D&D 5E Thoughts on Mearls' Comments on Fighter Subclasses Lacking Identity

[Tony Vargas]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?466352-Thoughts-on-Mearls-Comments-on-Fighter-Subclasses-Lacking-Identity#ixzz3hsbC1bv3
Mike's biggest regret is the fighter: the subclasses don't have the identity that the subclasses of other classes have. What's a battlemaster or a champion? They were so involved in the mechanics (for simple and complex fighters), that the names don't mean anything.

Sorry if it's been said already, but:

'Champion' certainly means something. A champion fights for someone, for a liege lord or for a helpless ward or for the weak in general, or for something a cause or religion or kingdom or leader or even vengeance.
The archetype just doesn't really deliver on any of those meanings.

'Battlemaster' is obviously a portmanteau devised specifically for 5e, it just as obviously can't be evocative, being newly-minted. In fact, it might well be that it was chosen specifically to be free of connotations or baggage.

Eldritch Knight certainly seems evocative and meaningful. You've got the ancient/arcane-magic/secrets of 'Eldritch' coupled with the familiar and nuanced 'Knight' (evoking the knight in shining armor, the over-zealous do-gooder, and the privilege of nobility). It takes a background to deliver on the nobility aspect, and the class may not lend itself overmuch to shining armor (DEX builds being at least as attractive), but doesn't seem like it falls that far short. The archetype can fight, can wear heavy armor, and can cast spells.
Maybe there could be more fluff about the orders such knights belong to?



As for the 'complexity' issue, the gap in complexity between the Champion (two short-rest-recharge abilities) and the Battlemaster (adds two short-rest-recharge CS dice that can each be used for one of three things) is not that vast. The EK gets some real complexity, but the fact he chooses known spells rather than being able to prep daily, and restricted list they're chosen from make him one of the less complex casters.

 

[redrick]

For example, someone wants to make the archetypal knight, what subclass should they take? It doesn't matter. It's not clear. Their choice isn't any easier. When someone makes a wizard, what they want to do in the game leads them to their subclass choice. When someone says "I wanna blow things up" then you point them to evocation, but if they want to be more tricky you go to illusion or enchantment. No detailed reading of the subclass is needed. When someone makes a fighter, the choice of "I want to be a great knight" or "I want to use a spear like the Oberyn Martell" or "I want to take the hits like a boss" then you need to read and re-read the options.
Similarly, reflavouring only goes so far. Someone wants to make a Madmartigan or Indigo Montoya and be great with a sword. Saying "great, just pretend you're the best swordsman in the land" isn't as satisfying as having something, anything to make that actually true.

When you're walking a new player through character creation, with every other subclass you ask "what do you want to do?" With the fighter you don't ask that but instead ask "how do you want to do what you want to do?" Which isn't very easy or intuitive...

You are seeing this as a bug, and others are seeing it as a feature. When you want to make the archetypal knight, you take the fighter. Whether it is a Champion Fighter or a Battlemaster Fighter is more about how you like to play than it is about how you view your character. (Though, as I said earlier, I do think there are some flavor implications with either subclass.) Is your problem that beginning players will have a hard time coming up with a character (as opposed to a statblock), or is it that beginning players will have a hard time mapping their image of a character onto a particular build? For the former problem, yes, the fighter, in its generality, doesn't necessarily tell new players, "This is exactly what a fighter is," in the way some other class builds do. On the other hand, I would argue, the fighter is the easiest flavor to come up with on your own. Most players, even inexperienced players, can come up with some flavor concept for a fighter. I don't really see the latter as much of a problem — again, in this case, either subclass can work for most fighter concepts. It's all about playstyle.

