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View Full Version : Magic: The Root of the Problem, a look at boosting the Fighter



CheshireCatAW
2009-09-11, 11:02 AM
The primary difficulty in adjucating what is possible with magic is that people do not have a frame of reference in the real world to guide it with. It's comparatively simple to figure that it's X much harder to cleave a log in twain when you're only able to bench press 50lbs as opposed to pressing 150lbs. We have no idea how "feasible" it would really be to increase the damage of your fireball from 1d6 to 2d6. And even that would be easier to figure out than what level spells should start affecting the mind directly such as sleep. Magic in the game world rides along, for all intents and purposes, with little (if any) guidance on how it would "really" work. The disconnect occurs when we start basing other skills off Real-World guides. Comparing a Fighter or Barbarian as-is to a Wizard or Cleric is like comparing Pong to Half-Life 2. The limitations that were in place for Pong are wildly, fantastically different than what HL2 has.

From this point, we have two options if we're trying to "balance" the classes. We could depower the Wizard or we could empower the Fighter. I intend to brainstorm some ideas of how to do the latter.

To empower the Fighter we have to take it off it's real-world limitations. I've heard, peripherally, that some people don't like ToB because it makes martial characters "too anime-y". I contend that this is the way to go with the Fighter (and to an extent, Barbarian) to balance him. He's got to embrace the fantasy tropes that allow Questing Peasant Steve to survive things he realistically stands no chance against. He's got to be able to leap ravines and burrow into rock WITHOUT MAGIC. He's got to be able to Matrix-Dodge arrows and push back magical walls of force because he's STRONG enough. We have to push his/her physical training to the point where it becomes implausible.

Hypervelocity Sword/Axe/Shield/
My first thought was a proprietary damage type that is allowed to persons of extreme strength. They are able to swing that sword -so hard- that the damage type changes to Perforation or Hypervelocity. The idea stemming from the effect Explosively Formed Penetrators have on modern heavily armored vehicles. What are the effects of this damage type? I have no clue! Maybe it does more damage to heavily armored people because of the armor backspall. Maybe it causes excessively higher damage (Maybe increasing the damage bonus from Strength from +1 per modifier to +3 or +4). It would also probably ignore some types of DR due to its nature. I'm certain people with more familiarity with the game system could come up with a far more balanced option.

A mythological example that comes to mind that is not replicable in game is the Cadalbolg being able to split a hill in half. While this might not immediately make this possible, I think it's a step in the right direction.

Is this realistic? Of course not. This completely ignores the science of why EFPs work. But who cares? It's simply doing what the Fighter already does and upgrading it into something better while maintaining a semblance of logic. It's what magic has been doing for decades!

Fighting Styles for Fighters
I've always been of the thought that Class Abilities should be more powerful than feats. How about giving fighters certain Feat Trees and tie them together as a Fighting Style, perhaps adding unique bonuses. Perhaps a Tripping style which, in addition to granting the Trip Feat tree, gives bonuses to tripping larger creatures, quadrupeds or, heck, even flying enemies. Have a Charging style which gives significant bonuses to charging enemies. The drawback might be that it takes a swift action to change between fighting styles.

This one was tangentially inspired by the Jedi, of all things. They have different fighting styles that boost certain abilities or allow certain skills to be used. I remember reading a novel where they switch fighting styles during a fight to throw off an enemy. This seems like something a Fighter should be capable of.

The huge benefit of this is that if the Fighter starts receiving this as class skills, his ability to contribute in a variety of situations increases. Maybe give him a different style every 3rd level or so? It will free them to take a single feat here or there that they might not take otherwise

Magic Spells style list of Feats of Strength
Maybe a Fighter with strength 25+, a certain Fighting Style and a couple of turns can push a wall of Force until it bubbles outward and bursts. Maybe a redonkulously tough Fighter can stab himself to give himself a bonus to resisting the effects of a mind affecting spell. Maybe a Fighter can swing a sword with such strength and precision that it creates a Wind-blast style projectile.

