Fighting Styles A Missed Opportunity

[Eubani]

In hindsight I believe that fighting styles have been a missed opportunity in that more could be easily added to ad more flavour into weapon using classes and provide new add in mechanics without having to go fully into a subclass but provide a little more crunch than a background. Thoughts?

Below are some of the new fighting styles that I have come up with, that I may add into my campaign after a few balance and wording passes.

(Warning if I could spell I would be dangerous)

Mobility: +5ft Move. The character gains +2 damage with weapon attacks if prior to making the attack they have moved 10ft or more.

Guerilla Warfare: If making a weapon attack when hidden roll damage dice twice and use the best result. Missed attacks do cause the character to lose hidden status.

Charge Reception: +2 damage with attacks using spears or pole arms and the enemy moved into melee since the end of the character's last turn.

Brawler: Unarmed attacks do 1d4 bludgeoning damage instead of 1pt. If the character's unarmed attacks gain a damage dice from another source they instead gain +2 damage with unarmed attacks.

Dagger Master: Weapon attacks with daggers have a crit range of 18-20. If the character gains an improved crit range from another source then instead add +2d4 damage on a crit instead.

Phalanx: Expend reaction and gain +1AC for each ally with a shield standing beside the character till the beginning of the character's next turn. (Max +2AC)


Offhanded Defence: +1AC if the character has an off hand weapon and does not attack with it on their turn. The bonus lasts till the beginning of the next turn or till the off hand weapon is used to make an attack.

Leader: 1/Rest Heal self or ally that can see or hear can spend a hit dice with a bonus equal to characters Charisma mod. Excess HP become Temp HP.


Sword Mage Style: On a turn that the character casts a spell of Lv1 or higher till the beginning of the next turn gain +2 damage with weapon attacks which also gain the same energy type as the spell if it had one.


Sword Sage Style: Gain 2 manouvers and 1 superiority dice which is d6 (refreshes with short rest) or the same as your others if you get them from another source.

I have a few more in mind for Paladins and Rangers but need to mull over them a bit more.

 

[Blue]

In general, I agree and disagree with your idea.

The fighting styles as given make that weapon-focused characters are consistently better with weapons right out of the gate then non-weapon-focused characters. A high STR cleric with martial weapons and heavy armor doesn't keep up with someone with a fighting style.

But really, once Extra Attack comes in, that point is fairly moot.

I like these in that they give flavor - they encourage certain tactics that would not otherwise be part and parcel of swinging your axe or twanging your bow. Amusingly, I dislike some of them for the same reason - they lock you into certain tactics with golden handcuffs which discourages diversity in actions, much like previous edition weapon specialization locked you into a specific weapon.

As most of these are not general like the original fighting styles and only apply in certain cases, my first throught is that I'd rather see these supplementing instead of replacing. Alternately, allow pick of 2-3 of these instead of one of the always-on - this way they come up fairly often, and they don't lock a character into just one type of action. This has an advantage over my first suggestion of requiring no changes to the class frameworks for a different category, and works well with subclasses that give more fighting styles, but might get to be too much with multiclassing since you could get multiple fighting styles working on the same attacks.

Just a comment on one:

Guerilla Warfare: If making a weapon attack when hidden roll damage dice twice and use the best result. Missed attacks do cause the character to lose hidden status.

This one is underwhelming for general attacks, and a must-have for stealth based rogues who would be rerolling sneak attack. It's both too good for a specific case, and not competitive in general usage.

 

[Eubani]

Thought given the above:

Weapon Master: Character gains 1 extra item manipulation as long as it involves weapons and if the character is using a different weapon than what they were using in their last turn gain +1 damage +1AC till start of next turn.

As for Geurilla Warfare I was going to have that on Fighter and Ranger lists of styles. Would adding Gain Proficiency in Stealth be too much considering these classes are skill starved?

 

[jasper]

My broken candle will defeat your broken milk carton! And my shield of gamer funk gives me +6AC +8 if you are down wind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC92wx86z84

gosh I old.

 

[Eubani]

My broken candle will defeat your broken milk carton! And my shield of gamer funk gives me +6AC +8 if you are down wind.

What???

 

[CapnZapp]

What???

What what...

In the Butt!

https://youtu.be/fbGkxcY7YFU

 

[ExploderWizard]

Guerilla Warfare: If making a weapon attack when hidden roll damage dice twice and use the best result. Missed attacks do cause the character to lose hidden status.

Ok I read this one and it made me laugh. I thought of a scenario that just starts the giggles:

- a fighter lurks around the corner with a raised great sword. A hobgoblin walks by and fails to detect the fighter. The fighter brings the sword down in a mighty stroke and......misses. The hobgoblin doesn't notice.

 

[Satyrn]

In hindsight I believe that fighting styles have been a missed opportunity in that more could be easily added to ad more flavour into weapon using classes and provide new add in mechanics without having to go fully into a subclass but provide a little more crunch than a background. Thoughts?

I like that the fighting styles are essentially always-on benefits (Protection being an exception), and broad enough to be constantly useful. And that there are only 4 choices to make is nice.

I don't think the designers missed an opportunity. Rather, they just went a different way. But it's also nice that if you'd prefer the other way, it's easy enough to homebrew a different set of styles like you're doing.

Feedback on your ideas: Because your styles aren't always on and are more situational than Protection (my party's paladin uses it nearly every round of combat), I think you ought to consider handing out a pair of styles each time a character would get one.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fighting styles are a variation on weapons specialization, they make you a little better at a specific sub-set/flavor, of the already narrow specialization of single-target sustained DPR. Adding more of them, while characters still choose one (or 2 if they go Champion), just creates a growing list of things they can't do.

 

[Leatherhead]

I'm taking this idea and running with it.