D&D 5E The New Fighter


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Klaus

First Post
At the very least, I wouldn't be opposed to the Fighter getting something like:

Military Knowledge:
The fighter has advantage on all checks to recall military lore.
 

Li Shenron

Legend
Maybe he doesn't need stuff, but IMO better question is is he better with some out-of-combat stuff or without it?

If you ask a player, of course they'll say that more is better... There are a couple of reasons why I don't think it's better for the game as a whole.

The first reason is that there is always room to add more stuff in your own game through house rules, but it's never nice to take stuff away, so as a general principle I don't like adding more features that aren't needed. Here we may disagree on the concept of "need", but if the problem is that a Fighter needs to have something to do out-of-combat, my opinion is that he already has, and 5e has already improved that by about double compared to 3e. Anyway my belief is that with too much stuff in the game players get too hung up on their uber character sheets and less focused on tactics, story, and teamwork.

The second reason is more subtle, and specific for the Fighter class. IMO every idea they will come up with for out-of-combat unique features will have to be chosen from a pool rather than automatic, otherwise it will narrow the concept behind the class (such as making all Fighters be soldiers or knight). Then, the game has already made the choice of opening up stuff like that to any character, through background/skills and specialties/feats, so the new ideas must not come at the expense of removing these options from everyone else. These things leave only small room for designing something out-of-combat that is (a) "Fightery" enough, (b) doesn't force a narrow archetype on all fighters, (c) doesn't work only at the expense of preventing others to be just as good at something. For example, there have been suggestions that Fighters should get some leadership features. Why would that be more fitting to a fighter than a wizard or cleric? Leadership in combat yes, that's more fitting to a fighter, but not out-of-combat.

But maybe it's not impossible to come up with something that everybody at least has no particular problems with. The current packet has started an idea of replacing class bonus skill (cleric and wizard) with a different benefit (advantage) that doesn't immediately make them the absolute best at those skills but makes them rather more reliable (and the benefit works both if such character has the skill trained or not). How about doing the same for the Fighter on fatigue-based saving throws? This doesn't imply any narrow concept on the class, and for me it would be "fightery" enough because it represents a very generic ability of being more resilient, after having spent years sweating and bleeding either in battle or training hard. What do you think?
 

BobTheNob

First Post
For the recovery of expertise dice I would like something kinda cool for fighters to be able to recover. Leave the "I can use an action bit", but its a fall back at best as we can allow for other, better thematic options.

For instance, a "bezerker" fighter might grant enemies attacking him advantage in order to recover one, thus incentivizing to take risks. Or the tank style character has a chance of recovering a point every time he is attacked, thus rewarding him and encouraging him to follow his path.
 

Klaus

First Post
For the recovery of expertise dice I would like something kinda cool for fighters to be able to recover. Leave the "I can use an action bit", but its a fall back at best as we can allow for other, better thematic options.

For instance, a "bezerker" fighter might grant enemies attacking him advantage in order to recover one, thus incentivizing to take risks. Or the tank style character has a chance of recovering a point every time he is attacked, thus rewarding him and encouraging him to follow his path.

And then you end up with Iron Heroes, which is an wesome (albeit complex) system, with different classes regaining "tokens" with different actions.
 


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