But we aren't talking about WotC's rules, or what the DM is throwing at us, not really. We're talking about players not doing interesting things with their characters. And since they're the consistent end-point, we should be working backwards from the player. Because not every player has this problem. And neither does every DM. We need a holistic approach. If we're going to offer up suggestions to WotC, then we need to know all points of failure.
The point of failure that's mostly coming up in this discussion is things that don't have system support. 5e, by design, has a lot of gaps in its system, and you can fit all sorts of interesting things into those gaps, but it doesn't have rules or even particularly helpful guidelines about how to implement them fairly. In practice, this tends to result in one of two problematic play styles
The DMs rulings are harsh enough that trying to use unlisted actions is just a waste of your action.
The DMs rulings are lenient enough that there's no point to using standard actions at all, you should just always come up with wild ideas on the fly.
Adding more options that are system supported and neither a waste of time nor overpowered tones down both of these effects, though there's always going to be some things that are outside the bounds of the system.
The other problem with interesting combat, though, is that making an interesting encounter area, with interesting options, is a lot of work, and most of the options you put in are never going to be used (this is similar to the problem with sandbox campaigns). Hard to see how you fix that with books, though maps with interesting stuff built in, or map makers that can fill random clutter in for you, would likely help.
I'm only going to focus on the first few paragraphs, because the passive aggressivity in the later ones is not conducive to any kind of discussion or resolution. Also, I understand that a lot of the points I'm going to make have already been made by other people, but I'm hoping I can clear some things up.
The fighter, as is, is a popular class. It is, seemingly, well-liked by the community at large. If true, this would place you in a vocal minority. And it's not difficult to see why.
There was another thread here where like 80% of people who voted in the poll said they believed fighters could use more complexity and customisation. While I do get your point that fighter as is remains popular, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have glaring issues that need to be fixed - most fundamentally, that of the fighter/caster disparity.
Imo adding maneuvers to the fighter's base kit won't immediately solve the mechanical issues fighters, much less other martials, have when compared to casters, but it definitely can fix a lot of the thematic issues it has, especially at higher levels where casters are gods and fighters are glorified mortals with one action to take: Attack.
What is clear is the options for tactical combat exist. And you are willing to lay blame for shortcomings at WotC and at the DM. And both can be fair. WotC can only do so much. They can give us the rules, which are really more like guidelines, and empower us to make our own games. Likewise, the DM should be looking to create engaging encounters. Difficult terrain, hazards, illumination, and weather are all possible features of a battlefield. Not every monster will think in terms of high-minded tactics, but reasonably intelligent ones are more likely to. Either way, it's fair to say the monsters know what they're doing. Which is a wonderful book, and I suggest any struggling DMs pick it up.
All of this is about WotC's rules. This entire discussion is about whether or not the thoroughly unbalanced game of 5e needs to be balanced by the players (PCs and DMs) because the company who made the game didn't do their job properly. The DM can certainly do a lot with difficult terrain, hazards, weather, and the varying intelligence and tactical acumen of the monsters they throw at their players, but if the PCs themselves fundamentally don't have enough things in their toolkit to last them an entire combat before they just become bonk bonk machines, the variation on the DM's side won't be able to make up for it. If you're making a roast dinner (the game) without any steak (interesting combat options), no amount of spices (the DM's tools) will change the fact that this meal doesn't have a core component to it.
But we aren't talking about WotC's rules, or what the DM is throwing at us, not really. We're talking about players not doing interesting things with their characters. And since they're the consistent end-point, we should be working backwards from the player. Because not every player has this problem. And neither does every DM. We need a holistic approach. If we're going to offer up suggestions to WotC, then we need to know all points of failure.
But the main point of this whole discussion, at least what I can gather, is that "not every player has this problem" ignores the fact that many players have this problem, and "a holistic approach" has already been suggested. Making the barbarian the simple bonk bonk class is an option, though I personally think every class should have some level of complexity and decision making built into it from scratch; however, giving fighters maneuvers as a base part of the kit is already optional. If a newbie or particularly disinterested player who simply wants to bonk bonk desperately needs to play a fighter, they can just,,, not use the maneuvers. We can even introduce a newbie-pick option that just lets them add a superiority die of damage to one attack for free, with none of the rider effects. It allows the complexity and decision-making many fighters want to have available to them, while allowing for other fighters who want a simple stress-free bonk bonk life to keep that life - and this bit is important - without reducing their damage or capacity in combat. There should be an incentive to go for the complex options - the rider effects - but they shouldn't allow complex fighters to compeltely outshine the simple fighters, especially in terms of damage (what a lot of simple fighters are often after, big numbers) just because they wanted a simpler game.
