Does D&D need a fighter class?

[Grydan]

That's not even remotely what I'm saying.

Look at it from this perspective: the "wizard' class is profoundly broad, being able to do pretty much anything he wants with the possible exception of healing (depending on edition and supplements used). But does it suck? No. And it shouldn't. And even though the wizard is the poster child of "casting spells" he's not the only one. Some concepts do get put into other, more specialized classes.

The "fighter" class ought to be in a similar position. Fairly broad, some more specialized concepts put into separate classes, and most importantly: shouldn't suck.

The idea that a generalized class is more likely to suck from an effectiveness point of view is completely false. And note that I'm not even talking about "everything we don't have fun rules for", but instead just the core concept of a martial warrior.

All this depends heavily on how the systems are implemented (compare the classes from D&D with those from Alternity or Anima, for example). Your statement assumes far too much.

While I'd happily agree with the idea that the fighter shouldn't suck (and would hope that it's not a terribly controversial position to take), to describe both the Wizard class and the Fighter class as broad is to conflate two very different meanings of the term.

The Fighter is, traditionally, conceptually broad. It's one class that's expected to cover a wide array of archetypes: soldiers, non-mystical knights, thugs, non-mystical archers, swashbucklers, gladiators, samurai, town guards, farmboys, mercenaries, pirates, officers ...

However, it's mechanically narrow. It provides tools for being good at hitting things with weapons, and for being good at surviving being attacked with weapons in return. Fighters are good at fighting fighters. But there's generally little or nothing to support the non-combat aspects of any of the archetypes that are folded into it, and even its combat abilities are very focussed specifically on weapon-use, rather than tactical acumen, combat mobility, and limiting enemy options.

The Wizard is mechanically broad. Want to do something? There's a spell for that. There are spells for dealing damage, reducing damage you take, avoiding taking damage, stopping enemies while bypassing the AC and HP mechanics the fighter is restricted to dealing with, reshaping the battlefield, overcoming obstacles, finding things, hiding things, identifying things, making things, destroying things, repairing things, altering the colour of things, making people like you, making people fear you, turning invisible ... pretty much any effect achievable within the system, other than magical healing, can be achieved via a wizard spell.

However, it's conceptually narrow. There's no pretence that the class covers, or has ever covered, every concept of magic users that we don't have a more specific class for. It doesn't even cover the entirety of the concept of wizard. Ask a non-D&D player at random to name a wizard. Chances are you'll get one of the following names in return: Merlin, Gandalf, Dumbledore, or Harry Potter. None of those conform to the D&D interpretation of the concept. Oh sure, Merlin, Gandalf, and Dumbledore might have the high intelligence that's expected of a D&D wizard, and Dumbledore is definitely a scholarly type, but Harry's about average at best in the intelligence department while still being a more effective wizard than his more intellectual peers. The elder three of the set are also generally known for their roles as wise advisors, while high Wisdom is not a trait commonly associated with D&D wizardry. And of course, they all use radically different magical systems that aren't even the slightest bit Vancian. Unlike the D&D wizard, for whom magic is something external learned through study, all of them (well, Merlin varies, depending on which of the numerous interpretations you go with) are themselves inherently magical beings, more like a D&D sorcerer.

Now, of course, expecting a class that originates in the 70s to model characters not created until the 90s is silly. And those who read deeper into Tolkien, as I expect many of us here have, find that Gandalf is closer in concept to an angel. But to the general public, they all readily fit into the concept of 'Wizard', never mind the even broader concept of 'Magic-User', at least as readily as all of those various martial combatants fall into the concept 'Fighter'. There's countless other (less widely recognized) examples one could draw upon, both from before and after the creation of the D&D Wizard. I could also list dozens upon dozens of characters and even entire categories of characters that people would be quite content to apply the label 'Magic-User' to, and aside from the writings of Jack Vance and licensed D&D material, you wouldn't find many who can be modelled by the D&D Wizard or Magic-User.

In summation the reason why the wizard can be broad and effective, and the fighter broad and ineffective is that the wizard is a narrow concept given a broad array of tools to support that concept, while the fighter is a broad array of concepts given a small set of tools that only partially supports the vast majority of them.

