D&D 5E (2014) And Lo, the Fighter Did Get a Shtick of his Own... COMBAT SUPERIORITY!

Klaus · Jul 31, 2012

It was an interesting idea in Complete Scoundrel (when we got Ambush feats that let a rogue spend Sneak Attack dice to gain other benefits), and it's still interesting now. Not sure about the increasing dice, though. Need to know more.

Mengu · Jul 31, 2012

erleni said:
Maybe, but look at what DiasExMachina made in Ultramodern4 with a 4e-chassis and you'll see that powers are a really better mechanic overall.

Powers aren't so much the issue, as it is the presentation of those powers in the card format. A table/list/chart format would have been much easier to accept, and to track for instance. The UM4 character sheet is a step in the right direction actually for compactness, but not quite there (though it's easy enough to make your own character sheet for it). I want to be able to run my finger down my list of powers to find the one I'm looking for. I want to be able to run my finger down another column to find the two powers that are minor actions. I want to be able to run my finger down another column to see what I can do at range. And I definitely want everything I can do on one page.

jrowland · Jul 31, 2012

Klaus said:
It was an interesting idea in Complete Scoundrel (when we got Ambush feats that let a rogue spend Sneak Attack dice to gain other benefits), and it's still interesting now. Not sure about the increasing dice, though. Need to know more.

Somewhere in the thread somebody mentioned why you need to increase the dice: Essentially the trade between damage and effects need to scale with the HP/Damage of the level of the characters/monsters.

Paraphrasing someone else:
Trading 3hp of damage vs a a goblin for a trip is a real choice. Trading 3hp of damage for a trip vs a giant is a no-brainer: choose trip. If the damage is higher, the choice becomes relevant again. At high levels, tripping the goblin is silly, you'll likely kill without CS, so adding damage is a no-brainer, but you really don't CS vs goblins at high level.

Mustrum_Ridcully · Jul 31, 2012

Klaus said:
It was an interesting idea in Complete Scoundrel (when we got Ambush feats that let a rogue spend Sneak Attack dice to gain other benefits), and it's still interesting now. Not sure about the increasing dice, though. Need to know more.

It could also become about making the Fighter just as "quadratic" as the Wizard.

Start with 1d4 (3 1st level spells) and move up to 20d20 (6 1st level, 6 2nd level, 6 3rd level, 6 4th level, 5 5th level, 5 6th level, 4 7th level, 4 8th level and 3 9th level spells).

Of course I don't quite believe that a Level 20 Fighter can add 20d20 damage to a single damage roll.

VinylTap · Jul 31, 2012

The numbers get really big really quickly, I still think they should scale up less quickly than 'Surprise attack'.

If you have Xd6 CS dice to spend, does that mean you can do x different actions as well as your regular attack in a single turn?

I'm A Banana · Jul 31, 2012

GX.Sigma said:
Anyone taking bets on how long it remains a fighter-only thing?

They've been talking about having a unique mechanical hook for each class. The text of the article suggests that increased damage was part of the hook for the Fighter class, but that this failed to distinguish the fighter enough in the minds of many folks (which is probably about in line with what they expected).

So I think it'll be a Fighter thing up until they introduce multiclassing and it becomes an everybody-but-not-quite-as-good-as-the-Fighter thing.

Paladins, barbarians, and the rest don't need 'em. Barbarians, for instance, have Rage as an iconic ability and they can do awesome things while Raging (which is already a little Vancian/"daily uses" in style). Paladins are a little more vague, but going in a Smite-centric (or even a Charge-centric) way wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. Rangers get archery and/or TWF ninja skills (and/or perhaps become 5e skrimisher-style scouts).

So "combat superiority dice" become the Fighter's unique schtick. A little generic, very flexible, swap your damage for kewl moves. Barbarians hit hard, but they don't have kewl moves. Paladins fight with a sword-and-board, but unless they multiclass, they don't have kewl moves. Rangers get two weapons, but if you want to be a whirlwind of ginsu death, you might want to at least dip into Fighter.

Part of this will depend on how 5e wants to do multiclassing, but I'm fairly confident that it'll be better than what we had a year ago.

JamesonCourage · Jul 31, 2012

ferratus said:
Sure, but it is still the size of a dagger, and has about the same penetrating force as a dagger. It just has reach. But when has a spear done as much maximum damage as a dagger in D&D, or a spear done as much damage as a two-handed sword? Never, which is dumb.

