Finally playing my first Fighter (battlemaster) in SKT, we've just started at level 5 and our DM had our intro be in a ship sailing into Icewind Dale when our boat was attacked by a hydra in our first 'shakedown see what you can do' sorta battle. Ship had other adventurer types on it, flurry of arrows and spells cast against it (not sure if they where doing damage or not but def gave off the vibes of a giant monster attack as the Hydra chomped down on some poor dwarf) que initiative! I went first and decided to just Nova to see exactly what my new greatsword weilding battlemaster could do with GWM and I was not disappointed.
I won't say I didn't roll well first attack was a 12, used a superority die to get to 16. hit ok nice I know I need around 16. 23 damage dealt, second attack 18 with no SD required 25 dmg. Action surge, 2 more hits for 24 damage a piece, action surge, 2 superiority dice and 96 damage dealt.
Absolutely awesome, DM was just looking at me like jesus thats nuts (but he loved it), I've only really played sorcerers and clerics and 1 druid so to me it was a nice change and really only seen sword n board fighters. GWM was beastily obviously the +10 was huge chunking in 40 damage, and the great weapon fighting style was clutch I rolled so many 1s and 2s in those attacks that turned into 4s and 5s.
Lookin forward to the rest of the campaign, I know I won't be going that ham all the time since it was an obvious single monster n done during travel kinda fight, BUT the possibility is there.. stuff all comes back on a short rest anyway
Fighters are a great class that I don't think gets nearly enough love. Their base abilities may not be flashy, but they're a sturdy class that offers a lot of flexibility in how you build them. And yeah, Battlemasters can be a lot of fun, plus they work with pretty much any weapon setup you choose.
Some may not agree. But really all of the Subclasses for fighter are solid. Some are more basic or more specialized than others. but they all do really well and they all fall back on a different way of fighting fairly easily if they want to. They aren't necessarily hard to have a couple different builds going on with a single character that you kind of switch between if you do it right. Though one is likely going to be a bit more focused on and thus a bit better more often than not.
Some may not agree. But really all of the Subclasses for fighter are solid. Some are more basic or more specialized than others. but they all do really well and they all fall back on a different way of fighting fairly easily if they want to. They aren't necessarily hard to have a couple different builds going on with a single character that you kind of switch between if you do it right. Though one is likely going to be a bit more focused on and thus a bit better more often than not.
Im sure they are, I think what may draw people to the battlemaster is having another mechanic to play with outside of just plan attacking, get some dice they come back on SRs which is great, you get a decent number of em and they do some nice things. It's sorta like having cantrips in a way, just some extra meat on the bone while still being essentially a normal martial thats not flinging spells n such. One pick I took was tripping attack which may turn out to be a bust in the campaign, not sure how many non giants we'll fight but we'll see, it just looked to good to pass up.
Some may not agree. But really all of the Subclasses for fighter are solid. Some are more basic or more specialized than others. but they all do really well and they all fall back on a different way of fighting fairly easily if they want to. They aren't necessarily hard to have a couple different builds going on with a single character that you kind of switch between if you do it right. Though one is likely going to be a bit more focused on and thus a bit better more often than not.
Im sure they are, I think what may draw people to the battlemaster is having another mechanic to play with outside of just plan attacking, get some dice they come back on SRs which is great, you get a decent number of em and they do some nice things. It's sorta like having cantrips in a way, just some extra meat on the bone while still being essentially a normal martial thats not flinging spells n such. One pick I took was tripping attack which may turn out to be a bust in the campaign, not sure how many non giants we'll fight but we'll see, it just looked to good to pass up.
I'm pretty sure you'll find a use for Tripping Attack in SKT. Maybe not quite as often as you like, but I agree it's an excellent maneuver and well worth taking
Some may not agree. But really all of the Subclasses for fighter are solid. Some are more basic or more specialized than others. but they all do really well and they all fall back on a different way of fighting fairly easily if they want to. They aren't necessarily hard to have a couple different builds going on with a single character that you kind of switch between if you do it right. Though one is likely going to be a bit more focused on and thus a bit better more often than not.
Im sure they are, I think what may draw people to the battlemaster is having another mechanic to play with outside of just plan attacking, get some dice they come back on SRs which is great, you get a decent number of em and they do some nice things. It's sorta like having cantrips in a way, just some extra meat on the bone while still being essentially a normal martial thats not flinging spells n such. One pick I took was tripping attack which may turn out to be a bust in the campaign, not sure how many non giants we'll fight but we'll see, it just looked to good to pass up.
I will admit it's just my experience. But over the years since 5th edition came out. I've repeatedly heard what boils down to one thing when it comes to battlemaster that makes it so popular. A bunch of shiny toys (techniques) that they don't really have to think about or be creative with to use. It's already basically there for them. And it's dice that they can add into numbers in somewhat skewed ways to show their optimization just behind that.
