New here.  Hi.

I was wondering if there were some existing threads regarding new abilities for fighters and martial classes generally?

I've been making my own homebrew for some time and one of the things I've found that makes fighters less fun to play is that they have fewer options in combat.

I've been revamping the martial style classes to include things like...

Crowd control - Using grapple to move or pin creatures

Defensive positioning - Being next to a fighter gives you a bonus to AC, fighters can be used as cover

Specialized "combat maneuvers" - disarm, sunder armor, things like that.

Anyhow, I'd appreciate any ideas or links to threads on the topic.

Thanks!

You want to think about weapons and special use case of said weapons as the fighters powers.  Put a limit on how often they can use such said power attacks.  Maybe group them by families for some basic specials and then give each unique weapon its own special power.

Say something like a Warpick devastating strike only usable on med/heavy armored combatants

-Increase crit chance from 20 to 15-20 on a roll (so 1 in 4 chance of it working, on a high armored foe this could really help)
-If crit hits, Penetrate armor lowering armor by 1 and causing a bleed of 1d12 a turn till staunched.
-If no crit hit, no crit or miss, the creature takes normal damage plus an extra D4 damage.


Depending on the system, that could be good.  No guarantee of the attack going through, if it does the attacker is easier to attack now, is bleeding, if fail they still get an increase of damage but the pick didn't penetrate the armor.  I would limit the amount of times used, they should not replace spell casters but should be something dealing with melee attackers from damage, stuns, reducing armor, inducing bleeds, concussions, blinding, crits, knockdowns, ae attacks etc

You could look up 3.5E, PF, PF2 or BG3 for inspiration on weapon damage abilities.

I am working on an OSE variant campaign. After dividing classes into martial, semi-martial, and non-martial categories I created class based damage tables by broad weapon size/type and level range. So the martial classes get the best damage for weapon classes and the best improvement. One advantage of this that drove me to do it in the first place is that damage is based on training and not the particular weapon, so there are no winner and loser weapons. No one wants to use a spear at d6 when they could use a sword for d8.

I am currently working on fighting styles that use various weapons that can be chosen which give bonuses to those trained in them when performing certain maneuvers. Fighting classes will have the opportunity to learn multiple styles. Still a work in progress.

I do a thing where each weapon has it's own special thing it can do based loosely on what I know about them in RL context.  An example is the spear; a spear has reach but it also can keep an enemy from getting in range by forcing them to do a check to close with you or someone standing adjacent to you. 

I've done something very similar for the very-non-D&D game I'm writing right now.  (Almost done, yay!)  One of the key design features is a depletable "fatigue" resource.  Normal attacks cost no fatigue but any of the 30 or so melee maneuvers (power attack, furious defense, etc) cost a certain amount.  The point is to offer fighters interesting, powerful options, like casters, but limit how often it can be done, also like casters.  The other options is 4E's x/day mechanic, which I hate with a passion because it has no reasonable in-game explanation.

Quote from: Mishihari on December 19, 2023, 04:26:46 PM
I've done something very similar for the very-non-D&D game I'm writing right now.  (Almost done, yay!)  One of the key design features is a depletable "fatigue" resource.  Normal attacks cost no fatigue but any of the 30 or so melee maneuvers (power attack, furious defense, etc) cost a certain amount.  The point is to offer fighters interesting, powerful options, like casters, but limit how often it can be done, also like casters.  The other options is 4E's x/day mechanic, which I hate with a passion because it has no reasonable in-game explanation.

Fatigue sounds interesting.  So it represents a pool of resources to use on abilities?  I like it!  WOuld the abilities be known from the beginning or added by feats/leveling? By class?  Or have you thought of that yet?

Right now I'm working on options for fighters that don't default to some variation of "I hit it with my axe!"  My goal is to create scenarios where there is a meaningful choice for martial players where they can decide... do I attack or do I do this other thing.

Whatever that may be...

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on December 19, 2023, 03:23:27 PM
You want to think about weapons and special use case of said weapons as the fighters powers.  Put a limit on how often they can use such said power attacks.  Maybe group them by families for some basic specials and then give each unique weapon its own special power.

Say something like a Warpick devastating strike only usable on med/heavy armored combatants

-Increase crit chance from 20 to 15-20 on a roll (so 1 in 4 chance of it working, on a high armored foe this could really help)
-If crit hits, Penetrate armor lowering armor by 1 and causing a bleed of 1d12 a turn till staunched.
-If no crit hit, no crit or miss, the creature takes normal damage plus an extra D4 damage.


Depending on the system, that could be good.  No guarantee of the attack going through, if it does the attacker is easier to attack now, is bleeding, if fail they still get an increase of damage but the pick didn't penetrate the armor.  I would limit the amount of times used, they should not replace spell casters but should be something dealing with melee attackers from damage, stuns, reducing armor, inducing bleeds, concussions, blinding, crits, knockdowns, ae attacks etc

You could look up 3.5E, PF, PF2 or BG3 for inspiration on weapon damage abilities.

I have been looking at the BECMI Master's book for weapon specialization rules.  Cool stuff in that book along this theme.

