Chaosmancer
Legend
So, I finally got a chance to watch this video, and frankly both you and Treantmonk... I really want to say it is borderline disingenuous to my sensibilities how this was presented and done.
Let's just start with something you said, which isn't something I can blame Treantmonk for, because he was rather clear. You said "There is a whole bunch of subtle stuff that allows for the new fighter to just pop right back up from being knocked unconscious that is hard to see if you just straight read the new class." And at the time, I thought this was strange, but I willing to admit I might have been wrong. But what you were talking about was the interaction between the dying rules and the Survivor ability. The survivor ability that is unique to the CHAMPION. So, it really is incredibly hard to see how the new FIGHTER can just pop back up since you are talking about a subclass, not the class itself. Now, I admit, I didn't see that interaction until he pointed it out in the video, but claiming or even implying that a subclass ability applies to the class as a whole? You should be better than that.
But, let's turn back to the math and my problems with it.
Treantmonk wanted to check Crawford's claim, which was "We want the warriors to rely on their class features, not feats, for damage" I'll get back to this. So to test this, he decides to make a 5e DnD champion Fighter and a OD&D champion fighter, making the same decisions for each of them. He says this will be an "apples to apples" comparison. He makes them both level 13.
So we start off with Human for both. And the 5e Fighter gets 1 Feat and the OD&D Fighter gets two feats.... wait, what? Oh, you see, he isn't actually comparing the FIGHTERS, he is comparing the RULE SET CHANGES. Because he uses the new human with the new fighter, and the old V human with the old fighter. Gee wilikers mister, I wonder which build is going to be stronger? The one that starts with an extra feat or the one that doesn't?
And before you tell me "well that doesn't change anything about his results" it absolutely does, because he claims that the new fighter is "better at everything" in part because of that free Alert feat he just got. Oh, and does he make the same decisions at each level? No, because he can't, but that doesn't matter because he only looks at the end result.
So, what do the character creation rules tell us here? That getting +1 feat is more powerful than not getting it? Of course that's the case. But he isn't done. Because he gives the 5e Fighter all the old versions of the feats, and OD&D fighter all of the same, new feats. Which again, creates a bias because the results could be (and partially are) from the improvements of the FEATS not the CLASS. Just an example of this, he gives the new fighter the Charger feat, something the 5e Fighter couldn't get because of the new feat design, and this gives his fighter a +1d8 damage over the other.
This is incredibly frustrating, because there is a 1d8+5 from the two feats that the other fighter simply cannot possibly have access to, because these feats did not exist in the 5e rulebook. How is this a fair comparison of the damage?
Additionally, the two masteries he used were Cleave and Graze, which I only mention because he makes an assumption I feel is clearly wrong, and also that obviously again skews these results. He assumes, and he knows this is an assumption because he tries to back it up with a poll he did, that you can roll your attack, see the result on the D20, then decide which mastery you want to use. He then further compounds this by assuming every single miss activates graze. Which seems like a strange assumption to make, because the playtest document clearly is having you make the decision before you know if you hit or miss, which obviously meant to make Graze less consistent. After all, it is the only MAstery that doesn't activate on a hit. If the intent was that you could always use graze on every miss, I'd assume the language would be far clearer. But this assumption AGAIN skews the results. Becuase if I took two fighters and one had the ability to deal damage on a miss, and the other didn't and they were otherwise identical... of course the one with the ability to deal damage on a miss is going to be dealing more DPR, because they never deal 0 damage. This is so self-evident. Even if his reading is RAW, RAI tells me it isn't supposed to work this way, because it seems clear they attempted to stop it from working this way. All it would take is "you decide which mastery to activate after the attack hits or misses" and boom, 100% guaranteed Graze.
A true, actual comparison between the old fighter design and the new fighter design would have been using the same character creation rules (which shows the old champion is superior in initiative to the new champion), the same feats, and only comparing their class abilities. And when you do that?
| Level | 5e Fighter | OD&D Fighter |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fighting Style, Second Wind (SR) | Fighting Style, two second winds (LR), Three Weapon Masteries |
| 2 | Action Surge | Action Surge |
| 3 | Subclass Feature | Subclass Feature |
| 4 | Feat | Feat, 3rd Second Wind, 4th Weapon Mastery |
| 5 | Extra Attack | Extra Attack, Feat |
| 6 | Feat | Subclass Feature |
| 7 | Subclass Feature | Weapon Expert |
| 8 | Feat | Feat |
| 9 | Indomitable | (Improved) Indomitable |
| 10 | Subclass Feature | Subclass Feature, 4th Second Wind, 5th Weapon Mastery |
| 11 | Two Extra Attacks | Two Extra Attacks |
| 12 | Feat | Feat |
| 13 | Two uses of Indomitable | Weapon Adept |
They are practically identical. And if we took the two classes at level 12, used the same rules, and compared what their damage output was like... the only way the new Fighter comes out ahead is from the extra attack of cleave, or the +1 damage from flex. And that is not 50% superior damage. Assuming the 6.3 per hit he does, and assuming we get the Great weapon attack bonus action like he does, it actually looks more like this
0.6x11.3x4 = 27.12
0.1x6.3x4 = 2.52
Total for old 29.64 DPR
0.6x11.3x4 = 27.12
0.1x6.3x4 = 2.52
He assumed cleave would proc 50% of the time... and I'm just going to trust his math here which seems to ignore the change that cleave can miss
0.5x0.97x6.3 = 3.06
0.1x0.97x6.3 = 0.6
Total for New 33.3
33.3 / 29.64 = about a 12% increase in damage. Not 50%, not 70%, 12% when you don't add extra damage for charger and swap the feat and everything else he did.
Now, did I ignore that the Champion subclass at this level has a 15% chance of critting instead of a 10%? Yes. But, again, I'm not comparing the champion to the champion, I'm trying to compare the FIGHTER to the FIGHTER. I'd have kept it at 5% crit chance, but I wanted to use his own math here as much as possible.
So, in the end... no. The fighter alone didn't get much of a boost, especially considering Cleave is probably the best option in the entire set. Feats got a boost, character creation got a boost, and if you combine all those boosts, then it is a pretty nice boost, but feats and character apply to EVERYONE. If you want to have an accurate assessment, you have to have as few changes between the two things you are comparing as possible. Not change everything all at once.
