D&D 5E Help - Battle Master Superiority Dice Variant Rule Requested by Player

[OB1]

I'm afraid it's not making sense to me. You say he has to use that die against an opponent within a minute. (Do you know how fast things die in 5e?) So does he lose it when the goblin is killed by his party wizard?

Then you say he can have up to three that he can spend against any enemy. But you established he needs to spend them against a particular enemy that he received it from. Your stated goal in this was that the RAW Battlemaster maneuvers were too "gamist". This is even more gamist in that the maneuver is supposed to be gained because the opponent left an opening to exploit. How do you use one opponent's opening on a different opponent, perhaps the goblin shaman clear across the battlefield?

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He has to spend the die against the opponent he makes the check against. I've moved from seeing an opening to seeing a flaw in the opponents defenses that he can exploit later in the same combat. Against a goblin, he's going to likely have to use it in the same round. Against a BBEG, he could study him for three rounds, gaining three die, and then unleash a combo against her.

 

[mellored]

IMO:

As a bonus action you can scan an enemy for openings, roll a d12 on the chart, your next attack against that target gains the battlemaster maneuver.
At level ?? You can roll 2d12 and choose either maneuver.

 

[l0lzero]

I would like to interject a bah-humbug here; riposte, parry, evasive footwork.

Riposte and Parry are reaction maneuvers (by 20th you end up with 9 of 16 maneuvers, having 3 of them be basically unusable intuitively seems wrong to me) and evasive footwork doesn't rely on opponent openings. With either system (the refresh d6 and the opposed roll) he wouldn't really have the option to use 2 of them ever, and the third one applies against all opponents so having it based on enemy opening seems counterintuitive.

I really feel like the die based system is not only the most balanced, but the most functional. Otherwise, those are 3 really good maneuvers that you just never get to use (at least 2 you can't since they're reactions, the other just doesn't make sense given the system). You could fix this by letting them do those maneuvers whenever, but then there's no good reason to ever not use them, and since you'd necessarily be decoupling maneuvers from superiority dice, there wouldn't be a limit.

If you want it to be a little more realistic, you could add a mechanic to allow for the refreshing of superiority dice similar to the d6 refresh model, or by making a different system (like a second-wind type SD refresh, recover 1d4+int/wis (I think wis makes more sense since it's about noticing openings) SD as a bonus action 1/rest). OR, you could allow him to always have superiority dice, but those always on SD are d4. He'd be able to, effectively, grant himself inspiration for attack/damage. A d4 isn't really going to break anything, but it will let him feel like he's always got the opportunity to use his maneuvers, or he can perform the maneuver, but gets no superiority dice for the maneuver, and some maneuvers become worthless without SD, others are not, but he is ALWAYS a battlemaster this way in that he always has a tactical attack option, but then he can riposte all the time limited only by having a reaction. The last option I would say that he can choose to spend a superiority die when performing a maneuver to gain the benefits that the SD grants for that attack (you can always trip an enemy, but you can only add damage when you spend the die), which would let him more strategically choose to boost his damage/to hit and still be an always on battlemaster (because really, without SD, the battlemaster is just a champion fighter without remarkable athlete or expanded crit range).

The issue is that the SD system is already "balanced" so changing it up requires a lot of math to see how it would actually affect the game in practical terms.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Hi all!

I have a player getting ready to take the Battle Master archetype and he had a request. Rather than having a set number of Superiority Dice to use per short rest, he's asked for a way to roll during each round of combat to see if he sees an "opening" in his enemy's defenses to perform a maneuver. I told him I love the idea and would get back with him on the specifics by next session.

So I basically see two ways of doing this, I could go the complicated way and compare some sort of deception or perception check from my PC against a deception or perception check from the enemy or could just work out the averages on a die role so that he gets about the same amount of Maneuvers per short rest.

You could lift the fighter 'maneuver' mechanic from 13th Age (13A is kinda meant to be stolen from that way).

Actually it's extensively used with monsters, too. The idea is to base the maneuver availability (or use in the case of monsters) on the natural d20 roll. So if you roll odd you can use one maneuver, add above 15 that maneuver or a different one, even nothing. That kind of thing. You can even have maneuvers that key off a miss, like a even or odd miss, or the like, or that work whether you hit or miss. It's a pretty practical system and it neatly captures the idea of taking advantage of openings as they happen, but it does suck almost all tactics and even autonomy out of the fighter, making it into a sort of video-game AI that just sorta plays itself.


Another option that retains more agency for the fighter, while removing some of the oddness would be to have CS dice refresh at the start of combat, instead of on a rest. Yes, that makes them approximately twice as available, I don't think that'll break the game. But, if you wanted a corresponding limit, you could rule that the same maneuver can't be used twice in the same encounter (or twice on the same opponent or simply twice in a row) on the theory that they are trick maneuvers and the same enemies won't keep falling for the same one over and over.

 

[OB1]

I would like to interject a bah-humbug here; riposte, parry, evasive footwork.

Hmm, this is a good point I hadn't thought about. This is what I love about coming to the boards, so many great players to bounce things off of before I test them out in play!

I think my new method that allows him to collect up to three battle die that last for a minute helps, but doesn't totally solve this. Perhaps I could also let him make the skill check as part of the reaction when attempting to use one of these maneuvers? If he already has a maneuver die available against that enemy he could use that instead of a check.

Also, I think I'm making one more tweak. Rather than just say he can only make 1 of each ability check, instead I think I'm going to raise the DC by 5 for each subsequent check using the same ability score against the same opponent.