Do you remember the martial maneuvers from "Tome of Battle: Book of the nine Swords"? Yes, I understand the update of the martial classes, crusader, warblade and swordsage aren't easy but this doesn't mean to be totally impossible. On the other hand one of the fun parts of D&D is playtesting a homemade class. I guess WotC doesn't want to publish a sourcebook about new classes with special game mechanics because they worry this crunch would be only interesting for a smaller group of players. And could this be fixed? Here I have got some suggestion to allow this special crunch could be interesting for the rest of players.
A measure could be to create one-encounter-duration spells and magic items. For example a paladin reads a "martial script" to learn "crusader's strike" (when your attack hits you or your ally within 10 feet heals 1d6 hit points +1 each initiator level until max 5). Then the martial maneuver is activated in the encounter against the dungeon boss. Until the end of the encounter the paladin can uses this manuever all the times she wanted... but only if she uses some special action to reload.
The schools of devoted spirit and white raven could be useful for a potential future warlord class. (Maybe this is using some special magic banner). The keys are easy to be understood and not slowing down the fight with unnecessary complications
Crusader could be a paladin subclasss and warblade a fighter subclass. The swordsage could be replaced by the cultivator, a new class inspirated into xianxia fiction.
Other option could be using a pool of power points but this would be totally reloaded each new encounter, or the PC would need to earn "agro power points" with each sucessful attack. In the end of the fight all the agro points would disappear and in the next encounter the PC should start from zero to reload the agro power points.
If the design was right for a right power balance but also a fun and fast gamepley this could be playtested to update the incarnum soulmelds in the future.
The idea is the updated martial maneuvers should work like melee-attack spells. The main difference would be they aren't at-will but almost, simplely to spend an action to reload. It would be like in a videogame where you hold down the button to then launch a more powerful attack when you release it.
The martial maneuvers should be interesting for DMs because a boss with maneuvers could need more strategy to be defeated. For example there is an encounter with a hobgobling squad whose mini-boss would be a captain with "crusader's strike" and his two bodyguards carring tower-shields. After striking the captain would hide behind the bodyguards' tower-shields to reload. Other idea is a squad whose captain be accompanied by a musician and (magic) standard bearer. The musician would be like a magic reloader and the magic banner would work like a power battery.
Now let's imagine Sturm III the knight finds the martial script with the martial maneuver "Shocking grasp" (a cartrip from PH). The martial script was crafted for no-spellcasters. The "martial script" wouldn't be spent after the first attack but after the end of the encounter. No spent but "unloaded". Then in the next turn Sturm can spend an action to reload the maneuver, and this can be used and reloaded more times until the end of the encounter.
A nerferd version of Valkyrias could be summoned like monster allies. Reth Dekala could be also a summoned enemy. The half-blood offspring of the naityan rakshasa could be used to playtest. (Monsters from 3.5 Tome of Battle).
Let's imagine a player creates a halfling monk, and to hit taller enemies she uses a nerferd version of "jump" spell like at-will cartrip. It is weaker but this can be used at all. One year later the player has got an idea, "jump" like a martial maneuver. It is like like "lesser jump" cartrip but if the PC "spends" actions or a round to "reload" then the cartrip is stronger or better. The power balance shouldn't be broken and the combat shouldn't be lower because this.
Or a player chooses a minotaur PC and the horn traits are uselles. Then she has got an idea, a nerferd version of the spell "Blood Wind" from "Savage Species". After some playtesting it has got an idea. "Lesser Blood Wind" is a martial maneuver. The range is shorter than the original but spending actions or a round the range is longer.
Encounter powers and martial cantrips were already tried - they were foundational components for 4e. Players largely rejected their inclusion in the game. There are lots of reasons for that rejection, but the key takeaway Wizards learned was that players wanted a sliding scale of class complexity, so that some class/subclass options could appeal to players across a wide range of playstyles.
That is a large part of why we have fairly simple fighters and more complex ones like battle master - Wizards wants to give choices spanning the complexity range, rather than just hand out a bunch of different abilities as they did with 4e. So, no, martial classes should not be getting a bunch of generic new abilities conferred upon all martials - we know that idea is unpopular from history.
Now, could some of these things be done with subclasses? Sure - and a lot of them already are. Monks, Fighters, Rogues, and Barbarians already have plenty of subclasses that add additional, unique abilities. Most Monk subclasses already do this, and then you have things like Battlemaster, Soulknife, Path of the World Tree, etc.
Regarding your aggression points suggestion, that is one of those things someone could build a subclass around (perhaps a barbarian or fighter), but it is a flawed design based on how 5e combat tends to run. Most combats last 3 ish rounds - that’s not that much time to gain any kind of combo point, which leads to balance issues. Balance it around too many rounds being likely, and you end up with a subclass that rarely gets to shine; balance it around too few, and it becomes a problem in longer boss fights. Not insurmountable balance problems - but difficult ones I expect Wizards does not want to try and work out given the vast disparities between combats at different tables.
