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

[Justice and Rule]

Ok. A fighter trains for hours a day until they are peak fitness. Maybe even slightly better. What is that worth? He might be able to jump father, but are we jumping miles? We might lift large boulders, but are we toppling mountains? We might kick down a steel door, but are we flipping the Tomb of Horrors upside down?

Again, if the origins fit the powerset, I'm ok. But I keep getting "Taran was a level 1 pig farmer, but 15 levels of adventures later, he wins staring contests with the Sun".

Okay maybe it's just too obscure a reference here, but it felt appropriate. But really, @Neonchameleon nails it: we need to use the same frames of reference. You can't talk about "real world training" because there's no comparison to "real world magic". You brought up Boromir, but why are we not basing what casters can do on Gandalf? That's the problem here: people want to pick different kinds of fiction for different classes. For whatever reason, fighters aren't Hercules or Gilgamesh but mundane people, while casters are judged against... well, D&D casters, because the game archetype is uniquely powerful compared to most depictions of mages.

I think @Stalker0 gets to all you need: a passing explanation that there is something special that can be brought out in everyone through training. Martial spirit, the hardening of skill and steel... however you put it, it can be there. I always tell my players that everyone channels the fantastic in their own way: Wizards mold it through "magic", Barbarians unleash it through rage, Monks channel it through Ki, and Fighters harden it through training. Like One Punch Man above, you can eventually reach ridiculous heights merely by training. At a certain point you just begin to cross over, see what you couldn't see before, cut what you thought uncuttable, start to see things in a way that you can navigate the steps to do the impossible.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I gotta admit, I did not expect "gonzo high magic world" to be the answer!

The weird thing is I have difficulty reading D&D in any other way. It's possibly because I started with GURPS and WFRP, but there is no way I can read either "consequence free hit points that recover within a matter of days", "entirely reliable magic with no backlash" or the sheer amount of power-scaling involving levelling up to be other than gonzo high magic.

I don't have anything against that. I love Eberron. I played Exalted a few times. If the goal is to give magical potential to every animal, plant and rock, I could see it. A world where people do impossible things before breakfast. Floating is islands, titanic monsters, magical ecosystems, and societies that cannot and do not resemble the real world. It's a tonal shift, but it's really what D&D has been pivoting towards for a while now.

And where we disagree is that to me the biggest thing that's changed from the days of Gygax with e.g. Tomb of Horrors or Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is that D&D is no longer by default either post-apocalyptic or a Fantasy Western (mostly because we now empathise much more with the Native Americans than we did half a century ago, and from that perspective Westerns have always been post-apocalyptic). Personally I think floating islands aren't any more gonzo and make a lot more sense if you've got the magic than sticking a Sphere of Annihilation into a statue's mouth.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

Fighter should be warlord,let monk be the complex martial

I would love for both the Fighter and the "Battlemaster" to be the effective way to build a "Warlord," but I admit there is more that can go into the Fighter and subclass design overall to support it.

First, I would love for Maneuvers to be one of the class mechanics for the Base Fighter, rather than leave them only for Battlemasters and feats. For those who prefer simple Fighters, it could be designed similarly to how casters get suggested spells that they can swap out. There can be some simple Maneuvers that a simple Fighter gets automatically, but that the Fighter can instead choose to swap out for a more complicated Maneuver in its place. Heck, there can be example load-outs that show players what options can be chosen to play a leader, or tank, or striker.

Second, though there are a number of leadership Manuever options, there are a lot more that can be added as options to build out the leadership styles. If a Druid can get page count for lots of Wildshape stat-blocks, and Warlocks can get lists of Invocations, the Fighter can have a more robust list of Maneuvers.

Third, the Fighter can also use their Fighter Bonus Feats to get more maneuvers if they so choose, and they can opt into Battlemaster to get more maneuvers, or Banneret to get other leadership options as well.

And finally, regarding the Subclass Name flavor-train, many people hate the word "Warlord" and others dislike "military officer titles" (like Tactician, Captain, Commander, etc.) for a variety of reasons that have been talked to death. But out of all the naming options, "Battlemaster" is my favorite that can represent a warrior who has mastery over the battlefield itself, and it is not tied to the baggage of all the other "military" options out there. It's very D&D, as well.

 

[Maxperson]

I truly don't get the idea behind class skill lists. It is beyond trivial to get the same skill from two sources, and therefore get any skill. I'd just open all skills to all classes really.

Yeah. I got rid of class skills in 3e. You just had to have a reason to have the skill. Skills like climbing, searching, etc. were general. There's nothing special you needed to do to put ranks into it. Others like knowledge arcana, spellcraft, religion, etc. had justifications built into the classes. If it wasn't something general or built into your class, but your background or gameplay brought it into your wheelhouse, go for it.

If your fighter's background included being a guard at a wizard tower in Halruaa, spellcraft and knowledge arcana made perfect sense for him to take. If during gameplay he spent a long time at a temple, then when he gained a level picking up religion made sense. Go for it.

 

[ECMO3]

Don't read comics much? Batman certainly needs tools to deal with God-tier threats, but he can be buck naked and still do impossible things and defeat absurd opponents.

