D&D 5E My tweak to make (Champion) Fighters decent

Edit: Updated version in Post 101 - http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?549984-My-tweak-to-make-Fighters-decent&p=7117754&viewfull=1#post7117754

This is designed for my no-Feats game, but might be worth considering even in a Feats game,
especially one with fewer than 6-8 fights/day.

"Ability Score Improvement

When you reach 4th level, and again at 6th, 8th, 12th, 14th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two Ability Scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.
One of the level 8, 12, 14 or 16 Ability Score improvements may be replaced by an additional
use of Action Surge (max 2 surges).
The level 19 ASI may be replaced by an additional Fighting Style."

Main effect is that level 8-16 Fighters may surge twice per short rest, level 17 Fighters 3 times, and the level 19 boost is less underwhelming than +2 to a minor stat.

Action Surge is pretty good, but if you think fighters are too weak otherwise, go for it.

Not sure if a third fighting style would be that great though.

Why do you think the Fighter need a power-up? So far it seems the consensus is that the Fighter is (boring but) quite strong.

Extra action surge might be worth a feat.

Fighting style if worth half a feat. maybe.

Baumi said:

Why do you think the Fighter need a power-up? So far it seems the consensus is that the Fighter is (boring but) quite strong.

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They seem a lot weaker than the Barbarians in my sandbox no-feats Wilderlands game, where players often set the pace. As I said in the OP, I'm not seeing 6-8 fights/day (and not interested in mangling my campaigns to force this). They have neither the durability of barbarians nor the nova power of Paladins, this change gets them closer to the latter.

Maybe in a Feats game they are more balanced though I doubt it, having played 3 levels of a Fighter with feats alongside a barbarian in Out of the Abyss. The lack of reckless attack option really hurts Fighter, as does
their squishiness. Barb just seems vastly better IME across several campaigns.

Horwath said:

Extra action surge might be worth a feat.

Fighting style if worth half a feat. maybe.

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The issue is that ASIs are not as good as feats esp once your main stat is maxed, and my Wilderlands game doesn't use feats. In practice this weakens the Fighter class which seems to have been written assuming the Feats optional rule is in use. Other classes don't seem so Feat dependent.

Action surges seems close enough, paticularly if you have short days.

Paladins have Nova, Barbarians have durability. In my games, (Champion) Fighter is going to be the reliable one, with a very simple expertise to two chosen weapon types (later a 3rd and 4th). Also, +prof to damage. Don't know if it would work for your game, just my 2CP.

On other classes being independent from feats, I think this is because Feats represent a thing anyone can learn to do, and Fighter is generally meant to represent that "Anyone". Fighter is built to use feats because it allows you to build the huge breadth of Archetypes "Fighter" covers. I think Fighter should have been like the Wizard and Cleric, and gotten 7 unique subclasses, and the Battlemaster shouldn't be there at all since he sucks up so much of the design space. That would have left room for several other maneuver based classes, who could have more specific maneuvers depending on their theme. If Battle Master was there, he should have received a few "Battlemaster-y" maneuvers, rather than all the maneuvers.

Why not allow the two bonus ASIs the fighter gets to access a limited selection of feats? Sentinel and shields master spring to mind as massively improving fighter utility by improving his action economy and HAM greatly improves durability.

An additional action surge could be really powerful, depending on your short rest to encounter ratio. A third fighting style strikes me as meh

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If short rests are never a thing in your game, and usually the heroes face one big battle where they burn up pretty much every resource they have, I would suggest you change all class features that replenish on a short rest to have 2x or even 3x the number of uses and make them replenish on a long rest, and let ABIs as they are. Of course, if short rests do occur "normally" (as per base game assumptions, between once and twice between long rests, no BWF intended, thus the scare-quotes), then this suggestion of mine is, of course, not applicable.

You mentioned barbarians and paladins over-performing the fighter in a featless game. Maybe this really has an influence on the evolvement of characters, as the fighter already manages itself quite well with fewer attributes, and has more ABIs to work with as a class feature, whereas paladins and barbarians might as well be very glad to just bump their varied attributes all the way.

Would you feel like it hurts very much your featless game to allow fighters (and maybe rogues too) to grab feats from a pre-selected list with their ABIs on levels when no other class has ABIs (6th, 14th, and in the case of the rogue, 10th)? Or maybe even substitute these specific ABIs altogether by class features, that might or might not emulate feats. You could give, for example, the damage reduction of heavy armor mastery plus the cleave half of great weapon mastery for fighters that go STR at 6th level, as a sort of improved fighting style, or the two-weapon fighting feat for dual wielders, and proficiency in dex saves plus evasion when wielding a shield for DEX based fighters.