Giving Martial Adept equivalent to Fighters

[Mjolnirbear]

So mechanically and mathematically, Fighters are fine. They do awesome damage, but are, well, a little boring.

I'm playing around with giving them some battle master tricks (the battle master having more of them).

If you are the type to get bored by "I attack with my Sword" every round would this entice you to play a fighter?

I can't believe I need to say this again! Fighters are fine and don't need defending. This is an opinion poll and my target respondents are those who already find the class boring. If this is not you please restrain your need to tell me the fighter doesn't need fixing. Thank you

[Rukelnikov]

May I ask why you find them boring in combat?

[Man_Over_Game]

Round 1. Action Surge. Attack Attack.
Round 2. Attack.
Round 3. I am hurt. Second Wind. Attack.
Round 4. Attack. You are dead.


There you go. I wrote you a Fighter script. It should work for the next 20 levels.

---------------------------

I've considered a fix to make Fighters more interesting:

Remove the ASI at level 6.
Move Action Surge from level 2 to level 6.
Add Martial Adept to level 2.
Upgrade Martial Adept to have two superiority die instead of one (making it a competitive choice against GWM/PAM/Sentinel)

[Hail Tempus]

If a fighter is just "attacking with his sword every round" his player doesn't really understand the class.

Assuming you're playing with feats, Fighters are one of the most diverse classes in the game. A Polearm Battlemaster is very different from a Great Weapon Master Champion, who is very different from a Sharpshooting Arcane Archer.

[Man_Over_Game]

If a fighter is just "attacking with his sword every round" his player doesn't really understand the class.

Assuming you're playing with feats, Fighters are one of the most diverse classes in the game. A Polearm Battlemaster is very different from a Great Weapon Master Champion, who is very different from a Sharpshooting Arcane Archer.

Diverse from a building perspect, but not in a turn-by-turn perspective. You can tack on Polearm Master to a Champion, and the most complex it gets is just figuring out where to move; what you do doesn't really change all that much from the feats. Having Sharpshooter doesn't really do much more than guess whether or not your target's AC is higher or lower than 10 + your hit bonus (which is the simple version to determine when to -5/+10 or not).

A lot of it are just binary decisions. Squishy friend is hurt, I move to help. Bad guy nearby, I hit him really hard. I'm low on health, Second Wind/Potion. The Battlemaster adds a lot more complexity, but that doesn't do much to help the other subclasses, and the class is incredibly simple until then.

A Warlock builds a lot like a Fighter, yet the Warlock is also probably the simplest Full Caster in the game. In the same way, Fighters have a lot of diverse build options, but are incredibly simple on the execution side.

Some people like the fact that the Fighter is simple, but that's not my cup of tea.

[Mjolnirbear]

If a fighter is just "attacking with his sword every round" his player doesn't really understand the class.

Assuming you're playing with feats, Fighters are one of the most diverse classes in the game. A Polearm Battlemaster is very different from a Great Weapon Master Champion, who is very different from a Sharpshooting Arcane Archer.

A PAM fighter is "attacking with my polearm" every round. A GWM is attacking with his heavy weapon every round.

Regardless of weapon or feat the fighter's usual moves are attack, attack, action surge. A feat doesn't change this pattern except by adding a bonus attack or a shove or a reaction as the circumstances allow.

Some people, myself included, find this boring. Thus I'm conducting a poll. If you are like me and find this boring, would adding more maneuvers (even if you're not a battlemaster) improve your time playing a fighter.

[Mjolnirbear]

Round 1. Action Surge. Attack Attack.
Round 2. Attack.
Round 3. I am hurt. Second Wind. Attack.
Round 4. Attack. You are dead.


There you go. I wrote you a Fighter script. It should work for the next 20 levels.

---------------------------

I've considered a fix to make Fighters more interesting:

Remove the ASI at level 6.
Move Action Surge from level 2 to level 6.
Add Martial Adept to level 2.
Upgrade Martial Adept to have two superiority die instead of one (making it a competitive choice against GWM/PAM/Sentinel)

I don't want to rearrange the levels, but if I didn't they'd become even more front-loaded for dips. So this seems a good implementation.

If you're giving the feat for free, why does it need to be competitive? They can still choose PAM or GWM at 4th.

[Corran]

I'm playing around with giving them some battle master tricks (the battle master having more of them).
Yeah, sure, doesn't sound like a bad idea. Maybe the thief's fast hands level 3 feature could be sth you could perhaps base a maneuver on. Or a maneuver that as part of sth else allows to unequip a shield faster, so dex based fighters can go s&b and be able to pick that maneuver so that they can use their bow more easily (I think it's a pity to have to use action surge for that). Or a maneuver part of which would allow the fighter to draw two weapons at the same time (for ''us'' that don't like the dual wielder feat).


If you are the type to get bored by "I attack with my Sword" every round would this entice you to play a fighter?
Maybe. It's not like the other classes are that well geared to always be able to avoid rinse and repeat once combat starts (well, perhaps with the exception of the first turn). The problem I see with this though, is that something like that plays a bit against the scope of having the champion archetype. So I am wondering if adding more maneuvers would be better done by only adding them to the battlemaster's arsenal, because then they would end up being used by the people that want to play that type of characters? While someone who wants to play a simple build can still play a simple build, that is without exchanging one of their passive boosts with something they have to remember or learn how to use? Dunno. The thought of more maneuvers is certainly interesting to me.

[Man_Over_Game]

I don't want to rearrange the levels, but if I didn't they'd become even more front-loaded for dips. So this seems a good implementation.

If you're giving the feat for free, why does it need to be competitive? They can still choose PAM or GWM at 4th.

Because it's still a feat that's accessible to everyone that nobody ever takes. 1 enhanced attack per short rest doesn't really seem like that much of a difference, but 2 is enough to earn some respect. I might take a Martial Adept with 2 superiority die as a Bard, Rogue or Barbarian, but you're more likely to see those classes with GWM, PAM or SS than a Martial Adept feat with one die.

Also, leaving it at one die as a level 2 Fighter feature doesn't really inspire a lot of support for the class. Why invest two levels into Fighter when I could just the subpar feat myself, or get something better altogether? I don't need Fighter levels to do that.

Or kill two birds with one stone. Enhance Martial Adept to 2 die, make it require 13 Strength AND Dexterity, and make it so that Fighter can ignore the Strength/Dexterity requirement of Martial Adept upon hitting level 2. That way, you make the feat better without making it "the best" choice while still giving people plenty of reason to invest into Fighter while making the Fighter a versatile combatant.

[Vogie]

So mechanically and mathematically, Fighters are fine. They do awesome damage, but are, well, a little boring.

I'm playing around with giving them some battle master tricks (the battle master having more of them).

If you are the type to get bored by "I attack with my Sword" every round would this entice you to play a fighter?

They already have them?

There's grappling in the core rules, and a bunch of optional rules in the DMG:

Disarming
Flanking
Facing
Cleaving through creatures
among others.

You can also refluff existing mechanics into new tricks. Polearm Master, for example, could be used on a katana-wielding fighter, with the 1d4 bludgeoning damage bonus action is dealt by hitting the target with their scabbard.

If you don't use certain aspects of the game, such as the above rules, or Unearthed Arcana content, think about ways to apply those skills to your mundane or martial players. If a fighter loves a warhammer, for example, maybe they start working to one of the bullet points from the Fell Handed feat:


Whenever you have advantage on a melee attack roll you make with the weapon and hit, you can knock the target prone if the lower of the two d20 rolls would also hit the target.
Whenever you have disadvantage on a melee attack roll you make with the weapon, the target takes bludgeoning damage equal to your Strength modifier (minimum of 0) if the attack misses but if the higher of the two d20 rolls would have hit.
If you use the Help action to aid an ally's melee attack while you're wielding the weapon, you knock the target's shield aside momentarily. In addition to the ally gaining advantage on the attack roll, the ally gains a +2 bonus to the roll if the target is using a shield.

Those are three decent things they can be rewarded that gives them some excellence in their chosen weapon.

You can also choose other aspects of the game that haven't been tapped that your martial players can tap into. Maybe they can gather more proficiencies for things like vehicles, gaming sets (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23653929&postcount=1), crafting, languages, even backgrounds!
Maybe the Criminal Barbarian wants to gain the sailor background. Perhaps the Rogue is really planning oriented, and can store Inspiration between sessions, or hold more inspiration than just one. Here are some other ideas (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22143676&postcount=97) for things you could add to martial characters' kits.

I mean, you could also just give each martial player the martial adept feat (it wouldn't count towards their feats, so they could select it again with an ASI to get another die without dipping BM) as a sort of way to level the playing field... but that could also backfire, as they'd only do something neat once, then stop trying to be interesting until they get their superiority die back.

[CantigThimble]

IMO most of the turn-by-turn decision making with fighters comes from positioning. Placing yourself optimally to force the enemy to attack the toughest person in the party, or punish them if they go for anyone else while not getting in the way of anyone else's abilities is a type of strategy that I really enjoy.

and if you like fighters with abilities, that's great we have Battlemasters and Eldrich Knights for you.

However, the fact that you like battlemasters doesn't mean that making Champions more like battlemasters is an improvement. Champions are the class whose design goal is to have the minimum possible number of fiddly abilities in combat.

I mean, I guess my point is, D&D has a whole swath of classes and subclasses for a reason. Why do we need to change things to entice people to play the classes they don't like instead of just letting people play the classes they do like?

[Hail Tempus]

I mean, I guess my point is, D&D has a whole swath of classes and subclasses for a reason. Why do we need to change things to entice people to play the classes they don't like instead of just letting people play the classes they do like? And it's not just a change, but a proposed power-boost to all fighter sub-classes.

Fighters may be (subjectively) boring to some people, but are they really a class that needs a power up? I haven't seen a lot of complaints that fighters are under-powered.

[Man_Over_Game]

IMO most of the turn-by-turn decision making with fighters comes from positioning. Placing yourself optimally to force the enemy to attack the toughest person in the party, or punish them if they go for anyone else while not getting in the way of anyone else's abilities is a type of strategy that I really enjoy.

and if you like fighters with abilities, that's great we have Battlemasters and Eldrich Knights for you.

However, the fact that you like battlemasters doesn't mean that making Champions more like battlemasters is an improvement. Champions are the class whose design goal is to have the minimum possible number of fiddly abilities in combat.

I mean, I guess my point is, D&D has a whole swath of classes and subclasses for a reason. Why do we need to change things to entice people to play the classes they don't like instead of just letting people play the classes they do like?

I think it's because the base Fighter is more "Champion" and less "Battlemaster" for the core chassis.
The Arcane Archer just shoots a magic arrow twice. Otherwise, it's just a Champion.
A Samurai gets some increased accuracy and HP for a few turns a day. Otherwise, it's a just a Champion.

So rather than having this:

Arcane Archer: Simple McShooty
Samurai: Simple Stabby
Battlemaster: Simple/Complex
Champion: Simple Simple



He's suggesting this:

Arcane Archer: Complex McShooty
Samurai: Complex Stabby
Battlemaster: Complex Complex
Champion: Complex/Simple

[Throne12]

A PAM fighter is "attacking with my polearm" every round. A GWM is attacking with his heavy weapon every round.

Regardless of weapon or feat the fighter's usual moves are attack, attack, action surge. A feat doesn't change this pattern except by adding a bonus attack or a shove or a reaction as the circumstances allow.

Some people, myself included, find this boring. Thus I'm conducting a poll. If you are like me and find this boring, would adding more maneuvers (even if you're not a battlemaster) improve your time playing a fighter.

It ain't no different then a wizard I cast X spell it does X. A has so many thing to do too. He can use a magic item, make a skill roll to cause some desired effect, use mundane items, take a feat like magic slayer and run pass everything and take on the spellcastet mono a mono. I love playing fighters and rogues with my favorite magic item bag of holding cause I fill that thing up with all kind of stuff so I can pull out a paddle when I find my self standing on a wooden door in a middle of a lake. Or a bag of sand to blind my foe of a Bag of flour to throw around to see a invisible person ect. If all you're doing is attacking round after round it's a player prob not a class problem

[Rukelnikov]

But how is the Core fighter simpler than Barbarian or Rogue?

To rage or not to rage, that's the only decision (and not a very difficult one 99.9% of the time)
Hide + Sneak (I guess you have to choose where to hide :S)

IMO fighter does its job right, and can range from Champion being the simplest class in the game, to Battlemaster with its choices and decisions, to EK which has choices, decisions, and per rest resource management.

[Man_Over_Game]

It ain't no different then a wizard I cast X spell it does X. A has so many thing to do too. He can use a magic item, make a skill roll to cause some desired effect, use mundane items, take a feat like magic slayer and run pass everything and take on the spellcastet mono a mono. I love playing fighters and rogues with my favorite magic item bag of holding cause I fill that thing up with all kind of stuff so I can pull out a paddle when I find my self standing on a wooden door in a middle of a lake. Or a bag of sand to blind my foe of a Bag of flour to throw around to see a invisible person ect. If all you're doing is attacking round after round it's a player prob not a class problem

Sure, but nothing about most of what you've said has anything to do with the Fighter class. There are creative player solutions, but not creative fighter solutions.

Fighters provide 1 solution: Hit it until it stops hitting you back.

Yes, you can add feats to provide more versatility, but generally those don't add any complexity or choices, they mostly add passive bonuses to things that you were already planning on doing.

Mage Slayer: Stand next to the Mage.
Polearm Master: Use a Polearm, stand near bad guys, hit bad guys with it.
Great Weapon Master: Hit bad guys with big weapon.
Tough: Try not to die.
Sentinel: Be between bad guys and your squishy friends.

They don't make Fighters any more complex, they just make Fighters better at doing that one thing (that they already do).

Not having Mage Slayer isn't going to convince a Fighter that he shouldn't be standing near the Mage, it just makes him better at doing it.

[Rukelnikov]

It ain't no different then a wizard I cast X spell it does X. A has so many thing to do too. He can use a magic item, make a skill roll to cause some desired effect, use mundane items, take a feat like magic slayer and run pass everything and take on the spellcastet mono a mono. I love playing fighters and rogues with my favorite magic item bag of holding cause I fill that thing up with all kind of stuff so I can pull out a paddle when I find my self standing on a wooden door in a middle of a lake. Or a bag of sand to blind my foe of a Bag of flour to throw around to see a invisible person ect. If all you're doing is attacking round after round it's a player prob not a class problem

Arguing the fighter has the same level of complexety as the wizard is pretty dishonest.

[Rukelnikov]

Fighters provide 1 solution: Hit it until it stops hitting you back.


Do core barbarians, rogues, or monks provide much more?

Monk get to stun... so they can hit better next round I guess...

Paladin and Ranger have a lil more versatility due to spells, but 90% of those spells will be spent on hitting better or avoiding getting hit better

[Man_Over_Game]

Do core barbarians, rogues, or monks provide much more?

Monk get to stun... so they can hit better next round I guess...

Paladin and Ranger have a lil more versatility due to spells, but 90% of those spells will be spent on hitting better or avoiding getting hit better

You're right, they all do damage, I'm not saying that "hurting things until they die" is a bad thing, but Fighters don't really have any choices between the start and the end of the encounter. They just do the one thing they can do that turn. Action Surge isn't really a "decision". You do it. Period. There's usually no reason to wait a round to do it.

The same thing goes for Second Wind. You're at half health, you use it. Period. What is waiting going to do for you, unless your healer has an AoE heal (at level 2, for some reason)?



Barbarians do have the distinction between dealing with threats that their Rage mitigates (warriors) vs. those it doesn't (elementals). They also have to determine whether or not Reckless Attack is a beneficial choice or not, and how much HP they have, enemies remaining, or the damage the Barbarian can do all ties into that. It's not much more complex than the Fighter, but it at least has choices.

Rogues have a lot of options, between hiding, Disengage, Dashing to an objective, or taking advantage of a Sneak Attack in some way. This is before including all the possible skills they may have that may affect the environment or the scenario they're dealt with.

Monks similarly have the option to Dash, Disengage, Dodge or attack an extra time, all with the same resource.




Action Surge as often as you can, Second Wind when you're at half health, spend every action attacking. Do that, and you'll do fine as a Fighter, and you don't have to think about any of that. Everything else is tied into the subclass or the player's ability to think outside the box.

[Rukelnikov]

You're right, they all do damage, I'm not saying that "hurting things until they die" is a bad thing, but Fighters don't really have any choices between the start and the end of the encounter. They just do the one thing they can do that turn. Action Surge isn't really a "decision". You do it. Period. There's usually no reason to wait a round to do it.

The same thing goes for Second Wind. You're at half health, you use it. Period. What is waiting going to do for you, unless your healer has an AoE heal (at level 2, for some reason)?



Barbarians do have the distinction between dealing with threats that their Rage mitigates (warriors) vs. those it doesn't (elementals). They also have to determine whether or not Reckless Attack is a beneficial choice or not, and how much HP they have, enemies remaining, or the damage the Barbarian can do all ties into that. It's not much more complex than the Fighter, but it at least has choices.

Rogues have a lot of options, between hiding, Disengage, Dashing to an objective, or taking advantage of a Sneak Attack in some way. This is before including all the possible skills they may have that may affect the environment or the scenario they're dealt with.

Monks similarly have the option to Dash, Disengage, Dodge or attack an extra time, all with the same resource.




Action Surge as often as you can, Second Wind when you're at half health, spend every action attacking, and that's literally it. Everything else is tied into the subclass or the player's ability to think outside the box.

To be fair, rage is also something you do all the time, even if it's not granting you a relevant resistance to damage it is still granting you the bonus on grapple/shove and to damage.

And trying to get a benefit from sneak attack isn't also a very meaningful decision, you always wanna sneak attack.

Rogue does require a little bit more decision making on the players part, but its not much, I missed my attack, use bonus to try n sneak, or disengage to avoid retribution?

I don't think fighter is meaningfully less complex than barbarians or rogues.

