D&D 5E Fighter Survey Response

[Tony Vargas]

I reiterated my stance that the Battlemaster is what the Fighter should be. The Maneuvers system and superiority dice should be the baseline for the Fighter class (and really, many of the other melee classes) the same way that Spellcasting and spell slots ares the baseline for all the magic classes. And to throw that system by the wayside is just stupid.

As limited as the BM manuevers are, I have to agree. I think the idea of the 'advanced fighter' being an entirely separate class is an even better one, though. Especially as they've prettymuch burned the maneuvers-as-central-mechanic bridge already.

If you add these four archetypes to the four Fighter archetypes we already have (Champion, Battlemaster, Eldritch Knight, Banneret) and you ask someone "What's the underlying base mechanical assumption that gives all Fighter their iconic identity regardless of subclass?" what is our answer currently?

Action Surge and Second Wind.

It's really Action Surge & Extra Attack, IMHO. Without Extra Attack, Action Surge doesn't do much, and Second Wind becomes pretty trivial out of the lowest levels (and overly random then).

Now I'm sure some people are happy with that, because they thinks Fighters should have no individual identity. Personally though, I think that just makes the Fighter class almost superfluous.

Agreed on both counts. There has always been an unspoken bias against the fighter in the community - maybe it's because the fighter is a very physical archetype (the jock or bully of the fantasy genre) and the fanbase is notoriously nerdy, or maybe it's a reaction against the muscle-bound protagonists of Conan pastiche in the 70s & 80s?

So I made it quite clear in my survey that I much preferred the archetypes they had made previously for the Cavalier, Scout, and Monster Hunter that used the Maneuver and superiority die system of the Battlemaster as the mechanical baseline of all new Fighter archetypes. And in each case, they received a set selection of some already-in-existence Manuevers, but then also got additional new Maneuvers and features that they and only they got based upon the fluff and story of the archetype.

To compare that to the development of spell mechanics with caster classes, as you did above, though, it's rare that a spell gets added to a single sub-class, exclusively. Spells might be added for a sub-class, specifically, but they'll be added to the class list - and often other class's lists, as well. Since spells can be used to differentiate specific caster characters and paint different concepts, adding a few new spells can open things up. By locking down new mechanics in a single sub-class, this cross-pollination effect and the creativity it allows is stopped cold, and you get a strangely inappropriate silo'ing of comparatively mundane abilities.

And then finally... I also said that doing an end-around on the DMs who don't want to use Feats by making subclasses that have ostensibly unique features but are actually just giving them Feats automatically is really kinda cheesy.

I disagree. It's just another option. Feats & MCing are optional, but some concepts - like the fighter/magic-user - are supported regardless (by a feat, and by MCing, and by a sub-class, so it's available unless the DM uses neither of the first two and bans the last). Apparently they feel that a very lethal archer is comparable central to the D&D feel, and want to give every opportunity for it to be included. For the DM who excluded feats to avoid complication and unintended synergies, the sharpshooter archetype might be OK - one who just doesn't want overpowered archers just won't add that archetype to his campaign.

You'd also be stuck with the Battlemaster's lame capstone; and you'd have no way to model abilities on anything but a short-rest basis. Most of the Knight's interesting stuff is in fact at-will.

Nod. The fighter chassis just doesn't leave a lot of design space for something like an extensive maneuver system, the BM is barely squeezed in as it is, expanding it must seem ill-advised. Variations on the Champion (which the Knight could easily be) might have been a better way to go, with an entirely separate martial class for the more 'complex' options...(...let's see, what other martial class was in a prior-edition PH1? Oh, yeah, the Warlord!)

Multiattack gets pretty interesting when you start using it for something other than just hitting the enemy. Push/grapple/disarm

We could definitely use more attack-equivalent rather than Action-requiring combat options.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The six ASIs fighters get are more than anyone else and allow a wide variety of fighters without needing to resort to new archetypes.

It's a large reason I don't actually like the Knight, Sharpshooter, and Samurai. Take Battlemaster, a few interesting maneuvers, and a feat or two and have at it.

I also agree that Battlemaster should have been the base of the class. Though if they actually wanted some reason to have numerous archetypes they could have restricted the level 6 and 10 ASIs to a small list of appropriate feats the player gets to choose from. However, the wonderful flexibility of extra ASIs and feats allows a large array of character types without needing to invent yet another archetype.

If given my druthers, I'd LOVE it if the Big Book of Mechanics they are making just ripped through a quick list of like 20 different "fluffy" fighter types that just listed a set of Fighting Style, Battlemaster Maneuvers and which two Feats at 6th and 10th level to take that would best exemplify them. And if there were any abilities that were missing from the maneuver list or feat list for a particular fluffy fighter... they would create and add a new Maneuver or Feat to the game that the fluffy fighter would take. So we could get an easy list of a Samurai, Cavalier, Warlord, Scout, Myrmidon, Dervish, Monster Hunter, Bodyguard, Dragoon, Archer, Justicar etc. etc.

