D&D 5E The Fighter Extra Feat Fallacy

[Lehrbuch]

The point is that D&D fighters are already impossibly superhuman...
Now that we've established that we're dealing with superhuman tropes, we're really just haggling over the price point.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

However, I do suggest that you actually read how the PHB describes a fighter. There is utterly no mention that a fighter is meant to represent a superhuman.

The fighter (esp. at high level) might be an unrealistically good warrior (compared to actual reality). But (before you add EK or the possibility of magical items) the fighter is entirely grounded within the genre expectations of what is possible within the limits of human (or fantasy race) capability. Especially, the genre expectations of a character who is a protagonist of the story.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

However, I do suggest that you actually read how the PHB describes a fighter. There is utterly no mention that a fighter is meant to represent a superhuman.

The fighter (esp. at high level) might be an unrealistically good warrior (compared to actual reality). But (before you add EK or the possibility of magical items) the fighter is entirely grounded within the genre expectations of what is possible within the limits of human (or fantasy race) capability. Especially, the genre expectations of a character who is a protagonist of the story.

How the PHB describes it may be a reasonable assumption of the intent, but what it does is the only measure of what it does. Intent is really beside the point.

 

[Imaro]

Nose dive off a 1000' structure and stick the landing.

Routinely jump 20' at will. Further, depending on how the DM lets athletics interact with jumping.

Stand against 200 orcs and kill them all. (sword and board, no magic, duelist weapon style, no use of action surge, no use of second wind, level 17 average hitpoints).

Stand in the center of a ancient red dragon's breath. Three times if you make the save on 2 and second wind.

This isn't considering any use of feats or subclasses and are off the top of my head.

I'm pretty sure S&S heroes as well as pulp heroes have done comparable feats to the ones you've listed above, S&S doesn't begin and end with Conan. Though in all honesty I'm not going to go back and look through all S&S fiction to find them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

oh. Now I get what you're getting at with this double standard thing.

That's a horrible example of it, though.

Giving the fighter an ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound isn't genre appropriate for the fighter's flavor.

You mean the core fighter, before considering sub-classes, I had to remind myself
- yeah, I get that you need the core fighter to be preserved from the superhuman as well as the supernatural & the overtly magical, to keep open options closer to gritty-realism (though, I really think you'd have to limit level, severely, as well).

But, yes, superhuman abilities like leaping over a castle wall could be opened up in some hypothetical sub-class - or new class without so much design space locked up, nor so much baggage - at some appropriate level...

To borrow my example from above, adding such a feature to tbe Punisher would drag him across that line under the Russian's feet, and turn him into a character with the flavor of Captain America.

Which'd be a fine flavor for a fighter sub-class, like the Knight, I suppose.

Nose dive off a 1000' structure and stick the landing.

Routinely jump 20' at will.

I'd just like to contrast these two (not to pick on them or you, the contrast just struck me).

The former is humorous, but it's otherwise perfectly plausible, a high-level character can suck up the average 70 points of damage from falling 200' or more ('terminal velocity' doesn't work quite the same in a fantasy world), though he'd have to negate that damage - for instance, with the 1st-level Feather Fall spell - to 'stick the landing' (not land prone).

'Realistically' people just do not survive terminal-velocity falls. Falls from surprisingly great heights, with horrifying injuries, sure, but not, rest an hour, you're fine.

So, yeah, pretty superhuman. Not a fighter ability, per se, and significantly more painful than sticking the landing with feather fall, but there it is.

Compare that to a 20' long-jump. That's not superhuman, but it is very impressive - if you're competing in middle school track & field.

Further, depending on how the DM lets athletics interact with jumping.

I should certainly hope so!

To be fair, it's only another 10' from gifted kid to world-record-holder Olympian.

The line is drawn somewhere between the two extremes. That it should be more than now and less than jumping over castle walls (although there's an argument there for wuxia themed games) isn't an argument that it cannot be drawn at all.

Less than jumping over the moon anyway ("what, not even the full moon first thing in the evening when it's really close to the horizon?" "No." "But that cow did it..." "Yes, but it's a Sacred cow, sorry.")

The fighter (esp. at high level) might be an unrealistically good warrior (compared to actual reality). But (before you add EK or the possibility of magical items) the fighter is entirely grounded within the genre expectations of what is possible within the limits of human (or fantasy race) capability. Especially, the genre expectations of a character who is a protagonist of the story.

A little overboard in some areas, due to system artifacts (like hps, that apply to all classes, really), a little too grounded in some, washed aground on 'realism' in others. It's very uneven.

 

[Gwarok]

Fighter are as boring or weak as the player is.

