Hello! This is a Fighter subclass I was working on quite some time ago, and I wanted to revisit it. It's still barebones on presentation, but I want to make sure there are no glaring issues with the abilities before I flesh it out. I posted the previous version for feedback a while ago and got some good pointers, but I've recently tweaked some things, so any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!
Strides of Mist
Cohesion: You have 3 cohesion at level 3. You gain one additional cohesion at level 7 and level 15. Cohesion is expended when you make use of one of your strides, which are described below. You regain all of your expended cohesion when you finish a short or long rest.
Strides
You know 3 strides at level 3, each of which expends a single cohesion to use. You gain an additional stride at levels 7, 10, and 18.
Beacon Stride
You may spend 1 Cohesion to teleport to the location of a projectile that you fired this turn and is within 120 feet or less of you. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Cloud Stride
Spend 1 Cohesion and teleport a number of adjacent, willing creatures equal to your Constitution modifier, up to 15 ft. They must all still be adjacent after teleporting. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Coalescent Stride
When you kill an enemy, you may spend 1 Cohesion and use a Bonus Action to gain 3d4 + Con temporary hitpoints.
Counter Stride
If an enemy creature misses you with an attack while you are dodging, you may spend 1 Cohesion and, as a Reaction, Immediately make a free attack against it. Your next successful attack - including this one - before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Evasive Stride
When forced to make a Dexterity saving throw, you may spend 1 Cohesion to take ½ damage on a failed save, or no damage on a successful save. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 force damage.
Formless Stride
Spend 1 Cohesion and Teleport 30 feet as a bonus action. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 force damage.
Pursuit Stride
When an enemy creature leaves your threatened zone, you may spend 1 Cohesion and use a Reaction to make an attack of opportunity with Advantage, even if the target disengaged. If the attack hits, and the creature ends its turn within 30 feet of you, you may immediately teleport to a space adjacent to it. Your next successful attack - including this one - before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Rescue Stride
When a friendly creature that you can see within 30 ft. is hit with an attack, you may Spend 1 Cohesion and use a Reaction to teleport to a space adjacent to them. You become the target of the attack, and the attack roll must still overcome your AC to deal damage. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Revenge Stride
Immediately after an enemy creature has dealt damage to you, you may spend 1 Cohesion and use a Reaction to teleport up to 15 ft. towards them and make a single attack against that creature. Your next successful attack - including this one - before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Trick Stride
When you hit an opponent with a ranged attack within 60 feet, you may spend 1 Cohesion and swap places with them. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Dissociation
When you take this subclass at level 3, you may suffer 1d10 force damage to activate a stride as though you had spent cohesion. You may do this once per day. At level 18, you may do this a second time per day, suffering 2d10 force damage the second time.
Reflexive Blink
Starting at 7th level, you may enter a state of constant micro-teleportation. For the next minute, you may take the Dodge Action as a Bonus Action. You may activate this ability a number of times equal to your constitution modifier (minimum of once). You regain all uses on a short or long rest.
Sudden Impact
Starting at 10th level, when you take the Attack Action, you may first teleport up to 15 feet.
Traveler in the Mists
Starting at 15th level, your strides are available whenever battle starts. If you roll initiative and have no cohesion remaining, you regain one use of it.
Flash Guardian
At 18th level, when you take the Dodge action, it applies to a number of additional allies equal to your Constitution modifier (Minimum of 1) within 15 ft. of you.
It's interesting, kind of a new take on Horizon WalkerxBattlemaster. Here's some initial thoughts:
Strides:
Beacon Stride - This one seems kind of weird, it seems to be meant for out-of-combat use but then has the attack damage bonus which is confusing
Evasive Stride - This one is super OP! It should be restricted to higher levels. It's also weird to have to attack damage bonus which makes it confusing how you're supposed to use it. Suring the Dex save is happening outside of your turn but the damage bonus only applies if you make an attack before the start of your turn...
