D&D 5E The Fighter Extra Feat Fallacy

Imaro said:

brought up 4th edition in a thread about 5e, so...

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I brought up the history of the fighter in a thread about the fighter, that history is relevant, and includes every past edition. The fighter's been popular in all those editions. It's been criticized in all those editions.

Outside of this forum I don't see much determination on getting the fighter revised... so again I have to ask how are you coming to the conclusion there's "a lot" of criticism?

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This forum stands as evidence, past forums do, as well. You can't pretend the fighter didn't get regularly ripped on gleemax, for instance.

Heck, the blurb on the back of the 2e CFH had a bit alluding to fighters being considered the 'weak cousin of D&D' or something like that. The fighter's gotten complaints going way back.

It's been the most popular class going all the way back.

Why deny either of those facts? Because they don't perfectly complement eachother? :shrug:

I'd have no problem with this...

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The game currently has supernatural powers built into at least the sub-classes of every class, and 9 of 12 classes are supernatural at the base-class level. That's a lot of exploration of different - often narrow and only subtly-different - supernatural concepts from every corner of the fantasy genre.

So I'm glad you agree that adding a new, non-supernatural class as an alternative to the high-DPR, 'simple' fighter might be a good alternative to 'fixing' the fighter - a class that's already very popular, and has a long history, with all the attendant baggage and expectations.

heck we're pretty much there with the Barbarian & monk. In fact why don't these two classes fit the bill?

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Not those two, no. The non-supernatural classes already in 5e are the Fighter, Rogue & Barbarian. The Monk uses Ki which is not only supernatural, but explicitly defined as magical in 5e.

So a new non-supernatural class would be a 4th such class, not a 3rd. If it had no supernatural powers in any sub-class, it'd be the 1st wholly non-supernatural class...
...but given sub-class designs, one such could always be added, so that wouldn't mean much.

Imaro said:

I'm curious why only your current or last PC? 5e has been out for a couple of years so shouldn't you be looking to see how many people have played straight fighters over that time period as opposed to just the current or last PC they played?

EDIT: For example we just started a new game where the player who played a straight BM in our previous campaign is now playing a cleric... according to your poll he couldn't put fighter but instead would have to put cleric... even though he's played a straight fighter to a higher level than he has the current cleric...

EDIT 2: I asked this in your poll thread as well...

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Answered in the other thread. Basically I couldn't figure out how to word the poll to take into account someone having multiple PC's with the same class without making the poll a mile long.

I figured a snapshot would give an accurate enough picture. And it apparently has.

Sacrosanct said:

I'll bet you a donut it's not. Even with the wording of the poll being very limited and setting up the fighter for failure. For example, since you're only asking for the current PC, that limits the number of fighter responses because there are a lot of other classes people play. And then from that already limited number, you're asking how many take 4 or more levels of fighter.

If you wanted a more accurate response, you should have asked, "For all of your PCs that have a fighter as part of their class, how many have the fighter levels result in the majority of the class levels?"

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Wow. Really? Setting the fighter up for failure by asking what's being currently played? Well, I guess that's par for the course. Have to nit pick and find fault beforehand I suppose.

Dude, that's an awful lot of negativity (and cross posted between two threads no less) for a pretty simple question.

Hussar said:

Wow. Really? Setting the fighter up for failure by asking what's being currently played? Well, I guess that's par for the course. Have to nit pick and find fault beforehand I suppose.

Dude, that's an awful lot of negativity (and cross posted between two threads no less) for a pretty simple question.

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Your question was whether or not people only level dip into fighter, or take more levels of it (or have it as the primary class). Your question was not "what class are people playing". So when you ask the latter, it makes the numbers of the former look less. By your own words, when you predicted it would just be middle of the pack, as if that somehow proves that a large ratio of people don't take several levels of fighter/have it as their primary class (your original question).

So it's either a horribly worded poll, or you were being deliberately disingenuous in it's framing.

Either way, it appears from the answers that people saw through that and it seems your personal experiences/tastes are very much the exception.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]

I thought your poll was an eloquent way of asking your question. It was simple straightforward and produced results hard to argue against. I don't know why anyone would argue with that methodology.

It would be cool if you could find a poll question to check if players play more ranged or melee fighters.

Sacrosanct said:

Your question was whether or not people only level dip into fighter, or take more levels of it (or have it as the primary class). Your question was not "what class are people playing". So when you ask the latter, it makes the numbers of the former look less. By your own words, when you predicted it would just be middle of the pack, as if that somehow proves that a large ratio of people don't take several levels of fighter/have it as their primary class (your original question).

So it's either a horribly worded poll, or you were being deliberately disingenuous in it's framing.

Either way, it appears from the answers that people saw through that and it seems your personal experiences/tastes are very much the exception.

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Umm, how is that disingeneous when my question of whether or not the fighter is the dip class was the primary purpose of the poll? Note, I didn't ask "what are people playing". I asked, what class does your character have 4 or more levels in. IOW, I was trying to see if my experience with fighter as a dip class was borne out by the larger community.

And, apparently, it isn't. Apparently my group is something of an outlier.

I never argued that fighters weren't popular. In fact, I had stated flat out that characters with fighter levels are the most popular characters in my group. I certainly wasn't questioning the polls stating that fighters are the most popular class. That would be silly considering that fighters have polled at the top for years and pretty much every edition.

You are looking for bad faith where none exists. I suggest that you take the post in exactly the way it was written and for the purpose it was written.

That all being said, I can agree with Mistwell's point. Fighters are the most popular class. By a fair margin. Even accounting for the notion of dipping into fighter, fighters remain the most popular class. So, it doesn't need to be fixed.

