I absolutely adore this class, its humble and simple n the surface but its so versatile it's absolutely amazing what you can do with a fighter, they are tireless and sturdy and sometimes get overlooked by the foe because they are not the wizard or paladin, but any adventuring party worth their salt is happy to have him along. I'm playing a dragonborn fighter battle master in a game, we are at 7th. I am a wall of hit points and very high armor and very few things scare my character in a fight. Anyone else in my party gets surrounded by 3 or 4 foes at once and they are in serious trouble, I just laugh and get to work. I'm building him to be strong at single target lock down with his maneuvers, with things like trip and menacing attack, but I have a fair bit of mobility as well with maneuvering attack and fleet footed so its very hard to lock me or my companions down. I'm the party shield and sword and don't take kindly to some orc attacking my companions the cleric or sorcerer. :) Looking forward to your analysis of one of my favorite classes, be interesting to see how you rate the battle master my personal favorite fighting archetype who even have a feat tailor made for them who else can say that!. :)
My DM gave me boots that let me Jedi jump my full movement, I also had a sunlight blade at the time. So we get into it with a bunch of were-rats, our npc decided to charge in stupidly to a group of six of them. He almost goes down, in one round. So my fighter jumped over the front line of rats kills two with both his attacks and then another with action surge. The leader swoops in and missed it's attack, My battle master promptly almost cuts it down with just the riposte and the bonus damage from that. Next turn I tanked all the hits, easily, passed all the con saves and Jedi jumped out after having secured agro long enough for the NPC to escape and let the paladin finish off the straglers. It was crazy fun.
My favorite fighter multiclass is the Champion into the Paladin. You end up getting three fighting styles which can give you Dueling, Protection, and Defense. You also get Better Critical range, as well as divine smite to load more damage onto your crits. You also end up having a really high AC. So you end up having a tank that can do shit loads of damage when that crit roles around.
bob patterson Nope. You get two fighting styles from being the fighter archetype called champion, and as a paladin you get a fighting style at level 2. :)
@UC6rOXz3mVZcFVTI1cZ5OQ-g here is the exact wording of it. Action Surge Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action. Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again. Starting at 17th level, you can use it twice before a rest, but only once on the same turn.
we know that is the updated one not the one from when it was released fist print the first print said Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action on top of your regular action and a possible bonus action 2014 print @@cerritus2171 they have changed it since then and I said I wish but I know they have reconed it
@@robertbeach71 not saying it doesn't. I'm in a server with a Homebrew rule that allows us to get to level 30 through multiclassing, I have a fighter/Barb that could do 314 damage with one turn and action surge
Great video; Fighters should be given more pizzaz. The one thing that holds them back is the sense that they're "bland" or "generic." I'm not saying that impression is accurate, but it's widely held even among long time RPers sort of subconsciously. (If asked they - we - will say "no, it doesn't have to be that way" but really they're thought of as "comparatively meh" in relation to other classes that seem to have more atmosphere and punch). (Recognizing of course that any character is what the player brings to it, but we're talking baseline here).
I think most of the 'pizzaz' that a fighter gets is from the extra ASIs & especially feats to really customize your character. The fighter's biggest strength is it's biggest weakness, flexibility. Because of this it's hard for it to have a core/class identity. The subclasses help a little but some are more based on culture (cavalier/samurai etc) and some are just plain underwhelming (champion & arcane Archer)
Fighter has always been a favorite for many reasons. Primarily is the freedom it gives to RP focus. The class is straightforward, leaving you - the player- to make it interesting for you, your party, and your DM. It’s also so versatile within and without of the class. 2 dips in/away from fighter give a lot of extra flavor. Want to be Darth Vader? Eldritch Knight + Bladesinger Wizard. Control Murder-Tank? Totem Barbarian + Battle-Master. Got a home brew game? Gunslinger Fighter + Hunter Ranger to be the Last of the Mohechians
Love me some fighters. PDK is an under-appreciated gem, basically sharing the goodness of the class with the party. With a PDK and another party member with Inspiring Leader, your group should stay pretty healthy. Then you still have the extra feats from being a fighter, to make sure you're kicking ass.
