Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Fighter: Samurai, Sharpshooter, Arcane Archer & Knight

I'm getting, like, unhealthy amounts of mad, clicking on that broken link.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Honestly you just described Wolverine's character arc under Chris Claremont in the 80s, so there is story precedent

What about the other way? The Samurai who's spent his entire life bound by honor and orders and self control who finally snaps and has all of that built up barely suppressed rage rise up to where they become a vicious monster on the battlefield, forgetting about their training and just raging their way through battle.

(Personally I think pretty much any multiclass can have a story that justifies it. Like you I would require a player who wants to play their weird multiclass to bring me a story explaining why their character has the choices that they've made, but I make all of my players do that anyway for their characters even if they single class. And my group enjoys coming up with weird reasons for the feats they've chosen or whatever so it's no big at my table.)

And every time I've commented on this, this is exactly what I have said. Not once did I say I would prevent something forever and ever. Only there has to be something in game that supports it. The same as why I don't allow a fighter to multiclass suddenly into a wizard if the fighter has never had exposure to wizardly magic and spellbooks. A PC that wants to multiclass into wizard needs to find a way in game to make that happen. Either learning from another PC, or finding a teacher somewhere

 

[Kobold Avenger]

These are interesting but my gut flip is that the arcane archer should have been in the ranger. Just a feeling.

Anyway, what I was hoping for I didn't end up seeing: following up on the superiority dice and running with it. Sharpshooter would be the closest thing I'd use and even that leaves me feeling underwhelmed. Further, what about fighters using thrown weapons or slings - i.e. class 2nd Edition halflings? They don't have a real place in these classes, and it's mildly disappointing. Classic historical example in David vs Goliath too.

Nothing in my reading of the sharpshooter's abilities shows that it can't potentially support thrown weapon or sling-using fighters. In fact nothing in my reading of the sharpshooter, potentially excludes fighters who use firearms that contain more than 1 bullet (so revolvers and pepperboxes at the most primitive), but it wouldn't be optimized for single-shot musket users though.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Arcane Arrow
Use your bonus action for an extra attacks worth of damage + an extra mystical effect.
It's kind of like superiority dice, but worse. Considering this is the backbone of the subclass, it doesn't feel like it happens anywhere near enough. Eldtrich knights can at least use a cantrip all day long to make them different than the other fighters. The Battlemaster gets to use their thing more often, and can pick to use it on a hit to prevent the "whiff effect" (though it's less damage). Changing this to a "When you hit with an arrow, you can expend a bonus action to make the arrow gain a magical effect" for most of the shots would go a long way to making this more palatable. Though a Reaction might be more logical at that point.

I don't think picking the effect after they've shot works terribly well, but what if the arrow *bamfed* back in the quiver if you missed?

That feels cool and magical, and prevents your two uses from being wasted because of bad luck

Ever-Ready Arrow
This is a really weird mechanic. 10 rounds after you use your last arcane arrow, you get another one. Vary rarely will you get a fight that lasts that long, effectively making it a "Start combat with one arcane arrow if you don't have any" feature, which is like one extra Arcane Arrow if your group is following the Battle-Battle-Rest model of encounters. It doesn't tickle my fancy much. Maybe just making it once per round would be a better option, for kind of a sustained damage VS the burst potential of the Battlemaster dichotomy.

Don't think they should get it every turn, even if they severely nerfed the arrows getting those effects every turn could end up being brutal.

Would it be too powerful to regain all expended uses of your arrow when you roll initiative? I think one per battle is good with their current scarcity, but we want them to have more anyways, so giving them 2 arrows per fight might not be too bad...

Born to the Saddle
It's telling that the first ability for riding they get is an ability that helps them get off the mount. And not in a good way. This should be some way to beef up a mount in general. Give it more hps, and some better saves. It doesn't have to deal damage, just survive a fireball so the knight in shining armor can actually ride their steed into battle. Then let the rest of the Knight's inherent defenerability prevent it from being pasted in general melee.

