Overall, this one isn't represented well by fighter, but is almost a perfect representation of an open hand monk. Actually... I literally don't see anything that isn't part of an open hand monk, besides his "duel wielding" only work with an unarmed attack. Which honestly fits the flavor in an awesome manner. I think I now know my next character.

White: Okay, this one has some unique stuff. Which is odd, since it has been referenced far less than the others (despite the others being over 50% "here is some cool flavor text and a handful of damage dice to roll, maybe some static attack bonus as well"). BM can replicate many of them, particularly the ones which grant allies attacks, move them, and give them attack boosts (the last one is somewhat indirect, by knocking enemies prone) but if there is any style BM comes short on it is this one. Honestly, I think this one is under represented due to the changes to action economy making extra and off turn abilities come at a premium.

So no, I really don't think BM is missing out. A lot of those options are just attacks. His only real "lack" is that he cannot spam these abilities repeatedly. Maybe you would enjoy the playtest battle master, who could spend a turn studying an enemy to refresh two superiority die (that being similar to warblade's recovery mechanic). Plug that in for relentless and I doubt anyone would claim it was OP. Or up his superiority dice slightly at high levels (he gets two extra instead of one at the various levels).

obryn

2014-11-06, 01:02 PM

re the Mike Mearls AMA it seems like they wanted to move away from 'encounter powers' as they felt that made fights samey.
...and "I attack" forever isn't? :smallconfused: Or running out of those interesting things unless you happen to get a short rest? Or being able to spam your 'best' maneuver to the exclusion of any other because all your abilities are tied to the same resource pool?

Not seeing it.

They could always have maneuvers that take more than one superiority die. They just havn't explored that space yet, but they will. I suspect they have a bunch of BM maneuvers that involve rolling your superiority die more than once, and things that make the die size seems to matter more. They will likely be published in the first martial class supplement in about a year, so relax.
When you cap out at 6 and aren't guaranteed recovery after each fight, those had better be some massive abilities.

The J Pizzel

2014-11-06, 01:36 PM

Hey gang. Let me first say I have not read this entire thread, just the first and last page. But I did want to at least chime in and offer my observations.

I ran a level 11 one-shot dungeon crawl last night for 7 players. One of them, who plays a half-orc druid in our regular game, wanted to have some fun and he made a Halfling Battle-Master fighter. He had 22 AC, and an adorable little "hobbit looking" short sword (he meant leaf-blade, like Sting). They fought an Ettin with two Bullette pets and a band of Bullywugs, then a Green Hag Coven with a Shield Guardian and a Flesh Golem, then a Beholder in its Lair with two Otyugh thralls. Now, my group doesn't tend to get into the discussions about which class is useless, or which ones can do the same job better or anything like that. They just experiment with different builds and have fun. That being said...everyone loved that frigging Battlemaster.

I don't know what all maneuvers he took, but I'll try to remember what he used for sure.

Commander's Strike - giving the Rogue a free out-of-turn attack with SA every now and then was awesome. Not exaggerating, the group cheered when he did it.
Distracting Strike - giving someone free advantage periodically was pretty useful. Nothing game changing, but the recipient was usually very grateful.
Goading Attack - when you've got a Bullette jump-clawing the crap out of your spell-casters, or a Flesh Golem pounding the poor rogue, or a Otyugh biting the crap out of your ranger, this was life-saving. I'm pretty sure this saved our Gnome Warlock and our Sorcerer at least once each.
Rally - nothing ridiculous, but he did use it twice. At one point our sorcerer was pretty down on HP and the group pretty much spend an entire round fixing him up. Pally did lay on hands, someone did first aid, fighter did Rally, etc. In a nutshell, he had enough HP to take one final hit before his round so he could survive enough to get the hell out of dodge.

Now, he was doing all this while putting up respectable damage with his short sword and whip, and getting three hits per turn. And he didn't even bother with Feats, he just took the ability boosts, so he probably would've been even more helpful with Sentinel or something. So as far was my group goes, the Battlemaster is in no way inferior to any other classes or builds. He contributed just as much as the rest, and then some. Oh and that thing that fighters get that lets him re-roll saving throws saved his bacon on that Beholder fight.

jP

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-06, 02:00 PM

...and "I attack" forever isn't? Or running out of those interesting things unless you happen to get a short rest? Or being able to spam your 'best' maneuver to the exclusion of any other because all your abilities are tied to the same resource pool?

It's not really an interesting thing if you do the same thing every combat. Special moves become routine rather than exceptional. Running your maneuvers out is a choice that you made.

You are not as limited in combat as in previous editions; do cool things that involve ability checks, combo shoves, help your teammates out, et cetera. Taking cover actually works. You can move around a lot more and in fact its pretty recommended owing to abilities like Pack Tactics or the Hobgobbo thing. There's also a few unlimited actions tied to feats, like shield bashes and charge attacks.

In any case, a maneuver that increases damage isn't any more interesting than 'I attack'.

p.s. I don't really like that a battlemaster has some sort of resorvoir of skill that he can deplete, but the only way to avoid that is unlimited maneuvers. Unlimited maneuvers certainly has its own problems, and its own verisimilitude issues.

obryn

2014-11-06, 03:04 PM

It's not really an interesting thing if you do the same thing every combat.
The Battlemaster Maneuver system does nothing to prevent this, though.

I'll use a 4e example, here, because I know everyone here loves those.

Your standard 4e character has a list of At-Will, Encounter, and Daily abilities. If you've done a really good job optimizing, you can expect to be able to use your various Encounter abilities each encounter. (Not so for Dailies, but let's compare apples to apples.)

Then you have the power point classes. 4e psionic classes (except the awesome monk) have a pool of power points which let them charge up their at-will attacks - basically making them encounter powers, since the pool refreshes every short rest. You even have half-boosts and full-boosts for yet more variety. In theory, you have a ton of flexibility - certainly more than a normal AEDU setup. This is quite similar to a 5e Battlemaster's resource pool.

So which of these two do you think is universally considered the more boring option in play? (It's the psionic characters. They tend to use the same ability over and over again - spamming it - sometimes over all 30 levels. The Psion's Dishearten is a great example of this, since it starts strong and only gets stronger. Frankly, they're pretty badly-designed, and three low points on an otherwise really interesting list of characters. Heck; I'd rather play a low-option Essentials class than a psionic class. On the other hand, a normal 4e AEDU character will pretty much be forced to change up their tactics round by round to figure out how best to use their Encounter abilities, since there's always tactical decisions to be made about them, including the choice of which one to use right now.)

You are not as limited in combat as in previous editions; do cool things that involve ability checks, combo shoves, help your teammates out, et cetera. Taking cover actually works. You can move around a lot more and in fact its pretty recommended owing to abilities like Pack Tactics or the Hobgobbo thing. There's also a few unlimited actions tied to feats, like shield bashes and charge attacks.
You've set the bar really, really low here.

In any case, a maneuver that increases damage isn't any more interesting than 'I attack'.

p.s. I don't really like that a battlemaster has some sort of resorvoir of skill that he can deplete, but the only way to avoid that is unlimited maneuvers. Unlimited maneuvers certainly has its own problems, and its own verisimilitude issues.
Resource management is really helpful for balance considerations. It allows more powerful special effects at the cost of unlimited use. See Vancian casting for an example of how this is often used in play. This is a big reason it's nice for martial characters to have daily-use abilities if they're already in your system; it allows for those massive effects.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 04:11 PM

Speaker

2014-11-06, 04:13 PM

Just give them more dice/a way to regenerate more dice then BM would be fine. Seriously most of its problems would dissappear. 10 dice with the ability to get more for a bonus action or something and the BM becomes pretty awesome.

Talakeal

2014-11-06, 04:21 PM

The one thing I want is a martial character without arbitrary limitations. I would like more options and complexity, but I hate having to restrict myself to a small list of maneuvers and then rest between uses or even forget my current powers to learn knew ones. ToB, 4e, and BM fighter all fail in this regard. What I really want a martial version of the 3e warlock that can do cool things but doesn't have arbitrary restrictions on how often they can use them.

Also, discussions of high and low fantasy get less useful every day. Going by a literary definition Lord of the Rings is more or less the epitome of high fantasy, but people now call it low fantasy because it doesn't have flashy enough "powers".

There is very little that Aragorn can do which someone like Conan can't, the difference in Low vs. High is in a classic sense more about themes and setting details than power level. Also note that the D&D fighter is far less interesting than either of them.

Frankly, I can't think of many pieces of fantasy literature or mythology that do. It really seems to be more of a modern thing from wuxia, shonen, superhero comics, and video games, and even then most of it is relatively tame. The only exceptions I can think of from mythology are American tall tales and a few near gods or artifacts that can rearrange landscapes.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 04:32 PM

Those sort of abilities are, for whatever reason, typically the domain of feats. Even in 3.5 fighter could (eventually) do cool things every single round. The bull rush and trip specialized fighters (usually with a spiked chain) come to mind.

It's not that hard to tell when people are discussing the genres and when people using it as an abbreviation for high/low powered fantasy.

MeeposFire

2014-11-06, 04:40 PM

Well what you have is a common problem of where trying to make something fun in the game may end up not working well in your imagination of how things would look in real life (and of course the opposite as well).

Martials are not the only area you see this. Many people throughout the years complained about how D&D magic works compared to most fantasy literature, movies, and TV. Vancian variants that D&D tends to use don't fit most versions of magic you ever see and some people get upset about that but it does happen to be a very nice way to run a game hence one of the reasons why they went with it over some other common ideas (such as mana points or the like).

The other problem is that if you give a warrior the ability to add an ability to his attack you will use it all the time unless you limit its uses. This also has the problem of being "unrealistic". The best fix for that of course would be doing a system where you have a percentage chance (or similar) of having an effect happen when you strike and when it happens you can choose the effect (such as every attack you make you have a 20% chance of adding a special attack to it) but that has the problem of lots of dice rolls and book keeping which slow down the game. Works well on a video game though.

Magic gets less complaints about this though since it is less defined. Magic works exactly as you decide that it does so the complaints happen because you can't accurately mimic specific examples from other sources. Weapon users have to deal with that and with the paradoxical nature what different people expect from a weapon user and how to represent that in a game.

obryn

2014-11-06, 04:50 PM

But the battlemaster doesn't resemble psionics more than encounter powers. Each manuever is unique, you can't add dice to increase their power, the only similarity is they all deal the same damage as one another.
You don't understand the distinction.

In one case (4e normal class), you have a list of 4 things, but you can only pick each thing once.

In the second case (both 4e psion and 5e battlemaster), you have a list of 4 things, but can pick any of them 4 times, in any combination.

While the second has a (much!) larger universe of possible combinations, those extra combinations mostly manifest in picking the same thing to do over several rounds. The first forces maximal round-to-round variation. Also - critically - if a certain choice is optimal in an encounter, there will likewise be less round-to-round variety in the second case. If one choice is optimal in most encounters, the variability drops even more. (This is the case with the 4e Psion's Dishearten power, fwiw, which is really badly designed and it's a shame it'll never get errata.)

(There's also a separate question of variety over a character's career. Given the current sorry state of maneuver choices - where every level, you're picking from a list of things you've already evaluated and dismissed - this is a major concern. Over a one-shot, it's fine. Over 20 levels? No.)

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-06, 04:51 PM

What maneuver are you always going to use instead of others? They are mostly pretty situational benefits - which is fine, since a BM isn't relying on the maneuvers for actually dealing damage.

Frankly, it's pretty gamey and not-martial to arbitrarily restrict a BM from using the same maneuver twice in a row if they so desire. IIRC the Tome of Battle classes relied on this restriction to force more variety.

The Battlemaster Maneuver system does nothing to prevent this, though.
Yes it does, as do other mechanics set to short rest. You don't have resources per-fight, so your ability to use those resources in any given fight is very context and choice dependent. So for example you can try to conserve on your superiority dice to fight the tougher foe you know waits ahead. But that comes as the cost of making the earlier fights more difficult, and probably inflicting additional damage to you.

Strictly speaking there is - AFAIK - nothing similar to short rest mechanics in 4e. Of course, there will be official short rest variant rules, and some people just play per-Short Rest as per-Encounter as is. I think a pretty good DM fiat would be to recharge all short rest powers when the party starts a climactic fight - representing their determination to succeed.

Resource management is really helpful for balance considerations. It allows more powerful special effects at the cost of unlimited use. See Vancian casting for an example of how this is often used in play. This is a big reason it's nice for martial characters to have daily-use abilities if they're already in your system; it allows for those massive effects.

Battlemasters/Fighters already have a supremely useful long rest ability in Action Surge; i'm not sure of your precise point. I think we all agree that resource management choices are good mechanics.

obryn

2014-11-06, 04:56 PM

The best fix for that of course would be doing a system where you have a percentage chance (or similar) of having an effect happen when you strike and when it happens you can choose the effect (such as every attack you make you have a 20% chance of adding a special attack to it) but that has the problem of lots of dice rolls and book keeping which slow down the game. Works well on a video game though.
I dunno. It also kind of takes the fiat and intent out of it, too. A wizard picks the best (prepared) spell for the situation. A fighter should be able to pick the maneuver they'd like to attempt.

This is basically how 13th Age works, btw, with Fighters' (and some other classes') maneuvers depending on certain natural d20 rolls, usually checking if a roll is odd or even. So if you roll a natural even number on the d20, you can invoke Maneuver A. If you roll odd, you can invoke Maneuver B. Though sadly, there's only one odd roll maneuver a Fighter can ever pick, which kind of sucks.

