Good day recruits,
Stop waving your hands and chanting your whimsical incantations, today’s Class Spotlight is on the Fighter. Pick up a weapon and start swinging, for heaven’s sake! Your job will be to be in your opponent’s face, stand your ground and make their life miserable. Sure you won’t get to play with fancy powers or colorful spells, but by the gods as your friends run out of magic or get caught out of position, you WILL still be standing firm and resolute. Now keep swinging, and don’t let me catch you slacking.
For those who wish to multiclass into Monk, you may seek ol’ Kaiju’s wisdom (please don’t, Fighter/Monk is terrible).
By Blood and Steel!
While the others out there are playing around with forces they cannot comprehend, Fighters are your good old reliable - give them a weapon, any weapon, and point them at the enemy. With their D10 HP die (only second to the Barbarian), the ability to wear any type of armor and their extensive weapon proficiencies, Fighters make for perfect frontliners. And although high-level Monks can attack 5 times through Flurry of Blows with unarmed strikes, Fighters are also the only class with the ability to strike up to 4 times with a single Attack action.
… And that’s without taking Action Surge into consideration! Do you want to attack even more? Pop that Action Surge and lay down the pain. Put a powerful magic weapon in a Fighter’s hands, and watch your enemies melt. Within the 2024 D&D Rules and the new Paladin Divine Smite restricted to once per turn, the single target nova potential of the Fighter may be the highest among martial classes.
Now for those who may not know, nova is a term used when someone goes all-in to deal massive amounts of damage in one go, burning down their resources in order to do so (like a Supernova blowing up and dying down). It used to be that Paladins could quickly burn through their spell slots by attacking multiple times and using Divine Smite on each blow in D&D 5e 2014, but this is no longer possible in 2024 D&D thus limiting their nova potential. The Fighter, on other hand, still scales fantastically well with weapons that deal extra damage such as Flametongue - a sword that deals an extra 2d6 fire damage on hit. At level 11 with 18 STR and a Flametongue Greatsword, you are looking at 6 attacks with Action Surge, for a potential 24d6 + 24 of single target damage (without counting any other flat bonuses)! Wowwee, whoever is on the receiving end is in for a world of pain.
And that’s not all the Fighter has, far from it, especially looking at the 2024 upgrades. Second Wind keeps you in the fight by giving you a multi-usage self-heal. Weapon Mastery allows you to add all kinds of effects to your attacks to ruin the day of your foes, from slowing them down to making them easier to hit. Tactical Mind allows you to add 1d10 to any failed ability check, improving the Fighter’s capacity to perform outside combat. Indomitable almost guarantees that you turn a failed saving throw into a success by allowing you to reroll it with a bonus equal to your level, making you much less vulnerable to save or suck spells. At last, Studied Attacks gives you advantage on your next strike when you miss one, lowering the odds of your target eluding you too many times. One last thing that we didn’t mention yet - Fighters also get feats more often than any other classes. While almost all classes gain those at level 4, 8, 12 and 16, the Fighter gets two extra at level 6 and 14. More chances to raise your ability scores or grab those nifty feats!
Actually we lied, there's another thing we forgot to talk about. While most picture the Fighter wearing heavy armor with a sword and shield, the beauty of that class is that it’s very customizable. Dexterity Fighter sporting dual blades and light armor? Sure. Longbow Fighter banking on their extra attacks to provide massive ranged damage? Go for it. Want to swing a Greataxe or a Maul with indiscriminate violence while protected in heavy armor? You’re on!
So, are you ready to roll a Fighter? Just don’t name them Bob and you’ll be fine.
The Fighters of Solasta
Alright, now let’s see how our armored folks fared in the first opus of Solasta. Considering Crown of the Magister was very combat-focused, the gap between spellcasters and martial classes tended to be less prevalent.
The Champion (SRD)
It is hard to be more “vanilla” than the Champion Fighter. With almost all of their features being passive upgrades, the Champion is just… an extension of the core Fighter class. After writing all these retrospectives about 4 classes and their 20 subclasses, it’s funny that we’re getting stumped by the Champion of all archetypes.
We start with Improved Critical, increasing your critical range to 19-20, which gets further improved later with Superior Critical for a range of 18-20. Now don’t get us wrong, rolling a crit is fun. It is exciting! So, rolling more crit isn’t bad per se - no, the issue mostly lies in the fact that critting with a regular weapon isn’t that impactful. Rogues love crits because their Sneak Attack already makes them roll a truckload of dice. Paladins love crits because it also doubles the impact of their Divine Smite. Fighters don’t really have something of the sort to take advantage of their crit.
