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Submortimer
2015-12-07, 03:00 PM
Martial Archetype: The Pugilist
A variation on the Monk/Fighter, this one mostly just focuses on punching things really, REALLY hard. While not intended to be a conversion of the class from FF 14, it would work as a suitable expy

Conventional thought states that a warrior is only as good as his weapon. For a pugilist, his weapon and his hands are one and the same. Though intense physical conditioning, a pugilist strives to forge his body into the ultimate tool of war, without relying on magic or the mystical crutch of Ki.

Close Quarters Combat
Starting when you choose this archetype at 3rd level, your study of unarmed fighting grants you mastery of combat styles utilizing such techniques. You gain proficiency in Unarmed Strikes, and you gain the following benefits when you aren't wearing medium or heavy armor or using a shield:
• You can use your Dexterity instead of Strength for attack and damage rolls of your unarmed strikes.
• When you take the attack action on your turn, you may use a bonus action to attempt to grapple a creature within your reach.
• Your unarmed strikes and fist weapons deal 1d6 points of damage. This increases to 1d8 at 10th level, and 1d10 at 18th level.

Close Quarters Fighting Styles
At 3rd level, you learn to utilize your traditional combat training in unique ways, granting you a measure of flexibility better suited to your chosen path. Your chosen Fighting Style changes in the following ways when you aren't wearing medium or heavy armor and not using a shield:
Defense: You gain an additional +1 to your AC, for a total of +2
Dueling: Your unarmed strikes deal +2 damage. You are treated as if you are wielding a one-handed finesse weapon for the purposes of feats and other class abilities.
Great Weapon Fighting: When rolling damage for an unarmed strike, you may reroll any 1s or 2s. You must keep the new result, even if it is a 1 or 2. You can treat unarmed strikes as attacks with two-handed heavy weapons for the purposes of feats and other class abilities.
Protection: You gain the benefits of Close Quarters Combat and Close Quarters Fighting Style while using a shield. When you take the attack action on your turn, you may use a bonus action to make an additional attack with the shield you are wielding, which deals 1d4 bludgeoning damage.
Two-Weapon Fighting: When you take the Attack action on your turn, you cam make an additional unarmed strike as a bonus action. You are treated as if you are wielding two one-handed light weapons for purposes of feats and other class abilities.
Additionally, as an action on your turn, you may choose to replace any of your current fighting styles with a different fighting style, though you still cannot benefit from the same style more than once.

Intensive Training
At 7th level, your training has given you an edge in all physical contests. Add half your proficiency modifier to all Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution checks that you do not already add your proficiency modifier to. Additionally, you may select either Athletics or Acrobatics: you gain proficiency in this skill, or double it if you already had proficiency.

Knockout Blow
At 10th level, you have learned to channel you impressive physical power into a single, devastating blow. When you take the Attack action on your turn, you may forgo any additional attacks you gain from the Extra Attack feature. For each attack you would give up in this way, you may add two additional damage dice to your unarmed damage roll.

Close Quarters Master
At 15th level, you've become a true master of unarmed combat. You learn an additional Fighting Style, and you have advantage on grappling checks against creatures of your size or smaller. Additionally, you may attempt to grapple creatures two size catagories larger than yourself.

Deathblow
At 18th level, your grueling training has taught you how to defeat most opponents with a single punch. When you use Knockout blow, you now add three additional dice of damage per Extra Attack instead of two.


New Martial Weapons
Weapon Cost Damage Weight Properties
Cestus - 1d4 bludgeoning 2 lb. Fist
Punching Dagger - 1d4 piercing 2 lb. Fist
Claw Gauntlet - 1d4 slashing 2 lb. Fist

Cestus. A cestus can take many shapes, but in all cases it is comprised of some sort of glove or hand wrapping covered with metal, stone, bone, or some other hard, blunt material, normally worn in pairs. Unarmed fighters often use them simply to protect their hands, but they are also useful for covering in special materials, such as silver or alchemist's fire. Wearing a cestus allows your unarmed strikes to deal 1d4 points of bludgeoning damage.

Punching dagger. This unique style of dagger consists of one or more blades attached to an H-framed handle, allowing a proficient user to augment his unarmed strikes. Wielding a punching dagger allows your unarmed strikes to deal 1d4 points of piercing damage.

Claw gauntlet. Claw gauntlets take two general forms: either a gauntlet with one to three long, sharp claws extending from the top of the arm to approximately one foot past the end of the wearer's fist, or a glove/gauntlet with sharp metal talons extending from the ends of the fingertips. In either case, they serve to slice the wearer's opponents to ribbons. Wearing a claw gauntlet allows your unarmed strikes to deal 1d4 points of slashing damage.

New Weapon Property
Fist. You can treat attacks with this weapon as unarmed strikes.

cooldes
2015-12-07, 07:45 PM
nice, i love pugilists. couple things,
Everybody is automatically proficient in unarmed strikes. says so in the phb errata. the errata also says that there is no such rule on grappling creatures 1 size larger.

both of these benefits aren't really benefits because anyone can already do them lol, so i onlt advise replacing these with some other benefits

btw here's the phb errata quotes

Melee Attacks (p. 195). The rule on
unarmed strikes should read as follows:
“Instead of using a weapon to make a
melee weapon attack, you can use an unarmed
strike: a punch, kick, head-butt, or
similar forceful blow (none of which count
as weapons). On a hit, an unarmed strike
deals bludgeoning damage equal to 1 +
your Strength modifier. You are proficient
with your unarmed strikes.”

