From another thread, I expressed my desire to open the possibilities of more well-balanced martials attribute-wise, and another poster suggested the following:
Afterwards I started thinking about the idea and came up with this:
Martial flexibility
Prerequisite: Strength 15 or higher, 6th level or higher (or maybe 4th level or higher...)
When you are wielding a melee weapon with which you are proficient that does not have the heavy property, you can calculate you melee attack and damage bonus as though your attacking attribute was the sum of your dexterity and strength -10 (maximum 20).
Then there would be a similar feat for ranged attacks, requiring dex 15+ and maybe excluding mechanical ranged weapons (crossbows) instead of heavy ones, but otherwise the same.
Some thoughts on my own design:
First, it is not elegant. I was trying to make it somehow value a little bit the odd scores. But then, instead of just adding the dex and str bonuses and capping at +5 I came up with such ugly equation. Moreover, I added a level gate, which as far as I remember is without precedent in 5e feat design. I thought about adding this to avoid "problems" with variant humans. The level 6 would be more of a attempt to sync with the earliest maxing of the primary atribute, which leads to the second point...
Second, it is potentially cheaper to max. Using standard array, usually it would take two ABIs to max out the main attack, but with this proposal it takes only one if someone starts off str & dex 15+. I am taking this into account, as on the other hand the PC cannot dump the other score at character creation (which seems to be very common, at least for fighters and rogues), and also when a PC increases an attribute, it is not only attack and damage they are increasing. For a dx character that also means AC, init, dex save and a few nice skills. For the str one it may mean less, but having a good str (athletics) goes a long way being an effective tank and helping battlefield control.
Third, I am not sure it is balanced/creates unexpected interactions with other parts of the game. I excluded heavy weapons from the melee version because heavy melee weapons seem to be by design the purview of str. If it were balanced, I would even imagine going as far as proposing something similar for spellcasters, let's say something to allow warlocks to mix up a little int on their spellcasting.
So, any thoughts, suggestions, critiques? Is it too dumb, too unbalanced, am I not seeing an obviously broken detail in it at all? Are there any different ideas completely unrelated to feats but that would address the same point? Am I too nearsighted to see that the game already provides with plenty of incentives for martials to be all-around balanced?
Everything is welcome, thank you guys in advance.
Afterwards I started thinking about the idea and came up with this:
Martial flexibility
Prerequisite: Strength 15 or higher, 6th level or higher (or maybe 4th level or higher...)
When you are wielding a melee weapon with which you are proficient that does not have the heavy property, you can calculate you melee attack and damage bonus as though your attacking attribute was the sum of your dexterity and strength -10 (maximum 20).
Then there would be a similar feat for ranged attacks, requiring dex 15+ and maybe excluding mechanical ranged weapons (crossbows) instead of heavy ones, but otherwise the same.
Some thoughts on my own design:
First, it is not elegant. I was trying to make it somehow value a little bit the odd scores. But then, instead of just adding the dex and str bonuses and capping at +5 I came up with such ugly equation. Moreover, I added a level gate, which as far as I remember is without precedent in 5e feat design. I thought about adding this to avoid "problems" with variant humans. The level 6 would be more of a attempt to sync with the earliest maxing of the primary atribute, which leads to the second point...
Second, it is potentially cheaper to max. Using standard array, usually it would take two ABIs to max out the main attack, but with this proposal it takes only one if someone starts off str & dex 15+. I am taking this into account, as on the other hand the PC cannot dump the other score at character creation (which seems to be very common, at least for fighters and rogues), and also when a PC increases an attribute, it is not only attack and damage they are increasing. For a dx character that also means AC, init, dex save and a few nice skills. For the str one it may mean less, but having a good str (athletics) goes a long way being an effective tank and helping battlefield control.
Third, I am not sure it is balanced/creates unexpected interactions with other parts of the game. I excluded heavy weapons from the melee version because heavy melee weapons seem to be by design the purview of str. If it were balanced, I would even imagine going as far as proposing something similar for spellcasters, let's say something to allow warlocks to mix up a little int on their spellcasting.
So, any thoughts, suggestions, critiques? Is it too dumb, too unbalanced, am I not seeing an obviously broken detail in it at all? Are there any different ideas completely unrelated to feats but that would address the same point? Am I too nearsighted to see that the game already provides with plenty of incentives for martials to be all-around balanced?
Everything is welcome, thank you guys in advance.
