Talk:Blademaster, Stance and Combo (5e Class)

I feel that the Blademanship at second level is clunky and doesn't really fit. My suggestion would be to replace it with stances that have effects which help outside of battle, advantage when climbing or something like that. Discipline and Flow also doesn't need to gain proficiency in dexterity saving throws, it is a full improvement without it. --Quininine (talk) 16:32, 13 January 2018 (MST)

Perhaps Blademanship could be replaced with a Fighting Style feature? The options would be: Great Weapon Fighting, Two-Weapon Fighting, Dueling, and Defense. Randomninjasniper (talk) 15:44, 25 June 2018 (MDT)

I really like this concept! If it's chill with the OP, I'd like to make a variant of this class (either a standalone or a fighter subclass)! --TheStoryEnthusiast (talk) 17:29, 13 November 2018 (MST)

What would the variant class entail? I'm fine with you stealing the concept (And I'm the only person who had edited this 'recently,' so I guess I am the OP), but I want to know whether the variant would be an improvement/alteration of the class, or an entirely different way of building it? Randomninjasniper (talk) 04:49, 14 November 2018 (MST)

Ah, you must be mistaken. You see, I called for the OP. That means the original poster, which in this case is Kalebbro. You see, it's rude to take credit for other people's work, even if you reworded a feature or two (after all, you are not the only recent editor: anonymous user 177.207.33.234 has edited more than you in the past 4 months). I hope this clears things up, or was there anything else I could help you with? --TheStoryEnthusiast (talk) 13:40, 14 November 2018 (MST)

My apologies. I assumed OP meant operator. I'm not very fluent in internet abbreviation. I never meant to steal the class. I see myself as a caretaker of a class that Kalebbro seems to have left at the moment. If/When he returns, I will defer to him concerning his intellectual property.

As for the anonymous user, I don't see how 177.207.33.324 has edited more than me. By my count, I have edited on six occasions while the anonymous user has only edited two. (I'm not trying to be high and mighty, I am just confused by your comments). As for asking the OP, I would recommend trying to contact him directly.

I don't mean any hostility by these comments, as I simply meant to state my views. Randomninjasniper (talk) 15:35, 14 November 2018 (MST)

Notes on 17th level archetype feature changes

I have some problems with the current final features of each archetype. For one thing, they seem to magical. This class is a martial one, where the character's study and practice mastering the art of the blade. This would not lead to abilities like Turtle Destruction Wave, or Crescent Moon Claw, which are undeniably magical. In addition, these finishers, which should be comparable to the paladin's 20th level features, which are usable once between long rests, these finishers would only be available in rare battles. I've done the math, which can be found here, and assuming optimized stats, the average monster of a CR equal to the character's level (pg. 274 of the DMG), a character wielding two weapons, and no other finishers being used, these finishers would be available for use after 8 rounds of combat. Given that most combat lasts 3-5 rounds, these finishers would see little use. So, my objective with my changes to the 17th level finishers (as well as the Discipline and Flow change) is to allow greater use of finishers, especially high-level ones. I am also making the finishers less magical.

OP here

I'm not really all that good with formatting//etiquette//syntax and usage of this site and the "talk" feature so sorry in advance.

Sorry for posting this and then kinda bailing on it. Love to see other people were interested in it enough to keep tweaking it. Feel free to edit or use this any way you want, just don't sell it. lol

-KalebBro

Updates

So I came across this class and read through it. It was so close to being balanced so I took my own approach to make things better and add where it was lacking. Here I'll be explaining some of the changes I made and why, so if the op is here or if anyone is interested in asking why some things are the way they are I welcome them to comment on what Ive done and why and make suggestions to make things better, it hasnt been touched in years so I decided to breath some new life in this class (sorry for not logging into my main account I lost my account info) My main objective was to balance and change the broken aspects of the class so that it would be more balanced for the lower levels, it's a lot harder to do things for higher levels and my main focus was to get that down. the higher level abilities I left mostly untouched other than re-wording some things that didn't make sense 100%

Base changes to The class: So for this I haven't done much to change how the class works other than raising the cap of how many combo points you can acquire. Since before you could literally get more combo points than you had a cap by lvl 5 in a single turn, and that just felt silly, doesn't effect balancing at all just means you can risk it to get a larger combo for a slightly bigger pay out over more turns (which has its own risks to it)

Stances: So for the lvl 1 and above stances they were all over the place, I get what the OP was going for, static passives that add some flavor to the class and you can pick your playstyle and even change on the go, but the later stances would overlap with the earlier ones? and the bonuses didn't match the subclasses the stances were associated with, it was a bit messy. All I did was lower the passive bonuses of the earlier stances, moved the AC bonus stance to lvl 7 and edit some of the spelling or phrasing mistakes (old lvl 7 stance wolf was a clear copy of the totem barbarian lvl 3 ability which is fine but changed so it gave EVERYONE including yourself permanent advantage for no downside) so I changed that to reflect the totem wolf ability since it's just good on it's own.

