D&D 5E Passive or Active Fighting Styles?

dnd4vr said:

Yeah, coming up with non-attack bonus actions was the best solution I found as I've been typing stuff up. For example, for GWF, the bonus action allows the attacker to shove or knock the target prone. Although an attack, it does no damage and follows the flavor of pushing/shoving someone with a two-handed weapon.

But do you see how even your suggestion makes it OP a bit? Allowing Defense style to have the character gain the benefits of Dodge while still getting in one attack (all they would otherwise have up to level 4) for a bonus action they would not likely use anyway... Now all your enemies have disadvantage to attacking you but you still get an attack in--it is too much (for me, anyway...). Maybe if it allowed you to make an attack as a bonus action but with disadvantage? You are focusing on your defense after all.

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I have no problem buffing fighters, paladins, and rangers at low-level. Outside of PAM VHuman shenanigans, they're not crazy strong.

To be perfectly clear, my balance concerns are almost entirely concerned with intra-option balance, not worrying about if the baseline efficacy of the party versus monsters is changed. That's trivially easy to handle via encounter changes.

You know, even if the Battlemaster had the same maneuvers but some of them were gated by level, I still think it would have been better design.

Riposte and Precise Strike are both good enough that it probably wouln't have hurt to have held them off a bit to a higher level and give the other maneuvers a bit more room to breathe.

Don Durito said:

You know, even if the Battlemaster had the same maneuvers but some of them were gated by level, I still think it would have been better design.

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Even though that'd've been "nerf" of sorts, it'd've at least given 'em something to look forward to, and make later choices feel more meaningful, because you're not exclusively picking from maneuvers that didn't make the cut for you last time.

Garthanos said:

Ack the zero tactics because simplistic random can be balanced gambit yuck yuck yuck. That is probably my number one dislike about 13A...

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The 13th Age fighter is not great. Althouh I think this is as much about the particular maneuvers it gets being too small and situational as anything else.

But Flexible attacks solve the two weapon fighting issue pretty well. The ranger just gets a second attack when the D20 roll is even. Done. It's arbritrary, but there's no real way to optimise that. (Whereas with the Essentials Scout, because your second attack depended on the first hitting, it was obvous that your best move was to always increase accuracy every chance you can). This was more what I had in mind.

I've wondered if there is some design space there in the idea of features that either can't really be optimised or are even anti-optimisation.

Take for example this (which I guess could be a fighting style):
Combat superiority (needs new name): You have learnt to maneuver your enemies so that even their successful defences force them to leave you openings you can take advantage of.
When you miss an attack against an enemy take a D6. On your next successful hit add the D6 to your damage roll. These D6 are cumulative, but you may never hold more than your proficiency.

Something like this seems actively safe - the more optimised a character is, the less extra damage it would be contributing. And there's no way to optimise for it because it's still always going to be better to hit than to miss.

dnd4vr said:

Would it be too powerful to allow a maneuver selection to be chosen once, roll a single die, but applied to each attack made using your attack action?
For example: if you spend your die on precision attack, you would gain the bonus to each attack made by that attack action.
It seems OP to me, but I am just spit-balling here...

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Well, Bless applies to every attack of every attack action for several characters, even if it is only a d4, so it doesn't seem entirely beyond the pale.
Also, such a use would perforce be /before/ the roll (or, at least, some of the rolls), which mitigates against one major advantage of Precision Strike.

TwoSix said:

I have no problem buffing fighters, paladins, and rangers at low-level. Outside of PAM VHuman shenanigans, they're not crazy strong.

To be perfectly clear, my balance concerns are almost entirely concerned with intra-option balance, not worrying about if the baseline efficacy of the party versus monsters is changed. That's trivially easy to handle via encounter changes.

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I guess I do worry about about party vs monsters because I don't want to have to change more things because of changes to the fighting styles.

Anyway, what about something like this for Archery:



I've "uped" it to include thrown weapons (a common complaint, but offset by Thrown Weapon style so might be redundant) and the addition of melee attack for closer quarters, using your weapon sort of like a club or staff, or for story even stabbing with an arrow or bolt.

Now, I can also add the qualifier "when you take the attack action" to the bonus action, or leave it separate. Personally, I would be fine with leaving it separate since you are only doing a d4 damage (plus STR I would suppose). The writing can be worked for whatever appeals the most.

dnd4vr said:

Anyway, what about something like this for Archery:

View attachment 117899

I've "uped" it to include thrown weapons (a common complaint, but offset by Thrown Weapon style so might be redundant) and the addition of melee attack for closer quarters, using your weapon sort of like a club or staff, or for story even stabbing with an arrow or bolt.

Now, I can also add the qualifier "when you take the attack action" to the bonus action, or leave it separate. Personally, I would be fine with leaving it separate since you are only doing a d4 damage (plus STR I would suppose). The writing can be worked for whatever appeals the most.

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It's not bad. I like the addition of thrown weapons, because I like to support non-standard options. I don't think the bonus action attack is a terrible option, but I don't love it. It encourages some weird behavior, like shooting from a distance (so as to not incur disadvantage) and then running in and bonking them with their bow. Seems like a weird visual.

What about a bonus action Disengage? (Or disengage as an action allows a bonus action ranged or thrown weapon attack?) Would be useful to an archer, sometimes very useful, but isn't buffing their damage any? Just makes them slippery at getting out of unwanted melee, which seems like something an archer fighter or ranger would be good at.

TwoSix said:

It's not bad. I like the addition of thrown weapons, because I like to support non-standard options. I don't think the bonus action attack is a terrible option, but I don't love it. It encourages some weird behavior, like shooting from a distance (so as to not incur disadvantage) and then running in and bonking them with their bow. Seems like a weird visual.

What about a bonus action Disengage? (Or disengage as an action allows a bonus action ranged or thrown weapon attack?) Would be useful to an archer, sometimes very useful, but isn't buffing their damage any? Just makes them slippery at getting out of unwanted melee, which seems like something an archer fighter or ranger would be good at.

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I suppose my visual was more about using the bow as an improvised melee weapon to take down an opponent near you before you shoot or something, like we see in movies when it is better for the archer to attack with the bow in melee as they move out of range of the enemy's attack.

The weird behavior you speak of would be very strange since if they moved into melee to attack with their ranged weapon on their bonus action, they are now either engaged in melee and have disadvantage on ranged shot or must disengage to move away.

To me disengaging, dodging, etc. are too strong and steps on the toes of rogues and monks when done as bonus actions. Allowing the bonus action to be an attack when the style allows you to disengage is the same issue as with defensive style and dodging as the main action.

I am trying to come up with things that are useful, but not available elsewhere. For example, I would love Dueling to use your reaction to parry, but there is already a feat for that... to me that is the biggest issue in striking balance, not repeating features available elsewhere, etc.

dnd4vr said:

For example, I would love Dueling to use your reaction to parry, but there is already a feat for that... to me that is the biggest issue in striking balance, not repeating features available elsewhere, etc.

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I wouldn't worry too much about that. There's a fair bit of redundancy in 5e between standard and optional rules (and w/in the standard rules, for that matter). Plenty of instances where there's two or three ways to get to about the same thing.

Tony Vargas said:

I wouldn't worry too much about that. There's a fair bit of redundancy in 5e between standard and optional rules (and w/in the standard rules, for that matter). Plenty of instances where there's two or three ways to get to about the same thing.

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True, but that is precisely why I am trying to avoid doing it and adding even more redundancy.