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S2 Ep. 4 - Class Review: Fighter · Bards and Barrels

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Bards and Barrels, the podcast for Dungeons and Dragons players new and old.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Ross Druce, and I'm joined by my friends and co-hosts Brett Miller and Phil Boone.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be exploring the world of Dungeons and Dragons in each episode, sharing our experiences, offering tips and advice for those who play and run this classic game.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: So whether you're a new player just starting out or a seasoned veteran looking to get a new perspective on things, Bards and Barrels has something for everyone.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: So sit back, grab a drink, and join us as we roll for initiative and embark on an epic adventure.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, there's the opening crack.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's time for another episode of Bards and Barrels.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: How are we doing, guys?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: That was a lot better crack than a couple weeks ago.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can take your judgment and you can shove it.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: He finally figured his stuff out.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a real beer.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're so proud of you, Phil.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well done.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're great.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was the angle.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was the angle of the mic.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it was.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, yes.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we figured it out.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: What are we doing tonight?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's just sitting there going, okay, get to it, guys.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: We saw the episode title.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: So tonight we are hopping into our first class review of season two where we're going to talk about the fighter.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just get right to it, guys.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: What are your first thoughts and impressions of the fighter?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: This is a fun one.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you've seen any action movie, you're good to go.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, my first impression is I thought that I knew what a fighter was, and then I studied a fighter a little bit more and realized that there are so many different ways that you actually can play this character than just kind of your stereotype.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: I would agree with that a hundred percent.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: I have been shortchanging them for years, probably since I've been playing, because I've had people tell me, like, a fighter's a fighter, go do something fun.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you want to fight, be a barbarian, because a barbarian can do cool things, like it can do the rage and everything else.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: But then, like you, Phil, like you you get into reading about this and you're like, dang, they are pretty versatile.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: They can attack lots, they they're your prototypical tank in a lot of ways.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's great.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you like rolling dice, this is the classical that's why I use DD Beyond.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: It rolls the dice for me.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's great.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Until D Beyond sticks it to you.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: And the DD, the digital dice go into dice jail.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Phil would know all about that.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, anyway, uh, let's go get into pros and cons.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Pros first, guys.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: What do you what do you like about the fighter?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, one of my biggest pros, I think, for the fighter in general is the high action economy.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, when you get action surge early on, level two, you start getting to take additional actions, you can do some healing stuff.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you can do so many things as a fighter.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: And one that kind of connects onto that, which is kind of a pro and kind of a con, is there's mostly fighting involved with a fighter, obviously.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: But like you kind of leave the rest of the game to the side a little bit, depending on how you have build your character.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: To to echo what Br Brett is saying as well, I did list that one kind of in my con side.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're not much of a support character.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're kind of you're kind of one-dimensional.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: In a lot of builds.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I mean, I think that's what it boils down to, is you would be the tank.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're gonna be up there in the front fighting, throwing the punches.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna be sitting back like let's say a cleric and doing buffs and things like that.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna be a ranged character.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Although there are options to do that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: There are op also options to cast spells, though, because there are archetypes that help do that.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Social encounters you're not great at necessarily.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, and I and I I would say that is a definite con, seeing as Brett, you and I both know this.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, like we tend to like high charisma characters.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is not a high charisma character.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we'll see later when I talk about my character.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: I actually use my race to buff some of those stats so they weren't so bad.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't completely suck at social interaction.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's a definite con for me, too.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: I would agree with that.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's nowhere on my con list, but you know what was on my con list?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Big surprise.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're normally not very stealthy.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: For whatever reason, that one's important to me.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, being proficient in all armor kind of pretty much lays out that you're not gonna be stealthy at something.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we'll look and see at uh okay, I like that.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: We'll just cast pass without trace on you, and you'll be like that.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: That meme with the tank with the with the branches and stuff on it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: You're okay.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh other pros, so heavy damage, right?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Either melee or ranged.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you take the magic route, right?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of your magic in this particular archetype we'll talk about later is battle magic.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you are doing damage in comparison to some of those other we've talked about.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, overall, I think the class features are relatively easy to learn.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you guys thought.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a lot of the basic rules that you just have to learn how to handle combat, and that's kind of your biggest thing you have to learn.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, one other pro I think that is handy is you're proficient in all weapons.