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

[Neonchameleon]

Pushing people that far isn't that useful if you have to walk 10 feet to follow them in between hits.

But if I push them over a cliff or into a pit trap I don't need to follow them.

 

[Garthanos]

Is it though? Or is it because the warrior is one of the most common protagonists in genre fiction.

This... most definitely.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Sure by spending a spell slot, and the creature having to make a save against said spell, and at a range much shorter than the fighter can fire the bow. Meanwhile the fighter can shoot 2-3 times and generate lots of saves.

If they have either a returning trident (possibly with the help of a single level warlock dip) or an entire bag full of tridents.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sure by spending a spell slot, and the creature having to make a save against said spell, and at a range much shorter than the fighter can fire the bow. Meanwhile the fighter can shoot 2-3 times and generate lots of saves.

Modify spell. Extended Spell.

Topple also has a save

Also, one of the ways for the Magic users to do it is a cantrip. Others are 1st level, and there is Spell Mastery.

Sure all of these are not as easy, not as cheap, ect ect ect. But do you want me to give you something that a spellcaster can do that a Fighter can't? Bend reality. Fly without an item. Breath underwater (unless they happen to be a race that has that naturally). Turn invisible. Have AOEs. Teleport. Become immune to all damage. Turn into a dragon.

But we did it, Fighter's have a thing that any pact of the chain warlock can do, and a thing that any cast can do if they have the right cantrip, and the ability to extend its range.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Actually, the base fighter's unconquerable makes them almost impossible to keep down as well.

If they make a saving throw (including a death save) and fail, they can reroll with a +15 (insta-success) and heal 1d10+15.

That's pretty difficult to kill if you ask me.

Sure, that's neat if you happen to be at zero hp and have Unconquerable and some Second Wind. I'm not saying you can't, because I did forget death saves are saving throws, but that is pretty hard to come by I'd think.

 

[Mistwell]

So, I finally got a chance to watch this video, and frankly both you and Treantmonk... I really want to say it is borderline disingenuous to my sensibilities how this was presented and done.

Kinda a jerk think to say, Chaosmancer. You start out that way and I am a lot less interested in whatever you have to say. Because I know you're going in biased, and have insulted me. Pretty poor manners there buddy. Nothing I said should get that kind of reaction from you.

Let's just start with something you said, which isn't something I can blame Treantmonk for, because he was rather clear. You said "There is a whole bunch of subtle stuff that allows for the new fighter to just pop right back up from being knocked unconscious that is hard to see if you just straight read the new class." And at the time, I thought this was strange, but I willing to admit I might have been wrong. But what you were talking about was the interaction between the dying rules and the Survivor ability. The survivor ability that is unique to the CHAMPION. So, it really is incredibly hard to see how the new FIGHTER can just pop back up since you are talking about a subclass, not the class itself. Now, I admit, I didn't see that interaction until he pointed it out in the video, but claiming or even implying that a subclass ability applies to the class as a whole? You should be better than that.

Because it's the subclass we have for this playtest and I just lumped it all in because it's what we're working with. It's fair to say it doesn't apply to all the fighter but it's not fair to take the shot you took at the end there. Again, you seem way over the top aggressive for giving my impression of a video I watched once and telling people to watch it themselves. Take it way down a few notches there my man,

But, let's turn back to the math and my problems with it.

Treantmonk wanted to check Crawford's claim, which was "We want the warriors to rely on their class features, not feats, for damage" I'll get back to this. So to test this, he decides to make a 5e DnD champion Fighter and a OD&D champion fighter, making the same decisions for each of them. He says this will be an "apples to apples" comparison. He makes them both level 13.


So we start off with Human for both. And the 5e Fighter gets 1 Feat and the OD&D Fighter gets two feats.... wait, what? Oh, you see, he isn't actually comparing the FIGHTERS, he is comparing the RULE SET CHANGES. Because he uses the new human with the new fighter, and the old V human with the old fighter. Gee wilikers mister, I wonder which build is going to be stronger? The one that starts with an extra feat or the one that doesn't?

I see no issues with this at all. We're comparing rules set to rules set. The fighter gains a lot of benefits from the new rules. It's fair to point that out. It absolutely is worthy of mention with the class analysis.

And again, the snark level on your final comment in that paragraph? Unnecessary. Three strikes.

