D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[doctorbadwolf]

In brief: (1) decouple Tactical Mind from Second Wind, there is no reason the Fighter should have to give up essential healing in order to get what is, quite literally, merely a suped-up cantrip, and (2) add (after full testing!) a feature like my Gritty Determination (TL;DR: pool = top ability mod + Fighter lv, spend 1:1 to improve any non-Initiative ability check by a total up to your Prof score, stacks with Prof/Expert, must be spent before rolling).

Oh, and I guess (3) for the love of God don't give any of these tools to anyone else. TM should definitely be Fighter 2 or even 3, and Gritty Determination can be 3-5 depending on when they get TM. Simply too deep for anyone to bother multiclassing just to get those tools (especially since my Gritty Determination feature really depends on getting more Fighter levels to be worthwhile.)

Do those things and the Fighter at last has something. It ain't much, but it's honest work. With TM and GD, the Fighter offers soaring highs, as opposed to the Rogue's consistent performance. In a sense, the two swap in combat vs noncombat. Rogues have Reliable Talent and innate Expertise, making their performance floor extremely high, while this hypothetical Fighter can potentially knock an ability check completely out of the park, but may also fall abysmally short. Conversely, Rogues in combat need special conditions to be able to do Big Damage, but Fighters just plug away, making tons of attacks every round and then giving themselves the ability to do it some more now and then.

That's a reasonably interesting mechanical niche for both classes. Fighters are reliable in combat and swingy outside it. Rogues are swingy in combat and reliable outside it.

I agree with your suggestions, except that IMO gritty determination could literally just be “when you fail a d20 test, you can choose to succeed instead, as if you rolled exactly the DC of the test” get rid of indomitable, put this at level 5-ish, with like 2ish uses per short or long rest, and get more at 11, 14, 17, and 20, and call it Heroic Determination because heroic fits the 5e fighter’s fantasy more than gritty does IMO.

I’d also give action surge either 1) more punch when used with secondary effects either a) chosen at level 2 like a Holy Order, or b) based on your fighting style choice, 2) more uses sooner eg 2 uses at level 5, 3 at 11, etc, or 3) both 1 and 2.

i guess Heroic Determination could not be any d20 test since TM is already an ability check booster, but tbh having a “use this a lot” and a “save this for dire straits” feature is a good dynamic.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So I have a proposition

Fighter Level 1-6 is very well designed. Agree or disagree?

Disagree in part. As stated, I believe it needs Tactical Mind without shackling it to Second Wind (just let it be 2 charges, regain 1 charge per short rest, or whatever.) And I believe it needs one additional purely non-combat feature, with my "Gritty Determination" proposal meant to be a nice, simple, straightforward option, though the exact numbers would require playtesting to ensure that it neither gets out of hand nor falls behind.

Another proposition.
Fighter 7-20 is poorly designed. Agree or disagree?

Agree.

 

[FrogReaver]

What's the benefit of lacking sub-systems, other than spells, to model exploring environments or interacting with NPCs in ways other than trying to kill eachother?

There's been like 20,000 threads on that topic, some of which I know you were part of. I think you are aware of the suggested merits and just disagree - do we really want to rehash that here?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That's sounds a lot like the variant rules I said would sell more books

The game is better for having a fairly low amount of variant rules that replace major rules systems. My suggestion would work as a change to the actual default official game, more than as a variant rule.

But, Tasha’s had optional variant rules for classes and it was fine and no one objected to th…okay we both know Tashas is controversial in part for having optional variant features for classes.

But if they don’t figure it out in time for the 2024 phb, sure. Put some of this stuff in the next Of Everything book. Shameska’s Orrery of Everything is my guess. But it will be best at that point to make it basically additive or easy to plug and play, like a change to how the spellbook works, or something, not a change to the spell slots by level table. That’s a change you make when revising the core game, not in a splat book as a tacked on alt.

But sets of features that change how classes interact with major rules systems within the game is not something I think can be safely assumed to be a money maker. It’s a gamble. And it’s a gamble that can lose you money so far down the road it will be impossible to backtrack on, and could accelerate the need for a new edition dramatically.

So no thanks. No strategy of selling lots of major non-additive variant rules split up amongst several books. That sounds terrible.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There's been like 20,000 threads on that topic, some of which I know you were part of. I think you are aware of the suggested merits and just disagree - do we really want to rehash that here?

So just the standard "bad rules make games good"/ROLE not ROLL stuff.
Sad, I was momentarily intrigued.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

players optimising the fun out of the game and being risk adverse by taking every long rest they can (from a mechanical standpoint, long resting after every battle is the optimal strategy).

It seems to me that the 5 minute adventure day came from players doing their darnedest to optimize fun into the game - for them. It's less fun for DMs, but more fun for most players - the exceptions being the players of fighter types who get left behind in the "more able to do more fun stuff each encounter" race.