I've heard other people being glad that the Knight doesn't have a lot of investment in being mounted, since it is difficult to have a combat where you are mounted. I've never been in a single combat in D&D where any of the players were fighting from horseback or the like, and if the class was heavily invested in mounted combat, it would see very little use at most tables.

Rapid Strike
This is, confusing, to say the least. Instead of Advantage, you can get a Bonus Action attack. I think it's supposed to simply negate advantage on one attack out of the three you will be doing at this level. But what happens if you have two sources of advantage on the same attack? Can you ignore one and still attack with advantage? Can the Bonus Attack get advantage from either the same source or a different one?
This is an awful headache of an ability that won't be giving much in the way of extra damage. I'm a little confused as to why it exists in the first place. Can't it be replaced with some kind of mounted charge bonus?

I get more ambivalent about Rapid Strikes the more I look at it, technically it is better than hitting with advantage, but more unique and interesting abilities would definitely be preferable.

Yeah, They don't add enough value I think, and we've got enough bonus actions that are good for fighters to take...

Rapid Strike
Nope, it's still a mess. Also it somehow makes even less sense here, because the Samurai needs to use a bonus action in order to invoke advantage in the first place. This could be scrapped in favor of flat bonus damage while using Fighting Spirit. Even if that is boring, at least it synergizes.

Technically, this would get used on the second turn of advantage from Fighting Spirit. Remember Fighting Spirit lasts until the end of your next turn. But yeah, I think perhaps we should push for some more interesting abilities.

 

[Corpsetaker]

I'm a bit disappointed in the Arcane Archer because I was hoping for an archer class with it's own spell list. I always enjoyed the "Imbue Arrow" ability that older versions had. I also don't like that the extra damage is "Force Damage". Why can't it just be some unnamed damage or "Arcane Damage"?

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I'm a bit disappointed in the Arcane Archer because I was hoping for an archer class with it's own spell list. I always enjoyed the "Imbue Arrow" ability that older versions had. I also don't like that the extra damage is "Force Damage". Why can't it just be some unnamed damage or "Arcane Damage"?

"Force Damage" is pretty much just "Arcane Damage", even if psionics might also do a bunch of that too.

 

[Dorian_Grey]

Nothing in my reading of the sharpshooter's abilities shows that it can't potentially support thrown weapon or sling-using fighters. In fact nothing in my reading of the sharpshooter, potentially excludes fighters who use firearms that contain more than 1 bullet (so revolvers and pepperboxes at the most primitive), but it wouldn't be optimized for single-shot musket users though.

For the sharpshooter you are 100% right. My bad on that, as I thought that the class was restricted to bows/crossbows for some reason. The sharpshooter can use throwing axes, javelins etc - which is cool!

At the same time, the complaint is still valid against Arcane Archers.

 

[Leatherhead]

I don't think picking the effect after they've shot works terribly well, but what if the arrow *bamfed* back in the quiver if you missed?

That doesn't work too well with the spirit of the power. For something like that to work, the arrow would have to last longer than a turn, and then you could just load up on magic arrows for some kind of alpha strike ability.

Would it be too powerful to regain all expended uses of your arrow when you roll initiative? I think one per battle is good with their current scarcity, but we want them to have more anyways, so giving them 2 arrows per fight might not be too bad...

Two is better than one, at least.

I've heard other people being glad that the Knight doesn't have a lot of investment in being mounted, since it is difficult to have a combat where you are mounted. I've never been in a single combat in D&D where any of the players were fighting from horseback or the like, and if the class was heavily invested in mounted combat, it would see very little use at most tables.

In a way, having no investment in mounted combat would have been better than having a smidgen. But they didn't do that, so now we are left with a subclass that doesn't deliver on it's imagery. You've never had a mounted combat because it's so brutal on horses, making it an unattractive option for people who like horses. Which is why it's important for a subclass that features mounted combat to have some kind of survival features for their mount. One ability that passively ups the HP and saves of a mount, combined with all their other tanky stuff, would have done the trick. And it's not more of an investment than the one ability we have right now.

