Martial Arts and Styles

Martial arts have a big part n the backstory of the world Alfaysia (euro/asian mix).

So for 5e, I need to develop a way to simulate learning martial arts. For 3e, I used skill points (which people mainly had a lot of) and had differing levels of competency. I've also used the feat method in 3e, which considering fighters got a lot, that worked out.

In 5e, I want to make it a lot less fiddly, in the spirit of fast and simple. Also emphasizing the "martial" in martial arts. The monk class would be for the fantastic stuff. (ki, enlightenment, energy blasts)

It seems a feat would work, variant humans could take it a first level, elves, dwarves etc may not learn it in their homeland, so picking it up a 4th would be reasonable, or if the dwarf player had to have it, I could make a variant dwarf adjustment for that particular PC.


On to the idea.

The Tavern Brawler feat is/was my starting point.

It lets the character use a d4 for their unarmed strike (good), with proficiency. And allows on a hit with unarmed strike, a bonus action to grapple (good). Let's ignore the rest of the feat for now.

I also want each martial art (there are about four main styles) to have a signature move of some type. Some of the martial adept feat maneuvers seem to fit (battle-master abilities) So let's add in the "choose 2 maneuvers" (from a smaller list) and gain superiority dice. This seems functional, with a customized list from the battle-master abilities.

But currently you are getting ALL the benefits of the MARTIAL ADEPT feat AND half the abilities from the TAVERN BRAWLER. So, not balanced. Then I looked at the battle-master abilities and most of them can be used with a melee weapon. In the spirit of "my" martial arts, suppose those taking this customized Martial Artist feat can only use the abilities with unarmed strikes?

So here is the draft feat

Martial Artist

• You are proficient with unarmed strikes and they use a d4 for damage.
• When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike you an use a bonus action to attempt to grapple the target.
• You learn two maneuvers of your choice from among those available to the Martial Artist (see custom list). If a maneuver you use requires your target to make a saving throw to resist the maneuver’s effects, the saving throw DC equals 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength or Dexterity modifier (your choice). These maneuvers may only be used with unarmed strikes. If you already have superiority dice, you gain one more; otherwise, you have one superiority die, which is a d6. This die is used to fuel your maneuvers. A superiority die is expended when you use it. You regain your expended superiority dice when you finish a short or long rest.

Martial Artist Maneuver List

• Disarming Attack
• Evasive Footwork
• Feinting Attack
• Lunging Attack
• Parry
• Precision Attack
• Pushing Attack
• Sweeping Attack (SPINNING CIRCLE KICK!)
• Trip Attack

Other thoughts:

• If you want more martial arts than this...take a level of monk. Or a monk could add maneuvers by taking this feat. Either way, the monk still gets many abilities, so this doesn't step on their toes. (too much, but my campaign background has been this way anyway so...)
• Perhaps there could be a Expert Martial Artist feat, raising your unarmed to d6. And potentially add 2 more maneuvers, and a superiority die, with/without improvement. This would give martial artist at the most FOUR special maneuvers, which should be plenty to characterize a style of martial arts within my world. And the expert martial artist would be around 4-8th levelish.
• Way down the line I might get bold and add perhaps ONE maneuver from The Book of Nine Swords, as a capstone ability. Hmm I could use this to recreate my swordmasters....

Thanks for the read...if you made it this far...please review and comment. It likely could use tweaking, and is not designed for all campaigns like an official product would be. Hey [MENTION=13009]Paraxis[/MENTION], you have a good eye for mechanics and balance, please look also.

I like it. As I was reading through the post I was thinking about what I would do and it was pretty much in line with what you wrote. It might be a little too good, but it seems like you want martial arts to be a big part of the world so enticing people to play to that type by making the feat attractive isn't a bad idea.

You could make the grapple part another optional maneuver on the list. This would tone it down a bit but still allow for grappling style martial arts. Also it would be interesting if the feat added finesse to unarmed strikes, it would allow for dexterity based characters that are not monks to use the feat, and open the door to rogues using sneak attack with unarmed strikes for ninjas, because everyone likes ninjas.

