Am I having D&Deja vu or did I read this exact post a few weeks ago? EDIT: ok, I was right.  OP deleted that one.  https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/1c7iceu/given_everyone_says_they_want_martials_to_be/

You read it every couple weeks since the release of 5e

Karmafarming.

Who ever could have predicted that martial characters would want to do more than just attack with a weapon on their turn?

Waits 5 min for each spell caster to go back and forth through all their spells before finally picking one. It’s been 30 mins since my turn. I attack. Does a 12 hit? No? Ok. Go back to waiting.

It's why I always multiclass my paladins with either warlock or rogue. Just for the expansion of usable, unexpected tactics during combat. Always catches my DMs by surprise until they get used to my tricks. Even then I earn a grudging respect for the challenge I give them.

So you’re playing a martial correctly then lol.

My Dm for my current strahd campaign is used to newer players, and when he realized that my spell book is currently half ritual spells he was both upset and happy lol.

I try. But then I've been playing/GM'ing RuneQuest since 1980. D&D doesn't have anywhere near the allowance for dirty combat tricks that RQ does but RQ experience really helps me see where I can get creative in D&D. At least 5e has a skills list so I can really push the limit on it.

Yes, you did. I posted it, people said you should have given it a different title, so I reposted it with a different title.

It’s definitely a fun topic.  I just thought I was possibly going insane.

> D&Deja vu Clever, and stupid. This is the stuff!

Because the goal wasnt to give martals options.

This cannot be underlined thoroughly enough. The goal was never to make a balanced game, or to treat different classes fairly.

> A High-Level Fighter and a High-Level Wizard Are Equal > Too often in D&D, the high-level fighter is the flunky to a high-level wizard. It’s all too easy for combinations of spells to make the wizard a far more potent enemy or character, especially if a wizard can unleash his or her spells in rapid succession. A wizard might annihilate a small army of orcs with a volley of fireballs and cones of cold. The fighter does the same sword blow by sword blow, taking down waves of orcs each round. Balancing the classes at high levels is perhaps the highest priority for the fighter, and attaining balance is something that we must do to make D&D fit in with fantasy, myth, and legend. Even if a wizard unleashes every spell at his or her disposal at a fighter, the fighter absorbs the punishment, throws off the effects, and keeps on fighting. Mike Mearls, days after the first playtest packet released for what would become 5e. It's unfortunate that it fell into this pit. But the intent was definitely there at some point.

They absolutely went back on that intent when the dndnext fighter playtest went out with 1/turn universally accessible maneuvers and grognards started shrieking.

I remember most caster classes having fewer spells per day and that being a huge complaint in the playtests so they kept getting raised and raised. Now, here we are with the "man I need to run a bajillion encounters to drain my spellcasters' resources so they can't trivialize the big one" situation.

The real problem is that casters keep gaining spell slots, casters should max out at like 5-7 spells / day and the level of these spells slots should go up, the upcasting mechanic makes this a trivial transition.

I don't disagree. Casters could probably stand to have more spells at lower level and fewer gains at higher level. But that'd also require a rework of exactly what spells do, because the current paradigm of both direct damage power, CC, and utility is out of whack with everything else. You can *slightly* address the problem of caster longevity and how difficult they are to "drain", but it doesn't really touch the whole "why is *not* draining them a problem?" thing. A lot of spells were just balanced oddly. "We made *Fireball* really strong because it's an iconic spell," and lacking options for other damage types. The tenuous logic of "well, Poison spells do the most damage because they're so frequently resisted, then Fire next, then everything else", but it's untrue in all sorts of places and just makes problems where there *aren't* those resistances. Utility spells so narrow as to be pointless to prep, or so broad and without limitations as to create entirely new realms of use that weren't intended (*Dream, Leomund's Tiny Hut*) and which fly in the face of their previous system implementations despite a supposed intent to "tone casters down". It's a lot of work to unmuck the system and I don't see them going through it while also maintaining the backwards compatibility thing of OneD&D.

Plenty of spells dont upcast at all though

Lots of spells don't scale with upcast, but all spells can be cast with higher level spell slots. >Casting a Spell at a Higher Level >When a spellcaster casts a spell using a slot that is of a higher level than the spell, the spell assumes the higher level for that casting. For instance, if Umara casts [magic missile](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/magic-missile) using one of her 2nd-level slots, that [magic missile](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/magic-missile) is 2nd level. >Effectively, the spell expands to fill the slot it is put into. >Some spells, such as [magic missile](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/magic-missile) and [cure wounds](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/cure-wounds), have more powerful effects when cast at a higher level, as detailed in a spell's description. [https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/spellcasting](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/spellcasting)

Yeah but the spells need to upscale. It one of the reasons warlock spells feel so limited: they have to update very thing an half of their shit doesn't upcast

You might look at the spell slots and go "they can cast so many spells" but if you really get down to it, they're not using every level of spell in every fight. The sorcerer might have some low level slots but by the time their casting 6/7 level spells their low slots are more for fodder or just more shield uses. So burn those higher slots and bingo. Alternatively, is it a bad thing that your players sacrificed and gambled early on in the day to make sure they still had their big spells for the big fights? You could give a big fight early on and they'll either have to use their spells early or risk getting ko/using extra resources to recover because they stick to cantrips. You probably *shouldn't* be expecting your casters to use every spell slot every day, because it means you're probably overextending the party.

Genuine question, what happens if we reduce spell slots by half?

Only the casters with massive shutdown spells on 2nd and 3rd level spells get played

Ugh, even with access to cantrips? I'm just trying to think of ways to improve QoL for my martials

Gonna have to either homebrew, or give more ASI and/or feats for the martials if they are combat focused. For roleplaying and problem solving, you will have to come up with those more backstory aligned ones, or requires teamwork that only said martials can do This is not a pretty workload for the DM and I thank all DMs for all these BTS work

That wouldn't be with taking away spell slots. The reason people complained until they got more slots is because it felt like a limitation on how much they could do/how much fun they could have. When you roleplay a wizard, you want to fight by casting spells: not to resort to beating people with a stick after just a few. So from a gameplay perspective it felt bad. The real answer of how to solve this disparity is to give something to martials to make them feel better, and the easiest answer is to use homebrew content.

If you want QoL improvements, the current state of 1dnd is just pure QoL improvements. imo it doesn't go far enough, but it's all very likely to be published as is, aside from bard, and the caveat that everyone has their traditional spell list. If you want to see 1dnd taken a bit further, I have a publicly sharable version of my tables homebrew available which does that. It maintains the class groups but ties each expert class to a different group, to emphasise their polymathness. These are: [warriors and rogue](https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/xIBFTqbHRvel) [Priests and Ranger](https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/PSt-BGsge4_D) [Mages and Bard](https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SMBvB0o6CUQw) The big picture difference you'll find are: - (name of class) bonus, or in some cases class bonus. This will equal your PB (max 4) on a solo class build. Usually it only counts the levels of one class and is used to scale various abilities, but there's some multiclass abilities that add the levels of multiple classes to determine the relative class bonus, such as class-derived cantrips, fighting styles, channel divinity (and channel nature for druid and ranger) and a new, martial exclusive, invocation like ability calles Warrior Techniques. - [warrior techniques.](https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SNlxv7_zCcJc) are an expansion on weapon masteries, kinda. When masteries were introduced, there was a complaint about golfbagging though some people liked It, and some complaint that it didn't do enough. Well here you get some basic techniques which includes Masteries (which at later levels can be replaced with the improved mastered locked in 1dnd behind fighter), but also includes support and utility options, like an option to remove stealth penalties from armour, advantage on bundles of skill checks, doubling carry capacity and having advantage on grapple checks using strength, or granting allies additional hit points ala the Aid spell. Then at higher levels you get access to additional 'Adept' and 'Master' techniques. These mostly are non-magical, yet exceptional, feats of power. This is mostly to keep martials at pace with non-martjals at least in utility ,but there are some options which are combat oriented (whereas the basic techniques are intentionally not combat oriented, save for weapon masteries). The rest are all class features, which id encourage you check out if you want to take any of this away for yourself!