[djreynolds]

PAM and dual wielders at 5th level can give up their first attack to trip or shove with an athletics check, and if they win it, attack with main attack and BA still with advantage

And if you grab expertise in athletics somehow, it might be strong than the battlemaster's trip. Its just the battlemaster can do this as they attack, and add their weapon damage and superiority die.

At 17th level, with expertise, your athletics score with a 20 in strength is +17, where a battle master's DC is 19 and many creatures can beat that strength saving throw... not many creatures are beating +17 athletics check which could be a possible 37.

[Kane0]

You need to make deeper changes, or else theyll just end up going back to the same attack routines as soon as they use up their few neat tricks. Like taking out extra attack for a bundle of combat tricks each usable twice per short rest, or swapping fighting styles for 4e style moves that dont run dry.
Giving them the feat would be like giving a caster one metamagic and two sorc points per long rest, it isnt going to shake up their playstyle thrn to turn.

[Throne12]

Sure, but nothing about most of what you've said has anything to do with the Fighter class. There are creative player solutions, but not creative fighter solutions.

Fighters provide 1 solution: Hit it until it stops hitting you back.

Yes, you can add feats to provide more versatility, but generally those don't add any complexity or choices, they mostly add passive bonuses to things that you were already planning on doing.

Mage Slayer: Stand next to the Mage.
Polearm Master: Use a Polearm, stand near bad guys, hit bad guys with it.
Great Weapon Master: Hit bad guys with big weapon.
Tough: Try not to die.
Sentinel: Be between bad guys and your squishy friends.

They don't make Fighters any more complex, they just make Fighters better at doing that one thing (that they already do).

Not having Mage Slayer isn't going to convince a Fighter that he shouldn't be standing near the Mage, it just makes him better at doing it.


So there isn't anything wrong with the fighter it does what it Supposed to. Getting to do things other then to hit things is where it sudclass's come into play. If you want to help others out play a proper dragon knight, you want a few spells play EK.

It's how you build your fighter with your choice of race, sudclass, and feats.


I haven't seen any so called fix's for the fighter that hasn't been op.

[Kane0]

I haven't seen any so called fix's for the fighter that hasn't been op.

Citation needed.

[Eric Diaz]

So mechanically and mathematically, Fighters are fine. They do awesome damage, but are, well, a little boring.

I'm playing around with giving them some battle master tricks (the battle master having more of them).

If you are the type to get bored by "I attack with my Sword" every round would this entice you to play a fighter?

I'm assuming you meant "giving Martial Adept to champions".

Well, it wont break anything, if that's what you're asking.

My own "fix" to the champion would be providing additional options for grappling (i.e., expertise in athletics) and criticals. But giving it martial adept for free is not going to make it more powerful than the battlemaster (overall) or any other class.

[Max_Killjoy]

Arguing the fighter has the same level of complexety as the wizard is pretty dishonest.

As an aside, can we not do this thing where we call a disputed position "dishonest"? There's a difference between being wrong, or stating mistaken facts, and actual dishonesty.

:smallsmile:

[GlenSmash!]

Barbarians do have the distinction between dealing with threats that their Rage mitigates (warriors) vs. those it doesn't (elementals). They also have to determine whether or not Reckless Attack is a beneficial choice or not, and how much HP they have, enemies remaining, or the damage the Barbarian can do all ties into that. It's not much more complex than the Fighter, but it at least has choices.

This is part of why I prefer the Barb to the fighter, though I still like fighters. my favorite Fighter was the UA scout Fighter. Even though it only had a few tricks they were all useful.

On a Polearm fighter, I think i would still Shove, Attack, bonus action attack a lot of the time. Hmm I might even make a grappling Spear wielding polearm master.

[Man_Over_Game]

So there isn't anything wrong with the fighter it does what it Supposed to. Getting to do things other then to hit things is where it sudclass's come into play. If you want to help others out play a proper dragon knight, you want a few spells play EK.

It's how you build your fighter with your choice of race, sudclass, and feats.


I haven't seen any so called fix's for the fighter that hasn't been op.

Taking Riposte as an example, which effectively gives you a conditional extra attack compared to my Action Surge replacement:

Action Surge adds an extra attack when you want it, against who you want.
Riposte gives you an extra attack and adds 1d6 to the damage, but you don't determine when you get it or who you attack.

Assuming all the Maneuvers are on the same page as Riposte, I'd consider Action Surge and Riposte to be equally as powerful until level 5 (when Action Surge gives you 2 attacks rather than 1).

In my example, I do suggest adding 2 superiority die, but looking at the numbers, that might be a bit high. Just using the base Martial Adept feat should be fine when compared to Action Surge.

Moving the Action Surge to 6, using the ASI/Feat for only Martial Adept and moving it to level 2 seems like a fair trade to add some versatility while maintaining balance.

Using Riposte as the Maneuver we're basing balance off of vs. Action Surge:

In favor of Martial Adept (Pros):
You get two options to choose from on how to spend your Short Rest resource.
You get an effective feat at level 2.
When you spend your short rest resource for an extra attack, you now add 1d6 to the damage.

In favor of Action Surge@level 2 (Cons):
You cannot choose when to get your extra attack (in regards to Riposte)
You cannot use your Short Rest resource for spellcasting.
The feat you would have gotten at level 6 must now be spent for Martial Adept.
You will have less damage output at level 5 (when you would have Extra Attack, doubled with Action Surge which you wouldn't get until level 6).

[Mjolnirbear]

Any player can grapple or shove. That's hardly an argument that Fighters are more complex than they seem. But despite that I've already expanded on Athletics checks with shoves, throws, locks, and chokeouts, and added a feint ability too.

My problem with Fighters is twofold: lack of resource management, and lack of neat things to do in combat natively. This correlates with a distinct lack of meaningful choices, and no, "Shall I stick him with the slicy thing or the pointy thing" isn't a meaningful choice in 5e. Battle master fixes both these problems. I've seen Homebrew where the battlemaster is simply added to the base fighter chassis, but that seems a bit much, and eliminates the BM as a subclass option.

So I want to add a small resource that allows the occasional significant choice, that the BM just happens to get more of. Frankly, maneuvers are cool enough that it could be incorporated into a universal resource like spells. But since the rogue gets bonus actions and hiding and tons of skills, the monk can run on water and fall 10000 feet and drink poison, and the fighter, dedicated to fighting, can't pull off a parry or trip or riposte unless he specializes in said moves, it seems off to me.

This is all off topic. Instead of "would you be more likely to play a fighter" answers I'm getting "there's nothing wrong with Fighters". And mechanically, you're all correct, but then, I had already said so in the first post. Mechanically, the fighter is fine. But then, so is the beastmaster ranger.

Since I perceive in my games a lack of interest in the fighter, a game where feats are allowed and I've added lots of Homebrew options, my attempt is to address the fighter chassis, not the feat chassis or the Athletics rules or role-playing.

(PS: thank you Man_Over_Game for staying on topic and picking up a shield to join the debate)

[Vogie]

The best way to get these that are fairly unique with the least amount of homebrew, is to use the 4e At-will attacks. For the fighter, these were called "Exploits", and there were about a dozen or so. These were all cantrip-esque moves that augmented the attack action, while also adding some little shenanigans.

They would be needed to updated to 5e standards, but still work fine. If you attacked with a:

"Grappling Strike", for example, you could grab the target with a free hand without giving up an attack, giving you the ability to Grapple as a Reaction as an Attack of opportunity.
"Tide of Iron" allows you to shove a creature 5 ft as part of your attack action, then move into that creatures old space (allowing a fighter to push around the target while still being within AoO range if they try to leave).
And so on.

[Willie the Duck]

So mechanically and mathematically, Fighters are fine. They do awesome damage, but are, well, a little boring.

I'm playing around with giving them some battle master tricks (the battle master having more of them).

If you are the type to get bored by "I attack with my Sword" every round would this entice you to play a fighter?

I came from the era when the most interesting part of combat was what happened before initiative was rolled (i.e. making sure you never engaged in combat except on your terms) or after the morale rolls started happening. So, no, I don't get bored by attacking every round once the fighting starts. But... I recognize not everyone agrees.

Thing is, we already have options for that, we call them Rangers, Paladins, Hexblades, War Clerics, possibly battlemasters depending on your definition. Class is just a set of mechanics, and fighter is what's left after you've pared off all the ones that have the most 'interesting' mechanics (spells in most cases, for D&D). It certainly doesn't have to be, but there should be an option for a relatively mechanically simple class, and I'm unclear on why fighter has to cover more ground than that.

Honestly speaking, it is once combat stops that I wish fighter had more going on under the hood.

[Man_Over_Game]

Any player can grapple or shove. That's hardly an argument that Fighters are more complex than they seem. But despite that I've already expanded on Athletics checks with shoves, throws, locks, and chokeouts, and added a feint ability too.

My problem with Fighters is twofold: lack of resource management, and lack of neat things to do in combat natively. This correlates with a distinct lack of meaningful choices, and no, "Shall I stick him with the slicy thing or the pointy thing" isn't a meaningful choice in 5e. Battle master fixes both these problems. I've seen Homebrew where the battlemaster is simply added to the base fighter chassis, but that seems a bit much, and eliminates the BM as a subclass option.

So I want to add a small resource that allows the occasional significant choice, that the BM just happens to get more of. Frankly, maneuvers are cool enough that it could be incorporated into a universal resource like spells. But since the rogue gets bonus actions and hiding and tons of skills, the monk can run on water and fall 10000 feet and drink poison, and the fighter, dedicated to fighting, can't pull off a parry or trip or riposte unless he specializes in said moves, it seems off to me.

This is all off topic. Instead of "would you be more likely to play a fighter" answers I'm getting "there's nothing wrong with Fighters". And mechanically, you're all correct, but then, I had already said so in the first post. Mechanically, the fighter is fine. But then, so is the beastmaster ranger.

Since I perceive in my games a lack of interest in the fighter, a game where feats are allowed and I've added lots of Homebrew options, my attempt is to address the fighter chassis, not the feat chassis or the Athletics rules or role-playing.

(PS: thank you Man_Over_Game for staying on topic and picking up a shield to join the debate)

Of course!

I feel like even the Champion would have something to gain from this. Adding confirmed damage to a crit when you have an improved crit range just feels cool. Now you're not just crit fishing, but you're crit fishing with more damage and an added status effect.

Samurai could add his advantage to a Lunging Strike, creating this sort of long-range, high accuracy, high damage "Iai-strike" effect that'd be really thematic. Or he could activate his Fighting Spirit to guarantee a hit with Goading Strike and have the extra HP to absorb the incoming damage.

Have a Banneret who regularly uses Commander's Strike to aid his allies, Rally to heal a single ally, or Goading Strike when his friends are low to help add more value to his Second Wind burst.

There's a lot to consider. Right now, people are taking Fighter 2 to take advantage of Action Surge, usually to fuel spells or some other combo, but having a Wizard take two levels into Fighter to cast spells twice as fast doesn't really seem like a Fighter way of doing things. Rather, I'd expect to see a Bard grabbing Fighter 2 to take advantage of Parry, or the Rogue to take advantage of Riposte, or the Barbarian to take advantage of Goading Strike. Action Surge is made to be versatile, but I feel like Martial Adept actually makes things feel like what you'd expect from the term "Fighter".

[Max_Killjoy]

I came from the era when the most interesting part of combat was what happened before initiative was rolled (i.e. making sure you never engaged in combat except on your terms) or after the morale rolls started happening. So, no, I don't get bored by attacking every round once the fighting starts. But... I recognize not everyone agrees.

Thing is, we already have options for that, we call them Rangers, Paladins, Hexblades, War Clerics, possibly battlemasters depending on your definition. Class is just a set of mechanics, and fighter is what's left after you've pared off all the ones that have the most 'interesting' mechanics (spells in most cases, for D&D). It certainly doesn't have to be, but there should be an option for a relatively mechanically simple class, and I'm unclear on why fighter has to cover more ground than that.

Honestly speaking, it is once combat stops that I wish fighter had more going on under the hood.

I think both the in-combat and the out-of-combat concern are legitimate.

"What's left after you pare off everything else" is one of my basic gripes with a lot of RPG systems -- in the effort to give classes (or the equivalent) "unique moves" or "niche protection", a lot of very basic combat moves, tricks, and techniques end up firewalled inside that class.

"Oh, no, you can't try to chokehold the BBEG to keep him from speaking the Word of Doom, only a Martial Artist can use the Chokehold ability!" :smallfurious:

[Willie the Duck]

"What's left after you pare off everything else" is one of my basic gripes with a lot of RPG systems -- in the effort to give classes (or the equivalent) "unique moves" or "niche protection", a lot of very basic combat moves, tricks, and techniques end up firewalled inside that class.

"Oh, no, you can't try to chokehold the BBEG to keep him from speaking the Word of Doom, only a Martial Artist can use the Chokehold ability!" :smallfurious:

I think that's a general problem I have with the WotC-era trend of gating abilities in general. But I still think there should be a 'simple in combat class' (for whatever value of simple we agree upon), alongside more complex fighting options.

[Man_Over_Game]

I think both the in-combat and the out-of-combat concern are legitimate.

"What's left after you pare off everything else" is one of my basic gripes with a lot of RPG systems -- in the effort to give classes (or the equivalent) "unique moves" or "niche protection", a lot of very basic combat moves, tricks, and techniques end up firewalled inside that class.

"Oh, no, you can't try to chokehold the BBEG to keep him from speaking the Word of Doom, only a Martial Artist can use the Chokehold ability!" :smallfurious:

In my own games, I try to allow it to happen, as long as it's strictly worse than what the other class can do.

The Thief, for example, can do the Use an Object event as a bonus action. This implies that every other instance of Use an Object is intended to be worse than that (uses an Action). No exceptions.

Another example could be the Disarming Maneuver from the Battlemaster. The Battlemaster spends his resource to do it, which gains some damage to his attack and disarms on a failed DC. For anyone else, I'd probably have you half damage for your attack for the same thing and not apply your proficiency to the saving throw. This would mean the Battlemaster deals 8 more damage and is about 25% more likely to land the disarm than you are, which seems like a good enough tradeoff.


Rather, make it so that anyone can do the Chokehold maneuver, but the Monk does it way better than you.

[Throne12]

I have to say firstly there is nothing wrong with the fighter as now. Secondly just take the dame feat at 4th lv or 6th if you want riposte, trip or better commander strike. Thirdly I would get rid of the asi at 6th have a ability based off your fighting style choice.

Archery: as a bonus action you can take a disengage action but you can only move half your movement.

Defense: as a bonus action you become a unmovable wall. You cant be knocked prone or be moved .

Dueling: fancy foot work. As a bonus action you can take the dodge action but only for the next attack .

Great weapon fighting: cleave. If you miss a attack on a enemy you can use your bonus action to make a attack on a enemy with in range of your original target.

Protection: when you use your fighting style to protect a ally you instead can jump in the way of the attack and take the damages instead.

Two weapon fighting: I dont got anything for this one.

[Rukelnikov]

As an aside, can we not do this thing where we call a disputed position "dishonest"? There's a difference between being wrong, or stating mistaken facts, and actual dishonesty.

:smallsmile:

Sorry, I didn't want to use the term wrong, because that would require me prooving why it is wrong. And I always had the impression its universally accepted that full spellcasters are the most complex classes.

Maybe dishonest was too offensive of a term, but I didn't know what other word to use.

[qube]

The main problem I have with these type of discussions is this:


Sure, but nothing about most of what you've said has anything to do with the Fighter class. There are creative player solutions, but not creative fighter solutions.

... in that, this is absolutely not relevant at all. A fighter doesn't become magically more fun to play if the wizard, rogue and cleric are no longer able to grapple, and he's the only one able to do so (general/player solution vs fighter solution)

In the end, to the question "can the fighter do only one thing in combat", the answer is "no, and this applies to all characters". That most of the reasons aren't specific to the fighter class themselves ... well ... not everyone cares about that.

--- --- --- ---

Round 1. Action Surge. Attack Attack.
Round 2. Attack.
Round 3. I am hurt. Second Wind. Attack.
Round 4. Attack. You are dead.


There you go. I wrote you a Fighter script. It should work for the next 20 levels.

Two days ago, me as a fighter
round 1: charge through the enemy line (multiple AoOs - but towering AC & HAM allow me to take it like a BOSS), using action to dash, and my protection fighting style to get the low init ganked bard out of trouble
round 2: attack some mooks.
round 3: while my buddy, the PAM Eldrich Knight, holds the line, I run to the backline where our cleric has been dropped by a crit arrow & give 'm a potion. (again, protection fighting style to keep 'm safe)
round 4: the cleric has cast hold person. I second wind, move, and action surge double attack

Yes, fighters are massively good at attacking. But they get other things. Those are not mandatory, but if you ignore those, you're stuck in a self forfilling profecy
yes, you can pick a boring +1 AC or +2 damage fighting style ... but you're not forced to do so.
yes, you can pick the no-resource managing champion over, for example, eldrich knight ... but you're not forced to do so
yes, you can ignore tactical combat and keep swinging your sword ... but you're not forced to do so
yes, you can take band statboost over an ability granting feat like shield mastery ... but you're not forced to do so

All and all, to state the very simple truth, in that, if you chose to play a boring build and play it in a boring fasion, and you find that boring? ... well, that problem is a PBCAK.
Problem between chair and keyboard character sheet

[Max_Killjoy]

Sorry, I didn't want to use the term wrong, because that would require me prooving why it is wrong. And I always had the impression its universally accepted that full spellcasters are the most complex classes.

Maybe dishonest was too offensive of a term, but I didn't know what other word to use.

I'd reserve "dishonest" strictly for when you think the other person is deliberately lying.

If you think they're making a mistake or reading something wrong, perhaps "mistaken".

[Rukelnikov]

I'd reserve "dishonest" strictly for when you think the other person is deliberately lying.

If you think they're making a mistake or reading something wrong, perhaps "mistaken".

I thought he knew thats not the case but said it anyways to try to support a point, dishonest was the only term that came to mind, but there should be a more polite way of expressing it.

[Max_Killjoy]

I thought he knew thats not the case but said it anyways to try to support a point, dishonest was the only term that came to mind, but there should be a more polite way of expressing it.

