Should Fighting Styles have "if"s?

[Bjarkmundur]

I've been looking at the published Fighting Styles and a couple of homebrewed ones, and it got me wondering. Why is the fighter designed to limit a fighting style to a weapon type, instead of opening the fighting styles up to see a more varied selection of fighter characters? I mean, they didn't call it weapon styles.

What do you think, should fighting styles be limited to weapon types, with ifs and buts and whens, or should they be more open and allow each character to express his inner warrior in his unique way? Is there maybe a happy medium that can be struck?

[Man_Over_Game]

I'm not sure how it is restricted to weapons.

One handed weapons? Ranged Weapons? Shields? Armor?

Those are all really broad selections. Even Great Weapon Fighting is restricted to melee weapons you are wielding with both hands, which extends to Versatile and Two Handed. That still leaves room for Reach, some thrown, and the highest damage weapons in the game.

The only one that's REALLY limited is Two Weapon Fighting, which is (by default) limited to melee light weapons. Which there are 6 of, and you can throw (and still get the Fighting Style bonus for) half of those. You can basically double those numbers by taking the Dual Wielder feat.

I'm not entirely sure how the Fighting Styles are considered to be restrictive. To a playstyle, maybe? But...isn't that kinda the point?

Unless I missed the mark on that one and we're talking about something else entirely (like weapon feats)?

[Nidgit]

The whole point of Fighting Style is specialization. When you're doing a thing your character has specifically trained in, like wielding a heavy weapon or using a bow, you get a bonus. That adds a lot more definition to a character than something broader like "swings harder", which by definition is already covered by ASIs.

[nickl_2000]

I think a happy medium has been struck.

Archery - All ranged weapons, whether XBows, Bows, Javelins, Daggers, Slings, or Darts
Defense - Applies to all Armor
Dueling - All one handed weapons, whether dex or strength based
GWF - All melee attacks where you use two hands, whether a great weapon or a Versatile Weapon.
Protection - Shield Based
Two Weapon Fighting - All light weapons, or more if you also take the feat.

In general these are applying to a group of weapons, not a single weapon. So, it leaves it very open to the player.

[stoutstien]

I think a happy medium has been struck.

Archery - All ranged weapons, whether XBows, Bows, Javelins, Daggers, Slings, or Darts
Defense - Applies to all Armor
Dueling - All one handed weapons, whether dex or strength based
GWF - All melee attacks where you use two hands, whether a great weapon or a Versatile Weapon.
Protection - Shield Based
Two Weapon Fighting - All light weapons, or more if you also take the feat.

In general these are applying to a group of weapons, not a single weapon. So, it leaves it very open to the player.
Throwing melee weapons don't get the archer bonus unfortunately. Darts are good to go though.

[Bjarkmundur]

Mwuahaha, I now have your indirect permission of making up some really funky fighting styles! Mwuahaha!

Honestly, though, I really felt like they were more niche than they actually are. I always looked at it "this one for shield, this for greatsword, this for that", but you really CAN pick rather freely.

[nickl_2000]

Throwing melee weapons don't get the archer bonus unfortunately. Darts are good to go though.

Yup, you are right. I read "ranged weapons" as "ranged attacks." Thanks for the correction.



Mwuahaha, I now have your indirect permission of making up some really funky fighting styles! Mwuahaha!

Honestly, though, I really felt like they were more niche than they actually are. I always looked at it "this one for shield, this for greatsword, this for that", but you really CAN pick rather freely.

By all means, go for it. Make something that you feel is missing and makes sense in your game.

[Lunali]

Throwing melee weapons don't get the archer bonus unfortunately. Darts are good to go though.

On the other hand, they do get the dueling bonus.

[BurgerBeast]

I think every fighter should just get every style. Rangers should get every style on their list, and likewise for Paladins, etc.

Each style can only be active if the conditions are met, and you can only benefit from one at a time.

At the point when a class grants a second style you can either (a) invent a new feature or (b) allow the character to have two styles active at once provided each is possible based on conditions.

Exploitable but I’m fine with it.

[stoutstien]

I think every fighter should just get every style. Rangers should get every style on their list, and likewise for Paladins, etc.

Each style can only be active if the conditions are met, and you can only benefit from one at a time.

At the point when a class grants a second style you can either (a) invent a new feature or (b) allow the character to have two styles active at once provided each is possible based on conditions.

Exploitable but I’m fine with it.

So more like a stance? I played with this idea a while back and I think if you make defense and offense stances where you can only have one of each up excluding champion fighter it could work. Maybe use reaction to change them

[Tanarii]

Archery - All ranged weapons, whether XBows, Bows, Javelins, Daggers, Slings, or Darts
Defense - Applies to all Armor
Dueling - All one handed weapons, whether dex or strength based
GWF - All melee attacks where you use two hands, whether a great weapon or a Versatile Weapon.
Protection - Shield Based
Two Weapon Fighting - All light weapons, or more if you also take the feat.

