Fighter fix? (Pathfinder.)

[Metahuman1]

Sooo,

The Pathfinder Fighter actually got a few class features, which conventional wisdom seems to be are kinda underwhelming. And they now get a feat every level. And yet seem to not even have gotten to Tier 4.

So, I had a though for how to fix them, and I'd like a wee bit o feed back.



1: Don't increase there actual skill ranks per level granted, but make it so all skills are class skills. If anyone of any race or culture can be a fighter and all races and cultures produce fighters, this makes thematic sense, and it opens up options for them to do something other then beat things.

2: Grant them Swordsage Maneuver progression, but instead of swordsage schools as the bog standard, let them pick, at lvl 1, three schools to get maneuvers from. Of any of them.

3: Give them pounce at lvl 1, and give them a small pool of points, based on shall we say, Con Mod Minimum 1. Will call these points, "Physique Points." Now, we give him, as an auto Bonus feat at lvl 1, travel devotion, with the special ability that instead of using Turn undead attempts to fuel them, he uses those Physique points. This gives him all the mobility he needs.

4: Proficiency's, just say "He's proficient with all weapons, armors, and shields." End of story. And give him Improved Unarmed strike at lvl 1 so that he can pass for knowing how to throw a jab and not get hit in the face in the process.



So, thoughts? Does this bring him up to at least a playable Tier 4? Higher?

[Saya]

Problems I can already see with this is that #2 and #3 will become a must dip for nearly any melee based characters, especially on top of the bonus feats granted.

#1 is good, but once again, you will run into a problem that fighters already have abysmally low skill pts, and without an int bonus, there are already a bunch of must-take skills if you don't want to be useless.

#4 is nice I suppose? Problem once again becomes dipping, but I do like having free imp unarmed.

[Bhaakon]

I don't think you really need to overhaul the base chassis (it would have been good to do it at the beginning, because it kind of sucks, but that ship has sailed, and I don't really like the idea of "replacing" it with an improved additional class a la warblade).

Pathfinder already has a bunch of feats with fight level prerequisites. Just make some of them really awesome, maybe designed along the lines of the combat style feats (but designed for weapons instead of unarmed combat). Particularly ones for non-standard builds (not everyone wants to be a charger, tripper, or a two-handed smasher). I'd like to see them do some of this through archetypes, but, unfortunately, the fighter's class features are so limited that anything they're traded out for will have to be equally lame. In short, turn "a bunch of bonus feats" into "a bunch of customizable class features," and leave the rest alone

I'd also design archetypes that are meant to stack with other archetypes, to provide more customizability and versatility. Maybe something like "Urbane Fighter," which would trade off heavy/med armor, non-buckler shield proficiency and 2 bonus feats for free weapon finesse, a version of dervish dancer that can use any finesse-able weapons and works with TWF, +2 SP/level, and grants social skills as class skills. It does 3 things at once: it makes the fighter slightly less useless out of combat, it provides some support to a non-standard play style (dex-based fighter and TWF), and it stacks with many other archetypes (it even loosely represents a historic fighting style, aristocratic dueling, which while not my stated goal, is certainly a preference).

[Drelua]

Since pounce does nothing until level 6 unless you're TWFing, you could delay that to make it less of an overpowered dip. You could delay the whole Travel Devotion thing too since most melee classes are already front-loaded, so it's probably not a good idea to give it so much new stuff at level 1, with most of it scaling independent of class level.

[navar100]

Pathfinder Fighter is fine. If anything, where Pathfinder changed some feats, change them back to 3E, such as Improved Trip.

Pathfinder Power Attack works well, but some people prefer 3E's version, at least so you can use Shock Trooper. You could use Shock Trooper for Pathfinder Power Attack; you just wouldn't get as much damage. What I like about Pathfinder Power Attack is that one-handed weapons get the -1 to hit +2 damage ratio. Two-handed weapons get -1/+3, which is fine, but now two-handed weapons aren't the strictly superior choice. Weapon and shield use is a viable option, especially with shield-based feats available. Fighters are not lacking for damage despite the change to Power Attack.

There are also archetypes to choose for interesting variety.