In classic literature it is rarely the Wizard which is the primary protagonist. It's usually the martially inclined character who leads the group to glory through stabbing things. They usually have to force their way through things magical, and it's just not reflected that way currently.

I looked at this originally and thought "That's just giving Fighters magic" and was kind of put off by it. After a while I realized that I was wrong. The only reason I might have thought it was magic is because it superficially resembles the system magic uses to list their items. This is simply a Fighter exceeding his reality-based limitation and slightly limiting magic's arbitrary omnipotence.

These are merely three concepts that I've been pondering over and may refine yet further, but I would like to know the general consensus of wether or not this makes sense to others, if it's already been done, or if it just comes off as another stark-raving lunatic preaching their "unique" idea on the boards.

Thank you for reading this and special thanks for critiques, comments and further ideas.

Doc Roc
2009-09-11, 11:07 AM
This should probably be in homebrew.

Melamoto
2009-09-11, 11:16 AM
This looks to be spot on to me. Wizards can do hundreds of things that fighters can't, and Fighters have no way of stopping them. The one that really gets me? Forcecage and Wall of Force. Barriers that are completely invincible except to magic. It just makes martial characters feel useless.

CheshireCatAW
2009-09-11, 11:17 AM
Tidesinger,
I would have put it there except that my intent was not to create a new system for playing the game. It was for highlighting some facets of the Fighter that I can see as being arbitrarily limited by reality. It seems that there's a lot of people out there who feel that because it's a Fighter, and therefore easily pictured in real life, it should be firmly interred in such reality. I wanted to call out why the Fighter fails and see if anyone else could offer their view of parts of the Fighter that could be improved from the concept up rather than the mechanical bits.

I do apologise if that didn't come through in my first post. I can see how my adding mechanics to each example might lead you to believe that, but I just wanted to show in game ways to exercise these concepts.

Kylarra
2009-09-11, 11:18 AM
Well there is this (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/prestigeClasses/legendaryDreadnought.htm).

The problem is, where are you going to draw the line with things obtainable through sheer martial prowess, and what is it going to give the fighter besides potentially making all of his tricks (trip, disarm etc) potentially available at once on the battlefield?

CheshireCatAW
2009-09-11, 11:21 AM
Well there is this (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/prestigeClasses/legendaryDreadnought.htm).

The problem is, where are you going to draw the line with things obtainable through sheer martial prowess, and what is it going to give the fighter besides potentially making all of his tricks (trip, disarm etc) potentially available at once on the battlefield?

I think we should be looking at it the other way, since that is the way people seem to view magic. They don't seem to bother with what the limit of what is obtainable is. They simply make a progression and have it progressively upgrade itself to remain a contender until well, level 20/9th level spells. I think the Fighter would benefit more from thinking in this direction rather than starting with his limitations, and then building from that foundation.

EDIT: I mention the progression spells specifically because that's the way most Fighter skills would seem to work. You progressively get better and better at it until you have an epiphany and start down a new road.

Doc Roc
2009-09-11, 11:23 AM
I agree with you. Do you have an e-mail address I could toss a thing at you via? PM it to me, I guess.

Kylarra
2009-09-11, 11:26 AM
I think we should be looking at it the other way, since that is the way people seem to view magic. They don't seem to bother with what the limit of what is obtainable is. They simply make a progression and have it progressively upgrade itself to remain a contender until well, level 20/9th level spells. I think the Fighter would benefit more from thinking in this direction rather than starting with his limitations, and then building from that foundation.Sounds like he's getting maneuvers.


:smallwink:


I mean sure, you could make a combat style that favors each of the fighters tricks that can be changed as a swift action. that'll mean that either it'll scale with level and thus not be multiclass friendly, or be dipped for every single specialized build there is (not that fighter2 generally isn't for the feats anyway).

Depending on the martial progression, you'd either outclass every other martial class or be left gimped by the necessity of your own versatility.

Now the solution to that is to have different trees that you can pull these tricks from. Perhaps split them off and allow you to pick and choose as you build up... well, that sounds kind of familiar.

