D&D General I'm a Fighter, not a Lover: Why the 1e Fighter was so Awesome

[Micah Sweet]

I would argue that since abilities came before class back then, that any individual who rolled a 17 or 18 in constitution or rolled an 18 in strength and did not choose a Fighter* was making a very curious decision. The massive gain from that special class ability was huge.

In fact, I would argue that your question is kind of strange, simply because you wouldn't see a cleric with a strength of 18. If you had an 18 in strength, it would be really .... odd ... to not choose a fighter. I can't say it never happened, but ... I never saw it happen.


*Before you respond, read the disclaimer. This includes subclasses.

Yeah. I still roll stats before I choose a class or species (etc) in my current games. But then, I've played far more 1e than any other game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Out of those, I think the two biggest notes:

1) Only fighters had real ranged weapons. Now in a dungeon like setting that wasn't as important as today where adventures/campaigns involve more open world type fights. But that's a really powerful notion.

2) The wizard interrupt rule. Now its a clunky rule because it involves weapon speeds, and weapon speeds are just hard to do right. But...this was probably the single biggest reason that LFQW didn't exist in early editions, even as levels got higher. Spell disruption was baked into any fighting class, and the fighter especially. So yeah try and cast that awesome 7th level spell....I dare you.

Absolutely. 1e was better designed than folks give it credit for IMO, even if the organization left much to be desired.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fighters also had the interesting choice of becoming nearly unhittable even at low levels by putting their second highest stat in dexterity instead of Con.
Plate + shield + 17 dex = AC -1, and you get effective two-weapon fighting as a bonus.

The great saving throws as you leveled really made a difference too.