I'm not really a fan, even though I like many other things about 13A.

obryn

2014-11-06, 05:00 PM

Frankly, it's pretty gamey and not-martial to arbitrarily restrict a BM from using the same maneuver twice in a row if they so desire. IIRC the Tome of Battle classes relied on this restriction to force more variety.
It is gamey, which is appropriate, since D&D is a game.

Yes it does, as do other mechanics set to short rest. You don't have resources per-fight, so your ability to use those resources in any given fight is very context and choice dependent. So for example you can try to conserve on your superiority dice to fight the tougher foe you know waits ahead. But that comes as the cost of making the earlier fights more difficult, and probably inflicting additional damage to you.
All that does is trade your round-to-round (or within-encounter) choices for foggy not-quite-daily resources. And if you don't choose to use your very limited amount of invocations, you are relegated to a simple attack, which is really one of the problems, here.

Morty

2014-11-06, 05:11 PM

Personally, I think the Battlemaster maneuvers would be fine... if they were available to every martially-inclined character. Selling them as special abilities of a 'complex' variant of the fighter is a rather sad joke. Even sadder because the expertise dice mechanic was a promising idea that could have solved the problem people are going on about (again) in this thread. Instead we got... well, this.

MeeposFire

2014-11-06, 05:14 PM

Well it would be a fairly simple matter to make a battle master type subclass for every class you wanted but the problem still will be how many times do you want them to sue those abilities in a combat, how fast should you regain them, and that sort of thing just like the fighter.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-06, 05:52 PM

No matter how many times you say 'you are limited to a simple attack' it's not true. There's many things you can do in combat, the easiest example of which is the shove.

obryn

2014-11-06, 05:57 PM

No matter how many times you say 'you are limited to a simple attack' it's not true. There's many things you can do in combat, the easiest example of which is the shove.
This is not the 5e trump card you want it to be. This is part of every character's baseline effectiveness. I'm talking about fighters and the capabilities built into the class.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 06:28 PM

This is not the 5e trump card you want it to be. This is part of every character's baseline effectiveness. I'm talking about fighters and the capabilities built into the class.

Such manuevers use up a single attack in an attack action or have feat tax (as does grapple). Fighters get more attacks per attack action than any other class and more feats. Therefor fighter is one of the classes best suited to use them, the other being the non casting rogue class thanks to expertise.

obryn

2014-11-06, 06:51 PM

Such manuevers use up a single attack in an attack action or have feat tax (as does grapple). Fighters get more attacks per attack action than any other class and more feats. Therefor fighter is one of the classes best suited to use them, the other being the non casting rogue class thanks to expertise.
And? The Fighter getting a third attack at high level and some more feats/stats are certainly nice, but hardly address the lack of breadth, variety, and power critics are bemoaning here.

Vogonjeltz

2014-11-06, 06:58 PM

Such manuevers use up a single attack in an attack action or have feat tax (as does grapple). Fighters get more attacks per attack action than any other class and more feats. Therefor fighter is one of the classes best suited to use them, the other being the non casting rogue class thanks to expertise.

Rogue gets less feats as well.

The maneuvers have fairly substantial synergy with available feats as well.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 07:09 PM

And? The Fighter getting a third attack at high level and some more feats/stats are certainly nice, but hardly address the lack of breadth, variety, and power critics are bemoaning here.

Sure it does. It allows him to make more sue of the built in rules, like feats and basic combat maneuvers, to supplement his arsenal. Being able to have 20 in your primary score and a feat by lvl 8 is great, especially for a SAD class. Considering how many options a feat can open up (typically 2-3 different things) that fills the class out. You know, on top of the short rest maneuvers and action surges, as basic chop chop.

Again, I play a fighter, and I spend fewer round doing nothing but basic attacks less often than the magic users spend their turns tossing out basic cantrips.

Anyone who is complaining about his lack of power hasn't actually played him btw.

The complaints are from people who lack the imagination or creativity to play a fighter as anything but "I hit it" without being handed a list of special powers.

Rogue gets less feats as well.

The maneuvers have fairly substantial synergy with available feats as well.

Yeah, though only one more than average/less than fighter. Still nice to have.

Also another reason those extra feats are so good, they open up more availability for the trip, bull rush, and grapple options. I'm also partial to the ones that give you more options for reaction actions.

charcoalninja

2014-11-06, 07:10 PM

This is not the 5e trump card you want it to be. This is part of every character's baseline effectiveness. I'm talking about fighters and the capabilities built into the class.

Especially since the "plenty of things" are at the same level as saying there are plenty of ways to fight with an army, or build a stronghold, or break through a wall... In that the DM is just making things up and the player is hoping against hope that he actually likes what the DM comes up with.

Improved actions are a key part of RPGs for sure, but when ALL of your combat options are magical tea party DM begging it robs the player of any ability to plan their combats and strategy around their character's capabilities because they never know what those capabilities are.

For me I'm toying with the idea of making all Battlemaster manuevers usible at will but anywhere that involves a superiority die is where you spend it. So you can do the battlemaster trip for example, but if you want to trip and deal damage you spend your die. That way the damage dealing aspect of the BM stays in line with the expectations of the game while providing an easy to use route into making him not so terrible.

Shadow

2014-11-06, 07:18 PM

For me I'm toying with the idea of making all Battlemaster manuevers usible at will but anywhere that involves a superiority die is where you spend it. So you can do the battlemaster trip for example, but if you want to trip and deal damage you spend your die. That way the damage dealing aspect of the BM stays in line with the expectations of the game while providing an easy to use route into making him not so terrible.

Trip is a poor example for your idea, as anyone can trip at any time by using one of their attacks during the Attack action.
For instance, a TWF rogue can Attack, trip instead of making an attack roll, and use his bonus action via TWF to attack at Advantage and thus get sneak attack damage even when fighting 1v1. All it requires is a contested roll (which he can get Expertise on, thus removing some of the need for Str for the check as would normally be required).
Can you give examples of how you'd do other maneuvers at-will without the superiority dice?

edit: I'm interested in how you plan on implementing most of the maneuvers without dice, without also making them OP options in the process by not imposing an opportunity cost.

For example, allowing Commander's Strike without the need for spending a SupDie would be OP if there were a rogue in the group.
Most of the other maneuvers would also be OP without any opportunity cost imposed.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 07:18 PM

Especially since the "plenty of things" are at the same level as saying there are plenty of ways to fight with an army, or build a stronghold, or break through a wall... In that the DM is just making things up and the player is hoping against hope that he actually likes what the DM comes up with.

Improved actions are a key part of RPGs for sure, but when ALL of your combat options are magical tea party DM begging it robs the player of any ability to plan their combats and strategy around their character's capabilities because they never know what those capabilities are.

For me I'm toying with the idea of making all Battlemaster manuevers usible at will but anywhere that involves a superiority die is where you spend it. So you can do the battlemaster trip for example, but if you want to trip and deal damage you spend your die. That way the damage dealing aspect of the BM stays in line with the expectations of the game while providing an easy to use route into making him not so terrible.

Friend, before you start whining about magical tea parties it might be a good idea to actually read the rules.

Every single character cna do that trip attack you jsut described. Oh sure, it's contested athletics instead of a strength saving throw, but the former actually offers better odds considering the average on a d20 is 10.5 rather than 8 (and you can boost your athletics fairly easily). So, that "homebrew" you just mentioned? Literally in the rules.

No, but please let your fighter give up one attack every single round so the party thief can backstab. That'll be amusing.

Shadow

2014-11-06, 07:34 PM

Can you give examples of how you'd do other maneuvers at-will without the superiority dice?

edit: I'm interested in how you plan on implementing most of the maneuvers without dice, without also making them OP options in the process by not imposing an opportunity cost.

For example, allowing Commander's Strike without the need for spending a SupDie would be OP if there were a rogue in the group.
Most of the other maneuvers would also be OP without any opportunity cost imposed.

To expand on this:
Commander's Strike at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Disarming Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Distracting Strike at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Evasive Footwork at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Feinting Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Goading Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Lunging Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Maneuvering Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Menacing Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Parry at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Precision Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Pushing Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: covered by shove
Rally at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: either not feasible or OP to throw temp HP equal to Cha every round
Riposte at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Sweeping Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Trip Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: covered by shove

Hytheter

2014-11-06, 07:45 PM

Ehh, better might be pushing it as it still costs the superiority dice that are limited and do not replenish in a consistent rate. I will agree that Steel Wind does not scale well though.
I didn't say Sweeping Maneuver was better than Steel Wind, I said it was weaker but more accurate.
I did however say that having two attacks is better, because it is.

That's the last point of yours I have to rebut (or really just correct); you've made some good points and the rest more or less comes down to opinion and system stuff.

Talakeal

2014-11-06, 08:00 PM

To expand on this:
Commander's Strike at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Disarming Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Distracting Strike at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Evasive Footwork at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Feinting Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Goading Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Lunging Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Maneuvering Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Menacing Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Parry at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Precision Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Pushing Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: covered by shove
Rally at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: either not feasible or OP to throw temp HP equal to Cha every round
Riposte at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Sweeping Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Trip Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: covered by shove

If everything is OP than maybe nothing is. Having to choose from only one on a long list of OP options is an opportunity cost.

Shadow

2014-11-06, 08:03 PM

If everything is OP than maybe nothing is.

I want you to think about what you just said for a moment....

Eslin

2014-11-06, 08:05 PM

I dunno. It also kind of takes the fiat and intent out of it, too. A wizard picks the best (prepared) spell for the situation. A fighter should be able to pick the maneuver they'd like to attempt.

This is basically how 13th Age works, btw, with Fighters' (and some other classes') maneuvers depending on certain natural d20 rolls, usually checking if a roll is odd or even. So if you roll a natural even number on the d20, you can invoke Maneuver A. If you roll odd, you can invoke Maneuver B. Though sadly, there's only one odd roll maneuver a Fighter can ever pick, which kind of sucks.

I'm not really a fan, even though I like many other things about 13A.

13th age was great, it just needed to not have that aspect at all. It was a pointless, frustrating element of random chance.

If everything is OP than maybe nothing is. Having to choose from only one on a long list of OP options is an opportunity cost.

Not how logic works, I'm afraid. Though I suppose if everyone got access to that stuff it'd boost martials, which I wouldn't mind.

Sure it does. It allows him to make more sue of the built in rules, like feats and basic combat maneuvers, to supplement his arsenal. Being able to have 20 in your primary score and a feat by lvl 8 is great, especially for a SAD class. Considering how many options a feat can open up (typically 2-3 different things) that fills the class out. You know, on top of the short rest maneuvers and action surges, as basic chop chop.

Again, I play a fighter, and I spend fewer round doing nothing but basic attacks less often than the magic users spend their turns tossing out basic cantrips.

Anyone who is complaining about his lack of power hasn't actually played him btw.

The complaints are from people who lack the imagination or creativity to play a fighter as anything but "I hit it" without being handed a list of special powers.

Yeah, though only one more than average/less than fighter. Still nice to have.

Also another reason those extra feats are so good, they open up more availability for the trip, bull rush, and grapple options. I'm also partial to the ones that give you more options for reaction actions.

We are aware the fighter is powerful in combat. Our complaint, and just because you don't find the fighter boring doesn't make this untrue for a large amount of people, is the lack of tactical options makes the fighter very dull to play. We don't want to be 'handed a list of special powers', we want the ability to choose. Tome of Battle shouldn't be copied over directly since that wouldn't make sense, but what the warblade provided (combat options and versatility, the ability to choose maneuvers to pick what your character was good at) is easily translatable into 4e.

Thinking about it, I think they should have the warlord turn up in the same splatbook. Devoted spirit and white raven covered a lot of what the warlord was about anyway, folding warlord into tome of battle would make a lot of sense.

Talakeal

2014-11-06, 08:21 PM

Not how logic works, I'm afraid. Though I suppose if everyone got access to that stuff it'd boost martials, which I wouldn't mind.

Care to elaborate?

The term "OP" is meaningless except as a comparison to the norm. If everything is "OP" then OP is the new norm, and therefore not OP anymore.

Now if you are comparing the fighter class to other classes (or monsters) it might make for an OP class, but I seriously doubt it.

Shadow

2014-11-06, 08:28 PM

Care to elaborate?

The term "OP" is meaningless except as a comparison to the norm. If everything is "OP" then OP is the new norm, and therefore not OP anymore.

Now if you are comparing the fighter class to other classes (or monsters) it might make for an OP class, but I seriously doubt it.

Have you actually read any of the maneuvers in question?
If not, read them, and then consider what would happen if they were allowed at-will with no opprotunity cost.
It would break melee combat over my knee like a professional wrestler in the '80s.

Talakeal

2014-11-06, 08:41 PM

Have you actually read any of the maneuvers in question?
If not, read them, and then consider what would happen if they were allowed at-will with no opprotunity cost.
It would break melee combat over my knee like a professional wrestler in the '80s.

Not really seeing it aside from evasive footwork; though I suppose once you start getting several attacks per round it could get a bit wacky. I still don't think it would put fighters over the top in comparison to casters.

Does the BM break the game as is if you only have one short fight a day and allow him to go nova each time?

obryn

2014-11-06, 08:44 PM

13th age was great, it just needed to not have that aspect at all. It was a pointless, frustrating element of random chance.
Yeah. :smallfrown: It's amazing how progressive 13A was in some aspects, while remaining pointlessly regressive in others. (Those others mostly being 'non-spellcasters' because Tweet.)

Thinking about it, I think they should have the warlord turn up in the same splatbook. Devoted spirit and white raven covered a lot of what the warlord was about anyway, folding warlord into tome of battle would make a lot of sense.
I'd be good with that, yeah.

I don't really expect anything resembling a "martial splatbook" however. Unfortunately.