This idea isn't even completely out of the blue: the OneD&D playtest has already done something very similar, with the ASI feat. Before, ASIs were core, and feats were an optional thing (like the battle master subclass) that you could take if you wanted to spice up your character. Now, because they realised how popular feats were, WotC decided to make feats the core feature (gave all fighters maneuvers) to allow for complex characters, and then introduced the ASI feat (the pure damage maneuver) for the people who don't want to mess with that level of complexity.
To return to the roast dinner analogy: a restaurant (WotC) has been making roast dinner for eight years now, but its missing a lot of the ingredients of the meal, which have instead been made into sides (subclass), and you can only pick one: brussel sprouts (champion), roast potato (eldritch knight), or steak (battle master). Some people have been asking, since the restaurant started, for the steak to be made a core part of the meal, so that they can enjoy both the steak and the potato at the same time. Other people counter that with "what if I'm vegetarian? what if I really like the meal as is?" However, if you are vegetarian (or just dont want steak in your meal), you can simply order it without steak (just ignore the feature), or ask for a quorn steak replacement (take and use the pure damage maneuver) - there are still options for everyone, including people who wanted theirs with steak and potatoes. On the other hand, if we keep the meal as is, the other people who wanted to have their meal with steak and potatoes at the same time, who wanted to add some sort of complexity to their character's base toolkit, simply cannot have that, as per the restaurant's restrictions, and have to either limit themselves to just steak again (playing another battle master) or by ordering another meal (play something else).
Fundamentally, in one scenario, the people who want the full package can play the full package, and the people who don't can use a simplistic version of the full package to come to mostly the same results without any of the faff. In the other scenario, an entire section of players (who are not a minority, if the poll I mentioned earlier has anything to say about it) are told to either "just play that one same class/subclass combo again" or "just play something else", which doesn't feel fair on them.
Folks in this thread be like: "Hey fighters can do amazing stuff, like sacrifice their attack to try to shove, or, like... improvise something, I dunno, that may work or not. If the DM allows it at all, but hey, improvise. Also, fighters should be simple and not requiring you to learn a ton of rules. Except all the rules for possible interactions with the environment in case you want to improvise."
It is in the PHB. DMs can do whatever they want, but if they are not allowing core PHB rules like improvise an action and shove then they are not playing RAW.
I have never had any DM in 5E tell me I could not attempt to improvise an action.
Finally to be clear they are sacrificing their attempt to "try" to hit someone with an attack to "try" and shove someone. You are right it might work and it might not, just like the attack you gave up might have worked and might have not worked.
You can always attempt to improvise an action, yes. A good DM will narrate the result of that action, with the aid of dice if required.
Zany off-the-wall cartoon stuff is much more likely to fail than not. The DM gets to decide whether whatever twiggy insane idea crept from their players' blowholes is even worth rolling for or if it simply results in failure. Players who consistently try to break the tone of a game by pulling outlandish Cool Move Checks need to stop, or need to find a DM willing to let them go Toon Force on the game and be the cast of Animaniacs. I don't want to play in that game though, and neither do most of my friends. We enjoy a more grounded game of D&D, in which characters cannot temporarily invoke the powers of the Loony Tunes to pull of whatever weird jank flits into our brain. The weird jank is funny, sure, but the game is more satisfying and engaging if we can't break it over our knee with Cool Move Checks at will.
Fighter players who may wish to play that more grounded game of D&D deserve options as well, beyond Cool Move Checks.
So what I'm reading here, Jounichi, is that the current fighter is absolutely pitch-perfect forever, there's absolutely no possible room whatsoever to change, modify, or improve it, and everybody should just accept that the entire Warrior group is Shining Golden Perfection and anyone who doesn't like them is just bad at the game?
You can always attempt to improvise an action, yes. A good DM will narrate the result of that action, with the aid of dice if required.
Zany off-the-wall cartoon stuff is much more likely to fail than not. The DM gets to decide whether whatever twiggy insane idea crept from their players' blowholes is even worth rolling for or if it simply results in failure. Players who consistently try to break the tone of a game by pulling outlandish Cool Move Checks need to stop, or need to find a DM willing to let them go Toon Force on the game and be the cast of Animaniacs. I don't want to play in that game though, and neither do most of my friends. We enjoy a more grounded game of D&D, in which characters cannot temporarily invoke the powers of the Loony Tunes to pull of whatever weird jank flits into our brain. The weird jank is funny, sure, but the game is more satisfying and engaging if we can't break it over our knee with Cool Move Checks at will.
Fighter players who may wish to play that more grounded game of D&D deserve options as well, beyond Cool Move Checks.
The first thing I want to point out is a lot of the things people want to add to the fighter are "Zany off the wall cartoon stuff". A lot of them are far more cartoonish than the things I mentioned. So I think there is a double standard there.
