D&D 5E The Fighter Extra Feat Fallacy

[Ovinomancer]

I believe their data, buy it wasn’t controlled for anything, for example people like me or multi class. A survey here would be better.


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A survey here would actually be far worse. This is a self-selected community with a clear culture distinct from even other D&D focused message boards. Conducting a self-selected survey amongst this self-selected community with clear cultural preferences is pretty much next to useless for describing the D&D community as a whole. It might be cigar or it might not, but the data would be clearly skewed in uncorrectable ways.

 

[Sacrosanct]

A survey here would actually be far worse. This is a self-selected community with a clear culture distinct from even other D&D focused message boards. Conducting a self-selected survey amongst this self-selected community with clear cultural preferences is pretty much next to useless for describing the D&D community as a whole. It might be cigar or it might not, but the data would be clearly skewed in uncorrectable ways.

I agree that this forum has its biases because everywhere does, but it seems much more middle of the road and representative of typical gamers. I won't name names, but one forum is all "1e or else it sucks. 3e and 4e ruined the game", and another is all "anything less than 4e is unacceptable, and anyone who dares say a negative word about 4e will be banned" and yet the third forum that comes to mind is all "powergaming or bust, so 3e is the only decent version."

At least here it's pretty even keeled among editions, comparatively speaking. Therefore, I think polls here are pretty representative. Just because you (general you) don't like the results, doesn't mean the poll isn't pretty accurate.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Hard to say this without edition warring, but I'll try (and probably fail). I'll accept that the fighter was the most popular class during this period (I have no reason to doubt it), but granting that, it was the most popular class among players who didn't simply quit the game for a different game/edition or skip it entirely. And I gather that the design of the fighter was a fairly common reason players offered for why they were quitting or skipping the game. I understand there was sufficient concern about this that Wizards even tried to "fix" it in the middle of the product cycle.

At least in local circles, I don't know of anyone who quit the game while citing fighter powers as their primary motivation for doing so. A couple of people complained about some very specific fighter powers, and there was some generic grumbling about Daily maneuvers not making much sense in a non-magical context, but the near-universal complaint that caused people to drop the game was just that it didn't make sense for how the world works outside of the dungeon.

Everyone I personally know who quit 4E did so because of skill challenges, minions, and healing surges; it was just too difficult to try and reconcile the mechanics with the underlying narrative that those mechanics were meant to reflect. That fighters could cleave or chip, instead of just making a basic attack, was never more than a tertiary concern.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'll accept that the fighter was the most popular class during this period (I have no reason to doubt it), but granting that, it was the most popular class among players who didn't simply quit the game for a different game/edition or skip it entirely.

Yep. The popularity of the fighter transcends edition. Long-time players still like the fighter. Brand-new players gravitate to the fighter. Fans of 3e liked the Tier-5 fighter. Fans of 4e liked the balanced Fighter-as-'defender.' Fans of 1e liked the castle-building 'Lord' Fighter. Fans of 2e liked the TWF/double-specialized Cuisinart-of-doom fighter.

I have no idea if it was still the most popular class in PF (IIRC, PF did beef the class up substantially, didn't it? CMB, alone, seemed to me a boon), so I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were. Paizo ever run a class-popularity survey?

(Disclaimer: I skipped that edition because I was on hiatus when it launched, and I therefore missed all the edition warring, too. My sense of what happened is cobbled together after the fact.)

You're not wildly far off. There was a very strong initial reaction against the wizard & fighter in 4e - and to the absence of the Gnome from the Player's Handbook. The former was "nerfed into the ground," the latter was "casting spells." While the wizard was orders of magnitude less versatile/powerful than the "Tier 1 godwizard" of 3.5, it was still hands-down, the most versatile class in the game, with the unique ability to swap out spells on a long rest (something other classes eventually poached in a much more limited way at the cost of a feat per alternate power), at-will utility cantrips and non-combat rituals. The fighter, OTOH, categorically did not cast spells (and absolutely does cast spells in 5e), so that was prettymuch just blowing smoke. The Gnome appeared w/in a year, in the PH2. Hostilities escalated and made-up terms and recriminations flew, but it was, at bottom, mainly about the balance between 'martial' characters, particularly the Fighter (& Warlord), and casters, particularly the Wizard.
Essentials obliged, giving the wizard more powerful spells, increasing the power of many existing spells, & granting it still more flexibility to swap more of them out, and stripping the fighter of virtually all its maneuvers.
It wasn't enough.
5e was enough.

But none of that was enough to blunt the popularity of the fighter.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I agree that this forum has its biases because everywhere does, but it seems much more middle of the road and representative of typical gamers. I won't name names, but one forum is all "1e or else it sucks. 3e and 4e ruined the game", and another is all "anything less than 4e is unacceptable, and anyone who dares say a negative word about 4e will be banned" and yet the third forum that comes to mind is all "powergaming or bust, so 3e is the only decent version."