It used to be that in 3.5e there were crit-fishing builds (the term used to try and “fish” for a critical hit), as there were special weapons, feats and features that would complement each other well for that purpose. We even found builds (although we didn’t verify if they were legit) where you ended up critting on a 9+, but even then most people would argue that crit-fishing wasn’t really good. It was fun, that’s for sure - but you could probably get more out of your character with a non crit-centered build.
Going back to 5e, there is much less support for crit-fishing than 3.5e - making a niche build even less viable. Gone are the days of Keen Kukris on Psychic Weapon Master. So you can imagine why for many more veteran players, Improved Critical just didn’t feel very exciting in the end.
Unfortunately for the Champion, the next few features were no more exciting. At level 7, Remarkable Athlete allowed you to add half your proficiency bonus to STR, DEX or CON checks - but only if you did not already use your proficiency bonus. A strictly worse Jack of All Trades that all Bards get at level 2, with the only upside being that you could jump a little further. Thankfully in the 2024 version, this feature instead unlocks as soon as level 3, and changed to grant you advantage on Initiative Rolls (which is huge!) and on Athletics checks. Additionally, you can now move for free without provoking Opportunity Attacks after scoring a Critical Hit - boosting the interest of Improved Critical by providing synergy. Huzzah!
The Champion also gets an additional Fighting Style (at level 10 in 2014 / level 7 in 2024), allowing them to further specialize or keep their options open. Now at level 10 in the 2024 ruleset, they get an archetype defining feature - something that the old Champion truly lacked outside being able to crit a little more often than others. Heroic Warrior gives them Heroic Inspiration at the start of each of their turns! This allows them to reroll ANY die after they rolled it once per round. You missed that last decisive strike on the big bad? Reroll. The evil wizard managed to use Charm Person on you? Reroll! The Champion just. Does. Not. Fail. EVER! This is the perfect flavor for them - they are THE Champion after all. Just remember that Heroic Inspiration doesn’t stack, so make sure you use it when you can.
The rest of the Champion’s features remain relatively the same after that, with Superior Critical at level 15 and Survivor at level 18 - the only upgrade in 2024 being that Survivor gives you advantage on Death Saving Throws and also makes your 18-20 crit range work when rolling them. Once again, a perfect fit for the Champion’s fantasy - you don’t miss, you don’t fail, and when you fall your rise again. Ah, let’s not forget to mention what Survivor did in the first place: While under half-HP (bloodied) and above 0 HP, you regain HP at the start of each of your turns.
Final Verdict? Honestly, Champion went from a fairly bland and weak archetype to something that’s genuinely fun and exciting with a strong flavorful identity. If we were not so limited in the number of Subclasses we could implement in Solasta 2 (due to team size and time), it’d definitely be one of the more interesting choices to select.
Mountaineer (Crown of the Magister)
Aaaah the Mountaineer, one of our first subclasses ever designed. We imagined the Mountaineer as this axe and shield dwarven fighter holding out waves of monsters inside tight tunnels underground. This one went all-in trying to bank on the shove feature - something that started as very interesting and filled with potential, but that tapered on the later you get in-game. Why is that? Well, turns out most larger creatures that you start encountering at higher levels are immune to shove and prone from Medium size creatures (hint: that’s you).
They start out with Shield Swipe, giving advantage on shove rolls when wielding a shield, and Tunnel Fighter giving them a flat AC bonus when next to a wall. You can see here the idea of fighting in confined spaces with very little room to manoeuvre, where controlling where the enemy position with shove can really change the flow of the battle. Fun fact, in the very early conception stage of Solasta 1 (waaaay back, even before we started working on the Kickstarter demo), the game had a much smaller scope. We’re talking 4 classes, no character creation, and a focus almost exclusively on dungeon diving. Here, let us share an early Concept Art from that time to illustrate what we mean.
Just pulled that one from the Solasta 1 art vault. Our party of 4 adventurers are about to square off against a troll on a tight hanging bridge in the dark.
As you can imagine, that changed quite a bit (notably with the success of the Kickstarter), and Solasta 1 grew into the game we all know and love nowadays; with a Character Creator, all 12 classes, and a vast world with diverse locations not limited to caverns and corridors… Which means the Mountaineer just became a lot more situational! Dang it!
Moving on, at level 7 they got Close Quarters which gave them the ability to swap position with an enemy with a bonus action and gain advantage on attack rolls against it. An interesting feature, unfortunately hindered by the prerequisites to make it work: it only worked on creatures of your size or smaller (medium), and you needed to win a contested shove roll (albeit with advantage thanks to Shield Swipe). Close Quarters itself is an interesting idea, but its limitations made it very situational - especially later when many enemies are bigger than Medium size.