That said you should certainly not try things that are not likely to work unless there is an extremely high payoff. I gave many examples above and I don't think ANY of the examples I gave earlier are Zany and off the wall, with the possible exception of jumping off the back of a horse and misty stepping to grapple a flying Cambion. In that case it had an extremely high payoff and more or less straightforward rules for every part except running up the horse's back (specific rules for jumping, specific rules for misty step, specific rules for grappling). All the DM really had to do to make that was assign a DC to not fall off of the horses back.
Most of the stuff I mentioned was not even improvise an action, it is mostly specific actions, bonus actions or attacks called out in the PHB (Grapple, Shove, Use an Object) or DMG (Climbing on an enemy, Disarm, Tumble). The only stuff that was actually technically "improvising an action" was calling for the enemy to surrender and convincing them that a Dragon is coming down the hall.
I think improvising an action is a core part of 5E and a core part of RAI and it is certainly showcased by the game designers during the D&D live events and "cartoonish stuff" is to a degree showcased in WOTC artwork. I also think that actually sets the tone of the game and the many groups I have played with all appreciate that. Boring combat where all you do is hit him with a stick is borning.
The fighter, as is, is a popular class. It is, seemingly, well-liked by the community at large. If true, this would place you in a vocal minority. And it's not difficult to see why.
There was another thread here where like 80% of people who voted in the poll said they believed fighters could use more complexity and customisation. While I do get your point that fighter as is remains popular, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have glaring issues that need to be fixed - most fundamentally, that of the fighter/caster disparity.
Imo adding maneuvers to the fighter's base kit won't immediately solve the mechanical issues fighters, much less other martials, have when compared to casters, but it definitely can fix a lot of the thematic issues it has, especially at higher levels where casters are gods and fighters are glorified mortals with one action to take: Attack.
That poll had 73 people, the other data got results from millions. Also, the way the poll was phrased, it was asking whether adding any tiny amount of complexity to Fighter is okay, not whether you should add large amounts via mechanics like Superiority. Not to mention, DDB polls can easily be manipulated. Oh, and the question wasn't even about any type of customization and complexity other than Superiority: it was a yes or no question on adding Superiority to the base-class, just with a bit of text at the end of each "Yes" or "No" which only serves to further distort the actual question.
But we aren't talking about WotC's rules, or what the DM is throwing at us, not really. We're talking about players not doing interesting things with their characters. And since they're the consistent end-point, we should be working backwards from the player. Because not every player has this problem. And neither does every DM. We need a holistic approach. If we're going to offer up suggestions to WotC, then we need to know all points of failure.
But the main point of this whole discussion, at least what I can gather, is that "not every player has this problem" ignores the fact that many players have this problem, and "a holistic approach" has already been suggested. Making the barbarian the simple bonk bonk class is an option, though I personally think every class should have some level of complexity and decision making built into it from scratch; however, giving fighters maneuvers as a base part of the kit is already optional. If a newbie or particularly disinterested player who simply wants to bonk bonk desperately needs to play a fighter, they can just,,, not use the maneuvers. We can even introduce a newbie-pick option that just lets them add a superiority die of damage to one attack for free, with none of the rider effects.
Or you could just put that complexity in any other martial class instead of adding in a billion options to confuse new players and hope they find the simple one. Not only that, but one Superiority die of extra damage to one attack is by no means nearly as powerful as Superiority. I will agree with you though that if complexity has to be added to Fighter, then optional additional complexity is the best way to go.
To return to the roast dinner analogy: a restaurant (WotC) has been making roast dinner for eight years now, but its missing a lot of the ingredients of the meal, which have instead been made into sides (subclass), and you can only pick one: brussel sprouts (champion), roast potato (eldritch knight), or steak (battle master). Some people have been asking, since the restaurant started, for the steak to be made a core part of the meal, so that they can enjoy both the steak and the potato at the same time. Other people counter that with "what if I'm vegetarian? what if I really like the meal as is?" However, if you are vegetarian (or just dont want steak in your meal), you can simply order it without steak (just ignore the feature), or ask for a quorn steak replacement (take and use the pure damage maneuver) - there are still options for everyone, including people who wanted theirs with steak and potatoes. On the other hand, if we keep the meal as is, the other people who wanted to have their meal with steak and potatoes at the same time, who wanted to add some sort of complexity to their character's base toolkit, simply cannot have that, as per the restaurant's restrictions, and have to either limit themselves to just steak again (playing another battle master) or by ordering another meal (play something else).
Yeah, no. I'm allergic to dairy, eggs, sesame, tree nuts, and fish and I can tell you that limiting other peoples options because "There are a few things left that you can have" is not fun whatsoever.
