D&D 5E The Legacy of the Fighter in 5 to 10 years

[Imaro]

I think the contention is pretty clear and it isn't about combat prowess. It is about the noncombat prowess of high mid to epic level fighters not remotely making any sense relative to their combat prowess...or when considered in context with the setting as a whole. It is about the incoherency of the inclination toward binding the D&D archetype of the Fighter/Fighting Man by our world metrics (lifting, running, leaping, etc) and our world physics (eg 1 earth gravity and the same atmospheric conditions). It is typically done on the basis of "versimilitude" but it couldn't be less "versimilitudinous" because it is nonsensical. I made the contention in the other thread and was hoping for some engagement on it, but there was none.

1) If a human in our world physically faces down a tiger or a grizzly bear and lives to tell the tale (forget about slaying it), the encounter quickly becomes legend. Naturally, we assume (and rightly so), that this person's physical prowess and mental/physical prowess is far beyond the extraordinary.

D&D Fighters with a few levels do this routinely, over and over, and with relative ease. If this were to happen in our real world, we would assume, and rightly so, that this person's physical prowess is basically supernatural. We would assume that they can leap higher, lift more, move faster, go for longer than any man (by a fair stretch) in human history. We would, rightly, assume they must be utterly unflinching at the prospect of anything that should produce paralyzing fear.

Aragorn, Boromir, Gimli, Conan, Legolas, Solomon Kane, etc. all do feats that match or exceed the ones you're listing and yet they aren't considered "supernatural"... and seem well within the power level of a low level fighter...

2) D&D mid-high and epic level Fighters come face to, well, ankle, with Tyrannosaurs. And slay them. This is one of the (if not THE) apex land predator in earth's history. It is a creature of such size, strength, sprinting speed, killing capacity, and sheer ferocity that the idea of a human doing anything but running for their lives from it (without the aid of an extremely high-cal mini-gun...and even with that...) strikes us as beyond absurd. Assuming a T-Rex were available, if someone were to say to you "that dude over there waded into melee with a T-Rex and took it down...and then ate a sandwich", you would think one of two things; (1) this guy is delusional or (2) that dude must have supernatural strength, agility, speed, toughness, mettle, what-have-you.

And Conan fights off Elder gods (Or whatever that thing was in the pit)... Aragorn faces down a group of Ringwraiths with a sword and torch... Gimli kills hordes of Orcs and Dire hyenas, Legolas does the same but also slays a gigantic elephant, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser defeat a living tower, Bard slays Smaug... and so on.

D&D Fighters of requisite level can do the former (wading into melee with a T-Rex and slaying them) routinely. Yet they are supposed to have very mundane, height-of-human-capacity (and with several GMs who just don't have the slightest clue about what humans are actually capable of...less than height of human capacity) on this here earth physical capacity.

See this is the mistake here... it's not earthly capacity... it's Sword and Sorcery/High Fantasy capacity...which arguably is a much stronger influence on D&D then myths... In other words they kill T-Rex's and Dragons like this...

[video=youtube;sMjkfZ3q8tE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMjkfZ3q8tE[/video]


Or like this...
[video=youtube;y7c0N8ADRoQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7c0N8ADRoQ[/video]

EDIT: One of the biggest differences I see between the S&S/HF fighter vs. the Mythic one isn't what they are capable of accomplishing but how they go about doing it. Bard, arguably a regular, and pretty unexceptional (compared to others) fighter is able to slay the mighty Wyrm Smaug without super powers...just an arrow...

 

[Eric V]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], great post...as for any possible explanation for the discrepencies you pointed out, I guess we have to default to "It's magic!"*

*A variation of "A wizard did it."

 

[Imaro]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], great post...as for any possible explanation for the discrepencies you pointed out, I guess we have to default to "It's magic!"*

*A variation of "A wizard did it."

Or not...

