D&D 5E New(?) Fighting Style: Tactical

dnd4vr said:

There are other features that allow you to add INT to Initiative, but I suppose for Fighters this would be a great boon if you favor frontloading your nova abilities. Otherwise, as a pet peeve of mine, I have never valued Initiative highly since after the initial action, it is just a "I go, you go, I go, you go" thing... so I would rather see something you will benefit from every round, not just the first.

Click to expand...

That's why the Tactical Style allows you to shift your place in the order

How about applying intelligence to AC at the cost of a bonus action. You could cap the bonus at your proficiency bonus. You can use your action to do the same for an ally that can see or hear you. If you have multiple attacks you can use one of these.

bedir than said:

That's why the Tactical Style allows you to shift your place in the order

Click to expand...

But once it is shifted, there is no benefit, unless you roll initiative every round (we used to, but decided to stop because of speed of play). Or maybe I am misunderstanding you? How about an example:

Round 1:
21 A
18 B
14 C
12 D
5 E

But D has the Tactical Style and INT 16, allowing a +3 to Initiative, so the order becomes

21 A
18 B
15 D
14 C
5 E

placing D before C.

Using the same initiative for each round (default in 5E), once applied the order remains for the rest of the encounter.

This gets back to my point about initiative in 5E. Supposing C was the enemy forces, once ABD all go, C goes, then E followed by ABD, then C. Repeats EABD, C, EABD, C, and so on. Everyone in the party goes (EABD) and then the DM (C). The repetitive cycle makes it so modifying initiative is only a benefit to D on the very first turn, after that, it really doesn't matter. Also, if D's bonus wasn't enough to bring it above C, it wouldn't benefit at all.

Do you see my point?

Pauln6 said:

How about applying intelligence to AC at the cost of a bonus action. You could cap the bonus at your proficiency bonus. You can use your action to do the same for an ally that can see or hear you. If you have multiple attacks you can use one of these.

Click to expand...

Not bad either, but I am focused more on using INT for attacking, preferably on the attack roll itself. However as others have pointed out, most combatants, if they lack high STR, tend to have high DEX, and will simply use DEX-based weapons.

However, your idea could work somehow as a feat as well.

Esker said:

I'm on record here as being decidedly anti-simulationist, but if stepping away entirely from the game balance aspect, this is absolutely true. I wonder what would happen if you just got rid of the finesse property and had DEX governing to-hit for all weapons, and STR affecting damage for all weapons except crossbows (and you got rid of the crossbow expert feat). A lot more rogues would use crossbows, I guess, though they don't care all that much about their static damage bonus after a point. But I kind of like the strategic tradeoffs inherent in having to decide whether your character is going to to hit harder or more often.

Click to expand...

For a fantasy heartbreaker I designed I did it like this. But the goal there was fewer total ability scores, and all are important to all characters.

For D&D, it could work but would requires some thought - but the first order repercussions would be:

• All weapon wields become a lot more MAD. A front liners would want DEX, CON, and STR plus whatever their class wants like CHR for a paladin or WIS for ranger. Without either an offsetting buff, or a matching debuff for casters, this messes with class balance.
• Make DEX even more valuable.
• Make STR even less valuable. It's a "nice to have" except for heavy armor wearers.
• Need to evaluate some existing features & feats (Reckless Attack needs rework, Elven Accuracy gets a big power boost and may need to be pulled back, etc.)
• You have things "backwards" like two handed weapons do better mathematically with more DEX (hit to apply that high base damage) while two weapon fighting with light weapons wants a higher STR because the bonus is a much bigger percentage to the total damage.
• Hurts the narrative that AC is armor and plating and thick hides that needs to be pierced, which may make armor granting AC a bit odd.

[MENTION=6987520]dnd4vr[/MENTION]

I'm saying my concept of Tactical Style would allow a Held Action in every round. This would represent the ability to analyze the action in battle and respond. Essentially they would choose their place in initiative each round.

Replacing a physical stat with a mental one makes the already abstract ability scores and the already abstract game mechanics even more abstract. This can cause disassociation between the game mechanics and the imagined fantasy world.

My 2 cents:

There are a bunch of people posting their opinions of how or why this idea will or won't work. Unless you've been absolutely convinced one way or the other, give it a try. Let one of your experienced players test it out with the understanding that if it fails to be fun and/or balanced, he'll need to re-work his character. Then, come back and tell us how it worked for you. 5e rules seem (to me) to really stress that the DM is free to modify/ignore/abandon rules as he sees fit so his players have fun. Maybe it will be a colossal failure, or maybe it will be great. Even if it is a spectacular success for you, it doesn't mean it will work for everybody.

