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

[W'rkncacnter]

People hating the 2024 Indomitable are just being contrarian for the sake of it. Their complaints just feel so forced.

wow, i didn't know you were inside my head.


...oh, wait.

The 2014 version of it was worthless, let's be real about that. You usually ended up rerolling a save you had little to no chance of succeeding in the first place, and 2014 Indomitable did nothing to help you succeed it the second time around.

oh, absolutely. i hate 2014 indomitable more then 2024 indomitable. if i had to pick between them, i'd pick 2024 any day.

i just think 2024 indomitable is such a boost that it might as well just be legendary resistances at this point. and that i'd be willing to give it up for more save proficiencies.

 

[NotAYakk]

Its one of the reasons I dislike alternate takes on Pass Without Trace that make it advantage instead of +10. Advantage doesn't really help that much if you have a -2 modifier.

Pass Without Trace that doesn't break bounded accuracy:
A) As part of casting this spell, make a stealth roll to hide. Creature you choose within 20' you can use this roll whenever they hide.
B) Creatures you choose within 20' can use a 15 stealth roll to hide. At higher levels: For each spell level above 3rd, add +2 to 15 stealth roll.

(details, like how you choose etc, are unpolished; the first one rewards it for a high-stealth character, the second lets a low-stealth druid use it. In 5.24, a 15 is a success; so it forces foes to search action to spot you.)

 

[NotAYakk]

i just think 2024 indomitable is such a boost that it might as well just be legendary resistances at this point. and that i'd be willing to give it up for more save proficiencies.

The trick is that at level 9, it isn't auto-success on a bad save. If you have a -2 to a save? A +7 is good, but not guaranteed.

The ability scales smoothly into legendary resistances at higher levels. And it does so (possibly levels sooner) faster if you have better saves.

Also, the first legendary resist is better than the 2nd and 3rd; as written, getting level 20 in fighter means your "first" indomitable is better than a 10/10 multiclass characters.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

The trick is that at level 9, it isn't auto-success on a bad save. If you have a -2 to a save? A +7 is good, but not guaranteed.

that...requires you to have a 6 or 7 in an ability score. which isn't IMPOSSIBLE, just...fairly unlikely.

more likely your lowest save will be a 9 or 10. more on that later.

The ability scales smoothly into legendary resistances at higher levels. And it does so (possibly levels sooner) faster if you have better saves.

it will for your strength, and maybe your con or dex if you take resilient dex and max it out. otherwise uh...no, it'll be about as close as the +10 was at level 9. which is my problem.

Also, the first legendary resist is better than the 2nd and 3rd; as written, getting level 20 in fighter means your "first" indomitable is better than a 10/10 multiclass characters.

....no? all the Indomitable uses are the same.

 

[NotAYakk]

that...requires you to have a 6 or 7 in an ability score. which isn't IMPOSSIBLE, just...fairly unlikely.

I've been playing with rolled characters a bunch. Chaos

more likely your lowest save will be a 9 or 10. more on that later.

I mean, with point buy or array, I usually have an 8. So -1 on top of the bonus. (I guess cloaks/etc are great)

it will for your strength, and maybe your con or dex if you take resilient dex and max it out. otherwise uh...no, it'll be about as close as the +10 was at level 9. which is my problem.

Yes, you get legendary resist on the stuff you invest in. That to me is completely ok.

Hell, I'd be ok with a mid-level character having one save they almost never fail always, let alone X times per day. It isn't as if that breaks the game; most mid level monsters (let alone adventuring days, let along campaigns) feel like they feature multiple different types of save effects.

If someone can stonewall the push back from a giant because they invested crazy in strength? Great, that makes a evocative character concept realization in game.

With +9, you get an auto-save against your strong saves, and a decently good chance against a poor save.

By +20 you get an auto-save against basically everything.

A "decent reroll with a bonus" converts continuously into "legendary resists" by level 20, and it does so at a different speed on different stats. On top of this, it is a scaling bonus on pure-fighter defences; the Paladin 6/fighter 9 (or whatever) doesn't have "better" ability to use indomitable than the pure fighter does. (I prefer it when a single-classed characters class features aren't significantly better done by a multi-class character; I'm looking at you, Divine Smite)

....no? all the Indomitable uses are the same.

Being able to do something 2x a day is not twice as good as being able to do something 1x a day.

This is like "the second feat is not as good as the first". The 2nd can be almost as good; but by the time you hit 3, there is diminishing marginal returns.

(To express it formally: in a given adventuring day, there will be a bunch of opportunities to use indomitable. The more uses you have, the less important each use will be on average.)

You can see this on DMs use of legendary resists. If you had one, you'd save it for "omg I'm gonna lose if I fail", but with 3 the first one is often on "that is a lot of damage" or whatever.

