There's only one change I'd propose to combat focus: Have it apply to weapons your fighting style affects, that way it ties in more to the additional fighting style, and how champion is a fighter-ier fighter. I'd also say give it a second use at level 18, 1 level after gaining your third indomitable. Another potential change: Fighting Style Improvement: At level 15, you have mastered your method of combat. One fighting style gets an increased benefit. Dueling would increase chance to hit when wielding a one handed weapon, as well as damage Archery would now also boost damage Defense would now boost saving throws by +1 Great Weapon Fighting lets you reroll damage for two handed weapons 1 extra time per attack Protection would no longer cost a reaction, and now also increase the defended player's AC by your shield's AC bonus (until either the start of your turn or you use this ability again, whichever comes first) Blind fighting increases range to 30 feet Superior Technique increases the die value to a d10, and gives you an additional superiority die Thrown Weapon Fighting increases the range of thrown weapons by 30 feet Interception would no longer cost a reaction Unarmed fighting increases the grappling damage to a d6, and gives advantage on grapple checks
I love the idea of Improved Fighting Style. All of them feel like they have room to evolve naturally, and that path of progression makes the Champion feel more Fightery. Well done! Now all you'd need to do is playtest the options for balance.
Champion is actually a sleeper champ that people overlook all the time because they're always assuming that they're going to start every fight at an optimal level when that simply isn't the case and you may have more or less resources then you anticipated due to how you've been rationing; Like if you had 6 fights between your long rests and you still have some left over, you wasted time/health working your way through it. other tmes you will have an opportunity to do a thing but completely forget that you can because of how optional it is. Champion doesn't have this problem since everything he has is built into his class passively and actually works really, really well; Like they start with a doubled crit chance and that only gets better as you gain more attacks (upwards of 4 at 20th which comes out to an absurd 10 total when you action surge) and that threshold improves to 18-20 by 15th level. Also when you are below half health you regenerate which takes some pressure off of your healer when you reach level 18. So for perspective a level 11 half orc with great weapon expertise, GWM, a Maul and a strength of 20 is going to get 6 attacks with action surge each of which has a 1-10 chance to crit so likely 1 and is going to do 2d6+5 on each with the crit getting an extra 4d6 meaning against a target with 14 ac they're going to hit pretty consistently and churn out an average of 66 damage during that surge without mastery and potentially considerably more with... which you as a fighter can conceivably do pretty much every fight. Now, it's important to remember that the above math is ignoring the existance of external factors and modifiers and looking at only what the race+class+feats+weapon can do on average and ignoring the presence of other players and the posibility of magic weapons wherein things can get a bit more silly, so lets check that out: Same fighter, but they have advantage on their attacks due to some 3rd party actions and Maul+2 against the same target Looks more like: 6 attacks 1-5 crit chance (so probably 2) no misses (thanks to advantage and +11 to hit) and GWM giving you an average of 158 with the only thing it costing you is... an action surge and some group synergy. Without it you're looking at about half that for a total of 79 which isn't exactly shitty. Now some players will of course point out that their class (Paladin, warlock, wizard) can churn out high and even higher averages, but I'd argue that they tend to require expenditures of resources pretty consistently in order to reach the same numbers which a lot of them simply can't do for an extended period of time; Paladin and wizard both need long rests to recover spell slots (and the paladin doesn't exactly have that many) and the waarlock can get really silly but is going to be high priority and can't handle the ensuing attention like the fighter can. Just some food for thought.
Fun fact about Arcane Archer. They are _never_ allowed to swap out their arcane shots. Not on a level up and not when gaining a new shot like battle master. Those two you pick at level 3? You're stuck with them for the rest of the character's run time.
@@craftyplayz8150I’d just make it so that they prepare a number of arrows at daily preparation rather than locking something in. Lets them have way more versatility.
5:58 Fighter: "I want to drink away the dragon!" DM: "What? How?" Wizard: "I use the one and only wish spell that you'll allow me to cast to let the fighter drink away the dragon." DM: "... that single use was meant for ... never mind. The dragon feels a sudden and overwhelming urge to prove it's might in a drinking game, and at the same time yo-" Fighter: "You misunderstand me, I wish to *_DRINK_* the dragon away." DM: "wot"
@@bonewizard The best part of finding new channels that are just starting out is when the creator can actually respond to your comment on an older video. Thanks.
Personally, I think the lv. 3 Eldritch Knight feature should allow bonded weapons to be considered magic weapons in order to overcome resistances and immunities. Would be cool and fitting
The first time hearing about the class, I was confused as heck that I could SUMMON a weapon magically, but it itself wasn't considered magic. Like even monk fists are considered 'magic' soon after that.
There’s several features that require fine tuning in Eldritch knight, like it’s 7th level feature should just let you replace on of your attacks with a cantrip instead of just giving you 1 bonus action attack, bladesingers gets this at level 6!
One critical thing I feel is missing from Arcane Archer that nobody else seems to suggest, at some point you should get the option to just change your arrow damage to magical + whatever elemental type you want. Fire, lightning, cold, acid, poison, thunder would be a good basis. it doesnt even need to be extra damage it just makes your ARCANE archer feel like they're always shooting ARCANE shots. It also just adds this nice detail of them being versitile in damage type which whille not crazy important is fun. Otherwise personally I actually would completely rebuild the class from the gorund up and make it a ranger subclass.
They already do gain this ability at level 7: "Magic Arrow- At 7th level, you gain the ability to infuse arrows with magic. Whenever you fire a nonmagical arrow from a shortbow or longbow, you can make it magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage. The magic fades from the arrow immediately after it hits or misses its target." You could easily just house rule that they can also choose an elemental attribute. Honestly, using vulnerabilities or stopping regenerative abilities is not overpowered (it's still only 1d8 + Dex) but definitely gives Arcane Archer a bit of much needed versatility.
I don't mind arcane Archer being a fighter subclass, although I do think that it's something ranger should get access to. Maybe ranger should get arcane shot as like ranger spells similar to paladin smites. But for fighter I think it's neat to have a class primarily focused on basically Hawkeye trick arrows. The master archer is letting arrows loose when he's surrounded by foes so he pulls out a teleport arrow, or he shoots an explosive arrow, or traps and enemy with an ice arrow. Most the martials have similar tool kits but I'd say it's the same as the spell casters having overlapping subclasses (tempest cleric/storm sorcerer), both fighter and ranger fight but ranger fights and uses nature magic while fighter fights really damn well.
@@anyoneatall3488 because arcane archer is a classic elven art and was based in nature originally which is very much a ranger thing. Beyond that the super specialized archer fits the ranger way better than the fighter. I much prefer all the fighter classes being more broad, arcane archer is just such a ranger class to me
13:37 eldritch knight pains me, because the crazy versatility of spells actually puts it on par with Battlemaster once you start getting 2nd level spells or so. War Magic is blatantly backwards. It should be "If you attack, you may use a bonus action to cast a cantrip" so that you get your extra attacks.
My homebrew version of Eldritch Knight literally just makes it into the Bladesinger Extra Attack ability, with the ability to exchange two attacks for a leveled spell when they get Improved War Magic.
late to the party, but to make that work you'd have to basically be whenever your character intends to attack you can use the bonus action, or just make it bonus action cantrips as otherwise your attacks don't get booming blade for example.
WotC really overcorrected for the mistakes they made with Eldritch Knight when they made the Bladesinger. the ability to replace one of your extra attacks really fits in with with the Eldritch Knight motif of “sword dude that casts spells in battle.” imo if you really wanna play Eldritch Knight i find that Bladesinger is just more fulfilling of that experience.
If there were a 5.5E/6E, I'd really like Maneuvers and Superiority to be class features. And then Champion can maybe be buffed by giving a +1 ASI to give that raw competence and choose one more Save proficiency.
That was what fighters were supposed to be in the testing for 5e (essentaly the one dnd testing community feedback thing that might be still going on idk/idr haven't been keeping track of recent events after the whole OGL and pinkerton debacle) but the community testing it said in the feedback was like aw gee Hasbro this is a bit to complicated for the fighter which is supposed to be simple and should not get fun things.
Here's how to actually fix Martials. 1. Remove Shield, Absorb Elements, and Silvery Barbs from all spell lists. Give Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, and Rogues the ability to "cast" these "spells" PB/long rest times as non-magical abilities, but only if they aren't concentrating on a spell, at level 1 (increasing to per short rest at level 7). In short, remove some of the stuff that makes Casters better Martials than Martials, and give it to Martials in such a way that Casters can't just multiclass to acquire it basically for free. 2. Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, and Rogues, at level 1, get the -5/+10 feature from GWM/SS for free, and are able to apply it to all weapons (and Unarmed Strikes in the case of the Monk). This massively improves Martial defences and significantly improves build diversity. 3. Ensure that every class feature thereafter is at least on par with the spells the Casters are getting at the same level. No more flagship Martial features merely on par with a 1st or 2nd level spell and often with fewer uses. Whether that be by continuing the trend of making certain spells Martial maneuvers, or going full Tome of Battle, or making Battle Master Maneuvers only epic, I don't care. Just give the Martials actually strong features at least on par with Ranger spellcasting.
I would give Combat Focus the ability to be used a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per short or long rest, since it's honestly not all that strong on it's own and would hardly be broken with some more uses, especially at such a high level already.
I love the concept of Arcane Archer but agree that the subclass is very lacking. They gain new shot options but stay at 2 uses per rest for their entire career. When they started scaling features with Proficiency Bonus, I thought that was a reasonable mod to the number of uses. Especially considering Arcane Shot is exclusive to bows, they absolutely need more uses as they grow. Battle Master with a Bow is still better, but at least scaling with PB makes this subclass more viable.
Hello m8 I came from Reddit. Good job on doing this, because I know this might be just like any other person who tells you their own version for a D&D-related thing, but I've also spent a good time listening to you. In conclusion, it was funny and informative so 10/10 my bone lad. P.s: you might swear a lot, but I bet you don't have a mean bone in your otherwordly and undead body.
The fighter is my favorite class to play as since to me it encourages combat roleplay. Because the class is so simple the DM and I actually end up doing things to make it more exciting. - Like charging and tackling an opponent and pinning them against the wall. - Or me throwing down ball bearings right when an opponent uses up more than half their movement speed to get to me, so they can't get back up immediately and now I got a prone enemy in front of me. - Or my personal favorite grappling a mage by the lower jaw and shoving my fingers in their mouth so they can't speak verbal components, essentially shutting down the spell caster. Misty step require verbal components. - A cool thing my dm allowed was during a stealth section my fighting took out several guards by sneaking behind them putting them in a sleeper hold. - Or holding them down in a barrel of ale, drowning them. To me fighter makes for a GREAT combat roleplayer that encourages the rule of cool. Combat doesn't just have to be about damage but also how what you do in order to end the fight.
@@bonewizard Would you believe this all started as a gag? My DM wanted to run a one shot (that became a short campaign) where we were all fighters. He gave us each a healing potion. Which we promptly sold them all for 400 gold to buy healing kits instead. Giving them to our fighter with the healer feat. (Seriously healing kits with the healer feat is godly! And they only get better as you level up. This one feat practically makes healing potions almost obsolete.) Also we realized we have a healer who can fight. - Then we bought spells for our fighter who took up the ritual caster feat. being so limited in spells but still having them them was a lot of fun, and since there was no spell focus we actually had to worry about components for once! It was actually a lot of fun to search for them for spells like find familiar, a little pseudo dragon who became our mascot of the group. - Then for me I took up grappler (wanted to go for a wrestling style) and bought like 5 nets, being able to restrain the enemy and giving my team every attack advantage against them is pretty good, perfect for our maul wielding great weapon fighter who always used great weapon master. Honestly I actually encourage anyone to try a one-shot where you’re all one class that each get one feat at the start. A team of monks, a team of barbarians, rogues, wizards, or warlocks. It amazing to see what the same class but can be built so differently with just a feat or two.
One thing you _could_ take for your additional Champion Fighting Style is a Tasha’s Fighting Style… and Protection I guess. You either get a once per long rest trick attack from a Battlemaster Manuever, or can reduce damage from attacks on your allies… or buff your darts if you’re a thrown weapon fighter or take Protection if you’re a Sword and Board fighter… I guess.
i wish battle manuevers were used in far more fighter subclasses. like, theyre so interesting, and fighter is suppose to be a trained fighting class! the amount of battle manuevers can and should vary, but access to them shousl be standars for the fighters!
I was kicking around the idea of how to buff all the pre tasha fighter subclasses to match the tasha fighters. And im thinking about just giving the pre tasha fighters 2 maneuvers and 2 superiority die. Including battle master.
Great video! I'm glad I stumbled upon your channel, you make some great points, especially about the Eldritch Knight, I've always felt it to be very restrictive to only pick from two schools of magic. Can't wait to see what kind of fixes you have for come of the underwhelming capstone abilities.
@@danilocarvalho8419 idk man. Spending one minute to get four 5th level spell slots doesnt seem too bad. Thats 4 more castings of wall of light, or hold monster.
