D&D Blog. Should Fighters get multiple attacks?

[I'm A Banana]

Now I get to hear that that was too useful and interesting, and they're back to "make an attack once a round and pretend you're playing the same game as everyone else who is flying invisibly and putting up invulnerable walls and disintegrating people with a single action".

These comments -- and it's more than just Gort making them -- are befuddling to me.

4e fighters were also making an attack once per round. Every 4e attack power is a variation on "I swing my sword." 4e wizard attack powers are all variations on "I blow it up."

90% of your character's abilities in 4e are just slight adjustments on "I try and kill it." That hasn't seemed useful or interesting to me for 4 years.

4e wizards in combat could turn invisible, fly, and put up invulnerable walls (the other 10% of powers: combat utility powers), while fighers could not.

Furthermore, 5e developers have been on record -- multiple times -- saying they don't intend to take away the more detailed 4e approach to "I swing my sword" for those who like it.

And ultimately, the whole "wizards are overpowered!" meme isn't addressed by making "I blow it up" or "I swing my sword" more complicated. It's addressed by keeping the social/combat/exploration pillars of the game siloed away from each other, either by treating spells and magic items both as treasure or both as class powers, and by ensuring that choices are equitable.

Basically, I don't quite understand the frothing paranoia about some return to some hypothetical dark ages of roleplaying just because 5e happens to probably include a fighter that can opt not to use 4e's complex attack powers. Sounds very...Chicken Little to me.

Multi-attacks against a single target are broken unless you can exert a strong control on static bonuses, which will almost never happen.

A game system that can't handle multiple consecutive attacks against a single opponent is far too fragile and precious to survive any group that I play with. I don't believe it's as impossible as you seem to think it is.

 

[Astrosicebear]

I, too, do not see a reason for all this "they are making the fighter a noob' class. They've publicly said the fighter, and ALL classes, will have customizable creation options to be as simple or complex as you want.

You want a Book of Nine Swords/Power based/manuevers/feat wazoo fighter, go for it. You wanna make a fighter that uses a sword and kills things, go for it. Why are we still polarized on this issue that the fighter is the only class that's being made 'noob' or 'easy mode'.

Every class has a degree of complexity associated with it. One could argue the fighter is as complex as a wizard made with the same complexity level.

And yes, to hand a new player a fighter is less time consuming and possibly easier on the DM than making a spellcaster. A fighter has stats, HP and weapons/armor. Done... give the char sheet and tell the player to go stab something. To make a wizard, you have Stats, HP, spells, components, familiar, and/or deity. That takes a bit more time.

I just don't see the logic in latching on to selective quotes, ignoring the other half of that quoted sentence, and then groaning about it.

As we work on D&D Next, we’ve moved away from power design and have returned to a more simplified fighter. Although we fully intend to introduce combat maneuvers as optional elements (think martial exploits), the fighter you might hand to the new player would just swing his or her sword, axe, or flail from round to round.

 

[Aenghus]

I would far prefer to avoid unrestricted multiple attacks for any class in the new edition, as that way lies brokeness. Any static bonuses to hit, or especially damage are multiplied dangerously by multiattacking, and tend to marginalise any other options provided to the detriment of variety.

I would prefer increasing damage on a single attack in the interests of speed and clarity. Other interesting options in and out of combat would be great to have too.

I can see multiattacking ok, when each attack must be against a different opponent, a little like the old 1e sweep attack idea against less than 1HD monsters, though I don't think that restriction is needed.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I would generally prefer it if fighters just attacked once but did more damage, and multiple attacks against different opponents would be optional.

As I just want to keep the number of dice rolled down.

And multiple attacks are more broken, because each attack is a different opportunity to crit, and you add your damage modifiers with each attack's damage roll.

 

[RoboCheney]

One more for not wanting multiple attacks to make a comeback. I've seen too many power characters built on layering damage bonuses with extra attacks.

It also runs counter to 5e's goals of faster combat. But then so do opposed rolls and critical confirmation rolls. So there's that.

As other have mentioned, give fighters cooler things to do with their turns. Give them more interesting decisions to make, not just more dice to roll.

 

[Mengu]

Why are they asking us this?

We have no idea what the order of magnitude will be on monster hit points at high levels. We have no idea how much damage a single attack will do. We have no idea what other classes will be able to do. How am I supposed to make an educated comment on whether fighters should get multiple attacks or not?

