First, about me, I've played D&D most my life. I have enjoyed 1st, 2nd, 3.0, & 3.5. I never played 4e, but research has led me to believe that I didn't miss much there. I have recently begun playing 5e, and am still learning what is new and different and what is the same. One of my biggest hopes in my transition was that fighters would have been changed in two ways. First, I hoped their overall structure would be simplified. Second, I hoped that they would be improved so that they actually felt like an epic character as you attain epic levels. I ask this question now since I've heard there may be a 6e on the horizon, so I guess sort of a speak now or forever hold my peace kind of reason.

To simplify them In particular, i strongly dislike feats. I find them to be a cumbersome system that bogs down the game, both during character creation and leveling, and during play. What DM has not had a PC have to tell everyone to hang on a minute while they check to see exactly how there feat works again. Sure, the DM can simply say, nope to late you miss your turn and tell them to know their stuff and be ready next time, but sometimes that can really have a negative impact on the rest of the party too. I think there are many other paths that Wizards could take with fighters to simplify them. One possible solution would be to have a list of possible builds that may be reminiscent of the most common feats we use now such as two weapon fighting, ranged combat prowess, grappler, etc... Instead of having a ton of feats to choose from, many of which build off of one another, you could simply choose from a list of 20 or so fighting styles at each level. PC's could then specialize by always selecting the same style, or generalize by selecting multiple styles across levels.  This is just one brief snapshot of a possibility here, but many exist.

The reason I believe fighters should be improved, is twofold. The last long term PC I played was a fighter in 3.5. I played them into epic or at least very near epic levels so as to be planning ahead. When our group played, I enjoyed my PC for roleplaying reasons, but when it came to combat I really was not much more than a human shield to absorb damage and cut down a lot of little baddies near me, but that's about it. Secondly, another PC playing a sorcerer used to get together with me out of game and just for fun we would duel. We did this many times, and I had some magical items to help, such as a ring that allowed me to go ethereal. However, aside from going ethereal and fleeing through barriers, he pretty much whooped me every time, and I mean not even close. From what I've seen, fighters have not been improved enough to change this.

I like that paladins have some special powers as they level like detecting and smiting evil, etc... but I have always felt that fighters should naturally have some effects like this too. The point here is that when a fighter reaches epic level, they should feel epic. To give examples it is easiest for me to reference some movies and video games. Think about Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and how the ninja's jumped great distances from roof top to roof top. Think about martial arts movies, how the main character can destroy an army of thugs by themselves. Think about the Street Fighter games and how the characters can discharge a fireball from their hands. Lastly, think about Soron from The Fellowship of the Ring when he wages out into battle against the humans and elves and how his weapon unleashes a wave of force that knocks everyone back 10 to 20 feet. Now I know on that last one we're talking about Soron here, but I'm also talking about how to make a fighter truly epic, and bottom line is that fighters are in desperate need of some real oomph!

 Remember, I'm not asking for how to change 5e here, I'm asking about what people want if/when a 6e is released?

Thanks all,

5e fighter is the simple version of the fighter that WOTC released. The edition is based around feats being optional within the core rule book, an option that was used by so many people that in 5e it’s no longer optional again for 6e.

some of the issues with fighter, in my opinion, are that the base class has 2 stand out signature abilities. Action surge and extra attacks. Action surge can be great, but it being a short rest feature can put it in a similar place as the warlock. Underpowered without short rest, or over powered with too many. The extra attack issue is that the 3rd attack from a single action spent doesn’t kick in until level 11 when most campaigns seem to end at if they ever get that high. These issues can lead to expectations being subverted.

WOTC has somewhat mitigated this by attempting to create effective subclass features for the fighter. Most of the subclasses are perfectly serviceable, though the Eldritch knight suffers a bit from the base games own spellcasting limitations and needed to be buffed retroactively by expanding the wizards spell list several times.

regarding the “gap” between spellcasters and martials, I’m under the impression that the gap is as close as it’s been even though there still is a gap in efficacy. Regarding PVP, the system was not designed from that point of play, though it does seem to be common enough in play and discussion. I don’t think prioritizing character classes to be able to fight each other is a valuable addition to the game, but I suppose I could be in the minority. The game itself seems much more focused around cooperative game play, regardless of what pillars the table might be using at any given time.

as for the balance of 6e or what ever they end up calling it, the “warrior” classes have been identified as the barbarian, fighter, and monk. There seems to some overlap already with feat selection for the ranger and I suspect the paladin will also be similarly balanced. Small changes to two weapon fighting have been made and reductions in bonus action clog seem to be a focus for the redesign. Mr Crawford has stated that the warrior classes will be dealing more damage without needing to rely on feats as much, though I have my doubts considering that from everything that’s been released so far there seems to be a firm reduction of DPR across the board for lower numbers in general.

edit: fighters have sentimental value for me since they were my first character. I admit that I fell for the “you should play a champion cause it’s simple” trap and had reservations about the class as a whole. Battlemaster is where it’s at.

