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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7829909" data-attributes="member: 996">I suppose "decision free" may be an exaggeration for effect.  Certainly, the fighter has been given fewer decisions points than other classes in many editions (and /plenty/ of them in others, like 3.x & 4e), but the point could also be that those decisions can be meaningless or too obvious to be meaningful (in slightly different meanings of 'meaning-'), or be boxed into only one.  Ironically, a game that I otherwise find myself praising rather a lot, 13th Age, delivered a not exactly simple, but essentially decisions-free fighter.  The fighter had maneuvers, which maneuver you used was determined by the natural result of your attack roll - you /could/ design the fighter so that several maneuvers activated on the same natural result, and then pick one, but it could also end up with each maneuver triggering on a different result, and thus no choice at all, the character would just run on autopilot.  The point, then, may just have been that there's never been much on that level of "simplicity" offered for casters.  So the simple/meaningful choice divide is also the martial/caster divide, when there's no mechanical or conceptual reason it need be so.I suppose there's a distinction between the number of decision points and the number of 'choices' at each point, sure.Heracles didn't exactly (or even remotely) cast spells, rage (intentionally/to his benefit) or constantly 'sneak attack' enemies, and he wasn't an monastic acetic, so Fighter's what's left, in 5e, for instance.Fighter necessarily covers a lot of ground, in the early game, because there were only two other classes and they both cast spells - so any non-caster, from Beowulf to Lancelot to Robin Hood to Conan to Alexander the Great could only be a fighter.  And, even now, because the few other non-casting archetypes you can tease out of the PH (there are no entirely non-casting classes, not even fighter), rage or sneak attack or use supernatural ki powers.Of course, there are many of those archetypes that fall to the fighter that it just can't do that well (one reason we need the Warlord back).  And, of course "(I know...)" this is nothing new, the discussion of bringing the fighter up to the level of a balanced class and up to the level of the archetypes from genre every other class /has too much supernatural power to emulate/, has been going since early days, and always circles around and runs aground on the same contradictory issues.  It was.  It stopped being a particular feature of the fighter by 3e when items were no longer primarily found via weighted tables and class restriction had relaxed a great deal - and magic items aren't assumed, at all, in 5e.</blockquote>

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