A critique and review of the Fighter class

[James Gasik]

Why does WotC leave anything untouched? Because they don't want to have to keep making changes to the PHB and make their customers upset that their book is "out of date". That's why it took so long to address the Ranger. They even had a UA Ranger update that I remember being quite popular, but in the end, they just made better subclasses like Gloom Stalker to "fix" the Ranger in the short run.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Why does WotC leave anything untouched? Because they don't want to have to keep making changes to the PHB and make their customers upset that their book is "out of date". That's why it took so long to address the Ranger. They even had a UA Ranger update that I remember being quite popular, but in the end, they just made better subclasses like Gloom Stalker to "fix" the Ranger in the short run.

Yeah it’s entirely possible they regret Frenzy, but they are not going to change it. If they ever did modify it (e.g. a saving throw against the effect) I would love it even more, but I still love my zerker as he is.

 

[tetrasodium]

Out of curiosity, what is going on for your combats to last that long? Large numbers of weaker opponents? Large battlefields with lots of terrain to navigate or traps to avoid? Or just a larger percentage of the xp budget per fight?

You guessed it. Bill's description in 567 sounds like a bit of of "movement for the sake of movement so the PC's can safely exploit it" & I almost called it out as such but it comes down to your choice of unreasonably labor intensive slogs. I vaguely described a 2-2.5hr battle earlier here in 397 & provided a snippet of the map. What I didn't do is give the whole 147x93 battlefield with several more monsters & 2-3 additional encounters that will now be discarded rather than slogged through with a series of lightning fast 1-2 round curbstomp turkey shoots. The other option ids to start easy encounters at or above what wotc lists as lethal encounters with superhigh CR or tons of critters.

Yea it's great that tools have advanced enough that I can create that map in (probably) ab hour or so & run it using two laptops plus a a touch enabled tvbox, but none of that was a thing when 5e launched & only some of it was maybe a thing not that far back precovid when it would have taken me much longer with less mature tools & no touch.

That touches on another way fighters & other martials were nerfed. In the past it was much easier to build plan & run encounters that allowed martials to shine at something in most if not every encounter during a dungeon crawl.

Honestly I don’t know why other people’s combats are so short. We play a lot of WotC adventure paths so it’s standard content.

I wonder if other people are having monsters just charge in and fight to the death. We run our NPCs smart: they use cover, disengage, try to break PC concentration, heal each other, etc.

That sounds like either there's a lot of Non-RAW & not at all close to RAW ToTM supporting it if you aren't relying on giant maps or high CR monsters compared to the party

 

[Bill Zebub]

That sounds like either there's a lot of Non-RAW & not at all close to RAW ToTM supporting it if you aren't relying on giant maps or high CR monsters compared to the party

Nope. We sometimes use flanking rule from DMG but that’s the only non-vanilla rule. And if too many players show up we might beef up the encounters.

And we do everything on maps, using either map tiles if in person or a lot of roll20 during the pandemic.

Honestly one thing that makes combats last longer is, I think, that some of our players are more into the role playing than the mechanics, and they often make suboptimal choices. Adds to the chaos and fun.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yeah it’s entirely possible they regret Frenzy, but they are not going to change it. If they ever did modify it (e.g. a saving throw against the effect) I would love it even more, but I still love my zerker as he is.

I suspect they are going to modify it ... in 2024 with the 10th/50th anniversary edition.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I suspect they are going to modify it ... in 2024 with the 10th/50th anniversary edition.

That would be good because almost all of the original subclasses need some work.

Of course some people will cry and scream about power creep, even if it just brings them up to par with the newer subclasses.

 

[James Gasik]

That would be good because almost all of the original subclasses need some work.

Of course some people will cry and scream about power creep, even if it just brings them up to par with the newer subclasses.

Well, yeah, there's a few people who think the game is either fine as it is, or it isn't conservative enough for their tastes. Ideally, WotC would give us guidelines for how to best scale up or scale down the game so we wouldn't have segments of the player base pulling the game in different directions.

Instead we get some good things, some bad things, and some mediocre things, just so everyone can point at something and say "more like this, please!".

Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition: The All You Can Eat Buffet RPG!

 

[Minigiant]

I suspect they are going to modify it ... in 2024 with the 10th/50th anniversary edition.

I expect

1. Change on Berserker
2. Hunter Magic and Beast Master Spells added to Hunter and Ranger
3. Expanded Spell List for Dragon Origin and Wild Magic Origin

 

[Neonchameleon]

I expect

1. Change on Berserker
2. Hunter Magic and Beast Master Spells added to Hunter and Ranger
3. Expanded Spell List for Dragon Origin and Wild Magic Origin

I'm expecting the above and a little more

• Change to Four Elements monks
• Change to monks (and possibly fighters) to recover Ki and short rest abilities instead by meditating for a minute proficiency times per day
• Change to short rests in general
• Looking at the half of invocations, feats, maneuvers, and possibly spells no one uses and either improving or replacing them
• Hex Warrior (med armour + shields and using Cha for attacks) onto Pact of the Blade
• Warlock tweaks round short rests. Possibly also making Eldritch Blast a class feature that is based on warlock level not character level (sorry Sorlocks...)
• Artificer to core
• Polishing weak subclasses (with the only nerf being moon druid CR 1/2 at level 2-3)
• Reworking some or all races

 

[Minigiant]

• Change to Four Elements monks
• Change to monks (and possibly fighters) to recover Ki and short rest abilities instead by meditating for a minute proficiency times per day
• Change to short rests in general

I think the spells from the Elemental Evil Player's Compendium will be added to the PHB and added to the 4E monk.

The monk and fighter might get to expend HD for Ki and Superiority dice on short rest.

I don't think short rest will be changed. I think they will add something to every class to benefit from short rests. So short rests will be a benefit to everyone in any l party make-up.

If feat trees remain, I think this is where fighters might get their exploration and social power as they will be able to hit 2 and 3 feats fastest in order to stack them. So if feat trees are okayed, I think they will be in the PHB and finally let you run a good knight, gladiator, watchman, or general mechanically with just PHB.