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

[Aldarc]

Fair enough!

They certainly do have the whole "fey/death" thing going.

Feydeath ... sounds like the name for my soon-to-be-formed band.

So any potential Duskblade Fighter subclass will probably be chained to the Shadowfell, with the subclass dragged behind kicking and screaming?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I don't entirely buy the idea that Battlemasters are the fighter class, and especially not that the Champion is then somehow not a fighter.

But I agree to the part where you lament the risk of having maenuvers walled off to the "maneuver subclass".

In an ideal world, the PHB should have contained the Champion, the Eldritch Knight and one maneuvers-based subclass, not the maneuvers-based subclass.

Just like metamagic should not have been walled off to be a sorcerer exclusive.

I actually just think the Champion should have been the fighter-equivalent of the Evoker-- the easiest of the subclasses to use and understand, but still being a part of the actual system. If the Fighter chassis was the maneuver system, the Champion would have been just the most basic selection of maneuvers-- the easiest-to-use, the easiest-to-grok. Like probably one of them would be Precision Attack-- after you roll your d20 for your attack roll, roll a superiority die add add that too. Pretty straightforward.

Now someone of course will probably say "No way! Still too hard to understand!" But at some point I really start to question just how simplistic does the game have to be? Do you really need to throw out the baby with the bathwater in order to make things so basic that all a person has to remember is "My crit range is 19-20 now, instead of just 20"? Especially considering all the other stuff all Fighters get that are just as potentially confusing as superiority dice? Is remembering you have four dice per short rest you can add to your attack rolls or damage rolls more difficult to understand than the rules for Action Surge or Second Wind or the Great Weapon Fighting Style? I'm not so sure about that.

In my perfect world, the Champion would just be the easiest Battlemaster maneuver selection, not a subclass completely removed from it. But maybe I'm just giving a mass of the player-base way too much credit in learning how to play the game.

TL;DR: If the Evoker is the "simple" Wizard and the Life Domain is the "simple" Cleric... the Champion would have been the "simple" Battlemaster (aka Fighter).

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Dualazi]

Well, what I want is something that I'll have to ultimately homebrew, something along the lines of a more modular Book of Nine swords approach.

What I wouldn't be surprised to see is the filching of ideas present in other franchises like 13th age, where fighters can activate different effects based on the outcome of the roll, or if they beat the target AC by a certain amount. I'd be interested to see either of these really, there's a lot of uncovered design space for them and I don't think they'd slow the game down too much.

 

[WarpedAcorn]

Apologies for not being clear.

I don't think the argument "it scales badly" is a good argument for something being bad. Not by itself. If, however, the "bad scaling" leads to uselessness, it would be another story. But I just don't see that as the case here...

I am not arguing that Second Wind is bad and I never said the ability was bad. What I said was "it scales like crap", and because of that "maybe it needs a second look". Like you mentioned, Action Surge scales amazingly because of its nature. Personally, I would really like it Second Wind was reworked to heal less at low level and more as you HP increase. Something like a dX / Fighter level would be great.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Honestly, I don't think we've really gotten as much fey/death as people are claiming.

Barbarian:

Ancestral Spirit- I guess if spirit=death then you have something, but it doesn't feel like a "death" class to me
Storm Herald - Elemental
Zealot- Divine

Bard:

Glamour- Fey based
Whispers- Spy based, if the steal shadow ability=shadowfell=Death you could make the claim, but it's a stretch I think

Cleric:

Forge- creation
Grave- death
Protection- *shrug*

Druid:

Dreams- Fey
Shepherd- Summon/Shaman
Twilight- Death


So, 11 subclasses. 2 with strong Fey themes and 2 with strong death themes. Majority of them, not so much unless you stretch and even then you only get up to about 50% of the releases so far

 

[steeldragons]

Ok had a nice long post just go *poof* before my eyes. So I'm gonna type it out again, but it is doubtful it will contain the eloquence and thoroughness of the original post...but hopefully I can recall all of the salient points.

The Fighter is an interesting case (in this context), because its subclasses are more mechanically driven...in a more "thematic" [?] or, even, "abstract" sense than the other classes' archetypal and/or flavor driven options. Instead of a Samurai subclass and a Warlord subclass, we have a Battlemaster. Instead of a Gladiator subclass and a Swordsman subclass, we have a Champion. Even generic non-TTRPG derivatives like "Defender" or "Leader" are subsumed into these more broadly generic subclasses.

The fighter's options don't offer the specified...flavor, I guess, of Illusionist wizards or "Wildshaper" druids...or even Assassin or Arcane Trickster rogues -who, we can presume, were intended to be the same as/match up with the Fighter's options: generic guy, specialized/slightly more complex guy, guy with a little [1/3rd caster] magic.

So, a lot of the declarations presented in this thread really don't hold up in the Fighter's design space.

We have the generic "hit harder/more often" warrior guy, no bells, no whistles, swings a sword, rolls his damage: the Champion.

We have the less generic/more specialized, slightly more complex to run/more moving parts warrior: the Battlemaster.

We have the warrior + [a dash of] magic [1/3rd caster, since 1/2 casters get their own classes], who uses both -fluidly- in battle:" the Eldritch Knight.

