It's been 8 days since I made this appeal. And everyone is still arguing in the same circles. Not for 100 more posts as I predicted, but for almost 300 more now. And I can count the number of actually productive suggestions on my fingers.
Which is why I just stopped posting for a while. I'll wait until the next UA is out and we actually have something to discuss. This martial vs. caster dispute is just going in circles. I made a poll (which got moved to general discussions section for Cthulhu knows what reason), I saw the results, they're more indicative than reading 300+ posts.
An optimizer should have a better AC than that mid tiers. A Bladesinger, Sword and board heavy armor caster or artificer should be able to drive that down to about 10%. You should be at either 25 AC with disadvantage or 27-28 without disadvantage.
A 6th level sword and Board Hexadin for example should be at 28 (plate, shield, protection, shield spell, shield of faith). A single-class Bladesinger should be at 25 with disadvantage or 27 without disadvantage (mage armor, dex, intelligence, shield spell and disadvantage through blur or PEG or +2 AC through Haste)
None of the spells you mention is reliably up -- you might have better uses for the action, bonus action, reaction, or spell slot. If you can consistently cast spells before combat the DM is being really generous -- it does happen, but it shouldn't be assumed true by default.
Shield of Faith is a bonus action, shield is a reaction, usually those are available. Not always but usually.
As for the other three, sure there are rounds where the enemy wins initiative and gets a shot at you with a 30% chance to hit like you said (or maybe even more), but that is usually in the first round and usually only when the enemy beats you in initiative and can get an attack on you.
"Optional" complexity isn't. Either 'complexity' is valuable enough that opting into it is something of a no-brainer (i.e. Champion being hot moose urine and Battlemaster being the only complete fighter) and the Simple Fighter Crowd wants it pulled, shredded, razed to the ground, and its grave salted to ensure it never again clutters their Beautifully Simple R5e, or the 'complexity' is so lame and pointless taking it is actively disadvantaging your team ("you can already have maneuvers on every fighter by just taking Superior Technique and Martial Adept to get two whole superiority dice per day!"). Which, of course, the Simple Fighter Crowd holds up as a splendid and perfect example of how to add back in 'complexity' without taking anything away from the Simple Fighter - by making the 'complexity' so superfluous and pointless nobody would want it so they don't have to feel bad about playing the walking diarrhea pot that is the Champion Fighter.
Of course the Simple Fighter Crowd is a fan of "optional" complexity that's so actively terrible it effectively doesn't exist, because then they can point to it and say "See, you got what you need, now use it or quit playing D&D!" It's such a useful tool for them to try and force more advanced players out of the hobby with.
And to be clear, 'complexity' here isn't actual complexity. It's fun, engagement, cool options, and things which make fighter pop and give it greater depth of play.
I don't want to force you out of the hobby, I want to force you into other class if you don't like fighter. That way the game has something for everyone. I would say you want to force everyone who is not a rules expert out of the hobby and that is most players.
I am a rules expert. I play 20 hours of D&D a week and spend another 20 hours reading D&D stuff or posting here and other forums. I make mistakes on occasion but not often and I can play a very complex class because of my understanding of the mechanics. The average player makes mistakes every other round or so. Why can't we have a game that suits all players? Why can't we have a game with beginners and experts at the same table?
If you want to "pop" then pick a class that pops!. The answer is so simple, why are you playing a fighter? Wizards pop, fighters don't - stay in your lane!
Me personally, I can enjoy playing simple characters. I can enjoy playing complex characters. I can enjoy playing weak characters or strong characters or anything in between. I can play combat focused games and I can play games where we have combat once every 3-4 sessions. Some people are not that flexible. If you are one of those people then don't play what you don't enjoy, but if you look I am sure you will find something you will enjoy that suits your play style.
For all the talk about a fighter with great combat maneuvers, I will point out that this fighter is not going to be fun in a game that is not heavily combat focused and that is the majority of games I would wager.
It's been 8 days since I made this appeal. And everyone is still arguing in the same circles. Not for 100 more posts as I predicted, but for almost 300 more now. And I can count the number of actually productive suggestions on my fingers.
Which is why I just stopped posting for a while. I'll wait until the next UA is out and we actually have something to discuss. This martial vs. caster dispute is just going in circles. I made a poll (which got moved to general discussions section for Cthulhu knows what reason), I saw the results, they're more indicative than reading 300+ posts.
To be fair, it will see more traffic in general than it would here
Shield of Faith is a bonus action, shield is a reaction, usually those are available. Not always but usually.
A hexadin has a ton of bonus actions that are better than shield of faith, shield is more likely but I wouldn't fail to take an opportunity attack for the chance I'd need a shield later. Also technically shield can't be cast by a sword and board fighter, as it has somatic components without material components and can only be cast with one hand free.
I don't want to force you out of the hobby, I want to force you into other class if you don't like fighter.
If you want to "pop" then pick a class that pops!. The answer is so simple, why are you playing a fighter? Wizards pop, fighters don't - stay in your lane!
So basically, you're saying "if you want to play an interesting fighter... tough luck, go away".
I wonder if "stay in your lane" is the advice I should give a newbie who's really excited to play the cool druid concept they're very attached to and which is jazzing them up to try their first game of D&D.
