Quote from: Batman;905155The Champion is fine by design because getting critical hits more often is going to increase your DPR, more so than attempting different combat maneuvers that aren't always beneficial all the time.

I am not so sure on that. The Champion goes gradually from a 1-in-20 chance of a crit to a 3-in-20. I compared the Battle Master, Wizard and Champion and the Champion triggers only 3 times compared to the Battle Masters eventual 6 uses. The Champion though get essentially regeneration/super endurance late in the game. And also allows you to trigger the Great Weapon feat's bonus attack potentially more often.

Havent done the math but at a guess they may be fairly close in output. But eventually the Champion may still be standing after the rest have fallen.

Lots of interesting dynamics in 5e that have yet to explore.

Quote from: tenbones;905160Wow someone is mad about someone not liking his elf-game. There's a shock. I feel so... "punted" LOL.

At least Batman is willing to talk about the actual topic. /shrug. I can always count on the Bats!!!

Mad? Sorry to burst your fragile ego but... No. Not really at all.

I've run round this enough times and you keep repeating the same tired false screed over and over. So really its you who arent talking about the topic. Try again please while we punt you some more.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;905214When every class assumes the role of a fighter there isn't really much point in a fighter class anymore. That archetype has become assumed in every individual who becomes an adventurer. A fighter archetype has no reason to exist unless it is better at fighting than every other archetype. This is directly at odds with the "everyone must be equally good at battle" paradigm that is pervasive in the game today. Those who bitch and moan about the fighter not being allowed to have nice things often don't stop to realize that it was the other classes who took those things away, and plugging in wuxia powers for the fighter in an attempt to return them does nothing but transform the genre of the game from heroic fantasy to heroic fantasy superheroes. The classic fighter archetype cannot be restored by heaping more mechanics on it.

As long as the game is designed to be all about combat, the fighter will not have a satisfactory place as an archetype. It really is that simple.

"When everyone is super. No one will be."

And this was one of the things we argued bitterly with WOTC over during playtest. The caster classes were even more powerful with cantrips alone and it was absurd. We got it reigned in some. But I still argue that the casters need to be curbed further.

Some observations.

The Champion, then Warrior, in the playtest got their 18-20 crit bonus at 7th level instead of 15th.And at 15th level their criticals now caused some sort of effect based on the damage type. Stun, Stop or Wound

The Battle Master, then Weaponmaster, in the playtest had fewer superiority dice, but could regain them by using an action. And their use had a chance of failure to cause an effect. But even on a fail at least added the roll as extra damage.

I think restoring the champion's power crits and the Battle Masters ability to regain dice would work in 5e.

I think Exploderwizard brings up a great many things that help illuminate, at least as the Fighter is concerned, the loss of what classes represent in the D&D verse. As to Cantrips, I'm not even that concerned with their damage out put because it's still pretty small compared to a weapon-based class using a bow and adding Dex to the damage roll. And if you're a cool DM you'll allow arrows to be modified to create various effects like smoking, fire, holy water, acid-tipped arrows.

Quote from: Batman;905295I think Exploderwizard brings up a great many things that help illuminate, at least as the Fighter is concerned, the loss of what classes represent in the D&D verse. As to Cantrips, I'm not even that concerned with their damage out put because it's still pretty small compared to a weapon-based class using a bow and adding Dex to the damage roll. And if you're a cool DM you'll allow arrows to be modified to create various effects like smoking, fire, holy water, acid-tipped arrows.

I was kicking around an idea to give the Fighter types a scaling weapon die, as per the Magic users Cantrips, but I'm not entirely sure how that would interact with the extra attack mechanic...

Quote from: Christopher Brady;905302I was kicking around an idea to give the Fighter types a scaling weapon die, as per the Magic users Cantrips, but I'm not entirely sure how that would interact with the extra attack mechanic...

In early playtests they didn't have multiple attacks per turn but instead did something similar in scaling the damage at certain levels. I wish I had the old playtest material but my old computer died and was wiped (thanks Windows 10 upgrade!) so I pretty much lost most of that stuff. If I remember correctly the Fighter got the most benefit, getting something like 4d6 with their swing. It ended up on the cutting room floor because people wanted more attack rolls to emulate combat better (or something arbitrary like that) and so they went back to previous incarnations of pre-4e.

Quote from: Naburimannu;905216The two groups I've trained with most recently are the London Sword & Dagger Club and the Triangle Sword Guild. They're working with identical weapons - what 5e (and modern scholarship) calls the Longsword, but many earlier editions called the Bastard Sword. The London group works in the Italian school (Fiore dei Liberi), the North Carolina group in the German school (Liechtenauer).

In the former group, no matter what your level of skill is, at least 25% of your training time is spent on disarms, grapples, throws, etc.
In the latter group, they're hardly mentioned; the focus is all about the sword. These people are strong, fit, powerful, and *capable* of doing these moves, but not *well trained* to do them.
In my very non-expert experience, the Liechtenauer moves don't leave you in good position to do grappling; the principal sword techniques are incompatible with the way Fiore smoothly combines wrestling plays and strikes.

