D&D (2024) Weapon Mastery + Cunning Strike+ Battle Master

[doctorbadwolf]

There are 9 masteries and 23 battle master maneuver.

Obviously not all of them are going lt be covered. Not unless each weapon got it's own thing (i.e. whip gets disarm).

That’s exactly my point. Weapon Mastery is not sufficient by itself to cover at-will maneuvers. They do decrease the need a bit, so 2 at wills at level 3 is fine, though. I’d rather 3, but even moreso rather have more dice or regain a die when you crit on an attack or something.

 

[mellored]

That’s exactly my point. Weapon Mastery is not sufficient by itself to cover at-will maneuvers. They do decrease the need a bit, so 2 at wills at level 3 is fine, though. I’d rather 3, but even moreso rather have more dice or regain a die when you crit on an attack or something.

Fighters start with 3.
Everyone else now has 2.

*as of the latest playtest anyways.

 

[Kurotowa]

That’s exactly my point. Weapon Mastery is not sufficient by itself to cover at-will maneuvers. They do decrease the need a bit, so 2 at wills at level 3 is fine, though. I’d rather 3, but even moreso rather have more dice or regain a die when you crit on an attack or something.

Really, maneuvers are an incredibly mixed bag. Partly because maneuvers are two elements welded together; "Enable doing a thing" and "Roll a die as a bonus to something". The ratios between those two vary a great deal. Like, sometimes it's enabling doing a thing you couldn't otherwise, and sometimes it's purely about the die bonus, and sometimes it splits the difference. They're all over the place, and that's why it's hard to balance them as at-wills.

Also they have a pretty excessive page count for a single subclass. Yes, there's the feat, but honestly who takes that? And yes, I know it's because it's a remnant of when maneuvers were baseline for Fighters, and they didn't want to throw out all their work. But Battle Master takes up a lot of space in the PHB, and that's before you start counting the additional maneuver pages in supplements.

So what I'm saying is... if the next UA comes out and maneuvers are redesigned, I won't shed a tear for them. I don't know if they'd yank out the bonus die to make them more freely useable, or focus on the bonus die for tactical power applications while leaving the attack enhancements to Weapon Mastery, or what. But at least testing an alternative take wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

[mellored]

My hope. Split it.

Battlemaster gets all the warlord maneuvers as a bonus action. No dice.

And then another subclass that gets dice. Which can be spent on attack or defense stuff.

 

[Pauln6]

I like there being mulitple different ways to inflict the same condition/status effect. Weapon Mastery, Maneuvers, Feats, etc.

But is it too powerful for one PC to have multiple potential ways to knock someone prone on the same attack?

Weapon Mastery: Topple
Battlemaster Maneuver: Trip Attack

They already have those abilities. The rogue is getting them at-will.

There’s no need to make them cost action economy. At worst, you just let the BM do them in place of an attack, and spend a die to do them in addition to an attack. Bringing the bonus action into it is completely unneeded.

I do think it's arguable that fighters and monks should be able to stack more than one status effect on a single attack at higher levels but I don't think it's a great idea to make that at will at no action cost. I also don't think it's a great idea to allow it via a low cost multiclass dip

It's possible to stack push and knockdown I suppose so you push up to 15 feet away x3 or combine push and knockdown.

I still think using bonus actions for many status effects is sensible in most cases to avoid cheese. It competes with other options then but they probably need to make heavy weapons have slightly better riders to make up for sacrificing twf sometimes.

Then you can add a class feature for rangers to avoid twf penalties and give fighters a higher level ability to do two in a combo.

It reduces cheese at lower levels and gives something extra to fighters that other classes lack.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

I do think it's arguable that fighters and monks should be able to stack more than one status effect on a single attack at higher levels but I don't think it's a great idea to make that at will at no action cost. I also don't think it's a great idea to allow it via a low cost multiclass dip

It's possible to stack push and knockdown I suppose so you push up to 15 feet away x3 or combine push and knockdown.

I still think using bonus actions for many status effects is sensible in most cases to avoid cheese. It competes with other options then but they probably need to make heavy weapons have slightly better riders to make up for sacrificing twf sometimes.

Then you can add a class feature for rangers to avoid twf penalties and give fighters a higher level ability to do two in a combo.

It reduces cheese at lower levels and gives something extra to fighters that other classes lack.

I understand that perspective... but as a thought experiment... could these reliable, interchangeable, stackable conditions become one of the higher level mechanical options that fighters could use in order to help them compete with casters?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Fighters start with 3.
Everyone else now has 2.

*as of the latest playtest anyways.

