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

[Salamandyr]

Well, since the latest rules update, fighter abilities don't work when the fighter is unarmed, which is stupid. The fighter should be all about killing you with whatever is available, not helpless the moment you take his favorite toy away from him. You don't learn how to kill something with a sword without learning how to kill them with your bare hands too.

 

[Hussar]

I think that sounds absurd from a roleplaying perspective, like developing fluency in a different language every night, but since we don't play at the same table don't let that stop you from houseruling it any way you like if you like the flavor.

No. It's like saying because I learned French, I can never speak Italian. Or rather, I start off speaking two languages but learning a third is practically impossible for most people.

I'm supposed to be a combat God but both Paladins and rangers, both of whom have far more options than I do can learn my specialty just as well as I can.

 

[Bluenose]

I think that sounds absurd from a roleplaying perspective, like developing fluency in a different language every night, but since we don't play at the same table don't let that stop you from houseruling it any way you like if you like the flavor.

A proper 'fighting style' gives you a pile of options for defence, offence, and "special tricks". Picking a fighting style that gives you one of those things makes me think I'm not picking a style at all, just something paying lip service to the concept in a rather patronising way. "See, we gave you a nice thing. Now go sit in the corner and play with it while we deal with the people who matter."

 

[Celtavian]

People really seem to have a hard time grasping the fact that those of us who are dissatisfied with the fighter don't want it to be more powerful or for it to deal more damage. What we want is the ability to make interesting choices in combat that have a visible impact on the battle in ways that are not purely damage. We want to not be at the whims of the DM whenever we want to try something "cool". We want to have the scope of our capabilities increase with our level so that at level 20 we are not merely repeating the same tricks we could do at level 3.

I would gladly give up 20% of the fighters damage in exchange for dynamic and interesting combat capabilities.

This is something other than narrative control as some keep asking for. I think the fighter should have interesting options in fights. I'd be ok with that. My only desire is that they be created like a fighting style, not like spells.

 

[Celtavian]

Umm, a Troll has 84 HP. A 10th level or lower fighter, which is what we're talking about, is still only doing about 80 points with feats and action surge, and against an AC of 15 is hitting about 50% (barring cheesing out with things like bless, which the fighter can't cast himself) I suppose a Battlemaster blowing all his superiority dice might be able to kill a troll, if he's lucky and hits all four times while using Feint to gain advantage) but, then he's done for the day. Again, presuming the use of feats, a Great Weapon Fighter, and some fairly lucky die rolls. He might do it, but, it's not bloody likely.

First, this is a group game. Always has been a group game. Encounter and monster design must always be done with the group capabilities in mind, not individual. It is not "cheesing" to have bless. It is an extremely common 1st level buff. It should be taken into account when thinking about the fighter.

By the way, what class can kill a troll in one round in 5E at 10th level?

But, on the topic of limitations, why are fighters locked into specific fighting styles? I choose my fighting style at 1st level (and again at 10th or 11th) but, I cannot change that once it's made. So, if I choose a defensive style fighter, but the group finds a really cool two handed magic sword, I can't really use it because I lose my class abilities. It would be like a wizard who loses access to his spells if he picks up a certain kind of staff. Sure, that staff is cool, but, how cool would it have to be to give up spells? Why can't I change my specialisation after a long rest? Something as simple as that would make a big difference in granting fighters more breadth without increasing power. So, I know that if we're going to face flying opponents tomorrow, I choose archery. If I know we're going to be fighting lots of mooks, maybe I go defensive. So on and so forth.

Because fighting styles represent years of training. Does a Tae Kwan Do practitioner take a long rest and suddenly he knows Ninjutsu? Players like me want a fighting style to feel like something the fighter trained at for years to gain the ability to do the feats he does. Not any fighter can take a long rest and be like any other fighter. What would make the fighter special at that point? It would like, "Seen one fighter, you seen them all."

People want to feel like their character is unique. If you could change that every long rest, they would feel about as unique as a person's white shirts.