Your idea about “scrolls” seems like a fairly bad one, however. Reload turns are not fun or really great for game design - they not only mean you are doing nothing, but they also ruin the action economy math for the encounter. Any ability that would require a reload action would need to be powerful enough to offset what you are giving up. So, a reload scroll would need to replace likely 4 different weapon attacks (two rounds with multi attack) in order to be balanced. That itself is a problem - it lets you front load damage, putting the monster a full round behind that player. They might get that round “back” next turn, but that assumes the monster gets to the next turn.
Regarding monsters getting more interesting abilities - that is something D&D should do more of. Even with lair actions and legendary actions, official monsters are rather unexciting and often punch well under what their CR is. Wizards absolutely should be making more monsters with unique combat approaches - no argument from me here.
All told, while some of these ideas could be worked into individual subclasses, they should not be added to the game as a default. Even the suggestion you do have that could be potential subclass elements seem to require some more time in the oven, as their are game design challenges I do not think you have considered given the current environment of 5e.
If there is a future skirmishes wargame style Mordheim the encounter couldn't be only three rounds and then a "reloadable" technique could change the strategy. If there is a future wargame with mass battles, a walord with "White Raven" and "Devoted Spirits" martial maneuvers could mark the difference.
A special attack that would caused a level of exhaustion would be used in the final hit.
What if the martial adept had got only three charges each encounter?
I would like to test the update of other special mechanics like the incarnum soulmelds, vestige pact magic, the truename or the shadow mysteries. These powers could be used like ordinary one spell slot each rest by the others but those special caster could enjoy some extra adventaje, for example one point of essence to enjoy a metamagic effect like energy substitution.
this sounds like a lot of mental gymnastics for what could easily be phrased ss a class or sub class ability, and then you padded it out to invent use cases that weren’t even issues.
one of the issues with how 5e is run is that if you carve out a rule for something, you inherently exclude everyone else from doing it without those same rules to include them.
the problem isn't the crunch. its that codifying it as a base rule locks everyone into it by default. if those rules are scoped wrong, worded wrong, or have too many unintended interactions, it causes systemic issues that plague the life span of the rules. If the DMs are expected to arbitrate house rules, its proven better to make it permission based rather than ban based.
This is why new classes are often a mess, even in supported books Artificer mostly works because its unlike other classes with created magic item being at its core, rather than found Its also touching rules other classes don’t even think about
Gunslinger works because its a crit machine that does ranged without magic or spells Differentiating from Rouge with no focus on stealth or flanking, but instead letting the subclasses define playstyle
Very few non-core classes can fit into the system, because the core classes already awkwardly overlap each other in too many places kind of to the point where most new subclasses are just porting other class archetypes and playstyle in the current set.
Looking at the UA, the struggle for original mechanic and playstyles is hard to carve out without it being compared to an existing class. especially lately, with the obsession of making “like spells, but different” class and subclass experiments.
Regarding monsters getting more interesting abilities - that is something D&D should do more of. Even with lair actions and legendary actions, official monsters are rather unexciting and often punch well under what their CR is. Wizards absolutely should be making more monsters with unique combat approaches - no argument from me here.
I had a conversation recently with someone who denies this, pointing to the Mage of 2024, a CR 6 creature that hits way harder than anything a PC could do at that level. They were incensed at this and demand that all "human" NPCs be built like PCs, and that anything the NPC can do, the PC should be able to do or learn. They went on to say that the "mage" was so strong, they should be the one out adventuring, not the PC. I literally had never heard of this, but I dunno, maybe it's far more common than I realized.
The One D&D playtest cycle conclusively demonstrated that the 5e playerbase, as an aggregate whole, loathes and despises ANY martial character with ANY degree of tactical or strategic complexity, engagement, or depth beyond "I hit it with the Attack action on my turn however many times my level lets me."
All attempts to introduce any form of martial complexity beyond "hit it, then hit it some more" were resoundingly decried, denounced, and deposed. The closest we got was Masteries, and in the wake of the 2024 PHB's release there were a slew of threads viciously complaining about Masteries as being needless complexity and power creep that took away from the game's Beautiful Perfect Simplicity.
Players on this board who want a more engaging option for martial gameplay are generally told to simply go play a different game. Or expected to make every single character they ever run a Battle Master, as that subclass is basically a quarantine ward where all the evil toxic poisonous hateful 'Complexity' is stored to keep it away from the four core classes (fighter, barbarian, monk, rogue) and countless other subclasses (all barbarian subclasses, all rogue subclasses, all but one each of monk and fighter subclasses) all purely and solely devoted to Simple I-Hit-It-A-Bunch Gameplay.
Why this is okay, I have no idea. But it is now codified forever as The Way All Things Must Be, so we are unfortunately stuck with it.
The One D&D playtest cycle conclusively demonstrated that the 5e playerbase, as an aggregate whole, loathes and despises ANY martial character with ANY degree of tactical or strategic complexity, engagement, or depth beyond "I hit it with the Attack action on my turn however many times my level lets me."