But he is not the equal of those with supernatural power.

A regular fighter in D&D can do impossible things - at 10th level a fighter can fight a tiger naked with his bare hands and no martial arts training and win every single time. If he is a medium size race he can grapple said tiger and prevent him from moving anywhere well over half of the time with no Athletics training, with Athletics training that fighter could do that half the time even with an 8 strength. The current 5E D&D fighter is Batman!

He can get bit by a king cobra and require no medical attention at all and usually not even be affected by the poison.

If you took the a world champion MMA fighter who is among the best martial artists in the world IRL and told him to beat a tiger to death with his bare hands he would end up dead. If you told him to grapple a tiger and prevent it from moving he would fail and again likely end up dead. If he got bit by a Cobra and did not get attention he would die the majority of the time

 

[Incenjucar]

A fighter has numbers, but so does a wizard. They still have fewer options than a child who did some after-school karate.

 

[Justice and Rule]

But he is not the equal of those with supernatural power.

I mean, I think you'll find a lot of people to debate that. His ability to think and prep are basically a superpower in and of themselves, effectively supernatural to the point that people meme about the idea of "Batman with prep time". Plus Batman basically has super ninja powers that let him basically appear anywhere and everywhere he needs to be, often without concern for obstacles that might be in his way.

Really, Batman is a fantastic Mastermind Rogue whose ability to plan and his stealth are basically supernatural. He can literally sneak up on Superman, someone whose super-senses defy how senses actually work.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There is a mechanical problem here though. With magic there is a explicit limit to what you can do in the form of spell slots. With skill checks there is not.

Say the PCs find themselves on a battlefield of recently wounded and dead soliders. The cleric could raise 1, maybe 2 of them.....but using the note above, the rogue can raise 100.

The "mundane" has the power of being "at-will", and that cannot be ignored.

That's why I don't mind fighters being weaker than casters....to a point. Because sure if you can nova and do this amazing thing....but its once a day, that is still balanced against a lesser thing I can do all day every day. Its just right now the gap between those things is too wide.

You post this like we've never put a limit on martial abilities. Indomitable can be used how many times per day at the level you receive it?

 

[Justice and Rule]

You post this like we've never put a limit on martial abilities. Indomitable can be used how many times per day at the level you receive it?

Or just create a resource pool. I've said this over many threads on the topic, but when I was doing my redux of the Fighter, I looked at Matt Mercer's usage of "Grit" for his Gunslinger class (which itself was taking from PF1) as a great way of doing a recharging resource that could be expended for a martial class. My other idea was to have recharges on powers similar to boss monsters. There are plenty of ways to do this sort of thing, you just have to engage with the problem rather than act like it's an insurmountable hurdle.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The base Fighter class should not be "magical" at its core because they don't need to be magical to kick ass at high levels. The non-magic-preferring players need to have at least some non-magical options (but they only get Fighter and Rogue). And it's easier for that to be core, and be able to offer magical options on top of that.

The complaint I'm seeing is that it isn't fair that spellcasters can manipulate reality and fighters can't. You're right. They can't. Mythic abilities like plowing through, or jumping over mountains without magic, or stealing the color of a person's eyes, is overtly magical. Might I remind folks that the "Thief of Legend" epic destiny in 4E, which was the most relevant design that allowed a rogue to steal a person's "qualities" like memory or eye-color or ability to steal, was Epic, Supernatural, and an option on the L.21-30 Epic side of things where supernatural was normal.

Subclasses, Feats, and Alternate class abilities, and Epic Destinies can still offer supernatural and magical options to opt into, like the Rune Knight, which is AWESOME. I agree that there could be a magical fighting class that can bring the anime/superhero maneuvers, and I hope that they make one some day, from the ground up, with lots of options. But it doesn't have to be the existing base Fighter or Rogue.

My home campaign world recognizes that magic is real, and that the Material Plane is just one step along the soul's journey, and heroes and villains strive to make their biggest impact in the world while they are alive so their souls are rewarded with power in the afterlife. But there are people in the world that don't buy into it, don't want to be puppets to some arcane or divine experiment. They just want to be the best they can be without magic, and I think those options need to exist. And they do. And those Fighters and Rogues KICK ASS at what they do. And they do so alongside magical options within those same classes.

You know, so many people make the accusation that we want "anime" fighters, without understanding what that actually means.

Hou Yi is a chinese archer who shot down 9 of the 10 suns in the sky, and pursued his wife who stole the pills of immortality to the Moon. He was not a god. He was not a supersoldier. He had not special origins. He was a man. A man who was legendarily skilled as a soldier and an archer.

Eastern Myths are full of figures like this. They learn secret techniques, but they aren't born special or auspicious. They just become skilled. It is frustrating because people look at the flashy moves and techniques, and assume that we must want those things, but we also want the STORY. A person who can start as nothing special, and through hard work, skill, and determination can become like gods. No special origin needed. And we could talk about it as Ki, but the Monks have made Ki something specific to them, and not the natural life force of all things.