D&D 5E Battlemaster and Superiority Dice are causing martials to suffer.

[James Gasik]

I would suggest anyone who is interested in a better Fighter, take a look at Adventures in Rokugan for 5e. The Bushi class has a resource that they gain in combat, called Focus, which can be used to power various maneuvers, and they have several stances to choose from.

This gives them various area attacks, the ability to disarm, knock prone, etc., and increase damage by saving up their Focus for a powerful finisher.

 

[Plaguescarred]

In the majority of games, the Battlemaster deals more damage than the Champion.

I'm no expert in CharOp but i believe it depends of a few factors like weapon, fighting style, number of combat per adventuring day, lenght of combat etc...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

3.x tried the model of: you can disarm all the time, but better don't, because it is so difficult that it is borderline suicide...
EXCEPT when you have all the feats and the right weapon, then it is always too good.
5e just allows the fighter narrative control, when an easy attempt is possible, but limits it to a few times per encounter, to balance it.

 

[James Gasik]

I don't blame the 3.0 design team for being wary and conservative about combat maneuvers. This isn't a defense of the final product- having things virtually locked behind Feats, most maneuvers being very niche, and difficult to pull off isn't very fun.

But I grok why a game designer might want to do this sort of thing. When everyone is using non-magical weapons, a combat maneuver like Sunder or Disarm just requires you to have holdout weapons.

When a game is built around an assumption that higher level characters require magic weapons, a combat maneuver like Disarm is huge and Sunder is just insane ("Yeah, ok, I'll destroy our loot, what a wonderful idea!").

Restrictions like not being able to grapple big foes easily, or having difficulty tripping behirs might not be fun, but not having them will make some players violently reject the idea as breaking their verisimilitude- when 4e gave us powers that could just knock a guy prone no matter how big or strong he was, there was a very loud and angry group of D&D fans who were extremely unhappy with the idea, leading to complaints about "magic Fighters".

Some people are not happy with the idea of high fantasy D&D, where legendary heroes can cleave the tops off of mountains. Just as some people are not happy with the idea of low fantasy D&D, where a player character is just marginally better than a town guard and forced to fight ogres and dragons.

Thus D&D has always had to walk a fine line, trying to have their cake and eat it too, with fantastic treasures and reality altering spells coexisting with heroes who can die to a single arrow at level 1.

The Battlemaster can get away with not having to make skill checks or even have serious restrictions on their maneuvers because they are using a resource. I feel very strongly that if the game had launched with all Fighters having maneuvers usable every turn without cost, many people would have torn their hair and gnashed their teeth.

This was design they had rejected with 4e, and did not want. And WotC, wanted to woo these people back into the fold, to regain whatever they felt they had lost to Paizo.

This is the current paradigm, and it would take a lot of people voting with their wallets to change it.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I'm not sure I'd ever have a player look at the options 1) Attack, multiple times for most of the campaign and 2) try to goad the opponent into hitting you instead of your friends and do nothing else, and then choose number 2 on purpose except in some weird edge case.

Wrapping extra effects into the things the martials already want to do because they're mechanically incentivized to do so (mostly taking the Attack action) means that you actually see these narrative adjusting actions in play instead of them being some theoretical "well, you COULD use your action to..."

Which is to say that I agree with the thread's premise: the existence of the Battlemaster drags other martials down. All martials should be able to goad, trip, disarm, and it shouldn't cost some specialized resource to do it, and it shouldn't feel like you're handicapping yourself to do something other than "I walk forward and swing twice."

All depends on framing and perspective. All characters can engage in any skill, but only some are proficient in it. The battlemaster is a character proficient in doing certain skills (maneuvers). If other martials want those same skills, they have options:

1. Multiclass with BM. This is your character training in using maneuvers in combat
2. Feat - Martial Adept. This is your character training in using maneuvers in combat
3. Fighting Style - Superior Technique. This is your character training in using maneuvers in combat

That is just by RAW. There are of course lots of 3pp products (LevelUp is a good place to start).

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I'm no expert in CharOp but i believe it depends of a few factors like weapon, fighting style, number of combat per adventuring day, lenght of combat etc...

Indeed, but I think that it is fair to say without heavy optimisation (which I believe will favour the BM), the Champion needs to be making 80 attacks between short rests before their damage matches a very basic BM.
That's eight 5-round combats at Tier 2. Most groups don't have that many between long rests.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

I think most of the big points have been brought up already. Difficulty in balancing at will options is tough. I did also want to point out that by making such things actions anyone can take, fighters specifically are weakened. This might have already been mentioned, but one has to ask why play a fighter over, say a paladin or barbarian who can do these things and have rage/smite/whatever as well.