Thanks Bobby,

I appreciate your thoughtful response. I obviously need to do some more reading of the 5e books to get a better understanding of things. I have focused my 5e learning thus far primarily on game design (story/lore) as a DM, but I am still pretty new to things as a player.

I think I maybe became too frustrated too soon and need to give it a closer look.

Thanks again,

Feats seem to be part of the next edition so if you don’t like feats it might not be for you. However, compared to spellcaster players, I really haven’t seen game delays due to looking up feats in 5E unless they are new players. But even experienced players cause way more delays looking up spells. Myself included but I typically look that stuff up during other players turns so I can be ready when it comes to me. 

Take a look at One D&D play test under the sources menu on this site if you want to get involved in the next edition or to see what direction WotC is moving towards. 

I do believe the “warrior” group for One D&D (1DD) may make moves to be more powerful but that waits to be seen. So far some feats that were must haves for marital have taken a reduction (Great Weapon Master, Sharpshooter) but my hopes are that the warrior group will pick some of that up to distinguish them from the other groups (Mage, Priest, Expert)

Hey ThriKreenWarrior,

That is a lot of great info and I will look into that, much appreciated.

I agree that spells take up more time as well, I just didn't want to diverge too much from my topic and overcomplicate things.

Thanks again,

One of the things 1D&D seems to be moving toward is eliminating things like the battle master’s superiority die and substituting a number of die/rest with increasing dice at various levels  for proficiency bonus times/rest which naturally increases with level while remaining fairly balanced. Simply doing that may make a more enjoyable fighter.

Pardon my weirdness here, but as I have been playing and had similar experience, I wondered if you had considered sword Skills.

I don’t mean “fight with two swords”, I mean “a stroke so powerful that the air becomes a blade and strikes the enemy ten feet away”.

anime been doing that kind of thing for a long while, but it might not be a fit.

the campaign I am working on I have an excuse to rejigger the fighter pretty seriously, and added these things in to balance against the magic having classes. It won’t start until next year, but the play testers love how it makes fighters seem like, well, fighters.

fair warning: my playtesting only runs through rapidly and randomly created dungeons (using my old 1e DMG, lol) and a stock town, so may not be a fair equivalent for you. But it does make for some pretty brava moments for the tanks.

Yes, I love that!

That is exactly the kind of thing that I am talking about, and I think anime is a great source for ideas.

Over the years, people have complained that wizards have too few hit points and die too easily early on. I may be mistaken, but I believe 5e already made a change there from the original d4 to I wanna say a d6 (no complaints there from me). Anyways, the point is that wizards were too week in earlier editions at lower levels as compared to other classes. Conversely though, they were the most powerful at higher levels and this low to high curve makes sense to me, but my argument is simply to narrow that power discrepancy at each end.

Bottom line, what do fighters have at 18th level and above that compares to spells like Time Stop and Wish, or even Miracle for that matter. I just don't think a few extra actions or attacks is enough. I believe at epic levels a fighter should be able to go onto the battlefield and do some really epic stuff. Why not say a fighter can whirl their sword around and create a tornado that then ravages the battlefield. Seriously, this is a fantasy game with magic, the sky should be the limit. For some reason it seems like fighters and perhaps some other character classes are held to a more realistic design standard. I say, open up the flood gates and make some seriously cool things possible. Imagine an epic barbarian with a rage like ability that makes them temporarily Hulk like. How fun would that be for the PC to have their character drop into the middle of the Blood War and just begin to lay waste for a time.

At any rate, I have taken a closer look at the 5e fighters now and I do like many of the changes that took place, but I still think there is a lot more that could be done here to make an epic level character from any class feel truly epic. 

Exactly.

It is something that meshes will with Feats (which, honestly, I am not fond of either, but I sorta still have them), so it doesn't change things a ton.

I gave folks what amounts to a feat at 2, 6, 10, 14, and 18, and for mages it is spells, but for fighters and such it is Sword Skills. They get to pick from a list of them. Still in playtesting or I would share the whole lot, lol.

