What is the fighter class to you?

[Li Shenron]

But, the Fighter, by design, is [and should remain] the "gateway drug" of D&D.

Sorry, but this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There is no reason why the Wizard couldn't be designed in such a way that there is a super-simple option. One cantrip at will and 2-3 known spells (with a short list of suggestions for beginners so that they don't need to scour the complete list) would make for a decent 1st level Wizard.

Almost all people I've seen play D&D for the first time wanted to do some magic, and were often told "Sorry you can't be the cool character because it's too difficult for you, play a Fighter for a couple of years then maybe". Many of them didn't get that far, but I bet some didn't because they got the message they couldn't play what they wanted.

 

[Celebrim]

For me the first represents anyone formally trained at arms for the purposes of combat of some sort.

This runs the gambit to me of a soldier on one hand, to an aristocratic duelist on the other. The mark of a fighter class character is their mastery of arms and combat with arms, whether at the scale of leading men into battle or at the scale of a one on one personal combat. A properly constructed fighter class for me allows you to play any sort of character of that sort.

What I have tended to see happen since 2e and certainly since 3e in earnest is for people to pigeon hole fighters into narrower and narrower roles so that the scope of a fighter becomes smaller and smaller over time and the number of martial classes proliferates. An ideally designed class for me would take all the concepts of soldier, duelist, marshal, swashbuckler, cavalier, and so forth and make them all available to mix and match out of the same class.

Note that this design shouldn't preclude having some skills outside of combat, and any skills related to combat, whatever those would be should obvious be within the purview of the fighter. For me these include broadly athletics and especially running, endurance especially marching and carrying of loads, leadership, intimidation and military bearing, the appraisal of and care of weapons, and in the context of a culture where military training was often equated with aristocratic social rank or was a stepping stone to same at least the very minimum of access to aristocratic social skills.

 

[Dandu]

Sorry, but this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There is no reason why the Wizard couldn't be designed in such a way that there is a super-simple option. One cantrip at will and 2-3 known spells (with a short list of suggestions for beginners so that they don't need to scour the complete list) would make for a decent 1st level Wizard.

You mean the Beguiler/Dread Necromancer/Warmage?

 

[Neonchameleon]

First question:
I have no problem with Fighters who have abilities that are, explicitly, beyond the mundane. I don't even necessarily have a problem with Fighters whose abilities (eventually) transcend what is natural, e.g. cleaving fireballs in two or reflecting spells with a blade or whatever. If people wish to make a beyond-the-mundane Fighter whose abilities are explicitly magical, they absolutely should be able to do so. But for those people who absolutely do NOT want their abilities to be remotely "magical," even if they transcend the mundane and brush against the "superhuman" or even "supernatural"? They also should be able to do that.

What people don't get is that realistic and gritty is a whole lot more lethal than cinematic. Fighters are stronger at The Red Wedding than they are in Indiana Jones. I can absolutely imagine an olympic level athlete in the company of wizards who is highly effective. A fighter who can "counterspell" by hitting the wizard in the back of the throat with a throwing knife before two words are out. Who can cast the "save or die" spell of Arrow-through-the-eye-into-the-brain against a dragon. In short not superhumanly fast, strong, or accurate. But still much faster, stronger, and more accurate than most people are.

The D&D fighter is, due to the nature of the hit point system, effectively armed with nerf weapons. An AD&D fighter takes a minute to kill a single orc. 3.0, 3.5 and 4e are a little better. Most 3.5 fighters take six seconds to kill. Not a single slash of their sword to cut someone's throat open and let them bleed out. Or a single lunge through the heart.

The simple rule on which the fighter stands and falls is that if anyone has a reliable way round the hit point system the fighter should be first in line, the rogue second, and the spellcasters dead last. You want to talk to me about save-or-die spells. Tell me, what spell is more deadly than decapitation? We're bound by realism here, people. Realism against decapitation. It might be realistic for a spell to be as deadly as a lucerne hammer through the skull. But it certainly isn't realistic for a spell to be more deadly.

It doesn't matter what level of realism people impose on the fighter, by definition they need to be the best at combat around or there is no point to them.

Are powerful wizards with deep bags of tricks possible alongside gritty fighters? Sure. But the gritty fighter should be a hardened killer and the deeper the wizard's bag of tricks the more likely it is that the fighter should be able to kill the wizard with both hands tied behind their back.

At times, these things have been given specific names. Others, they've only been indirectly alluded to. Doesn't matter. The game has always placed some kind of importance on them. All classes are designed for playing that game. Thus, all classes should be designed to place importance on all three, regardless of their access to 'generic' resources beyond that.