Also, sorry if I seemed to single you out, that wasn't the point... we just seem to be getting a LOT of "if you don't agree with me you're being dishonest" flak flying around lately.

[RSP]

I find it interesting that the idea to fix a fighter only having one option during combat, is to take away its ability to choose from many options of feats, that could add more options, and force it into taking one option.

Aren’t you, in effect, limiting the choices a Player can make by forcing it to chose Martial Adept as it’s 6th level ASI, essentially?

[Rukelnikov]

Also, sorry if I seemed to single you out, that wasn't the point... we just seem to be getting a LOT of "if you don't agree with me you're being dishonest" flak flying around lately.

No offesnse taken, I assume most of us want to have the most pleasing enviroment possible in the forums, and a big part of that is managing the level of toxicity in the threads.

[JNAProductions]

So, there's a new player.

They're an older player, and don't want to deal with a lot of mental overhead. All they want to do is be a big, burly dude in armor, swing their sword, and kick some butt.

Do I direct them to...

The Paladin? No, it has spells and a lot of resource management.
The Ranger? Same deal, and not as much armor.
The Barbarian? Less resources to manage, but no heavy armor, and we're trying to minimize overhead.
The Fighter? Good pick-but which subclass is best?

The EK? No, spells.
The Battlemaster? No, maneuvers are too much overhead.
The Champion? Perfect! There are literally only two unique resources to manage-Action Surge and Second Wind (and Second Wind is really simple to use), and the rest is passive boosts.

This is not a hypothetical, by the way. Last big campaign I was a part of had this guy. He was cool, and even invested in the game, but he just did NOT have a head for mechanics. So, he played a Champion Fighter and had a great time.

I 100% understand people who say "The Champion is too simple for me and my tastes," but that simplicity is FANTASTIC for newer players or those who just don't have a good head for the rules.

If you think Battlemaster or EK are the most fun, that's great-play them! But don't say that they're universally BETTER for a player.

[Man_Over_Game]

So, there's a new player.

They're an older player, and don't want to deal with a lot of mental overhead. All they want to do is be a big, burly dude in armor, swing their sword, and kick some butt.

Do I direct them to...

The Paladin? No, it has spells and a lot of resource management.
The Ranger? Same deal, and not as much armor.
The Barbarian? Less resources to manage, but no heavy armor, and we're trying to minimize overhead.
The Fighter? Good pick-but which subclass is best?

The EK? No, spells.
The Battlemaster? No, maneuvers are too much overhead.
The Champion? Perfect! There are literally only two unique resources to manage-Action Surge and Second Wind (and Second Wind is really simple to use), and the rest is passive boosts.

This is not a hypothetical, by the way. Last big campaign I was a part of had this guy. He was cool, and even invested in the game, but he just did NOT have a head for mechanics. So, he played a Champion Fighter and had a great time.

I 100% understand people who say "The Champion is too simple for me and my tastes," but that simplicity is FANTASTIC for newer players or those who just don't have a good head for the rules.

If you think Battlemaster or EK are the most fun, that's great-play them! But don't say that they're universally BETTER for a player.


So mechanically and mathematically, Fighters are fine. They do awesome damage, but are, well, a little boring.

I'm playing around with giving them some battle master tricks (the battle master having more of them).

If you are the type to get bored by "I attack with my Sword" every round would this entice you to play a fighter?

I think there's a bit of a point that a lot of people missing. The OP isn't saying that Fighters are bad and need to change, he saying he wants them to change in his image. Fighters are a bit more boring than the other classes, and in cases like yours, that's the best thing possible. I don't think anyone here is going to tell your friend that they couldn't have the base Fighter because you made a homebrew change to Fighters and how complicated they are.

Take the Revised Ranger, as an option. If the Revised Ranger was available, I don't think anyone would complain if someone still asked for the base Ranger instead (unless that would result in two different Ranger classes at the table).

--------------------

The OP is asking a roll-call as to who would like a more complex Fighter, not saying that the Superiority Die Fighter is Superior.

[JNAProductions]

I think there's a bit of a point that a lot of people missing. The OP isn't saying that Fighters are bad and need to change, he saying he wants them to change in his image. Fighters are a bit more boring than the other classes, and in cases like yours, that's the best thing possible. I don't think anyone here is going to tell your friend that they couldn't have the base Fighter because you made a homebrew change to Fighters and how complicated they are.

Take the Revised Ranger, as an option. If the Revised Ranger was available, I don't think anyone would complain if someone still asked for the base Ranger instead (unless that would result in two different Ranger classes at the table).

--------------------

The OP is asking a roll-call as to who would like a more complex Fighter, not saying that the Superiority Die Fighter is Superior.

I guess my question is, to the OP:

Why change the core Fighter class? Making Martial Adept better would be fine-that feat ain't great. Making a new subclass would be fine. Making a new base class that's more complex than the Fighter is fine.

But why change the Fighter itself?

[xroads]

If you are the type to get bored by "I attack with my Sword" every round would this entice you to play a fighter?

Even just swinging your sword every round can be much more entertaining if you add a little cinematic flair.

Instead of "I attack with my sword.", how about...


"I spin Dragon's Tooth around my head and impale it into the shoulder blade of my foe."
Or "Suddenly I drop to one knee and slice his femoral artery."
Or "My opponent missed with his thrust. I'll roll inside his arc and shank him."

[Mjolnirbear]

I find it interesting that the idea to fix a fighter only having one option during combat, is to take away its ability to choose from many options of feats, that could add more options, and force it into taking one option.

Aren’t you, in effect, limiting the choices a Player can make by forcing it to chose Martial Adept as it’s 6th level ASI, essentially?

I'm doing no such thing, unless I choose to invoke Man_Over_Game's proposition. My plan was to give them Martial Adept outright, or some iteration thereof (perhaps a gradual one or two dice over 20 levels and a couple choices for maneuvers. They don't need it mathematically, because they're just fine on damage. But they're not fine on choices to make during combat. One or two attacks per short rest being special, doing one more die of damage, seems hardly game breaking.

(To be clear I'm aware Fighters have precious little to do outside of combat too, aside from role-play. That's a topic for another day).

[Mjolnirbear]

Even just swinging your sword every round can be much more entertaining if you add a little cinematic flair.

Instead of "I attack with my sword.", how about...


"I spin Dragon's Tooth around my head and impale it into the shoulder blade of my foe."
Or "Suddenly I drop to one knee and slice his femoral artery."
Or "My opponent missed with his thrust. I'll roll inside his arc and shank him."


So the answer to the question you quoted is no?

Any action can be 'flaired'. Any class can do so and I already encourage it. Flair is not actually a meaningful choice though

[Mjolnirbear]

I guess my question is, to the OP:

Why change the core Fighter class? Making Martial Adept better would be fine-that feat ain't great. Making a new subclass would be fine. Making a new base class that's more complex than the Fighter is fine.

But why change the Fighter itself?

I already answered it. In my game, with extra fighter subclasses and extra grappling options and even an extra feat at first level, I've yet to see a player play a fighter. The universal response among my players when asked why is that they're boring.

Hence the question being if you think Fighters are boring would this tempt you to play one.

Its frankly exasperating that a simple opinion poll is being turned into a 'defend-the-fighter' thread. Guys. The fighter is fine mechanically. Strong even. But like the beastmaster, lacking thematically, at least among my players. You don't need to defend the fighter. If fighter is your favourite class then this thread isn't for you.

[Mjolnirbear]

The best way to get these that are fairly unique with the least amount of homebrew, is to use the 4e At-will attacks. For the fighter, these were called "Exploits", and there were about a dozen or so. These were all cantrip-esque moves that augmented the attack action, while also adding some little shenanigans.

They would be needed to updated to 5e standards, but still work fine. If you attacked with a:

"Grappling Strike", for example, you could grab the target with a free hand without giving up an attack, giving you the ability to Grapple as a Reaction as an Attack of opportunity.
"Tide of Iron" allows you to shove a creature 5 ft as part of your attack action, then move into that creatures old space (allowing a fighter to push around the target while still being within AoO range if they try to leave).
And so on.

How are these different in theme or function than maneuvers?

[JNAProductions]

I already answered it. In my game, with extra fighter subclasses and extra grappling options and even an extra feat at first level, I've yet to see a player play a fighter. The universal response among my players when asked why is that they're boring.

Hence the question being if you think Fighters are boring would this tempt you to play one.

Its frankly exasperating that a simple opinion poll is being turned into a 'defend-the-fighter' thread. Guys. The fighter is fine mechanically. Strong even. But like the beastmaster, lacking thematically, at least among my players. You don't need to defend the fighter. If fighter is your favourite class then this thread isn't for you.

And why is that an issue?

If no one at your table likes the Fighter... Then you don't have Fighters at your table. The Fighter is not a person-it's not gonna get offended if no one picks it.

To put it another way, what DO your players play?

[Man_Over_Game]

You *could* look into the Pain homebrew in my signature, thinking about it. It effectively lets players afflict enemies with a temporary Exhaustion mechanic with their attacks, for those times when you want to cripple an enemy's ability to assault you vs. going for a lethal blow.

A few other things you could do:


Update the weapons list to allow different playstyles with different weapons, then introduce some kind of penalty (Opportunity Attacks?) to changing weapons that Fighters are immune to. Effectively making them all weaponmasters
Add some sort of special maneuvers mechanics that everyone has access to, but favors those with multiple attacks (perhaps the DC is per-hit, not based on damage).
Magical weapons that do not increase damage, but rather change to fit multple niches (Sword+Shield to TWF to polearm to returning javelin, etc)
Introduce scenarios that require multiple actions on something in the environment (to change the potential uses of Action Surge).

[Mjolnirbear]

And why is that an issue?

If no one at your table likes the Fighter... Then you don't have Fighters at your table. The Fighter is not a person-it's not gonna get offended if no one picks it.

To put it another way, what DO your players play?

If no one likes playing Fighters, that's one thing. If they'd like to play but find it boring, that's another.

Why not just answer my question? I'm not asking whether the fighter sucks. I'm not asking what are your favourite things to make the fighter fun. It's a very simple question, and some of the most engaged and otherwise thoughtful people in this forum are dancing around it like ribbons on a maypole.

[JNAProductions]

So the question is, correct me if I'm wrong, Would the fighter be more appealing if they all had maneuvers, with the Battlemaster still having the most?

And the only I can give is "sometimes". Sometimes, I want a more complex class. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I want complexity, but I'm playing gestalt, so I want a more passive side. Sometimes sometimes sometimes.

[Man_Over_Game]

And why is that an issue?

If no one at your table likes the Fighter... Then you don't have Fighters at your table. The Fighter is not a person-it's not gonna get offended if no one picks it.

To put it another way, what DO your players play?

To me, that comes off as excluding a lot of content. That's 1/12 of the available classes.

If someone said that Rogues couldn't be in a campaign, that'd be really dramatic. I'd probably just walk out.

It might not be a problem at your tables, but it's definitely a problem to me.

I've played an Ancestral Guardian up to level 7. I hated it. It was super dull, and I'll never play a Barbarian again. That isn't to say that I don't like the Barbarian concepts; I love the idea of the Storm Herald shredding enemies while being near them, or jumping around as a Tiger Totem Barbarian, but there's just nothing to do with it. Get close, punch things, don't die, Reckless when you're only going to get punched once. That's the Barbarian.

And if Barbarian is out, and Fighter isn't much better, I'm kinda forced into being a Charismatic, devout Paladin if I have any desire to be a frontlining defender that's capable of doing more than just hitting something really hard.

[qube]

I already answered it. In my game, with extra fighter subclasses and extra grappling options and even an extra feat at first level, I've yet to see a player play a fighter. The universal response among my players when asked why is that they're boring.

Hence the question being if you think Fighters are boring would this tempt you to play one.

Its frankly exasperating that a simple opinion poll is being turned into a 'defend-the-fighter' thread. Guys. The fighter is fine mechanically. Strong even. But like the beastmaster, lacking thematically, at least among my players. You don't need to defend the fighter. If fighter is your favourite class then this thread isn't for you. Ever considered the idea that they don't have a problem with the class mechanically - but with the fighter flavor?

The fighter, mechanically, is anything but boring: An eldirch knight got options up the wazoo. So how do you justify giving 'm even more options to be logical path?

[JNAProductions]

To me, that comes off as excluding a lot of content. That's 1/12 of the available classes.

If someone said that Rogues couldn't be in a campaign, that'd be really dramatic. I'd probably just walk out.

It might not be a problem at your tables, but it's definitely a problem to me.

I've played an Ancestral Guardian up to level 7. I hated it. It was super dull, and I'll never play a Barbarian again. That isn't to say that I don't like the Barbarian concepts; I love the idea of the Storm Herald shredding enemies while being near them, or jumping around as a Tiger Totem Barbarian, but there's just nothing to do with it.

And if Barbarian is out, and Fighter isn't much better, I'm kinda forced into being a Charismatic, devout Paladin if I have any desire to be a frontlining defender that's capable of doing more than just hitting something really hard.

I was not saying "Ban Fighters!" I was saying "If no one likes Fighters, the only thing of consequence is that you don't have players playing Fighters."

And if you want to be frontline defender, Clerics can pull off the job pretty well with PLENTY of options.

Or there's a metric poopton of homebrew (a decent chunk of which is good!) here on the playground, of which there's guaranteed to be some frontliners. (I remember, I think it was called the Bone Knight or something, and it was super cool.)

[Man_Over_Game]

Ever considered the idea that they don't have a problem with the class mechanically - but with the fighter flavor?

The fighter, mechanically, is anything but boring: An eldirch knight got options up the wazoo. So how do you justify giving 'm even more options to be logical path?

The Ranger has some of the most flavorful subclasses in the game. Being the only subclass with a full-fledged companion? Turning invisible in the dark? Teleporting yourself and your attacks? Very cool, very thematic and very unique.

And yet, the Ranger is still considered the crappiest of the base classes. So much so that it's been revised twice.

The subclasses don't always define the chassis. The paint job doesn't always make the car.

[Man_Over_Game]

Or there's a metric poopton of homebrew (a decent chunk of which is good!) here on the playground, of which there's guaranteed to be some frontliners. (I remember, I think it was called the Bone Knight or something, and it was super cool.)

But why is that any better than what the OP is recommending? In any instance where homebrew is considered, why is this proposed change any worse than someone else's homebrewed class?

[JNAProductions]

But why is that any better than what the OP is recommending? In any instance where homebrew is considered, why is this proposed change any worse than someone else's homebrewed class?

I feel like, if you have issues with the Fighter (you in the general sense) you might as well just make something new, and not try to patch up an existing thing.

And, moreover, without dropping other things from the Fighter, just plain adding to it is gonna make it more powerful. While I don't consider the Fighter the most powerful class, nor do I believe balance in 5E is so fragile that it can't stand a little adjustment... I feel like Wizards of the Coast got balance pretty well this time around, so I don't see much of a reason to futz with it for one class and not others.

[Man_Over_Game]

I feel like, if you have issues with the Fighter (you in the general sense) you might as well just make something new, and not try to patch up an existing thing.

And, moreover, without dropping other things from the Fighter, just plain adding to it is gonna make it more powerful. While I don't consider the Fighter the most powerful class, nor do I believe balance in 5E is so fragile that it can't stand a little adjustment... I feel like Wizards of the Coast got balance pretty well this time around, so I don't see much of a reason to futz with it for one class and not others.

But to me, that seems less balanced than adding a minor tweak to the Fighter.

With a homebrew, you're dealing with a Random Number Generator, between the scale of 1-10, but if a Fighter is around a 4 and you add 1d4 to it, you'll still probably fall a lot closer in line than someone else's homebrew.

I mean, consider the fact that Fighters do just fine in combat but suck out of it. Maybe they deserve to be a little bit better at Fighting, you know?

[JNAProductions]

But to me, that seems less balanced than adding a minor tweak to the Fighter.

With a homebrew, you're dealing with a Random Number Generator, between the scale of 1-10, but if a Fighter is around a 4 and you add 1d4 to it, you'll still probably fall a lot closer in line than someone else's homebrew.

I mean, consider the fact that Fighters do just fine in combat but suck out of it. Maybe they deserve to be a little bit better at Fighting, you know?

Not really? You have reference-namely, every other class. So unless you're doing something so off the wall that there's no possible base of comparison in existing classes, you can get at least a rough idea of balance.

[Man_Over_Game]

Not really? You have reference-namely, every other class. So unless you're doing something so off the wall that there's no possible base of comparison in existing classes, you can get at least a rough idea of balance.

I still feel like it'd be easier stay within the balance threshold using what's already there rather than creating something new.

[qube]

The Ranger has some of the most flavorful subclasses in the game. Being the only subclass with a full-fledged companion? Turning invisible in the dark? Teleporting yourself and your attacks? Very cool, very thematic and very unique.

And yet, the Ranger is still considered the crappiest of the base classes. So much so that it's been revised twice.

The subclasses don't always define the chassis. The paint job doesn't always make the car.quite abstract & philosophial - but not an answer to the question.

Elditch knight is the subclass of the fighter that that basically screams: "hey, you wnat options? there, have a trucload of 'm. "

Yet - his players still don't take the fighter - not even the eldritch knight - not even the "fighter with options".


Ergo, why would giving 'm even more options be the right path? when they consider even the "fighter with options" to be boring

[JNAProductions]

I still feel like it'd be easier stay within the balance threshold using what's already there rather than creating something new.

But that's if you're CHANGING. What's being talked about is ADDING.

In a hypothetical system, where everything is balanced exactly to, say, 100, adding something without taking anything away is DEFINITELY going to result in imbalance.

Now, I don't think 5E is that precise with its balance, but the point is, the classes are reasonably balanced at the moment. Adding to something without taking anything away is 100% buff, 0% nerf, resulting in a stronger class.

[Man_Over_Game]

quite abstract & philosophial - but not an answer to the question.

Elditch knight is the subclass of the fighter that that basically screams: "hey, you wnat options? there, have a trucload of 'm. "

Yet - his players still don't take the fighter - not even the eldritch knight - not even the "fighter with options".