All attempts to introduce any form of martial complexity beyond "hit it, then hit it some more" were resoundingly decried, denounced, and deposed. The closest we got was Masteries, and in the wake of the 2024 PHB's release there were a slew of threads viciously complaining about Masteries as being needless complexity and power creep that took away from the game's Beautiful Perfect Simplicity.
Players on this board who want a more engaging option for martial gameplay are generally told to simply go play a different game. Or expected to make every single character they ever run a Battle Master, as that subclass is basically a quarantine ward where all the evil toxic poisonous hateful 'Complexity' is stored to keep it away from the four core classes (fighter, barbarian, monk, rogue) and countless other subclasses (all barbarian subclasses, all rogue subclasses, all but one each of monk and fighter subclasses) all purely and solely devoted to Simple I-Hit-It-A-Bunch Gameplay.
Why this is okay, I have no idea. But it is now codified forever as The Way All Things Must Be, so we are unfortunately stuck with it.
Having a multi decade break, and coming back fresh, none of the posts made sense until this last one by @ Yurei1453 . Now I think I understand what the other 7 posts were saying.
But in the beginning it was Simple I-Hit-It-A-Bunch Gameplay. So when did the rule makers try to get more complex? When did the "The One D&D playtest cycle " run their tests? Was it a 55/45 split or a 99/1 split? The last few decades I have been playing historical wargames, and those that are used to test are never really have an accurate representation of the player base that actually spends the money.
Encounter powers and martial cantrips were already tried - they were foundational components for 4e. Players largely rejected their inclusion in the game.
Debatable; I've never seen an exact breakdown for why people didn't like 4e, but most of the complaints I've heard were about homogenization, and given how many 4e concepts have made it into 5e, there's something to be said for it being more a presentation problem than a mechanical problem. I've always suspected that the real issue with 4e was more the nerf sledgehammer to mages than the addition of martial powers.
Encounter powers and martial cantrips were already tried - they were foundational components for 4e. Players largely rejected their inclusion in the game.
Debatable; I've never seen an exact breakdown for why people didn't like 4e, but most of the complaints I've heard were about homogenization, and given how many 4e concepts have made it into 5e, there's something to be said for it being more a presentation problem than a mechanical problem. I've always suspected that the real issue with 4e was more the nerf sledgehammer to mages than the addition of martial powers.
The game was quite popular, it just wasn't popular enough for management. (They also flooded the market with books, likely cannibalizing their own dollars, which cannot have helped their profit margins.)
It's biggest problem IMO was that it decided to take a specific D&D, and be the best possible version of that that it could. But if you weren't into detailed tactical combat, and a lot of players aren't, it's not the game for you, and I suspect that led to a much lower player retention rate. Which is a legit concern for management.
But 5e development was very twitchy about anything that looked too much like 4e, and complex martials is certainly one of those things.
Regarding monsters getting more interesting abilities - that is something D&D should do more of. Even with lair actions and legendary actions, official monsters are rather unexciting and often punch well under what their CR is. Wizards absolutely should be making more monsters with unique combat approaches - no argument from me here.
I had a conversation recently with someone who denies this, pointing to the Mage of 2024, a CR 6 creature that hits way harder than anything a PC could do at that level. They were incensed at this and demand that all "human" NPCs be built like PCs, and that anything the NPC can do, the PC should be able to do or learn. They went on to say that the "mage" was so strong, they should be the one out adventuring, not the PC. I literally had never heard of this, but I dunno, maybe it's far more common than I realized.
It's ignoring the fact that the mage is supposed to provide credible opposition to four level 6 PCs. It's a contrivance due to the nature of the game, where the players will often fight many fights, but the monsters don't. And yes, it doesn't make sense that an enemy wizard is so little like a player wizard, but fun encounters are way more important to most people.
(And also it's equivalent to a level 9 caster, and probably doesn't hit that much harder than a level 9 wizard who's not trying to conserve their spell slots. But you need to be higher level to be a credible threat to a level 6 party, and they're still going to smear you in a solo fight.)
I had a conversation recently with someone who denies this, pointing to the Mage of 2024, a CR 6 creature that hits way harder than anything a PC could do at that level.
CR and level have never been the same thing, nor are they intended for the same purpose. This is not to say that CR does an especially good job at what it's intended for, but criticizing it for failing at something it was never meant to do is missing the idea.
The One D&D playtest cycle conclusively demonstrated that the 5e playerbase, as an aggregate whole, loathes and despises ANY martial character with ANY degree of tactical or strategic complexity, engagement, or depth beyond "I hit it with the Attack action on my turn however many times my level lets me."
This comment does not reflect the reality of the playtest results, which, combined with the aggressive tone, makes it feel very disingenuous and like the goal is less presenting facts and more attacking the community itself. In reality, complexity was consistently rewarded across most of the playtest with high approval scores.
