D&D 5E Why play a low-level Fighter when the Barbarian is so much better?

[jadrax]

A Dex-barian can have AC 18 (Dex 16, Con 16, Shield).

Because you only get to add your rage damage and use Reckless Attack with strength based attacks, I am not sure a Dex-barian is a very good idea tbh.

 

[MerricB]

Or alternatively, Dex 16, Medium Armor Master, and the AC goes to 18, the Barbarian can stealth in half-plate, and the Barbarian never has to raise Dex or Con again if he doesn't want to.

A Variant Human Barbarian with Str 16, Dex 16, can have Medium Armor Master at level 1. Although he cannot yet afford half-plate, he's in AC 17 or 19 at level one, and just with gold can be in AC 18 or 20 later on.

Going the Str boost plus Con boost plus Dex boost with or without Shield takes a LOT of levels and is very MAD.

I do not know if the Barbarians have any special Con abilities, but by starting like this means that Dex and to a lesser extent Con can be taken out of the MAD equation.

Relentless Rage requires a Con save to use. Intimidating Presence is Charisma-based. That's about it for abilities that aren't Str-based.

One of the things I really like about 5E are the variety of approaches you can take to each character class. It's not just one way. The Str/Dex barbarian is absolutely a possible build.

Mind you, losing points of Con is one of the things I really, really hate doing in 5E. Hit points are at a premium (and the bonus to regaining health when spending hit dice is also significant).

Cheers!

 

[KarinsDad]

I've found this to not be the case. Especially compared to earlier editions.

The fighter isn't attacking 6 times at 20, 20, 15, 15, 10, 5. They're attacking 3 times at 10, 10, 10.

So you scoop up a few d20s and roll all of the attacks at once. "2 hit." Cool, now roll 2 dice.

If you're someone who is super awesome (like me) you have color coordinated dice. I've yet to have a martial with so many attacks that I couldn't roll all of my attack and damage dice at the same time. "Green is a miss. Red and blue hit, 22 damage."

The slowest part of the games I've run has been rolling saving throws vs AoE spells, though I tend to roll the saves for monsters of a similar type all at the same time.

In either case, this is the fastest paced table top game I've played in a long time.

I did not say that it was not faster paced.

I said that martial types with 2 or more attacks per round will hog table time.

It really is inevitable. You can claim that you roll 3 attacks at the same time, but I think you are exaggerating. And even if you can do it (being super awesome like you claim ), most people do not because they will have decision points between attacks in combat.


Let's look at that in a common scenario to illustrate why I think that:

Your 5th level Fighter is squaring off against an Orc.

You decide to attack the Orc first. Some players will say I attack the Orc. They then grab a D20, roll it, see if they hit, if they do hit, they then grab damage dice and roll it, see if they kill the Orc, at that point, decide which next foe to attack, if the Orc was killed and there is no adjacent foe, they move their miniature (if using miniatures), grab a D20, roll it, see if they hit, if they do hit, they then grab damage dice and roll it, see if they killed the next foe. If they do not kill the next foe, they then decide whether they want to use an Action Surge to attack that foe again. If they did kill that foe on their second attack, they then decide whether they want to use an Action Surge to attack a third foe, possibly move and attack. If they have movement remaining, they then possibly move their miniature, potentially for a second or third time.

I do not know too many players who will say "I attack the Orc with the blue dice, if I kill him, I'll move over and attack this other Orc over here with the green dice, if I don't kill him the first Orc..." all before they even pick up or roll the dice. Color coordinate dice or not, rolling both D20 and damage at the same time or not, most situations like these are handled sequentially. First attack, see result. Second attack, see result. Potential third attack.

In many circumstances like this, people often do not roll all of the D20s simultaneously since they have to then declare what colored diced is doing what, and how that changes if a guy drops or not.

So no, I do not believe your claim about how fast fighters are. Been gaming for many decades and players just do not do that.


I do have some players who roll both attack and damage at the same time and that probably happens a lot at some tables.

I have more players who roll to hit first, find out if it hits, then they roll damage. No matter how often I ask them to roll both to hit and damage at the same time, they invariably forget or do not want to do so.


On the other hand, the wizard casting the Fire Bolt round after round after round. Each time, he picks up the dice, rolls to hit and damage, and then decides to move or not. Done.

Sorry, there is no way that you are going to convince me that the player of the fighter takes less real time. He has more attacks and hence, more decision points. Nope, nope, don't believe you.

