D&D 5E (2014) [+]What does your "complex fighter" look like?

[James Gasik]

On the other hand, you can play a Fighter who has all the brain power of a slice of Swiss cheese, takes a subclass with no real decision points, and has no tactical acumen beyond "swing big sword at bad guy"...

 

[Krachek]

Bugsbunnyno.gif

What’s up doc?
The gif don’t work, it’s normal, we are in a + thread!

 

[Vaalingrade]

The fighter is a cerebral/intellectual take on combat IMO, that very much stands in contrast to unleashing your rage and anger.

Man, I wish the game felt that way.

 

[Celebrim]

Man, I wish the game felt that way.

Well, me too, hence my desire for a more complex fighter and therefore complex experience of playing the fighter - especially as you level up.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I wonder if the issue is 5E isn't tactical enough for the intellectual take on combat to work really?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I wonder if the issue is 5E isn't tactical enough for the intellectual take on combat to work really?

That's a big part of it.

That and the 'simplification' removed a lot of design space where that could go and what was there was deleted from the playtest.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I take it copies of the playtest docs are inaccessible?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I take it copies of the playtest docs are inaccessible?

Someone was talking about having them in a post a few months ago. They're not available from WotC anymore though.

 

[Undrave]

That doesn't give the number of options, though. You're gimping fighters by doing that. But if you reaaaaaaly want to do it that way. Wizards get spellcasting as their feature, so the number of spells per level aren't part of that. So all of their spells from levels 1-20 = 1 feature. You would have to count that as only 1 feature at level 20, not 27(number of spell slots). See what I mean?

I don't see how anyone can in all honesty say that spellcasting is just one feature.

I agree.

While I won't count every single spell or spell slot, I do think counting access to each spell level and ritual casting works as 10 features (cantrips would make it 11, which I didn't count before).

IMO it is like counting Extra Attack (2) and Extra Attack (3) as separate from Extra Attack.

Yeah I would count each level and ritual casting as 1 feature each, and Extra Attack is just 1 feature.

 

[Celebrim]

I wonder if the issue is 5E isn't tactical enough for the intellectual take on combat to work really?

Certainly a big part of making the fighter work is having sufficient crunch available to everyone, fighter or not, in the combat system. It's not usually enough to just rework the class itself. Spells are part of the class description of spell-casters so if you want to rework spell-casters a big part of that is dealing with spells. If you want to rework the fighter, the combat system is part of the class description of the fighter so there has to be a basic maneuver system in place to begin with that the fighter can expand on as the one that is good at it.

This means having things like grapple, trip, clench, shove, tackle, throw, disarm, shield bash, shield wall, fighting in ranks, distract, feint, etc. built into the system at a decent level of complexity so that you can say things like "The fighter adds some bonus on all combat maneuvers or to resist all combat maneuvers" starting right at 1st level or at least that you can have feats available to do that sort of thing if you don't do it as a core class power (because not every fighting style, say an archer, benefits from it so configurability is key). The fewer levers you have to pull on in the system, the harder it is to write combat feats/maneuvers that do interesting things without creating unwanted silos that break the kindergartener rule that basic fictional positioning shouldn't require a class power or other chargen resource.