Level Up (A5E) What is the vision of the high level fighter?

[Cap'n Kobold]

I'm going to suggest we leave the discussion about de-powering casters to those class threads, or the general A5E overview. For the moment we work on assuming the power levels of high-level casters are going to be the same as now.

In combat, there are a lot of options we can give fighters: Blinding, bleeding, deafening, stunning, shoving enemies around, incapacitating, moving around the battlefield themselves, resisting magic: Lots of things we can imagine a legendary hero or martial artist being able to do.

Out of combat is where we need to come up with suggestions.
Currently, the Fighter is a fairly mundane hero whose most distinctive abilities involve the theme of pushing themselves in a heroic effort to achieve amazing, but not magical things.
Do we want to build on that? Give the Fighter a reserve of "heroic surges" that can be used to achieve results beyond what you could normally expect from an ability check or similar action?

I am thinking that Fighters should probably have a lot of choices to pick abilities from a wide range, to fit the wide possibility of archetypes. Access to henchmen or military forces (and the ability to use them effectively) is an option, but it shouldn't be part of the base assumptions of the class.

So what other out of combat capabilities do we think Fighters could get?

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Making the Neighborhood Safer: Fighters should know everything about the best ways to secure a place. With only a couple of recommandations, they can make a room, a house, or a whole village safer, making it more difficult for their opponents to move, act or attack.

Badass Boast: "I am Kangar the Brave: those who meet me generally don't survive." Like an extended turn undead ability, a high-level Fighter should be able to intimidate opponents into fleeing or avoiding combat.

Makeshift armor/weapon: the Fighter is able to turn ordinary objects into temporary weapons and pieces of armor.

Tougher than the rest: Ignoring hunger, ignoring thirst, ignoring the need to sleep

Better gear: the Fighter knows her gear, and how to make it better and deadlier. She can pick the best sword, helmet, boots, saddle from a shop and modify them to make them even better.

Tactician: a Fighter can identify strengths and weaknesses, not only in an opponent, but in an organization as well, and it works out of combat too. Want to find the guard who's most likely to accept a bribe? The Fighter knows.

 

[Mirtek]

Kratos is a fighter who gets some cool magic items. But he doesn't need them to grapple Zeus (despite him just having a body of stormclouds) and punch a god to death.

Now, that's just power level. Mechanics-wise, Kratos kinda needs those magic items to do interesting stuff, but that's just a limitation of software. You could certainly have a high level fighter who can dash at such high speed that he can attack multiple enemies on different sides of the battlefield in one turn, or who can swing a blade so hard that it creates a shockwave that hits a cone of multiple enemies, or who is clever enough to have established an array of mercenary allies around the world during his adventures, who know just when he's in trouble, so they show up and provide help in combat in a sort of post hoc justification sort of way.

Out of combat, while the wizard is studying his spells, the fighter's mercenary allies are gathering information for him. It might not be magical lore, but they can get him accurate intel on enemy forces and movements, and on the behaviors and weaknesses of a hostile army. And while the cleric is praying to hear his god's voice, the fighter is studying anatomy - with the intent to kill folks, of course, but he learns so well he understands how a few simple pokes and prods can restore someone's vigor; or maybe he's so damned intimidating, when he tells you to hold your severed stump of a hand on and heal, you oblige out of fear of disappointing him. And while the bard is trying to piece together bits of legends about a lich's lair, one of the fighter's buddy's mentors shows up, saying that his sister served that lich for a while before the undead bastard killed her, and he got all sorts of secrets straight from the horse's mouth, and he'll hand them over if the fighter promises to end the abomination's wretched existence.

Kratos is a demigod and even so one could argue that he still needs the magic weapons to hurt the more powerful deities. By the time in the series he's able to smash them with his bare hands he's already further charged by the titans. In the early episodes you just beat the deity endboss by hitting him with his own attacks reflected by powerful artifacts

 

[CapnZapp]

One of the core problems of post-TSR non-4e D&D is that there's no real vision of what a high level fighter should be. Fundamentally a first level fighter moves at a human's pace and swings a sharpened piece of metal hard and fast at enemies in arms' length to kill them. A 20th level fighter ... moves at a human's pace and swings a sharpened piece of metal at enemies in arms' length to kill them. Meanwhile the wizard has graduated from burning hands a couple of times a day to permanently shapeshifting into a dragon, creating demiplanes, and casting Wish.

This wasn't the case in TSR era D&D for multiple reasons:

• The game was effectively soft-capped at level 9 or 10 due to the XP charts
• The fighter as a class feature got a small army as well as lands, and the small army gave them their ability to do weird things
• The wizard had far fewer spells known, and especially a much weaker choice of them
• Levels didn't claim to be equal; there were different XP tracks for different classes.

It also wasn't true in 4e with its reigned in magic and fighters who could do some pretty impressive things at epic level. But it's been true in 3.0, 3.5, and 5e. And is something that could and should be fixed.