"We need a Samurai!" The Battlemaster, quite obviously, is intended to give you a samurai. They've already said the long sword [being a versatile weapon in 5e] is the same as/can be easily swapped out as/for a "katana." Put the fighter in some traditional samurai-style armor (wherever you would get such a thing on your world). The BM's artistic talent feature is blatantly intended to give you that traditional samurai calligraphy/painting training. It's all right there. We have a samurai already. Unless you're looking for "Language: Feudal Era Japanese" on your character sheet, there really isn't anything to do here. They could, reasonably, add a few "martial arts" or "samurai moves" style maneuvers to the BM's list, but it certainly doesn't warrant its own subclass.

"We need a Defender!" The Champion is your defender. Roll up a Champion, put them in the heaviest armor you can find, give them the Defense or Protection fighting style (and take both at 10th level). Speak softly and carry a big shield. There's a "defender" fighter.

"We need a Warlord!" See "samurai" above. It's all there. The helping others and "rallying" maneuvers, the knowing about your enemies, everything you need for a non-magical warlord PC is in the Battlemaster. If you want more healing, group support magic, "inspirational leader" guy, there are Bard subclass options for that. They're handing out Inspirational help to your rolls like hotcakes.

"We need a Gladiator!" The Champion or BM could serve as your gladiator. Honestly, it strikes me as more in line with a 5e Background than a subclass...folks from anywhere, all over, even non-fighters could be wrapped up [enslaved] into the role of gladiator...hell even a fighter or barbarian with the Entertainer background could be a Gladiator.

The one I have seen, that I could totally see, highly approve/agree with, and it makes sense [as well as symmetry] is a 1/3rd caster of clerical/"divine" magic to bookend the Eldritch Knight's "arcane" magic. I think "Crusader" (as others have said) is a PERFECT title for such a character and falls in line with the Fighter's design frame: 1/3rd caster [of divine magic] and it works for an array of character types from the old school "Fighter/Clerics" to a "mercenary fighter with a holy streak, but not so devout as to become a paladin" and lots in between.

So, if I'm getting my point across, what we need is another, if there is to be another/different Fighter subclass, is something that is a different mechanic to fight with. I am not a fan of just making/spamming more "magic types." I think the Fighter [and Rogue and Barbarian] should be predominantly, overwhelmingly, non-magical characters. But something that, I suppose, makes the Fighter even more complex/moving parts than the BM. Or simply a different mechanic for determining damage...or attack accuracy...or something.

What, I think, people are looking for in the Fighter, isn't [or shouldn't be] so much new subclasses, which I am sure they think they do, because it just seems more "official" [I guess] that way...But new Fighting Styles, specially/specifically-flavored Battlemaster maneuvers, and character Backgrounds. Those are the moving pieces that can turn your "Champion" or "Battlemaster" into a hundred different things. If you want new Fighter subclasses, we need new moving parts -entirely- to work with.

 

[Jester David]

On the other hand, if enough people want a "devoted fighter" subclass, I don't see any harm in... giving them that.

Just as long as the team doesn't get overly creative and hands that subclass an ability that make you go "why can't my paladin/cleric do that?", nothing should actually break...

If the paladin was LG only it might work to do a warpriest (like Pathfinder). Because it's different.
Or if they were doing bi-monthly splatbooks like 3e/4e I wouldn't mind. Because it would be one option out of many.

But we're not likely to see that much new content or new subclasses. I'd rather not lose an actually new fighter option for a character concept we already have twice.

 

[Parmandur]

It depends how you describe it. They're both heavily armoured religious warrior filling the holy knight or templar archetype.
Unlike the wizard (no armour, few weapons) there's already less difference between the cleric and the fighter. It's a smaller jump. And there's an entire class that fills it.

If you really want to be a paladin with slightly less spellcasting, and fighter powers... just multiclass. Or multiclass cleric and fighter.

That first paragraph can apply to the Paladin itself infringing on the Cleric; assume multiclassing doesn't exist, as it is a variant rule after all.

Either way, I'll be shocked if it's not in the next update, opinions aside.

 

[Ketser]

The new sublcasses under fighter or the following subclasses aren't probably going to be "theme-locked," or at least in a way some are trying to say. Yes thjere are been a lot shadow/death options in subclasses (whisper bard, grave cleric, twilight druid), but no other theme has had the same dominance. Fey theme did fit and was a missing piece for both bard and druid, same with the spirit theme for barbarians and druids.

The cleric article is actually a good example of there being no direct theme requirement in new subclasses. It expanded the domain options to fill some of very needed and requested concepts.

I don't expect there to be a fey fighter, because i don't see them using such concept. I'm also doubtful about spirits, because fighter carries in 5e some expectation of civilization in it at least enough to create a separating line between him and the barbarian. I'm actually not even expecting shadow/death stuff, although there is something in me that would like a "black knight" concept.

What i'm expecting, like others have said, probably new "focused battlemaster" type subclasses. Maybe a new version of scout, for no-magic ranger fans. But because how the fighter class is built, it's really hard to make any actual predictions.