D&D 5.5E – New Fighter With Tons of Weapon Masteries Revealed
Hot on the heels of the Weapon Mastery reveal, WotC showed off the new version of the Fighter today.
The Fighter leads the charge in a preview of each class in the upcoming 5.5E D&D. In a new video, WotC reveals that the Fighter (along with the Ranger) has some of the most new features of any class. And that a big part of the design team’s goals for the new Fighter was trying to make them feel more versatile while still keeping them Fightery.
Did they succeed? Well, it’s waaaaaayyyyyy too early to judge. But we can say for sure that there have been some changes. Not that many from the last Playtest we saw them in, though. In a new video, WotC walks us through the new Fighter, and they look a lot like they did in Playtest 7.
But no worries if you didn’t see that, because here’s the new Fighter now. Confirmed. Approved. And part of a balanced breakfast.
WotC Reveals the New Fighter
Alright, let’s dive in. Fighters fight. And they fight very well. To this end, they get the most Weapon Masteries of any class and will be able to use them freely. Even combining them at some points. Which is all very well and good. But what about outside of combat?
Well, you get Tactical Mind at level 2. This lets you use your Second Wind to add 1d10 to an ability check instead of your hit point total. And as a bonus, you only spend it if you actually succeed on the check, so it’s basically never going to go to waste. Great for those days when you don’t have a fight.
You also get Tactical Mastery at level 9, which is the Weapon Mastery swapping opportunity. When you strike with a weapon, you can always use Push, Sap, or Slow on a weapon, replacing the mastery property of whatever you were hitting with. This is a new feature for the Fighter, giving them more opportunities to play around with the properties without having to necessarily juggle weapons a ton.
Then there’s Studied Attacks, which lets you gain an advantage on an attack roll when you miss an attack. But you don’t get that until level 13. By then, who knows how often you’ll be missing. But it’s still a good thing to have. Now, let’s get into the subclasses.
Battle Master
First, the one that makes me weep. Battle Master is what Fighters should be from the get-go. And the video makes it even sadder because they flat out say that they considered making maneuvers the core of the Fighter, but that doing that would somehow “undermine the goal of different playstyles”. It’s an awful tradeoff. Battle Master has that core fantasy that players want a Fighter to have. Heck, the Weapon Mastery Properties are basically baby maneuvers.
It boggles the mind. Especially since the other subclasses for the Fighter wouldn’t actually lose any uniqueness of playstyle if they also had Fighter Maneuvers that they could use.
Champion
Take the Champion. This is the boring Fighter subclass. Now they’re maybe all about Crits. This is the subclass for people who don’t want to think about what they’re doing, either because they’re on their phones or because they just don’t care that much about combat or are new to the game. Either way, the Champion is fine. I guess.
It’s the most disappointing one to me. You get advantage on Initative Checks and can crit on a 19 or 20, but then that’s basically all you get for a while.
Eldritch Knight
Eldritch Knight is a Fighter with spells. And this one actually gets better with the new rules. There are no school restrictions anymore. You can also use an arcane focus, allowing you to benefit from even more magical items. Otherwise it works exactly the same as before, with the exception that Improved War Magic lets you swap out two attacks to cast a Wizard spell of up to level two, which is not bad.
Psi Warrior
Basically unchanged from Tasha’s Cauldron. But in a nutshell, you get a pool of Psionic Power dice that you can spend to activate certain abilities, which is a lot like Battle Master Maneuvers, for those of you playing along at home. Another point against the “unique playstyle” argument. I’m still bitter about this, sorry folks.
But, Psi Warrior is a pretty fun subclass, and I’m glad to see it make the jump.
