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SamBurke
2013-03-06, 01:30 PM
Our board has a had a LOT of fighter fixes. They come and go and come and come and lots of them get made... but I'd like to ask a more central question.

When you sit down and player the Fighter class, what is it you're trying to do? What fundamental experience do you want? How should it FEEL to be a fighter?

Take, for example, the ToB Warblade. When you play a Warblade, you feel like you have a trick up your sleeve that you can pull and out use to bludgeon people. Every time you do, there's that satisfaction of having the right option or making it work.

What should a Fighter feel like? Because THAT is the question that can allow homebrewers to actually make one.

Yitzi
2013-03-06, 01:36 PM
I think it should be the feel of having a lot of options from which you can choose which one is best for this particular challenge (like a caster), but (unlike a caster or even initiator) those options should feel like additions to your basic capabilities rather than replacements for them.

So the "trick up my sleeve" idea, but the "trick" would be a bonus to your attack rather than a different attack.

SamBurke
2013-03-06, 01:46 PM
So they have 8 options, and then they can make those options even better by expending [resources] or some such?

Arcanist
2013-03-06, 01:55 PM
Someone who is good at fighting? :smallconfused: I expect the Fighter to fight like anyone else who has a disadvantage... CHEAT :smallwink:

scarmiglionne4
2013-03-06, 02:18 PM
1. A Fighter should be easy to pick up and play and remain useful either in the hands of a novice or
experienced player.
2. A Fighter should be very difficult to damage with mundane attacks.
3. A Fighter should be able to easily cause moderate to high damage in any melee situation.
4. A Fighter should excel at combat maneuvers and battle tactics and can disable or hinder any foe.

I think a Fighter should be the casual player's class. If they must have any tricks they should be kept simple, but effective. They should do things that make sense for a mostly melee warrior to do.

They should be able to break gear, disarm, and knockdown without burning feats. Feat selection intimidates new players who do not know what would be the best combination and truly should not be burdened with worrying about what feats they will choose before they level up. Smashing faces, gear, and knocking stuff down is easy to comprehend.

Fighters need to be an overwhelming force on the battlefield without being an overwhelming force on the character sheet. They should not have to have a golf-bag of weapons, gear, and abilities to be versatile.

An experienced Fighter wearing full plate wielding a bastard sword and a tower shield should be a force to be reckoned with, but that's just my play style.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-06, 02:21 PM
1: the fighter is disciplined, unflappable, and keeps soldiering on through trouble. Never goes down, never says die. The fighter is reliable.
2: alternately, the fighter is the one who's seen it all. They have old scars and a wealth of experience to draw on. They have a way to take down any enemy.

Those are the two concepts I've got in mind, although I've seldom gravitated towards the fighter types. I tend to go in for one of the more specialist concepts.

Synovia
2013-03-06, 02:22 PM
So the "trick up my sleeve" idea, but the "trick" would be a bonus to your attack rather than a different attack.

I disagree with this strongly. Bonuses to attacks are just numbers. We'd just be adding additional bookkeeping without changing the way the character feels.


Frankly, I think the Warblade did it pretty well.

Wargamer
2013-03-06, 02:39 PM
Well let me make it clear what I don't want to play: I don't want to play a spellcaster.

That means I don't want my "reward" halfway through the class to be spells (looking at you, Paladin and Ranger...). Nor do I want my class to reward me with mysterious and utterly inexplicable supernatural talents (looking at you, virtually every 'fix' ever written...).

What I really want from the Fighter is to be the quintessential warrior. In short, I want NPCs to look at my character and say "Gods help the poor bastard who fights him in single combat!"

Exactly how I achieve this greatness should be left to me. If I want to be a melee tank, dual-wield master, archer extraordinaire, mounted jouster or anything in between that should be my choice. Likewise, and perhaps because of this, if I want to be 'good' at every form of combat, that should be an option too.

Ultimately, the thing I really like about the Fighter is how wonderfully simple it is. All you have to do is go through the Feats list and pick the ones you want. That's it. End of. No learning how spells work, no "x per day" supernatural abilities, no complicated progressions. Just Feats. That in itself is quite appealing, in my opinion.

Kyuu Himura
2013-03-06, 02:40 PM
I disagree with this strongly. Bonuses to attacks are just numbers. We'd just be adding additional bookkeeping without changing the way the character feels.

I think he means "If you succesfully trip/disarm/sunder, you may also do X to an opponent", you know, an effect bonus , not a number bonus.



I expect the Fighter to fight like anyone else who has a disadvantage... CHEAT

That sounds like the rogue a bit.

I think that if the Fighter is a warrior, then he can soldier up to most problems, dealing with them by outlasting them.
If the fighter is a tactician, he can find a weakness or create a weakness in his enemies' tactics.

Jormengand
2013-03-06, 02:57 PM
I think specialising is the way to go. Barbarians and rogues, gladiators and honour guards, snipers and pikemen, weaponsmasters and battlemasters... they're all better ideas than any type of catchall fighter. Arguably, the best fix for the fighter is not to have a fighter.

Yakk
2013-03-06, 03:00 PM
I want to hamstring a giant.
I want to climb the Cyclops, and blind it.
I want to cut the wings of a dragon, and ground it.
I want to disarm foes.
I want to parry blows.
I want to dodge boulders.
I want to block fireballs with my shield.
I want to shrug off mind control via raw grit.
I want to fight with my eyes closed against Medusa or without breathing against Gorgons, and still kick ass.
I want to be able to pick up any weapon, and fight masterfully with it.
I want to be able to grab a foe, and use them as a weapon.
I want to be death to everything within my reach to legions of weaker foes.
I want to shoot the weak scale on the dragon and bring it down.
I want to break the wizard's staff.
I want to shoot a sling stone at a Goliath, and watch it fall.
I want to be effective in heavy armor, shrugging off blows that would fell a lesser man.
I want to be effective in light armor, side stepping blows with my greater maneuverability.
I want to be able to fight foes whose very touch is death, and win.
I want to be able to effectively threaten and oppose wizards, assassins, men at arms, deathknights, huge monsters and cultist priests.
I want my sword to be my most treasured possession, because it is a great tool, but I still want to be almost as dangerous with a stick I picked up from the ground, or the enemies sword I tore from his hands.

Jormengand
2013-03-06, 03:02 PM
I want to be able to grab a foe, and use them as a weapon.

I can see something similar to a grapple followed by enemy hammer working, here.

Eldan
2013-03-06, 03:35 PM
I don't think you could get me to play a fighter. I've played a dozen different systems in my life and never had the faintest desire to play a fighter of any kind.

And I apologize for making this annoyingly unhelpful comment.

Yitzi
2013-03-06, 03:54 PM
So they have 8 options, and then they can make those options even better by expending [resources] or some such?

No. Firstly, no resource tracking. If I want resource tracking, I can play a wizard. More like they have 8 options, all fairly powerful, of how to be better at combat. So they can try for a hard-hitting approach, or a many-attacks-in-a-round approach, or an archery-based approach, or a "can't touch me" AC-based approach, or a "can't hurt me" DR-based approach, etc.

Basically take 5-10 of the fighter builds out there* (their build would determine which ones are available), and they can decide which one they want to be for each battle (or even switch in the middle, though that should be at least a move action). Which means that if you want to beat a fighter in combat, you need a character that can beat all of them (pretty hard to do without a higher tier).

*Probably nothing really heavy like ubercharger, but the semi-optimized ones.


I disagree with this strongly. Bonuses to attacks are just numbers. We'd just be adding additional bookkeeping without changing the way the character feels.

Firstly, when I say "bonuses to attacks", I don't just mean +X to the attack roll (though that might be a basic starter). I mean stuff like Power Attack, Combat Expertise (for a bonus to defense), and various ways of changing the rules.
Secondly, the feel of the character wouldn't come from the bonuses; it'd come from looking at the situation and deciding which bonuses to use for this battle.


Frankly, I think the Warblade did it pretty well.

It's too caster-like for many people. However, a variant that gets no maneuvers but a large selection of powerful stances would be a lot like what I envision the fighter as should-being.

Wargamer
2013-03-06, 04:05 PM
I just looked up the Warblade... if it weren't from Wizards of the Coast, I'd swear it was yet another fanmade class written by someone who just doesn't get that we don't want to be casting spells.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-06, 04:11 PM
When you sit down and player the Fighter class, what is it you're trying to do? What fundamental experience do you want? How should it FEEL to be a fighter?

What should a Fighter feel like? Because THAT is the question that can allow homebrewers to actually make one.

I think this thread alone has shown that even this very small selection of forum-goers has vastly different ideas on what makes a Fighter feel good.

For me personally? I want to file off the generic nature of the Fighter and trash it entirely. I feel it's holding the class back while other, more specialized melee classes eat all the cool abilities. I want to focus it: make it the Aragon or Gimli of the group. Moderately armored, heavily armed, and a master of close range combat with some associated skills. I want to be a mobile death-dealing machine, able to mow through minions in gritty hand-to-hand combat.

I want that at levels 1-5. Moving up from there, I want to soon be throwing boulders that several men would struggle to lift, jumping incredible distances, and scaling enormous monsters to bring them down. This may take me to levels 8-10.

Towards the highest levels? I want to ram through castle walls with my body, do the work of dozens of men in a single day, leap to the ends of the earth, cut mountains in half, one-shot dragons with a carefully aimed shot, and, channeling from the Illiad, reroute entire rivers by beating a manifestation of the river spirit in single combat.

By 20th level Wizards are changing the world. I should be able to do the same through my combat skill and strength of arms.

Ultimately, however? I don't think that's particularly possible given how D&D is written. I think the whole system should be dialed back to E6 levels, and taken from there.

Barring that? Remove the fighter entirely, and let other classes fill its role.


I just looked up the Warblade... if it weren't from Wizards of the Coast, I'd swear it was yet another fanmade class written by someone who just doesn't get that we don't want to be casting spells.

And yet a huge number of people consider it one of the best pieces of WotC class design ever, myself included. It's an utterly fantastic system that works like a dream both conceptually and mechanically--if you can get over the fact that maneuvers can, yes, look a bit like spells. *I* don't want my Fighter casting spells, but I consider the ToB to be my favorite 3.5 book ever.

There are threads and threads discussing it at length, but I've never seen a maneuver I can't reflavor into being non-supernatural...except for the ones the Swordsage has that are clearly labeled as being supernatural. Nor do I have much truck with the idea that attacks you can't always use isn't realistic, as I've done a number of combat styles in my day, and the attack I use is almost always dictated in some way by my opponent's distance, position, prior reactions, defense, or some other shifting variable.

GoddessSune
2013-03-06, 04:14 PM
I hate the idea of the spellcasting fighter, such as the Tome of Blood classes(sure they don't call them spells, but that is what they are). A fighter should be good at fighting, and be simple.

My idea of a fighter fix just boosts everything the fighter already gets, like hit points. And gives the fighter simple, yet obviously needed abilities.

Magic item creation, for example. I'm fine with the idea that a fighter can create magic items by force of will, but not using traditional magic and spells. The process would be the same, however, ruleswise. Except the fighter just 'uses' the item and then imprints the magic on it.(kinda like the Warehouse 13 idea of how artifacts are created.)

The fighter needs simple ways to smash and over come spells, the mettle ability as such works just fine here.

And the fighter needs the ability to create temp items, like an artificer, so they can have that 'magic weapon for any foe'.

Wargamer
2013-03-06, 04:24 PM
Actually, some of the stuff in the 5th playtest summarised exactly how the Fighter should work.

The Fighter in the playtest, from what I was told, supposedly had the ability to add their class level to damage rolls... and if they miss, they still deal damage to represent a glancing hit.

Now I don't know if that is true or not, but that is exactly what a Fighter should get; the ability to deal a metric ****-ton of damage, and to utterly laugh at enemy defences. None of this Warblade bollocks; none of this "every class has to be a spellcaster" like Pathfinder seems to have gone for. You want to make a Fighter viable? How about a guy who deals D10+20 damage before strength, before magic weapon abilities, and deals four attacks per round! Screw you, Wizard! A Fighter like that will kill your whole damn school before you can say "I Wish this was still 3.0!"

Temotei
2013-03-06, 04:25 PM
By 20th level Wizards are changing the world. I should be able to do the same through my combat skill and strength of arms.

This is pretty much a good summary of what I'd want.

Then again, the warblade covers my needs well enough.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-06, 04:28 PM
Actually, some of the stuff in the 5th playtest summarised exactly how the Fighter should work.

The Fighter in the playtest, from what I was told, supposedly had the ability to add their class level to damage rolls... and if they miss, they still deal damage to represent a glancing hit.

Now I don't know if that is true or not, but that is exactly what a Fighter should get; the ability to deal a metric ****-ton of damage, and to utterly laugh at enemy defences. None of this Warblade bollocks; none of this "every class has to be a spellcaster" like Pathfinder seems to have gone for. You want to make a Fighter viable? How about a guy who deals D10+20 damage before strength, before magic weapon abilities, and deals four attacks per round! Screw you, Wizard! A Fighter like that will kill your whole damn school before you can say "I Wish this was still 3.0!"

The issue is that damage is easy to flat-out ignore in 3.5. It's laughably easy to make a charge-based Fighter build who effectively always hits and, when he does, deals enough damage to one-shot the Tarrasque. This is a well known fact.

The problem? That only makes the Fighter overpowered against enemies who can be charged and one-shot which, in the world of D&D with its spells, magic items, and crazy monsters, isn't that much of the opposition.

So yeah. If the Wizard lets you duel him fairly and without defensive spells, staying next to you and blasting you, you'll come out on top. But that won't happen. He'll be invisible and ethereal, with defensive spells that destroy you for even approaching him, blasting you with save-or-dies, save-or-sucks, and no-save-just-suck spells from hundreds of feet in the air above you.

A Fighter's power should remain consistently strong, like that of a Wizard in multiple encounters. He *shouldn't* have a power curve that goes OVERPOWERED -- USELESS with nothing in between.

SamBurke
2013-03-06, 04:30 PM
The issue is that damage is easy to flat-out ignore in 3.5. It's laughably easy to make a charge-based Fighter build who effectively always hits and, when he does, deals enough damage to one-shot the Tarrasque. This is a well known fact.

The problem? That only makes the Fighter overpowered against enemies who can be charged and one-shot which, in the world of D&D with its spells, magic items, and crazy monsters, isn't that much of the opposition.

So yeah. If the Wizard lets you duel him fairly and without defensive spells, staying next to you and blasting you, you'll come out on top. But that won't happen. He'll be invisible and ethereal, with defensive spells that destroy you for even approaching him, blasting you with save-or-dies, save-or-sucks, and no-save-just-suck spells from hundreds of feet in the air above you.

A Fighter's power should remain consistently strong, like that of a Wizard in multiple encounters. He *shouldn't* have a power curve that goes OVERPOWERED -- USELESS with nothing in between.

So it seems like a simple way to start fixing the fighter is to give him ways to debuff enemies OTHER than killing them.

In addition, a way to pierce (and/or be defended against) various magical abilities and the like is necessary in order to maintain the strength of the Fighter.

Wargamer
2013-03-06, 04:32 PM
More proof, if ever it was needed, that Spellcasters are broken and need nerfing. :P

That said though, at higher levels a Fighter should be able to get magic items to bypass Ethereal / Invisible stuff. As to flying enemies... if you went my by example, he may as well be armed with an anti-aircraft gun. Flying won't save you; you'll just take fall damage when he blows you out of the sky.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-06, 04:35 PM
But magic items shouldn't be necessary for a class to actually compete. Not good design.

Wargamer
2013-03-06, 04:39 PM
But magic items shouldn't be necessary for a class to actually compete. Not good design.
Okay, if we assume everyone is stuck with mundane gear... how did the Wizard get those top tier spells? If the Fighter is going to be deprived his shiny toys, then the Wizard should be losing some of their arcane clout. Beyond that... just kite until the spells wear off and the Wizard is dead meat.

Besides, if I was going to meta-plan, I'd say that the Fighter should have weaknesses because, in theory, every race does. The Fighter should be unsurpassed in raw combat. However, he needs others for more subtle or complex actions. Likewise, the Wizard should be a brilliantly talented character... for about ten minutes. He should rely upon the Fighter to do the bulk of the work in the mundane clashes, then unleash his arcane trickery at vital points. If the Wizard is casually blasting spells out all day long with little concern for his arcane limits, then the Wizard needs nerfing - it's not the Fighter who needs the buff.

Yitzi
2013-03-06, 04:40 PM
Actually, some of the stuff in the 5th playtest summarised exactly how the Fighter should work.

The Fighter in the playtest, from what I was told, supposedly had the ability to add their class level to damage rolls... and if they miss, they still deal damage to represent a glancing hit.

Now I don't know if that is true or not, but that is exactly what a Fighter should get; the ability to deal a metric ****-ton of damage, and to utterly laugh at enemy defences.

I would, however, insist that that "still deal damage on a miss" not work when the target is also a fighter. There should never be an attack against which no defense is possible.

Eldan
2013-03-06, 04:44 PM
I think Djinn makes a good point, but I'd like to take it off on a tangent a bit.

When we were talking about Gaols and Giants, I said this:

We don't need a fighter. Seriously. The fighter has sort of a place in the very old three-class system of one beefy dude, one casty dude and one tricky dude. Not in modern D&D.

Can you think of a single example of a fighter in fiction? I thought about it, I can't. Pretty much anyone out there is better modelled as a knight, paladin, swashbuckler, ranger, barbarian, rogue, scout, marshal, monk or other such class.

No one has all his abilities summed up as "I have the ability to hit people in different ways". They are all also quick, faithful, dedicated, sneaky, sharp-sensed, courtly, wise, mystical, wilderness-experienced or berserk.

The fighter, as characterized in third edition, seems to me to have, at best, a place as an NPC class.

Edit: and maybe spellcasters need nerfing, but that's not even really the question. This isn't so much about power as it is about having a variety abilities. If we really have to bring down everyone to the level of the most boring, one-track class, then we can just bury the game outright, because at that point, we'll have killed it.

tl;dr: Eff the fighter. Replace him with more interesting classes.

bobthe6th
2013-03-06, 04:54 PM
I want to play Tarquine. I want to be competent at many styles without breaking combat for all other classes. I want tripping, disarming, sundering, overrunning, and more combat special attacks that don't even exist yet. I want to have setting sun like akidoish options.

I want to be able to feel like I am controlling the fight, without having to deal much damage. While the barbarian kills everything, I want to destroy everythings will to fight. I want a class that fosters tactics, not being mindlessly simple like a barbarian.

3.5 already has the Big Stupid Fighter, it is called the barbarian. I want something that makes me feel smart, and rewards me for using the enemies against each other. When the numbers seem impossible, the enemies forces many levels of CR above the party, I want to be able to think for a second and turn to the party with a plan in character.

Wargamer
2013-03-06, 04:56 PM
I disagree entirely.

Swashbucklers, Knights, Rangers, Paladins; all of these are very clear archetypes, and they invoke very clear mental imagery. Moreover, these classes tend to be very rigid in their form. A Knight, no matter how you pitch it, is always going to be about tanking damage and getting into duels with people.

The Fighter, by contrast, can be almost anything. Specifically, anything that is all about beating the snot out of people. Sometimes, that's all you want.

Do we need a "Captain of the Guard" class? No. Do we need a "Nobleman" class? No. Do we need a "Mercenary" class? No. The Fighter can be all of these and more. The specialist classes should be just that - specialist. The notion of a rapier-armed devil-may-care hero who duels the king's guard whilst simultaneously swinging on the chandelier and declaring how he's deflowered every fair maiden in a ten mile radius is arguably distinct enough that it should be its own class. After all, from Zorro to the Musketeers to V have all been the same; lightly armoured, charismatic champions sporting light weapons. A Fighter they are not.

Ultimately, here's the issue I see with the "we don't need a Fighter" argument... we don't need a Wizard. Seriously, why would you need a generic spellcaster when you could have a Beguiler, a Spellsword, a Warmage, a Warlock, a Sorcerer, etc. etc. etc. When we have a dozen specialist classes, why bother with the generic class?

Because Gandalf is not a Warmage. He is not a Beguiler, or a Spellsword, or any of the others. Gandalf is a Wizard; a man whose arcane talents are varied and do not readily fall into a single, easily-defined archetype.

There will always be a need for the generic classes. Boast about how amazing your party of Warblade, Truenamer, Ardent and Duskblade may be, but to me D&D will always be about the Fighter, Wizard, Rogue and Cleric.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-06, 04:59 PM
Okay, if we assume everyone is stuck with mundane gear... how did the Wizard get those top tier spells? If the Fighter is going to be deprived his shiny toys, then the Wizard should be losing some of their arcane clout. Beyond that... just kite until the spells wear off and the Wizard is dead meat.

You can't kite from a Wizard. He's faster than you, more accurate than you, and, when his spells wear off, he teleports away and hangs out in another plane until he's ready to try again.

Also, a Wizard is only SLIGHTLY gimped by having no items. He gets 2 spells per level just from being a Wizard. My point isn't that items shouldn't be on the table, but rather that a Fighter's item selection should enable him to perform BETTER, not be the thing letting him play competitively in the first place.


Besides, if I was going to meta-plan, I'd say that the Fighter should have weaknesses because, in theory, every race does. The Fighter should be unsurpassed in raw combat. However, he needs others for more subtle or complex actions. Likewise, the Wizard should be a brilliantly talented character... for about ten minutes. He should rely upon the Fighter to do the bulk of the work in the mundane clashes, then unleash his arcane trickery at vital points. If the Wizard is casually blasting spells out all day long with little concern for his arcane limits, then the Wizard needs nerfing - it's not the Fighter who needs the buff.

Or it could be both. Hence why Tier 3 is considered the design sweet spot: a lot of times when it can excel, but it has the options to always contribute SOMEHOW in almost every situation.

As for the ten-minutes plan...that's how the Five Minute Workday scenario comes about. Short of always putting time restraints on encounters, there's not much you can do to stop a creative Wizard. Yes, Wizards need a bit of a fix...but that's not the discussion at the table here.



We don't need a fighter. Seriously. The fighter has sort of a place in the very old three-class system of one beefy dude, one casty dude and one tricky dude. Not in modern D&D.

Amen to this.


Can you think of a single example of a fighter in fiction? I thought about it, I can't. Pretty much anyone out there is better modelled as a knight, paladin, swashbuckler, ranger, barbarian, rogue, scout, marshal, monk or other such class.

Or can be summed up by a feat or two that anyone could take. That's the problem. Fighter is "a guy who fights." Guess what almost ALL D&D classes do? There's our issue.


No one has all his abilities summed up as "I have the ability to hit people in different ways". They are all also quick, faithful, dedicated, sneaky, sharp-sensed, courtly, wise, mystical, wilderness-experienced or berserk.

tl;dr: Eff the fighter. Replace him with more interesting classes.

Exactly. Every class that fights than ISN'T the Fighter is taking away things the Fighter could otherwise claim. Those classes are, however, interesting and powerful additions with their own unique flavor. So ditch the Fighter, and build more classes that fight but also do X, Y, and Z.

Edit: I'd also say the same about the Wizard, honestly. Gandalf and company can have classes designed to be focused towards them quite easily.

scarmiglionne4
2013-03-06, 05:00 PM
I disagree entirely.

Swashbucklers, Knights, Rangers, Paladins; all of these are very clear archetypes, and they invoke very clear mental imagery. Moreover, these classes tend to be very rigid in their form. A Knight, no matter how you pitch it, is always going to be about tanking damage and getting into duels with people.

The Fighter, by contrast, can be almost anything. Specifically, anything that is all about beating the snot out of people. Sometimes, that's all you want.

Do we need a "Captain of the Guard" class? No. Do we need a "Nobleman" class? No. Do we need a "Mercenary" class? No. The Fighter can be all of these and more. The specialist classes should be just that - specialist. The notion of a rapier-armed devil-may-care hero who duels the king's guard whilst simultaneously swinging on the chandelier and declaring how he's deflowered every fair maiden in a ten mile radius is arguably distinct enough that it should be its own class. After all, from Zorro to the Musketeers to V have all been the same; lightly armoured, charismatic champions sporting light weapons. A Fighter they are not.

Ultimately, here's the issue I see with the "we don't need a Fighter" argument... we don't need a Wizard. Seriously, why would you need a generic spellcaster when you could have a Beguiler, a Spellsword, a Warmage, a Warlock, a Sorcerer, etc. etc. etc. When we have a dozen specialist classes, why bother with the generic class?

Because Gandalf is not a Warmage. He is not a Beguiler, or a Spellsword, or any of the others. Gandalf is a Wizard; a man whose arcane talents are varied and do not readily fall into a single, easily-defined archetype.

There will always be a need for the generic classes. Boast about how amazing your party of Warblade, Truenamer, Ardent and Duskblade may be, but to me D&D will always be about the Fighter, Wizard, Rogue and Cleric.

Preach it, brother!

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-06, 05:03 PM
Preach it, brother!

This is a perfectly valid view. However, if we're talking Cleric/Rogue/Wizard/Fighter then A: we're taking a very narrow view of D&D (which isn't necessarily bad, but IS making it a very pre-determined party comp, useful mostly for dungeon crawls: again, that's fine and fun, but it is limiting), and B: that means we should probably have a generic Arcane Caster, Divine Caster, Skill Monkey, and Fighting Guy. So we should turn around and ditch the OTHER classes, so as to let those four specializations have more options and more versatility.

Trying to meet BOTH design goals is a nightmare for any system. Specialized classes vs. Generic classes is the same as freedom of options vs. feats that grant specific options. They work to actively counter each other: if a specialist has it, the generic shouldn't step on his toes. If a feat specifically grants the ability to do X, I shouldn't let you do X without a feat. Counterproductive design at its core in both examples. And also bad design.

Eldan
2013-03-06, 05:04 PM
Correct. Gandalf is a high level celestial with some little racial cleric casting, good knowledge skills and inspire courage smallwink:

Anyway, I'm fine with not having wizards. Few if any wizards in fiction have as much unlimited and varied power as those in D&D do. Overall, they tend to be specialized on one kind of magic or another.

Looking at my bookshelf: Harry Dresden's an evoker and diviner with some item crafting feats. Sparrowhawk is a Truenamer. Mouser has a mid-level UMD check. FitzChivalry is a telepath. Rincewind's an expert with some running feats. Kvothe is some kind of horrible Artificer/bard/swordsage/factotum mixture. In fact, I don't see a single generic wizard.

But name me one, just one, fighter in fiction.

Kane0
2013-03-06, 05:04 PM
What i'd want is simple, applicable and versatile mechanics on a solid chassis. The stock fighter is capable of good damage and a fair amount of customization, but ususally ends up getting pigeonholed into one or two methods after a few levels. So I want a fighter that is adaptable and fearsome in a fight but not over the top. We have ToB for the over the top combat prowess category, awesome as it is.

If you want a solid fighter that can be used for a whole bunch of builds, how about some of these features in addition to/instead of his bonus feats:

- More class skills and/or skills per level. Really.
- Warblades Weapon Apititude
- A Scathing Blow kind of ability, as described above. Still deal minimum damage if you miss due to AC
- An extra 1d4 every few levels that you can use on any d20 roll during combat, once per round. This allows you to put that little bit of extra 'grit' into saves, ability checks, skill checks and attacks when needed.
- A small selection of class abilities to shore up major weaknesses of the warrior type in general (combating miss chance, flying foes, incorporeal/ethereal foes, regeneration, etc), though he should not gain all of these, he still needs weaknesses after all.
- Mettle, like the Hexblade. Maybe only functions for fort instead of fort and will, but it would really help hammer home the feel of the fighter.

