While I'll agree all day long that the light armored, duelist/fencer/skirmisher needs to be supported with robust mechanical options and comparable mechanical effectiveness out of the box (because the archetype is so prolific), do we really have to do this for every single edition? Every new edition release gets the unfair comparison with the prior edition after several years of splats and Dragon magazine support. You won't be able to able to make every stray archetype right out of the box. As with 4e's (very light) refluffing of a PHB1 Ranger to get a light armored Fighter (it carried every bit of the heft but the name on the tin...while simultaneously having to carry little to no baggage of the wilderness warrior theme), you're probably going to have to perform some mild refluffing to get some of the more esoteric (or even slightly less prolific) archetypes.
While I have plenty of issues with the 5e design ethos, being able to support the vast swath of archetypes of the prior editions, out of the box, is certainly not one of them. Its an unrealistic, and unfair, expectation.
I beleive its a fair expectation especially since I outlined how they could easily do it.
For other classes sure. It might be a little unrealistic, but a Fighter is supposed to be best at combat and it accomplishes that through the use of weapons and armor.
It should be able to use any combination of those effectively.
Which doesn't mean they should be able to make every combination of armor and weapon work well.
I'm trying to get a good picture in my head. Do you have a favorite historical example of an effective light-armor heavy-weapon fighter that wasn't outclassed by some pre-firearms better weapons or armor?
See above. Conan the Barbarian had no armor and used a two-handed sword. You'll note that he did not 'rage' and was exceptionally skilled having come out of the gladiatorial pits. So he wasn't an actual barbarian class, he was a barbarian as a sub-race to human.
It doesn't matter if I can think of a concept. I'm sure you can find plenty of people out there on forums or blogs that talk about their cool light armor, heavy weapon character concept.
Light or no armor affords mobility. The Fighters features should reflect that, whether its with better positioning (free shift) or with a small bonus to AC when fighting heavily armored enemies (if the enemies AC is 16 or higher the Fighter would get a +4 to AC from their mobility or something like that).
It could be handled in a lot of ways, but it appears it isn't handled at all.
Tenser's transformation.
In all seriousness, what you're asking for has never existed in any edition of D&D ever, nor should it. A class that's meant to be super specialized in one thing should obviously not be as versatile as a class that has versatility as its focus. Nor would it be at all fair to wizards if another class could have all the same advantages without any of the drawbacks wizards pay for them.
You do realize that's exactly what the 5E Wizard gets right? If you follow the encounter design rules and make 4 average encounters, then the Wizard by 5th level has enough spells to cast 2-3 daily spells per encounter which means they can give enemies a higher miss chance than a Fighter in plate with a sheild. They can deal comparable damage as a Fighter (you measure this by seeing how long it takes a fighter to take out X enemies, then do the same for the Wizard who can hit multiple enemies per round, and find out that the Wizard can actually do more damage in the same amount of time). Then they can completely outclass the Fighter with rituals and utility spells.
Personally I think they need to seriously nerf the wizard and put all the broken stuff in a module which would include the straight 'vancian' wizard with no cantrips and spell for slot memorization.
That's just me though.
I can't make my 3e summoner wizard. And he was mostly PHB.
But I image it, like most hard concepts, will come when the round out the content.
Well, summoning should be one of the things they iron out before release. Right now there is 2-3 summon spells and they all can be used to easily break the game.
In my view, the rules are helpful for the game, but the rules are not the game. Your character concept is not the rules. Your interaction in the game is not the rules. The rules help adjudicate things you do, but they are not the things you do. I am free to make any character concept I want. The DM will work with me as best they can. Sometimes I will gain some advantage from the character concept by means of the rules, sometimes not, but I will be able to play any character concept I want, and have fun with it, regardless of whether the rules have outlined some preplanned conception of that character concept.
For me, it's not useful to be stuck on the rules, and competing to find ways to use the rules to gain advantage. I'm genuinely saying I find it's more enjoyable, with any version of the game, if I take a step back from the rules and not focus on them much. Most of them are not even there for the player, as most rules are there for the DM to help them adjudicate things. I find the game plays best if I think of it as not a competition - I'm not vying against my fellow players or the DM for supremacy of the rules or the game. I just play my character concept and have fun with it, and I don't focus on what's written on my character sheet or in a book (I use those things sometimes, I just don't focus on them). I really have more fun with it when I view it this way.
And that's fine for some people, but for others, we don't want to be stuck playing side kick or hoping the DM will take pity and avoid mechanics in favor of story. You are right, its not a competition, the goal is to have fun, but some of us don't find playing the side kick or being less effective than the rest of the group fun. So for people like us we need the game to work properly and allow us to make our concepts without costing any mechanical effectiveness.
