D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread

[Saph]

Odd, even when I granted our thief automatic stealth without checking to make sure she maintained the requirements for rolling it and without bothering to check each monster's perception against her steath roll, the thief STILL seemed totally worthless compared with the Fighter or Moradin Cleric. Attacking for slightly more than double damage every other round is only slightly better than just attacking normally every round, and since pretty much everyone else was better at each individual attack, the Thief was collossally unimpressive.

We found the same thing at level 1, but to be fair it does change as you go up levels. Since the thief gains +1d6 sneak attack damage every level (not every other level like 3.5) their damage scales much faster than everyone else's.

[Craft (Cheese)]

We found the same thing at level 1, but to be fair it does change as you go up levels. Since the thief gains +1d6 sneak attack damage every level (not every other level like 3.5) their damage scales much faster than everyone else's.

What was that about the fighter being the best at killing things?

[Saph]

What was that about the fighter being the best at killing things?

Oh, the fighter is good at doing damage, that's not the problem. The problem is that it doesn't do anything else.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Oh, the fighter is good at doing damage, that's not the problem. The problem is that it doesn't do anything else.

Oh, I know. In their design articles on the fighter they keep saying "Fighter is best class for killing! Nobody kills better than Fighter!"

Which is kinda inconsistent with the rogue getting sneak attack dice crazy fast.

[Kurald Galain]

Oh, I know. In their design articles on the fighter they keep saying "Fighter is best class for killing! Nobody kills better than Fighter!"

Which is kinda inconsistent with the rogue getting sneak attack dice crazy fast.

It strikes me that the intent is for the rogue to have situational powerful attack, which means that it won't get a consistent way to get Advantage all the time. It also strikes me that most 3E/4E players won't like this.

[Yora]

Which is not a unique fault of D&D. To my knowledge, nobody ever had any good ideas what else a warrior could be doing to compare to a rogue or mage.

@ Kurald: I do! (Fighting is for fighters. Rogues have to wait for their time to take the spotlight and can make themselves useful when the fighters are doing their job.)

[Kurald Galain]

@ Kurald: I do! (Fighting is for fighters. Rogues have to wait for their time to take the spotlight and can make themselves useful when the fighters are doing their job.)

Actually, I do too. I like having to put some work into getting a (big) sneak attack bonus. I really dislike how 4E has made it trivial for rogues to get sneak attack every turn, all the time, from level 1.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Which is not a unique fault of D&D. To my knowledge, nobody ever had any good ideas what else a warrior could be doing to compare to a rogue or mage.

We all know the answer to this: The fighter's job is to use his high strength score to carry things!

At least until everyone in the party gets their own bag of holding.

[hamlet]

Cleric hasn't been a dedicated healer since AD&D. I doubt it's ever going to go back to that. If that's what your players are hoping for, then I don't know what can help them.

Actually, in AD&D, the cleric wasn't neccessarily a "healbot" either, and playing one as such was, generally, seen as an inferior way to actually play the class.

Yes, he had the healing magic, but resorting to just healing magic was really ignoring a lot of what he was capable of doing.

However, turning healing into something so ridiculously easy is, IMO a bad thing. It really rubbed every single person in the group the wrong way no matter what their starting edition was. Not a single person out of about 10 folks thought it was in any way good.

[hamlet]

Oh, the fighter is good at doing damage, that's not the problem. The problem is that it doesn't do anything else.

Eh?

The fighter "doesn't do anything else"? What the heck is that supposed to mean?

No, really, that one just puzzles me. Especially since the fighter was, even outside of combat, one of the most active characters at our table. He did a lot above and beyond "hit it with a stick."

I simply cannot fathom this particular meme of "the fighter can't do anything but fight and is thus boring." Really seems to me like bad players.

[Saph]

No, really, that one just puzzles me. Especially since the fighter was, even outside of combat, one of the most active characters at our table. He did a lot above and beyond "hit it with a stick."