London is training Battlemasters, the colonies are training Champions.



** All sorts of caveats:

 - There are other German authors that teach grappling; a quick approximation may be that *unarmored fighters* aren't safe enough to take the risks of closing to grapple / are vulnerable enough that you don't need to grapple with them to kill them; *full-plate-harness armored fighters* are well-enough protected that they can afford to get close / need to be thrown or disarmed to have enough advantage to be able to hurt them. I don't know the sources well enough to know if this theory holds water.

 - I screwed up my rotator cuffs with TSG so haven't done any advanced training with them, nor kibbitzed about these theories with my friends who do. This is based on the intro-level classes I've taken and practices I've attended, skimming their curriculum, and my memory of German vs Italian comparisons.

 - The Iaido that I studied long ago is also focused on unarmored combat, but you don't take the other guy's sword away, you just cut his hands off.

Thats a very interesting insight into sword schools. I enjoyed that and it seems pertinent to the discussion. Thank you.

Quote from: Omega;905288"When everyone is super. No one will be."

And this was one of the things we argued bitterly with WOTC over during playtest. The caster classes were even more powerful with cantrips alone and it was absurd. We got it reigned in some. But I still argue that the casters need to be curbed further.

Well, it has always been mighty hard to rein in 'infinity'... Cantrips is one of several glaring abominations I saw upon first contact with 5e. To see warlock class dip builds proliferate as a current multiclass exploit for cantrips was only a matter of time, in my expectation.

But 5e is the only WotC edition I would ever deign to play, so it's not irredeemable in my eyes...

Quote from: Batman;905315In early playtests they didn't have multiple attacks per turn but instead did something similar in scaling the damage at certain levels. I wish I had the old playtest material but my old computer died and was wiped (thanks Windows 10 upgrade!) so I pretty much lost most of that stuff. If I remember correctly the Fighter got the most benefit, getting something like 4d6 with their swing. It ended up on the cutting room floor because people wanted more attack rolls to emulate combat better (or something arbitrary like that) and so they went back to previous incarnations of pre-4e.

I have the first playtest packets and one of the early ones. In the first, up to level 3, the fighter was getting a bonus to damage on level up. +2 at level 1, +3 at level 3. And it started with a "theme" Slayer which meant you dealt your stat mod as damage even if you missed.

Fastforward 7 months and now the fighter now has "Martial dice" that can spend on a hit to add more damage. 6 by level 20. and got damage bonus a little later. Maneuvers were now part of the class propper and instead the style you choose determined which you had access to or not.

The monk had a simmilar mechanic running with martial dice and all that.

Quote from: Omega;905288"When everyone is super. No one will be."

And this was one of the things we argued bitterly with WOTC over during playtest. The caster classes were even more powerful with cantrips alone and it was absurd. We got it reigned in some. But I still argue that the casters need to be curbed further.

The problem lies not with the Cantrips, but with how the magic system was original, as back in 1974, was designed.  It's still crazy powerful because spells just don't fail without outside stimulus, and smart casters won't use spells that are that 'fragile'.

But trying to change that got us 4e and the subsequent backlash, and with the prevalence of the OGL managed to kill any real chance at changing the most useful and reliable rules in the game.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;905430The problem lies not with the Cantrips, but with how the magic system was original, as back in 1974, was designed.  It's still crazy powerful because spells just don't fail without outside stimulus, and smart casters won't use spells that are that 'fragile'.

But trying to change that got us 4e and the subsequent backlash, and with the prevalence of the OGL managed to kill any real chance at changing the most useful and reliable rules in the game.

Most of the "big gun" spells in pre-3e D&D had relatively long cast times. (Power Word Kill very much does not). Even the short spells like Cloudkill and Fireball can be interrupted. Oh do I know how well they can be interrupted!

Something of note though.

Masque of the Red Death, the Ravenloft setting that was set on "gothic Earth" 1890 had a very interesting little rules change to casters.

1: Casting spells required a skill check. Roll the appropriate stat or less. With a -2 penalty. And. There was a -1 penalty to the check per level of the spell. (No level penalty if you took the skill twice.) Failure meaning it fizzled as if interrupted and is lost. And. On a check roll of natural 20 the spell took effect. But in some unhelpful way. Attack spells would hit the caster or allies, defensive spells made more vulnerable, etc.

2: As if that weren't bad enough. EVERY cast of a spell had a percent chance to taint the caster. 1% per level of spell. Double that if for evil purpose. Double that again if necromantic.

And we arent done yet!

3: Due to the low mana ebb of the world. Casting times were in ROUNDS(minutes), not segments.