Basic does not equal bad basic does not equal uninteresting it just means "simple" and the beautiful thing about Fighter is that they have A LOT of room for creative and flavorful changes without changing what is good about them mechanically Fighters are easy to build, meaning you can devote more brain power to RP and making them an interesting character
I feel like alot of people struggle with this idea. in my opinion most classes tell you what to act like, but fighter is the one class you HAVE to be creative with. most people who think fighter is boring are just bad fighters LMAO.
I’m glad to see you grow fairly quickly I believe just yesterday you had about 350 subs Your inspirations can be seen but you have your own style which I really enjoy, keep up the good work
I would personally add a feature to Champion called "Champion's Specialization". If you're a Champion, you're known for being extraordinarily good at doing one specific thing. If you are a champion center-forward on the basketball court, you do everything a center-forward does better than everyone else. If you are a champion spearman on the field of battle, you are without peers at using spears. Champion's Specialization: "At Level 10, you have trained endlessly with a particular set of weapons and are unmatched in their usage. Pick any two Simple or Martial Weapons. When you attack with one of thse weapons, double your proficiency bonus to the attack roll. On a hit, add your proficiency bonus to the damage roll."
Wow, I've watched a couple of videos now, and it's shocking to me that you only have 600-some subscribers. Your content is funny, enjoyable, the art style is endearing, overall just great. I'm glad to have found the channel and done my part for your subscriber count.
@@bonewizard Hard second here, mate. You're wildly underrated, but I hope you don't stay that way. Reach out. I bet the big names would like to hear your contribution. 🙂
@@Drekromancer hello mr. Zee bashew? Would you like to bring another youtuber on your show? Hes a shrill, poorly animated, skeleton that yells at the SCAG!
The spellcasting subclasses are supposed to have underwhelming features because the main feature is spellcasting (Mage Hand Legerdemain is about the same power as Bond Weapon, though it has a bit more utility). I DO like the changes you make, since I'm pretty sure WotC admitted that the magic school restriction was done for flavor, not for any balance reasons. I think Bladesinger should also be able to get BB and/or GFB at 2nd Level.
@@bonewizard Hahaha, hell yeah. I can understand why you'd feel some impostor syndrome after being underground for so long. But just wait - I'm sure it will start to feel natural soon. 🙂 ( -oops I mean BEEP BOOP- )
I like the idea of shooting ranged cantrips as a fighter for Eldritch knight, so perhaps a way to buff the subclass is to increase any cantrip damage that doesn’t use a weapon attack by your INT mod, and then maybe double that bonus when you reach 11th level to keep up with extra attack. I would also have the knight be able to attack twice as a bonus action with the improved warcaster cuz the damage output of 3rd level spells at high levels is pretty garbage.
WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT shield doesn't count as a weapon for dueling? Major game changer. but what I really want for fighter is a reason to wield a one handed weapon and no weapon in the other hand. an actually effective fighting style using a 1 handed weapon like a normal longsword and using the other hand to say, balance or grapple.
The protection fighting style is interesting in that it’s efficacy scales up at the rate of your enemies and enemy type. Imposing disadvantage on an attack roll from a monster that has one strong yet powerful attack can prevent alot if damage. Imposing disadvantage on a single attack when the enemy has access to multi attack isn’t nearly as impactful.
Thing is, most monsters scale by doing more attack rolls. Protection would probably be fine to allow disadvantage on all a attacks of chosen creatures turn or something.
@@bonewizard I thought of it being like a reverse Wolf totem barbarian, where enemies have disadvantage on their attacks if they are within 5ft of you. And it's passive so yay.
4:07 He claims it's the most played sub-class of the most played class. But Warlock is the most played class listed and The Hexblade is the most played sub-class.
I found this great, to be honest. Very fun and informative! You have a real good sense of humor, and a lot of your buffs we're needed without being too powerful. For the most part at least lol. I had fun! I do think buffing dueling is unneeded though. Instead I would recommend swapping protection as a fighting style for interception, a UA feat found in the UA class features pdf. It gets the feeling that the fighting style was going for without it being as bad. Hope to see more from you!
Using interception did cross my mind. However I didn't choose that because I pretty sure that fighting style will be in the book coming out this November. And id rather they have their own identities, both with their stregnths and weaknesses.
@@bonewizard A very fair consideration. I really hope its in the new book too. The UA class features stuff is my favorite UA content they've put out so far.
@@bonewizard LMAO YEAH. I remember that. I gave my feedback to WOTC for that, because it was really obvious that the feature that gave spell slots allowed for infinite spell slots with a healer. I personally hope for a refined Path of the Beast barb myself.
@@littulv Holy crap the infinite spell slot thing was insane! Who green-lit that? Bro, beast barb has the most flavor but they gotta buff that 3rd level ability. Those natural weapon attacks that are just worse than most weapons.
Most of the time in games I play all the things you listed for con checks were actually saving throws instead. I like combat focus and with lots of things being prof bonus times per long rest now I think it would make sense to change the feature to that instead
A change to Protection Fighting Style that i would love, is it being a passive effect just like other fighting styles: - Creatures of your choice that you can see have disadvantage to attack rolls made against creatures other than you within 5 feet of you. You must be wielding a shield. This way this fighting style would become the perfect passive fighting style for tanking.
I can tell you from experience, the biggest problem with cavalier is that your most powerful feature is limited by your DM. I didn't get to ride a mount in my cavalier game in combat until I was level 8. And even then I'm only on the beast 1/3 of the time. It was really taxing on my morale feeling like I'd traded in an imaginary horse for the ability to do anything other than attack and action surge until level 7.
@@bonewizard Ya you might be right. I just hate that war magic doesn't work with extra attack. Bladesingers can replace one of their attacks with a cantrip at level 6 so I figured it was far to let the eldritch knight do it to at level 7. Otherwise I see bladesinger as better then the eldritch knight in both combat and spells
@@theeye8276 see, the thing about that is that a bladesinger ONLY gets 2 attacks. A fighter gets 3 at 11 and 4 at level 20. A better way to implement the same thing is "when you cast a cantrip, you can make a weapon attack as part of the same action. So does the exact same thing as blade singer, and the exact same thing as eldritch knight but without using a bonus action. Worded that way tho makes it possible to also use a bonus action cantrip to get ANOTHER attack in. So then you'd have to word it "when you use your action to cast a cantrip make 1 weapon attack as part of that action"
@@theeye8276 But that's also when a cantrip levels up, right? Let's take an eldritch knight that has booming blade as an example. Wielding a great sword with a strength mod of 5, he's doing 6d6+15 damage already. One of these gets to have booming blade, which is 2d8 thunder damage at this point. And if that target moves it takes an extra 3d8 thunder damage. Green Flame Blade, target takes weapon damage+2d8 and another target next to it takes 2d8+your spell mod. Shocking grasp will do 3d8 and remove the target's ability to take a reaction. Fighters get a 4th attack at level 20 and cantrips have leveled up again at this point. So 8d6+20 and one booming blade for 3d8, potentially an extra 4d8 if the target moves. A normal cantrip like shocking grasp removes one of the greatsword attacks, but replaces it with 4d8 and carries a cool effect. Is this too much damage? Is this okay? Idk, we'd have to compare it to something. Other fighter classes are a good place to start. Battle master, gets all the cool maneuvers. Even though they can add a d8 to a d12 to a damage roll or attack roll or athletics check, they're spending a resource. They can't indefinitely do it. They can also miss and waste the Superiority dice. Samurai can get an extra attack, but they HAVE to have advantage, and they give up that advantage to make the extra attack. An extra 2d6+5 is about 11 average damage, while booming blade is 9 and a potential 13.5. Then at level 17 that's 13.5 and a potential 18 average damage. Cavalier's only attack buff is if someone hits a close ally through disadvantage, but also it can only be used up to like, 5 times per long rest. Echo knight, the proclaimed strongest fighter by some... can make an extra attack once per turn on the same long rest limit. I think this one's based off of con modifier. So, conclusions- gfb and booming blade have the potential to be really strong, and at level 11 up a regular d8 cantrip is stronger than a single attack AND carries a cool effect. Ray of frost slows by 10ft of movement, shocking grasp removes reactions, all sorts of cool stuff. Cantrips are also infinite, so really we've just given eldritch knight the greatest attack power of them all. Not to mention all the OTHER spells they can cast.
@@bonewizard big man foinn is my personal favourite 2 nah fr tho I got so fucking hyped when i saw cu chuliann as an Irish man myself i was like "HOLY SHIT THATS US MAMMIE WE GOT FECKING MENTIONED" I love our old myths and legends epically since even here in Ireland they are so commonly dismissed or forgotten
Four years in total, a 16 Month wait for me personally, and we still waiting on that Warlock Video. The Suspense is slowly killing me, but these Buffs for all the subclasses made so far have been so much fun for me and my Crew. Keep up the work Skelle-Lad.
It sucks that you’d have to take a feat to do this, but I think if you get Eldritch blast with Eldritch Knight it would be fantastic. I also think it would just be an improvement just to give it to the subclass
Champion has one thing going for it - regen. Take Dwarven Resilience on a level 18 Champion. Buff AC to the maximum. Watch your DM cry tears of agony as you tank 3 Ancient Dragons.
I wouldn't even say that Evocation is a good school of magic for EK because you don't have a good bonus to hit or a good save DC. I would swap it out for Transmutation anyday. I kinda wish it had the spell slot progression of a half-caster. As for war magic, I've seen the idea of letting them cast a cantrip instead of a weapon attack but that's really strong (especially with Blade Ward). So maybe give the EK a significant boost to cantrip damage? And more cantrips to choose, duh.
Fighter is actually one of the best classes in the game, it's just that people tend to sleep on it due to the lack of "flash" that so many other classes have. Like yes, it's "weapon guy", but my response to that is that you can literally recreate *any* historical warrior/soldier from history using them; Rajput, Winged hussar, Centurion, Red coat, Long bowmen, hoplite, viking, Eagle warrior, Samurai... All of these could be thematically built using the fighter and their near bottomless pit of feats, and as such they are the most versatile class in the game in terms of what they can be.
But you can recreate any magical guy with a wizard as well... that doesn't make a class good. Mechanical power has nothing to do with flavor, or even being flashy. It has to do with hard maths and probabilities.
@@limaTheNoob Ok, well if we're talking about raw math Fighter still has signifigant edges on more flashy characters like the wizard, since you have a greatly reduced reliance on long rests, Extremely reliable damage output, self healing and the tools you need to do the job are far easier to come by then that same wizard (who is pretty screwed if anything happens to his grimoire. Or his component bag. or his ability to vocalize). Hell, I'd go so far as to argue the Champion is a power player people sleep on owing specifically to the *absence* of active powers since it means nothing is ever wasted with him and a half orc with an increased crit threshold is well and truly a nightmare in terms of raw damage output.
@@guitarhausdoesntknowwhatac3285 see, your logic is not without merit, but, in actual play, all those strengths matter very little. Not reliance on long rests is only ever an advantage in a game where you actually always have 6-8 encounters - even if some tables do that sometimes, next to none do it regularly. Fighters are an endurance type of character, but no one wants to play meat grinder DnD nowadays where you mindlessly kill mooks from room to room without end. Just as you can take the spell book from the wizard, you can take the fighter's weapon. Gag the wizard? Handcuff the fighter. Apart from the whole endurance thing, there is nothing a fighter does truly better (even sustained damage is better done with caster classes, such as via summons and whatnot). Endurance is an old design, and it shows on both the fighter and the rogue, whose at-will abilities are actually a liability (since they are in place of potential long rest abilities that, due to being limited, would pack more power inherently).
@@limaTheNoob 1. You really can't assume that you are getting regular long rests, especially at higher levels where you will have more resources and thus more likely to get to recover half your spell list or so. 2.If you take a weapon from a fighter, he can get another weapon. Doesn't really work out the same way for the wizard when their spellbook gets removed since that's effecitvely everything they can do. 3.Putting aside how you keep underselling endurance, they still get more feats then anyone else and enough that you can create interesting builds that simply aren't possible for other classes. Also your summons go ut the window pretty quick with applications of counter spell, dispel or magic missile (all of which are going to be a lot more common in the sort of high level combat where you'd be routinely summoning. 4. Again, this assumes that you can consistently have spell resources to end the fight. As an aside, For someone who seems to poo poo on old school dungeon crawl type mechanics you sure are placing an emphasiss on combat as opposed to actual role play.
Found you on a whim and enjoy your videos and ideas and agree 90%. One thing I'll say for eldritch k ight summoning sword hat trick imo is pretty dope and make for cool rp moments if you need to hide a weapon or blend in or taken prisoner. But your additional perks to level 3 would be welcoming for sure. Look forward to next video!
Echo Knight is by FAR the best fighter subclass, alongside being one of the greatest subclasses in the game in general. Imagine if the Battlemaster had UNLIMITED superiority dice all the time from 3rd level. Welcome to Echo Knight.
