D&D 5E (2024) Modular and reloadable cartrips, encounter powers and martial techniques.

[LuisCarlos17f]

Do you remember the martial maneuvers from "Tome of Battle: Book of the nine Swords"? Yes, I understand the update of the martial classes, crusader, warblade and swordsage aren't easy but this doesn't mean to be totally impossible. On the other hand one of the fun parts of D&D is playtesting a homemade class.
I guess WotC doesn't want to publish a sourcebook about new classes with special game mechanics because they worry this crunch would be only interesting for a smaller group of players. And could this be fixed? Here I have got some suggestion to allow this special crunch could be interesting for the rest of players.

A measure could be to create one-encounter-duration spells and magic items. For example a paladin reads a "martial script" to learn "crusader's strike" (when your attack hits you or your ally within 10 feet heals 1d6 hit points +1 each initiator level until max 5). Then the martial maneuver is activated in the encounter against the dungeon boss. Until the end of the encounter the paladin can uses this manuever all the times she wanted... but only if she uses some special action to reload.

The schools of devoted spirit and white raven could be useful for a potential future warlord class. (Maybe this is using some special magic banner). The keys are easy to be understood and not slowing down the fight with unnecessary complications

Crusader could be a paladin subclasss and warblade a fighter subclass. The swordsage could be replaced by the cultivator, a new class inspirated into xianxia fiction.

Other option could be using a pool of power points but this would be totally reloaded each new encounter, or the PC would need to earn "agro power points" with each sucessful attack. In the end of the fight all the agro points would disappear and in the next encounter the PC should start from zero to reload the agro power points.

If the design was right for a right power balance but also a fun and fast gamepley this could be playtested to update the incarnum soulmelds in the future.

 

[tetrasodium]

Do you remember the martial maneuvers from "Tome of Battle: Book of the nine Swords"? Yes, I understand the update of the martial classes, crusader, warblade and swordsage aren't easy but this doesn't mean to be totally impossible. On the other hand one of the fun parts of D&D is playtesting a homemade class.
I guess WotC doesn't want to publish a sourcebook about new classes with special game mechanics because they worry this crunch would be only interesting for a smaller group of players. And could this be fixed? Here I have got some suggestion to allow this special crunch could be interesting for the rest of players.

A measure could be to create one-encounter-duration spells and magic items. For example a paladin reads a "martial script" to learn "crusader's strike" (when your attack hits you or your ally within 10 feet heals 1d6 hit points +1 each initiator level until max 5). Then the martial maneuver is activated in the encounter against the dungeon boss. Until the end of the encounter the paladin can uses this manuever all the times she wanted... but only if she uses some special action to reload.

The schools of devoted spirit and white raven could be useful for a potential future warlord class. (Maybe this is using some special magic banner). The keys are easy to be understood and not slowing down the fight with unnecessary complications

Crusader could be a paladin subclasss and warblade a fighter subclass. The swordsage could be replaced by the cultivator, a new class inspirated into xianxia fiction.

Other option could be using a pool of power points but this would be totally reloaded each new encounter, or the PC would need to earn "agro power points" with each sucessful attack. In the end of the fight all the agro points would disappear and in the next encounter the PC should start from zero to reload the agro power points.

If the design was right for a right power balance but also a fun and fast gamepley this could be playtested to update the incarnum soulmelds in the future.

I remember them. The Odyssey/moldvey stuff that mike Mearls has on his patreon includes classes with a couple variations of this kind of stuff in the last couple phb drops he's done. This one for example

https://www.patreon.com/posts/moldvay-147033869?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_fan&utm_content=web_share

He's still hammering out/rebuilding details in various areas of the system but so far it's shaping up looking like a pretty solid start when my biggest concern is that range far gets set to an overly long or overly specific 300 feet that lays well into the USMC sitting/kneeling/prone rifle qualification ranges.

edit: also checkout draw steel

 

[Minigiant]

I've always been a fan of Fighting games and would love if classes could get a super bar/gauge. A short or long rest rests you to 1 stock and each attack by you, hit to you, or advanced movement builds the gauge.

Martials could do special attacks or movements by spending 1, 2, or 3 stocks of their gauge. Casters could do this as well, but would require also expending a spell slot..

It would be a lot of tracking, but it would be fun for the people who do enjoy those kind of things..

