Those special attacks you describe remind me of Battle Master Fighter maneuvers. I've heard people complaining about the 5e fighter and wishing that the Battle Master fighter wasn't a sub-class, but part of the base class. Doing that would be a homebrew, but it might be less disruptive than giving bonus action shove to EVERYONE.
If they aren't interested in going in that direction, only allowing Fighters/Barbarians to do bonus action Shove, and making it an action for every other class would be better. Oh wait, they probably aren't interested in doing that either, because that would mean different classes would have slightly different UI's.
Exactly, it's a point of discussion in the DnD community anyway.
Oh NO please stop with all these rules that will break the game even more.
Ready, dodge, grab, shove to prone and feint/distract (RAW help action). These are actions that lacks in BG3 and that could give a bit more variety if necessary.
Don't play a fighter if you don't like to play a fighter or play a battlemaster. Pick a rogue, a ranger, a cleric, a paladin, a barbarian, a monk, a druid or any other class that can be melee builded if you want a melee character that have more buttons to click on.
Larian just doesn't understand at all why some players like the simplicity of fighters and they're obviously unable to add new things that won't break the game.
Don't give them any value because they call a class they just don't like "a tutorial class". Their design decisions make the fighter way less interresting. Not DnD, whatever Swen can say.
Please note that this idea is intended to be a replacement of their Bonus Action shove idea. I also think they should just keep to RAW, but I expect Larian to want to add something. The balance would not nearly be as upset by these special types of melee attacks, because they're not simply more powerful like the battlemaster manuevers.
So if you could choose, would you rather have these different options for your attacks, or BA shove? xD
+100. Please no. People. Play D&D first before judging the rules and saying they suck. The fighter has LOTS of options. These are beginner levels in EA. Please don't break the entire system more because you are so limited at lower levels. The fighter is brutal already at later levels.
That's part of the problem right now with EA. Everyone thinks the classes suck in 5e because there isn't a lot of variation
..YET. Everyone starts out relatively the same, but as you get higher level, the differences begin to really show.
Alter the game at low levels to make fighters tougher and you will have super OP fighters at levels 8+. D&D is about growing from noob to hero, not about starting as a hero.
These special moves replace your normal attack and have a negative effect too. The effects are intentionally small, which is gonna be a bigger deal at lower levels than they are at later levels. They are not straight buffs, so it's definitely not about making players a hero immediately, it's about giving options.
Excerpt from the Afflicted. Note: Vexir is a 3rd level Fighter Battlemaster:
It was Vexir's turn. Harpy 3 landed just in time for her to snap out of her funk. Her eyes narrowed at the creature, and she attacked. She was within melee range of the Harpy, along with Ryth-Shan, so Vexir gained advantage for flanking. She rolled a Natural 20 and 1. Critical hit! She used Menacing Attack and added 1d8 to her roll. Since she got a Critical hit, that meant she rolled 2d12+2d8+2 for damage. She rolled a total of 25 damage as she roared in fury. The Harpy had 14 HP remaining. The monster then had to make a Wisdom save or be frightened. She rolled a 12. Success. The Harpy barely resisted being frightened.
Vexir then used Action Surge. She rolled a 2 and 11+4=15. Hit. She used another superiority die. 1d12+1d8+2. She rolled 5+2=7. Harpy 3 was down to 7 HP. She rolled another Wisdom save and succeeded with a 16.
Now, if I were to take Vexir and level her up to level 7, she'd have "Know Your Enemy" special ability. If she spends 1 minute observing or interacting with another creature outside of combat, she can learn certain information about its capabilities compared to her own. The DM tells her if the creature is her equal, superior, or inferior in regards to two of the following characteristics of the player's choice: Strength, Dex, Constitution, Armor Class, Current HP, Class Level, Fighter Level.
This could be implemented into BG3 even without time being a thing. Just basically allowing the fighter to gain this knowledge against enemies on the fighter's first turn without requiring 1 actual minute of observing. The fighter just automatically knows the enemy's strengths. In order to do this, Larian would need to stop letting everyone know all of the stats of every enemy they face.
Levels 7 and 10 also allow the fighter more maneuvers and more superiority dice. The more maneuvers and superiority dice, the more OTHER abilities besides just hitting things that they have to choose from.
Combat maneuvers that you SHOULD be able to choose from when building a Battlemaster:
Commander's Strike, Disarming Attack, Distracting Strike, Evasive Footwork, Feinting Attack, Goading Attack, Lunging Attack, Maneuvering Attack, Menacing Attack, Parry, Precision Attack, Pushing Attack, Rally, Riposte, Sweeping Attack, Trip Attack, Ambush, Bait and Switch, Brace, Commanding Presence, Grappling Strike, Quick Toss and Tactical Assessment. And that's just the Battlemaster's abilities.
So, as you can see, the higher the levels the more maneuvers the fighter has to choose from out of the list above and the more superiority dice they can use to activate those maneuvers. Thus, giving MORE maneuvers to fighters early game will only make them even more unbalanced for later because they will have even more abilities than they already currently possess. On top of that, by giving them maneuvers they shouldn't have via weapon abilities, they negate a fighter's ability to gain some of those maneuvers later via their maneuvers. Thus, they break the system.
Seriously. I'm not saying 100% D&D 5e, but I have to continue to caution out here that the more they create homebrew rules the more they break things and later will have to somehow try to fix them. Patience, people. Think of classic RPG games. Any time you start, you don't have a ton of special abilities and traits. You gain them throughout the course of leveling up so that the Level 10 Fighter could easily beat the crap out of lots of enemies while the Level 1 Fighter can barely hold their own against a few goblins.
The things I suggested aren't more powerful abilities, they're different types of attacks. The BM's manuevres are straight up better than just attacking. That is not the case with my suggestion. Also, this is not another homebrew to add, this is an alternative solution to a problem (they think low level fighters don't have much to do) Larian tried (and failed) to solve, so it would replace their Bonus Action shove...
+1
I'm in favor of additional abilities that offer positives but that also come with numerical negatives. I like your ideas OP, though they probably would require some fine tuning: e.g., go for the arms shouldn't require you to physically stand on the side of an enemy. That's too finicky and precise.
These abilities could be instead of or in addition to the weapon abilities already in BG3 (you have a bludgeoning-specific action in your list). Weapon ability cooldowns don't really make sense, so making them include penalties to attack or AC or provoke an AoO makes more sense. Aside from the cooldowns and the fact that some weapon abilities in BG3 are much better than others, these are one of Larian's homebrew I like most.
D&D in previous editions had these additional attack options (or at least, Pathfinder has them) and it's a shame that they disappeared in the simplification to 5e.
Yeah, positioning might be a bit finnicky with their current system. Having some good GUI or a grid would fix it I think, just like FF tactics, but that's just another thing that won't happen. And yeah, they would definitely require fine-tuning, this was just stuff I came up with while writing the post.
