Or do trait trees like they did in d20 modern.
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Kill the fighter
Or do trait trees like they did in d20 modern.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
So that's a 4e sample.
Let's compare vs. a mostly (about 90%) 1e sample with 3e* being the other 10%. This sample includes every character our crew has played in any of our campaigns/one-offs/whatever over the past 31 years or so. Party NPCs are included in the first total, the second number (in brackets) excludes them. Triple-class characters are not included in the multiclass totals as I'm too lazy and there's really not enough of them to make a big difference; thus all multi-class numbers shown are for characters with two classes only.
* - I use 1e terminology throughout thus a 3e Rogue is counted as "Thief". I've also ignored a few 3e-only classes like Sorcerer and Psyonicist, there's only been about half a dozen of these in any case.
Single class:
Fighter 1160 (1046) EDIT - THIS IS A MISTAKE (thanks Excel) - SHOULD BE 271 (157)
Ranger 105 (68)
Cavalier 34 (20)
Paladin 20 (15) - banned in some of our games
Cleric 115 (55)
War Cleric 50 (35) - a homebrew class
Druid 48 (33) - called "Nature Cleric" 'round here
Magic-user 79 (52)
Illusionist 21 (12)
Necromancer 6 (5) - a very new class compared to all the others
Thief 87 (61)
Assassin 26 (20)
Bard 28 (22)
Monk 28 (22)
Multi-class:
Including Fighter 86 (49)
Including Ranger 26 (19)
Including Paladin 1 (1) - in theory Paladins cannot multiclass in our games
Including Cavalier 1 (1) - ditto for Cavaliers
Including Cleric 35 (28)
Including War Cleric 15 (12)
Including Druid 18 (13)
Including Magic-user 72 (55)
Including Illusionist 23 (18)
Including Necromancer 2 (2)
Including Thief 89 (56)
Including Assassin 11 (10)
Including Bard 2 (1) - in theory Bards cannot multiclass in our games
Including Monk 7 (6)
No matter how you look at it Fighter wins by a landslide in these parts. In fact, we've seen more pure single-class Fighters than all the other classes and multi's put together!
Lan-"one of the 1046"-efan
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Yikes. Please tell me you already had those stats, and didn't just count them up for this thread!!
Anyway, I just wanted to say, "The fighter is a Sacred Cow".
I'm frequently amazed by how many people want to take DNDNext and turn it into Generic-Fantasy-RPG.
Yes, we get it, DND has some issues that could be improved, but that's part of the charm!
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Yep.
One of the hats I wear in our crew is League Statistician. I have all the raw data in a massive Excel file, all I had to do was sort it...easy stuff.
Lan-"and counting"-efan
I think that part of this sacred-cow mentality of the fighter having to be "the nonmagic guy who hurts people and breaks things" is due to accepting some of the assumptions that have been built into D&D from almost the beginning.
The number-one assumption is that a PC shouldn't be allowed to learn how to cast magic without being someone special, having a 'gift' for it or special insight into the art. There is some justification for this in the fantasy genre and D&D likes to reinforce this by associating spellcasting ability with high mental ability scores. Spellcasting as it has evolved in D&D mechanically and thematically (regardless of edition) is geared toward the mentality of "you're just a fighter, you can't learn magic stuff", necessitating the inclusion of multiclassing as a useful yet costly tool for character development, mainly for players who don't like this have/have not division between the doing-it-the-hard-way characters and the push-the-effects-button characters.
Another assumption built-in to D&D that was often taken for granted or barely recognized is that all powers given to a character class must necessarily be a part of any character's identity..."if you got it, use it." Sound advice if you want a character to be as strong and versatile as possible, but even a 20th-level wizard could be played as though the PC were a simple soldier. Tons of magic ability to be sure, but just because you have it, doesn't mean you have to use it.
Suppose PCs of the Fighter class had access to some rogue-like and even some sorcerer-like powers. How terrible that would be! Someone imitating Russell Crowe's Gladiator character could be granted spellcasting ability on paper as part of the standard 5E Fighter class, yet the player may see these abilities as unsuitable for his desired character concept and refuse to acknowledge them even if their use would allow his PC and party to handle a certain problem more effectively. Pathfinder has set a good example IMO with its provision for alternative class features for players whose PCs were traditionally entitled by their class to obtain a familiar or an animal companion, but didn't want them for their characters.
Many niche classes have a lot of "material" to work with, being able to swap out some of their less important features for things more unusual yet suitable for the strange character concept ideas of some players. The fighter class, when you decide that all he's ever meant to be is a tough guy who fights with weapons and wears armor, then you handicap him with his own versatility. You leave him with an effects budget so meager, what sorts of alternative class features could he trade his special and unique powers for? Unlike a druid, sorcerer, or wizard. Pathfinder was compelled to find more goodies for its version of Fighter to use, in order to move beyond the "beat stuff up with fighter feats" that the D&D 3.x version was. Otherwise, Fighter could not have had much in the way of alternative class features as the other classes received once the first archetypes were published.