This more less sums it up. Was Conan boring? He had a sword. He hacked people to death with it. That was it. I think he had all of 12 lines in the entire first movie. None of that stopped him from being a legend and getting no small amount of us into this game in the first place. Funny how so many players seem to think that game mechanics need to be adjusted so their character is more interesting.

 

[Mort]

This more less sums it up. Was Conan boring? He had a sword. He hacked people to death with it. That was it. I think he had all of 12 lines in the entire first movie. None of that stopped him from being a legend and getting no small amount of us into this game in the first place. Funny how so many players seem to think that game mechanics need to be adjusted so their character is more interesting.

Conan was the focus of the movies/novels, A PC is part of a group of people at the table.

More to the point, that's not what the OP is complaining about. His complaint is that the Fighter has to sacrifice a portion of his combat effectiveness (by giving up a stat bump or devoting a feat to non-combat purposes) if he wishes to gain competence in the social or exploration leg of the game. Other classes, Wizard, Cleric, even Paladin don't have to do that.

That statement is what's being debated - and the length of the thread certainly implies it's not straightforward or easy.

 

[Satyrn]

You mean the core fighter, before considering sub-classes, I had to remind myself
- yeah, I get that you need the core fighter to be preserved from the superhuman as well as the supernatural & the overtly magical, to keep open options closer to gritty-realism (though, I really think you'd have to limit level, severely, as well).

Not Gritty Realism.

There is no gritty realism to Frank Castle, John MacClane, Lancelot and (to add another) Iolus from Hercules: The Legendary Journey.

Flat out: I want the option to play a class/subclass that has no magical, supernatural, or superhuman features.

Whether hitpoint rules make for wonky falling rules, or whatever else in the rules you argue make my character superhuman is outside of that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Flat out: I want the option to play a class/subclass that has no magical, supernatural, or superhuman features.

Yeah, that's gotten labeled 'gritty realism' or 'not fantasy at all,' but I get it, and support the objective.

Whether hitpoint rules make for wonky falling rules, or whatever else in the rules you argue make my character superhuman is outside of that.

They speak directly to it, and not in a nice way - what you want is really already impossible in a few areas because of vagaries of the system - so, understandably, you don't want to lose more of it.

Ideally, it'd be cool if there were a way to give characters like that enough normal abilities or other compensations that they could be fully competitive. In fiction, when you have a character that's not in the league of others in the same story, and not merely a side-kick, it may have a single specific skill that makes it vital ('niche protection' in D&D) or it may receive extra generous portions of luck, plot armor, and author force. Those things are not impossible to model in an RPG.

To bring it around to the original topic, more support for the other two pillars could be a fine way to bring such a baseline fighter into the other two pillars, making it more valuable (as something other than a meat shield) to the superhuman/supernatural magic-using portion of the party.

More to the point, that's not what the OP is complaining about. His complaint is that the Fighter has to sacrifice a portion of his combat effectiveness (by giving up a stat bump or devoting a feat to non-combat purposes) if he wishes to gain competence in the social or exploration leg of the game. Other classes, Wizard, Cleric, even Paladin don't have to do that.

That statement is what's being debated - and the length of the thread certainly implies it's not straightforward or easy.

Well, it was, these things always drift.

But long threads indicate three things: the resolve of the exponents, the determination of the opponents, and, a distant third, the complexity of the topic.

This one's comparatively simple. Exponents of the 5e incarnation of "Fighter SUX" count at least 3 shortcomings of the fighter class, which, in theory, might each be addressed by devoting the class's two bonus feats to them. Whether it takes one feat or both to bring the shortcoming up to snuff, 2 < 3.

 

[James Gasik]

Now if D&D in any way resembled Conan's world, we wouldn't be discussing how the Fighter is being held back. Because last I checked, Conan didn't need a guy to Healing Word him once a fight while he was down making death saves, nor do I recall Mako's Wizard making sure Conan routinely got Haste (and Fly for all those Dragon fights).

So what is a player supposed to do, exactly, to make his Fighter able to hit all enemies in a 20' radius for 8d6 fire damage? The guy can't even get Whirlwind Attack anymore!

I could go on listing all the myriad ways the Fighter is hamstrung in combat, the one thing he's good at, but I know the kind of answers I'd get "well the Fighter isn't supposed to be able to deal with all situations" or "get out a bow and shoot things".

 

[Tony Vargas]

I could go on listing all the myriad ways the Fighter is hamstrung in combat, the one thing he's good at, but I know the kind of answers I'd get "well the Fighter isn't supposed to be able to deal with all situations" or "get out a bow and shoot things".

Don't forget "just use your bonus feat to..."