D&D General The Case For High INT Fighters in Dungeons and Dragons

[Corinnguard]

I’d rather see a high charisma fighter subclass at this point.

Like a sorcerous equivalent of the Eldritch Knight?

 

[Minigiant]

this is what I meant... 5e actually went backwards and made Int less useful to generic characters. It's not like WotC was not warned about it, there were many of us duing DnDNext playtest sending feedback about it, and the possibilities to make Int more relevant to all characters, more on par with other stats, were all there:

• Initiative could have been based on Int (also decreasing a bit the supremacy of Dex, which feels like the best of all stats)
• bonus skills based on Int, similar to skill points bonuses in 3e (however, when the game has less than 20 skills to choose from, bonus skills can result in repetitive characters)
• more spell effects categories could have required Int saves instead of Wis (having passive/defensive uses for an ability score helps against dumping it, since you mostly can't control how you're being attacked)
• bonus languages from Int instead of starting everyone with multiple languages already

And with making Strength matter for anyone who isn’t a Strength-primary warrior.

Equalization of the Saving throws is the Easy Mode.

The 5e designers catered to 3e's bad ideas and 2e's tradition tropes too much. 2e and 3e fanboys shifted 5e's design to hard to outdated concepts. 5e's biggest Kickstarters, Competitor Compatible RPGs, and 3PPs for warriors are built around replacing these rules.

Here are some things that could be accepted by the community

1. There should be more STR, INT, and Cha saves. And a few should be iconic and commonly used.
2. INT fighting should be a fighting style. Same with WIS and CHa.
   1. Studious fighting- Use INT for attack and damage rolls after the Study action
   2. Zen Focused archery - Use WIS for attack and damage rolls after the Search action
   3. ????- Use Cha for attack and damage rolls after the Study action
3. Initiative is Dex or Int

 

[Blue Orange]

Gosh, there was a d20 supplement that had fighter variants for each of the six stats, and there was an INT one that was a tactician...anyone know what I'm talking about?

 

[Theory of Games]

Gosh, there was a d20 supplement that had fighter variants for each of the six stats, and there was an INT one that was a tactician...anyone know what I'm talking about?

Pathfinder has one.

 

[Nefermandias]

Although I like disadvantage/advantage it is also an issue in 5e.

The dirty solution would be to create a lesser disadvantage/advantage = -2/+2

Create? This is literally what Combat Advantage was in 4e.

 

[CreamCloud0]

fighter's number of fighting styles should be based off of 1+INT, in 5e fighter had access to 11 different fighting styles not counting 3 from unearthed arcana or the two druidic and divine warrior styles exclusive to ranger and paladin respectively, and a bog standard fighter would get only ONE of them, a SINGLE FIGHTING STYLE in 20 levels, not to mention most of them are mutually exclusive based on the weapon you're using barring a few like defense, blind fighting, superior technique or the shield syles, so you're not even able to stack bonuses for the most part.

the fighter as a martial master should be stacked with fighting styles.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

actual issue in the fundamental concept of a warlord being in

Well in the sense that you can role play “my character is a brilliant tactician” in the same way that you can role play “my character is an expert survivalist”. But those traits aren’t going to have any mechanical effect in 5e, since it is tactics light and survival light.

In order to make either tacticians or survivalists relevant you need to add significant mechanics, and that will alienate players who like 5e because it is rules lite and they don’t want that level of complexity.

 

[Shardstone]

Both the Fighter and Rogue are subtly Int-secondary classes, just the core rules don't do a great job of bringing those out all the way.

 

[mellored]

To summarize previous discussions on the topic: you can't make a decent warlord that's a fighter subclass for two main reasons:

1. 5e in general is hostile to 4e-style warlords. 4e cared a lot about specific battlefield positions and small bonuses, while 5e has to work with theatre-of-the-mind style combat and the main combat modifier is advantage/disadvantage which is a huge swing (plus healing surges and hit dice are very much not the same thing).

Disagree.
You can't port 4e mechanics over directly, but you can port the flavor of the mechanics.

Instead of granting movement, you can have "enemies adjacent to you can't take opportunity attacks against other creatures". Which works well for theater of the mind.

And nothing says they need to give out small bonuses. Mastermind rogues can give advantage as a bonus action, and no one thinks that's over powered.
Also, bardic inspiration, bless, crusaders mantle all give out small bonuses.

2. The fighter class in specific has a lot of its power budget allocated in the main class, not leaving much to play with for letting subclasses do their own thing.

This is the actual issue.

They attempted the warlord with both the Battlemaster and the Banneret. But you still mostly just hitting things.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Create? This is literally what Combat Advantage was in 4e.

Fair point, although I was thinking such a mechanic existing for more than just combat.