D&D 5E Fixing the Fighter

[Remathilis]

That being said, choosing the fighter class and complaining that it doesn't have the same ranged capabilities of a ranger seems slightly unusual to me.

Possibly because up till 4e, their ranged capacities were equal if not better than a rangers?

 

[Tovec]

The 4e fighter can "control aggro". Can or can't the PF fighter do this? At the moment I'm confused, because one of you seems to be saying it can't ("the fighter's job is not to control aggro") and the other that it can ("the PF fighter can be a defender").

Not arguing the point you were making here pemerton, but who says all fighters need to be defenders?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "duelist", but a 4e fighter can certainly be pretty tough one-on-one.

I assumed by duelist they meant something like the classical duel between two combatants like "duels to the death" used to be. Or basically someone who parrys, ripostes and what not to win a fight. Generally speaking the duelist is going to be in light armor and use a finesse weapon of some sort. NOT someone who stands toe to toe to fight an enemy. That could be anyone. That can be someone in full plate just standing against the BBEG and wailing on him until he is dead. Those are very different things.

The main issue with "at-will" is its limiting nature as to the sorts of effects which are balanced in the game. I'm not content with the "mundane" classes just having rather humdrum special effects.

I don't know about you but I know I'd be perfectly okay with a fighter (or rogue or what have you) picking up sand and tossing it in the eyes of their enemy to blind them temporarily. I would be equally okay with them poking their fingers into the enemy's eyes. The thing is, neither of these abilities require POWERS to complete them. You don't just poke someone's eyes and make them hurt once per day and after that you are done. You might prepare two bags of sand instead of one to toss into someone's eyes. Powers don't facilitate that. Neither do any form of vancian slots.

Oh, and in addition, they are VERY mundane things that produce a similar effect to the blindness spell a wizard might cast. They don't however come from the fighter's uniqueness of being a fighter to be performed.

I would not be averse to a Utility Belt-like ability, where you happen to have the right item at the right time. That could work - because then we're back to intrinsic competency rather than stocking up on gear.

How is "Utility Belt-like ability" different from "stocking up on gear"?

I brought up classes because... well, D&D is a class based system. It seems odd to me to choose a class which is built (primarily) for melee and then ask why it's not as good as a class based around ranged combat at using ranged weapons. If your answer to that is that class shouldn't be so restricting, then I wonder why you're playing a game which is so heavily tied to the concept of classes.

First, who says the class IS a melee class? I always considered the fighter to be a MARTIAL class, not necessarily MELEE so having the limitation of 'sword not bow' is stupid, at best.

Second, if you go with the basics of a class like fighter there is NO reason why the weapon itself should make a huge difference. How you use it, possibly, but the weapon itself should be a relatively minor aspect and should be the same across any class. It doesn't matter if the wizard uses a magical staff, a magical wand, a magical ring, or magical rod, or magic hat or anything. Those are implements, their class is SO much more and should not rely on that relatively minor point to define them.

Third, I assume you consider fighters to be melee because their primary role is defenders? Again, why? This is mostly covered below in the reply to the slayers thing. But basically my point is that - until 4e especially - fighters were not defined as defender but were instead defined as guy who deals with enemy and fights. How they did this is up to them. They were able to defend the "squishes" by virtue that they dealt to much damage they were impossible to ignore, and hard to kill too. Yeah that wizard will hurt you eventually but that fighter IS hurting right now. That is very different from the defender role we have now in 4e.

If none of that is satisfactory, then I suppose I'd suggest speaking to the GM about what he's willing to do for you. I see no reason why it would be game breaking to ask if you could take the ranger class, but swap out some of the rangery stuff (spells and animal companion) for different features (perhaps better armor proficiency and some bonus feats.) In fact, the D&D 3rd Edition DM's Guide suggests doing exactly that.

A completely different point of course, but many of us despise that we were fighters up to 4e and in 4e we were suddenly rangers (along with HOW MANY new ranger powers?) because we had the gall to want to use bows in combat - shocking.

In 4e, a Fighter is (with the exception of a Slayer) a Defender - and I'm fine with that. That's the class's job, and I like classes to have jobs. Defenders just don't work at range. If you want a guy who shoots stuff and kills it at long range, there's no reason whatsoever that character has to be a Fighter, IMO. I don't see value in insisting on a ranged-weapon Fighter when other classes do the "shoot and kill stuff" shtick perfectly well.