"Stay in your lane, newb. Put the druid down and play a Champion, you have to earn 'playing what you want' at this table."
Shield of Faith is a bonus action, shield is a reaction, usually those are available. Not always but usually.
A hexadin has a ton of bonus actions that are better than shield of faith, shield is more likely but I wouldn't fail to take an opportunity attack for the chance I'd need a shield later. Also technically shield can't be cast by a sword and board fighter, as it has somatic components without material components and can only be cast with one hand free.
I don't want to force you out of the hobby, I want to force you into other class if you don't like fighter.
If you want to "pop" then pick a class that pops!. The answer is so simple, why are you playing a fighter? Wizards pop, fighters don't - stay in your lane!
So basically, you're saying "if you want to play an interesting fighter... tough luck, go away".
It is a valid criticism since all that I've gathered from this conversation is that only spells are interesting so to make a fighter interesting they need to get some kind of spell-like abilities. In which case why are you bothering to play a fighter? If you want to swing an sword and have spells or spell-like abilities play a Hexblade, Bladesinger, Artificer, Ranger or Paladin (or an Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster). That's tons of choices with tons of play styles. Why try to turn Fighter into one of those other classes / subclasses?
An optimizer should have a better AC than that mid tiers. A Bladesinger, Sword and board heavy armor caster or artificer should be able to drive that down to about 10%. You should be at either 25 AC with disadvantage or 27-28 without disadvantage.
A 6th level sword and Board Hexadin for example should be at 28 (plate, shield, protection, shield spell, shield of faith). A single-class Bladesinger should be at 25 with disadvantage or 27 without disadvantage (mage armor, dex, intelligence, shield spell and disadvantage through blur or PEG or +2 AC through Haste)
None of the spells you mention is reliably up -- you might have better uses for the action, bonus action, reaction, or spell slot. If you can consistently cast spells before combat the DM is being really generous -- it does happen, but it shouldn't be assumed true by default.
Shield of Faith is a bonus action, shield is a reaction, usually those are available. Not always but usually.
As for the other three, sure there are rounds where the enemy wins initiative and gets a shot at you with a 30% chance to hit like you said (or maybe even more), but that is usually in the first round and usually only when the enemy beats you in initiative and can get an attack on you.
More importantly Haste and Shield of Faith are concentration and are a pretty bad use of that concentration most of the time (+2 AC is terrible compared to incapacitating 2 enemies with Hypnotic Pattern) - usually only the Paladin puts up Shield of Faith. Also with my heavy hitting monsters to make combat challenging it's unlikely for players to keep concentration on a spell for more than 2 rounds unless they have specific feats / features that help them keep it up (or take precautions to protect it).
I feel this conversation is starting to stray a bit from the subject at hand. The relative efficacy of various spells under diverse situations has little to do with peoples’ desires to either increase the complexity of Fighters, or not to.
"Risk and reward" is not really where meaningful decisions lay. The Power Attack option from GWM and Sharpshooter are "RIsk and Reward", and we see what those turned into - as you say, player spam them all day every day because it's "Attack" vs "Much Stronger/Better Attack w/Minor Hit Penalty." There's no real decision there, it's a case of whether you think you can land your strictly more powerful attack. Same with your list of called shots - all of those attacks are strictly better than a basic strike, and the game turns into "how do I guarantee landing 100% of my called shots all the time?" rather than a game of making meaningful decisions.
But that is a tactical decision? Taking specific actions in order to increase your chance to hit with an attack that has a penalty is a strategic decision. And choosing to risk missing for the chance to impose a condition is also a tactical decision. It's is dead easy to make taking a -5 to hit a significant cost, just raise enemy AC by ~3 and suddenly the "Power Attack" option is actually worse than doing a straight attack. Players than spam GWM / SS are dumb and often end up reducing their overall DPR.
"Meaningful decisions" means the character has qualitatively (NOT just numerically) different options for what they can do, each of which has a different impact on whatever their situation is, and choosing which of those qualitatively different options is better for their current situation is an important part of moment to moment gameplay. They tried to do this with the push/trip/disarm options in the DMG, but they made each of those options very weak and almost universally inferior to simply landing a bit more damage. The battlemaster comes closer, as you get enough Superiority that choosing whether or not to use it, and choosing which of your Superiority options to use, becomes an engaging part of playing the character. Superiority can even make the default options suck less - Disarm an enemy, then using a Superiority die on a Pushing Attack to move the enemy fifteen feet away from their Evil macGuffin before moving up to re-engage the enemy, as one example. Enemies capable of being disarmed are still vanishingly rare, but at least Superiority allows the disarm to mean something and actually inconvenience the foe.
Sorry I'm still confused. How are battle master maneuvers "qualitatively different"? There are essentially 3 types of maneuvers: (1) maneuvers that increase your chance to hit with an attack or that grant an extra attack, (2) maneuvers that add a rider to a regular attack that is something you could have already done but at the cost of your regular attack damage, and (3) niche out-of-combat or maneuverability options that are generally bad and that no body uses. The only two maneuvers that are "qualitatively different" to my eyes is the Menacing Attack and Goading Attack both of which are just versions of Paladin 1st level spells (Wrathful Smite and Compel Duel).