The skill system change makes that easier on the Fighter. It still sucks only having 2 + Int points, but consider: for many feats you want 13 Intelligence, so that's 3 skill points per level. Play human for 4 points per level. Take the skill point bonus for favored class, and you now have 5 points per level which is not bad. There's room to fiddle around with what skills you want. If you really need it, at 5th level dump all the points into Perception. 10th level gets another 5 points. +10 Perception at 10th level is not bad. A rogue is only +13 to Stealth. Since the rogue's Dex is higher than the fighter's Wis, the rogue probably has a 5 point advantage. However, that's ok. The rogue is supposed to be good at hiding, but if it really matters to you take Skill Focus Perception and have +16 Perception at 10th level since Skill Focus gives you a +6 bonus when you have 10 ranks. That is phenomenal, especially compared to 3E. As a fighter and human, you have the feat to spare if this is really important to you.

[Godskook]

Things that can get one to tier 4 comes down to one thing: Options. Better skills, skill points, maneuver progressions, methods for denying or bypassing things, etc. Access to UMD alone is worth a nomination.

What fighters can already do in 3.5(not familiar with PF's fighter, but if he's still tier 5, probably the same) basically comes down to "I kill him, really painfully". Want to be a Fighter, but tier 4 or better, find ways of contributing in:

-Stealth
-Traps
-Scouting
-Social
-Mobility(Flight, Long-distance, Burrow, Swim[not the skill check])
-Escape
-Battlefield Control(other than tripping)
-Healing
-Support(Buffs, Debuffs)

#1 flirts with this idea, #3-4 just improve his ability to become death incarnate, and #2 only cribs ToB(why not just play a ToB class at that point?).

[Arbane]

One idea I heard that I liked was to make some of the Fighter's bonus Feats 'floating' Feats, like the 3.5 Chameleon class has. At the start(?) of the day, the Fighter can pick what feats they want to 'memorize' in them. (Possibly only from the Fighter Bonus Feats list?)

It could give them a little much-needed flexibility, though they're still going to be overshadowed by the ones who can break physics by wiggling their fingers.

[Person_Man]

The big nerf to the Pathfinder Fighter is that Pathfinder feats generally suck compared to 3.5 feats. So a good fix would let the Pathfinder Fighter take the 3.5 versions of Fighter bonus feats and alternate class features (if they wanted to, or the Pathfinder versions if he prefers). Pathfinder Fighter would be a lot more useful if he had access to 3.5 Power Attack, Shock Trooper, Knock-Down, Knockback, Dungeoncrasher, etc.

[Lycar]

Gee, I dunno... it sure is not nice to have to take 2 feats to get an combat maneuver really going, be it tripping, disarming or repositioning foes.

On the other hand, this means you need a lot of feats to be good at combat maneuvers. Guess which class gets bonus feats...

Same thing for the BAB requirements: People complain that BAB is meaningless because so much attack bonus comes from other sources. But a good BAB progression means that you can get stuff at lv. 6 where a medium BAB class has to wait until lv. 9 (would get BAB 6 at lv. 8 but doesn't get a new feat before lv. 9, except maybe a Rogue who picks up a single combat feat as a Rogue Trick).

[Coidzor]

1: Don't increase there actual skill ranks per level granted, but make it so all skills are class skills. If anyone of any race or culture can be a fighter and all races and cultures produce fighters, this makes thematic sense, and it opens up options for them to do something other then beat things.

You could still stand to give them some more skill points.


2: Grant them Swordsage Maneuver progression, but instead of swordsage schools as the bog standard, let them pick, at lvl 1, three schools to get maneuvers from. Of any of them.

Well, yeah, giving them maneuver progression will help a lot. I've often considering giving something like halfcaster or bard progression of maneuvers to the non-ToB fighty types. Something like half-casters like hexblades, rangers, duskblades, and paladins getting half-ToB on top of that and things like fighters, swashbucklers, barbarians, and knights getting more bardic stuffs.


3: Give them pounce at lvl 1, and give them a small pool of points, based on shall we say, Con Mod Minimum 1. Will call these points, "Physique Points." Now, we give him, as an auto Bonus feat at lvl 1, travel devotion, with the special ability that instead of using Turn undead attempts to fuel them, he uses those Physique points. This gives him all the mobility he needs.

Between 1st and 6th level there's basically no difference as far as when pounce comes into play, as long as it falls within that set, so 1st level pounce, while infinitely dippable, isn't OP in and of itself. This Physique points seems like an adaptation of the Grit system with some other factors tossed in.


4: Proficiency's, just say "He's proficient with all weapons, armors, and shields." End of story. And give him Improved Unarmed strike at lvl 1 so that he can pass for knowing how to throw a jab and not get hit in the face in the process.

Fair enough. Exotic weapons are mostly horse pucky.


So, thoughts? Does this bring him up to at least a playable Tier 4? Higher?

Should be at least T4 with 3 schools of maneuvers, yeah.