 

[HatWearingFool]

I've always been a fan of Fighting games and would love if classes could get a super bar/gauge. A short or long rest rests you to 1 stock and each attack by you, hit to you, or advanced movement builds the gauge.

Martials could do special attacks or movements by spending 1, 2, or 3 stocks of their gauge. Casters could do this as well, but would require also expending a spell slot..

It would be a lot of tracking, but it would be fun for the people who do enjoy those kind of things..

You should look at Drawsteel. You power up through out a fight giving you the ability to use bigger abilities, and the more battles you have fought means the more power you start the next encounter with (until you rest).

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Do you remember the martial maneuvers from "Tome of Battle: Book of the nine Swords"? Yes, I understand the update of the martial classes, crusader, warblade and swordsage aren't easy but this doesn't mean to be totally impossible. On the other hand one of the fun parts of D&D is playtesting a homemade class.
I guess WotC doesn't want to publish a sourcebook about new classes with special game mechanics because they worry this crunch would be only interesting for a smaller group of players. And could this be fixed? Here I have got some suggestion to allow this special crunch could be interesting for the rest of players.

A measure could be to create one-encounter-duration spells and magic items. For example a paladin reads a "martial script" to learn "crusader's strike" (when your attack hits you or your ally within 10 feet heals 1d6 hit points +1 each initiator level until max 5). Then the martial maneuver is activated in the encounter against the dungeon boss. Until the end of the encounter the paladin can uses this manuever all the times she wanted... but only if she uses some special action to reload.

The schools of devoted spirit and white raven could be useful for a potential future warlord class. (Maybe this is using some special magic banner). The keys are easy to be understood and not slowing down the fight with unnecessary complications

Crusader could be a paladin subclasss and warblade a fighter subclass. The swordsage could be replaced by the cultivator, a new class inspirated into xianxia fiction.

Other option could be using a pool of power points but this would be totally reloaded each new encounter, or the PC would need to earn "agro power points" with each sucessful attack. In the end of the fight all the agro points would disappear and in the next encounter the PC should start from zero to reload the agro power points.

If the design was right for a right power balance but also a fun and fast gamepley this could be playtested to update the incarnum soulmelds in the future.

I think the main point here is per encounter abilities, of which I am in favour.

 

[Blue]

Do you remember the martial maneuvers from "Tome of Battle: Book of the nine Swords"? Yes, I understand the update of the martial classes, crusader, warblade and swordsage aren't easy but this doesn't mean to be totally impossible. On the other hand one of the fun parts of D&D is playtesting a homemade class.

These all should be possible with some updates to the letter and spirit of the 5e rules. Could be a lot of fun.

I guess WotC doesn't want to publish a sourcebook about new classes with special game mechanics because they worry this crunch would be only interesting for a smaller group of players.

Not sure where you're getting their intent from, they've posted a new class, the Artificer, before. I don't think we can divine intent, just observe the fact that after they did it a lot in previous editions (3.x and 4e) they are going a lot lighter on that, just like they are going a lot lighter on a publishing schedule for books with character-creation additions.

A measure could be to create one-encounter-duration spells and magic items. For example a paladin reads a "martial script" to learn "crusader's strike" (when your attack hits you or your ally within 10 feet heals 1d6 hit points +1 each initiator level until max 5). Then the martial maneuver is activated in the encounter against the dungeon boss. Until the end of the encounter the paladin can uses this manuever all the times she wanted... but only if she uses some special action to reload.

This looks nifty. It seems to have two parts, are they integral that they are together? I mean the first part is an at-will power that can be switched up between encounters (I assume the 'reloadable cantrips' part of the post title), and the second part is a recoverable 1/encounter power. Both seem like via interesting mechanics to explore either together or apart.

Now, 5e is a separate edition from 3.5, and there's the question if the goal is to recreate the 3.5 versions of these as mechanically close as possible even when that is at-odds with existing 5e design, or to use them to inspire 5e versions that represent the spirit of the classes but are willing to harmonize the mechanics with 5e? One of the major choices I see with this is per-encounter vs. per-short rest. Having yet-another measure of recharge in a party complicates balance against other classes and the DM's job.

Crusader could be a paladin subclasss and warblade a fighter subclass. The swordsage could be replaced by the cultivator, a new class inspirated into xianxia fiction.

