Daily Powers don't belong on the Fighter

[El Mahdi]

...Why can he only do it twice per day? What exactly is stopping him from doing it over and over?...

Adrenaline hangover...

 

[variant]

It does sound very good! I'd endorse this, specially if warlord healing and second wind become TempHP which disappears after the fight. To have the fighter "nova" and brutally end the combat sooner because he'd rather burn his extra THP than see them disappear, that would be totally awesome!

I hope the Warlord never shows its face as it was in 4e. I do not want some non-caster healing anyone or somehow making you move faster simply by shouting.

 

[Remathilis]

I think it would be interesting to see daily abilities tied into some kind of HP burn, since HP is already acknowledged to be "mojo" as much as it is actual health, let fighters take special actions at some kind of HP burn to represent exhausting themselves. Perhaps tie it in to Warlord "healing" of granting temporary hit-points, ie: more "mojo", that Fighters could then burn to use special abilities.

ACK! NO!

Anytime you burn health in a fight to do something, you create a "death spiral". Star Wars Revised showed this perfectly. You had to burn vitality to use the force, even to heal. Because fights were very lethal, you rarely did it in combat because even if you used a power to knock your foes back (force push) you lost hp. Star Wars fights turned into long-slogs of attrition punctuated only by how dumb the critical hit system worked (another topic for another day).

HP should only measure how many close calls you take before you die. Spending it to attack just means the fighter will spiral down faster than anyone else.

 

[Sunseeker]

ACK! NO!

Anytime you burn health in a fight to do something, you create a "death spiral". Star Wars Revised showed this perfectly. You had to burn vitality to use the force, even to heal. Because fights were very lethal, you rarely did it in combat because even if you used a power to knock your foes back (force push) you lost hp. Star Wars fights turned into long-slogs of attrition punctuated only by how dumb the critical hit system worked (another topic for another day).

HP should only measure how many close calls you take before you die. Spending it to attack just means the fighter will spiral down faster than anyone else.

That's why I added later in my post to only allow the use of THP, which could be measured as "extra mojo" on top of your usual HP. If you don't have THP, you can't use special "extra mojo" abilities. And as I pointed out, it would tie in nicely to the Warlord and still allow the class to exist as a "healer" who only granted THP(translated as extra mojo), but didn't actually heal.

 

[Campbell]

I hope the Warlord never shows its face as it was in 4e. I do not want some non-caster healing anyone or somehow making you move faster simply by shouting.

The warlord is conceptually grounded in a more narrative take on hp and on the conceit that leadership has a tangible effect on performance. Anyone coming from 4e who wants to play a Warlord is going to expect it to be conceptually similar. If you don't like the conceptual underpinnings of the class feel free to not use it. As a big tent game, 5e needs to include elements that work for players of every edition.

 

[Ajar]

I don't have a problem with non-magical characters having daily powers. I take the "daily" as a game or genre abstraction, not as a literal simulation of a physical reality.

This. HP aren't a literal simulation of physical reality either. Can a 10th level fighter really take that many more full sword hits before dropping? Or does high HP actually mean you're better at almost dodging out of the way and taking less of the brunt of a hit each time?

Stuff like healing surges, second wind, and martial dailies aren't any less realistic than the HP/level mechanic is to begin with.

*

I'm OK with the fighter and guardian theme as presented so far. I'd prefer a more interesting fighter, but I recognize that that isn't what they're going for in the playtest version.

 

[Lalato]

I don't agree with you that a fighter must be doing damage every round in order to be "pulling his weight." If a wizard spends his action casting a charm spell or some other debilitating effect rather than shooting a fireball, that's still a good use of his turn even if it doesn't deal damage. The same is true of a fighter tripping, disarming, etc. He's putting the enemy in a compromising position that may greatly reduce its effectiveness, make it more vulnerable to future attacks, prevent it from fleeing or repositioning, etc.

