and Hold.
Frightening Attack is the single most reliable CC setup in the game, and 2H fighter is the most powerful class by far, especially if supported by a Bless bot cleric supplementing damage with Inflict Wounds.
Yeah, about that. Larian overpowered Menacing Attack, too. Or rather the Frightened condition that it inflicts.
The Frightened condition does not make enemies flee and trigger AoO's. It gives disadvantage to attacks and stops you from moving closer to the source of fear. So a Frightened Bulette or Minotaur would still keep fighting, just with a disadvantage for one turn. And they would not give you free attacks on them.
So, another house rule that breaks balance. Not much incentive to pick Eldritch Knight when Menacing Strike from Battlemaster just single handedly destroys all the toughest enemies. Boss fights are generally why you have a Wizard in the party who can CC and peak perform, but funnily enough they don't have anything as powerful as Menacing Strike in its current form. Best they can do is DPS with the OP magic missile amulet, which is also rather backwards for their intended low level role.
Maybe Larian just hates 5e and would rather make a DOS 3.
It doesn't matter if Eldritch Knight had a more powerful version.
The problem here is that getting spells to land at all reliably is HORRENDOUS. As I said in the previous page, started Githyanki patrol fight at lv4 with Gale stealthed and joining the fight with an opening Poison Ray after prebuffing him with Mystra's Blessing from the unique staff, up in the garrison wall with elevation advantage.
Care to guess the hit chance of Poison Ray with bless and elevation advantage on an 18 intelligence wizard? 60%. 60 fucking percent. Lucky for me, it hit and did decent damage. But it's AGGRAVATING getting a single action per turn and having that single action after waiting for 4 enemy actions to miss half your single actions.
What makes Battlemaster and dual wield builds so much better than casters is that they actually get to land their skills reliably. That's the real issue. As a caster you do less damage, have limited resources, have no viable CC because their hit rates are abysmal, and you have no equivalent of backstab or action surge to give you two attacks in a row, one of them a CC attack that also does damage.
The casino style Dice-A-Rama RNG fest of this game is what's completely ruining the combat experience for so many classes.
Hell, I could write a novel on how often Sacred Flame does nothing and when it does it's for 1 damage.
Or the trash can Concentration system. Nothing more wonderful than wasting a spell slot on bless or the single cast per day Cleric Divine skill or the Druid's entangle only for a single ranged strike to break concentration, and just like that POOF wasted spell slot.
No interesting combos like Entangle+Moonbeam or Entangle+ Spike Growth.
The Supposed Thorn Whip cantrip which is meant to deal with elevated enemies, too bad it fails more than 60% of the time when aimed at elevated enemies due to vertical disadvantage.
These combat rules SUCK.
When am I going to pick a Land druid with anything but Coast? NEVER, Misty Step is too valuable for that vertical advantage to land spells and dodge attacks. It's such a ridiculously restrictive combat system eliminating combat style and choice.
RNG based combat and totally binary outcomes of Miss or Hit down to dice rolls are fine for a tabletop game with friends laughing around at the ridiculousness of it, but UNACCEPTABLE for a proper single player RPG experience.