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Peregrine
2007-09-15, 12:47 PM
So many people have come up with their own personal fighter fix that it’s not funny. Yes, the fighter is not a strong class. Yes, it lacks a solid concept that is carried across all aspects of the class. Yes, it is totally outclassed by spellcasters, especially CoDzillas who one-up the fighter at his own job. Tweak this, buff that, add this feat, these are all nice ideas, but ultimately they just don’t seem to cut it. What we need is more than just another fix; we need to think out an approach to these fixes. Our fighters need a meta-fix.

Concept
The first thing we need is a concept. Here are some differing approaches to the question of what The Fighter™ is.
The fighter is the trained soldier type. He doesn’t need to have been in an army per se, but his gimmick is knowing more about effective fighting than anyone else. This is supported by the fighter’s wealth of feats. But his lack of skills shoots this idea in the foot. If you want to adopt this idea, you have to give the fighter class skills that represent knowing about fighting. Leadership would be nice too.
The fighter is customisability. Everything she gets is a feat, an option. A fundamentally flawed approach, because it thinks of the fighter in terms of game mechanics rather than archetype. But we have to address this idea, because many people do hold to it. Any fighter revamp must either bow to this concept, or else decisively and openly choose to break with it. This attitude can also spill over into the game itself, in which case it tends to become...
The fighter is the generic tough guy. You can’t say what the fighter “is”, because the fighter is just anyone that focuses on taking a weapon and hitting things. Distinct from the above, in that this one is, well, kind of stupid. (“A class built on feats” is at least a nice idea, even if it doesn’t work very well in practice.) Those who hold to this idea tends to be actively against any kind of fix. “You can’t give the fighter that ability. They shouldn’t be able to do that. You’re pushing in on another class’s territory.” A class defined by not having a gimmick just doesn’t fit the game, okay? And every other class is adaptable enough to fill another’s shoes in a pinch. The fighter needs to get out of this rut if it’s to even fit in, never mind be competitive with the other classes. I only mention this here because it’s good to accept at the outset that you can’t please everyone.
The fighter is the character who hurts things with weapons. No, seriously: she knows how to put the right bit of steel in the right place to bring down any enemy. Great. Except that it doesn’t work that way; you can’t bring down “any” enemy like that. Contrary to legend, what does a lone fighter do against a dragon? It can fly, buddy. This approach is distinct from the previous one, in that this is, “The fighter does things this way; ergo, it should be possible to be effective doing things this way,” while that was, “The fighter does things this way, and if it doesn’t work, tough.”
The fighter is the action hero. He’s John McClane, or Rick O’Connell. He’s tough as nails, and never fazed by fighting forces that should be more than a match for him. He can always find a weakness to exploit, he makes use of the environment around him, and he’s adept with any weapon he comes across. He might not be the brightest spark, or always know what’s going on, but he’ll go toe-to-toe with anything. I picked those two specifically. John McClane, from the Die Hard series, seems to emulate very well the nature of combat in DnD: copious loss of hit points, and yet he just keeps moving. And Rick O’Connell, from The Mummy—well, what better movie series to illustrate a fighter type in the sort of supernatural setting that DnD usually turns up?
The fighter hurts wizards. This gets a mention because it’s the perennial favourite of the “rebalancing” school of fighter fixes: spellcasters are the best, therefore I’ll make fighters effective at hurting spellcasters.

Ideas
The following are ideas for new features and abilities to give the fighter, in order to try and make it match those of the above concepts that I feel are valuable (1, 4, and 5). Exactly how to make these available is up for discussion: they could be fixed abilities granted at certain levels, or they could be newly available feats, or whatever you like. I’m just throwing my ideas into the ring.

Favoured Weapon
Many people have tried powering up the fighter by powering up the Weapon Focus family of feats. Thing is, these aren’t actually bad feats (generally speaking, Weapon Focus will add more to your mean damage output than Improved Critical); but the fighter still has to burn feats on them, thus limiting his options for other manoeuvres and tying himself to a particular brand of equipment (especially painful if he fights with an asymmetric pair of weapons). So how’s this for an idea: Give the fighter a favoured weapon ability, like the ranger’s favoured enemy. Every few levels, the fighter can add a new weapon and advance an existing one. The levels of advancement could automatically grant the Weapon Focus line of feats in that weapon, or they might be something more diverse and flavourful.

