Fighter Deep Dive

 Today's single D&D video focuses on the Fighter. There is a lot of info - it's a 34-minute video - to cover, so I'll be largely talking about the points that stood out to me. Full disclosure, I played an Eldritch Knight for several years, and the subclass is near and dear to my heart, so you might find I focus on it a little more.

First off, an interesting behind-the-scenes remark Jeremy Crawford made is that, much as many of us fans had speculated, they experimented with making the Maneuvers from the Battle Master Fighter into a base feature of the Fighter class. Ultimately, they chose not to do this in large part to preserve the ability for players to choose the degree of complexity they wanted with the class. The Champion, after all, is built to be the ultimate streamlined, easy subclass to play, and this would have effectively made the Champion one of many Battle Masters. While I could easily imagine a 6th Edition or other new TTRPG making something akin to Maneuvers a core feature of their baseline martial class, I actually think this is probably the right call.

In the UA process, Fighters were given a broad capability to swap out the Weapon Mastery properties on their weapons. Now, however, at a certain level (I want to say 9?) they instead effectively always have Sap, Push, and Slow as options when they hit with their weapons, able to choose between those three and the weapon's innate mastery property. This will, to be fair, de-value weapons that already have these properties, but of course it will mean having a "mere" three choices rather than four. Interestingly, this also expands some of these properties to weapon types that wouldn't normally get them - hitting a target with a ranged attack that also inflicts Sap will allow an archer-style Fighter to help defend allies.

In an effort to give each class some out-of-combat features, Fighters will also be able to spend Second Wind charges (of which they will have more) to boost failed ability checks. Naturally this will help in situations where you need to bluff past some guards at the gala being held by the evil baron, but it could also help in combat, where you might need to make a difficult Athletics check to grapple a foe.

Fighting styles are expanding, with a number of styles introduced in Tasha's making it to the PHB, including Interception, Blind Fighting, and Thrown Weapon style, as well as I believe a mention that Protection was getting improved (though I don't think we got the details on that).

The Psi Warrior is the new fourth Fighter subclass for the PHB, but it sounds like it's not changed much from the Tasha's version.

The Eldritch Knight is going to retain what I thought was the most exciting change from the playtest, which is that War Magic now, rather than taking your action and granting an attack as a bonus action, instead uses the Attack action and allows you to replace one of your attacks with a Cantrip. Improved War Magic lets you cast a leveled spell, but replaces two attacks.

Here's the bad news, though: it appears that Improved War Magic will only allow you to cast 1st and 2nd level spells in this way. And thus, the glory of the Fireball-Action Surge-Fireball appears to be dead.

While not mentioned in this video, Action Surge was changed to allow basically any action other than the Magic action. However, because War Magic and Improved War Magic allow you to cast spells when taking the Attack action, this allowed you to get around the restriction. This should still work on cantrips and lower-level spells - you can still Thunderwave-Action Surge-Thunderwave (though at a much higher level) but it seems that you'll just be limited to spells that haven't quite hit that 3rd level power boost.

Still, I think we need to take the good with the bad - for the most part, this should simply free up our bonus actions, as by the time War Magic comes online, you have two attacks, so in the levels 7-10 range, you'll be making a cantrip and a weapon attack (and I highly recommend Green-Flame Blade or Booming Blade as your cantrip option, as it's basically just an enhanced weapon attack). At level 11, though, this pulls out ahead of the current version not only in preserving your bonus action, but because you'll now get your cantrip (already enhanced by being at level 11) but two, rather than a single additional attack. In other words, once War Magic comes online, if you have Green-Flame Blade or Booming Blade, it will always be optimal to use War Magic, whereas my level 12 Fighter would only use normal attacks when there was only a single target because the damage was a little better.

You will, of course, still be able to cast Fireball when you hit level 13 (do I resent that the campaign fell apart when we got within half a level of that point? I don't know, what do you think?) but you won't be able to double it up nor combine it with any weapon attacks (well, actually, you could action surge to get your attacks and even toss in a cantrip, or a lower-level spell if you've got Improved War Magic).

A small note: EKs can now use a spell focus. I don't know that this really gets around the whole somatic component complication, unless an arcane focus staff can also be counted as a quarterstaff. I think Warcaster will still be a good feat to pick up on an EK.

Overall, I think that's about it for info we wouldn't have gotten out of the UA process. I'm, of course, devastated by the killing of Fireball-Action Surge-Fireball, but I think the class is overall going to be in better shape.