Why is the fighter considered bad?

[DarthPenance]

Well, for starters, most of the characters I have played have been wizards, which tend to be considered the best class. Recently however, I rolled a fighter because the party needed a meele, this being my first martial, I wasn't very excited about not casting spells, that was, until the game started, my character was very resilient and a good damage dealer, he managed to survive 5 rounds alone against the BBEG, making him waste his best attacks while the rest went to get an artifact and attacking from afar, while he was dealing the most damage on him with extra attacks and action surge, on the fifth round he managed to put me down with a hold person, then proceeded to almost one-shot the others, then died shortly after because of the artifact. However, in various D&D communities, I see martials, primarily fighter and sometimes barbarian, being said to be weak and only be picked if the party really needs a meat shield, and I like to know why is that
Thank you for reading

[KorvinStarmast]

Recently however, I rolled a fighter because the party needed a meele, this being my first martial, I wasn't very excited about not casting spells, that was, until the game started, my character was very resilient and a good damage dealer, he managed to survive 5 rounds alone against the BBEG, making him waste his best attacks while the rest went to get an artifact and attacking from afar, while he was dealing the most damage on him with extra attacks and action surge, on the fifth round he managed to put me down with a hold person, then proceeded to almost one-shot the others, then died shortly after because of the artifact. It might be a hold over from previous editions, where the linear fighter quadratic magic user problem was more pronounced than in this edition, though it's still applicable in this one at some levels. (See here for an illustration (http://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/44856/22566)).

Sounds like you had fun. You have helped to dispel a myth. :smallbiggrin:

[dejarnjc]

Most people familiar with DnD 5e don't consider the fighter bad.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Personally, I don't find a single class or archetype in 5e to be 'bad'. Every single one can be utilized to fulfill important roles in most adventures, and often with a style all their own.

Some are better and some are worse, sure, but you'd have to really try to make a character so bad that they end up useless in your average dungeon. Even the four elements monk, widely derided and with good reason, can still make itself useful.

There's some argument to be made in specific campaigns, though. Aren't there always?

EDIT: Really need to clarify '5e' and not 'D&D'. 3x absolutely had these problems at higher levels, and 2e could too.

[Spookykid]

There is nothing a fighter can do that another class can't do better, and i like playing fighters in other editions

[Fishyninja]

See recently I have only played Martials and partial casters and as most people have said they are not bad they are jsut better at other things. I mean it's very hard not to find a party without one.

[CaptainSarathai]

Fighters are by no means bad.
Anyone who still feels that way in 5e is likely pointing to things like spell-manipulation, like Wish and Simulacrum cheese.

I'm currently play a Fighter/Warlock mashup (pre-Hexblade) and am outpacing my party, who are a Wizard, two wierd homebrew classes, a Bard, a Paladin, and a Cleric.
I have AC17 when the party's highest is an 18. I have Two Weapon Fighter for +Stat to my offhand attack, at a level where nobody has even gotten their extra attack yet (Human)
So far, I've been ripping though encounters and barely stopping to care.
Our DM screwed up his Encounter Building and threw us a Very Deadly encounter, and it was my character who dragged everyone out.

Melee characters, Fighters included, can be awesome in 5e.

[Dr.Samurai]

Because the fighter is a murdering machine. He will invade your land, kill your strongest warriors and your spiritual leaders, steal your powerful relics and artifacts, and he won't give a flying ****. He'll justify it to himself by making you "the other". Do you understand? Just because you look different, and sound different, maybe you have a tendency toward a certain alignment or religion. Any of these factors is enough for the fighter to kill on sight! You can just be minding your own business, out on patrol and randomly encounter the fighter and his friends and they will annihilate you without so much as a Hello.

That is why the fighter is bad.

[DarthPenance]

Because the fighter is a murdering machine. He will invade your land, kill your strongest warriors and your spiritual leaders, steal your powerful relics and artifacts, and he won't give a flying ****. He'll justify it to himself by making you "the other". Do you understand? Just because you look different, and sound different, maybe you have a tendency toward a certain alignment or religion. Any of these factors is enough for the fighter to kill on sight! You can just be minding your own business, out on patrol and randomly encounter the fighter and his friends and they will annihilate you without so much as a Hello.

That is why the fighter is bad.
Hum... ok?
I think that's a murderhobo party
But the "bad" in the title is meant to mean weak/underwhelming.

[gfishfunk]

Because the fighter is a murdering machine. He will invade your land, kill your strongest warriors and your spiritual leaders, steal your powerful relics and artifacts, and he won't give a flying ****. He'll justify it to himself by making you "the other". Do you understand? Just because you look different, and sound different, maybe you have a tendency toward a certain alignment or religion. Any of these factors is enough for the fighter to kill on sight! You can just be minding your own business, out on patrol and randomly encounter the fighter and his friends and they will annihilate you without so much as a Hello.

So say the orcs.


Hum... ok?
I think that's a murderhobo party
But the "bad" in the title is meant to mean weak/underwhelming.

They are emotionally and morally weak, and spiritually underwhelming.

That being said - they are nearly the most versatile class. They can be good at whatever you need them to be good at...except healing.

Definitely not bad -- in fact my preferred class.

[Zene]

Fighters are awesome.

The extra feat is amazing, Extra Attack x2 and x3 are amazing, Indomitable is great, Battlemaster Maneuvers are great, Champion Crits are great (but better for multiclassers, weirdly enough). EKs can do some really amazing things too. Overall fighter is a very strong, flexible, and well-designed class frame, with three excellent sub-class options.

Anyone who thinks they're bad, I posit is carrying some baggage from somewhere other than 5e; or is defining "bad" in a very odd way.

[Anderlith]

I played a level 3 Battlemaster Fight for a pickup game for a few sessions.

Sir Reginald Mandrake, the Gatecrasher, took on a few enemies well above his pay grade & still won. That's why they call them Greatswords, not Goodswords. The fighter is far from weak, just lacks options like Wall of Force, sure the fighter can really set an example in combat, he doesn't do much beyond swinging. A wizard can turn the enemy into a newt, Ask a dead king for guidence etc while fighter has to sit on his hamds

[Tanarii]

Because people often fall prey to group-think.

Because people are often white-room armchair theorists.

Because people are stuck in old edition thinking. Which leads me to the last one ...

As you get to high level D&D play, which in most editions of D&D (including 5e) means around or about 10+, more and more powerful spells start coming online. Which are often one-shot 'I win' buttons, or close to it, when considered in isolation. And in actual use in play at the point at which they are used. So in terms of Nova, high level spells dominate. And people see Nova and think it means 'more powerful' and not having it means 'weaker'.


Take AD&D 1e & BEMCI, in which high level 10+ casters were considered to completely dominate play. And they often did
... if they could get a spell off. Which was close to impossible if you were in melee, because you'd get hit and lose your spell.
... if they didn't run out of spells, which led to 5-minute working days.
... if they weren't fighting anything with magic resistance or immunities.

In AD&D 1e & BECMI, fighters and wizards worked in tandem. And it behooved parties to have far more Fighters than any other class, since they were tough and could go all day long and could hold a line. But they wanted at least one wizard for when things needed to go boom. But as times & editions changed and parties got smaller, dropping from an expected 6-10 to handle an adventure to the more modern 3-6 party members, wizards needed to be brought up in power and not just sitting in the back doing nothing or using a sling in most combats, as there was no longer an assumption you'd have 1/2 the party be Fighter-types.

It's also worth noting that apparently when Gygax first introduced 9th level spells, he considered that no PC would ever reach the levels necessary to cast those. After all, after 4-5 years of continuous and frequent play in the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns, no PC reached higher than 14th level. "As BLACKMOOR is the only campaign with a life of five years, and GREYHAWK with a life of four is the second longest running campaign, the most able adventurers should not yet have attained 20th level except in the two named campaigns. To my certain knowledge no player in either BLACKMOOR or GREYHAWK has risen above 14th level."

[MadBear]

In combat I'd say the fighter is just about as good as anybody. they're a bit weak on the control side, but that's not their schtick, so it's not a big deal.

Most martials could do with more Ribbon abilities that help give them opportunities outside of combat though. Nothing, major, but even small things like:

Pick One:
Brute: Your brutal nature is far reaching. Once per long rest, gain advantage on all intimidate checks made against one individual.

Knight: Your chivilarous nature is well known. Once per long rest, gain advantage on all persuade checks made against one individual to make them act in a chivalrous way.

etc.: Basically a small boost to a social skill once per long rest


These shouldn't be major abilities, nor should they outshine utility characters meant for them. But even something small like that could go a long way towards helping them feel useful in non-combat scenarios.

[Sir cryosin]

If your looking to put out constant high numbers each round a fighter can do that. Wizards can out DPR a fighter in a Sprint but the fighter is going to be right behind the wizard. Then eventually passing him to win the Marathon. Also keep in mine if the party is resting a lot the fighter is going to be using his action surge a lot. It just people playing high lv fighter don't get the earth shattering feel you get with higher lv spells so they feel fighters aren't good.

[Specter]

Because people often fall prey to group-think.

Because people are often white-room armchair theorists.

Because people are stuck in old edition thinking. Which leads me to the last one ...

As you get to high level D&D play, which in most editions of D&D (including 5e) means around or about 10+, more and more powerful spells start coming online. Which are often one-shot 'I win' buttons, or close to it, when considered in isolation. And in actual use in play at the point at which they are used. So in terms of Nova, high level spells dominate. And people see Nova and think it means 'more powerful' and not having it means 'weaker'.


Take AD&D 1e & BEMCI, in which high level 10+ casters were considered to completely dominate play. And they often did
... if they could get a spell off. Which was close to impossible if you were in melee, because you'd get hit and lose your spell.
... if they didn't run out of spells, which led to 5-minute working days.
... if they weren't fighting anything with magic resistance or immunities.

In AD&D 1e & BECMI, fighters and wizards worked in tandem. And it behooved parties to have far more Fighters than any other class, since they were tough and could go all day long and could hold a line. But they wanted at least one wizard for when things needed to go boom. But as times & editions changed and parties got smaller, dropping from an expected 6-10 to handle an adventure to the more modern 3-6 party members, wizards needed to be brought up in power and not just sitting in the back doing nothing or using a sling in most combats, as there was no longer an assumption you'd have 1/2 the party be Fighter-types.

It's also worth noting that apparently when Gygax first introduced 9th level spells, he considered that no PC would ever reach the levels necessary to cast those. After all, after 4-5 years of continuous and frequent play in the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns, no PC reached higher than 14th level. "As BLACKMOOR is the only campaign with a life of five years, and GREYHAWK with a life of four is the second longest running campaign, the most able adventurers should not yet have attained 20th level except in the two named campaigns. To my certain knowledge no player in either BLACKMOOR or GREYHAWK has risen above 14th level."

All of this.

The fighter is the best class at sustained, at-will damage. Barbarians, Paladins and Rangers all rely on resource management to pull great damage, but after many fights it becomes clear that the Fighter is the one who can hold his stuff together, even if his maneuvers/spells/etc. are all wasted.

[Biggstick]

Fighters are awesome.

The extra feat is amazing, Extra Attack x2 and x3 are amazing, Indomitable is great, Battlemaster Maneuvers are great, Champion Crits are great (but better for multiclassers, weirdly enough). EKs can do some really amazing things too. Overall fighter is a very strong, flexible, and well-designed class frame, with three excellent sub-class options.

Anyone who thinks they're bad, I posit is carrying some baggage from somewhere other than 5e; or is defining "bad" in a very odd way.

Now now, let's not get so carried away with ourselves. Indomitable is a pretty lackluster feature when trying to deal with saves imo.

Everything else you said was on point though. Fighters are an awesome class that don't have all the glitz and glammer of the primary spell caster classes, but you can depend on them to get the job done.

[SharkForce]

from my experience, the game is very well balanced from about level 3-4 up to level 10. it starts to slip a bit at 11 when a caster can mass suggestion one encounter to help trivialize the next 2-3 encounters, and continues to go gradually downhill as casters gain access to the really high level spells and more spell slots to use them, but at no point does a fighter become useless in standard play.

if you haven't gotten past level 10, you probably haven't seen fighters struggle to keep up at all, because they're fully capable of holding their own at those levels. if you've seen a fighter at levels 1-4, you've probably seen them totally dominate, probably only exceeded by moon druids at those levels, when they are very strong and casters have few spell slots and cantrips suck. even at higher levels, the fighter does just fine in combat, though if optimized and played well most full spellcasters should be pulling ahead of an optimized and well-played fighter. fighters do struggle in comparison at high levels, especially outside of combat, but thankfully can still remain relevant due to their high sustained damage in combat (which supplements the typical strengths of full casters very nicely), very good single-target burst damage when desired, and simply having skill proficiencies means that they are not left completely irrelevant outside of combat as they were in 3.x D&D.

so far as i can tell, most people who have actually played fighters seem to be happy with how they work. i wouldn't say the balance is perfect, but i would say it's close enough that people are able to enjoy the class, which is sufficient.

(that said, we do still have quadratic wizards and linear fighters to a large extent... it's just that the wizard's curve rises a lot less quickly than it used to).

[Malifice]

Because the fighter is a murdering machine. He will invade your land, kill your strongest warriors and your spiritual leaders, steal your powerful relics and artifacts, and he won't give a flying ****.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzvFNLAnYNw

[Sigreid]

The definition of bad I have most often seen for fighter is "boring", which is just another way of saying not to an individual person's taste. It's solid. The best general purpose combatant in the game, in my opinion. And unlike 3.x, they didn't knee cap it's out of combat potential by basically depriving it of skills.

Funny thing is, if they made it what the people who consider it boring want, then the people who love it as is would probably not be happy with it. Or at least as happy.

[Kane0]

Because the fighter had one job, and didn't do more than that.
The same can be said of the barbarian, but nobody ever seems to speak up about it. Maybe they're scared.

But it's probably more that they used to be bad and hasn't shaken that stigma, despite being just as good as any other martial option, if not better.

[skaddix]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzvFNLAnYNw

Pretty sure Conan is a Barbarian.

[Haldir]

Because the fighter is a murdering machine. He will invade your land, kill your strongest warriors and your spiritual leaders, steal your powerful relics and artifacts, and he won't give a flying ****. He'll justify it to himself by making you "the other". Do you understand? Just because you look different, and sound different, maybe you have a tendency toward a certain alignment or religion. Any of these factors is enough for the fighter to kill on sight! You can just be minding your own business, out on patrol and randomly encounter the fighter and his friends and they will annihilate you without so much as a Hello.

That is why the fighter is bad.

See Also- General Tarquin

[Deleted]

Well, for starters, most of the characters I have played have been wizards, which tend to be considered the best class. Recently however, I rolled a fighter because the party needed a meele, this being my first martial, I wasn't very excited about not casting spells, that was, until the game started, my character was very resilient and a good damage dealer, he managed to survive 5 rounds alone against the BBEG, making him waste his best attacks while the rest went to get an artifact and attacking from afar, while he was dealing the most damage on him with extra attacks and action surge, on the fifth round he managed to put me down with a hold person, then proceeded to almost one-shot the others, then died shortly after because of the artifact. However, in various D&D communities, I see martials, primarily fighter and sometimes barbarian, being said to be weak and only be picked if the party really needs a meat shield, and I like to know why is that
Thank you for reading


Simple.

As a class it gives you access to doing ONE thing well (HP damage). However, it doesn't do that one thing well enough to make up for not giving access to other things.

Many other classes give enough access to this one thing but also give access to other things.

The Rogue for example is pretty good at a lot of things and can keep up with damage.

Remember, compare the classes versus the game and not each other.

Personally I think the Fighter should be very reactive (my sig). Give the fighter options for using their reaction so that it can distinguish itself from the Rogue and Barbarian. Right now those two classes do enough damage PLUS get class features that help outside of doing damage. You can make both of them either strength or dex based (especially the rogue), though armor needs to be fluffed for the most part.

[Knaight]

The fighter isn't bad so much as worse than the caster classes - a high level martial character can still take a dozen or so arrows to the face no problem, the fighter in particular gets far more attacks than most which lets them singlehandedly cut down dozens of normal combatants, so on and so forth. There's a few oddities (e.g. the implications of bounded accuracy on accuracy with missile weapons), but in terms of how it actually plays out the fighter is a highly effective superhuman. They just don't have things on the level of some of the more ridiculous spells in the game.

[Coidzor]

Ultimately their biggest limitation is that there are very few ways to interact with the world outside of combat and spells except by DM fiat, and Fighters largely don't get access to spellcasting and have less access to the non-spell, non-combat set of interactions.


The definition of bad I have most often seen for fighter is "boring", which is just another way of saying not to an individual person's taste. It's solid. The best general purpose combatant in the game, in my opinion. And unlike 3.x, they didn't knee cap it's out of combat potential by basically depriving it of skills.

Funny thing is, if they made it what the people who consider it boring want, then the people who love it as is would probably not be happy with it. Or at least as happy.

I'd still say they overdid it with giving them fewer proficiencies, but I agree that they're not nearly as crippled by it.

[Knaight]

I'd still say they overdid it with giving them fewer proficiencies, but I agree that they're not nearly as crippled by it.

It would be hard to. 2+int skill points is an insult to basically every class that has it, and every exception is int based. Then there's how basically everything was cross class.

[raygun goth]

Pretty sure Conan is a Barbarian.

Conan is a fighter/rogue with proficiency in Scribe's Tools, Religion, and Arcana (for the mathematics). They call him "Barbarian" because he's the last of his tribe, sold into slavery in Khitai as a child, and raised in the ways of lost Atlantis.

[Matticusrex]

The fighter is bad because the all the other classes outperform it with their amount of options they get to interact with the world without sacrificing their combat capability.. But being "bad" in 5e is not that bad, the game was made so even the worst can preform well enough. The fighter serves as an intro class for new players before they move on to paladins and barbarians. It would have been nice to get an advance fighter class for veteran players but then you can just home-brew the problems away.

Also action surge is incredibly overrated for how limited it is.

[AttilatheYeon]

The fighter is bad because the all the other classes outperform it with their amount of options they get to interact with the world without sacrificing their combat capability.. But being "bad" in 5e is not that bad, the game was made so even the worst can preform well enough. The fighter serves as an intro class for new players before they move on to paladins and barbarians. It would have been nice to get an advance fighter class for veteran players but then you can just home-brew the problems away.

Also action surge is incredibly overrated for how limited it is.

I disagree, this seems like tier 1 and tier 2 thinking. Even in tier 2, fighters pull away from the other martials by level 6. They have there second ASI which lets them cap their primary attribute. Then concentrate on feats. In tier 3, they are combat gods with extra attack 2 combined with action surge, they can pull amazing round 1 novas. The only knock on the class is a lack of out of combat support, but they named the class fighter for a reason.

[CantigThimble]

Fighters get extra ASIs. Those give them lots of utility if you actually use them to get utility. If you just take even more combat abilities THEN the fighter has nothing to contribute except HP damage, and it will be your fault, not the class's. The fighter doesn't need ribbon abilities because he already gets his pick of a long list of them.

[LudicSavant]

Fighters get extra ASIs. Those give them lots of utility if you actually use them to get utility. If you just take even more combat abilities THEN the fighter has nothing to contribute except HP damage, and it will be your fault, not the class's. The fighter doesn't need ribbon abilities because he already gets his pick of a long list of them.

The fighter gets only two ASIs over other classes (which get 5). Are you trying to tell us that you think these two feats are going to somehow bridge the gap between a Fighter's out of combat utility and a Wizard's? :smallconfused:

[D.U.P.A.]

The problem with Fighter is that after 11th levels his features are just 'more of' already existing features attained at low level. Like more uses of action surges, second winds, indomitables, maneuvers, etc. It does not acquire something new really. Eldritch knight may have a slight upper hand here because of higher level spells, but its progression is quite slow anyway. Fighter is one of those classes which require magical items and weapons, which can make its huge number of attacks more prominent.

[Spookykid]

the first asi is at level 6, thats a long way to go to get something nice, not many make it to 14 for you last bonus asi

[Kobard]

Ultimately their biggest limitation is that there are very few ways to interact with the world outside of combat and spells except by DM fiat, and Fighters largely don't get access to spellcasting and have less access to the non-spell, non-combat set of interactions.Pretty much this. Mechanically, the fighter is good at one pillar of roleplaying. Even in that capacity, however, their options are tactically limited. The lack the tremendous depth of tactical options that are privy to spellcasters.