Not to mention one of the most important features of 5e, which is that the fighter's subclass doesn't have to be chosen during character creation. Your new player doesn't have to worry about which subclass will fit their archetype, because they get to spend a few sessions becoming familiar with the fighter and the character before they have to make a choice. And then, when they do make a choice, the contrast is super stark and easy. Do you want your character to do more than it already does? Choose a battlemaster. Or, if you want magic, choose an eldritch knight. Are you happy with "I hit it with my axe?" Choose the Champion. It will never get any more complicated. You will never pick up another new ability. Your combat mechanics will always be based around "I attack." This decision doesn't have to inform the character concept, because, by now, the player has already had several sessions to flesh out a concept. It's all about how that player likes to play.

Most of the flavorful classes, by contrast, force you to make some sort of subclass choice out of the gate. Sorcerer's and clerics choose subclass at level 1. Warlocks effectively have 2 levels of subclassing — which kind of being their pact is with, and then, at level 3, their pact subclass. For some people, that is not a good thing! That means, before you've ever played a single game of D&D, you have to pore over several different build options and choose between them. And now, your build option comes with a ton of baked in flavor that kind of dictates not only a lot about your character, but also how your DM has to build the world around that character. A woman in our group played a Great Old Ones Warlock, because she loved the telepathy and the "cosmic" quality, but didn't actually care for the whole Lovecraftian mythos stuff. (She'd read quite a bit of Lovecraft and found him distasteful.) The DM had one idea of what her character's backstory was about. The other Lovecraft-obsessed players had another idea (3 of us met playing Call of Cthulhu), and she had her own idea. Trying to reconcile all of it was actually pretty frustrating for her and the DM, and while we ultimately found a backstory that made sense for her and the DM's world, it left a bitter taste in her mouth. Bummer for a new player!

As a fighter, on the other hand, she could have chosen almost anything she wanted, and not have to worry about stripping out a bunch of flavor assumptions built into the character. Then, when we reached level 3, she could have said, "ok, all this 'I attack' is getting boring, give me some of these moves," or she could have said, "I'm more interested in the role-play and thinking outside the box than I am in the tactical combat. Let me be a champion."

 

[Jester David]

You are seeing this as a bug, and others are seeing it as a feature. When you want to make the archetypal knight, you take the fighter. Whether it is a Champion Fighter or a Battlemaster Fighter is more about how you like to play than it is about how you view your character. (Though, as I said earlier, I do think there are some flavor implications with either subclass.) Is your problem that beginning players will have a hard time coming up with a character (as opposed to a statblock), or is it that beginning players will have a hard time mapping their image of a character onto a particular build? For the former problem, yes, the fighter, in its generality, doesn't necessarily tell new players, "This is exactly what a fighter is," in the way some other class builds do. On the other hand, I would argue, the fighter is the easiest flavor to come up with on your own. Most players, even inexperienced players, can come up with some flavor concept for a fighter. I don't really see the latter as much of a problem — again, in this case, either subclass can work for most fighter concepts. It's all about playstyle.

But it's not that hard to reflavour a subclass. There's ZERO CHANGE in the difficulty of creating flavour for a warlock versus a fighter. It takes the exact same amount of creativity to make something completely your own.
And that's the issue. Someone who doesn't want to generate their own flavour for their class is fine playing any other class. The flavour is there for them. And if they need a little help thinking of their own flavour, lore is provided to give some inspiration. There's no foundation to start with. And if someone isn't interested in making the fighter different, then that character really stands out as bland and flat.

Having little to no flavour in the fighter doesn't make it any easier to reflavour. It just makes it mandatory.

 

[MoonSong]

I like and appreciate the ability to reflavour a class in some way. But I also like some mechanics to support my character and their chosen specialty, and some base fluff and options for people who aren't feeling inspired or need that extra boost.
It's all well and good to portray your fighter as a canny knight and say they're a canny knight, but if they cannot actually ride a horse or fight in armour better than anyone else then that element is lost.

I'd rather have the subclasses offer some lore and related mechanics. The subclasses should still be "big tent" ideas, like the "thief" or the "life cleric" where there's a lot of room to have variety in that role. But no flavour, a totally blank slate, gives nothing for people to work with.