Counter Stride - This one feels like it should just be part of Reflexive Blink.
Revenge - why is this limited to towards them? What if you're a ranged-character and want to teleport away? If you're already within 5ft of the enemy can you even use this? since you can't move any closer to them?
The Rest
Dissociation - This seems kind of redundant, if you want them to have more uses just give them more uses. This just seems like extra bookkeeping for little gain.
Reflexive Blink - How is this activated? Is this an Action? BA? Also this is an incredibly powerful ability, I'd suggest moving it up to a higher level.
Sudden Impact - Mechanically this is fine I just find the name doesn't really fit with the mechanics.
Flash Guardian - I don't understand how this is supposed to work? How does you dodging cause your allies to be dodging? Why is it limited by your Constitution modifier? It's a fine mechanic but I'm just not able to visualize what my character would actually be doing to cause this effect to happen.
Beacon: My intention here was that the fighter could use one of their attacks to just shoot an arrow into terrain and then teleport a long distance. Then, they could use another attack with the damage buff. I can see how the buff would go unused a lot, though. Originally, you got the damage buff just for using a point of Cohesion on a Stride, but when I added the Coalescent Stride, I knew that 3d4 temp hp on top of 3d4 extra damage would be too much, so I just manually added the buff to all of the other abilities. Maybe there's a better way to do it, though.
Evasive Stride: My intention here was just to give a limited version of the Rogue's Evasive ability, but I can see why that in addition to a buff might be too much. And you're right, the buff is in a weird spot. Maybe I can just remove it on this one and even things out?
Counter Stride: I can see that. I'll try and merge them. I wonder if the free attack might be too much in that case, though?
Revenge: I guess I was imagining this as a closer against ranged enemies, but it does make more sense to free it up.
Dissociation: This was mostly an effort to give some flexibility at a cost, as well as fit the narrative of pushing past your physical limit. Maybe it would be cleaner if I worded it "Take 1d10 Force Damage and regain a point of Cohesion." It's not as in-line with the narrative, but you're not weirdly circumnavigating the resource mechanically.
Reflexive Blink: I figured it would be like Action Surge, in that it doesn't use an action itself, but then alters your action economy in some way. I imagined the Dodge mechanic as a primary point of survivability with this subclass, so I hoped to make it available early on. Maybe there's a way I can tweak it to make it more appropriate, or have it scale. Maybe it could be a number of rounds equal to Con + Proficiency? So, a max of 7 rounds (probably more like 5) at the start, and more down the road?
Sudden Impact: That's fair. The name is actually a holdover from a different version. Thanks for pointing it out.
Flash Guardian: Yeah, I haven't filled out any lore elements yet, so that's my bad. The idea there is that the character is teleporting around and defending his allies (kind of like the Protection Fighting Style). The Constitution modifier is a running theme about holding yourself in "cohesion," which is also why Dissociation inflicts damage. So, in this case, your Con is just dictating how much you can push your teleporting while you're defending your friends.
Thanks again for the feedback. Much appreciated :-)
Dissociation: This was mostly an effort to give some flexibility at a cost, as well as fit the narrative of pushing past your physical limit. Maybe it would be cleaner if I worded it "Take 1d10 Force Damage and regain a point of Cohesion." It's not as in-line with the narrative, but you're not weirdly circumnavigating the resource mechanically.
It's generally a bad idea to make multiple limited resources a player has be interchangeable - in this case exchanging HP for cohesion. When you balance a feature to be limited by a limited resource, then it should be limited exclusively by that resource otherwise it becomes hard to balance as the number of uses is unclear - other features that replenish the other limited resource (in this case healing abilities for HP) now represent ways to replenish a different resource as well. In this case e.g. 1 cast of Goodberry by anyone in the party = 1-2 extra uses of cohesion.
