D&D 5E Passive or Active Fighting Styles?

[Li Shenron]

To my mind, if I understand @Li Shenron correctly, his comparison would be something like this:

Archery:
Passive: You get the +2 to ranged attacks.
Active: You get a +2 to ranged attacks, you can use your bonus action to aim (doubling your prof bonus), you can use your reaction to move away from a hostile creature.

My point is simply that if you had the above 2 as fighting styles in the same game, the 1st one is redundant and redundancy is a mistake. With only the second option available, you also have the first when you just ignore the active benefit.

For them to sensibly coexist, the +2 bonus of the latter could be reduced to +1 or removed entirely.

The core principle used in 5e wrt this topic is to make the player who chooses a low-complexity option not feel penalized.

 

[DND_Reborn]

My point is simply that if you had the above 2 as fighting styles in the same game, the 1st one is redundant and redundancy is a mistake. With only the second option available, you also have the first when you just ignore the active benefit.

For them to sensibly coexist, the +2 bonus of the latter could be reduced to +1 or removed entirely.

The core principle used in 5e wrt this topic is to make the player who chooses a low-complexity option not feel penalized.

Sorry, I was just posting them both side-by-side not to say I would use them that way, but for a comparison as the two options currently stand.

For the active version, I would reduce the bonus to +1. The bonus action could give you a better bonus at higher levels, but at the expense of your bonus action, and it would apply only to one shot at higher levels. The reaction is useful, but also at the expense of other reactions you might have (not that there are many, but...).

I would definitely have to brainstorm on how to make passive/active versions for all the styles... that is a lot of work so we'll see.

 

[delph]

Active/Passive use of FS - my suggestion - what about use level-scaling. On 1st lvl you get "basic" later (6-10 lvl) add those "bonuses". You know this style and you are getting better in it. No need get it on 1st lvl.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Active/Passive use of FS - my suggestion - what about use level-scaling. On 1st lvl you get "basic" later (6-10 lvl) add those "bonuses". You know this style and you are getting better in it. No need get it on 1st lvl.

I thought about adding a universal Extra Attack feature requirement for all the bonus action and reaction features, so that would be at 5th level in most cases, or later for College of Sword and MC'ed Bladesingers and others. That would fit most of your 6-10 level range and I think it could work well enough.