Just because a mechanic didn't work in the past doesn't mean it couldn't or shouldn't be attempted again. 5e is filled with mechanics that did not work the first time but were refined and now function well.
The magic weapon argument doesn't work in this edition, where they're not necessary. If the player wants a weird weapon that's their choice and the game shouldn't remove an option because some people might make that choice poorly.

It's a start. But if someone really wants to focus on shields, there's not a lot of options.


There's a lot of overlap between phalanx and legions. It mostly comes down to the size of the units. Really, Roman Legions were more flexible phalanxes.
Plus, it was just a name I pulled out quickly for an example and stuck with, the idea of an organized fighter with a shield who acts like a wall for his allies.

Which is great when the fighter can take the feat, which might not be 6th or 8th level. And it doesn't make you a better rider, has nothing to do with lances, doesn't keep you in the saddle, or any number of other bonuses a mounted knight might have.

So... really, you just don't want any new subclasses for the fighter.

A skilled players can work around any inherent flavour. Ignoring flavour really doesn't take any more work than making the flavour outright.
It can be a little trickier incorporating specific class features, but if you're reflavouring a subclass that you like anyway it's not a problem.

The trick is people who are newer or less skilled at adding flavour. Without the inherent flavour the class is flat and bland, just a generic "Bob the fighter". If the subclass had a dash of flavour then there'd be something for the DM and other players to work with or something the player could build on, but right now that's not provided.
It's a barrier to entry. A "you must be ----> creative to ride the fighter".

From what I can tell, there are two kinds of support, I call them active and passive. Active support is like when you have this mechanic that makes you good as something or that reinforces a flavour. Active support is specific, niche, and exclusionary -if you are very good with a certain thing, you cannot be that good at anything else- by definition. Then we have Passive support, the less the mechanics and default flavour get in the way of a determined character concept. The Champion and BM are both poor on Active support for many fighter concepts, more so on the flavor, but at the same time they are terrific with passive support for almost everything under the sun.

I got this idea after explaining over and over why I hate wizards and why the sorcerer class was disappointing. Compare the 3.5 sorcerer with the current one, the 3.5 sorcerer just says "I'm naturally magic" and leaves it at that, the flavour throws the suggestion that maybe is the blood of dragons but nothing is certain, this sorcerer had little active support for any concept, how could you get a special ability to reflect a draconic, angelic, demonic, outsider, undead,elemental or whatever origin? But at the same time nothing prevented you from saying you were the spawn of a god, or got come from a long line of witches, or want to be Elsa, or Sabrina, or just declare you don't care, you are maggic and leave it at that. The mechanics and the flavor don't get in the way, your character has room to breathe and be unique. On the other hand the 5e draconic sorcerer doesn't let anything to the imagination, it makes it very explicit you come from dragons, and the mechanics reflect that (strong active support), but if you don't want to come from dragons you have to pick something else, you cannot say "my sorcerer is an angel in the flesh" when the mechanics make it clear you are a hideous deformed human with scales and claws all over your body. The 5e sorcerer subclasses have very strong flavor, to the point it can get toxic and the characters you play feel less like individuals and more like their subclasses.

Would you have preferred the fighter had only two subclasses, both strong on active mechanics to be very good at a thing and that get in the way of any deviation? one of them "Knight" the other one "Duelist" and no room for archers, lancers, riders, gladiators, etc? I understand the desire to give strong support to archetypes and concepts, but what do you do when only a few of these can get it, and you don't happen to like the chosen preapproved flavours of fighter? now you have a bigger problem than just not enough unique mechanics to model your PC, now you also have to fight all other unwanted baggage. Yes, the only thing worse than having to make your own flavour is having to do it while removing the flavour you don't like.

Oh, and the mounted support, I gotta say you better get over it, from what Mearls said during the playtest, they consider it too much of a niche to give it support, let alone build a class or subclass around it.