As it stands, fighters are the "simple class". And there is certainly room in the game for a simple class. I have no problems with that. I LIKE fighters. But, I also think there is room in the game for a complex class. No one is saying replace existing fighters. What we want is more complexity. We want a fighter subclass with more breadth. So, you can stick to your Battlemaster or whatever makes you happy, and I can get my Crusader (to pick a name from Bo9S) or Swordsage and we're both happy.

Why does the existence of options for me reduce your enjoyment? Who cares if I get a fighter that looks like a wizard? Why is this a zero sum game?

I want a fighting man to feel like a fighting man. I don't want anime figures in my sword and sorcery fantasy. I don't care if martials are provided with additional options as long as the options feel like fighting maneuvers that he learned over years of training and time. The wizard learns arcane arts over time. He pursues mastery of magic for battle and utility. The fighter should be the same with fighting skills. Some of those should be non-combat. They should also be mostly mundane and tied to the idea of the simple fighting man. The guy that dresses in armor, uses a weapon, and does so in a very direct and mundane sort of way.

Sure, the current fighter could use some tweaking to accomplish that. I don't mind if someone makes those tweaks. Do I think they are necessary within the context of the game? Not really. The fighter does what the fighter does really well. He is boring, maybe intentionally so. In real life if we all had the option of being a mundane fighting man or some magic using person, I'm pretty sure most would choose magic if they were capable. Magic is by its nature more interesting than the mundane.

In 5E you can multiclass. So if you want to make some strange combination of fighting man with skills and magic, you can do. Why limit yourself to a fighter when you can mix and match to make something extremely unique?

 

[Celtavian]

A proper 'fighting style' gives you a pile of options for defence, offence, and "special tricks". Picking a fighting style that gives you one of those things makes me think I'm not picking a style at all, just something paying lip service to the concept in a rather patronising way. "See, we gave you a nice thing. Now go sit in the corner and play with it while we deal with the people who matter."

3E was definitely better for designing fighting styles. You could crush a troll in one round in 3E. You could crush multiple trolls in 3E as a martial. You could kill a group of giants. Martials at high level were sick damage dealers. They had some serious capabilities for destroying enemies. Whirlwind Stunning Strike was ridiculous.

I have forgotten what point 3.5 reached. Pathfinder martials seem right up the alley of people wanting powerful martials. You could make all kinds of martials effective. They had ridiculously powerful capabilities and access to amazing magic items. Mythic Adventures took martials into unreal territory. You want to be like Gilgamesh or Cu Chuliain, Mythic Adventures Pathfinder made it happen. I was running characters using those rules, they were mowing down groups of Vrock and Hezrou at level 7. It was pretty ridiculous.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

A proper 'fighting style' gives you a pile of options for defence, offence, and "special tricks". Picking a fighting style that gives you one of those things makes me think I'm not picking a style at all, just something paying lip service to the concept in a rather patronising way. "See, we gave you a nice thing. Now go sit in the corner and play with it while we deal with the people who matter."

Not sure why you addressed this to me. If you want to create a realistic fighting style that gives defensive and offensive options and special tricks against specific foes instead of one generic bonus, I have no objection. You can import krav maga into D&D and I don't care. I just objected to the absurdity of resetting your fighting style on a long rest: "yesterday I was a shield expert, and today I know krav maga but not shield fighting."

 

[KarinsDad]

The fighter doesn't really "shine" at being better at fighting than others until level 11. Barbarians, paladins, and rangers all have the same number of attacks from levels 1-10. The fighter gets action surge once per short rest, but the other classes get abilities that have a much greater impact on their combat capabilities overall (hunters mark, haste, smite, reckless attack, rage, etc). At level 11+ though the fighter does manage to barely climb to the top in terms of damage done, but is still behind the others in both utility and durability.

It depends on the Fighter build and it depends on what someone means by "better at fighting" (which can mean offense, defense, and/or the ability to be attacked more often so that the rest of the party isn't).

Sure, those Barbarians are not taking a lot of damage, but a Battlemaster Fighter with Parry and Heavy Armor Master isn't taking a lot of damage either, but can be doing more damage with Feint. An Eldritch Knight with the Shield spell and Heavy Armor Master isn't taking a lot of damage.


AC 16 Barbarian with two handed weapon and a foe with +6 to hit gets hit 55% of the time. 50% damage or ~27.5% damage (not taking into account criticals) if Raging which is a few encounters a day at lower levels.

