It's called Master of the Longsword, and is an attempt to work actual HEMA into 5E mechanics. In addition to making use of the actual Meisterhau and a number of other techniques and concepts, with fighting styles based on both blossfechten (unarmored fighting) and harnischfechten, (armored fighting) it also allows a fighter to apply Finesse to a longsword so long as it's wielded two-handed (though this might require a further restriction IE creature size).
I'm looking for advice to fine-tune various features, which are primarily Maneuvers managed by Superiority Dice, and special Reactions.
For example, one of the central concepts in Western, especially German, swordsmanship is fighting from the "Vor." Simply put, this means being the one to control direction and tempo of the fight. This synergizes with the DnD concept of initiative, so I decided to confer an actual mechanical advantage for having it. My current implementation is that when your character has Initiative over whatever enemy you're currently attacking, you gain a +2 AB and AC against that target. However discussions with others have suggested to avoid making use of such bonuses for simplicity.
So another thought I had was it automatically gives you Advantage against that opponent, but there are individual maneuvers that also confer Advantage. I supposed I could have those techniques allow a reroll of the lowest dice for the overlapping Advantage when Vor is applied. But I'm not sure if this could open up other issues, especially since it can be countered by conditions which put your character at a Disadvantage.
Any thoughts or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Still working on tweaks and looking for feedback. Minor changes not reflected in the latest public version (I wish it were possible to link without having to publish...):
Added abilities:
Versatile Strike
At 3rd Level, the Master of the Longsword uses the flexibility of their weapon to its fullest extent. When making an attack, you may determine before your attack roll what sort of attack it will be. You may either perform a cut for Slashing damage, or a thrust for Piercing.
Mordhau
At 7th Level, when making an attack the Master of the Longsword may expend a Superiority Dice to take their sword by the blade and strike with the hilt, inflicting Bludgeoning damage. Additionally, their target must make a Constitution save against their DC (the same as for the Master Strikes) or be stunned for a round.
Also, Overwhelming Barrage has been renamed to Furious Tempo, and the number of bonus attacks are tied to the character's DEX modifier.
Also also, ignore the bit about Distressed on Squinting Strike. I originally started working on this for BG3 and didn't realize that was something they Homebrewed.
Hi, HEMA scholar from London Longsword Academy here :)
"Vor" is way too strong. Roll high on Initiative (and you'd take Alert with this sub-class) and you just always have advantage on attacks? Crazy strong.
I'm not a fan of the 'If you are ahead in intiative' mechanic idea in general. You just don't get some of your abilities if you roll poorly.
What's the benefit to treating the weapon as finesse? You'll have to build Strength over Dexterity because you'll need it up to level 7.
Indes - giving the fighter additional actions is too strong.
Overall this seems overly complicated. There's a lot of "If X happens, you may do this unusual Y" giving additional attacks and actions, which is much too strong. Rather than an entire subclass, you would be better off creating a bunch of alternative Manoeuvres that can only be performed with a longsword, and being a Battlemaster since that would give a lot more versatility. Many of the techniques shown in surviving manuals are really only of use against an opponent who is also wielding a longsword; they are for duelling, not for general combat. Fighting as shown in Mair, for example, has no practical application in a melee situation and they shouldn't be confused with "general combat approach" - they are highly specific. You wouldn't use them against an opponent with a shield, for instance, and are mostly irrelevant against an opponent with a rapier. But you know this already I imagine.
As Silver once said "I will bring him from his tricks with downright blows."
The original concept was to have Vor grant +2 AB/AC against your current target if you have Initiative, but I was advised against that because 5e doesn't play well with such stacking additional bonuses. Advantage was the next thing I thought of which thematically fit with the role Vor plays.
Funny, much of the other feedback I've gotten elsewhere finds the idea of giving Initiative actual weight beyond just where you are in the turn order intriguing.
Personally, I feel that 2H longsword should be finesse for Medium creatures PERIOD, but some people are hung up on "It's a big sword so raaaaawr STR!" Rather than relying on House Rules, I made it a class feature directly. I could easily move it up in the order of class features, but I also wanted to mitigate players dipping for balance reasons (the main argument I see people make against finesse longsword is allowing Rogues to Finesse 2H).
Indes should not in itself grant additional actions. All it does is allow you to treat your character as if it has Initiative over whatever opponent they used the ability against. Taking any actions before that target means sacrificing your normal turn in the rotation. Attacking any target other than the one you used Indes against breaks it and you lose that Initiative.
