D&D 5E Giving Fighters nice things...

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, 5e is the Fighter's edition. All the min maxers I play with dip into fighter and/or rogue. The things Fighter gets are just too handy for any build.

Fighters are already one of the most powerful classes. With these changes, I don't know why anyone would bother playing a Paladin, War Cleric, Barbarian or other martial option.

If you don't care about game balance, sure add the changes.

Fighters get a lot of nice things now. You can give them more, but then other classes might get jealous

I am pretty sure fighter is very close to Best Class already, why would you buff them?

Wow, I'm surprised to see so much love for the fighter.

I don't know if 'love' is the word for it. ;|
Though I'm surprised there have been no come-backs to the "Fighter's can't have nice things" reference along the lines of "Grrr... Fight'n ain't nice!"

I have over 30 pages of fascinating and fun material, that works from the premise that Mike Mearls shared that the fighter could use more flavor. But I realized that to do the idea justice was taking up more space count than any other single class gets. Even the 8 spellcasting classes (bard, cleric, druid, paladin, ranger, sorcerer, warlock, wizard) share ~80 pages of spells. So I won't feel comfortable until I get it trimmed down...

Don't sweat it, just add two more martial classes (Warlord, obviously and, oh, IDK, some sort of 'martial controller....' OK, or you could just count the Rogue) to leverage that material, you'd be down to the same 1:10 classage-count ratio.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

As for the OP's first post...looks too powerful for me, but if that works for you, go for it! 5e is very good a allowing a DM to massage the rules to almost exactly what he/she wants.

That said, I lean more towards a "macro" change than a "micro" any time we find something not quite fitting with what we want. So what I do, for example, is allow Fighters to "fight better" than everyone else (oh, no Feats and no MC'ing in my game, just fyi). What that means is that if a situation crops up where the PC wants to shove a nasty beast off a cliff, the method for success may depend on the class doing the task...

Wizard: "Right. Roll to-hit first, at disadvantage. If you succeed, a Str vs Str check. If you fail the to-hit, make a Dex save, DC 10, or you go over". <--- wizards don't charge rampaging beasts for a reason!

Cleric (Light): "Right. Roll to-hit first. If you succeed, Str vs Str, or you can use Athletics if you have it. Then he goes over".

Ranger: "Right. Roll to-hit first. If you succeed, he has to make a DC Dex save vs your to-hit total, or DC 15, whatever's higher, or he goes over".

Barbarian: "Right. Roll to-hit first. If you succeed, he goes over".

Fighter: "Right. Roll to-hit first, with advantage. If you succeed, he goes over".

Now, some may see this as "arbitrary", but it really isn't. What it does, I have found, is encourage team work and recognition of what a characters class actually is. Class matters more than stats, in my games. A Fighter making a History check (assuming he's your standard run of the mill fighter), if he succeeds, he gets the basic info. However, a Bard, Wizard, Warlock, and some Clerics (depending on god/dess) will simply get more and better info. Why? Fighters don't hit the history books so much...they're working out and practicing hitting each other in the nose. Wizards have their noses in the books.

Race and, increasingly in my games, it seems, a characters Background will have a greater effect on character outcome than high bonuses to a skill/ability check. Redonculously high rolls are rewarded, however, it's just that if one class/race/background should obviously have a greater understanding by virtue of that c/r/b, and another does not, the one with the greater understanding (c/r/b) will just have more or better knowledge, or be more or better at getting a superior result from the same numerical roll.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

And there are many, many examples of uses for that feat that can help the fighter out in all sorts of non-combat situations. Thing is, any given fighter gets exactly one of them. (And it's the second-best option, after the one he took at 4th.)

Well, sort of second best. Second-most-urgent anyway. Unlike Battlemaster maneuvers, some ASIs/feats synergize with each other and with later class abilities, so it actually is possible to have a later ASI which is "better" in some ways than earlier ones. Obvious example: at 4th level, your proficiency bonus is only +2, and Warcaster can reduce your chances of failing a concentration check by, say, 65% if your Con is 14, whereas Resilient (Con) would reduce it by 29%. But if you already have Warcaster and your proficiency bonus is +6, then Resilient (Con) can reduce your chances of failing by 99.3%. The later ASI is better than the earlier one, and you didn't have the option of gaining that benefit earlier.

It would be nice if Battlemaster maneuvers synergized the same way, and that is why I don't mind the OP's suggestion of letting 7th+ level battlemasters spend two maneuvers on the same attack. I don't think any unusual synergies will be discovered but I might be pleasantly surprised. Maybe someone will do a Menacing Riposte that turns out to be awesome in practice.