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

[Horwath]

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.

2d6+5, 60% hit rate. it's 11 hits, 1 crit and 8 misses out of 20. goes to 7,55 damage per hit. with style it's 8,42 per hit. 11,5% extra damage.
Yeah, it's terrible.

 

[Horwath]

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.

sure, maybe all styles should be +prof to damage. except TWF.

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!

yeah, a little. but here reality needs to take a backseat for a little so thrown weapons can be an option to take. 30/120 is just horrible for ranged option.

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

one attack per round that uses reaction. and damage reduction has been scaled down from d10 to d6

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

needs a feat and fighting style. off hand still needs to be light.

if we take new TWF feat and new GWM, and say tha GWF style give +prof bonus and that GWM bonus action attack triggers in 20% of rounds and you use your extra prof bonus every round for simplicity.

that would give TWF (1d8+5)×2 and (1d6+5)×2 vs (2d6+5+3)×2 +prof(+3 lets say) and (2d6+5+3)×0,2
TWF 19+17=36, GWF 30+3+3=36.


GWF only needs one magic weapon vs. two, has better AoO, TWF has less overkill and can use more attack riders.

 

[Shiroiken]

Archery: add proficiency bonus to damage instead of +2 attack

I think it would be better as "reduce cover penalty by 2," which appeared to be the original goal, rather than boosting damage. I always had an issue with ranged attacks just being more accurate.

Defense: with +1 AC in proficient armor, add damage reduction of 1 when wearing proficient armor

Defense is underrated already. People don't take it because it's passive, rather than active, not because it isn't good. I could see switching it to damage reduction instead of boosting AC though, which would increase its appeal.

Dueling: proficiency bonus to damage instead of flat +2

This is a significant boost, which I don't see as necessary.

Great weapon fighting: damage die increase, 1d8 becomes 1d12, 1d10 becomes 2d6, 1d12/2d6 becomes 2d8, PAMs 1d4 becomes 1d6

Too complicated, so it won't happen. Interesting idea though.

Thrown weapon: in addition range of all thrown weapons becomes 60/180

Double the range, not super boosting all of them.

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

I think the existing -2 after the attack is fine, but I still have issues with how DM dependent it is. Every time I've taken these styles, the DM just targets me instead, making my ability useless.

Two weapon fighting: in addition, if you have Dual wielder feat and Extra attack feature, make two attacks with your off hand

I'd remove the requirement for the Duel Wielder Feat. In the Duel Wielder Feat, I'd add that if you have Two Weapon Fighting you can use two 1 handed weapons.

 

[Horwath]

I think it would be better as "reduce cover penalty by 2," which appeared to be the original goal, rather than boosting damage. I always had an issue with ranged attacks just being more accurate.

there is a feat for that.
as HP are abstraction, more damage can also be seen as more accurate.

Defense is underrated already. People don't take it because it's passive, rather than active, not because it isn't good. I could see switching it to damage reduction instead of boosting AC though, which would increase its appeal.

It's really bad.
if you get hit 60% of the time, it turns that to 55% of the time.
That is relative 8,3% damage reduction.
As now fighting styles are worth a full feat(lol) we can compare it with tough.
we could use 10th level fighter with "default" 14 Con. 84HP, 104HP with tough feat. 23,8% more HP.
Defense style closes to Tough feat only if you get hit on 16+ without style. then it turns that to 20% less damage

This is a significant boost, which I don't see as necessary.

+2 is good increase on 1d8+3 when you start, when you finish with 1d8+5 plus whatever magic bonuses you get, then that +2 seems trivial.

Too complicated, so it won't happen. Interesting idea though.

yeah. too much hassle. but style needs to get buffed.
maybe extra d6 damage per hit, d8 at 5th level, d10 at 11th level, d12 at 17th level.

Double the range, not super boosting all of them.

thrown needs to be somewhat viable. 60ft normal range is in default darkvision range, plus the range of bunch of features and spells.

I think the existing -2 after the attack is fine, but I still have issues with how DM dependent it is. Every time I've taken these styles, the DM just targets me instead, making my ability useless.

if you are in fullplate and shield and heavy armor mastery, then you are doing your job if the DM targets you.

I'd remove the requirement for the Duel Wielder Feat. In the Duel Wielder Feat, I'd add that if you have Two Weapon Fighting you can use two 1 handed weapons.

TWF is always a pain to balance.

 

[Stalker0]

In my games I combined dueling, TWF, great weapon styles all into:

Offense: Gain +2 damage on melee attacks.

And done, clean simple and strong, allows a player to actually switch weapons and still enjoy benefits

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Archery was overpowered because it negated the -5 from sharpshooter.

-5 + (+2) = -3 which is hardly negate. Lets say: softened...

 

[Clint_L]

In my games I combined dueling, TWF, great weapon styles all into:

Offense: Gain +2 damage on melee attacks.

And done, clean simple and strong, allows a player to actually switch weapons and still enjoy benefits

That seems overly general to me - I think it feels better to have someone as specifically great weapon specialist, a two weapon fighting specialist, etc.

Also, this solution doubles the benefit for two weapon fighting (i.e. they get +4 to damage instead of +2). So at first level a person wielding, say, two short swords would be doing (1d6+(3+2))+(1d6+2)=14 damage on average, whereas a great axe wielder would be doing (1d12+(3+2))=11.5 damage on average.

And I like the suggestion of tying damage benefits to proficiency so that they scale.

 

[RangerWickett]

The way I wish they would do fighting styles is to give each fighting style one or two reactions, which would represent how they defend themselves, or how they can assist teammates in a fight. You use your action on your turn to be offensive, but then you're fighting style gives you ways to avoid dying or contribute to an ally's action on their turn.

So I would have a complete rework, but I know that's not what this edition is going for.

 

[mellored]

The way I wish they would do fighting styles is to give each fighting style one or two reactions, which would represent how they defend themselves, or how they can assist teammates in a fight. You use your action on your turn to be offensive, but then you're fighting style gives you ways to avoid dying or contribute to an ally's action on their turn.

So I would have a complete rework, but I know that's not what this edition is going for.

Sounds like a higher level feat.

 

[Neonchameleon]

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?

Is great weapon fighting actually trash? It's slightly weaker than dueling but still adds about 10% damage.

The ones I'd call trash are Protection (especially on a fighter; it's not so bad on a paladin as they have fewer interrupts - but interception alwasy works), two weapon fighting (but that's no the fighting style's fault), and unarmed fighting. Oh, and thrown weapon fighting is a fix and a fudge. Blind Fighting needs building around.

The only one I'd call notably better than great weapon fighting is archery.

@Clint_L +2 damage per attack on two weapon fighting is only slightly better than the existing TWF which, as we all know, is solid at low levels but falls behind at level 5.

The big question is whether we want low bonus weapon specialisation at all.