Ergo, why would giving 'm even more options be the right path? when they consider even the "fighter with options" to be boring

Partially, I think it's the same reason people don't play the Necromancer. The first few levels are what a lot of people experience, and sometimes that's enough to turn someone off.

I think the other half is the fact that, while the Eldritch Knight has options in comparison to every other Fighter, it doesn't have *that* many options. It has fewer than the Hexblade, and roughly as durable. It has fewer than the Arcane Trickster. It has fewer than any Cleric. Compare it to pretty much any 1/3 or full melee caster on a list of simple vs. complex, and I'd probably say it's one of the simplest, and this is probably the most complicated of a Fighter you can get.

I mean, in the end, the Eldritch Knight gives you a long ranged attack, a defensive spell or two, and maybe some self-buff you really like but don't actually think about. Once the spell slots run out (and you get about 1 every 1-2 levels), you're about as complex as anyone with a Longbow.

[Hadoken]

I don't think fighters need an overhaul since players desiring a more complex array of choices can take the Battle Master or Eldritch Knight subclasses, but if you were committed to complicating fighters, I would suggest that you do something more interesting than just giving away what makes the Battle Master unique.

Wild Idea: get rid of extra attack from all classes.

Replace it with weapon mastery. Go through the martial weapons and give them each a set of three mastery abilities that unlock in place of the extra attack ability. Here's a random, definitely not balanced, out of my butt example:

Greatsword Adept: Your reach with greatswords is 10 feet.
Greatsword Expert: When you make an attack against a creature, you can make a bonus action attack against another creature within five feet of the original creature.
Greatsword Master: When you take the attack action, you can choose to make one attack against every creature within reach of your greatsword. Your AC is 10 until the beginning of your next turn.

With this system, instead of getting extra attacks, martial classes would get Martial Adept, Expert, or Master at the appropriate levels, unlocking a huge array of weapon abilities for fighters and a smaller set of choices for the other martials.

One other change you might make in this system is to limit how many weapon proficiencies each martial class gets. Maybe they get all simple weapons and at first level 3 martial weapons of their choice, picking up a new weapon proficiency each time they reach Adept, Expert, or Master as they level up. If you did this, you could give the champion proficiency in all martial weapons because I think that would be cool.

[djreynolds]

The classes were never created to be equal.
That's okay.

And fortunately or unfortunately, multiclassing is easy.

Look at paladin, they can smite before they ever take an oath. An eldritch knight can take 2 levels of paladin and now they can smite... just for 13 in strength and charisma. Easy.

A fighter could take 2 levels of barbarian, and yes reckless attack in full plate. No rage needed to recklessly attack. A battlemaster, need never trip again. GWM with advantage and precision.... never miss.

Do you feel the hex blade is OP? Don't play one. But 12th level is a long ways away, you may never lifedrinker and get to add charisma twice for damage.

It unfortunate the classes are not equal, but I see a ton of rangers and fighters played. I see a ton of TWF. I don't know why?

5E got rid of shield masters shove first because... they found it cheesy... and then said... now hexblade... this a well balanced fair class... no cheese.

My advice when playing a fighter... be prepared to multiclass into something other than barbarian. A few levels in another class does NOT mean you are no longer a fighter.
Means you are a survivor and adapted

[Rukelnikov]

I don't think fighters need an overhaul since players desiring a more complex array of choices can take the Battle Master or Eldritch Knight subclasses, but if you were committed to complicating fighters, I would suggest that you do something more interesting than just giving away what makes the Battle Master unique.

Wild Idea: get rid of extra attack from all classes.

Replace it with weapon mastery. Go through the martial weapons and give them each a set of three mastery abilities that unlock in place of the extra attack ability. Here's a random, definitely not balanced, out of my butt example:

Greatsword Adept: Your reach with greatswords is 10 feet.
Greatsword Expert: When you make an attack against a creature, you can make a bonus action attack against another creature within five feet of the original creature.
Greatsword Master: When you take the attack action, you can choose to make one attack against every creature within reach of your greatsword. Your AC is 10 until the beginning of your next turn.

With this system, instead of getting extra attacks, martial classes would get Martial Adept, Expert, or Master at the appropriate levels, unlocking a huge array of weapon abilities for fighters and a smaller set of choices for the other martials.

One other change you might make in this system is to limit how many weapon proficiencies each martial class gets. Maybe they get all simple weapons and at first level 3 martial weapons of their choice, picking up a new weapon proficiency each time they reach Adept, Expert, or Master as they level up. If you did this, you could give the champion proficiency in all martial weapons because I think that would be cool.

As someone else has suggested, giving advanced levels of style mastery to the fighter does sound like a cool idea. However, banning something from everyone else so that the fighter feels more special, is not something very cool to do.

[JBPuffin]

I would play a fighter any day of the week, so I’d be alright with it being buffed. No skin off my teeth - I already play spellcasters, what’s a little more complexity to martial classes gonna do to stop me? Honestly, though, if I’m playing a fighter, it’s because I want to do something with a concept best suited for out-of-combat role play anyway; the fighting is what would get me between opportunities to be my character, not the other way around.

[Rukelnikov]

OP sounds to me like what you are looking for is a Swordsage, I found this homebrewed one, at a glance it has some things that may need lil fixes, but its overall ok, leaning towards powerful, but mitigated by the pretty strange fact that it has no "high" saves (Str and Int).

OOPS forgot link: https://merovia.obsidianportal.com/wikis/swordsage

[qube]

Partially, I think it's the same reason people don't play the Necromancer. The first few levels are what a lot of people experience, and sometimes that's enough to turn someone off.

I mean, in the end, the Eldritch Knight gives you a long ranged attack, a defensive spell or two, and maybe some self-buff you really like but don't actually think about. Once the spell slots run out (and you get about 1 every 1-2 levels), you're about as complex as anyone with a Longbow.Yeah, see, that sound A LOT like you trying to downplay "a truckload of options".

Even at lvl 3, he gets 2 cantrips and 3 spells. That's 5 additional options. That's 5 additionals things he can do aside from "he attac". Straight up options. Not 'I'm gonna be creative with weapon bond" or something.

So the question still remains: If 5 additional options don't do it for his players ... I don't see changing it to 6 fixing the problem.

(and if you give too much options, you'll either have to make 'm meaningless ones or throw game balance out of the game. Fighters are already quite good at what they do. Making them better without making 'm worse obviously advocates breaking them)


So mechanically and mathematically, Fighters are fine. They do awesome damage, but are, well, a little boring.

I'm playing around with giving them some battle master tricks (the battle master having more of them).

If you are the type to get bored by "I attack with my Sword" every round would this entice you to play a fighter?

I can't believe I need to say this again! Fighters are fine and don't need defending. This is an opinion poll and my target respondents are those who already find the class boring. If this is not you please restrain your need to tell me the fighter doesn't need fixing. Thank you The problem, Mjolnirbear is that you're not asking the right question.

It would be like asking :


If you are the type to get bored by "I cast Eldritch blast" every round would this entice you to play a warlock?

The fighter (esp. the eldritch knight) is more then "I attack with my Sword". Just like the warlock is more then eldritch blast.

If your players gets bored with doing the same thing over and over again (be it EB or attack), they either need to play the class differently, of play a class that doesn't veer on one style (as clearly they are incapable of resisting the inticement to only do the thing the class veers toward).

But trying to "fix" the fighter so it no longers veers toward fighting ... isn't going to end up good. That will either result in an OP class that can do too much, a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none class, or, if you're lucky and put a lot of effort in it ... best case senario? a nihilist paladin.

[RSP]

I'm doing no such thing, unless I choose to invoke Man_Over_Game's proposition. My plan was to give them Martial Adept outright, or some iteration thereof (perhaps a gradual one or two dice over 20 levels and a couple choices for maneuvers. They don't need it mathematically, because they're just fine on damage. But they're not fine on choices to make during combat. One or two attacks per short rest being special, doing one more die of damage, seems hardly game breaking.

(To be clear I'm aware Fighters have precious little to do outside of combat too, aside from role-play. That's a topic for another day).

Gotcha: yeah it looks like I was referencing M.O.G.’s follow on post.

[RSP]

If no one likes playing Fighters, that's one thing. If they'd like to play but find it boring, that's another.

Why not just answer my question? I'm not asking whether the fighter sucks. I'm not asking what are your favourite things to make the fighter fun. It's a very simple question, and some of the most engaged and otherwise thoughtful people in this forum are dancing around it like ribbons on a maypole.

I’d say my answer to this is every class has downsides, or weaknesses; just like they all have strengths. If a Player says, “I’d love to play an EK, if only they had maneuvers.” And you then say “Okay!” Are you similarly going to appease the Bladesinger who wants a higher HD? A warlock who wants an extra spell slot per SR? A full caster Paladin for more smites? (Obviously some of these are more powerful than other but the point remains - once you start offering increases to one class/player, why not with others?

Further, when that Player says “I’d really love to play a fighter, but they seem boring” ask themwhat that means: do they want to play someone who fights a lot? Or do they like the mechanical set up of the class but want it to do more (see paragraph one for why I dislike this)?

[Skylivedk]

So mechanically and mathematically, Fighters are fine. They do awesome damage, but are, well, a little boring.

I'm playing around with giving them some battle master tricks (the battle master having more of them).

If you are the type to get bored by "I attack with my Sword" every round would this entice you to play a fighter?

I can't believe I need to say this again! Fighters are fine and don't need defending. This is an opinion poll and my target respondents are those who already find the class boring. If this is not you please restrain your need to tell me the fighter doesn't need fixing. Thank you

I'm sorry to see you get attacked by people not interested in your question.

I wholeheartedly agree. Basically all martial combat gets boring very quickly. Barbarians and Champions run ahead in the face of a limp combat experience (if you enjoy them, more power to you), but even my hexblade feels pretty one dimensional very quickly.

If I could find a good way to balance it, I'd give everyone with martial weapon proficiency more attack options. I'm picking my brain about how to do so... Maybe they can attack without proficiency to do maneuvers?

ADDED:
Here's some examples of attacks, I might give any class that has the extra attack option. The DC is 8+attack modifier+proficiency.

You forgoe your proficiency bonus to hit to do one of the following:
- Go for The Eyes Boo (Dex save: blind for 1 round)
- Below the Belt: con saves: disadvantage on skill checks for 1 round
- Bees Knees: Str/Dex(?)Save: 1/2 movement speed for 1 round.

Furthermore, at level five they could use any of the weapon feats from here freely without the passive modifiers... And sword probably needs something more interesting:
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/feats

Before the vicious crowd of vanilla 5e descend upon me: please remember we have different ideas of fun. Ie. The Champion is not fun at my tables and is currently parked in our subclass junkyard of "To Be Improved" alongside the Frenzy Barbarian. Actually, it has been picked apart as feat options. A bit like how we've dismantled the Thief and given most of its options to all rogues, so they all can have fast hands for a more Batman rogue feel. If you're already gasping in horror, consider that we've also chopped all ASI/feats in two and give them every second level.

I know it's power creep. I don't mind. It's a long crawl. I'm a DM, if I so wish, I can have SpongeBob enter the fray with 6 attacks, +50 to hit, critting on everything from 1-20 and throwing quickened Wish every round. Challenging my players is not a problem.

[Shuruke]

To make fighter less boring you can jist go with the rule of whatever a battle master can do any fighter can do by forgoing damage or etc. You can make a tripping attack but the battle master does damage doing it. You can do riposte but it costs your bonus action the previous turn to ready it. You can do menacing strike but you don't deal damage.

Instead just make it so the damage they roll if they hit is the dc for the save and wallah.

This could allow them to do fun things with all their extra attack or a battle master really wanting to trip something doubling down

[Max_Killjoy]

To make fighter less boring you can jist go with the rule of whatever a battle master can do any fighter can do by forgoing damage or etc. You can make a tripping attack but the battle master does damage doing it. You can do riposte but it costs your bonus action the previous turn to ready it. You can do menacing strike but you don't deal damage.

Instead just make it so the damage they roll if they hit is the dc for the save and wallah.

This could allow them to do fun things with all their extra attack or a battle master really wanting to trip something doubling down


In general, combat maneuvers should be part of a game's basic rules, and then if you have a "class" that's supposed to be good at maneuvers and whatnot, they get bonuses or special add-ons.

[Shuruke]

In general, combat maneuvers should be part of a game's basic rules, and then if you have a "class" that's supposed to be good at maneuvers and whatnot, they get bonuses or special add-ons.

Exactly jist use the maneuvers and instead of it being damage it creates the dc for the save.

For something like parry and riposte have it be a bonus action to trigger the stance like the tunnel fighter thing. Still uses reaction.

Then the battle master who has trained more in x maneuvers does damage on the hit that he can forgo to force a second save or impose disadvantage.

In my campaigns we treat maneuvers like shove action just using different skills
Fainting is forgoing an attack for deception check to get advantage on next attack

Goading is performance, persuasion
Etc

[qube]

In general, combat maneuvers should be part of a game's basic rules, and then if you have a "class" that's supposed to be good at maneuvers and whatnot, they get bonuses or special add-ons.Do note that things such as
tripping an opponent
shoving an opponent
Fainting/distracting an opponent
are already part of the games basic rules. and
Goading your opponent is the protection fighting style.
parry is a feat
Rally is basically a feat (inspiring leader)
(and you know what fighters have a ton of? feats).

Not sure what combat manouvres you'd want part of the basic set.
Riposte? God, Rogues would be OP.
Disarming? you'd have to revise your entire CR system if each character can disarm (Balor? suddenly not that much of a challenge after the barbarian took away greatsword & whip)

[JoeJ]

Disarming? you'd have to revise your entire CR system if each character can disarm (Balor? suddenly not that much of a challenge after the barbarian took away greatsword & whip)
[/list]

I hate to break it to you, but every character can already disarm. And mark, and climb onto a larger creature, and overrun, and shove aside, and tumble through an enemy's space.

[Kadesh]

Remove Battle Master from the game. Give all Fighters Maneuvers. Choose specific Maneuvers to gate behind a level.

Done.

[qube]

I hate to break it to you, but every character can already disarm. Do note, that it's stated in the section that starts with "This section provides new action options for combat. They can be added as a group or individually to your game". Meaning you can do so, if your DM allows this rule. And, just like the option of giving dragons free spells, if you change things, this can have an effect on how hard challenges are.

to take the balor as example, and the rules you point out - all it takes is two succesful attack rolls (reckless barbarians get automatic advantage) vs a balors +8 check. If succesful twice, the quentessential master demon is reduced to


At the start of each of the balor's turns, each creature within 5 feet of it takes 10 (3d6) fire damage

and

When the balor dies, it explodes, and each creature within 30 feet of it must make a DC 20 Dexterity saving throw, taking 70 (20d6) fire damage on a failed save,

Not really CR 20 worthy if the rogue can solo with bonus-disingage-move-arrow-repeat it.

[RSP]

Do note, that it's stated in the section that starts with "This section provides new action options for combat.

Right, similar to saying anyone can get advantage via flanking: it’s an optional rule, that, if instituted, has a huge effect on the rest of the system, such as:

- very easy for rogues to get Advantage
- classes that have Advantage granting benefits, like Reckless Attack, are made less effective by this
- likewise, enemies like kobolds with Pack Tactics, become less of a threat as their special ability essentially become something everyone can do
- combat is deadlier and faster as the ability to easily grant characters Advantage leads to more hits and more crits, on both sides (PCs and NPCs)


Any inclusion of optional rules should be taken knowing their will be a change to the system in some way.

[JoeJ]

Do note, that it's stated in the section that starts with "This section provides new action options for combat. They can be added as a group or individually to your game". Meaning you can do so, if your DM allows this rule. And, just like the option of giving dragons free spells, if you change things, this can have an effect on how hard challenges are.

to take the balor as example, and the rules you point out - all it takes is two succesful attack rolls (reckless barbarians get automatic advantage) vs a balors +8 check. If succesful twice, the quentessential master demon is reduced to


At the start of each of the balor's turns, each creature within 5 feet of it takes 10 (3d6) fire damage

and

When the balor dies, it explodes, and each creature within 30 feet of it must make a DC 20 Dexterity saving throw, taking 70 (20d6) fire damage on a failed save,

Not really CR 20 worthy if the rogue can solo with bonus-disingage-move-arrow-repeat it.

Because having dropped it's weapons it just stands there? The DM has no idea of anything else that a balor can do besides let itself get killed?

Note that the balor also has advantage in the contest because of the size difference. The balor can also disarm the barbarian, who would have disadvantage due to size (reckless attack doesn't give advantage in ability checks, just attack rolls), and if the barbarian has attacked earlier in the round using reckless attack, the balor attacks with advantage.

[Kadesh]

Right, similar to saying anyone can get advantage via flanking: it’s an optional rule, that, if instituted, has a huge effect on the rest of the system, such as:

- very easy for rogues to get Advantage
- classes that have Advantage granting benefits, like Reckless Attack, are made less effective by this
- likewise, enemies like kobolds with Pack Tactics, become less of a threat as their special ability essentially become something everyone can do
- combat is deadlier and faster as the ability to easily grant characters Advantage leads to more hits and more crits, on both sides (PCs and NPCs)


Any inclusion of optional rules should be taken knowing their will be a change to the system in some way.

Does anyone legitimately use flanking after more than like 3 sessions of using it and realising how stupid it is, in that it invalidates some options class features (why take Shield Master when you can just Flank? Why take Wolf Totem when you can just flank), and it also provides such a major boost to combat power?

[qube]

Because having dropped it's weapons it just stands there? The DM has no idea of anything else that a balor can do besides let itself get killed?... well it always has the option to go run away crying like a little girl I guess ... yet that doesn't change obvious truth being illustrated - in that changing the rules affect challenge rating.

[JoeJ]

... well it always has the option to go run away crying like a little girl I guess ... yet that doesn't change obvious truth being illustrated - in that changing the rules affect challenge rating.

Or maybe pick up a weapon? Or shove and/or grapple? Seriously, what would a PC do if they were suddenly disarmed in combat?