 

[redrick]

But it's not that hard to reflavour a subclass. There's ZERO CHANGE in the difficulty of creating flavour for a warlock versus a fighter. It takes the exact same amount of creativity to make something completely your own.
And that's the issue. Someone who doesn't want to generate their own flavour for their class is fine playing any other class. The flavour is there for them. And if they need a little help thinking of their own flavour, lore is provided to give some inspiration. There's no foundation to start with. And if someone isn't interested in making the fighter different, then that character really stands out as bland and flat.

Having little to no flavour in the fighter doesn't make it any easier to reflavour. It just makes it mandatory.

This is where I have to whole-heartedly disagree. There is a difference between adding flavor and replacing flavor. A clean slate makes few assumptions about who or what your character is. When you say, "my fighter is an errol finn-like swashbuckler," everybody at the table just hears that picture and fills it in. Now, any extrapolations and interpolations about your character will be made from that (flavorful) image. When you say, "my character is a warlock who made a deal with a timeless alien being," everybody at the table says, "Great Old Ones. Lovecraft. Ok, I know what that's about." And they start to fill in your character based on their reading of the PHB (which you might not have read too carefully, you naughty first time player!), or their broader knowledge of Mythos. Now your DM has all these assumptions about who your character is — as given to them by the game — but that's not who you think your character is! So you need to come up with a flavorful concept so powerful that it overpowers the existing assumptions that people have about warlocks and great old ones. And you didn't think to do this, because you didn't even know they would have these assumptions in the first place, and maybe you wanted to spend some time discovering your character for yourself through actual play.

I have experienced variations on the experience of our Warlock player several times. As a result, I don't recommend the warlock to new players. I have never experienced a problem with a player being unable to sprinkle some flavor onto a fighter. The fighter is a great class for a new player, because it lets them discover the character as they go. (It's also been a great class for me. I love my Champion fighter.)

Anyway, again, I don't mind if Wizards comes up with some new Jerk Chicken fighter subclasses. Not gonna complain. I do mind providing so many flavored subclasses that the assumption becomes, "if you want flavor x, you need to take build y." I don't want a player to look at a list of subclasses and see, "Gladiator, Knight, Samurai, Archer, Musketeer," and say, "oh, well, I guess I can't play a hoplite." (Or, "I want to play a hoplite, but to do that, I need to come up with a whole new subclass for it.")

 

[Andor]

But it's not that hard to reflavour a subclass. There's ZERO CHANGE in the difficulty of creating flavour for a warlock versus a fighter. It takes the exact same amount of creativity to make something completely your own.
And that's the issue. Someone who doesn't want to generate their own flavour for their class is fine playing any other class. The flavour is there for them. And if they need a little help thinking of their own flavour, lore is provided to give some inspiration. There's no foundation to start with. And if someone isn't interested in making the fighter different, then that character really stands out as bland and flat.

Having little to no flavour in the fighter doesn't make it any easier to reflavour. It just makes it mandatory.

I'm going to disagree politely. I've seen many, many new players over my years of gaming and in my experience it is much easier to explain to someone that they need to create a background than it is to explain the concept of "refluffing". Some people never do really get that. And some GMs loathe refluffing. If there was a "chevalier" sub-class that specialized in mounted combat I promise you that some GMs would balk at refluffing it as a mongol warrior, while others would be happy to let you play it as a steam-punk engineer on a coal-powered brass horse.

The fighter is the broadest concept in gaming. It covers everything from cavemen to samurai to space marines. It needs to be a flexible class, and in 5e it is. Especially with the background mechanics split out from the classes, and so much crunch moved to feats.

Also I have to disagree with your assertion that there is no difference in difficulty in refluffing different classes or subclasses. The more baggage the class has, the more work needs to be done. The warlock comes with lots of baggage in the form of the pact, and it's various granted abilities. See Redrick's warlock story for an example. A class without attached baggage is inherently easier to refluff because it has fewer parts that need to be accounted for.