Add some or all of those in and you'd be changing the fighter pretty drastically without straight up giving him more numbers or magical abilities, or completely invalidating other classes (though some core classes may need a bit of work)

Eldan
2013-03-06, 05:11 PM
Specialized classes vs. Generic classes

Good point. Myself, I do actually tend a bit more to the second, thinking about it. But I want specialized talents. When I redid the wizard, I gave him four archetypes to choose from (sneaky wizard, battle wizard, sage wizard and hedge wizard) and made them specialize in one to three thematically linked areas of magic.

I'd quite like the same for the fighter. Make a fighter class with some overarching talents, and then let them specialize in command (marshal), skirmish (swashbuckler), sharp senses (ranger), berserking (barbarian) or something else.

Because "I hit things with sticks" is not a framework to hang a whole class on.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-06, 05:14 PM
But name me one, just one, fighter in fiction.

I can actually think of one and only one who I'd have a bit of trouble making anything other than a Fighter or Warblade. Garet Jax, from The Wishsong of Shannara by Terry Brooks. He's obviously a well-hardened combatant, a master of every weapon imaginable, and spends the book seeking out an opponent who can finally beat him. He has no real identifying abilities other than being seemingly impossible to defeat in physical combat: he's fast, tough, and an expert with any weapon you toss at him (or with no weapon at all).

He also
[spoiler]...falls in combat with the first truly powerful magical beast he encounters--something that, in D&D, would have Regeneration. He kills it as it kills him. Fighter 3-5 with mundane weapons in a low-level world seems to fit.

Fighter or Warblade seem the only real possibilities, but characters like Garet Jax are exceedingly rare in fiction and literature.

Wargamer
2013-03-06, 05:17 PM
But name me one, just one, fighter in fiction.
Half the cast of Reluctant Heroes; every Dwarf in a Warhammer book who is not a Slayer or Engineer; Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde (their fighting style is always dead calm - the only one who "rages" is a school teacher!); Leonidas and his Spartans; the Scorpion King; almost every professional soldier in Fantasy.

Need I go on?

On this "generic vs specialist" thing... I am fine with specialist, when I want to play specialist. If I want to play a pirate, I'll be a Dread Pirate. If I want to be a frothing lunatic, I'll be a Barbarian. If I want to be a paladin, I'll be a Paladin.

...but what if I want to be a 'martial hero'? What if all I know about my character is that "I want to be a nobleman who specialises in two weapon fighting."? Enter, the Fighter.

Eldan
2013-03-06, 05:21 PM
Leonidas is also a king, a tactician and a leader. Cohen is quite proficient in the wilderness and at sneaking, when he wants to. Non-engineer/slayer dwarves in Warhammer tend to have about as much character as a brick and I can't think of one that is a main character.

I don't know the others.

But see, a nobleman who specializes in two-weapon fighting is not a fighter. He'd have skills other than fighting with weapons. He'd know courtly manners, and the history of his bloodline, certainly wrestling and riding, and perhaps a bit of politics and geography...

That's a knight, or a samurai, if it didn't suck.

bobthe6th
2013-03-06, 05:25 PM
"I want to be a nobleman who specializes in two weapon fighting."

Samurai. TWF, built in nobility... though you would want to give it a fix that actually good as a non TO fear base.

edit: ninj'd

Really, if a concept isn't covered, a class can be refluff or "fixed" to fit it. This is the problem with generic classes...

Wargamer
2013-03-06, 05:25 PM
But this is the beauty of the Fighter.

"My character should be a leader type!" Reach level 6, take Leadership, gloat over your cohorts.

"My character should be sneaky!" Wear light armour, get high dexterity, take some Feats that improve your sneakiness.

As long as the Feats are done properly, the Fighter can be whatever you want. It just need a little more refocusing to make it a clearly martial character, as opposed to two Bonus Feats to optimise your build.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-06, 05:26 PM
On this "generic vs specialist" thing... I am fine with specialist, when I want to play specialist. If I want to play a pirate, I'll be a Dread Pirate. If I want to be a frothing lunatic, I'll be a Barbarian. If I want to be a paladin, I'll be a Paladin.

...but what if I want to be a 'martial hero'? What if all I know about my character is that "I want to be a nobleman who specialises in two weapon fighting."? Enter, the Fighter.

The issue is that the specialist classes, by their mere existence, actively take away abilities and design space that the Fighter could otherwise add to his portfolio. So, ultimately, you get a class that doesn't have anything unique, because he's relegated to being a blank slate. He gets feats, which those other classes also get. Feats =/= class features, and making them as strong as class features is A: difficult, and B: helps other classes a lot as well without really making the Fighter functional.

You may WANT to have both options, but the system honestly can't support both options and have them both be solid, balanced options.

bobthe6th
2013-03-06, 05:30 PM
But the class dosn't suport those things. Leadership requires Cha... which a fighter has no need for. Go marshal.

The fighter dosn't give hide/move silently as class skills, so you are either going cross class or dipping another class. Go spell less ranger, or swashbuckler.

It would need to be a full generic class, with customizable chasie and class features... which obsoletes the specialist classes.

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-06, 05:34 PM
But name me one, just one, fighter in fiction.

Despite the name, Conan the Barbarian. No magic, no supernatural abilities, he's the guy that sneaks (yes fighters can sneak) into the tower and slays the wizard with the magic sword he found in the basement. He also wears heavy armor and swings a greatsword two handed.

Beowulf. Again, no magic, but still slays two giant monsters and a dragon.

Robert Baratheon and every other knight in the entirety of A Song of Ice and Fire. Low magic setting, but they are fighters, singular warriors with good heads on their shoulders and mastery of several weapons.
---------------

I think that many people are looking at these fighter fixes the wrong way though. When you change out the core abilities of a class, you change the class. The core abilities of a fighter are his feats. So what needs to be fixed for the fighter are his feats.

Use the fighter's feats to give him more options. New attacks, new ways to use his weapons, counterattacks and ways to control the battlefield through repositioning.

If you want a fighter that swings a greatsword at supersonic speeds to mow through his enemies, there should be a series of feats for that. Likewise if you want to dual wield and launch 1700 attacks a round. Or if you want to use your warhammer to rend your opponents armor in twain and knock a few spells out of the wizard's skull.

Feat chains are a good idea that has been poorly implemented. Each step in the chain should add new features and new ways to use the weapons associated with them. Every feat should feel like a powerful addition to the fighter's arsenal of skills, not a +2 to attacks and damage when the moon is out but only a quarter full and you haven't made a full attack since the fight began.

Wargamer
2013-03-06, 05:37 PM
Well I think it can. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that there is far too much specialisation in D&D. Hell, I think it's why I started to drift away for a while.

I started on 3.5 with the core books. Fantastic! We had our first ever D&D campaign and it was exciting and fun to do. We had a Fighter / Duellist, a Cleric, a Rogue and a Wizard / Ranger. It was all good.

Then we started seeing the expansions come in. Monster Manual II gave us more monsters, which is always fun. Then we saw the Complete books creep in... and slowly but surely the silliness took hold. Where once the melee class was divided into four broad categories of "Angry Guy, Aragorn, Paladin and Normal" now we had Samurai and Hexblades and Swashbucklers and so on and so forth... and this happened with every class. Oh, and of course every book brings with it at least a dozen Prestige classes.

There is a certain beauty in simplicity. I agree with the Favoured Soul (or whatever the 'Cleric's Sorceror' class was). I agree with the Swashbuckler. I agree with any class that gives us a new and interesting way to make a build... but I don't agree that every conceivable build has to have its own class, Prestige class, racial levels or monster levels. If you hit people, go Fighter. If you heal, go Cleric, if you steal, go Thief, if you want showy stuff, go Wizard. You can tailor these classes to your own ends; we don't need to divide them into twenty sub-classes for every possible variation of every possible theme.

Because here's the other issue with overspecialisation; I don't think Knights are knights. I don't think they behave the way a knight should... yet when you're telling people "I want to be a knight, but I don't want to use the Knight class", you're going to get odd looks.

Eldan
2013-03-06, 05:38 PM
But feats are not unique to the fighter. THat's the main problem.

If hte fighter just gets more feats, he's not a class. Everyone can take feats. That's like saying that expert should be a PC class because it gets a few more skills than other people.

There should be unique abilities for the fighter. Otherwise, what's the point? If a ranger four levels higher can do everything your fighter can do, and twenty other things, what's the point?

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-06, 05:39 PM
I think that many people are looking at these fighter fixes the wrong way though. When you change out the core abilities of a class, you change the class. The core abilities of a fighter are his feats. So what needs to be fixed for the fighter are his feats.

I can never seem to say this enough. Feats, in D&D, are not designed to replace class features.

If you change a Fighter's Fighter-Only feats, you may as well not give him feats and give him a pool of "Fighter Exploits." That would be fine, if you can do it properly. Feats, however, are designed to improve upon a character's existing abilities, typically in minor ways. That is not what a class feature should be doing.

"Fixing" the feat system in this manner is a power boost across the board to ALL classes, and requires VERY careful balancing to make sure the Fighter, with his +11 feats on everyone else, manages to reach a good power and versatility level with those additional 11 feats. It would be MUCH easier to simply make a pool of Fighter abilities and cut feats from the class altogether.

Wargamer
2013-03-06, 05:41 PM
There should be unique abilities for the fighter. Otherwise, what's the point? If a ranger four levels higher can do everything your fighter can do, and twenty other things, what's the point?

There are already at least three "Fighter Only" feats. All we need is more of them.

What's the point, you ask? Because if it's a Feat, I choose if I have it. If I feel that at 4th level I'd rather have Great Cleave than Weapon Specialisation, that's my call. It's part of the beauty of the Fighter.

So all you do is throw in a lot more Fighter Only feats, and leave it up to the player if he takes them. You can encourage them to take the Feats; make them good, make them powerful, make them Feats that most people will want to take either right away, or soon after they are unlocked.

But don't force it. Don't tell people they must take them. If people want to play "jack of all" Fighters, let them. It's part of what makes the class so inviting.

Eldan
2013-03-06, 05:49 PM
But all the sub-classes are endless fun.They are, to me, what make third edition third edition, and the reason why no other system I know can even remotely replace it in my heart.

The core wizard can never be a warlock. It can never be a binder. It can't be a truenamer. It can't be a shadowcaster. These classes have new and unique abilities.

Similarly, the core wizard can not be an archmage, war weaver, dragon disciple, nightmare spinner, mindbender, rage mage, arachnomancer, pale master, fleshwarper, earth dreamer, sandshaper, acolyte of the skin, spellsword, geometer, candlecaster, stormcaller, cataclysm mage or shadow adept.

They are options. They make the game fun.

Edit: if they are fighter-only, why even call them feats? At that point, call them fighter paths and save the space in the feat chapter. Makes everything more clear.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-06, 05:53 PM
A 20th Level fighter should obviously have awesome shades (http://i597.photobucket.com/albums/tt53/Pct1995/Pics/KaminaGlasses1.gif) and ride a cosmic-sized robot into battle.

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-06, 05:58 PM
I'm generally in agreement with Wargamer here.


But feats are not unique to the fighter. THat's the main problem.

There are Fighter Specific Feats, why not more of them? And why not better organize them so new players can look at these feats and go "Oh, If I go through these in order, then I get to do (insert really cool thing here)?"


If hte fighter just gets more feats, he's not a class. Everyone can take feats. That's like saying that expert should be a PC class because it gets a few more skills than other people.

In 3.5 the fighter has 0 class features that are not "bonus feats." Giving the fighter more feats isn't the answer. Giving the fighter more exclusive feat options is.

And if you look at Pathfinder, all of a fighter's class abilities that aren't feats are really just feats with their progression spread out across class levels. A +1 here, a +1 there and you still have to take feats to do anything.


There should be unique abilities for the fighter. Otherwise, what's the point? If a ranger four levels higher can do everything your fighter can do, and twenty other things, what's the point?

1) Because you can do what the ranger does 4 levels before he can do it.
2) The argument I'm trying to make is that adding new class features to the fighter makes him no longer "The Fighter." He just becomes a new specialist class.


I can never seem to say this enough. Feats, in D&D, are not designed to replace class features.

I think you might be wrong there. There are plenty of feats that replace or add new class features. And even if you're correct, are you sure that still makes it the right way to go about things?


If you change a Fighter's Fighter-Only feats, you may as well not give him feats and give him a pool of "Fighter Exploits." That would be fine, if you can do it properly. Feats, however, are designed to improve upon a character's existing abilities, typically in minor ways. That is not what a class feature should be doing.

Fighter Exploits? Yeah sure, why not? That's basically 4e.


"Fixing" the feat system in this manner is a power boost across the board to ALL classes, and requires VERY careful balancing to make sure the Fighter, with his +11 feats on everyone else, manages to reach a good power and versatility level with those additional 11 feats. It would be MUCH easier to simply make a pool of Fighter abilities and cut feats from the class altogether.

It only boosts power across the board if you don't account for prerequisites. As long as a feat has "Fighter Level X" in its prerequisites line, then you have to be a fighter at or above Level X to take it. And you can add pretty much anything to a feat's requirements, such as "Special: If you take any levels in a class other than Fighter, you lose access to this feat."

I'm not saying that we should put that caveat at the bottom of every fighter feat, I'm just saying it can be done.

SamBurke
2013-03-06, 06:03 PM
I can never seem to say this enough. Feats, in D&D, are not designed to replace class features.

If you change a Fighter's Fighter-Only feats, you may as well not give him feats and give him a pool of "Fighter Exploits." That would be fine, if you can do it properly. Feats, however, are designed to improve upon a character's existing abilities, typically in minor ways. That is not what a class feature should be doing.

"Fixing" the feat system in this manner is a power boost across the board to ALL classes, and requires VERY careful balancing to make sure the Fighter, with his +11 feats on everyone else, manages to reach a good power and versatility level with those additional 11 feats. It would be MUCH easier to simply make a pool of Fighter abilities and cut feats from the class altogether.

One thing that everyone's been focusing on is the DnD fighter and how to create a fix for it. But, IMO, that's putting the cart before dire warhorse.

My question was more of the playstyle: what did people want to do, how did they want to feel? What should it feel like, as a PLAYER, to have this character?

With that playstyle in mind, we can look at mechanics that emulate that. By doing so, we've looked past specialized vs. generic, to the heart of the issue.

Well, I say that. What the question I'm asking is, what should a Generic Warrior's fighting look like?

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-06, 06:11 PM
One thing that everyone's been focusing on is the DnD fighter and how to create a fix for it. But, IMO, that's putting the cart before dire warhorse.

My question was more of the playstyle: what did people want to do, how did they want to feel? What should it feel like, as a PLAYER, to have this character?

I want to feel like a Fighter. I know that doesn't sound very specific, so I'll elaborate.

The Fighter is someone who fights (duh). But more than that, they're better at it than most everyone else. A fighter should be able to wield any weapon adequately, and his favorite weapons with the kind of skill that makes opponents wet their pants. He should be able to think and move tactically, and hit hard while still taking hits, whether because he's nimble enough to dodge out of the way, or because he's wearing a metric ton of steel plating and he can't even feel you attacking him.

When I play a wizard, I do so because I want to be able to match wits and magical might with a dragon, taking it down before it even gets close enough to me to unleash its breath weapon.

When I play a Fighter, I do so because I want to be able walk up to the dragon, punch it in the face, take a breath weapon to the face and jam my sword into its eye.

If I'm going to be a fighter, it's because I want to go toe to toe with legendary and mythical creatures and beat the ever loving **** out of them.

bobthe6th
2013-03-06, 06:23 PM
The Fighter is someone who fights (duh). But more than that, they're better at it than most everyone else. A fighter should be able to wield any weapon adequately, and his favorite weapons with the kind of skill that makes opponents wet their pants. He should be able to think and move tactically, and hit hard while still taking hits, whether because he's nimble enough to dodge out of the way, or because he's wearing a metric ton of steel plating and he can't even feel you attacking him.

When I play a wizard, I do so because I want to be able to match wits and magical might with a dragon, taking it down before it even gets close enough to me to unleash its breath weapon.

When I play a Fighter, I do so because I want to be able walk up to the dragon, punch it in the face, take a breath weapon to the face and jam my sword into its eye.

If I'm going to be a fighter, it's because I want to go toe to toe with legendary and mythical creatures and beat the ever loving **** out of them.

Sounds kinda like a barbarian. Actually, exactly like a barbarian. You sure you don't want to play a barbarian instead?

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-06, 06:31 PM
Sounds kinda like a barbarian. Actually, exactly like a barbarian. You sure you don't want to play a barbarian instead?

Actually, I'm quite fond of the Barbarian. Especially in PF, because they have all these neat rage powers. But no. Not for this.

A barbarian wins a fight because he has a temper. A fighter turns his enemy's temper against them and wins.

Once again, that's a problem of specialist classes versus generalist classes.

If I was to say that I wanted to play a fighter because I want to hold the line against all odds, protecting my allies from every attack the enemy throws at us, what would you suggest I play?

What if I wanted to play a fighter to swing around two weapons at once and hit my opponent 10 times in one round?

What if I wanted to pick up a bow and shoot my opponent full of arrows?

Or sneak up behind him and slit his throat?

A fighter can do any of those things, it all comes down to feat selection.

bobthe6th
2013-03-06, 06:41 PM
A barbarian wins a fight because he has a temper. A fighter turns his enemy's temper against them and wins.

That was not at all what you described, and it can't. Their is no mechanic for it other then R's gambit... which other classes do better.



If I was to say that I wanted to play a fighter because I want to hold the line against all odds, protecting my allies from every attack the enemy throws at us, what would you suggest I play?

knight, or crusader.


What if I wanted to play a fighter to swing around two weapons at once and hit my opponent 10 times in one round?

swordsage, though maybe ranger?


What if I wanted to pick up a bow and shoot my opponent full of arrows?

scout, or possibly ranger if you don't mind the odd fluff.



Or sneak up behind him and slit his throat?

rogue or ninja and assassin. though shadow dancer is nice for this.



A fighter can do any of those things, it all comes down to feat selection.

it can't do the last as it has none of the skills it needs or the bonus damage. It can do the first, but the other classes can do it better. It isn't good at the second as it again lacks the bonus damage. The third is bad as you need bonus damage to remain relevant as an archer.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-06, 06:46 PM
Well, here's a notion.

Fighters are defined by the renown they command. They're flexible and adaptable to many different fighting styles, but they'll never be as good as the specialists. What they do have, though, is reputation. A fighter's reputation lets them command respect, authority, and power that the other martial classes are unable to.

You want a Level 20 fighter to change the world? That's because the Level 20 fighter is a legend. They command the respect and admiration of entire nations. They have allies in every city on the continent, because of their reputation. The only reason they're not a king is because they have a world to go out and save by fighting the monsters.

Arcanist
2013-03-06, 07:03 PM
Well, here's a notion.

Fighters are defined by the renown they command. They're flexible and adaptable to many different fighting styles, but they'll never be as good as the specialists. What they do have, though, is reputation. A fighter's reputation lets them command respect, authority, and power that the other martial classes are unable to.

You want a Level 20 fighter to change the world? That's because the Level 20 fighter is a legend. They command the respect and admiration of entire nations. They have allies in every city on the continent, because of their reputation. The only reason they're not a king is because they have a world to go out and save by fighting the monsters.

The only thing that can possibly be cooler then the fighter fitting this concept would be a Unicorn prancing around the milky way crapping more unicorns that crap ice cream which gets struck by lightning because the universe can only take so much awesome...

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-06, 07:17 PM
Well, here's a notion.

Fighters are defined by the renown they command. They're flexible and adaptable to many different fighting styles, but they'll never be as good as the specialists. What they do have, though, is reputation. A fighter's reputation lets them command respect, authority, and power that the other martial classes are unable to.

You want a Level 20 fighter to change the world? That's because the Level 20 fighter is a legend. They command the respect and admiration of entire nations. They have allies in every city on the continent, because of their reputation. The only reason they're not a king is because they have a world to go out and save by fighting the monsters.

Isn't this basically the AD&D fighter? And how would you represent this mechanically? Especially since the preferred dump stat for fighters is CHA?

FreakyCheeseMan
2013-03-06, 07:31 PM
Figured I'd weigh in with my few cents.

* A fighter should be easy to play. D&D has a very large and complicated rule base, which essentially translates to a high cost of entry for new players; they have to learn all kinds of rules just to play the game. Fighters should be playable with as few of these rules as possible (while still being fun), to give new players a place to start from.

* Fighters should be the underdogs. In a world of wizards and sorcerers, fighters are the guys who have to rely on their swords and shields; they are the little fish trying to get by in a big pool, which means that people automatically root for them.

* Fighters should be relateable. While part of the appeal of D&D is the chance to be something we're not, we'll usually have the most fun when we can actually relate to our character - when our character is a centuries-old sorcerer lich, that's difficult. Basic fighters, meanwhile, have a set of vulnerabilities and abilities that we can relate to - they're more likely to be compelling characters than their supernatural comrades.

* Fighters should be role-play flexible. To me, this actually means two somewhat unexpected things: They should have skill points, and they should be able to make use of any core attribute. Some people may want to play the dashing young rake who gets all the girls; some may want to play the cutthroat tactician who leads from the front; some may want to play the grizzled old veteran who's seen it all and knows people.

bobthe6th
2013-03-06, 07:36 PM
* A fighter should be easy to play. D&D has a very large and complicated rule base, which essentially translates to a high cost of entry for new players; they have to learn all kinds of rules just to play the game. Fighters should be playable with as few of these rules as possible (while still being fun), to give new players a place to start from.


why make the fighter the go to for this? the barbarian is a perfect training class... It just bothers me when people try to make the fighter out as such.

FreakyCheeseMan
2013-03-06, 07:41 PM
why make the fighter the go to for this? the barbarian is a perfect training class... It just bothers me when people try to make the fighter out as such.

So, first, I guess I was referring to "Fighter" as "Stock Martial Class" rather than just "Fighter Itself". But, that being said, why does Barbarian seem easier to you?

Also, I'd bring up the Roleplay Flexibility thing - Barbarian implies a few things, while new players should be allowed to play as wide a range of characters as possible, so they can get something that appeals to them personally.

EDIT: Oh, and this is what I imagine fighters *should* be, not necessarily what they are.

Conor77
2013-03-06, 08:14 PM
I want to hamstring a giant.
I want to climb the Cyclops, and blind it.
I want to cut the wings of a dragon, and ground it.
I want to disarm foes.
I want to parry blows.
I want to dodge boulders.
I want to block fireballs with my shield.
I want to shrug off mind control via raw grit.
I want to fight with my eyes closed against Medusa or without breathing against Gorgons, and still kick ass.
I want to be able to pick up any weapon, and fight masterfully with it.
I want to be able to grab a foe, and use them as a weapon.
I want to be death to everything within my reach to legions of weaker foes.
I want to shoot the weak scale on the dragon and bring it down.
I want to break the wizard's staff.
I want to shoot a sling stone at a Goliath, and watch it fall.
I want to be effective in heavy armor, shrugging off blows that would fell a lesser man.
I want to be effective in light armor, side stepping blows with my greater maneuverability.
I want to be able to fight foes whose very touch is death, and win.
I want to be able to effectively threaten and oppose wizards, assassins, men at arms, deathknights, huge monsters and cultist priests.
I want my sword to be my most treasured possession, because it is a great tool, but I still want to be almost as dangerous with a stick I picked up from the ground, or the enemies sword I tore from his hands.

Basically this entire list. I don't think a one-class fix can make all these things happen though, you need a change to the system.

Eldan
2013-03-06, 08:21 PM
The problem is this. Looking at that list, how many of those things only a fighter and no one else can do?

Amaril
2013-03-06, 08:25 PM
To me, the game/world that has done the best job of making it awesome to be a fighter, and one of the only ones I've encountered that's done so, is Infinity Blade (for anyone not familiar with it, it's an iOS game--it's awesome, buy it now). One wouldn't expect a mobile game to have deep lore or a compelling story, but this one does, and it's amazing how they can make sword-and-board fighters seem like the world's greatest badasses in a world with functioning high tech and magic. When I play a fighter, I want it to feel like that.

Conor77
2013-03-06, 08:28 PM
The problem is this. Looking at that list, how many of those things only a fighter and no one else can do?

That is precisely why I said you can't do it with a one-class fix. I'd expect that if the Fighter got to do all that stuff, everyone else should at least have bits and pieces. So you'd have to have all-over rules for doing that stuff, making the Fighter just the best at it or some-such thing.

FreakyCheeseMan
2013-03-06, 08:45 PM
To me, the game/world that has done the best job of making it awesome to be a fighter, and one of the only ones I've encountered that's done so, is Infinity Blade (for anyone not familiar with it, it's an iOS game--it's awesome, buy it now). One wouldn't expect a mobile game to have deep lore or a compelling story, but this one does, and it's amazing how they can make sword-and-board fighters seem like the world's greatest badasses in a world with functioning high tech and magic. When I play a fighter, I want it to feel like that.

Elaborate for those of us who don't have iOS?

bobthe6th
2013-03-06, 08:47 PM
So, first, I guess I was referring to "Fighter" as "Stock Martial Class" rather than just "Fighter Itself". But, that being said, why does Barbarian seem easier to you?

Also, I'd bring up the Roleplay Flexibility thing - Barbarian implies a few things, while new players should be allowed to play as wide a range of characters as possible, so they can get something that appeals to them personally.

EDIT: Oh, and this is what I imagine fighters *should* be, not necessarily what they are.

first of all, barbarian is idiot proof to a degree. It has two important stats, and a buff to those it can turn on as a free action. The player just has to learn to move and attack. You can give a player a barbarian with a greatsword and power attack, and they get to charge and attack without damaging themselves in the long run.

The concept of a barbarian already builds in this, as it allows you to just make a antisocial stupid character without being odd. New roleplayers get a chance to see the game before they can do a fully built original character.

Barbarian has very few options, nothing to screw up. A generic "melee guy" will have a lot of options to cover a stupidly huge amount of territory. (this is what a generic fighter would be like... would you hand that to a first time player? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194834))

Unless you flat out replace it, the barbarian is the simplest and best starter class for new characters.

Amaril
2013-03-06, 09:14 PM
Elaborate for those of us who don't have iOS?

Yeah, I guess :smallfrown: Problem is, unless your audience is familiar with that game's fiction, it's hard to explain why it does such a good job of making fighters awesome. I think part of it is that the main protagonist--who is the very embodiment of the fighter--is very compelling and sympathetic, and part of it is that the setting (as a result of the gameplay) places so much emphasis on the importance of single physical combat, with less on magic and technology. Just wanted to offer the comparison for anyone who did get it.

And for those who have iOS devices and don't have these games, again, I wholeheartedly recommend them.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-03-06, 09:15 PM
The fighter is a counter-intuitively terrible classes to inflict on a new player. If you're just handing them a character, sure, but even with years of experience with 3.5 I find picking feats to be one of the most onerous parts of character creation, and that's what the fighter is all about. Trying to build an effective character entirely out of effective feats scattered across a dozen books? Even with help, it's overwhelming.

Eldan
2013-03-06, 09:16 PM
The problem I see with that is this:

How much of that is good writing, in characterization and worldbuilding, and how much is the fighter's skills and mechanics?

Amaril
2013-03-06, 09:22 PM
The problem I see with that is this:

How much of that is good writing, in characterization and worldbuilding, and how much is the fighter's skills and mechanics?

Hmm, I see the problem :smallconfused: ...but actually, I think a lot of the time, the problem with fighters is that they're placed in worlds where they're set up to be dominated by the spellcasters. I guess that basically comes down to an argument that magic should be depowered, but considering that this setting actually does have high magic and technology, and that the fighters still dominate, I still think it's a good connection to make with this issue. I don't know much about the actual mechanics of fighters and how that contributes to making them flawed...I'm just trying to be helpful by doing what I know, which is flavor and concept.