The number-one assumption is that a PC shouldn't be allowed to learn how to cast magic without being someone special, having a 'gift' for it or special insight into the art. There is some justification for this in the fantasy genre and D&D likes to reinforce this by associating spellcasting ability with high mental ability scores. Spellcasting as it has evolved in D&D mechanically and thematically (regardless of edition) is geared toward the mentality of "you're just a fighter, you can't learn magic stuff", necessitating the inclusion of multiclassing as a useful yet costly tool for character development, mainly for players who don't like this have/have not division between the doing-it-the-hard-way characters and the push-the-effects-button characters.
Another assumption built-in to D&D that was often taken for granted or barely recognized is that all powers given to a character class must necessarily be a part of any character's identity..."if you got it, use it." Sound advice if you want a character to be as strong and versatile as possible, but even a 20th-level wizard could be played as though the PC were a simple soldier. Tons of magic ability to be sure, but just because you have it, doesn't mean you have to use it.
Suppose PCs of the Fighter class had access to some rogue-like and even some sorcerer-like powers. How terrible that would be! Someone imitating Russell Crowe's Gladiator character could be granted spellcasting ability on paper as part of the standard 5E Fighter class, yet the player may see these abilities as unsuitable for his desired character concept and refuse to acknowledge them even if their use would allow his PC and party to handle a certain problem more effectively. Pathfinder has set a good example IMO with its provision for alternative class features for players whose PCs were traditionally entitled by their class to obtain a familiar or an animal companion, but didn't want them for their characters.
Many niche classes have a lot of "material" to work with, being able to swap out some of their less important features for things more unusual yet suitable for the strange character concept ideas of some players. The fighter class, when you decide that all he's ever meant to be is a tough guy who fights with weapons and wears armor, then you handicap him with his own versatility. You leave him with an effects budget so meager, what sorts of alternative class features could he trade his special and unique powers for? Unlike a druid, sorcerer, or wizard. Pathfinder was compelled to find more goodies for its version of Fighter to use, in order to move beyond the "beat stuff up with fighter feats" that the D&D 3.x version was. Otherwise, Fighter could not have had much in the way of alternative class features as the other classes received once the first archetypes were published.
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And what did Pathfinder find exactly? I admit I only skimmed the fighter entry just now, but it looks to me like 'armour specialization' and 'weapon specialization' and 'bravery' are all the improvements he got. There's no sign of any 'alternatives' to choose between.
Perhaps I misunderstood your point.
Yes, we have fighter sacred cows, because they were assumptions built into the game from the very beginning. That's what sacred cows ARE.
I wouldn't mind more variety and options for the fighter, but I don't want it to be in the form of magic, nor of class features borrowed from elsewhere.
Let's invent some ways for fighters to make use of stats other than Str, Dex and Con.
How can we benefit a fighter with high intelligence?
How can we benefit a fighter with high wisdom?
How can we benefit a fighter with high charisma?
El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
And I'd say you'd be wrong.
I'd bet that the predominant reason for viewing a "Fighter" this way, is the desire to play the Warrior Archetype we see in fiction...which is what the D&D Fighter attempts to emulate.
It's not a D&D Sacred Cow, it's a Genre Archetype.
S
Sunseeker
Guest
Well, we can give them better skill-points. I think it's somewhat silly that fighters have always been the highly-trained weapon master guy, but they're apparently ignorant as all get out.
How do we benefit any martial class with high wisdom without adding magic?
-We don't.
-We could have wisdom determine "stances known" or "maneuvers known".
How do we benefit any martial class with high charisma without adding magic?
-We don't.
I think there are bigger assumptions here than just the fighter. Even a Barbarians Rage mechanics have always been verging on psuedo-magic. I think we should question why EVERYONE gets the same benefits from str, dex, and con, but martial classes get reduced or NO benefits from mental stats.
If magic classes are going to benefit from every score, and martial classes are only going to benefit from half of them, then martial classes should get double bonuses. Perhaps for melee classes they don't have to divide their str /2, they get full score -10. Perhaps for martial classes dexterity increase critical threat range as well as AC. Maybe con acts like a spell resistance to disease and poison.
Martial classes either need full-stat benefits like magic classes get, or they need to double-up on the bonuses they get from physical scores IMO.
StreamOfTheSky
Adventurer
No, your skim was quite accurate and his point was wrong. All PF did for fighter was give him slightly better numbers to hit things with. It was rather dissapointing.
My fighter houserules at least gave them 4 skill points (+int), and some ToB maneuvers. Wasn't hadly enough, but certainly a better direction than PF's fighter...
But if you force melee classes to be "realistic" while the casters can break physics on a whim, the game will always be broken. Low levels, sure, be realistic. But there should be a certain point (~level 6 in 3E is the generally agreed point) where everyone, even fighter, transcends that limit and reaches a point where they've surpassed the limits of what a real life human could do. If you don't accept that, the only other way to balance things is to massively pare down what magic can do, even 9th level spells. "Basic" things like creating a fortress out of nothing, teleporting, flying for any significant length of time... would either need to be removed completely or put at such ridiculously high levels that they would almost never actually see play. Which I certainly don't want to see. People that want gritty "realistic" D&D should just stick to low levels, E6, or something like that and leave the folks who want high fantasy / anime / wuxia alone.
