Thats a shame Jayne, The DMG has a great deal of information on recommended encounter numbers / challenge levels per day and your 'one and done' experiences are not that. Between 6 and 8 is recommended with 2 or three short rests.
The DMG doesn't recommend running 6 to 8 encounters per day, it just says that's roughly the limit that players can handle before running out of resources, and that they'll need to take about 2 short rests to make it that far.
It's pretty impractical to try to force 6 encounters into your story every single day. Some days are more eventful than others.
We have disagreed on this before I.C. When you have a Dungeon Masters Guide chapter on creating adventures which includes a table of xp by character level by encounter difficulty, multipliers to difficulty (not xp generated) for numbers and even a guide to experience earned per level per adventuring day its not just a guide its a plan. No one has to use it, but: Assume that it wasnt simply cut and pasted together on a whim and some play testing went into it as being a great starting point for new DM's on what was expected to be survivable as a challenge over a day (longrest) which would sufficiently allow the difference between short rest and longrest benefitting classes to become clear and both to shine.
I agree with you that in many cases it would be odd if you kept running into a set number of encounters - thats where art and DM planning comes into its own. But its what gamers should account for being able to overcome. If you play / run games where its only one encounter a day ever, the characters that have all long rest mechanics will seem rather better. If at the end of a gruelling delve / retreat / fail to hide / desperate last stand 22 encounter day and a half, no chance to sleep only breaks between waves of carnage then those short rest benefitting characters will seem better off. When one or the other becomes the norm it adjusts class effectiveness. Keeping that in mind as a DM as it may be a root cause of issues / fallacies of belief in what the party requires later.
I could not award full experience for an encounter that was fought out of context with challenging the parties resources. If the 'hard' encounter of bandits is the only thing that occurs in a day then there was no actual challenge to be had. Hopefully the party were cautious and didnt expend all their resources. In the end though each table is different, some may allow or even encourage players to target and assassinate lone targets of opportunity which do not advance the story but instead simply act's of xp farming. I would not warrant that with a full award. Conversely if a party is pushed hard by an increased number of challenges than recommended by the DMG an increased award is warranted as the difficulty of the listed challenge rating did not account for the increased number of encounters on resource expenditure. Stands to reason.
Have to agree with MoonDruid on this one. The DMG Creating Adventures section is clearly laid out like an experience budget for the DM to assume. In talking about the player resources and stating 6-8 medium to hard encounters per day, it literally says this would be in assumed "typical adventuring conditions and average luck". It seems much more like a guide than a warning of player limits.
It's a budget for planning how many encounters you can cram into a single day, not a budget for how many encounters you should be cramming into a single day. That's established from the get-go in that section:
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. ... In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress. ... Add together the values of all party members to get a total for the party’s adventuring day. ... This provides a rough estimate of the adjusted XP value for encounters the party can handle before the characters will need to take a long rest.
All three of the bolded sentences are about the party's limits.
Lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford is on record on both Twitter and Dragon Talk stating that those guidelines aren't a recommendation and that Wizards themselves don't build official adventures that way. Saying that section of the DMG is a recommendation is misleading and misses the fact that there's different types of adventures (something the very same chapter of the DMG covers.) 6 to 8 encounters per day doesn't work for a role-play heavy mystery/political intrigue campaign, for example. You're going to have to shoehorn encounters constantly and it's going to eat up significant amounts of time when that's just not the point of the story.
IC- I get your point. That may not be how it is intended. What I am saying is that the wording leads a newer DM like myself who may not know about Jeremy Crawford rulings on Twitter & Dragon Talk to think differently. When I read "typical adventuring conditions" and "For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that character is expected to earn in a day." it is hard not to read that as an expectation of encounter design. Especially when it literally says this is the XP "that character is expected to earn in a day." That verbiage at first glance doesn't feel like general guidance. That feels like what the DM is expected to design from a character experience perspective.
Even in your highlighted examples the language is ambiguous. Saying "most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day" isn't that qualitatively different than saying "most adventuring parties should handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day". Look up the word can in a thesaurus and you find "know how to" and "be capable of". That sounds more like guidance on what you should be doing, not guidance on the upper bounds of possibility.
At the end of the day it's up to each DM to interpret and how I interpret doesn't really impact how you interpret and vice versa. I would simply say as someone who reads and writes alot for professional reasons, words on the page mean more than intent of the writer. Once the word is on the page and is published, the intent of the writer is somewhat meaningless. Less so in this medium since we get the benefit of clarification from the writers but the point stands. Whatever the intentions were, it is very easy to read the text on the page of the encounter section as guidance on how the adventuring day should be designed instead of guidance on the limits of the adventuring day as intended.
