Creating a 5e Slayer

What about something like this?
lvl 3: Supreme skill - once per round you may automatically convert a normal hit into a critical hit. The original attack must hit in order to use this ability. You may use this ability twice and regain your uses of it during a rest.

lvl 7: Non-combat ability

lvl 10: When you score a critical hit you may add your weapon dice to the damage an additional time.

lvl 15: You may use Supreme skill two additional times between rests. Additionally you may use it more than once per round.

CTurbo said:

I figured it's probably too overpowered. The goal was to make the ultimate melee machine. I'm now thinking that my idea would have probably been better off as it's own class instead of a Fighter subclass.

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The 5e fighter is supposed to be the "best at fighting," the Barbarian and Paladin already give it a run for its money in melee, so there's not exactly acres of design space for a 4th contender for best-at-melee.

The Champion is just too bland. It doesn't get any tricks really.

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All the more reason for it to 'need' the highly-debatable 'best at fighting' title.

CTurbo said:

Yeah that's why I said Str + Dex and not just "add Dex mod". I was trying to avoid the all Dex build.

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It sounds like this is really the centerpiece of what you want from it. Frankly it sounds even blander (more bland?) than the Champion, but...

If you're going to go for a new class, you could put out the sub-classes by combat style. A GWF build, a TWF build, an Archer. (And, a sub-class that gets spells for some reason, of course.) The STR+DEX to damage mechanic makes STR a secondary stat for DEX builds as well as vice-versa, which is not all bad from a balance perspective.

However, if you're going there, you might want to focus on additional 1/round damage boosts, not Sneak Attack, but mechanically similar, so as to minimize the stacking-bonus abuse. For instance, like a cantrip caster, your Slayer might do additional weapon-damage dice every 5th level, instead of getting extra attack. Whatever the feature would have to be essentially incompatible with extra attack. So, yeah, prettymuch Power Strike.

Yeah. I never really understood what made a "Slayer" more deadlyerer than a normal fighter. It starts getting into obviously OP territory like saying "every time you miss, you hit instead" or "every hit is a critical hit instead" or "every critical hit deals 4x more damage".

transtemporal said:

Yeah. I never really understood what made a "Slayer" more deadlyerer than a normal fighter.

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The DEX bonus to damage, and the potential of cheesing up basic attacks & charge shenanigans, mostly. Not hugely deadlier - the normal fighter was a decent secondary striker, too.

And, while Power Strike didn't exactly do more dice than fighter encounter powers, if you were a little careful about how you used it, it could contribute somewhat more damage. (since you did get to apply it after hitting, so could avoid wasting it to a bad attack roll, and could even reserve it to pile onto crits)

Tony Vargas said:

The 5e fighter is supposed to be the "best at fighting," the Barbarian and Paladin already give it a run for its money in melee, so there's not exactly acres of design space for a 4th contender for best-at-melee.

All the more reason for it to 'need' the highly-debatable 'best at fighting' title.

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Yeah. It sounds like conceptually what the OP wants is the Champion. It's just a matter of making the mechanics a little more exciting.

Tony Vargas said:

The DEX bonus to damage, and the potential of cheesing up basic attacks & charge shenanigans, mostly. Not hugely deadlier - the normal fighter was a decent secondary striker, too.

And, while Power Strike didn't exactly do more dice than fighter encounter powers, if you were a little careful about how you used it, it could contribute somewhat more damage. (since you did get to apply it after hitting, so could avoid wasting it to a bad attack roll, and could even reserve it to pile onto crits)

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Interesting. I don't know if the dex bonus to dmg is a brilliantly elegant mechanic or total cheese factory. It kind of opens up the possibility of different dmg combos like str/int or dex/wis, which might be cool?

transtemporal said:

Interesting. I don't know if the dex bonus to dmg is a brilliantly elegant mechanic or total cheese factory.

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As the OP phrased it, both. STR+DEX, rather than the Slayer's +DEX to basic attacks, is elegant in 5e, because 5e makes it seamless to use either STR or DEX as your attack stat. DEX would be doubling up, that phrasing eliminates that particular potential 'abuse,' making either STR or DEX automatically fall into a 'secondary' attribute status. Neat and tidy. (That wouldn't have worked for the Slayer, because any stat might be used for a basic attack via feats, and using DEX for a basic attack required either a feat or a feature).

It kind of opens up the possibility of different dmg combos like str/int or dex/wis, which might be cool?

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4e used adding a secondary stat to damage as a striker role-support feature quite a bit. The artful-dodger rogue got it in the form of an at-will, for instance, the Pit Fighter PP got WIS to damage at 16th, etc. As the game progressed it got to be less and less limited bonus, Sorcerers with any sorcerer power, from 1st on - the Essentials Thief being the most extreme case, not only getting it's striker damage bonus across the board, but simply doubling up on DEX to damage instead of using a secondary attribute. In 4e/E it wasn't (quite) a broken mechanic, because classes that got it didn't generally get to make a lot of multiple attacks against a single target (the Ranger was the poster boy for that, with Twin Strike and did not get a static damage bonus, but extra dice 1/round). You could still push it with the odd encounter or daily that did so or let you make a minor action attack (like a bonus action attack in 5e), which was a prime damage optimization trick. (Disclaimer: Striker was my least-favorite role, so this is mainly second hand info.)

In 5e, between Extra Attack and bonus action attacks any 'static' (as we called 'em in 3e) damage bonus is potentially problematic. (Really, it's multiple attacks of any kind that have always proven problematic in every edition.)

I tried it once, when I did my Knight conversion, but I found it fit the Barbarian better.

Essentials Knight [Fighter Subclass]
Essentials Slayer [Barbarian Subclass]

As [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] mentions a striker in 4e received bonus damage. Usually a secondary stat. For example, the hexblade received their dexterity or constitution bonus to damage to weapon strikes at level one. This does give us a good comparison between the two editions though. Since the current pact of the blade warlock receives their charisma bonus to weapon attacks at level 12 then it could be argued that any slayer that we built would get their dex bonus to attacks at level 12.

The champion is a good 4e version of the slayer, but if one wanted a bit more of a slayer feel then translating the power strike ability would be my suggestion.