This is really at the core of it right? DnD combat is built around action economy. In most situations, the single most effective thing you can do is remove an enemy from the battlefield, and with it, it's actions. That makes dealing damage king.
That has less to do with action economy than with most of the non-damage options being weak.
In general, any type of CC is spending X% of your party's actions to remove Y% of your enemy's total actions; if X > Y, the CC is a net benefit. Note that reduction in actions is expected reduction, and thus has to include the chance that cc won't actually work. If the CC is only partial (makes actions less effective rather than removing them), also multiply by relative effectiveness. The problem is that the status effects available to generic fighters are Prone and Grappled.
If your party mostly consists of either melee characters, Prone can be decent, at least in tier 2, because what it mostly does is make all melee attacks between your turn and the enemy's next action (at which point they stand up) better. Not hugely better, but better -- on average, if there's five melee attacks (including the rest of your turn) between your shove attempt and the enemy's next turn, it works out okay, and the ratio gets better if your chance for shove is really high relative to your hit chance -- in 5e, a level 5+ rune knight using action surge and great weapon mastery almost certainly gets a net small benefit -- but it gets worse if your party has ranged attackers, or just non-melee attackers, or if your initiative timing works out badly.
Grappled... is really marginal. If you're dealing with a primarily ranged opponent with an easy way to get out of melee (say, cunning action or nimble escape) and poor melee options, who you can actually reach (why is the ranged attacker in melee reach to start with?), and where that ranged attacker is reasonably durable and a large percentage of enemy firepower, and you have at least one extra attack, it probably does pay off, but that's a pretty rare situation. Against most monsters, the benefit of grappled (they can only use their melee attacks on you and other melee attackers, not your ranged teammates) isn't actually worth the action cost of using it.
I would note a special case here: grapple and shove are quite good when dealing with environmental hazards or damaging zones. If there's something like a wall of fire, shoving an enemy into the wall is worth 5d8 for the shove, and another 5d8 for the grapple if they don't break out.
It is not rare. the situations I mentioned combined happen a lot:
Turned - If you damage him he is not turned, almost always a bad idea.
Charmed - Most (not all) charms are broken by damage. If someone in your party charmed an enemy it is usually to get some sort of effect that is beneficial to your partty, a weaponattack, if successful, will usually disrupt that benefit.
Frightened - Frightened restricts movement and the best option is usually to disengage and back away and is usually very foolish to charge (yet that is the most common thing done if not already in melee). This is not always the case, if it has a ranged attack melee may be the best move, but usually it is objectively not.
Grappling a turned, charmed, or frightened enemy is almost always going to be stupid, because why are you attacking them at all -- attack the monsters who aren't CCed.
That's basically my whole point. It's all Action Economy. Either yours or the monsters. If the option isn't strong enough to warrant the action cost, you don't use it. If it is, but only situationally, you use it then. If you can remove a monster's Action Economy, you win the fight. Spellcasters can do it by applying conditions. Martials do it by dealing damage, and thereby removing monsters. For an option to be worth anything to a martial, it has to be worth more than the action cost. If it's worth more than the action cost, it has to be limited in other ways.
It is not rare. the situations I mentioned combined happen a lot:
Turned - If you damage him he is not turned, almost always a bad idea.
Charmed - Most (not all) charms are broken by damage. If someone in your party charmed an enemy it is usually to get some sort of effect that is beneficial to your partty, a weaponattack, if successful, will usually disrupt that benefit.
Frightened - Frightened restricts movement and the best option is usually to disengage and back away and is usually very foolish to charge (yet that is the most common thing done if not already in melee). This is not always the case, if it has a ranged attack melee may be the best move, but usually it is objectively not.
Grappling a turned, charmed, or frightened enemy is almost always going to be stupid, because why are you attacking them at all -- attack the monsters who aren't CCed.
I didn't say you should grapple a turrned, charmed or frightened enemy. I said you should not typically attack them in melee. Typically things like Disengage, Charisma checks, hide, ready an action etc are a more effective use of your action than attacking them in melee, yet attacking them in melee is what most melee martials will do in this situation, even to the point of charging INTO melee against a frightened enemy. Attacking another enemy is an option, if there is another in movement range who isn't in a similar condition, but often there isn't .... and when there isn't they will almost always attack said compromised enemy even though it is far from optimal.
