D&D 5E What the Weaponmaster needs in 5e, and how to make it happen.

[doctorbadwolf]

I'm not entirely convinced that we need a direct mechanical representation, rather than simply something that hits at the idea of the 4e fighter. Rather than futzing about with marking, and OA's and whatnot, try to keep it simpler might be a better way of going.

For example, if you need to make the fighter "stickier", which is something that gets to the heart of a 4e fighter, just apply an always on aura. Any target within melee reach must take the disengage action before leaving the fighter's threatened area. Something as simple as that can evoke the stickiness of a fighter. Now, you have the choice - lose your round's worth of attacks, or attack the fighter.

I'm a huge believer in KISS design. Instead of messing about with all these different sub-systems, just reduce it down to very basics. So, we have our "don't move" aura (heh, I really suck at naming). Add in some goodies for attacking things within that aura - maybe something like a Monk's Way of the Open Fist maneuver system where if you get a limited palette of actions to take whenever attacking something in your aura - push effects, debuff effects, whatever. Pick one per turn and off you go. So, the fighter becomes sticky, and anything stuck there is going to get pummeled - a regular attack(s) plus an attack with special sauce.

Now, for my own personal project, could that live in a fighter subclass? What about a fighter subclass and 2 or fewer optional variant features that swap with standard core fighter features?

 

[Hussar]

It's got nothing to do with the class. It's because it's using a stance. Stances are typically about combat technique and, specifically, enhancing martial skills. I'm sorry, but no amount of practice or training with a combat technique is going to grant you a supernatural knowledge of how to speak, read, and write a language for a few minutes, and absolutely nothing about the lore of a stance supports the idea. If you want your martial classes to get non-martial abilities, that's fine. Totem Barbarians gets a couple spells as a ritual, and Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight get Spellcasting. However, the Totem Barbarian doesn't get speak with animals as a part of his Rage ability. The Eldritch Knight doesn't get shield as a part of Second Wind. The Arcane Trickster doesn't get invisibility as a part of Thieves' Cant.

It's not broken. It's inelegant design that breaks the immersion for what a stance is supposed to represent.

Find me a stance in 3.5 or 4e that only has a non-physical, non-combat use like Linguist does.

Breaking immersion is such a nebulous concept that I find it rather lackluster as an argument to be honest. We already accept non-magical regenerating fighters so some sort of technique that helps the fighter communicate with something doesn't faze me in the slightest.

 

[Satyrn]

Breaking immersion is such a nebulous concept that I find it rather lackluster as an argument to be honest. We already accept non-magical regenerating fighters so some sort of technique that helps the fighter communicate with something doesn't faze me in the slightest.

Linguist seems out of place to me, too. It's just not a combat feature like the others. Plus, it seems odd to be on any list that says "select one of these at the start of combat."

But I like the idea of giving this subclass some language proficiencies. I'd follow the battlemaster's model and simply provide a second benefit at 3rd level when the archtype is selected, A couple languages known in this case, where the battlemaster gains proficiency in an artisan's tool.

Maybe even call it Student of War, too,

 

[Bacon Bits]

Breaking immersion is such a nebulous concept that I find it rather lackluster as an argument to be honest. We already accept non-magical regenerating fighters so some sort of technique that helps the fighter communicate with something doesn't faze me in the slightest.

That's because we have already accepted loss of hp as vague in and of itself. In other words, it's easy to say that if you take 30 damage and heal half of it with Second Wind, it's not because you regenerated a sucking chest wound without magic. You didn't have a sucking chest wound. You were Hollywood injured. That's why your abilities are never impacted by loss of hp. You're as effective at max hp as you are at 1 hp, but take 1 more and suddenly you're unconscious and dying. You'll also recall that quite a few people objected to martial healing in both 4e and 5e.

Look, imagine if Fighter said:

Fighting Style
You adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options. You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.

Archery
You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons.

Defense
While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.

Diplomat
You gain proficiency in Diplomacy.

Dueling
When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.

[...]

It's not broken. It's not overpowered. It's not even something that you can't possibly envision a Fighter doing. But doesn't that make you say, "Diplomacy is a fighting style?"