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: So you just grab something and you're good.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you love to attack, like this is the class where you get an extra attack at fifth level, you get another one at 11th level, you get another one at 20th level.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So by the time you're a 20th level character, you have four attacks in your action.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes you can double that and have eight attacks on the round.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that's why in in a lot of ways, and maybe this is why we've avoided it at times, is this gets introduced as a great l a great character for a character class for intro-level players, because there's not a whole lot you have to learn.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely the go in and swing, swing, swing.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: But the on the flip side of that, the con is once you get a few levels in, you're gonna have so many things to do on your turn that it can get a little overwhelming.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like you've got a lot of different actions of different buffs, things you can do on your turn every time.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're playing for Phil, it's gonna be six months before you hit level three anyway.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll be fine by the time you get there.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I would like to rebuke that statement, however, it's true.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I have nothing to say here.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, so let's talk about uh where the fighter shows up in pop culture, Brett.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Everywhere.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, any action movie, you pretty much have a fighter involved.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean, if you go to comic book characters, you've got obviously Captain America, Wonder Woman, Hawkeye, uh any other big ones from just comic book ones?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, those are some of the big ones.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have one that's non-comic book.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay, what else?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: John McLean from Die Hard.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me he is not a fighter.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, alright, that's good.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I like it.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: But then like Mulan would be probably a fighter.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Sam.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, you've got to touch on Lord of the Rings, you've got Boromir, and uh, if you call back to the Ranger episode, Legolas is a fighter.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, shots fired.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: No comment.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but other ones uh that I had written down, Xena, warrior princess.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: Another fighter.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and a newer one, Maverick from Top Gun.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: Could be considered a modern day fighter using the fighter jet, but I mean, okay, didn't think about that until now.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: But uh that's his weapon, kind of a running gun.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's fair.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a mega type that has like a mount, sort of, like a cavalier, but instead of a you know, horse, he uses a fire jet.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's fine.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: It fits.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that's a bit of a stretch, but yeah, that one's my biggest stretch.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, I don't just see Tom Cruise popping out and punching somebody in the face.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if he's not in his fighter jet, is he doing much?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: In the bar, I could see him.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but he's gotta be loaded up just like we are.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we could all be fighters if that's the case.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: But there there are just so many examples of fighters in pop culture.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: What else do you guys have?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: I just love my John McClain one.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think diehard.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: That is you can pick up anything in Yippie Kaye, mother truckers.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what's the main character of Fight Club?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's his name?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: We don't talk about Fight Club.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Moving to the quick build.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Quick build for this character out of the basic rules.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so there this one, honestly, out of a lot of the quick builds, kind of goes in multiple directions because it truthfully depends on what sort of a fighter you're gonna build.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're building your stereotypical Captain America style fighter, you know, strength, right?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: You want to attack with melee weapons, strength's gotta be your number one.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, typically, if you're going for that type of a build of a build, constitution is gonna be your second.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you can have a high armor class, you want to be a little tanky, you're going to want to be able to stand in there and take hits as you dish them out.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're headed for the archery side of the fighter, you want to be more of a ranged fighter, or even use some of those finesse weapons, decks is more important than strength.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, constitution should still be your second unless you want to dabble in the magic.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you're looking towards an eldritch knight archetype, which grants you some of that magic, intelligence is where you would want to dump that instead of in constitution.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: I would say I love this quick build for all those reasons.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you look back and we talked about the barbarian or the cleric or something like that, it literally laid out this is the character you should build.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like, if if you're a hundred percent new, this is the very first character you ever built.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes that's very appealing to you because I don't have to think about it as telling me what I should do, right?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like if I come into this and I want flexibility and I want to be able to create my character, this is great because it at least helps guide you through that because it says choose this or this because of this.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: What do you what do you want to be and then choose this accordingly?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Which I love that about this quick like that's your big first big fork in the road.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Are you going to go into the combat directly and get into the fray, or are you gonna shoot from the outside or dodge in and out?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think the great thing is is like what when you read through the actual language for the quick quick build, it's easy enough to understand that even that first time player can get it.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's like it's it's exactly what you're talking about.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is like are you gonna be arranged or are you gonna be melee right up front?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's very easy.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like you can make those decisions pretty quick, which keeps it fairly simple.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then this is what you do if that's what you want to do, which is excellent.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, everybody's looking at me, so I suppose that means I need to say something.