Yes, I'm aware that much of what's in the manuals is pretty specific to longsword vs. longsword dueling. But there's a lot of stuff already in DnD that would be kind of silly to try to do in a duel, much less group combat, to begin with.
Incidentally, I tried reading Silver once. All I really got out of it was about 90% of his writing consisted of some variation on "Italians bad. English good."
Incidentally, I tried reading Silver once. All I really got out of it was about 90% of his writing consisted of some variation on "Italians bad. English good."
Silver hated the Italianisation of London, it's true, but principally because his school was losing to what he saw as McDojos teaching a sporty style of rapier fencing that didn't really work outside of training, and they all ended up stabbing each other to death because they trained to double hit. But his work is also an advert for the fencing school he ran with his brother. Always worth remembering that all of the people who wrote fencing manuals were active in training people to wound or kill each other, for money, so nationalism is really the least of any of their problems. Paulus Mair was hanged for embezzling if I remember right ^_^
His actual fencing stuff is pretty good and useful, although he does talk a lot of rubbish about how rapiers are terrible weapons. I liked that he regards the "black bill" as the best of all weapons, and talks about how a man with a pole weapon can handle multiple swordsmen, but loses to a pike, but the pike loses to more than one swordsman who can outmanoeuvre him. There's some good reading there.
Incidentally, I tried reading Silver once. All I really got out of it was about 90% of his writing consisted of some variation on "Italians bad. English good."
Silver hated the Italianisation of London, it's true, but principally because his school was losing to what he saw as McDojos teaching a sporty style of rapier fencing that didn't really work outside of training, and they all ended up stabbing each other to death because they trained to double hit. But his work is also an advert for the fencing school he ran with his brother. Always worth remembering that all of the people who wrote fencing manuals were active in training people to wound or kill each other, for money, so nationalism is really the least of any of their problems. Paulus Mair was hanged for embezzling if I remember right ^_^
His actual fencing stuff is pretty good and useful, although he does talk a lot of rubbish about how rapiers are terrible weapons. I liked that he regards the "black bill" as the best of all weapons, and talks about how a man with a pole weapon can handle multiple swordsmen, but loses to a pike, but the pike loses to more than one swordsman who can outmanoeuvre him. There's some good reading there.
I honestly never got past the nationalism stuff to reach the fencing. Most of my studying has been focused on Ringeck (I'm sure that comes through in my concept here).
Anyway, I'm open to suggestions for tweaks and changes on what I've got here.
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Looking for feedback on this Homebrew class I've been working on:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/subclasses/1180995-master-of-the-longsword
It's called Master of the Longsword, and is an attempt to work actual HEMA into 5E mechanics. In addition to making use of the actual Meisterhau and a number of other techniques and concepts, with fighting styles based on both blossfechten (unarmored fighting) and harnischfechten, (armored fighting) it also allows a fighter to apply Finesse to a longsword so long as it's wielded two-handed (though this might require a further restriction IE creature size).
I'm looking for advice to fine-tune various features, which are primarily Maneuvers managed by Superiority Dice, and special Reactions.
For example, one of the central concepts in Western, especially German, swordsmanship is fighting from the "Vor." Simply put, this means being the one to control direction and tempo of the fight. This synergizes with the DnD concept of initiative, so I decided to confer an actual mechanical advantage for having it. My current implementation is that when your character has Initiative over whatever enemy you're currently attacking, you gain a +2 AB and AC against that target. However discussions with others have suggested to avoid making use of such bonuses for simplicity.
So another thought I had was it automatically gives you Advantage against that opponent, but there are individual maneuvers that also confer Advantage. I supposed I could have those techniques allow a reroll of the lowest dice for the overlapping Advantage when Vor is applied. But I'm not sure if this could open up other issues, especially since it can be countered by conditions which put your character at a Disadvantage.
Any thoughts or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Updated version can be found here:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/subclasses/1184171-master-of-the-longsword
Still working on tweaks and looking for feedback. Minor changes not reflected in the latest public version (I wish it were possible to link without having to publish...):
Added abilities:
Versatile Strike
At 3rd Level, the Master of the Longsword uses the flexibility of their weapon to its fullest extent. When making an attack, you may determine before your attack roll what sort of attack it will be. You may either perform a cut for Slashing damage, or a thrust for Piercing.
