To be clear, MOST of the time. Your battle master has plenty to do out of combat considering he gets all the fighter abilities and whatever skills and abilities came with your background and race.The problem is that you don't get to be a Battlemaster all the time, you're only a Battlemaster SOME of the time. To say nothing of the fact that your Battlemaster is basically nothing outside of combat. You get an Artisan's Tool proficiency (OOOOH! Nice flavor but pretty useless 99% of the time becaus it have almost no problem solving ability) and you get Know your Enemy, only really gives you information related to combat. It took them YEARS to give us maneuvers in Tasha's that can do stuff outside of battle... which goes back to being a Batlemaster less than 2 minutes in a day.
The idea that a battlemaster is completely defined by his subclass is false to start with. That said alchemists tools is an excelent artisan's tool.
You have this backwards as I will illustrate. Math matters.An Illusionist is an Illusionist all day long all the time. The Battlemaster is only that part time and only during combat.
To start with are we comparing subclasses or classes with subclasses? School if illusion as a subclass gives you very little on top of your wizard, far less than battlemaster gives over fighter and honestly less than battlemaster even if you had no maneuvers and only the features you criticize. Schoolof illusion gives you an enhanced minor illusion cantrip, maleable illusions, illusury self and at very high level illusory reality. Those are all going to be very limited, far less uses than the battlemaster will get with maneuvers.
Assuming we are comparing a school of illusion wizard to a battlemaster fighter:
A third level battlemaster can do 12 maneuvers a day. A third level wizard can cast 7 spells a day including the 1 he gets back with arcane recovery.
A 7th level battlemaster can do 15 maneuvers a day. A 7th level wizard can cast a maximum of 13 spells a day,. That assumes he gets back 2 first and 1 second level with arcane recovery.
A 15th level battlemaster can do 18 maneuvers a day, plus he gets one every time he rolls initiative if he has none. Assuming you purposely burn through them as fast as possible in the first fight after a rest, this means you should get 21 a day if you have 6 fights distributed evenly with 2 rests. A 15th level wizard can cast 18 spells without Arcane recovery and up to 7 more 1st level spells with AR.
To be clear the exact level the wizard passes the battlemaster in spells vs maneuvers is 8th, but that assumes he only gets back 1st level spell slots with arcane recovery.
Now to elaborate further, in addition to the battlemaster maneuvers the battlemaster also has 2nd wind, Action surge, and indomitable.
So you actually have this backwards - until high level the wizard will use his spells BEFORE the battlemaster runs out of maneuvers and the wizard will have less abilities to bring to the fight after he runs out meaning he is a wizard for a smaller portion of the day.
Noncombat the wizard is bringing rituals and the battlemaster is bringing his Alchemist tools and making poitions of healing, oil, alchemists fire, antitoxin and acid. The wizard might have a slight edge here but not an overwhelming one and not one to overcome the difference in combat. If you are choose something else as your artisan's tool, well that is on you.
This would be a great point for you if you used the Arcane Archer instead of the battlemaster, but the numbers do not support this hypothesis with the battlemaster.
No most fighting styles aren't like that. Five out of 33 options are. Six if I give you GWF. That is not most.Most fighting styles are like that: once a condition is met, you get the bonus and the condition are usually pretty simple: use this weapon loadout, wea this armor, or someone triggers condition X for you to use your Reaction. There's no tradeoff when using a fighting style. Same with the Champion's crit range. You just GET it whenever you throw a d20.
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