 

[FallenRX]

I think most of the big points have been brought up already. Difficulty in balancing at will options is tough. I did also want to point out that by making such things actions anyone can take, fighters specifically are weakened. This might have already been mentioned, but one has to ask why play a fighter over, say a paladin or barbarian who can do these things and have rage/smite/whatever as well.

The idea i suggested was expanding them on the "Special Attack" options like Grapple and Shove, where you can trade out attacks to do these things, this kinda makes fighters innately the best at them, because they can simply do it the most, because they have the most attacks, on top of Action Surge.

 

[Staffan]

I'll add that Pathfinder 2 has a reasonably neat solution, but it is tied to the game's action economy so it would be really hard to implement in 5e without a major overhaul.

In PF2, you have three actions each round. Each action can be an attack, but at -5 on the second attack and -10 on the third (or subsequent if you can pull off shenanigans that will give you more), and since the game is designed so you'll about a 50% chance of hitting equal-level foes (60% for fighters using their primary weapon type) that's a pretty sharp drop-off in effectiveness. Anyone (well, anyone who's any good at the Athletics skill) can make combat maneuvers (shove, trip, grab, disarm), but this counts as an attack and requires either a free hand or a weapon designed to do that kind of thing. This is sometimes still useful – perhaps you want to trip your opponent to nuke their action economy or to set them up for the rogue's sneak attack, or something like that – so you will see situational use of maneuvers.

Fighters (and to some degree other classes, but mainly fighters) can take class feats (essentially selectable class features you get every other level) that build upon these maneuvers. But most of these have something that makes using them non-automatic. For example, Brutish Shove is a level 2 feat that lets you make an attack with a two-handed weapon and if you hit, you automatically Shove the foe 5' back (and can follow them if you want). In this case the limitations are twofold: you have to be using a two-handed weapon, and the feat/action has the Press trait which means it can't be your first attack in the round. Another one is the 4th level Knockdown, which lets you combine an attack with a Trip attempt in a single two-action activity, and your multiple action penalty doesn't increase until afterward (and you don't need a free hand if you have a two-handed weapon). That's strong, but sometimes you'd rather attack twice, or maybe move-attack-move, or something, which means it's not something you do all the time.

Anyhow, PF2 fighters can take lots of feats along those lines if that's what they like in their fighting style. And if they don't, well, regular Trip ain't too bad either.

 

[FallenRX]

I'll add that Pathfinder 2 has a reasonably neat solution, but it is tied to the game's action economy so it would be really hard to implement in 5e without a major overhaul.

In PF2, you have three actions each round. Each action can be an attack, but at -5 on the second attack and -10 on the third (or subsequent if you can pull off shenanigans that will give you more), and since the game is designed so you'll about a 50% chance of hitting equal-level foes (60% for fighters using their primary weapon type) that's a pretty sharp drop-off in effectiveness. Anyone (well, anyone who's any good at the Athletics skill) can make combat maneuvers (shove, trip, grab, disarm), but this counts as an attack and requires either a free hand or a weapon designed to do that kind of thing. This is sometimes still useful – perhaps you want to trip your opponent to nuke their action economy or to set them up for the rogue's sneak attack, or something like that – so you will see situational use of maneuvers.

Fighters (and to some degree other classes, but mainly fighters) can take class feats (essentially selectable class features you get every other level) that build upon these maneuvers. But most of these have something that makes using them non-automatic. For example, Brutish Shove is a level 2 feat that lets you make an attack with a two-handed weapon and if you hit, you automatically Shove the foe 5' back (and can follow them if you want). In this case the limitations are twofold: you have to be using a two-handed weapon, and the feat/action has the Press trait which means it can't be your first attack in the round. Another one is the 4th level Knockdown, which lets you combine an attack with a Trip attempt in a single two-action activity, and your multiple action penalty doesn't increase until afterward (and you don't need a free hand if you have a two-handed weapon). That's strong, but sometimes you'd rather attack twice, or maybe move-attack-move, or something, which means it's not something you do all the time.

Anyhow, PF2 fighters can take lots of feats along those lines if that's what they like in their fighting style. And if they don't, well, regular Trip ain't too bad either.

PF2E solution i feel is the best solution. Genuine good design.