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R.Shackleford
2016-06-06, 06:53 PM
Fighter Martial Archetype (Warlord)

Making this for a friend to use in a homebrew only game, originally based on the Purple Dragon Knight but I went way into left field for this one. I may need to scale this back but it shouldn’t be scaled back as the terrible PDK.

Level 3

Bolster Ally: Whenever you use Second Wind, An ally of your choice within 30’ also gains the benefit. That ally must be able to see or hear you. At levels 10, 15, and 18 an additional ally gains the benefit of your second wind if they can see or hear you.
Front-line Leader: You quickly strike out at an enemy that your ally is focused on to show the value of teamwork. As a reaction whenever an ally that is not a Warlord damages a creature within 10’ of you with a weapon attack, you may make a weapon attack against that creature if you are wielding a thrown weapon, melee weapon (if they are within the weapons range), or hand crossbow. At level 10 the range of this feature increases to 20’.

You may use this feature once per short rest. *


Level 7

Warlord Cunning: You gain proficiency with two skills of your choice that are Intelligence or Charisma based.


Level 10

Charge!: Whenever you use your Action Surge all allies within 30’ of you may use their reaction to move up to their speed. The ally must end closer to an enemy than they started.


Level 15

Spit, Grit, and Elbow Grease: Whenever you use indomitable your re-roll adds your constitution modifier. Whenever you use Indomitable you may also use your Second Wind (including bolster ally) at the same time.


Level 18

Fury and Determination!: Whenever you use indomitable and fail the re-roll, but you rolled higher than the constitution score of the creature who caused you to use indomitable, your sheer force of will causes a mental backlash and breaks the concentration of that creature.


====

*Font-Line Leader: Actually meant for this to be a short rest mechanic but never added in the short rest mechanic. I would have preceded a *1/per combat* as that makes more sense but I'll take what I can get.

Thinking about allowing the Shove (push) or Disarm Maneuvers replace the attack. I changed the trigger from *attack* to *damage* so this ability takes place AFTER the ally attacks and damages the target. If the ally kills the target you know before using this feature.

If this was to be at-will I would need the fighter to be set up more like the Rogue (or other martials) and work off the attack + attack + bonus damage class build but sadly the fighter isn't created that way...

I guess if you made a base warlord class you could set up the class to have extra attack once and then have all their damage be based around Front-Line Leader... Having it scale and such and then you would be free to not worry about extra attack 2 and 3 or MC issues.



Notes


This has utility, survival features, growth/scaling, and late game awesome sauce. Most importantly, allies will fall in love with you. This class isn't all about you but about working with allies to destroy the enemy.

I like giving Indomitable fail safes since 4/6 (3/6 at best) saves are going to suuuuuuck. A high level Warlord using Indomitable on multi target ongoing save spells is the best use but a flying fireball dropping caster will need to think twice or else they could fall. This isn't an auto win by any means... But it is a great deterrent. Late game casters still destroy the Fighter, as normal, but having a fighter (warlord) on your team won't be boring.

This archetype is also quite simple at level 3 and only gets a bit complicated (though nothing compared to casters) once you hit level 10 or 15.

Edit 1:

Took away expertise as I recalled that I don't care much for expertise, I'm giving the Warlord Advantage with the skills they choose. Might change this a bit at some point in the future.

Final Hyena
2016-06-06, 07:27 PM
Front-line Leader
This could be read that you have magical reach with your melee weapons.
Clarifying wording might help;
As a reaction whenever an ally that is not a Warlord attacks a creature within 10’ of you, you may make a weapon attack against that creature if you are wielding a thrown weapon, melee weapon (if they are within the weapons range), or hand crossbow. At level 10 the range of this feature increases to 20’.

Warlord Cunning
Perhaps just giving a skill proficiency would be an alternative.
Given that the sub class seems pretty on par to battle master Perhaps toning it down to one skill makes sense.

Charge!
I feel this adds in too much power, where it already has plenty. Might I suggest;
Whenever you use your Action Surge an ally within 60’ of you that can see and hear you may use their reaction to move a distance up to its movement speed.

