D&D (2024) Fighting styles and how to balance them?

[Horwath]

For the run of 5E, fighting styles were a balance complete mess.

from Archery's OP and breaking bounded accuracy to complete trash of great weapon fighting?

How would you balance them out?

My few suggestions:

Archery: add proficiency bonus to damage instead of +2 attack
Defense: with +1 AC in proficient armor, add damage reduction of 1 when wearing proficient armor
Dueling: proficiency bonus to damage instead of flat +2
Great weapon fighting: damage die increase, 1d8 becomes 1d12, 1d10 becomes 2d6, 1d12/2d6 becomes 2d8, PAMs 1d4 becomes 1d6
Thrown weapon: in addition range of all thrown weapons becomes 60/180
Interception and protection becomes one style: you force a rerroll of attack roll that hits an ally withing 5ft, if the reroll hits, reduce the damage by 1d6+prof bonus
Two weapon fighting: in addition, if you have Dual wielder feat and Extra attack feature, make two attacks with your off hand

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Seems more or less balanced.
For defense, it could actually be +half proficency bonus to AC and still be ok. Or combine it with protection and let it work on attacks vs yourself. In the playtest it worked that way (but felt a bit overpowered). Maybe change it to as a reaction add +prof bonus to AC against yourself, or an adjacent ally, when wielding a melee weapon. When you wield a shield you can also deflect ranged attacks.

 

[mellored]

They did rebalance in the playtest.

Archery no longer gets the +10 damage from sharpshooter.
Two weapon fighting doesn't take a bonus action.
Great weapon master loses the +10, but gets +proficiency once per turn.
Protection is now -2 after the attack, so you don't waste it.

 

[AnotherGuy]

They did rebalance in the playtest.

Archery no longer gets the +10 damage from sharpshooter.
Two weapon fighting doesn't take a bonus action.
Great weapon master loses the +10, but gets +proficiency once per turn.
Protection is now -2 after the attack, so you don't waste it.

The OP is trying to balance the fighting styles, not the feats. Emphasis mine.

 

[mellored]

Archery was overpowered because it negated the -5 from sharpshooter.
You can't just look at them in isolation.

I mean otherwise,
1d8+4 * 10% = 0.85 extra damage.
And if your hit 60% of the time and have 2d6, the great weapon is 0.8666666667 extra damage. (Including crits).

So that is balanced by itself. Always was.

 

[Horwath]

Archery was overpowered because it negated the -5 from sharpshooter.
You can't just look at them in isolation.

I mean otherwise,
1d8+4 * 10% = 0.85 extra damage.
And if your hit 60% of the time and have 2d6, the great weapon is 0.8666666667 extra damage. (Including crits).

So that is balanced by itself. Always was.

archery raised your hit chance by 10% but raised DPR by little more as you have base hit at around 60%

so you have

1d8+5 with 60% hit with +2 attack goes to 70% hit chance. 16,6% increase in DPR
and if you attack higher AC target that goes up even more. +8 attack vs AC 20 goes from 45% hit to 55% hit. 22,2% increase.

Bonus to damage gives same relative increase to DPR independent from AC of the target.

GW style with 2d6+5 goes from 12 to 13,33. An 11% increase

Dueling adds 21% DPR

if we add magic weapons style effect has less effect with damage based boost, but archery might have more. depending on magic bonuses.

 

[Horwath]

The OP is trying to balance the fighting styles, not the feats. Emphasis mine.

This.

most problems was with getting advantage to negate penalty, maybe bless spell. +2 was just icing on archery.

And as I mentioned, +2 attack varies in effect depending on target of AC which varies a lot in encounters.
outside resistances, which usually gets negated most of the time, damage is stable.

 

[Clint_L]

Your fix to great weapon fighting doesn't help nearly as much as your fixes that rely on proficiency because changing the damage dice doesn't scale. It's also inconsistent (i.e. going from 1d8 to 1d12 is +2 on average, d10 to 2d6 is +1.5, 1d12 to 2d8 is +2.5, etc.). It's also complicated. If you're just going to do a damage increase, then just do +proficiency to all of them.

Which I actually like. Great weapon fighting is absolute trash at the moment. Simplifying it and making it +proficiency makes it a worthy option.

Giving thrown weapons all a 180' maximum range is a bit goofy. A dagger taking someone out at 180 feet? That's quite a throw!

Combining interception and protection like that is VERY powerful, especially at low levels. Too powerful.

And two weapon fighting doesn't need the boost, especially that much of a boost - that makes it crazy good.

 

[mellored]

archery raised your hit chance by 10% but raised DPR by little more as you have base hit at around 60%

so you have

1d8+5 with 60% hit with +2 attack goes to 70% hit chance. 16,6% increase in DPR
and if you attack higher AC target that goes up even more. +8 attack vs AC 20 goes from 45% hit to 55% hit. 22,2% increase.

Bonus to damage gives same relative increase to DPR independent from AC of the target.

GW style with 2d6+5 goes from 12 to 13,33. An 11% increase

Dueling adds 21% DPR

if we add magic weapons style effect has less effect with damage based boost, but archery might have more. depending on magic bonuses.

Using relative damage boost seems like an odd choice...

Also, you forgot crits on great weapon. And magic weapons like wayth deal an extra 2d6, which can also be rerolled.

I will say that great weapon on a 1d12 is not great. But I really don't see why they shouldn't be 2d6.

 

[Clint_L]

Great Weapon fighting can (and sometimes does) result in you doing LESS damage. It's such a terrible fighting style. I don't know what it works out to in bonus damage, especially once you factor in critical, but I suspect that it's less than +1 damage, on average.