D&D 5E (Houserule) Consolidating and Rebalancing Fighting Styles

Stalker0 · Oct 31, 2017

While I really like the fighting styles, I feel that some of them are either a bit underpowered or don't really need to be their own style.

So here is a list of new styles:

Archery: (unchanged)
Defense: (unchanged)
Protection: (unchanged)

Offense: (combines dueling, Great Weapon Fighting, and Two Weapon Fighting. You gain +2 damage with melee weapon attacks.

The rationale: Dueling is a solid fighting style currently, but was also needlessly restrictive. Meanwhile, GWF caused needless rerolling and didn't actually provide much damage. Now the gap between GWs and SB doesn't drop because of fighting style.

On the TWF front, with this change TWF now gets the offense benefit. TWF gets a solid +4 overall....which is mostly comparable to the +3-+5 it received with the original version. But by combining them together, a fighter gains flexibility. If they want to switch weapons around they aren't penalized for it.

I feel like this rebalances the styles, offers the fighter a little flexibility...and tightens up the list a bit.

Thoughts?

Alexemplar · Oct 31, 2017

Stalker0 said:
While I really like the fighting styles, I feel that some of them are either a bit underpowered or don't really need to be their own style.

So here is a list of new styles:

Archery: (unchanged)
Defense: (unchanged)
Protection: (unchanged)

Offense: (combines dueling, Great Weapon Fighting, and Two Weapon Fighting. You gain +2 damage with melee weapon attacks.

The rationale: Dueling is a solid fighting style currently, but was also needlessly restrictive. Meanwhile, GWF caused needless rerolling and didn't actually provide much damage. Now the gap between GWs and SB doesn't drop because of fighting style.

On the TWF front, with this change TWF now gets the offense benefit. TWF gets a solid +4 overall....which is mostly comparable to the +3-+5 it received with the original version. But by combining them together, a fighter gains flexibility. If they want to switch weapons around they aren't penalized for it.

I feel like this rebalances the styles, offers the fighter a little flexibility...and tightens up the list a bit.

Thoughts?

If you aren't going to make fighting styles deeper sp they actually impact how a character really fights I think this is the best way to go about it.

I especially like your rational for the simple +2 as it applies to twf and gwf. And it's still a bigger relative boost for lower die weapons than higher die ones.

Hawk Diesel · Nov 1, 2017

I actually don't hate this. I don't think I'd include TWF with Offense. But otherwise I dig it.

Xeviat · Nov 1, 2017

Alexemplar said:
If you aren't going to make fighting styles deeper sp they actually impact how a character really fights I think this is the best way to go about it.

I especially like your rational for the simple +2 as it applies to twf and gwf. And it's still a bigger relative boost for lower die weapons than higher die ones.

I agree.

I’d really love to see more dynamic fighting styles, or styles that influence your role (I love protection for that).

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Blue · Nov 1, 2017

Stalker0 said:
While I really like the fighting styles, I feel that some of them are either a bit underpowered or don't really need to be their own style.

So here is a list of new styles:

Archery: (unchanged)
Defense: (unchanged)
Protection: (unchanged)

Offense: (combines dueling, Great Weapon Fighting, and Two Weapon Fighting. You gain +2 damage with melee weapon attacks.

The rationale: Dueling is a solid fighting style currently, but was also needlessly restrictive. Meanwhile, GWF caused needless rerolling and didn't actually provide much damage. Now the gap between GWs and SB doesn't drop because of fighting style.

On the TWF front, with this change TWF now gets the offense benefit. TWF gets a solid +4 overall....which is mostly comparable to the +3-+5 it received with the original version. But by combining them together, a fighter gains flexibility. If they want to switch weapons around they aren't penalized for it.

I feel like this rebalances the styles, offers the fighter a little flexibility...and tightens up the list a bit.

Thoughts?

Hmm. TWF gets the biggest boost +4 at Fighter 1 to +8 at Fighter 11 - but I'm okay with that, it's losing a +3 to +5 boost as you say, and it's generally considered the weakest.

But for me, the bonus for weapon & shield needs to be more than two-handed weapon because of all the ways two-handed weapon is already better. Sure more base damage, but more crit damage, better feat support, etc. In actual play it seems to be a lot more popular than a shield. I was just fine with the two-handed fighting style sucking.

