D&D 5E STR and DEX fighter stupid?

[bid]

The basic fighter should be Str16 Dex14 Con14 Int10 Wis12 Cha 10 (with racials), or something close to it. Your priorities should be GWM, sentinel and Str20. That gets you to level 12 without improving your Dex at all.

GWM is 15% extra damage and hard to avoid, but you could replace sentinel by Dex16 and use archery style to get hit+5 on ranged weapons too. Or just grab alert instead of Dex16.

There are too many juicy feats to waste 5 ASI on capping both Str and Dex. There's life outside of combat.

 

[krakistophales]

When you declare that your character doesn't want to do something because that's the realm of others you are declaring that your character feels that such a task if of zero importance to them. Your character has decided that certain tasks are below them, and therefore should not be done. Let the others do it.

That isn't heroic. I build heroes.

Now you're just putting words in my mouth. You can extrapolate whatever meaning you want from what I'm saying, except when I'm telling you exactly what I mean. I never said that anything was beneath my character just because I don't want to invest stats in being good at it. That's why d and d is a team game, where one guy specializes in one thing, the other guy the second thing, and the other guy the third thing, so that, as a unit, you're prepared for anything. The very idea of having each member of the team prepared for anything is preposterous.

Being great at what your character is supposed to do is heroic. You build heroes? I hear they're handing out medals in the lobby. You should pick yours up.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The option of being a little bit more stealthy or actually succeding the occassional dex saving throw and being first in the initiative or at least not being last is well worth trading 2 points of con. This is the advantage of a standard human. You can with point buy or rolling reasonably not have more than one dump stat.

16,14,14,14,12,9 is actually a very very good array.

...as long as you don't start every combat at close range... which in normal games is about 1 out of 10 tomes maybe.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What is this save?

The Mind Blast attack from a Mind Flayer, which can completely stop a party dead in its tracks for up to a minute. It's not so bad if you have a Wizard in the party, or if you're only fighting one Mind Flayer, but it's a potential TPK if the entire party is using Int as a dump stat; even if the party survives, you might just have to be okay with sitting out the entire fight.

And of course, a Mind Flayer in tandem with anything else is a substantial force multiplier.

 

[Herobizkit]

The very idea of having each member of the team prepared for anything is preposterous.

Generally speaking, yes. Every team member should be prepared for most things, though, and even the barest of PC's 'should' have:

a) a ranged attack (otherwise they can't fight flying or hard-to-reach opponents)
b) a melee attack (otherwise they're all-out defending or disengaging, which isn't doing damage)
c) a dagger (because you never know when you're going to get swallowed)

(Note that C covers A and B but is not exclusive to either)

As for my table, I go out of my way to be sure that most of what I do doesn't step on the toes/concepts of other players... and/or I play a Bard (or Druid, to my surprise) and do all the things.

To the OP - if you're working on a Dex/Wis fighter, you could always double-dip those stats and be a Monk. ^_^

 

[UngeheuerLich]

you don't have to be prepared for everything, but you may not complain if you can't always do what you are best at. If your concept is low dex, heavy armor no stealth, good luck surprising anyone. You are definitely a liability for your team sometimes.
If you dump strength no athletics, good luck climbing to an advantageous posotion or to resist aome annoying force movements or proning attacks.
I had people in groups I played dumping stats because they thought it won't play a role... and everytime there were sotuations where they wished they didn't...
Neither dumping str, nor dumping dex is totally advisable. Same for Charisma or int. There is always the one check you fail by one or two, no matter what you do. And there are always those times where 1 more damage doesn't make a difference at all...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

15,14,14,14,13,10 Is also an array for a human that is quite good. You make up for one less skill proficiency by having good stats all around. You are as good as any race without perfectly matching stats in your main stat and you are quick enough to reach 20 in your main if that is your goal.

 

[Mephista]

Is playing a STR / DEX fighter a dumb idea? No, not really. Is it non-optimal? That, however, is very true. D&D lends itself to specialization instead of generalization.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm just not sure if a 14 in dex vs wisdom is really cost effective. There are many more skills that rely on wis than dex, and just getting +2 to init, ranged attacks, saves, and dex skills isn't that great.

At least as good as choosing WIS instead. I think you underestimate just how many damage spells require a DEX save. DEX saves come up at least as often as WIS save in all of our games, and you get attack and initiative bonuses on top of that? I don't think the choice of WIS over DEX is nearly as clear cut at you're trying to say it is.

If I'm wearing heavy armor anyway, I have disadvantage on stealth so +2 means nothing, and why would I want to sneak around anyway?

Because in 5e, IIRC, the whole party needs to attempt a stealth check when trying to sneak by.

And in all my games, where one we are at level 7 and another level 12, I've never once had to draw a bow or felt that flying enemies were such a huge issue that they couldn't be dealt with.

I'm pretty confident in saying that your group must be that very tiny exception, if you've reached level 7 and 12 and never had to use a ranged weapon.

The basic fighter should be Str16 Dex14 Con14 Int10 Wis12 Cha 10 (with racials), or something close to it. Your priorities should be GWM, sentinel and Str20. That gets you to level 12 without improving your Dex at all..

The basic fighter (and every class) should be what you want to play. Your priorities is choosing the options you'll have more fun with. Theme and archetype first, math later. D&D is a game, meant to have fun with those at the table. Not a math contest about who has the best DPS player unless that happens to be the way your group has fun. But I'm betting for most it's not.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Is playing a STR / DEX fighter a dumb idea? No, not really. Is it non-optimal? That, however, is very true. D&D lends itself to specialization instead of generalization.

I disagree. It doesn't lend towards one or the other. It's a playstyle preference, and that's a human behavior thing, not a D&D thing. Generalized PCs are more than effective in D&D because there's so many things your PC can be doing in the game, from combat, to exploration, to interaction. If anything, specialization sets you up for failure at some point. And then we get forum threads about how D&D is broken because your (general you) super specialized GWF should have options to do ranged damage as much as the archer ranger because unless you can be as effective as every other class at everything, the game is not balanced and broken.