Fighters are as insanely variable as any other class when it comes to play style (especially the 'standard issue' "variant" Humans). Throw in Skilled and Lucky feats, and he's basically a less bitchy rogue or a better face than the bard and far less prone to Jester's Disease (That mental defect found in every bard that compels them to do insane shit that causes trouble the moment something isn't trying to kill them). Fighters can be mercs, soldiers, street & bar thugs, nobles, or even wilderness survivalists that never went crazy and started talking to animals.
Regarding the time it takes for a fighter to resolve their' attacks, a good tip I've found for speeding it up is to roll your attack d20 and your damage die at the same time; it's surprising how much time that saves.
Hey Drow are you familiar with Tapion from DBZ? He was a one shot char but he had a fantastic back story and, even better, he's very reminiscent of a bard. Take a look at him will ya? I think you could do a lot of crazy stuff with this theme
Playing a battle master in a game and he is a absolute beast in combat. I particularly like getting to size a foe up during the conversation so I can figure out how tough they are, you can learn their AC, if they have more HP than you at that moment, even if they seem stronger than you and others. It's awesome and can defiantly help in a pre battle plan. Plus those maneuvers are absolutely amazing and a blast to play with, working on building him to be very mobile himself and hard to pin down. But when it comes to fighting I can lock down the big threats and keep them away from the party and let my armor and hit points take the punishment for them. I think a fighter can look plain on the surface but they are very flexible and honestly if you get into it and have some fun with it they are a joy to play :)
Hey Bard, when you get to the Unconventional Fighter builds, here is what I use to make a mage slayer... Background: Knight of the Order Martial Archtype: Eldritch Knight Fighting Style: Protection Cantrip: Booming Blade, Green-Flame Blade, Lightning Lure, Poison Spray, Ray of Frost, Shocking Grasp 1st: Detect Magic, Earth Tremor, Identify, Thunderwave, Witch Bolt 2nd: Darkness, Melf's Acid Arrow, Mind Spike, Shatter 3rd: Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Haste 4th: Banishment, Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound Feats: Linguist, Mage Slayer, Magic Initiate, Martial Adept, Observant, Sentinel. Spell Sniper, War Caster (Note: I am using the Varient Human to get the maximum amount of feats possible)
@ Aaron Anderson I won't argue that shadow blade is an awesome spell, I prefer using it on my TR though since the image I have for my anti-mage is a sword & board, heavily armored knight type of character that lives by the "Fight fire with fire" philosophy. And yes I'm aware that I can get a similar result with a paladin, but they don't get access to core anti-magic spells such as counterspell for example.
Consider taking magic initiate to get hex. You get a splash of magical flavor you can tie to your backstory, hex damage applies on every hit, it can critical hit, and you can impose disadvantage on strength checks -- so your grapples and shoves get that much better
Made a reply to someone else about action surge went on sage advice instead doesn’t give you a extra bonus it’s just a reminder which I thought was stupid to put that In the text for phb.
Playing a fighter leaves all your emphasis on RP'ing yes you can use a sword but really only wants to crack skulls with a Quarterstaff or as amiss let weapon not a bow but darts with sharpshooter feat so range is not a problem or some such
1. Extra Feats/ASIs are not a good thing. You take the most useful one at 4th level, the 2nd most useful one at 6th, etc. That means that the extra two you get at the end are the worst ones for your build, because every single feat is available right from level 1. 2. Champion is not balanced. Even if a battlemaster blows all of his dice on the weakest maneuvers at random, they're still doing more damage than a Champion unless you're going through about 8 high threat encounters between every single short rest. Not 8 encounters per day, 8 boss in a row without any breaks. 3. Overall, the Fighter is one of the most mechanically weak classes in the game. They can do okay damage and have okay armor, but that's it. They have zero support for doing things outside of that, and features like Remarkable Athlete are just insulting.
So all that so called variation is just "the Fighter hits hard". Wow. Much depth, so skill. This is why I just don't like the Fighter. The plainest of plain janes.
Its what you make of it, depending on how you build them and how you play them in terms of RP is going to give you lots of deaph. On the surface yes they are straightforward which is not a weakness, it quick to learn and between the sub classes and feats, races, backgrounds you can have a very intriguing character on your hands and having all those extra ASI can lead to some cool choices and abilities for the fighter to have a cool array of abilities.
Actually, the fighter doesn't actually even hit hard. Barbarians while raging do 2 points more damage per attack. Paladins hit harder by using smites. Rogue hit wayyyy harder at higher levels. But yeah, the core of the Fighter class really just is, "I swing my sword a bunch of times."