[joaber]

Bad? Never
Boring? Maybe

Just to add that fighter is the first option to multiclass by far, it's at least an "ok" option to combine with any other class. So will be really good at damage, and if start to get boring, you have a hand full of options to leave it.

[CantigThimble]

The fighter gets only two ASIs over other classes (which get 5). Are you trying to tell us that you think these two feats are going to somehow bridge the gap between a Fighter's out of combat utility and a Wizard's? :smallconfused:

I never claimed that the fighter was the most versatile class out of combat. All I'm saying is that if your fighter has zero out of combat utility or flavor abilities then that's because you didn't take any. Utility feats offer quite a lot and ignoring them when evaluating the fighter does the class a disservice.

[LudicSavant]

I never claimed that the fighter was the most versatile class out of combat. All I'm saying is that if your fighter has zero out of combat utility or flavor abilities then that's because you didn't take any.

The goalpost for being competent at something isn't "more than zero," it's "comparable to competitors."

[CantigThimble]

The goalpost for being competent at something isn't "more than zero," it's "comparable to competitors."

Saying the fighter has zero out of combat utility is an incorrect statement. That's the point I was making.

And if you really want to talk competition then fine. The fighter has better out of combat utility than the barbarian.

If you want to say, he doesn't have enough then that's fine, that's a perfectly reasonable and justifiable opinion to have. Saying he has zero is false.

[gfishfunk]

{scrubbed}

[LudicSavant]

{scrubbed}

[Unoriginal]

It's not a strawman, technically. It's still a fallacy, though.


Wizards can provide some good options, but how they can help is not indispensable.

[CantigThimble]

That wasn't a quote, it was a strong implication. If you'd like to call me a liar because you don't get the same implication then go ahead, I'm done here.


Ultimately their biggest limitation is that there are very few ways to interact with the world outside of combat and spells except by DM fiat, and Fighters largely don't get access to spellcasting and have less access to the non-spell, non-combat set of interactions.


and simply having skill proficiencies means that they are not left completely irrelevant outside of combat as they were in 3.x D&D.


Most martials could do with more Ribbon abilities that help give them opportunities outside of combat though. Nothing, major, but even small things like:

Pick One:
Brute: Your brutal nature is far reaching. Once per long rest, gain advantage on all intimidate checks made against one individual.

Knight: Your chivilarous nature is well known. Once per long rest, gain advantage on all persuade checks made against one individual to make them act in a chivalrous way.

etc.: Basically a small boost to a social skill once per long rest

These shouldn't be major abilities, nor should they outshine utility characters meant for them. But even something small like that could go a long way towards helping them feel useful in non-combat scenarios.

[LudicSavant]

{scrubbed}

[gfishfunk]

Edit: Gah, I used the delete button instead of edit button, and now gfishfunk's post is before mine -_-

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/5a/5a9fc85da30a645da096b21a0debddf6efe6547babe52f18d0 ee5bd061e3cd99.jpg

And also, uh, the fighter is pretty fun.

But dang-it-all, I would add ritual caster as a feat in a heartbeat.

[xroads]

In my current group of seven players, there are three fighters. We only have one full time caster.

So I think there is still much love for the fighter out there. :smallsmile:

[Dr.Samurai]

{scrubbed}
I think you're stating your case a little too strongly here.

The quote is (I'm paraphrasing) "very few outside of combat and spells that isn't DM fiat". Meaning, if the DM doesn't conjure a way for you to interact with the world outside of combat, because fighters don't have spells, then you're not interacting with the environment.

The implication is that fighters really don't have a way to interact with the environment unless the DM specifically makes it so. Now, you may disagree with that take away, which is fine. And you can accuse him of creating a strawman, which is a form of deceit. And that's fine too, though I think you're escalating this into a more serious "debate" than intended. But I think you're being a little obtuse pretending not to see, in any way, where his statements are coming from.

Truth be told, you skewed the discussion originally by misinterpreting his remarks on ASIs, and then ironically accused him of creating a strawman later.


Since he's dropped it, you probably should as well.

[Tetrasodium]

Fighters get extra ASIs. Those give them lots of utility if you actually use them to get utility. If you just take even more combat abilities THEN the fighter has nothing to contribute except HP damage, and it will be your fault, not the class's. The fighter doesn't need ribbon abilities because he already gets his pick of a long list of them.

Agreed. Take a druid I'm playing. @4 he picked up warcaster so he could cast & better maintain spells while mixing it up in combat with his shield. Those spells give a lot of noncombat options At 8, defensive duelist pulled the defense into line to make mixing it up a lot less dangerous. at 12, probably resilient:con for concentration checks in combat or shield master. The fighter has the whole mixing it up in melee down pretty well by default though with better armor/weapons/hitdie & the champion/battlemaster/ek stuff. At 6, the druid gets something to bump their mixing it up in a small to significant way (deoends on circle)... fighters get a feat at 7, fighters get a martial archtype feature while the druid gets one fourth level spell slot... the process will repeat at 14&15(?) when fighters get another bonus feat/improvement. every single one of that druid's chosen skill proficiency are noncombat stuff (i.e. not athletics/acrobatics type stuff)


most classes fighters get compared to have a good bit of versatility baked in & need to use their feats/asi's to either crank a particular niche up to 11 or to dial up their combat capabilities. Fighters have the combat capabilities baked in, but not so much with versatility. If the fighter wants to have the versatility, pickup things like skilled or whatever instead of cranking the melee combat stuff to 11.

The other part of the problem is that those other classes need to think of things like "well will is an important save, maybe I shouldn't start with 8 wis" and "I'll probably need at least a littlr cha/int for x skill, maybe I shouldn't put the 8(s) there either"; but they also need to say things like "I'm going to need hp, con should probably be decent & dex will bump my ac, maybe an ok dex is a good idea too". Meanwhile a fighter can 8/8/8 int/wis/cha to 15/15/15 str/dex/con, focus all their feats on cranking combat past 11 & grumble that nonproficient skills with a -2 penalty don't stack up to trained skills or magical effects out of combat.

Fighters are great actually, you just need to decide what you want to be, the conan someone pointed out (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21806025&postcount=28) who can mix it up, know stuff, & do neat things, or jean claud van damme's less charismatic brother with worse acting skills who can mix it up and wait till he can mix it up again

[LudicSavant]

Truth be told, you skewed the discussion originally by misinterpreting his remarks on ASIs I did no such thing. If you'd care to actually go back and look, I actually asked him to clarify his position, rather than making any statement about his position. No interpretation is present, ergo, no misinterpretation is possible.


And you can accuse him of creating a strawman, which is a form of deceit.
Geez, next you'll be telling me that I'm accusing someone of being a liar when I say that they made an error in a math problem. :smalltongue:

[djreynolds]

Well, for starters, most of the characters I have played have been wizards, which tend to be considered the best class. Recently however, I rolled a fighter because the party needed a meele, this being my first martial, I wasn't very excited about not casting spells, that was, until the game started, my character was very resilient and a good damage dealer, he managed to survive 5 rounds alone against the BBEG, making him waste his best attacks while the rest went to get an artifact and attacking from afar, while he was dealing the most damage on him with extra attacks and action surge, on the fifth round he managed to put me down with a hold person, then proceeded to almost one-shot the others, then died shortly after because of the artifact. However, in various D&D communities, I see martials, primarily fighter and sometimes barbarian, being said to be weak and only be picked if the party really needs a meat shield, and I like to know why is that
Thank you for reading

So no one in the party could cast lesser restoration on the fighter?

D&D is a team sport.

The fighter holds the line and others back him up.

That's how the game works. If your wizard is casting blur on himself and not the tanks... that's where it went wrong. If the cleric with an 18 wisdom and wisdom save proficiency is in the back chucking spells and didn't think to cast protection from evil on the tank and instead on himself. Then you will not survive.

Lesser restoration is a 2nd level spell, so if your wizard is held and paralyzed cast it on him.

[gfishfunk]

Non-combat options are quirky: as a player I don't feel that I need the non-combat stuff because I can poke and prod, talk and swindle, or sneak and feign as needed with skills.

Spells are cool buttons to do that stuff, sure, but I don't feel that I NEED it. Its similar to Barbarian - everyone complains that it cannot do anything outside of combat. I disagree. You can always break things. I have rarely seen a problem in D&D that wasn't fixed by breaking things, even if those things are people.

[LudicSavant]

So no one in the party could cast lesser restoration on the fighter?

D&D is a team sport.

The fighter holds the line and others back him up.

That's how the game works. If your wizard is casting blur on himself and not the tanks... that's where it went wrong. If the cleric with an 18 wisdom and wisdom save proficiency is in the back chucking spells and didn't think to cast protection from evil on the tank and instead on himself. Then you will not survive.

Lesser restoration is a 2nd level spell, so if your wizard is held and paralyzed cast it on him.

And if the Cleric or Wizard is the tank?

[djreynolds]

And if the Cleric or Wizard is the tank?

Then do your job as the fighter and make the bad guy look like a pin cushion with arrows.

But it is team work.

A fighter's job is damage, tank, and maybe some physical skills.

But it is team work... not players out for individual glory

[LudicSavant]

If your wizard is casting blur on himself and not the tanks... that's where it went wrong.

Blur has a range of Self.

[MadBear]

And if the Cleric or Wizard is the tank?

then they'd have cast it on themselves, because of course they would if they're the tank.

[LudicSavant]

then they'd have cast it on themselves, because of course they would if they're the tank.

Precisely.

[djreynolds]

Precisely.

It's don't care what the range of whatever is.

If you tank is upfront doing the job... then support them.

In this scenario the fighter failed a wisdom save vs hold person and easily enough lesser restoration would've fixed this.

It is about silly game rules and semantics, it's about team work.

The wizard could have and should have spells to buff their allies.

If you work as a team and value your fellow team mate you should prevail

The standard fighter makes for a very good tank and give consistent damage. The standard archer can lay down consistent damage.

The fighter class is good at what it does.

My only issue with the class is it flavorless. And therefore it actually requires a better hand to play.

Playing a wizard well is easy. Playing a fighter well is challenging.

My advice is do not dump wisdom and take resilient wisdom at 6th level.

[MadBear]

Precisely.

yep, it also misses the point.

there was an implicit assumption made when the other poster said you should cast Blur on the fighter, that the fighter was playing the traditional tank role, and the wizard the traditional backline role.

Deviation from that norm will of course result in different results.

[KorvinStarmast]

Fighters get extra ASIs. Those give them lots of utility if you actually use them to get utility. Yes, providing the DM allows feats. (I suspect that most do).

But it is team work... not players out for individual glory Yes, though some people are all about being better than others on the team. (IRL, I have found the corporate world to be filled with such people).

My advice is do not dump wisdom and take resilient wisdom at 6th level. Is this to stop getting neutralized by enemy casters?

[LudicSavant]

But it is team work... not players out for individual glory

I agree with this entirely. The point I disagree with is the part where you claim that the game is going wrong as soon as a Wizard casts Blur on himself (indeed, the only possible thing the Wizard can cast Blur on).

[MadBear]

I agree with this entirely. The point I disagree with is the part where you claim that the game is going wrong as soon as a Wizard casts Blur on himself (indeed, the only possible thing the Wizard can cast Blur on).

He didn't say, "You should only ever cast blur on the fighter under any circumstance".

[LudicSavant]

He didn't say, "You should only ever cast blur on the fighter under any circumstance".

You can't cast Blur on the fighter ever. It's not actually possible.

[gfishfunk]

You can't cast Blur on the fighter ever. It's not actually possible.

All you have to do is twin spell it, use a higher spell slot, punch your DM so s/he has a concussion and cannot be bothered to look it up, and make sure you have the necessary material components. Pretty easy.

[LudicSavant]

All you have to do is twin spell it, use a higher spell slot, punch your DM so s/he has a concussion and cannot be bothered to look it up, and make sure you have the necessary material components. Pretty easy.

You cannot Twin Blur. Nor can you upcast it to target others. I would not recommend giving your DM a concussion. :smalltongue:

[RumoCrytuf]

Well, for starters, most of the characters I have played have been wizards, which tend to be considered the best class. Recently however, I rolled a fighter because the party needed a meele, this being my first martial, I wasn't very excited about not casting spells, that was, until the game started, my character was very resilient and a good damage dealer, he managed to survive 5 rounds alone against the BBEG, making him waste his best attacks while the rest went to get an artifact and attacking from afar, while he was dealing the most damage on him with extra attacks and action surge, on the fifth round he managed to put me down with a hold person, then proceeded to almost one-shot the others, then died shortly after because of the artifact. However, in various D&D communities, I see martials, primarily fighter and sometimes barbarian, being said to be weak and only be picked if the party really needs a meat shield, and I like to know why is that
Thank you for reading

Okay, don't hunt me down for this, but I like to compare classes to Overwatch Heroes. Each class fills a role, and some do a role better than others.

For example, Barbarians are the metaphorical Reinhardt. Big, meaty, and easily taking hits left and right, Barbarians can take a hit and give one back. Fighters are like MCree or Reaper (though without the edge). Good at damage, but useless for much else (depending on spec, sometimes fighters tank too). So if someone calls a fighter "bad" what are they saying it's bad at? Healing? Hell yeah, they're bad at healing. Damage? Not so much. Yeah, they're not good at crowd control (2-3 attacks vs a fireball against 16 goblins makes a point), but they make up for it with high intensity focused damage. A bunch of goblins would be fried against 8d6, but a fairly dexterous foe? 3d8+STR (dual wielding longswords with the fighting style) Will almost always outdo a fireball. (in my experience at least).

[Biggstick]

I guess a side by side comparison of the primary martial classes and their out of combat utility would help here. I won't include Ranger, as no one questions their out of combat utility. I'll be a taking some liberty, as I'll be choosing the most typical archetypes I've seen when these classes are played. Basic build parameters will be: Human Variant with Standard Array. All classes will be built with a 16 in their primary stat (STR for all), 14 in Con, and the idea that they take one combat focused feat (GWM, PAM, or Sentinel) as their Variant feat. It honestly doesn't make much difference if they're 2h or SnB for this comparison. They will max out the primary stat and then be marked as being able to grab "flavor" feats/ASI's with the remaining ASI levels.

Totem Barbarian.
Battlemaster Fighter
Oath of the Ancients Paladin
Barbarian 1. Rage, Unarmored Defense.
Fighter 1. Fighting Style, Second Wind.
Paladin 1. Divine Sense, Lay on Hands.

Rage's advantage on Strength checks is something that isn't utilized as often as I'd like to see. The "always on" AC from Unarmored Defense is pretty sweet too. Second Wind is a nice little self-heal in and out of combat, and the Fighting Styles are always nice. What wins this level for me though is the Paladin's Lay on Hands ability. Being able to "save" 5 people at 0 hp, or cure a disease/poison for a pretty cheap resource is fantastic utility.

Barbarian 0, Fighter 0, Paladin 1.
Barbarian 2. Reckless Attack, Danger Sense.
Fighter 2. Action Surge.
Paladin 2. Fighting Style, Spellcasting, Divine Smite.

Danger Sense is such an awesome ability that I see get great use out of combat and in combat whenever there is a Barbarian in the party. Action Surge, while an amazing ability, is something I only ever see utilized in combat. It can be utilized for utility, but I almost never see it happen. Lastly is Spellcasting for the Paladin. This is something that can't be beat by the other classes in regards to utility, as the Paladin can change spells prepared based on the day at hand.

Barbarian 0, Fighter 0, Paladin 2.
Barbarian 3. Primal Path. Spirit Seeker (Beast Sense/Speak with Animals), Totem Spirit (Bear or Wolf).
Fighter 3. Martial Archetype. Combat Superiority dice, Student of War (gain proficiency with a tool set).
Paladin 3. Divine health, Sacred Oath.

So Spirit Seeker is great depending on the campaign you're in. The Totems chosen at this level are primarily combat benefits, so won't play much of a consideration here. Student of War is another feature that depends on the campaign as to whether or not it's useful. The Paladin's Divine health is also a pretty solid ability in never having to worry about disease again (for the Paladin at least). That is an extremely passive ability though, and my out of combat vote for level 3 would have to go to the Barbarian's Spirit Seeker.

Barbarian 1, Fighter 0, Paladin 2.
Barbarian 4. ASI.
Fighter 4. ASI.
Paladin 4. ASI.

Nothing to see here. +2 Strength here for everyone. No one gets a point.

Barbarian 1, Fighter 0, Paladin 2.
Barbarian 5. Extra Attack, Fast Movement.
Fighter 5. Extra Attack.
Paladin 5. Extra Attack. Level 2 spells.

Nothing to...wait a minute. Extra movement?! I love extra movement. But you know who has extra movement at this level? The Paladin and his/her Find Steed. This spell alone is what wins the level 5 face-off for me. Being able to summon forth a Warhorse is just fantastic (plus all the other out of combat capability available in the level 2 spell selection).

Barbarian 1, Fighter 0, Paladin 3.
Barbarian 6. Path feature. Aspect of the Beast (Bear or Eagle).
Fighter 6. ASI.
Paladin 6. Aura of Protection.

So our Fighter is now maxed out on his/her Strength. But that doesn't compete with the other two classes at this level. While the Paladin's Aura of Protection is hailed as something every party should have, it's useful for it's in combat applications, not it's out of combat uses. It's the Barbarian who wins this level, either with the Aspect of the Bear or Eagle (both of which are the only ones I've seen players take).

Barbarian 2, Fighter 0, Paladin 3.
Barbarian 7. Feral Instinct.
Fighter 7. Martial Archetype feature. Know your Enemy.
Paladin 7. Sacred Oath feature. Aura of Warding.

Feral Instinct is great, but all combat imo. Aura of Warding is also great, but also a combat focused ability. Finally Fighter is up on the board with it's Know your Enemy feature. Being able to get a solid idea of an enemy's capabilities before combat is a fantastic ability.

Barbarian 2, Fighter 1, Paladin 3.
Barbarian 8. ASI.
Fighter 8. ASI.
Paladin 8. ASI.

Our Paladin and Barbarian have caught up to the Fighter's Strength, while the Fighter gets to either get a flavor feat or something to help with his/her combat. Let's just guesstimate that the Fighter will grab a combat focused feat here (Resilient Wisdom, Lucky, Mobile, or one of the other two combat focused feats it didn't pick up at first level.).

Barbarian 2, Fighter 2, Paladin 3.
Barbarian 9. Brutal Critical (1 die).
Fighter 9. Indomitable (1 use).
Paladin 9. Level 3 spells.

Brutal Critical is very obviously combat focused, as is the Fighter's Indomitable. Level 3 spell utility is a pretty easy win here.

Barbarian 2, Fighter 2, Paladin 4.
Barbarian 10. Path feature. Spirit Walker.
Fighter 10. Martial Archetype feature. Improved Combat Superiority (D10's).
Paladin 10. Aura of Courage.

Both Aura of Courage and Improved Combat Superiority are abilities that won't see use other then combat. Spirit Walker on the other hand is one of the best out of combat utility abilities any of these three classes get. Easy win for Barbarian.

Barbarian 3, Fighter 2, Paladin 4.
Barbarian 11. Relentless Rage.
Fighter 11. Extra Attack (2).
Paladin 11. Improved Divine Smite.

Right out the gate, Improved Divine Smite is very obviously a combat ability. Both Fighter and Barbarian capabilities at first glance would appear to be completely combat focused, and I would normally agree with you. But I gotta pick a winner, and I'm looking at the ability to not die from Barbarian as being useful in situations where you're dealing with environmental damage such as lava in a volcano or being burned at the stake. Fighter on the other hand would be gaining an extra attack here to help with shoving or grappling (bit of a reach, but potentially useful). I'm going to give the edge over to Barbarian though, as being able to choose to not die in stressful (if you make the low DC roll and have raged before it happens), but not necessarily combat situations, is a powerful out of combat ability.

Barbarian 4, Fighter 2, Paladin 4.
Barbarian 12. ASI.
Fighter 12. ASI.
Paladin 12. ASI.

Another boring level, but our Paladin and Barbarian have maxed out their attack stats. We're going to assume they either want another combat focused feat, or will start putting points into a tertiary stat (Constitution for Barbarian, or Charisma for Paladin). Fighters on the other hand, finally get to have a bit of spice and choose feats that really bring out their uniqueness. I see these next few feat levels for Fighters as the place they really make themselves and separate themselves utility-wise from the other classes.

Barbarian 4, Fighter 3, Paladin 4.
Barbarian 13. Brutal Critical (2 dice).
Fighter 13. Indomitable (2 uses).
Paladin 13. Level 4 spells.

