D&D 5E Building a better Fighter

[Paul Smart]

Hi everyone.

Lets talk Fighters. What works about them? What would you change and why? How can they be improved?

I would love to hear everyones thoughts.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Fighters suck, they can't do anything but "I attack"
Fighters are just fine, and have plenty of options if you have a basic imagination
Fighters need to do more and are boring
Not everyone wants every class to have a ton of resource management options
Give 'em more attacks
Keep 'em the way they are
They don't have enough baked in features
They get 2 extra feats, which are baked in, and mean that YOU get to choose which two additional baked in features you get rather than them be defined for you
At least they aren't paladins.


There. That's been a recap of the "how to make fighters better" thread we have every month.

 

[Gladius Legis]

If I could reconfigure the Fighter:
- Convert the whole class to Combat Superiority and Superiority Dice.
- For someone who wants the "simple" Fighter who wants to just hit things and not worry about what maneuver to use and when, introduce stances that cost Superiority Dice to activate. These stances could do things like increase crit range, have minor effects on hit and/or crit, etc. Sort of like 4e Essentials stances for the Knight and Slayer.
- Change Indomitable to a short rest recharge power.
- Give the Fighter free WIS save proficiency at a certain level (around Lv. 8-10 or so).
- Because I propose the whole class gets converted to Combat Superiority/Dice, archetypes can then be based on flavor instead of entirely on mechanics. So have archetypes like the Knight, Samurai, Cavalier, Warlord, etc., with their own unique features on top of the maneuvers and stances all Fighters get.

 

[FrogReaver]

Give subclasses for them based on out of combat paths instead of different ways to combat. There could be the Scout subclass (great at scouting, stealth etc) . There could be the Natural Born Leader subclass (knows others inside and out. Great at persuasion and insight, not necessarily a leader of men already but has the needed skills to be). The Brute subclass (think freak of nature athlete and very intimidating). There could be the Outdoors Man subclass (survival and perception based bonuses, good at creating traps). There could be the Tactician subclass (intelligent fighter that has an uncanny ability to predict enemy armies (or monsters) tactical maneuvers. A subset and enhancement of investigation and history/nature style abilities).

I would have all fighters get almost all their combat abilities from the class and get a few out of combat goodies from their subclass to enhance the chosen out of combat ability path.

 

[FrogReaver]

If I could reconfigure the Fighter:
- Convert the whole class to Combat Superiority and Superiority Dice.
- For someone who wants the "simple" Fighter who wants to just hit things and not worry about what maneuver to use and when, introduce stances that cost Superiority Dice to activate. These stances could do things like increase crit range, have minor effects on hit and/or crit, etc. Sort of like 4e Essentials stances for the Knight and Slayer.
- Change Indomitable to a short rest recharge power.
- Give the Fighter free WIS save proficiency at a certain level (around Lv. 8-10 or so).
- Because I propose the whole class gets converted to Combat Superiority/Dice, archetypes can then be based on flavor instead of entirely on mechanics. So have archetypes like the Knight, Samurai, Cavalier, Warlord, etc., with their own unique features on top of the maneuvers and stances all Fighters get.

I love superiority dice. I like the WIS save proficiency. I dislike the stances idea, but it would be easy to implement as a cost of superiority dice. I find combat focused subclasses for the fighter redundant and likely should be handled by fluff and weapon choices and behavior and combat maneuver choices more so than by subclass.

In fact I think superiority dice and extra attack at level 5 should be the basic way every melee class is set up. Superiority dice would essentially measure your martial ability. Different maneuver access can differentiate the classes. Similar to how spell slots and casting would measure your spell casting ability. Superiority dice may could even be expanded to help on certain out of combat tasks.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=15700]Sacrosanct[/MENTION] Bravo
[MENTION=6867385]Paul Smart[/MENTION] I've been tinkering at a substantial change to the fighter, but my quick and dirty changes would boil down to two things:

1) At 2nd level (when most classes get 2 features*), give the fighter the ability to Shove (i.e. push 5-ft or knock prone) either 1/turn for free on a hit or as a bonus action. This would help differentiate fighters early on compared to other "fighting types" (paladins & rangers) who also get Fighting Style and Extra Attack, and it would more consistently differentiate them than Action Surge (which does a great job...but comes into play less often).

2) Create new subclasses with stronger themes (as an option in addition to the ones in the PHB). Like Mike Mearls pointed out, some players like a little more to hang a concept on than "simple fighter" or "complex fighter." This would be where the outside-of-combat features would appear.

