One DND suggestion - maybe the weapon feats should be utility increasing over damage?

[Tarasque_man]

Wizards have kinda mentioned a lot before about how they want to design the new system for one dnd to where martials get a lot of their necessary features from their base class and feats aren't a requirement for martials power wise. In essence I really like this change as having a reason to pick flavorful or fun feats over damage boosting ones would vary up the amount of options for character creation. This said I kinda feel like a lot of the new versions of what were really essential feats still feel a bit essential. A lot of them are still giving damage boosts that might not be taking up as much of your damage as they were before they still feel really powerful and like things that without you'd feel a power drop.

So I kinda wanna suggest that maybe more of these weapon feats should be utility over damage in effect? Great weapon master could improve the cleave feature causing it to be something which allows for AOE attacks and crowd control. Polearm master could more be about pushing back and slowing enemies down and turning yourself into a hard to pass wall. Sharpshooter could be more about applying debuffs to enemies from a distance turning it into something that lets you kinda have suppressing fire or be a support style of sniper.

I feel like this could increase the amount of versatility martials have in combat seeing as raw damage dealing and taking is already martials can do and feats should be things that deviate your character and make them feel unique. Plus damage often feels like things martials need to focus on from how much of their kit revolves around it so just pure damage boosting feats not really being much of an option feels like martials could choose other things without "missing out" on the potential damage boosts they could be getting. I kinda also feel like we have some feats already which do this with crusher and slasher both being decently fine power wise but actually offering utility based bonuses so they're not seen as required feats for martial builds but can be nice to vary up a martial's options.

[Nagog]

I think it should be both.

The Spear Mastery feat was a great step in the right direction, though there are still some things I'd tweak about it (making the Reach property innate rather than using a BA for 1 turn duration, etc.), but even that is very combat utility, when what Fighters need is an identity outside of a fight.

[KorvinStarmast]

... but even that is very combat utility, when what Fighters need is an identity outside of a fight. Yes, weapons mastery/fighting style isn't how to do that. :smallwink:

[Skrum]

The problem with making weapon mastery (or similar, on-hit abilities) impactful is characters that use weapon attack A LOT. As much as I like to see weapon mastery and for martial combat to get some love, I think some of these masteries are gonna be kind of annoying. Cleave and Topple are the worst as they trigger extra rolls. Topple does it with basically every hit.

And that's something of a problem for making abilities impactful. The fact they are spammed means saving throws barely matter; whoever is getting hit is going to be making 2, 3, 4 saves a turn. It's gonna succeed at some point. And also necessitate a ton of extra rolls, slowing the game down.

It's something of a conundrum cause weapon users really need something else going on for them, but I don't think the entire "make martials better" project can be hung on weapon mastery.

[Aimeryan]

One problem with having the damage ONLY internally acquired is that WotC have shown they aren't that good at maths and figuring out what makes for good damage. Flex, for example, was considered very powerful by JC. For this reason, players need to be able to think outside the box to acquire damage, or be prepared to put up with lackluster amounts.

[ZRN]

One problem with having the damage ONLY internally acquired is that WotC have shown they aren't that good at maths and figuring out what makes for good damage. Flex, for example, was considered very powerful by JC. For this reason, players need to be able to think outside the box to acquire damage, or be prepared to put up with lackluster amounts.

Side-rant: I don't think he's just terrible at math. Let's take a level 11 sword-and-board fighter: Flex gives you an average of 1 damage per hit, so 2 DPR with a 67% hit rate. What do the other masteries give you?

Push, Slow, Sap: No impact on damage
Nick: No impact on damage (saves a bonus action)

Graze: Assuming that 67% hit rate, you deal 5 damage the other 33% of the time, so that's an extra 1.65 damage per attack or 3 damage per round. Better than Flex! Unless you have advantage or a higher attack bonus. If your hit rate is 80% or higher Flex is probably better, and that's not TOO tough a target if you can get advantage pretty reliably.

Vex: Each hit has an extra 22% chance to hit (from advantage) IF the previous attack hit (67-89% chance depending on whether THAT attack had advantage), so that's maybe an extra 18% chance to hit... IF you're attacking the same enemy nonstop, which generally won't be the case, so we'll cut it down to... 10%? If we assume you hit for 1d8+5+2 (Dueling) = 11.5, your average damage per attack goes from 7.7 to 8.8. So that's an added 3 DPR. Slightly better than Flex, but with the restriction that you have to focus fire on one target at a time.

Topple: In terms of YOUR damage output this is similar to Vex in that you're giving yourself advantage on subsequent hits, except (1) the target gets a save, (2) it resets every turn since presumably the target stands up on their turn, and (3) if you knock them over your first attack you get advantage on ALL subsequent attacks that turn. Impossible to do meaningful math on this but on average it'll be less added DPR than Vex for you 99% of the time (although it'll be way better overall if you have melee teammates and actually worse if you have ranged attacker teammates).

And let's keep in mind that Topple and Vex only up your DPR by giving you advantage, so the more other ways you have to get advantage the worse they are. And fighters have a LOT of opportunities to get advantage. Not to mention barbarians.

So the big dumb idiot JC said Flex was mathematically one of the best weapon masteries for increasing your damage when in fact it's... somewhere between the best- and third-best for fighters, and definitely 100% the absolute best for barbarians, hands-down.

[Atranen]

when what Fighters need is an identity outside of a fight.

Weapon mastery is one of my big remaining gripes for this reason. It's going to add a bunch of rolls, slow the game down, and not address the core problem with martials...martials already do great in combat. You can make very high dpr characters that contribute in a meaningful way. But they need more out of combat options.

We know how to do it...with stronghold systems and other domain level abilities.