Shadow

2014-11-06, 08:56 PM

Not really seeing it aside from evasive footwork; though I suppose once you start getting several attacks per round it could get a bit wacky. I still don't think it would put fighters over the top in comparison to casters.

Does the BM break the game as is if you only have one short fight a day and allow him to go nova each time?

Are you kidding me? Evasive Footwork doesn't even work unless you spend the die, because its effect is directly related to the roll.
But let's look at them individually.

Commander's Strike at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
You trade one attack and a bonus action to give the rogue an extra sneak attack every round. Yep, OP.

Disarming Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time you hit someone they have to save or drop an item of your choice. Yep, OP.

Distracting Strike at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time you hit someone the next attack made has advantage. Yep, OP.

Evasive Footwork at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Doesn't work at all unless you roll the SupDie.

Feinting Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Spend a bonus action to get advantage on the next attack. Yep, OP.

Goading Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time you hit, the creatuire hit has disadvantage to attack anyone other than you. Yep, OP.

Lunging Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Add 5' of reach for zero cost. Yep, OP.

Maneuvering Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time you hit, one ally can use reaction to move half speed without provoking. Yep, OP.

Menacing Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time you hit, the target makes a save or is frightened. Yep, OP.

Parry at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Doesn't work at all unless you roll the SupDie.

Precision Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Doesn't work at all unless you roll the SupDie.

Pushing Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: covered by shove
The mechanic for this already exists without spending a SupDie.

Rally at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: either not feasible or OP to throw temp HP equal to Cha every round
Doesn't work at all unless you roll the SupDie.

Riposte at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time a melee attack misses you, take a reaction attack. Yep, OP.

Sweeping Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Doesn't work at all unless you roll the SupDie.

Trip Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: covered by shove
The mechanic for this already exists without spending a SupDie.

How would any of that be even remotely balanced?

Eslin

2014-11-06, 09:07 PM

I'd be good with that, yeah.

I don't really expect anything resembling a "martial splatbook" however. Unfortunately.

Why wouldn't they release one? The PHB didn't have martial options anywhere close to the tactical options available in 4e and late 3.5, but considering 4e/tome of battle/PHB2/FC2/MoI all happened they're know the need and they know how to do it, it seems a natural option for an early splatbook considering the obvious lack 5e currently has.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 09:11 PM

We are aware the fighter is powerful in combat. Our complaint, and just because you don't find the fighter boring doesn't make this untrue for a large amount of people, is the lack of tactical options makes the fighter very dull to play. We don't want to be 'handed a list of special powers', we want the ability to choose. Tome of Battle shouldn't be copied over directly since that wouldn't make sense, but what the warblade provided (combat options and versatility, the ability to choose maneuvers to pick what your character was good at) is easily translatable into 4e.

Thinking about it, I think they should have the warlord turn up in the same splatbook. Devoted spirit and white raven covered a lot of what the warlord was about anyway, folding warlord into tome of battle would make a lot of sense.

You see warlord is actually unique. It isn't just "fighter, but with spells instead of attacks!".

Seriously, what exactly do you need? The standard BM manuevers do 90% of what manuevers did without the flavor text, and with damage scaling based on making multiple attacks rather than a bucket of die for one attack. Oh, and they aren't usable as often, like everything in 5e (casters get a fraction of spells per day for example).

Hytheter

2014-11-06, 09:25 PM

Feinting Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Spend a bonus action to get advantage on the next attack. Yep, OP.

I'm not sure that's actually op. There are many ways to use Bonus actions to get an extra attack, and two attacks are usually better than one attack with advantage.

In all other cases I agree; they don't work at all without seriously rewriting.

Eslin

2014-11-06, 09:33 PM

You see warlord is actually unique. It isn't just "fighter, but with spells instead of attacks!".

Seriously, what exactly do you need? The standard BM manuevers do 90% of what manuevers did without the flavor text, and with damage scaling based on making multiple attacks rather than a bucket of die for one attack. Oh, and they aren't usable as often, like everything in 5e (casters get a fraction of spells per day for example).

They were never 'spells instead of attacks'. They were organised in the same style as spells because it was a new system so it needed to be as familiar as possible (look at magic of incarnum for what it looks like when they don't do that), but they did not behave like spells and playing one did not feel like a spellcaster.

The current maneuvers aren't usable as often, but even if spells are usable less often that is still a bad thing. Make the effects weaker if you have to, but a fighter shouldn't run out of maneuvers and be left just swinging. Now to the important part: The standard BM maneuvers do NOT do 90% as you claim, not anywhere close. For one thing, you run out incredibly fast, making them very dissimilar to an initiator, and for another they do not cover anywhere near as much ground.

There is no manticore parry to punish your enemy for attacking, there is no mountain hammer to smash through objects, there is no mithral tornado to attack all nearby foes, no flanking maneuver to give allies free attacks against foes you surround, no stone vise to immobilize your foe , no lion's roar to boost the damage of my allies when you kill an enemy. The battlemaster fighter is a nice little nod to the tome of battle but it is not a valid substitute.

Shadow

2014-11-06, 09:34 PM

I'm not sure that's actually op. There are many ways to use Bonus actions to get an extra attack, and two attacks are usually better than one attack with advantage.

In all other cases I agree; they don't work at all without seriously rewriting.

Consider a rogue multi with 3 levels of fighter tossed on, which would allow sneak attack on every single attack no matter what as one example to show that it's too much.
As long as you're not getting disadvantage on the roll for some reason, all you have to do is spend your bonus action and BAM! roll 2d20 on the attack and apply sneak attack damage. Solo 1v1 fight? Doesn't matter. Ranged 1v1 without any cover to hide behind? Doesn't matter.
That's far far better than TWF, and would make fighter 3 an almost mandatory multiclass (or the martial adept feat at the very least) for a rogue that wants to optimize.

Hytheter

2014-11-06, 09:51 PM

Consider a rogue multi with 3 levels of fighter tossed on, which would allow sneak attack on every single attack no matter what as one example to show that it's too much.

I think you mean every single round, as opposed to every single attack.

But as far as I can tell getting Sneak Attack is trivially easy as long you have an ally within 5ft of the target. And if your allies can't get that close, then you probably can't get close enough for Feinting Attack either (it has a 5ft limit, so it's useless for Ranged sneak attack too). So what you're getting is the ability to forfeit your bonus action in exchange increased ability to act alone. Which doesn't sound unreasonable for three levels in another class to me.

Ranged 1v1 without any cover to hide behind? Doesn't matter.

Yeah, this tells me you didn't know Feinting Attack only works within 5ft, which is obviously going to colour your opinion.

Shadow

2014-11-06, 09:56 PM

Yeah, this tells me you didn't know Feinting Attack only works within 5ft, which is obviously going to colour your opinion.

Yeah, I know it does. That doesn't color anything, as crossbow expert is arguably one of the best feats that a rogue can take, and that feat removes the penalty associated with firing in melee range. This change would just make it that much better, tipping the martail adept or fighter 3 on a rogue lean that much more toward the mandatory optimization side of things.

As for the "I think you meant once per round" bit, rogues don't get extra attack and they'd be spending thier bonus to do this, so it could potentially apply to every single attack they make on thier turn if they needed it.

Hytheter

2014-11-06, 10:06 PM

Yeah, I know it does. That doesn't color anything, as crossbow expert is arguably one of the best feats that a rogue can take, and that feat removes the penalty associated with firing in melee range.

It's not really a "ranged 1v1" if you're firing Crossbows at 5ft though. That's functionally the same as just fighting in Melee. When you said ranged 1v1 that implies that the maneuver would actually be useful at ranged combat. And overall I don't see how the maneuver is iseful for Crossbow experts in particular like you're saying it does, other than not having to change weapons mid-combat.

As for the "I think you meant once per round" bit, rogues don't get extra attack and they'd be spending thier bonus to do this, so it would apply to every single attack they make on thier turn.
Ah, good point.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 10:13 PM

They were never 'spells instead of attacks'. They were organised in the same style as spells because it was a new system so it needed to be as familiar as possible (look at magic of incarnum for what it looks like when they don't do that), but they did not behave like spells and playing one did not feel like a spellcaster.

The current maneuvers aren't usable as often, but even if spells are usable less often that is still a bad thing. Make the effects weaker if you have to, but a fighter shouldn't run out of maneuvers and be left just swinging. Now to the important part: The standard BM maneuvers do NOT do 90% as you claim, not anywhere close. For one thing, you run out incredibly fast, making them very dissimilar to an initiator, and for another they do not cover anywhere near as much ground.

There is no manticore parry to punish your enemy for attacking, there is no mountain hammer to smash through objects, there is no mithral tornado to attack all nearby foes, no flanking maneuver to give allies free attacks against foes you surround, no stone vise to immobilize your foe , no lion's roar to boost the damage of my allies when you kill an enemy. The battlemaster fighter is a nice little nod to the tome of battle but it is not a valid substitute.

Fun fact: literally listed as spells in the 3.5 database. Because they are spells in practically ever way that matters design wise.

Yeah, you know what sort of maneuvers are appropriate to use all the time? Ones that deal damage between cantrip and fighter full attack damage and have only the riders of trip (or other advantage granting mechanic), knockback, and preventing movement. For a turn at most. That'd be balanced for all the time usage. The others? Not at all. Someone pointed that out after I suggested it, thinking about I honestly agree.

Oh, and you want those all day long at will? Powers that are strictly stronger than abilities you already agreed could be weakened? Wow maybe it's because your expectations are based on an edition where casters were insane, so nothing else looked OP!

BM fighter is warblade balanced for this edition without borrowing heavily from caster mechanics. Oh, and without oodles of flavor text for a few dozen "I hit hard" manuevers.

Oh and grapple checks man, immobilization right there.

Talakeal

2014-11-06, 10:21 PM

Are you kidding me? Evasive Footwork doesn't even work unless you spend the die, because its effect is directly related to the roll.
But let's look at them individually.

Commander's Strike at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
You trade one attack and a bonus action to give the rogue an extra sneak attack every round. Yep, OP.

Disarming Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time you hit someone they have to save or drop an item of your choice. Yep, OP.

Distracting Strike at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time you hit someone the next attack made has advantage. Yep, OP.

Evasive Footwork at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Doesn't work at all unless you roll the SupDie.

Feinting Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Spend a bonus action to get advantage on the next attack. Yep, OP.

Goading Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time you hit, the creatuire hit has disadvantage to attack anyone other than you. Yep, OP.

Lunging Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Add 5' of reach for zero cost. Yep, OP.

Maneuvering Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time you hit, one ally can use reaction to move half speed without provoking. Yep, OP.

Menacing Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time you hit, the target makes a save or is frightened. Yep, OP.

Parry at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Doesn't work at all unless you roll the SupDie.

Precision Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Doesn't work at all unless you roll the SupDie.

Pushing Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: covered by shove
The mechanic for this already exists without spending a SupDie.

Rally at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: either not feasible or OP to throw temp HP equal to Cha every round
Doesn't work at all unless you roll the SupDie.

Riposte at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: OP
Every time a melee attack misses you, take a reaction attack. Yep, OP.

Sweeping Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: not feasible without a rewrite
Doesn't work at all unless you roll the SupDie.

Trip Attack at-will without any opportunity cost via SupDie: covered by shove
The mechanic for this already exists without spending a SupDie.

How would any of that be even remotely balanced?

I said evasive footwork would be a problem as written.

As for the rest, again, are we talking about balanced against other maneuvers or against other classes?

Maybe I am used to 3.5 wizards, but none of these seem as good as even low level spells that casters put out in previous editions. And I keep hearing talk of Necromancers with skeleton armies, infinite simulacrum loops, contagion auto winning fights, intellect devourers one shotting fighters 40% of the time, call woodland beings ending fights, and level 3 wizards soloing the tarrasque. Admittedly I don't have much play experience in 5e, but I really don't think any of the above will make the poor casters quake in fear of the almighty fighter any time soon.

Although the more vengeful part of me does think that it would serve them right after so many years of dominance.

silveralen

2014-11-06, 10:40 PM

I said evasive footwork would be a problem as written.

As for the rest, again, are we talking about balanced against other maneuvers or against other classes?

Maybe I am used to 3.5 wizards, but none of these seem as good as even low level spells that casters put out in previous editions. And I keep hearing talk of Necromancers with skeleton armies, infinite simulacrum loops, contagion auto winning fights, intellect devourers one shotting fighters 40% of the time, call woodland beings ending fights, and level 3 wizards soloing the tarrasque. Admittedly I don't have much play experience in 5e, but I really don't think any of the above will make the poor casters quake in fear of the almighty fighter any time soon.

Although the more vengeful part of me does think that it would serve them right after so many years of dominance.

Yeah, move along, someone who has barely even looked at the changes from 3.X to 5e, and whose main experience with 5e is people pointing out some of the stupid loopholes in 5e (also, the only reason it is a mage soloing the tarresque is magic weapon, anyone with a +1 can hypothetically do the same thing, it is a flaw of infinitely dashing horses and vast featureless plains vs a monster with low move speed and no ranged attacks, nothing to do with class imbalance).

Get this straight: Fighter is balanced with the other classes. He is not weak. He doesn't need a buff. He is balanced against the other classes, free maneuvers every turn is not. Stop bringing your biases into a brand new system. I don't even know why that needs to be said, but apparently it does.

Plus, you wouldn't even screw over casters, who would at least have things like AoE and out of combat spells to serve as a niche. You'd be screwing the other combat classes, rendering many of them outright pointless.

Words can't describe my frustration at your jsutification "well casters ahve it coming to them". There was one badly imbalanced edition out of five, get over it.

Eslin

2014-11-06, 10:48 PM

Shadow

2014-11-06, 10:54 PM

Still, fighters being balanced isn't really the point - it's about the lack of options, not lack of strength.

