D&D 5E the dex warrior - why make a strength based one?

[Erechel]

Strength saves are awfully common. I've proven that. They are, indeed, much more common than Dex in the first 10 levels. As soon as you start fighting dragons, dex saves suddenly become important, but Strength saves have place too. Unless you are fighting a whole lot of spellcasters, you don't have to worry about Dex saves. A warhorse, a lion, a worg, all of them have Strength saves too, and it's very easy to grapple someone with a strong character or beast.

Also, it seems that your adventure include nothing more than fights in featureless plains. One thing you are not considering is how much cover hampers archers, and how much it doesn't hamper melee. Cover is huge (half cover equals 2 to AC and Dex saves, Three quarters cover is 5/5), and it's easy to come by: a tree, a lapid, a big dude with a shield (my character). But a melee character is almost never hampered by cover: it just moves to avoid giving it. And cover helps too to avoid that pesky lightning bolts. Also, if you worry about spellcasters or dex saves, just pick Shieldmaster feat: your common shield gives you +2 to your dex save, and if you pass it you don't give a about the fireball or dragon's breath. Not that a fighter will worry too much about damage (it can self-heal, after all, although arguably not a lot), but it helps.

Actually, the best use for the feat is strength-locked too: the ability to knock someone prone, and gain advantage on your 1d8+7 attacks. If you are a champion, this is golden: your probability to crit suddenly improve to more than 20% each strike. In a 5 round fight you will crit once at least without multiattack. You also can use other awesome feats: Heavy Armor Master gives you +1 to Strength and DR 3 against the most common damages, besides the better AC. This is huge: most monsters deal damage by multiattack, so it actually matters a lot in late levels (Paladin 12 and Warrior 10 in a party I'm dming). You have one monster that deals 30 DPR by 3 attacks? It suddenly deals 21. Offensive and defensive at the same time, the same as Shield Master (remember, shove is an Athletics check).

Even when you aren't in combat, Athletics is a catch'it all form of exploration based checks: you want to climb a mountain or a tower? Athletics. You got to swim? Athletics. You got to force the entry to a crypt? Athletics. You got to catch that big ball of rock falling? Athletics. You got to break free from chains? Athletics. You got to break free another creature from chains? Athletics. Are you beneath a net? Athletics. You got to jump over a pit? Strength. And so on and so on. All of them have made their way in my adventures, and other people's adventures which I've seen. Yes, many characters can circumvent this tasks with spells or ingenuity, but those will also fail a lot or expend valuable resources. Also, there can be nasty surprises (oh, why the flying wizard fall to the ground and die? Of course: strong winds (look at it in the DMG). I cannot say how many times the rogue and the wizard with 20 dex falled to the spike pits because they aren't strong enough to jump over them, and failed their checks, while the paladin and the warrior laughed at the other side. How many times my bulky guy saved my fast dex friend from falling to its death-

No, Strength isn't underpowered. Strength is underrated. Of course, Dexterity is useful, but isn't "da big stat".

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I in fact limited attribute bonus on ranged attacks. I added another range category at half normal range which allows adding attribute bonus to damage. I am inclined to xhange it again to 30ft... the former point blank range. I am also inclined to limit sneak attack damage to 30ft too.

 

[Zardnaar]

Without feats dex is OP. With feats OP at range a bit meh melee

 

[CapnZapp]

Hello

A basic but big change when comparing 5e to 3e is the impact of dex. Dexterity has always been a very useful ability - it's tied in with more skills, esp important for stealth, and can also save your life (by say, catching yourself before falling over the edge of the waterfall or whatever). Strength's uses were more limited - a few skills, more carrying capacity but it had one big important use: hurting stuff.

Finesse characters were possible in 3e and quite viable in fact - their high dexterity often made them decent tankers, they were very mobile and good at stealth and acrobatics. The downside was they didn't do as much damage.

Now in 5e the master fencer (dex melee fighter) is just as dangerous as a strength based fighter. Because of how the AC works in 5e the ACs can be about the same, and the damage too - a high dex fighter doesn't try to cut off your head, he stabs you in the eye. Sure he can't carry as much as the strength fighter, but he doesn't have to be wearing heavy armor either.

Is this a problem? Well, probably not. Where it gets really problematic IMO is when archery comes into play.

It used to be that the archer was pretty weak in melee. She didn't have melee weapons focus, and her melee damage was low. In fact her archery damage wasn't super high either unless she took a high dex high strength character (but then her con usually suffered). Now since dex counts for damage, she only needs two good stats - dex and con for suitability. And if she is forced into melee? Well she's pretty good now with a finesse weapon!

If the party is in a situation where ranged attack are much superior, the dex melee fighter (that master fencer) will be highly effective - perhaps not as much as the specialist archer, but still far superior to the strength-based fighter.

The other advantages of dex (stealth, skills, life saving stuff) still remain. And ranged fighting is more effective for other reasons too (no penalties for firing into melee, cover and ranged penalties can be eliminated with a feat, ranged fighting style gives +2 accuracy). I'm thus left to conclude that in 5e dex is now vastly superior to strength.

Now, this is probably old news for you folks who aren't still learning 5e. I'm sure there were threads about this previously so... what were the conclusions? Am I wrong?

edit: Just to be clear, I consider the root of the problem to be the addition of dex to ranged damage

You are completely correct.

WotC took away no less than eleven different checks and limitations on Dex/ranged combat.

No wonder you're only ever going to play a slow axe Dwarf for role-playing reasons, because tactically and optimization-wise it's simply not as useful as ranged.