Echo knight is the strongest, but that's ridiculous, a battlemaster can add 5 to attack and damage every single attack, prone from range, ect. The echo knight can... make melee attacks ranged? And can teleport every other turn assuming no-one attacks the echo? Get... 2 more attacks than normal per day? Your bonus action is clogged, so you can't PAM or CBE. Which immediately 2/3rds your damage compared to a battlemaster. I agree echo knight is the strongest, but that's waaaaaayyyy to much of an exaggeration.
@@jamesbaker2092 PAM and CBE are still viable, because you only need your bonus action on turns where you make your echo or teleport, and since they stick around for a while after creation and are free to move you won't need to re-summon them too often. The extra attacks per day help make up for turn when you're teleporting or re-summoning anyway, so there's no DPS loss. The Battlemaster has more damage dice for sure, but once you factor in mobility and opportunity attacks the Echo Knight will have more than enough attacks to make up the damage difference.
@@jamesbaker2092 Your echo has a minimum AC of 16; immunity to poison, psychic, and every single condition; and every attack into it is completely wasted, even if it gets destroyed. Having to re-up your Echo at all is a win, and one that doesn't come up too often in practice.
Just found your channel, I really like your take on homebrewing classes ! You are very funny and I think we grew up watching the same stuff on TV haha :D Keep up the good work
I think your channel is hilarious, great, accurate and very similar outlook on the game as I do. I would be interested in working on something someday with you! You remind me of a D&D version of “TheOdd1sOut” and that’s a huge compliment! Send me an email and we’ll stay in touch!!
Combat focus should be once per round!! then it would be on pair with the manouvers not once per short rest. Or it should be Proficiency times per short rest.
Actually the weakest level for the Champion is Lv3. Seriously, you're getting a 5% chance to deal an extra 7 damage. That's almost nothing. The solution is actually fairly easy: "your attacks deal an additional 1d4 damage" This is in line with Rangers, Battlemasters, Barbarians, etc. It's not overpowered at all and I think it's a great bonus for a class that is meant to be simple.
I do regret not touching level 3 in Hindsight. I should have done something for it. I opposed to giving a subclass a flat damage boost. Its lazy, and a missed opportunity. Maybe extend the crit range, or make a more reliable way to hit creatures. Idk. Im spitballing.
@@bonewizard I don't really like flat damage boni either, but I think this subclass is the one exception. It's really meant to be quite simple. Plus more dice on crits.
I actually quite like the restrictions on which spells you can choose because it builds a theme between the two subclasses of this type (trickster and Eknight) and I even build off this theme for my own homebrew monk caster subclass (divination and conjugation)
I had to make a character for an impromptu one shot and so I chose Champion Fighter. Tel’Dario Surefoot. The great great great grandson of Hardwon Surefoot from “not another DnD podcast” infamy. I had an absolute blast and ended up with a Magical great sword by the end of the session. And because of simplicity I was moving combat along and not fudging my rules like a couple of my party members.
I just discovered you channel, and I like the changes but here's a change I would like to propose for EK for war magic: whenever you use your action to make a melee weapon attack you can cast a cantrip as a bonus action.
Prior to my rewatch I’ll note my changes for my game currently Discontinued battlemaster in favour of providing a smaller list of “martial maneuvers” to monk barbarian fighter and maybe rogue (haven’t tested the balance) basically they start at lvl 2, have a smaller die progression (start with d4) and is tied to your proficiency bonus for a lot of stuff. Battle champion as I’m now calling it gets basically all the champion features, the full maneuver list, the other battlemaster features, and a slightly more sped up die progression. Basically doubling the amount of stuff this subclass gets made it finely feel somewhere even close to the others. For instance getting both remarkable athlete and know your enemy at 7th level still doesn’t make either of those particularly useful and that’s still kinda a dud level for this subclass, but getting 2 non combat abilities on your fighter at that level means you also won’t feel entirely useless as both these subclasses kinda could sometimes
My solution to the protection fighting style is to just give it to all fighters at lvl 1. If no one uses it there’s no reason for everyone can’t have it just in case
I play alot of fighter's in dnd and I found if you add some flair when you describing how you attack or interact with your enemies makes you feel so cool in combat.
Funny thing about the maneuvers, many are just things locked into battle master. Like trip and disarm So it be easier to nuke battle master and just give maneuvers to all fighters.
I know this video is old, but i wanted to add some stuff that i'd add/change regarding some of the stuff mentioned. Protector Fighting Style: i'd change this function to something like the following - When you stand within 5ft of an allied creature and you're wielding a shield, the allied creature gains a +1 or +2 to AC as long as they stand within 5ft of you. Only one creature can benefit from this fighting style at a time. Arcane Archer: Generally went with the magic archer idea. The changes proposed here are already great, so i'll just put some of the stuff i consider for this archetype. - Elemental Arrows: Starting at 3rd level, when you choose this archetype, you can choose to change the damage type of your Ammunition to either Fire, Cold, Lightning, Acid or Poison. You choose this damage type each time you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack, using ammunition. - (I couldn't think of a good name for this): Starting at 7th level, you learn the Cordon of Arrows spell and can cast it at it's lowest level as a ritual. You can do this an amount of times equaling half of your Proficiency Bonus (Rounded up). Eldritch Knight: with how Tasha's Cauldron of everything introduced the Bladesinger, i have one particular change in mind. War Magic: Starting at 7th level, when you make the attack action, or when you cast a cantrip as an action, you may either replace one attack with a cantrip with casting time of 1 action (If you use the attack action), or make a weapon attack as a part of the same action (in the instance you cast a cantrip). This just frees up their bonus action to use for other things.
The only cool thing about remarkable athlete is it gives you bonuses to your initiative roll, which is surprisingly useful for strength-based Fighters. Also, I got a lot of use out that miniature long jump boost to jump over some sewers (it was a con-save or get knocked unconscious because of how disgusting it was, and waste your action to get out).
0:26 Something I’d like to point out is that at this point, there is literally nothing attached to the “anything else” end of the scale, and that nothing is *still* heavier than ranger!
i feel the same about weapon focus on valor bard like... you want to attack with melee weapons and use a shield right? BUT NOO YOU MUST HAVE A FREE HAND TO HOLD YOUR FOCUS OR GET SHAFTED but the 'better fighter bard' the swords one can use their weapon as a focus... smh
I literally just gave all fighters feat " Martial Adept" lvl 1, and all Battlemaster on the level they would be gained. So that removed one subclass, but made rest fighters much stronger.
Honestly Im thinking of making a "spellcasting" for martial classes called Weapon arts, which would give the martials some way of using either magic or using their super enhanced senses. For example, something like a dominating pressence(chance to cause fear to nearby enemies) ignore pain(gives you some king of damage mitigation) etc... Of course, there would need to be a crap ton of balancing to make this fun and fair.
Cool vid, funny stuff and neat ideas, watched some of your other dnd things and ya, also cool stuff and neat ideas. Had you just randomly show up in recommended so here's hopin the yeetube gods are pushing your stuff. Hope to see more vids whenever you get to them.
So i did a build recently (bg3) based on war magic. Two levels in hexblade, seven in eldritch knight. Attack with your charisma twice, or eldritch blast then weapon attack on a bonus action. So far it has been fun, but you end up in melee unable to blast effectively quite a bit. (for bg3 I respeced once I get pact of the blade, and eventually I'll get third attack when i reach fighter 7 warlock 5.)
I was playng a champion fighter. I took a 1 level hexblade dip to make my lance use charisma, then i too the piercer feet and elven accuracy. If you'r on a horse you can attack medium creatures with advantage. Crit fishing is fun.
Something worth noting about Eldritch Knight is that it can learn spells that are not form the Abjuration or Evocation schools starting at level 8. This includes Shadow Blade. A 2d8 single-handed finesse weapon plopped onto a Fighter with Dueling Fighting Style that ALSO gains automatic advantage in dim light or darkness and can also be used as a thrown weapon and called back immediately after is an absolutely insane amount of damage to be able to throw out. This combo is not only obvious, but also seems so natural that I refuse to believe that WotC didn't fully intend you to use it. Unfortunately, EKs at no point gain any kind of bonuses to Concentration or CON saves and still have exceptionally few spell slots. Something I would suggest is, at some point or another before you learn Level 2 spells, the EK gains advantage on Concentration Throws, or some kind of bonus to Concentration saves equal to either their INT or CON modifier so they can keep their few concentration spells active more often.
I've always balanced my homebrew on fun, usually mechanically balance makes the classes fun so I always make sure to keep it in mind. So for me the fantasy's of each classes is the most important thing for each class to accomplish. When I play warlock I want to feel like I'm making a deal with the devil, I want power that warrants sacrificing babies to my patron, I want curses like the Chainsaw man devils. I want my barbarian to grapple a dragon and I want the rogue to be able to literally go invisible. The fighter is the master of combat, I want to be so good at swinging a sword that I overshadow the guy literally with God and anime on his side. When I play a fighter I want cool stuff to do, when I get to high level and the wizard is warping reality, I want to be an anime character. I want to do the demon slayer shit, I want to be the storm that is approaching and use judgement cut end. Seriously the wizard can cast dimension door,far step, and haste so I want my martial to move fast, jump high, and dash around the battle field. Is this realistic, no people can't slam a sword into the ground and create a wave of destruction all around them, but like the spell casters get to forget physics and do cool shit, realism walked out a long ass time ago. What I've been doing is reworking all 12 classes, yeah I know I'm a masochist, with a focus on the fantasies but also mechanical depth to the classes. Barbarians rage isn't a press and forget but is a meter you have to build and manage. Then I've added a feat/invocation/spell/fighting style like system, at 1st their just fighting styles and other generally passive or low level abilities. 2nd is cool moves akin to battle master maneuvers(but worse because battle master still has its use), 3rd is advanced moves that still generally apply to realism, 4th is fantastical but 5th is literally dragon ball z you punch the ground and it causes an earthquake.
One thing I would personally like to add to E. Knight is to give them the ability to enchant their weapon. When I thin of an Eldritch Knight, I think of this badass knight with a flaming blade in one hand, and a spell in the other. What I was thinking is to give them the ability to enchant their weapon as an action. it does an extra 1d4 damage of your chosen damage type for 1 minute, and you recover the use on a short or long rest. At higher levels, the buff lasts longer. 10 minutes to an hour and eventually indefinitely at level 18. And yes, you can use this on magic weapons. Another idea is to make your weapon deal an extra 1d4 of damage for a minute whenever you cast a 1st level or higher. The damage is the same as the spell you casted. So it's like you used the lingering energy of the spell to power up your weapon.
I buff the Arcane Archer by letting them switch Arcane shot options when they gain more and and buffing the Arcane shot option that's a 1ft wide line and make it 5 ft wide, make the banishment option 1 minute or permanent if the creature is not from the current plane.
I like the extra feat at level 7 for the Champion fighter! That's fitting. An alternative in my opinion could be, remarkable athlete plus: - Your walking speed increases by 10 feet. - You have a climbing and swimming speed equal to your walking speed. - You get proficiency in Athletics, if you already have it than you get expertise in Athletics.
Throwing this out there before I watch; this is my current Fighter fix: Fighter gets an extra feat, from a list: Athlete, Charger, Fighting Initiate, Martial Adept, Savage Attacker, Skilled, Tavern Brawler, or Tough. Big fan. Specifically chose versatile / not build defining / not often picked feats. I'm also running Treantmonk's Three Homebrew Rules, which give everyone -5/+10 attacks. I'm also giving weapons with the Heavy property Brutal Critical. Also, critical hits - any excess damage can roll over to another target (with the same AC or lower). But after watching your Monk video, I'm hoping there's some more spice to keep the Fighter up to speed.
Mmmm. Yes. Very good. Couple changes. All Fighters: - Level 3 gets an extra feat, from a list: Athlete, Charger, Fighting Initiate, Martial Adept, Savage Attacker, Skilled, Tavern Brawler, or Tough. - Level 6 gets Combat Focus, can reroll missed attacks (number of times at fighter levels, where number = proficiency bonus for pure fighter) times per short rest. - Level 18 gets Expaned Crit Range, 19-20 (or 16-20 if Champion) Champion: - Remarkable Athlete adds half proficiency bonus to Str, Dex, Con checks - even if already proficient, and gets moved to level 3. Level 7 gets an extra feat/ASI. Level 10 also starts critting on 18. Level 15 starts critting on 17.
