D&D 5E The Fighter/Martial Problem (In Depth Ponderings)

[Minigiant]

'tick off one resource, add a flat number to your attack roll, double your damage' is complex?

...yes

 

[Micah Sweet]

that's not simple

Simple is overrated IMO.

 

[Minigiant]

Simple is overrated IMO.

Yes but D&D should have an option that requires little brainpower to run for the new, young,or tired.

Preferably more than one.

WOTC just made the mistake of not siloing it into its own class and building the most popular D&D class around it (and predictably failing at it.).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes but D&D should have an option that requires little brainpower to run for the new, young,or tired.

Preferably more than one.

WOTC just made the mistake of not siloing it into its own class and building the most popular D&D class around it (and predictably failing at it.).

It's only a failure if it hinders them in accomplishing their goals, which to my mind are to make as much money as possible from as many people as possible so as to feed their shareholders. They do this by designing and publishing a game designed to appeal enough to as many people as they can such that they will buy it. Their current class design doesn't appear to hinder that goal, thus they have no reason to make any significant changes to it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes but D&D should have an option that requires little brainpower to run for the new, young,or tired.

Yes, little. But it doesn't need to be playable by an amoeba. "Spend this resource to hit hard" is not too complicated by any reasonable definition.

 

[pemerton]

Nah. It is pretty easy. Complexity doesn't come from having a resource mechanic, but from number of things you can do with it. So all fighters could have "grit points" (or whatever) and a complex fighter could have ton of different stuff they could spent them on while the simple one would have just one "big strike" feature they could burn them on, and then some passive bonuses to compensate for the lost versatility.

This is more-or-less 4e Essentials (vs "trad" 4e).

The issue in 4e was that the simple version ends up being a bit under-tuned. 5e is less complex overall than 4e (eg fewer status effects in combat, no martial AoEs as best I'm aware) and so getting the tuning right should be easier.

But I wouldn't expect WotC to so radically change the build of such a core class at this stage of the game!

 

[Minigiant]

Yes, little. But it doesn't need to be playable by an amoeba. "Spend this resource to hit hard" is not too complicated by any reasonable definition.

It's not the resource management. It's the extra math to get the simple fighter at the damage threshold.

Such a character concept would have to be built from stratch asa whole new class.,

It's only a failure if it hinders them in accomplishing their goals, which to my mind are to make as much money as possible from as many people as possible so as to feed their shareholders. They do this by designing and publishing a game designed to appeal enough to as many people as they can such that they will buy it. Their current class design doesn't appear to hinder that goal, thus they have no reason to make any significant changes to it.

WOTC would have made more money with the Champion being its own class.
Unfortunately they didn't at the start and are passed that point.

 

[James Gasik]

It's not the resource management. It's the extra math to get the simple fighter at the damage threshold.

Such a character concept would have to be built from stratch asa whole new class.,


WOTC would have made more money with the Champion being its own class.
Unfortunately they didn't at the start and are passed that point.

Thing is though, that math could be "hidden" from the player, and simply put into the class features or a table as a flat number.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's not the resource management. It's the extra math to get the simple fighter at the damage threshold.

Make the math easy. Use the resource to get 2d6 of extra damage or something. (Just an example, but whatever seems balanced.)

Such a character concept would have to be built from stratch asa whole new class.,

No, that's just absurd. I get that you love class bloat, but this is not a reasonable argument for it.

WOTC would have made more money with the Champion being its own class.

Citation needed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Make the math easy. Use the resource to get 2d6 of extra damage or something. (Just an example, but whatever seems balanced.)


No, that's just absurd. I get that you love class bloat, but this is not a reasonable argument for it.


Citation needed.

Bloat is subjective. Since you can always ignore material you don't want to use, I don't really believe in it.