 

[MerricB]

Ooh. I completely missed the bit about only Str-based weapons getting the extra damage! Still, you can have Str 14, Dex 16, Con 16, and a shield and be AC 18 and hit at +4 for d8+4 And having Advantage on Str checks means that you don't need as high a Str.

Note that the advantage doesn't apply to attack rolls or saving throws.

Reckless attack allows you to gain advantage on the attack rolls, with the drawback of making your higher AC not as effective!

If I were playing a barbarian, I'd ignore critical capacity completely unless I had some way of ensuring them. They're too rare.

They aren't as rare as you might think - a raging barbarian using Reckless Attack will be doing a critical hit about 1 in 10 attacks. Having advantage on attack rolls is a real feature.

Cheers!

 

[KarinsDad]

Mind you, losing points of Con is one of the things I really, really hate doing in 5E. Hit points are at a premium (and the bonus to regaining health when spending hit dice is also significant).

I kind of thought that way myself for the longest time, but I've recently come to the conclusion that for the most part, a 12 Con (and sometimes even a 10 for some character concepts) is sufficient most of the time, especially for PCs that have the Con saving throw proficiency.

5E, in my mind, is a game of offense over defense, stealth over blundering.

Con is important, but not as important as my gut reaction and initial thoughts on it made it out to be. By not flooding Con, it gives the player more opportunity to have a more balanced PC with more options due to having higher average ability scores.

Dex on the other hand, wow, that's just too big of an elephant in the room.

 

[MerricB]

Dex on the other hand, wow, that's just too big of an elephant in the room.

I'm sure you can come up with a better metaphorical idiom than one that invokes a creature that is particularly noted for not being Dexterous!

Cheers!

 

[Blackbrrd]

I did not say that it was not faster paced.

I said that martial types with 2 or more attacks per round will hog table time.

It really is inevitable. You can claim that you roll 3 attacks at the same time, but I think you are exaggerating. And even if you can do it (being super awesome like you claim ), most people do not because they will have decision points between attacks in combat.


Let's look at that in a common scenario to illustrate why I think that:

Your 5th level Fighter is squaring off against an Orc.

You decide to attack the Orc first. Some players will say I attack the Orc. They then grab a D20, roll it, see if they hit, if they do hit, they then grab damage dice and roll it, see if they kill the Orc, at that point, decide which next foe to attack, if the Orc was killed and there is no adjacent foe, they move their miniature (if using miniatures), grab a D20, roll it, see if they hit, if they do hit, they then grab damage dice and roll it, see if they killed the next foe. If they do not kill the next foe, they then decide whether they want to use an Action Surge to attack that foe again. If they did kill that foe on their second attack, they then decide whether they want to use an Action Surge to attack a third foe, possibly move and attack. If they have movement remaining, they then possibly move their miniature, potentially for a second or third time.

I do not know too many players who will say "I attack the Orc with the blue dice, if I kill him, I'll move over and attack this other Orc over here with the green dice, if I don't kill him the first Orc..." all before they even pick up or roll the dice. Color coordinate dice or not, rolling both D20 and damage at the same time or not, most situations like these are handled sequentially. First attack, see result. Second attack, see result. Potential third attack.

In many circumstances like this, people often do not roll all of the D20s simultaneously since they have to then declare what colored diced is doing what, and how that changes if a guy drops or not.

So no, I do not believe your claim about how fast fighters are. Been gaming for many decades and players just do not do that.


I do have some players who roll both attack and damage at the same time and that probably happens a lot at some tables.

I have more players who roll to hit first, find out if it hits, then they roll damage. No matter how often I ask them to roll both to hit and damage at the same time, they invariably forget or do not want to do so.


On the other hand, the wizard casting the Fire Bolt round after round after round. Each time, he picks up the dice, rolls to hit and damage, and then decides to move or not. Done.

Sorry, there is no way that you are going to convince me that the player of the fighter takes less real time. He has more attacks and hence, more decision points. Nope, nope, don't believe you.

I partly agree with you, especially when it comes to the dice rolling. I still can't get myself to roll hit/damage at the same time.

I don't agree when it comes to the conclusion. If I was playing a Wizard at level 11+ (since you mention three attacks), you have quite a lot of spells known (28+5 cantrips), and lots of spell slots (15). You have a single decision to make, but it's probably a lot more complex than the deceision for the Fighter. Using a Cantrip repeatedly sounds like a no-brainer encounter that doesn't take a lot of time for the Fighter either. If it's a more dangerous encounter you really have to think to maximize the Wizards potential, much more so than the Fighter, deciding what spell slots to blow, and you have a lot of them. Also, the multiple target spells triggers a lot of saving throws. Pretty sure that a Fighter takes less time in that scenario, while the first scenario is something that is going to be quick for both.

