Fighter Enhanced (Not Your Typical Fighter Rework) (Part 1: I Hit It With My Sword!)

[Plaguemask]

Plaguemask's Fighter Rework, The Fighter Enhanced.
In this rework I will adress some core issues with the fighter, focusing on 3 things;
Linear Progress
Lack of Mobility
'I Hit It with my Sword'!

Part 1: "I Hit It With my Sword for 2D6 damage!"
The Fighter gets a unique mechanic: Battle Focus. When out of combat, the Fighter has 0 Battle Focus. He gains Battle Focus (Hereby just called Focus) in one of three ways:
At the start of his round, the Fighter gains 1 Focus.
Whenever he hits an enemy with a melee or ranged physical attack, he gains 2 Focus.
Whenever he takes damage from an enemy, he gains 1 Focus.
A Fighter's maximum Battle Focus Is listed on the table at the bottom.
When out of Combat, the Fighter loses 5 focus every round.
Battle Focus allows the fighter to use a few tricks, hereby dubbed 'Battle Specilizations'
At level 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 19 the Fighter may pick up a new one. Instead of limiting by level alone, these abilities are limited by the Focus that Is required to use them, and seperated into categories based on It.
2 Focus: Dash, Parry, Piercing Strike.
-Dash increases the Fighter's movement speed by 20'ft for one move. This does not use an action, but does not stack with other movement-speed enhancing abilities.
-Parry lets the Fighter do an opposing attack roll against any creature attacking him as an immediate action (Once per Round). If his attack roll Is superior, the attack Is 'Parried' and the attacker Is considered flat-footed until the start of his next turn.
-Piercing Strike Is an attack that the fighter puts his body weight into, in order to drive his weapon through the opponent's defenses. The fighter gains a +2 to Attack, and If the target Is hit, their AC Is permanently reduced by 4 unless their armor Is repaired. This Is only usable once per encounter.
-Focused Shot Is a ranged full-round attack, firing a single arrow. The Fighter may add his Dexterity and Strength to Damage dealt, alternatively the Fighter may instead add his Strength to his Attack Roll.

5 Focus: Mordhau, Pummel, Withstand.
-Mordhau lets the Fighter attempt a Coup de Grâce on a Stunned, Paralyzed, or Paniced creature, as a full-round action. This ability requires an attack roll, but can not crit. Only usable once every 5 Rounds.
-Pummel Is a highly disruptive unarmed blow that disrupts any spell with a verbal or Somatic component being cast, and may be activated as an AoO or Swift action. Pummel does not however deal damage, and does not suffer a penalty If the Fighter does not have Improved Unarmed Strike
-Withstand allows the fighter to shape and discipline his Focus, steeling his nerves and body. He gains temporary hit points equal to his Fighter Level, Constitution Modifier, and Strength Modifier. This can be activated when Unconcious, but not whilst Dying. Similar to a Barbarian's rage, these hitpoints goes away at the end of combat, but will never kill the Fighter, leaving him at least one round away from death.
-Distracting Shot Is a ranged attack that attempts to Confuse the enemy. The attack only deals half damage. If the attack hits, the target has to roll a Fortitude (10+Fighter Level+Dexterity) or become Confused for two rounds.

9 Focus: Limbtear, Powerful Strikes, Rapid Advance.
-Limbtear allows the fighter to make a CMB check against an opponent as a standard action. If he succeeds, he may choose a limb, and rip It off from their body. DC = 10+HD. This inflicts damage equal to 10% of the target's total health.
-Powerful Strikes targets up to five creatures within 20'ft. The Fighter may move freely between these targets, striking them as part of a Full-Round Attack.
-Rapid Advance allows the fighter to quickly move from his current position to on adjacent to an enemy within 90'ft. He does not provoke an AoO from any threatened squares he passes through or leaves. This Is a Move action.
-Barrage allows the Fighter to cluster his ranged attacks together by firing them quickly, rather than strongly. The Fighter may make twice as many ranged attacks as BAB would normally allow, but at a cumulative -2 to Hit and Damage.

