D&D (2024) Fighter (Playtest 7)

[Neonchameleon]

To be fair, there are quite a few fighting games that do in fact grant you momentum after you get hit.

Oh, indeed which is why I brought it up. I'd love to see a fighter or a barbarian type using that as their subclass mechanics. (What started as my 4e retroclone is littered with bonuses for being bloodied and with bonuses equal to the number of recoveries/healing surges you're down)

 

[Minigiant]

Oh is the Brawler 10 years old? Has it had no inherent ability to hurt fiends really well for 10 years?

No. Obviously.

Your specific complaints aren’t all that common, you’re just making assumptions based on speculation and stating it like it can be supported by anything substantial

Monks running out of Ki is new?
Fighters and Barbarians lacking out of combat features is new?
Monks, fighters, and warlocks being weak in low encounter tables is new?

No. The 5e design team has mostly ignored these problems for a long while.

While they go out their way to hype up Tavern Brawling EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY GET.

The most generous explanation for their focus on some aspects while ignoring other aspects until forced by massive survey stress is that the 5e designers in their home game play very different from a lot of the community. Especially from the massive influx of new fans

The second most logical explanation is corporate pressure on them to keep ignoring the complaints of the 5e core books in order to not create additional bad press on the highest selling books of the edition. And the 2024 edition of the core books is an excuse to insert fixes they wand to include for a while and were sitting on but didn't in order to keep the 2014 Printing from looking outdated and flawed.

I choose the former due to the glee that Crawford tends to have on game aspects that aren't that powerful and his constant reminds of missing obvious powergameable aspects of 5e.

 

[see]

Any warrior-type can do what Brawler does, better, from level 1, by having a Lance (reach, topple) and Halberd (reach, cleave) in their backpack.

No, he can't. The Brawler can swap Mastery effects on each attack roll. Unless you're letting "any warrior-type" dig around in his backpack and swap weapons in the middle of his turn, he can't Cleave an opponent and then use the attack roll granted by Cleave to Topple a second. The Brawler can do that.

As far as damage, the actual current rule is "Often, an improvised weapon is similar to an actual weapon and can be treated as such . . . An object that bears no resemblance to a weapon deals 1d4 damage".

So, of course, the sensible thing here is for the Brawler to go and find an object that is similar to a maul (ideally), or maybe just a warhammer, and carry that around, just like "any warrior-type" carries around a weapon. Oh, hey, now he's got a 2d6 or 1d10 Reach weapon that can Cleave, Push, and Topple all on the same turn. Oh, he'll do less damage if he loses access to the "improvised" weapon he's been carrying around . . . but under those circumstances, he's better off with bare hands or whatever can be scrounged than other fighters.

Now, maybe we'll have a different rule in the 2024 rulebooks for evaluating damage by improvised weapons. And sure, if a DM goes out of his way to nerf the Brawler ("No, that blacksmith's sledgehammer doesn't resemble any weapon, d4 for you!"), the DM can do that. But taking the rules at face value for this playtest, the Brawler is in decent shape.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The thing about the brawler is that it is almost good, but a lot depends on how generous with magic items the DM is.

Level 3: This is where the problem lies.

• Unarmed Expert provides a damage floor but is basically a ribbon ability most of the time. What it does is provides a damage floor to the DM; if you do d6 damage unarmed or d8 with two hands you should not be doing less damage with an improvised weapon.
• Improvised Experthas two weaknesses. The first is that it leaves the damage too much up to the DM, and the second is even with a generous DM it is likely that (until level 10) it will be strictly better to just use an ordinary non-magical weapon.
  • There is a "secret sauce" here. Both the Sap and the Topple properties are limited in use; you can only sap someone once and you can't topple someone already down.

There are two things that are needed here. The first is a DM sidebar saying "Very few improvised weapons will do less damage than fists, and many will do more". And the second is some reason to use improvised weapons at all. My suggestion:
Confusing improviser: When using a specific item as an improvised weapon for the first time gain advantage on that attack roll.

This doesn't fix all the problems although it will keep you up with +1 weapons. Slightly lower damage but very easy advantage is something.

Level 7: This is a great ability. Bonus action attack as a freebie? At least it would be if both Shove and Grapple weren't restricted to targets no more than one size larger than you.

Level 10: Dirty fighting just does not work with Improvised Expert. You can't use improvised weapons two handed. And one handed? Your properties are Slow (which if you are grappling someone is a ribbon property?), Sap (one hit only), and Vex (which is basically useless when you already have Advantage). And you can't dirty fight with two handed weapons?!?

Level 15: Gain proficiency bonus to damage with improvised weapons (which at least to some degrees makes up for the magic item issue), and use two Mastery properties? Let's look at those Mastery properties.

• One handed:
  • Sap only applies to the next attack roll. Doesn't stack
  • Slow doesn't stack
  • Vex is mostly redundant if you've the foe grappled. It's not bad but doesn't synergise well other than to set up the attack.
• Two handed:
  • Cleave gives you an extra attack you can only make 1/turn. No stacking
  • Topple has the property that once someone is prone they can't be double-proned
  • Push is pretty good

Add Push to the one handed list and Graze to two handed.