 

[Remathilis]

So that's a third of your list that doesn't (or at least might not) meet your own requirements, a few more were seen as beyond the mundane to the people who originally told the stories, 1500-2000 years ago, and another third that don't meet the "myth and legend" bit in the first place.

The problem with Myth is that its heroes tend to by Supermen. That's why they are our myths. As you pointed out, a story of a mundane hero is probably history, a story of a great hero is myth, and great heroes need a reason why they are great. Blood of Kings. Divine Ancestry. Blessings of the Gods. Magical Items. Myth often espouses the idea that "leaders are great men" rather than "great men become leaders." Hell, even the Fellowship of the Ring is full of royal scions (Legolas is son of Thranduil, King of the Northern Elves. Gimli is of Durin's line and thus connected to dwarven royalty, Frodo himself is a noble among hobbits. Boromir's fall is partially due to being the son of the Steward of Gondor who was an improper or false ruler, lacking the noble qualities of true royal blood). Mythic heroes don't go from "Zero to Hero", they are literally BORN heroes! Name a myth, I'll name a hero born with the blood of Kings, Angels, Demons, or Gods in them.

Which goes to the next obvious question: are all D&D fighters born better than common men? Do they all harbor some hidden bloodline or blessing in order to justify their high ability scores, supernatural abilities, and advanced training? True "Everyman" heroes are rare; those plucked from the common folk are scant. Simply put, most ancient storytellers created reasons why these heroes were superheroes and most of it came down to birthright. D&D puts no such restriction on its heroes, so its much harder of them to emulate the genre of mythic hero unless you're willing to give them mythic origins. (Kinda like Exalted).

[As an aside: Magic is usually the pervue of rare bloodlines themselves. Merlin, Circe, Medea, Cassandra, Gandalf, even Harry Potter get their powers from supernatural births or bloodlines (or in Gandalf's case, being a frickin angel) which makes them poor examples of wizardry in D&D. Clerics almost epitomize the "blessed by the Gods" trope. In fact, the only class that consistently comes from low birth and rarely has extraordinary birthrights is... rogues.]

 

[Sacrosanct]

You might want to check your mythologies. Cú Chulainn is the son of Lugh, the god of light. Miyamoto Musashi is of the Fujiwara clan, which intermarried numerous times with the Imperial line, which (historically) claimed direct descent from Amaterasu, so he might or might not be of divine heritage. Karna is the son of Surya, the Hindu sun god. Jason was the great-grandson of Hellen (not to be confused with Helen--this is a dude) and the nymph Orseis (daughter of Oceanus, Zeus, or some river-god I'd never heard of). Hector was of the Trojan royal family, and thus descended from both Dardanus (son of Zeus and Elektra) and from Tros (grandson of Dardanus) who married a daughter of Simoeis, the river-god of the Trojan river-plain.

I couldn't track down the lineage of Ragnar, though it would seem at least one of his important ancestors appeared out of nowhere as an infant. Arthur, in his modern depiction, doesn't have any real 'superpowers,' but his old Welsh origins absolutely depict him as interacting with the supernatural on a regular basis and leading a posse of "superhero" warrior-types (check this page, do a search for "superhero"). Plus, his father Uther may even have been a sorcerer--there are tales that suggest he is the origin of one of the "Three Great Enchantments" of Britain, and that originally it was Uther himself who did the transformative magic to trick Igraine (with Merlin being a later, French substitution). Horatius Cocles was generally believed--even in the days of Rome, such as in the writings of Livy--to be either made up, or to be an extremely aggrandized version of whatever actually occurred, because even the people of his day found the story implausible.

And much of the rest of your list...isn't actually people from myth or legend. Hannibal? Spartacus? Purely historical figures--or, at least, I've never heard a single "myth" told about them (not in the same way people tell myths about Hercules or Perseus, anyway). Alaric, Yue Fei, and Attila didn't get myths told about them either: they had histories written about them. Roland is sort of an edge case, as he is limitedly present in historical texts, but pretty heavily romanticized.