Both Brutal Critical and Indomitable are combat focused abilities. Level 4 spells take the cake here.

Barbarian 4, Fighter 3, Paladin 5.
Barbarian 14. Path feature. Totemic Attunement (Bear or Wolf).
Fighter 14. ASI.
Paladin 14. Cleansing Touch.

I will admit, I've never been in a game with 14th level Barbarian or Paladin. Fighter though, I have. The Barbarian feature looks to be pretty combat focused, so that consideration is out for our purposes. I want to give this point to Fighter, but Cleansing Touch (while I've never actually seen it in play) just seems so strong in it's out of combat capabilities.

Barbarian 4, Fighter 3, Paladin 6.
Barbarian 15. Persistent Rage.
Fighter 15. Martial Archetype feature. Relentless (when initiative rolled, regain superiority 1 die).
Paladin 15. Sacred Oath feature. Undying Sentinel.

Rage not ending is great. Regaining a superiority die at the start of combat is also nice. Not dying once per long rest is arguably the best one if one takes things at face value. I might surprise people here, but I feel being able to no longer have to make an attack roll against someone or take damage to maintain your rage is amazing for Barbarian's out of combat utility.

Barbarian 5, Fighter 3, Paladin 6.
Barbarian 16. ASI.
Fighter 16. ASI.
Paladin 16. ASI.

More tertiary stat bumps for the Paladin and Barbarian, while the Fighter gets to grab more utility. Easy point for the Fighter.

Barbarian 5, Fighter 4, Paladin 6.
Barbarian 17. Brutal Critical (3 dice).
Fighter 17. Action Surge (2 uses), Indomitable (3 uses).
Paladin 17. Level 5 spells.

Fighter and Barbarian with combat value added. Paladin gains more spell choices. Easy Paladin win.

Barbarian 5, Fighter 4, Paladin 7.
Barbarian 18. Indomitable Might.
Fighter 18. Martial Archetype feature. Improved Combat Superiority (D12's).
Paladin 18. Aura improvements.

D12's are sweet, and a bigger aura range is nice, but never rolling below a 20 (or 24 once you're level 20) on your Strength checks is just awesome out of combat utility.

Barbarian 6, Fighter 4, Paladin 7.
Barbarian 19. ASI.
Fighter 19. ASI.
Paladin 19. ASI.

The Barbarian and Paladin are now finishing maxing out there tertiary stats while the Fighter gets a final feat. This one will probably be something like Lucky/Alert.

Barbarian 6, Fighter 5, Paladin 7.
Barbarian 20. Primal Champion, Unlimited Rage.
Fighter 20. Extra Attack (3).
Paladin 20. Sacred Oath feature. Elder Champion.

The Elder Champion is amazing in combat, while a 4th attack (and potential 8 attacks with an Action Surge) is almost as good. The real winner here for out of combat utility is the Barbarian boost to Strength/Constitution and endless rages.

Barbarian 7, Fighter 5, Paladin 7
So after going through all this, and expecting the Fighter to be even with Barbarian or Paladin, I've come to the conclusion that Fighter truly doesn't get as much out of combat utility as Paladin or Barbarian. What the Fighter does get is customization though. You can make it's out of combat utility through feat choices. The Paladin and Barbarian, while having more options out of combat built into their class, are already predetermined in what they can do. A Fighter gets to choose the out of combat capabilities it has through feats.

I still think the Fighter is a great class, but I myself definitely have a better view on these three classes capabilities now that I've done this run down.

[MadBear]

You can't cast Blur on the fighter ever. It's not actually possible.

Ah, I forgot that it's a self only spell this edition.

[Unoriginal]

So after going through all this, and expecting the Fighter to be even with Barbarian or Paladin, I've come to the conclusion that Fighter truly doesn't get as much out of combat utility as Paladin or Barbarian.

Except you decided to make your comparison about who "win" by having the most utility at each level.


If you want to compare how much each class get, you should take into account every feature they get at each levels, and then compare the end results. Not go "the Paladin has clearly a superior ability at this level, so I'm not counting what the Barbarian and the Fighter get"

[N810]

yea.... all Them ASI's could be out of combat skills if that what you wanted. :smallannoyed:

[Specter]

Just some friendly reminders about out-of-combat utility:

- Battlemasters can size up anyone's physical stats. That's a huge utility.
- Eldritch Knights can pick spells that help outside of combat. Two words: Find Familiar.
- Purple Dragon Knights can be the party's diplomat with expertised Persuasion.
- Fighters in general are the best to activate traps head on, because they have good HP and can reroll the save if they fail with Indomitable. If it's a physical trap even better due to their top AC. Rogues are the exception for DEX traps due to Evasion.

So yeah, nothing to write home about, but definitely more than Barbarians.

[Biggstick]

Except you decided to make your comparison about who "win" by having the most utility at each level.


If you want to compare how much each class get, you should take into account every feature they get at each levels, and then compare the end results. Not go "the Paladin has clearly a superior ability at this level, so I'm not counting what the Barbarian and the Fighter get"

Eh, I could do that. Assigning a number value to the utility each feature provides would be useful (make it a 10 scale, with the best being 10 and the worst being 1). However, I still think I would end up with extremely similar results with even more time put into something that has already netted the results I'm looking for.

Examples

Both Aura of Courage and Improved Combat Superiority are abilities that won't see use other then combat. Spirit Walker on the other hand is one of the best out of combat utility abilities any of these three classes get. Easy win for Barbarian.

Barbarian 8/10, Fighter 1/10, Paladin 2/10.
Both Brutal Critical and Indomitable are combat focused abilities. Level 4 spells take the cake here.

Barbarian 1/10, Fighter 2/10, Paladin 6/10.
Rage not ending is great. Regaining a superiority die at the start of combat is also nice. Not dying once per long rest is arguably the best one if one takes things at face value. I might surprise people here, but I feel being able to no longer have to make an attack roll against someone or take damage to maintain your rage is amazing for Barbarian's out of combat utility.

Barbarian 5/10, Fighter 1/10, Paladin 4/10.
With these as basic examples of what I think it is you're looking for, I would add up the scores at the end. The best score would be 200, and the worst would be 1. The end results of this type of comparison would still be extremely similar to what I've come up with in who "wins" at each level, and then totaling that up at the end, regarding out of combat utility.

[LudicSavant]

Okay, don't hunt me down for this, but I like to compare classes to Overwatch Heroes. Each class fills a role, and some do a role better than others.

For example, Barbarians are the metaphorical Reinhardt. Big, meaty, and easily taking hits left and right, Barbarians can take a hit and give one back. Fighters are like MCree or Reaper (though without the edge). Good at damage, but useless for much else (depending on spec, sometimes fighters tank too). So if someone calls a fighter "bad" what are they saying it's bad at? Healing? Hell yeah, they're bad at healing. Damage? Not so much. Yeah, they're not good at crowd control (2-3 attacks vs a fireball against 16 goblins makes a point), but they make up for it with high intensity focused damage. A bunch of goblins would be fried against 8d6, but a fairly dexterous foe? 3d8+STR (dual wielding longswords with the fighting style) Will almost always outdo a fireball. (in my experience at least).

Hey, I was one of the top ranked Reinhardt players back in Season 1, before I stopped playing (http://i.imgur.com/TuqoXUN.png) :smallsmile:

And when I want to tank like a Reinhardt... I play a caster tank build. After all, I can't make a big ol' moveable wall for my squishies to hide behind or throw out line attacks with a Barbarian. Barbarian strikes me more like a hookless, ultless Roadhog, a big fat pile of easy-to-hit (Reckless) hp and close range damage. Of course, Roadhog can't do advantage prone/grapple combos either... metaphors only go so far.

That said, I think people should be cautious of role dogmatism (not saying anyone in particular's doing it, just saying people in general should be cautious). Folks coming from, say, an MMO background may be quick to assume that Fighters are tanks, Sorcerers are ranged blasters, and so forth... but I feel framing the issue this way does a disservice to the versatility of the class system. For example, one of the 3 campaigns I'm in currently has 6 characters at mid-levels: 3 martials and 3 casters. Of them... two of the casters are doing the bulk of the frontline tanking (the Druid and the Sorcerer). The Druid essentially has 3 large hp pools per short rest and can prone/grapple people while continually regenerating health and buffing/debuffing everyone to mitigate damage (in addition to just casting Pass Without Trace at will from his staff of the woodlands, which means that everyone in the party can hide well if needed). The Sorcerer has 24-31 AC (depending on what she's doing at the time), counterspells, good saves, War Caster AoOs which will outright remove people trying to run away from her from the field of battle, melee lockdown skills, creates barriers and terrain for her squishies to hide behind (hello Reinhardt), and uses spells to peel targets off of allies and towards her.

[N810]

yea that's what I thought he's only doing Totem barbarians.

[djreynolds]

I agree with this entirely. The point I disagree with is the part where you claim that the game is going wrong as soon as a Wizard casts Blur on himself (indeed, the only possible thing the Wizard can cast Blur on).

100% correct, LudicSavant, my apologies AFB

Your right you cannot cast blur on the fighter, it a self only spell...

My point is instead of casting blur on yourself... you should've buffed the tank with something else instead of worrying about your own skin

Take care of your teammates and they will take care of you

As a wizard, I would often cast haste on the paladin or protection from evil on the barbarian and help them.

Also at 6th level... every fighter should just take resilient wisdom.

Please select lesser restoration if it is a spell you can select, it is game changing. Now that hold person the BBEG cast on your fighter is 1 less spell they can cast. And your fighter is back in the fight.

[Specter]

The Sorcerer has 24-31 AC (depending on what she's doing at the time),

Without multiclassing? Please elaborate.

[Talionis]

Fifth Edition is much more balanced. Past editions have conditioned players to stay away from martials.

Add to that optimizers who are the majority on these boards will look for multiclass solutions and generally prefer more complex answers to the simple. Extra Attacks isn't as sexy as some spells because it's more of the same attack they do at level one, but Fighters continue to be very steady and they keep up.

Every table doesn't enforce resource management the same. There is a lot less magic in 5E than 3.5 where the number of extra spells casters got became very ridiculous. Many spells scale in damage with higher spell slot but it's easy to run out of those high level spell slots. Fighters look better as DMs punish casters for spamming through their spell slots. That doesn't always happen

People also don't give the much better skill system that grants Fighters skills credit as ribbons. I wouldn't have minded if Fighters got ribbon abilities but they do get extra feats to use which can be used to grant a little out of combat flexibility.

[Rhedyn]

There are a lot of ways to play the fighter, most of the optimal ones are human either for more feats or more stats (for the skill monkey build). Both barbar and fighter suffer from "give me my combat feat" syndrome, so in any non-rolled stats (aka silly high stats) game, they want their combat feat for free.

For consistent damage dealing, the fighter is fine. Everyone can do damage, but the fighter does it quicker in important combats (action surge). What fighter's lack is strategic and tactical options. Now if you use gold properly, you can get titles and armies and have your strategic options. It's a bit more GM dependent than summons , binding, undead, and snowmen, but it gets that job done, you just don't have anything over anyone else and you are more likely to burn that money on any fancy gear available for purchase than those caster types. For tactical options, you have things like shove, some spells from EK, or special dice from battlemaster, BUT you probably just need to smack the guy since everyone else can be shifting the scales of combat while being better at it. That's just the classical problem for martials in D&D combat. Your role is too hit things. It's nearly always the best option and your tool set for when it isn't, is limited.

[Coidzor]

yea.... all Them ASI's could be out of combat skills if that what you wanted. :smallannoyed:

Could be, but are generally not going to be because people usually want to be good at their primary job.

[LudicSavant]

Please elaborate.

+1 Plate (+9 AC), +1 Shield (+3 AC), Ring of Protection (+1 AC), Cloak of Protection (+1 AC), Shield spell (+5 AC), Haste (+2 AC).

[Meronin]

+1 Plate (+9 AC), +1 Shield (+3 AC), Ring of Protection (+1 AC), Cloak of Protection (+1 AC), Shield spell (+5 AC), Haste (+2 AC).

That sorcerer is later found dead in a ditch for hogging all the loot.

Removing casting failure from sorcerer and wizard was a mistake.

[LudicSavant]

That sorcerer is later found dead in a ditch for hogging all the loot.

The other players have just as much loot. That said, without any magic loot, it's still 27 AC, which is better than most Fighters. Though it would be a low magic campaign indeed to not have any magic items once you get past level 10...

That's on top of a toolkit including things like terrain creation, mirror image, sleet storm, greater invisibility, misty step, and counterspells.

[Vogonjeltz]

Well, for starters, most of the characters I have played have been wizards, which tend to be considered the best class. Recently however, I rolled a fighter because the party needed a meele, this being my first martial, I wasn't very excited about not casting spells, that was, until the game started, my character was very resilient and a good damage dealer, he managed to survive 5 rounds alone against the BBEG, making him waste his best attacks while the rest went to get an artifact and attacking from afar, while he was dealing the most damage on him with extra attacks and action surge, on the fifth round he managed to put me down with a hold person, then proceeded to almost one-shot the others, then died shortly after because of the artifact. However, in various D&D communities, I see martials, primarily fighter and sometimes barbarian, being said to be weak and only be picked if the party really needs a meat shield, and I like to know why is that
Thank you for reading

Could you elaborate on who exactly considers Wizards the best class and who told you Fighters (or Barbarians) are weak in 5th edition?

FWIW, In my experience neither of these sentiments are accurate; Wizards have been marginally useful in most games and Fighters are usually the strongest performers.


Also action surge is incredibly overrated for how limited it is.

Is it though? The ability to (end game) force 8 contests in a single round is astoundingly good.

Literally any other class can, at best, force 2 contests in a round. Two.


Ultimately their biggest limitation is that there are very few ways to interact with the world outside of combat and spells except by DM fiat

Characters can do basically anything to interact with the world outside of combat and spells, that's baked right into the game (PHB 6, PHB 8) by virtue of being an RPG instead of a computer game.

The game literally is: 1. DM describes the environment. 2. The Players describe what they want to do. 3. DM narrates the result of the adventurers' actions.

Did you, perhaps, mean to say that most non-attack/spells activities aren't codified in a limited way? If so, that's true, but also non-illuminating as there are an endless array of possibilities, and it would be ridiculous to try and limit them.

[Matticusrex]

Could you elaborate on who exactly considers Wizards the best class and who told you Fighters (or Barbarians) are weak in 5th edition?

FWIW, In my experience neither of these sentiments are accurate; Wizards have been marginally useful in most games and Fighters are usually the strongest performers.



Is it though? The ability to (end game) force 8 contests in a single round is astoundingly good.

Literally any other class can, at best, force 2 contests in a round. Two.



Characters can do basically anything to interact with the world outside of combat and spells, that's baked right into the game (PHB 6, PHB 8) by virtue of being an RPG instead of a computer game.

The game literally is: 1. DM describes the environment. 2. The Players describe what they want to do. 3. DM narrates the result of the adventurers' actions.

Did you, perhaps, mean to say that most non-attack/spells activities aren't codified in a limited way? If so, that's true, but also non-illuminating as there are an endless array of possibilities, and it would be ridiculous to try and limit them.

What kind of horrible players do you play with that make you think wizards are not that useful compared to fighters? Fighters dont even compare to paladins and rogues let alone a full caster like wizard cleric or druid. The power difference in both combat and rollplay is night and day. Fighter will always be a tutorial class than does the bare minimum you can possibly do in 5e while still being useful. They are the floor of usefulness.

[Dr.Samurai]

I did no such thing. If you'd care to actually go back and look, I actually asked him to clarify his position, rather than making any statement about his position.
Thank you but I know what you did. Hence my comment :smallwink:.

No interpretation is present, ergo, no misinterpretation is possible.
Right. He mentions nothing about wizards, nothing about being equal to anyone in the way of utility, nothing about parity at all even, but those are the things you needed clarification on. Explain to me how that happened without you interpreting the meaning in his words.

Geez, next you'll be telling me that I'm accusing someone of being a liar when I say that they made an error in a math problem. :smalltongue:
This isn't a formal argument. He wasn't refuting people. He was making a point. Only when you called him out as attacking a scarecrow did he bring up examples of people essentially implying that fighters have little to no utility. You are correct that technically what they said did not mean fighters have "zero" utility. But of course it's easy for most people to see how "not completely irrelevant" can be taken to mean "for all intents and purposes, lacks utility".

[BoutsofInsanity]

BAD? BAD? YOU THINK A FIGHTER IS BAD?

Son, I am going to educate you on the workhorse of Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

First and foremost, the fighter goes hard all day, everyday. She is going to get the work done and keep getting the work done, laying that brick and foundation so her badass friends can roll up and clean up.

Remember that D mother f#*!(*& D is a squad based rpg. You work in a team. The fighter is your center. The fighter takes that stage and holds it down. She may not be the star, but she is the secondary character that the plot revolves around.

The Barbarian is a DPS Full on Tank. The Paladin is a Novaburst Support Tank. You know what the fighter is? A DPS BURST TANK that doesn't run out of spells, rage, or exhaustion. She doesn't tank as good as the barbarian, she doesn't burst as hard as the Paladin. But she can burst, and can tank.

You get more feats, better stats, and the ability to take feats and flesh out your concept as the game continues on. You set up the flashy plays by setting yourself up as the center. Rogue gets the sneak attack because you graciously took Sentinel and held down the monster from leaving your threatened area. But before that you bursted down the enemy rogue because you rolled up on him with Action Surge and attacked him 6 times with great weapon fighting. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

I'm sorry, did you say bad? All I hear is whining crybabies not understanding how being the dark horse of the party works. You may not flash, but you come in, put in your 10 hour day, and go home and drink with your friends. Then come back just fine because your con is high and you aren't hungover. Those assassins that one shot your wizard friend? Yah, they left you the f$7# alone because you would just turn on them and Action Surge Chop CHOp.

Fighters: Doing everything competently but not specializing.

[Coidzor]

Characters can do basically anything to interact with the world outside of combat and spells, that's baked right into the game (PHB 6, PHB 8) by virtue of being an RPG instead of a computer game.

Yes and no. As you well know, there are sharp limits based upon the DM in particular.


The game literally is: 1. DM describes the environment. 2. The Players describe what they want to do. 3. DM narrates the result of the adventurers' actions.

Or the DM says "No, there's no way to cleanly model that in the system, think of something else."

Or "No, we're not playing Exalted, no stunting."


Did you, perhaps, mean to say that most non-attack/spells activities aren't codified in a limited way? If so, that's true, but also non-illuminating as there are an endless array of possibilities, and it would be ridiculous to try and limit them.

The lack of even decent guidelines means you're entirely at the mercy of the DM's mood that day. Given that there's not an explicit blessing for stunting in 5e, most player groups seem to have decided to be more conservative as far as I have seen discussed or encountered.


This isn't a formal argument. He wasn't refuting people. He was making a point. Only when you called him out as attacking a scarecrow did he bring up examples of people essentially implying that fighters have little to no utility. You are correct that technically what they said did not mean fighters have "zero" utility. But of course it's easy for most people to see how "not completely irrelevant" can be taken to mean "for all intents and purposes, lacks utility".

Yes. The only attempts at an argument that the Fighter has utility baked into them rely upon feats being allowed(granted, that's common enough), and the Fighter spending a fair share of their feats on gaining utility effects. Which only underscores how little access they have to start with.

[Talionis]

I really think the people poo pooing Fighters run less than the suggested encounters per day. Fighters become obviously good when other classes start to run out of resources.

[Specter]

+1 Plate (+9 AC), +1 Shield (+3 AC), Ring of Protection (+1 AC), Cloak of Protection (+1 AC), Shield spell (+5 AC), Haste (+2 AC).

So multiclassed Sorcerer. That's what I thought. Kinda unfair to play Sorc as a tank with a multiclass and a truckload of magic items.

[LudicSavant]

So multiclassed Sorcerer. That's what I thought.

That's not multiclassed. :smallannoyed:

Have fun arguing with your own assumptions, I guess.


a truckload of magic items.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?402507-Deconstructing-5e-Typical-Wealth-by-Level

It's not actually an unusual amount. Nor are any of them required for the build to work (the player in question just happens to have them).

Heck, you can even craft them all yourself.

[Meronin]

That's not multiclassed. :smallannoyed:

It's not actually an unusual amount. Nor are any of them required for the build to work (the player in question just happens to have them).

Heck, you can even craft them all yourself.

There is an actual wealth by level table in the DMG, it's absolutely nowhere remotely near this. That's a monty haul pipe dream.

