D&D 5E [+]What does your "complex fighter" look like?

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

I shouldn't have to, because it is pretty clear to everyone - including you as you just demonstrated - what I mean by - "Some mechanical approaches to the problem of balancing spell-casters and martials is to simply give the non-spellcasters their own spells." The only people who have a problem with that description are deliberately being obtuse so that they can "score a point" rather than have any sort of legitimate discussion.

So yes, technically, often when I say "spells" I am using this as a short-hand for "spell-like mechanics" but out here in the meta where we are discussing mechanics that isn't much of a distinction.

The only people who are confused are people who have a vested emotional interest in pretending to be confused by this for whatever reason.

It's a real distinction for many not some rhetorical ploy. It's the reason some people aren't satisfied with say the Eldrich Knight but like the 4e Fighter both of which use limited use powers with some narrative control (although arguably much less for the 4e Fighter). One uses spells and one uses "abilities that use mechanics that have been traditionally reserved for spells in D&D, particularly limited use in exchange for power and narrative control".

I also pointed out how further divorcing player and character resources might be a better method to model martial prowess than one to one player /character resources given that "magic" can't do the bending fiction for the martial if that bending is needed -- it needs to happen outside the character, which is different than how most spellcasting works but shares some mechanics.

Look, I don't necessarily want to see a martial that uses the exact same structure and mechanics as a Wizard but I also don't want to cross off mechanics just because they have traditionally been only used for spells in D&D. Even if you do use the same structure (4e did), the permission base led to different powers. 4e Fighters couldn't teleport or create elemental damage from nothing.

Anyway, I'm not going to try to persuade you further. No point.

My whole point, however, was to point out that in your mostly excellant earlier post if you were trying to capture the full spectrum of why people have different ideas of how the fighter should be improved and what tools are available to improve it, you should include this perspective as it's one that causes people to butt heads.

If the design parameters are "no spells allowed" then some people will advance the 4e Fighter as a good start. If the parameters are " no abilities that use mechanics that have been traditionally reserved for spells in D&D, particularly limited use in exchange for power and narrative control" then the 4e Fighter is off the table.

Since some people see this difference, I'm not sure why we wouldn't want to be clearer on which design space we are talking about?

 

[Celebrim]

EXAXTLY! The d20 SW is the best IMO.

I've been having fun the last two years with a bounty hunter campaign in Star Wars D6, but as a GM I have to say I do miss hit points and not having the problem of death spirals. It's very hard to balance combat when basically any throw could result in any result.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I've been having fun the last two years with a bounty hunter campaign in Star Wars D6, but as a GM I have to say I do miss hit points and not having the problem of death spirals. It's very hard to balance combat when basically any throw could result in any result.

I don't recall having death spirals in WEG d6 SW, but that was a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away... ).

 

[Celebrim]

Look, I don't necessarily want to see a martial that uses the exact same structure and mechanics as a Wizard but I also don't want to cross off mechanics just because they have traditionally been only used for spells in D&D.

I don't either. As I noted though, I don't like disassociated mechanics even when they occur in spells where you can always appeal to "magic" as a general purpose explanation. I find they are bad for the game in a lot of ways, some subtle and others more overt.

I don't want to get into edition bashing so I'm not going to get into examples where 4e designers just assumed no one would care about the fiction if the game was balanced, even though some exist.

What I am going to say is that there are usually ways to make martial mechanics feel distinctive and gritty that gives you both the advantage of giving martials more to do in combat without sacrificing the fiction and making the game have priority over the thing it is trying to simulate. If a fighter learns a combat trick (whatever we are going to call it be it maneuver or feat or whatever), that says so something like "Whenever you hit an opponent with a bludgeoning weapon twice in the same round, you may shove them as an immediate action that doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity" or "Whenever you perform a shield bash attack, if you hit, you may choose to either clench or shove the opponent as free action" then I'm OK with that sort of thing.