Now I know that can be taken negatively but be aware that I don't mean it that way. It's just something to keep in mind and something that can be grown past or reconsidered if we want to. And it's something we really should consider when it comes to things like fighters because a lot of what fighters do is not flashy unless we make it flashy. They are a starting point character with a wide range of potential for us to do that for a reason.
Precise Attack is half of the bm combo and *technically* the other half can be any of the damaging ones, but trip is definitely one of the best - not *as* good as menacing, but pretty damn great. Just remember, you can't use your fighting style to reroll a maneuver die.
When you fight something Large or smaller, believe me, you'll notice the benefit to attacking a prone target with GWM.
I think the crazy thing about fighters in the mid and late tiers is the amount of ASIs you get. You'll proably have your 20 and some feats when all other classes will only have one of those. Sometimes the fighter looks boring, but it's just a toolkit for your own way of building that martial badass you want, while still being obviously not underpowered. Hell you could take all the worst choices probably (let's say Purple Dragon Knigt with only feats that don't help in battle like linguist) and would still be viable in battle thanks to Action Surge, fighting style and multiple attacks.
Fighter migt be vanilla - but vanilla with sprinkles and it ******* rocks.
A battle master with their maneuvers can be good when they want to be good. They can attack when their enemy misses them. They can trip them, putting them prone. Gain advantage for their ally. Get a large plus to their hit when they really, really need a hit. And on and on. Lots of things to work with. They are kind of the Swiss Army knife of the fighter class.
Something like the champion is solid, but it's going to almost entirely rely on getting that crit. Which means you may crit a lot on lesser foes, where you didn't need the crit. But not crit at all on the toughest foes. So it can be overkill on the one and not show up in the next fight. It's just all in the luck of the dice.
Champion is a really solid choice for a 3 level multi-class dip to get a fighting style, action surge and the expanded crit range.
Except that they aren't really. They are limited by their superiority dice. Which really means that if they aren't careful they may be doing a few of those things for a couple of rounds realistically. And then for the other rounds of combat they are just a base fighter once more relying on base fighter things for much of their career. Even as they raise in levels throughout their career they only pick up 1 more Superiority Dice though they pick up a lot more attacks and other things. They can use those superiority dice a little more wisely by using something like Know your Enemy helping a little to know what your up against. But people talk about it like it's infinite and it's really not. Not even when running on a short rest. People really do like to understate their various short comings when talking about their core feature. Those short comings do not mean that they aren't solid. But they aren't quite the swiss army knife or the overpowering option that they are made out to be.
Champion is not just relying on Expanded Crit range either. That's just a base. A little less player controlled than BattleMaster but potentially a bit more useful depending on how the dice roll as well, assuming that you don't just engineer a build that takes a fair bit of the luck in dice rolling out of the equation by just finding ways to pile on advantage so that they are just rolling so much more often that the Crits are going to happen (it doesn't even necessarily take Multiclassing to do this). Champion is also adding to out of combat physical rolls. anything from Athletics to Stealth that you aren't already proficient in gets half the boost instead. This is actually a fairly useful boost that is almost entirely overlooked because it's not directly combat applicable but opens up a lot of things to the champion. And they get a second fighting Style at 10th level. Which isn't exactly something to sneeze at because it can either synergize with the one you already picked, which can be a fair range of things, or actually help empower a second alternate build in a way that can't be done by most other fighters. And then like Sutlo Says there are so many ASI's that all fighters can choose from but Champions can actually explore even deeper or build a wider range of things from than other Warriors because they are very generalist in nature.
They are all solid. They all do things a little bit differently and some may be a bit more specialized in how they do things. But they can always fall back of some level of generalist or just plain be the King of Generalists if they wish to be with certain subclasses.
Half proficiency is nice, but my champion already has most of these skills with proficiency. So it will be stealth and sleight of hand where I will get the half proficiency. Sleight of hand may never be used by me, nor is it used much by anybody, including rogues, in the games I have played. I remember a few coin purses being stolen by a rogue, is all. The bump to initiative is probably the most useful part of Remarkable Athlete. A second fighting style is nice, but literally a 1st level ability, you are getting at 10th level. Not awe inspiring or game changing. The ENTIRE subclass is built around the expanded crit range. That is the selling point.
If those are the skills you took. That's not a failing of the subclass. that is a choice you made to take those skills over other skills. Champions have increased benefit and options to consider putting one or two or even three of their very few skill proficiencies in other things without losing out entirely on the physical things if they wish to. They can choose to forgo that but they do not have to.