Never mind. It's pointless. Clearly the game is intended sole to be a run-once-and-done experience for new players ONLY and anyone who's already run a D&D campaign needs to just accept that the game will be explicitly and maliciously designed to punish them for their hubris.
Who's got the next game to play? You think once Adam Bradford finishes Nexus, Pathfinder can gets its head out of its ass long enough to sink an edition of D&D again? Obviously advanced players aren't allowed to play this game, so we've gotta find somewhere else to go.
Who's got the next game to play? You think once Adam Bradford finishes Nexus, Pathfinder can gets its head out of its ass long enough to sink an edition of D&D again? Obviously advanced players aren't allowed to play this game, so we've gotta find somewhere else to go.
Probably not. Pathfinder really succeeded with their knockoff of 3E because WOTC went to 4E and that was unpopular. I think the masses are actually going the other way now. One gaming group I started playing with on Wednesday just recently moved from P2E to D&D 5E. Also since Paizo is unionized now it will make be more difficult for them to take risk.
If you look recently Paizo started publishing more 5E content like they want to cash in on the 5E popularity as much as everyone else does, so I don't think they will be moving off on their own like they did previously.
Homebrew is always an option though if you have a closed group of like-minded players.
To return to the roast dinner analogy: a restaurant (WotC) has been making roast dinner for eight years now, but its missing a lot of the ingredients of the meal, which have instead been made into sides (subclass), and you can only pick one: brussel sprouts (champion), roast potato (eldritch knight), or steak (battle master). Some people have been asking, since the restaurant started, for the steak to be made a core part of the meal, so that they can enjoy both the steak and the potato at the same time. Other people counter that with "what if I'm vegetarian? what if I really like the meal as is?" However, if you are vegetarian (or just dont want steak in your meal), you can simply order it without steak (just ignore the feature), or ask for a quorn steak replacement (take and use the pure damage maneuver) - there are still options for everyone, including people who wanted theirs with steak and potatoes. On the other hand, if we keep the meal as is, the other people who wanted to have their meal with steak and potatoes at the same time, who wanted to add some sort of complexity to their character's base toolkit, simply cannot have that, as per the restaurant's restrictions, and have to either limit themselves to just steak again (playing another battle master) or by ordering another meal (play something else).
You lost me. I mean, you lost me earlier. The rest was a big ol' wall of text. This is just the cherry on top of dessert.
Who in their right mind serves steak as a side dish. What's the main course? That's the class. That's the protein the dish is built around. Which, by the way, in a balanced meal, would only be 25% of the plate. So your fruits/vegetables and grains/starches would make up the rest. This entire analogy just trips over itself if you have even a basic understanding of nutrition.
Who's got the next game to play? You think once Adam Bradford finishes Nexus, Pathfinder can gets its head out of its ass long enough to sink an edition of D&D again? Obviously advanced players aren't allowed to play this game, so we've gotta find somewhere else to go.
Probably not. Pathfinder really succeeded with their knockoff of 3E because WOTC went to 4E and that was unpopular. I think the masses are actually going the other way now. One gaming group I started playing with on Wednesday just recently moved from P2E to D&D 5E. Also since Paizo is unionized now it will make be more difficult for them to take risk.
If you look recently Paizo started publishing more 5E content like they want to cash in on the 5E popularity as much as everyone else does, so I don't think they will be moving off on their own like they did previously.
Homebrew is always an option though if you have a closed group of like-minded players.
That's partially true. There was some backlash to 4E from longtime players, and most jumped to Pathfinder because of familiarity, but it did attract a lot of new players. Officially, WotC does not consider it a failure. And now Paizo has hired some of the 4E developers for Pathfinder 2nd edition. The feat at every level isn't that different from the powers acquired at every level. And a number of other 4E mechanics were ported over and refined, as well.
It's worth remembering that Paizo was firmly ingrained with 3.X for much of that period. They were contracted to run both Dragon and Dungeon magazines. During that tenure, they produced a lot of official and unofficial content. They were the first to adapt Castle Ravenloft to 3rd edition; including printing two different versions of Strahd. It's where Golarion was first previewed. And, after their contracts were cancelled, they negotiated a deal with WotC to publish Pathfinder. It has its own OGL. It's not part of the 3.5 OGL.
Improvisation is nebular. If you insist that the game is good if both players play it right and the DM play it right, it's not good. Thing is: things you can do need to be codified. It's what Battlemaster's maneuvers do. They codify a list of actions that a martial character can reasonably do without breaking verisimilitude and going supernatural. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to be a basis upon which to iterate.