Jayne, I.C. wont budge from this view that the DMG chapter dealing with encounter sizes / amounts has anything to do with what you should use. Not once, not ever. (so far) I respect that it isnt the only way you must play. I dont believe that if the guide outline of what could / should be dealt with is instead replaced in a campaign for one and done fights versus swarms of giant rats in groups of 1000 who bunch up nicely once per day, or one over guide budget challenge creature once per day it is actual worth the experience out of context of a challenge for the day. It will make it hard to allow the differences between long and short rest classes to differentiate themselves.
As players you are better off surviving a challenge and learning from it than being fed experience than being fed experience then facing a guidline approved challenge.
At the end of the day it's up to each DM to interpret and how I interpret doesn't really impact how you interpret and vice versa. I would simply say as someone who reads and writes alot for professional reasons, words on the page mean more than intent of the writer.
If we're just talking about passively consuming literature, sure. It really doesn't matter if we disagree on what Moby Dick is about, or if what you got out of it is different from what the author intended.
The situation's a bit different when we're talking about a tabletop game in a public forum. Saying something to the effect of "This is the intended way to play the game" does affect other people, whether the statement is true or false. That's why I went out of my way to point out that there's no minimum or recommended number of encounters per day.
"The situation's a bit different when we're talking about a tabletop game in a public forum."
I know right? It's almost as if they should have written the rules clearly so that people aren't reliant on Twitter & Dragon Talk for rule clarifications...
That'd be ideal, yeah. But humans aren't perfect, writing is hard, game development is hard, and they have deadlines to meet.
I'm grateful D&D has a team of designers that are happy to answer all of the questions that inevitably arise, even the dumb ones that can easily be answered by reading the book. I've learned a lot just from following Jeremy Crawford's twitter account.
I hope I'm not stepping on any toes by throwing my opinion in here, but this line of discussion both on and off-topic has been extremely fascinating and I couldn't resist looking up a few things on my own.
For instance, an encounter doesn't seem to mean it's always combat. The DMG clearly lays out several "objectives" of an encounter any of which could presumably be achieved without fighting. I'd even go as far as to say the DMG adds a qualifier by explicitly denoting "creating a combat encounter" as it's own section.
If encounters don't need to be purely combat focused, then I think R(recomendation)AW is fair for 6-8 a day. Especially if some of those encounters are puzzles, non-violent NPC interactions or even environment generated content would in practice be a good number to equalize full, half and quarter casters.
In this way, I think the AA is fairly balanced against the battle master because what they may lack in combat DPR they make up for with an out of combat proficiency and an emphasis on INT which most played classes sorely lack and IMO if most checks are applied equally by most DM would (at least it would feel like) give a strong sense of value to the player.
I hope I'm not stepping on any toes by throwing my opinion in here, but this line of discussion both on and off-topic has been extremely fascinating and I couldn't resist looking up a few things on my own.
For instance, an encounter doesn't seem to mean it's always combat. The DMG clearly lays out several "objectives" of an encounter any of which could presumably be achieved without fighting. I'd even go as far as to say the DMG adds a qualifier by explicitly denoting "creating a combat encounter" as it's own section.
If encounters don't need to be purely combat focused, then I think R(recomendation)AW is fair for 6-8 a day. Especially if some of those encounters are puzzles, non-violent NPC interactions or even environment generated content would in practice be a good number to equalize full, half and quarter casters.
In this way, I think the AA is fairly balanced against the battle master because what they may lack in combat DPR they make up for with an out of combat proficiency and an emphasis on INT which most played classes sorely lack and IMO if most checks are applied equally by most DM would (at least it would feel like) give a strong sense of value to the player.
I agree with your first statement about encounters. I think what you're bringing up is fair, that they do have better exploration and social benefits. But, I don't think Arcane Archer Lore stacks up to make them equal thou. Yes they get two skills and two cantrips that are out of combat spells. Battlemasters only get student of war ( a tool )and they get Know your Enemy while out of combat, but still a bit combat focused. It just still feels limited in comparison. I still think one more shot per short rest is enough and I don't think that would put them over the top.