Eldan
2013-03-06, 09:25 PM
That's another argument I throw around often.

Bob the competent fighter should not be paired with your average D&D wizard. He should be paired with the average sword and sorcery wizard whose magic consists of forbidden knowledge, a few true names, subtle enchantments and feeling magical energies. The average D&D wizard should be paired with your average divine avatar of indian mythology, if he needs a meatshield.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-06, 09:25 PM
Isn't this basically the AD&D fighter? And how would you represent this mechanically? Especially since the preferred dump stat for fighters is CHA?
Class features, really. As the fighter levels up, it doesn't matter how much CHA they have or don't have. They just get that influence for being that awesome.

Amaril
2013-03-06, 09:37 PM
That's another argument I throw around often.

Bob the competent fighter should not be paired with your average D&D wizard. He should be paired with the average sword and sorcery wizard whose magic consists of forbidden knowledge, a few true names, subtle enchantments and feeling magical energies. The average D&D wizard should be paired with your average divine avatar of indian mythology, if he needs a meatshield.

Yeah, pretty much. The magic that does exist in Infinity Blade isn't exactly that approach, but it's pretty much the same power level--spells are cast from magic rings that can only hold up to maybe three different ones, and take a considerable amount of time to recharge after being used. And you can only ever safely wear one ring at a time, since otherwise you risk accidentally setting yourself on fire when trying to heal that sword cut. And they can only be used by the Deathless immortals who rule the world with an iron fist, or by their part-mortal descendants. And they're not even really magic--they're actually advanced quantum teleportation systems or something like that that shoot fire by transmitting it from a nearby source of heat. So yeah, not exactly the standard D&D wizard.

Still, though, I maintain that it is possible (though not necessarily easy or sensible) to make a perfectly effective fighter without massively changing the rules, if the setting is conducive to it. Sometimes.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-06, 09:53 PM
Still, though, I maintain that it is possible (though not necessarily easy or sensible) to make a perfectly effective fighter without massively changing the rules, if the setting is conducive to it. Sometimes.

Infinity Blade is a strange thing to bring up though, because the entire game system was designed around making fighting cool, and magic is relegated to a minor side note.

D&D, on the other hand, isn't build that way. Which makes it a LOT harder. It's also supposed to emulate a much wider amount of world flavor, so...

Amaril
2013-03-06, 09:54 PM
Infinity Blade is a strange thing to bring up though, because the entire game system was designed around making fighting cool, and magic is relegated to a minor side note.

D&D, on the other hand, isn't build that way. Which makes it a LOT harder. It's also supposed to emulate a much wider amount of world flavor, so...

Very valid point. I agree on all counts.

Yitzi
2013-03-06, 10:42 PM
Figured I'd weigh in with my few cents.

* A fighter should be easy to play. D&D has a very large and complicated rule base, which essentially translates to a high cost of entry for new players; they have to learn all kinds of rules just to play the game. Fighters should be playable with as few of these rules as possible (while still being fun), to give new players a place to start from.

I would say yes and no. Fighters should be easy to play, in the sense that you can play them without a lot of work...but they should still be much more effective in the hands of a skilled player than an unskilled one.


* Fighters should be the underdogs. In a world of wizards and sorcerers, fighters are the guys who have to rely on their swords and shields; they are the little fish trying to get by in a big pool, which means that people automatically root for them.

Root for them, yes, enjoy playing them not so much, especially when there are wizards and sorcerers on the same team as them.

Yitzi
2013-03-06, 10:46 PM
The fighter is a counter-intuitively terrible classes to inflict on a new player. If you're just handing them a character, sure, but even with years of experience with 3.5 I find picking feats to be one of the most onerous parts of character creation, and that's what the fighter is all about. Trying to build an effective character entirely out of effective feats scattered across a dozen books? Even with help, it's overwhelming.

Of course, the easiest answer to that is for new players to use only Core books; it vastly reduces the amount that has to be worked through. Of course, that makes him less effective; the options are either to simply accept that a new player won't be as effective as an experienced one, or else restrict everyone to Core for the time being. (For that matter, restricting to Core+whitelist would make character creation less onerous in general, as well as being a far easier point to homebrew balance fixes from than "everything that's ever been published".)

bobthe6th
2013-03-06, 10:50 PM
Of course, the easiest answer to that is for new players to use only Core books; it vastly reduces the amount that has to be worked through. Of course, that makes him less effective; the options are either to simply accept that a new player won't be as effective as an experienced one, or else restrict everyone to Core for the time being. (For that matter, restricting to Core+whitelist would make character creation less onerous in general, as well as being a far easier point to homebrew balance fixes from than "everything that's ever been published".)

but it costs a metric ton of published matirial, some of which actually makes sense. Though you could get some milege out of stripping martial classes and applying Tome of battle +T3 casters+rogue/ninja/scout, then pure core material.

inuyasha
2013-03-06, 10:50 PM
heres what i want, and its only 2 words

great...cleave

I once wiped out an entire bar full of orcs with that feat...and an abandoned church full of wights...and the crazy undead butcher guy with his ghoul minions...and many many more....

Grod_The_Giant
2013-03-06, 11:18 PM
Of course, the easiest answer to that is for new players to use only Core books; it vastly reduces the amount that has to be worked through. Of course, that makes him less effective; the options are either to simply accept that a new player won't be as effective as an experienced one, or else restrict everyone to Core for the time being. (For that matter, restricting to Core+whitelist would make character creation less onerous in general, as well as being a far easier point to homebrew balance fixes from than "everything that's ever been published".)

"Core only" is a weird double-issue balance-wise, though. It's got some of the weakest classes in the game (coughmonkcough) right next to the strongest (3/5 tier 1s). The crappiest options (hello, +2 skill feats) and the most broken (all the polymorphs, gate, glitterdust, rope trick...).

bobthe6th
2013-03-06, 11:22 PM
"Core only" is a weird double-issue balance-wise, though. It's got some of the weakest classes in the game (coughmonkcough) right next to the strongest (3/5 tier 1s). The crappiest options (hello, +2 skill feats) and the most broken (all the polymorphs, gate, glitterdust, rope trick...).

True, but their is only like 20 pages of required reading before spells. adding homebrew to that is a lot saner, as it is easier to see everything that will interact with it... though I can see arguments against it.

Yitzi
2013-03-07, 12:02 AM
but it costs a metric ton of published matirial, some of which actually makes sense. Though you could get some milege out of stripping martial classes and applying Tome of battle +T3 casters+rogue/ninja/scout, then pure core material.

Yeah; there's always the option of your balance fix just involving adding back in some splatbook stuff. But it's simply easier to handle if your starting point is "Core only".


"Core only" is a weird double-issue balance-wise, though. It's got some of the weakest classes in the game (coughmonkcough) right next to the strongest (3/5 tier 1s). The crappiest options (hello, +2 skill feats) and the most broken (all the polymorphs, gate, glitterdust, rope trick...).

Yes; I think the best way to put it is that Core-only needs a balance fix more than when you include certain splatbook stuff (because you have such an imbalance), but it also makes it easier to do that balance fix (simply because there's less stuff to worry about and deal with.)

Realms of Chaos
2013-03-07, 12:48 AM
What should the fighter have? :smallconfused:

In my mind, the path of least resistance would be versatility. I personally believe that the specialist vs generalist dispute is best solved by letting the fighter have a taste of every combat style while restricting the "true power" of each combat style for more specialized classes. In other words, I feel that the fighter should be less of the "generic" combatant and more of the "jack-of-all-trades" combatant (able to ride well when needed, shoot an arrow with great skill, fight unarmed if no weapon is at hand, etc.).

At the same time, however, I think that versatility should have some degree of structure. I've seen plenty of fighters that reselect all of their feats each morning (and one that uses "feat slots" as spellcasters use spell slots) and I personally feel that approach both complicates the class a bit and puts pressure on the DM to memorize a whole lot more feats that the fighter might have on any given day instead of concentrating on what the fighter actually does have. Rather, something closer to the earlier suggestion of having several fighter builds and being able to switch between them seems pretty attractive over all.

My attempt to capture what I'm trying to talk about is kind of shown in here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=270092) as the combat styles class feature.

At the same time, I do believe that the realm of basic options should be expanded in some manner (allowing players to blind, parry, hamstring, and so forth without spending feats) outside of the class in order to give the full effect of belonging to that class, though it might be possible through the use of new mechanics. Again, I have a possible examples (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217700) of the type of thing I'm talking about, even if the implementation is a bit flawed.

Apologies for the self-promotion. :smallredface:

Xefas
2013-03-07, 01:45 AM
Bob the competent fighter should not be paired with your average D&D wizard. He should be paired with the average sword and sorcery wizard whose magic consists of forbidden knowledge, a few true names, subtle enchantments and feeling magical energies. The average D&D wizard should be paired with your average divine avatar of indian mythology, if he needs a meatshield.

This is my stance as well.

(Sans the verbage 'divine avatar' - I'd say something like 'extraordinary hero'. 'Divine avatar' has a magical connotation and, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that the way, say, Arjuna of the Mahabharata is an 'avatar' of the god Nara, is less like how we'd refer to an Aspect of Heironeous as his 'avatar', and more like how we'd refer to Batman as the 'avatar' of night/fear/justice/etc. In that he embodies and furthers the goals of Nara, but isn't a child/aspect/magical font of power. I could be totally wrong, though.)

The Fighter is weak and uninteresting, but he comes by it honestly. He's the Fighter. He fights. He's not the Hero, or the Juggernaut, or the Sword-Saint, or the Carnifex.

It's okay that he adventures with Rogues, Warmages, and Healers. They have very narrow purviews as well. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

You just also need a fighting class that plays with Druids, Wizards, and Clerics. Because that's where the Fighter starts to look inadequate. That's when you pull out the Unconquered Warrior class, who drinks and disgorges rivers, vaults mountains, uproots castles, parries death, and tells all of magic's "nope" effects, "no, you nope". And you don't call him the "Fighter", so everyone knows what to expect.

Lvl45DM!
2013-03-07, 02:59 AM
They're tough first thing. They should be able to weather the brunt of most assaults and come out alive. They're also hard to hit. They get the best armour and have high stats and abilities that make them hard to hit. Not as hard as monks but harder than anyone else. Mages should cast little immunities, like protection from missiles, but fighters should be really hard to hit with them always.
A fighter should pick up a sword and be able to do things noone else can do with it. In 1st Ed Fighters were the only class that got more than one attack a round, which gave them the impression of dominating in combat. After training with that sword for a while they should be even better than other fighters.
They're brave. The fighter (and the subclasses too) is the one who is going to hold the breach, charge the monsters draw fire save people. In alot of my games mages have been in danger of dying and the fighter took the bullet for them metaphorically speaking. Because they could.
The fighters are the leaders of the party. They keep the cool head in danger. They are on mission. They are grounded and mundane.

Xulin
2013-03-07, 03:47 AM
Well, from what I can see, the fighter really suffers from a lack of direction. Since he could theoretically "be anything", or that's what the designers intended, there's nothing in the class to mechanically support any particular role. Fighters only have feats - and feats are weak.

For a fighter I would want to play, I would want a worldly sort of character, who's capable of fending for himself and has good senses and reflexes (survival, spot, +init?), and has a practiced ease with being in combat. But I have something of a mercenary image of how I'd want a fighter - that's a character specific concept, and would be better fitting on a "Mercenary" core class of some sort.

If I were to propose a fix, up their skill points to 4/level, let them choose some class skills to add (maybe not UMD, cause come on), and have some suites of abilities they can choose from ala the exotic weapon master and master thrower. They surely would be served with some more Fighter Only feats, as the only ones that exist around specializing in a particular weapon (bleh), and those are terrible. Definately though something that fighters should have that they don't is a lot of incidental, utilitarian abilities that just sort of go in their class; things like, you can kick your sword up from the ground into your hand, or being able to sleep standing up. Fighting is their life, so they should have various little things they do to generally make their lives easier.

Gnorman
2013-03-07, 04:30 AM
A fighter, if defined by his feats (a proposition I do not necessarily agree with), should at least have the ability to change those feats on a daily basis. If you let the Wizard do it with a 2nd-level spell, you should let the fighter do it on a much larger scale. Spells are mutable; feats are permanent (absent retraining rules). A poor choice for the former is remedied by an expenditure of gold or a good night's sleep; the latter cannot be remedied at all. That is patently unfair.

A truly versatile fighter should be able to be a peerless archer one day and a heavily-armored tank the next, much in the same way a cleric can be a healbot one day or a divinely-fueled meat grinder on another.

I agree with Djinn_in_Tonic and Eldan on nearly all the other points. The fighter is too limited of a concept to support balanced play. Balanced play is not a dirty word, either, just because 4E got it wrong. A fighter needs active abilities and the ability to bend/break the rules in the same way casters can, not just inflated attack and damage numbers. A fighter also needs a way to do battlefield control so that he is not ignored by the vast majority of opponents, who often have ways to circumvent or negate him entirely. What good is a tank that can't hold the attention of the monster? And for those of you with a problem with ToB classes - is it the fluff, or the mechanics that offend you the most? Because if the former, that's an easy fix.

In all likelihood, the best solution is to eliminate the fighter entirely and disseminate the various roles into other combat-oriented classes. I've said it before and I'll say it again: "guy who fights" will never be able to occupy the same design space as "guy who is magic."

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-07, 05:06 AM
"guy who fights" will never be on the same footing as "guy who is magic."
I'm pretty sure a 10th level wizard won't beat a 20th level fighter before his spell slots run out and will probably die on a single ranged full attack by said fighter.
Thus simply making a "fixed" 10th level fighter as good as the 20th level fighter is now does make him be on the same footing as "guy who is magic". Naturally, the 20th level fixed fighter needs to be as strong as the 40th level current fighter or something.
(this is a simplistic/joke example to refute the unfixability of balance, not my actual suggestion)


A fighter needs active abilities and the ability to bend/break the rules in the same way casters can, not just inflated attack and damage numbers.
Nope. Openly breaking the rules of the universe when you are supposed to be strictly nonmagical is just a good way to break immersion and mess up the flavor the fanbase was expecting. That's precisely why ToB classes are not liked by a good percentage of people that want to play melee guys.

My counter-suggestion is to give the fighters a series of boosts (passive abilities giving bonuses in specific situations), stances (unlimited-use abilities that manipulate existing bonuses like Power Attack) and counters (automatic abilities that activate when specific circumstances are met). Some examples would be:

Die Hard: whenever a fighter takes damage from either a critical hit or a situational/environmental hazard (falling, flames, explosions, magma and the like), he can make a fortitude save DC 10+the hazard's CR for half damage.
Improved Die Hard: as per Die Hard, except it applies against traps and extraordinary abilities dealing damage.
Greater Die Hard: as per Die Hard, except it applies against supernatural abilities and spells that deal damage.
Shield Block: A fighter holding a shield may roll an attack roll against an attack or area damaging spell using his BAB+shield AC bonus. If he beats the attack's attack roll or the spell's reflex save, he can choose to have the damage apply to his shield rather than himself.
Armed Parry: A fighter holding a weapon may roll an attack roll against an incoming melee attack's attack roll. If he succeeds, he can choose to have the damage apply to his weapon rather than himself. If he succeeds by 10 or more, the attack is negated entirely.
Improved Armed Parry: As armed parry, except the fighter may interpose his weapon against incoming ranged attacks, touch attacks and ranged touch attacks.
Master Armed Parry: The fighter can parry attacks within his reach rather than attacks specifically targeted at him.
Greater Armed Parry: As armed parry, except the fighter may bat aside single-target spells and special abilities if his attack roll beats the caster's opposed CL check + casting ability modifier +10.

Gnorman
2013-03-07, 05:28 AM
I'm pretty sure a 10th level wizard won't beat a 20th level fighter before his spell slots run out and will probably die on a single ranged full attack by said fighter.
Thus simply making a "fixed" 10th level fighter as good as the 20th level fighter is now does make him be on the same footing as "guy who is magic". Naturally, the 20th level fixed fighter needs to be as strong as the 40th level current fighter or something.
(this is a simplistic/joke example to refute the unfixability of balance, not my actual suggestion)

Depends heavily on the circumstances, environment, and gear allowed, as do all things. One on one arena combat is and never will be the measure of a class. A 10th level fighter and a 20th level fighter still have the same basic response to a situation: kill it with steel. A 10th level wizard and a 20th level wizard are worlds, nay, planes apart.

Even intended in jest, it is a terrible solution (and, if in jest, why use it as an example?). You're just causing number inflation without actually addressing the issues at hand. Balance can be addressed without resorting to this sort of argument.


Nope. Openly breaking the rules of the universe when you are supposed to be strictly nonmagical is just a good way to break immersion and mess up the flavor the fanbase was expecting. That's precisely why ToB classes are not liked by a good percentage of people that want to play melee guys.

I was referring to the rules of the game, not the rules of the universe. Exploiting the action economy, for example. And why does the fighter have to stick his magic on items to not "break immersion?" There are hundreds of mythological examples of "mundane" heroes doing decidedly supernatural things.

Additionally, only a small handful of ToB classes and maneuvers are expressly supernatural. Most of them are very easily viewed as mundane, so I don't buy that part of your argument either.


My counter-suggestion is to give the fighters a series of boosts (passive abilities giving bonuses in specific situations), stances (unlimited-use abilities that manipulate existing bonuses like Power Attack) and counters (automatic abilities that activate when specific circumstances are met). Some examples would be:

Die Hard: whenever a fighter takes damage from either a critical hit or a situational/environmental hazard (falling, flames, explosions, magma and the like), he can make a fortitude save DC 10+the hazard's CR for half damage.
Improved Die Hard: as per Die Hard, except it applies against traps and extraordinary abilities dealing damage.
Greater Die Hard: as per Die Hard, except it applies against supernatural abilities and spells that deal damage.
Shield Block: A fighter holding a shield may roll an attack roll against an attack or area damaging spell using his BAB+shield AC bonus. If he beats the attack's attack roll or the spell's reflex save, he can choose to have the damage apply to his shield rather than himself.
Armed Parry: A fighter holding a weapon may roll an attack roll against an incoming melee attack's attack roll. If he succeeds, he can choose to have the damage apply to his weapon rather than himself. If he succeeds by 10 or more, the attack is negated entirely.
Improved Armed Parry: As armed parry, except the fighter may interpose his weapon against incoming ranged attacks, touch attacks and ranged touch attacks.
Master Armed Parry: The fighter can parry attacks within his reach rather than attacks specifically targeted at him.
Greater Armed Parry: As armed parry, except the fighter may bat aside single-target spells and special abilities if his attack roll beats the caster's opposed CL check + casting ability modifier +10.

If these are all gained automatically instead of as feats, I'm more inclined to view them favorably. But as it is, I think passive bonuses are boring and generally not the best way to improve a class. And forcing the fighter to track a separate resource (shield HP or weapon HP) is inelegant. Also, most of these address problems the wizard is capable of ignoring at level 3, so you're not leveling the field by much. Parry, however, is a good start.

EDIT: Please note that I use the wizard as the high bar, not as a rational standard. If I had my way, all casters would be spontaneous fixed-list casters. Even still, the options available to a Beguiler far outweigh those available to a Fighter. That needs fixing.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-07, 05:38 AM
A 10th level fighter and a 20th level fighter still have the same basic response to a situation: kill it with steel. A 10th level wizard and a 20th level wizard are worlds, nay, planes apart.
And that is a problem why? The point of the fighter IS to beat things up. As long as it does that better than the wizard, the fighter fulfills its intended purpose.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-07, 05:56 AM
I can never seem to say this enough. Feats, in D&D, are not designed to replace class features.


Except the core Fighter class itself disagrees with you, seeing as its base class feature is Fighter bonus feats.

The problem is, whoever designed the original feats was an idiot and did not go far enough with the idea. Anyone who's going to reimplement any part of d20 doesn't need to repeat his failures. Feats can, and should, be made actually meaningful.

What, you say? "Feats, however, are designed to improve upon a character's existing abilities, typically in minor ways." Take a wild guess what half of so-called class features do!

If you look at core, you'll quickly notice that most "class features" are just as bad as feats. "Rogue special abilities" are just fighter bonus feats with another name, to give the most glaring example. It tells a lot a selection of a feat is, indeed, an eligible rogue special ability.

And it doesn't get much better outside of core. Most ACFs are just feats by another name. Some entire classes, such as the Knight, or Samurai, could've been entirely made as a selection of feats, seeing as they are nothing but variants of the Fighter.

Eldan
2013-03-07, 06:05 AM
I'm pretty sure a 10th level wizard won't beat a 20th level fighter before his spell slots run out and will probably die on a single ranged full attack by said fighter.


I wouldn't be so sure on that one. With a few simple spells, the wizard becomes all but immune to the fighter. Fly+windwall, for starters, then miss chances, mirror image and a few others...
Sure, actually killing the fighter becomes a bit more difficult, but the wizard has a lot of time to try, in relative safety.

At that point, the fighter will have to rely more or less entirely on his equipment to get the job done.

But really, the core wizard should not be the bar we are measuring against. Take the beguiler, dread necro or warmage instead.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-07, 06:38 AM
Stuff

Eh. I'd ague that whoever made the Fighter was an idiot (as if feats were meant to be class feature equivalents then all classes could have very easily been made generic, and that would have indeed been the best option, as you'd be able to offer balance and customizability across the board), at least with how the entirety of 3.5 turned out. I'd also argue that most classes that have these "feat-equivalent" class features are fairly poorly designed: almost all classes in the tier 1-3 range have their own subsystem of mechanics above and beyond the basic rules (i.e. not only do they get better at X, but they get "entirely new options X,Y, and Z:" spells, invocations, maneuvers, powers, vestiges, and so forth). That's what I want in my classes: having a good system driving a class's mechanics feels good, both conceptually and in play, and it really helps differentiate the classes. I'd want a fighter driven by a system like that, whether it be ToB or something new and less "spell-like" (although I don't personally believe ToB is spell-like).

Classes not having unique or shared subsystems is fine, but either all classes should have then or none should. The subsystems provide power and, more importantly, thematically-fitting options, both if which make a class stronger. If you want Tier 1-3 balance, you need the options a subsystem provides. If you want Tier 4-5 balance, you can avoid them...but your class system should pick one and stick with it, because there is a definite Tier break right at the point where most subsystems drop out of the design (at Tier 3, approximately). I don't think that's coincidence.

Finally, things should, in a good design, have their own design space. If feats are meant to be full class features then classes should be more generic and should grant enough feats to customize them to a player's liking. If they aren't intended to be class features, classes like the Fighter should not expect feats to pull double duty. In current design feats seem strongly intended to be cool perks, not freestanding class replacements.

D&D does mix this up a bit, but that's something tht should be fixed, not embraced. Feats that give +1 to attack and feats that give "New Ability XYZ" shouldn't be competing for the same character resource. They're to drastically different to occupy the same design space.

Dsurion
2013-03-07, 06:47 AM
And it doesn't get much better outside of core. Most ACFs are just feats by another name. Some entire classes, such as the Knight, or Samurai, could've been entirely made as a selection of feats, seeing as they are nothing but variants of the Fighter.I feel the same way about Prestige Classes, and detest them for it. So, in any game I run, if I allow a Prestige Class at all, it will be a pile of feats instead of class levels.

@ Fighter-Only Feats: You may as well just call them Class Features (which is what they are at that point) and make them selectable. Same thing, really.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-07, 06:47 AM
Wind wall must be vertical. The fighter simply moves beneath the wizard and shoots up. :smallamused:


then miss chances, mirror image and a few others...
The pathfinder fighter closes his eyes before shooting (a free action) and uses his Greater Blindfight feat. Miss chance? What miss chance?


the core wizard should not be the bar we are measuring against. Take the beguiler, dread necro or warmage instead.
I choose option 3: measuring the fighter's effectiveness against monsters. If the fighter does his primary jobs (killing stuff and resist being killed by stuff) at least as good as anyone else - and better than classes for which it isn't a primary job - then all is well.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-07, 06:59 AM
I feel the same way about Prestige Classes, and detest them for it. So, in any game I run, if I allow a Prestige Class at all, it will be a pile of feats instead of class levels.

I would be very interested to see you manage to capture the flavor and theme of, say, about half my PrC creations with a series of 2-3 feats each.

But I suppose the argument for PrCs being an excellent addition to the 3.5 class system is an argument for another thread.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-07, 07:17 AM
PrC Initiate: you get the special abilities of a 10-level PrC as if you were lvl 3 in it. You don't gain any spell/bab/save/other base class ability progressions. If it is a 5-lvl PrC, you get effective lvl 1 instead.
PrC Adept: as above, except lvl 6 or lvl 3
PrC Journeyman: as above, except lvl 8 or lvl 4
PrC Master: as above, except lvl 10 or lvl 5


The above greatly benefits the fighter, too. Imagine a fighter using his base feats to get full benefits of two separate 10-level PrCs.

Eldan
2013-03-07, 09:40 AM
So... I can take a prestige class that introduces an entirely new subsystem, along with, say, a full caster?

It's one of the few things I like in 4E, honestly. The idea of what are basically prestige classes (I forgot the name, but you get them on the middle tier) that you take along your basic class with no resource expenditure. Because it seems to me that everyone tkaes prestige classes in third edition anyway.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-07, 09:46 AM
And that is a problem why? The point of the fighter IS to beat things up. As long as it does that better than the wizard, the fighter fulfills its intended purpose.
Well, the wizard currently beats monsters better than the fighter (by simply bypassing their normal defenses), so there's that problem.

And who says the point of the fighter is merely to beat things up? That's like saying the point of the wizard is to acquire tomes of knowledge.

(Also, I'm onboard with the previously-made observation that we're cutting fighters too short a shrift. Mythology is filled with fighters doing supernatural deeds, by the sheer merit of their heroic stature.)

Realms of Chaos
2013-03-07, 09:51 AM
Hmmmmm... just realized something.

What I want from fighters, in a large sense, is the Book of Experimental Might II. While some of the ideas (oblation feats, yuk!) seem a bit iffy, most of the stuff in there looks spot-on or very nearly so.

ElaborationFighting Domains: An automatic minor benefit that often scales, a major benefit if you focus in that domain, and the ability to retrain feats within a certain area of combat like unarmed or mounted combat.

Double Feats:Costing two feat slots simultaneously, this is literally the only way I've seen someone make fighter-only feats that a warblade or someone else with a "fighter level" can't snag. It also helps to mark a regular increase in power at levels 6, 12, and 18.

Uberfeats: Despite the silly name, these are probably the closest I've ever seen to capstone class features in feat form (up there with weapon supremacy), forming the tip of the top of a feat chain and providing rather insane benefits (such as +10 feet speed + an extra move action each round + no AoOs for movement + never lose Dex to AC if you're going for speed focus, for example) in exchange for lots of prereqs and "retiring" the benefits of some of your earlier feats.

Oblation Feats: Not my favorite by any stretch of the imagination but it was intended for paladins rather than fighters (as far as I can tell) so I'll just ignore them for the moment.

Feat Bonuses: Fixing up the dead levels of the fighter, giving the fighter a series of boosts they can use with their bonus feats is pretty excellent (especially as the only thing you really need to track is a single depleting number over time) and having bonus feats actually increase in power at later levels is something that plenty of people have adapted. While these fixes don't mix with homebrew or third-party feats, the book itself provides ~220 feats (including alterations to PHB bonus feats and several feats that were sorely needed such as more leader-ish fighter feats, better mounted feats, and feats that let you block things with a shield).

It's not like the sourcebook is too obscure, either, seeing as it was made by Monte Cook. I know that it obviously doesn't fix everything but I'm curious as to why/how a comprehensive re-tooling of the feat system to support fighters by one of the guys who wrote the PHB goes all but unnoticed in just about every talk concerning said fighters. :smallconfused:

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-07, 10:17 AM
I would be very interested to see you manage to capture the flavor and theme of, say, about half my PrC creations with a series of 2-3 feats each.

