D&D (2024) Fighter (Playtest 7)

[Vael]

So, new subclass, the Brawler. Still digesting that one, and the EK has some poor wording given how the video described it.

But, gotta love the new Tactical Mind and Tactical Shift features. Both expand the use of Second Wind, with Tactical Mind allowing you to use it on ability checks (and making sure there's no feel bads, you can use it when you know you've failed a d20 test and only expend the Second Wind useage if it manages to turn a failure into success) and Tactical Shift allowing a quick repositioning without triggering OAs when you heal.

Fighters seem to have lost the "get two masteries, choose which you get every strike" feature, instead just allowing them to alter which Weapon Masteries go with which weapon, which I guess is fine. I assume this is to leave space for a potential subclass that'll be the Kensai-like Weapon expert.

I'll confess, not a fighter dude, but I do like the look of this class. Some out of combat utility, some more differentiation from the Barbarian in flavor and focus ... these all seem like solid steps forward.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Quoting myself from the general thread:

I mean we've Tactical Mind, an actual utility ability, yeah it's extremely weak, it's the equivalent of Advantage, roughly, though you could use it after Advantage, I guess. Also hilariously I guess you get to move without OAs even if you use it out of combat lol? Battle Master is much improved (on an already solid slate), and gets an actual no-roll utility ability - Know Your Enemy - mostly in-combat but still, you could use it out - you could even do scouting with it and come back after a short rest with all your dice back. Student of War gives an actual skill as well as no-doubt still-useless tool proficiency.

Brawler isn't quite there yet but sounds promising, and importantly, WotC have a sidebar that amounts to "Unarmed attacks will be forced to totally suck if you're not a Monk", which is broadly applicable and could be very cool, and perhaps obviate the need for a martial artist class that isn't Monk (still need to throw Monks overboard though, easily 5E's worst conceptualized and least-developed class). It's a little sad though - you can see someone is basically struggling with Crawford to overcome Crawford bizarre but ultra-consistent deep hatred of unarmed attacks from non-Monks (including natural weapons on PC), but you have pathetic loserly design like "Oh you get a free unarmed attack but you're not allowed to use it to punch someone, that would be cool and mechanically effective so obviously inappropriate on a martial!".

We do get a bit of needless idiocy still, like with EKs, they can have two bonded weapons, cool, but need 2 bonus actions to summon them. That shouldn't even be a rule. It's a waste of ink. All it does is the make the subclass very slightly worse, and make the game needlessly more complicated for absolutely no gain whatsoever. That is straight-up bad design. It's not even consistent design.

Like, it's mostly improvements, but it's really unimpressive improvements compared to insanity like Memorize Spell for Wizards, which is just wild.

Brawler is particularly sad because it's subpar in virtually every way just because Crawford hates unarmed attacks for some reason (he is 100% consistent about this at least, throughout 5E). Even at level 10 you might think that perma-Advantage is good but at that point you're fighting tons of monsters who have stuff like "resistance to non-magic weapons", and they don't get to make their unarmed attacks or improvised weapons magical.

 

[Minigiant]

Tactical Mind was my Houserule as a DM already so making it official might make me play fighter again for other DMs.

 

[Emberashh]

Brawler to me feels vaguely like they're trying to enable something that evokes how the Barbarian in the movie fought.

Which is especially peculiar because I had the same inspiration for my games actual Barbarian subclass, the Pit Dog, and it feels like this is making the concept way too complicated for what its supposed to do, but also way too boring and weak.

To illustrate that point (because I like a good excuse to talk about my game), the way my Barbarians work attack wise is that they get Smash Dice; extra damage dice they get to roll for every damage die their weapon throws out. These dice grow from d4s to d12s, and with the right weapons you can be rolling upwards of 6d12 per Attack.

All Barbarians have the ability to apply these dice to improvised weapons. No restrictions, no malarkey, and if they spend the time to develop their Sleight of Hand skill (which they should, as you won't be as strong as you'll want to be if you don't), then those improvised weapons will throw out up to a d12 too.

But, the limiting factor about improvised weapons is that they have no Durability to speak of in most instances, and unlike conventional weapons their Durability is tracked like ammo is. If you roll a 1 in your Damage roll, the weapon breaks.

Now, the Pit Dogs function takes that fact and builds its abilities around it. When such weapons break, the PD gets unique Momentum boons that stack for the battle; basically, the more stuff you break against your enemies, the stronger, faster, and more resistant you get.

That already is lots of fun, and IMO captures what Hulga was doing in the Movie pretty much exactly (particularly in tandem with other base Barbarian abilities like Slam, which is an instant grapple + throw).

But that doesn't scale quite as well into the epic level hijinx my game funnels towards. So I introduced the capability to rip off NPC/Monster body parts and items to make even stronger improvised weapons out of. When you go to solo a Dragon, you can literally rip off one of its scales and use it as a shield, and stab it to death with one of its talons. And when those inevitably break, you get even stronger Boons thematic to whatever you just beat up with their own arm.

Crack a Dragon's fang over its skull and now you start dealing fire damage with every hit. Stuff like that.

And aside from all of that, I built the Pit Dog as a sort of "urban" Barbarian, so they have secondary and tertiary abilities that all play into various tropes of Conan, Fafhrd, gladiators, and general bruisers, and also encourage a more dextrous heavy build over a conventional Strength one (not that my game is one to build around single attributes anyway; everyone is MAD as they should be)

 

[Minigiant]

Oh someone in lead design has a HUGE THING for tavern brawlers.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Oh someone in lead design has a HUGE THING for tavern brawlers.

No.

They have a huge thing for the concept of Tavern Brawlers, but they are utterly opposed to making them mechanically effective.

The subclass is not good.

 

[Neonchameleon]

At least someone in the design team has caught on to the idea that even the improved Indomitable isn't worth a class ability on its own. Now if only they'd realise that about ASIs for non-casters (although to be fair fighter feats are massively improved).

 

[Horwath]

No.

They have a huge thing for the concept of Tavern Brawlers, but they are utterly opposed to making them mechanically effective.

The subclass is not good.

fighting with fists vs swords is not mechanically effective.
brawler got a damage with fist as big as a quarterstaff. thats very generous.

unarmed strike should be a feat, not a subclass theme.

 

[Minigiant]

No.

They have a huge thing for the concept of Tavern Brawlers, but they are utterly opposed to making them mechanically effective.

The subclass is not good.

I must remind you.

The games the designers run are not like most tables and have a style where chucking a chair is good at level 15.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I must remind you.

The games the designers run are not like most tables and have a style where chucking a chair is good at level 15.

I am unsure if this is a joke, but certainly Crawford seems to believe this. That chucking a non-magical chair for half damage at some non-magic-weapon resistant devil is a totally awesome and valid ability, or that we actually want to track V/S/M in detail and so on.