D&D, multiple attacks, and an alternative

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Here, let me give you an example of two features that are mechanically almost identical, but thematically different.

Render Impotent (Su) - You reach out and feel your target's vital energy, locating a weak point and striking it to render the opponent impotent. They must pass a Fortitude Save, DC X, or get depressed and sad at what you just did, becoming Shaken until they go see a doctor.

Widowmaker (Ex) - Targeting your opponent's genitals (wherever they are), you smack the unholy shit out of them. The target must pass a Fortitude Save, DC X, or their genitals explode and they are Shaken for like, ten minutes or something.

One is better for a Monk or a jedi or whatever, the other is better for a Barbarian or Fighter.
I don't really have much stake in this conversation, I just wanted to write up a couple nut-busters.

[JonSetanta]

People are telling you that's not what fighter players and most other people want fighters to do because it doesn't fit with their character concept of person who uses muscles and actual physical weapons.

It's optional. Like, you know, spells.

This is as if you're complaining about a single spell choice for Wizards ruining the entire stereotype.

If a player doesn't want the ability, they don't learn it for the character.

[Kaelik]

People are telling you that's not what fighter players and most other people want fighters to do because it doesn't fit with their character concept of person who uses muscles and actual physical weapons.

It's optional. Like, you know, spells.

This is as if you're complaining about a single spell choice for Wizards ruining the entire stereotype.

If a player doesn't want the ability, they don't learn it for the character.

Look man, you can't say that an option spell ruins a spellcasting concept, My Necromancer just knows the spell fireball, my Beguiler just learned the spell Raise Dead, and my Wizard just learned the spell Barbarian Rage 5/day which he doesn't cast but just happens.

This doesn't have to effect your necromancer, beguiler, or wizard because all it does is make your character a necromancer who refused to learn fireball, a beguiler who refused to learn Raise Dead, and a Wizard who refused to learn Barbarian Rage. But also your character could learn this tomorrow, and every day will be defined in part by their refusal to learn this spell.

Likewise, it's totally not a problem that my fighter learned the sword strike Teleport, where he imagines a location, chants some words, and then he and several people touching him teleports to that place. It doesn't have any effect on all the fighters who choose not learn this sword strike, except of course that they are all now defined as people who could have learned this but didn't and the class fighter which is a large defining concept of the character is defined as a class that can teleport by chanting magic words and visualizing.


I get that your thing is never learning a new thing no matter what anyone says to you, but please put that on hold for just a second to try to understand a thing multiple people have told you: Theme matters. What people do and how they do is important not just because of specific game balance concerns, but because creating theming is an important part of getting people to enjoy a game.

And also your theme of people cutting the memories out of their brains with a physical sword that magically becomes a spirit sword to avoid cutting the brains of people when you want to cut their memories is not appropriate to a fighter.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

And also your theme of people cutting the memories out of their brains with a physical sword that magically becomes a spirit sword to avoid cutting the brains of people when you want to cut their memories is not appropriate to a fighter.

You're right, that's too cool for a fighter.

[JonSetanta]

The theme is Charles Atlas Superpower.

You punch, swing weapon, or throw, or shoot projectile hard enough that you surpass mundane reality.

Yes, I can move on past the "attack mental concept" option if you truly believe that's not something any warrior player would want, but one detail: You keep calling these ideas "fighter" powers.

The class I'm slowly developing is NOT a fighter. It's a Paragon, which might resemble any Paladin, Fighter, Swordsage, or Barbarian at low levels, but the design goal is to surpass "I approach the monster and attack".
As mentioned earlier, examples are Thor, Cuchulainn, and weeb warriors.
That's the theme, not Footsoldier Number 634 that just so happened to acquire a Magic Sword +1.

[Kaelik]

Your theme is "no theme because having a theme is too hard" so your theme is going to suck.

You have structured this thread and the conversation as fixing a problem in D&D, not just making a homebrew class to be ignored by anyone who wants good things.

[JonSetanta]

Then I'll just make a new thread.

[Lord Charlemagne]

https://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=50341

A little late, there was a earlier thread discussing the role iterative attacks vs one big attack should have in a D&D-like game, linked above, along with some other related discussion.

[Harshax]

In the OP's original link, DM David suggests that the reason 5E didn't go with a single attack that does a lot of damage is that bounded accuracy still makes fighters whiff a lot.

I have a OCR game on my hard drive that gives every class a Fray dice. This is a die of damage that can be applied to a single foe every round, regardless if you hit or not, or something like that. I only skimmed the document recently.

In 1E AD&D, a fighter could attack once per level against creatures with less than 1 HitDie. This mostly guaranteed that fighters would sow kobolds and goblins like wheat.

So as a fumbling suggestion (I have a massive headache), why not just have Fighters roll a Fray attack, rolling their combined damage dice as one, and applying it automatically to creatures with HD below a certain threshold? At 1st level, a Fighter can Fray against all 1HD creatures. That means, he automatically hits (regardless of AC) and rolls normal damage. Or maybe this applies to minions only? This is treated as cleave damage against any 1HD creatures in melee range. So if the Fighter rolls 12 points of damage this would automatically slay 2 creatures with 6 Hit Points.