Every now and then when reading the echo-chamber arguments ("Fighter is obviously bad design") on forums like this one, I am reminded of the discussion on Slashdot (~Enworld for engineer types, back in the day) when the Apple iPod was first announced. The engineers all mocked it, compared its specs to their favorite digital music player, declared it inferior, and predicted its swift demise. My favorite rationale for this conclusion was that it didn't...wait for it...support Ogg Vorbis format. (Ogg Vorbis is an open source alternative to MP3.)

I never revisited that debate, but I'm guessing the reaction to the iPod's success involved creative interpretations of the data that are similar to how some folks here interpret the popularity of the Fighter. Because, you know, it just can't possibly be true on its own merits. All the 'experts' say so.

Elfcrusher said:

Every now and then when reading the echo-chamber arguments ("Fighter is obviously bad design") on forums like this one, I am reminded of the discussion on Slashdot (~Enworld for engineer types, back in the day) when the Apple iPod was first announced. The engineers all mocked it, compared its specs to their favorite digital music player, declared it inferior, and predicted its swift demise. My favorite rationale for this conclusion was that it didn't...wait for it...support Ogg Vorbis format. (Ogg Vorbis is an open source alternative to MP3.)

I never revisited that debate, but I'm guessing the reaction to the iPod's success involved creative interpretations of the data that are similar to how some folks here interpret the popularity of the Fighter. Because, you know, it just can't possibly be true on its own merits. All the 'experts' say so.

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Apple made products for the everyday person when everyone else was targeting the power users. That's why they succeeded. Hey I guess your story does have an analog here after all.

Maybe more importantly than anything is that fighters are the class with the least baggage. They are the class with the most RolePlaying freedom. While those notions don't necessarily make for a balanced in all 3 pillars class it does make for a popular and useful class. I would love to find a fighter solution to out of combat issues that work around what he already is.

I would love for him to have something he could replace a fighting style with that gave a small boost to a skill or 2 of choice. I would love to be able to replace 2nd wind with something skill related as well. Such options would open up flexibility for him without taking away any of the classes freedom.

I can actually see an option to expend Action Surge to give it a use in out of combat situations. Possibly advantage on a single str or dex check?

Anyways just thinking out loud.

FrogReaver said:

Apple made products for the everyday person when everyone else was targeting the power users. That's why they succeeded. Hey I guess your story does have an analog here after all.

Maybe more importantly than anything is that fighters are the class with the least baggage. They are the class with the most RolePlaying freedom. While those notions don't necessarily make for a balanced in all 3 pillars class it does make for a popular and useful class. I would love to find a fighter solution to out of combat issues that work around what he already is.

I would love for him to have something he could replace a fighting style with that gave a small boost to a skill or 2 of choice. I would love to be able to replace 2nd wind with something skill related as well. Such options would open up flexibility for him without taking away any of the classes freedom.

I can actually see an option to expend Action Surge to give it a use in out of combat situations. Possibly advantage on a single str or dex check?

Anyways just thinking out loud.

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Just curious... but how would this be different from the fighter having the choice of a combat or non-combat feat? To clarify... many posters in this thread are claiming even when given the option for non-combat versatility the player of a fighter is going to choose to invest in more combat capability (something I'm not sure is correct if the player is genuinely looking for more utility outside combat)... and I'm wondering why you think that wouldn't be the case with these suggestions?

Imaro said:

Just curious... but how would this be different from the fighter having the choice of a combat or non-combat feat?

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It wouldn't be: it'd also be a small amount of build-time versatility, trying to make up for an overall lack of capability, by competing with the tremendous in-play versatility of most other sub-classes.

Attaching non-combat perks to each style - Duelist makes you better at reading people, Greatweapon makes you better at athletics, etc - would be a better approach, it wouldn't add much versatility, but would add some out-of-combat capability.

Elfcrusher said:

Every now and then when reading the echo-chamber arguments ("Fighter is obviously bad design") on forums like this one, I am reminded of the discussion on Slashdot (~Enworld for engineer types, back in the day) when the Apple iPod was first announced. The engineers all mocked it, compared its specs to their favorite digital music player, declared it inferior, and predicted its swift demise. My favorite rationale for this conclusion was that it didn't...wait for it...support Ogg Vorbis format. (Ogg Vorbis is an open source alternative to MP3.)

I never revisited that debate, but I'm guessing the reaction to the iPod's success involved creative interpretations of the data that are similar to how some folks here interpret the popularity of the Fighter. Because, you know, it just can't possibly be true on its own merits. All the 'experts' say so.

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Popularity is it's own thing. The 'reasons' behind it are varied and unpredictable and rarely have anything to do with logic or the objective qualities of the thing in question.

Coke doesn't objectively 'taste better' than any other sufficiently-vile sugar(high-fructose-corn-syrup)-sweetened cola drink, but it's the most popular vile, overly-sweet cola drink. A Vulcan surveying earth people on how they feel about each objective quality & ingredient of coke, would conclude that few thinking beings would ever touch the stuff, let alone pay for the privilege of being slowly poisoned by it. They would be wrong. Not because they're wrong about what coke is, just because they didn't control for how illogical humans are.

The popularity of the fighter proves the fighter is popular. It doesn't disprove any objective qualities of the fighter class design. At worst, it might prove that players like bad designs and enjoy playing strictly inferior characters. ;P At best, it might prove that many players are above such considerations and many DMs well-able to compensate for such issues in play. IMHO, the most likely causation is neither of those, but simply that the most popular character concepts can only be approached with the fighter class (followed closely by those for which the rogue, wizard, & barbarian are most appropriate or intuitive).

So, yes, it's very like your ipod example.