Unearthed Arcana New Year Unearthed Arcana Brings Back Those Old 2E Kits

Klaus · Jan 4, 2016

I'm A Banana said:
You could do similar things with SD (maybe Scouts recover SD when they move, 3e-style. Maybe Cavaliers recover SD when they charge! Mearl's Iron Heroes and 3e's Book of Nine Swords aren't bad places to loot for these mechanics!).

Now THAT is an idea I can get fully behind. I was a fan of an early version of SD where the character could spend an action reassessing the battle, and recover 1 SD. Getting SDs from different actions (say, begin with 1, and build up your SD as you go) would be a very interesting notion! The Battlemaster begins with 3 (or 5, or 7) and recovers with rest. A Scout begins with 1, and gains 1 through movement (max 3, 5 or 7), while a Cavalier begins with 1, and gains 1 when facing a single enemy, or when charging a mounted opponent, etc (max 3, 5 or 7). Must still to be easy to track, though. Maybe "earn and expend"?

DEFCON 1 · Jan 4, 2016

I'm A Banana said:
Yeah, I think it's related to the problem of "Concrete Meaning" (as discussed at length in http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ses-Have-Concrete-Meaning-In-Your-Game/page65). Fighters and their subclasses have little "Concrete Meaning," in contrast to many 5e classes. To a certain degree, I'm sure this was intentional - people expect the fighter to be a flexible class, to represent many different character types, and the 5e fighter delivers on that, at the expense of being "generic."

I like the idea of subclasses with more concrete meaning, I just don't want them to be BM knock-offs.

Here's the thing... I think these kit re-dos are their attempt to actually GET at "Concrete Meaning". And they're using the Battlemaster because it is what I think they think is the "real" Fighter class. The class they would point to as being the baseline Fighter, because that's the one that has their mechanical martial creation-- the Superiority die. The Champion exists because they felt the need to have a "simple" Fighter, but it's not the one they look as being equivalent to the Cleric or the Wizard. I think the Battlemaster is what their default Fighter class would be if they didn't provide the simple one too.

So if we say for the sake of argument that Battlemaster = Fighter in their eyes... we now look to the subclasses of that "Fighter class" to get at the specialties that include all the story and fluff. This is where we'd find the Samurai. The Gladiator. The Scout. The Cavalier. All the fluffy sub-classes the Fighter gets that the Cleric gets with their god domains and the Wizard gets with their schools of magic.

Can you theoretically make Cavaliers, Scouts, Gladiators, Samurai, Myrmidons, and the like just by using the Battlemaster as-is? Sure. But why aren't people doing that? In the thread you mentioned, it was brought up that you could make a book of "Fluffy Fighters" just by making specific builds of the Battlemaster and layer on some story as to why you selected this maneuver or that maneuver. But it didn't seem to gain much traction. I would suspect though that by doing this... not only selecting this maneuver and that maneuver but also getting EXTRA bits you can't ordinarily get from your baseline Battlemaster... is the way to inspire people to play them, as well as make a reason for WotC to possibly publish them in a book. Because there's extra mechanics for each sub-class, so you aren't just printing a book of "ideas", which would probably irritate people.

For my money... if "spells" are the baseline mechanic for all spellcasters and which can be distributed across almost every single class in the game in some form or fashion... then "superiority dice" can form the same function across several different martial classes too. I don't see why every martial classes needs to have their own individual martial mechanic without any overlap whatsoever (like we currently have in Rage, Superiority Dice, Inspiration Dice, Sneak Attack, Smite, Flurry of Blows and Hunter's Mark). More than one martial class could share a mechanic. Or at the very least... the one "sub"class that has it could share it amongst other sub-sbclasses.

I'm A Banana · Jan 4, 2016

Li Shenron said:
Not that it would be wrong to have them as Maneuvers. But if you start having Maneuvers that got nothing to do with combat, why still calling it a BATTLEmaster?

I'm personally inclined to believe that things that give a fighter more noncombat options tend to be positive additions - under that criteria, I don't see much reason to limit "use SD dice to enhance a skill" to particular subclasses and not allow a BM to get it.

Li Shenron said:
With relation to the Cavalier and Scout specifically, the FIRST ability of each is not combat-related, although it can be used in combat if needed. So it sounds better to me they are unique to these subclasses

Yeah, I wouldn't propose those become manuevers, but by themselves, they aren't really enough to make a subclass feel distinct. Supported by better mechanics, maybe; or given to a feat, almost definitely.

Klaus said:
Now THAT is an idea I can get fully behind. I was a fan of an early version of SD where the character could spend an action reassessing the battle, and recover 1 SD. Getting SDs from different actions (say, begin with 1, and build up your SD as you go) would be a very interesting notion! The Battlemaster begins with 3 (or 5, or 7) and recovers with rest. A Scout begins with 1, and gains 1 through movement (max 3, 5 or 7), while a Cavalier begins with 1, and gains 1 when facing a single enemy, or when charging a mounted opponent, etc (max 3, 5 or 7). Must still to be easy to track, though. Maybe "earn and expend"?

