D&D 5E [+]What does your "complex fighter" look like?

[Baron Opal II]

That could be the main function of the superiority die, then. The fighter has them, and when they perform a maneuver as a skilled practitioner they add a d6 to their check. Or whatever value it is at. That's already done for a few of them, obviously, but this could be a useful generalization.

Battlemasters know three maneuvers at 3rd level, and then two more at 7th, 10th, and 15th level. Since we're talking about have the Battle master be the base class, then we should have these three maneuvers at 1st level. Presumably, we are keeping the six other maneuvers to be learned through the fighter's progression through the levels.

Should there be more maneuvers learned, though feats or in the base class? If there are extra maneuvers, should be take into account the subclass, or simply layer it on?

 

[Umbran]

Yeah I would count each level and ritual casting as 1 feature each, and Extra Attack is just 1 feature.

Mod Note:
The thread is not about wizard features. Folks were removed from the thread last night because they couldn't stop talking about wizard features.

Please don't continue. Thanks.

 

[Celebrim]

Should there be more maneuvers learned, though feats or in the base class? If there are extra maneuvers, should be take into account the subclass, or simply layer it on?

My preference is to have a big pool of maneuvers and to have a fighter know all of them with maneuvers the fighter doesn't know just cost an extra dice to perform. Most maneuvers should represent rather generic combat abilities, which for the battlemaster they already do so that's good. So in my system it would be much less a matter of 'maneuvers known' than maneuvers you are proficient in.

I'm not a huge fan of subclasses. To me if your class needs subclasses, it suggests your feat system isn't very robust and your classes aren't very flexible. To me writing a subclass is almost a cop-out, suggesting the designer wanted to deliberately limit player options in order to reduce the amount of thought and play testing needed to write out good rules.

Feats should either improve how good you are at a maneuver, or interact with the maneuver system or the combat system. For example, "Whenever you score a critical hit on a foe, you gain a bonus superiority die which you may use in the same combat." is the sort of thing that to me is a Feat and not a maneuver.

I've had a lot of success with Feats that represent some sort of martial tradition such as "Skirmisher", "Heavy Infantry", "Gladiator", "Duelist", "Hoplite", "Assault Trooper", "Legionnaire" or whatever. Among the things I like about them is that they are not only descriptive of the fighter's experience and have mythic resonance through referencing some real world fighting style, but they make imagining low level armies pretty straightforward. Typically they give relatively small circumstantial bonuses in two or three areas.

 

[Undrave]

(Guess I missed some stuff last night, sorry!)


Ya know, I’m not a big fan of superiority dice… I just feel like they focus too much attention on sheer damage instead of the interesting effects found in the maneuvers. Damage’s not exactly a department the Fighter is missing out on, but it’s valued so much that they only get a handful of dice. I’d rather get the maneuvers at-will without the extra damage.

It’d be a lot more fun if superiority dice were just completely divorced from maneuvers and just be a different thing where the Fighter can throw some extra D6/D8/D10 to their damage in a similar way to a Paladin’s Smite (call it ‘extra effort’ if you want).

 

[Celebrim]

Ya know, I’m not a big fan of superiority dice… I just feel like they focus too much attention on sheer damage instead of the interesting effects found in the maneuvers. Damage’s not exactly a department the Fighter is missing out on, but it’s valued so much that they only get a handful of dice. I’d rather get the maneuvers at-will without the extra damage.

I agree in general, although some sort currency is often a good way to ensure the same one manuever isn't spammed out endlessly, most of that criticism is fair.

But I think the bigger problem here is with the writing of maneuvers. Feats and maneuvers are some of the hardest things to write well in D&D game design because they are terse. And terse things take more skill than things that aren't, but unfortunately people think because they are terse they take less thought rather than more.

A good example of what I consider to be a problem here is the Feint maneuver which just is straight upside without any situational qualifiers and really could be written as basically anything ("Power Attack", "Blade Mastery", "Secret Technique") because the mechanics of gaining advantage and doing extra damage are just so generic and flavorless. And that gets back to if your combat system lacks basic crunch, then their aren't many levers to pull. And really, to me the feint maneuver is so straight foward that I imagine it pretty dominates over the situational ones in terms of how often people spend dice on it. This is a maneuver that is screaming for a Wisdom save from the target just to keep it balanced with the other options rather than something more generic like spending your bonus action, especially if you are already paying currency for it. Then at least there is some flavor to it.