Level 18: Unarmed specialist. Are you kidding me? +1 damage per unarmed attack? As a level 18 ability? That you can't use while using your level 15 ability?

And then there's the quick summary of the fundamental problem with the class:

• Level 3: Does not work with normal magic weapons
• Level 7: Does not work on foes larger than Large
• Level 10: Does not work with two handed improvised weapons (or foes larger than large)
• Level 15: Does not work with unarmed strikes
• Level 18: Does not work with armed strikes.

Every ability is either useless in a common situation or actively does not work with one of the other abilities.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

No, and Crawford explains exactly why that's a bad idea.

He explains why he thinks it's a bad idea, not why it is.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Monks running out of Ki is new?
Fighters and Barbarians lacking out of combat features is new?
Monks, fighters, and warlocks being weak in low encounter tables is new?

No. The 5e design team has mostly ignored these problems for a long while.

No, they haven’t. Both expansion books have addressed some or all of those.

While they go out their way to hype up Tavern Brawling EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY GET.

This is meaningless. They like the feat. Okay.

The most generous explanation for their focus on some aspects while ignoring other aspects until forced by massive survey stress is that the 5e designers in their home game play very different from a lot of the community. Especially from the massive influx of new fans

Hardly. More reasonable is the idea that most of these problems are QoL improvements, not major problems, and the few major problems are simply things they was no world in which they were ever going to change via errata, option taxes, or similar.

The second most logical explanation is corporate pressure on them to keep ignoring the complaints of the 5e core books in order to not create additional bad press on the highest selling books of the edition. And the 2024 edition of the core books is an excuse to insert fixes they wand to include for a while and were sitting on but didn't in order to keep the 2014 Printing from looking outdated and flawed.

This is wild supposition with no support in anything real. See above.

I choose the former due to the glee that Crawford tends to have on game aspects that aren't that powerful and his constant reminds of missing obvious powergameable aspects of 5e.

The design team doesn’t care about powergaming. The community as a whole doesn’t care about powergaming. No one but powergamers and people who spend too much time on the internet overthinking D&D care about powergaming.

Meanwhile, every time you make wild unsupportable claims with no evidence in a way that reads like you’re speaking from knowledge of solid facts, I’m going to point that out. It’s literally trivially easy to make clear that you are speaking from opinion, not in reference to any direct knowledge.

 

[mellored]

I like the monk as the pseudo magic fighter. It's just not balanced very well. Which can mainly be solved by "more ki" in one way or another.

Personally I would do something like use a bonus action to gain a ki, and use a bonus action to spend it.

As far as battle master. At first pass, all of the maneuvers now looks really competitive. I don't see anything i wouldn't take or feel like I have to take. Except maybe sweeping attack.

The brawler had a lot of negative synergy. You get the light property (but not nick), reach, and a bonus action grapple. None of those work together.
Also "An improvised thrown weapon has a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet.", so not sure why you would use the brawler thrown range.
It would also be useful to have more guidance as to what is what rather than "DM may I use the bar stool like a maul?".
Picking your mastery each attack is neat though.

Champion is still fine.

War magic is nicely cleaned up.

 

[Weiley31]

Crawford addresses this in the video. He says they've heard that idea and considered it, but decided against it for two reasons. One is that the Battle Master is popular and they don't want to kill it to give other subclasses a watered down version of what it does. The other is that, believe it or not, not everyone likes Maneuvers and they don't want to force them on players who don't want them.

While I'm all for bringing all the Fighter subclasses up to a good level of performance, I can't entirely say he's wrong that chopping up the Battle Master and giving everyone a small piece is not the way to go. Like, would it really be satisfying to have two Superiority Dice and one Maneuver? I don't think so.

give every fighter number of dice(d6, no scaling) equal to proficiency bonus and number of maneuvers equal to proficiency bonus.
give battlemaster double of that and scaling of dice, d10 at 7th level. d12 at 15th level.

if you want a simple fighter;
Barbarian ------> that way.

Crawford directly addressed this in the last video. In simple terms.....its just not happening. They debated it internally and even tried out some options early on, and it got dropped. There is no world in which the fighter will have maneuvers by default in 2024.

I like how the assumption right away is that it has to be watered down.

They pretty much tried doing that already with the Heroes of Dragonlance Revisted UA and its Knight of Solamnia Background+the Squire of Solamnia+Knight of the Crown/Rose/Sword feats from said UA.

Basically, non-Battle Master Fighters and Paladins could get BM Maneuvers and would have a D6. Of course, ONLY the Battle Master would be able to upgrade those Maneuver die past D6 and would pretty much have the most number of Maneuvers. Especially if you took the few options that gave you extra Maneuvers. Still, even if you didn't go that route, the fighter was able to enjoy some of that BM goodness without having to be a BM.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I think the brawler (if focused on improvised weapons) should get things like area attacks. Like a whirlwind attacks with 2-handed items, and a 30' line (Dex save) attack if they throw a heavy object.

 

[Lord Shark]

That doesn't work in a system with as slow combat as D&D. Three rounds is about how long a fight lasts, and that's really not a lot of time to gain momentum unless you e.g. power up while being hit.

The 13th Age monk is built along those lines; each form gives you three increasingly powerful attacks (opening, flow, and finishing), which are intended to be used in sequence.