14 Focus: Shattering Blow, Adamantine Is Unbreakable, Execution.
-Shattering Blow attempts to dispell any and all magic within a 15'ft radius of the fighter. He swings his sword with enough force to break even some of the mightiest barriers. For the purpose of Dispelling, he treats his Fighter Level as his Caster Level, and may add his weapon's damage dice onto the final result (Greatsword, level 10 Fighter = 1D20+10(Fighter)+2(Greatsword Damage Dice)
This Is still a normal attack and may deal damage as normal, but can not be used more than once per round.
-Adamanatine Is Unbreakable allows the Fighter to stave off even some of the mightiest blows with his sheer physical pressence alone. He gains DR/- equal to his level and Constitution modifier for five rounds. This Is a Swift action.
-Execution Is a full-round action. The fighter attempts to attack an enemy within range at a -12 to-Attack Penalty. If the attack connects and deals damage, It reduces the target's total health by 25%. This does not need to be a melee attack. DC (10+Fighter Level+Str Mod). This effect lasts until the enemy target Is healed by a spell of fifth level or higher.
-Swift Reposition allows the fighter to dive for a closeby position, moving half his movement speed as a swift action. He may however not move again this round.


20 Focus: Test of Skulls, Battle Tendency, Awaken.
-Test of Skulls targets one creature within 240'ft. The creature must succeed on a Will and Fortitude Save (10+Fighter Level+Str Mod). If either fails, The Test of Skulls takes full effect. The target Is forced to confront the Fighter in a one-on-one melee duel. The target can not run away without a Will Save(10+Fighter Level+Str Mod). If the Fighter wins this duel, his Battle Focus recharges to full.
This Is a Move action.

-Battle Tendency increases the Fighter's movement speed by 60'ft, his critical range by one step, his damage by one dice step, his AC by 10, and all his saves by 5, for 5 Rounds. Swift action.

-Awaken unleashes the Fighter's true warrior spirit. He gains two extra attacks per round, as If under the effects of Haste, and becomes immune to Level Drain and Death effects for the duration. Lasts for 2 Rounds. This Is a Swift action.

-Inner Focus lets the Fighter to channel his Focus into attacks. If using a Ranged weapon, he may make an additional attack (For free), and all attacks this round gain a +10 to Hit and Damage. If using a Melee, he may instead channel all of his Focus into several devestating blows, adding his Fighter Level to all damage dealt for five rounds.

A friend I showed this to so lovingly said;
I like it, though doesn't nessecarily adress Fighter's biggest meme of not being able to do **** outta a fight. Helps a lil bit tho
That wasn't really what I aimed at accomplishing with this: It's fine to have Fighters be good at Fighting. The issue was that they weren't; They couldn't even compete with other martial classes or partial-caster-martials like Paladins.
So with this, I've adressed the following: Linear Fighters. Now, every few levels (About the same time as the casters, actually) the Fighter gets a noticable bump in power. (Level 1, 3, 6, 10, 14. Now, they don't get anything 'new' at 17, 19, like casters do, merely can pick up a few more abilities.)

Note: You have to choose an ability on the level that you get a point to spend on them.

If people want, I might edit this in the future to include Part 2: 'Breaking down the door's just as well as lockpicking, right?' and maybe even Part 3: 'What's a skill point?'

Battle Focus on Each Level: 1:2, 2:3, 3:4, 4:6, 5:7, 6:9, 7:10, 8:12, 9:13, 10:15, 11:16, 12:16, 13:17, 14:17, 15:18, 16:18, 17:19, 18:19, 19:20, 20:20.]
PS: Due to GiantITP being a bit broken, I had to copy-paste this from a .txt and can not preview post.
Edit: Accidentally wrote rounded up instead of rounded down.
Edit 2: Should clear up that Battle Focus Is used as a resource.
Edit 3: Focus generation reduced.
Edit 4: Execution nerfed from being a Finger of Death effect, Focus Cap added at 20 Focus, Battle Specilization Points per level reduced from 1 every other level to 1 level 3 levels.
Edit 5: Added [2] Focused Shot, [5] Distracting Shot, [9] Barrage, [14] Swift Reposition, and [20] Inner Focus

[aimlessPolymath]

Just doing some numbers:
At level 1, you can pick up a 2 focus ability. Note that this upgrade to Fighter makes it basically better than practically any other class at combat, since Parry lets you negate the other class's attacks 1-for-1.

level 3, you pick up another.

L5: 5 focus. You will likely only get 1 of these.

L7: 9 focus

L9: 9 focus

L11: 14 focus. Notably, this includes a death effect with a superscaling DC, two levels before Finger of Death comes online.

L13: 14 focus.

L15: 20 focus.

L17: 20 focus.

L19: 20 focus.

I'm struck by the fact that you will only ever want to get one 5-cost ability.

I'm wondering:
-how much Focus you expect a fighter to generate each round on average.
-What you saw as the primary advantage of, say, barbarians or rangers, over fighters in terms of what they could do in combat that the fighter couldn't?