Our fighter was the same. But the actual class is just a bit boring. I really can't see myself playing one without a bit more mechanical variety.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Eh?

The fighter "doesn't do anything else"? What the heck is that supposed to mean?

No, really, that one just puzzles me. Especially since the fighter was, even outside of combat, one of the most active characters at our table. He did a lot above and beyond "hit it with a stick."

I simply cannot fathom this particular meme of "the fighter can't do anything but fight and is thus boring." Really seems to me like bad players.

As Saph said, what we mean is the class. The person playing the fighter might be very creative and charismatic, figuring out and using dirty tricks around the environment at every turn. The problem is you can play that way with any class, so why should anyone choose the Fighter over, say, the Cleric or Wizard?

[hamlet]

Boring how?

I found it in no way boring. In fact, it was one of the better written classes in the playtest. Forthright, simple, and straight up. It said what needed to be said quickly (one side of one page) and without any questions on how it was intended to work as opposed to how it actually did according to what was written there. Brevity is something that was completely lost after AD&D, which is a shame.

What, exactly, makes it boring as opposed to the wizard, cleric, or thief?

[Craft (Cheese)]

Boring how?

I found it in no way boring. In fact, it was one of the better written classes in the playtest. Forthright, simple, and straight up. It said what needed to be said quickly (one side of one page) and without any questions on how it was intended to work as opposed to how it actually did according to what was written there. Brevity is something that was completely lost after AD&D, which is a shame.

What, exactly, makes it boring as opposed to the wizard, cleric, or thief?

Wizards and clerics get spells, and rogues get powers to make them better at using skills. The fighter gets... damage on a miss. And technically that's a feat that theoretically any class could take, so that doesn't really count.

[hamlet]

Wizards and clerics get spells, and rogues get powers to make them better at using skills. The fighter gets... damage on a miss. And technically that's a feat that theoretically any class could take, so that doesn't really count.

Eh? Spells and powers is what you want? If a character isn't doing something special, unique, and awesome every round, he's not contributing to the success of the party, or he's just flat out not interesting to you?

Do you need special rules to govern "doing something"? Is the fighter ONLY capable of fighting with a sword/ax/club/whatever because that's all that's on his sheet?

No, really. I'm not trying to be a jerk here. I simply cannot understand this constant meme of "the fighter is boring" that's been going around. It's a complete, total, and absolute break with . . . well . . .EVERYTHING that I know about gaming and basic logic and nobody's been able to actually explain it.

[Drazik]

what craft i think is trying to say is that yes, although you can (and most people think you should) play more than what is on your sheet, you can do that with every other class also. it is not fighter specific.

My group did 2 playtest runs. the first time i played the fighter, the second one of my friends did. both times we had a lot of fun.

HOWEVER just comparing the class mechanics WITHOUT playing the class, the fighter appears very boring.

the wizards and both clerics get spells, and the cleric gets channel divinity powers. cool!
the rogue gets +1d6 on attacks with advantage every level, plus some other goodies (night vision, scheme, ect...) that cool to.

the fighter gets... oh. the fighter gets an extra action, twice a day. that's cool i guess, but it's only one thing and starts at level two.

[JoeMac307]

Eh? Spells and powers is what you want? If a character isn't doing something special, unique, and awesome every round, he's not contributing to the success of the party, or he's just flat out not interesting to you?

Do you need special rules to govern "doing something"? Is the fighter ONLY capable of fighting with a sword/ax/club/whatever because that's all that's on his sheet?

No, really. I'm not trying to be a jerk here. I simply cannot understand this constant meme of "the fighter is boring" that's been going around. It's a complete, total, and absolute break with . . . well . . .EVERYTHING that I know about gaming and basic logic and nobody's been able to actually explain it.

You aren't alone here. I like that the fighter is mechanically simple, and so do my players who favor fighters. I don't think being straightforward is boring or limiting... I see it as a strong platform on which to build in nearly any conceivable direction. But I seem to be in the minority here with that point of view.

