D&D 5E Is Duellist style too good without feats.

[Helldritch]

Let us assume 20 in relevant stat (dex or st)
Great weapon style: Battle axe: 1-12, reroll any 1 or 2 so we can safely assume about 3-12. This gives us 8 to 17 damage with an average of 12.5 per hit. Our Great Sword master is a bit better off. 2d6 dmg reroll any 1 or 2 once per attack. Lets assume 1 roll every time. This means about 3-6 + 3-6 or 6-12, add in the stat and you get 11 - 17 or an average of 14. The great sword is clearly the better here. All great weapons should be on the 2d6 attack damage to justify a change in styles.

Dueling, lets go for the long blade option: 1d8 (long sword, or rapier) +7. This means 8-15 or an average of 11.5 per attack. The great axe user only gains 1 pt worth of damage over the dueling character but the great sword master gets about 3 more. On one attack it is not much, over 3 attacks it is 9 points of damage in favor the great sword master. At four attacks, it means 12 more points of damage. As much as one attack from the dueling character. The cost is two points of AC from a shield. If the dueling character is based on dexterity, this means that the AC advantage from dexterity is almost lost if we assume medium armor. Max AC bonus is +2 for such an armor so the maximum AC will be 19 with a shield. Unless the character wears plate and accept a penalty of movement (assuming strength is low...) dueling only wins one point of AC vs a great weapon style. So a dex based character loses a bit by using dex for dueling (barring multiclass character concepts like fighter/rogue).

If we take into consideration criticals...
The great weapon style double the dice (and let's forget that axe please). Lets assume one roll 3-6 + 3-6 + 1-6 + 1-6 + 5 this will give us 13 to 29 dmg for an average of 21 dmg.
The duelist will do 1-8 + 1-8 +7 for 2-16 +7 or an average of 16.

So duelist is not really out balanced. The benefits of a +2 in AC is quite good as most monster in the MM will have a relatively hard time hitting an AC 20.

I personally think that the problem comes from the 1d12 great weapons. The reroll of one dice is not enough to warrant using one of these. Glaive and Polearms give reach so the lessened damage is not that bad for this advantage. The great axe gives nothing for the loss of damage vs great sword. Either the great axe is bad, or the great sword is too good. So let's give the axe an edge. Why not introduce a new damage type:

Cleaving: A weapon with this property counts both as a slashing and blunt weapon. When it comes to take into account resistance or vulnerability to a damage type this weapon takes the most advantageous one for the user.

So if a creature has resistance to blunt or slashing, the axe does full damage in either case. If the creature has a weakness to one type of damage, the axe damage is increased. Not a great advantage but an advantage that justify only one die of damage. Since many enemies of dwarves like to use undead skeletons (orc shaman do animate fallen foes and friends) it would be a small justification.

 

[Don Durito]

If you find dueling too powerful, I would simply make it a flat +1 instead of +2. It is still useful for S&B types who don't want to take defensive or protection styles.

Because I'm not fully convinced it is too powerful. That's why I originally asked the question.

My major concerns are:

• It's possibly too good compared with Great Weapon Fighting without feats (although this isn't so bad overall - there's always going to be players who just like idea of using a big weapon and so long as they do the most damage they'll likely be happy - even if the difference isn't that great. (But buffing that damage by a point or two wouldn't be hard).
• It potentially crowds out the design space for new fighting styles.
• It makes Dex fighters who use a shield too good - this isn't really thematically appropriate for D&D and I'm convinced it wasn't really what the feat was intended to accomplish.

Upon consideration it's the last that bothers me the most. So by reducing the bonus with a shield to +1 and increasing the damage of strength based weapons, I would make strength a better choice for damage - I would also be keeping the damage baseline where it is, but making Duelist less of a must have choice (unless you want to go rapier without a shield - which is the fighting style the playtest documents suggest it was really intended to support).

 

[DND_Reborn]

Because I'm not fully convinced it is too powerful. That's why I originally asked the question.

