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

[Andor]

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.

No, no it's not. A GM is not a dick for not allowing refluffing. In my experience there are usually two reasons for a GM not allowing refluffing.
1) They are a novice GM and want to see how things work as written before they tinker, which is understandable.
2) They have a strong vision for their world and you cannot refluff a Warlock as a rogue puppeteer who throws animated care bear dolls instead of eldritch bolts because no such thing exists in their world. Which I'm delighted to see frankly as I usually find campaigns without a strong vision on the part of the GM get unfocused and fade away as soon as some new shiny appears.
To assume you can refluff without hindrance shows a player entitlement attitude, and to claim there is no valid reason not to allow refluffing beyond the GM being a dick furthers that assumption.

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.

Many problems here.
1) A GM who demands a story is not a dick. I've played in a campaign where it took 2 years for a player to give his character a name. It did not make him easier to work with.
2) You are ignoring the second sentence of my post. New players often find it easier to create than to rewrite.
3) You are ignoring the last paragraph of my post. More pieces is equal to more work. Period. Can I rewrite Steven King's "The Stand" to be a light hearted romp about gummi bears and race cars? Sure, but why the hell would I? It would be much easier to start with a blank slate if what I wanted was that different from the source material. Hooks to build off of are helpful for writing a story. Mechanically supported class features stop being hooks and become obstacles the more of them you have to account for.
4) Why are you insisting that a characters story must spring from his sub-class of all places? Class is what you do. Sub-Class is how you prefer to do it. Your characters back story is not about what they do, but why they do it. And for that things like race and (especially) background are at least as important as a sub-class.

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.

No. No, it's not. A Bechamel sauce is flavorless white goo. It's also referred to as a "Mother sauce" because hundreds of wonderful things can be made by adding to it. That would not be possible if it started with a base of rosemary or habenero, because then the choices you could make would be constrained by the existing structure.

One of the more common complaints I've seen about 5e is how few non-spellcasting classes there are. If stripping things out or refluffing them were as simple as you claim none of those complaints would have been made. Everyone would have simply cried "Oh, no worries, I'll just refluff my rangers spells as herbalism and woodlore." And yet complaints were made.

So... we shouldn't have inherent flavour because new players who don't read the entries and are being DMed by new DMs, and don't discuss their character concept with their DM might have problems?

Actually no one here is saying inherent flavor is always bad. The argument is that it doesn't have to be mandatory. You seem to be arguing that simplicity is bad, inherently. There should be no vanilla option because you can always pick out the chocolate chips. It is really that offensive to see one tub of vanilla next to all the rocky road and moose tracks?

 

[SkidAce]

I follow and endorse any discussion that uses ice cream as an example.....mmmmmmmmm.

 

[Minigiant]

I follow and endorse any discussion that uses ice cream as an example.....mmmmmmmmm.

Just because you can put chocolate, strawberry, or caramel syrup on vanilla ice cream doesn't mean when don't need chocolate ice cream or pralines and cream. You'll just have bad chocolate ice cream if you mix topping syrup in vanilla.

The REAL PROBLEM is the cake elitists hogging up 1/3 the desert table with a bunch of angel's food and yellow cakes with 7+ frostings each. How many cakes do we need?

Pie and Ice Cream forever.

 

[SkidAce]

Just because you can put chocolate, strawberry, or caramel syrup on vanilla ice cream doesn't mean when don't need chocolate ice cream or pralines and cream. Youll just have bad chocolate ice cream if you mix topping syrup in vanillam

The REAL PROBLEM is the cake elitists hogging up 1/3 the desert table with a bunch of pain white and yellow cakes with 7+ frostings each. How many cakes do we need?

Pie and Ice Cream forever.

The cake is a lie....

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yes, there's a bit of chicken-or-the-egg going on here, I'm sure.

While I understand there's legacy stuff and marketing research, the other side of the coin is "if you design it, they will come."

It seems clear that the fighter is viewed as inadequate, as each edition does try to improve it. First with % Strength, then Specialization, then C&T, then Bonus Feats, then marking & exploits, then MDD's in the playtest, now styles & maneuvers.

But, things are tried, then given to everyone else or abandoned in favor of something else. Conversely, when casters get a new toy or have an old restriction removed, it tends to carry forward.

You raise a good example of cleric sub-classes. Is EVERY cleric going to match up to a specific domain? Definitely not. But can you get close enough with 7-8 sub-classes? Probably, yeah. I mean, imagine if the cleric's sub-classes had been designed:

• Battle Cleric
• Support Cleric
• Scholarly Cleric

Maybe people would be happier with that? Dunno. But this reduces the sub-class to its mechanical function, much like the fighter.

The fighter sub-classes aren't really divided by mechanical function, they all have the same function: multi-attack DPR. The Champion enhances that with crits, the Battlemaster with CS dice and the EK with spells, but they're all essentially 'strikers.'

I'm not sure what you had in mind with your hypothetical sub-classes, but they're at least suggestive of traditional 'tank,' and 'healer' roles for the first two, while the last sounds like it could be almost wizardly.

I actually think the idea to have the Basic classes use Basic generic sub-classes makes a lot of sense (e.g. Champion, Thief, Generalist Wizard, Pantheon Cleric), and then have the PHB sub-classes be where you can find the flavorful identity sub-classes.

That sounds like it'd've supported the Basic/Standard dichotomy well.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I'll just add my comment in that I really like the fighter as presented in 5E and do not follow the criticism. In play it works out very much exactly as I want, and the three fighter subtypes work across a variety of fighter interpretations. My favorite class in 5E actually.

