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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6130472" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Gonna try one more time here and then call it a day.  Dausuul has the crux of it above.  Let us say that I'm good at several, different sports; Baseball, Basketball, American Football, Wrestling, Track and Field.  In the course of a 2 year period of my life, someone plays on a Baseball traveling team with me.  They survey my Baseball acumen regularly through the course of those 2 years as we are together intermittently for months at a time, but our schedule is such that we are basically traveling for half a day, or more, playing tournaments that include games every day with the rare day off...strictly baseball.  The "story of me" to him is "guy who is good at Baseball".  One day, he meets a friend of mine and finds out that we're all mutual acquaintances.  The other guy reveals that we grew up together and that my life was very spread out on the various sports above until the last few years when I dedicated my life almost exclusively to Baseball.  He also finds out that I've got lots of other interests outside of athletics; reading, RPGs, comic books, history, physics, and philosophy.  He scratches his head, "huh?"This is what happens with the Fighter in D&D.  Within the fiction, no one knows (not his companions, NPCs, nor the 3rd party audience) that he is "good" (meaning proficient...which I don't consider "good") with anything beyond whatever style and weapon he invariably (with extreme anomalies for folks who have 0 interest in building their PC for relative effectiveness; with respect to the challenges before them and the acumen of the other PCs) dedicates his PC build options to.Now this sort of guy with these Build tools would look like a "versatile fighter who is good at all weapons and styles":[sblock][/sblock]This is what I would expect from their description of their design vision for a 5e Fighter.  He is:- Not just proficient but "good" at all weapons.  He is world-class and gains benefits from the different martial styles and techniques that come with the various weapons.- A Skirmisher who has the ability to roam the battlefield, escaping gambits, setting them up and acquiring targets as required.- A Defender who defends his allies and ruthlessly punishes his enemies when they ignore him, turning him into a deadly Striker by proxy.- A Striker even without his Defender buffs to his damage by proxy of Combat Challenge violation.- A significant melee Controller with the ability to impose his will on enemies in melee range by forcing them into catch-22, suboptimal tactics and basically lock them down/immobilize them...and do it to multiple enemies.The character above (or one with mechanics like that) stands up to that design vision and the fiction will bear that out such that his or her allies, NPCs, and 3rd party viewers (players) will not have any "huh?" moments such as above when someone relays "oh yeah, most folks around here know him/her as nerdy mcnerderson who plays a bunch of other sports that aren't baseball...they don't know him/her as a baseball player at all".  Dual-Katana-Wielding Swordmasters, Dart-throwers, Flail Trip Builds,  Plate armor + Shield tanks with Combat Patrol, Archers with Manyshot  don't look like look like that guy outlined above in the shared  imaginary space nor out of it and the mechanics that incentivize that  sort of specialization won't produce that guy.</blockquote>

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