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

[CreamCloud0]

Aren’t we talking about a fighter subclass here? Because changing the core fighter class to use intelligence sounds like a very stupid idea!

i was reading this thread under the assumption we were discussing baseclass, and it makes more than enough sense to me, the fighter is/should be far more than just a dumb brute, if you want a class just to smack someone over and over with a heavy stick look to the barbarian, but fighters they are highly trained warriors, scholars of war and combat, masters of tactics and strategy, adding onto what they currently get to express that sounds like a very smart idea IMO.

i understand if your point is that fighters already struggle somewhat with MAD but i consider that a tangential issue to be solved.

 

[CreamCloud0]

The base class might use magic.

but why? WHY must they? are we not allowed to have classes who can function perfectly well without the ceaseless insidious justification of using magic?

You can "insist that it was just years of hard work; endless hours thinking of the best stratagems, honing their minds into a razor sharp edge."

well it was those things, but that's no reason to be giving them magic, those are all perfectly mundane ways to become powerful, skill, study and training

Blurr the lines a bit.

You can already shrug off mortal wounds by sleeping.

yes, but in DnD fantasyland doing that isn't magical, it might perhaps be seen as extraordinary, but extraordinary in the way i in the real world look at the stuff the people in the olympics do and go "wow those guys, they're a cut above, really put the effort", i don't think "wow i wonder what supernatural force is empowering these ordinary people to be able to do that".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

i was reading this thread under the assumption we were discussing baseclass, and it makes more than enough sense to me, the fighter is/should be far more than just a dumb brute, if you want a class just to smack someone over and over with a heavy stick look to the barbarian, but fighters they are highly trained warriors, scholars of war and combat, masters of tactics and strategy, adding onto what they currently get to express that sounds like a very smart idea IMO.

i understand if your point is that fighters already struggle somewhat with MAD but i consider that a tangential issue to be solved.

Really, no. The concept for the original fighting man was "dumb brute" just as the concept for the original magic user was "weedy intellectual". Conan was the prototype fighting man long before the barbarian class was added to the game.

There is room to expand the fighter beyond the original concept, but that is something for subclasses, not the core class. Fighters should never need to be intelligent. The uneducated farmboy who picks up a sword when his homestead is destroyed by bandits is at least as much a core D&D fighter than the veteran mercenary.

And there is no particular reason why barbarians need to be dumb either. Conan wasn't.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Two of the fighter subclasses are already explicitly magical.

The proposal is, "make 100% of Warlords magical."

Would you accept Champions being classified as magical, people who innately have magical powers that nobody really knows where they come from?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The base class might use magic.

You can "insist that it was just years of hard work; endless hours thinking of the best stratagems, honing their minds into a razor sharp edge."

Blurr the lines a bit.

You can already shrug off mortal wounds by sleeping.

There is no blurring the lines a bit. They are, intentionally, hard and bright and unavoidable.

Either the powers stop working where magic stops working, or they don't. It is trivial to determine whether something actually is magic or not in D&D.

 

[mellored]

There is no blurring the lines a bit. They are, intentionally, hard and bright and unavoidable.

Either the powers stop working where magic stops working, or they don't. It is trivial to determine whether something actually is magic or not in D&D.

Does a monk stop being able to run on water when in an anti-magic circle?
Do dragonborn lose the ability to fly?
Do dwarfs lose their darkvision?
How about halflings luck?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Does a monk stop being able to run on water when in an anti-magic circle?
Do dragonborn lose the ability to fly?
Do dwarfs lose their darkvision?
How about halflings luck?

You specifically said adding the word "magic." Officially, the test for whether something stops working in an antimagic field has, as its final question, a check for whether or not it is described as magic or magical. If it is, it turns off in an AMF.

Hence, you have explicitly and officially made all Warlords magical by referring to it as magical in the description of the class. This test is cut and dried. No blurred lines (a distinct rarity among 5e rules.)

As for your questions: yes because ki is explicitly called magical; I would need to see the new dragonborn text to say for sure; no for both dwarves and halflings, because these abilities do not meet the standard for the AMF test. They aren't magic items or spells, they don't refer to spells, they don't involve a spell attack, they aren't fuelled by spell slots, and they don't mention "magic" or "magical" in their description. Your suggestion re:Warlord pings that last thing.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i feel this thread is discussing alot the potential of warlord as filling the 'smart fighter' position, personally to me the warlord is not the 'smart fighter', or rather they are that in the same way that the barbarian is the 'brute fighter', the two non-fighter classes have different tools and design and serve a different role because of that, a barbarian is a damage sponge who trades off increased chances to hit for both themselves and their opponent, that is not the fighter's methods-the fighters methods are skill and tactics(fighting styles and manuvres) to improve their to-hit without sacrificing their own defences, a warlord uses their inteligence to protect, support and better position their team, that is not the fighter's methods-the fighters methods are using their inteligence to defend themselves, plan their own attacks and target weak points.

or to put more simply, the warlord concept is a martial designed for a support/defense role, the fighter concept is designed for striker/defense role, adding greater emphasis to how their inteligence factors into that doesn't fundamentally change their role IMO.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Does a monk stop being able to run on water when in an anti-magic circle?

Not magic. Supernatural, but not magic--a distinction the fandom refuses to acknowledge.

Do dragonborn lose the ability to fly?

Wings... are not magical.

Also when did dragonborn get to fly?

Do dwarfs lose their darkvision?

Retinas are also not magical.

How about halflings luck?

Supernatural but not magical.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Not magic. Supernatural, but not magic--a distinction the fandom refuses to acknowledge.

The text for the Monk class in 5.0 explicitly calls ki magical.

Wings... are not magical.

Also when did dragonborn get to fly?

5.5e gives them flight at some point IIRC? But it depends on the description. If it uses the word "magic[al]," can be fuelled by spell slots, or copies/mimics a spell, then it's magical. If it doesn't, then it isn't.

Retinas are also not magical.

Unless the description says otherwise, but in this case it doesn't.

Supernatural but not magical.

A distinction that has no clear meaning in 5.x. For this specific ability, however, you are correct that it is not magical because the description does not use the words "magic" or "magical" and it isn't a spell, doesn't refer to a spell for how it works, isn't a magic item, and isn't powered by spell slots.