Also congrats on blowing two feats on armor prof.

[Ninja-Radish]

From my perspective I think it's because 5e doubled down on the "Casters rule, Martials drool" paradigm from 3e and earlier editions. Barbarians and Fighters are just awful compared to a Paladin, for example. In fact, Pallys can do everything a Fighter can do better than the Fighter can, plus they can cast spells.

Also, the martial archetypes for Fighters are just terrible. EK and Champion are basically worthless, and the Battlemaster maneuvers are only decent at low levels. Finally, it seems like half of the Fighter's class abilities are only good for fluff, whereas the Paladin is jam packed with useful stuff.

This post makes me sound like a Paladin fanboy, but the truth is I HATE Paladins with a passion. I wish Fighters were better so that there would be a mechanical reason to play one, but there isn't. Balance doesn't exist in 5e, just like it didn't in 3e or 2e.

[Meronin]

EK has spells that they actually use for spells. It takes a lot of restraint for a Paladin to not smite away all their spell slots considering they don't even get cantrips.

[Dudu]

I rate Fighters as good. They can dish damage rather well, more reliably than others. Also, they can tank, if they want. Give the proper background to the fighter and he can sport some skills for out of combat. Champion is the prime pick for someone who is starting the game and just want to play something that works with little though included. Eldritch Knight is probably better than champion, but I find some of his features oddly unsynergistic (does this word even exist?) with fighter features. Battlemaster is a total beast and add some utility to his damage dealing, I'd rate him the strongest fighter subclass.

For UA content, I think samurai has the simplicity mixed with effectiveness that is as great as champion's. Arcane Archer is likely in all my favorite archer builds.

I'm a caster by choice. If I'm not playing a cleric, I'm playing a bard or a wizard. Druids and sorcerers I played briefly. But I apreciate a fighter if there's one in the party, those guys get sh1t done. A monk is prone to do nothing than throw some girly punches, a ranger is tinkering with his clumsy spells, the barbarian is being overly pissed and suddenly your baddass Connan is some guy who can barely catch his breath. Of course, those 3 cases are cases of players using their classes, good classes, inneficiently. But I think such mistake is harder to make with a fighter.

[LudicSavant]

Also congrats on blowing two feats on armor prof.

They did not blow two feats on armor proficiency. Have fun with your false assumptions.


There is an actual wealth by level table in the DMG, it's absolutely nowhere remotely near this.

This is a flat out untrue statement.

The starting wealth table for level 11 ranges up to 7500gp (enough to craft or buy a large quantity of magic items on its own), plus 4 free magic items. The character I presented has 4 magic items, all of which can be acquired using the level 11 starting guideline.

But wait, your case is even weaker than that. The DMG actually provides two sets of wealth guidelines: One for starting at a given level, and another for getting to a certain level by actually playing the game (and getting loot tables). The second set of guidelines provides significantly more loot (apparently by design).

And we didn't start at that level. We got there in over a year of actual play.

[Snails]

I really think the people poo pooing Fighters run less than the suggested encounters per day. Fighters become obviously good when other classes start to run out of resources.

Indeed.

That was a big part of the problem in all editions. The uncertainty of how much fighting needed to be done, whether you might even be ambushed by a determined enemy just after you all decided it would be a good time to retreat for the day, drives smart players to look for efficiencies. The most efficient use of a spell slot is very very often to buff a melee specialist.

So while it was always true that the Wizard looked extremely attractive on paper compared to other classes at higher levels, it was not necessarily viewed as an actual problem when the Wizard Player ended up deciding to help the Fighter Player have so much fun for the good of the party.

[Coidzor]

They did not blow two feats on armor proficiency. Have fun with your false assumptions.

How about just getting it over with by actually explaining instead of bogging down the thread by dragging it out by making people play 20 questions.

[LudicSavant]

How about just getting it over with by actually explaining instead of bogging down the thread by dragging it out by making people play 20 questions.

He never had the courtesy to ask one question, let alone 20. He just started making false assumptions.

But here, I'll answer the question nobody bothered to actually ask:

Any sufficiently experienced 5e player will tell you that there are a variety of ways for a Sorcerer to get access to medium armor proficiency without a feat, such as being a dwarf or a Favored Soul. Then you can just throw one half-feat onto that (which, in that particular character's case, brought an odd-numbered strength score up to an even number).

[SharkForce]

You are correct that technically what they said did not mean fighters have "zero" utility. But of course it's easy for most people to see how "not completely irrelevant" can be taken to mean "for all intents and purposes, lacks utility".

ok, seriously, the "not completely irrelevant" thing was pointing out that in 3.x, fighters *were* completely irrelevant. it doesn't even apply to 5e fighters one way or the other. i specifically said they weren't like 3.x fighters, as in, they *do* have relevance outside of combat, which was on top of pointing out that they were as good *in* combat for most of the game in that same quote.

if you're reading into that to mean that i thought fighters have no value, then you need to read more closely.

[Anderlith]

The balance of wizard vs fighter is this

A wizard worries constantly on what enemies they could be facing? How numerous? What resistances/weaknesses? Will they be bold & charge? Will the enemy hold back their heavy hitters using mooks to soak up spells first? The opposide? Will i fight later? Will they have caster support? How powerful? Should I defense first? Blast first? Control the battlefield & tip my hand or wait til I'm desperate? Etc. etc.

& people wonder why there are so mamy mad wizards out there

A fighter worries about who to kill first, (spellcaster first, big guy second, mooks with a cleave) then terrain factors, & what he is going to eat for dinner. Everything is weak to killing, & fighters are good at that.
Battlemasters have a bit of worry about resource management but this eleviates some stress for when you are pressed for options.
EK is a fighter that has almost as much worry as a wizard for some of it's power.

Fighters got a lot of love in this edition. They are never not solid. While wizards can be quadratic & tactical/logistical skeleton keys, I've rarely seen anyone play that kind of character outside myself. Usually they pick a few cool utility spells of varying usefulness for the day, a few defensivd spells, & then a range of hurt. Then they use the hurt in mostly good ways, a defensive spell or two & then try to find a reason to use a utility. By halfway through the day they are either close to spent or not at all & by the end of the day they are either long empty or still have a good handful because they were too cautious to use them.

The fighter though? He is just wants to know if the rest can keep up with him or if they need a long rest to freshen up.


So something else I'd like to point out is that outside of combat, wizards & spellcasters will look for a spell to do something while fighters look for interesting non magical solutions which honestly go more towards the three pillars than spellcasters.

[Malifice]

Pretty much this. Mechanically, the fighter is good at one pillar of roleplaying.

Its the central pillar of most games though, and he does it the best.

[skaddix]

I don't know the Paladin can tank just fine cleanse negative effects, heal and provides an aura buff to saves.

Fighters will always lag because Magic is just better. But compared to the Wizard, The Fighter can affect a much smaller number of foes or allies at any given time. What 5e has done is stopped every Wizard, Sorcerer and Cleric from coming in and doing the Fighter's job better by only allowing you to concentrate on one buff at time with no real investment. Considering pure classes...A Paladin and Druid can still come in and do your job better. Barbarian is Debatable. Now Granted the Fighter is better if everyone gets their resources drained but that is not exactly fun for the rest of the table. I guess the reworked ranger might not care but everyone else does....well the Moon Druid, Rogue and Warlocks might be fine.

[Talionis]

The balance of wizard vs fighter is this

A wizard worries constantly on what enemies they could be facing? How numerous? What resistances/weaknesses? Will they be bold & charge? Will the enemy hold back their heavy hitters using mooks to soak up spells first? The opposide? Will i fight later? Will they have caster support? How powerful? Should I defense first? Blast first? Control the battlefield & tip ,y hand or wait til I'm desperate? Etc. etc.

& people wonder why there are so mamy ,ad wizards out there

A fighter worries about who to kill first, (spellcaster first, big guy second, mooks with a cleave) then terrain factors, & what he is going to eat for dinner. Everything is weak to killing, & fighters are good at that.
Battlemasters have a bit of worry about resource management but this eleviates some stress for when you are pressed for options.
EK is a fighter that has almost as much worry as a wizard for some of it's power.

Fighters got a lot of love in this edition. They are never not solid. While wizards can be quadratic & tactical/logistical skeleton keys, I've rarely seen anyone play that kind of character outside myself. Usually they pick a few cool utility spells of varying usefulness for the day, a few defensivd spells, & then a range of hurt. Then they use the hurt in mostly good ways, a defensive spell or two & then try to find a reason to use a utility. By halfway through the day they are either close to spent or not at all & by the end of the day they are either long empty or still have a good handful because they were too cautious to use them.

The fighter though? He is just wants to know if the rest can keep up with him or if they need a long rest to freshen up.


So something else I'd like to point out is that outside of combat, wizards & spellcasters will look for a spell to do something while fighters look for interesting non magical solutions which honestly go more towards the three pillars than spellcasters.

This is really well put. I think a lot of people on these boards like what spell can I use here question and see the fighter as simple and less tactical. It's not always the case, Fighters don't have a spell for everything so they do need teamwork and need to look for role play solutions.

5E Fighters are very good at being consistent. They are a great vehicle for buffs. Generally they do well regardless of resource management.

[BillyBobShorton]

Vuman fighters make some of the best characters, IMO. FEATS, FEATS, FEATS!

It's about party composition, though. 1 of any character has major strengths & weaknesses. Together, Voltron.

[djreynolds]

The fighter is not a stand alone adventurer, he has a role to fill.... consistent damage, tank, and some physical skills like athletics.

5E is very swingy and having extra attacks to make up missing is nice to have.

Stat wise by 8th level, assuming standard array, your strength is maxed and you have feat like GWM, PAM, Shield Master or a save feat like resilient wisdom, lucky, even mage slayer falls in their.

It's a very good class, it is flavorless and that is the designers fault, not the players.

Playing a standard adventure that incorporates 6-8 encounters a day along with 2-3 short rests and 1 long rest and the fighter is fine.

Playing a homebrew, may not use that standard.

I highly recommend every PC look into multiclassing and for fighters I like cleric and rogue. You need wisdom for saves, so a 13 in wisdom you should have. I like to have at least a 14 in Dex, just allows me to use breastplate if I want.

[Knaight]

From my perspective I think it's because 5e doubled down on the "Casters rule, Martials drool" paradigm from 3e and earlier editions. Barbarians and Fighters are just awful compared to a Paladin, for example. In fact, Pallys can do everything a Fighter can do better than the Fighter can, plus they can cast spells.

5e marginally weakened martial characters (bounded accuracy hurts a bit), and drastically cut spellcaster power. Concentration, the removal of autoscaling spells and replacement with the option too use higher level slots to get scaling, and a bit of trimming on some of the more egregious spells counts for a lot. Also Paladin's can't do everything a Fighter can - 4 attacks per round and action surge count for a lot, and while I'd argue that Paladins are more powerful because of how D&D magic works, absent the spells they really aren't.

[MrStabby]

Throwing my hat into the ring as a DM...

I think paladins are more powerful than fighters but not really due to spells so much but instead due to their auras and their exceptionally efficient ways to heal downed players.

Fighters are a good class. Great HP and Heavy armour proficiency make them tough but the real stand out thing is the ASIs. An extra few ASIs let you go all fancy-pants with fighting styles or whatever but if you want someone to tough out combats resilient dex and resilient wis will make a fighter harder to shift. At higher levels you can keep raising Con or take the toughness feat. Barbarians will still have an edge absorbing damage but fighters can be tougher in facing mind control effects.

Fighters can do most things. They are SAD so you can raise whatever stat you want for out of combat skills - bump Cha and use an extra ASI for the Actor feat for example. Too many people complain that fighters don't do much out of combat when instead it is just the player not taking the option. Equally feats like ritual caster can get you a lot of out of combat utility as well.

[Specter]

From my perspective I think it's because 5e doubled down on the "Casters rule, Martials drool" paradigm from 3e and earlier editions. Barbarians and Fighters are just awful compared to a Paladin, for example. In fact, Pallys can do everything a Fighter can do better than the Fighter can, plus they can cast spells.

Also, the martial archetypes for Fighters are just terrible. EK and Champion are basically worthless, and the Battlemaster maneuvers are only decent at low levels. Finally, it seems like half of the Fighter's class abilities are only good for fluff, whereas the Paladin is jam packed with useful stuff.

This post makes me sound like a Paladin fanboy, but the truth is I HATE Paladins with a passion. I wish Fighters were better so that there would be a mechanical reason to play one, but there isn't. Balance doesn't exist in 5e, just like it didn't in 3e or 2e.

I'm pretty sure you've never played either blackjack or 3.5, because a person that played both would never write this comment.

In 3.5, a caster could spend the first five rounds of combat simply buffing himself, to become a god, and then engage the enemy only on the 6th, AND they had spells that could turn them into martials. In 5e that's not true at all, if your caster is surrounded or on focus-fire, you protect your behind, that's it. Unless you have the kind of DM that will just pile enemies together for that Wall of Force. What's more, any other caster can shut you down with a reaction.

Casters being worse than in 3.5 is already a general consensus in the community, to the point of me feeling bored for explaining that.

Paladins can do more damage then fighters, as long as they have resources. A 20th-level fighter without resouces can smack a Paladin the same situation. Even an archer. And Paladin is a poorly-designed class that gets too much in terms of smites and saves in general.

I can understand you hating all over champion, even if I don't agree with it, but on all other subclasses? Man, it's almost attention posting. I can pit my 10th-level EK against any other martial build you can come up with, and many casters as well. EKs are also some of the few martials who can tank (Paladin, for instance, can't).

[LudicSavant]

I see an awful lot of speculation and unsupported claims here, but very little data or analysis being presented by most of the posters in this thread. Let's get some actual numbers going and see where that takes us, shall we?

For example, there are folks going around saying that when everyone runs out of resources, the Fighter is the best at damage. But... are they? Did anyone actually bother to check before they said that? I'd be interested to see the numbers.

Let's take two polearm masters: Palagal the Oath of the Ancients Paladin and Fighterguy the Battlemaster. Both have managed to use up all their short/long rest resources, since everyone seems to be assuming that this is a situation that happens all the time (I'll ignore the fact that this goes against my experience with 6-8 encounter adventuring days for now).

First thing out of the way: The Fighter actually has limited resources (both on short and long rest cooldowns) just like everyone else. They need their indomitables, action surges, seconds winds, battlemaster dice, EK spells, hit points, etc. If anyone were to intimate that they somehow keep chugging along indefinitely unhindered, that person is misleading you. They run dry just like your local Warlock or whatever.

So, what do they have when it's down to zero?

Fighterguy:
Vhuman, Str 20 / Dex 10 / Con 16 / Int 8 / Wis 14 / Cha 10, Polearm Master, Resilient (Wisdom), Fighting Style: GWF.
Saving throws: Str+9, Dex+0, Con +7, Int -1, Wis +6, Cha +0

Palagal:
Vhuman, Str 20 / Dex 8 / Con 14 / Int 8 / Wis 10 / Cha 16, Polearm Master, Fighting Style: GWF.
Saving throws: Str +8, Dex +2, Con+5, Int +2, Wis +7, Cha +11

The DMG "create a monster" rules tell us that CR 11 monsters have 17 AC, so we'll use that for our calculations of damage outputs.

Fighterguy has 11 extra hp since he didn't invest in Charisma, but Palagal generally saves more hp than that (potentially a lot more hp than that) with her superior saves and resistance to spell damage (though Fighterguy investing in Wisdom and Resilient (Wisdom) as suggested by posters here does a good deal to help him catch up partway to a 16 cha Paladin). Both characters have +9 to hit.

Fighterguy has 3 attacks + 1 bonus action attack + 1 reaction attack (potentially), while Palagal has 2 attacks + 1 bonus action attack + 1 reaction attack. Palagal does an extra 1d8 radiant per hit, though.

So what's the DPR come out to? Well, that depends a bit on whether they get a reaction hit, and whether Palagal's mount is still alive or not. So I'll just give the numbers for all of those cases.

Average DPR, factoring in everything (great weapon fighting, crit chances, hit chances, everything)
Base: Palagal 31.695 / Fighterguy 28.33
Reactionhit: Palagal 43.03 / Fighterguy 35.99

Palagal's sustained damage is already superior, before counting her horse.


But wait, Palagal actually has another advantage that doesn't run out: They have an intelligent warhorse which can act independently and is always in telepathic communication. This Warhorse will grant extra speed, attempt to knock enemies prone (with a pretty good save DC and no creature size limit!), and make 1-2 attacks with +4 to hit and 2d6+4 damage each.

So let's factor in the horse too.
Failed Trample, no reaction: Palagal 36.445 / Fighterguy 28.33
Failed Trample, Palagal/Fighterguy reaction: Palagal 47.78 / Fighterguy 35.99
Failed Trample, both reaction: Palagal 52.53 / Fighterguy 35.99
Successful Trample, no reaction: 56.20125 / Fighterguy 28.33
Successful Trample, Palagal/Fighterguy reaction: Palagal 67.53625 / Fighterguy 35.99 (assumes that palagal does not get advantage on the reaction, otherwise she'd have even more)
Successful Trample, both reaction: Palagal 72.28625 / Fighterguy 35.99 (assumes that palagal/warhorse does not get advantage on the reaction, otherwise she'd have even more)

Also note a successful trample boosts the damage of allies, because they get advantage against the target too. So her damage advantage is higher than listed here (depending on allies).

How likely the trample is to be successful can be factored in, but for that I'd have to know the target's strength save bonus.

On top of Palagal having better resourceless damage than Fighterguy, Palagal also has better saves for herself and all party members near her, all day. In addition to her and her teammates taking less damage from spells due to significantly higher saves, they also halve that already reduced damage thanks to Order of the Ancients level 7 ability.

[N810]

or they could be in a dungeon, where it's unfeasible to have a freaking horse.

[Biggstick]

Snip
They have an intelligent warhorse...
Snip

I was ready to be convinced until I saw this. Also, what kind of PAM Fighter is going for Warcaster if they're using a 2her? They will definitely take +2 Strength instead of Warcaster, as it isn't as important if you're utilizing a 2her. Just food for thought when doing your calculations.


or they could be in a dungeon, where it's unfeasible to have a freaking horse.

I agree so much with this. If you're doing this supposed comparison Ludic, and everyone has burned through all of their resources, the Warhorse has probably died too. Don't make it the basis of your argument.

[LudicSavant]

or they could be in a dungeon, where it's unfeasible to have a freaking horse.

In which case, the paladin's damage is still higher, without the horse.

{scrubbed}


I agree so much with this. If you're doing this supposed comparison Ludic, and everyone has burned through all of their resources, the Warhorse has probably died too. Don't make it the basis of your argument.

It isn't the basis of my argument. It's adding insult to injury. Please note this part of the post:


Average DPR, factoring in everything (great weapon fighting, crit chances, hit chances, everything)
Base: Palagal 31.695 / Fighterguy 28.33
Reactionhit: Palagal 43.03 / Fighterguy 35.99

No horse required for the palagal's resourceless output to be better.

[N810]

Also why is the fighter invested in wisdom over one of the physical stats ?
.... yea you could probably just swap wis and dex, so he can hit stuff more reliably.

[LudicSavant]

Also why is the fighter invested in wisdom over one of the physical stats ?

Because that is what posters earlier in the thread defending the fighter were saying that you should do.

[Unoriginal]

Dude, the warhorse would be a ressource. And why would the Fighter have War Caster?

Also, I might have misread it, but are you implying that the Paladin is using Polearm Master and GWF while *riding a horse* ?

[LudicSavant]

Also, I might have misread it

Yes.



I see an awful lot of speculation and unsupported claims here, but very little data or analysis being presented by most of the posters in this thread. Let's get some actual numbers going and see where that takes us, shall we?

For example, there are folks going around saying that when everyone runs out of resources, the Fighter is the best at damage. But... are they? Did anyone actually bother to check before they said that?

Let's take two polearm masters: Palagal the Oath of the Ancients Paladin and Fighterguy the Battlemaster. Both have managed to use up all their short/long rest resources, since everyone seems to be assuming that this is a situation that happens all the time (I'll ignore the fact that this goes against my experience with 6-8 encounter adventuring days for now).

First thing out of the way: The Fighter actually has limited resources (both on short and long rest cooldowns) just like everyone else. They need their indomitables, action surges, seconds winds, battlemaster dice, EK spells, hit points, etc. If anyone were to intimate that they somehow keep chugging along indefinitely unhindered, that person is misleading you. They run dry just like your local Warlock or whatever.

