Empowering the Martials: Differing Feat Progression

[Aldrius]

Something has always bugged me about DND. Simply speaking, a martial class is very much outdone by its spellcasting brethren. While fighters are still wailing on one or two mobs and taking punches to the face, very nearly dying every turn, the wizard casually flies up, points a finger in the general direction of the nuisance, and blasts it with a ball of fire that roasts it and all its friends into Kentucky fried monster.

I've been wracking my brain on how to solve this, and an idea finally occurred to me. What's a martial depend on more than his BAB or his class features?

Feats. Feats make the fighter, just like spells make the wizard.

So an alteration is needed. I came up with a simple formula. It's by no means perfect, but it will empower your bow-and-sword pals accordingly.

At its most basic explanation, every class gets one feat per level instead of one every odd, with all characters getting a guaranteed feat at level 1.

Full martial classes with no spells, such as fighters (not counting bonus feats), rogues, and gunslingers, get 20 feats total (effectively, they have a feat progression of 1/level.)

Minor spellcasting classes, like paladins and rangers, get 16 feats total (.8/level)

Medium spellcasting classes, like bards and alchemists, get 14 feats total (.7/level)

Finally, full spellcasters keep the usual 10 feats total, or a .5/level progression.

Essentially, we subtract 1 feat per level of spell they can cast. The only exception to this rule is a full spellcaster, who would by this system have 11 feats, but... well, I'll explain the math later.

Hybridization, you say? Well, I can solve that conundrum for you.

Joe's a level 5 fighter. He has 5 feats. Joe's a pretty smart cookie, though, and decides some basic level 1 spells would greatly enhance his combat prowess and utility. Good on you, Joe! You get that Master's Degrees in Advanced Prestidigitation! Unfortunately for Joe, all that study time to turn him into a fighter 5/wizard 1 means he's flubbed his training in other areas. The result? This:

5 + .5 = 5.5. We round down in this system. For the purposes of keeping this clear, all classes begin at level 1 with a feat score of 1, then progress forward as shown by their spellcasting capability. If Joe takes a level in fighter, his feat score will jump to 6.5 as he exercises those previously-atrophied muscles and learns a new martial trick or two. If he decides to split into, say, a bard, on top of being pretty good at whistling, his feat score will raise to 6.2, and he STILL gets another feat because his feat score managed to pass to the next whole number. If he takes another level, though, his feat score will be at 6.9, just .1 shy of a full new feat. Take a level in ranger (for whatever reason, Joe's never been able to keep his attention on one career, so now he's got 4 different classes on him) and you get a feat score of 7.0, JUST enough to get that sweet, delicious 7th feat at level 8. Good mathemagics, Joe!... even if you did sort of shotgun your class specialization everywhere.

What does this mean for monsters, though? More feats means monsters would be easier to defeat, right? No, not necessarily. Monsters can also have class levels, and they get the same benefits as a player in this regard. I've strongly considered giving some monsters feats, but this isn't about making the game easier for the players, but giving martial classes more of a chance to shine in later levels with a wider range of choice. A wizard can use a large variety of means to dispose of an enemy, from polymorphing to incinerating to freezing to just dumping them on a pit. Now the fighter has a chance to do more than Greater Vital Strike Power Attack and hope that's good enough for everything he'll encounter. Now he decided to also invest on Improved Grapple. Or Teleport Tactician for that annoying wizard that always teleports out of the fight, giggling like a maniac because his concentration check bonus is too high for even Disruptive to work. Now you have Run to catch up with that flying jerk as he tries to escape you to the exit. Now you have options.

[Mr.Lute]

The real issue with martials and spellcasters is and always has been the odd obsession dnd has with sitting still, at least until 5e. What that edition did, better or worse otherwise, that drastically helped the spellcasting/non-spellcasting balance, is *let Martial's move and use their main trick*. Which is to hit things really well. Spellcasters don't waste a turn doing piddling "semi-spells" and moving. It also largely fixed summoning rules.

If you wanted to balance that without butchering the rules, spellcasters would need to take an action to ready their spells for a combat, and can only cast a cantrip or similar ability in that round. Feats can modify this is the same way that a fighter can occasionally build to get a free attack in the first round. Surprise would need to be re-worked (or become uber deadly for wizards) as well.

Notably, archer Martials tend to compete with most spellcasters in practice in combat because they can can reliably attack just like spellcasters can reliably cast. The exceptions involve high level summoning rules, which don't work at all and god save anyone who can twist their mind to think they do.

Out of combat, the issue is with there simply being too many clutter spells that work too reliably to solve problems the rest of the party could solve with skills, and most DM's not effectively punishing spellcasters who frivolously spam spells to solve mundane problems (via sleep deprivation mostly). And spellcasters getting more skills than martials due to INT determining skills

My fix is that all martials should have higher skill progression given that they have more free time to learn them, which would also limit people being shoe-horned into playing pure skill monkeys, particularly with unchained rogue (which should still have a net advantage) being a decent combat class now.

At least, that's my take on it. More feats aren't needed because martials typically get free feats as a class feature anyway. Plus, spellcasting feat trees are separate from martial feat trees and can't really mix. And we need some variation in spellcasting feats to have valid spellcasters, and with this plan you kill that by making them choose between five or so feats, which means they take the five or so feats that every spellcaster takes.

While there are broken spellcasting feats that need to be nerfed because, again, they break the game entirely (G@% D$+n whoever let the summoning spam buff get to this point) but it's a unique, case by case, basis. With your plan, we have a similar spellcaster problem instead.

The other element of the fix is to use the archetype and (For fighters) weapon/armor training class features.

[Aldrius]

A fair enough critique. I recognize this formula isn't the end-all be all, just kind of a bandaid solution, but at the same time, I can't help but feel that it would just be plain fun to give martials more feat options, more paths they can take for combat, and just a greater selection than attack-or-don't-attack.

[Milo v3]

Quote:

Something has always bugged me about DND. Simply speaking, a martial class is very much outdone by its spellcasting brethren. While fighters are still wailing on one or two mobs and taking punches to the face, very nearly dying every turn, the wizard casually flies up, points a finger in the general direction of the nuisance, and blasts it with a ball of fire that roasts it and all its friends into Kentucky fried monster.

This seems unrelated to the rest of your post.