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

[Ahnehnois]

Aha. I see. So you want something like 3.x multiclassing without it being multiclass?

I want something like 3.X multiclassing, plus feats and alternate class features, whereby pretty much anyone who was interested in, say, evasion or power attack or adding their wis bonus to AC could get it if they tried hard enough. I'd just rather you didn't have to jump through as many hoops.

 

[CleverNickName]

That's only a problem if you insist that the NPC's and monsters have to use the same rules as PC's.

I concede the point that monsters are different from characters because the characters are heroes etc., etc. But why (from a game mechanics standpoint) would you want to ignore the heroic aspects of NPCs?

 

[1of3]

I agree with the psychology aspects, but from a game mechanics standpoint there is very little difference. Ultimately, you are adding numbers to a roll...whether those numbers are fixed or random.

There are some differences:

- Physical reminder. Your class ability is literally in front of you. No "Oops, I forgot Dodge" situations.

- Declaration without talking. Abilities like combat expertise require seperate declaration (or have to played intransparently). But when you take those dice from your pile, you obviously use them.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I concede the point that monsters are different from characters because the characters are heroes etc., etc. But why (from a game mechanics standpoint) would you want to ignore the heroic aspects of NPCs?

Convenience.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Or it died, because the application sucked.

And it sucked because D&D was never meant to be GURPS or Hero/Champions.

 

[VinylTap]

I agree with the psychology aspects, but from a game mechanics standpoint there is very little difference. Ultimately, you are adding numbers to a roll...whether those numbers are fixed or random. If the Weapon Specialization feat gave you a +3 bonus to damage rolls with a weapon, or if it gave you +1d6 damage instead, would it really make that much of a difference? In the moment, maybe. In the long run, probably not.

The random element to the system has a bigger effect than a simple modifier, or smaller, depending on the size of the random element vs. the size of the modifier. A +10 bonus will almost always be higher than a +2d6, after all.

Now, psychology reminds us that there is a chance that we could get an 11 or a 12, and some people will gravitate toward that...and psychology makes us forget that there is an equal chance of getting a 1 or a 2 (and that in all likelihood they are going to get a 7.) But man...that rush we get when we DO manage to roll a 12 is going to make us forget all about those ones and twos!

So I agree that rolling dice is more fun than static modifiers. But from a math standpoint, the difference is slight.

The players engagement with the mechanic will be very different, but the point's not really worth pressing. But really? what else can you do with dice? At some point you're just going to either be ...

'modifying a roll'
'rolling more dice'

Obviously there's a lot of roleplaying options you could throw in, but the common consensus seems to be for simple mechanics to back the role-playing up with. "I want to do this, give me a simple yet scalable mechanic to do what I want to do" instead of long-winded yet specific "chair smash mechanic"

What else does the system allow for? And I love analogies, but aren't you just complaining there's more ways 'sink the ball' ? Sure its more of the same, but how else are you going to play basketball?

Hope this post comes off more constructive than aggressive

 

[ferratus]

I concede the point that monsters are different from characters because the characters are heroes etc., etc. But why (from a game mechanics standpoint) would you want to ignore the heroic aspects of NPCs?

If an NPC is really a heroic fighter (and as such has a long-standing role as a character) then having fighter class levels is appropriate and will be rare enough that these few extra dice won't be a problem.

If every goblin underboss is a fighter, then anything that adds complexity to the class makes running the game a DMing nightmare. Just like having wizard/sorcerer/cleric spell lists on a monsters is a pain, (which essentially requires the DM to play multiple wizards at a time), so too would playing multiple fighters or fighters in every encounter be a pain in the butt.

 

[TwinBahamut]

This is a system that has potential. It rather surprised me because of that. If done well, this could strike a nice balance between different playstyles, and serve as a fair compromise. Of course, I'd really need to see a more specific implementation before I can judge. This is all going to come down to how expensive it is for the player to acquire one of these options, and how effective the different options are. Game design is all about the details, after all.

This kind of system won't ever be as bad as 3E power attack and expertise, since it finally killed the attack bonus penalty (good riddance to extra math and unfair penalties to effectiveness), but I hope it isn't a giant feat tax like they were. If each "style" option requires the Fighter to give up general character customization slots (like feats or a whole theme), it would be a bit unfair. If the Fighter only has to spend Fighter-specific customization slots, and is given a fair number of those, then this might work really well.

 

[CleverNickName]

Convenience.

Heh heh...that's good enough for me.

I'll try the new fighter out and see how it feels in play, but I will probably end up converting all of those dice rolls into static averages for the same reason.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Heh heh...that's good enough for me.

I'll try the new fighter out and see how it feels in play, but I will probably end up converting all of those dice rolls into static averages for the same reason.

Yeah, this seems like a non-issue to me. Use dice if your prefer, or use static modifiers if you like that better. From my experiences from converting modifiers to dice, it's probably better to start with the assumption of dice, because of the random factor. I think it's easier to non-randomize a random mechanic than it is to randomize a mechanic with static assumptions.

I hope that for the static modifier preferrers, that the dice pool will keep to a single type of die, though, so they won't have a +2, +3, +3 and a +5 to distribute, but rather a pile of tokens giving the same bonus each.