With the constant debate of the "martial/caster disparity" within the D&D community upon One D&D's playtests, there's been another subject of debate... the "simple/complex martial" one. Some want martial classes to be overhauled to be as complex with "maneuvers/martial spells/whatever the heck 3.5 did in that one book/weaboo fightin moves" (I'm going to be honest this is the embodiment of me) and utility meanwhile others prefer a more simplistic approach and like 5e's design. I think One D&D could support both of these ideas by making all martials simple... except for the fighter. The fighter can pretty much be flavored to support any of the martial classes fantasies as of currently. Unarmed fighting for monk, DEX build for rogue, STR for barbarian, ect. This is why I think a good idea would be to revise the fighter, and make it the martial which can truely stand up to spellcasters... a more varied, tactical class where although you could swing your weapon constantly, you could use more varied tactics, and have comparable utility to casters through superhuman feats. (before people complain about "superhuman martials", go look at the tiers of play. Martials should be starting to become superhuman at level 5)
I think this is the best compromise we can get as of currently... with the expert UA and rogue it's clear WOTC wants to keep some classes simple and as much as "weaboo fightin moves" me who loves overly complex characters I think this is great for most players. Letting most classes be simple and only asking for one "complex" one might be the way to go.
Idea has already been shot down. There's maybe two people in the entirety of the D&D playerbase who want the fighter class to be deeper and more engaging than HIT IT W/ TEH HITTIN' STICK!, and we've been quite viciously and violently told to shut the f@#$ up, stop playing D&D, and go back to doing Cosigns & Calculus instead because REAL TRUE D&D PLAYERS hate rules and want the game to be even simpler and easier to play than Go Fish.
Idea has already been shot down. There's maybe two people in the entirety of the D&D playerbase who want the fighter class to be deepet and more engaging than HIT IT W/ TEH HITTIN' STICK!, and we've been quite viciously and violently told to shut the f@#$ up, stop playing D&D, and go back to doing Cosigns & Calculus instead because REAL TRUE D&D PLAYERS hate rules and want the game to be even simpler and easier to play than Go Fish.
Wait isn't hitting with stick barbarian lol? I want to "hit with stick" shouldn't be 4 classes lol. Honestly it's community perception of the fighter where it's basically the same as barbarian which is holding it back. Can't we just change "simple class" from fighter to barbarian?
That idea was also shot down. Apparently the barbarian is too complicated for HITTIN' STICK folks, because you have to decide whether or not to rage before you hit stuff with your hittin' stick. Also a bunch of junk about how it's not okay to restrict everybody who wants to play Big Simple Fighter to just one class because "barbarian may not speak to the class fantasy they want for their character", but it's absolutely totally okay to force every last single person who wants more from Fighter than HITTIN' STICK to play Battle Master, just Battle Master, and nothing but Battle Master from now until the end of time because locking all the complexity into one subclass of one class means it can be ignored the way God and Gary Gygax intended.
I may still be enormously pissed off at that thread and all the lying liars in it who claim to Luv 1DD and all the cool ways 1DD is increasing depth and engagement while viciously arguing against actually increasing depth in the game at every possible turn.
People are way too hung up on the idea that a class group must all share a precisely identical "Group Feature". That was simply how the Experts happened to line up. Warrior group classes will share a thematic link rather than a mechanical one - namely, they're all warriors. They contribute to the party by fighting stuff.
People are way too hung up on the idea that a class group must all share a precisely identical "Group Feature". That was simply how the Experts happened to line up. Warrior group classes will share a thematic link rather than a mechanical one - namely, they're all warriors. They contribute to the party by fighting stuff.
It would be cool if the class groups did each have a unifying mechanic though. Give superiority dice and maneuvers to all warriors. Give metamagic to all mages.
I'm going to once again agree with everyone and most likely please no one.
There are many players who want very complex fighters. They want to rival wizards with their options, or recreate their favorite anime characters. They are limited to a single subclass to try to do it. And while the Battle Master is good, even it can't bring every fantasy to life, and it pales in comparison to spellcaster utility. These players want more options, and deserve to have them. Nano also brought up a good point in the other thread that the fantasy disparity is even greater than the mechanical one. Wizards in DnD are far more powerful than most wizards represented in any media, while fighters can barely do anything a normal real world person couldn't.
There are also many other players who don't want to play battle masters. The maneuvers are too complex. Not because the players are dumb or uncreative. New players often don't understand the intricacies of battlefield control yet. They don't know why causing a fear effect is good, or how pushing an opponent can combo with other players, or what it means to sacrifice your reaction, or how attacks of opportunity can change battles. They have enough on their plate learning the basic rules. The list of maneuvers to choose from is just a bunch of words, whose consequences they don't understand yet Others don't just want to have to do that much calculations to make their class work. They avoided wizards for these reasons. Some just want to have fun with friends and roll a few dice. Making every fighter use maneuvers would not be good for these players.
I think there is a solution. It's just not one that DnD has explored yet. The base fighter class can be made more interesting, with more utility, and greater superhuman power, without being overly complicated. The trick is to give them abilities that IGNORE rules, rather than add a bunch of new ones to learn. Similar to the way they said they wanted Rogues to work.
Achilles, John Carter, Superman, and many anime heroes are exciting because they break the laws of physics and human limitations. The base fighter class should do the same. Supernatural athletic ability should be baked in. Dashing, climbing, jumping, endurance should all be things they can do without a second thought. Remove the limits of the world for them as they advance. Leadership and social skills can do the same.
Commander's Strike can be a basic fighter ability for example. Instead of trying to count all of the actions and reactions lost, and adding dice, it can be made easier. A certain number of times a day/rest, the fighter should be able to just use a bonus action to let another character make one attack. Done.
Fighters should get abilities that fulfill the fantasy, but don't require the player to know all the ins and outs of the rules. A player should be able to say "I want to jump over that pit and crash into the goblins with my shield and send them all flying," and it should just work. WotC could write rules like this. They just haven't yet. More options does not always require more complex rules.
Fighters could get climbing and swimming speeds. They could get advantage on jump rolls or double the distance moved. They could carry allies to safety without worrying about encumbrance. They could get to do power strikes that combine all of their attacks into one strong one. They could increase the damage of their weapons by one dice level over everyone else. They could force monsters to take saving throws or be knocked back. They could heal at the end of each turn. They could get to make an attack against every enemy in reach. They could get a free attack every time they drop an opponent. They could get advantage breaking down doors or holding up the portcullis while their friends escape. They don't have to know how breaking doors works, just that they are good at it. We could put the complexity in the hands of the DM to worry about, and let the player just have fun.
Then we could also give more complex options to advanced players. Multiple subclasses that fulfill different fantasies. There will always be a place for the Champion, it just needs to be better without being more complicated. And their will always be a desire for more crunchy options for advanced players. I don't know what the rules should be exactly. I have some ideas, but it would take a lot of work to balance. I just know that a more satisfying solution for everyone is possible if WotC looks for it.