Actual example from combat - My Fey Wanderer twisted Dragon Fear back on to a White Dragon who failed his save. The DM chose not to use legendary resistance, not realizing the gravity of the situation, and instead waiting to use it on stunning strike and the psychic lance spell which he figured was coming. Instead of moving/staying out of breath weapon range and attacking him from range for AT LEAST two free rounds where the Dragon could not harm us ... instead, the frightened Fighter stayed in breath weapon range and the Monk dashed in even closer to get into melee. Both of them got breathed on and then the Monk was attacked and attacked with Legendary actions (attacks with disadvantage) that round and the following round. One of them may have went down in the fight, I can't remember, but they both took a ton of easily avoidable damage if they had just hung back and dodged or hid or did anything to stay out of range and give the enemy effective actions. I even used a bonus action to drop some magic stones that they could have put in a sling and hurled at him, but their play was charge into melee.
You pointed out above that combat is about action economy and often the best move for a martial in that equation is to NOT attack and ruin an effect that is stealing actions. Truthfully in the situation I described, since I had a Mirthful Fey summoned and party members that were saving against dragon fear every turn - we likely could have kept hammering him with frightened even if he saved by having my Fey try to charm me every turn and then twisting it back on the Dragon when I saved (with advantage) or twisting it on him when a party member saved against his lingering dragonfear. Between the Wizard and I, we probably could have burned through his legendaries before he could have came at us, at which point things like spam-stunning strike would be effective. It is quite possible smarter play and NOT going into melee would have won the day without us taking ANY damage at all.
As far as grappling goes - grappling an enemy who is silenced or in darkness because one of your casters put him there is usually better than attacking him and letting him stroll out of the darkness.
Actual example from combat - My Fey Wanderer twisted Dragon Fear back on to a White Dragon who failed his save. The DM chose not to use legendary resistance, not realizing the gravity of the situation, and instead waiting to use it on stunning strike and the psychic lance spell which he figured was coming. Instead of moving/staying out of breath weapon range and attacking him from range for AT LEAST two free rounds where the Dragon could not harm us
You mean the period where the dragon moves out of line of sight and you can't attack it at all?
Actual example from combat - My Fey Wanderer twisted Dragon Fear back on to a White Dragon who failed his save. The DM chose not to use legendary resistance, not realizing the gravity of the situation, and instead waiting to use it on stunning strike and the psychic lance spell which he figured was coming. Instead of moving/staying out of breath weapon range and attacking him from range for AT LEAST two free rounds where the Dragon could not harm us
You mean the period where the dragon moves out of line of sight and you can't attack it at all?
He did not have anywhere to go. It was a cavern with 3 exits, the one we were in and two more to our left, but he would have had to move "closer" to my Fey Wanderer to get to any of them and he can't do that while under the frightened condition. Frightened is an extremely powerful condition to impose on an enemy and as long as we stayed out of range of the breath weapon he would have been literally harmless until he made his save, losing all his actions that could damage us and losing his legendary actions as well.
Even if he had another exit to break line of sight, breaking line of sight does not cancel the frightened condition and he would have been abandoning his hoard to us without the ability to come back until he saved (and doing so would not cancel his lost actions as we would all presumably have actions readied when he came back). To be honest if there was a passage he could have escaped through and if he went that way, I would probably have sent my Fey after him too which would have likely burned a legendary to avoid being charmed while he was out of sight. Our Wizard also had Psychic Lance, which you do not need to see the enemy to use. You just need to know its name.
He did not have anywhere to go. It was a cavern with 3 exits, the one we were in and two more to our left, but he would have had to move "closer" to my Fey Wanderer to get to any of them and he can't do that while under the frightened condition.
White dragons have a burrow speed, and it's not like it would have lasted more than a round or two (if all else fails, he could have just burned a LR on the recovery roll). Frightened can be a powerful status effect, but it's extremely situational.
PS building a tank is already 100% possible if players want to do so. It just comes at the cost of much lower DPR than a DPR build. Most players seem to prefer DPR to tanking thus choose not to sacrifice DPR for tanking. [Plus DPR is inherently better than tanking anyway b/c a dead enemy does 0 damage whereas even the best tanking only reduces enemy damage to ~ 25%]
PPS Tanking as a play style fundamentally doesn't make much sense when fighting an intelligent enemy. Intelligent enemies aren't going to waste their time attacking someone they can't hit, they will find other solutions.
"You can do X if you don't mind being useless" translates as "You can't actually do X".
