An easy boost for Fighters and Rangers is to give them more powerful Fighting Styles. Imo these are best flavoured as campaign specific martial schools. UA already has some.

You can have eg a great axe style that is +4 damage to match Duelist, a TWF style that gives an extra attack as part of an attack action. I give TWF fighters 2 extra bonus attacks at 11th level. Etc.

Quote from: GameThug;1135589GWF?  How could I have overlooked the fact that it gives you 6.3 instead of 5.5 Avg Dam on a d10?

Or maybe it's just another example of Fighter weaksauce.

As for GWM, it (and you) assume that the GM is lining up low AC adversaries all day, everyday--and that overkilling low AC, low HP monsters is what we're talking about.

I get that the problem is beyond your perception.  That's fine.  You have yet to offer any actual, meaningful evidence to support your claim--and nothing you have contributed addresses the actual question at hand.

An extremely low number of monsters below CR 20 have enough AC to make GWM not worth using. Unless your DM is sending nothing but dragons and shit at you, yeah, basically you will be fighting low AC monsters all day every day. Especially if you play smart enough to have advantage frequently, since it basically negates the penalty when fighting anything with AC under 20ish.

With Champions I let Remarkable Athlete bonus stack with Proficiency bonus. IME Champion is the only underpowered Fighter path in the PHB.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1135558Cunning Action and Expertise are pretty strong abilities especially for a Fighter that doesn't dump dex. If a whole party has it, every fight is going to have a "kite" section where the enemy needs to find/reach the party before they even need to use serious abilities. Expertise in Athletics/Stealth would just be crazy good for a fighter. They could kite for awhile with stealth and grapple basically anything. Barbarian would be even better with all of their real class features.

I can see that those are useful for fighters/barbarians - but ALL classes (which was the original contention)? And at what level do you take these 2 levels of rogue? I'm talking about a campaign from level 1 - N, not a "build a character at level X".

Also, I don't understand the term "kite", in this context. At medium - high levels, stealth/grapple won't help when the enemy is hitting you from range with all sorts of nasty stuff. For stealth, you need something to hide behind, which isn't always possible (assuming you're not a halfling!)

Quote from: GameThug;1135589GWF?  How could I have overlooked the fact that it gives you 6.3 instead of 5.5 Avg Dam on a d10?

Or maybe it's just another example of Fighter weaksauce.

As for GWM, it (and you) assume that the GM is lining up low AC adversaries all day, everyday--and that overkilling low AC, low HP monsters is what we're talking about.

I get that the problem is beyond your perception.  That's fine.  You have yet to offer any actual, meaningful evidence to support your claim--and nothing you have contributed addresses the actual question at hand.

Hahaha, beyond my perception. What's next, "EARTH HAS 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY"? As has been mentioned, the tradeoff with GWM is worth it even against enemies with fairly high ACs. And AC does not scale together with HP. There are plenty of low AC high HP enemies around. And GWF is best utilized with weapons which do 2D6 damage.

Quote from: Blankman;1135614Hahaha, beyond my perception. What's next, "EARTH HAS 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY"? As has been mentioned, the tradeoff with GWM is worth it even against enemies with fairly high ACs. And AC does not scale together with HP. There are plenty of low AC high HP enemies around. And GWF is best utilized with weapons which do 2D6 damage.

you dont believe in time cube...well now i thing Greenwhich Mean Tome has retarded your mentality.

Quote from: S'mon;1135598With Champions I let Remarkable Athlete bonus stack with Proficiency bonus. IME Champion is the only underpowered Fighter path in the PHB.

imo purple dragon knight is bad too.

Quote from: Slambo;1135622imo purple dragon knight is bad too.

I said in PHB - no experience with the XGTE paths either. But Eldritch Knight is very strong spamming Shield spell and Battle Master is decent at 2 encounters per SR.

Quote from: areallifetrex;1135597An extremely low number of monsters below CR 20 have enough AC to make GWM not worth using. Unless your DM is sending nothing but dragons and shit at you, yeah, basically you will be fighting low AC monsters all day every day. Especially if you play smart enough to have advantage frequently, since it basically negates the penalty when fighting anything with AC under 20ish.

I always like how the suggestion arises that players aren't playing smart enough.

Some classes can readily generate advantage.  Others, including the fighter, cannot.

Shove uses an attack that MAY generate advantage on the next, not that WILL.  Battlemaster Trip a) uses a superiority die and b) is contested still.  Feinting Attack burns a SD and a Bonus Action.

Quote from: Blankman;1135614Hahaha, beyond my perception. What's next, "EARTH HAS 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY"? As has been mentioned, the tradeoff with GWM is worth it even against enemies with fairly high ACs. And AC does not scale together with HP. There are plenty of low AC high HP enemies around. And GWF is best utilized with weapons which do 2D6 damage.

Oh, so your example of the excellence of martials in general is a build based on one feat with one weapon type?  That totally disproves my claim that the Fighter class is weak.

Quote from: GameThug;1135626Oh, so your example of the excellence of martials in general is a build based on one feat with one weapon type?  That totally disproves my claim that the Fighter class is weak.

Archer Style + sharpshooter also very strong.

Quote from: GameThug;1135590What I want is something that makes some tweaks at the PC level while leaving the rest of the game mechanics mostly intact.  The players are fine with a rebalance, as there is a broad consensus around how the classes stack up.

You sound like you're basically right in my target demo for the game system I'm developing. It's d20 based and while there are some real differences at the character building level, it plays enough like 5e (in the sense that you roll a d20+mods vs. a target number, roll d4-d12+Mods for damage, have an action economy, spend resources with short and long term recovery, etc.) that you should be able to use Roll20 for it.

I think it's fighter classes (it's an entire class group with brigand, captain, defender, disabler, mastermind, sentinel, sharpshooter, slayer and striker classes with strong, swift and berserker combat styles and daring, tactical and wary combat focuses available to all the classes... so a strong tactical defender or a swift wary striker or a daring berserker captain for examples) might be just what you're looking for. At the very least it might inspire some ideas for what to do with the 5e fighters in your games.

I'll let you have access to the rules document in trade for feedback on the system (the more eyes the better). PM me if you're interested.

Quote from: S'mon;1135623I said in PHB - no experience with the XGTE paths either. But Eldritch Knight is very strong spamming Shield spell and Battle Master is decent at 2 encounters per SR.

Ah i didnt notice you said in PHB. Battlemaster is okay, but think it should have been rolled into the base of the martial classes, having manuvers as a way to distinguish "full" martial classes from Half Martial classes, but thats just me.

Quote from: GameThug;1135590What are you trying to do, exactly?

Yo Einstein, you're new here so we don't know shit about you, your group, or your group dynamics. Thus, the questions are so everyone on the thread understands your specific situation. We only have 1-2 forum members here with telepathy and they keep it to themselves, the rest of us non-psionics have to get our facts from reading posts.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1135667Yo Einstein, you're new here so we don't know shit about you, your group, or your group dynamics. Thus, the questions are so everyone on the thread understands your specific situation. We only have 1-2 forum members here with telepathy and they keep it to themselves, the rest of us non-psionics have to get our facts from reading posts.

Maybe just answer the actual question, then:

"Can anyone recommend a 5E hack that rebalances the core classes so Fighters in particular don't suck so bad?"

If you think 5E classes are well-balanced, you're probably not the guy to help me.  If you're unaware of the reams of writing on this topic, and you need to be in order to make a recommendation, you're not the guy to help me.

The specifics of my group etc are for me to worry about.

If you need examples, check out the replies after your first reply.