D&D 5E The Fighter Problem

[Eubani]

Also [MENTION=6780269]dco[/MENTION] I'm curious about your thoughts about the cleric and wizard getting lots of subclasses in the PHB, and the fighter and rogue getting three subclasses in comparison. I see a double standard, but I'm suspecting you (and others) see it differently. How do you see it?

Aside from not being allowed to do more than HP damage and the occasional ability check fighters are also not allowed to take up page count. Page count is only allowed for spellcasters to suggest otherwise would anger the Spellcasters Supremacy League.

 

[Zardnaar]

You're not responding to the response I'm giving you, you're just repeating the "real world" response. Is there some reason you're doing that? Do you just think a setting shouldn't reflect feats and magic and long lived races with racial proficiency in some weapons and damage done by adventurers and such, and should instead reflect the real world which lacks those things? I'm just not seeing the logic in focusing on the real world as an example for a setting with those things in them.

D&D had plenty of magic longswords and bows are not exactly rare LMoP has a magic one iirc.

Not many (if any) magic polearms or hand crossbows in 5E wotc adventures.

It up to the DM to balance 5E. Not gonna enable powergamers abusing the -5/+10 by giving them an awesome weapon over another PC who took another option.

Unless the adventure has one of those weapons.

 

[Arnwolf666]

Aside from not being allowed to do more than HP damage and the occasional ability check fighters are also not allowed to take up page count. Page count is only allowed for spellcasters to suggest otherwise would anger the Spellcasters Supremacy League.

That's the beauty of the fighter. Cut and Dry. Love it. Would have it no other way.

 

[Mistwell]

D&D had plenty of magic longswords and bows are not exactly rare LMoP has a magic one iirc.

Not many (if any) magic polearms or hand crossbows in 5E wotc adventures.

You're doing it again - repeated your argument (for which I already responded to) rather than addressing my response to your argument.

"D&D's setting" is irrelevant, as are "5e wotc adventures", relative to what I was saying. Neither assumes feats for example.

YOUR setting - the one you control as DM, and not anyone else's. YOU chose to have feats in that setting - not WOTC, not past D&D settings, it's you who made that choice. Feats, by your own admission, tend to favor three types of weapons: 1) polearms, 2) two-handed weapons, and 3) longbows. We both know which three feats I am referring to when I list those, and you and I have discussed those three feats for years, and we both agree they are the three most powerful combat feats, right?

So given your setting has people who do substantially (and I mean very substantially) more damage to foes when they use one of those three weapons, why wouldn't IN YOUR SETTING (not WOTCs settings, and not their adventures, but your setting which uses feats) have those three types of weapons come up more often as magic items? You know, given it would be logical for such a setting that magic users who craft magic weapons would choose the weapons which come up most often for being effective at dealing death with said weapons?

I get you run published adventures and settings and then use choose to use the feats option, but I am replying to you saying you wouldn't choose to help players out with such weapons and they'd be rare magic items. That's not WOTC saying that or making that choice, it was you. So why would you say that, given you're the one who adapted WOTC materials with an optional feat system and then chose to not modify that setting to account for the feats you added to that world? It's not a matter of helping the players out - it's a matter of your setting not being very internally consistent anymore once you modified it to include feats but didn't modify it to include magic items which account for the feats modification.

It up to the DM to balance 5E. Not gonna enable powergamers abusing the -5/+10 by giving them an awesome weapon over another PC who took another option.

But that part is pure metagaming and has nothing to do with setting. If you wanted your setting to reflect that you shouldn't have modified it to include feats in the first place, and should certainly inform your players of your decision to not make that logical modification concerning magic items as well before they choose those feats (rather than complaining about them being power gamers who have bad expectations about magic items which you created for them when you opted to include the feats they're choosing).

As it is, you modified it to include feats, didn't modify it to include the logical ramifications of those feats in terms of magic weapons, and then offered the weak excuse of "Oh the published adventures don't have those weapons, they're more rare in this world because...reasons." Even though the "reasons" no longer make sense when you modify that setting with feats.