One really simple fix to their relative nerfing is to just undo the feat nerfs for everyone. Or if you insist on making fighters and feats have super special shiny times, have fighters have the ability to take both parts of the broken up feat as a single feat.


Gee, I dunno... it sure is not nice to have to take 2 feats to get an combat maneuver really going, be it tripping, disarming or repositioning foes.

On the other hand, this means you need a lot of feats to be good at combat maneuvers. Guess which class gets bonus feats...

In 3.5 you had to have a lot of feats to be good at combat maneuvers. It still was not a good system, and making them take up more feats so that one is at a relative feat loss in Pathfinder was not exactly a good solution.


Same thing for the BAB requirements: People complain that BAB is meaningless because so much attack bonus comes from other sources. But a good BAB progression means that you can get stuff at lv. 6 where a medium BAB class has to wait until lv. 9 (would get BAB 6 at lv. 8 but doesn't get a new feat before lv. 9, except maybe a Rogue who picks up a single combat feat as a Rogue Trick).

Yes, most people that object to them feel that such things should just have level requirements instead so as to not penalize people for multiclassing. Or martially inclined characters who don't have full BAB.

Well, aside from things like the horse pucky that was weapon finesse in 3.5, which had a BAB prereq of +1.

[jmelesky]

The big nerf to the Pathfinder Fighter is that Pathfinder feats generally suck compared to 3.5 feats.

I'm not completely convinced on feats as substitutes for class features, but PF does have a wide variety of feats. There are multiple ways, via feats, to add status conditions to enemies that get hit, and get free movement-oriented combat maneuver checks. That checks off the "Battlefield Control" and "Support(buff/debuff)" items in Godskook's list.

Does that mean the PF Fighter is up to Tier 4? I don't know. But i do consider the PF Fighter to be an upgrade from 3.5ed rather than a nerf, despite the lower ceiling of damage dealing.

[Chained Birds]

How about something similar to what they did with Monks and the Qinggong Archetype. But instead of having the Fighter lose its far and few class features, have them "trade-out" their Fighter Bonus Feats for special abilities. Though the problem in this plan resides in what would be used to determine how many times the Fighter can use the granted ability (1/encounter?). Not to mention what the abilities might be...
Maybe some ToB like Maneuvers or something. Would be a pretty fun endeavor making a list of maneuver-like abilities for the Fighter to choose from.

[Person_Man]

I'm not completely convinced on feats as substitutes for class features, but PF does have a wide variety of feats. There are multiple ways, via feats, to add status conditions to enemies that get hit, and get free movement-oriented combat maneuver checks. That checks off the "Battlefield Control" and "Support(buff/debuff)" items in Godskook's list.

Yes, you can do useful things with Feats in Pathfinder. But in Pathfinder you generally need 3-5 Feats to accomplish any particular combo. Virtually all useful/powerful Pathfinder feats require 1-3 bad/mediocre prerequisites.

This is a particular problem for the Pathfinder Fighter, who gets Feats in place of class abilities. If Feats were more powerful, then the Pathfinder Fighter would be more powerful. But since Feats are so granular, the Pathfinder Fighter sucks.

[Metahuman1]

Yes, you can do useful things with Feats in Pathfinder. But in Pathfinder you generally need 3-5 Feats to accomplish any particular combo. Virtually all useful/powerful Pathfinder feats require 1-3 bad/mediocre prerequisites.

This is a particular problem for the Pathfinder Fighter, who gets Feats in place of class abilities. If Feats were more powerful, then the Pathfinder Fighter would be more powerful. But since Feats are so granular, the Pathfinder Fighter sucks.

Which leads me back the the Frank and K's Tome idea.

Ok, so, let's say I take Two weapon figthing at first level. Just to make an example.

Instead of having to take additional feats to get my extra Itenerative attacks and a bit of a defense bonus, those just automatically come online when I have a certain amount of hit dice. The whole feat path is one feat that scales with level.


Would something like that + Pathfinder feats do the trick?

[Coidzor]

Which leads me back the the Frank and K's Tome idea.

Ok, so, let's say I take Two weapon figthing at first level. Just to make an example.

Instead of having to take additional feats to get my extra Itenerative attacks and a bit of a defense bonus, those just automatically come online when I have a certain amount of hit dice. The whole feat path is one feat that scales with level.


Would something like that + Pathfinder feats do the trick?

With their granularity and sometimes oddly specific pre-requisites, they do practically lay that path out for you if you would care to do so, yeah.

[Big Fau]

Which leads me back the the Frank and K's Tome idea.

