Fighters don't stand out from other Martials except in number of feats and, now, some Weapon Mastery shenanigans. Despite my dislike for the Weapon Mastery system (and alternate system) I was struck by an idea to make Fighters stand out as the experts in wielding weapons that can work within that system and remain simple.
The idea is to make Fighters more Proficient in weapon attacks and weapon DCs. Expertise would be far too powerful so a bit of brainstorming led me to the following Fighter features:
[Level 1] Weapon Initiate
Your Proficiency Bonus with weapon attacks and weapon DCs counts as 3 unless it is already higher.
[Level 5] Weapon Adept
Your Proficiency Bonus with weapon attacks and weapon DCs counts as 4 unless it is already higher.
[Level 9] Weapon Expert
Your Proficiency Bonus with weapon attacks and weapon DCs counts as 5 unless it is already higher.
[Level 13] Weapon Master
Your Proficiency Bonus with weapon attacks and weapon DCs counts as 6 unless it is already higher.
[Level 17] Weapon Legend
Your Proficiency Bonus with weapon attacks and weapon DCs counts as 7 unless it is already higher.
This should mean Fighters have a +1 to weapon attack rolls and saves without being exploitable by a Fighter dip. I'm not really a fan of numerical bonuses to make classes better normally (ideally my take on Feats would be to strip out most of the damage improvements and make them for customisation or gaining interesting options) but I feel the Fighter could be justified as just being more proficient at fighting.
Caveat, I haven't playtested or done third order analysis of how this might interact with all features.
Thoughts?
EDIT: Reworded first two paragraphs to clarify my horribly unclear explanation of why I was proposing this.
This doesn't provide any tactical options at all for the fighter. It is a case of just a bigger number to hit increasing odds by just 5%. Which is both boring and doesn't leave a lot of choice open. I prefer the One DnD solutions of weapon masteries a lot more, but that is just me.
As Aquilontune says this doesn't add anything tactical so I'm not sure how it solves your stated problem?
I was disappointed that Fighter lost the multiple masteries per weapon feature from the earlier Fighter UA; that to me is what true mastery looks like, and meant you could have several battlemaster like abilities tied to your favoured weapon, and switch betwen them as you please.
So I'd rather see that brought back, but alongside the mastery system being much improved (as I dislike most of the current masteries). I'd rather mastery be more about once per Attack action bonuses you can choose to trigger, so having multiple options would give that tactical choice of which one to use.
My apologies for not being clear I was in a rush to get down a stream of consciousness and will edit my initial post. This was not meant to address the tactical options issue for Fighters and replace Weapon Masteries (I've already proposed my solution to how I'd give Tactical Options and rework weapons to be more interesting).
This was a thought experiment to give Fighters a flat passive boost to using weapons (and Weapon Mastery DCs) and make them stand out slightly from other martial classes in doing what martial classes do. I'm not normally a fan of this approach but some of the main feedback I've seen to proposed improvements to the Fighter is people want it simple. Not much more simple you can get than a +1 boost to attack Proficiency.
If everything remains as is in the UA, would Fighter having +1 Weapon Proficiency be unbalanced? Would it make Fighters feel like the unsurpassed weapon experts? Do you feel it's unneeded?
My apologies for not being clear I was in a rush to get down a stream of consciousness and will edit my initial post. This was not meant to address the tactical options issue for Fighters and replace Weapon Masteries (I've already proposed my solution to how I'd give Tactical Options and rework weapons to be more interesting).
This was a thought experiment to give Fighters a flat passive boost to using weapons (and Weapon Mastery DCs) and make them stand out slightly from other martial classes in doing what martial classes do. I'm not normally a fan of this approach but some of the main feedback I've seen to proposed improvements to the Fighter is people want it simple. Not much more simple you can get than a +1 boost to attack Proficiency.