Your Views on some things are also very narrow. You think of it just as a 1st level ability. But they are first level abilities that are strong enough to basically affect entire builds over the entire careers of characters. So strong that people will dip into Fighter just to get those same abilities at mid or even high levels. 1st does not necessarily mean weak ability. Specially in something as front loaded in general as D&D 5e is. There are even other fighter subclasses that people would love to have more than one Fighting Style to use in their builds because they recognize that some of them can be stacked to some extent.
One of the arguably most powerful abilities in many people's eyes is Action Surge. A Second level ability. One that Minmaxers tend to like to rely on for their theoretical math even at level 20 in their attempts to prove OP'ness or superiority.
And the entire subclass is not built around that Increased Crit range. Your just so combat focused that is all you see. A couple of their gained subclass features touch on it. But much of the subclass is actually doing something fairly different. And your selling it very short just boiling it down to that. Even with a combat focused mentality.
That's like Looking at the BattleMaster and saying that all it's about is boosting your defenses and using your reaction because some of the maneuvers they get do that in some fashion. You'd immediately argue that they are much more than that.
So don't sell the Champion short just because you like something else better. Or you made skill choices that don't work with it because that's all you wanted.
Half proficiency is nice, but my champion already has most of these skills with proficiency. So it will be stealth and sleight of hand where I will get the half proficiency. Sleight of hand may never be used by me, nor is it used much by anybody, including rogues, in the games I have played. I remember a few coin purses being stolen by a rogue, is all. The bump to initiative is probably the most useful part of Remarkable Athlete. A second fighting style is nice, but literally a 1st level ability, you are getting at 10th level. Not awe inspiring or game changing. The ENTIRE subclass is built around the expanded crit range. That is the selling point.
If those are the skills you took. That's not a failing of the subclass. that is a choice you made to take those skills over other skills. Champions have increased benefit and options to consider putting one or two or even three of their very few skill proficiencies in other things without losing out entirely on the physical things if they wish to. They can choose to forgo that but they do not have to.
Your Views on some things are also very narrow. You think of it just as a 1st level ability. But they are first level abilities that are strong enough to basically affect entire builds over the entire careers of characters. So strong that people will dip into Fighter just to get those same abilities at mid or even high levels. 1st does not necessarily mean weak ability. Specially in something as front loaded in general as D&D 5e is. There are even other fighter subclasses that people would love to have more than one Fighting Style to use in their builds because they recognize that some of them can be stacked to some extent.
One of the arguably most powerful abilities in many people's eyes is Action Surge. A Second level ability. One that Minmaxers tend to like to rely on for their theoretical math even at level 20 in their attempts to prove OP'ness or superiority.
And the entire subclass is not built around that Increased Crit range. Your just so combat focused that is all you see. A couple of their gained subclass features touch on it. But much of the subclass is actually doing something fairly different. And your selling it very short just boiling it down to that. Even with a combat focused mentality.
That's like Looking at the BattleMaster and saying that all it's about is boosting your defenses and using your reaction because some of the maneuvers they get do that in some fashion. You'd immediately argue that they are much more than that.
So don't sell the Champion short just because you like something else better. Or you made skill choices that don't work with it because that's all you wanted.
Champion fighter gets these benefits, outside of what every other fighter gets...
3rd level - Improved Critical, 19 and 20 7th level - Remarkable Athlete, add half your proficiency bonus (round up) to any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check you make that doesn’t already use your proficiency bonus. 10th level - 2nd fighting style (and you presumably took the best one for your style already) 15th level - Superior Critical, 18-20 18th level - Survivor, regain 5 + Con mod of hp if below 50% health and not at 0 hp
The "meat and potatoes" of the subclass is CLEARLY the expanded crit range.
As to the skill checks getting the half proficiency, there are only four Str and Dex skills - acrobatics, athletics, sleight of hand and stealth. I would argue that most players are going to make sure they have either athletics or acrobatics. Many players are going to have one of the other three. There are no Con skills, but there can be Con checks.
No. It's not. that's just all that you care to see. Notice those 3 other abilities there? You knwo the Ones that don't have anything to do with Crit range? Quoting them to me and then telling me none of them matter and only the ones specified by you to matter are the ones that matter. That's not actually true. Get over yourself and stop pretending it is.
Also Many players do not necessarily take Athletics or Acrobatics. Particularly if all they care about is fighting. Unless they got a niche they want to build around... like Shoving and Grappling. Your just making that assumption because that is what you would take. It's just as easy for them to take things like Perception and Intimidation. But those aren't the ones your caring about right now in your efforts to reduce the value of the ability. Perception and Intimidation both being highly taken skills. Specialy on "Strong" characters because they do things like help to avoid ambushing, help to act in ambush rounds, or To apply social pressure in an effort to strong arm their way through much of the social stuff to get back to things like Killing.
