D&D 5E A few new fighting styles

Hold the Line. [Fighter, Paladin] While you are wearing heavy armor, you have advantage on ability checks and saving throws you make to avoid being shoved, knocked prone, dismounted, or otherwise moved against your will.

Mixed Tactics. [Fighter, Ranger] You can sheathe one weapon and draw another as part of the same action. You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls you make with a ranged weapon if the last attack you made was with a melee weapon, and vice versa.

Mobility. [Fighter, Ranger] While you are wearing light armor or no armor, you gain a +3 bonus to AC against opportunity attacks.

Versatile Wielding. [Fighter, Paladin] You can don or doff a shield as a bonus action. You gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with a versatile weapon you are wielding in two hands, and a +1 bonus to attack rolls with a versatile weapon you are wielding in one hand.


The virtue of most fighting styles is their simplicity. I'm a little worried that Mixed Tactics and Versatile Wielding are already too complicated, but they also fill holes I see in the existing fighting style options. What do you think?

I would rework Hold the Line to be a bit like dwarven plate, if something happens you can use your reaction to prevent it.

Reason is that the way it is worded now, lots of times it would do nothing (For example eldritch blast) but other times it would make you more likely to resist damage from a spell when thematically its supposed to be avoiding the movement.

They're interesting. But they seem far more situational than the PH's styles.

I'm thinking of Hold the Line and Mobility especially. Neither of those situations has come up enough for my gnome battlemaster to ever make me think maybe I ought to have taken it instead of the one I got.

I really, really like Versatile Wielding. Though I think a better name might be Adaptive Fighting, or maybe Switch Hitter.

Overall not bad. I like them conceptually. They each do try to fill holes in existing weapon styles, which is what they should strive to do. A few comments:

1) Hold the line is fine as is, though as suggested you could consider making it spend your reaction to guarantee blocking an attempt to move/dismount, etc. This makes it "stack" with certain feats like mounted combat, which give similar bonuses, and means that the enemy has to basically spend two attacks to knock you prone, kind of cool and fitting conceptually.

2) Mixed Tactics is fine, though you could consider reword in it slightly (something like by the end of your next turn or something), as written now, annoying rules lawyers may try to argue that their last attack from a fight 7 days ago was still technically their "last attack". Any sensible person would find that to be asinine, but power gamers be power gamers. >_<

3) I like Mobility conceptually, but have concerns with potential stacking as an AC bonus with the hunter ranger ability (hordebreaker I think? Or was it from the mobile feat? I can't remember offhand but u know it was one of these things). I assume it's intended to be a fighting style that allows someone to move around the battle field without taking hits as they try to run, but I fear in bounded accuracy this may cause issues with these two abilities stacking. Perhaps change thus fighting style to disadvantage on enemy OOA against the fighter? Or maybe something like letting the fighter disengage as a bonus action if they hit the target. There are a couple posibilities.

4) I feel versitile fighting is too strong, at least in any table that does reinforce the "don/doffing" shields as an action (mine doesn't really). The bonus to hit with the weapon being wielding in one hand feels kind of fiddly and I think isn't really needed when you remember that by using one hand with a versitile weapon they are already "gaining" the 2 ac from the shield over ranged fighting style or two weapon fighting or two handed fighting style. I feel the closest to compare it to is dueling, which Still does allow one to use a shield, but sort of "shackles" them into not using a weapon's versitile property as the average damage tends to be higher from dueling fighting style in every case.

I would suggest that it be changed to a flat +1 bonus to damage when wielding any weapon with the versitile property, and let the players don/doff a shield as a bonus action. This effectively gives them a choice between gaining +2 ac and +1 damage with sword/board (worse than dueling, but still gives the the option to do the next bit), or effectively gaining +2 average damage (the bonus combined with the die increase) with the potential for 1 extra damage and a bit higher if you crit, as well as access to feats that use 2 handed weapons with versitile properties.

Related: part of the reason why versatile sucks at present is that they have no fighting style that encourages switching between sword/board and 2handed, but also because there is no feat that screams "THIS IS FOR VERSITILE WEAPONS!!!" This proposed fighting style would at least allow a person to take both heavy weapons user and shield master (etc) and actually switch between them fluidly, if not not making them a 3rd feat as well.

I quite like the concepts.
They might need some tweaking and playtesting, but they're a really good foundation.

Overall not bad. I like them conceptually. They each do try to fill holes in existing weapon styles, which is what they should strive to do. A few comments:

1) Hold the line is fine as is, though as suggested you could consider making it spend your reaction to guarantee blocking an attempt to move/dismount, etc. This makes it "stack" with certain feats like mounted combat, which give similar bonuses, and means that the enemy has to basically spend two attacks to knock you prone, kind of cool and fitting conceptually.