The way I would tweak this example of rebalancing Champion (while even keeping in mind the date it was created) is actually to move the extra Fighting style to level 7 and have the addition feat be at level 10 (though, probably best to just straight up make it an extra ASI that can be used for a feat to fit better with the base design of the game). That way you're just keeping the even numbered level ASIs more consistently to play into the simplicity angle just a be more. Better flow. Though, my own, preexisting, homebrew fixes for Champion worked out a bit differently. I had the same idea in what you did with Combat Focus, but as a change in the way Superior Athlete functions. "Starting at 7th level, once on each of your turns, whenever you make a check or attack roll that uses Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution, you can choose to have that roll's result equal the value of your proficiency bonus instead, even if the original roll was a 1. You can do so after the DM tells you if the roll was a success or failure, but before applying any effects of the roll." Essentially, it's like a more focused and weaker variant of Reliable Talent that also applies to attacks (especially at 15th level, where it's no longer limited to once per turn, though still only on your own turn). Fighter is the class that is most effected by the fact that ever attack roll has a 5% chance of missing no matter how low the AC of the target is, so getting to mitigate that on a regular basis seems fair. Also gave it two additional Fighting Styles, one at 3rd level, but that was informed by there being a better selection of Fighting Styles to chose from nowadays. (And no additional feat/ASI, since I didn't think of that and not as much of a big deal given the easier to overlap Fighting Styles that have been added.) Guess while I'm here, I say some more of homebrewing fixes I've done. Proficiency number of uses for Arcane Archer would risk meaning it only gets taken as a multiclassing dip. Instead, I doubled down scaling the Arcane Shots, actually starting them at even less power they already did, but having them gain a die of damage for each and every subclass feature level. With that comes the more radical change, keeping the hard limit of only 2 Shots, but having them both refresh when rolling initiative straight from level three. (So, they excel in handling multiple encounters, still struggling behind Battle Masters at low levels, but having greater return on investment as they continue to grow.) Also added some long rest resources in the way of crafting specialized arrows at mid to high levels. Like an Arrow of Life that heals when it hit and has a minute of regen, and, at level 18, an Arrow of Death that doesn't deal damage and instead casts Power Word Kill when you hit a creature with it. Unlike the Arcane Shots, you have to chose to fire these arrows before the attack roll, though the magic is only expended if they hit. You also have to make a crafting check on a long rest using the skill you chose with Arcane Archer Lore, so successfully making the stronger arrows isn't guaranteed, and can only have one of each in existence at a time. ...Actually, let's just skip to the subclass that is so bad that you forgot it even existed in the video despite referring to the book it comes from, Banneret (Purple Dragon Knight) from SCAG. Buff Rallying Cry to just heal others the same value of your Second Wind roll for simplicity's sake, make it target more creatures (up to a number equal to your charisma modifier (minimum of 1) + your proficiency bonus), and "maybe" even throw in removal of a limited set of status conditions like Fear, Charm, and Stun (via allowing a choice of Con or Wis save to shrug it off). Have the subclass gain additional Second Wind uses at 7th and 15th level. Move Royal Envoy to 3rd level and Bulwark to level 10 (Bulwark could also target multiple allies). Inspiring Surge should just outright grant an action (taken at the end of your turn) to the ally, literally sharing the Action Surge with any type of party member. If your subclass's main gimmick is forgoing any improvement to your own character in order to support the rest of your party, they better be able feel you make a difference to them. Even support focused classes get more things they can do for themselves than the Banneret does, so that specialization needs to leave an impact. I should mention my changes also take into account tweaking even the good subclasses at least a little bit. P.S. This was a great video. Found it in the recommended by chance. P.P.S. A much easier and lazier way the fix Champion and Banneret would be to just combine them into one subclass with no changes from as written, since they address what each lacks between passive value and active things to do, and have synergistic theming flavor to each other.
I did Originally buff the arcane Archer back in 2020 and that's pretty much what I did, with the added bonus of also increasing the duration of some of the shots like banishing arrow to a minute with repeated saves
So there's a couple things here. First off: Best way to Buff Fighter? Take the Battlemaster subclass, and dissolve it into the core Fighter class. Replace Indomitable, one of the Extra Attack boosts, and one of the extra ASIs, and every Fighter now gets Maneuvers as outlined in the Battlemaster subclass. If I had my way, though, I'd dissolve the whole Fighter class into 2 or 3 separate classes- the Archer, the Man-At-Arms, and the Skirmisher (or Archer and Skirmisher could be the same thing if you prefer). But as for the subclasses... I personally think that Arcane Archer could be best boosted by giving them Rage progression on their magic arrows- so start with 2, then go to 3, then 4 or 5 at the end. Also give them a couple other neat tricks, like a double or triple-shot, or they learn the Ranger's "Conjure Volley" spell and can use it 1/Lr or something. Champion is actually pretty solid, I think. That one is a case of "The wider rule base doesn't support it fully" than anything else. I do think that the improved crit should be leaned on more, though. And don't underestimate the EK's use of a cantrip sometimes- remember that Cantrips DO scale on character level, and so can get fairly strong; more than that, though, it gives the EK a way of doing, say, a "Firebolt that guy way over there, then hit the guy in front of me" sort of thing.
My buff for fighter would be giving ALL fighter subclasses maneuvers. Have them with smaller dice, maybe introduce them level 1 or 2, and give each subclass a small list of unique, level-locked maneuvers it the fighter can choose from in addition to a list of universal maneuvers. And perhaps each subclass gets one of those exclusive maneuvers for free either at level 3 or each time you gain a subclass feature. the latter would work better for the battlemaster and any subclass that wants to work closer as an alternative battlemaster, like a Warlord. Then to compensate buff the battlemaster by giving them more dice than they currently have in addition to those exclusive maneuvers and buffing their current subclass upgrades (or tie their progression directly to even more powerful maneuvers gated by leveling up) This would make each fighter subclass much easier to make, frankly. Arcane archer could instead have the arcane parts be tied to the maneuvers. paired with the free maneuver(s) allows them to have lots of flexibility. Eldritch knight is already a beast of its own. the magic would replace the free maneuver for sure. one crazy idea is that it uses maneuver dice instead of spell slots but that ruins synergy with other casters. One other idea is to treat its list of maneuvers like metamagics, using its maneuvers to alter the spells in some way. Perhaps also give the subclass a clause that it can use maneuvers that trigger off of attacks work with spell attacks. It would also be better to give it the bladesinger's extra attack instead (also give it transmutation instead of evocation for its signature spell schools to choose from). of course if this is all too imbalanced then make it so maneuvers are tied directly to the subclass framework. but if the base fighter's maneuvers are far more gimped compared to a battlemaster-framework, stuff like EK should still get them just the subclass should not be buffing said maneuvers. Subclasses like Samurai are frankly too bare-bones compared to EK and BM. oooh I get to use a bonus action for advantage on my attacks 3 times a day. little scaling in uses, no other synergies with swords or bows or horses, only it's level 7 ability feels like it could be an actual samurai. changing the advantage ability to a maneuver that's meant to work with stuff like ranged weapons would make more sense since samurai historically were primarily horseback bowmen on the battlefield. Then some of the flavor abilities at level 7 should be expanded and spread out as the main power lays in the maneuvers. things like Crescent-Moon blade or other fantasy-inspired samurai tropes would THRIVE with special maneuvers! Samurai would work best as a battlemaster-adjacent subclass! Hell make one of it's abilities an Iaijutsu strike, foregoing extra attacks for a single strike that's buffed to hell as a maneuver. or make it a primary ability/stance that helps protect against surprise, sneak attacks, projectiles, etc. perhaps at the cost of an attack or using the bonus action PBTPD. Or make it so they choose a secondary "fighting style" similar to a warlock pact. Basically I hate how the samurai was implemented and have 5 different ways to Sunday to improve it. Champion would be great chassis for a wrestler type. maneuvers to help grappling, unarmed damage, thrown weapons, or improvised weapons that synergize with the fighting styles and feats. The Warlord would make a great fighter subclass that focuses on maneuvers. the battlemaster frankly took some of its kit already but the battle master should be the frontline guy, the warlord should be the backline commander & buffer. providing temp hp (or heaven forefend, HEALING!) as maneuvers, commanding allies to attack. higher level maneuvers let you command multiple creatures to move without spending reactions to shift a battlefield. Allow you to command formations, a way to introduce flanking outside of optional rules(?) or just have positioning matter for the class. Perhaps it has AoE effects to represent areas under the control of its allies. A guard command makes it so allies have an easier time focusing on defending in a certain area, etc. All non-magical. basically: the fighter needs a reworked skeleton. so many of its subclasses are too bare-bones to matter. battlemaster still feels gimped depending on levels and tiers compared to other martials and spellcasters. maneuvers should be the fighter's answer to spells. while you're at it buff barbarian a bit after 8th-10th level they frankly get bread crumbs in later tiers. then fix berserker. either let them short rest away exhaustion levels & completely at long rests or make them have weaker debuffs other than exhaustion.
on the topic of protection: make it a passive. creatures within 5 feet of you get some amount of cover. though on the topic of frontliners: the game REALLY needs a pull-in mechanic for ALL martials that isn't based on saves or is only partially reliant on them. plus work for multiple enemies, perhaps # = Prof. Frontlining is so difficult in 5e since any creature can just ignore you and go for the wizards. opportunity attacks are the only deterrent but it's usable once a round and then other enemies can ignore you like a city ignores a pothole. if this is done, buff ancestor barbarian, tie its mechanics into this enmity mechanic, etc.
What I do for Eldritch Knight is I let them make their weapon attacks and then they can cast a cantrip as a bonus action. Now everybody's happy. It's also pretty hilarious for the fighter to be so happy that they landed 2 attacks and then missed their firebolt.
There's only one change I'd propose to combat focus:
Have it apply to weapons your fighting style affects, that way it ties in more to the additional fighting style, and how champion is a fighter-ier fighter.
I'd also say give it a second use at level 18, 1 level after gaining your third indomitable.
Another potential change:
Fighting Style Improvement:
At level 15, you have mastered your method of combat. One fighting style gets an increased benefit.
Dueling would increase chance to hit when wielding a one handed weapon, as well as damage
Archery would now also boost damage
Defense would now boost saving throws by +1
Great Weapon Fighting lets you reroll damage for two handed weapons 1 extra time per attack
Protection would no longer cost a reaction, and now also increase the defended player's AC by your shield's AC bonus (until either the start of your turn or you use this ability again, whichever comes first)
Blind fighting increases range to 30 feet
Superior Technique increases the die value to a d10, and gives you an additional superiority die
Thrown Weapon Fighting increases the range of thrown weapons by 30 feet
Interception would no longer cost a reaction
Unarmed fighting increases the grappling damage to a d6, and gives advantage on grapple checks
I love the idea of Improved Fighting Style. All of them feel like they have room to evolve naturally, and that path of progression makes the Champion feel more Fightery. Well done! Now all you'd need to do is playtest the options for balance.
This idea is sick. At that level, i might even make some of these stronger. Can i steal this idea?
Champion is actually a sleeper champ that people overlook all the time because they're always assuming that they're going to start every fight at an optimal level when that simply isn't the case and you may have more or less resources then you anticipated due to how you've been rationing; Like if you had 6 fights between your long rests and you still have some left over, you wasted time/health working your way through it. other tmes you will have an opportunity to do a thing but completely forget that you can because of how optional it is.
Champion doesn't have this problem since everything he has is built into his class passively and actually works really, really well; Like they start with a doubled crit chance and that only gets better as you gain more attacks (upwards of 4 at 20th which comes out to an absurd 10 total when you action surge) and that threshold improves to 18-20 by 15th level. Also when you are below half health you regenerate which takes some pressure off of your healer when you reach level 18.
So for perspective a level 11 half orc with great weapon expertise, GWM, a Maul and a strength of 20 is going to get 6 attacks with action surge each of which has a 1-10 chance to crit so likely 1 and is going to do 2d6+5 on each with the crit getting an extra 4d6 meaning against a target with 14 ac they're going to hit pretty consistently and churn out an average of 66 damage during that surge without mastery and potentially considerably more with... which you as a fighter can conceivably do pretty much every fight.
Now, it's important to remember that the above math is ignoring the existance of external factors and modifiers and looking at only what the race+class+feats+weapon can do on average and ignoring the presence of other players and the posibility of magic weapons wherein things can get a bit more silly, so lets check that out:
Same fighter, but they have advantage on their attacks due to some 3rd party actions and Maul+2 against the same target Looks more like:
6 attacks 1-5 crit chance (so probably 2) no misses (thanks to advantage and +11 to hit) and GWM giving you an average of 158 with the only thing it costing you is... an action surge and some group synergy. Without it you're looking at about half that for a total of 79 which isn't exactly shitty.
Now some players will of course point out that their class (Paladin, warlock, wizard) can churn out high and even higher averages, but I'd argue that they tend to require expenditures of resources pretty consistently in order to reach the same numbers which a lot of them simply can't do for an extended period of time; Paladin and wizard both need long rests to recover spell slots (and the paladin doesn't exactly have that many) and the waarlock can get really silly but is going to be high priority and can't handle the ensuing attention like the fighter can.
Just some food for thought.
@@bonewizard go on ahead! Feel free to use it
I love this. Please for the love of god not extra rerolls on great weapon fighting though, it slows down combat so much as it is.
Fun fact about Arcane Archer. They are _never_ allowed to swap out their arcane shots. Not on a level up and not when gaining a new shot like battle master. Those two you pick at level 3? You're stuck with them for the rest of the character's run time.
