number of powers which benefit from Dexterity, Wisdom or Constitution. Some fighter attacks have an additional benefit if used with weapons from a specific group, such as axes, spears or light blades. Dungeons & Dragons Essentials The Essentials rulebook Heroes of the Fallen Lands presented two alternate versions of the Fighter, the Knight and the Slayer. The Knight focuses on defense, while the Slayer focuses on both offense and defense. Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition The fighter has been included as a character class in the 5th edition Player's Handbook. Players may choose from one of three Martial Archetypes at third level: Champion, Battle Master, and Eldritch Knight. Each is intended to provide a different flavour to the base fighter class: the Champion archetype focuses on simplistic power, the Battle Master focuses on a unique resource that is used to empower weapon flourishes known as maneuvers, and the Eldritch Knight offers limited access to magic. Later published sourcebooks have expanded upon the fighter class by granting additional subclass options. Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (2015) added the Purple Dragon Knight to the Martial Archetype options, which focuses upon assisting and supporting allies. Xanathar's Guide to Everything (2017) added the Arcane Archer, Cavalier, and Samurai as player options. The Arcane Archer uses a unique resource of magically-empowered trick shots, the Cavalier focuses on mounted combat, defending their allies and marking foes for engagement, and the Samurai focuses on resilience, swift strikes, and social interaction. Explorer's Guide to Wildemount (2020) added the Echo Knight. Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (2020) added two new options: Psi Warrior and Rune Knight. Non-player character Outside of the player base classes, in 3rd edition the Warrior class is a simplified and weakened version of the fighter, intended to be used as a non-player character, as town guard for example. Reception Screen Rant rated the fighter class as the 2nd most powerful class of the base 12 character classes in the 5th edition. The Gamer rated the 5th edition fighter subclass Samurai as the 10th most awesome subclass out of the 32 new character options in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Gus Wezerek, for FiveThirtyEight, reported that of the 5th edition "class and race combinations per 100,000 characters that players created on D&D Beyond from" August 15 to September 15, 2017, fighters were the most created at 13,906 total. Human (4,888) was the most common racial combination followed by dwarf