Ok, so, let's say I take Two weapon figthing at first level. Just to make an example.

Instead of having to take additional feats to get my extra Itenerative attacks and a bit of a defense bonus, those just automatically come online when I have a certain amount of hit dice. The whole feat path is one feat that scales with level.


Would something like that + Pathfinder feats do the trick?

So basically undoing what Jason did to feats in the first place? It's a solid start, but it won't bring the Fighter up a tier.

[Metahuman1]

Would it bring fighter up a tier if we did that + the other four suggestions I mentioned + the other Stuff Pathfinder throws on the fighter via Archatypes, class features (such as they are.), ext?

[Doug Lampert]

Gee, I dunno... it sure is not nice to have to take 2 feats to get an combat maneuver really going, be it tripping, disarming or repositioning foes.

On the other hand, this means you need a lot of feats to be good at combat maneuvers. Guess which class gets bonus feats...

Why do 3.5 fighters SUCK? Because core 3.5 fighter feats suck, and expansion feats are to some extent held back by the desire to not be too much better than core feats.

Other classes get enough feats to fill any one chain, and you're normally only using one chain at a time. Even more true in pathfinder where everybody got 3 extra feats by level 20.

Look at things like the item crafting feats, or the leadership feat, or natural spell, or even freeking skill focus if it's on a useful skill (UMD, concentration, or diplomacy for example), then look at the fighter feats, and weep that the fighter feats are considered to be a useful substitute for a class feature!

Why do 3.5 fighter feats suck? Because 3.5 fighters get bunches of them, so the designers figured anything good could be at the end of a five feat chain.

Now let's look at Pathfinder. Over 20 levels a 3.5 fighter got 18 or 19 feats. The PF fighter on the other hand gets 21 or 22 feats! A massive upgrade of a whole 15% more feats, obviously it's fine to now split the fighter's feats in two since he has so many more!

Wait! 15% more feats, so half as useful per feat? Maybe I'm missing something here.

Notice that list of other feats that weren't nerfed because fighters get so many: item crafting got better in PF and yet casters get the same 3 extra feats as fighters. Skill focus got better and yet skill monkeys got the same 3 extra feats as fighters....

Are we seeing a trend here? It's only fighter feats that were nerfed because fighters get so many feats.

Hint: If fighter feats are supposed to be a major class feature of the fighter then you can should not nerf them because "fighters get so many feats"! That's flatly insane. Maybe we can "improve" balance even more by giving fighters 3 feats a level and requiring that ALL bonus feats be spent on 3.5 core toughness! Of course we'd have to nerf their HD to "make up" for that.

Class features are supposed to be good. Design good, balanced feats, and then if fighter feats are supposed to be their class feature give them an appropriate number, but don't for the love of god and logic and sanity do that and then nerf the feats that fighters can take because "fighters get so many feats". Yet that seems to be exactly what Pathfinder did, they nerfed the already nerfed fighter feats even more based on the "so many feats" school of fighter feat design.

[Lycar]

You are forgetting something:

A fighter is melee only. He doesn't need anything but combat feats, mostly because he simply can't make good use of any other feats (save an odd Skill feat if he does feinting or tumbling a lot maybe).

In other words: A fighter can easily have all his feats be combat feats.

Now take any class other then fighter. They get 10-11 feats in 20 levels. How many of them are they willing to devote to combat feats?

Let's face it, other classes have better things to do then develop maybe 1 or two melee tricks.

The fighter doesn't get anything but melee trick, but he can afford to learn more then one feat chain. And fortunately there are now
feats that, while not exactly scaling, remain useful even at higher levels.

- Shield Slam: Free Bull Rush while retaining all your iterative attacks?
Does not even need TWFing to work?* Yes please!
- Two Weapon Feint + Greater. You can make a Feint that makes your
opponent lose his DEX to AC for the rest of your turn.
- Depending on your style of play, being able to reposition a foe on the
battle grid can be useless or a huge advantage. Keep your iteratives too.

A fighter has enough feats to do all these things by lv. 9 or so and has some feats to spare! Any other class will be hard pressed to get more then one of these tricks going, if at all, because they really need their feats for other things.

That is okay, feats are the one thing a fighter gets but he can pull it off as long a he picks a bag of tricks that are supported by the groups style of play.

Being able to reposition your foes can be immensely useful if you are fond of D&D 4th Ed. inspired tactical board game fights. Set the enemy up for a flank with the Rogue without the poor guy having to risk failure on a tumble check? Yes please!