So, what do they have when it's down to zero?

Fighterguy:
Vhuman, Str 20 / Dex 10 / Con 16 / Int 8 / Wis 14 / Cha 10, Polearm Master, Resilient (Wisdom), Fighting Style: GWF.
Saving throws: Str+9, Dex+0, Con +7, Int -1, Wis +6, Cha +0

Palagal:
Vhuman, Str 20 / Dex 8 / Con 14 / Int 8 / Wis 10 / Cha 18, Polearm Master, Fighting Style: GWF.
Saving throws: Str +9, Dex +3, Con+6, Int +3, Wis +8, Cha +12

The DMG "create a monster" rules tell us that CR 11 monsters have 17 AC, so we'll use that for our calculations of damage outputs.

Fighterguy has 11 extra hp since he didn't invest in Charisma, but Palagal generally saves more hp than that (potentially a lot more hp than that) with her superior saves and resistance to spell damage (despite Fighterguy investing in Wisdom and Resilient (Wisdom) as suggested by posters here). Both characters have +9 to hit.

Fighterguy has 3 attacks + 1 bonus action attack + 1 reaction attack (potentially), while Palagal has 2 attacks + 1 bonus action attack + 1 reaction attack. Palagal does an extra 1d8 radiant per hit, though.

So what's the DPR come out to? Well, that depends a bit on whether they get a reaction hit, and whether Palagal's mount is still alive or not. So I'll just give the numbers for all of those cases.

Average DPR, factoring in everything (great weapon fighting, crit chances, hit chances, everything)
Base: Palagal 31.695 / Fighterguy 28.33
Reactionhit: Palagal 43.03 / Fighterguy 35.99

Palagal's sustained damage is superior.

No horse. No war caster.

How is this unclear?


Also why is the fighter invested in wisdom over one of the physical stats ?
.... yea you could probably just swap wis and dex, so he can hit stuff more reliably.

If you swapped Wis and Dex, the chance to hit would be the same, because Fighterguy's using a strength-based weapon to benefit from Polearm Master.

[MadBear]

Last edited by LudicSavant; Today at 01:27 PM. Reason: Edited to underline and bold that the horse is not required, since apparently some people were missing that line. Spoilered the part about the horse.

You should also mention that you edited it to change around stats so that they both had a strength of 20, as you originally had them with 18 strength.

Also, people can read just fine. They're nit picking little pieces of what you did to point out your calculations appeared biased when you add things like a horse in.

One thing I'd question/wonder, would be what the calculation look like when you start adding in magical items.

The thing that makes fighters unique is the quantity of attacks vs the paladins quality. As your overall calculations show the paladin at level 11 comes out on top with normal gear. How does that change if the players have a sword that grants 1d6/2d6 ect. extra damage. You'd think that the fighters extra attack would change the tide in this case, but I'm not sure.

[Tanarii]

The real question is ... why are we all getting treated to the Make a Build to "Prove" a Point Fallacy?

[MadBear]

The real question is ... why are we all getting treated to the Make a Build to "Prove" a Point Fallacy?

I don't know that what he is doing is fallacious. He's addressing a popular claim and providing evidence. Nothing about that seems particularly wrong.

[Tanarii]

I don't know that what he is doing is fallacious. He's addressing a popular claim and providing evidence. Nothing about that seems particularly wrong.
It's fallacious to think that showing a build provides evidence.

[MadBear]

It's fallacious to think that showing a build provides evidence.

how so? It's evidence used to support a claim. The builds are more or less used to keep your variables consistent in supporting that claim. (that's why I think people call foul on the horse).

[LudicSavant]

Also, people can read just fine.
Then they should be able to see that I very clearly listed a variety of cases, including no horse and no war caster, and even mentioned myself reasons why the horse might not count (such as it dying) myself.

[Geodude6]

I'm guessing the "fighters are bad" mentality is a holdover from the 3e days where martial characters were often overshadowed at mid to high levels by CoDzilla. Martials are better than they were in 3e and can keep pace with casters quite well.

[Tanarii]

how so? It's evidence used to support a claim.No. No, it really isn't. What it is: an "appeal to numbers" type fallacy. It's putting together a specific combination of numbers, relying on the authority of 'numbers', to make it LOOK like something is being proved. As opposed to showing one specific build out of context of actual gameplay or use overall of a class.

Something like Kryx's DPR tables would be much less fallacious, and even then it's only looking out one aspect: average DPR over an adventuring day.

[LudicSavant]

As opposed to showing one specific build out of context of actual gameplay or use overall of a class.

It's in context of a specific gameplay scenario which another poster provided, actually. It's also using a fighter build based directly on the advice posters in this thread were offering. If you would like to suggest a build of the Fighter that would outperform Palagal, we're all ears.

It's certainly a far better case than people making claims like "fighter is the best at sustained damage, because I said so" which has been the bulk of posts claiming that fighters are good at resourceless damage in this thread.

[Unoriginal]

I get the impression a lot of the "Fighters are bad" crowd is the same who think "monsters who don't have special powers are boring HP sacks with no tactical depth"

[Misterwhisper]

The fighter is considered weak because everything it is supposed to be good at, other classes do either just as well or better.

The fighter gets 4 attacks a round at level 20, the last of which is the fighter "capstone"

- A Berzerker Barbarian can get 4 at level 13 I believe (away from books)
- A Valor Bard can do it at 10
- A monk can do it at 5
- A Warlock or any of the MANY people who dipped it for 2 levels and left can do it at 17.
- A Ranger can do it at 17

The fighter is also supposed to be a tanking class:

- The paladin can do exactly the same thing but has better self heals and buffs.
- The Barbarian is just going to be taking half damage from the attacks that actual do hit.
- Depending on the level a Druid can just out soak and self heal through the same fights, on top of being a full caster.

Archtypes:

Champion is just plain boring to play, roll attack, do a little damage, wait til next turn.
They gave it the ability to critical hit more often but in the same brush stroke made critical hits mean very little considering they up your damage by only the weapon die in this edition.
Also, at base with no archtype, a Barabrian multiplies the damage by more than just x2, which almost evens out with the champion's higher crit range but can make much more of an impact because a Barbarian has a way to always be attacking with advantange so they have just as much chance to crit anyway until much higher levels.

Battlemaster looks great on paper, but no mechanic that is based around a short rest is reliable because you never know when or if you will get one, and with so few uses of superiority dice you can run out VERY fast.

Eldritch Knight: Well, let's try to fix the boring fighter by making them weak casters. So now you have another stat to deal with, and also the least important stat for a fighter mind you. Also later you are giving up your extra attacks just so you can cast your spells.


The only thing that a fighter really has going for it is action surge, and most people just take 2 levels of Fighter and leave.

The idea that they get 2 more feats/stats's than most classes is not going to make up for having lackluster class abilities.

[KorvinStarmast]

Fighters are a good class. Great HP and Heavy armour proficiency make them tough but the real stand out thing is the ASIs. An extra few ASIs let you go all fancy-pants with fighting styles or whatever but if you want someone to tough out combats resilient dex and resilient wis will make a fighter harder to shift. At higher levels you can keep raising Con or take the toughness feat. Barbarians will still have an edge absorbing damage but fighters can be tougher in facing mind control effects.
OK, with your idea foremost, here's my Vhuman outline.
S 15 (16)
D 11 (Wait for feat later)
C 15 (16)
I 9
W 11 (Wait for feat later)
Ch 10 (Or Int 10 Ch 9)
That's a 27 point buy.
Would you suggest the Resiliant dex first, or something like Pole Arm Mastery? Or resilient Wis first? Or, should one hold off on the resilient bit and do other feats first?
I make the character creation assumption that I will not be the party face.

[Dudu]

Please note that ammounts of damage added to each hit favors Fighterguy more than Palagal. Stuff like GWF, for example. But many people seem to ignore fighters as archers. The sharpshooter is even more reliable, since you can put a +2 to atk with fightning style.

With every hit scoring, the 3 shots would sum 30 dmg, and the 4 hits with polearm would put 40 extra dmg. The -5 to hit would make it less. I'm not a fan of having both PAM and GWM though. Of course, if using GWM, stuff like advantage would make a bigger difference to the one using the feat.

With resources avaible paladin probably trumps over fighter in overall combat relevance. But the Battlemaster carry some minor combat utility, like allowing an ally to flee combat without eating an AoO, disarming or tripping an enemy, goad and others. I don't think it's a complete wipeout.

[Desamir]

It's fallacious to think that showing a build provides evidence.

How else would you objectively test the claim "Fighter deals the highest at-will damage"?


Average DPR, factoring in everything (great weapon fighting, crit chances, hit chances, everything)
Base: Palagal 31.695 / Fighterguy 28.33
Reactionhit: Palagal 43.03 / Fighterguy 35.99

I noticed you omitted GWM from this calculation. Here are the numbers including GWM, against a more realistic AC of 16 (average MM AC is 14, and CR11 monsters will not be present in every combat at 11th level). Reaction attacks are not reliable and shouldn't be considered for at-will DPR, even with PAM. Using your DPR spreadsheet:

Paladin: 31.65 (29.22 with GWM)
Fighter: 30.425 (37.95 with GWM)

Fighter comes out comfortably ahead.

It's worth noting that in order to fit both feats into his build, the Paladin will only get one ASI, leaving his Strength at 18. This is factored into the above number, which is why the Paladin loses DPR with GWM and is better off getting the second Strength ASI instead.

I had to do this on my phone, so let me know if I made any errors.

[LudicSavant]

Please note that ammounts of damage added to each hit favors Fighterguy more than Palagal. Stuff like GWF, for example. But many people seem to ignore fighters as archers. The sharpshooter is even more reliable, since you can put a +2 to atk with fightning style.

100% agreed on both points!


I noticed you omitted GWM from this calculation. Well yeah, because I didn't give them that feat. I gave them the stuff people were suggesting in the thread.

If you want me to compare a different build, please suggest the specific build. What is Fighterguy removing to make room for GWM?


I had to do this on my phone, so let me know if I made any errors.
I will check as soon as I know what was replaced to make room for GWM on Fighterguy. :smallsmile:

[Desamir]

If you want me to compare a different build, please suggest the specific build. What is Fighterguy removing to make room for GWM?

From the build you posted, you mean? Resilient (Wis).

Outside of GWM+PAM and 16 starting Strength + two Strength ASIs, any ability array is fine. 16/10/16/8/14/8 is one option.

[Anderlith]

How else would you objectively test the claim "Fighter deals the highest at-will damage"?



I noticed you omitted GWM from this calculation. Here are the numbers including GWM, against a more realistic AC of 16 (average MM AC is 14, and CR11 monsters will not be present in every combat at 11th level). Reaction attacks are not reliable and shouldn't be considered for at-will DPR, even with PAM. Using your DPR spreadsheet:

Paladin: 31.65 (29.22 with GWM)
Fighter: 30.425 (37.95 with GWM)

Fighter comes out comfortably ahead.

It's worth noting that in order to fit both feats into his build, the Paladin will only get one ASI, leaving his Strength at 18. This is factored into the above number, which is why the Paladin loses DPR with GWM and is better off getting the second Strength ASI instead.

I had to do this on my phone, so let me know if I made any errors.

You could also theoretically add some superiority dice as well, it's a short rest refresh. I know we are doing the math without all of that, but it's one of the benefits that a fighter only needs a short rest be be at the best of his game.

Think of Three Hunters in LOTR, no oher class would be able to do that.

[LudicSavant]

You could also theoretically add some superiority dice as well, it's a short rest refresh. I know we are doing the math without all of that, but it's one of the benefits that a fighter only needs a short rest be be at the best of his game.

Think of Three Hunters in LOTR, no oher class would be able to do that.

If we're going by the "standard adventuring day," then short rests are on a schedule just like long rests. You get 6-8 Normal-Hard challenge encounters, and 2 short rests. As such, we can derive the number of superiority dice you spend per encounter per "standard adventuring day."

For a level 11 Battlemaster and 6 encounters, it's 2.5 superiority dice per encounter. And 0.5 second winds (8.25hp/encounter), 0.16 repeating indomitables, and 0.5 action surges. And then you can just compare to the resource schedule of any other class.


From the build you posted, you mean? Resilient (Wis).

Outside of GWM+PAM and 16 starting Strength + two Strength ASIs, any ability array is fine. 16/10/16/8/14/8 is one option.

Okay. I'll check your work when I have time.

[AttilatheYeon]

You could also theoretically add some superiority dice as well, it's a short rest refresh. I know we are doing the math without all of that, but it's one of the benefits that a fighter only needs a short rest be be at the best of his game.

Think of Three Hunters in LOTR, no oher class would be able to do that.

Adding Superiority dice, also means adding Smites for the pally.

[Specter]

The fighter is considered weak because everything it is supposed to be good at, other classes do either just as well or better.

The fighter gets 4 attacks a round at level 20, the last of which is the fighter "capstone"

- A Berzerker Barbarian can get 4 at level 13 I believe (away from books)
- A Valor Bard can do it at 10
- A monk can do it at 5
- A Warlock or any of the MANY people who dipped it for 2 levels and left can do it at 17.
- A Ranger can do it at 17

HA! No.

You see, it's convenient to just state something some classes can sometimes do, while a fighter can ALWAYS do these things with no drawbacks and conditions.

- Berserkers can pull off four attacks when they are in a rage, and when they frenzy. If your barbarian has 6 rage uses, he'll die after using the sixth. The fighter will be okay, no more tired than when he began. If you pit a berserker against a fighter he'll destroy the fighter, but PvP is not the point;
- Valor Bards don't get any respect as archers if they don't take a Fighter dip for Archery. Also, you'd have to reach level 10, and waste a 5th-level spell slot that requires sustained concentration (where they'll fail without a feat). And good luck taking Sharpshooter and maxing two stats.
- Monks have to spend Ki to use four attacks, and still pull some lousy d6 damage. If the fighter wants to use his bonus action that way, he can get five attacks, not four;
- Warlocks can attack reliably four times with Hex, it's true. That's why they get so little spell slots. Get something, not get something else;
- Rangers should read the Valor Bard entry.

[Sigreid]

HA! No.

You see, it's convenient to just state something some classes can sometimes do, while a fighter can ALWAYS do these things with no drawbacks and conditions.

- Berserkers can pull off four attacks when they are in a rage, and when they frenzy. If your barbarian has 6 rage uses, he'll die after using the sixth. The fighter will be okay, no more tired than when he began. If you pit a berserker against a fighter he'll destroy the fighter, but PvP is not the point;
- Valor Bards don't get any respect as archers if they don't take a Fighter dip for Archery. Also, you'd have to reach level 10, and waste a 5th-level spell slot that requires sustained concentration (where they'll fail without a feat). And good luck taking Sharpshooter and maxing two stats.
- Monks have to spend Ki to use four attacks, and still pull some lousy d6 damage. If the fighter wants to use his bonus action that way, he can get five attacks, not four;
- Warlocks can attack reliably four times with Hex, it's true. That's why they get so little spell slots. Get something, not get something else;
- Rangers should read the Valor Bard entry.

A warlock comes close, but even with Hex isn't a match for a dex fighter with ranged fighting style and sharp shooter. And if said fighter has a magic bow and magic arrows, forget about it.

[MrStabby]

The fighter is considered weak because everything it is supposed to be good at, other classes do either just as well or better.

The fighter gets 4 attacks a round at level 20, the last of which is the fighter "capstone"

- A Berzerker Barbarian can get 4 at level 13 I believe (away from books)
- A Valor Bard can do it at 10
- A monk can do it at 5
- A Warlock or any of the MANY people who dipped it for 2 levels and left can do it at 17.
- A Ranger can do it at 17



So I don't get this...

You seem to be assuming every other class (bar warlock) is using their bonus action to get their total of attacks but skipping that out for the fighter? Moreover you seem to be just counting attacks and ignoring how good each of them is. Your level 5 monk for example can make 4 attacks but this is consuming resources and the damage die maxes out at d6 on some of them - compared to the fighter who is able to swing something like a greatsword for 2d6 damage + mods per attack.

I am not sure it is entirely honest to draw conclusions from a comparison between classes where the other classes are allowed to use bonus actions, but not the fighter and where other classes are allowed to use limited resources but deny the fighter the same.

[Specter]

A warlock comes close, but even with Hex isn't a match for a dex fighter with ranged fighting style and sharp shooter. And if said fighter has a magic bow and magic arrows, forget about it.

Oh yeah, that's a thing too.

[Anderlith]

Adding Superiority dice, also means adding Smites for the pally.

Smites are long rest refresh

[LudicSavant]

I had to do this on my phone, so let me know if I made any errors.

- To fully account for Heavy Weapon Master's benefits, you need to account for the crit rider replacing the PAM bonus attack on crits. This means that the Fighter's DPR is higher than 37.95 with Great Weapon Master against an AC 16 target.

- If you're just tossing defense to the wind by throwing out things like resilient (wisdom) and dumping the wisdom save down from +6 to +1, that's a pretty substantial hit to the fighter's defenses. Which is fine and all, but it should be noted in the overall comparison. It also seems incongruous to do this for the Fighter while continuing to invest in durability for the paladin and dumping their damage stat, then comparing only damage (e.g. lowering Strength instead of Charisma). It's also worth noting that if the Paladin loses 2 points of Charisma, their saves are still much better than the Fighter's (especially after he loses RW).

- I don't see why you would ignore reactions. The goal is to make a generally effective, practical character, not to optimize a single arbitrary variable. Getting off reactions is one of the main reasons to take PAM, as well as one of the big reasons to be in melee at all (as opposed to just being a sharpshooter).

- I don't know how you determined that 16 AC was "more realistic." Creatures run the gamut of different ACs, not to mention a wide variety of defensive abilities that augment how difficult they are to hit. The DMG guideline for CR 11 (the lowest Medium) creatures is AC17, and the guideline for CR 15 (Hard) creatures is 18 (that's if you have 4 PCs). Note that the Standard Adventuring Day assumption specifies 6-8 Medium-Hard encounters.

Let's take a sampling of some of the monsters you will fight. A "+" indicates that the monster has abilities that make them harder to hit than their base AC (like blur or parry). Two plusses means they have abilities that make them much harder to hit than their base AC (like a gynosphinx's shield+Greater Invisibility combo that they always use)
A Behir has 17. A Horned Devil has 18. A Dao has 18+. An Efreeti has 18+. A Marid has 17+. A Remorhaz has 17. A Roc has 15. A Gynosphinx has 17++. Annnd... that's all the CR 11 creatures in the monster manual.

How about CR15, for the more challenging campaign guideline (which is generally a better measure for practical optimization stress testing)? Well there we have a AC19+ Adult Green Dragon, AC19+ Adult Bronze, an AC17++ Mummy Lord, and an AC 18 purple worm.

If anything, AC 17 is a lowball. The only way you're getting lower ACs than 17 using the "6-8 medium/hard" guideline is if you're fighting groups or a Roc.

[zinycor]

Pretty sure Conan is a Barbarian.

Conan is more like a barbarian/fighter/rogue

[djreynolds]

I have made several champions, and though personally I loath the class because of just poor writing by the designers, he survived

Survivor coupled with defensive duelist, high AC, and taking the dodge action (a lot) I survived.

Resilient wisdom, lucky (mostly for critical hits that would clean you out) and I like mage slayer as the advantage on saves within 5 feet is nice.

You are just going to have to suck it up with dex saves and the damage

I love the paladin class, but they have flaws as well, your spell slots can go fast. But really it just better written as is the barbarian.

The fighter is blah, but with a skilled player and the right feats you can contribute.

Unfortunately, classes are not created equal, its not the fighter's fault. As we all know, in past games you had to have a 17 in charisma just to play a paladin

[agnos]

From my perspective I think it's because 5e doubled down on the "Casters rule, Martials drool" paradigm from 3e and earlier editions. Barbarians and Fighters are just awful compared to a Paladin, for example. In fact, Pallys can do everything a Fighter can do better than the Fighter can, plus they can cast spells.

Also, the martial archetypes for Fighters are just terrible. EK and Champion are basically worthless, and the Battlemaster maneuvers are only decent at low levels. Finally, it seems like half of the Fighter's class abilities are only good for fluff, whereas the Paladin is jam packed with useful stuff.
I really don't understand this sentiment at all. Perhaps part of it is that I often run AL Epics, "force" parties to stretch resources during hardcovers, etc. Paladins get a lot of love because spells and their general party-friendliness. But here's the thing: every party needs specific roles filled both in and out of combat. Just because a roll gets filled, it doesn't mean that people recognize or appreciate it. Very few people recognize or appreciate the fighter's battlefield control. Sure, it's not a wall of force, but PAM, Mage Slayer, Sentinel, etc. that you can afford to get from Fighter's extra ASI's put some major tough zones for opponents. It's boring because it doesn't come with the flashiness spells bring on its own, but that doesn't mean it can't steal them. Boring isn't the same as bad. Champion 15 is stupidly gross; Battle-master gives all kinda party benefits; EKs choose when they get hit.

