Combos

One of the big issues with D&D has always been the "linear fighter, quadratic wizard" problem, where Wizards get ever-bigger spells as they go up in level while Fighters just get a bit better at whatever they were doing previously. One of the fixes for that was always to give Fighters bizarre and outlandish powers to try to compensate, but that never quite sat right either.

Another fix I've mooted in the past was the notion of combos - the Fighter would have a set of 'basic' attacks that could be used at any time, but by combining them into sequences they could multiply up the effects. So if they first landed "uppercut", they could then use "haymaker", and then finish off with "thundrous smite" to get a knock-out effect.

Well, maybe. There are complexities inherent in all of that.

But that's not the point of this post, because I've said most of this before.

The point of this post is to note that I've made a crucial mistake in my thinking. Originally, I had thought that the Fighter should hit with the various 'steps' in order to qualify for the chain. But the problem with that is that they're very likely to fail at some point, and at the very least have to repeat a step (if not start over). Because combats mostly last four rounds at most, and feature multiple opponents, that makes the chains essentially useless.

My correction is that the Fighter should have to use all the various powers, without needing to hit. And for the powers beyond the first there should probably be at least some effect even on a miss. Once you get to the capstone power in the chain, that probably does require a hit... but should allow for retries if it does fail the first time.