D&D 5E New maneuver; deadly strike.

[Horwath]

I have an idea for new battlemaster/spell-less ranger maneuver.

very simple;

Deadly strike;
before rolling for attack spend a superiority die.
If attack hits roll 2 dices for extra damage.

it gives more damage than other maneuvers, but it's risky as you must use it beforehand and may miss and waste the superiority die.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

If that works for your group, great. I'd personally never use it, and I doubt any of my play group would either.

Giving up the guarantee that you aren't just wasting a limited resource for no benefit, and also giving up the potential for your resource spending to give you more than just additional damage (such as tripping or pushing your target) is a net loss - even when getting to potentially add more damage.

If monsters were actually hard to kill quickly through teamwork, this proposed maneuver might be more appealing.

 

[FrogReaver]

I have an idea for new battlemaster/spell-less ranger maneuver.

very simple;

Deadly strike;
before rolling for attack spend a superiority die.
If attack hits roll 2 dices for extra damage.

it gives more damage than other maneuvers, but it's risky as you must use it beforehand and may miss and waste the superiority die.

I like the concept. I think it should not use weapon dice. Roll 2x superiority dice instead. However, even then it's likely a fair bit better than the regular ones that add a single superirity dice to damage.

Chance to hit most enemies will fall somewhere between 50% and 75%. At 50% my suggested change would make it basically equaivalent in the long run and situationally better in some circumstances but not all. However, at 75% chacne to hit its loads better in the long run as well as having way more situations where it will be situationally useful. In fact it'd be very rare for the regular 1d8 damage abilities to come close to this one ever. It's almost a must pick IMO and definitely a must pick for archers with their naturally higher chance to hit.

Though the super good damage effectiveness of this ability may be apprpriate since damage is all that it does.

Ultimately it's not a game game breaking ability even if it does slightly more damage. It can be justified in that you are trading this damage for less utility. And ultimately it's at most 50% more damage from superiority dice which is a relatively minor buff given the percent of your total damage a day that actually comes from superiority dice. Comparing this to wise use of precision attack and the -5/+10 damage feats it will likely result in less damage than precision attack and damage feats could do anyways, I think it will be a fine addition.

 

[Tony Vargas]

One thing that seemed to get hashed out in the playtest was that, at least for a class with multiple attacks like the fighter, damage was always going to be king. There was just no way found around it: if there was a moar damage option it'd tend to crowd other options out. So rather than MDD that did extra damage but which you traded out for maneuvers earlier in the playtest, we got CS dice which added a little extra damage /and/ fueled a maneuver. You didn't have to give up damage to add a little wrinkle to combat via a maneuver. Of course, that didn't leave a lot of oomph for the maneuvers, themselves, so they can be a tad 'meh,' but the CS die's extra damage is generally useful.

 

[Horwath]

I like the concept. I think it should not use weapon dice. Roll 2x superiority dice instead. However, even then it's likely a fair bit better than the regular ones that add a single superirity dice to damage.

Chance to hit most enemies will fall somewhere between 50% and 75%. At 50% my suggested change would make it basically equaivalent in the long run and situationally better in some circumstances but not all. However, at 75% chacne to hit its loads better in the long run as well as having way more situations where it will be situationally useful. In fact it'd be very rare for the regular 1d8 damage abilities to come close to this one ever. It's almost a must pick IMO and definitely a must pick for archers with their naturally higher chance to hit.

Though the super good damage effectiveness of this ability may be apprpriate since damage is all that it does.

Ultimately it's not a game game breaking ability even if it does slightly more damage. It can be justified in that you are trading this damage for less utility. And ultimately it's at most 50% more damage from superiority dice which is a relatively minor buff given the percent of your total damage a day that actually comes from superiority dice. Comparing this to wise use of precision attack and the -5/+10 damage feats it will likely result in less damage than precision attack and damage feats could do anyways, I think it will be a fine addition.

Maybe I have written it poorly.

I meant that you roll 2 superiority dices, not weapon damage.
[MENTION=52548]Aaron[/MENTION]
If it's too weak, maybe add that you can roll 3 dices instead of 2 if you have advantage on attack roll vs. target.

Like fighters own limited version of sneak attack.

 

[FrogReaver]

Maybe I have written it poorly.

I meant that you roll 2 superiority dices, not weapon damage.

If it's too weak, maybe add that you can roll 3 dices instead of 2 if you have advantage on attack roll vs. target.

Like fighters own limited version of sneak attack.

amazed you could read my post and come away with thinking it's too weak.

 

[Horwath]

amazed you could read my post and come away with thinking it's too weak.

sorry,

edited the post to address the second part to Aaron.

 

[FrogReaver]

sorry,

edited the post to address the second part to Aaron.

makes so much more sense now!

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

[MENTION=52548]Aaron[/MENTION]
If it's too weak, maybe add that you can roll 3 dices instead of 2 if you have advantage on attack roll vs. target.

Like fighters own limited version of sneak attack.

It's not about it being "too weak", it's about it being a bum deal right up until it is so powerful that no other maneuver is as appealing - because spend 1 die and maybe something happens will always be a worse deal than spend 1 die and definitely add damage plus also maybe something else, unless we are talking about very intense effect for the first option like the "maybe" being "maybe you kill any enemy it is reasonable for you to face in just your action."

 

[MechaPilot]

I'd be inclined to make a deadly strike maneuver be something more like this:

If you beat the target's AC by 5 or more and you do damage to the target that is greater than its Constitution score, you may spend a superiority die to force the target to make a Con save with a DC equal to half the damage dealt to it. Failing this save results in the target being reduced to zero HPs.

Note that the above is just off the top of my head brainstorming. It might make more sense to require two superiority dice, or to require the attack to use up all of your extra attacks.