5th level. You get 2 attacks when you take the Attack action. Action Surge lets you take the Attack action a second time. 4 total attacks. Your Strength cannot be above 20, so you can't have more than +5 to the damage without spending your Superiority Dice on that. Greatsword does 2D6. Max damage is 12. +5. 17 damage per attack, 4 attacks, 68 damage.
You don't qualify for a Bonus attack. Your enemy didn't try to move away, so you don't get an Attack of Opportunity. 4 attacks total. If you used all 4 of your Superiority Dice to add to damage, which you did not, you could do 32 more points of damage. So if you spent everything you had, you could do 100 points of damage if you rolled maximum on everything other than the To Hit rolls. You got 4 less than that?
Nope.
I don't have a clue where you were getting +10 to damage per hit.
Half proficiency is nice, but my champion already has most of these skills with proficiency. So it will be stealth and sleight of hand where I will get the half proficiency. Sleight of hand may never be used by me, nor is it used much by anybody, including rogues, in the games I have played. I remember a few coin purses being stolen by a rogue, is all. The bump to initiative is probably the most useful part of Remarkable Athlete. A second fighting style is nice, but literally a 1st level ability, you are getting at 10th level. Not awe inspiring or game changing. The ENTIRE subclass is built around the expanded crit range. That is the selling point.
If those are the skills you took. That's not a failing of the subclass. that is a choice you made to take those skills over other skills. Champions have increased benefit and options to consider putting one or two or even three of their very few skill proficiencies in other things without losing out entirely on the physical things if they wish to. They can choose to forgo that but they do not have to.
Your Views on some things are also very narrow. You think of it just as a 1st level ability. But they are first level abilities that are strong enough to basically affect entire builds over the entire careers of characters. So strong that people will dip into Fighter just to get those same abilities at mid or even high levels. 1st does not necessarily mean weak ability. Specially in something as front loaded in general as D&D 5e is. There are even other fighter subclasses that people would love to have more than one Fighting Style to use in their builds because they recognize that some of them can be stacked to some extent.
One of the arguably most powerful abilities in many people's eyes is Action Surge. A Second level ability. One that Minmaxers tend to like to rely on for their theoretical math even at level 20 in their attempts to prove OP'ness or superiority.
And the entire subclass is not built around that Increased Crit range. Your just so combat focused that is all you see. A couple of their gained subclass features touch on it. But much of the subclass is actually doing something fairly different. And your selling it very short just boiling it down to that. Even with a combat focused mentality.
That's like Looking at the BattleMaster and saying that all it's about is boosting your defenses and using your reaction because some of the maneuvers they get do that in some fashion. You'd immediately argue that they are much more than that.
So don't sell the Champion short just because you like something else better. Or you made skill choices that don't work with it because that's all you wanted.
Champion fighter gets these benefits, outside of what every other fighter gets...
3rd level - Improved Critical, 19 and 20 7th level - Remarkable Athlete, add half your proficiency bonus (round up) to any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check you make that doesn’t already use your proficiency bonus. 10th level - 2nd fighting style (and you presumably took the best one for your style already) 15th level - Superior Critical, 18-20 18th level - Survivor, regain 5 + Con mod of hp if below 50% health and not at 0 hp
The "meat and potatoes" of the subclass is CLEARLY the expanded crit range.
As to the skill checks getting the half proficiency, there are only four Str and Dex skills - acrobatics, athletics, sleight of hand and stealth. I would argue that most players are going to make sure they have either athletics or acrobatics. Many players are going to have one of the other three. There are no Con skills, but there can be Con checks.
No. It's not. that's just all that you care to see. Notice those 3 other abilities there? You knwo the Ones that don't have anything to do with Crit range? Quoting them to me and then telling me none of them matter and only the ones specified by you to matter are the ones that matter. That's not actually true. Get over yourself and stop pretending it is.
Also Many players do not necessarily take Athletics or Acrobatics. Particularly if all they care about is fighting. Unless they got a niche they want to build around... like Shoving and Grappling. Your just making that assumption because that is what you would take. It's just as easy for them to take things like Perception and Intimidation. But those aren't the ones your caring about right now in your efforts to reduce the value of the ability. Perception and Intimidation both being highly taken skills. Specialy on "Strong" characters because they do things like help to avoid ambushing, help to act in ambush rounds, or To apply social pressure in an effort to strong arm their way through much of the social stuff to get back to things like Killing.
Comments like "get over yourself" and calling my opinion "very narrow," while I have repeatedly ignored your insults says everything about you.
Good day.
I'm telling you to get over yourself because your being extremely stubborn. Does it say something about me? It does. But it also says a great deal about you that you keep hammering the same point the same way regardless of what i've said in this thread repeatedly which got me to that point.