While reach is a huge benefit, I'm also under the impression that the spear will also have more force behind it than the dagger. And, again, I think the damage die difference comes back to "would you rather be nicked by a spear, or a two-handed sword?" This falls apart some when you're wearing armor or have a monstrously thick hide, obviously (it's why my RPG uses damage reduction, and things like spears have better armor penetration than things like two-handed swords).

ferratus said:
Bringing back the lance's ability to do double damage from the back of a horse during a charge would be a good start. Heck, bringing back the lance at all would be a good idea.

I didn't know it was gone! Interesting.

ferratus said:
4e weapon qualities show a way to do weapons that is a fairly elegant compromise with simplicity and weapon design. It is just a shame that they kept differing weapon damage values.

If you classify weapons based on what they do, and give that class of weapons qualities which give them differing damage in different situations, I believe it is completely workable and simple.

That's certainly one way to do it. It's not my preference (I prefer to differentiate them quite substantially, but I like fiddly!), but I could see it. Didn't weapons in D&D used to do 1d6?

ferratus said:
The Romans scorned the Gauls and their use of a long slashing sword, believing it was only good for superficial glancing injuries. They put their faith in a short thrusting sword and a shield, and their record in battle against the Gauls speaks for itself. You wouldn't know it from D&D though, because a short sword always does less damage than a longsword or two-handed sword. If you were using D&D stats, the Romans would lose to the Gauls every time.

Well, I'm not familiar with this. I'm curious about opposing tactics, armor, numbers, and the like. Again, I'd rather this be resolved via damage reduction/armor penetration, but I don't think that's a popular stance at all.

ferratus said:
A two-handed sword has its uses. If you don't need a shield because you are wearing plate armour, it increases the reach and power of your longsword substantially. Good against calvary, good at cutting through swaths of pike formations. But there is a reason that he generally lost to men wielding an estoc or rapier.

Do you have a link or something to the longsword vs rapier claim here? This is foreign to me. I didn't think there was ever really a historical match between armies of longsword vs rapier (or even really duels).

ferratus said:
The large two-handed sword is slower, has a large arc, and is difficult to recover from a missed blow. When a man overcommits with his large weapon, a man pretty much has his pick of where to stick his blade, as large portions of his body will be exposed by the errant swing. So a rapier doing half the damage of a two-handed sword in that situation is baloney.

I really don't want to get into a debate about fighting techniques here, so I'm going to hold back from replying to this paragraph.

ferratus said:
Or how about the fact that nobody ever uses a dagger to backstab anyone? Really, assassinations are the reason a stiletto was created, but nobody ever uses them because they do less damage than a short sword or rapier (or pay the feat tax to backstab with an even larger weapon).

I thought the stiletto was developed and used to finish off heavily armored opponents (getting through the eye slit, etc.), and that they were first carried by knights?

Daggers are pretty famous in fantasy for backstabs, though. I think that can be explained easily enough by how easy they are to conceal compared to a rapier.

ferratus said:
This can all be laid at the feet of differing damage for weapons, because the D&D community can't be convinced that weapons were designed for tactical advantage in specific situations, not because one weapon is superior to another.

True. While weapons were developed for different situations, you've proven your point: you won't convince me that they were all equally damaging or deadly.

ferratus said:
There are ways in which weapons do more damage than other weapons, but they aren't absolute things. A club doesn't have as much mass as a mace, nor metal ridges or spikes designed to bend or pierce armour. But against an unarmoured opponent, a club does the job just as well. (This is why armour should be damage reduction instead of AC but that's a debate for another day).

Back to damage reduction/armor penetration! Seriously, it helps a lot with what I want in the game. Does that mean it should be in the game? No. Maybe (maybe) as part of a module, but I don't know if there's enough demand for that. Again, though, I'm all for differentiating weapons (my RPG does it through a variety of ways: damage die, armor penetration, critical range, critical multiplier, grade, range increment, reach, type, and 3 features [from a list of 30]; like I said, I like fiddly). As always, play what you like

Galeric · Jul 31, 2012

Very much like DCC, but very easy to eliminate if you do not like the mechanic.

The rampant bonus's they started introducing in 3rd has gotten way out of hand, good to see they are scaling back and making the game from 1 - 20 once again.

Klaus · Aug 1, 2012

jrowland said:
Somewhere in the thread somebody mentioned why you need to increase the dice: Essentially the trade between damage and effects need to scale with the HP/Damage of the level of the characters/monsters.

