Warden of the Ancients Fighter Archetype

Like a lot of what I'm posting these days, this is content for Under the Seas of Vodari, written by me with a lot of development support from Shawn Ellsworth. It deals heavily in the setting lore, a little more of which you can see in this previous post.

Warden of the Ancients

Long ago the Ancients were torn apart by the gods, split into the Dakri and the Varu. Civil war erupted and both spent lifetimes developing fighting techniques to gain the upper hand in an endless series of conflicts. Varu golden sentinels countered the aggressive, predatory style developed by the dakri in the darkest waters. Following the wars, some dakri and varu joined together to learn from one another and merged their techniques into a single teaching. This tradition has been preserved among surviving descendants of this once great civilization and rediscovered by those who have delved into its ruins. Whether learned through training with a master or by deciphering murals and inscribed monoliths, all who learn these secrets techniques are its wardens.

Warden of the Ancients Features

Fighter Level - Feature

3rd - Among the Ruins, Traditions of the Forgotten Wars

7th - Mobile Tactics

10th - Advanced Warden Techniques

15th - Disciplined Tactics

18th - Master Warden

Among the Ruins

3rd-level Warden of the Ancients feature

Your time spent in the ruins of the once-great cities of the Ancients has provided you with lost knowledge. You gain proficiency with one of the following skills of your choice: History, Investigation, Religion, and Survival. In addition, you learn Celestial or a language of your choice if you already know this language.

Traditions of Forgotten Wars

3rd-level Warden of the Ancients feature

You can use a bonus action to enter one of the stances below. A stance lasts for 1 minute or until you are incapacitated. You can end a stance early as a free action. You can enter one of these stances twice, and you regain one use of this feature when you use your Action Surge or Second Wind features or finish a short rest. You regain all expended uses of this feature when you finish a long rest.

Swift Darkness Stance. While you are in this stance, your speed in all movement modes increases by 10 feet. When you start your turn with no hostile creatures adjacent to you and move at least 10 feet, you gain advantage on the first attack roll you make before the end of your turn.

Unbreaking Shell Stance. While you are in this stance, when a creature hits you with an attack, you gain resistance to damage dealt by all subsequent attacks made by that creature until the start of your next turn.

Golden Sentinel Stance. While you are in this stance, you deal an additional 1d8 damage when you hit a creature with an opportunity attack. Additionally, if you are wielding a ranged, reach, or thrown weapon, you can use a bonus action on your turn to choose one five-foot square you can see that is at least 10 feet from you, and in which a creature is taking cover. If the creature reduces the amount of cover it has, you can make an opportunity attack against it.

Mobile Tactics

7th-level Warden of the Ancients feature

You can use the Dash action as a bonus action, and you can expend a use of Traditions of Forgotten Wars to enter a stance as part of the same bonus action. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Advanced Warden Techniques

10th-level Warden of the Ancients feature

When you use the stances of Traditions of Forgotten Wars, you gain the following additional features.

Swift Darkness Stance. Once per turn while you are in this stance, you can deal an additional 2d6 damage when you hit with an attack if you have advantage on the roll.

Unbreaking Shell Stance. While you are in this stance, when you take acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder damage, you deal 1d8 additional damage of that type the next time you hit with a weapon attack before the end of your next turn.

Golden Sentinel Stance. While you are in this stance, you gain blindsight out to a range of 15 feet.

Disciplined Tactics

15th-level Warden of the Ancients feature

When you roll initiative and have no uses of Traditions of Forgotten Wars remaining, you regain one use of it.

Master Warden

18th-level Warden of the Ancients feature

When you use the stances of Traditions of Forgotten Wars, you gain the following additional features.

Swift Darkness Stance. While you are in this stance, when you reduce a creature to 0 hit points, you can use your reaction to move up to half your speed and make one additional attack. If you are wielding natural weapons, you can make two additional attacks; if you are wielding two melee weapons, you can make one attack with each.

Unbreaking Shell Stance. While you are in this stance, when you succeed or fail a saving throw, you gain advantage on saving throws that you roll until the start of your next turn.

Golden Sentinel Stance. The additional damage you deal with opportunity attacks while you are in this stance increases to 2d8, and when you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, it has disadvantage on attacks it makes until the start of your next turn.

Design Notes

Stance-shifting is one of my favorite go-tos for building a playstyle in class or subclass, and I've tried to meld that into the lore here. One of the major challenges was using the fighter skill list and making these stances work without handing out three or more additional skill proficiencies in high-value skills. (Among many other problems, that would intrude on ranger and rogue in bad ways.)

That said, there's one assault/DPS stance, one survivability stance, and one zone-control stance, each basically bulking up one aspect of the fighter class. 

My lingering doubts in the design focus on the function of Golden Sentinel stance at 3rd level, and the usage frequency of stances overall - I am well aware that current design is moving toward making everything PB uses/long rest, but I'm not sure that's best for this case, so I'm trying something else.