If the design parameters are "no spells allowed" then some people will advance the 4e Fighter as a good start. If the parameters are " no abilities that use mechanics that have been traditionally reserved for spells in D&D, particularly limited use in exchange for power and narrative control" then the 4e Fighter is off the table.

There is an aesthetic going on here, but I don't think you are really capturing the aesthetic that is going on. D&D spells explicitly change the fiction because of "magic" without a further in game need to explain why. So you can have a spell that conjures 5 daggers out of nowhere as an at will ability and allows you to throw them in an arc in front of you. But if you do that, and you don't have magic as part of the explanation, then at some point after the character has thrown 40 daggers over the course of an extended combat, you are going to be like, "Where is she keeping all those daggers and if these are mundane daggers why aren't they piling up around the room?" You get to the point, and I know this sort of thing would happen because I've seen it with at will cantrip abilities in some systems, where the player is going to declare, "I climb out of the pit by spending the next two hours throwing daggers into the corner of the room until they make a pile tall enough to reach the lip of the pit".

It's not that mind a martial maneuver being able to replicate a spell. It's that I mind when mechanics are introduced because at the meta level they are perfectly balanced, but aren't in fact paying any attention to the fiction. It's not even that I mind if the thing the martial class does is 'unrealistic'. I'm perfectly fine at some level with an at will maneuver that lets you throw a small shield like you were Captain America. I haven't done that, I feel Cap has what is basically a magic shield even in the fictional space, but I wouldn't hugely object if in fact the maneuver was written like a physical object was actually moving through the fictional space (for example on a miss shield might not come back to you or would land some distance away depending on if there was something to ricochet against).

 

[Celebrim]

I don't recall having death spirals in WEG d6 SW, but that was a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away... ).

It's a wound track system so as you advance on the track you get more and more incapacitated. It's particularly noticeable with baddies that are often seemingly invincible for several rounds because decently large dice pools converge to an average that is hard to overcome with a smaller dice pool, but as soon as you generate a stun or injury off a lucky or unlucky roll the formerly invincible NPC death spirals immediately. The party if they get off on a bad foot pretty much has to find a way to 'heroically' spend force points or they'll death spiral out as well.

And technically, any one blaster bolt could instantly kill any character that doesn't have narrative currency to spend, which might sound like 'Realism!' but is really just a pain in the butt from a GM's perspective because you don't really want to kill your PC's just because they rolled soak and got 5 1's (Yahtzee!)

 

[GMforPowergamers]

We're almost done with the last season (#5) of the original show. I doubt I'll watch the new one, but we'll see.

There's a new show? (Frantic web search)

yup show was always in the back of my mind but when I saw the new one was being worked on I told my fiancé and she had never heard of it...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Correct. But we have limited time and can go through everything WoTC and adjust for it. We can’t with 3rd party.

You can go through what you 're interested in and what you players present to you.

 

[HammerMan]

You can go through what you 're interested in and what you players present to you.

How much? On average we have games of 4-5 players to the DM. If each player asks for 1 add on book that is at least 4… and sooner or later we will be back to 3e when “I want a class from this book a feat from this one and spells form both those and this third one”

We even debated 1 book by group vote and we hit a wall with people not having time or money to look at what people want.

 

[Bill Zebub]

My issue with per rest martial abilities isn’t about “dissociative mechanics” but rather just because it’s spell slots by another name.

The decision making I enjoy isn’t whether to use a resource now or save it for a future unknown. I like balancing risk:reward in the moment.

In my view, Battlemaster might as well be a refluffed caster.

 

[James Gasik]

My issue with per rest martial abilities isn’t about “dissociative mechanics” but rather just because it’s spell slots by another name.

The decision making I enjoy isn’t whether to use a resource now or save it for a future unknown. I like balancing risk:reward in the moment.

In my view, Battlemaster might as well be a refluffed caster.

Doesn't that make Action Surge and Second Wind "spells", then?