Fighter

[Tony Vargas]

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.

True. None the less, the assumption being made in 5e is that the fighter will be 'best at' fighting, and that balance will require he be bad at the other two pillars. Getting that balance 'right' is a matter of degree - of making the fighter so much better at combat in return for so much worse at interaction and exploration - on the part of the designers, and of DMs carefully balancing the relative importance and prominence of each of the three pillars in their campaigns.

So, if the fighter is to enjoy only a small edge in combat, while being far behind in the other two pillars, that would argue that the DM must make combat a primary focus of the game, with most game time in most sessions being taken up with it. The balance achieved would consist of the fighter being 'best,' in the sense of 'first among equals' in combat, contributing a little more, a little more consistently, but still giving everyone else a chance to shine some of the time, and the other classes getting to dominate in interaction and exploration while the fighter awaits the glory of the next fight.

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.

While I agree in the broader sense, and, while that would make a better game, one in which players are free to play the characters they want, in the styles they want, while the DM is free to run the campaign he wants, with the tone and pacing he wants, such a game "wouldn't be D&D."

 

[mlund]

We haven't seen any Combat Maneuvers that require multiple dice other than the podcast depiction of Riposte (3 dice for a counter-attack).

I'm thinking something less specific to conscious though than Challenge could work to flesh out the "sticky fighter" shticks. I'd call it "Engage."

Engage
You lock your opponent into close combat, raining blows down that demand his full attention.
Benefit: Once per turn, when you attack an enemy in melee reach, you can spend two expertise dice to engage him. The next time he attacks your ally or forces one to make a saving throw he has Disadvantage on the attack or your ally has Advantage on the saving throw.

- Marty Lund

 

[Bow_Seat]

We haven't seen any Combat Maneuvers that require multiple dice other than the podcast depiction of Riposte (3 dice for a counter-attack).

I'm thinking something less specific to conscious though than Challenge could work to flesh out the "sticky fighter" shticks. I'd call it "Engage."

Engage
You lock your opponent into close combat, raining blows down that demand his full attention.
Benefit: Once per turn, when you attack an enemy in melee reach, you can spend two expertise dice to engage him. The next time he attacks your ally or forces one to make a saving throw he has Disadvantage on the attack or your ally has Advantage on the saving throw.

- Marty Lund

I'd change it to say "when you hit" to keep it in line with other fighter CS abilities. Also, because it would make sense that if you made errant attacks that the enemy could finally slip out of the engagement.

 

[Jupp]

I didn't see that much in the fighter as well but I've just listened through the latest Penny Arcade D&D Next podcast and suddenly I find the fighter just a freekin' cool thing. Perhaps I am just such a tool for everything coming from PA's D&D stuff

Perhaps it's also just good advertising on their part but it did show me what those expertise dice mean for the fighter. I didn't really get it before.

 

[Bow_Seat]

I didn't see that much in the fighter as well but I've just listened through the latest Penny Arcade D&D Next podcast and suddenly I find the fighter just a freekin' cool thing. Perhaps I am just such a tool for everything coming from PA's D&D stuff

Perhaps it's also just good advertising on their part but it did show me what those expertise dice mean for the fighter. I didn't really get it before.

There's nothing toolish about people having fun. If you were sitting at your home table with friends and they were all going on about how awesome the fighter was, you'd think the fighter was cool too. It's not as much about bandwagoning as it is about everybody enjoying themselves and nobody feeling left out.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I do not like marking and I don't want fighters to be shoe horned into a role. I want fighters to fight and I want be able to use themes to create the kind of fighter I want.

Not all fighters defend so I don't want a built in defending mechanic.

 

[mlund]

Three fighters walk into a ruined Deep Gnome city ...

Man, that sounds like it deserves a punch-line.

Seriously, though, I've got a play-test coming up on Thursday with a 4 person party consisting of 3 Fighters and a sorcerer. It'll be interesting to see just how much diversity race, fighting style, background, and specialty can really bring to the table. My players are bringing:

A Hill Dwarf Fighter (Slayer) with a Maul.
A Mountain Dwarf Fighter (Protector) with Axe and Shield
A Wood Elf Fighter (Sharpshooter) with the Longbow
and A High Elf Sorcerer (Draconic Lineage) with a Buckler and Rapier

Someone will take the Healer specialty, and it'll be interesting to see how well a non-cleric party can function. They've got some of the best weapons and HP you could possibly bring to the table, anyway.

Not all fighters defend so I don't want a built in defending mechanic.

Read the play-test. There's already built-in defending mechanics. They just happen to be optional choices. Just go down the Duelist or Slayer paths instead of the Protector. Problem solved.

- Marty Lund

 

[Vikingkingq]

True. None the less, the assumption being made in 5e is that the fighter will be 'best at' fighting, and that balance will require he be bad at the other two pillars. Getting that balance 'right' is a matter of degree - of making the fighter so much better at combat in return for so much worse at interaction and exploration - on the part of the designers, and of DMs carefully balancing the relative importance and prominence of each of the three pillars in their campaigns.

So, if the fighter is to enjoy only a small edge in combat, while being far behind in the other two pillars, that would argue that the DM must make combat a primary focus of the game, with most game time in most sessions being taken up with it.

Surely an alternative to having combat be a larger pillar than the other two, as the balance for fighters being "bad" at the other two is simply to create a narrower band of effectiveness? I.E, if the Fighter is merely first among equals in combat, why can't they be an equal but not first in the others as opposed to "bad"?

 

[n00bdragon]

Surely an alternative to having combat be a larger pillar than the other two, as the balance for fighters being "bad" at the other two is simply to create a narrower band of effectiveness? I.E, if the Fighter is merely first among equals in combat, why can't they be an equal but not first in the others as opposed to "bad"?

Because that's magic anime bull**** and totally unrealistic and I can't roleplay when you give me all these special role-play centered abilities!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Surely an alternative to having combat be a larger pillar than the other two, as the balance for fighters being "bad" at the other two is simply to create a narrower band of effectiveness? I.E, if the Fighter is merely first among equals in combat, why can't they be an equal but not first in the others as opposed to "bad"?

There are many alternatives when balancing across all three pillars, of course. One is to make the fighter, as he appears to be, just marginally 'best' in combat, and really bad at the other two, but make combat a major focus of the game. Another might be to put the fighter head-and-shoulders above the rest in combat, and generally OK, if not even pretty good in some narrow areas of the the other two, but have combats be few and far between with intrigue or exploration in some combination the meat of the campaign. There are myriad other ways to balance classes across the three pillars. Whatever way is settled upon will dictate the relative importance of each pillar.

Along with the need to balance daily and at-will (and, perhaps, now, encounter) resources at a point (certain number of encounters/rounds/monsters/exp) for each adventuring 'day,' 5e will have a quite specific prescription of how it is to be played (if you care about balance, and don't care to re-design it to any great degree).


Of course, there is also the alternative of balancing by giving them all comparable portions of resources in each of the daily, at-will, and any in-between management periods (which 4e did), and the alternative of balancing classes within each pillar (which no version of D&D has ever even attempted), which would allow anyone to play any class in any style in any campaign with any pacing.