D&D General Give my your favorite class abilities

[Sacrosanct]

From any edition (or clone of any edition, which includes PF I suppose).

What are some of your favorite moves/maneuvers/powers from the core classes that you really liked, and if they aren't in the current edition, wish they were?

 

[Seramus]

Devise a Stratagem​

Investigator
Source Advanced Player's Guide pg. 56
Frequency once per round

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You assess a foe's weaknesses in combat and use them to formulate a plan of attack against your enemy. Choose a creature you can see and roll a d20. If you Strike the chosen creature later this round, you must use the result of the roll you made to Devise a Stratagem for your Strike's attack roll instead of rolling. You make this substitution only for the first Strike you make against the creature this round, not any subsequent attacks.

When you make this substitution, you can also add your Intelligence modifier to your attack roll instead of your Strength or Dexterity modifier, provided your Strike uses an agile or finesse melee weapon, an agile or finesse unarmed attack, a ranged weapon (which must be agile or finesse if it's a melee weapon with the thrown trait), or a sap.

If you're aware that the creature you choose is the subject of a lead you're pursuing, you can use this ability as a free action.

 

[Maxperson]

From any edition (or clone of any edition, which includes PF I suppose).

What are some of your favorite moves/maneuvers/powers from the core classes that you really liked, and if they aren't in the current edition, wish they were?

I've always loved sneak attack. From every edition except for 4th(mainly because I don't know how it works in 4th ).

Edit: Oh and the paladin save bonus aura from the various editions.

 

[James Gasik]

Outside of core, tons, but core classes? Man they tend to be boring. I'd bring up Warlord powers, but I think everyone is tired of Warlord discussions. Bards getting bonuses to untrained skill checks was always nice.

Oh and I guess Majestic Word. Ranged healing with a small tactical adjustment was pretty sharp.

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

Twin spelling! (Sorcs and Enchanter wizards).

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Ok, I'll probably get trashed for this but...

Come and Get It was a pretty cool taunt-like power for fighters. I was a little wonky, requiring a weapon attack against Will save defense to drag enemies toward you and deal weapon damage to them, but it worked as a tanky move.

its pretty sad that in D&D 5e it requires, like, 14 levels in some classes to get something non-magical almost close to it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Ok, I'll probably get trashed for this but...

Come and Get It was a pretty cool taunt-like power for fighters. I was a little wonky, requiring a weapon attack against Will save defense to drag enemies toward you and deal weapon damage to them, but it worked as a tanky move.

its pretty sad that in D&D 5e it requires, like, 14 levels in some classes to get something non-magical almost close to it.

Yeah, there was a lot of resistance to mundane classes getting powers (I was one of them), but I think there was definitely room in 5e to incorporate more things like taunts.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Core? Hmm, tough question.

However, on a bit of a tangent, back in 3.5 I loved that the Swashbuckler from Complete Warrior gave you free Weapon Finesse and allowed you to add your INT modifier to your damage in addition to your STR. And it got twice the skill points that the fighter did. It made it a lot more interesting for a martial character who'd rolled a decent INT score.

Although finesse is completely rolled into weapon properties in 5E, it would be nice if there were more non-magical ways for martial characters to leverage their above-average scores in other abilities like Int or Wisdom in combat.

 

[Shiroiken]

Ok, I'll probably get trashed for this but...

Come and Get It was a pretty cool taunt-like power for fighters. I was a little wonky, requiring a weapon attack against Will save defense to drag enemies toward you and deal weapon damage to them, but it worked as a tanky move.

its pretty sad that in D&D 5e it requires, like, 14 levels in some classes to get something non-magical almost close to it.

I liked the general concept, but it was poorly implemented. For creatures that were primarily ranged attackers, such as artillery and controllers, it made absolutely zero sense for them to run into melee. It would have made far more sense to simply require everyone affected to target the character with an attack action on their next turn. Melee characters would have run up anyway, but the wizard/archer wouldn't.

 

[cbwjm]

This is going to sound a little boring and may not count as a class ability, but wizard specialisation. I liked that they'd get an extra spell of their school, resisted their school better than others and penalised others. Tied into that was the school restrictions, though they used the same spells as everyone else, this kind of made them feel a little different without needing to creating a unique spell list.

Next up would be signature spell. This showed up in 2e spells and magic. It gave you a free cast of the chosen spell, and you cast it as if you were 2 levels higher or it had a penalty for the target to save or was faster to cast if there were no level based benefits. Specialists could only choose spells of their school, but the cost to learn was cheaper than for generalist mage. Imagine a level 1 evoker who picked magic missile as his signature spell, he'd be able to cast magic missile 3 times with 2 missiles at level 1.