D&D 5E (2024) 5.5 Fighter Best Eince 2E

[Zardnaar]

Mercy was the only one I found decent. And proficiency in all saves was nice, but wasn't enough to make up for the rest of the class being as deficient as it was. 2014 Monks just did no damage at those higher levels, and Stunning Strike was less reliable because enemy CON saves scaled so high at that point.

Way of Fist FoB is a save vs prone. Thought that was decent.

Stunning Strikes over rated for reason you said.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don't think it works well with the Fighter class.



I've played a lot of 5E to 20th level and that is not common, often because other PCs have ways of canceling this if it happens.



I just think it is not something that is needed or for that matter somethng that fits with the fighter class.

As Gasik said - this is not something that is going to make players want to play a fighter, so why give it to them?

Ok. Your experience is really the opposite of mine. Of course fighters don't want to be dominated.
A highly desireable ability.
This is true for all the people I play with.

Some of them, me included, started with AD&D, where high level fighter's identity was being highly resistant to many spells.

 

[ECMO3]

Some of them, me included, started with AD&D, where high level fighter's identity was being highly resistant to many spells.

I played lots of AD&D as well, a 2024 high level fighter is far more impervious to effects that a 1E fighter is. Aside from generally having a higher chance of making a save due to things like 2024 Indomitable, Heroic Inspiration, feats and tons of ways to get bonuses, advantage or even immunity, they also have way more opportunities to save. High level effects in 1E sometimes had no save at all, and when they had a save if you failed it you were out of the fight for good, game over. It is not the save every round or save every time you take damage or save until the bad guy loses concentration that is typical of 5E debilitating effects.

Things like Trap The Soul, Imprisonment, Temporal Stasis and Maze* had no save in 1E.

Even when they did have a save it was still worse. A 20th level Fighter in 1E needed a 9 to save against the Hold Monster spell. You might think that is a fairly easy save, but when he failed it (40% of the time) he did not get to reroll with heroic inspiration, he did not get to automatically pass it due to a feat, he did not get to add 20 and most importantly if he failed it he was out for well over 10 turns. No more saves, no trying to break the bad guys concentration, just immobilized for however many turns the caster has as levels. Oh and if he made the save he was still slowed, again for the whole fight with no other saves!

Domination was a psionic ability in 1E (not a spell). A 20th level fighter needed a 6 to save against it, but again if he failed that was it ..... he was dominated until the bad guy ran out of psionic points.

*Maze doesn't have a save in 2024 5E either, but a fighter is rarely going to spend more than a few turns there .... or 1 turn if he is a champion. He is going to escape from it quicker than any other class.

 

[ECMO3]

Mercy was the only one I found decent. And proficiency in all saves was nice, but wasn't enough to make up for the rest of the class being as deficient as it was. 2014 Monks just did no damage at those higher levels, and Stunning Strike was less reliable because enemy CON saves scaled so high at that point.

How many did you play in tier 4?

Mercy was the best Monk in tier 1 and the lower part of tier 2, but it was still pretty weak overall compared to other classes at those tiers and it was not among the best Monks in tier 4. I would say it is actually on the lower end of Monks in tier 4, with only the really bad subclasses below it.

Stunning Strike is not an amazing Monk feature at high level. With most subclasses I rarely used it at high level in the Monks I played. I still used it situationally, and in 2014 I sometimes spammed it at high level, but that was situational and purposeful and it was throwing lots of saves at an enemy to try to beat him numerically. It is not a common or really extremely effective tactic, but if you have more key than you can spend and are hitting him anyway .....

You bring up Flurry of Blows, then you bring up stunning strike, but these are low level Monk features. They are not high level Monk features and they are not very powerful at high level unless there was something else they were doing based on the subclass. Saying a Monk is weak because FOB and SS are not good at high level is like saying a Wizard is weak because Burning Hands sucks at high level.

 

[ECMO3]

I'm gonna say that's BS. It doesn't win there even in white room math, let alone actual gameplay.

It is not BS. Try it out some time.

The 2014 Monk sucked. It has been proven countless times to suck.

Saying it over and over again does not make it true. The people who say this have typically not played Monks in tier 4.

 

[ECMO3]

Nobody normal cares that an ability violates your sacred bounded accuracy. People do care that an ability is overly disruptive to gameplay, however and for whatever reason that ability ends up being that way.

Go back and read this thread. Someone here specifically asked for my opinion, so yes at least one poster does care. I answered that person.

If you don't like my opinion, fine don't comment, but yes I have found it disruptive in play.

And in no way is an auto-save on some (not all) of the Fighter's potential saves 3/day more disruptive to gameplay than a lot of the more degenerate stuff the full casters could do (and can still do in 2024) at that level.

In the games I have played it has been. That is 2 campaigns going 1-20 and 3-20 with a fighter in them since the 2024 rules came out (and 4 total going to level 20).

How many campaigns have you played with a high level 2024 fighter where it wasn't disruptive?

It's completely relevant because casters have been getting away with murder in 5e, especially at those levels, while martials got diddly poo.

All PCs get away with murder, combat is an entire pillar of the game and the monster manual is filled with intelligent, sentient beings that are intended to be thrown against the PCs and killed. This is not unique to casters and it does not bother me that casters can murder enemies in larger numebers than Fighters can.

Moreover though I still don't see how caster abilities and spells are relevant to what a Fighter does and does not get in his kit. Fighters are not casters unless you play an EK. People who play fighters want the abilities the Fighter class gives, not the abilities the caster classes give. If they wanted to play someone with what the caster has they would play a caster. I play far more fighters than I play full casters.

This is like buying an $80k pick up truck and then complaining it is not as fast as an $80k Corvette. If you want a caster, play a caster but let's stop trying to make a Fighter a caster.

