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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tigris" data-source="post: 9831708" data-attributes="member: 7043270">InspirationWell 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 5EBut 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 are1. 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 weapons3. 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.</blockquote>

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