Spit, Grit, and Elbow Grease
What about if the check was already constitution?
It is also a lil bit strong.
Perhaps a slight alteration;
Whenever you use indomitable your re-roll adds your constitution modifier on top of all the normal modifiers.

Fury and Determination!
This does slightly change the normal method of breaking concentration.
Might I suggest;
Whenever you use indomitable and fail the re-roll, the creature who caused you to use indomitable must make a concentration check as if it had taken damage equal to your indomitable result.

Orlune
2016-06-06, 07:43 PM
Looks pretty good you might want to polish up the language a little bit. For example front line leader could allow you to use your reaction to make an attack of opportunity against the target. If you want to make it more powerful you could also add in some movement to the feature.

R.Shackleford
2016-06-06, 10:40 PM
Front-line Leader
This could be read that you have magical reach with your melee weapons.
Clarifying wording might help;
As a reaction whenever an ally that is not a Warlord attacks a creature within 10’ of you, you may make a weapon attack against that creature if you are wielding a thrown weapon, melee weapon (if they are within the weapons range), or hand crossbow. At level 10 the range of this feature increases to 20’.

Warlord Cunning
Perhaps just giving a skill proficiency would be an alternative.
Given that the sub class seems pretty on par to battle master Perhaps toning it down to one skill makes sense.

Charge!
I feel this adds in too much power, where it already has plenty. Might I suggest;
Whenever you use your Action Surge an ally within 60’ of you that can see and hear you may use their reaction to move a distance up to its movement speed.

Spit, Grit, and Elbow Grease
What about if the check was already constitution?
It is also a lil bit strong.
Perhaps a slight alteration;
Whenever you use indomitable your re-roll adds your constitution modifier on top of all the normal modifiers.

Fury and Determination!
This does slightly change the normal method of breaking concentration.
Might I suggest;
Whenever you use indomitable and fail the re-roll, the creature who caused you to use indomitable must make a concentration check as if it had taken damage equal to your indomitable result.

Front-Line Leader: Good catch, that would be a bit silly.

Warlord Cunning: Yeah, just skill training should work. It just sucks that expertise is even a thing cause that's the first thing my mind goes to.

Charge!: If the ally isn't attacking I think allowing more than one to move would be the way to go. Most games won't get to the player having more than one Action Surge per rest. So 1/rest "y'all move" would work well. Especially since most PCs won't have used the disengage action.

Spit Grit Elbow Grease: 1d10+Level really isn't a lot of HP at this high of level and adding Con to a save 1-3/long rest isn't as strong as the paladin's ability of Cha to saves to themselves and others.

Fury and Determination!: Casters have plenty of ways to screw over enemies and can cherry pick saves. Giving a martial a new way to mess with casters is something more martials should have. Plus this seems fun and can help get around the con save and the fact that touching casters can be close to impossible... Blur, a low level spell, makes causing a caster to attempt a concentration save... Difficult since all you really have is attack rolls.

Everything else I'll take a look at but I want to keep the different mechanic :).


Looks pretty good you might want to polish up the language a little bit. For example front line leader could allow you to use your reaction to make an attack of opportunity against the target. If you want to make it more powerful you could also add in some movement to the feature.

Front-Line Leader allows you to make an Attack, not on OA, against a target that your ally attacked. It isn't an OA.

Might change the name to "Lead by Example"

Final Hyena
2016-06-07, 08:04 AM
Spit Grit Elbow Grease: 1d10+Level really isn't a lot of HP at this high of level and adding Con to a save 1-3/long rest isn't as strong as the paladin's ability of Cha to saves to themselves and others.
But this isn't for a paladin, it's for a fighter, please compare it to other level 10 fighter abilities, like getting +1 damage on your superiority dice (which is a sub class you are on par with).


