I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Just a little thought experiment: if we rolled these classes together, what might it look like?
Some ideas:
Basic Warlord-as-Fighter
Fighting Style: Commander
You are an inspiring force on the battlefield, capable of helping your allies to get the most out of their attacks and defenses. You focus on using your expertise dice on your allies, rather than on yourself.
Suggested Background: Noble
Suggested Specialty: Healing Specialist
Suggested Equipment: Chainmail, shield, longsword, 4 javelins, adventurer's kit, and 39 gp.
Level - Maneuver
1 - Inspiring Words
2 - Protect
4 - Commanding Shout
8 - Danger Sense
10 - Tactical Instructions
Maneuver: Inspiring Words
When an ally is down, you can get them back up with a courageous shout.
Effect: When an ally who can hear you takes enough damage to fall unconscious, you can use a reaction to reduce the damage your ally takes. Roll all the expertise dice you spend, add up their results, and reduce the damage by that total. If the damage drops to 0, the hit becomes a miss.
Maneuver: Commanding Shout
You can order an ally to attack in your stead.
Effect: As an action, you can allow an ally who can hear you you to make a melee weapon attack against a target of your choice. If they do, roll all the expertise dice you spend, and add up their results. Your ally's damage roll gains a bonus equal to that total.
Maneuver: Tactical Instructions
You can ask an ally to make one small adjustment...
Effect: Just before you make an melee weapon attack, you can allow an ally who can hear you you to move up to 5 feet. If they do, and the target of your attack is within their reach at the end of their move, roll all the expertise dice you spend, and add take the highest result. Your attack gains an attack bonus equal to that result.
Basic Assassin-As-Rogue
Scheme: Assassin
You are a student of the many ways in which it is possible to end someone's life. Your training is on death and subterfuge and your skills often command quite a high price.
Skills: Disguise, Bluff, Profession (Poisoner), Climb
Manuevers: Surprise Strike, Sneak Attack, Spring Attack, Danger Sense
Maneuver: Surprise Strike
You strike before they have a chance to react.
Effect: When you hit with a melee attack on a turn in which you have surprise, roll all the expertise dice you spend, and add them to your damage roll. Any saving throws that your attack provokes have disadvantage on them.
Some ideas:
Basic Warlord-as-Fighter
- Ability Adjustment: Add Int, Wis, or Cha to the options. Fighters may need intelligence for brilliant tactical maneuvers, Wisdom to read their opponents, and Charisma to inspire their allies.
- Add the "Commander" Fighting Style for those who want an easy pre-packaged set of abilities.
- Add the following Maneuvers: Inspiring Words, Commanding Shout, Tactical Instructions.
- Design Notes: Healing Specialist specialty would help a "warlord-style" PC keep the party recharged with healing potions and whatnot. Noble background gives them Persuade and other relevant skills. High price of big heavy armors keeps them out of reach of low-level PC's, and a warlord never really has to worry about getting it. The mix-n-match nature of maneuvers lets you pretty easily build an archer-warlord as well. Regardless, the commander here is quite good at range. There are a LOT of effects in current maneuvers that, if a fighter could just use them on an ally who could hear them (and perhaps slightly reduced effectiveness in exchange for the range), would be amazing.
Fighting Style: Commander
You are an inspiring force on the battlefield, capable of helping your allies to get the most out of their attacks and defenses. You focus on using your expertise dice on your allies, rather than on yourself.
Suggested Background: Noble
Suggested Specialty: Healing Specialist
Suggested Equipment: Chainmail, shield, longsword, 4 javelins, adventurer's kit, and 39 gp.
Level - Maneuver
1 - Inspiring Words
2 - Protect
4 - Commanding Shout
8 - Danger Sense
10 - Tactical Instructions
Maneuver: Inspiring Words
When an ally is down, you can get them back up with a courageous shout.
Effect: When an ally who can hear you takes enough damage to fall unconscious, you can use a reaction to reduce the damage your ally takes. Roll all the expertise dice you spend, add up their results, and reduce the damage by that total. If the damage drops to 0, the hit becomes a miss.
Maneuver: Commanding Shout
You can order an ally to attack in your stead.
Effect: As an action, you can allow an ally who can hear you you to make a melee weapon attack against a target of your choice. If they do, roll all the expertise dice you spend, and add up their results. Your ally's damage roll gains a bonus equal to that total.
Maneuver: Tactical Instructions
You can ask an ally to make one small adjustment...
Effect: Just before you make an melee weapon attack, you can allow an ally who can hear you you to move up to 5 feet. If they do, and the target of your attack is within their reach at the end of their move, roll all the expertise dice you spend, and add take the highest result. Your attack gains an attack bonus equal to that result.
Basic Assassin-As-Rogue
- Ability Adjustment: Add Cha to the options. Rogues may use trickery, deceit, or suavity as their main tools.
- Add the "Assassin" Scheme for those who want an easy pre-packaged set of abilities.
- Add the following Maneuvers: Surprise Strike
- Clarified the Profession skill: It should probably let you create items that your profession would be skilled at creating (in this case, poison).
- Design Notes: The Surprise Strike maneuver gets you the major thing. Aside from that, the Disguise skill that already existed is useful, but it could hypothetically be rolled into Bluff. Having a more specific skill list clearly hurts skill-specialists, since they're less likely to "have" the right skill (not that it stops them from using an ability check, just that they have trouble advocating for their relevant bonus). There already is a "basic poison," and hypothetically, higher-level, more-virulent poisons could exist, and poisons with alternate effects (such as paralysis, slow movement, spike damage, ongoing damage etc.) could also be adopted, but this would mostly be an issue of the Profession (poisoner) skill making them, and the Equipment list having them to buy -- but it would need to be a pretty robust suite of options. There'd also need to be something that lets the assassin use them better than others, and I'm not sure what that would be -- surprise strike imposes a penalty to saving throws, so maybe that's enough?
Scheme: Assassin
You are a student of the many ways in which it is possible to end someone's life. Your training is on death and subterfuge and your skills often command quite a high price.
Skills: Disguise, Bluff, Profession (Poisoner), Climb
Manuevers: Surprise Strike, Sneak Attack, Spring Attack, Danger Sense
Maneuver: Surprise Strike
You strike before they have a chance to react.
Effect: When you hit with a melee attack on a turn in which you have surprise, roll all the expertise dice you spend, and add them to your damage roll. Any saving throws that your attack provokes have disadvantage on them.
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