Fighter

[Grimmjow]

The fighter needs to keep improvements from 4e. Mainly, his mark. The mark should apply to ranged, too. A good fighter should be hard to get away from even if he is ranged. Other than that, to specialties not needed.

i would prefer that if the fighter class can be a tank, it is an option to be one. I don't like the idea of all fighters (or paladins) having to be a tank

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

More likely, we'll see something like a maneuver for this. There's no need for marking specifically; the useful part was the attack if they ignored you. Since we already have a resource that represents the Fighter's badassery, why not make use of it instead of making the Fighter track yet another combat variable with marking?

My guess is something akin to:
"Challenge: You can use this maneuver as a reaction when an enemy within your melee reach makes an attack against an ally that you can see. Spend an Expertise die to make a single melee attack against that enemy."

This sounds good at first, except that it conflicts with the Defender specialty (since you only get one reaction). Plus it's no use once the enemy has moved away from you. Ultimatecalibur's might be the best option.

 

[DogBackward]

This sounds good at first, except that it conflicts with the Defender specialty (since you only get one reaction).

People keep bringing this up... so yeah, it does "interfere" with the reactions for Guardian. An optional specialty that not all Fighters will have. Kinda like the action to cast a spell interferes with making an attack. Or how hiding interferes with casting a spell. It's called action economy for a reason; valuation is a very important part of it, you have to decide what's more important to use at any given moment.

 

[Stalker0]

I think people need to give the combat dice of the fighter a bit more time, as that mechanic has the potential for a lot of evolved complexity.

What makes it neat is that you can switch your tactics so quickly, offense one round, defense the next, knock a guy prone the third, kick a guy into a wall the 4th.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The fighter still looks a little boring.

I will see soon if it is so in play.

The CS Fighter seems a lot like the 3e fighter, to me, and the 3e fighter was definitely not boring. It was an engrossing challenge to build effectively, and engaging in tactical play if well-built. While it might be a lot easier to build, the CS fighter still looks like it'll be engaging in tactical play, in it's own right.

The only downside of the 3e fighter was that it was typically played in games that included "tier-1" casters, and that wasn't even an issue at the levels of the current playtest.

So I think the current 5e fighter should play-test pretty well. I'd be surprised if it wasn't a hit.

Also I think the Idea of giving a second theme to the fighter was not that bad.

Why not make themes with the same name as the fighting styles. And if you chose a fighting style, you automatically gain the feats of the same name (like rogue schemes work)

Fighting Styles are as close to Themes/Specialties as makes no odds. The only difference is that they're fighter-exclusive, which should make the fighter /more/ interesting, or at least more unique.

Edit: maybe a fighting style could also grant a bonuns skill, so that a fighter also has 4 skills at the beginning like most other classes.

Unlike in 4e, where there was no perceptible mechanical reason for the fighter to be restricted to 3 not-terribly-useful skills, the Fighter in 5e is going to be balanced across 'the pillars,' and is meant to be dominant in the 'combat' pillar, while skills figure prominently in the other two, thus, the fighter must be skill-poor.

 

[Tony Vargas]

More likely, we'll see something like a maneuver for this. There's no need for marking specifically; the useful part was the attack if they ignored you.

The idea was to give the enemy a catch-22, attack the fighter (usually the least effective use of an attack, since the fighter was high-defense, high-hp, high-surge) or take an extra hit from the fighter (not /the/ hardest hitter in the party, but nothing to sneeze at). In practice, the DM would have the monster do the less objectionable of the two, tactically, unless he had some 'RP' reason to do otherwise.

My guess is something akin to:
"Challenge: You can use this maneuver as a reaction when an enemy within your melee reach makes an attack against an ally that you can see. Spend an Expertise die to make a single melee attack against that enemy."

That's not a bad idea, except:

1) You're trying to put in a mark-like mechanic to make the fighter more Defendery, but, the extant 'Defender' Theme/Specialty also uses a reaction. I know that's been pointed out, but someone going for a 'defender fighter' is probably going to want to have both.

2) It's really too much for 'just' a CS die. Give up 1d of damage to likely make another whole attack? And, if you're attacked instead, you can still use the same die to parry.

Spending CS dice to inflict damage - just the damage rolled on the CS dice - might be good.
Not making it a reaction in return for the lower damage might be fair, and would keep it compatible with Defender. Alternately, making something that explicitly stacked with Defender could be an option. Like, if you use Defender to give an enemy Disadvantage and the enemy hits, you can spend CS dice to 'parry' on behalf of the ally.

 

[Vikingkingq]

Unlike in 4e, where there was no perceptible mechanical reason for the fighter to be restricted to 3 not-terribly-useful skills, the Fighter in 5e is going to be balanced across 'the pillars,' and is meant to be dominant in the 'combat' pillar, while skills figure prominently in the other two, thus, the fighter must be skill-poor.

Here's the thing - I don't think the Fighter needs to be "poor" at the other pillars, but rather "narrow," and then the trick is to make sure that the "narrow" aspect of the Fighter's non-combat abilities appears often enough in adventures and the like so that people don't feel the Fighter is useless outside of combat.

