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

[UngeheuerLich]

Sort of realistic unless you have your enemy completely outclassed in some fashion / see also minions or nearly defeated enemies.

Realistic but very unfun. So I prefer the narrative control thing which was directly taken from 4e.

 

[Staffan]

Like I said, read the first adventure in Ghosts of Saltmarsh and then tell me damage type does not matter. Weapon damage type will matter in well over half the battles and 1st level characters don't have enough funds for a replacement weapon. Unless you thought about this when you made your weapon choices, you won't have one. I would also argue that Skeletons alone are more common than Orcs and about equal to Kobolds and swarms are as common as all 3 of the types you listed.

I've played through part of Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I was playing a viking-type Battlemaster, so I had the Sailor background which gave me a belaying pin which is treated as a club. That was pretty helpful, and even if you don't happen to have that background bringing a club as a backup weapon isn't a bad idea.

 

[ECMO3]

Just because it's exclusive doesn't make it GOOD.

Maybe not, but it is what you said you wanted.

Personally I prefer menacing attack and when I play a fighter, the most common fighting style I take is superior technique and menacing attack is the most common maneuver (although I will also take Brace, quick toss, Commanding Presence or Grappling Attack). If I am playing a human I will usually combine it with martial adept and some combination of three of the above.

It is not all the time that I take Superior technique. I also get archery, defense or dueling depending on the build, but I take superior technique more often than any one of those.

My biggest problem with giving a fighter the ability to do these kinds of things for free as part of the class is it puts the fighter way, way ahead of other classes in melee, especially those that do not get extra attack, even if they build towards that. I think these should be options, but your melee oriented clerics or bards should be able to keep it close with a basic fighter by selecting the appropriate subclasses and feats and they can't if you are giving the fighter this stuff for free. The fighter gets so far ahead it is not even close. This actually causes the problem you talk about earlier - The Cleric casts bless and then he is irrelevant .... he is only irrelevant because the Fighter is doing so much damage the cleric's really does not matter. Make it so the Fighter is only doing a little bit more and now the Cleric still matters a lot.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

That kinda has the problem I have with Gishes in general though, which is why would anyone be a fighter (In character especially) if you are nearly as a good a warrior as the fighter, plus you have a bunch of useful spells on top of that?

 

[Undrave]

Maybe not, but it is what you said you wanted.

Not really no. I want a Goading attack features that trades the extra damage dice for repeatability.

My biggest problem with giving a fighter the ability to do these kinds of things for free is it puts the fighter way, way ahead of other classes in melee, especially those that do not get extra attack. I think these should be options, but your melee oriented clerics or bards should be able to keep it close with a fighter by selecting the appropriate subclasses and feats and they can't if you are giving the fighter this stuff for free. The fighter gets so far ahead it is not even close.

Why the heck not? He's the FIGHTER, he should be the best at FIGHTING because that's all it seems to get. I'm really annoy at this weird attitude I see all the time that 'If the Fighter can do X, every Tom, Dick, and Harry who swings a sword should be able to do it too" as if the Fighter is some sort of default non-class you apply to anybody. No. The Fighter is a specialist in his own right and if it gets something unique then so be it. The Bard and Cleric get Spells, the Barbarian gets Rage and other abilities. The Fighter can Goad. Or Menace, or Distract or Push 5 feet (you could do it at-will in 4e and it didn't break anything!) on a hit.

Just limit the goading or whatever to once per turn if you think it would break the game.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Well you can still play 4e. I hated 4e and I really disliked playing 3.5E (for me 3.5 wqas fun to think about but not play).

In my opinion with 5E you can get a ton of mileage out of feats and multiclassing. If you say you can't recreate the 5e fighter and warlord experience I will take your word for it (because I did not play it), but you can build a character to do a lot in 5E with the right choices. You can make a Ranger a full on caster who rarely wields a weapon or a wizard who dominates melee.

I have seen people talk about Warlords, but it is hard for me to believe you can't recreate those mechanics with options already available. Something like Battlemaster or Banneret subclass with superior technique fighting style and a Bard multiclass.

Suggesting that a Battlemaster fighter can recreate Warlord play experience is like saying that an Eldritch Knight can recreate the Wizard experience.
Suggesting that a Purple Dragon Knight fighter can recreate Warlord play experience is like saying that an Champion fighter with magic initiate feat can recreate the Wizard experience.