This is some kind of doublethink: saying that fighters are good for newbies, and saying that fighters are as good as your improvisation skills and your DM's lenience. Only an advanced player can improvise with consistent success and satisfaction, because it takes an advanced player to know the rules well, know what their character is capable of, what to expect of environmental damage, how to evaluate the difficulty of checks, how to persuade the DM that your improvised action is within the rules, etc. Does a new player know how disarm works? It's in the DMG. How many new players enter the game having read the combat section in DMG?
... Homebrew is always an option though if you have a closed group of like-minded players.
Because clearly everybody who wants a little more meat on their games' bones is also a master game developer with hundreds of hours of random spare time to design, test, prove out, and implement their very own heavily customized 5e just for them.
Because that's just how everything works. An advanced player is also an advanced DM is also an advanced game designer, those are all totally the exact same skillset, and we're all just a bunch of blathering idiots for not realizing extensive homebrew customization of the game requiring hundreds of hours of design, testing, proving out, and implementation is the answer we've all been looking for.
Thanks ever so much for pointing that out. I know my life will never again be the same for it.
To return to the roast dinner analogy: a restaurant (WotC) has been making roast dinner for eight years now, but its missing a lot of the ingredients of the meal, which have instead been made into sides (subclass), and you can only pick one: brussel sprouts (champion), roast potato (eldritch knight), or steak (battle master). Some people have been asking, since the restaurant started, for the steak to be made a core part of the meal, so that they can enjoy both the steak and the potato at the same time. Other people counter that with "what if I'm vegetarian? what if I really like the meal as is?" However, if you are vegetarian (or just dont want steak in your meal), you can simply order it without steak (just ignore the feature), or ask for a quorn steak replacement (take and use the pure damage maneuver) - there are still options for everyone, including people who wanted theirs with steak and potatoes. On the other hand, if we keep the meal as is, the other people who wanted to have their meal with steak and potatoes at the same time, who wanted to add some sort of complexity to their character's base toolkit, simply cannot have that, as per the restaurant's restrictions, and have to either limit themselves to just steak again (playing another battle master) or by ordering another meal (play something else).
You lost me. I mean, you lost me earlier. The rest was a big ol' wall of text. This is just the cherry on top of dessert.
Who in their right mind serves steak as a side dish. What's the main course? That's the class. That's the protein the dish is built around. Which, by the way, in a balanced meal, would only be 25% of the plate. So your fruits/vegetables and grains/starches would make up the rest. This entire analogy just trips over itself if you have even a basic understanding of nutrition.
Sigh... That's what AndreGolin is trying to say, That WOTC is serving the main course of the fighter class as a side dish in the form of the battlemaster subclasses.
To return to the roast dinner analogy: a restaurant (WotC) has been making roast dinner for eight years now, but its missing a lot of the ingredients of the meal, which have instead been made into sides (subclass), and you can only pick one: brussel sprouts (champion), roast potato (eldritch knight), or steak (battle master). Some people have been asking, since the restaurant started, for the steak to be made a core part of the meal, so that they can enjoy both the steak and the potato at the same time. Other people counter that with "what if I'm vegetarian? what if I really like the meal as is?" However, if you are vegetarian (or just dont want steak in your meal), you can simply order it without steak (just ignore the feature), or ask for a quorn steak replacement (take and use the pure damage maneuver) - there are still options for everyone, including people who wanted theirs with steak and potatoes. On the other hand, if we keep the meal as is, the other people who wanted to have their meal with steak and potatoes at the same time, who wanted to add some sort of complexity to their character's base toolkit, simply cannot have that, as per the restaurant's restrictions, and have to either limit themselves to just steak again (playing another battle master) or by ordering another meal (play something else).
You lost me. I mean, you lost me earlier. The rest was a big ol' wall of text. This is just the cherry on top of dessert.
Who in their right mind serves steak as a side dish. What's the main course? That's the class. That's the protein the dish is built around. Which, by the way, in a balanced meal, would only be 25% of the plate. So your fruits/vegetables and grains/starches would make up the rest. This entire analogy just trips over itself if you have even a basic understanding of nutrition.
Sigh... That's what AndreGolin is trying to say, That WOTC is serving the main course of the fighter class as a side dish in the form of the battlemaster subclasses.
Well, they're wrong. The chassis of the fighter is pretty damn good.
... Homebrew is always an option though if you have a closed group of like-minded players.
Because clearly everybody who wants a little more meat on their games' bones is also a master game developer with hundreds of hours of random spare time to design, test, prove out, and implement their very own heavily customized 5e just for them.
Or maybe the experienced, successful master game developers at WOTC decided the current, heavily tested and popular Fighter was the best way to implement the class. When you talk about testing and game design it is important to note the D&D Next playtest fighter had a lot more options in combat and those were PURPOSELY removed from the class and relegated to subclasses after playtesting it.
