D&D 5E Next up is Fighter, what do you want from UA?

[mrpopstar]

I want more fighting styles, more maneuvers, more feats, and more backgrounds. — The battle master works, we just need varied specifics to bring our concepts to mechanical fruition.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I think a Kensai or Legacy Weapon fighter could be cool.

It's a concept I've always enjoyed but never actually seen executed on the table, perhaps a subclass that has different abilities based off of what weapon style you chose to explore?

 

[RCanine]

Some things I want:

* A fighter that's rewarded for Charisma and/or Intelligence
* A fighter that emphasizes the difference between weapon types

 

[PrimevalSeeker]

I could see them creating ranger and paladin variants for the fighter, but without them being 1/3 casters. That being said it would have been much better if the base fighter was modeled after the battlemaster, with a baseline maneuver system.

New fighting styles, maneuvers and feats would be a nice, since they showed with the recent UA that they also work on rules.

 

[CapnZapp]

General reply: more non-magical subclasses

Specific reply: Warlord

 

[CapnZapp]

Like you mentioned, I think the Fighter is pretty solid and doesn't "need" anything. Second Wind scales like crap, making amazing under level 3, so maybe that deserves another look.

What do you mean?

My characters are level 15. Having access to a free renewable unstealable potion of healing that gives 1d10+15 hp back is way better than regular potions of healing, and is quite nice even compared to the options available at this lofty level.

Of course, if your party contains a healbot that generously spends all her spell slots on Heals and auras, it might not seem like much.

But then you can simply skip over Second Wind as something you don't really need.

For parties that doesn't have access to a healbot let me assure you it is a nice thing to have.

 

[CapnZapp]

I would say a lightly armored "Scout" type could be an option, but I think the Ranger class covers that fairly well.

And I actually think the Fighter already does that better than the Ranger...

In the context of this thread, this only means adding a new subclass that does scouting even better would be the death knell of scouter rangers.

 

[CapnZapp]

Gladiator would be cool, but that's pretty much battlemaster.

The problem with battlemaster is that while the mechanics cover a lot of archetypes fairly decently, there's no fluff to go along with it.

What I mean is that as a rare exception (for me at least) I could actually see "battlemaster kits", where you could specify, say, a "gladiator kit" where the battlemaster maneuvers are specified for this kit.

To make anyone actually take the kit (that is to answer the question "why on earth voluntarily restrict yourself to a limited selection when you can build yourself an identical character and still retain a completely free choice?") you would want to add a "kit bonus".

Something you only gain by picking the kit. Something that balances the reduced flexibility and therefore power.

 

[Leatherhead]

More maneuvers.

Racial themed subclasses. Like the Dwarven Defender, Elvish Archer, and the Halfling Slinger.

Some kind of Arcane Archer, with cantrips that ride on ranged weapon attacks would be nice.

Maybe a Musketeer while we are at it.

Or how about oodles of new weapons?

 

[CapnZapp]

I see the Fighter and its archetypes as something of a lost cause, really. The game needs more martial options, but the existing structure of archetypes doesn't have the design space for them.

I'm inclined to agree.

I mean between the three existing subclasses it's awfully hard to see enough space for a fourth (that isn't warlord )

Battlemaster covers way too many archetypes.

Not mechanics-wise, but fluff wise. Having different subclasses for "gladiator" or "swashbuckler" or "pirate" or "swordmaster" would allow you to paint the basic chassi with unique bonus and ribbon abilities.

Now you can pick battlemaster maneuvers, but there's nothing else to that.

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What I do feel is needed is to strata the maneuvers. Not having low-level abilities separate from high-level abilities mean that once you have your first handful, all subsequent picks are decidedly weaksauce. (Since the ability you pick fifth will by definition be less useful to you than four entire things)

Ideally, the fighter class should be errataed to not just hand out all menuvers right away.

Barring that, they could add more maneuvers but restrict them to high levels. But that would probably be a straight upgrade, so it's not without problems.