Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9510918" data-attributes="member: 6877472">No.  Not really.  Because maneuvers are a resource spent to get a fairly minor effect that don't scale.  Cantrips are able to be used as often as needed, and most attack cantrips do scale.  They're not the same thing, of course, but if you want to do something more than just hit point damage, it costs a "martial" something.I know a lot of people are happy with that.  I know there are people who wouldn't want maneuvers in the first place (if there weren't, then every Fighter would be a Battle Master and we know that's not true).But if you want parity between weapon users and spell users, masteries aren't it. They're better than not having masteries at all, don't get me wrong, but they're like a hamburger without the hamburger, just condiments on a bun.A lot of people want martials to be as resourceless as possible (beyond just hit points).  Yet Fighters have resources.  Barbarians have resources.  Paladins and Rangers have spells.  The only class without any resources to track is the Rogue!The Rogue is going to get the choice to deal less damage in exchange for a cool effect.  This is something all weapon users should have a variation of at minimum- it's like being able to do called shots or disarms in 2e- take a penalty to hit, do cool thing.Wizards is too conservative with the abilities of martials, while happy to have spells do anything.  Why?  Because there are people who rejected a game where martials had more awesome things they could do.  They don't want martials to feel "magical".  They want Jack Burton, a normal guy in an extraordinary situation, somehow fighting monsters without any weird mystical hoodoo.And paradoxically, a lot of these same people want overpowered spellcasters- they just want using magic to be dangerous and risky, and for spellcasters to need the protection of fighting men again.Now that casters have been allowed to step out of the shadow of martials, there's only one way you can get true parity- by making martials more overtly preternatural, and that's just not popular.This isn't to say that martials are useless or anything- if you want consistent damage potential so enemies die faster, a Fighter is still your huckleberry.  But just rolling attacks and dealing damage turn after turn when the casters are able to pull not only combat-warping moves out of their bag of tricks, but have all this out of combat utility to boot can get boring, no matter how big the numbers are.  And they aren't that big, Wizards has seen to that.But even if you don't want Fighters with the kind of super moves you see in the average anime, there are things they should be doing routinely.  Blocks, parries, disarms, ripostes, half-swording, swapping weapons, tripping foes, shield bashing, taking advantage of the environment by leaping behind cover or doing a good ol' shoulder roll, grabbing someone with a free hand, throwing pocket sand, targeting weak points in armor, maneuvering to put the sun in their opponent's eyes- the list goes on, and the game doesn't fully support these things.  There's little reason to move in combat.  Specialized maneuvers are gated behind limited subclass and Feat choices.  A sword is just as good against all sorts of enemies as a hammer (with vanishingly small exceptions).Weapon masteries technically give you reasons to switch weapons, but you got people going "oh what, he's going to use one weapon to do this move, then switch it to do another move?  That's busted and silly!  Never no mind the silly Wizard man just made six guys go slack jawed staring at some pretty lights!"</blockquote>

Verification