Just maybe, experienced game designers working on the most popular RPG in history actually know what they are doing?
How many times are you going to argue "it's popular therefore it's perfect"? It is, in fact, a very real logical fallacy. Something can be both popular and absolutely godawful. I'm certain anyone who puts their mind to it for fifteen seconds can come up with at least one historical trend that was extremely popular in its day and yet turned out to be absolutely horrific later on when people got smarter.
After all, those same developers you're saying nailed the fighter down to SHINING GOLDEN PERFECTION are now also reduxing the game with lessons learned from eight years of righteous ****-ups, and demanding that anyone who doesn't want to spend the entirety of a thousand hour campaign doing literally dick-monkey ****squat except saying "I use The Attack Action to damage the enemy closest to me" leave the game and play something else isn't bloody helping.
How many times are you going to argue "it's popular therefore it's perfect"? It is, in fact, a very real logical fallacy. Something can be both popular and absolutely godawful. I'm certain anyone who puts their mind to it for fifteen seconds can come up with at least one historical trend that was extremely popular in its day and yet turned out to be absolutely horrific later on when people got smarter.
After all, those same developers you're saying nailed the fighter down to SHINING GOLDEN PERFECTION are now also reduxing the game with lessons learned from eight years of righteous ****-ups, and demanding that anyone who doesn't want to spend the entirety of a thousand hour campaign doing literally dick-monkey ****squat except saying "I use The Attack Action to damage the enemy closest to me" leave the game and play something else isn't bloody helping.
I never said it was perfect, but you suggested that master game designers are the ones who know how to design a game and sarcastically implied that you and your gaming group didn't or couldn't design a fighter that is better for you.
Also as a point of fact I spent about 10 paragraphs on this very thread trying to explain how how you could do things other than use the attack action to damage the nearest enemy, gave examples of personally using them in play and you responded "THEY DO NOT WORK". You then later labeled some of them "dick-monkey squat", "junk" and "useless, pointless, and utterly idiotic", even though I and others pointed out how those options could be situationally far more powerful than an attack.
You insist that you can only hit an enemy with an attack even though you can find thousands of videos of high-level players online doing things other than hitting an enemy with an attack and while you insist you want a more complex fighter you also turn around and say you want your combat to be "more grounded" which sounds to me like a contradiction in and of itself.
The point of failure that's mostly coming up in this discussion is things that don't have system support. 5e, by design, has a lot of gaps in its system, and you can fit all sorts of interesting things into those gaps, but it doesn't have rules or even particularly helpful guidelines about how to implement them fairly. In practice, this tends to result in one of two problematic play styles
Adding more options that are system supported and neither a waste of time nor overpowered tones down both of these effects, though there's always going to be some things that are outside the bounds of the system.
The other problem with interesting combat, though, is that making an interesting encounter area, with interesting options, is a lot of work, and most of the options you put in are never going to be used (this is similar to the problem with sandbox campaigns). Hard to see how you fix that with books, though maps with interesting stuff built in, or map makers that can fill random clutter in for you, would likely help.
I'm only going to focus on the first few paragraphs, because the passive aggressivity in the later ones is not conducive to any kind of discussion or resolution. Also, I understand that a lot of the points I'm going to make have already been made by other people, but I'm hoping I can clear some things up.
There was another thread here where like 80% of people who voted in the poll said they believed fighters could use more complexity and customisation. While I do get your point that fighter as is remains popular, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have glaring issues that need to be fixed - most fundamentally, that of the fighter/caster disparity.
Imo adding maneuvers to the fighter's base kit won't immediately solve the mechanical issues fighters, much less other martials, have when compared to casters, but it definitely can fix a lot of the thematic issues it has, especially at higher levels where casters are gods and fighters are glorified mortals with one action to take: Attack.
All of this is about WotC's rules. This entire discussion is about whether or not the thoroughly unbalanced game of 5e needs to be balanced by the players (PCs and DMs) because the company who made the game didn't do their job properly. The DM can certainly do a lot with difficult terrain, hazards, weather, and the varying intelligence and tactical acumen of the monsters they throw at their players, but if the PCs themselves fundamentally don't have enough things in their toolkit to last them an entire combat before they just become bonk bonk machines, the variation on the DM's side won't be able to make up for it. If you're making a roast dinner (the game) without any steak (interesting combat options), no amount of spices (the DM's tools) will change the fact that this meal doesn't have a core component to it.
It is in the PHB. DMs can do whatever they want, but if they are not allowing core PHB rules like improvise an action and shove then they are not playing RAW.
I have never had any DM in 5E tell me I could not attempt to improvise an action.
Finally to be clear they are sacrificing their attempt to "try" to hit someone with an attack to "try" and shove someone. You are right it might work and it might not, just like the attack you gave up might have worked and might have not worked.