@@Tiyev it depends on whether you want damage per attack or damage per round. The highest damage per attack actually comes from a *BARD* multiclass. If you are college of shadows14 and paladin 2 you can opt to use banishing smite on a maul with great weapon master (because who doesnt love a literal ban-hammer) while green-flame blading. You can smite on this hit, and also trigger psychic blades... leading to a singular attack of 5d10+8d8+10d6+15 without critting... and iirc all those numbers are effected by the crit multiplier. As for a fighter "falling behind" a rogue in damage per round, that is simply not the case either. Great weapon master provides tons of flat damage, and with action surge you get up to 9 attacks a round -- that is 90 damage just from great weapon master. A fighter can take magic initiate to get hex, and a flametongue greatsword to do 5d6 per swing (which crits for 10d6, the same damage bonus rogues get *once per round*). It is unlikely to get much more than one crit a round, even with action surge, but if you are a champion and you shove to ground? Hello damage potential.
![Quando Rondo - Life Goes On [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eIf3fhMXAow/mqdefault.jpg)
My first fighter was a champion sage. I explained the crit bonus as him studying the enemies to find their weak points.
I absolutely adore this class, its humble and simple n the surface but its so versatile it's absolutely amazing what you can do with a fighter, they are tireless and sturdy and sometimes get overlooked by the foe because they are not the wizard or paladin, but any adventuring party worth their salt is happy to have him along. I'm playing a dragonborn fighter battle master in a game, we are at 7th. I am a wall of hit points and very high armor and very few things scare my character in a fight. Anyone else in my party gets surrounded by 3 or 4 foes at once and they are in serious trouble, I just laugh and get to work. I'm building him to be strong at single target lock down with his maneuvers, with things like trip and menacing attack, but I have a fair bit of mobility as well with maneuvering attack and fleet footed so its very hard to lock me or my companions down. I'm the party shield and sword and don't take kindly to some orc attacking my companions the cleric or sorcerer. :)
Looking forward to your analysis of one of my favorite classes, be interesting to see how you rate the battle master my personal favorite fighting archetype who even have a feat tailor made for them who else can say that!. :)
My DM gave me boots that let me Jedi jump my full movement, I also had a sunlight blade at the time. So we get into it with a bunch of were-rats, our npc decided to charge in stupidly to a group of six of them. He almost goes down, in one round. So my fighter jumped over the front line of rats kills two with both his attacks and then another with action surge. The leader swoops in and missed it's attack, My battle master promptly almost cuts it down with just the riposte and the bonus damage from that. Next turn I tanked all the hits, easily, passed all the con saves and Jedi jumped out after having secured agro long enough for the NPC to escape and let the paladin finish off the straglers. It was crazy fun.
My favorite fighter multiclass is the Champion into the Paladin.
You end up getting three fighting styles which can give you Dueling, Protection, and Defense. You also get Better Critical range, as well as divine smite to load more damage onto your crits. You also end up having a really high AC. So you end up having a tank that can do shit loads of damage when that crit roles around.
bob patterson Nope. You get two fighting styles from being the fighter archetype called champion, and as a paladin you get a fighting style at level 2. :)
Verified with Sage Advice. And now something my paladin will do eventually.
bob patterson you should take like 14 levels of fighter and 8 levels of paladin.
Better improved crit and a second fighting style comes later
@@varasatoshi3961
That's 22 levels...
14+8=22
10:10 action surge doesn't give you a bonus action, it just gives an action.
I wish it did that would help out two weapon fighters a lot more
@UC6rOXz3mVZcFVTI1cZ5OQ-g here is the exact wording of it.
Action Surge
Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action.
Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again. Starting at 17th level, you can use it twice before a rest, but only once on the same turn.
we know that is the updated one not the one from when it was released fist print the first print said Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action on top of your regular action and a possible bonus action 2014 print
@@cerritus2171 they have changed it since then and I said I wish but I know they have reconed it
But with multi attack at 5 and 11 and 20, that extra action sure packs a punch.
@@robertbeach71 not saying it doesn't. I'm in a server with a Homebrew rule that allows us to get to level 30 through multiclassing, I have a fighter/Barb that could do 314 damage with one turn and action surge
Great video; Fighters should be given more pizzaz. The one thing that holds them back is the sense that they're "bland" or "generic."