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm not sure that this is going the right direction or not, but one of the things I was thinking of, and it's kind of a throwback to what we were talking about earlier, that um I don't remember which one of you guys mentioned, but the fighter being one of those stereotypical characters that you could pick up and just run right from the beginning.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: It is one of the characters that's typically put into like the introductory campaigns.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like there are some pre-generated character sheets, a fighter is one of them, and I do think that it makes sense for that to be.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why a wizard is one of those four typically, I don't know.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: But a fighter to me makes sense in that arena.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about like what what does a first level fighter look like?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are your proficiencies?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: What do you what do you get?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, like I mentioned before, you've got proficiency with all weapons, so pretty much anything you can pick up and use, and you also have proficiency in all armor too.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you can go the more ranged route and do like a studded armor, or you can go straight to heavy armor if you have that available to you and really boost up your armor class.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that is uh going back to make you know this being easy for first-time players, being proficient in everything means you don't have to try to figure out what to choose.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Choose anything, it's gonna be okay for this character to use.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're not limited on a specific list.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, which is excellent.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: I love that about this.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think next to the barbarian too, that um your fighter is one that has like some of the highest HP at first level, right?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're using D10 as your hit dice, it's gonna be 10 plus your constitution modifier.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you follow the quick build, your constitution's probably one of your higher scores.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a good way to kind of build kind of a beefy or stocky character up front as well.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then at first level, you also get to pick your fighting style.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: So immediately off the bat, you can pick uh from like archery or from um great great weapon fighting.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: Great weapon fighting, thank you.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um specific ways of your character is going to use those specific um weapons that you're gonna be using and how they're gonna be using them.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right, and I do think it's important to talk about that because you mentioned two of them.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned archery and great weapon fighting, but there's also a few other ones.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's defense, which gives you the plus one bonus to your AC.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: The dueling one, um, which when you're wielding a melee weapon uh in one hand and no other weapons, you get a plus two bonus to your damage.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's protection, um, which is when a cre character when a good lord, when a creature you see attacks a target other than you that's within five feet, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on that throw, which would be super handy.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then there's the two weapon fighting.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're using um two light weapons, you essentially get two attacks with that.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: One is uh your attack and one is your bonus attack.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great way to develop a little bit of your specific fighter early on without having to wait till some of those later levels before you start unlocking some of the uniqueness of your character.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think it continues with the common theme that we've so we've seen so far is like if you're developing a specific style for your character, they're giving you the options to do so, which doesn't happen with a lot of other classes.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a lot of times you don't get those key decisions until level three, level five, later on.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's good too to have it up front here, especially.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you've got you know three characters that want to play a fighter.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: You honestly at first level could already have three extremely different fighter characters just based on fighting style alone.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that makes the campaign way more fun straight off the bat.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I think that's impressive that you get as a fighter in your first level is the second wind.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bonus action, and on your turn, you can regain some hit points, and it's one D10 plus your fighter level as a first level character.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's huge.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: That could fully restock you.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you you only get to use it once per short or long rest.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you only have to hit a short rest to get it back.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: So boom, use it.
• 14:34
  unknown: Right.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: First level.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's crazy.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I think uh the other thing that that's really cool about this, well, it's actually at third level, you gain your martial archetype, which the the the basic ones are the champion, the battle master, and the eldric knight.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm gonna toss this over to Phil because we'll talk about those three and then get into some of the expanded uh uh ones as well.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so your fighting style is your first choice, right?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a it is an important choice.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: You at some of these can pick a second one of those.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Your martial archetype, that's your big, big decision, right?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: It truthfully defines what type of a character you're gonna play.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're sticking with the basic rules, you only get one choice in there.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, it's one of my favorites.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: So don't feel like you're getting slided there.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's the champion.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this focuses on development of your raw physical power honed into deadly perfection.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: You get to improve your crit.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So on your weapon attacks at third level, you score a crit on a 19 or a 20.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that 19 works out in your favor here.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at seven level, you become a remarkable athlete.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: You get to start adding half your proficiency bonus to any of your strength, decks, constitution checks.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're not already adding your proficiency bonus to those, you also can make a running long jump.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not sure how often that comes into effect, but I know in Storm King's Thunder there's a specific scene that it happens that you could use that.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're playing that campaign, uh that could come into play there.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at 10th level with the champion, you get to pick another fighting style.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So as we talked about what those were earlier, Ross kind of walked you through those at that point.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: You could say, oh, you know what?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've been a great weapon fighter.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I want to also dabble in some archery.