D&D (2024) 4/26 Playtest: The Fighter

[Asisreo]

I just want to say that I wish they expanded and fully implemented the "Blessings" mechanic in the DMG.

Right now, its poorly implemented but it has a lot of abilities that people are suggesting at this moment. They even avoid antimagic so its not overtly magic item use.

For example, a Blessing of Valhalla lets you summon viking warriors by your side. And there's literally a Blessing of Weapon Emhancement which literally lets a martial turn any weapon they wield into a +# magic weapon.

I think expanding and fully implementing this into base classes might be worthwhile.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

But he is not the equal of those with supernatural power.

A regular fighter in D&D can do impossible things - at 10th level a fighter can fight a tiger naked with his bare hands and no martial arts training and win every single time. If he is a medium size race he can grapple said tiger and prevent him from moving anywhere well over half of the time with no Athletics training, with Athletics training that fighter could do that half the time even with an 8 strength. The current 5E D&D fighter is Batman!

He can get bit by a king cobra and require no medical attention at all and usually not even be affected by the poison.

If you took the a world champion MMA fighter who is among the best martial artists in the world IRL and told him to beat a tiger to death with his bare hands he would end up dead. If you told him to grapple a tiger and prevent it from moving he would fail and again likely end up dead. If he got bit by a Cobra and did not get attention he would die the majority of the time

Are there any classes that couldn't perform those feats, all else being equal?

Why are there so many threads insisting that fighters need to basically be Goku at high levels? Like, why fighters particularly? Where are all the threads arguing that rangers, or monks, or rogues, or warlocks, or artificers, or barbarians need super-mega-power boosts? Is it just the fighters that have a particularly vociferous fan base?

Like, the monk thread is all about trying to buff them to be competitive with classes such as the fighter, specifically.

Fighters are the most representative of the martials' issues: Lack of interesting and tactical things to do in combat. Lack of capability out of combat etc.
The other martials most definitely have the same issues, but generally less so than the Fighter. The Fighter is also closest to a concept that should include a lot of things that it doesn't to many of us.

 

[Incenjucar]

A fighter's actions are so mediocre that they can do them four times as often as a wizard at minimum and still not come out as the best class.

 

[ECMO3]

Because if every potato farmer in the world can do the same "impossible" thing then it isn't actually impossible, is it?

IRL surviving the bite of a Cobra, without medical attention is about a 5% chance. That's real easy to model in DnD, you just are going to have to require a nat 20. At a DC 10 check, that means you need a -10 modifier which you would get at a constitution score of.... -10.

So, in DnD you have to effectively be DEAD ten times over, before your chances of failing that DC are "realistic". So saying that Fighters are extraordinary for being able to make that save is misleading at best, and outright ridiculous most of the time. Anything with 3 hp and a positive constitution score is more likely to survive a cobra bite in DnD than an IRL person.



So since when is Batman IRL? You can't just remove the context of DnD from the discussion of DnD



Tom Cruise and Ben Afflac aren't Action Movie Heroes. Shocker. This is my shocked face. Who would have guessed that actors aren't really the characters they portray.

But you do really get the point while you are whizzing by it. "Jack Reacher might manage that, but like Batman he is a character.... Characters, like D&D fighters, outinely do impossible things."

Yeah, a high level fighter beating a tiger to death is ROUTINE for characters like this. Do you think Tigers are serious threats to Dragons? Do you think the Demon Lord Graz'zt fears being left in a pit with a Tiger, because he might die? Sure, we can say "but it would be impossible for anyone to do IRL!" but it misses the point that we don't consider Tigers serious threats in most DnD games. The context matters, barely impossible feats (because give the human a spear and the tiger suddenly is very much at risk of being killed) are things we expect from mid-tier CHARACTERS. It doesn't matter if a real life person couldn't do this. We depict people doing things no real life person could ever do all the time in media.

I am completely missing how this is relevant to the discussion.

Batman, Reacher and D&D fighters all do impossible things and they can do it because they are characters. Sure I completely agree.

But to be on the same level as high level casters, we really need high level warriors to get past the level of John Wick and Jack Sparrow.

They should not be on the same level as high level casters, that is the whole point!

Superman is a "high level caster" in that he has supernatural powers. Batman is a "fighter" no supernatural powers, not on nearly the same level as superman but can still do "impossible" things.

This is exactly how it should be in D&D - fighter (Batman) can do impossible things but nowhere near the same level as high level casters (Superman). Maybe the fighter can match the caster in some unique circumstances with some clever play and magic items, just like Batman can (and did) match up with superman with kryptonite and bat armor on a prepared battlefield, but day to day this is no contest and that is how it should be.

 

[Eubani]

This is exactly how it should be in D&D - fighter (Batman) can do impossible things but nowhere near the same level as high level casters (Superman). Maybe the fighter can match the caster in some unique circumstances with some clever play and magic items, just like Batman can (and did) match up with superman with kryptonite and bat armor on a prepared battlefield, but day to day this is no contest and that is how it should be.

