D&D 5E The Fighter Extra Feat Fallacy

[Hussar]

Sure but while you think such a class could be entertaining, no one is talking about how gimped the wizard is that actually takes a high str. No one ever talks about that. No one talks about how bad he is at athletics compared to strength based characters. He's a total afterthought that gets no love. No one even notices he's missing. Why is that?

That's the thing. What is he missing. After a few levels, the wizard has so many options to meaningfully contribute to all three pillars, that not having a skill isn't even noticed.

Want to scout - exploration pillar, poof, Find Familiar and I've got a scout (bat) that can see in the dark, instantly detect invisible opponents and only costs me 10 minutes to replace. Never minding higher level goodies.

Social pillar? I've got spells like Friends or charms to make me a better face character than anyone else. Never minding spells that will let me speak every language, read minds, and various other goodies like disguise self for infiltration.

So, even without any skill proficiencies in Athletics, Persuasion, or whatnot, I can still contribute to all three pillars pretty darn well.

Skills are basically the fall back for a wizard. For a fighter, they're the only way he gets to contribute.

 

[Mistwell]

Optimization is a matter of degree, you can be disinterested in the internet extremes, but you can't long plead ignorance or indifference to 6 stars and what they do.

Tony, are you trying to be a dick? Why are you acting like you know people you've never even heard of, better than people I've known all my life? There are no 6 stars. Literally almost none of my players have ever used the Internet to look up anything relating to D&D, ever. They truly, really, sincerely, do not care about any degree of optimization (some of them). None. Not one iota. Note even a vague thought. Truly. Seriously. Believe me. Accept this as a truth. It's real.

Take that insight and hold it up to a mirror. You're extrapolating from a long-standing group to the whole benighted D&D playing sub-culture of nerddom.

I am not though. I surely never said or implied everyone played this way. I said I don't think it's as popular as one might think from message boards. The surveys showed a majority of games are home brew. A huge percentage, way more than expected, turned out to still be long standing 1e and 2e games. Gamist mentality didn't rank nearly as well as expected in the surveys. You can talk to a bunch of the consultants on the game as well and they will tell you the same thing - the number of people who treat the game in a gamist nature or who even read the rules beyond a basic glance at them turned out to be much lower than I think a lot of people expected. It's surely not all lke that. I don't know if it's most. But it's more than you appear to think it is.

Then, without labeling/dismissing it as 'optimization,' consider the game, itself, before turning on options or applying variants, and consider what it implies.

Because we were actually talking about a class and it's features, not your circle of friends.

I mentioned my table in response to claims about how everyone is. In response to people claiming it's not just a bad idea but somehow morally wrong to not optimize your fighter and increase their charisma. And now you're strawmanning me as if I raised them for a different purpose. No reason for that.

Again, the only thing that pisses me off in these discussions is people who assume the entire world of RPGs is how they play the game and experience the game and their perspective. I've been really clear to say the way my table plays isn't universal, it's just one meaningful portion of the types of players out there.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Again, the only thing that pisses me off in these discussions is people who assume the entire world of RPGs is how they play the game and experience the game and their perspective.

And, again, more explicitly, that is exactly what you're doing.

 

[Mistwell]

And, again, more explicitly, that is exactly what you're doing.

You cut the very next sentence to set up a strawman. I guess we're done now? I will inform my players you know them better than I do, that they all optimize even though they think they don't, and that I've said everyone is like them even though I didn't.

 

[guachi]

Given wizards with a low Con are one of the primary iconic images of fantasy wizards (Raistlin from Dragonlance and Elric of Melnibone), I have to disagree. I think wizards with a sub-10 Constitution scores are rather common.

I think Raistlin's official Constitution score was 10. If this is correct, it's just some random fact that stuck in my head 30+ years ago and stayed there.

I will admit, though, that I don't currently possess any official material to look it up.

 

[James Gasik]

The AL group I was part of had a girl who insisted her 10 Con Wizard was just fine, since she never took damage between Shield and her Broom of Flying. My Fighter had like three times her hit points (I was low tier 3, she was high tier 2). I tried to explain to her that I once took half my hit points in damage from a trap (I think it was in Durlag's Tower), but she insisted it wasn't a big deal.

I stopped playing AL before I got to see which one of us was right. So yeah, there's at least ONE person who thinks a low Con Wizard is perfectly fine. I wouldn't try it, myself, but I've been playing since the days it was perfectly legal to start a level 1 character with ONE hit point...

 

[Mistwell]

\double

 

[Tony Vargas]

You cut the very next sentence to set up a strawman. I guess we're done now? I will inform my players you know them better than I do, that they all optimize even though they think they don't, and that I've said everyone is like them even though I didn't.

I made no claims about your players. You're the one who keeps holding them up as proof of your sweeping claims about player behavior...
...as if that somehow contradicts or nullifies the actual content of the game.

 

[Azzy]

I think Raistlin's official Constitution score was 10. If this is correct, it's just some random fact that stuck in my head 30+ years ago and stayed there.

I will admit, though, that I don't currently possess any official material to look it up.

Since I have Dragonlance Adventure on my self (along with a lot of other older D&D books), I decided to get up from my desk and take a look... You remember correctly!

 

[Sadras]

You just said you'd judge a player harshly if they made a Fighter with a high charisma, and you're chiding others for not accepting people with different play styles? Are the repair bills expensive for you, with all that stone throwing you're doing in that glass house?

That wasn't me - I'm sure you mistook me for Saelorn.
EDIT: Ah ok, no worries, just saw your follow-up post.