Your creations? Probably not.

Stuff like Archmage, Hierophant, Dwarven Defender, Duelist, Barbarian, Shadow Dancer, Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster, Thaumaturgist, Loremaster and Dragon Disciple?

Trivially.

You see, when you mention things like "more generic classes" and "balance and customizability across the board", my heart weeps. You are talking of a game d20 could have been. The game didn't need hundreds of classes, many of which are redundant. The game especially didn't need hundreds of near-irrelevant feats, many of which only have functions like "allows this and that class to co-exist".

The stupidity of class dipping and browsing through dozen splatbooks to get just the right combination of abilities to qualify for some asinine prestige class could've been avoided, if someone had thought "hey. The sole attracting feature of this class is Int to defense. Why not make that a feat and allow it for everybody?" So on and so forth.

You can see the beginnings of this different game, ironically, in the very core of it. Notice how the original classes are much more generic than those that came after? Notice how they indeed have bonus feats or equivalent abilities as some of their main class features? The UA Generic classes briefly recognized this, and almost gave us the game you described.

Then, all designers seemingly did a 180 degree turn, and classes started becoming narrower and narrower. Feats became just an entry fee for joining the fun of these special snowflake classes.

In some ways, the game improved across its evolution. But evolution is hardly precise, and in this case too it left the system full of unneeded clutter and uncashed potential. Feats could've been easily made into a powerful subsystem comparable to maneuvers or spells. Instead, they became increasingly less relevant as people kept adding more new subsystems into the game. And now I see people saying "Feats? Feats are boring. Anyone can get them". But they're only boring because no-one stopped to make them interesting. I'm willing to bet that D&D 3.x. has five or more spells published for each arcane spell there is. Four-fifths are probably as dull as feats, yet I don't see people going "arcane spells? Arcane spells are boring. Anyone can UMD a scroll".

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-07, 10:40 AM
I just went and made a generic fighter. By "generic" I mean "it replaces barbarian, assassin, paladin, the original fighter and several melee PrCs the way a wizard is a necromancer, illusionist, summoner, transmuter, diviner and evoker in one package."


You guys tell me what you think.

Eldan
2013-03-07, 10:47 AM
Your creations? Probably not.

Stuff like Archmage, Hierophant, Dwarven Defender, Duelist, Barbarian, Shadow Dancer, Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster, Thaumaturgist, Loremaster and Dragon Disciple?

I concede that point. Except maybe the Dragon Disciple, I don't think you could hand out the half-dragon template with a series of feats. Better level adjustment rules would be better for that. Similar with the Arcane Trickster, that should just be better multiclassing.

I entirely agree that probably about 80% of prestige classes should never have been made. But it would be sad to lose all the others.

If I were to remake the game from scratch (which I have started three times and never more than started, really), I would kick out half the base classes and make the rest more versatile, with things like class paths (you know, Alternate Class Features, but built in from the start). Then leave the prestige classes fore the interesting concepts that can't be made to work otherwise.

Still, how far do you go with this? Is the Paladin just a cleric/fighter multiclass? Is the sorcerer an alternate class feature for the wizard? But then, why isn't divine casting an alternate class feature for the wizard as well? Why can't sneak attack be a series of feats for a fighter, so we don't need rogues? Rangers? Can't they just be druid/fighters? Bards? Make inspire courage a feat for rogue/wizards!

Edit:
An aside: this is what makes a good homebrewer in my mind. If I can look at a creation of theirs and think "I have never seen this before. I could not make this, otherwise." And not only that, but also "This could not have been done otherwise. This is elegant." Djinn's Prestige Classes are often good examples. They could not be feats. They would be difficult as base classes or alternate class features. But they work as prestige classes.

Many homebrewers (me included) make fixes, updates, simplifications. And those can be elegant. But they are rarely new, and rarely unique.

Wargamer
2013-03-07, 11:06 AM
Still, how far do you go with this? Is the Paladin just a cleric/fighter multiclass? Is the sorcerer an alternate class feature for the wizard? But then, why isn't divine casting an alternate class feature for the wizard as well? Why can't sneak attack be a series of feats for a fighter, so we don't need rogues? Rangers? Can't they just be druid/fighters? Bards? Make inspire courage a feat for rogue/wizards!

Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Sorcerer should be your core four. Yes, Sorcerer. Not Wizard. I'll explain why later.

Now, as to the rest...

Barbarians? Yeah, they have a place I think. Their entire mindset of "absolutely frothing lunatic with sword" is very different from the norm, so they can fit.

Bards? Hell yes! Bards don't get nearly as much love as they deserve!

Druids? No, not really. Druids should probably be a Prestige Class for Clerics who are particularly attuned with nature.

Monks should not be a Core Class in the PHB; they should be in the DMG as an example of classes you can use in an oriental themed campaign. Sorry, Monk fans, but your character is out of place in medieval fantasy.

Paladin? Sorry, oh dear friend, but you have been put through too much pain. You need to be taken to the nice, safe place known as Prestige Land so that Lawful Stupid characters can't take ranks in you. Besides, being a Paladin is far more awesome when you have to work to become one!

Ranger? I'm on the fence here. On the one hand, it could work as a Core class still. On the other hand, we have a clearly martial class who also acquires spellcasting; that to me suggests Prestige.

Now for the one that almost certainly induced massive rage... the Wizard. This is not a Core Class! Think about it; Sorcerers are born with arcane power, and learn how to manipulate it in some meaningful way. Wizards? Wizards develop magic by reading! The idea of someone who can just grant themselves arcane power through sheer force of will clearly belongs in the realms of Prestige. Moreover, it allows the Wizard to take on far more interesting aspects, and removes the need for a lot of other prestige classes. Eldritch Knight, Mystic Theurge, Arcane Trickster, Archmage... all of these can be effectively removed and rolled into the Wizard class by achieving it via Fighter, Cleric, Rogue or Sorcerer respectively.

...I think this may be getting off topic. :P

nonsi
2013-03-07, 11:33 AM
I think it should be the feel of having a lot of options from which you can choose which one is best for this particular challenge (like a caster), but (unlike a caster or even initiator) those options should feel like additions to your basic capabilities rather than replacements for them.

So the "trick up my sleeve" idea, but the "trick" would be a bonus to your attack rather than a different attack.


1. A Fighter should be easy to pick up and play and remain useful either in the hands of a novice or
experienced player.
2. A Fighter should be very difficult to damage with mundane attacks.
3. A Fighter should be able to easily cause moderate to high damage in any melee situation.
4. A Fighter should excel at combat maneuvers and battle tactics and can disable or hinder any foe.

I think a Fighter should be the casual player's class. If they must have any tricks they should be kept simple, but effective. They should do things that make sense for a mostly melee warrior to do.

They should be able to break gear, disarm, and knockdown without burning feats. Feat selection intimidates new players who do not know what would be the best combination and truly should not be burdened with worrying about what feats they will choose before they level up. Smashing faces, gear, and knocking stuff down is easy to comprehend.

Fighters need to be an overwhelming force on the battlefield without being an overwhelming force on the character sheet. They should not have to have a golf-bag of weapons, gear, and abilities to be versatile.

An experienced Fighter wearing full plate wielding a bastard sword and a tower shield should be a force to be reckoned with, but that's just my play style.


I want to hamstring a giant.
I want to climb the Cyclops, and blind it.
I want to cut the wings of a dragon, and ground it.
I want to disarm foes.
I want to parry blows.
I want to dodge boulders.
I want to block fireballs with my shield.
I want to shrug off mind control via raw grit.
I want to fight with my eyes closed against Medusa or without breathing against Gorgons, and still kick ass.
I want to be able to pick up any weapon, and fight masterfully with it.
I want to be able to grab a foe, and use them as a weapon.
I want to be death to everything within my reach to legions of weaker foes.
I want to shoot the weak scale on the dragon and bring it down.
I want to break the wizard's staff.
I want to shoot a sling stone at a Goliath, and watch it fall.
I want to be effective in heavy armor, shrugging off blows that would fell a lesser man.
I want to be effective in light armor, side stepping blows with my greater maneuverability.
I want to be able to fight foes whose very touch is death, and win.
I want to be able to effectively threaten and oppose wizards, assassins, men at arms, deathknights, huge monsters and cultist priests.
I want my sword to be my most treasured possession, because it is a great tool, but I still want to be almost as dangerous with a stick I picked up from the ground, or the enemies sword I tore from his hands.

Me too.
That's why I created my Warrior (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13182574) the way I did.

It doesn't cover stuff like:
- hamstring a giant.
- climb the Cyclops, and blind it.
- cut the wings of a dragon, and ground it.
- block fireballs with my shield.

But those require changes to the rules (like being able to block line of effect that passes anywhere within my space/reach as an immediate action), but it practically covers everything else. It certainly covers all the above and more far better than any martial class I'v ever seen - official as well as homebrew.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-07, 11:37 AM
Your creations? Probably not.

Stuff like Archmage, Hierophant, Dwarven Defender, Duelist, Barbarian, Shadow Dancer, Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster, Thaumaturgist, Loremaster and Dragon Disciple?

Trivially.

Well, yes. Just because WotC doesn't know how to make a strong PrC doesn't mean that is no place for them though. :smalltongue:

As for the rest...yes. It could be done, but even then you'd either new to tie casting into this feat system, or deny casters access to feats, or give everyone else another subsystem to play with. It could probably be done quite well. That's a FAR cry from fixing a Fighter though. That's rebuilding the whole system from the ground up.

Not that that's a BAD thing...

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-07, 11:54 AM
What about a fighter fix that treats fighter abilities as much of a multiple choice and mix-and-match as spellcasters pick their spells, but without losing the fighter's flavor or actually giving spells or maneuverlike abilities to them? A fairly open system for which new abilities could be added via splatbooks just like spells are added for a caster?


Fighters pick feats now, right? Why not give them abilities similar to (but more interesting and powerful than) feats?

Eldan
2013-03-07, 12:25 PM
That should probably it, yes.

The difficult thing, really, would be finding a unique niche (or design space, as Djinn calls it) for the fighter.

I would also appreciate if he had some kind of unique mechanic. Pretty much everyone else has. Wizards cast, clerics cast differently and turn, druids wildshape, rogues backstab, bards sing.... fighters use attack and damage rolls, which everyone else can also use.

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-07, 12:32 PM
That should probably it, yes.

The difficult thing, really, would be finding a unique niche (or design space, as Djinn calls it) for the fighter.

I would also appreciate if he had some kind of unique mechanic. Pretty much everyone else has. Wizards cast, clerics cast differently and turn, druids wildshape, rogues backstab, bards sing.... fighters use attack and damage rolls, which everyone else can also use.

The one thing that D&D doesn't seem to have is a Tank role. I don't mean a guy that's dressed up in full plate and carrying a tower shield, (or driving an M1 Abrams). I mean someone that can force enemies to face him instead of the squishies.

If the rogue is the sneaky guy, the barbarian is the angry guy, the ranger is the ranged guy, then maybe the fighter ought to be the "None Shall Pass!" guy?

EDIT: In order for that to work, the fighter would probably need 3 or so things.

1) A challenge type of ability. Tied into Intimidate or something?
2) Some maneuverability debuffs. Leg sweeps, hamstrings, etc.
3) A way to move his allies, or grant his allies extra move so that they can always reposition so that the fighter is between them and the enemy.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-07, 12:34 PM
The unique fighter mechanic is lots and lots of passive abilities. :smalltongue:

As for finding a unique niche, the wizard doesn't have a niche of its own either. It is simply an amagalm of all the spellcasting niches in fantasy except for healing (summoning, blasting, illusions, necromancy, enchantments, divinations and the like) put together in a single class. THAT is mainly why the wizard (along with the cleric) is so much more versatile than anybody else.

That said, my new Generalist Fighter has the open ability table thingy and covers lots of the problems of the fighter mentioned in this thread. (actually good at killing stuff, actually good at not dying, more varied abilities, higher mobility/tactics, doesn't automatically become useless without magic items and so on and so forth)
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=274874


Any problems not covered by the basic options I thought up in the last 2-3 hours can easily be covered by another ability group or two.


Also, he can tank pretty well with the right ability combo - if enemies don't attack him, he can stop them in their tracks or foil their abilities with his counters for example.

Eldan
2013-03-07, 12:35 PM
True, but a tank mechanic is really difficult to explain with mundane means. It always reeks of mind control to me, when I see it.

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-07, 12:40 PM
True, but a tank mechanic is really difficult to explain with mundane means. It always reeks of mind control to me, when I see it.

Your mother was a hamster (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7zbWNznbs)

At 1st level, a fighter may use a swift action to incite his opponents to anger. The fighter makes an intimidate check against each enemy within 30 feet. If the check succeeds, the enemy must include the fighter as a target in its attacks for a number of rounds equal to 1/2 the fighter's level (minimum 1).

Maybe it reads as mind control, but it's really just the ability of the fighter to pull focus. It's grandstanding, making himself seem like a bigger threat than any of his friends. Lots of animals (including people) do it.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-07, 12:41 PM
Naah.

My fighter's "Always Ready" ability allows him to take a readied action without readying to counter/intercept enemies for example. His Instant Counter can allow him to foil an enemy's mobility (shoot the legs!) or his spellcasting (hammer to the face!). Shield Block can block or harmlessly deflect attacks in the fighter's reach (they don't have to be against him specifically) and so can Weapon Parry. I may add more such abilities in the ability trees as I think them up.



The point is not to mind-control the enemy into attacking the fighter. The point is to be sufficiently annoying that the enemy HAS to engage the fighter instead of the rest of the group.

Eldan
2013-03-07, 12:43 PM
That's a good one, yes. Someone once told me that in older editions, movement even worked that way. The fighter could intercept by waiting until his enemy moved, then just getting in the way.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-07, 12:46 PM
Hey, that's a good idea. Mutants and Masterminds even has a feat advantage that allows you to stand in the way of an enemy attack as an immediate action.

Yitzi
2013-03-07, 12:46 PM
Your mother was a hamster (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7zbWNznbs)

At 1st level, a fighter may use a swift action to incite his opponents to anger. The fighter makes an intimidate check against each enemy within 30 feet.

Intimidate seems wrong. I'd say it'd be better as Diplomacy, but most circumstance bonuses and penalties would be reversed.

But both ideas, "get in the other guy's way" and "anger the other guy into attacking you", are good ones.

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-07, 12:52 PM
Intimidate seems wrong. I'd say it'd be better as Diplomacy, but most circumstance bonuses and penalties would be reversed.

But both ideas, "get in the other guy's way" and "anger the other guy into attacking you", are good ones.

I think it could be either diplomacy or intimidate, but making the enemy move in different directions.

Diplomacy to make them come to you
Intimidate to send them running for the hills.

Enemies basically kite themselves at that point lol.

Yitzi
2013-03-07, 01:19 PM
Intimidate to send them running for the hills.


Perhaps as a modification to the existing "demoralize" usage of the skill. Say a success makes them shaken for one round, a success by 5 makes them shaken for 1 minute, by 10 makes them frightened for 1 minute, and by 15 makes them panicked for 10 minutes. Multiple uses of the skill should count as a single source and not stack (as should multiple instances of the same spell or power), as otherwise fear stacking becomes too powerful.

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-07, 01:28 PM
Perhaps as a modification to the existing "demoralize" usage of the skill. Say a success makes them shaken for one round, a success by 5 makes them shaken for 1 minute, by 10 makes them frightened for 1 minute, and by 15 makes them panicked for 10 minutes. Multiple uses of the skill should count as a single source and not stack (as should multiple instances of the same spell or power), as otherwise fear stacking becomes too powerful.

If this was going to be a progressive class feature, I'd say that maybe at 5th level and every 5 levels afterwards, you move up that chain by 1.

1st: shaken for one round
5th: shaken for 1 minute
10th: frightened for 1 minute
15th: Panicked for 1 minute
20th?:panicked for 10 minutes

sorta like that.

Synovia
2013-03-07, 02:03 PM
You see, when you mention things like "more generic classes" and "balance and customizability across the board", my heart weeps. You are talking of a game d20 could have been. The game didn't need hundreds of classes, many of which are redundant. The game especially didn't need hundreds of near-irrelevant feats, many of which only have functions like "allows this and that class to co-exist".

Couldn't agree more.

I think a HUGE problem with 3.5 D20 is the prestige classes and feats that would have been unneeded had they just built the systems cleaner. The dozens of almost identical subsystems means you need dozens of feats/prestige classes to mesh things that should have just worked together.

For instance, we have almost identical prestige classes where one works for arcane casters, one works for divine. Then we need another one because Sorcerers cast with a different attribute than Wizard. Then we need another one because of Cloistered cleric.. and another one because of ...

We end up with dozens of prestige classes all trying to do the same thing, when it really should have just been a class that says "Caster + this special ability"

SamBurke
2013-03-07, 04:25 PM
So, the way I see it, there are two types of people here:

Those who want each possible roll to get a class or interesting new subsystem...

And those who want one generic class for it all.

Does that seem fair? If so, could the same game have both?

gkathellar
2013-03-07, 04:33 PM
There will always be a need for the generic classes. Boast about how amazing your party of Warblade, Truenamer, Ardent and Duskblade may be, but to me D&D will always be about the Fighter, Wizard, Rogue Thief and Cleric.

Emphasis mine.

Jus' sayin.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-07, 04:37 PM
Now for the one that almost certainly induced massive rage... the Wizard. This is not a Core Class! Think about it; Sorcerers are born with arcane power, and learn how to manipulate it in some meaningful way. Wizards? Wizards develop magic by reading! The idea of someone who can just grant themselves arcane power through sheer force of will clearly belongs in the realms of Prestige. Moreover, it allows the Wizard to take on far more interesting aspects, and removes the need for a lot of other prestige classes. Eldritch Knight, Mystic Theurge, Arcane Trickster, Archmage... all of these can be effectively removed and rolled into the Wizard class by achieving it via Fighter, Cleric, Rogue or Sorcerer respectively.

...I think this may be getting off topic. :P
Side note--this kinda blew my mind, in a good way. It makes way too much sense.

Wargamer
2013-03-07, 04:56 PM
Emphasis mine.

Jus' sayin.
I'm too much a fan of "Good" parties to like having a full-on criminal as part of the core four. :P

PairO'Dice Lost
2013-03-07, 04:58 PM
So, the way I see it, there are two types of people here:

Those who want each possible roll to get a class or interesting new subsystem...

And those who want one generic class for it all.

Does that seem fair? If so, could the same game have both?

It's possible, if done well. Look at the wizard: it's a class whose theme is "uses magic," it has spells to do everything under the sun, and has a fairly empty Special column on the class table...but you can specialize in one of eight schools and each school has many associated ACFs and PrCs, each of which is fairly distinct from the others.

If you were to compare each of the eight specializations with all the UA, PHB2, etc. ACFs taken and a thematic PrC built in (e.g. focused specialist conjurer/malconvoker vs. focused specialist illusionist/shadowcraft mage vs. ...), they all turn out very differently in terms of themes and capabilities, and they're very different in turn from a "dedicated generalist" like an elven generalist/mage of the arcane order with Uncanny Forethought and such.

The same could be done with the fighter, rogue, and cleric. You have a "fighter" superclass with a certain set of fairly generic abilities, and then you specialize within that to become a barbarian, knight, swashbuckler, etc. In that case, you don't have a fighter class that just consists of whatever's left after you give all the cool stuff to other classes, you have a fighter-only category of abilities that all of the other martial classes share. All the benefits of having many separate fighter classes, without the drawbacks of screwing over an actual fighter class.

If you look at the various class fixes that add ToB stuff to core classes, they're already doing that to some extent: you have a basic list of "fighter" features (the disciplines) and each class adds their own stuff on top of that, so the idea can definitely work. It would take a heck of a lot of effort to rewrite every 3e class to use that system, and you'd have to figure out how to make the alternate magic systems fit into the new framework, but it's doable.


Now for the one that almost certainly induced massive rage... the Wizard. This is not a Core Class! Think about it; Sorcerers are born with arcane power, and learn how to manipulate it in some meaningful way. Wizards? Wizards develop magic by reading! The idea of someone who can just grant themselves arcane power through sheer force of will clearly belongs in the realms of Prestige.

I disagree, at least as far as D&D flavor goes; I agree that a more generic d20 variant might work better that way. D&D magic is strongly bound up with the concept of language-based (written and spoken) magic: verbal components, gestures in the air, spell scrolls, spellbooks, geometers, dwarven runes, glyphs, power words, the list goes on, and even the casters who have more inherent magic deal with that theme.

Anyone can use scrolls and other magic writings with some training (via UMD), the wizard just specializes in it, the same way anyone can manifest psionics (via Wild/Hidden Talent and UPD) but manifesters do it better...whereas "I have the blood of dragons in my veins" or "I've made a bargain with a powerful outsider" sound more like PrCs, like the dragon disciple or acolyte of the skin.

If anything, someone who learns to access magic by reading magical writings and casting the spells there is more basic than a sorcerer, warlock, or other type of arcane caster, who could be said to start out as a wizard who manipulates ambient magic via written formula and then transcend that to be able to draw upon their own natural power and no longer need a spellbook.


Moreover, it allows the Wizard to take on far more interesting aspects, and removes the need for a lot of other prestige classes. Eldritch Knight, Mystic Theurge, Arcane Trickster, Archmage... all of these can be effectively removed and rolled into the Wizard class by achieving it via Fighter, Cleric, Rogue or Sorcerer respectively.

Those PrCs would be unnecessary anyway, if caster multiclassing worked better; Eldritch Knight and Mystic Theurge literally offer nothing besides dual-progression, the only cool ability of Arcane Trickster besides the dual progression is Ranged Legerdemain (which could be a multiclass feat like Swift Hunter or Ascetic Mage), and since the Archmage abilities take the place of spells they could easily be turned into an ACF, a feat tree, or even a series of spells.

You might as well say that Cleric should be a PrC and Druid should be a base class, so you can make Paladins, Monks, Heirophants, and Mystic Theurges by multiclassing--yes, you could do it that way, but there's no need to do that if you can fix caster multiclassing. And doing that isn't difficult, it just once again requires a bit of tedious rewriting.

Eldan
2013-03-07, 05:16 PM
There will always be a need for the generic classes. Boast about how amazing your party of Warblade, Truenamer, Ardent and Duskblade may be, but to me D&D will always be about the Fighter, Wizard, Rogue Thief and Cleric.

That, to me, is simply a divergence between fluff and crunch. The warblade will never call himself "Warblade" in game. He's a warrior, or a general, or a knight errant. Few thieves would announce themselves as such, either. Agent? Gang-member? Trickster? Sure. Ardent I could almost see, and Duskblade could perhaps be the name of some esoteric order, as the fluff implies. But a duskblade is still a fighter.

A party of factotum, favoured soul, binder and warblade is a party of wizard, fighter, rogue and thief.

edit: the archmage is a series of metamagic feats.

And if an endless number of prestige class contests have shown me anything, it's that a good dual progression class should offer more than just progressing both sides. It should offer synergistic features that combine the two mechanics. Compare spellsword to eldritch knight. The spellsword can channel spells and cast in armour. Awesome. The eldritch knight though? Just about no class features.
Heck, look at the arcane archer, bad as it turns out in the end.

Yitzi
2013-03-07, 05:28 PM
If this was going to be a progressive class feature, I'd say that maybe at 5th level and every 5 levels afterwards, you move up that chain by 1.

1st: shaken for one round
5th: shaken for 1 minute
10th: frightened for 1 minute
15th: Panicked for 1 minute
20th?:panicked for 10 minutes

sorta like that.

Poor idea, as that means that he'd be able to do a one-shot "mission kill" with a decent chance of success, unless the enemy has the appropriate counter, in which case that feature is useless. You'd essentially have the same "overpowered or useless, nothing in between" problem that a lot of spells have.

Eldan
2013-03-07, 05:51 PM
Condition tracks. G&G has them, I think they solve a lot of those problems.

Razanir
2013-03-07, 06:07 PM
I'd want to play a military commander of sorts. Someone who not just fights well himself, but also encourages others to fight well with his mere presence

Super_slash2
2013-03-09, 09:37 AM
Hi. I'm new to DnD as in, I've played like 4 sessions of it. And by DnD I mean Pathfinder. I have a friend who used to play it alot (and is knowledgeable of power gaming in it) and another friend who's also into it so I've heard them speak about it a fair bit but I myself have not played much. When I did though, I got really into it. And there I was busy poring over splatbooks and trying to make cool characters (that sadly never got played :[ ). I preface my post with that because I just wanted to show you should take what I say with a grain of salt. But it is possible what I say might also be relevant. From the mouths of babes and all that.

1) I don't understand how you can have a Fighter that doesn't use magic beat a magic user. At level 3, a Wizard can gain the spell Benign Transposition. This opens up a whole world of possibilities - you can effectively fight on two fronts simultaneously, you can escape confinement, you can get someone else to protect you while you get to safety. there's alot this one spell can do. Out of combat, it can help you rescue hostages, it can help you humiliate other people, it can pass as parlour trick at parties... I'm not aware of any Fighter class feature that can simply be as versatile as this one spell. And it's just one spell at Level 2. It seems odd to me that you would expect a magic-less, supernatural-less, extraordinary-less Fighter to compare to anyone who wields magic because the very nature of magic is to bend reality to your will. It is practicly in the definition of it. It's not just a class feature for spellcasters, the point of magic is to do weird things and that gives you a ton of options that you cant hope to achieve without sufficiently advanced science fiction-y stuff.

2) I tried making characters for all the classes (because who hasn't when they're new) and the hardest class to make was the Fighter because of the stuff mentioned before - the class is so generic as to be completely overshadowed by others. I wanted to make a "Mother Bear" sort of Barbarian who used her rage and rage powers selectively to instead add battlefield control through rushes and things. That was easy to do - it practicly wrote itself. I wanted to make an Half-Elven Sorceror disgusted with his Human side and learning Transmutation to try and "purify" himself. Easily done. I wanted to make a Fighter who..... and then got stuck for days. Because there is actually nothing interesting about the Fighter template itself. The only possibly interesting thing is to go fight Dragons and that, in my opinion, is terrible. The Fighter class seems to exist to give you some semblance of combat competency while you focus on other things, like being a King or being a grizzled war-veteren. On its own, lore-wise it is incredibly lackluster in my opinion.

3) For the experience of a newbie playing : I made a generalist Wizard (I think they're called Universalists). I didn't make it because I thought she'd be strong, I made it because the idea has incredible appeal. You are doing what you want and you can cast any spell that suits your situation - you have REAL freedom to just do anything and be anywhere. You are hindered only by your wits and your imagination and there is never a point where you KNOW you've hampered yourself in some way. You are like a stamp collector but instead of stamps you are collecting arcane secrets of how the world works (I study Pure Mathematics so this character was basicly self-insert fanfiction). It's not just about power, it's about FREEDOM. This is what the generalist wizard means to me, truly unhampered by strings, not better than anyone else at any one thing other than being truly versatile and able to rise to any occassion.

The Fighter does not do this for me. I can admit, especially after a VERY nice post on the front page which listed what he thought fighters should do including rip the wings of dragons to ground them - it was very evocative - but even if you do that in a truly mundane way, it seems to be what a Fighter does instead of what he is. To me the Wizard can DO things but what a Wizard IS is different. I feel like the Fighter actually is like a blank slate for what else might show up.

