D&D 5E The Warrior

[The Old Crow]

First off, I approve of giving actual class features instead of bonus ASIs, and I like what I see s far.

I was waiting for the melee talents before commenting, because that's what I am interested in most, but there is almost too much information for me to process as is, so I'll give some feedback.

General Talents
The following talents have no requirements.

Accuracy (passive)
Gain a +1 bonus to hit with weapon attacks.

Fortitude (passive)
Gain +5 hit points. You may take this talent multiple times.

Iron Resolve (active)
As a reaction, you can add your proficiency bonus to a saving throw against a threat that you are aware of. If you are already proficient in a save, this gives you a total of double your proficiency bonus to that save.

Might (passive)
Gain a +1 bonus to damage with weapon attacks. You may take this talent multiple times.

Readiness (passive)
Gain a +5 bonus to initiative checks.

Unarmored Defense (passive)
While wearing no armor, you may add your Intelligence modifier to your AC, in addition to your Dexterity modifier. You can still wield shields and benefit from Unarmored Defense.

Fortitude's 5 hp seems ok at low level, but I don't think it scales well. What about +1 hp/level, can only be taken once.

Iron Resolve lacks a recharge. Is this intentional?

h the listed components as part of the suit to use these talents.

Armored Defense (passive)
Gain a +1 bonus to AC while wearing armor. It takes you half the required time to don or doff armor.

Gauntlet Expertise (passive)
While wearing gauntlets, you cannot be disarmed.

Helmet Expertise (passive)
While wearing a helmet and not surprised, any time you are struck by a critical hit, roll a d20. On a result of 10+ the blow is deflected by your helmet, and you take normal damage instead.
Armor Talents

Gauntlet Expertise needs something. I don't know what though. Resistance to things that harm you when you actively touch them?

Archery Talents
You must be wielding a bow or crossbow in order to use archery talents.

Aimed Shot (active)
When you use the Attack action to attack a target, you can take an aimed shot to ignore half-cover and reduce three-quarters cover to being only as effective as half-cover for purposes of your aimed shot. If the target has no cover you instead gain a +2 bonus to hit. You can only take one aimed shot per round.
Recharge: You must spend one round observing a target and making no attacks.
Improved Aimed Shot: In place of two attacks, you make a shot ignoring half and three-quarters cover entirely (or gain a +3 bonus to hit), and your attack deals an extra weapon die of damage on a hit.
Master Aimed Shot: In place of three attacks, you make a shot ignoring half and three-quarters cover (or gain a +5 bonus to hit), as well as any disadvantage on your attack roll, and your attack deals two extra weapon dice of damage on a hit.

I think this one looks good. It seems to be carefully written so it can stack with Archery Style (in the event of multiclassing ) without being overpowered.

Archer’s Escape (passive)
When you use the Attack action to make a ranged attack against a target, you may Disengage as a bonus action and move 5 feet for free before or after the shot.

Is this intended after each shot when multiattacking?

Hail of Arrows (active)
As an action, you fire a barrage of arrows into a 15 foot diameter circular area. Choose a number of creatures within the area equal to your proficiency modifier; those creatures must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failure they suffer damage as if struck by one of your arrows, while on a success they suffer half as much damage. You may not benefit from Extra Attack during a round in which you use Hail of Arrows.
Recharge: If handling ammunition cinematically, you must refill your quiver. If tracking ammunition, this expends a number of arrows or bolts equal to twice your proficiency modifier.

Needs one kind of recharge, not two. First one has the right idea, have to stop and get more arrows. The secnd is hardly a seed bump, and has the weird side effect that the more proficient you are, the more arrows you lose regardless of number of targets. Anyway, I think this needs a recharge more in balance with the other recharges of talents, where the result is resting the talent for at least a turn.

Full Draw (active)
As a bonus action you draw your bowstring to full extension. The next attack you make on your turn with the bow gains advantage to hit if firing within short range, or suffers no disadvantage when firing at long range.
Recharge: Rest your arm for a full round.

A stupid quibble: This seems more like careful aim. Having a Bend The Bow talent that adds STR would be cool, though.

More later, gotta go!

 

[BookBarbarian]

This is a massive amount of good work, and I'm going to have to take a while to go over it all, but what I see I like.

Two minor quibbles, I think Helmet expertise would be better served as some kind of save rather than a static 10+. Constitution makes the most sense to me. I also see "advantage on damage rolls" for the monster slayers favored foe ability. So far Advantage has always been with a d20 so rather than use the word Advantage, i would just describe rolling the damage die twice and taking the higher value.

All in all this is just fantastic.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

I love this. The modular nature of building your own fighter from a list of abilities much better emulates the bonus feats from third edition than the extra ASI and the current feat list. It also makes sense for a class with very flexible fluff has very flexible mechanics (I also have a tendency to love very flexible classes in general).

As a revised version of the fighter do you have any plans on creating an eldritch knight type archetype? With no current arcane half caster the eldritch knight is one of the few archetypes filling that niche.

Minor editing nitpick: Overwatch is the name of both an archer talent and a borderlands guard feature.

 

[SmokingSkull]

I'm liking what I'm seeing so far, when you finish this I'm going to see if I can convince my DM to let me redo my fighter with this. While I do appreciate the default fighter that we have in 5E now I wouldn't mind trying this out. Also I remember that thread, boy oh boy did that one get heated!

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Yeah, level 14 is dead right now. It's not ideal. What happened is there is a logic/pattern behind when certain features are granted (see my post #2). For example, camp talents are granted roughly at the beginning of each new tier (e.g. 2nd level, 5th level, 11th level, 17th level). Another example, new fighting talents aren't granted on two consecutive levels to allow the player time to really get used to the new ability.