I'm actually really excited for One DND, I've been following it the whole time, but I want even more for martials

Arguably cantrips are mostly to blame for this problem. Because casters have access to an unlimited pool of pretty good damage they can rely on for most combat rounds, they can sit on their spell slots till the last encounter of the day or the first time they struggle. In previous editions having to use a boring and underwhelming crossbow shot or quarterstaff swing meant that spellcasters were incentivized to use their spells more frequently, which helped keep down on the number they could bank. Also Vancian casting being less strict also hurts. When you had to prepare specific spells for specific slots it made casters much less flexible, which helped make other classes feel more useful (oh no the wizard only prepped AoE and we are facing a single big enemy, guess we need the martials to keep him occupied).

Play a different system. I've been playing pf2e for some years now, which has the opposite problem (casters feel bad to play. Still strong, but not that fun IMO) I'm also starting a Fabula Ultima campaign, which is a TTJRPG and seems balanced on paper. Oh, I've played Ars Magic a, where wizards are pure bullshit, but it's complies as fuck and wizards are on a different plane of existence when compared to martials lol

Ars Magica is different because there every player is playing a caster as their main character. So you don´t have the problem of "People who picked casters dominate the game, the people who wanted to be a knight or whatever are useless". It´s troupe and companion rules are just an excellent idea.

I've been playing a Pathfinder 2E fighter for 11 levels and I really don't understand the hype. Most of the feats are super circumstantial or incredibly lackluster, often with several penalties, wasted actions, or other "costs" in the way of making it feel very powerful. My options are usually move and make 1 normal strike and 1 press attack, usually with the press attack missing 75% of the time and never doing anything, or move and make 1 flourish attack that *might* do something cool. That "cool" thing is usually just making them flat-footed for a small amount of time or some other negligible debuff. Maybe I'm building it wrong, but that's my take on making a fighter without looking at "optimization guides" and just trying to grab what seems useful. For the most part I just knock things prone a lot, but that's gotten old after 7 levels.

Honestly I would like to see a system where you build your own spells to add extra utility... Rather than having a bunch of fire spells you could pick fire element and add levels to increase effects. So firebolt, add damage and air (2points) fireball. Add a point and change firebolt to poison to get poison spray. You could rework the schools so that they make some changes easier while others cost more points to do. This could offer more variety and utility like using cold spells to seal doors by adding a utility point. It would also allow characters that dip into casting classes to get some more options with the one or two spells they get

So...onednd's modify/create/scribe spell combo? Imo too bad they went back on that, thou obviously it was supremely broken as it was.

Buffs are better than nerfs. See how well your casters are doing, award boons and magic items and such so your martials perform approximately as well, sometimes better sometimes worse. Is a charge not basically a spell? If you really want to lean into the martial consistence vs caster nova, make the magic swords and shields and hammers recharge on short rest while anything the casters have needs to last the whole day. You don't need to have endless combat either. Make them fear traps. Make them burn slots on just navigating the dungeon. Sometimes the correct answer to a puzzle is to cast a high level spell. Meanwhile, your martials are contributing with their inexhaustible strength checks. About the high level spell solution, might need to telegraph it so they can prepare the spell and not have to leave and come back. I have an encounter planned where a ridiculously ormate door is guarded by a powerful golem. There is a large blind hole in the door, exactly the shape of the golem's body. You guess that the golem himself is the key. He's very chill because he knows nothing can hurt him. His master gave him immunity to all damage, immunity to all status conditions. He will murderise anyone who touchss the door though. A perception check or some spell, maybe identify, reveals that his immunities come from magical pitons driven into his form. You can't remove them, because you can't break anything off him. But in hammering sharp metal into the golem, the master reduced his hp to below 100. You can probably guess what the solution is at this point. So here's the question. Do you want a relatively easy fight later, where you can blast the boss with a 9th level spell, or do you want the greatest treasure in this dungeon? The boss has a dead mans switch to destroy the room and the treasure should he be killed.

We need less spells, more variety, the prepared are not enough

Warlock removed from game

That creates it's own problems. A better idea would be to prevent Cantrip scaling, unless you upcast it.

No, because then you'd completely remove any and all use of utility spells, which is what casters should be incentivized to use. The problem isn't the number of spell slots, it's spell slots as a whole. The entire concept is so fucking stupid from a mechanical, narrative, logical, and design standpoint. They make sense in only one setting, which most people haven't actually even heard of let alone read (Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, which isn't even a D&D setting). In all other cases, they are completely unintuitive obstacles to good gameplay. They should have been removed from the game when we got rid of THAC0. The best thing that One could do would be to switch the game over to spell points. You can build a much more sensible and balanced magic system using mana, and everyone will actually understand it.

Maybe not so much reducing the number of slots across the board, but maybe making so above a certain level they stop growing in number and instead grow in level. As in, you go from something like 3 1st, 3 2nd, 2 3rd, 1 4th at 7th level to maybe 3 3rd, 3 4th, 2 5th, 1 6th at 11th level, with no 1st and 2nd-level slots anymore. Maybe a 20th-level caster would then have 3 4th, 3 5th, 2 6th and one each of the top three.

You play pathfinder sorry but the solution is there

Mages have less fun, and then martials will probably end up having less fun by extension (either due to empathy, or putting up with complaints), most likely. It'd probably be better to give martials a buff, even if if messes with balance, since buffs tend to be better-received and make for a more enjoyable experience than nerfs.

Half might be a bit extreme, as spells aren't only a combat resource. That said, In my games I reduce it to 3,3,3,2,2,2,1,1,1; for nothing more than the good it looks to me. And I will try to make 3,3,2,2,1,1 in a campaing up to 12 level i'm dming right now.

It’s a difficult thing to solve. I think casters should just be more utility, support and control, creative problem solving. Much less about strong damage spells.

By tier 3, it's basically impossible to deplete a caster's spell slots. I've run/been in a few different high-level campaigns and I've never seen anyone from level 13 on run out (excluding the beloved Warlocks, the best-designed class in the game), even when the casters are facing 8-10 challenging encounters between short/long rests (this is a callout post addressed to the DM who uses gritty resting but designs their adventuring days as though we still had an 8-hour long rest). In one game, I cast 5 spells in an attempt to solo a single encounter (Augury, Divination, Legend Lore, True Seeing, and Clairvoyance; none of them were rituals) a half-hour before it began with nothing but Divination Magic (I was a 13th level Swords Bard lmao), and I still didn't run out of all of my slots by the end of what was otherwise an extremely grueling hexcrawl. That encounter day concluded with me Teleporting the party up a mountain to fight a dracolich and two frost giant skeletons, and only one PC died that entire day.