Again, the relative benefits of haste Vs hypnotic pattern are not the topic of this thread. Please take that debate to a new thread, or drop it. Thank you.
haste gives you a +2 to AC, doubles your movement speed, and gives you an extra action, which most of the time will be an extra attack. The other thing it gives you (advantage on DEX saves) is relatively circumstantial, but still useful when it comes up. I say that to say you're probably selling haste short there. Also hypnotic pattern is not suited for every situation, just as haste isn't.
Yes I am aware of that, I played a Wizard who's whole gimmick was that he was a wimpy boy who used his magic to buff his big burly Paladin protector. It was fun to RP, but overall the biggest benefit of Haste was to allow the Paladin to be able move when the druid kept surrounding him with Plant Growth. Overall, was not impressed by the DPR nor Survivability bonus and the cost of being unable to use any other concentration spell or ending up in the Negative DPR when the Paladin lost their turn when Haste ended felt super constraining.
I feel this conversation is starting to stray a bit from the subject at hand. The relative efficacy of various spells under diverse situations has little to do with peoples’ desires to either increase the complexity of Fighters, or not to.
In a way it is. As soon as the subject of optimization came up the conversation almost went entirely to magic. Which kind of says something about martials.
I feel this conversation is starting to stray a bit from the subject at hand. The relative efficacy of various spells under diverse situations has little to do with peoples’ desires to either increase the complexity of Fighters, or not to.
In a way it is. As soon as the subject of optimization came up the conversation almost went entirely to magic. Which kind of says something about martials.
That is a pretty fair point imo.
And I will also add that it says something that WoTC frequently tacks magical stuff onto martial subclasses.
And I feel like it warrants reminding that they went out of their way to support Battle Master and its superiority mechanic specifically in Tasha's. They wouldn't have done that if superiority wasn't something that received a lot of positive feedback.
It is one of the better fighter options its just no where near as good as spells at mid to higher levels. Spell casters just don't run out of spells fast enough for their so called limited resource to be that awesome in comparison. I do think battle master could be salvaged into something that makes it balanced with spells or at least close enough for government work. Though I will say I think this is a 20% issue in that probably only 20% of the tables have players that optimize at a level where this stuff matters. You have a basic low end optimized warrior type hitting like a truck and they will look fine at most tables. It is the optimizer tables where it starts to fall apart where martials have to optimize far far further to hang in with a relatively non optimized wizard.
So for me the issue is there and it would be nice if they tried to fix it, but I'm not sure it impacts enough players for them to put the effort in.
Well the way I see it we are probably not going to see a large change to much of any classes as much as we will likely see rules changes and spell changes. In terms of fighters instead of asking "complex" or "not-complex" I think it may just be more effective to ask "what is the power fantasy and how can we wizards achieve it". Barbarians, the power fantasy is a being that is supernaturally tough and strong someone that powers through his enemies. For some Barbarian may also have the power fantasy of being a tribal leader or tribal warrior which puts them on the full martial nature class where ranger is the half caster expert nature person and the druid is the one with nature full caster. The Monk is the martial arts eastern traditions power fantasy of someone that is nimble and dodgy able to use their body as a weapon just as well as their use of weapon. The fighter is the master of arms, the master of the nuances of weapon combat.
Looking at their subclasses from the PHB we can ask "how does this modify the fighter to improve or change this power fantasy?" The eldritch knight seems to try to change the power fantasy to add a little sorcery for a "sword and sorcery" style character. I personally do not think the eldritch knight successfully fulfills this fantasy because their spells scale too slowly for evocation spells to be all that useful for a fighter. Then we have the champion which is the simplest subclass that makes your fighter more of a fighter, and we have the battle master, which is one of the more complex fighter classes that makes your fighter more of a fighter. Both the Champion and the Battle Master try to achieve the standard fighter fantasy of the master of weapon combat. From what I have seen, even those in favor of simple fighters have found Champion disappointing and most people love the Battle Master. In fact, battlemaster was loved enough that Wizards used 2 whole pages in tasha's for example builds of every type of mundane fighter imaginable using the battle master fighter.
Future books brought us Cavalier and Samurai, two more mundane and fairly simple fighters. The Cavalier I always here people disappointed about it not having enough to do with mounted combat, but those that use it seem pleased with its ability to defend allies. Samurai is almost exclusively built with sharpshooter or GWM both of which changed in the expert play test making Samurai much worse than before.
The next 2 sublcasses were Rune knight for those that wanted to play as a giant, and Psi-warrior, for those that wanted to play a jedi (I was one of them).
Ultimately, I think we see a precedence for Wizards wanting fighters to have complexity if they choose and simplicity if they choose. The problem is these 2 options are not in any way balanced with one another at the moment, and those that want more complexity still need more options outside of a single subclass to live the fantasy of a person skilled with weapons taking advantage of a less skillful enemy with tactical know how. The suggestion for complicated warrior feats may be the best options for this and in the meantime we have to hope they make the non-complicated subclasses more interesting and stronger with what they can do.
Sorry I'm still confused. How are battle master maneuvers "qualitatively different"? There are essentially 3 types of maneuvers: (1) maneuvers that increase your chance to hit with an attack or that grant an extra attack, (2) maneuvers that add a rider to a regular attack that is something you could have already done but at the cost of your regular attack damage, and (3) niche out-of-combat or maneuverability options that are generally bad and that no body uses. The only two maneuvers that are "qualitatively different" to my eyes is the Menacing Attack and Goading Attack both of which are just versions of Paladin 1st level spells (Wrathful Smite and Compel Duel).
