Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Fighter: Samurai, Sharpshooter, Arcane Archer & Knight

I'm getting, like, unhealthy amounts of mad, clicking on that broken link.

 

[Lord Twig]

I think you have me confused with someone else, as I don't think I have said anything about marking (there are a few people with Mecha in their screen name, so no problem). I freely admit it would be much more appropriate if there was a save (probably wisdom) so the target can overcome the strong emotion, and I plan on saying so in the survey for these fighters. Inflicting an emotion (almost always fear) on someone/thing else is part of the game, and not always from a magical source (see the berserker barbarian's menace ability). And much like all save or suck effects, players tend to love it when their PC's can do it, and hate it when it is done to their PC's.

It's possible I failed the notice the presence of two Mecha characters in this thread. But in my defense you all look alike!

And yeah, a save would make me feel better about it.

 

[Lord Twig]

Players generally don't like their characters taking damage or getting critically hit, or failing saving throws. I'm not convinced that "I wouldn't like if that thing I can also do happened to my character" is a suitable standard.

Why do you assume people won't like the results of the second statement? Isn't combat supposed to be challenging?

Challenging sure. Inevitable failure and death? Not so much.

Or even if it isn't that severe, the loss of player agency without even the chance of a save is a terrible rule!

First, the knight marks my character. I don't even know what that means, but it appears to have something to do with fear, and there is no save. Now on my turn I can't do anything except attack the guy that marked me unless I want to take a huge amount of damage. And running away isn't an option, I would just take even more damage! Is that fun? No. Bad rule.

So.... every damage spell in the game?

Petrification
Disintegration
Geas
Hold Person and other Paralyzing effects

These all allow a save. And damage is fine, but usually you at least have some kind of defense against it.

Having an enemy scry and throw a meteor swarm on your inn while you are sleeping, then summoning an MArilith to mop up while they teleport away and cast nondetection so you have no way to track them?

Again, Scrying allows a save. So does meteor swarm. A Marilith can be fought in the traditional manner. At no point is my agency taken away from me. Plus this is a pretty contrived scenario. Whereas having a Sharpshooter with Sharpshooter sniper (presumably of the same level as the party) attack the party in an ambush is a pretty straightforward occurrence.

Finally, how does the Sharpshooter balance against a Champion or Battle Master archer? Or an Arcane Archer in the same UA!?! He does insane damage for 3 full rounds of attacks while the Arcane Archer get's two attacks with a bonus, and only once a round.

But, beyond responding to that... I'm a little disappointed in how cursory and reactionary the discussion on this UA has been.

The biggest parts of the discussion seems to have been the dislike of the names and 4e style marking.

I'm more interesting in trying to figure out how many of the Knights reaction abilities stack into the same hit (I don't think mark and Hold the Line stack at all) than how to explain it. I'll explain it if it ever comes up in plan, if no one at my table wants to play it, I'm not going to worry about it.

Ah well, the conversation will probably die down by Monday like all the other ones have (Anyone else worried that once a week UAs while awesome is too quick of a turn over to get used to and study the different mechanics?)

If you look back you will notice that I commented on all four subclasses. All had flaws, but the Knight was the worst in my opinion, followed closely by the Sharpshooter. Of course everyone is going to have different opinions, that's fine, but I still have a right to voice my own.

 

[Lord Twig]

The fun thing is that, in D&D & especially in 5e, the DM decides everything, anyway. Want someone immune to the mark? Make him immune to fear. Don't want him also immune to a spell that causes fear? Make him immune to non-magical fear. Just decide on the spur of the moment that a mark shouldn't work on a given target in a given circumstance? Rule that way.

If I have to arbitrarily rule that a character's defining feature doesn't work to keep the game entertaining for the rest of the group, it's not a good feature.

Not that a WILL save makes a big difference much of the time (one of the annoying things about modern D&D is that it's way too easy for high level archetypal-hero-type PCs to end up with low WILL/WIS).
But, it doesn't really matter how you conceptualize the mark. It doesn't work against creatures immune to fear, which does imply (unnecessarily, IMHO), that it works on emotions (fear being the only emotion D&D has many mechanics for or immunity to). Your calm character can be calmly 'cautious' of the marking BBEG (and, face it, was probably going to be attacking him anyway, in which case the mark does nothing - I mean, how often is the BBEG there to protect someone else?)

Sure, you might have a 95% chance to fail, but at least you get a chance to resist, and that is all that most players want. At least that is what myself and my players want. Go ahead and cast a Fear spell! I might fail my save, but at least I got my role.*

Black Knight standing in the way to the Evil Wizard behind him? Pretty common actually. Or at least certainly not rare enough to be unheard of.