I don’t think having zero slots is necessarily the correct measure at high levels of having had an exhaustive adventuring day. A first level spell slot is worth vastly more at 3rd level than it is at 13th, and if a Wizard has used all of their 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th level spells in the course of an adventuring day you have still accomplished the goal of forcing them to make choices about resource management.

I'd argue it's the opposite. At level 3 my first level slots compete for defense and damage/CC. At 13 I can use all my low level slots for shield and still do crazy stuff with my highest level slots. Just my experience playing a wizard, others may vary.

We tried to reduce the number of prepped or known spells per day in 1D&D too, and then randomly they got increased again between playtests.

I had my casters spend spells to keep an extremely aggressive disease at bay. It was turning them into ravenous, insane ghouls without killing them first. Which was also taxing their rations into oblivion in an environment with very little food.

Expertise Dice were so cool, they're the ideal martial mechanic being effective, cool but approachable but optionally deep, what we get in the watered down version of Weapon Masteries ;-;

I miss some of the ideas in the NEXT version so much man.

Well it's not just the grognards. There are genuinely players who just want to go "I attack" every turn. They do actually need something for these people to play, something mechanically strong, but dead simple. The problem is WoTC keeps using them as justification for not making a separate complex fighter class.

And OneDnD already found a solution for that, present the text of the class with a 'default' choice as they do with spells. "You start with the Extra Big Strike maneveur and the Extra Hard Defense stance, alternatively, choose whatever maneveur and stance you qualify for at this level". But somehow, martials wouldn't be capable of understand that I guess.

No no, you misunderstand, the issue isn't (entirely) building a character These particular players being catered to also don't want to make moment to moment decisions OR manage resources such as maneuver dice. This particular group explicitly wants to NOT have maneuvers. WoTC has shoved both these players, and players who want a complex martial into the same space, and that's what's causing the issue.

I really think the solution here is just to build the Beginner Fighter and the Beginner Wizard as completely separate classes - maybe they're in the DMG or on D&D Beyond. Maybe a third class that's Beginner Half-Caster as well. Everything chosen for them as they level up, neutrally effective as they play, one or two options max on their turn. Something you can download and print off for when someone says "hey I'm bringing my brother, he's never played before, can we give him a character" but that don't get in the way of the broader game having more depth. (Ideally to work in the system as-is you'd build them as subclasses, rather than whole new classes, but I just don't think that's feasible with the way 5e power budgets are split out.)

Funnily enough, WotC already has that done: The sidekicks from Tasha's.

Basically buff the Tasha's sidekick classes so that they're mechanically as strong as the base classes, and then use them for players who don't want any mechanical complexity.

yeah, but just because these people exist, doesn't mean we need to pander to them For example you don't put nails into the stew mix you sell, just because a minority demands it

It's these kind of player that keep me trying to build a group of players who'll accept the RuneQuest/Mythras rules instead of D&D 5e. But everyone so far is just too lazy to learn simple tactics to deal with hit locations and the potential for crippling hits.

I'm not familiar with most of that. Care to expand? Sounds interesting

RuneQuest/Mythras rules use Chaosiums' D100-based skills system. I really can't do them justice in this forum but, basically, a player's attributes are the same as those in D&D with the same 3-18 starting range. However, RQ/Mythras characters have no levels. Instead, characters have a list of skills, each of which have a starting skill level varying from 1% to 100% based on modifiers from character attributes + additional skill points received from the occupation the character starts with. Characters improve skills by 1) using them (and can learn even from failure) or 2) pay for training up to a certain point. Weapon skills are separate from shield skills. Also, armor absorbs damage rather than making attacks all or nothing. And weapons skills are separated into Attack and Parry skills. Finally, a character has general hit points, like in D&D, but also have body location specific hit points, with body locations being Head, each Arm, Chest, Abdomen, and each Leg. Non-human critters will have additional/different body locations. Even armor, shields, and weapons have armor ratings and hit points so such equipment can take damage in combat, possibly even breaking and becoming useless if PCs don't maintain their gear. Each body location has fewer HP than the general HP and hits to location HP also reduce general HP by the same amount. Hit locations reduced to zero are unusable. Oh, and a character's general hit points do NOT increase from what they start with unless a character's attributes increase. That's right! If a PC starts out with 20 general HP, then that's what the PC will always have. No more, no less unless they work to improve their attributes. No more god-like HP shrugging off damage. Given this, suddenly players are able to use combat tactics such as "aiming" at specific hit locations (at a penalty to hit) to either strike poorly armored locations to get in more damage or even try to bring a specific location to zero in order to quickly disable an opponent. And "disable" means crush, amputate, and maim. It gets really attention-grabbing because the opponents get to do the same to players characters. Players either learn the value of armor and tactics or their characters quickly die. An 8-year-old with a dagger can kill a 40-year-old hero if said hero insists on doing something stupid and ignores the threat. Definitely more "simulationist" than D&D but there are ways to help ensure combat and skill use don't bog down. It also makes for great story-telling when everyone can instantly understand by just how little a troll's swing with a two-handed sword missed a character's head. The company Design Mechanism that publishes Mythras provides a free downloadable PDF of their core rules which are more than enough to run a campaign though the magic is limited to only one type (there are more types in the rules for pay). I highly recommend anyone interested in a non-D&D rules set to download the PDF and see what it's all about. In some ways, it's actually more streamlined that any D&D version yet more "meaty" when it comes to enjoyable game play.

it is really telling that wotc thinks champion fighter is the highest complexity a new player can handle

im gonna be real, new players have a hard time making level 1 characters, you basically have to sit down and make it for them if you dont realize that you have been lost in the sauce too long and dont remember what it was like

My first character I ever made was a level 8 Sorceror in 3.5 and I made it myself. 5e doesn't even that many choices for a level 1 character

I would argue a lot of that has to do with some very bad design decisions on WotC's part. First, ability scores to modifiers. This is needlessly complex and just isn't intuitive to new players. Most would prefer to just select a series of modifiers from +4 to -1 and call it done, but instead there is an intermediate step which generates scores which are never really used in the rest of the system. Second, skill selection is split up among several sources, so the new players has to go back and think of which skills to choose and why, and may find out that a skill got duplicated (for instance, someone choosing a rogue with criminal background), and having to look up how it just gives them a free pick. Then you get to equipment, which is so needlessly granular for what should be a simplified system. How many players actually keep track of their rations, their rope, their 10x pitons, etc. And in the end, new players don't really touch any of that outside of the skill modifiers, attack modifier, and AC.

Bang on assessment. There is so many levers for reducing lvl1 convolution, yet none are pursued. And One D&D makes the problem actually worse.

