What is the fighter class to you?

[Legatus Legionis]

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[Celebrim]

Because let me tell you: the people in various threads over in the 5e subforum all seem to think Fighter is "one who fights," but have wildly divergent attitudes about what "one who fights" means. For example, my suggestion of various "soldier"-informed features was immediately shot down with a response that not all Fighters--despite being "ones who fight"--are "trained soldiers."

Yes, but we who answer, that fighter means one that fights can't be held responsible for their limited imagination.

The people who answered you in that way are right in one sense - not all fighters are soldiers. But their answer then that the fighter class therefore can't be a soldier is predicated on the false assumption that having the option to be a soldier precludes the option to not be a soldier. They could just as easily be answered, "Yes, but not all fighters aren't trained soldiers." There response is therefore nonsense, and really is based on the unfortunate idea that a martial class should have a rigid list of powers.

While I don't like the 'everyone is a spellcaster' model, there is one aspect of everyone being a spellcaster that does produce the right sort of design and that is that spells inherently allow for very broad build customization. No one gets in an argument that Wizards can't have access to fireball because not every Wizard is a fireball slinger. They understand without knowing that they understand that just because a wizard could toss a fireball doesn't mean he has to learn or use the spell. So while I don't like having martial classes limited by the same resource management limitations seen in spellcasting classes (the model seen in say Bo9S of 4e), I do like the idea of lists of interchangeable parts that can build up your particular fighter (the model of a fighter for the most part abandoned by Pathfinder).

So clearly "one who fights" doesn't answer the question in a meaningful sense.

Yes, it does. Again, just because you got one nonsense rebuttal by someone with a limited imagination doesn't mean the answer is meaningless. The answer that a fighter is one that fights implies that those who give that answer mean that in their conception of a fighter, the class ought to be broad enough to include all concepts where the focus of the class is armed combat against an armed foe, and that any character that includes this idea ought to be able to gladly take up the class in full or in part in support of that idea.

That's why I made the joke post. It may be a technically correct answer, but it gets us nowhere.

No, and I'll show you how far it gets us.

It gets us past an answer like, "The fighter is a big dumb brute that hits things with a stick." "No", says the answer "The fighter is one that fights", "A Fighter may be a big dumb brute that hits things with a stick, but it also must not be only a big dumb brute that hits things with a stick."

And it gets us past an answer like, "The fighter is a heavily armored tank that slugs it out toe to toe with its foes." No, the fighter may be a heavily armored tank that slugs it out with its foes, but it must not be limited to that.

And it gets us past answers like, "I need a special Swashbuckler class, because fighters can't be lightly armored figures that dance and leap athletically around their foes.", or "I need a special Marshall class, because fighters can't be cunning and charismatic leaders of men, who defeat their foes by wit, observation, skillful tactics and coordination."

The proper answer ought to be, "No, you can make all those things with the Fighter."

And the reason for me that that has to be true, besides the fact that it is incredibly elegant, is that if you don't do that it becomes very difficult to make hybrid martial characters that are pretty good in multiple roles - say a character that is a bit of an archer/warlord/swashbuckler. And among other things, I think if you aren't assuming that high level fighters can be good in multiple archetypes, then you are inherently assuming that spellcasters are at high levels always of a higher tier than fighters because spellcasters, via spell selection, will always at least be more flexible.

In high level abstract, to me the idea fighter class design might look something like:

"1st Level: Hmm.. I think I'll start with Novice Swashbuckler."
"2nd Level: Hmmm.. lets add Novice Warlord."
"3rd Level: Ok, Novice Master-of-Arms looks good."
"4th Level: Now for Journeyman Swashbuckler."
"5th Level: There are too many times I can't close to melee...I really need the versatility of Novice Archer."

And so forth.

 

[Celebrim]

First: D'karr covered the "meaningful does not mean equal."

Second, if other classes are getting more combat stuff so they can contribute more in that sphere, doesn't it then naturally follow that Fighters should get more non-combat stuff so they can contribute more in that sphere?

Yes, but there is something subtle here I think you are missing.

In other words, if we're questioning the "combat is for Fighters, not (really) for other classes" premise, why aren't we also questioning the complimentary premise, "things for other classes aren't (really) for Fighters"? If other classes have gained breadth by expanding into the combat sphere, increased breadth in other areas for the Fighter seems a perfectly viable alternative.