Partially covered above.

I'm not overly familiar with 4e, but what are slayers? From my limited experience I would suggest that MOST concepts prior to 4e were more along the theme/role of slayers than defenders. Some people wanted to be that guy who wore full plate and stopped or absorbed damage from the squishies. There were builds for it of course but MOST fighters and fighter builds (prestiges and kits) were NOT built around this. I'm not saying it is invalid or anything but since most versions in 4e (and what I can only assume you are suggesting for 5e) are defenders and that the rest of us want whatever slayers are then something is missing.* You can't bridge that gap with more options for defender, you need the slayer and it in many cases needs to be more important or more default than the defender. Since, prior to 4e, defender was an option just as others were.



*Yeah, that sentence got away from me a little. If there is confusion I'll have to clarify it in my next post. I can't figure out how to fix it this time around.

 

[Remathilis]

In 4e, a Fighter is (with the exception of a Slayer) a Defender - and I'm fine with that. That's the class's job, and I like classes to have jobs. Defenders just don't work at range. If you want a guy who shoots stuff and kills it at long range, there's no reason whatsoever that character has to be a Fighter, IMO. I don't see value in insisting on a ranged-weapon Fighter when other classes do the "shoot and kill stuff" shtick perfectly well.

Here's the rub.

In Pathfinder, I could build a Slayer-like PC by taking Power attack, weapon focus/specialization, et all, and have a warrior good at killing foes in melee and at reach.

I could also build a fighter who is a knight-like defender with Stand Still, Step Up, Bodyguard, shield feats, etc.

But in Pathfinder, I can take feats from each and do both massive damage AND defense.

In 4e, I can't. I must pick between the two.

 

[Argyle King]

Possibly because up till 4e, their ranged capacities were equal if not better than a rangers?

Then what was the point of the archery style for the ranger?

 

[Remathilis]

Then what was the point of the archery style for the ranger?

To give all the "bwaah! Drizzt ruined rangers!" people something to choose instead of two-weapon fighting.

 

[Imaro]

Then what was the point of the archery style for the ranger?

I think it would be the same reason that in 4e we have the thief and the rogue... or the archery ranger and the hunter or the fighter and the knight or... do I really need to keep going???

 

[Ratskinner]

The mutant topic is Fighters. What has been done right about them in the past? What has been done wrong? How can they be fixed in Next?

I'll start - For me to even look its way, the Next Fighter must have "fiat" capabilities. What I mean by this is, consider the Wizard.

<snip>

For me, the Fighter must have a similar degree of ability to make declarations like this. They should not be playing "mother may I" while the Wizard is bending reality over their knee.

For me, I think this clashes with the supposedly abstract nature of hitpoints and melee from a historical standpoint. If you're going to give the fighter specific fiat, then let's go ahead and make it specific:
Caster Fiat: "he believes he is my friend now" "there's a wall of fog across the room here"
Fighter Fiat: "his arm is broken" "I disarm him" "

...but we don't like that, and hp are regularly defended as "simple" (with a few recognizing them as the pacing mechanic they are). So if we want the simple and abstract, then the problem isn't a lack of specific fiats for the fighter, its an overabundance of specific fiats for the caster. (A problem which became exacerbated with the increased reliability of spells in 3e.)

Which I'd be fine with. Take everything back to a very simple base using hp as a combat pacing mechanic. If you get to 0 hp, you are taken out of the fight. If that happens from a swordblow, you're (most likely) dead (or at least gravely wounded). If that happens from a spell, then you might be anything from transformed into a newt to suddenly in love with the person you were recently attempting to kill, to crispy-fried by a fireball.

 

[Argyle King]

First, who says the class IS a melee class? I always considered the fighter to be a MARTIAL class, not necessarily MELEE so having the limitation of 'sword not bow' is stupid, at best.

Second, if you go with the basics of a class like fighter there is NO reason why the weapon itself should make a huge difference. How you use it, possibly, but the weapon itself should be a relatively minor aspect and should be the same across any class. It doesn't matter if the wizard uses a magical staff, a magical wand, a magical ring, or magical rod, or magic hat or anything. Those are implements, their class is SO much more and should not rely on that relatively minor point to define them.