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: You pick up a second one, and now you're kind of dual threat at that point.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um at 15th level, your critical rolls become even more superior, and now any weapon attack that you roll that's an 18, 19, or 20 counts as a crit hit as well.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then at 18th level, um, at the start of each of your turns, you regain 5 HP plus whatever your constitution modifier is, if you're below half of your HP.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, not when you're at zero, and it doesn't work that way.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're unconscious, it's not gonna help you out.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: But every single turn that you're below half of your health, you regain five plus your con modifier, and that's pretty big.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, outside of that, um, if you jump into the player's handbook, if you got a copy of that, you've got two choices there.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: You got the battle master or the eldritch knight.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the eldritch knight is your magical version here of playing this character.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you gain spellcasting at third level.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's based on the wizard list, and intelligence is your modifier.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, cool parts of the eldridge knight as well, you have a weapon bond.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of this ritual you perform to bomb with your weapon.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Once you're bonded to it, you cannot be disarmed from it unless you're incapacitated.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if it's on the same plane of existence as you, similar to like Molinor, you can summon it as a bonus action on your turn.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can have up to two bonded weapons, you can only summon one at a time with your bonus action.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's probably one of the coolest parts of it.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: On the flip side of that is the Battle Master.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: This one focuses on uh technique, is what I would call it.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you gain four superiority dice at the third level here.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're d8s when you start, and what they allow you to do is cast maneuvers.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So maneuvers are just different things you can do with your strikes that are typically going to enhance your attack in some way.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: You start gaining more dice the higher in levels you get, the dice get bigger, so you get to d10s, you get to d12s as you kind of grow as a character as well.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: But just an example of some of those maneuvers are like a disarming attack, so you could actually make the opponent drop their weapon, and then typically you would do additional damage as well.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can parry, repost, there's a trip attack, a goading attack to try to draw things away from your fellow um characters.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: So those are your player handbook options.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then if you expand kind of beyond that to other sources, um there are I think seven that I know of, other options out there, and high level.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got the arcane archer, which comes from Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: This one weaves magic into archery attacks to produce supernatural effects.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Super cool.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, kind of reminded me of Hawkeye with magic arrows.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I see this one as.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: There is a cavalier, also in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, good for mounted combat.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, as far as you know, most of your fighter builds goes, this one has some pretty awesome support features if you're looking to try to be able to help support the party.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: The samurai, also from Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: To me, this field uh this feels like a build for someone who loves Charisma, as I read through this.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: So this would be a Ross or a Brett style character.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, coolest thing in my opinion on this one is that you can actually grant yourself advantage on weapon attacks, which is a pretty pretty huge buff.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything has two different options.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the Psy Warrior.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a fighter who augments their physical might with Psy-infused weapon strikes, uh, telekinetic lashes, and then barriers of mental force.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's got some pretty cool features as well, looking through that one.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the other one in that book as well is the rune knight.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this one's kind of based in giant lore as well, but you can enhance your gear with runes, uh, you do some extra damage on your attacks, you can protect your allies, and eventually you can actually increase your size up to the size of huge, which I thought was pretty unique as far as uh that option goes.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Sword Coast Adventures Guide has one called a Purple Dragon Knight.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you're not playing in a very specific campaign, that one's sometimes called a banneret.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's basically a warlord.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's kind of the trope that you get out there.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a ton of benefits that I found with that one realistically.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And lastly on the list is the Echo Knight, which comes from the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, um, which is a critical role book.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: In this one, you create an echo of yourself, and kind of as you grow as a character, you power up that echo, and that one's pretty cool as well.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of it is tied to battlefield control and controlling the enemy that you're going up against and how you want to do that.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there are a lot of them out there are good for you know building a battle strategy.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you're you know a strategist, that's something that you love to do.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think you have a lot of different options of how to approach that.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like in with I think it was Battlemaster, you can kick somebody down and then have advantage for the rest of your attacks on it.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just like those different archetypes set you up for really customized encounters that you're gonna be going up against.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think if anything else, what we're seeing is the stereotypical fighter is not the case at all.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's so personalized and you can be so specific with how you want to play this character.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's actually pretty impressive for the most part.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so now we're gonna dive into uh something that we started uh several, I guess, class reviews ago, but uh we we each created a fighter.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so Brett, why don't you kick us off with your fighter?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I am gonna kick off with Yurik Gould.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he is a light foot halfling fighter.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: Not what you normally would think of when you're thinking of fighter uh with a halfling.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: He's cute.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a little tiny guy.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and but I wanted to challenge myself a little bit.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: So on our ranger episode, I also did a lightfoot halfling, but a ranger, and then I wanted to build another one as a fighter and compare them.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: So they are both archery-based.
