It honestly is kinda sad that the concept of Fighter is threatened by "wearing armor" and all Fighter gets with respect to armor is "I can wear it". So cleric, artificer and various other combinations somehow don't tread on Fighter but god forbid a Viking Warrior have some damn armor and be able to rage.
I'm perfectly aware that I can flavor stuff and wedge characters into the boxes the design team enforces. I do it often and sometimes it is fun. It would also be fun to play a back alley thug that is a mobile and sneaky striker with her lead pipe or mace or whatever. Could I play that with a fighter? Sure but she won't be that mobile and for flavor I'd be giving up the Fighter's defining features according to you (wearing armor and using better weapons). Does my sneak up and whack someone seem weird if I can't take them down in one shot and have to do the same damage by hitting them three times? Could I layer in feats to make it work better? Sure but the system tends to punish you for not optimizing your main stat which is the expense of taking feats.
Does it suck that the only kind of stealthy precision striker the designers can imagine is either Zorro or Puss in Boots or a guy with two short swords (fine that's an exaggeration but not that big of one)? Yeah it kinda does. To be honest I started this thread to raise the idea that maybe, just maybe the designers don't give martials the benefit of the doubt on build flexibility in cases where they are not as strict with casters. I stand by that, but at this point the conversation is boring and in the end most of the time the DMs I play with will give me flexibility like this.
It honestly is kinda sad that the concept of Fighter is threatened by "wearing armor" and all Fighter gets with respect to armor is "I can wear it". So cleric, artificer and various other combinations somehow don't tread on Fighter but god forbid a Viking Warrior have some damn armor and be able to rage.
I'm perfectly aware that I can flavor stuff and wedge characters into the boxes the design team enforces. I do it often and sometimes it is fun. It would also be fun to play a back alley thug that is a mobile and sneaky striker with her lead pipe or mace or whatever. Could I play that with a fighter? Sure but she won't be that mobile and for flavor I'd be giving up the Fighter's defining features according to you (wearing armor and using better weapons). Does my sneak up and whack someone seem weird if I can't take them down in one shot and have to do the same damage by hitting them three times? Could I layer in feats to make it work better? Sure but the system tends to punish you for not optimizing your main stat which is the expense of taking feats.
Does it suck that the only kind of stealthy precision striker the designers can imagine is either Zorro or Puss in Boots or a guy with two short swords (fine that's an exaggeration but not that big of one)? Yeah it kinda does. To be honest I started this thread to raise the idea that maybe, just maybe the designers don't give martials the benefit of the doubt on build flexibility in cases where they are not as strict with casters. I stand by that, but at this point the conversation is boring and in the end most of the time the DMs I play with will give me flexibility like this.