First of all, other classes have always to some extent been present in the combat sphere. Even back in 1e, the M-U and the Thief, while being very weak in combat where not excluded from it and were expected to contribute most of the time in some fashion - even if it was just standing back and hurling darts and purloined poisoned daggers. So it's not like by saying, "A fighter is one that fights", we are saying that fighters are the only one that can fight. What we are saying is that everyone who has the approach to combat of the fighter is a fighter, where the fighters approach to combat is the classical approach of mastery of armed combat. Basically, if in some fashion you spar, practice striking targets, go through weapon drills, lift weights and so forth and that's how you get better, you are probably a fighter.

So that leaves us the question, "Are their other approaches to fighting beyond that of the fighter?" And I believe that the answer is clearly, "Yes.", but that it is in some cases subjective where you draw the line.

One obvious answer is the answer of the Wizard, "I will prosper in combat not by force of arms or skill with weapons, but by mastery of esoteric and arcane arts!" This is clearly a very different answer than the fighter. The wizard is an idea distinct in my opinion from the fighter. But I would argue that there are some other ideas that are also subtly different than the fighter even though they are martial classes.

Consider the answer of the Rogue, "I don't really do combat. Crossing blades with a foes is for chumps. I skulk and deceive to avoid combat. But when I must fight, I will use sneaky tricks and underhanded tactics to disable a foe before the fight really begins." Again, the rogue fights, but the concept of what fighting is to a Rogue is very different than the Fighter. Not only can we see that combat isn't as important to the rogue as the fighter, but the idea of mastery of combat and mastery of arms is missing.

Even more subtle, consider the answer of the Barbarian. No, I don't like the name 'Barbarian'. I don't consider it very appropriate for the class, and the proof of that is how many NPCs you see in published modules that are Barbarian classed without being culturally 'barbarians', but without getting into a long argument, I think the following is reasonable to understanding what is unique to the Barbarian class: "I love to fight, but my power doesn't come from long practice with blades or cunning tactics. I draw my strength from within. I draw upon my emotions - my rage, my hatred, my madness, my will to win, and the indomitable fearlessness that comes with it, to become invincible and strike off my opponents head." This is an almost alien viewpoint to the fighter, and is really mystical at some level. The idea that I'm going to draw upon my Rage to turn myself into a weapon, isn't something that is within the fighter's view of combat where victory is supposed to come by disciplined skill at arms. Now, as I've already hinted, I think the archetype commonly called 'Barbarian' is actually far broader than the narrow focus it has historically been constrained to in the same way that the fighter is being unnecessarily constrained. In my game, the Barbarian has been replaced by the slightly more versatile concept of the Fanatic. A classical Barbarian is merely a Fanatic whose background is that he has been initiated in to the secret military society of a primitive people, where he learned how to harness his rage, and could be inspired by anything from an Aztec Jaguar Warrior, to a Mandan brave, to a Gaulish warrior, to a Norse Beserker, to a Jewish Nazarene or Zealot. But he could also be a member of an elite Imperial Bodyguard, a psychotic madman, a brainwashed patriotic shocktrooper of some sort (Bonzai!), a warrior channeling his Ki (see the Boxer Rebellion), or an oathsworn Templar.

 

[Tony Vargas]

To me, it seems that when people talk about the fighter, they're having two different conversations at the same time.

The first conversation is a debate over how the fighter is portrayed, in terms of what powers/abilities he has. One side wants to have a fighter that ultimately becomes an extremely skilled human (or demihuman) but doesn't innately develop any powers that are beyond what a character with no magic (not just no spellcasting, but no mystical/mythical abilities whatsoever) could do. They basically want a "peak-human" type of character, a la Conan or Captain America.

You're missing "... in the fantasy genre, or the literature/myth/legend that inspired it," when talking about what a character without supernatural powers "could do."