Okay so I realized shortly after the last post that some of this could be accomplished by splitting up the current maneuvers and simplifying the ones that should be available to all warriors. I still believe that the basic fighter should not be dealing with mechanically complicated maneuvers and dice pools. They should still have more flavor, combat options, and flexibility, just not the bookkeeping.
Looking at the full list, they can be divided into certain types:
Basic Combat Maneuvers - these are literally just things that every martial class should be trained well enough to do. These should be options for everyone in the Warrior group, at all times. I would suggest this being a low level class feature like Expertise. For the first 3 offensive ones, you can choose to do one of them each turn as part of your Attack action. You say what you want to do, and the DM makes a saving throw roll. For the last two defensive options, you could do one of them each turn when you are attacked. With all of these, the rules would be to be simplified and remove the dice pool mechanic. They are always 'on' as options.
Disarming Attack
Pushing Attack
Trip Attack
Parry
Brace
Complex Combat Maneuvers - these take more specialized training. These can stay with the Battle Master and more complicated subclasses.
Bait and Switch
Commander's Strike
Distracting Strike
Goading Attack
Feignting Attack
Lunging Attack
Maneuvering Attack
Riposte
Sweeping Attack
"Gamey" Maneuvers - these are odd ones that just let you add your dice pool to certain rolls. Some won't have a place anymore at all with the new rules. They can all be adapted to Battle Masters as well, or reworked as basic class features
Ambush
Commanding Presence
Evasive Footwork
Grappling Strike
Precision Attack
Tactical Assessment
The Weird Maneuvers - the strange ones that bring in completely different mechanics or fill in a niche gap. I would say just make each one a class feature of a different Warrior class.
Menacing Attack (barbarian)
Quick Toss (monk)
Rally (fighter)
Any of these could be modified to change to class features if they at simplified. I don't mean making them boring. I just mean removing the unnecessary complexity of Battle Master maneuvers and dice mechanics in favor of rules that have the same general effect but put any work in the DM's hands. Like Sweeping Attack could just be an ability that let's warriors of a certain level make a free melee attack each time they eliminate an enemy.
It would take a lot of revisions. This is just a basic idea of how the current maneuvers could be adapted to give even the simplest of fighters options, while also not turning them into 'sword wizards.'
And basic fighters still deserve more exciting options too, like I suggested previously. Even something as simple to use as 'advantage on all Athletics or Acrobatics tests' is really flavorful, useful, and easy. High level abilities can include things like power attacks and whirlwind attacks. Things you can imagine every famous warrior from Greek epics to King Fu Hustle doing.
People are way too hung up on the idea that a class group must all share a precisely identical "Group Feature". That was simply how the Experts happened to line up. Warrior group classes will share a thematic link rather than a mechanical one - namely, they're all warriors. They contribute to the party by fighting stuff.
It would be cool if the class groups did each have a unifying mechanic though. Give superiority dice and maneuvers to all warriors. Give metamagic to all mages.
All Warriors get combat maneuvers and superiority or focus dice. Each class gets their own list of maneuvers to choose from.
Idea has already been shot down. There's maybe two people in the entirety of the D&D playerbase who want the fighter class to be deepet and more engaging than HIT IT W/ TEH HITTIN' STICK!, and we've been quite viciously and violently told to shut the f@#$ up, stop playing D&D, and go back to doing Cosigns & Calculus instead because REAL TRUE D&D PLAYERS hate rules and want the game to be even simpler and easier to play than Go Fish.
And I was just starting to recover from that one. Then again, the silent majority voted 74,5% in favor of more complexity while vocal minority was preaching basic bonk over and over like a mantra.
With the constant debate of the "martial/caster disparity" within the D&D community upon One D&D's playtests, there's been another subject of debate... the "simple/complex martial" one. Some want martial classes to be overhauled to be as complex with "maneuvers/martial spells/whatever the heck 3.5 did in that one book/weaboo fightin moves" (I'm going to be honest this is the embodiment of me) and utility meanwhile others prefer a more simplistic approach and like 5e's design. I think One D&D could support both of these ideas by making all martials simple... except for the fighter. The fighter can pretty much be flavored to support any of the martial classes fantasies as of currently. Unarmed fighting for monk, DEX build for rogue, STR for barbarian, ect. This is why I think a good idea would be to revise the fighter, and make it the martial which can truely stand up to spellcasters... a more varied, tactical class where although you could swing your weapon constantly, you could use more varied tactics, and have comparable utility to casters through superhuman feats. (before people complain about "superhuman martials", go look at the tiers of play. Martials should be starting to become superhuman at level 5)
I think this is the best compromise we can get as of currently... with the expert UA and rogue it's clear WOTC wants to keep some classes simple and as much as "weaboo fightin moves" me who loves overly complex characters I think this is great for most players. Letting most classes be simple and only asking for one "complex" one might be the way to go.
Honestly, whether or not you like it, “simple” Fighter is one of the most enjoyed and beloved classes in the game. You may want Fighter to be complex, but most of the people who actually play the class enjoy it as is. Even if you make other classes less complex to make up for it, it would be a massive roll of the dice to see whether or not the fans of “simple” Fighter wanted to lose the class and features they loved in exchange for being forced to play the other martials that were supposed to replace Fighter in terms of the level of complexity. WotC really has no reason to risk ostracizing so much of their fan-base.
Not only that, but this would involve completely remodeling and redesigning every martial class including Fighter, and it would completely change the landscape of the game as well as removing any semblance of “backwards-compatibility” from 1DD. These changes would have a ripple effect and mean that basically everything dependent on how martials work would have to change. Next, everything that was dependent on those previous changes would have to change, and so on and so forth. In short, what you are proposing would completely and enormously change the game and the odds of WotC doing this are basically zero.
Idea has already been shot down. There's maybe two people in the entirety of the D&D playerbase who want the fighter class to be deepet and more engaging than HIT IT W/ TEH HITTIN' STICK!, and we've been quite viciously and violently told to shut the f@#$ up, stop playing D&D, and go back to doing Cosigns & Calculus instead because REAL TRUE D&D PLAYERS hate rules and want the game to be even simpler and easier to play than Go Fish.
Wait isn't hitting with stick barbarian lol? I want to "hit with stick" shouldn't be 4 classes lol. Honestly it's community perception of the fighter where it's basically the same as barbarian which is holding it back. Can't we just change "simple class" from fighter to barbarian?
You and Yurei seem to be very confused about why people who like “simple” Fighter like it: we don’t just enjoy “My character hits with the hitting stick”; we enjoy “My character does all the cool things a Battle Master would do flavor-wise, but they don’t actually take that action or deal with any of it mechanically.” In short, very few of the fans of “simple” Fighter are fans of playing it like a Barbarian, they are just fans of playing a martial character that isn’t a berserker dude but is also a character where they don’t have to deal with all the complexity that more complicated classes or subclasses doing a similar thing flavor-wise would mechanically provide.
Not only would making the base Fighter a super complex class and shunting everyone who wants to play a simple class into Barbarian risk alienating and ostracizing a massive portion of the “simple” Fighter fanbase, and not only would it involve completely changing how both of those classes and the game as a result work, but it would force anyone who wants to play a fairly simple class into having to be a rampaging madman conceptually.
