D&D 5E A tweak for the Battlemaster fighter

[Esker]

How about adding Magic Adept: Hex?

Yeah, good idea. It'd be interesting to see whether an extra d6 per attack for one combat a day is worth more than advantage on the first attack. You'd need another parameter to account for bonus action competition like the ranger has for Hunter's Mark, but shouldn't be too hard to get a rough sense.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The thing with Hex on a fighter of cause, is at level 20 it can nova with Action Surge (twice) and 3 extra attacks for +8D6 per round. Or +10D6 with a free bonus action attack and reaction attack

It gets especially interesting for a Champion...

 

[Quartz]

Now, because you have not argued in good faith previously I

Excuse me?! I have always argued in good faith.

Why not set them both at 200%.

Because you were unfairly favouring the Battlemaster.

 

[Esker]

The thing with Hex on a fighter of cause, is at level 20 it can nova with Action Surge (twice) and 3 extra attacks for +8D6 per round. Or +10D6 with a free bonus action attack and reaction attack

Wouldn't action surge give 4 extra attacks at level 20? With Hex I think that is +8d6 for those two rounds, minus 1d4+7 for the lost bonus action attack if we're still talking about the spear and shield build with PAM. If the combat is three rounds and you don't need to move Hex to a different target (though I think it'd be reasonable to assume you'd choose to use it on one you expected to be longer than average), you're gaining a total of 2x8d6+1x4d6-1d4-7 from Hex, or about 60.5 damage times to-hit in total (assuming 0.6 to hit that's 36ish total damage in the day from the feat). That doesn't count crits, and granted it'll go up if the battle is longer than three rounds, though it'll also go down if you have to switch targets.

 

[Esker]

Found and fixed some typos in my spreadsheet. I was accidentally completely omitting action surge damage from the bottom line, and I wasn't counting smites properly either.

 

[dave2008]

Excuse me?! I have always argued in good faith.

I disagree. You presented a paradigm: dueling style, no feats + hunter's mark. We made spreadsheets. They disagreed with you assumption / analysis. You said - what about bonus actions. We said the ranger doesn't get any. You said yes they do - look at pole arm master. That requires a different fighting style and feats. You changed the parameters instead of admitting a mistake. That it is not acting in good faith.

Every analysis but yours indicates the fighter and ranger are roughly on par and your response is" The battlemaster still sucks." That is not in good faith.

You are not looking at merits of our analysis, you just change the parameters of the to make your argument correct. That is not in good faith.

 

[dave2008]

Found and fixed some typos in my spreadsheet. I was accidentally completely omitting action surge damage from the bottom line, and I wasn't counting smites properly either.

I thought something might be up. Now it is much closer to my (less thorough) analysis.

 

[Mort]

@dave2008 @FrogReaver @Mort @Mistwell

I made a shiny new spreadsheet here. I added Paladin Smites, sneak attack, and toggles for feats, and coded in a lot of stuff so that you can just change what's in the yellow, and everything else should automatically populate. It looks for exact string matches in the fields for class, subclass and fighting style (enter one of Dueling, TWF, GWF, Archery, or none; I think case-sensitive), and looks for the word 'yes' in the feat fields.

Enjoy! There are almost certainly typos, so would love it if you found them! (Though some of the formulas are excessively complex)

If the results are right or very nearly right, it demonstrates an impressive degree of balance across the martial classes at level 11 with a standard number of combats, rests, and lengths of combat. It turns out that distracting strike is worth more than GWM, if you compare the Champion with PAM and GWM to the Battlemaster PAM using spear and shield.

Thanks for all the analysis!

For the paladin a few possible tweaks (unless they're already in there and I missed them):

1. For the typical paladin (oath of devotion) - once per short rest his to hit chance is going to be significantly higher (from sacred weapon) as in +3 to +5 higher (15% to 25%), resulting in significantly more average damage. Now it takes an action to activate so is difficult to gauge (certainly don't want to give up a round of combat), but it's somewhat safe to assume that on at least 1-2 fights the paladin has sufficient notice to activate it prior to the fight (1 minute duration, no concentration).

2. For the oath of vengeance: a. He'll have advantage on all attacks on a single enemy once per short rest, resulting in a nice bump in damage. b. He uses hunter's mark too, resulting in 3.5 not 2.5 add on to damage (though if you're fighting a horde Divine power is likely better, not here though) 3. the 11th level Vengeance paladin has access to haste which may also be a big damage boost (though if you put haste up, no hunter's mark - so depending on build, that may actually be a loss in damage - lots of trade-offs!)

Anyway, just some thoughts.

 

[Esker]

Thanks for all the analysis!

For the paladin a few possible tweaks (unless they're already in there and I missed them):

1. For the typical paladin (oath of devotion) - once per short rest his to hit chance is going to be significantly higher (from sacred weapon) as in +3 to +5 higher (15% to 25%), resulting in significantly more average damage. Now it takes an action to activate so is difficult to gauge (certainly don't want to give up a round of combat), but it's somewhat safe to assume that on at least 1-2 fights the paladin has sufficient notice to activate it prior to the fight (1 minute duration, no concentration).

2. For the oath of vengeance: a. He'll have advantage on all attacks on a single enemy once per short rest, resulting in a nice bump in damage. b. He uses hunter's mark too, resulting in 3.5 not 2.5 add on to damage (though if you're fighting a horde Divine power is likely better, not here though) 3. the 11th level Vengeance paladin has access to haste which may also be a big damage boost (though if you put haste up, no hunter's mark - so depending on build, that may actually be a loss in damage) - lots of trade-offs!).

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Thanks! I haven't done anything with Paladin subclasses yet, since they weren't the main focus of the discussion. But I'll try to work these in!

 

[Mort]

Thanks! I haven't done anything with Paladin subclasses yet, since they weren't the main focus of the discussion. But I'll try to work these in!

Thanks,

Yeah we're focused on the battlemaster and the ranger - but I noticed you put in paladin so was curious. No need to go crazy!

I'm actually playing (for once! DM 99% of the time) a paladin and am very curious about the statistics.