" Those two you pick at level 3? You're stuck with them for the rest of the character's run time."
Ya, that seems like an oversight. Its an easy fix though. I wish i included that in the video.
Arcane Archer is pretty easy to fix. Scale shots per short rest via proficiency+idk, something? I love the flavor of that subclass, but just...yeah
Time to add arcane archer to my homebrew list of balance changes.
@@craftyplayz8150I’d just make it so that they prepare a number of arrows at daily preparation rather than locking something in. Lets them have way more versatility.
5:58
Fighter: "I want to drink away the dragon!"
DM: "What? How?"
Wizard: "I use the one and only wish spell that you'll allow me to cast to let the fighter drink away the dragon."
DM: "... that single use was meant for ... never mind. The dragon feels a sudden and overwhelming urge to prove it's might in a drinking game, and at the same time yo-"
Fighter: "You misunderstand me, I wish to *_DRINK_* the dragon away."
DM: "wot"
A proper use of the wish spell
@@bonewizard The best part of finding new channels that are just starting out is when the creator can actually respond to your comment on an older video. Thanks.
@@bonewizardyeah forget wishing to be a billionaire or be a dragon yourself, drink a fucking dragon whole, that’s the way to go!😂
The dragon proceeds to scream in pure terror as it turns into a magical chum smoothie.
You attempt to drink the Dragon. Roll a Constitution check😅
Personally, I think the lv. 3 Eldritch Knight feature should allow bonded weapons to be considered magic weapons in order to overcome resistances and immunities.
Would be cool and fitting
Seems reasonable.
The first time hearing about the class, I was confused as heck that I could SUMMON a weapon magically, but it itself wasn't considered magic. Like even monk fists are considered 'magic' soon after that.
Considering how it's how a blade pact weapon works, it should work the same for an eldritch knight
There’s several features that require fine tuning in Eldritch knight, like it’s 7th level feature should just let you replace on of your attacks with a cantrip instead of just giving you 1 bonus action attack, bladesingers gets this at level 6!
One critical thing I feel is missing from Arcane Archer that nobody else seems to suggest, at some point you should get the option to just change your arrow damage to magical + whatever elemental type you want. Fire, lightning, cold, acid, poison, thunder would be a good basis. it doesnt even need to be extra damage it just makes your ARCANE archer feel like they're always shooting ARCANE shots. It also just adds this nice detail of them being versitile in damage type which whille not crazy important is fun.
Otherwise personally I actually would completely rebuild the class from the gorund up and make it a ranger subclass.
They already do gain this ability at level 7:
"Magic Arrow- At 7th level, you gain the ability to infuse arrows with magic. Whenever you fire a nonmagical arrow from a shortbow or longbow, you can make it magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage. The magic fades from the arrow immediately after it hits or misses its target."
You could easily just house rule that they can also choose an elemental attribute. Honestly, using vulnerabilities or stopping regenerative abilities is not overpowered (it's still only 1d8 + Dex) but definitely gives Arcane Archer a bit of much needed versatility.
I don't mind arcane Archer being a fighter subclass, although I do think that it's something ranger should get access to. Maybe ranger should get arcane shot as like ranger spells similar to paladin smites. But for fighter I think it's neat to have a class primarily focused on basically Hawkeye trick arrows. The master archer is letting arrows loose when he's surrounded by foes so he pulls out a teleport arrow, or he shoots an explosive arrow, or traps and enemy with an ice arrow.
Most the martials have similar tool kits but I'd say it's the same as the spell casters having overlapping subclasses (tempest cleric/storm sorcerer), both fighter and ranger fight but ranger fights and uses nature magic while fighter fights really damn well.
Why would you make it a ranger subclass?
@@anyoneatall3488 because arcane archer is a classic elven art and was based in nature originally which is very much a ranger thing. Beyond that the super specialized archer fits the ranger way better than the fighter.
I much prefer all the fighter classes being more broad, arcane archer is just such a ranger class to me
reminder that rolling for initiative is making a Dexterity check, so Remarkable Athlete actually improves your initiative rolls
13:37 eldritch knight pains me, because the crazy versatility of spells actually puts it on par with Battlemaster once you start getting 2nd level spells or so.
War Magic is blatantly backwards. It should be "If you attack, you may use a bonus action to cast a cantrip" so that you get your extra attacks.
Woah exactly my thoughts. This will make EK so much better and even allow True Strike be worthy of use!
My homebrew version of Eldritch Knight literally just makes it into the Bladesinger Extra Attack ability, with the ability to exchange two attacks for a leveled spell when they get Improved War Magic.
late to the party, but to make that work you'd have to basically be whenever your character intends to attack you can use the bonus action, or just make it bonus action cantrips as otherwise your attacks don't get booming blade for example.
@@PapaBearIsHere Booming Blade only applies to the attack made as part of the casting.
WotC really overcorrected for the mistakes they made with Eldritch Knight when they made the Bladesinger. the ability to replace one of your extra attacks really fits in with with the Eldritch Knight motif of “sword dude that casts spells in battle.” imo if you really wanna play Eldritch Knight i find that Bladesinger is just more fulfilling of that experience.
If there were a 5.5E/6E, I'd really like Maneuvers and Superiority to be class features. And then Champion can maybe be buffed by giving a +1 ASI to give that raw competence and choose one more Save proficiency.
I already made this change in my homebrew of the game and it made the class way more fun to play
That was what fighters were supposed to be in the testing for 5e (essentaly the one dnd testing community feedback thing that might be still going on idk/idr haven't been keeping track of recent events after the whole OGL and pinkerton debacle) but the community testing it said in the feedback was like aw gee Hasbro this is a bit to complicated for the fighter which is supposed to be simple and should not get fun things.
welp... say hello to 5.5e in a couple months LMAO
Here's how to actually fix Martials.
1. Remove Shield, Absorb Elements, and Silvery Barbs from all spell lists. Give Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, and Rogues the ability to "cast" these "spells" PB/long rest times as non-magical abilities, but only if they aren't concentrating on a spell, at level 1 (increasing to per short rest at level 7). In short, remove some of the stuff that makes Casters better Martials than Martials, and give it to Martials in such a way that Casters can't just multiclass to acquire it basically for free.
2. Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, and Rogues, at level 1, get the -5/+10 feature from GWM/SS for free, and are able to apply it to all weapons (and Unarmed Strikes in the case of the Monk). This massively improves Martial defences and significantly improves build diversity.
3. Ensure that every class feature thereafter is at least on par with the spells the Casters are getting at the same level. No more flagship Martial features merely on par with a 1st or 2nd level spell and often with fewer uses. Whether that be by continuing the trend of making certain spells Martial maneuvers, or going full Tome of Battle, or making Battle Master Maneuvers only epic, I don't care. Just give the Martials actually strong features at least on par with Ranger spellcasting.
you lost me on the first sentence brother 💀everyone thinks they know how to fix martials, when in fact, you want to balance the whole ass game💀
I would give Combat Focus the ability to be used a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per short or long rest, since it's honestly not all that strong on it's own and would hardly be broken with some more uses, especially at such a high level already.
In retrospect, I agree.
The council will watch your carear with interest
oh cool I always wanted to be part of the Illuminati!
I love the concept of Arcane Archer but agree that the subclass is very lacking. They gain new shot options but stay at 2 uses per rest for their entire career. When they started scaling features with Proficiency Bonus, I thought that was a reasonable mod to the number of uses. Especially considering Arcane Shot is exclusive to bows, they absolutely need more uses as they grow. Battle Master with a Bow is still better, but at least scaling with PB makes this subclass more viable.
Hello m8 I came from Reddit. Good job on doing this, because I know this might be just like any other person who tells you their own version for a D&D-related thing, but I've also spent a good time listening to you. In conclusion, it was funny and informative so 10/10 my bone lad.
P.s: you might swear a lot, but I bet you don't have a mean bone in your otherwordly and undead body.
Thanks mate! And that is accurate, I do not have a mean bone in my body. I keep those bones in the closet.
@@bonewizard That's a creative way to say the Paladin who came to slay you for being "unholy" and "against all laws of nature" whatever those are.
The fighter is my favorite class to play as since to me it encourages combat roleplay. Because the class is so simple the DM and I actually end up doing things to make it more exciting.
- Like charging and tackling an opponent and pinning them against the wall.
- Or me throwing down ball bearings right when an opponent uses up more than half their movement speed to get to me, so they can't get back up immediately and now I got a prone enemy in front of me.
- Or my personal favorite grappling a mage by the lower jaw and shoving my fingers in their mouth so they can't speak verbal components, essentially shutting down the spell caster. Misty step require verbal components.
- A cool thing my dm allowed was during a stealth section my fighting took out several guards by sneaking behind them putting them in a sleeper hold.
- Or holding them down in a barrel of ale, drowning them.
To me fighter makes for a GREAT combat roleplayer that encourages the rule of cool. Combat doesn't just have to be about damage but also how what you do in order to end the fight.
Bro, I dont know if anyone told you this, but you got a cool DM.
@@bonewizard Would you believe this all started as a gag? My DM wanted to run a one shot (that became a short campaign) where we were all fighters. He gave us each a healing potion. Which we promptly sold them all for 400 gold to buy healing kits instead. Giving them to our fighter with the healer feat. (Seriously healing kits with the healer feat is godly! And they only get better as you level up. This one feat practically makes healing potions almost obsolete.) Also we realized we have a healer who can fight.
- Then we bought spells for our fighter who took up the ritual caster feat. being so limited in spells but still having them them was a lot of fun, and since there was no spell focus we actually had to worry about components for once! It was actually a lot of fun to search for them for spells like find familiar, a little pseudo dragon who became our mascot of the group.
- Then for me I took up grappler (wanted to go for a wrestling style) and bought like 5 nets, being able to restrain the enemy and giving my team every attack advantage against them is pretty good, perfect for our maul wielding great weapon fighter who always used great weapon master.
Honestly I actually encourage anyone to try a one-shot where you’re all one class that each get one feat at the start. A team of monks, a team of barbarians, rogues, wizards, or warlocks. It amazing to see what the same class but can be built so differently with just a feat or two.
One thing you _could_ take for your additional Champion Fighting Style is a Tasha’s Fighting Style… and Protection I guess. You either get a once per long rest trick attack from a Battlemaster Manuever, or can reduce damage from attacks on your allies… or buff your darts if you’re a thrown weapon fighter or take Protection if you’re a Sword and Board fighter… I guess.
i wish battle manuevers were used in far more fighter subclasses. like, theyre so interesting, and fighter is suppose to be a trained fighting class! the amount of battle manuevers can and should vary, but access to them shousl be standars for the fighters!
I was kicking around the idea of how to buff all the pre tasha fighter subclasses to match the tasha fighters. And im thinking about just giving the pre tasha fighters 2 maneuvers and 2 superiority die. Including battle master.
All fighters should get maneuvers.
Judging from how many UA features/subclasses have incorporated Superiority Dice, at least someone at Wizards probably agrees, heh
Have you seen Laserllama's fighter?
@@rikospostmodernlife no?
Great video! I'm glad I stumbled upon your channel, you make some great points, especially about the Eldritch Knight, I've always felt it to be very restrictive to only pick from two schools of magic. Can't wait to see what kind of fixes you have for come of the underwhelming capstone abilities.
If your talking about bard, then yes. I got plans for that.
@@bonewizard and warlock's too
@@danilocarvalho8419 idk man. Spending one minute to get four 5th level spell slots doesnt seem too bad. Thats 4 more castings of wall of light, or hold monster.
Basic does not equal bad
basic does not equal uninteresting
it just means "simple"
and the beautiful thing about Fighter is that they have A LOT of room for creative and flavorful changes without changing what is good about them mechanically
Fighters are easy to build, meaning you can devote more brain power to RP and making them an interesting character
I feel like alot of people struggle with this idea. in my opinion most classes tell you what to act like, but fighter is the one class you HAVE to be creative with.
most people who think fighter is boring are just bad fighters LMAO.
I’m glad to see you grow fairly quickly
I believe just yesterday you had about 350 subs
Your inspirations can be seen but you have your own style which I really enjoy, keep up the good work
Thank you!
Ya my channel is blowing up very quickly in the past week, and it makes me kind of nervous haha.
You’ll do great, I’m sure of it
mans blowing up!
I would personally add a feature to Champion called "Champion's Specialization". If you're a Champion, you're known for being extraordinarily good at doing one specific thing. If you are a champion center-forward on the basketball court, you do everything a center-forward does better than everyone else. If you are a champion spearman on the field of battle, you are without peers at using spears.
Champion's Specialization:
"At Level 10, you have trained endlessly with a particular set of weapons and are unmatched in their usage. Pick any two Simple or Martial Weapons. When you attack with one of thse weapons, double your proficiency bonus to the attack roll. On a hit, add your proficiency bonus to the damage roll."
Hey man, just scrolling through my reddit feed and found your vid. Gotta say, real nice quality. Keep up the good work and have a good time
Hilarious! Even for someone with little knowledge of D&D, I'm excited to see how you will buff other classes. Keep up the good work, Bone Daddy!
