[5E] - Fighter Martial Adept Archetype (PEACH)

[Surrealistik]

Threw together a stance based martial archetype for the Fighter called the Martial Adept; first draft so wording and balance probably needs refinement:

http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyZhFLXbZ

[Surrealistik]

Clarified wording, nerfed Martial Master and Hybrid Technique.

[stonegategames]

Putting on the critical lens:

Martial Flexibility: What is the design goal with this? Most of Fighting Styles don't overlap well.

Martial Stance: Assuming one as a bonus action but lasting until completion of a rest don't mesh well, especially when there aren't limited uses. I would either limit the use to a minute per short rest or change stances to be permanent conditions while not incapacitated that can be switched at the end of a short rest.

Whirling Dervish:

Cumulative bonuses and this type of tracking go against the core of 5e design principles. This could simply be you get advantage with your offhand when you it with a non-offhand.
A new attack should be tied to a reaction or bonus action.
The second two abilities will normally trigger together, which makes it confusing in the situation's where they wouldn't.


Line Breaker:

Static bonuses aren't really core 5e design.
This is general could be cleaned up, but it's interesting.


Marauding Wolf: Pack Tactics-like abilities always give other people advantage, never yourself. You can maybe cross that line, but only if you have a compelling reason.

Deft Skirmisher: Similar feedback as line breaker, while also stepping on a rogue's Cunning Action a bit too early. If you wanted to keep it, I would restrict this to minimum level 7.


Stopping here, I'm seeing a theme. For better or for worse, 5e was designed with bounded accuracy and an action economy of Action, Reaction, Bonus, Movement. Many of your stances either modifies the action economy or upsets the bounded accuracy model.

Generally, replace any cumulative bonus with advantage - it is less to track and easier to explain. Otherwise use something like bardic inspiration or battlemaster dice.

I would stay away from things that replace a fighter's Extra Attack feature with utility moves or give multiple reactions.

[Surrealistik]

Putting on the critical lens:

Martial Flexibility: What is the design goal with this? Most of Fighting Styles don't overlap well.

Martial Stance: Assuming one as a bonus action but lasting until completion of a rest don't mesh well, especially when there aren't limited uses. I would either limit the use to a minute per short rest or change stances to be permanent conditions while not incapacitated that can be switched at the end of a short rest.

Whirling Dervish:

Cumulative bonuses and this type of tracking go against the core of 5e design principles. This could simply be you get advantage with your offhand when you it with a non-offhand.
A new attack should be tied to a reaction or bonus action.
The second two abilities will normally trigger together, which makes it confusing in the situation's where they wouldn't.


Line Breaker:

Static bonuses aren't really core 5e design.
This is general could be cleaned up, but it's interesting.


Marauding Wolf: Pack Tactics-like abilities always give other people advantage, never yourself. You can maybe cross that line, but only if you have a compelling reason.

Deft Skirmisher: Similar feedback as line breaker, while also stepping on a rogue's Cunning Action a bit too early. If you wanted to keep it, I would restrict this to minimum level 7.


Stopping here, I'm seeing a theme. For better or for worse, 5e was designed with bounded accuracy and an action economy of Action, Reaction, Bonus, Movement. Many of your stances either modifies the action economy or upsets the bounded accuracy model.

Generally, replace any cumulative bonus with advantage - it is less to track and easier to explain. Otherwise use something like bardic inspiration or battlemaster dice.

I would stay away from things that replace a fighter's Extra Attack feature with utility moves or give multiple reactions.

Thanks for the feedback stone.

Martial Flexibility is generally trying to sense of a versatile, studied combatant. Figured it fit the bill for a weak, albeit useful secondary 3rd level benefit (hey, if nothing else you can get +1 AC!); not fully satisfied with this and am kicking around ideas.

In general I've tried to stay away from cumulative bonuses; only really enacting them when advantage would be just too strong, but a flat bonus wouldn't quite work either.

Attack replacement I'm not so sure I understand the aversion to; this is already done with utility moves like the shove and grapple.

In terms of limiting the stances, perhaps you can be in a stance for a total of 10 rounds + your Constitution modifier per short rest, and when you wish to remain in a stance beyond this, you can suffer an exhaustion level to refresh your turn count, or gain Constitution modifier more rounds? I want stance switching to be relatively dynamic throughout, but I do acknowledge that those abilities at-will might be a little strong. At L18+, probably will let the character be in stance indefinitely.

