D&D 5E Why play a low-level Fighter when the Barbarian is so much better?

[UngeheuerLich]

Say what now?

What kind of game are you running, that easy and medium difficulty encounters are "not even worth running"?

taking barbarian 1 just for the rage is really old. 14 years old truth be told. Good idea? Maybe. But delaying all ability bumps traded for partial damage reduction.

Dragon fire is not reduced by the barbarian rage damage reduction. Also a dragon can just fly away and come back later when the barbarian has clamed down.
Good? Certainly. Overpowered? Not too much. Maybe raging should prevent the use of heavy armor... but most probably dipping barbarian is a fair trade. Being one level later at everything is annoying. It could be just that level where you fight the dragon when you are one attack behind or when you wish you had indomitable to resist the fire breath.

I am more worried about dipping moon druid level 2 and will certainly rule that at lvl 2 you only be able to change into a 1/2 CR animal.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I mean that from a player side, I do not find them worth the time. They are generally so trivial that our party is able to steamroll them. They are fights that our party will clearly win and do so within just a few rounds of combat. They serve no other purpose than to drain our resources.

I prefer when combats are meaningful. I prefer when combats are dangerous. I prefer to have fights that could actually end up with the party losing or needing to run away. Easy and medium encounters just don't do that for me in 5e.

Sounds like you need to find a DM who has at least some creativity to him or her, rather than just treat monsters like sacks of stats. See my example of kobolds above.

But more the point, you can hardly say the barbarian is overpowered when you're ignoring things that are meant to mitigate that power (multiple encounters for instance).

 

[drjones]

I mean that from a player side, I do not find them worth the time. They are generally so trivial that our party is able to steamroll them. They are fights that our party will clearly win and do so within just a few rounds of combat. They serve no other purpose than to drain our resources.

Yes, that is the purpose. (and sometimes to surprise players who treat them with lazy disregard)

And that is the reason that the Fighter can outshine the Barb in some circumstances, they still have resources after those 'meaningless' fights. If you remove them then you have weakened classes like the generic fighter and it is on your head, not the games.

 

[Ashkelon]

Sounds like you need to find a DM who has at least some creativity to him or her, rather than just treat monsters like sacks of stats. See my example of kobolds above.

But more the point, you can hardly say the barbarian is overpowered when you're ignoring things that are meant to mitigate that power (multiple encounters for instance).

This complaint isn't DM specific. It has come up many times trhough many games with many different DMs. Your kobold example doesn't show anything either. The combat encounter could have been skipped and a kobold could have fled to warn the warrens as soon as he sees the PCs. The same effect is had without need for a trivial combat.

I also never said the barbarian is overpowered. I think the barbarian raging every encounter works out just fine. I also said that a raging barbarian gets very little in the way of an offensive boost as reckless attacker allows the barbarian to have advantage on every attack whether or not the barbarian is raging.

Finally, I pointed out how if you follow the encounter guidelines, you will most likely only have between 3 and 5 encounters per day (especially if you mix up combats with some medium, some hard, and some deadly). So you saying I am ignoring the encounter guidelines in my analysis is completely mfalse. I showed you what the encounter guidelines actually are.

 

[Mistwell]

taking barbarian 1 just for the rage is really old. 14 years old truth be told. Good idea? Maybe. But delaying all ability bumps traded for partial damage reduction.

Dragon fire is not reduced by the barbarian rage damage reduction. Also a dragon can just fly away and come back later when the barbarian has clamed down.
Good? Certainly. Overpowered? Not too much. Maybe raging should prevent the use of heavy armor... but most probably dipping barbarian is a fair trade. Being one level later at everything is annoying. It could be just that level where you fight the dragon when you are one attack behind or when you wish you had indomitable to resist the fire breath.

I am more worried about dipping moon druid level 2 and will certainly rule that at lvl 2 you only be able to change into a 1/2 CR animal.

I am sure your response was intended for someone...but I also am pretty sure I was not the someone you intended to quote.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I am sure your response was intended for someone...but I also am pretty sure I was not the someone you intended to quote.

Yes, you are right. Truly misquoted^^

 

[Sacrosanct]

This complaint isn't DM specific. It has come up many times trhough many games with many different DMs. Your kobold example doesn't show anything either. The combat encounter could have been skipped and a kobold could have fled to warn the warrens as soon as he sees the PCs. The same effect is had without need for a trivial combat.

Did you even read my example? Because it very much illustrates how "by the book", an easy encounter is not trival, nor do the PCs just walk all over it. I gave a few examples of how the kobolds use tactics and their lair to make a mess of things for the party.

Finally, I pointed out how if you follow the encounter guidelines, you will most likely only have between 3 and 5 encounters per day (especially if you mix up combats with some medium, some hard, and some deadly). So you saying I am ignoring the encounter guidelines in my analysis is completely mfalse. I showed you what the encounter guidelines actually are.

Firstly, you told me to actually go read the DM guidelines and said 6-8 was a myth. Well, is seems of the two of us, I was the one who read them and not you, because the actual text directly proved your claim wrong.

Secondly, rarely does actual play actually mirror those recommended encounters per day. I've never seen players go, "Well, we've hit X encounters per day and met our Y XP cap per day, so time to rest!" Short and long rests have been dictated solely on the availability of such during actual game play, and not a metagame mechanic. Sometimes the rested after 2 encounters. Sometimes they had a dozen before they could find a place to rest.

But all of this is beside the point that is, "If you skip encounters there were expected of you to have, you can't make a valued assessment of one classes power/functionality over another because it's you who is changing the expected mode of play, particularly if you're using limited power/per day abilities in that assessment."