[Aimeryan]

Side-rant: I don't think he's just terrible at math. Let's take a level 11 sword-and-board fighter: Flex gives you an average of 1 damage per hit, so 2 DPR with a 67% hit rate. What do the other masteries give you?

Push, Slow, Sap: No impact on damage
Nick: No impact on damage (saves a bonus action)

Graze: Assuming that 67% hit rate, you deal 5 damage the other 33% of the time, so that's an extra 1.65 damage per attack or 3 damage per round. Better than Flex! Unless you have advantage or a higher attack bonus. If your hit rate is 80% or higher Flex is probably better, and that's not TOO tough a target if you can get advantage pretty reliably.

Vex: Each hit has an extra 22% chance to hit (from advantage) IF the previous attack hit (67-89% chance depending on whether THAT attack had advantage), so that's maybe an extra 18% chance to hit... IF you're attacking the same enemy nonstop, which generally won't be the case, so we'll cut it down to... 10%? If we assume you hit for 1d8+5+2 (Dueling) = 11.5, your average damage per attack goes from 7.7 to 8.8. So that's an added 3 DPR. Slightly better than Flex, but with the restriction that you have to focus fire on one target at a time.

Topple: In terms of YOUR damage output this is similar to Vex in that you're giving yourself advantage on subsequent hits, except (1) the target gets a save, (2) it resets every turn since presumably the target stands up on their turn, and (3) if you knock them over your first attack you get advantage on ALL subsequent attacks that turn. Impossible to do meaningful math on this but on average it'll be less added DPR than Vex for you 99% of the time (although it'll be way better overall if you have melee teammates and actually worse if you have ranged attacker teammates).

And let's keep in mind that Topple and Vex only up your DPR by giving you advantage, so the more other ways you have to get advantage the worse they are. And fighters have a LOT of opportunities to get advantage. Not to mention barbarians.

So the big dumb idiot JC said Flex was mathematically one of the best weapon masteries for increasing your damage when in fact it's... somewhere between the best- and third-best for fighters, and definitely 100% the absolute best for barbarians, hands-down.

For one, thats out of only a few damage masteries, so thats not great. Its like saying you came 4th in a 5 person race then claiming to be one of the strongest.

For two, it doesn't really work out quite like that. Adding an extra damage when your attacks are successful has a high likelihood of being meaningless because enemies rarely die a round earlier due to a few points of damage difference. People may go after you but before the enemy. Your attack may have killed it anyway (or one of your remaining attacks would have). Its happens, but not regularly. It would have more meaning if combat took something more like 10 rounds on average rather than 3 or 4.

For three, compared to something like Graze where doing a fair amount of damage regardless of if you hit does often have significant meaning. If it only happened 20% of the time it is still often more meaningful than Flex - and it comes up more often than that. The same goes for Vex. Topple has a similar affect, but potentially party wide. It can easily lead to 15 points of damage being added in a 3 round combat - not all the time, but when it does it matters.

For four, you can compare the mathematical power of something like Push and Nick, its just more complicated. When they come up they do matter a lot.

For five, none of this matters as regardless Flex is not a strong damage increase. Even if the rest were the exact same as Flex but weaker, it still wouldn't be good. Which goes against the point JC was making.

[Merlecory]

Weapon mastery is one of my big remaining gripes for this reason. It's going to add a bunch of rolls, slow the game down, and not address the core problem with martials...martials already do great in combat. You can make very high dpr characters that contribute in a meaningful way. But they need more out of combat options.

We know how to do it...with stronghold systems and other domain level abilities.

Maybe it is different at higher levels than I am used to playing, but I feel like martial characters do numbers in combat, but they don't do anything else. I always felt like "I take the attack action" was the right thing 99.999% of the time, unless the DM really put effort into making there be a second option. I would hope masteries would let there be some diversity in combat at the least, even if not pushing up damage numbers. Brawlers ability to change mastery on each attack is great... if it were the default of how masteries worked.

[Amechra]

when what Fighters need is an identity outside of a fight.

Arguably, what the Fighter needs is to be replaced with a different class, either by a more specific "fighty dude" archetype (like 4e's Warlord) or by making it the "generic adventurer" class that it arguably was before 3e (give them the Fighter's simple damage scaling, toss in features based off of expanding your Background's features, and just vibe with that). Having a class whose core identity is "I'm highly competent in a fight" simply doesn't work in a game where that's the default expectation for every class, and that identity doesn't offer much in the way of hooks for out-of-combat features.


The problem with making weapon mastery (or similar, on-hit abilities) impactful is characters that use weapon attack A LOT. As much as I like to see weapon mastery and for martial combat to get some love, I think some of these masteries are gonna be kind of annoying. Cleave and Topple are the worst as they trigger extra rolls. Topple does it with basically every hit.

They are a bit fiddly, aren't they?

The funny thing is that 5e already has a framework for making martial characters more interesting - there are two "skill attacks" (Grappling and Shoving) that are built in to the default rules and replace an attack, meaning that Extra Attack technically gives you a couple special moves (like the classic "suplex" (Grapple+Shove))... that no-one uses outside of some specific builds, because just using your basic attack twice is honestly going to be better in most situations.

I think you could honestly get a ton of mileage out of coming up with more skill attacks (I like the idea of using Intimidate to frighten someone for a turn), handing out Extra Attack early, and just making it so you can't follow up a successful basic attack with another attack against the same target. You'd have to futz with the damage scaling, but we're already doing that anyway, so...

[verbatim]

pushing and grappling are some of the few utility options available to martials. Adding more stuff like that could be very cool and healthy for the game going forward.

Another helpful design change paradigm change might be looking at emulating cantrip riders and scaling for inspiration.