I agree with you that for the wizard, that's a good use of his turn, but the fighter's niche is the consistent damage dealer in combat. If you start giving him other things to do, then that means someone else has to pick up his slack. I'm OK with someone else picking up the slack, the people at the gaming table have to be aware of that. When a player sits down at the table with "bag of tricks" fighter build that doesn't do damage, that's going to potentially cause problems. It's just something people have to be aware of before the start of the game.

I would much rather the fighter does at least some minor damage when tripping or anything else. If my fighter trips an opponent, you better believe he hit his opponent so hard that the poor fellow fell down and got hurt in the process. If my fighter disarms someone, he didn't just make a deft maneuver that disarmed his opponent, he got a slash on that hand causing damage. It doesn't have to be a lot of damage, it could even be trivial.

A fighter's job is to be good enough that even when he does a fancy maneuver, he still hurts his opponent. I would say this is one of the things that 4e got right.

I disagree, it's the easiest way to balance the fighter with the other classes and keep it unique. Having the fighter make an extra attack every time it gets around to him isn't going to significantly slow down the combat anymore than having the wizard roll more dice for his fireball or the cleric rolling more dice for his healing. A turn based resource pool is also the easiest thing to keep track of.

So wait a minute, the fighter is boring because all he gets to do is roll a d20 and swing his weapon. So the way to make him exciting is to just roll another attack that's just the same?

And yes, it does slow things down, because each attack is a separate siloed thing. Each one is rolled and calculated separately. Your examples of fireball damage and healing are all done at once and totaled as one action. Where fireball does slow things down is with saves. The DM still has to roll saves for each affected creature.

Anyway, I think it's better to have more varied and interesting attack options than to have multiple attacks that are essentially the same thing over and over again.

 

[Invisible Stalker]

The fighter should get one surge for each can of spinach he carries.

I hope the martial classes keep daily powers and that the Warlord is in 5e.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

So this won't happen, but I was thinking about a mechanic for this that might work, and is somewhat based on real life... Im a martial artist, a lapsed one anyway, and in essence the more advanced my opponent, the more difficult it is to land a complex blow.... That said

What if the powers list was like the clerics spell list, a series of moves that a fighter could draw on, but only when they successfully hit, and then by a margin....

Hit by less than 2 difference.... Basic attack
Hit by 2 .... A little bit of an opening to do a minor stunt ( eg at will)
Hit by 5 .... A more substantial opportunity to do a more powerful stunt ( per encounter or x/ day)
Hit by 10 ... An enemy is completely off balance or out of position, do you best stunt ( daily)

Certainly makes creating advantage a very important tactic, especially against more advanced foes.

.... For balance the same mechanic would have to have a similar mechanic for spell casting ( casting check)

... Just a throw away idea

I like this idea. Here's a similar one I came up elsewhere that also gives the fighter a bit more control over when it kicks in:

Here's a top-level of a system I kind of like for fighter mechanics: The fighter can activate a mechanic if he hits an enemy by a required margin. Frex, if a fighter hits a target by at least 7, he can trip, which knocks an opponent prone if he misses a dex check. In order to give the fighter some control of when these kick in he's given a Stamina of 5 per level, a Stamina point can be used at any point to give a +1 to hit, and Stamina refreshes at the same time hit points do.

I like this system for a couple of reasons. It links maneuvers to the fiction. The margins can be varied to give a desired frequency to maneuvers. It gives a little more depth to decisions about when to use Stamina and maneuvers.
​

I also like the idea of burning hit point for maneuvers.

In general I really don't like dailies etc. for martial characters. I want there to be a reason for why things happen other than "it's a game." I was actually okay with barbarian rage though. It makes a lot of sense that raging would take a lot out of you and you would need to rest before doing it again.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I hope the Warlord never shows its face as it was in 4e. I do not want some non-caster healing anyone or somehow making you move faster simply by shouting.

I really like the idea of the warlord. I've always wanted a way to model Croaker from the Black Company books. I didn't care fore 4E's implementation though. I'm hoping they come up with something better this time around.