If everything remains as is in the UA, would Fighter having +1 Weapon Proficiency be unbalanced? Would it make Fighters feel like the unsurpassed weapon experts? Do you feel it's unneeded?
If you are meaning in addition to mastery than I don't think it is needed. The extra feat fighters get at level 6 already achieves this. They can take an ASI and be +1 on everyone if they want, or they can take a half feat and be one step closer to 20 before others and still have a cool feature they got to pick. I would call this a solution that is in search for a problem.
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Fighters don't stand out from other Martials except in number of feats and, now, some Weapon Mastery shenanigans. Despite my dislike for the Weapon Mastery system (and alternate system) I was struck by an idea to make Fighters stand out as the experts in wielding weapons that can work within that system and remain simple.
The idea is to make Fighters more Proficient in weapon attacks and weapon DCs. Expertise would be far too powerful so a bit of brainstorming led me to the following Fighter features:
[Level 1] Weapon Initiate
Your Proficiency Bonus with weapon attacks and weapon DCs counts as 3 unless it is already higher.
[Level 5] Weapon Adept
Your Proficiency Bonus with weapon attacks and weapon DCs counts as 4 unless it is already higher.
[Level 9] Weapon Expert
Your Proficiency Bonus with weapon attacks and weapon DCs counts as 5 unless it is already higher.
[Level 13] Weapon Master
Your Proficiency Bonus with weapon attacks and weapon DCs counts as 6 unless it is already higher.
[Level 17] Weapon Legend
Your Proficiency Bonus with weapon attacks and weapon DCs counts as 7 unless it is already higher.
This should mean Fighters have a +1 to weapon attack rolls and saves without being exploitable by a Fighter dip. I'm not really a fan of numerical bonuses to make classes better normally (ideally my take on Feats would be to strip out most of the damage improvements and make them for customisation or gaining interesting options) but I feel the Fighter could be justified as just being more proficient at fighting.
Caveat, I haven't playtested or done third order analysis of how this might interact with all features.
Thoughts?
EDIT: Reworded first two paragraphs to clarify my horribly unclear explanation of why I was proposing this.
This doesn't provide any tactical options at all for the fighter. It is a case of just a bigger number to hit increasing odds by just 5%. Which is both boring and doesn't leave a lot of choice open. I prefer the One DnD solutions of weapon masteries a lot more, but that is just me.
As Aquilontune says this doesn't add anything tactical so I'm not sure how it solves your stated problem?
I was disappointed that Fighter lost the multiple masteries per weapon feature from the earlier Fighter UA; that to me is what true mastery looks like, and meant you could have several battlemaster like abilities tied to your favoured weapon, and switch betwen them as you please.
So I'd rather see that brought back, but alongside the mastery system being much improved (as I dislike most of the current masteries). I'd rather mastery be more about once per Attack action bonuses you can choose to trigger, so having multiple options would give that tactical choice of which one to use.
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My apologies for not being clear I was in a rush to get down a stream of consciousness and will edit my initial post. This was not meant to address the tactical options issue for Fighters and replace Weapon Masteries (I've already proposed my solution to how I'd give Tactical Options and rework weapons to be more interesting).
This was a thought experiment to give Fighters a flat passive boost to using weapons (and Weapon Mastery DCs) and make them stand out slightly from other martial classes in doing what martial classes do. I'm not normally a fan of this approach but some of the main feedback I've seen to proposed improvements to the Fighter is people want it simple. Not much more simple you can get than a +1 boost to attack Proficiency.
If everything remains as is in the UA, would Fighter having +1 Weapon Proficiency be unbalanced? Would it make Fighters feel like the unsurpassed weapon experts? Do you feel it's unneeded?
If you are meaning in addition to mastery than I don't think it is needed. The extra feat fighters get at level 6 already achieves this. They can take an ASI and be +1 on everyone if they want, or they can take a half feat and be one step closer to 20 before others and still have a cool feature they got to pick. I would call this a solution that is in search for a problem.