D&D 5E My tweak to make (Champion) Fighters decent

[S'mon]

Here's what I have now - thanks to everyone who made useful and constructive input.

So here's what I have now:

Second Wind
You have a limited well of stamina that you can draw on to protect yourself from harm. On Your Turn, you can use a Bonus Action to regain hit points equal to 1d10 + your fighter level.
Once you use this feature 3 times you must finish a Long Rest before you can use it again.

Action Surge
Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On Your Turn, you can take one additional action on top of your regular action and a possible Bonus Action.
Once you use this feature 3 times you must finish a Long Rest before you can use it again.
At 17th level you may use this feature an additional 3 times before finishing a Long Rest.

Ability Score Improvement
When you reach 4th level, and again at 6th, 8th, 12th, 14th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two Ability Scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.
Action Hero: The Level 8, 12, and 14 Ability Score improvements may each be replaced by one additional use of Action Surge per Long Rest.
Unlimited Might: The level 16 & 19 Ability Score improvements may raise an Attribute above 20, but not above 24.

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I think that puts the Champion Fighter on par with the Barbarian. They remain less durable but have very strong striking power for a limited duration.

 

[guachi]

XP for the ability names "Action Hero" and "Unlimited Might".

In my campaign, I removed short rest recharges and simply doubled everything a class gets on a short rest and had it recharge on a long rest. However, for a campaign like yours with one week between long rests I think tripling is good. One week is so long you'll probably have the PCs being judicious in their use and may even end a week with some uses left over.

 

[S'mon]

XP for the ability names "Action Hero" and "Unlimited Might".

In my campaign, I removed short rest recharges and simply doubled everything a class gets on a short rest and had it recharge on a long rest. However, for a campaign like yours with one week between long rests I think tripling is good. One week is so long you'll probably have the PCs being judicious in their use and may even end a week with some uses left over.

Cheers.

While this is aimed at Champions, the Battlemaster as written with short rest superiority dice is terrible design IMO; eg the dice recharge on an SR but can give temp hp that last until an LR. So the best use of a Battlemaster is to give rousing speeches each morning, rerolling them every hour until everyone in the party has max or nearly max temp hp, before heading out around noon... Making it 3 times the dice per LR immediately discourages this sort of behaviour.

 

[FrogReaver]

Cheers.

While this is aimed at Champions, the Battlemaster as written with short rest superiority dice is terrible design IMO; eg the dice recharge on an SR but can give temp hp that last until an LR. So the best use of a Battlemaster is to give rousing speeches each morning, rerolling them every hour until everyone in the party has max or nearly max temp hp, before heading out around noon... Making it 3 times the dice per LR immediately discourages this sort of behaviour.

I think its less the abilities problem and more the abuse of the rest system you are seeing. A short rest immediately after a long rest just to try to recharge some abilitiy you started the day out with is bad. No. That shouldn't happen. Could it be avoided if every short rest abilities effects ended at a short rest? I suppose. Or we could just not allow resting right after a rest...

 

[The Old Crow]

Here's what I have now - thanks to everyone who made useful and constructive input.

So here's what I have now:

Second Wind
You have a limited well of stamina that you can draw on to protect yourself from harm. On Your Turn, you can use a Bonus Action to regain hit points equal to 1d10 + your fighter level.
Once you use this feature 3 times you must finish a Long Rest before you can use it again.

Action Surge
Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On Your Turn, you can take one additional action on top of your regular action and a possible Bonus Action.
Once you use this feature 3 times you must finish a Long Rest before you can use it again.
At 17th level you may use this feature an additional 3 times before finishing a Long Rest.

Ability Score Improvement
When you reach 4th level, and again at 6th, 8th, 12th, 14th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two Ability Scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.
Action Hero: The Level 8, 12, and 14 Ability Score improvements may each be replaced by one additional use of Action Surge per Long Rest.
Unlimited Might: The level 16 & 19 Ability Score improvements may raise an Attribute above 20, but not above 24.

__________________

I think that puts the Champion Fighter on par with the Barbarian. They remain less durable but have very strong striking power for a limited duration.

I hope you report back how this works out in play. I want to change short rest recharge too, though I was planning on the use of an action to get the recharge benefits of a short rest 2/day. I am very interested in how your plan works out.

 

[S'mon]

I hope you report back how this works out in play. I want to change short rest recharge too, though I was planning on the use of an action to get the recharge benefits of a short rest 2/day. I am very interested in how your plan works out.

I will be implementing this in both my no feats online game and my feats plus multiclassing tabletop game so should get a good idea how it works in practice.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I was wondering, as I mentioned earlier, if the problem here isn't related to this pacing, instead of feats. Barbarians have absolutely no abilities that refresh on a short rest.

Except their hit points.

Which, being barbarians, they're probably "spending" a lot of.

Yeah, some classes look forward to short rests more than others, but with the Hit Dice mechanic there's no character who finds them useless.

 

[Corwin]

That alone would create balance problems with both encounters, and other classes (they are balanced to rage every other fight).

One campaign we play in, irregularly, is the one I play my rogue/monk/warlock. Very short rest based, as you can imagine. My friend in that game plays a paladin. The DM runs a very story-driven game where we often have only a single combat in a given day. Which makes the paladin that much more amazing in those fights. Good thing, as I said, its story-driven. So not only is my spotlight time the important thing, but with combats not being the focus of the game, my multitude of non-combat abilities makes me uber valuable and important.

 

[Flamestrike]

double post

 

[Flamestrike]

One campaign we play in, irregularly, is the one I play my rogue/monk/warlock. Very short rest based, as you can imagine. My friend in that game plays a paladin. The DM runs a very story-driven game where we often have only a single combat in a given day. Which makes the paladin that much more amazing in those fights. Good thing, as I said, its story-driven. So not only is my spotlight time the important thing, but with combats not being the focus of the game, my multitude of non-combat abilities makes me uber valuable and important.

Understood, but there is zero reason for the DM in your campaign to refrain from using the 'gritty realism' rest variant in that campaign.

At around 0-1 fight per day, and usually a week of no fighting every month or so, it would be (mechanically) much better resource recovery pacing for that campaign.

You would be getting your Ki/ spell slots back for each encounter. The Paladin would need to ration his slots/smites for around half a dozen of them.

DnD is a resource management game at its heart. The current iteration is based on a 'short rest' every 2 or so encounters, and a 'long rest' every 6 or so encounters.

What form a 'short rest' or a 'long rest' take are up the DM.

If your camapaign experiences any of the following issues;

1) Fighters/ Warlocks are too weak
2) Full casters/ barbarians/ paladins are too strong
3) Encounters are not challenging enough
4) PCs heal too fast

Then ask yourself why you are not using the gritty realism rest variant? You can fix all those problems by simply messing with the rest rules.

My personal campaign uses:

Short rest (5 minutes long, but no more than once every 4 hours; happens automatically every 4 hours) - Spend up to 1/2 level in HD, recover all short rest resources
Long rest (8 bours long, once every 24 hours) - Recover 1/2 your level in expended HD, spend unlimited HD, recover 1 expended spell slot of levels 1-5, and recover 1 expended spell slot of levels 6+ or 1 mystic arcanum.

I like faster short rests for better story pacing and the removal of jarring 1 hour breaks 2-3 times per adventuring day, and I wanted to slow down healing and spell slot recovery on a long rest for the full casters, prompting them to be quite conservative with spell slot usage.

I also reduced the number of barbarian rages per long rest by 1 and handed them out a fighting style to compensate.

That hits the sweet spot for class and encounter balance for mine.