D&D 5E (2014) Should martial characters be mundane or supernatural?

[Minigiant]

I dont see how thats even a universe that exists. Battlemaster absolutely is a Fighter.

Infinite universes

The universe where Mike Mearls goes nuts and makes a setting book with a martial class that gets base maneuvers and advanced ones then fans retrofit it to make anime swordsmen, edgy Dark Sun gladiators, and 4e warlords to drive him nuts is not that crazy of a situation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's like your opinion man.

And that so to what @Oofta said, the majority want them. And I thing the majority want new classes. It's WOTC policy to not make them. It's a supplier problem, not demand.

Lots of 3pp classes out there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not the one saying they should add another class. It's not going to happen and people that want more classes have tons of 3PP to choose from. If it wasn't for that I might have a bit more sympathy.

Pushing out a ton of content just ends up with an overloaded system that doesn't work for a lot of people.

Not pushing out enough content just ends up with an anemic system that doesn't work for a lot of people.

 

[Minigiant]

Lots of 3pp classes out there.

Exactly. WOTC choose not to supply in order inflate the PHB.
3PPs supplied instead.
WOTC left money on the table.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

A level 5 fighter in full gear can fight and beat a dozen trained soldiers at point blank range.

Battlemaster, duelist, 18 str 14 con, plate, shield, PAM. 20 AC, +6 to hit, 2d6+1d4+18 (27.5) dpr plus maneuvers, 44 hp+10.5 second wind.

Against guards, 16 AC 11 hp 5.5 dpr at +3 to hit.

Guard has 10% hit 5% crit for .2*4.5+.15*1 --- it takes an average of 52 attacks to drop our battlemaster.

1d6+6 has a 1/3 chance to one-hit a guard, 100% chance to two-hit. Crits, or use of a BM damage die, have a 1/6 chance to not kill a guard. 1d4+6 cannot one-hit unless you use a BM die, but will kill a wounded guard.

It ends up with a bit over 1 guard killed per round (of which 0.15 is from bonus action) Action surge is about 0.85 dead guards. Give or take.

BM dice can turn .8 of a miss into a hit (worth 0.4 dead guards), grant a ripost (worth about 0.4 dead guards), boost damage (worth about 0.4 dead guards) on a non-crit or a crit (worth 0.15 dead guards because guard already dead).

Burning 1 die per action is easy.

So 2.5 guards dead round 1, followed by 1.4 guards for 2 rounds, then about 1 guard per round. After 3 rounds 5.3 guards are dead, having done about 9 damage to the fighter.

If we have N+5 guards, they last N+3 rounds against our fighter, doing N*3+9+(N+1)N/2 damage to the battlemaster.

Solving for 50 we get:
50=3N+9+N^2/2+N/2
N^2+7N+12.25=103.25
(N+3.5)^2=103.25
N+3.5=10.16
N=6.66
So 12 guards is an even fight for our level 5 fighter in mundane gear.

By level 11 the PC has a +1 weapon and shield, 16 con and 20 strength and 3 attacks. Swings are almost twice as deadly (chance to kill per swing) and the fighter gets 50% more of them. The fighter has 119.5 HP budget, a bit more than double as well. The attackers deal 1/3 less damage. And more BM dice.

Doubling number of foes makes 4x damage taken. But fighter is 3x as durable and kills almost 3x as many guards per round; so 36 soldiers at once (all in melee range!) is an even fight.

Make the foes queue up and only engage a dozen at a time (!) and the fighter can handle 100 soldiers in an even fight.

...

Is this supernatural? No mortal person could fight 100 trained soldiers like that.

And by 20 we get another massive jump in power. 4 hits, basically 100% kill and accuracy, per round. Each attacker does almost 0 damage per swing. Two action surges. More efficient uses of BM dice.

And if we optimize it gets worse.

All true.

Treating this as a mundane fighter is such a difficult to rationalize choice.

Not true. Mundane doesn’t mean not extraordinary. It just means it isn’t magical. John Wick isn’t supernatural, he is just impossibly skilled and tough. In terms of mundane va supernatural, he’s mundane.

 

[Oofta]

You are allowed to.
I just don't see how adding just 2 additional classes to refine the class that is "3 concepts mashed together" is bloat. Especially since neither one would be a full caster and the result of not adding a new class or two is the bloating of subclasses.

I suspect in an alternate universe where the Fighter and Battlemaster are separate classes, this thread doesn't exist. And many of the martial topics, threads, and videos and a dozen other places down exist.

I mean why couldn't the base fighter be the Champion and have the choice of the Cavalier or Banneret atop that?

The whole thing 300% feels like a strategy to prop up the PHB more that to give the community what they want,

I doubt 2 additional classes would be enough. Some people want "crunchier" Fighters, some people want mythic heroes, some want a 4E fighter, some want fighter that can compete with bards and rogues for skills.

WOTC has done and continues to put significant effort into playtests,market research and surveys (not all of which are open to the broad public). They have a better idea of what works than either one of us.

 

[Scribe]

Infinite universes

The universe where Mike Mearls goes nuts and makes a setting book with a martial class that gets base maneuvers and advanced ones then fans retrofit it to make anime swordsmen, edgy Dark Sun gladiators, and 4e warlords to drive him nuts is not that crazy of a situation.

I think the weight of any mythical thumb holding down the 'glorious rise of the 4e fighter/warlord' is...pretty light these days.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Exactly. WOTC choose not to supply in order inflate the PHB.
3PPs supplied instead.
WOTC left money on the table.

Not a very Hasbro thing to do.

OTOH, 50 years of Tradition, and lingering fear of another Edition War can make a designer cautious.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

eh, i do think the fighter specifically should break bounded accuracy personally, or at least give it a good few sizable cracks, but i do agree with the rest of what you're saying.

Absolutely.

And just bypass it.

The fighter takes an action, everything within half the fighter’s movement speed takes some damage, and anything of CR less than half the fighters level saves vs instant death.

And the fighter is adding PB to all damage rolls by level 11, gets a second action surge at level 11 and third at level 17, and double thier pb to attacks until the end of their next turn when they use Action surge, from level 6 on.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Exactly. WOTC choose not to supply in order inflate the PHB.
3PPs supplied instead.
WOTC left money on the table.

Cause the juice isn't worth the squeeze to them.