Anyone telling you otherwise is simply blinded by his or her own expectations. But if you build your character in a rational way, you'll find Wizards simply forgot to ensure there's good reasons to go melee, that have been present in fantasy rpgs since the dawn of time.

Either that, or they caved to the pressure of all the people that demanded their lithe dexterous special snowflake can deal just as much damage, and simply figured nobody would notice the fundamental assumption of the fantasy genre - the preeminence of melee - was gone until well after they sold most of their PHBs anyway...

As for solutions, I analyzed your suggestion but found it hurt too many archetypes for it really work.

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[Libramarian]

Either that, or they caved to the pressure of all the people that demanded their lithe dexterous special snowflake can deal just as much damage

I tend to think the goal was to appeal to women, who stereotypically prefer lithe dexterous archers over strong melee brutes. It's a kind of hypercorrection to the old rule where female characters had a lower strength cap than males.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Hello

A basic but big change when comparing 5e to 3e is the impact of dex. Dexterity has always been a very useful ability - it's tied in with more skills, esp important for stealth, and can also save your life (by say, catching yourself before falling over the edge of the waterfall or whatever). Strength's uses were more limited - a few skills, more carrying capacity but it had one big important use: hurting stuff.

Finesse characters were possible in 3e and quite viable in fact - their high dexterity often made them decent tankers, they were very mobile and good at stealth and acrobatics. The downside was they didn't do as much damage.

Now in 5e the master fencer (dex melee fighter) is just as dangerous as a strength based fighter. Because of how the AC works in 5e the ACs can be about the same, and the damage too - a high dex fighter doesn't try to cut off your head, he stabs you in the eye. Sure he can't carry as much as the strength fighter, but he doesn't have to be wearing heavy armor either.

Is this a problem? Well, probably not. Where it gets really problematic IMO is when archery comes into play.

It used to be that the archer was pretty weak in melee. She didn't have melee weapons focus, and her melee damage was low. In fact her archery damage wasn't super high either unless she took a high dex high strength character (but then her con usually suffered). Now since dex counts for damage, she only needs two good stats - dex and con for suitability. And if she is forced into melee? Well she's pretty good now with a finesse weapon!

If the party is in a situation where ranged attack are much superior, the dex melee fighter (that master fencer) will be highly effective - perhaps not as much as the specialist archer, but still far superior to the strength-based fighter.

The other advantages of dex (stealth, skills, life saving stuff) still remain. And ranged fighting is more effective for other reasons too (no penalties for firing into melee, cover and ranged penalties can be eliminated with a feat, ranged fighting style gives +2 accuracy). I'm thus left to conclude that in 5e dex is now vastly superior to strength.

Now, this is probably old news for you folks who aren't still learning 5e. I'm sure there were threads about this previously so... what were the conclusions? Am I wrong?

edit: Just to be clear, I consider the root of the problem to be the addition of dex to ranged damage

You are right. Dex is the god stat in 5e. The best solutions imo: (i) no finesse weapons (all melee weapons use Str) and no crossbow expert feat (ie no way of eliminating disad if the archer gets caught in melee). Then both Str weapons and Dex ranged attackers have their usefulness/place.

 

[Ancalagon]

Thread necromancy? Why?

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[CapnZapp]

I tend to think the goal was to appeal to women, who stereotypically prefer lithe dexterous archers over strong melee brutes. It's a kind of hypercorrection to the old rule where female characters had a lower strength cap than males.

I don't think that at all.

The overwhelming majority of D&D customers remain men, and they want to play fast and nimble characters too. Compare action heroes of today: the Stathem and Damons are much less obvious Strength builds than the Neggerneggers and Lundgrens of yesteryear. Also cue asian influences.

Bringing up gender only risks derailing the discussion entirely, and draws focus away from the core issue here.

---

So, let's instead posit the question:

Does the fantasy genre need Strength as paramount fighting ability?

I would say yes, it does.

Otherwise combat tends to become much more modern in that distance and cover and kiting tactics become viable methods, which completely overshadows the "Conan fighting style" where you manly wade into a horde of orcs, swatting aside their cowardly arrows, and then cleave them three at a time.

I would argue the basic rules engine of D&D is geared towards melee combat, with low movement rates and short spell ranges and a massive focus on melee monsters.

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In 5th edition, with almost no checks on ranged fire, the tactic to stay at a distance and shoot everything dead simply becomes too good, too easy.

The only way to solve this is to ensure there is a definite cost to the quality of "range". Having range (more than 30 ft anyway, since most monsters can close 30 ft and still unload its best attacks) needs to carry significant consequences, such as lower damage, frailer builds and/or a susceptibility to being "caught" in melee.

Begin by removing the stupendous +2 bonus to ranged from Archery Fighting Style. Crucially; ban, remove or nerf the two feats Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert.

That at least gets rid of the most obvious excesses. Then I'd recommend playtesting to see if your players still pick ranged combatants, and thus, if further nerfs are needed.

Remember, 3rd edition was a huge success. And it had no less than eleven (11) checks and limitations on archers that 5E made the huge mistake of removing.

 

[CapnZapp]

You are right. Dex is the god stat in 5e. The best solutions imo: (i) no finesse weapons (all melee weapons use Str) and (ii) no crossbow expert feat (ie no way of eliminating disad if the archer gets caught in melee). Then both Str weapons and Dex ranged attackers have their usefulness/place.

I would argue removing (ii) is much more of a pressing issue than (i), since at least with finesse weapons you remain a melee combatant.

 

[Mephista]

Ara ara. The "Dex is ultimately superior to Str" argument again. The only way to tell is to actually run the game and see. Game balance shifts depending on the game.

Now back to your regularly scheduled fun.