So what does it mean for the fighter to level up in Level Up? Is the fighter an inherently low level archetype?

• The Mythic Fighter - Beowulf, CuChulain, Hercules, Roland, Outlaws of the Water Margin. The high level fighter is the demigod of mythology, able to perform ridiculous feats of strength and physical ability, leaving reality far behind.
• The Deadly Fighter - John Wick, et al. The deadly fighter putting a sword through someone kills them dead - and none of this "hit points" nonsense that makes a high level fighter feel like they are wielding boffer swords. Instead what they hit they normally kill (literal gods may be merely discorporated) irrespective of defences, and the trick is delivering the fighter to the target. And they can also do the old AD&D trick of one attack per class level per round against weak foes to thresh their way through minions.
• The Noble - the AD&D fighter writ large, with more troops and more elite troops as they level up. The fighter themselves is deadly - but so are their minions. Even this breaks down after about level 14 or so.
• The Level Cap - fighters are inherently mundane and simply do not have the potential to hang with the big boys. Cap them at level 10.

This, of course, is a perfect case for Prestige Classes - at level 10 the fighter picks one of the above options as well as or instead of continuing to level up as a fighter. Possibly as a second subclass.

The rogue of course has a similar problem and needs its own discussion.

In a game so focused on killing things and looting their stuff "moves at a human's pace and swings a sharpened piece of metal at enemies in arms' length to kill them" is plenty.

After all, at level 20 that might mean single-handedly shredding a red dragon, lich, or storm giant, all with just three or four quick strikes.

I suggest you simply play something else than Fighter if Fighter isn't what you want to play.

Best regards

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I suggest you simply play something else than Fighter if Fighter isn't what you want to play.

It's not a bad suggestion, but is that really a "vision of the high level fighter"?

 

[Asisreo]

The problem is that, while BMX Bandit is trying to find a way to solve the problem through mundane means, Angel Summoner can just summon a horde of divine beings and deal with it in no time.

Yes.

Magic is convenient. I never said it wasn't. But saying that the fighter cannot solve the problem misrepresents the fighter as well as TTRPG's in general.

The angel summoner spent a 7th-level spell slot to wait 1 minute to have this CR 4 celestial appear before him for an hour, at most. Not very long for how expensive the slot is. It's convenient, though, as magic should be. I don't particularly see why the mundane must have convenient solutions.

Especially since they'll almost definitely end up falling flat to exactly the people suggesting them the same way the monk's flavor abilities fall flat to them.

 

[Minigiant]

Yes.

Magic is convenient. I never said it wasn't. But saying that the fighter cannot solve the problem misrepresents the fighter as well as TTRPG's in general.

The angel summoner spent a 7th-level spell slot to wait 1 minute to have this CR 4 celestial appear before him for an hour, at most. Not very long for how expensive the slot is. It's convenient, though, as magic should be. I don't particularly see why the mundane must have convenient solutions.

Especially since they'll almost definitely end up falling flat to exactly the people suggesting them the same way the monk's flavor abilities fall flat to them.

I think the core issus is that the spellcaster's solution comes from his class features whereas the fighter's solution comes from his share of the gold or treasure.

Now if the fighter still advanced to a Fighter-Lord or a Christmas Tree Fighter, then gold and treasure would be class features respectively.

 

[Neonchameleon]

In a game so focused on killing things and looting their stuff "moves at a human's pace and swings a sharpened piece of metal at enemies in arms' length to kill them" is plenty.

After all, at level 20 that might mean single-handedly shredding a red dragon, lich, or storm giant, all with just three or four quick strikes.

And this is a separate D&D problem - that the hit point rules mean that the fighters aren't waving around sharpened weighted pieces of metal so much as boffer swords. A realistic and skilled human should be able to dispatch an unarmoured ogre in a single solid hit to the throat or under the rib cage to the heart. In 5e an ogre has 59 hit points. A storm giant is CR 13 and has 230 - but being humanoids one shot to the foemeral artery should be lethal. Which means a level 20 fighter can't match a real world expert swordsman in terms of lethality.

As for the red dragon or lich, both would have to be exceptionally stupid to let the fighter get close. The dragon can fly and breathe fire. If they land to get within reach of the fighter and then lose then they deserve a Darwin Award, and the fighter doesn't really have extra ways to close on the dragon than they had at lower level.

So they can't actually do what you claim.

 

[RangerWickett]

never said it was for combat. Could be for scouting, intimidation, having to grab something floating up there. A 1000 reasons. So I would like to know how the mundane fighter accomplishes this

He jumps, and floats like Trinity. Why not?

The universe allows for giant insects. It allows for flying creatures as big as castles. It allows for you to be set on fire, stabbed repeatedly, and then be perfectly fine with 8 hours rest.

So yeah, if you're good enough at jumping, you can just stay in the air.

 

[Azzy]

I really think that looking towards 3e's Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords would be a good idea.