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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8632110" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Alright, let's get this done right out the gate. I came into this discussion with an honest desire to calmly, respectfully*, and maturely converse with people both who agreed with my position and those that do not. I figure that little is to be gained by only engaging with those that already share one's beliefs, and that we're all capable of keeping perspective on differences of opinion and experience about an inherently trivial endeavor. That said, there is a certain threshold of basic decency I consider necessary to consider a conversation worthwhile. *I was actually worried about the tone of using the concept of goalpost-moving, which is why I called my self out on it in an attempt to mute the potential hostility it could engender..Performative sighs and bizarre* accusations of dishonesty do not meet that threshold. If you have disagreements with my points, or believe that I am wrong about my assumptions as to how you can to your position, I encourage you to bring them forward in a reasoned and articulate way. You will be met in kind. If, on the other hand, the above is how you would prefer to engage, we can both not need to waste further efforts and go our separate ways. *based on using in one's analysis a metric you don't personally consider valuable.That said, there are significant places where we do agree, and other places where it is clearly different opinions formed by different experiences of play. In the interest of brevity (such that anyone excepting the two of us won't just skip past) I'll do a truncated response.Second wind definitely does not scale. Full agree. It is a great boon at 1st level, and I think that's a huge part of its' point (not that the devs have been great at telling us the 'why' of their decisions).I didn't say short swords did d8s, I said they gave you 2x(1d6+3). You are correct that casters can use 2H weapons or 2wf, but they have to work to get there (race or archetype choice), may have to put points into both dex and str to make decent AC and 2H weapons work (excepting war/tempest/twilight clerics, who pay for it by not getting extra attack), may have to wait until level 3 to get some of the basic components of the concept, and then will still be a fighting style down. None of these are insurmountable, but they are constraints (that can be ameliorated, but then the opportunity cost of such has to be taken into account).Rerolling 1s and 2s definitely isn't the best advantage. +2 to hit for ranged, a superiority dice and battlemaster maneuver, +1 AC, blindsight 10', reaction-action intercepts or protective blocks of allies, or possibly +att to damage for 2wf* are better choices of fighting styles.*possibly opening up a wombo-combo with a party caster dropping a fog cloud on the fighter and the opposition. After all, the party fighter and party caster work best when they work together.**in a one-shot or other campaign that doesn't last to the point where 2wf trails offOkay, so yes. +2 to hit (leading into a pretty obvious synergy with a -5/+10 feat) and/or opening up new fields of options usually outshines some odds and ends pluses to damage in most cases. As I said, no small amount of agreement. In particular what I don't like about fighting styles (and most of the best combat feats) is that they 'lock in*' certain weapon or weapon+shield arrangements. I occasionally miss the times when AD&D fighter Joe found the +3 shield well ahead of when that was normal and decided to switch from 2H sword to 1H weapon or some bracers of archery and suddenly started pricing out a composite longbow to match their strength bonus. *obviously not literally, since you can still do the other thing, you just forgo your benefit from the style/feat.This is clearly a huge deal for you. I do not dispute that it is an interesting choice for them to make getting martial weapons as easy as it is at the same time they made everyone have the same basic to-hit bonus at the same level. That said, those other characters will not be hitting as hard with those weapons, and where they come close, the will be doing so at significant opportunity cost to doing their own primary thing. The valor bard using bow or paired shortswords or rapier -- they are doing so without the fighting styles of a fighter, waiting until L3 to get all the components, without action surge, with a delayed second attack (and no 3rd or 4th later), and they are doing so with a lot of other drags on their starting attributes and subsequent ASIs/feats. If they start with a 16 dex, it takes more work for them to have a 16 cha*. If they take Sharpshooter, both that dex and cha advancement are delayed. If they don't bother with sharpshooter because they are doing rapier and shield, they can keep rough pace with the fighter doing the same strategy (minus two ASIs over the whole career, and concerns for Cha), but then when do they pick up resilient:con and/or warcaster (and if they don't have those and are wading into melee, how often is the whole spellcasting part of their setup* working out for them?)?