 

[DND_Reborn]

This is a maneuver that is screaming for a Wisdom save from the target just to keep it balanced with the other options rather than something more generic like spending your bonus action, especially if you are already paying currency for it. Then at least there is some flavor to it.

The problem I have with such ideas is it involves another die roll, either contested or not, which slows things down--but then some people don't like the idea of a maneuver (such as Feint) being automatic either.

It makes design more difficult: which way do you go?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why can't people just roll their maneuver dice at the same time as the attack?

The Pearl d20 is attack, the Jade is maneuver. Done.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Someone was talking about having them in a post a few months ago. They're not available from WotC anymore though.

That's unfortunate. I'm not that proficient with the Wayback Machine.

Ya know, I’m not a big fan of superiority dice… It’d be a lot more fun if superiority dice were just completely divorced from maneuvers and just be a different thing where the Fighter can throw some extra D6/D8/D10 to their damage in a similar way to a Paladin’s Smite (call it ‘extra effort’ if you want).

Having messed around with Lancer a bit (fun game!), I appreciate how they manage their Advantage / Disadvantage system. Their rolls use a d20, but it is not a d20 system. Each level of Adv/Dis grants you a +/- d6 to the roll. They cancel out as you would expect. If you gain more advantage, you would, say, roll 2d6 and apply the highest, not the total, to the d20. That could be a useful application of "tactical" dice, and be able to add to attack, damage, AC, saves, movement (1 corresponds to 5', 2 to 10', &c.).

My preference is to have a big pool of maneuvers and to have a fighter know all of them with maneuvers the fighter doesn't know just cost an extra dice to perform. Most maneuvers should represent rather generic combat abilities, which for the battlemaster they already do so that's good. So in my system it would be much less a matter of 'maneuvers known' than maneuvers you are proficient in.

Right, I can see that. Both the fighter with his glave and the wizard with his staff can trip a goblin. But, the fighter with his greater strength and higher skill (attack bonus) is more likely to succeed. Those who have trained in polearm tactics (knows the maneuver) can do so with greater skill (and can potentially apply dice, do some damage along with tripping, and so on).

I've had a lot of success with Feats that represent some sort of martial tradition such as "Skirmisher", "Heavy Infantry", "Gladiator", "Duelist", "Hoplite", "Assault Trooper", "Legionnaire" or whatever. Among the things I like about them is that they are not only descriptive of the fighter's experience and have mythic resonance through referencing some real world fighting style, but they make imagining low level armies pretty straightforward. Typically they give relatively small circumstantial bonuses in two or three areas.

I can see that. I do have subclasses do the heavy lifting for my fighting guilds (Order of the Gorgon, &c.), but I can see feats be useful for fighting styles or upgrading to uncanny physical feats.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Why can't people just roll their maneuver dice at the same time as the attack?

The Pearl d20 is attack, the Jade is maneuver. Done.

Honestly, I don't know why rolling multiple dice like this annoys me, but it does.

I had a player who liked to roll his attack roll and damage roll together to speed things up. It always bothered me. I know rationally it is a good practice, but for whatever irrational reason is just bugs me.

 

[Celebrim]

It makes design more difficult: which way do you go?

Design is always difficult. Ignoring the issues just means you have a thoughtless design.

The worst thing combat can be is an exercise where everything takes turn throwing their dice, adding the resulting numbers, and the side that exceeds some total first wins. It involves no choices and no imagination, and it very strongly resembles the sort of combat we had when I was a 10 year old DM running Basic D&D.

If the aesthetic that you are going for is really simple and basic "fast" combat then sure, you can minimize the dice rolling and the choices and leave all of combat up to added flavor. But eventually adding that flavor gets to be a chore because what everyone is doing is redundant so saying what they are doing gets redundant as well.

"I roll to hit. Hit. I do 9 damage."

For 6-8 hours. Sure, you got through 6-8 combats but do you remember any thing that happened in any of them?