D&D 5E What non-combat abilities should fighters have?

[Sacrosanct]

1. You make a Fighter.
2. You sit down at the table with a few other players
3. They make PCs who are definitely not fighters because they think fighters are boring
4. You make up improbable reasons why all your PCs have met up in a tavern
5. Your DM makes up improbable reasons why you will all go adventuring together
6. You set off on an adventure and come back a lot richer
7. Your fighter now has all those other PCs as friends

No skillz needed. Your contribution is to shout a lot, whack a lot of monsters, and convincingly not quite get killed several times in fun ways. Then you help carry the loot.

Fighter is already the best job in the world. If you add extra abilities, people will expect you to use them and then you have responsibilities and guilt and peer pressure and expectation management and wtf? That's not fun. That's work.

It's really easy for a fighter PC to have friends if the fighter player has basic social skills and decent hygiene, and the players of the PC friends of the fighter also have decent social skills and hygiene.

 

[Ancalagon]

This question feels far less relevant to me now that backgrounds have been added to the game. I do know that yes, other classes get background too! But by having access to them, the fighter gets at least a few skills that aren't related to bloodshed. They aren't expert at it, but they can contribute, they can participate.

And if you have a somewhat clever/resourceful player, that's all you need.

I feel like including Expertise for Rogues and Bards kind of wrecked skill use for other classes in a not so subtle way.

A decent stat and a skill proficiency was supposed to feel like you were competent. In that system a fighter with all the traits mentioned above just has the background proficiencies associated with those abilities and a decent stat in the relevant ability checks. Now they 'have to have Expertise' to be considered good enough or when they only get a 15 on a skill check it is a failure or at the higher levels it has to be 25 (see Critical Role).

.

Well, I see what you mean but that may be simply due to the GM setting the DCs too high.

 

[Quickleaf]

It sounds like there is a leaning towards subclass focused abilities, which makes the most sense to me. WotC seems to be trying to do that in post-PHB content. Mike Mearls said he regrets the way they did Champion and Battle Master because they are mechanical rather than identity based, but I think there was some merit to. They could have started with fighter subclasses with stronger identities, but that would have required a significant number of them to cover all the basic options so people didn't feel like their option wasn't supported. The Battle Master supports (in my eyes) things like swashbuckler, gladiator, samurai, as well as the more generic concepts like a fighter that trains at a dedicated fighter's school or a tactical leader. And they have non-combat abilities in the form of a tool proficiency (not unique) and an ability to size up potential opponents (unique). Champion's out of combat ability, Remarkable Athlete, is kind of weak, but it is mostly unique (bard gets something similar). Purple Dragon Knight got Persuasion Expertise, which isn't entirely unique, but is definitely something. The UA fighters seem to all get unique things.

So would the dissatisfaction be absent if the PHB subclasses were more like the UA subclasses, or is it more fundamental?

That's an astute question to ask. I think the big picture is that most players are mostly satisfied with the fighter class. Let me dig up numbers from my polls from last year:

For me personally, I think subclasses with more identity is a move in the right direction for the fighter. After lots of gaming and reflection, I also think there are some fundamental design issues (I'll explain below).

For instance, fundamental things like followers or better taxes don't make any sense from a 5e design standpoint, because nobody gets those features or the equivalents of them anymore as built-in class features. Implementing those sorts of things would require giving rogues a feature that makes them guild masters, clerics a feature to get their own temples, etc. That's a whole different design layer of the game that wouldn't make sense if it were only applied to fighters. Is there a desire for this sort of general layer to be added to the game? Perhaps that sort of thing could be added as high level "prestige backgrounds" that you can pick up some time after 9th level. Perhaps each class is limited to specific choices.

You're assuming, like other designers have throughout D&D's history, that such followers & strongholds & domain management need to be roughly equally distributed among classes. In OD&D that wasn't the case: fighters were the *only* ones who become barons and gained tax revenue. In AD&D, though others got such things, the fighter had an edge in terms of numbers/skill level/gear of followers. By 3e it had eroded completely.

I'm not saying it would fit well into modern D&D design. I'm just pointing out there's no need for "equal representation" – that's a construct that emerged as designers cut things away from the fighter class over each edition.

What I'm saying is – that design philosophy has created an identity void, which should be filled with *something*.

There's some imbalance, but fighter is within my personal tolerance range.

It's not about balance, it's about class identity concepts.

There are small balance/design issues, but mostly yes, for me the problem has to do with lack of identity & lack of non-combat features.

A couple thoughts...