AC 18 Eldritch Knight with Shield spell and two handed weapon and a foe with +6 to hit gets hit 45% of the time for 45% damage, unless he uses the Shield spell (typically for harder hitting foes) for 25% damage (35% and 15% if a Defense build). Throw Heavy Armor Master into the mix and that's like stopping the damage of one or more attacks per encounter at lower levels.


Another thing Fighters get is two additional ASEs, one at 6th and one at 14th IIRC. This equates to better Str, Con, or more feats.

At lower levels, an Eldritch Knight can wade in and cast Thunderwave. Sure, it doesn't do a lot of damage on its own, but it can do just as much as a low level Fighter (abet against multiple foes) and it can set up the rest of the melee PCs for advantage. Or he can cast Blur at level 8 and be significantly harder to hit than a Barbarian.

And of course Rage ends if the Barbarian has not attacked or taken damage since his last turn.


Action Surge, Second Wind. Even Great Weapon Fighting tends to mostly cancel out low level Barbarian rage damage boost. The advantage of lower level Fighters over Barbarians is that they tend to have more options. Low level Barbarians do fight better if they are raging, but in order to maintain balance, a DM might want to consider using the 6-8 encounters per day guideline to offset this advantage and/or use the Rage ending rules properly.


Similar things happen with Paladins and Rangers, but again, it's build (and DM encounter style and party makeup) dependent. An archer Ranger with the Archery style, Hunter's Mark, and Colossus Slayer can do sick damage (even without Sharpshooter and/or Crossbow Expert). But such a build is typically a bit more squishy than most Fighters and often has less survivability if targeted by multiple foes and in some parties, having an archer means having one less front line combatant (which might mean more potential attacks against other squishier PCs). Pros and Cons. I think people often compare two builds or two classes and do not realize that the synergy of how such builds work in given parties changes.

 

[Ashkelon]

A proper 'fighting style' gives you a pile of options for defence, offence, and "special tricks". Picking a fighting style that gives you one of those things makes me think I'm not picking a style at all, just something paying lip service to the concept in a rather patronising way. "See, we gave you a nice thing. Now go sit in the corner and play with it while we deal with the people who matter."

I think that it would be really great to see a ToB style fighter where you can learn various Martisl Disciplines, each giving you a stance and a few maneuvers that go with it (boosts, strikes, and counters). Perhaps require you to be in that disciplines stance to use its maneuvers. As you level, you learn additional disciplines and improve the ones you already know. That would capture the feel of a fighting style way better than the boring numbers porn fighting styles are currently.

 

[brehobit]

I'm playing a game where 1 fight per day is about the norm. It makes sense in the context of the game (we are pirates and so multiple fights per day is weird), but I think we've had a short rest 2 maybe 3 times after 15+ encounters. I'm playing a dex-based fighter with two-weapon combat as his thing (dual rapiers). Thankfully we don't have any full standard casters (barbarian, ranger, fighter, warlock) so the balance isn't too far off but the barbarian always rages and the ranger always has a mark up and doesn't hesitate to put it up again if it gets dropped.

At 5th level I find my action surge is pretty potent and keeps up in effectiveness with all but the warlock (hard to beat a fireball at 5th level).

That said, the thing I feel is missing is out-of-combat usefulness. The free prof. with a set of tools at 3rd level was cool but not hugely useful as we don't seem to _need_ a carpenter as much as a ship would in the real world. I think more skill prof. would be nice, but I'd really like to see something else fun. Problem is, I'm not sure what else would make sense for a fighter to _have_. Maybe an extra non-combat option that is divorced from the sub-class. Say 3 options: one focused on Int, one on Wis, and one on Chr. The Int one might throw around some int-based skill prof. at higher levels and maybe the ability to use a very limited set of rituals. The Wis one might provide bonuses to insight and perception with respect to combat issues and perhaps some access to a cleric ritual or two. The Chr one might provide Chr-skill prof and some type of leadership/presence bonus that helps calm/rally weaker NPCs (townspeople) and intimidate large groups of weak enemies?).

But yeah, the no-short-rest thing hurts.