Barbarian is the least flexible class concept in the game: it’s basically just a crazy dude who gets angry and hits people with his axe. Try as you might, it is hard to flavor Barbarian as something different. It’s even harder for new players to flavor it as something different when the mechanical features are based-off the conceptual vision of the class.
On the other hand, Fighter -- with all its various subclasses with different designs and features – can be used to conceptually emulate almost anything while allowing the player to control the level of complexity. Honestly, if you include half-casters, you have more than half a dozen primarily martial focused classes that are relatively complex and can be used by players who like more complexity. We get it, you want more complexity in D&D, but you don’t need to get your complexity by shoving everybody who wants simplicity to the side and by forcing them into a limiting class concept and stopping them from playing with the class and concept they enjoy.
Idea has already been shot down. There's maybe two people in the entirety of the D&D playerbase who want the fighter class to be deepet and more engaging than HIT IT W/ TEH HITTIN' STICK!
There were literally 38 people who said they thought that on the poll at the literal top of the thread you linked.
I may still be enormously pissed off at that thread and all the lying liars in it who claim to Luv 1DD and all the cool ways 1DD is increasing depth and engagement while viciously arguing against actually increasing depth in the game at every possible turn.
Merely because someone disagrees with you does not mean they are "lying liars" and their opinions are invalid. Overall, I love 1DD and am happy about how they are increasing depth and engagement for those who want it while providing alternatives for this who don't. That being said, if someone is proposing to add complexity that will A) involve completely breaking the game, and/or B) will take away simple options from players who need them while leaving no alternatives then yes, I will oppose those proposals.
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Glancing through that older thread, I can see why no one has a desire to retread that argument again. I'm sorry for everyone involved. Hopefully we can avoid that. If it's best just to let it go, then I apologize for adding another thought.
I think a lot of the problem with coming together on this is a disagreement on what 'complexity' must mean.
For some people, fighters just hitting things is boring and battle master maneuvers are exciting. They want more of that. And they're right. Attacking the same way over and over is boring. Martials can't do even a fraction of the cool things that spellcasters can do. It gets old. And it doesn't fulfill the fantasy.
But for some people, maneuvers are too complicated to force on everyone. And they are. From a mechanical standpoint they are. I know from experience that new players are overwhelmed by the way they interact with the meta of a combat system that is never explained in the books. The Players Handbook tells you what being prone means, in the far back, but it doesn't explain what that means in the meta sense for the fight. It doesn't tell you WHY these maneuvers are good, and why they are anything more than dice to track and choices to make from a list of other confusing choices.
Some experienced players don't think it's complicated, because they understand it. They only see the flavor and the possibilities. For them, 'complexity' means options.
Some other players can't imagine making the class more interesting without adding complexity, because so far the rules have usually worked that way. For them, 'complexity' means fiddly rules you have to cross-reference and a certain degree of mastery of the game.
This all comes down to the design philosophy. 'Complex' can apply to depth of options, or it can apply to mechanical implementation of those options. The best rules add options without adding mechanical complexity. There at many games out there that have thousands of tables, complex rule interactions, dozens of bonuses and penalties to count every round, etc that all, in the end, add nothing to the experience of roleplaying a character. They are math for the sake of math and an illusion of 'reality.' That's fine if you like that sort of thing.
DnD is not that kind of game. It's best when it's elegant. When you can get 90% of the 'reality' with 10% of the rules. If WotC comes out with Warriors in the next UA that can achieve a large variety of options for martials, that don't also require complex mechanics to achieve, I think (almost) everyone will be happy.
Here are some examples of possible more elegant solutions, that remove the mechanical complexity but retain the options, and put the work in the DMs hands:
- Let everyone in the Warriors group add their proficiency bonus to damage.
This is an extremely simple mechanic with a massive effect on making martials stronger. It comes out to about the same in-game effect as giving everyone a pool of superiority dice to add damage, without any of the tracking or rest mechanics needed. It smooths out the scaling, and is easy for both players and DMs to anticipate their output in a fight. It gives those characters that specialize in martial combat a real, tangible bonus that makes them feel stronger and better with weapons as every level.
- Give them basic combat options for every round
Take a page from the new grappling rules and give all martials a basic set of maneuvers they can do when they attack. Draw these from the battle master maneuvers list, but simplify them and don't limit them. There is nothing to track, the rules are intuitive, and they would be things that anyone playing a martial could envision being a basic part of their fighting kit.
So how would that look? At level 1, Fighters, Barbarians, and Monks all get a new ability:
Combat Superiority
When rolling damage with a weapon attack or unarmed attack, add your proficiency bonus to the total.
When you hit with an attack as part of the Attack action, you can choose to cause one of the following effects. The target creature can be no more than one size larger than you. They must make a (Str or Dex) saving throw with a DC equal to 8+your proficiency bonus+either your Strength or Dexterity bonus, and suffer the effect on a failed roll. You can attempt one of these maneuvers on each of your turns
Disarming Attack - knock one weapon from their hand 10' in the direction of your choosing.
Tripping Attack - knock the target prone
Pushing Attack - push the target up to 10' away from you. You can choose whether you want to follow it or not, at no additional movement cost.
Just adding extra damage on every hit, and the possibility of one of a limited set of moves once per turn, would vastly improve both the martial character's combat prowess and versatility. They would feel like real masters of the battlefield. These are easy concepts for any player to grasp and choose from, and flow naturally in the narrative.
"I want to attack the ogre and try to knock his club from his hands!"
Player hits, and does more damage than their companions would.
DM rolls a save.
"I want to charge the kobold and push him off the bridge!"
Player rolls, DM rolls, apply the effects.
Then if you want even crunchier options, you can choose a subclass that has them. And other maneuvers can be adapted to specific classes, as I mentioned with Menacing Attack for Barbarians, Quick Toss for Monks, and Rally for Fighters.
Rally
At level 6, your fighter displays such confidence in battle and inspiring leadership, you can encourage your allies to fight on even when things look grim. You can use your bonus action to allow a creature that can see or hear you to spend one of its hit dice and heal a number of HP equal to the roll plus your proficiency bonus and your Charisma modifier.
These might not be the best solutions. Anyone can probably punch holes in specific details. That's not the point. My hope is to show that complexity of choice does not have to be saddled with mechanical complexity. They can make fighters cool without overcomplicating them. It doesn't take going to one extreme or the other. That just happens to be all we've seen so far in some cases. But better options can exist for everyone.
... Barbarian is the least flexible class concept in the game: it’s basically just a crazy dude who gets angry and hits people with his axe. ...
Among the myriad of wrong incorrect things in that post, I figured this was the one that needed addressing most.