Wow, I've watched a couple of videos now, and it's shocking to me that you only have 600-some subscribers. Your content is funny, enjoyable, the art style is endearing, overall just great. I'm glad to have found the channel and done my part for your subscriber count.
Thanks for the encouraging words.
@@bonewizard Hard second here, mate. You're wildly underrated, but I hope you don't stay that way. Reach out. I bet the big names would like to hear your contribution. 🙂
@@Drekromancer hello mr. Zee bashew? Would you like to bring another youtuber on your show? Hes a shrill, poorly animated, skeleton that yells at the SCAG!
“Don’t think for a second I forgot about the SCAG!” Hilarious. I’m subscribing
The spellcasting subclasses are supposed to have underwhelming features because the main feature is spellcasting (Mage Hand Legerdemain is about the same power as Bond Weapon, though it has a bit more utility). I DO like the changes you make, since I'm pretty sure WotC admitted that the magic school restriction was done for flavor, not for any balance reasons. I think Bladesinger should also be able to get BB and/or GFB at 2nd Level.
Binge watched all of these videos, Bangers all around
Glad you liked them!
Glad to see that a lot of the highly-rated comments are new. You're gaining ground, and it's about time.
Dude i exploded. I firmly believe i cant be doing this well and most of the subscribers are bots or something.
@@bonewizard Hahaha, hell yeah. I can understand why you'd feel some impostor syndrome after being underground for so long. But just wait - I'm sure it will start to feel natural soon. 🙂
( -oops I mean BEEP BOOP- )
@@bonewizard Hop on it and throw down a new video to capitalize on the hype!
@@Drekromancer by the end of june ill put something out.
@@bonewizard My body is ready. 🙂
I like the idea of shooting ranged cantrips as a fighter for Eldritch knight, so perhaps a way to buff the subclass is to increase any cantrip damage that doesn’t use a weapon attack by your INT mod, and then maybe double that bonus when you reach 11th level to keep up with extra attack. I would also have the knight be able to attack twice as a bonus action with the improved warcaster cuz the damage output of 3rd level spells at high levels is pretty garbage.
Hilarious editing! Looking forward to more content!
I just discovered the channel and I thought these ideas for fixing some weaknesses in DnD were really good, you did great, greetings from Brazil 🇧🇷
Awesome, thank you! Also hi Brazil 🇧🇷
WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT shield doesn't count as a weapon for dueling? Major game changer. but what I really want for fighter is a reason to wield a one handed weapon and no weapon in the other hand. an actually effective fighting style using a 1 handed weapon like a normal longsword and using the other hand to say, balance or grapple.
The protection fighting style is interesting in that it’s efficacy scales up at the rate of your enemies and enemy type.
Imposing disadvantage on an attack roll from a monster that has one strong yet powerful attack can prevent alot if damage.
Imposing disadvantage on a single attack when the enemy has access to multi attack isn’t nearly as impactful.
Thing is, most monsters scale by doing more attack rolls.
Protection would probably be fine to allow disadvantage on all a attacks of chosen creatures turn or something.
@@bonewizard I thought of it being like a reverse Wolf totem barbarian, where enemies have disadvantage on their attacks if they are within 5ft of you. And it's passive so yay.
interesting ideas, and well made. i will definitely keep an eye out for our feature vids.
Thanks mate!
4:07 He claims it's the most played sub-class of the most played class. But Warlock is the most played class listed and The Hexblade is the most played sub-class.
i like your words calcium construct
and i like how you improve the warrior subclasses
its just so simple as: i like your channel :)
Glad you like it!
Nice work as always! I really appreciate your hard work and dedication.
I found this great, to be honest. Very fun and informative! You have a real good sense of humor, and a lot of your buffs we're needed without being too powerful. For the most part at least lol. I had fun!
I do think buffing dueling is unneeded though. Instead I would recommend swapping protection as a fighting style for interception, a UA feat found in the UA class features pdf. It gets the feeling that the fighting style was going for without it being as bad.
Hope to see more from you!
Using interception did cross my mind. However I didn't choose that because I pretty sure that fighting style will be in the book coming out this November. And id rather they have their own identities, both with their stregnths and weaknesses.
@@bonewizard A very fair consideration. I really hope its in the new book too. The UA class features stuff is my favorite UA content they've put out so far.
@@littulv fingers crossed for wold magic barbarian (a better balanced one)
@@bonewizard LMAO YEAH. I remember that. I gave my feedback to WOTC for that, because it was really obvious that the feature that gave spell slots allowed for infinite spell slots with a healer.
I personally hope for a refined Path of the Beast barb myself.
@@littulv Holy crap the infinite spell slot thing was insane! Who green-lit that?
Bro, beast barb has the most flavor but they gotta buff that 3rd level ability. Those natural weapon attacks that are just worse than most weapons.
Nice video, Homeskillet. I came to say nice work on the Samurai Jack call outs, especially the Blue Creature sound effect at 14:08. Love that show.
Most of the time in games I play all the things you listed for con checks were actually saving throws instead. I like combat focus and with lots of things being prof bonus times per long rest now I think it would make sense to change the feature to that instead
A change to Protection Fighting Style that i would love, is it being a passive effect just like other fighting styles:
- Creatures of your choice that you can see have disadvantage to attack rolls made against creatures other than you within 5 feet of you. You must be wielding a shield.
This way this fighting style would become the perfect passive fighting style for tanking.
That would be good
Level 10 feature about fighting styles could also give the ability to swap both of them on a short rest. Would be bad ass and versatile.
Ooo thats good. I like that, it is a good start to improve them.
I knew we had a gungeon player from the video on the monk video, but gunther confirmed it.
Best rouge like of all time
I can tell you from experience, the biggest problem with cavalier is that your most powerful feature is limited by your DM. I didn't get to ride a mount in my cavalier game in combat until I was level 8. And even then I'm only on the beast 1/3 of the time. It was really taxing on my morale feeling like I'd traded in an imaginary horse for the ability to do anything other than attack and action surge until level 7.
This is why my Leonin Echoknight became the mount for our Goblin rogue.
Modern problems require modern solutions.
Eldritch Knights should be able to replace one of their attacks with a casting of a cantrip like blade singer does.
I like the idea of making war magic just allow you to replace one of your attacks from the attack action with a cantrip no bonus action required.
I thought of that too. I did that math and it makes it waaaaay to strong. Lol
@@bonewizard Ya you might be right. I just hate that war magic doesn't work with extra attack. Bladesingers can replace one of their attacks with a cantrip at level 6 so I figured it was far to let the eldritch knight do it to at level 7. Otherwise I see bladesinger as better then the eldritch knight in both combat and spells
@@theeye8276 see, the thing about that is that a bladesinger ONLY gets 2 attacks. A fighter gets 3 at 11 and 4 at level 20. A better way to implement the same thing is "when you cast a cantrip, you can make a weapon attack as part of the same action. So does the exact same thing as blade singer, and the exact same thing as eldritch knight but without using a bonus action. Worded that way tho makes it possible to also use a bonus action cantrip to get ANOTHER attack in. So then you'd have to word it "when you use your action to cast a cantrip make 1 weapon attack as part of that action"
@@cameronlancefrii7356 the fighter only gets more attacks at level 11. That's tier 3 when it's so I think it's fine personally
@@theeye8276 But that's also when a cantrip levels up, right? Let's take an eldritch knight that has booming blade as an example. Wielding a great sword with a strength mod of 5, he's doing 6d6+15 damage already. One of these gets to have booming blade, which is 2d8 thunder damage at this point. And if that target moves it takes an extra 3d8 thunder damage.
Green Flame Blade, target takes weapon damage+2d8 and another target next to it takes 2d8+your spell mod.
Shocking grasp will do 3d8 and remove the target's ability to take a reaction.
Fighters get a 4th attack at level 20 and cantrips have leveled up again at this point. So 8d6+20 and one booming blade for 3d8, potentially an extra 4d8 if the target moves.
A normal cantrip like shocking grasp removes one of the greatsword attacks, but replaces it with 4d8 and carries a cool effect.
Is this too much damage? Is this okay? Idk, we'd have to compare it to something. Other fighter classes are a good place to start.
Battle master, gets all the cool maneuvers. Even though they can add a d8 to a d12 to a damage roll or attack roll or athletics check, they're spending a resource. They can't indefinitely do it. They can also miss and waste the Superiority dice.
Samurai can get an extra attack, but they HAVE to have advantage, and they give up that advantage to make the extra attack. An extra 2d6+5 is about 11 average damage, while booming blade is 9 and a potential 13.5. Then at level 17 that's 13.5 and a potential 18 average damage.
Cavalier's only attack buff is if someone hits a close ally through disadvantage, but also it can only be used up to like, 5 times per long rest.
Echo knight, the proclaimed strongest fighter by some... can make an extra attack once per turn on the same long rest limit. I think this one's based off of con modifier.
So, conclusions- gfb and booming blade have the potential to be really strong, and at level 11 up a regular d8 cantrip is stronger than a single attack AND carries a cool effect. Ray of frost slows by 10ft of movement, shocking grasp removes reactions, all sorts of cool stuff. Cantrips are also infinite, so really we've just given eldritch knight the greatest attack power of them all. Not to mention all the OTHER spells they can cast.
Just stumbled upon your channel. These videos are crazy good!
Thank you! I hope you like the stuff going forward.
DID CU CHULIANN GET A MENTION YES I LOVE IRISH MYTHS
They are pretty cool. I personally love fionn mac cumhaill. Its so goofy yet still so cool.
@@bonewizard big man foinn is my personal favourite 2 nah fr tho I got so fucking hyped when i saw cu chuliann as an Irish man myself i was like "HOLY SHIT THATS US MAMMIE WE GOT FECKING MENTIONED" I love our old myths and legends epically since even here in Ireland they are so commonly dismissed or forgotten
Four years in total, a 16 Month wait for me personally, and we still waiting on that Warlock Video. The Suspense is slowly killing me, but these Buffs for all the subclasses made so far have been so much fun for me and my Crew. Keep up the work Skelle-Lad.
It sucks that you’d have to take a feat to do this, but I think if you get Eldritch blast with Eldritch Knight it would be fantastic. I also think it would just be an improvement just to give it to the subclass
Firebolt would work just as well
Champion has one thing going for it - regen. Take Dwarven Resilience on a level 18 Champion. Buff AC to the maximum. Watch your DM cry tears of agony as you tank 3 Ancient Dragons.
Great video! Subscribed!
JUST FOUND THIS AND NOW I'M EXCITED!!!
I wouldn't even say that Evocation is a good school of magic for EK because you don't have a good bonus to hit or a good save DC. I would swap it out for Transmutation anyday.
I kinda wish it had the spell slot progression of a half-caster.
As for war magic, I've seen the idea of letting them cast a cantrip instead of a weapon attack but that's really strong (especially with Blade Ward). So maybe give the EK a significant boost to cantrip damage? And more cantrips to choose, duh.
Cackled at kicking in wizards door. Great animation. One subscriber point to you.
Fighter is actually one of the best classes in the game, it's just that people tend to sleep on it due to the lack of "flash" that so many other classes have.
Like yes, it's "weapon guy", but my response to that is that you can literally recreate *any* historical warrior/soldier from history using them; Rajput, Winged hussar, Centurion, Red coat, Long bowmen, hoplite, viking, Eagle warrior, Samurai... All of these could be thematically built using the fighter and their near bottomless pit of feats, and as such they are the most versatile class in the game in terms of what they can be.
Ya dude. Fighter is dope.
But you can recreate any magical guy with a wizard as well... that doesn't make a class good. Mechanical power has nothing to do with flavor, or even being flashy. It has to do with hard maths and probabilities.
@@limaTheNoob Ok, well if we're talking about raw math Fighter still has signifigant edges on more flashy characters like the wizard, since you have a greatly reduced reliance on long rests, Extremely reliable damage output, self healing and the tools you need to do the job are far easier to come by then that same wizard (who is pretty screwed if anything happens to his grimoire. Or his component bag. or his ability to vocalize).
Hell, I'd go so far as to argue the Champion is a power player people sleep on owing specifically to the *absence* of active powers since it means nothing is ever wasted with him and a half orc with an increased crit threshold is well and truly a nightmare in terms of raw damage output.
@@guitarhausdoesntknowwhatac3285 see, your logic is not without merit, but, in actual play, all those strengths matter very little. Not reliance on long rests is only ever an advantage in a game where you actually always have 6-8 encounters - even if some tables do that sometimes, next to none do it regularly. Fighters are an endurance type of character, but no one wants to play meat grinder DnD nowadays where you mindlessly kill mooks from room to room without end.
Just as you can take the spell book from the wizard, you can take the fighter's weapon. Gag the wizard? Handcuff the fighter.
Apart from the whole endurance thing, there is nothing a fighter does truly better (even sustained damage is better done with caster classes, such as via summons and whatnot).
