Almost Downloaded it. Except it has critical immunity and tactical awareness/evasion. Its basically invincible and there is no risk factor. Also I don't know if it is compatible with fighter subclasses combined or Unleashed or Eldritch Knight change spell attribute caster mod.
I love the idea of this mod, but action surge is my favorite fighter ability. Without it I would rather just take Martial Adept as a feat instead of actually using Fighter as a class. Would you be willing to make a version of this mod that keeps action surge, for those of us who are less concerned with balance? Thank you so much for making and providing this mod! <3
First off I want to say that I love this mod, I like the fix to multiclass cheese and the uniqueness of the subclasses compared to the base game!
I agree with some of the other comments here that the battlemaster feels a bit weaker than the others, and was curious if it would be possible to make their "Press The Attack" ability allow an ally to make an attack with a maneuver? Eg, a battlemaster uses the ability, choses one of their maneuvers (trip attack) and then their ally gets a trip attack on their turn? Could also be an ability with 3-5 options baked in that you choose to include (kinda like how Find Familiar only gives you preset options). I think it would be a to boost the damage/utility they provide to battles without breaking things, but I also have 0 idea how to code that :)
Anyway, great mod, I love it and I will recommend it a lot
I'd love to do the maneuver with press the attack thing, it sounds super cool. I don't think (????) I could make it work unless I made it super convoluted, but I do think that I could do some other small boosts like making it give extra movement, a defense bonus, etc. I'll look through some files and see what sort of things seem doable. I'm starting a playthrough of battlemaster right now actually, so I'll try to see how it feels and adjust based on that too. Thanks for the feedback and suggestion! Glad you like the mod :)
Cool, thanks for considering it. Not sure if this helps you at all, but the Titanstring Bow gives a once per short rest use of Pushing Shot (Ranged) even if you do not have a superiority dice- maybe there's something about that in the item's code that can help you figure it out. Been using Eldritch Knight with this mod, and the improved War Magick feels so good, thanks again lol
Keep your eyes peeled for more rework mods in the future. I have some ideas for a reworked rogue that I'll probably hash out over the next week. I'll mostly focus on martials and giving them more choices in combat and character creation, but let me know if y'all have anything in other classes that you're passionate about and would like to see make it into a mod.
I just want to point out that removing action surge actually reduces your damage per short rest significantly. Maneuvers win out at lvl 4 when you get the 3rd dice, but once extra attack kicks in, it is incredibly behind. Maneuvers are weaker than action surge unless you are using stuff like disarm/push attack to cheese the game. I just mean in general as a fighter redesign you are reducing the overall powerlevel of the fighter by trading the 2 features.
Just want to point out that this mod just actually ends up increasing the gap between battlemaster and the other 2 classes unfortunately (maybe champion at 10 is stronger if you get advantage consistently, didnt make that math)
I did think about that, but ultimately this wasn't designed to buff the fighter, it was designed to make them more interesting and varies in gameplay. I know action surge is a HUGE portion of fighter's power budget, and I considered making it once per long rest for battlemaster In this. I'm still leaving that on the table if I get more similar feedback, but I want battlemaster to still feel fun to play the majority of the time. I'm also open to just giving them a different, more tactical feature that doesn't come with the issues action surge brings.
It does even out a bit more at later levels though, since you can have an Eldritch Knight use a 3d10 cantrip and still get two attacks in, or use hold person and then attack and dual wield for a double crit.
Maneuvers definitely do less damage than action surge in a purely numerical sense, but that's really not the point of them. Tactically, they provide versatility in ways that can vastly improve your ratio of damage taken/damage dealt. Goading attack for example functionally increases your teams AC up to your own for a round, pushing attack can secure choke points to almost eliminate hostile damage when combined with a web spell, and Precision attack can help you land final hits that ensure an enemy dies before their next turn. Maneuvering attack can get an allied spell aster away from a swarm, not only keeping them alive (functionally an extra action for your team), but allowing them to fireball the same swarm with impunity, increasing your team's damage output.
In my mind, lowering the flat damage of the class when two people stand in front of each other and press attack every turn is fine if it's replaced with power that has a higher skill ceiling and rewards tactical play.