Barbarians are no harder to refluff than anything else. Yes, the nomenclature of their signature Rage ability speaks to a 'frothing madman', but barbarians are no more bound to axes than fighters are bound to swords, and Rage can be the cold, calculating fury of a warrior in a battle trance as much as it's the screeching rampage of a berserker. Hell, I know some folks that flavor 'Rage' as the Sherlock Holmes-like combat calculation; their bonus damage is from striking more precisely and their damage reduction is from predicting incoming enemy strikes and shifting their stance to lessen the blow. There are many ways to rework Rage, and Rage is the only ability that insists on 'frothing madman'.
That being said...
Players who enjoy martial characters deserve to have fun, too. And at some point, having your entire character class consist of literally factually nothing but "i use The Attack Action to attack my enemy" stops being fun. It stops being fun. And one more time, for emphasis: it stops being fun. The fighter class, as a base chassis, is bad and boring. There's a reason "advanced" players end up on almost any other class instead - fighter is a training-wheels straightjacket that provides nothing useful to the party unless the player is provided an overabundance of magic swag or unless they play Battle Master. People who want to retain the generic pointless uselessness of fighters because "simple is awesome and advanced players are all ******** who hate fun and they should just play a different game already!" can continue being incorrect. Superiority is not even remotely that complicated, fighters need some freaking help, and y'know what?
At some point, a player has to LEARN THE RULES OF THE GOD DAMNED GAME. It doesn't have to be their first session. It doesn't even necessarily have to be their first campaign. A DM, or their fellow players, can (and should!) help them learn and be forgiving of their goofs while they're learning. But I cannot fathom nor abide this ridiculous stupid notion that a 'New Player' is NEVER supposed to learn how to play and that they should strive to stay bad at the game for as long as they can.
I understand that this means a lot to many people, but in the end it is just one small aspect of a single game. It is not solving world hunger. Mischaracterizing the other side as frothing idiot lunatics does nothing to help the discussion.
Some things are fun for some people, even if we personally can't see it. For some people, a wizard is the opposite of fun. For them, a Champion Fighter might be their ideal character. For some people, spending hours optimizing every last DPR for a character is fun. For others it goes completely against the spirit of the game. And new players deserve a chance to play a class without learning all the secret tricks to the rules. Not because they are dumb. They're not. At the same time, those classes should have options for the more experienced players that want something deeper. They already do. But it could be better and I've tried to show how.
No one should tell someone else to shut up and play a different game. The fact is, almost no one has actually literally done that. And conversely, some people might actually be happier playing Pathfinder or OSR. For some, DnD 5e is already too complicated and gamey, while others want a million charts and specific rules for gathering components to make a potion. DnD 5e is not those games. 1DnD is not going to be those games.
I want more options for Fighters. I personally don't want it to be in the form of battle master superiority dice. They are complicated without any real reason to be. I have played with very smart people who made every effort to understand them and just ended up changing classes in the end because it just didn't click. or they hated the convoluted process to get unimpressive results. And I don't want to alienate the people who already love the fighter. I've given examples of how you can get the same versatility as those maneuvers, without the need for a dice pool and short rest mechanic. And I think a lot of people would love to see the short rest mechanic go away...
Barbarian is the least flexible class concept in the game: it’s basically just a crazy dude who gets angry and hits people with his axe.
Barbarians are no harder to refluff than anything else. Yes, the nomenclature of their signature Rage ability speaks to a 'frothing madman', but barbarians are no more bound to axes than fighters are bound to swords, and Rage can be the cold, calculating fury of a warrior in a battle trance as much as it's the screeching rampage of a berserker. Hell, I know some folks that flavor 'Rage' as the Sherlock Holmes-like combat calculation; their bonus damage is from striking more precisely and their damage reduction is from predicting incoming enemy strikes and shifting their stance to lessen the blow. There are many ways to rework Rage, and Rage is the only ability that insists on 'frothing madman'.
Actually no, here is the list of abilities in the base Barbarian class that actively mentions how Barbarians are like frothing madmen:
Rage
Reckless Attack
Relentless Rage
Persistant Rage
This only includes the features in the base-class (subclasses have even more features that mention this) but do note that it includes a feature that is not Rage (Reckless Attack), therefore disproving that the only Barbarian feature that mentions this is Rage. Here are some other features that directly tie into and correlate with the theme of Barbarian as a crazy madman:
Unarmored Defense
Brutal Critical
Indomitable Might
Primal Champion
Not to mention that if you look at all three of the "different" Barbarians described at the start of the chapter, they are all very similar and all tie into (at least somewhat) the crazy axe-wielder theme despite the fact that the PHB only lists characters for each class to show the difference between them. Oh, or just look at all the Barbarian art in the Barbarian class section and notice that both of them carry an axe.
So yeah, saying that "Barbarians are no harder to refluff than anything else" is simply not the case: they are the class that has the most distinctive class theme and concept in all of the PHB, if they are not the most distinctive class, then what is?
"But if you spend time and work and go through the complex effort of reworking all their features then you can play a slightly different type of Barbarian." Yes, but what new player who's goal is to play a simple class wants to go through all the work of remodeling that class and reworking those features?
Players who enjoy martial characters deserve to have fun, too. And at some point, having your entire character class consist of literally factually nothing but "i use The Attack Action to attack my enemy" stops being fun. It stops being fun. And one more time, for emphasis: it stops being fun. The fighter class, as a base chassis, is bad and boring. There's a reason "advanced" players end up on almost any other class instead - fighter is a training-wheels straightjacket that provides nothing useful to the party unless the player is provided an overabundance of magic swag or unless they play Battle Master. People who want to retain the generic pointless uselessness of fighters because "simple is awesome and advanced players are all ******** who hate fun and they should just play a different game already!" can continue being incorrect. Superiority is not even remotely that complicated, fighters need some freaking help, and y'know what?
Maybe it stops being fun to you, but what if it is still fun to me? You already have several relatively complex classes, and a large demographic of D&D players want some simple classes. Is your goal really to take away their fun from them just because you wouldn't enjoy what they like? Make another martial more complex, you have free reign there, but don't take Fighter away from the players who enjoy it. You keep accusing other people of trying to limit the classes "advanced players" can play, yet you are the one advocating to take away the one "simple" class from the "simple players" who love playing that class.
"Players who enjoy martial classes deserve to have fun, too" is literally my exact point except I'm talking about all players who enjoy martial classes, not just the select few who enjoy super complicated martial classes.
At some point, a player has to LEARN THE RULES OF THE GOD DAMNED GAME. It doesn't have to be their first session. It doesn't even necessarily have to be their first campaign. A DM, or their fellow players, can (and should!) help them learn and be forgiving of their goofs while they're learning. But I cannot fathom nor abide this ridiculous stupid notion that a 'New Player' is NEVER supposed to learn how to play and that they should strive to stay bad at the game for as long as they can.
Yes, new players should learn how to play the game. Having a simpler class they can start out with makes it much easier for them to do so. There is nothing wrong with playing a simple class; simple classes make it easier to play the game, they don't prevent you from learning the rules.
