Now that both of the pregens have come out, I thought I’d take some time to compare the Fighter to the Cleric. What follows is a bit of number crunching and math, as well as a few thoughts. Take it with a grain of salt.
Base Stats
HP: The fighter gets on average 1 more hp per level than the cleric. A slight advantage.
Saving Throws: Strength and Constitution vs Charisma and Wisdom. A bit of a wash.
AC: Fighter has 17, Cleric has 18. Fighter does have that +1 bonus, but it’s not going to compare to the shield. An orc has a +4 bonus and swings for 1d12+2, which means they deal an average of 3.9 damage to the fighter, and 3.6 damage to the Cleric. It takes an orc 3.0 attacks on average to knock the fighter to 0, and 3.0 attacks to down the Cleric, 2.77 if you don’t count the racial hp bonus.
Attack and Damage: Fighter swings for +5, 1d12+3. Cleric swings for +4, 1d8+2. Fighter’s higher strength and two-handed weapon gives him the edge. Against our orc pal, he’s doling out a whopping 6.77 damage on average per swing, compared to the Cleric’s 4.2. It only takes our fighter an average of 1.62 attacks to down an orc, while our cleric needs 2.6 attacks to finish one off.
Hit Dice: Hit Dice are there to provide an extra pool of healing and are avalable to every character. For the Fighter, they add level*(1d10+2), and for the Cleric, it’s level*(1d8+2). Averaged out, that’s 7.5 extra healing per level for the Fighter, and 6.5 extra for the Cleric.
Overall, the classes have a very similar level of durability, but that big d12 greataxe and its incredibly deadly crits is going to give the fighter a big edge when it comes to damage.
Now let’s look at class features
Level 1: Second Wind, Combat Style vs Cantrips, Spells, and Disciple of Life.
Let’s assume for this thought experiment that the average adventuring day has 4 encounters, for a total of 3 short rests. Let’s say that each encounter lasts an average of 4 rounds, and that each character gets 4 actions, usually attacking. That means the Fighter can use their Second Wind 4 times, for a total maximum of 4d10+4, average of 25 extra hp each day, more if you have more encounters, less with fewer. Clerics have six 1st level spells prepared each day, but can only cast twice. With Disciple of Life, their Cure Wounds spell can heal 2d8+5 a pop, averaging 28 damage a day. Alternatively, they can cast any of the other spells they have prepared instead, giving them a lot of flexibility. As for the AC boost, it’s only half as effective as strapping on a shield and at the end of the day, it means that once every twenty rolls, an attack that would have hit, instead misses. Clerics get Cantrips instead, which are neat, useful, and flavorful. Fighter is doling out 61% more damage than the Cleric though, so it’s looking good so far.
Fighter: Damage Per Day: 108.32
Healing Per Day: 32.5
Cleric: Damage Per Day: 67.2
Healing Per Day: 28
Level 2: Action Surge vs More Spells and Channel Divinity
Action Surge is pretty great. It lets the Fighter get in an extra attack each encounter--assuming you get a short rest in-between encounters, of course--which means extra damage. If the average combat is 4 rounds, that means that the Fighter’s damage output jumps from 27 to 33.5. With our 4 encounter benchmark, that means 134 damage a day. Even better, it’s a nova type thing that lets you focus fire on an enemy to take it down faster.
Cleric gets another spell. Let’s say they use it with an attack spell, Inflict Wounds, which does an average of 11.1 damage on our poor, beleaguered orc. Slot that into one of the 16 attacks they make a day, and it boosts their daily damage output a bit. The real star of the show is Preserve Life. A meaty 10 hp encounter power that rapidly increases in power. Since it only works on allies at half hp or less but can deliver precise, spread out healing, let’s say that Preserve Life can be used to its full power on average 2.5 times a day, for an extra 25 hp of healing.
Overall, the Fighter is now doing 80% more damage than the Cleric, though he’s now fallen behind in healing.
Fighter: Damage Per Day: 134
Healing Per Day: 44
Cleric: Damage Per Day 74.1
Healing Per Day: 59.5
Level 3: Improved Critical vs More Spells
Improved crit is a pretty simple class feature, turning the occasional hit into a crit. It’s boring but effective. Crits in 5e deal max damage plus an extra weapon die of pain. So a 1d12+3 swing that averages out at 9.5 damage instead becomes a 1d12+15 swing averaged at 21.5. What this means is that our Fighter’s average damage is going to jump from 6.7 to 7.35
Meanwhile, our Cleric jumps from 3 to 6 spells per day, two of which are level 2. Let’s say our Cleric uses 1 on an extra Inflict Wounds attack and the other two on Spiritual Weapon, because they like hitting things. Spiritual Weapon takes an Action, but summons up a magic weapon that attacks each round, including the round it’s summoned, dealing an average of 3.46 damage. So our cleric’s actions would look something like this twice a day:
Round 1: Spiritual Weapon
Round 2: Attack, SW Attack
Round 3: Attack, SW Attack
Round 4: Attack, SW Attack
And twice a day, one of those normal attacks would be replaced with an Inflict Wounds spell. Divide that up over 4 encounters, and you have 8 Spiritual Weapon Attacks, 2 Inflict Wounds Attacks, and 12 normal attacks, for a total of 100.3 Not bad, but still not enough to keep pace with the Fighter.