MMO style tanking with threat and challenge is dumb, but tanking absolutely exists in the real world. It's done by blocking enemy movement, typically by making it difficult to bypass you. It's possible to implement something like that in a TTRPG, but at a minimum you'd have to delete all the "On your turn" garbage -- a readied attack should do more damage than a regular attack, not less -- and move back to a 3.x style opportunity attack where moving through someone's threatened zone, even if you don't exit, draws an attack.
Real world "tanking" heavily relies on formations made up of dozens to hundreds of combatants. And if you have that many in D&D (e.g. Conjure Animals / army of undead) it works as well. A solo person tanking many enemies just doesn't work if those enemies are intelligent.
"You can already do [X] by taking a gigantic hit to your viability in combat!" "I don't want to take a gigantic hit to my viability in combat, though..." "See?! All you want is more power! You don't want options at all, you just wanna be OP!"
No. No, I do not. I want the other things I can do on my turn to be as good as The Attack Action. Not drastically better than The Attack Action, because then we have a new Default Answer to Everything and we're right back to where we started. Not drastically worse than The Attack Action either, Agilemind, because we already have that and nobody uses it because doing so is a mistake and we all know it.
I would like for there to be real, actual, meaningful choices for things to do in a fight, other than Taking The Attack Action. Because Basic Bonk is boring as hell, and yet we've never had an option for better. Basic Bonk, doing nothing but Taking The Attack Action, will always be there for people who just can't be bothered to do better, but we still don't have any way of going Beyond Basic Bonk in any meaningful capacity.
Why?
I thought you said that fighting styles make almost no difference? So surely sacrificing just +2 dmg on attacks for the ability to impose Disadvantage on an enemy attack is a fair trade? And doorway-Dodging is already extremely viable to the point several optimization channels recommend it. Plus take 3 level dip into Monk and you can Dodge as a bonus action thus having minimal impact on DPR.
It is totally viable to play complex martial characters in 5e right now if you build for it. Take 5-Battlemaster or 5-Rune Knight + 3 Open Hand Monk + 3 Ancestral Guardian Barbarian and you have a million and one import strategic choices in combat. Add in Magic Initiate for Find Familiar, Mage Hand and Minor Illusion and you have dozens of out of combat options as well. You just have to ignore the "optimizer" talking heads because they do not optimize for fun, they only optimize build to maximize one specific playstyle for a solo character in a vacuum, and 95% of the time only care about DPR, when if you have a decent DM every combat should be unique because of different terrain challenges, enemies with different strength and weaknesses, and different map designs.
PS: Finally if you want to cast spells play a spellcaster, every class except Barbarian has a spellcasting option. And every caster except Sorcerer has a boinking subclass.
"You can already do [X] by taking a gigantic hit to your viability in combat!" "I don't want to take a gigantic hit to my viability in combat, though..." "See?! All you want is more power! You don't want options at all, you just wanna be OP!"
No. No, I do not. I want the other things I can do on my turn to be as good as The Attack Action. Not drastically better than The Attack Action, because then we have a new Default Answer to Everything and we're right back to where we started. Not drastically worse than The Attack Action either, Agilemind, because we already have that and nobody uses it because doing so is a mistake and we all know it.
I would like for there to be real, actual, meaningful choices for things to do in a fight, other than Taking The Attack Action. Because Basic Bonk is boring as hell, and yet we've never had an option for better. Basic Bonk, doing nothing but Taking The Attack Action, will always be there for people who just can't be bothered to do better, but we still don't have any way of going Beyond Basic Bonk in any meaningful capacity.
Why?
I thought you said that fighting styles make almost no difference? So surely sacrificing just +2 dmg on attacks for the ability to impose Disadvantage on an enemy attack is a fair trade? And doorway-Dodging is already extremely viable to the point several optimization channels recommend it. Plus take 3 level dip into Monk and you can Dodge as a bonus action thus having minimal impact on DPR.
It is totally viable to play complex martial characters in 5e right now if you build for it. Take 5-Battlemaster or 5-Rune Knight + 3 Open Hand Monk + 3 Ancestral Guardian Barbarian and you have a million and one import strategic choices in combat. Add in Magic Initiate for Find Familiar, Mage Hand and Minor Illusion and you have dozens of out of combat options as well. You just have to ignore the "optimizer" talking heads because they do not optimize for fun, they only optimize build to maximize one specific playstyle for a solo character in a vacuum, and 95% of the time only care about DPR, when if you have a decent DM every combat should be unique because of different terrain challenges, enemies with different strength and weaknesses, and different map designs.