Sure... someone else could easily do that and just put it up on DMs Guild... but I think it'd be cooler if WotC just did it, in addition to making another couple or archetypes as well.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I don't know if we should really add the GWM part of your comment to the discussion since it's technically a feat and thus not a part of the baseline... but I do concede the baseline right now does include Grapple and Shove alongside Attack. Personally... I just find that more... limited I guess... to what the baseline should be. Now, you do in fact allow the addition of other stuff into the equation by including the Improvised action, which would certainly cover some things. But I think that I just prefer the more solid baseline that all the Maneuvers demarcate as accomplishable and thus expand the martial menu out to more than just Attack, Grapple, Shove and Improvise Other Stuff (which presumably would cover things like Trip, Disarm, Parry etc.)

Disarm doesn't have to be improvised--it's right in the DMG.

I'd rather not have all the interesting maneuvers be gated behind superiority dice. I'm generally open to letting any of the battlemaster maneuvers be improvised somehow--the Disarm and Tripping precedents suggest that the main advantage of superiority dice is that you get to do something special and do damage at the same time. For example, as a DM I'm 90% okay with letting Feint be a valid use of an attack: spent an attack during an Attack maneuver with a melee weapon to grant advantage to the next attack from a specific attacker on that same target during the following round. At low levels this is indistinguishable from a narrow-case Help action; at higher levels when you gain more attacks it gains more versatility. This is identical to the battlemaster maneuver (IIRC) except that the battlemaster version also does damage at the same time--exactly like Disarm vs. Battlemaster Disarm.

Edit: on consideration, I'd probably make Feint include a Strength (Deception) or Dexterity (Deception) check against the enemy's passive Wisdom (Insight). This accomplishes two things: differentiates it more from the Help action, and makes the Champion's Remarkable Athlete ability more attractive.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Agreed on both counts. There has always been an unspoken bias against the fighter in the community - maybe it's because the fighter is a very physical archetype (the jock or bully of the fantasy genre) and the fanbase is notoriously nerdy, or maybe it's a reaction against the muscle-bound protagonists of Conan pastiche in the 70s & 80s?

It could also be a bit of chicken-and-egg problem. People play D&D because of its magic system, not its martial combat; people who like intricate martial arts subsystems play other games like GURPS (w/ GURPS: Martial Arts), so most D&D players are interested in magic and the magic system gets most of the attention and gets developed further. Vicious circle, etc., etc.

It would be hard to deny that Gygax, for example, was more interested in developing intricate magic systems than intricate physical combat systems.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It could also be a bit of chicken-and-egg problem. People play D&D because of its magic system

Vancian is an acquired taste, at best!
People play D&d because it's D&D, the first RPG, the only one anyone outside the hobby is likely to have heard of, the single one you're most likely to find a few other people willing to play (or, at least, familiar enough with not to use lack thereof as an excuse not to), even if each of them would rather be playing something else.

not its martial combat; people who like intricate martial arts subsystems play other games like GURPS (w/ GURPS: Martial Arts), so most D&D players are interested in magic and the magic system gets most of the attention and gets developed further. Vicious circle, etc., etc.

To be fair, no 'other game' really approaches the popularity of D&D. Most of us started with D&D. If you started with D&D and insisted on an intricate/realistic depiction of melee rather than dungeon crawling or a weird wizard show, you probably exited the hobby and never looked back.

Also, really, as much as D&D combat system may leave to be desired in terms of intricacy, realism, or depth of play, it /is/ a fairly playable system that models genre 'plot armor' better than most - mainly due to hps & abstraction.

It would be hard to deny that Gygax, for example, was more interested in developing intricate magic systems than intricate physical combat systems.

Not impossible, though. Remember all those crazy pole-arms, with fiddly special abilities like dismounting and disarming and setting to receive a charge, not to mention Weapon vs Armor type and speed factor and space required....?

 

[Mercule]

I reiterated my stance that the Battlemaster is what the Fighter should be. The Maneuvers system and superiority dice should be the baseline for the Fighter class (and really, many of the other melee classes) the same way that Spellcasting and spell slots ares the baseline for all the magic classes.

While I agree, in general, I'm left with a desire to still have a Champion that can be used as "training wheels" like the 1E Fighter class often was.

Note: I actually enjoyed playing the 1E Fighter and would consider playing the Champion. I don't see simplicity as an inherently bad thing or only to be used as "training wheels". I just like that "old skool" D&D actually had something to hand to someone that didn't require much/any system mastery to create or play (but still benefited from a tactical mind, etc.).