Fighter: Damage Per Day: 147
Healing Per Day: 55.5
Cleric: Damage Per Day: 100.3
Healing Per day: 78.5
Level 4: Ability Score Improvements for Everyone!
Not much happens at this level, except that I have to redo all of my math because the prime ability scores are going up, plus the cleric gets to use SW one more time a day.
Fighter: Damage Per Day: 160.4
Healing Per Day: 67
Cleric: Damage Per Day: 112.06
Healing Per Day: 104
Level 5: Extra Attack vs Spells
Last one, and it’s a big one. Fighter gets its second attack, Cleric gets third level spells.
Extra attack is really huge. Rather than making the 20 attacks a day from before, the fighter is now making 40 attacks. It really is just a flat doubling of damage output. Which is easy for me. And honestly, I’d say it’s enough of a gamechanger that instead of making 40 attacks, more likely the fighter is going to just be mowing down encounters in much fewer rounds while the GM works to catch up.
As for spells, clerics don’t really have a damage dealer level 3 spell, but wow, do they get a lot of neat toys. Speak With Dead, Create Food and Water, Water Walk, Animate Dead, Remove Curse, Dispel Magic, and so on. Because I’m lazy, let’s say our cleric uses those two extra spells on level 3 Cure Wounds spells. Each heals 6d8+7 damage, for an extra 68 healing a day.
Fighter: Damage Per Day: 320.8
Healing Per Day: 78.5
Cleric: Damage Per Day: 112.06
Healing Per Day: 191
Conclusions
In spite of the Fighter’s simplicity, they are really good at what they do, which is hitting things in the face. Even with the aid of spellcasting attacks like Inflict Wounds and Spiritual Weapon, a cleric doesn’t stand a chance of keeping up with their damage output using their spells and a one-handed weapon. That’s probably to be expected.
That said, the cleric is still able to prepare a large number of spells each day, and decide which slot to use them with on the fly. For the sake of this hypothetical number crunch, I only used 3 spells, and a cleric would have access to 6 others that would offer a number of exploration and interaction options. Abilities like Action Surge and Improved Critical really don’t offer that same flexibility. As well, they can strategically use their spells. Casting Bless before a combat would increase the damage output and saving throw defense of everyone by a hefty d4, which translates to something like 15% more damage per attack for the entire party.
As well, our Cleric is Life Domain. A War Domain Cleric from the last public playtest could have swapped their Shield for a Greataxe like the Fighter and the War Priest feature, which would have narrowed the gap significantly. A level 4 War Priest with 16 strength and wisdom would deal 137.75 damage per day, BEFORE casting a single spell. The war priest would still be able to pick and choose when to use any of their 7 slots on their 8 prepared spells, which could easily let it outperform the fighter at its own schtick without even having to try, right up until the Fighter gets its big level 5 boost. And it’s important to keep in mind that this hypothetical 4 encounters of 4 rounds each is designed to actually help the Fighter. Fewer and shorter encounters will more heavily favor the war priest and other caster classes. Noncombat approaches to combat will favor the cleric even more. Why wade into the water to fight the sea monster when you can Water Walk over? It sure is handy to be able to talk to the skeleton in the dungeon to get a head’s up on the ambush that’s just ahead. Being able to remove the Manticore’s Curse means it’s that much less likely to attack you. A Fighter isn’t able to contribute in these ways, and since the Cleric can use any prepared spell with any slot, the Cleric loses NOTHING for this extra flexibility.
There are four solutions as I see it. You can reward the Fighter’s narrow focus on its specialty of combat, giving it ways to clearly outperform even an optimized war priest at every level of play. Or broaden the Fighter’s scope so that they have similar narrative tools, such as being able to perform superhuman feats of strength and power, wield influence over a large number of followers, or let them pick exclusive magic items as a part of their class features, as their bodies are stronger and more able to “attune” to their energies without being torn apart. You could go the other direction, and lower the power and flexibility of the Cleric so that it isn’t simultaneously a combat monster and deus ex machina for the plot.
