D&D 5E Level 11+: How do the Warriors compare?

[Saeviomagy]

So, I was wanting to explore changing weapon damage to be 1[W] per tier, just like cantrips. Characters would drop down to single attacks, except TWFing. There would also be learned maneuvers for the warriors to allow for other tricks, like giving up a weapon die to split your attacks between multiple targets (this way, your multitarget damage is cumulatively higher than your single target damage, but your single target damage is higher per target; 1d8+5 to two or 2d8+5 to one, for instance).

Yeah, but warriors already lag when it comes to fighting groups... now they're giving up dice and having to learn maneuvers to be poor at it?

In place of Extra Attack, the warrior classes would get abilities like the cantrip users and clerics get.

Exciting!

They'd get across the board buffs to their attacks.

aww That's not really what the cantrip users are trading "slightly degraded combat efficiency" for. They're trading it for "massively increased out of combat ability".

This way, a multiclasser wouldn't necessarily feel rushed to reach 5th level in a particular class to keep up, but the classes are still rewarded at certain tiers.

The problem to me looks like I'm better off waving a greatsword instead of slinging cantrips even if I have no stat modifier or levels in martial classes.

In my initial ideas, I ended up with the following abilities. They were all balanced roughly equally with the PHB versions, but things got weird past that:

Barbarian: half-damage on a miss. When a barbarian attacks you, even if your armor takes it, it still hurts.

Which is problematic because this would still apply against people not wearing any armor at all. It's also problematic because it's diminishing the value of reckless attack by quite a bit, and radically changing the balance between damage dealt and attack bonus.

It also doesn't mesh with any mind view that sees hit points as not being just meat.

Valor Bard and the other Gishes: War Magic. Instead of Extra Attack, let them make attacks and cantrip uses at the same time. This needs to explicitly state that it's a 1W weapon attack, though.

1W + modifiers + X<cantrip dice> is only going to be competitive with XW+modifiers with specific cantrips and weapon combinations. Also this is way, way worse than what you gave barbarians.

Fighter: Weapon Mastery. The Fighter gets a bonus to hit and damage with weapon attacks. Not counting barbarian reckless attack, fighters are the most accurate. This is easily balanced through level 20, though I'd recommend moving their capstones around since weapon damage scales at 17th.

With the above modification, barbarians literally never ever miss, so they are the most accurate, no matter what bonus you hand out here. Ironically a high attack bonus here would mean that barbarians are the most accurate, while warriors are the hardest hitting.

Monk: Improved Martial Arts. The monk keeps their multiple attacks. While their main attack scales with additional dice, they'll gain more 1W unarmed attacks.

Paladin: Improved Divine Smite. Move the paladin's improved divine smite earlier. They get extra radiant damage on their attacks sooner to keep up with the curve.

Ranger: Hunter's Quarry. Give Rangers a form of sneak attack against targeted foes. It's similar to the paladin's radiant damage. Maybe let this bypass any damage resistances? Or something.

The rest of these are too vague to really comment on.

All up... interesting idea. But it does kind of seem to be fixing something that's a bit of a non-issue with an overly large hammer.

 

[Blue]

An issue is that extra attack is supposed to be a lot better then cantrips. A caster has cantrips ... plus everything else they do. Weapon damage dealers just have their weapon. Extra attack adds in both their STR or DEX modifier plus all of their other modifiers - rage to melee, fighting styles, feats, 11th level features that add to each attack - to each attack.

Now, as a mechanic I like what you are doing better. It's very 13th Age, which is a 10 level system and weapon wielders do [lvl]d[W], and adds in STR/DEX once per tier. But 5e weapon balance assumes extra attacks for most classes and your proposed rule doesn't take everything else that gets loaded into that, so it's not balanced vs. the rest of the system.

 

[Xeviat]

Since my warriors would be better at fighting groups, I'm going to guess that you aren't really groking what I'm saying. I'll post some math tonight.


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[Tony Vargas]

Since my warriors would be better at fighting groups, I'm going to guess that you aren't really groking what I'm saying. I'll post some math tonight.

I must have missed that bit, as well?

Extra Attack is problematic, but it's also potentially quite powerful, and the fighter, the poster boy for 5e Extra Attack, depends on being 'best' at fighting (with weapons), via Extra Attack & Action surge, to balance being marginal outside of combat.

