Erechel
Explorer
I was playing a lot of 5ed lately, and I came across a few questions. ¿How to be a powerful fighter? ¿How do you build an over effective fighter in D&D Next, that deals a nice amount of damage, or resists better than, lets say a monk or a cleric? ¿It's possible to make a champion really useful in a combat?
I think that the best thing you can do if you are a fighter is to being a human, to have a nice heavy armor (let's say a chainmail), and a nice two handed or versatile weapon. Forget dexterity and shield focus on heavy armor and strenght.
If you are a human, you can choose a feat, two +1 to scores, and a free skill instead of base +1 to six scores. So you choose Heavy Armor Master (a WONDERFUL feat, specially at low levels), that allows you to reduce 3 damage points from every nomal attack when you are heavily armored, and adds a +1 to strenght (effectively giving you +2 to strenght, easily rising it at 18 or even 20 if you are lucky enough), and Combat style Two Handed weapon master, that allows you to reroll any 1 or 2; you end with an average output damage of 1d12/2d6 + 4, with very few chances of making less than 7 (with a Two Handed Axe) or 9 damage (using a Claymore- but slightly reduces the possibility of making 16 damage). If you have a natural 18, with the feat and also the +1 you have St 20, and your damage is almost never less than 8 or 10 (using the same weapons); your maximum (critic) is 29 points. And your to hit is +7, that is almost a non miss with most enemies (you easily hit 3 out of 4 blows on armor 12).
And in level two your action surge can add you an extra attack... another at least 8-10 damage. So in a bad round (action surged) your minimum output is between 16 and 20 (let's say 18). This easily goes up if you have at least one critic, but there are only 5% chances, and even less to make two critics. You have a (very slight) posibility of making up to 58 damage in level two! Nasty!
But that doesn't end here. Defensively, you choose your second best ability score, and give it to Constitution. Let's say, for flat numbers, a 16 if you are lucky enough to achieve a natural 15 on the roll, or at least (if you are unlucky) at least a 14. Not a big deal. You have a flat 12-13 hit points. Not overly great, considering that the Barbarian has more hit points (with the same constitution, he has 14-15); but you have Heavy Armor Master, efectively reducing EVERY blow in 3 damage points.
Goblin default damage is 5: three blows to take away a barbarian (and they have +4 to hit, so they effectively blow them away very easily). But to that human warrior the basic damage is 2; effectively taking 5-6 blows to knock him down, without counting the Second Wind, that (in a bad round) gives you at least one more effective hit, and up to 6 more!
And with armor 16 that is, at least a natural 12 to hit the warrior; so 2 hits over 5 attacks! You have attack him at least 15 times to knock him down, 17-18 with the minimum Second Wind, and 30 times with the maximum. We can say, a standard of 24 attacks to knock a level 1 warrior, with many possibilities of (in that time) the warrior wiping out the goblins. Neat.
A Dwarf or a Half orc warrior has to wait until level 4 to have acces to such powerful combat performance. In further levels, the warrior doesn't escalade a lot, but he gains access to multiple attacks, more feats/ score modifiers and combat styles, making him a pretty awesome combatant against most non magical foes.
I think that the best thing you can do if you are a fighter is to being a human, to have a nice heavy armor (let's say a chainmail), and a nice two handed or versatile weapon. Forget dexterity and shield focus on heavy armor and strenght.
If you are a human, you can choose a feat, two +1 to scores, and a free skill instead of base +1 to six scores. So you choose Heavy Armor Master (a WONDERFUL feat, specially at low levels), that allows you to reduce 3 damage points from every nomal attack when you are heavily armored, and adds a +1 to strenght (effectively giving you +2 to strenght, easily rising it at 18 or even 20 if you are lucky enough), and Combat style Two Handed weapon master, that allows you to reroll any 1 or 2; you end with an average output damage of 1d12/2d6 + 4, with very few chances of making less than 7 (with a Two Handed Axe) or 9 damage (using a Claymore- but slightly reduces the possibility of making 16 damage). If you have a natural 18, with the feat and also the +1 you have St 20, and your damage is almost never less than 8 or 10 (using the same weapons); your maximum (critic) is 29 points. And your to hit is +7, that is almost a non miss with most enemies (you easily hit 3 out of 4 blows on armor 12).
And in level two your action surge can add you an extra attack... another at least 8-10 damage. So in a bad round (action surged) your minimum output is between 16 and 20 (let's say 18). This easily goes up if you have at least one critic, but there are only 5% chances, and even less to make two critics. You have a (very slight) posibility of making up to 58 damage in level two! Nasty!
But that doesn't end here. Defensively, you choose your second best ability score, and give it to Constitution. Let's say, for flat numbers, a 16 if you are lucky enough to achieve a natural 15 on the roll, or at least (if you are unlucky) at least a 14. Not a big deal. You have a flat 12-13 hit points. Not overly great, considering that the Barbarian has more hit points (with the same constitution, he has 14-15); but you have Heavy Armor Master, efectively reducing EVERY blow in 3 damage points.
Goblin default damage is 5: three blows to take away a barbarian (and they have +4 to hit, so they effectively blow them away very easily). But to that human warrior the basic damage is 2; effectively taking 5-6 blows to knock him down, without counting the Second Wind, that (in a bad round) gives you at least one more effective hit, and up to 6 more!
And with armor 16 that is, at least a natural 12 to hit the warrior; so 2 hits over 5 attacks! You have attack him at least 15 times to knock him down, 17-18 with the minimum Second Wind, and 30 times with the maximum. We can say, a standard of 24 attacks to knock a level 1 warrior, with many possibilities of (in that time) the warrior wiping out the goblins. Neat.
A Dwarf or a Half orc warrior has to wait until level 4 to have acces to such powerful combat performance. In further levels, the warrior doesn't escalade a lot, but he gains access to multiple attacks, more feats/ score modifiers and combat styles, making him a pretty awesome combatant against most non magical foes.
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