Tldr: The goal was to redesign the fighter to reward tactical play and mechanical mastery. Maneuvers were intended to add choice and strategy to the class rather than to fill the power budget void of action surge. I can and have crunched numbers on this, but it's incredibly difficult to account for the power budget a 10 foot shove or a taunt effect should cost as they are inherently reliant on the details of an encounter, party composition, and player skill. As I receive more feedback and play the class myself I'll take a look at adjusting some dials here and there.
Thank you for the feedback, it was very helpful! Enjoy the mod :)
It's not that simple. You're right in 2 cases: 1) The player short rests every single fight. 2) Going for 1-shots vs. Bosses. But in other cases, i.e. longer fights, more fights per short rest etc.. the other 2 subclasses start to catch up and possibly surpass Battlemaster, whereas before, it wasn't even a question which subclass was best.
While Maneuvers are indeed weaker than Action Surge, they level out the damage floor and add some much needed versatility to the other 2 subclasses. Maneuvers synergize really well with Champion's crit increase as well.
Overall, I think this rework created a more straightforward separation between Battlemaster and Champion at least, in that one is more suited for bursty playstyles, and the other suited for more consistent damage and high endurance fights. +it always rubbed me the wrong way that other classes can get maneuvers simply by picking a feat, and full on fighter subclasses had to wait in the same line. And as a side note: I like what this rework did to multiclass balance, by making fighter dips more of a commitment.
What if you made Action Surge a once per long rest ability for the whole class, and gave Battlemaster extra charges at lvl 3 and later. Maybe using Surge applies a debuff for a specific number of turns, say 3-5 turns, that prevents multiple uses per round. This should significantly lessen the gap between the subclasses, if it is truly that big.
I'm considering making action surge just give you a single extra attack when you use it, but it still comes back on a short rest. That way it doesn't break with multiclassing and can still provide some burst damage without outshining the other subclasses early on.
What if you just increased the base maneuver die to a d10, which scales to d12 at lvl 10 in compensation?
OR
Introduced a new version of "Action Surge" as baseline to go with the new Maneuvers being baseline changes. Baseline Fighter now gets Maneuvers (beginning with 2 Superiority die instead of the 4 in vanilla) and Action surge; however, any extra damage dealt with the additional action is halved. (still good for burst if truly needed, but can now be more heavily utilized for utility while still allowing a core mechanic of Fighter to remain intact.) THEN, for "Battle Master" they gain 1 extra Superiority die and a special version of action surge that allows them to deal full damage with their second action gained in addition to a second bonus action.
Hmm that's interesting. I'm not sure how I'd code in the half damage on action surge since there's no good way to apply statuses to action points afaik, but I could see action surge giving you a free extra attack for baseline fighters and a full extra action for battlemasters. I like the idea of action surge mainly being used for utility but that usually just results in it being abused with spellcasting. Hopefully with maneuvers as a base feature, the attacks feel like they also provide utility. Sometimes in the next few days I'll probably update this mod with that change or smthn very similar. It seems the action surge change was pretty controversial (which is fine, no one's obligated to download the mod if they like base fighter) so I'll tinker with it a bit to see what feels right.
I'm of the opinion that Action Surge simply should not be allowed to cast spells. Colby from D4 Deep Dive starts just about every single spellcaster build with "First, we're starting off with Fighter" for the heavy armor proficiency and Action Surge at level 2, and it's for good reason. "Damage now is better than damage later", as Pack Tactics would say.
Simply nixing spellcasting from Action Surge, but keeping the rest of its flexibility, is what they also did in the latest One D&D playtest document (alongside allowing Eldritch Knights to get around this limit by casting spells via trading 2 attacks). Spellcasters in regular 5e can still use that action to dodge or hide or disengage or dash, and in BG3, you can still do most of those, or throw potions or other consumables which shape the battlefield. It's got plenty of uses still.
Frankly, I don't think it's the low level features that need to be nerfed. Action Surge should probably be a baseline ability. You can win and shutdown encounters with 1st to 3rd level spells, especially in BG3 when Grease can break concentration with no save and end your turn early, Hideous Laughter shuts down turns, Command limitshiding and dipping in and out of magical Darkness can break AI in some cases (cheese the phase spider matriarch for example), and there's the general OPness of 3rd level spells which mostly did not receive nerfs.