*or str-based weapon, but then the attribute investment increases even more.**You could just ignore casting stats and concentration enhancers and focus on str/dex and combat feats, and have a fighting character that tops out at 2 attacks and has a bunch of utility spells. That's actually an interesting idea. I don't think it'd be in any way optimized, though.Inspiration and song of rest and jack of all trades aren't valor-specific. Combat inspiration is, and it's... fine I guess. Kind of akin to the bonus damage from a battlemaster's maneuvers, just without the riders that are the primary draw. But my point again is that the bard that chooses valor is choosing that instead of, say, Lore (IIRC one of the most highly rated subclasses in the PHB). Much of the subclass benefits are wrapped up in the armor and weapon proficiencies and the extra attack*. That's an opportunity cost that needs to be taken into account.*as they should be, since they are a huge deal. These classes are, IMO, indeed better than fighters. I have never disputed that. I just think it takes place once you take OOC into account, and the fighter still does their job of being a top-notch fighter. Yep. Missed that. Was thinking the bards and bladesinger. Mea cupla there. As for cantrips, we're clearly not going to agree. By 5th level, the difference between what a fighter with a few ASIs into their attribute and a relevant feat will be doing compared to 2dX cantrps is going to be significant. Imo, these are multiple topics, not one. Caster v. noncaster is not the same as caster vs. martial*, wizard vs. fighter, or magic vs. non-magic. If we lump rune knight (or heck also monks, since ki) over on the same side as wizards and druids and have only champions, samurai, cavaliers and a few of the barbarian archetypes on the other side of the scale, then it is a very different comparison. Maybe I missed it, but I don't think anyone else was having that conversation. *admittedly, what constitutes martial varies by person.Okay. Here we have the different experiences I mentioned. I've seen them all played as less-squishy caster options. I've have absolutely also seen them played in the attempt to make them be full on fighter-leaders, and the results were... again, fine. They certainly still were good playable characters, but the martial madness did not live up to the hopes. Combat buffs took too much time to cast (spending the first round or two casting means less time fighting in the relatively short combats), or went down to easily (excepting when people had war caster and resilient:con, in which case their casting/combat stats/feats were delayed). High-elf Tempest clerics with booming blade who thought they would be warhammer-spamming melee machines ended up doing the same SG/SW wombo-combo the life cleric did. At tier 2 the valor bard did enjoy shooting bows for 2x(1d8+3) instead of 2d4 vicious mockeries on rounds where they didn't instead cast a levelled spell, but it certainly didn't rank close to what the half-elven battlemaster with EA, XBE, SS, archery fighting style and Precision Attack, Menacing Attack, and Tripping Attack was able to do. I should mention that I was playing the valor bard. Valor bards are one of my favorite options. They are great. I just disagree that they outperform a fighter at doing the one thing a fighter is allowed to do.Here's on thing I didn't think to mention. Multiclassing makes hash of everything, and I have no doubt that there are a huge number of X 1-3 + Y 1-2 + z 1-15 builds that outperform many-to-most 1-20 builds*. If you can get a huge chunk of what makes a battlemaster fighter great by taking 3 levels of it on top of other-class X, that changes things dramatically**. I've not found full Hexblades to live up to the promise (in no small part because of that long stretch from 2-10 with only two spell slots that hampers all warlocks), but hexblade1/paladinX-1) builds? Yeah, those are contenders for simply-best-options. Without a doubt, dipping for features can change a lot of this, and I honestly wish the MC rules were in the optional rules in the DMG. 3e had this too -- if your table let any wild build you could dream up or pull of OP boards, you had a massive leg up (until the DM followed suit). *Probably with a favorable lean to the classes with the most complex options. Iconic example (but not for combat prowress) being the coffeelock builds.**although when to take those levels does become a balancing act, and if you look at going fighter 1-11 with 2 attacks at 5 and 3 at 11 compared to a valor bard/battlemaster hybrid not getting 2 attacks and battlemaster abilities until level 9+, it's some tricky mathAnd, most importantly, IMO, when the party runs into a lever across a pit to wide to jump, or behind a wall too thick to break through, or a cliff too slick to climb, the casters have options that the fighters (or even rogues) can't match. This is where I think the real insult to all martials lie -- even though 3e and 4e skill systems had serious flaws, they were attempts at making the non-fighting, non-casting part of gameplay complex and engaging. I'm hopeful that D&D50 ends up bringing some of that back.</blockquote>

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