Charger

[Angelalex242]

Ya know...in real life, Kinetic Energy=MassxVelocity squared.

What if the Charger feat gave you an extra damage dice for every 30 feet over 30 you move?

This means little to most characters, who can only dash up to 60 feet and get one extra damage dice...

But if you're a monk/barbarian/mobile/etc. who has a temporary movement speed of 180 and gets 5 extra damage dice...

The idea is to give meaning to the 'Flash' builds where movement is optimized.

Might also give it 'drive by' capabilities, so that character with 180 movement need not stop where the attack took place.

[quindraco]

Ya know...in real life, Kinetic Energy=MassxVelocity squared.

What if the Charger feat gave you an extra damage dice for every 30 feet over 30 you move?

This means little to most characters, who can only dash up to 60 feet and get one extra damage dice...

But if you're a monk/barbarian/mobile/etc. who has a temporary movement speed of 180 and gets 5 extra damage dice...

The idea is to give meaning to the 'Flash' builds where movement is optimized.

Might also give it 'drive by' capabilities, so that character with 180 movement need not stop where the attack took place.

Here's a modified Charger feat that might appeal to you that's more in line with how Charger is designed and how the game generally works:

Charger (Fixed)

When you use your action to Dash, you can use a
bonus action to make one melee weapon attack or to
shove a creature. When you use your bonus action
to Dash, you can make one melee weapon attack
or shove as an action.

If you move at least 10 feet in a straight line
immediately before making this attack or shove, you either
gain a +X/2 bonus to the attack's damage roll (if you chose
to make a melee attack and hit) or push the target up
to X feet away from you (if you chose to shove and
succeeded), where X is the number of feet you moved
in a straight line immediately preceding the attack or shove.

[Lalliman]

When you use your action to Dash, you can use a
bonus action to make one melee weapon attack or to
shove a creature. When you use your bonus action
to Dash, you can make one melee weapon attack
or shove as an action.

Given that you have to restrict yourself to one attack in order to benefit from this feat, even when attacking with your action, does the second sentence actually matter? I can't think of any situation in which action dash plus bonus action single attack is any different from bonus action dash plus action single attack. Either way, you're using both to achieve the same result.

If you move at least 10 feet in a straight line
immediately before making this attack or shove, you either
gain a +X/2 bonus to the attack's damage roll (if you chose
to make a melee attack and hit) or push the target up
to X feet away from you (if you chose to shove and
succeeded), where X is the number of feet you moved
in a straight line immediately preceding the attack or shove.

Uhm, that would be, under reasonably favourable circumstances, a +30 damage bonus or a 60 foot shove. That's a little silly.

I think OP has the right idea in that we should embrace the feat's niche nature and balance it around speed-boosted characters. Because a mechanic like this is inevitably either going to be weak for normal characters and balanced for speed-boosted ones, or balanced for normal characters and overpowered for speed-boosted ones. I'd prefer the former. As to what the right distance-to-damage ratio is, I'm not sure, you'll have to do some math and some playtesting on that.

[Sherlockpwns]

I like the idea of this:

After you use dash as an action you can make one bonus attack on any enemy within reach of any space you occupied during your movement. For each 5ft space you moved, you may add +1 damage to a maximum of +10.


Thematically you get that anime ninja vibe. Mechanically you are getting that heavy weapon master bonus without the -5 to hit BUT losing additional attacks to balance it out. In most situations the dash + move will let the player reach the full 50ft of movement needed for max dmg, though I’d prefer some kind of wording or DM interpretation that says you can’t just run back and forth like a cartoon winding up your legs to get the full bonus.

Anyway, you get the idea. You get extra movement and damage based on speed with a cap (mostly to prevent cheesing it with cat people). You are still limited to only 1 attack. I’d consider it still relatively weak, especially since you still provoke aoo without another feat, ability, or spell.

[Angelalex242]

Nah.

The idea for this is to be uncapped, so people with 'flash' builds, like monks with mobility and boots of striding and so on who happen to be catfolk can get full use out of optimizing for movement.

[cZak]

How would that work on a mounted character?
Because the mount (and not you technically) is moving, it would not apply?

[follacchioso]

This is how I would change the Charger feat:

Charger Feat

You can use a Bonus Action to take the Dash Action.

[sayaijin]

Nah.

The idea for this is to be uncapped, so people with 'flash' builds, like monks with mobility and boots of striding and so on who happen to be catfolk can get full use out of optimizing for movement.

Monks are the ones most likely to use and abuse this, so let's balance around them:

Monk at level 5 can attack twice plus flurry of blows for 4 total attacks at 1d6, right? They also have +10 movement speed, so unless they go Tabaxi or Centaur or something, they're most likely sitting with 40ft. Dash doubles that to 80ft, so whatever number we end up with for charge attack should probably exceed (1d6+mod)*4=30 because it costs a feat, and it's an all or nothing attack. The next break point is level 11 when damage goes up to 1d8+mod and their movement is up to +20ft (Dash doubling to 100ft). So at that level the charger should exceed (1d8+mod)*4=38 because again it's a feat and an all or nothing attack.

