D&D 5E Why Not? A Variant Captain Fighter

[Garthanos]

Iin Star Wars Saga, there is “reroll and take the second result” as well as “reroll and take the better result”.

any attacks by those so marked who hit an ally you make choose to force a re-roll and take the new value?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

any attacks by those so marked who hit an ally you make choose to force a re-roll and take the new value?

Could workX yeah.

 

[tetrasodium]

I very much suspect there could be large number of "but you made the fighter more powerful" responses (if anyone bothers to) and only a small subset of instances it might be true.

This project is perhaps too huge or I have too many ideas.

I think that the fighter's biggest problem here is that it's not like the other 11 classes but 5e doggedly tries to pretend otherwise. Ad&d is just too different with different experience tables, ability requirements for some classes, & so on for a good comparison.. 4e is just too different & not an area of deep knowledge for me. 3.5 is a good comparison though because fighter was kind of a dual role class

• A trap for well meaning newbies who didn't put any planning into what feat chains & prc they were aiming for until they were spread too thin. Usually someone (the gm or another player) would try to help these people but they tended to be rare from what I remember. The fact that it also got a bonus feat at 4/6/8/10/etc made it easier to recover from heavy investment in zany feats like skill focus basket weaving and pointless skills like knowledge french omelette history.
• a two level dip for level 1 & level 2 bonus feats along with 1/1 BaB progression & good fort save. This made it a great way to shave off some weaknesses, qualify for a PrC needing certain feats more quickly, or bring a feat based concept online faster.

Sure there were plenty of purely martial prestige classes, but the critical difference wth 5e is that you would go into them around level 5 & the entire PrC was probably onlt 5-10 levels of rapidfire cool stuff to create an interesting concept thematically & mechanically different from other martial PrCs. Now in 5e you have archetypes that try to split off from the main core of fighter into interesting little niches, but that appens at level 3 & is spread out across the next 17 levels between core fighter class features. The blandness of fighter shouldn't be surprising when you consider how many of the battlemaster maneuvers were just a special attack action anyone could take in place of any other attack.

Spoiler: for example

It's not helped by the fact that there used to be feat chains that would alter improve & enhance those special attacks to a significant degree. There are a lot of interesting abilities fleshed out to varying degrees, I suggest creating a new class without the lead weight of the fighter core. Maybe add some or many of the abilities (as is or weakened) already fleshed out to the core class & instead of fighting the schizophrenic too many directions feel then pick a couple directions those can be grouped into for a collection of archetypes that sprout from the core class. Using that route you don't need to worry about splitting the development of those forks with the development of a core class & can have most if not all of the post-split levels devoted to taking a forking deer path into an eight lane highway complete with streetlights & all that is not getting dragged down trying to be an almost but crappy version of some other archetype?

Also... just like the maneuvers, some of the fighting styles are especially bad & they are rarely interesting ("ooooh" +1 with X).. The default protection fs is in an especially eggregious example. Whenever I see someone at one of my AL my tables with defensive style I 100% know it because they are constantly reminding the group that if they stay within 5 feet he/she can use it to help defend them & rarely does anyone take them up on it. By comparison when a player finds out another player is running a paladin "do you have your aura?" & "what does your aura do" are almost always quickly raised questions. a much better version of defensive style might be something like:
you actively thwart attacks from opponents within your reach*. As long as you are conscious and able to take reactions any hostile opponent within your reach making one or more attacks directed at an ally of yours suffers a -2(-1d4?) penalty on those attacks.

* Is this wording odd compared to "five feet"? sure for a human with a 5 foot reach, but a bugbear has a 10 foot reach as does a medium sized PC who is enlarged. Not having the ability accommodate for such things is silliness that might as well get corrected if it's being tweaked[/QUOTE]

 

[Garthanos]

you actively thwart attacks from opponents within your reach*. As long as you are conscious and able to take reactions any hostile opponent within your reach making one or more attacks directed at an ally of yours suffers a -2(-1d4?) penalty on those attacks.
g tweaked

I like the d4 it feels 5e'ish - 4e used a -2 and had powers to attack and also mark more enemies whether you hit or not.
The Cavalier/(Who almost guarantee if feats are used is using sentinel feat) does better than the protection style by far. The abilities of a Cavalier feel artificially spread out over those 17 levels you mentioned I call it artificially spread as the Weaponmaster fighter in 4e would have in composite almost always had the like or better at low levels.... sounds like the same effect in 3e too.

One of the things about changing the core class when the changes are elegant it makes the subclasses better like the Training Exercises allows any archetype to pick up maneuvers.

* Is this wording odd compared to "five feet"? sure for a human with a 5 foot reach, but a bugbear has a 10 foot reach as does a medium sized PC who is enlarged. Not having the ability accommodate for such things is silliness that might as well get corrected if it's being tweaked

4e had that odd little issue too... instead of trusting that well reach was a thing they tended to have powers say adjacent or the like it might have been service to the idea of the "normal" sized weapon is the dominant trope weapon so it took feats and special abilities to tap into the awesome control from a pole arm. (then needed patchy clunkiness and feats for when a reach weapon or reach ability was in place).

 

[Garthanos]

Could workX yeah.

Almost seems stronger than advantage in some ways it only works when they hit so they have to hit twice. (usually not but may result in an enemy bumbling into a crit they wouldn't have gotten)

Normally the re-roll combines with Disadvantage ... you have the enemy making a disadvantaged attack... and they are forced to reroll when it succeeds

That is a reason to make it something which does not combine.

 

[Garthanos]

Fixing fighting styles also allows you to help out all the melee combatants across the board (assuming good fixes of course)

 

[tetrasodium]

.

I like the d4 it feels 5e'ish - 4e used a -2 and had powers to attack and also mark more enemies whether you hit or not.
The Cavalier/(Who almost guarantee if feats are used is using sentinel feat) does better than the protection style by far. The abilities of a Cavalier feel artificially spread out over those 17 levels you mentioned I call it artificially spread as the Weaponmaster fighter in 4e would have in composite almost always had the like or better at low levels.... sounds like the same effect in 3e too.

One of the things about changing the core class when the changes are elegant it makes the subclasses better like the Training Exercises allows any archetype to pick up maneuvers.


4e had that odd little issue too... instead of trusting that well reach was a thing they tended to have powers say adjacent or the like it might have been service to the idea of the "normal" sized weapon is the dominant trope weapon so it took feats and special abilities to tap into the awesome control from a pole arm. (then needed patchy clunkiness and feats for when a reach weapon or reach ability was in place).

5e uses -1d4with bane and almost nothing else

 

[Garthanos]

5e uses -1d4 with bane and almost nothing else

makes me think of the Bards inspiration die

One could almost see it (when its not direct physical interference like in my Threatening Glare (or is it Harrying Shout) as the fighter disrupting enemies ie sort of the opposite of the bards action.
(thanks for bringing up bane by the way)

 

[Garthanos]

If one introduces Flanking Rules +more relevant Opportunity attacks something like this could be quite useable.

Pass Through (Overrun/ Footwork Lure) - as a bonus action fancy footwork and athletic moves allow you to penetrate the line and move to the other side of an adjacent enemy or to swap places with such without triggering opportunity attacks… the first attack you make following this movement if it hits gains a bonus damage of one CS die.

Situationally you may be providing other adjacent allies and yourself with flanking derived advantage with one bonus action.

One way of making this a bit stronger might be to allow additional speed as part of the maneuver

 

[Garthanos]

Pass through becomes a bit like a Over-run from 3e and Footwork Lure from 4e.