D&D 5E Do Fighter Battlemaster Superiority dice feel magical?

[mellored]

As for the proficiency bonus: The point would be that you're just trying to brute force the effect, when you're not in a position to apply your full skill and power to it. Getting someone into exactly the right spot to pull off one of those tricks to full effect takes effort and luck, and not something you can pull off every single time, which is what's represented in the superiority dice limitation.

Not being able to do it all the time is already modeld with the d20 roll.
I mean, if you try and trip, but roll a 1, then he wasn't in the exact right position. But there's no reason you couldn't try to pull it off every time.
Adding your proficency bonus means you are better at getting them into that position. Not that they will always be there.

If it was "you automaticly trip someone", then yea, you need a limit.


That said, possibly a better model might be...
"Before you attempt to trip someone, you can roll a d20. You can then decide whether to use that roll for the trip, or just make a regular attack, rolling a new die."

Thus, you only try and trip when you think you have a good chance at succeding.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

And, I'll again take a jab at putting all spell write-ups in one long catalogue, it makes browsing through /your/ class's choices impossible and is annoying as heck. 1e's class/level organization was much more friendly

As a player of a particular PC that makes sense. But as a DM, or just a D&D player who is prone to want to randomly look up remove fear or something, an alphabetical presentation is significantly easier than having to also remember/guess which class and level the spell belongs to.

Having a complete alphabetical index in concert with presentation by class works, as long as classes don’t share the same spells. Nobody wants to pay for 4 identical detect magic write-ups.

Personally, I’m a fan of how 5e got rid of variable spell level by class, so the same spell is always the same spell, and an alphabetical presentation just works best with that. But yeah, AD&D did its spell presentation right for the spell design parameters it used.