So that's a third of your list that doesn't (or at least might not) meet your own requirements, a few more were seen as beyond the mundane to the people who originally told the stories, 1500-2000 years ago, and another third that don't meet the "myth and legend" bit in the first place.

Not that I think that "I can list a bunch of mythical, historical, or mixed mythical-historical people who were awesome and mundane" actually defeats the comment you responded to. "The Fighter should be able to emulate historical warriors" is not in any way incompatible with "the Fighter should be able to emulate many heroic archetypes of history, myth, and legend."

Best this is addressed in bullet form rather than multi-quote

1. It was already pointed out how I did have one or two who were descended from divine nature that I didn't realize. Hardly impacts or voids the rest of the list
2. Ragnar, and Arthur were based on real people. Most (but not all) historical scholars agree that Nennius's records are accurate, and Arthur was inspired by Owain Ddantgwyn from the kingdom of Powys in the late 5th century. Back then, leaders were called by their battle name, and Owain's battleflag was the bear--or "Arth" in the local language. "The bear" = "Arthur". But that's really beside the point and not relevant. What is relevant is you have an entire group of warriors from myth and legend (the phrase used) that didn't do anything more than what a fighter can do in D&D
4. Historical figures are also legendary. That was a word used. "Myth and legend". Or are you now also in the business of changing/ignoring what words mean to suit your biases?


Ashkelon told Imaro that "you can keep fighters mundane if you want, but I want my fighters to represent those figures from myth and legend" as his reasoning for giving them non-mundane superpowers. I provided a list of people (even if you take off the one or two from direct god-spawning) who are from myth and legend who haven't done anything more than a fighter can do. Therefore, Ashkelon's claim was incorrect. You can create a fighter as currently built to emulate heroes from myth and legend and saying that someone like me or Imaro who prefer the current fighter can't be inspired by heroes of myth and legend is flat out false.

So far none of you have been able to show what feats most of those people did from that list that a D&D fighter as built can't do. All you've done is manage to shift the goalposts so hard it's about to set off the Cascadia fault line.

*edit* Oh, and I see we've now moved onto the "if a fighter can kill a T-rex, which isn't realistic, then the fighter should be able to have all these other super powers too" fallacy. Even if you set aside that fallacy, that's not the argument being made. The argument being made is that you guys are arguing that the fighter needs to have superhuman abilities above and beyond how they are designed now, and we're arguing that the fighter is fine as built and doesn't need them. We are not arguing that the fighter should have to match what a human in real life can do exactly, and all the way up to level 20.

 

[Minigiant]

I kinda think my original thoughts on the fighter are true.

1) Many don't understand the strengths and legacy of the fighter.
2) Many groups don't play 5th edition the way it was designed to be played nor do they adjust the game based on these assumptions to match their desires.
3) It this game or any future form of D&D or the fighter were designed based on many of the ideas in this thread, not only would the legacy of the fighter be dramatically changed but there would be a rather high chance of the resulting game having other unintended factors and consequences which would not be desired.

The 5th edition fighter follows most of the fighter's tradition and continues its legacy. Alter that and you might hate the result.

The fighter might start stepping on the rogue's toes. The desire of a shorter adventuring day means heavily nerfed casters. Ability scores might start getting complicated as secondary effects of strength, dexterity, speed, and toughness are added. Melee Fights between warriors and mages might become more realistic (aka curb stomp battles and dead mages). Etc.

 

[KarinsDad]

Ragnar, and Arthur were based on real people. Most (but not all) historical scholars agree that Nennius's records are accurate, and Arthur was inspired by Owain Ddantgwyn from the kingdom of Powys in the late 5th century. Back then, leaders were called by their battle name, and Owain's battleflag was the bear--or "Arth" in the local language. "The bear" = "Arthur".

Arthur? Owain Ddantgwyn?

Hmmm

How about wiki? Nope. Conjecture there.

