New Fighting Styles [PEACH]

[Amechra]

Blindfighting (Fighter, Ranger)
Creatures you cannot see do not get advantage on their attack rolls against you.

Grappling (Fighter, Ranger)
Whenever you successfully make a Strength (Athletics) check to grapple a creature or maintain a grapple, you may immediately deal your unarmed strike damage to the creature you are grappling.

Throwing Weapons (College of Swords Bard, Fighter, Ranger)
Whenever you throw a weapon, you may immediately draw another weapon.



I think Throwing Weapons needs another bump, but I'm not sure what. And yeah, I had a bit of a block when it came to Paladin fighting styles.

[Envoy]

For paladin, what about advantage with radiant damage or something. I can’t come up with the statistics or whatnot, but I’d find the paladin is quite difficult, as you said.
Something else, what about aerial combat. Is there one with that?

[suplee215]

I could see grappling as a paladin style. perhaps a shield bash type as well "when you attack with a one handed weapon you may use your bonus action to make an attack with your shield that counts as an improvised weapon" (improvised to avoid it being better than two weapon fighting)

[DeTess]

I'd say blind-fighting is too situational. Most fighting styles provide a bonus every round you're actively using the style, and this one will only come up once or twice a session in most games. Grappling seems like a fine fighting style. Throwing weapons could get a clause allowing for throwing weaposn to be dual-wielded if the rules don't cover that already, or get the same benefit as the dual-wielding fighting style (+dex to damage) when dual-wielding throwing weapons.

[JMS]

Maybe a mounted style?

[Envoy]

What about airborne style? Using dexterity would be nice.
It could involve jumping around and jumping off enemies and allies.
Alchemy Style- advantage (somehow) using potions or magic effects(not spells)
I’m just copying off of monster hunter now, so that’s all👌

[stoutstien]

Blindfighting (Fighter, Ranger)
Creatures you cannot see do not get advantage on their attack rolls against you.

Grappling (Fighter, Ranger)
Whenever you successfully make a Strength (Athletics) check to grapple a creature or maintain a grapple, you may immediately deal your unarmed strike damage to the creature you are grappling.

Throwing Weapons (College of Swords Bard, Fighter, Ranger)
Whenever you throw a weapon, you may immediately draw another weapon.



I think Throwing Weapons needs another bump, but I'm not sure what. And yeah, I had a bit of a block when it came to Paladin fighting styles.

Blind fighting is to narrow. Maybe just make it a reaction to apply disadvantage on the first attack against you. Nice tactical choice now

The grapple fighting style I use is- you can no make a grapple attempt as an attack of opportunity.
*The grapple feat got a complete rework also.
+1 str or con
- can make a single melee attack as an reaction to anyone who succeed a check to escape a grapple.
-you are considered to have 3/4 cover while grappling.

Throwing weapon- +1 damage with weapons thrown and remove the disadvantage for attacking at long range.

[sandmote]

Grappler looks great, although Blindfighting doesn't really fit as a fighting style. Maybe letting the PC ignore disadvantage against lightly obscured opponents instead?


I think Throwing Weapons needs another bump, but I'm not sure what. And yeah, I had a bit of a block when it came to Paladin fighting styles. None of the options from the books increase the size of a weapon's damage die. That might be a reasonable option, considering thrown weapons tend to be fairly small.


Throwing Weapons (College of Swords Bard, Fighter, Ranger)
Whenever you throw a weapon, you may immediately draw another weapon (no action required by you) and can roll a die one size larger in place of the normal damage when attacking with a weapon that has the thrown property.

I'm hoping the language makes it clear this doesn't stack with a monk's martial arts die.


Maybe a mounted style?
I'd maybe break this into two, one offensive and one defensive.

Perhaps as follows:


Mounted Cover (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin)
As a bonus action on your turn, you can drop to the side of your mount, granting yourself half cover until the start of your next turn or until you use an action, bonus action, or reaction.

Although I don't remember where I heard of this tactic being used, so I'm not sure how feasible it would actually be. On to an offensive bonus:

And then a separate one for offense:


Steady Rider (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin)
When you use the attack action, your mount can use its action to roll into your attacks. When your mount does so, you may make a weapon attack as a bonus action

[Amechra]

For paladin, what about advantage with radiant damage or something. I can’t come up with the statistics or whatnot, but I’d find the paladin is quite difficult, as you said.
Something else, what about aerial combat. Is there one with that?