Now I know you limited the Dissociation feature to limit this, but this then becomes complicated and additional bookkeeping with very little impact on the game. The self-damage IME would not make it feel like a last-desperate attempt at something, but rather prevent it being used in a desperate situation as (particularly at level 3) the associated damage might KO you before you're able to complete the stride if used in a desperate situation as you'd already be on low HP or it wouldn't feel like a desperate situation.
Reflexive Blink: I figured it would be like Action Surge, in that it doesn't use an action itself, but then alters your action economy in some way. I imagined the Dodge mechanic as a primary point of survivability with this subclass, so I hoped to make it available early on. Maybe there's a way I can tweak it to make it more appropriate, or have it scale. Maybe it could be a number of rounds equal to Con + Proficiency? So, a max of 7 rounds (probably more like 5) at the start, and more down the road?
Dodge is more powerful than the +5 AC from Shield. Fighters already get good survivability from AC, they do not need a boost there. The weaknesses in Fighter defenses is saving throws and unavoidable damage. Note that most Fighter subclasses get 0 defensive boosts, yours currently has 3 powerful ones (Reflexive Blink is much more powerful than the Blur spell which requires and Action to activate and your Concentration to maintain, and a 2nd level slot).
That's an interesting point regarding Dissociation that I hadn't considered. And it does defeat the point of being last-ditch if it can kill you. Do you think it should be replaced with something, or just dropped?
Hmm, that's interesting. That does make sense. Would shifting the Dodge focus to Temp Hp or reducing damage align a little better with the other subclasses? The evasive theme is obviously core to the subclass, and both seem like they could conceptually fullfill that roll, too, without being as overwhelming as Dodge seems to be.
One other way to offer extra uses via Dissociation is to require passing a con save for it to work, and the con save gets progressively higher.
You might be able to tie Reflexive Blink directly to Strides - where you get X buff until the start/end of your next turn when you use a Stride. Thus it is limited by uses of Cohesion. But yeah as is it is too strong. Dodging as a bonus action would be worth a Cohesion point all by itself, so this is like handing out 10 more points per use.
If you really like incorporating Dodge, I'd put a qualifier that you couldn't do it in medium or heavy armor.
Also, Beacon and Cloud need clarification on the action cost. If Beacon isn't meant to be a bonus action, I'd make it a part of the same attack that fired the projectile.
If you want some kind of "last ditch" type ability then maybe a different take on the "resist 0 hp" abilities like:
Escape When you are reduced to 0 hp, you can instead teleport to within 5ft of a friendly creature and remain at 1 hp instead. Once you have used this ability you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest.
But I think removing it would just be fine. You might want to instead replace it with an out-of-combat utility ability like ability to cast Fog Cloud X-time per day, or proficiency in Arcana, or something.
So, I have some changes in mind based on your feedback (much appreciated to both of you), and some other thoughts I'd had.
"Your Next Successful Attack" - I'm wondering if this is unnecessary. Lots of abilities only work on the next attack, whether they hit, or not. I'm thinking of changing the language to "This Attack," if the Stride involves making an attack as part of the ability, or "Your Next Attack," if it makes sense to gain a damage buff, but doesn't have a built-in attack. In the latter case, the buff would fade at the end of the character's turn (or the next turn, if it's an off-turn ability).
Reflexive Blink - I'm considering renaming this "Afterimage Stride" and making it a Stride option that reads "Spend 1 Cohesion. You may take the Dodge Action as a Bonus Action this turn." That way, it's still an option, but it is much more limited.
Dissociation - I'll probably just drop this for simplicity's sake. There's probably enough level 3 value as is.
Beacon Stride - In an effort to make this more interesting in and out of combat, I'm thinking of changing it to read, "Spend 1 Cohesion. Your next ranged weapon attack has its minimum range increased by 3d4x10 ft. If the projectile lands within 120 ft. of you, you may use a Bonus Action to teleport to an adjacent space." I like the idea of integrating the "3d4" in other ways, like Superiority dice do. So far, there's 3d4+Con temp hp, 3d4x10 minimum range increase, 3d4 Force damage, and 3d4+Con reduced damage. I'm hoping it makes it a little more natural, rather than just tacking 3d4 Force damage on the end of every Stride. Though, now that I think about it, rolling the range might make the ability somewhat unreliable. I feel like having it be a fixed 120 ft. might be too much, though. And it would also mean that you can only teleport to your projectile in instances where the range increase didn't help much.
