D&D 5E Flèche: Charge Attack For Light Fighters

[Ruin Explorer]

I s2g I feel like I’m gettin feedback by about half people actually reading and engaging, and half people walking by on the street and glancing over without slowing down. I’ve posted entire class writeups on these forums and gotten fewer comments from folks who clearly didn’t read something in the OP.

I mean, I'll be honest, it doesn't seem like you read and engaged, so I'm not sure you're in a great position to judge that.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I mean, I'll be honest, it doesn't seem like you read and engaged, so I'm not sure you're in a great position to judge that.

What does it not seem like I read and engaged, exactly? Where have I replied to someone’s statements while completely ignoring or missing major key elements?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Also as a fencer LOL@trying to fleche whilst holding a bigass shield, that's silly but I guess you mean a buckler.

As someone who has fought quite a lot sword and shield, LOL @ thinking someone can’t sprint full speed at another person and perform a lunging or passing attack whilst doing so.

Sprinting in full kit is part of the training and practice process.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oh! I might simplify the restrictions to “must only be wielding one handed weapons that are light, finesse, or defensive, and be wearing no, light, or medium, armor.”

It’s a fast, precise, and agile charge.

And I’ll go ahead and change the damage bonus to speed, to make it more feel like an especially fast charge. I also realized that I didn’t write up charge attack quite right, it is meant to give extra movement while restricting you freedom of movement. Perhaps it gives opportunity attacks advantage against you, as well, mean flèche neutralizes a downside rather than being a “big” bonus with its giving disad.

So,


Master Duelist

You are a master of personal combat with light and defensive weapons, whether skillfully deflecting attacks in a sudden defensive stance, using an enemy’s misstep against them, or swiftly and nimbly charging at a foe to throw them off balance.

You gain 2 manuevers dice, which can be used to power the manuevers listed below, or any other manuever you know.



Flèche
Light Fighting
When you make a charge attack, opportunity attacks against you have disadvantage, and you can spend a maneuver die to gain a bonus to your movement equal to 5 times the result of your maneuver die roll, and when you attack the target you can treat a die result of 18 or higher as a natural 20.

Parry
light fighting
As a reaction when targeted by an attack, you can grant yourself a bonus to AC equal to your proficiency bonus that lasts until the start of your next turn.

Riposte
light fighter
When a melee attack against you misses, you can spend a maneuver die to grant yourself a bonus action attack that you can take on your turn against the attacker, with a damage bonus equal to the result of your manuever die.

————
Okay, I made the parry just be the existing defensive duelist but last until the start of your next turn, and the riposte uses your bonus action on your next turn.

Flèche has a fairly small bonus at-will, but the speed buff and crit buff require spending the maneuver die.

The light fighting tag means that you must be using only light armor, medium armor, or no armor, and weilding only one-handed weapons or double sided weapons which are light, finesse, or defensive. (Might drop the double weapons but it feels right to have them be treated like two weapons for stuff like this)

The only thing I’m dissatisfied with for duelists still is that there no reason to not have something in your off-hand.

My other concern is that maneuver dice currently come back with a long rest of you don’t have a special feature that lets you regain some quicker, so ultimately it might be best to split these into two feats and have more of the benefit be at-will in each feat, include weapon proficiencies.

Perhaps the feat should let you learn two light fighting manuvers, and give the defensive duelist bit and a minor boon for having a free hand.

Master Duelist

You are a master of personal combat with light and defensive weapons, whether skillfully deflecting attacks in a sudden defensive stance, using an enemy’s misstep against them, or swiftly and nimbly charging at a foe to throw them off balance.

You gain 2 focus dice, which are each a 1d6, unless you have larger focus dice from another source such as your class, and can be used to power the techniques listed below, or any other techniques you know.



Flèche
Light Fighting
When you make a charge attack, opportunity attacks against you have disadvantage. If you spend a focus die when you do so, you gain a bonus to your movement equal to 5 times the result of your focus die roll, and when you attack the target you can treat a die result of 18 or higher as a natural 20.

Parry
light fighting
As a reaction when targeted by an attack, you can grant yourself a bonus to AC equal to your proficiency bonus that lasts until the start of your next turn.

Riposte
light fighter
When a melee attack against you misses, you can spend a focus die to grant yourself a bonus action attack that you can take on your turn against the attacker, with a damage bonus equal to the result of your focus die.