Cultivation, in context of how Eastern fiction uses it as a power-up mechanism for innate power, is done in D&D via gaining levels. Having a separate power up track for one class is something I would want to avoid.

Other option could be using a pool of power points but this would be totally reloaded each new encounter, or the PC would need to earn "agro power points" with each sucessful attack. In the end of the fight all the agro points would disappear and in the next encounter the PC should start from zero to reload the agro power points.

Both can work, and coexist (though likely on separate classes or subclasses). 5e already uses the power pool mechanic broadly in things like a Warlock's spell slots, a Monk's Ki, or a Battlemaster's Martial Dice (with the 5e change of per-encounter to per-short-rest).

A pool you grow with each attack, building up either each succeeding attack or leading to powerful finale attacks, I think could be a really fun mechanic. That said, I would not make it each successful attack as you suggest because that means that bad dice luck hits the PC twice, once in that attack but also in removing whatever future power-up happens. So a few bad rolls can make a PC really be ineffective for an entire encounter which just isn't fun. (Yes, I realize that the opposite can make someone shine a bit more, but with an average success rate of 65% to hit, a few good roles just means maybe 1-2 more hits which isn't that great of a deal.)

 

[Composer99]

Puts me in mind of Limit Breaks from Final Fantasy games or the warrior class's Rage resource in World of Warcraft.

 

[mellored]

I had a similar idea in the back of my mind, but each class charges their power in a different way.

I.e.
Barbarian: when you take damage, increase the damage you deal. This bonus ends when your rage ends.

Bard: Each verse you sing increases the potency of the next verse.

Warlock: each time you deal damage, you gain a spell slot 1 level higher. Resets when you cast a spell.

Or some such.

 

[Tigris]

Inspiration


Well the Tome of Battle was to some degree playtest material for 4E, so these kind of things would be a lot more at home in 4e especially since 4E has "encounter abilities". It did not have random effects, but the daily abilities with encounter long errects made sure different encounters would play different.


Also one problem with "ressources" (as can be seen in the 4e psionic classes) instead of encounter abilities, is that people will often just spam the same ability. Pathginder 2 and to a lesser degree Draw Steel have this design flaw.


Trespasser (at least the previous version, did not check the newest yet), does solve this problem by increasing the ressource cost of abilities after use. So if necessarily you can use the same ability again but it costs more.


I think thats a good design, if you want to use ressource points.


Putting it in 5E


But well lets see what we can do with 5th Edition. 5.24 did come closer to 4E with several mechanics, but it still does not have encounter abilities.


However, what we can use is "when you roll initiative" trigger abilities.


Also 5.24 added "Maneuvers" or rather "at will" abilities for Martials in the form of Weapon Mastery. You can use a different weapon for a different at will attack.

Its in theory a cool solution to add at wills, without calling it so, it only has one flaw: Magical Weapons.


As soon as you have a Magical weapon the weapon switching becomes ineffective. So we kind of need to solve this.

Fortunately 4th Edition did also have a solution for that. Assassins and other classes which would switch weapons, could use "Ki focus" which would apply the magic bonus to all weapons.


So the idea would be to give a magical amulet which can store a magical weapon and apply its bonus to any weapon being used in the main hand (and the to hit to the weapon in the srcond hand as well).



This would already allow to use of different weapons, but then there is another potentiam limiting factor: Fighting Styles.


So a feature to allow the use of different fighting styles with differenr weapons sounds like a good idea.


But also there is a problem with weapon switching from 1 hand + shield to 2 handed or 2 1 handed. So we need to allow that.


Now there is yet another potential factor limiting weapon use: Feats (like piercer etc.). Of course it would be too strong just to give feats becauae of the bonus stats, but if we leave that away that could make for another interesting potential feature to have acccess to different feats depending on the weapon used.


At this point nothing of this is "random" though so combats could still be similar to each other without needing to adapt. So lets include this. So how cpuld this look like?