Sudden Impact - Rename this to Flash Strike
Evasive Stride - Drop the damage buff from this.
Reflexive Blink - The new version of the level 7 ability. It reads "When you are hit with an attack, you may use your Reaction to reduce the inflicted damage by 3d4+Proficiency Modifier. Additionally, you may choose to teleport up to 5 ft. You may do this a number of times equal to your Constitution Modifier. You regain all uses on a short or long rest." I'm not sure if the Proficiency Bonus should determine uses, or if it should be the Con modifier. I'm also a fan of the Short Rest recovery that the Fighter gets, but I know they changed the Goliath's racial ability to recover on a long rest, so maybe I should follow that example?
Rescue Stride - I feel like this is one where I might be able to apply the 3d4 in a different way. Maybe, "If the attack hits, the attacking creature must make a Dexterity (maybe Con?) Saving Throw or take 3d4 Force damage." Maybe there's a better way to apply it, though?
"Your Next Successful Attack" - I'm wondering if this is unnecessary. Lots of abilities only work on the next attack, whether they hit, or not. I'm thinking of changing the language to "This Attack," if the Stride involves making an attack as part of the ability, or "Your Next Attack," if it makes sense to gain a damage buff, but doesn't have a built-in attack. In the latter case, the buff would fade at the end of the character's turn (or the next turn, if it's an off-turn ability).
Reflexive Blink - I'm considering renaming this "Afterimage Stride" and making it a Stride option that reads "Spend 1 Cohesion. You may take the Dodge Action as a Bonus Action this turn." That way, it's still an option, but it is much more limited.
Dissociation - I'll probably just drop this for simplicity's sake. There's probably enough level 3 value as is.
Beacon Stride - In an effort to make this more interesting in and out of combat, I'm thinking of changing it to read, "Spend 1 Cohesion. Your next ranged weapon attack has its minimum range increased by 3d4x10 ft. If the projectile lands within 120 ft. of you, you may use a Bonus Action to teleport to an adjacent space." I like the idea of integrating the "3d4" in other ways, like Superiority dice do. So far, there's 3d4 temp hp, 3d4x10 minimum range increase, 3d4 Force damage, and 3d4+Con reduced damage. I'm hoping it makes it a little more natural, rather than just tacking 3d4 Force damage on the end of every Stride.
Sudden Impact - Rename this to Flash Strike
Love all of these!
You still might want to consider adding a non-combat ability, as one of the complaints about fighters is they have nothing to do outside of combat. Maybe something related to stealth or infiltration? That would sync well with the long-range teleport ability.
Hello! This is a Fighter subclass I was working on quite some time ago, and I wanted to revisit it. It's still barebones on presentation, but I want to make sure there are no glaring issues with the abilities before I flesh it out. I posted the previous version for feedback a while ago and got some good pointers, but I've recently tweaked some things, so any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!
Strides of Mist
Cohesion: You have 3 cohesion at level 3. You gain one additional cohesion at level 7 and level 15. Cohesion is expended when you make use of one of your strides, which are described below. You regain all of your expended cohesion when you finish a short or long rest.
Strides
You know 3 strides at level 3, each of which expends a single cohesion to use. You gain an additional stride at levels 7, 10, and 18.
Beacon Stride
You may spend 1 Cohesion to teleport to the location of a projectile that you fired this turn and is within 120 feet or less of you. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Cloud Stride
Spend 1 Cohesion and teleport a number of adjacent, willing creatures equal to your Constitution modifier, up to 15 ft. They must all still be adjacent after teleporting. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Coalescent Stride
When you kill an enemy, you may spend 1 Cohesion and use a Bonus Action to gain 3d4 + Con temporary hitpoints.
