A critique and review of the Fighter class

[James Gasik]

And yet, it's better for other classes. Spells can give bonuses to saves or even immunity to status effects. Monks get proficiency in all saves. Paladins get to add their Charisma to not only all their saves, but anyone else nearby.

And Fighters get, what, 3 rerolls a day? WOW.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Indomitable is a joke. You go up a level and get a once per long rest ability to reroll a saving throw. A proper ability would be proficiency in a saving throw, or, if it has to be a limited resource, Legendary Resistance.

Don't get me wrong, I agree (or, rather, I think the entire saving throw infrastructure of 5e was not designed all that well), but it IS technically present.

Y’all are on the right track here.

Rename it Heroic Resilience (or Determination) and make it a PB/LR “choose to succeed instead” for ability checks and saving throws, and BAM, fighter levels up out of combat and gets a solid “don’t get dominated or locked down” benefit.

 

[Minigiant]

Which doesn't mean I have a problem with either the fighter or wizard. They're not perfect because nothing is, I just disagree that there's not a narrative difference. A fighter in plate trying to chop you in half with a greataxe feels a lot different than that guy wearing studded leather trying to make you into a pincushion with their arrows

The issue is the narratives behind the archetypes within the fighter vary heavily.

I like what I said about the different fighters in a stereotypical feudal society. There are

1. The royal prince who trains in combat because he is lower in the line of succession but still has to be adept in court and government
2. The noble lord who focuses of domain management and noble intrigue while having to maintain the expectations of being a skilled warrior and general.
3. The knight who pledges loyalty to the above lord who has to keep some knowledge of politics but has to focus more on his body than numbers.
4. The merchant watchman who is expected to guard the caravan and help the merchant manage the business.
5. The temple guard who is expected to protect important figures and artifacts in a church and tho know the significance of those under her care.
6. A mercenary archer in a sell sword company whose only responsibility is to be able to shoot, run, eat, and sleep under a tent.
7. The low class town guard who must focus on their perception and sussing out potential threat.
8. The underclass gang member who is brought in for muscle by a crime lord whose job is to look scary as well as back it up with force.

These are very different archetypes in the noncombat sphere. That's before you get fantastical with eldritch knights, rune knights, and such. You would have to heavily invest in converting them to mechanics, trivializing their importance, or have a social contract to apply standard boni when deep in their expertises. In modern games with multiple class systems, said archetypes would be in split into a few classes with their own focused noncombat spheres.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Exactly this.

People present it as "Fighter is 100% combat/0% non-combat, it's not meant to have stuff outside that, other classes are less combat and more non-combat." But that's really not the case. Paladins are essentially equal to Fighters in combat terms, but also have spells on top, with the versatility to choose whether to focus those spells into raw combat potential (Divine Smite/smite spells) or utility effects. Hell, some Clerics aren't too far behind Fighters (e.g. War or Storm) and they get full 9th level spells!

The Fighter is not so overwhelmingly, unequivocally amazing at combat that it justifies the class itself offering piddly-nothing beyond baseline mechanics all characters get.

To be fair Tasha's and onwards does fix that via subclasses. The Psi Warrior can do ridiculous telekinetic things, the Rune Knight has their own custom flavour of magic with all the runes granting out of combat abilities, and the Echo Knight has echoes. And the battlemaster gained some new maneuvers that let them spend superiority dice on a couple of skills. Just one of the many ways I find the modern direction of D&D to be a vast improvement on pre-Tasha's.

 

[Oofta]

The issue is the narratives behind the archetypes within the fighter vary heavily.

I like what I said about the different fighters in a stereotypical feudal society. There are

1. The royal prince who trains in combat because he is lower in the line of succession but still has to be adept in court and government
2. The noble lord who focuses of domain management and noble intrigue while having to maintain the expectations of being a skilled warrior and general.
3. The knight who pledges loyalty to the above lord who has to keep some knowledge of politics but has to focus more on his body than numbers.
4. The merchant watchman who is expected to guard the caravan and help the merchant manage the business.
5. The temple guard who is expected to protect important figures and artifacts in a church and tho know the significance of those under her care.
6. A mercenary archer in a sell sword company whose only responsibility is to be able to shoot, run, eat, and sleep under a tent.
7. The low class town guard who must focus on their perception and sussing out potential threat.
8. The underclass gang member who is brought in for muscle by a crime lord whose job is to look scary as well as back it up with force.

