D&D 5E Battle Master Homebrew Idea

DaedalusX51 said:

Yeah I am the creator of that one too. While I really like what I did there, my changes went so far that I have to basically rewrite the entire feat system as well.
After speaking about it with some other posters, I decided to try to make an alternate version of the Battle Master with more minor changes.

BTW here is a pdf version of the Fighter document with art and only the Warrior and Eldritch Knight subclasses
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxZxYfpUunBsWVdLUkFtWmVaWms

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Oh really? HA! That's funny! Never even realized it! Which explains why you gave me the Laugh rather than the XP. I saw that notification before you had posted your quoted response, so I was thinking to myself "Why is he Laughing? I must be missing something here."

Turns out, I'm missing the biggest thing of all! Well, if it matters, I think your Warrior archetype is great and I've been following your progress thus far, so thanks for the final version. I'm a firm believe that the baseline Fighter should have been the maneuver-using one (rather than just a subclass), so the Warrior which replaces Champion and BM altogether is fantastic IMO.

DaedalusX51 said:

Please let me know what you think and if there is a way I can possibly balance this a little better. (I know I went overboard on some things, but in my mind, it is always better to be more powerful and tone it down, then to be useless and try to buff it.
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I like your design goals, and I think the changes you have made are real improvements. Since I like where this is going I thought I'd offer my opinion on some of the features.

Superiority Dice: If you find that your final version of this subclass is overpowered, reducing the number of superiority dice is an option, since this class can do cool things without them.

Commander's Strike: Using an attack action shouldn't buy someone the ability to cast a cantrip as a reaction. I think this should be limited to attacks that normally could be taken as a reaction.

I would also prefer it if it didn't cost the ally's reaction, but cost the fighter their reaction instead. The reason I would prefer that design is making the ally pay the cost for the fighter's feature put the cost on them, and competes with the ally's potential use of their own features or strategy.

Disarming Attack

If you expend a superiority die, you destroy the object instead.

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Er, that is way too overpowered. Have the object land a number of feet away from the opponent, or let the fighter catch it if they have a free hand.

Maneuvering Attack This is another reaction of ally cost one, but as well there is no stipulation that the ally needs to be anywhere near the creature the fighter attacks, which is kinda weird.

Rally All your allies can enter combats prerallied. At high levels I don't see a problem, because it won't be much protection, but it might be at low levels. I'm not particularly worried about it, just not sure it is intended.

Riposte You need to make an attack roll, correct?

The Old Crow said:

I like your design goals, and I think the changes you have made are real improvements. Since I like where this is going I thought I'd offer my opinion on some of the features.

Superiority Dice: If you find that your final version of this subclass is overpowered, reducing the number of superiority dice is an option, since this class can do cool things without them.

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With the way I have these maneuvers setup, you do not automatically get extra damage unless you expend extra dice. I think this is actually a pretty decent trade off to give the Battle Master more turn by turn versatility.

The Old Crow said:

Commander's Strike: Using an attack action shouldn't buy someone the ability to cast a cantrip as a reaction. I think this should be limited to attacks that normally could be taken as a reaction.

I would also prefer it if it didn't cost the ally's reaction, but cost the fighter their reaction instead. The reason I would prefer that design is making the ally pay the cost for the fighter's feature put the cost on them, and competes with the ally's potential use of their own features or strategy.

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I can definitely see where you are coming from here and I may be willing to reconsider this.

The Old Crow said:

Disarming Attack

Er, that is way too overpowered. Have the object land a number of feet away from the opponent, or let the fighter catch it if they have a free hand.

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Agreed. As [MENTION=6801204]Satyrn[/MENTION] commented earlier, I think this is the way to go with this one.

The Old Crow said:

Maneuvering Attack This is another reaction of ally cost one, but as well there is no stipulation that the ally needs to be anywhere near the creature the fighter attacks, which is kinda weird.

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Yeah I was iffy on this one as well. I'll have to reevaluate it.

The Old Crow said:

Rally All your allies can enter combats prerallied. At high levels I don't see a problem, because it won't be much protection, but it might be at low levels. I'm not particularly worried about it, just not sure it is intended.

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I did not consider it to be honest, but I think 2-3 HP at the start of every fight at 3rd level isn't too crazy. I'll have to see how it plays out at the table.

The Old Crow said:

Riposte You need to make an attack roll, correct?

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While I am still considering changing it to an attack that only does Dexterity modifier damage, I left it as automatic damage for speed of play at the table.
BTW it is the same for Sweeping Attack. If I change one, I'll likely change both.

DEFCON 1 said:

Oh really? HA! That's funny! Never even realized it! Which explains why you gave me the Laugh rather than the XP. I saw that notification before you had posted your quoted response, so I was thinking to myself "Why is he Laughing? I must be missing something here."

Turns out, I'm missing the biggest thing of all! Well, if it matters, I think your Warrior archetype is great and I've been following your progress thus far, so thanks for the final version. I'm a firm believe that the baseline Fighter should have been the maneuver-using one (rather than just a subclass), so the Warrior which replaces Champion and BM altogether is fantastic IMO.

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If you like the Warrior keep that link bookmarked. At some point I will be updating and including the remaining feats and game mechanic changes at the end of the document. I'll also post it here on ENWorld as well as r/UnearthedArcana.

DaedalusX51 said:

With the way I have these maneuvers setup, you do not automatically get extra damage unless you expend extra dice. I think this is actually a pretty decent trade off to give the Battle Master more turn by turn versatility.