I will put this in a probably far better but obscure way - if you've played Fire Emblem : The Sacred Stones, there's a character Amelia who starts out as a rookie. And she has the ability to train in more paths to because she starts out as a complete blank slate and thus has more freedom of choice as to where she ends up being, a General, a Great Knight, a Paladin... This is what the Fighter seems to me. I'll explain why here :

Alot of people in this thread say what they want the Fighter to do. In general, be awesome but also be a team captain or be a protector for their friends and so on. These are all states of being for the character LATER ON. At the start you are a humble Fighter, with sword in hand trying to beat off bandits and rats. Later on, you are a hero, taking down dragons and rising to any challenge. But what about the middle gap? What is the actual transition? I don't know if it's been stated past page 3 but as far as I've seen, noone has said how they expect the journey from rat-killer to dragonslayer to go. It's just a collection of states (of being awesome) but it seems disjoint.

4) This in general kind of speaks of what one of the main issues of the Fighter is to me - Lore-wise, Experience is not valuable to the Fighter. I don't mean Experience POINTS, I mean actual Experience. In terms of a wizard, seeing spells cast and using your spells in the field of battle translates to understanding more about the world around you and practising your incantations. As a Rogue, picking Locks teachs you about the Gullibility of your fellow Man while simultaneously exercising your dexterity. For a Paladin, fighting evil is practise for fighting even more evil. But for a Fighter, there is no value to your experience. You don't seem to "learn cool moves" like Roy got from his Grandfather. You dont' seem to "learn what incantation matchs what spells" to gain an Insight bonus to anything. You don't seem to recognise what Mummy Rot looks like, even if you've seen it before in your travels. Sure, YOU THE PLAYER can say, this looks like an ambush like the five other times we've seen before but your character does not learn from it. Your character only learns how to hit things better and harder.

If the Fighter, with levels, could research Combat Moves the same way casters learn spells (a really cool idea actually I think). If a Fighter could treat Poisons because of their time through harsh swamps. If a Fighter could recognise when casters mean to cast Teleport and throw a knife in the back to stop it. If only. But they don't gain anything from Experience. So Lore-wise they gain nothing but more effective hitting power. And that amounts to nothing really (to me at least) - they DON'T get to leap on the backs of dragons and hold its head back going "GIDDYUP BOY!!!". They just sit down on the ground shuffling their feet going well, if only.

Sorry for the rambling mess. Sorry if it was inaccurate (especially easily verifiably so). And sorry if it was not helpful in any way.

SamBurke
2013-03-09, 11:06 AM
Well that sort of won the thread...

I think I see what you're saying, and I agree.

1. I've long thought that mundane vs. Magic necessarily meant magic... but what about HEROIC vs. Magical? Perhaps we could refluff.

2. The problem of a fighter's lore is in part because of the name (which is horribly cliche and pointless), and in part because of the generalized vs. specialized debate everyone's been batting around. Since it's not a specialized class, it doesn't get the specialized fluff. Then again, it could have gotten PrCs or some form of extra "stylized" paths and such.

3. I don't know about intermediate states... I know a lot of people don't want "spells for fighters", but it's one of the best ways to make it look good.

4. Combat "moves" would work well... Question for everyone else: what is the problem with fighters having a smaller selection of "moves." Is it the bookwork..?

nonsi
2013-03-09, 12:26 PM
Well that sort of won the thread...

I think I see what you're saying, and I agree.

1. I've long thought that mundane vs. Magic necessarily meant magic... but what about HEROIC vs. Magical? Perhaps we could refluff.

2. The problem of a fighter's lore is in part because of the name (which is horribly cliche and pointless), and in part because of the generalized vs. specialized debate everyone's been batting around. Since it's not a specialized class, it doesn't get the specialized fluff. Then again, it could have gotten PrCs or some form of extra "stylized" paths and such.

3. I don't know about intermediate states... I know a lot of people don't want "spells for fighters", but it's one of the best ways to make it look good.

4. Combat "moves" would work well... Question for everyone else: what is the problem with fighters having a smaller selection of "moves." Is it the bookwork..?

How about combining this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13182574) with this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=274995)?

Sure, mundanes don't do things that ignore the laws of nature, but the above combination can accomplish quite a lot.

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-09, 12:44 PM
Well that sort of won the thread...

I think I see what you're saying, and I agree.

1. I've long thought that mundane vs. Magic necessarily meant magic... but what about HEROIC vs. Magical? Perhaps we could refluff.

2. The problem of a fighter's lore is in part because of the name (which is horribly cliche and pointless), and in part because of the generalized vs. specialized debate everyone's been batting around. Since it's not a specialized class, it doesn't get the specialized fluff. Then again, it could have gotten PrCs or some form of extra "stylized" paths and such.

3. I don't know about intermediate states... I know a lot of people don't want "spells for fighters", but it's one of the best ways to make it look good.

4. Combat "moves" would work well... Question for everyone else: what is the problem with fighters having a smaller selection of "moves." Is it the bookwork..?

1. Heroic vs. Magical was what Tome of Battle did. It didn't fix the fighter per se, but added really nasty maneuvers and such that put the martial classes in it on par with the casters (or very nearly so).

2. Giving the fighter a set of paths to follow is probably a good idea, I think it's what feat chains were intended to do. But feat chains kind of suck, because feats suck.

3. I don't think we've ever discussed intermediate states. Personally, I have no problem with "spells" for fighters. It would make playing a fighter feel more active because you're not attacking the monster, you're using Falling Leaf Strike to trip the beast with your Halberd and bring your blade down on the back of the things neck for a killing blow. You never hear a wizard's player say "I cast a spell." but you'll never hear a fighter's player say something other than "I attack it."

4. I think fighters should have a selection of "moves." I just think they should be tied into the one mechanic that a fighter already has, bonus feats. For me, there are two reasons why bonus feats suck:


4a. Feats in general kind of suck. There's a few gems out there, like Robilar's Gambit, but for the most part they just add and subtract numbers.

4b. I might get more feats than everyone else, but they can all select those feats too. So fighter bonus feats aren't special. Fighter bonus feats should be something only the fighter has access to, cuz they're his bonus feats, nobody else's.

Eldan
2013-03-09, 12:55 PM
Superslash: go read the Tome of Battle, carefully. Then look up "Age of Warriors" here on this forum. It should do at least some of what you talk about.

Just to Browse
2013-03-09, 11:09 PM
Preface: This wall of text has ignored pages 2 and 3 and half of 4 in this thread, I might repeat someone.

I find that whenever someone talks about how fighters can beat wizards or how to expand fighters conceptual space, they always cut gordian knots (batman-ing any item they need, distracting the wizard with a thrown rock) or interact with the system in plausible and badass ways that just aren't defined (climbing a creature, called shots).

If you really want the fighter to exist, you need to work the things people want to see into the system, and make them level-appropriate so that they kick in when people are able to do them. I think the fighter should be a class that deals damage and gets extra actions, and their turns should be spent making bull rush, trip, climb, shield bash, backflip, called shot, parry, predict action, horde breaker, leap attack, etc. actions that any other character could do but are especially easy for the fighter.

Super_slash2
2013-03-10, 10:15 AM
Heroic vs. Magical was what Tome of Battle did. It didn't fix the fighter per se, but added really nasty maneuvers and such that put the martial classes in it on par with the casters (or very nearly so).

Then what's the problem?

I've read Tome of Battle but I felt it kind of betrayed the point of the Fighter. I remember thinking that the White Raven and Iron Heart disciplines fit the theme of a mundane combatant but it seemed like the rest were basicly spell lists under a different guise. The combat manoeuvre system was cool but the actual moves you got seemed to not fall under the sort of Heroics you'd see Aragorn use. It seemed to be very nice for the new classes and it was cool but it felt like it just made the Fighter concept even more outdated.

Which doesn't seem to need to be the case, at least in terms of fighting. I have opinions on the way these sort of systems work, borrowed from a host of other games and game ideas but I don't want to go into it because well, I don't know how accurate it will be. I can here or elsewhere or something but a) it's probably been done to death and b) it would be the impressions of largely an outsider to the system.

But yeah, I've read Tome of Battle. I liked the idea of it alot but I felt it betrayed the principles of the Fighter by ALOT (being the generic hero guy, that dude who fights and owns).

Also, I really like the link nonsi gave. It is really appealing to me. Seems like alot to remember though.

I'm sorry if I come across as arrogant. I've just found the argument really interesting for a couple of years - even without playing, it has kind of shaped how I've looked games and versatility in gaming.

Eldan
2013-03-10, 10:18 AM
That's mainly because it wasn't intended to just cover mundane fighters. If yo ulook at the three classes, you have a mundane class, a mystical class, and a faith-based class. And so you have mundane, mystical and faith-based disciplines.

IN actual play, few characters will have more than one, maybe two disciplines they have heavily invested in. So you can build your mundane character by playing a warblade and heavily investing in White Raven and Iron heart, with a few choice maneuvers from Diamond Mind and Tiger Claw.

Then you go select one of the several hundred homebrew disciplines out there and you are set for life.

Super_slash2
2013-03-10, 10:42 AM
I guess. I just don't see the need to make the FIGHTER specialise. I understand they're different classes, I'm just trying to explain why I felt that while it was a good splatbook it isn't necessarily applicable to the concept of the Fighter, as had been brought up by others in the thread.

Network
2013-03-10, 11:29 AM
Our board has a had a LOT of fighter fixes. They come and go and come and come and lots of them get made... but I'd like to ask a more central question.

When you sit down and player the Fighter class, what is it you're trying to do? What fundamental experience do you want? How should it FEEL to be a fighter?
I want to have access to at least one good feat tree while being potent regardless of which one I take. The things to consider are :
* Will I fight on my feet or on a horse or other creature? I want to have feats for both things.
* Will I take an armor and be an human shield, or use my superior agility to outmatch my foes? I want feats for both.
* Which weapon or combination of weapons will I choose? I must have feats for any of these combinations : a weapon and a shield, a two-handed weapon (dual or not), one weapon in each hand, or a range weapon?

IMO, because the fighter has only feats as class features, they must be an efficient substitute to them. To improve the class, you must extend the feat selection. In fact, I'd prefer if they didn't have a lot of class features, because this makes the class harder for newcomers.

Every feat of the tree must be more useful than the former, so that warblades don't benefit from them equally. At least some feats must grant abilities useful against spellcasters, for example by granting SLA such as Dispel magic and Antimagic field at a competitive level (the latter always is, the former becomes less and less so).

I'd also prefer if no substancial change was made before 5th level. The power difference between spellcasters and non-spellcasters only pup up by level 7 or so.

Amechra
2013-03-10, 11:42 AM
If we're discussing heroic combat moves... Throw these (http://forum.faxcelestis.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7688) on the Fighter.

It works out to give neat stuff.

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-10, 01:04 PM
I want to have access to at least one good feat tree while being potent regardless of which one I take. The things to consider are :
* Will I fight on my feet or on a horse or other creature? I want to have feats for both things.
* Will I take an armor and be an human shield, or use my superior agility to outmatch my foes? I want feats for both.
* Which weapon or combination of weapons will I choose? I must have feats for any of these combinations : a weapon and a shield, a two-handed weapon (dual or not), one weapon in each hand, or a range weapon?

IMO, because the fighter has only feats as class features, they must be an efficient substitute to them. To improve the class, you must extend the feat selection. In fact, I'd prefer if they didn't have a lot of class features, because this makes the class harder for newcomers.

Every feat of the tree must be more useful than the former, so that warblades don't benefit from them equally. At least some feats must grant abilities useful against spellcasters, for example by granting SLA such as Dispel magic and Antimagic field at a competitive level (the latter always is, the former becomes less and less so).

I'd also prefer if no substancial change was made before 5th level. The power difference between spellcasters and non-spellcasters only pup up by level 7 or so.

Yeah, I agree with all of this.

Gnorman
2013-03-10, 01:23 PM
If we're discussing heroic combat moves... Throw these (http://forum.faxcelestis.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7688) on the Fighter.

It works out to give neat stuff.

Those are pretty good, Mr. (Ms.?) Shameless Plug. The "Adapt" technique is like, Fixing the Fighter 101.

Elricaltovilla
2013-03-10, 01:47 PM
If we're discussing heroic combat moves... Throw these (http://forum.faxcelestis.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7688) on the Fighter.

It works out to give neat stuff.

Unfortunately, NONE of these are associated with the fighter as written. So, except for (presumably) the ones that don't have any specific association, a fighter gets no benefit, while rogues, ninjas, rangers, paladind and even DRUIDS get unique combat techniques.

If this thread is supposed to be getting us to buffing the fighter, then as written, this isn't going to do it.

Gnorman
2013-03-10, 02:38 PM
Unfortunately, NONE of these are associated with the fighter as written. So, except for (presumably) the ones that don't have any specific association, a fighter gets no benefit, while rogues, ninjas, rangers, paladind and even DRUIDS get unique combat techniques.

If this thread is supposed to be getting us to buffing the fighter, then as written, this isn't going to do it.

You're misreading the "Associated classes" clause. Associated classes are not exclusive. They merely allow THAT class to achieve True Mastery in THAT technique. They do not restrict other classes from taking lesser masteries, and they certainly don't restrict the fighter.

The fighter is presumed to have access to ALL of them. See the spoiler under "How Does One Gain Combat Techniques?" It clearly states that the only requirement is the appropriate BAB, and that fighter levels are one of two explicit methods to achieve True Mastery (the other being levels in "Associated classes").

Amechra
2013-03-10, 02:41 PM
Those are pretty good, Mr. (Ms.?) Shameless Plug. The "Adapt" technique is like, Fixing the Fighter 101.

I only wrote the ones in the second post; at least I'm not as bad as nonsi, what with him suggesting his fighter fix whenever he has the least chance...

:smallwink:

And no honorifics, please; I deserve none of them.

Scerpico
2013-03-10, 03:04 PM
I've always thought that a Fighter, a real Fighter in a world full of Angels, Devils, Dragons and monsters, a world where men and women can seize the very foundations of reality itself and bend them to their whims through the internalisation of knowledge should be a FIGHTER in every sense of the word.

To me a Fighter should be someone who has internalised battle; it is what defines them and the path through which they shape the world more than knowledge, more then technique, more than causes, the simple act of standing before something and proclaiming "NO."
As a fighter advances choices regarding what they might focus on; mounted combat, duel-wielding and the like should fall away; soldiers and martial artists worry about weapons and technique, favourite swords and fancy trinkets are the toys of those who dabble in the killing arts but a Fighter simply IS, as a capable of dealing death whatever their situation or armament is a hand because they have transcended soldiers, transcended tactics and weapons and become battle made flesh, the war that walks, something that will not, CAN NOT fall so long as it can still hold a weapon in its hand and spit blood at that which stands before it.

Wizards and other Mages use their will and knowledge to change the world around them, to force their ideas of what reality should be on others, why can't a Fighter, a being of will and drive equal to any Wizard use that same will to change themselves? Force reality to see them as they will themselves to be rather than abide the limits of lesser beings?

(Strange rambling over)

From my experience 3.5 doesn't have the room for a class that asserts itself as 'decent in a fight' in a world of Wizards and Angels becoming a Hero should require something more than that, half a dozen classes have 'decent in a fight' as a footnote before getting on to the interesting stuff so to me a successful Fighter class has to MEAN something beyond being pretty decent in a fight, to be as far beyond the average soldier as a wizard is above a stage magician , to step beyond the appearance of fighting and killing and connect with the fundamental ideals behind them.

Zelkon
2013-03-10, 05:52 PM
Kill me for it, but the 4e fighter is the best fighter in any system I've ever seen.

PairO'Dice Lost
2013-03-10, 06:15 PM
Kill me for it, but the 4e fighter is the best fighter in any system I've ever seen.

I think many non-4e fans (myself included) would agree with you that 4e did a pretty darn good job with the fighter compared to other editions' or other games' fighters...but I also think most would say that the 4e fighter isn't great, just better than before. I mean, the 4e fighter is still nothing but numbers and very small-scale combat tactics, with no out-of-combat utility except skills and martial practices (which aren't unique to the fighter at all), and while the long list of powers looks impressive and seems to give him Nice Things, that's mostly due to formatting and the fact that 4e is essentially levels 5-13 of 3e spread over 30 levels.

A more flexible system can condense practically all of the PHB1 offensive fighter powers (and more) into about two pages (http://eternitypublishing.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/revised-4e-fighter/). Were I to attempt a fighter and/or general combat system fix--and I probably should, I think it's part of the Playground rules that everyone has to homebrew one class fix per year or something and I'm overdue :smallwink:--many of the 4e fighter's (and rogue's and ranger's) powers would be folded into weapon proficiencies, class-agnostic combat maneuvers, or basic level 1-10 fighter features, before we even got into specialization or selectable powers or whatever, because in the grand scheme of things the stuff the 4e fighter gets even at high levels is just not that impressive.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-10, 06:29 PM
Were I to attempt a fighter and/or general combat system fix--and I probably should, I think it's part of the Playground rules that everyone has to homebrew one class fix per year or something and I'm overdue :smallwink:--

Crap! You think YOU'RE overdue? Nine+ years of homebrew and seven years on this forum and I've done a SINGLE class fix, and that was before I joined GitP.

Should I be afraid? I feel like I owe a perfect, Tier 1 fighter fix that appeals to both ToB lovers AND ToB haters now. :smalleek:

Wargamer
2013-03-10, 06:31 PM
I realise this is likely turning into a circular discussion, but I don't recall this stuff ever coming up when playing WFRP.

Come to think of it, in both Warhammer and Dark Heresy, nobody I know wanted to be a caster. I mean, here's a basic overview of the choices:

WFRP:
Hedge Wizard - You are an outcast, viewed at best as a deranged lunatic who belongs in an asylum, or at worst a daemon in human skin. It is quite probable that if you were to cast so much as a cantrip within line of sight of another human being, you would be burned at the stake.

"Normal" Wizard - You live apart from a society that will never accept you or your powers. Most people, even those who owe you their lives, will treat you with distrust.

Both of these guys share a common problem; that their Magic ultimately comes from Chaos, and so there is a real chance that said power could have nasty repercussions, such as Daemons getting inside their head and ripping their soul out via the nostrils. With great power comes great responsibility, and no responsibility is greater than making sure your soul is not damned for all eternity.

DARK HERESY:
Sanctioned Psyker - You suck. Your life sucks, your job sucks, everything about your existence sucks. You. Suck. End of.
Your history prior to joining the Inquisitorial warband you call "the party" can be summarised as follows; when you weren't in a cage, you were having your head cut open. When you weren't having your head cut open, you were having psionic power pumped through you so violently that it has caused you some kind of brain damage (or possibly burned the eyes out of your skull).
Welcome to hell, Mr Psyker, because from now on you're going to spend every day of your life praying Daemons don't turn you into a gateway to Hell and consume a billion innocents. Oh, but don't worry too much; your party members, and just about every other authority figure, will gladly shoot you in the face the moment they think you're about to be corrupted by Chaos...


See the theme here? Having supernatural powers sucks! Sure, you can immolate an entire goblin camp with your mind, but that sort of thing has *gasp* consequences! You don't get your cake and eat it - you don't get to reshape creation and be loved and admired for it. You either go mad and commit suicide, go mad and get murdered by your party, go mad and become consumed by Chaos, or survive and become a social pariah who only finds acceptance amongst his own kind (and even then it's no guarantee).

That is what D&D is missing. Being a Wizard / Sorcerer / Supernatural Being should have penalties that go beyond D4 hit points per level and a poor combat skill.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-10, 06:38 PM
That is what D&D is missing. Being a Wizard / Sorcerer / Supernatural Being should have penalties that go beyond D4 hit points per level and a poor combat skill.

But D&D isn't predicated on a Grimdark setting. In high fantasy magic typically doesn't have hugely painful costs. Making painful costs apply to magic might fix the issue, but it might have the wrong effect: nobody WANTS to have their major ability have a huge chance of backfiring. It also might not fix the issue at all: magic will still be really strong.

Perhaps most importantly you'd be forcing campaigns to adopt a "magic backfires and/or has a high cost" model. That's completely inappropriate or many of the worlds and games D&D emulates.

Wargamer
2013-03-10, 06:52 PM
I disagree; it happens in Discworld, and ironically only during the books when it's still trying to be 'generic high fantasy' as opposed to pseudo-Victorian with magic.

The Discworld thing is, actually, the prime example of how to slap D&D magic across the face. You play a trigger-happy Wizard? Okay, sure, go nuts. Problem is one of three things is going to happen:

1) You are going to literally blow a hole in reality and attract Fiends From Another Dimension.

2) You are going to draw the attention of some kind of arcane-feeding monster, which may or may not be un-killable.

3) Someone else in your University is going to decide you're a threat to his promotional prospects, and turn you into a frog (which will be promptly fed to a quite mundane, but contextually horrific creature).

As Discworld puts it, Magic is about learning when not to use it. It's not just Discworld either; Gandalf, who is the D&D wizard, is clearly packing a lot more power than he appears to be. The guy defeated a Balrog, and yet he spends all his time casting spells to... light his pipe, make rocks glow and talk to moths? Yeah; someone is clearly exercising restraint with his power.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-03-10, 07:08 PM
The issue with that is that most players don't like the idea of being handed a character that they aren't allowed to use. There are games-- like 40k-- where that's appropriate due to the setting and system, but D&D has never, to the best of my knowledge, been one, and any attempts to make it so run afoul of dozens of stumbling blocks.

I love the Diskworld books, don't get me wrong, but they're not the best example of "how to do mages." In the early books you're talking about, wizards are ridiculously, ridiculously powerful. Sure, if they seriously cut loose they start burning holes in reality, but look at what's going on in those situations-- the Octavo? Launching magical nukes across the Circle Sea? That's epic level magic by D&D terms. Turning people into pumpkins? No worries, mates.

Wargamer
2013-03-10, 07:14 PM
Actually, there's no reason they can't use their character; it just comes down to having to use it intelligently.

Want to play a character that solves every problem by throwing a high level spell at it? Odds are you're rolling a new one in two adventures, three at the outside.

Want to play a character whose most cast spells are subtle, with the big gun spells only brought into play in dire circumstances? That's much more like how it should be.

As much as I cringe at uttering the words "4th was right", from what I hear they were on the Wizard. In a typical four man band, you have the Fighter (direct damage / tank), the Cleric (healing / buffing), the Thief (sneaky damage and obstacle removal), and the Wizard. What role is missing from this bunch? Debuff. Take away the Wizard's ability to cremate an entire army with one spell, and what is left? The ability to convince an entire army they're going to die a horrible, horrible death!

The more I think on it, the more that becomes the blatant answer - the problem with the Fighter is nobody did any proper play testing of the Wizard in 3.0.

Funnily enough, that's kind of how my Runecaster turned out; a ranged damage dealer whose "trick" is to debuff the enemy or, at a pinch, teleport everyone to safety.

Gnorman
2013-03-10, 08:21 PM
Want to play a character that solves every problem by throwing a high level spell at it? Odds are you're rolling a new one in two adventures, three at the outside.

Punishing players for using their abilities to solve problems is, in my opinion, very bad design. Limit those abilities, make them incapable of solving every problem, sure. But saying "Hey, you cast too many big spells today, you are eaten by a grue" does not work very well in D&D.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-03-10, 08:23 PM
Punishing players for using their abilities to solve problems is, in my opinion, very bad design. Limit those abilities, make them incapable of solving every problem, sure. But saying "Hey, you cast too many spells today, you are eaten by a grue" does not work.
This. Also, players tend to be clever dudes. Powergamers will figure out how to game the system, and they will go right back to blowing stuff away with high-level spells, only twice as efficiently as before because you rebalanced everything with the idea that these spells wouldn't get cast.

Eldan
2013-03-10, 08:31 PM
The casters are the only ones left in D&D who get any tools - in the framework for the rules, that is, not purely by roleplaying - for bringing some strategy - not tactics, we have that - and creative problem-solving into the game and I can not help but think that if we lost that, by being forced to either stop casting anything big or being eaten, I'd lose the last bit of fun this game still has to offer me, which would be a bloody shame and probably force me to abandon it.

Or in other words: take away all the epic evocation you want, I wouldn't touch it often anyway. But take away my charms, illusions, transmutations and divinations and I'll be gone as well.

Also: if you don't want the players to use something, don't put it in the game. Don't offer it, then punish them for using it.

nonsi
2013-03-10, 11:20 PM
From my experience 3.5 doesn't have the room for a class that asserts itself as 'decent in a fight' in a world of Wizards and Angels becoming a Hero should require something more than that, half a dozen classes have 'decent in a fight' as a footnote before getting on to the interesting stuff so to me a successful Fighter class has to MEAN something beyond being pretty decent in a fight, to be as far beyond the average soldier as a wizard is above a stage magician , to step beyond the appearance of fighting and killing and connect with the fundamental ideals behind them.

That's a nice concept.
Do you have anything at least half baked that turns concept into actual mechanics ?

Bhu
2013-03-10, 11:58 PM
Our board has a had a LOT of fighter fixes. They come and go and come and come and lots of them get made... but I'd like to ask a more central question.

When you sit down and player the Fighter class, what is it you're trying to do? What fundamental experience do you want? How should it FEEL to be a fighter?

Take, for example, the ToB Warblade. When you play a Warblade, you feel like you have a trick up your sleeve that you can pull and out use to bludgeon people. Every time you do, there's that satisfaction of having the right option or making it work.

What should a Fighter feel like? Because THAT is the question that can allow homebrewers to actually make one.

I would like a godless killing machine.

Ziegander
2013-03-11, 12:23 AM
Half-baked: The Fighter starts play having learned three Fighter Bonus Feats, which comprise what is called his "Repertoire." He may not use these first three feats to meet the prerequisites for each other. He automatically adds a new feat to his Repertoire at every Fighter level after first. Furthermore, he may add feats to his Repertoire by observing them, making, say, a Martial Lore check (or something similar), in much the same way a Wizard is able to learn new spells from spellbooks and scrolls.

At the start of every combat encounter, the Fighter forms from his Repertoire a "Strategy," which is a number of Fighter Bonus Feats he knows that he believes to be relevant to the situation that he will be able to use for that particular encounter. This costs him no actions and is done even before his first turn. At the start of each of the Fighter's turns he may form a new Strategy as a swift action.

Every few levels the Fighter is able to Improvise a new feat whenever he uses a swift action to form a new Strategy, picking up a number of feats he has no knowledge of and gaining the use of them until the end of the encounter or until he spends another swift action to form another new Strategy, whichever comes first. There would be a limit to how many feats the Fighter could Improvise in a given encounter.

Class features, beyond the above big one, would be open-ended, tactical things that could be useful in lots of fights. Abilities to help discover and neutralize enemies' special attacks/defenses and discover and exploit enemies' weaknesses. Special incentives for tactical movement and positioning above the typical bonuses other creatures get. Heck, maybe price breaks on weapons and armor because the Fighter knows that stuff better than the guy that's selling it? Bonuses to Initiative and to special combat actions like Bull Rush and Disarm? I'm kind of spit-balling at this point. It would be icing on the cake if some of the class features offered utility that could be taken advantage of outside of combat.

tarkisflux
2013-03-11, 01:15 AM
I've been holding off on adding my input, but since we're wandering off topic I may as well put it in now. Hopefully it gets us away from complaining that DnD is DnD and not WFRP or some other game with VERY different thematic elements.

Anyway, when I want to play a "fighter", I go to one of three places:

1) If I just want to play a smashy fighter, I grab a barbarian with one of the assorted UA totems. It is a simple and straightforward character that I would be super comfortable handing to a person new to the game who didn't want to deal with a bunch of rules learning yet. Every locked door has an axe shaped keyhole, as they say.

2) If I want to play a dirty fighter who breaks his enemies and has a Conan style problem solving streak (the novels, not the movies), I grab a PF Rogue and possibly use the UA Wilderness Rogue variant. I don't have piles of combat maneuvers, but the rogue tricks and SA fill that hole pretty easily (and I don't mind the lack of flasking, because I want to be swording things as a "fighter"). And the skill points I get (and spend on UMD, because that is where the options are in the game at high levels) allow me to contribute to non-combat encounters in potentially useful ways. I might pick up medium armor proficiency later on or I might not, it depends on the game and the growth of the character.