Counter Stride
If an enemy creature misses you with an attack while you are dodging, you may spend 1 Cohesion and, as a Reaction, Immediately make a free attack against it. Your next successful attack - including this one - before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Evasive Stride
When forced to make a Dexterity saving throw, you may spend 1 Cohesion to take ½ damage on a failed save, or no damage on a successful save. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 force damage.
Formless Stride
Spend 1 Cohesion and Teleport 30 feet as a bonus action. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 force damage.
Pursuit Stride
When an enemy creature leaves your threatened zone, you may spend 1 Cohesion and use a Reaction to make an attack of opportunity with Advantage, even if the target disengaged. If the attack hits, and the creature ends its turn within 30 feet of you, you may immediately teleport to a space adjacent to it. Your next successful attack - including this one - before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Rescue Stride
When a friendly creature that you can see within 30 ft. is hit with an attack, you may Spend 1 Cohesion and use a Reaction to teleport to a space adjacent to them. You become the target of the attack, and the attack roll must still overcome your AC to deal damage. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Revenge Stride
Immediately after an enemy creature has dealt damage to you, you may spend 1 Cohesion and use a Reaction to teleport up to 15 ft. towards them and make a single attack against that creature. Your next successful attack - including this one - before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Trick Stride
When you hit an opponent with a ranged attack within 60 feet, you may spend 1 Cohesion and swap places with them. Your next successful attack before the beginning of your next turn deals an additional 3d4 Force damage.
Dissociation
When you take this subclass at level 3, you may suffer 1d10 force damage to activate a stride as though you had spent cohesion. You may do this once per day. At level 18, you may do this a second time per day, suffering 2d10 force damage the second time.
Reflexive Blink
Starting at 7th level, you may enter a state of constant micro-teleportation. For the next minute, you may take the Dodge Action as a Bonus Action. You may activate this ability a number of times equal to your constitution modifier (minimum of once). You regain all uses on a short or long rest.
Sudden Impact
Starting at 10th level, when you take the Attack Action, you may first teleport up to 15 feet.
Traveler in the Mists
Starting at 15th level, your strides are available whenever battle starts. If you roll initiative and have no cohesion remaining, you regain one use of it.
Flash Guardian
At 18th level, when you take the Dodge action, it applies to a number of additional allies equal to your Constitution modifier (Minimum of 1) within 15 ft. of you.
It's interesting, kind of a new take on Horizon WalkerxBattlemaster. Here's some initial thoughts:
Strides:
Beacon Stride - This one seems kind of weird, it seems to be meant for out-of-combat use but then has the attack damage bonus which is confusing
Evasive Stride - This one is super OP! It should be restricted to higher levels. It's also weird to have to attack damage bonus which makes it confusing how you're supposed to use it. Suring the Dex save is happening outside of your turn but the damage bonus only applies if you make an attack before the start of your turn...
Counter Stride - This one feels like it should just be part of Reflexive Blink.
Revenge - why is this limited to towards them? What if you're a ranged-character and want to teleport away? If you're already within 5ft of the enemy can you even use this? since you can't move any closer to them?
The Rest
Dissociation - This seems kind of redundant, if you want them to have more uses just give them more uses. This just seems like extra bookkeeping for little gain.
Reflexive Blink - How is this activated? Is this an Action? BA? Also this is an incredibly powerful ability, I'd suggest moving it up to a higher level.
Sudden Impact - Mechanically this is fine I just find the name doesn't really fit with the mechanics.
Flash Guardian - I don't understand how this is supposed to work? How does you dodging cause your allies to be dodging? Why is it limited by your Constitution modifier? It's a fine mechanic but I'm just not able to visualize what my character would actually be doing to cause this effect to happen.
Thanks for the feedback!