 

[I'm A Banana]

Note: You only have 6-8 combats per day if you use medium and easy difficulty encounters. IMHO, medium and easy difficulty encounters aren't even worth running.

If you only use deadly and hard encounters you will have only about 4 encounters per day. The barbarian can rage 4 times per day by level 6.

Also, do not forget that reckless attacker gives the barbarian advantage on attacks regardless of whether or not the barbarian is raging.

In other words, if you increase the difficulty of the encounter so that the barbarian's spikes are less effective, you lower the number of encounters, and the end result is that the barbarian (or any other limited-resource user) is more consistent, more like a fighter or a rogue. Hard and Deadly encounters will cancel the Barbarian rages by knocking barbarians unconscious more often (unless your monsters tend to ignore the targets dealing the most damage to them). The HP totals and higher AC's of the monsters will ignore much of that extra damage. Critting on a 19 is MUCH more valuable when only a 15+ hits. And so on. The barbarian will swing, but the highs are tamped down, because there won't be those lows.

And that's not even getting into the legendary and lair shenanigans.

And while varying the number of encounters in an adventuring day is pretty common, it's also (so far) pretty opaque as to how the game WANTS you to handle "ONE BIG ENCOUNTER AND THEN DONE!" style binary challenges. Maybe if your encounter rate varies significantly from the baseline, the DMG will have a "limited-resource fighter" available for use that'll work better with that style.

 

[Mistwell]

I find, as both a player and a DM, that a mix of easy, medium, and hard encounters (in common parlance, not rules definition of those terms) is better than a more fixed hard level encounters. It's better for believably of the setting, exploration and interaction, adventure pace, and resource management. I do not find easy encounters that last one or two rounds to be boring, provided they are mixed in with medium and hard encounters as well. Eliminating easy (and medium) encounters would in my opinion just extend how long average battles take to fight, which would shift the focus to combat a lot more since there would be less time for exploration and interaction in any given 4 hour game we play.

 

[KarinsDad]

taking barbarian 1 just for the rage is really old. 14 years old truth be told. Good idea? Maybe. But delaying all ability bumps traded for partial damage reduction.

Dragon fire is not reduced by the barbarian rage damage reduction. Also a dragon can just fly away and come back later when the barbarian has clamed down.
Good? Certainly. Overpowered? Not too much. Maybe raging should prevent the use of heavy armor... but most probably dipping barbarian is a fair trade. Being one level later at everything is annoying. It could be just that level where you fight the dragon when you are one attack behind or when you wish you had indomitable to resist the fire breath.

I am more worried about dipping moon druid level 2 and will certainly rule that at lvl 2 you only be able to change into a 1/2 CR animal.

This is kind of like saying that multiclassing itself results in being annoying because everything is one level later.

Let's take level 9 fighter vs. level 8 fighter level 1 barbarian.

The level 9 fighter has indomitable 1/day. The other has rage 2/day.

HD 8 Young Green Dragon:

Breath 42 damage, DC 14 Con save, recharge 5-6

Claw/Claw/Bite: +7 to hit, 11/11/22

One does average 42 (30.5 DPR) in a single round, the other does average 44 (17 DPR) in a single round.

The breath has a recharge and can typically only be done 1 round in 3.

So regardless of how many rounds the dragon breathes, indomitable helps at most once. If it works, it stops ~21 damage. If it does not work, it does nothing. In this example, on average it stops 55%*21 = 11.5 DPR points of damage.

A round where either fighter is hit with claw/claw/bite, it stops 6+6+8=20 damage (or more with criticals, on average 8 DPR for a round). And it does it for the entire encounter. Every successful hit.

One possible entire encounter of Indomitable saving just a little more average damage (11.5) as Rage does in a single round (8 DPR).


As for your "dragon can just fly away" comment, doubtful. In the 136 hit point Young Green Dragon example here, even in a single round, the PCs are probably going to drop 40 to 60 points of damage on him at 9th level, especially with casters throwing out their big guns. And as he flies away, unless he is out of sight, his 80 speed is going to allow the PCs to fire off another round of ranged spells and attacks. A dragon would be stupid to come back being half wounded or so. Granted, in examples where the Dragon is higher CR and is legendary compared to the party, the party does less damage and he does more, but even so, at 9th level, PCs have a ton of different offensive options to just nail a Dragon. Even a tougher one would at least be partially injured and the players are now aware of his existence. That option seems subpar for a Dragon unless he just rules the encounter and if he is that tough, there is no need for him to fly away and come back later. The fighter's resist isn't going to matter.


So no, I'm not seeing where Indomitable is so amazing. Once per day, it may or may not save from some status effect which is good. But this is only for 1 level. About 10 encounters total (according to the XP guideline which I think are very skewed low). At level 10, both fighters have it.

And the resist works day after day, 2 fights max per day for every level starting at 2 (assuming the player goes Fighter / Barb and not Barb / Fighter at levels 1 and 2).


I do not see anything on the Fighter's list at any level where I say "Boy, I'd really want that instead of resist melee (or ranged weapon) for one more level". Nothing on the list seems that good, although situationally, they might be. Even the Champion's Survivor does not typically save as much damage per encounter (since fighters might not go to half damage in many fights and while above half damage, it stops) and how often do people play at level 18?


From a party resource POV, this just means that the healers can save about 2 cures / tier / day that do not have to be cast on the fighter (the guy getting melee attacked the most), but can be shared elsewhere. Even with good AC, being up front, the fighter is going to be hit a lot every day unless the encounters are easy (or unless he is an archer).