5th level. You get 2 attacks when you take the Attack action. Action Surge lets you take the Attack action a second time. 4 total attacks. Your Strength cannot be above 20, so you can't have more than +5 to the damage without spending your Superiority Dice on that. Greatsword does 2D6. Max damage is 12. +5. 17 damage per attack, 4 attacks, 68 damage.
You don't qualify for a Bonus attack. Your enemy didn't try to move away, so you don't get an Attack of Opportunity. 4 attacks total. If you used all 4 of your Superiority Dice to add to damage, which you did not, you could do 32 more points of damage. So if you spent everything you had, you could do 100 points of damage if you rolled maximum on everything other than the To Hit rolls. You got 4 less than that?
Nope.
I don't have a clue where you were getting +10 to damage per hit.
the most likely source of +10 Damage per hit is with GWM or sharpshooter. Though since I'm not entirely sure exactly what your referencing I can't be sure if that's the exact thing that is meant.
Great Weapon Master could do it. I see no mention of taking a -5 on hit rolls though. In fact, the only two hit rolls mentioned are a 12 and an 18. The 12 got a Superiority Die added to get to 16. Standard Issue Hydra has a 15 AC. If they were taking a -5 to hit, then both of those attacks would have missed, even with the Superiority Die getting spent.
The original post mentions re-rolling 1s and 2s. That's the Fighting Style; Great Weapon Fighting. It doesn't actually add to damage, it just improves the odds of doing better damage.
I don't know where the +10 to damage in the original post could be coming from. Sharpshooter only applies to ranged weapons. It's not the Superiority Dice. Strength only gets you to +5 assuming maximum without magic items. There is no single magic item I know that will give +10 to damage in melee. The Legendary rarity Belt Of Storm Giants only gives +9, and shouldn't be showing up in games below 17th level or so. No mention of magic items was made, but it is certainly possible with more than one item involved.
Perhaps the most amusing thing is that since no fire damage is mentioned, only one of the hits would actually kill a head. Standard Issue Hydra has about 172 hit points (Max is 255). Taking off one of the heads without fire damage means that it gets to grow that head back, grow another one, and gain 20 hit points back. So the original poster did 76 damage total, and made the Hydra a little more dangerous. The Hydra now has the chance to hit back for 90 points of damage. The maximum a 5th level Fighter can have is 75.
The +10 dsmage is obviously coming from the Great Weapon Master feat. He says so in the last sentence of the first paragraph: "I went first and decided to just Nova to see exactly what my new greatsword weilding battlemaster could do with GWM and I was not disappointed." GWM = Great Weapon Master. He does not specifically mention taking a -5 on each attack roll, but why does he have to? He is just reporting the results of his attack rolls after applying all modifiers. It looks like he just had some pretty lucky rolls!
The +10 dsmage is obviously coming from the Great Weapon Master feat. He says so in the last sentence of the first paragraph: "I went first and decided to just Nova to see exactly what my new greatsword weilding battlemaster could do with GWM and I was not disappointed." GWM = Great Weapon Master. He does not specifically mention taking a -5 on each attack roll, but why does he have to? He is just reporting the results of his attack rolls after applying all modifiers. It looks like he just had some pretty lucky rolls!
Great Weapon Master could do it. I see no mention of taking a -5 on hit rolls though. In fact, the only two hit rolls mentioned are a 12 and an 18. The 12 got a Superiority Die added to get to 16. Standard Issue Hydra has a 15 AC. If they were taking a -5 to hit, then both of those attacks would have missed, even with the Superiority Die getting spent.
The original post mentions re-rolling 1s and 2s. That's the Fighting Style; Great Weapon Fighting. It doesn't actually add to damage, it just improves the odds of doing better damage.
I don't know where the +10 to damage in the original post could be coming from. Sharpshooter only applies to ranged weapons. It's not the Superiority Dice. Strength only gets you to +5 assuming maximum without magic items. There is no single magic item I know that will give +10 to damage in melee. The Legendary rarity Belt Of Storm Giants only gives +9, and shouldn't be showing up in games below 17th level or so. No mention of magic items was made, but it is certainly possible with more than one item involved.
Perhaps the most amusing thing is that since no fire damage is mentioned, only one of the hits would actually kill a head. Standard Issue Hydra has about 172 hit points (Max is 255). Taking off one of the heads without fire damage means that it gets to grow that head back, grow another one, and gain 20 hit points back. So the original poster did 76 damage total, and made the Hydra a little more dangerous. The Hydra now has the chance to hit back for 90 points of damage. The maximum a 5th level Fighter can have is 75.
He doesn't mention the -5 But he also doesn't make mention of the potentially +7 or +8 positive modifier either. Which would balance out with the -5 to make his attacks be more +2 or +3. But that isn't necessarily needed. Because as others stated. He's reporting the final results of the roll and the change that he got from using Precision Strike on the one roll.