IME, players don't much like per-day limits, and have been grumbling about Vancian magic since the earliest days. Naturally they want to work around the fun-draining effects of this (fun draining for them - it's loads of fun for DMs). The 5 minute day is an effective method of doing so.

More generally, there's the issue of what's fun for DMs is very often not so fun for players, and vice versa. Fora like this highlight the issue because they have more DMs as active participants and so skew things toward the DMs point of view.

(And yes, I'm almost always a DM/GM too. But my touchstone for running a good game is "How does this look from the players' point of view? Would I really want to be a player in a game run like this?")

 

[M_Natas]

True. Making gritty rests the default would fix most of that though.

Gritty Rest as written could also just lead to the 5 minute work week instead of the 5 minute work day.
I made another thread ( https://www.enworld.org/threads/lon...ty-realism-variant-rules.700415/#post-9161018 ) where I propose a Gradual system. But having a rest system where you need to meet certain conditions and than just have 100%, no matter how low or high your ressource were before just invites abuse.
In my Gradual Gritty Realism rules my adjustments also balance out spellcasters a little in comparison to non spellcasters, buffing them at tier 1 and making them weaker in comparison to non casters at higher levels.
Ressources like HP and especially Spellslots need to be recovered Gradually and not in a from 0 to 100% way, because that just invites abuse.
But when you just recover 15 or 20% each long rest you will be more careful at how you spend your spellslots. Like right now, when you start a long rest, its vest tonuse up most of your spellslots. For goodberrys, sending, healing, for everything.
Because the next day you will have 100% of your spellslots no matter if you now have 60% or 0% of your spellslots.

But when you only regain 20% of your spellslots, it matters. If you end your day with 60%, the next day you have 80%. But if you use up spells and are only left with 20%, the next day you will onlynhave 40% or your spellslots available.
Suddenly you need to be more conservative with your Spell use, even if you had a 5 minute work day.
The from 0 to 100% rest is part of the balance problem, even if the long rest is 7 days instead of 1.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fighter Level 1-6 is very well designed. Agree or disagree?

Fighter 7-20 is poorly designed. Agree or disagree?

For perspective, I consider the 3.x Fighter well designed - downright elegant. It was just every other class.

The 5e fighter is no 3.5 fighter, not at any level.

Class Balance is certainly worse as you level. It's the classic sweet spot issue real-D&D has always had. You can blame that on martial class designs or full caster class designs. Or, of course, on DMs or CharOp

 

[Oofta]

IMO. There is - it's just not applicable to 100% of cases. There are many potential classes we could objectively say were bad. The ones in the game currently are mostly close enough that I don't think we can say definitively for levels 1-20 class A in all it's variations is better than class B in all it's.


This is where it gets alot more nuanced. There is an argument being put forth that's essentially '(1) fighters are popular but it's in spite of their poor design, likely because some combination of conceptual space they represent being popular and the low mental load required to play one sufficiently well. So they are popular but poorly designed because of xyz'.

Citing their popularity as evidence of their good design is just talking past almost everyone making some form of the above argument.


Agreed. I think on it's face popularity should initially be treated as evidence of good design. For example, if someone told me Mario was badly designed and I said but it's super popular that might be enough to change their mind - perhaps they reevaluated what they thought was good design. But when they go further and say it's badly designed because xyz and popular for other reasons then citing it's popularity is no longer persuasive. At that point citing popularity repeatedly isn't doing anything.

The only goal of any class or feature in the book is to provide rules that people want to use. Plenty of people play fighters therefore they've achieved the design goal of the class. I personally don't care for warlocks, but I don't need to since a lot of people do enjoy them. I'm not going to post to every thread mentioning warlocks how terrible the class is.

Obviously different individuals will have different preferences and desires, but no design could possibly work for everyone. It just has to work well enough for a lot of people. Just like D&D in general.

I'd be perfectly fine with people discussing the issues they have and options or 3PP versions to make them work better for them . On the other hand I've played and DMed fighters to 20th level, they work just fine for me and the people I play with. So I'll just contine to ignore threads on how to fix a problem I don't have, unlike 3E.

But saying people just don't know any better has zero data to support it and is insulting to people who like the class.

 

[Minigiant]

But sets of features that change how classes interact with major rules systems within the game is not something I think can be safely assumed to be a money maker. It’s a gamble. And it’s a gamble that can lose you money so far down the road it will be impossible to backtrack on, and could accelerate the need for a new edition dramatically.

But again. Who said that?

Make default Action Surge 1/SR. Variant Action Surge is 3/LR. Call it Action Points

So at the table where they only have 1 big fight per day, the fighter has 3 Action Points to Nova just like the Wizard can vomit all their spell slots.

That's how I run urban adventure where after every fight the group go back home to sleep.