3) If I want to play a defender fighter who charges into a fight in plate and keeps foes from attacking my friends, I play a F&K Tome Knight (sorry if you dislike those, I understand the position and concerns) without the F&K scaling feats (because I dislike those for unrelated reasons). I have fewer options than the PF Rogue, but it does a really solid job of getting the feel of knighthood and aggro draw without mind control right. The forced PrC out at 11 is a bonus IMO, because I can select an explicitly magical knight class and get the tools that the upper levels need without breaking from expectations of the class (I know a lot of people don't want to play at 11+ as a non-mundane, but I am not one of them).

I pretty much never look at the Fighter class at this point. There are too many "fighter" archetypes to be handled by the class chassis. It's not that I couldn't build these things with feats (though in a lot of cases I can't), it's that the Fighter lacks the skill points and the options and a whole bunch more to adequately capture the "fighter" I'm trying to play to emulate the "fighter" in fiction. And in fixing the class for one concept, it locks out several others without similar large scale fixes.

So what do I want? Pretty much the above three class split, but with more customization options or paths or ACFs built into the classes. I don't want to be write "fighter" on my sheet. I am happy handing people a berserker (literate barbarian with alternate fluff) if they want an easy class, and don't see any reason why Fighter should be that (there needs to be 1 certainly, but which one is a matter of preference). I want to be able to build a knight or a samurai or a marshal from the same class because those are similar concepts and don't need specialized classes. Similarly, I want to be able to build a dirty fighter or an assassin or a <something else that I can't think of because I'm tired> from a second class. I want the three classes to be broad enough to have some repeatability, but not so broad that they suffer concept and option paralysis like that described in the post that won this thread.

So you can mark me down as in the new "wants 3 broad 'weapon thug' classes with different tactical foci" category, which I have just invented for myself. The fighter has a long and storied history... as a class that you took when you didn't roll stats high enough for a class that you wanted. Or as a class that you took for a while before your dual classed into the real class that you wanted. It has a history inherited from when it was left behind at higher levels that it has never gotten over, and I am pretty happy to leave behind. I genuinely think the game will be better for it.

nonsi
2013-03-11, 01:30 AM
At the start of every combat encounter, the Fighter chooses his Strategy, which is a number of Fighter Bonus Feats he believes to be relevant to the situation that he will be able to use for that particular encounter. This costs him no actions and is done even before his first turn. At the start of each of the Fighter's turns he may choose a new Strategy as a swift action.

Every few levels the Fighter is able to Improvise a new feat whenever he uses a swift action to choose a new Strategy, picking up a number of feats he has no knowledge of and gaining the use of them until the end of the encounter or until he spends another swift action to choose another new Strategy, whichever comes first. There would be a limit to how many feats the Fighter could Improvise in a given encounter.


Nice concept.
How would you balance it? How many would be enough but not too much? (all the way to level 20)

Ziegander
2013-03-11, 01:40 AM
Nice concept.
How would you balance it? How many would be enough but not too much? (all the way to level 20)

Right now I'm thinking you start at 1 feat per Strategy and work up to 10 feats at 19th level. Improvise would kick in at 4th level, when you get one unknown feat per encounter, and you could get another at every four levels thereafter so that by 20th you could Improvise 5 feats per encounter.

It sounds really complicated and option-paralysis inducing, but the numbers start small at low-level while the player is still getting comfortable with the system. By the time a player is high-level and has lots of feats per Strategy, he or she should know their Repertoire and how to use it pretty well.

The system gives the versatility of a Wizard to the Fighter, something we've talked about doing for years, and moves the Fighter's fighting prowess off the class table (for the most part) to allow for real class features.

Here's what I've got so far:

The Fighter

Alignment: Any
Hit Die: 1d10

{table=head]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special |
Strategy

1st|+1|+2|+1|+1|Combat Focus, Strategy|
1

2nd|+2|+3|+1|+1|Combat Superiority +1, +1d6|
1

3rd|+3|+3|+2|+2|Arms Knowledge|
2

4th|+4|+4|+2|+2|Improvise (1)|
2

5th|+5|+4|+3|+3|Battlefield Assessment (Foes)|
3

6th|+6/+1|+5|+3|+3|Combat Superiority +2, +2d6|
3

7th|+7/+2|+5|+3|+3|Cunning Logistician|
4

8th|+8/+3|+6|+4|+4|Improvise (2)|
4

9th|+9/+4|+6|+4|+4|Battlefield Assessment (Terrain)|
5

10th|+10/+5|+7|+5|+5|Combat Superiority +3, +3d6|
5

11th|+11/+6/+1|+7|+5|+5|Sharper Focus|
6

12th|+12/+7/+2|+8|+6|+6|Improvise (3)|
6

13th|+13/+8/+3|+8|+6|+6|Battlefield Assessment (Status)|
7

14th|+14/+9/+4|+9|+6|+6|Combat Superiority +4, +4d6|
7

15th|+15/+10/+5|+9|+7|+7|Problem Solver|
8

16th|+16/+11/+6/+1|+10|+7|+7|Improvise (4)|
8

17th|+17/+12/+7/+2|+10|+8|+8|Battlefield Assessment (Awareness)|
9

18th|+18/+13/+8/+3|+11|+8|+8|Combat Superiority +5, +5d6|
9

19th|+19/+14/+9/+4|+11|+8|+8|Man of Action|
10

20th|+20/+15/+10/+5|+12|+9|+9|Greater Combat Focus, Improvise (5)|
10
[/table]

Class Skills (6 + Int modifier per level): Appraise (Int), Balance (Dex), Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Escape Artist (Dex), Gather Information (Cha), Handle Animal (Cha), Hide (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge (all skills, taken individually) (Int), Listen (Wis), Martial Lore (Int), Move Silently (Dex), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Swim (Str), Tumble (Dex), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

Proficiencies: A Fighter is proficient with all simple and martial weapons, all light, medium, and heavy armors, and with all shields (including Tower Shields). By spending 12 hours practicing with an armor, a shield, or a weapon that he is not proficient with a Fighter gains proficiency with that item. This practice need not be taken consecutively.

Fighter Bonus Feats
A Fighter begins play with the knowledge of three Fighter Bonus Feats which he adds to his Repertoire. He may not use any of these three feats to meet the prerequisites for one another. At every level after 1st, the Fighter adds a new Fighter Bonus Feat to his Repertoire.

A Fighter is also able to add Fighter Bonus Feats to his Repertoire through practice and/or observation. In either case he must make a successful Martial Lore check to do so. If the Fighter hires a master to learn from the DC is 10 + 1 per point of Base Attack Bonus in the prerequisites + 2 per other feat in the prerequisites. If not, the DC increases by 10. Anytime a creature within 30ft of the Fighter actively uses the benefit of a Fighter Bonus Feat it knows that the Fighter doesn't know, the Fighter should be given an opportunity to identify that feat (using the same DC above). Any feat identified in this manner is automatically added to the Fighter's Repertoire.

Combat Focus (Ex): A Fighter is at his best when the chips are down and everything is going to Baator in a handbasket. When the world is on fire, a Fighter keeps his head better than anyone. If he finds himself in a situation that is stressful and/or dangerous enough that he would normally be unable to "take 10" on skill checks, he automatically gains Combat Focus. By itself, this focus does nothing (at least not until later levels), but a Fighter may end his Combat Focus as an immediate action to reroll a die roll he makes. He may use this ability to reroll a damage roll, even multiple dice if all dice contributed to a single attack.

Strategy (Ex): At the start of every combat encounter a Fighter forms a Strategy from among the Fighter Bonus Feats in his Repertoire, choosing a number of such feats as given in the table above. This costs the Fighter no actions and is done even before his first turn. A Fighter is only able to benefit from feats chosen in this way. At the start of each of his turns, before he takes any other actions, a Fighter may spend a swift action to form a new Strategy.

Combat Superiority (Ex): Starting at 2nd level, a Fighter gains a +1 competence bonus to Initiative, and to special combat actions (Bull Rush, Disarm, etc). Furthermore, he deals +1d6 damage when attacking from superior positioning such as via flanking or higher ground. These bonuses increase by 1 and 1d6 respectively every four levels after 2nd.

Arms Knowledge (Ex): Starting at 3rd level, a Fighter enjoys a competence bonus to Appraise checks relating to armors, shields, and weapons equal to his class level, and receives a 25% discount when purchasing armors, shields, and/or weapons that he has successfully appraised.

Additionally, he gains the Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat, and may use it with an effective caster level equal to his Fighter class level. When crafting magic items in this way he need not cast required 1st level spells. At every odd level hereafter, he may craft items without needing to cast spells one level higher.

Improvise (Ex): Starting at 4th level, whenever the Fighter spends a swift action to form a new Strategy he may choose a Fighter Bonus Feat that he has not added to his Repertoire and gain its benefits until the end of the encounter or until he spends another swift action to form another new Strategy, whichever comes first. At 4th level, he may only gain the benefit of one such feat per encounter, but every four levels after 4th this number increases by 1.

Battlefield Assessment (Ex): A Fighter uses his wits during any combat as much as, if not more so than, the strength of his arm. He may not be the most educated man or able to grasp arcane mysteries, and he doesn't have to be, because while the heat is on he's the most brilliant guy on the field.

Foes - Starting at 5th level, a Fighter gains a bonus to all Knowledge checks made to identify creatures equal to his class level (max +10).

Terrain - Starting at 9th level, a Fighter gains a bonus to all Knowledge (Architecture & Engineering), Knowledge (Geography), and Knowledge (History) checks (max +15). Something, something, strategic advantage?

Status - Starting at 13th level, a Fighter automatically knows the hit point totals and any conditions suffered by all creatures within his line of sight.

Awareness - Starting at 17th level, a Fighter gains True Seeing out to 30ft and Blindsight out to 60ft.

Cunning Logistician (Ex): Use of Aid Another from a distance, increase bonus to Combat Superiority bonus. May also use Aid Another to grant the use of a Fighter Bonus Feat that you know for the rest of the encounter.

Sharper Focus (Ex): Some benefit going on while you haven't expended your focus.

Problem Solver (Ex): Contingent actions.

Man of Action (Ex): Extra swift action each turn. Spend two swift actions to take an extra standard action.

Greater Combat Focus (Ex): Expend focus to "take 20" or maximize a damage roll.

nonsi
2013-03-11, 03:12 AM
Yes, my gut feeling also went for 1 improvisation per 4 levels.
Sounds just right.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-11, 12:24 PM
The issue with that is that most players don't like the idea of being handed a character that they aren't allowed to use.

You just nailed down the main reason people have issues with D&D fighters. :smallwink:

Ziegander
2013-03-11, 03:25 PM
My latest Fighter fix is almost complete. When it is, should I post a new thread for it, or let it die where it stands?

nonsi
2013-03-11, 04:27 PM
My latest Fighter fix is almost complete. When it is, should I post a new thread for it, or let it die where it stands?

If you have something worth sharing, by all means, share it.

SamBurke
2013-03-11, 06:21 PM
If you have something worth sharing, by all means, share it.

It's posted above if you'd like to take a look.

Also, I'd post it up, Ziegander. It's a great fix.

Just to Browse
2013-03-11, 07:04 PM
Fun (not-thread-related) fact: If Zeigander finished by the end of this month, it will be his 15th fighter fix (incl. Limit Break Veteran, "Designers Intent" Fighter, and The Warrior's Way Warlord).

Since the beginning of fighter fixes, which I believe was October 2009, that's 15 fixes over the course of 43 months, which is an average of 2.87 months per fighter fix.

Let's draw off of these statistics. If someone gets pregnant today, by the time the child comes to term we can predict that Zeigander will have fixed the fighter another three times. If he continues at this output for 24 years, he will eventually write a hundred. I'm not sure if there is even enough conceptual space for that, but if there is then Zeigander will be the one to find it.

SamBurke
2013-03-11, 07:23 PM
Fun (not-thread-related) fact: If Zeigander finished by the end of this month, it will be his 15th fighter fix (incl. Limit Break Veteran, "Designers Intent" Fighter, and The Warrior's Way Warlord).

Since the beginning of fighter fixes, which I believe was October 2009, that's 15 fixes over the course of 43 months, which is an average of 2.87 months per fighter fix.

Let's draw off of these statistics. If someone gets pregnant today, by the time the child comes to term we can predict that Zeigander will have fixed the fighter another three times. If he continues at this output for 24 years, he will eventually write a hundred. I'm not sure if there is even enough conceptual space for that, but if there is then Zeigander will be the one to find it.
Indeed.

I think you may want to make one book full of them. TOME OF THE FIGHTER it could be called. I'd get one.

Ziegander
2013-03-11, 08:12 PM
Fun (not-thread-related) fact: If Zeigander finished by the end of this month, it will be his 15th fighter fix (incl. Limit Break Veteran, "Designers Intent" Fighter, and The Warrior's Way Warlord).

Since the beginning of fighter fixes, which I believe was October 2009, that's 15 fixes over the course of 43 months, which is an average of 2.87 months per fighter fix.

Let's draw off of these statistics. If someone gets pregnant today, by the time the child comes to term we can predict that Zeigander will have fixed the fighter another three times. If he continues at this output for 24 years, he will eventually write a hundred. I'm not sure if there is even enough conceptual space for that, but if there is then Zeigander will be the one to find it.

Hahahahaha! And now someone is running statistics on my Fighter fixes... Good. Some of my other classes are pretty good too... :smallredface:

Durazno
2013-03-11, 08:13 PM
Actually, speaking of magic backlash, I could see many classes having a "you done went too far!" mechanic.

Like imagine a Wizardy character who is limited to a selection of schools of magic and a bit restricted in terms of power - high tier 3ish, right? Staying within these limits, they could happily contribute to a party of middling power and not cause any planar trouble... but they could also cast spells above their current cap or from forbidden schools, running a serious risk of bringing down the wrath of the gods or planar backlash or whatever.

A Roguish character could have underworld contacts or daring plots that have a chance to backlash at inconvenient times if they lean on that feature too much. Like, oh, if they keep borrowing money from their crimelord contacts, the DM could start rolling to see if legbreakers ever come after the party. This doesn't sound like it's on the same scale as the wizard's backlash, but it's still a threat to their life and limb. Again, it would be an optional feature in addition to normal Rogue features, and could be fluffed differently depending on alignment (for instance, a good rogue might have toughs coming after them because they've been Robin Hooding too much, you know?)

I'm not sure what a Fighty character could have in this case, though. Perhaps they have a legendary reputation that they can use in social situations or to scare off opponents, which carries the risk of other legendary swordsfolk, powerful enemies from their past or shady employers who won't take "no" for an answer crawling out of the woodwork?

SamBurke
2013-03-11, 08:26 PM
Actually, speaking of magic backlash, I could see many classes having a "you done went too far!" mechanic.

Like imagine a Wizardy character who is limited to a selection of schools of magic and a bit restricted in terms of power - high tier 3ish, right? Staying within these limits, they could happily contribute to a party of middling power and not cause any planar trouble... but they could also cast spells above their current cap or from forbidden schools, running a serious risk of bringing down the wrath of the gods or planar backlash or whatever.

A Roguish character could have underworld contacts or daring plots that have a chance to backlash at inconvenient times if they lean on that feature too much. Like, oh, if they keep borrowing money from their crimelord contacts, the DM could start rolling to see if legbreakers ever come after the party. This doesn't sound like it's on the same scale as the wizard's backlash, but it's still a threat to their life and limb. Again, it would be an optional feature in addition to normal Rogue features, and could be fluffed differently depending on alignment (for instance, a good rogue might have toughs coming after them because they've been Robin Hooding too much, you know?)

I'm not sure what a Fighty character could have in this case, though. Perhaps they have a legendary reputation that they can use in social situations or to scare off opponents, which carries the risk of other legendary swordsfolk, powerful enemies from their past or shady employers who won't take "no" for an answer crawling out of the woodwork?

While these ideas are GREAT for building stories, as class features... they seem to penalize the player. That's not good.

Eldan
2013-03-11, 08:27 PM
On the other hand, Iove produced about 1/3 of a class fix per year I've been on this board. *sigh*.

Durazno: I don't think you could use something like that as a balancing mechanism. Because, well. Munchkins will find a way to minimize or even abuse the backlash.

Offer it as a plot device if you want to use things like that. Not as a class feature.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-03-11, 08:38 PM
On the other hand, Iove produced about 1/3 of a class fix per year I've been on this board. *sigh*.

Still ahead of me and my 1/9th of a class fix per year of homebrewing. :smalltongue:

SamBurke
2013-03-11, 09:12 PM
Still ahead of me and my 1/9th of a class fix per year of homebrewing. :smalltongue:

Still ahead of me and my 0/2th of a class fix. :smallbiggrin:

Seerow
2013-03-11, 09:18 PM
Crap! You think YOU'RE overdue? Nine+ years of homebrew and seven years on this forum and I've done a SINGLE class fix, and that was before I joined GitP.

Should I be afraid? I feel like I owe a perfect, Tier 1 fighter fix that appeals to both ToB lovers AND ToB haters now. :smalleek:

Hah. I'm a few years behind myself. We should work together on that perfect tier 1 fix that is also balanced with tier 3 classes and appeals to everyone who has ever played a tabletop RPG, as well as suddenly make Ziegander realize he has wasted years of his life on 15 fighter fixes that are now obsoleted by the chosen One.



That said, I've long since come to the conclusion that the Fighter cannot be truly fixed within the confines of 3.5. To really make it work, I would need to (or at least very much want to) rewrite the whole system from the ground up. How attacks and defenses work. How scaling works. What feats do. What class abilities do. How combat maneuvers work. How mundane and magic items work. What size bonuses do. There's a million little interacting pieces to the puzzle that all point towards why the Fighter is in the bad position it is in, even before you consider the lack of direction or actual abilities it gets.

After all, it's not just the Fighter that's disadvantaged, pretty much all mundane characters are at a disadvantage compared to casters. Mundane caps out at tier 3, and the low end of it at that (seriously if tier 3 classes were the only classes in the game, we'd have a new tier system putting Warblade down at the bottom and Beguiler/Dread Necromancer far above it), the Fighter is just the poster child for poor mundane characters because he represents the worst of the worst.

Zelkon
2013-03-12, 05:33 AM
Hah. I'm a few years behind myself. We should work together on that perfect tier 1 fix that is also balanced with tier 3 classes and appeals to everyone who has ever played a tabletop RPG, as well as suddenly make Ziegander realize he has wasted years of his life on 15 fighter fixes that are now obsoleted by the chosen One.



That said, I've long since come to the conclusion that the Fighter cannot be truly fixed within the confines of 3.5. To really make it work, I would need to (or at least very much want to) rewrite the whole system from the ground up. How attacks and defenses work. How scaling works. What feats do. What class abilities do. How combat maneuvers work. How mundane and magic items work. What size bonuses do. There's a million little interacting pieces to the puzzle that all point towards why the Fighter is in the bad position it is in, even before you consider the lack of direction or actual abilities it gets.

After all, it's not just the Fighter that's disadvantaged, pretty much all mundane characters are at a disadvantage compared to casters. Mundane caps out at tier 3, and the low end of it at that (seriously if tier 3 classes were the only classes in the game, we'd have a new tier system putting Warblade down at the bottom and Beguiler/Dread Necromancer far above it), the Fighter is just the poster child for poor mundane characters because he represents the worst of the worst.

No, you just need to divorce it from those broken systems entirely, and not be afraid to break WSoD. 4e, balance wise, is obviously very stable. This comes from giving identical, or similar (that's what I like to focus on) progression to all classes. Therefore, if you can match a fighter's progression of abilities gained with the versatility and ability of the abilities gained by tier 1. Essentially, the quadratic fighter.
Because no one in our own world has really even made it past 7th level, that's when stuff starts to break apart, because they said "fighters have to basically stay at this level forever, while wizards advance like in myths." However, using a quadratic (which really should be called exponential. I don't know where quadratic came from) scaling method, the fighter of 20th level would be capable of a feat like lifting the whole freaking world and just shattering through an opponent's armor (or a mountain. Mountains too). Obviously, a mathematically realistic scaling of this kind is, well, unrealistic in a game environment, but using mathematics, you can indeed get the fighter to the level of a wizard.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 05:46 AM
Actually, I'm pretty sure I can make a Tier 1 martial class. It just won't be a fighter. The reason for that is threefold;


Power:
High-level spellcasters can use abilities plain stronger than the non-casters. Theoretically, those are balanced by limited uses/day... but obviously that doesn't work if you can cast 5 high-level spells per fight and it only takes 3 to beat most challenges. The solution for this is to make non-caster classes stronger to cover the margin. This was (partially) covered in ToB - except for the flavor being closer to magical abilities than martial and thus many people didn't like it.

Versatility:
Mundane classes usually have a single way for dealing with a challenge. I.e. to kill something, they beat it with a stick till they deal more damage than it has HP. Spellcasters in comparison can deal with challenges in multiple ways i.e. damage, save-or-die, save-or-lose, save-or-suck, summoning and energy drain are just ways for them to kill enemies. Thus not only they can hit an opponent's weaknesses but also are more fun to play than meleers.
The solution for this is to give non-casters more varied abilities. This was (partially) covered in ToB - except for the flavor being closer to magical abilities than martial and thus many people didn't like it.

Utility:
Spellcasters can kill stuff, buff allies, debuff enemies, magically travel, influence minds, heal others, raise the dead, use illusions, use divinations, and control the terrain. Non-spellcasters can usually only hit enemies with sticks until they die. Even if the non-spellcasters were stronger in a fight (yeah, sure), they would still be boring to play because they'd have a single use to the spellcasters' one dozen different major uses. This has never been addressed in any fix I saw so far.



To sum up, a non-caster that matches a caster in Power, Versatility and Utility should;

1) Be able to kill stuff, protect allies, interrupt enemies, have enhanced mobility, manipulate morale, manipulate a battle tactically, gain benefits through situational awareness, and perform legendary (but non-magical) feats of strength, stamina and agility.
2) Have some variety in each of the above options just as a wizard has variety within schools of magic.
3) Be just as powerful as a spellcaster in the stuff he specializes in.
4) Retain the flavor of a martial character.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 06:17 AM
4e, balance wise, is obviously very stable. This comes from giving identical, or similar (that's what I like to focus on) progression to all classes.
Bad idea. Instead of having a half-dozen organically different classes, you basically have the same class with superficial differences, disguised as different classes. Also, specifically for 4th edition, we got no lasting effects that actually work, all lasting harm is damage, and utilities went from 50% of the game down to maybe 10% of the game.
So you sacrifice the system's ability to actually depict various fantasy worlds effectively and playably in the interest of balance.


Therefore, if you can match a fighter's progression of abilities gained with the versatility and ability of the abilities gained by tier 1.
To that I agree. But match the versatility and ability, not the avialable options - if you build a fighter that feels like a spellcaster then you only have spellcasters in the world. If you make the spellcaster deal damage like a fighter, then you only have damage-dealers.
One needs to actually work to make melee classes useful... but as separate classes with different abilities and flavor, not as the same progression.


Because no one in our own world has really even made it past 7th level, that's when stuff starts to break apart, because they said "fighters have to basically stay at this level forever, while wizards advance like in myths." However, using a quadratic (which really should be called exponential. I don't know where quadratic came from) scaling method, the fighter of 20th level would be capable of a feat like lifting the whole freaking world and just shattering through an opponent's armor (or a mountain. Mountains too). Obviously, a mathematically realistic scaling of this kind is, well, unrealistic in a game environment, but using mathematics, you can indeed get the fighter to the level of a wizard.
No you can't. Not when using just mechanics anyway. Because the wizard isn't better than the current fighter (and most any fixes I've seen) only in raw power. They are better in versatility and utility as well and just higher numbers doesn't fix this.

Zelkon
2013-03-12, 08:17 AM
Bad idea. Instead of having a half-dozen organically different classes, you basically have the same class with superficial differences, disguised as different classes. Also, specifically for 4th edition, we got no lasting effects that actually work, all lasting harm is damage, and utilities went from 50% of the game down to maybe 10% of the game.
So you sacrifice the system's ability to actually depict various fantasy worlds effectively and playably in the interest of balance.
I won't start another edition war. I suggest you do the same. I just have to say that this is not true in 4e nor what my idea was getting at.



To that I agree. But match the versatility and ability, not the avialable options - if you build a fighter that feels like a spellcaster then you only have spellcasters in the world. If you make the spellcaster deal damage like a fighter, then you only have damage-dealers.
One needs to actually work to make melee classes useful... but as separate classes with different abilities and flavor, not as the same progression.
That's not at all what I meant. My 4e analogy was such: at approximately the same level as the wizard, the fighter should get equivalent/counter abilities. So, when the wizard can fly, the fighter should climb seamlessly and be able to make astounding leaps to attack flying enemies.



No you can't. Not when using just mechanics anyway. Because the wizard isn't better than the current fighter (and most any fixes I've seen) only in raw power. They are better in versatility and utility as well and just higher numbers doesn't fix this.
Again, you're missing the point. Of course the fighter needs more versatility. That much is obvious. My point was, if the fighter advances as a wizard (the similarity to 4e as I pointed out above). My point was, after 7th level, where the discrepancy starts, is the highest a human in our world has ever gotten. Therefore, we should stop applying human standards and maximums to characters above that level. Quadratic (or rather, exponential) scaling fixes the fighter.

Yitzi
2013-03-12, 08:30 AM
Bad idea. Instead of having a half-dozen organically different classes, you basically have the same class with superficial differences, disguised as different classes. Also, specifically for 4th edition, we got no lasting effects that actually work, all lasting harm is damage, and utilities went from 50% of the game down to maybe 10% of the game.
So you sacrifice the system's ability to actually depict various fantasy worlds effectively and playably in the interest of balance.

Be that as it may, it does help with balance, which is all that he actually claimed. So imitating 4e may be a bad idea (IMO, it is), but it is a good illustration of the fact that one of the most promising approaches to fixing a fighter is redoing the whole system. (I think you can fix the fighter without redoing the system, by taking one of the tier-3 or tier-4 fighter fixes that already exists (or making your own) and combining it with something that nerfs casters down to tier 3 or 4.)

Zelkon
2013-03-12, 08:52 AM
Be that as it may, it does help with balance, which is all that he actually claimed. So imitating 4e may be a bad idea (IMO, it is), but it is a good illustration of the fact that one of the most promising approaches to fixing a fighter is redoing the whole system. (I think you can fix the fighter without redoing the system, by taking one of the tier-3 or tier-4 fighter fixes that already exists (or making your own) and combining it with something that nerfs casters down to tier 3 or 4.)

I disagree with you agreeing with me. :smalltongue:
It's not redoing the system, it's redoing what the expectations are for a martial character round-to-round. Giving options that are in line with the wizard; in this case, tier 1 or 2. When the wizard gets flight, the fighter should be able to counter it, or fly himself (take your pick). The Basic Attack is a pain in the neck in every system, which is why nothing I design is based off them.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 09:06 AM
When the wizard gets flight, the fighter should be able to counter it, or fly himself (take your pick).
How about neither? Flying abilities are not thematically appropriate for a fighter. He could jump onto the flying enemy if said enemy is close enough but that's not really a counter.

A real counter would be to make ranged combat deadly at the hands of a trained combatant if the enemy doesn't have some protection. I.e. a rogue dealing sneak attacks if an enemy is in the open and without cover and a fighter getting a significant bonus to damage/criticals so the flying enemy (by definition being in the open) or an infantry charge against ranged enemies gets realistic penalties applied to it.

