D&D General What does the mundane high level fighter look like? [+]

[Oofta]

Squirrels don't get rolls unless the DM chooses. I hate to keep pointing this out, but DM's breaking their own illusion then complaining about it really is a "Stop hitting yourself" moment, and not in the way bullies do it.,

The squirrel can attack if it's a minion familiar. Minions are a dumb kludge that makes no sense and aren't remotely necessary in 5E.

 

[Quickleaf]

The squirrel can attack if it's a minion familiar. Minions are a dumb kludge that makes no sense and aren't remotely necessary in 5E.

Find Familiar, quote: "A familiar can’t attack, but it can take other actions as normal."

So technically, the squirrel could trigger a tripwire holding a pin that's keeping a log in place with a bunch of rocks, causing the rocks to fall on the enemies, and then break through the false floor, causing them to take fall damage into the pit trap.... The pit trap can be trapped with a glyph of warding and lined with the 2nd reagent of a contact explosive that reacts to the mineral dust on the rocks, which can trigger a flammable cloud of poison gas... which the glyph of warding ignites.... But it wouldn't have made an attack, so it's cool.

Then it can chitter incomprehensibly and run off.

 

[Gammadoodler]

The squirrel can attack if it's a minion familiar. Minions are a dumb kludge that makes no sense and aren't remotely necessary in 5E.

It's more a failure of mechanical expression (IMO) than anything else.

The point of it is to have some monsters where any hit by a sufficiently powerful enemy will kill them. It's the exact same logic used for unsurvivable fall damage and instakill assassination attacks (not that I'm particularly fond of these, but they do serve as existing precedent).

But instead of describing the instakill effect and its parameters (i.e. how much more powerful enemies must be to kill with a single attack), the designers chose to use the hp system instead, causing all this confusion about the underlying objective nature of these creatures and concern about the newfound lethality of housepets and woodland creatures.

But the instakill effect is a reasonable bit of genre emulation that could exist in the game and mostly doesn't. I think it could be fixed fairly simply if folks were willing to agree on the parameters for when it should trigger rather than worry about rodents with an axe to grind.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Squirrels don't get rolls unless the DM chooses. I hate to keep pointing this out, but DM's breaking their own illusion then complaining about it really is a "Stop hitting yourself" moment, and not in the way bullies do it.,

And I hate to keep pointing out how that argument hurts the fighter, and is directly against this + thread. So once again, take it elsewhere. You're focusing on the squirrel while missing the entire point. If you make minions have 1 hp, then everyone can kill them in one hit. How does that help the mundane fighter? It doesn't. It hurts them. It steals their thunder to allow everyone and their grandma's dog to kill an ogre minion with minimal effort. And then you end up with even more threads about how fighters get screwed and the game punishes them.

You wanna talk about "stop hitting yourself moment", talk about folks complaining for years about the fighter getting overshadowed while at the same time arguing for a mechanic that screws them and allows every other creature in the game (not just PCs, but even Joe the tavernkeeper) to take out ogre minions in one hit.

So I'll say it again. This is a + thread to come up with ideas of what a higher level mundane fighter looks like. Take threadcapping to one of the other half dozen threads on this topic. Thank you.

 

[Quickleaf]

To keep the ball rolling in a positive direction, I had a thought experiment asking "Well, what makes a high-level (10th+) Rogue distinct as currently written in 5e? What would trying to mirror those features for a hypothetical fighter look like?"

Here's my attempt to imagine that...

Rogue	Fighter ideas
Reliable Talent: By 11th level, you have refined your chosen skills until they approach perfection. Whenever you make an ability check that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10.	Reliable Attack: At 11th level, you have refined your skill with weapons to near perfection. Whenever you make an attack that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as 10.
Blindsense: Starting at 14th level, if you are able to hear, you are aware of the location of any hidden or invisible creature within 10 feet of you.	Combat Sense: Starting at 14th level, if you are able to hear or see, you cannot be surprised.
Slippery Mind: By 15th level, you have acquired greater mental strength. You gain proficiency in Wisdom saving throws.	Steel Resolve: By 15th level, you can add half your proficiency bonus (rounded down) to saving throws in which you lack proficiency.
Elusive: Beginning at 18th level, you are so evasive that attackers rarely gain the upper hand against you. No attack roll has advantage against you while you aren't incapacitated.	Adaptive Defense: At 18th level, you learn to rapidly adapt your defenses to thwart your foes. After an enemy hits you with an attack, it suffers disadvantage on all subsequent attacks it makes against you that turn.
Stroke of Luck: At 20th level, you have an uncanny knack for succeeding when you need to. If your attack misses a target within range, you can turn the miss into a hit. Alternatively, if you fail an ability check, you can treat the d20 roll as a 20. Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.	?