Quote from: Captain_Pazuzu on December 19, 2023, 04:46:37 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on December 19, 2023, 04:26:46 PM
I've done something very similar for the very-non-D&D game I'm writing right now.  (Almost done, yay!)  One of the key design features is a depletable "fatigue" resource.  Normal attacks cost no fatigue but any of the 30 or so melee maneuvers (power attack, furious defense, etc) cost a certain amount.  The point is to offer fighters interesting, powerful options, like casters, but limit how often it can be done, also like casters.  The other options is 4E's x/day mechanic, which I hate with a passion because it has no reasonable in-game explanation.

Fatigue sounds interesting.  So it represents a pool of resources to use on abilities?  I like it!  WOuld the abilities be known from the beginning or added by feats/leveling? By class?  Or have you thought of that yet?

Right now I'm working on options for fighters that don't default to some variation of "I hit it with my axe!"  My goal is to create scenarios where there is a meaningful choice for martial players where they can decide... do I attack or do I do this other thing.

Whatever that may be...

If I was going to do it by in D&D, I'd give some for CON, and some for each level up, with the level up amount varying by class.  That way each class can do some things, but the fighters are the best at it because they get by far the most fatigue allowance.  I don't see a problem with limiting it to just fighters though if that's what you're looking for - it's just my game is skill not class based so there would be no way for me to do that even if I wanted to.

Not a fighter specific thing, but I use a supplement for Basic Fantasy that adds called shots, they simply declare what they are going to do and make an attack roll at -4, sometimes the creature gets a saving throw as well.

At my table our fighter has used this to great effect.

Likewise I use another concept called weapon specialization, at certain levels they get attack/damage bonuses to a weapon of their choice, which can grant extra attacks for that weapon.

Don't make maneuvers costly to acquire, or so difficult to use in combat that there's no point trying them over normal attacks.

Do martial classes get cleaves - as in bonus attacks when they drop weaker opponents?

Quote from: Socratic-DM on December 19, 2023, 06:30:19 PM
Not a fighter specific thing, but I use a supplement for Basic Fantasy that adds called shots, they simply declare what they are going to do and make an attack roll at -4, sometimes the creature gets a saving throw as well.

At my table our fighter has used this to great effect.

This is the track I use for my homebrew as well. "Options" already exist .. every "feat" is something a fighter (or anyone else) can already attempt. Just roll with a penalty to achieve any outcome other than the default "do damage" effect.

My experience with this has been similar to yours: the fighters, with their superior to-hit rolls, wind up taking great advantage of this rule in combat.

D&D 4e is hated for a number of reasons, some of them even legitimate. But it is absolutely fantastic at exactly what you're thinking about.

Quote from: migo on December 20, 2023, 04:09:37 PM
D&D 4e is hated for a number of reasons, some of them even legitimate. But it is absolutely fantastic at exactly what you're thinking about.

Matthew Collvielle is releasing 4.5Edition, where you always hit and you just change your gear to switch subclasses.  It truly looks like shit.

Now he does have some ideas like as the party expends resources they do unlock some abilities and when they rest well the villain gains abilities.  That is something I like.  First it cuts down on the long restitis some players go for and then if you random encounter rolls suck and you go by them the party gets one hell of a bonus.  It would be nice to have a system with this being known, part of the game and planned for.

Me personally when the players smurf the boss by running around and sneaking and carefully clearing everything and then taking a long rest and wait until no encounters to take away one resource, I simply up the bosses rolls, resistances and buff him accordingly.  If their daily budget is 20K xp and the boss was 8K xp but they decided to treat the game like a video game, no problem players you now have a 20K xp boss enjoy the fight.

Quote from: migo on December 20, 2023, 04:09:37 PM
D&D 4e is hated for a number of reasons, some of them even legitimate. But it is absolutely fantastic at exactly what you're thinking about.

Ya know... I just looked and I happen to have the 4th edition martial power.  I had totally written 4th edition off.

Thanks for the tip.

Really... anything that isn't an attack is welcome.

I'd suggest looking into some of the systems presented in the Rules Cyclopedia/BECMI version of D&D. It did something similar to what you're describing in which Fighters would unlock "Combat Options" at 9th level and beyond. This included setting lances for charges, parrying, defensive postures, and even multiple attacks. Granted you could always allow your fighting-types to unlock these abilities much earlier if you wanted to.

Another idea from BECMI is the Weapon Mastery charts. Granted they look confusing at first, but they're pretty simple once you give them a look over. The big things to take away from them are that they modify the weapon for the character in question. So, for example, a character who has Basic skill with a Sword does 1d8 damage. When they reach Skilled status, however, they do 1d12 damage, and get a +2 to their Armor Class against the first attack against them every combat round. In this case you could allow fighters to do something similar, wherein they can train with a particular weapon and increase its capabilities beyond that of other classes. So when a cleric swings a mace, it's just 1d6 damage, but a fighter with some training with the same mace might deal 2d4.

Both of these systems allowed the Fighter to keep up with the other classes as they gained new abilities and spells. Sure, the wizard can do a 4d4+4 Magic Missile, but now the fighter can do 2d8 + STR Bonus and gets defensive bonuses. It's not a 1:1 comparison, but he can keep up.