A critique and review of the Fighter class

[doctorbadwolf]

Defense is a terrible fighting style. IT's boring. And of the original PHB styles, It's the only one that numerally could be used with another style.

Now some other ones stack because of WOTC's "No Errata for non-broken things" policy. My guess is that fighting styles will be more mutually exclusive in the 2024 version.

Why would they be? I extremely doubt they will significantly chance fighting styles.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Looking at it, I see no reason that the Natural Leader feat and Organization rules of Star Wars Saga Edition couldn’t be ported to 5e pretty directly.

 

[Minigiant]

I find this weird as 5e's singular feats are widely considered more powerful that any single 3x and certainly and 4e feat. Do you really feal Leadership was so much more powerful that normal 3x feats?

Besides GWF/SS/CE/PM, every 5e feat is limted to Tier 1 in power. There are no 3e Feat trees. There are no 4e paragon or epic feats.

None of 5e's feats give you powers of Tier 2-4. You only get stuff a PC gets at 1st-4th level. 1st level spells. Fighting styles. Skills. Weapons. etc.

 

[James Gasik]

As for Leadership: giving you a second character to control is pretty powerful. Seeing as how they couldn't even get Beastmaster right initially, and all the gripes about summoning or using familiars to do, well, anything, I rather doubt WotC would be like, "sure, have an NPC you can control" without either making it next to useless or the subject of many complaints about it's "brokenness".

 

[Minigiant]

Why would they be? I extremely doubt they will significantly chance fighting styles.

It wouldn't be significant change to Fighting styles themselves.

However with Blind Fighting, Thrown Weapon Fighting, and Unarmed Fighting, it is clear that either they assumed DM would make those ruling or they completely missed those

Fighting styles were designed to be mutually exclusive. For example, Dueling not working with Great weapon Fighting or Two Weapon fighting despite no way to get 2 fighting style except via Champion.

However WOTC didn't realize that you can't draw enough thrown weapons to attack with all your attacks or that fighter unarmed attacks were woefully weak. But they didn't want to make errata. So they patched it with Fighting styles.

When they redo the PHB in 2024, that will be their opportunity to errata thrown attacks, unarmed attacks, and maneuvers.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It wouldn't be significant change to Fighting styles themselves.

However with Blind Fighting, Thrown Weapon Fighting, and Unarmed Fighting, it is clear that either they assumed DM would make those ruling or they completely missed those

Fighting styles were designed to be mutually exclusive. For example, Dueling not working with Great weapon Fighting or Two Weapon fighting despite no way to get 2 fighting style except via Champion.

However WOTC didn't realize that you can't draw enough thrown weapons to attack with all your attacks or that fighter unarmed attacks were woefully weak. But they didn't want to make errata. So they patched it with Fighting styles.

When they redo the PHB in 2024, that will be their opportunity to errata thrown attacks, unarmed attacks, and maneuvers.

Again, I doubt they will do much of that, but we shall see.

How on earth do you figure Blind Fighting fits into that group, though?

Also, I'm completely certain that Unarmed Fighting won't be obviated, because they want unarmed strikes to be underpowered without investment.

And honestly, i don't think they'll change anything that would directly and unavoidably contradict and nullify the validity of any major expansion to the game.

We are going to get a special edition reprint of the core books with extended errata and possibly some rewriting of lore text, advice, etc. The DMG and MM will be vastly more changed than the PHB, which will be mostly the same. What they change will not make the books they just put out as the expansion set for the game invalid. So think more like Deep Gnomes being written to not need Deep Gnome Magic, but to still benefit from it. Unarmed Strikes might get a bit of a rewording, but it won't be so that you can punch for 1d6+str without investment.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Besides GWF/SS/CE/PM, every 5e feat is limted to Tier 1 in power. There are no 3e Feat trees. There are no 4e paragon or epic feats.

None of 5e's feats give you powers of Tier 2-4. You only get stuff a PC gets at 1st-4th level. 1st level spells. Fighting styles. Skills. Weapons. etc.

And thank god for that.

While I wouldn't balk at some level gated feats, and the 2-feat themes they've done in Strixhaven and previewed for Dragonlance are mostly fine, they still suffer from what makes Dodge the most frustrating feat in the entirety of 3.5 and Star Wars RPG/Saga Edition. The first feat is, for reasons unfathomable and strange, strictly less powerful than other feats with no prereqs. It's completely insane, to me, to force someone to take a weak option in order to later get an option that is very mildly more powerful.

If the later feats made the first feat more powerful, as well, I'd almost be okay with it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I find this weird as 5e's singular feats are widely considered more powerful that any single 3x and certainly and 4e feat. Do you really feal Leadership was so much more powerful that normal 3x feats?

An entire second character as a feat? Absolutely. It was an incredible outlier from ... just about any other feat. The second most powerful mainstream feat for martials was probably Cleave (which of course is part of GWM in 5e) and for casters it was almost certainly one of the item crafting feats. Your cohort, of course, could have multiple item crafting feats so you pretty much have a covering argument there.

 

[Neonchameleon]

It wouldn't be significant change to Fighting styles themselves.

However with Blind Fighting, Thrown Weapon Fighting, and Unarmed Fighting, it is clear that either they assumed DM would make those ruling or they completely missed those

Fighting styles were designed to be mutually exclusive. For example, Dueling not working with Great weapon Fighting or Two Weapon fighting despite no way to get 2 fighting style except via Champion.

This isn't actually true; even using just the PHB you could in theory use Protection, Defense, and Duelling on a sword & board fighter if you made a horrible multiclass.

 

[Minigiant]

This isn't actually true; even using just the PHB you could in theory use Protection, Defense, and Duelling on a sword & board fighter if you made a horrible multiclass.

I was more speaking within "role".

The Offensive Fighting styles didn't stack on damage or accuracy.
The Defensive Fighting style didn't stack on AC.
And the Defender Fighting style both used your reaction to block.

So getting Archery and Throw Weapon Fighting does stack. Or Great and Two Weapon Fighting. You have to switch weapons and only get one benefit at a time.

Only Superior Techniques stacks on role.