What Captain America (bad example, not genre) or Conan (or Heracles or Roland or Beowulf etc etc) could do certainly goes far beyond what an 'ordinary person' can do IRL, or even realistic 'peak human' ability. No magic or mysticism or supernatural anything required. What characters like that do in genre is also not merely superhuman, but extremely improbable. They do things that may not be strictly speaking impossible, but which would require the wildest luck or most preternatural skill (or most likely both in large measure), and yet do them very consistently. There's Author force going on there, a sort of 'protagonist syndrome,' where events around the character, by the authors design, warp in his favor to allow him to always catch that branch when he falls, or have the horde of enemies attack him more-or-less one at a time, or always avoid every poisoned arrow in the barrage, or outrun the avalanche, or split the arrow or whatever. Crazy, impossible, super-human, but not quite supernatural thing after crazy impossible superhuman thing.

Once you take that fully into account (and D&D /does/ get most of the 'plot armor' side of that protagonist effect under hps, if you don't interpret them too narrowly), you have an idea of what the fighter 'should' be (but sadly, isn't).

The flipside to this are people who want a fighter that (eventually) develops magical/mystical/mythical abilities (which, again, are not spellcasting per se). These are the fighters that resemble superheroes that have out-and-out super powers, anime heroes, or most characters from fighting video games (e.g. Ryu, Sub-Zero, etc.). These characters are still "supposed" to be damage-dealers, but there's no particular reason why they can't have various powers that are - whether implicitly or explicitly - beyond what an "ordinary person" can do.

That's prettymuch a straw man. If you're OK was grafting supernatural powers onto a character, you'll just MC or play an exotic race or some other class or whatever to get what you want. It has nothing much to do with the fighter class at that point.

I see this as being distinct from the second conversation, which is about what function fighters fulfill in the course of game-play. Here, the question becomes what the fighter can do outside of combat.

And in combat, for that matter. At some points in the game's history, the fighter has had a lot more in-combat options than others. Providing more in-combat options means more detailed, slower-to-resolve combat, whether those details are maneuvers for the fighters, generally-available maneuvers, or complex combat-useful spells for casters.

In this regard, one side holds that the fighter doesn't really have much of a role outside of combat, and that's largely okay. The fighter's niche is (usually single-target) damage-dealing, and in this regard it does exactly what it sets out to do. For those on this side of the debate, the fighter doesn't really need to be able to do much else, simply because that's not what the class is designed to do. If you wanted to be an explorer or a social butterfly, the line of thinking goes, why would you play a class called "the fighter"?

That's an odd accident of tradition. When the game first got rolling, much of the rules were focused on combat, including the few spells, and everything else but a few checks, like listening at doors or checking for surprise, was mostly just a matter of the players describing actions and the DM making judgments. Then the Thief was introduced to the game with a bunch of special-abilities (actually just skills), and those became off-limits for everyone else. Since the magic-user and cleric kept getting more spells, the class that fell through the cracks non-combat-ability-wise, was the fighter.

Opposite to this are those who think that the fighter should not be inherently pigeon-holed away from non-combat functions. Here, the mode of thinking is that the fighter should have some method by which it can do more than just kill things. Moreover, it should not just be able to contribute in this regard, but of contribute meaningfully, which means doing so in a way that another class won't easily eclipse.

There's a third idea, that non-class choices, like Backgrounds and feats can adequately cover non-combat ability, for everyone.

So keeping this distinction in mind, what do you think the fighter class should be?

The class players go to for the most familiar and accessible of heroic fantasy archetypes. So the Knight in Shinning armor, the Robin Hood, the King Arthur, the Mighty Warrior, the lethal duelist, or the consummate martial artist. It should eschew supernatural powers like spellcasting. That doesn't preclude supernatural powers from other sources - a half-celestial or half-dragon could still be a fighter, for instance, or a fighter could use a magic item. The fighter class just needn't provide anything supernatural. Superhuman or preternaturally skillful or just supremely brave/lucky/etc, sure.

Should it have superhuman powers beyond that of the commoner, or should it be an ordinary person that's pushed himself to his absolute limits?

The fighter should certainly be able to eventually do any of the things that martial heroes from genre/myth/legend do, with magic coming into it only in the sense of aid from outside, like magic items. That means both superhuman abilities appropriate to those archetypes and routinely doing the profoundly improbable, pushing /beyond/ ordinary human limits (which are never absolute for the hero), or benefiting from 'luck,' narrative force, 'plot armor' or whatever you want to call it, via whatever mechanics can be devised to model such things.

Is it alright for it to be focused on little more than fighting, or should the fighter have non-combat options comparable to other classes?

