I have a player who would like to change the die from Giant's Might to a d4, and allow the die to be added every attack. It would then scale at the various levels as the subclass progresses. While I think this makes thematic sense, I am concerned about balance. Here is the rule from Tasha's:
Once on each of your turns, one of your attacks with a weapon or an unarmed strike can deal an extra 1d6 damage to a target on a hit.
Has anyone done this change? If so, did it change the balance significantly?
I would love to hear your thoughts about this potential change!
Depending how it scales, you could potentially add 48 damages per turn to your fighter. I fell this is a lot. Too much for me. But having it scale, but still once per turn could avoid having the feature looks...underwhelming at higher level.
The Rune Knight is already a quite strong subclass, so it doesn't need extra power. Unless you remove or limit some other ability, such as having one fewer rune.
Changing it to a d4 on every attack is the equivalent of giving the character the "Divine Favor" spell active all the time without costing a spell slot or other resource. For comparison, an extra d6 every 1/turn is the equivalent of landing a free two weapon fighting short sword attack every turn (since without the fighting style a short sword would only do d6 damage).
Comparing total damage output - d4 averages 2.5 while d6 is 3.5. In tier 1 with one attack d6 is better. However if the character takes polearm master they can add it to each attack. Of course, you should also factor in the to hit aspect since the d6 can be applied when you hit while the extra d4s are lost if you miss which will close the gap a bit.
At level 5 it is 5 vs 3.5 potential damage. At level 11 it is 7.5 vs 3.5. The dueling fighting style adds +2 damage to every attack. So adding a d4 to every attack is better than having the dueling fighting style AND the rune knight ability applies to any weapon attack including ranged ones while dueling does not.
I'm mentioning the comparisons since it makes it easier to figure out exactly how powerful this feature would be in comparison to existing game features. However, in the end, it is between you, your player and the rest of the table how you want to run it.
It is not a feature that will break the game. A few more points of damage isn't really that big a deal - but if it makes the rune knight outshine the other players then they may not like it. In addition, making changes for one player can lead to other players asking for similar considerations. You need to decide a policy on how to deal with such requests so that it is fair to everyone.
Thanks all. I appreciate the thoughts and definitely got me thinking. I had not compared the math to the dueling fighting style, but it is a nice comparison. And definitely a fair point about the other players.
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Hi all,
I have a player who would like to change the die from Giant's Might to a d4, and allow the die to be added every attack. It would then scale at the various levels as the subclass progresses. While I think this makes thematic sense, I am concerned about balance. Here is the rule from Tasha's:
Has anyone done this change? If so, did it change the balance significantly?
I would love to hear your thoughts about this potential change!
Thanks in advance!
Depending how it scales, you could potentially add 48 damages per turn to your fighter. I fell this is a lot. Too much for me. But having it scale, but still once per turn could avoid having the feature looks...underwhelming at higher level.
The Rune Knight is already a quite strong subclass, so it doesn't need extra power. Unless you remove or limit some other ability, such as having one fewer rune.
Changing it to a d4 on every attack is the equivalent of giving the character the "Divine Favor" spell active all the time without costing a spell slot or other resource. For comparison, an extra d6 every 1/turn is the equivalent of landing a free two weapon fighting short sword attack every turn (since without the fighting style a short sword would only do d6 damage).
Comparing total damage output - d4 averages 2.5 while d6 is 3.5. In tier 1 with one attack d6 is better. However if the character takes polearm master they can add it to each attack. Of course, you should also factor in the to hit aspect since the d6 can be applied when you hit while the extra d4s are lost if you miss which will close the gap a bit.
At level 5 it is 5 vs 3.5 potential damage. At level 11 it is 7.5 vs 3.5. The dueling fighting style adds +2 damage to every attack. So adding a d4 to every attack is better than having the dueling fighting style AND the rune knight ability applies to any weapon attack including ranged ones while dueling does not.
I'm mentioning the comparisons since it makes it easier to figure out exactly how powerful this feature would be in comparison to existing game features. However, in the end, it is between you, your player and the rest of the table how you want to run it.
It is not a feature that will break the game. A few more points of damage isn't really that big a deal - but if it makes the rune knight outshine the other players then they may not like it. In addition, making changes for one player can lead to other players asking for similar considerations. You need to decide a policy on how to deal with such requests so that it is fair to everyone.
Thanks all. I appreciate the thoughts and definitely got me thinking. I had not compared the math to the dueling fighting style, but it is a nice comparison. And definitely a fair point about the other players.