D&D (2024) 2024 Player's Handbook Reveal #2: "New Fighter"

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"The Fighter is now the weapon master equivalent of the Wizard" (with respect to versatility).

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OVERVIEW

The Fighter seems to have been mostly set in Playtest 7. Most of the features described carry over from there, though Brawler has gone and is replaced by Psi Warrior form Tasha's.

• Ranger and Fighter have the most new features.
• Subclasses provide "different levels of mechanical idiosyncracy".
• Weapon mastery (level1), tactical mind (2), tactical shift (5), studied attacks (13) -- all of these are as in PT7.
• second wind -- increased number of uses (as PT7)
• NEW: Level 9: Tactical master is like mastery of Armaments, but limited to push. sap, and slow. These properties are now always in the fighter's pocket, regardless of the weapon used. These properties add to Battle Master abilities.
• Fighting Styles: new options available: Blindfighting, Interception, Thrown Weapons, and Unarmed fighting (from Tasha's). (YAY for thrown weapons and unarmed fighting!). Protection style "improved".
• NEW: You can change your fighting style when you level up.
• NEW: All classes now get an Epic Boon at level 19, replacing the ASI.

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SUBCLASSES

Battle Master:

• they considered making the maneuvers the core of the fighter, but that would undermine the goal of different playstyles for each subclass.
• ambush, bait and switch, commanding presence, and tactical presence all brought over from Tasha's (as PT7)
• Student of War also gives you a skill proficiency (as PT7)
• Know your enemy has "limited number of uses per day" (PT7 had one, IIRC)

Champion:

• same core identity, focusing on crits.
• Remarkable Athlete: NEW. When you score a crit, you can move without receiving opportunity attacks.
• Remarkable Athlete: advantage on initiative and athletics (as PT7). This works with the new surprise rules, which give you an edge but "defang" the one-sidedness of surprise.
• Additional fighting style at 7, Heroic Warrior at 10, Survivor at 18 (as PT7).

Eldritch Knight:

• for players who played OD&D when Elf was a class...
• with the Psi Warrior are for people who want Fighter and X (mixed).
• no school restrictions (also for Arcane Trickster)
• NEW: you can now use an arcane focus.
• War Magic and Improved War Magic: as in PT7, but at level 18 you can replace two attacks with spells up to level 2 (I think this is new).

Psi Warrior:

• changes from Tasha: changes are primarily in rewording.

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NEW RULES
Epic Boon:

• you may choose a non-epic boon feat. They include an ASI that can go past 20, and include abilities go beyond what feats normally do.
• Example: Boon of Combat Prowess. Once per TURN, you can turn a miss to a hit. Another example: You have Truesight. Another example: when you attack or take the magic action, you also teleport.
• The PHB now has rules to go beyond level 20. Every time you hit some XP threshold, you can choose another Epic Boon (which could take one of your scores to level 30).

Other NEW rules clarifications:

• Heroic Inspiration which lets you re-roll any one die (may be one damage die, but not all damage dice).
• Surprise now gives you disadvantage on your initiative. (Champion, Assassin, and Barbarian are hard to surprise -- they won't have disadvantage on init).
• No school restrictions for Arcane Trickster or Eldrtich Knight.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Vex is back.

Vex seems to be largely overrated by the community. We will see, but I think it isn't that powerful.

 

[mellored]

I think this makes it worse. There are entire swaths of fighters this will be nothing but a boon for, but this is an ability meant for all fighters.

It is nothing but a boon for every fighter.

Just a little bit bigger of a boon with a trident than a longsword. And obviously you were not using Topple before hand anyway.

And it's not like you can use all of them at the same time. It would be similar to being able to prepare 1 extra spell, not getting an extra spell slot. Nice, but not huge.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Can the 2024 Action Surge be used by the fighter player to trash WOTC multiple times in one round thread?

 

[mellored]

Can the 2024 Action Surge be used by the fighter player to trash WOTC multiple times in one round thread?

Per the latest playtest.

"you can take one additional action, except the Magic action."

 

[DrJawaPhD]

From what I can tell, they have not said either way.

The proposal makes sense, and puts an appropriate (IMO) curb on Fighter 2/Wizard X builds. (Are there other builds where this would be obviously exploitable?).

Action Surge is obviously exploitable by every nova damage build in the game, and it's crazy that they aren't addressing it. It really ought to be given out at a higher level, it's way too powerful to give out for just a 2 level dip

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Here's hoping they've significantly buffed the Champion's increased crit range, so that it actually keeps up with the other Fighter subclasses. Alternatively, giving Champions extra damage dice on crits would be a major way to solve this problem. Just an extra 1d6 would be a huge help.

 

[Horwath]

Here's hoping they've significantly buffed the Champion's increased crit range, so that it actually keeps up with the other Fighter subclasses. Alternatively, giving Champions extra damage dice on crits would be a major way to solve this problem. Just an extra 1d6 would be a huge help.

adding +1 HP per level to bump Champion to barbarians level would also been nice.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

adding +1 HP per level to bump Champion to barbarians level would also been nice.