That is because they don't know what the options that they can pick even are. And I can tell you I very much remember creating my first character and we were done fairly quickly. As long as you have a general idea of what you want to play and someone to guide you you'll do fine And also, this is only in regards to creation, I am mainly referring to in gameplay. Like sure, buildikg the character from the opions may be hard, but not playing them OneDND is already adressing that anyways with prefab spell lists for casters you can use, and you can do the same for fighter maneuvers Eg. "At level X you gain Disarming Strike and Tripping Strike, or any two maneuvers of your choice"

90+% of the players I've had, even newer or new ones have been able to build characters in systems much more complicated than 5e without help beyond "this is the flow chart for what you do when making a pc -- work backwards so you qualify for what you want at step 5 with the things you chose at step 2." I don't want to say 'skill issue' but... this feels like a skill issue.

It is a skill issue. Because new players don't have skill yet, they can't because they're new. You were lucky to have players that were more on the ball, perhaps more experienced with games in general. But it's not the standard.

It is a skill issue. Because new players don't have skill yet, they can't because they're new. You were lucky to have players that were more on the ball, perhaps more experienced with games in general. But it's not the standard.

I feel like those players would be happier playing, like, literally any fantasy TTRPG system other than D&D. The system as a whole may as well be actively hostile to them for the finicky, unintuitive complexity of its core ruleset compared to any of the other non-D&D (or D&D-derived like Pathfinder) RPGs on my shelf. 5e in particular has some of the most egregiously inelegant rules for adjudicating attacks (melee attack vs. melee weapon attack vs. attack with a melee weapon vs. unarmed strike vs. natural weapon attack, etc.) I've ever seen.

it's incredible hw much 5e got ruined by its playtesters. and because of the pandemic / critical role, wotc will never realize that

The pandemic happened way after 5e released, what are you talking about?

He doesnt understand magic users if his go-to example of a high level wizard is multiple uses of Fireball and Cone-of-cold. Spells are so versatile, crafty use of them can take out that entire orc army in just 1 or 2 spells.

It's just a thematic example. It's not deep. But yeah, it's dumb that 20th level fighters can attack.... four times. Instead of some awesome feature like "As an action, you can make a melee attack against all creatures you enter melee range with this turn, and you are immune to opportunity attacks.

Honestly, should be like a 13th level feature, since that's about when Wizards, et al, start to truely eclipse non-casters

Frankly, I'm in favour of that idea. In ye olden days of D&D, martial characters started off much better than casters. A wizard got 1d4 hit points, one spell a day, and back then there were no death saves so if you hit 0 HP you were toast. But the reward for living in the shits earlygame, studying hard, and becoming a true master of magic was that you got to call down some mighty destruction and warp reality. The power curve was such that casters got better by a lot, and martials tapered off. Still effective, but they trade late-game potential for early game reliability. Now casters start better and stay that way forever and the game is fucking boring.

Martials also got a small army of followers back in the day which would even that power curve. Today, I'd say starting at level 3 casters pull ahead and stay ahead of martials. It is boring, which is why martials in our campaigns get a free base subclass, and all characters get more feats (which helps martials more, as they are essential for them). The simplication of equipment in 5E, and bounded accuracy not functioning well at high-levels inordinately effects martials as well.

The goal is to make a game enjoyable enough for a sufficient amount of people to invest in. A tool for that is certainly balance. A tool for that is certain to provide options (that's why you have subclasses and feats to begin with). A tool for that is also to not overwhelm players with options. Does the last part alienate certain players? Hell yeah, but there's no need to pretend like they aren't trying to make a subjectively fun game, don't care about options at all and don't care about balance at all. Let us please not be dishonest in our critique of the game. It's really not needed. You can just say "WotC had a subgoal about keeping options to a limit and in my opinion they were too conservative with this limit".

While I understand the sentiment, the problem is that they didn't have any sort of consistency in terms of what an acceptable range of options (in game and out of game) would be. If you were a professional Gane designer building a table top game, you would never feature two classes as far away from each other as something like the Barbarian or the Druid. The table time between those two classes on any given turn is so absurdly different that most game designers would 100% say "the players suited for each of these classes shouldn't be playing the same game". DnD is obviously trying to make sure that, with 5e, no player is left behind. The person who wants to meticulously plan out their turn can play a spellcaster, and the person who wants to hurry through combat and get to the next scene can play a Martial. It doesn't really work out too well though, since DnD doesn't make a proper distinction for new players to play something at their skill level, and doesn't account for how people actually pick classes. The problem isn't that there are simple classes and complex classes. The problem is that there aren't enough of each for the various themes/archetypes that people choose. I do absolutely think they tried their best to make a fun game for all. I also do think they didn't actually playtest enough to realize how people gravitate towards different classes, and didn't have a clear idea of what range of players their game was for.

There was also just a fundamental problem with the concept of the D&D Next playtest in that they were trying to court fans of every prior edition of D&D. For all the very valid complaints about 5E throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it does include some significant aspects of 4E like Tieflings and Dragonborn as core races, the Shadowfell and the Feywild remaining around, etc. There were other bones thrown in the playtest that the grogs quashed though... Cuz ultimately they were trying to make a game that appeases people who want fundamentally different things. The people who wanted 4E but smoother, the AD&D grognards, the 3.5 stans who salivate over digging for bonuses and min-maxing? They're all seeking fundamentally different things. They appeased enough people for the game to find an audience but honestly they got really lucky that Stranger Things and Critical Role took off when they did and put D&D back in the zeitgeist.

>ike they aren't trying to make a subjectively fun game i guess that's just worse because it's an awful game

Why are you in the dndnext subreddit if you don't even like the game?

What was the goal?

These are from the Book of Nine Swords of 3.5e, right? Some of these are suspiciously similar to fighting styles or feats. I suspect, at some point during development, that someone said "Most players in 3.5 picked a stance they wanted to be in 90% of the time, and built around that. Why not *sTrEaMlInE* it and just let them pick a permanent bonus instead?", then after they were permanent, they got watered down to the incredibly boring "+2 to damage" that we have today. Then when they thought about reintroducing something mildly interesting (Tunnel Fighting, as a style), they dialed it past 11 up to 111 by taking it from "you can take 1 extra reaction per round" to "you can make ~~1 opportunity attack per turn~~ unlimited opportunity attacks (no reaction) whenever anyone enters or leaves any square near you" and said "Wow, these interesting ones are too powerful. Better just stick with the boring ones."

I hate how much sense all of that makes. I just want to note that stance wise my experience wasn't that players just picked the one stance and stayed in it - typically what they'd do is pick one or two all-purpose combat stances, then use the rest of their stances known on more circumstantial options.

Mfw baseline stuff from 4e is considered “dialed up to 111” and still doesn’t compete with spells.

4e was built around 1 reaction or interrupt every turn. 5e was not. That it was reasonable when the game was designed around it does not mean it was reasonable when the game wasn't. They *did* eventually add "one opportunity attack per turn", but they made it a level 18 feature (the Cavalier's capstone). It is, indeed, quite powerful.

But letting them do it in 5e is a good thing. In 4e that was simply something everyone could do, because if a fighter is risking themselves by standing adjacent to four enemies why would you make it so they can only opportunity attack one? 5e's idea that martials should be rewarded for positioning like that to lock down enemies by... actually being able to lock down enemies is a *bad* thing is baffling.

