D&D (2024) Fighter (Playtest 7)

[Minigiant]

But that's an easily solvable problem. All you need to do is break out the simple subclass from the fighter and make it a separate class entirely. Call it a Warrior or something like that.

In fact if you did that you could make it even simpler, since you could bake the subclass features of the champion into the main class, meaning that you can have a class without subclasses. That makes it even easier for new players.

5th edition is the first edition of D&D to think "new classes is bad".

That's why this hasn't happened.
We must wait until 6e for "Simple Fighter" and "Complex Fighter" to split.

 

[Minigiant]

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

No they didn't.
WOTC did practically jack squat about the monk and warlock resource problems until this playtest.
(Goes back to check)
Yup. No extra Ki or spells. No restoration of ki.

As for Fighter OOC. They did a something. Bonus skills in certain subclasses. And maneuvers that give bonuses to ability checks.

This is meaningless. They like the feat. Okay.

And they made a whole subclass abut it.

A subclass fans here and at every other D&D space are have long conversations about because they made it extremely DM dependent without releasing the new DM rules and guidelines to properly judge it.

Which run counter to things they just said. Because they just changed Remarkable Athlete in the playtest to make its use clear and not DM dependent.

This creates a disconnect of them saying one way and designing a different way.
A disconnect of saying X but designing Y. Then adding Z which was asked for a long time after years of silence.

None of it makes any sense.
Why do this now?
Why do this in the second to last playtest packet on PHB content when you know you won't be able to test the changes after you get the survey?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No they didn't.
WOTC did practically jack squat about the monk and warlock resource problems until this playtest.
(Goes back to check)
Yup. No extra Ki or spells. No restoration of ki.

As for Fighter OOC. They did a something. Bonus skills in certain subclasses. And maneuvers that give bonuses to ability checks.


And they made a whole subclass abut it.

A subclass fans here and at every other D&D space are have long conversations about because they made it extremely DM dependent without releasing the new DM rules and guidelines to properly judge it.

Which run counter to things they just said. Because they just changed Remarkable Athlete in the playtest to make its use clear and not DM dependent.

This creates a disconnect of them saying one way and designing a different way.
A disconnect of saying X but designing Y. Then adding Z which was asked for a long time after years of silence.

None of it makes any sense.
Why do this now?
Why do this in the second to last playtest packet on PHB content when you know you won't be able to test the changes after you get the survey?

Okay. All of that is completely disconnected from the claims you were making about how they play the game.

 

[Minigiant]

Okay. All of that is completely disconnected from the claims you were making about how they play the game.

It is.

My hypothesis was always that they don't experience those problems and issues because they play the game differently from a large percentage of he community. If you play 5th edition with a DM with Old School or OSR mentalities, world creation, and adventure design, you don't run into them.

So when they did the playtest survey for the 2024 core books, they were bombarded with this new info and did not leave themselves enough time to design with it in mind.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It is.

My hypothesis was always that they don't experience those problems and issues because they play the game differently from a large percentage of he community. If you play 5th edition with a DM with Old School or OSR mentalities, world creation, and adventure design, you don't run into them.

So when they did the playtest survey for the 2024 core books, they were bombarded with this new info and did not leave themselves enough time to design with it in mind.

That does not track.

So, first, they didn’t find out how people play 5e in 2021. They’ve known for most of a decade how and what people play 5e, and longer than that how folks play D&D in general.

Second, old school DMs aren’t immune to the issues you’re pointing to.

Third, what info we actually have about their games suggest a cinematic style, not old school “skilled play” or powergaming.

 

[Minigiant]

That does not track.

So, first, they didn’t find out how people play 5e in 2021. They’ve known for most of a decade how and what people play 5e, and longer than that how folks play D&D in general.

So why did they wait until now to address them?

Second, old school DMs aren’t immune to the issues you’re pointing to.

But they are more resistant to them.

There are many EnWorlders, game designers, and content creators who often talk about not rolling during exploration and social encounters and having long grindy dungeon crawls which would benefit short rest classes.

They would not run into these problems.

Third, what info we actually have about their games suggest a cinematic style, not old school “skilled play” or powergaming.

Which makes they overall avoidance of some off these often discussed 5e complaints and criticisms until literally yesterday confusing.

 

[see]

This doesn't fix all the problems although it will keep you up with +1 weapons.

What keeps a Brawler up with magic weapons is the magic items mentioned in the Design Note on p.14. The place to make sure Brawlers, monks, and College of Dance bards keep up with magic weapons is there, not in subclass features.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So why did they wait until now to address them?

Because they’re not things they were willing to address with errata or additional design, hey we’re just going to have to wait until a major revision. Well, that, and none of them were causing a majority of players to be unsatisfied, they just weren’t hitting ideal targets.

But they are more resistant to them.

There are many EnWorlders, game designers, and content creators who often talk about not rolling during exploration and social encounters and having long grindy dungeon crawls which would benefit short rest classes.

They would not run into these problems.

Sure they would. That style of play is very uneven in terms of encounters per day, difficulty of encounters, etc.

Which makes they overall avoidance of some off these often discussed 5e complaints and criticisms until literally yesterday confusing.

First, this is irrelevant to the criticism I laid out that started our exchange. The fact you find it confusing is not evidence for any given supposition you want to make bold declarative statements about as if explaining facts to someone.

Second, how is it confusing? See above.

They tried to use class and subclass features to make up for pain points in certain classes, and in some cases it mostly worked. In the cases that didn’t, they were not ever going to go beyond that before doing a deep dive survey and creating a major revision to the game.

As for the idea they ignored them until yesterday, that’s simply not true.

Taking warlock again, UA5 addressed the same issues for warlocks. Much more radically.

 

[NaturalZero]

The thing you'd want to do if you were to give all fighter subclasses superiority dice is not to split the Battlemaster up. Instead, you just have the dice do things that are specific for the the subclass.

• Battlemaster: 100% intact
• Eldritch Knight: Spend superiority dice do to special magic attacks and maneuvers.
• Pis Warrior: Spend superiority dice to do psi actions (kinda how it already works)
• Rune Knight: Spend superiority dice to activate runes
• Echo Knight: Spend superiority dice to summon echo and activate echo moves
• Warlord: Spend superiority dice to buff or activate ally moves outside of what the battlemaster gets, plus temp hp.
• Brawler: Spend superiority dice to spontaneously mix and match weapon masteries, on top of base unarmed damage.

And so on. It's a super obvious and elegant way to make all of the fighter classes work on the same chassis without dumb wizard spell slots, adding "psi" dice with a different mechanics, or really having to make different recovery and gimmicks for power activation for every subclass.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Bless you for simply dis-including the Champion.