Bash an obnoxious goblin (or other outclassed foe) around the battlefield like a hockey puck? Remember that in a 'CR appropriate' encounter that consists of more then 1 enemy all your opponents will likely be outclassed by your CMB vs. their CMD.

Go to the Pathfinder SRD and check the various stats for monsters of a given CR and compare them to the CMB of a reasonably well built fighter. On average the fighter will have a better then average chance to pull off a successful maneuver.

Are the tricks worth it? If your DM doesn't use humanoids with weapons, Disarm will be useless. Huge and huger creatures? No grappling or tripping etc. But then again, if your DM limits your encounters to random page flips in the monster manuals you have different problems then fighter feats being weak.

* Whoops, totally does need TWFing to work, my bad.

[Coidzor]

Let's face it, other classes have better things to do then develop maybe 1 or two melee tricks.

Which is another facet of the fighter than needs to be fixed, thank you for bringing it up. He needs something to do outside of combat. Frankly, even with PF's more kind version of cross-class skills, 1 or 2 points (3 if one is a tripper), just isn't going to cut it.

[Big Fau]

The point of debating how to make the Fighter better isn't because the Fighter class doesn't work, it's because the only real trick it has (feats) are available to anyone and everyone. What is the difference between a Paladin with Power Attack and a Fighter with it? Class features that allow the Paladin to contribute to situations where combat is a bad idea.

Even worse is that the Paladin can do combat just as efficiently as the Fighter can. He may have less feats to work with, but at least in 3.5 you only needed 3 feats to be really efficient in combat.

Ultimately, the class needs something other than feats. Something that lets him play ball while the party isn't in combat, because not everyone can role play out a diplomatic conference between two waring nations. Meldshaping, Binding, hell I'd even settle for Truenaming; ANYTHING is better than sitting on your hands.

[jmelesky]

The point of debating how to make the Fighter better isn't because the Fighter class doesn't work, it's because the only real trick it has (feats) are available to anyone and everyone.

Indeed, even the Fighter-only feats ("Xth-level Fighter" as a prereq) can be taken by other classes with certain class features (e.g. Magus, Monk).

I've considered adding a class ability that lets Fighters fudge some of the feat prereqs. For example, "treat your BAB as X higher", or "treat ability scores as X higher" for purposes of feat prerequisites. That would help prevent MAD, and make it easier to climb feat trees to the cool stuff, but it seems like a patch rather than a solution.

[balistafreak]

Ultimately, the class needs something other than feats. Something that lets him play ball while the party isn't in combat, because not everyone can role play out a diplomatic conference between two waring nations. Meldshaping, Binding, hell I'd even settle for Truenaming; ANYTHING is better than sitting on your hands.

Truenamer/Fighter gestalt is now default Fighter? Somehow that generates hilarious images in my head...

[Metahuman1]

Truenamer/Fighter gestalt is now default Fighter? Somehow that generates hilarious images in my head...

It actually shouldn't. All those feats + d10 hit die + Full BAB + 2 good Saves + Lot's or proficiency's + 4+int mod skill points a level and all knowledge skills + UMD as class skills isn't a horrible set up if your not up against endless Batman Wizards and Natural Spell Druids.

[kardar233]

Truenamer/Fighter gestalt is now default Fighter? Somehow that generates hilarious images in my head...

I wonder if there's an Utterance that Bull Rushes in a cone area effect....

[SpaceBadger]

One thing that I am doing for standard Fighters is having them pick a Favored Weapon at level 2 (was level 1, but that made it too great for dipping). Inspired by a class feature called My Blade Is My Brother in Grod_the_Giant's Strength of Arm & Blade Fighter (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=227466), it gives the Fighter the benefits of Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization in the chosen Favored Weapon without having to take those feats, scaling up with BAB as the Fighter levels up.

At +2 BAB the Fighter gains Weapon Focus with the Favored Weapon, at +3 BAB he gains Weapons Specialization with the Favored Weapon, at +4 BAB he gains Greater Weapon Focus with the Favored Weapon, at +5 BAB he gains Greater Weapons Specialization with the Favored Weapon - haven't decided yet on a good cap for +6 BAB (I should mention, this is for an E6 Fighter so +6 BAB is the max, otherwise I can see this would get silly as more bonuses got added for every added level).

So really all it does is give the Fighter some automatic feats with his Favored Weapon, without having to spend the feats on them.

[SpaceBadger]

For some of those Fighter variants allowing retraining of feats (or even retraining blocks of feats) to meet expected hazards, how do you fluff that? I just can't get my head around it for verisimilitude: "Hmm, looks like we are going to be fighting some flying critters, I'll concentrate for awhile and swap out my block of melee feats for a block of ranged feats." Umm, what?

