Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8357439" data-attributes="member: 87792">The real answer: Far more than any AD&D character. First you aren't a generic cookie cutter fighter with utterly vanilla abilities. Second you're comparing a fighter to a battlemaster fighter. Given that there are ten official fighter subclasses then you're comparing one fighter in ten to all fighters.Then there's the fighting style. In AD&D after about level 4 Swords Were The Best Weapons. There were two basic viable paths for melee - greatsword and longsword with one having a higher AC and the other doing more damage. Thrilling. Meanwhile by comparison in 5e has multiple different styles; the polearm, the greatweapon, and sword and board are all viable in their own right. (Two Weapon isn't really in either system). The core fighter feats of Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, Sentinel, Heavy Armour Master, Crusher (and to a lesser extent Piercer and Slasher), and Martial Adept all change what you do from round to round - and that's if you don't get something like observant or actor.And then two battlemaster fighters can do things very differently. One might be going for debuffs like Menacing Attack and Trip, one for hits like Precision Attack and Riposte, and more. The maneuver one comes close to spamming another might not use at all.The big thing 5e (and late 4e) have done with their approach to magic items is removed almost all the vanilla junk. I'm sorry, but a +2 sword is not a meaningful magic item. Meanwhile you still get magic items in 5e. The number is reduced - but what is particularlyI'm sorry, but this simply isn't true.You claim that Bob, your largely mechanics free fighter is given some sort of personality and distinctiveness by the fact his magic items are what he himself has done. But then Bob dies and he's replaced in the party by Boc. The party needs a fighter to hold the front lines so they give Boc all Bob's kit. Then after a couple of adventures Boc dies and is replaced by Bod who gets his kit.Bob went through the Demonweb Pits and gained his equipment from there. Boc took that and then replaced some of his equipment in the Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Bod is now carrying the equipment from both. Does this somehow mean that Bod has been through both the Demonweb Pits and the Dungeon of the Mad Mage?Because that is what you are claiming it would mean. In reality of course Bod is shown very clearly by this example to be a blank slate of a character, made interesting only by what he wears and what he holds, two things that are only partly due to their history. And because Bod is clearly a blank slate, it shows up just how much of a blank slate Bob and Boc both were. For that matter if Bob gets mugged, his items stolen, and chained to an oar of a slaving ship does that also take away his personality?Your magic items are not a track record of what the character has done. They are a track record of what the party has done. And it gets confused with the character when characters are functionally immortal. And the fighter is in your model nothing but a walking trophy cabinet with all the woodenness implied. (And no, I'm not saying that trophies are a bad thing. I'm just saying they aren't a substitute for a personality).Before you say "But you could have an almost identical fighter in 5e" the situations are very different. In the old school case there has been one decision made - to be a fighter. In the 5e case the player has chosen to first play a fighter, then a battlemaster, then chosen identical feats, and even identical battlemaster maneuvers. Rather than just picking the same class you've madeThank goodness we aren't in the 20th Century. With editions that are running TSR into the ground.Of course if you were playing 20th Century D&D using the rules as written you would have an expectation of having a literal castle and small army when you reached high level. Once again with stuff substituting for a personality.If you're just going to invent bad magic items then no wonder you have a problem. A +0 longsword isn't per se a thing. And a silver dagger still felt better than the tedium of a +1 weapon because it actually did something rather than just added to the dice as nothing more than a stopgap until you found something bigger.This I actually agree with.</blockquote>

Verification