Which is fine. So let's turn the topic toward ideas in that regard and away from the idea that removing the superiority dice is a workable solution, because it's not.

I don't think there's an issue needing to be resolved, but I'm not opposed to listening to reasonable ideas.

Lokiare

2014-11-06, 10:57 PM

My solution is to make all the fighters maneuvers at-will, but have requirements on them. For instance make 'smash heads' only usable on two adjacent enemies that are also adjacent to the fighter. Make 'slice and dice' only usable against enemies in a straight line (which the fighter moves adjacent to while attacking. Make "kick em' while they're down" only usable on prone targets...etc...etc...

Then front load the class. 2 maneuvers at 1st level. 1 at 2nd, 1 at 3rd, and 1 every other level after that for a total of 12. If you don't like 12 then do one every 3rd level after that for 9 or one every 5th level for 7.

Give them expertise dice equal to 1/5 their level (front loaded like maneuvers) and let them spend them to increase the effect of a maneuver. Then allow them to recover two by taking an action, or half on a short rest, or all on an extended rest.

make maneuvers have levels but scale based on the character level.

There done. Fixed it for ya in 5 minutes.

You guys that like 'hit it, hit it again' can keep on playing the Champion, but give the rest of us a real class.

To the people that keep saying the fighter is balanced, no, not even close. They don't come in last in single target damage, but they can't take on enemies like casters or even other martial based classes. They have very little out of combat utility.

In other words the only time the fighter is 'balanced' is when you are fighting a single opponent and even then save or die/suck spells will probably outshine them and turn them into the clean up crew.

For a high level fighter to be even with a wizard at level 18 they would have to have this maneuver:

Slashing Blur
Once per day you can expend all your dice to make the following attacks. Move your speed x4 and make 10 basic attacks against each enemy you move adjacent to. You don't provoke opportunity attacks while doing this.

That's equal to the wizards meteor swarm. Yeah, take a good long look.

Vogonjeltz

2014-11-06, 11:16 PM

silveralen

2014-11-06, 11:24 PM

Still, fighters being balanced isn't really the point - it's about the lack of options, not lack of strength.

Easy basic fixes: Increase the superiority dice rather making the dice bigger (the difference between a d8 and a d12 is rarely going to offer enough scaling to matter, more dice will). Increase the number of dice restored by relentless to two because the feature is awful.

More options: Add a manuever that can stun enemies and one that can instant kill them that burns through additional dice, probably 2 and 3 respectively. Maybe add a couple stance abilities that burn 1-2 combat dice to give you a benefit for the entire encounter, I can't think of anything super interesting but I'm sure someone can. Add a few more combat feats to give always on options, if anyone has a good idea toss it out.

Maybe needed: add a full warlord class based on doing less damage but having maximum battlefield control. Unsure of the specifics, but worth consideration.

Shadow

2014-11-06, 11:28 PM

For a high level fighter to be even with a wizard at level 18 they would have to have this maneuver:

Slashing Blur
Once per day you can expend all your dice to make the following attacks. Move your speed x4 and make 10 basic attacks against each enemy you move adjacent to. You don't provoke opportunity attacks while doing this.

That's equal to the wizards meteor swarm. Yeah, take a good long look.

???????????????????????
Meteor swarm: 20d6 fire + 20d6 bludgeoning, save for half
average 140, save for half (70) leaving the average at about 105.

Let's be EXTREMELY NICE and use a +3 DAGGER for the fighter:
1d4+8(x10) = average 105 damage
Yeah, okay, that's about right for a single enemy, falling in the middle of a successful and a failed save. Sure.
But when we look at a more reasonable weapon, like a greatsword it becomes:
2d6+8(x10) = average 150 damage, which is more than a failed save on a meteor swarm offers.

Now we figure in that 120' of movement.... without provoking.... and if he only attacks one enemy per 5 feet, that becomes 18,000 points of potential damage with no save involved.
If he's smart about it and snakes his way through the battlefield to get two enemies per 5' of movement (one on each side), it's twice that, or approximately 36,000 points of damage potentially.
In an open field filled with an attacking army, the fighter could single handedly kill about 250 enemy combatants in a single round.
(edit: actually it's probably closer to 300 or 350. I forgot about the one right in front of me the entire time. So it's 3 per 5' of movement, except when turning corners.)

Still think it's comparable to meteor swarm?

Eslin

2014-11-06, 11:28 PM

Easy basic fixes: Increase the superiority dice rather making the dice bigger (the difference between a d8 and a d12 is rarely going to offer enough scaling to matter, more dice will). Increase the number of dice restored by relentless to two because the feature is awful.

More options: Add a manuever that can stun enemies and one that can instant kill them that burns through additional dice, probably 2 and 3 respectively. Maybe add a couple stance abilities that burn 1-2 combat dice to give you a benefit for the entire encounter, I can't think of anything super interesting but I'm sure someone can. Add a few more combat feats to give always on options, if anyone has a good idea toss it out.

Maybe needed: add a full warlord class based on doing less damage but having maximum battlefield control. Unsure of the specifics, but worth consideration.

Honestly, I'd just say you start the encounter with 1-3 dice depending on level and get a temporary superiority die at the start of each turn. That way you get a maneuver every round and you can still burn your dice for improved effect. Main problem is still that you get all your good features front loaded, though.

Lokiare

2014-11-06, 11:29 PM

Are you just playing theorycraft, or have you actually played the fighter in a 5e game yet?

My game experience thus far indicates the battle master (and the superiority dice subsystem) function perfectly fine, and they are quite fun to play.

What level have you played it to?

Because the game I played in the fighter was one of the first to go down, before we called it quits.

I'd love to get into a 5E game just so I can say from experience how bad it is but I can't find an online game anywhere that wants me...

silveralen

2014-11-06, 11:36 PM

Honestly, I'd just say you start the encounter with 1-3 dice depending on level and get a temporary superiority die at the start of each turn. That way you get a maneuver every round and you can still burn your dice for improved effect. Main problem is still that you get all your good features front loaded, though.

Now you see, that temporary superiority die isn't needed. These are not at will abilities, standard shove/grapple is fine for at will abilities, they give you a handful of neat tricks beyond raw damage id you choose, but come at a cost of less raw damage, just like 4e.

Hytheter

2014-11-06, 11:37 PM

How would people feel about this: maneuvers that are usable at will, but instead of being usable during an attack action they are separate actions that scale in a manner similar to the Fighter's extra attacks ie becoming better at levels 5 and 11. Some maneuvers might only be available at higher levels if they are quite powerful. There might also be weaker effects using bonus actions or reactions, that don't scale much if at all.

Example:
Disarming Attack
Make an melee attack. If it hits, instead of dealing damage the opponent must make a STR saving throw or drop an item.
From 5th level, the attack deals damage normally as well as forcing a STR save.
From 11th, if the opponent drops a weapon because of this maneuver they take damage equal to it's damage dice.

So basically it's a situational action that replaces a normal attack. Then when you would be able use two attacks, it can deal damage as part of the action (but you can't disarm one enemy and attack another, for example) and with a further effect when you could use three attacks. This doesn't have to be the exact effects, of course; the point is that it starts off roughly equivalent to a single attack, then 2 then 3 as appropriate.

If I were making this a separate class, I'd make it so that the class doesn't get Extra Attacks in the normal way at all, leaving the Fighter as the better straight up attacker.

Eslin

2014-11-06, 11:40 PM

Now you see, that temporary superiority die isn't needed. These are not at will abilities, standard shove/grapple is fine for at will abilities, they give you a handful of neat tricks beyond raw damage id you choose, but come at a cost of less raw damage, just like 4e.

You're right, trying to fit the battlemaster into that kind of tactical role is kind of silly. Having a couple of classes dedicated to this kind of thing is a better idea, would allow for much more freedom and leave fighter its niche of having a bunch of attacks.

JoeJ

2014-11-07, 12:02 AM

There is very little that Aragorn can do which someone like Conan can't, the difference in Low vs. High is in a classic sense more about themes and setting details than power level. Also note that the D&D fighter is far less interesting than either of them.

Well of course! Aragorn and Conan are fully fleshed-out characters with personalities and backstories. Obviously they're more interesting than a game mechanic. Put as much work into detailing your D&D fighter as Tolkien and Howard put into their creations and then maybe you'll have something to compare.

JoeJ

2014-11-07, 12:52 AM

I'd love to get into a 5E game just so I can say from experience how bad it is but I can't find an online game anywhere that wants me...

What a shock! I can't imagine why any DM wouldn't want a player whose goal is to not have fun.

Speaker

2014-11-07, 01:04 AM

Just give them more dice at higher levels no need to do this at will stuff. Giving them 1 dice for just rolling initiative is pretty whack. Give them the ability t get dice back for bonus actions and then they would be fine. Seriously... it's not the lack of power most people are complaining about its the lack of options. Let's say at level 20 the fighter gets 6 dice so...let's compare that to the spell slots casters get. So basically in a game where you have 6 encounters and the BM uses 1 die each encounter you'll end up using 7 or maybe 8 of the dice and while the wizard will use 8 of his spell slots and let's face it Spells> Maneuvers. See my problem with this archetype now? It's too limitedifficult in the long term which is exactly what fighters aren't supposed to be.

Shadow

2014-11-07, 01:12 AM

Speaker

2014-11-07, 01:42 AM

If he's only using 1 die each combat then it's the player's fault, not the fighter's.
Superiority dice renew at each short rest. Use them all unless you want to save one just in case you don't have time for a breather. And with rules for optional/variant/shorter rest times in the DMG, I doubt most tables will stick to the exceedingly long hour break listed in the PHB.

With your example of 6 encounters, if they get a rest between each, that's 36 maneuvers available compared to the caster's base 22 slots. Even if youonly get a short rest every *other* combat, that's still 18 maneuvers compared to the caster's base 22 slots.

Yeah until you realize short rests aren't short . They're one hour long so unless your DM set up the adventure in a way you an hours rest in the middle of an enemy infested dungeon each fight then yeah sure...but for most adventures it's not even feasible. The short rest mechanic is really really limiting in most situations. If you enter a dungeon you're really not going to have the time to do something like that. That's why I hate short rest as a mechanic because it's situational even though it's really important for some classes. RAW short rests don't work well as a mechanic if short rest were actually...short then yeah I'd think it be much better and I wouldn't have an issue with the BM. I just realize that short rest aren't really efficient the way they are that's why I'm advocating for more dice in the first place.

Shadow

2014-11-07, 01:46 AM

Speaker

2014-11-07, 01:52 AM

Hence the line that read:
And with rules for optional/variant/shorter rest times in the DMG, I doubt most tables will stick to the exceedingly long hour break listed in the PHB.

So for the class to work you basically have to house rule it. Okay then I agree with that then.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-07, 01:56 AM

like he said, short rest variant rules are confirmed in the dmg. they won't be house rules.

don't forget that a BM can increase their superiority die amount by taking Martial Adept.

Shadow

2014-11-07, 01:58 AM

So for the class to work you basically have to house rule it. Okay then I agree with that then.

An official variant rule in the DMG is hardly what I would call a house rule. Are feats house rules? Is multiclassing a house rule? Because those are optional variants, just like the shorter rest times.
And the class works just fine even if you follow the PHB's hour long rest mechanic. My point was that most DMs will probably use one of the variant rules available.

Speaker

2014-11-07, 02:10 AM

Well then you're right provided the DM use these rules then nothing would need to be changed.

Eslin

2014-11-07, 02:26 AM

like he said, short rest variant rules are confirmed in the dmg. they won't be house rules.

don't forget that a BM can increase their superiority die amount by taking Martial Adept.

Blow a feat, get one die. Woo!

Talakeal

2014-11-07, 03:02 AM

Yeah, move along, someone who has barely even looked at the changes from 3.X to 5e, and whose main experience with 5e is people pointing out some of the stupid loopholes in 5e (also, the only reason it is a mage soloing the tarresque is magic weapon, anyone with a +1 can hypothetically do the same thing, it is a flaw of infinitely dashing horses and vast featureless plains vs a monster with low move speed and no ranged attacks, nothing to do with class imbalance).

Get this straight: Fighter is balanced with the other classes. He is not weak. He doesn't need a buff. He is balanced against the other classes, free maneuvers every turn is not. Stop bringing your biases into a brand new system. I don't even know why that needs to be said, but apparently it does.

Plus, you wouldn't even screw over casters, who would at least have things like AoE and out of combat spells to serve as a niche. You'd be screwing the other combat classes, rendering many of them outright pointless.

Words can't describe my frustration at your jsutification "well casters ahve it coming to them". There was one badly imbalanced edition out of five, get over it.

I think you are putting a lot more into this debate than I intended. I was merely pointing out that on a fundamental level the choice between multiple seemingly overpowered options would form an internal balance where the choice becomes which option do I use.

I fully agree that I am not an expert on the system and should not be debating specific rules, but at a glance none of the BM fighter maneuvers look that strong. Many of them are pretty close to things that previous edition fighters could get as passive abilities with the right feats or class features.
On the other hand because of the way bounded accuracy works it looks like save or suck spells and anything that summons minions is going to be extremely hard for a fighter to deal with. And as more and more books come out the spell lists are only going to get longer and more broken.

Power level aside, mages are always going to have the upper hand simply because they have more tactical options. Honestly I prefer it this way as it gives me something to work against, so its not something I have to "get over". But wizards simply have too many options for them to ever be on the losing side. Teleportation and divination alone ensure that if a wizard wants an unfair fight he can have, and a fighter is going to have to work very hard to even up the advantage.