Monks, one of the most complex of the base martial classes, went from being disliked to receiving high popularity scores - not just because they could do more damage, but because things like Stunning Strike were limited, incentivizing Monks to play more tactically as they did not feel they had to keep their Kai for spamming stunning strike repeatedly.
Rogues were made drastically more complex and tactical, gaining the ability to forgo damage to use various in-combat tricks. This polled highly enough it made it into the final game.
More complex subclasses like Battlemaster and Path of the World Tree Barbarian also made it through the design process and into the core game.
Based on how many complex martial options not only made it through the design process, but made it through far above the threshold, I think it can be confidently stated players love complex martial characters, and your allegations to the contrary are material falsehoods.
The problem many players have is not with martials being complex, but with them being exclusively complex. Crawford and others discussed this was a long-standing point repeated across surveys and across editions - players want to make sure there are simple, straightforward options like Berserker and Champion in the game - which also requires that there be base classes that are fairly simple like Barbarian and Fighter respectively. After all, if you make the base class features more complex, that raises the complexity for the entire class, even simple subclasses. Conversely, the opposite is better design - you can keep the base class features simple for those who want simple, while using subclasses to increase complexity for those who want that specific martial experience combined with complexity. The option that polled highest and was ultimately adopted allows everyone to win.
Frankly, this feels like such an obvious compromise that gives everyone what they want, that the vitriol and obvious mischaracterizations in your post at those who voted for this option feels a lot like gatekeeping. I have a player in my group who I love playing with; who loves playing D&D; who loves combat… but they do not enjoy thinking during combat. They want to do exactly the thing you derisively mock them for in your post - play a character that just hits things over and over again.
What you want out of the game seems to be closing and locking the door on a lot of players’ ability to play what they want. What Wizards gave us keeps a lot of different doors open, so players can find the door that works for them and their power fantasy. I am not sure how anyone could be angry about the second option being the option Wizards went with - it is the only option where everybody wins.
The One D&D playtest cycle conclusively demonstrated that the 5e playerbase, as an aggregate whole, loathes and despises ANY martial character with ANY degree of tactical or strategic complexity, engagement, or depth beyond "I hit it with the Attack action on my turn however many times my level lets me."
This comment does not reflect the reality of the playtest results, which, combined with the aggressive tone, makes it feel very disingenuous and like the goal is less presenting facts and more attacking the community itself. In reality, complexity was consistently rewarded across most of the playtest with high approval scores.
Monks, one of the most complex of the base martial classes, went from being disliked to receiving high popularity scores - not just because they could do more damage, but because things like Stunning Strike were limited, incentivizing Monks to play more tactically as they did not feel they had to keep their Kai for spamming stunning strike repeatedly.
Rogues were made drastically more complex and tactical, gaining the ability to forgo damage to use various in-combat tricks. This polled highly enough it made it into the final game.
More complex subclasses like Battlemaster and Path of the World Tree Barbarian also made it through the design process and into the core game.
Based on how many complex martial options not only made it through the design process, but made it through far above the threshold, I think it can be confidently stated players love complex martial characters, and your allegations to the contrary are material falsehoods.
The problem many players have is not with martials being complex, but with them being exclusively complex. Crawford and others discussed this was a long-standing point repeated across surveys and across editions - players want to make sure there are simple, straightforward options like Berserker and Champion in the game - which also requires that there be base classes that are fairly simple like Barbarian and Fighter respectively. After all, if you make the base class features more complex, that raises the complexity for the entire class, even simple subclasses. Conversely, the opposite is better design - you can keep the base class features simple for those who want simple, while using subclasses to increase complexity for those who want that specific martial experience combined with complexity. The option that polled highest and was ultimately adopted allows everyone to win.
Frankly, this feels like such an obvious compromise that gives everyone what they want, that the vitriol and obvious mischaracterizations in your post at those who voted for this option feels a lot like gatekeeping. I have a player in my group who I love playing with; who loves playing D&D; who loves combat… but they do not enjoy thinking during combat. They want to do exactly the thing you derisively mock them for in your post - play a character that just hits things over and over again.
What you want out of the game seems to be closing and locking the door on a lot of players’ ability to play what they want. What Wizards gave us keeps a lot of different doors open, so players can find the door that works for them and their power fantasy. I am not sure how anyone could be angry about the second option being the option Wizards went with - it is the only option where everybody wins.
Loud people just want those "straightforward" options merged with their base classes wholesale so they can optimize harder like in 3.5. Optimization itself is valid, but there is a line between optimization and trying to munchkin game design for the sake of having more.
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DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Rogues were made drastically more complex and tactical, gaining the ability to forgo damage to use various in-combat tricks. This polled highly enough it made it into the final game.
Just curious what are the various in-combat tricks. I only know about the thieving part and the sneak damage.
Rogues were made drastically more complex and tactical, gaining the ability to forgo damage to use various in-combat tricks. This polled highly enough it made it into the final game.
Just curious what are the various in-combat tricks. I only know about the thieving part and the sneak damage.
