In your opinion, would a ranged battlemaster fighter work well mechanically? I'm aware that many of the Maneuvers are for melee fighting, but I've been toying around with an idea for a crossbow or gun wielding battlemaster. Tbh the only reason that I'm concerned about the "functionality" of it is because the rest of my group minmaxes like crazy and I don't want my character to die cuz it can't keep up with the rest of the group. Not to yuck their yum or say I'm not having fun in the group! I just wanna know if this is a build that will hold up.
I am pretty much constantly thinking about Battle Master maneuver strats, so you came to the right place!
A few key points:
The only Core Rulebook maneuvers that require you to be in melee when attacking are feinting attack, lunging attack, and sweeping attack (pushing attack is in a grey area; I would rule the "pushed up to 15 feet away from you" as being up to 15 feet in a direction away from your location, not that 15 is a limiting distance from your character--but another DM might not agree).
Parry and riposte involve an enemy getting into melee with you, which is possible even if you're a ranged attacker, but not necessarily ideal.
Disarming strike, distracting strike, goading attack, menacing attack, precision attack, and trip attack are all delicious options for a ranged attacker to take. (Ambush, from TCoE, is another good choice)
Basically, you should always have *some* means of melee attack if you're going to choose this subclass, because you can't guarantee that your enemies won't move around the battlefield and Get You. But in general, focusing your skillset around ranged attacks is perfectly possible.
Battlemaster mechanics are made for manipulating your enemies' and allies' options. A disarming strike gives an ally in melee a chance to steal the enemy's weapon, for example. Other options mentioned above might give your allies' attacks advantage, put the enemies at disadvantage, or impose other conditions (frightened, prone) in addition to more standard effects like dealing extra damage or boosting your own rolls.
With that in mind -- if you have a caster-heavy party and they also enjoy these types of strategic moves, you will want to choose your maneuvers with care. Nerfing an enemy will always feel cool, but with AOE effects, they can often hit multiple enemies with their effects at the same time. Assuming you're playing with people who aren't all about hogging the spotlight, though, you can just tell them this is a mechanical role you're planning to take, and they will likely not step all over your fun.
Now, as you've noted, the Battle Master isn't built with ranged combat in mind. There is another option: the Arcane Archer. It works in a similar way; you get a limited number of special effects you can apply to your ranged attacks. These effects are explicitly magical, but they are not spells. The main caveats to this proposal are as follows:
This subclass calls for a high (or at least decent) Intelligence score, since the save DCs are calculated using that ability.
You get fewer uses per short/long rest. When you take the subclass, you get two uses of the special "arcane shot" effects per short rest, instead of the 4 you start with in Battle Master.
This is likely negotiable with the right DM, but Arcane Archer is dedicated to archers specifically -- no firearms allowed, RAW.
With that information at hand, I really do recommend reviewing the list of Arcane Shot options -- they're long, so I can't recap them all here, but they tend to work more like particularly beefy cantrips with multiple damage effects and an additional, usually single-round debuff, e.g. reduced speed, banishing an enemy for a round, or limiting the enemy's field of vision.
To me, this subclass needs some reworking (a core subclass ability shouldn't be a two-and-done, IMO), but it has a charm of its own. In many ways, these two subclasses are mirrors of one another. I just think that structurally, Battle Master is more mechanically sound -- and therefore, unless you have a homebrew-minded DM, you should probably go for that one.
(Also! If you're concerned about the so-called "caster-martial divide" or other "power creep" issues, talk with your DM about it! They ostensibly want you to have a good time and not feel left behind, so if a liberal hand with martial-oriented items you can use to offset some of those power gaps.)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
(Based on the Pathfinder Inquisitor because it’s a wonderful class and I feel they got the feel for Inquisitors down pat with it)
As undeniably awesome as Inquisitors are at combat, there’s more to you than that. The class is rightfully named Inquisitor since you are roaming around the countryside for one reason:
You’re here to ask questions and get answers, to find what others are hiding from you and to wring out the truth out from the tightest of mouths. Starting with the stellar ability Stern Gaze, you add half your Inquisitor level to all Intimidate and Sense Motive checks you make. You also get Discern Lies as an at-will SLA.
This makes you a walking lie detector which alongside 6 + Int skill ranks per level can find out the truth no matter what. With a decent enough Wisdom modifier, you’ll be sniffing out the truth like a Lagotto Romagnolo digging up truffles.
Keep this in mind as you roleplay and design your character, but don’t forget to put points into Diplomacy as well. A kind word will often loosen tongues more than a stern gaze will.
Classes in RPGs are so incredibly useful and interesting, they can provide nice constructs for people to easily latch onto and use in games. When I want to play as someone who jumps into a fight I make a Warrior, or a Fighter, or any of the many classes that imply that toughness and strength. If I want to make a character that is a healer and is more supportive I might choose a class called a Priest, and so on.
The names and lore around classes can function as a kind of mini-tutorial that says "This is generally how this class wants to fight." That way people can know the basic function of the classes without having to have played them all.
Now the concept of classes span many game types but for my purposes I want to talk about classes for games that expect the player to have or use multiple characters, games like Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics. I even include in this games that the player has only one character but are expected to be a part of a larger group full of multiple characters such as in an MMO (World of Warcraft, Guild Wars...). This means most of what I’ll be saying doesn't apply to games like Dark Souls where the classed character is going solo, as the class system in those games has a very different purpose that I might talk about some other time (though I talk about it a bit in this essay I wrote on why I think Dark Souls should get rid of classes in their games).