 

[Leatherhead]

I'm a bit disappointed in the Arcane Archer because I was hoping for an archer class with it's own spell list. I always enjoyed the "Imbue Arrow" ability that older versions had. I also don't like that the extra damage is "Force Damage". Why can't it just be some unnamed damage or "Arcane Damage"?

Force damage is arcane damage in 5e. The list of damage types got whittled down to 13 for 4e, because the rest were largely redundant or too niche.

 

[Azzy]

Your game, you do you.

I just don't see how a samurai/rogue isn't a perfect Ronin, for instance. Or a Samurai/Barbarian a more beefy rage-y Ronin. Or any number of other things.

I mean, why not just let players make the character they want, instead of God-gming all over their fun?

I agree with the premise, but I don't see why a character can't be a samurai or ronin regardless of their class or class combo. Not all samurai are courtly and urbane. Or even warriors. This is one of the reasons I'm not keen to things like "knights", "samurai", "cataphract", "centurion", "spartans", etc. being classes or subclasses--it creates too much conceptual baggage.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Overall I really like the designs... except that everything is still keyed to short rests.

It's pretty strongly part of the 5e fighter paradigm - a compromise between the traditional all-at-will 'Linear' Fighter (of LFQW) and the balanced AEDU fighter (casualty of the edition war). Just like the Essentials fighter sub-classes, really.

I would love it if there were a viable alternate mechanic.

One quick and dirty variant is to multiply the number of short-rest uses by 3 and make them 'daily,' instead.

4e was a game with much worse penalties for being in melee by default, and a plethora of abilities that could counter marking and being next to someone you didn't want to be next to.

Well, different penalties. An AoO instead of Disadvantage on ranged attackers. OK, worse for casters since they have no penalty at all in 5e...

This class is coming into a game that has none of those punishments unless the players are built to perform such punishments.

That just makes it /less/ problematic. But it still allows the Knight to carry out the traditional fighter 'meat shield' function, mechanically. Which is a nice bit of support (see below).

It's not enabling, it's just restricting the tactics monsters can employ and forcing them to play a game that they haven't been designed to compete in.

It's enabling on the player side, obviously the opposite on the other side, that's the point. But really, not that bad, either. Mark punishment in 4e could double the defenders' DPR - in 5e, with flurries of multi-attacks the norm for fighters, the knight only gets a modest boost when his mark is violated - and it tapers off proportinately has his Extra Attack improves (thus Rapid Attack at 15th, presumably).

I don't think there's a progression from MMO tanks to the 3.5e knight class or from the 3.5e knight to the essentials knight.

From the traditional D&D fighter, to MMO aggro, to the rest. When programmers started trying to put D&D on-line, they ran into an issue in that the fighter's traditional role was to block for the rest of the party - in old-school dungeon-crawling, a pair of fighters would form a 'wall' in the ubiquitous 10x10 corridor, and outside that special case, there was an unwritten law (even unconscious assumption) that the DM would tend to have monsters just rush the front-line fighters more often than not, anyway. AIs didn't have that assumption, so MMOs coded in 'Aggro' to keep the fighter working as it was supposed to. 3e players familiar with MMOs started to notice/complain "the Fighter lacks Agrro!" and the Knight was the belated and not too stunningly effective response. (Of course, they may have lacked Aggro, but 3.x fighters with reach could certainly protect their allies using choke "points" up to 25' across! - before Enlarge shenanigans.)

I consider it a line from the 3.5 Knight to the Essentials Knight, yes. Sure, in the time-line you had the Bo9S Warblade and 4e 'Defender' Role between them, but, considering how the Knight pulled back from the 4e paradigm, and, obviously, the name, I think it's fair to discount the Warblade and Defender as a dead branch on that evolutionary tree.