To increase the number of uses per short rest, how about magic items? If a wizard can use a Pearl of Power, why can't there be an Arrow of Power? Arcane Archer has his two shots, needs another one, so he pulls out his special arrow, whispers a phrase in elvish to the head, a rune glows, and he fires a third use of his special ability. (And hopes when they survey the battlefield the arrow is still there)
Or make them consumables. Easier to find, cheaper to obtain, works only once. But when you need another special arrow, it's worth using.
Honestly my thoughts on this have moderated somewhat after playing a Warlock. I think this comes down to what sort of DM/campaign you are in. If you are in a combat heavy / RP lite campaign and you incorporate multiple short rests between long rests, then 2 shots that recharge on a short rest seems ok. If you have a DM where there is lots of RP and maybe only one or two big combat encounters per session and no short rests, then bumping up to 3 shots feels pretty reasonable.
As Antesse points out, incorporating some sort of item mechanic could also work well for this. My DM made sure I got a Rod of the Pact Keeper relatively early for my Warlock and we modified it slightly to only require a bonus action to recharge the spell slot. Maybe a magic bow that recharges an Arcane Shot once per dawn or on a natural 20 roll similar to the Gunfighter Grit.
To increase the number of uses per short rest, how about magic items? If a wizard can use a Pearl of Power, why can't there be an Arrow of Power? Arcane Archer has his two shots, needs another one, so he pulls out his special arrow, whispers a phrase in elvish to the head, a rune glows, and he fires a third use of his special ability. (And hopes when they survey the battlefield the arrow is still there)
Or make them consumables. Easier to find, cheaper to obtain, works only once. But when you need another special arrow, it's worth using.
I like this idea, even building off it I'd say changing the class combat feature to a crafting feature and allowing you to infuse arrows x number of arrows per day would be better for those players who maybe want to stockpile them. Of course, as soon as I say that I see how it could be abused with downtime...
Either way, I don't quite think the subclass is too UP, just that it might need to either scale up the shots or possibly come with an extra language (either Sylvan or Elvish since IIRCC in older editions you needed to have Elven blood to even take this class).
To increase the number of uses per short rest, how about magic items? If a wizard can use a Pearl of Power, why can't there be an Arrow of Power? Arcane Archer has his two shots, needs another one, so he pulls out his special arrow, whispers a phrase in elvish to the head, a rune glows, and he fires a third use of his special ability. (And hopes when they survey the battlefield the arrow is still there)
Or make them consumables. Easier to find, cheaper to obtain, works only once. But when you need another special arrow, it's worth using.
If you're going with infusing X arrows per day/rest then you can set a cap for how many you can have infused at one time...say your Fighter level. Although, if you are infusing arrows ahead of time, it seems appropriate to have to decide what kind of arrows they will be when you infuse them, not when you use them. That feels more craft-y and might make you feel like Green Arrow/Hawkeye.
---
So, another solution to upping the number of uses of the special arrows could be a special character boon gained through story and roleplaying. Rather than finding a magic item, finding a legendary arcane archer who will teach you the super secret art of the Third Arrow after you rescue his child from the evil monsters, could be a way to get that third shot. Or maybe the goddess of archery can bless you for cleansing one of her shrines from invaders. Or recovering a long lost tome that fell deep into a dungeon. In any case, hearing a rumor, investigating the rumor, completing a side quest, getting a reward.
Ooohhh I really like the idea of an Infusing/Crafting mechanic to add to the number of arrows and fully agree, there would have to be a limit. Being able to infuse up to your Fighter level seems like that could get crazy powerful though. I would argue the best way to do this would be similar to Grit but since this has more of a "wizardy" feel, make it based on Intelligence instead of Wisdom. So I would say it would read something like this"
Infuse Arrows:
You gain the ability to imbue the power of your arcane shots into arrows for your future use. During a long rest, you can spend an hour to create a number of infused arrows equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of 1). On a hit, the arrow replicates the power of one known Arcane Shot ability at your current level which you choose during the time you create the arrows. This magic lasts for 24 hours or until you create a new batch of infused arrows.
I think this would add alot to the class while not being broken. The fact that you can only have one infused batch at a time keeps you from spending an entire day long resting and creating dozens of magic arrows. The minimum of 1 increased Arcane shot adds alot of utility and the ability to scale with your Intelligence so you can get more but at the cost of maxing your Dexterity/Constitution keeps it from going out of control I think
You gain the ability to imbue the power of your arcane shots into arrows for your future use. During a long rest, you can spend an hour to create a number of infused arrows equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of 1). On a hit, the arrow replicates the power of one known Arcane Shot ability at your current level which you choose during the time you create the arrows. This magic lasts for 24 hours or until you create a new batch of infused arrows.