Archery - all ranged weapons, wether ammunition or thrown
Defense - all armor
Dueling - all one handed melee weapons, wether melee or thrown. Other hand empty or (more likely) shield.
GWF - all two handed or versatile melee weapons. (melee only?*)
Protection - Shields
TWF - all use of Two Weapon Fighting

*I can't find the rule that says you throw versatile weapons one handed, but good luck selling two handed throwing to your DM. Regardless, the higher damage die only applies to two handed melee attacks.

Personal opinion, Dueling is OP and should have been written to not work with a Shield in the other hand either.

[suplee215]

*I can't find the rule that says you throw versatile weapons one handed, but good luck selling two handed throwing to your DM. Regardless, the higher damage die only applies to two handed melee attacks.



The thrown weapon thing is actually in the versatile weapon rules. "Versatile. This weapon can be used with one or two hands. A damage value in parentheses appears with the property—the damage when the weapon is used with two hands to make a melee attack." Now one can argue that this is only referring to the damage and if you put two hands on the spear as you throw it you still get the benefit of the style even if you use the damage for a one handed attack but at that point I think the DM's glare will shut up any reasonable person. So the other 60% will still be arguing with you for a few hours.

[indemnity]

..Why is the fighter designed to limit a fighting style to a weapon type...

As a DM it is incredibly fun to take away peoples toys and make them think.

It is a balance of fun and meta-gaming of course. Don't want the ridiculous MC GWF polearm master leaving the table because they haven't found a polearm in the last four levels.

[Teaguethebean]

]Personal opinion, Dueling is OP and should have been written to not work with a Shield in the other hand either.
How is 2 extra damage better than a +2 to hit or +1 AC I feel like archery or defense are clearly the best fighting styles.

[Bjarkmundur]

Archery:
Limiting this fighting style to range weapons makes sense, since it's designed to negate covers.

Defense:
Why is this limited to armor-users? Is it just to ward of multiclass shenanigans?

Great Weapon Fighting:
Why can't this be used for all weapon attacks? Is the requirement for this fighting style strictly arbitrary?

Protection:
I don't understand the shield requirement? Is this too arbitary?

[Tanarii]

How is 2 extra damage better than a +2 to hit or +1 AC I feel like archery or defense are clearly the best fighting styles.
Two extra damage per attack, which typically means about +1.2 DPR per attack.

+2 to hit is great, but it's total added damage is a factor of your base damage. Without sharpshooter on a longbow you're looking at roughly +.75dpr per attack at low levels and +.95 DPR at higher levels. It's sharpshooter (or other large per attack bonuses) that makes Archery powerful.

Defense isn't really comparable, because it's doing something different. But rarely do I see it referred to as "the best". Usually it's considered a fallback Fighting Style, one you take only if you're not particularly offensively oriented character and you don't want to use shields (or reaction contention will be high).

+2 damage is roughly balanced. Without a shield.

[BurgerBeast]

So more like a stance? I played with this idea a while back and I think if you make defense and offense stances where you can only have one of each up excluding champion fighter it could work. Maybe use reaction to change them

Yep, like a stance. That idea sounds pretty cool.


Two extra damage per attack, which typically means about +1.2 DPR per attack.

+2 to hit is great, but it's total added damage is a factor of your base damage. Without sharpshooter on a longbow you're looking at roughly +.75dpr per attack at low levels and +.95 DPR at higher levels. It's sharpshooter (or other large per attack bonuses) that makes Archery powerful.

Defense isn't really comparable, because it's doing something different. But rarely do I see it referred to as "the best". Usually it's considered a fallback Fighting Style, one you take only if you're not particularly offensively oriented character and you don't want to use shields (or reaction contention will be high).

+2 damage is roughly balanced. Without a shield.

I’m pretty sure that mathematically defensive is superior to all other styles, although somewhat unexpectedly it gets better as AC improves, until the enemy needs a 20 to hit at which point it becomes worthless - although I don’t have the math handy to back it up. To take a simple example, if an enemy needs a 19 to hit you, that +1 to AC has just cut the enemy’s DPR in half. If 18, cut by 33%, if 17, 25%... etc

At 50%, your DDBD (damage dealt before dying/downed) is doubled.

At 33%, DDBD 150%.

At 25%, DDBD 133%.

Obviously if you were never going to be “downed,” DDBD is irrelevant. But when it is relevant (i.e. deadly boss fights), it’s massive. Not to mention simply losing hp at a slower rate has a large effect on party resource management.

[Composer99]

Archery:
Limiting this fighting style to range weapons makes sense, since it's designed to negate covers.

Defense:
Why is this limited to armor-users? Is it just to ward of multiclass shenanigans?

Great Weapon Fighting:
Why can't this be used for all weapon attacks? Is the requirement for this fighting style strictly arbitrary?

Protection:
I don't understand the shield requirement? Is this too arbitary?

The idea behind each fighting style is to give each of the major ways of fighting in the game (using two-handed weapons, ranged weapons, wearing armour) it's own specialty shtick. What's more, the designers' intent does clearly seem to be to have each shtick be distinct from the others, which is why, for instance, gwf lets you reroll damage dice while other styles don't, or why protection fighting style requires a shield.

