Fighter attack: extra attacks vs extra damage

[dave2008]

Action surge is once/twice per short rest, not per day. Depending on the day, that would be between one to six uses in a day.

That said, a level 20 character would make an Olympic champion look like a complete chump. By time you reach 20, you've pretty much achieved demigod status. For example, a level 20 human monk with the mobile feat can dash at a speed of 38.4km/h while also being able to casually carry a minimum of 120lbs on his back. That's faster than Usain Bolt... while also carrying at least 120lbs on his back. And unlike Bolt, who gives his all for that 9 second dash of his, our Monk friend would have no trouble doing his little stunt 20 times as needed with only an hour needed to recover (while also fighting inbetween). That's insane physical capability by any normal standard.
In comparison, a fighter would generally be expected to pursue a similar degree of martial skill to a monk's pursuit of physical prowess. If our level 20 Monk can make Usain Bolt look like a complete amateur, what does a similarly accomplished Fighter achieve compared to any Olympic level fencer, let alone a casual practitioner? Keep in mind, by level 20, any martial class has achieved a level of skill and physical prowess that puts them on par with mages who can literally bend the very fabric of reality. 8 Attacks with any weapon over the course of 6 seconds isn't exactly unreasonable at that point.

If you want to try to be reasonable about things, physically inclined characters probably begin to far surpass the whole "Olympic champion level" of things anywhere between levels 1-5, depending on what you intend to measure.

Do keep in mind, if you still want to keep with the whole "fewer attacks being made" bit without worrying about the class balancing act, you could always just fluff any multiple attacks made against a single target to simply be a single excessively strong or decisive blow. Each attack roll doesn't necessarily have to be a measure for an individual blow, it could instead be a measure of severity for a single one. Hit some poor bastard with an action-surge-pumped 8 attack rolls and the damage rolls were enough to thoroughly obliterate him? Turns out it was actually a single perfect strike right through his heart. On the other hand, if your player does want to move around and split some attacks up, he then always has the option to do so, if need be. At the end of the day, DnD is a game of imagination; and as much as I love to metagame and number crunch (and I really, really love to do that), there are situations where focusing on imaginative solutions over mechanical ones can offer some much more intuitive results. And I feel this case is definitely one of them.

To clarify I am not overly concerned with realism, and I agree that level 20 characters are demigods. I have a bigger issue with multiple attack rolls. Less so the number of attacks. An option might be to just roll the dice once and apply the result to each attack. Or once for every 2 attacks or similar. That being said, I like the feel of a fighter that does more damage per hit. Its more of a feel/aesthetic thing than a realism one.

 

[dave2008]

I still don't see how having the extra attacks slows the game down. If you're making them all at once against the same target, you should be rolling all the dice at once. All the while not having to worry about which attack you're using your *2 multiplier for, and which attack hits normally (what happens if you land a crit with GWM or have Haste cast on you?), or calculating whatever may be needed for a cleave mechanic. Dealing with all that, you're going to end up slowing the game down quite a bit. It seems like a lot of work and complication for a problem you can solve just by saying saying "and these three attack rolls were basically one really big attack that split the guy in two."

I agree with you on a logical basis (though my players can calculate square roots in their head so the math doesn't slow them down), but empirical evidence from actually playing has proven that, with my group, it does indeed slow things down to have multiple attack rolls. Currently my fighters do not roll all there dice at once, so that may help. People like to roll, it becomes a production. Otherwise I would use avg. static damage to help speed things up as well (I do of course for monsters, but I mean all damage).

On top of that, I simply like the idea of a fighter that has fewer attacks, but does more damage per attack. I don't think that is such a big deal.

 

[Xeviat]

I very much supported scaling damage back in the day over scaling attacks. Firstly, scaling damage allows opportunity attacks to remain as threatening in the end game as they are in the beginning of the game. As it stands now, a fighter's opportunity attack (barring sentinel or other effects) hardly matters. Second, there's still ways to make scaling damage work for all the things people have been mentioning here.

Lets say instead of getting extra attacks, martial characters just got extra damage dice. Their damage would be reduced, because of not getting the multipliers again. Also, multi attacks flatten out damage expectations, because there's a lower chance of hitting 0 times and doing no damage. That's worth something.

The second can be addressed by adding in "on miss" effects, or possibly rerolls. The evoker gets damage on a successful save on their cantrips after all. That would functionally bring up average damage so the lost damage from issue one wouldn't be there, in the averages (the ceiling is still reduced, but the floor is raised).

Having scaling damage also leaves room for cool, universal mechanics. Lets say at level 5, fighter attacks go from [W]+Str/Dex to 2[W]+Str/Dex. Lets also say that combat maneuvers are changed so that you can give up 1[W] to add certain effects, like give up 1[W] for adding trip, disarm, or push. What if you could give up 1[W] to attack 2 targets, still allowing for AOE style multiattacks but spreading the damage around (you'll also deal more damage over all to two targets then you would to one target, just like the standard AoE paradigm).

And, you get a nice beefy opportunity attack.

Doing such modifications would take a lot of work in the system. I'm sad that they didn't go in this direction, as they were flirting with it in the playtest.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'd just remove fighters extra attacks at 11th and 20th level and change them to dealing 2x weapon damage or 2x mod or some combination of that.