At level 10 they got Shield Push, another buff to their shove by making it a bonus action - once again putting all eggs in the shove basket without giving a solution for larger creatures. And finally at level 15 they had Pack Strider, which basically gave you the equivalent of Pack Tactics - giving you advantage on melee attack rolls if you have another ally next to the target.
Wew! Now that we know the weaknesses of our dear Mountaineer, how did we rework it in the Sourcebook? Well, we kept the initial idea of this shield-focused fighter, but without the whole shoving theme as it would quickly become size-gated - and the Mountaineer is no Path of the Giant.
At level 3, we start with Shield Expert instead of Shield Swipe, giving you the bonus of the Shield Master feat with a bit of extra on the side - being able to use the shield as a 1d4 bludgeoning weapon and strike with it as if it were a light weapon with your bonus action. We also get Close Quarters instead of Tunnel Fighter, which now both allows you to move through the space of any creature of a larger size than yours (making it useful against bigger creatures) and to swap place with creatures of your size instead of shoving them if you so desire (keeping it useful against smaller creatures).
At level 7 we see the return of Tunnel Fighter, which only sees a little update in its wording to clarify that the bonus AC is granted when next to an obstacle that can grant total cover (so not limited to walls). At level 10, Shield Push is replaced by Shield Bash, giving you the ability to force enemies hit by your shield to roll a CON save or be… Dazed? Wait, that doesn’t exist! But you’ve got the idea - we didn’t want to hand out too many hard CCs when making our subclasses, so Shield Bash would only halve the target’s speed and prevent them from using Bonus Actions and Reactions until your next turn.
At last, at level 15 you would get Watchful Sentry instead of Pack Strider, allowing you to use your reaction to swap places with an ally next to you that is getting attacked (and forcing the attack to target you instead). After all, with the Mountaineer archetype being all about defense, positioning and control - we had to make it so they could protect their allies properly!
Final Verdict? The Mountaineer is a real window into the very first drafts of Solasta 1 - its entire theme born from our original game plan: a deep delve into dark caverns with a small party of four: Fighter, Wizard, Rogue and Cleric. The theme of the Mountaineer was good, its execution needed a little bit of readjusting but overall we believe that there’s a lot of room for a shield-focused archetype for the Fighter.
Spellblade (Crown of the Magister)
The Spellblade is where we start to get into some design struggle - we want a Fighter that can cast spells, but that’s already the turf of the Eldritch Knight. Does that mean there is no room for something new? No, of course not! But theme-wise we are bound to have some similarities because they both fulfill the same fantasy, a magic wielding fighter. Small funny anecdote: we remember seeing a comment about the Spellblade that made us laugh quite hard. “This is not a fighter, this is a rogue running on fighter hardware”.
Let’s forget the Spellblade for a moment and think about the idea of a spellcasting Fighter. What does a Fighter want to do to be relevant in a fight? Well, they need to be attacking to make use of all their extra attacks, which is the main draw of the class. But that means spending a turn casting spells is not a good thing, right? Well then, how do we make it work? There are a couple of solutions. First of all, spells are also useful outside battle - that’s one of the main reasons why people complain about the spellcaster vs martial gap at higher level on tabletop. Spells can give a lot of utility, like helping to sneak into a castle with Invisibility and Sleep, preventing combat with Suggestion or illusion spells, and so on and so forth.
But as you already know, Solasta 1 is mostly combat focused. So that doesn’t work out for us. The second solution is bonus action spells and reaction spells, which allow them to keep their main action to attack. Problem is, there are only a few of them (wizard spell list) - such as the well known Shield spell which is already something the Eldritch Knight has. The third solution is encouraging spellcasting by giving something in return. For example, Eldritch Knight’s Eldritch Strike makes your opponent roll their next saving throw with disadvantage if you manage to land a weapon attack on them - encouraging you to cast spells by making them more likely to land.
Now let’s go back to the Spellblade. When we started working on this archetype, we hadn’t come to such conclusions quite yet, so we were mostly testing things around to see what stuck. At level 3, Magic Weapon made your weapon be considered magical against creatures resistant to non-magical damage. Honestly, this one was completely a filler feature - something that quickly became irrelevant as you would find +1 weapons while adventuring.
At level 7, Into the Fray made you able to use Melee weapons as spellcasting focus and the ability to cast somatic spells even while wielding such weapons - as well as allowing you to cast ranged spells without disadvantage while in melee. This feature was much more on point, as one of the biggest issues for spellcasting martial classes is the inability to cast somatic spells if both of their hands are occupied, with the only option being to drop a weapon to cast or to be playing Two-Handed weapons.