I realize there's a bevy of magic items unlike any in the default rules of 5e, of which provide a tremendous amount of support for martials and melee attacking in general. To the point you'd often rather be a Fighter doing 200 damage. But I think it's well-earned for its weaknesses in lack of flexibility and encounter-solving power. And in some cases, just nerf those items.
Limiting baseline Action Surge to an extra attack and only making Battle Master’s a full action could also help to alleviate some of the caster based multi-casting issues without removing their niche as having to dip 1 more level into fighter to gain access to an extra spell cast prevents things such as Wizards and Warlocks from obtaining their 10th lvl subclass features, or less spell slots and slower caster/build progressions for all of them.
*Edit, if you do change Action Surge like this, I would recommend keeping the enemy mobs with the vanilla version of Action Surge.
You might be interested in the UA PHb Playtest 7 changes to Fighter
I directly referenced the playtest but I'm sure others would be interested to read it too :)
I'd also like to add that I think this brand new mod, Battle Master Superior Recovery, would be a good way to integrate Battle Master as "yeah but I do the superiority dice BETTER" subclass in the way that Champion is the current "Fighter but more Fighter" subclass.
(I also feel like between weapon actions which expend on a miss, and maneuvers, and feats, and fighting styles, there are way too many subsystems with too much overlap. But to revise such a thing into a more integrated system, like spells, is a bit beyond the scope of a BG3 mod.)
Hey! Saw the changes and I for one think the concept of having the power of "cheating' the Action Economy to be more baked into the individual Subclasses of the Fighter to be an awesome rework of the system. This adaption also happens to aid in incentivizing people to try out the Class when comparing it to more generally perceived "strong", caster-based Subclasses while keeping meaningfully built multi-classing options. Those "heroic" Action Surge moments are a core identity for Fighter and this adaption helps improve upon this functionality while also adding some individual flavor to the Fighter Subclasses. If I could, I would suggest but a few small changes, which will admittedly improve the power level of Fighter; however, I don't think to any unreasonable degree while still improving their identities and flavor dramatically.
BATTLEMASTER:
*New: Gains 1 Additional Maneuver die. *(Adjusted) Reposition: Grants to themselves OR an ally. Press the Attack: Remains the same. Tactical Awareness: Remains the same. Improved Superiority Dice: Remains the same.
CHAMPION:
*(Adjusted) Rush of Battle: Now scales with any extra attacks they gain (so Two at level 5, Three at level 11). Peerless Athlete Jump: Remains the same. Immunity to Crit at lvl 7: Remains the same. Crit Hit range at 10 and fighting style: Remains the same.
ELDRITCH KNIGHT:
Arcane Cascade: Remains the same. War Magic: Remains the same. Eldritch Strike: Remains the same. *(Adjusted) Lvl 11: Now Two extra attacks with cantrips OR spells (there’s no reason casting a cantrip over a spell should feel stronger at this point, unless you’re using the new Arcane Cascade feature, but we’re also very limited in spell slots/levels anyways).
Thanks for the mod, I'll be using it in my playthroughs from now on! *Endorsed
Hey! Thanks for commenting and the ideas, I like them a lot! The reposition change is 100% something I wish I thought of. I'll spend a bit of time tomorrow figuring out submenus so I can make that change. Ill also run some maths to see if adding the extra maneuver for them is fair or not.
As for rush of battle, I debated letting a full attack happen and I'm still not quite sure where it should be power-level wise. I mainly focused on getting these in the game first so for this one I went with the smaller buff to not break things while I run some math to see what the right spot for it is.
I kind of agree with the Eldritch Knight lvl 11 ability change too, though I mainly was going off of the new Onednd (or revised 5e ig) change where they can replace one attack with a cantrip or two with a spell. This proved tough to implement since the scripting for extra attack is needlessly complicated (which is why you have to cast the spell/cantrip first. I've only been modding for a few days now). I'll sleep on this one and give it a look while I'm running my other numbers.
I appreciate your support and feedback, you're the best!