When the Fighter would normally get a 2nd attack, his Fray attack gains an additional damage roll and the creatures that the fighter can Fray against goes up one. At 5th level, a 2nd attack is gained. Fray attacks are now twice that of 1st level and automatically affect creatures of 2HD or lower. At 11th level Damage x 3 and affects 3HD and so on.

I don't really know what 5E does for appropriate encounters involving mooks. So, I'm not sure if a Fray attack, as I've suggested it, would scale appropriately. Does the 9 HD BBEG have a horde of 2HD gnolls or 4HD ogres? Maybe that's a question for encounter composition and a suggestion that the MC includes mooks to be dispatched easily to make the fighter feel useful.

Additionally, again to address the whiff factor of bounded-accuracy, a successful hit gets a normal damage roll. But a failed attack still does a lesser amount of damage. At 11th when a Fighter rolls 3dW for damage, a failed attack roll still does 1d or half or something. Going toe-to-toe with a fighter isn't ever an all (hit) or nothing (miss) affair.

Combine this with previous options that a Fighter treats their damage roll as a pool of actual damage options or special moves, I think this could solve the problem of the fighter getting too many dice rolls to resolve their attack, the whiff facter of bounded accuracy, and the lack of superiority against minions.

[angelfromanotherpin]

The Nightmares Underneath gave fighters the generous ability where they aren't rolling to see if they hit, but to see if they do normal or double damage. That was very flat, but I imagine you could scale it, or something like it.

I remember back when we were discussing 4E/TNE, the subject of how much it sucks when your turn is move and *miss* came up, and the thought was that Minor action abilities could be the stopgap, providing small but very reliable contributions alongside the riskier/rewardier Attack actions. Minor action chip damage seems like something you'd want to consider carefully re: armies vs dragons and mooks vs PCs, though.

[Harshax]

Having recently played a session of 5E as a sub-optimal 14th level ranger against 3 Dragonborn bruisers and a "lightning wyvern" that got both a bite and a sting attack, I dropped from 101HP to -14 in one round. This was fifteen individual to-hits. The other PCs, faced with similar situations, were squeezing every reaction and special effects out of their character sheet to mitigate hits and damage and I got super bored listening to them go over all their possibilities. It was a bit overwhelming, because I have spent fuckall learning 5E. I think a single attack roll from PC fighters and surges/fighter-damage pool options might be super efficient, if the MC plans their encounters appropriately, but I have zero idea how that even scales.

I've heard 5E math is bad, so I'm not too worried that my suggestion is absolute shit. Just maybe, kinda shit depending on what the DM's guide suggests is proper encounter design.

[JonSetanta]

https://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=50341

A little late, there was a earlier thread discussing the role iterative attacks vs one big attack should have in a D&D-like game, linked above, along with some other related discussion.

Thank you!

I'll check that out.

[JonSetanta]

So, to explain further why I slowly slapped out concepts for a new warrior class in this thread, it's a direct response to the ever-increasing number of attack rolls without actually getting Nice Things like status effects and area attacks.
I've been dissecting the Tome Monk capabilities, and Frank's Crusader, but this is the last mention of the Paragon class here. I'll write it offline and post the first version in a week or two in a new thread.

[JonSetanta]

So, I had another idea stemming from a post or few some pages back about hitting on every melee swing.

If I were to make this a class ability or feat, I'd limit it to once a round, no matter how many attacks a warrior got.
Naturally this would make little difference in high levels but if I assigned it at, say, level 6 it would be pretty much a close-range True Strike attached attack or Magic Missile spell.

I was also thinking of applying an hourly resource for the encounter-ending abilities based on Frank's post a while ago about Barbarians being fueled by a "Rage pool", can't remember the thread name but it outlined the various resources classes use and for Fighter/Semi-superhero characters I could just rename it Stamina or Momentum.

Like Tome Spheres, lower level abilities would not drain this resource as a warrior gets more levels. They would only limit the most powerful ones.
It might also be spent defensively to reduce or even negate damage as an Immediate action, succeed on a save, or dodge an attack. This would have to be applied wisely as the resource would go to zero very quickly if being spent on both offense and defense every round, with no way to refresh it mid combat.

[Zaranthan]

I refer to that resource management thread all the time:
viewtopic.php?t=53893

As for reducing the cost of lower level abilities, that can get weird. It's more straightforward to either have abilities scale up to remain relevant, and limit the number of them available, or let them swap obsolete abilities for better ones, so the resources are more stable and predictable.

[JonSetanta]

I refer to that resource management thread all the time:
viewtopic.php?t=53893

As for reducing the cost of lower level abilities, that can get weird. It's more straightforward to either have abilities scale up to remain relevant, and limit the number of them available, or let them swap obsolete abilities for better ones, so the resources are more stable and predictable.

Aha! The thread. Thanks.

Yes, I could have them all scale, but certain debuff effects don't work against high level monsters due to immunity lists.
Swapping is a must if I'm going to even approach Tier 2 warrior status, since every Tier 1 caster can swap out their entire spell list daily.