At level 10, Spelltyrant was a strange telekinesis power which allowed you to shove enemies from afar with a bonus action. While interesting, it didn’t really synergize with the rest of the Spellblade’s features - and a 5’ shove rarely mattered anyway.
At last, at level 15 they got Arcane Escape, which made Spellblades get the benefit of Dodge whenever they cast a spell. This was a strong feature which fell into the 3rd category - giving you a reason to cast a spell by rewarding you with something significant. Normally, dodging would take your main action anyway - so being allowed to cast a spell for that is just cherry on the top!
After all of this, and looking back at it, when we started writing the revised Sourcebook Spellblade was one of the archetypes that we decided to completely rework. Into the Fray got moved to level 3 so that Spellblades could immediately start casting somatic spells when they got their subclass going. At level 7, they get Arcane Conduit which makes them imbue their weapon until the end of their next turn whenever they cast a spell with a casting time of 1 action, making it deal an extra 1d10 force damage. With the amount of attacks a Fighter can dish out, this bonus damage would quickly stack up.
At level 10 Arcane Shield now gave them temporary HP when casting a spell, allowing them to stay in the fight longer. And at level 15, they would get Swift Cast to change the casting time of a spell that used a main action into a bonus action once per short rest (while still getting the benefit of Arcane Conduit).
As you can see, the Spellblade now had a much clearer pattern of play - one that was easy to understand. Unlike the Eldritch Knight that would cast spells and still attack thanks to War Magic, the Spellblade was supposed to alternate between spellcasting on one round to receive buffs and attacking on the other to spend them. Later on they would get the ability to cheat once per short rest by cutting the first round of spellcasting with Swift Cast, vastly improving their initial impact on the battle. However, the pattern remains simple: cast a spell to get damage buffs and temporary HP, then go slap the baddies with indiscriminate violence.
Final Verdict? The Spellblade wasn’t terrible in its first iteration, it got two good features for two mediocre ones. Previously an “okay” archetype, it fortunately became quite a lot of fun to play around with thanks to its rework, and managed to find its own identity!
Commander (Lost Valley)
With the Commander the aim was to provide a non-spellcasting support archetype, not unlike the 4th edition Warlord. Rallying the troops while standing beside them, without any divine blessings or magic shenanigans - just pure unadulterated guts. The fact that you could now have a strong frontliner who could also empower the rest of the team was a godsend for many players, who really enjoyed the addition of the Commander in Lost Valley.
At 3rd level, the Commander gains proficiency in Intimidation and Insight, as well as Rousing Shout - a bonus action to give all nearby allies (including themselves) advantage on their next attack. This feature can be used multiple times per short rest, allowing the Commander to heavily lower the chances of his party missing during combat, giving them a good use of their bonus action.
At level 7 they get Coordinated Defense, where they can sacrifice one of their attacks to grant any ally (or themselves) Dodge - again boosting their action economy by making Dodge usable without having to sacrifice a main action, and massively increasing the survivability of their teammates.
At level 10, Invigorating Shout increases the range of Rousing Shout and now also grants a small amount of temporary hit points, which over time considering the high amount of uses this feature has adds up to quite a lot, further enhancing the team’s tankiness. And at last, at level 15 Lead by Example marks enemies that you hit - making them additional damage any time someone makes a successful weapon attack against them.
As you can see, a very straightforward fantasy of a commander leading their troop to victory, by increasing both the offensive and defensive capabilities of nearby allies. There isn’t much to add since the Sourcebook version only saw minor tweaks, such as changing the name of Lead by Example to Take Them Down and increasing the additional damage from 1d4 to 1d6, and giving a name to the level 3 Bonus Proficiencies. It is now Gruff Authority, which on top of giving the 2 skill proficiencies also allows them to add their STR modifier to Intimidation & Persuasion checks.
Final Verdict? The Commander had an idea in mind when it was designed and they perfectly filled their role. A strong support martial class that can still kick ass on their own!
The… ??? (Solasta II)
In the demo, Neyra was a Cleric / Fighter who did not have the level to unlock her Fighter subclass, so there is very little that you could surmit from there. Let’s just say that we’re cooking something quite interesting, and we’re excited to see how you will like it!
Community Stream #09 Friday May 2nd
A little earlier than the other times, May’s Community Stream will take place later this week on Friday May 2nd! You’re many to have noticed the SRD 5.2 is now live, so we’re taking a deep dive into the document to discuss about the new content and what a passage to the 2024 ruleset would imply!
See you on Friday, 9 am PDT / 12 pm EDT / 6 pm CEST!
Article by Tactical Myzzrym
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2975950/Solasta_II/
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