I don't know if Fighters need to be more complex (although I wouldn't be opposed to it), but I do feel, of all the martials, the Fighter should be "the best" at what they do. They are straight forward, but I think they could be better. They are on the right track. They have Action Surge, probably one of the most powerful class features in the game and a reason why many take a 2 level fighter dip to get it and they get the additional ASI's at 6 and 10, and they get up to 4 attacks with the Attack action. They could get something as simple as "when wearing armor, they get an additional +1 to AC, at level 10 it becomes a +2" (basically, remove the Defensive fighting style from the game and make it a Fighter class feature that scales), or as mentioned above they add PB to their damage. Or when they hit with a melee attack, once on a turn, they can knock the target prone or shove 5' (if failed save), or any other myriad of things that the base fighter can have without relying on tracking dice and maneuvers, or limited use abilities. It's one of the things I liked about the 5E Hunter Ranger, you could customize your character a little.
Anyway, I didn't read the other thread, but at one time I thought Battle Master should be the base Fighter class. I don't think that anymore, but I would like to see some improvements. Let's see what the 1D&D UA has to say before we get ahead of ourselves. But it is a fun discussion, as long as we're civil.
Lemme "simply" say this, BB: Release 5e has no option whatsoever for people who want an 'Advanced' martial class.
It does not exist. No, the Battlemaster does not count. Anyone who tells me "Superiority is too complicated!" is either lying to me or missing something, because Superiority is not complex at all. If you can get your brain around spellcasting - and everybody who runs this game for any length of time can get their brain around spellcasting, even if Wizards insists on making it weird - you can get your brain around Superiority. The Battlemaster is at best an "Intermediate Bonk" class. There is no option for people who want an advanced, high-caliber martial warrior. None. Paladins are not it. Monks are not it. THERE IS NO "IT".
And we're never going to get it, because people keep screaming and shrieking and screeching and caterwauling that 1DD needs to be More Better Simple with no option whatsoever for anyone that wants any god damned meat on their character's bones because tHeN nEw PlAyErS mIgHt GeT cOnFuSeD!!, and keeping one brainless goober from bouncing off the already oversimplified, straightforward rules of D&D is worth telling a hundred thousand "Advanced" players to shut the **** up, get lost, and never play a tabletop game again.
Gods above and below, I am so ******* sick of this ridiculous 'argument'. Just say what you all f@#$ing mean already - you don't want "advanced" players in the game or at your tables. You want everyone with any clue what they're doing to be barred from playing, because it's easier for y'all to adjudicate the game if nobody you're adjudicating for has any goddamned clue how the game works and you can just make shit up on the spot without worry. Everybody gets to play D&D for precisely the length of one campaign, and then they're banned from the hobby for Beeing Tu Gud.
Idea has already been shot down. There's maybe two people in the entirety of the D&D playerbase who want the fighter class to be deepet and more engaging than HIT IT W/ TEH HITTIN' STICK!, and we've been quite viciously and violently told to shut the f@#$ up, stop playing D&D, and go back to doing Cosigns & Calculus instead because REAL TRUE D&D PLAYERS hate rules and want the game to be even simpler and easier to play than Go Fish.
Funny thing about that thread is that it shows that those that are against Fighters being more than basic bonk are actually in the minority.
With the constant debate of the "martial/caster disparity" within the D&D community upon One D&D's playtests, there's been another subject of debate... the "simple/complex martial" one. Some want martial classes to be overhauled to be as complex with "maneuvers/martial spells/whatever the heck 3.5 did in that one book/weaboo fightin moves" (I'm going to be honest this is the embodiment of me) and utility meanwhile others prefer a more simplistic approach and like 5e's design. I think One D&D could support both of these ideas by making all martials simple... except for the fighter. The fighter can pretty much be flavored to support any of the martial classes fantasies as of currently. Unarmed fighting for monk, DEX build for rogue, STR for barbarian, ect. This is why I think a good idea would be to revise the fighter, and make it the martial which can truely stand up to spellcasters... a more varied, tactical class where although you could swing your weapon constantly, you could use more varied tactics, and have comparable utility to casters through superhuman feats. (before people complain about "superhuman martials", go look at the tiers of play. Martials should be starting to become superhuman at level 5)
I think this is the best compromise we can get as of currently... with the expert UA and rogue it's clear WOTC wants to keep some classes simple and as much as "weaboo fightin moves" me who loves overly complex characters I think this is great for most players. Letting most classes be simple and only asking for one "complex" one might be the way to go.
Idea has already been shot down. There's maybe two people in the entirety of the D&D playerbase who want the fighter class to be deeper and more engaging than HIT IT W/ TEH HITTIN' STICK!, and we've been quite viciously and violently told to shut the f@#$ up, stop playing D&D, and go back to doing Cosigns & Calculus instead because REAL TRUE D&D PLAYERS hate rules and want the game to be even simpler and easier to play than Go Fish.
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Wait isn't hitting with stick barbarian lol? I want to "hit with stick" shouldn't be 4 classes lol.
Honestly it's community perception of the fighter where it's basically the same as barbarian which is holding it back. Can't we just change "simple class" from fighter to barbarian?
That idea was also shot down. Apparently the barbarian is too complicated for HITTIN' STICK folks, because you have to decide whether or not to rage before you hit stuff with your hittin' stick. Also a bunch of junk about how it's not okay to restrict everybody who wants to play Big Simple Fighter to just one class because "barbarian may not speak to the class fantasy they want for their character", but it's absolutely totally okay to force every last single person who wants more from Fighter than HITTIN' STICK to play Battle Master, just Battle Master, and nothing but Battle Master from now until the end of time because locking all the complexity into one subclass of one class means it can be ignored the way God and Gary Gygax intended.
I may still be enormously pissed off at that thread and all the lying liars in it who claim to Luv 1DD and all the cool ways 1DD is increasing depth and engagement while viciously arguing against actually increasing depth in the game at every possible turn.
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Expert group get Expertise at level 1
Warriors may get a feature at level 1. What would a Fighter / Monk / barbarian share?
People are way too hung up on the idea that a class group must all share a precisely identical "Group Feature". That was simply how the Experts happened to line up. Warrior group classes will share a thematic link rather than a mechanical one - namely, they're all warriors. They contribute to the party by fighting stuff.
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It would be cool if the class groups did each have a unifying mechanic though. Give superiority dice and maneuvers to all warriors. Give metamagic to all mages.
I'm going to once again agree with everyone and most likely please no one.
There are many players who want very complex fighters. They want to rival wizards with their options, or recreate their favorite anime characters. They are limited to a single subclass to try to do it. And while the Battle Master is good, even it can't bring every fantasy to life, and it pales in comparison to spellcaster utility. These players want more options, and deserve to have them. Nano also brought up a good point in the other thread that the fantasy disparity is even greater than the mechanical one. Wizards in DnD are far more powerful than most wizards represented in any media, while fighters can barely do anything a normal real world person couldn't.
There are also many other players who don't want to play battle masters. The maneuvers are too complex. Not because the players are dumb or uncreative. New players often don't understand the intricacies of battlefield control yet. They don't know why causing a fear effect is good, or how pushing an opponent can combo with other players, or what it means to sacrifice your reaction, or how attacks of opportunity can change battles. They have enough on their plate learning the basic rules. The list of maneuvers to choose from is just a bunch of words, whose consequences they don't understand yet Others don't just want to have to do that much calculations to make their class work. They avoided wizards for these reasons. Some just want to have fun with friends and roll a few dice. Making every fighter use maneuvers would not be good for these players.