I also don't have any problem with a rogue not being a huge contributor to combat. I see them as a finesse class, that shines during certain circumstances (scouting, trapfinding, occassional sneak attacks) but otherwise just survives combat situations rather than thrives in them. On this point, I again seem to be in the minority here.

Maybe it's just different styles of play. Maybe it is generational. Sometimes it seems that everybody has to feel special every single second of every single day, and that bleeds over to D&D. A rogue has to be just as good at fighting as a fighter, but if so, then the fighter is a stupid class because all it can do is "hit it with a stick" so it needs cool manuevers to make it interesting. Fair enough. Not my style of play, but a valid one...

[Craft (Cheese)]

Eh? Spells and powers is what you want? If a character isn't doing something special, unique, and awesome every round, he's not contributing to the success of the party, or he's just flat out not interesting to you?

Do you need special rules to govern "doing something"? Is the fighter ONLY capable of fighting with a sword/ax/club/whatever because that's all that's on his sheet?

The only thing the Fighter can do aside from attacking is making something up and asking the DM if it's okay.

Fighter: "I grab the Kobold and hold him in place while the rogue stabs him in the neck!"

DM: "Hmm, okay. You and the Kobold make opposed strength checks to see if it works."

That's just fine, but the purpose of a game system is to provide rules to adjucate situations so the DM doesn't have to make up a rule on the spot like that. Freeform roleplaying is fine and good fun, but why should I bother to buy/learn a system just to play Freeform?

[hamlet]

The only thing the Fighter can do aside from attacking is making something up and asking the DM if it's okay.

Fighter: "I grab the Kobold and hold him in place while the rogue stabs him in the neck!"

DM: "Hmm, okay. You and the Kobold make opposed strength checks to see if it works."

That's just fine, but the purpose of a game system is to provide rules to adjucate situations so the DM doesn't have to make up a rule on the spot like that. Freeform roleplaying is fine and good fun, but why should I bother to buy/learn a system just to play Freeform?

So . . . again . . . it boils down to because the fighter doesn't have special unique snowflake status on paper, he is therefore horribly boring?

Or is this, yet again, the utter dread that seems to be the norm nowadays with regarding the DM as having any responsibility to make regular adjudications?

Sorry, still don't get it. Seems to boil down to "it isn't on the sheet, therefore it's boring and wrong and not right" or whatever. Seriousl lack of imagination.

[JoeMac307]

The only thing the Fighter can do aside from attacking is making something up and asking the DM if it's okay.

Fighter: "I grab the Kobold and hold him in place while the rogue stabs him in the neck!"

DM: "Hmm, okay. You and the Kobold make opposed strength checks to see if it works."

That's just fine, but the purpose of a game system is to provide rules to adjucate situations so the DM doesn't have to make up a rule on the spot like that. Freeform roleplaying is fine and good fun, but why should I bother to buy/learn a system just to play Freeform?

I agree that there should be detailed combat rules that tell you how to do any common action in combat, such as holding a kobold still while the rogue stabs it in the neck. I don't think the poor DM should have to come up with all of that on the fly in every circumstance.

But that is combat rules. That everyone follows. Not just the fighter. How does the lack of detailed combat rules equal a need to make the fighter a more mechanically complicated class? There seems to be a disconnect there.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I agree that there should be detailed combat rules that tell you how to do any common action in combat, such as holding a kobold still while the rogue stabs it in the neck. I don't think the poor DM should have to come up with all of that on the fly in every circumstance.

But that is combat rules. That everyone follows. Not just the fighter. How does the lack of detailed combat rules equal a need to make the fighter a more mechanically complicated class? There seems to be a disconnect there.

Because, once again, if everything the Fighter does can be done by anyone else, why even have the fighter?