Per the DMG, using these rules does not change the CR of encounters. (And reasonably it shouldn't, since they increase the options of both sides equally.)

[Hail Tempus]

If no one likes playing Fighters, that's one thing. If they'd like to play but find it boring, that's another.

Why not just answer my question? I'm not asking whether the fighter sucks. I'm not asking what are your favourite things to make the fighter fun. It's a very simple question, and some of the most engaged and otherwise thoughtful people in this forum are dancing around it like ribbons on a maypole. According to the numbers released by WOTC regarding what characters people create on DnD beyond, the fighter is the most popular character class, and human fighters are the most popular race and class combination. So, it doesn’t seem like the DnD player base considers the fighter to be unfun to play. Interestingly, three of the full caster classes seem to be the least popular (bards, sorcerers, and druids, respectively).

I guess the problem here is that your premise that fighters aren’t fun isn’t really widely shared.

[Kadesh]

Or maybe pick up a weapon? Or shove and/or grapple? Seriously, what would a PC do if they were suddenly disarmed in combat?

Per the DMG, using these rules does not change the CR of encounters. (And reasonably it shouldn't, since they increase the options of both sides equally.)

Challenge is calc'd based on damage. By removing that ability to deal that damage, CR is lessened. Do you have a point?

[Vogie]

How are these different in theme or function than maneuvers?

They... are? I don't know what you're asking.

Using Martial Exploits differ from maneuvers in that:

They aren't Battlemaster ManeuversTM
They require no superiority dice
They don't have any other special to-hit bonuses
They can provide interesting mechanics that aren't currently in the game, depending how you convert them.
And differ from existing hit modifiers, like Grapples and disarms, in that:

They don't require you to give up your attack actions
They allow you to alter the action economy, such as the grapple-as-reaction example given.
They don't require feats to work

[JoeJ]

Challenge is calc'd based on damage. By removing that ability to deal that damage, CR is lessened. Do you have a point?

The CR of a creature is not affected by tactics, or by anything else that happens during the encounter. Situational factors can affect encounter difficulty, but not when they are equal for both sides, as is the case here.

All this is simply to point out that the maneuvers which were suggested be available to all characters already are. If you want to keep discussion whether or not disarming should be allowed, we should probably do that in a new thread.

[Eric Diaz]

Okay, I'm still worried that people think "fighter" and "champion" are synonyms in 5e. They are not.

But anyway... besides giving martial adept to champion, what else are we looking for?

Anyone can be certain that this won't break the game by simply glancing at the feat.

So, the idea proposed by the OP is obviously viable, although only the OP can tell if it actually works as INTENDED - i.e., convince the player to pick the champion with bits of BM instead of BM (which seems to be a strange exercise but IMMV).

Now, are we looking for other ways to make the champion more powerful? Or more complex? Or have more choices? Etc.

[djreynolds]

To play a fighter is a choice. 4 attacks is solid. You may feel average, that's okay.

You chose to play a gal or guy with a weapon. Nothing else.

And to survive. It's beautiful actually.

It's what draws players to the fighter class and the champion. The challenge.

So you got 7 feats/ASI... Make them count. Grab any magic item you can. Take lucky, MI, anything that keeps you on your feet and in the fight. And get smart, retreat, fight dirty... anything to win.

You, your sword, and dice. The champion's challenge.

[Skylivedk]

And why is that an issue?

If no one at your table likes the Fighter... Then you don't have Fighters at your table. The Fighter is not a person-it's not gonna get offended if no one picks it.

To put it another way, what DO your players play?

Two points:
1) if one is of the persuasion that the fighter is boring in combat, it probably goes for a couple of the other martials as well (barbarian, ranger, maybe even Paladin)
2) wanting to play a fighter might mean something different depending on previous experiences. Ie my favourite CRPGs (dragon age, divinity) make fighters way more mechanically entertaining in combat than DnD does.


Ever considered the idea that they don't have a problem with the class mechanically - but with the fighter flavor?

The fighter, mechanically, is anything but boring: An eldirch knight got options up the wazoo. So how do you justify giving 'm even more options to be logical path?

In a lot level ranges, he really doesn't. Spells grow more varied over time, but from 3-7 you're not overloading the grey goo nestled between your ears making choices.


According to the numbers released by WOTC regarding what characters people create on DnD beyond, the fighter is the most popular character class, and human fighters are the most popular race and class combination. So, it doesn’t seem like the DnD player base considers the fighter to be unfun to play. Interestingly, three of the full caster classes seem to be the least popular (bards, sorcerers, and druids, respectively).

I guess the problem here is that your premise that fighters aren’t fun isn’t really widely shared.

And OP is not one of them. I don't care if ten million people enjoy playing Champion, I wouldn't and neither would my table. One of my recurring, very experienced and competent, players is currently trying a cavalier. He found level 1-3 boring as a tax report and I can relate.. He might have had a plethora of options and flavour to add, but viable options were extremely few. Always.

[qube]

The CR of a creature is not affected by tactics, or by anything else that happens during the encounter. Situational factors can affect encounter difficulty, but not when they are equal for both sides, as is the case here.I shall respectfully disagree.

A fighter smiles the balor wasted his action, takes a backup weapon from his backpack and rips a balor to shreds.

A monster on the other hand, has no backup weapon listed. As such,
an armed balor does ~90 potential damage per round (2 attacks, a pull, and a potential AoO to a character that doesn't want to remain in it's aura of fire), plus 10 damage per melee character.
While an unarmed balor reduced to grappling is reduced to a potential ~10 damage (if it succeeds in it's grapple & the target fails to escape), and melee character have no reason to keep standing in the aura can just get out of aura range (provoking an non-proficient attack of 8 damage > auto 3d6 damage)
((and shoving? shoving is just silly, as they can't use their multi-attack on it, and litterly give the PCs a way out of their aura without OA))


And the Balor is the lucky one - having some (very weak, but still) powers that don't require 'm to use weapons.


All this is simply to point out that the maneuvers which were suggested be available to all characters already are. If you want to keep discussion whether or not disarming should be allowed, we should probably do that in a new thread.we're not talking about weather it should be allowed or not.

We're talking about that it affects the challenge armed enemies pose. 90 isn't the same as 10. A 30 damage sword isn't the same as an 8 damage, non-proficicent, unarmed strike. And it isn't the same as minor things (like grapple, shove or trip), where you got no significant follow up tactic for)

you can allow grapple - but you will need to revamp the CR system, dropping the CR of monsters depending on how much they are dependant on their weapon.


> The fighter, mechanically, is anything but boring: An eldirch knight got options up the wazoo.
> So how do you justify giving 'm even more options to be logical path?

In a lot level ranges, he really doesn't. Spells grow more varied over time, but from 3-7 you're not overloading the grey goo nestled between your ears making choices.Respectfully, I disagree.

At lvl 3, concervatevily the EK's core chasis allows him for 6 options (use one of his 2 cantrips, use one of his 3 spells, or attack); more if you include abilities (who, if any, do I protect with my protection fighting style, do I have my bonus action to second wind, will I need my action surge now or later), even more if you include basic melee combat (positioning) and even more if you include advanced combat tactics (grapple, shove, trip)

At lvl 3, concervatevily, the standard wizard has only has 8 (3 cantrips, 5 spells) and 1 more if you include his ability.

Yes, sure, neither are "overloading the grey goo nestled between your ears" - but as far as options go, I'm not seeing the EK having to bow his head to the wizard.

[JoeJ]

A fighter smiles the balor wasted his action, takes a backup weapon from his backpack and rips a balor to shreds.

<sigh> and the balor picks up the weapons that are right there on the ground at it's feet and turns the fighter into hamburger.


you can allow grapple - but you will need to revamp the CR system, dropping the CR of monsters depending on how much they are dependant on their weapon.

Not according to the rules in the DMG I don't. You do what you want in your game.

But I'm dropping this now, because it's heading off topic for the thread.

[qube]

{{Scrubbed}}

[JoeJ]

... you ... don't need to take into ... account ... that's you messed up the CRing of monsters ... because ... the DMG ... claims ... you can... do what you want in your game. ...

Those were separate statements, dude.

1) Using the combat rules in the DMG does not require recalculating CR. If it did, it would say so. It would also say that you need to recalculate CR if the party has a battle master fighter, who has a better disarm attack than the one in the DMG.

2) If you want to recalculate CR for your game anyway, knock yourself out.

[qube]

1) Using the combat rules in the DMG does not require recalculating CR. If it did, it would say so.Except, of course, it's in "Chapter 9: Dungen Master Workshop", which starts out by warning these rules can have drastic effects on your game.

Likewise, take for instance the massive damage rule would boost the monster that does all it's damage in 1 attack over a simelar monster that does an equal amount of damage, but divided over 6 attacks.


It would also say that you need to recalculate CR if the party has a battle master fighter, who has a better disarm attack than the one in the DMG.There's a difference betwwen a monster being bad because the party is geared towards fighting its kind (which is part of part of the game) - and monsters consistantly proving less of a challenge (which is the value the CR represents)

[Skylivedk]

I shall respectfully disagree.

A fighter smiles the balor wasted his action, takes a backup weapon from his backpack and rips a balor to shreds.

A monster on the other hand, has no backup weapon listed. As such,
an armed balor does ~90 potential damage per round (2 attacks, a pull, and a potential AoO to a character that doesn't want to remain in it's aura of fire), plus 10 damage per melee character.
While an unarmed balor reduced to grappling is reduced to a potential ~10 damage (if it succeeds in it's grapple & the target fails to escape), and melee character have no reason to keep standing in the aura can just get out of aura range (provoking an non-proficient attack of 8 damage > auto 3d6 damage)
((and shoving? shoving is just silly, as they can't use their multi-attack on it, and litterly give the PCs a way out of their aura without OA))


And the Balor is the lucky one - having some (very weak, but still) powers that don't require 'm to use weapons.

we're not talking about weather it should be allowed or not.

We're talking about that it affects the challenge armed enemies pose. 90 isn't the same as 10. A 30 damage sword isn't the same as an 8 damage, non-proficicent, unarmed strike. And it isn't the same as minor things (like grapple, shove or trip), where you got no significant follow up tactic for)

you can allow grapple - but you will need to revamp the CR system, dropping the CR of monsters depending on how much they are dependant on their weapon.

Respectfully, I disagree.

At lvl 3, concervatevily the EK's core chasis allows him for 6 options (use one of his 2 cantrips, use one of his 3 spells, or attack); more if you include abilities (who, if any, do I protect with my protection fighting style, do I have my bonus action to second wind, will I need my action surge now or later), even more if you include basic melee combat (positioning) and even more if you include advanced combat tactics (grapple, shove, trip)

At lvl 3, concervatevily, the standard wizard has only has 8 (3 cantrips, 5 spells) and 1 more if you include his ability.

Yes, sure, neither are "overloading the grey goo nestled between your ears" - but as far as options go, I'm not seeing the EK having to bow his head to the wizard.

A) Balor
In a world where everybody can disarm, I'd suggest DMs to have plans for intelligent high level creatures losing there weapon and flex their creativity while doing so. Anything from giving a claw attack with full proficiency to smaller backup weapons would do the trick.

B) EK at low levels
Odds are that only one or two of those cantrips are for combat. If two, one is normally a melee and the other ranged, effectively still only adding one more option to consider in most cases. As to the spells: you have so few on a daily basis that very soon, you're left with (n)one, again effectively reducing the stuff you can pull out. It comes across as a bit disingenuous that you only look at the lowest level range in your comparison.

But beyond that, I've just played a Wizard from start. Not much fun either, but thank Garl for minor illusion! I would in general not start games at lower levels than 3 preferably 5 for experienced players. The same game, we had a cavalier. Especially when on a streak of bad rolls, his turns were emptier than calories in processed food. Palpable difference in the things we could do early on. And again: if you like the simplicity, that's cool. Enjoy!

It might also be metal fatigue after many years of play, but combat is becoming less and less engaging for me. The closest I have to playing a martial currently in my campaigns is a hexblade. Vastly bigger toolbox, yet I very often resort to the same tactic, because that one is so effective: Armour of Agathys (preferably with Warding Bond on top) or Mirror Image (if we deal with big hits) and step dance around mooks burning reactions and freezing hp. Grate a little darkness+GWM cheese on top and you're good. Similarly, fighters (and rogues) often have one-three approaches which they'll rely on for the majority of their encounters. If you like that, more power to you. If you like OP and myself would like a less predictable encounter flow, then this thread should be for you. If you'd suggest a system with more variety in combat, I'm all ears. I'm at the point where I'm considering creating one myself

[qube]

A) Balor
In a world where everybody can disarm, I'd suggest DMs to have plans for intelligent high level creatures losing there weapon and flex their creativity while doing so. Anything from giving a claw attack with full proficiency to smaller backup weapons would do the trick.oh, quite true - but altering monsters to keep their CR on par with what it used to be is already the step after that.


B) EK at low levels
Odds are that only one or two of those cantrips are for combat. If two, one is normally a melee and the other ranged, effectively still only adding one more option to consider in most cases. As to the spells: you have so few on a daily basis that very soon, you're left with (n)one, again effectively reducing the stuff you can pull out. but I'm coparing apples with apples. If you start taking into account not using spells to preserve spell slots, and not using cantrips as they might not be applicable ... how many options does the wizard have left? 3? use your combat cantrip, use one of your presuice spellsplots, or use your ability (if applicable)

Don't forget that compared tot the wizard, the EK's base chasis - the fighter - gets many of his abilities back every short rest.


It comes across as a bit disingenuous that you only look at the lowest level range in your comparison.It does? You were the one who said


In a lot level ranges, he really doesn't. Spells grow more varied over time, but from 3-7

so, I figured, since you claimed he gets better over time, I thought I'd compare to your worst case: lowest level.
We can go and talk about level 4, where the EK gets a new spell AND an extra feat (and there are lot of feats for melee characters that allow for extra options; ex. something like shield bash; or polearm mastery, which permanently having a choise between bonus action spell or bonus action attack). Heck he could go Magic initiate and get two more cantrips & a spell.
At level 5, he's not getting an extra option ... but that's the level of the massively powerful extra attack
At level 6, another feat
At level 7, a new spell.
Comperatively, over those 4 levels, the wizard gets 3 more options (he gets 4 spell, a feat, and a tradition) - but with the limitation of spells costing resources, even at lvl 7, the wizard player is far from .... how did you phrase it ... overloading the grey goo nestled between your ears making choices. While, the EK is just turning out to be a horrible build - having too many options and not enough actions to use 'm.


But beyond that, I've just played a Wizard from start. Not much fun either, but thank Garl for minor illusion!do note that the EK's spell school limitation is for his spells, not his cantrips. minor illusion is an option from 'm - and quite the powerful one at that (if nothing else, it creates a 5ft cube square of concealment the enemy needs to spend an action on to see through)


Especially when on a streak of bad rolls, his turns were emptier than calories in processed food.now, now, now now now, in the intrest of not comming of as being a bit disingenuous, you're not gonna say we're assuming that the fighter misses all attacks, the monster gets all the saves against EK spells, and then conclude that somehow it's not fun to play fighter, are you?

'cause, well, let's all look how a save-or-suck caster does against a DM who's on a roll.
LITTERLY worse then your failing cavalier, because your cavalier still had the hp (and prob. the AC) to tank, while your wizard has turned into a liabliety that the frontliners need to protect.

[Skylivedk]

I shall respectfully disagree.

A fighter smiles the balor wasted his action, takes a backup weapon from his backpack and rips a balor to shreds.

A monster on the other hand, has no backup weapon listed. As such,
an armed balor does ~90 potential damage per round (2 attacks, a pull, and a potential AoO to a character that doesn't want to remain in it's aura of fire), plus 10 damage per melee character.
While an unarmed balor reduced to grappling is reduced to a potential ~10 damage (if it succeeds in it's grapple & the target fails to escape), and melee character have no reason to keep standing in the aura can just get out of aura range (provoking an non-proficient attack of 8 damage > auto 3d6 damage)
((and shoving? shoving is just silly, as they can't use their multi-attack on it, and litterly give the PCs a way out of their aura without OA))


And the Balor is the lucky one - having some (very weak, but still) powers that don't require 'm to use weapons.

we're not talking about weather it should be allowed or not.

We're talking about that it affects the challenge armed enemies pose. 90 isn't the same as 10. A 30 damage sword isn't the same as an 8 damage, non-proficicent, unarmed strike. And it isn't the same as minor things (like grapple, shove or trip), where you got no significant follow up tactic for)

you can allow grapple - but you will need to revamp the CR system, dropping the CR of monsters depending on how much they are dependant on their weapon.

Respectfully, I disagree.

At lvl 3, concervatevily the EK's core chasis allows him for 6 options (use one of his 2 cantrips, use one of his 3 spells, or attack); more if you include abilities (who, if any, do I protect with my protection fighting style, do I have my bonus action to second wind, will I need my action surge now or later), even more if you include basic melee combat (positioning) and even more if you include advanced combat tactics (grapple, shove, trip)

At lvl 3, concervatevily, the standard wizard has only has 8 (3 cantrips, 5 spells) and 1 more if you include his ability.

Yes, sure, neither are "overloading the grey goo nestled between your ears" - but as far as options go, I'm not seeing the EK having to bow his head to the wizard.


oh, quite true - but altering monsters to keep their CR on par with what it used to be is already the step after that.

but I'm coparing apples with apples. If you start taking into account not using spells to preserve spell slots, and not using cantrips as they might not be applicable ... how many options does the wizard have left? 3? use your combat cantrip, use one of your presuice spellsplots, or use your ability (if applicable)

Don't forget that compared tot the wizard, the EK's base chasis - the fighter - gets many of his abilities back every short rest.