 

[Minigiant]

[MENTION=63508]Minigiant[/MENTION]


Yes. And we do in our games - (see link above if interested).

Thanks for putting succinctly.

I like your subclasses.

But male and female humanoids, can't we have both? Really.

Certainly we could still keep the 2:generics and add a few specific flavor subclasses.

We literally did it for eldritch knight. Why not for other exotic fighters.

Then you could have better names for the basic build and the complex one.

The champion is a bad name for what it does. Champion feels more like the "warrior of higher stock". The naturally gifted fighter who got that way through good lineage, holy blessing, or magical ancestry, dumb luck. Your "Dude with 3 stinking 18s" Mary Sue Swordsman.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You are probably (like me) much more open to class complexity than the average fighter-choosing player.

That's a little off. For one thing, you don't know it's true, all we have to go on is the stereotype of the "wake me when the fight starts" guy. For another, that's as much a ringing condemnation of the simplistic fighter as it is a rationalization for it. Sure, the fighter has mostly been pretty simplistic, at least prior to 3e, it was. That means people who might want to play an archetype handled by the fighter, but who wanted a less stultifying gaming experience, wouldn't choose it - not that people who chose it were the only ones interested in playing that range of archetypes. By the same token, casters have mostly been complex and frustrating to play, but that doesn't mean only people who liked that challenge wanted to play a caster archetype, just that they were the ones who could stand it.

But for the fighter: I thought that blandness was supposed to be a strength...?

Again, you're assuming that because the class was always lacking, that it's supposed to be lacking, that no one want's a more interesting or flavorful way of approaching the wide range of heroic archetypes that no other class is suitable for (prettymuch any character in genre who doesn't cast spells, go berserk, or sneak around steeling things & murdering people, has to be a fighter in 5e)

A actual weaponmaster of some type would be great to have as a fighting style. This was a classic theme of the fighter and I am shocked it isn't in the PHB or in an UA yet.

That's what the Battlemaster is. In the playtest, it was called Weaponmaster for a bit, then changed to Battlemaster.

The truth is is you can pull of 80-90% of the "archetypical fighters" using the fighter, fighting style, champion or battlemaster, and the current feats.

Have to disagree strongly with that. Most heroic archetypes you see in the genre can't be anything but a fighter - again, because they don't cast spells, aren't berserkers, and aren't sneak-thieves/assassins - but the fighter doesn't do them justice. It's a rare hero who is just a melee badass or just a great archer, which is as far as you can get with a Champion of Battlemaster. They're DPR-optimizeable 'Strikers,' and that's it.

The only issue is the 10% of "archetypical fighters" that you can't pull out well. Brawlers*, battleragers**, and gladiators***, wrestlers**** lack the mechanical support to even do there gimmicks right. Cavaliers sort of work but rely on a feat tax and have naming issues as the fighting style for lances is "Dueling". And more "mental fighters" lack support and lose a lot of power for increasing mental ability scores with no combat gains for it. Then there are setting and racial archetypes like bladesingers, dwarven defenders, breach gnomes, Etc Etc

You're right that there are a few flavors of melee-badassedness that do fall through the cracks between the Fighter, Barbarian, and Monk.

I'm still kinda upset there's no generic rogue.

Each class should probably have a fairly 'generic' sub-class as a catch-all customizeable for concepts not handled by the rest of it's sub-classes.

But, overall I agree with Mearls. They were so focused on getting the simple and complex fighter working, they missed so much.

For instance, they missed creating a complex fighter. Though the very idea that 'complex' is something to aim for is a little silly. When the fighter has been good, yes, it's been a little more complex: complex to build in 3.x, tactical complexity in 4e - but there has to be a point to the complexity. 5e was too focused on the 'classic game,' when the fighter was utterly simplistic, to be open to archetype ideas that might have called for any meaningful level of complexity.

