D&D 5.5E – New Fighter with Tons of Weapon Masteries Revealed

Hot on the heels of the Weapon Mastery reveal, WotC today introduced the new version of the Fighter.

The fighter leads the charge in a preview of every class in the upcoming D&D 5.5E. 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 to try to make it more versatile while still keeping it Fightery.

Did they succeed? Well, it's too early to judge. But we can say with certainty that there have been some changes. However, there aren't many of them in the last Playtest we saw them in. In a new video, WotC shows us the new Fighter, and they look a lot like the ones from Playtest 7.

But don't worry if you haven't seen it, because now here is the new Fighter. Confirmed. Approved. And is part of a balanced breakfast.

WotC reveals new fighter

All right, let's go. The fighters fight. And they fight very well. To this end, they gain the most weapon masteries of any class and will be able to use them freely. Even combining them at certain times. Which is very 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 life total. And as a bonus, you only spend it if you actually pass the check, so it will almost never go to waste. Ideal for days when you're not fighting.

You also gain Tactical Mastery at level 9, which is the Weapon Mastery swap opportunity. When hitting with a weapon, you can still use Push, Sap, or Slow on a weapon, overriding the proficiency property of whatever you were hitting with. This is a new feature for the fighter, giving them more opportunities to play with properties without having to juggle weapons.

Then there are Studied Attacks, which allow you to gain advantage on an attack roll when you miss an attack. But you won't get that until level 13. Until then, who knows how many times you'll miss. But it's still a good thing to have. Now let's move on to the subclasses.

Battle Master

First, the one that makes me cry. Battle Master is what fighters should be from the start. And the video makes it even sadder because they say categorically that they were considering making maneuvers the core of the Fighter, but that this would “somehow undermine the purpose of the different playstyles”. It's a terrible compromise. Battle Master has this fundamental fantasy that players want a fighter to have. Hell, weapon mastery properties are basically baby moves.

This is perplexing. Especially since the other subclasses of the Fighter would not lose the uniqueness of the style of play if they also had hunting maneuvers they could use.

Champion

Take the Champion. This is the boring Fighter subclass. Now they may just be focusing on the reviews. This is the subclass for people who don't want to think about what they're doing, either because they're on the phone, don't care much about combat, or because they are new to the game. Regardless, the Champion is fine. I guess.

This is the most disappointing for me. You get advantage on initiative checks and can crit on a 19 or 20, but that's basically all you get for a while.

Supernatural Knight

Eldritch Knight is a fighter with spells. And it is improving with the new rules. There are no more school restrictions. You can also use an arcane focus, allowing you to benefit from even more magical items. Otherwise, it works exactly the same as before, except that Improved War Magic lets you swap two attacks to cast a wizard spell up to level two, which isn't wrong.

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 at home. Another point against the “single play style” argument. I'm still bitter about this, sorry guys.

But Psi Warrior is a pretty fun subclass, and I'm happy to see it make the jump.

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