Please consider the following adjustment. (is the way I do in my table) at lvl 2, 6, 14 the fighter receives the following feature: Warrior TechnickChose one of the 3 following options: Action Surge, Combat Superiority or a Feat
Since in bg3 you will probably can not limit the ASI on lvl 2, you probably should not give feat as an option at lvl 2. I also scale Combat Superiority (which gives maneuvers and dices) at lvls 6 and 14
This empowers players giving they more options to play as they like.
28 comments
I agree with some of the other comments here that the battlemaster feels a bit weaker than the others, and was curious if it would be possible to make their "Press The Attack" ability allow an ally to make an attack with a maneuver? Eg, a battlemaster uses the ability, choses one of their maneuvers (trip attack) and then their ally gets a trip attack on their turn? Could also be an ability with 3-5 options baked in that you choose to include (kinda like how Find Familiar only gives you preset options). I think it would be a to boost the damage/utility they provide to battles without breaking things, but I also have 0 idea how to code that :)
Anyway, great mod, I love it and I will recommend it a lot
Just want to point out that this mod just actually ends up increasing the gap between battlemaster and the other 2 classes unfortunately (maybe champion at 10 is stronger if you get advantage consistently, didnt make that math)
I know action surge is a HUGE portion of fighter's power budget, and I considered making it once per long rest for battlemaster In this. I'm still leaving that on the table if I get more similar feedback, but I want battlemaster to still feel fun to play the majority of the time. I'm also open to just giving them a different, more tactical feature that doesn't come with the issues action surge brings.
It does even out a bit more at later levels though, since you can have an Eldritch Knight use a 3d10 cantrip and still get two attacks in, or use hold person and then attack and dual wield for a double crit.
Maneuvers definitely do less damage than action surge in a purely numerical sense, but that's really not the point of them. Tactically, they provide versatility in ways that can vastly improve your ratio of damage taken/damage dealt. Goading attack for example functionally increases your teams AC up to your own for a round, pushing attack can secure choke points to almost eliminate hostile damage when combined with a web spell, and Precision attack can help you land final hits that ensure an enemy dies before their next turn. Maneuvering attack can get an allied spell aster away from a swarm, not only keeping them alive (functionally an extra action for your team), but allowing them to fireball the same swarm with impunity, increasing your team's damage output.
In my mind, lowering the flat damage of the class when two people stand in front of each other and press attack every turn is fine if it's replaced with power that has a higher skill ceiling and rewards tactical play.
Tldr: The goal was to redesign the fighter to reward tactical play and mechanical mastery. Maneuvers were intended to add choice and strategy to the class rather than to fill the power budget void of action surge. I can and have crunched numbers on this, but it's incredibly difficult to account for the power budget a 10 foot shove or a taunt effect should cost as they are inherently reliant on the details of an encounter, party composition, and player skill. As I receive more feedback and play the class myself I'll take a look at adjusting some dials here and there.
Thank you for the feedback, it was very helpful! Enjoy the mod :)
1) The player short rests every single fight. 2) Going for 1-shots vs. Bosses.
But in other cases, i.e. longer fights, more fights per short rest etc.. the other 2 subclasses start to catch up and possibly surpass Battlemaster, whereas before, it wasn't even a question which subclass was best.
While Maneuvers are indeed weaker than Action Surge, they level out the damage floor and add some much needed versatility to the other 2 subclasses. Maneuvers synergize really well with Champion's crit increase as well.
Overall, I think this rework created a more straightforward separation between Battlemaster and Champion at least, in that one is more suited for bursty playstyles, and the other suited for more consistent damage and high endurance fights. +it always rubbed me the wrong way that other classes can get maneuvers simply by picking a feat, and full on fighter subclasses had to wait in the same line. And as a side note: I like what this rework did to multiclass balance, by making fighter dips more of a commitment.
Maybe using Surge applies a debuff for a specific number of turns, say 3-5 turns, that prevents multiple uses per round.
This should significantly lessen the gap between the subclasses, if it is truly that big.
OR
Introduced a new version of "Action Surge" as baseline to go with the new Maneuvers being baseline changes. Baseline Fighter now gets Maneuvers (beginning with 2 Superiority die instead of the 4 in vanilla) and Action surge; however, any extra damage dealt with the additional action is halved. (still good for burst if truly needed, but can now be more heavily utilized for utility while still allowing a core mechanic of Fighter to remain intact.) THEN, for "Battle Master" they gain 1 extra Superiority die and a special version of action surge that allows them to deal full damage with their second action gained in addition to a second bonus action.