I wouldn't get frustrated over my "justification of well fighters have it coming" because I don't actually feel that way. I said the vindictive part of me would like to say it, but I never would because it is petty and stupid and terrible game design. It is also one that I have heard used many times as a justification for class balance in other games as well as early D&D where mages got d4 HP and 1 spell a day at low levels and therefore could have game breaking power at high levels. It was humbug then and it is humbug now.

Well of course! Aragorn and Conan are fully fleshed-out characters with personalities and backstories. Obviously they're more interesting than a game mechanic. Put as much work into detailing your D&D fighter as Tolkien and Howard put into their creations and then maybe you'll have something to compare.

Maybe not Conan, but I think I have put a lot more into my personality and backstory than Aragorn. That dude is actually pretty bland.

The problem is that they can do a lot more than a D&D fighter. Lack of interesting combat options aside, fighters have terrible skills and saving throws and don't gain much benefit from mental ability scores. Aragorn is a healer, a tracker, a diplomat, a swordsman, a poet, a lover, a musician, a survivalist, a stalker, an archer, a leader, and a dozen other things. Conan has likewise been a soldier, a nomad, a thief, a sailor, a king, a berserker, a mercenary, and more.

You just can't get that sort of diversity out of a D&D character with any mechanical backing.

JoeJ

2014-11-07, 04:13 AM

Maybe not Conan, but I think I have put a lot more into my personality and backstory than Aragorn. That dude is actually pretty bland.

The problem is that they can do a lot more than a D&D fighter. Lack of interesting combat options aside, fighters have terrible skills and saving throws and don't gain much benefit from mental ability scores. Aragorn is a healer, a tracker, a diplomat, a swordsman, a poet, a lover, a musician, a survivalist, a stalker, an archer, a leader, and a dozen other things. Conan has likewise been a soldier, a nomad, a thief, a sailor, a king, a berserker, a mercenary, and more.

You just can't get that sort of diversity out of a D&D character with any mechanical backing.

Of course you can. I have no idea how you can say that fighters have terrible skills. They may not get as many skill proficiencies as some other classes, but the skills are the same. How many skill proficiencies do you need anyway? There are only 18 skills in the game. Fighters start with four plus any racial proficiencies, and can take a feat to get three more. Like every other class they get tool and/or language proficiencies from their background, and can learn new ones during downtime. And as for saving throws, fighters have proficiency in one common and one uncommon save, just like every other class.

I'm not sure what you meant by not getting much benefit from mental ability scores. Casting spells seems like a pretty big benefit for the Eldritch Knight subclass. And a character of any class applies their INT, WIS, or CHA modifier to skills in exactly the same way. The only difference is that fighters have more opportunities to boost their "dump" stats than any other class.

For Aragorn, the abilities you list would use Survival, Persuasion, Perform, and Stealth skills, a tool proficiency for the musical instrument, plus the Healer and possibly Inspiring Leader feats (Unless the healing was done with a spell, which a fighter can also get as a feat.). A human fighter could have all of this by 4th level. The things you listed for Conan are jobs, not abilities, and there's no reason a D&D fighter can't have all those same jobs over the course of a career.

D&D 5e is not 3.x or Pathfinder. In this edition, fighters do get nice things, and any player character, regardless of class, can have a wide variety of useful non-combat abilities.

Fra Antonio

2014-11-07, 04:30 AM

Power level aside, mages are always going to have the upper hand simply because they have more tactical options. Honestly I prefer it this way as it gives me something to work against, so its not something I have to "get over". But wizards simply have too many options for them to ever be on the losing side. Teleportation and divination alone ensure that if a wizard wants an unfair fight he can have, and a fighter is going to have to work very hard to even up the advantage.
And how exactly are you going to give fighters martial-themed options capable of countering clever divination and teleportation? In fact, do you often play games where fighters have one-on-one competitions with fully prepared wizards?
I'm running a converted 5e game at level 13, and so far there was only one serious fight played by D&D rules (the other one was freeform *World-style because it fit the mood much better), but the party sorcerer now has considerably less spells known and especially spell slots, even though I gave everyone extra 2 levels during conversion (they just got to level 11 in 3.5). It really feels.

Morty

2014-11-07, 08:01 AM

13th age was great, it just needed to not have that aspect at all. It was a pointless, frustrating element of random chance.

Yeah. :smallfrown: It's amazing how progressive 13A was in some aspects, while remaining pointlessly regressive in others. (Those others mostly being 'non-spellcasters' because Tweet.)

There's actually a Tome of Battle (http://13thage.org/index.php/classes/467-master-of-nine) conversion for 13th Age. I have no idea how it fits into the rest of the system, of course, but there it is.

On an entirely unrelated note, I find it amusing that 4e is still derided as being like a video game or MMO, but 5e's fighter is praised for its efficiency at "sustained damage". At least it's not sustained dps.

obryn

2014-11-07, 08:23 AM

Yeah until you realize short rests aren't short . They're one hour long so unless your DM set up the adventure in a way you an hours rest in the middle of an enemy infested dungeon each fight then yeah sure...but for most adventures it's not even feasible. The short rest mechanic is really really limiting in most situations. If you enter a dungeon you're really not going to have the time to do something like that. That's why I hate short rest as a mechanic because it's situational even though it's really important for some classes. RAW short rests don't work well as a mechanic if short rest were actually...short then yeah I'd think it be much better and I wouldn't have an issue with the BM. I just realize that short rest aren't really efficient the way they are that's why I'm advocating for more dice in the first place.

Hence the line that read:
And with rules for optional/variant/shorter rest times in the DMG, I doubt most tables will stick to the exceedingly long hour break listed in the PHB.
The problem, of course, is that the short rest duration is a global setting, and futzing with it helps monks, warlocks, clerics, etc. at least as much, if not more, than it helps Fighters.

Monks in particular eventually get 20 chi points; getting that every fight may be a bit much.

Shadow

2014-11-07, 10:12 AM

The problem, of course, is that the short rest duration is a global setting, and futzing with it helps monks, warlocks, clerics, etc. at least as much, if not more, than it helps Fighters.

Monks in particular eventually get 20 chi points; getting that every fight may be a bit much.

I'd argue the idea that it helps them more. The same in some cases, sure.
Sure, monks get more Ki, but many of their abilities cost multiple Ki so the fact that they got more is really a wash. Plus they don't have the same potential DPR unless they specifically flurry every single round. They have to spend at least two or three Ki on a flurry and a rider if they want to have the same effect that a fighter can get by spending a single superiority die. And if they don't get that rest then they'll be lagging behind the fighter whose potential abilities are largely unaffected by not getting a rest comparatively. So resting doesn't really help them more, but not resting absolutely hurts them more.

Yes, the more rests that are taken the better a warlock gets, but they can't put out the same amount of consistent damage and also use a slot for additional effect at the same time. They have to choose. A fighter doesn't.

Clerics? I'm not even going to dignify that with a response because there is no comparison.

charcoalninja

2014-11-07, 10:35 AM

???????????????????????
Meteor swarm: 20d6 fire + 20d6 bludgeoning, save for half
average 140, save for half (70) leaving the average at about 105.

Let's be EXTREMELY NICE and use a +3 DAGGER for the fighter:
1d4+8(x10) = average 105 damage
Yeah, okay, that's about right for a single enemy, falling in the middle of a successful and a failed save. Sure.
But when we look at a more reasonable weapon, like a greatsword it becomes:
2d6+8(x10) = average 150 damage, which is more than a failed save on a meteor swarm offers.

Now we figure in that 120' of movement.... without provoking.... and if he only attacks one enemy per 5 feet, that becomes 18,000 points of potential damage with no save involved.
If he's smart about it and snakes his way through the battlefield to get two enemies per 5' of movement (one on each side), it's twice that, or approximately 36,000 points of damage potentially.
In an open field filled with an attacking army, the fighter could single handedly kill about 250 enemy combatants in a single round.
(edit: actually it's probably closer to 300 or 350. I forgot about the one right in front of me the entire time. So it's 3 per 5' of movement, except when turning corners.)

Still think it's comparable to meteor swarm?

So, sure 150 damage for the fighter vs. failed save on meteor swarm is 140 average. Wow soooo much more. He chose 10 basic attacks off of the top of his head in a forum post, not after a crazy amount of test analysis; the fact that he's within the ballpark alone is impressive. So you're attacking one enemy per 5 feet of movement, so 120 feet / 5 is 24 enemies so 24*150 = 3600 points of damage, not 36,000. And you'll notice that if Meteor swarm hits 24 enemies the wizard also just did 3600 damage. And sure the fighter doesn't allow a save, he's making attack rolls, and 10 of them vs the wizards ONE save.

End result is that in order to match meteor swarm, the fighter needs to be able to run around like crazy smacking people with almost 10 basic attacks per guy. Instead he gets 6 superiority dice and can trip people...

... Cool.

charcoalninja

2014-11-07, 10:42 AM

I'd argue the idea that it helps them more. The same in some cases, sure.
Sure, monks get more Ki, but many of their abilities cost multiple Ki so the fact that they got more is really a wash. Plus they don't have the same potential DPR unless they specifically flurry every single round. They have to spend at least two or three Ki on a flurry and a rider if they want to have the same effect that a fighter can get by spending a single superiority die. And if they don't get that rest then they'll be lagging behind the fighter whose potential abilities are largely unaffected by not getting a rest comparatively. So resting doesn't really help them more, but not resting absolutely hurts them more.

Yes, the more rests that are taken the better a warlock gets, but they can't put out the same amount of consistent damage and also use a slot for additional effect at the same time. They have to choose. A fighter doesn't.

Clerics? I'm not even going to dignify that with a response because there is no comparison.

Well a Champion fighter gets 1 extra action and 1d10+level hp per short rest and say a light cleric can deal 2d10+level radiant damage in a 30' radius burst that dispels all magical darkness in the radius. A tempest cleric can maximize any thunder or lightning spell once a Short rest, and a life cleric can heal the party for cleric level x 5 which is basically Lay on Hands as a short rest. So their abilities aren't that weak and I'd argue are stronger than the champion. Battlemaster is a Short rest based sub class so it makes sense that they'd be better with short rests.

Shadow

2014-11-07, 10:45 AM

You're right, I didn't divide the 120/5. But that leaves 7200, not 3600. But it's still way too much.
And none of that takes into account that a fighter shouldn't be able to output as much nova as a caster specifically because the fighter still has amazing DPR when forced to siimply attack every round, whereas a caster's DPR sucks when forced to use cantrips.

If a fighter has the best consistent sustained damage, and also has a nova equal to a caster, then the fighter is OP.
The fighetr can do it all day. The caster cannot. That's why it's balanced.

edit:
Also consider that you're essentially giving the fighter (what you consider, but are mistaken) is equivalent to a 9th lkevel spell EVERY SHORT REST.
How the hell do you consider that balanced?

obryn

2014-11-07, 11:28 AM

I'd argue the idea that it helps them more. The same in some cases, sure.
I disagree.

For a Battlemaster, it's needed for a certain baseline of interest and effectiveness. For a Monk, it means all stun-lock, all the time. :smallsmile:

HorridElemental

2014-11-07, 11:40 AM

edit:
Also consider that you're essentially giving the fighter (what you consider, but are mistaken) is equivalent to a 9th lkevel spell EVERY SHORT REST.
How the hell do you consider that balanced?

Caster are unbalanced and no one bats an eye, non-casters become unbalanced then everyone looses their mind!

But seriously, this is why we need balance in this fame, but make everything awesome. 4e went the way of bringing magic down to non-magic when really what should have happened is bring everyone to a high level and make everything at-will.

Essentially you make abgame where if you are 16th+ level then you are casting 7-9th level spells at will and forget about your lower level spells for the most part. Then have non-casters have sick abilities too.

Spell chains could help with this, you cast your cantrips, and those become higher level spells (1st - 9th) that you continue to cast at will.

Resource management and such can be used in other ways. I like resource management but not the "I do X and suddenly can't do x till I take an arbitrarily short or long rest".

Edit: huh... There are two threads about the sorta same thing... Totally though they both was the same thread hahaha...

silveralen

2014-11-07, 12:03 PM

I think you are putting a lot more into this debate than I intended. I was merely pointing out that on a fundamental level the choice between multiple seemingly overpowered options would form an internal balance where the choice becomes which option do I use.

I fully agree that I am not an expert on the system and should not be debating specific rules, but at a glance none of the BM fighter maneuvers look that strong. Many of them are pretty close to things that previous edition fighters could get as passive abilities with the right feats or class features.

On the other hand because of the way bounded accuracy works it looks like save or suck spells and anything that summons minions is going to be extremely hard for a fighter to deal with. And as more and more books come out the spell lists are only going to get longer and more broken.

Power level aside, mages are always going to have the upper hand simply because they have more tactical options. Honestly I prefer it this way as it gives me something to work against, so its not something I have to "get over". But wizards simply have too many options for them to ever be on the losing side. Teleportation and divination alone ensure that if a wizard wants an unfair fight he can have, and a fighter is going to have to work very hard to even up the advantage.

But again you are assuming there are multiple overpowered options. Which isn't true. Fighter doesn't really compete with casters in any case (except for paladin/ranger who have little in the way of out of combat utility spells). Boosting fighter's power in combat doesn't really change anything since he offers more there (except AoE spells). Instead, it risks overpowering him compared to other martial fighting classes.

Fighters already can mix basic trip/shove/grapple abilities into their attacks, something that (without feats) used to use up all of their attacks. They can move and make all their attacks, which is nice. So out of the box fighters can do things that used to require feats. Honestly, the trip attack and pushing attack are kind of "trap" maneuvers (trip less so potentially, see below). Fighter can already do those things, it just gives him more damage when he does them (and actually has a lower chance of succeeding sadly).