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Vancian is an acquired taste, at best!

Not the Vancianism. Vancianism has never been all that popular with D&D players anyway--hence the popularity of spell point variants over the years. What is popular is the structure and the content. Predefined spells, schools of magic, 1st-9th level spells with exponentially-growing effects (although 5E is ambivalent about exponentialism; some spells grow exponentially with level and others are just linear), Fireball and the way it interacts with HP, Polymorph, Magic Jar, Clone, Teleport, Shapechange, etc., etc. During my GURPS years I tried many times to shoehorn in something approximately D&D's Fireball but it never quite felt right. Neither did MERP. Shadowrun had some cool bits, and it definitely affected the way I view 5E (esp. Planar Binding), but it doesn't really have a satisfactory Fireball either, and that's one of the reasons why I'm not playing Shadowrun 4E right now.

But Vancianism per se isn't popular, as we can see from the fact that 5E has mostly discarded it.

People play D&d because it's D&D, the first RPG, the only one anyone outside the hobby is likely to have heard of, the single one you're most likely to find a few other people willing to play (or, at least, familiar enough with not to use lack thereof as an excuse not to), even if each of them would rather be playing something else.

To be fair, no 'other game' really approaches the popularity of D&D. Most of us started with D&D. If you started with D&D and wanted an intricate/realistic depiction of melee rather than dungeon crawling or a weird wizard show, you probably exited the hobby and never looked back.

Also, really, as much as D&D combat system may leave to be desired in terms of intricacy, realism, or depth of play, it /is/ a fairly playable system that models genre 'plot armor' better than most - mainly due to hps & abstraction.

I did exit the hobby partly for that reason, and came back partly because of the magic system and partly because of the class/XP/levelling system and partly because of combat/HP/monsters. I still don't run murderhobo dungeon crawls or weird wizard shows, and in a lot of ways my adventures would fit more naturally into a GURPS topology... but right now I'm playing 5E, and it's not because it was a default option.

And when I introduce people to 5E, it's not because I don't know any other systems that might interest them, it's because it seems like a good match. (There are other people whom I hesitate to introduce 5E to as a first RPG, because it's so combat-centric. But I haven't ruled 5E out either.)

Not impossible, though. Remember all those crazy pole-arms, with fiddly special abilities like dismounting and disarming and setting to receive a charge, not to mention Weapon vs Armor type and speed factor and space required....?

I thought about mentioning those, but decided against it because "more interested in X" doesn't imply "entirely disinterested in Y." But he clearly spent way more mental energy inventing mad wizards and spells by mad wizards than he did in inventing new polearms, or we'd have hundreds of polearms each with its own special abilities instead of only a dozen-odd.

 

[SpiritOfFire]

Urg... this thread is getting me restless with the great ideas...

It'd be so cool if there was an expanded martial system that'd give me both the strategic power selection consideration when leveling, and the expanded tactical options during combat that spell casters get. I think it makes a lot of thematic sense too. As you gain more experience, you learn new moves.

That being said, the 5e design philosophy seems to be edition inclusion, which is why the maneuvers system in only an archetype and not the fighter baseline. Not everyone thinks tactical considerations are fun; they just wanna hit stuff! (This is why I'm okay with 2 separate classes at this point)

On a related note, it would be nice if Battlemasters could forego attacks to recharge superiority dice against a particular foe. If a Battlemaster knows how to attack "menacingly", why can't he attack menacingly against more than six orcs in the horde? Using Extra Attack as a resource for maneuvers as well as pushing/proning/disarming seems to fit well with the Fighter paradigm.

I actually think it'd be even better if it was the other way around, and you expended superiority dice to gain additional attacks. You'd not only have the choice of attacking again vs enhancing your current attack, but it'd also model getting tired throughout the fight.

In anything from boxing to fencing, fatigue and conditioning are important considerations. You can't keep attacking in a frenzy for too long. After a few seconds more, you're gonna run out of gas and get countered.

Push hard now or hold back? I think it'd be super fun to play if DEFCON1's idea of making the maneuvers system standard came true.

 

[hejtmane]

Not impossible, though. Remember all those crazy pole-arms, with fiddly special abilities like dismounting and disarming and setting to receive a charge, not to mention Weapon vs Armor type and speed factor and space required....?

Yep the 1e days and the speed factor rules where vauge

 

[phantomK9]

I mean, the new Knight is being set up as a tank and gets abilities that you mostly get through the Sentinel Feat and Goading Attack maneuver. So why you'd forsake your feat and maneuver system like that and just hand those abilities over to a supposedly "new" subclass (without also giving them all the benefits that go along with those two subsystems) is beyond me.

PREACH!!