D&D 5E Thoughts on Mearls' Comments on Fighter Subclasses Lacking Identity

[Wik]

When a player does this, I would end up giving them a named weapon that "evolves" alongside the character. A spiffy mythical falchion that levels alongside you seems more palatable than a slightly better falchion around every corner.

And I'm all for that sort of play - I try to do something similar. But it's not rules-as-written, which was my original point.

Weapon Specialists affect combat, which is important to 95% of all games (not an exact number). Which means that if that option exists, everyone needs to take it. And if everyone takes it, they either take the weapon that interests them, which leads to the situation I described, or they take the longsword so they can be assured of finding appropriate strength magic items as the game goes on... and every fighter becomes the same.

It's not a fun situation, and it's sucked in 1e onwards. In the 1e game I recently played in, if you were a fighter, you specced in either longsword or longbow. Anything else was a dumb move. (One guy specced in heavy flail, and I believe he wound up finding exactly one... a measly +1 flail that became his most treasured possession, while everyone around him was swinging +3 longswords).

 

[Ristamar]

I'll echo the sentiment that the Champion's and Battlemaster's lack of an identity is their strong suit, at least as a core class. It's easier to focus the two "vanilla" archetypes with a background and feats rather than expanding the class with a deluge of archetypes. Strict thematic archetypes are more appropriate when tied to campaign setting (Knights of the Crown/Sword/Rose in Dragonlance, Purple Dragon Knight in Forgotten Realms, etc).

 

[CapnZapp]

Reiterating what I said in the other thread:

I was disappointing by the design of the fighter's subclasses, and commented as much in my review of the PHB. The problem is they're entirely differentiated by mechanics and not flavour, because it equates the complexity of the class with the subclass rather than another choice.

For example, a theoretical cavalier subclass has to either be simple or complex (or in the middle), which might not satisfy some people. If they opt to make the cavalier simpler, a player who wants a complex fighter will have to choose to either play a class they don't entirely like or try and make a cavalier without actually taking the cavalier option.

Because the story of fighters is detached from their choice of subclass, you don't associate the description of a fighter with its abilities. A grizzled soldier with a sword and shield could equally be a champion or battlemaster, as could a phalanx fighter with a spear, or a mobile fencer with a flashing rapier, or the mounted knight with a lance. The description of the character tells you nothing of the build or class features.

A better design would have been tying the superiority dice to the fighter class itself. Such as allowing fighters to gain a simple class feature or maneuvers. So the complexity was independent of subclass. But they didn't go that direction.

You are probably (like me) much more open to class complexity than the average fighter-choosing player.

Having at least one subclass that stands out because of its simplicity is good. Making all subclasses equally complex would defeat this.

 

[CapnZapp]

I am surprised too.

The fighter have always been the blank slate.

You fight, yes. But how and why is not for the class to say.

If anything, they made some subclasses TOO specific. Best example: sorcerer - if you can't stand the randomness of the wild mage you WILL have a draconic heritage.

Think of how much cooler it would have been if draconic was but one of several sources of your power, and how much that would have helped combat the Sorcerer's perceived blandness.

But for the fighter: I thought that blandness was supposed to be a strength...?

 

[CapnZapp]

Most of all: fixing Sorcerer's and rangers is way higher on my priority list than blinging out the fighter.

 

[Hussar]

After all, 99% of the military types in our own world would be called "fighters", and no one can say that a Roman Legion, a Gaulish barbarian, a viking warrior, and a navy SEAL are at all similar.


Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...bclasses-Lacking-Identity/page4#ixzz3hp5VkVyT

Isn't that the issue though? None of those characters should share all mechanics. A Navy Seal has an entirely different skill set (as in skills, not fighting skills) than a Gaulish Barbarian. Yet, both are covered by a Fighter class which grants exactly the same skills and powers to all fighters.

So, why not have a few more fighter sub-classes that better cover some fairly specific styles of fighters better than a single umbrella class?

 

[Iosue]

I see where Mearls is coming from, and don't entirely disagree. But the fighter was a tough nut to crack, given that it seems the feedback was virtually 50-50 on desired levels of complexity. Some folks wanted a very simple, vanilla fighter that would be fun with newbies and/or the less-tactically inclined, but a roughly equal number of folks wanted fighters just as complex and option filled as casters. And unlike rogues, where subclasses are actually thematically quite similar, but with different emphases, there's just a wide range of possibilities encompassed in "fighter".

So actually I think they threaded that needle pretty cleanly. And I actually think there is more flavorful differentiation in the subclasses than is normally given credit for. The Champion relies very much on innate strength, skill, and ability. As their subclass features center around improvement of innate ability: more damaging criticals, greater resilience, increased physical capabilities through Remarkable Athlete. The Battle Master, OTOH, is much more of a learned fighter. Its subclass features center around study: ability with artisan tools, the ability to learn from an enemy by observation, codified techniques. Fezzik is a Champion. Inigo and the Man in Black are Battle Masters. Luke is a Champion. Vader is a Battle Master. The Hound is a Champion. Jaime Lannister is a Battle Master.