For development, I took the "fighting styles" as a core model, and then added some kind of wild effect.  I grouped them into weapon types: Bow, Sword, Spear, Rod, and Thrown. The last two were player request additions because one of them just *had* to use fighting needles (shrug).

The hard part is coming up with the effects for the basic sorta of things -- I like things to improve as a character does, so having them increase by "movements" (a total steal from some anime -- "Rod skill, Third Movement: Wall of Pain!") gave it a frame work and also an added bonus of seeing a playtester take down an Orc Wizard from 30 feet away while the player shouted the movement was a total blast.

I hope you can run with this. If I remember when we are done playtesting later this year, I will drop them in here.

Fighters get so many ASI that can be used on feats, and they get to choose a defining martial archetype, that I think 5E provides everything necessary to build a unique fighter.

On dndbeyond the wording of the feats is included on the character sheet, so it shouldn't take players a long time to check the wording, and they should be planning ahead during the combat rounds to be able to announce their intended action(s) quickly enough without pausing for a minute or two to read a feat's description.

Hello Farling,

I do think that 5e has made several improvements to the fighter class(es), and I would agree that they can be made unique, but at epic levels is unique enough?

In my opinion, the average NPC soldier in a city is probably no higher than 1st or maybe 2nd level. In fact, in smaller towns they are often untrained workers banning together to form a militia, so their more like a 1st level farmer. By third level an NPC soldier usually has earned some significant rank and anything higher is unlikely to be found in anything less than a large city or marching army from one. By 5th level, an NPC soldier is likely at least a Captain, and in most cities your unlikely to find many fighters above levels 7 - 10, and those fighters are likely generals of an army, or adventurers themselves. Further, at the higher end they are well known within their city and a force to be reconned with in combat. Now this all makes sense to me, but it's the following ten levels where I take issue. How big of a difference is there really between a 10th level fighter and a 20th? I know in combat the 20th level fighter would mop the floor with the 10th level fighter as he has more hp, better att. bon., more feats, some additional special abilities, and likely increased damage, so I recognize that there is a notable difference. Further, there name is probably known outside of their city across the realms. That said, is the difference enough?

I believe a 20th level fighter should be more than just an amazing fighter, I believe they should be an epic fighter with abilities that go beyond our reality and instead are only possible within a fantasy landscape's reality. If not at level 20, then certainly by level 25 or 30. My argument is to make an epic fighter more than unique make them EPIC!

For example: I think a level 30 fighter should be able to go toe to toe with a demigod and have a chance. Maybe not a good chance, but a chance. Certainly a 30th level wizard could, so why not a fighter?

On the topic of feats. D&D beyond does help, and feats are a system that does work ok, but in my opinion it is a clunky system that could be improved on. Unfortunately, I think it is really more of a marketing tool for sales purposes than it is a tool to make the game better. Every time they make a book with new feats, spells, etc... people buy them and sales go up. At least this was the trend in 3.5, I am not yet familiar enough with 5e to say. I think if feats were all together in one source book, and I mean all feats then that would help simplify things substantially, and if the feats were made more powerful at higher levels that could work too.

Perhaps they could make a Book of Combat, which could list all feats, all spells, etc...

Anyways, those are simply my opinions, and agree or not I appreciate your feedback.

Thanks,

Hey AEDorsay,

That all sounds great to me.

I also like things to improve as a character does. In fact that is actually one of the reasons I did not like feats in the first place, as in 3.5 there was generally no room for straying from a path. If you had a vision for you character's outcome at epic levels, you had to plan it out in advance and adhere to it nearly 100% or your character would not achieve the desired results. This sucks when it makes no sense in game. I think it is more fun when you play out certain things that you character is working on in game and then when you level you take the feats that match up with what you've been doing in game (i.e. if I have been doing a lot of ranged fighting in game recently b/c the monsters have had flight, then when I level I would ideally take a bow related feat not a melee one).

Thanks again,

D&D 5E only goes up to level 20. The martial archetypes grant abilities which will be quite significant by the time the fighter gets to 20th level.

In OneD&D, they are planning to improve on the way that feats work, you might be interested in having a look at some of the UA that has been released so far for OneD&D.

I’ve played a few fighters in this and every edition (they’re really my favorite), and I’ve never found them lacking. 