From a gameplay perspective, it's probably best to have all classes fully participating in all three 'Pillars.' Either that or have classes just handle combat abilities (which'd mean trimming a lot from most classes, 'utility spells' or rituals, in particular), and have other options, like Backgrounds handle the other two (which'd mean 'Ritual Caster' might be a whole background, and Rogue might become one instead of a class). Then you might have a Fighter w/Thief Background PC that essentially combined the combat ability of the fighter and the non-combat utility of the Rogue (and, I doubt such a character would be 'broken.')

The Fighter is...
the simplest class and, as such, the easiest for new players to grasp and get them immersed in the fantasy world.

Not exactly true now (The Campion is the simplest sub-class, but the Battlemaster and EK beat out the Berskerker, at the very least, for complexity), and certainly not true in recent editions. The 3.x fighter required a lot of system mastery to build effectively, and, depending on that build, could be quite challenging and interesting to play, as well - in that edition, the Barbarian made a much better 'training wheels' class. In 4e, the classes weren't that far apart in complexity, and you could build a character and learn the game fairly easily playing whatever archetype you were interested in - but the Stiriker Role was arguably the simplest to use in play, and the fighter was a Defender. In that edition, the archer-ranger was often regarded as the simplest character.

Prior to 3.0, sure the fighter was pretty darn simple. Not that new players always got to start with one. Often when you were new to a group, you'd find yourself playing a cleric the first time out, instead. ;P

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

While I don't like the 'everyone is a spellcaster' model, there is one aspect of everyone being a spellcaster that does produce the right sort of design and that is that spells inherently allow for very broad build customization. No one gets in an argument that Wizards can't have access to fireball because not every Wizard is a fireball slinger. They understand without knowing that they understand that just because a wizard could toss a fireball doesn't mean he has to learn or use the spell. So while I don't like having martial classes limited by the same resource management limitations seen in spellcasting classes (the model seen in say Bo9S of 4e), I do like the idea of lists of interchangeable parts that can build up your particular fighter (the model of a fighter for the most part abandoned by Pathfinder).

Though bizarrely, gamers do get in arguments over wizards having access to the humble cure light wounds, and similar spells. Most of us are awfully selective about who gets interchangeable parts, and who gets to choose from which parts.

/tangent

 

[pemerton]

The Fighter's the big strong dude who whacks things with bludgeony and pokey objects.

The first conversation is a debate over how the fighter is portrayed, in terms of what powers/abilities he has. One side wants to have a fighter that ultimately becomes an extremely skilled human (or demihuman) but doesn't innately develop any powers that are beyond what a character with no magic (not just no spellcasting, but no mystical/mythical abilities whatsoever) could do. They basically want a "peak-human" type of character, a la Conan or Captain America.

The flipside to this are people who want a fighter that (eventually) develops magical/mystical/mythical abilities

These are both descriptions of the fighter in in fiction terms. But that doesn't tell us anything about mechanics. Tony Vargas picks up on this point:

What characters like that do in genre is also not merely superhuman, but extremely improbable. They do things that may not be strictly speaking impossible, but which would require the wildest luck or most preternatural skill (or most likely both in large measure), and yet do them very consistently. There's Author force going on there, a sort of 'protagonist syndrome,' where events around the character, by the authors design, warp in his favor to allow him to always catch that branch when he falls, or have the horde of enemies attack him more-or-less one at a time, or always avoid every poisoned arrow in the barrage, or outrun the avalanche, or split the arrow or whatever. Crazy, impossible, super-human, but not quite supernatural thing after crazy impossible superhuman thing.

Once you take that fully into account (and D&D /does/ get most of the 'plot armor' side of that protagonist effect under hps, if you don't interpret them too narrowly), you have an idea of what the fighter 'should' be

This is right. What is key to playing a character and having a Conan-esque experience is that you almost always win, not because you are supernatural but because no one gets the better of you. Even if you are locked in a prison by a wizard, a harem girl who fell in love with you on an earlier occasion will come and rescue you (in The Hour of the Dragon).

In the context of an RPG, this requires some sort of metagame mechanics to replicate. Hit points get some of the way there, but there's a lot more that can be done. (4e exemplifies some of this.)