I think there is a solution. It's just not one that DnD has explored yet. The base fighter class can be made more interesting, with more utility, and greater superhuman power, without being overly complicated. The trick is to give them abilities that IGNORE rules, rather than add a bunch of new ones to learn. Similar to the way they said they wanted Rogues to work.
Achilles, John Carter, Superman, and many anime heroes are exciting because they break the laws of physics and human limitations. The base fighter class should do the same. Supernatural athletic ability should be baked in. Dashing, climbing, jumping, endurance should all be things they can do without a second thought. Remove the limits of the world for them as they advance. Leadership and social skills can do the same.
Commander's Strike can be a basic fighter ability for example. Instead of trying to count all of the actions and reactions lost, and adding dice, it can be made easier. A certain number of times a day/rest, the fighter should be able to just use a bonus action to let another character make one attack. Done.
Fighters should get abilities that fulfill the fantasy, but don't require the player to know all the ins and outs of the rules. A player should be able to say "I want to jump over that pit and crash into the goblins with my shield and send them all flying," and it should just work. WotC could write rules like this. They just haven't yet. More options does not always require more complex rules.
Fighters could get climbing and swimming speeds. They could get advantage on jump rolls or double the distance moved. They could carry allies to safety without worrying about encumbrance. They could get to do power strikes that combine all of their attacks into one strong one. They could increase the damage of their weapons by one dice level over everyone else. They could force monsters to take saving throws or be knocked back. They could heal at the end of each turn. They could get to make an attack against every enemy in reach. They could get a free attack every time they drop an opponent. They could get advantage breaking down doors or holding up the portcullis while their friends escape. They don't have to know how breaking doors works, just that they are good at it. We could put the complexity in the hands of the DM to worry about, and let the player just have fun.
Then we could also give more complex options to advanced players. Multiple subclasses that fulfill different fantasies. There will always be a place for the Champion, it just needs to be better without being more complicated. And their will always be a desire for more crunchy options for advanced players. I don't know what the rules should be exactly. I have some ideas, but it would take a lot of work to balance. I just know that a more satisfying solution for everyone is possible if WotC looks for it.
Okay so I realized shortly after the last post that some of this could be accomplished by splitting up the current maneuvers and simplifying the ones that should be available to all warriors. I still believe that the basic fighter should not be dealing with mechanically complicated maneuvers and dice pools. They should still have more flavor, combat options, and flexibility, just not the bookkeeping.
Looking at the full list, they can be divided into certain types:
Basic Combat Maneuvers - these are literally just things that every martial class should be trained well enough to do. These should be options for everyone in the Warrior group, at all times. I would suggest this being a low level class feature like Expertise. For the first 3 offensive ones, you can choose to do one of them each turn as part of your Attack action. You say what you want to do, and the DM makes a saving throw roll. For the last two defensive options, you could do one of them each turn when you are attacked. With all of these, the rules would be to be simplified and remove the dice pool mechanic. They are always 'on' as options.
Disarming Attack
Pushing Attack
Trip Attack
Parry
Brace
Complex Combat Maneuvers - these take more specialized training. These can stay with the Battle Master and more complicated subclasses.
Bait and Switch
Commander's Strike
Distracting Strike
Goading Attack
Feignting Attack
Lunging Attack
Maneuvering Attack
Riposte
Sweeping Attack
"Gamey" Maneuvers - these are odd ones that just let you add your dice pool to certain rolls. Some won't have a place anymore at all with the new rules. They can all be adapted to Battle Masters as well, or reworked as basic class features
Ambush
Commanding Presence
Evasive Footwork
Grappling Strike
Precision Attack
Tactical Assessment
The Weird Maneuvers - the strange ones that bring in completely different mechanics or fill in a niche gap. I would say just make each one a class feature of a different Warrior class.
Menacing Attack (barbarian)
Quick Toss (monk)
Rally (fighter)
Any of these could be modified to change to class features if they at simplified. I don't mean making them boring. I just mean removing the unnecessary complexity of Battle Master maneuvers and dice mechanics in favor of rules that have the same general effect but put any work in the DM's hands. Like Sweeping Attack could just be an ability that let's warriors of a certain level make a free melee attack each time they eliminate an enemy.
It would take a lot of revisions. This is just a basic idea of how the current maneuvers could be adapted to give even the simplest of fighters options, while also not turning them into 'sword wizards.'
And basic fighters still deserve more exciting options too, like I suggested previously. Even something as simple to use as 'advantage on all Athletics or Acrobatics tests' is really flavorful, useful, and easy. High level abilities can include things like power attacks and whirlwind attacks. Things you can imagine every famous warrior from Greek epics to King Fu Hustle doing.
All Warriors get combat maneuvers and superiority or focus dice. Each class gets their own list of maneuvers to choose from.
Just a thought.
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And I was just starting to recover from that one. Then again, the silent majority voted 74,5% in favor of more complexity while vocal minority was preaching basic bonk over and over like a mantra.
Honestly, whether or not you like it, “simple” Fighter is one of the most enjoyed and beloved classes in the game. You may want Fighter to be complex, but most of the people who actually play the class enjoy it as is. Even if you make other classes less complex to make up for it, it would be a massive roll of the dice to see whether or not the fans of “simple” Fighter wanted to lose the class and features they loved in exchange for being forced to play the other martials that were supposed to replace Fighter in terms of the level of complexity. WotC really has no reason to risk ostracizing so much of their fan-base.
Not only that, but this would involve completely remodeling and redesigning every martial class including Fighter, and it would completely change the landscape of the game as well as removing any semblance of “backwards-compatibility” from 1DD. These changes would have a ripple effect and mean that basically everything dependent on how martials work would have to change. Next, everything that was dependent on those previous changes would have to change, and so on and so forth. In short, what you are proposing would completely and enormously change the game and the odds of WotC doing this are basically zero.
You and Yurei seem to be very confused about why people who like “simple” Fighter like it: we don’t just enjoy “My character hits with the hitting stick”; we enjoy “My character does all the cool things a Battle Master would do flavor-wise, but they don’t actually take that action or deal with any of it mechanically.” In short, very few of the fans of “simple” Fighter are fans of playing it like a Barbarian, they are just fans of playing a martial character that isn’t a berserker dude but is also a character where they don’t have to deal with all the complexity that more complicated classes or subclasses doing a similar thing flavor-wise would mechanically provide.
Not only would making the base Fighter a super complex class and shunting everyone who wants to play a simple class into Barbarian risk alienating and ostracizing a massive portion of the “simple” Fighter fanbase, and not only would it involve completely changing how both of those classes and the game as a result work, but it would force anyone who wants to play a fairly simple class into having to be a rampaging madman conceptually.