PS: Finally if you want to cast spells play a spellcaster, every class except Barbarian has a spellcasting option. And every caster except Sorcerer has a boinking subclass.
Doorway Dodge can be really powerful, especially if your table does not use the tumble action from the DMG .... and if they do use it then there is something else your fighter can do.
I am trying to figure out a Tiefling sorc build with Flames of Phelegos (sp?) and green flame blade, but I am finding it kind of difficult to make it good without relying on magic items to boost strength or a Warlock multiclass
He did not have anywhere to go. It was a cavern with 3 exits, the one we were in and two more to our left, but he would have had to move "closer" to my Fey Wanderer to get to any of them and he can't do that while under the frightened condition.
White dragons have a burrow speed, and it's not like it would have lasted more than a round or two (if all else fails, he could have just burned a LR on the recovery roll). Frightened can be a powerful status effect, but it's extremely situational.
Like you mentioned above, it is all about action economy. 2 rounds is 2 lost actions and 4-6 lost legendary actions on his part, and even if he can prevent us from hurting him, we can still use that time to buff, set traps for his inevitable return, start pocketing items from his hoard etc. We were already out of his range, if he moves further out of range he has to move back that distance when he finally saves (which is probably after his next turn with legendary resistance if necessary). A readied action by us would likely have him making another save against frightened off turn as soon as he came back into sight .....
Frightened is a little bit situational, but not a lot situational, by that I mean there are a TON of situations where it is extremely effective. Virtually any enemy that does not have a ranged attack can be nearly neutralized with frightened and many enemies that have ranged options those ranged attacks are much weaker than the melee options .... this works as long as your martials do not stay in melee with him. Even if you want to still attack, attacking and moving away without disengaging and taking a reaction attack is almost always better than attacking and staying in melee and getting attacked with multiattack.
There are situations frightened is not as useful, particularly if the enemy has great ranged options, but even then as long as they are attacks they are still at disadvantage which is a big debuff. The only time it is not useful is when an enemy is immune to the condition, and that certainly happens.
One thing I hoped would happen would be to add more to and better define the fighting styles themselves. Have them improve as you take on more levels in the class. When looking at some of the additional feats that can be taken, there are some there that could be meshed into the fighting styles and unlocked as you progress.
For example: Dueling. +2 damage when only using a weapon in one hand. Believe this was later adjusted so that a shield didn't work as well. The idea behind this fighting style is that of the classic swashbuckler, rapier in hand, side on stance etc. Except, a +2 to damage is not that exciting once you get a little higher in level and none of the fighting styles develop into anything more complex.
So my wish would be: Dueling. Add your proficiency bonus to damage when using a weapon in one hand and noting in the other. That way it improves as you level up. But, add to that: When fighting defensively, ie. you take the dodge action. You instead apply your proficiency bonus to AC against melee attacks and no longer get it on damage until the start of your next turn. Ok, adds a bit more to a different action and maybe that is unlocked at a higher level but lets go a bit further and mesh in the Defensive Duelist Feat to the fighting style as well and automatically give that to the melee classes at a higher level.
Bunch of other ideas for the other fighting styles but I am intending to look at trying this out homebrew in a new campaign and see how it goes.
That has less to do with action economy than with most of the non-damage options being weak.
In general, any type of CC is spending X% of your party's actions to remove Y% of your enemy's total actions; if X > Y, the CC is a net benefit. Note that reduction in actions is expected reduction, and thus has to include the chance that cc won't actually work. If the CC is only partial (makes actions less effective rather than removing them), also multiply by relative effectiveness. The problem is that the status effects available to generic fighters are Prone and Grappled.
If your party mostly consists of either melee characters, Prone can be decent, at least in tier 2, because what it mostly does is make all melee attacks between your turn and the enemy's next action (at which point they stand up) better. Not hugely better, but better -- on average, if there's five melee attacks (including the rest of your turn) between your shove attempt and the enemy's next turn, it works out okay, and the ratio gets better if your chance for shove is really high relative to your hit chance -- in 5e, a level 5+ rune knight using action surge and great weapon mastery almost certainly gets a net small benefit -- but it gets worse if your party has ranged attackers, or just non-melee attackers, or if your initiative timing works out badly.
