Summary
The fighter is best known inDungeons & Dragonsas both a great starting place for beginners and the go-to class for arming yourself with a slew of different weapons. Mechanically speaking, the fighter is the easiest class in the game to pick up and play with no prior D&D knowledge or experience.
That being said, more than a fair share of veteran D&D players swear by this class for its impressive durability and menagerie of weapon builds. While some weapon builds are more powerful than others (looking at you, Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, and Sharpshooter), the newly introduced Weapon Mastery mechanic may right this wrong by offering each weapon a unique playstyle. Hit the armory and grab your weapon of choice: it’s time to dance.
Better Options Is A Recurring Theme Of This Edition
At first level, you gain access to yourFighting Styleas well as Second Wind. Fighting Styles have been changed into feats, however. You now get a Fighting Style feat as part of picking up the fighter class. More importantly, you can now change your Fighting Style every time you gain a level, allowing you to explore various playstyles with your fighter.
Meanwhile, Second Wind now starts at two uses instead of one. Additionally, you regain a use of Second Wind whenever you finish a short rest. That being said, the big change here actually comes with two features gained at later levels: Tactical Mind at second level and Tactical Shift at fifth level.
At fifth level, Tactical Shift allows you to reposition yourself on the battlefield in the case that you or an ally end up in a bad spot. When you use your Second Wind, you can now move up to half your speed without provoking opportunity attacks. This provides fighters with some much-needed mobility as defending your party often ends up being much like herding cats. Tactical Mind is explained below.
5Weapon Mastery Brings Weapon Identity
Weapons Are Distinguished By Their Properties
Weapon Mastery is one of the single biggest changes to the rules found in the 2014 Player’s Handbook. While fighters will receive more Weapon Masteries than any other class to accentuate their identity as weapon savants, barbarians, paladins, rangers, and rogues will also have access to at least one Weapon Mastery.
Keep in mind that some specific subclasses will give you access to additional Weapon Masters beyond your regular limit. Below is a table with every Weapon Mastery as well as an example weapon that uses it.
Property And Example Weapon
Vex
At ninth level, fighters unlock the Tactical Master feature, which allows you to substitute your weapon’s current mastery property with your choice of push, sap, or slow. This isa nice added bit of versatilitythat makes fighters the undisputed masters of weaponry.
4Tactical Mind Makes For Better Skill Checks
Fighters Can Now Succeed At More Than Just Athletics
When you fail an ability check, Tactical Mind lets you expend a Second Wind use and roll a d10 to attempt to succeed instead. The nice thing about this feature is that if you still fail the ability check, you do not expend a use of your Second Wind. In other words, fighters can now make key ability checks much more reliably as long as they still have a Second Wind charge available.
Being limited to only two uses of Second Wind may result in this feature seeing less use than the designers planned, however. It might be the case that you unlock even more Second Wind uses at higher levels. This remains to be seen.
3Indomitable Lives Up To Its Name
We Still Would Have Liked To See A Legendary Resistance Type Feature
Previously, Indomitable rarely helped you succeed at the rerolled saving throw. This is due to fighters having poor saving throws in a number of abilities including Dexterity, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma. Thankfully, this feature has been changed so that your rerolled saving throw also gains a bonus equal to your fighter level.
Since it’s unlocked at level 10, this means that this feature will give you a +10 bonus to the saving throw you use it on right off the bat, and it only gets better as your fighter levels up. Even so, we don’t think it would have been outrageous to make this feature into something fighters could use to automatically succeed at a saving throw. After all, high level bad guys can do it multiple times in a fight.
2Unerring Attack Rolls
Fighters Are Now The Best At Landing Attacks
At thirteenth level, fighters now gain Studied Attacks. This feature allows your attack rolls to land much more often, as any time you miss an attack roll, you gain advantage on your next attack against the same creature.
The one complaint here is that there is a slew of other ways to gain advantage during combat, and the best fighters will already have a tried and true method to provide themselves with advantage on their attacks. In these cases, Studied Attacks is a feature that does nothing.
It would have been nice to see this feature provide a different benefit if you already have advantage on your attack roll, especially since you unlock this in the late game at thirteenth level.
1Streamlined Subclasses
Small Tweaks Go A Long Way
Aside from the largely overlooked champion subclass, not much has changed for the fighter subclasses. Granted, champion was always supposed to be the beginner player subclass. As is though, the subclass truly assumes that players aren’t especially bright. Thankfully, champion has been redesigned, and it might actually be a viable option now versus the other fighter subclasses. Here’s what we know so far.
Psi Warrior
As one of the three classes first introduced in the original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set, the fighter has cemented itself as one of the most important classes in the game. Unfortunately, a legacy tied to beingthe most beginner-friendly player optionhas prevented this class from shining as brightly as its contemporaries.
While this statement remains true for the 2024 Player’s Handbook, changes like Weapon Mastery go a long way toward adding customization options to the class that allows every fighter to feel unique. Besides, let’s not forget that you can always homebrew some of these features to give your fighters more of a fighting chance.
