(Who Misses on Most Attacks)
True story…
I was GMing the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure from the Fifth Edition Starter Set and I had two brand new players at the table. It was literally their first time playing 5e and the first time playing any RPG for one of them. We were using the preteen characters from the Starter Set. One of the new players had the elf wizard character and the other had a human fighter.
As our second combat progressed, I noticed a major difference between these two characters. The wizard was getting lots help from the more experienced players about what he could do with his character. He had come to the session with no prior knowledge of the game. At first, he was presented with a nearly overwhelming number of options in his spell list. Fortunately, one of the others had brought the Arcane Spell Cards and they were able to pull out four good spells from the list to fill his available spell slots.
Just Axe Him
And on the other side of the table, the fighter had…an axe. After learning which number represented his attack, he quickly got in the groove. Whenever his turn came around, he would swing his great axe, either hit or (more likely) miss, then look around the table and ask, “Am I done?”
To his credit, the player was a great sport about it and based on our conversations afterward he still had a lot of fun. But as the GM, I wasn’t satisfied. I really wanted both of these new players to have a great adventure and to leave the game feeling like heroes.
A Little Help?
So, I went to social media and solicited advice. I got quite a few great ideas for dealing with this. Some of them were philosophical, some practical, and others just fun.
7 Ways to Make a Fighter Fun
1) Focus on Role Playing
There were several reminders from other gamers to make the game fun not by “winning” all the time but by making “losing” interesting. Even before the roll, describe the attack or action and encourage the player to do so as well. This will make his actions, even if they are simple attacks, more meaningful to the story and raise the stakes for the die roll. If he really is missing all the time, make that part of the story. The fighter will become an enjoyably clumsy and inept character. You can begin to make him roll for mundane tasks like sitting on a chair.
2) Award Inspiration or Advantage Points
One of the first things that I realized I should have been doing was awarding Inspiration points to the player. The fighter had been rolling the worst of any person around the table. But, especially considering he had never played a role playing game before, he had done a great job of looking back at his character background and giving in-story reasons for the choices he was making. Inspiration points are designed for just this instance. Giving him an Inspiration point or two over the course of a session would have given him more decisions to make in determining when was the best time to utilize the points.
3) Start Moving
One of the primary benefits the fighter can provide is tactical control of a battle field. By moving aggressively he can draw away heat from the characters who happen to be landing their attacks and providing them with more opportunities. This will also provide the player with lots of strategic decisions to make regardless of whether his great axe is connecting.
4) Give Him a Better Weapon
A quick way to improve the effectiveness of any character is to upgrade their equipment. As soon as was reasonable, I planned to provide a new weapon that will give just a slight bump to his attacks. Also, I was advised to make sure that the fighter was maximizing his chances by sticking with one hand fighting, rather than wielding two weapons or going for two attacks. It’s better to hit once than miss twice.
4) Give Him a Magic Item
One commenter suggested that I give him a magical amulet. This amulet would provide a +1 to attack rolls for every miss. Then it would reset back to zero after a hit. This would be a simple and quick way to give a decent boost to his chances. As a bonus, it could also provide some story hooks for the character as well.
6) Have the Player Get New Dice
Everyone around our table realized pretty quickly that the fighter’s dice were cursed. Unfortunately, they were already attuned to him. And we didn’t have time to perform the necessary rituals for him to use a new set. Naturally, the old set of dice has already been melted down.
7) Have the Fighter Sell His Soul for Better Luck
If implementing a few of the ideas above doesn’t solve the problem, another idea was for the player to sell his soul to an archfey for better luck. Personally, it seemed a bit extreme. I figured I would have the player preroll a new character first and see if that helped. If not, I’ve got this gem of an idea tucked away as a backup.
I hope to implement most, if not all, of these ideas for the fighter player at our next gaming session. I’m hoping it will dramatically increase the number of decisions the fighter needs to make and increase the number of options available to him.
Have you seen any of these tactics in play at the table? What do you think makes playing a fighter character fun?
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