Perhaps. I'm mostly just considering the simple math of it. Even at only 1 short rest per day, Battle Master has a floor of +8d8 damage, or (roughly) +36 damage per day. Both BM and Champion crit 5% of the time, so Champion is only getting 1 out of 19 extra crits per day (given the 20th is already a crit). Even if we presume a 2d6 or 1d12 weapon, that's an average of 7 (or 6.5) damage in 1 of 19 non-crit attacks. Even with the generous assumption of 6 combats with only one short rest in the middle, the BM never using maneuvers on a crit, and having five combat rounds per combat, that's 2x5x6+2 = 60 attacks. Three of those are already crits, and on average, old Champion would get three extra crits...for a total of 7x3 = 21 damage. That's literally about as unfavorable as it is possible to be to the BM, and yet the Champion is still not even getting 2/3 of the BM's benefits. Bump it up by even one short rest, and you're comparing 21 bonus damage from the Champion to 54 bonus damage from the BM, not even half as much.

If the expanded crit range started at 18-20 and became 16-20 at high level, it could keep up, it would just have times where it's ahead and times where it's behind. Alternatively, if you got that extra +1d6 per crit, the above would increase from 21 to 31.5, which is still weaker (especially given how much I've biased the above numbers to disfavor the BM), but it would be something. Using +1d8 and doubling it to +2d8 later would actually make it a reasonable pick--probably still weaker, but not enough to matter in the long run (that'd be 34.5 early on, which would fall behind the BM as its number/size of dice grows, but doubling both the bonus and the number of extra crits would make up for that late in the game.)

 

[Horwath]

Perhaps. I'm mostly just considering the simple math of it. Even at only 1 short rest per day, Battle Master has a floor of +8d8 damage, or (roughly) +36 damage per day. Both BM and Champion crit 5% of the time, so Champion is only getting 1 out of 19 extra crits per day (given the 20th is already a crit). Even if we presume a 2d6 or 1d12 weapon, that's an average of 7 (or 6.5) damage in 1 of 19 non-crit attacks. Even with the generous assumption of 6 combats with only one short rest in the middle, the BM never using maneuvers on a crit, and having five combat rounds per combat, that's 2x5x6+2 = 60 attacks. Three of those are already crits, and on average, old Champion would get three extra crits...for a total of 7x3 = 21 damage. That's literally about as unfavorable as it is possible to be to the BM, and yet the Champion is still not even getting 2/3 of the BM's benefits. Bump it up by even one short rest, and you're comparing 21 bonus damage from the Champion to 54 bonus damage from the BM, not even half as much.

If the expanded crit range started at 18-20 and became 16-20 at high level, it could keep up, it would just have times where it's ahead and times where it's behind. Alternatively, if you got that extra +1d6 per crit, the above would increase from 21 to 31.5, which is still weaker (especially given how much I've biased the above numbers to disfavor the BM), but it would be something. Using +1d8 and doubling it to +2d8 later would actually make it a reasonable pick--probably still weaker, but not enough to matter in the long run (that'd be 34.5 early on, which would fall behind the BM as its number/size of dice grows, but doubling both the bonus and the number of extra crits would make up for that late in the game.)

IMHO, all martial classes should get increased crit range, with Champion and barbarian being the best of them,

even improved critical feat would be nice;

Improved critical:
+1 ASI,
you now score critical hit on 19 and 20, or you expand your critical range by 1.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Perhaps. I'm mostly just considering the simple math of it. Even at only 1 short rest per day, Battle Master has a floor of +8d8 damage, or (roughly) +36 damage per day. Both BM and Champion crit 5% of the time, so Champion is only getting 1 out of 19 extra crits per day (given the 20th is already a crit). Even if we presume a 2d6 or 1d12 weapon, that's an average of 7 (or 6.5) damage in 1 of 19 non-crit attacks. Even with the generous assumption of 6 combats with only one short rest in the middle, the BM never using maneuvers on a crit, and having five combat rounds per combat, that's 2x5x6+2 = 60 attacks. Three of those are already crits, and on average, old Champion would get three extra crits...for a total of 7x3 = 21 damage. That's literally about as unfavorable as it is possible to be to the BM, and yet the Champion is still not even getting 2/3 of the BM's benefits. Bump it up by even one short rest, and you're comparing 21 bonus damage from the Champion to 54 bonus damage from the BM, not even half as much.

That was always something that bothered me.

But: remarkable athlete down to 3 and improved goes a long way to balance it way better:

-advantage on initiative:
Going first if you would not otherwise can mean a full round of damage. Lets say, about 25% of combats will have this situation (math is bit complicated here).
That could mean extra 4 attacks at level 5. So on average one more attack per combat. Which adds some damage.

-extra movement on a crit. Mobility is very helpful, if you are in melee. Especially a twf champion will move a lot as they have more chances to crit.
Also weapon masteries like vex will give the champion advantage a lot, making a higher crit chance even better.

Also consider that a battlemaster rarely spends all dice in a single combat. Until they regain one every round, they usually don't want to be caught without any die left. I
If two combats happen before the fighter can take a short rest, the battlemaster might not be use any subclass ability in a given fight.


So even though the numbers seem to favour the battlemaster heavily, in actual play the champion is not as far behind as one would assume. And after the buffs, I am quite certain that the little (average) damage difference will not be noticable, as different adventuring days favour one or the other and there will be days where the champion heavily outdamages a battlemaster.