Endurance is an old design, and it shows on both the fighter and the rogue, whose at-will abilities are actually a liability (since they are in place of potential long rest abilities that, due to being limited, would pack more power inherently).
@@limaTheNoob
1. You really can't assume that you are getting regular long rests, especially at higher levels where you will have more resources and thus more likely to get to recover half your spell list or so.
2.If you take a weapon from a fighter, he can get another weapon. Doesn't really work out the same way for the wizard when their spellbook gets removed since that's effecitvely everything they can do.
3.Putting aside how you keep underselling endurance, they still get more feats then anyone else and enough that you can create interesting builds that simply aren't possible for other classes. Also your summons go ut the window pretty quick with applications of counter spell, dispel or magic missile (all of which are going to be a lot more common in the sort of high level combat where you'd be routinely summoning.
4. Again, this assumes that you can consistently have spell resources to end the fight.
As an aside, For someone who seems to poo poo on old school dungeon crawl type mechanics you sure are placing an emphasiss on combat as opposed to actual role play.
Found you on a whim and enjoy your videos and ideas and agree 90%. One thing I'll say for eldritch k ight summoning sword hat trick imo is pretty dope and make for cool rp moments if you need to hide a weapon or blend in or taken prisoner. But your additional perks to level 3 would be welcoming for sure. Look forward to next video!
Oh the RP for EK to summon a sword is very cool, but mechanically its poopy.
Glad you like the vids!
Echo Knight is by FAR the best fighter subclass, alongside being one of the greatest subclasses in the game in general.
Imagine if the Battlemaster had UNLIMITED superiority dice all the time from 3rd level.
Welcome to Echo Knight.
Echo Knight has unlimited teleportation, and most casters are lucky to have any teleportation at all. Echo Knight is awesome.
Echo knight is the strongest, but that's ridiculous, a battlemaster can add 5 to attack and damage every single attack, prone from range, ect. The echo knight can... make melee attacks ranged? And can teleport every other turn assuming no-one attacks the echo? Get... 2 more attacks than normal per day? Your bonus action is clogged, so you can't PAM or CBE. Which immediately 2/3rds your damage compared to a battlemaster. I agree echo knight is the strongest, but that's waaaaaayyyy to much of an exaggeration.
@@jamesbaker2092 PAM and CBE are still viable, because you only need your bonus action on turns where you make your echo or teleport, and since they stick around for a while after creation and are free to move you won't need to re-summon them too often. The extra attacks per day help make up for turn when you're teleporting or re-summoning anyway, so there's no DPS loss.
The Battlemaster has more damage dice for sure, but once you factor in mobility and opportunity attacks the Echo Knight will have more than enough attacks to make up the damage difference.
@@normal6483 your echo has 1 hp. You'll need a new one nearly every turn
@@jamesbaker2092 Your echo has a minimum AC of 16; immunity to poison, psychic, and every single condition; and every attack into it is completely wasted, even if it gets destroyed. Having to re-up your Echo at all is a win, and one that doesn't come up too often in practice.
Just found your channel, I really like your take on homebrewing classes ! You are very funny and I think we grew up watching the same stuff on TV haha :D
Keep up the good work
I think your channel is hilarious, great, accurate and very similar outlook on the game as I do. I would be interested in working on something someday with you! You remind me of a D&D version of “TheOdd1sOut” and that’s a huge compliment!
Send me an email and we’ll stay in touch!!
"Most played class", meanwhile Warlock has 13% and Hexblade is 38%
Combat focus should be once per round!! then it would be on pair with the manouvers not once per short rest. Or it should be Proficiency times per short rest.
Probably, ya.
This is an amazing video! Thank you for sharing your ideas.
Actually the weakest level for the Champion is Lv3.
Seriously, you're getting a 5% chance to deal an extra 7 damage. That's almost nothing.
The solution is actually fairly easy: "your attacks deal an additional 1d4 damage"
This is in line with Rangers, Battlemasters, Barbarians, etc. It's not overpowered at all and I think it's a great bonus for a class that is meant to be simple.
I do regret not touching level 3 in Hindsight. I should have done something for it.
I opposed to giving a subclass a flat damage boost. Its lazy, and a missed opportunity. Maybe extend the crit range, or make a more reliable way to hit creatures. Idk. Im spitballing.
@@bonewizard I don't really like flat damage boni either, but I think this subclass is the one exception. It's really meant to be quite simple. Plus more dice on crits.
@@hieronymusnervig8712 fair but i feel like i can still make some simple, good, and better than a flat damage bonus.
so the ua brute.. that was meant to be the better version of champion.
I really did enjoyed the video!
Also your voice is very pleasing, your animatics are good, your very funny and your advice is really good too!
I actually quite like the restrictions on which spells you can choose because it builds a theme between the two subclasses of this type (trickster and Eknight) and I even build off this theme for my own homebrew monk caster subclass (divination and conjugation)
I had to make a character for an impromptu one shot and so I chose Champion Fighter. Tel’Dario Surefoot. The great great great grandson of Hardwon Surefoot from “not another DnD podcast” infamy.
I had an absolute blast and ended up with a Magical great sword by the end of the session. And because of simplicity I was moving combat along and not fudging my rules like a couple of my party members.
These are all so fun and stupid and amazing and great and goofy. Found you last week and I'm a big big fan now.
Have fun. Hope they help your game.
I just discovered you channel, and I like the changes but here's a change I would like to propose for EK for war magic: whenever you use your action to make a melee weapon attack you can cast a cantrip as a bonus action.
Prior to my rewatch I’ll note my changes for my game currently
Discontinued battlemaster in favour of providing a smaller list of “martial maneuvers” to monk barbarian fighter and maybe rogue (haven’t tested the balance) basically they start at lvl 2, have a smaller die progression (start with d4) and is tied to your proficiency bonus for a lot of stuff.
Battle champion as I’m now calling it gets basically all the champion features, the full maneuver list, the other battlemaster features, and a slightly more sped up die progression. Basically doubling the amount of stuff this subclass gets made it finely feel somewhere even close to the others. For instance getting both remarkable athlete and know your enemy at 7th level still doesn’t make either of those particularly useful and that’s still kinda a dud level for this subclass, but getting 2 non combat abilities on your fighter at that level means you also won’t feel entirely useless as both these subclasses kinda could sometimes
My solution to the protection fighting style is to just give it to all fighters at lvl 1. If no one uses it there’s no reason for everyone can’t have it just in case
I play alot of fighter's in dnd and I found if you add some flair when you describing how you attack or interact with your enemies makes you feel so cool in combat.
That applies to pretty much everything in dnd combat lol
Oh my god...this video is amazing and I'm going to be watching as many as I can from now on.
Funny thing about the maneuvers, many are just things locked into battle master. Like trip and disarm
So it be easier to nuke battle master and just give maneuvers to all fighters.
such an underated channel i love all your videos so much
Thanks pancake man
I know this video is old, but i wanted to add some stuff that i'd add/change regarding some of the stuff mentioned.
Protector Fighting Style: i'd change this function to something like the following - When you stand within 5ft of an allied creature and you're wielding a shield, the allied creature gains a +1 or +2 to AC as long as they stand within 5ft of you. Only one creature can benefit from this fighting style at a time.
Arcane Archer:
Generally went with the magic archer idea. The changes proposed here are already great, so i'll just put some of the stuff i consider for this archetype.
- Elemental Arrows: Starting at 3rd level, when you choose this archetype, you can choose to change the damage type of your Ammunition to either Fire, Cold, Lightning, Acid or Poison. You choose this damage type each time you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack, using ammunition.
- (I couldn't think of a good name for this): Starting at 7th level, you learn the Cordon of Arrows spell and can cast it at it's lowest level as a ritual. You can do this an amount of times equaling half of your Proficiency Bonus (Rounded up).
Eldritch Knight: with how Tasha's Cauldron of everything introduced the Bladesinger, i have one particular change in mind.
War Magic: Starting at 7th level, when you make the attack action, or when you cast a cantrip as an action, you may either replace one attack with a cantrip with casting time of 1 action (If you use the attack action), or make a weapon attack as a part of the same action (in the instance you cast a cantrip).
This just frees up their bonus action to use for other things.
Salsa Dance with dislocated arms get me every time. Thank you for putting that image in my head
May a monster like that never darken your doorstep.
Man not sure why yall aren't as popular as someone like jocat, this is some goof stuff!
The only cool thing about remarkable athlete is it gives you bonuses to your initiative roll, which is surprisingly useful for strength-based Fighters. Also, I got a lot of use out that miniature long jump boost to jump over some sewers (it was a con-save or get knocked unconscious because of how disgusting it was, and waste your action to get out).
Remarkable athlete is OK, but REALLY should be written more clearly in regards to the initiative rolls.
@@bonewizard yup, I very much agree. I only figured out that it helped with initiative when I actually played Champion
I just noticed the arcan trickster roague looks like a character right out of Mouse guard
that was the inspiration! Love that book series.
Informational and comedic.... I love it!
0:26
Something I’d like to point out is that at this point, there is literally nothing attached to the “anything else” end of the scale, and that nothing is *still* heavier than ranger!
i feel the same about weapon focus on valor bard like... you want to attack with melee weapons and use a shield right? BUT NOO YOU MUST HAVE A FREE HAND TO HOLD YOUR FOCUS OR GET SHAFTED but the 'better fighter bard' the swords one can use their weapon as a focus... smh
I literally just gave all fighters feat " Martial Adept" lvl 1, and all Battlemaster on the level they would be gained. So that removed one subclass, but made rest fighters much stronger.
For those curious, the Purple Dragon Knight was beyond saving, so it didn't appear in this video
Honestly Im thinking of making a "spellcasting" for martial classes called Weapon arts, which would give the martials some way of using either magic or using their super enhanced senses.
For example, something like a dominating pressence(chance to cause fear to nearby enemies) ignore pain(gives you some king of damage mitigation) etc...
Of course, there would need to be a crap ton of balancing to make this fun and fair.
Itd be better to give them out of combat utility
@@shadow-faye Honestly true, I just always felt that considering how much magic is in dnd, all of the "caster" martials feel... weird to me...
Cool vid, funny stuff and neat ideas, watched some of your other dnd things and ya, also cool stuff and neat ideas.
Had you just randomly show up in recommended so here's hopin the yeetube gods are pushing your stuff.
Hope to see more vids whenever you get to them.
Thanks! I have been forced by the pact im in to release a video by the end of this month. And that is not a joke lol.
So i did a build recently (bg3) based on war magic. Two levels in hexblade, seven in eldritch knight. Attack with your charisma twice, or eldritch blast then weapon attack on a bonus action. So far it has been fun, but you end up in melee unable to blast effectively quite a bit. (for bg3 I respeced once I get pact of the blade, and eventually I'll get third attack when i reach fighter 7 warlock 5.)
I was playng a champion fighter. I took a 1 level hexblade dip to make my lance use charisma, then i too the piercer feet and elven accuracy. If you'r on a horse you can attack medium creatures with advantage. Crit fishing is fun.
Something worth noting about Eldritch Knight is that it can learn spells that are not form the Abjuration or Evocation schools starting at level 8. This includes Shadow Blade. A 2d8 single-handed finesse weapon plopped onto a Fighter with Dueling Fighting Style that ALSO gains automatic advantage in dim light or darkness and can also be used as a thrown weapon and called back immediately after is an absolutely insane amount of damage to be able to throw out.
This combo is not only obvious, but also seems so natural that I refuse to believe that WotC didn't fully intend you to use it. Unfortunately, EKs at no point gain any kind of bonuses to Concentration or CON saves and still have exceptionally few spell slots. Something I would suggest is, at some point or another before you learn Level 2 spells, the EK gains advantage on Concentration Throws, or some kind of bonus to Concentration saves equal to either their INT or CON modifier so they can keep their few concentration spells active more often.
I've always balanced my homebrew on fun, usually mechanically balance makes the classes fun so I always make sure to keep it in mind. So for me the fantasy's of each classes is the most important thing for each class to accomplish. When I play warlock I want to feel like I'm making a deal with the devil, I want power that warrants sacrificing babies to my patron, I want curses like the Chainsaw man devils. I want my barbarian to grapple a dragon and I want the rogue to be able to literally go invisible. The fighter is the master of combat, I want to be so good at swinging a sword that I overshadow the guy literally with God and anime on his side.
When I play a fighter I want cool stuff to do, when I get to high level and the wizard is warping reality, I want to be an anime character. I want to do the demon slayer shit, I want to be the storm that is approaching and use judgement cut end. Seriously the wizard can cast dimension door,far step, and haste so I want my martial to move fast, jump high, and dash around the battle field. Is this realistic, no people can't slam a sword into the ground and create a wave of destruction all around them, but like the spell casters get to forget physics and do cool shit, realism walked out a long ass time ago.