 

[Sage Genesis]

While I'd happily agree with the idea that the fighter shouldn't suck (and would hope that it's not a terribly controversial position to take), to describe both the Wizard class and the Fighter class as broad is to conflate two very different meanings of the term.

...

I think the real issue that I'm talking in the prescriptive, whereas you seem to be talking in the descriptive. In other words, I'm talking about what Fighters should be like. And you're talking about what they have traditionally been like in the past. So everything what you say might be true, but it has little bearing on what I was talking about; yes the Fighter was mechanically narrow, but I'm saying that it shouldn't be.

 

[Grydan]

I think the real issue that I'm talking in the prescriptive, whereas you seem to be talking in the descriptive. In other words, I'm talking about what Fighters should be like. And you're talking about what they have traditionally been like in the past. So everything what you say might be true, but it has little bearing on what I was talking about; yes the Fighter was mechanically narrow, but I'm saying that it shouldn't be.

My apologies. It was not my intent to attribute views to you that you do not hold.

Yes, I agree that fighters should be mechanically broad ... at least, if we're going to continue to treat them as conceptually broad.

Either we need to provide them the tools to represent the concepts they're supposed to cover, or we need to accept that they don't cover those concepts and (assuming we want those concepts to be modelled in the game) come up with classes that do, to take the burden of supporting them off the shoulders of the fighter.

4E took the approach of both somewhat narrowing the conceptual breadth (pushing the non-magical archer over into the Ranger, for instance) while increasing the range of mechanical support. I don't feel it really went far enough in either respect, as even the vast majority of fighter utilities still fell into the 'hit stuff harder or be better at taking hits' niche, but at least some support was provided for being more than just to-hit and damage in combat. The 4E fighter has the ability to both force and restrict enemy movements, manoeuvre in combat, as well as impose at least a meaningful fraction of the range of conditions available to other classes (slowed, prone, and dazed being the most readily available to the fighter without the use of magic items) without doing something tactically unwise (such as giving up an entire round worth of damaging attacks by the supposedly most effective attacker ... though they also gave up their claim on that position in the narrowing of the conceptual breadth).

 

[Sage Genesis]

My apologies. It was not my intent to attribute views to you that you do not hold.

No need to apologize, it's an honest enough miscommunication.

Yes, I agree that fighters should be mechanically broad ... at least, if we're going to continue to treat them as conceptually broad.

Either we need to provide them the tools to represent the concepts they're supposed to cover, or we need to accept that they don't cover those concepts and (assuming we want those concepts to be modelled in the game) come up with classes that do, to take the burden of supporting them off the shoulders of the fighter.

I would agree with that. Ideally Next would manage to cover a broad range of Fighter-concepts through a combination of sub-classes and backgrounds. I'm not confident it hit that point during the playtest but it might on launch. Or maybe shortly after - 4e didn't have the Druid and Bard on launch either but I was fine with waiting for those. If the Fighter's structure allows for this to happen in the future I will be satisfied.

I'm mostly curious if the Fighter will get any Warlord-esque abilities. Aside from the martial healing thing, the concept of a commander or tactician is a sound one. And it's not a concept that needs to be exclusively represented by the magical music guy.

 

[Reyemile]

Though the workload itself needn't be great. You can look at minor changes to existing classes as a way of making them specific to your game. Swap out the Thief of the Red Hand's "Sneak Attack" core mechanic and replace it with perhaps some sort of "Divine Magic" mechanic and now you've got a priesthood of a god of trickery and deceit! It's a new class (since every class is very specific), but the work involved was really quite minor: use Tab B instead of Tab C. Take the yellow lego block and replace it with the blue one.

The hardest part is getting the break points right, and I took a stab at that in the articles (Background for non-combat skills, Basic Abilities for weapon/armor types, a Core Mechanic to fuel your powers, and Class Abilities that define what you get as you level). I think it's viable, though I don't think it's quite all that I'd want personally...lots of room for improvement!

This sounds very much like Legends D20. It does almost exactly this.