D&D (2024) 4/26 Playtest: The Fighter

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Also - Indomitable is now awesome. I think it would be great if you could use it for failed ability checks.

Yes, and you could tie Indomitable to be a part of Second Winds, if you want a similar resource as Barb now gets with their out-of-combat Rage...

 

[THEMNGMNT]

At first read, Fighter looks fun. Definitely an improvement. In one of my campaigns a character has a 9th level fighter (who has played much better than I anticipated) and I think he'd have a blast rebuilding his character as a playtest Champion.

 

[Mistwell]

Do you have a link to the comparison? And what sort of comparison is this? Because from what I can tell this is all boosts onto the fighter chassis with champion still being pretty mediocre.

That said I'd say that the level 8 D&Done fighter was about two feats ahead of the 2014 fighter, not counting the combat feat. But that's where you hit the point of diminishing returns because your attack stat is maxed out and you have a nice set of synergies.

The video comes out next week this was just a preview for patreon subscribers. Happy to link to it once it goes live to general public. I was surprised, and so was Treantmonk himself, to see how boosted they are and how much of that boost came with how the Champion interacts with other rules in unexpected ways. A lot of it would be really hard to notice if you were just reading the playtest class itself in isolation.

Also, these new weapon mastery rules can really up your damage if you have a lot of attacks in a round.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The video comes out next week this was just a preview for patreon subscribers. Happy to link to it once it goes live to general public. I was surprised, and so was Treantmonk himself, to see how boosted they are and how much of that boost came with how the Champion interacts with other rules in unexpected ways. A lot of it would be really hard to notice if you were just reading the playtest class itself in isolation.

Also, these new weapon mastery rules can really up your damage if you have a lot of attacks in a round.

Which almost certainly means that it will be nerfed in the balance pass. I just hope it is a numbers nerf. Of course, they could tweak the monsters to balance combat.
That said I think combat works ok in 5e, it is the advice that is borked leaving every DM to reverse engineer the combat system.
The big issues, IMHO, are that from level 7 to 12 the encounter guidelines drift away from the party in that by level 12 the easy encounter is trivial, the medium one is easy, the hard one medium and deadly is just hard. The other issue is that extra characters adds capability to the party faster than extra monsters does to the challenge.

 

[mellored]

The video comes out next week this was just a preview for patreon subscribers. Happy to link to it once it goes live to general public. I was surprised, and so was Treantmonk himself, to see how boosted they are and how much of that boost came with how the Champion interacts with other rules in unexpected ways. A lot of it would be really hard to notice if you were just reading the playtest class itself in isolation.

Also, these new weapon mastery rules can really up your damage if you have a lot of attacks in a round.

I assume it was polearm master + great weapon master.
Which is 3 attacks, with +10/-5.

Compared to using them with the new cleave *(with the +prof damage replacing the Str on the cleave attack)
Which is 4 attacks, with +1 damage and to-hit.

Gut tells me that's a 20-30% increase.

But I'm not seeing how he got 70% from. Maybe comparing old TWF with new? Because the old one was behind.

Anyways, I'll have to see the video. Maybe I missed something.

 

[Mistwell]

Which almost certainly means that it will be nerfed in the balance pass. I just hope it is a numbers nerf. Of course, they could tweak the monsters to balance combat.
That said I think combat works ok in 5e, it is the advice that is borked leaving every DM to reverse engineer the combat system.
The big issues, IMHO, are that from level 7 to 12 the encounter guidelines drift away from the party in that by level 12 the easy encounter is trivial, the medium one is easy, the hard one medium and deadly is just hard. The other issue is that extra characters adds capability to the party faster than extra monsters does to the challenge.

Crawford says in the video their intent is to really boost the damage of the fighter particularly at higher levels. Which is what they seem to have done.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I just listened to the newest Treantmonk optimization release on Patreon (which will hit YouTube for free not too long from now).

He is reviewing the new fighter.

Spoilers!

He starts with the premise, having just read the class, that it's kind of meh. Now keep in mind, Treantmonk does optimization stuff for D&D now for a living. He crunches these numbers every day, plays a TON of games with other optimizers (and non-optimizers sometimes too), makes podcasts all the time, and you'd think if anyone would be good at glancing at new material and being able to figure out just from reading it if it's a big boost it would be him.

And this to be honest is why I don't rate Treantmonk at all. His instincts every time I've run into them have been bad. Here's a clear example of this.