I mean if you could make your character concepts without it costing you mechanical effectiveness, would you be offended or angry or whatever at 5E? I don't think you would. You could continue to play how you always have, so why not try to allow the other play styles into the game?
In what edition can you make a Fighter that is lightly armored, uses heavy weapons, and has social skills while still being as effective a Fighter as a more standard version?
In what edition can you do the same for a defender wizard?
I'm not sold on 5e at all.
And I love 4e.
But you are reaching, and making us 4e grognards look bad in the process.
You can come much closer in 4e and even 3E than you can in 5E. In 3E you can make a defender Wizard With a Ring of Wizardry, or a few wands that have spells like mirror image, blur, mage armor (and its higher level cousins), Polymorphs self, etc...etc...
In 4E its a little harder, but you can take feats and spells that allow you to have extremely high AC and other defenses, and there is an at-will that allows you to force a creature to attack a creature of your choice on their turn. I can't remember what it is, but I had a player that would spam it in one of my games.
See I don't see 4E as the pinnacle of the game. I see it as a step in the right direction. I was hoping 5E would be another step, but it appears from what I've seen, that it is not. Hopefully they will fix it before release.
I don't make anyone look bad. I make us look good, because we are trying to get our style in the game, of which 4E was only the closest edition to it, but not the pinnacle of.
Looking at your first character, you want it to have the advantage of light armor (more maneuverable) and be better at social skills than a regular fighter. You don't get something for nothing though, so you will have to make some sacrifices. Either less damage or worse AC. The point buy system makes it really expensive to max out a stat, so you don't lose that much str for a higher dex. I haven't done the numbers for 5e, but in 4e you could either go with a 20/15 split, or a 18/18 split. In other words, trading -1 to hit/dmg for +2AC, ranged attacks, initiative, reflex defense and so on. Since you are giving up heavy armor for light, you will end up a few points lower in AC (not up as directly derived from the stats).
No sorry, I don't think its too much to ask that a fighter be as versatile (at creation and level up) as a wizard is every round of every day.
I have no problem with the fighter having a relatively low AC compared to the plate mail and sheild fighter. However they need to make the build workable. A post above your suggested a temp hp generating fighter so that even though they get hit often, they mitigate most of the damage by gaining temp hp. That would be one solution. Even if its just 1d6 temp hp for every attack they make. That would be enough to mitigate the extra hits for the most part.
Its not like I'm asking for the fighter to be good at spell casting here. All I'm asking is for the fighter to be the best at using weapons and armor. I don't think that request is out there.
I don't think there was a single high hp wizard in earlier editions. You had the Sword mage from 4e, but it's not really a wizard. In 5e, you would probably need to multiclass fighter/wizard which I assume have some sub-optimal levels until they start to shine, much like it was in 3e.
You don't need a high hp wizard. You need a wizard that can take hits. This can be accomplished by stone skin in 3.5E. It virtually doubled the casters hp (added up to 50 points). combined with other defensive spells that make the wizard hard to hit, and you have a very tanky wizard. If you really want to make one shine you can grab a few spells that regen hp like vampiric touch or regeneration (can't remember if that was a wizard spell) or polymorph self (troll).
There will probably be quite good support of non-core classes after launch (probably way too much in my opinion), where you get more options. Until then, you can either just make a character that's not "optimal", or you can talk with your DM and come up with a feat or class feature that makes your character "optimal".
Yeah, I'd rather stay consistent from table to table and avoid making house rules to fix mechanical problems. Instead I'd like to reserve house rules to change the feel of the game or to make the story, world, or plot better.
As to 'just play a character that's not optimal'. Its worse than that. With the flat math of 5E and bounded accuracy, a few points of 'not optimal' really could mean a TPK or a characters death.
No, I'd rather they just fix the problems inherent in 5E so that everyone can play with the play style that they want, something that they named as one of their design goals.
Aside: Now a lot of people might ask why I'm being so critical of 5E, and why can't I just go play 4E or something. Well here's the answer. I'd like to make 5E the best game I can, but I can't do that without pointing out its flaws, and now before it hits shelves is the time to point out the flaws.
For example say you have a son or nephew that is trying to learn baseball. When they miss in practice, you don't just keep saying 'good job, you are doing great.' over and over as they continue to miss. You go up and demonstrate how it should be done. You tell them what they are doing wrong so they can improve. You try to teach them the right way to do it, and you give them plenty of practice.
That's all I'm doing with 5E right now, and people shouldn't take it personally. They should help, so that 5E will be the best game of D&D ever.