Scholars (and others) have put up a dozen different possible historical figures, none of which have any substantial evidence. It's unlikely that we will ever know. It's not like people did not write fiction back then (and they especially did so in the 12th century when discussing 5th century people).

 

[Ashkelon]

I kinda think my original thoughts on the fighter are true.

1) Many don't understand the strengths and legacy of the fighter.

The strength and legacy of the fighter is that it is good with all weapons, right? That isn't really true in 5e though. From levels 1-10 the fighter is not meaningfully better with all weapons than the barbarian, paladin, or ranger.

2) Many groups don't play 5th edition the way it was designed to be played nor do they adjust the game based on these assumptions to match their desires.

I also showed that even using the games base assumptions for number of encounters and number of rests, the fighter isn't meaningfully ahead of the barbarian, paladin, or ranger in terms of DPR or survivability.

3) It this game or any future form of D&D or the fighter were designed based on many of the ideas in this thread, not only would the legacy of the fighter be dramatically changed but there would be a rather high chance of the resulting game having other unintended factors and consequences which would not be desired.

Which is of course why we are saying leave the 5e fighter as is and give us a "mythic warrior" class. The developers have even hinted that such a class is potentially on the horizon when they asked about martial adepts.

The 5th edition fighter follows most of the fighter's tradition and continues its legacy. Alter that and you might hate the result.

Again, which is why I would rather see a separate class. That way everyone who want the generic and mundane fighter can have what they want, while everyone who wants their mythic warrior can get that too.

The fighter might start stepping on the rogue's toes.

Unlikely. Giving the fighter expertise in STR checks wouldn't come close to matching the utility of the rogues expertise in 2 skills, 2 extra trained skills, reliable talent, and cunning action.

And aside from that, why is it a problem if the fighter steps on the rogues toes a little outside of combat. The rogue can dish out similar damage to the fighter in combat, isn't that stepping on the fighter's toes? The rogue can actually be an exceptional combatant at both melee and range at the same time, something the 5e fighter currently struggled with.

The desire of a shorter adventuring day means heavily nerfed casters.

Doesn't shorter adventuring days mean more powerful casters? Same number of spells per day but fewer rounds of combat leads to higher spell utilization.

Ability scores might start getting complicated as secondary effects of strength, dexterity, speed, and toughness are added.

not even sure what you are trying to say here. Are you saying that jumping further and lifting more are abilities that are too complicated for players? You do realize such abilities exist in game already (Bull' Strength spell, jump spell, bear totem feature, Goliath racial, monk step of the wind, etc).

Melee Fights between warriors and mages might become more realistic (aka curb stomp battles and dead mages). Etc.

How? How did any of the suggested abilities pertain to combat in a way that would help defeat a spellcaster?

Lifting more - nope
Jumping further - nope
Proficiency in STR and CON checks - nope

Even expertise in athletics won't help much, as a grappled Mage can still cast spells unimpeded. And such a Mage could simply use misty step to teleport out of the grapple. Or cast a spell that causes forced movement to break the grapple.

 

[LapBandit]

I've always felt the Battle Master moves should be open to all Fighters and then expanded to feats of strength/constitution. Things like expend a Superiority die and double somehow greatly enhance a STR, CON, or Athletics check. Gives you the abilities/flavor of some of the mythic warriors of old. The archetype to replace Battle Master would be 1/3 bard (like the Purple Dragon Knights of Corymyr they're including in the Sword Coast campaign guide).

 

[Tony Vargas]

Single target DPR is split into melee and ranged.
Now pre-3e, the relation with fighters, paladins, and rangers was weird as the latter 2 classes were "fighter+" classes and were "better" than fighters of the same level. XP wasn't normalized so comparing classes was weird then.

I didn't mean Specialization as in weapon specialization feats and features. I said specialties, as in STR fighters were better at melee and DEX fighter were better at range.

There were no 'DEX fighters' (at least, not officially, some of us wrote variants) prior to 3e, and even those were tenuous.