So that min/max spiritualist casts Reversed Resurrection - Destruction on some merchant so he does not have to pay him. That is a base 20% (18 -2 = 16) chance of failure. With an additional 45% (-9) chance of failure if said spiritualist didn't hit the books hard. Assuming he didn't just annihilate himself then that is a 36% chance to be tainted. Its going to take 100 rounds to cast by the way. Hope there's no interruption! Even something as simple as Lightning Bolt is going to tie the caster up for 3 minutes and even with focused proficiency its still a 20% chance of failiure and a 5% chance of disasterous failure.
 
Oh yeah. And No elves, dwarves, etc. Humans only.

Masque was so much fun to play and one of these days I will replace my copy that was stolen.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904993I am pretty much in this same boat, except for the "clearly inferior that nobody ever used them" part.

There seem to be three options for "unusual" combat techniques like tripping, pushing or disarming:

• Don't include them in the RPG at all.
• Include them but make them so unattractive that they're only used in very specialized circumstances.
• Include them but make them better than basic hitting an opponent with a weapon (so players who want to be effective tend to use them excessively).

I meant 2, although I see I stated it a little too strongly; if an opponent who can't fly insists on standing on the edge of a cliff, then pushing becomes attractive even if it's very unlikely, because the payoff is high enough. But otherwise I don't see anyone in 5e shoving a creature per the rules in the PHB; do you? (There's a unicorn you can hunt in between 2 and 3 where the unusual techniques are exactly balanced and will be chosen just as frequently as in reality, but I would wager it's going to end up in 3 as soon as a clever player figures out how to abuse the rules.)

QuoteThe manipulation of action economy, a la Thief archetype features, would actually be a wonderful start to its redesign. However I can see how increased chance of success, or bonus damage can be feature reward variations to its design. In fact, all told that pool redistributed between Champion and Battlemaster could really squeeze out something interesting.

I think the other part which bugs me about the "implicitly reserved" nature of those maneuvers is how the Battlemaster has to also select a limited choice of them from the pool. So much of the presentation implies that these functions are reserved and generally unavailable, even within the archetype itself. The way it's written takes up extra space in an exception-based design format that is totally a 4e nod, but the end result also ends up weakening "designer intent" arguments for supporting these maneuver to be liberalized into general availability. This leaves a sense of doubt whether such open GM judgment would throw off the game somehow.

It is something that should have really been cordoned off as a '4e Approved!' archetype take after a larger spread of these maneuvers made it into the General Actions in Combat chapter, Attacks sub-chapter. That would have cleared ambiguity while also feeding the brainstorm for green (or timid) GMs how to develop their own new Improvised Actions.

I think that it would be better to list how all the various maneuvers would work for non-battle masters, and then express the battle master maneuvers by explaining the difference from the basic rule. This would have the following benefits:

* Make the battle master less peculiar (or less 4e, if that's what it is; I'm not familiar enough with 4e to comment).

* Point up weird anomalies in how the maneuvers work. For example, it's complicated to list the circumstances in which Pushing Attack or Trip Attack are more likely to succeed than the ordinary "Shoving a Creature" rules. The battle master rules seem to assume that the battle master will have Medium size: a halfling battle master (Small) could push or trip a rhinoceros (Large) but not under the shoving rules (one size larger only); conversely an Enlarged human battle master (Large) could not push or trip an elephant (Huge) but could under the shoving rules. The saving throw in the maneuver forces the defender to use Strength, not Dexterity, and lets the battle master use Dexterity (and proficiency bonus without Athletics proficiency) but if both favor Strength and the fighter has proficiency in Athletics, then it's equivalent to the contest under "Shoving a Creature" except that the battle master effectively rolls 8 (and has no option to augment it with various reroll mechanisms like Luck or inspiration), and the battle master had to hit the target's AC first as well (but gets damage plus the superiority die for it, and 15 feet in the case of successful pushing).

* Force various posters to find new things to complain about.

So I guess that we are in the same boat, and apparently even paddling in the same direction. I still want to play a battle master or at least play in a group with one; the anomalies above might be irrelevant to how it actually plays.

I get it, maneuvers as situational advantages. Nothing so good so as to outright replace basic attacks, but a lateral spread of power by doing different things well. I'm with you there.

And it's not like the generically available example maneuvers had to be hard and fast mechanically. It just had to be a dialogue like the old games on how the designers would go about handling such a challenge. An example for everyone to crib off of, and a dialogue about why those design choices, is great for those who need more guidance than "whatever your wildest imagination's desire!" there'll be those brave enough to make rule variants, but at least they have a metric to guide them why in their adjudicated choice of mechanical resolution.

Like, go read an old D&D rule about grenade scatter, shooting into melee from outside, or overbearing an opponent. Sure they can get esoteric in the minutae of creature sizes, facing, and randomization of results. But there was a method to that madness -- it showed what the designers prized from the game in relation to the setting's logic: how to make the mechanics serve the unpredictable feel of the world versus a disconnected spew of metagameable functions.

There's an adult consideration going on in that sort of presentation.