• The fighter (like the sorcerer) has lots of features that upgrade. This reduces complexity but comes at the cost of interesting stuff to hang your imagination on.
• Fighting Style & Extra Attack are not unique to the fighter. You have to wait till 11th level to get your third Extra Attack at which point it becomes "unique" in a sense. Having something earlier that's consistently reliable (unlike Action Surge) would feel more on point for a fighter.
• I expect the fighter's choice of weaponry to be more significant than other warrior-types. I expect a fighter to be able to do things with a sword that a barbarian, paladin, or ranger could not do. Merging BD&D Weapon Mastery, AD&D Weapon Specialization (some of the optional rules), and 4e's weapon-specific power effects are good places to look for inspiration.
• At 2nd level, the fighter is missing a second class feature that all other classes get (except the rogue). This would be a good place to add a "ribbon" ability or an ability that offers some identity. EDIT: If making such a change, I'd also advocate for the rogue getting a second feature at 2nd-level as well, something like Read Languages might be apropos.
• At 3rd level, the fighter only gets Martial Archetype....whereas Barbarians get bonus Rage, Paladins get Divine Health, and Rangers get Primeval Awareness. After looking over the various subclasses of the warrior-types (roughly equal power/rules presence), it's clear the fighter is missing a feature at 3rd level.
• Again, at 5th level, the fighter only gets Extra Attack....whereas Barbarians also get Fast Movement, and Paladins and Rangers also get 2nd level spells. Something is missing.
• Extra Attack (4) kicks in at 20th level...which is wonky, because other Extra Attack levels (5th & 11th) correspond to tier jumps & cantrip damage upgrades...personally, I would put Extra Attack (4) at 17th level and give the fighter class a proper interesting capstone.

When you look at any one of these issues in isolation, it's not a big deal, but add them together and a picture starts to form: The designers, in their effort to make the base fighter "low complexity", conflated "fewer unique features" with "low complexity."

I think that's a mistake. "Low complexity" has more to do with a just-rightness of how the class features are designed.

 

[Satyrn]

1. You make a Fighter.
2. You sit down at the table with a few other players
3. They make PCs who are definitely not fighters because they think fighters are boring
4. You make up improbable reasons why all your PCs have met up in a tavern
5. Your DM makes up improbable reasons why you will all go adventuring together
6. You set off on an adventure and come back a lot richer
7. Your fighter now has all those other PCs as friends

No skillz needed. Your contribution is to shout a lot, whack a lot of monsters, and convincingly not quite get killed several times in fun ways. Then you help carry the loot.

Fighter is already the best job in the world. If you add extra abilities, people will expect you to use them and then you have responsibilities and guilt and peer pressure and expectation management and wtf? That's not fun. That's work.

That's why I play fighters! And play clerics like they're fighters.

 

[Celebrim]

What did that look like for your game? Did you add features to the 5e fighter? Or was it just in the back of your mind when running the game?

I'm not going to talk a lot about implementation, because I don't know enough about 5e to recommend a good implementation for 5e, and the implementation I'm using is not really applicable.

Looking at 5e though, my feeling is that the fighter is ultimately too conservative in its implementation, in the same way that 3e skills were too conservatively implemented and the 3e fighter - while an incredibly elegant design - was largely devoid of ability because of the way skills and feats were implemented in the game and the conservative way they were granted to characters in comparison to the very liberal and generous implementation of spells. 5e seems to have ramped back the very generous implementation of spells, increased the value and complexity of feats, but they've retained the fundamentally conservative approach to skill/feat uses - particularly the fighter.

A good example of what bothers me is the Champion's remarkable athlete ability: "Starting at 7th level, you can add half your proficiency bonus (round up) to any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check you make that doesn’t already use your proficiency bonus. In addition, when you make a running long jump, the distance you can cover increases by a number of feet equal to your Strength modifier."

Broken down, the ability is two different things - you are a little bit better at everything physical. That's good, and I have no real problem with that general idea, but note that it's not really anything that will make the fighter distinctive. It does however implement some sort of out of combat utility. And the second is, "When you make a running long jump, the distance you can cover increases by a number of feet equal to your Strength modifier." Now that is stupid. While it does give the fighter (at least the champion fighter) some actually distinctive ability ("Actually jump a bit farther"), that implementation is so narrow and so conservative as to be ridiculous. It doesn't even effect all jumps - just running broad jumps. Why be so narrow? Why couldn't we list 10 different fields of human endeavor where the fighter was able to perform at a superhuman level instead of just running broad jumps? Was it just to be elegant and save text that we limited it to just that one thing? If so, compare the lavish amount of text devoted to describing spells, and consider that every spell is a class ability. And why be so conservative? If an athletic person can jump say 20', why is it particular helpful, cool, and noteworthy that the fighter can - with his remarkable athleticism - jump 23'? How often is that even going to be relevant? Would it be completely ridiculous to say that the fighter added his class level to the distance he could jump in a running broad jump? Why limit 20th level characters to merely human accomplishments? Twentieth level spellcasters aren't limited to merely human accomplishment.