Or you could just do nothing and have fun with the game anyways. This is probably the easiest thing to do.
Base Stats
HP: The fighter gets on average 1 more hp per level than the cleric. A slight advantage.
Saving Throws: Strength and Constitution vs Charisma and Wisdom. A bit of a wash.
AC: Fighter has 17, Cleric has 18. Fighter does have that +1 bonus, but it’s not going to compare to the shield. An orc has a +4 bonus and swings for 1d12+2, which means they deal an average of 3.9 damage to the fighter, and 3.6 damage to the Cleric. It takes an orc 3.0 attacks on average to knock the fighter to 0, and 3.0 attacks to down the Cleric, 2.77 if you don’t count the racial hp bonus.
Attack and Damage: Fighter swings for +5, 1d12+3. Cleric swings for +4, 1d8+2. Fighter’s higher strength and two-handed weapon gives him the edge. Against our orc pal, he’s doling out a whopping 6.77 damage on average per swing, compared to the Cleric’s 4.2. It only takes our fighter an average of 1.62 attacks to down an orc, while our cleric needs 2.6 attacks to finish one off.
Hit Dice: Hit Dice are there to provide an extra pool of healing and are avalable to every character. For the Fighter, they add level*(1d10+2), and for the Cleric, it’s level*(1d8+2). Averaged out, that’s 7.5 extra healing per level for the Fighter, and 6.5 extra for the Cleric.
Overall, the classes have a very similar level of durability, but that big d12 greataxe and its incredibly deadly crits is going to give the fighter a big edge when it comes to damage.
Now let’s look at class features
Level 1: Second Wind, Combat Style vs Cantrips, Spells, and Disciple of Life.
Let’s assume for this thought experiment that the average adventuring day has 4 encounters, for a total of 3 short rests. Let’s say that each encounter lasts an average of 4 rounds, and that each character gets 4 actions, usually attacking. That means the Fighter can use their Second Wind 4 times, for a total maximum of 4d10+4, average of 25 extra hp each day, more if you have more encounters, less with fewer. Clerics have six 1st level spells prepared each day, but can only cast twice. With Disciple of Life, their Cure Wounds spell can heal 2d8+5 a pop, averaging 28 damage a day. Alternatively, they can cast any of the other spells they have prepared instead, giving them a lot of flexibility. As for the AC boost, it’s only half as effective as strapping on a shield and at the end of the day, it means that once every twenty rolls, an attack that would have hit, instead misses. Clerics get Cantrips instead, which are neat, useful, and flavorful. Fighter is doling out 61% more damage than the Cleric though, so it’s looking good so far.
Fighter: Damage Per Day: 108.32
Healing Per Day: 32.5
Cleric: Damage Per Day: 67.2
Healing Per Day: 28
Level 2: Action Surge vs More Spells and Channel Divinity
Action Surge is pretty great. It lets the Fighter get in an extra attack each encounter--assuming you get a short rest in-between encounters, of course--which means extra damage. If the average combat is 4 rounds, that means that the Fighter’s damage output jumps from 27 to 33.5. With our 4 encounter benchmark, that means 134 damage a day. Even better, it’s a nova type thing that lets you focus fire on an enemy to take it down faster.
Cleric gets another spell. Let’s say they use it with an attack spell, Inflict Wounds, which does an average of 11.1 damage on our poor, beleaguered orc. Slot that into one of the 16 attacks they make a day, and it boosts their daily damage output a bit. The real star of the show is Preserve Life. A meaty 10 hp encounter power that rapidly increases in power. Since it only works on allies at half hp or less but can deliver precise, spread out healing, let’s say that Preserve Life can be used to its full power on average 2.5 times a day, for an extra 25 hp of healing.
Overall, the Fighter is now doing 80% more damage than the Cleric, though he’s now fallen behind in healing.
Fighter: Damage Per Day: 134
Healing Per Day: 44
Cleric: Damage Per Day 74.1
Healing Per Day: 59.5
Level 3: Improved Critical vs More Spells
Improved crit is a pretty simple class feature, turning the occasional hit into a crit. It’s boring but effective. Crits in 5e deal max damage plus an extra weapon die of pain. So a 1d12+3 swing that averages out at 9.5 damage instead becomes a 1d12+15 swing averaged at 21.5. What this means is that our Fighter’s average damage is going to jump from 6.7 to 7.35
Meanwhile, our Cleric jumps from 3 to 6 spells per day, two of which are level 2. Let’s say our Cleric uses 1 on an extra Inflict Wounds attack and the other two on Spiritual Weapon, because they like hitting things. Spiritual Weapon takes an Action, but summons up a magic weapon that attacks each round, including the round it’s summoned, dealing an average of 3.46 damage. So our cleric’s actions would look something like this twice a day:
Round 1: Spiritual Weapon
Round 2: Attack, SW Attack
Round 3: Attack, SW Attack
Round 4: Attack, SW Attack
And twice a day, one of those normal attacks would be replaced with an Inflict Wounds spell. Divide that up over 4 encounters, and you have 8 Spiritual Weapon Attacks, 2 Inflict Wounds Attacks, and 12 normal attacks, for a total of 100.3 Not bad, but still not enough to keep pace with the Fighter.