I can see how it would give the Fighter some versatility, but... it just seems weird to me, can't think of how to justify it in gameworld.

[SpaceBadger]

Which is another facet of the fighter than needs to be fixed, thank you for bringing it up. He needs something to do outside of combat. Frankly, even with PF's more kind version of cross-class skills, 1 or 2 points (3 if one is a tripper), just isn't going to cut it.

I'd like to reimagine the basic Fighter as the quintessential explorer/dungeoneer/adventurer/leader. What I haven't entirely figured out is good ways to do that, without making him a quasi-skillmonkey and stepping on the roles of the Rogue etc.

More Knowledge and Linguistics skills would be a start - figuring out that weird symbol or inscription not because he has spent a lot of time in dusty libraries studying books and scrolls, but because he has spent a lot of time in the field/dungeons/whatever and has seen something similar before.

Maybe some 4e-ish stuff that lets him aid other party members in what they're doing, as long as there is a reasonable fluff to justify it, not just "he can do it just because the rules say he can do it."

Maybe face skills to bargain with leaders of other groups encountered in the field? Again there may be a problem of stepping on the skillmonkey's roles, plus Fighters aren't usually high Cha.

Some way of using knowledge of past adventures to help deal with whatever is encountered now? Like being familiar w certain tribes of orcs or goblins, recognizing their clothing/gear/weapons and therefor knowing better how to fight or deal with them? But now maybe we are stepping on the Ranger and his favored enemies...

Anyone else on board here?

[balistafreak]

I wonder if there's an Utterance that Bull Rushes in a cone area effect....

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/2973-1-1323311599.png

Yeah, I was referring to the Skyrim dragon shouts with that earlier comment of mine, glad to see someone got it. :smallbiggrin:

[Lycar]

Which is another facet of the fighter than needs to be fixed, thank you for bringing it up. He needs something to do outside of combat. Frankly, even with PF's more kind version of cross-class skills, 1 or 2 points (3 if one is a tripper), just isn't going to cut it.
No he doesn't. He is a Fighter for crying out loud, that is what the entire class is about!

A Fighter fights, period. You want skillls? Dip Rogue. You want spells? Dip Wizard. Or Sorceror. You want skill and magic? Rejoice, there is an entire class for this: The Bard.

The Fighter is about doing one thing very well: Fighting. And he can be relevant in more then just one way too, thanks to his feats.

Yes, other classes can take feats too, some even 'fighter only' feats. Magus was brought up. Mixes spells and melee. So if that is what you are looking for, there is a class for this. No more need to multiclass Fighter with some caster and gripe about lost caster levels.

But if you want to be the undisputed master of Combat Maneuvers, Fighter is the way to go. No other class gets as many pluses on his CMB then any other. Remember: Everything that boosts your to-hit also increases your CMB.

But you pay a price: You are so specialized at melee combat that you don't get skills or spells. If you want those, pick another class or multiclass. Heck, humans can even have two favoured classes with but one feat expended and half-elves...

The problem of melee is also not that there is no more Shock Trooper in PF (unless you houserule it in anyway that is) or that Power Attack was reigned in.

The problem with 3.x is, and has been from the start the ridiculously overpowered magic. Magic can be powerful, it is magic after all but it must come at a price.

Magic had a (sometimes very high) price associated with it in 2nd Ed. That went out the window with 3.0. Along with the balance between magic and melee.

What PF did do though is balance melee with other melee. Paladins can do terrible damage thanks to smiting, but only against select foes. Barbarians can rage but that is limited. Of course, just like spell slots, this limit means nothing if the total number of combat rounds in a day doesn't exceed this limit.

Ever were furious about the "5'-step-of-impunity"? Now there is a feat for that. A chain even. Guess who can afford to take the feats to stick to an enemy? Everybody? Think again. Who gets feats that are basically the Mage Slayer line? Fighters do.

Are they still vulnerable to magic, quite unlike they were in 2nd. Ed. I might add? Yes, yes they are. But hey, that is so that the casters in the party can shine by protecting their fellows from hostile magic. And if they don't do that? Then they simply do a ****-poor job.

But even if you have a straight Fighter, if you want feats that require Combat Expertise, you will have 3 skill points as a matter of fact anyway. Maybe more. How many skills, and what skills do you really need outside of combat?

Why even bother putting more then a couple of ranks in Acrobatics or Climb or Swim if 'these skills become obsolete because of magic at lv. 5'?