You can always attempt to improvise an action, yes. A good DM will narrate the result of that action, with the aid of dice if required.
Zany off-the-wall cartoon stuff is much more likely to fail than not. The DM gets to decide whether whatever twiggy insane idea crept from their players' blowholes is even worth rolling for or if it simply results in failure. Players who consistently try to break the tone of a game by pulling outlandish Cool Move Checks need to stop, or need to find a DM willing to let them go Toon Force on the game and be the cast of Animaniacs. I don't want to play in that game though, and neither do most of my friends. We enjoy a more grounded game of D&D, in which characters cannot temporarily invoke the powers of the Loony Tunes to pull of whatever weird jank flits into our brain. The weird jank is funny, sure, but the game is more satisfying and engaging if we can't break it over our knee with Cool Move Checks at will.
Fighter players who may wish to play that more grounded game of D&D deserve options as well, beyond Cool Move Checks.
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Yes, that pretty much covers it.
The first thing I want to point out is a lot of the things people want to add to the fighter are "Zany off the wall cartoon stuff". A lot of them are far more cartoonish than the things I mentioned. So I think there is a double standard there.
That said you should certainly not try things that are not likely to work unless there is an extremely high payoff. I gave many examples above and I don't think ANY of the examples I gave earlier are Zany and off the wall, with the possible exception of jumping off the back of a horse and misty stepping to grapple a flying Cambion. In that case it had an extremely high payoff and more or less straightforward rules for every part except running up the horse's back (specific rules for jumping, specific rules for misty step, specific rules for grappling). All the DM really had to do to make that was assign a DC to not fall off of the horses back.
Most of the stuff I mentioned was not even improvise an action, it is mostly specific actions, bonus actions or attacks called out in the PHB (Grapple, Shove, Use an Object) or DMG (Climbing on an enemy, Disarm, Tumble). The only stuff that was actually technically "improvising an action" was calling for the enemy to surrender and convincing them that a Dragon is coming down the hall.
I think improvising an action is a core part of 5E and a core part of RAI and it is certainly showcased by the game designers during the D&D live events and "cartoonish stuff" is to a degree showcased in WOTC artwork. I also think that actually sets the tone of the game and the many groups I have played with all appreciate that. Boring combat where all you do is hit him with a stick is borning.
That poll had 73 people, the other data got results from millions. Also, the way the poll was phrased, it was asking whether adding any tiny amount of complexity to Fighter is okay, not whether you should add large amounts via mechanics like Superiority. Not to mention, DDB polls can easily be manipulated. Oh, and the question wasn't even about any type of customization and complexity other than Superiority: it was a yes or no question on adding Superiority to the base-class, just with a bit of text at the end of each "Yes" or "No" which only serves to further distort the actual question.
Or you could just put that complexity in any other martial class instead of adding in a billion options to confuse new players and hope they find the simple one. Not only that, but one Superiority die of extra damage to one attack is by no means nearly as powerful as Superiority. I will agree with you though that if complexity has to be added to Fighter, then optional additional complexity is the best way to go.
Yeah, no. I'm allergic to dairy, eggs, sesame, tree nuts, and fish and I can tell you that limiting other peoples options because "There are a few things left that you can have" is not fun whatsoever.
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Never mind. It's pointless. Clearly the game is intended sole to be a run-once-and-done experience for new players ONLY and anyone who's already run a D&D campaign needs to just accept that the game will be explicitly and maliciously designed to punish them for their hubris.
Who's got the next game to play? You think once Adam Bradford finishes Nexus, Pathfinder can gets its head out of its ass long enough to sink an edition of D&D again? Obviously advanced players aren't allowed to play this game, so we've gotta find somewhere else to go.
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Probably not. Pathfinder really succeeded with their knockoff of 3E because WOTC went to 4E and that was unpopular. I think the masses are actually going the other way now. One gaming group I started playing with on Wednesday just recently moved from P2E to D&D 5E. Also since Paizo is unionized now it will make be more difficult for them to take risk.
If you look recently Paizo started publishing more 5E content like they want to cash in on the 5E popularity as much as everyone else does, so I don't think they will be moving off on their own like they did previously.
Homebrew is always an option though if you have a closed group of like-minded players.
You lost me. I mean, you lost me earlier. The rest was a big ol' wall of text. This is just the cherry on top of dessert.
Who in their right mind serves steak as a side dish. What's the main course? That's the class. That's the protein the dish is built around. Which, by the way, in a balanced meal, would only be 25% of the plate. So your fruits/vegetables and grains/starches would make up the rest. This entire analogy just trips over itself if you have even a basic understanding of nutrition.