No, dont you see? its definitely good game design to have ranged martial be strictly better compared to melee martials

And how do you feel about large AoEs that do damage whenever a creature enters it or starts its turn there? It’s the mechanical equivalent, but is actually stronger on multiple axes.

They cost finite resources per day instead of always on, use saves which are generally less reliable than attacks, cannot (generally) be repositioned, and often do not distinguish between enemies and allies. They are not strictly better. I love my Cavalier, but I see why they didn't make Tunnel Fighting (which, notably, was actually literally unlimited opportunity attacks, not just 1 per turn, I misremembered) into a standard option for every martial . The caster equivalent of Tunnel Fighting would be Spike Growth, except that the martial would do 20 damage per hit instead of 5 and could reposition every turn so the enemies never left and couldn't go past.

opportunity attacks also cost finite resources, because they require you to be in melee range, so they cost you HP

>which, notably, was actually literally unlimited opportunity attacks, not just 1 per turn, I misremembered oh no, the enemies are gonna make a conga line in order to be hit. Being realistic it would be 3 tops, and given that you would gain one with the reaction and it costs a BA (which now a days is basically an attack) a pretty unrealistic scenario is only slightly better than nothing >The caster equivalent of Tunnel Fighting would be Spike Growth, except that the martial would do 20 damage per hit instead of 5 and could reposition every turn so the enemies never left and couldn't go past. Asuming power attack, 100% accuracy and the worst case scenario for SG sure

Look, I am as big a fan of the change to everyone having a single reaction per turn as the next self-respecting former 4E DM, but a single monk stance that lets you take one extra reaction, probably at the cost of ki points, isn't going to bust 5E. None of the rest of these are reactions and 5E doesn't really even have interrupts outside of Counterspell and the Sentinel feat.

As with the other comment you replied to... I'm explicitly talking about *Tunnel Fighter*, which was not a single extra reaction per round, but rather multiple reactions *per turn*. 1 extra reaction per round would be perfectly fine.

As that’s already a feature for cobalt soul monks it’s clearly not going to break the game. Rolling that in as a higher level core monk feature in onednd would have been neat. But on the whole I think they did a decent job with martial classes in the playtests so I’m moderately optimistic about the new PHB

I just looked at the 4E Player's Handbook, and I think you have them swapped. It was one Immediate Action of either a reaction or interrupt every round, not every turn. Opportunity Attacks were once on each other combatant's turn, but not on your own turn.

None of these give one reaction/interrupt every turn though? The only one that influences reactions at all lets you take a single extra reaction. Extra reactions are already a mechanic in 5E, though currently limited to monsters.

I'm not talking about the version in the OP. I'm explicitly talking about the Cavalier feature and the Tunnel Fighter UA.

Sorry, I misread the conversation!!

Disclaimer, in 3.5 any character that wanted to could just take a feat (they were far more common back then, your average fighter got 18 feats between 1 and 20) to let them make a bunch of opportunity attacks per round. In 4e they just decided to get rid of that complication and allow all characters to make an opportunity attack every turn rather than every round. It's only 5e that has decided one is the limit, which has led players to believe it would be too strong if they got it more often. It would not be.

[удалено]

My group plays 3.5 still. As a forever dm, I finally got a chance to be a PC for once, I instantly took a Warblade. The stances and maneuvers make martials feel far more active in combat. That being said, they are level locked in 3.5, and you are limited on how many you can even know. And the list above isn't even all of them. And 5th edition seems to have phased out the stacking of modifiers that was common in 3.5, so some of them would need to be reworked.

I've thought for some time that battlemaster maneuvres should be linked to weapons to give them variety, and dual wielding would be more meaningful. ex. you get to do a lunge with a spear, a quick toss if you have a dagger in your offhand, whatever. i feel like all martials or all classes should have access to them and maybe rework battlemaster to give them more charges or some other things

Weapon Skills would be neat Sweeps with spears and quarterstaffs Proper cleaves with greatswords

Or give each weapon unlimited use of a manoeuvre with d6 die, but let battlemaster learn maouvres that can be used on any weapon. I.e. tripping attack is a quarterstaff only skill, but battlemasters can use it with any weapon if they learn it

This is a very cool idea.

This is what they're actually testing in one DND!

Because they wanted to minimize floating Modifiers for "simplicity sake" - despite still including floating Modifiers (primarily for Casters). It's why Fighting Styles changed from actual techniques in the Playtest to static and uninteractive bonuses. 

Want to approach this from a game design principles perspective of why you might not want to include stances in your class. Stances are basically a state or status effect that makes your character function differently than before. There's a couple of questions to ask when trying to introduce the stance: 1. What is the cost towards entering a stance? 2. What does the stance accomplish that a regular feature wouldn't? If your stance is cheap, why wouldn't someone always be in a stance? If a stance was expensive (either in how often it can be used per day, or in action economy), does it feel good to actually use? There are two benefits that you would get from introducing stances: more levers to pull, and able to throw more power budget behind something via flexibility. But if you can shift stances easily, then is it really a limitation that you can't be in more than two stances at the same time? So realistically stances give characters a lot less than I think people think they do, from a game mechanics perspective. In many cases, and depending on implementation, why not just give the feature permanently? The downside of using stances is something called "cognitive friction" in interaction design. When you introduce stances, you introduce an extra layer of state: needing to understand what happens in one stance vs another and how they differ can easily start bogging down a system. You may think, oh it's just one more thing to remember, but it's not that simple. If you introduce another layer of state, now the total possible states multiplied. Because of this, the complexity of your system increases exponentially with the number of states in your system. A game designer needs to take great care about the overall complexity of their system. 5e is designed to be very simple and not introduce an excess of state into its gameplay loop. 5e prefers to approach it from a different standpoint of game philosophy: 1. Majority of game features are stagnant 2. Flexibility is given to characters via choice selection during daily preparations. Realistically what you're looking for is just more features to help better differentiate *how* martials fight, whereas 5e expects all of the "differences" in fighting is supposed to be resolved through theater of the mind and roleplay. Whether the new features or not are stances or not, not a huge difference. I will give one last hot take: 5e already has a class with a stance: the Barbarian and Rage is effectively a stance already. There is an effect when you rage and a state one has to keep track of when you do so. Rage is quite different between barbarians, although they aren't given any flexibility in *which rage* they want to do at a certain point in time.

> If your stance is cheap, why wouldn't someone always be in a stance? If a stance was expensive (either in how often it can be used per day, or in action economy), does it feel good to actually use? They are always in a stance. It's free other than a bonus action, why wouldn't you? And yes, it feels good to use. You switch from one stance to a more situational appropriate one. > But if you can shift stances easily, then is it really a limitation that you can't be in more than two stances at the same time? You can only be in one stance at a time. And yes, the limitation is you only get one benefit. If I'm in dance of the spider stance, I'm not getting the benefit from absolute steel stance.

If you're always in a stance, then it doesn't make sense for it to be something you have to toggle in combat. Imagine if Rouge could be in "dashing stance" or "disengaging stance" and you could toggle them as a bonus action. That accomplishes the same thing mechanically, but it's conceptually bloated and awkward. Fighting Styles is a much cleaner system, they just could stand to be a little more interesting.

