Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I'm about to start a new campaign, and I really don't want martials, especially fighters, to depend on the one +X weapon. And I also think, full spellcaster are just sooo much more powerfull in general. So I just wrote this.
It was quite the challenge to make rules that weren't over-riding any class/subclass features...
Would love opinions.
Martial Mastery
Level 1 Martial Class Feature
This feature is designed for Dungeons & Dragons 5.5 / 2024.
Martial Classes
For this feature, the Martial Classes are:
Martial Level
Your Martial Level is the total number of levels you have in Martial Classes.
Paladin and Ranger levels count fully for this feature. There are no half Martial Classes.
Martial Mastery Bonus
Your Martial Mastery Bonus is based on your Martial Level, as shown in the Martial Mastery table.
Martial Durability
Your Hit Point maximum increases by an amount equal to twice your Martial Level.
If your Martial Level changes, your Hit Point maximum changes accordingly.
Martial Attack and Damage
When you make an attack roll with a weapon or an Unarmed Strike, you gain your Martial Mastery Bonus to the attack roll and to the damage roll of that attack.
This bonus doesn’t stack with a magic bonus to attack and damage rolls from a weapon or similar effect. If more than one such bonus would apply to the same roll, use only the highest bonus.
Death Saving Throws
You gain your Martial Mastery Bonus to death saving throws.
Death Resilience
Starting at Martial Level 5, you can resist death from overwhelming damage.
When damage would kill you instantly, you can choose to survive the damage instead. If the damage would reduce you to 0 Hit Points, you drop to 0 Hit Points instead. If you were already at 0 Hit Points, you remain at 0 Hit Points.
In either case, you aren’t killed by that damage, and that damage doesn’t cause you to fail death saving throws.
Once you use Death Resilience, you can’t use it again until you finish a Long Rest.
An issue I have is that it doesn’t really solve the issue in the first place. Sure the martials are certainly tankier, but the spellcasters still have far more versatile and encounter ending spells like Teleport, Banishment or Cloudkill.
Theres really nothing to help bridge the utility gap, which in my option is a lot larger than the gap in combat.
I totally agree. However, my goal isn't to make martials have more utility; it's to make them less dependent on magic weapons and give them a bit more survivability.