Simply nixing spellcasting from Action Surge, but keeping the rest of its flexibility, is what they also did in the latest One D&D playtest document (alongside allowing Eldritch Knights to get around this limit by casting spells via trading 2 attacks). Spellcasters in regular 5e can still use that action to dodge or hide or disengage or dash, and in BG3, you can still do most of those, or throw potions or other consumables which shape the battlefield. It's got plenty of uses still.
Frankly, I don't think it's the low level features that need to be nerfed. Action Surge should probably be a baseline ability. You can win and shutdown encounters with 1st to 3rd level spells, especially in BG3 when Grease can break concentration with no save and end your turn early, Hideous Laughter shuts down turns, Command limitshiding and dipping in and out of magical Darkness can break AI in some cases (cheese the phase spider matriarch for example), and there's the general OPness of 3rd level spells which mostly did not receive nerfs.
I realize there's a bevy of magic items unlike any in the default rules of 5e, of which provide a tremendous amount of support for martials and melee attacking in general. To the point you'd often rather be a Fighter doing 200 damage. But I think it's well-earned for its weaknesses in lack of flexibility and encounter-solving power. And in some cases, just nerf those items.
*Edit, if you do change Action Surge like this, I would recommend keeping the enemy mobs with the vanilla version of Action Surge.
You might be interested in the UA PHb Playtest 7 changes to Fighter [link]
Basically same rules as before but you can't cast magic with Action Surge anymore.
Also to the mod author, you might be interested in the way they changed Fighter and it's subclasses in the Playtest.
I'd also like to add that I think this brand new mod, Battle Master Superior Recovery, would be a good way to integrate Battle Master as "yeah but I do the superiority dice BETTER" subclass in the way that Champion is the current "Fighter but more Fighter" subclass.
(I also feel like between weapon actions which expend on a miss, and maneuvers, and feats, and fighting styles, there are way too many subsystems with too much overlap. But to revise such a thing into a more integrated system, like spells, is a bit beyond the scope of a BG3 mod.)
BATTLEMASTER:
*New: Gains 1 Additional Maneuver die.
*(Adjusted) Reposition: Grants to themselves OR an ally.
Press the Attack: Remains the same.
Tactical Awareness: Remains the same.
Improved Superiority Dice: Remains the same.
CHAMPION:
*(Adjusted) Rush of Battle: Now scales with any extra attacks they gain (so Two at level 5, Three at level 11).
Peerless Athlete Jump: Remains the same.
Immunity to Crit at lvl 7: Remains the same.
Crit Hit range at 10 and fighting style: Remains the same.
ELDRITCH KNIGHT:
Arcane Cascade: Remains the same.
War Magic: Remains the same.
Eldritch Strike: Remains the same.
*(Adjusted) Lvl 11: Now Two extra attacks with cantrips OR spells (there’s no reason casting a cantrip over a spell should feel stronger at this point, unless you’re using the new Arcane Cascade feature, but we’re also very limited in spell slots/levels anyways).
Thanks for the mod, I'll be using it in my playthroughs from now on! *Endorsed
As for rush of battle, I debated letting a full attack happen and I'm still not quite sure where it should be power-level wise. I mainly focused on getting these in the game first so for this one I went with the smaller buff to not break things while I run some math to see what the right spot for it is.
I kind of agree with the Eldritch Knight lvl 11 ability change too, though I mainly was going off of the new Onednd (or revised 5e ig) change where they can replace one attack with a cantrip or two with a spell. This proved tough to implement since the scripting for extra attack is needlessly complicated (which is why you have to cast the spell/cantrip first. I've only been modding for a few days now). I'll sleep on this one and give it a look while I'm running my other numbers.
I appreciate your support and feedback, you're the best!
at lvl 2, 6, 14 the fighter receives the following feature:
Warrior TechnickChose one of the 3 following options: Action Surge, Combat Superiority or a Feat
Since in bg3 you will probably can not limit the ASI on lvl 2, you probably should not give feat as an option at lvl 2.
I also scale Combat Superiority (which gives maneuvers and dices) at lvls 6 and 14
This empowers players giving they more options to play as they like.