There’s been lots of fighter discussions on the boards over the years, and I find, sometimes, its people who don’t really like them much and are trying to improve them, while people who play them a lot think they’re pretty cool as is. I don’t know if this applies to you, just an observation. 
Really, the one thing fighters are missing is out of combat options. When the fight ends, it’s up to everyone else to find the secret door, disarm the traps and interrogate the hostage, while the fighter stands there. But in a fight, extra attacks combined with action surge and the right feats can make them just brutal.

And those extra feats coupled with being SAD, means they’ve usually got a maxed primary ability and a few other tricks. They can really benefit from crusher, slasher, piercer and sentinel to gain serious battlefield control. They do lots once the fight starts. And, really, absorbing attacks and damage so the rogue can sneak attack and the wizard can blow stuff up is a critically important function.

But, there’s more coming. Crawford has said there will be things with weapons in 6e that we haven’t seen before, which seems aimed straight at fighters. 

Also, just system-wise, you’ll find that feats are much more forgiving in this edition than they were in 3.x. As you said, you were really locked in to certain feats in a certain order if you wanted your character to be effective. This edition has really done away with that. There aren’t feat trees like 3.x where you need the first one, and really only also want the 5th one, but you still need to take 2-4. And if you do it wrong, you’re sitting there at level 12 and not very useful, because you made the wrong choice at level 3 and there’s no way out of that hole.

Here, only a handful of feats have any prerequisites, and those just started and are really only 2 feats, not whole chains of them. 

Fighters already are quite epic. They can perform feats that other classes need magic or supernatural abilities to be able to do. Thanks to Action Surge, Fighters can attack more times than even a Hasted creature*, they can ward of death in a spiteful last stand, call down retribution upon enemies who dare attack their friends will hit points back into their bodies.

It's all in how you present the the actions of a fighter. Sure, if you go "I attack. I attack again. I attack again and then I do action surge and attack some more" it will obviously not be epic. However, Fighters have so much for it that you can easily play them as anything from Marvel Superheroes (what is Steve Roger's "I can do this all day" if not Second Wind?) to Anime Characters (you want to cut the air 10 feet in front of you? Just take Lunging Attack) and many things in between. You just have to present it in the right way.

*At level 11 a Fighter who Action surges can attack six times, seven if you dual wield. The only thing that comes close to that is a hasted Monk using Flurry of Blows and they only get to five attacks. That means that a warrior who can run across water and up walls and can punch ghosts to death (super-death?) with their bare fists AND has been magically enchanted for speed still isn't as quick as someone who has *really* mastered the art of fighting.

Quote from Lostwhilefishing >>

Fighters already are quite epic. They can perform feats that other classes need magic or supernatural abilities to be able to do. Thanks to Action Surge, Fighters can attack more times than even a Hasted creature*, they can ward of death in a spiteful last stand, call down retribution upon enemies who dare attack their friends will hit points back into their bodies.

It's all in how you present the the actions of a fighter. Sure, if you go "I attack. I attack again. I attack again and then I do action surge and attack some more" it will obviously not be epic. However, Fighters have so much for it that you can easily play them as anything from Marvel Superheroes (what is Steve Roger's "I can do this all day" if not Second Wind?) to Anime Characters (you want to cut the air 10 feet in front of you? Just take Lunging Attack) and many things in between. You just have to present it in the right way.

*At level 11 a Fighter who Action surges can attack six times, seven if you dual wield. The only thing that comes close to that is a hasted Monk using Flurry of Blows and they only get to five attacks. That means that a warrior who can run across water and up walls and can punch ghosts to death (super-death?) with their bare fists AND has been magically enchanted for speed still isn't as quick as someone who has *really* mastered the art of fighting.

I don’t think it has much to do with presentation, though describing things in thematic ways can help spice things up.

 It’s kind of interesting how you described fighters being about more than attacking a lot and then emphasized that attacking a lot is what they do.

I agree that action surge is amazing, but the fighter seems to get the least out of it until they actually get to level 11. IF they get to level 11. Going into more detail about action surge, what are we gonna do with it besides attack a bunch at an advantageous time?  
Dodge, dash, disengage, cast a spell, use an object, activate a magic item, help, hide, search, ready? A lot of those seem so drastically more situational than attacking that I doubt a fighter would have the surge available in the combat scenario where those other options would even be beneficial. There’s also a great many ways to get access to those options from bonus actions so that might detract from that value.

the “I can do this all day” reference would be more accurate if the fighter didn’t need short rests. Honestly I think the champion subclass features should just be baked into the base class fighter.