Charger
When you take the dash action on your turn, you don't provoke opportunity attacks and you may make a melee weapon attack against a creature as a bonus action. This attack gets +1 to the damage roll for every 5ft you move before attacking. If the creature is no more than one size larger than you, they must make a strength saving with the save DC equal to the bonus damage or be knocked prone.


Now at level 5, it's 1d6+mod+16=23.5 (assuming they move the full 80 before attacking). At level 11, it's 1d8+mod+20=28.5
Even as a Tabaxi, these increase to 39.5 and 48.5, but it's every other turn.

[Mastikator]

A hasted, long strider'd, mobility feat'd Tabaxi monk level 15/barbarian 5 with boots of speed could add up to +45 dice, you'd have to move 1360 feet. If you move half of this in a straight line back and then the other half forward you'd only get +23 dice. Using a great axe you could do 24d12 damage (average 156) slashing damage.

[Zhorn]

I usually tend towards more conservative tweaks when looking to buff abilities and features.
I like the concept of adding additional damage dice, but I don't think I'd use the 'stacking' element for every 30 feet.
Still, I'm all in favour of buffing Charger to encourage more mobility based melee damage dealing.

I think I would take the damage bonus off being tied to the Bonus Action or Dash, and swap out the flat bonus for an additional weapon dice
"If you move at least 10 feet in a straight line immediately before attacking, your next melee attack rolls one additional weapon damage die"

Still retain the Bonus Action Attack when performing a Dash Action (though I might expand that to include if either you or a creature you are mounted on takes the Dash Action, I'll revisit this in a later post when I'm less swamped), just having the damage component less restrictive and encouraging more movement between attacks. Plus making the damage bonus into a dice makes it crit compatible.

As an 'across the board' take, it'll be a bit more generous on the damage to more builds than OP's idea, but on the extreme niche cases like a tabaxi monk it'll not have those fistful'of'dice boosts to single hits.

[Angelalex242]

Just to keep this in mind, 1360 feet in 6 seconds means that tabaxi monk is moving 154.54 miles per hour. Over twice the legal limit for cars on the freeway.

You want to respect how much velocity 154.54 miles per hour actually is when you hit something while moving that fast.

[MadBear]

Just to keep this in mind, 1360 feet in 6 seconds means that tabaxi monk is moving 154.54 miles per hour. Over twice the legal limit for cars on the freeway.

You want to respect how much velocity 154.54 miles per hour actually is when you hit something while moving that fast.

While I agree that if you are moving at 154.54 mph, getting hit by you should deal extra damage, you kinda break the game when your character is dishing out 150ish damage every round without really expending a resource. I mean, that seems/feels a little game breaking at that point.

so while I get it from a realistic perspective (but also, moving at 154 mph, and hitting something should probably hurt you as well then), from a game balance perspective, that just doesn't make sense.

[sayaijin]

While I agree that if you are moving at 154.54 mph, getting hit by you should deal extra damage, you kinda break the game when your character is dishing out 150ish damage every round without really expending a resource. I mean, that seems/feels a little game breaking at that point.

so while I get it from a realistic perspective (but also, moving at 154 mph, and hitting something should probably hurt you as well then), from a game balance perspective, that just doesn't make sense.

I like this idea of it hurting you as well. That might be a lever we can pull to balance extremely high speeds.

[Angelalex242]

That would make the Barbarian side of Monk 15/Barbarian 5 more valuable, as they'd be able to halve that damage while raging.

Also, perhaps don't freak too much at the damage. We're talking about Tier 4 damage. When the Fighter is attacking 4 times with a vorpal sword with 2 action surges, the Cleric has his god on speed dial, and the wizard is wishing upon a star.

[Zhorn]

Also, perhaps don't freak too much at the damage. We're talking about Tier 4 damage. When the Fighter is attacking 4 times with a vorpal sword with 2 action surges, the Cleric has his god on speed dial, and the wizard is wishing upon a star.

The damage element is kinda the whole point though. The nova potential is very nutty. At least with the other methods already in the game there's a limit on how often you can do it between rests and such so it is not every round of every encounter.
Still a fun idea for a superhero game, but way past the overpowered line.

[Mastikator]

While I agree that if you are moving at 154.54 mph, getting hit by you should deal extra damage, you kinda break the game when your character is dishing out 150ish damage every round without really expending a resource. I mean, that seems/feels a little game breaking at that point.

so while I get it from a realistic perspective (but also, moving at 154 mph, and hitting something should probably hurt you as well then), from a game balance perspective, that just doesn't make sense.

You're expending 2 spell slots, one magic item on a level 20 character and it only works every other round. Those spells slots must come from other characters or even more magic items. A vanilla fighter of the same level can easily out-damage this setup.

If anything I'd still like a +1 str/dex/con on charger to even consider taking it.

[Angelalex242]

Sounds fair.

The option of Str/Dex/Con even sounds fair.