• 22:23
  unknown: Ooh.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: And seeing what is the difference between the two types of characters.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: So Urik is uh a crossbow wielding, longbow wielding distance shooter.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: So uh can run around, sneak pretty heavily.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what we were talking about earlier, Phil.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: With stealth, he's got a plus six to stealth straight off the bat.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's level one.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Mainly from your race.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is that where some of that comes from?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like the halfly nimbleness type of thing.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: So the stealth comes from picking up the urchin background, uh, which is one of the expansions, but it is um based on Yurik is was abandoned as a child and had to grow up on the streets of I'm not sure what town.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: You can, if you take this character and run with it, you can pick.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but as part of that, learn to live on the streets and picked up some stealthiness along the way, being able to steal to survive.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then picking up on the kind of the backstory of this character, uh, as he was growing up, he had to hunt for his own food.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: So he would go off kind of like Katniss Everdeen into the woods and hunt his own food to be able to survive.
• 23:33
  unknown: Nice.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but as for stats, uh originally when I rolled, I rolled so poorly I had to re-roll.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: My highest roll was an 11, so I'm like, no, that is too bad.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I re-rolled and was much happier.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: My lowest was a 13 on the re-roll.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: So 15 strength, um, 18 decks.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I went heavy on the decks because I'm focusing on range.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then constitution coming in at a 16, and then the rest are 13 and 14.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Damn.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: So very powerful, even at level one.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Sweet.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, Ross, what did you bring out to us for today?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I built a female half orc, and her name is Renzata.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she just to get into some of the things you can pick for a fighter really quick, she took the defense fighting style, um, which paired with her with her chainmail armor she has, plus, she has a shield.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she's coming into first class with an AC of 19 already.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: So she's gonna be very hard to hit.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: So she's gonna be right up there slamming as many people as she possibly can, just because it's gonna be so hard to hit her.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I did take the soldier background, uh, and I'll get into that a little bit when I share my backstory with this.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: But as far as stats go, um, we we rolled pretty decent for the most part.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: We rolled uh above a 12 uh for strength decks, constitution, and intelligence.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: We have uh an 18 for strength, so we got the plus four in there, which is really nice.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh decks, we got a plus two con constitution, we have a plus two, and then intelligence, we have a plus one.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: But wisdom and charisma, which as we all know, I love charisma players, um charisma PCs, I should say.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and this poor lady has a negative one.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: But what I did do because of some of her racial features, I was able to buff things like persuasion.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: She naturally, because she's a half orc, has the intimidation, so she intimidates pretty easily.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I did buff that persuasion and then some of her like perception and stuff like that, just so it wasn't super bad because you do tend to use a lot of those things.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: Half orc is a very powerful race to pick for a fighter.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that was the one of the things that was appealing to me because of that.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it also made it easy for me to write a background for her.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: So let me share the background with you guys.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just because I think it's a fun role-playing thing in here.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it says uh what I wrote was uh as a young girl, Ren was always an outcast.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: She's been called a freak far too often to even care anymore.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: When schools and temples wouldn't take her, she turned to the military.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: They saw value in her strength and intelligence when it came to the battlefield.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: After basic training and serving stints in the city guard and waterdeep, she was sent to Baldur's Gate and was given the rank of sergeant in a unit command in the Flaming Fist, but was quickly moved to the Upper City, uh the Upper City Guard, and now commands a small platoon who patrol the neighborhood around the Temple of Gone.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Ren is not battle hardened, yet she has seen her fair share of muck and mire in Baldur's Gate.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: While unrest stirs at the Basilis Gate, she knows the time is nearing when she will get her first taste of blood.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: So she's one of those she I I I always get a little leery about background sometimes because like a for a first level character, you are not gonna be a battle hardened general.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I thought so.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was important to say that she was still green, but she's she's like one of those like super muscly dudes, but has never gotten into a fight before.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of how I see her being.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been more of her intelligence that has gotten her rank, like she just understands how how to fight because she's had to do it all her life.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of the the angle that I was taking with her background.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: So d did we decide like when he says Baldur's Gate, do we drink?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody drink, everybody drank.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, but I think that's perfect.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, do you have anything else on her?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: I do have one thing.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: So so it's like I didn't go super exotic with anything this time, uh like as far as class and race, but one thing I did do was I did go exotic with her weapon choice.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: She actually has a um, I got I gotta find it here.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a double-bladed scimitar, which I would envision, I don't know if she got this someplace, but like she could spin it around and kind of like lightsabers sometimes, like where she can take it apart and dual wield it is would be pretty stinking cool for her.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe she got it when she was promoted to whatever she's Italian she's eating now.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: With that proficiency, you can do anything with that, right?