These are very different archetypes in the noncombat sphere. That's before you get fantastical with eldritch knights, rune knights, and such. You would have to heavily invest in converting them to mechanics, trivializing their importance, or have a social contract to apply standard boni when deep in their expertises. In modern games with multiple class systems, said archetypes would be in split into a few classes with their own focused noncombat spheres.

I guess I'm just not seeing the issue or how it applies to fighters any more than any other class. Your list is encompassed by backgrounds. Whether backgrounds do enough to distinguish characters is another topic entirely.

 

[Bill Zebub]

the idea that the Knight and the musketeer and the town guard and the sword sage and the warlord all have to fit into a single class is nuts... especially the least effective and least customizable class

I disagree. I think that's working as intended. But it's an aesthetic preference: some people really want somewhat different concepts to have different mechanics, and others are happy fluffing the same mechanical chassis. In general I lean toward the latter, but where there's a really iconic concept, and multiclassing won't get you there, we have subclasses to sprinkle some mechanical flavor in.

Again, though, I recognize that's an aesthetic preference. But I think 5e leans that way, so if you're expecting/hoping for something different you might be in the wrong system.

What is nuts is that Sorcerer has its own class, instead of a refluffed...or possibly subclassed...Wizard.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I disagree. I think that's working as intended. But it's an aesthetic preference: some people really want somewhat different concepts to have different mechanics, and others are happy fluffing the same mechanical chassis. In general I lean toward the latter, but where there's a really iconic concept, and multiclassing won't get you there, we have subclasses to sprinkle some mechanical flavor in.

Subclasses do a lot of work in 5e - and can cover a whole lot of concepts.

What is nuts is that Sorcerer has its own class, instead of a refluffed...or possibly subclassed...Wizard.

What's nuts is that wizard has its own class with a dozen different subclasses or so, instead of being the book-learning sorcerer subclass.

 

[Minigiant]

I guess I'm just not seeing the issue or how it applies to fighters any more than any other class. Your list is encompassed by backgrounds. Whether backgrounds do enough to distinguish characters is another topic entirely.

The point is the the magic user was split into the wizard, sorcerer, artificer, and warlock because of the different thematics of their spells and alterations. And they would have aspects and spells on top of their background.

That's the thing. A rogue has options from class that add on top of background. Same with artificer, barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, monk, paladin, ranger, sorcerer, warlock, and wizard.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I disagree.

what a shock....

I think that's working as intended. But it's an aesthetic preference: some people really want somewhat different concepts to have different mechanics, and others are happy fluffing the same mechanical chassis. In general I lean toward the latter, but where there's a really iconic concept, and multiclassing won't get you there, we have subclasses to sprinkle some mechanical flavor in.

and yet these boards, tick tok and FB groups are full of people who complain that the fighter just isn't enough... but sure you say it is AOKAY

What is nuts is that Sorcerer has its own class, instead of a refluffed...or possibly subclassed...Wizard.

the fighter is a left over from when we had 3 or 4 classes... that is it. the Magic User (aka wizard) was all the casters for the start. the fighter being all the martial made sense then... when we built out sorcerer, bard, warlock we also built almost multi class fighter (ranger)druid/fighter (paladin) cleric/fighter and we DID get barbarian... but when 3e took over the barbarian become the frenzy class...

 

[Oofta]

The point is the the magic user was split into the wizard, sorcerer, artificer, and warlock because of the different thematics of their spells and alterations. And they would have aspects and spells on top of their background.

That's the thing. A rogue has options from class that add on top of background. Same with artificer, barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, monk, paladin, ranger, sorcerer, warlock, and wizard.

Warrior types are broken up into fighter, rogue, paladin, rogue, barbarians. Still don't see much of a difference.