Another real counter would be for melee classes to have bonuses when they can see and ready themselves against enemy attacks so a wizard just standing there and hitting you gets penalized for not thinking strategically (as he should)

Amechra
2013-03-12, 09:09 AM
I would like Archery to be functional, please.

Why is the entire strategy negated by a 4th level spell? And usually useless far earlier?

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-12, 09:13 AM
Because no one in our own world has really even made it past 7th level, that's when stuff starts to break apart, because they said "fighters have to basically stay at this level forever, while wizards advance like in myths." However, using a quadratic (which really should be called exponential. I don't know where quadratic came from) scaling method, the fighter of 20th level would be capable of a feat like lifting the whole freaking world and just shattering through an opponent's armor (or a mountain. Mountains too). Obviously, a mathematically realistic scaling of this kind is, well, unrealistic in a game environment, but using mathematics, you can indeed get the fighter to the level of a wizard.
I support this, and I don't care if people think it's "too weeaboo" to be D&D. Eastern mythologies seem to have done a better job of not getting lost in the shuffle of "let's demythologize everything!" that the Western stories underwent. Seriously, there's some epic non-caster stuff to be found therein.

People don't seem to grasp the idea that you can have a supernatural effect from a mundane cause, yet that's the cornerstone of an epic martial hero.

Yitzi
2013-03-12, 09:17 AM
A real counter would be to make ranged combat deadly at the hands of a trained combatant if the enemy doesn't have some protection. I.e. a rogue dealing sneak attacks if an enemy is in the open and without cover and a fighter getting a significant bonus to damage/criticals so the flying enemy (by definition being in the open) or an infantry charge against ranged enemies gets realistic penalties applied to it.

Definitely the way to go IMO, but the bonuses against flying enemies should be substantially greater than those against land-based enemies in the open.


I would like Archery to be functional, please.

I think this is the one feature that EVERY fighter fix needs.

Zelkon
2013-03-12, 09:26 AM
How about neither? Flying abilities are not thematically appropriate for a fighter. He could jump onto the flying enemy if said enemy is close enough but that's not really a counter.

A real counter would be to make ranged combat deadly at the hands of a trained combatant if the enemy doesn't have some protection. I.e. a rogue dealing sneak attacks if an enemy is in the open and without cover and a fighter getting a significant bonus to damage/criticals so the flying enemy (by definition being in the open) or an infantry charge against ranged enemies gets realistic penalties applied to it.

Another real counter would be for melee classes to have bonuses when they can see and ready themselves against enemy attacks so a wizard just standing there and hitting you gets penalized for not thinking strategically (as he should)

How is that not a counter? I myself am a fan of flying fighters, but I know that's not for everyone. Simply resorting to ranged attacks makes two weapon fighters and those who aren't trained in the way of the bows useless, which solves nothing. You must give abilities that allow the fighter to defeat obvious advantages. So, if you give the wizard flight, give the fighter the ability to counter this. If you give the wizard the ability to cast a spell, allow a fighter to hit it back, and then allow a way for a wizard to overpower him and cast the spell anyways. If you give the wizard time stop, give the fighter to act during that, albeit at a slow pace. Etc.

nonsi
2013-03-12, 09:26 AM
Because no one in our own world has really even made it past 7th level, that's when stuff starts to break apart, because they said "fighters have to basically stay at this level forever, while wizards advance like in myths."

I'll probably get flamed by Amechra for this (again :smallwink:), but still, this one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13182574&postcount=1) is not in any way confined to 7th level abilities.
Sure, it won't break reality with 7th+ SL effects on its own, but it can manage quite decently with the majority of level appropriate challenges (putting WBL aside) and come up triumphant more often than not. And (unless I'm missing something) it allows the creation of virtually any martial combat role (Anime not included).

Zelkon
2013-03-12, 09:32 AM
Actually, I'd rather have the fighter not even go into archery. I usually leave that to the ranger (which is usually redefined in all the games I play. I understand this is not applicable to core games). I call the fighter the militant or warrior and keep him at thrown weapons and melee, while the archer/ranger deals with ranged combat and dabbles in some light melee weapons. The fighter as is is a really wide archtype.

nonsi
2013-03-12, 09:52 AM
Actually, I'd rather have the fighter not even go into archery. I usually leave that to the ranger (which is usually redefined in all the games I play. I understand this is not applicable to core games). I call the fighter the militant or warrior and keep him at thrown weapons and melee, while the archer/ranger deals with ranged combat and dabbles in some light melee weapons. The fighter as is is a really wide archtype.

I don't see the point in making the archer archetype a different class.
Bows are weapons just like any other weapon. The fact that they serve as projectile launchers shouldn't matter that much.
There's no significant difference in the role of hand-eye coordination between melee and range attacks.

Also, to condemn the soldier archetype to helplessness when facing opponents with powerful range attacks is plain simple unfair, given that many of them have the means of staying out of his reach.

Amechra
2013-03-12, 09:52 AM
I'll probably get flamed by Amechra for this (again :smallwink:), but still, this one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13182574&postcount=1) is not in any way confined to 7th level abilities.
Sure, it won't break reality with 7th+ SL effects on its own, but it can manage quite decently with the majority of level appropriate challenges (putting WBL aside) and come up triumphant more often than not. And (unless I'm missing something) it allows the creation of virtually any martial combat role (Anime not included).

I was only bringing it up because someone was getting on my case; I will hold my tongue.

But in any case, I don't think a given combat style should be restricted by class; while, say, the Ranger might be better at it than the Fighter, the Fighter should still be able to pick up a bow and be minimally competent.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-12, 10:35 AM
I don't see the point in making the archer archetype a different class.
Bows are weapons just like any other weapon. The fact that they serve as projectile launchers shouldn't matter that much.
There's no significant difference in the role of hand-eye coordination between melee and range attacks.

Also, to condemn the soldier archetype to helplessness when facing opponents with powerful range attacks is plain simple unfair, given that many of them have the means of staying out of his reach.
If the ranger gets good melee, the fighter should get good archery.

I note that Samurai were actually proficient in the bow, for one. It's not just a hunter thing.

SamBurke
2013-03-12, 10:37 AM
That said, I've long since come to the conclusion that the Fighter cannot be truly fixed within the confines of 3.5. To really make it work, I would need to (or at least very much want to) rewrite the whole system from the ground up. How attacks and defenses work. How scaling works. What feats do. What class abilities do. How combat maneuvers work. How mundane and magic items work. What size bonuses do. There's a million little interacting pieces to the puzzle that all point towards why the Fighter is in the bad position it is in, even before you consider the lack of direction or actual abilities it gets.


Waitwaitwaitwaitwait... So you're saying that there's a way to completely re-write a number of rules that would fix things?

What rules, and how?

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 10:42 AM
The basic classes I can see would be Fighter (the tank), Rogue (the sneak), Cleric (the faith guy), Mage (the magic guy). Other classes would be paths/archetypes/alternate features within those classes. For example Paladin and Barbarian would be special paths for the Fighter, Ranger and Monk would special paths for the Rogue, Inquisitor and Priest would be paths for the Cleric, Sorceror and Wizard would be paths for the Mage.

Of course, they wouldn't be the only paths. This woud make multiclassing within the same archetype simplified and streamlined - no need to make a bazillion prestige classes or base classes with each book; they'd simply be new options for their class like the new spells in each book are options for spellcasters.

Scerpico
2013-03-12, 10:49 AM
That's a nice concept.
Do you have anything at least half baked that turns concept into actual mechanics ?

A fair question and one I'm not daft enough to think I can answer definitively without a lot of playtesting but I spent a hour spit-balling and might as well share my thoughts.
It must be made clear that the words below are just that; Spit-baling,I make no claims regarding them being well thought out.

That said let the rambling,incoherent response begin!

The first is that I think we need to decide if such a fighter as I proposed is best suited to a base class of a prestige class, I can see it going either way here since the idea I put forward is at once quite narrow in focus like a PRC but at the same time quite broad in its execution of that aim like a base class.
Since this will affect ability distribution and relative starting power I feel that it is something that needs to be addressed.

The second is to consider what a Fighter IS, as I said before there are a bunch of classes that let you beat someone's brains out with a stick so if theres to be a Fighter class then they should be the best at the pure execution of stick.
Perhaps an ability similar in thematics to Warmage Edge? perhaps half class level to attack and damage? Now this obviously needs extensive testing at all levels before I can call it balanced and it runs the risk of the common fighter fix trap just bolting on more numbers and ignoring the larger issues but I feel that if you're going to call yourself Fighter than you'd better be the best at Fighting.
Perhaps controversially I'm not particularly opposed to the idea of a Fighter not being great at things outside of Fighting; sure he needs more that 2 skill points a level but giving of yourself so completely can leave little left for other pursuits.
With that in mind perhaps this 'Fighting Edge' or whatever could also apply to such things as Craft (weapon/armour) Intimidate and Knowledge (tactics) to represent that the Fighter has internalised all that Fighting is, not just the cool hitting people bit that everyone talks about.

People might notice that I make no mention of ability scores in this rambling mess of text; that's because I'm not sure if a Fighter should have abilities dependant on ability scores beyond their attack bonus,skills, HP and AC which I feel is enough to be getting along with as it is.
One of the things that Casters have over mundanes is the ability to focus on one or two scores and have magic shore up the rest, A Fighter doesn't have that luxury.
Perhaps a Fighter could advance in ability scores as proposed in Xefas' excellent Solar Hero class, either way this is something I think bares experimenting with.


One problem I've seen come up a lot is a Wizard taking one look at a Fighter's armour and scads of hitpoints and simply deciding to say "You lose" by making his soul fall off or turning him into a trout HP or ability to reduce him to chunk salsa be damned.
Obviously this needs fixing; the first thing I propose is to increase all of a Fighters Saves to Good; A Fighter in a world of magic and monsters needs to be strong in both body AND mind to survive in anything beyond the scrub leagues and I propose that it is through WILL that any warrior transcend their limitations to become what they wish to be.
The second is to grant them something like Scar-Writ Saga shield: the idea that Fighting is their identity; the battles they have thought and the choices they have made are indelibly etched upon their bodies just as a Sorcerer internalises the magic that they learn and their bodies rail at the idea of anyone trying to change them.
At first this could be a flat bonus to resist things like poison, death effects and transformations such as polymorph or petrification, forcing a saving throw if non is usually granted and eventually expanding to mind affecting abilities and a flat out immunity to such things at higher levels.
The Fighter has struggled a long hard road and internalised that bitter lesson and no wizard will simply brush that aside.

Killing things is what a Fighter does when you get down to it and as it stands a Fighter separated from his tools is a liability, often utterly unable to even damage foes as the game progresses.
Perhaps as a Fighter dips deeper into their calling they are granted the ability to ignore the defences of others? Things like the miss chance of incorporeal foes and DR/whatever are either halved or simply ineffective against a Fighter no matter what they wield.
A Fighter must learn to walk hand in hand with death, to understand it and it is a lesson that they should be able to share.

Another problem often faced is that of reach; A wizard can blast the crap out of whole armies easily or just erase whole groups from existence while a Fighter is often forced to work one at a time with those within 5 feet.
I propose that the Fighter's reach and threatened area periodically increase by 5 feat,perhaps at 6th level and every 4 thereafter (no even going to pretend that this is anything other than a number pulled out of thin air) and at say 10th level that can affect 2 adjacent foes within their threatened area with the same attack roll.

The only other main problem that springs to mind right now is that of the much loathed wall of force which pretty much just tells a Fighter to sit in the corner and think about the insanity that made them quit wizard school.
The trick here is to balance this between still being useful as a means to delay the Fighter but not the I win button it is as stands.
Perhaps the Fighter's grasp of killing is such that even they can strike down that which seeks to impede them by making a opposed check (Fighters highest BAB+edge VS caster level?) to bypass or even shatter the wall?

Thats it for now, I'll give it some more thought and jot some more stuff down if anyone thinks this has any merit at all.

Rogue Shadows
2013-03-12, 10:50 AM
How is it that everyone in this thread hasn't quoted this post and heaped praise upon it yet?


I want to hamstring a giant.
I want to climb the Cyclops, and blind it.
I want to cut the wings of a dragon, and ground it.
I want to disarm foes.
I want to parry blows.
I want to dodge boulders.
I want to block fireballs with my shield.
I want to shrug off mind control via raw grit.
I want to fight with my eyes closed against Medusa or without breathing against Gorgons, and still kick ass.
I want to be able to pick up any weapon, and fight masterfully with it.
I want to be able to grab a foe, and use them as a weapon.
I want to be death to everything within my reach to legions of weaker foes.
I want to shoot the weak scale on the dragon and bring it down.
I want to break the wizard's staff.
I want to shoot a sling stone at a Goliath, and watch it fall.
I want to be effective in heavy armor, shrugging off blows that would fell a lesser man.
I want to be effective in light armor, side stepping blows with my greater maneuverability.
I want to be able to fight foes whose very touch is death, and win.
I want to be able to effectively threaten and oppose wizards, assassins, men at arms, deathknights, huge monsters and cultist priests.
I want my sword to be my most treasured possession, because it is a great tool, but I still want to be almost as dangerous with a stick I picked up from the ground, or the enemies sword I tore from his hands.

Seerow
2013-03-12, 10:59 AM
Waitwaitwaitwaitwait... So you're saying that there's a way to completely re-write a number of rules that would fix things?

What rules, and how?


Like I said, it would be reworking the system from the very bottom up. A systemic change wouldn't be enough by itself to fix the Fighter, many of the things people have discussed here would still be needed. You still need some level of parity of options, you still need fighters being able to deal with high level magical effects...

But at the fundamental level, there are a number of things in the D&D system that just straight up don't work. RNG scaling is all over the place and incredibly hard to predict/evaluate. This simultaneously makes things like AC useless and Save or Dies extremely overpowered (or alternatively useless when up against something that goes off the RNG with their save). Feats have a wide range of things they can do, and no real set expectations. HP/Damage is generally considered useless in the metagame for a number of reasons, and Armor is generally more of a hindrance than a help. Magic items are expected to make up for the failings of mundanes without giving Mundanes any greater access to them than casters... the list goes on and on.

Basically what I'm getting at is that while there's no core systemic fix out there that would make the fighter as written comparable to a wizard as written, a fresh new system with a better eye towards consistency at the core can make designing classes using that core much easier to balance, without falling into the same-y trap that 4e did. Going into more details regarding specifically what sorts of things I would do with a new system falls pretty far outside of the realm of this thread. It's enough to highlight the fact that there are core systemic problems that would need to be addressed.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 11:00 AM
Well, if you want to see a fighter in action that seems realistically fighterish but also legendarily epic and impressively awesome, you could play the God Of War series of games. Kratos is pretty much THE fighter in games right now. And despite of being very physical and keeping to the flavor of the archetype, he kicks an unbelievably large amount of ass.

Zelkon
2013-03-12, 11:07 AM
The basic classes I can see would be Fighter (the tank), Rogue (the sneak), Cleric (the faith guy), Mage (the magic guy). Other classes would be paths/archetypes/alternate features within those classes. For example Paladin and Barbarian would be special paths for the Fighter, Ranger and Monk would special paths for the Rogue, Inquisitor and Priest would be paths for the Cleric, Sorceror and Wizard would be paths for the Mage.

Of course, they wouldn't be the only paths. This woud make multiclassing within the same archetype simplified and streamlined - no need to make a bazillion prestige classes or base classes with each book; they'd simply be new options for their class like the new spells in each book are options for spellcasters.

Actually, just magic guy and melee guy would work. Rogue is too narrow compared to fighter, and magic guy can choose divine or arcane. Then we no longer need a class system.

Seerow
2013-03-12, 11:49 AM
Actually, just magic guy and melee guy would work. Rogue is too narrow compared to fighter, and magic guy can choose divine or arcane. Then we no longer need a class system.

I've been torn on the existence of a rogue in a system where characters are brought down to core concepts (ie fighter, wizard, cleric). The rogue does more skill stuff than the fighter, but he still fights. What stops a fighter from fighting with the sneaky rogue style? Why can't a fighter pick up skills? So on the one hand, I agree just a single badass normal class is good enough.

On the other hand, rogues are one of the iconic core 4, and just getting rid of them would feel weird, even if the Fighter was capable of anything the Rogue could do before.


Honestly though, rolling Rogue in with the Fighter is probably for the best. If you were doing more specialized classes, you could have it broken up into Knight, Barbarian, and Rogue, and probably a half dozen others mentioned in this thread (Ranger, Swashbuckler, etc).

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 11:54 AM
No, we do need a class system. Systems with classes are a) more beginner-friendly and b) more flavor-friendly. Besides, here are the Paths I see for each of my suggested 4 classes;

Fighter
Basic abilities are good BAB, high HP, good fort and will saves, weapon and feat mastery. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Barbarian: rage powers
Defender: toughness, recovery, interrupts and blocks
Slayer: knowledge, weakness exploits, crippling strikes
Paragon: mobility, strength and dexterity feats
Tactician: initiative, terrain, action economy manipulation
Warlord: morale manipulation, combat support

Rogue
Basic abilities are good BAB, medium HP, good reflex and will saves, dodge and skill mastery. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Assassin: stealth, sneak attack expert
Hunter: ranged combat, traps expert
Monk: unarmed combat, mobility
Trickster: diplomacy/bluff/social expert
Charlatan: item/device/treasure expert


Cleric
Basic abilities are medium BAB, medium HP, good fort and will saves, divine casting. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Druid: nature/shapeshifting expert
Priest: domain magic expert
Healer: restoration/defense expert
Inquisitor: smite powers/destructive magic expert
Cultist: planar magic, ritual casting
Oracle: divination magic and sight powers

Mage
Basic abilities are bad BAB, low HP, good reflex and will saves, arcane casting. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Artificer: powers related to items and constructs
Sorceror: spontaneous casting expert
Wizard: magic school specialist
Spellshaper: metamagic/spellslot manipulation
Warlock: innate powers

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-12, 11:54 AM
The basic classes I can see would be Fighter (the tank), Rogue (the sneak), Cleric (the faith guy), Mage (the magic guy). Other classes would be paths/archetypes/alternate features within those classes. For example Paladin and Barbarian would be special paths for the Fighter, Ranger and Monk would special paths for the Rogue, Inquisitor and Priest would be paths for the Cleric, Sorceror and Wizard would be paths for the Mage.
Tradition aside, why divide it up by role (fighter and rogue) and power source (cleric and wizard)? The fighter doesn't derive their power from "tank" like the cleric derives their power from faith. You're viewing one class for what they are and the other class for what they do.

wayfare
2013-03-12, 12:07 PM
Our board has a had a LOT of fighter fixes. They come and go and come and come and lots of them get made... but I'd like to ask a more central question.

When you sit down and player the Fighter class, what is it you're trying to do? What fundamental experience do you want? How should it FEEL to be a fighter?

Take, for example, the ToB Warblade. When you play a Warblade, you feel like you have a trick up your sleeve that you can pull and out use to bludgeon people. Every time you do, there's that satisfaction of having the right option or making it work.

What should a Fighter feel like? Because THAT is the question that can allow homebrewers to actually make one.

I think the folks are expecting a bit much out of the fighter, in that it was clearly designed to be the "make whatever the hell you want" class. But with all those dead levels it feels like an npc class.

Additionally, you can use fighter to make a fairly lethal class, but only if your standard is "deals hp damage". Thats actually a pretty bad way to go in 3.5, as it lacks any versatility and there are tons of ways around it.

I've made a few fixes, and am proud of some of them too. But when I imagine the fighter, I never imagine him above tier 4 or low 3. The ones i've liked the most have been built around a theme -- weaponsmaster, tactician, better barbarian, etc.

Ultimately, I think that part of the problem with fighters is that they have little versatility in the face of casters. Play a low magic world that replaces casters with ritualism, and you have a really fun place for monks, rangers, scouts, rogues and the like to hang out in.

Even then, fighters are still a 2 level prestige class with no prerequisites.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 12:21 PM
I am viewing all classes as what they are and what they do - no distinction.

Fighter is the group's tank. He uses his great strength to do heavy weapons/armor and trains in all martial abilities.
Rogue is the group's sneak. He uses his great dexterity to do light weapons and armor and trains in exploiting his skills in various situations.
Cleric is the faith guy. He uses his wisdom to understand the (personified) concepts of the universe and draw power from them in various ways.
Mage is the primary spellcaster. He uses his charisma -force of personality and innate talent- to channel the forces of magic and has skill in further manipulating and shaping that magic.

nonsi
2013-03-12, 12:37 PM
How is it that everyone in this thread hasn't quoted this post and heaped praise upon it yet?

I did (post #105). Well, not with bells & trumpets, but I did state those as targets to aim for.

SamBurke
2013-03-12, 01:30 PM
No, we do need a class system. Systems with classes are a) more beginner-friendly and b) more flavor-friendly. Besides, here are the Paths I see for each of my suggested 4 classes;

Fighter
Basic abilities are good BAB, high HP, good fort and will saves, weapon and feat mastery. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Barbarian: rage powers
Defender: toughness, recovery, interrupts and blocks
Slayer: knowledge, weakness exploits, crippling strikes
Paragon: mobility, strength and dexterity feats
Tactician: initiative, terrain, action economy manipulation
Warlord: morale manipulation, combat support

Rogue
Basic abilities are good BAB, medium HP, good reflex and will saves, dodge and skill mastery. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Assassin: stealth, sneak attack expert
Hunter: ranged combat, traps expert
Monk: unarmed combat, mobility
Trickster: diplomacy/bluff/social expert
Charlatan: item/device/treasure expert


Cleric
Basic abilities are medium BAB, medium HP, good fort and will saves, divine casting. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Druid: nature/shapeshifting expert
Priest: domain magic expert
Healer: restoration/defense expert
Inquisitor: smite powers/destructive magic expert
Cultist: planar magic, ritual casting
Oracle: divination magic and sight powers

Mage
Basic abilities are bad BAB, low HP, good reflex and will saves, arcane casting. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Artificer: powers related to items and constructs
Sorceror: spontaneous casting expert
Wizard: magic school specialist
Spellshaper: metamagic/spellslot manipulation
Warlock: innate powers
I really like these divisions quite a bit, as they serve to create a generic base, which can then be specialized. In other words, you've managed to find a solution that can get a lot of different people to agree.

Eldan
2013-03-12, 02:08 PM
How different would the paths be? I mean, would hte warlock have a significantly different casting mechanic from the sorcerer? How different is the monk from the trickster?

Because if they are very different, I'm wondering at which point they are not the same class anymore and shouldn't be called that.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 03:06 PM
A mage would basically get non-spontaneous, nonspecialized spellcasting with limited spells known and 4 slots per level at most.
A mage with the sorceror path would get bonus spell slots, spontaneous casting and sorceror bloodlines.
A mage with the wizard path would get school specialization, learning spells from scrolls and bonus school slots.
A mage with the warlock path would get Reserve feats and warlock SLAs to backup his basic arcane casting.

So basically they have the same primary feature (arcane spellcasting) and they improve it or back it up in various ways.

The basic rogue is more or less the class as it currently is in the SRD.
A Trickster rogue would add many abilities based off her social skills, used both in combat and out of combat.
A rogue with monk training would add the usual abilities of the monk such as unarmed damage, flurry, AC bonus, and so on and so forth.



It should be noted that a full Path would have 15 abilities, spellcasters get their basic spells and 30 abilities by level 20 and non-casters get generic class traits, more skills and more HP and 40 abilities by level 20.


That allows for most any build that currently exists to be translated. For example, what used to be a Wizard 6/Incantatrix 10/Archmage 4 will now be a Mage 20 with full paths in Wizard and Spellshaper.

PairO'Dice Lost
2013-03-12, 03:07 PM
How different would the paths be? I mean, would hte warlock have a significantly different casting mechanic from the sorcerer? How different is the monk from the trickster?

Because if they are very different, I'm wondering at which point they are not the same class anymore and shouldn't be called that.

They could easily fit under the same super-class, if that's the way they're built. For the mage, start off with 2-3 spells per day and 3-4 spells known of each level as a base, then give the sorcerer extra spells per day and the ability to spontaneously cast signature spells, give the wizard extra spells known and the ability to cast some utility spells straight from his spellbook, give the warlock a bunch of reserve-feat-like features, give the spellshaper a bunch of metamagic, and give the artificer the ability to infuse spell effects into items to give them a longer duration or make them contingent or whatever. You get the flavor of all those classes (sorcerer is spontaneous, warlock is at-will, wizard is prepared, artificer is the downtime guy) without making them use different subsystems, so you can condense the ruleset because any feats/PrCs/etc. that work for one work for all of them.

Similarly, for the rogue, start off with 3/4 BAB, 8 skill points, a feature like inspiration points that lets you add stat bonuses to skills X/encounter, and bonus d6s to damage under certain conditions. The trickster adds Int to social skills and gets the bonus damage against flat-footed enemies, the monk adds Wis to mobility skills and gets the bonus damage to unarmed strikes, the hunter adds Dex to nature skills and gets the bonus damage to ranged attacks, and so forth, with the different paths adding their own unique stuff on top.

EDIT: Swordsage'd by the original suggester. Great minds and all that.

Eldan
2013-03-12, 03:15 PM
Hrm. Not sure I like it, I must admit. That few basic chassises is too few to my liking. And incorporating things that currently only have one class, like the Binder, would be extremely complicated.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-12, 03:17 PM
I am viewing all classes as what they are and what they do - no distinction.

Fighter is the group's tank. He uses his great strength to do heavy weapons/armor and trains in all martial abilities.
Rogue is the group's sneak. He uses his great dexterity to do light weapons and armor and trains in exploiting his skills in various situations.
Cleric is the faith guy. He uses his wisdom to understand the (personified) concepts of the universe and draw power from them in various ways.
Mage is the primary spellcaster. He uses his charisma -force of personality and innate talent- to channel the forces of magic and has skill in further manipulating and shaping that magic.
"Tank" and "sneak" imply specific functions, though. It's not just that the fighter trains in martial abilities; you also point to the fighter as being the one who draws fire and stands up. You point to the rogue as being the one who can bypass situations through skill usage.

On the contrary, when you describe cleric and mage, you're very vague on what they actually do in relation to the game. You say that the cleric "understands" concepts of the universe and "draws power" from them, but you don't say what that does, unlike your clearly-defined role for the fighter and rogue. You note that the mage "channel[s] the forces of magic" and "[shapes] that magic", but you don't touch on how that expresses itself in the game.

See the divide here? I'm only making a deal of it because I think it reflects on a larger blind spot that players seem to have, when it comes to the "Core 4". They think of the mundanes in very particular roles, but the roles of the casters can often be much vaguer, which means that there is no clear concept for the classes. The upshot of this is, the caster classes become more flexible, because they wind up with large amounts of features.

Defining a fighter merely as "someone who channels their might to perform heroic feats" is about on par with defining a wizard as "someone whose will channels the forces of magic and has skill in shaping it", and I think that's ultimately the path to enabling the fighter: freeing ourselves of the mindset that shackles mundane classes to a specific role (where the caster classes of the "Big 4" are not so bound). If you see the fighter as someone whose strength/might enables them to perform great feats, that's a much more tenable concept for a higher-tier fighter.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 03:18 PM
I am working on the Champion right now - the universal Martial class. I did not name it "Fighter" because it does a lot more than simply fighting.


BTW, good way to mess with scry-and-dier wizards; my full tactician path;
Informed Decision to know when you're observed and not be caught unaware by the wizard, the initiative boosts to win initiative for you and your entire party, the mobility stuff to move+full attack, prepare the terrain, prepare against specific enemy, declare a formation against specific tactic/situation, always ready to have readied action from before the combat starts, trick enemy to make him believe your bad save is actually your good save. Anticipate to know his actions before he actually takes them by reading his body language and tactics. And then wait for him to actually come. Should be a hilariously short battle. :smalltongue:

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 03:40 PM
It's not just that the fighter trains in martial abilities
By "martial abilities" I mean weapons, armor, physical toughness, defensive counters, tactical advantages, morale manipulations, tribal fighting styles of raw strength, paragons of agility and mobility and special maneuvers. ALL aspects of martial, formal combat.