Advantage on Radiant damage? Interesting, but I'm not sure that's a good idea. It comes out to roughly +1.2 damage per die for smiting, which is a lot bigger than what you get from most Fighting Styles. Aerial Combat could be kinda interesting, though - I just don't think that it would get much use...


I could see grappling as a paladin style. perhaps a shield bash type as well "when you attack with a one handed weapon you may use your bonus action to make an attack with your shield that counts as an improvised weapon" (improvised to avoid it being better than two weapon fighting)

Hmm... you know, you're right. I'm not sure why I didn't give them Grappling. I'm a bit wary about handing out an extra attack in general - part of me thinks that a boost to shoving people could be cool for a shield style, so that it'll work well with Shield Master.


I'd say blind-fighting is too situational. Most fighting styles provide a bonus every round you're actively using the style, and this one will only come up once or twice a session in most games. Grappling seems like a fine fighting style. Throwing weapons could get a clause allowing for throwing weaposn to be dual-wielded if the rules don't cover that already, or get the same benefit as the dual-wielding fighting style (+dex to damage) when dual-wielding throwing weapons.

As it stands, Throwing Weapons can be dual-wielded. I'm not sure that it's a good idea to just straight-up copy an already pretty decent Fighting Style that already applies to the weapons in question... but I think I can work with something kinda similar.


Maybe a mounted style?

You ever have one of those moments where you're thinking about something really hard, and then someone points out something that you just straight-up missed? Yeah, that's what's happening right now.


What about airborne style? Using dexterity would be nice.
It could involve jumping around and jumping off enemies and allies.
Alchemy Style- advantage (somehow) using potions or magic effects(not spells)
I’m just copying off of monster hunter now, so that’s all👌

Hmm... BATTLE PARKOUR shows promise as a Fighting Style (gets me teary eyes about Dragoon builds from 3e, it does). Alchemy Style would be simple enough ("You may drink potions as a bonus action"), but I'm thinking that that should be part of a feat more than anything.


Blind fighting is to narrow. Maybe just make it a reaction to apply disadvantage on the first attack against you. Nice tactical choice now

The grapple fighting style I use is- you can no make a grapple attempt as an attack of opportunity.
*The grapple feat got a complete rework also.
+1 str or con
- can make a single melee attack as an reaction to anyone who succeed a check to escape a grapple.
-you are considered to have 3/4 cover while grappling.

Throwing weapon- +1 damage with weapons thrown and remove the disadvantage for attacking at long range.

The thing is that Fighting Styles are more about fixing the numbers than tactical options - Protection notwithstanding. They essentially bump the combat styles up until they are roughly equivalent. Your Grappling fighting style is pretty awesome... but I'd give that to Grappler as an additional benefit. Otherwise, it's basically Sentinel, but you're trading out an attack's worth of damage to have it potentially last much longer. Your Throwing Weapon fighting style doesn't really touch the core issue with the style, which is that you can only draw one weapon per Attack action. It is inherently designed as a back-up fighting style, which is annoying to try to fix.


Grappler looks great, although Blindfighting doesn't really fit as a fighting style. Maybe letting the PC ignore disadvantage against lightly obscured opponents instead?

None of the options from the books increase the size of a weapon's damage die. That might be a reasonable option, considering thrown weapons tend to be fairly small.


Throwing Weapons (College of Swords Bard, Fighter, Ranger)
Whenever you throw a weapon, you may immediately draw another weapon (no action required by you) and can roll a die one size larger in place of the normal damage when attacking with a weapon that has the thrown property.

I'm hoping the language makes it clear this doesn't stack with a monk's martial arts die.


I'm getting a lot of hostility towards Blind Fighting :smallwink: To be fair, the idea was that you'd take it if you're one of those builds that loves to throw around Darkness. You attack normally, they attack with disadvantage. It also currently affects stuff like creatures hiding from you and Invisible creatures, so there's that. I'll take it back to the drawing board, though, with everyone's feedback.

Bumping up the weapon die size... not sure I like it, to be honest. It feels, I dunno, clumsier than handing out a bonus to damage? That's just a gut feeling, though.



I'd maybe break this into two, one offensive and one defensive.

Perhaps as follows:


Mounted Cover (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin)
As a bonus action on your turn, you can drop to the side of your mount, granting yourself half cover until the start of your next turn or until you use an action, bonus action, or reaction.