And before you tell me "well that doesn't change anything about his results" it absolutely does, because he claims that the new fighter is "better at everything" in part because of that free Alert feat he just got. Oh, and does he make the same decisions at each level? No, because he can't, but that doesn't matter because he only looks at the end result.

So, what do the character creation rules tell us here? That getting +1 feat is more powerful than not getting it? Of course that's the case. But he isn't done. Because he gives the 5e Fighter all the old versions of the feats, and OD&D fighter all of the same, new feats. Which again, creates a bias because the results could be (and partially are) from the improvements of the FEATS not the CLASS. Just an example of this, he gives the new fighter the Charger feat, something the 5e Fighter couldn't get because of the new feat design, and this gives his fighter a +1d8 damage over the other.

This is incredibly frustrating, because there is a 1d8+5 from the two feats that the other fighter simply cannot possibly have access to, because these feats did not exist in the 5e rulebook. How is this a fair comparison of the damage?

It's fair because this is the new rules we're assessing and the fighter benefits from them. I have no idea why you want to assess them in isolation from the rest of the rules, and I'd bet you would have no issue assessing the spellcasting classes benefit from having just three broad spell pools now, which is a rules change and not a class change. Feats are the domain of the Fighter more than any class, it's absolutely relevant to assess this rules change which impacts them. If you're "frustrated" because you would do it different, I suggest you post your own analysis and do it different. I promise you, his audience thinks this is a fair way to do it.

Additionally, the two masteries he used were Cleave and Graze, which I only mention because he makes an assumption I feel is clearly wrong, and also that obviously again skews these results. He assumes, and he knows this is an assumption because he tries to back it up with a poll he did, that you can roll your attack, see the result on the D20, then decide which mastery you want to use.

Yes it's fair to ask his audience what they think about how the rule works before using it that way in his video. You seem upset about that, like he should have done something different? No idea why you'd think that.

He then further compounds this by assuming every single miss activates graze. Which seems like a strange assumption to make, because the playtest document clearly is having you make the decision before you know if you hit or miss, which obviously meant to make Graze less consistent.

I absolutely disagree and a majority of people disagree with you on this. The ruling is based on other rulings that already exist in the game. Without clarification, the other rulings say it should be run the way he's assuming it is run.

After all, it is the only MAstery that doesn't activate on a hit. If the intent was that you could always use graze on every miss, I'd assume the language would be far clearer.

It isn't clearer in other parts of the rules which have similar triggering issues.

But this assumption AGAIN skews the results. Becuase if I took two fighters and one had the ability to deal damage on a miss, and the other didn't and they were otherwise identical... of course the one with the ability to deal damage on a miss is going to be dealing more DPR, because they never deal 0 damage. This is so self-evident.

Yes, it's assessing an aspect of the new fighter. Why on earth wouldn't he assess it? You're saying he shouldn't assess a new part of the fighter because you what, think it's unfair or something? And it's OK if part of an assessment is self-evident. I once again have to ask, where are you going with this? It's like you're objecting to anyone doing an assessment.

Even if his reading is RAW, RAI tells me it isn't supposed to work this way, because it seems clear they attempted to stop it from working this way.

Other rules trigger just like this, that's where the ruling came from. Maybe they will clarify otherwise, but until that happens the reason he and others went with that ruling is based on prior rulings. Which showed it was RAI for those other rulings. You follow precedent when unsure, until otherwise clarified. That's the fair way to do it.

All it would take is "you decide which mastery to activate after the attack hits or misses" and boom, 100% guaranteed Graze.


A true, actual comparison between the old fighter design and the new fighter design would have been ...

Make a video and post it. After all you are dead set on absolutist comparisons (and I disagree yours was), so to compare your analysis we're going to have to see it just like we saw it with Treantmonk.

Is that a fair approach? Yes, when a guy starts out with insults, dishes out unhelpful snark, and rages about assumptions people are making because it's the best rules we have to determine how vague rules are supposed to work. It's definitely a fair approach.

I await your video and will appreciate you putting yourself out there like Treantmonk does. Hope you're up for the pubic criticism like you were so willing to dish out in such a rude manner.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sure it is.
Level 1 cleave is +3.9 average damage
Level 17 cleave is +6.3 average damage.