Not really, bounded accuracy actually works in fighter's favor. If the fighter is worried about mages, grab prof in wisdom saving throws with a feat (he has con already, and most save or suck spells are con/wis) and pick up Mage slayer as well. With indomitable as backing, fighter now has some of the best saving throws in the game, with only paladin competing. I can't stress this enough: fighter gets more feats than any other class despite needing fewer attribute increases, you have to make this work for you to succeed. Further, don't assume power creep on spells. I could counter that as more feats become available fighter will of course become more powerful, the fact is we have no clue which, if either, might happen.

Fighter can actually use divination as well, as BM archetype, without any multiclassing. He can also gain forbiddance to shut down a teleporting wizard, if properly prepared. Hell, unless that wizard hit 20 he doesn't have but the one teleport each day as well. Unless the wizard does something along the lines of "shows up, casts one spell, teleports away", he can quickly find himself in trouble, though currently it's up to interpretation how a mage slayer triggered AoO with a trip attack add on would interact with casting.

Caster are unbalanced and no one bats an eye, non-casters become unbalanced then everyone looses their mind!

You missed the point. Casters have checks to their power and limitations that simply weren't present before. Casters aren't unbalanced in the same way they were in other versions. They are different and fill different roles. And yes, giving a class who already is extremely consistent in combat a nuke option that recharges on a short rest is far different than giving that same nuke to a character who can use it one per long rest and is built around nuke/limited abilities.

HorridElemental

2014-11-07, 12:33 PM

But again you are assuming there are multiple overpowered options. Which isn't true. Fighter doesn't really compete with casters in any case (except for paladin/ranger who have little in the way of out of combat utility spells). Boosting fighter's power in combat doesn't really change anything since he offers more there (except AoE spells). Instead, it risks overpowering him compared to other martial fighting classes.

Fighters already can mix basic trip/shove/grapple abilities into their attacks, something that (without feats) used to use up all of their attacks. They can move and make all their attacks, which is nice. So out of the box fighters can do things that used to require feats. Honestly, the trip attack and pushing attack are kind of "trap" maneuvers (trip less so potentially, see below). Fighter can already do those things, it just gives him more damage when he does them (and actually has a lower chance of succeeding sadly).

Not really, bounded accuracy actually works in fighter's favor. If the fighter is worried about mages, grab prof in wisdom saving throws with a feat (he has con already, and most save or suck spells are con/wis) and pick up Mage slayer as well. With indomitable as backing, fighter now has some of the best saving throws in the game, with only paladin competing. I can't stress this enough: fighter gets more feats than any other class despite needing fewer attribute increases, you have to make this work for you to succeed. Further, don't assume power creep on spells. I could counter that as more feats become available fighter will of course become more powerful, the fact is we have no clue which, if either, might happen.

Fighter can actually use divination as well, as BM archetype, without any multiclassing. He can also gain forbiddance to shut down a teleporting wizard, if properly prepared. Hell, unless that wizard hit 20 he doesn't have but the one teleport each day as well. Unless the wizard does something along the lines of "shows up, casts one spell, teleports away", he can quickly find himself in trouble, though currently it's up to interpretation how a mage slayer triggered AoO with a trip attack add on would interact with casting.

You missed the point. Casters have checks to their power and limitations that simply weren't present before. Casters aren't unbalanced in the same way they were in other versions. They are different and fill different roles. And yes, giving a class who already is extremely consistent in combat a nuke option that recharges on a short rest is far different than giving that same nuke to a character who can use it one per long rest and is built around nuke/limited abilities.

Quote the rest of my reply and you will see I didn't miss the point.

silveralen

2014-11-07, 02:48 PM

Quote the rest of my reply and you will see I didn't miss the point.

Yes, you want to make every class the exact same bland homogenized cookie cutter format as the rest.

Why? If you want to play something that feels like a caster, play one. I enjoy the playstyle of 5e fighter. I don't want to be forced into playing a psuedo caster, I despised that aspect of 4e. It actually bored me, because I just picked powers and used them, rather than finding fun and creative ways to fight.

Every class does not need to look the exact same. Play a caster, or half caster, if you want that sort of scaling and predefined power list.

HorridElemental

2014-11-07, 03:51 PM

Doug Lampert

2014-11-07, 04:18 PM

So, sure 150 damage for the fighter vs. failed save on meteor swarm is 140 average. Wow soooo much more. He chose 10 basic attacks off of the top of his head in a forum post, not after a crazy amount of test analysis; the fact that he's within the ballpark alone is impressive.

And the 150 damage comes WITH an assumed +3 sword, the maximum allowed in the system and clearly stated to not be assumed in the game balance.

So the "balanced" fighter (the one with a non-magic sword) is doing 120 damage if every attack hits.

obryn

2014-11-07, 04:19 PM

Yes, you want to make every class the exact same bland homogenized cookie cutter format as the rest.

Why? If you want to play something that feels like a caster, play one. I enjoy the playstyle of 5e fighter. I don't want to be forced into playing a psuedo caster, I despised that aspect of 4e. It actually bored me, because I just picked powers and used them, rather than finding fun and creative ways to fight.

Every class does not need to look the exact same. Play a caster, or half caster, if you want that sort of scaling and predefined power list.
This is a false dichotomy, though. There's room for many styles of characters, all sharing space at the same table. 4e showed this was feasible, with a robust enough system. A 4e Slayer and a 4e standard Fighter could easily play around the same table, even though the Fighter has a whole lot more complexity and moving parts. Likewise, an Elementalist (point & shoot) and a Wizard could both contribute handily.

D&D should be a big tent; setting up weird limits ("I like my 5e fighter, therefore your 4e fighter can't fit into the game") is awful.

Finally, as an aside, resource management doesn't make you a spellcaster! That's crazy talk!

Every Resource is a Spell: A Play in Two Acts
Act 1. Scene: A big room with a bunch of scary stuff and mean monsters. A 3e party approaches.

Barbarian: Hmm, this fight looks pretty hard. I think I should cast one of my Rages.
Wizard: What? That's not a spell!
Barbarian: Well, I can only cast it a few times a day, like your fireballs!
Wizard: That doesn't make it a spell, though?
Barbarian: Resource management. I can only use it a few times a day; it's a spell!
Rogue: Whatever; let's fight!

They Fight

Act 2. Scene: The heroes stand victorious but bloody on a heap of empty XP sacks.

Wizard: My, that was a difficult fight! Are you alright, Rogue!
Rogue: I sure am, Wizard! Fortunately, I was able to cast Defensive Roll at the last minute!
Wizard: (facepalms)
Barbarian: (high fives Rogue) I'll say, spellcaster buddy!

Exeunt.

:smallwink:

HorridElemental

2014-11-07, 04:22 PM

This is a false dichotomy, though. There's room for many styles of characters, all sharing space at the same table. 4e showed this was feasible, with a robust enough system. A 4e Slayer and a 4e standard Fighter could easily play around the same table, even though the Fighter has a whole lot more complexity and moving parts. Likewise, an Elementalist (point & shoot) and a Wizard could both contribute handily.

D&D should be a big tent; setting up weird limits ("I like my 5e fighter, therefore your 4e fighter can't fit into the game") is awful.

Finally, as an aside, resource management doesn't make you a spellcaster! That's crazy talk!

Every Resource is a Spell: A Play in Two Acts
Act 1. Scene: A big room with a bunch of scary stuff and mean monsters. A 3e party approaches.

Barbarian: Hmm, this fight looks pretty hard. I think I should cast one of my Rages.
Wizard: What? That's not a spell!
Barbarian: Well, I can only cast it a few times a day, like your fireballs!
Wizard: That doesn't make it a spell, though?
Barbarian: Resource management. I can only use it a few times a day; it's a spell!
Rogue: Whatever; let's fight!

They Fight

Act 2. Scene: The heroes stand victorious but bloody on a heap of empty XP sacks.

Wizard: My, that was a difficult fight! Are you alright, Rogue!
Rogue: I sure am, Wizard! Fortunately, I was able to cast Defensive Roll at the last minute!
Wizard: (facepalms)
Barbarian: (high fives Rogue) I'll say, spellcaster buddy!

Exeunt.

:smallwink:

Funny enough, once I explained to them my PC was a barbarian stuff like this happened haha.

The casters in the party were good sports about it. Eventually a couple players started using You GI Oh terms and stuff haha.

Shadow

2014-11-07, 04:28 PM

The bottom line is this:
You may find the fighter boring. The Champion can certainly be considered boring by most accounts. But the EK and the BM are only considered boring by some (and most of those are by players that haven't actually played a fighter, but are merely theorycrafting).
Boring isn't the issue.
While they may arguably be boring (compared to casters) they certainly aren't gimped or underpowerd compared to them in any way, so making changes that affetct their power level in any way makes them OP by comparison.

No, they don't have the nova nuking capabilities of a caster. No, they don't have as much utility as a caster. But both the nuking/nova and the utility come with an opportunity cost associated.
The fighter may lack those nuking/nova/utility capabilites, but what they lack in that regard they make up for in consistent sustsain.
The reverse is true of most casters. What they lack in consistant sustain they make up for in nova/nuking/utility.
It's a trade off, and it's balanced.
Whether you feel that they are boring or not, their power level should not increase.

Sartharina

2014-11-07, 04:32 PM

Caster are unbalanced and no one bats an eye, non-casters become unbalanced then everyone looses their mind!

But seriously, this is why we need balance in this fame, but make everything awesome. 4e went the way of bringing magic down to non-magic when really what should have happened is bring everyone to a high level and make everything at-will.

As a DM... hell no. Ain't nobody able to prep for this kind of ****.

Morty

2014-11-07, 04:42 PM

The argument that discrete abilities that use up some sort of resource feel like spells is circular. They feel like spells because for the longest time, they were the only abilities of the sort. Everyone who didn't have spells interacted with the rules the same way, all the time, from level 1 to level 20. So obviously trying to give other archetypes proper means of affecting the game will feel like spells, because there's nothing else it can feel like. There's really no magic way of making everything feel distinct, because at the most basic level, someone rolls and something happens. If something happens without rolling, it's usually because magic juice was expended to just make it happen. Setting up a "must be this at-will to qualify" bar for non-magical abilities is putting form over function.

HorridElemental

2014-11-07, 05:13 PM

As a DM... hell no. Ain't nobody able to prep for this kind of ****.

It really isn't that much prep, haven't you ever played high level 3.P? Casters have ways of spamming high level spells already. The druid planar Shepard might be the easiest way to do it.

If the base system is made for it, well it can work.

Little bit of effort never hurt anyone.

Morty

2014-11-07, 05:18 PM

All opinions about 5e aside, 3.P's casters are not the level you should aim at, ever. Just no.

Sartharina

2014-11-07, 05:24 PM

It really isn't that much prep, haven't you ever played high level 3.P? Casters have ways of spamming high level spells already. The druid planar Shepard might be the easiest way to do it.Tried playing high-level 3.P. The casters having ways of spamming high-level spells broke the game.

charcoalninja

2014-11-07, 05:41 PM

Tried playing high-level 3.P. The casters having ways of spamming high-level spells broke the game.

Yeah 3.5 goes from everyone being feeble peasants terrified of housecats to WMD wielding micro nations of absolute destruction.

You go from playing peasants and ploughshears to financing and fallout.

Theodoxus

2014-11-07, 06:40 PM

Hmm, pure theorycraft here, but I wonder if you tied the number of superiority dice to the number of spells as wizard gets - at the same level, but the dice come back after a long rest instead of short, if that would mollify the disparaging crowd.

You couldn't legitimately complain that casters (wizard, specifically) have more options, they'd be the same. I wouldn't increase the die type doing this though. Or perhaps only once from d8 to d10.

I can understand why WotC didn't include Combat Maneuvers ala PF - but that doesn't mean I can't. Parry, Riposte, Trip all work perfectly fine as base abilities (CMs). Shadow might find it OP to use, but they're already limited by Bonus and Reaction limitations. Having these specific maneuvers be B or R actions, and only moved up to free with the expenditure of dice is balancing. Sure, you can knock someone over with shove and then use your extra attacks to gain advantage - but is it really that much more OP to use your bonus action to do that, and then get a full attack (to borrow parlance) on a bad guy? Sacrificing that bonus to do other things... makes that rogue with 3 fighter dip less appealing for sure.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-07, 07:07 PM

i doubt it would break the game, but it will certainly significantly increase the power of affected characters. they'd probably outperform and outshine other classes.

free uses of bonus actions as class features also cause mild incompatibility with feats that use bonus actions and reactions~

Vogonjeltz

2014-11-07, 07:49 PM

What level have you played it to?

Because the game I played in the fighter was one of the first to go down, before we called it quits.

I'd love to get into a 5E game just so I can say from experience how bad it is but I can't find an online game anywhere that wants me...

So are you saying you've played a 5e game where someone else was playing a Fighter? How many levels did you go through? What were the combats? What did the Fighter player do?

These are all things that will drastically impact perceptions.

I'm doing an ongoing fighter right now at level 4. Fights so far have included: 8 lizard folk; some kind of custom golem; several groups of humanoid enemies (bandits probably) ranging in numbers from 4 to 10; a wight leading 4 zombies in an ambush underground (my Fighter went nova on the wight killing it in 3 rounds right after dealing with a zombie. yay action surge + Manuevers); a bulette and about 16 bugbears that ambushed us and attacked in waves.

That last one is the closest the Fighter has come to dying, and that was from 6 surprise round javelins and a Morningstar crit. Thus far, I am pleased with the performance levels.

