The Playtest Fighter

[Ellington]

The fighter seems to be one of the major gripes people have with the playtest, and I have to agree. I understand the need for a simple playstyle to appeal to new players, but that playstyle should be the exception and not the norm.

Most 5E players won't be new players, they'll be players that are at least somewhat familiar with D&D. I'd also think that if new players had made the decision to try and learn D&D in the first place, they'd put in a bit more effort than just learning how to hit stuff, which seems to be the only option for the playtest fighter.

After all the blog posts on how awesome the fighter was going to be, I can't help but feel incredibly let down. I know that they're going to offer more options later on in feats, but I'd like some fun abilities tied into the class itself that I don't have to go out of my way to get.

 

[I'm A Banana]

1. It's a playtest, not a finished product. This is a version of the fighter, not THE fighter
2. There should probably exist a simple fighter in the game for those who want a simple fighter.
3. Personally, I like the simple fighter, and plan on recommending it to the utter newbies I'll be playtesting a bit with, because it's a lot easier to grok quickly.

 

[Walking Dad]

I don't see a lack of ability, but I see the lack of options. I hope their will be something like combat maneuvers to give options without using feat for it. The feat the pregens got seemed all be tied to their theme (1st level) or background (3rd level).

Oh, and the axe uses the wrong dice, according to the guide.

 

[Danzauker]

For me, this fighter is ok as long as there is another fighter "build" which can do all the fun and crazy stuff that the 4Ed AEDU fighter could.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

The problem is that it's not merely a simple fighter, it's a boring fighter.

 

[ArmoredSaint]

For me, the biggest issue is that he very urgently needs better armour. He went down too fast, even with all those hit points. Heavy armour just needs to be better, period.

 

[Otakkun]

I had expected heavy armor to provide DR against weapons. Go figure.

A shame they ditched all the ideas of Tome of Battle. Just using a bit of that would've made fighters more interesting.

 

[Minigiant]

Actually it looks bad. The playtest fighter currently only show proficiencies and damage bonus. There is not anything to substitute out. Maybe the damage bonus canberra subbed out for maneuvers. But if the fighter remains like this... you will have to LAYER modules on top of it to not be just attacking and praying that the DM fiat is favorable to you if you want to do something other than damage.

 

[Walking Dad]

Actually you could take the theme of the dwarf cleric in the actual game to be more a tank than a damage dealer (I try to avoid 4e terms).

 

[Tehnai]

I'm personally expecting two things :

1- For the Weapon Master class ability to be one amongst many options one can choose.

2- For the fighter to be expected to try things like disarming and tripping his opponents, or use his environment more. We'll probably be trained back to the having fighters describe their attacks as "I'll try to attack him and push him back using my shield", and sort of Ad hoc it all instead of having precise powers that would do the same.