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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 7044485" data-attributes="member: 6777737">To me the 4e Fighter (I never played Essentials so it's not Weaponmaster to me) was, at it's core, two abilities:Combat Challenge1. You mark any opponent you attack (hit or miss) until the end of your next turn.2. When an enemy that is marked by and adjacent to the Fighter chooses to attack someone other than the Fighter, the Fighter gets a free attack against the marked enemy as an immediate interrupt (i.e., as a reaction).Combat Superiority1. If you hit with an opportunity attack and movement provoked the attack of opportunity, the target stops moving (i.e., the target's speed is reduced to 0).Pretty much everything else was gravy.  Yes, even Come and Get It, even Tide of Iron.  These two abilities were the core structure of the class.Critically, opportunity attacks were limited to once per turn, so Combat Superiority could be used to prevent multiple opponents from running past you.  Also critically, you could use both Combat Challenge and an AoO in the same turn against the same creature.  Quite honestly, opportunity attacks are so rare in 5e that I question whether they should be once per turn in 5e already.  I understand the desire to simplify and use reactions for everything, and I understand why reactions are limited to once per round, but it's pretty easy to game the system currently.There's two abilities people call out to mimic the 4e Fighter:  the Sentinel feat which punishes attackers, and Protection Style which penalizes attackers.Now, this is close.  Bullet point 1 is actual Combat Superiority.  However, since only punishes (triggers an attack) and doesn't penalize, it means you can only Sentinel against one creature a turn.  So, in order to punish a creature for attacking whom you're defending, you have to sacrifice punishing any other target that you might have attacked.  Additionally, you have to give up any ability for opportunity attacks.The second ability is the one that can actually penalize attacks is the Protection Fighting Style:Here we're applying a bonus instead of a penalty.  That's perfectly fine.  I'm not a huge fan of requiring that you and your ally be adjacent to each other, but it's acceptable.  However, this ability is consuming our Fighter's reaction again!  We have to choose between being able to punish an attacker, shielding your allies, or making opportunity attacks.The 5e DMG does have alternate rules that it calls "marking" on p271:However, other than automatically applying on hit, it's exactly nothing like a mark in 4e.  It's like they took everything that was bad about Combat Challenge and Combat Superiority and made it into one ability.  It will essentially never come up because you have to attack before you can mark, and even when it does trigger all it does is grant advantage on one attack.  It does nothing to actually taunt the attacker, nor does it do anything to punish an attacker for ignoring the Fighter, nor does it prevent enemies from rushing past the Fighter unless they've already engaged.  The Fighter is still unable to keep his enemies stuck to him.  Even the fact that they change opportunity attacks to once per turn instead of once per round, as well as changing opportunity attacks to not consume your reaction doesn't make a significant difference.Worse, even if you're using the "mark" alternate rule, once you use Sentinel to attack or Protection to shield, you can no longer use opportunity attacks because Sentinel and Protection consume your reaction!  Mark's opportunity attacks don't consume a reaction, but you still need to be able to take a reaction to take one... which you can't once it's been spent.What I would like to see is a 5e subclass of Fighter that gets a proper mark, and -- instead of getting any other benefits -- has trained to be a Defender Fighter.The problem with the subclass option, of course, is that you need all these options at level 3 and level 7 to really duplicate it.  4e characters basically start at level 3, so I'm not irritated by the fact that the Defender Fighter has to wait until level 3 to get going.  However, I don't like the idea that they have to wait until level 7 to get a full Combat Challenge.  I need to think some on how I'd structure the subclass.My ideal 4e Fighter in 5e would be:Fighter + Sentinel + Protection Style + unlimited reactions for Sentinel, Protection Style, or opportunity attacks.  I'd probably take Shield Master as well.Hm....</blockquote>

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