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

[Don Durito]

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?

 

[DND_Reborn]

IIRC, GWM increases average damage for a 2d6 weapon by 1.33 points. Reducing Duelist to +1, but allowing it to work with a shield, is reasonable IMO.

Taking duelist away frmo S&B fighters limits them to either Defensive or Protective styles. Defensive is good and works well IMO, but Protective has always been lackluster.

All that being said, IME every table has used feats, and damage is the "cheapest" and most common boost, so the +2 of Duelist is good, but not over the top. I would find it more reasonable for you to reduce it to +1 damage but allow it with a shield, than require the second hand be empty.

 

[dregntael]

In my house rules, I've gone the other way and buffed the GW and protection fighting styles to bring them in line with the other styles:

• Great weapon fighting: When you deal damage with a heavy weapon, you roll an extra damage die and drop the lowest result.
• Protection: While you are holding a shield, all allies within 5 feet of you gain half cover against attacks from enemies you can see.

So for GWF, greataxe becomes 2d12 drop lowest, and greatsword becomes 3d6 drop lowest. I like this solution because it brings both weapons to the same average damage (8.46 for greatsword and 8.49 for greataxe). To balance things out in combination with feats, I've also limited the +10 damage from GWF and SS to be usable only once per turn.

The main change to protection is to make it work passively like all other fighting styles, but then giving disadvantage felt too strong so I changed it to half cover.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think duelist is fine. If we're using the standard conversion math it would be archery style that's the biggest deal wouldn't it? Even without accompanying feats. Setting that aside though, yeah, duelist is better than GW style. I would also prefer the +1 may use with shield option, although you could combine two by just leaving the damage at+2 with no shield, and dropping it to +1 with shield in hand, covering both your bases.

 

[Minigiant]

Well, GWF is really for the greatsword, double scimitar, crits, and bonus dice. You get 1.0-1.33 damage bonus.

The S&B duelist warrior get +2 damage and AC.
The GW GWF warrior gets 1.0-1.33 damage depending on weapon, scales better with more die, and an optional feat to further boost damage.

Seems mostly fair.

 

[TwoSix]

In my house rules, I've gone the other way and buffed the GW and protection fighting styles to bring them in line with the other styles:

• Great weapon fighting: When you deal damage with a heavy weapon, you roll an extra damage die and drop the lowest result.
• Protection: While you are holding a shield, all allies within 5 feet of you gain half cover against attacks from enemies you can see.

So for GWF, greataxe becomes 2d12 drop lowest, and greatsword becomes 3d6 drop lowest. I like this solution because it brings both weapons to the same average damage (8.46 for greatsword and 8.49 for greataxe). To balance things out in combination with feats, I've also limited the +10 damage from GWF and SS to be usable only once per turn.

The main change to protection is to make it work passively like all other fighting styles, but then giving disadvantage felt too strong so I changed it to half cover.

I really like these changes, although I think I would apply GWF to any two-handed weapon, or a versatile weapon wielding in 2 hands. Archers would still prefer archery fighting style, but it gives the 2h fighter a bonus when they pull out a bow.

 

[ad_hoc]

They're all close enough to be fine.

Protection is highly underrated. It is much more powerful in a game where the DM has the monsters attack the weaker characters.

 

[Esker]

If you don't let duelist work with a shield then it becomes strictly for DEX rapier builds, since for a STR build it would be strictly worse than using a two-handed weapon.

 

[Weiley31]

They're all close enough to be fine.

Protection is highly underrated. It is much more powerful in a game where the DM has the monsters attack the weaker characters.

That's why you replace it with the much more superior Interception Style from UA.

 

[Helldritch]

They're all close enough to be fine.

Protection is highly underrated. It is much more powerful in a game where the DM has the monsters attack the weaker characters.

You're absolutely right. Most low AC characters in my games cringe when there is no protection style combattant. If there is one, they stick as much as possible to the character. Imposing disadvantage can be really big, especialy if a bard used Vicious Mockery. On a creature attacking twice, that can mean two attacks made with disadvantage.