*Of course this reminds me of The Gamers II where a player insisted on a roll to see if he could get that natural 20... and rolled a 1 and made it worse. But honestly that is one of those moments that your group will talk about years afterwards.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, it's about harrying. If you all out wail on someone frantically, for instance, it's very easy to block those attacks, but you also don't want to ignore them. You can hard strike a weapon to knock it away from your allies. Heck, it could simply be engagement if it was a universal mechanic. You don't not attack someone who is attacking you.

Exactly this. In SCA skirmish fighting, this is what you do to keep the archers safe, or any number of other things, when the wall breaks and it's a desperate melee.

Or in a bar fight, if you are bigger and more capable of taking a hit than your friends...I was...not a safe person when I was younger.

Anyway, if you get in the face of the scariest guy in the room, like right there in hat dudes face, and slap the dude...that dude is not doing anything else until you have been dealt with.

 

[Xeviat]

Challenging sure. Inevitable failure and death? Not so much.

Or even if it isn't that severe, the loss of player agency without even the chance of a save is a terrible rule!

First, the knight marks my character. I don't even know what that means, but it appears to have something to do with fear, and there is no save. Now on my turn I can't do anything except attack the guy that marked me unless I want to take a huge amount of damage. And running away isn't an option, I would just take even more damage! Is that fun? No. Bad rule.



These all allow a save. And damage is fine, but usually you at least have some kind of defense against it.



Again, Scrying allows a save. So does meteor swarm. A Marilith can be fought in the traditional manner. At no point is my agency taken away from me. Plus this is a pretty contrived scenario. Whereas having a Sharpshooter with Sharpshooter sniper (presumably of the same level as the party) attack the party in an ambush is a pretty straightforward occurrence.

The mark does allow a "save" still. You don't automatically take damage if you attack someone else. The knight makes an attack against you. They could still miss. You could do things to boost your damage. Dodge action and then move away, now they attack with disadvantage (or negate their advantage). Or you try to knock them prone, or push them away from you. There are many options.

Far more options than you have when you're told "roll a Dexterity save" when a fireball falls on you.

Now, if disengage and things like tumble worked against Knights, that would be just fine with me. But it seems disingenuous to say that a mark takes away your options but a "save or be screwed" spell doesn't; it's not like you can simply decide "no, I succeed this save" (barring a few options that are there for that, I suppose).

 

[Xeviat]

Exactly this. In SCA skirmish fighting, this is what you do to keep the archers safe, or any number of other things, when the wall breaks and it's a desperate melee.

Or in a bar fight, if you are bigger and more capable of taking a hit than your friends...I was...not a safe person when I was younger.

Anyway, if you get in the face of the scariest guy in the room, like right there in hat dudes face, and slap the dude...that dude is not doing anything else until you have been dealt with.

I find myself wanting generic, all encompassing, engagement rules. They could take the place of opportunity attacks and marking and all that. You get locked in melee with someone, you're there until you want to put effort into getting away. Defender types could engage with multiple opponents (or simply those with extra attack can attack multiple people, and thus engage with multiple people; that would reward you for splitting attacks instead of focusing fire). Attacking someone who is already engaged could grant some kind of bonus (and allow the rogue to sneak attack).

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Or even if it isn't that severe, the loss of player agency without even the chance of a save is a terrible rule!

You appear to be fixating quite a bit on the saving throw, but saving throws have nothing to do with player agency. A save is just a random chance of passing or failing.

First, the knight marks my character. I don't even know what that means, but it appears to have something to do with fear, and there is no save.

Per the text, the knight is "menacing" you. Now, I don't like that myself. I don't think it should be fear-based; I think it's sufficient for the knight to be simply have an overbearing fighting style that requires an opponent's full attention to avoid getting stabbed a lot. But it is not exactly ambiguous as written.

Now on my turn I can't do anything except attack the guy that marked me unless I want to take a huge amount of damage. And running away isn't an option, I would just take even more damage! Is that fun? No. Bad rule.

You are stating outright that you do have options. You can attack other people, and you can run away. The knight makes them less attractive options than they otherwise would be, but whether taking the punishment is worth the gain is up to you. That's called "tactics". If we're playing chess and I position a pawn to defend my queen, taking my queen becomes a less attractive option for you. If you complain that by doing this I'm taking away your agency and ruining your fun... well, then you're not the sort of person I want to play chess with.

These all allow a save. And damage is fine, but usually you at least have some kind of defense against it.

