D&D 5E "Slayer" fighter archetype

[UngeheuerLich]

So I am actually liking the irresistible damage concept. Let me try a write up:

Inexorable Strike: No effect, ability, or condition can reduce the damage of your weapon attacks, or turn your critical hits into normal hits. Your critical hits stop all forms of regeneration for 1 round. A creature brought to 0 hp by your attack is automatically killed.

Do you play dota2 Axe?

 

[Stalker0]

What about this?

After you hit a creature with a critical hit, they can't regain hitpoints for 1 round.

oooooooh, that's nasty! Ok v2

Inexorable Strike v2: No effect, ability, or condition can reduce the damage of your weapon attacks, or turn your critical hits into normal hits. Your weapon critical hits prevent a target from regaining hitpoints until the start of your next turn. A creature brought to 0 hp by your weapon attack is instantly killed.

 

[Bolares]

for 1 round

Maybe "until the start of your next turn"? I think this is the current wording.

 

[Stalker0]

Do you play dota2 Axe?

nope, never played DOTA, LoL, any of them

 

[Stalker0]

Maybe "until the start of your next turn"? I think this is the current wording.

your right, I updated it.

 

[Stalker0]

Now if you want to go with a more "anti-magic" route with the ability, we go this route (aka a fighter busting out of force cage and wall of force type stuff which I've always wanted in a high level fighter)

Inexorable Strike v3: No effect, ability, or condition can reduce the damage of your weapon attacks, or turn your critical hits into normal hits. You can destroy force effects normally immune to damage, treat such effects as if they had 50 hp.

 

[dave2008]

No. It is not too powerful.
Crits are randomly and only 1 in 20 or about 1 in 10 attacks with advantage.
And then the trigger is quite random. And then at that level you have an ability to do 4d6 reroll 1's and 2's + 11 (and possibly also +10 due to great weapon mastery) and with the brutal surge we are looking at about doing about 38 * 2 damage anyway... and that is withou a magic weapon that might deal extra damage. At that level the weapon is probably +2, so 80 damage. What good is this ability?

So actually limiting it to prof bonus per day makes it better, because then at least you feel good that you usually don't have to actually use it and save it for the rare circumstance that you don't deal 50 damage or more on the crit.

Of course, you could be a sword and board slayer, but that seems counter intuitive, because if you want to really dish out damage, two handed weapons are the way to go.

It wasn't a crit, that was the point. Stalker was suggesting replacing the critical hit trait with an entirely different trait not tied to critical hits.

 

[dave2008]

Thank you all for the great ideas! I will take these into account and update it later today (some time after LevelUp launches).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It wasn't a crit, that was the point. Stalker was suggesting replacing the critical hit trait with an entirely different trait not tied to critical hits.

Oh. Oops. Yes. I like Stalker's suggestions.

 

[Quickleaf]

One of the thing we do to make fighters better fighters then other classes is to give them more OA triggers than other classes/creatures have. This works well for all fighters IMO, but I have always wanted fighters to be the best melee damage dealers, but never really had a good idea to implement this.

So what I am currently thinking about providing a "Slayer" subclass that adds its proficiency bonus to the damage of its attacks. However, I am not good a designing player options and was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to balance this a bit. To be clear, I am trying to make this subclass the clear leader in melee damage.

Any ideas?

EDIT: Here is my first attempt (thank you to @vincegetorix for some suggestions):

Slayer
Some text describing the slayer here.

Slayer Features

Fighter Level	Feature
2nd	Brutal Surge
3rd	Vital Strikes
7th	Combat Reflexes
10th	Slayer's Mien
15th	Deadly Critical
18th	Cascade of Steel

Brutal Surge
When you would use an Action Surge to gain an additional attack, you can instead double the damage of one attack. You can do this for each additional attack provided by your Action Surge. You must make this choice before you make your attack roll.

Vital Strikes
Starting at 3rd level, you are trained to strike your opponent's vitals. Whenever you hit with a melee weapon that your proficient with and deal damage, the weapon's damage increases by an amount equal to your proficiency bonus.

Combat Reflexes
Starting at 7th level, you can make an Attack of Opportunity without spending your reaction. You can do this a number of times per day equal to your proficiency bonus. Additionally, you can make attacks of opportunity against enemies that make ranged attacks, cast spells, or stand from the Prone position within your reach.

Slayer's Mien
When you are wielding a melee weapon, any Charisma (Intimidation) roll can never be lower than your Strength score.

Deadly Critical
Starting at 15th level, when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, if the target has less than 50 hit points, it dies.

Cascade of Steel
Starting at 18th level, when you make an Attack of Opportunity without spending your reaction, you can make a number of attacks equal to your extra attack feature.

I don't have time to do a numbers comparison, but the points of comparison I'd look at are average 3-round damage output for the Paladin (using a level-appropriate smite spell), Paladin (alpha strike with all the Divine Smite), Battlemaster Fighter (using manuevers), Battlemaster Fighter (using maneuvers and Action Surge) at levels 1, 5, 11, and 20. I'd compare to your Slayer Fighter without & with Action Surge.

As far as specific abilities, I appreciate what you're doing with Slayer's Mien trying to evoke a "menacing warrior" archetype. My personal opinion – not a critique of your mechanics – is that your Slayer falls into the same hyper-focus on mechanics at the expense of narrative that the PHB fighter subclasses fell into. I think you can stay more true to your "menacing warrior" archetype by tweaking this a bit to give this fighter proficiency with Intimidation when they take the subclass, and instead of making it work like a rogue's Reliable Talent, dovetail it into the opportunity attack theme you've got going – Whenever a creature you have successfully intimidated provokes an opportunity attack from you, it is vulnerable to damage you deal to it until the end of its next turn. Effectively adding "soft control" reinforcement to the "menacing warrior" archetype with a bit of mechanical backing to the idea of what being intimidated means.

I also 100% agree with @Stalker0 that the 15th level Deadly Critical doesn't fit your concept. Instead, I wonder if a sort of inverse of the object damage threshold rules could work. I seem to recall there being a 4th edition assassin (or maybe slayer fighter?) that did something like this... where if you reduced an enemy to X or less hit points (it was a small number), then they were reduced to 0 hit points instead. For example, X might be your proficiency modifier (e.g. 3 HP at 5th level) or twice your proficiency modifier (e.g. 6 HP at 5th level). "Deadly Finish" or some such.