Well a Champion fighter gets 1 extra action and 1d10+level hp per short rest and say a light cleric can deal 2d10+level radiant damage in a 30' radius burst that dispels all magical darkness in the radius. A tempest cleric can maximize any thunder or lightning spell once a Short rest, and a life cleric can heal the party for cleric level x 5 which is basically Lay on Hands as a short rest. So their abilities aren't that weak and I'd argue are stronger than the champion. Battlemaster is a Short rest based sub class so it makes sense that they'd be better with short rests.

Every fighter gets second wind, not just the champion. If you want to compare subclass abilities, then it should be comparing the improved crit rates, and better baseline combat performance.

Hmm, pure theorycraft here, but I wonder if you tied the number of superiority dice to the number of spells as wizard gets - at the same level, but the dice come back after a long rest instead of short, if that would mollify the disparaging crowd.

You couldn't legitimately complain that casters (wizard, specifically) have more options, they'd be the same. I wouldn't increase the die type doing this though. Or perhaps only once from d8 to d10.

I can understand why WotC didn't include Combat Maneuvers ala PF - but that doesn't mean I can't. Parry, Riposte, Trip all work perfectly fine as base abilities (CMs). Shadow might find it OP to use, but they're already limited by Bonus and Reaction limitations. Having these specific maneuvers be B or R actions, and only moved up to free with the expenditure of dice is balancing. Sure, you can knock someone over with shove and then use your extra attacks to gain advantage - but is it really that much more OP to use your bonus action to do that, and then get a full attack (to borrow parlance) on a bad guy? Sacrificing that bonus to do other things... makes that rogue with 3 fighter dip less appealing for sure.

Ugh, that would be awful. The fighter potentially has up to 56 superiority dice within an 8 hour period. A wizard has 22 spells. (At 20th).

Doug Lampert

2014-11-07, 08:47 PM

Ugh, that would be awful. The fighter potentially has up to 56 superiority dice within an 8 hour period. A wizard has 22 spells. (At 20th).

That's the wizard from some mystery world with neither ritual spells nor arcane recovery but where the fighter can get unlimited short rests.

In the hypothetical gameworld where the Fighter gets 56 superiority dice in 8 hours the wizard casts something like 70 non-cantrip spells in the same period.

Shadow

2014-11-07, 08:50 PM

silveralen

2014-11-07, 11:19 PM

This is a false dichotomy, though. There's room for many styles of characters, all sharing space at the same table. 4e showed this was feasible, with a robust enough system. A 4e Slayer and a 4e standard Fighter could easily play around the same table, even though the Fighter has a whole lot more complexity and moving parts. Likewise, an Elementalist (point & shoot) and a Wizard could both contribute handily.

D&D should be a big tent; setting up weird limits ("I like my 5e fighter, therefore your 4e fighter can't fit into the game") is awful.

Okay, but that sort of class exists already, it just isn't a fighter. Monks scale more like this, paladins and rangers scale exactly like this (though a different focus from full casters, being striker/defender rather than controller/leader, to borrow 4e terminology). Your 4e fighter exists, he just isn't called a fighter because it'd be weirdly confusing to have two fighter classes that weren't even particularly similar.

Amusingly, my table refers to many abilities as casting (flurry of blow has happened multiple times recently). Sometimes they say use instead of cast for both normal abilities and actual spells. Never had anyone stop to argue about it.

obryn

2014-11-07, 11:31 PM

Eslin

2014-11-08, 12:19 AM

Okay, but that sort of class exists already, it just isn't a fighter. Monks scale more like this, paladins and rangers scale exactly like this (though a different focus from full casters, being striker/defender rather than controller/leader, to borrow 4e terminology). Your 4e fighter exists, he just isn't called a fighter because it'd be weirdly confusing to have two fighter classes that weren't even particularly similar.

Amusingly, my table refers to many abilities as casting (flurry of blow has happened multiple times recently). Sometimes they say use instead of cast for both normal abilities and actual spells. Never had anyone stop to argue about it.

I... what? No. There is nothing like the 4e fighter in 5e, either in style of play or mechanical setup. That's not a thing.

Todasmile

2014-11-08, 01:15 AM

Pages 211 to 289 of the PHB are reserved for descriptions of the various spells in the game. The Warlock's spell list takes up more than a third of a page, and it consists solely of the names of the spells they can learn at what spell level. The Warlock gets 7 pages dedicated to it in the table of contents, while the Fighter gets 6, despite having one more subclass to handle. The Warlock's Eldritch Invocations list takes up 1.5 pages alone. The Battlemaster's Maneuver list takes up .75 pages.

I don't care about power level. The power level discussion has gone on too long, and it keeps getting brought up. The Fighter is strong, they have a place, but that place is utterly insignificant in complexity level to one of the less complex casters - IE: Not Wizard.

If you want your Fighter to be a pure Attack creature with no complexity involved, just hitting stuff, that's fine. People might want that, and so it should be possible to do. However, it's entirely possible to build a caster as a no-complexity cantrips user OR a high-complexity spell user, while the pure martial classes only get the equivalent of the former option. This is an undeniable problem.

The Champion is a mess, and it needs a complete rework. I've already stated my opinions on this a few pages back. The Champion could easily be the "attack attack" fighter, but it needs to have the option of more build complexity. I'd bring back the Fighter Feat system for them, with a list of unique feats that they can take. It's not like this was ever really a problem in 3e, which had far more feat complexity than we do now.

The Battlemaster could do with a rework as well. I'd expand their pool of superiority dice, make the dice smaller, and make them not regain ALL of them per short rest - maybe they regain 1d2 which increases by 1d2 every other fighter level, or the like. They could have up to 20, maybe, at a time, one per level. They need an expanded list of maneuvers DEARLY. This would also benefit any martial character who cared to take the Martial Master feat, which could maybe be updated to give access to another maneuver of a higher power level and one or two extra dice. The Battlemaster would get to choose a maneuver every x levels to add to their list. They could then use multiple dice to upgrade the effects of their various maneuvers, perhaps up to a cap.

I'm wary of making them too much like psionics - I saw another poster warn of the effects of that - so I'd consider putting a cap on maneuver uses per Long rest - IE: Maybe a "third-level" maneuver would get to be used once, a "second-level" twice, a "first level" thrice, and the possible "cantrip" unlimited times.

I saw the "meteor swarm" maneuver suggestion posted a while back. I'd make it work like so, wording approximate:

Blade Blur
Third-Level (must be level x in order to learn)
Usable once per long rest
You must use your Action to use this maneuver. You may choose to consume a number of Superiority Dice not exceeding 6. Your movement for this round is quadrupled. You may make a number of attacks this turn equal to 2 + the number of Superiority Dice consumed. Each time you attack this round, roll one of your consumed Superiority Dice - the result is added to your Attack roll for that attack. You do not provoke Opportunity attacks as a result of leaving an enemy's threat range this round.

Obviously, the power level would need to be adjusted, and honestly having a nuke that works like this might be considered too good for the BM - I'd rather have more utility and interesting scenario based maneuvers than straight attacks - but you see the general idea.

Sartharina

2014-11-08, 02:33 AM

The Champion is a mess, and it needs a complete rework. I've already stated my opinions on this a few pages back. The Champion could easily be the "attack attack" fighter, but it needs to have the option of more build complexity. I'd bring back the Fighter Feat system for them, with a list of unique feats that they can take. It's not like this was ever really a problem in 3e, which had far more feat complexity than we do now.No, the Champion doesn't need any "Build Complexity (But a bit more flexibility with what he can do would be appreciated. The "Remarkable Athlete" boost really should apply to proficient skills as well.)

Speaker

2014-11-08, 03:15 AM

Short rests are unreliable. Makes BM not that good. They need more die. Pretty much all that they need.

Sartharina

2014-11-08, 03:24 AM

Short rests are unreliable. Makes BM not that good. They need more die. Pretty much all that they need.I'd say they need a combination of more dice and easier recovery of said dice. It was cool when you could regain a die by spending an action to refocus.

Dienekes

2014-11-08, 04:47 AM

I'd say they need a combination of more dice and easier recovery of said dice. It was cool when you could regain a die by spending an action to refocus.

Losing a turn to get 1 die back seems like it'd be one of those things no one would ever do in combat. But on the other hand it means that instead of an hours rest you'd need Total Dice * 6 seconds.

Honestly, yeah, that and a few more interesting maneuvers and I think he'd be in pretty decent shape.

Speaker

2014-11-08, 05:00 AM

Losing a turn to get 1 die back seems like it'd be one of those things no one would ever do in combat. But on the other hand it means that instead of an hours rest you'd need Total Dice * 6 seconds.

Honestly, yeah, that and a few more interesting maneuvers and I think he'd be in pretty decent shape.

That's why I suggested they could sacrifice a bonus action. That'd probably be better.

HorridElemental

2014-11-08, 08:01 AM

In 3.P it broke the game to let casters spam high level magics because the game wasn't really built with that in mind. 3.X was built for low level play with high level stuff tacked on.

4e had everyone, including the monsters, built for high level play and it worked pretty well. At level 25-30 you could spam a ton of high level abilities and never really touch your at-wills (unless the battle went on for a really really really long time).

If you set a system up to support high level play then it will work just fine.

Also, the casters won't be broken if the monsters and non casters are made to support high level play. The reason high level casters in 3.x were broken was because they were the only ones playing on that field. Like if one team playing baseball could run the bases with a baseball bat and hit people and the other team couldn't....

Vogonjeltz

2014-11-08, 10:26 AM

That's the wizard from some mystery world with neither ritual spells nor arcane recovery but where the fighter can get unlimited short rests.

In the hypothetical gameworld where the Fighter gets 56 superiority dice in 8 hours the wizard casts something like 70 non-cantrip spells in the same period.

You said spell slots, so that doesn't include rituals. Why on earth would I want to have less than have the potential Manuevers?

lol, I'd like to see the math on that one if you don't mind.
Granted, unlimited rests isn't going to happen, so his numbers were way off, but yours are even worse.

Amazing. What do you think 8x7 is? Hint: 56

Pages 211 to 289 of the PHB are reserved for descriptions of the various spells in the game. The Warlock's spell list takes up more than a third of a page, and it consists solely of the names of the spells they can learn at what spell level. The Warlock gets 7 pages dedicated to it in the table of contents, while the Fighter gets 6, despite having one more subclass to handle. The Warlock's Eldritch Invocations list takes up 1.5 pages alone. The Battlemaster's Maneuver list takes up .75 pages.

I don't care about power level. The power level discussion has gone on too long, and it keeps getting brought up. The Fighter is strong, they have a place, but that place is utterly insignificant in complexity level to one of the less complex casters - IE: Not Wizard.

If you want your Fighter to be a pure Attack creature with no complexity involved, just hitting stuff, that's fine. People might want that, and so it should be possible to do. However, it's entirely possible to build a caster as a no-complexity cantrips user OR a high-complexity spell user, while the pure martial classes only get the equivalent of the former option. This is an undeniable problem.

The Champion is a mess, and it needs a complete rework. I've already stated my opinions on this a few pages back. The Champion could easily be the "attack attack" fighter, but it needs to have the option of more build complexity. I'd bring back the Fighter Feat system for them, with a list of unique feats that they can take. It's not like this was ever really a problem in 3e, which had far more feat complexity than we do now.

The Battlemaster could do with a rework as well. I'd expand their pool of superiority dice, make the dice smaller, and make them not regain ALL of them per short rest - maybe they regain 1d2 which increases by 1d2 every other fighter level, or the like. They could have up to 20, maybe, at a time, one per level. They need an expanded list of maneuvers DEARLY. This would also benefit any martial character who cared to take the Martial Master feat, which could maybe be updated to give access to another maneuver of a higher power level and one or two extra dice. The Battlemaster would get to choose a maneuver every x levels to add to their list. They could then use multiple dice to upgrade the effects of their various maneuvers, perhaps up to a cap.

I'm wary of making them too much like psionics - I saw another poster warn of the effects of that - so I'd consider putting a cap on maneuver uses per Long rest - IE: Maybe a "third-level" maneuver would get to be used once, a "second-level" twice, a "first level" thrice, and the possible "cantrip" unlimited times.

I saw the "meteor swarm" maneuver suggestion posted a while back. I'd make it work like so, wording approximate:

Blade Blur
Third-Level (must be level x in order to learn)
Usable once per long rest
You must use your Action to use this maneuver. You may choose to consume a number of Superiority Dice not exceeding 6. Your movement for this round is quadrupled. You may make a number of attacks this turn equal to 2 + the number of Superiority Dice consumed. Each time you attack this round, roll one of your consumed Superiority Dice - the result is added to your Attack roll for that attack. You do not provoke Opportunity attacks as a result of leaving an enemy's threat range this round.

Obviously, the power level would need to be adjusted, and honestly having a nuke that works like this might be considered too good for the BM - I'd rather have more utility and interesting scenario based maneuvers than straight attacks - but you see the general idea.

That would be a pointless gimping of the battle master fighter, for the same reasons pointed out previously. Almost all the fighter features are at will or on a short rest.

Giant2005

2014-11-08, 11:33 AM

I personally don't really see an issue with the Battlemaster - it is all about opportunity cost. If you want consistency, you play a Champion. If you want short term superiority at the expense of that consistency, then play a Battlemaster.
Honestly I think the issue here is that everyone seemed to think the Champion was a joke because the Battlemaster could do so much more. Now they are playing Battlemasters and don't like the fact that Champions are so very superior to them after they have spent all of their superiority dice.