Another way of looking at it is Champions represent enlisted men, the rank and file who are trained to fight. Battle Masters represent the officer class -- study in addition to training. If they hadn't used it on a background, the Champion might have been called "Veteran", representing ability through innate skill and experience. The Battle Master might then be called "Man-at-Arms", or more inclusively, "Captain". This would be more flavorful, strongly relating to each class's features, and avoiding the vague, not-natural titles they currently bear.

At any rate, I'm glad we have two fighters of differing complexity, with enough abstractness of flavor to create many different kinds of fighters through subclass, fighting styles, feats, and backgrounds. Having that, I can now look forward to more specifically flavored subclasses.

 

[garnuk]

Just thinking outloud here...

Names that would have fit the Champion: Strongman, Soldier, Beast, Gladiator, Grunt

Names that would have fit the Battlemaster Fighter: Tactician, Weaponmaster, Warlord, Captain, Duelist

I'm not sure if any of those are necessarily more flavourful than the current names.

 

[Minigiant]

I agree there is some interesting design space here. I do find the fighter (and rogue) very effective but not very interesting. But I am not sure the subclass (champion/battlemaster) point is where I would want to add interesting options. It would be good to see some options around fighting style - to see the type of weapons in the hand of a fighter make a much bigger deal. Axes, spears and Swords etc could have some interesting, different (and perhaps) more dramatic effects in the hands of a fighter.

A actual weaponmaster of some type would be great to have as a fighting style. This was a classic theme of the fighter and I am shocked it isn't in the PHB or in an UA yet.

The truth is is you can pull of 80-90% of the "archetypical fighters" using the fighter, fighting style, champion or battlemaster, and the current feats.

The only issue is the 10% of "archetypical fighters" that you can't pull out well. Brawlers*, battleragers**, and gladiators***, wrestlers**** lack the mechanical support to even do there gimmicks right. Cavaliers sort of work but rely on a feat tax and have naming issues as the fighting style for lances is "Dueling". And more "mental fighters" lack support and lose a lot of power for increasing mental ability scores with no combat gains for it. Then there are setting and racial archetypes like bladesingers, dwarven defenders, breach gnomes, Etc Etc


The curse of being a blank state class is that you catch heavy flak for any gimmicks you don't support well.

*Tavern brawler is a secondary, horizontal feat. A fighter would never have a mechanical reason to make unarmed attacks even with the feat.
** One can argue that this is a barbarian or barbarian/fighter muliticlass
**** The gladiator works if you just want the background. But there is no support for support to classical age gladiator styles. No Hoplomachus or Thracians (unarmored, longsword, shield, backup spear). No Murmillo or Secutor (unarmored, arm guard, longsword, heavy shield). No Retiarius (uarmored, trident, net). Basically no unarmed fighter, there's only 1 kind of shield, the trident and net both suck, and bolas and other exotic D&D weapons don't even exist.
****Grapple feat is weak and no support for throws and unarmed.

 

[Li Shenron]

skip

I agree with you this time. For me their announced idea of using subclasses also as a complexity dial sounded excellent. So why did they stop at the Fighter? They could have at least kept their Academic Wizard, and have an Indiana Jones - inspired low-complexity Rogue that is neither a thief or assassin or spellcaster.

I also wonder if Mearls remembers how many more flavorful subclasses they had in their hands during the playtest. They had a 'Knight' and a 'Gladiator' subclass, but they listened to some voices saying 'Knight should be a background' or 'Gladiator is too specific', so they only have themselves to blame. Note that I don't think it was a bad move to make the maneuvers-based subclass more generic, but they could still have kept the Gladiator in a different shape.

As for the existing classes, Eldritch Knight is specific enough for me, even if you can vary the chosen spells. My only regret about the Champion is the name, which I think it sounds inappropriate (not a native English speaker here, but 'champion' sounds to me like the champion of a cause, or otherwise a tribe or even an individual lord) if not outright stupid (first image that came to my mind, was Regdar and Tordek going back to the tavern from the dungeon, spend all the treasure in ale and go party singing 'we are the champions...'). I think it should have been called the Veteran because all the features represent just going through the motion and getting better at the same few generic skills, no further explanations.

I don't have a better name for the Battlemaster. Anyway, IMHO this is a great subclass because in reality it is many subclasses merged together. You can pick all the friends-supporting maneuvers and be a Warlord, or you can pick another list and be a Duelist, a Bodyguard and so on... but you can also cherry-pick freely and be more generic.

This is similar to what they have done with the elemental Monk and with the Totem Barbarian: you can be a 'fire monk' or 'air monk' but also a more generic 'elemental monk'. You can be a cougar barbarian or a bear barbarian but also a more generic 'wild animals barbarian'.

There is of course always a trade-off, because restrictions increase flavor but obviously impede freedom. But what if it is only a matter of presentation? Why not just presenting the maneuvers by type (one maneuver has one type), or suggesting styles (one maneuver may belong to multiple styles)? They can do this without changing anything in the existing class!