Thoughts?
The power gamer in me hates that the magic fades after 24hrs or if you make more, but I feel this is the best way to balance it out. Perhaps change it to a short rest so it can keep up with battle master and it might be worth it to really pump up Int so you get those extra arrows?
I also still strongly feel that gaining proficiency in Elven or Sylvan would be a great buff to the lore feature of this class.
Adding proficiency in Elven or Sylvan I agree would be fine. Languages generally don't make or break the game but this would be a nice little extra for the normally low skilled fighter. So my thinking on making it a long rest recharge is that generally I think these arrows have a stronger and more profound impact on the game than most of the battle maneuvers. In many ways they have an impact similar to lower level spells or Paladin smites and this informed my decision to write it with a long rest recharge. When thinking about the balance on this, it's also important to remember that Fighters get two more ability score improvements vs the other classes. That means it is reasonably possible to max dexterity and have Con maxed with Int at 18 or vice versa.
Given the possible ability scores, this arrow crafting enhancement seems to me to be an effective way of turning the fighter into sort of a Half Ranger / Half Paladin which feels like a pretty good interpretation of the class. Honestly I've never had a great deal of draw for the Fighter but this feels quite intriguing.
I just play as a gnome and I can have one of my strong friends carry me for an hour if possible, I also take the Martial adabt feat since there are only a couple of good maneuvers for archers getting the best of both worlds and an extra affect per short/long rest that I can use with arcane shots or separately.
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The DMG doesn't recommend running 6 to 8 encounters per day, it just says that's roughly the limit that players can handle before running out of resources, and that they'll need to take about 2 short rests to make it that far.
It's pretty impractical to try to force 6 encounters into your story every single day. Some days are more eventful than others.
We have disagreed on this before I.C. When you have a Dungeon Masters Guide chapter on creating adventures which includes a table of xp by character level by encounter difficulty, multipliers to difficulty (not xp generated) for numbers and even a guide to experience earned per level per adventuring day its not just a guide its a plan. No one has to use it, but: Assume that it wasnt simply cut and pasted together on a whim and some play testing went into it as being a great starting point for new DM's on what was expected to be survivable as a challenge over a day (longrest) which would sufficiently allow the difference between short rest and longrest benefitting classes to become clear and both to shine.
I agree with you that in many cases it would be odd if you kept running into a set number of encounters - thats where art and DM planning comes into its own. But its what gamers should account for being able to overcome. If you play / run games where its only one encounter a day ever, the characters that have all long rest mechanics will seem rather better. If at the end of a gruelling delve / retreat / fail to hide / desperate last stand 22 encounter day and a half, no chance to sleep only breaks between waves of carnage then those short rest benefitting characters will seem better off. When one or the other becomes the norm it adjusts class effectiveness. Keeping that in mind as a DM as it may be a root cause of issues / fallacies of belief in what the party requires later.
I could not award full experience for an encounter that was fought out of context with challenging the parties resources. If the 'hard' encounter of bandits is the only thing that occurs in a day then there was no actual challenge to be had. Hopefully the party were cautious and didnt expend all their resources. In the end though each table is different, some may allow or even encourage players to target and assassinate lone targets of opportunity which do not advance the story but instead simply act's of xp farming. I would not warrant that with a full award. Conversely if a party is pushed hard by an increased number of challenges than recommended by the DMG an increased award is warranted as the difficulty of the listed challenge rating did not account for the increased number of encounters on resource expenditure. Stands to reason.
Have to agree with MoonDruid on this one. The DMG Creating Adventures section is clearly laid out like an experience budget for the DM to assume. In talking about the player resources and stating 6-8 medium to hard encounters per day, it literally says this would be in assumed "typical adventuring conditions and average luck". It seems much more like a guide than a warning of player limits.
All three of the bolded sentences are about the party's limits.
Lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford is on record on both Twitter and Dragon Talk stating that those guidelines aren't a recommendation and that Wizards themselves don't build official adventures that way. Saying that section of the DMG is a recommendation is misleading and misses the fact that there's different types of adventures (something the very same chapter of the DMG covers.) 6 to 8 encounters per day doesn't work for a role-play heavy mystery/political intrigue campaign, for example. You're going to have to shoehorn encounters constantly and it's going to eat up significant amounts of time when that's just not the point of the story.