Commander's Strike and Rally don't fit in any of those categories, though they're both bad so I can see why you blanked them out. I actually consider Ambush, Commanding Presence, and Tactical Assessment pretty good. But yes, battle master maneuvers could in fact use some enhancement, it's just that everything else is so bad that they look great by comparison.
If you want to "pop" then pick a class that pops!. The answer is so simple, why are you playing a fighter? Wizards pop, fighters don't - stay in your lane!
Well, if this isn't gatekeeping, then I don't know what it is.
A single use of Second Wind is at best going to prevent on average half a round of damage, at 1st level, and it continues to dwindle rapidly.
I mean, I know you are trying to argue that Second Wind is bad, but your table kind of just proved my point. Being able to heal half an attack's damage at low level while making good use of your action economy is helpful at worst and crucial at best. At higher levels, you have more uses of Second Wind (which your table did not account for). Not only that, but monsters attacks are broken into a multiattack routine, so the likelihood that you take the full 100 damage on your turn is basically zero, because not only would you have to be targeted by all the monsters attacks (which would be a sign of poor DMing), but all of those attacks would have to hit as well.
Good thing I never said that Second Wind is bad, only that it is inconsequential. I did forget to include the additional use of Second Wind, but it really does absolutely nothing to help. Also, the fighter who would make the most of Second Wind is a tank fighter, and the likelihood that you take the full 100 damage as a tank is considerable, especially when many monsters at that CR have effects that don't require attacks - dragons, solars, marut, literally any spellcaster.
As you yourself admitted, many of the Ranger's important abilities come at levels that are too late to be of much use. So while having lots of nice abilities may be cool, it's not nearly as cool if your campaign doesn't last long enough to use them. On the other hand, Fighter gets most of their important abilities at low levels, and the power and amount of uses of those abilities scales as well.
You're still ignoring the biggest feature the ranger gets, which is spellcasting. Even if it's half-casting, the ranger's spellcasting (which is imo the weakest spellcasting in the game) gives them access to Goodberry and Pass Without Trace and Conjure Animals, three of the best known game-breaker spells in D&D, as well as other fantastic options like Absorb Elements, Entangle, Aid, Spike Growth, and Revivify, all before the fighter gets their third attack.
Oh boy. So your answer to my "hey, I understand this is a really contentious issue right now, but I am interesting in solving it in a way that makes everyone happy. Consider this idea!" is "nah but consider this, go **** yourself." You clearly aren't interested in actually finding a solution to this issue the community is having. What I see is one side - the ones advocating for complexity - suggesting ideas and considering balance issues, and another side - the ones advocating for simplicity - going "nyeh" and shitting on every single idea passed to them.
Firstly, none of us will be able to "solve" this issue. The best we can do is make homebrew solutions.
Secondly, who you are even talking to and where on all of Faerun, the Nine Hells and beyond did anyone ever tell you to "**** yourself." All I told you is that I don't that one specific idea works, but apparently, disagreeing with one idea means that you are "shitting" on them. Also, I proposed numerous suggestions to help fix this. The vast majority of them were ignored.
"Firstly, none of us will be able to "solve" this issue. The best we can do is make homebrew solutions." Then why are you here? Seriously. This thread was started by people attempting to fix an issue they see in the game they love. If none of us can solve the issue, and we can do is homebrew, why the **** do you care what we do? Why are you still here, posting, disrupting other people's problem-solving? In your eyes we're just suggesting homebrew ideas, right? In what way could that ever possibly "steal the simple fighter away from you" if all we're doing is homebrewing?
Also, your response to "here's this idea about introducing complexity while still allowing for simplicity so everyone gets what they want" was "or you could just not do that so you don't 'confuse new players and hope they find the simple one'." And no, you did not give any useful or meaningful counter-solution. You said "or we can not do this, and also if we did it would be meaningless since damage isn't as good as superiority." First, if you really think that maneuvers are so deeply and incomprehensibly complex that a new player won't be able to figure out they mean, you are really, really underselling the intelligence of new players. Secondly, when people are discussing potential solutions to a problem and you butt in by saying "no actually you should just not do this, thank you!" you're not actually helping. This is the equivalent of telling everyone who wants to fix an issue they see in the game they love to go **** themselves - you clearly don't care about actually solving the issue, you just want people to stop "trying to steal the simple fighter" away from you.
You may think something to be bad, but many, many other people like that thing. And arguing that that option should be taken away from them and made complex because you enjoy complexity ignores the simple reality that other people may enjoy different things and that they too, need options. Nothing you've said explains why Fighter should be the complex class when it can literally be any other class.
