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

[Vael]

I'm in 3 games currently, two have Battlemaster Fighters and there's another Fighter who I'm not 100% sure what their subclass is, but they haven't done much explicitly magical stuff.

 

[Emberashh]

I imagine that in most games, casters are strong, but not pushing boundaries. Just going from my AL experience, players like damage, so most spells are ones that deal damage as opposed to hard crowd control effects; so everything synergizes. The Wizard fireballs a group, weakens them, the warrior types finish them off, everyone is happy.

As long as the DM isn't using problems that only magic can solve, everyone feels like they are contributing. If a game is just "go on this adventure, then go on that one", the narrative power of a spellcaster with spell slots to burn because they aren't adventuring doesn't really come up.

And I'm not discounting the concept of a social contract where players aren't attempting to warp the game around their characters, I've no doubt there are tables that run that way.

The crux of the caster/martial imbalance is that it's theoretical; casters have a higher ceiling than martial characters, but the floor isn't that much higher; the quality of choices and the skill of the player do matter.

If someone plays a Wizard and takes no damaging cantrips ("I have real spells for that, if I want to do damage, my crossbow does d8+3, that's way better than firebolt!") and thinks spellcasting consists of mage armor, magic missile, shield, flaming sphere, misty step, fireball, and counterspell (again, calling on my AL experience), there shouldn't be a problem- we know the game is balanced around damage and hit points, not anything else like accuracy, utility, or various forms of disadvantaging foes (since Jeremy so kindly told us).

This is why we see such disparate opinions on the caster/martial divide, because most of the time, it doesn't seem to exist. And as a result, even if Wizards designed for it, you'd have people wondering why their character concept of "skilled strong guy" forces them to accept strange abilities like leaping into the air or cutting magic force fields in half- "This is D&D, not Exalted or Earthdawn!".

And remember, Wizards has designed around fixing martial/caster disparity before, and the majority of their player base said "hard pass". As much as it would be nice for them to give us options to negate it, it's not going to happen until there is a larger percentage of players who actually see the problem.

Which means instead of arguing about whether or not this is a thing, the people who see a problem should be making "+" threads about brainstorming ways to fix it- the problem is real for these people, and they need solutions, not to be told "lol, the game is fine, I've never had this problem in 35 years of playing" endlessly.

If this was Reddit i would gift you gold.

 

[Emberashh]

Because the design focus is on the first third of the game where LOTR is based.

Which again is bunk, because as said, relative to LOTR, even low level DND is well in excess of LOTR mythic past.

Everyone here gets that what you're trying to say is low level DND is trying to be close to regular humans, but thats not even what low level DND actually is, and as said, its still in excess of what LOTR depicts, before you even address how magic is depicted.

The reality is this viewpoint is being thrown off because magic in DND is, by design, violating its own mixed genre whereas Martials, on the whole, aren't. If all classes were made equal to the Champion Fighter, DND is still on a level well in excess of LOTR.

Levels and class design frankly don't even matter. All characters in DND are in excess of Mythic LORE by 5th level simply by virtue of being able to fight and kill not just a dragon, but at least half a dozen of them every single day, and their capabilities only go up from there.

And even then, depending on the party make up, their tactics, and any items already gained, they could take on that challenge or their equivalents even earlier than 5th.

The simple fact that, within DNDs fiction, they can even fight a single dragon at all is what sets DND apart from LOTR dramatically, nevermind fighting and killing multiple of them every single day.

And its that fiction mind that tends to be neglected as a factor in these debates.

People can hem and haw all they like about Martials not being able to do anything, but Martials are able to fight and kill dragons, even by themselves with the right misc equipment and a good plan. That sets them far, far, far above LOTR, and even farther above real life, regardless of whether or not one likes what abilities they have or what game mechanics they have to use to do "cool things", as though chopping up a dragon with an axe isn't inherently cool.

 

[Minigiant]

Which again is bunk, because as said, relative to LOTR, even low level DND is well in excess of LOTR mythic past.

Everyone here gets that what you're trying to say is low level DND is trying to be close to regular humans, but thats not even what low level DND actually is, and as said, its still in excess of what LOTR depicts, before you even address how magic is depicted.

That's not what I'm trying to say.

What I am saying is.. if you asked a D&D design team lead for an inspiration of what a level 11 nonmagical full class fighter, who would they give as an example? A level 17 nonmagical full class fighter,?

Likely the would dodge the question or state a LOTR character who isn't high level.

If you asked most players, the answers would be very different. And this is why people tend to not make them. Because what the current fans and the design team see as a nonmagical full class fighter are different. So people don't make them..

 

[James Gasik]

If this was Reddit i would gift you gold.

If you have any real gold to spare, I wouldn't say no.

 

[tetrasodium]

That's not what I'm trying to say.

What I am saying is.. if you asked a D&D design team lead for an inspiration of what a level 11 nonmagical full class fighter, who would they give as an example? A level 17 nonmagical full class fighter,?

Likely the would dodge the question or state a LOTR character who isn't high level.

If you asked most players, the answers would be very different. And this is why people tend to not make them. Because what the current fans and the design team see as a nonmagical full class fighter are different. So people don't make them..

D&d very far from Tolkien to the extent that cubicle7 makes a thing called adventures in middle earth.
D&d?... Goblin Slayer.
5e?... Saitama or Momon The Dark Warrior

 

[Minigiant]

D&d very far from Tolkien to the extent that cubicle7 makes a thing called adventures in middle earth.
D&d?... Goblin Slayer.
5e?... Saitama or Momon The Dark Warrior

But the AIME classes are very similar to their 5e counterparts
Cubicle 7 mostly just took the magical monsters and classes out of 5e, replaced the casters with new classes, changed up a few things, and made a LOTR game.

Every 5e player at a table I been to that ran a fighter eventually multiclasses or uses overt magic unless they are making LOTR clones or braindead basic PCS. Because their inspiration isn't LOTR or LOTR inspired media.

It might be just my experience but its all I've seen from fighters.

 

[Older Beholder]

We finished a campaign at level 20 last year where one of the characters was a Battlemaster,
The guy that Dm'ed the first campaign is now playing a Samurai in our second campaign and is at level 9.

 

[TheSword]

What this data tells me, albeit with a small sample. Is that a significant number of people can enjoy playing Fighters (unless all these people are being tricked or forced to play it until level 7 at gunpoint of course). Significant enough that D&D are not going to make the kind of changes that a small but very vocal group are advocating. The data showing the popularity of the fighter and now that a purely non-magical fighter is pretty conclusive to my mind.

 

[dave2008]

@Yaarel , what do you gleam for your poll data so far. Currently, by this poll, about 2/3s of the groups see a nonmagical fighter by your rather strict definition. That, to me, is a huge number given all the options available. I don't think there is any other strict combination of class & subclass that would come close to meeting that threshold, but I could be wrong. So, what does that mean to you? Do this prove or debunk your hypothesis so far?