[New Class] The Tactician, aka the mundane caster

[Yakk]

[quote]You can combine gambits together in the same turn with these constrains:
1. The column “Max Tactical Points per Turn” show how many tactical points you can use in singe turn of yours.[/quuote]
Single (spelling error)
[quote] 2. A gambit can force a Saving Throw to a specific enemy only once per round.[/qoote]
You should word gambits better? And turn or round?

Why not restrict all gambits to being usable once per turn?

3. A specific water gambit can only be used once per round.

This should be in the water gambit rules not here.

4. Only one gambit requiring a reaction is possible to use in a round (exception: “God of the Battlefield” feature).

How is this not already implied by the reaction cost?

You regain all expended tactical points when you finish a long rest.

I'd consider moving it over to a short-rest. I find 1 point per level plus short rest refresh works well.

It eliminates having to memorize a table among other things.

If you want to have more gambit points than that, you then add mechanics that refresh your gambit pool. Like, at level 11, you could have a 1/SR action that refreshes your gambit pool fully.

Heck, you could just make it always able to refresh it as an action. Call it Tactical recovery. In a fight, taking an action is expensive, but making it something a Tactician does is really on-brand.

You'll note that this makes out of combat TP costs less important. But they already where.

ANALYTICAL FIGHT
At 1st level, when you attack with a weapon, you can use your Intelligence modifier, instead of Strength or Dexterity, for the attack and damage rolls.

Your analytical mind is so focused that if you use this feature, you can’t cast spells or concentrate on them for 1 minute.

I think this is a bad feature for a few reasons.

The only way to not attack with Str/Dex in 5e has been magical. And it was a bad idea, really.

If you are swinging a sword you should have some physical prowess, be it big muscles or balance.

A suggested change
ANALYTICAL FIGHTING
At 1st level, once on a turn you can add your intelligence modifier to a weapon attack that misses, or to the damage of a weapon attack that hits.

You'll note that you still will want to have Strength or Dexterity. But Intelligence acts as a decent proxy. A character with +2-3 strength and +2-3 intelligence is totally viable; if you miss, you add your int and deal 2-3 less damage, and if you hit your damage is +5 off the weapon.

By making it one or the other, it isn't as good as a bonus on str/dex.

MENTAL RECOVERY

100% refresh is a bit much IMO. Note that a Wizard gets like 1/3 or less from their recovery feature.

Wait, you meant to call this Tactical Recovery and refer to a table. Stop it with the tables when you don't need a table: make it "1/2 your level" or something.

WEAKNESS ASSESSMENT
At 5th level, if you don’t spend any tactical points in your turn, you add 1d10 to the attack's damage roll. You cannot use this feature as a reaction or with the "Extra Attack" feature.

The feature improves at higher levels. This damage increases by 1d10 when you reach 11th level (2d10), and 17th level (3d10).

I get why you are doing this, I just don't like it. It is fiddly.

Consider making this once/turn to start with. Then the extra attack clause becomes less important; a 5/5 MC is a heavy investment for +5.5 damage per turn. It also closes up an exploit with two-weapon fighting and haste; a level 17 Tactician does 9d10 bonus damage with haste + two weapon fighting (on top of weapon damage) at-will so long as they don't use TP.

Max Tactical Points per Turn

That gets a little silly.

You make an attack with the lunging, goading, menacing, muting, penetrating, distracting, precision and focus maneuvers. Every turn.

You know 14 gambits and pick 8 per turn. That is 3003 combinations to choose from each turn. You'll probably have a macro you use almost every turn in response.

This is trying to give a per-turn power budget. But it provides a limit on damage output, not much else.

add 1d10 to the damage roll.

Pretty much every single Tactical ability does this. So much so that we should honestly tear it out of the ability descriptions.

Can we split GAMBITS into more than one kind of thing?

1. New "passive" abilities like IMPROVED CLIMB or AMBUSH or UNDYING FORTITUDE

2. Boosts to an attack, like TRIP ATTACK or PRECISION ATTACK

3. Reactions like RAPID ATTACK

4. Bonus attacks, like COMMANDER’S STRIKE or RAPID ATTACK

To avoid the action economy problem, (4) should use your bonus action (or otherwise be limited). A keyword for (3) would be appropriate, and maybe even its own "silo" of abilities.

(1) and (2) are also very different. The TP you spend on (1) are not the expensive part of them, but rather the oppotunity cost of having a (1) ability. (2) meanwhile ends up being a TP dump to make your per-turn damage output match expectations; you'll want to do +CAPd10 each turn (or burn it on other ways to boost it).

And forcing 9 saving throws by using 9 gambits of category 2 on the same attack each turn is tiresome.

I get how you want it to work economically, but can't we clean it up and get a similar damage output and prevent 9 saving throws per turn?

1. Have a [Tactical] die size.
2. Bake +[Tactical] into damage at level 5. Once per turn when you hit, you deal +[Tactical].
3. When you use a Gambit you deal an extra +[Tactical] damage starting at level 1. At level 5, 14 and 17 this increases to 2[Tactical], 3[Tactical] and 4[Tactical] dice respectively.
4. At level 11, you can use 2 Gambits on a single attack.
5. At level 20, you deal +2[T] on attacks 1/turn instead of +1[T], and get that 2 reaction thing.


This gives us a damage curve like this:
1: [W]+Stat (+[T])
5: [W]+Stat+[T] (+2[T])
11: [W]+Stat+[T] (+4[T])
14: [W]+Stat+[T] (+6[T])
17: [W]+Stat+[T] (+8[T])
20: [W]+Stat+2[T] (+8[T])

We can scale [T] to make this match what we want. Values in () are when we spend TP to use gambits.

Next, we could also add "if a target has seen you use a gambit in the last 2 rounds, they have advantage on the saving throw". This should discourage gambit-spamming. But annoying to track. Could make it "ever" if we want to simplify tracking.

The Tactician would then be picking a different gambit each turn that they haven't used yet. At level 11+ they are picking 2 different ones. Deciding to reveal a gambit has a cost further down the fight.

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If you like the split of abilities into reactions/bonus/boosts/abilties and the [Tactician] die, and the "Regain TP by spending an action":

1. Give all 4 kinds of things on a schedule. TABLE TIME!
2. The bonus actions become a Ploy. These all are action economy boosters. Commander's Strike, Sweeping Attack, Rally - they act like limited use "extra action". You can do one Ploy per turn, and you can't reuse one until you Tactical Reasses. You gain these as you gain levels. We don't charge a bonus action just to be nice to TWF characters, but we could make all Ploys a bonus action.
3. Boosts remain Gambits. Gambits are all riders on an attack. They implicitly add damage. You get 1 Gambit per attack until level 11, and then 2 per attack.
4. Reactions become Tricks. They all use your Reaction. Like Boosts, you get 1 use of each between each Tactical Reasses.
5. The "passive" abilities become Strategys. Strategys just do stuff, like add +[Tactical] die to intimidation checks, or give you a Climb speed.

Tricks, Ploys and Gambits all use Tactical Points. You regain all of your Tactical Points when you Tactical Reasses as an action.

Tricks and Ploys are limited to 1 use between Reasses.

Tactical Reasses recovers all of your Tactical Points but requires an action.