Each class is a different fantasy, ideally a distinct and meaningful one. In order to do this the game splits its mechanics into smaller chunks and gives each class access to only a small chunk of them. This allows each class to have it's own mechanical identity: this is the class that steals, this is the one that heals, this is the one that punches people in the face. This gives each class a structure and a purpose, but it can also be confining. Draw the boundaries between classes to firmly and it can be constricting in a way that limits player customization, draw them to loosely though and the differences between classes become meaningless.
This is a problem all class systems have to try and deal with because class systems have to try and serve two masters: customization and mechanical identity. So, lets talk about those two things and how they can conflict with each other in class systems.
There are a lot of ways you can talk about customization in a class system but there is a distinction in it that I want to make that is very necessary: intra-class customization and extra-class customization. Intra-class focuses on what inside the confines of the class the player is able to customize. For example imagine a Thief class and it has two special abilities that the player can choose between: attacks steal some money, or greater chance to steal items. You only get to pick one of the two and which one you choose is how you are customizing that class for your own personal use.
Extra-class customization is customization based around how you can use those classes. Lets say that you can have 4 party members and 6 different classes each of which can only be used once. That is 6*5*4*3=360 different party combinations. Extra-class customization is how you can customize your group outside the confines of the class system.
If you are willing to endure the oversimplification, imagine all the character mechanics as a pie and each class as a slice of that pie. The bigger you make the slices the more mechanics each class gets but the fewer slices there will be, alternatively the more slices you make the less mechanics each class gets but you get more classes you will have. In theory you could always add more mechanics to a game, making more pie, but in practice you are only going to have so many distinct mechanics in a game.
Now the bigger you make each class's slice of the mechanics pie the more room you have to allow for customization inside the confines of that class (intra-class). You have more mechanics available so you can have the player decide between more options and allow the class to be turned into several different things based how the player customizes it. The more classes you have though, the more you slice up that pie, the more extra-class customization options you can give the player but there will be less options possible within each class.
If you make each slice to big though then it is also meaningless. A single class shouldn’t be able to do everything as the purpose of classes are to differentiate characters from each other and give each class a distinct purpose and role in the larger party.
There are ways to give each class more mechanics without magically being able to come up with more pie though, one is to give the same mechanic to multiple classes. This gives you the ability to have more classes while keeping them all mechanically robust. But the thing about giving the same mechanics to multiple classes is that is makes each class less unique. If all Tank classes protect other characters in the same way then they don’t have a unique mechanical identity and so while you are in theory creating more classes for the player to use you are diluting the concept of a class into a useless and arbitrary thing. The distinction between Warrior and Fighter isn't a meaningful choice if they are 99% the same thing, then it is just a cosmetic choice (though those can be great too).
It is fine to give them the same basic mechanics, like normal attacks, but each class should have something that makes them special as well. Remember, each class is a fantasy.
Another thing we can do in order to increase customization without diluting the mechanical identity of each class is multi-classing. How it is done exactly can be very different from game to game but the basic strokes are that each character can use the mechanics of one or more classes. By doing this each class keeps it's own mechanical identity, White Magic belongs to the White Mage class, but you expand upon what customization options are available to each unit. This can go too far though, if every character always has access to everything then it is less a class system for differentiating characters and more of an upgrade system for leveling them up.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a game that doesn't just have multi-classing as an option but rather it is a requirement. You start as a basic class and then after leveling up that class you unlock new classes, which in turn leads to new classes for you to level up and unlock. This system also serves as a way to teach the player the basics of the game and hide from them the more complex mechanics until after they have used and gotten used to the basic ones. This means they get exposed to increasing complexity that is customized to the mechanics that they have already used.
Each character has a primary class and can equip a limited number of the skills they get from other classes. The limited number of slots available means that while they might want to have options from a lot of classes available to them they will want to focus on and master a couple of the classes. Players can create their own Frankenstein out of all the classes as but there is a certain gravity to the core class that a character has equipped right now. All Monks will have some of their same core mechanics in common which means that the Monk class has a certain mechanical identity.
This tradition of multi-classing continues in many of Square's games, two of the most recent good examples of its use are Bravely Default and Final Fantasy 14.
Multi-classing comes with its own limitations though, if a character can be say a Monk/Dragoon hybrid then both Monk and Dragoon have to operate in the same basic ways. For example both have to have the same energy/mana system. You could try and balance having different classes energy systems on one character but that is more likely than not to be unbalanced and super confusing, which isn't to mention the UI problem of where do you put all those extra bars for all those different energy systems?
Take World of Warcraft for example, they don't allow for multi-classing and that means that each class can be pushed further into their own space with their own energy system (energy, runes, mana, rage). Having all these different energy systems for using spells/abilities wouldn't be possible if the player could multi-class.
Furthermore if they know exactly what skills a class can have they can balance someone around having just those small subset of skills. You can also balance having a larger set of skills but the value of balancing only a smaller subset is that 1) it is easier and 2) it, again, allows you to push what is allowable in that subset further. It is quite easy to imagine two skills that in combination would be absolutely broken if one character had both at once, and yet if they were only allowed to have one of those skills then they would be a super great mechanics. By limiting the options each unit has available to it you can give those classes mechanics that you couldn't otherwise. Drawing firm distinctions between classes allows you to push each classes mechanics further away from each other without breaking the game.
My favorite class systems have enough rigidity to give each of the classes a mechanical identity, a character, but are flexible enough such that a player can customize it and express themselves within it. You want to create more meaningful options while trying to create distinct and interesting classes, without limiting the design space you have available and balance it so that all the options you are giving them are viable. Which is a lot.
The standard composition of a 5-man group is 1 tank, 1 healer, and 3 dps. Most 5-man groups are found through the Looking for Group (LFG) system. The random people you’re matched with in a 5-man through the LFG system can challenge you in a few different ways.
The tank is in a DPS spec and insists it is his tanking spec.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