It does? You were the one who said


In a lot level ranges, he really doesn't. Spells grow more varied over time, but from 3-7

so, I figured, since you claimed he gets better over time, I thought I'd compare to your worst case: lowest level.
We can go and talk about level 4, where the EK gets a new spell AND an extra feat (and there are lot of feats for melee characters that allow for extra options; ex. something like shield bash; or polearm mastery, which permanently having a choise between bonus action spell or bonus action attack). Heck he could go Magic initiate and get two more cantrips & a spell.
At level 5, he's not getting an extra option ... but that's the level of the massively powerful extra attack
At level 6, another feat
At level 7, a new spell.
Comperatively, over those 4 levels, the wizard gets 3 more options (he gets 4 spell, a feat, and a tradition) - but with the limitation of spells costing resources, even at lvl 7, the wizard player is far from .... how did you phrase it ... overloading the grey goo nestled between your ears making choices. While, the EK is just turning out to be a horrible build - having too many options and not enough actions to use 'm.

do note that the EK's spell school limitation is for his spells, not his cantrips. minor illusion is an option from 'm - and quite the powerful one at that (if nothing else, it creates a 5ft cube square of concealment the enemy needs to spend an action on to see through)

now, now, now now now, in the intrest of not comming of as being a bit disingenuous, you're not gonna say we're assuming that the fighter misses all attacks, the monster gets all the saves against EK spells, and then conclude that somehow it's not fun to play fighter, are you?

'cause, well, let's all look how a save-or-suck caster does against a DM who's on a roll.
LITTERLY worse then your failing cavalier, because your cavalier still had the hp (and prob. the AC) to tank, while your wizard has turned into a liabliety that the frontliners need to protect.

A) never claimed that the Wizard was great at low levels either. Well, out of combat with Magic Mouth shenanigans, they're quite entertaining. In combat, my favourite to play at lower levels have been either multiclasses or the moon druid. Notice how I mention that I find combat growing dull in general and didn't use a fighter in my example?

B) when you say many, you mean two abilities on short rest? I always presumed that common courtesy was to count to at least two before counting to many :)

C) The Wizard has a familiar. Double the action economy. The EK can have that as well, but then he suffers in spell slot usage.

D) how can you count (at least) four spells as less than three options?

E) I didn't claim it was normal to miss all attacks. Rather observed that he, the Cavalier, has one big main button and 20-50% of the time it does nothing. Compare to ie 13th Age where most martials do something even when they miss (I think that's true for HERO and a few others).

F) I would more or less always take minor illusion. Simply too fun not to.

Again, if you like the level of complexity: great. I'm adding layers in my game and will probably continue to do so

[RSP]

A) Balor
In a world where everybody can disarm, I'd suggest DMs to have plans for intelligent high level creatures losing there weapon and flex their creativity while doing so. Anything from giving a claw attack with full proficiency to smaller backup weapons would do the trick.


In this world where everyone disarms, what’s the Int cutoff for carrying a backup weapon? I’d say, the DM then either handwaves that the creature in question has another weapon, or actually changes every statsheet to include it (learning to fight with a weapon would go hand in hand with carrying a back up). I doubt DMs take the time to alter every stat sheet so everyone can disarm, but every npc that gets disarmed is determined to just pull out their back up weapon (why would it need to be smaller? Why not have the same back up weapon?).

Similar to the “how many rocks is the giant carrying?”-question. When looking at a giant’s ranged attacks. If you say “one, I guess” you’ve just nerfed the CR of that giant by only giving them a one-shot ranged attack.

If you say “as many as they need,” well then I guess every giant is carrying a Bag of Holding for the in-game explaination of how they physically carry so many rocks (and not have it interfere with their melee attacks).

Or again, handwaive away.

[qube]

A) never claimed that the Wizard was great at low levels either.but that's the scope of the thread. it's the fighter class specifically that is seen as the problem; other classes are seen as fine.


B) when you say many, you mean two abilities on short rest? I always presumed that common courtesy was to count to at least two before counting to many :)well, compared to what the wizard chasis gives ya, 2 is infinately mroe :smalltongue:


C) The Wizard has a familiar. Double the action economy. The EK can have that as well, but then he suffers in spell slot usage.I'm not sure there are many other spells that allow for so many options as find familiar, so if geared toward options - I don't see why that spellslot wouldn't be worth it.


D) how can you count (at least) four spells as less than three options?
Wizard gets 7 (4 spells, 1 feature, 1 feat, 1 cantrip); EK gets 4 (2 spells, 2 feats); 7 minus 4 is 3 : :smallsmile:


E) I didn't claim it was normal to miss all attacks. Rather observed that he, the Cavalier, has one big main button and 20-50% of the time it does nothing. Compare to ie 13th Age where most martials do something even when they miss (I think that's true for HERO and a few others).possibly - but still, this is not a fighter issue - but a game system issue.


F) I would more or less always take minor illusion. Simply too fun not to. +1 :smallbiggrin:

[Draz74]

There's a lot to consider. Right now, people are taking Fighter 2 to take advantage of Action Surge, usually to fuel spells or some other combo, but having a Wizard take two levels into Fighter to cast spells twice as fast doesn't really seem like a Fighter way of doing things. Rather, I'd expect to see a Bard grabbing Fighter 2 to take advantage of Parry, or the Rogue to take advantage of Riposte, or the Barbarian to take advantage of Goading Strike. Action Surge is made to be versatile, but I feel like Martial Adept actually makes things feel like what you'd expect from the term "Fighter".

Regardless of the rest of this thread's arguments, I think this is a point that should be getting more attention ...

[qube]

In this world where everyone disarms, what’s the Int cutoff for carrying a backup weapon? I’d say, the DM then either handwaves that the creature in question has another weapon, or actually changes every statsheet to include it (learning to fight with a weapon would go hand in hand with carrying a back up). I doubt DMs take the time to alter every stat sheet so everyone can disarm, but every npc that gets disarmed is determined to just pull out their back up weapon (why would it need to be smaller? Why not have the same back up weapon?). Actually, I've thouth about it, and the problem with giving monsters backup weapons is this:

>> we want fighters to be able to do more
<< we'll add disarm as combat option
>> but then weaponwielding monsters will be less of a challenge
<< don't worry, we'll make disarm is useless - monsters will just have backup weapons.

... not to mention, from a PC point of view, melee characters such as the fighter are most negatively impacted if monsters can get free disarm attempts as well

- - - - - -

On the "what’s the Int cutoff", it's more of an experience thing, or even monkey-see monkey do. it's a mistake you'll make once, or seen make once, and at that point, you'll always have at least a spare knife with you (heck, back in the day, people ALWAYS had a knife with them. it's a useful tool, for people who, like, eat and stuff).

[Ignimortis]

The basic idea is nice.

Basically what I would do is, take every maneuver published so far (so Battle Master, Monster Hunter and Scout?) and divide them into simple and complex categories.

Stuff like shove on attack, trip, intimidate and so on, which don't provide lasting effects or mess with action economy, go into "simple". Those are things that every single fighter can do without Superiority dice or anything. You just don't get any bonuses on your attacks or their damage, because you don't have Superiority Dice.

Stuff like Parry (which is probably better done as the Scout's dodge, roll the die and add it to AC, if better than attack roll, then halve the damage), Lunge, Monster Hunter's +save feature, etc. goes into "complex", and you do have learn those maneuvers and use Superiority dice for those, so you have to have the feat or be a Battle Master (Scout and Monster Hunter maneuvers get merged into BM's list, because why not?). Superiority dice can also be used for simple maneuvers to power them up accordingly.

However, at level 10 Battle Masters and those other subclasses would gain another feature: you can declare that you're not making a number of extra attacks this turn, but still attack something at least once and if you hit, you regain this much superiority dice. Another variant of that feature would instead allow you to gain one superiority die by spending a bonus action and then successfully hitting an enemy (yes, it's Warblade, who would've thought).

This gives non-BMs options and gives BMs ways to use their options significantly more often, maybe even almost always.

[Shuruke]

I feel like this is being made more complicated then necessary

Just allow all martial classes to make attempts at maneuvers at the cost for damage.

They make an attack roll and on a hit instead of damage they force a save against 8+prof+ dex or str.

If they want to use parry or riposte they have to ready it with a bonus action on their turn treating it like a minor held action.

This would also allow u to give enemies the same features
Making a attack and instead of damage forcing a save to succumbing to effect of goading attack

For disarming have each creature have 2 back up weapons
If a d12 os their primary their secondary is a long sword 1d10 after that it goes down to 1d8 then finally disarming it 4 turns in a row its damage is d4.

These are the rules we (me and 4 other dms) and with the total of 30 something players have never had any issues.

If u guys want to argue about balance and monster cr go for it.
Or u can just have fun and make changes as needed and maybe help out .

"hey we will try out the rules this forum guy has in mind and tell him how it went." If everyone here just did this how many players would that reach
What could be the sample size? Maybe that's what we should look at rather than bickering

[JoeJ]

Except, of course, it's in "Chapter 9: Dungen Master Workshop", which starts out by warning these rules can have drastic effects on your game.

That is incorrect. There is a warning about allowing characters to concentrate on more than one effect, use more than one reaction or bonus action per round, or attune to more than three magic items. There is no such warning about using the action options such as disarm. There is a warning on p. 270 that "the main risk of adding some of these rules is slowing down play." That is the only warning present in the text.

If you think that CR is affected by using the disarm rule, then please quote the text that says so.

[Cazero]

The point of the battlemaster's maneuvers is not to give you new abilities. Anyone can already trip, shove, disarm, etc with opposed ability checks, parry with the dodge action and counterattack with readied actions. RAW even explicitly mentions two of those (trip and shove) as only costing one of your several attacks.

Shoving a Creature
Using the Attack action, you can make a special melee attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
The point of the battlemaster's maneuvers is to make those abilities you already have a lot more powerful by breaking action economy (you dont give up attacks for them anymore) and making them more reliable (the math of save DCs is loaded in your favor by growing proficiency, counteracting monster's scores going higher than 20).

[Ignimortis]

The point of the battlemaster's maneuvers is not to give you new abilities. Anyone can already trip, shove, disarm, etc with opposed ability checks, parry with the dodge action and counterattack with readied actions. RAW even explicitly mentions two of those (trip and shove) as only costing one of your several attacks.

The point of the battlemaster's maneuvers is to make those abilities you already have a lot more powerful by breaking action economy (you dont give up attacks for them anymore) and making them more reliable (the math of save DCs is loaded in your favor by growing proficiency, counteracting monster's scores going higher than 20).

People keep saying that "oh, but you do have those abilities, everyone can do this already". However, you give up damage for those things, and spending a turn or half of it not doing damage is bad, especially in a game where everyone is expected to do damage. If you're not doing damage on your turn, then you probably are doing something that contributes more to damage than your own capabilities, such as healing a warrior who does twice your damage, or providing buffs/debuffs that also increase damage to enemies more than you could do yourself.

Thus, shoving an enemy is usually only a good thing if you have a team combo in mind or you're shoving someone off a cliff so that they fall and die instantly. Tripping an enemy is only good if it can't get up in time, and your party is mostly melee and won't grumble about disadvantage on ranged attacks. Disarming is useless 50% of the time, unless you're only fighting humanoid enemies who can't bite and claw perfectly well, and who also don't carry backup weapons.

Therefore, I would assume that anything situational and non-unique like tripping, shoving, disarming and things of that kind should be available to Fighters as tactical options without actually forcing Fighters to forego one of their only good features, which is damage. Precision Attack, Parry, Riposte, etc. are more unique and should be uncommon.

[qube]

That is incorrect. There is a warning about allowing characters to concentrate on more than one effect, use more than one reaction or bonus action per round, or attune to more than three magic items. There is no such warning about using the action options such as disarm. There is a warning on p. 270 that "the main risk of adding some of these rules is slowing down play." That is the only warning present in the text.

If you think that CR is affected by using the disarm rule, then please quote the text that says so.

Consider trying no more than one or two of the options at a time so that you can clearly assess their effects on your campaign before adding other options.

CR is part of that. How can I tell? Things like Hero points, Healing Surges, - one sided bonuses to players - obviously have an affect on how hard challenges are; yet there isn't a specific warning for that too. Likewise, Sanity, Fear, and Horror, Slow natural Healing - one sided negative mechanism for players - will make certain things harder.

introducing injuries (extra effect on a crit) greatly benefits champions, who at highter levels can score a crit per round on average, while indruducing massive damage rules greatly benefits single strike monsters (yet have no effect on mosters that do equivalent in many attacks)

After all, it states


Each option represents a different genre, style of play, or both.

A Chthulu-esk game - a horror survival game - is supposed to be significantly harder then standard D&D (unlike "standard" D&D, in Chtulu, you're pretty much considered victorious if one party member survives without permanent scaring )

... heck, I hope I don't need to explain how introducing 3d8 or 6d8 weaponry might give martial characters a slight leg up ...

[Son of A Lich!]

Meanwhile, Qube, The wizard sighs, casts Maze, reducing the Balor's DPR to zero for approximately three rounds while the party cleans out the Mobs and the party readies to gank it when it pops back into existence.

I don't see a fighter, being able to disarm a larger opponent and removing it's weapon choices, as being a bad thing for play. It's a tactical decision that allows the fighter to view things in a more 3 dimensional way, rather then hoping it's swing is really hard this time.

Having a meaningful choice of potentially disarming a Balor and reducing its Damage Output on the clock is a chance to make your fighter proud of getting to do something to swing things into the parties favor that wasn't "And kill this thing too". If the Balor picks up his weapons, or pulls out a back up weapon, the fighter is tanking damage from the rest of the party by keeping him from effectively burning out 90 points of damage that would have to be healed later or mitigated by spell slots of the aforementioned wizard.

And note, that this isn't something that will always work - The Balor has advantage on the roll (due to being large size) and two weapons standard. If the fighter fails on one, The Balor can punish him for taking the gamble. But more importantly, The Fighter had a chance of controlling the battlefield's output by virtue of being good at Fighting.

Seriously, I don't understand why people are so opposed to players doing cool things in their games just because it wasn't "Magic". If you think this is going to be a problem, Well... Earth Elementals can't be disarmed, Dragons can't be disarmed, Hell, most Devils and Demons can't be disarmed.

A horde of goblins would be a waste of time disarming!

I think you are making a mountain out of a mole hill here...

[qube]

Meanwhile, Qube, The wizard sighs, casts Maze, reducing the Balor's DPR to zero for approximately three rounds while the party cleans out the Mobs and the party readies to gank it when it pops back into existence.and the game is balanced around that. The wizard just spend a valuable resource to get an edge against 'm.


I don't see a fighter, being able to disarm a larger opponent and removing it's weapon choices, as being a bad thing for play. It's a tactical decision that allows the fighter to view things in a more 3 dimensional way, rather then hoping it's swing is really hard this time.ah, but bad =/= impactful.

As you yourself put:

Seriously, I don't understand why people are so opposed to players doing cool things in their games just because it wasn't "Magic". If you think this is going to be a problem, Well... Earth Elementals can't be disarmed, Dragons can't be disarmed, Hell, most Devils and Demons can't be disarmed.

The CR6 Earth Elementals can't be disarmed, and remains CR 6
The CR20 Dragons can't be disarmed, and remains CR 20
..
but The CR 20 Balor can be disarmed, reducing it to nothing more then a speedbump.

And while you say


And note, that this isn't something that will always work - The Balor has advantage on the roll (due to being large size) and two weapons standard. If the fighter fails on one, The Balor can punish him for taking the gamble.
The fighter gets 6 or 8 attemps (depending on his level), and has a larger modifier.

As for his ability to punish the fighter if he fails one ... do note that the balor can no longer use multi attack, so even 1 succesful it's as far as it being a real challenge anymore ... Meh.

You speak of maze?. Try something a bit more lower: Hex (where suddenly the disadvantage on a ability check is significanlty more impactful in the game, as the disarming mechanism basically substituted a save to avoid for a skill to avoid).

-- either way, you and I may vary in oppinion on how it might affect the balor, but if you introduce this rule, you'll have to take it into account that you've altered how much of a challenge some monster pose. And that's the problem. The fac tthat apparently we can't agree on how much, is even a bigger problem (as that show how hard it actually is to guage it correctly)

If if actually was just "a mountain" - just a "all monsters count as has half their CR", it would be easy. But it isn't, and that's the problem.

[Skylivedk]

but The CR 20 Balor can be disarmed, reducing it to nothing more then a speedbump.

And while you say


And note, that this isn't something that will always work - The Balor has advantage on the roll (due to being large size) and two weapons standard. If the fighter fails on one, The Balor can punish him for taking the gamble.
The fighter gets 6 or 8 attemps (depending on his level), and has a larger modifier.

As for his ability to punish the fighter if he fails one ... do note that the balor can no longer use multi attack, so even 1 succesful it's as far as it being a real challenge anymore ... Meh.

You speak of maze?. Try something a bit more lower: Hex (where suddenly the disadvantage on a ability check is significanlty more impactful in the game, as the disarming mechanism basically substituted a save to avoid for a skill to avoid).

-- either way, you and I may vary in oppinion on how it might affect the balor, but if you introduce this rule, you'll have to take it into account that you've altered how much of a challenge some monster pose. And that's the problem. The fac tthat apparently we can't agree on how much, is even a bigger problem (as that show how hard it actually is to guage it correctly)

If if actually was just "a mountain" - just a "all monsters count as has half their CR", it would be easy. But it isn't, and that's the problem.

If you as a DM are prepared to allow optional rules, I hope and expect you are also prepared to do other rulings; such as assigning proficiencies to creatures and NPCs. None of them, if I remember correctly, have ANY weapon proficiencies. This includes the Veteran and the Knight. Does that mean a sane DM would rule (do a ruling) that if the Knight or the Veteran is disarmed they wouldn't be able to pick up a club or a longsword and use it proficiently? Of course not.

Balors would, in this crazy parallel world of a DM doing rulings that make sense, also be proficient with their own claws/hands (looking at them and comparing them to Aarakockra, I'd go for claws, for using the chains around their bracers as smaller die whips or for something akin to spiked gauntlets). They'd be less than happy about not using their preferred weapon and have their damage reduced (so fighter did contribute meaningfully), but a speed bump? Not quite.