I have given so many reasons for this to you directly that this boggles my mind. Here's a rundown, in case god is real and you're saying this all in good faith. 1) I believe the fighter is mechanically uninteresting at most levels of play. Note the use of the word believe here, which means "to hold something as an opinion," just to make sure you understand 100% that I am talking about my opinion, and not stating something as fact. 2) I believe the mechanics of the fighter do not provide adequate recourse to portray the fantasy of a mythical warrior - Perseus, St George, Theseus, Odysseus, etc. 3) I believe the fighter is mechanically weak at all levels of play when compared to the spellcasters, not because they can do more damage, but because butspellcasters get access to every solution other than damage while fighters have to hope either that damage is good enough, their extremely sparse mechanics are flavourful enough, or the DM is lenient enough to allow them to do the cool things that other classes are allowed to do as part of the base class chassis. With all this combined, I believe that the fighter specifically, more than any other martial class, needs some added features to allow for them to 1. make interesting decisions every turn of combat, just like spellcasters, that goes beyond taking the Attack action; 2. accurately portray the fantasy of a mythical or superheroic warrior; and 3. stand up, even in some small way, to the mechanical superiority of fighters. In my opinion, maneuvers as part of the base class fulfill all of those criteria, while still being able to allow for simplicity with the damage-only maneuver idea. Something like:
Clean Strike
Sometimes a simple strike is best. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die and add it to the damage roll.
As you said, if we give every fighter a choice of 20 maneuvers - while I disagree that it will be too complex for anyone to grasp - it may be difficult to find that easy option, so you make it explicitly clear in the game, with the suggested list. They have already done this in 1DD, with the suggested skills AND suggested spells, so why on earth can't they do it with suggested maneuvers? If you really want to spell it out for the simple fighter players because you think they're so incapable of playing the game that they need to have exactly zero decision making at any time, we can look back to 4e, where they had different archetypal build recommendations in the class description, before the features were even shown giving advice on which powers to pick if you want to play a certain way.
I think we must be having different conversations. "Throughout all of your posts on this thread, I've seen nothing but your desire to take away Fighter from the people who need it" and "you seem to think that simplicity automatically means something is bad." "Your whole argument is that the most beloved simple class should be taken away from the people who need it, merely because you want more options for yourself." What are you talking about. Who are you talking to. Is there someone else named AndreGolin in this thread?
I have never said that I want to "take away Fighter from the people who need it." I have expressed my desire to see a fighter base class with some more mechanical complexity because I believe that is what the fighter is missing; I have, however, made it very clear multiple times in this thread that this is my opinion, so I'm not sure why you're painting me out to be some fun-destroying supervillain scheming to rob the poor bonk bonks of their precious TTRPG class and replace it with my own sick and twisted desires.
Neither have I ever said that "simplicity automatically means something is bad." I have, however, again, made it very clear multiple times that IN MY OPINION I believe the fighter is lacking in complexity.
Perhaps I am confusing what you and other posters with the exact same blank avatar screen are saying. However, I have seen you make multiple suggestions to add complicated (or at least what would be complicated to a new player) mechanics such as Superiority to the base-Fighter class. And honestly, I don't think that's fair to the massive amount of people that want/need/love "simple" Fighter as it is.
People who like simplicity need options, too. Making Fighter a complex class only takes away the already limited pool of some options from the players who enjoy them. I get that your opinion is that Fighter is "lacking in complexity", but according to my personal experience and according to data that is overall quite reliable (it is certainly much more reliable than a few small polls on DDB) many want an option that is lacking in complexity. Because they enjoy simplicity.
So yes, (unless I am misunderstanding you) it may be your opinion that those people should have the simple option they love turned complex. But personally at least, I think that is a very problematic opinion to have.
Again, if you believe the suggestions I have made would seriously stop every single simple player from picking up the game, I think you need to reevaluate your understanding of intelligence because these suggestions are not complex at all.
Here's a recommendation: if you desperately want to play simple fighter, go play simple fighter. If you see a forum thread of a couple people discussing about how to fix the issues they see in the fighter by adding complexity, don't join in. If you don't have anything constructive to say, don't say anything, just let it go, because by your own admission none of this matters, we're only homebrewing, and none of this will ever affect you.
Here's another recommendation: if you're going to interact with multiple people on a forum at once, make sure you have the mental bandwith to interact with multiple people on a forum at once. None of this "ah sorry I mistook you for another poster, so I accused you of actively trying to destroy the game I love" crap, its absolutely ridiculous. I had posted I think twice before you made that post, so I have no idea why you think its okay to insult me like that, and then not even apologise? Just hand wave it away as "ah my bad I confused you with all your other blank avatar ilk". Absolutely ridiculous.
Here's a final recommendation: listen to people when they tell you what they mean. There's no need for this "unless I'm misunderstanding you, I think you're problematic and a danger to this game and that you want to steal away my precious simple fighter." It's so completely deranged that I don't know where to begin. I have made it extremely clear now that I do not wish to "turn complex the simple option people love" - I want to find a fix for the fighter that makes it fun for everyone. Currently, there are two main groups, one of which enjoys the fighter as is, and one of which does not. I am trying to find a solution that allows both groups to enjoy playing the fighter, so that no one is simply gatekept out of a class (because right now that is effectively what is happening; the class does not fulfill the fantasy that many people want it to, and no other class can, so they are trying to make it so that it does fulfill the fantasy, and are being told to just "go play some other class"). That is my goal here, I have always made it explicitly clear that that is my goal here, and at no poiny have I ever alluded to, or made any suggestion in the hopes of, wanting to destroy your experience of the game.
