D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Not to start a fight, because I do agree that fighters have been given the short end of the stick from time to time, but I hear this argument all the time and I have to ask, can you think of any stories in which the guy with the big sword manages to keep pace with the mages without a) Having magic himself or b) Having "magic" items that otherwise provide him with super-normal abilities?

Of the top of my head I can't think of any. Sure I can think of stories where the fighter and the wizard were on the same side and adventured together, and within the framework of the story, they were roughly equal, but even then it seems clear that the fighter would be outmatched in a straight one on one.

Well, there are two different aspects to this. The first is people who survived without any external help. Realistic heroes like Conan, Aragorn, and the like often had special items, but needed them only for specific purposes, and their items were usually interchangeable; Aragorn picked up a ghost touch longsword when dealing with ghosts, but he didn't need that specific sword to be a good warrior. Mythological heroes like Beowulf, Odysseus, and the like were just stronger, faster, smarter, and better than normal people; they didn't go up against the equivalent of high-level D&D casters, but they (A) broke the laws of physics to a greater or lesser extent and (B) went up against mid-level threats like Circe, the dragon, and so on. There's no reason that those kinds of fighters can't be extended to high levels with the same theme and justifications.

The second aspect is fighters who relied on an item, rather than items, plural. King Arthur and Excalibur, Marvel's Thor and Mjolnir, Cu Chulainn and Gae Bolg--all of those have one iconic, named item that grants them special power, but (A) they're already exceptional in their own right and (B) they're the only ones who can use the item or the ones who can use it best. Take away their special items and they lose some nifty benefits, but they can survive and thrive without them. Giving fighters signature magic items to expand their capabilities wouldn't be a bad thing, as long as they're plenty capable without it.

The fighter isn't either of those. Take a fighter and remove all of his items once he hits mid levels, and he can't compete against things that a normal (if very skilled) human can't deal with. Take all of those items and give them to a commoner, and he can use them just as well as the fighter can. There is certainly a space in the narrative for the guy who can't compete in a fair fight without fancy items, but that guy either is defined by his signature items (e.g. Iron Man) or doesn't get into fair fights in the first place (e.g. a rogue), neither of which is what the fighter is "supposed" to be.

4e tried really hard to make this work, but I have to agree with the two criticisms that it spawned. 1) That magic didn't feel magical anymore and 2) That all the classes felt very very similar in play.

It's possible to give the fighter Nice Things without bringing the casters down to his level and/or making everything feel same-y. Witness 3e's Tier 3 class variety and 4e's Essentials: both allowed for mechanical variety (the Tier 3's much more than Essentials, obviously) while still feeling different and both being interesting.

I also find the argument that fighters shouldn't have to rely on magic items interesting given that (at least pre-3.x) mages relied on magic items as well. Specifically their spell books but also spell components, without which a mage was powerless after they spent their spells.

The spellbook is the iconic item, akin to the signature sword, which none of the other casters need, and indeed the wizard can master any old spellbook to cast from, it just might not have the same spells. The spell components weren't magic items in the D&D sense of the word; they could use any old items for spells, and in fact wizards scrabbling around for reagents after theirs were stolen is a common stereotype of older editions. That's more the equivalent of a fighter who just needs to have some weapon to pull his weight, whether a longsword or a branch snapped off a tree. To get a wizard as item-reliant as a fighter, think of a UMD rogue who's outfitted with wands and scrolls--he's got all the magic of a "real" wizard, given enough cash, but none of it is him doing the actual magic and he's useless without his stuff.

I'm referring to "player fiat" as anything that allows a player to dictate what occurs in the game world without asking permission. It could be a spell or maneuver or anything else; I honestly don't think spells are considerably different from fate points, action points or anything else in this regard when we're talking about the gameplay elements involved.

Well, again, I think it's important to differentiate between players using the rules framework and players dictating outcomes, just like there's a difference between a DM giving his NPC fighter a magic sword and a DM dictating that his fighter will hit 90% of the time, but if by player fiat you're just referring to codifying rules so that the fighter doesn't have to rely on the DM's favor, then I'm all for that.

The factotum is an example of how this doesn't work. Improvising is 100% RP base. Its not always available. You can't quantify "Improvisation". The factotum is truly a pathetic example of mechanizing things like insight.

Now this is an example of the fiat problem I was talking about. Improvising in an RPG doesn't work like improvising in a book. In a book, if the protagonist needs an avalanche there are convenient boulders nearby, if he needs to improvise a bomb from common materials they're there and the process of doing so can be handwaved, and so on. Improvisation shouldn't be the basis of a single class, but it should be codified mechanically, whether in-game (DC X check to make a bomb) or metagame (spend a plot point, oh look, boulders!) because the environment won't always have the perfect tools for improvising and DM fiat can vary in effectiveness.

This is true to some extent; Fighters will need something "fancy" to compete with other concepts when those other concepts are truly powerful. But although I like the idea of high-level Fighters getting appropriate "fancy" abilities, I like even better the idea of some non-"fancy" abilities still being powerful. The Warblade and the 4e Fighter are good models of how, although the Fighter probably can't compete at epic levels without some kind of ususual power source, he can get past the low levels and still be awesome without needing anything other than pure martial skill.

The fighter doesn't need a very fancy concept, necessarily, it just has to be something broader and more evocative than "guy who uses a sword." Fighters have "guy with sword" and "fighting style guy" and they get things like the very blah Weapon Supremacy; barbarians have "stronger than mere mortals" and "too stubborn to die" and they get things like the superhuman Frenzied Berserker. The warblade has a bit of the barbarian's schtick (Tiger Claw) and a bit of "impossibly fast and precise" (Diamond Mind and Iron Heart) as far as combat skill goes, with a bit of the Sublime Way "special fancy training" stuff that all the martial adepts have thanks to his maneuver and class features; his concept encompasses "weapons guy" but isn't limited by it.

Of course, special abilities and context define the class as much as the other way around; the warblade and the fighter have the same basic flavor, but the fighter is held back by the inertia of his only special abilities having been weapon-focused while the warblade was free to try new things. The 4e fighter is only epically skilled because 4e drops the ceiling of what "epic" means fairly low: the 29th level fighter powers in the PHB are all basically the stuff you've been doing for the past ten levels, but with more damage and a few minor perks, while the casters have been brought down so that they're within the fighter's reach. 7[W] or +100 damage from the 4e fighter or the warblade let you kill things better, but they aren't anything new and different and they aren't what the fighter needs.

This isn't even remotely true. There are a whole host of RPGs where the math is sufficiently minimal for this to not be an issue (Wushu, Risus, some Fudge builds) and others where there is essentially no math at all (Fiasco, Microscope). The statement applies to all long form traditional RPGs, but that's about the only category where it does so.

You're right, my bad. I should have said to get into the rules-heavy games I'd mentioned generally requires that you like and be good at math, so 3e is no worse than AD&D in that respect. Though I haven't ever met anyone that got into gaming via rules-light/math-light games like the ones you mentioned, I've only seen people who got in via the big-name games and migrated to the more niche ones thereafter; do you know how common it is, if at all, for people to be exposed to RPGing by games like those?