D&D General The Case For High INT Fighters in Dungeons and Dragons

[MarkB]

You'd basically have to build for it, which most of the existing subclasses don't. In concept, the Battle Master is the smart fighter, learning clever tactics and being able to assess opponents. But in practice, none of their capabilities are linked to intelligence, so having some is of no benefit to them.

 

[Minigiant]

If you mean whether there should be a high Int fighter subclass, I don't think so.

What I would really like, is if there was enough benefit of high Int in general so that being a high Int fighter would be an attractive character build option independently of the subclass.

This.

Ever since 3rd edition where they made ability scores matter to all characters D&D has struggled with making intelligence a good enough candidate for being a high score for any one who isn't a spellcaster that uses intelligence.

In third edition intelligence increase your skills however in that edition The fighter skill list was incredibly biased to enforce a dumb warrior trope.

And fourth edition intelligence could be what you use for AC if you are wearing light armor. However this wasn't enough for general use and again intelligence was only important for classes that used intelligence as a active primary or secondary score.

And fifth edition, intelligence just increases your checks with most lore skills.

If the Study action actually gave some kind of concrete combat benefit then you can have Intelligence be important to fighters in some way.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ever since 3rd edition

And before 3rd edition. I saw plenty of INT 3 fighters in 1st and 2nd edition.

But it makes sense really, no intelligent person is going to think being eaten by monsters is a good career choice!

 

[pawsplay]

"Intelligence" in the sense of a D&D stat that relates to skills, knowledge, and mental clarity doesn't really correspond with the idea of intelligence as a general, everyday construct. A lot of intelligence, in the real world sense, would include WIS as well as INT. While there could be a high Intelligence fighter, there is nothing a fighter does that requires high INT.

 

[Staffan]

Best be careful, the people who can't handle the warlord being a fighter subclass might hear!

To summarize previous discussions on the topic: you can't make a decent warlord that's a fighter subclass for two main reasons:

1. 5e in general is hostile to 4e-style warlords. 4e cared a lot about specific battlefield positions and small bonuses, while 5e has to work with theatre-of-the-mind style combat and the main combat modifier is advantage/disadvantage which is a huge swing (plus healing surges and hit dice are very much not the same thing).

2. The fighter class in specific has a lot of its power budget allocated in the main class, not leaving much to play with for letting subclasses do their own thing. The Battlemaster, with appropriate maneuver selection, is about as close as you can get to a warlord, and for those who like warlords that is wholly unsatisfying. It's like saying "Why do you need to play a wizard when you can play an Eldritch Knight fighter instead? Both can cast spells, right?"

 

[Li Shenron]

In third edition intelligence increase your skills however in that edition The fighter skill list was incredibly biased to enforce a dumb warrior trope.

And fourth edition intelligence could be what you use for AC if you are wearing light armor. However this wasn't enough for general use and again intelligence was only important for classes that used intelligence as a active primary or secondary score.

And fifth edition, intelligence just increases your checks with most lore skills.

If the Study action actually gave some kind of concrete combat benefit then you can have Intelligence be important to fighters in some way.

Yes, this is what I meant... 5e actually went backwards and made Int less useful to generic characters. It's not like WotC was not warned about it, there were many of us duing DnDNext playtest sending feedback about it, and the possibilities to make Int more relevant to all characters, more on par with other stats, were all there:

• Initiative could have been based on Int (also decreasing a bit the supremacy of Dex, which feels like the best of all stats)
• bonus skills based on Int, similar to skill points bonuses in 3e (however, when the game has less than 20 skills to choose from, bonus skills can result in repetitive characters)
• more spell effects categories could have required Int saves instead of Wis (having passive/defensive uses for an ability score helps against dumping it, since you mostly can't control how you're being attacked)
• bonus languages from Int instead of starting everyone with multiple languages already

I am generally never against a player coming up with a new skill, so if someone wants to have a Knowledge(Monsters) skills that can be used to know in advance strength and weaknesses of any creature, I am all in favor of it. It's not a huge motivation for high Int but it might help a little bit.

"Intelligence" in the sense of a D&D stat that relates to skills, knowledge, and mental clarity doesn't really correspond with the idea of intelligence as a general, everyday construct. A lot of intelligence, in the real world sense, would include WIS as well as INT. While there could be a high Intelligence fighter, there is nothing a fighter does that requires high INT.

I think you're onto something... sadly, whenever something can in a real world sense related to both WIS and INT together, the RPG designers almost invariably default to WIS. That's because there is a hard-boiled traditional bias towards 'dumb characters are great at making good decisions out of instinct'. Maybe ditching this old mantra and saying instead that INT includes instinctive intelligence and isn't always just good-at-math intelligence, could help move some capabilities from WIS to INT and make both more equally useful.

 

[AnotherGuy]

...the main ...(snip)... modifier is advantage/disadvantage which is a huge swing...

Although I like disadvantage/advantage it is also an issue in 5e.

The dirty solution would be to create a lesser disadvantage/advantage = -2/+2

 

[ruemere]

Add guns. Mana guns, gunpowder guns, wand guns, psi guns.

Make gun maintenance and aiming Int activity. For magic and psi guns, you can introduce additional dependencies.

There, you have a reason to have a high Int demand for a fighting character.

Now, about the preferred class:

• fighter gets higher HP and shooting related feats. Int effectively replaces Str.
• wizards get spells, why would they want settle for limited application abilities. A mage gun could become a basic offense option.
• rangers would be strong contenders for primary gun users, except they would become MAD (Multiple Ability Dependent)
• rogues - same, but also MAD
• cleric - same, but also MAD

 

[humble minion]

Ever since 3rd edition where they made ability scores matter to all characters D&D has struggled with making intelligence a good enough candidate for being a high score for any one who isn't a spellcaster that uses intelligence.

And with making Strength matter for anyone who isn’t a Strength-primary warrior.

 

[CreamCloud0]

To summarize previous discussions on the topic: you can't make a decent warlord that's a fighter subclass for two main reasons:

1. 5e in general is hostile to 4e-style warlords. 4e cared a lot about specific battlefield positions and small bonuses, while 5e has to work with theatre-of-the-mind style combat and the main combat modifier is advantage/disadvantage which is a huge swing (plus healing surges and hit dice are very much not the same thing).

While this point about warlord design not working with 5e is entirely true it’s not a problem that is exclusive to warlords, and you’d probably have just as much trouble transferring any 4e class directly to 5e or trying to put 5e class design into 4e ones even, it's like porting 2D mario's code into a 3D game and wonder why you're having issues, it's because it's not designed to handle in that environment.

The point being, mechanically warlord was designed for 4e but there’s no actual issue in the fundamental concept of a warlord being in 5e, just in trying to exactly replicate how it worked and existed in 4e, and like you said, trying to shoehorn it into a fighter subclass power budget.

That said, i do not consider the warlord to be the same thing as ‘the smart fighter’ they perform different roles.