I like this idea! Another thought I had was that you could choose which spell schools you want, allowing for more flexibility. Although tbh I think the EK isn't strong enough that it even really needs this restriction, especially since the Bladesinger came out with its special Extra Attack and the EK still has the less-than-stellar War Magic at 7th.
I wonder if "stay in your lane" is the advice I should give a newbie who's really excited to play the cool druid concept they're very attached to and which is jazzing them up to try their first game of D&D.
"Stay in your lane, newb. Put the druid down and play a Champion, you have to earn 'playing what you want' at this table."
If he wants to get extra attack with his Druid, then yes you should tell him that - put down the Druid and play a class that gets extra attack like Fighter or maybe you homebrew a Druid subclass that does that. If you want to play a Druid though you don't get to do that as part of your class.
This is actually a great analogy! Should we give the Druid class extra attack and martial weapon proficiency because some players like your newbie want to play a Druid that gets to attack twice on every turn with a greatsword?
Maybe we should just tell WOTC they need to add extra attack to the Druid class?
Which is why I just stopped posting for a while. I'll wait until the next UA is out and we actually have something to discuss. This martial vs. caster dispute is just going in circles. I made a poll (which got moved to general discussions section for Cthulhu knows what reason), I saw the results, they're more indicative than reading 300+ posts.
Shield of Faith is a bonus action, shield is a reaction, usually those are available. Not always but usually.
As for the other three, sure there are rounds where the enemy wins initiative and gets a shot at you with a 30% chance to hit like you said (or maybe even more), but that is usually in the first round and usually only when the enemy beats you in initiative and can get an attack on you.
I don't want to force you out of the hobby, I want to force you into other class if you don't like fighter. That way the game has something for everyone. I would say you want to force everyone who is not a rules expert out of the hobby and that is most players.
I am a rules expert. I play 20 hours of D&D a week and spend another 20 hours reading D&D stuff or posting here and other forums. I make mistakes on occasion but not often and I can play a very complex class because of my understanding of the mechanics. The average player makes mistakes every other round or so. Why can't we have a game that suits all players? Why can't we have a game with beginners and experts at the same table?
If you want to "pop" then pick a class that pops!. The answer is so simple, why are you playing a fighter? Wizards pop, fighters don't - stay in your lane!
Me personally, I can enjoy playing simple characters. I can enjoy playing complex characters. I can enjoy playing weak characters or strong characters or anything in between. I can play combat focused games and I can play games where we have combat once every 3-4 sessions. Some people are not that flexible. If you are one of those people then don't play what you don't enjoy, but if you look I am sure you will find something you will enjoy that suits your play style.
For all the talk about a fighter with great combat maneuvers, I will point out that this fighter is not going to be fun in a game that is not heavily combat focused and that is the majority of games I would wager.
To be fair, it will see more traffic in general than it would here
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A hexadin has a ton of bonus actions that are better than shield of faith, shield is more likely but I wouldn't fail to take an opportunity attack for the chance I'd need a shield later. Also technically shield can't be cast by a sword and board fighter, as it has somatic components without material components and can only be cast with one hand free.
So basically, you're saying "if you want to play an interesting fighter... tough luck, go away".
I wonder if "stay in your lane" is the advice I should give a newbie who's really excited to play the cool druid concept they're very attached to and which is jazzing them up to try their first game of D&D.
"Stay in your lane, newb. Put the druid down and play a Champion, you have to earn 'playing what you want' at this table."
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It is a valid criticism since all that I've gathered from this conversation is that only spells are interesting so to make a fighter interesting they need to get some kind of spell-like abilities. In which case why are you bothering to play a fighter? If you want to swing an sword and have spells or spell-like abilities play a Hexblade, Bladesinger, Artificer, Ranger or Paladin (or an Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster). That's tons of choices with tons of play styles. Why try to turn Fighter into one of those other classes / subclasses?
More importantly Haste and Shield of Faith are concentration and are a pretty bad use of that concentration most of the time (+2 AC is terrible compared to incapacitating 2 enemies with Hypnotic Pattern) - usually only the Paladin puts up Shield of Faith. Also with my heavy hitting monsters to make combat challenging it's unlikely for players to keep concentration on a spell for more than 2 rounds unless they have specific feats / features that help them keep it up (or take precautions to protect it).
I feel this conversation is starting to stray a bit from the subject at hand. The relative efficacy of various spells under diverse situations has little to do with peoples’ desires to either increase the complexity of Fighters, or not to.
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Sorry I'm still confused. How are battle master maneuvers "qualitatively different"? There are essentially 3 types of maneuvers: (1) maneuvers that increase your chance to hit with an attack or that grant an extra attack, (2) maneuvers that add a rider to a regular attack that is something you could have already done but at the cost of your regular attack damage, and (3) niche out-of-combat or maneuverability options that are generally bad and that no body uses. The only two maneuvers that are "qualitatively different" to my eyes is the Menacing Attack and Goading Attack both of which are just versions of Paladin 1st level spells (Wrathful Smite and Compel Duel).
Again, the relative benefits of haste Vs hypnotic pattern are not the topic of this thread. Please take that debate to a new thread, or drop it. Thank you.