1. You have the magic amulet as above.
2. You have 2 "ghostly weapons" choose for each of them a fighting style. When you hold it in your main hand (including 2 handed weapon) you gain the associated fighting style.
3. For each ghostly weapon choose 2 weapon types (scimitar, shoet aword long sword etc) each chosen weapon must have a different mastery property (so 4 different ones) When you roll initiative, both weapons randomly turn into 1 of the 2 chosen weapons. As long as a ghostly weapon is in your main hand you can use its weapon mastery peoperty.
4. Choose 4 level 4 feats for which you fulfill the requirements and make all choices for them. You cannot choose a feat you possess and you cannot gain a feat you have chosen. When you roll initiative pick 2 of those feats at random and distribute 1 each to both of your ghostly weapons. When holding the ghostly weapon in your mainhand you can use the feat as if you have it(but do not gain its stat bonus).
5. When you stow or draw a one handed weapon, you can for free stow or draw a weapon or shield with the other hand.


Now if we want to have this as a subclass (level 3 this should be fine for any strength based class so barbarian, paladin, fighter and ranger), we should also have some sort of ressource mechanic, else its a boring subclass and it also does not fulfill the power fantsy you describe.


Since many potential feats (piercer etc.) Have critical effects lets do something which plays a bit with them. And which makes xour maneuvers more reliable.

6. When you roll initiative roll 2 D20 and set them asside and you gain 2 fate points. When you make an attack roll after knowing if you hit or miss, you can exchange your attsck roll with one of the 2 dice. (Set the dice for you had with the attack roll asside). If this turns a hit into a miss this costs 1 fate point. You can also replace the damage roll of a weapon with one of the dice, if the result is not higher than the max dice size (so 8 msx with a d8).


This is actually easy to track. If you have some physicsl representation of your ghost weapons you put the 2 dice each on 1 of your weapons (with fighting style random weapon this combst and feat) and when you used the fate point you put it off the weapon next to it. And you can just change the dice values of these 2 dice when trading.



The ghost weapons could be "ancestral weapons" would fit the flavour nice. Both empower you once in a way.


This feature would give some nice thigns to play with, like stoeing a crit made with a small weapon to do it in the next attsck with a big weapon (with piercer or something similar), or when missing with a 7 rolled or so, you can trade it vs a low number you rolled and later increase a damage dice with it etc. Or if you know you hit with an 8, but have a 6 rolled, you can exchange a 8 rolled from a damage dice with the 6 to later turn a miss into a hit.


Of course if this is a "general" subclass the later subclass features must be adapted to the different main classes.



But general improvements one could have later in this subclass are

1. Upgrading weapon mastery properties (like giving them bigger effects)
2. Choosing a 5th feat and 3 feats are drawn and 1 is active for both weapons
3. Rolling 3 dice when rolling initiative and selecting 1 for the initiative and the other 2 for the stores dice.
4. Increasing the dice by 1 when exchanging it. (The one you store).
5. If you attack with advantage also being able to store the not used dice from the attack roll.
6. Having more fate points (a bit boring)


I know it sounds a bit complicated, but one could also make the preparation at the end of combat for the next (except the rolling) and what I like is that it makes use of what is already in 5.24 but use it to make your melee character more flexible and have a more martial based (+ magical weapons) subclass.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Thank you for your participation.
The idea is the updated martial maneuvers should work like melee-attack spells. The main difference would be they aren't at-will but almost, simplely to spend an action to reload. It would be like in a videogame where you hold down the button to then launch a more powerful attack when you release it.
The martial maneuvers should be interesting for DMs because a boss with maneuvers could need more strategy to be defeated. For example there is an encounter with a hobgobling squad whose mini-boss would be a captain with "crusader's strike" and his two bodyguards carring tower-shields. After striking the captain would hide behind the bodyguards' tower-shields to reload. Other idea is a squad whose captain be accompanied by a musician and (magic) standard bearer. The musician would be like a magic reloader and the magic banner would work like a power battery.
Now let's imagine Sturm III the knight finds the martial script with the martial maneuver "Shocking grasp" (a cartrip from PH). The martial script was crafted for no-spellcasters. The "martial script" wouldn't be spent after the first attack but after the end of the encounter. No spent but "unloaded". Then in the next turn Sturm can spend an action to reload the maneuver, and this can be used and reloaded more times until the end of the encounter.

A nerferd version of Valkyrias could be summoned like monster allies. Reth Dekala could be also a summoned enemy. The half-blood offspring of the naityan rakshasa could be used to playtest. (Monsters from 3.5 Tome of Battle).