Edit: Like many fighter fixes, this is highly biased against archery.

[Plaguemask]

Just doing some numbers:
I'm wondering:
-how much Focus you expect a fighter to generate each round on average.

1: Depends on the level. As full-rounds become common (but note that many abilities are move/full attack actions.) the Focus will go up.
On level 1-5, your Fighter can generate at most 6 Focus, assuming he's only hit once.
At level 6-10, your Fighter will generate at most 9 Focus, assuming he's only hit once.
At level 11-15, 12.
Level 16-20, 15.
Assuming he hits all his attacks.
As everything he goes up against gets more and more OP (This Is a side effect of Wizards/Sorcs/Clerics getting more and more OP and needing monsters to match It) A lot of abilities needs to be powerful, as much as I hate to say It, to actually be competitive. I don't mean 'okay' or 'acceptable', I mean something that you excell in that no one does - This Is called Class Identity.



At level 1, you can pick up a 2 focus ability. Note that this upgrade to Fighter makes it basically better than practically any other class at combat, since Parry lets you negate the other class's attacks 1-for-1.

This Is true, and somewhat of an issue, I realize. It's a bit hard to make mostly non-scaling abilities that remain relevant. However, It's up to RNG; Either you parry an attack or you get hit. I need to work on that ability, I admit.



-What you saw as the primary advantage of, say, barbarians or rangers, over fighters in terms of what they could do in combat that the fighter couldn't?


Are you honestly asking this question?
Rangers get spells and a whole selection of feats that Fighters couldn't even dream of getting. Literally, in some cases, as they require spellcasting levels.
Barbarians gets a fun thing called Rage-Cycling their once-per-rage abilities and doing more damage than the fighter ever could.
And with both of these, let's not mention all the out of combat utility they have compared to fighters (Yes, even barbarians, with their 4+dumped int.)
The fighter I'm presenting here Is not as much of a versatile character as the Ranger, or as front-facing powerful as the Barbarian. I wanted them to be somewhat unique, not 'Barbarian but worse'. Unless you're a bow and arrow fighter.

Speaking of which, Bow and Arrow fighters are plenty strong, even If they're one-trick-ponies, which kinda fills the role I wanted Fighters to fit in; It's okay to do one thing, as long as you do It really, really well.

Also, about the comment about Parry; May I point you towards Oppertune Parry and Riposte? A parried strike generates no Focus and negates an attack, (primarily meant for the more fragile warriors as a way to just avoid the damage in the first place), which means start of your next turn, you're 2 focus down. The entire thing Is about focus management, but I feel like a lot of issues could likely be solved If I just tweaked some numbers down, but I don't want It to just be 'A given' that you'll never have Focus or always have Focus for abilities.

Edit: No matter how I've come across in this post, I want to point out that I value criticism and I do take It very seriously into account.
Edit 2: After waking up a bit, serious nerfing has happened. Will show more love to archer builds when I get some coffé into me ^^

[Plaguemask]

1: Focus Generation reduced from 1 at start of turn, 3 when hitting an enemy and 2 when getting hit to 1/2/1.
2: Execution nerfed from being a very strong death effect to being a pretty alright, heavy damage effect. Battle Focus Cap added at 20 Focus, Battle Specializations reduced from 1 every 2 levels, to 1 every 3.
Added 4 new abilities (Specifically for Ranged Fighters.)
[2] -Focused Shot Is a ranged full-round attack, firing a single arrow. The Fighter may add his Dexterity and Strength to Damage dealt, alternatively the Fighter may instead add his Strength to his Attack Roll.
[5] -Distracting Shot Is a ranged attack that attempts to Confuse the enemy. The attack only deals half damage. If the attack hits, the target has to roll a Fortitude (10+Fighter Level+Dexterity) or become Confused for two rounds.
[9] -Barrage allows the Fighter to cluster his ranged attacks together by firing them quickly, rather than strongly. The Fighter may make twice as many ranged attacks as BAB would normally allow, but at a cumulative -2 to Hit and Damage.
[14] -Swift Reposition allows the fighter to dive for a closeby position, moving half his movement speed as a swift action. He may however not move again this round.
[20] -Inner Focus lets the Fighter to channel his Focus into attacks. If using a Ranged weapon, he may make an additional attack (For free), and all attacks this round gain a +10 to Hit and Damage. If using a Melee, he may instead channel all of his Focus into several devestating blows, adding his Fighter Level to all damage dealt for five rounds.

All future changelogs will be kept in this comment.