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like double bladed scimitar.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like that would be really cool and some fun role-playing options.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, Phil, what do you got?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, evidently Ross and Phil were on very similar wavelengths here because I also built a half orc fighter.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but not mine is a non-binary character named Borig.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and Borig, well, aka Phil in this case, kind of forgot to write a background, but we're gonna hit on our background first, and we'll come back to the other stuff because it kind of feeds in well with what Ross has already talked about.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: I also chose the uh soldier background.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: So Borig happens to serve in one of what was her name?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Renzata.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: In Ren's uh battalion that is checking out the Basilis gate in Baldur's Gate.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I said Baldur's Gate for like the first time, so you can't hold that one against me.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if you want to count it as a Ross, you sure can.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so Boric, uh, I YOLO, and we did okay.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, let's call it basically typical, right?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I got a 17 in my strength because I am playing this as a melee fighter.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: So plus three to my strength.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um decks, I got a plus two, threw a 14 in there.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Constitution, a 15, still grants me a plus two.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: So trying to just play more of the tanky style, um, strength constitution combo.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, intelligence plus zero with my 11.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wisdom a plus one with my 12.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that was a little metagaming for perception.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it was.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then charisma, because we everybody at this point knows charisma is Phil's dump stat.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Negative one, which I proudly put there with my eight.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, not a problem for me.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, fighting style-wise on the fighter front, uh, Borig adopted the fighting specialty of great weapon fighting.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, if I re- I can re-roll a one or a two on the damage dice with my melee weapons wield with two hands, and to complement that as my weapon choice in my starting equipment, I took the great axe.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, base damage is one D12 plus three to two-handed heavy martial melee weapon.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, I thought that would lend itself well to the great weapon fighting.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: And that's gonna really cause some damage once you get a second attack.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the plan, right?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: And AC's not as high as Rentz.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she's more seasoned than I am.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 18 armor class there, and learning from everything that she does in the battalion.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, one of the last kind of pieces here, too, which fed into the, you know, one of the reasons I picked the half orc is that one of the racial traits for a half orc is that you have a savage attack.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if you hit a critical, you score a crit hit, you get a roll one of the weapons dice an additional time and just add that on as extra damage.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: So as you're racking up your extra attacks and you start adding in all that extra damage, and then you action surge and you're suddenly attacking again.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can just rake on damage at that point.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's handy.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh, what do we think?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Final thoughts, Brett.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: This is a great, really approachable first-time character that you can jump into and not get bored with, like you can adapt it and change it over time.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, one thing I just remembered that we didn't touch on is with a fighter, you get a lot of ability score improvements over levels one to 20, you can get up to or you can get seven ability score improvements.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: Normally, you can only get five of those.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think with a fighter, picking a feat over an ability score improvement is really powerful.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, being able to customize your character and add those additional feats can really boost your of what you can do over time.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I 100% agree with that.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: So uh obviously, if you're gonna do that, you know, make sure DM's okay with feats.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that most probably are.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just make sure that you're not gonna make yourself way, way, way too overpowered because it can happen, right?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, my final thoughts on the fighter.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's a good intro class, and I think that you can bend this character into whatever you're looking for.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to taste a magic, it's there.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be, you know, frontline fighter, it's there.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to sit on the side and shot pot people with your ranged weapons, it's there.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: I truthfully think that you have options.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be a healer, don't pick a fighter.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: But kind of beyond that.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great first player character.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I I agree a hundred percent with what you said, Phil, because I think stereotypically, fighters, people avoid fighters because they think that's all they do.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's no variability in there, there's not a lot of flexibility to do what you want.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: And what we've seen throughout this episode is that is completely the opposite.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, I would highly lean toward first-time players playing fighters because it allows you to do exactly what you said.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can get a taste of all of these other things, which allows you to try those things out.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you go to build your next character, if you want more magic, then you can go toward those spellcasting classes.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you want more range, you can then go to the rangers and things like that if that's what you want to do, or some also some spellcasting classes.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's it's just a great thing that is the complete opposite of what the stereotypes out there are.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's gonna do it for this episode of Bards and Barrels.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: This was another great class review.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: You can listen to our past episodes of the show anywhere podcasts can be found.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, want to stay in the loop and not miss the latest from us?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Be sure to head over and give us a like and follow on our Facebook and Instagram accounts at Bards and Barrels.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you soon, folks.