The +10 damage is indeed from GWM and he does mention it a couple of different times in his post that a good portion of his damage came from it. It also raises things like the maximum damage by a lot.
Also Some things to note about the official 5e Hydra. The Heads are only grown back at the end of it's turn. And Fire damage only has to be applied by somebody in the turn. It does not have to be part of each attack. Also Slightly less hp is gained from regrowing heads than it takes to sever heads so it is possible to actually wear it down and kill it. it just dies early if all of it's heads are removed which happens in 25 hp increments. So if it starts with 5 heads and you can manage to deal 125 damage to it in a single set of turns between it's turns then it is possible to kill it before it gets back around to it's turn once more. And it will die outright from that if fire is used by even just one person somewhere in the turn so it can't regrow heads. The 172 only matters if your wearing it down without the use of fire.
Most people actually miss the fact that they can be killed early in 5e if you can manage to blitz them with enough damage with the right builds. But if you fail then you can suffer greatly for it because the Hydra in 5th edition in contrast to actually being easier to kill than in older editions actually has no limits on the number of heads that it can have. Which means that if your not careful and don't use something like fire it can become infinitely more dangerous by the time you manage to wear all of it's hp down.
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Finally playing my first Fighter (battlemaster) in SKT, we've just started at level 5 and our DM had our intro be in a ship sailing into Icewind Dale when our boat was attacked by a hydra in our first 'shakedown see what you can do' sorta battle. Ship had other adventurer types on it, flurry of arrows and spells cast against it (not sure if they where doing damage or not but def gave off the vibes of a giant monster attack as the Hydra chomped down on some poor dwarf) que initiative! I went first and decided to just Nova to see exactly what my new greatsword weilding battlemaster could do with GWM and I was not disappointed.
I won't say I didn't roll well first attack was a 12, used a superority die to get to 16. hit ok nice I know I need around 16. 23 damage dealt, second attack 18 with no SD required 25 dmg. Action surge, 2 more hits for 24 damage a piece, action surge, 2 superiority dice and 96 damage dealt.
Absolutely awesome, DM was just looking at me like jesus thats nuts (but he loved it), I've only really played sorcerers and clerics and 1 druid so to me it was a nice change and really only seen sword n board fighters. GWM was beastily obviously the +10 was huge chunking in 40 damage, and the great weapon fighting style was clutch I rolled so many 1s and 2s in those attacks that turned into 4s and 5s.
Lookin forward to the rest of the campaign, I know I won't be going that ham all the time since it was an obvious single monster n done during travel kinda fight, BUT the possibility is there.. stuff all comes back on a short rest anyway
Fighters are a great class that I don't think gets nearly enough love. Their base abilities may not be flashy, but they're a sturdy class that offers a lot of flexibility in how you build them. And yeah, Battlemasters can be a lot of fun, plus they work with pretty much any weapon setup you choose.
Some may not agree. But really all of the Subclasses for fighter are solid. Some are more basic or more specialized than others. but they all do really well and they all fall back on a different way of fighting fairly easily if they want to. They aren't necessarily hard to have a couple different builds going on with a single character that you kind of switch between if you do it right. Though one is likely going to be a bit more focused on and thus a bit better more often than not.
Im sure they are, I think what may draw people to the battlemaster is having another mechanic to play with outside of just plan attacking, get some dice they come back on SRs which is great, you get a decent number of em and they do some nice things. It's sorta like having cantrips in a way, just some extra meat on the bone while still being essentially a normal martial thats not flinging spells n such. One pick I took was tripping attack which may turn out to be a bust in the campaign, not sure how many non giants we'll fight but we'll see, it just looked to good to pass up.
It’s awesome indeed. I often like more GWM than PAM. That’s why I like War Cleric multiclass for Fighters.
I'm pretty sure you'll find a use for Tripping Attack in SKT. Maybe not quite as often as you like, but I agree it's an excellent maneuver and well worth taking
I will admit it's just my experience. But over the years since 5th edition came out. I've repeatedly heard what boils down to one thing when it comes to battlemaster that makes it so popular. A bunch of shiny toys (techniques) that they don't really have to think about or be creative with to use. It's already basically there for them. And it's dice that they can add into numbers in somewhat skewed ways to show their optimization just behind that.
Now I know that can be taken negatively but be aware that I don't mean it that way. It's just something to keep in mind and something that can be grown past or reconsidered if we want to. And it's something we really should consider when it comes to things like fighters because a lot of what fighters do is not flashy unless we make it flashy. They are a starting point character with a wide range of potential for us to do that for a reason.
Fighters are extremely solid class and battlemaster is a excellent subclass, samurai also a fine choice for going nova, altogether a knockout class.