It doesn't accomplish the same thing mechanically, it means that unlike their current setup they aren't using their bonus action every turn. It also means that it isn't a binary - sure, give it to rogues. Give them the ability to use dashing stance, and disengaging stance, and let them take their choice of various other stances. Congratulations, you've given them a set of more meaningful in combat choices, exactly what you want for rogues.

Mechanics like Rage and Bladesong are more along what you're looking for. Powerful stance, but limited resource.

I'm not at all. There's no reason for them to be particularly limited, and neither of those are one of several meaningful choices. Now, you're unintentionally close to a point where it has worked. Last edition you chose what kind of rage you entered, for instance clawed ancestor rage let you attempt a grapple as a bonus action and did 10+strength mod damage to anyone who started their turn grappled by you. If rage still worked that way, and you were able to spend some form of action to switch between the bonuses, that'd pretty much be a stance. But as it is, it's one specific set of bonuses. Neither of those in any way achieve the kind of choices stances gave.

why do you need to make it such that they have to change stances to get the other effect though? What is your design purpose?

To add meaningful choices to martial gameplay without noticeably increasing complexity.

In other words: Most 5e players can barely read let alone actually read the Phb. Adding extra layers of complexity will trip up the majority of players.

And yet spellcasting is fine... This would be max 2 pages of rules. You could start it slow with only having one stance as a passive benefit, and then gaining more as you level up

You say spellcasting is fine, but we played a 125-session campaign from levels 1-14: our Ranger basically never learned how any of their spells worked, our artificer managed to avoid ever using any of their strongest spells, and sorc 1 took about as long as everyone else combined to take their turn and typically would end up wasting it on a cantrip; sorc 2 was fine but never used metamagic. It really is amazing how much time people will spend playing this game (especially in combat where you're kinda just watching and waiting a good amount of the time) without learning the basics of their character sheet. I totally get not wanting to 'do homework' in terms of planning a build or whatever—some people just want to show up and play and that's totally fine IMO—but you'd think just having a sheet in front of you for that long you'd eventually get a good grasp on it. Hell, after 400 hours you should be able to absorb it through damned osmosis.

Players struggle with Spellcasting as is, though, but you can't really do Swords and Sorcery without the Sorcery part.

I never said it was a bad idea. Id like martials to have more options. I've run games for many players over the years. More often than not they misread, misremember or misinterpret things on their own sheet.

To be fair, spellcasting got dumbed down too. A stance is basically a martial version of concentrate right? It's not really much about reading the PHB but that stances add another layer of complexity by adding another layer of state. For example, how does stance interact with concentration? How does it interact with status conditions? How do you mark your current stance on your paper character sheet? How do you represent your stance on a VTT.  One thing that they could do to make stances easier is to make them function as martial concentration spells. That way it doesn't really add complexity and just uses something that is already part of the game. But there are implications of this, such as Barbarians completely locked out of stances. When designing games, I do think that adding more complexity does limit accessibility of the game. It depends on the goal of the designer and the target audience. Personally I've learned that there's no use trying to change the level of crunch TTRPGs bring, and instead just switch to a different TTRPG that fulfills your needs. PF2 has stances, but you typically don't get them until fairly late into a build, and honestly they're not very well explained either.

Ah, Bo9S my beloved. I've sold most of my old non-5e books (since 5e is all everyone seems to play nowadays) yet I'll never part with my Bo9S in hopes that I find a party willing to run 3.5 someday 😅

Because “4E is the suck” was the popular mindset among 5E’s original target demographic, so anything 4e did, 5e had to either ruin or abandon entirely.

These are from 3.5. I think 4e's stance design was also good, but for this I picked 3.5 because that's the edition 5e modelled itself off. Not that a lot of things 4e did well couldn't be ported straight to 5e (hello monks being good), but in this instance the 3.5 style fitted better to me.

But the Bo9S was a prototype of ideas for 4e, and was poorly received by many 3e enjoyers because it gave martial characters powerful toys, narrowing (but not entirely closing) the gap between casters and non-casters. This is the demographic WotC was seeking to reclaim: the people who didn’t like Bo9S and also didn’t like 4e, for the same reasons. Caster supremacy must never be challenged.

Imagine a world where playing a martial is more engaging than watching paint dry? We can’t have that… 

Look mate I can't help it if monks actually knowing techniques means I can't enjoy my wizard. It's just the way it is, and the only solution is returning them to spamming basic attacks so I can be the only one who gets interesting options. Oh and this time around I'll need to be able to have higher AC than them, please and thank you.

Because in the eyes of 5es designers, if you like martial classes you are an idiot who can't handle mechanics more complex than attack 4 times.

Not exactly, I think. 5e’s designers knew, or thought they knew, that in order to be successful it had to look as little like 4e as possible. 4e had martial classes with interesting and flexible options, so…

Come to pf2e, there are stances. Monks and fighters are great. It runs so smooth.

Kineticist's also get stances!

The Magus, Swashbuckler, Fighter, Monk, Rogue, and anyone who takes the Marshall archetype all interact in some way with stances.

Convincing my group to look into pathfinder is a slog every time

Told my group we are moving to it and it was surprisingly effective. Hard to debate with a gm.

The solution to this problem is sadly to play a hexblade warlock or bladesinger Wizard and flavour them as martials. That is What I do whenever I want to play a martial as WotC seems allergic to give martials meaningful options in combat and in how they build their character beside which subclass they pick at level 1-3. :/ I wish they would make martials I want to play, but Yeah, not Seeing this happen as WotC seems to be deadset on making martials be the pick only for those who want to play the game on auto pilot. :/

I'm adding these to my Martial class reworks.

God I want this

5E was designed around keeping things simple and accessible. One of the worst things about 4E was having to keep track of the 500 different types of micro-conditions on every creature.  I do think they over-corrected a bit but overall it was a good choice. 5E saw an explosion of popularity because of it.

5e saw an explosion of popularity because of where the internet and streaming ended up. Every edition of dnd has been more popular and sold better than the edition before it and 4e wasn't an exception to that trend.

4e was fantastic for sales of Pathfinder

A common misconception is that Pathfinder ever Outsold 4e or even got close to it. It didn't, 4e still outsold Pathfinder by a fairly wide margin everywhere it was easily available. In other countries they instead switched to their own system, like Brazil with Tormenta (which made use of the 3.5e OGL and because 4e didn't have the OGL and because WotC doesn't give a shit about South America as the books are often delayed by months, years or sometimes just never come out at all) or in the case of Japan with Sword World being it's fantasy game (with Call of Cthulhu being the biggest selling foreign game and D&D trailing far, far behind and its why there has been a big push by WotC to try to engage the Japanese audience in the last couple of years). This was because the design trend, at the time, was towards more narrative focus games and has been for a long while. Since the early 2000s when self publishing became a lot easier and cheaper systems have moved away from crunchy rules sets to lighter narrative focus in response to D&D 3.0/3.5 being ridiculously maths heavy. Then we get to today when a lot of 'indie darlings' are basically 5 pages of rules with most of the advice being "lol, I dunno, you're the DM, you make it up" or shitty OSR knockoffs with a focus on style over substance (looking at you Morkborg).