Fighter Knowledge
Fighters should be able to size up enemies. This is something of a hole in the game; only in recent supplements have Wizards of the Coast given sufficient attention to the use of knowledge checks to assess an opponent. But, as a bard knows bits of information about people, places and items, fighters should be the experts in knowing how dangerous a creature is and how to hurt it. What follows are the possible applications of this skill; a fighter could gain access to each application at a different level.
Assess danger: The fighter can size up an enemy and decide whether attacking it seems easy, challenging, or suicidal. The level of detail revealed could go up by class level.
Assess damage: Like the above, but the fighter can estimate how much a creature is hurting.
Assess defences: The fighter knows the opponent’s AC. This is useful for letting the player decide, e.g. how much to power attack for. At low levels, this ability might be useable after the fighter has scored a hit; at higher levels, after missing; at higher levels yet, without even attacking—this would let the fighter instantly recognise when the creature does something that changes its AC, like declaring Dodge.
Creature knowledge: The fighter has pulled together bits and pieces of information about various creatures and how to fight them, substituting for ranks in knowledge skills.
Spot weakness: Could be rolled into the above, but even if a fighter fails to recognise that the creature before them is a troll, it could be reasonable to give him a chance to figure out that it looks like the sort of creature that fire might hurt.
Of these, I think assessing danger, assessing defences, and creature knowledge are the most promising applications. Checks could be 1d20 + fighter level + Wis modifier, with synergy from some Knowledge skill or other.

Better training
The fighter should have as class skills, any Knowledge category (or other skill) relevant to military tactics, organisation and leadership. The fighter could also possibly get some sort of leadership or cooperative combat abilities (a few exist as feats, but how about making them standard issue, or at least more attractive?)

Tough as nails
How many action heroes fall under mind control and start beating up their allies? A fighter should be good at making saves, through an ability like Evasion or Mettle or Slippery Mind or something else that gives them more chance of overcoming effects through sheer badassness, even when they target the fighter’s weak saves.

Never say die
Fighters should be supremely hard to actually finish off. Of course, the Diehard feat sort of puts paid to the cinematic cliché of going down, then recovering and getting back up, but there are other ways to handle this. Make them better at fighting off death, resistant to death effects—even resistance to coups de grace maybe? (Damage reduction is the barbarian’s gimmick. You slash the angry hulk before you, but he doesn’t seem to feel it. You slash a fighter, and she’ll feel it, she just won’t let it faze her.)

I hope to add to and refine this post over time, and with feedback. So please, have at it. If you want to suggest some mechanics to implement these ideas, by all means please do. :smallsmile:

Spiryt
2007-09-15, 01:14 PM
Fighter fixes never struck me as good idea. In fact "fixing" fighter will make him much better than Rangers, Barbarians and Paladin, let alone Swashbucklers.

And he anyway will be worst than spellcasters. Problem of 3.5 is not fighter being so weak (in fact he can be much more effective melee than let's say - ranger), but rather spellcaster being overpowered.

And it's harder to fix.

Lord Iames Osari
2007-09-15, 01:42 PM
I disagree, Spiryt. It's almost always easier to make something weak more powerful than to weaken something that's powerful now.

The #1 and #4 concepts seems to me to be what the fighter should be. I should say that I view the fighter as a more medieval-through-early modern kind of combatant, with a heavy focus on melee, formation fighting, and massed ranged fire.

Deepblue706
2007-09-15, 01:49 PM
Well, I think the point is not quite fixing their combative abilities so that they become unkillable machines of death and destruction (except for when they meet a Wizard, etc). Aesthetic with the Fighter is something that is more necessary. The Fighter can be dressed up with more minor abilities that give him more options, and display unique powers.

If you've heard of the Marshal class, I would say it sums up the "tactics" that I'd like to see Fighters have - truly, I think these kind of abilities are going to be implemented into 4ed's "Warlord" class, what I presume to be a Fighter/Commander. They can grant allies benefits on flanking damage via "Master of Tactics", and have other neat abilities. They also have Knowledge, Spot and Listen as class skills.

Here's a link: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20030906b

I made a relatively simple Fighter fix to make them tougher to kill, but didn't give them much more offensive capability, because fighters really can deliver a lot of damage...if they ever get the opportunity. Unfortunately, they never do in higher-end games. For some reason I can't access a link right now, so instead I'll sum up - I granted them Endurance and Diehard as free feats as they leveled up (but took away the bonus feat at level 1), and granted an ability to substitute a Fort save for any other save X times per/day (it mirrored the Paladin's Smite Evil progression). They also had the choice of expending these at any time to instead make use of other abilities they learn through levels, kind of like how a Cleric can sacrifice Turning Attempts for Divine Feats. These did various things, ranging from granting extra temporary HPs to granting the Haste effect on the Fighter. Aside from those abilities, they were also granted AC bonuses when armed with weapons which they've selected Weapon Focus for (and that whole chain), as well as reduced penalties for wearing medium and heavy armor. I also gave them Mettle.

Some of those abilities can be powerful, and I would not suggest directly trying to implement them - I'm only posting this to help spark some ideas of your own.

Spiryt
2007-09-15, 02:03 PM
I disagree, Spiryt. It's almost always easier to make something weak more powerful than to weaken something that's powerful now.


Probably, but then if you want to significally power up fighter, you must also power up other non caster classes. Otherwise it would have no sense.

Lord Iames Osari
2007-09-15, 02:07 PM
Here's my fighter fix (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2797895&postcount=6), if anyone's interested.

