Base Class: Fighter
Marauders are battlefield assassin who specialize in wielding two weapons to quickly dispatch their target. To a marauder, battles are meant to be over quickly, one way or the other. If taking out a key player in a fight would turn the tide in their favor, marauders will happily put their lives on the line. They are the first in, the first to get a kill, and, perhaps more often than one would like, the first ones down. But by that point it doesn't matter - they have already removed their quarry's head, ensuring their allies' victory.
They key to a marauder's success lies in it's short but powerful bursts of adrenaline that they are trained to tap into at will. Marauders take what makes a fighter a fighter - action surge, second wind, and the indomitable ability - and give them additional benefits to fuel their battle spirit. But as is true with all things, once it's over, it's over. And pushing their bodies too far can leave lone marauders vulnerable...
Dual Wield Specialist
3rd-level Marauder feature
Your weapons are like an extension of your body. When wielding a weapon in each hand, you gain the following benefits:
- You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light.
- You can draw or stow two one-handed weapons when you would normally be able to draw or stow only one.
- You can make your off-hand attack as part of the Attack action instead of as a bonus action.
- If your race has the ability to make a melee attack with natural weapons - such as horns, hooves, fangs, or claws - you may treat them as a one-handed weapon, potentially freeing up one of your hands. If you do, at 7th level your natural weapons count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance or immunity to non-magical weapons.
- Your critical hits are calculated differently. Instead of rolling one weapon's damage dice twice, you instead roll the damage dice from each held weapon as you hit your target with all of your weapons at the same time. You still only count your damage modifier once.
Adrenaline Rush
3rd-level Marauder feature
You enter a battle high during intense moments of fighting, giving you a massive spike of adrenaline. You have advantage on your initiative rolls. In addition, your core fighter abilities gain the following effects:
As part of your action surge ability, you have advantage on all melee weapon attacks made the next time you take the Attack action, and you can move up to half your movement speed without provoking attacks of opportunity. Furthermore, you can use your action surge one additional time before taking a short or long rest, but receive one level of exhaustion for doing so.
As part of your second wind ability, you gain temporary hit points equal to the number of hit points restored. You also have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage until the start of your next turn.
Dancing Steel
7th-level Marauder feature
You are constantly on the move, intercepting incoming blows while landing attacks of your own. When a creature would make a successful ranged or melee weapon attack against you, you may use your reaction to add your proficiency bonus to your AC. If this difference causes the creature to miss you, you may use your offhand weapon to make a single melee weapon attack against it. You may do this after seeing the roll but before the outcome has been determined.
In addition, you can add your proficiency bonus to Dexterity saving throws and your movement speed is increased by 10 feet.
Relentless Assault
10th-level Marauder feature
Each time you make a successful melee weapon attack against an enemy, you may choose to take a -1 penalty to your subsequent attack rolls. If you do, you gain +1 to the damage roll of the attack. This effect stacks with each successful hit, but resets at the end of each turn.
In addition, as a bonus action you can expend a use of your indomitable ability to suppress the effects of exhaustion for one hour. This does not remove the condition, only temporarily ignores it.
Single-Minded Focus
15th-level Marauder feature
As part of making a melee weapon attack against a creature, you can mark that creature as the focus of your assault. When attacking that creature, you may make one additional melee weapon attack each time you take the attack action, reduce the creature's movement speed by 10 feet on a hit, and score a crit on a roll of 19 or 20. However, you have disadvantage on attack rolls made against any other creature, and other creatures have advantage on attack rolls made against you.
You can only mark one target at a time, and cannot mark another target until the first mark has ended. A mark can only end when the creature reaches 0 hit points, if you end your turn more than 30 feet away from the target, or a minute has passed.
Bloodthirst
18th-level Marauder feature
When a hostile creature within 5 feet of you is reduced to 0 hit points, you gain a number of hit points equal to twice your level with this class. If you are already at your maximum total hit points then you gain that many temporary hit points instead.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 2, 2024The purpose of this class is to emphasize dual-wielding as a high-damage combat style instead of something like the Great Weapon Master/Polearm Mastery combo. It's a playstyle that encourages making a beeline for the strongest looking enemy, shredding them in a tornado of blood and steel, then hoping your allies have your back as you limp home. You still may want to take feats like crusher, slasher, or piercer to make the most of different weapon types, but it still serves to provide competition for the dominant weapon damage meta builds.
As an added benefit, I realized toward the tail-end of making this subclass that it would be a great chance to provide some of the lesser played races with natural weapons - such as minotaur or centaur - a chance to regularly utilize said weapons. I think those races are pretty cool, but I often consider natural weapons to be highly situational, especially with builds that would already have a high strength stat.
This does, however, present some exploitative damage with the thri-kreen race. I considered putting in wording that would limit their ability to use all four of their weapons on each crit, but realized it was a losing battle. Limiting it to only two weapon attacks would put them behind natural weapons, but letting them make only three attacks means they can still hold a shield with one of their main hands. Since using a shield defeats the purpose of the subclass, I decided that if they really want to go that route then I'm not going to stop them. If you don't want to abuse the subclass, don't play thri-kreen. If you and your DM are both okay with it, however, then by all means go nuts.