D&D General Requesting permission to have something cool

[Reynard]

I want to expand a little on my previous post, specifically about adjusting the game to make the "mundane martial" feel as "cool" as the spell slinging wizard at key moments.

When a horde of goblins overwhelms the party, the wizard can throw a big spell and hopefully take out many of them them, but then they are spent and reduced to retreating behind the martials. Conversely, that sword and board fighter hacks away at the enemy, relentless and uncompromising and unstoppable because of steel and grit. In earlier versions of the game, this was achieved in the core design differences between the classes: the wizard was a glass cannon with powerful but limited tools, but was extremely vulnerable to even weak attacks due to way attacks and damage worked. Conversely, the fighter could not only hew through weaker opponents for as long as he had hit points to do so, he was much harder to hit than the wizard and could take much more damage.

What about the dragon, you ask? Well, the wizard was still limited in unleashing their most powerful attacks, and still weak. The fighter not only could likely still take the hits, the fighter was designed with good saving throws specifically to give the fighter the grit to stand up to the dragon or necromancer or whatever. The class fantasy of the fighter was solidly built into the design.

More recent versions of the game have drifted away from those key differences I enumerated. The restrictions and limitations on the wizard have eroded over time, and the wizard has been granted more "staying power" on top of it. Meanwhile, as monsters have gotten more powerful, the fighter has not really kept up: they don't have the highest hit points and ACs and best saves like they used to. And that is not even to mention the "kill as many goblins as you have hit dice" tool that makes the fighter feel awesome. Therefore, the solution is not to give the fighter near-magical attack sequences that emulate the kinds of impacts on the battlefield the casters have. the solution is to clamp down on the casters and to make "grit and steel" matter again.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And I've seen people complain that 5e doesn't provide those martial fantasies.

Sure, so have I, the same few people, endlessly, on these forums.

 

[Cadence]

We don't need a separate master swordsman or expert marksman because that's what fighters already are. What would they be that isn't already covered? I think the sword-and-board fighter gets a bit of a short shrift in the Sage Advice that says shield bash can only occur after all attacks have been resolved (I don't follow that rule). But with appropriate feats, fighters have multiple ways of filling those tropes.

Which fighters are that? (Because some of the fighters archetypes get leadership skills or spell casting or...)

 

[Remathilis]

To be fair, there seem to be a good many players who don't want to play a supernatural character, fighter or otherwise. Many fantasy stories players may use as inspiration feature non-supernatural characters in fantasy settings (like the "bard" in the recent D&D movie). Are we saying here that such players should just take a hike?

I mean, if they are going to keep posting this topic over and over again, yes?

The issue to me is that people think the fighter should have access to the same kinds of plot cards as wizards do, but it should be nonmagical. A wizard can teleport? I can teleport too except I'm so kewl that I just run over there in less than 6 seconds while avoiding all attacks of opportunity. That fighters and other mundanes can't just slap down an "I win" card, especially in social and exploration challenges. They want the benefits of magic but with none of the limits of it, and that's not an option for me.

So you get a choice: accept that the martial mundane character is not going to have the same access to "I win" cards as a caster, give the martial access to magic "I win" cards by making them magical, or find a game where magic doesn't have "I win" cards either. But this "
He Does Exactly What I Do But Nonmagically" isn't going to fly.

 

[mamba]

Even 4E, based on other recent threads, the power level didn't come close. Yes, my 30th level fighter did a lot of damage, had control and auras in 4E but they couldn't "split a ship in two because their sword is so sharp".

if that is what you want, that is not really any D&D, agreed. Find some superhero game instead of forcing D&D into being one

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, if they are going to keep posting this topic over and over again, yes?

The issue to me is that people think the fighter should have access to the same kinds of plot cards as wizards do, but it should be nonmagical. A wizard can teleport? I can teleport too except I'm so kewl that I just run over there in less than 6 seconds while avoiding all attacks of opportunity. That fighters and other mundanes can't just slap down an "I win" card, especially in social and exploration challenges. They want the benefits of magic but with none of the limits of it, and that's not an option for me.

So you get a choice: accept that the martial mundane character is not going to have the same access to "I win" cards as a caster, give the martial access to magic "I win" cards by making them magical, or find a game where magic doesn't have "I win" cards either. But this "
He Does Exactly What I Do But Nonmagically" isn't going to fly.

Yeah, that idea is, IMO, undeniably silly (though I'm sure someone will deny it). I guess I'm wondering what kind of D&D you're advocating for, and where the kind of design changes needed to make it would come from.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

if that is what you want, that is not really any D&D, agreed. Find some superhero game instead of forcing D&D into being one

So, you are advocating a nerf to wizards, since a wizard certainly could destroy the ship with their high level abilities, so the fighter would also need ship-destroying high level abilities for parity.

 

[Minigiant]

We don't need a separate master swordsman or expert marksman because that's what fighters already are. What would they be that isn't already covered? I think the sword-and-board fighter gets a bit of a short shrift in the Sage Advice that says shield bash can only occur after all attacks have been resolved (I don't follow that rule). But with appropriate feats, fighters have multiple ways of filling those tropes.

There is plenty that isn't covered.

That's what I assumed this topic was about

 

[Oofta]

Which fighters are that? (Because some of the fighters archetypes get leadership skills or spell casting or...)

Depends on what you mean. A battle master with archery skill and sharpshooter seems to be an expert archer, capable of sending a volley of arrows in a single round at higher levels with an action surge making a several of your foes drop their weapons or knocking them prone. Matches up to expert marksmen I've seen in movies.

There are other options as well, just depends on what the nebulous terms mean. If you mean a swordsman that can cut reality with their blade, no. D&D has never supported that trope and I don't think it should.

 

[Cadence]

Depends on what you mean. A battle master with archery skill and sharpshooter seems to be an expert archer, capable of sending a volley of arrows in a single round at higher levels with an action surge making a several of your foes drop their weapons or knocking them prone. Matches up to expert marksmen I've seen in movies.

Thank you! I haven't played a 5e fighter so that helps!