How many social skills do you need? Intimidate? That is a class skill and you have feats that work with it. Bluff? That is more a Rogue thing. But hey, a simple dip and presto, Bluff as class skill. Or just take, I dunno, one of those nifty traits that sometimes give skills as class skills. Done.

Diplomacy? Sure, why not. it is not a class skill but that can be helped, now you need all those other skills to scrape together all those synergy... oh wait, those are gone.

But you know what? If you are relying heavily on a skill, there are feats for that too. Except in 3.x they might as well have been absent because nobody ever takes them outside of prerequisites.

But when a single feat makes a signature ability 15 or 30 % more likely to succeed... And if you are a Fighter, you have feats. Nothing but feats but that is being a Fighter for you. Yo no likey? Multiclass.

[Big Fau]

No he doesn't. He is a Fighter for crying out loud, that is what the entire class is about!

Not according to WotC.


A Fighter fights, period. You want skillls? Dip Rogue. You want spells? Dip Wizard. Or Sorceror. You want skill and magic? Rejoice, there is an entire class for this: The Bard.

Oh hey, guess what? You are ignoring the issue that this thread is trying to address.


The Fighter is about doing one thing very well: Fighting. And he can be relevant in more then just one way too, thanks to his feats.

Contrary to what Bruce Lee said, in D&D it just isn't enough to have practiced that one kick 1000 times. The Fighter isn't good at fighting, he's good at one or two fighting tricks and nothing else. Whenever the fight calls for something other than one of those two tricks, he's screwed because his class can't do anything to contribute to those fights.

Picture a fight like a 6th level Chain Tripper/Dungeoncrasher build Fighter against a 6th level Warlock. If the Warlock has the Spider Climb invocation, the Fighter physically cannot beat the Warlock because the Fighter's Ranged combat is utter garbage by comparison. Yes, the Warlock is more squishy, but the Fighter's bow (assuming he has one) isn't going to deal more than 1d8+5 to the Warlock, who's doing 3d6/round and the Fighter can't defend against it without screwing himself over too.

Another example would be any Huge-sized creature with Improved Trip/Improved Disarm and Combat Reflexes. Unless the Fighter is built for ranged combat specifically, he eats an AoO when he moves in, loses his turn, and takes a full attack next round while the creature gets a 5ft step. Now take a look in the various MMs and tell me how many enemies in 3.X are capable of doing this.

I know that solo encounters and PvP are a bad measuring stick for class balance, but the Fighter has no method built into the class to deal with these issues, and yet the developers of the class claim that it is the best at fighting in spite of these glaring weaknesses.


But if you want to be the undisputed master of Combat Maneuvers, Fighter is the way to go. No other class gets as many pluses on his CMB then any other. Remember: Everything that boosts your to-hit also increases your CMB.

Not "undisputed master of Combat Maneuvers", he's the master of two button combat. Either he hits one button or the other, but if the situation calls for a third button he's SoL.


But you pay a price: You are so specialized at melee combat that you don't get skills or spells. If you want those, pick another class or multiclass. Heck, humans can even have two favoured classes with but one feat expended and half-elves...

No, he's so specialized that he cripples himself, and Paizo exaggerated that issue.


What PF did do though is balance melee with other melee. Paladins can do terrible damage thanks to smiting, but only against select foes. Barbarians can rage but that is limited. Of course, just like spell slots, this limit means nothing if the total number of combat rounds in a day doesn't exceed this limit.

Except the Paladin and the Barbarian are useful in situations that aren't combat by virtue of class features (and I'm not counting cross-class skills as class features).


Ever were furious about the "5'-step-of-impunity"? Now there is a feat for that. A chain even. Guess who can afford to take the feats to stick to an enemy? Everybody? Think again. Who gets feats that are basically the Mage Slayer line? Fighters do.

And how many feats does it take to get that chain active? Because if the answer is more than 1.15, it takes up more feats than Paizo gave the Fighter.


But when a single feat makes a signature ability 15 or 30 % more likely to succeed... And if you are a Fighter, you have feats. Nothing but feats but that is being a Fighter for you. Yo no likey? Multiclass.

Here's a fun fact: You can reprint the entire 3.5 Fighter class on an index card. In Pathfinder, it takes two of them. Some fix huh?

[Coidzor]

No he doesn't. He is a Fighter for crying out loud, that is what the entire class is about!

Why, yes, that's the problem that you're apparently unable or unwilling to consider could ever be a problem for anyone ever, despite having read the OP and gone through this thread discussing this very thing.

