D&D 5E Fighters should be the social class

[Maxperson]

Gandalf did, until he died. Then Aragorn took over.

And the company disintegrated shortly after, though not due to faulty social skills.

 

[Maxperson]

If the sorcerer has a better persuasion mod, why not let them make the persuasion checks?

It's not their choice. NPCs don't just speak to one PC most of the time. The NPCs are going to be speaking to the group.

 

[auburn2]

Think so???

A Human Fighter at level 8 will only have (at most) 9 skills: 4 (Human variant with skilled feat) + 2 background + 2 fighter + 1 subclass.
(I might be missing a feature here or there for maybe an extra skill or two, but it isn't 17...)

This is because you can't take the Skilled Feat more than once.

A Human Variant Rogue (Scout) 3/ Cleric (Knowledge Domain) 1/ Bard (Lore) 3 has all 18 skills by character level 7, with expertise in 8 of them.

Were does it say you can't take skilled feat more than once? And I forgot AA nature/survival which means it is all 18 sills at level 8! (assuming skilled X4)

Also you can get another skill through prodigy FWIW, so even without taking skilled 4 times it is still 10, not 9.

In any case the point is you can have a crapload of skills with any class if you want to and build to it, so all this whining about fighters not able to be social is BS.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Were does it say you can't take skilled feat more than once?

It's right there in the PHB:

The only feat you can take multiple times is Elemental Adept, according to RAW:

I was talking about single classes, although I may have missed some.

All fine and dandy, but you said RAW. RAW includes all the options in the rules.

Now, without feats and/or MCing, I think a Half-Elf Lore Bard would have the most at 10 skills (race 2, background 2, class 3, subclass 3). Could be more, but that's all I can think of right now... shrug

 

[FrogReaver]

Not really relevant, since you can get any of them from your background.

No you can't. You can get 2 of those from your background. You can't get all of them ever.

 

[FrogReaver]

Plenty of leaders come from the military, and/or positions of privilege, and where notoriously incompetent. Being in a job does not mean someone is good at a job.

I don't think the leaders with those backgrounds are any more or less incompotent than ones with any other background.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Foppish has a negative connotation that would imply lower charisma and skill

It absolutely does not. That's bizarre. Foppish is about how you dress and act, and has nothing to do with skill or charisma. You can be a massive fop and incredibly skilled and charismatic. What is it you think foppish means?

I disagree, however. 5e encourages rolling only when the outcome is in doubt. That small difference in bonus becomes moot most of the time because rolling unnecessarily is not encouraged.

I don't think the difference is as small as you're suggesting, but that illustrates another problem with 5E, that being that investing in a skill or making something a priority for your character can often be undermined by the mighty d20. The problem then become that the Bard with +7 skill fails, and the Fighter with +4 fails, but the Barbarian with a grand total of -1 succeeds. Which is funny the first time but not the twentieth time, let alone the five-hundredth.

Foppish is a made up quality attempting to make a point based on that non-existent trait misapplied to game mechanics.

There is no such thing as a low quality set of social characteristics that can be applied to a high bonus.

I have no idea what you think you're saying here. These two sentences barely make any sense in English. My point is that by default D&D doesn't have any rules support for thing like the fact that a character is familiar with a mileux or kind of person. That's up to the DM. Whereas many other games have either more formal support for it (Etiquette skills in Shadowrun, for example) or have a narrative-based design which naturally includes it.

They aren't wizards. They're all bards.

I totally agree Wizard is basically just a Loremaster Bard who has forgotten his roots.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't think the leaders with those backgrounds are any more or less incompotent than ones with any other background.

There is a long British tradition of the children of the privileged serving as gloriously incompetent military officers, before going on to serve with glorious incompetence in other walks of life. But these days the military part is skipped as often as not.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Secondly, a fighter should really be the most common and relatable of the classes amongst common people. Someone who adventures by the strength of their arm should be more understandable and less "weird" than someone who casts magic because they have dragon blood, or even someone who casts magic out of their lute.

I think you have fighters confused with rogues here. Those super-strong meatheads who are literally tough enough to stand in front of a dragon are less relatable than even the spellcaster who commands the power of the heavens - but is as vulnerable as a real life person. Now a rogue, someone who knows that they aren't tough enough to stand toe to toe with supernatural enemies and instead needs guile and trickery to come out on top in a literal land of the giants? That's relatable.

This isn't to say that there aren't good stories to be told about fighters - and there's a reason that Superman the straightforward exemplar was, for most of the mid-late 20th century, the most popular DC superhero (only eclipsed by Batman from the mid 80s). But even there Superman doesn't translate to fighter so much as he does Paladin. Has a code, superpowered, and explicitly here as an immigrant to fight for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way."; the appeal isn't the relatability so much as the deliberate larger than life nature.

Thirdly, there's often mention how a fighter has little utility outside of combat. Some people may like that, others may not. A choice like this however, gives those who want that utility to be available to them.

Whether or not the starting fighter dumps CHA or not, I feel that they should have more choices beyond insight and intimidation.

Now this I can fully agree with.

I'm not sure how I would approach the relatability issue differently however. Running a campaign, I might consider altering the DC based on who the audience is. For example, a foppish bard trying to win over a garrison of hardened frontier soldiers should have a harder time IMO than the grizzled fighter in the party who speaks their language.

Meanwhile the same grizzled fighter walks in to a tavern and everyone swallows, terrified of offending him. The fop is far more disarming to civilians because their persona is deliberately non-threatening. And the rogue is an everyman.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And the company disintegrated shortly after, though not due to faulty social skills.

Not to get into another discussion, but the Fellowship would certainly have broken up by that point anyway, as not everyone was planning on going all the way to Mordor.