Not including pushing people into position, magic weapons, or buffs.

Now is it enough scaling? Not sure. But it scales.

So every spell in the game scales, because your spell save DC increases? Again, that isn't how we generally talk about "scaling". We don't say "well, Vampiric Touch scales because my spell attack modifier increased"

 

[Neonchameleon]

I see no issues with this at all. We're comparing rules set to rules set. The fighter gains a lot of benefits from the new rules. It's fair to point that out. It absolutely is worthy of mention with the class analysis.

It's also worth noting that one thing Treantmonk did but didn't make explicit was to min max the Champion under 2014 rules, and to do this picked a Vuman with a combat feat (I think PAM) at first level, something that's impossible in OneD&D rules. Putting the classic fighter an entire combat feat ahead.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

Is it though? Or is it because the warrior is one of the most common protagonists in genre fiction.

This is why I and others want a fighter that is more complex because we want to play those concepts without being limited

 

[Chaosmancer]

Kinda a jerk think to say, Chaosmancer. You start out that way and I am a lot less interested in whatever you have to say. Because I know you're going in bias, and have insulted me. Pretty poor manners there buddy. Nothing I said should get that kind of reaction from you.

Maybe I shouldn't blame you at all, and just assume you were bamboozled by Treantmonk, but I imagine you were able to analyze this at least as well as me, which really makes me wonder why you presented your post the way you did. Is it poor manners? Maybe, but I'm not insulting you. I'm saying the way you presented this video was misleading, as was the video itself.

Because it's the subclass we have for this playtest and I just lumped it all in because it's what we're working with. It's fair to say it doesn't apply to all the fighter but it's not fair to take the shot you took at the end there. Again, you seem way over the top aggressive for giving my impression of a video I watched once and telling people to watch it themselves. Take it way down a few notches there my man,

But you can't just lump it all together. That's the point. That would be like me saying "Barbarians deal an extra 2d6 to 4d6! This is so good!" and then confusing people who don't realize that that was only the Berserker who gets that. I'm sorry you think I'm being over the top aggressive, but this situation annoys me greatly to realize how misleading the information was.

I see no issues with this at all. We're comparing rules set to rules set. The fighter gains a lot of benefits from the new rules. It's fair to point that out. It absolutely is worthy of mention with the class analysis.

And again, the snark level on your final comment in that paragraph? Unnecessary. Three strikes, and we're barely into your post. Let's see if you get any better from here before I stop reading.

Okay, rule set to rule set. Why not use the dragonlance rules then to allow them to start with the same number of feats? And that snark? That was directed at Treantmonk. Get insulted on his behalf if you want, but I left a fairly similar remark on the video.

And this is my entire point here. If it is a change caused by changing the rules, then it isn't a change based on the class itself. And this matters. If we had all the weapons increased by a die size, would fighter damage go up? Sure, but that's not because we made the fighter more powerful, we made weapons more powerful, and all weapon users be they fighters or not got that increase. So presenting that as a fighter improvement alone? That's disingenuous. Straight up. If the fighter is more powerful because we made feats more powerful then everyone who gets feats got more powerful, which is EVERYONE.

It's fair because this is the new rules we're assessing and the fighter benefits from them. I have no idea why you want to assess them in isolation from the rest of the rules, and I'd bet you would have no issue assessing the spellcasting classes benefit from having just three broad spell pools now, which is a rules change and not a class change. Feats are the domain of the Fighter more than any class, it's absolutely relevant to assess this rules change which impacts them. If you're "frustrated" because you would do it different, I suggest you post your own analysis and do it different. I promise you, his audience thinks this is a fair way to do it.

I did do my own analysis later, but actually I would take it out depending on what I was looking at. "What are druids capable of"? Okay, I'd be fine mentioning they have Hunter's Mark now without needing a feat or multi-class. "Did the mechanical changes to the druid class make the druid more powerful?" Well... that has little to do with having access to hunter's mark. It would be important to differentiate what I'm talking about.

Again, many of the changes he talked about that increased that damage have nothing to do with improving the fighter directly.

Yes it's fair to ask his optimizer audience what they think about how the rule works before using it that way in his video. You seem upset about that, like he should have done something different? No idea why you'd think that.

