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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6699489" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Hold on--it's not the Battlemaster per se who is getting Ripose every round, it is the melee Battlemaster. The archer wouldn't get it even if he were pure battlemaster 20. Or at least, he wouldn't get it at range, but if he were for some reason tanking on the front lines with a rapier, he'd rapidly discover that d8+4d6+5+d10 is actually a better Riposte than the battlemaster 20's presumed 2d6+5+d12, or 2d6+15+d12 if he power attacks. Riposte actually loses utility for the pure battlemaster relative to the battletrickster--although granted, the archer battletrickster is not specialized for melee and so will be coming from behind before Riposte is taken into account.The main function of a tank as I see it isn't damage, it's survivability while you hold a strongpoint against enemies while your allies kill kill. From this perspective, Riposte actually isn't a very good tank ability at all because once you've used your reaction to Riposte, there is nothing at all to prevent the enemy from bypassing you and hitting the squishies behind you--and if they were going to hit the squishies anyway, then Riposte was useless (you would have gotten an opportunity attack anyway). Many enemies won't do that for various reasons of course. But even against those foes, it's hard to argue that having one option (Riposte for 18 points of damage) is superior to having multiple options (Riposte for 28 points of damage, or Shield for +5 to AC, or Cunning Action for half damage against this attack).BTW, if "take out a mage on the back line is your criteria", that's a job for an archer anyway, not a tank. The tank won't get to Riposte the mage, and he'll take a bunch of opportunity attacks getting to the back line, since he doesn't have Cunning Action or anything <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />, so he'll end up doing maybe 10% more damage than the archer on his nova while taking say 30 or 40 points of damage to himself, compared to zero for the archer.Well, de gustibus non disputandum est. Thanks for the discussion, it was useful.</blockquote>

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