&

Grappler (p. 167). Ignore the third benefit;
it refers to a nonexistent rule

Edit: not sure if i missed it, But being able to unarmed strike as a bonus maybe might be a great replacement for these features.

Submortimer
2015-12-07, 08:13 PM
nice, i love pugilists. couple things,
Everybody is automatically proficient in unarmed strikes. says so in the phb errata. the errata also says that there is no such rule on grappling creatures 1 size larger.


Well, you're half right. There is a rule: In the "grappling" entry, it states that you can only attempt to grapple a creature that is no more than one size catagoey larger than you. The errata only removes the third benefit from the feat because the rule that the FEAT references doesn't exist. I still have to change the ability.



Edit: not sure if i missed it, But being able to unarmed strike as a bonus maybe might be a great replacement for these features.

This was omitted intentionally. You can still gain a bonus attack by taking the Two-Weapon fighting style or by taking the Protection fighting style.

cooldes
2015-12-09, 06:29 AM
Well, you're half right. There is a rule: In the "grappling" entry, it states that you can only attempt to grapple a creature that is no more than one size category larger than you. The errata only removes the third benefit from the feat because the rule that the FEAT references doesn't exist. I still have to change the ability.

yeah that's pretty much exactly what i was saying


This was omitted intentionally. You can still gain a bonus attack by taking the Two-Weapon fighting style or by taking the Protection fighting style.

yeah i noticed afterward that you improved the fighting styles to do this. very well done imho.

WarrentheHero
2015-12-09, 04:10 PM
It looks like a fairly nice class, but I do have a few concerns with it:

First, I feel like you could do more with grappling. I have a Barbarian Grappler in one of my games, and I gave him an attack based off of it so that he can keep par damage-wise. The way it worked is, if you have a creature grappled, you can, as an action, make a Strength(Athletics) check vs their Athletics or Dexterity)Acrobatics checks. If you succeed, you slam them on the ground, ending the grapple and dealing 1d6+STR bludgeoning damage, in addition to leaving them prone afterwards.

Your class doesn't have quite the same limitations that base non-monk pugilist has, in terms of damage, so you may not need this feature to compensate, but I think it would be a flashy, fun feature to add.


Additionally, the new weapons seem sort of useless. They only add one point of damage over unarmed attacks, are functionally equivalent to a dagger without range, and become completely irrelevant when this subclass reaches 3rd level. They're nice flavor-wise, to be sure, but I'm not certain that they add anything relevant to combat.


Finally, I have some issue with the Dueling fighting style, specifically the "finesse" part of it. This allows it to interact with the Rogue Sneak Attack feature, even though Sneak Attack was built with a dagger, sword, or arrow in mind- something that has a 'sneak attack vibe.' While I understand wanting to do stuff like in Skyrim where you can shadow-suplex someone, it causes a break mechanically, especially when you consider that Monks don't have this, for the express reason of the Sneak Attack.

Over all, it looks pretty good, though I fear that the Strength build may be wanting in defense.

Submortimer
2015-12-10, 01:06 AM
First, I feel like you could do more with grappling. I have a Barbarian Grappler in one of my games, and I gave him an attack based off of it so that he can keep par damage-wise. The way it worked is, if you have a creature grappled, you can, as an action, make a Strength(Athletics) check vs their Athletics or Dexterity)Acrobatics checks. If you succeed, you slam them on the ground, ending the grapple and dealing 1d6+STR bludgeoning damage, in addition to leaving them prone afterwards.


I see what you mean, but keep in mind this is more of a "Striking" class than a "grappling" class. Those abilities are in there to give it a slightly different feel than the monk.



Additionally, the new weapons seem sort of useless. They only add one point of damage over unarmed attacks, are functionally equivalent to a dagger without range, and become completely irrelevant when this subclass reaches 3rd level. They're nice flavor-wise, to be sure, but I'm not certain that they add anything relevant to combat.


The weapons serve a very specific point: on its own, or even with backup, this subclass has no way to access magical damage. Monks can, since they have a class feature that allows this, but pugilits do not. This way, they have a weapon that either can be enchanted or have the Magic Weapon spell cast on it.



Finally, I have some issue with the Dueling fighting style, specifically the "finesse" part of it. This allows it to interact with the Rogue Sneak Attack feature, even though Sneak Attack was built with a dagger, sword, or arrow in mind- something that has a 'sneak attack vibe.' While I understand wanting to do stuff like in Skyrim where you can shadow-suplex someone, it causes a break mechanically, especially when you consider that Monks don't have this, for the express reason of the Sneak Attack.


Frankly, I don't see this as a problem. As it is, monks can just do most of their attacks with a short sword, getting finesse along with their unarmed strike damage. I'm of the mindset that monks should be allowed to treat their fists as finesse weapons, so thats how I built my class. It certainly won't create any game breaking issues.



Over all, it looks pretty good, though I fear that the Strength build may be wanting in defense.

Thanks! And I kinda agree with you, thought that can be mitigated somewhat with the protection and defense CQF styles.