Designing a class so that the player either A. sits on his thumbs, or worse, pulls out a gameboy, during all of the non-combat sections of the game or B. is encouraged to be a disruptive ***** so as to create combats where there were none before is as bad of game design as Kender.

Kender, for the 12 gods' sakes.

[Metahuman1]

No he doesn't. He is a Fighter for crying out loud, that is what the entire class is about!

A Fighter fights, period. You want skillls? Dip Rogue. You want spells? Dip Wizard. Or Sorceror. You want skill and magic? Rejoice, there is an entire class for this: The Bard.

The Fighter is about doing one thing very well: Fighting. And he can be relevant in more then just one way too, thanks to his feats.

Yes, other classes can take feats too, some even 'fighter only' feats. Magus was brought up. Mixes spells and melee. So if that is what you are looking for, there is a class for this. No more need to multiclass Fighter with some caster and gripe about lost caster levels.

But if you want to be the undisputed master of Combat Maneuvers, Fighter is the way to go. No other class gets as many pluses on his CMB then any other. Remember: Everything that boosts your to-hit also increases your CMB.

But you pay a price: You are so specialized at melee combat that you don't get skills or spells. If you want those, pick another class or multiclass. Heck, humans can even have two favoured classes with but one feat expended and half-elves...

The problem of melee is also not that there is no more Shock Trooper in PF (unless you houserule it in anyway that is) or that Power Attack was reigned in.

The problem with 3.x is, and has been from the start the ridiculously overpowered magic. Magic can be powerful, it is magic after all but it must come at a price.

Magic had a (sometimes very high) price associated with it in 2nd Ed. That went out the window with 3.0. Along with the balance between magic and melee.

What PF did do though is balance melee with other melee. Paladins can do terrible damage thanks to smiting, but only against select foes. Barbarians can rage but that is limited. Of course, just like spell slots, this limit means nothing if the total number of combat rounds in a day doesn't exceed this limit.

Ever were furious about the "5'-step-of-impunity"? Now there is a feat for that. A chain even. Guess who can afford to take the feats to stick to an enemy? Everybody? Think again. Who gets feats that are basically the Mage Slayer line? Fighters do.

Are they still vulnerable to magic, quite unlike they were in 2nd. Ed. I might add? Yes, yes they are. But hey, that is so that the casters in the party can shine by protecting their fellows from hostile magic. And if they don't do that? Then they simply do a ****-poor job.

But even if you have a straight Fighter, if you want feats that require Combat Expertise, you will have 3 skill points as a matter of fact anyway. Maybe more. How many skills, and what skills do you really need outside of combat?

Why even bother putting more then a couple of ranks in Acrobatics or Climb or Swim if 'these skills become obsolete because of magic at lv. 5'?

How many social skills do you need? Intimidate? That is a class skill and you have feats that work with it. Bluff? That is more a Rogue thing. But hey, a simple dip and presto, Bluff as class skill. Or just take, I dunno, one of those nifty traits that sometimes give skills as class skills. Done.

Diplomacy? Sure, why not. it is not a class skill but that can be helped, now you need all those other skills to scrape together all those synergy... oh wait, those are gone.

But you know what? If you are relying heavily on a skill, there are feats for that too. Except in 3.x they might as well have been absent because nobody ever takes them outside of prerequisites.

But when a single feat makes a signature ability 15 or 30 % more likely to succeed... And if you are a Fighter, you have feats. Nothing but feats but that is being a Fighter for you. Yo no likey? Multiclass.

Yeah, um, dude, gotta say, that sounds more like a vote to go back to playing 2nd E. Which is totally fine if that's what you want to do. One of these day's I'd actually like to learn that system (I tried to play it once a long time ago. The Dyslexic kid who was use to 3.x Initiative trying to get a handle on 2nd E initiative was great fun, for everyone at that table except me, the Dyslexic kid. ). Unfortunately, it really doesn't feel like a helpful suggestion on how to try and get the fighter fixed. Nor does it really seem to carry that much of a punch line unless I'm missing something.


Anyway, I had a though last night. When I suggested giving the Fighter pounce at level 1 along with the other idea for giving him easy access to swift action movement, I was trying to give him more mobility, which all melee and most none spell casting based range need.

And it was pointed out to me that that would make them too good a 1 lvl dip.

But what if we gave all the Tier 3 and lower classes those ability's at lvl 1 as a game rules default? That would bring everyone who's trying to use a sword or bow up a step, but the people who Don't need a boost cause they've got Full casting/Manifesting/something just as over powered anyway still have to dip away form that power to get it.

If put into practice, would this idea positively impact most game play?