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
Precise Attack is half of the bm combo and *technically* the other half can be any of the damaging ones, but trip is definitely one of the best - not *as* good as menacing, but pretty damn great. Just remember, you can't use your fighting style to reroll a maneuver die.
When you fight something Large or smaller, believe me, you'll notice the benefit to attacking a prone target with GWM.
I think the crazy thing about fighters in the mid and late tiers is the amount of ASIs you get. You'll proably have your 20 and some feats when all other classes will only have one of those. Sometimes the fighter looks boring, but it's just a toolkit for your own way of building that martial badass you want, while still being obviously not underpowered. Hell you could take all the worst choices probably (let's say Purple Dragon Knigt with only feats that don't help in battle like linguist) and would still be viable in battle thanks to Action Surge, fighting style and multiple attacks.
Fighter migt be vanilla - but vanilla with sprinkles and it ******* rocks.
Except that they aren't really. They are limited by their superiority dice. Which really means that if they aren't careful they may be doing a few of those things for a couple of rounds realistically. And then for the other rounds of combat they are just a base fighter once more relying on base fighter things for much of their career. Even as they raise in levels throughout their career they only pick up 1 more Superiority Dice though they pick up a lot more attacks and other things. They can use those superiority dice a little more wisely by using something like Know your Enemy helping a little to know what your up against. But people talk about it like it's infinite and it's really not. Not even when running on a short rest. People really do like to understate their various short comings when talking about their core feature. Those short comings do not mean that they aren't solid. But they aren't quite the swiss army knife or the overpowering option that they are made out to be.
Champion is not just relying on Expanded Crit range either. That's just a base. A little less player controlled than BattleMaster but potentially a bit more useful depending on how the dice roll as well, assuming that you don't just engineer a build that takes a fair bit of the luck in dice rolling out of the equation by just finding ways to pile on advantage so that they are just rolling so much more often that the Crits are going to happen (it doesn't even necessarily take Multiclassing to do this). Champion is also adding to out of combat physical rolls. anything from Athletics to Stealth that you aren't already proficient in gets half the boost instead. This is actually a fairly useful boost that is almost entirely overlooked because it's not directly combat applicable but opens up a lot of things to the champion. And they get a second fighting Style at 10th level. Which isn't exactly something to sneeze at because it can either synergize with the one you already picked, which can be a fair range of things, or actually help empower a second alternate build in a way that can't be done by most other fighters. And then like Sutlo Says there are so many ASI's that all fighters can choose from but Champions can actually explore even deeper or build a wider range of things from than other Warriors because they are very generalist in nature.
They are all solid. They all do things a little bit differently and some may be a bit more specialized in how they do things. But they can always fall back of some level of generalist or just plain be the King of Generalists if they wish to be with certain subclasses.
If those are the skills you took. That's not a failing of the subclass. that is a choice you made to take those skills over other skills. Champions have increased benefit and options to consider putting one or two or even three of their very few skill proficiencies in other things without losing out entirely on the physical things if they wish to. They can choose to forgo that but they do not have to.
Your Views on some things are also very narrow. You think of it just as a 1st level ability. But they are first level abilities that are strong enough to basically affect entire builds over the entire careers of characters. So strong that people will dip into Fighter just to get those same abilities at mid or even high levels. 1st does not necessarily mean weak ability. Specially in something as front loaded in general as D&D 5e is. There are even other fighter subclasses that people would love to have more than one Fighting Style to use in their builds because they recognize that some of them can be stacked to some extent.
One of the arguably most powerful abilities in many people's eyes is Action Surge. A Second level ability. One that Minmaxers tend to like to rely on for their theoretical math even at level 20 in their attempts to prove OP'ness or superiority.
And the entire subclass is not built around that Increased Crit range. Your just so combat focused that is all you see. A couple of their gained subclass features touch on it. But much of the subclass is actually doing something fairly different. And your selling it very short just boiling it down to that. Even with a combat focused mentality.
That's like Looking at the BattleMaster and saying that all it's about is boosting your defenses and using your reaction because some of the maneuvers they get do that in some fashion. You'd immediately argue that they are much more than that.
So don't sell the Champion short just because you like something else better. Or you made skill choices that don't work with it because that's all you wanted.
No. It's not. that's just all that you care to see. Notice those 3 other abilities there? You knwo the Ones that don't have anything to do with Crit range? Quoting them to me and then telling me none of them matter and only the ones specified by you to matter are the ones that matter. That's not actually true. Get over yourself and stop pretending it is.
Also Many players do not necessarily take Athletics or Acrobatics. Particularly if all they care about is fighting. Unless they got a niche they want to build around... like Shoving and Grappling. Your just making that assumption because that is what you would take. It's just as easy for them to take things like Perception and Intimidation. But those aren't the ones your caring about right now in your efforts to reduce the value of the ability. Perception and Intimidation both being highly taken skills. Specialy on "Strong" characters because they do things like help to avoid ambushing, help to act in ambush rounds, or To apply social pressure in an effort to strong arm their way through much of the social stuff to get back to things like Killing.