But lets pretend that we don't have to monoclass (because most of the play I usually see in AL doesn't). That Fighter X/Druid 1, Fighter X/ Wizard 2, Fighter X/ Sorcerer 3, etc. get limited access to awesome through Staves. If you really want to see a threat, give a fighter a staff of Power. That's real pain.

[djreynolds]

I really don't understand this sentiment at all. Perhaps part of it is that I often run AL Epics, "force" parties to stretch resources during hardcovers, etc. Paladins get a lot of love because spells and their general party-friendliness. But here's the thing: every party needs specific roles filled both in and out of combat. Just because a roll gets filled, it doesn't mean that people recognize or appreciate it. Very few people recognize or appreciate the fighter's battlefield control. Sure, it's not a wall of force, but PAM, Mage Slayer, Sentinel, etc. that you can afford to get from Fighter's extra ASI's put some major tough zones for opponents. It's boring because it doesn't come with the flashiness spells bring on its own, but that doesn't mean it can't steal them. Boring isn't the same as bad. Champion 15 is stupidly gross; Battle-master gives all kinda party benefits; EKs choose when they get hit.

But lets pretend that we don't have to monoclass (because most of the play I usually see in AL doesn't). That Fighter X/Druid 1, Fighter X/ Wizard 2, Fighter X/ Sorcerer 3, etc. get limited access to awesome through Staves. If you really want to see a threat, give a fighter a staff of Power. That's real pain.

You are right, I have played every class. I think the issue is... are DMs running 6-8 encounters a day, if not the fighter is going to look like a turd.

Action surge is once a short rest. And so second wind, and so are maneuvers. If you are playing without/ or occasional short resting... the fighter is lame.

But once you play with 6-8 encounters in a day, you will find the champion is doing quite well.

[Kane0]

Oh! Another two reasons people think fighters aren't all that:

If you aren't using multiclassing and feats, which are optional remember, then the fighter ends up with two bonus ASIs that they cant spend on things like PAM and GWM.
This directly impacts their combat strength moreso than other classes, who enjoy other benefits in place of those ASIs. They get to become a little bit better at the same stuff everyone can do, rather than gain the ability to do something awesome that others can't.
So by only getting better at the core stuff they start the game with, fighters are great for players looking to get started in the game or a no-nonsense combat boost but they don't offer anything new and exciting the way other classes do as the levels go by. Look at the difference past level 3 between what the fighter gets and what the barbarian, paladin and ranger get.

[djreynolds]

Oh! Another two reasons people think fighters aren't all that:

If you aren't using multiclassing and feats, which are optional remember, then the fighter ends up with two bonus ASIs that they cant spend on things like PAM and GWM.
This directly impacts their combat strength moreso than other classes, who enjoy other benefits in place of those ASIs. They get to become a little bit better at the same stuff everyone can do, rather than gain the ability to do something awesome that others can't.
So by only getting better at the core stuff they start the game with, fighters are great for players looking to get started in the game or a no-nonsense combat boost but they don't offer anything new and exciting the way other classes do as the levels go by. Look at the difference past level 3 between what the fighter gets and what the barbarian, paladin and ranger get.

That is awesome insight.

That's the issue with the fighter. Right there.

Can you play a class without feats?

Paladin, yes. Barbarian, yes. etc., etc.

Its the design. Instead of extra feats at 6th and 14th, I'd rather something cool...

Otherwise, the class is flavorless. Otherwise I have a fighter with a 20 in strength and dex.

[Desamir]

- To fully account for Heavy Weapon Master's benefits, you need to account for the crit rider replacing the PAM bonus attack on crits. This means that the Fighter's DPR is higher than 37.95 with Great Weapon Master against an AC 16 target.

True.


- If you're just tossing defense to the wind by throwing out things like resilient (wisdom) and dumping the wisdom save down from +6 to +1, that's a pretty substantial hit to the fighter's defenses. Which is fine and all, but it should be noted in the overall comparison. It also seems incongruous to do this for the Fighter while continuing to invest in durability for the paladin and dumping their damage stat, then comparing only damage (e.g. lowering Strength instead of Charisma). It's also worth noting that if the Paladin loses 2 points of Charisma, their saves are still much better than the Fighter's (especially after he loses RW).

I've mentioned this in other threads, but I try to avoid doing holistic comparisons across classes, since it's very difficult to make an objective comparison. The best I can do is test as narrowly as possible. (The array I mentioned earlier gets to +2 Wisdom saves, btw. +3 is achievable if you're willing to drop to 14 Con to match the Paladin.)

To your second point, I don't quite understand. It is not possible to get both 20 strength and GWM+PAM on a Paladin by 11th level using point buy, correct?


- I don't see why you would ignore reactions. The goal is to make a generally effective, practical character, not to optimize a single arbitrary variable. Getting off reactions is one of the main reasons to take PAM, as well as one of the big reasons to be in melee at all (as opposed to just being a sharpshooter).

Just trying to eliminate variables. The goal of 5e is to make a practical character, but the goal of my post was to evaluate the claim "Fighter deals more at-will damage," no more no less. For anything that is not guaranteed round-to-round, we need to make an assumption for how often it will occur. Adding reactions back in will narrow the DPR gap some, depending on what frequency is assumed. Coincidentally, I'm playing an 11th level PAM Paladin right now, and in my experience I get opportunity attacks perhaps 25% of the time.


- I don't know how you determined that 16 AC was "more realistic." Creatures run the gamut of different ACs, not to mention a wide variety of defensive abilities that augment how difficult they are to hit. The DMG guideline for CR 11 (the lowest Medium) creatures is AC17, and the guideline for CR 15 (Hard) creatures is 18 (that's if you have 4 PCs). Note that the Standard Adventuring Day assumption specifies 6-8 Medium-Hard encounters.

Let's take a sampling of some of the monsters you will fight. A "+" indicates that the monster has abilities that make them harder to hit than their base AC (like blur or parry). Two plusses means they have abilities that make them much harder to hit than their base AC (like a gynosphinx's shield+Greater Invisibility combo that they always use)
A Behir has 17. A Horned Devil has 18. A Dao has 18+. An Efreeti has 18+. A Marid has 17+. A Remorhaz has 17. A Roc has 15. A Gynosphinx has 17++. Annnd... that's all the CR 11 creatures in the monster manual.

How about CR15, for the more challenging campaign guideline (which is generally a better measure for practical optimization stress testing)? Well there we have a AC19+ Adult Green Dragon, AC19+ Adult Bronze, an AC17++ Mummy Lord, and an AC 18 purple worm.

If anything, AC 17 is a lowball. The only way you're getting lower ACs than 17 using the "6-8 medium/hard" guideline is if you're fighting groups or a Roc.

The reason I went with AC 16 is because most parties do indeed fight a mixture of groups and solo fights. The average AC of the MM is 14; that is artificially high, because it is an unweighted average that assumes you will encounter Tarrasques as often as you will encounter Goblins. It's true that if you are fighting mostly solos, the gap will be narrowed. KFC (http://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder)'s random encounter function can come in handy here to get an idea what range of ACs an average 11th level party will be facing over an adventuring day. At first glance, it seems to vary quite a bit.

[SharkForce]

(edit: this is in response to the posts *before* the one immediately above it)

i dunno about that.

feats are quite important for all martials. paladins and barbarians lean on GWM/PM as a melee fighter, and rangers tend to either rely on that or sharpshooter/crossbow mastery to reach their highest levels of DPR as well.

i mean, a barbarian or ranger or especially a paladin can get more value out of actual attribute increases than a fighter, sure... but pretty much any of them would rather have feats for damage.

or, to put it another way... paladins are a very MAD class. but when it comes time to discuss optimization, nobody ever suggests taking no feats, it's always a question of where the attribute increases go *after* you've got at least one feat, and quite possibly two.

to the second point, you can certainly make the argument that fighters don't generally get new and awesome things past the first few levels (and i would agree with you)... but i'm not convinced that's actually a problem, per se.

as i've said, from everything i can tell people are enjoying their fighters. i would be bored playing one, but that doesn't mean they're bad, it just means they're not for me. there are plenty of people who would hate to play a wizard, which i enjoy greatly. that doesn't mean wizards are bad, it just means they're not for them.

i still think at the very highest levels, fighters lack the ability to alter the world the way a level 15-20 character should be able to do. but it fills a niche that some people are looking for. i can't say that "they're not interesting enough" is a problem that fighters suffer from, because for a lot of people, it turns out that they *are* interesting enough.

[djreynolds]

Doesn't the whole party get "Aura of Protection", in you get all the auras... 10ft and then 30ft?

You can't take away the aura from party members you don't like, as long as they are friendly.

[Malifice]

I see an awful lot of speculation and unsupported claims here, but very little data or analysis being presented by most of the posters in this thread. Let's get some actual numbers going and see where that takes us, shall we?

For example, there are folks going around saying that when everyone runs out of resources, the Fighter is the best at damage. But... are they? Did anyone actually bother to check before they said that?

Let's take two polearm masters: Palagal the Oath of the Ancients Paladin and Fighterguy the Battlemaster. Both have managed to use up all their short/long rest resources, since everyone seems to be assuming that this is a situation that happens all the time (I'll ignore the fact that this goes against my experience with 6-8 encounter adventuring days for now).

First thing out of the way: The Fighter actually has limited resources (both on short and long rest cooldowns) just like everyone else. They need their indomitables, action surges, seconds winds, battlemaster dice, EK spells, hit points, etc. If anyone were to intimate that they somehow keep chugging along indefinitely unhindered, that person is misleading you. They run dry just like your local Warlock or whatever.

So, what do they have when it's down to zero?

Fighterguy:
Vhuman, Str 20 / Dex 10 / Con 16 / Int 8 / Wis 14 / Cha 10, Polearm Master, Resilient (Wisdom), Fighting Style: GWF.
Saving throws: Str+9, Dex+0, Con +7, Int -1, Wis +6, Cha +0

Palagal:
Vhuman, Str 20 / Dex 8 / Con 14 / Int 8 / Wis 10 / Cha 18, Polearm Master, Fighting Style: GWF.
Saving throws: Str +9, Dex +3, Con+6, Int +3, Wis +8, Cha +12

The DMG "create a monster" rules tell us that CR 11 monsters have 17 AC, so we'll use that for our calculations of damage outputs.

Fighterguy has 11 extra hp since he didn't invest in Charisma, but Palagal generally saves more hp than that (potentially a lot more hp than that) with her superior saves and resistance to spell damage (despite Fighterguy investing in Wisdom and Resilient (Wisdom) as suggested by posters here). Both characters have +9 to hit.

Fighterguy has 3 attacks + 1 bonus action attack + 1 reaction attack (potentially), while Palagal has 2 attacks + 1 bonus action attack + 1 reaction attack. Palagal does an extra 1d8 radiant per hit, though.

So what's the DPR come out to? Well, that depends a bit on whether they get a reaction hit, and whether Palagal's mount is still alive or not. So I'll just give the numbers for all of those cases.

Average DPR, factoring in everything (great weapon fighting, crit chances, hit chances, everything)
Base: Palagal 31.695 / Fighterguy 28.33
Reactionhit: Palagal 43.03 / Fighterguy 35.99

Palagal's sustained damage is already superior, before counting her horse.


But wait, Palagal actually has another advantage that doesn't run out: They have an intelligent warhorse which can act independently and is always in telepathic communication. This Warhorse will grant extra speed, attempt to knock enemies prone (with a pretty good save DC and no creature size limit!), and make 1-2 attacks with +4 to hit and 2d6+4 damage each.

So let's factor in the horse too.
Failed Trample, no reaction: Palagal 36.445 / Fighterguy 28.33
Failed Trample, Palagal/Fighterguy reaction: Palagal 47.78 / Fighterguy 35.99
Failed Trample, both reaction: Palagal 52.53 / Fighterguy 35.99
Successful Trample, no reaction: 56.20125 / Fighterguy 28.33
Successful Trample, Palagal/Fighterguy reaction: Palagal 67.53625 / Fighterguy 35.99 (assumes that palagal does not get advantage on the reaction, otherwise she'd have even more)
Successful Trample, both reaction: Palagal 72.28625 / Fighterguy 35.99 (assumes that palagal/warhorse does not get advantage on the reaction, otherwise she'd have even more)

Also note a successful trample boosts the damage of allies, because they get advantage against the target too. So her damage advantage is higher than listed here (depending on allies).

How likely the trample is to be successful can be factored in, but for that I'd have to know the target's strength save bonus.

On top of Palagal having better resourceless damage than Fighterguy, Palagal also has better saves for herself and all party members near her, all day. In addition to her and her teammates taking less damage from spells due to significantly higher saves, they also halve that already reduced damage thanks to Order of the Ancients level 7 ability.

Youre forgetting the extra feat the fighter gets (lets go with GWM) and his archetype (let's go with champion).

Run your numbers again, with zero resource expenditure.

[djreynolds]

You know at the end of the day, there are no threads why the paladin sucks.

The fighter is poorly written and IMO is not for novices, it takes a better hand to play well.

There is no challenge to playing a paladin, nor even multiclassing one. Too easy.

But with a particular focus of feats and stats, a fighter is fine.

The classes in 5E are not equal. Sorry. The paladin class feels like a prestige class

[Zalabim]

I might be too lazy to prune, so I see an awful lot of speculation and unsupported claims here, but very little data or analysis being presented by most of the posters in this thread. Let's get some actual numbers going and see where that takes us, shall we?

For example, there are folks going around saying that when everyone runs out of resources, the Fighter is the best at damage. But... are they? Did anyone actually bother to check before they said that?

Let's take two polearm masters: Palagal the Oath of the Ancients Paladin and Fighterguy the Battlemaster. Both have managed to use up all their short/long rest resources, since everyone seems to be assuming that this is a situation that happens all the time (I'll ignore the fact that this goes against my experience with 6-8 encounter adventuring days for now).

First thing out of the way: The Fighter actually has limited resources (both on short and long rest cooldowns) just like everyone else. They need their indomitables, action surges, seconds winds, battlemaster dice, EK spells, hit points, etc. If anyone were to intimate that they somehow keep chugging along indefinitely unhindered, that person is misleading you. They run dry just like your local Warlock or whatever.

So, what do they have when it's down to zero?

Fighterguy:
Vhuman, Str 20 / Dex 10 / Con 16 / Int 8 / Wis 14 / Cha 10, Polearm Master, Resilient (Wisdom), Fighting Style: GWF.
Saving throws: Str+9, Dex+0, Con +7, Int -1, Wis +6, Cha +0

Palagal:
Vhuman, Str 20 / Dex 8 / Con 14 / Int 8 / Wis 10 / Cha 18, Polearm Master, Fighting Style: GWF.
Saving throws: Str +9, Dex +3, Con+6, Int +3, Wis +8, Cha +12

The DMG "create a monster" rules tell us that CR 11 monsters have 17 AC, so we'll use that for our calculations of damage outputs.

Fighterguy has 11 extra hp since he didn't invest in Charisma, but Palagal generally saves more hp than that (potentially a lot more hp than that) with her superior saves and resistance to spell damage (despite Fighterguy investing in Wisdom and Resilient (Wisdom) as suggested by posters here). Both characters have +9 to hit.

Fighterguy has 3 attacks + 1 bonus action attack + 1 reaction attack (potentially), while Palagal has 2 attacks + 1 bonus action attack + 1 reaction attack. Palagal does an extra 1d8 radiant per hit, though.

So what's the DPR come out to? Well, that depends a bit on whether they get a reaction hit, and whether Palagal's mount is still alive or not. So I'll just give the numbers for all of those cases.

Average DPR, factoring in everything (great weapon fighting, crit chances, hit chances, everything)
Base: Palagal 31.695 / Fighterguy 28.33
Reactionhit: Palagal 43.03 / Fighterguy 35.99

Palagal's sustained damage is already superior, before counting her horse.


But wait, Palagal actually has another advantage that doesn't run out: They have an intelligent warhorse which can act independently and is always in telepathic communication. This Warhorse will grant extra speed, attempt to knock enemies prone (with a pretty good save DC and no creature size limit!), and make 1-2 attacks with +4 to hit and 2d6+4 damage each.

So let's factor in the horse too.
Failed Trample, no reaction: Palagal 36.445 / Fighterguy 28.33
Failed Trample, Palagal/Fighterguy reaction: Palagal 47.78 / Fighterguy 35.99
Failed Trample, both reaction: Palagal 52.53 / Fighterguy 35.99
Successful Trample, no reaction: 56.20125 / Fighterguy 28.33
Successful Trample, Palagal/Fighterguy reaction: Palagal 67.53625 / Fighterguy 35.99 (assumes that palagal does not get advantage on the reaction, otherwise she'd have even more)
Successful Trample, both reaction: Palagal 72.28625 / Fighterguy 35.99 (assumes that palagal/warhorse does not get advantage on the reaction, otherwise she'd have even more)

Also note a successful trample boosts the damage of allies, because they get advantage against the target too. So her damage advantage is higher than listed here (depending on allies).

How likely the trample is to be successful can be factored in, but for that I'd have to know the target's strength save bonus.

On top of Palagal having better resourceless damage than Fighterguy, Palagal also has better saves for herself and all party members near her, all day. In addition to her and her teammates taking less damage from spells due to significantly higher saves, they also halve that already reduced damage thanks to Order of the Ancients level 7 ability.


- To fully account for Heavy Weapon Master's benefits, you need to account for the crit rider replacing the PAM bonus attack on crits. This means that the Fighter's DPR is higher than 37.95 with Great Weapon Master against an AC 16 target.

- If you're just tossing defense to the wind by throwing out things like resilient (wisdom) and dumping the wisdom save down from +6 to +1, that's a pretty substantial hit to the fighter's defenses. Which is fine and all, but it should be noted in the overall comparison. It also seems incongruous to do this for the Fighter while continuing to invest in durability for the paladin and dumping their damage stat, then comparing only damage (e.g. lowering Strength instead of Charisma). It's also worth noting that if the Paladin loses 2 points of Charisma, their saves are still much better than the Fighter's (especially after he loses RW).

- I don't see why you would ignore reactions. The goal is to make a generally effective, practical character, not to optimize a single arbitrary variable. Getting off reactions is one of the main reasons to take PAM, as well as one of the big reasons to be in melee at all (as opposed to just being a sharpshooter).

- I don't know how you determined that 16 AC was "more realistic." Creatures run the gamut of different ACs, not to mention a wide variety of defensive abilities that augment how difficult they are to hit. The DMG guideline for CR 11 (the lowest Medium) creatures is AC17, and the guideline for CR 15 (Hard) creatures is 18 (that's if you have 4 PCs). Note that the Standard Adventuring Day assumption specifies 6-8 Medium-Hard encounters.

Let's take a sampling of some of the monsters you will fight. A "+" indicates that the monster has abilities that make them harder to hit than their base AC (like blur or parry). Two plusses means they have abilities that make them much harder to hit than their base AC (like a gynosphinx's shield+Greater Invisibility combo that they always use)
A Behir has 17. A Horned Devil has 18. A Dao has 18+. An Efreeti has 18+. A Marid has 17+. A Remorhaz has 17. A Roc has 15. A Gynosphinx has 17++. Annnd... that's all the CR 11 creatures in the monster manual.

How about CR15, for the more challenging campaign guideline (which is generally a better measure for practical optimization stress testing)? Well there we have a AC19+ Adult Green Dragon, AC19+ Adult Bronze, an AC17++ Mummy Lord, and an AC 18 purple worm.

If anything, AC 17 is a lowball. The only way you're getting lower ACs than 17 using the "6-8 medium/hard" guideline is if you're fighting groups or a Roc.

It looks like you're using level 11, where the Paladin can't have 20 Str and 18 Cha with standard array. So that's one thing to fix.

Anyway, you're using the best feat for the paladin, but not the best one for the fighter. A GWM BM is probably going to experience better synergy than with PM, and does 29.25 average damage for their turn's action, about ~30.64 averaging criticals for a bonus attack, when not using resources. It loses out on the free reaction attack, but I think GWM is much better when you do have resources to spend.

