D&D 5E (2014) The Fighter Problem

[Wuzzard]

Champion fighter is my favorite class. Just like to roll me some crits. GWM makes it better.


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[Zardnaar]

Magic items can be anything and you're arguing the players are entirely metagaming. Which is fair given that's your experience, but neither is a knock on how the class is built. But even if that's the case, sword and board is a fine option, and Shield Master is a fine feat to go with it. But maybe more importantly this might be a good argument for more feats to choose from.

As for cookie-cutter, here comes another Paladin with Aura of Protection. Here comes another raging Barbarian. Here comes another archer Hunter Ranger. All the other fighter-types you mentioned are even more cookie-cutter than a Fighter who at least has 6 good feats to choose from. Why aren't those other fighter-types viewed as cookie cutter as well? My guess is it's because of hold-over prejudices from prior editions regarding what feats "should" be rather than actual lack of versatility with fighters.

Magic items can be anything true but some are a lot more common than others in official adventures.

Is there even a magic polearm in the APs?

 

[Mistwell]

Magic items can be anything true but some are a lot more common than others in official adventures.

Is there even a magic polearm in the APs?

I don't know. We've mostly been playing homebrew (and I guess apparently according to surveys a majority of game do as well). But I am currently playing a fighter in Tales from the Yawning Portal with a polearm so I guess I will find out!

Regardless, doesn't Shield Master and Sentinel work pretty well with sword and board too? Don't fighters gain benefit from a magic shield (which is pretty common) where archer rangers and raging barbarians often don't? I am starting to suspect this is more of a competition between Paladin and Fighter rather than Fighter and all of Barbarian, Ranger and Paladin.

 

[Ashkelon]

[MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] I think you are overestimating the value of a single feat. A bonus feat at level 6 amounts to little more than +1 to attack and damage rolls. At 6th level the fighter will have 18 Strength and Great Weapon Master while the paladin will have 16 Strength and Great Weapon Master. The +1 to attack and damage rolls doesn't really compete with +Charisma to all saves for the paladin and his allies, utility spells, and smite spells.

Sure many class features aren't better than a feat, but many class features are. The UA ranger's dash as a bonus action, monks fast movement and stunning fist, blackguards charisma to damage dealt, UA blade pact invocations, rogues cunning action, barbarians rage and reckless attack, paladin smites, and so on. Overall, the fighter class doesn't come with all that many potent class features on his own.

Compare the fighter and barbarian at 8th level for example. The fighter has a feat, a fighting style, and action surge. The barbarian has +10 foot speed, 4 rages per day, reckless attack, advantage to Dex saves, advantage on initiative rolls and the ability to be immune to surprise. So while the fighter can take the mobile feat to match the barbarian's mobility, or the alert feat to match the barbarians immunity to surprise and bonus to initiative, the fighter only has one bonus feat so can't match the barbarian in both. Furthermore, the level 8 fighter cannot match the durability of the barbarian, nor can he match the damage of the barbarian, even if he uses his bonus feat to try and shore up one of those areas.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Magic items can be anything and you're arguing the players are entirely metagaming. Which is fair given that's your experience, but neither is a knock on how the class is built. But even if that's the case, sword and board is a fine option, and Shield Master and Sentinel are fine feats to go with it. But maybe more importantly this might be a good argument for more feats to choose from.

It's not meta-gaming if it's information that the characters should reasonably be aware of. If all of the stories they've heard about magic weapons are about longswords, and none of them are about polearms, then that's something they should take into consideration when deciding which weapon types to focus on.

 

[Sacrosanct]

[MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] I think you are overestimating the value of a single feat. A bonus feat at level 6 amounts to little more than +1 to attack and damage rolls. .

No it's not. For one, a feat gives the fighter a ton of options for non combat utility that people keep saying is missing. Or it allows a fighter to cast spells. Or shove people for bonus actions. Or force them to suffer AoO. Or any number of other things. A feat is NOT little more than a +1 to attack and damage rolls.

 

[Corwin]

A feat is NOT little more than a +1 to attack and damage rolls.

As if that was even the limits of what a +2 increase in an ability score does...

 

[Mistwell]

[MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] I think you are overestimating the value of a single feat. A bonus feat at level 6 amounts to little more than +1 to attack and damage rolls. At 6th level the fighter will have 18 Strength and Great Weapon Master while the paladin will have 16 Strength and Great Weapon Master. The +1 to attack and damage rolls doesn't really compete with +Charisma to all saves for the paladin and his allies, utility spells, and smite spells.

You're assuming ASI, and I am specifying feats in the context of replying to Zard, who uses feats and favors the most powerful feats in the game. Let's not play this shell game where in one thread a guy is talking about how powerful Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, Sentinel, Resilient, etc. are on the one hand, and then pretending none of those exist and it's only an ASI on the other hand. Keeping it consistent, Zard believes in using feats, and the most powerful ones, and he's the one making the assessment that the Fighter is lagging behind. So in that context, we should be assuming the feats, not the ASI. And not the Actor feat - but the powerful ones. The ones we all acknowledge tend to be more powerful than an ASI for the same fighter-type. The ones that give an extra attack as a bonus action, or an extra attack as a reaction, or which do +10 damage every hit, or which incapacitate a foe, those feats.

 

[Sacrosanct]

As if that was even the limits of what a +2 increase in an ability score does...

Exactly. A feat is mean to be roughly equivalent to a +2 bonus, which is not just +1 to attack rolls and damage, but also a +1 to any saving throws and skill checks, if applicable.

But no feat actually grants a base bonus to hit and damage (why would it, that's why you have the ASI option instead of a feat). Feats are meant to give you a significant bonus set of abilities that can impact any of the three pillars. How big of an impact probably depends a lot on personal playstyle. But anyone viewing feats through only a DPR lens is missing the point, I think.

 

[Mistwell]

It's not meta-gaming if it's information that the characters should reasonably be aware of.

It's not information the characters should reasonably be aware of. Magic items are rare in 5e to begin with, and the default magic item generation method is random. Their awareness should be, "We have no idea what magic we might find." Zard was saying he finds those items because he's playing adventure paths, but WOTC has already said based on their surveys a majority of players are not even playing the published adventures but are using homebrew settings and adventures, and those "stories" the characters would have heard are not the FUTURE adventures they might be going on so they don't represent what's in the world based on the past stories. And, I addressed even Zard's experienced and mentioned feats that would go well with longswords and armor and shields and the predominant magic items for fighter-types anyway.