 

[LapBandit]

I have an idea. Leave things as they are and don't scale cantrips at all. Martial characters are already at a HUGE disadvantage 11+ when magic becomes reality-shaking and problem-resolving in even the toughest situations, they do not need their versatility reduced.

 

[Immoralkickass]

That would be a straight up nerf, as less attacks means less chance to crit, and less damage rider bonus.

 

[Gladius Legis]

I have an idea. Leave things as they are and don't scale cantrips at all. Martial characters are already at a HUGE disadvantage 11+ when magic becomes reality-shaking and problem-resolving in even the toughest situations, they do not need their versatility reduced.

Scaling cantrips as they are currently are easily my least favorite thing about this edition.

That said, I'd probably be OK with them getting one scaling level (Lv. 11). Other than that, though, I agree.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I have an idea. Leave things as they are and don't scale cantrips at all. Martial characters are already at a HUGE disadvantage 11+ when magic becomes reality-shaking and problem-resolving in even the toughest situations, they do not need their versatility reduced.

Do you really feel that being able to deal around 16 damage per round at will is stepping on a level 11 martial character's toes? I'd expect most martial character's at-will damage is over twice that.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I prefer to keep my extra attacks. More chances to crit, and more chances to score a hit. Also more opportunities to use different battle master maneuvers on separate attacks.

 

[Hillsy7]

Hi everyone. I've been working on a house rule to remove Extra Attack. I was reminded of it by the recent alternative multiclassing thread. I dislike the juxtaposition of Extra Attack alongside the beautiful Rogue progression and the spellcaster's cantrip progression.

Ok - firstly well done for posting your homebrewing methodology the right way. Namely, "I don't like this", rather than "This is clearly bad and broken and WHY DIDN'T WotC ASK ME TO DESIGN 5TH EDITION?! WHYYYY!!!!!"....so much kudos there!


I've got some questions that may seem facetious but aren't meant that way.

1) Have you played much 4th Edition? I'm guessing so because you used the [W] syntax. What you are doing is literally turning 5th edition basic attacks into 4th edition style at-wills. Which is fine, but it does beg the question why you've switched to 5th edition. Just because 4th Ed isn't the newest edition, doesn't make your preference for it Bad or Wrong.

2) Do you understand the design decisions that have gone into extra attack and cantrips (not just with each other, but compared to the old 3.5 BAB system)? The choices made mean that cantrips and extra attacks (mostly) work in specific design ways so they have a different feel over and above just the maths. Spell cantrips tend to have much swingier damage (4d8 on a hit) compared melee attacks, that not only have multiple attack rolls (flattening out damage average) but have a much higher baseline because of modifier damage. This makes melee attacks and cantrips feel different, while DPR-wise being balanced.

3) Are you playing in a game where cantrips are used much more than spells other than at the lower levels (before cantrip progression and extra attack)? Most of my experience is that cantrips are a last resort once you're out of spells (want to conserve a couple) and you don't want to pick up a Crossbow (a la 3.5). That's why they are built like mini-spells (swingy all dice damage and no mods with no damage on a miss/save rather than half). So in a combat of 5 rounds, you're probably casting 3 spells and a couple of cantrips. They are hardly the core structure of the caster class, and shouldn't really be considered the pinnacle of game design. (NB: because of static damage, swinging a long sword at level 5 with 18 STR gives you 17 damage average per turn. A level 17 ray of frost does 18 average - this is to keep a melee character on par with a spellcasters bigger spells).

At the end of the day, it's your call and to be fair you've couched it in a way that tells us all it's just something personal to you, which is fine. If you want to tinker with the rules, the guys at D&D actively encourage it - it's guide, a starting point. If it doesn't provide the gaming experience you crave - or you simply want to mess about and personalise it (Hell, I know that feeling....it's FUN!) - more power to you.

However, I will say take a bit of time and have a real think about why you feel this change is necessary, for the sake of your own games. If it's because you and your friends want their own personal experience, great. If it's for fun, or just to try out, superb! But if it's because you fundamentally feel that WotC did a bad job that's ruining your enjoyment of the game - I think you need to do significantly more research before you start breaking apart the fundamental balance 5e has in the game (deliberate choices made by experience game designers), because you might seriously damage the game for your players.

Or better still, just build your own gaming system - you're not beholden then to any of the structure and inherent tradeoffs that exist in D&D 5e....you clearly seem to like the numerical crunch of the thing, so build your own RPG mechanics. I've got 4 or 5 I like to muck about with occasionally because I like the probability and mathematical challenges they throw up.