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Yes I am aware of that, I played a Wizard who's whole gimmick was that he was a wimpy boy who used his magic to buff his big burly Paladin protector. It was fun to RP, but overall the biggest benefit of Haste was to allow the Paladin to be able move when the druid kept surrounding him with Plant Growth. Overall, was not impressed by the DPR nor Survivability bonus and the cost of being unable to use any other concentration spell or ending up in the Negative DPR when the Paladin lost their turn when Haste ended felt super constraining.
In a way it is. As soon as the subject of optimization came up the conversation almost went entirely to magic. Which kind of says something about martials.
It is one of the better fighter options its just no where near as good as spells at mid to higher levels. Spell casters just don't run out of spells fast enough for their so called limited resource to be that awesome in comparison. I do think battle master could be salvaged into something that makes it balanced with spells or at least close enough for government work. Though I will say I think this is a 20% issue in that probably only 20% of the tables have players that optimize at a level where this stuff matters. You have a basic low end optimized warrior type hitting like a truck and they will look fine at most tables. It is the optimizer tables where it starts to fall apart where martials have to optimize far far further to hang in with a relatively non optimized wizard.
So for me the issue is there and it would be nice if they tried to fix it, but I'm not sure it impacts enough players for them to put the effort in.
Well the way I see it we are probably not going to see a large change to much of any classes as much as we will likely see rules changes and spell changes. In terms of fighters instead of asking "complex" or "not-complex" I think it may just be more effective to ask "what is the power fantasy and how can we wizards achieve it". Barbarians, the power fantasy is a being that is supernaturally tough and strong someone that powers through his enemies. For some Barbarian may also have the power fantasy of being a tribal leader or tribal warrior which puts them on the full martial nature class where ranger is the half caster expert nature person and the druid is the one with nature full caster. The Monk is the martial arts eastern traditions power fantasy of someone that is nimble and dodgy able to use their body as a weapon just as well as their use of weapon. The fighter is the master of arms, the master of the nuances of weapon combat.
Looking at their subclasses from the PHB we can ask "how does this modify the fighter to improve or change this power fantasy?" The eldritch knight seems to try to change the power fantasy to add a little sorcery for a "sword and sorcery" style character. I personally do not think the eldritch knight successfully fulfills this fantasy because their spells scale too slowly for evocation spells to be all that useful for a fighter. Then we have the champion which is the simplest subclass that makes your fighter more of a fighter, and we have the battle master, which is one of the more complex fighter classes that makes your fighter more of a fighter. Both the Champion and the Battle Master try to achieve the standard fighter fantasy of the master of weapon combat. From what I have seen, even those in favor of simple fighters have found Champion disappointing and most people love the Battle Master. In fact, battlemaster was loved enough that Wizards used 2 whole pages in tasha's for example builds of every type of mundane fighter imaginable using the battle master fighter.
Future books brought us Cavalier and Samurai, two more mundane and fairly simple fighters. The Cavalier I always here people disappointed about it not having enough to do with mounted combat, but those that use it seem pleased with its ability to defend allies. Samurai is almost exclusively built with sharpshooter or GWM both of which changed in the expert play test making Samurai much worse than before.
The next 2 sublcasses were Rune knight for those that wanted to play as a giant, and Psi-warrior, for those that wanted to play a jedi (I was one of them).
Ultimately, I think we see a precedence for Wizards wanting fighters to have complexity if they choose and simplicity if they choose. The problem is these 2 options are not in any way balanced with one another at the moment, and those that want more complexity still need more options outside of a single subclass to live the fantasy of a person skilled with weapons taking advantage of a less skillful enemy with tactical know how. The suggestion for complicated warrior feats may be the best options for this and in the meantime we have to hope they make the non-complicated subclasses more interesting and stronger with what they can do.
Commander's Strike and Rally don't fit in any of those categories, though they're both bad so I can see why you blanked them out. I actually consider Ambush, Commanding Presence, and Tactical Assessment pretty good. But yes, battle master maneuvers could in fact use some enhancement, it's just that everything else is so bad that they look great by comparison.
Well, if this isn't gatekeeping, then I don't know what it is.
Good thing I never said that Second Wind is bad, only that it is inconsequential. I did forget to include the additional use of Second Wind, but it really does absolutely nothing to help. Also, the fighter who would make the most of Second Wind is a tank fighter, and the likelihood that you take the full 100 damage as a tank is considerable, especially when many monsters at that CR have effects that don't require attacks - dragons, solars, marut, literally any spellcaster.
You're still ignoring the biggest feature the ranger gets, which is spellcasting. Even if it's half-casting, the ranger's spellcasting (which is imo the weakest spellcasting in the game) gives them access to Goodberry and Pass Without Trace and Conjure Animals, three of the best known game-breaker spells in D&D, as well as other fantastic options like Absorb Elements, Entangle, Aid, Spike Growth, and Revivify, all before the fighter gets their third attack.
"Firstly, none of us will be able to "solve" this issue. The best we can do is make homebrew solutions." Then why are you here? Seriously. This thread was started by people attempting to fix an issue they see in the game they love. If none of us can solve the issue, and we can do is homebrew, why the **** do you care what we do? Why are you still here, posting, disrupting other people's problem-solving? In your eyes we're just suggesting homebrew ideas, right? In what way could that ever possibly "steal the simple fighter away from you" if all we're doing is homebrewing?