The defense being your AC. Which is exactly the same defense that protects you from the knight's mark. Twice, even: he has to hit you to mark you, then he has to hit you again to hurt you when you provoke an attack.

If I have to arbitrarily rule that a character's defining feature doesn't work to keep the game entertaining for the rest of the group, it's not a good feature.

Rules spelled out in a couple of paragraphs can't cover all in-universe contingencies. Have you never ruled that a PC's ability just doesn't make sense in some particular circumstance? To take an obvious example, there's nothing saying that you can't cast fireball underwater, but if I rule that you can't cast fireball underwater it's hardly a sign that the spell is "not a good feature".

 

[Uchawi]

The specialization is the point. If you don't want to be "Magic Arrow Guy",

I disagree. The existing fighter archetypes are generalists as presented. It makes no sense to become hyper focused on a single concept like bow and arrow (versus ranged weapons). Overall, I would rather have concepts that introduce new styles and maneuvers that could also be used by existing fighter archetypes, like high level maneuvers that could be traded out for low ones. But that is an overall problem with the fighter. If they had introduced maneuvers similar to spells, you would have a lot more flexibility to allow new fighter concepts, while at the same time allowing each one to specialize; due to flexibility with the class (just like casters).

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I disagree. The existing fighter archetypes are generalists as presented.

Therefore all future fighter archetypes must be generalists, or else... what? Why on earth should we restrict the design space this way?

If they had introduced maneuvers similar to spells, you would have a lot more flexibility to allow new fighter concepts, while at the same time allowing each one to specialize; due to flexibility with the class (just like casters).

They did do that. It's called the battlemaster. If players want a flexible archetype that lets them pick maneuvers to taste, there it is. But why should every other archetype resemble the battlemaster, either in being a generalist or in using maneuvers -- or worse, both? The different archetypes are there for people who want to do different things with their fighters, whether it's specializing in magic arrows or learning spells or just rolling big attacks without worrying about special abilities at all.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Or even if it isn't that severe, the loss of player agency without even the chance of a save is a terrible rule!

Effects in 5e either roll to hit or they force saves, they rarely do both. The Knight's Mark requires a successful hit, so there's no gamist 'need' for a save. As far as the logic of it, HPs represent a whole range of fictional visualization, including morale and the like, a creature that's not immune to fear that's hit by the Knight's attack has clearly been affected by the Knight.

An alternative would be to have the target of the Knight's attack make a WILL save every time, hit or no. But, combining the two would make the ability needlessly complicated.

If I have to arbitrarily rule that a character's defining feature doesn't work to keep the game entertaining for the rest of the group, it's not a good feature.

First of all, the mark mechanic doesn't make the game less entertaining, it makes combats more dynamic and interesting (reducing the tendency towards optimal focus fire which otherwise makes combats predictable and targeting decisions no-brainers) rather it's a PC like the Knight marking or a monster (everyone marking any time like the optional module, I'm not so sure about - I've never run an all-Defender party in 4e, let alone vs an all-Soldier group of monsters!). Secondly, there's nothing arbitrary about my examples, they're all fiction-first/mechanics-second. It's the DM's role to decide on the abilities & immuniyies of the adversaries he presents, and it's very much his job to rule on how such things interact. If you decide a monster can't be distracted from it's quarry, making it immune to fear makes sense, if that focus isn't to the tune of lacking fear entirely, it might be reasonable to make it only non-magical fear. It still doesn't make huge amounts of sense in fiction that marking would do /nothing/, but as it's currently written, immunity to fear flips it off entirely. It'd be more versimilitudinous for immunity to fear to remove the attack penalty, but not stop the reaction attack 'punishment' (if anything, negating the penalty should give the punishing attack advantage, as the marked enemy is willfully dropping his defenses against the Knight to make an all-out attack). (... hm... actually, that'd have some interesting tactical consequences - opening up distance in any way to escape the Knight just long enough to deliver such an attack without the enhanced consequence... probably too much tactical detail for standard 5e, but, then, standard 5e doesn't include the Knight...)

Black Knight standing in the way to the Evil Wizard behind him? Pretty common actually. Or at least certainly not rare enough to be unheard of.

Very different from a lone BBEG marking, yes, but it'd actually make the fight more true to the fiction if the Black Knight had a solid mechanic to make its bodygaurding effective. So that sounds like an argument for monsters that mark - again, the DM can just add that to the monster block or include it in a new monster, if it makes sense to him.

Yep, I'm getting increasingly hopeful on the whole topic...