Delvebound: Stamina Variant Feature

Improving Martials with Stamina

“Alright, your turn. What do you do?”

“I attack.”

This exchange happened at least 3 times every session whenever someone in a game I was in played a martial class. Usually more if there was a lot of combat that day. It was like clockwork. The spellcaster would pull out a spell we hadn’t considered, the half caster would pull out either a spell or an attack with some magical riders added, and the martial would, as they had for the past eight sessions, make one or more weapon attacks.

Playing as a more traditional knight, assassin, or other nonmagical character in both 5th Edition and Delvebound has always felt underwhelming to some of us on the development end of things. While spellcasters have a plethora of options in a fight, it felt like martials only had one. Or at least, one that ever did anything: making weapon attacks. For a system about swords and sorcery, D&D focuses a lot more on one than the other. Sure, some options mitigated this feeling more than others, but it never felt like anything on par with what spellcasters were doing.

We wanted martials to be less of a one trick pony. Watching movies, reading books, and playing video games, we saw characters similar to the ones we played doing stuff we wished was easier to implement into D&D without it being a hassle for the GM. Trapping enemies with environmental hazards, leaping across rooftops while shooting arrows, and using unique attack moves were all things we wanted to do. That was when Juan had a fun idea. He originally called it action points, and it was just a few extra options that made fights more fun in our home games. Then it expanded, we added special attacks for specific weapons, perks to use in and out of combat that gave you more options, and refinements to the original concept. “Hold on, I can tech this shit!” became a common phrase at the table whenever someone was about to pull off something crazy or cinematic with the system we pulled together. It was while we expanded it that we thought “why not add it to Delvebound properly?”

Stamina has been an absolute joy to playtest behind the scenes. It is our hope that you enjoy shooting feral vampires off of lighthouse walls, drop kicking skeletons into fire pits, blinding Dremora with your own blood, and making a heroic final stand against a necromancer just as much as we have.

—Swampy (WanderingSwampBeast)