D&D 5E Do Fighters Still Suck?

[rczarnec]

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Paladins can outshine fighters when they "nova" their smites. Barbarians are harder to kill. But nobody out-damages the fighter in the long term. Fighters can keep up the damage-dealing far longer and more consistently.

Now, that's just fine if you run the game under the standard "many smaller combats" assumption. If you run fewer, larger combats, it's easier for the limited resource martial classes, like the paladin, to start to pull ahead. But there are always going to be adjustments when the game is tweaked.

All IME, of course.

This by far. Fighters are their weakest when you let the party short and long rest any time they feel like it. Then everyone can regain their abilities constantly and the fighters biggest benefit "stamina" completely disappears. The starting portion of my campaign I am running now is a good example. Party due to their own choices went through four relatively major encounters without a short or long rest. By the last two the spell chuckers were all down to thrown cantrips and whiffing badly their crossbows.

On the other hand the fighters of the party were only down hitpoints, they were hitting just has hard in the last battle as they were hitting in the first.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Necromancer casts 'Animate Thread...

View attachment 89089

...just in case the answer that hadn't changed in the prior 41 years had changed in the last 2. ....

The thing you always have to remember about Fighter is that their class name basically says it all. They aren't there to be a skill monkey, support others or cast spells. They are there to fight.

...it hasn't. Nor has the reasons for it.

This by far. Fighters are their weakest when you let the party short and long rest any time they feel like it. Then everyone can regain their abilities constantly and the fighters biggest benefit "stamina" completely disappears.

Getting to use Second Wind and Action Surge every fight wouldn't exactly suck for the 5e fighter.
But long rests, sure.