D&D 5E (2014) The Fighter Extra Feat Fallacy

[Hussar]

Seriously, though: 5e does have that pesky 'everyone who ever loved D&D,' so if he loved D&D for letting him play some utterly mundane fighter at some point, 5e should accomodate him, somehow - and it certainly seems to be doing so, or he wouldn't be so flustered at the prospect of someone else getting to play the much less mundane, but still non-magical fighter he loved playing in some other edition...

...FWIW.

For me, the problem is, that baseline makes the fighter rather flat and boring. Sure, as this thread has shown, a fighter can be competitive, and maybe even better than that, at a specific fighting niche, so long as you only play one type of fighter (two weapon wielding pistol crossbows using the reloading cheese errata ). The poor sword and board fighter, probably the most iconic staple of the genre, is so far down the list, that he's not even considered.

The thing is, in, say, 2e, that sword and board fighter was death on toast. He was the only class to get specialization - thus extra attacks far before anyone else. Plus one of the three classes with access to percentile strength. A purely mundane fighter WAS the best at fighting. No one else came even close and you certainly didn't need to futz about eking out every possible bonus he can find just to be able to keep up with the other classes.

Thing is, in 5e, that's not true. Yes, you can build a fighter that's pretty high up on the DPS list. But only if you take some pretty specific builds. Want to use a shield? Oops, now you are lagging behind. So on and so forth.

I thought the point of the fighter giving up pretty much any class based abilities related to social or exploration pillars was to make fighters best at fighting. Not "best at fighting if we cheese weasel every optimization concept we can lay our hands on". Simply best at fighting.

If the fighter isn't best at fighting, out of the gate, then why doesn't the fighter get stuff for the other pillars? There's no reason a fighter couldn't get bonuses to persuasion/intimidation based on his fame. Why not floating skill bonuses (like say a few d4's he can add to skill checks) for exploration stuff?

I guess my point is, what is the point of fighters being pretty good but not best unless you absolutely optimize him at fighting and not getting anything else? EVERY other fighter type class gets ribbons outside of combat. Totem barbarians get a boatload of goodies, paladins and rangers have spells and healing, monks have all sorts of stuff they can use out of combat.

Why is the fighter getting left in the cold. Would it terribly unbalance the fighter to give him a dice pool of skill bonus dice, in a similar vein to the cleric getting Guidance spells?

 

[Mort]

... The poor sword and board fighter, probably the most iconic staple of the genre, is so far down the list, that he's not even considered.

I don't think that's remotely true. A 5e sword and boarder is extremely viable and has good feature and feat support.

The thing is, in, say, 2e, that sword and board fighter was death on toast. He was the only class to get specialization - thus extra attacks far before anyone else. Plus one of the three classes with access to percentile strength. A purely mundane fighter WAS the best at fighting. No one else came even close and you certainly didn't need to futz about eking out every possible bonus he can find just to be able to keep up with the other classes.

Funny, I remember 2e as the eddition where most fighters went for the dual longswords ultra cheese option and completely abandoned the shield.

Thing is, in 5e, that's not true. Yes, you can build a fighter that's pretty high up on the DPS list. But only if you take some pretty specific builds. Want to use a shield? Oops, now you are lagging behind. So on and so forth.

Don't agree that shield fighters are sub par in this edition, but I'll actually agree with this point. Building an effective fighter is too hard in this edition (as it was in 3e). I hate that people consider fighters simple and mage the "more advanced" class. IME it's much easier to build an effective mage than an effective fighter, and even more easy to recover from a bad choice of feat etc.

As for your broader point, I've actually always agreed with it. Fighters could really use some options /expansions to make them the true masters of melee (before 11th level please!) and to give them some more flexibility /viability in the other two tiers of play.





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[Azzy]

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. 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.

Considering the good Captain has no supernatural abilities at all, I'm not seeing your objection here.

 

[Mistwell]

Which, depending on your weapon may or may not be usable for two more attacks. Still, granting that it's 8 attacks, at 11th level, just enough to attack each adjacent enemy on a typical grid when surrounded.

Now, in 3e, you could WWA with a reach weapon, like the infamous spiked chain, and attack every enemy w/in 10. Human-sized enemies completely surrounding you, that's 24. Can you make 24 attacks in 5e in one action? No. You can blow up that many or more human-sized enemies in a 20' radius with a 3rd level spell, but no way you're /attacking/ that many.

I am starting to seriously wonder if you actually play the game, or if you just white room theorize almost all of your experience with it.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Considering the good Captain has no supernatural abilities at all, I'm not seeing your objection here.

Fine line between "experimental serum granting superhuman abilities" and "supernatural". (Cf. Arthur C. Clarke on magic.) Seems to me you're splitting semantic hairs there.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I am starting to seriously wonder if you actually play the game, or if you just white room theorize almost all of your experience with it.

I'm pretty sure Tony does play quite a bit, but I think there's some confirmation bias going on here. I see people playing fighters all the time who are perfectly happy with them. But if you have decided that the fighter is bad (and maybe are still angry that there's no dedicated warlord) you are going to have very different perceptions.

 

[Azzy]

Fine line between "experimental serum granting superhuman abilities" and "supernatural". (Cf. Arthur C. Clarke on magic.) Seems to me you're splitting semantic hairs there.

Superhuman? More like the peak of human physical ability.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Superhuman? More like the peak of human physical ability.

Yes, that's how it's described in a (wait for it)...comic book. In the fantasy world of comic book heroes, Captain America is at the peak of human physical ability. As are Daredevil and Batman. In the real world, the stuff they do would be superhuman.

 

[shoak1]

The idea is to reward the players for being creative with a PC idea that isn't just a direct optimization of a PC, often using the forums here. CREATIVITY will be rewarded, you can actually play whatever you want.

Why on earth would you reward creativity? Freezing my poop and then making an ice sculpture out of it would be creative, but I wouldn't be expecting a reward for it. Nah, in my group we stick with rewarding good play, i.e. play that furthers the chances of the PCs winning. And just to be clear, yes, I said WIN. Don't suck or you will die - no reward for creativity at my table.

I guess you are like the guy who said if your not optimizing your PC you cant play in his game and really don't deserve to play the game at all.

Nah, you can still come play, but we will laugh at you, be condescending, and in general make it very clear how bad you suck. And even if your play improves, we will never let you forget about that time you decided to play a sickly old wizard lol.....

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't know....to me there's something to be said for the PC that, when his turn comes, knows exactly what he's going to do and makes his rolls knowing the exact math involved, and completes his turn in a fraction of the time of all the other PCs who have to thumb through spell books or flip flop back and forth due to analysis paralysis....

Such "turn optimization" seems to me to be at least comparable in value to "build optimization".

Fighters rule.