D&D 5E So what's exactly wrong with the fighter?

[FormerlyHemlock]

You're changing the subject here from non-combat to combat but I'll go with it:

Not having any combat abilities but ones which you can use all the time also makes no sense. At both ends, because repeating "At Will" attacks time after time is a cheap way to be predictable and have your opponent adapt to that, and that's an easy way to fail. At the other end, because virtually any martial school will teach you that some moves should only be attempted in the right circumstances and most of the time are not only not going to work but are going to compromise your defences. 4e resolved that dichotomy by allowing the player to choose when that opportunity came up and that's easy to criticise, but the alternative people seem to prefer is to either have no moments of opportunism at all or to make them present all the time - and neither of those things is as "realistic" as the 4e method.

They're all unrealistic. I can name ways in which "Vancian choose your own opportunity" is actually worse than at-will (but probabilistic) techniques. For example, if the justification behind "you can only Disarm once per day" is "the enemy changes his hold to deny you the opportunity," why wouldn't I still be able to disarm another enemy 30' away who didn't see me disarm the first enemy because of an intervening wall, not to mention being busy with his own opponent? Why wouldn't I still be able to disarm a zombie? Zombies are too dumb to shift their grips. Why shouldn't I be prohibited from Disarming a skilled enemy fighter who knows about disarm maneuvers, even if he hasn't seen me specifically try it against anyone today?

If you wanted to add opportunistic attack options I'd say you should do it right: model the likelihood that the opportunity would arise (e.g. 25% per round for Disarm, or 5% if vs. an intelligent opponent who has reason to expect a Disarm and is actively preventing it). Then if the opportunity arises, I can use the technique at will, possibly with an opportunity cost (AC penalty). No Vancian resources required, and no feats required either.

This kind of thing is not suitable for core 5E but I wouldn't mind seeing it in a 5E Martial Maneuvers rulebook or something reminiscent of GURPS: Martial Arts, for people who want pure fightery combat to be more complicated.

 

[famousringo]

Bleh, I think I'm just going to duck out after this post. Maybe some people (myself included) in the "fighter sucks" crowd are bad at explaining things to people that don't see the problem. The bottom line for me is that the 5E fighter, as designed, does not live up to my imagination of what a fighter is. It doesn't have the combat utility or mechanics to support the kind of tactics I like to do in combat (helping allies, forcing enemies to keep me in mind, having ways to shrug off enemy blows, etc.) or the things I want these characters to do outside of combat.

I know you said you're ducking out, so I hope I don't come across a jerk for responding, but I see support for all the tactics you mention.

Helping: Commander's strike, Distracting Strike, Maneuvering Attack, Rally, Trip Attack, Disarming Attack, Inspiring Leader, or just a simple Action Surge to reach and stabilize a downed ally or perform some other crucial action (drop the portcullis, grab the macguffin, etc.).

Forcing Enemies: Protection Style, Goading Attack, Menacing Attack, Pushing Attack, Polarm Master, Sentinel, Grappler, Shield Master.

Shrug off blows: Second Wind, Indomitable, Defense Style, Parry, Defensive Duelist, Heavy Armor Master, Tough, Resilient, Lucky.

So yeah, without delving into your non-combat grievances with the class, it's really hard to see what combat utility you're looking for in the fighter that the game doesn't support. And with nine maneuvers and up to seven feats over a career, the fighter can deliver quite a bit of it.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Helping: Commander's strike, Distracting Strike, Maneuvering Attack, Rally, Trip Attack, Disarming Attack, Inspiring Leader, or just a simple Action Surge to reach and stabilize a downed ally or perform some other crucial action (drop the portcullis, grab the macguffin, etc.).

Not to mention good old Push (Prone) to give your (melee) ally advantage to attack and reduce the enemy to a single opportunity attack at disadvantage instead of a full attack sequence. You can probably even arrange to take the opportunity attack yourself so that your ally takes zero attacks from that enemy that round.

I probably don't need to explain how this works, but just in case:

Mort the Fighter pushes Iron Golem prone; if it works, he then retreats 30 feet, taking an opportunity attack at disadvantage from the golem. Xuan Dai the Moon Druid (Alligator) then bites the golem and hits it with his tail and then retreats 30 feet too. The Iron Golem spends 15 feet of movement getting to its feet. Oops! Having used 15' already, it's not fast enough to move 20 feet towards Xuan Dai and attack him this turn! If Mort hadn't pushed it it would have gotten its regular 2 attacks instead of 1 at disadvantage. Hooray for Push!

Shrug off blows: Second Wind, Indomitable, Defense Style, Parry, Defensive Duelist, Heavy Armor Master, Tough, Resilient, Lucky.

Also Healer and Inspiring Leader. In fact, isn't spending a second with a med kit to negate 25 points of damage pretty much essentially the same as "shrugging off blows"? Pull out a bandaid and slap it on myself, now I'm back in the game. Plus I can patch my buddies.

 

[Celtavian]

One of our guys is playing a defensive fighter right now. He's pretty damn good. He uses Sentinel to lock down tough targets. He uses Commander's Strike to give higher damage PCs another attack. He is planning on picking up Menacing Strike to give Disadvantage to enemies he's attacking. He will eventually pick up Shield Master to be able to knock opponents down and avoid Dex-based damage. Overall, defensive fighter is pretty capable. It's one of the reasons I never consider them when talking damage discrepancies. They're pretty powerful. Their AC makes them extremely hard to hit. They walk into a group of enemies using the Dodge action, they can last a long time while the rest of the party takes them out.

