D&D (2024) Do you see Fighter players at your own table?

[nevin]

Agreed. And on top of that, TTRPGs are much less competitive than MMOs, which make concerns about efficacy and utility even less of a driver of people's choices.

The answer to the more detailed question "In 5e, are high-level spellcasters' contributions so useful that they trivialize a high-level noncaster's contributions" is pretty obviously a "Yes". I will definitely prefer the bladesinger who can send somone to Limbo with a touch and then attack with his ice golem simalcrum that's polymorphed into a dragon than the fighter who can attack with his hand crossbow 9 times.

Trying to determine if that truth stops people from playing noncasters at high levels doesn't make caster superiority less true. All the numbers show are that plenty of people are happy making nonstrategic choices, even at high levels, in the name of playing to a preferred concept. And given that it's impossible to "lose" a modern RPG, why wouldn't making the choice of concept over effectiveness be a common choice?

Because people are divided internally between emotion, instinct, and logic. According to most psychology studies most people are higher on the emotional scale than the logic scale. Instinct is harder to quantify but since a lot of it is programmed for cave man days and we've advanced way faster than we've evolved it causes reactions that don't always make sense in modern life. I don't remember the exact breakdown but I seem to recall there are 3 or 4 people who process emotionally vs every 1 who processes logically. I'd guess that most of those strategic // effective players who get so unhappy with what most people consider immaterial things are stuck on the logical side where they've been in the minority their whole lives and spend a lot of time trying to figure out why humans are so messed up.

As one of the logical ones I have to point out it's not them that's broken it's us... We don't fit...

 

[Mistwell]

You keep forgetting that you said less than 50% was “most”. That’s what I quibbled with.

How are "most" and "majority" not synonyms?

In the other thread just shy of 60% (or “most” according to you) tables have three or more single classed full casters.

Yes, 60% is also "most." And I don't recall the other thread being specifically "single classed" but maybe my recollection is wrong on that. I do know you're comparing one class (fighter) to many spellcasters and trying to make that out to be a fair comparison when it's not.

If it was multiclassing that was skewing results, why so many single classes casters? Shouldn’t it be roughly the same? Yet we see less than ten percent of tables have no single classed casters.

Huh. Funny that.

What's funny is you're replying to a post of mine which has nothing to do with any of that. Which, again, says this is more about you trying to "win an argument" than have an honest discussion.

 

[AmandaBarbarian]

I've never ran a table with 4 or more players that didn't have a fighter. I've run games without rogues, druids,rangers,paladins,warlocks, usually every party has a fighter, and a sorcer or wizard, and a cleric. out of those 3 the cleric is the one most likely to be replaced by a multiclass or a something odd like a healing sorcerer.

in my few years playing I have played at many tables without a fighter, but only 1 without a warlock and when that one had the monk die they came in as a warlock... so that was only half a campaign.

 

[nevin]

in my few years playing I have played at many tables without a fighter, but only 1 without a warlock and when that one had the monk die they came in as a warlock... so that was only half a campaign.

thus the problem with asking questions like this and expecting useful data.....Statitiscally what I see and what you see are insignificant.

 

[AmandaBarbarian]

thus the problem with asking questions like this and expecting useful data.....Statitiscally what I see and what you see are insignificant.

then is there any reason to ever ask or even discus our games?

 

[nevin]

then is there any reason to ever ask or even discus our games?

not if you are seeking statistical data. If you just want to talk then sure.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Well yeah thats the whole thing about this disparity that tends to get disregarded in these discussions; most people don't actually care unless a player is being toxic about it to begin with, at which point the design of the game is entirely immaterial.

I know this will just get me lectured again, but I hate this argument. Sure "people who throw hand axes for fun don't care that tank-busting 50 cal's exist" is technically true. Sure, I knew a player who played a wizard with a negative intelligence who refused to cast spells because they hated magic and intstead punched people while spouting WWE lines, and that player said he had fun.

But while the game is supposed to be fun, it is also supposed to be roughly balanced. You should be able to have fun without having to say "well, I'd be better off if I was actually casting spells, but I don't care about being effective."

And I know, how DARE I say fighters aren't effective. I should totally believe they are equally effective to spellcasters despite all evidence to the contrary, because fighters are popular and people have fun with them, and they can do damage in a turn and repeat that damage every turn. But, at the end of the day "I had fun" isn't "this is balanced" We know this to be true. And even if the vast majority of people don't care whether or not things are balanced, the game works better when parity can be achieved.