2) Mixed Tactics is fine, though you could consider reword in it slightly (something like by the end of your next turn or something), as written now, annoying rules lawyers may try to argue that their last attack from a fight 7 days ago was still technically their "last attack". Any sensible person would find that to be asinine, but power gamers be power gamers. >_<

3) I like Mobility conceptually, but have concerns with potential stacking as an AC bonus with the hunter ranger ability (hordebreaker I think? Or was it from the mobile feat? I can't remember offhand but u know it was one of these things). I assume it's intended to be a fighting style that allows someone to move around the battle field without taking hits as they try to run, but I fear in bounded accuracy this may cause issues with these two abilities stacking. Perhaps change thus fighting style to disadvantage on enemy OOA against the fighter? Or maybe something like letting the fighter disengage as a bonus action if they hit the target. There are a couple posibilities.

4) I feel versatile fighting is too strong, at least in any table that does reinforce the "don/doffing" shields as an action (mine doesn't really). The bonus to hit with the weapon being wielding in one hand feels kind of fiddly and I think isn't really needed when you remember that by using one hand with a versatile weapon they are already "gaining" the 2 ac from the shield over ranged fighting style or two weapon fighting or two handed fighting style. I feel the closest to compare it to is dueling, which still does allow one to use a shield, but sort of "shackles" them into not using a weapon's versatile property as the average damage tends to be higher from dueling fighting style in every case.

I would suggest that it be changed to a flat +1 bonus to damage when wielding any weapon with the versatile property, and let the players don/doff a shield as a bonus action. This effectively gives them a choice between gaining +2 ac and +1 damage with sword/board (worse than dueling, but still gives the the option to do the next bit), or effectively gaining +2 average damage (the bonus combined with the die increase) with the potential for 1 extra damage and a bit higher if you crit, as well as access to feats that use 2 handed weapons with versatile properties.

Related: part of the reason why versatile sucks at present is that they have no fighting style that encourages switching between sword/board and 2handed, but also because there is no feat that screams "THIS IS FOR VERSATILE WEAPONS!!!" This proposed fighting style would at least allow a person to take both heavy weapons user and shield master (etc) and actually switch between them fluidly, if not not making them a 3rd feat as well. Also, perhaps a feat may be the best place for this sort of thing anyway, as it means any martial make make effective use of versatile weapons and not just fighters/rangers/paladins, but that is opinion I guess.

Hold the Line. Might work better if you spend your reaction to just reduce forced movement. Look to the restrained condition for wording. More of a certainty

Mixed Tactics. Attack and damage is a bit much. Might be neat to also emcourage people to switch betweeen melee and thrown weapons

Mobility. Maybe AC bonus and a boost to movement speed?

Versatile Wielding. Uncertain his I feel about extra damage when two-handing when you already get that. Really, +1 should be enough making two handed versatile weapons equal to most great weapons. The bonus to attack works but feels bland.

Versatile as is is too strong

thethain said:

I would rework Hold the Line to be a bit like dwarven plate, if something happens you can use your reaction to prevent it.

Reason is that the way it is worded now, lots of times it would do nothing (For example eldritch blast) but other times it would make you more likely to resist damage from a spell when thematically its supposed to be avoiding the movement.

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Thanks, I like that better.

MostlyHarmless42 said:

3) I like Mobility conceptually, but have concerns with potential stacking as an AC bonus with the hunter ranger ability (hordebreaker I think? Or was it from the mobile feat? I can't remember offhand but u know it was one of these things). I assume it's intended to be a fighting style that allows someone to move around the battle field without taking hits as they try to run, but I fear in bounded accuracy this may cause issues with these two abilities stacking. Perhaps change thus fighting style to disadvantage on enemy OOA against the fighter? Or maybe something like letting the fighter disengage as a bonus action if they hit the target. There are a couple posibilities.

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I don't really see the balance issue if a ranger gets +7 on AC against opportunity attacks. Yeah, it produces an AC that looks really high within the paradigm of bounded accuracy, but considering any 2nd level rogue can disengage as a bonus action whenever they want and effectively have infinite AC against opportunity attacks, I don't buy that this is a game-breaker.

Jester David said:

Hold the Line. Might work better if you spend your reaction to just reduce forced movement. Look to the restrained condition for wording. More of a certainty

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I don't see what you're referring to in the restrained condition.

Jester David said:

Mobility. Maybe AC bonus and a boost to movement speed?

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I guess +5 feet of movement is another possibility. If I did that, I'd probably ditch the AC bonus. But to me, the AC bonus really sells this as a fighting style, you get what I mean?