Yes….? I’m not sure what point you intend this to make or support or underline or whatever.

I do think it's arguable that fighters and monks should be able to stack more than one status effect on a single attack at higher levels but I don't think it's a great idea to make that at will at no action cost.

I do.

I also don't think it's a great idea to allow it via a low cost multiclass dip

We can’t have the whole game designed around multiclass combinations being good.

It's possible to stack push and knockdown I suppose so you push up to 15 feet away x3 or combine push and knockdown.

I still think using bonus actions for many status effects is sensible in most cases to avoid cheese.

It’s just not needed, and every time someone has an idea for martial characters, people so worried about “cheese” and want every single thing to have an additional cost, even when the idea doesn’t put the class into the top of the class power bandwidth, much less above it.

Besides, you could just as easily include language that prevents stacking masteries and at-will maneuvers.

 

[Scott Christian]

You know, stating that you've never suggested otherwise would go over better... if you hadn't suggested otherwise. Such as:



or



Or how about



And then



This last one is particularly egregious to me, because the chain of discussion traces back to you claiming that people play champion fighters to "spend the time crafting their next-best line, pun, or speech for their turn, instead of deciding whether to spend points to trip an opponent". You are directly stating that MOST players don't put thought or effort into their RP, but that champion fighter players are the exception, because instead of thinking about the battle in front of them, they are crafting RP and that's why they picked a champion fighter. This isn't me making up things, this is me looking at what you said and claimed.

And, if you want to instead claim that people pick the Champion fighter because they prefer to have fewer choices and options... well, why doesn't the Samurai work? For 10 levels, the Samurai's ONLY ability that isn't skills or saves, is to get advantage on attacks. And if three times per day deciding when to have advantage on their turn is far too much decision making... why can't they just decide they will always use it on the first turn of combat and make it not a decision? Or what about the Bear Totem Barbarian? The ONLY choice is whether or not to rage, and then you just always reckless attack. This is a single decision. And frankly, I know a single decision or two is perfectly fine for that champion fighter only player. Why? Because action surge and second wind and indomitable are all ALSO decisions.

And I don't want to ruin other people's fun, I don't. That's why when I made my combat arts system, it was opt-in, you don't need to use it if you don't want. But there are a lot of us that look at the fighter and see that it isn't stacking up, and every time we try and do something to increase our fun, we get this response that OTHER people's fun, people who don't want to play 99% of the rest of the game, but only want to play the Champion Fighter, means that we can't make the fighter match the standards of the rest of the game.

But, we also... have a solution. Why not take the Warrior and the Expert from Tasha's, and use those for the simple class? You can even take the Spellcaster for a simple magic-user. Then you can still play an ultra simple class which doesn't even have a subclass choice, and everyone else can fix the fighter. Isn't that a better solution for all of us?

No offense, but every single thing you highlighted does not disprove my claim. It simply says, in my experience most players choose or can only do one of those things really well. They have a harder time doing those things when their attention is split. I fail to see how this is debatable.
And again, none of what I said derails the claim that for some players, the champion is the right choice specifically for the reasons I listed. You are not refuting my claim, you are making up a different claim and arguing against it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

My hope. Split it.

Battlemaster gets all the warlord maneuvers as a bonus action. No dice.

And then another subclass that gets dice. Which can be spent on attack or defense stuff.

Man, if they make the Battlemaster into the Warlord that will be.... interesting....

 

[Chaosmancer]

No offense, but every single thing you highlighted does not disprove my claim. It simply says, in my experience most players choose or can only do one of those things really well. They have a harder time doing those things when their attention is split. I fail to see how this is debatable.
And again, none of what I said derails the claim that for some players, the champion is the right choice specifically for the reasons I listed. You are not refuting my claim, you are making up a different claim and arguing against it.

Whether or not it was your intent, you were not phrasing things to say "Most players don't do X. For some players, choosing the Champion allows them to do X, but other players might not need the champion to do X". No, instead what your phrasing said was "People play the Champion to do X. Most players don't do X." And since we know most players don't play the champion, it is trivially easy to see that as a claim that only people who play champions do X.

Especially when combined with your obvious anger over the idea of a "beer and pretzel game" and warping that into some accusation of being overweight drunks, which has never once been the actual meaning of that phrase.


But fine. Let us assume that this was all just a miscommunication. Let us additionally assume that the removal of the Champion is a serious possibility going forward.

Why would the Warrior class not be a good fit for people who would otherwise play the Champion? It is an even simpler martial class, so would it not fulfill their needs to an even greater degree?