My major concerns are:

• It's possibly too good compared with Great Weapon Fighting without feats (although this isn't so bad overall - there's always going to be players who just like idea of using a big weapon and so long as they do the most damage they'll likely be happy - even if the difference isn't that great. (But buffing that damage by a point or two wouldn't be hard).
• It potentially crowds out the design space for new fighting styles.
• It makes Dex fighters who use a shield too good - this isn't really thematically appropriate for D&D and I'm convinced it wasn't really what the feat was intended to accomplish.

Upon consideration it's the last that bothers me the most. So by reducing the bonus with a shield to +1 and increasing the damage of strength based weapons, I would make strength a better choice for damage - I would also be keeping the damage baseline where it is, but making Duelist less of a must have choice (unless you want to go rapier without a shield - which is the fighting style the playtest documents suggest it was really intended to support).

Since the last bullet is your main point of contention, and I agree this might have been the intent after playtest, how about that the other hand must be EMPTY. No other weapon, no shield, nothing at all--more akin to "fencing" style of dueling?

 

[Don Durito]

Since the last bullet is your main point of contention, and I agree this might have been the intent after playtest, how about that the other hand must be EMPTY. No other weapon, no shield, nothing at all--more akin to "fencing" style of dueling?

You mean like I said in the OP

But I think I'm actually, going to go further and just flat out ban finesse with a shield. So less clerics with rapiers also.

 

[DND_Reborn]

You mean like I said in the OP

But I think I'm actually, going to go further and just flat out ban finesse with a shield. So less clerics with rapiers also.

LOL sorry, between this threat and the other, I have been reading so many posts about it all it is hard to keep track of who said what, when, and where!

Banning finesse with a shield would be fine with me if I played at your table, personally, but the side effect is that it even more pigeon-holes weapon choices. Do you really want to see more dual-wielding clerics with rapiers?

 

[Don Durito]

LOL sorry, between this threat and the other, I have been reading so many posts about it all it is hard to keep track of who said what, when, and where!

Banning finesse with a shield would be fine with me if I played at your table, personally, but the side effect is that it even more pigeon-holes weapon choices. Do you really want to see more dual-wielding clerics with rapiers?

Without feats they'd just be wielding shortswords - but that strikes me as a bad choice for a cleric either way, they need their bonus actions.

 

[FrogReaver]

The differences in styles are mostly negligible without feats.

Defensive is the most useful as it gives you the most options throughout the game. It works with shields and 2 handed weapons giving you more flexibility in gearing up.

great weapon style is bad now but when it used to work with extra damage dice it was good

duelist is strongest early but can be less useful as your str goes up or if you get magic weapons that do +1d6 or +2d6 dmg.

archery has no competition for a primary archer.

Basically I asked this question in another thread but I thought it might get more answers in a thread of its own.

Basically as the title says.

If Great Weapon Master is allowed than Duelist style doesn't seem that great.

However, without that feat, Great Weapon Style possibly doesn't add enough extra damage to be worth the loss of 2 AC (Especially if you use a Great Axe).

There's also the fact that it seems the obvious choice for a sword and board fighter. Once you start getting multiple attacks, the extra damage is probably better than the +1 AC from Defensive Style, and it positively makes Protection Style look weak in comparison. It's also probably a much better pick than the early superiority dice you can get from the new class variants article (except perhap if you take that style as 1st level and are allowed to trade it out for duellist style when you get an extra attack. This also threatens to crowd out space for other potential future fighting styles.

So, l guess what I'm asking here is what should the baseline be?

One simple fix would be to just state that duelist style only works if you have one hand actually free, and therefore can't be used with a shield. In the absence of feats, this seems to balance out the fighting styles fairly well.

But it would be a straight nerf to sword and board fighters. So that's the question. Would taking duellist away from sword and board fighters weaken them too much? Do you feel that having that extra damage is important to the classes?