The pro for multiple rolls is that it reduce swinginess of combat, yielding results closer to the expected average more frequently. The cons are, it takes longer to resolve, design is a bit harder, and if people need to give up movement to get the extra attacks, it can lead to static fights. They could try single rolls first, if combat seems too swingy, they can look at other options. Or if the math looks like fighters need multiple attacks right away, they do that. It's really inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, as long as the math works out, and monsters are taken down at whatever may be their intended rate.

If I play a 10th level fighter, and it takes me 4 rounds to take down an enemy, while everyone else is taking down 4 enemies each round, then I'll ask for multiple attacks. If I'm taking down one enemy a turn with 3 attacks, while the rogue struggles to take down an enemy in two turns, then maybe my attack rate needs to be reduced, and the rogue may need help in some way. Multiple attacks, are just a dial on the control panel, and we won't know where to turn that dial to, until we start up the engine, and see how it drives.

 

[Deadboy]

I just don't see the logic in latching on to selective quotes, ignoring the other half of that quoted sentence, and then groaning about it.

Because throughout D&D history and too often in their talks about this playtest, the words "fighter" and "simple" seem to be far too connected to those of us who finally found what we'd been looking for in the 4e Fighter.

I personally would feel a LOT better if just once they'd talk about the WIZARD you would hand to a new player. That would help ease my mind a lot, too. But they don't ever seem to, we only hear about simple and fighters.

I have seen plenty of new players who don't want to play the fighter; or casual players like one player in my group who even after many play sessions can't remember what dice to roll, and yet if I tried to put a fighter in front of her she'd wrinkle up her nose and ask for something else to play. She's currently playing a pixie sorcerer and has played a human wizard previously. Of the three less experienced players in my two current game groups, we could only get away with putting a fighter in front of one of them.

 

[Hassassin]

The pro for multiple rolls is that it reduce swinginess of combat, yielding results closer to the expected average more frequently. The cons are, it takes longer to resolve, design is a bit harder, and if people need to give up movement to get the extra attacks, it can lead to static fights.

Good summary of pros and cons.

(Although I'm not sure design is any harder than for increasing damage. Having both is the problem.)

If they keep the 4e standard/minor/move actions, multi-attack could require only your standard and minor and still let you move.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I personally would feel a LOT better if just once they'd talk about the WIZARD you would hand to a new player. That would help ease my mind a lot, too. But they don't ever seem to, we only hear about simple and fighters..

They just released a "simple" sorcerer in Heroes of the Elemental Chaos. It appears they understand the concept and the desire for such.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Another kludge that might work, though someone would need to make it a lot more elegant than this:

Multiple "attacks"

Any character with multiple attacks can still only make one attack roll against a given opponent per round. However, you may give up one or more extra "attacks" to increase damage in some other single attack.

Then you set that damage increase as a flat amount based on level, class, and maybe a few other things that are kept carefully under control. (That is, if you sharply govern Str mods, you could include the Str mod to damage. If you don't so govern, because of spiraling stat bonuses from level, magic items, buff spells, etc., then don't include it here.)


As more complicated options to this basic, balanced model, you might then also allow things such as:

• Attacks used for increased damage can also be used for miss rolls. That is, roll 2d20, and if either roll hits, you get basic damage + bonus damage for one extra attack.
• Other things you can do to the targets besides increase damage--this is how you activate martial effects such as disarm attempts, trips, shield pushes, etc.

At that point, the bonus to damage just becomes another option in the list.

For example, we have a 4th level fighter with a battle axe and 18 Str. He hits with, say, a +7 (in a slowly scaling game), for 1d8+4, having two attacks, and can forgo an attack for +3 damage to the other one. He can try to hit two guys for that base damage. Or only having one opponent (or really needing to get one opponent down), he can concentrate by rolling once at the usual bonus, for 1d8+7. Whether he wants to flavor this attack as a big windup or several jabs, is up to him.

Using the optional rules, he has two shots to land that 1d8+7 on a single target, or he can stick with 1d8+4 and try for some other effect. But on average, if targets are handy and not about to die, he is often better off smacking two different monsters.

Contrawise, the "ultra simple" option is that you ban those extra attacks and just tack on the expected damage modifier, which gets used all the time. This is something you might do for a new player or one that doesn't want to fool with those kind of decisions.

Note, there should be no multiplicative effects in how this is managed. For example, a character with 3 attacks cannot trade in 1 attack for a flat bonus to both of the other ones. He can trade in 1 attack for a flat bonus to one of the other ones, then use the last attack to go after some other monster (or tack on even more damage to the first attack or go for a trip or whatever options are allowed at that table).