That's some crappy DM'ing right there. If you modify a setting, then don't fall back on the excuse of "the adventure was published that way." So modify the adventure to adapt to your setting modifications!

 

[Eubani]

I still firmly believe that the Fighter should of been 2 classes a simple class and an advanced one, furthermore I would of also made 1 or 2 simple spellcasting classes most likely one divine and one arcane. Yet for some reason only the fighter has to bare the burden of being the simple class which says something of what the designers think about the class and it's players.

 

[Zardnaar]

You're doing it again - repeated your argument (for which I already responded to) rather than addressing my response to your argument.

"D&D's setting" is irrelevant, as are "5e wotc adventures", relative to what I was saying. Neither assumes feats for example.

YOUR setting - the one you control as DM, and not anyone else's. YOU chose to have feats in that setting - not WOTC, not past D&D settings, it's you who made that choice. Feats, by your own admission, tend to favor three types of weapons: 1) polearms, 2) two-handed weapons, and 3) longbows. We both know which three feats I am referring to when I list those, and you and I have discussed those three feats for years, and we both agree they are the three most powerful combat feats, right?

So given your setting has people who do substantially (and I mean very substantially) more damage to foes when they use one of those three weapons, why wouldn't IN YOUR SETTING (not WOTCs settings, and not their adventures, but your setting which uses feats) have those three types of weapons come up more often as magic items? You know, given it would be logical for such a setting that magic users who craft magic weapons would choose the weapons which come up most often for being effective at dealing death with said weapons?

I get you run published adventures and settings and then use choose to use the feats option, but I am replying to you saying you wouldn't choose to help players out with such weapons and they'd be rare magic items. That's not WOTC saying that or making that choice, it was you. So why would you say that, given you're the one who adapted WOTC materials with an optional feat system and then chose to not modify that setting to account for the feats you added to that world? It's not a matter of helping the players out - it's a matter of your setting not being very internally consistent anymore once you modified it to include feats but didn't modify it to include magic items which account for the feats modification.



But that part is pure metagaming and has nothing to do with setting. If you wanted your setting to reflect that you shouldn't have modified it to include feats in the first place, and should certainly inform your players of your decision to not make that logical modification concerning magic items as well before they choose those feats (rather than complaining about them being power gamers who have bad expectations about magic items which you created for them when you opted to include the feats they're choosing).

As it is, you modified it to include feats, didn't modify it to include the logical ramifications of those feats in terms of magic weapons, and then offered the weak excuse of "Oh the published adventures don't have those weapons, they're more rare in this world because...reasons." Even though the "reasons" no longer make sense when you modify that setting with feats.

That's some crappy DM'ing right there. If you modify a setting, then don't fall back on the excuse of "the adventure was published that way." So modify the adventure to adapt to your setting modifications!

Heroes use those weapons armies not so much. Most NPCs don't have feats so why would there be more magical equivilents where most people have no real use for them.

 

[S'mon]

As it is, you modified it to include feats, didn't modify it to include the logical ramifications of
those feats in terms of magic weapons...

This seems like 3e/PF thinking to me. IME PCs may or may not have access to Feats, at GM's option,
but NPCs never do, or almost never if the GM creates the occasional PC-class NPC and gives them Feats. But I have never seen an NPC with Feats in any campaign I've played or GM'd, or in any published material. So it makes no sense to assume that Feats are an established part of the world and that you have to modify legacy in-world item creation to take account of them.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

And then give the fighter (and the rogue while we're at it), a bunch of subclasses like the cleric & wizard get. On the conceit that the "CORE FOUR" classes are umbrellas for a broader range of character concepts, and thus should have 6-9 subclasses each.

To me, that would be really attractive design for the fighter. It would preserve the customization options without short-thrifting the narrative springboard.

EDIT: So in my revised PHB model, the "CORE FOUR" and their sub-classes might be...