... It probably depends more on the player though. A fast player can be very quick even if playing a Wizard (or a Codzilla from 3.5, which I did). I must say that the medium fast player was quicker than me (and I am a fast player) since he just played a high-crit power attacking Fighter, and I played a cleric type (Solamnic knight prestige class mess). I just had so many options that I sometimes got stuck in a complex decision making loop.

The main thing about the Wizard is that the decisions can often be done out-of-turn, while the thing is that takes time for the Fighter, the rolls and deceisions in between the rolls is what is taking the time. On the other hand, rolling 40d6 damage for Meteor Strike is going to take some time, together with the saves for everyone in the 4x40' diameter columns. (Sure you can average the damage, but if so, you can for the Fighter's damage as well).

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm sure you can come up with a better metaphorical idiom than one that invokes a creature that is particularly noted for not being Dexterous!

Metaphorical? Idiom? Huh?

Nope. Elephant is one of my bigger words. Dex is huge in 5E.

 

[TheGorramBatman]

Using cantrips for comparison is exactly analogous to rolling all three attacks at the same time against the same target.

Casting cantrips is the baseline, but it is hardly the norm.

Spells are inherently complicated. It usually involves both the player and the DM opening to a specific page of the Player's Handbook, reading a paragraph, rolling hit/saves for everyone afflicted, and then rolling damage.

If you want to compare the most complicated situation for the Fighter (rolling 3 attacks one at a time, making decisions between attack roll and damage, and then maybe moving on to another target if the first dies), then lets take a look a more complicated scenario for the Wizard.

The Wizard casts Cloudkill. Since it isn't Fireball, a spell every player/dm has inherently committed to memory, the DM opens his Players handbook to the spell section and flips to page 222. A 20 foot radius of thick poisonous fog pops up where the Wizard designated. The DM makes a note of the Constitution saving throw required and how much damage will result (since it is a spell that could be scaled up. In this case we will assume not). The DM also makes note of the spells desired dimensions. Since no one has a 40' by 40' cloudkill miniature, the DM busts out his wet erase markers and marks out the bounds on the..

Wait. No. Not there. THERE.

Oh.

The DM wipes away at the wet erase ink, and redraws the boundaries. The Wizard nods in approval.


The DM notes that the minimum damage is not enough to kill any of the 8 targets in the cloud and asks the Wizard to roll 5d8 damage. The Wizard rolls 25 damage. The DM makes a constitution saving throw for all 8 of the critters in the cloud. Those that succeed take 12 damage, those that fail take 25 damage.

This all obviously takes more time than the Fighter's turn.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

On the Monster's turn, the DM asks the Wizard to roll 5d8. The Wizard's roll totals 18. The DM then rolls a constitution saving throw for all 8 of the critters in the cloud. Those that succeed take 9 damage, those that fail take 18 damage. Two of the creatures die and their miniatures are removed from the cloud.

On the Wizards turn, the player casts... wait. Cloudkill still isn't done. The wizard moves it 10 feet away from himself. Since no one has a 40 x 40 cloudkill miniature, the DM scrubs away at the mat with his fingers and then redraws a new box.

The Wizard casts a cantrip. Makes one roll and feels satisfied with his 2d8 damage.

On the Monster's turn there are still two critters in the cloud. The DM asks the WIzard to roll 5d8. The Wizard's roll totals 26. The DM then rolls two constitution saving throws. Those that succeed take 13 damage. Those that fail take the full 26. One more creature dies.

This wizard's action, casting cloudkill, has probably taken more time than all of the Fighter's turns for the duration with a single spell. During this time the Wizard is also doing other things.

Cloudkill might be one of the most egregious offenders, but there's lots of spells that boil down to "The DM makes at least one roll every round from here until forever."

Comparing cantrips to attacking 3 different targets with pauses between isn't exactly apples to apples.

 

[TheGorramBatman]

Metaphorical? Idiom? Huh?

Nope. Elephant is one of my bigger words. Dex is huge in 5E.

Assuming people use the Encumberance rules and follow them properly (HAR HAR HAR never going to happen), then I don't think Dex is really the end all be all some are making it out to be. In this edition equipment is heavy and encumberance is looooow.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, chalk one up for dex being awesome.

Dex's main drawbacks are that most of the finesse weapons aren't great and that Great Weapon Fighting and Great Weapon Mastery are rad. Granted, neither of those arguments hold up particularly well for anyone who is not swinging a two handed weapon.