Agreed.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sorry, but this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There is no reason why the Wizard couldn't be designed in such a way that there is a super-simple option. One cantrip at will and 2-3 known spells (with a short list of suggestions for beginners so that they don't need to scour the complete list) would make for a decent 1st level Wizard.

Almost all people I've seen play D&D for the first time wanted to do some magic, and were often told "Sorry you can't be the cool character because it's too difficult for you, play a Fighter for a couple of years then maybe". Many of them didn't get that far, but I bet some didn't because they got the message they couldn't play what they wanted.

Exactly.

I know that MMO analogies are unpopular and often taken to be insulting, but I really, TRULY do think that MMOs have something that tabletop games--and D&D in particular--could learn from. In most games--say, FFXIV or GW2, or even WoW--there are classes with dirt-simple mechanics, minimal need to worry about "rotation" or "uptime/downtime" or whatever, and some of them are "martial." There are also classes with complex chains, linked skills, dependency on combos or an involved rotation...and some of them are also martial.

D&D, for whatever reason, has devoutly held onto this strange conception that "magic = complicated, melee = simple"--or, rather, melee = simplistic. It's become ingrained, practically a symbol of pride for some gamers, that Fighters are for noobs, Wizards are for "experienced" players, and that concept generalizes to other similar classes (even 13A is guilty of it--the Fighter, Paladin, and Barbarian are all lower-complexity, even if you pull out all the stops, than a typical Cleric or Wizard). But not everyone who is new wants to swing a sword; not everyone who likes playing Fighters (or even "Fighter-types") likes minimal-complexity classes; not everyone who likes casting spells prefers high-complexity classes.

But if they--WotC, Pelgrane, anybody--really care about attracting sales and "growing" rather than "maintaining," this seems like THE biggest sacred cow we have yet to slay. Some versions of D&D have been better and others worse, and the D&D Next playtest even paid lip service to the idea...only to completely and totally abandon it later.

So I guess that's something I'd add to my answer, or rather that I would give in answer to the slightly different question, "What isn't the Fighter class to you?"

The Fighter class isn't defined by a particular level of complexity. It isn't confined to being complex OR simple, and instead covers a wide swathe of options.

Speaking, of course, about D&D and not other systems. Dungeon World, for example, the classes are intended to be small and self-contained, but (relatively) easy to create (among other useful attributes that make DW a different beast from D&D).

 

[Tonguez]

Sure I can do Captain America with the Fighter and thats great, but can I also do Legolas with his shield surfing and trick arrows? Can I play and effective martial artist or a swashbuckling pirate? The Hulk is better served by the Barbarian, but shouldn't the Fighter be able to do something similar?

The issues I see are two fold firstly that magic is so ubiquitous in DnD that as levels rise, every class has to have powers to keep pace and secondly that has resulted in class specialisation so that the fighter has become more and more narrowly defined to just being the tough, hitter rather than the broadly skilled combatant.

The question then is how to create a fighter class that allows for tough, melee tank, master archer, agile martial artist, tactical squad leader, aristocratic knight, bush ranger and gladiator.

The arcade game Soul Calibur gives a broad range of fighter styles many without overt 'powers' and being able to emulate them plus a few non-combat/leadership skills added would be good

 

[Dandu]

Warblade

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

The Fighter's the big strong dude who whacks things with bludgeony and pokey objects. Donesn't need to be much more complicated than that.

 

[Herobizkit]

It's true. "Fighter" is pretty much to go-to job for adventurers who can't do much else but fight.

From an in-game perspective, the base Fighter adventurer is a person who leaves his former NPC job to become a strong guy who can swing weapons and take some abuse.

From a real-world perspective, in a career of specializations, the Fighter is your Grunt Soldier - your 'front-line infantry'. In some cases, Grunt is what people want; in others, it may be all they qualify to be. He might be the peak of physical conditioning (like, say, pro athletes might be) but his jobs are primarily using said physicality towards a goal.

 

[Minigiant]

The fighter is the class which excels at weapons combat and armor use in traditional ways above all else.

In the first sens, the fighter's main aspects are not magical but progress eventually to peak athletic and weapons skill. These feats would look magical because of their scope and power but not actually be.

In the second sense, the fighter is so good at combat that they are allows to branch in to noncombat training without harming their combat ability at noticeable amounts. A fighter is so good at combat, they should have room to play with. And if a fighter chooses to use that room to focus more on combat, that should also be allowed.