Fury and Determination!: Casters have plenty of ways to screw over enemies and can cherry pick saves. Giving a martial a new way to mess with casters is something more martials should have. Plus this seems fun and can help get around the con save and the fact that touching casters can be close to impossible... Blur, a low level spell, makes causing a caster to attempt a concentration save... Difficult since all you really have is attack rolls.
My suggestion still allowed a fighter to mess with concentration without touch.
"Get around a con save."
Should we really be ignoring saving throws?
It would ignore the boons of say war casting, which I feel is a bit unfair.

R.Shackleford
2016-06-07, 09:52 AM
But this isn't for a paladin, it's for a fighter, please compare it to other level 10 fighter abilities, like getting +1 damage on your superiority dice (which is a sub class you are on par with).


My suggestion still allowed a fighter to mess with concentration without touch.
"Get around a con save."
Should we really be ignoring saving throws?
It would ignore the boons of say war casting, which I feel is a bit unfair.

Utility: To be fair, Fighters are so far behind on utility that you can't compare it to another fighter. You have to compare it to a class that gets utility. The core fighter is rather lacking in anything that isn't *I move and hit*, the EK gains some utility but even then it is extremely limited and pushes the player toward *I move better and hit with a magic stick*. The fighter wasn't created with the same consistency as the rest of the martials and partial so to make it balanced with the game you can't compare it to the core fighter.

Concentration: You realize that casters get to ignore saving throws and other conventions of the system right? Power Word *X* completely ignores attack and saves of the spell system. Foresight, for 8 hours no concentration, allows casters to not be surprised and have advantage on attack rolls. If a non-caster does gain magic a caster can use the ever popular Counterspell to, without a check, invalidate a spell of 1st to 3rd level. A majority of martial/partial martial spells are those that instantly, without a check, can be counter spelled. Hell, a caster could counter spell each round until the martial/partial martial is out of spells and still have a ton of spell slots.

There are plenty of duration spells that ignore concentration all together. Blur and Freedom of Movement are two nifty ones. The sorcerer even gains features that let them twin and quicken (among other things) spells, breaking the rules/conventions of the system.

So if we are going to say "no homebrewing features that get around the base rules" we need to start enforcing that at the core rules too. Which we can't because the entire point of specific class features is to break previously made core rules.

We need Heath Ledger's joker meme for this. lol

Yeah Fury and Determination is different, but it is an 18th level feature and it ought to be different. It ought to be something radical and awesome... Look at what other classes get as "capstones". Druids become onions, Clerics call down gods, Paladins become angels, and Barbarians are pure rage and break the ability score limit on two ability scores. All good capstones take a rule and bend or break them. The cleric goes from *chance to call in a favor from a deity and might be able to stop a volcanoe from exploding* to *can call in a favor from a deity to stop a volcanoe from exploding*.

Once you get high level you should have abilities that reflect the time and energy put into getting that far and not just another use of a low to mid level feature.

Fury and Determination gives you a feature that lets you break convention. However, it isn't full proof and even if you have to use indomitable that doesn't mean a caster will have a concentration effect up. That Lich or whatever may not always have a concentration spell up, hell, most casters would probabaly have blur up and then wait to see what they need.

Final Hyena
2016-06-07, 10:33 AM
Utility: To be fair, Fighters are so far behind on utility that you can't compare it to another fighter. You have to compare it to a class that gets utility.
Every class has varied power spikes, comparing one class to any other is liable to cause issues.
You can look at other classes for example of the kinds of utility you want, but it should still balance for the class you are using them on.
Otherwise you could cherry pick the best levels from every class and make the strongest class


Concentration: You realize that casters get to ignore saving throws and other conventions of the system right? Power Word *X* completely ignores attack and saves of the spell system. Foresight, for 8 hours no concentration, allows casters to not be surprised and have advantage on attack rolls. If a non-caster does gain magic a caster can use the ever popular Counterspell to, without a check, invalidate a spell of 1st to 3rd level. A majority of martial/partial martial spells are those that instantly, without a check, can be counter spelled. Hell, a caster could counter spell each round until the martial/partial martial is out of spells and still have a ton of spell slots.
SNIP
The Fighter is not a caster, neither is your sub class.