Grappled... is really marginal. If you're dealing with a primarily ranged opponent with an easy way to get out of melee (say, cunning action or nimble escape) and poor melee options, who you can actually reach (why is the ranged attacker in melee reach to start with?), and where that ranged attacker is reasonably durable and a large percentage of enemy firepower, and you have at least one extra attack, it probably does pay off, but that's a pretty rare situation. Against most monsters, the benefit of grappled (they can only use their melee attacks on you and other melee attackers, not your ranged teammates) isn't actually worth the action cost of using it.
I would note a special case here: grapple and shove are quite good when dealing with environmental hazards or damaging zones. If there's something like a wall of fire, shoving an enemy into the wall is worth 5d8 for the shove, and another 5d8 for the grapple if they don't break out.
Grappling a turned, charmed, or frightened enemy is almost always going to be stupid, because why are you attacking them at all -- attack the monsters who aren't CCed.
That's basically my whole point. It's all Action Economy. Either yours or the monsters. If the option isn't strong enough to warrant the action cost, you don't use it. If it is, but only situationally, you use it then. If you can remove a monster's Action Economy, you win the fight. Spellcasters can do it by applying conditions. Martials do it by dealing damage, and thereby removing monsters. For an option to be worth anything to a martial, it has to be worth more than the action cost. If it's worth more than the action cost, it has to be limited in other ways.
I didn't say you should grapple a turrned, charmed or frightened enemy. I said you should not typically attack them in melee. Typically things like Disengage, Charisma checks, hide, ready an action etc are a more effective use of your action than attacking them in melee, yet attacking them in melee is what most melee martials will do in this situation, even to the point of charging INTO melee against a frightened enemy. Attacking another enemy is an option, if there is another in movement range who isn't in a similar condition, but often there isn't .... and when there isn't they will almost always attack said compromised enemy even though it is far from optimal.
Actual example from combat - My Fey Wanderer twisted Dragon Fear back on to a White Dragon who failed his save. The DM chose not to use legendary resistance, not realizing the gravity of the situation, and instead waiting to use it on stunning strike and the psychic lance spell which he figured was coming. Instead of moving/staying out of breath weapon range and attacking him from range for AT LEAST two free rounds where the Dragon could not harm us ... instead, the frightened Fighter stayed in breath weapon range and the Monk dashed in even closer to get into melee. Both of them got breathed on and then the Monk was attacked and attacked with Legendary actions (attacks with disadvantage) that round and the following round. One of them may have went down in the fight, I can't remember, but they both took a ton of easily avoidable damage if they had just hung back and dodged or hid or did anything to stay out of range and give the enemy effective actions. I even used a bonus action to drop some magic stones that they could have put in a sling and hurled at him, but their play was charge into melee.
You pointed out above that combat is about action economy and often the best move for a martial in that equation is to NOT attack and ruin an effect that is stealing actions. Truthfully in the situation I described, since I had a Mirthful Fey summoned and party members that were saving against dragon fear every turn - we likely could have kept hammering him with frightened even if he saved by having my Fey try to charm me every turn and then twisting it back on the Dragon when I saved (with advantage) or twisting it on him when a party member saved against his lingering dragonfear. Between the Wizard and I, we probably could have burned through his legendaries before he could have came at us, at which point things like spam-stunning strike would be effective. It is quite possible smarter play and NOT going into melee would have won the day without us taking ANY damage at all.
As far as grappling goes - grappling an enemy who is silenced or in darkness because one of your casters put him there is usually better than attacking him and letting him stroll out of the darkness.
You mean the period where the dragon moves out of line of sight and you can't attack it at all?
He did not have anywhere to go. It was a cavern with 3 exits, the one we were in and two more to our left, but he would have had to move "closer" to my Fey Wanderer to get to any of them and he can't do that while under the frightened condition. Frightened is an extremely powerful condition to impose on an enemy and as long as we stayed out of range of the breath weapon he would have been literally harmless until he made his save, losing all his actions that could damage us and losing his legendary actions as well.
Even if he had another exit to break line of sight, breaking line of sight does not cancel the frightened condition and he would have been abandoning his hoard to us without the ability to come back until he saved (and doing so would not cancel his lost actions as we would all presumably have actions readied when he came back). To be honest if there was a passage he could have escaped through and if he went that way, I would probably have sent my Fey after him too which would have likely burned a legendary to avoid being charmed while he was out of sight. Our Wizard also had Psychic Lance, which you do not need to see the enemy to use. You just need to know its name.