IC- I get your point. That may not be how it is intended. What I am saying is that the wording leads a newer DM like myself who may not know about Jeremy Crawford rulings on Twitter & Dragon Talk to think differently. When I read "typical adventuring conditions" and "For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that character is expected to earn in a day." it is hard not to read that as an expectation of encounter design. Especially when it literally says this is the XP "that character is expected to earn in a day." That verbiage at first glance doesn't feel like general guidance. That feels like what the DM is expected to design from a character experience perspective.
Even in your highlighted examples the language is ambiguous. Saying "most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day" isn't that qualitatively different than saying "most adventuring parties should handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day". Look up the word can in a thesaurus and you find "know how to" and "be capable of". That sounds more like guidance on what you should be doing, not guidance on the upper bounds of possibility.
At the end of the day it's up to each DM to interpret and how I interpret doesn't really impact how you interpret and vice versa. I would simply say as someone who reads and writes alot for professional reasons, words on the page mean more than intent of the writer. Once the word is on the page and is published, the intent of the writer is somewhat meaningless. Less so in this medium since we get the benefit of clarification from the writers but the point stands. Whatever the intentions were, it is very easy to read the text on the page of the encounter section as guidance on how the adventuring day should be designed instead of guidance on the limits of the adventuring day as intended.
Jayne, I.C. wont budge from this view that the DMG chapter dealing with encounter sizes / amounts has anything to do with what you should use. Not once, not ever. (so far) I respect that it isnt the only way you must play. I dont believe that if the guide outline of what could / should be dealt with is instead replaced in a campaign for one and done fights versus swarms of giant rats in groups of 1000 who bunch up nicely once per day, or one over guide budget challenge creature once per day it is actual worth the experience out of context of a challenge for the day. It will make it hard to allow the differences between long and short rest classes to differentiate themselves.
As players you are better off surviving a challenge and learning from it than being fed experience than being fed experience then facing a guidline approved challenge.
If we're just talking about passively consuming literature, sure. It really doesn't matter if we disagree on what Moby Dick is about, or if what you got out of it is different from what the author intended.
The situation's a bit different when we're talking about a tabletop game in a public forum. Saying something to the effect of "This is the intended way to play the game" does affect other people, whether the statement is true or false. That's why I went out of my way to point out that there's no minimum or recommended number of encounters per day.
"The situation's a bit different when we're talking about a tabletop game in a public forum."
I know right? It's almost as if they should have written the rules clearly so that people aren't reliant on Twitter & Dragon Talk for rule clarifications...
That'd be ideal, yeah. But humans aren't perfect, writing is hard, game development is hard, and they have deadlines to meet.
I'm grateful D&D has a team of designers that are happy to answer all of the questions that inevitably arise, even the dumb ones that can easily be answered by reading the book. I've learned a lot just from following Jeremy Crawford's twitter account.
I hope I'm not stepping on any toes by throwing my opinion in here, but this line of discussion both on and off-topic has been extremely fascinating and I couldn't resist looking up a few things on my own.
For instance, an encounter doesn't seem to mean it's always combat. The DMG clearly lays out several "objectives" of an encounter any of which could presumably be achieved without fighting. I'd even go as far as to say the DMG adds a qualifier by explicitly denoting "creating a combat encounter" as it's own section.
If encounters don't need to be purely combat focused, then I think R(recomendation)AW is fair for 6-8 a day. Especially if some of those encounters are puzzles, non-violent NPC interactions or even environment generated content would in practice be a good number to equalize full, half and quarter casters.
In this way, I think the AA is fairly balanced against the battle master because what they may lack in combat DPR they make up for with an out of combat proficiency and an emphasis on INT which most played classes sorely lack and IMO if most checks are applied equally by most DM would (at least it would feel like) give a strong sense of value to the player.
I agree with your first statement about encounters. I think what you're bringing up is fair, that they do have better exploration and social benefits. But, I don't think Arcane Archer Lore stacks up to make them equal thou. Yes they get two skills and two cantrips that are out of combat spells. Battlemasters only get student of war ( a tool )and they get Know your Enemy while out of combat, but still a bit combat focused. It just still feels limited in comparison. I still think one more shot per short rest is enough and I don't think that would put them over the top.
To increase the number of uses per short rest, how about magic items? If a wizard can use a Pearl of Power, why can't there be an Arrow of Power? Arcane Archer has his two shots, needs another one, so he pulls out his special arrow, whispers a phrase in elvish to the head, a rune glows, and he fires a third use of his special ability. (And hopes when they survey the battlefield the arrow is still there)
Or make them consumables. Easier to find, cheaper to obtain, works only once. But when you need another special arrow, it's worth using.