Which goes back to what I've been observing about you. You just don't want martials getting nice things.

I play lots of martials and I want them like I want them. Do you want me to say I want them like you want them or like someone else wants them? That would not be true.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I played lots of AD&D as well, a 2024 high level fighter is far more impervious to effects that a 1E fighter is. Aside from generally having a higher chance of making a save due to things like 2024 Indomitable, Heroic Inspiration, feats and tons of ways to get bonuses, advantage or even immunity, they also have way more opportunities to save. High level effects in 1E sometimes had no save at all, and when they had a save if you failed it you were out of the fight for good, game over. It is not the save every round or save every time you take damage or save until the bad guy loses concentration that is typical of 5E debilitating effects.

Things like Trap The Soul, Imprisonment, Temporal Stasis and Maze* had no save in 1E.

Even when they did have a save it was still worse. A 20th level Fighter in 1E needed a 9 to save against the Hold Monster spell. You might think that is a fairly easy save, but when he failed it (40% of the time) he did not get to reroll with heroic inspiration, he did not get to automatically pass it due to a feat, he did not get to add 20 and most importantly if he failed it he was out for well over 10 turns. No more saves, no trying to break the bad guys concentration, just immobilized for however many turns the caster has as levels. Oh and if he made the save he was still slowed, again for the whole fight with no other saves!

Domination was a psionic ability in 1E (not a spell). A 20th level fighter needed a 6 to save against it, but again if he failed that was it ..... he was dominated until the bad guy ran out of psionic points.

Yeah. Tell me something new.
Of course they were by far notnimmune to that. But a fighter comparably was better than most other characters.

I was recently educated that in 1e, a fighter had a good chance to jever have the caster cast a spell.
In 2e that was not the case anymore. But casting spells in melee was not guaranteed.

So a fighter being able to shrug off a lot of effects is a real good thing to have. As I already said, I would take a different ability that was more in line with shrugging off effects really fast.
But magic vs no magic is always better off. Even in 2024 d&d there are ways a wizard can win against fighters. There are enough spells to mess with them.

Flight, wall spells, invisibility spells and so on...

*Maze doesn't have a save in 2024 5E either, but a fighter is rarely going to spend more than a few turns there .... or 1 turn if he is a champion. He is going to escape from it quicker than any other class.

 

[Gladius Legis]

You bring up Flurry of Blows, then you bring up stunning strike, but these are low level Monk features. They are not high level Monk features and they are not very powerful at high level unless there was something else they were doing based on the subclass. Saying a Monk is weak because FOB and SS are not good at high level is like saying a Wizard is weak because Burning Hands sucks at high level.

Flurry of Blows is the Monk's main damage feature, regardless of level.

Stunning Strike is the Monk's main control feature, regardless of level.

Both of them, in 2014, suck. And the 2014 Monk gets NOTHING at higher levels to make up for how bad those fall off in their respective capacities.

Sorry, your math ain't mathin'. (Not that you gave any math to begin with.)

 

[Gladius Legis]

Saying it over and over again does not make it true. The people who say this have typically not played Monks in tier 4.

It's your word against plenty of people who have broken down how bad 2014 Monks are, especially in tier 3 and 4.

If I hadn't played a 2014 Monk for myself at that level and found it every bit as unpleasant as their analyses suggested, then I'd still take their word over yours any day.

 

[Gladius Legis]

In the games I have played it has been. That is 2 campaigns going 1-20 and 3-20 with a fighter in them since the 2024 rules came out (and 4 total going to level 20).

How has it been disruptive? You keep repeating this claim but you never give any examples or analyses. The only way I can see it being "disruptive" is if you're one of those killer DMs who was upset you couldn't CC the Fighter out of commission.

Which, by the way, you couldn't really do that often to a Fighter in AD&D because they had the best saves. 2024 Indomitable finally brings that back to a certain extent, which is still a very limited extent compared to AD&D.

How many campaigns have you played with a high level 2024 fighter where it wasn't disruptive?

2 one-shots. And in neither one was the Fighter dominating action. It was always a full spellcaster of some sort doing so.

All PCs get away with murder, combat is an entire pillar of the game and the monster manual is filled with intelligent, sentient beings that are intended to be thrown against the PCs and killed. This is not unique to casters and it does not bother me that casters can murder enemies in larger numebers than Fighters can.

"Getting away with murder" is a figure of speech, so it's hilarious you're taking what I said literally. What I meant was that casters have many more ways at that level of disrupting the game than the Fighter does. That was true in 2014, and it is still unfortunately true in 2024 even if the Fighter has closed that gap somewhat.

Moreover though I still don't see how caster abilities and spells are relevant to what a Fighter does and does not get in his kit. Fighters are not casters unless you play an EK. People who play fighters want the abilities the Fighter class gives, not the abilities the caster classes give. If they wanted to play someone with what the caster has they would play a caster. I play far more fighters than I play full casters.

This is like buying an $80k pick up truck and then complaining it is not as fast as an $80k Corvette. If you want a caster, play a caster but let's stop trying to make a Fighter a caster.

Because you're comparing two different types of characters at the same level of play. It's OK to do that, contrary to what you believe.

I never said the Fighter should get spells. That is a ridiculous straw man. What I am getting at is that Fighters (and all martials) should have abilities that are comparable in effect on the game to what casters get at those levels, even if those abilities aren't spells.

2024 still falls short in that regard, but the new Indomitable at least closes that gap a little bit. Which obviously is offensive to your sensibilities for reasons you still haven't defined to satisfaction.

I play lots of martials and I want them like I want them. Do you want me to say I want them like you want them or like someone else wants them? That would not be true.

I'm having trouble understanding what you do want out of martials, because you're not making any sense.