Although I don't remember where I heard of this tactic being used, so I'm not sure how feasible it would actually be. On to an offensive bonus:

And then a separate one for offense:


Steady Rider (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin)
When you use the attack action, your mount can use its action to roll into your attacks. When your mount does so, you may make a weapon attack as a bonus action

In general, a Fighting Style should cover a whole style - if you split it up, the only people who can get the full benefits of the style are people with 10+ levels in Champion Fighter (unless you multiclass, of course).

Also, of those two, Mounted Cover is very fiddly, and Steady Rider is crazy seriously people what's with handing out bonus action attacks with heavy weapons i can't ev-... Sorry, I don't know what came over me. I do think it's a bit much, though.



Alright, a lot to think about. I'll go ruminate and fiddle. Thanks, people.

[aimlessPolymath]

Mounted Combat to me would relate heavily to a cavalry charge; perhaps "when you make a melee attack against someone while mounted, if your mount Dashed this turn, you get +x damage/attack".

A variant on this that counts general movement ("...if you started your turn at least 15 feet away from a target" instead of dashing) could work for a skirmisher style.



Re: throwing, a + to die size is roughly on the same level as +1 damage, so that would be a reasonable alternative if die size adjustment is too clunky.

Blind Fighting seems great; I'm a big fan of picking up access to a smoke bomb-type thing to restrict ranged combat, and this works great with it. It might need a small bump to keep from losing track of the target's location ("... you get advantage on Perception checks against targets you hit for one round"), or perhaps giving a bonus to Perception checks to detect invisible foes (though that might not be really applicable for a combat style).

[sandmote]

I'm getting a lot of hostility towards Blind Fighting :smallwink: To be fair, the idea was that you'd take it if you're one of those builds that loves to throw around Darkness. You attack normally, they attack with disadvantage. It also currently affects stuff like creatures hiding from you and Invisible creatures, so there's that. I'll take it back to the drawing board, though, with everyone's feedback. Maybe make it a feat? Particularly if it allows a single casting of darkness or fog cloud in case you're a single class fighter.


Bumping up the weapon die size... not sure I like it, to be honest. It feels, I dunno, clumsier than handing out a bonus to damage? That's just a gut feeling, though. Probably why they didn't use it with the ones in the book ,although I'm not sure how much more design space there is.


In general, a Fighting Style should cover a whole style - if you split it up, the only people who can get the full benefits of the style are people with 10+ levels in Champion Fighter (unless you multiclass, of course).

Also, of those two, Mounted Cover is very fiddly, and Steady Rider is crazy seriously people what's with handing out bonus action attacks with heavy weapons i can't ev-... Sorry, I don't know what came over me. I do think it's a bit much, though. My thought was to split it up between a horse archer and a lance wielding knight. If you'd have to give up your bonus to make an attack of opportunity, I don't think you'd want to be in a melee. The second one is meant to stop your mount from dashing or disengaging when you use the fighting style, although it might be better to force the enemy to make a saving throw to avoid being knocked prone instead of extra damage? In that case, you'd be punishing yourself if you mix u ranged combat with it.

[BerzerkerUnit]

Good start, here’s my input

Blindfighting- Invisible creatures creatures with total concealment do not gain advantage on their attacks if they are within 5 feet. You do not have disadvantage when attacking such creatures.

Grappling- looks good

Thrown- when you throw a weapon you may immediately draw another weapon. Additionally when you take the attack action, you can use a bonus action to throw up to 3 tiny weapons (weighing less than 1 lb) with the thrown property. Only one of these attacks gains a damage bonus from your ability score.

[sandmote]

Thrown- when you throw a weapon you may immediately draw another weapon. Additionally when you take the attack action, you can use a bonus action to throw up to 3 tiny weapons (weighing less than 1 lb) with the thrown property. Only one of these attacks gains a damage bonus from your ability score.

I think you need to define the damage output for the tiny weapons. Otherwise you might as well just write "darts," which are the only existing weapon to qualify.

What about doubling the short range of such weapons instead of a damage boost? This makes the damaging ones more flexible, and let you attack with a net without disadvantage.

Alternatively, "you can attack with a thrown weapon as a bonus action. On a hit, you have advantage on your next attack roll against the target before the end of your turn." This would mirror the historical use of daggers and handaxes in combat, which were used to create openings in your opponent's guard. Or perhaps a slightly weakened version of this, to avoid rogues abusing it, although I'm not sure what.