For me, I'd want to perhaps move that remarkable athleticism out of the archetype, given the champion something in compensation, and make it a core part of being every sort of fighter. And I'd want to broaden the scope and depth of the power to including carrying burdens, and so forth, as guided by my understanding of what a fighter was really good at.

And then I'd probably want to implement something related to the rest of the fighter silo - for example, something like at 9th level gaining proficiency on all intelligence and charisma checks pertaining to leading and commanding warriors in battle. Of course, for that to be meaningful, you have to have some sort of system for doing that - maybe using bonus actions to lend aid at a distance, or loaning actions, or whatever. Then, to further the depth of your ability if you wanted to make that a core part of your particular fighter, have feats and archetypes that opened up 'commander/tactician' as a viable build.

 

[Xeviat]

• The fighter (like the sorcerer) has lots of features that upgrade. This reduces complexity but comes at the cost of interesting stuff to hang your imagination on.
• Fighting Style & Extra Attack are not unique to the fighter. You have to wait till 11th level to get your third Extra Attack at which point it becomes "unique" in a sense. Having something earlier that's consistently reliable (unlike Action Surge) would feel more on point for a fighter.
• I expect the fighter's choice of weaponry to be more significant than other warrior-types. I expect a fighter to be able to do things with a sword that a barbarian, paladin, or ranger could not do. Merging BD&D Weapon Mastery, AD&D Weapon Specialization (some of the optional rules), and 4e's weapon-specific power effects are good places to look for inspiration.
• At 2nd level, the fighter is missing a second class feature that all other classes get (except the rogue). This would be a good place to add a "ribbon" ability or an ability that offers some identity.
• At 3rd level, the fighter only gets Martial Archetype....whereas Barbarians get bonus Rage, Paladins get Divine Health, and Rangers get Primeval Awareness. After looking over the various subclasses of the warrior-types (roughly equally power/rules presence), it's clear the fighter is missing a feature at 3rd level.
• Again, at 5th level, the fighter only gets Extra Attack....whereas Barbarians also get Fast Movement, and Paladins and Rangers also get 2nd level spells. Something is missing.
• Extra Attack (4) kicks in at 20th level...which is wonky, because other Extra Attack levels (5th & 11th) correspond to tier jumps & cantrip damage upgrades...personally, I would put Extra Attack (4) at 17th level and give the fighter class a proper interesting capstone.

When you look at any one of these issues in isolation, it's not a big deal, but add them together and a picture starts to form: The designers, in their effort to make the base fighter "low complexity", conflated "fewer unique features" with "low complexity."

These are some interesting thoughts, and some are venturing into areas other than out of combat. But, there are some room for ribbons there.

First, at 3rd level, the Battle Master gets a (weak) ribbon in a tool proficiency. Other UA fighter Archetypes get some extra skills and such here. This would be useful. Rather than necessarily getting Expertise, for instance, maybe they could get proficiency modifier to certain skills whether or not they had it already (so the Noble Cavalier may stack on persuasion and history, but the Folk Hero Cavalier would learn some new skills). There's certainly room there for a little extra.

As for the Fighter getting some unique things, noncombat or not, I keep going back to Weapon Mastery, High Mastery, and Grand Mastery. Fighters knew how to use weapons better than others. Yes, Extra Attack 2 and 3 do this, but what if they got "Improved Fighting Style" and more at certain places. Things like removing the bonus action requirement from TWFing and other things could go in here as uniquely Fighter things (but that's slightly off topic) without getting too strange.

I'm not sure the Fighter really needs an actual buff at 2nd sand 5th compared to the other warriors, but getting some lesser, ribbon abilities would be fine. Let's look at the Fighter vs the Paladin.

1st
Fighter: Fighting Style, Second Wind
Paladin: Divine Sense, Lay on Hands
Comparison: Lay on Hands and Second Wind are comparable. Second Wind offers way more daily healing (19.5 vs 5), but it doesn't work on others. Divine Sense is a Ribbon, Fighting Style is offensive power. The Fighter could use a Ribbon here, and Fighting Style could be dropped to 1st for the Paladin.

2nd
Fighter: Action Surge
Paladin: Fighting Style, Spellcasting, Divine Smite
Comparison: Fighting Style on the paladin only balances out 1st level. If you pretend smite is just a spell and it's the only spell the paladin has, spellcasting and action surge balance out. Spellcasting can be used for utility things, but action surge can be used in exploration too, so the extended benefits could balance out. 2 smites equal +18 damage per day; 3 extra attacks from action surge is +19.2 damage on longsword with duelist or +23.3 on greatsword with GWFing.