I think it shows that he knew that was an assumption that was in debate. And he doesn't present it that way. He is an optimizer who has dealt with sage advice many times, he should be aware of this and make it clear in the video that his conclusion is based on this assumption, which may be wrong.

I absolutely disagree and a majority of people disagree with you on this. The ruling is based on other rulings that already exist in the game. Without clarification, the other rulings say it should be run the way he's assuming it is run.

"Without Clarification"? This is a playtest, we are clearly going to get clarification. Especially since many people are going to want it to work to always activate, and it is really clear to me that the designers don't want that. I mean, you charge an enemy and swing. You roll a 12 + 10... are you activating Graze or not? I'll even say it is a heavily armored humanoid with a shield.

Again, assuming graze always hits, always adds to the damage, skews his numbers. And the "you see the result, but decide before you know if it hits or misses" is rules language to create that uncertainty, it is creating chances to choose incorrectly. If this was the only thing he did? Probably wouldn't have made a big difference. But a little here, a little there, and those discrepancies add up.

Why, it isn't clearer in other parts of the rules which have similar triggering issues?

It is. It just doesn't usually matter for DPR if you need to choose to use something like bardic inspiration before knowing if it hits or not.

Yes, it's assessing an aspect of the new fighter. Why on earth wouldn't he assess it? You're saying he shouldn't assess a new part of the fighter because you what, think it's unfair or something? And it's OK if part of an assessment is self-evident. I once again have to ask, where are you going with this? It's like you're objecting to anyone doing an assessment.

No, that's not what I'm saying. If he was only looking at Graze? That would have been fine. But it wouldn't exactly have been ground breaking, would it?

0.6x11.3x4 = 27.12
0.1x6.3x4 = 2.52
Total for old 29.64 DPR

0.6x11.3x4 = 27.12
0.4x5x4 = 8
0.1x6.3x4 = 2.52
Total for new 37.64 DPR

About a 27% increase to DPR, which makes sense, because your minimum damage went from 0 to 20. If he did that analysis, no one would be shocked either, always dealing damage is better than sometimes dealing damage.

But if your assessment assumes perfect clairvoyant use of an ability, which is likely not intended.... well that isn't something someone who is SO influential should be presenting without making it explicit and showing the other side of it.

Other rules trigger just like this, that's where the ruling came from. Maybe they will clarify otherwise, but until that happens the reason he and others went with that ruling is based on prior rulings. Which showed it was RAI for those other rulings.

Yes, I know other rules work where you roll then decide what happens. I know. But you seem to not understand the actual content of my objection, because you are assuming that see the roll then decide means you are always correct and never choose incorrectly. THAT is the assumption I'm calling into question, just like I have called into question his assumption that cleave is a 50% chance of being capable of activating it.

Make a video and post it. After all you are dead set on absolutist comparisons, so to compare your analysis we're going to have to see it just like we saw it with Treantmonk.

Is that a fair approach? Yes, when a guy starts out with insults and rages about assumptions people are making because it's the best rules we have to determine how vague rules are supposed to work. It's definitely a fair approach.

I await your video and will appreciate you putting yourself out there like Treantmonk does. Hope you're up for the pubic criticism like you were so willing to dish out in such a rude manner.

Oh, was a new law passed? Are the only valid criticisms and analyses now done with $500 dollar video equipment? The fact I typed it out makes it immediately invalid because I can't afford to go out and purchase a home studio and record my face and voice?

Yeah, he puts himself out there. That doesn't make him immune to criticism or to being held to a higher standard, when he is so influential in the community. I notice you don't actually have any actual counterpoints to the points I raised. Don't you think that if he had used the same feats, and used the same character creation rules he would have had a different result?

Or how about this, if he had said directly "does a great weapon master fighter in this game do more or less damage than the same build in the original version?" and made it clear that was the point he was trying to make? Then I'd be less frustrated by this. It would be less egregious because that question was something some people were concerned with on losing the -5/+10 damage. But instead him, and you, have presented this as "the new fighter is 50% better than the old fighter at all things!" Which is not what his analysis showed. And am I being a little harsh with this? Yes. Because he is too influential, and his opinion holds too much weight for something like this not to have an effect on the survey results, based on a biased analysis of the class. And since it will lead to "this is good and fine" when I'm trying to push for things to go further, it is aggravating.