A "classic" problem with every edition of fighter has been it gets a feature at low levels, and at higher levels it ... gets another instance of that feature. Be it a feat, another fighting style, or here another use of an ability (like indomidable).

Your first feat, fighting style, or use of an ability is better than your 3rd almost always (there are exceptions, when the ability has self-synergy, but that isn't common). When you get a feature at level 1-5 as your class feature for a level, then another use of the feature at level 16-20 ... also as the class feature at that level, it means that the level 16-20 level is worse than the level 1-5 level was.

This error is why 5e.14 had many martial classes multiclass levels 1-3 (or 4) from multiple classes; the level 1-4 features where as good, or better, than the higher level features of other classes, let alone the increased choice (because you can pick from more classes and subclasses) allowing more optimization.

 

[NotAYakk]

and you still can have characters who hit things with a sword, but there will likely be situations you may encounter, a flying enemy perhaps, something across a ravine, or when restrained in place, where all the movement in the world won't help you reach that target and the melee STR character has to pick up a ranged weapon, of course throwing your weapon isn't going to be your first option in most situations, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be a viable option.

you want players to have the option of being mobile enough that they can always get into melee
i want players to have the option of a character who can throw their weapon if the need arises (or if they just want to do that)
we don't have to pick between which of these problems gets solved, both solutions can be implemented

Like, if flying creatures acted less like attack helicopters crossed with tanks, the flying problem would be less.

Ie, imagine if flying requires concentration by default. Everytime they are hit, they have to make a con save against DC 10 or damage done. Every point they fail the save by they drop 10'.

Now, flying in combat becomes a very big risk.

And if melee-range specialists have the mobility to cross stuff like chasms, grab ahold of attacking flying creatures, break free of bonds - that again seems better than ensuring their ranged attack option is almost as good as the ranged specialist characters.

If these melee specialists had such abilities, and ranged and flying foes had such disadvantages, then in the remaining cases where melee isn't very good - that looks like the case where anti-magic cancels a spellcaster, or fighting in a 10' by 10' room makes an archer suck, a relatively rare and contrived corner case instead of "every 2nd tuesday" like it is today.

I've played with a high mobility melee centric character; they had 60' of movement speed, a daily resource that gave them +30' on that, 1 use of action surge for emergencies, could fly (at that speed) nearly at-will, and sometimes got hasted (by level 12) via spell or potion. On the map they acted as a cannon ball and their relative lack of ranged combat options wasn't a big problem.

In some encounters, like when defending a fortification, they started the fight firing ranged weapons, then transitioned (for example).

But they didn't feel crippled. A fellow PC had 30' of movement and poor ranged combat options, meanwhile, felt crippled. Two solutions developed; one, a companion mount, and two my PC picking the small PC up and carrying them into battle (on top of sometimes using haste on the slower PC; which just brought them up to my PC's speed, basically).

In short, I tried this out; and it seems to work.

(And while my PC could fly, he'd often fake it and pretend to be bouncing off walls and jumping; hiding the ability you can fly from enemies makes counter play less likely, and I liked the visuals. This means a character who can jump 60' would be able to do much of the things my PCs did in combat, by observation (not all).)

 

[ECMO3]

Plenty of spells and features in 2014 broke bounded accuracy. God forbid the Fighter finally get a feature that does.

Not like this one. No other ability in the game is so out of bounds as the 2024 indomitable. No other ability is even close.

Which leads to my next point: there are and have always been things in 5e that are intentionally designed to break bounded accuracy. And there is nothing wrong with that when it's appropriate for a spell or feature to do that, and when those things are in moderation.

I don't think it is appropriate for a feature to allow a 17th level fighter to reroll a failed save with a +17 three times a day.

If it was half your level it would still be extremely powerful and would even still break bounded accuracy at high level and when combined with things like resistance or proficiency.

There are a lot of changes I like in the 2024 rules and there are a lot of changes I don't like. Indomitable is the change I dislike the most and it is one of two changes to the 2024 rules I have houseruled in games I DM.

 

[James Gasik]

They should have made Indomitable like Legendary Resistance.

 

[ECMO3]

People hating the 2024 Indomitable are just being contrarian for the sake of it. Their complaints just feel so forced.

The 2014 version of it was worthless, let's be real about that. You usually ended up rerolling a save you had little to no chance of succeeding in the first place, and 2014 Indomitable did nothing to help you succeed it the second time around.

I liked the 2014 version much better. That is not "forced" it is just the truth. It probably should have been improved, but they way they did it is not an improvement for the game.

I am wondering how many people who love the 2024 indomitable are basing that on the white room or if they have actually played with it to tier 4.

 

[ECMO3]

They should have made Indomitable like Legendary Resistance.

I would not be a fan of that either.