D&D 5E Martial Techniques

[Helldritch]

Some of your idea should be maneuvers for the Battlemaster or made available through the martial adept feat. Some of them should be straight up feats. Some others should simply be removed as they add nothing that isn't already in the core rule save extra dmg and it's not the whole point on how martial characters work. Cantrip for casters, extra attacks for martial characters. But some of your idea are really good. It is unfortunate that I don't see them working as you would like them to.

Otherwise I pretty much feel that Jester David's analysis is dead on accurate.

Three of them made me quite envious of not thinking about it myself.

Feather Me Yon Wretch. It would be a nice maneuver for a BM using a ranged weapon. It would make a nice change where we could see a General with a bow. It still need some work to make it balance but it is a realy good idea.

Shield of Blades That one could be a realy good feat for dual wielders. It could work as a maneuver for a BM too. My heart is torn between these two options... feat or maneuver... Both options need some work to balance though... Maybe the bonus AC could work only against one or two opponents... A lot of potential in here.

Ardent Shield That one, I feel like Jester. I really wish paly could use cantrips. Maybe a feat enabling it to be a cantrip for paly? Something akin to magic initiate? Or simply making it a cantrip in the cleric's list? I don't know yet but I fell in love with that one.

 

[Cyvris]

You're simplifying things a bit.
The attack options were stripped out in response to playtest feedback. The Martial Damage Dice were cool, but playtest feedback showed that people generally felt they were "wasting" their dice by using them on anything but damage. Because tripping or stopping reactions or blinding are nice, but the best status condition to put on a creature is always "dead".

First, thanks for the direct review and feedback, it's the actual crunch these needed to help beat it into shape.

Now then, sure dead is nice, but that status won't be imposed immediately. Combat is going to last at least a few rounds. Getting direct tactical options outside of that make each round more engaging. Some players don't like that and it's fine. Limiting such tactical thought to casters isn't the way to go though. If they can slow someone down with magic or push them around, the Fighter with a massive sword should be able to do the same.

Okay, let's take a look at the design.

I'll admit there is a great deal of "kludge" there. I've gone back and forth between allowing class abilities with them and not. For the most part it probably wouldn't break that many things to let things like "Smite" be used with this, but at the same time I wanted to prevent the Ranger from using two of these when attacking with things like Horde Breaker. Wording like "target" and "attack speed" were mostly to have them match how spells are written, though that wording could be cleaned up. Honestly as a DM I have no issue with players using techniques or abilities like these against inanimate objects. My 4e group once had a sci-fi game where "Ray of Frost" was used to freeze a cyanide tooth so the NPC that had been taken prisoner couldn't use it. Using abilities in inventive ways is always the best.

Sure "locking" the design space of an "attack" down can be bad at times, yet Spells have always been VERY specifically worded, so I think some specific vs general abilities for Fighters, Rangers, and Rogues is fine as long as the whole table agrees.

The overall problem with this design is the majority of powers are damage plus. You deal the regular damage of an attack plus the extra effect, which is supposedly to be roughly equivalent to a cantrip's bonus. However, cantrips generally don't add their caster's ability score bonus to damage.

Short fix-casters now add ability score to damage, monsters get a minor HP bump. Buff everyone, don't nerf. I do like the suggestion of forgoing ability mod to deal additional damage, and think either could work.

The damage scaling is funky, I agree. I couldn't word things correctly, so just slapped a static increase on it. Something like "deal an additional weapon dice of damage" might work, but the wording need to be tight.

The direct break down of each power is helpful, especially catches on things like "square". I'll review the powers, trashing some of the extra damage ones for more effects. Some of those were pulled from when this was separate techniques for each class, and most of the damage ones come from the Barbarian specifically. Ardent Shield was a similar technique and one I just didn't want to toss out. Sure it channels a bit from WoW and Captain America, but it just seems to "fit" the Paladin. Been toying with an Oath that gets "Divine Challenge" from 4e, so maybe those will get lumped together.

Some of your idea should be maneuvers for the Battlemaster or made available through the martial adept feat.

The idea was these would fill the gap of "at-will" vs Battlemaster's "encounter" attacks. They certainly step on its toes, but don't gain superiority dice so are decently weaker. The original draft had a great deal of the 4e Warlord split between the Fighter and Ranger, which is an archetype it would be nice to see return in force. Again, I'm going to play around with eliminating the extra damage and focus more on effects. These are certainly powerful, but that is half my intent. The recent SCAG cantrips really step on the toes of Martial characters and how that something like that COULD be done pretty easily.

Paladin Cantrips (and more for the Cleric) is something I've wanted for awhile. This seemed the best way to backdoor them in, but now I like the idea of an Oath. Indeed, I'm now almost toying with the idea of taking these Techniques and Superiority Dice and making Archetypes for all of these classes that hew closer to a 4e set up. The Knight brought back Marking so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch.

 

[Xeviat]

I will come in and digest these tomorrow. I'm very interested. This has been something I've wanted to do.


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[Xeviat]

Okay. So, since these Techniques don't give up much compared to a normal attack, I'm not sure they're really comparable to a cantrip. Maybe they're comparable to Greenflame Blade and Booming Blade, but those are gishy cantrips and require MAD to function at their best.

I'm fine with them costing an action, and I'm perfectly fine with them bringing back terms like "Basic Attack". Here's a few of my thoughts:

First, make the current attacks that characters have into their standard Martial Technique. This removes the ability to stack. Fighters get "Extra Attack", giving them an attack at 5th, 11th, and 17th (just like eldritch blast). Paladins get "Holy Strike", giving them radiant damage as they level up. Rogues get "Sneak Attack". This would require more changes, but it will help you to avoid the stacking that you're worried about.

Second, I think the Techniques need to give up some damage. Until 5th level, they aren't costing most characters anything. Depending on the maneuver, just dealing weapon damage or just dealing ability score modifier damage would be appropriate; they're fairly close to each other by 4th/8th level. 4E didn't have most at-wills cost damage, but that's also because the baseline at-will was 1[W]+Primary Ability+Secondary Ability, so they were generally paying with their secondary ability.

Again, I'm very interested in this. Martial Techniques as side by sides with Cantrips would be a great way to expand upon the game. I'd go a few steps further, and have different techniques that come with proficiency in each weapon/group (and change how proficiencies are earned, so they fall in with cantrips) and add a few class based techniques. But I'm also more willing to made sweeping changes instead of just looking at one thing.