Cleric (8): Death, Knowledge, Life, Light, Nature, Tempest, Trickery, War
Fighter (8): Borderlands Guard, Cavalier, Eldritch Knight, Gladiator, Monster Slayer, Veteran, Warlord, ?
Rogue (8): Arcane Trickster, Assassin, Mastermind, Swashbuckler, Thief, ?, ?, ?
Wizard (8): Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Necromancy, Transmutation, "Generalist"

Also [MENTION=6780269]dco[/MENTION] I'm curious about your thoughts about the cleric and wizard getting lots of subclasses in the PHB, and the fighter and rogue getting three subclasses in comparison. I see a double standard, but I'm suspecting you (and others) see it differently. How do you see it?

This is coming across as you wanting more subclasses for the Fighter purely because some other classes get more: numbers for the sake of the numbers.
Not because you have specific concepts that require subclasses of the fighter to express that cannot be expressed with the current subclasses.

Fighter (8): Borderlands Guard, Cavalier, Eldritch Knight, Gladiator, Monster Slayer, Veteran, Warlord, ?

Can you give a quick run-down of the subclass mechanics of each of these, and why they are necessary as specific separate subclasses please?

I generally view the distinction between Champion and Battlemaster as being similar in concept to the distinction between Sorceror and Wizard: two different methods and mechanics for the same broad concept. That doesn't mean that I believe that Champion and Battlemaster need to be two separate classes however: They work as they are.

I also think that you need to actually look and think about what the numbers of Wizard and Cleric subclasses that you are fixated on represent.
The wizard subclasses are simply the school of spells that the wizard emphasises. The Cleric's are just the aspect of their deity that they emphasise.
To my mind, that is equivalent to the Fighter's decision on the type of weapon or fighting style that they emphasise: they aren't concepts like the Rogue's archetypes, they are just expressions of specialisation like a Fighter picking Duelling style or the GWM feat for their Fighter bonus class feat.

Personally I like the way that the PHB Fighter subclasses aren't limited in scope to specific concepts. If I want to play a Samurai, I'm not pushed towards the Samurai Fighter Subclass: I can just play a Champion and use the decision points already in the class to bring out the concept. I agree with Mearls that the Champion subclass doesn't carry specific baggage with it, but disagree with him if he is stating that that is a bad thing.

 

[dco]

Also @dco I'm curious about your thoughts about the cleric and wizard getting lots of subclasses in the PHB, and the fighter and rogue getting three subclasses in comparison. I see a double standard, but I'm suspecting you (and others) see it differently. How do you see it?

I think D&D 5e should have done like True20 and let the players choose their own class features, let them build their own characters outside of defined archetypes. At least it would give the players some more variety, the game will always fail compared to some others building the character concepts of the players, on the other hand it has the thrill of leveling your archetype and acquire new powers.

Coming from that point of view I have no problem, with D&D I usually build my character concept from the class I want to try, first the class and powers and later the concept, if I play Hero system for example I buy the characteristics I need to configure the character I have in my head. That's me, and we have what we have, if there are only 3 subclasses instead of XXX what can I do?
But if I wanted more variety from the class in my opinion the subclasses of the wizard and the cleric have less differences compared to the differences between a Champion, Battlemaster and Eldritch Knight. Appart from a pair of features and bonuses for the school the differences will depend more on the spell selection, but you can have a lot of spells prepared and you will end using a lot of times the same ones, sleep, shield, etc, you could have more variation using a sorcerer if you choose different spells because you would be enforced to use them.
The fighter can have a more distinct gameplay from the start if you choose DEX or STR and a different fighting style, then we have the subclasses, one adds spells and maneuvers to use them, the other lots of different maneuvers, I could make a duellist, a leader, an archer that doesn't fail and all of them would be very different, and then we have the simplicity of the Champion.

 

[Mistwell]

Heroes use those weapons armies not so much. Most NPCs don't have feats so why would there be more magical equivilents where most people have no real use for them.

Because magic weapons are not typically made for armies (which cannot use them to much effect) but are rather used to kill monsters which are otherwise resistant or immune from non-magical attacks, in a setting where such exist. And those things are killed by adventurers. Who are also the ones who most often would make such weapons