Quote from Bobbybaker>>

Quote from Lostwhilefishing>>

Fighters already are quite epic. They can perform feats that other classes need magic or supernatural abilities to be able to do. Thanks to Action Surge, Fighters can attack more times than even a Hasted creature*, they can ward of death in a spiteful last stand, call down retribution upon enemies who dare attack their friends will hit points back into their bodies.

It's all in how you present the the actions of a fighter. Sure, if you go "I attack. I attack again. I attack again and then I do action surge and attack some more" it will obviously not be epic. However, Fighters have so much for it that you can easily play them as anything from Marvel Superheroes (what is Steve Roger's "I can do this all day" if not Second Wind?) to Anime Characters (you want to cut the air 10 feet in front of you? Just take Lunging Attack) and many things in between. You just have to present it in the right way.

*At level 11 a Fighter who Action surges can attack six times, seven if you dual wield. The only thing that comes close to that is a hasted Monk using Flurry of Blows and they only get to five attacks. That means that a warrior who can run across water and up walls and can punch ghosts to death (super-death?) with their bare fists AND has been magically enchanted for speed still isn't as quick as someone who has *really* mastered the art of fighting.

I don’t think it has much to do with presentation, though describing things in thematic ways can help spice things up.

 It’s kind of interesting how you described fighters being about more than attacking a lot and then emphasized that attacking a lot is what they do.

I agree that action surge is amazing, but the fighter seems to get the least out of it until they actually get to level 11. IF they get to level 11. Going into more detail about action surge, what are we gonna do with it besides attack a bunch at an advantageous time?  

Dodge, dash, disengage, cast a spell, use an object, activate a magic item, help, hide, search, ready?

A lot of those seem so drastically more situational than attacking that I doubt a fighter would have the surge available in the combat scenario where those other options would even be beneficial.

There’s also a great many ways to get access to those options from bonus actions so that might detract from that value.

the “I can do this all day” reference would be more accurate if the fighter didn’t need short rests.

Honestly I think the champion subclass features should just be baked into the base class fighter.

 There are some good arguments for that. The Fighter as a class doesn't really need that but arguments have been made.

Hey thanks everyone,

There is a lot of great info to chew on here. A lot of this is subjective so of course there will be opinions on both sides of the fence, which is great, as argumentation is a great way to drum up good ideas. I still have a lot to learn about 5e, but just to reiterate, the reason I created this post now was to get it out there before 6e is fully produced, so I acknowledge that I put the cart a little before the horse on this one, but not without a purpose.

I am glad to hear that feats have been improved to have less junk feats needed to get what you really are after, that is great news! As far as 5e ending at level 20, to DM's like myself, that just means that levels beyond that fall back on earlier editions (3.x) or homebrew, etc... I refuse to accept that characters level progression is stopped at level 20. The story must go on as they say.

So here is an idea. What if whether they are called feats or whatever, instead of building them as your character progresses, what if all feats were categorized like spells. That is, by feat level, and separated by style like schools of magic. Then as a fighter progresses in level, they gain access to a new portfolio of feats, and instead of gaining a number of spell slots, they gain a number of feat styles. Obviously, this is just the beginning of a brainstorm here, and it would need to be fleshed out to really see if it could work well or not, but I do think it is an intriguing idea myself. Thoughts?

Thanks to all for the great responses, keep'em coming!

Quote from DMGlenntendo >>

So here is an idea. What if whether they are called feats or whatever, instead of building them as your character progresses, what if all feats were categorized like spells. That is, by feat level, and separated by style like schools of magic. Then as a fighter progresses in level, they gain access to a new portfolio of feats, and instead of gaining a number of spell slots, they gain a number of feat styles. Obviously, this is just the beginning of a brainstorm here, and it would need to be fleshed out to really see if it could work well or not, but I do think it is an intriguing idea myself. Thoughts?

 You just described one of the plans for 1D&D. Some feats will be restricted to different class groups. And some feats will be level-gated. So far, we know of level 1 feats and level 4+ feats. No word on if there will be more than that.

The idea after level 20 is to stack on epic boons. The big thing if you do add more levels is you can’t really start doing things that add to proficiency bonus, because with bounded accuracy, the math will break pretty quickly if you do. 

Yep, feats look like they will be leveled and separated by Group (Expert, Mage, Priest, Warrior). We have already seen that Rangers (Expert Group) will gain access to Warrior Group Fighting Style feats. So we may see the same with Fighters or other Warrior Group classes.