Third, I assume you consider fighters to be melee because their primary role is defenders? Again, why? This is mostly covered below in the reply to the slayers thing. But basically my point is that - until 4e especially - fighters were not defined as defender but were instead defined as guy who deals with enemy and fights. How they did this is up to them. They were able to defend the "squishes" by virtue that they dealt to much damage they were impossible to ignore, and hard to kill too. Yeah that wizard will hurt you eventually but that fighter IS hurting right now. That is very different from the defender role we have now in 4e.


A completely different point of course, but many of us despise that we were fighters up to 4e and in 4e we were suddenly rangers (along with HOW MANY new ranger powers?) because we had the gall to want to use bows in combat - shocking.

You are certainly free to be a fighter and use a bow. That is still true -even in 4th Edition.

I say the fighter is melee based not because of the defender role, but because viewing him differently makes me question why we bother having ranger as a different class. I actually agree that the fighter is the martial class. However, if that is so, how then do we define the ranger?

Personally, I would have been happy having the ranger class become a theme in 5th Edition. A rogue with a nature lense or a fighter with a lightly armored skirmishing build would have worked fine. However, if ranger and fighter are both to be classes, I'd like to have more of a reason to have both instead of ranger simply being some kind of second-hand fighter crossed with a second-hand druid.

You say you chose fighters up until 4th Edition -which made you choose a ranger if you wanted a ranged character. From my point of view, I didn't choose fighters at all in 3rd Edition if I wanted to play a game beyond level 4. While Pathfinder did some work toward fixing that, some of the problems still remain. While I very strongly disagree with some of the ideals which 4th Edition is based on, one thing I feel it got right was the fighter. Even after other books were released, the fighter remained one of my favorite 4E classes because of the flexibility it allowed. (My #1 favorite was the Warlord.)

It is quite easy to make a 4E fighter deal damage and defend if that's what you want to do. It is also quite easy to make a ranged 4E fighter who is effective. You're not going to be nearly as good as a ranger who optimizes ranged combat, but I don't necessarily see that as a flaw in the game... especially in a game where we are choosing to have both ranger and fighter as core classes. My view is that either both classes have a reason to be there or they don't. If I regularly find that the concepts I have for a campaign cannot fit into that (or cannot be reasonably done even with multiclassing and similar options,) I start to feel I'm better served by playing a game which isn't D&D.

If you're talking pre-3rd Edition, I honestly have nothing to base what I'm saying on. I'm primarily familiar with 3rd Edition and 4th Edition when it comes to D&D. I've dabbled in 1st Edition a little bit recently, and I've also played a rather large amount of Pathfinder in the last 5-6 months. Outside of the d20 family (if it matters) I primarily play GURPS 4th Edition and have quite often used it in conjunction with D&D setting fluff and adventures.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Then what was the point of the archery style for the ranger?

Not to try to pile on, but I wouldn't consider 3 feats (that don't include Precise Shot) over 10 levels to be anywhere near equal to a Fighter based on Archery in 3.5 (archery-wise, at least; skills, Reflex save, minor spells, etc., are all good for other things). The feats were intended to help Rangers in combat, but in no way were they better archers than Fighters that focused on archery. As always, play what you like

 

[Argyle King]

Not to try to pile on, but I wouldn't consider 3 feats (that don't include Precise Shot) over 10 levels to be anywhere near equal to a Fighter based on Archery in 3.5 (archery-wise, at least; skills, Reflex save, minor spells, etc., are all good for other things). The feats were intended to help Rangers in combat, but in no way were they better archers than Fighters that focused on archery. As always, play what you like

I wasn't very clear in the argument I was making in so much that I was talking about more than one edition. The 4th Edition fighter can be a very capable ranged combatant with some work. The ranged Ranger can be a very capable ranged combatant without trying. The ranged 4th Edition Ranger who really works at doing damage from range is going to do what the hard working ranged fighter is doing and still having more left over to do even more.

However, what you say helps make my point. There is outcry over a wizard outclassing a rogue by using spells which can mimic skills. There is also outcry over a cleric being able to fight like a fighter and still have spells. Why is it that we don't mind having the fighter bleed into the territory that other classes are supposedly supposed to cover?

edit: I suppose I'm also asking why it's bad to give the fighter his own realm and his ranger own realm if we desire to have both classes. If the desire to have the fighter be the king of martial combat outweighs the desire to have both the ranger and fighter as classes with unique spheres of adventuring influence, it makes more sense to me to drop one of them (the ranger) and have it turned into a theme, lense, career path, or whatever you want to call it for other classes.