 

[famousringo]

Not to mention good old Push (Prone) to give your (melee) ally advantage to attack and reduce the enemy to a single opportunity attack at disadvantage instead of a full attack sequence. You can probably even arrange to take the opportunity attack yourself so that your ally takes zero attacks from that enemy that round.

The cynical response is that anybody can Push (or take the Help action, etc.), so it's worth pressing the point that Battlemasters (also Hand monks and high level Totem barbarians) get to do this as a bonus while hurting their opponent. Also, Trip Attack targets strength saves, which is probably advantageous compared to resisting with either Athletics or Arobatics.

They're superior tacticians and just plain better at it.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

One of our guys is playing a defensive fighter right now. He's pretty damn good. He uses Sentinel to lock down tough targets. He uses Commander's Strike to give higher damage PCs another attack. He is planning on picking up Menacing Strike to give Disadvantage to enemies he's attacking. He will eventually pick up Shield Master to be able to knock opponents down and avoid Dex-based damage. Overall, defensive fighter is pretty capable. It's one of the reasons I never consider them when talking damage discrepancies. They're pretty powerful. Their AC makes them extremely hard to hit. They walk into a group of enemies using the Dodge action, they can last a long time while the rest of the party takes them out.

Tangent: a defensive paladin is even better at full defense, since they have equal access to Defense fighting style and they can stack Dodge + Shield of Faith on round one, and then add Sanctuary on top on round two.

I'm always surprised at how seldom Dodge and Push get mentioned. Push is arguably better than Sentinel at locking down enemies, because you can use it proactively and more than once per turn: you know who's prone, but you don't know who's going to get hit by a Sentinel opportunity attack until it happens. There's no reason you couldn't combine them of course, but Sentinel does cost a full feat and is therefore expensive.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The cynical response is that anybody can Push (or take the Help action, etc.), so it's worth pressing the point that Battlemasters (also Hand monks and high level Totem barbarians) get to do this as a bonus while hurting their opponent. Also, Trip Attack targets strength saves, which is probably advantageous compared to resisting with either Athletics or Arobatics.

They're superior tacticians and just plain better at it.

You make a fair point: some people want fighters to be good at martial tactics, and other people want them to be better at it than everybody else. Str-based fighters (and barbarians) are always going to be better at pushing/grappling/etc. than Dexy shadow monks due to Strength and Athletics proficiency, but you're right that Open Hand monks can be about as good at this by spending ki and a bonus action, which might bother the crowd who wants fighters to be uniquely best.

My remarks are addressed towards those who are more interested in effectiveness than competition: if you want your fighter to be good at helping teammates, there's how you do it. From that perspective the fact that it doesn't cost any design-time resources except Athletics and Strength (which you were going to take anyway) is a plus. You can improve your team tactics right now, today, without changing anything about your build.

 

[Celtavian]

Tangent: a defensive paladin is even better at full defense, since they have equal access to Defense fighting style and they can stack Dodge + Shield of Faith on round one, and then add Sanctuary on top on round two.

Sanctuary breaks as soon as you attack. It doesn't do much to have a defensive fighter that can't attack. An EK gets the shield spell, which can temporarily boost AC quite a bit when needed.

I'm always surprised at how seldom Dodge and Push get mentioned. Push is arguably better than Sentinel at locking down enemies, because you can use it proactively and more than once per turn: you know who's prone, but you don't know who's going to get hit by a Sentinel opportunity attack until it happens. There's no reason you couldn't combine them of course, but Sentinel does cost a full feat and is therefore expensive.

The reason Sentinel is better is because it allows you to freeze a target on their turn. Prone knocks them down. They just stand up and can still move half their speed on their turn and full attack. Prone doesn't do much unless the initiatives fall right. It can be quite powerful if the initiatives fall right.

Knocking someone prone doesn't work on very large or powerful creatures. Whereas Sentinel works regardless of size, strength, or Athletics/Acrobatics skill.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Sanctuary breaks as soon as you attack. It doesn't do much to have a defensive fighter that can't attack. An EK gets the shield spell, which can temporarily boost AC quite a bit when needed.

I thought we were discussing full defense? If you're Dodging, the only kind of attack you're making anyway is an opportunity attack. If you make one, so what, just re-cast Sanctuary next turn. Or don't.

But Shield of Faith is more efficient, and doesn't prevent attacks, which is why it's the round 1 pick and Sanctuary is deferred to round 2 (if at all).

The EK has to choose between having opportunity attacks, having a shield, or having a Shield spell. He can't do all three unless he has Warcaster, and even then he can't do opportunity attack and Shield on the same round.

 

[Celtavian]

I thought we were discussing full defense? If you're Dodging, the only kind of attack you're making anyway is an opportunity attack. If you make one, so what, just re-cast Sanctuary next turn. Or don't.

But Shield of Faith is more efficient, and doesn't prevent attacks, which is why it's the round 1 pick and Sanctuary is deferred to round 2 (if at all).

The EK has to choose between having opportunity attacks, having a shield, or having a Shield spell. He can't do all three unless he has Warcaster, and even then he can't do opportunity attack and Shield on the same round.

I wasn't talking full defense. I was talking a defensive fighter that controls the battlefield and takes hits versus a damage focused fighter like an archer or GWF.