A critique and review of the Fighter class

[Minigiant]

The problem is that not only does the fighter need to be decent at skills and is comparable to 80% of the other classes, they have to be as good or better. Heck, fighters aren't good because they can't compare to a bard who's main reason for existence is being the party's face?

It's not like every party has a bard. If there is a bard, then odds are, the fighter can focus on something else. Maybe they focus on stealth and picking locks because the party has no rogue. Maybe they focus on survival skills or use one of their extra feats to take the healer feat and help keep the party alive.

The point everyone is making is the fighter can't compete with any class for spotlight outside of combat.

So often the fighter player ends up waiting for everyone else to pick their class and specialities, then they can choose from whatever is left. Which gets worse the bigger the group.

The party has a sorcerer, artificer, rogue, and druid. Maybe they can spec to Athletics exploration?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Imagine if they put out a class that ONLY had social capabilities and no options in combat save for what you get from feats and one otherwise not very good subclass of it, or a minor option in it's good subclass, then someone insisted there was nothing wrong with it because they were personally okay with it.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Biggest issue for Fighter as a social powerhouse, imo, is the lack of really mindblowing stuff to do to really impress people to your side.

They can fight well, but not that much better than the other classes to warrant much adoration, and out of combat they'll struggle to compete with people who can cure the sick, heal the wounded, resurrect the dead, increase the farmer's crop yield, summon ponies for the children to play with, etc. Those things I'd say are more impactful than just numbers on charisma skills, and it just piles up as you level.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Maybe the fighter is the Starbucks of D&D: some connoisseurs will tell you all the reasons it's awful, and yet for each one of them there are 1,000 people who think it's wonderful.

 

[tetrasodium]

Biggest issue for Fighter as a social powerhouse, imo, is the lack of really mindblowing stuff to do to really impress people to your side.

They can fight well, but not that much better than the other classes to warrant much adoration, and out of combat they'll struggle to compete with people who can cure the sick, heal the wounded, resurrect the dead, increase the farmer's crop yield, summon ponies for the children to play with, etc. Those things I'd say are more impactful than just numbers on charisma skills, and it just piles up as you level.

No it really is "that" much better. There's the problem with these threads. All attacks are made with the same attack bonus, all attacks add ability mod+weapon/feat/FS mods, & bounded accuracy ensures that monster AC fails to keep up so by level 11 or so almost any attack is guaranteed to hit.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

You do hit a lot at that level, but I really have no idea what point you're making there.

 

[lingual]

Indeed. But this is a world away from what you claimed your build could do by dominating the social pillar. And a bard, sorcerer, or warlock who valued Tongues could cast it on themselves.

Yes - but they won't remain in the top tier as you level up because once again no magic or support abilities. That's acceptable at 4th level but won't remain so.

Your bog standard warlock or sorcerer will be rolling +6 having just spent a skill and nothing else. It's only the +1d8 that makes it even vaguely impressive.

It's hard to outclass him at his one trick. So he's not definitively outclassed. But by the same token there are plenty of social builds he isn't outclassing in the social tier. For example the warlock with training in persuasion and deception and who has the Mask of Many Faces invocation (as well as Agonizing Blast) to change what they look like and a flying invisible familiar that can shapechange into an easily overlooked animal when they want to spy on people.

And I'm much more interested in what the warlock will do than in seeing how big a number the social one trick pony will throw.

Finally your focus on "how high a persuasion can I get as that will let me dominate the social pillar" is roughly equivalent to looking at raw stealth numbers. Which again battle master maneuvers and feat investment will give you. But what they won't give you is things like Cunning Action, Pass Without Trace, Invisibility, a flying scout whose eyes you can see through, and more. It's a trick and a good one but it's not the entire pillar.

The Fighter needs to dominate the Social pillar. If it did, the complaining would come from other classes. And you can't make everything dominate the Social Pillar.

 

[lingual]

So at 4th level the Fighter took Feats, something any other class can do. That doesn't prove anything about a Fighter - that's just how cool Feats are.

It's good that any class can become effective at the social skills. Players choice between trade offs and such.

 

[Oofta]

The point everyone is making is the fighter can't compete with any class for spotlight outside of combat.

So often the fighter player ends up waiting for everyone else to pick their class and specialities, then they can choose from whatever is left. Which gets worse the bigger the group.

The party has a sorcerer, artificer, rogue, and druid. Maybe they can spec to Athletics exploration?

Other than rogues and bards, no other class gets a particular benefit for OOC activities outside of limited resources. If you cherry pick classes and the spells they choose and ignore some of the penalties for things like charm person and assume they can don't have to worry about resource management and never split the party and ignore feats and ignore magic items and assume that the DM relies heavily on dice for OOC activities and assume that the player of the fighter feels like D&D is a competition and for some bizarre reason can only contribute to the game based on their proficiency bonus there isn't a lot of room for the fighter to be better at certain things. Doesn't mean he can't still be decent at a few OOC things just in case the specialist isn't there, but I guess we have to ignore that as well.

So yes, if the stars align there's not a lot of room for the fighter to be better than everyone else in the party (although in one of my games the party doesn't have anyone that's good in Athletics and it's caused several issues). They'll probably still be very welcome in that group of squishies when it comes to combat. For a lot of people that's enough.

 

[tetrasodium]

You do hit a lot at that level, but I really have no idea what point you're making there.

Other classes get fewer attacks to multiply bonuses across, fewer bonuses adding to each attack and/or both of those things. It's a disparity that grows into fighters very much being "that" much better in combat at level 11+