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.

 

[Horwath]

Then give Stealth advantage on intuitive, and Surprise disadvantage.

You will nearly always go first that way. With just a small chance that things go wrong.

or simpler. If you are surprised, you do not get to act on 1st turn of combat.

 

[mellored]

I'm sorry, what?

Where on earth are you getting FOURTEEN extra crits from a 5% increase in crit chance?

I never said 14 crits. That would be 98 extra damage.

5% boost means you need 20 attacks to make 1 extra crit.
Or 15 attacks with some advantage.

Also, no + anything, crits don't add flat damage, they ONLY add dice.

2d6+3 is a normal attack.
Champion goes first, and makes more normal attacks. The initiative bonus is much more valuable than the crit range.

Example combat
Roll initiative
Champion: 2d6+3
BM: 2d6+1d8+3
Champion: 2d6+3
BM: 2d6+1d8+3
Champion: miss
BM: miss
Champion: 2d6+3
BM: 2d6+3
Champion: 2d6+3, kills the target.

Total damage
Champion: 40, *not including crit
BM: 39

Obviously it won't always line up that way, but it's not exactly an uncommon scenario.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I never said 14 crits. That would be 98 extra damage.

5% boost means you need 20 attacks to make 1 extra crit.
Or 15 attacks with some advantage.

2d6+3 is a normal attack.
Champion goes first, and makes more normal attacks. The initiative bonus is much more valuable than the crit range.

Example combat
Roll initiative
Champion: 2d6+3
BM: 2d6+1d8+3
Champion: 2d6+3
BM: 2d6+1d8+3
Champion: miss
BM: miss
Champion: 2d6+3
BM: 2d6+3
Champion: 2d6+3, kills the target.

Total damage
Champion: 40, *not including crit
BM: 39

Obviously it won't always line up that way, but it's not exactly an uncommon scenario.

I just don't see this happening often enough to be such a clear win case. I mean, imagine if the Champion kills with their very first attack--now you're having to account for all the possibilities where the Champion gets fewer attacks because they're not getting 2-3 attacks, they're getting just 1, or whatever. Or the times when there are, y'know, a lot of targets on the field, so killing one has no effect on whether or not the BM can make a further attack. Etc.

I'm not saying advantage on initiative is bad. It isn't. It's very good, and very helpful. But it has very, very little effect on daily damage output. Not zero--as you've said, this can happen--but all sorts of other things can happen that are instead disadvantageous to the Champion. Not so with the Battle Master, and (as noted) I wasn't accounting for using maneuvers on crits, presuming that the BM never has dice available when critting, which is obviously incorrect.

Your Champion, optimized out the wazoo for crit-fishing, that somehow magically has advantage on every attack they ever make (when the BM does not), is still falling behind the BM even at its weakest point, when it still has only 4d8. It becomes 5d8 at level 7, 5d10 at level 10, 6d10 at level 15 (and you recharge 1 die if you roll initiative and don't have any, meaning under the above example, it would actually be 7d10 or even 8d10 per rest), and 6d12 (with the possibility of 7 or 8) at level 18.

The crit-fisher perma-advantage TWF Champion does not keep up. Even at just level 7, when nothing whatsoever has changed about the Champion's damage output, the bar has now moved up to 5d8 per rest, or ~22.5. Heck, even at level 10 nothing actually improves for the Champ--they get a second Fighting Style, but that would (at best) let them tread water in a new way (e.g. Archery, or GWF, or Defense), it wouldn't actually help them catch up. So by that point, the BM has both increased the size and number of their dice, to 5d10 (~27.5) per rest, while the Champion has done...nothing. Level 11 gives a slight reprieve, what with 2x EA, but you face the diminishing returns problem. From levels 1-4, TWF was letting you make 2x as many attacks. Levels 5-10, it lets you make 1.5x. Levels 11-19, it's only 4/3.

This is why I say adding just a really small bonus--like +1d6 damage on a crit--would work wonders for making the Champion actually GOOD at what it does. Simple effect, roll more dice. Simple result, get more damage. Folks drawn to Champion for its simplicity won't be put out much by this, I should think. And that little bump in damage, especially on a crit-fisher build, would pretty handily solve the damage gap.

Again: Advantage on initiative is great, and almost certainly better than "Remarkable Athlete"'s old effect (which was half proficiency to initiative checks, since the other parts were mostly worthless even for a ribbon, given most Champions will be proficient in at least one of Athletics or Acrobatics already.) But unless there have been some hefty changes elsewhere that specifically favor Champions somehow, I'm not seeing any of these changes actually fixing the damage gap.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

My math was already accounting for the Champion never being in a situation where they cannot make every attack they're able to make. This does not change anything.

