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

[Shardstone]

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.

This is the actual issue.

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

The Kibbles and Laserllama Warlord classes are fantastic and well-balanced. They are also on two different spectrums; the Kibbles Warlord is a lot more involved and caster-level of complexity, while the Laserllama feels more like a 5E martial warlord but still fun and doing more then just hitting things.

However, both Warlords expand the game a good bit with their new mechanics. 5E is conservative; it doesn't like expanding the game. That's why we never see new classes IMO because a class is basically a subsystem that gets added to the game that one (sometimes more) players can enjoy.

 

[CreamCloud0]

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.

no, in the sense of the straight up actual class 'The Warlord', just designed for 5e's mechanics, using 5e's mechanics, nothing needs to be added, battlemaster maneuvres, bardic inspiration, paladin aura, bless, aid, healing word, shield of faith, the help action at range or to multiple targets, all of these and more already exist and could be used to make a brilliant warlord in 5e, they just, y'know, need to actually be put together in the apropriate combination.

 

[TiQuinn]

I don’t see a difference between a high INT fighter and a high WIS fighter (which is more common). Whenever we give fighters abilities or skills that focus on tactics or perception, it’s usually based on WIS. To me, that’s a straight swap of ability scores as the difference between the two is fairly arbitrary.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

no, in the sense of the straight up actual class 'The Warlord', just designed for 5e's mechanics, using 5e's mechanics, nothing needs to be added, battlemaster maneuvres, bardic inspiration, paladin aura, bless, aid, healing word, shield of faith, the help action at range or to multiple targets, all of these and more already exist and could be used to make a brilliant warlord in 5e, they just, y'know, need to actually be put together in the apropriate combination.

You can’t have a tactician if the game has no tactics.

 

[TiQuinn]

You can’t have a tactician if the game has no tactics.

I think KibblesTasty’s version does a good job emulating tactics. Tactics themselves are hand waved in 5e, but the results that tactics give are tangible. Tactics just end up in the same bucket as “what does your magic look like when you cast”.

 

[CreamCloud0]

You can’t have a tactician if the game has no tactics.

you can, they just manifest differently, i suspect your issue here is that you have an overly narrow perspective on what 'tactics' must be and thus 5e fails to fit your definiton, but what are abilities like commander's strike, distracting strike and maneuvering strike if not representations of tactics in 5e? i'm sure there are many more other abilities that exist that i cannot list off the top of my head that are also designed to serve the place of tactical skill.

 

[Minigiant]

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

It's the Reddit meme.

"Everyday a new 5e fan recreates for 4e"

 

[Paul Farquhar]

but what are abilities like commander's strike, distracting strike and maneuvering strike if not representations of tactics in 5e?

No, they are not. Being able to reposition is isn't relevant for a game system that much doesn't care about location.

 

[Minigiant]

I don’t see a difference between a high INT fighter and a high WIS fighter (which is more common). Whenever we give fighters abilities or skills that focus on tactics or perception, it’s usually based on WIS. To me, that’s a straight swap of ability scores as the difference between the two is fairly arbitrary.

It's the difference between perception and investigation

In play the high wisdom fighter would be more observant and see attacks and guards coming.

Whereas the high intelligent fighter would analyze a person and guess where attacks and guards are coming from.

Adjusting to the play versus reading to play.

 

[CreamCloud0]

No, they are not. Being able to reposition is isn't relevant for a game system that much doesn't care about location.

so flanking isn't a thing then? it's an optional rule but it's still a rule, and you can still let an ally move without taking an opportunity attack, or attack ranges, positioning can matter for those, or auras and AoEs.

just because 5e doesn't do it to your personal satisfaction doesn't mean it doesn't have it.