That'd be sexy enough for me. Make the SD abilities explicitly maneuvers, give these fighter subclasses a list of specific manuevers, and give them a unique power up/recharge mechanic, and I think they'd play very differently and encourage very different kinds of actions. The unique recharge/power up mechanic + what's existing (maybe with some tweaks for the other duplicate features) could be a really defining subclass.

DEFCON 1 said:
Can you theoretically make Cavaliers, Scouts, Gladiators, Samurai, Myrmidons, and the like just by using the Battlemaster as-is? Sure. But why aren't people doing that?

I'd say it's probably because the options aren't big enough + no one's done it in their games, so they haven't seen it in action.

A fighter subclass with more "concrete meaning" is a GREAT idea, but I don't want it to be "BM with a coat of paint." These are a little too close to BM With A Coat of Paint. They're on the "go home" side of Go Big Or Go Home.

jodyjohnson · Jan 4, 2016

NotActuallyTim said:
Hmm...

I'm actually thinking of running Tumbling Fool like so:

Jesters get those benefits for free. Everybody can try to get one such benefit for a turn by succeeding on a Acrobatics check on their turn.

I may also include the ability to make one ability check per turn for free, unless specified otherwise.

I don't have my DMG with me. Weren't there some Tumbling options in the DMG as optional rules?

The Jester wouldn't even need to have Acrobatics proficiency which would be weird.

Pauln6 · Jan 4, 2016

jodyjohnson said:
I don't have my DMG with me. Weren't there some Tumbling options in the DMG as optional rules?

The Jester wouldn't even need to have Acrobatics proficiency which would be weird.

Yes I think Tumble is when you use your action or bonus action to make an acrobatics check to move through a square occupied by an enemy. It's specific, not just any old acrobatics check, so the ability looks powerful but carries risk. Be interesting to see how it plays out in practice!

DEFCON 1 · Jan 4, 2016

I'm A Banana said:
A fighter subclass with more "concrete meaning" is a GREAT idea, but I don't want it to be "BM with a coat of paint." These are a little too close to BM With A Coat of Paint. They're on the "go home" side of Go Big Or Go Home.

I'll give you that. But I do think that using "Battlemaster As Fighter" and creating fluffier sub-classes by narrowing some maneuver selections but gaining additional features off of them (plus throwing in extra stuff like the differing recharge mechanics talked about above) is on a possible right track.

Or of course... Mike and Co. could just make Cavalier and Scout "prestige classes" instead! I wonder how well those would've gone over!

DEFCON 1 · Jan 4, 2016

Klaus said:
Now THAT is an idea I can get fully behind. I was a fan of an early version of SD where the character could spend an action reassessing the battle, and recover 1 SD. Getting SDs from different actions (say, begin with 1, and build up your SD as you go) would be a very interesting notion! The Battlemaster begins with 3 (or 5, or 7) and recovers with rest. A Scout begins with 1, and gains 1 through movement (max 3, 5 or 7), while a Cavalier begins with 1, and gains 1 when facing a single enemy, or when charging a mounted opponent, etc (max 3, 5 or 7). Must still to be easy to track, though. Maybe "earn and expend"?

Were it to be this way... the "earn and expend" format for Scouts and Cavaliers to gain and use SD... I definitely would then think you'd need to make sure the non-Maneuvers they spend them on are not comparatively so powerful to the ones the BM gets to have. Because (for example) I'd have to believe the Scout would earn (and then expend) SD from each of their movements per combat, giving them all-told many more SD than the Battlemaster would ever get between rests (their standard 4). So those 4 SD the Battlemaster gets between short rests have to have more powerful maneuvers to spend them on than the ones the Scout would get (since presumably they could earn 5, 10, 20 SD between rests if we based it on "move more than 15 feet on your turn" for example.)

Not saying you couldn't balance it... but it certainly would take a bit of doing and a lot of care.

Sword of Spirit · Jan 4, 2016

While I'm concerned about bloat, and I'm not sure whether I'd allow all the options, I think this is a good UA article.

I'm very glad that they put out Scout. I'm hoping that the final version of it will satisfy those who are looking for a non-magical ranger, so we can finally put that debate to rest.

benensky · Jan 4, 2016

This may have been said before because I did not read all the comments. Also, it is no big deal to me, but it struck me as I read the PDF.

Why would they pick the Scout kit to revamp rather than an other? Wasn't there a discussion involving Mike M. discussing how to make the ranger more distinctive? I believe the WoC D&D team wanted to do things to promote the Ranger's specialty. Then, here the scout is introduced. This seems to intrude into Ranger's unique qualities. In fact, it looks like the scout/fighter is given a Ranger class feature.