This is a game of make believe. Make your players believe! Mine would straight up complain if I reduced a Balor to giving 1+Str pr attack just because they lost a weapon. If you want monsters to occasionally have backup weapons; describe the weapons as the monsters/NPCs are first seen. If you don't, expect a justifiable backlash from your players when the monster is disarmed and suddenly pulls a greatsword out of a back pocket.

[Son of A Lich!]

Maze - No save, get taken out of combat until you pass a DC20 intelligence check

Hex - Stay in combat, but with disadvantage on one of 6 ability checks.

I would much rather face a Hex happy adventuring party, in place of a Maze happy wizard.

Further, while I'm not trying to start a Casters v. Mundane fight here, Wizards are not losing out a valuable resource by casting a spell that removes a CR20 monster from the fight, and if the Balor is fighting on his own, he was dead as soon as the combat started.

The Balor needs to be accounted for, he is taxing the players' clock and weighs in heavily. That is why he is a CR20 monster. The fighter is also expending a resource in disarming him - The fighter's attacks are his most valuable contribution to the player's clock. If he doesn't keep swinging, the combat can drag out too long and the other members resources start to get taxed. By disarming the Balor, he influences the clock in both directions; The Balor is doing less damage to everyone else, and he is at an advantage in engaging him in melee (Even if the Balor is going to try to get his weapons back).

But best of all, the fighter gets to do something that helps swing combat in his parties favor that he doesn't get to do at all times. The Paladin can Crit Fish and deliver a massive Smite attack, The rogue can disengage or hide or jockey for position to get sneak attacks in, but the Fighter just tanked using a maneuver that isn't valuable enough to specialize in (Due to the bevy of creatures with natural weapons or swarms of lesser creatures that it's just easier to kill), but he is still advantaged in performing.

This is no more game breaking then grappling a spell caster or a monk catching arrows. The monster's CR does not need to change just because the Fighter could disarm him, no more then a CR has to change because a Wizard can cast Maze (Or Banishment, or Forcecage, or Hex, or Polymorph or whatever).

Again, I repeat, why is it a problem that a Fighter gets to do something dynamic in the fight that isn't "Hope to do more damage" while a Wizard can trivialize a fight with a single spell but that isn't taken into account in your CR calculation? Why can't fighters do cool things when they are... y'know... fighting?

[D-naras]

I'd give Fighters, Martial Adept for free at some point early, like OP suggests, but i'd also give them ways to regain their superiority die during combat. For example, whenever a fighter grapples, shoves or crits an enemy, if they have 0 superiority dice left, they regain one.

This should reward players for engaging creatively with the combat rules and build nicely on the fighter's high number of attacks. BM will still have more maneuvers, larger and more superiority dice so they shouldn't feel cheated off their gimmick.

Maybe give them Martial Adept at 3rd level and the ability to regain SD at 5th, to discourage dipping for the whole deal. Also, it will be a good reward for players splitting their levels between Fighter and another martial class.

[qube]

If you as a DM are prepared to allow optional rules, I hope and expect you are also prepared to do other rulings;obviously - but that's the point. it's not just "add some rule, nothing really changes". The rules has reprecussions a DM will need to take into account (either recalculaing CR, or altering monsters).


Hex - Stay in combat, but with disadvantage on one of 6 ability checks.

I would much rather face a Hex happy adventuring party, in place of a Maze happy wizard.Yes, on "one of 6 ability checks." - but on all of those checks.

Recall the Balor? Who faced the 6 attack or 8 attack fighter ... but "he has advantage on his check" ? yeah, no.

The disarms rule has that effect. It gives each character an at will ability that is not save-or-suck, but check-or-suck.


The monster's CR does not need to change just because the Fighter could disarm him,you keep saying that. Yet all I can see is,

how easy it is to disarm monsters
(virtually non are trained in athletics, action amout/advantege PCs can get in checks, ability to give monsters disadvantage on checks...)
how monsters aren't twarted when they lose their weapons
Considering that at lvl 11 you get the 6 attack fighter, ... that's

YMMV, but it doesn't sit right with me that a single lvl 11 character that can cripple a CR20 demon with ease in a single round - and do it without expending important resources, not even with special optimisation.

you can keep telling me and telling that that's OK - but I don't see it that way.

[Son of A Lich!]

So, Bruce, the disarming fighter, is level 11 and decides on behalf of his party to go and kill a Balor and I, the DM don't stop them from trying.


You can Certainly Try

Bruce easily defends his position that killing a Balor will be easy, because I, the terrible DM, allow him to disarm opponents. The party agrees that this will be a great way to get some cool loot and be an excellent chance to get a boat load of Exp.

Balors are CR 19 after all.

Bruce has a Strength of 20, and a Con of 18, with everything taken into account, we will say that he has an AC of 23. He has two weapon fighting, allowing him 6 chances to disarm the Balor with an action surge and his attacks are at +11 (Both weapons are holy and have a +3 bonus to them). I must be a really bad DM to have given him the loot to get these chances, but I don't want to straw man your position here - I've been arguing that any party member should be able to contribute to a fight in a meaningful way, and you are starting to claim that a Balor can be killed at level 11 because he can be disarmed. So I'm going to push this hypothetical scenario as far into your favor here as possible.

apparently, our Balor is not particularly bright and left the back door to his lair open. Demons, am I right? The players get the drop on our Demon and his retinue of buddies - lets say 6 dretches, and a Glabrezu. Note that this weak sauce retinue is all within under CR11, and should be a perfectly fine encounter. Boss monsters, such as a Balor, should never be encountered on their own because of action economy, but without demon slaying barrages of over leveled spell casters in the party, I can't tip this any further into Bruce's favor without completely defeating the point.

So, The rest of the party is going to be fighting the other creatures, while Bruce squares off with the Balor. This is for simplicity sake, but we will assume that the party got Hex on the Balor, targeting Strength, and that three rounds in, Bruce will be hasted. Despite it being the demon's lair, he must have forgotten his heating bill, and the lair is not hazardous to the PCs in any way - No ledges to push off of, no pools of lava, no fire pits of the screaming dead... just... I dunno, a Couch and a musty pile of knitting magazines or something.

So, Hex goes off, Bruce gets his opening flurry of attacks with an action surge and a two weapon fighting to try and disarm the Balor before it has a chance to react.

Bruce's athletics (5(Str)+4(Proficiency)) is a grand total of a +9 bonus. This is versus a +8 bonus from the Balor, who skipped out on gym class as a young demon and doesn't have Athletics. Due to Hex, the Balor does not get advantage on his checks - his size is cancelled out by the Hex.

We'll say he lays in three attacks before the Balor is disarmed completely, both weapons falling to the ground. Bruce gets 3 attacks against him which obviously all hit, and deal (1d6 Necrotic+1d6 Holy +1d8 Slashing (Magical)+5)x3. We'll call that 54 damage from the fighter. Things are looking good for Bruce! A pretty solid round of combat!

The Balor out paces him on the initiative order (It was either Str 20 or Dex 20, We went with Strength). The Balor picks up his Sword for free (Bruce didn't waste actions kicking the weapons away, but frankly, Balor's are Huge so, the weapons weren't going to be out of his reach). The Balor uses his attack action to Grapple Bruce. Bruce does not have advantage on him, and The Balor may be Hexed, but it still has a +8 to his strength checks. With Bruce crushed beneath his hoof, his movement speed is reduced to zero. Since the Balor is two size categories larger then Bruce (Actually, it's kinda questionable that Bruce would be allowed to make disarms, but to the spirit of the question of how weak and pathetic the Balor becomes with no weapons, we will say he can).

The Balor has terrible rolls with his fire aura ability, so he only deals 3 damage with each of Bruces attacks, and another 3 for starting within 5 feet of the Balor. The Balor has only done 21 damage. His Grapple attack does another 9 (1+Strength Modifier)

Bruce's turn, he swings another 3 times (for another 9 damage to him from the fire aura ability) because it's an action to escape a grapple (The Balor is two size categories larger then him, so he doesn't have very good odds of pulling it off anyway).

He could do another disarm and try to keep the Balor from holding the weapon, but with only a 55% chance of success and he already has the Balor down 50 points of HP, he decides to go for three more attacks. He reduces the Balor down another 54 for sake of simplicity.

END OF ROUND 1 CLOCK -
Bruce 80/110
Balor 154/262

The Balor still can't roll anything for fire damage. Bruce only gets 3. This time, However, the Balor picks up his whip and decides to multi-attack... But gosh darnit all to heck, he still can't manage to land any attacks on Bruce's big heft AC. Despite a +14 to hit, Bruce misses these attacks. It's hard out here for a demon, y'know?

Bruce retaliates with two more disarm attempts and gets them on the first two tries! To round off his action (Since he's not going anywhere), he uses second wind to recuperate some HP. wowzers, Bruce rolled a 10! 21 hp.

END OF ROUND 2 CLOCK -
Bruce 93/110
Balor 154/262

The Balor gets another 3 damage for the flame aura... Figures. He picks up his sword again and swings. Finally, he gets a hit. It's only 21 damage total. He just can't seem to get any good damage rolls in today... he must be thinking about all that good knitting was going to get around to one of these days.

Bruce's cleric casts Haste on him, so the Wizard can maintain Hex.

Bruce uses his first attack action to try to disarm the Balor, and succeeds. The rest of his attack actions are used to actually hit the demon, and his bonus action is yet another attack. 90 damage in total with 5 hits.

Could Bruce actually beat this demon?

END OF ROUND 3 CLOCK -
Bruce 51/110
Balor 64/262

The Balor's flame aura kicks in and rolls average damage for once. He swings his sword against the Bruce and gets average damage again.

Bruce goes unconscious.

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ComfortableFluidAsianpiedstarling-mobile.jpg


The Balor was never below Bruces HP, because Bruce couldn't out pace the Demon, even when everything that could have gone in Bruce's favor, did. Bruce never had the opportunity to leave the demon's reach - he couldn't disengage or run because Balor's can teleport. Bruce needed to have two weapon fighting to get the extra attempts to disarm the Balor, but even then he only had a 55% chance of success. The chip damage from the Fire aura was bad enough to slowly eat through his HP, and he actually would have killed himself if the balor rolled average amounts.

Turns out, a CR19 monster (As Balors are only CR19, not 20) are formidable enough to kill a level 11 fighter with decked out gear just fine, even without having their weapons on hand. I even just assumed that the player would just hit, instead of taking the sizable chance that they could miss, and didn't factor in criticals, because it didn't matter.

Now, I could have just assumed all max dice in favor of Bruce, but then we're not even in the realm of practical exercise any more. It turns out the elder dragons could be killed by a kitten if the dice are not in the ancient red dragon's favor. I mean, it's not likely, but... I mean... how much leeway do you need to warrant the fight to be 'Trivialized' by a simple tactic to help out the party?

A Level 11 fighter is not going to gimp a CR19 Balor because he can disarm an opponent. The Balor has plenty of offenses to keep him in the game and Disarming for sake of damage mitigation is a perfectly valid tactic that I would encourage a Fighter to employ, and I wouldn't be losing sleep over it.

Oh, and about the Dretches and Glabrezu, I didn't just pick random demons that didn't have weapons to disarm - The Balor is the only Demon with weapons to disarm, all of them in the monster manual fight unarmed. In fact, it's hard to find something above CR18 that DOES have a weapon to disarm.

So, to recap - You've been debunked. The Balor is disarmable, but that doesn't make it any more reliable for a significantly lower level character to kill it. Even with Hex, and no listed skill proficiencies, the Balor can incidentally kill a level 11 fighter. Now, do you want to try to move the goal posts and try again with a level 16 fighter? Or should the entire party be fighting a Balor on it's own? If that's the case, then your DM needs to learn the point of trash mobs is not to threaten the party but to absorb resources the party needs to kill the boss. Maybe Bruce needs to be a dragonborn with some Temp HP and resistance to fire?

But, gosh, If a player is resistant to fire damage... well, then you need to adjust the CR of Red Dragons or they will just twiddle their thumbs and let the party kill them because their breath weapon is half as effective against the red dragonborn fighter...? Eh? Eh? No?

Same idea, just not as practical. The Action economy is the player's greatest resource. Spending it to reduce a bad guy's DPR is great, but it's not enough to turn the fight in your favor, and most definitely isn't enough to trivialize a good encounter.

Now, if they were level 20 players and could eliminate the opposition within a round, or the Wizard neutralized the bigger threats while the fighter held off the Balor, whether or not to disarm a balor instead of attacking is one that requires a full read of the situation. Is the damage you are preventing more important then the damage you could be dealing?

*nod nod* That's why we focus on the clock rather then raw numbers. Both sides are on a race to Zero HP. Get their people there faster then you can be brought to it.

[Kadesh]

Maze - No save, get taken out of combat until you pass a DC20 intelligence check

Hex - Stay in combat, but with disadvantage on one of 6 ability checks.

I would much rather face a Hex happy adventuring party, in place of a Maze happy wizard.

You're comparing a 1/day ability with a like 17+ a day ability?

You also use lots of words to say little. Stop it. Concise your argument so that it is not rambling nonsense.

[Willie the Duck]

You're comparing a 1/day ability with a like 17+ a day ability?

You also use lots of words to say little. Stop it. Concise your argument so that it is not rambling nonsense.

This was overly harsh (perhaps too concise), however (and generally agree)...



<unconscionably long post, that itself a serious problem for communicating your point>
...
apparently, our Balor is not particularly bright and left the back door to his lair open. Demons, am I right?
...

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ComfortableFluidAsianpiedstarling-mobile.jpg

...
So, to recap - You've been debunked.
[This is actually the biggest red flag -- you shouldn't tell your audience that you've successfully debunked your opponent (most people who make such claims on forums tend to be wrong), they should decide if you have]

...
But, gosh,
...
Eh? Eh? No?
...
*nod nod* That's why we focus on the clock rather then raw numbers. Both sides are on a race to Zero HP. Get their people there faster then you can be brought to it.

This mishmash of condescension and too-cool-for-school-ism is the exact opposite of successful communication, or working to convince others of your point. You took a reasonable argument (that, honestly, I probably could have been convinced of, with a less destructive argument) and made it nearly impossible to agree with (or even sift through).

[Max_Killjoy]

This mishmash of condescension and too-cool-for-school-ism is the exact opposite of successful communication, or working to convince others of your point. You took a reasonable argument (that, honestly, I probably could have been convinced of, with a less destructive argument) and made it nearly impossible to agree with (or even sift through).


Insert applause gif here.

[Man_Over_Game]

On a lighter note, I have been scrambling to make something work that fits within the balance of the game.

Something like this?:

"Rather than gaining Action Surge at level 2, you gain one Superiority Die and can choose 2 maneuvers from the Battle Master subclass. Your Superiority Die is a 1d8, and you regain it after a Short or Long Rest. You gain an additional Superiority Die at levels 5, 11, 17 and 20 and can change one of your maneuvers at those levels.

At level 17, you gain 2 more maneuvers and your Superiority Die is a 1d10."

----------------

The goal here is to replace Action Surge while still maintaining the same level of power. With the fact that one of the maneuvers grants an additional attack, I consider a Superiority Die roughly the same amount of power as an Action Surge with no Extra Attacks.

To balance the Superiority Die version to match Action Surge, I had to consider a solution that scaled as Action Surge did, which gave you an additional attack for each Extra Attack feature, so I just added more superiority die per Extra Attack feature.

Level 17 was tricky, as it gave a second use of Action Surge, but I figured doubling your available maneuvers and adding a bonus Superiority Die would help close that distance. While Action Surge would provide an effective 6 attacks, and Superiority Dice would add an effective 4, I thought doubling your maneuvers and increasing the effectiveness of each SD would be enough to bridge that 2 attacks-per-short-rest difference.

I was worried about the Battlemaster not having much value from these changes, but it still has a lot of synergies with Superiority Dice and it gets its superiority dice upgrade sooner than the default Fighter. I would change the level 15 feature of the Battle Master to allow yourself to spend your Reaction to command someone to spend one of your Superiority Dice for a maneuver of your choosing that they use their own modifiers and proficiency for. I'd make this change due to the fact that the Battlemaster will almost always have Superiority Dice with these changes, as well as having an extra way to spend Superiority Dice that's very thematic for the subclass.

It adds a lot of the diversity that the OP is looking for and is on-topic for the thread while still maintaining balance. Personally, I think it'll make Fighters feel more like Fighters, allowing them to fit well with other semi-martial classes, like Rogues or Bards.

[qube]

Bruce easily defends his position that killing a Balor will be easy, because I, the terrible DM, allow him to disarm opponents. The party agrees that this will be a great way to get some cool loot and be an excellent chance to get a boat load of Exp.

...

The players get the drop on our Demon and his retinue of buddies - lets say 6 dretches, and a Glabrezu.
Adding extra monsters - textbook example of moving the goalpost.


We'll say he lays in three attacks before the Balor is disarmed completely,
...
The Balor out paces him on the initiative order (It was either Str 20 or Dex 20, We went with Strength). The Balor picks up his Sword for freeSigh ... and that's already adressed in the thread. If you assume monsters pick up their weapons for free, you make disarming a pretty useless tactic; in which case the question becomes "why add it to the game in the first place".

Oppositely, considering Bruce disarmed the balor, the weapons - if you assume they didn't fall far and thus are in the Balors range - should still be in Bruce's range as well. Since Bruce only used 3 attacks, he gets a free action to pick up the sword and an action surge to pick up the whip.

but what if it requires Bruce 4-6 attacks to disarm 'm?

Worst case senario, a simple mage hand from another character, heck, a simple move (the OMG could provoke an unarmed opportunity attack of the Balor) & grap; snatches the whip away from it.

Worst WORST case senario, Bruce simply uses his additional attacks on the whip, destroying it.


So, to recap - You've been debunkedSo, to recap, you moved the goalpost, assumed stupid tactics from Brusce, and framed your senario so that the disarm combat manouvre is nothing more then an action drain (not speed bump) ... At which point you came to the conclusion disam wasn't that overpowered.

Color me debunked.

