D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting

[Water_Bear]

By this logic, you should never do anything that doesn't benefit all of humanity, like watch TV... play video/tabletop games... screw around on internet forums... Since, unless it has a permanent effect, it was all for nothing!

Well, leisure has it's purpose. Games and playfulness are connected with curiosity and learning, happy people are more productive, and mass media like TV and the Internet open up ways for people to do good never before seen. But yeah, most people in the 1st world (myself included) don't do nearly enough good to justify the amount of goodies we enjoy.

And to avoid a complete de-rail;

Even though it is realistic for fighters to be trained in multiple weapons, particularly if they were in an army, characters in fantasy who use weapons almost always have a specific weapon with which they specialize, and thus almost ALWAYS use in battle. I think 4e does this fine, as a fighter can use any military-grade weapon if they have to, but can choose feats to specialize in using their favorite weapon better. 5e only has a few feats so far, so we only have a rough idea of where they're going with weapon specializations, but it seems that it is largely the same: the fighter has training in every weapon category, but if you choose, for example, the Archer specialty, you are better with bows than other weapons.

The problem with saying that Fighters being trained with all Martial weapons means they are generally competent with them, is that proficiency alone doesn't really mean much. Sure they don't take a non-proficiency penalty, but they aren't going to be able to use them well; bows in particular require highly specialized builds to be effective.

I would prefer a Fighter with a broad range of powers which inflict status effects (Prone, Stunned, etc) through attacks and let them do that through whatever weapons they are trained in. Weapon Style feats can cover using specific weapons or weapon groups in particular ways, but the base Fighter chassis should be decent with whatever random weapon they pick up.