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Payn's Ponderings: The Fighter's identity; or, what's left after the combat pillar?
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<blockquote data-quote="Helldritch" data-source="post: 8557375" data-attributes="member: 6855114"><p>I blame a few things.</p><p>1) <strong>Standard array or stat placement</strong>.</p><p>Because of the standard array and stat placement, we no longer see fighter with mid to high int, wis or cha. These stats are now the dump stats for a fighter (or any martial character that will not cast any spells). My first character was a fighter that became a wizard because I had relatively low strength (16) but rolled 18 intelligence (yes, on 3d6 the rest was average). As a young 10 year old boy, I saw that as a curse, but I switched to wizard at level 7. But if I had had, say... 15? My fighter would have stayed a fighter but with a high intelligence score. With the standard array and stat placement, all fighters will have high ST or Dex and High Con. St or Dex will become a dump stat along with the intel and or charisma.</p><p></p><p>2) <strong>The low amount of skills given by background and class.</strong></p><p>Raising both of these by a single additional one make true wonders as the "essentials" are normally covered. Just two skills more helps martial (yes, even the rogues and bards are on the low side). It would also help differentiate a fighter from an other just by the skills chosen.</p><p></p><p>3) <strong>Languages are few and intelligence and race should give you more along with some background.</strong></p><p>I miss the days when an elf would speak about six languages from the start, not counting his bonus intelligence. Ok, six might have been a wee bit too much but three would have been good. Common, Elf and Orc? Intelligence giving more languages on start would also help. Here only starting intelligence would count, but with a 16, it means 3 more.</p><p></p><p>4) <strong>Expertise</strong></p><p>The goal of expertise is to make a character exceptional at one skill, doubling his proficiency bonus. The unfortunate side effect is that as soon as there is a character with one such skill in a knowledge or whatever, the other characters feel like useless (beside possibly giving advantage on an already high skill by helping the expert). This makes the DC system wonky as if you have a character with expertise in perception, traps are now almost irrelevant if a second character has it. At 8th level, a rogue might have expertise in both perception and lock picking, with advantage it means the equivalent +18 to a roll (+ 8 from double prof, +5 from dex and +5 from advantage with the help action). Even at +13, it means that as low as level 8, a DC or 25 will be beaten with a roll of 12 or better. With advantage, it means that this chance is the equivalent of 7 or more to succeed a DC 25. Heck! A 20th level rogue will have +17 all by himself! How can he fail with a bit of help? Expertise should have given a +2 at best. This way, even with help, success would not be so sure thus making a second character able to help quite important and not just icing on the cake.</p><p></p><p>5) <strong>Stat Required on the rolls.</strong></p><p>This one, is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Why would Religion require intelligence? Is it logical that your priest that takes religions knows less about religions than the rogue that took it and put expertise in it? Or the wizard? Some classes should give bonuses to some skills. A priest might have +2 to his skills in religion, a wizard +2 in arcane. Or a character might have +2 in one skill of its choice.</p><p></p><p>This would help a lot in giving versatility in pillars.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Helldritch, post: 8557375, member: 6855114"] I blame a few things. 1) [B]Standard array or stat placement[/B]. Because of the standard array and stat placement, we no longer see fighter with mid to high int, wis or cha. These stats are now the dump stats for a fighter (or any martial character that will not cast any spells). My first character was a fighter that became a wizard because I had relatively low strength (16) but rolled 18 intelligence (yes, on 3d6 the rest was average). As a young 10 year old boy, I saw that as a curse, but I switched to wizard at level 7. But if I had had, say... 15? My fighter would have stayed a fighter but with a high intelligence score. With the standard array and stat placement, all fighters will have high ST or Dex and High Con. St or Dex will become a dump stat along with the intel and or charisma. 2) [B]The low amount of skills given by background and class.[/B] Raising both of these by a single additional one make true wonders as the "essentials" are normally covered. Just two skills more helps martial (yes, even the rogues and bards are on the low side). It would also help differentiate a fighter from an other just by the skills chosen. 3) [B]Languages are few and intelligence and race should give you more along with some background.[/B] I miss the days when an elf would speak about six languages from the start, not counting his bonus intelligence. Ok, six might have been a wee bit too much but three would have been good. Common, Elf and Orc? Intelligence giving more languages on start would also help. Here only starting intelligence would count, but with a 16, it means 3 more. 4) [B]Expertise[/B] The goal of expertise is to make a character exceptional at one skill, doubling his proficiency bonus. The unfortunate side effect is that as soon as there is a character with one such skill in a knowledge or whatever, the other characters feel like useless (beside possibly giving advantage on an already high skill by helping the expert). This makes the DC system wonky as if you have a character with expertise in perception, traps are now almost irrelevant if a second character has it. At 8th level, a rogue might have expertise in both perception and lock picking, with advantage it means the equivalent +18 to a roll (+ 8 from double prof, +5 from dex and +5 from advantage with the help action). Even at +13, it means that as low as level 8, a DC or 25 will be beaten with a roll of 12 or better. With advantage, it means that this chance is the equivalent of 7 or more to succeed a DC 25. Heck! A 20th level rogue will have +17 all by himself! How can he fail with a bit of help? Expertise should have given a +2 at best. This way, even with help, success would not be so sure thus making a second character able to help quite important and not just icing on the cake. 5) [B]Stat Required on the rolls.[/B] This one, is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Why would Religion require intelligence? Is it logical that your priest that takes religions knows less about religions than the rogue that took it and put expertise in it? Or the wizard? Some classes should give bonuses to some skills. A priest might have +2 to his skills in religion, a wizard +2 in arcane. Or a character might have +2 in one skill of its choice. This would help a lot in giving versatility in pillars. [/QUOTE]
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