Loader image
Loader image
Back to Top

Blog

Nerdarchy > Dungeons & Dragons  > D&D Design Diary: Martial Artist martial archetype
fighter

D&D Design Diary: Martial Artist martial archetype

Worldbuilding: Where to Begin with a Homebrew Campaign Setting
Why Do We Play? RPG Game Master and Player Differences Explored

Hello! Nerditor Doug here to welcome a new writer to the family. Chris Chupp is part of the awesome Nerdarchy community and recently sent us a copy of his homebrew subclass for the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons fighter – the Martial Artist martial archetype. A couple of our writers gave it the once over and shared their thoughts about the content available over at the Dungeon Master’s Guild. I invited Chris to write a follow up design diary about his work creating the D&D fighter subclass. This is that design diary.

Gloves come off for the D&D Martial Artist fighter

Hey there and thanks for swinging by!

I’m not a first time Dungeon Master or homebrewer, but this may be my most polished piece and I’m happy to share it with you. I’m a fan of combat sports in general and a lover of kung-fu movies, so when one of my players’ characters, starving and desperate to do some damage (after the umpteenth failed weapon attack in many sessions) cast his club to the ground and threw a haymaker at the wild boar he was attempting to hunt, I had to do something.

He played the critical moment with such gusto I gave him a d6 unarmed + Strength to reflect his compounded anger and pent-up frustrations.

Lo and behold, a hit! The fatal blow. Such was the experience that the character (a survivor on a hardcore jungle-island survival-type campaign I’m running) never picked the club back up. Funny how bad die rolls can birth a concept like that.

D&D fighter martial artist

A wild boar in real life is dangerous, so keep in mind we’re talking about D&D wild boar. And this character knocked one out barehanded!

We consulted the internet for possible homebrews that fell in line with the concept of a nonmonk fist fighter. There are some, but we weren’t interested in tracking resources like “___ Points” or something similar. The extras that came with monk class options didn’t fit the bill either; the fighter class already had everything a fighter needs – Action Surge, Extra Attack and Second Wind were things someone who lives to fight would develop naturally anyway. Go figure! The fighter core class is tried and true. No need for a new class, just a specialization.

So it was decided I would create a subclass for him, a bare-knuckled fighter every bit as tenacious and capable as his armed and armored peers.

I felt it was reasonable and in fact necessary to take a sizeable chunk from the fighter proficiency lists. One doesn’t retain old and unused skills while pursuing perfection in others. I borrowed the Unarmored Defense equation and modified it to allow for Dexterity or Strength builds to reflect the wide breadth of martial arts today, loosely mapping to a sort of featherweight/heavyweight scale. Unarmored Movement made sense since your muscles didn’t go anywhere but you dropped the extra weight your armor previously added. Fancy footwork!

fighter

Muhammad Ali, legendary fighter, in this iconic photo where he taunts vanquished opponent Sonny Liston. “Get up and fight, sucker!” [Photo by Neil Leifer]

It was later added (after many, many in-game shenanigans) that the subclass was multiclass locked. Besides, your laserlike focus on your craft meant you had no time for anything else.

We start with a d6 for damage because it’s solid and reflective of short swords, something almost any PC can wield. We point to the monk’s special ki skills and frontloaded feature-heavy level progression when justifying the increased damage die this fighter gets.

Each Fighting Specialty, while tailored to a loose type of fighting, was made to benefit not only the Martial Artist using it but his party as well in some way or another. My Grappler players made use of the Powerful Build feature of some races and spent entire combats throwing multiple enemy combatants around and into natural dangers or subduing casters and other ranged threats.

My Brawler players were the bane of any enemy caster’s existence, either throat punching to silence and therefore negating spells with verbal components or slapping components/focuses from their squishy caster hands. They were good at whittling down the options a boss enemy had as well, once disarming my BBEG of his greatsword and severely limiting his damage output. As an ode to a favorite MMO of ours we added poison resistance to reflect a background in dirty fighting. Remove it in your game if that seems a bit much. No hard feelings.

My Strikers were damage powerhouses, particularly at lower levels where stat bonuses and that d6 weren’t doing anything crazy. I found that they would stun enemies and the party would ignore the stunned victim to handle the active enemies left over, and this was a considerably effective way to curtail incoming damage when they could get that crit. I didn’t impose size requirements on the feature because a natural 20 is a natural 20, ’nuff said.

Fists of Fury, besides being the first of a few spoofy feature titles, comes online when, in-game, enemies may start to populate with built-in resistances to nonmagic damage. We maintain that strikes are bludgeoning-type damage regardless. Be it a hand, elbow, knee or foot strike, it seemed off to give them any additional damage type. We are crazy people attacking with our natural bodies, after all. A single social expertise helps to keep them mildly useful in noncombat roles.