Give it a try and have fun.

bedir than said:

@dnd4vr

I'm saying my concept of Tactical Style would allow a Held Action in every round. This would represent the ability to analyze the action in battle and respond. Essentially they would choose their place in initiative each round.

Click to expand...

Ah, got it. Hmm... that sounds interesting but doesn't fit the feel of a Fighting Style by the other mechanical benefits they offer. I have to work on that really.

Arvok said:

My 2 cents:

There are a bunch of people posting their opinions of how or why this idea will or won't work. Unless you've been absolutely convinced one way or the other, give it a try. Let one of your experienced players test it out with the understanding that if it fails to be fun and/or balanced, he'll need to re-work his character. Then, come back and tell us how it worked for you. 5e rules seem (to me) to really stress that the DM is free to modify/ignore/abandon rules as he sees fit so his players have fun. Maybe it will be a colossal failure, or maybe it will be great. Even if it is a spectacular success for you, it doesn't mean it will work for everybody.

Give it a try and have fun.

Click to expand...

LOL that's ok that they are giving opinions, I want them (doesn't mean I'll listen of course, I can be stubborn at times. )

I'll present it to the other players and get their input, I am just trying to find a way to really make INT a viable option for fighting-classes, and Fighting Styles seemed to be a good way to fit it in. We'll see.

Blue said:

For D&D, it could work but would requires some thought - but the first order repercussions would be:

• All weapon wields become a lot more MAD. A front liners would want DEX, CON, and STR plus whatever their class wants like CHR for a paladin or WIS for ranger. Without either an offsetting buff, or a matching debuff for casters, this messes with class balance.

Click to expand...

They would be more MAD, but the impact of each stat would be reduced, so you could build an accurate character, a hard hitting character, or somewhere in between. Everyone would do less damage on average though so you'd probably want to do some HP scaling.

• Make DEX even more valuable.

• Make STR even less valuable. It's a "nice to have" except for heavy armor wearers.

Click to expand...

I think on balance that's probably true, but for normal weapon attacks against most typical ACs, an extra point to damage has a slightly bigger impact on average damage than an extra point to accuracy. So for ranged characters with extra attack, they might actually choose to prioritize STR over DEX (SS aside, which definitely shifts things in favor of accuracy boosts; that's a whole other can of worms). I could imagine adding strength requirements to use heavy weapons.

• Need to evaluate some existing features & feats (Reckless Attack needs rework, Elven Accuracy gets a big power boost and may need to be pulled back, etc.)

Click to expand...

Yeah. Quite a lot of things would need reworking after a change as sweeping as this one. Elven accuracy could be restricted to certain classes of weapons instead of certain classes of ability score. If elven accuracy excluded two-handed melee weapons and reckless attack excluded ranged weapons (as it does now), then the only weapons that could benefit from both would be one-handed melee weapons, for which there's no -5/+10 feat to abuse the superadvantage. I could also see replacing the advantage benefit of reckless attack with an extra bonus to-hit equal to your strength mod, so it no longer interacts at all with elven accuracy (which it feels like it shouldn't anyway).

• You have things "backwards" like two handed weapons do better mathematically with more DEX (hit to apply that high base damage) while two weapon fighting with light weapons wants a higher STR because the bonus is a much bigger percentage to the total damage.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a good observation. Requiring minimum strength scores for heavy weapons would address that to an extent, though it wouldn't remove the issue.

• Hurts the narrative that AC is armor and plating and thick hides that needs to be pierced, which may make armor granting AC a bit odd.

Click to expand...

Yeah, maybe, though it's already a bit odd now vs finesse and ranged weapons. I don't know that anyone is actually piercing metal armor now though, are they? It feels more plausible to me to say that higher quality armor leaves fewer vulnerable areas to target.

Esker said:

Yeah, that's a good observation. Requiring minimum strength scores for heavy weapons would address that to an extent, though it wouldn't remove the issue.

Click to expand...

You could also give light weapons 2xDEX mod to-hit and increase the base damage of non-light weapons. Even then, STR becomes more helpful than DEX when wielding light weapons for baseline attacks, except that rogues would still want to prioritize DEX to land their sneak attacks. The fighting styles would need rebalancing, but they already do. Maybe you could leave dueling alone, let TWF add proficiency to the damage of both weapons (on top of the STR mod to the main hand only) so it autoscales to keep it ahead of dueling for damage, compensating for not getting a shield and having to spend a bonus action, and replace the rerolls in the GWF style with a flat extra bonus to damage based on the strength mod (half rounded down, maybe, to encourage spending that ASI to get to +4?). That probably needs some further tweaking, but feels like it's on the right track.