Let's take social stuff for example - I think there's a good case to be made for making the Fighter class have something similar to the current Soldier background (although hopefully Backgrounds will give a baseline of Social competency) such that Fighters have a niche of being good at interacting with soldiers, gladiators, watchmen, and other people for whom martial skill is important in their life. Rogues and bards should still be better, and they should be better at interacting with all kinds of people (warrior types, religious people, commoners, nobility, other races, etc.), but maybe Fighters are halfway between them and a Wizard in dealing with just that type of people.

Likewise, I think there's a niche for the Fighter to shine in exploration - to an extent, their stats should give them a baseline competency because they probably have High Strength, Con, or Dex. But what I hope we see is the environmental equivalent of skills challenges, so that we have examples of particular kinds of locations such as: Difficult Crossings (rickety bridges over a gorge, fording a swift river, a really steep mountain pass), or Ruins (with rubble, crumbling buildings, untended flora, and cultural artifacts). And in these locations, there's a wide range of different things you can do to help the party explore or move through and Fighters are good at a particular subset of these (say, climbing ahead to carry a rope for the rest of the party, or shifting boulders or rubble, or holding the end of a rope steady, or kicking in doors, etc.) but less so than Rogues or Rangers who are better at every aspect, but more so than a Wizard.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Here's the thing - I don't think the Fighter needs to be "poor" at the other pillars, but rather "narrow," and then the trick is to make sure that the "narrow" aspect of the Fighter's non-combat abilities appears often enough in adventures and the like so that people don't feel the Fighter is useless outside of combat.

That would also argue towards leaving the fighter with relatively few skills selected from a limited list of mostly-physical skills - Climb, Jump, Swim, Endurance, etc... He can help with exploration when the party needs to scale a cliff, ford a river, break down a door or the like. In a social situation, he can back them up with the looming threat of his combat prowess (intimidate). That's something to do in both pillar, but narrow, and in keeping with the fighter's traditional role and abilities.

 

[Vikingkingq]

That would also argue towards leaving the fighter with relatively few skills selected from a limited list of mostly-physical skills - Climb, Jump, Swim, Endurance, etc... He can help with exploration when the party needs to scale a cliff, ford a river, break down a door or the like. In a social situation, he can back them up with the looming threat of his combat prowess (intimidate). That's something to do in both pillar, but narrow, and in keeping with the fighter's traditional role and abilities.

Sort of. Mostly physical skills I agree with, general Strength/Dex/Con checks sure, but I think the key thing is going to be how the Exploration pillar is written up. What I think we need are Locations/Objects that are written up more like Traps with lists of skills/ability scores and how you can use them to interact with the environment to help the party (and maybe Class-specific things, so maybe anyone might be able to spot a trap, but only a Rogue will Spot the faded thief-sign that indicates what kind of trap; anyone can read the ancient riddle, but the Cleric knows some element of religious lore that tells him what kind of god they're dealing with).

Socially, I'm happy to keep looser, because a lot of folks just theater of the mind it. But I'd like the "impress martial guys" feature along with the "intimidate with my muscles," because it makes the Fighter more a part of the world.

 

[Grydan]

Unlike in 4e, where there was no perceptible mechanical reason for the fighter to be restricted to 3 not-terribly-useful skills, the Fighter in 5e is going to be balanced across 'the pillars,' and is meant to be dominant in the 'combat' pillar, while skills figure prominently in the other two, thus, the fighter must be skill-poor.

The thing is, the fighter never has been allowed, and likely never will be allowed, to be as dominant in the combat pillar as other classes are allowed to be in other pillars. They're not even allowed to be as relatively effective in the other pillars as other classes get to be in combat.

Fighters get a marginally better attack bonus than other classes. They get an edge in damage over most if they choose to use their expertise dice in the least interesting way, otherwise they have no particular edge in damage. They might have the best AC in the party, though there's certainly no guarantee there: clerics of the War domain have the same armour proficiencies, and a high dexterity character wearing light armour can match the AC of a heavy armour wearer. If they do have the best AC in the party, it's likely not by a large margin. With Fort/Ref/Will gone, and ability saves in their place, the fighter has no chance for any particular edge there.

A handful of theoretically possible marginal edges do not add up to dominance of a pillar.

I will grant that the fighter is currently the toughest of the classes, with the highest HP per level and the Parry ability granting the potential for once-per-round damage reduction. All else being equal, they'll survive the longest, which I guess is something. Not sure it's dominance, though.

Rogues cannot fail DC 16 checks in skills they're trained in, and DC 13 checks in skills they're not trained in. Fighters can fail a DC 9 check that uses their best stat and a trained skill. In combat, fighters only have a +1 to-hit advantage over a rogue with a similar attack stat (+2 at level 4, before dropping back to +1 at level 5). Fighter's don't get some minimum attack-roll guarantee, nor a bonus that they can opt to use in place of their stat bonus.

Every class participates in combat. Every class gets combat-based features.

Every class should participate in exploration. Therefore every class should get exploration based features.

Every class should participate in interaction. Therefore every class should get interaction based features.