D&D (2024) Barbarians, Monks, the Warrior Group and Fighting Styles

[Minigiant]

I've been already handling it this way when I DM.

Reckless Attack and Martial Arts will become Fighting Styles.

If Barbarians and Monks are in the Warrior Group. I predict that Reckless Attack and Martial Arts will be changed to be class exclusive Fighting Styles.

Reckless attack is basically a class exclusive fighting style.

Martial Arts will likely be broken into 2 class features. Likely Martial Arts will be broken up. The Additional Attack ill likely be carved out of Martial and written similar to the Light weapons rule.
Now how it will be written is the question. Will it be written to stack with light weapons or to replace a light weapon attack.

Barbarian
Barbarian will be simple. At whichever level they get their Fighting Style, they will get Reckless Attack as their only Fighting style option.

This wll be a buff to Barbarians as they will have one of the dew fighting styles that stacks. Not a huge one ATM as fighting style feats are not currently worth the feat slot.

Monk
My prediction is that they will test it as stacking. That's right. Monks will get 3 attacks at level1. Quarterstaff, Quarterstaff, Unarmed Strike.

Fighting Style: Monk Fighting
When you take the Attack action to make an attack with a monk weapon in one hand or an Unarmed strike, you can make one extra Unarmed Strike as part of that action.

Fighter
The only question is if fighter get a class exclusive feat in the PHB or have to go backward compatible to get exclusivity.

The main thing is it would futureproof the Barbarian or Monk. WOTC could sell a book with a DEX or CHA barbarian or STR Monk as fighting style will little reference or tweaking to other class features.

 

[Leatherhead]

You want speculation?
Power attack (the +damage - to hit feature of the 2014 sharpshooter and Great Weapon master feats) becomes a Warrior Group feature like how Expertise is the Expert Group feature.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The Monk's Martial Arts ability in the 2014 PHB was basically just Two-Weapon Fighting except with unarmed attack as the off-weapon.

 

[Marandahir]

Martial Arts and Monks are weird there because yeah, it's a Fighting Style essentially, but it's the core of the Monk. So if you don't LOCK Monks into it, you're undermining what the Monk does.

I could actually see a rewrite of Unarmed Fighting to function as the Monk's unarmed attack, while letting the Monk function with a bunch of different Fighting Styles. So you could have that Zen Archer archetype by taking Archery and have the Monk's bow be its Monk weapon. Or you could have a Duelling Style and now we've got the 3.5e Swordsage class.

In fact, there's a lot of parallel between Book of 9 Swords classes and these three Warriors - Fighters/Barbarian/Monk are roughly, though obviously not entirely, equivalent to Crusader/Warblade/Swordsage. We want Warriors that aren't just Sword fighters, of course, so that's part of it, but also the Crusader was a Martial Superiority Die Spelless Paladin / 4e Warlord, depending on Fighting Style. I'd love to see all Warriors get Superiority Dice as a base class feature…

I think there's a lot of room for exploration here.