Hey, just looking for advice on my homebrew archetype for the brawler. I pulled all the abilities from other existing archetypes besides "Say Uncle," but I've changed the name to suit the flavor of the archetype better.
Brawler Archetype: Bar Fighter
She’ll break a chair over your back. She’ll slam a tankard into your face. She’ll hold you down and rub sand in your eyes. She’s a bar fighter, and he idea of a party involves lots of broken furniture… and enemies.
Proficiencies: The Street Fighter is proficient with with all simple weapons and can wear light armor, excluding shields
This alters the brawlers weapon proficiencies
Bonus Feat: At 1st level, street fighters gain catch off-guard and throw anything as bonus feats
Brawler’s Flurry: Starting at 2nd level, a brawler can perform a
series of unarmed strikes and improvised weapon attacks.
This alters the Brawler’s Flurry class feature
Say Uncle: At 3rd level, a bar fighter can attempt to demoralize a grappled enemy with a dirty trick as free action that provokes attacks of opportunity but with a -4 penalty. This penalty decreases to -3 at 7th level, -2 at 11th level, -1 at 15th level, and she takes no penalty at 19th level.
This replaces the Martial Training
Improvised Weapon Mastery: At 5th level, a brawler's damage with improvised weapons increases. When wielding an improvised weapon, she uses the unarmed strike damage of a brawler 4 levels lower instead of the base damage for that weapon. If the weapon normally deals more damage than this, its damage is unchanged. This ability also increases the critical threat range of improvised weapons from 19-20 x2. The brawler can decide to use the weapon's base damage instead of her adjusted unarmed strike damage—this must be declared before the attack roll is made.
This replaces Close Weapon Mastery
Chair-Breaker’s Strike: At 5th level, a brawler's unarmed strikes and improvised weapon attacks are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. At 9th level, her unarmed and improvised weapon attacks are also treated as cold iron and silver for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. At 12th level, she chooses one alignment component: chaotic, evil, good, or lawful; her unarmed strikes and improvised weapon attacks also count as this alignment for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. (This alignment component cannot be the opposite of the brawler's actual alignment, such as a good brawler choosing evil strikes.) At 17th level, her unarmed attacks and improvised weapon attacks are also treated as adamantine weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction and bypassing hardness.
This alters the Brawler’s Strike class feature
Tankard Stabbing: At 8th level, a chair-breaker can choose the type of damage her improvised weapons deal (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing)
This replaces the brawler’s 8th level bonus feat
A lot of improvised weapons are treated as close weapons, so you could just keep Close Weapon Mastery as it is. The 19-20/2x crit range might be a bit much.
Rather than Chair-Breaker Strike, I'd give the Brawler an ability to grant an enhancement bonus to an improvised weapon, like a Makeshift Scrapper Rogue can.
Finally, Say Uncle is quite weak. I'd rather pick up the Dirty Grapple feat. Keep Martial Training, it's nice to have. If someone wants to Dirty Grapple, they'll get the feat.
The trades feel rather off. You lose close weapons (not that big of a deal) and shields, but you gain two bonus feats. You lose an ability that helps with feat prerequisites and gain combat maneuver ability instead?
Both Say Uncle and Improvised Weapon Mastery's crit increase also feel redundant because this is a class/archetype that can very easily pick up dirty trick feats and Improvised Weapon Mastery (the feat)
Say Uncle is also pretty poorly written and vague.
This also does nothing to make improvised weapons viable at higher levels. A simple fix to that is an ability that lets the brawler apply magical enhancements to unarmed strikes to their improvised weapons as well.
I must admit, if I were making an improvised brawler archetype, I'd take a different direction.
Alright. I wasn't aware of the Dirty Grapple feat. And Crynad, did you completely skip over chair-breaker strike? That's exactly what I did, dude. I'll scrap say uncle. I agree it was poorly conceived.
And Crynad, did you completely skip over chair-breaker strike? That's exactly what I did, dude. I'll scrap say uncle. I agree it was poorly conceived.
No, that's not what you did. That ability just lets you bypass damage reduction. It doesn't give magical enhancements.
At higher levels, there's almost no reason to ever use improvised weapons because your unarmed strikes will have a higher damage dice and can gain the benefits of amulet of mighty fist.
Take a look at Flaming Crab Game's Tavern Brawler. It seems like it would be a good base to work from.