Beacon: My intention here was that the fighter could use one of their attacks to just shoot an arrow into terrain and then teleport a long distance. Then, they could use another attack with the damage buff. I can see how the buff would go unused a lot, though. Originally, you got the damage buff just for using a point of Cohesion on a Stride, but when I added the Coalescent Stride, I knew that 3d4 temp hp on top of 3d4 extra damage would be too much, so I just manually added the buff to all of the other abilities. Maybe there's a better way to do it, though.
Evasive Stride: My intention here was just to give a limited version of the Rogue's Evasive ability, but I can see why that in addition to a buff might be too much. And you're right, the buff is in a weird spot. Maybe I can just remove it on this one and even things out?
Counter Stride: I can see that. I'll try and merge them. I wonder if the free attack might be too much in that case, though?
Revenge: I guess I was imagining this as a closer against ranged enemies, but it does make more sense to free it up.
Dissociation: This was mostly an effort to give some flexibility at a cost, as well as fit the narrative of pushing past your physical limit. Maybe it would be cleaner if I worded it "Take 1d10 Force Damage and regain a point of Cohesion." It's not as in-line with the narrative, but you're not weirdly circumnavigating the resource mechanically.
Reflexive Blink: I figured it would be like Action Surge, in that it doesn't use an action itself, but then alters your action economy in some way. I imagined the Dodge mechanic as a primary point of survivability with this subclass, so I hoped to make it available early on. Maybe there's a way I can tweak it to make it more appropriate, or have it scale. Maybe it could be a number of rounds equal to Con + Proficiency? So, a max of 7 rounds (probably more like 5) at the start, and more down the road?
Sudden Impact: That's fair. The name is actually a holdover from a different version. Thanks for pointing it out.
Flash Guardian: Yeah, I haven't filled out any lore elements yet, so that's my bad. The idea there is that the character is teleporting around and defending his allies (kind of like the Protection Fighting Style). The Constitution modifier is a running theme about holding yourself in "cohesion," which is also why Dissociation inflicts damage. So, in this case, your Con is just dictating how much you can push your teleporting while you're defending your friends.
Thanks again for the feedback. Much appreciated :-)
It's generally a bad idea to make multiple limited resources a player has be interchangeable - in this case exchanging HP for cohesion. When you balance a feature to be limited by a limited resource, then it should be limited exclusively by that resource otherwise it becomes hard to balance as the number of uses is unclear - other features that replenish the other limited resource (in this case healing abilities for HP) now represent ways to replenish a different resource as well. In this case e.g. 1 cast of Goodberry by anyone in the party = 1-2 extra uses of cohesion.
Now I know you limited the Dissociation feature to limit this, but this then becomes complicated and additional bookkeeping with very little impact on the game. The self-damage IME would not make it feel like a last-desperate attempt at something, but rather prevent it being used in a desperate situation as (particularly at level 3) the associated damage might KO you before you're able to complete the stride if used in a desperate situation as you'd already be on low HP or it wouldn't feel like a desperate situation.
Dodge is more powerful than the +5 AC from Shield. Fighters already get good survivability from AC, they do not need a boost there. The weaknesses in Fighter defenses is saving throws and unavoidable damage. Note that most Fighter subclasses get 0 defensive boosts, yours currently has 3 powerful ones (Reflexive Blink is much more powerful than the Blur spell which requires and Action to activate and your Concentration to maintain, and a 2nd level slot).
That's an interesting point regarding Dissociation that I hadn't considered. And it does defeat the point of being last-ditch if it can kill you. Do you think it should be replaced with something, or just dropped?
Hmm, that's interesting. That does make sense. Would shifting the Dodge focus to Temp Hp or reducing damage align a little better with the other subclasses? The evasive theme is obviously core to the subclass, and both seem like they could conceptually fullfill that roll, too, without being as overwhelming as Dodge seems to be.
Again, thanks!
One other way to offer extra uses via Dissociation is to require passing a con save for it to work, and the con save gets progressively higher.
