Martial Improvements (Grisaire Supplement)

Martials is the term referring to fighters, rogues, monks, and barbarians, specifically. They are classes that lack spellcasting at their base (even if they may have subclasses that can cast magic). These classes are commonly seen as inferior to casters in 5th Edition, a design flaw that kind of has persisted in DnD since even Advanced Dungeons and Dragons due to the caster's superior versatility through spells. While this makes sense in-world, it's kind of discouraging anyone from playing a martial. So, here are some attempts to add to martials. The rules here are largely for testing and may mesh poorly with other rules. Use with caution.

Maneuvers

Since martials logically have more robust bodies than spellcasters, it only makes sense that they can do more with their strength and constitution! 5e is a bit sorely lacking in this area, so this is an attempt to remediate that a bit. These maneuvers are available only to the four official classes stated above, though homebrew martial classes can also use them. Based on the character's Strength and Constitution scores, they can add the below maneuvers to their base character. These are separate from class features and are meant to be a more versatile bread and butter. This potentially steps on the toes of battlemaster, so beware.

A martial character gains maneuver slots based on the table below. This differs even between martial classes.

Weapon-Specialized Maneuvers

The new stuff from OneDnD (unofficially dubbed 5.5e) has some interesting ideas on weapons with maneuvers. It would make sense, since some weapons are special and could do lots more things than your base vanilla. But they require the hands o

Martial Skills and Skill Specializations

If you think about how much time a wizard has to put into learning spells or how a warlock has to invest in maintaining their pact, it makes sense that martials have a bit more leeway and time to get better at certain skills than a spellcaster. There are also more skills added, taking from 3.Xe, that are available to a martial.

Proficiency Ranks

Each skill, instead of simply having proficiency or expertise, now has 4 ranks of proficiency. Martial classes like fighter automatically start with 2 proficiency ranks in all their chosen skills, while spellcasters like wizards start with only 1. This can be adjusted as needed, but the point is that martials will therefore have some help in boosting their skills over spellcasters to help with even non-combat stuff. This takes a bit from how, in ADND, casters start with less proficiency slots and gain them at a much slower rate than martials.

Proficiency Ranks

Rank	Proficiency Bonus
1	0.5 ¼ of your proficiency bonus, rounded down
2	0.5 ½ of your proficiency bonus, rounded down
3	¾ of your proficiency bonus, rounded down
4	Your whole proficiency bonus

So, for example, at level 1, a wizard doesn't get any bonus from their proficiency bonus to their skills, while fighters at least start with a +1. This sort of also reflects the diversity of foci when it comes to mundane and magical training. Arcane studies are arduous and time-consuming, meaning warlocks are too busy unlocking secrets of their arcanum and artificers are too busy with their toys. Fighters, monks, and barbarians have time to do other things and get better at them.

Double Proficiency

Adding double proficiency multiplies the current modifier of rank you have. So, a level 1 rogue that doubles their rank 2 in Stealth would have a +2 to stealth overall. Spellcasters still have trouble with this since 0 × 2 is still 0. Alternatively, you can add ranks to the above table (up to 8) to show incremental gains of proficiency as opposed to an automatic doubling. In that case, the ranks would have proficiency multipliers as follows: 5th Rank: 10.5 ¼, 6th Rank: 10.5 ½, 7th Rank: 1¾, 8th Rank: 2

Multiclassing

When multiclassing, you usually would gain some proficiencies associated with the class. In this case, you gain 1 rank in the proficiencies given.

0 Rank Proficiency

If we want to get really gritty about it, you can have 0 rank proficiency as the base instead of proficiency rank 1. Rank 0 means you do not get any benefits from the proficiency, yet. However, you must have this rank before progressing in the proficiency in that skill or tool! So, martial classes in this case can still start with rank 1 or 2 proficiency, while spellcasters might get only rank 0.

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