 

[Emberashh]

You should be able to have fun without having to say "well, I'd be better off if I was actually casting spells, but I don't care about being effective."

And most people do, because playing a Martial is a fundamentally different fantasy that gets satisfied in a fundamentally different way from that of Casters.

Its the same underlying reason why a Gish feels different from either one, and why a Paladin, Ranger, or Monk feel different from that. (The common factor being, of course, that they are all different)

I should totally believe they are equally effective to spellcasters despite all evidence to the contrary

No, you should just accept that balance isn't everything. Some philosophies, notably the OSR and arguably Classic, explicitly argue that balance is stupid and has no place in the game.

And insofar as DND goes, the baseline for where things ought to be vis a vis class design depends on what genre DND is trying to be, and since the days of Appendix N that has always been a mix of sword and sorcery and epic fantasy. The sole things violating this kitbashed genre in 5e are things in Casters that were both deliberately designed to be broken and not incorporated into the level of play they exist at (because they deliberarely didn't design that level of play), and things that were arbitrarily denied to Martials based on the whims of 4chan trolls still pissed off over Weaboo Fightan Magic.

Nobody but trolls actually wanted casters to do all the utility heavy lifting, but thats what WOTC took from the Next playtest.

But despite all of that, the game is still fun and works, even without extraneous DM effort, as not everybody that plays game takes it that seriously, which is the only means by which you'd start rubbing up against the system.

I would argue in fact more people play it closer to its roots as a Dungeon shooter than they do as Critical Roll, and that is why theres a huge disparity in what the online community thinks versus the greater audience.

 

[CleverNickName]

I've never ran a table with 4 or more players that didn't have a fighter. I've run games without rogues, druids,rangers,paladins,warlocks, usually every party has a fighter, and a sorcer or wizard, and a cleric. out of those 3 the cleric is the one most likely to be replaced by a multiclass or a something odd like a healing sorcerer.

Now that I think about it, my gaming group (5 players and 1 DM) has almost always featured one Sneak, one Healer, one Mage, and two Warriors.

The most popular Sneak is rogue, but we've had a bard once or twice. The least-popular Sneak for my group is the ranger--we've only ever had one, and it was way back in 2002 and we were playing 3rd Edition rules. (And there's an argument to be made on whether the ranger is actually a sneak, or if it's a warrior...but the player played it as a stealthy hunter-in-the-forest archetype, so I'm going with sneak here.)

The most popular Healer is cleric--I've seen dozens of them come and go over the years. To quote my players during Session Zero, "the party isn't a party without a healer." The least-popular choice is probably druid, but we've got a Wildfire Druid in the group now that seems to be doing a pretty good job. (This druid has the Healer feat, and loves to spend his downtime brewing healing potions for the group.)

The most popular Mage is wizard, but we've seen all of them at least once over the years: artificers, sorcerers, warlocks, you name it. I think the warlock is my personal favorite, but I'm definitely in the minority with the group. Right now we have an artificer, and it's taking some getting used to....the player is mulling over whether or not he wants to multiclass into wizard. The least-popular Mage at my table is the sorcerer.

But getting back to the main topic of this thread: the most popular Warrior is fighter, and it's not even close. There is always a melee warrior and a ranged warrior in the party, and the fighter easily fits both. Right now we have a Musketeer Fighter optimized for ranged combat, and we have a Battle Master fighter that has been optimized for melee. Occasionally we will get barbarians and monks and paladins in the group, but not nearly as common as we get fighters. The least-popular choice for Warrior is probably barbarian, unless you count that one sneaky ranger from 21 years ago.

 

[SteveC]

I don't see many multiclass players. . I've got a few that are extreme min maxers they always multiclass everyone else tries it once or twice then goes back to thier favorite class. I think there is a lot of benefit to the non hardcore player in playing a simple class that doesn't have as many levers.

Of course there's a benefit like that. Just speaking of multiclass dips, the fighter for Action Surge is one of them. The Warlock Hexblade is another. I know people play single class fighters because they want that simplicity in the game, the game I'm in has one of them. That doesn't mean the other side doesn't exist either. And my comment about Action Surge was sort of intended as a joke.