What I've been doing is reworking all 12 classes, yeah I know I'm a masochist, with a focus on the fantasies but also mechanical depth to the classes. Barbarians rage isn't a press and forget but is a meter you have to build and manage. Then I've added a feat/invocation/spell/fighting style like system, at 1st their just fighting styles and other generally passive or low level abilities. 2nd is cool moves akin to battle master maneuvers(but worse because battle master still has its use), 3rd is advanced moves that still generally apply to realism, 4th is fantastical but 5th is literally dragon ball z you punch the ground and it causes an earthquake.
One thing I would personally like to add to E. Knight is to give them the ability to enchant their weapon. When I thin of an Eldritch Knight, I think of this badass knight with a flaming blade in one hand, and a spell in the other. What I was thinking is to give them the ability to enchant their weapon as an action. it does an extra 1d4 damage of your chosen damage type for 1 minute, and you recover the use on a short or long rest. At higher levels, the buff lasts longer. 10 minutes to an hour and eventually indefinitely at level 18. And yes, you can use this on magic weapons.
Another idea is to make your weapon deal an extra 1d4 of damage for a minute whenever you cast a 1st level or higher. The damage is the same as the spell you casted. So it's like you used the lingering energy of the spell to power up your weapon.
I buff the Arcane Archer by letting them switch Arcane shot options when they gain more and and buffing the Arcane shot option that's a 1ft wide line and make it 5 ft wide, make the banishment option 1 minute or permanent if the creature is not from the current plane.
Dude just... YES. i feel like buffing underpowerd subclasses is not talked about enough, especially the PHB ones vs the xanathar and more recent ones
That's what this channel is all about lol
I like the extra feat at level 7 for the Champion fighter! That's fitting.
An alternative in my opinion could be, remarkable athlete plus:
- Your walking speed increases by 10 feet.
- You have a climbing and swimming speed equal to your walking speed.
- You get proficiency in Athletics, if you already have it than you get expertise in Athletics.
Throwing this out there before I watch; this is my current Fighter fix:
Fighter gets an extra feat, from a list: Athlete, Charger, Fighting Initiate, Martial Adept, Savage Attacker, Skilled, Tavern Brawler, or Tough.
Big fan. Specifically chose versatile / not build defining / not often picked feats.
I'm also running Treantmonk's Three Homebrew Rules, which give everyone -5/+10 attacks.
I'm also giving weapons with the Heavy property Brutal Critical.
Also, critical hits - any excess damage can roll over to another target (with the same AC or lower).
But after watching your Monk video, I'm hoping there's some more spice to keep the Fighter up to speed.
Mmmm. Yes. Very good.
Couple changes.
All Fighters:
- Level 3 gets an extra feat, from a list: Athlete, Charger, Fighting Initiate, Martial Adept, Savage Attacker, Skilled, Tavern Brawler, or Tough.
- Level 6 gets Combat Focus, can reroll missed attacks (number of times at fighter levels, where number = proficiency bonus for pure fighter) times per short rest.
- Level 18 gets Expaned Crit Range, 19-20 (or 16-20 if Champion)
Champion:
- Remarkable Athlete adds half proficiency bonus to Str, Dex, Con checks - even if already proficient, and gets moved to level 3. Level 7 gets an extra feat/ASI. Level 10 also starts critting on 18. Level 15 starts critting on 17.
The way I would tweak this example of rebalancing Champion (while even keeping in mind the date it was created) is actually to move the extra Fighting style to level 7 and have the addition feat be at level 10 (though, probably best to just straight up make it an extra ASI that can be used for a feat to fit better with the base design of the game). That way you're just keeping the even numbered level ASIs more consistently to play into the simplicity angle just a be more. Better flow.
Though, my own, preexisting, homebrew fixes for Champion worked out a bit differently. I had the same idea in what you did with Combat Focus, but as a change in the way Superior Athlete functions. "Starting at 7th level, once on each of your turns, whenever you make a check or attack roll that uses Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution, you can choose to have that roll's result equal the value of your proficiency bonus instead, even if the original roll was a 1. You can do so after the DM tells you if the roll was a success or failure, but before applying any effects of the roll." Essentially, it's like a more focused and weaker variant of Reliable Talent that also applies to attacks (especially at 15th level, where it's no longer limited to once per turn, though still only on your own turn). Fighter is the class that is most effected by the fact that ever attack roll has a 5% chance of missing no matter how low the AC of the target is, so getting to mitigate that on a regular basis seems fair. Also gave it two additional Fighting Styles, one at 3rd level, but that was informed by there being a better selection of Fighting Styles to chose from nowadays. (And no additional feat/ASI, since I didn't think of that and not as much of a big deal given the easier to overlap Fighting Styles that have been added.)
Guess while I'm here, I say some more of homebrewing fixes I've done.
Proficiency number of uses for Arcane Archer would risk meaning it only gets taken as a multiclassing dip. Instead, I doubled down scaling the Arcane Shots, actually starting them at even less power they already did, but having them gain a die of damage for each and every subclass feature level. With that comes the more radical change, keeping the hard limit of only 2 Shots, but having them both refresh when rolling initiative straight from level three. (So, they excel in handling multiple encounters, still struggling behind Battle Masters at low levels, but having greater return on investment as they continue to grow.) Also added some long rest resources in the way of crafting specialized arrows at mid to high levels. Like an Arrow of Life that heals when it hit and has a minute of regen, and, at level 18, an Arrow of Death that doesn't deal damage and instead casts Power Word Kill when you hit a creature with it. Unlike the Arcane Shots, you have to chose to fire these arrows before the attack roll, though the magic is only expended if they hit. You also have to make a crafting check on a long rest using the skill you chose with Arcane Archer Lore, so successfully making the stronger arrows isn't guaranteed, and can only have one of each in existence at a time.
...Actually, let's just skip to the subclass that is so bad that you forgot it even existed in the video despite referring to the book it comes from, Banneret (Purple Dragon Knight) from SCAG. Buff Rallying Cry to just heal others the same value of your Second Wind roll for simplicity's sake, make it target more creatures (up to a number equal to your charisma modifier (minimum of 1) + your proficiency bonus), and "maybe" even throw in removal of a limited set of status conditions like Fear, Charm, and Stun (via allowing a choice of Con or Wis save to shrug it off). Have the subclass gain additional Second Wind uses at 7th and 15th level. Move Royal Envoy to 3rd level and Bulwark to level 10 (Bulwark could also target multiple allies). Inspiring Surge should just outright grant an action (taken at the end of your turn) to the ally, literally sharing the Action Surge with any type of party member. If your subclass's main gimmick is forgoing any improvement to your own character in order to support the rest of your party, they better be able feel you make a difference to them. Even support focused classes get more things they can do for themselves than the Banneret does, so that specialization needs to leave an impact.
I should mention my changes also take into account tweaking even the good subclasses at least a little bit.
P.S. This was a great video. Found it in the recommended by chance.
P.P.S. A much easier and lazier way the fix Champion and Banneret would be to just combine them into one subclass with no changes from as written, since they address what each lacks between passive value and active things to do, and have synergistic theming flavor to each other.
I did Originally buff the arcane Archer back in 2020 and that's pretty much what I did, with the added bonus of also increasing the duration of some of the shots like banishing arrow to a minute with repeated saves
So there's a couple things here.
First off: Best way to Buff Fighter? Take the Battlemaster subclass, and dissolve it into the core Fighter class. Replace Indomitable, one of the Extra Attack boosts, and one of the extra ASIs, and every Fighter now gets Maneuvers as outlined in the Battlemaster subclass.
If I had my way, though, I'd dissolve the whole Fighter class into 2 or 3 separate classes- the Archer, the Man-At-Arms, and the Skirmisher (or Archer and Skirmisher could be the same thing if you prefer).
But as for the subclasses... I personally think that Arcane Archer could be best boosted by giving them Rage progression on their magic arrows- so start with 2, then go to 3, then 4 or 5 at the end. Also give them a couple other neat tricks, like a double or triple-shot, or they learn the Ranger's "Conjure Volley" spell and can use it 1/Lr or something.
Champion is actually pretty solid, I think. That one is a case of "The wider rule base doesn't support it fully" than anything else. I do think that the improved crit should be leaned on more, though. And don't underestimate the EK's use of a cantrip sometimes- remember that Cantrips DO scale on character level, and so can get fairly strong; more than that, though, it gives the EK a way of doing, say, a "Firebolt that guy way over there, then hit the guy in front of me" sort of thing.
My buff for fighter would be giving ALL fighter subclasses maneuvers. Have them with smaller dice, maybe introduce them level 1 or 2, and give each subclass a small list of unique, level-locked maneuvers it the fighter can choose from in addition to a list of universal maneuvers. And perhaps each subclass gets one of those exclusive maneuvers for free either at level 3 or each time you gain a subclass feature. the latter would work better for the battlemaster and any subclass that wants to work closer as an alternative battlemaster, like a Warlord.
Then to compensate buff the battlemaster by giving them more dice than they currently have in addition to those exclusive maneuvers and buffing their current subclass upgrades (or tie their progression directly to even more powerful maneuvers gated by leveling up)
This would make each fighter subclass much easier to make, frankly. Arcane archer could instead have the arcane parts be tied to the maneuvers. paired with the free maneuver(s) allows them to have lots of flexibility.
Eldritch knight is already a beast of its own. the magic would replace the free maneuver for sure. one crazy idea is that it uses maneuver dice instead of spell slots but that ruins synergy with other casters.
One other idea is to treat its list of maneuvers like metamagics, using its maneuvers to alter the spells in some way. Perhaps also give the subclass a clause that it can use maneuvers that trigger off of attacks work with spell attacks. It would also be better to give it the bladesinger's extra attack instead (also give it transmutation instead of evocation for its signature spell schools to choose from).
of course if this is all too imbalanced then make it so maneuvers are tied directly to the subclass framework. but if the base fighter's maneuvers are far more gimped compared to a battlemaster-framework, stuff like EK should still get them just the subclass should not be buffing said maneuvers.
Subclasses like Samurai are frankly too bare-bones compared to EK and BM. oooh I get to use a bonus action for advantage on my attacks 3 times a day. little scaling in uses, no other synergies with swords or bows or horses, only it's level 7 ability feels like it could be an actual samurai.
changing the advantage ability to a maneuver that's meant to work with stuff like ranged weapons would make more sense since samurai historically were primarily horseback bowmen on the battlefield. Then some of the flavor abilities at level 7 should be expanded and spread out as the main power lays in the maneuvers. things like Crescent-Moon blade or other fantasy-inspired samurai tropes would THRIVE with special maneuvers! Samurai would work best as a battlemaster-adjacent subclass!
Hell make one of it's abilities an Iaijutsu strike, foregoing extra attacks for a single strike that's buffed to hell as a maneuver. or make it a primary ability/stance that helps protect against surprise, sneak attacks, projectiles, etc. perhaps at the cost of an attack or using the bonus action PBTPD. Or make it so they choose a secondary "fighting style" similar to a warlock pact.
Basically I hate how the samurai was implemented and have 5 different ways to Sunday to improve it.
Champion would be great chassis for a wrestler type. maneuvers to help grappling, unarmed damage, thrown weapons, or improvised weapons that synergize with the fighting styles and feats.
The Warlord would make a great fighter subclass that focuses on maneuvers. the battlemaster frankly took some of its kit already but the battle master should be the frontline guy, the warlord should be the backline commander & buffer. providing temp hp (or heaven forefend, HEALING!) as maneuvers, commanding allies to attack. higher level maneuvers let you command multiple creatures to move without spending reactions to shift a battlefield. Allow you to command formations, a way to introduce flanking outside of optional rules(?) or just have positioning matter for the class. Perhaps it has AoE effects to represent areas under the control of its allies. A guard command makes it so allies have an easier time focusing on defending in a certain area, etc. All non-magical.
basically: the fighter needs a reworked skeleton. so many of its subclasses are too bare-bones to matter. battlemaster still feels gimped depending on levels and tiers compared to other martials and spellcasters. maneuvers should be the fighter's answer to spells.
while you're at it buff barbarian a bit after 8th-10th level they frankly get bread crumbs in later tiers. then fix berserker. either let them short rest away exhaustion levels & completely at long rests or make them have weaker debuffs other than exhaustion.
on the topic of protection: make it a passive. creatures within 5 feet of you get some amount of cover.
though on the topic of frontliners: the game REALLY needs a pull-in mechanic for ALL martials that isn't based on saves or is only partially reliant on them. plus work for multiple enemies, perhaps # = Prof. Frontlining is so difficult in 5e since any creature can just ignore you and go for the wizards. opportunity attacks are the only deterrent but it's usable once a round and then other enemies can ignore you like a city ignores a pothole. if this is done, buff ancestor barbarian, tie its mechanics into this enmity mechanic, etc.
What I do for Eldritch Knight is I let them make their weapon attacks and then they can cast a cantrip as a bonus action. Now everybody's happy.
It's also pretty hilarious for the fighter to be so happy that they landed 2 attacks and then missed their firebolt.
Ngl, that Gungeon reference was fire
LETS GOOOOOOO! Gungeon is my favorite game ever. I also use that soundtrack a bit. The synergy room song is 🔥