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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9189746" data-attributes="member: 6877472">They did, though I think we have to look at the possible reasons why.-Exceptional Strength.-"Exceptional" Constitution.-AC that doesn't suck.-Ability to stack Dex and Armor.-Weapon Specialization.-"Cleaving" low level foes.-Better potential for hit points.-Magic item tables.-Better combat tables/Thac0.-Better saving throw advancement.-Sweet, sweet Kits (2e).-Extra Attacks.Now all this isn't true for all Fighters.  You might not have stats above 16.  You might be playing without UA if you're a 1e Fighter.  You might have a terrible Dex.  Your DM might not roll random items or use published modules.  You might just suck at rolling d10's for hit points.But it isn't impossible to imagine how all these options worked together to make the Fighter a powerhouse, especially in light of:-lower monster hit points.-lower monster AC (this one surprised me, my memories are of constantly having to deal with low AC enemies and not really caring with my Fighters, but looking through the monster books, it's surprising how many powerful foes in 1e had relatively normal AC's.  2e seems to have adjusted this, however).Digging up one of my old sheets, I have a Fighter 13 with 19 Strength, dual-wielding +3 weapons with specialization, and he gets 7/2 attacks per melee with a Thac0 of 1, dealing 1d8+12 damage per hit, which means his average damage against AC -10 is still like 28.8 and a Great Wyrm Red Dragon has like 108 hit points on average, meaning it could die inside of two rounds of combat!  And as for saving throws, between my Ring of Protection, Cloak of Displacement, +3 armor (2e rules), luckstone, and Scarab of Protection, there's a lot of saves I can only fail on a 1.  And as if all that wasn't bad enough, I still had about 120 hit points enemies needed to chew through before I had to run away and let my regeneration heal me back up, lol.Now though?  A Fighter 12 gets 3 attacks per turn for 2d6+6 (I can assume a +1 weapon, but I've never had a +2 or better in 5e.  Likely wouldn't have anything near my 2e Fighter's loadout of items).  Or can dual-wield (not usually a great choice) for 1d8+6 (8 if a Champion).Sure, there's Action Surge, but an Ancient Red is a CR 24 with something like 546 hit points!  A lot has changed, and quite a bit is worse for the 5e Fighter than his AD&D counterpart.</blockquote>

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