Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
Exactly the one man army was a concept from the beginning (though the implementation was a bit situational) it was definitely about completely out classing potentially large numbers of lower powered enemies.That's an interesting question. Arguably, the "one man army" for martial characters goes as far back as the old rule that Fighters got to attack 1/level against critters that were less than 1hd.
Which meant that at higher levels, Fighters could effectively kill (for example) 1 kobold per level per round, every round.
Edit: It looks like if you relegate lower powered like 1e did to enemies with very low hit points then 5e sort of did make an optional rule to bring it closer. Like many 5e optional rules I do not think this was well thought out as the following rule means that a rogue doing a sneak attack might be better at cleaving through additional enemies than the 5e fighter or maybe that is ok. It may be rather inferior functionally to both Rain of Steel and Great Cleave. And could be seen as inferior to the 1e rule which did not require each enemy to be defeated but I think using various functions a GWF champion doing a lot of Crits can get up there on damage so that he can cleave through a lot of minor enemies with one hit. 4es use of minions means you can mow through bigger and bigger adversaries as you level and swarms like an angry mob can also be taken on effectively without as many specific powers for spreading the pain too (working better if you have them though). And the 4e abilities are not generally dependent on being a striker to do massive single target damage to spread the pain.
CLEAVING THROUGH CREATURES
If your player characters regularly fight hordes of lower- level monsters, consider using this optional rule to help speed up such fights.
When a melee attack reduces an undamaged creature to 0 hit points, any excess damage from that attack might carry over to another creature nearby. The attacker targets another creature within reach and, if the original attack roll can hit it, applies any remaining damage to it. If that creature was undamaged and is likewise reduced to 0 hit points, repeat this process, carrying over the remaining damage until there are no valid targets, or until the damage carried over fails to reduce an undamaged creature to 0 hit points.
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