[BerzerkerUnit]

I think you need to define the damage output for the tiny weapons. Otherwise you might as well just write "darts," which are the only existing weapon to qualify.

What about doubling the short range of such weapons instead of a damage boost? This makes the damaging ones more flexible, and let you attack with a net without disadvantage.

Alternatively, "you can attack with a thrown weapon as a bonus action. On a hit, you have advantage on your next attack roll against the target before the end of your turn." This would mirror the historical use of daggers and handaxes in combat, which were used to create openings in your opponent's guard. Or perhaps a slightly weakened version of this, to avoid rogues abusing it, although I'm not sure what.

Replace “less than 1 lbs.” with “1 lbs. or less” to include daggers.

I’m growing more and more hesitant to make features that grant advantage since there is no dearth of ways to get it already.

So no, I think the damage boost and increased opportunity to trigger sneak attack for MC rogues is the major draw. It actually makes a lot of MC options more enticing since rangers and warlock’s with Hex and Hunter’s Mark would see exceptional power for the first round since it the style says nothing about readying more than 1 weapon, so you’re either spending your ready every round for 3 rds to draw enough daggers to fling, or you started combat with 3 in hand. Either way, combat is likely over before you can do it again.

[sandmote]

Replace “less than 1 lbs.” with “1 lbs. or less” to include daggers.

I’m growing more and more hesitant to make features that grant advantage since there is no dearth of ways to get it already.

So no, I think the damage boost and increased opportunity to trigger sneak attack for MC rogues is the major draw. It actually makes a lot of MC options more enticing since rangers and warlock’s with Hex and Hunter’s Mark would see exceptional power for the first round since it the style says nothing about readying more than 1 weapon, so you’re either spending your ready every round for 3 rds to draw enough daggers to fling, or you started combat with 3 in hand. Either way, combat is likely over before you can do it again. That is a fair criticism, so I will update to this:


Skirmishing
Whenever you throw a weapon, you may immediately draw another weapon. Additionally, if you attack with a thrown weapon and then make another weapon attack against the same target, the target loses the benefits of any shield it is wielding and takes an additional 1d4 weapon damage on a hit.

That doesn't grant advantage, and is compatible with both the historical and fantasy methods that throwing weapons get used. It also isn't 3d4+ your Str/Dex modifier in damage as a bonus action at level 2. Or 3d4+3d6+ your Str/Dex modifier in damage if using Hex/Hunter's Mark. Which I admit is comparable to my earlier suggestion for melee characters on mounts, but I did have an additional cost (your mount's action) to that attack.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Blind-Fighting should be a half feat and not a fighting style.


Blind-Fighting

+1 Int or Wis

You do not have disadvantage for attacking a creature you cannot see and creatures that you can't see don't have advantage on attacks againat you.

Additionally, you don't automatically fail an ability check based on sight when blinded. You have disadvantage on the check.

[Yakk]

Blindfighting (Fighter, Ranger)
You do not grant advantage from not being able to see creatures or being flanked. You have advantage on perception on creatures hiding due to darkness or invisiblity.

Brawling (Fighter, Ranger)
When you are wielding a weapon in one hand and have one hand free, or have both hands free, you gain a +1 bonus to AC. Whenever you successfully make a Strength (Athletics) check to grapple a creature or maintain a grapple, you may immediately deal your unarmed strike damage to the creature you are grappling. You make make grapples as opportunity attacks.

Throwing Weapons (College of Swords Bard, Fighter, Ranger)
Whenever you throw a weapon, you may immediately draw another weapon. If you have thrown a weapon, you may throw a weapon in another hand as a bonus action on your turn.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Throwing Weapons (College of Swords Bard, Fighter, Ranger)
Whenever you throw a weapon, you may immediately draw another weapon. If you have thrown a weapon, you may throw a weapon in another hand as a bonus action on your turn.

You can already use two weapon fighting with thrown weapons (which is why rogues should always be using daggers). The only benefit this fighting style really gives is the free drawing of weapons and I don't think that's good for a full fighting style.

I think a fighting style that allowed for thrown weapon property to work as if it was "ranged" for the purpose of features would be great.

Using a feature, spell, or feat that called for a ranged weapon attack and using a thrown weapon could be fun.

Edit: I know there are other thrown weapons than daggers but most builds will be dex so using the lightest will be the go to.

Edit 2: Also, using a dagger with twf and dueling style gives a +2 dmg to your second attack if you threw the first one. This allows you to mix up with twf thrown and sword n board.