Do those two things, and I think a fair deal of the disagreement around the 5e fighter would diminish.


*EDIT: I'd also advocate giving the rogue a little something at 2nd-level too; I'd recommend something like "Decipher Script" to play up their exploration role & the old "Read Languages" feature from AD&D.

 

[S'mon]

Hi everyone.

Lets talk Fighters. What works about them? What would you change and why? How can they be improved?

I would love to hear everyones thoughts.

They work a lot better as a Long Rest class - I made all their SR powers 3 per LR.

 

[FrogReaver]

[MENTION=15700]Sacrosanct[/MENTION] Bravo
[MENTION=6867385]Paul Smart[/MENTION] I've been tinkering at a substantial change to the fighter, but my quick and dirty changes would boil down to two things:

1) At 2nd level (when most classes get 2 features*), give the fighter the ability to Shove (i.e. push 5-ft or knock prone) either 1/turn for free on a hit or as a bonus action. This would help differentiate fighters early on compared to other "fighting types" (paladins & rangers) who also get Fighting Style and Extra Attack, and it would more consistently differentiate them than Action Surge (which does a great job...but comes into play less often).

2) Create new subclasses with stronger themes (as an option in addition to the ones in the PHB). Like Mike Mearls pointed out, some players like a little more to hang a concept on than "simple fighter" or "complex fighter." This would be where the outside-of-combat features would appear.

Do those two things, and I think a fair deal of the disagreement around the 5e fighter would diminish.


*EDIT: I'd also advocate giving the rogue a little something at 2nd-level too; I'd recommend something like "Decipher Script" to play up their exploration role & the old "Read Languages" feature from AD&D.

I'm glad we agree on stronger themed subclasses for the fighter.

I like the free action shove in a lot of ways. It could fix a lot of the 5e fighter's issues. Makes him lock an opponent to him easier. Gives an incentive to melee with heavy weapons instead of staying ranged) I'm just worried about it causing prone since prone is so freaking strong of a condition in 5e with the power attack -5/+10 feats. It's not a problem in heroic tier since barbarians get very similar abilities and about the same damage options as the fighter. However, level 11+ it would cause the fighter to really overshadow the barbarian and probably the paladin as well.

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm glad we agree on stronger themed subclasses for the fighter.

I like the free action shove in a lot of ways. It could fix a lot of the 5e fighter's issues. Makes him lock an opponent to him easier. Gives an incentive to melee with heavy weapons instead of staying ranged) I'm just worried about it causing prone since prone is so freaking strong of a condition in 5e with the power attack -5/+10 feats. It's not a problem in heroic tier since barbarians get very similar abilities and about the same damage options as the fighter. However, level 11+ it would cause the fighter to really overshadow the barbarian and probably the paladin as well.

Ah, that was my quick-and-dirty version for folks wanting minimalist changes that work within an existing rules structure.

My actual implementation would focus on forced movement...both for the reason you present and to step less on the Battle Master's toes...

[SECTION]Forced Movement. Starting at 2nd level, once per turn when you hit a creature with a melee or ranged attack, you may slide the creature up to 5 feet in a direction of your choosing if you wish. You can only force a creature into an unoccupied space.[/SECTION]

This one change does a whole mess of good things:

• Cool stunts. It allows the fighter to pull off cool stunts like pushing enemies off bridges or shooting riders out of the saddle as a matter of course.
• Tactical positioning. Coupled with 5e's policy allowing all characters to move-attack-move, it allows for tactical repositioning in combat. For players who are into that sort of thing.
• Rescuing allies. It allows the fighter to reliably break most grapples of his or her allies.
• Locking down enemies. Since it works on a per turn basis, the fighter can use it on his or her turn, and then later on a different creature's return when making an opportunity attack. This makes the fighter a bit better at keeping opponents away from squishy allies.
• Doesn't rely on bonus actions. So builds like two-weapon fighters who really need their bonus action or cantrip-casting eldritch knights can still benefit from the feature.

The main drawbacks are:

• Steps on Battle Master's Pushing Attack. While Pushing Attack still has a use (for when you want to push a creature 15 feet instead of 5 feet), and still does extra damage, the ability to slide a creature reliably will overshadow it a little.
• Tactical positioning. The usefulness of moving a creature 5 feet may be a bit more nebulous in theater of the mind style games.

 

[FrogReaver]

Shoving Fighting Style. When you shove a creature you may deal your stat mod damage to that creature