The mechanic just doesn't match the description of the ability that grants it. If you want the Fighter to have such an ability, that's fine, but mashing them all together into one box is very inelegant. It's putting a hammer in the silverware drawer, "because they're all tools." Or making a card called Pin to Earth and not having it remove flying.

It's like putting the druidcraft cantrip on the Wizard spell list, or animate dead on the Paladin's. It works. You can even invent reasons to do it for a given campaign. But it's a flavor fail.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Linguist was a mild bit of fun. (Loosely based on the idea a fighter would have picked up a few languages fighting in mercenary companies).

It was so out of place it didn't even register when I read it. Cute.

 

[Krachek]

For those who don't recall, the Weaponmaster was the early name of the Battlemaster in the playtest, and the de-facto sub-class name retroactively applied to all 4e fighters when they were superseded by the Essentials Knight & Slayer. (It was also a Dragon Mag fighter build with a few powers that did different things depending on what weapon you used, but I'm guessing that's not important).

So, as the title suggests, the Battlemaster ain't the Weaponmaster. For one thing, the Weaponmaster had sub-classes of it's own - Defender, Greatweapon, Battlerager, Tempest, Brawler, & Arena builds. For another, of course, it was stuffed in the Martial/Defender 4e-Role box (so effective ranged combat was oddly out). (Getting away from that last parenthetical is a good thing, given that 5e doesn't have roles, and makes it (finally!) seamless to go STR v DEX for attack.) But, the depth possible with the Weaponmaster isn't possible with the Battlemaster, and the Battlemaster has given up both that and a lot of the Weaponmaster's 'Defender' functionality in exchange for a big pile of DPR. As with the Warlord, that pile of DPR makes it hard to wedge the Weaponmaster concept into the very limited remaining design space of a fighter sub-class.

I see two obvious ways to address the DPR-crowding issue with the fighter.

1) Divert Extra Attack, somehow. That is, the sub-class(es) that take up the Weaponmaster's mantle have a feature that makes extra attack do something other than a bland extra attack. Like, oh, each round you're entitled to Extra Attack you get a free CS die? IDK. Still not a game designer, me.

2) New class! It's not like there are way too many non-casting classes in 5e!


I wouldn't mind hearing some others.


Then there's the depth-of-play/flexibiliity/etc provided by 'exploits' (martial powers) in 4e. 5e comes up short in several ways. One is that it's all relative - to the depth/flexibiity/power/resources of spells, that is. A 4e Weaponmaster had a set of attack options and resources that were only slightly inferior to the typical caster's. By contrast, the Battlemasters handful of maneuvers and CS dice don't even stack up favorable to its "1/3rd caster" sibling, the Eldritch Knight, who gains 4 levels of spells over his career.

By the same token, the Eldritch Knight is essentially a cut-rate fractional wizard, like a pre-measured Fighter/Wizard multiclass. The Battlemaster's features, then, is analogous to a multiclass-like fraction of an implied maneuver-based class. One that's as far ahead of the battlemaster in maneuvers as the Wizard is beyond the EK in spells.
That'd be something.
Possibly a basis for the Weaponmaster.

It is hard to make an effective defender with only one reaction per round.
In 4 ed the defender become a thing when the essential go out, but especially by allowing one opportunity attack per turn using the defender aura. Suddenly defending was a damage dealing tactics.
But on the other hand the defender aura have slow down the combat. The defender was contantly interrupting the DM.
I think 5ed should stay at one reaction per round. Thus the defender cannot be much better than what give the sentinel feat.

 

[mellored]

It is hard to make an effective defender with only one reaction per round.
In 4 ed the defender become a thing when the essential go out, but especially by allowing one opportunity attack per turn using the defender aura. Suddenly defending was a damage dealing tactics.
But on the other hand the defender aura have slow down the combat. The defender was contantly interrupting the DM.
I think 5ed should stay at one reaction per round. Thus the defender cannot be much better than what give the sentinel feat.