Really, I'd like you to expand your targets. Archery, especially with the Sharpshooter feat, is too good. And protection pretty much sucks - and to me it should be the other way around where taking a feature that helps your teammates instead of you needs to have a bit of a leg up on the self-serving features just to be a contender.

Alexemplar · Nov 1, 2017

Blue said:
Hmm. TWF gets the biggest boost +4 at Fighter 1 to +8 at Fighter 11 - but I'm okay with that, it's losing a +3 to +5 boost as you say, and it's generally considered the weakest.

But for me, the bonus for weapon & shield needs to be more than two-handed weapon because of all the ways two-handed weapon is already better. Sure more base damage, but more crit damage, better feat support, etc. In actual play it seems to be a lot more popular than a shield. I was just fine with the two-handed fighting style sucking.

Really, I'd like you to expand your targets. Archery, especially with the Sharpshooter feat, is too good. And protection pretty much sucks - and to me it should be the other way around where taking a feature that helps your teammates instead of you needs to have a bit of a leg up on the self-serving features just to be a contender.

Maybe combine the +1 from defense fighting style with the protection ability. You trend towards higher AC so enemies don't want to target you while also having the ability to mess with their attacks against the people next to you.

DEFCON 1 · Nov 1, 2017

I myself don't like your new Offense style because I don't believe great weapon users need higher maximum damage than what they can already get from their damage die plus applicable feats. The 'Re-roll 1s and 2s' raises their average damage but does not increase their maximum damage. Thus a greataxe will do 3-12 points of damage per attack. Whereas Dueling does get an increase in maximum damage, moving the "best" weapon of Dueling (the 1d8 longsword/rapier/battleaxe) from 1 to 8 points of damage up to 3 to 10 points of damage. They basically gain the max damage value of their weapon as though it were Versatile.

To move great weapon fighting from 3-12 damage to 3-14 damage just seems unnecessary to me personally. And as so many dice get thrown all the time anyway... the idea that we are "saving" a single die roll by not making them re-roll 1s or 2s is not a sufficient reason to give them 3-14 damage. Just my opinion.

Stalker0 · Nov 1, 2017

Alexemplar said:
Maybe combine the +1 from defense fighting style with the protection ability. You trend towards higher AC so enemies don't want to target you while also having the ability to mess with their attacks against the people next to you.

Personally I find the +1 AC fighting style already quite good. If the protection style needs work than so be it, but my players loved the extra AC...which can be very hard to get otherwise.

DEFCON 1 said:
I myself don't like your new Offense style because I don't believe great weapon users need higher maximum damage than what they can already get from their damage die plus applicable feats. The 'Re-roll 1s and 2s' raises their average damage but does not increase their maximum damage. Thus a greataxe will do 3-12 points of damage per attack. Whereas Dueling does get an increase in maximum damage, moving the "best" weapon of Dueling (the 1d8 longsword/rapier/battleaxe) from 1 to 8 points of damage up to 3 to 10 points of damage. They basically gain the max damage value of their weapon as though it were Versatile.

To move great weapon fighting from 3-12 damage to 3-14 damage just seems unnecessary to me personally. And as so many dice get thrown all the time anyway... the idea that we are "saving" a single die roll by not making them re-roll 1s or 2s is not a sufficient reason to give them 3-14 damage. Just my opinion.

You make some fair points. The main issue is not just that re-rolls are annoying, but they are also an extremely weak bonus. A Great Weapon Fighter should never really take GW, they should take the +1 AC.

Here is an alternate version for Great Weapon Fighting.

GWF: Any 1,2, or 3 on a die becomes a 4.

Now at first glance this might seem extremely strong. However, on average it is the equivalent of +1 damage for a d6 roll. So a Greatsword would deal an average of 9 damage....the same as the +2 damage I proposed before...but now more in the bounds of bounded accuracy. Further, it still eliminates the rerolls.

The main issue with this version is its much weaker for the Greataxe....which is already an inferior weapon in all hands except the barbarian already.

D&D 5E (Houserule) Consolidating and Rebalancing Fighting Styles

Stalker0

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Alexemplar

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Hawk Diesel

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Xeviat

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Blue

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Alexemplar

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DEFCON 1

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Stalker0

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