NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8731948" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Yeah, I'm inclined to say that maneuvers are an interesting implementation for a battlemaster class, but that I don't see them as a model to fix the issue of overall battlefield ability as in not-just-attack actions). What 3e illustrated to me was that simply affixing these status-effect riders to the existing since-~'74 D&D combat framework is likely to always be a challenge. Things will usually be either too good not to use (3e spiked chain trip) or never worth giving up a normal attack. Battlemaster or 4e fighter (or also many 5e paladin and ranger spells like the smite spells or hail of thorns, which would be maneuvers instead of spells in other systems) does so, but uses the resource management component (which I don't personally have a problem with, but don't get a vote on whether others do, so it's worth discussing alternatives). Fundamentally, there are few things better to use an action to do to an opponent than working towards them being long-term or irrevocably downed -- even true with spells, where most of the best combat spells sacrificing an action to either inconvenience many opponents or take one or two out of the fight (banishment, hypnotic pattern) or unlikely to contribute (blindness, entangle) for several rounds.I think combat could be rethought, with the idea of special move riders being associated with each attack (so alongside regular attack and damage). Me and the other main GM in my group developed a game with this as a standard -- all attacks had normal to-hit/damage, but then would have one special effect alongside (intimidation, trip, disarm, parry, etc.) that you would also be testing for. It worked... okay (game in general was rushed into play with insufficient playtests, there were clear and obvious 'always best choices' among the rider effects). I have seen many, both with people new to D&D and people coming back from the TSR era (and a few others here and there). Obviously the current implementation is undertuned, but I think there is a market for the general concept. This leads to my other point -- there are (at least) two camps regarding 'the Fighter' -- those that want it to be more complex and have more options, and those that want it to be readily playable as straightforwardly as possible. Both sides are hamstrung by being married to a core class skeleton that accommodates both of them poorly. Either fighter ought be split in half, or Champion get peeled off and made into a thing onto itself, or some similar avenue towards the same end.</blockquote>

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