[JoeMac307]

Because, once again, if everything the Fighter does can be done by anyone else, why even have the fighter?

Fair enough. It goes back to what I was saying originally. The Rogue can't just be a finesse character that is only rarely useful in combat and really shines with traps and sneaking around, etc... because then half the game the player wouldn't feel special. So, the Rogue has to be beefed up in combat, and that makes it so "everything the Fighter does can be done by anyone else", and now you have to make the Fighter mechanically complicated to make it seem like a relevant class.

So we agree. If you want to make the Rogue feel special all the time, you have to make the Fighter into something complicated so that the Fighter can be special also. The only other option is to have Rogues that are only useful sometimes, primarily outside of combat, and then the Fighter will and can shine in combat, without a lot of fancy powers / maneuevers / abilities.

Or am I missing something?

Edited to fix a couple of typos.

[hamlet]

Because, once again, if everything the Fighter does can be done by anyone else, why even have the fighter?

Because the fighter is, simply put, better at physical combat than any other class in the game. The fighter fights. It's what he does, it's what he was hired for.

The wizard wizards. The thief steals. The fighter fights, and he does it better than anybody else.

You know that whole concept of "rogues" as being primary damage dealers? Yeah, that's much newer than you think. Theives were originally conceived (well into the game, actually, since they weren't an original class) as sneaks, scouts, scoundrels, and party faces. They weren't expected to stand toe-to-toe with the bad guys. They were expected to find out information that helped the rest of the party do its job more effectively. Find out where the bad guy is so that he can be ambushed or at least be deprived of the advantage of being hidden. Avoid falling victim to traps. And occasionally stick a knife in the back of somebody unaware.

The fighter was, then, the guy who was really the one expected to put the bad guys down when it came time to do it. Yeah, a wizard could, from time to time, really do some major killing, but he was a flash in the pan, really.

If anything, the uniqueness of the fighter was killed not because "everybody else can do what he does" but because WOTC editions muddied the roles so dramatically that folks never actually understood the design goals of the original systems.

[obryn]

So . . . again . . . it boils down to because the fighter doesn't have special unique snowflake status on paper, he is therefore horribly boring?

"My special ability is having no special abilities whatsoever! It makes me awesome at coming up with stuff because I really have no alternatives!"

That's the 20-miles-uphill-in-the-snow answer. Where surviving on nothing but cornmeal and beetles is advertised as "character-building" rather than just something you do when you're desperate. (That's the way it was, and we liked it!)

Everyone at the table can innovate. Clerics don't stop coming up with clever stuff just because they have spells. Neither do Wizards. What's more, because spells are back to their puffy 1e/2e glory, they can innovate more.

It'd be nice for Fighters to have some interesting mechanics that belong to the class, is all. Stuff Fighters can do that Joe Commoner can't with a few feats. You might dismiss this in a snarky kids-these-days/special snowflake/lack-of-imagination sort of way (I think you hit all the classics in your past few posts), but it's hardly an unreasonable desire.

-O

[Oracle_Hunter]

If anything, the uniqueness of the fighter was killed not because "everybody else can do what he does" but because WOTC editions muddied the roles so dramatically that folks never actually understood the design goals of the original systems.

So... you're railing against the game as is? I thought you were defending the 5E Fighter Design, since that's what folks were talking about?

[hamlet]

Fair enough. It goes back to what I was saying originally. The Rogue can't just be a finesse character that is only rarely useful in combat and really shines with traps and sneaking around, etc... because then half the game the player wouldn't feel special. So, the Rogue has to be beefed up in combat, and that makes it so "everything the Fighter does can be done by anyone else", and now you have to make the Fighter mechanically complicated to make it seem like a relevant class.

So we agree. If you want to make the Rogue feel special all the time, you have to make the Fighter into something complicated so that the Fighter can be special also. The only other option is to have Rogues that are only useful sometimes, primarily outside of combat, and then the Fighter will and can shine in combat, without a lot of fancy powers / maneuevers / abilities.