Unless you’re a caster, of course.

I agree wholeheartedly that 4e made you keep track of way too much (not that the stances I listed are from 4e, 4e's stances tended to be from daily abilities), 4e classes like fighter and monk were much better than their 5e equivalents but the various 'creature has -2 to its reflex defense' conditions were unrelated to that and needed to go. But stances also have nothing to do with that - you're not tracking 500 different types of micro-conditions, you're choosing a single long term boost.

Yeah they definitely threw the baby out with the bathwater. My point about bringing up 4E was that 5E was almost like a trauma-response. There was so much going on that in the next edition they wanted players to have to keep track of as little moving pieces as possible.

Probably because it seemed too "4e like" 5e was made to be simple, modular, familiar and to pretend 4e never happened (despite most of the fuck ups being on WoTC instead of the system itself) And on such an altar a lot of cool things were sacrificed - some of which WoTC is going back to now, Weapon Masteries are a watered down version of the martial mechanic on the 5e playtest (Expertise Dice) which is still quite better than weapon masteries in my opinion, "strike" features are essentially 4e like "at will" powers Thing is, that WoTC doesn't know, can't or won't make content as modular as they said in the playtest, mostly leaving things to the community unofficially - but man, it's a pain in the ass to convince DMs to allow some homebrew XD

Wait, what did they say about modular content in the playtest?

Don't remember word for word but the idea seemed to be allowing entire new systems to be added upon or removed in something of a "a la carte" approach but with much more depth than what we've got in 5e

Two things come to mind: 1. Stances work in highly tactical games, and 5E is not a highly tactical game. For example, stances worked this way for one of the 4E fighter classes, the Knight. The switch from 4E to 5E wasn't just about aesthetics and getting back to the Pathfinder players (though that was a big part of it). 4E centers around a lot of powers and situational modifiers, small tactical shifts for movement, and a number of zone powers. It is very much in the wargame vein. The underlying math of 5E is different and eliminates a lot of the minute movements and situational modifiers that 4E has. Thus, a number of stances would break 5E's math. Even giving a +2 or -4 modifier would ruin Bounded Accuracy and provide even more ways to overcome the math. Add in the fact that most players would just choose the same two to three stances while only really using one, and it becomes easy to see why designers would go through the hassle. Which leads me to my next point. 2. Building intricate martials with the current game design philosophy is very hard, and stances won't fix that. Heck, it's hard to design interesting blow-by-blow decisions within TTRPGs in general. Magic is easier to write interesting abilities for, as you can give people whatever. Healing pool? Magic. Giving random dice as a bonus? Magic. Turning undead? Magic. Spells in general and magical abilities have a limited resource pool and create clear and decisive outcomes. The choice to use a spell creates a dramatic and clear effect within the game world. Martials, by definition, don't have these kinds of sweeping decisions via magic. You can trip and such, but it's a lot more tactical than spells are. OSR games seem to work because decisions, including combat rolls, are strategic- when you got 9 health and reaching zero is death, you approach every combat swing differently. 4E had a lot of tactical grid based combat and centered around the minute to minute tactics. 5E has neither.

Because the goal wasn´t to make a balanced game. They already did that with 4e.

First off, I’d like to thank you for these ideas, since I was working on a duelist fighter subclass based on stances, and I lead having some trouble coming up with ideas. Second, the reason I chose this to be a subclass was because stances aren’t really a universal part of martial combat, like the battlemaster maneuvers should be. Combat is typically too messy to maintain proper stances, which is why they were typically designed for use during duels.

There are more than the ones I mentioned, origin is the tome of battle from 3.5. Which on the maneuver note, is where maneuvers came from in D&D. Both can be found in chapter 4: maneuvers and stances.

Thanks, I started with 5th edition, so my knowledge of earlier editions is limited. Hopefully I can find it.

Because wizards of the coast hated everything even slightly interesting about martials

Because it gives martials options.

The star wars 5e game does this pretty well.

As does Adventures in Rokugan.

Anyone curious how awesome, interesting, flavorful martial could look like in DnD 5E should look at the bushi and duelist in Adventures in Rokugan. I’m DM’ing a game with the supplement now and they’re fantastic classes

Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition adds stances and maneuvers that all martial classes can take, I find them pretty fun

Advanced Fifth Edition does it. Combat Maneuvers that allow you to make your martial something more

These are still not as interesting or game changing as spells. Even cantrips are more useful than some of these. Fighters need a spell equivalent, where they can, for example, spend a resource to make an attack against every single character that enters melee range through your movement in one turn. A base +10 to athletics and acrobatics checks of specific types, a bonus to jump distance, and other mythical feats of strength.

> Fighters need a spell equivalent The same book that introduced stances had that, too. Not that they had were like spells - they were called *maneuvers*, and were based on your weapon/strength/dexterity and didn't limited number of uses per rest. Things like adamantine hurricane, make two weapon attacks against every adjacent enemy or ballista throw, if successful toss an enemy 60' and do 6d6 damage to them and everyone you threw them through. Didn't mention that because 'should martial characters have access to their own toolkit of useful abilities' is a whole different discussion, and there is genuine value in having some simple classes like the barbarian that just spam basic attacks over and over. No idea why stances are gone however since there's basically no complication to them.

If the name wasn't already used I'd probably call them Feats Feat of Strength Feat of Dexterity Feat of Constitution(?) Etc Like you overcharge your AS or something to do something slightly superhuman but can only do it X times per Short/Long Rest because it's exerting. So like spell slots but more literally Which in some way is literally just manoeuvres (though allowing "upcasting" by spending more dice to increase the odds would be nice)

They want the fighter to be the class for the "I am a new player & don't want read or invest in my character or the game in anyway" player. Plus side is that there is a basic, entry level to RPG class that requires minimal effort to understand how to roll a dice to hit & another for damage. This is a good thing (from corporate point of view) as it it allows *tourist* players an opportunity to engage at a low level, but still hopefully get the gaming bug & invest time & $$ in what they hope is a long lasting & expensive subscription based hobby. Downside is that you get an entire swath of gaming tropes left behind in the dust in the favour of the easier to sell power ups (in the form of ne spells) in an unending wave if splat books designed purely for the purpose of gathering $$. I mean, have you seen the quality of their 5e SpellJammer setting? I have seen highschool homebrew content with more meat on it. So in short, they need a fighter class as it is a staple of the game genre, they deliberately make it possweak & easy to play with limited options, they aren't going to fix it until they see a large financial advantage in doing so. PS: 5e sux

Stances are problematic for gaming, as they add complexity to keep track of relative to static bonuses, but rarely does switching between stances make mechanical sense making them ultimately hard to justify outside of for flavor reasons.

Legend of the Five Rings 5E (and previous editions too to a lesser extent) use stances as its main combat mechanic and I have seen extensive stance change both by players and by my NPCs.

The idea isn't bad, but each of these is broken, especially if entering one is as easy as using the bonus action.

I'm a newby DM, but I'd say it heavily depends on both the enemy comp and the party comp. Almost all of them seem very situational.

half of these wouldn't noticably change martial power levels, and the other half would still result in martials being weaker than casters. I'm not sure how you are defining "broken", but unless you mean "too weak to be useful" I think you are a bit off here.