 

[Wik]

[MENTION=40177]Wik[/MENTION]
It's a question of depth. A lot of it comes down to what I am now dubbing the Cavalier Factor.

For some players to feel satisfied they're playing a cavalier, they'd be happy with a horse, some heavy armor, a noble background, lawful good alignment, and maybe the Mounted Combat feat. Maybe less than that.

For some player to feel satisfied they're playing a cavalier, they'd be happy with a horse with character traits, customizable heavy armor, a noble title and followers, a cavalier's code, and abilities letting them perform amazing feats of horsemanship. Maybe more than that.

It's a good name for the issue, and I'm firmly in the first group. Though I can live with 5e letting all of those cavalier abilities you mention to exist. It's fine to have a bit of flavour in a side class, SO LONG as it's in addition to some much broader ideas. Also, your version doesn't mention weapon specialization, which is something I'm huge set against in 5e, for reasons mentioned above.

A "Cavalier" variant would be all aces with me. BUT, I think 5e would be much better suited to have a "mounted warrior" variant or something like that, which has in the class descrption something along the lines of "this could be a holy knight, a cavalier, a persian immortal, or a dwarf on an angry boar". I think letting players fluff their mechanics is the best approach for an RPG. I've done the other games, and they're not for me.

I believe D&D 5e should be able to handle both scenarios, and the place the system is best equipped to do that is in class and sub-class design.

I think it should mostly cater towards the first side of things, because that side allows individual groups to look towards their own play interests more readily. I don't like how in the last two decades, D&D has been more and more about designers making flavour choices on what D&D is and isn't.

D&D 5e may not be as rules-intensive as a Pathfinder (and definitely not as heavy as Shadowrun!), but it's also not as rules-light as Savage Worlds or OD&D (and definitely not as light as RISUS!). There's room enough for flavorful mechanical variety within each class without bloat.

Mechanical variety? Yes. But too much flavour in there, and it becomes a case of "well, you have a cavalier. Why isn't there a phalanx? And then, well, you have a phalanx... why isn't there a legionnaire?" I'd much prefer we keep the game painted in broad strokes.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Why can't we just have both and all be happy These are great generic archetypes (as in a bunch of rules - subclasses). Let's not change them, but we can still have some fighter actual archetypes too, yeah?

Some extra options to go with the 2 subclasses presented, even if there is a lot of overlap would be cool by me. A master fencer that has 'some' of the BM options that suit, but other more dueling-styled powers too.

That's my 2 cents. There is room for both. Some people just see it as a pity there was not both in the PHB. Doesn't mean what is there is bad, it is just some flavourful, actual archetypes, would be welcome too.

 

[Quickleaf]

Mechanical variety? Yes. But too much flavour in there, and it becomes a case of "well, you have a cavalier. Why isn't there a phalanx? And then, well, you have a phalanx... why isn't there a legionnaire?" I'd much prefer we keep the game painted in broad strokes.

It's a question of sufficient coverage of archetypes and play-styles. Does 8 sub-classes give you sufficient coverage for a Wizard? Maybe you feel it's far too many, or maybe you feel it's missing a "generalist scholar type"? EDIT: As an aside, I would agree that wizard needs a "scholarly tradition" for a generalist, and that should be in the Basic D&D rules. In fact, I homebrewed one and it's in the Class Database here on ENWorld.

Similarly, the question becomes: How many sub-classes gives sufficient coverage for a Fighter in terms of archetypes and play-styles?

I love playing fighters, but the fighter sub-classes don't capture my imagination. Champion is underwhelming both narratively (what *is* a champion?) and mechanically. "Battle master" seems like something every fighter should be, right? He is a master of battle, yeah no sh&t! Eldritch Knight is great for corner-case scenarios, but not a standard fighter.

On the other hand, the wizard sub-classes do capture my imagination because they're clearly *about* something. An evoker is thematically different from an illusionist or an esoteric transmuter, and not just mechanically different. Evokers tend to be showy war mages. Illusionists tend to be crafty and sneaky. Transmuters tend to be alchemical philosophers.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that the rules of the Fighter class do not support character identity. Rather, it is up to the player's role-playing and selection of "peripherals" (background, skills, feats, equipment, roleplaying traits) to provide their fighter PC with identity.

OTOH, while these "peripherals" are essential to every other character's identity as well, a wizard character gets an extra layer of identity from their choice of sub-class. Evokers tend to be showy war mages. Illusionists tend to be crafty and sneaky. Transmuters tend to be alchemical philosophers. And certain sub-class features support those generalizations. This is great for new players, and even old players interested in "playing to type." At the same time, the sub-class features don't lock you into playing the philosopher Transmuter or sneaky Illusionist -- player who prefer to play out-of-the-box characters can still play an madcap explosive wielding gnomish Transmuter or a master of fear and dreams Illusionist.

When we look back to older iterations of the fighter, there WERE rules supporting identity in the form of followers & strongholds. They didn't lock step you into a certain character type besides, broadly, a "leader of men."

So what I'm advocating for is Fighter sub-classes that thematically add something just like wizard sub-classes thematically add something to the character.

YMMV.

 

[Eric V]

Totally agree about other subclasses feeling different both in terms of flavour AND mechanics (though the druid and ranger subclasses are, perhaps, a little too similar IMO); the fighter seems to be the only one where the difference is in mechanics, period.