[KorvinStarmast]

Arguing the fighter has the same level of complexety as the wizard is pretty dishonest inaccurate. FTFY, and I agree. We are a group of over 50 somethings whose party make up is: 1 Wizard, 1 Cleric (now two) 1 Fighter Champion, 1 Barbarian (Bear Totem), 1 Rogue/Ranger (OK, my nephew, the only not-50-something), 1 Rogue/Arcane Trickster. All have been around D&D since the 70's. The two who took Champion and Barbarian explicitly said on more than one occasion "not interested in the complications of spell casting, I prefer this class."
The guy who took the wizard has been talking with me on each level up on "Man, all these spells, which ones do I choose?"
I play a Cleric because I like to play a cleric. I don't mind having to choose the spells to prepare. I've found that when playing clerics since AD&D 1e time (those bonus spells were sweet) the RP value of healing someone (NPC, monster, anyone not in the party) or of removing a curse, is often out of proportion to the effort expended.
DDepends on the campaign, sure.

Rogues are fun, and Arcane Tricksters are funner.

Neither our Barbarian nor our Champion are bored.

I came from the era when the most interesting part of combat was what happened before initiative was rolled (i.e. making sure you never engaged in combat except on your terms) or after the morale rolls started happening. So, no, I don't get bored by attacking every round once the fighting starts. But... I recognize not everyone agrees. Amen.

Thing is, we already have options for that, we call them Rangers, Paladins, Hexblades, War Clerics, possibly battlemasters depending on your definition. Honestly speaking, it is once combat stops that I wish fighter had more going on under the hood. I find that making choices on background and skill proficiencies can spread some of the love into non combat encounters ... my champion started an orc revolt among the slaves of some giants a while back ... he's a half orc. :smallbiggrin: Great fun.

So, there's a new player.

They're an older player, and don't want to deal with a lot of mental overhead. All they want to do is be a big, burly dude in armor, swing their sword, and kick some butt. My friends mentioned above agree.
On a lighter note, I have been scrambling to make something work that fits within the balance of the game.

Something like this?:

"Rather than gaining Action Surge at level 2, you gain one Superiority Die and can choose 2 maneuvers from the Battle Master subclass. Your Superiority Die is a 1d8, and you regain it after a Short or Long Rest. You gain an additional Superiority Die at levels 5, 11, 17 and 20 and can change one of your maneuvers at those levels.

At level 17, you gain 2 more maneuvers and your Superiority Die is a 1d10." Neat idea, do you think you'll get a chance to play test it?
Adding extra monsters - textbook example of moving the goalpost.
I am going to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, no, Demon's Advocate, as it's a Balor, and point out that demons can summon other demons. It's part of their kit. :smallbiggrin: (But I might be recalling a variant rule on demons, rather than the standard demon, need to check the MM ...)

[CantigThimble]

I find that making choices on background and skill proficiencies can spread some of the love into non combat encounters ... my champion started an orc revolt among the slaves of some giants a while back ... he's a half orc. :smallbiggrin: Great fun.

One thing I really enjoyed when I changed from spellcaster to fighter was figuring out how how to accomplish my out of combat goals without a giant list of abilities that specifically say: "Solve this problem" I'm not sure how much my effectivness in solving out of combat problems changed, but it was definitely a lot more satisfying to find ways to fit the square pegs in the round holes than it was to just manage a big list of spells to make sure I had as many different shapes of pegs as possible.

This is where I get one of my personal axioms of gaming: The most engaged player at the table will be the most effective, no matter how few abilities they have on their sheet. The least engaged player at the table will be the least effective, no matter how many abilities they have on their sheet.

[qube]

I find that making choices on background and skill proficiencies can spread some of the love into non combat encounters ... my champion started an orc revolt among the slaves of some giants a while back ... he's a half orc. :smallbiggrin: Great fun. my battlemaster is the brother of a king of a citystate, and thus First Knight.

In fact ironically, we've got race, class, background, etc ... which is a lot more then many of the guys of myths and legend had.Arthur? ya know. Human, no reali abilities, scion background - but that's about it. St. George ... heck, all he had was a horse & lance. No way these guys could be interesting right? :smallwink:


(But I might be recalling a variant rule on demons, rather than the standard demon, need to check the MM ...)it's a variant. (and just like giving dragons access to spells like coningency & shield, or like templates, the MM doesn't state how that changes the CR)
((of course, if people want to argue that those minion monsters don't change the CR ... there's also no reason to add them. After all, they don't change the CR, right? :smalltongue: ))

[Son of A Lich!]

You also use lots of words to say little. Stop it. Concise your argument so that it is not rambling nonsense.


This was overly harsh (perhaps too concise), however (and generally agree)...

This mishmash of condescension and too-cool-for-school-ism is the exact opposite of successful communication, or working to convince others of your point. You took a reasonable argument (that, honestly, I probably could have been convinced of, with a less destructive argument) and made it nearly impossible to agree with (or even sift through).

Notes taken. Thank you for pointing this out to me. I was in a bad head space when I wrote it and probably shouldn't have responded at all until the next morning.


You're comparing a 1/day ability with a like 17+ a day ability?

To be fair, I didn't bring up Hex as a game changer. I was saying that a Wizard is allowed to trivialize a fight and no one bats an eye, but if a Fighter disarms an opponent it makes Balors a speed bump. I don't think Hex makes a big change in the math of whether or not a Balor is neutralized by disarming attacks.


Adding extra monsters - textbook example of moving the goalpost.

Except in practice, you will almost never see a boss monster without adds.

I figured a trivial encounter with a Balor would mean that a fighter could take it on himself. For comparison, an 11 level fighter could kill an Ankheg on his own, right? The Ankheg is little more then a speed bump.

To ensure that the fighter was even capable of fighting the Balor in head to head combat I assumed he hit with every attack, gave the Fighter a surprise round, all of his short/long rest abilities and that other casters had put the concentrations spells up (So that the fighter didn't have to specialize in Disarming with a specific build), and the Balor missed his first attacks AND did minimal damage with his flame aura ability and had no environmental effects to help it. Further, the adds didn't help the Balor in the favor of the fighter, while the party did help the Fighter with Haste and Hex.

But the fighter still loses. I agree that I did move the goal posts, but they were in your favor, not against you.


Sigh ... and that's already adressed in the thread. If you assume monsters pick up their weapons for free, you make disarming a pretty useless tactic; in which case the question becomes "why add it to the game in the first place".

Except that it does reduce the Balors DPR with his weapons by a fair amount. Now, the rules here aren't specified, but that's a quirk of 5e's design. I can't see any reason why a Balor would not be able to pick up his weapons after having been disarmed as part of his attack action (The interact with objects action specifies that drawing a weapon is not an action, but there is no ruling on picking up a dropped weapon).

But, as you said yourself, The Balor doesn't get his multi-attack if he only has one weapon. I will agree to that strict reading of the rules, since we are talking about balance.


Oppositely, considering Bruce disarmed the balor, the weapons - if you assume they didn't fall far and thus are in the Balors range - should still be in Bruce's range as well. Since Bruce only used 3 attacks, he gets a free action to pick up the sword and an action surge to pick up the whip.

First - Balor's are huge monsters, the Balor's reach is 10ft. But we can assume that Bruce still had movement left and could saunter over to the weapons on the ground.

Secondly - Bruce cannot wield the weapons (As they are huge and even with powerful build, they are a size catagory too large for him), and no matter where he throws them/takes them/puts them/drops them or whatever... Balor's can teleport... The Balor is always in range to pick up an item off the ground or pull it off of an opponent.

Remember, Bruce is the strength build in the party. The Balor has advantage on opposed strength checks due to his size, but this is nullified by Hex. If someone else has the weapons and are trying to keep it away from the Balor, the Balor is significantly more likely to break them in a grapple and to take his weapons back. If Bruce keeps the Balor's weapons, then the party has a significant drop in DPR and the Balor wins by attrition.



but what if it requires Bruce 4-6 attacks to disarm 'm?


Worst case senario, a simple mage hand from another character, heck, a simple move (the OMG could provoke an unarmed opportunity attack of the Balor) & grap; snatches the whip away from it.

Worst WORST case senario, Bruce simply uses his additional attacks on the whip, destroying it.

Mage hand can only move 10lbs. Both weapons are heavier then 10lbs quadrupled for being huge weapons. If the wizard needs to keep hex up, and the cleric needs to keep Bruce's health up, and the rogue needs to grab and dash the weapons, and the Fighter needs to keep the Balor from picking them back up again, I think you've lost the "Speed Bump" argument.

To my knowledge, there are no rules for destroying magic items, but I would probably rule about 25 damage to sunder a magic weapon, and that it would have resistance unless you have siege weapon rule, or it was dispelled. So... about 4 attacks to destroy the whip. Admittedly, at least he isn't getting the flame aura damage on those attacks, but at least he has the Balor down one weapon.

Mind you, the flame aura alone means that Bruce only has 11 attacks on average to finish off the Balor, assuming average damage. And every round he takes below that, he loses one attack opportunity. Healing spells at that level aren't big enough to keep Bruce alive long enough to kill the Balor because the Balor is too high of a CR for them to take on.

Now, all of this can be mitigated, but at some point you have to look at it and realize that your pouring more factors in favor of the party to allow them the opportunity to kill a Balor at significantly lower level then they are supposed to be able to - You have to admit that once you start talking about setting up Bruce as a Balor killing machine and not giving the Balor anything to defend himself with, and he still has a pretty significant chance of dying... The Balor is still a far too challenging for a mid level party.


So, to recap, you moved the goalpost, assumed stupid tactics from Brusce, and framed your senario so that the disarm combat manouvre is nothing more then an action drain (not speed bump) ... At which point you came to the conclusion disam wasn't that overpowered.

Color me debunked.

Disarm is NOT over powered. Useful, to be sure, but not over powered. It's better when it's at a level appropriate encounter and used as a delaying tactic for the rest of the party to keep up. If the bandit baron is wielding scimitars and the fighter intercepts him and disarms him, then the Baron has to pick up his weapons instead of attacking the wizard, for example. It's a choice with a trade off that can keep the party from having to use their limited resources (Even if Hex is 20 times a day, it's still a limited resource) and lets the fighter make tactical decisions. Is it better to disarm him now and keep him around for a turn, or better to just unload damage? There will be situations that call for either option.

I think you chose the Balor specifically because it has weapons, no unarmed attacks listed, and was high CR. Almost everything else in the book of that high CR either can't be disarmed (Like a dragon), or has other attack options (Like the Pit Fiend).

The problem here is that, while the disarm does drop his DPR per round, the players need to be of significantly higher level to mitigate the other factors passively and have staying power to take down the Balor. The Fighter can influence the Balor's DPR at 11th level, but doesn't have the support internally to keep it up. While we could imagine a white room where a Fighter kills a Balor at level 11, D&D isn't played in white rooms. The Tactic isn't enough on it's own to influence the CR of the monster in total.


it's a variant. (and just like giving dragons access to spells like coningency & shield, or like templates, the MM doesn't state how that changes the CR)
((of course, if people want to argue that those minion monsters don't change the CR ... there's also no reason to add them. After all, they don't change the CR, right? :smalltongue: ))

The point of adds is that they make the game more fun. Lair actions and legendary resistances exist to keep a boss monster alive long enough to threaten the party. If I had a Lich encounter planned, I would also throw in 20 zombies and 5 wights with long bows, just to keep everything dynamic and interesting. The point isn't to make it more challenging, it's to keep a job for everyone to do instead of dog piling the Boss.

[qube]

Secondly - Bruce cannot wield the weapons (As they are huge and even with powerful build, they are a size catagory too large for him), and no matter where he throws them/takes them/puts them/drops them or whatever... Balor's can teleport... The Balor is always in range to pick up an item off the ground or pull it off of an opponent.unless, of course, if Bruce puts them in his bakcpack (or however you call the space you put items (like greatwords) in that you don't wield)


Mind you, the flame aura alone means that Bruce only has 11 attacks on average to finish off the Balor, assuming average damage.[quote]rounds, you mean. 93 hp at 9 DPR, is 11 rounds. (more actually, as the balor only gets in a signle whip attack aside from his aura).

[quote]I think you chose the Balor specifically because it has weapons, no unarmed attacks listed, and was high CR. Almost everything else in the book of that high CR either can't be disarmed (Like a dragon), or has other attack options (Like the Pit Fiend). :smallconfused: ... yes ... ? since I was pointing out that disarm has a different effect on a case by case basis.

You're ABSOLUTELY right, you know:

Dragon: no effect.
Pit fiend: very minor effect
Balor: signifcant effect
Marilith (ya know, the 6 scimitar demon): ... picking up only 1 per turn really messes her up her mojo.

And that's the problem I'm adressing. If it just had a minor effect on everyone, then, hey, just throw CR +1 monsters at the party, and the problem is solved. But with the varying effect, it's harder to, or need to spend more time on, making balanced encounters.


The point of adds is that they make the game more fun.yes, I know that, but I'm adressing the CR system, not what a DM can or can't do to make it more fun.

[Skylivedk]

Or just be a sane DM and expect that the NPC's and monsters have proficiencies that aren't listed. Just like it makes no sense that the Veteran and Knight have no proficiencies, it also makes no sense that the Balor:
A) has no other proficiencies
B) would only deal 1 dmg with his huge demon skin, claw like nailed hands. They look like Sabertooth's.
C) that the Balor wouldn't use the chains, another whip etc.

-- and no, I'm not back at nullifying disarm by just giving extra weapons. There's a difference between damage pr attack to 1 and reducing the attack with 30-60%. There's also a difference between being able to use the ability as you battle a pirate captain on a ship with waves crashing all over and a demon lord in the depths of hell

[qube]

Or just be a sane DM and expect that the NPC's and monsters have proficiencies that aren't listeI'm not sure you grasp my point, if you start your post with that.

My point is that the disarm rule requires addtional work to make encounters balanced. And it's that extra work (by calculating a correcter CR, or altering the monsters so they are back on CR) that I hold against it.



B) would only deal 1 dmg with his huge demon skin, claw like nailed hands. They look like Sabertooth's.actually, it does 9 damage (1+STR mod). (as it's the max damage a longsword deals by the average jo blow, that does add up)

edit: and sure, the unarmed damage itself is still 1, but lets be fair this is only 1d4 damage and does a lot of more damage then what Sabertooth's nails would do IRL

https://www.bilderbeste.com/thumbs/kLY18S5G9QAx_mQ1jKvybpGhKE67SVeMo4xcwkhUKVQ1mQtCBa HyGXBTjcKoXFq4zkvWG_WgYn6Yz6deAkpJzA.jpg
A rondel, a real medival dagger. Not some little
knive you use to put butter on your bread

[Man_Over_Game]

Guys, I don't think that a niche Disarm effect is quite what the OP is looking for.

Could we put the whole Disarm argument on hold to put the thread back on track? I get that everyone wants to be right, but who is really benefiting from this discussion?

[qube]

Guys, I don't think that a niche Disarm effect is quite what the OP is looking for.

Could we put the whole Disarm argument on hold to put the thread back on track? I get that everyone wants to be right, but who is really benefiting from this discussion?solid point.

looking at your idea of replacing action surge with superiority dice, begs the questions, what about battlemasters?
are they removed from game
are they now the "action surge" subclass
are they modded differently (I mean, their stick used to be the maneuvers. They kind of get the problem of champion (tnot getting anything really new, without the benefit of the champ - which was litte to no resource management)

balancewise, my first idea would be to compare action surge with riposte. In that optic,
you'd get a number of dice equal your amount of attack (you used to be able to action surge for, for example, 3 attacks; now you can riposte for 3 attacks) ... but that die would always be considered 0. (since riposte does attack damage plus die, while action surge only does normal damage)
when you get your second action surge, you could rule the die always results in a value equal to your proficiency modifier or something like that.
any difference between riposte & action surge could be offsetted by giving the fighter more manouvers. trading that disadvantage for Versatility

[Max_Killjoy]

solid point.

looking at your idea of replacing action surge with superiority dice, begs the questions, what about battlemasters?

are they removed from game
are they now the "action surge" subclass
are they modded differently (I mean, their stick used to be the maneuvers. They kind of get the problem of champion (tnot getting anything really new, without the benefit of the champ - which was litte to no resource management)



My impression from earlier posts is that Battlemaster would be the subclass that gets Superiority Dice "sooner, more, and bigger".

[Man_Over_Game]

solid point.

looking at your idea of replacing action surge with superiority dice, begs the questions, what about battlemasters?
are they removed from game
are they now the "action surge" subclass
are they modded differently (I mean, their stick used to be the maneuvers. They kind of get the problem of champion (tnot getting anything really new, without the benefit of the champ - which was litte to no resource management)

balancewise, my first idea would be to compare action surge with riposte. In that optic,
you'd get a number of dice equal your amount of attack (you used to be able to action surge for, for example, 3 attacks; now you can riposte for 3 attacks) ... but that die would always be considered 0. (since riposte does attack damage plus die, while action surge only does normal damage)
when you get your second action surge, you could rule the die always results in a value equal to your proficiency modifier or something like that.
any difference between riposte & action surge could be offsetted by giving the fighter more manouvers. trading that disadvantage for Versatility

I actually reached the same exact conclusion you did in every way.

Keep Battlemasters. They're actually improved by this change, due to the fact that they increase the Superiority Die size by one step at level 3, and they have multiple synergistic benefits with Superiority Dice. A full-level Battlemaster would have 14 of the possible 16 maneuvers with this change, and have 4d8 Superiority Dice at level 3 and have 7d12 dice at level 17. Everyone else would have 1d8 die at level 3 and 2d10 at level 17. The Battlemaster would just be a specialized option for their maneuvers. While having 5 more dice than everyone might not seem like a big enough deal to consider a subclass, that's compounded by each Short Rest your team has. In an expected combat day with 2 Short Rests and 3 battles, your Champion friend pulled off 6 maneuvers while you were able to do 21.

I really did consider making the Superiority Die 0 (like what you mentioned with Riposte) but not only does that make some of the maneuvers completely invalid (like Evasive Footwork) but it also becomes trumped by the Martial Adept feat. Why would someone dip 2 levels into Fighter when they could just buy a feat that does it better?