I'm not saying that impression is accurate, but it's widely held even among long time RPers sort of subconsciously. (If asked they - we - will say "no, it doesn't have to be that way" but really they're thought of as "comparatively meh" in relation to other classes that seem to have more atmosphere and punch). (Recognizing of course that any character is what the player brings to it, but we're talking baseline here).
I think that's probably the best way of explaining it that I've heard.
I think most of the 'pizzaz' that a fighter gets is from the extra ASIs & especially feats to really customize your character.
The fighter's biggest strength is it's biggest weakness, flexibility. Because of this it's hard for it to have a core/class identity. The subclasses help a little but some are more based on culture (cavalier/samurai etc) and some are just plain underwhelming (champion & arcane Archer)
Fighter has always been a favorite for many reasons. Primarily is the freedom it gives to RP focus. The class is straightforward, leaving you - the player- to make it interesting for you, your party, and your DM. It’s also so versatile within and without of the class. 2 dips in/away from fighter give a lot of extra flavor. Want to be Darth Vader? Eldritch Knight + Bladesinger Wizard. Control Murder-Tank? Totem Barbarian + Battle-Master. Got a home brew game? Gunslinger Fighter + Hunter Ranger to be the Last of the Mohechians
Love me some fighters. PDK is an under-appreciated gem, basically sharing the goodness of the class with the party. With a PDK and another party member with Inspiring Leader, your group should stay pretty healthy. Then you still have the extra feats from being a fighter, to make sure you're kicking ass.
For those wondering: Hekatoncheires/Hecatoncheires (he-ka-TAHN-kay-res). Or as I like to call them: "holy-crap-thats-a-lot-of-hands!"
Yes, and that is why it is called that: hecaton = 100, and cheires = hands!!!!
Fighters are as insanely variable as any other class when it comes to play style (especially the 'standard issue' "variant" Humans). Throw in Skilled and Lucky feats, and he's basically a less bitchy rogue or a better face than the bard and far less prone to Jester's Disease (That mental defect found in every bard that compels them to do insane shit that causes trouble the moment something isn't trying to kill them). Fighters can be mercs, soldiers, street & bar thugs, nobles, or even wilderness survivalists that never went crazy and started talking to animals.
Regarding the time it takes for a fighter to resolve their' attacks, a good tip I've found for speeding it up is to roll your attack d20 and your damage die at the same time; it's surprising how much time that saves.
I hope your ranking video of the different fighters comes soon, I always try and guess your votes. There are a few I’d like your opinion on
Hey Drow are you familiar with Tapion from DBZ? He was a one shot char but he had a fantastic back story and, even better, he's very reminiscent of a bard. Take a look at him will ya? I think you could do a lot of crazy stuff with this theme
Ever thought of using graphics more often in the video. great video
I think Battlemaster gives a fighter a lot of options. Second Wind is really valuable and the bonus ability score increases are great
Playing a battle master in a game and he is a absolute beast in combat. I particularly like getting to size a foe up during the conversation so I can figure out how tough they are, you can learn their AC, if they have more HP than you at that moment, even if they seem stronger than you and others. It's awesome and can defiantly help in a pre battle plan. Plus those maneuvers are absolutely amazing and a blast to play with, working on building him to be very mobile himself and hard to pin down. But when it comes to fighting I can lock down the big threats and keep them away from the party and let my armor and hit points take the punishment for them. I think a fighter can look plain on the surface but they are very flexible and honestly if you get into it and have some fun with it they are a joy to play :)
Hey Bard, when you get to the Unconventional Fighter builds, here is what I use to make a mage slayer...
Background: Knight of the Order
Martial Archtype: Eldritch Knight
Fighting Style: Protection
Cantrip: Booming Blade, Green-Flame Blade, Lightning Lure, Poison Spray, Ray of Frost, Shocking Grasp
1st: Detect Magic, Earth Tremor, Identify, Thunderwave, Witch Bolt
2nd: Darkness, Melf's Acid Arrow, Mind Spike, Shatter
3rd: Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Haste
4th: Banishment, Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound
Feats: Linguist, Mage Slayer, Magic Initiate, Martial Adept, Observant, Sentinel. Spell Sniper, War Caster
(Note: I am using the Varient Human to get the maximum amount of feats possible)
Warwick: The Uncaged Wrath of Zaun but... why? Your spell save DC and your attack bonus are going to be SUPER low.