Honestly my thoughts on this have moderated somewhat after playing a Warlock. I think this comes down to what sort of DM/campaign you are in. If you are in a combat heavy / RP lite campaign and you incorporate multiple short rests between long rests, then 2 shots that recharge on a short rest seems ok. If you have a DM where there is lots of RP and maybe only one or two big combat encounters per session and no short rests, then bumping up to 3 shots feels pretty reasonable.
As Antesse points out, incorporating some sort of item mechanic could also work well for this. My DM made sure I got a Rod of the Pact Keeper relatively early for my Warlock and we modified it slightly to only require a bonus action to recharge the spell slot. Maybe a magic bow that recharges an Arcane Shot once per dawn or on a natural 20 roll similar to the Gunfighter Grit.
I like this idea, even building off it I'd say changing the class combat feature to a crafting feature and allowing you to infuse arrows x number of arrows per day would be better for those players who maybe want to stockpile them. Of course, as soon as I say that I see how it could be abused with downtime...
Either way, I don't quite think the subclass is too UP, just that it might need to either scale up the shots or possibly come with an extra language (either Sylvan or Elvish since IIRCC in older editions you needed to have Elven blood to even take this class).
Love it!
If you're going with infusing X arrows per day/rest then you can set a cap for how many you can have infused at one time...say your Fighter level. Although, if you are infusing arrows ahead of time, it seems appropriate to have to decide what kind of arrows they will be when you infuse them, not when you use them. That feels more craft-y and might make you feel like Green Arrow/Hawkeye.
---
So, another solution to upping the number of uses of the special arrows could be a special character boon gained through story and roleplaying. Rather than finding a magic item, finding a legendary arcane archer who will teach you the super secret art of the Third Arrow after you rescue his child from the evil monsters, could be a way to get that third shot. Or maybe the goddess of archery can bless you for cleansing one of her shrines from invaders. Or recovering a long lost tome that fell deep into a dungeon. In any case, hearing a rumor, investigating the rumor, completing a side quest, getting a reward.
Ooohhh I really like the idea of an Infusing/Crafting mechanic to add to the number of arrows and fully agree, there would have to be a limit. Being able to infuse up to your Fighter level seems like that could get crazy powerful though. I would argue the best way to do this would be similar to Grit but since this has more of a "wizardy" feel, make it based on Intelligence instead of Wisdom. So I would say it would read something like this"
Infuse Arrows:
You gain the ability to imbue the power of your arcane shots into arrows for your future use. During a long rest, you can spend an hour to create a number of infused arrows equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of 1). On a hit, the arrow replicates the power of one known Arcane Shot ability at your current level which you choose during the time you create the arrows. This magic lasts for 24 hours or until you create a new batch of infused arrows.
I think this would add alot to the class while not being broken. The fact that you can only have one infused batch at a time keeps you from spending an entire day long resting and creating dozens of magic arrows. The minimum of 1 increased Arcane shot adds alot of utility and the ability to scale with your Intelligence so you can get more but at the cost of maxing your Dexterity/Constitution keeps it from going out of control I think
Thoughts?
The power gamer in me hates that the magic fades after 24hrs or if you make more, but I feel this is the best way to balance it out. Perhaps change it to a short rest so it can keep up with battle master and it might be worth it to really pump up Int so you get those extra arrows?
I also still strongly feel that gaining proficiency in Elven or Sylvan would be a great buff to the lore feature of this class.
Adding proficiency in Elven or Sylvan I agree would be fine. Languages generally don't make or break the game but this would be a nice little extra for the normally low skilled fighter. So my thinking on making it a long rest recharge is that generally I think these arrows have a stronger and more profound impact on the game than most of the battle maneuvers. In many ways they have an impact similar to lower level spells or Paladin smites and this informed my decision to write it with a long rest recharge. When thinking about the balance on this, it's also important to remember that Fighters get two more ability score improvements vs the other classes. That means it is reasonably possible to max dexterity and have Con maxed with Int at 18 or vice versa.
Given the possible ability scores, this arrow crafting enhancement seems to me to be an effective way of turning the fighter into sort of a Half Ranger / Half Paladin which feels like a pretty good interpretation of the class. Honestly I've never had a great deal of draw for the Fighter but this feels quite intriguing.
I just play as a gnome and I can have one of my strong friends carry me for an hour if possible, I also take the Martial adabt feat since there are only a couple of good maneuvers for archers getting the best of both worlds and an extra affect per short/long rest that I can use with arcane shots or separately.