Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition: Fighting Stances

The wife and I played Nioh 2, and by play I mean we get our asses kicked multiple times against the first enki we encountered. We still haven't beaten it, but in all fairness at the time she did push out a baby a the prior week.

A part of the game that I think is a big deal are stances: low, middle/medium and high. I think high stance does the most damage, but I'm not sure what the others really do. Presumably middle would be a, well, middle ground, and low would be more defensive.

We didn't play all that long, and I don't remember if the game explained what they do. What I do recall is that each stance was linked to various attacks and abilities, which can only be used while in that stance, and I'm thinking on how to use that in Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition.

I've already figured out the effects. You'd have a kind of aggressive/offensive and defensive mode. The former grants a +1 bonus to attack and damage, on top of everything else you get, but your Defense gets reduced by 1, while the latter grants a +1 bonus to Defense whilst imposing a -1 penalty to attacks.

You choose to enter a Stance at the start of your turn, and are effectively stuck in that Stance until the start of your next turn. Initially I'd considered needing a Swift Action, but then it would be possible to go into an aggressive stance, make your attacks, and then just toggle to defensive. 

Granted you could only do this every other round, but it would still undo the risks and create a kind of static action pattern. By setting your stance prior to making an attack, you have to make a choice and stick with it.

You can also just exit both Stances, or go into a more "neutral" fighting Stance that confers no particular benefit.

How you access Stances is a bit murkier. I don't necessarily want to bake them into a class. Granted it makes sense for the fighter and even paladin, but it would be something else to track that a player might not want to deal with, and we try to avoid those whenever possible (which is why we removed Turn Undead/Rebuke Adversary from the cleric entirely).

It is because of that that I think there needs to be some sort of buy-in.

One method would be to use Skill Points. Currently all classes gain some sort of universal Attack Bonus, reflecting either on-the-crawl experience, or practice during downtime (including during a long-rest period). Any character of any class can already burn Skill Points to gain an additional +1 bonus to hit with a specific weapon of his choice, so learning Stances would just build on that.

Since buying to-hit bonuses costs 2-4 Skill Points (varies by class), Stances would just be 1 for either the aggressive or defensive option, or both. They don't just give pure bonuses, after all.

The other option would be to make it a class-specific Talent, reflecting specialized training. You get automatic access to both modes with whatever weapons you're proficient with. This keeps things simpler: you don't need to track which weapons have Skill-based Attack Bonuses, as well as which ones have which Stance(s).

That's one reason I'm leaning towards the Talent option. Another is that we can make Talents that build on it, increasing the benefit of a Stance, as well as other abilities that require you to be "in" a Stance, similar to the monk class. I should note that while monk Stances don't impose penalties, granting very minor benefits, they do provide a more meaningful, Ki-dependent ability.

For example, Tiger stance lets your unarmed strikes inflict slashing damage, and you deal +1 damage with all attacks as long as you have at least 1 Ki. Ki is used to power all sorts of abilities and other Talents, so there's a tradeoff: I don't want to just give the fighter a +1 damage Stance without some sort of penalty or limitation, otherwise you'd just take it and use it constantly.

This is also why there won't be Talents that remove these penalties, or let you switch your Stance. At least not easily; as mentioned before you'd just fall into a routine of going aggressive, making a bunch of attacks, and then switching to defensive at the end. Perhaps a way to switch it on a critical hit/you exceed the enemy's Defense by a certain amount (ie, an Exploit), or as a Reaction if an enemy hits/misses you.

Have to see how it works via playtesting, if it's even worth the cost of admission. Might have to beef it up to make it more enticing (especially with other passive Talents that don't require round-by-round decision making), or make it an Action like Fighting Defensively, just fighter-specific. Or just abandon it for now if no one likes it.