 

[Jester David]

This is where I have to whole-heartedly disagree. There is a difference between adding flavor and replacing flavor. A clean slate makes few assumptions about who or what your character is. When you say, "my fighter is an errol finn-like swashbuckler," everybody at the table just hears that picture and fills it in. Now, any extrapolations and interpolations about your character will be made from that (flavorful) image. When you say, "my character is a warlock who made a deal with a timeless alien being," everybody at the table says, "Great Old Ones. Lovecraft. Ok, I know what that's about." And they start to fill in your character based on their reading of the PHB (which you might not have read too carefully, you naughty first time player!), or their broader knowledge of Mythos.

That's an unfair example. In the one, the character gives an example outside the game (Errol Flynn) as well as another descriptor (swashbuckler). There's also no description of subclass. In the warlock part of the example, you're referring to something right out of the book and not really adding anything.

Which is the whole damn point. If someone shows up at the table and just pulls a subclass randomly and says "my character is a warlock who made a deal with a timeless alien being" they don't need to add anything more. People can fill up the character with outside knowledge from the PHB and Lovecraft. But if someone says "I'm a human fighter" or "I'm a dragonborn battle master" we have nothing to work with.

It takes just as much effort to say "my dragonborn fighter moves like Errol Flynn as he buckles his swash" as it does to say "my warlock was dying and made a pact with a psychopomp in exchange for a longer life" or "my grandfather sold his soul a beining known as Aseoth and I have inherited his debt". The inherent flavour of the warlock doesn't mean you can't go your own route, saying a Fey patron was really a deceptive arch devil, the Fiend was an elemental primordial, or the Great Old One was a ilithid Elder Brain.

You're not bound by the provided flavour any more than you are restricted by the example names or suggested personality traits.

 

[Jester David]

I'm going to disagree politely. I've seen many, many new players over my years of gaming and in my experience it is much easier to explain to someone that they need to create a background than it is to explain the concept of "refluffing". Some people never do really get that. And some GMs loathe refluffing. If there was a "chevalier" sub-class that specialized in mounted combat I promise you that some GMs would balk at refluffing it as a mongol warrior, while others would be happy to let you play it as a steam-punk engineer on a coal-powered brass horse.

This argument is essentially "we can't have X because some DMs are dicks". Which isn't a particularly great argument as it can be applied equally to every side or position.

For example, some DMs might balk at people not having flavour in their characters and demand all PCs have some story. Which means more work. So, with that argument, all classes and subclasses need to have flavour so players have less work. Because some DMs are dicks.

I prefer to argue from positions that assume most Dungeon Masters are reasonable human beings whom you can bargain with. Because if the DM is a dick, you have larger problems than not being able to reflavour your mount into a steampunk iron horse.

The fighter is the broadest concept in gaming. It covers everything from cavemen to samurai to space marines. It needs to be a flexible class, and in 5e it is. Especially with the background mechanics split out from the classes, and so much crunch moved to feats.

And renaming the "champion" into "the gladiator" and giving it flavour related to be trained to fight on behalf of other people does nothing to fundamentally change the class.

Also I have to disagree with your assertion that there is no difference in difficulty in refluffing different classes or subclasses. The more baggage the class has, the more work needs to be done. The warlock comes with lots of baggage in the form of the pact, and it's various granted abilities. See Redrick's warlock story for an example. A class without attached baggage is inherently easier to refluff because it has fewer parts that need to be accounted for.

There's no mechanics that say a warlock has to have a patron. Rename "pacts" into "schools" or "aspects" and that baggage goes away.

The warlock chassis could be used to make an arcane version of paladins that swear and oath to their nation, be it the deceptive elven kingdoms, the forgeborn dwarves, or the unhinged halflings.


It's always better to have something than nothing. It's always better to have the choice to create and add lore than have no choice and have to create lore. Because you can always choose to ignore what's there.