See Cunning Strike, Improved Cunning Strike, and Devious Strikes. Some subclasses give another option or two to use with this as well, but all Rogues gain this as a base.
An over-simplified base class cannot be made meaningfully more engaging with the addition of a subclass. Over the level range most D&D is allowed to play at, most subclasses might - MIGHT - add two abilities to the base class. These abilities are also almost always very simplistic. Even the oh-so-vaunted Battlemaster, hailed and reviled in equal measure for being Da Bess At Tactics, only ever gets four Do A Tactical Thing actions per day. Once its Superiority is expended, it's no more able to engage the brain than a regular fighter.
The answer to "I hate thinking, learning rules, and engaging with the game my friends are playing; I just want to roll dice and hit stuff" is not to make almost half the game's core classes so simplistic they fall off the bottom of the pool and are actively painful to play for many players. The answer is a Foundation class. Take the old "Warrior" sidekick class and fill it out as a full playable player-centric option. No subclasses, no feats, no choice points whatsoever - the whole thing is both on rails and made to be as simple as the rules will allow. No need to manage complicated finicky crap like Second Wind or Action Surge, no need to track Rage. Create a Warrior whose abilities are all passive always-on bonuses to its attacks, saves, and AC, with built-in Tough and Resilient as it levels. Just a big brick of damage, defense, and HP halfway between the Fighter and the Barbarian that removes ALL thinking and ALL choice so the Stuff Hitters can have exactly what they want - a powerful and numerically impressive Hitter of Things that doesn't make them track or consider or think about *anything*.
Meanwhile those of us who'd like martial combat to not be a total pointless slog might actually be able to get somewhere.
I've been drifting away from D&D in general for a while now, in part because of this attitude that anyone who wants more from their game than "I hit it again" is just the literal worst person. If you aren't all in on stripping ALL of the engagement, ALL of the nuance, and ALL of the depth out of the "game" part of this Role Playing Game, then you don't deserve to play.
If that's the only thing any of you want, you can have it. This hobby used to be important to me,but I guess I can go do something else with my time and not have to justify to throngs of Internet randos why a game that consistently insults my intelligence doesn't feel good to play anymore.
You know you can still play other editions, right? 5e isn't a very crunchy system, and it sounds like that's what you want, but that would drive away a large portion of the current player base.
Now, if we could get a 5e Advanced setup, that could be cool.
A lot of alleged "I want to do more than attack" amounts to "I want to attack, dodge & defend in very specific ways w/o being a caster because OtherStuffExists".
People want minimum-to-no costs for that which is perfectly doable already. It transcends demanding explicit support for optimization, minmaxing & powergaming(which are all perfectly valid), going all the way into demanding their crunchmunchkining be catered to...through DNDBeyond,...which isn't a direct pipeline to WotC game devs.
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DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
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Do you remember the martial maneuvers from "Tome of Battle: Book of the nine Swords"? Yes, I understand the update of the martial classes, crusader, warblade and swordsage aren't easy but this doesn't mean to be totally impossible. On the other hand one of the fun parts of D&D is playtesting a homemade class.
I guess WotC doesn't want to publish a sourcebook about new classes with special game mechanics because they worry this crunch would be only interesting for a smaller group of players. And could this be fixed? Here I have got some suggestion to allow this special crunch could be interesting for the rest of players.
A measure could be to create one-encounter-duration spells and magic items. For example a paladin reads a "martial script" to learn "crusader's strike" (when your attack hits you or your ally within 10 feet heals 1d6 hit points +1 each initiator level until max 5). Then the martial maneuver is activated in the encounter against the dungeon boss. Until the end of the encounter the paladin can uses this manuever all the times she wanted... but only if she uses some special action to reload.
The schools of devoted spirit and white raven could be useful for a potential future warlord class. (Maybe this is using some special magic banner). The keys are easy to be understood and not slowing down the fight with unnecessary complications
Crusader could be a paladin subclasss and warblade a fighter subclass. The swordsage could be replaced by the cultivator, a new class inspirated into xianxia fiction.
Other option could be using a pool of power points but this would be totally reloaded each new encounter, or the PC would need to earn "agro power points" with each sucessful attack. In the end of the fight all the agro points would disappear and in the next encounter the PC should start from zero to reload the agro power points.
If the design was right for a right power balance but also a fun and fast gamepley this could be playtested to update the incarnum soulmelds in the future.
The idea is the updated martial maneuvers should work like melee-attack spells. The main difference would be they aren't at-will but almost, simplely to spend an action to reload. It would be like in a videogame where you hold down the button to then launch a more powerful attack when you release it.
The martial maneuvers should be interesting for DMs because a boss with maneuvers could need more strategy to be defeated. For example there is an encounter with a hobgobling squad whose mini-boss would be a captain with "crusader's strike" and his two bodyguards carring tower-shields. After striking the captain would hide behind the bodyguards' tower-shields to reload. Other idea is a squad whose captain be accompanied by a musician and (magic) standard bearer. The musician would be like a magic reloader and the magic banner would work like a power battery.