The 4e weapon master could only mark 1 person at a time. And also only had 1 reaction to punish with.
Wardens and knights could mark everyone around them, but their punishment was much smaller.
Thus you kind of want 2 feats.


Sentinel works fine for the first, though it should scale it with multi-attack and not just sneak attack.
*When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn’t have this feat), you can use your reaction to take an attack action against it (inlcuding multi-attack if you have it).


Warden:
*The area within 5' of you is difficult terrain for enemies, including flying.
*When an enemy provokes an opportunity attack while you are holding a weapon, it takes damage equal to half your level even if you do not attack it or have already spent your reaction. The damage is the same type as the weapon your holding. A creature can only take this damage once per turn.

 

[Krachek]

The 4e weapon master could only mark 1 person at a time. And also only had 1 reaction to punish with.
Wardens and knights could mark everyone around them, but their punishment was much smaller.
Thus you kind of want 2 feats.


Sentinel works fine for the first, though it should scale it with multi-attack and not just sneak attack.
*When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn’t have this feat), you can use your reaction to take an attack action against it (inlcuding multi-attack if you have it).


Warden:
*The area within 5' of you is difficult terrain for enemies, including flying.
*When an enemy provokes an opportunity attack while you are holding a weapon, it takes damage equal to half your level even if you do not attack it or have already spent your reaction. The damage is the same type as the weapon your holding. A creature can only take this damage once per turn.

Upgrading sentinel feat that way will simply turn it into an offensive feature.
Combining GWM + sentinel and cheap spell like command or dissonant whisper,
I would rather improve the protection fighting style to include more attack at higher level.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It is hard to make an effective defender with only one reaction per round.

It does seem to be a stumbling block. In 3e, there was Combat Reflexes, and in 3.5 the Knight got a feature that made the area around him 'difficult terrain' (which would theoretically cut down on the 5' steps). 4e only had one 'reaction' (Immediate action) per round, but one AoO per turn. And defenders also inflicted the mark penalty which didn't just go away when they were pushed around.

In 4 ed the defender become a thing when the essential go out,

The Defender was very much a thing from launch.

but especially by allowing one opportunity attack per turn using the defender aura. Suddenly defending was a damage dealing tactics.

In a way, that's a defender fail. In another it's a matter of enemy (DM) attitudes.

The defender, done well, forces a catch-22 on the enemy: either attack the very tough defender (sub-optimal) or suffer a penalty (sub-optimal) /and/ a 'punishment' (pure negative) for attacking someone else (who would have been the optimal target but for the defender's intervention).

If enemies consistently ignore the defender, he turns into a striker, looking like an offense-oriented badass, and his allies are slightly harder to hit. If the enemy consistently attacks the defender looks like a tough-as-nails badass. Either way, defenders are heroes of the battle.

But on the other hand the defender aura have slow down the combat. The defender was contantly interrupting the DM.

If the DM doesn't want the interrupts, he can just consistently respect the aura (or consistently push/slide the aura-defender away).

I think 5ed should stay at one reaction per round.

Overall, that might be advisable. An exception in an optional class or sub-class wouldn't hurt, though. And there could be alternatives, like the 3.5 & 4e Knights' that could go on 'auto pilot.'

The 4e weapon master could only mark 1 person at a time. And also only had 1 reaction to punish with.

There were more than a few weaponmaster powers that attacked, and thus marked, more than one enemy at a time, and the -2 penalty remained whether he had a reaction or not, /and/ Combat Superiority still applied to trying to get away from him.

And, of course, it depended very much on the DM. If the first marked enemy decided to respect the mark, well, the reaction was still there to menace the second, and if the first enemy hit, 'focus fire' demands he pile on, anyway...

Upgrading sentinel feat that way will simply turn it into an offensive feature.

That's up to the DM, ultimately, as it depends on how enemies react to the threat of the feat.

I would rather improve the protection fighting style to include more attack at higher level.

Something like the Knight's 15th level feature in UA?

I'm increasingly thinking that extra reactions, for specific uses, could improve for some sub-classes in step with extra attack. It'd be logical enough, and easy enough to remember...

 

[Krachek]

My fear is that new tactical feature rapidly turn to gimmick play.