What people don't get is that realistic and gritty is a whole lot more lethal than cinematic.

<snip>

The D&D fighter is, due to the nature of the hit point system, effectively armed with nerf weapons.

<snip>

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

This is the other post in the thread that really grapples with the issue from the perspective of game design rather than just an in-fiction perspective.

If success in combat is gated away behind the hit point system, then that is going to put a limit on how Conan-esque a fighter can be. Likewise if fighting multiple foes is gated away behind the action economy system. AD&D tackles the latter via the multiple-attacks-vs-less-than-1HD-creature rules. 4e tackles the former via the minion rules. Systems like RQ and RM break out of the hit point attrition paradigm altogether, but stick to action economy constraints.

You can't talk about building a Conan-esque fighter without directly addressing these issues of system design.

Get a new person to play a game of D&D. They have never played D&D before. They have seen, probably a few fantasy movies. Maybe some comic books or a novel. All they know how to do is roll a die.

<snip>

The Fighter PC is in the world. Knows their [very most] basic job and abilities. That player is playing D&D...hopefully imagining their character, envisioning the fight, getting more and more enwrapt in the fantasy story he/she is helping to create with every decision, action, and die roll.

<snip>

Oh no a goblin is coming at you!

By framing the situation as a combat one, of course it's easy to make the fighter seem like an easy class. Instead make the situation be this: you come across a door that is sealed shut, and engraved with strange runes. The newbie might find this easier to tackle playing a wizard rather than a fighter, especially if they've watched the first LotR movie.

 

[Quickleaf]

Great conversation so far Fighter is a D&D topic near and dear to my heart, since it is the class I usually play when I'm a player.

I relate to your high design concept of the fighter [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] as being a class with multiple "talent trees" (or something like that) which you choose from as you advance. It strikes me as the best way to accommodate the many fighter archetypes: cavalier/knight, hero of destiny/literary protagonist, dragon slayer, veteran/man-at-arms, warlord/champion, duelist/swashbuckler, etc. Either that or you create a fighter with many sub-classes like the 5e wizard or cleric. I'm actually doing my own redesign using that as a guiding principle.

For me, fighters universally embody three things:

• Weapon Superiority
• Endurance
• Prestige/Reputation

Weapon Superiority. Fighters should be the absolute best with weapons. They should use weapons in interesting ways that distinguish between axe, sword, pick, or maul more than damage numbers. When a fighters attacks other players at the table should take notice, and it should feel visceral and dynamic, drawing from armed martial arts (I'm thinking Western Martial Arts). Also, fighters should be able to do a limited version of bardic lore or identify with arms and armor, maintain arms and armor (if there are arms/armor degradation rules), display their weapon prowess to cause doubt/despair/fear in lesser foes, and talk shop with the local smith to get a good deal or learn who is ordering weapons. Maybe called shots should be a distinctly fighter thing, or maybe they should be particularly skilled at called shots. At higher levels they probably should get either a special attack that circumvents HP or a massive multi-attack against weak foes like in AD&D.

Endurance. Fighters should be the hardiest characters, and not just in terms of hit points. They should have the best saving throws. They should be able to delay suffering infirmities/conditions long enough to take one more crucial action. They should carry fallen characters without breaking a sweat, hold their breath for amazing lengths, stay on watch all night without batting an eye the next morning, labor in the salt-mines without suffering exhaustion/fatigue, and forced march longer and harder than others. Some fighter archetypes (e.g. duelist/swashbuckler) may tweak the specifics of what this endurance looks like, but the general principle applies.

Prestige/Reputation. Fighters should leverage prestige/renown/reputation more than other characters, or in ways other characters cannot. They might acquire a stronghold and followers. They might have a reputation as a ruthless yet honorable mercenary Whatever the case for the individual fighter, ALL fighters should eventually develop reputation as bad-asses, and they should be able to leverage that reputation in play. This might be inspiring despair/dread/fear in unfriendly or hostile creatures, contacting old war contacts, getting a deal on arms & armor, negotiating for higher pay or an extra provision in the contract, etc.

When I look at the main fighter archetypes -- cavalier/knight, hero of destiny/literary protagonist, dragon slayer, veteran/man-at-arms, warlord/champion, duelist/swashbuckler -- I can see these 3 points applying to all of them.