Float Like a Butterfly was inspired by boxing greats (very obviously). Free of the burden of armor, one can more efficiently and quickly manipulate the body to bob and weave. I have since considered adding the “That you can see” stipulation to the course of incoming attacks and don’t think it would be sacrilege in the least if you were to house rule it yourself. If you’re even lightly considering using this subclass in the first place I’m flattered.

martial artist fighter

The legendary Bruce Lee might very well have been a Martial Artist fighter in D&D.

Sting Like a Bee is the logical evolution of the preceding feature. We’ve all seen the fighter duck under his opponents’ big swing and deliver a surprise overhand. More inspiration came from Jeet Kune Do, a fighting style developed by legendary figure Bruce Lee. Known as the Way Of The Intercepting Fist, JKD teaches aggressive defense. Loosely and respectfully this boils down to something like “Is that guy trying to punch you? Throw your own punch, faster and straighter than his. Punch him first to stop his punch.” And from there came the inspiration for the gravy effect should you succeed in a KO/Kill while countering. You punched his punch away.

King of the Ring is a small group of lesser bonuses that other classes get at much lower levels. They synergize exceptionally well and while they definitely pack a mechanical punch (ba-dum-tish) they are all reflective of the logical apex of skill, strength, conditioning, reflexes and body control of the highest tier fighters.

Originally, the capstone provided immunity to critical hits and the barbarian capstone 24 natural limits, but after refusing to add a size requirement to the stunning ability of the Striker so natural 20s remained super rewarding, I reduced this to resistance to the damage of critical hits. It was not in the spirit of “A natural 20 is a natural 20” to deny an enemy their critical bonuses if they rolled it fair and square. Also, we don’t want to step on the barbarian’s toes. They’re an entirely different beast. So we tone it down a level.

The bonuses are passive and permanent, reflective of the fighter’s hard-won investments in himself. It isn’t a gift form a higher power that wears off after one minute; those are muscle cells and reflexes you earned with blood sweat and tears.

It’s important to note that while Martial Artists are certainly going to be doing heavy damage in their later levels (as an invested fighter should) they are not going to enjoy the bonuses and features of many high tier items. We’re talking about weapons and armor, of course. I found that my players did struggle when given magical or natural obstacles like large chasms or bodies of water, etc. Without a built-in feather fall or water walk they were forced to finesse or brutalize their way through. But since the class pretty much begs you to play a madman the roleplay to address these issues was all kinds of outstanding.

So in closing this class is the result of a number of months of actual gameplay and a couple of nerds trying to punch dragons to death. Hope it adds something to your game! Thanks for your time.

From the Nerditor’s desk

You can find our writers’ initial thoughts on the D&D Martial Artist fighter martial archetype over here, and snag a copy of Chris’ content at the DM’s Guild here. It’s a great example of how to homebrew content that fits your own campaign and players. We live in an awesome time to be a gamer, when people can share their creations with the whole community so easily through sources like the DM’s Guild and our own website here. There’s a lot of creatures, classes, races, magic items and spells and more lurking on this site for you to discover.

The Dungeon Masters Guild is a new program that allows you to create content (adventures and locations; new monsters; character classes, archetypes, and backgrounds; etc.) using Wizards of the Coast’s intellectual property (IP) and to make some money while you’re at it. – from the DM’s Guild website

Remember, Nerdarchy’s exclusive coupon code DTRPG-Nerdarchy gives you a one-time 10 percent discount on orders of digital products $10 or more and is available at any OneBookShelf site like the DM’s Guild and DriveThruRPG.

It is great to welcome another new writer to our family here on the website, which continues to grow and expand with new voices and new content daily. If you’ve got something to say about the tabletop roleplaying culture, hit us up on the Contact Us tab. Please like, comment on and share your favorite posts too.

Like this?

Did you enjoy this post? Nerdarchy’s awesome volunteer staff of writers and editors do their best to create engaging, useful and fun content to share. If you like what you find here on our site, consider patronizing us in a good way through Patreon.

On top of reaching our goal of paying our writers, pledging gets you exclusive monthly content for your D&D game, opportunities to game with Nerdarchy, access to patron-only channels on our Discord and more

With your generous support we’ll continue to create quality content between our YouTube channel and blog, invest in equipment to increase recording quality, and eventually create original publications and products to enhance your tabletop role-playing and gaming experience.

Thank you for your consideration and as always, until next time stay nerdy!

[amazon_link asins=’0785834443,0544435249,1569757879′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’nerdarchy-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’89839ee6-2df2-11e8-a41a-419173e482fe’]

Share
Chris Chupp

No Comments

Leave a Reply