And made it so that the higher level stances weren't just re-flavored versions of the lvl 1 ones, they are more unique and 'powerful' in their own way, reflecting the fact you gain access to them at lvl 7.

Maneuvers: This was probably the biggest part I had to edit and re-balance. For the most part I kept all the original Maneuvers just made more fair and also added some of my own that fit the theme you were going with this class, added some more utility and damage options. Personally I found it strange (and triggered my OCD lol) that you had a random number of 'openers' 'Flourishes' and 'Finishers' so I evened things up and made 2 openers, flourishes and finishers for each level advancement when you unlocked more options. I think I did a good job of keeping the originals and balancing them out and adding some new ones. The crit finisher before costing 3 combo points was a bit insane XD, you could literally get a critical hit EVERY turn, 2 combo point opener, 1 flourish attack and then on your 3rd attack a crit finisher to get a crit on the 3rd hit, by lvl 13 having a guaranteed crit (most of the time) every single turn is kinda insane so changed that to cost 5 instead as even if you hit a 2 combo opener and the other 2 attacks you can't pull it off right away the following turn. My goal was to make the options viable at all levels (with higher level maneuvers having more of an impact but each has it's own uses depending on the situation.

Fighting styles: Just added an up to date version with where they come from official and UA included minus the "ranged" options since this is a melee focused class

Class Abilities: Honestly as far as class abilities go there are not that great, 80% of everything you get revolves around combo maneuvers and stances havent come up with a good way to balance this without redoing the entire class so Ive kept it how it was.

completely re-wrote the lvl 10 ability as previously it literally made 0 sense. It tried to imply the combo point system worked like the barbarian rage saying you could go a minute without loosing concentration, that was literally the entire ability (maybe originally you had to keep attacking/get attacked to keep maintaining concentration) but that made 0 sense as nowhere did it say you couldn't concentrate for a minute. So I changed the wording on how the combo works saying how if you loose concentration, at the end of combat OR if a minute passes and you haven't attacked or been attacked you automatically loose concentration. Made the lvl 10 ability give advantage on the concentration save instead as that seemed fitting. I kept the part where it says "like concentrating on a spell" so I suppose if someone wanted to meta game technically they could get the war-caster feat? but that would go against the spirit of a fighter and the homebrew ability but that's on the DM to enforce. Think it's pretty clear how it's meant to work.

Subclasses: So for subclasses I changed very little tbh as they seemed alright. you got one subclass for defence, one for accuracy and one for damage, seemed pretty cool. Did change how the final Adamantine ability worked as I believe it was ACTUAL garbage, spend your whole turn to use an ability you unlocked like 8 levels before and the only pay out is you get to make 1 attack as a reaction. I think I knew what they wanted to do but worded it in a way where it was impossible (think they wanted the attacks using a reaction to not use a reaction but by saying "use a reaction to attack" you are locking yourself in to only 1 attack so I kept the spirit there, you act as the front line tank to an army and you can attack everyone who attacks you back for free which is powerful and cool and it's lvl 17 so yeah it might be a bit broken getting technically "infinite attacks" but it's only if they miss you so eh it's fine. you're almost a god anyways at that point.

Speaking of infinite attacks the Mithril final ability LITERALLY was infinite (I know I say literally a fair bit in this wall of text but i do mean it when I say it), as long as you kept hitting you kept attacking, which is fine but there was no cap for it, and even tho you're lvl 17 it was dumb so I replaced it with the mimicking the spell Steel Wind Strike which I think we can all agree is 1st COOL AF and 2nd much more in line with what the subclass is going for and "balanced" while still being a great ability.

On a personal Note I'm thinking of adding Action surge/Second wind as abilities, since other than the maneuvers/stances you don't get anything with this class and even tho they do give you a passive bonus it's not enough to justify it being the only thing, you have a lot of "options" but having options doesn't equivalate a good balanced class so I might add them we'll see (Definity not adding anything more tho as indomitable and the 3-4 extra attacks would basically just make this a fighter but better in every way and I want to avoid that. And might change the level distributions of the maneuvers and stances to be on the same level instead at different times? but if I did that I may have to add a late game stance/ maneuvers and having 3 sets of 2 abilities for openers, flourishes and finishers is plenty to manage as is, adding any more would make it too complicated to run late game