Bear in mind that it is only 5th level I believe where the Battlemaster's daily number of maneuvers (the primary facet of the warlord and something that they would be doing every round) is overtaken by the wizard's daily number of spells. And that this calculation not only assumes what seems to be an unrealistically long adventuring day, but also equates a single cleaving, goading, or lunging attack with a fireball, haste or hypnotic pattern spell.

 

[SakanaSensei]

Not really no. I want a Goading attack features that trades the extra damage dice for repeatability.

Why the heck not? He's the FIGHTER, he should be the best at FIGHTING because that's all it seems to get. I'm really annoy at this weird attitude I see all the time that 'If the Fighter can do X, every Tom, Dick, and Harry who swings a sword should be able to do it too" as if the Fighter is some sort of default non-class you apply to anybody. No. The Fighter is a specialist in his own right and if it gets something unique then so be it. The Bard and Cleric get Spells, the Barbarian gets Rage and other abilities. The Fighter can Goad. Or Menace, or Distract or Push 5 feet (you could do it at-will in 4e and it didn't break anything!) on a hit.

Just limit the goading or whatever to once per turn if you think it would break the game.

If they don’t end up giving the fighter more stuff to do out of fights, I’m fine with them doing substantially more damage in a fight (I’m talking 25-50% more) than a wizard. Like, these casters are already running around solving every non-combat mystery, death, need for transportation, long-distance communication… Fighters need to be the best at fighting, and not just single target damage with weird edge-case builds that build on elven accuracy or something.

 

[Maxperson]

Here is a 2022 ranking that puts it ahead of battlemaster in popularity:

All Dungeons & Dragons Fighter Subclasses, Ranked By Popularity

The Fighter class is a good starting point for new Dungeons & Dragons players. Here are the best subclasses, ranked by popularity.

www.thegamer.com

And even if it is losing ground, it is undoubtedly one of the most popular subclasses by far.

That's a 2022 ranking alright, but it doesn't say where they are getting their numbers from. The only link is to a 2020 thread on ENworld giving D&D Beyond numbers.

I don't necessarily doubt what you are saying, but that link doesn't actually prove anything.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Battlemaster is pretty strong as far as the Fighter subclasses go, but it hoarding the maneuvers, and making them lame as hell with limited use, is definitely a problem.

 

[Magister Ludorum]

People usually see battlemaster and its maneuver system as a cure for the issue of the martial caster gap, and i can understand why, martial have a terrible issue of a lack of options, and battlemaster gives resources and options, which make the class feel far more dynamic and interesting.

But here is my issue, one of the reasons why martial are suffering is because

1. Martials cannot do certain actions because thats what the battlemaster does.
2. Martials and what they do are tied to resources...for no real reason.

These two ideas i feel limit martials from what i feel they could be, why can martial threaten people into attacking them, why cant they simply disarm and trip people, why can't they rally or parry and such. And why should any of this be on any resource?

Its silly, what resource am i spending to goad someone into an attack or making a distraction? Magic? No, Stamina? How much effort does it take to goad or shout orders? Evasive Footwork, and grappling sure, but basic stuff like that?

The idea martials need resources to do these things is insane, they should just be able to do them, Special Actions, like shove or grapple show a clearer way forward for martials, with actions they can trade out attacks to do to get unique options.

The issue with martials is the fact battlemaster exists so other martials cant get these options, and the fact that they are on an arbitrary resource that represents nothing but trying to imitate 4E's power system, which was just as nonsensical and one of the reasons that game failed.

I feel we can do better than just turning martials into casters with a different resource, Martials defining trait is always being able to act without being tied to resources on what they can do, so i feel we should design them around that.

Martials should be characters of action, who just do, while casters should be powerful but limited by resources, I feel like limiting martials to resources to do technique is absurd, they should always be able to do a lot with a action, even PF2E which a lot of people praised for solving the issue did so in this way.

But thats just my opinion on this, how do you feel?

TLDR; Battlemasters hogging all of the special techniques martials should just be able to do, and the idea that doing these things cost some weird limit hurts the martial experience overall. Martials should just be able to do these things with attacks/actions themselves being the resource, and they should not have weird limitations

This is what I was getting at in another thread when I said I don't want to see 4e style martial powers in 5e. I want fighters to be able to use a wide variety of maneuvers at will. No resource management needed.

Of course some posters here on ENWORLD think that somehow means limiting fighters to things a guy at the gym can do.