The problem was that a fighter who wanted to be good at ranged combat needed very good DEX for the 'reaction/attacking bonus,' but /also/ needed very high STR and special ranged weapons made specifically for that STR, to have the damage bonus to keep up with what melee fighters could do. By the same token, high DEX and heavy armor was a desirable combination, since there was no maxDEX to AC cap. So there were not specialized 'STR' fighters and DEX fighters in classic D&D - you maximized both if you possibly could.

Specialization came later in 1e, and in 2e, and at that point, you had double-specialized-dual-wielding fighters dominating in melee, and bow-specialists dominating at range. Even then, though, they both required both high STR and high DEX for optimal effectiveness.

Of the 5e fighter it is definitely true.
The 5e one has the highest average of Melee DPR, Ranged DPR, Defending, Solo killing, Horde breaking, Toughness, Single turn Novaing, and Adventuring Longevity at most levels of 5th edition.

I think you're double-counting some stuff there. Multi-attacking gives you high single-target DPR in melee or ranged, so Solo Killing and both kinds of DPR are just the multi-attacking feature (though I'm not disputing it's a mechanically potent, even problematic feature).

But, at bottom, you have GWM melee fighters and SS archery fighters as the optimal specializations in 5e. Except for the dominant melee style being one big weapon instead of two little ones, it's very close to the 2e status-quo.

I found my experiences with 5e fighters and the stories on the web to have them less likely to be useless if the DM follows the guidelines and varies encounters.

That was the key in 3e, too. Well, not so much following guidelines, which are iffy in both cases, but varying the campaign. A DM could impose splotlight balance in 3.x by varying challenges enough. It wasn't easy, but, in spite of the Cult of RAW, it was possible. 5e makes imposing spotlight balance much easier, since the DM is empowered not just to vary the content of encounters or nature of challenges or length of the day, but to make rulings, turn by turn, to assure that spotlight shines where it needs to.

Same way you cut them off without magic: reduce them to 0 hp and give it a stylish, dramatic description for its death.

That'd suit me, fine. Thing is, the D&D fighter loses a lot of effectiveness the moment you take weapons out of the picture. Niche protection for the Monk, I suppose. It looked like 5e wasn't going to be quite that bad, but it seems unarmed attacks aren't going to be counting as 'weapons,' afterall.

The problem here is what constitutes mundane?

It does seem to be being used differently. Sometimes, to designate not casting spells or using other supernatural or magical abilities. Sometimes to mean 'ordinary' and bound by modern perceptions of what is physically possible. The former is reasonable enough - there are still a few sub-classes that meet that definition. The latter, in the context of an FRPG, is just absurd.

Sure seems like he's making a claim to me. So I asked him to provide examples of those heroes I listed doing what he said they do. Which he hasn't.

It seems you have each made some claims. I do not see yours being substantiated. You can badger Ashkelon for not giving you a specific citation if you like, but it's not like we can't all look up the Song of Roland and see that the crazy stuff that was attributed to him, just for one example from you list.

I mean, you still are saying things like"The 5e fighter doesn't have exceptional strength, skill, speed, or endurance. At lest not when compared to heroes of myth and legend." and I just gave you a list of heroes of myth and legend not having anything more powerful than a current 5e fighter has.

You can sure pack a lot of logical fallacies into a single statement.

Ashkelon just needs to provide examples of characters from myth/legend who do perform superhuman feats beyond what the fighter can do. Providing lists of historical persons who aren't reputed to have performed superhuman feats is meaningless.

Furthermore, you list /does/ contain characters from myth who did perform those kinds of feats. Ashkelon mentioned vertical leaps, for instance, and Cuchulain's "Salmon's Leap" is one of his famous feats.

Which you disagree with but can't actually come up examples of them doing what you said they do.

You've been given multiple examples. From your own list.

I think I'm gonna save myself the headache of trying to figure out your massive inconsistencies and just walk away.

promises, promises.