The following has been incredibly obvious to me ever since the feats packet dropped:

• "Level 0" characters are a whole lot more competent thanks to the starting feat being in most cases a lot more powerful than the old background
• With floating +2s and +1s and almost all feats giving a +1 the new "standard starting array" plus L1-3 being fast and easy access to medium armour (e.g. from a L1 feat) is 17/14/14 for almost all characters. 16/16/13 is largely obsolete other than possibly for monks and people starting at around L8 or 16 or dropping in for single sessions.
• Due to break points your L4 feat is worth the equivalent of two old-style A-tier feats (a +2 to an ASI being a-tier) and so is your third L4 feat (i.e. fighters at L8, Rogues at L10, everyone else at L12). This effectively pushes the fighter a full a-tier feat ahead of their "classic" rival at each of L4 and 8.
  • Cutter/Crusher/Piercer are basically ribbon abilities, and Heavy Armour Master (old version) doesn't scale.
• The three classic "S-tier" fighter feats are only s-tier with combos. The power attack feats (GWM, SS) are only S-tier with accuracy buffs, so GWM is mostly S-tier on a Barbarian or Battlemaster with Precise Attack while Sharpshooter is S-tier with the Archery style. "Classic" Polearm Master is s-tier with duelist style and a spear or the sentinel feat. The combos have been removed pushing them all down to A-tier
  • GWM on a champion was never S-tier because there was no easy accuracy buff so the nerf is minimal
• Joining Sentinel and X-Bow Expert in A-tier (as well as the "un-combo'd" s-tier feats) are several other feats including charger and shield expert. +2 primary stat ASI used also to be A-tier. (This A-tier will get shaken out over time)

So even before the new playtest packet dropped the level 8 fighter was basically two entire A-tier feats ahead at level 8.

With the fighter packet dropping it was also obvious that at least some weapon masteries were close to (old) a-tier feat level. Cleave, for example, is an extra attack under an easy to trigger condition (for many campaigns, especially if you have something like Charger to give you a push attack) that does not use an action and doesn't nerf the primary attack the way PAM or XBE does. That's at the very least high (old) b-tier.

So the fighter is strictly quite a bit stronger than it was with a particularly big boost in the level 8-11 range where it used to be falling off (everyone else gets the "double feat" to hit primary stat 20 at L12, and I still don't like the new Indomitable but it is a huge improvement). But there were three fundamental problems with the fighter; all have been partially patched but none have fundamentally changed.

• There is no significant difference between a tier 2 and a tier 4 fighter other than numbers go up.
  • In D&D 2014 the fighter literally got no abilities from levels 12-19 that weren't a repeat of earlier abilities or abilities that weren't good enough to take earlier. (No I don't count extra extra attacks as repeats).
  • In OneD&D the situation is better, but the fighter is still doing the same things they were at level 1; moving 30ft as a move action and swinging a sharpened piece of metal hard and fast against someone within reach using one of the same range of weapon masteries; the high tier fighter just gets a few more dice.
• The fighter has the least usefulness out of combat bar none. They've the joint lowest skills, no class features that help (not even cantrips) unless you dump combat power with a feat, and most of the subclasses only add a little
  • New backgrounds give everyone a chance to be better out of combat with the feats. This doesn't move the fighter off the bottom but it does mean they have more to do.
• The Champion Fighter got basically no meaningful abilities; improved critical ranges aren't that good, Remarkable Athlete is things you don't want to roll because you're not trained, and Additional Fighting Style is "pick one that was not good enough for level 1 and won't stack with what you do".
  • The One D&D Champion is IMO literally twice as powerful as the classic Champion. But twice nowt is still nowt and the Champion isn't quite nowt but is too close. I may need to dig deeper here.
  • There may be significant synergy between the Champion and the GWM feat (without PAM) going into tier 3; with the 18-20 crit range having been dropped from level 15 to level 10, Advantage being easier to get both from Heroic Advantage and knocking people over from e.g. Charger or Topple and a potential extra attack from Cleave your chances of getting a crit to proc your extra attack are getting pretty decent. (Almost 40% from three attacks without advantage, almost 75% if you also have a cleave attack and have advantage).

On the other hand I am surprised that the new fighter moved further ahead in damage with free access to advantage. I'd have thought that would bring the classic GWM more into the game - but would need to check what the to hit numbers were. I also hadn't spotted the death save changes.

They're even better at skill usage than the old fighter.

What do you mean "even better"? The old fighter was the (joint) worst class at skill usage in the entire game. Two skills known, no class features that help, and the only strength (i.e. primary stat) skill falling off in usefulness over time as climbing and jumping are less useful when flying becomes easy and swimming being less useful with water walking and breathing rituals.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Seems really odd that talking twice as fast makes you more persuasive, but sure. Why not add the influence and study actions.
Also the help action.

Mainly they just need to keep spell casting out.

I mean it's not Just talking fast, but 'fast talking' is literally how some scams work and something people say about salesmen that get you to buy things you don't want.

 

[mellored]

I mean it's not Just talking fast, but 'fast talking' is literally how some scams work and something people say about salesmen that get you to buy things you don't want.

I spend all my life training with weapons and swords.

Now I can use a burst of energy to scam people by talking faster.

Can't say that I see it... but it's a niche of a situation so it's not going to hurt to have it.

 

[Asisreo]

I'm actually very surprised by how against the idea of "golf-bag fighter" is in this community. I thought that was the default of the fighter anyways.

You keep a greatsword for maximum damage, a longsword and shield if your goal is to have extra AC, a bow/xbow for ranged situations, a lance (if you have a reliable mount), a net because why not, and a few holy waters, acids, and alchemist's fires.

Having even more weapons with even more unique properties and uses really builds into the fantasy I have of "general master of weapons."