What I noticed this experiment is that, first of all, the high-level rogue in 5e is a continuation of the low-level rogue – there's not a stark difference. Their skills get more reliable (building on Expertise), they become more elusive (building on Evasion & Uncanny Dodge)... and they also become able to flawlessly spot hidden/invisible creature & get lucky. It's those last two that are most interesting because they add something new to the rogue's identity that is distinctive at high levels.

 

[pemerton]

@Quickleaf, I don't know how much 5e D&D play takes place at 20th level, so I don't know how important balance considerations are. But to me it seems the most natural fighter equivalent to Stroke of Luck is Stroke of Death: once per rest, your attack kills the creature you strike.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@Quickleaf, I don't know how much 5e D&D play takes place at 20th level, so I don't know how important balance considerations are. But to me it seems the most natural fighter equivalent to Stroke of Luck is Stroke of Death: once per rest, your attack kills the creature you strike.

Well, I think balance considerations are important enough that this would be utterly bonkers, and I'm pretty sure not fun to most players either to big boss monsters always getting killed this way.

One thing I miss from 4e is the bloodied value. It was handy for keying all sorts of mechanics into.* For example fighter could have a feature that if they dealt at least the enemy's bloodies value's worth of damage with one strike, it would be an insta kill. And if you wanted to make this even more powerful, you could accompany it with the ability to choose to do one powerful strike instead of many regular ones.

*Now you can of course just refer to "half the hit point maximum" but as that is not a value that actually is written anywhere in the statblocks it is a bit more awkward.

 

[Oofta]

It's more a failure of mechanical expression (IMO) than anything else.

The point of it is to have some monsters where any hit by a sufficiently powerful enemy will kill them. It's the exact same logic used for unsurvivable fall damage and instakill assassination attacks (not that I'm particularly fond of these, but they do serve as existing precedent).

But instead of describing the instakill effect and its parameters (i.e. how much more powerful enemies must be to kill with a single attack), the designers chose to use the hp system instead, causing all this confusion about the underlying objective nature of these creatures and concern about the newfound lethality of housepets and woodland creatures.

But the instakill effect is a reasonable bit of genre emulation that could exist in the game and mostly doesn't. I think it could be fixed fairly simply if folks were willing to agree on the parameters for when it should trigger rather than worry about rodents with an axe to grind.

In 5E it's been solved. After a certain point, very low level monsters will be killed with one hit if the PC does a decent amount of damage with one hit. A CR 1/8 bandit has 11 HP. GWM or SS build will always take them out with one hit, someone with the dueling style will take them out most of the time with 1 hit.

This idea that you must take out the mooks in 1 hit is just a really strange hill to die on to me. Even the vaunted Jon Wick sometimes shoots the low level guys more than once to kill them. The fact that fighters don't do massive damage in one hit and sometimes even at high level is just the way the game works. They do more reliable damage, they don't necessarily do the most damage in one hit. I don't see a reason to change that.

 

[Scribe]

To keep the ball rolling in a positive direction, I had a thought experiment asking "Well, what makes a high-level (10th+) Rogue distinct as currently written in 5e? What would trying to mirror those features for a hypothetical fighter look like?"

Good post. Taking 10 and an "instant kill" are things on my list, but I like Adaptive defense as well.

 

[Sacrosanct]

To keep the ball rolling in a positive direction,

You've done this a couple times, and I just wanted to say how I really appreciate your effort to keep bringing this thread on target. So thanks for that. Really.