It also looks like you're applying GWF FS to the paladin's Imp Divine Smite dice. Stop that.

At the end of a day, when you don't have resources, you won't have a summoned steed either, even assuming your DM lets your summoned steed that explicitly serves as a mount instead serve as an additional combatant. That's a horse to beat another day though.

The DMG recommends that parties fight groups of enemies for harder encounters and rarely, carefully, if ever, fight higher CR for harder encounters. CR 11 is the top end of enemies for this level, not the bottom.

The interesting part of this comparison to me is that the level 11 battle master has more expendable damage resources than the paladin. Going back to your original example, the fighter has action surge and 5 d10 superiority dice. The paladin has 3/3/4 spell slots. With 65% hit chance, dice/smites thrown carelessly will crit ~7.7% of the time, so 29d8 is worth 140.5 and 5d10 is worth 29.615. Action surge is worth 22.98.

The paladin has ~140.5 smite damage per long rest and the fighter has 52.595 action surge+vanilla superiority damage per short rest.

This whole effort looks moot when a Crossbow Expert+Sharpshooter fighter has 120' range and does 37.7 average damage per round against AC 17 (9.425 per attack, 4 attacks). That's more than Fighterguy getting a reaction attack. It's a shame about Resilient (wis).

The moral of this story is, if you want your fighter to do the most at will damage, use two feats. If you want to use only one feat on damage, use Sharpshooter or Great Weapon Master. If you want to mindlessly follow memes or prove a point online, use Polearm Master or Crossbow Expert. I think PM is actually alright at lower levels and great when combined with GWM.

[Citan]

Fighters get extra ASIs. Those give them lots of utility if you actually use them to get utility. If you just take even more combat abilities THEN the fighter has nothing to contribute except HP damage, and it will be your fault, not the class's. The fighter doesn't need ribbon abilities because he already gets his pick of a long list of them.
Agreed.

The fighter gets only two ASIs over other classes (which get 5). Are you trying to tell us that you think these two feats are going to somehow bridge the gap between a Fighter's out of combat utility and a Wizard's? :smallconfused:
Going immediately into extremes is not gonna help you look constructive, you know...
With that said...
- Fighter gets 2 more ASI.
- Fighter is already one of the most tankiest class (especially EK) and can focus only on their attack stat.
- So they can easily squish another ASI for a feat is they so want, or maybe even two.

Now...
- Ritual Caster: gives you plenty of utility, probably less than a Wizard (unless this one doesn't care) more more than a Bard (who probably doesn't want to spend all his learning on rituals) or a Druid (not so many rituals).
- Observant: become good at finding traps, hidden doors, spotting enemies and such.
- Actor: be the face of the party.
- Lucky: just so you succeed in THAT important ability check.
- Magic Initiate: may be enough to provide downtime activity (Mold Earth), roleplay interactions (Prestidigitation, Minor Illusion, Message, Friends, Charm Person, Comprehend Languages) or other things (Find Familiar, Fog Cloud, Unseen Servant)....
- Skilled: as it says.

Sure, the Fighter can never be as versatile or gets as many non-combat abilities as other classes. That is perfectly normal, he is a warrior.
But he gets far enough abilities to have interesting things to do outside combat if you do wish so.

If you play a Fighter that knows nothing else than hit things, it's because you as a player aren't creative enough to make him do otherwise (or you want your character to be like this, which is also perfectly fine -in fact, it can be veeeery fun also ^^-).

On the particular point of Ritual Caster, in fact, a Fighter taking it may very well become much more useful in rituals than a pure spellcaster, even those with "prepared" spells, simply because you don't even have to choose spells to prepare, contrarily to them: any spell you know is a one you can ritual cast. So you may have all "prepped" for any occasion.

[Specter]

What Citan said is true. Even if you're not feeling creative or want to be useful out of combat, grab 2 general feats like Tough and Lucky and marvel at your survival rate.

[Dr.Samurai]

ok, seriously, the "not completely irrelevant" thing was pointing out that in 3.x, fighters *were* completely irrelevant. it doesn't even apply to 5e fighters one way or the other. i specifically said they weren't like 3.x fighters, as in, they *do* have relevance outside of combat, which was on top of pointing out that they were as good *in* combat for most of the game in that same quote.

if you're reading into that to mean that i thought fighters have no value, then you need to read more closely.
I think I read your meaning just fine. I was explaining how Cantig took it, since Ludic was captivated by Cantig's use of the word "zero" and couldn't seem to see beyond it. (I'm not even convinced that Cantig took your post to mean "zero utility", I think he just felt compelled to respond to Ludic's out-of-left-field accusation about a strawman.)

I understand that you were saying the 3rd edition fighter was completely irrelevant outside of combat, and by comparison the 5th edition fighter isn't because he at least gets skill proficiencies. The thing is, this is just very faint praise. Everyone gets skill proficiencies, and most get more than the fighter. So he's really at the bottom of the barrel here. If someone takes your point exactly as you intended it, or goes one step further and takes it to mean "zero utility", it isn't much of a difference. Especially when Cantig's point was about the utility that feats bring. There was really very little reason to harp on about a strawman. (I'm not disagreeing with you by the way.)

I suspect I was grumpy from having to deal with the storm on Tuesday, and this exchange between the two struck more of a nerve than it needed to.

[LudicSavant]

Zalabim, please do not edit my quotes to say something other than what they actually said (such as the line about laziness). Either quote the text that's actually there, or don't use quote tags. I find it rather rude.


It looks like you're using level 11, where the Paladin can't have 20 Str and 18 Cha

edit: You're right, I'll have to correct that.
edit2: Corrected


This whole effort looks moot when a Crossbow Expert+Sharpshooter fighter has 120' range and does 37.7 average damage per round against AC 17 (9.425 per attack, 4 attacks).

I already agree that fighters are good at archery damage.


Going immediately into extremes What extreme was gone into in the quote given? Accurately pointing out that they get 2 extra ASIs? Or asking him to clarify his position?

Calling either of those things "going into extremes" does not help you appear objective.

[MadBear]

First of all, Zalabim please do not You can absolutely get 20 strength and 18 Cha by level 11 with point buy, which was the stat generation method given. Start 15 str / 15 cha, add +1 to each from VHuman, use 2 of your 3 ASIs on strength, and 1 on Cha. 20 Str and 18 Cha. The error is yours.



but that would then be a featless paladin right? (maybe I missed something)

[LudicSavant]

I've mentioned this in other threads, but I try to avoid doing holistic comparisons across classes, since it's very difficult to make an objective comparison. The best I can do is test as narrowly as possible. (The array I mentioned earlier gets to +2 Wisdom saves, btw. +3 is achievable if you're willing to drop to 14 Con to match the Paladin.)

Such a comparison may be difficult, but it is however the core endeavor of practical optimization, wherein the goal is to create the best character overall rather than a one-trick pony.

That said, if you would like to boost only one variable, we can do that. But in that case both the Paladin and Fighter would take very different builds. For example, you could boost the Fighter's all-day damage by changing it to a Champion (which has a doubled crit rate), or the Paladin's by changing it to an Oathbreaker (which has a damage-boosting aura and 24-hour minionmancy).

Of course, changing to a Champion will probably not make you a stronger character overall.


To your second point, I don't quite understand. It is not possible to get both 20 strength and GWM+PAM on a Paladin by 11th level using point buy, correct? Correct. I would simply not take GWM on the Paladin.


The reason I went with AC 16 is because most parties do indeed fight a mixture of groups and solo fights. The average AC of the MM is 14; that is artificially high, because it is an unweighted average that assumes you will encounter Tarrasques as often as you will encounter Goblins. It's true that if you are fighting mostly solos, the gap will be narrowed. KFC (http://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder)'s random encounter function can come in handy here to get an idea what range of ACs an average 11th level party will be facing over an adventuring day. At first glance, it seems to vary quite a bit.

It sounds like you just eyeballed it, then. It's also worth noting that DPR is more representative of contribution when you're talking about big solo monsters rather than hordes. For example, if you're fighting a horde of average goblins, GWM isn't going to help you at all, because they can only take up to their hp in damage (average 7) at a time


The interesting part of this comparison to me is that the level 11 battle master has more expendable damage resources than the paladin. Going back to your original example, the fighter has action surge and 5 d10 superiority dice. The paladin has 3/3/4 spell slots. With 65% hit chance, dice/smites thrown carelessly will crit ~7.7% of the time, so 29d8 is worth 140.5 and 5d10 is worth 29.615. Action surge is worth 22.98.

Indeed, the fighter has a lot of expendable resources! Which is why I found it strange that some people were acting like they were resourceless and "never slowed down." It is much more appropriate to compare classes with full access to their resource schedules (as every single class has one), and I'd be interested to see the results.

A complete comparison would need to account for more variables than the ones in your quote, however. A few that leap to mind are:

1) The fighter will get more than 5d10 superiority dice in a "standard adventuring day." (Specifically, they'd get 15d10)
2) Spell slots can be used more efficiently than just using smite 100% of the time.
3) Divine Smite itself can be used more efficiently than smiting on any random attack (for instance, many paladin players wait until they get a crit to trigger it). The same goes for some Battle Master maneuvers, I think (though they benefit a bit less from this).
4) It seems like you're ignoring the paladin's permanent duration companion even when comparing limited resources.
5) Certain paladins have features other than divine smite and spell slots which boost their DPR. For example, the Oath of Vengeance paladin's channel divinity.


even assuming your DM lets your summoned steed that explicitly serves as a mount instead serve as an additional combatant

A DM that does not allow you to do this is making a houserule.


CONTROLLING A MOUNT
While you're mounted, you have two options. You can either control the mount or allow it to act independently. Intelligent creatures, such as dragons, act independently.


but that would then be a featless paladin right? (maybe I missed something)

Actually I'm mistaken. Why on earth did I think I had 3 ASIs? :smalleek:

Correcting. Adjusted all the math accordingly.



*snip*
Wow this is just endless. Weren't you just complaining about people not dropping this issue a few pages ago? And we did, but you've been carrying it on for 4 more pages, and the rabid personal attacks are getting harder and harder to ignore.

Sharkforce has made it very clear that Cantig was not, in fact, addressing his actual position when responding to his quote. The accurate term for that is a straw man argument. That's the end of it. Now I suggest you follow your own advice.


Since he's dropped it, you probably should as well.

____________

Since Desamir brought up the case of fighting groups for heavy weapon master to become beneficial... Here's another character who's good at melee damage all day long, but this time it's a top-of-the-line full caster on top of it, complete with the incredible Spell Breaker ability.

Arcana Cleric, VHuman, uses their feat on Magic Initiate to grab Shillelagh, dumps everything else on Wisdom. She carries a shield and wears half-plate, which means that she's got a higher AC than a GWM/GWF polearm master, even before she uses a buff. Uses Green-Flame Blade when there's two targets, and Booming Blade when there's one.

At level 8, she does some pretty surprising DPR with a single melee attack, thanks to Potent Spellcasting combined with melee cantrips. It's 1d8+5 (from shillelagh) +1d8 (green flame blade)+5 (from Potent Spellcasting) agaisnt the first target, then 1d8+5 (green-flame blade)+5 (from Potent Spellcasting) against the second, for a grand total of 3d8+20 damage. Against two AC 16 targets, that's 22.45 DPR.

Her single target damage isn't too shabby either, provided an enemy tries to move away from this sticky tank to get at squishier allies (or get at her, if she's doing hit and run tactics, which she totally can). If an enemy breaks Booming Blade, it's a grand total of 4d8+15 damage (1d8+5 shillelagh, +5 from potent spellcasting both times it deals damage, +1d8 on initial hit from booming blade, +2d8 from moving), or 22.35 DPR against a single AC 16 target.

In both cases, this club-and-shield cleric's DPR is (very slightly) higher resourceless damage than a level 8 20 strength Heavy Weapon Master, Great Weapon Fighting style Champion with a Greatsword (22.265 DPR against an AC 16 target). A 20 strength Heavy Weapon Master / Polearm Master fighter can edge her out slightly, though, doing about 26 DPR (more if they're getting reactions).

At level 11, the damage increases to 28.65 DPR (breaking Booming Blade) and 28.75 DPR (two targets with Green-Flame blade). At least 12, she can grab War Caster, and then get 57.5 DPR on an enemy that's trying to break away from her to go after a squishier target. No resources are used up to do that.

This is on top of having an accurate 3d8+5 ranged attack that ignores cover and Guidance (which is almost like being able to give people Expertise on demand) and 2 other cantrips for contributing even after all spells have run dry.

I'm just really not seeing this "casters get used up in 6-8 encounter adventuring days but martials don't" thing at all. And for those few posters who seem to have wildly misconstrued my statements, I'll clarify that I'm not saying that the fighter is bad. I'm saying that I am skeptical of the particular claim that casters get all used up in 6-8 encounter adventuring days while fighters don't, and that "anyone saying that casters are strong must not be using 6-8 encounter adventuring days."

[Anderlith]

So much talk about Paladin vs Fighter. Why not Fighter vs Sorcerer? Or Fighter vs Ranger? Maybe...

Fighter vs the World! (Spoiler: Fighters wins because they just keep truckin')

[LudicSavant]

Adding to my post above, there's no reason to assume casters are running on empty during a DMG-advised 6 encounter, 2 short rest adventuring day. During a standard 6 encounter adventuring day, a level 8 Arcana Cleric such as the one in the above post (who doesn't even have things like a land druid or wizard for recovering spell slots) has enough resources for 2 spells and 1 channel divinity per encounter. (A level 8 Champion Fighter has 0.5 action surges and 0.5 Second Winds per encounter in a 6-fight adventuring day. A Battle Master would add 2.5 superiority dice per encounter onto that).

I've never really felt a need to use more than 2 spell slots per Normal/Hard encounter, and even the low level slots have high value (a Bless can add more DPR to the party than action surge while boosting saves, for example). It's also worth noting that a single slot might do work for multiple encounters (for example, Spirit Guardians lasts 10 minutes, and it's not uncommon to have 2 or more fights in 10 minutes in a dungeon crawl).

And you are by no means weak without rest-limited resources. Green-Flame Blade and Booming Blade can keep up with Extra Attack (and is often superior, thanks to Potent Spellcasting double dipping, which is confirmed to work by Jeremy Crawford (http://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/08/13/does-the-arcana-clerics-potent-spellcasting-add-wis-mod-damage/)), Guidance makes everyone's out of combat skills markedly better and can boost initiative of key players, and you can cast as many Rituals as you want.

In short, the Fighter isn't the only one who keeps on truckin' through 6-8 encounters. Sure, a new player might blow through all their spell slots too fast and not have built any good sustained tactics into their caster, but that is not what's going to happen with a capable strategist piloting a well-optimized character.

[Specter]

So much talk about Paladin vs Fighter. Why not Fighter vs Sorcerer? Or Fighter vs Ranger? Maybe...

Fighter vs the World! (Spoiler: Fighters when because they just keep truckin')

Fighter vs. Barbarian, Monk and Rogue is what I'd like to see. Especially when it comes to damage and resources.

[djreynolds]

The paladin IMO and the fighter have different roles in the party.

A paladin is a leader, if you want her buffs you have to tag along with her as she performs suicidal missions.

A fighter is consistent damage, consistent AC, consistent HP... consistency.

Comparing who is a better tank or striker is silly.

Is the paladin as a class better written, yes.

Does the fighter perform consistently, yes.

Each class has it short comings. Paladins have oaths that must be fulfilled and can lead to your death.

Is the paladin a better class than the fighter, on average I would say yes, overall.



But a fighter strength is that it can multiclass easily without worrying his attack stat and con.

16/13/16/8/13/8 is very obtainable for 1st level, allowing the easy pick of 1 level of rogue for expertise in athletics and then snag shield master.

And with this build you can shove almost anyone and disarm almost anyone. No more shillelagh, its gone. Go grab another stick.

At level 17, fighter with just 1 level of rogue has +17 to prone someone or disarm them, on a natural 20, that's +37.

Cantrips are good, until you find at higher levels everything is resistant or immune to fire and lightning

A champion is best played sword and board with 1 level of rogue and shield master and a rapier for defensive duelist

[Matticusrex]

The paladin IMO and the fighter have different roles in the party.

A paladin is a leader, if you want her buffs you have to tag along with her as she performs suicidal missions.

A fighter is consistent damage, consistent AC, consistent HP... consistency.

Comparing who is a better tank or striker is silly.

Is the paladin as a class better written, yes.

Does the fighter perform consistently, yes.

Each class has it short comings. Paladins have oaths that must be fulfilled and can lead to your death.

Is the paladin a better class than the fighter, on average I would say yes, overall.



But a fighter strength is that it can multiclass easily without worrying his attack stat and con.

16/13/16/8/13/8 is very obtainable for 1st level, allowing the easy pick of 1 level of rogue for expertise in athletics and then snag shield master.

And with this build you can shove almost anyone and disarm almost anyone. No more shillelagh, its gone. Go grab another stick.

At level 17, fighter with just 1 level of rogue has +17 to prone someone or disarm them, on a natural 20, that's +37.

Cantrips are good, until you find at higher levels everything is resistant or immune to fire and lightning

A champion is best played sword and board with 1 level of rogue and shield master and a rapier for defensive duelist

Paladin has much more powerful multi-classing with just the warlock and sorcerer. A paladin can fill a fighters roll without the fighter being able to fill a paladins roll.

[djreynolds]

Paladin has much more powerful multi-classing with just the warlock and sorcerer. A paladin can fill a fighters roll without the fighter being able to fill a paladins roll.

What role is that? A paladin IMO isn't a tank, he/she is a leader with an "Oath".

That Oath means... no retreat no surrender at times. It might means doing something tactically un-wise, like running off to fight the most dangerous creature.

A fighter, and I loath the class because it poorly written, the fighter didn't write his own stuff.

I'm trying to tell you to play a fighter well do this or that. I'm not selling you on which class is better.

Anybody who has common sense can see the paladin is stacked.

Any monkey can play a paladin well, mechanically. Its very easy

If you wish to combine a bard and paladin and warlock and sorcerer, go ahead.

It is a very powerful class. All I see in the AL are halberd wielding paladins.

But really the difference between the two classes in play isn't much, I mean the paladin might average over the course of the day, 75-100 more HP in damage output in a day over a fighter.

Its not the fighter's fault it is the games designers, the classes are not equal and never have been. Look at 1st ED, look at the stats you needed just to roll to play one.

And now really look at survivability at early levels, a fighter has a 18 strength at 4th, a 20 at 6th, and a feat at 8th. How really high are spell DCs that a fighter cannot make them during these levels? And how many players in the party can fix this.

I have said it before, if you want to play a grunt... play a fighter

If you want to play a jet pilot with all the bells and whistles... play a paladin

Don't knock the fighter, knock the designers

But my 19th level champion/ 1 rogue survived, its was a nasty half-orc with expertise in athletics, defensive duelist, survivor, a huge AC, the lucky feat, resilient wisdom, a sun sword, shield master, and mage slayer, and 20 strength and 16 con. 7ASI, and usually 3 attacks with advantage and a cleric and wizard fixing him when he needed it. He never died. All the paladins did, they got greedy and blew all their resources early and valiantly.

[Specter]

Paladin has much more powerful multi-classing with just the warlock and sorcerer. A paladin can fill a fighters roll without the fighter being able to fill a paladins roll.

Better multiclass, huh? Well, I object on grounds of every class benefitting from (at least) 2 Fighter levels. And on grounds of the first paladin level being absolute garbage that people endure just to get to the second.

And paladins can fill some combat roles, Fighters can fill all of them. Fighters can do melee, do ranged, nova, do single-targets, do hordes, control, tank and sponge damage.

[joaber]

last week I did many DPR calculations, easier thanks LudicSavant Calculator, comparing optimized builds lvl 20. I was making an avg of DPR in all day, counting 6 combat encounters day, 2 short rest, 4 rounds per encounter, some reaction and advantage probability. Agaist a 18 AC (I think is avg for that lvl)

damage of pali only really increses after lvl 11 if he burn all spellslots to smite (keep lvl 5 to 24h hunter's mark, if don't lose concentration), smite is after hit (with chance to crit), this make good difference in the end. The Soul of Vegeance make difference too 3 encounters day.
battlemaster get more uses of superiority dices (now d12), action surge + 1 attack.
GWM is obvious, Polearm master show more efficiency than greatsword, because of always get a bonus action attack + reaction chance. I even tried use magic initiate+warcaster+spell sniper to reation with booming blade + 1 hex/day. As a v human + 6 ASI.
ripose gives you one more attack turn
precision strike change a miss to a hit
trip attack gives you about 50% chance to have advantage in all attacks that turn (+8 if used in first attack with action surge).
Frenzy barbarian get a real boost with retaliation.
rogue, monk, PHB ranger didn't get much chance agains't those 3.