Barbarian is the least flexible class concept in the game: it’s basically just a crazy dude who gets angry and hits people with his axe. Try as you might, it is hard to flavor Barbarian as something different. It’s even harder for new players to flavor it as something different when the mechanical features are based-off the conceptual vision of the class.
On the other hand, Fighter -- with all its various subclasses with different designs and features – can be used to conceptually emulate almost anything while allowing the player to control the level of complexity. Honestly, if you include half-casters, you have more than half a dozen primarily martial focused classes that are relatively complex and can be used by players who like more complexity. We get it, you want more complexity in D&D, but you don’t need to get your complexity by shoving everybody who wants simplicity to the side and by forcing them into a limiting class concept and stopping them from playing with the class and concept they enjoy.
There were literally 38 people who said they thought that on the poll at the literal top of the thread you linked.
Merely because someone disagrees with you does not mean they are "lying liars" and their opinions are invalid. Overall, I love 1DD and am happy about how they are increasing depth and engagement for those who want it while providing alternatives for this who don't. That being said, if someone is proposing to add complexity that will A) involve completely breaking the game, and/or B) will take away simple options from players who need them while leaving no alternatives then yes, I will oppose those proposals.
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HERE.Glancing through that older thread, I can see why no one has a desire to retread that argument again. I'm sorry for everyone involved. Hopefully we can avoid that. If it's best just to let it go, then I apologize for adding another thought.
I think a lot of the problem with coming together on this is a disagreement on what 'complexity' must mean.
For some people, fighters just hitting things is boring and battle master maneuvers are exciting. They want more of that. And they're right. Attacking the same way over and over is boring. Martials can't do even a fraction of the cool things that spellcasters can do. It gets old. And it doesn't fulfill the fantasy.
But for some people, maneuvers are too complicated to force on everyone. And they are. From a mechanical standpoint they are. I know from experience that new players are overwhelmed by the way they interact with the meta of a combat system that is never explained in the books. The Players Handbook tells you what being prone means, in the far back, but it doesn't explain what that means in the meta sense for the fight. It doesn't tell you WHY these maneuvers are good, and why they are anything more than dice to track and choices to make from a list of other confusing choices.
Some experienced players don't think it's complicated, because they understand it. They only see the flavor and the possibilities. For them, 'complexity' means options.
Some other players can't imagine making the class more interesting without adding complexity, because so far the rules have usually worked that way. For them, 'complexity' means fiddly rules you have to cross-reference and a certain degree of mastery of the game.
This all comes down to the design philosophy. 'Complex' can apply to depth of options, or it can apply to mechanical implementation of those options. The best rules add options without adding mechanical complexity. There at many games out there that have thousands of tables, complex rule interactions, dozens of bonuses and penalties to count every round, etc that all, in the end, add nothing to the experience of roleplaying a character. They are math for the sake of math and an illusion of 'reality.' That's fine if you like that sort of thing.
DnD is not that kind of game. It's best when it's elegant. When you can get 90% of the 'reality' with 10% of the rules. If WotC comes out with Warriors in the next UA that can achieve a large variety of options for martials, that don't also require complex mechanics to achieve, I think (almost) everyone will be happy.
Here are some examples of possible more elegant solutions, that remove the mechanical complexity but retain the options, and put the work in the DMs hands:
- Let everyone in the Warriors group add their proficiency bonus to damage.
This is an extremely simple mechanic with a massive effect on making martials stronger. It comes out to about the same in-game effect as giving everyone a pool of superiority dice to add damage, without any of the tracking or rest mechanics needed. It smooths out the scaling, and is easy for both players and DMs to anticipate their output in a fight. It gives those characters that specialize in martial combat a real, tangible bonus that makes them feel stronger and better with weapons as every level.
- Give them basic combat options for every round
Take a page from the new grappling rules and give all martials a basic set of maneuvers they can do when they attack. Draw these from the battle master maneuvers list, but simplify them and don't limit them. There is nothing to track, the rules are intuitive, and they would be things that anyone playing a martial could envision being a basic part of their fighting kit.
So how would that look? At level 1, Fighters, Barbarians, and Monks all get a new ability:
Combat Superiority
When rolling damage with a weapon attack or unarmed attack, add your proficiency bonus to the total.
When you hit with an attack as part of the Attack action, you can choose to cause one of the following effects. The target creature can be no more than one size larger than you. They must make a (Str or Dex) saving throw with a DC equal to 8+your proficiency bonus+either your Strength or Dexterity bonus, and suffer the effect on a failed roll. You can attempt one of these maneuvers on each of your turns
Disarming Attack - knock one weapon from their hand 10' in the direction of your choosing.
Tripping Attack - knock the target prone
Pushing Attack - push the target up to 10' away from you. You can choose whether you want to follow it or not, at no additional movement cost.
Just adding extra damage on every hit, and the possibility of one of a limited set of moves once per turn, would vastly improve both the martial character's combat prowess and versatility. They would feel like real masters of the battlefield. These are easy concepts for any player to grasp and choose from, and flow naturally in the narrative.
"I want to attack the ogre and try to knock his club from his hands!"
Player hits, and does more damage than their companions would.
DM rolls a save.
"I want to charge the kobold and push him off the bridge!"
Player rolls, DM rolls, apply the effects.
Then if you want even crunchier options, you can choose a subclass that has them. And other maneuvers can be adapted to specific classes, as I mentioned with Menacing Attack for Barbarians, Quick Toss for Monks, and Rally for Fighters.
Rally
At level 6, your fighter displays such confidence in battle and inspiring leadership, you can encourage your allies to fight on even when things look grim. You can use your bonus action to allow a creature that can see or hear you to spend one of its hit dice and heal a number of HP equal to the roll plus your proficiency bonus and your Charisma modifier.
These might not be the best solutions. Anyone can probably punch holes in specific details. That's not the point. My hope is to show that complexity of choice does not have to be saddled with mechanical complexity. They can make fighters cool without overcomplicating them. It doesn't take going to one extreme or the other. That just happens to be all we've seen so far in some cases. But better options can exist for everyone.
Among the myriad of wrong incorrect things in that post, I figured this was the one that needed addressing most.
Barbarians are no harder to refluff than anything else. Yes, the nomenclature of their signature Rage ability speaks to a 'frothing madman', but barbarians are no more bound to axes than fighters are bound to swords, and Rage can be the cold, calculating fury of a warrior in a battle trance as much as it's the screeching rampage of a berserker. Hell, I know some folks that flavor 'Rage' as the Sherlock Holmes-like combat calculation; their bonus damage is from striking more precisely and their damage reduction is from predicting incoming enemy strikes and shifting their stance to lessen the blow. There are many ways to rework Rage, and Rage is the only ability that insists on 'frothing madman'.
That being said...
Players who enjoy martial characters deserve to have fun, too. And at some point, having your entire character class consist of literally factually nothing but "i use The Attack Action to attack my enemy" stops being fun. It stops being fun. And one more time, for emphasis: it stops being fun. The fighter class, as a base chassis, is bad and boring. There's a reason "advanced" players end up on almost any other class instead - fighter is a training-wheels straightjacket that provides nothing useful to the party unless the player is provided an overabundance of magic swag or unless they play Battle Master. People who want to retain the generic pointless uselessness of fighters because "simple is awesome and advanced players are all ******** who hate fun and they should just play a different game already!" can continue being incorrect. Superiority is not even remotely that complicated, fighters need some freaking help, and y'know what?
