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*Dungeons & Dragons
The Fighter/Martial Problem (In Depth Ponderings)
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<blockquote data-quote="Trasvi" data-source="post: 9209441" data-attributes="member: 7023211"><p>Right, now we get to the meat of it. If that's your frame of reference, I mostly agree. I just think that's bad.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I'd say that STR builds are <em>presented</em> as something that is viable, but through a confluence of non obvious mechanics it turns out to be a subpar choice. The text of the rules says its encouraging you to play a STR build, but the emergent gameplay is that STR is worse than other options. Fighter is presented alongside wizard in a way that the text says they are considered equal, but through gameplay, especially high level gameplay, that turns out to not be true. A game could present these differently: plenty of video games will have a "difficulty" or "power" score on the character rules to let you know that it's not for beginners.</p><p>I don't think it's easy to tell from the main rules text STR is discouraged. There are 3 books in the core rules, and subtle changes to any one of those books could make a melee str build better than casters. If you change the way that short rests occur, or (as discussed ad nauseum) how magic items are distributed, fighter stocks might shoot up. You could leave all the core rules the same and change only the monster manual and completely upend class balance. It's not a players fault if they're not aware of these things.</p><p></p><p></p><p>And so I would say again: that's a core flaw in the design of 5e, a better game would not be that way. Not everyone has terminally online grognards as part of their player group to tell them what pitfalls to avoid - and a lot of terminally online grognards will deny those pitfalls exist. Some groups just stumble in to them and only realise once they're having problems, and to me that's something that is worth fixing.</p><p></p><p>If I were on the design team, I'd be giving explicit mechanical advantages and extra abilities to str/melee classes to bridge the problem: making the risk worth the reward.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Trasvi, post: 9209441, member: 7023211"] Right, now we get to the meat of it. If that's your frame of reference, I mostly agree. I just think that's bad. I'd say that STR builds are [I]presented[/I] as something that is viable, but through a confluence of non obvious mechanics it turns out to be a subpar choice. The text of the rules says its encouraging you to play a STR build, but the emergent gameplay is that STR is worse than other options. Fighter is presented alongside wizard in a way that the text says they are considered equal, but through gameplay, especially high level gameplay, that turns out to not be true. A game could present these differently: plenty of video games will have a "difficulty" or "power" score on the character rules to let you know that it's not for beginners. I don't think it's easy to tell from the main rules text STR is discouraged. There are 3 books in the core rules, and subtle changes to any one of those books could make a melee str build better than casters. If you change the way that short rests occur, or (as discussed ad nauseum) how magic items are distributed, fighter stocks might shoot up. You could leave all the core rules the same and change only the monster manual and completely upend class balance. It's not a players fault if they're not aware of these things. And so I would say again: that's a core flaw in the design of 5e, a better game would not be that way. Not everyone has terminally online grognards as part of their player group to tell them what pitfalls to avoid - and a lot of terminally online grognards will deny those pitfalls exist. Some groups just stumble in to them and only realise once they're having problems, and to me that's something that is worth fixing. If I were on the design team, I'd be giving explicit mechanical advantages and extra abilities to str/melee classes to bridge the problem: making the risk worth the reward. [/QUOTE]
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