I wouldn't be opposed to adding something at 14th level. In my original version, I think that level was another Prestige benefit (like at 9th level).

The obvious move to me is to shift the 15th-level subclass feature down one.

Actually, now that I've copied them over, it looks like I didn't have a backup of my Swashbuckler. I'll take a peek at the Dervish again. I tend to be very thorough in researching subclasses and their inspirations. So I'll be reviewing the version in SCAG and the latest Unearthed Arcana. As well as any AD&D "Swashbuckler-y" kits. And any 3e Swashbucklers. I don't remember the concept appearing in 4e, at least not by name...

4E called them "rogues".

 

[Tony Vargas]

Swashbucklers. I don't remember the concept appearing in 4e, at least not by name...

Like 5e, 4e provided the Swashbuckler as an after-market Rogue, in Dragon 381, mostly a matter of feats, IIRC, as well as having several swashbucklery or duelisty themes & PPs. But, 4e Rogue with a Rapier, pretty good swashbuckler in general. (4e was still hung up on class-determines-attack-stat, so you couldn't just have a DEX based fighter by taking a high DEX.)

 

[DaedalusX51]

First I want to congratulate you on really accomplishing what you set out to design. This really combines an open concept Fighter with multiple discrete concepts into one class. In addition, the camp talent idea adds a much needed exploration/interaction benefit that the Fighter is currently lacking. Great Job.

My only concern or criticism is that many of these talents seem to be things that any fighter-like class should be able to do to some degree. I don't think this is necessarily your fault in the design of this, but WotC's failing.

I think it would have been wise for them to create a suite of martial maneuvers, sort of like 4e's powers, but having a unified resource to use them.

For instance, Fighters, Rangers, and Paladins all gain some kind of resource that they can use to fuel maneuvers that they learn as they level. Rangers and Paladins receive half as much of that resource and a limited selection of exploits due to the fact that they are also half casters. This gives a unified vision of how Fighter-like classes fight, but the Fighter will still reign supreme.

Now I know that some players really hate prescriptive maneuvers since they feel that any codified mechanics will impede improvisation. However I think adding in features specifically designed to benefit improvisation such as adding proficiency bonus to improvised attacks and other features could give them a place to shine as well.

Anyhow, I just wanted to let you know that this is excellent work, and it has inspired me to begin working on a larger scale rework to accommodate that vision in 5E.

 

[Quickleaf]

First I want to congratulate you on really accomplishing what you set out to design. This really combines an open concept Fighter with multiple discrete concepts into one class. In addition, the camp talent idea adds a much needed exploration/interaction benefit that the Fighter is currently lacking. Great Job.

My only concern or criticism is that many of these talents seem to be things that any fighter-like class should be able to do to some degree. I don't think this is necessarily your fault in the design of this, but WotC's failing.

I think it would have been wise for them to create a suite of martial maneuvers, sort of like 4e's powers, but having a unified resource to use them.

For instance, Fighters, Rangers, and Paladins all gain some kind of resource that they can use to fuel maneuvers that they learn as they level. Rangers and Paladins receive half as much of that resource and a limited selection of exploits due to the fact that they are also half casters. This gives a unified vision of how Fighter-like classes fight, but the Fighter will still reign supreme.

Now I know that some players really hate prescriptive maneuvers since they feel that any codified mechanics will impede improvisation. However I think adding in features specifically designed to benefit improvisation such as adding proficiency bonus to improvised attacks and other features could give them a place to shine as well.

Anyhow, I just wanted to let you know that this is excellent work, and it has inspired me to begin working on a larger scale rework to accommodate that vision in 5E.

Thanks

The trick for me is how to avoid writing a bloated class that ends up taking too much page count (like the UA Mystic). So when pursuing any kind of codified "talent tree" or "powers" design, there's a design tightrope you walk between too much detail and too little detail.

And I would *not* recommend a maneuver system for Rangers and Paladins or other non-Fighters. Why? Because they already have cool unique stuff they're doing (spells, special abilities) AND they have the Extra Attack and Fighting Style already in common with the Fighter. This is meant to give Fighters a more cohesive unique unmistakable identity as "masters of combat."

 

[DaedalusX51]

Thanks

The trick for me is how to avoid writing a bloated class that ends up taking too much page count (like the UA Mystic). So when pursuing any kind of codified "talent tree" or "powers" design, there's a design tightrope you walk between too much detail and too little detail.

And I would *not* recommend a maneuver system for Rangers and Paladins or other non-Fighters. Why? Because they already have cool unique stuff they're doing (spells, special abilities) AND they have the Extra Attack and Fighting Style already in common with the Fighter. This is meant to give Fighters a more cohesive unique unmistakable identity as "masters of combat."

I don't disagree. Currently, this design can only be siloed into the Fighter class as the Paladin and Ranger are already filled to the brim with class features and things to do.

I'm going to take some time see if i can find some interesting design space to rework the fighting style and extra attack class features that all of these classes share, without it going too far off the rails.

I let you know what I come up with, if anything at all. Thanks.

 

[mellored]

Now I know that some players really hate prescriptive maneuvers since they feel that any codified mechanics will impede improvisation. However I think adding in features specifically designed to benefit improvisation such as adding proficiency bonus to improvised attacks and other features could give them a place to shine as well.

That can be mittigated by using open wording. The same the game already does when it adds 1d8 damage to a weapon attack, does not mean other people can't attack.


Don't say "you can do X", which implies others cannot.
Say "when you do X", "add", and "increase", or "as a bonus action".

i.e.
Wrong way "As an action, you can pull a rug out from under someone and attempt to knock them prone.". (implies only you can).
Right way "When you use an action to pull a rug out from under someone, they have disadvantage on their Dex save to be knocked prone." (implies anyone can, your just better at it).