White dragons have a burrow speed, and it's not like it would have lasted more than a round or two (if all else fails, he could have just burned a LR on the recovery roll). Frightened can be a powerful status effect, but it's extremely situational.
Real world "tanking" heavily relies on formations made up of dozens to hundreds of combatants. And if you have that many in D&D (e.g. Conjure Animals / army of undead) it works as well. A solo person tanking many enemies just doesn't work if those enemies are intelligent.
I thought you said that fighting styles make almost no difference? So surely sacrificing just +2 dmg on attacks for the ability to impose Disadvantage on an enemy attack is a fair trade? And doorway-Dodging is already extremely viable to the point several optimization channels recommend it. Plus take 3 level dip into Monk and you can Dodge as a bonus action thus having minimal impact on DPR.
It is totally viable to play complex martial characters in 5e right now if you build for it. Take 5-Battlemaster or 5-Rune Knight + 3 Open Hand Monk + 3 Ancestral Guardian Barbarian and you have a million and one import strategic choices in combat. Add in Magic Initiate for Find Familiar, Mage Hand and Minor Illusion and you have dozens of out of combat options as well. You just have to ignore the "optimizer" talking heads because they do not optimize for fun, they only optimize build to maximize one specific playstyle for a solo character in a vacuum, and 95% of the time only care about DPR, when if you have a decent DM every combat should be unique because of different terrain challenges, enemies with different strength and weaknesses, and different map designs.
PS: Finally if you want to cast spells play a spellcaster, every class except Barbarian has a spellcasting option. And every caster except Sorcerer has a boinking subclass.
Doorway Dodge can be really powerful, especially if your table does not use the tumble action from the DMG .... and if they do use it then there is something else your fighter can do.
I am trying to figure out a Tiefling sorc build with Flames of Phelegos (sp?) and green flame blade, but I am finding it kind of difficult to make it good without relying on magic items to boost strength or a Warlock multiclass
Like you mentioned above, it is all about action economy. 2 rounds is 2 lost actions and 4-6 lost legendary actions on his part, and even if he can prevent us from hurting him, we can still use that time to buff, set traps for his inevitable return, start pocketing items from his hoard etc. We were already out of his range, if he moves further out of range he has to move back that distance when he finally saves (which is probably after his next turn with legendary resistance if necessary). A readied action by us would likely have him making another save against frightened off turn as soon as he came back into sight .....
Frightened is a little bit situational, but not a lot situational, by that I mean there are a TON of situations where it is extremely effective. Virtually any enemy that does not have a ranged attack can be nearly neutralized with frightened and many enemies that have ranged options those ranged attacks are much weaker than the melee options .... this works as long as your martials do not stay in melee with him. Even if you want to still attack, attacking and moving away without disengaging and taking a reaction attack is almost always better than attacking and staying in melee and getting attacked with multiattack.
There are situations frightened is not as useful, particularly if the enemy has great ranged options, but even then as long as they are attacks they are still at disadvantage which is a big debuff. The only time it is not useful is when an enemy is immune to the condition, and that certainly happens.
Just found this post so sorry if I 'Necro' it.
One thing I hoped would happen would be to add more to and better define the fighting styles themselves.
Have them improve as you take on more levels in the class.
When looking at some of the additional feats that can be taken, there are some there that could be meshed into the fighting styles and unlocked as you progress.
For example:
Dueling. +2 damage when only using a weapon in one hand. Believe this was later adjusted so that a shield didn't work as well.
The idea behind this fighting style is that of the classic swashbuckler, rapier in hand, side on stance etc.
Except, a +2 to damage is not that exciting once you get a little higher in level and none of the fighting styles develop into anything more complex.
So my wish would be:
Dueling. Add your proficiency bonus to damage when using a weapon in one hand and noting in the other.
That way it improves as you level up.
But, add to that:
When fighting defensively, ie. you take the dodge action.
You instead apply your proficiency bonus to AC against melee attacks and no longer get it on damage until the start of your next turn.
Ok, adds a bit more to a different action and maybe that is unlocked at a higher level but lets go a bit further and mesh in the Defensive Duelist Feat to the fighting style as well and automatically give that to the melee classes at a higher level.
Bunch of other ideas for the other fighting styles but I am intending to look at trying this out homebrew in a new campaign and see how it goes.
Could make for some interesting homebrew. But the PHB is set in stone at this point
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?