Tide has some sort of fighter fix he's been working on. might be a good place to start I guess.

Chrono22
2009-09-11, 11:28 AM
The problem is twofold.
On the one hand, the original warrior/spellcaster progressions are heavily lopsided towards spellcasters; it's been brought up many times on the internet. The scope and versatility of a spell caster (in or out of combat) trumps any other class comparatively.
The second problem is the philosophy that a magical solution can and should always be better than mundane ones. Many spells exist that render entire character concepts or progressions irrelevant.

These problems are inherent to the game- you can't fix these aspects of the system unless you reimagine it. Sorry. But that's what happens when you build a house on shifting sand.
Specifically, the scope of any given attack/ability/magical power must be balanced in respect to the tier it's from. Tiers of power (escalating categories of power/scope) must be established.
The second part of the solution would be to break the shackles of the "fighters can only fight" stereotype. That doesn't necessarily mean magic, but they should get abilities that can directly impact the game reality in a meaningful fashion.

If you just want to fix the system... the fastest and simplest solution (IMO) would be to give all classes access to stances and maneuvers (for which they qualify by their primary combat attributes). Treat the BAB of a character as their "level" for maneuvers/stances known/prepared.

Grumman
2009-09-11, 11:36 AM
In classic literature it is rarely the Wizard which is the primary protagonist. It's usually the martially inclined character who leads the group to glory through stabbing things. They usually have to force their way through things magical, and it's just not reflected that way currently.
In classic literature, I think you'd find the martially inclined character is usually the protagonist because of his limitations. Since the reader already has a rough idea of what a real person can do, they don't need pages of exposition to make their solutions look plausible. With a spellcaster, you risk every achievement looking like a Deus Ex Machina.

CheshireCatAW
2009-09-11, 11:42 AM
Sounds like he's getting maneuvers.


:smallwink:


I mean sure, you could make a combat style that favors each of the fighters tricks that can be changed as a swift action. that'll mean that either it'll scale with level and thus not be multiclass friendly, or be dipped for every single specialized build there is (not that fighter2 generally isn't for the feats anyway).

Depending on the martial progression, you'd either outclass every other martial class or be left gimped by the necessity of your own versatility.

Now the solution to that is to have different trees that you can pull these tricks from. Perhaps split them off and allow you to pick and choose as you build up... well, that sounds kind of familiar.

Tide has some sort of fighter fix he's been working on. might be a good place to start I guess.

I see that it looks like maneuvers, but I was trying to stay away from them as much as possible. I was thinking the styles could give passive bonuses to skills that directly relate to the current mindset of the Fighter while adding similar pentalties to skills/checks which would be counterproductive to his current goals. A guys bracing himself to take a bullrush head-on is going to have trouble focusing on dextrous actions. I guess I may just be straying too far into ToB, though. I'll really have to re-read that book.

Now there's a great solution. Have multiple trees, some which share feat groupings but perhaps give different bonuses to encourage different behaviours?

Zaq
2009-09-11, 11:51 AM
But who cares? It's simply doing what the Fighter already does and upgrading it into something better while maintaining a semblance of logic.

This part is what I don't like. Fighters are already decent at what they do... it's just that what they do is disgustingly limited. They don't need to be better at what they do. They need new things they can do.

CheshireCatAW
2009-09-11, 12:11 PM
This part is what I don't like. Fighters are already decent at what they do... it's just that what they do is disgustingly limited. They don't need to be better at what they do. They need new things they can do.

I agree with this, which is why I like the Fighting Style and Feat Tree ideas. It allows the Fighter to be much more versatile than he used to be. However, I also think that he could do with a boost to those skills he invests in, making him a better Fighter than a Druid or Cleric.

This is precisely why I posted, however. What ideas do you have as to what a Fighter SHOULD be able to do, but isnt?

Kylarra
2009-09-11, 12:13 PM
Mm, though I hesitate to use monks as a baseline for anything in particular, perhaps they can serve to start as a guideline for how (WotC at least) sees some sort of breakdown in styles.

Monk style variants (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#cobraStrike).