I never said homebrew can't be different from the norm, my point was that;

It would ignore the boons of say war casting, which I feel is a bit unfair.
You build your class specifically to be good at concentration checks, and suddenly they are invalidated. This isn't the case with power word kill or stun where you can't take the feat for advantage against stun/death affects.

Further more you are making a sub-par roll, and are (sometimes) being rewarded for it. Despite failing a saving throw, you hurt the attacker, but not if you pass??

The other issue is thematically.
How does it actually work against say a fireball?
The creature isn't magically connecting to you.

Here is the other issue, if you failed the save even when you had con mod on top, what is the chance that the result will beat their con score?

R.Shackleford
2016-06-07, 06:07 PM
Every class has varied power spikes, comparing one class to any other is liable to cause issues.
You can look at other classes for example of the kinds of utility you want, but it should still balance for the class you are using them on.
Otherwise you could cherry pick the best levels from every class and make the strongest class


The Fighter is not a caster, neither is your sub class.

I never said homebrew can't be different from the norm, my point was that;

You build your class specifically to be good at concentration checks, and suddenly they are invalidated. This isn't the case with power word kill or stun where you can't take the feat for advantage against stun/death affects.

Further more you are making a sub-par roll, and are (sometimes) being rewarded for it. Despite failing a saving throw, you hurt the attacker, but not if you pass??

The other issue is thematically.
How does it actually work against say a fireball?
The creature isn't magically connecting to you.

Here is the other issue, if you failed the save even when you had con mod on top, what is the chance that the result will beat their con score?

The fighter has less boons than others, it isn't about being a caster but about being an effective class in more than just a single area of the game.

The core fighter is broken, if people homebrew new fighter subclasses they should fix what is broken about the fighter.

Ignoring Warcaster is fine, this is one subclass ability. Multiple abilities ignore bonuses that others get. If I take Skilled and pick up perception I will still be useless against rogues that have Expertise (Stealth).

Just because casters are on the short end of the stick once in a while doesn't mean that's a bad thing.

But thanks for your help, the DM approved of what's above and I'm done with this :)

Final Hyena
2016-06-08, 09:36 AM
The fighter has less boons than others, it isn't about being a caster but about being an effective class in more than just a single area of the game.

The core fighter is broken, if people homebrew new fighter subclasses they should fix what is broken about the fighter.
Not sure I agree, Way of the four elements is broken. If you play in RP heavy games the paladin and druid are quite OP. But the fighter is fine.


Ignoring Warcaster is fine, this is one subclass ability. Multiple abilities ignore bonuses that others get. If I take Skilled and pick up perception I will still be useless against rogues that have Expertise (Stealth).
The most a Rogue can get is +17 to stealth, which can be beaten even with a negative modifier. So that skill proficiency is not worthless it increases your odds of success.

R.Shackleford
2016-06-08, 10:04 AM
Not sure I agree, Way of the four elements is broken. If you play in RP heavy games the paladin and druid are quite OP. But the fighter is fine.


The most a Rogue can get is +17 to stealth, which can be beaten even with a negative modifier. So that skill proficiency is not worthless it increases your odds of success.

On the Rogue...

"Reliable Talent

By 11th level, you have refined your chosen skills until they approach perfection. Whenever you make an ability check that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10."

Starting at level 11, assuming max ability score for dex or wis which is possible, you are looking at 1d20 + 5 dex + 8 (13) with a minimum roll of 10 no matter what. At level 11 the minimum a Rogue can get is 23, which is three points over hard and two points away from very hard. Once the rogue gains +6 prof the minimum is three points below nearly impossible.

The rogue makes others "not tall enough to ride" and invalidates others proficiency in skills. And this is for something very very common.

(note: expertise should probabaly be part of the ability check system but that's a separate issue.

Casters or monster who fly take away martials ability to do melee damage.

Casters or monsters that can turn invisible take away the rogue's ability to sneak attack.

Class features are all about taking away the Ability of another creature. This is par for the course.

The fact that Fury and Determination! Can be used at most 3/day (but even then isn't garenteed to do anything) is more balanced than other options that take away features of other classes.