Mordhau
At 7th Level, when making an attack the Master of the Longsword may expend a Superiority Dice to take their sword by the blade and strike with the hilt, inflicting Bludgeoning damage. Additionally, their target must make a Constitution save against their DC (the same as for the Master Strikes) or be stunned for a round.
Also, Overwhelming Barrage has been renamed to Furious Tempo, and the number of bonus attacks are tied to the character's DEX modifier.
Also also, ignore the bit about Distressed on Squinting Strike. I originally started working on this for BG3 and didn't realize that was something they Homebrewed.
Hi, HEMA scholar from London Longsword Academy here :)
"Vor" is way too strong. Roll high on Initiative (and you'd take Alert with this sub-class) and you just always have advantage on attacks? Crazy strong.
I'm not a fan of the 'If you are ahead in intiative' mechanic idea in general. You just don't get some of your abilities if you roll poorly.
What's the benefit to treating the weapon as finesse? You'll have to build Strength over Dexterity because you'll need it up to level 7.
Indes - giving the fighter additional actions is too strong.
Overall this seems overly complicated. There's a lot of "If X happens, you may do this unusual Y" giving additional attacks and actions, which is much too strong. Rather than an entire subclass, you would be better off creating a bunch of alternative Manoeuvres that can only be performed with a longsword, and being a Battlemaster since that would give a lot more versatility. Many of the techniques shown in surviving manuals are really only of use against an opponent who is also wielding a longsword; they are for duelling, not for general combat. Fighting as shown in Mair, for example, has no practical application in a melee situation and they shouldn't be confused with "general combat approach" - they are highly specific. You wouldn't use them against an opponent with a shield, for instance, and are mostly irrelevant against an opponent with a rapier. But you know this already I imagine.
As Silver once said "I will bring him from his tricks with downright blows."
The original concept was to have Vor grant +2 AB/AC against your current target if you have Initiative, but I was advised against that because 5e doesn't play well with such stacking additional bonuses. Advantage was the next thing I thought of which thematically fit with the role Vor plays.
Funny, much of the other feedback I've gotten elsewhere finds the idea of giving Initiative actual weight beyond just where you are in the turn order intriguing.
Personally, I feel that 2H longsword should be finesse for Medium creatures PERIOD, but some people are hung up on "It's a big sword so raaaaawr STR!" Rather than relying on House Rules, I made it a class feature directly. I could easily move it up in the order of class features, but I also wanted to mitigate players dipping for balance reasons (the main argument I see people make against finesse longsword is allowing Rogues to Finesse 2H).
Indes should not in itself grant additional actions. All it does is allow you to treat your character as if it has Initiative over whatever opponent they used the ability against. Taking any actions before that target means sacrificing your normal turn in the rotation. Attacking any target other than the one you used Indes against breaks it and you lose that Initiative.
Yes, I'm aware that much of what's in the manuals is pretty specific to longsword vs. longsword dueling. But there's a lot of stuff already in DnD that would be kind of silly to try to do in a duel, much less group combat, to begin with.
Incidentally, I tried reading Silver once. All I really got out of it was about 90% of his writing consisted of some variation on "Italians bad. English good."
A few more tweaks, mostly to language to hopefully make some things clearer:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/subclasses/1186775-master-of-the-longsword
I removed the "Restriction" as a feature at Level 3, since it's already covered in the class description.
Silver hated the Italianisation of London, it's true, but principally because his school was losing to what he saw as McDojos teaching a sporty style of rapier fencing that didn't really work outside of training, and they all ended up stabbing each other to death because they trained to double hit. But his work is also an advert for the fencing school he ran with his brother. Always worth remembering that all of the people who wrote fencing manuals were active in training people to wound or kill each other, for money, so nationalism is really the least of any of their problems. Paulus Mair was hanged for embezzling if I remember right ^_^
His actual fencing stuff is pretty good and useful, although he does talk a lot of rubbish about how rapiers are terrible weapons. I liked that he regards the "black bill" as the best of all weapons, and talks about how a man with a pole weapon can handle multiple swordsmen, but loses to a pike, but the pike loses to more than one swordsman who can outmanoeuvre him. There's some good reading there.
I honestly never got past the nationalism stuff to reach the fencing. Most of my studying has been focused on Ringeck (I'm sure that comes through in my concept here).
Anyway, I'm open to suggestions for tweaks and changes on what I've got here.