At least here it's pretty even keeled among editions, comparatively speaking. Therefore, I think polls here are pretty representative. Just because you (general you) don't like the results, doesn't mean the poll isn't pretty accurate.

My preference for results had nothing to do with it. I find such surveys interesting but not accusations against my preferences or confirmations of the same. It's what other peoole like, which had little bearing pin what I like.

No, it's because your absolutely wrong if you think ENW is representative of anyone but serious D&D fans that like to argue about the rules and talk gaming meta topics online. That's a bare fraction of the hobby as a whole, and one that generally had a different perspective on the game than the average player because they've discussed the meta and rules governing to death. The average player doesn't care about GWM or balance among classes or if the fighter isn't up to sniff with other classes. They like what they like.

We aren't representative of anything but a bunch of folks that like to talk about D&D online and like to do so here at ENW.

 

[Azzy]

Hard to say this without edition warring, but I'll try (and probably fail). I'll accept that the fighter was the most popular class during this period (I have no reason to doubt it), but granting that, it was the most popular class among players who didn't simply quit the game for a different game/edition or skip it entirely. And I gather that the design of the fighter was a fairly common reason players offered for why they were quitting or skipping the game. I understand there was sufficient concern about this that Wizards even tried to "fix" it in the middle of the product cycle.

If this is more-or-less accurate, it suggests that:

1. The fighter is really important to D&D.
2. You can, in fact, design a fighter that many players don't want to play, and
3. Because of #1, those players won't just opt not to play a fighter, they'll opt not to play the game at all.

(Disclaimer: I skipped that edition because I was on hiatus when it launched, and I therefore missed all the edition warring, too. My sense of what happened is cobbled together after the fact.)

The fighter (nor the warlord) was not in any way part of my decision to purposefully skip 4e.

 

[cmad1977]

Nobody quit 4e because of the fighter. They quit for a laundry list of legitimate reasons.


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[Greg Benage]

Nobody quit 4e because of the fighter. They quit for a laundry list of legitimate reasons.

No reason to belabor it -- there's plenty of commentary on that edition's fighter still out there on the internet. I don't have a dog in the fight (pun intended).

 

[Alexemplar]

Yeah, I'd put him in the Fighter category for sure. With the Archery Style, obviously.

Honestly, the Fighter class is probably the broadest class in the game, with so many examples from fiction that I can't understand all the insistence in this thread that the class is/must be superhuman or supernatural and so on. Surely such determinations are more about the campaign and setting, and the style of game that the group is going for.

Mostly because D&D generally ups the fantasy ante.

In most fantasy tales, raising the dead, increasing one's lifespan, curing any known ailment, teleportation long distances, summoning powerful spirits, etc represent the pinnacle of magical power, are usually only wielded by supernatural creatures and usually only show up a couple of times at most in a story. In D&D, they're cool tricks your mortal characters use to deal with daily inconveniences.

In such a high powered game where people wield such powers on a nigh daily basis, having some superhuman abilities (or plot contrivances) is kind of helpful.

Even Exalted draws the line at reviving the dead, long distance instantaneous travel, time travel, etc and you're playing almost literal gods.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Mostly because D&D generally ups the fantasy ante.

In most fantasy tales, raising the dead, increasing one's lifespan, curing any known ailment, teleportation long distances, summoning powerful spirits, etc represent the pinnacle of magical power, are usually only wielded by supernatural creatures and usually only show up a couple of times at most in a story. In D&D, they're cool tricks your mortal characters use to deal with daily inconveniences.

In such a high powered game where people wield such powers on a nigh daily basis, having some superhuman abilities (or plot contrivances) is kind of helpful.

Even Exalted draws the line at reviving the dead, long distance instantaneous travel, time travel, etc and you're playing almost literal gods.

Sure, that's generally true. But again, it really depends on the setting and the tone of the game or story. There is a default assumption of setting baked into the game, but that doesn't mean it's universal. If you just look back at the examples of characters that could be or are Fighters cited in this thread....the list is pretty encompassing.

Conan, John McClane, Batman, Jaime Lannister, Riverwind, Jean Tannin, Croaker, Hector, Athos....and so on. Different degrees of ability based on what makes sense for the world/setting/genre.

There's no reason to claim that a Fighter "must" have superhuman or supernatural abilities, or that a Fighter must not have them. There's room for a myriad of interpretations.

Again, this is the strength of the class. Most other classes in the game, with the exception of the Rogue, are far more niche. This tends to limit them to some extent...to pigeonhole them a bit. Speaking generally of course...there are always exceptions...but show me a list of fictional Wizards, and then tell me the characters in it are as varied as the Fighters. Especially once you also separate Sorcerors and Warlocks. Then, the other classes get even more niche...Clerics? Paladins? Bards? Each has maybe a handful of fictional representatives.

What makes a Wizard cool is the spells. What makes a Paladin cool is the smiting.

What makes a Fighter cool? It's up to the player.