Fighter Subclass Design

The fighter is perhaps the most polarizing class in the game. Online, it is regarded as unable to keep up with spellcasters. Yet in play, it remains one of the most popular classes. The heroic warrior is a classic archetype, and despite the class’s inability to match the firepower of a 9th level spell, its class features are flexible and fun enough to keep players coming back for more.

I think the secret to the fighter’s success is the tendency for most groups to stick to the first five levels of the game. At that level range, the fighter’s reliability, high AC, and good hit points stand out. Moreover, action surge granting a second action feels like a powerful, flexible ability.

Despite those strengths, can we use subclass design to buttress the fighter at high levels? I think we can, and the tool we can use to do that has been in the game since its launch.

Boosting the Top End

I have a heretical view of the fighter class. Its core class features provide it with a nice, steady output of damage, good protection and hit points, and the ability to survive without draining the party’s healing. Those features are a nice baseline to build from, but unlike other classes I think the subclasses need to provide new, unique mechanics to give a fighter subclass an identity.

The champion gives us everything we need for a fighter that doubles down on at-will reliability. The battle master’s maneuvers provide design space for anything that relies on short rests.

That leaves subclasses driven by long rests, and that brings us to the eldritch knight. With its access to spell slots, the eldritch knight gives us all the design tools we need to build and balance a fighter with daily abilities capable of reaching the heights that spellcasters can achieve.

The 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide helpfully breaks down the baseline damage value of spells from 1st to 9th level. We can use that tool to determine how much damage the eldritch knight derives from its spells. That number represents the total damage that a daily-based fighter should put out. Here’s a summary, using the guidelines for single-target damage spells. Area of effect spells are supposed to do around 40% less damage, but in practice they do more.

Fighter Level    Total Daily Damage Output

3: 22

4 to 6: 33

7 to 9: 77

10 to 12: 94          

13 to 15: 149

16 to 18: 176

19 to 20: 209

You can cap the daily fighter’s damage output at the damage equal to the highest level spell a wizard of the same level as the fighter could use. That information is all in chapter 9 of the 2014 DMG.

When crafting daily fighter abilities, the total damage output at a given level should add up to the value given in the listing above. For example, a 5th level fighter should do a total of 33 damage on average using features that they regain after a long rest.

Spells provide a good template for determining what a fighter ability can do. Use them as a guideline for what is balanced at a given level, and treat them as worth the damage listed in the DMG.

Features and Structure

This approach sets aside the existing fighter subclass structure. Instead, the subclass levels you need to provide the damage output to match the eldritch knight’s spell slots.

When the subclass begins at 3rd level, you can probably just start at the 4th level damage output. An extra 1st-level spell is not going to break the game at that level. That approach also means that you don’t need to scale the subclass’s damage up before the next class feature at 7th level.

The weapon bond class feature is a pure ribbon. It provides no added damage output and has narrow utility. For your subclass, you don’t need to account for it unless you want to add a flavorful, but ultimately zero power, feature.

At 7th level, you need to provide a dramatic power up. The fighter needs to dish out a whopping 44 more damage per day. Lean into feature that have few uses (even just one!) and big effects. That design creates a wider separation between the core fighter and your subclass.

The war magic class feature allows the eldritch knight to keep pace with other fighters when they use cantrips. I suggest finding some at-will utility, or perhaps a single, at-will attack equal to the fighter’s two attacks at this level, to offer enough variety to the player.

At 10th level, damage bounces up another 27 points. Consider improving the fighter’s existing features with some added damage. That damage increase is lower than the 4th level gain, so a completely new ability that uses that entire power budget will look weak.

Eldritch strike is a powerup, as it improves the chance of landing a spell. I suggest finding a similar tool to make the fighter’s other features more efficient, such as an accuracy buff or the ability to regain spent abilities on a short rest once per day.

The 13th, 16th, and 19th level power ups are awkward, as they take place outside of the fighter’s normal schedule of subclass features. You can embed that upgrade at an earlier level by specifying that a lower level feature improves at 13, 16, and 19. You can also use a mechanic like spell slots that specifies a level-by-level schedule of resource gains.

Arcane charge offers the always popular high level teleport for a character. Consider slotting in a similar utility feature that lets the fighter keep up with casters.

Finally, improved war magic provides a benefit roughly equal to a 1st-level spell to all daily abilities used by the eldritch knight. Consider a similar buff that the fighter gains when expended its daily resources.

What About Other Fighters?

In my opinion, almost any fighter that you want to capture as a short rest-based subclass could be expressed as a set of maneuvers available to the battle master. Why reinvent the wheel? The same goes for a wholly at-will driven fighter and the champion. Both of those classes provide robust mechanics to capture a damage schedule that maps to those recharge rates.

To model the champion, make sure that abilities the fighter regains with a short rest are equal in damage to the output generated by the superiority dice. Remember to account for the increase in die size. The average output of a give die is half its maximum result plus 0.5. Multiply that value by the total number of dice and you have your damage output per short rest.

The champion is a little trickier to calculate, as it relies on generating more frequent critical hits. The brute subclass that showed up in Unearthed Arcana way back in the day gives a good look at what an at-will fighter could gain: +1d4 damage per attack starting at 3rd, increasing to +1d6 at 10th, +1d8 at 16th, and +1d10 at 20th. While those numbers are a bit above the at-will damage curve, they compensate for a lack of high-end, single action damage output.

Bonus Topic: Why Do People Like the Fighter?

From a purely mathematical point of view, the fighter lacks the peaks offered by other classes. The class relies on adventures where the party gets into lots of fights and loses resources over time. If your campaign features fewer, larger battles, the fighter can feel weak.

As I mentioned earlier, most players experience the game from 1st to 5th level. At those levels, the gap between caster and fighter is relatively narrow. The wizard still feels vulnerable, and the fighter’s action surge feels on part with the best damage the wizard can dish out. That alone accounts for why most players feel like the fighter contributes.

I also think that most players focus on survivability to a much greater degree than homebrewers who dive into the game’s math. A high AC and hit points feel comforting to players who focus more on avoiding damage and survivability. Combine that with the fighter’s second wind, and you have a character that feels like it provides a wider margin for error. If your standard of power is, “Does my character feel vulnerable?”, then the fighter probably comes out ahead.

It is 100% true that the best defense against an attack is to take out the enemy that can deliver it, but that’s not an obvious lesson to many players.

Despite all that, personally I think focusing on daily abilities and pushing the fighter’s peak output to match the wizard, in both damage and utility, is the way to go. There’s a lot more design space there, and your design will stand out from the existing slate of options.