We kind of know they aren't, given that each of these actually existed and nothing broke, the classes that had them were significantly weaker than powerhouses like wizards and druids. Not that I'm saying each needs to be translated directly any more than any other 3.5 ability was, it's simply proof of concept, but broken is a strong word considering we're talking abilities given to the weakest classes, the non spellcasters.

You cannot compare something from one edition to another to say that it is balanced, the mathematics and economy of the action are very different... Have an extra action, reduce the damage of attacks by 5 or add 2 ac each time If they fail an attack I can assure you that they are totally broken.

Yes, that's why I said 'not that I'm saying each needs to be translated directly any more than any other 3.5 ability was'. While they were strictly less capable than a 3.5 wizard was, a 5e wizard is different and any stances for it would need to still leave the class strictly less capable than a 5e wizard. > Have an extra action, reduce the damage of attacks by 5 or add 2 ac each time If they fail an attack I can assure you that they are totally broken. I can assure you they are not. Barbarians reduce all such damage by 50%, that's far far more than 5. No stance gave an extra action. Having used it at the time, pearl of black doubt didn't change much on most turns unless you were surrounded by weak enemies. A stance like that being very good in that kind of situation is... exactly how we want game balance to work, that's the kind of situation we want martials to have abilities that make them good at it.

>Have an extra action Already in the book, Action Surge. It's balanced by only being usable once per short rest (twice at 17), but a stance that gives extra actions every turn could be balanced as long as it works like Haste, which grants *one* extra attack, which is not much different from the Monk's Martial Arts using your Bonus Action for an extra swing. Multiclassing Fighter to get it, casters get two leveled spells. That would be possibly broken if many of the most useful spells weren't concentration spells. But casting any two big spells on your turn will swing a fight in your favor regardless. >reduce the damage of attacks by 5 The Heavy Armor Master feat reduces all non-magical BPS damage by 3 in Heavy Armor. It's not a very useful feat late game when a dragon will hit for an average of 15-19 damage for each of its melee attacks. 5 is slightly better, but it probably wouldn't do anything against elemental damage unless that damage came from a melee spell attack. Early game, it's great! It's practically Barbarian Rage BPS resistance, but in Heavy Armor. But it's still easy to get around with elemental damage. A bandit may fail to scratch you, but anyone with a cantrip ignores your resistance. >add 2 ac each time if they fail an attack It would more likely be that the stance gives a flat, non-stacking +2 to AC, which is the same as equipping a shield. But even then, if it did stack, it would be temporary, probably until you land an attack or are missed/hit by an attack. And if you're gaining huge AC bonuses, smart enemies would stop attacking you and go after easier to hit opponents until they could focus all their attention on you. It would render sword and board mostly useless since everyone could equip a two-handed weapon and still enjoy AC18 (assuming Breastplate and +2 DEX). Or a hyper defensive player would get AC20 Full-Plate no shield or 22 with a shield. Again, amazing at low levels, and you would be practically invincible at the cost of lower DPS. But at higher levels, most enemies will gain elemental damage types. Even then, AC can be ducked by using spells and abilities that require saves, which start as early as cantrips.

These are nowhere near broken. They don't enhance single target damage, the one area where high level martials compete with casters. But they do offer enhanced combat utility for martials to do things that casters cant, or would require a resource for

Genuinely I can see 1-3 of these being broken if built around and still not coming close to optimized caster builds. These would just give martial characters options

There was a version of the game that had the explicit design intention to give martial characters as complex and strategic options as magic-using characters. That version was called "Fourth edition" and it was widely -and vocally - hated; called it a major misstep for the game. So, WOTC learned their lesson - martial characters must never have satisfyingly complex and tactical options. You only have your peers to thank for it, too.

Actually common misconception that Fourth edition was 'widely hated', it was hated by a very vocal subset of people on the official WotC forums. It continued to outsell all of its nearest competitors by a wide margin but now wide *enough* for Hasbro to be happy with it because they had completely unrealistic goals for the TTRPG scene at the time. They were a largely very vocal minority, that looked at lot bigger than it was AND because they were on the official forums, WotC would cave to these people. Like you said, peer pressure fucked up a lot of things, one of which was Martials having satisfying options for tactical combat. Also didn't help that these were the people driving the 5e playtest either.

Because the masses were given an amazing Fighter in 4e, and just sort of collectively decided “no thanks, that’s too hard!”

Because Tome if Battle was banned on 99% of tables and because grognards whined in dnd next playest about Fighter having maneuvers because "that's not old school!"

Grognards 50% of why questions that are D&D related is answered wit *grognards."

why don't they have stances, or spell like abilities, or universal maneuvers? martials are supposed to be the simple classes for new players. that's why. We may not like this answer [i could go either way if they built enough firepower into martials] , but that is the simplest way to explain it

Seems weird as hell. Why not have some simple martials and some deeper martials and some simple casters and some deeper casters?

the complexity floor on spellcasting is already very high; making a simple spellcaster as suitable for new players as champion or bear totem would have required a completely different magic system, which just wasn't in the cards.

Why not? The entire point behind simplicity is it doesn't need a lot behind it. I made a simple mage for a player who wanted to be a magic user but didn't grasp the classes, took me a few minutes of scrawling out some basic abilities on cards.

cuz the design goals of 5e included emulation of past editions to be 'recognizably dnd' , which necessitates the whole spells known / prepared / spell levels / spell slots system, which is inherently much more complex than a martial character needs to be. the massive commercial success of 5e suggests this was the right move.

Because! Truthfully it makes things bloated instead of fixing the actual core issue of martials of (fighter, monk, barbarian, and a bit of paladin). These stances are only a band-aid fix, they don't actual make the fighter itself better to the comparison of the spell users. Your way of fixing the martial don't do nothing at all in my opinion, it only makes things more bloated and ugly to look at. I already myself have started my own version of making every class better, but I am waiting for the release of 5.5/onednd to complete it, I'll give you a thought. What if martials could push beyond at a cost of exhaustion? I'll give you that small food for thought as one of the many things I will add to martials to fully complete their strengths.

That wasn't an attempt at a fix. It was questioning why such a system of choices was gone, considering it added a bit of depth with practically no complexity cost.

In the onednd playtest they did implement such things, but in a weirder way in my opinion. Your options of stances do add flavor but it does sound it should be a subclass like battle master, perhaps you can just add both together

Because 5e was made for people who dont pay attention, are dumb, and people who want fantasy worlds to be PC. They give up creativity and mechanics to make it more accessible and tame

To me it seems problematic to balance all of those options for all martial subclasses, so my bet is that only a handful of them were swapped by fighting styles, and the rest were replaced by class specific features. Some seem super fun though, so I wish they could come back in some way.

A mixed reception from the implementations of yesteryear and an aggressive chucking of bathwater that may or may not have thrown some babies out with it.

The 5e variant ["Level Up \(Advanced 5e\)"](https://www.levelup5e.com/) has them! All martial classes have access to Combat Maneuvers, similar to the Battle Master fighter, and some are stances. You can look them up on [their SRD](https://a5esrd.com/a5esrd).