Fighter counting as full initiator levels?

[Segev]

Obviously, this isn't going to "fix" the poor Fighter, but how much of a bump in effectiveness would this give him? That is, if every fighter level counted as a full IL for all Initiator classes (as opposed to the 1/2-IL that non-initiator classes normally count as)?

This would likely synergize at least a little with the fact that he can spend Fighter feats on maneuvers and stances.

[ngilop]

YES do this.


the half level crap was just a slap in the face to the poor fighter to say 'yeah we totally said you are the single greatest combantant in the game, but yeah we lied to you and to everybody who ever bought anything from D&D so heres more insult ontop BWAHAHA casters rule!'

all its going to do is make the fighter a bit better.. also get rid of that crappy 3 max martial studies for the fighter.

[Twilightwyrm]

I'd say go for it, including removing the three Martial Study cap. If the fighter wants to work long and hard to finally have the ability to Teleport, Fly, say "no" to spells and effects, and burn down entire towns in the space of less than an hour in exchange for a +3 to hit and weapon damage, by all means he has earned it. True, it will take some work, and he won't likely ever have the sheer power of a full martial adept, but it does carve out the fighter a niche (aside from "good for dipping") insomuch as he is potentially the most customizable maneuver using class. Hell, give him the ability to swap out his fighter feats at the start of every day (thus effectively giving him access to anything on the maneuver list), and he might, just might, break into Tier 3.

[HammeredWharf]

It could make various Dungeoncrasher / Zhentarim Fighter + ToB builds more effective.

[Andion Isurand]

You have my vote in favor of this idea.

[Alex12]

Hm. Full initiator levels, some kind of recovery mechanic for maneuvers, no cap on Martial Study, and the ability to swap out feats (or, at minimum, get the warblade ability to refocus weapon-specific feats to a different weapon) would be about the minimum to properly fix Fighter. But if you're doing that, you might as well just play a Warblade.

[DarkSonic1337]

Actually having the ability to switch out feats every day in combination with full initiator level and no limit on martial stance would make the fighter a VERY solid tier three.

He could use his massive number of feats to qualify for high level maneuvers and switch them out every day, and even with just the utility of Shadow Hand, Diamond Mind, and White Raven he'd have already gotten versatile enough to match the Swordsage.

Without the feat switch every day though I still wanna call him tier 4. I don't think any particular discipline is versatile enough to reach tier 3 status (UNLESS he devotes heavily to shadow hand. Teleportation, all day flight, incorporeality, it's a really loaded utility discipline).

[Irk]

Thug Dungeoncrasher Zhentarim Fighter is already high T4 if not low T3, so you'd have to make sure not to outshine other ToB classes if those are involved in the game. It sounds funny, but it could just make Warblade irrelevant. You might as well gestalt Warblade and Fighter, granting access to Fighter ACFs to make a really strong martial T3. I like the idea a lot.

[eggynack]

Sounds cool. It might be good to broaden it too, toss the full initiator level thing to any melee focused class of low power level, except maybe warrior, cause those fellows aren't supposed to get cool things. I suppose the question then is whether to draw the power level line at or below barbarian competency. Either way sounds good. Point is, paladins and monks need hugs too.

[Alex12]

Sounds cool. It might be good to broaden it too, toss the full initiator level thing to any melee focused class of low power level, except maybe warrior, cause those fellows aren't supposed to get cool things. I suppose the question then is whether to draw the power level line at or below barbarian competency. Either way sounds good. Point is, paladins and monks need hugs too.

Eh, if you gave monks swordsage maneuvers (including stances, refresh mechanic, counts as swordsage for purposes of maneuvers, etc), I'm sure they'd be fine.

[Coidzor]

Obviously, this isn't going to "fix" the poor Fighter, but how much of a bump in effectiveness would this give him? That is, if every fighter level counted as a full IL for all Initiator classes (as opposed to the 1/2-IL that non-initiator classes normally count as)?

This would likely synergize at least a little with the fact that he can spend Fighter feats on maneuvers and stances.

Master of the 9 is a lot easier to get into, IIRC. Fighter 9 gets Dungeoncrasher+Zhentarim Fighter goodies & then Warblade 1/Swordsage 1/Crusader 1 gets them IL 11 in all three progressions at level 12. I don't think Fighter X/Warblade Y is quite competititve with Warblade 20, but if you want more than one martial adept class I think Fighter is the way to bump the IL of both by a fair bit while also grabbing stuff like robilar's gambit prereqs and such.

Idiot Crusader might be easier to do as well? All Crusaders can probably now grab Robilar's Gambit & Karmic Strike.

So it's mostly a bump for the initiating classes as now they don't lose nearly as much when they dip for feats/sneak attack.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I do exactly this, along with giving Fighter a few readied maneuvers (4 over 20 levels....not many) that can be re-used (the rest remain 1/encounter, so it's different than other martial adept classes) and free martial studies that don't count towards the limit of 3. I also let fighter bonus feats taken on martial study not count towards the limit of 3.

I'd also suggest giving monk full initiator level progression among other buffs...do remember it's actually the weakest core class, not fighter. And is more flavor-aligned to martial arts as it is.

[TSED]

Master of the 9 is a lot easier to get into, IIRC. Fighter 9 gets Dungeoncrasher+Zhentarim Fighter goodies & then Warblade 1/Swordsage 1/Crusader 1 gets them IL 11 in all three progressions at level 12.


Honestly, this would be absolutely terrifying. A fighter basically stops being a 'fighter' and becomes 'a very powerful chassis to springboard into Martial Adepts.'