3rd
Fighter: Archetype
Paladin: Divine Health, Oath (oath spells and 2 channel divinity options 1/short rest), +1 1st level spell.
Comparison: Here, we see room for an expansion of ability. The Archetype ability should be as good as channel divinity, so the Fighter should really get something along the power level of Divine Health. Adding something more to the Archetypes would be great here. The extra paladin spell slot brings us to 3/day vs 1/short action surge, which sounds fair even though it's +27 damage vs +23.3; close enough.

4th
Comparison: both get ASI.

5th (ugh)
Fighter: Extra Attack
Paladin: Extra Attack, 2nd level spells (2/day)
Comparison: On the surface, this seems bad for the Fighter. The paladin does get extra utility options. If they use their new spell slots (1 1st and 2 2nds) entirely for smiting, though, it's an increase of +36 damage. Since Extra Attack and Action Surge stack, this is also a +19-23 damage increase for the Fighter. That's behind the paladin by quite a bit, so they could probably use a little something more there.

I'm finding myself thinking of changing the subclasses, expanding Fighting Style, and altering Action Surge as a way of giving the Fighter something more unique.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[bedir than]

If someone was to make a new Fighter in my game I might consider allowing them a second background as long as it was one of the "fighter-y" ones.

Which would essentially mean that they did one thing, then did something violent and then became an adventurer. Those second backgrounds would be

Criminal (Thug/brute types)
Folk Hero
Sailor
Soldier
City Watch
Faction Agent
Knight of the Order
Mercenary
Bounty Hunter
Tribe Member

This gives them social/exploration boosts from day one. But they also aren't large boosts.

 

[Xeviat]

If someone was to make a new Fighter in my game I might consider allowing them a second background as long as it was one of the "fighter-y" ones.

Which would essentially mean that they did one thing, then did something violent and then became an adventurer. Those second backgrounds would be

Criminal (Thug/brute types)
Folk Hero
Sailor
Soldier
City Watch
Faction Agent
Knight of the Order
Mercenary
Bounty Hunter
Tribe Member

This gives them social/exploration boosts from day one. But they also aren't large boosts.

I had a similar thought for humans, instead of their extra trained skill, since they're "versatile". I was looking at human side by side with half-elf after the first 5E game I ran ended up having 2 half-elves in it.

 

[Ancalagon]

A good example of what bothers me is the Champion's remarkable athlete ability: "Starting at 7th level, you can add half your proficiency bonus (round up) to any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check you make that doesn’t already use your proficiency bonus. In addition, when you make a running long jump, the distance you can cover increases by a number of feet equal to your Strength modifier."

Broken down, the ability is two different things - you are a little bit better at everything physical. That's good, and I have no real problem with that general idea, but note that it's not really anything that will make the fighter distinctive. It does however implement some sort of out of combat utility. And the second is, "When you make a running long jump, the distance you can cover increases by a number of feet equal to your Strength modifier." Now that is stupid. While it does give the fighter (at least the champion fighter) some actually distinctive ability ("Actually jump a bit farther"), that implementation is so narrow and so conservative as to be ridiculous. It doesn't even effect all jumps - just running broad jumps. Why be so narrow? Why couldn't we list 10 different fields of human endeavor where the fighter was able to perform at a superhuman level instead of just running broad jumps? Was it just to be elegant and save text that we limited it to just that one thing? If so, compare the lavish amount of text devoted to describing spells, and consider that every spell is a class ability. And why be so conservative? If an athletic person can jump say 20', why is it particular helpful, cool, and noteworthy that the fighter can - with his remarkable athleticism - jump 23'? How often is that even going to be relevant? Would it be completely ridiculous to say that the fighter added his class level to the distance he could jump in a running broad jump? Why limit 20th level characters to merely human accomplishments? Twentieth level spellcasters are limited to merely human accomplishment.

I concur with you that the ability is underwhelming. At the *very least*, I think that bonus should be added to checks that *do* use the proficiency bonus. A champion doing an athletics check, who is proficient in athletics should get a better result than a battlemaster who is also proficient in athletics and has the same stat bonus no?

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] I couldn't agree more, mate. When I think of the fighter, I often look at the 5e rogue's Cunning Action and how the rogue (thief) subclass expands on that with Fast Hands as an excellent model for fighter design. Not the bonus actions specifically, but the general implementation of "here's class ability X with which you can do these cool things" and "here's subclass ability Y that expands on X in thematically flavorful ways."