D&D 5E Mission Impossible?!

[Seramus]

Because the design balance point doesn't change regardless if many DMs ignore it.

It was a foolish choice of balance point since almost nobody has eight encounters a day (even including skill challenges). It certainly happens sometimes, but you can sit and watch any FLGS table, any youtube D&D stream, or study the natural pacing of any official module... and a full eight encounters is rare as hell.

But I completely agree with you that 13th Age uses a great system, and have started using it myself.

 

[Zardnaar]

Generally back ground and go Dex based with a tertiary starving something like charisma.

Fighters get a bonus feat/ASI level 6 compared to every other class so you could use it in more skills or whatever without giving up to much in the way of combat use. You can still have 20 Dex level 8 and a feat.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Feats are fundamental to the functioning of the Fighter class. If you don't use feats your fighters are broken.

 

[Oofta]

It was a foolish choice of balance point since almost nobody has eight encounters a day (even including skill challenges).

I'll have to tell my group that, they'll be quite relieved. Use the alternate rest rules to make a short rest overnight and a long rest is a week or more if you aren't doing dungeon crawls. If you are doing dungeon crawls, don't allow long rests in dangerous areas. Don't assume you'll have a long rest after a session. Done.

It's easy to overcome in a home game; admittedly not so much so in an AL game. But those (in my experience) tend to be combat heavy so it kind of balances out.

 

[Oofta]

Feats are fundamental to the functioning of the Fighter class. If you don't use feats your fighters are broken.

Not everyone does sharp shooter crossbow expertise builds or whatever feat heavy build you're thinking of. Those that do focus on combat feats do so because they enjoy optimizing the combat side of things. If you want to contribute more out of combat there are several backgrounds and feats that will help.

 

[Oofta]

This isn’t a thing.

Some people really want it to be an issue. This is what, the third thread on this arguing the exact same thing? That in spite of the fact that fighters are the most commonly build class on DndBeyond that they're somehow fundamentally broken because they aren't spellcasters or rogues.

Because the answer is simple. There's not a problem. Anyone can build a PC with a lot of out of combat flexibility if they want to do so. A lot of people don't care. In my games, the non-casters contribute just as much as the casters because they contribute to RP and party decisions. Most games don't have things like fly or teleport because either the caster is out of spells or they simply aren't high enough level.

 

[Leatherhead]

Or the secret is just accept that they wont be as useful and just play with what you got?

I'm going to let everyone into a secret that often gets overlooked in white-room balance discussions: Something doesn't have to be as useful as the best, it only has to be useful enough to be a viable and reliable option.

Is expertise in the Stealth skill as good as Greater Invisibility? Heck no.
Is it useful enough to not warrant spending a spell slot in the vast majority of situations? Heck yes.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I agree feats can make a Fighter more well-rounded - especially when one is not wedded to just taking combat feats.

Backgrounds also can play an important role in helping Fighter have some rules-obvious contribution to the exploration pillar (e.g. Archaeologist, Fisher, or Outlander among others) or the social pillar (e.g. Anthropologist, Sailor, or Smuggler). Even the tried-and-true optimizer’s choice of Soldier has some social pillar significance.

Beyond that, a DM should be cognizant of spotlight time and engage the Fighter in the non-combat pillars, too. So what if they aren’t the best at smooth talking or foraging, the party Fighter can still contribute meaningfully with some creativity on the player’s part and and engaging scenario set up by an inclusive DM.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So if that's the case, fix the root cause. Unfortunately that will likely take a fairly comprehensive change of the numbers.

So, 6-8 encounters/2-3 short rest/day is obviously a ratio of encounters to uses of abilities.
For sort rest abilities, its 2 encounters per short-test ability. So, converting short rest to encounter is simple halving.
For dailies, I suppose, split the difference: divide by 7. So anything less than 4/day, you don't have, 4-10/day becomes 1/encounter.

So the wizard would get his first slot at 3rd, a second at 7th, and top out at 3/encounter at 15th - at others the level of a slot might increase.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Feats are fundamental to the functioning of the Fighter class. If you don't use feats your fighters are broken.

If true, the Fighter class should have appeared as an option in the Feats section.