D&D General What does the mundane high level fighter look like? [+]

[Tony Vargas]

if we're going to have that fantasy of wading through large numbers of monsters...well...we need rules that make that tenable and not exhausting for the GM and a drag on game play.

Not really. Because running theses mooks wouldn't even really reinforce the fighter core fantasy.

The one thing fighters do really well in 5e is single target damage. Adding more targets, even weak ones is a direct dilution of the fighter's impact on the battle. Adding 10 or 20 of them means adding the type of threat a 5e fighter has the most difficult time addressing (outside of flying creatures).

Fair.

D&D may not have done a great job of the whole wading through large numbers of monsters power fantasy....

TSR D&D, the fighter had the ability to attack less-than-1-HD monsters (like goblins and kobolds) once per round per level, and, with 7 hp, tops, a pretty good chance of one-shotting each of them. Problem was those were litterally the least of monsters, they'd have a bit of trouble hitting a 1st level fighter in splint armor, by the time you were mowing through them they were irrelevant, and spells could just anihilate large numbers of them.

3e, the Fighter could get Great Cleave by 4th or WWA by 6th, and mow through groups of enemies if he could one-shot them individually, and reach could help make that group bigger. But monsters you could hit & one-shot dependably w/Great Cleave were, again, pretty quickly irrelevant and could be erased even more efficiently by AE spells. 3e also introduced a way to handle large groups of enemies more easily, swarms. Problem was they took half damage from single-target attacks (full or extra damage vs attacks that could target the whole swarm), so Great Cleave was no help, and WWA could be ruled either way.

4e kept swarms and introduced the fighter got at-will cleave and encounter and daily attack powers that could include mulitple attacks or a small AE, and even a small AE worked well against swarms or/and minions. Of course, casters, particularly Controller-Role casters like the Wizard, still got bigger AEs, and there was no martial controller.

5e fighters specialize in single-target DPR via mutliple attacks like Action Surge and Extra Attack, but no AEs, minions are gone, so it's back to one-hit-kill as the threshold for mowing through monsters - BA makes those monsters less trivial a threat, but they're still efficiently erased by AE spells. There are still swarms, so a large group of enemies modeled by a swarm can be subjected to the fighters single-target DPR, but it resits that damage.

 

[Sacrosanct]

So a DM is expected to run 10 to 20 extra cr 1/2 mooks that will miss constantly and deal no damage and be no threat just to give the fighter one of their core fantasies?

Zikes.

No. Not at all. Those mooks can and do damage the other party members, making them a threat that has to be addressed. Creating a situation where the wizard or rogue can't just go one-shot the bbeg while the fighter is still getting to them because otherwise the CR 1/2s will mess up the rogue and wizard. Mooks allow the fighter to do what they do best because the wizard isn't stealing their thunder.

All the pieces work together; the combat doesn't work in a vacuum.

 

[Aldarc]

I felt that in 4e the monster HP was bloated and fights took too long. I haven’t had that impression in 5e, things die pretty fast.

It was. I believe that there is even a thread on 4e that revealed some behind the scenes business where some staffer buffed the HP for monsters before release because they thought the HP looked too low. From what I recall, the math was not corrected until MM3.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In any case, whilst I don't think finetuning the damage dealing aspect of the fighter would necessarily hurt, I think concentrating on that is a mistake. It is actually the aspect of fighters which is fine, even pretty good, and overtuning it might lead to a genuine imbalance. What they're lacking is movement and other athletic stunt capabilities, as well as utility outside of combat. If I wanted to improve fighter I'd focus on those, not the damage dealing at which they already are pretty damn good.

 

[Minigiant]

Again, there are rules for this in the DMG. For example if the monsters need a 16 or better to hit, on average 1 in 5 will hit. I'd also use the optional cleave rules for scenarios like this or I go even further and make them swarms, which is something I've done for zombies. Then there's just modifying monsters, adding to their attack and damage while leaving HP low. You can also have some of the low level monsters knock the PC prone so the rest have advantage to hit.

There are plenty of options without resorting to minions.

There are variant rules. But the variant rules don't actually work because the monster have too many HP unless your DM gives you the optional magic items.

If magic weapons that add tons of damage per hit were required, there is no problem.

If you create custom swarm monster for a gang of human cult zealots, demon legionnaires or orc berserkers, there is no problem.

But either of those is admitting that 5e doesn't do it by default.

 

[Fanaelialae]

It is not about number of words, it is about having to use this sort of feature that doesn’t represent anything that exists in the fictional world to patch the fact that your combat system doesn’t scale properly.

In Flee Mortals, minions do represent something in the fictional world. Two examples are the Pitling and the Blood-Starved Vampire.

The Pitling is the lowest category of demon. Essentially abyssal vermin. They're capable of consuming the soul of a dying creature (making it dangerous to go to 0 HP when they're nearby), and if they succeed they immediately transform from a CR 4 minion into a CR 6 non-minion (a category 2 demon).

The Blood Starved Vampire is a vampire that has gone a year or more without consuming blood. They are driven by their bloodthirst, and must consume scores of humanoids to regain their former glory. They often band together because they are aware that even a single blow can render them unto dust.

With that kind of world building explaining their place in the setting, would that make such minions more acceptable in your eyes?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In Flee Mortals, minions do represent something in the fictional world. Two examples are the Pitling and the Blood-Starved Vampire.

The Pitling is the lowest category of demon. Essentially abyssal vermin. They're capable of consuming the soul of a dying creature (making it dangerous to go to 0 HP when they're nearby), and if they succeed they immediately transform from a CR 4 minion into a CR 6 non-minion (a category 2 demon).

The Blood Starved Vampire is a vampire that has gone a year or more without consuming blood. They are driven by their bloodthirst, and must consume scores of humanoids to regain their former glory. They often band together because they are aware that even a single blow can render them unto dust.

With that kind of world building explaining their place in the setting, would that make such minions more acceptable in your eyes?

Yes, absolutely.

 

[Gammadoodler]

In any case, whilst I don't think finetuning the damage dealing aspect of the fighter would necessarily hurt, I think concentrating on that is a mistake. It is actually the aspect of fighters which is fine, even pretty good, and overtuning it might lead to a genuine imbalance. What they're lacking is movement and other athletic stunt capabilities, as well as utility outside of combat. If I wanted to improve fighter I'd focus on those, not the damage dealing at which they already are pretty damn good.

Ennhh. Can certainly move on, but personally I think the damage is the flipside of the utility abilities coin.

Specifically, that they do not get enough combat potence for the amount of utility they give up.

Annndd.. a significant amount of their combat potence comes from outside the class, specifically feats and magic weapons. Start taking that stuff away and the damage quickly drops from 'pretty damn good' to 'fine' real fast.

 

[Minigiant]

No. Not at all. Those mooks can and do damage the other party members, making them a threat that has to be addressed. Creating a situation where the wizard or rogue can't just go one-shot the bbeg while the fighter is still getting to them because otherwise the CR 1/2s will mess up the rogue and wizard. Mooks allow the fighter to do what they do best because the wizard isn't stealing their thunder.

All the pieces work together; the combat doesn't work in a vacuum.

But that is not "What does the mundane high level fighter look like?"

it is "What does the mundane high level nonfighter look like?"

We agree that a high level mundane fighter should wade through lesser foes. However since 5e doesn't do it, many are simply stripping of the fantasy rather than creating good rules that enforce that fantasy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm saying, "mundane" ain't even in it. Mundane is the commoner farming. Adventuring, itself, is not mundane.

By that standard, how can you even design a mundane warrior- the express purpose of this (+) thread?