Pathfinder Fighter Question

[Handsome Goblin]

I am new to pathfinder, and I am thinking about creating a human fighter. I am trying to diecide if I want to go falchion and get feats like improved critical ect, or if I want to go lucerne hammer and abuse reach/improved trip/attacks of opprotunity and such. Or maybe just greatsword pure damage? All I know for sure is I want to do something with two handers. If you could give me your opinion and advice it would be much appreciated thanks!

[Galvin]

Trip attacking is probably your best choice. If you take the feats Combat Expertise, Improved Trip and Combat Reflexes you can trip multiple people as you get more attacks per round and get a trip attack vs. them as they fall.

[navar100]

You could do all three eventually with all the feats you have, though with Power Attack any two-handed weapon would do so you can still use the falchion and/or hammer and go to town on damage and don't concern yourself about the greatsword.

Some people might advise against the combat maneuvers tactic due to 1) vehement despise of the changes to feats that were in 3E and 2) apoplexy about all the monsters in the bestiary at high levels with very high CMD.

My advice: 1) You'll have to decide for yourself whether you are willing to spend the feats for the combat maneuvers. It's probably best just to be an expert at one or two, such as disarming and tripping or bull rushing and tripping. This will leave room for feats for raw damage and critical hits.

2) Just because a monster exists in the bestiary doesn't mean it will exist in the campaign. Also, just because for a particular combat you do happen to face a creature where your combat maneuvers are suboptimal does not make you an utter failure at being a fighter. It just means you use other tactics instead, such as raw damage and gunning for critical hits. You don't need to use every feat you have every time all the time. However, it doesn't hurt to talk with your DM to be sure the combat styles you want will get used often enough. For example, if the campaign will have you fight lots of monsters using natural weapons and very few humanoids using weapons, feats dedicated to disarming will be a waste.

If the campaign will have a lot of spellcaster foes, there are feats that help you fight them such as making it harder to cast defensively or follow the opponent who tried to take a 5 ft step and still threaten him.

[Arc_knight25]

Pathfinder i would assume is hard to make a tripping build, because of the CMB and CMD system. From what I have noticed from our Rogue trying to tumble is that it is quite hard to do anything against alot of foes. I feel more often then not your going to be dropping your weapon so you yourself don't get tripped.

I would suggest going Crit build with the Falchion or going around with a great sword/axe.

[khachaturian]

if you want to go for combat maneuvers, i would suggest looking into barbarian instead of fighter. the rage power strength surge lets you add your barbarian level to a CMB check. i think that this is better than the improved *** feats since it is only one rage power, it scales with level, and doesn't require combat expertise (this would also allow you to dump int). while you would still provoke an attack of opportunity,if you are using a reach weapon, it shouldn't matter. you can also go for knockdown and knockback if you are so inclined. strength surge is usable once per rage, but even at low levels, you can rage cycle-lite with heart of the fields.

[AttilaTheGeek]

You don't need to put feats into damage other than Power Attack. When PAing with any two-handed weapon, you can kill pretty much anything with a full attack.

Oh, and, take Lunge. It's excellent.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I would avoid the tripping build, it won't work so well in PF.

At early levels, start with the greatsword, it's just plain better initially. Avoid plunging feats into a specific weapon till you get a feel for what you'd like to do and how getting new weapons is handled (is there a magic walmart or a crafting character? if not, does the DM actually drop (m)any falchions for you to get, or would you be like a thirsty man in the desert?), though I suppose you coul sink one feat in and retrain it at 4th level.

Assuming the DM won't hinder you acquiring falchions, you should eventually switch over to them. Basically around the point you qualify for Imp. Critical, or can afford a +1 keen weapon.

I would avoid the critical feats, even with a 15-20 threat range; they're just...really bad. Your high level feats should be things like Dazing/Stunning Assault, Penetrating Strike, Dreadful Carnage, and Pin Down. Earlier on, Power Attack and Lunge are the best feats to get. You might want Cornugon Smash at 6th or so, only to retrain it at 12th after picking up Dreadful Carnage.

[Handsome Goblin]

Thanks a lot for all the advice! I am new to pathfinder so don't know much about all the CMB stuff. So I might just go for the crit build with the falchion, and if I diecide to change my mind and go for tripping people I will be a barbarian. Thanks again!

[StreamOfTheSky]

The best tripper in Pathfinder would be a summoner's eidolon, or the summoner himself if he went with Synthesist archetype. If you wanted to do a tripper.

Still, not only did PF nerf combat maneuvers in general, trip now just flat out does not work...ever... on anything with a fly speed, and anything with lots of legs get impossibly huge bonuses. So it's only even useful on some enemies.

[Handsome Goblin]

If my party needed a caster I was looking into the summoner but I wont go into that haha.

[Hylas]

If you want to do maneuvers, or one specific maneuver, take a 1 level dip into maneuver master monk. You get an extra attack at -2 (maybe -1 because you can use your monk levels instead of BAB, so you might be able to finagle something) every time you full attack (no monk weapons needed) that can only be used on maneuvers, even ones that usually require a standard action. On top of beefing up your full attack at the cost of 1 BAB, you get a free maneuver feat while ignoring the prerequisites. My personal favorite is to use dirty trick for blindness.

Though to be honest, if you build your fighter right then you'll be smashing most things in one round anyways. It's what melee does.

[Spuddles]

I would go damage output route, personally. Something big and chunky. And since crit immunity isn't as common due to the changes to the undead/construct types, it's now loads of fun to land crits on skeletons and zombies. Undead are some of the most common monster types at all levels.


I would avoid the tripping build, it won't work so well in PF.

It really depends on enemy composition. Tripping vs. humanoid opponents and medium/large bipeds can work really well. Our DM used a lot of glaive wielding fighters vs. us and it totally locked us down.

On the downside, Pathfinder bumped up the BAB for a lot of monster types, though. Undead are now 3/4 instead of 1/2 and constructs are full instead of 3/4. And flying creatures are totally immune to trips.

If making the decision to trip or not, in a vacuum, not tripping is the obvious choice. Otherwise, it's a high feat investment and if you end up fighting giants or dragons or anything with flying, it's like you lit 2-4 feats on fire, and if you got those feats via fighter, it's basically wasting 2-8 levels of fighter.