That's partially true. There was some backlash to 4E from longtime players, and most jumped to Pathfinder because of familiarity, but it did attract a lot of new players. Officially, WotC does not consider it a failure. And now Paizo has hired some of the 4E developers for Pathfinder 2nd edition. The feat at every level isn't that different from the powers acquired at every level. And a number of other 4E mechanics were ported over and refined, as well.
It's worth remembering that Paizo was firmly ingrained with 3.X for much of that period. They were contracted to run both Dragon and Dungeon magazines. During that tenure, they produced a lot of official and unofficial content. They were the first to adapt Castle Ravenloft to 3rd edition; including printing two different versions of Strahd. It's where Golarion was first previewed. And, after their contracts were cancelled, they negotiated a deal with WotC to publish Pathfinder. It has its own OGL. It's not part of the 3.5 OGL.
Improvisation is nebular. If you insist that the game is good if both players play it right and the DM play it right, it's not good. Thing is: things you can do need to be codified. It's what Battlemaster's maneuvers do. They codify a list of actions that a martial character can reasonably do without breaking verisimilitude and going supernatural. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to be a basis upon which to iterate.
This is some kind of doublethink: saying that fighters are good for newbies, and saying that fighters are as good as your improvisation skills and your DM's lenience. Only an advanced player can improvise with consistent success and satisfaction, because it takes an advanced player to know the rules well, know what their character is capable of, what to expect of environmental damage, how to evaluate the difficulty of checks, how to persuade the DM that your improvised action is within the rules, etc. Does a new player know how disarm works? It's in the DMG. How many new players enter the game having read the combat section in DMG?
Because clearly everybody who wants a little more meat on their games' bones is also a master game developer with hundreds of hours of random spare time to design, test, prove out, and implement their very own heavily customized 5e just for them.
Because that's just how everything works. An advanced player is also an advanced DM is also an advanced game designer, those are all totally the exact same skillset, and we're all just a bunch of blathering idiots for not realizing extensive homebrew customization of the game requiring hundreds of hours of design, testing, proving out, and implementation is the answer we've all been looking for.
Thanks ever so much for pointing that out. I know my life will never again be the same for it.
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Sigh... That's what AndreGolin is trying to say, That WOTC is serving the main course of the fighter class as a side dish in the form of the battlemaster subclasses.
Well, they're wrong. The chassis of the fighter is pretty damn good.
Or maybe the experienced, successful master game developers at WOTC decided the current, heavily tested and popular Fighter was the best way to implement the class. When you talk about testing and game design it is important to note the D&D Next playtest fighter had a lot more options in combat and those were PURPOSELY removed from the class and relegated to subclasses after playtesting it.
Just maybe, experienced game designers working on the most popular RPG in history actually know what they are doing?
How many times are you going to argue "it's popular therefore it's perfect"? It is, in fact, a very real logical fallacy. Something can be both popular and absolutely godawful. I'm certain anyone who puts their mind to it for fifteen seconds can come up with at least one historical trend that was extremely popular in its day and yet turned out to be absolutely horrific later on when people got smarter.
After all, those same developers you're saying nailed the fighter down to SHINING GOLDEN PERFECTION are now also reduxing the game with lessons learned from eight years of righteous ****-ups, and demanding that anyone who doesn't want to spend the entirety of a thousand hour campaign doing literally dick-monkey ****squat except saying "I use The Attack Action to damage the enemy closest to me" leave the game and play something else isn't bloody helping.
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I never said it was perfect, but you suggested that master game designers are the ones who know how to design a game and sarcastically implied that you and your gaming group didn't or couldn't design a fighter that is better for you.
Also as a point of fact I spent about 10 paragraphs on this very thread trying to explain how how you could do things other than use the attack action to damage the nearest enemy, gave examples of personally using them in play and you responded "THEY DO NOT WORK". You then later labeled some of them "dick-monkey squat", "junk" and "useless, pointless, and utterly idiotic", even though I and others pointed out how those options could be situationally far more powerful than an attack.
You insist that you can only hit an enemy with an attack even though you can find thousands of videos of high-level players online doing things other than hitting an enemy with an attack and while you insist you want a more complex fighter you also turn around and say you want your combat to be "more grounded" which sounds to me like a contradiction in and of itself.
It's literally three features. Four, if you count the extra extra attack.
People who played PHB ranger and monk: "am I a joke to you"?
It is actually 9 features, or 29 if you count repeated features:
1. Fighting Style
2. Second Wind
3. Action Surge (X2)
4. Martial Archetype
5. ASI (x7)
6. Martial Versatility (X7)
7. Extra Attack (X3)
8. Martial Archetype Feature (X4)
9. Indomitable (X3)
This is more features than most classes have.