5th level. You get 2 attacks when you take the Attack action. Action Surge lets you take the Attack action a second time. 4 total attacks. Your Strength cannot be above 20, so you can't have more than +5 to the damage without spending your Superiority Dice on that. Greatsword does 2D6. Max damage is 12. +5. 17 damage per attack, 4 attacks, 68 damage.
You don't qualify for a Bonus attack. Your enemy didn't try to move away, so you don't get an Attack of Opportunity. 4 attacks total. If you used all 4 of your Superiority Dice to add to damage, which you did not, you could do 32 more points of damage. So if you spent everything you had, you could do 100 points of damage if you rolled maximum on everything other than the To Hit rolls. You got 4 less than that?
Nope.
I don't have a clue where you were getting +10 to damage per hit.
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I'm telling you to get over yourself because your being extremely stubborn. Does it say something about me? It does. But it also says a great deal about you that you keep hammering the same point the same way regardless of what i've said in this thread repeatedly which got me to that point.
Which is something you may wish to remember.
the most likely source of +10 Damage per hit is with GWM or sharpshooter. Though since I'm not entirely sure exactly what your referencing I can't be sure if that's the exact thing that is meant.
I'm referring to the original post.
Great Weapon Master could do it. I see no mention of taking a -5 on hit rolls though. In fact, the only two hit rolls mentioned are a 12 and an 18. The 12 got a Superiority Die added to get to 16. Standard Issue Hydra has a 15 AC. If they were taking a -5 to hit, then both of those attacks would have missed, even with the Superiority Die getting spent.
The original post mentions re-rolling 1s and 2s. That's the Fighting Style; Great Weapon Fighting. It doesn't actually add to damage, it just improves the odds of doing better damage.
I don't know where the +10 to damage in the original post could be coming from. Sharpshooter only applies to ranged weapons. It's not the Superiority Dice. Strength only gets you to +5 assuming maximum without magic items. There is no single magic item I know that will give +10 to damage in melee. The Legendary rarity Belt Of Storm Giants only gives +9, and shouldn't be showing up in games below 17th level or so. No mention of magic items was made, but it is certainly possible with more than one item involved.
Perhaps the most amusing thing is that since no fire damage is mentioned, only one of the hits would actually kill a head. Standard Issue Hydra has about 172 hit points (Max is 255). Taking off one of the heads without fire damage means that it gets to grow that head back, grow another one, and gain 20 hit points back. So the original poster did 76 damage total, and made the Hydra a little more dangerous. The Hydra now has the chance to hit back for 90 points of damage. The maximum a 5th level Fighter can have is 75.
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The +10 dsmage is obviously coming from the Great Weapon Master feat. He says so in the last sentence of the first paragraph: "I went first and decided to just Nova to see exactly what my new greatsword weilding battlemaster could do with GWM and I was not disappointed." GWM = Great Weapon Master. He does not specifically mention taking a -5 on each attack roll, but why does he have to? He is just reporting the results of his attack rolls after applying all modifiers. It looks like he just had some pretty lucky rolls!
He paired Precision strike with GWM, as I recall.
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
He doesn't mention the -5 But he also doesn't make mention of the potentially +7 or +8 positive modifier either. Which would balance out with the -5 to make his attacks be more +2 or +3. But that isn't necessarily needed. Because as others stated. He's reporting the final results of the roll and the change that he got from using Precision Strike on the one roll.
The +10 damage is indeed from GWM and he does mention it a couple of different times in his post that a good portion of his damage came from it. It also raises things like the maximum damage by a lot.
Also Some things to note about the official 5e Hydra. The Heads are only grown back at the end of it's turn. And Fire damage only has to be applied by somebody in the turn. It does not have to be part of each attack. Also Slightly less hp is gained from regrowing heads than it takes to sever heads so it is possible to actually wear it down and kill it. it just dies early if all of it's heads are removed which happens in 25 hp increments. So if it starts with 5 heads and you can manage to deal 125 damage to it in a single set of turns between it's turns then it is possible to kill it before it gets back around to it's turn once more. And it will die outright from that if fire is used by even just one person somewhere in the turn so it can't regrow heads. The 172 only matters if your wearing it down without the use of fire.
Most people actually miss the fact that they can be killed early in 5e if you can manage to blitz them with enough damage with the right builds. But if you fail then you can suffer greatly for it because the Hydra in 5th edition in contrast to actually being easier to kill than in older editions actually has no limits on the number of heads that it can have. Which means that if your not careful and don't use something like fire it can become infinitely more dangerous by the time you manage to wear all of it's hp down.