Some minor adjustments. Still haven’t sat with some of the suggestions given in thread, so I’ll update again soon.

Changed maneuver to technique, and maneuver dice to focus dice, because focus is what every non-caster uses to measure their ability to keep using special moves without eating dirt, and the general term for the moves if now focus techniques, because some aren’t really maneuvers, like meditations, stances, etc.

 

[James Gasik]

As far as comparing Feats to class features goes, Charger must be the most busted Feat in the game because it's better than the level 14 Tiger Totem Barbarian feature.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

As far as comparing Feats to class features goes, Charger must be the most busted Feat in the game because it's better than the level 14 Tiger Totem Barbarian feature.

Oh man…yeah. The poor totem barb…so many crap mechanics tied to great animals. So few good ones.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think I'd probably do it as:

Master Duelist

• When fighting with a single-handed weapon and not using a shield, you add your Proficiency Bonus to your AC.
• You can take the Dash, (Dodge) or Disengage action as a bonus action
• If you move at least 20 feet in a straight line before making your first attack in a round, on a hit you treat it as a Critical Hit.

If that is too underpowered, have it add +1 Dex or +1 Str.

Yeah, I think that my paradigm may work better separate from the thing that you're modeling here. Like, two different types of feats.

I liked the idea of basically giving 2 at will martial abilities that are fairly small, and two focus techniques, this being meant to perform similarly in power to feats like shadow touched or magic initiate, but techniques aren't of the same power as spells, directly, so I figured two and two, with no stat boost, would work. Also, precedent in 5e is that making the feat more specific allows a little more juice.

But maybe it's better to just structure one feat roughly as you've done, and another similar to the Martial Adept feat, but not terrible.

I will say that I don't think giving dash, dodge, and disengage as bonus actions is a good idea. let the rogue keep some of that sauce to itself, at least at low levels.

I'll give it some more thought.

I really like the idea of feats that have a specific feel with at-will features, and give access to limited abilities. But if I give all my martial class variants focus dice...do I need to do that? I mean it lets non-martials to grab them up. ugh.

I don't want to rewrite 5e but gooooodness gracious do I dislike all the totally related resource pools that are completely non-interoperable or transferable.

Master Duelist:

• When fighting with a single-handed weapon and your other hand is empty, you take the Dodge action as a bonus action,. You can use this bonus action only if you haven't moved during this turn, and after you use the bonus action, your speed is 0 until the end of the current turn.

I've never understood this. Why should charging then end all movement, especially in a version of the game where normally you can move, attack, move, attack again, move again?

• When you use the Dodge action, you can use your reaction when a creature within 5 ft attack you to parry the attack. Add one roll of your weapon damage die and add it to your AC. If this cause the attack to miss, you can make a single attack against the attacker.
• When you move at least 20 ft in a straight line, the next attack you make before the end of your turn scores a critical hit on a roll of 18-20.

This stuff makes sense.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I've never understood this. Why should charging then end all movement, especially in a version of the game where normally you can move, attack, move, attack again, move again?

The part you quoted isnt really about charging, its more a ''defensive stance'' for your duelist.
In short, the feat gives you two ''modes'' for your duelist:

• One defensive mode: dodge & parry (the 2 first bullet points)
• One attack mode: a Flèche (the last bullet point)

So in a turn, you can either Flèche (moving at least 20 ft) or root yourself and use defensive counter-attacks, but not both in the same turn.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The part you quoted isnt really about charging, its more a ''defensive stance'' for your duelist.
In short, the feat gives you two ''modes'' for your duelist:

• One defensive mode: dodge & parry (the 2 first bullet points)
• One attack mode: a Flèche (the last bullet point)

So in a turn, you can either Flèche (moving at least 20 ft) or root yourself and use defensive counter-attacks, but not both in the same turn.

Okay but…why, tho?

If it’s an important goal, perhaps just make it explicit, and word the whole thing one ability that you can once per turn, or put “you can do this once per turn, as long as you not used the other ability”?

 

[Stormonu]

I will say that I don't think giving dash, dodge, and disengage as bonus actions is a good idea. let the rogue keep some of that sauce to itself, at least at low levels.

The monk gets dash, dodge, disengage as a bonus action as well, though they have to spend a ki for it, so there is precedent for it to be a martial thing. Besides, if your using your bonus action for this, you're not using it for off-hand attacks or other actions.

<edit> and Swashbucklers are rogue subclass, so it's not out of place for fencing in the first place.