Or am I missing something?

Edited to fix a couple of typos.

Commenting on this separately.

I think that, really, is part of the crux of the problem. It's not that there's a flaw in the fighter inherently, it's that there's a major paradigmatic difference in how the game works, vis-a-vis, a character has to be interesting, cool, and fun ALL THE TIME, or something's wrong. It's not acceptable that at some times, a character might not have anything immediate or direct to contribute, especially within combat.

It's "not fun" for a thief's player to stand back while the fighters and clerics are wading into melee, because he's "not playing anymore just watching others play."

It's "boring" to be a fighter because "everybody can fight and he can't do anything special."

It's just a wholly different world view that's completely incompatible with older conceptions of how things worked.

[hamlet]

"My special ability is having no special abilities whatsoever! It makes me awesome at coming up with stuff because I really have no alternatives!"

That's the 20-miles-uphill-in-the-snow answer. Where surviving on nothing but cornmeal and beetles is advertised as "character-building" rather than just something you do when you're desperate. (That's the way it was, and we liked it!)

Everyone at the table can innovate. Clerics don't stop coming up with clever stuff just because they have spells. Neither do Wizards. What's more, because spells are back to their puffy 1e/2e glory, they can innovate more.

It'd be nice for Fighters to have some interesting mechanics that belong to the class, is all. Stuff Fighters can do that Joe Commoner can't with a few feats. You might dismiss this in a snarky kids-these-days/special snowflake/lack-of-imagination sort of way (I think you hit all the classics in your past few posts), but it's hardly an unreasonable desire.

-O

No. You're not actually listening.

The fighter is not without special abilities. His special ability is, and should be, that he is the best at fighting. He's the guy who's best at getting into the thick of furball melees and coming out alive on the other end. He's the guy who gets between the bad guys and good guys. He "stands between you and harm in all the dark places you must walk . . ."

That is not "no special abilities." That is very specific.

So... you're railing against the game as is? I thought you were defending the 5E Fighter Design, since that's what folks were talking about?

You're not understanding me.

I'm not, at all, railing against 5th edition design at this point. I'm talking specifically about the, to me, unfathomable view of a huge number of fans who think the fighter is boring, un-unique, uninteresting, and not good. I've been very specific about that.

[Craft (Cheese)]

It's "not fun" for a thief's player to stand back while the fighters and clerics are wading into melee, because he's "not playing anymore just watching others play."

It really isn't. Have you ever sat around for 30 minutes while your other party members do all the work because you weren't capable of contributing in the current situation?

[Oracle_Hunter]

@Hamlet

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I'm not, at all, railing against 5th edition design at this point. I'm talking specifically about the, to me, unfathomable view of a huge number of fans who think the fighter is boring, un-unique, uninteresting, and not good. I've been very specific about that.

That's not what you said.

You said "If anything, the uniqueness of the fighter was killed not because "everybody else can do what he does" but because WOTC editions muddied the roles so dramatically that folks never actually understood the design goals of the original systems."

Since you also said the reason to have a Fighter is "[b]ecause the fighter is, simply put, better at physical combat than any other class in the game. The fighter fights. It's what he does, it's what he was hired for" which has not been true because "WOTC Editions muddied the roles so dramatically." Therefore, it is the failure of WOTC to design Fighters to be "the best at fighting" which makes the Fighter non-unique.

Can you reconcile your thinking presented above?

EDIT: Oh wait, I see. Your argument is actually "the Fighter is the best at Fighting but WOTC confused fans as to the truth of this." If so, your argument is empirically false so... OK?

It really isn't. Have you ever sat around for 30 minutes while your other party members do all the work because you weren't capable of contributing in the current situation?

Sure, I've played a Decker in Shadowrun

[JoeMac307]

I noticed everyone responded directly to hamlet, but no one addressed my argument (besides hamlet).