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Your character can use a maneuver with extra damage, a number of times equal to their Superiority Dice. The character in the book can use a maneuver with extra damage, a number of times equal to their Superiority Dice. Your character also has the option to use a maneuver without extra damage, which isn't an option available to the character in the book.

To some extent, you could replace this whole subclass with a single sidebar on the Battle Master which allowed them to use all of their maneuvers at-will but without adding extra damage. I mean, you put in a lot of extra work to give them extra options for the maneuvers which replace that extra damage, but it still boils down to a pure buff in terms of versatility. To that end, it's kind of like giving every sorcerer an extra list of spells known according to a theme; it's shoring up a weakness of the class, with no down side.

Saelorn said:

Your character can use a maneuver with extra damage, a number of times equal to their Superiority Dice. The character in the book can use a maneuver with extra damage, a number of times equal to their Superiority Dice. Your character also has the option to use a maneuver without extra damage, which isn't an option available to the character in the book.

To some extent, you could replace this whole subclass with a single sidebar on the Battle Master which allowed them to use all of their maneuvers at-will but without adding extra damage. I mean, you put in a lot of extra work to give them extra options for the maneuvers which replace that extra damage, but it still boils down to a pure buff in terms of versatility. To that end, it's kind of like giving every sorcerer an extra list of spells known according to a theme; it's shoring up a weakness of the class, with no down side.

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It sounds like the best and most balanced solution for What deadalus wants is something like this:

Take the battlemaster and remove CS dice. Instead the battlemaster can use 1 maneuver per round. Maneuvers are usable at-will as long as they follow the 1 per round limit. Any maneuver that requires you to roll a CS die for an effect other than damage uses your proficiency bonus.

This gives the battlemaster at-will round by round decisions to make without requiring resource tracking. The damage will be lower than a typical battlemaster, but they never run out of maneuvers. The one maneuver per round limit is there to prevent abuse from stacking multiple maneuver usages.

Saelorn said:

Your character can use a maneuver with extra damage, a number of times equal to their Superiority Dice. The character in the book can use a maneuver with extra damage, a number of times equal to their Superiority Dice. Your character also has the option to use a maneuver without extra damage, which isn't an option available to the character in the book.

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The only maneuvers that actually increase your damage output are Commander's Strike (which I will be nerfing further), Sweeping Attack, Riposte, and using a die to increase the damage roll. So if you would like to recreate the original Menacing attack, you would actually have to use two superiority dice instead of one. Except for Disarming Attack, Trip attack and Pushing Attack, the at will version of the maneuvers are actually weaker than the originals. The only thing I could think of with those maneuvers would be to give the target advantage on the saving throw. Do you have a better idea here?

There definitely is an increase in versatility, but I think there is actually a decrease in net damage done per die expended compared to the OG Battle Master. That is unless you spend all of your dice just to do extra damage.

Saelorn said:

To some extent, you could replace this whole subclass with a single sidebar on the Battle Master which allowed them to use all of their maneuvers at-will but without adding extra damage. I mean, you put in a lot of extra work to give them extra options for the maneuvers which replace that extra damage, but it still boils down to a pure buff in terms of versatility. To that end, it's kind of like giving every sorcerer an extra list of spells known according to a theme; it's shoring up a weakness of the class, with no down side.

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While I don't disagree with you here, is it really necessary to have that weakness and what do you gain instead? For Sorcerers I would assume their spell selection weakness is to compensate for their versatility with Metamagic. For Battle Masters, I guess they choose to have limited versatility for extra damage. I would personally always choose to have more options to play with than extra damage.

I think if I can balance out the level of power here and ensure that this version of the Battle Master is consistently doing less damage than the OG Battle Master, I will be in a potentially balanced space.

Let me know you thoughts.

DaedalusX51 said:

While I don't disagree with you here, is it really necessary to have that weakness and what do you gain instead? For Sorcerers I would assume their spell selection weakness is to compensate for their versatility with Metamagic. For Battle Masters, I guess they choose to have limited versatility for extra damage. I would personally always choose to have more options to play with than extra damage.

I think if I can balance out the level of power here and ensure that this version of the Battle Master is consistently doing less damage than the OG Battle Master, I will be in a potentially balanced space.

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It helps if you intend the new sub-class to replace the old sub-class entirely, because you can just say that you want it to be more powerful and leave it at that. I think the UA ranger subclasses are supposed to work that way; they're better than the old sub-classes because the class needed to be stronger over-all.

If you don't want this version of the Battle Master to eclipse the Battle Master in the book, then it seems like the obvious starting point would be to cut down its Superiority Dice, in number or size or both. That way, you can't add an extra d8 to the attack or damage roll as often, so the old version is flat-out numerically superior.

Saelorn said:

If you don't want this version of the Battle Master to eclipse the Battle Master in the book, then it seems like the obvious starting point would be to cut down its Superiority Dice, in number or size or both. That way, you can't add an extra d8 to the attack or damage roll as often, so the old version is flat-out numerically superior.

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I'm gonna add in that I think that the added versatility this battlemaster gets with the at-will maneuvers could be nicely offset by reducing the SD to a d6. (At one point I was gonna suggest removing the SD entirely, but I don't think that's necessary. )


And as an aside I've noticed that this battlemaster will not be a two weapon fighter. Or at least shouldn't be, given how many other options he'll have for his bonus action. Just an observation. I don't think it matters.