Now let's imagine Sturm III the knight finds the martial script with the martial maneuver "Shocking grasp" (a cartrip from PH). The martial script was crafted for no-spellcasters. The "martial script" wouldn't be spent after the first attack but after the end of the encounter. No spent but "unloaded". Then in the next turn Sturm can spend an action to reload the maneuver, and this can be used and reloaded more times until the end of the encounter.
A nerferd version of Valkyrias could be summoned like monster allies. Reth Dekala could be also a summoned enemy. The half-blood offspring of the naityan rakshasa could be used to playtest. (Monsters from 3.5 Tome of Battle).
How to find the right balance of power?
Let's imagine a player creates a halfling monk, and to hit taller enemies she uses a nerferd version of "jump" spell like at-will cartrip. It is weaker but this can be used at all. One year later the player has got an idea, "jump" like a martial maneuver. It is like like "lesser jump" cartrip but if the PC "spends" actions or a round to "reload" then the cartrip is stronger or better. The power balance shouldn't be broken and the combat shouldn't be lower because this.
Or a player chooses a minotaur PC and the horn traits are uselles. Then she has got an idea, a nerferd version of the spell "Blood Wind" from "Savage Species". After some playtesting it has got an idea. "Lesser Blood Wind" is a martial maneuver. The range is shorter than the original but spending actions or a round the range is longer.
Encounter powers and martial cantrips were already tried - they were foundational components for 4e. Players largely rejected their inclusion in the game. There are lots of reasons for that rejection, but the key takeaway Wizards learned was that players wanted a sliding scale of class complexity, so that some class/subclass options could appeal to players across a wide range of playstyles.
That is a large part of why we have fairly simple fighters and more complex ones like battle master - Wizards wants to give choices spanning the complexity range, rather than just hand out a bunch of different abilities as they did with 4e. So, no, martial classes should not be getting a bunch of generic new abilities conferred upon all martials - we know that idea is unpopular from history.
Now, could some of these things be done with subclasses? Sure - and a lot of them already are. Monks, Fighters, Rogues, and Barbarians already have plenty of subclasses that add additional, unique abilities. Most Monk subclasses already do this, and then you have things like Battlemaster, Soulknife, Path of the World Tree, etc.
Regarding your aggression points suggestion, that is one of those things someone could build a subclass around (perhaps a barbarian or fighter), but it is a flawed design based on how 5e combat tends to run. Most combats last 3 ish rounds - that’s not that much time to gain any kind of combo point, which leads to balance issues. Balance it around too many rounds being likely, and you end up with a subclass that rarely gets to shine; balance it around too few, and it becomes a problem in longer boss fights. Not insurmountable balance problems - but difficult ones I expect Wizards does not want to try and work out given the vast disparities between combats at different tables.
Your idea about “scrolls” seems like a fairly bad one, however. Reload turns are not fun or really great for game design - they not only mean you are doing nothing, but they also ruin the action economy math for the encounter. Any ability that would require a reload action would need to be powerful enough to offset what you are giving up. So, a reload scroll would need to replace likely 4 different weapon attacks (two rounds with multi attack) in order to be balanced. That itself is a problem - it lets you front load damage, putting the monster a full round behind that player. They might get that round “back” next turn, but that assumes the monster gets to the next turn.
Regarding monsters getting more interesting abilities - that is something D&D should do more of. Even with lair actions and legendary actions, official monsters are rather unexciting and often punch well under what their CR is. Wizards absolutely should be making more monsters with unique combat approaches - no argument from me here.
All told, while some of these ideas could be worked into individual subclasses, they should not be added to the game as a default. Even the suggestion you do have that could be potential subclass elements seem to require some more time in the oven, as their are game design challenges I do not think you have considered given the current environment of 5e.
A subclass could be a softer way to playtest.
If there is a future skirmishes wargame style Mordheim the encounter couldn't be only three rounds and then a "reloadable" technique could change the strategy. If there is a future wargame with mass battles, a walord with "White Raven" and "Devoted Spirits" martial maneuvers could mark the difference.
A special attack that would caused a level of exhaustion would be used in the final hit.
What if the martial adept had got only three charges each encounter?
I would like to test the update of other special mechanics like the incarnum soulmelds, vestige pact magic, the truename or the shadow mysteries. These powers could be used like ordinary one spell slot each rest by the others but those special caster could enjoy some extra adventaje, for example one point of essence to enjoy a metamagic effect like energy substitution.
this sounds like a lot of mental gymnastics for what could easily be phrased ss a class or sub class ability, and then you padded it out to invent use cases that weren’t even issues.
one of the issues with how 5e is run is that if you carve out a rule for something, you inherently exclude everyone else from doing it without those same rules to include them.
the problem isn't the crunch. its that codifying it as a base rule locks everyone into it by default. if those rules are scoped wrong, worded wrong, or have too many unintended interactions, it causes systemic issues that plague the life span of the rules. If the DMs are expected to arbitrate house rules, its proven better to make it permission based rather than ban based.