Finerty
2007-09-16, 02:34 AM
I noticed and posted this in another fighter fix thread:


A major problem with "fighter fixes", I've noticed, is a sweeping change that affects the entire class in all of it's drab, 20-level glory. Lower-level fighters are great. Swing martial weapon, hit monster. Hurray. The problem is that the power level increase of fighters is linear, and the power level increase of casters is closer to exponential. You actually don't need to worry too much about the first ten levels so much as you need to shift special abilities towards the later half to compensate for caster's higher-level spells.

On that note, If you want a good later-on ability, work in pounce. The clearest advantage of a fighter in higher levels is the ability to do some devastating attacks, and to have a full attack action of four very high attacks. Now, fighters also have heavy armor proficiency. This means low movement speed. Charging means getting to move double your move speed (good, because of that reduced move speed), and taking a +2 to attack (great, fits with the primary use of the class) and a -2 to AC (covered already by the heavy armor). Pounce means you get to make a full attack action at the end of a charge - brilliant, because a full attack action is the powerful weapon that any fighter, no matter their feat list, has.

Peregrine
2007-09-16, 01:44 PM
Favoured Weapon (Ex)
At 1st level, a fighter gains the Weapon Focus feat for free with any one weapon type. At 5th level and every four levels thereafter (9th, 13th, and 17th), the fighter may select an additional favoured weapon. In addition, at each such interval, the fighter's skill with all existing favoured weapons improves. He gains in succession the Weapon Specialization, Greater Weapon Focus, Greater Weapon Specialization and Weapon of Choice (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/ruIuiKxNerFBCOi5fK8.html)* feats with the chosen weapon types. (Apply the Weapon of Choice feat to one specific example of the weapon type, as normal for that feat.)

Thus, at 17th level, a fighter will have Greater Weapon Specialization and all preceding feats with two weapon types, and Weapon of Choice with a specific example of one of these types; Greater Weapon Focus and the preceding feats with a third weapon type; Weapon Specialization and Weapon Focus with a fourth weapon type; and Weapon Focus with a fifth weapon type.

* Open to suggestions here. I'm not too sold on Weapon of Choice: yay, +4 vs disarm or sunder? And another +1 to damage? The PHBII introduced further feats of this sort, but they're not OGL, sadly.

Alternatively... This is a grand total of 15 free feats, but only 9, maybe 12 of those will be useful (that's favoured weapons 1, 2 and maybe 3). Funnily enough, the fighter has 9 dead levels. How about giving one favoured weapon improvement at each dead level? The fighter can spread them across as many weapons as he chooses, or he can stack them up on a specific weapon type, though he must meet the prerequisites. This way, most fighters will still go for five improvements on one weapon type and four on another.

[hr]
And now some comments on others' replies:


Fighter fixes never struck me as good idea. In fact "fixing" fighter will make him much better than Rangers, Barbarians and Paladin, let alone Swashbucklers.

Depends how we fix it. We can always port across some improvements to those classes too. As Iames said, it's easier than depowering casters.


Well, I think the point is not quite fixing their combative abilities so that they become unkillable machines of death and destruction (except for when they meet a Wizard, etc). Aesthetic with the Fighter is something that is more necessary. The Fighter can be dressed up with more minor abilities that give him more options, and display unique powers.

I very much agree. The skills and knowledge stuff is meant to be along these lines. Favoured Weapon, as implemented above, is something of a death machine kind of improvement... but it's more because that's how I see fighters working, specialising in certain types of weapons. (Which they already can, by taking the feats normally, but I just like the idea of it being an included feature like this.)


...and granted an ability to substitute a Fort save for any other save X times per/day (it mirrored the Paladin's Smite Evil progression). They also had the choice of expending these at any time to instead make use of other abilities they learn through levels, kind of like how a Cleric can sacrifice Turning Attempts for Divine Feats. These did various things, ranging from granting extra temporary HPs to granting the Haste effect on the Fighter. Aside from those abilities, they were also granted AC bonuses when armed with weapons which they've selected Weapon Focus for (and that whole chain), as well as reduced penalties for wearing medium and heavy armor.

This, I like. :smallsmile:


I noticed and posted this in another fighter fix thread:

A very true observation, and probably the biggest objection I've come up with to Favoured Weapon as written. But bringing it in later would make it too weak. Substituting for some of the existing bonus feats (instead of getting both) could work...

The other ideas, especially the skills and knowledge improvements, should not make any distinct difference to power at low levels: just, as Deepblue said, improving their aesthetics.

Oh, and here's another idea: Give high-level fighters a selection of special abilities, like rogues get. Most people complain that the high-level bonus feats are a waste anyway, and nobody seems to have been able to homebrew enough to fill the need. :smallsmile: (Remember, rogues can take a feat instead of a special ability... so too could fighters.) Some of the features from Iames's fix, which looks good (if a bit linear for my tastes), could suit this well. So, of course, could pounce. :smallsmile: