D&D 5E D&D Next Blog - The Fighter

[Sunseeker]

It only looks like wholesale discounting of 4E because most of 4E probably falls under the 'advance tactical combat modules' and not the base game, and thus they haven't gotten around to working on it yet. The base game is just that. The base. The stuff they created back in Basic D&D. 4E is an obvious evolution from the base, so it makes perfect sense that a lot of what is being worked on now will not take 4E into account.

Once they finish designing the 'base' fighter and they start working on combat exploits, defender abilities, etc. etc... then we'll see more of the main 4E foci start reappearing.

It still feels like I'm hearing an awful lot of "I liked this 2e thing" and "I liked this 3e thing" and "oh weren't things so great in 1e and AD&D" and then a lot of "well 4e was dumb" or "ya know 4e kinda sucked".

I realize 4e is a very combat heavy edition, but there were non-combat and basic mechanics changes that 4e added, as well as overarching ideas to classes that feel like they're being ignored in favor of "classic" concepts.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The Fighter and the martial source get conflated very easily. If the game has a Fighter and Wizard, and there are knights, soldiers, fencing masters, archers, guardians, warlords and brawlers under the one, and the illusionists, evokers, pyromancers, sorcerers, warlocks, and beguilers under the other, then, OK, they're prettymuch source-as-class, and they need to be terribly broad.

If, OTOH, there's going to be separate Warlord, Fighter, Slayer, & Ranger classes, then one can fill each role, and all can be 'Martial' and you're fine, too.

OTOOH, if you're going to have one 'fighter' who just dicks around with various weapons for trivial tactical differences, and a boatload of caster classes who totally obviate him...

 

[JohnSnow]

I'm coming to the belief that Fighter is too broad a class. It might be better as four or so separate classes that each focused on a different area. Like Archer, Knight, Barbarian, etc.

No.

No. No. No! NO!!

This is, IMO, a terrible idea.

If you split the fighter into several classes because it's "too broad" conceptually, and you probably end up with a character who's only got one fighting style. He's a niche character who sits on his hands (or is totally ineffective) when his preferred fighting style isn't appropriate. The knight who's awesome on a horse and can't find his ass off one? No thanks. Moreover, it's not even realistic or remotely related to the fiction.

Specializing to the point of not being able to use a particular combat style is fine if that's what the player WANTS, but there are plenty of players who want their character to be able to switch between melee and ranged.

And fiction and history is full of fighter types who COULD and DID.

 

[FireLance]

I find it interesting that he's being so positive about the 3e fighter, given how strongly the 4e crowd seems to dislike everything about the 3e fighter.

What I disliked about the 3e fighter was that its bonus feats still weren't enough to keep it competitive with the spellcasters.

It had the advantage of simplicity and flexibility, true, but it didn't need to sacrifice power to have that - the Essentials slayer had simplicity, flexibility and was fairly well balanced with the spellcasters (although that was also in part due to 4e's scaling back of the caster classes).

Hopefully, the 5e fighter class will be the same.

EDIT: There really ought to have been a poll option, "A fighter is a martial, weapon-using character who is as effective as his spellcasting companions at all levels of the game and in all situations, with perhaps a slight advantage in combat."

 

[exile]

I'm playing a fighter in a Pathfinder: Kingmaker campaign right now. She just hit 13th level and is a monster with two-handed axes. She does tons of damage with them and is an expert at knocking her targets on their butts with those attacks. That said she can pick up just about any other weapon and use it well, though hammers and spears follow axes in terms of preference. She prefers lighter armor for battlefield mobility, but knows how to wear heavier armor. She might never use a shield, but unlike the rogue and wizard, she does know how to do so. If out of potions of fly, she can even break her bow out and fire it. She's got a nice bow, and while she's not as handy with it as is her husband (the party's ranger) or the party's rogue (who has placed quite a lit of emphasis on bow use), she's not too shabby with it either. This is almost my idea of the perfect fighter-- able to use every weapon (except maybe some exotic ones), better than most other classes with some of them, and teh best in teh game with one or two of them.

Now, I also just got back from DDXP where I played a lot of 4E. As an aside, I played a cleric for about half of the games, a blunt-weapon-wielding, shield-carrying, undead-turning, party-healing cleric; and I can't believe there are people out there who dislike this archetype. But, I digress. My friend played a greatsword-wielding fighter. While my cleric was able to hit some enemies almost as hard as did my friend's fighter, I was mostly limited to hitting one at a time. The fighter could attack several at a time, and lock them down to boot. What I'm talking about of course are Powers and the fighter mark. Now, if you were to tack these powers and this mark onto a Pathfinder style fighter, I think that would be a class that would just about make me orgas--

Well, it would make me very happy. Give the guy (or gal) a few more skill points, and he'd be better able to participate in exploration as well as combat.

What was that third leg on teh stool again, role-playing? Well, I get into that even if I don't have ranks in Diplomacy, or Bluff, or Intimidate. I just get sad when my die rolls can't back up my obviously awesome monologue.

I'm rambling.

 

[exile]

Oh, if it wasn't obvious from my post, I'm all for one strong, versaitle fighter class, not breaking it into a bunch of separate classes. That said, I'm also for keeping the barbarian, paladin, and ranger around and keeping them distinct from the fighter.

The warlord, I have mixed feelings about-- maybe it would be best (as someone here has already said) to kill him and give the fighter his stuff, maybe by way of a theme, or build options as the fighter progresses.

 

[Morrus]

I don't get the "that's a lot of real estate for one class" line.

The fighter's the one that's really good at, y'know, fighting. The wizard's the one that's really good at, y'know, magic. The rogue is the one that's really good at picking locks and hiding. The cleric's somewhere between fighter and wizard with some healing thrown in.

Sure, you can have more specialised versions of each. But I don't get why it's a struggle to envisage.

Weird-ass names like the "Tempest" don't do it for me. What the hell is a "tempest"? I can see "Cavalier" because the word means something to me in the right context - a fighter specialised in mounted combat (although I'd argue that's a theme, not a class - it's still a fighter).

I think I'm realising that I only want four core classes. Fighter, mage, cleric, thief (those names, preferably). Plus a few others for the sake of tradition, because they're D&D. Anything else should be themes and customization. Certainly nothing called a "tempest" (I don't even know what that is, and feel like I don't want to know).

Fighter, mage, cleric, thief
Ranger, paladin, druid, monk, barbarian
Assassin

Specialisation for mages and clerics.

That'll do.

 

[JohnSnow]

Yes. The problem is that the "skirmisher" type, wearing light armor, being mobile, using a few melee weapons well--happens to fit with using ranged weapons very well. So it is really easy to tack on "woodlore" to that (not unreasonable for many characters), call it a ranger, and stop there. And that's why I said that the fighter might not end up making the best archer. You can make him "all that" with a bow, but if he isn't mobile, it loses some oomph. And if you put him in leather and make him mobile, then what about all those heavy weapon and armor things that he isn't getting much use out of anymore?

So I come back to skills. If the defining thing for the ranger--who can make a pretty decent hunter/archer if he wants, is the woodlore, then you also need at least one fighter skill set that is fairly decent, too.

Alternately, they could say that ranger is a theme (or subclass or prestige class) instead of a class, so that the "woodlore" part is just something you add onto the appropriate fighter--but I didn't really think many people would go for that. If people are that upset that they must be able to build their archer with the "fighter" label, how are they going to feel about not having a "ranger" label to put on a package?

Or they could make the "fighter" an equal skill monkey. He gets a few special abilities in weapons to supplement his vast command of those, and a few special abilities in skills to specialize, but he is the king of the mundane. Then you give rogues a lot of special abilties to compensate for their relative lack of weapon ability.

Well, I'm fairly solidly in the camp that the ranger needs to be something other than a "fighter with skills" because I feel fighters should have skills.

I also think more should separate rangers from fighters than just a weapon choice and a theme. Some options that come to mind would be to give rangers a mechanical benefit for skirmishing, give them bonuses against certain kinds of opponents, and so forth.

Similarly, the fighter should probably have a couple unique class features that no other class has. Personally, I'd be in favor of something like Weapon Mastery.

 

[Sunseeker]

No.

No. No. No! NO!!

This is, IMO, a terrible idea.

If you split the fighter into several classes because it's "too broad" conceptually, and you probably end up with a character who's only got one fighting style. He's a niche character who sits on his hands (or is totally ineffective) when his preferred fighting style isn't appropriate. The knight who's awesome on a horse and can't find his ass off one? No thanks. Moreover, it's not even realistic or remotely related to the fiction.

Specializing to the point of not being able to use a particular combat style is fine if that's what the player WANTS, but there are plenty of players who want their character to be able to switch between melee and ranged.

And fiction and history is full of fighter types who COULD and DID.

I think the ranged non-caster concept of an archer and the armor-less raging barbarian are different enough to warrant their own classes, as they have in the past. But the core fighter should still retain a lot of variety in it's design and customization.

 

[Shroomy]

Some of these designers have an awfully distorted and negative view of the Fourth Edition. But this writer contradicts his negative comparison of 4e with his own facts:

"In 4th Edition, the fighter’s focus shifted from total customization and instead grounded the fighter into a particular niche—a role that would continue until the slayer came along in the Essentials products. Again, the class focused on weapons, distinguishing them into two broad groups: two-handed weapons and sword-and-board. Later supplements expanded the fighter builds to allow berserkers (battleragers), two-weapon wielders (tempests), brawlers, and so on."

So he says Fighters were limited and then lists six very different builds. What he also does not realize is that those Fighter builds which have decent dexterity are as good an archer as any Fighter from a previous edition. And in fact the designers made magical throwing weapons very useful, so that every strong character had a good ranged weapon.

I thought it was pretty clear that he was referring to the fact that no matter which build you played or which powers you selected, you were still a melee defender (unless you were a slayer).