That all said, getting into specifics:

Whirling Dervish: Yeah, the extra attack was supposed to demand a reaction; fixed that. Also replaced the cumulative bonus. Merged abilities 2 and 3.

Line Breaker: I definitely think I need to stick with the bonus in this case; I mean it's static at least. If you have suggestions for compressing the language, I'm all ears.

Marauding Wolf: In general, I'm thinking of this as an opportunist tactician; someone who can enables others, but also use their presence to enable themselves like a rogue. Do you find any of its abilities to be mechanically overpowered?

Deft Skirmisher: To be fair, a 2 level rogue dip gets you the same without an armor type limitation; also this should be more fair with stances becoming limited in duration.

[stonegategames]

In terms of limiting the stances, perhaps you can be in a stance for a total of 10 rounds + your Constitution modifier per short rest, and when you wish to remain in a stance beyond this, you can suffer an Exhaustion point to refresh your turn count, or gain Constitution modifier more rounds? I want stance switching to be relatively dynamic throughout, but I do acknowledge that those abilities at-will might be a little strong. At L18, probably will let the character be in stance indefinitely.


Don't worry about adding the Con mod and use natural language: "As a bonus action, you may adopt or change a stance for a minute." Combat will almost never last more than 10 rounds, so a minute is effectively until combat ends. Here you could limit the uses to Con mod per short or long rest.


Right now Maurading Wolf is a strictly better version of the Wolf Barbarian ability. Between that and Deft Skirmisher, I'd say stop eating the other classes' lunch: you can give fighter's abilities that they can get, but if it is a core part of that class then you should give it to the fighter later and possibly with restrictions.

[Surrealistik]

Don't worry about adding the Con mod and use natural language: "As a bonus action, you may adopt or change a stance for a minute." Combat will almost never last more than 10 rounds, so a minute is effectively until combat ends. Here you could limit the uses to Con mod per short or long rest.

The reason I delineated in rounds is to let someone conserve rounds if desired as opposed to forcing them to use it all their duration in one block (and also to make Constitution a thing without it getting too powerful/influential). I do understand the value of simplicity though; will mull over this a bit.

EDIT: What about this: "You can remain in stance for a total time of 1 minute. You can replenish this duration by choosing to suffer a level of exhaustion when you would adopt a stance or remain in stance with no duration remaining, or by completing a rest."


Right now Maurading Wolf is a strictly better version of the Wolf Barbarian ability. Between that and Deft Skirmisher, I'd say stop eating the other classes' lunch: you can give fighter's abilities that they can get, but if it is a core part of that class then you should give it to the fighter later and possibly with restrictions.

Not necessarily; I mean early on, yeah, for sure. Later? Barbarian gets more rages, his allies get more attacks, and since the advantage Wolf totem provides isn't restricted to the first attack made, its benefits can really stack up. I think that with the duration limit, Skirmisher starts looking more at ease with Cunning Action.

[Surrealistik]

Updated Battle Momentum and Martial Master wording.

[Surrealistik]

Changed the stance duration to half Constitution score in order to make stance usage more limited assuming 2-3 combats per short rest.

[Surrealistik]

Bump. Anything too strong/too weak at this point or that needs clarifiying?

[Llama513]

The formatting is off, there is material that is sticking off to the side, and thus cannot be read

[Surrealistik]

The formatting is off, there is material that is sticking off to the side, and thus cannot be read

Which page? I wonder if it's a browser/mobile device display issue because the Homebrewery link appears fine to me.

[Llama513]

Which page? I wonder if it's a browser/mobile device display issue because the Homebrewery link appears fine to me.

Pages 1 and 2, I am in Chrome so I don't think that it is a browser thing just looked at it in firefox, and it looks fine, which is weird because it is usually the other way

[Surrealistik]

Pages 1 and 2, I am in Chrome so I don't think that it is a browser thing

Very strange.

Played around with the formatting a bit. Any better?

[Llama513]

Very strange.

Played around with the formatting a bit. Any better?

Yeah it is fine now, in both browsers