I also want to avoid the Five Moves of Doom trope.
Either cooldown or resource pool would work, but some Strike abilities are simply better suited to certain situations than others.
The option to use one Metastrike to fling the warrior at a dragon from 120 feet away, deal damage, then apply something like Shaken, Dazed, or Stunned in the same turn, then on further turns optionally go for either single-attack massive damage or a multitude of blows is ideal.

[JonSetanta]

So, to shift over the discussed excerpts and failed concepts of a Paragon PC to a new thread, I have only one question:

Would a collection of Metastrikes work better as a base class, prestige class, or scaling feats for a Fighter (or perhaps even anyone) to take?

[deaddmwalking]

Would a collection of Metastrikes work better as a base class, prestige class, or scaling feats for a Fighter (or perhaps even anyone) to take?

This is 100% dependent on your goal.

As initially described, you're looking to make a melee style class that is simple but deals relevant amounts of damage. To me that says Base Class.

I personally wouldn't bother going with a prestige class. It's better to be able to do archetypal stuff from Level 1, not Level 6.

If you opt for feat(s), while martial classes in general would benefit from level-relevant damage, unless you've adjusted feat progressions most classes won't be able to acquire them. If these are general feats and are good enough to warrant everyone taking them, they'll miss out on potentially other cool feats that provide more space to differentiate characters.

If you decide not to go with a base class, it's possible to reimagine these as 'stances' that are available to everyone, just like 'fighting defensively' is an option anyone can take. If you went that route, you'd probably apply a condition and action cost.

Examples:
Sweeping Blade (Stance): You may spend a full action to enter the sweeping blade stance. On your following turn, you may make a melee attack against every opponent within your threatened area.

Lightning Stroke (Stance): As a move action, you may enter the Lightning Stroke stance. While using this stance, you lose the ability to make attacks of opportunity and take a -4 to AC. You may make a single attack as a standard action that does triple base weapon damage. If this attack results in a critical, critical weapon damage is also tripled, but not other bonuses such as Strength, magic weapon bonus, damage from the flaming property, etc.

You could have feats that either improve your access (ie, removes some of the penalties/costs) or allow you to combine multiple stances simultaneously.

[JonSetanta]

The goal isn't just about dealing relevant damage, though. It's about adjusting the area of effect, riders, limited defensive options...

But I was considering Prestige so a character would have an AoE Metastrike at PrC L1 at least as a slotted option, then go up from there.

EDIT: On further consideration, I'll do a mix of PrC (because I want players to have the option of Monk/Paragon, Fighter/Paragon, Paladin/Paragon, etc) and some feats that everyone can opt for. It'll take some work splitting what counts as a truly exclusive "Paragon only" ability, and a combat option that, reasonably, someone like a Rogue or Bard might be able to accomplish.

Spending attacks beyond the first in each turn is most likely the best option, as my earlier proposal of temporarily reducing the ingrained Enhancement bonus to weapons held would only mess with the RNG.

[OgreBattle]

1) Core gameplay mechanic Attacks for things you can do in Mario and the NFL
2) Feats to augment the core mechanic effect Attacks in a class agonistic way
3) Class ability Attacks for things that use class resources

[JonSetanta]

I'm considering something like an alternative to Power Attack where AC is reduced instead of accuracy for a damage boost once per round.

[Zaranthan]

So, Shock Trooper?

[JonSetanta]

Oh? It's actually a thing in Tome already?
I'll look it up.

EDIT: OK it's not Tome, it's Complete Warrior, but I'm going to take it a step further and add to the damage for each attack "sacrificed" in a round.

https://dndtools.org/feats/complete-war ... per--2614/

Ironically it's a terrible feat since it, mostly, can be used only on the first turn of combat, unless you keep running, turn around, and go back the other way.
Also, a warrior has to subtract -5 from BAB AT LEAST before even subtracting from AC, I think I can do better than this.

[Kaelik]

Jon setana finding shock trooper the most widely understood to be broken essential combo piece and being like "wow this sucks" is fucking funny as shit.

Edit: by the way you misread it. They don't have to do 5 from bab before subtracting from ac. They have do to at least 5 and then they switch that five to ac.

It doesn't matter because you generally power attack for 100% with heedless charge.

Shocktrooper is a part of every charge build. And people made lots of minor variations to get 2 or 3 k damage by level 10 on a charge.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Oh? It's actually a thing in Tome already?
I'll look it up.

EDIT: OK it's not Tome, it's Complete Warrior, but I'm going to take it a step further and add to the damage for each attack "sacrificed" in a round.

https://dndtools.org/feats/complete-war ... per--2614/

Ironically it's a terrible feat since it, mostly, can be used only on the first turn of combat, unless you keep running, turn around, and go back the other way.
Also, a warrior has to subtract -5 from BAB AT LEAST before even subtracting from AC, I think I can do better than this.

Are you fucking high? How are you gonna do better than Attack to AC? Like Kaelik said, any time someone uses Heedless Charge, they're going to boost their AC as high as possible. It seems like you want to do AC to Attack, which is... questionable. It's like a Barbarian's Reckless Attack from 5e, except you're even more likely to get hit. It's gotta be a hell of an attack bonus to be worth deliberately exposing my asshole like that.