You point to the rogue as being the one who can bypass situations through skill usage.
By "skill" I mean ALL uses of skill, dexterity and unorthodox solutions in and out of combat, either to avoid or overcome obstacles, not the very limited "skill" usage we see today. A rogue combining dexterity+stealth+mobility to assassinate people in broad daylight (think Assassin's Creed) is a skilled combatant. So is a rogue using her contacts and diplomacy to buy items at cost rather than full price (sort of how wizards can craft them at cost). And so is that rogue of a diplomat who seduces the king's daughter to get influence on the king and get that trade treaty passed or that law abolished. (as opposed to a spellcaster that might charm the king).


You say that the cleric "understands" concepts of the universe and "draws power" from them, but you don't say what that does, unlike your clearly-defined role for the fighter and rogue.
It gives him access to divine spells and powers who are as varied as the usage of skills or a fighter's expertise in conflicts. They are actually more varied that skills or martial expertise but more narrowly focused and affect less people at once. (A knight can use tactical advantage to boost an entire army's attack and AC by 1 while a cleric could give a bigger boost on a couple dozen people at most)


You note that the mage "channel[s] the forces of magic" and "[shapes] that magic", but you don't touch on how that expresses itself in the game.
Arcane spells/powers similar to the divine above, with more emphasis in manipulating magic itself and less emphasis on defense.

PairO'Dice Lost
2013-03-12, 03:52 PM
Hrm. Not sure I like it, I must admit. That few basic chassises is too few to my liking. And incorporating things that currently only have one class, like the Binder, would be extremely complicated.

There's no reason that those have to be the only four classes in the system, or that that has to be the only setup; all that scheme does is collect the classes who either are defined by one of the four roles (the sorcerer, wizard, cleric, and favored soul, for instance, are currently basically defined as "class that has spells" with no major additional features or more specific flavor of their own) or that don't have enough extras to stand on their own (the barbarian and assassin are currently basically a small feat tree for a fighter or rogue, for instance).

There's plenty of room for a gish class (arcane/martial) for the hexblade, duskblade, and similar; a "crusader" class (divine/martial) for the paladins, soulborn, and similar; an "invoker" class (at-will magic) for the dragonfire adept, binder, and similar (including moving the warlock here); some sort of trickster-but-called-something-else class that covers the bard, spellthief, factotum, maybe shadowcaster, and other arcane+skills classes; and so on--and in fact you'd probably need to have at least 10 classes in that sort of setup, for each of the four classic roles and each X/Y hybrid.

The idea wouldn't be to shoehorn everything into the classic four, just to condense dozens of classes down to a manageable number so the more niche classes have a reason to exist, the unsupported classes get more options, and the do-anything caster classes can be pruned a bit. I'm actually working on something like this at the moment, which is why I've jumped in to talk about Belial's suggestion, and so far I've found that it's possible (conceptually, at least) to fit pretty much every 3e class into those 10 classic and hybrid class slots without stretching them too much, and the fighter definitely comes out looking better when his schtick is "every 3e martial class" instead of just "the bonus feats and weapons guy."

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 04:10 PM
A Basic class needs to be generic and have lots of options to avoid the "20 base classes and 100 PrCs" fiasco of the latest editions. It also needs enough options to be both powerful and interesting to play.


Any reason the Binder or Dragonfire Adept couldn't be Paths in a basic spellcasting class? A mage that doesn't take either sorceror or wizard paths ends up with both limited prepared casting and limited spells known; their spells would be secondary to their other abilities.
By taking Dragonfire Adept + Warlock or Binder + Warlock, the primary abilities would be the innate ones, not the spells.

Eldan
2013-03-12, 04:45 PM
I brought up the binder mainly because it is so different from the basic Vancian mechanic. You could also say Totemist instead, or Truenamer. These classes are interesting because they not only have different fluff, but also very different mechanics. That's why I like them (not that I don't like Vancian, but I like diversity more.)

Seharvepernfan
2013-03-12, 04:50 PM
When I play a fighter?

High HP, high armor/shield bonuses, high fort saves, high attack bonus, high damage, lots of attacks, high bullrush/disarm/grapple/overrun/trip/sunder modifiers, proficiency in tons of different weapons, lots of bonus combat feats, plenty of ranks in craft (weapons/armor)/climb/handle animal/intimidate/jump/ride/swim.

Which is what a fighter is, assuming you can get most of that.

When I imagine a fighter? Some heavily armored guy with a shield and a big one-handed weapon, blocking/parrying attacks with his shield and counter-attacking with his weapon, sometimes shield-bashing. Dodging big attacks, side-stepping charges, being surrounded but his enemies being the ones who are off-balance and challenged...that sort of thing.

We all know why the fighter doesn't work, at least not past 6th level or so.

In my houserules, the fighter still exists, but it's for dipping or npcs. I'm also not using ToB for my current world/campaign, but I'm not really opposed to it (there's plenty of it I don't like, but eh). If my players want to play a "fighter", they play a paladin, a ranger, or a cleric of war and strength.

Long story short, in my houserules, all the PC classes are about the same tier, and everybody gets spells at every level. The "warrior" types get combat related spells so they can stay relevant at higher levels. The cleric of war and strength is pretty much a fighter in spirit, but they can up their own size/strength/durability as well as having access to, say, flame strike or short-range teleportation or flight or whatever for enemies who would otherwise be near-impossible for a regular fighter to defeat.

I also limit the number of gargantuan-or-larger monsters in my campaigns, and those that do exist are typically dumb beasts or dwell in the ocean.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-12, 06:30 PM
I finally posted my Tier 1 martial class, the Champion. It is a preliminary build in that it hasn't been playtested yet. You guys tell me what you think.

The Champion's intention is a badass martial character that is both a mistress of weapons and has many varied support abilities, buffs and utilities. She should be able to deal with a wizard or other spellcaster - at least in Pathfinder that the more stupid and nonsensical exploits are avoided.

She should also be able to deal with monsters, as shown by the pic of one squaring against a Pit Fiend.

Yitzi
2013-03-12, 06:48 PM
Simply resorting to ranged attacks makes two weapon fighters and those who aren't trained in the way of the bows useless, which solves nothing.

I would say that one of the hallmarks of a good fighter fix is that there are no 2-weapon fighters or melee-only fighters (except for barbarians if you fold them into fighter); a fighter, at least by level 5, should be versatile enough to be good at more than one combat style.


No, we do need a class system. Systems with classes are a) more beginner-friendly and b) more flavor-friendly. Besides, here are the Paths I see for each of my suggested 4 classes;

Fighter
Basic abilities are good BAB, high HP, good fort and will saves, weapon and feat mastery. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Barbarian: rage powers
Defender: toughness, recovery, interrupts and blocks
Slayer: knowledge, weakness exploits, crippling strikes
Paragon: mobility, strength and dexterity feats
Tactician: initiative, terrain, action economy manipulation
Warlord: morale manipulation, combat support

Rogue
Basic abilities are good BAB, medium HP, good reflex and will saves, dodge and skill mastery. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Assassin: stealth, sneak attack expert
Hunter: ranged combat, traps expert
Monk: unarmed combat, mobility
Trickster: diplomacy/bluff/social expert
Charlatan: item/device/treasure expert


Cleric
Basic abilities are medium BAB, medium HP, good fort and will saves, divine casting. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Druid: nature/shapeshifting expert
Priest: domain magic expert
Healer: restoration/defense expert
Inquisitor: smite powers/destructive magic expert
Cultist: planar magic, ritual casting
Oracle: divination magic and sight powers

Mage
Basic abilities are bad BAB, low HP, good reflex and will saves, arcane casting. Paths will be the following archetypes;
Artificer: powers related to items and constructs
Sorceror: spontaneous casting expert
Wizard: magic school specialist
Spellshaper: metamagic/spellslot manipulation
Warlock: innate powers

You left out:
-Someone to use negative energy/create undead (should probably fall under cleric)
-Some sort of summoner, whether cleric-based or mage-based.
-Mages should probably be divided up by abilities rather than methods the way the others are; artificer already fits that, but the others are more about method. Perhaps someone for battlefield control, someone for debuffs, and someone for direct damage spells.
-It's also probably a good idea to have an unspecialized form of each one that has a bit of everything.

Just to Browse
2013-03-12, 06:57 PM
If the idea of a single Fighter class doesn't appeal (I have the same opinion as Eldan, but only because it decreases multiclassing and thus potential CharOp), you can achieve a similar effect by putting classes into categories by theme. A chapter of the The Better Player's Handbook could be called The Fighter and have 6 classes in it labeled weaponmaster, hunter, barbarian, knight, etc.

Rogue Shadows
2013-03-12, 10:24 PM
I suppose it comes down to preference, but not only do I see the Rogue as meaningfully distinct from the Fighter, but I actually see in 3.5 D&D two different types of Rogue; the thief-type (who focuses on skills, stealing stuff, agility, and backstabbing) and the adventurer-type (who focuses on trapfinding, supporting the party, being decent at combat, etc). Or basically street thief verses dungeon delver.

This again probably comes down to preference and what I've grown up playing, though...sort of like how Russians have two distinct words for blue, translated into English as light blue and dark blue, but to a Russian they aren't shades of the same color, but rather two completely distinct colors.

Eldan
2013-03-13, 09:09 AM
I was looking through old homebrew notes recently, and I found something I had given several titles: "Catalyst", "Man of no Fate", "The Undestined"...

Basically, I had started with a simple fluff idea. All is predetermined by destiny. Except for the fate of heroes. Heroes are those who defy prophecy and predetermination.

It had a few simple ability suggestions. It did not trigger prepared actions or contingent spells. It could not be found with divinations and events it interacted with could not be foretold with it. Opponents lost insight bonuses against it and, at higher levels, insight bonuses got turned around into penalties. It also had the ability to just "say no" to certain actions taken against it, and to simply take 20 on a single roll so often per day.

Mostly reactive and passive abilities, really, which is always a shame for a class, and certainly not tier 2. But quite strong and an interesting idea to take a martial character in, I thought.


Edit: I certainly agree that the rogue and the fighter should be different. But my problem is this. If you abstract to the point that the wizard, warlock and sorcerer are all the same class because they cast spells, one just does it through learning and the other through blood, aren't the fighter and the rogue the same class? Because they both hit things with weapons, one just does it openly and the other sneakily.

Yitzi
2013-03-13, 09:50 AM
But my problem is this. If you abstract to the point that the wizard, warlock and sorcerer are all the same class because they cast spells, one just does it through learning and the other through blood, aren't the fighter and the rogue the same class? Because they both hit things with weapons, one just does it openly and the other sneakily.

No; that's a reason that the normal fighter and the US trade-bonus-feats-for-sneak-attack fighter are the same class. Rogues are not about hitting things with weapons, they're about skill use. Sneak attack is sort of a secondary ability.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-13, 10:41 AM
No; that's a reason that the normal fighter and the US trade-bonus-feats-for-sneak-attack fighter are the same class. Rogues are not about hitting things with weapons, they're about skill use. Sneak attack is sort of a secondary ability.
Same question stands, actually. You still have a clear, rules-defined difference between fighter and rogue.

"I learn my spells via communing with a god" vs. "I learn my spells from a book" vs. "I do what I want!" are not clear, rules-defined differences between clerics, wizards, and sorcerers. It boils down to this: they all cast spells. Just like all fighters hit things with weapons, or all rogues are (theoretically) skillmonkeys. The fact that their spells come from different sources is mainly a fluff distinction, akin to "my fighter studied under Pai Mei" vs. "my fighter fought in the Iron Legion".

So, either shove all the casters into one class, or else make fighter, rogue, etc. into different flavors of "Fighting Man", to hearken back to the older days.

Eldan
2013-03-13, 10:53 AM
See, I'd much rather see them with more different casting mechanics. Vancian is a perfect fit for an intelligence-based scholarly caster. Not so much for a sorcerer. I suggest a charisma-based psion for that, maybe. The cleric, I honestly have no idea. Perhaps invocations, with a focus on passive ones.


Ooh, something Binder-like for clerics could be interesting. You make deals with your god. You take a vow for this day, and in exchange get a set of abilities.

So, instead of Binding Naberius to get the ability to talk to crowds, you take a Vow of Honesty for the day and become a fantastic orator.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-13, 11:04 AM
If you abstract to the point that the wizard, warlock and sorcerer are all the same class because they cast spells, one just does it through learning and the other through blood
They aren't the same class by the time they are wizards and sorcerers. By that I mean that a Mage 20 with full Wizard and Artificer paths is going to be a preparatory caster with specialization in his school of magic that can learn spells from scrolls, casts from intelligence and has item-related abilities. While a Mage 20 with full Sorceror and Spellshaper paths is going to cast off charisma, have spontaneous casting, bonus spell slots, limited spells known and has spell slot and metamagic abilities.

And the mage taking Warlock and Spellshaper paths doesn't have more than a handful of spells but has multiple SLAs and can burn those spell slots to enhance and manipulate his SLAs.

With that system you cut down on the massive number of PrCs and base classes needed because you have one class that can evolve into significantly different playstyles without needing a bazillion extra pages of splatbooks and dead levels that need to be PrCed.

Oh wait, that's actually a drawback for gaming companies. :smalltongue:




aren't the fighter and the rogue the same class? Because they both hit things with weapons, one just does it openly and the other sneakily.
Nah. As others said, the martial character is the ultimate authority in combat, especially physical conflicts and large-scale wars. (that's why I named the class "Champion" and not "Fighter")
On the contrary the Rogue is the ultimate authority in utility; he can still fight but his main usefulness should be in stealth (both in sneaking and against sneaking), social situations, wealth, scouting, trapping (both setting and finding/removing traps), information (forgery, espionage, lore, infiltration and the like). His fighting is directly enhanced by her skill and other abilities rather than being her primary focus.

Yitzi
2013-03-13, 12:10 PM
Same question stands, actually. You still have a clear, rules-defined difference between fighter and rogue.

"I learn my spells via communing with a god" vs. "I learn my spells from a book" vs. "I do what I want!" are not clear, rules-defined differences between clerics, wizards, and sorcerers. It boils down to this: they all cast spells. Just like all fighters hit things with weapons, or all rogues are (theoretically) skillmonkeys. The fact that their spells come from different sources is mainly a fluff distinction, akin to "my fighter studied under Pai Mei" vs. "my fighter fought in the Iron Legion".

So, either shove all the casters into one class, or else make fighter, rogue, etc. into different flavors of "Fighting Man", to hearken back to the older days.

Wait, I think I'm missing something major in your argument..."shove all the casters into one class" and "make fighter, rogue, etc. into different flavors of 'Fighting Man'" are both about combining classes, so if you don't combine one that's a reason not to combine the other.


See, I'd much rather see them with more different casting mechanics. Vancian is a perfect fit for an intelligence-based scholarly caster. Not so much for a sorcerer. I suggest a charisma-based psion for that, maybe. The cleric, I honestly have no idea. Perhaps invocations, with a focus on passive ones.


Ooh, something Binder-like for clerics could be interesting. You make deals with your god. You take a vow for this day, and in exchange get a set of abilities.

While I wouldn't pick that exact combination*, the idea of different casting mechanics for different power sources is a very good one.


*I don't really like Vancian casting enough to keep it if things are being changed anyway, but a spellpoints-like system seems a good idea for the wizard, with prepared spells being limited by intelligence. Limit his ability to regain spellpoints during an adventure, but let him "take apart" ongoing spells (mainly his own, but even an enemy's if he has the time and skill to do it) for part of the spellpoints used to cast them, and you've got a noticeable flavor with clear gameplay ramifications. A psion-like mechanic for the sorcerer seems good, but give him access to ALL spells (since he doesn't have to learn them), but his effective caster level is equal to the number of points he spends (since he doesn't have the skill to use a small amount of power effectively.)
Clerics, if they don't use bindings, could have two point systems; one would track the cleric's own ability to channel his deity's power and would work like spellpoints, whereas the other would channel his deity's willingness to give power and would (a) cost double for stuff not in his deity's spheres, (b) be free when acting directly on his deity's orders, and (c) be regained through service rather than time. And of course any spell can be vetoed or changed by his diety at will. Throw on a fairly generous limit based on his diety's power (a servant of a minor god isn't going to be throwing around 9th level spells), and you've got noticeable flavor.

Eldan
2013-03-13, 12:45 PM
I've sort of already done that to the wizard, see my signature. Not spell points, but "number of spells prepared". It works reasonably well, though I've only tested it much at low levels, and with a lot of other changes.

I have begun brewing my binder cleric now. I'm calling it "Oathbound".

Edit: and I've said it many times, but I love, love, love, LOVE Vancian casting. It's the best representation of an intelligent, scholarly, tactical spellcaster I've ever seen in any system. I've never seen another system for spellcasting that rewards and demands so much forethought.

Gideon Falcon
2013-03-13, 11:56 PM
I'm kindof confused by the number of people saying that maneuvers are bad because they turn fighters into spellcasters. Maneuvers come as close as anything to fixing the main problem with fighters, that they only have on thing they can do. In order for a fighter to be what a fighter is supposed to be, they need a set of abilities that they can choose to use, rather than just choosing how much to invest into power attack.

Gnorman
2013-03-14, 12:49 AM
I'm kindof confused by the number of people saying that maneuvers are bad because they turn fighters into spellcasters. Maneuvers come as close as anything to fixing the main problem with fighters, that they only have on thing they can do. In order for a fighter to be what a fighter is supposed to be, they need a set of abilities that they can choose to use, rather than just choosing how much to invest into power attack.

Because there's a portion of the D&D community that bristles when someone suggests that the fighter do something supernatural. It does not fit their conception of what a fighter should be, i.e. "mundane bad-ass."

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-14, 04:13 AM
I'm kindof confused by the number of people saying that maneuvers are bad because they turn fighters into spellcasters. Maneuvers come as close as anything to fixing the main problem with fighters, that they only have on thing they can do. In order for a fighter to be what a fighter is supposed to be, they need a set of abilities that they can choose to use, rather than just choosing how much to invest into power attack.
Because there's a portion of the D&D community that bristles when someone suggests that the fighter do something supernatural. It does not fit their conception of what a fighter should be, i.e. "mundane bad-ass."
Hey, I made a mundane bad-ass that power-wise and option-wise far surpasses the maneuver classes. She can fight in melee and ranged, actively defend others, interrupt enemy actions, bring tactics to nonmagical combat via tactical buffs and action economy manipulation, perform great feats of strength and speed, use powerful crippling blows, be a great leader and warlord through morale manipulation over whole armies and so on and so forth.


I admit that I mistakenly labeled her Tier 1 based on power alone and argued too much before I realized my mistake though. :smallredface:

Seerow
2013-03-14, 06:22 AM
Because there's a portion of the D&D community that bristles when someone suggests that the fighter do something supernatural. It does not fit their conception of what a fighter should be, i.e. "mundane bad-ass."

But the Warblade doesn't even do anything supernatural. The entire objection is to the presentation, which is ridiculous.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-14, 07:09 AM
I half-agree with Seerow here. There are systems where everything, from spellcasting to fighting to thievery is done with similar skill checks. The players using those systems generally don't complain, because to them, what happens inside the game is what's important, not what kind of dice are rolled, or how the abilities are notated.

The reason I only half-agree is because the kind of system used in ToB is almost a carbon copy of the traditional spellcasting system. I understand the outrage when after decades of not applying that system to fighters it is suddenly lauded as the one true thing giving fighters nice things.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-03-14, 09:11 AM
I'm kindof confused by the number of people saying that maneuvers are bad because they turn fighters into spellcasters. Maneuvers come as close as anything to fixing the main problem with fighters, that they only have on thing they can do. In order for a fighter to be what a fighter is supposed to be, they need a set of abilities that they can choose to use, rather than just choosing how much to invest into power attack.
These people are what is generally referred to as "silly."

Yitzi
2013-03-14, 09:13 AM
The reason I only half-agree is because the kind of system used in ToB is almost a carbon copy of the traditional spellcasting system. I understand the outrage when after decades of not applying that system to fighters it is suddenly lauded as the one true thing giving fighters nice things.

This. The real problem with ToB is that it's mechanically too similar to spellcasting. Different classes should use different complex mechanics. (By "complex mechanics" I mean anything big enough to justify its own chapter for something that does not apply to every class.)

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-14, 09:17 AM
Wait, I think I'm missing something major in your argument..."shove all the casters into one class" and "make fighter, rogue, etc. into different flavors of 'Fighting Man'" are both about combining classes, so if you don't combine one that's a reason not to combine the other.


The point I was making was more...

"The casters have about as much divergence (based on spell use) as different flavors/styles of a fighter."

If one caster gains spells by study, and another gains spells by devotion, there's about as much rules difference there as between a fighter who uses a glaive and a fighter who uses sword-and-board. So why do we handle one situation by making two classes, but the other situation by encouraging one class to specialize?

So, either lump all the casters together (in order to be honest about the fact that really, they're not all that different) or else genericize the rogue enough that you can justify having crunch-similar, fluff-divergent classes. (I worded that latter part poorly in my initial post there.)

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-14, 09:23 AM
Well, clerics and wizards have entirely different spell types thus different class. There's as much mechanical difference between them as between fighter and rogue.


That said, I'm currently making a "generic" rogue that should be actually useful for a change.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-14, 09:41 AM
Well, clerics and wizards have entirely different spell types thus different class. There's as much mechanical difference between them as between fighter and rogue.

Well, as you've outlined it...

Fighters: combat
Rogues: skills
Clerics: spells
Wizards: other spells

And, given that the function of all spells is "be useful in a powerful way", where being useful could either mean bypassing challenges or being good in combat (all the spell lists seem to have ways of doing both in a really solid way), I see little difference between the last two. That's all I'm saying.

Yes, they technically have different spell lists, but that's no different than two fighters who are specced with different feat chains.

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-14, 09:45 AM
Actually spells mean different things for clerics and wizards;

Wizard: offense, magic manipulation, bypassing challenges.
Cleric: defense, health and protection, physical boosts.


At least that's how it's supposed to work.

Seerow
2013-03-14, 09:48 AM
Well, as you've outlined it...

Fighters: combat
Rogues: skills
Clerics: spells
Wizards: other spells

And, given that the function of all spells is "be useful in a powerful way", where being useful could either mean bypassing challenges or being good in combat (all the spell lists seem to have ways of doing both in a really solid way), I see little difference between the last two. That's all I'm saying.

Yes, they technically have different spell lists, but that's no different than two fighters who are specced with different feat chains.

The main issue in my eyes is that the Rogue skills translate to basically "Any mundane skill in the game". Mundane skills are primarily how non-casters get to interact with the world outside of combat.

So having a core class whose job it is to do every mundane skill better than anyone else can basically kills the fighter dead when it comes to having any sort of meaningful out of combat role.


On the other hand, magic has no such limitations. The types of things magic can do are so varied, even taking a small subsection of it and giving each to two classes, those two classes are still likely to have more overall utility than the mundane character. Trying to split the utility a mundane can bring among two classes stretches them too thin and makes them even less capable of competing. Giving all of the utility to one class (ie the rogue scenario) makes that one class passable, but the other class (see: The Fighter) is left with nothing is left useless out of combat.

Eldan
2013-03-14, 09:52 AM
Well, as you've outlined it...

Fighters: combat
Rogues: skills
Clerics: spells
Wizards: other spells

And, given that the function of all spells is "be useful in a powerful way", where being useful could either mean bypassing challenges or being good in combat (all the spell lists seem to have ways of doing both in a really solid way), I see little difference between the last two. That's all I'm saying.

Yes, they technically have different spell lists, but that's no different than two fighters who are specced with different feat chains.

Which is why I suggest giving Clerics a different mechanic. Vancian doesn't represent Faith all that well.

Zelkon
2013-03-14, 10:28 AM
Which is why I suggest giving Clerics a different mechanic. Vancian doesn't represent Faith all that well.

Spell points make more sense for clerics, calling on the faith when they need it.

Rakoa
2013-03-14, 10:51 AM
Vancian does not fit at all. I can't imagine the faithful worshipper of some god getting up in the morning, beginning his prayers, and praying for exactly everything he would need that day. Then when it turns out he is missing something important, his god says "Well though crackers Cleric boy, you said you wanted Shield and thats what you get."

Super_slash2
2013-03-14, 11:04 AM
Well, as you've outlined it...

Fighters: combat
Rogues: skills
Clerics: spells
Wizards: other spells

And, given that the function of all spells is "be useful in a powerful way", where being useful could either mean bypassing challenges or being good in combat (all the spell lists seem to have ways of doing both in a really solid way), I see little difference between the last two. That's all I'm saying.

Yes, they technically have different spell lists, but that's no different than two fighters who are specced with different feat chains.

Surely that's similar to saying that there is no real difference between Abjuration and Conjuration apart from the lists in them? Similar but not the same because you have specialisation - which you could surely do for Clerics and Wizards as well (for example, their familiars)?

If you're saying that there is no difference that reflects the difference in Power Source, then surely you can easily change that too? Just play up the God angle for clerics - did you make your daily sacrifices today? No? Well, better not get in any fights later.

What you could do is what I wanted to do before I opened the list of deities and cried myself to sleep : write up a list of services and rituals and expected actions for each God and use them as criteria for being "a good cleric". So, the ones based on learning more stuff will get happier with you should you actually learn more stuff and be actively upset with you should you destroy books or something. Gods that heavily favour innate ability over supplementary ability get frowny-face over you using magical items and things. Not that you should be punished for associating with others who do (don't want another paladin) but there is no reason why you can't force gameplay to revolve around the lore BETTER if that's what you ultimately want.

For a wizard, i don't know, make them actually pick up a book and read? I'm sure you can think of something.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-03-14, 11:57 AM
Which is why I suggest giving Clerics a different mechanic. Vancian doesn't represent Faith all that well.
Really? Because I feel like Clerics are the only ones for whom prepared casting makes sense. You're not using your own power, after all-- your god is handing you pre-made magic. Wizards know how to build a gun from scratch and do so; clerics are handed a gun and told "do my work."

Eldan
2013-03-14, 12:45 PM
Which is why I'm building the Oathbound. I feel soulbinding is actually the perfect magic for clerics.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-03-14, 12:46 PM
Surely that's similar to saying that there is no real difference between Abjuration and Conjuration apart from the lists in them? Similar but not the same because you have specialisation - which you could surely do for Clerics and Wizards as well (for example, their familiars)?

Well, put that way...

"The difference between different casters' spell lists is more or less akin to the difference between different Wizard schools."

Belial_the_Leveler
2013-03-14, 01:33 PM
"...which is a far greater difference than that between various martial classes"


If you add the above then that statement would be complete.

Yitzi
2013-03-14, 03:01 PM
The point I was making was more...

"The casters have about as much divergence (based on spell use) as different flavors/styles of a fighter."

If one caster gains spells by study, and another gains spells by devotion, there's about as much rules difference there as between a fighter who uses a glaive and a fighter who uses sword-and-board. So why do we handle one situation by making two classes, but the other situation by encouraging one class to specialize?

So, either lump all the casters together (in order to be honest about the fact that really, they're not all that different) or else genericize the rogue enough that you can justify having crunch-similar, fluff-divergent classes. (I worded that latter part poorly in my initial post there.)

Wait, "genericize the rogue"? Don't you mean "split the rogue and fighter into multiple classes each, based on flavor"?

In any case, you left out a third option: Make the different flavors of caster have substantial mechanical differences that justify them being different classes.