Paraxis said:

I like it. As I was reading through the post I was thinking about what I would do and it was pretty much in line with what you wrote. It might be a little too good, but it seems like you want martial arts to be a big part of the world so enticing people to play to that type by making the feat attractive isn't a bad idea.

You could make the grapple part another optional maneuver on the list. This would tone it down a bit but still allow for grappling style martial arts. Also it would be interesting if the feat added finesse to unarmed strikes, it would allow for dexterity based characters that are not monks to use the feat, and open the door to rogues using sneak attack with unarmed strikes for ninjas, because everyone likes ninjas.

Click to expand...

Hmmmm, take out grapple and add it to the list of maneuvers, great, not all arts were grappling based so that makes sense.

I knew there would be something I didn't consider. Finesse. Some martial artists are brutes and others are, well finesse.

Thanks for the review. I am going to post it on the campaign wiki and see how the players like it. Will update after playtesting at some point.

This opened me up to creating some feats to add variant powers to the game rather than adding things as pure racial/nation-of-origin modifiers.

Great write up.

New Feats

Completed Write Up

I like this a lot!

Great work, I like it too. What about:

- When you take this feat as a monk, you may substitute an expended superiosity die with 2 ki points.
- You may take this feat multiple times, each time choosing different maneuvers.

Goemoe said:

Great work, I like it too. What about:

- When you take this feat as a monk, you may substitute an expended superiosity die with 2 ki points.
- You may take this feat multiple times, each time choosing different maneuvers.

Click to expand...

Regaining the superiority die with ki is an interesting idea. Will discuss with my players.

That feat looks very well done - balanced, useful, evocative.

For me the hardest part of getting martial arts in a D&D game is providing a reason to use it. If unarmed fighting is worse than armed, why ever use it? And it makes little sense to have weapons inferior to unarmed fighting. I can think of possible reasons to use it, but they all seem a bit forced in generic D&D: perhaps weapons are culturally restricted, perhaps the disarm feat is really strong in your system, perhaps it's just a a game about martial artists, perhaps martial arts proficiency provides benefits in armed combat as well.

So how do you get martial arts in your D&D games as something the players want to use?



Edit: I just glanced at this and thought it almost read like a criticism of the fundamental idea of a having a martial artist in D&D. It's not intended as such, so please don't take it that way. I'm genuinely looking for suggestions.

Mishihari Lord said:

That feat looks very well done - balanced, useful, evocative.

For me the hardest part of getting martial arts in a D&D game is providing a reason to use it. If unarmed fighting is worse than armed, why ever use it? And it makes little sense to have weapons inferior to unarmed fighting. I can think of possible reasons to use it, but they all seem a bit forced in generic D&D: perhaps weapons are culturally restricted, perhaps the disarm feat is really strong in your system, perhaps it's just a a game about martial artists, perhaps martial arts proficiency provides benefits in armed combat as well.

Click to expand...

Exactly my way of thinking. As I read the Monk I liked the ideas but everything felt a little weak. It is nice that you may use weapons with martial arts, but face it: simple weapons other than the staff as a monk weapon don't sound very intriguing. When you look at "martial arts damage" in the table you see 1d4 and 1d6 for lower levels and 1d8 to 1d10 during the higher levels. You do 1d8 to 1d10(or 2d6) this with a decent weapon on the first level with each of the ohter fighters.

Class features sound nice, but use KI. A look at the table, zero KI at first, 3 points of KI at third level. I could watch each of my players, as they looked the monk up with curiosity and dismissed it, even before they read most of the text. Monk is pure fluff with little coolness.

Feats like this one from SkidAce hopefully change it a little. Also those threads messuring the DPR of the classes show, the monk could do better. I am willing to let my player get a little more for the buck, when choosing a monk. I am not sure if I will upgrade the martial arts damage die (starting with d6 and ending with d12) or if I will offer some more KI points to make the monk less dependable on short rests.

With a higher damage die for martial arts, the monk will do an average of 1 point of damage more per attack. It is not too much but looks way better on the table.

For more KI you could offer additional points equal to the wis modifier. This would add much usability to the lower levels and wouldn't change much during mid to high levels of play.

What do you think?