In the end, there isn't a big difference about DPR for those, when we checked the most optimized DPR build. Of course that the avg AC, encounters, rounds, reaction and adv probability can be completly different in your table. And probably you'll not make a build only for his DPR, you'll choose totem barb instead of frenzy, keep paladin's spell slots for spells and will not spend 3 feats to a battlemaster just to use booming blade as AoO + 1 hex.

But, in fact, none of those was the DPR champion. The DPR champion was....

Sorclock, with hex spend almost all lvl 1 to 4 slots to convert in SP and quick EB with hex, using the 6 to 9 slots too.

I didn't tried other multiclasses.

[LudicSavant]

The paladin IMO and the fighter have different roles in the party. I think it's very important to keep in mind that your role isn't determined just by your class, it's determined by your build. The role of a Sharpshooter and a Shield Master are quite different, for example.

I would strongly caution against role dogmatism: The assumption that a given class must fit inside a particular box.


A paladin IMO isn't a tank

On the contrary, a paladin can tank quite effectively when built to do so.

[Jarlhen]

What do you guys think of the sharpshooter UA archetype?

[Specter]

What do you guys think of the sharpshooter UA archetype?

If no multiclassing or feats are allowed it's the most consistent archer you'll find. Otherwise I'd go for Rogue 5/Fighter 15 with Sharpshooter.

[mgshamster]

According to Kryx's DPR Sheet, a GWM fighter* has the second highest kills per round (KPR) in the game, at 31.6%. The only class that beats it is the GWM Frenzy Barb at 32.6% (or the GWM PM Frenzy Barb at 32.9%). Comparably, the GWM PM OoV paladin (which is the highest damaging paladin there is) is doing 24.3% KPR.

KPR is defined as damage as a percent of monsters CR equivalent HP, across all levels, across the entire adventuring day. The link below has individual levels broken down.

So regardless of any builds in this thread, the paladin is not doing more damage over an adventuring day than the fighter, as reflective of the average CR equivalent monster HP.

*Oddly, the GWM PM fighter is reduced, having a KPR of 31.5%.

link (https://goo.gl/o8yKNV)

Fighters be solid in 5e, yo.

And the Champ is still the best.

[LudicSavant]

According to Kryx's DPR Sheet, a GWM fighter* has the second highest kills per round (KPR) in the game, at 31.6%. The only class that beats it is the GWM Frenzy Barb at 32.6% (or the GWM PM Frenzy Barb at 32.9%). Comparably, the GWM PM OoV paladin (which is the highest damaging paladin there is) is doing 24.3% KPR.

KPR is defined as damage as a percent of monsters CR equivalent HP, across all levels, across the entire adventuring day. The link below has individual levels broken down.

So regardless of any builds in this thread, the paladin is not doing more damage over an adventuring day than the fighter, as reflective of the average CR equivalent monster HP.

Kryx's spreadsheet appears to be missing many of the relevant variables necessary to determine the amount of damage contributed over an adventuring day. In which case, your conclusion would not follow from your premise.

That's not to say that Kryx's spreadsheet isn't a lovely resource. However, it is not nearly as complete as you are making it out to be. Moreover, it is naive to simply compare mean KPR (in reality, KPR varies a great deal by level, with different classes and builds having peaks and valleys over their lifetimes)

[mgshamster]

Kryx's spreadsheet appears to be missing many of the relevant variables necessary to determine the amount of damage contributed over an adventuring day. In which case, your conclusion would not follow from your premise.

If it appears that way, then you're just missing them. They're there.

Granted, one of my biggest complaints with his sheet is that it's difficult to parse. It took me a long time to understand what he wrote, and a lot of PMs with him asking for clarification.

But it's all there. It just ain't easy to see.

[LudicSavant]

If it appears that way, then you're just missing them. They're there.

I see no attempt to account for contributions from things like Bless. Or cover the KPR of casters in general. Or account for minions. Or really any of the things that are going on with characters more complex than a Champion in an real game.

[mgshamster]

{scrubbed}

[LudicSavant]

{scrubbed}

No, I'm saying that you're acting like it accounts for every variable, when it clearly does not.

[mgshamster]

{scrubbed}

[LudicSavant]

{scrubbed}

A rather transparent attempt to deflect to personal attacks. My point is that your conclusion does not follow from your premises.


So regardless of any builds in this thread, the paladin is not doing more damage over an adventuring day than the fighter, as reflective of the average CR equivalent monster HP.

In order for your conclusion to follow from your premises, Kryx's spreadsheet would have to account for all variables. It does not, ergo your conclusion does not follow from your premises.


{scrubbed}

I have been building on his work, actually. I even provided examples of cases where classes get higher DPR than in his sheet. You dismissed all of said work by saying that "regardless of all builds, fighter is better, because Kryx's sheet." But Kryx's sheet does not include all builds. It doesn't even include all of the tools of the builds it does include.

[mgshamster]

{scrubbed}

[LudicSavant]

{scrubbed} I already provided examples of builds that exceed Kryx's numbers, actually.


{scrubbed} No, as I have clearly stated, I'm saying that you're wrong because your conclusion does not follow from your premises.

You "calling me out" is irrelevant to the discussion. (https://www.google.com/search?q=ad+hominem+tu+quorque&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

[mgshamster]

I already provided examples of builds that exceed Kryx's numbers, actually.

No, you didn't. A single DPR calc using one time resources on a single basis without taking into account the adventuring day, number of encounters on average, short rests, and encounter CR equivalent HP does not make a proper DPR calculation.

That is by no means, in any definition anywhere, a superior calculation.

{scrubbed}

[LudicSavant]

*snip*

Mghamster, I have been doing my very best to attempt to discuss with you to achieve the most accurate results, such as by noting that there are additional variables you could account for.

This only seems to have led to a continuous stream of accusations and personal attacks from you, rather than discussing the topic at hand. I really don't know what you want.

[djreynolds]

There is a romantic view of the fighter. It is my favorite class to play since dwarves, Halflings, and elves were classes, but in 5E I feel the paladin is written so well, it is cool and unique and perhaps a tad overpowered. And that's okay

The 5E fighter needs some more flavor to it, IMO

But what most forum members must understand is I never rolled well enough to play a paladin or ranger in 1E. So I played the fighter who's only requirement was a 9 in strength.

I have played all the classes.

If you want to play a warrior with a sword or bow and strength of arms and wit and grit, no gods, no oath, just you

If you want the best all around melee combatant... it quite possible that it is the paladin class.

If playing a beastmaster calls to you... play one.

But the fighter is still a competitive class, and in the right hands is very good.

I appreciate LudicSavant's stance and it makes for great debate

[mgshamster]

{scrubbed}

[Sabeta]

Perfect balance is unattainable. Plain and simple. In fact, I'm not sure why people care quite so much about it in 5th Edition given that 5E is probably the most balanced the game has ever been, and at the very least it's light years ahead of the cobbled together Tiering system that 3.5 demanded.

From what I've gathered so far, the crux of everyone's arguments is this:

We all acknowledge the Fighter is a capable, if not stale combatant. The problem lies in that the Fighter ends his role there, while almost every other class has ribbons and utilities outside of combat that help round them out and stand above the crowd. I disagree with this sentiment. Battlemaster turns Fighter into a reasonable controller with extra damage to boot, and Eldritch Knight gives you a few good utility skills and teleporting weapons, which is always cool.

As Mghamster pointed out: Fighters are extremely capable with their DPR, and their KPR isn't a slouch either. They're very good combatant classes, and that's the niche they choose to fill. They have combat-related support options. In other words, they're perfectly fine as is. Maybe a ribbon or two to make them a little more exciting, but they do what they do well and that's that. {scrubbed}

[LudicSavant]

More deflection. I feel I have already addressed every on-topic claim you have made.

[Sabeta]

I feel I have already addressed every on-topic claim you have made.

You have not. You two have been slinging insults at each other for an entire page, without really saying anything of value.

[Anderlith]

Ah. I see we continue along the lines of trying to shame others rather than you actually doing the math. More deflection.

See, here's the deal. I recognize bullies when I see one, and you, sir, have been a bully in this thread. And I try to hit them with the exact same Medicine they're dosing out.

So if you don't like how you're being treated, then I suggest you take a good long hard look in the mirror.

Not just this thread, either.

So how about we discuss what archetypes do you think could be added to the fighter chassis to help give it more Three Pillars support?
I think it would be nice to see a jungle explorer type. Not so much a rogue archeologist like Dr. Jones but more like Clayton or Allan Quartermaine. Someone who still resolves stuff with mostly brute force but has a bit of knowledge & daring, & some trap skill.
Or a bodyguard, someone good at protecting others & seeing through social situations, maybe even illusions/compulsion.
Just my two copper to maybe stop giving attention to trolls

[LudicSavant]

You have not.

Oh? Which point did I not address?

{scrubbed}

[Sabeta]

{scrubbed}

[djreynolds]

Not just this thread, either.

So how about we discuss what archetypes do you think could be added to the fighter chassis to help give it more Three Pillars support?
I think it would be nice to see a jungle explorer type. Not so much a rogue archeologist like Dr. Jones but more like Clayton or Allan Quartermaine. Someone who still resolves stuff with mostly brute force but has a bit of knowledge & daring, & some trap skill.
Or a bodyguard, someone good at protecting others & seeing through social situations, maybe even illusions/compulsion.
Just my two copper to maybe stop giving attention to trolls

I got another thread on it, I had when a champion crits, he and teammates get temp hp to share... but if he rolls a 1, they lose those temp hp and some of the teams max hp till also either the champ crits again or a long rest.

I would also like grit points, 1 a level and you can use them to add to rolls and saves for all fighters

I would like it if you under fear and you have an action surge... you can attack that source of the fear and that source has disadvantage on its concentration checks... fight or flight

[LudicSavant]

But the fighter is still a competitive class, and in the right hands is very good. Agreed.


I appreciate LudicSavant's stance and it makes for great debate
Thanks, I appreciate yours as well.

[Anderlith]

I got another thread on it, I had when a champion crits, he and teammates get temp hp to share... but if he rolls a 1, they lose those temp hp and some of the teams max hp till also either the champ crits again or a long rest.

I would also like grit points, 1 a level and you can use them to add to rolls and saves for all fighters

I would like it if you under fear and you have an action surge... you can attack that source of the fear and that source has disadvantage on its concentration checks... fight or flight

I didn't mean adding more to the fighter chassis. But adding archtypes that would favor some other modes of play. Like the thief vs the assassin, one is more RP & situational & one is more combat, etc

[djreynolds]

I didn't mean adding more to the fighter chassis. But adding archtypes that would favor some other modes of play. Like the thief vs the assassin, one is more RP & situational & one is more combat, etc

Not to get off the thread, but I like all the rogues. The thief has some crazy uses, very out of the box.

I would like something more defined when it comes to surprise rounds.

The fighter just needs a little more.

When you read the write up for a paladin of vengeance, for me, its just comes off the page.

I think a champion could use something like that, I see "Casey at Bat" kind of stuff.

[mgshamster]

Not just this thread, either.

So how about we discuss what archetypes do you think could be added to the fighter chassis to help give it more Three Pillars support?
I think it would be nice to see a jungle explorer type. Not so much a rogue archeologist like Dr. Jones but more like Clayton or Allan Quartermaine. Someone who still resolves stuff with mostly brute force but has a bit of knowledge & daring, & some trap skill.
Or a bodyguard, someone good at protecting others & seeing through social situations, maybe even illusions/compulsion.
Just my two copper to maybe stop giving attention to trolls

I feel these can be addressed through background and skills, rather than an archetype.

That's part of the beauty of 5e - the other pillars can be obtained through aspects of character creation beyond the class.

However, I do like the ideas. Especially the jungle explorer.

The jungle explorer would have the outlander background with thieves tools for traps. Then give him knowledge skills.

The bodyguard would have the protection fighting style, a feat to boost wisdom saves (for the seeing through illusions), and a good insight.

[Specter]

Not just this thread, either.

So how about we discuss what archetypes do you think could be added to the fighter chassis to help give it more Three Pillars support?
I think it would be nice to see a jungle explorer type. Not so much a rogue archeologist like Dr. Jones but more like Clayton or Allan Quartermaine. Someone who still resolves stuff with mostly brute force but has a bit of knowledge & daring, & some trap skill.
Or a bodyguard, someone good at protecting others & seeing through social situations, maybe even illusions/compulsion.
Just my two copper to maybe stop giving attention to trolls

The Scout archetype from UA did the wild thing rather well. If you added some rogue or ranger to it, it's as good as exploration as it gets.

The Monster Hunter could be good at many skills with those extra proficiencies. I just wish they had gotten rid of that lazy superiority mechanic, and tried to do permanent (and original) boosts.

[Addaran]

Not just this thread, either.

So how about we discuss what archetypes do you think could be added to the fighter chassis to help give it more Three Pillars support?
I think it would be nice to see a jungle explorer type. Not so much a rogue archeologist like Dr. Jones but more like Clayton or Allan Quartermaine. Someone who still resolves stuff with mostly brute force but has a bit of knowledge & daring, & some trap skill.
Or a bodyguard, someone good at protecting others & seeing through social situations, maybe even illusions/compulsion.
Just my two copper to maybe stop giving attention to trolls

I feel the Scout and the Monster Hunter archetype are the best all-around ones (aside from EK).

EK already add utility and magic to your strong mundane combat role.

Scout and Monster Hunter both gets more skills (2-3) that will help a lot for exploration or social. Then they have some utility abilitie (ranger vs a few magic stuff) Their maneuvers' options are both less then the Battlemaster, but thanks to fighter's extra feat, they can pick the one that add two maneuver and one dice. So in the end, you have the two best maneuvers for your character, the others the BM gets would just be a bonus.

edit: Pseudo shadow-monk'ed D: but unlike Specter i like the superiority mechanic, since it synergies so well with the feat.

[Dr.Samurai]

Do I consider the fighter bad? I don't think so. But... the fighter was one of my favorite classes in 3rd edition, when it was probably maligned the most. And that was mostly because of the idea of customization, and not having set class features that I may or may not want or may or may not fit my character concept. The idea of it in my mind was great, even if the fighter may have failed in-game.

In 4th edition the fighter was once again my favorite class, and this time was pretty boss.

Now in 5th edition, I don't know, I haven't really been interested in playing the fighter. It seems... boring. I don't think it has much to do with out of combat ability or utility, which is not to say it doesn't need help there. But I think it is more about what I can do in combat. As someone that likes the fighter archetype (meaning, the armored warrior that doesn't use magic), I don't normally go for magic users. But the champion's abilities are all passive, and I think it was a mistake to limit maneuvers to an archetype (and restrict their usage with superiority dice, but that's more personal, I'm bad with resource management).

All this is to say that this is the first edition where "gish" type characters seemed appealing. My first fighter was an eldritch knight, and it was fun to play. And I think the warlock is probably my favorite class, and I think that's again due to customization (choose a patron, choose a pact, choose spells, choose invocations). I'm playing a fighter now, and I'm hoping it will be interesting in combat.

Wow this is just endless. Weren't you just complaining about people not dropping this issue a few pages ago?
Specifically, I was telling you to drop your hounding of Cantig.

And we did
Who is the "we" here? Who are you speaking for? Cantig had already dropped it before I posted.

but you've been carrying it on for 4 more pages
You're complaining that the thread advanced a couple pages before Sharkforce quoted me, and then a couple more pages before I responded? Interesting point... I guess.

and the rabid personal attacks are getting harder and harder to ignore.
Please point to the "rabid personal attacks" that hurt your feelings...

Observing what bothers me about the way you post is not a personal attack, and I was perfectly quite lucid when I did it.

That you didn't want to respond to my post before last, but are having trouble ignoring me now is not my problem. I suggest you put me on an ignore list if that's the case.

Sharkforce has made it very clear that Cantig was not, in fact, addressing his actual position when responding to his quote.
Sharkforce made it clear what his meaning was. (Though note that instead of saying "utility" in his response to me he says "value", which is an important difference because Cantig wasn't arguing whether fighter's have any value at all. Notice how I didn't leap all over it because in the greater scheme of things, it isn't really important.) His clarification means nothing after the fact and now that Cantig has already backed out of the conversation though.

A misinterpretation of Sharforce's point doesn't take away from what Cantig was saying. And it doesn't mean it was a straw man. And he is still making an interesting point that may be true or false.

In this case, the difference between meaning and interpretation is arguably very small. Whether fighters have the least utility of all classes, or actually no utility at all, they have spare feats that can give them utility. Argue that point Ludic, because that's the point Cantig was making. Don't mangle what someone is trying to say until you think you can peg them with a logical fallacy, when they didn't even quote anyone directly.

The accurate term for that is a straw man argument.
For such a stickler for definitions, this doesn't necessarily follow from your previous sentence.

That's the end of it.
We shall see.

Now I suggest you follow your own advice.
I probably should. I'm pretty smart...

[Chaosmancer]

Since this thread has moved to archetypes, let's not forget the new UA

Assuming they get cleaned up, Clayton could be done well with the sharpshooter (he was mainly a gunman), which gives extra skills and the bonus action search.

Samurai makes a great "General" build, with their bonuses to charisma skills in high society and the extra skills necessary to pull it off.


To talk a little about combat. I don't think people question that fighters deal excellent single target damage, but they don't have reliable ways to deal with multiple strong opponents and i think that hurts them, since a lot of other classes do have some way of dealing with that.

I'll never say they are bad (my current half orc samurai is awesome) but you can blow through all your resources in a fight and then you're needing that rest, because especially at lower levels second wind is a god send and action surge feels almost necessary

Of course, that dm likes outnumbering us 5 to 1 and ramping up the difficulty, which may also have something to do with it

[Sigreid]

To talk a little about combat. I don't think people question that fighters deal excellent single target damage, but they don't have reliable ways to deal with multiple strong opponents and i think that hurts them, since a lot of other classes do have some way of dealing with that.



This part kind of confuses me. Except for the ranger who has a few hit everybody abilities that seem mostly for thinning out mooks, I don't see any of the primarily martial classes being able to do anything about multiple powerful opponents but focus them down one at a time.

[Specter]

Do I consider the fighter bad? I don't think so. But... the fighter was one of my favorite classes in 3rd edition, when it was probably maligned the most. And that was mostly because of the idea of customization, and not having set class features that I may or may not want or may or may not fit my character concept. The idea of it in my mind was great, even if the fighter may have failed in-game.

3.5 allowed for more customization, but it was mostly pointless optimization. You could spend 8 feats learning to grapple well, and still be worse than the Druid's pet snake. The game was completely stacked against non-magic classes, so that the only real thing that could be done was follow very strict and multiclass-heavy builds that would let you do great damage (like that whole Leap Attack thing). Choices felt pointless, because if you didn't follow the best or started off with some average feats, you were compromised. I definitely don't miss those days.

Now the fighter's choices are streamlined, but effective. All choices are doable, even TWF which is generally considered the worst. Each fighting style leads to some feat choices that let you specialize a bit more.

Archery? You can take Sharpshooter or Crossbow Expert, or both.

Dual-wielding? You can take Dual Wielder. Or maybe even Mobile to attack a bunch of guys and evade yourself.

Heavy weapons? You can take Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master to rack up damage, or be more of a controller guy with Sentinel.

Shields? Shield Master for tactical tripping, or just Tough to take more of a beating. Etc.

At low levels, you're already doing what you want to be doing.


To talk a little about combat. I don't think people question that fighters deal excellent single target damage, but they don't have reliable ways to deal with multiple strong opponents and i think that hurts them, since a lot of other classes do have some way of dealing with that.

I disagree. Of the Fighting Style classes, Rangers are the best against hordes, and Paladin is the best against a boss, in general. Fighter takes a middle ground where they can shift gears and adjust to what comes. Their bigger number of attacks at higher levels and short-rest tools are good for both scenarios, just not as good as pallys and rangers are at their niches.

[mephnick]

I'm fine with Fighters the way they are. People just need to be willing to take feats that round you out (Magic Initiate, Dungeon Delver, Ritual Caster etc) with their extra feat choices rather than mindless adding another +2 Strength.

[Haruki-kun]

The Winged Mod: Locked for review.