@@varasatoshi3961 Please explain, because I've never had a problem with either
@Warwick: The Uncaged Wrath of Zaun take shadow blade when you can. 2d8 psychic damage that had the finesse, light, and a thrown range of 20/60.
@ Aaron Anderson I won't argue that shadow blade is an awesome spell, I prefer using it on my TR though since the image I have for my anti-mage is a sword & board, heavily armored knight type of character that lives by the "Fight fire with fire" philosophy. And yes I'm aware that I can get a similar result with a paladin, but they don't get access to core anti-magic spells such as counterspell for example.
@@thurismundbotheric7598 shiiiiiit, sounds awesome dude!
Love your videos.
The Landing from Final Fantasy VIII
Consider taking magic initiate to get hex. You get a splash of magical flavor you can tie to your backstory, hex damage applies on every hit, it can critical hit, and you can impose disadvantage on strength checks -- so your grapples and shoves get that much better
STR saving throws are part of many control spells that can push you or knock you down. Still not as useful as dex saves or wis saves, but not useless.
can you do Fighter Battle Master first?
Final Fantasy 8. Invasion of Balamb Garden
Made a reply to someone else about action surge went on sage advice instead doesn’t give you a extra bonus it’s just a reminder which I thought was stupid to put that In the text for phb.
Have you ever tried a Dragonborn/monk combo?
Challenge how would you build ghost rider
Yay bard
I always multi-class with fighter
Ff7 battle theme
Playing a fighter leaves all your emphasis on RP'ing yes you can use a sword but really only wants to crack skulls with a Quarterstaff or as amiss let weapon not a bow but darts with sharpshooter feat so range is not a problem or some such
Punctuation, please?
1. Extra Feats/ASIs are not a good thing. You take the most useful one at 4th level, the 2nd most useful one at 6th, etc. That means that the extra two you get at the end are the worst ones for your build, because every single feat is available right from level 1.
2. Champion is not balanced. Even if a battlemaster blows all of his dice on the weakest maneuvers at random, they're still doing more damage than a Champion unless you're going through about 8 high threat encounters between every single short rest. Not 8 encounters per day, 8 boss in a row without any breaks.
3. Overall, the Fighter is one of the most mechanically weak classes in the game. They can do okay damage and have okay armor, but that's it. They have zero support for doing things outside of that, and features like Remarkable Athlete are just insulting.
fighter/brute
So all that so called variation is just "the Fighter hits hard". Wow. Much depth, so skill.
This is why I just don't like the Fighter. The plainest of plain janes.
Its what you make of it, depending on how you build them and how you play them in terms of RP is going to give you lots of deaph. On the surface yes they are straightforward which is not a weakness, it quick to learn and between the sub classes and feats, races, backgrounds you can have a very intriguing character on your hands and having all those extra ASI can lead to some cool choices and abilities for the fighter to have a cool array of abilities.
Actually, the fighter doesn't actually even hit hard. Barbarians while raging do 2 points more damage per attack. Paladins hit harder by using smites. Rogue hit wayyyy harder at higher levels.
But yeah, the core of the Fighter class really just is,
"I swing my sword a bunch of times."
@@Tiyev it depends on whether you want damage per attack or damage per round.
The highest damage per attack actually comes from a *BARD* multiclass. If you are college of shadows14 and paladin 2 you can opt to use banishing smite on a maul with great weapon master (because who doesnt love a literal ban-hammer) while green-flame blading. You can smite on this hit, and also trigger psychic blades... leading to a singular attack of 5d10+8d8+10d6+15 without critting... and iirc all those numbers are effected by the crit multiplier.
As for a fighter "falling behind" a rogue in damage per round, that is simply not the case either. Great weapon master provides tons of flat damage, and with action surge you get up to 9 attacks a round -- that is 90 damage just from great weapon master. A fighter can take magic initiate to get hex, and a flametongue greatsword to do 5d6 per swing (which crits for 10d6, the same damage bonus rogues get *once per round*). It is unlikely to get much more than one crit a round, even with action surge, but if you are a champion and you shove to ground? Hello damage potential.