You might be able to tie Reflexive Blink directly to Strides - where you get X buff until the start/end of your next turn when you use a Stride. Thus it is limited by uses of Cohesion. But yeah as is it is too strong. Dodging as a bonus action would be worth a Cohesion point all by itself, so this is like handing out 10 more points per use.
If you really like incorporating Dodge, I'd put a qualifier that you couldn't do it in medium or heavy armor.
Also, Beacon and Cloud need clarification on the action cost. If Beacon isn't meant to be a bonus action, I'd make it a part of the same attack that fired the projectile.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
If you want some kind of "last ditch" type ability then maybe a different take on the "resist 0 hp" abilities like:
Escape When you are reduced to 0 hp, you can instead teleport to within 5ft of a friendly creature and remain at 1 hp instead. Once you have used this ability you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest.
But I think removing it would just be fine. You might want to instead replace it with an out-of-combat utility ability like ability to cast Fog Cloud X-time per day, or proficiency in Arcana, or something.
So, I have some changes in mind based on your feedback (much appreciated to both of you), and some other thoughts I'd had.
"Your Next Successful Attack" - I'm wondering if this is unnecessary. Lots of abilities only work on the next attack, whether they hit, or not. I'm thinking of changing the language to "This Attack," if the Stride involves making an attack as part of the ability, or "Your Next Attack," if it makes sense to gain a damage buff, but doesn't have a built-in attack. In the latter case, the buff would fade at the end of the character's turn (or the next turn, if it's an off-turn ability).
Reflexive Blink - I'm considering renaming this "Afterimage Stride" and making it a Stride option that reads "Spend 1 Cohesion. You may take the Dodge Action as a Bonus Action this turn." That way, it's still an option, but it is much more limited.
Dissociation - I'll probably just drop this for simplicity's sake. There's probably enough level 3 value as is.
Beacon Stride - In an effort to make this more interesting in and out of combat, I'm thinking of changing it to read, "Spend 1 Cohesion. Your next ranged weapon attack has its minimum range increased by 3d4x10 ft. If the projectile lands within 120 ft. of you, you may use a Bonus Action to teleport to an adjacent space." I like the idea of integrating the "3d4" in other ways, like Superiority dice do. So far, there's 3d4+Con temp hp, 3d4x10 minimum range increase, 3d4 Force damage, and 3d4+Con reduced damage. I'm hoping it makes it a little more natural, rather than just tacking 3d4 Force damage on the end of every Stride. Though, now that I think about it, rolling the range might make the ability somewhat unreliable. I feel like having it be a fixed 120 ft. might be too much, though. And it would also mean that you can only teleport to your projectile in instances where the range increase didn't help much.
Sudden Impact - Rename this to Flash Strike
Evasive Stride - Drop the damage buff from this.
Reflexive Blink - The new version of the level 7 ability. It reads "When you are hit with an attack, you may use your Reaction to reduce the inflicted damage by 3d4+Proficiency Modifier. Additionally, you may choose to teleport up to 5 ft. You may do this a number of times equal to your Constitution Modifier. You regain all uses on a short or long rest." I'm not sure if the Proficiency Bonus should determine uses, or if it should be the Con modifier. I'm also a fan of the Short Rest recovery that the Fighter gets, but I know they changed the Goliath's racial ability to recover on a long rest, so maybe I should follow that example?
Rescue Stride - I feel like this is one where I might be able to apply the 3d4 in a different way. Maybe, "If the attack hits, the attacking creature must make a Dexterity (maybe Con?) Saving Throw or take 3d4 Force damage." Maybe there's a better way to apply it, though?
Love all of these!
You still might want to consider adding a non-combat ability, as one of the complaints about fighters is they have nothing to do outside of combat. Maybe something related to stealth or infiltration? That would sync well with the long-range teleport ability.
Thanks a lot! And that's a good call. I'll see what I can think of along those lines.