I have read your analyses and I reject some of your assumptions.

Also, how on earth could it mean 4 extra attacks at that point? The only way that could possibly happen is if you're crediting the Champion with Action Surge, but not the Battle Master...but at some point the BM is going to be in melee too, so it's ridiculous to assume the Champion gets it but the BM never does. I absolutely reject the idea that advantage on Initiative would result in earning two whole rounds of attacks that the BM simply can't make.

I did not state that.
I said that if you go first, the champion can make 4 attacks. 2 with extra attack and two with action surge + extra attack before the enemy acts.
Yes. I was not accounting that the battlemaster gets the action surge afterwards. My mistake.

That's nonsense. One round, some of the time, I could maybe grant. Absolutely not two rounds. Making a total of 6 extra attacks per day would give you...less than 1/3 of a crit on average. Not anywhere near enough to matter.

Yeah. Did not say two rounds.

On the other hand, the first 4 attacks (as explained above) can have a very large impact.

This, however, I had not accounted for. Using TWF would result in (slightly) more attacks, particularly early on, but you trade away a significant loss of potency in the doing: no weapon compatible with TWF has a damage die higher than d6, so those crits are only earning you (on average) 3.5 damage, compared to the 4.5-6.5 damage of Battle Master maneuvers (even if, as stated, we presume BMs do not ever use their maneuver dice on critical hits), meaning they have to get even more additional attacks to make up the difference. (8d8 is 36 average; that would mean a Champ with 1d6 weapons would need to get about 10 extra crits per day to make up the difference. Even if the Champ always gets 3 attacks per round from TWF, that's still 10*19/3 = 63-64 rounds of combat--shave off a couple for Action Surge and you still end up with 60+, which means you'd need six 10-round combats per day just to keep up with the BM that never gets more than ONE short rest per day.)

There are often days without short rests...
Also a battle master that saves their rolls for crits (an extra 1d8 damage at that level) is probably wasting damage because they wait 20 attacks on average for each crit. So 9 rounds assuming action surge on level 5.

I already accounted for that. I assumed 15 combat rounds (three fights of five rounds), one short rest, three fights of five rounds, long rest. In 15 rounds, the BM is essentially guaranteed to land at least four attacks. Hence, there will essentially never be a situation where the BM is somehow not getting 4d8 damage per short rest--the more attacks you make, the more nearly guaranteed it becomes. Since Champions absolutely depend on having more attacks per round in order to get their bonus, there is never a world where the Champion is getting more crits but the BM is not getting in all of her Superiority Dice per rest.

If the BM decides to spend all their dice.
If the BM is used to having one short rest after each combat, yes, the BM will spend those. That is not the base assumption of the game (2014). The assumption is 6 to 8 combats woth 2 short rests in between (as absurd as it is). Which means the BM usually spreads their 4 dice over 2 combats.

So. Do you need to have 2 combats per short rests all the time? No, but the threat of having them makes the BM way more cautious in wasting them.

Yes, you assumed 3 fights per short rest. But you did not account for the BM letting opportunities slide, because of caution.

It doesn't matter whether they're happening in every fight or not; I'm averaging across all fights per rest. BMs get a floor of +4d8 damage per rest. I assumed one short rest per day, meaning a total of +8d8. For the Champion to overcome that, even with TWF, they have to have a stupidly high number of extra rounds. It's simply not possible--despite this situation being distinctly unfair to the BM (who would very much rather get one more short rest per day.)

You still don't account for the dice the battlemaster saved up too long.

Yes, they are. Three of your four points were completely irrelevant, and the third is a mixed bag, because while it does increase the number of attacks made, it only does so by dropping the damage dice for those crits.

I am not sure which points you discounted. But your math is very white roomy.

A TWF Champion using d6 weapons would be making 90 attacks over those six combats rather than 60. Hence, the BM would get 3 crits (5%) while the Champion would get around 9 crits, give or take. However, the BM can use a greatsword (2d6) or greataxe (1d12), while the Champ cannot, so those 3 crits are actually 6d6 bonus damage (three hits of 2d6). The Champion is getting ~9d6 damage in total from their crits (9 hits of 1d6 damage). As a result...the Champion is only ahead by 3d6 from their crit bonus, while the Battle Master is ahead by 8d8 from their maneuvers. I don't know about you, but I'd say 8d8 beats the everloving crap out of 3d6.