This is why new classes are often a mess, even in supported books Artificer mostly works because its unlike other classes with created magic item being at its core, rather than found Its also touching rules other classes don’t even think about
Gunslinger works because its a crit machine that does ranged without magic or spells Differentiating from Rouge with no focus on stealth or flanking, but instead letting the subclasses define playstyle
Very few non-core classes can fit into the system, because the core classes already awkwardly overlap each other in too many places kind of to the point where most new subclasses are just porting other class archetypes and playstyle in the current set.
Looking at the UA, the struggle for original mechanic and playstyles is hard to carve out without it being compared to an existing class. especially lately, with the obsession of making “like spells, but different” class and subclass experiments.
I had a conversation recently with someone who denies this, pointing to the Mage of 2024, a CR 6 creature that hits way harder than anything a PC could do at that level. They were incensed at this and demand that all "human" NPCs be built like PCs, and that anything the NPC can do, the PC should be able to do or learn. They went on to say that the "mage" was so strong, they should be the one out adventuring, not the PC. I literally had never heard of this, but I dunno, maybe it's far more common than I realized.
The One D&D playtest cycle conclusively demonstrated that the 5e playerbase, as an aggregate whole, loathes and despises ANY martial character with ANY degree of tactical or strategic complexity, engagement, or depth beyond "I hit it with the Attack action on my turn however many times my level lets me."
All attempts to introduce any form of martial complexity beyond "hit it, then hit it some more" were resoundingly decried, denounced, and deposed. The closest we got was Masteries, and in the wake of the 2024 PHB's release there were a slew of threads viciously complaining about Masteries as being needless complexity and power creep that took away from the game's Beautiful Perfect Simplicity.
Players on this board who want a more engaging option for martial gameplay are generally told to simply go play a different game. Or expected to make every single character they ever run a Battle Master, as that subclass is basically a quarantine ward where all the evil toxic poisonous hateful 'Complexity' is stored to keep it away from the four core classes (fighter, barbarian, monk, rogue) and countless other subclasses (all barbarian subclasses, all rogue subclasses, all but one each of monk and fighter subclasses) all purely and solely devoted to Simple I-Hit-It-A-Bunch Gameplay.
Why this is okay, I have no idea. But it is now codified forever as The Way All Things Must Be, so we are unfortunately stuck with it.
Please do not contact or message me.
Having a multi decade break, and coming back fresh, none of the posts made sense until this last one by @ Yurei1453 . Now I think I understand what the other 7 posts were saying.
But in the beginning it was Simple I-Hit-It-A-Bunch Gameplay. So when did the rule makers try to get more complex? When did the "The One D&D playtest cycle " run their tests? Was it a 55/45 split or a 99/1 split? The last few decades I have been playing historical wargames, and those that are used to test are never really have an accurate representation of the player base that actually spends the money.
Debatable; I've never seen an exact breakdown for why people didn't like 4e, but most of the complaints I've heard were about homogenization, and given how many 4e concepts have made it into 5e, there's something to be said for it being more a presentation problem than a mechanical problem. I've always suspected that the real issue with 4e was more the nerf sledgehammer to mages than the addition of martial powers.
The game was quite popular, it just wasn't popular enough for management. (They also flooded the market with books, likely cannibalizing their own dollars, which cannot have helped their profit margins.)
It's biggest problem IMO was that it decided to take a specific D&D, and be the best possible version of that that it could. But if you weren't into detailed tactical combat, and a lot of players aren't, it's not the game for you, and I suspect that led to a much lower player retention rate. Which is a legit concern for management.
But 5e development was very twitchy about anything that looked too much like 4e, and complex martials is certainly one of those things.
It's ignoring the fact that the mage is supposed to provide credible opposition to four level 6 PCs. It's a contrivance due to the nature of the game, where the players will often fight many fights, but the monsters don't. And yes, it doesn't make sense that an enemy wizard is so little like a player wizard, but fun encounters are way more important to most people.
(And also it's equivalent to a level 9 caster, and probably doesn't hit that much harder than a level 9 wizard who's not trying to conserve their spell slots. But you need to be higher level to be a credible threat to a level 6 party, and they're still going to smear you in a solo fight.)
There are already encounter powers in 5E. They just don't call them that, they're labeled as recharging on a short rest.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
CR and level have never been the same thing, nor are they intended for the same purpose. This is not to say that CR does an especially good job at what it's intended for, but criticizing it for failing at something it was never meant to do is missing the idea.
Correct. A CR 6 is approximately equivalent to a PC level 9 according to the guidance in Xanathar's.
This comment does not reflect the reality of the playtest results, which, combined with the aggressive tone, makes it feel very disingenuous and like the goal is less presenting facts and more attacking the community itself. In reality, complexity was consistently rewarded across most of the playtest with high approval scores.