Paraphrasing someone else:
Trading 3hp of damage vs a a goblin for a trip is a real choice. Trading 3hp of damage for a trip vs a giant is a no-brainer: choose trip. If the damage is higher, the choice becomes relevant again. At high levels, tripping the goblin is silly, you'll likely kill without CS, so adding damage is a no-brainer, but you really don't CS vs goblins at high level.

Oh, I understand *why* the die size is increasing. I'm just not sure if the rate is right.

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
It could also become about making the Fighter just as "quadratic" as the Wizard.

Start with 1d4 (3 1st level spells) and move up to 20d20 (6 1st level, 6 2nd level, 6 3rd level, 6 4th level, 5 5th level, 5 6th level, 4 7th level, 4 8th level and 3 9th level spells).

Of course I don't quite believe that a Level 20 Fighter can add 20d20 damage to a single damage roll.

Yeah. Looking at the Ambush feats, you would start with 1d6 and end up with 10d6. I wonder if something could be done to use the d12... Start with 1d12, and gain another d12 at 5th, 10th, 15th and 20th. I mean, even at 20th level, adding 5d12 to every attack is a big deal.

Mad Hamish · Aug 1, 2012

ferratus said:
Sure, but it is still the size of a dagger, and has about the same penetrating force as a dagger. It just has reach. But when has a spear done as much maximum damage as a dagger in D&D, or a spear done as much damage as a two-handed sword? Never, which is dumb.

I suspect you'll find that the way that a spear is wielded versus the way that a dagger is wielded is sufficiently different to explain a difference in damage (not to mention that D&D damage is not all actually physical damage)

ferratus said:
The Romans scorned the Gauls and their use of a long slashing sword, believing it was only good for superficial glancing injuries. They put their faith in a short thrusting sword and a shield, and their record in battle against the Gauls speaks for itself. You wouldn't know it from D&D though, because a short sword always does less damage than a longsword or two-handed sword. If you were using D&D stats, the Romans would lose to the Gauls every time.

Which was more down to formation fighting and the advantages of being able to protect each other with shields and coordinate your attacks better than inherent superiority of a short sword to a long sword (I also understand that the roman coordiation of troops was far superior and so was their armour)

The results of 1 to 1 duels would say more about the effectiveness of the weapons at dealing wounds.

My understanding is that duels between Europeans with rapiers versus Samuraii tended to end with the European dead on the field and the Samurai dying later due to puncture wounds in the stomach.

ferratus said:
A two-handed sword has its uses. If you don't need a shield because you are wearing plate armour, it increases the reach and power of your longsword substantially. Good against calvary, good at cutting through swaths of pike formations. But there is a reason that he generally lost to men wielding an estoc or rapier.

The main use of two handed swords against pikes was to actually break the pikes rather than to cut through their formations.
Note that an estoc is also a two handed weapon...
It was also highly dependent on the armour.

ferratus said:
The large two-handed sword is slower, has a large arc, and is difficult to recover from a missed blow. When a man overcommits with his large weapon, a man pretty much has his pick of where to stick his blade, as large portions of his body will be exposed by the errant swing.

Which is why actually fighting with a two handed sword was not about making massive swings most of the time. Also the leverage advantage of two hands can make movement and recovery surprisingly quick...

ferratus said:
So a rapier doing half the damage of a two-handed sword in that situation is baloney.

Or how about the fact that nobody ever uses a dagger to backstab anyone? Really, assassinations are the reason a stiletto was created, but nobody ever uses them because they do less damage than a short sword or rapier (or pay the feat tax to backstab with an even larger weapon).

No, the Stiletto was developed to bypass armour and was typically used to finish the wounded off.
The main reason that daggers and stilettos were used for assassinations is that they are concealable but can do enough damage.

ferratus said:
This can all be laid at the feet of differing damage for weapons, because the D&D community can't be convinced that weapons were designed for tactical advantage in specific situations, not because one weapon is superior to another.

on the extremes some weapons are far superior to others, however there are a wide range of weapons that are good enough that the difference isn't overly significant (although 1 might be favoured in 1 up combat versus the other)

ferratus said:
There are ways in which weapons do more damage than other weapons, but they aren't absolute things. A club doesn't have as much mass as a mace, nor metal ridges or spikes designed to bend or pierce armour. But against an unarmoured opponent, a club does the job just as well. (This is why armour should be damage reduction instead of AC but that's a debate for another day).

I'd change that to a club does the job well enough rather than as well as a mace. My suspicion is that you're more likely to survive being hit by a club than a mace.