Human Fighter, Veteran
Str- 18
Dex- 14
Con- 15
Int- 11
Wis- 13
Cha- 9
HP- 12
AC- 17 (scale mail + shield)
Combat Expertise, Bullrush
long sword +5 to hit/ +4 to damage
The Tests
The tests were run in javascript programs that simulate combat between the fighter and the goblin until one of them dies. The Goblin's Bushwacker ability was taken into account (gives the goblin advantage on the first round if he has won initiative). Critical hits and the fighter's Martial Damage Dice (to parry and to add extra damage) were also used. The test combats were run 100,000 times to produce a good average.
First we test to see how much danger the Fighter is in when fighting against a lone goblin in a one on one fight. What is his chance of getting killed? As it turns out, not much.
As you can see from the above graph, his chance of dying in such a fight is almost nonexistent - a measly .001 chance. This is about identical to your danger in 4e if you fought a single goblin minion.
Next we have the 5e fighter fight a series of infinite goblins, one at a time, until he dies. How many goblins can he kill before he succumbs to wounds? Here are the results-
The 5e fighter is exactly as powerful as the one in 4e even though the 4e fighter fought against goblin minions and could heal himself once during the battle. Much of this is due to the Martial Damage Dice. The ability to parry 1d6 damage every round makes the fighter almost invulnerable in fights against a single, low level opponent like our goblin here. Taking that away changes things drastically. His chance of dying increases, but is still only a very low 1% chance, but he is only able to kill 8 goblins before dying. That's more in line with older editions. Unfortunately, doing that would probably make the fighter very weak in comparison to the other classes in 5e, especially the spellcasters who have their own power-ups (I'm looking at you cantrips).
Update - 2/7
Frank over on Google+ alerted me to an error with my math on the fighter's attack bonus. I've changed that from a +6 to a +5 and rerun the tests. Now they line up so close to 4e that I can't believe it's accidental. The designers are definitely shooting for that level of power.
18 strength is pretty awesome and Combat Expertise with it that guy isn't typical. He's extremely dangerous against low hit dice monster's . It's genius actually. Is this a complaint? You made a veteran fighter that can fight an army? Well looks like the model works well! Now if you remove cantrips absolutely remove damage dice and vice versa!
ReplyDeleteTry doing it with an orc. I suspect the results will be quite different.
ReplyDeleteWhy the fuck would you play a game if there's no chance of death? Why not just play My Little Pony, and declare "I Win!" every time something happens.
ReplyDeleteSimon: No chance of death against a single level 1 monster =! no chance of death. :) How does the same fighter do against, say, two goblins at once? Three? Four?
DeleteHow does a standard party fare against a well-crafted encounter of five to eight goblins laying a suitably clever ambush, with traps and ranged weapons, as goblins are wont to do?
You're clearly playing the wrong My Little Pony.
DeleteGiven that the parry thing only works once per round, I'd be interested in the results of a test that checks how large a group of goblins each edition's fighter could reliably beat up (I guessing the answer would be one for pre 2e editions).
ReplyDeletedefinitely the 5e fighter would be weaker against groups than against individuals
DeleteHow did you calculate this? I'm currently designing my own RPG, you can email me at therealdraconite@gmail.com
ReplyDeletejavascript, lots of javascript
DeleteAt what level are a 0e, 1e, or BX fighter's chances against a single goblin approximately the same as those of a 1st level 5e fighter? That's potentially quite useful information. I did a very rough model that suggests your 1st level 5e fighter can kill the same number of goblins in a row as a 4th level AD&D fighter. That's ignoring the AD&D "speedbump" rule for <1HD enemies to avoid spiking the results (an orc would make a better test).
ReplyDeletehmm... that's an interesting question. I believe that 4e was designed with the idea that a 1st level pc would start out about as powerful as a 3rd-4th level pc in older editions.
DeleteUnfortunately these calculations don't prove anything. By the xp guidelines, a single first level Fighter in Next is supposed to fight three goblins at once, not one. Even for an easy encounter there should've been two.
ReplyDeleteSo by setting up the fights this way you've proven that Fighters are hard to kill... in scenarios that are explicitly way too easy. No offense, but anybody could've told you that without 100,000 calculations.
You cannot ignore the context of the rules and expect to divine meaningful results.
Also, parry doesn't reduce damage of ranged attacks. Hopefully after a handful of goblins died moving in to attack the fighter, one would instead use a shortbow or sling. Filing them into a meat grinder isn't exactly a fair test of how combat should work.
ReplyDeleteMDD refresh each turn so he can parry each creature that attacks him. I think this have to be a typo meaning round not turn but...
ReplyDeleteNo, this is wrong. Parry is a reaction and you only have one of those per round. So it doesn't matter when your MDD refresh, you still can't parry all creatures.
Delete