Also, your response to "here's this idea about introducing complexity while still allowing for simplicity so everyone gets what they want" was "or you could just not do that so you don't 'confuse new players and hope they find the simple one'." And no, you did not give any useful or meaningful counter-solution. You said "or we can not do this, and also if we did it would be meaningless since damage isn't as good as superiority." First, if you really think that maneuvers are so deeply and incomprehensibly complex that a new player won't be able to figure out they mean, you are really, really underselling the intelligence of new players. Secondly, when people are discussing potential solutions to a problem and you butt in by saying "no actually you should just not do this, thank you!" you're not actually helping. This is the equivalent of telling everyone who wants to fix an issue they see in the game they love to go **** themselves - you clearly don't care about actually solving the issue, you just want people to stop "trying to steal the simple fighter" away from you.
I have given so many reasons for this to you directly that this boggles my mind. Here's a rundown, in case god is real and you're saying this all in good faith. 1) I believe the fighter is mechanically uninteresting at most levels of play. Note the use of the word believe here, which means "to hold something as an opinion," just to make sure you understand 100% that I am talking about my opinion, and not stating something as fact. 2) I believe the mechanics of the fighter do not provide adequate recourse to portray the fantasy of a mythical warrior - Perseus, St George, Theseus, Odysseus, etc. 3) I believe the fighter is mechanically weak at all levels of play when compared to the spellcasters, not because they can do more damage, but because butspellcasters get access to every solution other than damage while fighters have to hope either that damage is good enough, their extremely sparse mechanics are flavourful enough, or the DM is lenient enough to allow them to do the cool things that other classes are allowed to do as part of the base class chassis. With all this combined, I believe that the fighter specifically, more than any other martial class, needs some added features to allow for them to 1. make interesting decisions every turn of combat, just like spellcasters, that goes beyond taking the Attack action; 2. accurately portray the fantasy of a mythical or superheroic warrior; and 3. stand up, even in some small way, to the mechanical superiority of fighters. In my opinion, maneuvers as part of the base class fulfill all of those criteria, while still being able to allow for simplicity with the damage-only maneuver idea. Something like:
As you said, if we give every fighter a choice of 20 maneuvers - while I disagree that it will be too complex for anyone to grasp - it may be difficult to find that easy option, so you make it explicitly clear in the game, with the suggested list. They have already done this in 1DD, with the suggested skills AND suggested spells, so why on earth can't they do it with suggested maneuvers? If you really want to spell it out for the simple fighter players because you think they're so incapable of playing the game that they need to have exactly zero decision making at any time, we can look back to 4e, where they had different archetypal build recommendations in the class description, before the features were even shown giving advice on which powers to pick if you want to play a certain way.
Again, if you believe the suggestions I have made would seriously stop every single simple player from picking up the game, I think you need to reevaluate your understanding of intelligence because these suggestions are not complex at all.
Here's a recommendation: if you desperately want to play simple fighter, go play simple fighter. If you see a forum thread of a couple people discussing about how to fix the issues they see in the fighter by adding complexity, don't join in. If you don't have anything constructive to say, don't say anything, just let it go, because by your own admission none of this matters, we're only homebrewing, and none of this will ever affect you.
Here's another recommendation: if you're going to interact with multiple people on a forum at once, make sure you have the mental bandwith to interact with multiple people on a forum at once. None of this "ah sorry I mistook you for another poster, so I accused you of actively trying to destroy the game I love" crap, its absolutely ridiculous. I had posted I think twice before you made that post, so I have no idea why you think its okay to insult me like that, and then not even apologise? Just hand wave it away as "ah my bad I confused you with all your other blank avatar ilk". Absolutely ridiculous.
Here's a final recommendation: listen to people when they tell you what they mean. There's no need for this "unless I'm misunderstanding you, I think you're problematic and a danger to this game and that you want to steal away my precious simple fighter." It's so completely deranged that I don't know where to begin. I have made it extremely clear now that I do not wish to "turn complex the simple option people love" - I want to find a fix for the fighter that makes it fun for everyone. Currently, there are two main groups, one of which enjoys the fighter as is, and one of which does not. I am trying to find a solution that allows both groups to enjoy playing the fighter, so that no one is simply gatekept out of a class (because right now that is effectively what is happening; the class does not fulfill the fantasy that many people want it to, and no other class can, so they are trying to make it so that it does fulfill the fantasy, and are being told to just "go play some other class"). That is my goal here, I have always made it explicitly clear that that is my goal here, and at no poiny have I ever alluded to, or made any suggestion in the hopes of, wanting to destroy your experience of the game.
I like this idea! Another thought I had was that you could choose which spell schools you want, allowing for more flexibility. Although tbh I think the EK isn't strong enough that it even really needs this restriction, especially since the Bladesinger came out with its special Extra Attack and the EK still has the less-than-stellar War Magic at 7th.
If he wants to get extra attack with his Druid, then yes you should tell him that - put down the Druid and play a class that gets extra attack like Fighter or maybe you homebrew a Druid subclass that does that. If you want to play a Druid though you don't get to do that as part of your class.
This is actually a great analogy! Should we give the Druid class extra attack and martial weapon proficiency because some players like your newbie want to play a Druid that gets to attack twice on every turn with a greatsword?
Maybe we should just tell WOTC they need to add extra attack to the Druid class?