At some point, a player has to LEARN THE RULES OF THE GOD DAMNED GAME. It doesn't have to be their first session. It doesn't even necessarily have to be their first campaign. A DM, or their fellow players, can (and should!) help them learn and be forgiving of their goofs while they're learning. But I cannot fathom nor abide this ridiculous stupid notion that a 'New Player' is NEVER supposed to learn how to play and that they should strive to stay bad at the game for as long as they can.
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I understand that this means a lot to many people, but in the end it is just one small aspect of a single game. It is not solving world hunger. Mischaracterizing the other side as frothing idiot lunatics does nothing to help the discussion.
Some things are fun for some people, even if we personally can't see it. For some people, a wizard is the opposite of fun. For them, a Champion Fighter might be their ideal character. For some people, spending hours optimizing every last DPR for a character is fun. For others it goes completely against the spirit of the game. And new players deserve a chance to play a class without learning all the secret tricks to the rules. Not because they are dumb. They're not. At the same time, those classes should have options for the more experienced players that want something deeper. They already do. But it could be better and I've tried to show how.
No one should tell someone else to shut up and play a different game. The fact is, almost no one has actually literally done that. And conversely, some people might actually be happier playing Pathfinder or OSR. For some, DnD 5e is already too complicated and gamey, while others want a million charts and specific rules for gathering components to make a potion. DnD 5e is not those games. 1DnD is not going to be those games.
I want more options for Fighters. I personally don't want it to be in the form of battle master superiority dice. They are complicated without any real reason to be. I have played with very smart people who made every effort to understand them and just ended up changing classes in the end because it just didn't click. or they hated the convoluted process to get unimpressive results. And I don't want to alienate the people who already love the fighter. I've given examples of how you can get the same versatility as those maneuvers, without the need for a dice pool and short rest mechanic. And I think a lot of people would love to see the short rest mechanic go away...
Actually no, here is the list of abilities in the base Barbarian class that actively mentions how Barbarians are like frothing madmen:
This only includes the features in the base-class (subclasses have even more features that mention this) but do note that it includes a feature that is not Rage (Reckless Attack), therefore disproving that the only Barbarian feature that mentions this is Rage. Here are some other features that directly tie into and correlate with the theme of Barbarian as a crazy madman:
Not to mention that if you look at all three of the "different" Barbarians described at the start of the chapter, they are all very similar and all tie into (at least somewhat) the crazy axe-wielder theme despite the fact that the PHB only lists characters for each class to show the difference between them. Oh, or just look at all the Barbarian art in the Barbarian class section and notice that both of them carry an axe.
So yeah, saying that "Barbarians are no harder to refluff than anything else" is simply not the case: they are the class that has the most distinctive class theme and concept in all of the PHB, if they are not the most distinctive class, then what is?
"But if you spend time and work and go through the complex effort of reworking all their features then you can play a slightly different type of Barbarian." Yes, but what new player who's goal is to play a simple class wants to go through all the work of remodeling that class and reworking those features?
Maybe it stops being fun to you, but what if it is still fun to me? You already have several relatively complex classes, and a large demographic of D&D players want some simple classes. Is your goal really to take away their fun from them just because you wouldn't enjoy what they like? Make another martial more complex, you have free reign there, but don't take Fighter away from the players who enjoy it. You keep accusing other people of trying to limit the classes "advanced players" can play, yet you are the one advocating to take away the one "simple" class from the "simple players" who love playing that class.
"Players who enjoy martial classes deserve to have fun, too" is literally my exact point except I'm talking about all players who enjoy martial classes, not just the select few who enjoy super complicated martial classes.
Yes, new players should learn how to play the game. Having a simpler class they can start out with makes it much easier for them to do so. There is nothing wrong with playing a simple class; simple classes make it easier to play the game, they don't prevent you from learning the rules.
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HERE.I don't know if Fighters need to be more complex (although I wouldn't be opposed to it), but I do feel, of all the martials, the Fighter should be "the best" at what they do. They are straight forward, but I think they could be better. They are on the right track. They have Action Surge, probably one of the most powerful class features in the game and a reason why many take a 2 level fighter dip to get it and they get the additional ASI's at 6 and 10, and they get up to 4 attacks with the Attack action. They could get something as simple as "when wearing armor, they get an additional +1 to AC, at level 10 it becomes a +2" (basically, remove the Defensive fighting style from the game and make it a Fighter class feature that scales), or as mentioned above they add PB to their damage. Or when they hit with a melee attack, once on a turn, they can knock the target prone or shove 5' (if failed save), or any other myriad of things that the base fighter can have without relying on tracking dice and maneuvers, or limited use abilities. It's one of the things I liked about the 5E Hunter Ranger, you could customize your character a little.
Anyway, I didn't read the other thread, but at one time I thought Battle Master should be the base Fighter class. I don't think that anymore, but I would like to see some improvements. Let's see what the 1D&D UA has to say before we get ahead of ourselves. But it is a fun discussion, as long as we're civil.
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Sigh.
And we're back to this.
Lemme "simply" say this, BB: Release 5e has no option whatsoever for people who want an 'Advanced' martial class.
It does not exist. No, the Battlemaster does not count. Anyone who tells me "Superiority is too complicated!" is either lying to me or missing something, because Superiority is not complex at all. If you can get your brain around spellcasting - and everybody who runs this game for any length of time can get their brain around spellcasting, even if Wizards insists on making it weird - you can get your brain around Superiority. The Battlemaster is at best an "Intermediate Bonk" class. There is no option for people who want an advanced, high-caliber martial warrior. None. Paladins are not it. Monks are not it. THERE IS NO "IT".
And we're never going to get it, because people keep screaming and shrieking and screeching and caterwauling that 1DD needs to be More Better Simple with no option whatsoever for anyone that wants any god damned meat on their character's bones because tHeN nEw PlAyErS mIgHt GeT cOnFuSeD!!, and keeping one brainless goober from bouncing off the already oversimplified, straightforward rules of D&D is worth telling a hundred thousand "Advanced" players to shut the **** up, get lost, and never play a tabletop game again.
Gods above and below, I am so ******* sick of this ridiculous 'argument'. Just say what you all f@#$ing mean already - you don't want "advanced" players in the game or at your tables. You want everyone with any clue what they're doing to be barred from playing, because it's easier for y'all to adjudicate the game if nobody you're adjudicating for has any goddamned clue how the game works and you can just make shit up on the spot without worry. Everybody gets to play D&D for precisely the length of one campaign, and then they're banned from the hobby for Beeing Tu Gud.
Please do not contact or message me.
Funny thing about that thread is that it shows that those that are against Fighters being more than basic bonk are actually in the minority.
She/Her College Student Player and Dungeon Master