D&D 5E Removing Daily/Encounter Powers from the Fighter

[Tony Vargas]

The Fighter in the play test who regained all of his Dice every turn was by far the most popular at my table. Unfortunately people seem married to the idea that a Fighter subclass had to provide 'encounter powers'.

Might've had something to do with MDDs being pretty potent, as well.

As the OP illustrates, there's a strong objection to fighters getting any sort of limited-use abilities.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Lots of interesting ideas here.

I like using the existing Exhaustion mechanic, maybe with faster recovery of Exhaustion for fighters. It's simple, not too punitive, but prevents just spamming special abilities over and over by adding a cost. You could do back-to-back Action Surges and then two Second Winds, and then a final Action Surge to finish the BBEG. At which point our hero, at Exhaustion 5, collapses, and needs days of rest and care to recover. No need to invent a new system, it's there in Basic.

At this point, I would guess that making Action Surge at-will would probably be too powerful. I want the fighter to be the best combatant, defeating an equal-level raging barbarian four times out of five, but at-will Action Surge sounds like too much. We'll see; it may be that the fighter needs that much of a boost.

Second Wind at-will is extremely powerful and narratively odd (if it is a predictable, reliable ability), but much of my concern with that is tied into problems with the HP system. HP for humanoid heroes are mostly plot armor and vitality, HP for large monsters are much more about meat. Before I rethink Second Wind, I might want to see what DMG offers for WP/VP systems. DR could replace it as "always-on" resilience booster.

 

[Li Shenron]

IIRC it's only:

Action Surge (short rest)
Second Wind (short rest)
Indomitable (long rest)

I also dislike non-at-will mundane abilities, but I'm trying to wrap my head around making them more acceptable without mechanical adjustments.

At least I'm going to think that Action Surge is fatigue-based, Second Wind is passive (got to do with your body's own resistance to wounds, not fatigue), and Indomitable is largely random luck fueled by your adventuring experience. As such, they don't really "overlap", they can recharge separately.

The only real problem I have is with Second Wind being a bit too much free healing.

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Then there is also the expertise dice of the Battlemaster. With that, it starts being difficult... it does seem also fatigue-based to me, especially since you can regain one die by "resting" (or catching your breath) for a single turn of battle - at least if this is still in the game, which is not 100% certain.

But... there is an alternative way to interpret Action Surge: if you think of it as simply being higher speed in combat, it's not even necessarily fatigue-based anymore. How faster is the Fighter compared to the others? Well... about 1 action per a few hours, the later 2 actions per a few hours...

 

[Joe Liker]

Second wind is explicitly described as drawing on a "limited well of stamina." An action surge is when you "push yourself beyond your normal limits."

One lets you keep fighting even though you're exhausted; the other lets you act with superhuman alacrity. I personally don't feel like it's too strange just to say they pull from different kinds of inner strength (i.e., two separate "fatigue" pools) and let them both work as written.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The "level of fatigue" idea is kind of keen, and one I hadn't heart before!

But given how controversial short-rest-recharge things are in general, I would not be shocked if the DMG contained a way to ramp up or down the recharge rate of any individual ability within certain guidelines. So you could have long-rest-recharged second winds, or at-will spell slots, or whatever.

And if the DMG doesn't, it shouldn't be TOO hard to reverse-engineer them on a "how many encounters/day are expected? How many rounds/encounter?" kind of basis. Messier, but if you could do it on the 4e math, you can probably do it on the 5e math.

 

[Tony Vargas]

At this point, I would guess that making Action Surge at-will would probably be too powerful. I want the fighter to be the best combatant, defeating an equal-level raging barbarian four times out of five, but at-will Action Surge sounds like too much. We'll see; it may be that the fighter needs that much of a boost.

You could tone down an at-will Action Surge by making it take a bonus action. In other words, fighters would be able to take full actions instead of just making a single attack as their bonus action. Simple and, once the fighter gets multiple attacks, cements their 'best at fighting' niche.

Second Wind at-will is extremely powerful and narratively odd (if it is a predictable, reliable ability), but much of my concern with that is tied into problems with the HP system. HP for humanoid heroes are mostly plot armor and vitality, HP for large monsters are much more about meat. Before I rethink Second Wind, I might want to see what DMG offers for WP/VP systems. DR could replace it as "always-on" resilience booster.

As healing, it would let the fighter de-facto regenerate. So, while the limited-use version may have some conceptual problems, the unlimited-use version is far worse. Perhaps the limited-use idea isn't so bad?

You could make an at-will Second Wind less narratively odd by making it Temp hps. That also has the benefit of no longer being 'regeneration,' since Temp HPs don't stack. Since it consumes a bonus action, there is a 'price' (especially if you have Action Surge use a bonus action, as well). However, it's no longer 'second wind' (recovering after being wounded), but a sort of pre-buff that you'd want to use very early in the fight to /avoid/ being wounded. You could, indeed, conceivably replace such a not-really-a-second-wind with some sort of 'fighting defensively' thing that consumes the bonus action to gain DR until the start of the next turn.

Finally, you could take a page from the 4e Paladin, and have Second Wind be an at-will that consumes a daily resource: HD. Use a bonus action to Second Wind and gain the Second Wind hps + 1 HD. When you're out of HD, you can't Second Wind anymore.

 

[keterys]

For Second Wind, replace the fighter's HD with d12, then let the fighter spend a hit die to heal whenever he succeeds on a death save.

For Action Surge, how about let the fighter have a bonus action to move or charge at the start of any combat he's not surprised, and get a single swing on a different opponent whenever he crits.

 

[Li Shenron]

But given how controversial short-rest-recharge things are in general, I would not be shocked if the DMG contained a way to ramp up or down the recharge rate of any individual ability within certain guidelines. So you could have long-rest-recharged second winds, or at-will spell slots, or whatever.

Right now we know that the DMG has an option for shorter rests (5 mins), in which case Second Wind grants in fact temporary HP rather than healing.