Battle Master maneuvers should come with Extra Attack

[Skrum]

Basically, having nifty tactical options shouldn't be specific to one fighter subclass. The upcoming Mastery system is a small step in this direction, but the fact that they don't scale and don't offer choices beyond what weapon you're using...I think they're going to get stale pretty quick.

I'm thinking something like

"When an attack hits, instead of dealing damage, a character may use one of the following maneuvers once per turn. DC for the effect is 8 + proficiency bonus + the stat used to make the attack."

Disarming Attack
Distracting Strike
Goading Attack
Menacing Attack
Pushing Attack (this should probably be limited to melee attacks, both for verisimilitude reasons and balance concerns)
Trip Attack

Since the attack wouldn't deal damage, the maneuver dice is irrelevant. Similarly, characters wouldn't spam these since they don't deal damage.

I'd like to see this scale as well - maybe starting at level 11, a maneuver does weapon damage. And at level 17, it does full damage

[Pex]

"Instead of doing damage" is the problem that harkens back to 3E. It comes to the point where doing damage is more efficient than trying any special effect so no one tries the special effect. Battlemaster had it right to make the special effect a rider in addition to the damage. This way even if the opponent made the save you are still doing your normal damage plus an additional die of damage as compensation for using up a resource allocation. Characters can shove and trip normally now without damage, but it's without spending a character resource to do it and the player chooses when it's convenient for those niche times where the special effect is more important or useful than damage.

Some people do want Battlemaster maneuvers to be a Thing for all fighters as part of the class, not a subclass, but they mean for it to be as they are now - rider effects in addition to not instead of damage.

[Skrum]

"Instead of doing damage" is the problem that harkens back to 3E. It comes to the point where doing damage is more efficient than trying any special effect so no one tries the special effect. Battlemaster had it right to make the special effect a rider in addition to the damage. This way even if the opponent made the save you are still doing your normal damage plus an additional die of damage as compensation for using up a resource allocation. Characters can shove and trip normally now without damage, but it's without spending a character resource to do it and the player chooses when it's convenient for those niche times where the special effect is more important or useful than damage.

Some people do want Battlemaster maneuvers to be a Thing for all fighters as part of the class, not a subclass, but they mean for it to be as they are now - rider effects in addition to not instead of damage.

Hmm fair point...

Thing is, I don't necessarily want to add a resource on to every class, nor do I want characters to just spam it cause it's mechanically optimal. Might not be a way around it though.

[Doug Lampert]

Hmm fair point...

Thing is, I don't necessarily want to add a resource on to every class, nor do I want characters to just spam it cause it's mechanically optimal. Might not be a way around it though.

Slight reduction in damage would do. "Instead of adding your ability score to damage you may..."

Or make it if the attack die roll is a natural 16+ and hits, that will come up about once a round for a level 20 fighter (twice on an action surge), but isn't automatic or just spammed.

[Sorinth]

You can already trip, push, disarm as an attack replacement and your version is actually worse since you have to hit first giving an additional way to fail.

Your distracting strike is basically a subset of Help action that costs an attack instead of an action, Intimidate/Goading are also arguably already allowable as an action as part of the Improvising an Action (Intimidate being one that is listed as an example), so your change would basically be letting them do it as an attack instead of an action and maybe clarifying the exact rules, which is perfectly fine but you could arguably achieve it by just rewording the Extra Attack feature so that instead of 2 attacks from 1 action it's an additional action that has to be used to make an attack sort of like the Haste spell.

[Doug Lampert]

You can already trip, push, disarm as an attack replacement and your version is actually worse since you have to hit first giving an additional way to fail.

Your distracting strike is basically a subset of Help action that costs an attack instead of an action, Intimidate/Goading are also arguably already allowable as an action as part of the Improvising an Action (Intimidate being one that is listed as an example), so your change would basically be letting them do it as an attack instead of an action and maybe clarifying the exact rules, which is perfectly fine but you could arguably achieve it by just rewording the Extra Attack feature so that instead of 2 attacks from 1 action it's an additional action that has to be used to make an attack sort of like the Haste spell.

Replacing extra attack with "extra action" is something I've suggested before. You'd need to disallow or limit spells somehow, which is not hard, but is a thing you need to do.

[Anonymouswizard]

Honestly I'd ideally rework most classes so that Superiority Dice fuel martial characters in a similar way to how Spell Slots fuel casters and create maneuvers for each class. The Paladin is probably the easiest switch (let them burn multiple dice on Smites and give them active defence abilities*), but I think you could even get Barbarians and Rogue's onto the system with some work.

I think the main reasons WotC didn't do this for 5e are a trio of 1) the 'simple Fighter' being a sacred cow, 2) an overreaction to the '4e is tabletop WoW' crowd, and 3) a desire to give martials a broad range of resource types, even if that caused two to fall into the spell slot black hole.

* I'm also seeing an aura mechanic where you have to commit dice, but I'd have to actually start building the class.

[Bobthewizard]

I ran a game where I eliminated battlemaster and gave Combat Superiority and Improved Combat Superiority to all martial classes except paladins. Obviously not stacking if they multi classed. It worked great and made martials a lot more fun.

[Pooky the Imp]

Honestly I'd ideally rework most classes so that Superiority Dice fuel martial characters in a similar way to how Spell Slots fuel casters and create maneuvers for each class. The Paladin is probably the easiest switch (let them burn multiple dice on Smites and give them active defence abilities*), but I think you could even get Barbarians and Rogue's onto the system with some work.

I think the main reasons WotC didn't do this for 5e are a trio of 1) the 'simple Fighter' being a sacred cow, 2) an overreaction to the '4e is tabletop WoW' crowd, and 3) a desire to give martials a broad range of resource types, even if that caused two to fall into the spell slot black hole.

* I'm also seeing an aura mechanic where you have to commit dice, but I'd have to actually start building the class.

I'd very much like to see this.

Honestly, it's sad that the Book of Nine Swords has been all but forgotten, given that it had so many great ideas for giving fighter/rogue/paladin type classes things to do in combat beyond 'hit it with sword again'.

You mentioned sacred cows and I'd argue that one of the worst offenders is the rogue being built around sneak attack. It can be fun to roll a bunch of dice, sure, but it's a one-dimensional mechanic and can quickly get stale. I'd much rather see them able to use their own version of Manuvers and instead make Sneak Attack the main feature of the Assassin subclass.

[Amnestic]

Honestly, it's sad that the Book of Nine Swords has been all but forgotten,

Forgotten by WotC perhaps, but there's a bunch of homebrew adaptations of ToB to 5e floating around, both in part (as subclasses for existing 5e classes) and in full (as three full classes with their full maneuver sets).

[Pooky the Imp]

Forgotten by WotC perhaps, but there's a bunch of homebrew adaptations of ToB to 5e floating around, both in part (as subclasses for existing 5e classes) and in full (as three full classes with their full maneuver sets).

Oh that's interesting. Any links?