Fighter: Damage Per Day: 147
Healing Per Day: 55.5
Cleric: Damage Per Day: 100.3
Healing Per day: 78.5
Level 4: Ability Score Improvements for Everyone!
Not much happens at this level, except that I have to redo all of my math because the prime ability scores are going up, plus the cleric gets to use SW one more time a day.
Fighter: Damage Per Day: 160.4
Healing Per Day: 67
Cleric: Damage Per Day: 112.06
Healing Per Day: 104
Level 5: Extra Attack vs Spells
Last one, and it’s a big one. Fighter gets its second attack, Cleric gets third level spells.
Extra attack is really huge. Rather than making the 20 attacks a day from before, the fighter is now making 40 attacks. It really is just a flat doubling of damage output. Which is easy for me. And honestly, I’d say it’s enough of a gamechanger that instead of making 40 attacks, more likely the fighter is going to just be mowing down encounters in much fewer rounds while the GM works to catch up.
As for spells, clerics don’t really have a damage dealer level 3 spell, but wow, do they get a lot of neat toys. Speak With Dead, Create Food and Water, Water Walk, Animate Dead, Remove Curse, Dispel Magic, and so on. Because I’m lazy, let’s say our cleric uses those two extra spells on level 3 Cure Wounds spells. Each heals 6d8+7 damage, for an extra 68 healing a day.
Fighter: Damage Per Day: 320.8
Healing Per Day: 78.5
Cleric: Damage Per Day: 112.06
Healing Per Day: 191
Conclusions
In spite of the Fighter’s simplicity, they are really good at what they do, which is hitting things in the face. Even with the aid of spellcasting attacks like Inflict Wounds and Spiritual Weapon, a cleric doesn’t stand a chance of keeping up with their damage output using their spells and a one-handed weapon. That’s probably to be expected.
That said, the cleric is still able to prepare a large number of spells each day, and decide which slot to use them with on the fly. For the sake of this hypothetical number crunch, I only used 3 spells, and a cleric would have access to 6 others that would offer a number of exploration and interaction options. Abilities like Action Surge and Improved Critical really don’t offer that same flexibility. As well, they can strategically use their spells. Casting Bless before a combat would increase the damage output and saving throw defense of everyone by a hefty d4, which translates to something like 15% more damage per attack for the entire party.
As well, our Cleric is Life Domain. A War Domain Cleric from the last public playtest could have swapped their Shield for a Greataxe like the Fighter and the War Priest feature, which would have narrowed the gap significantly. A level 4 War Priest with 16 strength and wisdom would deal 137.75 damage per day, BEFORE casting a single spell. The war priest would still be able to pick and choose when to use any of their 7 slots on their 8 prepared spells, which could easily let it outperform the fighter at its own schtick without even having to try, right up until the Fighter gets its big level 5 boost. And it’s important to keep in mind that this hypothetical 4 encounters of 4 rounds each is designed to actually help the Fighter. Fewer and shorter encounters will more heavily favor the war priest and other caster classes. Noncombat approaches to combat will favor the cleric even more. Why wade into the water to fight the sea monster when you can Water Walk over? It sure is handy to be able to talk to the skeleton in the dungeon to get a head’s up on the ambush that’s just ahead. Being able to remove the Manticore’s Curse means it’s that much less likely to attack you. A Fighter isn’t able to contribute in these ways, and since the Cleric can use any prepared spell with any slot, the Cleric loses NOTHING for this extra flexibility.
There are four solutions as I see it. You can reward the Fighter’s narrow focus on its specialty of combat, giving it ways to clearly outperform even an optimized war priest at every level of play. Or broaden the Fighter’s scope so that they have similar narrative tools, such as being able to perform superhuman feats of strength and power, wield influence over a large number of followers, or let them pick exclusive magic items as a part of their class features, as their bodies are stronger and more able to “attune” to their energies without being torn apart. You could go the other direction, and lower the power and flexibility of the Cleric so that it isn’t simultaneously a combat monster and deus ex machina for the plot.
Or you could just do nothing and have fun with the game anyways. This is probably the easiest thing to do.
Last edited:
