Fighter or Warblade

[MirthTheBard]

Hi there! This is my first post so be gentle. I am still a relatively new D&D player and have a lot to learn.

I mostly just want to know about the fighter and warblade; can all of the feats of the fighter make it as strong as a warblade, or would a fighter have to delve into other classes in order to match a pure warblade (and if I would have to delve to be better, which classes?)?

I mostly play campaigns starting from level one if that makes a difference. Any and as much detail as possible about the two classes and how they compare is appreciated.

[eggynack]

I don't really think there's anything, short of pretty extreme cheese, that can get a fighter up to warblade levels. Warblades are basically just universally better. I also think that warblades are pretty great at level one, so you should be fine on that count.

[Wings of Peace]

You'll here conflicting opinions but I'm of the view that if focused solely on Charging or Tripping the Fighter can outperform a Warblade in a lot of combat scenarios. That said, optimizing a fighter to that level takes a good deal of system knowledge that you as a newer player may not have or may not have access to depending on your DM.

On the other side of the coin, the Warblade is a lot harder to mess up than a fighter. Maneuvers once you understand them are easy to use without optimization, give very real boosts to damage, saves, as well as other stats depending on how you use them, and can be refreshed easily. Learning maneuver mechanics will take a bit of extra reading, but overall I find the Warblade to be friendlier to new players and on average superior to the fighter.

So yes, the Fighter can perform certain roles well as mentioned in the first paragraph, but that's with relatively heavy amounts of optimization compared to the Warblade who is pretty solid out of the box.

[sonofzeal]

At lvl 1-5, Warblade almost invariably wins. The big disadvantage on Standard Action Strikes is the lack of full-attack, but at 1-6 you don't have that anyway and the Warblade can likely just straight-up overpower the Fighter across the board.


Beyond that... well, there's a lot of flexibility for Fighters. I've seen Fighters that could keep up with Warblades, generally by hyper-specializing (Trip, Grapple, Charge)... but while they can often outperform Warblades within their chosen niche, the Warblade has more diversity and more utility, and is generally way harder to shut down and/or kill.

On the other side though, both multiclass well, especially with eachother. A level or three of Warblade will do wonders for a Fighter, and a couple levels of Fighter will often help Warblades too. Both like Barbarian dips. Heck, both like dips in general, and dip well themselves. Both classes provide options that may be useful to any given martial character.

[avr]

A fighter can be set up to kill things (usually in just one way) well. A warblade can be set up to do so more easily and still have other options available. The latter is just easier to use IMO, though not necessarily more powerful.

At level 1 a fighter has a couple less hit points and skill points, a point or 2 more AC, and 10' less speed due to the heavier armour which gives him/her that AC. The warblade might well have Punishing Stance making them more equivalent to a barbarian at this level.

Once you've got 4 or 6 levels of fighter, you will probably have enough feats that any further required can be picked up via the base 1 per 3 levels, or at least would be less valuable than the class features you can get in prestige classes. A warblade does just fine sticking with their main class all the way to level 20.

[Sir_Thaddeus]

The only things Fighters have going for them against Warblades are simplicity and availability. They don't use any non-core mechanics, and they're available on the SRD. However, since you brought up Warblades, I assume you have access to the Tome of Battle; as for simplicity, maneuver mechanics are fairly easy to learn. Overall, I'd go with Warblade, though fighter dips are still somewhat useful.

[Kudaku]

In optimization (ie taking a character concept and trying to make him as optimal as possible) you'll often run into two terms, optimization floor and optimization ceiling.

Optimization ceiling is the upper limit for how powerful a class can be, and the optimization floor is the lower limit for how useless a class can be.
Some classes have both high ceilings and low floors - this would be a class that can be very, very powerful if built well and quite poor if built badly. An example of a class like this is the Sorcerer.
Some classes have high ceilings and high floors - these are the classes that it's fairly hard to break since they're good right out of the box.
Finally you have the classes that have low ceilings and low floors - these are the classes that it's fairly hard to excel with since they don't really bring anything to the table. An example of this could be the Healer, or the Warrior NPC class.

That reads a bit like a lecture and I'm sorry for dumping that on you, but I do it because the following statements understandable:

The fighter is a class with a low optimization ceiling and a medium-low optimization floor. It's a hard class to truly excel with.
The Warblade is a class with a medium optimization ceiling and a very high optimization floor. It's a very hard class to not play well.

Now, that might make it sound like it's a no-brainer but D&D is a group game - if everyone else are playing characters with low optimization the Warblade can wind up taking center stage and overshadowing some of the other party members.

So I'd say that Fighter or Warblade depends on what the rest of your party are playing, and how experienced they are.
If they're playing archivist, cleric, factotum, crusader then I'd say go for Warblade and have fun.
If they're playing rogue, paladin, healer, hexblade then I'd consider the fighter.

[Tvtyrant]

Neither. Go Psychic Warrior (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/classes/psychicWarrior.htm). You'll thank me for it :P The Duskblade is also swanky...

Actually Warblade is pretty awesome. It can go either Two Weapon or Two Handed styles effectively, and has a lot of variety.

[MirthTheBard]

Thanks everyone! Really helpful information. I just recently found out about the Tome of Battle and my two D&D mentors both like the Tome of Battle classes a lot, so I figured I'd find other people's opinions in order to further grasp the possibility of both classes.

[Humble Master]

I personally find Warblade better for a number of reasons.

Diamond Mind lets you replace saves and attack rolls with Concentration checks. It alos has soem nice damage boosting stuff and if you pump your concentration check is really good. Finally Time Stands Still is just awsome.

Iron Heart gives you more damage and with Mithril Tornado and Adamantine Hurricane you can dispatch hordes of foes with ease. Also Iron Heart Surge: Get rid of one effect instantly, nuff said.

Tiger Claw in a nutshell: Jump on people, kill them. Also Raging Mongoose is really good. You get a full attack in a swift action! For bonus points compine that with Time Stands Still! 3 Full Attack in one round!

Fighters can become better at one thing than Warblades (tripping, charging ect.) But in general a warblade will win and be cooler while doing it.

[Fyermind]

Fighters specialize. They specialize hard. If you want to do the same thing every fight or be useless, fighters are very good at that. I use fighters a lot as NPC opponents because they can do one (sometimes surprising) thing very well because all their feats went into it. If they try to diversify, they end up very weak.

Warblades have many more options in any given round, and can still play some of the fighter's specialization tricks. I prefer warblades for PCs or recurring villains because they are more useful in more varied situations.

I'd like to bring up another two optimization terms: Vertical and Horizontal optimization. Vertical optimization is about doing on thing very well, Horizontal optimization is about doing many different things. Both reach diminishing returns at some point because you run out of actions or you already won at 1000 damage per round, and pushing it over 9000 is just wasting energy.

Warblades come out of the box with decent horizontal and vertical optimization. Fighters come out of the box with a few extra feats to optimize with. Feats are, in general a terrible way to optimize horizontally (spells and class features are very good at horizontal optimization however, which is pretty much the basis of the tier system). Feats can be very good at vertical optimization however.

In my experience with my level of system mastery, using the terms previously described here and elsewhere in the thread and comparing only fighters and warblades:
Fighters have high vertical ceiling, but a low horizontal ceiling.
Warblades have a medium high vertical ceiling and a medium horizontal ceiling.

[Fouredged Sword]

Now, two levels of fighter and a barbaian level are a nice addition to a warblade if you are starting 6th level or so. You won't miss those three warblade levels and you get pounce, two feats you can move around from weapon to weapon, and +4 str and con for one battle a day.