There is nothing more or less arbitrary about any given fighting style than there is about any mechanic of the game, all of which are ultimately arbitrary in some sense.

If you want to be able to use protection fighting style without using a shield, or to reroll weapon damage dice, and there's nothing wrong with that as such, that cries out for a homebrew feat of some sort. Or maybe modifying weapon master feat.

[Potato_Priest]

If you want to be able to use protection fighting style without using a shield, or to reroll weapon damage dice, and there's nothing wrong with that as such, that cries out for a homebrew feat of some sort. Or maybe modifying weapon master feat.

To add to your point, I’m pretty sure if you allowed people to use their style outside of its associated weapon, everyone would always use archery on everything.

Of course, if you didn’t allow archery to be swapped out, then everyone would use dueling on everything.

The other 3 would probably be OK to expand though.

[Nightgaun7]

Personally I feel like they should have been more along the lines of Aggressive/Defensive/Protective/Mobile etc.

[Hytheter]

Personal opinion, Dueling is OP and should have been written to not work with a Shield in the other hand either.

Not sure I agree that it's OP but it's definitely clearly better than GWF. Especially when you consider versatile weapons which, with the correct style, are actually stronger in one hand than in two.

I've seen it suggested that GWF should be +2, which would be both more effective and easier to play (though I'd hesitate with GWM and PAM existing) while Dueling does something else besides damage.

[stoutstien]

Not sure I agree that it's OP but it's definitely clearly better than GWF. Especially when you consider versatile weapons which, with the correct style, are actually stronger in one hand than in two.

I've seen it suggested that GWF should be +2, which would be both more effective and easier to play (though I'd hesitate with GWM and PAM existing) while Dueling does something else besides damage.

A good GWF fix is just turn any one or two rolled with damage into the half of the total of that die. Not as constant as duelist but prevents low rolls with high damage two handed weapons. Doesn't buff PAM either.

[Sindeloke]

A good GWF fix is just turn any one or two rolled with damage into the half of the total of that die. Not as constant as duelist but prevents low rolls with high damage two handed weapons. Doesn't buff PAM either.

That's not really a fix, just a timesaver. Unless you're using "half of d6 is 4" for simplicity, then it does turn into a buff which might actually add more damage than Dueling under the right circumstances. But if you're doing "all 1s and 2s on my greataxe are 6.5" you haven't actually changed the style at all, that's already the baseline effect of the style when averaged over multiple rolls.

[Man_Over_Game]

That's not really a fix, just a timesaver. Unless you're using "half of d6 is 4" for simplicity, then it does turn into a buff which might actually add more damage than Dueling under the right circumstances. But if you're doing "all 1s and 2s on my greataxe are 6.5" you haven't actually changed the style at all, that's already the baseline effect of the style when averaged over multiple rolls.

What would be the damage change if you made the GWF style to be:

"If you roll a 1 on your damage die, you instead treat it as dealing the maximum possible value."

This would save time, but it might also give it the damage buff it needs to be competitive against the Dueling feature, but I'm unsure of how to track how valuable it'd be.

[Edit] Well, I guess I could calculate it, thinking about it:

2d6 weapon:

Default Average: 3.5x2 = 7
New Average: 4.33x2 = 8.66

1d12 weapon:

Default Average: 6.5
New Average: 7.42

A bit low. So let's take a look if we expanded it to 1-2:

2d6 weapon:
New Average : 5x2 = 10


1d12 weapon:
New Average: 8.25


Which is a bit closer to what we want. Both weapons are getting between +2-+3 damage per hit.

[stoutstien]

That's not really a fix, just a timesaver. Unless you're using "half of d6 is 4" for simplicity, then it does turn into a buff which might actually add more damage than Dueling under the right circumstances. But if you're doing "all 1s and 2s on my greataxe are 6.5" you haven't actually changed the style at all, that's already the baseline effect of the style when averaged over multiple rolls.

Yea I rounded up so a 1 or 2 would turn into a 7 with a d12 and so on.

[stoutstien]

@MoG

Have you ever done the math to allow great weapon style to allow a player too maximize their damage roll once a round? Maybe first attack.

[Hytheter]

A good GWF fix is just turn any one or two rolled with damage into the half of the total of that die. Not as constant as duelist but prevents low rolls with high damage two handed weapons. Doesn't buff PAM either.

That does kinda help the ease of play aspect (but even then requires players to recall/calculate the average of results of dice), but does nothing for the actual overall effectiveness.


What would be the damage change if you made the GWF style to be:

"If you roll a 1 on your damage die, you instead treat it as dealing the maximum possible value."

[snip]

A bit low. So let's take a look if we expanded it to 1-2:

2d6 weapon:
New Average : 5x2 = 10


1d12 weapon:
New Average: 8.25


Which is a bit closer to what we want. Both weapons are getting between +2-+3 damage per hit.

1d10 also becomes an average of 7.2, which isn't tons but still better than duelling's d8+2 at least. Also 3.75 on a D4 for PAM.