Monks, one of the most complex of the base martial classes, went from being disliked to receiving high popularity scores - not just because they could do more damage, but because things like Stunning Strike were limited, incentivizing Monks to play more tactically as they did not feel they had to keep their Kai for spamming stunning strike repeatedly.
Rogues were made drastically more complex and tactical, gaining the ability to forgo damage to use various in-combat tricks. This polled highly enough it made it into the final game.
More complex subclasses like Battlemaster and Path of the World Tree Barbarian also made it through the design process and into the core game.
Based on how many complex martial options not only made it through the design process, but made it through far above the threshold, I think it can be confidently stated players love complex martial characters, and your allegations to the contrary are material falsehoods.
The problem many players have is not with martials being complex, but with them being exclusively complex. Crawford and others discussed this was a long-standing point repeated across surveys and across editions - players want to make sure there are simple, straightforward options like Berserker and Champion in the game - which also requires that there be base classes that are fairly simple like Barbarian and Fighter respectively. After all, if you make the base class features more complex, that raises the complexity for the entire class, even simple subclasses. Conversely, the opposite is better design - you can keep the base class features simple for those who want simple, while using subclasses to increase complexity for those who want that specific martial experience combined with complexity. The option that polled highest and was ultimately adopted allows everyone to win.
Frankly, this feels like such an obvious compromise that gives everyone what they want, that the vitriol and obvious mischaracterizations in your post at those who voted for this option feels a lot like gatekeeping. I have a player in my group who I love playing with; who loves playing D&D; who loves combat… but they do not enjoy thinking during combat. They want to do exactly the thing you derisively mock them for in your post - play a character that just hits things over and over again.
What you want out of the game seems to be closing and locking the door on a lot of players’ ability to play what they want. What Wizards gave us keeps a lot of different doors open, so players can find the door that works for them and their power fantasy. I am not sure how anyone could be angry about the second option being the option Wizards went with - it is the only option where everybody wins.
Loud people just want those "straightforward" options merged with their base classes wholesale so they can optimize harder like in 3.5. Optimization itself is valid, but there is a line between optimization and trying to munchkin game design for the sake of having more.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Just curious what are the various in-combat tricks. I only know about the thieving part and the sneak damage.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/br-2024/character-classes#Rogue
See Cunning Strike, Improved Cunning Strike, and Devious Strikes. Some subclasses give another option or two to use with this as well, but all Rogues gain this as a base.
An over-simplified base class cannot be made meaningfully more engaging with the addition of a subclass. Over the level range most D&D is allowed to play at, most subclasses might - MIGHT - add two abilities to the base class. These abilities are also almost always very simplistic. Even the oh-so-vaunted Battlemaster, hailed and reviled in equal measure for being Da Bess At Tactics, only ever gets four Do A Tactical Thing actions per day. Once its Superiority is expended, it's no more able to engage the brain than a regular fighter.
The answer to "I hate thinking, learning rules, and engaging with the game my friends are playing; I just want to roll dice and hit stuff" is not to make almost half the game's core classes so simplistic they fall off the bottom of the pool and are actively painful to play for many players. The answer is a Foundation class. Take the old "Warrior" sidekick class and fill it out as a full playable player-centric option. No subclasses, no feats, no choice points whatsoever - the whole thing is both on rails and made to be as simple as the rules will allow. No need to manage complicated finicky crap like Second Wind or Action Surge, no need to track Rage. Create a Warrior whose abilities are all passive always-on bonuses to its attacks, saves, and AC, with built-in Tough and Resilient as it levels. Just a big brick of damage, defense, and HP halfway between the Fighter and the Barbarian that removes ALL thinking and ALL choice so the Stuff Hitters can have exactly what they want - a powerful and numerically impressive Hitter of Things that doesn't make them track or consider or think about *anything*.
Meanwhile those of us who'd like martial combat to not be a total pointless slog might actually be able to get somewhere.
I've been drifting away from D&D in general for a while now, in part because of this attitude that anyone who wants more from their game than "I hit it again" is just the literal worst person. If you aren't all in on stripping ALL of the engagement, ALL of the nuance, and ALL of the depth out of the "game" part of this Role Playing Game, then you don't deserve to play.
If that's the only thing any of you want, you can have it. This hobby used to be important to me,but I guess I can go do something else with my time and not have to justify to throngs of Internet randos why a game that consistently insults my intelligence doesn't feel good to play anymore.
Please do not contact or message me.
You know you can still play other editions, right? 5e isn't a very crunchy system, and it sounds like that's what you want, but that would drive away a large portion of the current player base.
Now, if we could get a 5e Advanced setup, that could be cool.
A lot of alleged "I want to do more than attack" amounts to "I want to attack, dodge & defend in very specific ways w/o being a caster because OtherStuffExists".
People want minimum-to-no costs for that which is perfectly doable already. It transcends demanding explicit support for optimization, minmaxing & powergaming(which are all perfectly valid), going all the way into demanding their crunchmunchkining be catered to...through DNDBeyond,...which isn't a direct pipeline to WotC game devs.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.