Lucky for Batman he has a utility belt that can carry Superman's sandwiches, coffee and spare wands. Because at higher levels of play in and out of combat that is what that means. Keep in mind that with DnD that Superman gets the cool toys as well on top the abilities.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This is exactly how it should be in D&D - fighter (Batman) can do impossible things but nowhere near the same level as high level casters (Superman). Maybe the fighter can match the caster in some unique circumstances with some clever play and magic items, just like Batman can (and did) match up with superman with kryptonite and bat armor on a prepared battlefield, but day to day this is no contest and that is how it should be.

If this is 'how if should be', either get rid of one or the other and stop pretending you're making a game that's fun for both.

 

[Eubani]

Apparently wanting more than a basic "I attack" and a few Athletics checks hurts some people's fun. Why can't they realize that you add all bells and whistles to a Fighter and they can ignore them and continue to "I attack" and the occasional Athletics check. To be blunt to get a good Fighter some peoples fun and verisimilitude is going to have to be ignored and I am more than happy for that to happen.

 

[Clint_L]

Many of these suggestions keep hitting on what the Fighter is already great at - dealing and taking damage. They are an A-S tier class in both departments. Weapon mastery offers a significant damage buff and a few more combat options, though nothing too exciting. They need more options outside of combat, though that has to come at a cost - no class can be A-S tier at everything.

I think what limits fighters is that they are really great at these two very important and pretty easily quantifiable things. So they have a very clear role. But they are bottom tier at everything that isn't those roles. This is a significant design problem, because it can play out very differently at different tabletops. If you have a combat-heavy, roleplay-lite table, fighters are amazing. If you have a roleplay-heavy, combat-lite table, fighters suck.

Contrast with, say, a rogue. Rogues are A-S tier at exploration, and probably C-B tier at everything else. Rogues are an easier class to balance; you can tweak a few things, but players at most tables will find opportunities where their rogue can be the star at times.

I argue that increasing damage output or survivability works against making fighters more interesting and flexible - they don't need buffs in those departments. Any improvements should be in areas that make them interesting outside of combat. This is potentially addressed to some degree, by the greater access to feats that fighters currently have, though a lot of players don't really look at feats as a way to broaden the capacities of their fighter outside of combat, but more as a way to double down on what the fighter already does well.

WotC has to aspire to keep all the classes balanced against each other, so there is a bit of a zero sum game going on. If one class is above or below the average, taking a typical campaign into account (so much as there is such a thing) then that becomes a problem. Fighters are not currently a problem in terms of their average utility, they are a problem because their utility is so lopsided.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I am completely missing how this is relevant to the discussion.

Batman, Reacher and D&D fighters all do impossible things and they can do it because they are characters. Sure I completely agree.

Okay, so here's the thing.

We want the DnD fighter who is expected to stab Demon Lords and be a force on a multiversal scale to do things Reacher CAN'T. We'd actually probably want him to do things that Batman usually can't do too.

Because, a low-level DnD fighter should probably be as good as Jack Reacher, and a mid-level DnD rogue is probably about as good as Batman. So HIGH level characters need to be better. Just saying "but it is impossible to fight a tiger bare-handed in the real world!" has no bearing on this, because a man with a pointy stick can kill a tiger, and a high level fighter should be able to kill the demon representing the primal ferocity of all stalking predators.

Things in DnD scale.

They should not be on the same level as high level casters, that is the whole point!

I fundamentally disagree. If I have a 20th level character, they should be on the same level as a different 20th level character. I don't want one character who is only capable of influencing events on a scale of a city, while the other is capable of effecting events on a multiversal scale.... because if I wanted that, I'd just cap the other character at level 10 and call it a day.

Superman is a "high level caster" in that he has supernatural powers.

No he isn't. Superman has four iconic powers. Super Strength (not a caster), Invicibility (Not a caster), Flight (sure, caster) and Laser Eyes (eh, maybe a caster?). He isn't summoning chains, or calling forth fire, or consulting scrying pools. Actually, Superman is a great example of something that high level fighters should be able to do, with his strength and durability.

Batman is a "fighter" no supernatural powers, not on nearly the same level as superman but can still do "impossible" things.

This is exactly how it should be in D&D - fighter (Batman) can do impossible things but nowhere near the same level as high level casters (Superman). Maybe the fighter can match the caster in some unique circumstances with some clever play and magic items, just like Batman can (and did) match up with superman with kryptonite and bat armor on a prepared battlefield, but day to day this is no contest and that is how it should be.

So just cap martials in your game and let the rest of us play with equal characters instead of god-wizards and their lackeys.

 

[Azzy]

They should not be on the same level as high level casters, that is the whole point!

With that opinion, I'm very glad that you aren't a game designer. There absolutely should be parity between characters of the same level regardless of their class.