Having said that, if I were to solve this "problem", I'd do it by borrowing the Diviner Wizard's mechanic.
Firstly I'd lower the number of Superiority Dice to two-ish (Personally I think 4 is way too many for a 3 level dip especially when you compare it to the Warlock who shares a similar mechanic. Then I'd have the Superiority Dice replace themselves with a die of a lower value when used. When you use a 1D12 superiority die, you get back a 1D10, when that is used you have a 1D8 etc. The rate at which the Superiority Dice increase to a higher value might need tinkered with a bit but they are probably okay as they are (Start as a D8, increase to a D10 at level 10 and a D12 at level 18)

Morty

2014-11-08, 12:09 PM

I think both this discussion and the design of the fighter sub-classes itself approach the problem backwards. What they should have done was create a robust system of martial combat that all 'martial' classes have access to, just like all magic-using classes have access to spell-casting rules. Then a simple method for those who just want to whale on enemies round after round would be one that interacts with the system in a limited manner, effectively making all choices for the player, freeing them from the fiddly bits. Making a dirt-simple base and welding things to it in sub-classes leads to lukewarm results like the BM.

Theodoxus

2014-11-08, 12:11 PM

Ugh, that would be awful. The fighter potentially has up to 56 superiority dice within an 8 hour period. A wizard has 22 spells. (At 20th).

That's why I said they'd tie to a Long Rest - reading comp for the win. A wizard has 22 spells, a fighter would have 22 superiority dice.

Dienekes

2014-11-08, 01:21 PM

HorridElemental

2014-11-08, 01:52 PM

No, some of us (me for example) are not saying that the Battlemaster or the Champion are in any way weak. They have the best consistent damage in the game, or close to it. The problem is just that the option for an engaging complex fighter is barely engaging or complex. Most often you will still be making standard attacks and the maneuvers made are not particularly interesting.

The two core problems with the BM...

1: Resting for an hour between tripping foes (or whatever maneuver) does not fit a narrative very well. The reaource management style just doesn't fit.

2: Maneuvers, for the most part are quite weak. Seriously they are mostly laughable.

A quick and dirty fix I thought of that doesn't really do enough is that when you run out of dice you can still use your maneuvers but you don't get to roll the dice. Maneuvers that don't use dice as part of the actual mechanic don't cost dice anymore.

The abilities are still Meh, but you can explain the dice as being exertion and why you need to rest for a fricken hour (still lame though).

Maneuvers are at-will and less like spell casting but you don't get that bonus damage or what not all the time.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-08, 02:02 PM

...if you want to trip people without spending a die, you can just shove. :p

HorridElemental

2014-11-08, 02:34 PM

...if you want to trip people without spending a die, you can just shove. :p

Not part of an attack though. The maneuver let's you attack n shove while a shove is just pushing them.

silveralen

2014-11-08, 03:28 PM

Not part of an attack though. The maneuver let's you attack n shove while a shove is just pushing them.

Shove uses up an attack, not your action. You can shove and attack as a single action from lvl 5 onwards. You can shove as a bonus action all day with a feat.

I... what? No. There is nothing like the 4e fighter in 5e, either in style of play or mechanical setup. That's not a thing.

No, you're so far off I don't even know where to start.

Okay, lets look:

Paladin has additional damage scaling damage plus: knockback and prone, or frightened, or setting then on fire, or blinding them, or a sort of mild debuff, or just max damage. Plus he has activated abilities than give bonuses so long as he maintains them, with only one usable at a time.

Ranger has a strike which restrains enemies (paladin can grab this as well), multiple ways to turn his ranged attacks into line attacks or standard AoE type abilities, and activated boosts.

Monk can stun, push, trip, prevent reactions, and trigger a save or die, those his abilities don't come with the built in scaling damage. He can grab those abilities instead, but they are mainly long range not close combat.

So what's the problem? They use the spell slot system? Everything in 4e used the same system regardless of source. If you don't want your paladin or ranger's abilities to be magical, describe them as non magical.

Speaker

2014-11-08, 03:32 PM

I knew something was fishy about the BM's features then I went to check how maneuvers were handled before in the playtesting phase of the game. Apparently they got 2 superiority die after a turn ended with them having none and the it was changed to this. So the people at WoTC actually knew that sup dice management would be a problem and they made it worse? Why? Either they're incompetent or they purposefully made it so the BM wouldn't be strong, I am inclined to think it was the latter.

JoeJ

2014-11-08, 03:39 PM

Speaker

2014-11-08, 03:46 PM

Recover two per turn? So superiority dice were not a resource that could run out, but an ability that could be spammed essentially forever? If that's the case, I think I can understand why they changed it.

I can see why they would too but the current version is a bit too harsh. My point was that they knew that the BM would need a way to get its sup dice consistently and when they were fixing the archetype they made that very problem much worse.

JoeJ

2014-11-08, 04:02 PM

I can see why they would too but the current version is a bit too harsh. My point was that they knew that the BM would need a way to get its sup dice consistently and when they were fixing the archetype they made that very problem much worse.

If we use the guidelines in the DMG, the party should be facing 2-3 medium or hard encounters per short rest, which gives the BM an average of 1-2 superiority dice per encounter. I haven't played a BM (my fighter is still 1st level), but that doesn't sound hideously awful as a mini-nova ability. Obviously it's not as powerful as a full caster going nova, but fighters also have high sustained damage. I'll be able to evaluate it better after my character gone up a few more levels though.

Sartharina

2014-11-08, 04:32 PM

Recover two per turn? So superiority dice were not a resource that could run out, but an ability that could be spammed essentially forever? If that's the case, I think I can understand why they changed it.

At the time, superiority dice were significantly weaker, and were used at multiple points during a round. You were expected to use them every round, but what two things you boosted with superiority dice varied from round to round.

HorridElemental

2014-11-08, 04:47 PM

At the time, superiority dice were significantly weaker, and were used at multiple points during a round. You were expected to use them every round, but what two things you boosted with superiority dice varied from round to round.

This. There was also a few versions of the Fighter that was so much better than the current BM.

I loved it when Parry would work on magic and breath weapons. One of my favorite images is of a Fighter (or Knight) that is deflecting the fire breath of a dragon or one that uses their sword to slice through a fireball.

mephnick

2014-11-08, 04:48 PM

Would it be unbalanced to homebrew parry to work against magic?

HorridElemental

2014-11-08, 04:51 PM

Would it be unbalanced to homebrew parry to work against magic?

Not in the slightest.

TheDeadlyShoe

2014-11-08, 05:00 PM

sure but if you don't use a magic weapon your weapon may melt ;)

mephnick

2014-11-08, 05:07 PM

sure but if you don't use a magic weapon your weapon may melt ;)

Actually a magic weapon with the property of blocking/parrying a certain amount of magic might be a pretty cool find, as opposed to just another flaming weapon.

Vogonjeltz

2014-11-08, 05:17 PM

That's why I said they'd tie to a Long Rest - reading comp for the win. A wizard has 22 spells, a fighter would have 22 superiority dice.

And you don't see why that would be worse than the status quo?

HorridElemental

2014-11-08, 05:20 PM

sure but if you don't use a magic weapon your weapon may melt ;)

Really hope that's sarcasm...

Actually a magic weapon with the property of blocking/parrying a certain amount of magic might be a pretty cool find, as opposed to just another flaming weapon.

Why a certain amount?

Property: This magical weapon automatically attempts to parry magical attacks. The first magical attack each round is subjected to the Parry maneuver (or insert the wording to make parry work with magic yadda yadda).

Attuning to this weapon allows you to also use your reaction to parry a magical effect.

Lokiare

2014-11-08, 10:10 PM

Well of course! Aragorn and Conan are fully fleshed-out characters with personalities and backstories. Obviously they're more interesting than a game mechanic. Put as much work into detailing your D&D fighter as Tolkien and Howard put into their creations and then maybe you'll have something to compare.

Actually this comic sums my thoughts on that up nicely:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/images/comic_lotr122a.jpg
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/images/comic_lotr122b.jpg
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/images/comic_lotr122c.jpg

Notice that in 4E that's a single roll.

I think you are putting a lot more into this debate than I intended. I was merely pointing out that on a fundamental level the choice between multiple seemingly overpowered options would form an internal balance where the choice becomes which option do I use.

I fully agree that I am not an expert on the system and should not be debating specific rules, but at a glance none of the BM fighter maneuvers look that strong. Many of them are pretty close to things that previous edition fighters could get as passive abilities with the right feats or class features.
On the other hand because of the way bounded accuracy works it looks like save or suck spells and anything that summons minions is going to be extremely hard for a fighter to deal with. And as more and more books come out the spell lists are only going to get longer and more broken.

Power level aside, mages are always going to have the upper hand simply because they have more tactical options. Honestly I prefer it this way as it gives me something to work against, so its not something I have to "get over". But wizards simply have too many options for them to ever be on the losing side. Teleportation and divination alone ensure that if a wizard wants an unfair fight he can have, and a fighter is going to have to work very hard to even up the advantage.

I wouldn't get frustrated over my "justification of well fighters have it coming" because I don't actually feel that way. I said the vindictive part of me would like to say it, but I never would because it is petty and stupid and terrible game design. It is also one that I have heard used many times as a justification for class balance in other games as well as early D&D where mages got d4 HP and 1 spell a day at low levels and therefore could have game breaking power at high levels. It was humbug then and it is humbug now.

Maybe not Conan, but I think I have put a lot more into my personality and backstory than Aragorn. That dude is actually pretty bland.

The problem is that they can do a lot more than a D&D fighter. Lack of interesting combat options aside, fighters have terrible skills and saving throws and don't gain much benefit from mental ability scores. Aragorn is a healer, a tracker, a diplomat, a swordsman, a poet, a lover, a musician, a survivalist, a stalker, an archer, a leader, and a dozen other things. Conan has likewise been a soldier, a nomad, a thief, a sailor, a king, a berserker, a mercenary, and more.

You just can't get that sort of diversity out of a D&D character with any mechanical backing.

See the comic above.

Aragorn is actually a quarter elf, with a human bloodline that grants him the ability to heal using specific plants. The rest he learned as part of his vocation as a ranger which was a club or group, not a class or occupation. In 4E terms "Ranger" would have been a theme and he would have been a half-elf with the bloodline background. His backstory would have been to be in a long line of kings and his epic destiny would be to rule a kingdom. His class was likely a hybrid of a Bravura Warlord and a Rogue.

I could do the same for Conan, but I won't.

Pages 211 to 289 of the PHB are reserved for descriptions of the various spells in the game. The Warlock's spell list takes up more than a third of a page, and it consists solely of the names of the spells they can learn at what spell level. The Warlock gets 7 pages dedicated to it in the table of contents, while the Fighter gets 6, despite having one more subclass to handle. The Warlock's Eldritch Invocations list takes up 1.5 pages alone. The Battlemaster's Maneuver list takes up .75 pages.

I don't care about power level. The power level discussion has gone on too long, and it keeps getting brought up. The Fighter is strong, they have a place, but that place is utterly insignificant in complexity level to one of the less complex casters - IE: Not Wizard.

If you want your Fighter to be a pure Attack creature with no complexity involved, just hitting stuff, that's fine. People might want that, and so it should be possible to do. However, it's entirely possible to build a caster as a no-complexity cantrips user OR a high-complexity spell user, while the pure martial classes only get the equivalent of the former option. This is an undeniable problem.

The Champion is a mess, and it needs a complete rework. I've already stated my opinions on this a few pages back. The Champion could easily be the "attack attack" fighter, but it needs to have the option of more build complexity. I'd bring back the Fighter Feat system for them, with a list of unique feats that they can take. It's not like this was ever really a problem in 3e, which had far more feat complexity than we do now.

The Battlemaster could do with a rework as well. I'd expand their pool of superiority dice, make the dice smaller, and make them not regain ALL of them per short rest - maybe they regain 1d2 which increases by 1d2 every other fighter level, or the like. They could have up to 20, maybe, at a time, one per level. They need an expanded list of maneuvers DEARLY. This would also benefit any martial character who cared to take the Martial Master feat, which could maybe be updated to give access to another maneuver of a higher power level and one or two extra dice. The Battlemaster would get to choose a maneuver every x levels to add to their list. They could then use multiple dice to upgrade the effects of their various maneuvers, perhaps up to a cap.

I'm wary of making them too much like psionics - I saw another poster warn of the effects of that - so I'd consider putting a cap on maneuver uses per Long rest - IE: Maybe a "third-level" maneuver would get to be used once, a "second-level" twice, a "first level" thrice, and the possible "cantrip" unlimited times.

I saw the "meteor swarm" maneuver suggestion posted a while back. I'd make it work like so, wording approximate:

Blade Blur
Third-Level (must be level x in order to learn)
Usable once per long rest
You must use your Action to use this maneuver. You may choose to consume a number of Superiority Dice not exceeding 6. Your movement for this round is quadrupled. You may make a number of attacks this turn equal to 2 + the number of Superiority Dice consumed. Each time you attack this round, roll one of your consumed Superiority Dice - the result is added to your Attack roll for that attack. You do not provoke Opportunity attacks as a result of leaving an enemy's threat range this round.

Obviously, the power level would need to be adjusted, and honestly having a nuke that works like this might be considered too good for the BM - I'd rather have more utility and interesting scenario based maneuvers than straight attacks - but you see the general idea.

I was the one that wrote that maneuver originally further up and I did it to illustrate the point that as a nova class the BM is horrible. It would have to have the power I described just to keep up with the 1 level 9 spell a wizard gets every day, not including the 1 level 8, 1 level 7, and so on and so forth. They don't even come close.

In other threads I designed a fighter that was based on adrenaline and got exponentially better at using weapons and armor as they progressed and had 'adrenaline' maneuvers they could pull off, but I won't bother repeating it as the play test and design process are over and we are left with the boring (in my opinion) fighter we have.