You say things I did not say. If you want to compare apples to oranges, have fun.

So: if the Champion could get better dice (say, a d8 light weapon), and if the Champion is somehow making MANY more attacks (as in...around 40 more), and if fights start off in such a way that the Champion winning initiative gets them a whole extra round of combat, and if the Battle Master is being starved of short rests, and if the party gets into a bazillion combats every single day...then sure, maybe it becomes possible for the Champion to keep up.

Yeah. Not what I said.

Until, of course, the Battle Master's dice get larger, or they get more dice....

And the champion gets a second fighting style and heroic inspiration every freaking turn...

Also: assuming 8d8 more damage in a whole day (which they don't get) leaves you with an average of 36 more damage.
You assumed 64 attacks per day. That leaves us with with less than +0.5 damage per attack for the BM. Which is about as benefical as the savage attacker feat. Congratulation for your heavy optimization.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

if we take 8th level rogue with 20 dex and base hit chance of 60% and most importantly with Elven accuracy+Aim;

you go from DPR of 24,65 to DPR of 27.

not really gamebreaking.

No. Not at all.

But 36 extra damage per day (as of @EzekielRaiden 's calculation) which translates to less than 1 more DPR for the BM dwarfs the champion so that he is close to unplayable.

So your increase of 2.35 DPR can be looked at differently...

 

[mellored]

Or the times when there are, y'know, a lot of targets on the field, so killing one has no effect on whether or not the BM can make a further attack. Etc.

It does have an effect on how much damage is taken though. Killing an enemy when it only had 3 turns instead of 4.

Your Champion, optimized out the wazoo for crit-fishing, that somehow magically has advantage on every attack they ever make (when the BM does not)

I don't think a champion wielding a maul is optimized out the wazoo. Advantage just works better with expanded crit range, even if they got the same amount of advantage.

Though you are correct i did not consider battlemaster dice on a crit.

As for initive, advantage means going first 75% of the time, and enemies have a 50% chance to die from an odd number of attacks.

So Champ gets 0.375 extra rounds per combat.
2d6+3 * 0.375 * 4 combats = +15 damage.

And at level 5 is is 2d6+4 * 0.375 * 4 * 2 = 33

The crit-fisher perma-advantage TWF Champion does not keep up.

I agree crit fishing by itself doesn't do much, even with advantage.
You also need add on dice (smite) to really boost it.

Even at just level 7, when nothing whatsoever has changed about the Champion's damage output, the bar has now moved up to 5d8 per rest, or ~22.5.

There has been more changes to the Champ. As of the playtest.

Level 7 is the extra fighting style.
Level 10 is 1/turn reroll any die. Which is likely going to reoll a miss, effectively make an extra attack.
Level 15 is 18-20 crit. So not much.
Level 17 is 18-20 "crit" death saves, with advantage. Making it extremely likely you will never die from being dropped, and fairly likely you stand back up.

Also, at level 5, 11, and 17 the Champion extra damage from initive and crit range scale, where as the BM dice do not.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Being surprised should be punishing.

The game rewards alpha striking as is. Getting a free round of attacks just means that the only worthwhile consideration ever is getting that surprise round - it turns any difficult fight into an easy one.

That's a bit much of a swing, especially if Rangers still have lol +10 stealth to everyone.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The game rewards alpha striking as is. Getting a free round of attacks just means that the only worthwhile consideration ever is getting that surprise round - it turns any difficult fight into an easy one.

That's a bit much of a swing, especially if Rangers still have lol +10 stealth to everyone.

But that's what 5e is all about.

Remove details. Eliminate all complexity. Get your one bonus (Advantage, Surprise, etc.) and be done with it. No need to learn to play; just press the "I Win" button. No need to think or strategize or coordinate; just do the obviously incredibly powerful thing.

 

[TiQuinn]

The game rewards alpha striking as is. Getting a free round of attacks just means that the only worthwhile consideration ever is getting that surprise round - it turns any difficult fight into an easy one.

That's a bit much of a swing, especially if Rangers still have lol +10 stealth to everyone.

It’s a change that simplifies the game, probably by making surprise a less sought after option, but simplifies it nonetheless.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

It’s a change that simplifies the game, probably by making surprise a less sought after option, but simplifies it nonetheless.

It's not any simpler to say 'disadvantage to initiative' over 'they skip their turn'. It just makes the gameplay less volatile.