You basically just go fighter until [level campaign is starting at -3] and grab dungeoncrasher and zhent ACF, plus all the bonus feats (if high enough to), and more or less become a warblade AND crusader AND swordsage.

Fighter levels themselves wouldn't be T3 yet, but making use of all three martial adepts turns you into probably the most powerful of T3s. It might even have enough power to get into the very rockbottom of T2 - this is now a guy who has access to:

Flight.
Oodles of bonus damage.
Teleports.
Very solid saves (yay diamond mind).
Heals (both self and party).
White Raven Tactics!
Alternate movement modes (flight, air-walk, spiderclimb, etc.)
Repositioning capability (both setting sun and dungeoncrasher bullrushes)
Enemy Action Reduction (Overwhelming Mountain Strike, Hydra Slaying Strike, etc.)
Condition applications (various fears + zhent = frightened, tons of flatfooted, immobilizations, etc. etc.)
And more. You get the idea.

Remember that the first level of swordsage grants 6 (!) maneuvers, and the first level of crusader grants 5(!), so between 3 levels you've gotten 14 maneuvers of "almost the highest possible." Why would you want to play a full crusader / warblade / swordsage, ever?

[SinsI]

How about making it Full initiator for One discipline, Half Initiator for all the others?

[Klarth]

Just treat the Sublime Fighter multiclass like any of the other initiators: for other classes, fighter levels only count as half IL.

So a Fighter 6 has a fighter IL of 6, and can grab a third level maneuver with Martial Study as a bonus feat.
A Fighter 6/Warblade 1 has a warblade IL of 4 (not 7), and can only grab second level maneuvers with his warblade.

[Gwendol]

Nice, and seconding the proposal to extend the invitation to a few other martial classes (paladin, knight, swashbuckler).

[Segev]

Hm. If one is "extending the invitation" to all "fighter-type" classes, might it be easier to just set IL==BAB? This has an unfortunate side effect of making clerics perhaps too good at Maneuvers, though.

I've actually contemplated the possibility of treating all "* Level" things the way martial adepts do: half your class levels in non * classes. (* = Manifester, Caster, Incarnum-user, Initiator, Binder, whatever)

Likely, though, that's too fundamental a change to do without revamping a fair bit of the system to support it.

[Gwendol]

No, I was really just suggesting it for those classes to give them a bit more going for them. The knight meshes well with crusader, obviously, but could also do well with Warblade under these rules. The swashbuckler might see use outside of Daring Outlaw, which would be cool.

[Bloodgruve]

I like this idea for Initiator Level. I also like the idea of Fighters able to switch out bonus feats daily.

Maybe drop in a refresh mechanic for Fighter that they simply can't initiate the same maneuver twice in a row and no more then once a turn if they're granted by a Feat? This could give players a reason to take a look at Fighter vs Warblade.

Fighters still have less HP, less Maneuvers n Stances and no other class abilities. Oh, they get Heavy Armor Proficiency.. I'd maybe add Skill Focus or something to their Bonus Feat list in case they need some help with certain schools?

Maybe give Fighters a modified Weapon Aptitude like Warblade, limiting it to Exotic Weapon Proficiency? But I'm making this into a Fighter class rework so I'll stop here...

Blood~

[Coidzor]

How about making it Full initiator for One discipline, Half Initiator for all the others?

So something like...
Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger => Warblade full, swordsage/crusader half
Knight, Paladin, Marshal => Crusader full, swordsage/crusader half
Rogue, Monk, Hexblade => Swordsage full, warblade/crusader half

[Trundlebug]

This thread is awesome!

I've been messing with this idea for a while. Well since ToB :smallbiggrin:. One thought was ftrs get limited access to one discipline they can switch daily but is a little strict. How far do you go before a fighter is a warblade though right? Really though a fighter should be able to sunder walls of force, cut through a fireball and battle meditate their way out of a domination, I've just had problems doing that within the confines of D&D :sigh:.

[Telok]

I actually did this in a campaign. It mostly turned Fighter into a better dip class, although one guy did go Swordsage 1 / Fighter ++.

What I did was:

Give a Fighter bonus feat at every Fighter level.
Allow Martial Study and Martial Stance to be taken more than 3 times when they are taken as a Fighter bonus feat.
Allow Fighter levels to count as full initatior levels for Martial Study and Martial Stance.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I actually did it by discipline, not class. Which causes some confusion/complication when adding actual martial adept classes to the build, but so be it. Basically, my fighter variant gets full IL progression for a specific set of class disciplines and the normal half progression for others. I have a few variant fighters with a different thematic set of class disciplines but for basic fighter, the class disciplines are Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, Setting Sun, Stone Dragon, Tiger Claw, and White Raven (and my fighter gets the relevant skills, like concentration). All the variant fighters share IH, SS, SD, and WR in common. Those just seemed like the "core fighter martial arts styles" to me. Pure martial skill, defensive counterattacking, overpowering foes, and leading soldiers into battle.

[Andion Isurand]

I actually did this in a campaign. It mostly turned Fighter into a better dip class, although one guy did go Swordsage 1 / Fighter ++.

What I did was:

Give a Fighter bonus feat at every Fighter level.
Allow Martial Study and Martial Stance to be taken more than 3 times when they are taken as a Fighter bonus feat.
Allow Fighter levels to count as full initatior levels for Martial Study and Martial Stance.



I did pretty much the same thing, along with a d12 hit dice and revising the fighter feats so that some of them scale a little bit with the number of feats one has taken from the list of fighter bonus feats.

Fighter Feat Scaling (http://magerune.blogspot.com/2014/04/fighter-feat-scaling.html)

Still working on formatting something using formal language that can be inserted into the game to help the fighter work with Martial Study more often, just not sure what form it will take.